This page includes materials on US relations with the world, with a special focus on Northeast Asia and, inevitably, the Middle East. And so Britain is brought into it. And sometimes I stray further afield, when something catches my eye. Prior to 2005 it was called 'US and the world'

• US senator Graham threatens to defund UN over Palestine bid
  Netanyahu tells visiting Republican lawmaker that Israel will stand firm against effort to impose statehood terms By Times of Israel staff and AFP December 27, 2014, Visiting US Senator Lindsey Graham threatened Saturday to withhold US funding from the UN, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu lashed out at the Palestinian Authority, a day after a senior Palestinian official said the PA will push for a UN vote on the Palestinian statehood bid by Monday. “This is the same PA that joins hands with Hamas, incites constantly against Israel, the same PA is going to try to bring to the UN Security Council a resolution that seeks to impose on us conditions that will undermine our security,” the prime minister charged on Saturday at a press conference in Jerusalem with the Republican senator from South Carolina. “We will stand firmly and reject such a diktat,” Netanyahu said. Graham, a staunch pro-Israel senator, expressed support for the PM’s position, declaring that Congress would not “sit back and allow the United Nations to take over the peace process.” Graham went so far as to say that “any effort by the French, the Jordanians or anyone to avoid direct negotiations between the Israelis and the Palestinians over the peace process, anyone who tries to take this to the UN Security Council” will be met with “a violent backlash by the Congress that could include suspending funding to the United Nations. We will not sit back and allow the United Nations to take over the peace process.” He also said the US Congress “has your back, in a very bipartisan way. The Republican Party now runs the House and the Senate, and things will be a bit different. But one thing will be constant: There will be bipartisan support” for Israel [Israel] [Governance]
• Kirk puts weight behind Senate GOP plan to impose Iran sanctions, says veto-proof bill possible
  Published December 28, 2014 FoxNews.com A top Republican senator said Sunday that the upper chamber upon returning to work next month under GOP control will likely make imposing new sanctions on Iran a top priority. “Majority Leader (Mitch) McConnell has said the first vote … will be to approve the Keystone pipeline,” Illinois GOP Sen. Mark Kirk told Fox News’ “America’s News Headquarters.” “He has also said the second big vote will be on Iran sanctions so I would expect that coming up.” Capitol Hill Democrats and Republicans have pushed for sanctions to get the rogue nation to finally agree to a deal that would halt its alleged development of a nuclear weapon. Such calls have been led by GOP Sens. John McCain, Ariz., Lindsey Graham, S.C., and Kelly Ayotte, N.H. [Iran] [Governance] [Sanctions]
• Europe Beware! – World War III Could Destroy Europe for the Third Time in a Century
  By Peter Koenig Global Research, December 30, 2014 Washington is determined to go to war with Russia. Its military industrial complex demands it. Its financial system – FED, Wall Street demand it. War is a debt machine. War brings insane amounts of profit. The European vassals go along with it. It is part of the PNAC (Plan for a New American Century) to take over the world. After Russia, China would follow. That’s the plan. China is being encircled as we speak. Already 50% of the US navy fleet is stationed in the Pacific, from Japan to the Philippines to Australia. By 2016, Obama has promised, the navy war contingent in the Pacific will increase to two thirds. In mid-2014, China had surpassed the US in economic power. China must be annihilated in any way possible. Never mind that Russia and China have recently concluded a pact, a close financial and military alliance – which to defeat will be next to impossible. Unless – and here is the crux of the matter – unless Washington, a dying beast, pouncing wildly its tentacles all around the globe, initiates an all-out nuclear war, destroying the planet, including itself – but foremost Europe. After all, the US of A is far away. Protected by two Oceans. Starting wars from foreign bases is much safer. [Imperialism] [US global strategy]
• Why Obama Won’t Reach a Deal With Iran
  by Gareth Porter Everyone following the negotiations on Iran’s nuclear program and the lifting of economic sanctions against the Islamic Republic agrees that the Obama administration would like to have an agreement with Iran. It would be in line with the real interests of the United States to be able to cooperate openly with Iran against the common enemy of Sunni terrorists of ISIL. And it would be the one major accomplishment in foreign affairs that Obama could cite in his two terms in office. But the evidence suggests that the administration won’t make the compromises with Iran necessary to get a comprehensive agreement. On one hand, the political and legal system of the United States has been so thoroughly reshaped over more than two decades by Israeli interests that the hoops Obama would have to jump through to lift sanctions against Iran would be far more politically demanding than what he had to do to lift sanctions against Cuba. And on the other hand, despite its differences with Benjamin Netanyahu over the negotiations, the administration actually believes in the false narrative of covert Iranian nuclear weapons program and “nuclear deception” that Israel has long promoted. As the lead negotiator for the United States with Iran, Wendy Sherman (the protégé of the hardline anti-Iran and pro-Israeli Secretary of State Warren Christopher and the choice of Secretary of State Clinton to be Undersecretary of State) told a Congressional committee in October 2013, she didn’t trust Iran, because, “we know deception is part of the DNA.” But an even more important, the evidence indicates that the administration feels that it has no incentives to reach an agreement with Iran, because it is getting most of what it wants already under the status quo. [Iran] [US Negotiating]
• Francis Fukuyama: ‘In recently democratised countries I’m still a rock star’
  The world-renowned political thinker on what’s left of ‘The End of History’, the crimes of the neocons and having the ear of the Chinese leadership Wesley Yang Saturday 27 December 2014 09.30 GMT The first volume of Francis Fukuyama’s history of political development has been one of only a handful of books by a foreigner to make a profit in China. As Fukuyama explains when we meet near his home in Palo Alto, California, foreign books in China are usually pirated. But The Origins of Political Order, which narrates the emergence and growth of the state “From Pre-Human Times to the French Revolution”, engages respectfully with Chinese history and culture, and features an overarching version of national history that the Chinese themselves no longer teach or learn. Enough of his account of the country’s enormous historic strengths and equally enormous historic weaknesses survived the censor’s scalpel to make the work valuable to the Chinese reading public. [Softpower]
• Military Intelligence foresees threats to Israel in 2015
  Analysis: Top Shin Bet assessment predicts Middle East will remain dangerous and unstable: There is no international landlord, states are disintegrating, and enemies are honing tactics. Published: 12.28.14, 00:01 / Israel Opinion The Middle East is expected to be very bad place in which to live over the coming year – perhaps one of the worst and most dangerous places in the world. When Military Intelligence puts its feelers out across the borders – in the direction of Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, Yemen, Saudi Arabia and North Africa – it sees and describes a world gripped by social decay, crumbling politically, and becoming increasingly poor. The chronic economic crisis that is affecting the Arab Spring countries, and continues to worsen in light of the falling oil prices, is accelerating the internal disintegration of major countries such as Syria, Libya and Iraq, and could undermine stabilizing regimes like Iran and Egypt. In Saudi Arabia alone, which is seen as a stable country, unemployment among the young will reach 30 percent in the coming year. No wonder there are so many Saudis in the global Jihad organizations. Many more young individuals will fail to find their place in the Muslim societies, resulting in the rise of many more radical movements around Israel and the spilling by Muslims of a lot more Muslim blood in relation to previous years. And this tidal wave of violence could spill over into Israel. If there is a nightmarish scenario that's going to keep MI officials awake at night in 2015 it's the possibility that they won't be able to locate this tidal wave as it begins to form. [Middle East] [Israel] [Saudi Arabia] [Jihadists]
• War with Isis: The West needs more than a White Knight
  World View: Despite billions spent on weapons, the US has not been able to counter the militants' gruesome tactics There is a scene in Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking-Glass in which Alice meets the White Knight who is wearing full armour and riding a horse off which he keeps falling. Alice expresses curiosity about why he has placed spiked metal anklets on his horse's legs just above the hoofs. "To guard against the bites of sharks," he explains, and proudly shows her other ingenious devices attached to himself and his horse. Alice notices that the knight has a mouse trap fastened to his saddle. "I was wondering what the mouse trap was for," says Alice. "It isn't very likely there would be any mice on the horse's back." "Not very likely, perhaps," says the Knight, "but if they do come, I don't choose to have them running all about." It's as well "to be provided for everything", adds the Knight. As he explains his plans for countering these supposed dangers, he continues to tumble off his horse. The White Knight's approach to military procurement is very similar to that of the American and British military establishments. They drain their budgets to purchase vastly expensive equipment to meet threats that may never exist, much like the sharks and mice that menace Alice's acquaintance. Thus the Pentagon spends $400bn (£257bn) on developing the F-35 fighter (Britain is buying planes at a cost of £100m each) to gain air superiority over Russia and China in the event of a war with either power. Meanwhile, equipment needed to fight real wars is neglected, even though no answer has been found to old-fashioned weapons such as improvised explosive devices (IEDs) that caused two-thirds of the US-led coalition's casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan. A strange aspect of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq is that there has been so little criticism of the failure of expensively equipped Western armies to defeat lightly armed and self-trained insurgents. This is in sharp contrast to the aftermath of the US Army's failure to win the war in Vietnam in the 1960s and 1970s. The question is of more than historic interest because the US, UK and other allies are re-entering the wars in Iraq and Syria where they are seeking to "degrade and ultimately destroy" the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isis). [MISCOM] [US Military] [ISIS] [F 35]
• Who Was Alan Gross Working For?
  by Carmelo Ruiz-Marrero Alan P. Gross, an American arrested in Cuba in 2009 for smuggling broadband satellite communications equipment, made world headlines on December 2014 when he was released the same day that US president Obama ordered the release of three Cubans who were in American prisons serving sentences for espionage. Press reports mentioned that Gross was in the Caribbean island in his capacity as a subcontractor for USAID, a US government agency that administers aid programs abroad. Throughout its history this agency has been accused of being an arm of US foreign policy and at worst a mere front for intelligence operations rather than the neutral and apolitical provider of aid to poor countries that it pretends to be. In 2014 USAID was caught red-handed in bizarre schemes to destabilize Cuba through Twitter and by funding hip hop artists. A lesser known fact is that Gross was in Cuba working for a USAID contractor called Development Alternatives Inc. (DAI), a company that supervises and executes economic development projects all over the world. In 2010 it was USAID’s fifth biggest contractor, raking in almost $382.5 million in contracts just in that year. DAI has also worked for the US State Department, the Pentagon, the World Bank, the United Nations, the European Commission, and private sector giants like Monsanto, Wal-Mart, Hewlett Packard, Sun Microsystems, Exxon Mobil, Daimler Chrysler, Unilever and The Gap. “We tackle fundamental social and economic development problems caused by inefficient markets, ineffective governance, and instability”, says DAI about its work. [USAID] [Front] [NGO] [Subversion]
• Is Saudi Arabia Trying to Cripple American Fracking?
  Well, it's said as much, but the real reason for the flood of new Saudi oil is more complicated. • By Michael MoranMichael Moran is author of The Reckoning: Debt, Democracy and the Future of American Power, and most recently, The Fall, a novel of the Berlin Wall. The opinions expressed here are his own. • December 23, 2014 In a country that never tires of hearing itself described as “a nation of innovators,” the idea that one such innovation — the shale oil boom — has galvanized the world’s most powerful cartel, OPEC, to launch a campaign to snuff it out has obvious appeal. But like most Hollywood notions of reality, however, this one is too good to be true. Despite repetition in countless media accounts and analysts’ notes over the past few weeks, though, the idea of a “sheikhs vs. shale” battle to control global oil supplies has precious little evidence behind it. The Saudi-led decision to keep OPEC’s wells pumping is a direct strike by Riyadh on two already hobbled geopolitical rivals, Iran and Russia, whose support for the Syrian government and other geostrategic machinations are viewed as far more serious threats to the kingdom than the inconvenience of competing for market share with American frackers. Among the world’s oil producing nations, few suffer more from the Saudi move than Tehran and Moscow. At a time when both are already saddled with economic sanctions — Russia for its actions in Ukraine and Iran for its alleged pursuit of nuclear weapons technology — the collapse of oil prices has put unprecedented pressure on these regimes. For Russia, the crisis has hit very hard, with the ruble losing 40 percent of its value to the dollar since October. This is particularly problematic since Russian state-owned oil firms have gone on a dollar-borrowing spree in recent years; now, servicing that debt looks very ominous. True, Saudi OPEC minister Ali al-Naimi insisted last month that the move was intended to target shale. But he would say that, wouldn’t he? After all, his OPEC counterparts were standing beside him — including the OPEC minister from Iran. The fact is, Saudi Arabia has little to fear from shale. Saudi Arabia’s huge reserves of conventional oil can and probably will be produced for decades after the shale boom has run its course — which the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) expects to happen by 2050 or so — and at much lower costs. [Fracking] [Oil] [Saudi Arabia]
• Imperialist feminism and liberalism
  Deepa Kumar 6 November 2014 Colonial feminism is based on the appropriation of women’s rights in the service of empire and has been widely utilised in justifying aggression in the Middle East. But is it liberal? In a recent CNN interview, religion scholar Reza Aslan was asked by journalist Alisyn Camerota if Islam is violent given the “primitive treatment in Muslim countries of women and other minorities.” Aslan responded by stating that the conditions for women in Muslim majority countries vary. While women cannot drive in Saudi Arabia, elsewhere in various Muslim majority countries, women have been elected heads of states 7 times. But, before he could finish his sentence pointing out that the US is yet to elect a woman as president, he was interrupted by co-host Don Lemon who declared: “Be honest though, Reza, for the most part it is not a free and open society for women in those states.” How is it that people like Camerota and Lemon, who very likely have never travelled to “free and open” Turkey, Lebanon or Bangladesh, or read the scholarship on women’s rights struggles in Morocco, Iran and Egypt, seem to know with complete certainty that women are treated “primitively” in “Muslim countries”? On what basis does Lemon believe that he has the authority to call Aslan out for supposed dishonesty? How is it that with little or no empirical evidence on women’s rights in Muslim majority countries (which vary widely based on country, regions within a country, social class, the history and nature of national liberation movements, the part played by Islam in political movements etc.) Western commentators routinely make such proclamations about women and Islam? The answer lies in a ubiquitous, taken-for-granted ideological framework that has been developed over two centuries in the West. [Imperialism] [Humanitarian intervention] [Islam] [Feminism]
• Afghan civilian casualties, injuries to reach 10,000 in 2014 – UN
  Published time: December 20, 2014 01:43 Combined civilian casualties in Afghanistan will top 10,000 deaths and injuries this year, the UN has estimated, noting the highest civilian death toll on record and a nearly 20 percent increase compared to previous year. UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) says that it has documented 9,617 civilian casualties from 1 January 2014 to the end of November. That figure includes 3,188 civilian deaths and 6,429 civilian injuries. The mission warns that by year’s end, the number may rise well above 10,000 victims, the highest since the UN body began keeping record in 2009. The majority of casualties, some 75 percent, are blamed on “the Taliban, the Haqqani network and other insurgent groups,” Georgette Gagnon, the Director of Human Rights at UNAMA told the journalists at UN Headquarters. Around 12 percent of civilian casualties are blamed on the pro-Government forces. Another 11 percent is blamed on “ground engagements where the party that caused the civilian casualties cannot be determined” while the remainder of casualties was due to “unexploded ordinates that are left after ground engagements,” Gagnon said. [Afghanistan] [casualties]
• Saudi royal priorities
  The Saudi budget announced late this December keeps domestic and foreign spending high even as oil revenues plummet, a reflection of the royal family's concern about internal unrest four years after the Arab Spring. Hard choices are deferred for now. A recent budget report shows challenges ahead for the Saudi economy in 2015. Bruce Riedel Posted December 26, 2014 The Saudi budget projects spending for next year at $229 billion and revenues at $190 billion, according to the Saudi Gazette. The estimated deficit will be $38.6 billion. Spending actually will rise slightly over last year while revenue has fallen due to lower oil prices. The deficit will be the largest in the kingdom's history. Finance Minister Ibrahim Al Assaf has said the deficit will be funded by drawing down the kingdom's reserves, estimated at $750 billion or more. King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz has already authorized drawing on reserves to keep spending high. The king has also promised to keep pumping around 9.6 million barrels per day. During previous periods of falling oil prices the kingdom has cut spending. In 1998, for example, Abdullah said Saudis had to change their lifestyle to recognize that "the time of abundance is over." In 2009, the Saudis cut back on government jobs and public projects. In the worst crisis in the 1980s per capita income fell by roughly 50%. But since the start of the Arab Spring in 2011, the Saudi royal family has dramatically increased spending on the kingdom's welfare state to support the unemployed, the middle class and provide affordable housing. Salaries for the 2 million employees of the government, directly or indirectly, have increased. Funding for education and health care has gone up. The king has sought to buy off any dissent. Even in the Shiite Eastern Province spending on public programs has gone up. The royal family has also increased military and security expenditures. In March 2011, Abdullah created 60,000 new security jobs primarily to enhance security at key government installations. Spending on arms imports remains high. With the Royal Saudi Air Force engaged against the Islamic State, operational costs will go up. Abdullah's decision to keep spending at all-time highs reflects the House of Saud's conviction that the greatest danger to its survival is at home from disaffected citizens. [Saudi Arabia]
• Revealed: the true story of 'Maya', the CIA analyst who hunted down Osama bin Laden
  Real-life model for character in Zero Dark Thirty accused of series of bungles and being an apologist for torture By Richard Spencer, Middle East Correspondent 7:14PM GMT 20 Dec 2014 In the film Zero Dark Thirty, she was the persistent, conscientious CIA officer who finally tracked Osama bin Laden to his lair. In real life, her identity and current position were carefully hidden: until now. Following the release of the controversial US Senate report on the CIA’s use of torture and rendition, she has had her less-than-sparkling record picked over, been dubbed by the media “The Queen of Torture” and now finally been outed. While the film’s portrayal of her as a life-long al-Qaeda expert is accurate, her career is revealed to feature a series of blunders and accusations of misleading Congress. “She dropped the ball when the CIA was given information that might very well have prevented the 9/11 attacks,” wrote Jane Mayer, author of a definitive history of the agency’s “enhanced interrogation” practices, in the New Yorker. “She gleefully participated in torture sessions afterward; she misinterpreted intelligence in such a way that it sent the CIA on an absurd chase for al-Qaeda sleeper cells in Montana. And then she falsely told congressional overseers that the torture worked.” [CIA] [Torture] [Incompetence]
• MH370 was 'shot down by the US military', former airline CEO claims
  Marc Dugain said it may have been hijacked and flown towards Diego Garcia Lizzie Dearden Monday 22 December 2014 A French former airline director has claimed that the US military may have shot down Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 and covered it up. Marc Dugain, who headed Proteus Airlines and is an established author, speculated that the Americans may have targeted the aircraft because they feared a September 11-style attack on a military base in the Indian Ocean. In an article for French magazine Paris Match, he claimed that the Boeing 777 crashed nowhere near where international search teams have been combing the ocean for wreckage, but near an American military base in the British territory of Diego Garcia. “It’s an extremely powerful military base. It’s surprising that the Americans have lost all trace of this aircraft. Without getting into conspiracy theories, it is a possibility that the Americans stopped this plane,” he told France Inter, according to a translation by The Local. [MH370]
• Lockerbie bomber’s guilt reaffirmed by Scotland’s top prosecutor
  Abdelbaset al-Megrahi’s guilt in killing of 270 people in 1988 Pan Am bombing remains unchallenged by Crown Office Press Association theguardian.com, Saturday 20 December 2014 18.55 GMT Lockerbie bomber guilt reaffirmed Scotland's top prosecutor has pledged to track down Abdelbaset al-Megrahi's accomplices. Photograph: Manoocher Deghati/AFP/Getty Images Scotland’s top prosecutor has reaffirmed Abdelbaset al-Megrahi’s guilt in the killing of 270 people in the Lockerbie bombing and has pledged to track down his accomplices. The lord advocate, Frank Mulholland, said no Crown Office investigator or prosecutor has raised a concern about the evidence in the bombing of Pan Am flight 103 26 years ago. Al-Megrahi’s part in the bombing has been called into question in a series of books, documentaries and testimony to the Scottish parliament. A petition, Justice for Megrahi, backed by politicians and family members of some victims, remains on Holyrood’s books two years after al-Megrahi’s death. But in an anniversary address to relatives, Mulholland will say his investigation “remains on the evidence, and not on speculation and supposition”. He will travel to Washington to attend a memorial service at Arlington cemetery in Washington on Sunday. Mulholland will say: “The current instability in Libya has meant that some investigative opportunities have required to be reassessed, which I know has been frustrating for family members. “However our prosecutors and police officers, working with UK government and US colleagues, will continue to pursue this investigation, with the sole aim of bringing those who acted along with al-Megrahi to justice. “There are other significant investigative opportunities open to us which are not reliant on obtaining evidence from our Libyan colleagues. [Lockerbie] [Evidence]
• Ex-IAEA Chief Warns on Using Unverified Intel to Pressure Iran
  by Gareth Porter In a critique of the handling of the Iran file by the International Atomic Energy Agency, former IAEA Director General Han Blix has called for greater skepticism about the intelligence documents and reports alleging Iranian nuclear weapons work and warned that they may be used to put diplomatic pressure on Tehran. In an interview with this writer in his Stockholm apartment late last month, Blix, who headed the IAEA from 1981 to 1997, also criticized the language repeated by the IAEA under its current director general, Yukiya Amano, suggesting that Iran is still under suspicion of undeclared nuclear activity. Blix, who clashed with US officials when he was head of the United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC) on weapons of mass destruction in Iraq from 2000 to 2003, said he has long been skeptical of intelligence that has been used to accuse Iraq and Iran of having active nuclear-weapons programs. “I’ve often said you have as much disinformation as information” on alleged weaponization efforts in those countries, Blix said. Referring to the allegations of past Iranian nuclear weapons research that have been published in IAEA reports, Blix said, “Something that worries me is that these accusations that come from foreign intelligence agencies can be utilized by states to keep Iran under suspicion.” Such allegations, according to Blix, “can be employed as a tactic to keep the state in a suspect light—to keep Iran on the run.” The IAEA, he said, “should be cautious and not allow itself to be drawn into such a tactic.” Blix warned that compromising the independence of the IAEA by pushing it to embrace unverified intelligence was not in the true interests of those providing the intelligence. [IAEA] [UNUS] [Iran]
• Cuban Five at Heart of US / Cuba Deal
  by Marjorie Cohn In the course of delivering his historic speech dramatically altering US Cuba policy, President Barack Obama briefly mentioned that the United States released three Cuban agents. These men are members of the “Cuban Five,” who were imprisoned for gathering information on US-based Cuban exile groups planning terrorist actions against Cuba. Without their release, Cuba would never have freed Alan Gross. And Obama could not have undertaken what ten presidents before him refused to do: normalize relations between the United States and Cuba. Fighting Terrorism Against Cuba On June 8, 2001, Gerardo Hernandez, Ramon Labanino, Antonio Guerrero, Fernando Gonzalez and Rene Gonzalez were convicted of criminal charges, including conspiracy to commit espionage, and conspiracy to commit murder, in a trial in US district court in Miami. They were sentenced to four life terms and 75 years collectively. In a 93-page decision, a three-judge panel of the Eleventh Circuit US Court of Appeals unanimously reversed their convictions in 2005, because the anti-Cuba atmosphere in Miami, extensive publicity, and prosecutorial misconduct denied them the right to a fair trial. The decision of the three-judge panel was later overturned by a decision of all the Eleventh Circuit Judges, sitting en banc, so the convictions stood. But the Cuban Five have steadfastly maintained their innocence and there has been a worldwide campaign to free them. In Cuba, the five men are considered national heroes. Since the Cuban revolution in 1959, anti-Cuba terrorist organizations based in Miami have engaged in countless terrorist activities against Cuba and anyone who advocated normalization of relations between the United States and Cuba. Terrorist groups including Alpha 66, Commandos F4, Cuban American National Foundation, Independent and Democratic Cuba, and Brothers to the Rescue, have operated with impunity in the United States – with the knowledge and support of the FBI and CIA. [Cuba] [Terrorism] [Double standards]
• The reason oil could drop as low as $20 per barrel
  By Anatole Kaletsky December 19, 2014 How low can it go — and how long will it last? The 50 percent slump in oil prices raises both those questions and while nobody can confidently answer the first question (I will try to in a moment), the second is pretty easy. Low oil prices will last long enough for one of two events to happen. The first possibility, the one most traders and analysts seem to expect, is that Saudi Arabia will re-establish OPEC’s monopoly power once it achieves the true geopolitical or economic objectives that spurred it to trigger the slump. The second possibility, one I wrote about two weeks ago, is that the global oil market will move toward normal competitive conditions in which prices are set by the marginal production costs, rather than Saudi or OPEC monopoly power. This may seem like a far-fetched scenario, but it is more or less how the oil market worked for two decades from 1986 to 2004. Whichever outcome finally puts a floor under prices, we can be confident that the process will take a long time to unfold. It is inconceivable that just a few months of falling prices will be enough time for the Saudis to either break the Iranian-Russian axis or reverse the growth of shale oil production in the United States. It is equally inconceivable that the oil market could quickly transition from OPEC [Oil] [Saudi Arabia]
• The gunship archipelago
  Paul Rogers 18 December 2014 The growth of secretive floating armouries raises a challenge to maritime security worldwide. The MV Sinbad is a vessel of 250 gross tonnage, originally built as a fisheries patrol-boat in Sweden in 1981. With a crew of ten it is usually to be found in international waters, most recently in the Gulf of Oman off the coast of Fujairah, one of the United Arab Emirates (UAE). There, MV Sinbad is not protecting local fisheries but acting as a floating armoury supporting anti-piracy operations by the Sri-Lankan-based Avant Guard Maritime Services. The latter is a "private maritime security company", and itself an offshoot of Sri Lanka’s largest private military company. The MV Sinbad is identified on the company’s website as one of three floating armouries, used to support a number of commercial anti-piracy protection schemes operating principally in the Arabian Sea. As such, its purpose is clear. But where it touches the recent trend towards floating armouries outside of territorial waters - a development that is little known outside specialist maritime-security circles - a far more murky aspect emerges. [Privatisation]
• Mandy Rice-Davies: fabled player in a very British scandal
  Rice-Davies was only 18 when she was called upon to play a part in framing an innocent, but politically inconvenient man Geoffrey Robertson The Guardian, Friday 19 December 2014 19.01 GMT Mandy Rice-Davies and Christine Keeler leave the Old Bailey during the trial of Stephen Ward Mandy Rice-Davies (centre) and Christine Keeler (behind) leave the Old Bailey during the trial of Stephen Ward. Photograph: Evening Standard/Getty Images It has taken 50 years, but Britain has gradually caught up with Mandy Rice-Davies. A confidence, a swagger, a certain arrogance surrounds the young who carve their very public niche in contemporary Britain. Rice-Davies had it half a century ago. Inevitably she changed. In the years before her death yesterday from lung cancer, she lived the suburban life in Surrey. But it proved an ideal vantage point for her to watch as stuffy old Britain changed too. Rice-Davies, who has died at the age of 70, was only 18 in 1963, when she was called upon to play a part in framing an innocent, but politically inconvenient man. [Hypocrisy] [Coverup]
• Open for business?
  Alex Delmar-Morgan and Peter Oborne 19 December 2014 The timing of HSBC’s decision to shut down the bank account could not have come at a worse moment for the Ummah Welfare Trust, one of Britain’s largest Muslim charities. HSBC is famous for its longstanding claim to be the 'world's local bank', the slogan which formed the backbone to its famous global advertising campaign for years. The bank claims to appeal to every race, colour, nationality and creed. But how true is this? A growing number of the world’s estimated 1.6 billion Muslims are coming to question whether HSBC really is on their side. Over the past few months HSBC has, without warning, closed the accounts of several well-known British Muslims and their dependents. It has also targeted Muslim institutions, including one well-known charity and a mosque. None of these have been given any explanation for HSBC’s sudden action. All of them received letters out of the blue. All say they had excellent credit records. HSBC itself refuses to give any reason for its decisions. Most of the victims are politically active. Without exception they were opponents of the Israeli war against Gaza, and some have connections to the Muslim Brotherhood, which is banned as a terrorist organization by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
  In the absence of an explanation from HSBC it is impossible to say why the accounts of these Muslim organisations have been closed. However, there is persuasive evidence that the real pressure comes from the United States. We will be examining this evidence shortly. [Softwar] [Islam]
• Operation Nazification – U.S. Military Hired Sixteen Hundred Nazi Scientists and Doctors
  Book Review: Annie Jacobsen - Operation Paperclip: The Secret Intelligence Program That Brought Nazi Scientists to America By David Swanson Global Research, February 21, 2014 Annie Jacobsen’s new book is called Operation Paperclip: The Secret Intelligence Program That Brought Nazi Scientists to America. It isn’t terribly secret anymore, of course, and it was never very intelligent. Jacobsen has added some details, and the U.S. government is still hiding many more. But the basic facts have been available; they’re just left out of most U.S. history books, movies, and television programs. After World War II, the U.S. military hired sixteen hundred former Nazi scientists and doctors, including some of Adolf Hitler’s closest collaborators, including men responsible for murder, slavery, and human experimentation, including men convicted of war crimes, men acquitted of war crimes, and men who never stood trial. Some of the Nazis tried at Nuremberg had already been working for the U.S. in either Germany or the U.S. prior to the trials. Some were protected from their past by the U.S. government for years, as they lived and worked in Boston Harbor, Long Island, Maryland, Ohio, Texas, Alabama, and elsewhere, or were flown by the U.S. government to Argentina to protect them from prosecution. Some trial transcripts were classified in their entirety to avoid exposing the pasts of important U.S. scientists. Some of the Nazis brought over were frauds who had passed themselves off as scientists, some of whom subsequently learned their fields while working for the U.S. military. [Nazism]
• Learning the Art of Coexistence
  The New Opening With the USA
  by Raul Castro
  Since my election as President of the State Council and Council of Ministers I have reiterated in many occasions our willingness to hold a respectful dialogue with the United States on the basis of sovereign equality, in order to deal reciprocally with a wide variety of topics without detriment to the national Independence and self-determination of our people. This stance was conveyed to the US Government both publicly and privately by Comrade Fidel on several occasions during our long standing struggle, stating the willingness to discuss and solve our differences without renouncing any of our principles. The heroic Cuban people, in the wake of serious dangers, aggressions, adversities and sacrifices has proven to be faithful and will continue to be faithful to our ideals of independence and social justice. Strongly united throughout these 56 years of Revolution, we have kept our unswerving loyalty to those who died in defense of our principles since the beginning of our independence wars in 1868. Today, despite the difficulties, we have embarked on the task of updating our economic model in order to build a prosperous and sustainable Socialism. As a result of a dialogue at the highest level, which included a phone conversation I had yesterday with President Obama, we have been able to make headway in the solution of some topics of mutual interest for both nations. [Cuba]
• Easing rules with Cuba may produce bonanza for U.S. business
  By Kevin G. Hall McClatchy Washington Bureau December 17, 2014 Updated 6 hours ago WORLD NEWS CUBA-ROADTRIP 2 MCT “We have, and we’ll have socialism,” reads a sign on the road to Biran, the birthplace in Cuba of dictators Fidel and Raul Castro, March 27, 2012. KEVIN G. HALL — MCT WASHINGTON — The Obama administration’s move Wednesday toward normalized relations with Cuba after five decades of strife may set events in motion that will change business fortunes across the Florida Straits, the Caribbean and the Americas. The United States is alone with a trade and travel ban on Cuba, now in place more than 50 years, and as a result, companies from Brazil, Canada, China, Germany and elsewhere have been able to open hotels, offer cruise ship services and operate mines.
  That begins to change immediately, as the Obama administration said it would ease travel restrictions to Cuba under 12 categories. This will allow private foundations, researchers and professional organizations to have more people-to-people contacts. Americans will be allowed to provide business training to Cubans, who’ve often been trained in top-notch universities but have zero experience in private enterprise. In recent years, the Roman Catholic Church has stepped into the void to provide basic business training in major cities such as Havana. But Cuba has no trade or vocational schools, and very little resembling private enterprise as Americans know it. [Cuba] [Subversion] [NGO] [Religion]
• U.S. to Restore Full Relations With Cuba, Erasing a Last Trace of Cold War Hostility
  By Peter Baker DEC. 17, 2014 WASHINGTON — President Obama on Wednesday ordered the restoration of full diplomatic relations with Cuba and the opening of an embassy in Havana for the first time in more than a half-century as he vowed to “cut loose the shackles of the past” and sweep aside one of the last vestiges of the Cold War. The surprise announcement came at the end of 18 months of secret talks that produced a prisoner swap negotiated with the help of Pope Francis and concluded by a telephone call between Mr. Obama and President Raúl Castro. The historic deal broke an enduring stalemate between two countries divided by just 90 miles of water but oceans of mistrust and hostility dating from the days of Theodore Roosevelt’s charge up San Juan Hill and the nuclear brinkmanship of the Cuban missile crisis. “We will end an outdated approach that for decades has failed to advance our interests, and instead we will begin to normalize relations between our two countries,” Mr. Obama said in a nationally televised statement from the White House. The deal, he added, will “begin a new chapter among the nations of the Americas” and move beyond a “rigid policy that is rooted in events that took place before most of us were born.” [Cuba] [Peaceful coexistence]
• Question of the week: Do you support the President’s announcement to reestablish diplomatic, economic, and travel ties with Cuba?
  For over half a century, the United States has maintained a strict ban on the majority of trade with Cuba. The ban originated during the 1959 Cuban Revolution, as a U.S. response to the Cuban government’s takeover of privately owned American businesses. Since that time, the United States has upheld the ban as long as the Cuban government continued to resist the establishment of a democracy and neglect human rights. The United States has not had formal diplomatic relations with Cuba since 1961; however, that changed yesterday when President Obama announced the release of American citizen, Alan Gross, who was arrested for trying to increase Internet access in small communities across Cuba and was imprisoned there for 5 years; as well as the release of three Cubans who were part of the “Cuban Five” and imprisoned in Florida for 15 years on spying charges. The President’s announcement is part of his plan to normalize relations between Cuba and the United States, and will also include reviewing the designation of Cuba as a state sponsor of terrorism, easing financial restrictions, easing travel restrictions, and beginning the effort to lift the 54-year-old ban on trade between the two countries. Additionally, the United States will begin looking to establish an embassy in Havana in the coming months. In return, Cuba also agreed to allow greater Internet access for its citizens and easier telecommunications with the United States. Question of the week: Do you support the President’s announcement to reestablish diplomatic, economic, and travel ties with Cuba? ( ) Yes. ( ) No. ( ) I don’t know. ( ) Other. Share your thoughts on my blog here. Take the Poll here. Find the results of last week’s InstaPoll here. [Cuba]
• The United States and Cuba Begin Restoring Relations
  Geopolitical Diary December 17, 2014 | 23:09 The United States and Cuba on Dec. 17 took their most assertive step in several decades toward normalizing relations. The most important announcements concerned the resumption of high-level political discussions focused on renewing formal diplomatic ties between the countries, which have been nonexistent since 1961. Cuban and U.S. officials will hold high-level meetings in the coming months, and the two countries will work toward establishing embassies in Havana and Washington. The United States will also immediately relax some sanctions on trade and travel to Cuba. President Barack Obama announced that the United States would loosen certain restrictions on financial transactions with Cuba, remove some restrictions on U.S. citizens traveling to Cuba, and authorize the export of certain goods to the Cuban private sector. The U.S. State Department will also review Cuba's designation as a state sponsor of terrorism. Obama has the legal authority to immediately implement the measures he announced, but he left the issue of formally lifting the trade embargo up to Congress. Together, the announcements signaled a gradual process of reopening Cuba to the United States. Havana has much to gain from starting such a process, especially at a time when its regional partner, Venezuela, faces severe instability. Cuba fears that a declining Venezuelan economy will limit one of the island nation's sources of financing and low-cost petroleum shipments while it is attempting to transition toward a new leadership and economic model. However, a formal end to the embargo is a long way off. The United States' Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity Act of 1996 requires visible progress toward Cuban concessions such as liberalizing political activity, holding free elections and dissolving state security bodies. [Cuba] [US negotiating] [Sanctions]
• Yusef Sarwar got 12 years in prison. What about William Hague?
  Ian Sinclair 16 December 2014 Two men supported the Syrian rebels, one is in prison, the other is a government minister. Prince Harry in an Apache helicopter. Flickr/Defense Images. Has there ever been such an obvious case of government hypocrisy that has been so completely ignored by the media? On 5 December 2014 Yusef Sarwar, a 22-year old man from Birmingham, was sentenced to 12 years in prison for travelling to Syria to fight with a jihadist group against the Syrian Government. When she found out where her son had gone, Yusef’s mother, Majida Sarwar, contacted the police. They apparently told her they would help get her son home. According to the Observer Yusef only spent a few weeks in Syria, before returning to the UK in January 2014, where he was immediately arrested at Heathrow Airport. Majida has been speaking out strongly against the harsh sentencing of her son, comparing his treatment to the progressive, and it would seem more effective, rehabilitation of returning jihadists to Denmark. Speaking to The Observer she noted “When the Queen’s son went to Afghanistan to fight he was patted on the back. Our sons are going out for a cause that the British government also supports, they support the rebels fighting in Syria, he is sent to jail for 12 years.” With this one utterance Majida completely shamed our supposedly free and critical media and all the professional and often highly educated journalists and commentators who work within it. Where in the endless newspaper columns and television news reports about Syria have you seen such a bold declaration of the truth? Whether she knows it or not, by pointing to Prince Harry fighting and killing the Taliban—most of whom are poor, local men from farming families—Majida crossed a red line that most career-minded journalists steer well clear of. Most revealing is Majida’s reference to the inconvenient fact the British Government have themselves been supporting the Syrian rebels. [Syria] [Jihadists] [Outsourcing] [Double standards] [Hypocrisy]
• Did CIA torture violate Nuremberg ban on human experimentation?
  By Jonathan S. Landay McClatchy Washington Bureau December 16, 2014 Updated 9 hours ago WASHINGTON — CIA health professionals may have committed war crimes by collecting and analyzing data on brutally interrogated detainees in potential violation of U.S. and international bans on research on human subjects without their consent, a human rights organization said Tuesday. Physicians for Human Rights called on President Barack Obama and Congress to establish a commission of inquiry to examine the participation of CIA and private medical personnel in the interrogation program, including possible breaches of domestic and international laws. “The CIA relied upon health professionals at every step to commit and conceal the brutal and systematic torture of national security detainees,” the organization said in an analysis of a four-year study of the agency’s interrogation program released last week by the Senate Intelligence Committee. “While most of the acts detailed . . . violate international human rights and domestic laws prohibiting torture, several of these alleged violations can also constitute war crimes.” In raising possible war crimes by medical personnel, the analysis cited bans on experimentation on prisoners that grew out of the trials of Nazi officials and doctors held in Nuremberg, Germany, after World War II. Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2014/12/16/250260_did-cia-torture-violate-nuremberg.html?rh=1#storylink=cpy [Torture] [War crimes]
• Obama to announce historic overhaul of relations; Cuba releases American
  By Elise Labott, CNN Global Affairs Correspondent December 17, 2014 -- Updated 1621 GMT (0021 HKT) Washington (CNN) -- U.S. contractor Alan Gross, held by the Cuban government since 2009, was freed Wednesday as part of a landmark deal with Cuba that paves the way for a major overhaul in U.S. policy toward the island, senior administration officials tell CNN. President Barack Obama spoke with Cuban President Raul Castro Tuesday in a phone call that lasted about an hour and reflected the first communication at the presidential level with Cuba since the Cuban revolution, according to White House officials. Obama is expected to announce Gross' release and the new diplomatic stance at noon in Washington. At around the same time, Cuban president Raul Castro will speak in Havana President Obama is also set to announce a major loosening of travel and economic restrictions on the country. And the two nations are set to re-open embassies, with preliminary discussions on that next step in normalizing diplomatic relations beginning in the coming weeks, a senior administration official tells CNN. [Cuba] [Embargo]
• Marco Rubio Fires Back On Cuba: Obama Is The 'Worst Negotiator' In My Lifetime
  Posted: 12/17/2014 1:50 pm EST Updated: 13 minutes ago WASHINGTON -- President Barack Obama will get no money for his Cuba policy, no ambassador will be confirmed and the embargo will never be lifted, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) vowed in a blistering press conference on Wednesday. In a historic move earlier in the day, Obama announced that the United States will begin talks with Cuba to normalize full diplomatic relations, marking the most significant shift in U.S. policy towards Cuba in 50 years. The president's remarks followed the release on Wednesday morning of American Alan Gross, who had been held in a Cuban prison for five years. Gross' release was negotiated in exchange for the freeing of three Cubans who had been jailed in the U.S. for spying. "This entire policy shift announced today is based on an illusion, based on a lie,” Rubio, who is the son of Cuban immigrants, told reporters on Capitol Hill. "The White House has conceded everything and gained little." "I’m committed to doing everything I can to unravel as many of these changes as possible," he added. The Florida senator's powers in that regard will be considerable. Soon-to-be Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) deferred to Rubio when asked for comment on the issue. And when the new, Republican-led Senate comes into session on Jan. 6, Rubio will be the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee's subcommittee on the Western hemisphere, which has oversight responsibility for U.S. dealings in the region. "This Congress is not going to lift the embargo," Rubio declared at the end of his news conference. [Cuba] [Governance]
• Conversation with a CIA Interrogator
  by Douglas Valentine John Patrick Muldoon, “Picadoon” to those who knew him, was the first director of the CIA’s Province Interrogation Center (PIC) program in South Vietnam. Legendary CIA officer Lucien Conein told me I could find him at a particular bar in Washington, D.C. “Tell him I said he was the worst private investigator ever,” Conein said. “Tell him I said he’d lose a guy halfway across the street.” I took cab over to Tenley Square and walked into the bar. It was midnight. The bartender was cleaning glasses. “Is John Muldoon here?” I asked. The bartender looked at me suspiciously and nodded at a really big guy hunched over a drink at the far end of the bar. I walked down. “Are you Muldoon?” He turned and gave me a menacing look. I took that for a yes. “Conein says you’re the worst PI in the world. Says you’d lose a guy,” etcetera. Muldoon was offended. “You can tell that fucker Conein I wouldn’t lose the guy till he was all the way across the street,” he said indignantly. Based on that introduction, Muldoon and I began a series of interviews over the next few days, one of which was conducted at his brother’s sprawling horse and polo farm in Maryland. Standing six feet four inches tall, weighing well over two hundred pounds, Muldoon had a scarlet face and deep voice. A Georgetown University dropout, he joined the Agency in 1958. At least one of his family members was already working there. He did his first tour in Germany and in 1962 was sent to South Korea. “I worked interrogation in Seoul,” Muldoon recalled. “I’d never been involved in interrogation before. Ray Valentine was my boss. There was a joint KCIA-CIA interrogation center in Yon Don Tho, outside Seoul.” In recruiting cadres for the Korean CIA, the CIA used the same method it used to staff the South Vietnamese Central Intelligence Organization (CIO), which the CIA under Station Chief William Colby created in 1961. As revealed by John Marks in The Search for the Manchurian Candidate, the CIA sent its top psychologist, John Winne, to Seoul to “select the initial cadre,” for the KCIA using a CIA-developed psychological assessment test. “I set up an office with two translators,” Winne told Marks, “and used a Korean version of the Wechsler.” CIA psychologists “gave the tests to 25 to 30 police and military officers,” Marks writes, “and wrote up a half-page report on each, listing their strengths and weaknesses. Winne wanted to know about each candidate’s ability to follow orders, creativity, lack of personality disorders, motivation-why he wanted out of his current job. It was mostly for the money, especially with the civilians.”’ In this way secret police are recruited as CIA assets in every country where the Agency operates. In Latin America, Marks writes, “The CIA … found the assessment process most useful for showing how to train the anti-terrorist section. According to results, these men were shown to have very dependent psychologies and needed strong direction.” Direction that comes from the CIA. Marks quotes one assessor as saying, “Anytime the Company spent money for training a foreigner, the object was that he would ultimately serve our purposes.” CIA officers “were not content simply to work closely with these foreign intelligence agencies; they insisted on penetrating them, and the Personality Assessment System provided a useful aid.”’ [CIA] [Torture]
• 2 Military Bases in Syria Fall to Rebels
  By Mohammad Ghannam DEC. 15, 2014 BEIRUT, Lebanon — Two important Syrian military bases in Idlib Province, under rebel siege for two years, fell on Monday to insurgents led by the Nusra Front, the Islamist militant group aligned with Al Qaeda, fighters and activist groups monitoring the conflict reported. The Nusra fighters appeared to have achieved the victory partly by using American TOW antitank missiles they had captured from more moderate antigovernment fighters backed by the United States, another sign that those fighters are struggling to regain the initiative from extremist groups. [Jihadist] [Outsourcing]
• The “Shape-Shifting Sheik” and the “Sydney Siege”
  By Tony Cartalucci Global Research, December 16, 2014 Suspect had multiple aliases, granted political asylum by Australian government, interviewed by Australian media, spent years as fake pro-Western “Shia’a cleric” condemning Iran and Syria before recently “converting” to Sunni and supporting ISIS. Another embarrassing chapter has unfolded for Western intelligence and security communities in the wake of the so-called “Sydney Siege.” The suspect named by the media as “Man Haron Monis” also has gone by the names “Manteghi Boroujerdi” and “Mohammad Hassan Manteghi” and was an individual now confirmed to have long been on the radar of the Australian government, media, law enforcement, and court system since his arrival on Australian shores almost two decades ago. Claiming he was a “lone wolf” attacker whose violence and extremism could not have been foreseen is betrayed by an extensive criminal record including murder, preceded by the suspicious circumstances that brought him to Australia to begin with. [Jihadist]
• Turkey hits back at US over torture report
  Always disgruntled over the US State Department’s annual country report on human rights, which highlights allegations of torture and maltreatment by the Turkish police against terror suspects, the US Senate’s report on CIA tortures appears to have given Ankara a rare opportunity to hit back at Washington. While Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu expressed his hope that the United States “will not repeat such inhuman treatment,” Turkey's alleged cooperation with the CIA over rendition of Islamic terror suspects is conveniently overlooked. AuthorSemih IdizPosted December 12, 2014 Turkey is the only NATO ally that has come out to officially condemn the United States, albeit in diplomatic terms, and to call for American officials who authorized the use of torture against Muslim suspects to be brought to justice. Ankara also says it is investigating whether Turkish citizens were detained and unlawfully tortured by the CIA. Revelations about the CIA’s “enhanced interrogation techniques” have also elicited skepticism about Washington’s honesty, resulting in harsh condemnation of the United States from pro-government and Islamist columnists in Turkey. Meanwhile, anti-government papers are highlighting that supporters of the government are conveniently avoiding any mention of allegations that Turkey also facilitated the CIA’s prisoner transport flights, or rendition, of suspected Muslim terrorists. [Torture] [Turkey] [Arrogance]an rights] [Blowback]
• Geopolitics and international state crime: an accountability black hole
  Richard Falk 15 December 2014 There is a conspiracy of silence around victors’ justice within the United Nations and in global diplomacy, as if it is embarrassing even to call attention to such a fundamental deficiency in the implementation of international criminal law. Chief US prosecutor Robert H. Jackson addresses the Nuremberg court.1945. Ever since surviving German and Japanese political leaders and military commanders were put on trial after World War II there has been an insistence that those who represent states are potentially subject to indictment, prosecution, and punishment if they violate international criminal law. In the main this has been understood as applying to grave violations of the laws of war (especially the Hague and Geneva Conventions), crimes against humanity (recently specified to include apartheid and torture as distinct crimes), crimes against the peace (aggression, which was the core crime alleged at Nuremberg and Toyko, but has been called into question in recent years), and genocide (not formally criminalized until 1948). In effect, those whose actions violate these restrictions on the behavior of states cannot claim immunity or exemption from law because they are acting in good faith on behalf of the state or even carrying out the orders of those running the state. [Double standards] [ICC]
• Spy messages could finally solve mystery of UN chief’s death crash
  US urged to hand over intercepts to establish truth of 1961 plane accident in Zambia in which Dag Hammarskjöld died Jamie Doward The Observer, Saturday 13 December 2014 12.56 GMT un chief death crash Searchers walk through the scattered wreckage of the DC6B plane carrying Dag Hammarskjold in a forest near Ndola, Zambia Photograph: Ap For more than half a century, the circumstances of the tragic death of Dag Hammarskjöld have been shrouded in mystery. That the former UN secretary-general died in a plane crash while on his way to negotiate a ceasefire in the breakaway African republic of Katanga, is well documented. But the cause of the crash remains to be established. That proof may become available if the US National Security Agency (NSA) complies with a new request from the UN and hands over crucial intelligence intercepts that could confirm what brought down the Albertina DC6 in a forest near Ndola in northern Rhodesia (now Zambia) in September 1961. All but one on board died in the crash. A 16th passenger, Sergeant Harold Julien, the acting chief security officer, died as a result of injuries a few days later, having told medical staff he had seen “sparks in the sky” shortly before the crash.
• The Relentless Production of Shale Oil Is Breaking OPEC’s Neck
  By Peter Coy and Matthew Philips December 11, 2014 The Relentless Production of Shale Oil Is Breaking OPEC’s Neck The world’s biggest oil companies faced ruin in the summer of 1931. Crude prices had plummeted. Wildcatters were selling oil from the bonanza East Texas field for a nickel a barrel, cheaper than a bowl of chili. On Aug. 17, Governor Ross Sterling declared a state of insurrection in four counties and sent 1,100 National Guard troops to shut down the fields and bring order to the market. A month later the Railroad Commission of Texas handed out strict production quotas. That heavy-handed intervention in the free market was remarkable enough. Even more remarkable was who pulled it off. The person in charge of shutting down the wildcatters, National Guard Brigadier General Jacob Wolters, was the general counsel of Texas Co., an ancestor of Chevron (CVX). And the Texas governor who ordered Wolters in was a past president of Humble Oil and Refining, a forerunner of ExxonMobil (XOM). Big Oil played hardball in those days. History is repeating itself, with a twist. The stressed-out giants of today are Saudi Arabia and its fellows in the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries. The descendants of the 1930s wildcatters are today’s producers of oil from shale, who are driving down the world price of crude by flooding the market with millions of barrels of new oil each day. At $64 a barrel, Brent crude is down 44 percent since June. The twist is that today’s upstarts aren’t draining oil from neighbors’ plots, as happened in the 1930s. And OPEC can’t call in the National Guard against them. All it can do is gape at the falling price of crude and contemplate the destruction of their cartel at the hands of the Americans, whom they thought they had supplanted for good 40 years ago. Energy economist Philip Verleger says shale is to OPEC what the Apple II (AAPL) was to the IBM (IBM) mainframe. [Oil]
• Iran Nuclear Talks: A Perilous Slippery Slope
  By Prof. Ismael Hossein-Zadeh Global Research, December 12, 2014 WAR ON IRAN? Baghdad talks on Iran’s nuclear program unresolved Soon after the Iran nuclear talks were recently extended for another seven months (beyond the November 22, 2014 deadline), President Rouhani spoke with the Iranian people in a televised address in which he sought to portray the inconclusive negotiations as a diplomatic victory for Iran, as an indication that his team of negotiators “stood their ground” in the face of excessive demands by the US and its allies. In reality, however, the extension meant the failure of the Iranian negotiators to achieve anything of substance (in terms of sanctions relief) in exchange for the significant unilateral concessions they had made a year earlier. To put it differently, it meant that the US and its allies refused to honor what they had promised Iran in return for its suspension and/or downgrading of its nuclear technology. A year earlier, that is, in the first round of negotiations on 24 November 2013, Iran had agreed to the following significant concessions: limit its enrichment of uranium from the level of 20 percent to below 5 percent purity, render unusable its existing stockpile of 20 percent fuel for further enrichment, not activate its heavy-water reactor in Arak, not use its more advanced IR-M2 centrifuges for enrichment, and consent to extensive IAEA inspections of its nuclear industry/facilities. This obviously means that Iranian negotiators had agreed to more than freezing Iran’s nuclear technology; more importantly, they had reversed and rolled back significant scientific achievements and technological breakthroughs of recent years. In return, the US and its allies had agreed that following the “confidence building” implementation of these commitments by Iran, economic sanctions against that country would be lifted. A year later, and despite the fact that IAEA has consistently confirmed Iran’s compliance with these commitments, major sanctions continue unabated [US Negotiating] [Iran] [Renege] [Sanctions]
• Britain in Bahrain: eyes wide shut
  Paul Rogers 11 December 2014 A new naval base in the Gulf reveals both the flaws in Britain's strategic thinking and the limits of its military capacity. The British government announced on 6 December 2014 that it was expanding its use of port facilities at Mina Salman in Bahrain into a full naval base. The news was greeted by protests from the Shi’a majority in the Gulf kingdom; many called for the removal of the United Kingdom's ambassador, Iain Lindsay. A potent argument now circulating is that the Sunni-dominated government is paying most of the cost of the new base as a reward for Britain’s turning a blind eye to human-rights abuses in Bahrain - especially since protests erupted there in the early months of the "Arab spring". Bahrain Watch and other human-rights groups have long criticised the government in Manama, but they have had little impact on British government policy. The UK base will not be large in comparison to the substantial United States naval headquarters for its fifth fleet, just up the coast. But is still significant, as the first permanent presence "east of Suez" since the Britain withdrew from the region in 1971. In its own way, the symbolism is considerable, even though such military commitments overseas are now out of line with domestic opinion. [Bahrain] [Bases]
• CIA chief: ‘Unknowable’ whether ordinary interrogation would bring same intel gains
  In his first public comments since the release of the Senate report on the CIA detention program, agency director John Brennan said that valuable information was obtained from detainees subjected to harsh interrogation techniques, but it remains “unknowable” whether conventional questioning alone could have led to the same intelligence gains. (AP) By Ellen Nakashima and Brian Murphy December 11 at 7:21 PM ? CIA Director John Brennan on Thursday moved to defend an agency battered by a devastating report released this week on the use of harsh interrogation techniques while acknowledging what he called “abhorrent” methods that were “outside of the bounds” of approved policy. In rare televised remarks from the agency’s marble lobby before two dozen senior CIA leaders, Brennan said that valuable information was obtained from detainees subjected to the measures, which included waterboarding and “rectal rehydration.” But, he said, it remains “unknowable” whether conventional questioning alone could have yielded the same intelligence gains. [CIA] [Torture]
• A $4,000 Paint Job to Keep the Pentagon's New $400 Billion Fighter Jets Running
  By Justin Bachman December 10, 2014 The F-35 Lightning II is the most expensive fighter jet in military history, with a total cost of nearly $400 billion to produce a planned fleet of more than 2,400 planes. Just don't expect any of them to fly with anything warmer than tepid jet fuel. When the fuel for the F-35 hits higher temperatures, there's a chance the jets will experience what the Air Force described as a "shutdown." To keep each $100 million-plus jet running at Luke Air Force Base, located northwest of Phoenix, the 56th Logistics Readiness Squadron is preparing to repaint its fuel trucks, currently green. "We are taking proactive measures to mitigate any possible aircraft shutdowns due to high fuel temperatures in the future," Chief Master Sergeant Ralph Resch explained last week in an Air Force statement. His team of fueling specialists got the idea to paint the trucks from Edwards Air Force Base in the Mojave Desert, where summer temperatures routinely hit 110 degrees. A coat of white paint, which better reflects heats, could help cool down the fuel. The Air Force insists that the F-35 has performed well during test flights in hot desert climates. Still, the warm-fuel glitch would hardly be the first unforeseen issue to hamper the F-35 program, whose long litany of development woes ranges from engine fires and oil leaks to enormous cost overruns. [F-35]
• Why America’s middle class is lost
  The middle class took America to the moon. Then something went horribly wrong. Written by Jim Tankersley Photos by Bonnie Jo Mount Video by Whitney Shefte Graphic by Darla Cameron, Ted Mellnik Produced by Emily Yount, Dwuan June Published on December 12, 2014 DOWNEY, CALIF. — One day in 1967, Bob Thompson sprayed foam on a hunk of metal in a cavernous factory south of Los Angeles. And then another day, not too long after, he sat at a long wood bar with a black-and-white television hanging over it, and he watched that hunk of metal land a man on the moon. On July 20, 1969 — the day of the landing — Thompson sipped his Budweiser and thought about all the people who had ever stared at that moon. Kings and queens and Jesus Christ himself. He marveled at how when it came time to reach it, the job started in Downey. The bartender wept. On a warm day, almost a half-century later, Thompson curled his mouth beneath a white beard and talked about the bar that fell to make way for a freeway, the space-age factory that closed down and the town that is still waiting for its next great economic rocket, its new starship to the middle class. They’ve waited more than a decade in Downey. They’ve tried all the usual tricks to bring good-paying jobs back to the 77-acre plot of dirt where once stood a factory that made moon landers and, later, space shuttles. Nothing brought back the good jobs. Those jobs aren’t coming back. Not at the old North American Rockwell plant, and not in thousands of similarly socked towns. Yes, the stock market is soaring, the unemployment rate is finally retreating after the Great Recession and the economy added 321,000 jobs last month. But all that growth has done nothing to boost pay for the typical American worker. Average wages haven’t risen over the last year, after adjusting for inflation. Real household median income is still lower than it was when the recession ended. Make no mistake: The American middle class is in trouble. That trouble started decades ago, well before the 2008 financial crisis, and it is rooted in shifts far more complicated than the simple tax-and-spend debates that dominate economic policymaking in Washington. It used to be that when the U.S. economy grew, workers up and down the economic ladder saw their incomes increase, too. But over the past 25 years, the economy has grown 83 percent, after adjusting for inflation — and the typical family’s income hasn’t budged. In that time, corporate profits doubled as a share of the economy. Workers today produce nearly twice as many goods and services per hour on the job as they did in 1989, but as a group, they get less of the nation’s economic pie. In 81 percent of America’s counties, the median income is lower today than it was 15 years ago. [Middle class] [Decline] [Inequality]
• From Bush to Obama, Eyes Wide Shut
  The same memo Bush used to wall himself off from the details of CIA torture is keeping Obama’s drone war alive. • By Marcy Wheeler Marcy Wheeler is an independent journalist who covers civil liberties and national security. • December 12, 2014 • On the second day of Barack Obama’s presidency, he prohibited most forms of physical torture. On the third, a CIA drone strike he authorized killed up to 11 civilians. Those two data points explain one of the most remarkable aspects of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s summary of its report on torture and also likely point to what should be the report’s larger lesson: the purported absence of presidential leadership behind either the torture or the drone programs. The 525-page executive summary of the Senate’s report, which was released to the public on Tuesday, Dec. 9, provides the most comprehensive description of the torture conducted as part of the CIA’s rendition, detention, and interrogation program in support of the war on terror. (The full 6,000-page report will remain classified for decades.) The summary portrays brutal torture that was also largely counterproductive for intelligence-gathering purposes. It depicts a program so badly managed that the CIA lost count of detainees and on more than one occasion detained and tortured the wrong suspect. But the most disturbing part of the report might not be the gruesome abuses or the gross incompetence. At least we can hope those are in the past. The biggest problem for the future that the report reveals consists of claims about the ignorance of President George W. Bush (and to a much lesser extent, Vice President Dick Cheney) about key parts of the program. [Torture] [CIA] [White House] [Agency]
• The Easy Lesson of World War I
  by Jean Bricmont There at least two things that are easier to start than to end: a love affair and a war. No participant in WWI expected it to last as long as it it did or to have the consequences that it had. All the empires that participated in the war were destroyed, including eventually the British and French ones. Not only that, but one war leads to another. The British philosopher and logician Bertrand Russell remarked that the desire of the European monarchs to crush the French Revolution led to Napoleon; the Napoleonic wars produced German nationalism that itself led to Bismarck, the French defeat at Sedan and the annexation of Alsace-Lorraine. That in turn fueled French revanchism that gave rise, after World War I, to the Versailles Treaty, whose inequities gave a strong boost to Nazism and Hitler. Russell ended the story there, but it continues. Hitler’s defeat gave rise to the Cold War and the creation of Israel. The Western “victory” in the Cold War led to the current desire to crush Russia once and for all. As for Israel, its creation produced endless strife and an intractable situation in the Middle East. What is the way out of this dialectic? I would suggest the idea of institutional pacifism. Not pacifism in the sense of refusing violence under any circumstance, or as amoral exhortation, but in the sense of building institutions that can help the preservation of peace. The United Nations and its charter, at least as it was originally conceived, is probably the best example of such an institution. [Imperialism] [Humanitarian intervention]
• America Held Hostage
  A few Americans are held hostage by al-Qaeda. The rest of us are held hostage by the U.S. overreliance on military force. By John Feffer, December 10, 2014. The United States recently conducted a raid in Yemen to free an American hostage. The raid failed. The Navy Seals killed 11 people, including a 10-year-old boy. The kidnappers executed the hostage, journalist Luke Somers. They also killed South African teacher Pierre Korkie. The South African was on the verge of being released as part of a hostage negotiation that the U.S. government didn’t know about. Somers, meanwhile, was not the subject of any negotiations. The United States has a longstanding policy not to pay ransoms and not to negotiate with terrorists. Except that sometimes the United States does pay ransom. And sometimes it does negotiate with terrorists. Consistency is the hobgoblin of little countries: superpowers can do whatever they wish. But the United States enjoys only the illusion of free rein. In fact, America is held hostage by the very way it conducts its foreign policy. And it’s been that way since the dawn of America’s engagement with the world. [Militarisation] [US global strategy]
• After Hagel, Washington’s War Party Parties On
  The coverage of Chuck Hagel's departure tells as much about the return of "war fever" in Washington as the event itself. By Tom Engelhardt, December 8, 2014. Originally published in TomDispatch. It’s the end of the road for Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, and the Washington press corps couldn’t have been more enthusiastic about writing his obituary. In terms of pure coverage, it may not have been Ferguson or the seven-foot deluge of snow that hit Buffalo, New York, but the avalanche of news reports was nothing to be sniffed at. There had been a changing of the guard in wartime Washington. Barack Obama’s third secretary of defense had gone down for the count. In the phrase of the moment, he had “resigned under pressure.” Sayonara, Chuck! With a unanimity that crossed political lines, the accounts read as if written by a single reporter. The story went something like this: two years earlier, President Obama had brought in Hagel, a decorated Vietnam War veteran and former Republican senator with a reputation for being leery about the overuse of American military power, to wind down the war in Afghanistan, rein in military critics, and put the Pentagon budget on something closer to a peacetime footing. After a bruising Senate confirmation hearing from which he never recovered, he proved poor at “messaging” the president’s policies, had a “crappy relationship” with National Security Adviser (and Obama buddy) Susan Rice, proved a weak manager at the Department of Defense as well as a “weak link” in the Obama national security team, and could never break into the president’s tight-knit circle of insiders who — everyone agreed — had a nasty habit of “micromanaging” America’s wars (rather than, it seemed, letting the military do what needed to be done). In the end, the president “lost confidence” in him. It was a “mutual” firing, or at least Hagel had advanced somewhat voluntarily toward the edge of the cliff before being pushed off. [Militarisation] [Chuck Hagel]
• Sending troops to protect dictators threatens all of us
  CIA torture, crushing democracy and Britain’s new military base in Bahrain all deliver a toxic message Seumas Milne The Guardian, Wednesday 10 December 2014 20.35 GMT Detainees in orange jumpsuits sit in a holding area at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba Detainees in orange jumpsuits sit in a holding area at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. 'Britain has been up to its neck in the CIA’s savagery, colluding in kidnapping and torture.' Photograph: U.S. Navy/Getty Images We may have known the outline of the global US kidnapping and torture programme for a few years. But even the heavily censored summary of the US senate torture report turns the stomach in its litany of criminal barbarity unleashed by the CIA on real and imagined US enemies. The earlier accounts of US brutality in Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo pale next to the still sanitised record of forced rectal “infusions” and prolapses, multiple “waterboarding” drownings and convulsions, the shackled freezing to death of a man seized in a mistaken identity case, hooded beatings and hanging by the wrists, mock executions, and sleep deprivation for up to 180 hours. What has been published is in fact only a small part of a much bigger picture, including an estimated 100 or more prisoners tortured to death in US detention. Added to the rampant lying, cover-ups and impunity, it’s a story that the champions of America’s “exceptionalism” will find hard to sell around the world. And it’s hardly out of line with a CIA record of coups, death squads, torture schools and covert war stretching back decades, some revealed by an earlier senate report in the 1970s. There is of course nothing exceptional about states that preach human rights and democracy, but practise the opposite when it suits them. For all the senate’s helpful redactions, Britain has been up to its neck in the CIA’s savagery, colluding in kidnapping and torture from Bagram to Guantánamo while dishing out abuses of its own in Iraq and Afghanistan. So you’d hardly think this reminder of the horrors unleashed in the name of the war on terror was the time for Britain to announce its first permanent military base in the Middle East for four decades. The presence of western troops and support for dictatorial Arab regimes were, after all, the original reasons given by al-Qaida for its jihad against the west. [Bahrain] [Bases]
• Not just torture: Senator says CIA stalling over bogus intelligence that led to Iraq war
  By Jonathan S. Landay McClatchy Washington Bureau December 10, 2014 Updated 7 hours ago WASHINGTON — CIA Director John Brennan, under fire over the Senate report on the CIA’s use of torture, is facing new heat over his role in what a senior lawmaker calls an apparent coverup involving bogus intelligence used by the George W. Bush administration to help justify the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Carl Levin, D-Mich., who’s ending 36 years in the Senate, plans to press Brennan one last time to fulfill a pledge to support the full declassification of a CIA cable debunking the claim that the leader of the 9/11 hijackers met with an Iraqi intelligence officer in the Czech capital of Prague just months before the attacks. “Director Brennan’s apparent refusal to do what he has committed to do – to ask the Czech government if it objects to release of the cable – now takes on the character of a continuing coverup,” Levin plans to tell the Senate on Thursday, according to a draft of his speech obtained by McClatchy. At a Christian Science Monitor breakfast with reporters on Wednesday, Levin said he’s been told by Czech officials that “they have no objection” to the release of the cable. Levin also pointed out that the former chief of the Czech counterintelligence service, who was in the post at the time of the alleged meeting, published a memoir this year in which he asserted that the CIA pressured him to confirm the encounter and that U.S. officials pressured the Czech government when he couldn’t do so. “Without any regard to us, they used our intelligence information for propaganda press leaks. They wanted to mine certainty from unconfirmed suspicion and use it as an excuse for military action,” wrote Jiri Ruzek. “We were to play the role of useful idiot.” Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2014/12/10/249681_not-just-torture-senator-says.html?sp=/99/100/&rh=1#storylink=cpy [CIA] [Iraq] [Disinformation]
• Iraq Intelligence
  CIA official: No proof harsh techniques stopped terror attacks Undercutting assertions by former vice president Dick Cheney and other former Bush administration officials, the CIA inspector general in 2004 found that there was no conclusive proof that waterboarding or other harsh interrogation techniques helped the Bush administration thwart any "specific ... Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/reports/intelligence/#storylink=cpy [CIA] [Iraq] [Disinformation] [Torture] [Intelligence]
• Project Coast: Who’s Behind the Recent Ebola Outbreak?
  The report issued by the World Health Organization states that the current Ebola outbreak in West Africa is the largest and most complex since the detection of the virus in 1976. This outbreak has reached an all time high in both the number infected with the virus and those deceased from it than in all the previous outbreaks combined. The outbreak started in March 2014 in Guinea and it soon jumped across the border to Sierra Leone and Liberia, and then the infected brought the virus via air and land transport to Nigeria and Senegal. But this time around, the virus was not simply spreading across Africa, but it had managed to reach other continents. However, if one is to study the facts carefully, then a question arises: how is it that a virus that was first identified in 1976 “suddenly” became so active and able to spread across the African continent and beyond? To get an answer one must study the history of US secret experiments in this area, although Washington strives to hide it from public attention. First appeared: http://journal-neo.org/2014/12/11/rus-e-bola-kto-vinovat-v-ee-vspy-shke/ [Ebola] [cbw]
• Senate report on CIA program details brutality, dishonesty
  The Washington Post's Greg Miller lists the important takeaways from the CIA interrogation report and explains why it is being released now. (The Washington Post) By Greg Miller, Adam Goldman and Julie Tate December 9 at 1:35 PM ? An exhaustive, five-year Senate investigation of the CIA’s secret interrogations of terrorism suspects renders a strikingly bleak verdict of a program launched in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, describing levels of brutality, dishonesty and seemingly arbitrary violence that at times brought even agency employees to moments of anguish. The report by the Senate Intelligence Committee delivers new allegations of cruelty in a program whose severe tactics have been abundantly documented, revealing that agency medical personnel voiced alarm that waterboarding methods had deteriorated to “a series of near drownings” and that agency employees subjected detainees to “rectal rehydration” and other painful procedures that were never approved. [Read: Senate Intelligence Committee’s report on the CIA program] The 528-page document catalogues dozens of cases in which CIA officials allegedly deceived their superiors at the White House, members of Congress and even sometimes their peers about how the interrogation program was being run and what it had achieved. In one case, an internal CIA memo relays instructions from the White House to keep the program secret from then-Secretary of State Colin Powell out of concern that he would “blow his stack if he were to be briefed on what’s been going on.” [Torture] [CIA]
• The Military-Industrial Complex Gets Its Man
  by Melvin A. Goodman President Barack Obama has bungled the job of appointments to key national security positions for the past six years, and the nomination of Ashton Carter will allow him to maintain his streak. Carter is the classic example of the defense intellectual who has labored in the halls of academe, and then becoming extremely hawkish as he or she attains status and influence in the halls of the Pentagon. An important example is Carter’s views on national missile defense over the past three decades. In the 1980s, while on the faculty of Harvard University, Carter wrote a study for the Office of Technology Assessment that assailed the effectiveness and usefulness of President Ronald Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative. As a defense department official in the Clinton and Obama administrations, however, Carter became a strong supporter of both national missile defense in the United States and even the ridiculous idea of installing a regional missile defense in Eastern Europe against the possibility of a threat from Iran. The latter idea at least displays a certain amount of imagination. Carter, however, has displayed a consistency in recommending the use of force. Although there has been a persistent misuse of military force in U.S. national security policy over the past several decades, which has costs tens of thousands of lives and trillions of dollars, you would be hard pressed to find an example of Carter offering any criticism of how military policy has been used and misused. Fortunately, his advice to use military force has been ignored on several important occasions. President Bill Clinton ignored Carter’s recommendation to use air power against North Korea in 1994, and wisely resorted to diplomacy. As a result, the State Department helped to arrange the Agreed Framework with Pyongyang that led to a freeze in the North Korean nuclear program. Carter recommended a similar use of force to the Bush administration to prevent the test of a North Korean long-range missile that failed in less than 40 seconds. President George W. Bush ignored Carter’s recommendation, which predictably had the support of Vice President Dick Cheney. [MISCOM] [Ashton Carter] [Military option]
• Rebels in northern Syria say U.S. has stopped paying them
  By Mousab Alhamadee and Roy Gutman McClatchy Foreign Staff December 9, 2014 Updated 7 hours ago REYHANLI, Turkey — The United States has stopped paying most of the pro-western rebels fighting in northern Syria and has suspended the delivery of arms to them, rebel commanders told McClatchy Tuesday. A top civilian coordinator for rebel forces estimated that the cutoff affects 8,000 of the estimated 10,000 fighters in Idlib and Hama provinces, where the so-called moderate rebels face a severe challenge from the Nusra Front, al Qaida’s affiliate in Syria. Commanders said CIA operatives told them the cutoff was the U.S. response to the Nusra gains, which have included the seizure of U.S.-supplied weapons from moderate rebel forces in recent weeks. The commanders predicted the cutoff will only strengthen Nusra as fighters desperate to feed their families join Nusra or the Islamic State. Individual fighters were receiving $150 a month, the commander said. [US Syria policy] [Subversion] [Legality] [Proxy]
• The sad echo of CIA practices in the Syrian regime’s prisons
  By Ishaan Tharoor December 9 at 6:14 PM ? A man despairs after a reported bomb attack by government forces in the northern city of Aleppo on June 2, 2014. (Tamer al-Halabi/Agence France-Presse via Getty Images) On the same day that the U.S. Senate made available to the public a redacted version of its report on the CIA's program of secret overseas interrogation sites, a Syrian activist group released its own documenting of abuses taking place under the watch of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. The report, compiled by the Syrian Commission for Transitional Justice, a Syrian opposition group based in Istanbul, points to systematic violations of human rights in the Assad regime's jails. According to former U.N. envoy Lakhdar Brahimi, the regime has jailed about 50,000 to 100,000 amid Syria's brutal civil war. An untold number have experienced torture and other abuse. [Diversion] [Torture] [Media]
• Cotton’s claim that Hezbollah is ‘under federal indictment’ for attempting a terror attack in Washington
  By Glenn Kessler December 10 at 6:00 AM ? (AP Photo/Danny Johnston) “Hezbollah has tried to launch terrorist attacks right here in Washington D.C. They’re under federal indictment collaborating with locals in Mexico to cross our borders, attack us here.” –Sen.-elect Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Nov. 30, 2014 We are a little late to this, and thus are following FactCheck.org’s look at the same quote. But it’s worth getting this on the record because Cotton is responding to a question about a campaign statement that previously had earned him Four Pinocchios. [Hysteria] [Disinformation] [Governance]
• U.S. bases, embassies prepare for violence with release of Senate torture report
  By Jonathan S. Landay, Marisa Taylor and David Lightman McClatchy Washington Bureau December 8, 2014 WASHINGTON — U.S. forces and diplomatic missions overseas braced on Monday for the release of the public version of a long-awaited Senate Intelligence Committee report into the CIA’s use of torture after a U.S. intelligence community warning of a “heightened potential” for a “violent response,” U.S. officials said. The report’s roughly 500-page executive summary, which the White House said would be unveiled on Tuesday, excoriates the CIA, concluding that it didn’t gain significant intelligence or the cooperation of detainees by using the harsh interrogation methods, had wrongly subjected some people to the procedures and misled the White House and Congress about the results. The Democrat-led committee’s conclusions, which were obtained in April by McClatchy, are being fiercely disputed by current and former CIA officials, former President George W. Bush and senior officials of his administration, and some lawmakers, mostly Republicans. They contend that the program produced valuable information that disrupted terror plots and led to the capture of key al Qaida operatives. “We did what we were asked to do, we did what we were assured was legal. And we know our actions were effective,” Jose Rodriguez, the former senior CIA official who oversaw the program, wrote in an op-ed piece published Sunday in The Washington Post. [Torture] [CIA]
• Senate Report Says Torture Program Was More Gruesome, Widespread Than CIA Claimed
  Posted: 12/09/2014 11:17 am EST Updated: 13 minutes ago Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) has been at the helm of a multi-year Senate Intelligence Committee effort to investigate the CIA's torture tactics during the years following 9/11. (Photo by Mark Wilson/Getty Images) WASHINGTON -- The Senate Intelligence Committee on Tuesday released the highly anticipated 500-page summary of its report on the CIA’s post-9/11 torture program, providing a sobering glimpse into one of the darkest chapters in the U.S. government's history. In the report, a product of a 5-year investigation, Senate investigators reveal sordid details of the systemic and individual failures by the agency personnel who ran the "enhanced interrogation program" -- the government's euphemism for systematic torture -- during the George W. Bush administration. The program involved capturing terrorism suspects and shipping them to secret overseas prisons, where they were subjected to techniques such as waterboarding. The CIA's program has long been criticized as un-American and a chilling departure from the nation’s values. Opponents allege that it resulted in gross abuses and inhumane treatment of detainees, some of whom were eventually revealed not to have been involved in terror organizations. [Torture] [CIA]
• War by Media and the Triumph of Propaganda
  by John Pilger Why has so much journalism succumbed to propaganda? Why are censorship and distortion standard practice? Why is the BBC so often a mouthpiece of rapacious power? Why do the New York Times and the Washington Post deceive their readers? Why are young journalists not taught to understand media agendas and to challenge the high claims and low purpose of fake objectivity? And why are they not taught that the essence of so much of what’s called the mainstream media is not information, but power? These are urgent questions. The world is facing the prospect of major war, perhaps nuclear war – with the United States clearly determined to isolate and provoke Russia and eventually China. This truth is being turned upside down and inside out by journalists, including those who promoted the lies that led to the bloodbath in Iraq in 2003. The times we live in are so dangerous and so distorted in public perception that propaganda is no longer, as Edward Bernays called it, an “invisible government”. It is the government. It rules directly without fear of contradiction and its principal aim is the conquest of us: our sense of the world, our ability to separate truth from lies. The information age is actually a media age. We have war by media; censorship by media; demonology by media; retribution by media; diversion by media – a surreal assembly line of obedient clichés and false assumptions. [Media] [Softwar] [Russia confrontation] [China confrontation] [US global strategy]
• Suspected Israeli war jets strike near Damascus airport
  By Mitchell Prothero McClatchy Foreign Staff December 7, 2014 Updated 4 hours ago This Sunday, May 5, 2013 file photo released by the Syrian official news agency SANA shows a general view of damaged buildings wrecked by an Israeli airstrike, in Damascus, Syria. Israeli warplanes carried out two airstrikes Sunday near Damascus, one near the city's international airport and a second outside a town close to the Lebanese border, Syria's state news agency said. UNCREDITED — AP/SANA ISTANBUL — Suspected Israeli aircraft bombed a military complex on the outskirts of Damascus’ international airport Sunday in what Syrian state television said was an attack on warehouses housing an advance Russian-made anti-aircraft system. The attack would be consistent with repeated Israeli pledges that it would not allow Syria to deploy the S-300 anti-aircraft missile system and raised the question of whether Russia had sent new components of the system to Syria, perhaps in violation of an August pledge not to complete delivery under terms of a United Nations arms embargo. The Israeli military offered no comment on the report. [Airpower] [Israel]
• The Rise of German Imperialism and the Phony “Russian Threat”
  By Prof. James Petras Global Research, December 07, 2014 The principle Nazi ideological prop that secured massive financial and political support from Germany’s leading industrialists was the Communist and Soviet threat. The main Nazi military drive, absorbing two-thirds of its best troops, was directed eastward at conquering and destroying Russia. The ‘Russian Threat’ justified Nazi Germany’s conquest and occupation of the Ukraine, the Balkans, Eastern Europe and the Baltic states, with the aid of a substantial proportion of local Nazi collaborators. After Germany’s defeat , division and disarmament, and with the extension of Soviet power, the US reinstated the Nazi industrial and banking giants, officials and intelligence operatives. At first they were engaged in rebuilding their domestic economy and consolidating political power, in collaboration with the US military occupation forces. By the late 1960’s Germany regained economic primacy in Europe and was at the forefront of European ‘integration’, in association with France and England. It soon came to dominate the principle decision – making institutions of the European Union(EU). The EU served as Germany’s instrument for conquest by stealth. Year by year, through ‘aid’ and low interest loans,the EU facilitated German capitalist’s market penetration and financial expansion,through out south and central Europe. Germany set the agenda for Western Europe, gaining economic dominance while benefiting from US subversion and encirclement of Eastern Europe, Russia and the Baltic and Balkan states. [Germany] [Russia confrontation]
• It's Time to Start Paying Attention to Greece Again
  By Joe Weisenthal December 08, 2014 Alexis Tsipras, the leader of SYRIZA (Coalition of the Radical Left) and current leader of the Greek Opposition, is pictured at the beginning of the protest march on Nov. 27, in Athens. Photographer: Michael Debets/Pacific Press/LightRocket via Getty Images It’s been awhile since Greece was front-page news, so here’s a refresher: A few years ago, it looked as though Greece might be forced to leave the euro zone, as investors lost faith in the country’s ability to pay its debts. In late 2011, 10-year Greek bonds were trading with a yield around 35 percent. The crisis began to dissipate in the summer of 2012, when the center-right New Democracy party eked out the narrowest of election victories and cobbled together a coalition that agreed to a bailout under harsh terms. Since then financial markets have eased considerably, although the economy is still in the gutter. Anyway, you might want to start paying attention again. Greece may see elections early next year, and a new poll just out has the radical leftist Syriza party in first place by more than 3 percent. If Syriza takes power, the relative calm of Greek financial markets could be rocked.
• Five Lies Washington Tells Itself about the Middle East
  Five bedrock delusions keep America mired in the Middle East, to everyone's detriment. By Andrew Bacevich, November 28, 2014. Originally published in Tom Dispatch. My young friend M, sipping a cappuccino, is deadly serious. We are sitting in a scruffy restaurant across the street from the Cathedral of St. John the Divine on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. It’s been years since we’ve last seen each another. It may be years before our paths cross again. As if to drive his point home, M repeats himself: “Iraq just doesn’t exist.” His is an opinion grounded in experience. As an enlisted soldier, he completed two Iraq tours, serving as a member of a rifle company, before and during the famous Petraeus “surge.” After separating from the Army, he went on to graduate school where he is now writing a dissertation on insurgencies. Choosing the American war in Iraq as one of his cases, M has returned there to continue his research. Indeed, he was heading back again that very evening. As a researcher, his perch provides him with an excellent vantage point for taking stock of the ongoing crisis, now that the Islamic State, or IS, has made it impossible for Americans to sustain the pretense that the Iraq War ever ended. [US Middle East policy]
• Al-Qaeda group’s gains in Syria undermine U.S. strategy
  Supporters of the Al Nusra Front take part in a protest against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in Aleppo. The group is extending its control over a swath of territory in the northwest of the country that was until recently held by the moderate opposition. (FADI AL-HALABI/AFP/Getty Images) By Liz Sly December 5 at 6:56 PM ? ANTAKYA, Turkey — The main al-Qaeda affiliate in Syria is extending its control over a swath of territory that was until recently held by the collapsing moderate opposition, jeopardizing U.S. plans to form a new rebel force to fight extremists. Since routing two of the biggest Western-backed rebel movements last month from the province of Idlib, Jabhat al-Nusra has been steadily consolidating its position as the single most powerful military force in northwestern Syria. The group has overrun towns and villages throughout the province, secured supply routes into neighboring Turkey and potentially paved the way for the establishment of an Islamic “emirate” — a competing entity to the “caliphate” declared last summer by the Islamic State in northeastern Syria and western Iraq. The al-Qaeda affiliate’s expanding footprint risks further complicating the U.S.-led effort to contain and destroy the far more powerful Islamic State, a fierce rival to Jabhat al-Nusra that ejected the al-Qaeda loyalists from its territories last summer. If the fighting in Syria continues on its current trajectory, the country soon will be partitioned almost entirely between jihadist forces and those of the Assad regime, leaving the moderate rebels without territory and the United States without allies in the strategically important country, rebel commanders and analysts say. [US Syria policy] [Jihadists]
• UK to establish £15m permanent Mid East military base
  Philip Hammond MP: "This is about protecting Britain's interest in the Gulf" Britain is to establish its first permanent military base in the Middle East since it formally withdrew from the region in 1971. The base, at the Mina Salman Port in Bahrain, will host ships including destroyers and aircraft carriers. The UK said it was an "expansion of the Royal Navy's footprint" and would "reinforce stability" in the Gulf. Bahrain will pay most of the £15m ($23m) needed to build the base, with the British paying ongoing costs. [UK] [Sectarianism]
• End of the “Team of Rivals”? Or More of the Same?
  Hagel’s Dismissal by Gary Leupp Somebody on CNN suggested the other day that the dismissal of Chuck Hagel as Defense Secretary spells the end of Barack Obama’s notion of a “team of rivals.” (Recall how that term was used after the 2008 election to refer to the new president’s decision to include former rivals, notably Hillary Clinton, in his administration. It was derived from the title of a book by presidential historian Doris Kearns Goodwin celebrating Abraham Lincoln’s cabinet formed in 1860 that included three former opponents.) Obama wanted to be the great healer, the magnanimous reconciler of a bitterly divided nation. Thinking it would aid this effort, he decided to protect the outgoing administration from prosecution for any crimes. He never seriously considered ordering the Justice Department to investigate the campaign of lies that had been waged to win support for the war. “Let’s move on,” declared the candidate of Hope and Change (and soon to be Nobel Peace Prize laureate) to the profound chagrin of those who’d hoped to see Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Powell, Rice & all in orange suits behind bars.
• Iraq’s Ghost Army
  by Patrick Cockburn The Iraqi army includes 50,000 “ghost soldiers” who do not exist, but their officers receive their salaries fraudulently according to the Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi. “The Prime Minister revealed the existence of 50,000 fictitious names,” said a statement after a thorough headcount during the latest salary payments. The Iraqi army has long been notorious for being wholly corrupt with officers invariably paying for their jobs in order to make money either through drawing the salaries of non-existent soldiers or through various other scams. One Iraqi politician told The Independent a year ago that Iraqi officers “are not soldiers, they are investors”. In the years before the defeat of the army in Mosul in June by a much smaller force from Isis, Iraqi units never conducted training exercises. At the time of Isis’s Mosul offensive, government forces in Mosul were meant to total 60,000 soldiers and federal police but the real figure was probably closer to 20,000. “Ghost” soldiers may never have existed and just be fictitious names added to the roster, or they may once have existed but been killed or deserted without this being officially noted. In either case, the officer in a unit would keep receiving the salary, though he would have to share it with his superiors. Another scam is for soldiers to kick back part of their salary to their officer in return for staying at home or holding another job but never going near a barracks. Mr Abadi’s figure of 50,000 is probably only a modest estimate of the numbers of Iraqi soldiers who play no military role. Asked why the Iraqi army had disintegrated at Mosul, a retired four-star general said the explanation was “corruption, corruption, corruption”. He said that this had become institutionalised when the US was building a new Iraqi army after dissolving the old one in 2003. The Pentagon insisted that supplies of food and other necessities be outsourced to private companies. The general said that as a result the Iraqi government might be paying for a battalion with a nominal strength of 600 men, but which in fact had only 200 soldiers. Profits would be shared between officers and commercial companies supposedly supplying the army [Corruption]
• The Illusion of Debate
  by Jason Hirthler A recent article in FAIR reviewed the findings of its latest study on the quality of political “debate” being aired on the mainstream networks. It studied the run-up to the military interventions in both Iraq and Syria. Perhaps the arbiters of the study intended to illustrate what we’ve learned since the fraudulent Iraq War of 2003. Well, it appears we’ve learned nothing. FAIR spent hours painfully absorbing the misinformation peddled by such soporific Sunday shows as CNN’s State of the Union, CBS’s Face the Nation, NBC’s Meet the Press, and ABC’s This Week, plus some of the more popular weekly political programming including ADHD-inducing CNN’s Situation Room, Fox News Channel’s Special Report, the venerable sedative PBS NewsHour, and MSNBC’s Hardball. You know the cast of characters: glib George Stephanopoulos, forthright Candy Crowly, harrowing Wolf Blitzer, and stentorian Chris Matthews. Images of their barking maws are seared into the national hippocampus. Overall, 205 mostly government mouthpieces were invited to air their cleverly crafted talking points for public edification. Of them, a staggering sum of three voiced opposition to military action in Syria and Iraq. A mere 125 stated their support for aggressive action. Confining its data to the Sunday shows, 89 guests were handsomely paid to educate our benighted couch-potato populace. One suggested not going to war. It stands to reason that considered legal arguments against these interventions got the short shrift, too. The media consensus on Syria and Iraq isn’t an isolated instance of groupthink. Far from it. It conforms to a consistent pattern, one that has at its core a deliberate disregard for international law and efforts to strengthen transnational treaties and norms regarding military action. (Although transnational law regulating trade is highly favored, for obvious reasons.) [Media]
• New defense secretary would inherit old tensions
  According to administration officials, Pentagon official Ashton Carter is expected to be President Obama’s nominee to replace Chuck Hagel as U.S. defense secretary. (Reuters) By Greg Jaffe December 2 at 9:16 PM ? President Obama may have picked a new defense secretary, but an older and thornier problem remains: The commander in chief, who publicly committed to ending America’s two wars, must find ways to inspire the men and women he continues to send into battle. Obama has had a difficult relationship with the military and his defense secretaries, who have often questioned his passion and commitment to the military’s mission. Those misgivings could grow as troops, haunted by the muddled outcomes in Iraq and Afghanistan, increasingly ask whether the past 12 years of war were worth it. “The military and veterans look to the president to give them a story that justifies their sacrifice,” said Mike Breen, a veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan and executive director of the left-leaning Truman National Security Project. “They’re asking, ‘What was the last decade of my life for?’ Fairly or unfairly, they are looking to the president for an answer.” Ashton B. Carter, the president’s likely choice for defense secretary, may not have the answers to those questions. [Pentagon] [Governance]
• U.S. weighs a new front to create safe zone in Syria
  By Karen DeYoung December 1 at 12:31 PM ? The Obama administration is weighing the opening of a new front in the air war against the Islamic State in Syria, part of an offensive to push back militants along the western portion of Syria’s border with Turkey and create a relatively safe zone for U.S.-backed Syrian rebel forces to move in. Under the plan, U.S. aircraft flying from Turkey’s Incirlik air base would target positions the militants currently hold along the border north of Aleppo, eastward toward the besieged town of Kobane. Turkish special forces would move into the area to assist targeting and help Syrian opposition fighters consolidate their hold on the territory. [US Syria policy] [Legality]
• Edward Snowden wins Swedish human rights award for NSA revelations
  Whistleblower receives several standing ovations in Swedish parliament as he wins Right Livelihood award Ewen MacAskill in Stockholm The Guardian, Monday 1 December 2014 18.26 GMT Snowden, speaking by video from Moscow, said: ‘All the prices we’ve paid, all the sacrifices we made, I believe we would do again - I know I would.’ Whistleblower Edward Snowden received several standing ovations in the Swedish parliament after being given the Right Livelihood award for his revelations of the scale of state surveillance. Snowden, who is in exile in Russia, addressed the parliament by video from Moscow. In a symbolic gesture, his family and supporters said no one picked up the award on his behalf in the hope that one day he might be free to travel to Sweden to receive it in person. His father, Lon, who was in the chamber for what was an emotional ceremony, said: “I am thankful for the support of the Right Livelihood award and the Swedish parliament. The award will remain here in expectation that some time – sooner or later – he will come to Stockholm to accept the award.” Snowden is wanted by the US on charges under the Espionage Act. His chances of a deal with the US justice department that would allow him to return home are slim and he may end up spending the rest of his days in Russia. His supporters hope that a west European country such as Sweden might grant him asylum. Members of the Green party called for him to be given sanctuary in Sweden. [Snowden]
• New G20 Financial Rules: Cyprus-style Bail-ins to Confiscate Bank Deposits and Pension Funds
  By Ellen Brown Global Research, December 02, 2014 On the weekend of November 16th, the G20 leaders whisked into Brisbane, posed for their photo ops, approved some proposals, made a show of roundly disapproving of Russian President Vladimir Putin, and whisked out again. It was all so fast, they may not have known what they were endorsing when they rubber-stamped the Financial Stability Board’s “Adequacy of Loss-Absorbing Capacity of Global Systemically Important Banks in Resolution,” which completely changes the rules of banking. Russell Napier, writing in ZeroHedge, called it “the day money died.” In any case, it may have been the day deposits died as money. Unlike coins and paper bills, which cannot be written down or given a “haircut,” says Napier, deposits are now “just part of commercial banks’ capital structure.” That means they can be “bailed in” or confiscated to save the megabanks from derivative bets gone wrong. Rather than reining in the massive and risky derivatives casino, the new rules prioritize the payment of banks’ derivatives obligations to each other, ahead of everyone else. That includes not only depositors, public and private, but the pension funds that are the target market for the latest bail-in play, called “bail-inable” bonds. “Bail in” has been sold as avoiding future government bailouts and eliminating too big to fail (TBTF). But it actually institutionalizes TBTF, since the big banks are kept in business by expropriating the funds of their creditors. It is a neat solution for bankers and politicians, who don’t want to have to deal with another messy banking crisis and are happy to see it disposed of by statute. But a bail-in could have worse consequences than a bailout for the public. If your taxes go up, you will probably still be able to pay the bills. If your bank account or pension gets wiped out, you could wind up in the street or sharing food with your pets. [Finance] [Crisis]
• Athens 1944: Britain’s dirty secret
  When 28 civilians were killed in Athens, it wasn’t the Nazis who were to blame, it was the British. Ed Vulliamy and Helena Smith reveal how Churchill’s shameful decision to turn on the partisans who had fought on our side in the war sowed the seeds for the rise of the far right in Greece today Ed Vulliamy and Helena Smith The Observer, Sunday 30 November 2014 demonstrators in Athens with three bodies, shot dead, in the middle of the crowd A day that changed history: the bodies of unarmed protestors shot by the police and the British army in Athens on 3 December 1944. Photograph: Dmitri Kessel/Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images I can still see it very clearly, I have not forgotten,” says Títos Patríkios. “The Athens police firing on the crowd from the roof of the parliament in Syntagma Square. The young men and women lying in pools of blood, everyone rushing down the stairs in total shock, total panic.” And then came the defining moment: the recklessness of youth, the passion of belief in a justice burning bright: “I jumped up on the fountain in the middle of the square, the one that is still there, and I began to shout: “Comrades, don’t disperse! Victory will be ours! Don’t leave. The time has come. We will win!” “I was,” he says now, “profoundly sure, that we would win.” But there was no winning that day; just as there was no pretending that what had happened would not change the history of a country that, liberated from Adolf Hitler’s Reich barely six weeks earlier, was now surging headlong towards bloody civil war. [Cold War] [Churchill] [Repression]
• What Happens When Islamic State's Foreign Fighters Return?
  By Cam Simpson December 01, 2014 In 1982 an Egyptian engineer and Islamist named Muhammad abd-al-Salam Faraj wrote a religious pamphlet for his brothers. It was widely distributed that year after Faraj was convicted and executed for leading the plotters who assassinated Egyptian President Anwar Sadat. Faraj titled his pamphlet The Neglected Duty. That duty was to wage jihad. Faraj debated whether the violent struggle should primarily be local or international. He believed jihadis have a duty to overthrow secular regimes in Arab and Muslim lands before striking against “non-believers” in other countries. In his pamphlet, Faraj framed his answer to the local vs. global debate this way: “To fight an enemy who is near is more important than to fight an enemy who is far.” The phrases “near enemy” and “far enemy” are still used by jihadi groups today as they debate what paths to take. That issue amounts to far more than an ideological debate in the corridors of U.S. intelligence agencies and their counterparts in Europe. Record numbers of jihadis have been crossing international borders to volunteer with Islamic State and other groups in the fight against “near enemies” in Syria and Iraq. Security chiefs on both sides of the Atlantic, especially in Europe, say they are consumed daily with trying to track and stop them. Already, some have allegedly been involved in plotting or carrying out attacks against the “far enemy” in the West after returning home. Website: How ISIS Corporatized Terror Only about 100 of the foreign fighters are believed to be from the U.S., but American intelligence officials estimate that about 15,000 foreign fighters have gone to the war zone, with some 2,000 originating in Western countries. An estimated 1,600 come from just three of the U.S.’s closest allies in Europe—the United Kingdom, France, and Germany. Passport holders from those nations do not need visas to enter the U.S. Al-Qaeda’s 9/11 operation, the deadliest terrorist attack in history, was led by a small cadre of jihadi volunteers like many of those leaving Europe for the fight today. They traveled east from Germany to Afghanistan 15 years ago, also determined to fight a near enemy in a Muslim country. No one worried much about the spread of international terrorism when Osama bin Laden first arrived in Afghanistan in 1980 at the age of 23. [Jihadist] [Blowback]
• Who’s the Big Spender? Military Spending from Beijing to the Pentagon
  Author: Dan Steinbock · July 2nd, 2014 According to the Pentagon, the rapid growth of China’s military spending reflects its increasing assertiveness in the region. According to Beijing, US military spending is the real issue. What are the facts? It has become an annual ritual. Recently, the US Department of Defense (DoD) usually released its report to Congress on China’s “military and security developments.” As before, the release of the report was followed by Beijing’s comment that it overstated the “so-called Chinese military threat.” In the US, the Pentagon report is touted by the media as another reminder of China’s military assertiveness. In this narrative, China’s” military spending is soaring, whereas in the West austerity policies are forcing drastic cuts. In the mainland, a parallel debate tends to focus on the ulterior motives of the US pivot to Asia. But how valid is the narrative? [Military expenditure]
• NATO: Danger to World Peace
  by Immanuel Wallerstein Commentary No. 389, November 15, 2014 The official mythology is that between 1945 (or 1946) and 1989 (or 1991), the United States and the Soviet Union (USSR) confronted each other continuously - politically, militarily, and above all ideologically. This was called the "cold war." If it was a war, the word to underline is "cold" since the two powers never engaged in any direct military action against each other throughout the entire period. There were however several institutional reflections of this cold war, in each of which it was the United States, and not the USSR, that took the first step. In 1949, the three western countries occupying Germany combined their zones to create the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) as a state. The Soviet Union responded by restyling its zone as the German Democratic Republic (GDR). In 1949, NATO was established by twelve nations. On May 5, 1955, the three western powers officially ended their occupation of the FRG, recognizing it as an independent state. Four days later, the FRG was admitted to membership in NATO. In response to this, the USSR established the Warsaw Treaty Organization (WTO) and included the GDR as one of its members. [NATO]
• Taliban brings war to Afghan capital, threatening stability and endangering foreigners
  Gunfire erupted Saturday afternoon in Kabul as Taliban fighters entered a guest house for foreign aid workers. (Reuters) By Sudarsan Raghavan November 30 at 7:41 AM ? KABUL — Taliban insurgents have intensified their attacks on this besieged capital with a flurry of brazen bombings and afternoon raids targeting foreigners and Afghans, bringing the war into this city in a way not seen in any other year since the radical Islamists were ousted from power. The latest assault occurred Saturday, when three militants clutching guns and grenades, including one who wore an explosives-packed vest, stormed a compound inhabited by foreigners in the middle-class Karte-e-Saay enclave. In a frenzy of explosions and gunfire, two foreigners were killed and seven were taken prisoner, said Deputy Interior Minister Mohammad Ayub Salangi. All of the attackers died in clashes with Afghan security forces, and the hostages were eventually freed. On Sunday, authorities raised the death toll to three foreigners — a South African aid worker and his two children — and an Afghan. And Kabul’s police chief, Gen. Mohammed Zahir, abruptly resigned amid the rising insecurity. The dramatic increase in violence in Kabul, arguably the most heavily defended city in the nation, indicates the resilience of the Taliban, despite pronouncements by Afghan, U.S. and NATO officials that the insurgency has been weakened. As the annual fighting season nears an end in rugged, increasingly snow-covered mountain areas, the capital has become the new focal point of the conflict. [Afghanistan] [Decline]
• Greek resistance hero tells how the Athens bomb he planted nearly killed Churchill
  Manolis Glezos crept through sewers to plant dynamite beneath British HQ in Athens. But the order to detonate never came Helena Smith and Ed Vulliamy The Observer, Sunday 30 November 2014 Manolis Glezos, the Greek resistance hero who is now the oldest MEP at 92, in Brussels “You will have read about the plot to blow up HQ the Hotel Grande Bretagne. I do not think it was for my benefit. Still, a ton of dynamite was put in sewers by extremely skilled hands.” Thus wrote Winston Churchill in a telegram to his wife of his close brush with death in Athens on Christmas Day 1944. The “skilled hands” belonged to Manolis Glezos, the Greek resistance hero who, 70 years after laying the explosives, has revealed to the Observer how Britain’s wartime leader came within inches of being killed by communist guerrillas towards the end of the second world war. “I will tell you something I have never told anyone,” the 92-year-old said in Brussels, where he is the European parliament’s oldest MEP. “I carried the fuse wire myself, wire wound all around me, and I had to unravel it,” he said, explaining how he spent hours crawling through the sewerage system to plant the dynamite in the dead of night. “There were about 30 of us involved. We worked through the tunnels … we had people cover the grid lines, so scared we were of being heard. We crawled through all the shit and water and laid the dynamite right under the hotel.” By the time the insurgents emerged, sodden and covered in excrement, there was enough explosive under the building “to blow it sky high”. “It took me at least two hours laying the explosive material and two hours coming back, and when we came out it was a matter of seconds, it was ready to go.” But in a twist of fate the attack was abandoned when members of the communist-led resistance movement, EAM, learned that Churchill had flown into Greece and, unexpectedly, was visiting the British command.
  But the Athens bomb plot was in a league of its own. The would-be attack, barely two months after the Germans had retreated from Greece, came as the country was hurtling headlong into civil war. Athens had been racked by violence after the British army alongside Nazi collaborators – in one of the most controversial episodes of the second world war – opened fire on a crowd of unarmed civilians demonstrating in support of the partisans in Syntagma Square. The 3 December killings, which kicked off a wave of violence that is known in Greece as the Dekemvriana, are regarded as the opening shots in the cold war. Back in Britain, public opinion was outraged. [Cold War] [Repression] [Greece]
• Islamists come out on top in new effort to unify Syrian rebel groups
  By Mousab Alhamadee McClatchy Foreign Staff November 29, 2014 GAZIANTEP, Turkey — Seventy-two Syrian rebel groups on Saturday announced a new coalition to battle the government of President Bashar Assad. But hopes that moderate rebels would dominate the meeting were dashed when extremists gained more of the 17 executive positions than had been expected. Col. Muhammad Hallak, who represented a moderate faction attending the three-day organizational meeting, accused Islamists, especially Ahrar al Sham, which is known to work closely with al Qaida’s Syrian affiliate, the Nusra Front, of capturing more positions than its influence in the rebellion deserved. A review of the names by McClatchy indicated that moderates hold only six or seven of the 17 executive positions. Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2014/11/29/248482_islamists-come-out-on-top-in-new.html?sp=/99/117/&rh=1#storylink=cpy [Jihadists]
• Former al Qaida hostage recounts nightmare – of dealing with FBI
  By Nancy A. Youssef McClatchy Washington Bureau November 28, 2014 WASHINGTON — The only thing as bad as being tortured for months as a captive of jihadists in Syria was dealing with the U.S. government afterward, according to one former American hostage. Matt Schrier, 36, a freelance photographer held by extremists for seven months in 2013 until he escaped, has told McClatchy that the bureaucracy he endured upon his return home was a second kind of nightmare following the months of abuse he suffered while he was a hostage. “I never thought it would get this bad,” Schrier said. [FBI]

• What Next For Democrats?
  by Andrew Levine With the midterm elections behind them, Republicans are riding high. It won’t last; the next election could do them in. 2016 is shaping up to be like 2012, only more so. Two ideologically like-minded parties with different constituencies pulling in opposite directions will again be at each other’s throats. In American politics, money talks – louder than ever, since the Supreme Court decided that political corruption is “free speech.” This is why it hardly matters, in the larger scheme of things, how voters pull one party or the other. They both serve the same masters and come out at pretty much the same place. It does matter, though, around the margins – in ways that affect peoples’ lives a little and the fortunes of politicians a lot. Thus Richard Nixon’s “Southern Strategy” was, as pundits and pop historians say, “transformative.” It dragged the GOP and therefore the country to the right. Thanks to its success, the “solid South,” once solidly Democratic, is now solidly Republican – increasingly even at the state and local levels. This transformation has been remarkable, not least because it left everything the same – except, of course, that outright segregationists are gone. This is a major advance, but it hardly redounds to the Republicans’ credit.
• U.S. will use psych evaluations, stress tests to screen Syrian rebels for training
  By Missy Ryan November 28 at 5:54 PM ? The U.S. military will subject Syrian rebels taking part in a new training program to psychological evaluations, biometrics checks and stress tests under a screening plan that goes well beyond the steps the United States normally takes to vet foreign soldiers, a sign of the risks the Obama administration faces as it expands support for armed groups in Syria. Officials said the screening program, developed chiefly by the U.S. Central Command, will rely on what was described as a “common core” of screening protocols, including running trainees’ names through U.S. and foreign intelligence databases, collecting biometric data and, when possible, seeking information from fighters’ home communities. Rebel commanders will be subject to additional screening. “In the special operations community, we have a pretty long history of vetting and screening surrogate forces that we’ve worked with,” said an official at CENTCOM, who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe planning. But the new plan “is unique to Syria, because we’re going to work with folks that we won’t accompany once we employ them,” he said. “So vetting and screening becomes even more important.” [Proxy] [Outsourcing] [US Syria policy]
• The Decline of the CIA
  by Melvin A. Goodman CIA director John Brennan is promoting a reorganization scheme at the Central Intelligence Agency that will make it more likely that intelligence analysis will be politicized to support the interests of the White House and senior policymakers. The organizational change that he favors would abolish the directorates of intelligence and operations, which were designed to maintain a bureaucratic wall between intelligence analysis and clandestine actions, in order to create regional and functional “centers” that would place analysts and operatives side-by-side. There is no doubt that such centers would do great harm to the production of strategic intelligence and would increase the likelihood of politicizing all intelligence production. The CIA already relies heavily on so-called fusion centers, such as the Counter Terrorism Center (CTC) and the Counter Intelligence Center (CIC), which combine intelligence analysts and clandestine operatives. [CIA]
• What the Fake Syria Sniper Boy Video Tell Us About Media Experts
  Many mainstream media websites helped a fake video go viral this month. The video showing a young Syrian boy running through sniper fire to save a little girl, was exposed as a fake when the Norwegian producer Lars Klevberg made the fact public. One of the stated aims of the Norwegian film makers was to “see how the media would respond to a fake video.” This article examines how that experiment went. The western press very quickly accepted the video as real and used it to support the US administration’s narrative on Syria. Many top US news sources began to spread the story. Even though the producer said he explicitly added big hints that the video was fake, like the children surviving multiple gun shots. Propagating false stories on Syria, is nothing new for the western press. In the lead up to the conflict many stories were exposed as frauds, such as the Anti-government activist “Gay Girl in Damascus” which turned out to be a middle-aged American man in Scotland. Syrian Danny Abdul Dayem which was frequently interviewed by CNN was using fake gun fire and flames in his interviews. The fake sniper video wasn’t enough to support US government narratives by itself, as the now deleted original upload didn’t suggest the identity of the snipers. So the west’s media suggested that it was Syrian military snipers that were targeting the children without any evidence. Journalists failed to mention how they reached the conclusion that an actor in Malta was shot by the Syrian military. It may be that the western press is quick to trust pro-rebel sources, as the video was uploaded by the pro-rebel Sham Times along with their own twist. The Guardian’s headline for the video was “Syrian boy ‘saves girl from army sniper’” and the Telegraph delicately suggested the Syrian military was responsible for the fake bullets. First appeared: http://journal-neo.org/2014/11/27/what-the-fake-syria-sniper-boy-video-tell-us-about-media-experts/ [Media] [Disinformation] [Syria] [Propaganda]
• The wrong medicine
  Anna Coote 27 November 2014 The overwhelming weight of evidence suggests market-based reforms are bad for healthcare, finds the latest report by the New Economics Foundation. Government reforms of England's National Health Service (NHS) over the last three decades have transformed a democratically controlled public service into an open, competitive market. Despite political leaders regularly claiming to base their decisions on evidence, our new report finds no sound evidence to support these changes. England's 2012 Health and Social Care Act is the latest and most extreme move towards markets in healthcare. Large profit-seeking organisations, many of them based in the United States, are now winning more and more NHS business. A new trade agreement between the European Union and the United States (TTIP), due for completion next year, threatens to lock in private sector control of the NHS by inflicting heavy financial penalties on a future government trying to return health services to public ownership. [Health] [Marketisation]
• Afghanistan-Iraq: back to the future
  Paul Rogers 27 November 2014 Washington hoped for a clean getaway from the two countries it invaded in the early 2000s. The Taliban, like the Islamic State, has other ideas. After a lengthy and disputed election process, Ashraf Ghani became Afghanistan's president on 29 September 2014. His visit to neighbouring Pakistan on 14-15 November is an important early step in his regional diplomacy. The relationship between the two states had been very difficult during most of the period of his predecessor, Hamid Karzai (2001-14), and improving it is a high priority for the former World Bank official. Indeed, it is always likely that a trip to Islamabad is going to be the most salient in the foreign-policy schedule of any Afghan president. Pakistan has long been accused of aiding the Afghan Taliban as a means of maintaining its influence in Afghanistan. Its primary strategic motive - which has survived many changes of leadership in Islamabad - is to limit India's role in the region. Indeed, few external analysts appreciate how deeply fear of Indian power runs among the Pakistani elite. In particular, this underlies the army's determination to expand Pakistan’s nuclear force (a project now underway). In political and economic areas too, Pakistan is greatly concerned by the involvement of Indian organisations, both governmental and commercial, in Afghanistan’s development. For its part the Indian government is principally concerned with Chinese power in the region. New Delhi views Afghanistan as holding a crucial geopolitical position - close to central Asia and the focus of extensive economic interest from a growing China, not least in the minerals sector.
• Save the Children staff furious over ‘global legacy’ award for Tony Blair
  Internal letter signed by almost 200 staff members says award is ‘morally reprehensible’ and endangers STC’s credibility globally Harriet Sherwood The Guardian, Tuesday 25 November 2014 15.27 GMT The charity Save the Children faces a backlash from staff after it presented Tony Blair with a “global legacy award” in New York last week – despite privately acknowledging that he is a controversial and divisive figure. Amid widespread criticism on social media, many of the charity’s staff have complained that the presentation of the award has discredited Save the Children (STC). An internal letter, which gathered almost 200 signatures – including senior regional staff – in the first six hours of dissemination, said the award was not only “morally reprehensible, but also endangers our credibility globally”, and called for it to be withdrawn. It said that staff wished to distance themselves from the award and demanded a review of the charity’s decision-making process. “We consider this award inappropriate and a betrayal to Save the Children’s founding principles and values. Management staff in the region were not communicated with nor consulted about the award and were caught by surprise with this decision,” it said. The move has also raised questions about Save the Children’s (STC) integrity and independence because of close links between the former British prime minister and key figures at the charity’s helm. Its UK chief executive, Justin Forsyth, was a special adviser to Blair for three years, and Jonathan Powell, Blair’s former chief of staff, is currently on the board of STC. [Tony Blair] [UNUS]
• Israel Warns of N.Korea-Iran Nuclear Link
  Israel on Thursday claimed to have intelligence that Iran acquired missile and nuclear technology and expertise from North Korea in exchange for huge amounts of financial support over the past years. The claim was made by Yuval Steinitz, the Israeli minister of strategic and intelligence affairs, according to the U.S. news website World Tribune. It comes in the context of a wider Israeli campaign to shore up U.S. support for a hard line on Iran. He noted that the international community has failed to keep North Korea from developing nuclear weapons despite years of talks with the North, and claimed Iran too could bypass international sanctions. "We all know that Iran, Syria and North Korea are very close to each other," World Tribune quoted Steinitz as saying, "Any nuclear accord with Teheran would be meaningless without addressing its alliance with Pyongyang."
• The Failure of the Iran Nuclear Negotiations
  by Gareth Porter After more than a year of negotiations between the United States and Iran, the two sides have failed to reach an agreement by the agreed deadline in July. They have agreed to continue negotiating, but the failure to meet the deadline was clearly not caused by the lack of time. To understand why the talks have remained deadlocked, it is necessary to review the Obama administration’s stance on diplomacy with Iran in the context of the long US history of favouring “coercive diplomacy” over traditional negotiations in managing conflicts with adversaries. Reliance on coercive diplomacy is deeply imbedded in the strategic culture of US national security institutions. It has evolved over decades of US military and economic dominance in international politics, which has allowed the United States to avoid genuine diplomacy repeatedly. [US Negotiating] [Iran] [Coercive diplomacy]
• Michèle Flournoy takes herself out of the running to lead Pentagon
  By Greg Jaffe November 25 at 5:32 PM ? Michele Flournoy, a former undersecretary of defense for policy, was believed to be on the short list to become the next secretary of defense, but said in a letter to the board of directors at her think tank, the Center for a New American Security, that she is not interested. (Linda Davidson/The Washington Post) Michèle Flournoy, who was widely thought to be among President Obama’s top candidates to be the next secretary of defense, has indicated that she’s not interested in the job. Flournoy, who co-founded the Center for a New American Security and currently serves as its chief executive officer, wrote in a letter to her board of directors that the needs of her family prevented her from taking the job, according to a person who received the letter. Within minutes of the news Monday that Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel planned to resign, Flournoy was touted as the front-runner for the job to replace him. Flournoy had served as the undersecretary of defense for policy in the first years of the Obama presidency and played a key role in developing the strategy for the U.S. surge of troops into Afghanistan in 2009. [Pentagon] [US global strategy] [Think tanks]
• White House seeks a stronger hand at Pentagon to manage crises
  Resignation, coming less than two years after his confirmation, could signal a coming shakeup of the national security team.-- By Greg Jaffe and Rajiv Chandrasekaran November 24 at 9:16 PM ? President Obama tapped Chuck Hagel as defense secretary because he wanted someone who would quietly implement the administration’s policy, avoid controversy and promote no big, sweeping ideas. Hagel was forced to resign Monday for being exactly that defense secretary. Hagel didn’t make big mistakes. Nor had he lost the confidence of the uniformed military. But he often seemed lost or overly deferential to his generals in top-level White House strategy meetings, especially those focused on the battle against Islamic State militants in Iraq and Syria, senior administration officials said. [Strategic incoherence] [Chuck Hagel]
• Defense Secretary Hagel, under pressure, submits resignation
  President Obama announced the resignation of Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel at a joint news conference on Monday. Hagel will continue as defense secretary until the president nominates a successor, who must also be confirmed by the Senate. (Associated Press) By Craig Whitlock and Missy Ryan November 24 at 1:00 PM ? Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel bowed to pressure from the White House and submitted his resignation Monday after less than two years in the job, a casualty of the Obama administration’s infighting over national-security policy, especially regarding the Middle East. Hagel said he will remain at the Pentagon until Obama can pick a replacement, who must then be confirmed by the Senate. Contenders include Michéle Flournoy and Ashton Carter, former high-ranking defense officials during Obama’s first term who were passed over for the top job in favor of Hagel. Obama formally announced the change in a late-morning appearance at the White House. He said Hagel approached him last month and concluded that “it was an appropriate time for him to complete his service.” Neither Hagel nor the president gave a specific reason for the decision, and Obama gave no hint that he had asked Hagel to stay. [Chuck Hagel] [Strategic incoherence]
• US air strikes in Syria driving anti-Assad groups to support Isis
  Fighters from the Free Syrian Army and several Islamic military groups say Isis is gaining allies or truces due to US bombings Mona Mahmood The Guardian, Sunday 23 November 2014 14.13 GMT US air strikes in Syria are encouraging anti-regime fighters to forge alliances with or even defect to Islamic State (Isis), according to a series of interviews conducted by the Guardian. Fighters from the Free Syrian Army (FSA) and Islamic military groups are joining forces with Isis, which has gained control of swaths of Syria and Iraq and has beheaded six western hostages in the past few months. Some brigades have transferred their allegiance, while others are forming tactical alliances or truces. Support among civilians also appears to be growing in some areas as a result of resentment over US-led military action. “Isis now is like a magnet that attracts large numbers of Muslims,” said Abu Talha, who defected from the FSA a few months ago and is now in negotiations with other fighters from groups such as the al-Nusra Front to follow suit. [ISIS] [Unintended consequences]
• Tony Blair, “Infanticide Endorser” is Rewarded by “Save The Children”
  By Felicity Arbuthnot Global Research, November 23, 2014 The Children of Iraq, Victims of the US-UK led war “At Save The Children we want to delight and surpass your expectations.” (Save The Children website) When the Orwellian “Middle East Peace Envoy” Tony Blair was named “Philanthropist of the Year” by GQ Magazine in September for “his tireless charitable work” (tell that to the dismembered, dispossessed, traumatized of Iraq, Afghanistan) there was widespread disbelief. Mind stretching though, it was hardly a heavyweight accolade, coming from a publication with, seemingly, a strange fetish for David Beckham’s knickers and little grounding in reality. The magazine’s Editor lauding Blair’s “achievements” surreally included “reconciling the three Abrahamic faiths.” He may know about men’s knickers, but he clearly has not heard of Iraq. [Tony Blair] [Bizarre]
• If we build new roads and railways, the economic returns will come
  George Osborne talks of investing in transport to carry people out of poverty, but the money has to be made available, and not just in the south-east Larry Elliott The Observer, Sunday 23 November 2014 Manchester Ship Canal in Cheshire The Manchester Ship Canal: transport developments in the industrial revolution transformed our economy, and can do so again. Photograph: Christopher Thomond for the Guardian The scene: Liverpool. The date: 15 September 1830. The occasion: the opening of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway. The Duke of Wellington, the then prime minister, was on hand to watch as inventor and entrepreneur George Stephenson drove the first of a procession of steam-hauled trains along the world’s first inter-city railway line. It was the dawn of the railway age, and the first northern hub. Infrastructure has always mattered. The industrial revolution was not just the story of cotton mills and iron foundries. It was about canals, railways and tarmacadam roads. Big changes to the way people and goods could move around the country boosted growth and transformed the economy. The north led the way: this was the one period in Britain’s history when its economic centre of gravity lay above a line drawn from the Wash to the Severn estuary. Today the entire country is suffering from decades of under-investment in infrastructure [Infrastructure]
• The First Un-War
  by Jeffrey St. Clair Picture the circumstances. You’re evaporating politically, less and less remains of you every week. The nation itself is quivering with anxiety, freaking out over each new virus or decapitation posted on Instagram. The economy, six years after the crash, continues to be catatonic: half the GDP generated by liquidation sales, the other half driven by enterprises that require HazMat suits. There’s scant hope of finding an exit from that gnawing vortex, not with the gang running the Hill these days. Some of your closest allies have jumped ship, and shanked you in the back on the way out the door with bitchy tell-all memoirs that excoriate you for not heeding their advice. The rest of the inner circle seems to have lost faith: faith in the office, faith that anything will get better, faith in you. Yes, put yourself in Obama’s chair, right there in the cockpit of the Oval Office, under these tremulous circumstances. What would you do when you’re flatlining and there’s no quick fix, no patch, no system upgrade that will reboot the program? What is to be done? You unlock that secret drawer and pull out the old playbook, the binding worn by numerous desperate hands before your own, you pencil in some innovations, a few of your signature moves and then let rip by declaring a new war. Well, not exactly “declaring” war. That would be problematic. Hmm. There is that sweeping Authorization for Use of Military Force cooked up by Bush’s crack team of lawyers back in 2001, the one that sanctioned unilateral war across the Middle East from Afghanistan to Somalia to Iraq. Of course, you once denounced that very document as “constitutional over-reach” but who will hold those naïve opinions against you now? [Imperialism] [Diversion] [Domestic]
• Intercept of Pakistani’s communication led to investigation of U.S. diplomat
  By Adam Goldman November 21 at 7:18 PM ? The FBI opened a counterintelligence investigation of a veteran U.S. diplomat after intercepting the communication of a Pakistani official that indicated the woman might have been involved in providing secrets to the Pakistani government, U.S. officials said. The intercept triggered months-long surveillance of Robin L. Raphel, a former ambassador and assistant secretary of state, and eventually led the bureau to obtain a warrant to search her home in Washington; her office at the State Department was also searched. It is unclear what form of communication was intercepted by the United States. One U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing case, said the bureau found classified information at Raphel’s home. The New York Times first reported on the intercept and the lengthy surveillance of Raphel, 67, who has not spoke publicly since news of the investigation broke this month. “Ambassador Raphel is a highly respected career diplomat who has dedicated her life to serving the United States and its interests,” said Amy Jeffress, Raphel’s attorney and the former chief of the National Security Section in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia. “She would never intentionally do anything to compromise those interests. She, and we as her counsel, are cooperating with the investigation, and we are confident that she will be cleared of any suspicion.” A spokesman for the Justice Department would neither confirm nor deny the existence of an investigation. Raphel’s security clearances were pulled and her contract with the State Department was allowed to expire because of the investigation. The search of Raphel’s home was one of several open steps by the FBI that indicated the investigation was at an advanced stage and agents were comfortable with some details about the case becoming public. Many FBI counterintelligence investigations never result in criminal charges. Espionage cases involving Americans are rare and often difficult to prosecute because they involve classified material the government does not want made public. Raphel is a well-known figure in diplomatic circles She began her government career as a CIA analyst, according to a State Department biography. She served 30 years in the Foreign Service and retired from the State Department in 2005. Her former husband, Arnold L. Raphel was the U.S. ambassador to Pakistan when he was killed in a 1988 plane crash with the president of Pakistan, Gen. Mohammad Zia ul-Haq. Questions about whether the crash was in fact an assassination continue to swirl around the incident. Raphel returned to the State Department in 2009 to work as an adviser to Richard Holbrooke, who had been named by then-Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton to the new post of special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan. Raphel also worked as a lobbyist for Cassidy & Associates, a Washington-based government relations firm, before returning to the government. As part of that job, she represented Pakistan.
• Islamic State vs its far enemy
  Paul Rogers 21 November 2014 Behind the flux of conflict on the ground in Syria-Iraq, all sides are digging in for a long war. Much of the recent attention on the war against Islamic State has focused on the intense conflict between the movement and local Kurds in and around Kobane, close to the Syria-Turkey border. Its 60,000 people had been relatively undisturbed by the Syrian war until a few months ago, when thousands of people displaced by the escalating conflict began to swell its population. Within a short period, as many as 400,000 had arrived. Most fled across the border to Turkey when the town was besieged by Islamic State (IS) militias. Today, control of otherwise deserted and ravaged Kobane is divided between these militias and Kurdish fighters, including some from Kurdish Iraq (see Tim Arango, “In Syria battle, a test for all sides”, New York Times, 20 November 2014) Kobane is strategically important for IS, not least as seizing it would give the movement command of a long stretch of the border. The repeated targeting of IS positions by US airstrikes has made the battle there even more pivotal. At the same time, it is but one part of a wider war with many other elements. Three of these involve western and Iraqi governments, and three the Islamic State. [ISIS]
• The UAE and Saudi War on the Muslim Brotherhood Could Be Trouble for the U.S.
  Geopolitical Diary Monday, November 17, 2014 - 18:58 The UAE Cabinet approved a list of 83 designated terrorist organizations on Saturday, including al Qaeda and the Islamic State. Much more significant, though, was the inclusion of many Muslim organizations based in the West that are believed to be allied with the Muslim Brotherhood movement. Prominent among them are two American Muslim groups: the Council on American Islamic Relations and the Muslim American Society. The decision to put two mainstream U.S. Muslim groups on its list of terrorist organizations is part of an initiative, together with the Saudis, to undermine the Islamist movement known as the Muslim Brotherhood. The move is unlikely to succeed, but it could cause problems between the U.S. government and the American Muslim community. Ever since the Muslim Brotherhood's rise in the aftermath of the 2011 Arab Spring, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia have felt deeply threatened by the Islamist movement. Both countries supported the July 2013 coup that toppled the Brotherhood-led government of Mohammed Morsi in Egypt. They continue to use their financial might to prop up the government of former military chief President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi. In addition, they are trying to make sure that the Brotherhood in the region is generally weakened, or even decimated. From their perspective, the Islamism of the Muslim Brotherhood is a far greater threat to the monarchies than even the jihadism of al Qaeda and the Islamic State. Given the armed insurrectionist approach of the jihadists, the Saudis and Emiratis can crack down on them using coercive means more easily. But for them, the Brotherhood is a much more insidious threat. Not only does it oppose violence as a means of achieving its political goals, but it also seeks democracy.
• BRICS’ Brazil President Next Washington Target
  Brazil’s newly re-elected President, Dilma Rousseff, survived a massive US State Department disinformation campaign to win a runoff vote against US-backed Aecio Neves on October 26. However it is already clear that Washington has opened a new assault on one of the key leaders of the non-aligned BRICS group of emerging economies—Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa. With a full-scale US financial warfare attack to weaken Putin’s Russia and a series of destabilizations aimed at China, including most recently the Hong Kong US-financed “Umbrella Revolution,” getting rid of Brazil’s socially-minded President is a top priority to stop the emerging counter-pole to Washington’s New World (dis-)Order. The reason Washington wants to get rid of Rousseff is clear. As President she is one of five heads of the BRICS who signed the formation of the US$100 billion BRICS Development Bank and a reserve currency pool worth over another US$100 billion. She also supports a new International Reserve Currency to supplement and eventually replace the dollar. Inside Brazil she is supported by millions of lower-income Brazilians who have been lifted out of poverty by her various programs, especially the Bolsa Familia, an economic subsidy program for low-income mothers and families. The Bolsa Familia has brought an estimated thirty-six million families out of poverty via Rousseff and her party’s economic policies, something that creates apoplexy in Wall Street and Washington. Her US-backed campaign rival, Aécio Neves of the Brazilian Social Democracy Party (Partido da Social Democracia Brasileira – PSDB), serves the interests of tycoons and their Washington allies. First appeared: http://journal-neo.org/2014/11/18/brics-brazil-president-next-washington-target/ [Destabilisation]
• President Obama needs to fix his flawed Islamic State strategy
  By Editorial Board November 18 at 7:57 PM THE BEHEADING of another American by the Islamic State brought an appropriately harsh condemnation from President Obama, who called it “an act of pure evil.” Such words about the murder of Abdul-Rahman Kassig, also known as Peter Kassig, ought to reinforce the urgency of destroying the terrorist entity before it can further embed itself in Syria and Iraq and commit other atrocities — such as genocide against non-Muslim communities or a direct attack on the United States. That’s why it was discouraging to hear Mr. Obama simultaneously rule out steps to patch the glaring gaps in his strategy. At a news conference in Australia on Sunday, the president appeared to reject the deployment of U.S. Special Operations forces to the front lines — a move his senior military commanders have publicly said may be necessary — except in extreme circumstances. Mr. Obama cited the Islamic State’s acquisition of a nuclear weapon as an example of what would move him to act. For the Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman, Gen. Martin Dempsey, and other U.S. commanders, the threshold is considerably lower. Gen. Dempsey said last week that he could recommend the deployment of the forces in any effort to retake the Iraqi city of Mosul or secure the border with Syria. That’s because the U.S. troops could play a crucial role in directing airstrikes against enemy forces as well as in advising Iraqi and allied units on tactics. [US Syria policy] [Strategic incoherence] [Media] [Special forces]
• The Persecution of Julian Assange
  by John Pilger The siege of Knightsbridge is a farce. For two years, an exaggerated, costly police presence around the Ecuadorean embassy in London has served no purpose other than to flaunt the power of the state. Their quarry is an Australian charged with no crime, a refugee from gross injustice whose only security is the room given him by a brave South American country. His true crime is to have initiated a wave of truth-telling in an era of lies, cynicism and war. The persecution of Julian Assange must end. Even the British government clearly believes it must end. On 28 October, the deputy foreign minister, Hugo Swire, told Parliament he would “actively welcome” the Swedish prosecutor in London and “we would do absolutely everything to facilitate that”. The tone was impatient. The Swedish prosecutor, Marianne Ny, has refused to come to London to question Assange about allegations of sexual misconduct in Stockholm in 2010 – even though Swedish law allows for it and the procedure is routine for Sweden and the UK. The documentary evidence of a threat to Assange’s life and freedom from the United States – should he leave the embassy – is overwhelming. On May 14 this year, US court files revealed that a “multi subject investigation” against Assange was “active and ongoing”. Ny has never properly explained why she will not come to London, just as the Swedish authorities have never explained why they refuse to give Assange a guarantee that they will not extradite him on to the US under a secret arrangement agreed between Stockholm and Washington. In December 2010, the Independent revealed that the two governments had discussed his onward extradition to the US before the European Arrest Warrant was issued. Perhaps an explanation is that, contrary to its reputation as a liberal bastion, Sweden has drawn so close to Washington that it has allowed secret CIA “renditions” – including the illegal deportation of refugees. [Assange] [Sweden]
• Fake Video Footage: The West’s Propaganda War on Syria Exposed Once Again
  By Tony Cartalucci Global Research, November 16, 2014 Fox, the London Telegraph, and the Daily Mail all published articles promoting a video claiming to show a Syrian boy rescuing a young girl amid heavy gunfire during Syria’s ongoing conflict. The Daily Mail article claimed under its titled, “Heroic young boy runs through sniper fire in Syria, pretends to get shot, then rescues terrrified girl as bullets hit the floor around them,” that: Yabroud was the last rebel stronghold held by the FSA on the Lebanese border before it fell to Assad’s forces in March 2014. The video, which was uploaded yesterday, has already had nearly 500,000 views. It was later re-published on YouTube by Sham News Network, which is run by activists based in Damascus. Several YouTube comments claim the video is fake, but experts told The Telegraph they have no reason to doubt its authenticity. The Telegraph, referenced by the Daily Mail, in an article titled, “Watch: Syrian ‘hero boy’ appears to brave sniper fire to rescue terrified girl in dramatic video,” would claim: The Telegraph cannot independently verify the footage but it is thought the incident took place in Yabroud – a town near the Lebanese border which was the last stronghold of the moderate Free Syrian Army. Experts tell the paper they have no reason to doubt its authenticity. It would not be the first time gunmen had targeted children in the nearly four years of bloody civil war. More than 11,000 children have died in war-torn Syria since 2011, including hundreds targeted by snipers, a report by the London-based Oxford Research group revealed earlier this month. The group found that sniper fire killed 389 Syrian children under the age of 17 between March 2011 and August 2013. The UN has previously accused the Syrian regime of “crimes against humanity” – including the use of snipers against small children. Nowhere does the Telegraph claim “experts” of any kind believed the video was authentic. Instead, what the Telegraph did was engage in the same intentionally misleading, manipulative propaganda much of the Western media has resorted to in its coverage of the Syrian conflict, and many others, for years – cite a baseless, unverified claim – then roll it in together with other baseless claims so that they appear to support one another as factual. While the Daily Mail claims “experts” claimed “they have no reason to doubt its authenticity,” those who have witnessed the West’s intentional, systematic deceit throughout the duration of the Syrian conflict could cite many reasons. With it now confirmed that the above mentioned video is a hoax, yet another reason still can be cited. Indeed, the video was a complete hoax – a literal production filmed in Malta, not Syria, and consisting of actors, actresses, and special effects [Propaganda] [Disinformation]
  • Footage of Syrian 'hero boy' dodging sniper's bullets to save girl revealed as FAKE
    Nov 15, 2014 14:03 By Chris Gee The one-minute film appears to show the boy haul a girl to safety amid volleys of gunfire but it was performed by actors and shot in Malta A young boy bravely dodges volleys of gunfire to rescue a girl caught in the middle of Syrian sniper fire, incredible amateur video footage appeared to show. But the images, reported at the time to have been posted by Syrian anti-regime activists, were in fact shot by Norwegian film-makers on the holiday island of Malta. [Propaganda]
  • ‘Syria Danny’ Caught Staging CNN War Propaganda Stunt
    Footage appears to show “activist” coordinating fake gunfire Paul Joseph Watson Infowars.com Tuesday, March 6, 2012 Astounding footage has emerged of ‘Syria Danny’ – the dubious “activist” who appears on mainstream news every week begging for a US or Israeli military invasion – in which he apparently coordinates gunfire and explosions to be staged during his interview with CNN. As we have previously documented, ‘Syria Danny’ is a 22-year-old British citizen of Syrian descent from Cambridge. After returning from Homs in summer last year, he lived in London for a few months before returning to Syria in December, from which point onwards he became the poster child for a western military intervention in Syria, begging almost daily on CNN for the United States or even Israel to bombard the country. The clip above shows Danny being connected to CNN for one of the many interviews the station has conducted within him over the last few months. While waiting to be connected, Danny says, “Well, let the gunfire sound then,” before subsequently asking someone off camera, “Did you tell him to get the gunfire ready?” An explosion is heard soon after, but Danny doesn’t even flinch. The person working the camera, Danny himself, and at least one person off camera, clearly appear to be coordinating staged gunfire and explosions to coincide with the CNN interview. The cameraman then reminds Danny to talk about recovering dead bodies before the interview with Anderson Cooper begins. The talking point about Assad’s forces carrying out indiscriminate violence is strongly emphasized. [Propaganda]
• Only the Syrian Army is able to fight ISIL: so let’s back it
  Kamal Alam 17 November 2014 It must be now be clear to western defence chiefs that there is only one credible fighting force on the ground capable of fighting ISIL and that is the Syrian military. General George S Patton famously remarked, ‘No bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. You won it by making the other poor dumb bastard die for his country.’ Today as the war in Syria rages on, everyone seems to be confused as to how we got here and where we are going from here. Thousands of foreign Arab and non-Arab fighters fill the ranks of the terrorists now fighting the Syrian Army. Stories of blonde Europeans fighting abound, including shockingly a young Jewish teenager. Interestingly, most of the returning Saudis remark that they were misled on the ground and that the objectives given them to fight in the first place were incorrect. One of the most galling reports relates to French objectives in Syria: the most gung ho European country demanding military intervention is France; but the French have lost their own senior intelligence operative to the terrorists the agent was sent to oppose. The foreign fighters pouring into both Syria and Iraq have spoken about their disillusionment as the aims of different rebel groups vary from opportunism to sheer capitalist gain from foreign government aid projects. Even the French policy over Syria has been a matter of score settling and political gain rather than a proper insight into the battle on the ground. The public defection of an intelligence agent to rebel groups further underscores the complete fragmentation on the frontlines. [US Syria policy] [ISIS]
• Sources: U.S. air strikes in Syria targeted French agent who defected to al Qaida
  By Mitchell Prothero McClatchy Foreign Staff October 5, 2014 IRBIL, Iraq — A former French intelligence officer who defected to al Qaida was among the targets of the first wave of U.S. air strikes in Syria last month, according to people familiar with the defector’s movements and identity. Two European intelligence officials described the former French officer as the highest ranking defector ever to go over to the terrorist group and called his defection one of the most dangerous developments in the West’s long confrontation with al Qaida. The identity of the officer is a closely guarded secret. Two people, independently of one another, provided the same name, which McClatchy is withholding pending further confirmation. All of the sources agreed that a former French officer was one of the people targeted when the United States struck eight locations occupied by the Nusra Front, al Qaida’s Syrian affiliate. The former officer apparently survived the assault, which included strikes by 47 cruise missiles. [Defector]
• Agents of Israel
  After the July 2014 Israeli attacks on Gaza, Hamas arrested suspected Palestinian informants and executed 18 of them on August 22. It only needs the right collaborator in the right place. Without the collaborator you can't do anything. Roni Shaked, former Shin Bet official This documentary tells the story of Palestinian collaborators and the significant role they have played in the targetting of high-ranking Hamas and Fatah figures by Israeli intelligence. The film examines the role infiltrators have played since the assassination of Fatah founder member Khalil al-Wazir (aka Abu Jihad) in the 1980s; Yahya Ayyash, 'the Engineer', with the help of collaborator Kamal Hammad in January 1996; and Palestinian imam and politician, Sheikh Ahmed Yasin, in 2004. We interview known collaborators like Nadim Anjas who worked with Israel's internal security service Shin Bet between 1996 and 2002; and Abdul Hamid Rajub, who describes his role in the killing of Abu Jihad. We also talk to alleged double agents, Palestinian Authority officials, and a former Shin Bet deputy director. The film examines Shin Bet's recruitment methods – the exploitation of desperate and vulnerable people, sexual entrapment and the co-option of prisoners in Israeli jails. It includes interviews, phone interviews, confession transcripts, reconstruction, anonymous interviews and the use of a hidden camera.
• White House announces push for next generation of hi-tech weapons
  Defence secretary says US technological edge is eroding as countries like North Korea and militant groups improve arsenals Reuters in Simi Valley theguardian.com, Sunday 16 November 2014 04.36 GMT The US defence secretary, Chuck Hagel, has announced that the Pentagon will push into cutting-edge technologies to develop new weapons. The US defence secretary, Chuck Hagel, has announced that the Pentagon will push into cutting-edge technologies to develop new weapons. Photograph: Mark Ralston/AFP/Getty Images The US military will pursue an ambitious programme to identify and develop new weapons systems based on cutting-edge technologies in a bid to maintain its dominance, the defence secretary, Chuck Hagel, has announced. Hagel announced the Defence Innovation Initiative and said it would include an effort to develop and field new systems using technologies such as robotics, autonomous systems, miniaturisation, data processing and three-dimensional printing. Noting the defence department did not dominate the technologies it hoped to exploit, Hagel said the Pentagon would turn to businesses and universities for ideas and help. He said the Pentagon expected the push to produce systems that would offset its rivals’ advantages, as atomic weapons did in the 1950s and precision strike and stealth have done in more recent years. “We are entering an era where American dominance in key warfighting domains is eroding and we must find new and creative ways to sustain, and in some areas expand, our advantages,” Hagel said in a memo to Pentagon leaders announcing the initiative. While the United States had been engaged in wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, powers such as Russia and China had invested heavily in military modernisation, fielding advanced aircraft, submarines, and both longer-range and more accurate missiles, Hagel said. Technologies and weapons that were once the exclusive province of advanced nations had become available to a broad range of militaries and non-state actors, from North Korea to Hezbollah, he added. Hagel’s remarks echoed those of other senior Pentagon officials appearing at the forum. [MISCOM] [Threat]
• In new video, U.S. sailors attacked in Istanbul by Turkish mob
  By Dan Lamothe November 12 at 12:11 PM ? Anti-American protesters shouting "Yankee, go home!" attacked three U.S. Navy sailors on Wednesday in Istanbul near where their warship was docked on an inlet of the Bosphorus Strait in the Black Sea. (AP) A group of about 20 nationalists attacked three U.S. sailors in Istanbul on Wednesday, hurling objects at them, chasing them and briefly putting a bag over one of the sailors’ heads. The U.S. Navy acknowledged the incident, which was publicized in a video online. The attack underscores the volatility in Turkey, a longtime U.S. ally that increasingly is at odds with Washington on foreign policy, especially over how to handle the Islamic State militant group in neighboring Syria. In the video, one of the Turks is seen saying the Americans looked like members of the U.S. Army. The Turks claimed to be members of the Turkey Youth Union, which is opposed to working with the United States and becoming members of the European Union. “We define you as murderers, as killers… and we want you to get out of our land,” one man says, seconds before the attack ensues. [Anti-Americanism] [Turkey]
• Armenians dig out their Ottoman land deeds
  The great suffering and losses that accompanied the forced displacement of Armenians in 1915 under the Ottoman Empire are called a “genocide” by Armenians and “deportation” by Turkey. The parliaments of 20 countries have recognized the Armenian version of events. The centenary of the Armenian genocide is only five months away. Summary? Print Armenians might count on Ottoman title deeds, preserved and passed down to generations for 100 years, to claim their abandoned properties next year. Author Tulay Cetingulec Posted November 12, 2014 Translator(s)Sibel Utku Bila In the United States, where the Armenian issue is most prominent, 42 states have recognized the events as genocide. Yet, in his eagerly anticipated statements every April 24, President Barack Obama has used the expression “meds yeghern,” which means “great calamity” in Armenian, rather than the word “genocide.” Serving his second term free from the pressures of re-election, Obama is unlikely to alter his usual language in 2015. The Republicans, who took control of the Senate in midterm elections Nov. 4, appear to stand closer to Turkey on the Armenian issue, provided Turkey mends fences with Israel. [Turkey] [Human rights] [US global strategy] [Israel] [Double standards]
• What Could Possibly Go Right?
  Four Months into Iraq War 3.0, the Cracks Are Showing -- on the Battlefield and at the Pentagon
  By Peter Van Buren Karl von Clausewitz, the famed Prussian military thinker, is best known for his aphorism “War is the continuation of state policy by other means.” But what happens to a war in the absence of coherent state policy? Actually, we now know. Washington’s Iraq War 3.0, Operation Inherent Resolve, is what happens. In its early stages, I asked sarcastically, “What could possibly go wrong?” As the mission enters its fourth month, the answer to that question is already grimly clear: just about everything. It may be time to ask, in all seriousness: What could possibly go right? [Strategic incoherence] [ISIS]
• Ideological Foundations of Mainstream Neoclassical Economics: Class Interests as “Economic Theory”
  By Prof. Ismael Hossein-Zadeh Global Research, November 14, 2014 There is now a widespread consensus that mainstream/neoclassical economists failed miserably to either predict the coming of the 2008 financial implosion, or provide a reasonable explanation when it actually arrived. Not surprisingly, many critics have argued that neoclassical economics has created more confusion than clarification, more obfuscation than elucidation. Economic “science” has, indeed, become “an ideological construct which serves to camouflage and justify the New World Order” [1]. Also not surprisingly, an increasing number of students who take classes and/or major in economics are complaining about the abstract and irrelevant nature of the discipline. For example, a group of French graduate students in economics recently wrote an open letter, akin to a manifesto, critical of their academic education in economics as “autistic” and “pathologically distant from the problems of real markets and real people”: “We wish to escape from imaginary worlds! Most of us have chosen to study economics so as to acquire a deep understanding of the economic phenomena with which the citizens of today are confronted. But the teaching that is offered . . . does not generally answer this expectation. . . . This gap in the teaching, this disregard for concrete realities, poses an enormous problem for those who would like to render themselves useful to economic and social actors” [2]. The word “autistic” may be offensive and politically incorrect, but it certainly provides an apt description of mainstream economics. Interestingly, most economists do not deny the abstract and irrelevance feature or property of their discipline; but argue that the internal consistency of a theory—in the sense that the findings or conclusions of the theory follow logically from its premises or assumptions—is more important than its relevance (or irrelevance) to the real world. Nobel Laureate economist William Vickery, for example, maintains: “Economic theory proper, indeed, is nothing more than a system of logical relations between certain sets of assumptions and the conclusions derived from them. . . . The validity of a theory proper does not depend on the correspondence or lack of it between the assumptions of the theory or its conclusions and observations in the real world. . . . In any pure theory, all propositions are essentially tautological, in the sense that the results are implicit in the assumptions made” [3]. Paul Samuelson, another Nobel Laureate in Economics, likewise writes, “In pointing out the consequences of a set of abstract assumptions, one need not be committed unduly as to the relation between reality and these assumptions.” How or why did economics as a crucially important subject of inquiry into an understanding of social structures evolve in this fashion, that is, as an apparently rigorous and technically elaborate discipline without much usefulness in the way of understanding or solving economic problems? [Economics]
• Hagel: Taking out Assad won't put IS 'back in the box'
  Senior US officials denied Nov. 13 that the Obama administration is considering making the removal of Bashar al-Assad a key plank in its strategy to defeat the Islamic State (IS). Summary? Print Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel shot down reports that the Obama administration is considering a change of targets in its fight against the Islamic State. Author Julian Pecquet Posted November 13, 2014 Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel and Joint Chiefs Chairman Martin Dempsey told lawmakers on the House Armed Services Committee that the focus remains on helping Iraqi forces defeat the Sunni militant group inside Iraq. The remarks follow a CNN report Nov. 12 indicating a rethink inside the White House amid complaints from coalition partners such as Turkey and Saudi Arabia that want Assad removed. "There is no change in strategy," Hagel told Rep. Jackie Speier, D-Calif., who voted against legislation to train and equip Syrian rebels in September. "Assad's part of the equation, of course," Hagel said. But "just alone dealing with Assad, where we are now ... that's not going to put ISIL [the Islamic State] back in the box." Hagel, who reportedly wrote a sharp memo to National Security Adviser Susan Rice last month urging a sharper focus on solving the years-long conflict in Syria, said the Islamic State remains the main target. "We could change Assad today, and that's not going to change all the dynamics," he said. "Who are you going to replace Assad with? What kind of an army can take on ISIL?" [US Syria policy] [Strategic incoherence] [Bashar Assad]
• Pro-Sanctions Group Targets Legal Humanitarian Trade With Iran
  Eli Clifton and Ali Gharib on November 13, 2014 - 3:23 PM The anti-Iran pressure group United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI) claims as its mission to stop the Iranian nuclear program. A big part of its effort revolves around what it calls “private sanctions campaigns”—attempts to get consumers to boycott or otherwise pressure companies doing business with Iran, while at the same time “striving not to punish the Iranian people,” as the group’s mission statement puts it. But the pledge to avoid harming “the Iranian people”—heard from many who take a hard line against Iran—rings hollow amid the breadth of UANI’s advocacy. A Nation investigation into UANI’s Iran Business Registry reveals a more muddled picture. The registry lists more than 1,100 companies doing business with or in Iran—legal or otherwise. While UANI accuses many of the companies of violating US or international sanctions, the listings also target for public pressure some companies doing entirely legal, humanitarian trade with Iran, including those engaged in selling Iran medicines—economic activity that is specifically exempted from sanctions by the US Treasury Department. [Sanctions]
• A permanent infrastructure for permanent war
  David Vine 13 November 2014 America's 35-year-long strategy of dotting the Middle East with military bases, large and small, is one of the greatest disasters in the already-sordid history of its foreign policy. With the launch of a new US-led war in Iraq and Syria against the Islamic State (IS), the United States has engaged in aggressive military action in at least 13 countries in the greater Middle East since 1980. In that time, every American president has invaded, occupied, bombed, or gone to war in at least one country in the region. The total number of invasions, occupations, bombing operations, drone assassination campaigns, and cruise missile attacks easily runs into the dozens. As in prior military operations in the greater Middle East, US forces fighting IS have been aided by access to and the use of an unprecedented collection of military bases. They occupy a region sitting atop the world’s largest concentration of oil and natural gas reserves and has long been considered the most geopolitically important place on the planet. Indeed, since 1980, the US military has gradually garrisoned the greater Middle East in a fashion only rivaled by the Cold War garrisoning of western Europe or, in terms of concentration, by the bases built to wage past wars in Korea and Vietnam. [Bases] [Middle East]
• Coalition Divided Over Goals
  by Thierry Meyssan Washington seems to have abandoned its Levant remodeling map for another. However, the failure of the first project and the strength of the Syrian people do not bode well for the implementation of this new plan. Thierry Meyssan reviews the adjustments it requires and the division it has created within the coalition: on one side, the United States, Israel and Saudi Arabia, on the other, France and Turkey. Voltaire Network | Damascus (Syria) | 10 November 2014 Remodeling Map according to Ralph Peter Washington no longer wishes to overthrow the Syrian Arab Republic because it considers that the National Coalition as unable to govern and it does not want to see the country falling into unmanageable anarchy. Indeed, unlike Libya and Iraq, Syria and Israel are adjacent, so chaos in this place could be fatal to the US protégé. [US Syria policy] [Alliance] [Fragmentation]
• George W. Bush’s claims on weapons found, and not found, In Iraq
  By Glenn Kessler November 13 ? (AP Photo/Pat Sullivan) “We both put together large coalitions of nations, and we both gave Saddam Hussein a chance to make a choice.” “The man, Saddam Hussein, would have a lot of revenue as a result of high prices of oil. And even though there wasn’t, you know, a – we found a dirty bomb, for example – he had the capacity to make chemical, biological and nuclear weapons. And so there’s – you know, it’s all very hypothetical. But yeah, I could argue that we’re much safer without Saddam. And I would argue that the people of Iraq have a better shot at living in a peaceful – a peaceful state.” – Former president George W. Bush, interview on National Public Radio’s “Morning Edition,” aired Nov. 12, 2014 The Fact Checker was puzzled by Bush’s reference to finding a dirty bomb in Iraq. It certainly sounded like he said that such a weapon was found in Iraq. But after listening to the tape a few times, we concluded that the former president, in an offhand manner, was giving that as an example of something that was not found after the United States invaded Iraq. Who knew that the United States invaded Iraq because of a potential dirty-bomb threat? That’s certainly not what the administration suggested before the war. Let’s examine a pair of the president’s claims in the NPR interview. [Iraq] [Disinformation] [George W Bush]
• Republicans will now taste their bitter harvest
  By Katrina vanden Heuvel November 11 In the early 3rd century B.C., after King Pyrrhus of Epirus again took brutal casualties in defeating the Romans, he told one person who offered congratulations, “If we are victorious in one more battle with the Romans, we shall be utterly ruined.” In his more sober moments, Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), about to achieve his lifelong ambition of becoming Senate majority leader, may wonder whether he, too, has achieved a pyrrhic victory. Republicans are still crowing about the sweeping victories in 2014 that give them control of both houses of Congress. They will set the agenda, deciding what gets considered, investigated and voted on. Their ideas will drive the debate. But Republicans have no mandate because they offered no agenda. Republicans reaped the rewards of McConnell’s scorched-earth strategy, obstructing President Obama relentlessly, helping to create the failure that voters would pin on the party in power. But the collateral damage is that the “party of ‘no’?” has no agreement on what is yes. Instead of using the years in the wilderness to develop new ideas and a clear vision, Republicans have used them only to sharpen their tongues, grow their claws and practice their backhands. [Governance]
• 700 US troops report possible chemical agent exposure
  11 November 2014 Rebecca Trager An internal Pentagon review has found that 734 US troops reported potential exposure to chemical warfare agents including sarin and sulfur mustard while serving in Iraq and Afghanistan between 2004 and 2010. The information is based on data from post-deployment health assessments, and a review of the medical records of all service members assigned to units where exposures were reported. The actual extent of that exposure is ‘not yet clear’, said Pentagon press secretary Rear Admiral John Kirby in a statement last week. [cbw]
• The Lessons of Libya
  by Dan Glazebrook Three years ago, in late October 2011, the world witnessed the final defeat of the Libyan Jamahiriya – the name by which the Libyan state was known until overthrown in 2011, meaning literally the ‘state of the masses’ – in the face of a massive onslaught from NATO, its regional allies and local collaborators. It took seven months for the world’s most powerful military alliance – with a combined military spending of just under $1 trillion per year – to fully destroy the Jamahiriya (a state with a population the size of Wales) and it took a joint British-French-Qatari special forces operation to finally win control of the capital. In total, 10,000 strike sorties were rained down on Libya, tens of thousands killed and injured, and the country left a battleground for hundreds of warring factions, armed to the teeth with weapons either looted from state armouries or provided directly by NATO and its allies. Britain, France and the US had led a war which had effectively transformed a peaceful, prosperous African country into a textbook example of a ‘failed state’. Yet the common image of Libya in the months and years leading up to the invasion was that of a state that had ‘come in from the cold’ and was now enjoying friendly relations with the West. Tony Blair’s famous embrace of Gaddafi in his tent in 2004 was said to have ushered in a new period of ‘rapprochement’, with Western companies rushing to do business in the oil-rich African state, and Gaddafi’s abandonment of a nuclear deterrent apparently indicative of the new spirit of trust and co-operation between Libya and the West. Yet this image was largely a myth. [Libya] [Airpower] [Qatar] [Renege]
• What the Fall of the Wall Did Not Change
  Geopolitical Weekly Tuesday, November 11, 2014 Stratfor By George Friedman Twenty-five years ago, a crowd filled with an uneasy mixture of joy and rage tore down the Berlin Wall. There was joy for the end of Germany's partition and the end of tyranny. There was rage against generations of fear. One fear was of communist oppression. The other fear was of the threat of a war, which had loomed over Europe and Germany since 1945. One fear was moral and ideological, while the other was prudential and geopolitical. As in all defining political moments, fear and rage, ideology and geopolitics, blended together in an intoxicating mix. Marxism's Sway Twenty-five years later, we take for granted the moral bankruptcy of Soviet communism, along with its geopolitical weakness. It is difficult for us to remember how seductive Marxism was, and how frightening Soviet power was. For my generation, at the better universities, Marxism was not an exotic form of oriental despotism but a persuasive explanation of the world and how it worked, as well as a moral imperative that a stunning number of students and faculty were committed to. The vast majority of Marxists in what was called the New Left adopted it as fashion more than passion. A small segment of the New Left, particularly in Europe and supported by Soviet intelligence, took direct action and took risks, killing, wounding, kidnapping and blowing things up in the pursuit of political aims. The latter had courage; the former were shallow and cynical. There is no doubt that the shallow and cynical were more praiseworthy. Still, ideologically, Marxism in its several varieties had a persuasive power that is difficult for even those of us who lived through it to recall. Its pull had little to do with industrial democracy, although songs from the labor movement were sung regularly. It was far less about the proletariat and more a revolt against what was seen as the shallow one-dimensionality of affluence. It was never clear to me what Marxists had against affluence, as I was relatively poor, but the venom against the previous generation's capitulation to ordinary life was intense. Marxism had become the ideology of the young, who celebrated its moral superiority [Marxism]
• Stakes are high as US plays the oil card against Iran and Russia
  Washington is trying to drive down prices by flooding the market with crude but risks collateral damage to its own shale industry o Larry Elliott o The Guardian, Sunday 9 November 2014 16.00 GMT Imagine that at the start of 2014 you were an investor who liked to dabble in the commodity markets. You could sniff something going seriously wrong in Ukraine and you were alarmed by early reports of groups of militants marauding across northern and western Iraq. With hopes that the global economy would continue to strengthen, the smart money would have been on oil prices continuing to climb. That’s what geopolitical tension plus robust demand usually means. On this occasion, though, the smart money was wrong. After standing at well over $110 a barrel in the summer, the cost of crude has collapsed. Prices are down by a quarter in the past three months. More oil has been pumped at a time when the global recovery has faltered, with traders caught unawares by the slowdown in China and renewed stagnation in the eurozone. That, though, is not the whole story. The fourfold increase in oil prices triggered by the embargo on exports organised by Saudi Arabia in response to the Yom Kippur war in 1973 showed how crude could be used as a diplomatic and economic weapon. History is repeating itself. Think about how the Obama administration sees the state of the world. It wants Tehran to come to heel over its nuclear programme. It wants Vladimir Putin to back off in eastern Ukraine. But after recent experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan, the White House has no desire to put American boots on the ground. Instead, with the help of its Saudi ally, Washington is trying to drive down the oil price by flooding an already weak market with crude. As the Russians and the Iranians are heavily dependent on oil exports, the assumption is that they will become easier to deal with. John Kerry, the US secretary of state, allegedly struck a deal with King Abdullah in September under which the Saudis would sell crude at below the prevailing market price. That would help explain why the price has been falling at a time when, given the turmoil in Iraq and Syria caused by Islamic State, it would normally have been rising. The Saudis did something similar in the mid-1980s. Then, the geopolitical motivation for a move that sent the oil price to below $10 a barrel was to destabilise Saddam Hussein’s regime. This time, according to Middle East specialists, the Saudis want to put pressure on Iran and to force Moscow to weaken its support for the Assad regime in Syria. [Oil] [US global strategy] [Saudi Arabia]
• Syrian official: negotiations with US blocked by Saudi Arabia
  DAMASCUS, Syria — From his office adjacent to the presidential al-Rawda Palace in the heart of Damascus, a Syrian official goes about his work interpreting the landscape in his country and its surroundings at the military and internal and external political levels. He told Al-Monitor, “The military situation of our armed forces and the situation on the ground is more than good. The fall of the town of Murak to the Syrian army is a major achievement that can even be described as strategic. Control over this critical site guarantees total control of the Hama-Aleppo road. This implies that Aleppo city has almost fallen to the Syrian army militarily.” A Syrian official spoke on the continued gains of the Syrian army, the failings of the international coalition and chances of talks between the opposing parties. Author Jean Aziz Posted November 7, 2014 Translator(s)Joelle El-Khoury It is therefore probably logical that the authorities in Damascus do not agree with the proposal by UN envoy Staffan de Mistura to turn the city into a “freeze zone,” as it is being called, to be managed by moderate opposition members and to then talk later with Syrian authorities about restarting the Geneva path for a peaceful solution. The Syrian official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said, “Ghouta is gradually falling to our troops. Douma city, the capital of the revolution and the headquarters of Zahran Alloush, the leader of the so-called Jaysh al-Islam, will be our army’s next target. Moreover, do not rule out the possibility of hearing about surprises on the ground in the coming weeks, of agreements in some areas controlled by gunmen, or of an announcement on reconciliations between armed groups and the Syrian authorities. We have reliable information that the financial blockade imposed by the Western coalition on the terrorists has begun to produce concrete preliminary results, for the first time in more than three years, in addition to the horrific conflicts between armed factions and the terrorists themselves.” [US Syria policy] [Saudi Arabia] [Client]
• Transforming Mongolia-Russia-China Relations: The Dushanbe Trilateral Summit
  The Asia-Pacific Journal, Vol. 12, Issue 44, No. 1, November 10, 2014. Alicia Campi The trilateral summit among the presidents of Mongolia, China, and Russia, on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) at Dushanbe, Tajikistan on September 11, 2014, was the culmination of a deliberate summer whirlwind policy blitz of Mongolian President Tsakhia Elbegdorj to position his country to take advantage of deepening Sino-Russian economic relations. Concerned that a “great game” to create a new version of the Eurasian Silk Road was being played out without any Mongolian input, Mongolia’s activist president used the celebrations around the commemoration of different anniversaries in Sino-Mongol and Mongol-Russian relations to make certain that his two powerful neighbors did not proceed with transportation and energy cooperation without taking into account the role of a mineral-rich Mongolia. The landlocked Northeast Asian nation is seeking to become an international transportation hub and at the same time diversify its mineral exports. This spotlight trilateral summit moment in Mongolian-Chinese-Russian relations, together with the trips of Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin to Mongolia a few weeks previous, attracted attention, bordering on concern, of other Eurasian countries, the European Union, and the United States who do not fully comprehend Mongolia’s strategy. [Mongolia] [Railways] [Eurasian landbridge]
• The CIA and Drugs, Inc.: a Covert History
  by Doug Valentine Gary Webb was a good investigator. He linked a drug dealer in Los Angeles, through Contra suppliers, to CIA officers and Republican politicians. His editor let the story rip, and the “Dark Alliance” series made a mighty impact on Black Americans, who saw it as evidence that the ruling class was as racist as ever. Webb stuck a stake in the evil heart of the national security state and embarrassed the CIA’s contacts in the mainstream media. All of which was unforgiveable. Pressure was applied, history re-written, and Webb, in despair, apparently committed suicide. The irony, of course, is that Webb had exposed only a small part of the story. The fact of the matter is that the US government has always managed large portions of the illicit, international drug business, and was doing so long before the CIA came into existence. Documented cases abound, like the Opium Scandal of 1927, in which a “former” US Attorney in Shanghai provided a Chinese warlord with 6500 Mausers in exchange for $500,000 worth of opium. Two years later, US Customs inspectors found a huge quantity of opium, heroin, and morphine in the luggage of Mrs. Kao, the wife of a Nationalist Chinese official in San Francisco. At which point Secretary of State Henry L. Stimson hustled Chiang Kai-shek’s ring of drug dealing diplomats out of the country. The State Department likewise protected a ring of drug smugglers in 1934, and thus allowed heroin to pour into New Orleans. Two historians said about the Honduran Drugs-For-Guns case: “the defense of the Western hemisphere against the Axis powers…reduced to insignificance clandestine attempts to link the managerial personnel of a major cargo airline to smuggling.”[i] As it was in the beginning, it is now and ever shall be: the ruling class’s power resides in its control of the criminal underworld; and since 1947, it has been the CIA’s job to advance and protect the conspiracy. [Drugs] [US global strategy] [CIA]
• UK Program to Train Libyan Soldiers Ends in ‘Disarray and Scandal’
  by SOPHIE STEPHENSON A program by the Ministry of Defence to train Libyan soldiers has ended ahead of schedule, due to a string of criminal offences committed by several of the men. Initially planning to train two thousand troops at the Bassingbourn base in Cambridgeshire, the first group of three hundred are now being sent home – weeks in advance – and it is unlikely that the program will continue elsewhere. Many of the original three hundred recruits were what the Guardian labels ‘former revolutionaries’, meaning rebels that fought alongside NATO in the 2011 war that destroyed Libya’s Jamahiriya government. A Ministry of Defence spokesman claims that each of the men went through a special vetting process prior to their selection; however this does not seem to have been too successful. Apparently ninety of the men withdrew from the program throughout the course of their stay, returning home due to personal reasons and health problems, while others are said to have had behavioural and disciplinary issues. Several more have claimed asylum. Five soldiers have been charged with various sexual offences, including the rape of a man in Cambridge by two officers. [Libya] [Blowback]
• Failures of International Law and Human Rights Institutions: Palestine, Syria and Iraq in 2014
  By John Philpot Global Research, November 07, 2014 The United States’ bombing of Syria and Iraq since mid-September 2014 and the Israeli onslaught on Gaza in July and August 2014 show once again the extreme weakness of International Law and International Human Rights organisations in deterring, punishing these illegal wars of aggression or in finding mediated solutions. Neither International Courts nor United Nations Independent Commission of Inquiry on the 2014 Gaza Conflict offer any realistic solutions. Moreover, we’ve just learned that the International Criminal Court will not investigate the Israeli attack on the Gaza Flotilla in 2010 that left ten people on the Flotilla dead. Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan Since early 2011, Syria has been the victim of a massive invasion by diverse Islamic terrorist organisations, western proxy organisations—“mercenaries” according to Mother Agnès-Mariam de la Croix of Syria—supported and financed by the United States, Britain, France, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar. Bombing civilian targets, terrorising and murdering civilians—including beheading—has been the order of the day. About 200,000 have died and there are almost 2.5 million refugees in countries surrounding Syria. These crimes committed against the Syrian people should be punished but there is no viable mechanism or political will available. The Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, Fatou Bensouda has turned a blind eye to the sufferings of Syria and the Syrian people when she could have acted. The United States, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey benefit from total legal impunity since they are not bound by the Rome Statute. But all is not lost since the Rome Statute binds Great Britain and France. Their leaders can be charged for aiding and abetting crimes committed in Syria by the Free Syrian Army and the multitude of Jihadists carrying out atrocities. Charles Taylor, former President of Liberia, is serving a 75-year sentence imposed by the Special Court for Sierra Leone for aiding crimes committed by insurgents in Sierra Leone. The Prosecutor of the ICC does not even need a formal complaint to begin. The Prosecutor can take the initiative by petitioning the Court for leave to lay charges against François Hollande and David Cameron and/or other political or military leaders. The Prosecutor took this initiative with respect to the purely internal dispute arising as a result of the Kenyan election violence in 2007-2008. The Kenyan violence, a serious internal problem, is of much less gravity than the massive death and displacements in Syria, probably by a factor of about 200 to 1. [ICC] [Double standards]
• Another Fake Bin Laden Story
  By Dr. Paul Craig Roberts Global Research, November 07, 2014 RT, one of my favorite news sources, has fallen for a fake story put out by the Pentagon to support the fantasy story that a SEAL team killed Osama bin Laden, who died a second time in Abbottabad, Pakistan, a decade after his first death from illness and disease. http://rt.com/usa/202895-navy-seal-shot-binladen/ This fake story together with the fake movie and the fake book by an alleged SEAL team member is the way the fake story of bin Laden’s murder is perpetrated. Bin Laden’s alleged demise at the hands of a SEAL team was a propaganda orchestration, the purpose of which was to give Obama a hero’s laurels and deep six Democratic talk of challenging his nomination for a second term. Osama bin Laden died in December 2001 of renal failure and other health problems, having denied in his last recorded video any responsibility for 9/11, instead directing Americans to look inside their own government. The FBI itself has stated that there is no evidence that Osama bin Laden is responsible for 9/11. Bin Laden’s obituary appeared in numerous foreign and Arabic press, and also on Fox News. No one can survive renal failure for a decade, and no dialysis machine was found in the alleged Abbottabad compound of bin Laden, who allegedly was murdered by SEALs a decade after his obituary notices. [Osama]
• Did the Fall of the Berlin Wall Hurt Economic Growth?
  By Charles Kenny November 07, 2014 A quarter-century since the fall of Berlin Wall, recent events in Ukraine are evidence enough that conflict between Russia and the West didn’t disappear with the end of the Cold War. But that isn’t the only way that the optimism of 1989 has been disappointed. The early 1990s were filled with hope that the economies of Eastern Europe and Central Asia would boom once they were freed from the shackles of state control. In fact, the economic performance of the former Eastern bloc has been pretty grim—for some countries, worse than under communism. That’s a lesson in the messiness of change, but it also highlights why economic growth is only a partial measure of progress. According to World Bank figures, the low and middle-income countries of Eastern Europe and Central Asia as a region have increased their average GDP per capita 43 percent since 1990. That’s slightly better than Sub-Saharan Africa but worse than South and East Asia, Latin America, or the Middle East and North Africa. For 25 countries in the former Eastern bloc, the per-capita GDPs of 13 (containing most of the region’s population) have expanded more slowly since 1990 than the global average. Of the 165 countries for which the World Bank has data, Russia’s GDP per capita (measured in purchasing power parity) was 33rd highest in 1990 and 42nd highest in 2013. Ukraine dropped from 55th to 93rd. Bulgaria and Latvia dropped one spot, Romania four, and Hungary eight. Poland did manage to climb 16 spots, to 45th richest, but it was very much in the minority. While Albania, Poland, Belarus, and Armenia have more than doubled their income per capita since 1990, six countries in the region are poorer than they were that year, including Ukraine and Georgia. [Socialism] [Capitalism] [GDP]
• U.S. Pakistan expert loses security clearance in federal probe
  WASHINGTON Fri Nov 7, 2014 1:42pm (Reuters) - A U.S. State Department expert on Pakistan was stripped of her security clearance and is part of a federal counterintelligence investigation, two sources familiar with the matter said on Friday. Robin Raphel, a retired ambassador who had been an adviser to the State Department's Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan (SRAP), had her house searched about three weeks ago, said a law enforcement source who asked not to be named. Her security clearance was revoked before her contract was allowed to expire, said a second source who also spoke on condition of anonymity. She is a career diplomat who has served as ambassador to Tunisia and assistant secretary of state for South and Central Asia. The Washington Post newspaper first reported Raphel's case. The exact nature of the investigation remained unclear but the Post cited two U.S. officials as saying it was a counterintelligence matter, which usually involves spying allegations.
• Why arming rebels will fuel Syria's inferno
  The Syrian conflict is taking yet another dramatic turn as the militant jihadists of Jabhat al-Nusra, al-Qaeda’s official Syrian affiliate, rout rebels from their strongholds in Idlib, threatening to eliminate entirely any presence by moderate rebels in northern Syria, as the Islamic State has already done in the east. Arming Syria’s rebels is a dangerous move that will only result in prolonging the war and potentially empowering extremists. Author Edward Dark Posted November 6, 2014 The focus is now turning to Aleppo, where rebels are making their last stand against both the encroaching forces of the regime and the jihadists. Will they be left to face their fate alone as in Idlib, or will someone come to their rescue? If yes, who and how? If the French and Turks have their way, they might yet be saved, but at present it appears that the United States has finally given up on its former rebel allies, writing them off completely. So in Aleppo, people are buzzing with questions and seeking answers. This once-vibrant metropolis has been reduced to little more than a sad, distorted shadow of its former beauty and glory. Cold, rubble-strewn streets crisscross the deserted and largely devastated neighborhoods of its rebel-held east, while daylight hours in its regime-held west bring the hectic bustle of a battered and weary population desperately trying to go about daily life and survive. The night brings darkness and solitude to both, but no comfort or respite, as their hapless inhabitants hunker down, shivering from the cold and in fear of the constant sound of gunfire, shelling and explosions.
  The machinations of the many actors and their proxies in my country ensured that its people would never see the freedom they were tantalizingly promised. Instead, they got a cynical war driven by others' malevolent interests. Someone brought Pandora’s box to Syria and opened it. No wonder they are struggling to put the demons back inside; the monsters they have unleashed are now coming for them. It appears there might finally be a faint glimmer of hope, as a bit of sanity calling for change has resulted in tentative, broad backing for moves toward localized cease-fires and a “freezing” of the conflict, news that will be welcomed by the vast majority of Syrians. Until then, however, we are stuck in limbo, waiting for our nightmare to end. In the meantime, please don’t make our plight even more unbearable. Don’t throw more fuel at the inferno consuming us 10 dozen souls at a time. Don’t arm the rebels. [US Syria policy] [Outsourcing] [Jihadist]
• With exercises in Asia, U.S. Army searches for relevance
  By Anna Fifield November 8 at 10:15 AM CAMP KITA-ENIWA, JAPAN — First came the whistle, then the thud and the plumes of dust as the “mortar” landed in the area where the “enemy” had been spotted. The Japanese soldiers, having bundled out of tanks so they could lie in wait behind clumps of tall grass, then let loose. Two American Apache helicopters came in low to avoid detection, then suddenly soared up to (pretend to) unleash their weaponry on the enemy forces. Loudspeakers along the side of the field, which sounded like World War II relics, crackled out radio chatter in Japanese and English. “We have eyes on the enemy tank,” an American voice said. It’s not war, or even a very close resemblance to war. But in a region of the world where there are enough territorial disputes on the islands surrounding Japan that battle sometimes feels possible, this is an exercise that reveals two military forces looking to redefine their mission. One is American, the other Japanese. [Joint US military] [Japanese remilitarisation]
• Who Is Ruling Yemen? New Government Announced Amid Pro-Saleh, Houthi Protests in Sanaa
  By Alessandria Masi @alessandriamasia.masi@ibtimes.com on November 07 2014 5:32 PM Yemeni president Abdo Rabbo Mansour Hadi announced a new, technocratic government on Friday as thousands of protesters, in solidarity with former president Ali Abdullah Saleh and the country's Houthi rebels, gathered in Yemen’s capital. Frustration from Yemen’s impoverished population paved the way for recent Shiite rebel gains that deepened the country’s sectarian divides, and threaten to start a proxy war with regional powers like Iran and Saudi Arabia. The Saudi Arabia-backed Sunni president brought in 34 new ministers including Shiite Houthis, believed to have ties to the Iranian regime; members of the Herak group, a separatist group based in southern Yemen; and five women, including Nadia al-Saqqaf, who was appointed the first female Information Minister, the Associated Press reported. The development came just hours before the United Nations was set to impose sanctions on two Houthi leaders and Saleh, whom the Security Council blamed for spurring protests opposing the government. The U.S.-sought sanctions will pass, provided no one on the Security Council opposed them, al-Jazeera reported. Protesters in Sanaa condemned the sanctions, which they claimed were American “interference” in the country’s affairs, according to the Associated Press. [UNUS]
• Who Has Contributed What in the Coalition Against the Islamic State?
  • BY Justine Drennan • October 22, 2014 - 03:35 PM • As the Obama administration has ramped up its campaign against the so-called Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, it has tried to present itself as acting with the support of a broad range of partner nations. The State Department lists more than 60 countries as members of the “global coalition to degrade and defeat ISIL.” But the bar for inclusion is apparently fairly low. Although many countries have pledged military or humanitarian support, the State Department indicates that simply "exposing ISIL's true nature" can qualify a nation for the coalition. The anti-Islamic State operation, now named “Inherent Resolve,” has zeroed in on the area around the besieged Syria-Turkey border town of Kobani, which as of Oct. 22 has been the target of about 150 of the 600-some U.S.-led airstrikes against the group. While European coalition partners continue participating in airstrikes in Iraq, the Pentagon has not mentioned the participation of Arab partners -- so far the only countries to have joined the United States for airstrikes within Syria -- since Oct. 14. After a week of apparently U.S.-only strikes in Syria, U.S. Central Command noted in its daily statement on Oct. 21 that “out of respect for participating nations, U.S. Central Command will defer to partner nations to publicly comment on their airstrikes against ISIL.” The table below tracks major developments in partner commitments, including the date of the first strikes by each country involved in the air campaign and each country’s most recently announced total contributions of military and/or humanitarian aid. This table will be updated periodically as coalition members’ commitments change. [ISIS]
• The Pressure to Escalate
  The Phantasmagoric World of Washington By Tom Engelhardt Sometimes it seemed that only two issues mattered in the midterm election campaigns just ended. No, I’m not talking about Obamacare, or the inequality gap, or the country’s sagging infrastructure, or education, or energy policy. I mean two issues that truly threaten the wellbeing of citizens from Kansas, Colorado, and Iowa to New Hampshire and North Carolina. In those states and others, both were debated heatedly by candidates for the Senate and House, sometimes almost to the exclusion of anything else. You know what I’m talking about -- two issues on the lips of politicians nationwide, at the top of the news 24/7, and constantly trending on social media: ISIS and Ebola. Think of them as the two horsemen of the present American apocalypse. And think of this otherwise drab midterm campaign as the escalation election. Republican candidates will arrive in Washington having beaten the war and disease drums particularly energetically, and they’re not likely to stop. In 2015, you’re going to hear far more about protecting Americans from everything that endangers them least, and especially about the need for a pusillanimous president (or so he was labeled by a range of Republicans this campaign season) to buckle down, up the ante, and crush the Islamic State, that extreme Islamist mini-oil regime in the middle of an increasingly fragmented, chaotic Middle East. [US global strategy] [Escalation] [Hysteria]
• Traveling Through Multiple Europes
  Geopolitical Weekly Tuesday, November 4, 2014 - 03:00 ? Print ? Text Size ? By Adriano Bosoni Europe is overcrowded with people and with nations. Six decades ago, the need to suppress the dangerous forces of nationalism led to the unprecedented political, economic and social experiment now known as the European Union. The hundreds of thousands of EU citizens working across the Continent and the lack of border controls between member states show that the experiment has been successful in many ways. However, rising nationalism, pervasively high unemployment and a growing sense of frustration with governing elites also highlight the serious limitations of the European project. Over the past 12 months, I have traveled extensively throughout Europe, observing firsthand how the global economic crisis is reawakening dormant trends along the Continent's traditional fault lines. The crisis is having an uneven effect on EU member states because the eurozone locks countries with different levels of economic development into the same currency union. Europe's geography helps explain these differences: Countries in the south have traditionally dealt with high capital costs and low capital-generation capacity, while countries in the north have seen the opposite. In December, I drove from Barcelona to Madrid. The endless succession of mountains along the route encapsulates Spain's traditional struggle against geography: Merely moving people and goods from point to point on the Iberian Peninsula has always posed formidable challenges for governments and traders. This rugged geography also led to the development of small pockets of populations with strong national identities, creating tension between Madrid and the Basque Country as well as Catalonia. Spain has traditionally been a resource-poor country that has had to look to the Atlantic to find wealth while frequently resorting to violence to secure unity. In contrast, most of Germany is flat. In May, I drove north along the Rhine, one of the country's major economic arteries. The river and its tributaries have blessed all of the people living near them, bringing incalculable wealth to trading cities such as Frankfurt and Cologne. The same holds true for the two other major German waterways, the Elbe and the Danube. But wealth does not necessarily mean peace. Both sides of the Rhine host multiple castles and fortifications, a reminder of the state of fragmentation that defined the Germanic world for centuries. The lack of any real physical borders to the east and west also helps explain Germany's historical conflict with its neighbors [Geography] [Geopolitics]
• Hagel’s Syria Memo
  by Gary Leupp In his recent memo to President Obama, portions of which were leaked to the press, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel expressed concern that the administration’s policies in Syria are “in danger of unraveling” and that there is “no end game” to the targeted bombing policy. One can understand Hagel’s anxiety. The task, assigned to multiple un-nuanced American minds, is so complicated. In Syria, the “U.S. Defense Department” (read: U.S. War Ministry) is charged with the following: (1) The mission to “degrade and destroy” ISIL (ISIS, Islamic State) forces, who have this year (for some reason people in Washington can’t seem to understand, andwith stunning, unexpected rapidity) come to control a region straddling Syria and Iraq larger than the island of Britain. Obama plainly sees this as the priority task. If ISIL takes Baghdad, it will mean the undoing of all U.S. achievements in Iraq since 2003, demonstrating that no matter how much “shock and awe” they can inflict on a helpless country, U.S. officials can’t build a stable state and keep it under their control. The collapse of the current regime in Baghdad and/or massive Iranian intervention would be an embarrassment and nightmare, not just for George W. Bush and Barack Obama but for the U.S. imperialist system as a whole. [US Syria policy] [Strategic incoherence]
• The Left’s Unsung Success Story
  by Serge Halimi In times of crisis, a head of state who gets re-elected in the first round, having already served two terms, is a rarity indeed. One such is Evo Morales, whose win, with 61% of the vote, should have received more attention than it did. All the more so since he pulled off this electoral feat in Bolivia — which had five different presidents between 2001 and 2005. His victory follows a 25% reduction in poverty, an 87% real-terms increase in the minimum wage, a lowering of the retirement age (1) and an annual growth rate of over 5% — all since 2006. Given how often we’re told we need to overcome our disenchantment with politics, why hasn’t this good news been more widely reported? Could it be because it stems from progressive reforms implemented by leftwing regimes? [Media]
• The Islamic State’s Ideology Is Grounded in Saudi Education
  By Emile Nakhleh Emile Nakhleh is a Research Professor at the University of New Mexico, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and author of “A Necessary Engagement: Reinventing America’s Relations with the Muslim World.” Credit: MPH’s blog, Saudi-Season WASHINGTON, Oct 31 2014 (IPS) - According to an article published Oct. 21 on Al-Monitor, the Islamic State (ISIS or IS) has issued new regulations for the school systems under its control in Iraq and Syria. The announced purpose of the so-called guidelines, which carried the imprimatur of the group’s “Amir al-Mu’minin,” presumably leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, is to “eradicate ignorance and disseminate Sharia sciences.” Although the “guidelines” are extreme, controlling and regressive, some of the key elements in the IS educational programme are similar to what one finds in Saudi textbooks, especially those that are taught in Saudi public middle and high schools. The ideological foundations of Saudi public school education are based on Wahhabi-Salafi-Hanbali theology. Science experiments are allowed with the understanding that the doctrine of “Tawheed” or “Oneness” of God permeates the universe. God created everything and every creature. There is no “Big Bang” theory and no evolution of the human, animal, or plant species. One key difference focuses on the nation-state. Whereas Saudi education accepts the Saudi and other Arab and Muslim states, with recognised boundaries and national ethos, IS rejects national boundaries within Dar al-Islam, or the Abode of Islam, and individual states. Instead, it calls for one Islamic State or a “Caliphate.” The new guidelines call on teachers to emphasise creationism, reject Darwinism, eliminate music and the arts, teach history from a Sunni-Islamic perspective, discard modernity, and of course segregate the sexes [Saudi Arabia] [ISIS]
• Rivals Tehran, Riyadh pledge billions to Lebanon’s army
  Lebanese army soldiers carry their weapons during clashes with Islamist militants in Tripoli on Oct. 25. (Stringer/Reuters) By Hugh Naylor November 4 at 3:30 AM BEIRUT — Saudi Arabia and Iran have offered apparently competing aid packages to Lebanon’s small and modestly armed military as it confronts rising attacks at home by militants with ties to extremists fighting in Syria’s civil war. The pledges total billions of dollars’ worth of mostly light arms and underscore mounting concern among the Persian Gulf foes about the stability of a country where both have invested significant resources. The aid is on top of the more than $1 billion spent by the United States since 2006 to train and equip the 16,000-member army, which has limited authority and yields to Iran-backed Hezbollah, Lebanon’s powerful Shiite militia. Hezbollah supports Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in his fight against Saudi-backed rebels. Many suspect the offers of assistance from Riyadh and Tehran are simply another instance of one-upmanship between the Sunni and Shiite powerhouses. “You have to look at this as a regional issue, as part of their broader competition for influence,” said Elias Hanna, a retired Lebanese army general. [Saudi Arabia] [Sectarianism]
• On Election’s Eve, G.O.P. Is Confident, but Voters Are Sour
  By Jonathan Weisman and Ashley Parkernov. 3, 2014 Slide Show|20 Photos WASHINGTON — The most expensive midterm campaign in American history stumbled into Election Day on Tuesday with voters’ interest at record lows and their divisions deep over what they want their government to do in President Obama’s final two years. Republicans entered the final hours confident they will gain at least six seats and take control of the Senate, but polls showed several races too close to call. Likely runoffs in Georgia and Louisiana, along with late vote counts in Alaska, Colorado and Iowa, will mean Senate control may remain in doubt beyond Tuesday night. The same could be true for governors’ races in Colorado, New Hampshire, Georgia and Florida. Related Coverage The uncertainty about the outcome is a fitting match for the mood of the nation. A slowly but steadily improving economy — with six months of strong growth, gasoline below $3 a gallon for the first time in four years and substantial deficit reduction — has not translated into broader optimism. Voters are more inclined toward blame than credit. Instead, they are seemingly worn down by economic struggles and late waves of panic, chiefly about the threats posed by the Islamic State and the possible spread of Ebola. [Governance] [Alienation]
• Coup leader in Burkina Faso received U.S. military training
  Transitional leader of Burkina Faso Lieutenat-Colonel Isaac Zida, right, meets with members of the diplomatic corps in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso on Nov. 3. (Legnan Koula/EPA) By Craig Whitlock November 3 at 5:10 PM The army officer who has seized power in Burkina Faso amid popular protests in the West African country was twice selected to attend counterterrorism training programs sponsored by the U.S. government, according to U.S. military officials. Lt. Col. Isaac Zida, the former deputy commander of the presidential guard, emerged Saturday as the country’s ruler — at least on an interim basis — after angry demonstrators attacked government buildings and forced Burkina Faso’s longtime strongman to flee the country. In 2012, when he was a major, Zida attended a 12-day counterterrorism training course at MacDill Air Force Base in Florida that was sponsored by the Defense Department’s Joint Special Operations University, according to Army Lt. Col. Mark R. Cheadle, a spokesman for the U.S. Africa Command. That same year, Zida also attended a five-day military intelligence course in Botswana that was financed by the U.S. government, Cheadle said. The U.S. military has developed a close relationship in recent years with Burkina Faso, which has allowed the Pentagon to operate a secretive Special Operations base that it uses to conduct reconnaissance flights across West Africa. Pro-democracy protesters in Burkina Faso denounce what they're calling a military coup, just days after mass protests forced its long-ruling president to resign. (Reuters) Although the training he received was relatively brief, Zida’s experience carries echoes of other African military officers who went on to topple their governments after being selected by the U.S. government for professional military education courses. [US global strategy] [Client] [Coup] [Democracy]
• Exclusive: Washington Cuts Funds for Investigating Bashar al-Assad's War Crimes
  BY Colum Lynch November 3, 2014 - 05:18 PM The U.S. State Department plans to cut its entire $500,000 in annual funding next year to an organization dedicated to sneaking into abandoned Syrian military bases, prisons, and government facilities to collect documents and other evidence linking Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's regime and its proxies to war crimes and other mass atrocities during the country's brutal civil war, according to the recipient of the assistance and a senior U.S. official. The move, which has not previously been reported, comes as the Obama administration is stepping up funding to collect evidence of war crimes in Iraq by the Islamic State, an extremist Islamist organization that has horrified the world with its mass killings, enslavement of women, and beheadings of ethnic minorities, foreign aid workers, and journalists, including two American reporters who were executed in recent months. The funding shift has raised concern among human rights advocates that the United States and its allies are reducing their commitment to holding the Syrian leader accountable for the majority of Syria's atrocities because the interests of Washington and Damascus are converging over the fight against the Islamic State. For the past two years, the U.S. State Department has channeled a total of $1 million in funds to the Commission for International Justice and Accountability (CIJA), a group of international war crimes prosecutors that sends local researchers, lawyers, and law students into Syrian battle zones to collect and extract files and other evidence that can help map the Syrian command structure and identify the military orders authorizing illegal activities, including barrel bomb campaigns, the starvation of besieged towns, and a spate of mass murders that have pushed the conflict's death toll past 190,000 since March 2011. [NGO] [US Syria policy]
• “Newspapers” and “Activists”
  By Tony Cartalucci Global Research, November 03, 2014 New Eastern Outlook US-funded newspapers promote US-funded NGOs in their efforts to halt infrastructure projects that would reduce flooding, produce clean, renewable energy, and provide jobs and development for millions. “The Irrawaddy,” which claims to be “a leading source of reliable news, information, and analysis on Burma/Myanmar and the Southeast Asian region,” has doggedly covered efforts by so-called “activists” to prevent the construction of dams all across Southeast Asia – from Myanmar (still called by its British imperial nomenclature “Burma” by the Western media), across Thailand, and in Laos. Its most recent article, “Thai Power Firm’s Business Tactics ‘Use Burma’s Weak Laws’,” is a typical representation of these efforts. It reports that: One of the chief financiers of hydroelectric dams planned on Burma’s Salween River is accused of investing in countries where there is “oppression and limited transparency” in order to achieve its objectives. Having been restricted in its activities at home, the Electricity Generating Authority of Thailand (EGAT) wants to use Burma and Laos as proxy suppliers of electricity via environmentally damaging river dams, the US-based NGO International Rivers told The Irrawaddy. Dams are undoubtedly disruptive to the surrounding, existing environment and surely governments and special interests regularly sidestep their responsibility to ensure dam construction results in equitable outcomes for surrounding human populations as well as wildlife. However, to oppose their construction entirely is a regressive, politically motivated agenda peddled by some of the most sociopolitically and environmentally destructive special interests on Earth. To understand this, one must understand what both The Irrawaddy and International Rivers have in common, and specifically why their agenda has become entwined in the battle against real development across all of Southeast Asia. US-Funded “Newspapers” and “Activists” Both The Irrawaddy and International Rivers are creations and perpetuations of the US State Department and several Fortune 500 corporate-financier funded foundations. These include foundations that represent the interests of corporations including Exxon, Chevron, British Petroleum (BP), Total, as well as big-finance and the World Bank. Already, it should be easy to understand why Western energy giants and financiers would be interested in arresting the development of sustainable energy independence across Southeast Asia. The Irrawaddy is literally a creation of the US State Department via its National Endowment for Democracy (NED). This is revealed in a 2006 report titled, “FAILING THE PEOPLE OF BURMA? A call for a review of DFID policy on Burma,” published by the Burma Campaign UK. In it, it states specifically: [NED] [NGO]
• The Fates of American Presidents Who Challenged the Deep State (1963-1980)
  Peter Dale Scott The Asia-Pacific Journal, Vol. 12, Issue 43, No. 4, November 3, 2014. In the last decade it has become more and more obvious that we have in America today what the journalists Dana Priest and William Arkin have called two governments: the one its citizens were familiar with, operated more or less in the open: the other a parallel top secret government whose parts had mushroomed in less than a decade into a gigantic, sprawling universe of its own, visible to only a carefully vetted cadre—and its entirety . . . visible only to God.1 And in 2013, particularly after the military return to power in Egypt, more and more authors referred to this second level as America’s “deep state.”2 Here for example is the Republican analyst Mike Lofgren: There is the visible government situated around the Mall in Washington, and then there is another, more shadowy, more indefinable government that is not explained in Civics 101 or observable to tourists at the White House or the Capitol. The former is traditional Washington partisan politics: the tip of the iceberg that a public watching C-SPAN sees daily and which is theoretically controllable via elections. The subsurface part of the iceberg I shall call the Deep State, which operates according to its own compass heading regardless of who is formally in power.3 I believe that a significant shift in the relationship between public and deep state power occurred in the 1960s and 1970s, culminating in the Reagan Revolution of 1980. In this period five presidents sought to curtail the powers of the deep state. And as we shall see, the political careers of all five—Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford and Carter—were cut off in ways that were unusual. One president, Kennedy, was assassinated. Another, Nixon, was forced to resign. To some extent the interplay of these two forms of power and political organization is found in all societies. The two were defined by Hannah Arendt in the 1960s as “persuasion through arguments” versus “coercion by force.” Arendt, following Thucydides, traced these to the common Greek way of handling domestic affairs, which was persuasion (pe??e??) as well as the common way of handling foreign affairs, which was force and violence (ß?a)."4 The two represent not just different techniques of government but different cultures and mindsets, in fundamental tension with each other.5 Hannah Arendt. Source This tension increases, and predictably tips toward violence, if a well-organized open community expands beyond its own borders and is increasingly occupied with the business of supervising an empire. It is repeatedly the case that progressive societies (like America) expand. As their influence expands, their democratic institutions, based at bottom upon persuasive power among equals, are supplemented by new, often secret, institutions of top-down violent power for the control of alien populations abroad, often speaking different and unfamiliar languages. The more the society expands, the more these institutions of violent power encroach upon and supplant the original democracy. [Imperialism] [Democracy] [Deep state]
• U.S.-backed Syria rebels routed by fighters linked to al-Qaeda
  By Liz Sly November 2 ? BEIRUT — The Obama administration’s Syria strategy suffered a major setback Sunday after fighters linked to al-Qaeda routed U.S.-backed rebels from their main northern strongholds, capturing significant quantities of weaponry, triggering widespread defections and ending hopes that Washington will readily find Syrian partners in its war against the Islamic State. Moderate rebels who had been armed and trained by the United States either surrendered or defected to the extremists as the Jabhat al-Nusra group, affiliated with al-Qaeda, swept through the towns and villages the moderates controlled in the northern province of Idlib, in what appeared to be a concerted push to vanquish the moderate Free Syrian Army, according to rebel commanders, activists and analysts. Other moderate fighters were on the run, headed for the Turkish border as the extremists closed in, heralding a significant defeat for the rebel forces Washington had been counting on as a bulwark against the Islamic State. [US Syria policy] [Jihadist]
• How Saudi Arabia is distancing itself from the Islamic State
  Thirteen years after US President George W. Bush declared war on terrorism, the Middle East is no closer to victory. Instead, terrorism appears to have morphed into an even more dangerous beast in the form of the Islamic State (IS). Westerners, as expressed through the media, seem to be under the same impression as they were after Sept. 11, 2001 — namely, that the Sunni jihadist movement is linked to the Wahhabi brand of Islam emanating from Saudi Arabia. This has prompted renewed debate among Saudis about this supposed Wahhabist-jihadist connection. While Saudi Arabia has confronted the Islamic State, the country has denied there is any connection between its state religion and the jihadist group. Author Bader al-Rashed Posted September 29, 2014 Translator(s)Cynthia Milan After bombings in Riyadh by al-Qaeda in 2003, the relationship between terrorism and religious extremism was widely discussed in the kingdom, with the government establishing the King Abdulaziz Center for National Dialogue that same year. During the dialogue's second meeting, Extremism and Moderation … A Comprehensive Methodological Vision, it was agreed that religious programs in Saudi Arabia were the primary force behind the spread of extremism in society. As a result of the dialogue, school curricula, the religious curriculum in particular, were modified by the Ministry of Education. Doubts remained, however, that religious education had been sufficiently modified given that radical Islamists were believed to dominate the education sector in the kingdom. Saudi Arabia is today taking seriously the allegations in the international media that it is the ideological root of the current jihadist groups. Some have sought to defend the country's religious vision by trying to disassociate Sunni jihadist groups from their brand of Islam, instead castigating other groups, such as the Kharijites — an Islamic sect separate from Sunnis and Shiites that emerged from the first Islamic civil war in the seventh century between Ali Ibn Ali Talib and Muawiya Ibn Abi Sufyan following the killing of the third caliph, Uthman Ibn Affan. Nawaf Obaid and Saud al-Sarhan presented this view in a Sept. 8 article in The New York Times. They argued that IS' discourse is different from that of Salafism and Wahhabism. They contended that IS ideologues are Kharijites who believe that those different from them are infidels and can therefore rightfully be killed, including en masse. The main problem in suggesting an IS link to Kharijites is that the group has been distributing Muhammad Ibn Abd al-Wahhab’s books across the territory under its control in Iraq and Syria, suggesting that the group is explicitly declaring its affiliation with Wahhabism. [Saudi Arabia] [ISIS]
• Don’t Worry, the Next World War Is Not Upon Us…Yet
  Graham Allison July 31, 2014 A century ago this month, Europeans stood on the brink of a war so devastating that it forced historians to create a new category: “World War.” None of the leaders at the time could imagine the wasteland they would inhabit four years later. By 1918, each had lost what he cherished most: the kaiser dismissed, the Austro-Hungarian Empire dissolved, the tsar overthrown by the Bolsheviks, France bled for a generation, and England shorn of the flower of its youth and treasure. A millennium in which European leaders had been masters of the globe came to a crashing halt. What caused this catastrophe? President John F. Kennedy enjoyed needling colleagues with that question. He would then remind them of his favorite answer, quoting German Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg: “Ah, if we only knew.” When, in the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, Kennedy found himself “eyeball to eyeball” with Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, making decisions that he knew could mean quick death to 100 million people, he reflected on the lessons of 1914. At several decision points, he adjusted what he was inclined to do in an effort to avoid repeating those leaders’ mistakes. As they were choosing to fulfill commitments, or not, to mobilize forces sooner or later, the participants in the First World War were simultaneously seeking to frame public perceptions of the crisis. Each sought to blame its adversary. In the aftermath of the catastrophe, the victors took considerable liberty with the facts to justify punishing the vanquished. The Treaty of Versailles imposed such draconian penalties that it created conditions in which, just two decades later, the Second World War erupted. This larger drama has understandably shaped historians’ accounts of the causes of the war. But as the best of the new books on this conflict, Christopher Clark’s The Sleepwalkers, concludes forthrightly, the available evidence can be marshaled to support an array of competing claims. “The outbreak of war in 1914 is not an Agatha Christie drama at the end of which we will discover the culprit standing over a corpse in the conservatory with a smoking pistol,” Clark writes. “There is no smoking gun in this story; or, rather, there is one in the hands of every major character.” [China confrontation] [Conflict] [1914]
• ISIL: From Decapitation to Islamophobia
  By Dr. Ismail Salami Global Research, October 08, 2014 With the ISIL terrorists mounting more gory adventurism in Syria and Iraq and capturing villages and towns, there seems to be no tangible impediment to stop this influx of terror. The ghastly images circulated freely by the cult on the internet from beheading to crucifying their victims in cold blood have incensed the international community on the one hand but on the other hand, they have regrettably conduced to Islamophobia, a plan long funded by the officials in Washington. The root causes of the ISIL cult are not hard to imagine and there are times that those involved in the creation and financing of the cult unwittingly engage in a blame game. A recent instance of this blame game happened on October 2, when US Vice President Joe Biden made one of his off-the-cuff remarks at Harvard University’s Institute of Politics, saying that the Turks, Saudis and UAE “poured hundreds of millions of dollars and tens of thousands of tons of weapons against anyone who would fight Assad, except that the people who were being supplied were al-Nusra and al-Qaeda and the extremist element of jihadis coming from other parts of the world.” Unsurprisingly, his remarks drew swift condemnation from Washington’s regional allies who took a swipe at Biden’s ‘untoward’ statements. Among those licking their wounds was Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan who fumed that, “Biden will be history to me if he has used such expressions.” After all, Biden later apologized to Turkey and UAE. On October 4, Biden delivered his personal apology to President Erdogan on the telephone and the White House issued a statement to the effect that Biden did not mean to say that Turkey “intentionally” facilitated terrorists. The world’s richest terrorist organization, ISIL has been funded by Qatar, Kuwait plus the countries mentioned by Mr. Biden. According to a report published by the Brookings Institute titled “Playing with Fire”, Kuwaiti private donors “began their operations in Syria under a previous 2002 law that did not criminalize terrorist financing and left authorities with few tools to combat potentially troubling financial activity. Nonetheless concerned about the threat of radicalization in their own country, Kuwaiti officials insisted before the new law was implemented that they had been monitoring the situation closely.” [Outsourcing]
• America’s unnecessary Mideast wars
  To make Syria the latest free-fire zone in Washington’s never-ending misadventure in the region will almost surely prolong and exacerbate the agonies that country is experiencing • By Andrew J. Bacevich • Published: 20:00 October 7, 2014 With America’s 14th front barely opened, the Pentagon foresees a campaign likely to last for years. Yet, even at this early date, this much already seems clear: Even if America wins, it will lose. Defeating Daesh will only commit the US more deeply to a decades-old enterprise that has proved costly and counterproductive. Back in 1980, president Jimmy Carter touched things off when he announced that the US would use force to prevent the Arabian Gulf from falling into the wrong hands. In effect, with the post-Ottoman order created by European imperialists — chiefly the British — after First World War apparently at risk, the US made a fateful decision: It shouldered responsibility for preventing that order from disintegrating further. Britain’s withdrawal from “east of Suez”, along with the revolution in Iran and the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan, prompted Washington to insert itself into a region in which it previously avoided serious military involvement. At the time, oil — not freedom, democracy or human rights — defined the principal American interest and stability was the goal. Military power offered the means by which the US hoped to attain that goal. Armed might would keep a lid on things. The pot might simmer, but it wouldn’t boil over. In practice, however, whether putting boots on the ground or relying on missiles from above, subsequent US efforts to promote stability have tended to produce just the opposite. Part of the problem is that American policymakers have repeatedly given in to the temptation to unleash a bit of near-term chaos, betting that longer-term order will emerge on the other end. Back in Vietnam, this was known as burning down the village to save it. In the Greater Middle East, it has meant dismantling a country with the aim of erecting something more preferable — “regime change” as a prelude to “nation building”. Unfortunately, the US has proved considerably more adept at the former than the latter. [US Middle East policy] [Oil]
• Why this Joe Biden gaffe matters more
  By Aaron Blake October 6 It has been a really rotten few weeks for Vice President Biden. First came a trio of gaffes that earned him a Worst Week in Washington nod. Then, on Thursday, he suggested that being vice president is a "bitch." None of these things, though, compare to something else Biden said in that very same speech Thursday. Biden was forced to apologize over the weekend to leaders of both Turkey and the United Arab Emirates after suggesting in the speech at Harvard that these two countries and another ally — Saudi Arabia — were the United States' "biggest problem" in responding to the Syrian civil war. “The Turks, who are great friends — I have a great relationship with (Turkish President Recep Tayyip) Erdogan, whom I spend a lot of time with — the Saudis, the Emiratis, etc. What were they doing? They were so determined to take down (Syrian President Bashar) Assad and essentially have a proxy Sunni-Shia war,” Biden said, according to AP. Biden added: "They poured hundreds of millions of dollars and thousands of tons of weapons into anyone who would fight against Assad — except that the people who were being supplied were al-Nusra and al-Qaeda and the extremist elements of jihadis coming from other parts of the world.” Biden also said Erdogan admitted to him that Turkey "let too many [foreign fighters] through" into neighboring Syria. Needless to say, these are some pretty serious allegations. And they were met with some understandably hard feelings from countries who are supposed to be allies. Erdogan swore off his relationship with Biden and called for an apology, and Biden offered one Saturday. Then Biden apologized to the UAE on Sunday. [Outsourcing] [Jihadists] [Turkey] [Saudi Arabia] [Qatar]
• Pakistan’s Lessons for Turkey
  By MICHAEL M. TANCHUM and HALIL M. KARAVELIOCT. 5, 2014 Last week, Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, declared that Turkey is ready “for any cooperation in the fight against terrorism.” Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu argued that Islamic State militants pose a greater threat to Turkey and the Muslim world than to the West. But Turkey’s dilemma is far more grave than its leaders realize. Indeed, Turkey’s current situation resembles the early years of Pakistan’s sponsorship of the Taliban. The Islamic State is recruiting militants in Turkey. And failure to clean its own house now could lead Turkey down the path of “Pakistanization,” whereby a resident jihadist infrastructure causes Sunni extremism to ingrain itself deeply within the fabric of society. Although Turkey now recognizes the threat — the Turkish government voted to authorize military force in Iraq and Syria on Thursday — it has yet to come to terms with its own responsibility for helping to create it. Turkey claims that radical groups grew stronger because moderates seeking the overthrow of President Bashar al-Assad of Syria were not given adequate aid. But that is not the whole picture. As Francis J. Ricciardone Jr., the former American ambassador to Turkey, has pointed out, Ankara supported radical groups, including the Nusra Front. Indeed, during the early days of Syria’s civil war, jihadist groups funneled fighters and resources through Turkey into Syria. [Outsourcing] [Turkey] [Jihadist] [Blowback]
• US-backed forces in Syria suffer big setback
  By Mousab Alhamadee and Roy Gutman McClatchy Foreign Staff November 1, 2014 Updated 5 hours ago ISTANBUL — Al Qaida-backed militants Saturday stormed the base of the most prominent civilian commander in the U.S.-backed Syrian rebel force, forcing him and his fighters to flee into hiding in the Jebal al Zawiya mountains of northern Syria. Jamal Maarouf, a contractor in private life, became internationally known for leading the successful offensive in January that forced the Islamic State from most of two northern provinces. His ouster from his own village was an enormous setback for him, the rebel forces and his international backers. Even more ominous was that that the Islamic State, now far stronger and claiming to run a Caliphate in Syria and Iraq, reportedly had joined Jabhat al Nusra in the attack on the village of Deir Sinbul. [US Syria policy]
• Foreign jihadists flocking to Iraq and Syria on 'unprecedented scale' – UN
  UN report suggests decline of al-Qaida has yielded an explosion of jihadist enthusiasm for its even mightier successor organisations, chiefly Isis • • Spencer Ackerman in New York • Follow @attackerman Follow @GuardianUS • theguardian.com, Thursday 30 October 2014 21.13 GMT • An image grab taken from a video released by Islamic State group's official Al-Raqqa site via YouTube. Photograph: AFP/Getty Images The United Nations has warned that foreign jihadists are swarming into the twin conflicts in Iraq and Syria on “an unprecedented scale” and from countries that had not previously contributed combatants to global terrorism. A report by the UN security council, obtained by the Guardian, finds that 15,000 people have travelled to Syria and Iraq to fight alongside the Islamic State (Isis) and similar extremist groups. They come from more than 80 countries, the report states, “including a tail of countries that have not previously faced challenges relating to al-Qaida”. [ISIS] [Strategic incoherence] [Outsourcing]
• U.S. strategy against Islamic State hits major hurdles
  Bombing in Homs, Syria Syrian police and residents inspect the site of a car bombing in Homs on Oct. 29. The U.S. plan to raise a rebel army in Syria to fight Islamic State has run into steep political and military obstacles. (European Pressphoto Agency) By David S. Cloud, W.J. Hennigan, Raja Abdulrahim contact the reporters This article is related to: Middle East, Syria, Armed Forces, Islamic State, Bashar Assad, Wars and Interventions, Free Syrian Army t? U.S. strategy against Islamic State hits major hurdles October 30, 2014, 5:16 PM| Reporting from WASHINGTON The Obama administration's plan to raise a 15,000-strong rebel army in Syria has run into steep political and military obstacles, raising doubts about a key element of the White House strategy for defeating Islamic State militants in the midst of a civil war.. Pentagon concerns have grown so sharp that Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel sent a two-page memo to the White House last week warning that the overall plan could collapse because U.S. intentions toward Syrian President Bashar Assad are unclear, according to a senior defense official who read the memo but was not authorized to speak publicly. President Obama has called on Assad to step down, but he has not authorized using military force, including the proposed proxy army, to remove the Syrian leader. At a news conference Thursday, Hagel declined to discuss his memo to national security advisor Susan Rice, but he acknowledged that Assad has inadvertently benefited from more than five weeks of U.S.-led airstrikes against the Islamic State, one of the most powerful antigovernment forces in Syria's bitter conflict. Secretary of State John F. Kerry sought to paper over the problem Thursday, telling a forum in Washington that the proposed proxy army "can have an impact on Assad's decision-making so we can get back to a table where we could negotiate a political outcome, because we all know there is no military resolution of Syria." Rebel leaders in Syria say they would reject joining a U.S.-backed force that is not aimed at defeating Assad, their main enemy. Senior U.S. military officers also privately warn that the so-called Syrian moderates that U.S. planners hope to recruit — opposition fighters without ties to the Islamic radicals — have been degraded by other factions and forces, including Assad's army, during the war. It will take years to train and field a new force capable of launching an offensive against the heavily armed and well-funded Islamic State fighters, who appear well-entrenched in northern Syria, the officers say. [US Syria policy] [Strategic incoherence] [Outsourcing]
• The Berlin Wall fell 25 years ago, but Germany is still divided
  By Rick Noack October 31 at 3:30 AM ? A woman and a man walk along the painted East Side Gallery, a former part of the Berlin Wall, and are reflected in a rain puddle in Berlin, Germany, 08 July 2014. The weather forecast predicts more rain for the following days. EPA/PAUL ZINKEN It can be hard for visitors to Berlin to imagine where the Berlin Wall once separated Germany's communist East from the U.S.-friendly West. Today, commuters run to catch a metro where trains stood for nearly 40 years. Curried sausages are sold and illegal (but popular) parties are celebrated in empty warehouses just feet from where East Germans were shot by their own countrymen as they tried to cross the border to the west. Next week, Germany will celebrate the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall and at first glance, it seems as if the country is more united than some nations that were never split. But numbers and images illustrating differences in lifestyles and problems between East and West Germans tell a different story. While 75 percent of Germans who live in the east said they considered their country's reunification a success in a recent survey only half of western Germans agreed. And that's not the only distinction indicating that the separation of the past prevails today. [Germany] [Unification]
• US Government Sanitizes Vietnam War History
  By Marjorie Cohn Global Research, October 30, 2014 Marjoriecohn.com For many years after the Vietnam War, we enjoyed the “Vietnam syndrome,” in which US presidents hesitated to launch substantial military attacks on other countries. They feared intense opposition akin to the powerful movement that helped bring an end to the war in Vietnam. But in 1991, at the end of the Gulf War, George H.W. Bush declared, “By God, we’ve kicked the Vietnam syndrome once and for all!” With George W. Bush’s wars on Iraq and Afghanistan, and Barack Obama’s drone wars in seven Muslim-majority countries and his escalating wars in Iraq and Syria, we have apparently moved beyond the Vietnam syndrome. By planting disinformation in the public realm, the government has built support for its recent wars, as it did with Vietnam. Now the Pentagon is planning to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Vietnam War by launching a $30 million program to rewrite and sanitize its history. Replete with a fancy interactive website, the effort is aimed at teaching schoolchildren a revisionist history of the war. The program is focused on honoring our service members who fought in Vietnam. But conspicuously absent from the website is a description of the antiwar movement, at the heart of which was the GI movement. Thousands of GIs participated in the antiwar movement. Many felt betrayed by their government. They established coffee houses and underground newspapers where they shared information about resistance. During the course of the war, more than 500,000 soldiers deserted. The strength of the rebellion of ground troops caused the military to shift to an air war. Ultimately, the war claimed the lives of 58,000 Americans. Untold numbers were wounded and returned with post-traumatic stress disorder. In an astounding statistic, more Vietnam veterans have committed suicide than were killed in the war. [Vietnam] [Disinformation] [Propaganda]
• Airstrikes against Islamic State do not seen to have affected flow of fighters to Syria
  By Greg Miller October 30 ? More than 1,000 foreign fighters are streaming into Syria each month, a rate that has so far been unchanged by airstrikes against the Islamic State and efforts by other countries to stem the flow of departures, according to U.S. intelligence and counterterrorism officials. The magnitude of the ongoing migration suggests that the U.S.-led air campaign has neither deterred significant numbers of militants from traveling to the region nor triggered such outrage that even more are flocking to the fight because of American intervention. “The flow of fighters making their way to Syria remains constant, so the overall number continues to rise,” a U.S. intelligence official said. U.S. officials cautioned, however, that there is a lag in the intelligence being examined by the CIA and other spy agencies, meaning it could be weeks before a change becomes apparent. [Jihadist] [Syria] [Outsourcing] [Turkey]

• U.S. Sends Planes Armed with Depleted Uranium to Middle East
  by David Swanson The U.S. Air Force says it is not halting its use of Depleted Uranium weapons, has recently sent them to the Middle East, and is prepared to use them. A type of airplane, the A-10, deployed this month to the Middle East by the U.S. Air National Guard’s 122nd Fighter Wing, is responsible for more Depleted Uranium (DU) contamination than any other platform, according to the International Coalition to Ban Uranium Weapons (ICBUW). “Weight for weight and by number of rounds more 30mm PGU-14B ammo has been used than any other round,” said ICBUW coordinator Doug Weir, referring to ammunition used by A-10s, as compared to DU ammunition used by tanks. Public affairs superintendent Master Sgt. Darin L. Hubble of the 122nd Fighter Wing told me that the A-10s now in the Middle East along with “300 of our finest airmen” have been sent there on a deployment planned for the past two years and have not been assigned to take part in the current fighting in Iraq or Syria, but “that could change at any moment.” The crews will load PGU-14 depleted uranium rounds into their 30mm Gatling cannons and use them as needed, said Hubble. “If the need is to explode something — for example a tank — they will be used.” Pentagon spokesman Mark Wright told me, “There is no prohibition against the use of Depleted Uranium rounds, and the [U.S. military] does make use of them. The use of DU in armor-piercing munitions allows enemy tanks to be more easily destroyed.” On Thursday, several nations, including Iraq, spoke to the United Nations First Committee, against the use of Depleted Uranium and in support of studying and mitigating the damage in already contaminated areas. A non-binding resolution is expected to be voted on by the Committee this week, urging nations that have used DU to provide information on locations targeted. A number of organizations are delivering a petition to U.S. officials this week urging them not to oppose the resolution. [Depleted uranium] [cbw]
• For Turkey and U.S., at odds over Syria, a 60-year alliance shows signs of crumbling
  By Liz Sly October 29 at 6:46 PM ? ANKARA, Turkey — The increasingly hostile divergence of views between Turkey and the United States over Syria is testing the durability of their 60-year alliance, to the point where some are starting to question whether the two countries still can be considered allies at all. Turkey’s refusal to allow the United States to use its bases to launch attacks against the Islamic State, quarrels over how to manage the battle raging in the Syrian border town of Kobane and the harsh tone of the anti-American rhetoric used by top Turkish officials to denounce U.S. policy have served to illuminate the vast gulf that divides the two nations as they scramble to address the menace posed by the extremists. Whether the Islamic State even is the chief threat confronting the region is disputed, with Washington and Ankara publicly airing their differences through a fog of sniping, insults and recrimination over who is to blame for the mess the Middle East has become. At stake is a six-decade-old relationship forged during the Cold War and now endowed with a different but equally vital strategic dimension. Turkey is positioned on the front line of the war against the Islamic State, controlling a 780-mile border with Iraq and Syria. Without Turkey’s cooperation, no U.S. policy to bring stability to the region can succeed, analysts and officials on both sides say. [Turkey] [ISIS] [Kurds]
• OPINION: Ebola, Human Rights and Poverty – Making the Links
  By Alicia Ely Yamin Alicia Ely Yamin is Lecturer on Global Health and Policy Director at the Francois-Xavier Bagnoud Center for Health and Human Rights, Harvard University, and Chair of the Center for Economic and Social Rights. CAMBRIDGE, Massachussetts, Oct 27 2014 (IPS) - The catastrophic Ebola crisis unfolding in West Africa offers many lessons, not least for global anti-poverty efforts. These will culminate in a set of targets, to be agreed by the United Nations in 2015, known as the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). First of all, the crisis should lead to a re-think of the triumphalism that has marked some of the global health debate in recent years, with some projecting a “grand convergence within a generation” between North and South, rich and poor countries, based upon the “end of preventable mortality, including from infectious diseases”. It is not a coincidence that, in addition to the legacy of colonial exploitation, and pillaging by their own corrupt and unaccountable governments in recent history, Liberia and Sierra Leone are two countries that have been ravaged by brutal civil wars. Second, neither universal health insurance, without real access to public health as well as effective care, nor cash transfers, without connections to functioning systems, would have thwarted Ebola or the social devastation it is wreaking. Yet both are highly touted solutions to global poverty, and likely to be part of the SDG agenda. Nor would “pay for performance”, whereby health workers are supposedly incentivised to be more productive by having compensation linked to quotas and outcomes. All of which brings us to a third lesson from the crisis: silver-bullet solutions that focus on short-term outcomes, and often produce so-called ‘vertical’ interventions (that is, those de-linked from the broader context), actually do not work in the long term, or in the face of crises. [Ebola]
• John Maynard Keynes Is the Economist the World Needs Now
  By Peter Coy October 30, 2014 Is there a doctor in the house? The global economy is failing to thrive, and its caretakers are fumbling. Greece took its medicine as instructed and was rewarded with an unemployment rate of 26 percent. Portugal obeyed the budget rules; its citizens are looking for jobs in Angola and Mozambique because there are so few at home. Germans are feeling anemic despite their massive trade surplus. In the U.S., the income of a median household adjusted for inflation is 3 percent lower than at the worst point of the 2007-09 recession, according to Sentier Research. Whatever medicine is being doled out isn’t working. Citigroup (C) Chief Economist Willem Buiter recently described the Bank of England’s policy as “an intellectual potpourri of factoids, partial theories, empirical regularities without firm theoretical foundations, hunches, intuitions, and half-developed insights.” And that, he said, is better than things countries are trying elsewhere. There is a doctor in the house, and his prescriptions are more relevant than ever. True, he’s been dead since 1946. But even in the past tense, the British economist, investor, and civil servant John Maynard Keynes has more to teach us about how to save the global economy than an army of modern Ph.D.s equipped with models of dynamic stochastic general equilibrium. The symptoms of the Great Depression that he correctly diagnosed are back, though fortunately on a smaller scale: chronic unemployment, deflation, currency wars, and beggar-thy-neighbor economic policies. An essential and enduring insight of Keynes is that what works for a single family in hard times will not work for the global economy. [Crisis] [Keynes]
• The Crisis in U.S.-Israel Relations Is Officially Here
  The Obama administration's anger is "red-hot" over Israel's settlement policies, and the Netanyahu government openly expresses contempt for Obama's understanding of the Middle East. Profound changes in the relationship may be coming. Jeffrey Goldberg Oct 28 2014, 2:52 PM The other day I was talking to a senior Obama administration official about the foreign leader who seems to frustrate the White House and the State Department the most. “The thing about Bibi is, he’s a chickenshit,” this official said, referring to the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, by his nickname. This comment is representative of the gloves-off manner in which American and Israeli officials now talk about each other behind closed doors, and is yet another sign that relations between the Obama and Netanyahu governments have moved toward a full-blown crisis. The relationship between these two administrations— dual guarantors of the putatively “unbreakable” bond between the U.S. and Israel—is now the worst it's ever been, and it stands to get significantly worse after the November midterm elections. By next year, the Obama administration may actually withdraw diplomatic cover for Israel at the United Nations, but even before that, both sides are expecting a showdown over Iran, should an agreement be reached about the future of its nuclear program. [Israel]
• Cuban Doctors at the Forefront of Ebola Battle in Africa
  Island Nation Outpaces Larger Countries in Sending Medical Staff; Unlikely Partner for U.S. Drew Hinshaw in Freetown, Sierra Leone, and Betsy McKay in Atlanta Updated Oct. 9, 2014 9:35 p.m. ET Sierra Leone’s government welcomes the 165 Cuban health-care workers who came to fight Ebola. Glenna Gordon for The Wall Street Journal With risks growing that Ebola could flare on foreign shores, the U.S. is calling for nations to dispatch doctors and nurses to West Africa, where thousands of lives are on the line. Few have heeded the call, but one country has responded in strength: Cuba. In the weeks since U.S. President Barack Obama sent the first of nearly 4,000 troops to West Africa, the struggle to quell Ebola has created odd bedfellows. Perhaps none is quite so odd as the sight of Cuban doctors joining forces with the U.S. military to combat Ebola in West Africa. Cuba has long had an antagonistic relationship with its northern neighbor, the U.S. Aspiring global heavyweights China, India and Russia have done plenty of business in Africa, but their contributions to fighting the Ebola epidemic have been underwhelming thus far. And nations with some of the world’s most advanced health-care systems have come too late with too little to the crisis, said leaders from Ebola-affected countries. On Thursday, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called for “at least a 20-fold surge in assistance” that includes “trained medical personnel.” “The international response was slow,” said Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf. On Thursday, she pleaded for more medical personnel, speaking from the capital Monrovia to a World Bank Ebola conference in Washington. “More than ever, we need qualified and dedicated staff to join the fight against Ebola.” (More: Spanish Hospital Says Condition of Worker With Ebola Worsens) Cuba has answered that call. It has sent 165 health workers to hard-hit Sierra Leone, a disproportionately large number for a tiny island nation of 11 million people. They join cadres of medical workers in West Africa from several nations who are under the auspices of aid groups. Doctors Without Borders says it has about 250 international staff in the region and nearly 3,000 working on Ebola there overall. Cuba has long played an outsize role in Africa, sending troops to battle the South African military out of Angola, and training guerrillas who joined Nelson Mandela ’s armed struggle against apartheid. In the early 1960s, Che Guevara traveled to try to foment revolt in the east of newly independent Democratic Republic of the Congo—only to find himself in the company of men he later judged more interested in plunder than global socialism. [Ebola] [Cuba]
• Will Ebola Finish Off the US blockade of Cuba?
  by W.T. Whitney Jr., MD The New York Times October recently praised Cuba for sending health workers to West Africa to fight Ebola. “Cuba stands to play the most robust role among the nations seeking to contain the virus,” the Times said, adding that “Cuba’s contribution (…) should be lauded and emulated.” More than that: “[O]nly Cuba and a few nongovernmental organizations are offering what is most needed: medical professionals in the field.” Indeed nations “with the most to offer” have held back. The newspaper has some advice. “Washington (…) is diplomatically estranged from Havana, the boldest contributor. [Therefore,] the benefits of moving swiftly to restore diplomatic relations with Cuba” are clear. The week before, the Times had also called for the U.S. government to establish normal relations with Cuba. But this time the editors added urgency to their plea and left out earlier qualifications. The United Nations has secured pledges for almost $1 billion, but aid flows slowly; $50 million were in hand as of October 21. According to the Times, “19,000 doctors, nurses and paramedics are needed by December1.” The United States and Britain are sending soldiers and building field hospitals. [Ebola] [Cuba] [Sanctions]
• The West Remains Blind to the Sunni-Shia Battle
  by Patrick Cockburn A Specialised Criminal Court in Saudi Arabia has sentenced a prominent Shia clergyman, Sheikh Nimr Baqir al-Nimr, to death on vague charges of “breaking allegiance to the ruler” and “encouraging, leading and participating in demonstrations.” It is a sentence that is creating rage among Saudi Arabia’s two-million-strong Shia minority that has long claimed to be persecuted and discriminated against. The Saudi authorities are nervous about how the verdict handed down on 15 October will be received; the court arrested Sheikh Nimr’s brother, Mohammed Nimr al-Nimr, after he announced the outcome of the trial on Twitter. Local activists believe this was to prevent him speaking to the media after sentencing. Harsh though the sentence is, it is less than the prosecution’s demand for execution by “crucifixion”, a punishment that in Saudi Arabia involves beheading. [Sectarianism] [Saudi Arabia] [US global strategy]
• In bizarre new video, Islamic State hostage gives tour of Kobane
  By Adam Taylor October 27 at 5:06 PM ? A propaganda video shows John Cantlie, a British journalist captured by Islamic State in 2012, walking around the Syrian city of Kobane, while disputing Western media accounts of the fighting there between Islamic State and Kurdish forces. (Via YouTube) In a remarkable new video released by the Islamic State militants, British hostage John Cantlie gives a tour of the Syrian city of Kobane and denounces Western coverage of the fighting in the city. (Note: Our video team believes the first segment of may have been doctored.) Cantlie, a photographer and journalist who was taken hostage in late 2012, has appeared in a number of propaganda videos for the Islamic State in recent months, usually in an orange jumpsuit in front of a plain black screen. However, the new video, released Monday via social media accounts linked to the Islamic State, appears markedly more professional than the previous ones. Notably, it appears to show Cantlie walking outside and animatedly discussing recent events. The video also takes aim at a different target: Although previous videos appeared designed to criticize Western military action against the Islamic State, this time the main target appears to be Western media and their coverage of the situation in Kobane, where the Islamic State has battled for control against Kurdish militias. The video begins with an aerial shot of Kobane purportedly shot by a "drone of the Islamic State army," before apparently showing Cantlie walking in what he describes as the "so-called PKK safe zone." (PKK refers to the Kurdistan Workers' Party.) Cantlie says the area is now controlled by the Islamic State, and he goes on to call Western media's reporting on Kobane inaccurate. The British hostage specifically singles out reporting by the International Business Times, the BBC and the Independent's Patrick Cockburn. Cantlie argues that no Western reporters are in the city and thus are receiving their news only from "Kurdish commanders and White House press secretaries." [ISIS] [Media]
• Organised Hypocrisy on a Monumental Scale: Robert Wade on the Economic Occupation of the West Bank
  Late last year I made my first visit to the West Bank. I’d never before been anywhere in what was once known as the Levant, between Anatolia and Egypt, though I’ve travelled in other parts of the world, as a researcher into economic and political development. Mostly I look at institutions – of all kinds and sizes – and the ways they go about their business, whether it’s the management of common resources at village level, such as grazing and irrigation, or the state-level implementation of policies on industry and technology. I visited the West Bank at the invitation of the Kenyon Institute, which arranges visits and lectures by British-based academics. As well as lecturing, I interviewed civil servants and politicians, NGO officials and owners of small factories, and travelled across much of the territory. I was struck by the development impasse in the West Bank, and by the granular details of Palestinian life under the Israeli control system: I mean daily life, at the basic level, as distinct from the high-profile feuds and negotiations with which we’re all familiar. First, some figures. In the combined territory of Israel plus Palestine, the population of Israeli Jews is just over six million, of whom about half a million live in East Jerusalem or settlements in the West Bank. The population of Palestinian Arabs is about six million, of whom some 2.7 million live in the West Bank, 1.7 million in Gaza and 1.7 million in Israel. So the ratio of Palestinian Arabs to Israeli Jews in the combined territory is 49.8:50.2. However, two qualifications have to be made. First, the population of Palestinian Arabs living as refugees is estimated at 6.8 million, bringing the number of Palestinian Arabs to nearly 13 million. Second, within the borders of Israel plus Palestine, the Arabs in the four territories where Arabs live (West Bank, Gaza, East Jerusalem and Israel) have little exchange with one another; they are in no sense a unit. The West Bank’s population of 2.7 million is around a third the size of Israel’s (including Arabs), but has a much higher birthrate (though the birthrate among Jewish settlers in the West Bank and East Jerusalem is even higher). The average income of Jewish Israelis (at market exchange rates) is around $40,000; that of Arab Israelis $13,000; that of West Bankers $3700, and less in Gaza. At the end of the Second World War, Jews accounted for about 34 per cent of the population of historic or British Mandate Palestine, Arabs 66 per cent; the average income of the Jews was about twice that of Arabs. Today, the population ratio is almost 50:50; the average income of Jews is about 11 times that of West Bankers. Few places in the world have a long land border with such a large average income disparity between the two sides. [Israel] [Inequality]
• Principle, Rigor and Execution Matter in U.S. Foreign Policy
  Geopolitical Weekly Tuesday, October 28, 2014 - By George Friedman U.S. President Barack Obama has come under intense criticism for his foreign policy, along with many other things. This is not unprecedented. Former President George W. Bush was similarly attacked. Stratfor has always maintained that the behavior of nations has much to do with the impersonal forces driving it, and little to do with the leaders who are currently passing through office. To what extent should American presidents be held accountable for events in the world, and what should they be held accountable for? Expectations and Reality I have always been amazed when presidents take credit for creating jobs or are blamed for high interest rates. Under our Constitution, and in practice, presidents have precious little influence on either. They cannot act without Congress or the Federal Reserve concurring, and both are outside presidential control. Nor can presidents overcome the realities of the market. They are prisoners of institutional constraints and the realities of the world. Nevertheless, we endow presidents with magical powers and impose extraordinary expectations. The president creates jobs, manages Ebola and solves the problems of the world -- or so he should. This particular president came into office with preposterous expectations from his supporters that he could not possibly fulfill. The normal campaign promises of a normal politician were taken to be prophecy. This told us more about his supporters than about him. Similarly, his enemies, at the extremes, have painted him as the devil incarnate, destroying the Republic for fiendish reasons. He is neither savior nor demon. He is a politician. As a politician, he governs not by what he wants, nor by what he promised in the election. He governs by the reality he was handed by history and his predecessor. Obama came into office with a financial crisis well underway, along with the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. His followers might have thought that he would take a magic wand and make them go away, and his enemies might think that he would use them to destroy the country, but in point of fact he did pretty much what Bush had been doing: He hung on for dear life and guessed at the right course. Bush came into office thinking of economic reforms and a foreign policy that would get away from nation-building. The last thing he expected was that he would invade Afghanistan during his first year in office. But it really wasn't up to him. His predecessor, Bill Clinton, and al Qaeda set his agenda. Had Clinton been more aggressive against al Qaeda, Bush might have had a different presidency. But al Qaeda did not seem to need that level of effort, and Clinton came into office as heir to the collapse of the Soviet Union. And so on back to George Washington. Presidents are constrained by the reality they find themselves in and the limits that institutions place on them. Foreign policy is what a president wishes would happen; foreign affairs are what actually happen. The United States is enormously powerful. It is not omnipotent. There are not only limits to that power, but unexpected and undesirable consequences of its use [Continuities] [Realist]
• My enemy’s enemy - the battle for secularism
  Daniel Silas Adamson 22 October 2014 250 international campaigners met last week in London to discuss the rise of the religious right. From the frontlines of the struggle against extremism came an impassioned appeal for solidarity and secularism. A two-day conference on “The Religious Right, Secularism, and Civil Rights” doesn’t sound like a festival of laughs, but it was hard not to smile at the sight of Richard Dawkins getting roped into a photo op with Inna Shevchenko, Ukrainian leader of the topless protest group Femen. Professor Dawkins, beaming and slightly flustered, had just about composed himself when he was handed a sign that read “The Vaginal Coalition Against Bigotry.” In the end, though, this event was not about celebrity atheists or media-baiting publicity stunts. It was about a succession of brave women and men who have fought long, unsung battles against religious extremism in places – Somalia, Iran, Algeria, Senegal, Afghanistan – where to speak up for human rights and democratic freedoms carries a real risk of death. [Religion] [Secularism]
• Islamic State keeps up Syrian oil flow despite U.S-led strikes
  Fri Oct 24, 2014 9:07am EDT Syrian Kurd leader sees war of 'attrition' in Kobani By Suleiman Al-Khalidi AMMAN, Oct 24 (Reuters) - Islamic State is still extracting and selling oil in Syria and has adapted its trading techniques despite a month of strikes by U.S.-led forces aimed at cutting off this major source of income for the group, residents, oil executives and traders say. While the raids by U.S. and Arab forces have targeted some small makeshift oil refineries run by locals in eastern areas controlled by Islamic State, they have avoided the wells the group controls. This has limited the effectiveness of the campaign and means the militants are able to profit from crude sales of up to $2 million a day, according to oil workers in Syria, former oil executives and energy experts. "They are in fact still selling the oil and even stepping up exploitation of new wells by tribal allies and taking advantage of the inability of the enemy to hit the oil fields," said Abdullah al-Jadaan, a tribal elder in Shuhail, a town in Syria's oil-producing Deir al-Zor province. U.S.-led forces want to avoid hitting the oil installations hard because it could hurt civilians more than the militants and could radicalise the local population, analysts say. [ISIS] [Airpower]
• Without Lucrative Market, Potential Ebola Vaccine Was Shelved for Years
  By Denise Grady Oct. 23, 2014 GALVESTON, Tex. — Almost a decade ago, scientists from Canada and the United States reported that they had created a vaccine that was 100 percent effective in protecting monkeys against the Ebola virus. The results were published in a respected journal, and health officials called them exciting. The researchers said tests in people might start within two years, and a product could potentially be ready for licensing by 2010 or 2011. It never happened. The vaccine sat on a shelf. Only now is the vaccine undergoing the most basic safety tests in humans — with nearly 5,000 people dead from Ebola and an epidemic raging out of control in West Africa. Its development stalled in part because Ebola was rare, and until now outbreaks had infected only a few hundred people at a time. But experts also acknowledge that the lack of follow-up on such a promising candidate reflects a broader failure to produce medicines and vaccines for diseases that afflict poor countries. Most drug companies have resisted spending the enormous sums needed to to develop products useful mostly to poor countries with little ability to pay for them. [Ebola] [Capitalism] [Inequality]
• The missing context for IS's rise
  By Ramzy Baroud Consider this comical scene described by a former US diplomat who was deployed to Iraq on a 12-month assignment in 2009-10. Peter Van Buren led two Department of State teams assigned with the abstract mission of the "reconstruction" of Iraq after the 2003 US invasion. "In practice, [reconstruction] meant paying for schools that would never be completed, setting up pastry shops on streets without water or electricity, and conducting endless propaganda events on Washington-generated themes of the week ('small business,' 'women's empowerment,' 'democracy building.') "We even organized awkward soccer matches, where American taxpayer money was used to coerce reluctant Sunni teams into facing off against hesitant Shiite ones in hopes that, somehow, the chaos created by the American invasion could be ameliorated on the playing field." Of course, there is nothing comical about these soccer matches when seen in context. The entire American nation-building experiment was in fact a political swindle engulfed by many horrifying episodes, starting with the dissolution of the country's army, entire official institutions and the construction of an alternative political class that was essentially sectarian.
  True, the Americans didn't create Iraqi sectarianism. The latter always brewed beneath the surface. However, sectarianism and other manifestations of identity politics in Iraq were always overpowered by a dominant sense of Iraqi nationalism, which was violently destroyed and ripped apart by US firepower starting March 2003. But what the American truly founded in Iraq was Sunni militancy, a concept that has, till recently been alien to the Middle East. [Sectarianism] [US global strategy] [ISIS]
• When governments go to war, the Fourth Estate goes AWOL
  Author Annabelle Lukin Senior Lecturer, Linguistics at Macquarie University
  . A year after the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the University of California, Berkeley, conducted a postmortem of the media coverage of the so-called “Iraq war”. The conference included academics, journalists, UN weapons inspectors and diplomats. UC Berkeley also invited Lieutenant Colonel Rick Long, whose job it had been to prepare journalists to be embedded with American forces as they rolled into Iraq. The invasion would soon be described as “the greatest strategic disaster in US history”, by no less than retired Lieutenant General William Odom, a former senior military and intelligence official in the Carter and Reagan administrations. But, as Long told the gathering, the strategy for managing the media had been beautifully executed: Frankly, our job is to win the war. Part of that is information warfare. So we are going to attempt to dominate the information environment. Overall, we were very happy with the outcome. When we needed them most, the Fourth Estate rolled over and let the military establishments of the belligerent countries tickle their tummies. [Media] [Iraq]
• Where Hucksters Rule
  by Andrew Levine In less than two weeks, this year’s midterm elections will be history; hardly anyone cares. Why would they? There are some state and local elections in the offing where the outcomes matter. But at the national level, it is a wasteland. The results are already in too – ninety-nine percent of us lose. We have no one to vote for, and no good way to vote against anyone either. There is not even a good way to express contempt for what the duopoly party system has put on offer. Not voting is an ambiguous gesture at best. If control of the Senate weren’t at stake, even inveterate liberals would have a hard time finding reasons to care what the outcome will be. They ought to have a hard time anyway. In view of the abundance of evidence accumulated in recent years when Democrats controlled the Senate, it is hard to see how it could be worse were Republicans to wrest control away from them. And, as President Obama starts a third Iraq War – or revives Number Two, depending on how you count – it is hard to enthuse over the candidates of his feckless party. [Democracy]
• Freest Under Czech Communism!
  by Andre Vltchek Milan Kohout is a thinker, performer, and professor. He was born in Czechoslovakia, where he lived before signing of ‘Charter 77’, and immigrating to the United States, where he became a naturalized US citizen. Mr. Kohout got thoroughly disappointed with capitalism, and the Western regime. For years and decades he has been performing all over the world, confronting Western imperialism, racism, capitalism and all the world’s religions, particularly Christianity, frontally. The Discussion took place on October 12, 2014, in Klikarov, a small village in West Bohemia. Vltchek came to Czech Republic in order to give a political lecture at the Faculty of Philosophy and Arts in the city of Pilsen, where Kohout teaches. Both of them drove to a tiny and remote village of Klikarov, in West Bohemia, where they sat by a fishpond, and engaged in a discussion about toxicity of Western imperialism, capitalism and European/US propaganda. *** ANDRE VLTCHEK (AV): You are one of the few artists in the West who is taking direct action against Western imperialism, against unbridled capitalism, and against the religions. How and when did you choose this particular form of art? MILAN KOHOUT (ML): It is obviously from the days when I was part of the so-called ‘Second Culture’, the Czech Underground; the era that was called by the West a ‘totalitarian system’ or, the Czechoslovak socialist system. ‘Second Culture’ was the movement that shaped our own creativity as well as the meaning of art. In those days we were expelled from the official culture, or from the ‘first culture’. So we rebelled. It was a deeply political movement by definition, and it produced political art. [Socialism] [Soviet Union]
• Why Did East Germany Really Go Under?
  by Victor Grossman “Humpty-Dumpty sat on a wall, Humpty-Dumpty had a great fall. “ The children’s rhyme and its words Wall and Fall came to mind in connection with commemorations of the fall of the Berlin Wall – actually its opening up. Is such an allusion frivolous? Maybe. For millions that event twenty-five years ago was marked by genuine, understandable euphoria. But unceasing ballyhoo in the German media, weeks and weeks ahead of the anniversary, and plans for 8000 white helium balloons lit up by 60,000 batteries along the ten-mile length of the former wall, to be released in the evening with triumphant trumpet blasts, jubilant church bells or something similar while Angela Merkel, Lech Valesa, Mikhail Gorbachov, Berlin’s ex-mayor and other celebrities cast their eyes gratefully heavenward, may perhaps justify my somewhat different approach. After the Wall lost its barrier status on November 9th 1989, what quickly fell in the months that followed hardly conjured up the funny-looking egg some recall from Alice’s looking-glass adventures. It was rather the forty-year-old institution calling itself the German Democratic Republic, the GDR. To employ again the ovoid allusion, one might inquire: Did it fall because it was totally foul? Was it given an outside push or two? And did that downfall represent simply the glorious revolution of a folk yearning for freedom – or is the matter more complicated? This is still very relevant, for many similar uprisings have since occurred – and are still occurring. Why did the GDR go under? Despite reams of bad publicity since its start after 1945, it was born largely of the hopes and dreams of a relatively small number of survivors of Hitler fascism, some in exile on many continents, others in Nazi camps and prisons. These men and women were determined to create a new Germany – or part of Germany at least – rejecting fascism and the powerful forces behind it: Bayer and BASF (of I.G. Farben), which built and helped run Auschwitz, Siemens, Krupp and Flick, which misused hundreds of thousands of starved concentration camp prisoners and forced laborers from all Europe – and the Deutsche Bank which helped finance every bloody step of the way. Despite their defeat, for a second time, these forces never gave up plans for recuperation and renewed expansion and were already re-establishing themselves. But not in eastern Germany, where such plans were thwarted and their factories and property nationalized. It was this vitally crucial step by the GDR which was never forgiven, not to this day. [Socialism]
• What's the appeal of a caliphate?
  In June the leader of Islamic State declared the creation of a caliphate stretching across parts of Syria and Iraq - Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi named himself the caliph or leader. Edward Stourton examines the historical parallels and asks what is a caliphate, and what is its appeal? When Islamic State (IS) declared itself a caliphate in June this year, and its leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi claimed the title of caliph, it seemed confirmation of the group's reputation for megalomania and atavistic fantasy. Al-Baghdadi insisted that pledging allegiance to this caliphate was a religious obligation on all Muslims - an appeal which was immediately greeted by a chorus of condemnation across the Middle East. But is it dangerous to underestimate the appeal of IS? Al-Baghdadi's brutal regime does not, of course, remotely conform to the classical Muslim understanding of what a caliphate should be, but it does evoke an aspiration with a powerful and increasingly urgent resonance in the wider Muslim world. The last caliphate - that of the Ottomans - was officially abolished 90 years ago this spring. Yet in a 2006 Gallup survey of Muslims living in Egypt, Morocco, Indonesia and Pakistan, two-thirds of respondents said they supported the goal of "unifying all Islamic countries" into a new caliphate. Why do so many Muslims subscribe to this apparently unrealisable dream? The answer lies in the caliphate's history. [ISIS] [Islam]
• The Pentagon and Big Oil: Militarism and Capital Accumulation
  By Prof. James Petras Global Research, October 26, 2014 There is no question that, in the immediate aftermath and for several years following US military conquests, wars, occupations and sanctions, US multi-national corporations lost out on profitable sites for investments. The biggest losses were in the exploitation of natural resources – in particular, gas and oil – in the Middle East, the Persian Gulf and South Asia. As a result some observers speculated that there were deep fissures and contradictory interests within the US ruling class. They argued that, on the one hand, political elites linked to pro-Israel lobbies and the military industrial power configuration, promoted a highly militarized foreign policy agenda and, on the other hand, some of the biggest and wealthiest multi-national corporations sought diplomatic solutions. Yet this seeming ‘elite division’ did not materialize. There is no evidence for example that the multi-national oil companies sought to oppose the Iraq, Libyan, Afghan, Syrian wars. [US global strategy] [Militarisation] [Imperialism] [MISCOM]
• The Islamic State’s North Korean arms
  Pyongyang likely not aiding IS directly, but its weapons may have reached them nonetheless October 24th, 2014 Andrea Berger Keep calm: The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant is probably not buying weapons from North Korea. In recent weeks, several sources have identified North Korean small arms and light weapons in the hands of IS fighters. While this may be the case, an analysis of the weapons used by IS and rival groups in Syria points to the conclusion that no North Korean weapons in the IS arsenal have been purchased or transferred directly from Pyongyang. Instead, the group has likely either looted them from Syrian government stores along the way, or received them in illicit transfers from former Libyan government caches. Proliferation rears its ugly head in many ways. THE SOURCES Conflict Armament Research noted in a recent report that, alongside ammunition from a host of other manufacturers, DPRK-produced rounds useable in heavy machine guns or anti-tank rifles are being fired by IS. Most of the ammunition used by IS in Iraq, they said, is U.S.-manufactured. By contrast, most of the ammunition used by forces in Syria is Chinese or Soviet. Fittingly, the North Korean cartridges discovered were found in crates in Syria alongside Chinese, Soviet and Romanian rounds. Using the iTrace system, one can glean that all of the rounds were produced by factory 93 in the DPRK, which makes a variety of infantry weapons. It is also apparent that they were manufactured between 1975 and 1986, and are, therefore, by no means new stock. [ISIS] [Propaganda] [Arms sales]
• Rwanda and the Criminalisation of International Justice: Anatomy of War Crimes Trials
  By Christopher Black Global Research, October 19, 2014 The Nato ordered indictment of Muammar Gadaffi by the International Criminal Court (ICC) during the Nato attack on Libya in 2011 echoed the indictment of President Milosevic by International Criminal Tribunal For Yugoslavia, during the Nato attack on Yugoslavia in 1999. Both men ended up dead as a direct consequence. The indictments of these two men, had only one purpose, to serve as propaganda to justify Nato’s aggression and the elimination of governments that refused to bend the knee. The international criminal justice machine has become a weapon of total war, used not to prosecute the criminals who conduct these wars, but to persecute the leaders of the countries who resist. Milosevic and Gaddafi are not the only victims of this criminalised international legal structure. The list is long: President Saddam Hussein of Iraq, President Charles Taylor of Liberia, Prime Minister Jean Kambanda of Rwanda, President Laurent Gbagbo of Ivory Coast, President Bashir of Sudan and President Uhuru Kenyatta of Kenya. The charges against them trumped up, created out of whole cloth. Recently there was talk in the western press of charges against President Putin. We all see how absurd and surreal the game has become. The structural role these tribunals have played in the attempt by the USA and its Nato allies to create a New World Order has been analysed and described by distinguished jurists and writers around the world. Since I am a trial lawyer, I wanted to contribute to your understanding of the criminal nature of this international justice machine by relating to you some of my experience defending a particular political prisoner held by it. I could tell you about the scandalous practices of the ICTY in the Milosevic trial in which I was involved through his international defence committee but these are well known and have been recounted by a number of eminent persons and writers. There are many victims of these tribunals but I will focus on this one particular case because it stands as an exemplar of the many. However, the criminality was so deep and so extensive that when I began writing down the history of this trial I realised I would need a book to relate it all. So, in the time permitted us, I decided to provide you with a sketch of how these trials work. So I am going to talk about the Rwanda tribunal because it is the most familiar to me and because the war in Rwanda is used time and again by the United States in its propaganda to justify its wars of intervention, so-called. [ICC]
• How to defeat Islamic State's war machine
  Although much has been written to explain the tactical military successes of the Islamic State (IS), there has not yet been a comprehensive assessment of how, since June 2014, IS has managed to rule over terrain larger than Lebanon to include 8 million Iraqis and Syrians. Summary? Print The Islamic State has to be recognized as a lethal and effective war machine at the tactical level. Author Metin Turcan Posted October 14, 2014 How has it been possible that in a short three months IS has been able to control extensive terrain, with 3,000 IS fighters capturing Mosul, which was guarded by 30,000 Iraqi soldiers, and after seizing Mosul on June 10 engage in battles two days later with Iraqi forces in towns north of Baghdad, 230 miles from Mosul? Although one can allude to the delayed reaction of the international community, the lack of strong military opposition to IS, the international support IS has acquired and the support from Sunni tribes and political bodies in areas it captures, none of it defies the reality that — at the tactical level — IS is an extremely lethal and effective war machine. To understand this key determinant of IS gains, one has to understand that reality. This article will attempt to analyze the factors contributing to IS’ military efficiency, particularly at the tactical level. Factors that boost tactical effectiveness of IS can be summarized as fluid and decentralized command and control structure; novel hybrid military tactics blending conventional warfare with terrorist tactics; effective use of armored platforms in offensive operations; dispersion; preservation of momentum at all costs; effective exploitation of topographic and human terrains; simplicity and flexibility in planning; and conducting operations and high levels of initiative and morale. Fluid and decentralized command control structure IS does not have permanent and centralized command and control structure in the traditional sense of warfare. Unlike contemporary armies of the world, IS doesn’t make sharp distinctions between strategic, operative and tactical levels. In their traditional warfare, tactical achievements is the way to achieve strategic objectives. For IS, the basic goal is to score tactical successes and expand on them step by step. Deviating from the traditional approach, what IS fields is a bottom-up command structure focused on a fast pace for small military achievements. At the moment, US-led airstrikes have been mostly against IS communication and training facilities. It is extraordinary that there is not a single control facility that has been hit by allied airstrikes. [ISIS] [Social media]
• When It Comes to Beheadings, ISIS Has Nothing Over Saudi Arabia
  By Janine di Giovanni / October 14, 2014 12:56 PM EDT Saudi police ready a square for public floggings in the Saudi city of Khobar September 28, 2009. Zaki Ghawass/Reuters • The escalation of the war against the Islamic State was triggered by widespread revulsion at the gruesome beheading of two American journalists, relayed on YouTube. Since then, two British aid workers have met a similar grisly fate. And another American has been named as next in line by his terrorist captors. Yet, for all the outrage these executions have engendered the world over, decapitations are routine in Saudi Arabia, America’s closest Arab ally, for crimes including political dissent—and the international press hardly seems to notice. In fact, since January, 59 people have had their heads lopped off in the kingdom, where “punishment by the sword” has been practiced for centuries. The Saudi legal system is based on Islam’s Sharia law. Some countries that use Sharia possess a penal code, but Saudi Arabia does not, although some activists have been calling for reform. So, what’s it like to be beheaded there? Your last morning on Earth would likely be spent in isolation. You would rise early and eat a last breakfast. If you are lucky, you might receive a sedative, like Valium, to calm your nerves. Executions usually take place in the morning, before the oppressive heat of the desert kingdom takes hold, in a public square. Saudi Arabia, Iran, North Korea and Somalia are the only countries in the world that still execute people in public People will gather to watch you die. According to British author John R. Bradley, public beheadings are the “only form of public entertainment” in Saudi Arabia, aside from football matches. [Human rights] [Double standards] [Saudi Arabia]
• Rental America: Why the poor pay $4,150 for a $1,500 sofa
  No credit, no cash, no bank account? There’s still a place to go shopping, but it comes at a price. By Chico Harlan October 16 ? ?Follow @chicoharlan Donald Abbott, 35, looks over a receipt from Buddy’s Home Furnishings while his daughter, Savannah, and wife Jamie, rest on the family loveseat. The Abbott family purchased a sofa set from Buddy’s opting to pay for it in weekly installments of $110. (Photo by Bob Miller/For The Washington Post) CULLMAN, Ala. — The love seat and sofa that Jamie Abbott can’t quite afford ended up in her double-wide trailer because of the day earlier this year when she and her family walked into a new store called Buddy’s. Abbott had no access to credit, no bank account and little cash, but here was a place that catered to exactly those kinds of customers. Anything could be hers. The possibilities — and the prices — were dizzying. At Buddy’s, a used 32-gigabyte, early model iPad costs $1,439.28, paid over 72 weeks. An Acer laptop: $1,943.28, in 72 weekly installments. A Maytag washer and dryer: $1,999 over 100 weeks. Abbott wanted a love seat-sofa combo, and she knew it might rip her budget. But this, she figured, was the cost of being out of options. “You don’t get something like that just to put more burden on yourself,” Abbott said. Five years into a national economic recovery that has further strained the poor working class, an entire industry has grown around handing them a lifeline to the material rewards of middle-class life. Retailers in the post-Great Recession years have become even more likely to work with customers who don’t have the money upfront, instead offering a widening spectrum of payment plans that ultimately cost far more and add to the burdens of life on the economy’s fringes. [Capitalism] [Inequality]
• Federal pay still far behind private sector’s, study group says
  By Eric Yoder October 17 at 12:35 PM ? Notes from a seized haul of $7.16 million in counterfeit hundred-dollar bills are pictured in Battambang September 30, 2014. Cambodian police seized the fake notes on September 19 near the border with Thailand, the largest seizure of fake U.S. notes in Southeast Asia for about a decade and the biggest ever in Cambodia. Picture taken September 30, 2014. To match CAMBODIA-CRIME/COUNTERFEIT REUTERS/Andrew RC Marshall (CAMBODIA - Tags: CRIME LAW BUSINESS) (Andrew RC Marshall/Reuters) White-collar federal employees on average earn 35.2 percent less than private-sector workers in comparable jobs, an advisory council announced Friday in the latest report in a years-long back and forth over how salaries stack up. The Federal Salary Council announced that figure based on data gathered by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which under federal pay law follows a methodology that has yielded a large “pay gap” figure in favor of the private sector for two decades. The indicated gap was nearly identical to the 35.4 percent reported last year. “The data is consistent data,” said Colleen M. Kelley, a member of the council and president of the National Treasury Employees Union. “It’s been agreed to during every administration regardless of party. Even though it’s flat, it’s still pretty big, and it’s negatively affecting federal employees and agencies also.” [Governance] [Inequality]
• A professor in U.S. is telling Liberians that the Defense Department ‘manufactured’ Ebola
  By Terrence McCoy September 26 ? An Ebola sign placed in front of a home in the West Point slum area of Monrovia, Liberia, on Sept. 25, 2014. (EPA/AHMED JALLANZO) Last week, President Obama announced an ambitious — and expensive — plan that effectively placed the U.S. military at the forefront of the global fight against the worst Ebola outbreak in history. In an effort that could cost as much as $750 million in the next six months, he assigned up to 3,000 military personnel to West Africa to “combat and contain” what officials call “an extraordinarily serious epidemic.” As those military doctors and officials begin what will be a difficult task, among the challenges they face are rumors that spread fear — fear of Ebola, fear of quarantine measures and fear of doctors. Already, several medical workers have been murdered in Guinea — throats slit, bodies dumped in a latrine. Then six Red Cross volunteers were attacked earlier this week while they tried to collect the body of an Ebola victim. And now, in what may plant further seeds of mistrust and suspicion, a major Liberian newspaper, the Daily Observer, has published an article by a Liberian-born faculty member of a U.S. university implying the epidemic is the result of bioterrorism experiments conducted by the United States Department of Defense, among others. And while some commenting on the article were critical, the number who praised it was telling. “They are using” Ebola, wrote one, “for culling the world population mainly Africa for the…purpose of gaining control of the Africans resources criminally.” The piece purports to describe scientific findings from various “reports,” which are not cited in detail, and even references the bestselling thriller, “The Hot Zone.” “Reports narrate stories of the US Department of Defense (DoD) funding Ebola trials on humans, trials which started just weeks before the Ebola outbreak in Guinea and Sierra Leone,” wrote Delaware State University associate professor Cyril Broderick. [Ebola] [cbw]
• Ebola, AIDS Manufactured by Western Pharmaceuticals, US DoD?
  Tue, 09/09/2014 - 09:59 admin Scientists Allege . By: Dr. Cyril Broderick, Professor of Plant Pathology . Dear World Citizens: I have read a number of articles from your Internet outreach as well as articles from other sources about the casualties in Liberia and other West African countries about the human devastation caused by the Ebola virus. About a week ago, I read an article published in the Internet news summary publication of the Friends of Liberia that said that there was an agreement that the initiation of the Ebola outbreak in West Africa was due to the contact of a two-year old child with bats that had flown in from the Congo. That report made me disconcerted with the reporting about Ebola, and it stimulated a response to the “Friends of Liberia,” saying that African people are not ignorant and gullible, as is being implicated. A response from Dr. Verlon Stone said that the article was not theirs, and that “Friends of Liberia” was simply providing a service. He then asked if he could publish my letter in their Internet forum. I gave my permission, but I have not seen it published. Because of the widespread loss of life, fear, physiological trauma, and despair among Liberians and other West African citizens, it is incumbent that I make a contribution to the resolution of this devastating situation, which may continue to recur, if it is not properly and adequately confronted. I will address the situation in five (5) points: 1. EBOLA IS A GENETICALLY MODIFIED ORGANISM (GMO) Horowitz (1998) was deliberate and unambiguous when he explained the threat of new diseases in his text, Emerging Viruses: AIDS and Ebola - Nature, Accident or Intentional. In his interview with Dr. Robert Strecker in Chapter 7, the discussion, in the early 1970s, made it obvious that the war was between countries that hosted the KGB and the CIA, and the ‘manufacture’ of ‘AIDS-Like Viruses’ was clearly directed at the other. In passing during the Interview, mention was made of Fort Detrick, “the Ebola Building,” and ‘a lot of problems with strange illnesses’ in “Frederick [Maryland].” By Chapter 12 in his text, he had confirmed the existence of an American Military-Medical-Industry that conducts biological weapons tests under the guise of administering vaccinations to control diseases and improve the health of “black Africans overseas.” The book is an excellent text, and all leaders plus anyone who has interest in science, health, people, and intrigue should study it. I am amazed that African leaders are making no acknowledgements or reference to these documents. 2. EBOLA HAS A TERRIBLE HISTORY, AND TESTING HAS BEEN SECRETLY TAKING PLACE IN AFRICA I am now reading The Hot Zone, a novel, by Richard Preston (copyrighted 1989 and 1994); it is heart-rending. The prolific and prominent writer, Steven King, is quoted as saying that the book is “One of the most horrifying things I have ever read. What a remarkable piece of work.” As a New York Times bestseller, The Hot Zone is presented as “A terrifying true story.” Terrifying, yes, because the pathological description of what was found in animals killed by the Ebola virus is what the virus has been doing to citizens of Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia in its most recent outbreak: Ebola virus destroys peoples’ internal organs and the body deteriorates rapidly after death. It softens and the tissues turn into jelly, even if it is refrigerated to keep it cold. Spontaneous liquefaction is what happens to the body of people killed by the Ebola virus! The author noted in Point 1, Dr. Horowitz, chides The Hot Zone for writing to be politically correct; I understand because his book makes every effort to be very factual. The 1976 Ebola incident in Zaire, during President Mobutu Sese Seko, was the introduction of the GMO Ebola to Africa. 3. SITES AROUND AFRICA, AND IN WEST AFRICA, HAVE OVER THE YEARS BEEN SET UP FOR TESTING EMERGING DISEASES, ESPECIALLY EBOLA The World Health Organization (WHO) and several other UN Agencies have been implicated in selecting and enticing African countries to participate in the testing events, promoting vaccinations, but pursuing various testing regiments. The August 2, 2014 article, West Africa: What are US Biological Warfare Researchers Doing in the Ebola Zone? by Jon Rappoport of Global Research pinpoints the problem that is facing African governments. [Ebola] [cbw]
• U.S. is Responsible for the Ebola Outbreak in West Africa: Liberian Scientist
  By Timothy Alexander Guzman Global Research, October 17, 2014 Guatemala-STDs A History of Guatemala’s Syphilis Experiment: How a U.S. Led Team Performed Human Experimentations in Central America Dr. Cyril Broderick, A Liberian scientist and a former professor of Plant Pathology at the University of Liberia’s College of Agriculture and Forestry says the West, particularly the U.S. is responsible for the Ebola outbreak in West Africa. Dr. Broderick claims the following in an exclusive article published in the Daily Observer based in Monrovia, Liberia. He wrote the following: The US Department of Defense (DoD) is funding Ebola trials on humans, trials which started just weeks before the Ebola outbreak in Guinea and Sierra Leone. The reports continue and state that the DoD gave a contract worth $140 million dollars to Tekmira, a Canadian pharmaceutical company, to conduct Ebola research. This research work involved injecting and infusing healthy humans with the deadly Ebola virus. Hence, the DoD is listed as a collaborator in a “First in Human” Ebola clinical trial (NCT02041715, which started in January 2014 shortly before an Ebola epidemic was declared in West Africa in March. Is it possible that the United States Department of Defense (DOD) and other Western countries are directly responsible for infecting Africans with the Ebola virus? Dr. Broderick claims that the U.S. government has a research laboratory located in a town called Kenema in Sierra Leone that studies what he calls “viral fever bioterrorism”, It is also the town where he acknowledges that is the “epicentre of the Ebola outbreak in West Africa.” Is it a fact? Is Dr. Broderick a conspiracy theorist? He says that “there is urgent need for affirmative action in protecting the less affluent of poorer countries, especially African citizens, whose countries are not as scientifically and industrially endowed as the United States and most Western countries, sources of most viral or bacterial GMOs that are strategically designed as biological weapons.” He also asks an important question when he says “It is most disturbing that the U. S. Government has been operating a viral hemorrhagic fever bioterrorism research laboratory in Sierra Leone. Are there others?” Well, Mr. Broderick’s claims seem to be true. After all, the U.S. government has been experimenting with deadly diseases on human beings for a long time, history tells us so. One example is Guatemala. Between 1946 and 1948, the United States government under President Harry S. Truman in collaboration with Guatemalan President Juan José Arévalo and his health officials deliberately infected more than 1500 soldiers, prostitutes, prisoners and even mental patients with syphilis and other sexually transmitted diseases such as gonorrhea and chancroid (a bacterial sexual infection) out of more than 5500 Guatemalan people who participated in the experiments. The worst part of it is that none of the test subjects infected with the diseases ever gave informed consent. The Boston Globe published the discovery made by Medical historian and professor at Wellesley College, Susan M. Reverby in 2010 called ‘Wellesley professor unearths a horror: Syphilis experiments in Guatemala.’ It stated how she came across her discovery: Picking through musty files in a Pennsylvania archive, a Wellesley College professor made a heart-stopping discovery: US government scientists in the 1940s deliberately infected hundreds of Guatemalans with syphilis and gonorrhea in experiments conducted without the subjects’ permission. Medical historian Susan M. Reverby happened upon the documents four or five years ago while researching the infamous Tuskegee syphilis study and later shared her findings with US government officials. The unethical research was not publicly disclosed until yesterday, when President Obama and two Cabinet secretaries apologized to Guatemala’s government and people and pledged to never repeat the mistakes of the past — an era when it was not uncommon for doctors to experiment on patients without their consent. [Ebola] [cbw]
• U.S. general: ‘It’ll take time’ to train new Syria force, reclaim Iraq turf, defeat Islamic State
  By Hannah Allam McClatchy Washington Bureau October 17, 2014 Updated 21 hours ago Army Gen. Lloyd J. Austin III, commander of U.S. Central Command, updates reporters at the Pentagon about the military campaign against Islamic State militants in Iraq, Friday, Oct. 17, 2014. The top U.S. commander for the Middle East says fighting over the Syrian border town of Kobani has allowed the U.S.- led coalition to take out large numbers of Islamic State group fighters that have been pouring in. WASHINGTON — “It will take time.” That was the line used repeatedly Friday by the U.S. general leading the military campaign against the Islamic State, in his first news conference at the Pentagon since taking charge of Central Command last year. While Army Gen. Lloyd Austin praised some “encouraging” signs, he cautioned patience on virtually every aspect of this open-ended battle, suggesting that it would take years to build viable Iraqi and Syrian partner forces, reclaim territory from the militants, and reform the oppressive governments whose policies fuel extremism. “We can and will get the job done and done well,” Austin said. “But, again, it will take time.” Austin, who has served as the Army’s vice chief of staff and as commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, is known to avoid the limelight. A profile on the niche website Foreign Policy this week described him as “one of the more silent generals” and noted that even President Barack Obama called him out for trying to sneak off the stage at an appearance last month at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Fla., where Central Command is headquartered. On Friday, however, Austin seemed at ease giving his first public assessment of the much-criticized, still-evolving military campaign he commands. He dwelt on the Obama administration mantra that air power alone won’t defeat the Islamic State, and he acknowledged that the entire effort hinged on the building of trusted, viable ground forces in Iraq and Syria – so far the most elusive part of the strategy. “We’ll be able to put quality soldiers on the battlefield that can get the job done,” Austin vowed, but, when pressed, he couldn’t predict a time frame. “It’ll take time,” he repeated. [ISIS] [US Syria policy]
• Why the campaign against Islamic State is doomed
  Date October 14, 2014 Hugh White Tony Abbott hopes for a good, quick, cheap war in Iraq. But after the first few weeks of bombing everyone now understands that western air strikes alone will do little to "degrade and destroy" the so-called Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. They will only be defeated on the ground. That will require very large land forces, committed for a very long time, and accepting heavy casualties. Most of those forces are supposed to come from the Iraqi Army and "moderate" factions in Syria's civil war, both of which have already been soundly beaten by IS. The hope is that weapons, training and advice from the US-led coalition will transform them into crack troops who can turn the tables on IS and win the war for us. This is not a new idea. For half a century America and its allies have been trying to win messy civil wars without fighting themselves and by training and equipping one side or the other. It never works. We need only recall Afghanistan, where we have just spent many billions of dollars and quite a few lives over almost a decade, trying and failing to create effective, pro-western security forces that could beat the Taliban. Or Iraq, where an equally massive effort produced the Iraqi Army, whose dismal performance allowed IS to seize so much of Iraq in the first place. Or Vietnam. There are deep reasons for these failures. Making good soldiers is a very complex business. A few days "instruction" by a foreigner who doesn't even speak their language does not do it. As IS itself shows, civil wars are not won by better weapons or technical skills, but by stronger motivation and morale. Foreign advisers cannot supply that. This means that Barack Obama's current campaign against IS is almost certain to fail. So what are the alternatives? The best would be to secure large-scale support from the major regional powers who have most at stake in the future of Iraq and Syria. Turkey, Iran and Saudi Arabia have the forces and resources to defeat IS if they choose to use them. But they do not share Obama's strategic objectives in the region, and they are bitter rivals themselves. They will not follow America's leadership. That seems to leave only one option - to commit US and coalition land forces to fight and defeat IS on the ground themselves. Many people already believe we should do this, and their numbers will grow. Already the counter-insurgency experts are calling for a coalition ground campaign. But we should be under no illusion what that would mean. A few thousand Western troops will not make any real difference. Many, many more would be needed. [ISIS] [Airpower] [Strategic incoherence] [Australia]
• Panetta’s Memoir Blasts Obama On His Leadership, Blames Him For State Of Iraq And Syria
  By Lauren Walker Filed: 10/10/14 at 6:44 PM "Worthy Fights" by Leon Panetta "Worthy Fights" by Leon Panetta Penguin Press Filed Under: World, Leon Panetta, CIA, Secretary of Defense, Torture, torture report, Congress, Hillary Clinton, Iraq, Iraq War, al Qaeda, Syria, Syrian rebels, chemical weapons, Civil Rights, richard nixon, Worthy Fights Though memoirs are nothing new to Washington, their contents can be particularly cutting when faulting a current president—and Obama’s been hit with a series of not-so-happy former cabinet members’ tell-all-ish books lately. [US global strategy] [Obama] [Dissension]
• US/Syria: Investigate Possible Unlawful US Strikes
  At Least 7 Civilians Dead; Residents Say No Evident Military Target September 28, 2014 The United States and its allies in Syria should be taking all feasible precautions to avoid harming civilians. The US government should investigate possible unlawful strikes that killed civilians, publicly report on them, and commit to appropriate redress measures in case of wrongdoing. Nadim Houry, deputy Middle East and North Africa director (New York) – Apparent US missile strikes on Idlib in Syria that killed at least seven civilians should be investigated for possible violations of the laws of war. On September 25, 2014, in statements to the press, Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said the United States was looking into reports of civilian casualties in Syria from their strikes but that the US military had “no credible reporting from operational sources” of civilian deaths. Three local residents told Human Rights Watch that missiles killed at least two men, two women, and five children, in the early morning hours on September 23 in the village of Kafr Deryan in northern Idlib. There is unverified information that the two men could have been members of the extremist Islamist armed group Jabhat al-Nusra. Video footage corroborates the witness accounts that civilians were killed by Tomahawk cruise missiles, which are in the US arsenal. [Civilian] [Causalities]
• Here’s Everything Wrong with the White House’s War on the Islamic State
  The Obama administration’s war plans in Iraq and Syria are illegal, ill-conceived, and destined to fail. Here's what the U.S.—and you—can do instead. By Peter Certo, October 1, 2014. This article is a joint publication of Foreign Policy In Focus and TheNation.com. If Barack Obama owes his presidency to one thing, it was the good sense he had back in 2002 to call George W. Bush’s plans to go to war in Iraq what they were: “dumb.” (The war was many other things too—illegal, cynical, not to mention disastrous—but “dumb” was pretty good for a guy running for Senate back when both parties had largely lined up behind the war.) Since then, Obama’s had his ups and downs with the antiwar voters who delivered his 2008 nomination and subsequent election. But throughout the arguments over drones, Afghanistan, Libya, and NSA spying—among other issues—Obama could always come back to these voters and say: Hey, at least I ended the war in Iraq. What do you think the Republicans would have done? But now, with scarcely a whisper of serious debate, Obama has become the fourth consecutive U.S. president to launch a war in Iraq—and in fact has outdone his predecessors by spreading the war to Syria as well, launching strikes not only on fighters linked to the Islamic State (IS, or ISIS) but also on the al-Qaeda-linked al-Nusra Front and al-Khorasan. This was no minor escalation. According to the Washington Post, the United States and its Arab allies dropped more explosives on Syria in their first engagement there than U.S. forces had dropped over all of Iraq in the preceding month. It was the largest single U.S. military operation since NATO’s intervention in Libya was launched back in 2011. [ISIS] [Legality] [Strategic incoherence]
• The Afghanistan Withdrawal: A Potential Disaster in the Making
  Disputes over Iraq have distracted Americans from a more important debate. Peter Beinart Oct 15 2014, 11:03 Planes carrying Defense Secretary Leon Panetta's delegation leave Forward Operating Base Shukvani in Afghanistan. (Reuters) For weeks now, the media has been gleefully recounting what former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta thinks about the decision by his old boss, President Obama, to withdraw American troops from Iraq. “Panetta unloads on White House for pulling US forces out of Iraq,” read a recent Fox News headline. “Leon Panetta blows whistle on lies about Iraq,” announced Jennifer Rubin in The Washington Post. Fine. Panetta has every right to bash Obama for ignoring his advice and withdrawing too many U.S. troops too fast. And given the disaster that Iraq is today, it’s only natural that the press would cover the comments. But what the reporters interviewing Panetta generally don’t ask is what he thinks about Obama’s decision to withdraw troops from Afghanistan. That’s a shame, because if the Iraq-troop debate is about assigning blame for tragic decisions in the past, the Afghanistan-troop debate is about deciding whether to implement potentially tragic decisions in the future. Afghanistan, in other words, is the troop-withdrawal debate that really matters right now. Yet it gets almost no play in the media. If it did, Americans might realize that we may be headed for disaster yet again. [US global strategy] [Afghanistan]
• Iraq’s Descent into Chaos
  by Patrick Cockburn Iraq is descending into savage sectarian warfare as government-backed Shia militias kill, torture and hold for ransom any Sunni whom they detain. Isis is notorious for its mass killings of Shia, but retaliation by Shia militiamen means that Iraq is returning to the levels of sectarian slaughter last seen in the Sunni-Shia civil war of 2006-07 when tens of thousands were murdered. The Shia militias have become the main fighting force of the Baghdad government since the Iraqi army was defeated by Isis when it took northern Iraq in June. According to a detailed Amnesty International report published today, the militias enjoy total immunity in committing war crimes against the Sunni community, often demanding large ransoms but killing their victims even when the money is paid. The re-emergence of the Shia militias and the failure to rebuild the Iraqi army is torpedoing the US and British policy of supporting a more inclusive and less sectarian government in Baghdad. The aim was to create a government that could reach out to Iraq’s five or six million-strong Sunni community and seek to turn it against Isis. But, since the militias treat all Sunni men as Isis fighters or supporters, the Sunni are left with no choice but to stick with the jihadi militants. [Sectarianism] [Iraq]
• Obama Knew Arming Rebels Was Useless, But Did It Anyway
  By Dan Froomkin ?@froomkin Yesterday at 10:07 PM What’s worse: Launching a disastrous military campaign under false pretenses to achieve goals you wrongly believe are attainable? Or launching a disastrous military campaign you know is doomed in order to help your party win an election? I ask in light of today’s New York Times story about how President Obama asked the CIA a while back whether arming rebel forces – pretty much the agency’s signature strategy — had ever worked in the past. He was told that it almost never has. But then in June, once the political pressure for intervention in Syria got too great, he did just that — sending weapons to rebels fighting the Syrian military. Yes: He knew better, but he did it anyway. Political (and media) pressure was also a major factor behind last month’s shifting of those gun-running efforts to counter the Islamic State, instead of the Syrian military – and the launch of ineffective if not counter-productive strikes by U.S. planes and missiles. Obama could have leveled with the American public and said: Look, there’s not much we can do to help over there. Pretty much everything my best people have come up with only makes things worse. If there’s a solution at all, it’s for the Saudis and the Iranians and the Turks to make this their problem. But that probably would have been cast by the elite media — not to mention Fox News — as surrender, costing the Democrats another few House and Senate races. So it wasn’t even a possibility. [Domestic]
• Nobel Prize winner Malala told Obama U.S. drone attacks fuel terrorism
  By Anita Kumar McClatchy Washington Bureau October 10, 2014 WASHINGTON — The teenager who became the youngest person to win the Nobel Peace Prize Friday told President Barack Obama at a White House meeting last year that she worried about the effect of U.S. drone strikes. The Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to Malala Yousafzai of Pakistan, as well as Kailash Satyarthi of India, for pushing for young people's rights, including the right to education. Malala, now 17, made international headlines after being shot in the head by the Taliban on a school bus two years ago for promoting education for girls in Pakistan. After recovering, she took her campaign for children’s education across the world, writing a book and even speaking at the United Nations last year. After she found out she won, Malala delivered a statement after classes ended Friday at her school in Birmingham, England. She thanked her parents, especially her father, for “not clipping my wings.” “A girl is not supposed to be the slave...A girl has the power to go forward in her life,” she said on CNN. “She’s not only a mother, she’s not only a sister, she’s not only a wife...She should have an identity. She should be recognized and she has equal rights as a boy.” She said she found out she won from a teacher while she was in chemistry class Friday morning at about 10:15 a.m. “I felt very honored. I felt more powerful and more courageous,” she said. “This is really an encouragement me to go forward.” In October 2013, Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama met with her in the Oval Office “to thank her for her inspiring and passionate work on behalf of girls education in Pakistan.”
  But in a statement released after the meeting, Malala said she was honored to have met with Obama, but that she told him she's worried about the effect of U.S. drone strikes. (The White House statement didn't mention that part.) "I thanked President Obama for the United States' work in supporting education in Pakistan and Afghanistan and for Syrian refugees," she said in the statement. "I also expressed my concerns that drone attacks are fueling terrorism. Innocent victims are killed in these acts, and they lead to resentment among the Pakistani people. If we refocus efforts on education it will make a big impact." [UAV] [Blowback]
• Understanding calls for reinstating the Islamic State
  Azzam Al-Kassir 14 October 2014 Maududi’s writings on implementing Sharia and Qutb’s radical approach contributed to Jihadist movements that have been multiplying like mushrooms since the mid-seventies of the last century. Creating an Islamic state ruled by the principles of Shari'a law is the cornerstone which a growing Islamic ideology depends on. But this general aim serves as an ideological façade concealing behind it a heterogeneous mixture of groups and organizations that differ in their strategies, priorities and interpretation of reality. Looking first at the shared elements among the upholders of political Islam, and the movements that arose from the political activism in the Arab world at the present time, we see how this placed numerous individuals and groups in a post-Sayyid Qutb context. This study gives special attention to the subjective factors that have enabled extremist religious ideas to influence public affairs, at the same time that objective factors - social, economic and political - paved the way for the spread of Jihadist thought. Finally, we ask how Islamic thought could be revived to overcome the negative impact of some of these extremist Islamic organizations on public affairs. The concept of an Islamic state, as first elaborated by Sayyid Abul A’la Maududi (1903 -1979), is a product of modernity. Despite this, great efforts were exuded to find ideological roots for an Islamic state grounded in historical evidence, while portraying the concept as theologically Islamic. In the introduction to his book Islamic theory and its contribution to politics, law and constitution, Maududi wrote: ‘It is urgent that we lift the veil upon the face of political Islamic theory, in the hopes that this intellectual darkness which has gripped society is revealed, and to restrain those mouths which foolishly claim that (Islam has not provided human society with a sociological or political structure). We will shed light upon those wandering in the dark ages; confused and misguided.’ As such, Maududi offered the term hakimiyya which was subsequently adopted and fully exploited by Sayyid Qutb (1906-1966). With Qutb, hakimiyya grew and branched out into jahiliyya (ignorance), takfeer (excommunication), and blind jihad. Some Islamists today refer to the ‘hakimiyya verses of the Quran’. [Islam] [Jihad]
• Despite Nobel win, Malala hated by many at home
  By AFP ISLAMABAD: Malala Yousafzai may have won the Nobel Peace Prize, but she remains an object of hate for many Pakistanis who view her as a Western agent on a mission to shame her country. Shot in the head by Taliban insurgents two years ago after she spoke out against them for opposing girls' education, it comes as little surprise that militants continue to revile the 17-year-old. More difficult for her supporters to comprehend is the outpouring of invective from Pakistan's middle classes, who may be keen to educate their daughters but who object to airing the country's problems abroad. “#MalalaYousafzai should b awarded Oscar Award instead of Nobel Prize,” tweeted user Adnan Karim Rana, a common refrain among detractors who believe her shooting, hospitalisation and coma were all staged as part of a conspiracy that involved Britain where she now lives.
• U.S.-led air war in Syria is off to a difficult start
  A female reporter runs with a rebel fighter to avoid snipers at the front line against Islamic State fighters in Aleppo's northern countryside Friday. (Jalal Al-Mamo/Reuters) By Liz Sly October 10 at 8:18 PM REYHANLI, Turkey — The U.S.-led air war in Syria has gotten off to a rocky start, with even the Syrian rebel groups closest to the United States turning against it, U.S. ally Turkey refusing to contribute and the plight of a beleaguered Kurdish town exposing the limitations of the strategy. U.S. officials caution that the strikes are just the beginning of a broader strategy that could take years to carry out. But the anger that the attacks have stirred risks undermining the effort, analysts and rebels say. The main beneficiary of the strikes so far appears to be President Bashar al-Assad, whose forces have taken advantage of the shift in the military balance to step up attacks against the moderate rebels designated by President Obama as partners of the United States in the war against extremists. The U.S. targets have included oil facilities, a granary and an electricity plant under Islamic State control. The damage to those facilities has caused shortages and price hikes across the rebel-held north that are harming ordinary Syrians more than the well-funded militants, residents and activists say. At the start of the air campaign, dozens of U.S. cruise missiles were fired into areas controlled by the moderate rebels, who are supposed to be fighting the Islamic State. Syrians who had in the past appealed for American intervention against Assad have been staging demonstrations denouncing the United States and burning the American flag [ISIS] [Airpower] [Blowback]
• Let’s not misread Mongolia’s supposed ‘rebalance’ to Russia and China
  Author: Jeffrey Reeves, APCSS 7 October 2014 The close timing of Chinese president Xi Jinping’s and Russian president Vladimir Putin’s recent visits has led a number of analysts to claim Mongolia has abandoned its ‘Third Neighbour’ diplomacy — a long-held policy to build relations with non-border countries — for a consortium with Beijing and Moscow. Pointing to Mongolia’s uneven economic relations with Beijing, dependence on Russian oil and gas imports and slowing growth, these analysts argue that Mongolia has ‘rebalanced’ to China and Russia out of necessity. But this reasoning is not only short-sighted, it also represents a fundamental misreading of trends in Mongolia’s domestic and foreign affairs. Closer consideration of current developments in Mongolia reveals a different story. Mongolia’s tactics should not be conflated with its strategy. Since 1994, Mongolia’s foreign policy strategy has been to ensure its national security and economic growth through widespread engagement with as many states as possible. Mongolia’s engagement with China and Russia — both neither new nor all-encompassing — is a tactic to achieve this strategy, not a strategy itself. Mongolia maintains similar tactical contacts with states as diverse as Canada, Turkey, India and Japan. Often misunderstood, Mongolia’s Third Neighbour Policy is a three-part strategy of economic, political and military engagement. The tactical economic engagement with China (supposedly the main indicator for the ‘rebalance’ thesis) is just one limited component of Mongolia’s overall foreign policy approach. Mongolia maintains deep political engagement with a wide range of states and international institutions, including Japan, Germany, Hungary, South Korea, North Korea, and the United Nations. The military component also remains robust, particularly in relation to the United States and the UN. If anything, these aspects of the policy have strengthened as multilateral economic exchange has weakened.
• Probe of silencers leads to web of Pentagon secrets
  By Craig Whitlock October 12 at 7:30 PM ? The mysterious workings of a Pentagon office that oversees clandestine operations are unraveling in federal court, where a criminal investigation has exposed a secret weapons program entwined with allegations of a sweetheart contract, fake badges and trails of destroyed evidence. Capping an investigation that began almost two years ago, separate trials are scheduled this month in U.S. District Court in Alexandria, Va., for a civilian Navy intelligence official and a hot-rod auto mechanic from California who prosecutors allege conspired to manufacture an untraceable batch of automatic-rifle silencers. The exact purpose of the silencers remains hazy, but court filings and pretrial testimony suggest they were part of a top-secret operation that would help arm guerrillas or commandos overseas. [Corruption] [Assassination] [False flag]
• US Middle East Strategy in Tatters
  by Patrick Cockburn America’s plans to fight Islamic State are in ruins as the militant group’s fighters come close to capturing Kobani and have inflicted a heavy defeat on the Iraqi army west of Baghdad. The US-led air attacks launched against Islamic State (also known as Isis) on 8 August in Iraq and 23 September in Syria have not worked. President Obama’s plan to “degrade and destroy” Islamic State has not even begun to achieve success. In both Syria and Iraq, Isis is expanding its control rather than contracting. Isis reinforcements have been rushing towards Kobani in the past few days to ensure that they win a decisive victory over the Syrian Kurdish town’s remaining defenders. The group is willing to take heavy casualties in street fighting and from air attacks in order to add to the string of victories it has won in the four months since its forces captured Mosul, the second-largest city in Iraq, on 10 June. Part of the strength of the fundamentalist movement is a sense that there is something inevitable and divinely inspired about its victories, whether it is against superior numbers in Mosul or US airpower at Kobani. In the face of a likely Isis victory at Kobani, senior US officials have been trying to explain away the failure to save the Syrian Kurds in the town, probably Isis’s toughest opponents in Syria. “Our focus in Syria is in degrading the capacity of [Isis] at its core to project power, to command itself, to sustain itself, to resource itself,” said US Deputy National Security Adviser Tony Blinken, in a typical piece of waffle designed to mask defeat. “The tragic reality is that in the course of doing that there are OR Book Going Rougegoing to be places like Kobani where we may or may not be able to fight effectively.” Unfortunately for the US, Kobani isn’t the only place air strikes are failing to stop Isis. In an offensive in Iraq launched on 2 October but little reported in the outside world, Isis has captured almost all the cities and towns it did not already hold in Anbar province, a vast area in western Iraq that makes up a quarter of the country. It has captured Hit, Kubaisa and Ramadi, the provincial capital, which it had long fought for. Other cities, towns and bases on or close to the Euphrates River west of Baghdad fell in a few days, often after little resistance by the Iraqi Army which showed itself to be as dysfunctional as in the past, even when backed by US air strikes. [ISIS] [Turkey]
• ISIS: Made on the Net?
  by Robert Fisk Ever since the Pentagon started talking about Isis as apocalyptic, I’ve suspected that websites and blogs and YouTube are taking over from reality. I’m even wondering whether “Isis” – or Islamic State or Isil, here we go again – isn’t more real on the internet than it is on the ground. Not, of course, for the Kurds of Kobani or the Yazidis or the beheaded victims of this weird caliphate. But isn’t it time we woke up to the fact that internet addiction in politics and war is even more dangerous than hard drugs? Over and over, we have the evidence that it is not Isis that “radicalises” Muslims before they head off to Syria – and how I wish David Cameron would stop using that word – but the internet. The belief, the absolute conviction that the screen contains truth – that the “message” really is the ultimate verity – has still not been fully recognised for what it is; an extraordinary lapse in our critical consciousness that exposes us to the rawest of emotions – both total love and total hatred – without the means to correct this imbalance. The “virtual” has dropped out of “virtual reality”. [ISIS] [Social media]
• The United States is No. 1, But in What?
  by Lawrence Wittner American politicians are fond of telling their audiences that the United States is the greatest country in the world. Is there any evidence for this claim? Well, yes. When it comes to violence and preparations for violence, the United States is, indeed, No. 1. In 2013, according to a report by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, the U.S. government accounted for 37 percent of world military expenditures, putting it far ahead of all other nations. (The two closest competitors, China and Russia, accounted for 11 percent and 5 percent respectively.) From 2004 to 2013, the United States was also the No. 1 weapons exporter in the world. Moreover, given the U.S. government’s almost continuous series of wars and acts of military intervention since 1941, it seems likely that it surpasses all rivals when it comes to international violence. This record is paralleled on the domestic front, where the United States has more guns and gun-related deaths than any other country. A study released in late 2013 reported that the United States had 88 guns for every 100 people, and 40 gun-related deaths for every 400,000 people?the most of any of the 27 economically developed countries surveyed. By contrast, in Britain there were 6 guns per 100 people and 1 gun-related death per 400,000 people. Yet, in a great many other areas, the United States is not No. 1 at all. [Decline]
• Key Democrats, Led by Hillary Clinton, Leave No doubt that Endless War is Official U.S. Doctrine
  By Glenn Greenwald ?@ggreenwald Tuesday at 2:56 PM Long before Americans were introduced to the new 9/11 era super-villains called ISIS and Khorasan, senior Obama officials were openly and explicitly stating that America’s “war on terror,” already 12 years old, would last at least another decade. At first, they injected these decrees only anonymously; in late 2012, The Washington Post - disclosing the administration’s secret creation of a “disposition matrix” to decide who should be killed, imprisoned without charges, or otherwise “disposed” of - reported these remarkable facts: Among senior Obama administration officials, there is a broad consensus that such operations are likely to be extended at least another decade. Given the way al-Qaida continues to metastasize, some officials said no clear end is in sight. . . . That timeline suggests that the United States has reached only the midpoint of what was once known as the global war on terrorism.” In May, 2013, the Senate Armed Services Committee held a hearing on whether it should revise the 2001 Authorization to Use Military Force (AUMF). A committee member asked a senior Pentagon official, Assistant Secretary Michael Sheehan, how long the war on terror would last; his reply: “At least 10 to 20 years.” At least. A Pentagon spokesperson confirmed afterward “that Sheehan meant the conflict is likely to last 10 to 20 more years from today — atop the 12 years that the conflict has already lasted.” As Spencer Ackerman put it: “Welcome to America’s Thirty Years War,” one which – by the Obama administration’s own reasoning – has “no geographic limit.” Listening to all this, Maine’s independent Sen. Angus King said: “This is the most astounding and most astoundingly disturbing hearing that I’ve been to since I’ve been here. You guys have essentially rewritten the Constitution today.” Former Bush DOJ lawyer Jack Goldsmith – himself an ardent advocate of broad presidential powers – was at the hearing and noted that nobody even knows against whom this endless war is being waged: “Amazingly, there is a very large question even in the Armed Services Committee about who the United States is at war against and where, and how those determinations are made.” [MISCOM]
• ISIS in Washington: America's soundtrack of hysteria
  Tom Engelhardt 9 October 2014 Inside America’s system of terror-mongering: how it works, why it works, who benefits from it, and how it completes the demobilization of the American people. It happened so fast that, at first, I didn’t even take it in. Two Saturdays ago, a friend and I were heading into the Phillips Museum in Washington, D.C., to catch a show of neo-Impressionist art when we ran into someone he knew, heading out. I was introduced and the usual chitchat ensued. At some point, she asked me, “Do you live here?” “No,” I replied, “I’m from New York.” She smiled, responded that it, too, was a fine place to live, then hesitated just a beat before adding in a quiet, friendly voice: “Given ISIS, maybe neither city is such a great place to be right now.” Goodbyes were promptly said and we entered the museum. All of this passed so quickly that I didn’t begin rolling her comment around in my head until we were looking at the sublime pointillist paintings of Georges Seurat and his associates. Only then did I think: ISIS, a danger in New York? ISIS, a danger in Washington? And I had the urge to bolt down the stairs, catch up to her, and say: whatever you do, don’t step off the curb. That’s where danger lies in American life. ISIS, not so much. [ISIS] [Hysteria]
• Intensified U.S. airstrikes keep Kobane from falling to Islamic State militants
  By Liz Sly and Brian Murphy October 7 at 4:47 PM ? ANTAKYA, Turkey — The U.S.-led coalition stepped up airstrikes around the Syrian border town of Kobane on Tuesday after Turkey appealed for help, enabling Kurdish fighters to reverse the advance of Islamic State militants for the first time since the extremists launched their assault about three weeks ago. The strikes followed the request by Turkey for intensified U.S. efforts to prevent the predominantly Kurdish town, known as Ayn al-Arab in Arabic, from falling to the Islamic State, Turkish officials said. Turkey has lined up tanks and troops within view of the Syrian Kurdish fighters defending Kobane but has not sought to intervene — for a tangle of reasons bound up with its complicated relationship with Kurds and its doubts about the goals of the international coalition fighting the extremists. Turkey insisted, however, that it does not want the town to fall, and a senior official said Ankara asked the United States on Monday to escalate strikes. “Turkey will not be content with the fall of Kobane into the hands of terrorist organizations,” Deputy Prime Minister Yalcin Akdogan said in a statement Tuesday. [ISIS] [Turkey]
• The Law of Futility: Air Strikes Against the Islamic State
  By Binoy Kampmark Global Research, October 06, 2014 War is a dirty, unforgiving business. It is not rendered clean by remote deployments and orders executed at a distance from seemingly safe areas. It takes lives, inflicts unspeakable harm, and rarely brings smiles to those who suffer it. But the members of the US-led coalition currently involved in striking Islamic State targets in Syria and Iraq would have you think otherwise. They give the impression that clean distances are golden, and air strikes will have their intended “degrading” effect. Therein lies the message about the false salvation of machinery – the technological panacea that rarely does what it is meant to. The notion that air power would win the day has been something of a fetish for enthusiasts, both of the prophetic and practising sort. It prophetically concerned H. G. Wells in The War in the Air(1908). It enraptured Britain’s blood lusting Air Marshal Arthur “Bomber” Harris during World War II, who believed in characteristically delusional fashion that his death sowing fleets won the war in exclusive fashion. Curtis “Demon” Le May fronted as the US equivalent, instrumental behind the striking of sixty-four Japanese cities between March and August 1945 that killed around 330,000 people. The doctrinal holy water, however, came from the font of the US Strategic Bombing Survey. At most times, however, such bombing took place alongside massive deployments of troops on the ground, a complementary union of industrially inflicted destruction. As sophisticated as weapons might ever be, the lack of ground impetus is a fundamental weakness to any assertions of effect. [Air power]
• Moazzam Begg was in contact with MI5 about his Syria visits, papers show
  Defence case corroborated as documents revealed agency told Begg he could continue work for opposition in Syria ‘unhindered’ Ian Cobain and Randeep Ramesh The Guardian, Thursday 2 October 2014 20.58 BST Moazzam Begg Documents handed to the CPS show Moazzam Begg was in contact with MI5 before and after his trips to Syria. Photograph: Rob Stothard/Getty Images The terrorism case against former Guantánamo inmate Moazzam Begg collapsed after MI5 belatedly gave police and prosecutors a series of documents that detailed the agency’s extensive contacts with him before and after his trips to Syria, the Guardian has learned. The documents included minutes of meetings that MI5 officers and lawyers held with Begg, at which he discussed his travel plans and explained he was assisting opposition fighters in their war against Bashar al-Assad’s regime. On seeing the material, Crown prosecutors realised it corroborated Begg’s defence case: he insists he was always perfectly candid with MI5, and says the agency assured him no attempt would be made to hinder him if he wanted to return to Syria. [Jihadist] [Outsourcing] [Double standards]
• Biden blames US allies in Middle East for rise of ISIS
  Published time: October 03, 2014 13:02 Edited time: October 03, 2014 16:53 US Vice-President Joe Biden has accused America’s key allies in the Middle East of allowing the rise of the Islamic State (IS), saying they supported extremists with money and weapons in their eagerness to oust the Assad regime in Syria. America’s “biggest problem” in Syria is its regional allies, Biden told students at the John F. Kennedy Jr. Forum at the Institute of Politics at Harvard University on Thursday. “Our allies in the region were our largest problem in Syria,” he said, explaining that Turkey, Saudi Arabia and the UAE were “so determined to take down Assad,” that in a sense they started a “proxy Sunni-Shia war” by pouring “hundreds of millions of dollars and tens of thousands of tons of weapons” towards anyone who would fight against Assad. “And we could not convince our colleagues to stop supplying them,” said Biden, thus disassociating the US from unleashing the civil war in Syria. “The outcome of such a policy now is more visible,” he said, as it turned out they supplied extremists from Al-Nusra Front and Al-Qaeda. All of a sudden the regional powers that sponsored anti-Assad rebels awakened to the dawn of a major international security threat in the face of ISIS – now called Islamic State. After being essentially thrown out of Iraq it found open space and territory in eastern Syria and established close ties with the Al-Nusra Front which the US had earlier declared a terrorist group. Now Washington needs a coalition of Sunni states to fight the Islamic State because “America can't once again go in to Muslim nation and be the aggressor, it has to be led by Sunnis, to attack a Sunni organization [the IS],” Biden said, acknowledging that it is for the first time that the US uses a geopolitical strategy. “Even if we wanted it to be, it cannot be our fight alone,” Biden said. “This cannot be turned into a US ground war against another Arab nation in the Middle East.” “But of what I’m more astonished is of his apparent amnesia about what America and Britain were trying to ferment in Syria only a year ago. They were not only putting staff intelligence personnel on the ground, and providing logistical support to the rebels in Syria; they were spearheading the campaign to try to oust Assad,” former MI5 agent Annie Machon told RT. She added that “Perhaps, the Vice President is finally learning some lessons from history. It does not matter who you think your friends are going to be in the region. Very often they will be taken over or subsumed into a more radical group.” [Outsourcing]
• Banks remain fearful of US-approved transfers to Iran
  Iranian-Americans attempting to send money to Iran for humanitarian purposes are still experiencing major difficulties despite US authorization and the creation of a special channel for some transactions under the interim accord on Iran's nuclear program. An Iranian-American doctor tells Al-Monitor that his charity’s efforts to send money to Iran for an orphanage led to his US bank account being closed. Author Barbara Slavin Posted October 2, 2014 When Mohammad Farivar, a gastroenterologist who teaches at Boston University and Harvard Medical School, tried to send slightly more than $100,000 to Iran this summer from his charity’s long-standing account at what is now Santander Bank, he found it not only impossible to complete the transaction, but was also notified shortly thereafter that his account would be summarily closed. The doctor shared his correspondence with the bank, and his frustrations, with Al-Monitor. Farivar said he had collected the funds from Iranian-Americans in the Boston area on behalf of the Earthquake Relief Fund for Orphans, a charity he founded more than two decades ago, to build an addition to an orphanage in the Iranian city of Kashan. He deposited the money in the organization’s account at Santander, which took over Sovereign Bank, where the charity opened an account in 1990. Farivar's nonprofit has aided earthquake victims in other countries, including Pakistan, and it sent money to Iran following the 2004 earthquake in Bam. Farivar said he decided to go forward with the Kashan project because a year ago, the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), which deals with sanctions, gave blanket approval for such activities. A Treasury official confirmed to Al-Monitor that on Sept. 10, 2013, the department issued a general license permitting US nongovernmental groups “to provide certain humanitarian and not-for-profit services to Iran that directly benefit the Iranian people.” The license authorizes funds transfers in support of such activities of up to half a million dollars a year. Iranian-Americans are also authorized to send personal remittances to family and friends in Iran. The official said, “So long as the funds originating from a US financial institution are routed through a third country, the ultimate destination could be either a non-designated [not sanctioned] Iranian bank or money service provider.” The official added that this mechanism predates the interim nuclear deal signed with Iran last November. When Farivar tried to wire the money from the charity’s account to an individual at an HSBC bank in Hong Kong for transfer to Iran, Santander closed the account. Farivar complained to Roman Blanco, president of Santander’s operations in the United States. Blanco did not respond, but JoAnn Gruber, a vice president of the Spain-based bank who manages customer relations with Americans, replied in a Sept. 26 letter that Farivar shared with Al-Monitor. Gruber wrote, “Any decision to close an account is our decision and no information regarding such a decision is communicated, released or provided to any individual or entity outside of the bank.” According to Farivar, “They closed a legitimate account because I tried to send money to a person in China” to then transfer to Iran following OFAC guidance. Blanco did not respond to an email inquiry from Al-Monitor. [Financial sanctions] [Treasury] [Iran]
• Divisions Could Weaken U.S.-Led Coalition in Iraq and Syria
  Analysis September 29, 2014 | 1439 ? Print ? Text Size ? A Coalition Divided Between Iraq and Syria Presents Risks Summary Over the past week, the U.S.-led coalition carrying out airstrikes against Islamic State positions in Iraq and Syria has expanded to include several new members. This has enhanced its overall combat power and spread the burden more equitably. The British parliament voted Sept. 26 to join the group and has already commenced airstrikes over Iraq. Denmark and Belgium also decided to participate in direct combat operations. These new partners join two European peers, France and the Netherlands, as well as Australia. Notably, these six countries have chosen to restrict their combat roles to Iraq. This contrasts with the role of the United States' five Arab partners -- Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates -- which have been carrying out airstrikes with the United States in Syria since operations expanded there Sept. 23. This odd division of labor does not operate in the interest of efficiency but is instead an artifact of the complicated and juxtaposed reality on the ground and in the political arena. The battleground against the Islamic State is ostensibly divided between the sovereign states of Iraq and Syria. In reality, however, it is a single space spread over what has become an imaginary border. The divided coalition reflects the members' divergent political views on how to manage the respective situations of Iraq and Syria. Ultimately, the arrangement artificially separates what should be treated as a single battlefield and a single enemy. This weakens the coalition, confuses desired outcomes and often limits operations to what will appease all members. [ISIS] [US global strategy] [Alliance] [Client]
• Failure is success: how American intelligence works in the 21st century
  Tom Engelhardt 3 October 2014 Is repeated failure actually the key to the success and endless expansion of the US intelligence community? What are the odds? You put about $68 billion annually into a maze of 17 major intelligence outfits. You build them glorious headquarters. You create a global surveillance state for the ages. You listen in on your citizenry and gather their communications in staggering quantities. Your employees even morph into avatars and enter video-game landscapes, lest any Americans betray a penchant for evil deeds while in entertainment mode. You collect information on visits to porn sites just in case, one day, blackmail might be useful. You pass around naked photos of them just for...well, the salacious hell of it. Your employees even use aspects of the system you’ve created to stalk former lovers and, within your arcane world, that act of "spycraft" gains its own name: LOVEINT. You listen in on foreign leaders and politicians across the planet. You bring on board hundreds of thousands of crony corporate employees, creating the sinews of an intelligence-corporate complex of the first order. You break into the “backdoors” of the data centers of major Internet outfits to collect user accounts. You create new outfits within outfits, including an ever-expanding secret military and intelligence crew embedded inside the military itself (and not counted among those 17 agencies). Your leaders lie to Congress and the American people without, as far as we can tell, a flicker of self-doubt. Your acts are subject to secret courts, which only hear your versions of events and regularly rubberstamp them–and whose judgments and substantial body of lawmaking are far too secret for Americans to know about. You have put extraordinary effort into ensuring that information about your world and the millions of documents you produce doesn’t make it into our world. You even have the legal ability to gag American organizations and citizens who might speak out on subjects that would displease you (and they can’t say that their mouths have been shut). You undoubtedly spy on Congress. You hack into congressional computer systems. And if whistleblowers inside your world try to tell the American public anything unauthorized about what you’re doing, you prosecute them under the Espionage Act, as if they were spies for a foreign power (which, in a sense, they are, since you treat the American people as if they were a foreign population). You do everything to wreck their lives and–should one escape your grasp–you hunt him implacably to the ends of the Earth. As for your top officials, when their moment is past, the revolving door is theirs to spin through into a lucrative mirror life in the intelligence-corporate complex. [MISCOM] [Intelligence]
• Radovan Karadžic tells war crimes trial there was no ethnic cleansing in Bosnia
  Ex-Bosnian Serb leader makes stunning remark at end of ICC trial in The Hague, saying he was a ‘true friend to Muslims’ Julian Borger in The Hague The Guardian, Wednesday 1 October 2014 14.44 BST Radovan Karadžic said the court was a politically-inspired western creation that was biased against Serbs. Photograph: Michael Kooren/AFP/Getty Images The former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadžic has told a war crimes trial there was no systematic “ethnic cleansing” of the territory under his control during the Bosnian conflict. Karadžic made the dramatic claim at the end of a five-year trial for genocide and crimes against humanity in The Hague, the biggest war crimes trial in Europe since the Nuremberg tribunal for Nazi atrocities. Taking advantage of his last opportunity to make a public declaration before a verdict is reached, Karadžic portrayed himself as innocent, and said the court was a politically inspired western creation that was biased against Serbs. “It is the Serb people who stand accused,” he said. “There was never been a situation where so many decent, innocent people, mostly Serbs, are imprisoned outside their country, while the murderers of Serbs go free.” Dressed in a charcoal suit and red tie, Karadžic delivered an often rambling rebuttal of the charges against him, frequently referring to himself in the third person. “The entire case against me is false,” he said. “I really was a true friend to the Muslims.” Karadzic added: “I know of no one in the Serb leadership who wanted to harm Muslims or Croats.” [Double standards] [War crimes] [Media]
• Why stop at Isis when we could bomb the whole Muslim world?
  Humanitarian arguments, if consistently applied, could be used to flatten the entire Middle East George Monbiot The Guardian, Tuesday 30 September 2014 19.26 BST A military plane 'Now we have a new target, and a new reason to dispense mercy from the sky, with similar prospects of success.' Photograph: ASAP/ECPAD/Corbis Let’s bomb the Muslim world – all of it – to save the lives of its people. Surely this is the only consistent moral course? Why stop at Islamic State (Isis), when the Syrian government has murdered and tortured so many? This, after all, was last year’s moral imperative. What’s changed? How about blasting the Shia militias in Iraq? One of them selected 40 people from the streets of Baghdad in June and murdered them for being Sunnis. Another massacred 68 people at a mosque in August. They now talk openly of “cleansing” and “erasure” once Isis has been defeated. As a senior Shia politician warns, “we are in the process of creating Shia al-Qaida radical groups equal in their radicalisation to the Sunni Qaida [ISIS] [Double standards]
• Argentina president claims US plotting to oust her
  Cristina Fernández de Kirchner alludes to alleged plot against her by local businessmen and ‘foreign help’ in televised speech Uki Goni in Buenos Aires The Guardian, Wednesday 1 October 2014 18.36 BST Argentina President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner was accused of being ‘out of touch with reality’ by Argentinian opposition politicians. Photograph: Justin Lane/EPA Argentinian opposition politicians have accused the country’s president, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, of being “completely out of touch with reality” after she gave a rambling televised address in which she claimed the US may be behind a plot to overthrow her government and possibly even assassinate her. “If something should happen to me, don’t look to the Middle East, look to the North,” Fernández said during the address on Tuesday night, in which she alluded to an alleged plot against her by local bankers and businessmen “with foreign help”. Fernández had previously claimed to have received death threats from Islamic State (Isis) because of her friendship with Pope Francis. In last night’s speech, however, she seemed to suggest the threats against her, received in three emails to Argentinian security officials, had come from the US. Her claim comes in the wake of a rapid deterioration of Argentina’s already rocky relationship with the US after the country went into default in August. Argentina has rejected paying $1.3bn (£990m) awarded by New York Judge Thomas Griesa to “vulture fund” investors who refused to accept a “haircut” on Argentinian bonds from the country’s previous default in 2001. “I’m not naive, this is not an isolated move by a senile judge in New York,” said Fernández. “Because vultures look a lot like the eagles of empires,” referring to the bald eagle, the national symbol of the US. [Subversion] [Media]
• Theresa May plans new powers to ban extremists from TV appearances
  Gagging order with echoes of Sinn Féin ban aimed at those who undertake activities ‘for the purpose of overthrowing democracy’ Alan Travis, home affairs editor The Guardian, Tuesday 30 September 2014 Radical Islamist extremists and neo-Nazis could be banned from making public appearances including on television under a gagging order proposed by the Conservatives with echoes of the broadcast ban that once applied to the voice of Gerry Adams. Theresa May will announce the measure as part of a widely drawn counter-extremism strategy that is intended to catch so-called hate preachers such as Anjem Choudary, who was released on bail last week after being arrested on suspicion of encouraging terrorism. The home secretary’s new orders would be aimed at those who undertake activities “for the purpose of overthrowing democracy”, a wide-ranging definition that could also catch a far wider range of political activists. [Repression] [Hysteria]
• British PM David Cameron: “Non-Violent Extremists” Including “9/11 Truthers” and “Conspiracy Theorists” are Just as Dangerous as ISIL Terrorists
  An Open Letter By Peter Drew Global Research, September 29, 2014 Dear Mr Cameron I write this open letter to you in response to your recent speech at the United Nations calling for military intervention in Iraq and Syria over the threat of ISIL. In particular I would like to make mention of your reference to the so called threat to society of what you have termed ‘non-violent extremists’, including those who are attempting to bring forward information and evidence about 9/11 which contradicts the official version of events. Putting aside the direct issue of ISIL for a moment, I find this position on 9/11 evidence to be quite incredible. It is a position that is either extremely ignorant, or it is a position that goes against freedom and democracy in British society to such an extent that it is scarcely believable. Huge numbers of extremely credible and professional people across the world are now bringing forward incontrovertible facts and evidence showing us that the events of 9/11 have been systematically covered up, and that the public has been deceived and manipulated on this issue at a quite incredible level. Just like the public was deceived and manipulated about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. While you are labelling these people who bring this evidence forward about 9/11 as ‘non-violent extremists’, are you aware of what is currently happening in New York City regarding 9/11? [9/11]
• Managing a Nightmare: How the CIA Watched Over the Destruction of Gary Webb
  By Ryan Devereaux ?@rdevro 09/25/2014 Eighteen years after it was published, “Dark Alliance,” the San Jose Mercury News’s bombshell investigation into links between the cocaine trade, Nicaragua’s Contra rebels, and African American neighborhoods in California, remains one of the most explosive and controversial exposés in American journalism. The 20,000-word series enraged black communities, prompted Congressional hearings, and became one of the first major national security stories in history to blow up online. It also sparked an aggressive backlash from the nation’s most powerful media outlets, which devoted considerable resources to discredit author Gary Webb’s reporting. Their efforts succeeded, costing Webb his career. On December 10, 2004, the journalist was found dead in his apartment, having ended his eight-year downfall with two .38-caliber bullets to the head. These days, Webb is being cast in a more sympathetic light. He’s portrayed heroically in a major motion picture set to premiere nationwide next month. And documents newly released by the CIA provide fresh context to the “Dark Alliance” saga — information that paints an ugly portrait of the mainstream media at the time.
  Webb’s troubles began in August 1996, when his employer, the San Jose Mercury News, published a groundbreaking, three-part investigation he had worked on for more than a year. Carrying the full title “Dark Alliance: The Story Behind the Crack Explosion,” Webb’s series reported that in addition to waging a proxy war for the U.S. government against Nicaragua’s revolutionary Sandinista government in the 1980s, elements of the CIA-backed Contra rebels were also involved in trafficking cocaine to the U.S. in order to fund their counter-revolutionary campaign. The secret flow of drugs and money, Webb reported, had a direct link to the subsequent explosion of crack cocaine abuse that had devastated California’s most vulnerable African American neighborhoods. [Subversion] [Drugs] [Media]
• The Fake Terror Threat Used To Justify Bombing Syria
  By Glenn Greenwald and Murtaza Hussain ?@ggreenwald?@mazmhussain Sunday at 4:11 PM As the Obama Administration prepared to bomb Syria without congressional or U.N. authorization, it faced two problems. The first was the difficulty of sustaining public support for a new years-long war against ISIS, a group that clearly posed no imminent threat to the “homeland.” A second was the lack of legal justification for launching a new bombing campaign with no viable claim of self-defense or U.N. approval. The solution to both problems was found in the wholesale concoction of a brand new terror threat that was branded “The Khorasan Group.” After spending weeks depicting ISIS as an unprecedented threat — too radical even for Al Qaeda! — administration officials suddenly began spoon-feeding their favorite media organizations and national security journalists tales of a secret group that was even scarier and more threatening than ISIS, one that posed a direct and immediate threat to the American Homeland. Seemingly out of nowhere, a new terror group was created in media lore. [Disinformation] [Media] [US Syria policy]
• From Tory tax cuts to the war in Iraq, we’re lurching backwards
  Cameron’s Conservatives are replaying Thatcher and Blair. But it’s a past we need to escape from Seumas Milne The Guardian, Thursday 2 October 2014 Margaret Thatcher and David Cameron at No 10 ‘It may not offer a Falklands factor for the election, but Cameron is already wrapping himself in the union jack to pick up whatever war leader’s dividend might be available before the price of intervention becomes clear.’ Photograph: Eddie Mulholland/Rex The Tories have always made a virtue out of being retro. “I am very proud of Nanny,” the fogey MP Jacob Rees-Mogg declared to an adoring crowd on Tuesday. But they have truly gone back to the future in Birmingham. The spin has been that the Conservatives are now the party of “progress, compassion and social justice”. The unmistakable message of the conference, however, is that they are heading backwards on all fronts.
  It may not offer a Falklands factor for the election, but Cameron is already wrapping himself in the union jack to pick up whatever war leader’s dividend might be available before the price of intervention becomes clear. [Hysteria] [Domestic]
• And Now, Ladies an’ Gentlemen: Obama’s ‘War on Ebola’…
  William Engdahl For a Nobel Peace Prize President, Barack Obama seems destined to go down in history books as the President who presided over one of the most aggressive series of wars ever waged by a bellicose Washington Administration. Not even George Bush and Dick Cheney came close. First, before the ink was even dry on his Nobel Prize certificate, Obama announced the Afghanistan “surge”, pouring another 30,000 US military into that destroyed part of the world. Then came Obama’s war against Libya’s Qaddafi, followed rapidly by his war to try to topple Syria’s Bashar al Assad. Soon after came Obama’s “war for democracy in Ukraine,” otherwise better called Obama’s attempt to provoke Russia into a new war confrontation with NATO by backing a gaggle of Ukrainian oligarchs, criminals and outright neo-nazis in Kiev. In July of this year, Obama’s Administration was pushing the President to launch a second try at bombing Syria back to the Stone Age, allegedly to destroy ISIS, a looney Jihadist Sunni sect that was said to be a joint venture of the CIA and Israeli intelligence. Now Obama’s advisers, no doubt led by the blood-thirsty National Security Adviser, Susan Rice, have come up with a new war. This is the War Against Ebola. On September 16, President Obama solemnly declared the war. He announced, to the surprise of most sane citizens, that he had ordered 3,000 American troops, the so-called “boots on the ground” that the Pentagon refuses to agree to in Syria, to wage a war against….a virus? First appeared: http://journal-neo.org/2014/10/02/and-now-ladies-an-gentlemen-obama-s-war-on-ebola/ [Ebola] [Militarisation] [Pretext] [Obama]

• US Global Power in the 21st Century: Military or Economic Imperialism?
  By Prof. James Petras Global Research, September 29, 2014 Despite vast amounts of imperial data to the contrary, the great majority of writers on imperialism continue to describe and analyze US imperialism strictly in economic terms, as an expansion of “capital accumulation”, “accumulation on a world scale”. In fact the major and minor US imperial wars have more to do with “capital dis-accumulation”, in the sense that trillion dollar flows have gone out from the US, hundreds of billions of dollars in profits from resource sites have been undermined, markets for exports have been severely weakened and exploitable productive labor has been uprooted. At the same time US imperialist state ‘dis-accumulates capital’, multi-national corporations, especially in the extractive sector are expanding, “accumulating capital” throughout Latin America. This new configuration of power, the conflicting and complementary nature of 21st century US imperialism, requires that we anchor our analysis in the real, existing behavior of imperial state and extractive capitalist policymakers. The basic premise informing this essay is that there are two increasingly divergent forms of imperialism: military driven intervention, occupation and domination; and economic expansion and exploitation of resources, markets and labor by invitation of the ‘host country’. We will proceed by examining the choices of imperial strategy, in a historical – comparative framework and the alternatives which were selected or rejected. Through an analysis of the practical decisions taken regarding ‘imperial expansion’ we can obtain insights into the real nature of US imperialism. The study of imperial strategic choices, past and present, state and corporate, requires three levels of analysis: global, national and sectoral. [Imperialism]
• Marina Silva, Female Evangelical Candidate, Could Win Brazil Presidency
  Reuters | By By Anthony Boadle Posted: 09/28/2014 7:00 am EDT Updated: 19 minutes ago BRASILIA, Sept 28 (Reuters) - Brazil's increasingly powerful evangelical Christians are tantalizingly close to electing one of their own as president next month in what would be a historic shift for the world's largest Catholic nation. Marina Silva, an environmentalist running neck and neck in polls with incumbent President Dilma Rousseff, is a Pentecostal Christian who often invokes God on the campaign trail and has said she sometimes consults the Bible for inspiration when making important political decisions. Some 65 percent of Brazil's 200 million people are Roman Catholics but evangelicals are rapidly gaining followers and power. They grew from 5 percent of the population in 1970 to more than 22 percent in 2010 and the trend has continued. Evangelical groups have made particular inroads among urban working Brazilians who benefited from economic prosperity over the last two decades and are now demanding a greater say in politics. Recent polls show evangelical voters would support Silva over Rousseff by a margin of about 54 percent to 38 percent if the two face each other in a runoff on Oct. 26, as most expect. In a tight race, that could swing the result. The evangelicals' rise has drawn comparisons to the "religious right" that began to influence U.S. politics in the 1980s. [Religion]
• U.S.-led strikes pressure al Qaeda’s Syria group to join with Islamic State
  Reuters, 26/09 21:03 CET By Mariam Karouny BEIRUT (Reuters) – Al Qaeda’s affiliate in Syria, the Nusra Front, is facing mounting pressure from its own members to reconcile with its rival Islamic State and confront a common enemy after U.S.-led air strikes hit both groups this week. But that move would require pledging loyalty to Islamic State, which has declared a caliphate in territory it controls in Iraq and Syria, which would effectively put an end to the Nusra Front, fighters in the group say. Nusra, long one of the most effective forces fighting Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, was weakened this year by battles with Islamic State, an al Qaeda splinter group that routinely employs ruthless methods such as beheadings and mass executions. The two share the same ideology and rigid Islamic beliefs, but fell out during a power struggle that pitted Islamic State head Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi against al Qaeda chief Ayman Zawahri and Nusra Front leader Abu Mohammad al-Golani. But U.S.-led air and missile strikes, which have hit Nusra as well as Islamic State bases in Syria, have angered many Nusra members who say the West and its allies have joined forces in a “crusader” campaign against Islam. [ISIS] [US Syria policy] [Blowback] [Intelligent design]
• Defense Contractors Are Making a Killing
  By Dan Froomkin Thursday at 5:23 PM Stock prices for Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics, Raytheon and Northrop Grumman set all-time record highs last week as it became increasingly clear that President Obama was committed to a massive, sustained air war in Iraq and Syria. It’s nothing short of a windfall for these and other huge defense contractors, who’ve been getting itchy about federal budget pressures that threatened to slow the rate of increase in military spending. Now, with U.S. forces literally blowing through tens of millions of dollars of munitions a day, the industry is not just counting on vast spending to replenish inventory, but hoping for a new era of reliance on supremely expensive military hardware. “To the extent we can shift away from relying on troops and rely more heavily on equipment — that could present an opportunity,” Jack Ablin, chief investment officer at BMO Private Bank, whose $66 billion portfolio includes Northrop Grumman Corp. and Boeing Co. shares, told Bloomberg. [MISCOM] [Intervention] [US global strategy] [Military expenditure]
• Syria-to-Ukraine Wars Send U.S. Defense Stocks to Records
  By Richard Clough Sep 25, 2014 2:47 PM GMT Led by Lockheed Martin Corp. (LMT), the biggest U.S. defense companies are trading at record prices as shareholders reap rewards from escalating military conflicts around the world. Investors see rising sales for makers of missiles, drones and other weapons as the U.S. hits Islamic State fighters in Syria and Iraq, said Jack Ablin, chief investment officer at Chicago-based BMO Private Bank. President Barack Obama approved open-ended airstrikes this month while ruling out ground combat. “As we ramp up our military muscle in the Mideast, there’s a sense that demand for military equipment and weaponry will likely rise,” said Ablin, who oversees $66 billion including Northrop Grumman Corp. (NOC) and Boeing Co. (BA) shares. “To the extent we can shift away from relying on troops and rely more heavily on equipment -- that could present an opportunity.” [MISCOM]
• The war on ISIS already has a winner: The defense industry
  by Tory Newmyer @FortuneMagazine September 13, 2014, 6:00 AM EDT Makers of munitions and unmanned aircraft top the list of private-sector beneficiaries. It’s far too soon to tell how the American escalation in the sprawling, complex mess unfolding in Iraq and Syria will play out. But this much is clear: As our military machine hums into a higher gear, it will produce some winners in the defense industry. New fights mean new stuff, after all. And following the U.S. withdrawal from Iraq and Afghanistan—and the belt-tightening at the Pentagon imposed by steep budget cuts—military suppliers are lining up to meet a suddenly restored need for their wares. Presenting his vision for expanding the confrontation with the terrorist group ISIS in a speech to the nation on Wednesday night, President Obama outlined a program of intensified airstrikes designed to keep American troops away from the danger on the ground. So defense analysts are pointing to a pair of sure-bet paydays from the new campaign: for those making and maintaining the aircraft, manned and unmanned, that will swarm the skies over the region, and for those producing the missiles and munitions that will arm them. [MISCOM]
• Rouhani: Syria airstrikes 'will only create tragedies'
  Iranian President Hassan Rouhani put forward his prescription for defeating the group that calls itself the Islamic State (IS), saying that local Iraqi and Syrian central government forces must be in the lead and that the United States was creating a new “terrorist group” by training and equipping members of the Free Syrian Army. Summary? Print Iran’s president said a nuclear agreement would open the prospect of more cooperation with the United States but criticized the American decision to give more support to Syrian rebels, warning that it could spawn more terrorism. Author Barbara Slavin Laura Rozen Posted September 24, 2014 Speaking to a large audience of Americans and Iranian Americans in a New York City ballroom on Sept. 24, Rouhani did not reply when asked if he had heard President Barack Obama offer his own ideas for eradicating Islamic extremism in a major speech just hours earlier before the UN General Assembly. US President Barack Obama spoke of the need for Muslim communities “to explicitly, forcefully and consistently reject the ideology of al-Qaeda and ISIL [another acronym for IS]” by accommodating “devout faith with a modern, multicultural world.” But Obama also said in relation to IS that “the only language understood by killers like this is the language of force.” While there was a certain overlap in their views in terms of advocating political inclusiveness in Iraq and Syria, Rouhani suggested that the bombardment of IS in Syria by a US-led coalition might backfire and produce more terrorist organizations.
• Fighting ISIS and the Morning After
  By Emile Nakhleh Emile Nakhleh is a research professor at the University of New Mexico, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and author of “A Necessary Engagement: Reinventing America’s Relations with the Muslim World.” Protesters in Ahrar Square in the Iraqi city of Mosul, January 2013. Credit: Beriwan Welat/IPS WASHINGTON, Sep 18 2014 (IPS) - As the wobbly anti-ISIS coalition is being formed with American prodding, the Obama administration should take a strategic look at the future of the Arab world beyond the threat posed by the self-declared Islamic State. Otherwise, the United States would be unprepared to deal with the unintended chaos. Driven by ideological hubris, the Bush administration on the eve of the Iraq war rejected any suggestions that the war could destabilise the whole region and rock the foundations of the Arab nation-state system. Invading Iraq was a “dumb” war. Chasing after ISIS in the Iraqi/Syrian desert without a clear vision of the endgame could result in something far worse. That system, which was mostly created under the colonial Sykes-Picot treaty of 1916, is now being severely stressed. The Obama administration should avoid repeating the tragic mistake of its predecessor. While trying to halt the advance of ISIS by focused airstrikes, and regardless of the coalition’s effectiveness in “degrading” and “defeating” ISIS, President Obama should instruct his senior policymakers to explore possible architectures that could emerge from the ashes of Sykes-Picot. The stresses and fault lines we are witnessing in the region today could easily lead to implosions tomorrow. Rightly or wrongly, Washington would be blamed for the ensuing mayhem. As Secretary of State John Kerry shuttles between countries chasing the elusive coalition to fight ISIS, the administration seems to be unclear even about terminology. Is it a war or a multifaceted counter-terrorism strategy against ISIS? Whatever it’s called, if this strategy fails to eradicate the Islamic State and its Caliphate, is there a “Plan B” in the making? Briefing senior policymakers on the eve of the Iraq war, I pointed out the possible unintended consequences of the invasion. George Tenet, former CIA director, alludes to several of these briefings in his book, “At the Center of the Storm.” One of the briefings discussed the possibility that the Iraq invasion could fundamentally unsettle the 100-year old Arab nation-state system. National identity politics, which heretofore has been managed and manipulated by autocratic regimes—tribal, dynastic, monarchical, and presidential—could unravel if the Bush administration failed to anticipate what could happen following Saddam’s demise. The artificiality of much of those states and their boundaries would come unhinged under the pressures of the invasion and the unleashing of internal forces that have been dormant. National loyalties would be replaced by religious and sectarian affiliations, and the Shia-Sunni disputes that go back to the 7th century would once again rise to the surface albeit with more violence and bloodshed. The briefings also emphasised Iraq’s central Islamic dilemma. While for many Sunni Muslims Baghdad represents the golden age of Islam more than 1,200 years ago, Iraq is also the cradle of Shia Islam. Najaf and Karbala in southern Iraq are sacred for the Shia world because it was there where the fourth Caliph Ali’s son Hussein was “martyred” and buried. Iran, as the self-proclaimed voice of Shia Islam all over the world, is deeply embedded in Iraq and will always demand a central role in the future of Iraq. Bush administration senior policymakers ignored these warnings, arguing Iraqis and other Muslim Arabs would view American and coalition forces as “liberators” and, once the dictator fell, would work together in a spirit of tolerance, inclusion, and compromise. This view, unfortunately, was grounded in the neocons’ imagined ideological perception of the region. As we now know, it was utterly ignorant of ground truths and the social fabric of the different Arab Islamic societies. [US global strategy] [Blowback] [Intelligent design]
• Militarizing the Ebola Crisis
  Few would oppose a robust U.S. response to Ebola, but the Obama administration's deployment of 3,000 troops to Liberia comes amid a broader U.S.-led militarization in West Africa. By Joeva Rock, September 24, 2014. Six months into West Africa’s Ebola crisis, the international community is finally heading calls for substantial intervention in the region. On September 16, President Obama announced a multimillion-dollar U.S. response to the spreading contagion. The crisis, which began in March 2014, has killed over 2,600 people, an alarming figure that experts say will rise quickly if the disease is not contained. Obama’s announcement comes on the heels of growing international impatience with what critics have called the U.S. government’s “infuriatingly” slow response to the outbreak. Assistance efforts have already stoked controversy, with a noticeable privilege of care being afforded to foreign healthcare workers over Africans. After two infected American missionaries were administered Zmapp, a life-saving experimental drug, controversy exploded when reports emerged that Doctors Without Borders had previously decided not to administer it to the Sierra Leonean doctor Sheik Umar Khan, who succumbed to Ebola after helping to lead the country’s fight against the disease. The World Health Organization similarly refused to evacuate the prominent Sierra Leonean doctor Olivet Buck, who later died of the disease as well. The Pentagon provoked its own controversy when it announced plans to deploy a $22 million, 25-bed U.S. military field hospital—reportedly for foreign health workers only. One particular component of the latest assistance package promises to be controversial as well: namely, the deployment of 3,000 U.S. troops to Liberia, where the U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) will establish a joint command operations base to serve as a logistics and training center for medical responders. [Ebola] [Militarisation] [US global strategy]
• Obama Launches an Illegal War in Syria
  President Obama’s decision to bomb Syria stands in stark violation of international law, the UN Charter, and the requirements of the U.S. Constitution. By Phyllis Bennis, September 24, 2014. President Obama’s decision to bomb Syria stands in stark violation of international law, the UN Charter, and the requirements of the U.S. Constitution. It contradicts his own commitment, stated a year ago in the UN General Assembly, to reverse Washington’s “perpetual war footing.” And it portends disaster for the people of Syria, the region, and much of the world. The White House stated goal is to destroy the headquarters of the violent and extremist ISIS militia. But you can’t bomb extremism out of existence. The U.S. bombs do not fall on “extremism,” they are falling on Raqqah, a 2,000 year-old Syrian city with a population of more than a quarter of a million people – men, women and children who had no say in the take-over of their city by ISIS. The Pentagon is bombing targets like the post office and the governor’s compound, and the likelihood of large number of civilian casualties as well as devastation of the ancient city, is almost certain. [US Syria policy] [Legality]
• The price of the US war on ISIS .
  Lamis Andoni Tuesday, 23 September 2014 14:10 .. ...from experience, we know that the American intervention will not weaken the spread of extremism, rather, it will increase the spread of extremism It is only natural for the Arab governments to support and even participate in the international alliance to face the Islamic State (ISIS). The issue for these governments is not a fear of the organisation itself, but because the war on ISIS will give them the chance to eliminate the forces of change, justify their oppression, establish a functional role for itself, and guarantee America's blessing and support. However, the elite's support of foreign military intervention, even by the same forces and voices that had opposed America's invasion of Iraq and opposed a Western resolution against the regime in Syria, is an indication of the state of fear and helplessness that is prevalent in the Arab community. [ISIS] [Blowback]
• Iranian conservative says the US needs Iran
  Amir Mohebian is one of the most well-known conservative voices of the last two decades. He rose to prominence as a critic of the Reformists after the election of Mohammad Khatami in 1997. A professor of Western philosophy at Islamic Azad University, Mohebian was also one of the editors of the conservative newspaper Resala and established the Arya Center for Strategic Studies, a think thank. He is currently editor in chief of the Arya News Agency.
  Second, IS is a Western project gone wrong in Syria … The United States has proven that while it is capable of creating radical movements against its enemies, it is not capable of managing these movements due to its lack of familiarity with their way of thinking. Therefore, these movements usually backfire and turn against the United States itself. Al-Qaeda is a sufficient example in this case. [Outsourcing]
• The Chomsky Paradox
  by Jeffrey St. Clair One night over a bottle of Irish whiskey, Alexander Cockburn told me a story about Noam Chomsky’s teeth. One day the great brain went to the dentist for a check up after several years of neglect. During the examination, the tooth doctor noticed extreme wear on the enamel of Chomsky’s molars. “Noam, do you grind your teeth?” “Not that I know of.” “Well, the enamel is taking a real pounding. Perhaps you’re doing it at night. Can you ask your wife if she’s observed anything?” Chomsky goes home Lexington, near the MIT campus and tells his wife Carol about his encounter with the dentist. That night and the next, Carol stays up after Noam has fallen asleep, keeping a close watch for any nocturnal grinding but notices no unusual dental machinations. However, Carol did observe a furious gnashing each morning at the breakfast table as Noam read his way through the New York Times. Chomsky taught two generations how to read the paper of record, how to detect the warps in its stories, the subtle biases and false constructions, the decisive elisions of context, and servility toward elite power. What Chomsky could do not was to KillingTrayvons1teach us how to stop reading the New York Times. As a result, thousands of activists around the globe reach for the Times (or the Guardian or the Washington Post) each morning, with red pens in hand, begin marking it up and grinding the enamel off their teeth. Being Luddites, Cockburn and I were late-comers to the web. Our journal CounterPunch didn’t go online until the late 1990s, as the sun was going down on the Clinton administration. But it wasn’t long before we realized the web offered an exit from what we called the Chomsky Paradox, an existential dilemma that often keeps the Left mired in a hostile environment fight phantoms—namely, political reality as constructed by the editors of the elite media. After a few years of publishing on the web to an audience of more than a million readers a month, it became clear to us that the old David v. Goliath struggle of left pamphelteers battling the vast print combines of the news barons is beginning to equal up. On a laptop’s 12-inch screen CounterPunch stands as high as the New York Times or Rupert Murdoch, who shelled out $580 million for Myspace.com in 2006 when he belatedly realized the world had changed. [Internet] [Media]
• Obama’s Fake Pretext: “Going After the Super-Evil Khorasans Who are About to Attack Us”
  New Boogeyman Has Already Been Debunked By Washington's Blog Global Research, September 27, 2014 Obama is now – after the fact – scrambling to justify bombing the sovereign nation of Syria without the permission of either the Syrian government or even the United States Congress by saying that we were going after the super-evil Khorasans, who were about to attack us. My God! That sounds terrifying … like a cross between Genghis Khan, Klingons and the Kardashians! The U.S. is saying that they’re even more dangerous than ISIS. There’s just one wee little problem … the Khorasan threat is as as fake as the Kardashians’ physiques. (Admittedly, it’s confusing, given that the Kardashians have also inserted themselves right in the middle of the Syrian conflict.) Agence France-Presse reports: The US says it has hit a little-known group called “Khorasan” in Syria, but experts and activists argue it actually struck Al-Qaeda’s affiliate Al-Nusra Front, which fights alongside Syrian rebels. In announcing its raids in the northern province of Aleppo on Tuesday, Washington described the group it targeted as Khorasan, a cell of Al-Qaeda veterans planning attacks against the West. But experts and activists cast doubt on the distinction between Khorasan and Al-Nusra Front, which is Al-Qaeda’s Syrian branch. “In Syria, no one had ever heard talk of Khorasan until the US media brought it up,” said Rami Abdel Rahman, director of the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. “Rebels, activists and the whole world knows that these positions (hit Tuesday) were Al-Nusra positions, and the fighters killed were Al-Nusra fighters,” added Abdel Rahman, who has tracked the Syrian conflict since it erupted in 2011. [ISIS]
• Europeans say U.S. never briefed them on plot by al Qaida group
  By Mitchell Prothero McClatchy Foreign Staff September 26, 2014 IRBIL, Iraq — European counterterrorism specialists say their American counterparts never mentioned an imminent plot by al Qaida operatives in Syria to attack Western targets and didn’t brief them on the group that’s supposedly behind the plan, a previously unknown terrorist unit that American officials have dubbed the Khorasan group. The interviews with the specialists, from two European NATO allies with close intelligence ties to the United States, raise questions about why the United States used its first series of airstrikes on the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, in Syria to also attack eight installations belonging to the Nusra Front, an al Qaida affiliate that anti-government rebel groups consider an important ally in their fight to topple the government of Syrian President Bashar Assad. [ISIS]
• US Biodefense: A Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing.
  In The 2001 Anthrax Deception: The Case for a Domestic Conspiracy, author Graeme MacQueen ties together a considerable breadth of evidence related to both the attacks of September 11, 2001 and to the subsequent anthrax letters, weaving together a tapestry which is compelling and logically coherent. The anthrax letters, also known as the anthrax attacks or “Amerithrax,” were put into the mail in the weeks following 911. The letters, which contained anthrax spores, were sent to both media offices and also to two Democratic U.S. Senators, killing five people and infecting seventeen others. MacQueen has a Ph.D. in comparative religion from Harvard University and stepped down from his position at McMaster University after over thirty years in order to pursue his activities in justice and peace work He promotes a thesis that the anthrax letters were perpetuated by a well- coordinated US government conspiracy, implemented by the same parties who were behind the events of September 11. His documentation is compelling in its use of open source material to reveal a pattern and inherent design behind the seemingly chaotic events of that time period. First appeared: http://journal-neo.org/2014/09/26/the-2001-anthrax-deception-the-case-for-a-domestic-conspiracy/ [cbw] [False flag]
• “Humanitarian Air Strikes” against Syria: U.S. Breaks International Law, Again
  By Alexander Clackson Global Research, September 24, 2014 The United States, assisted by a handful of Arab nations, conducted air strikes on Syria on 23rd September. The attacks mark a striking expansion in America’s military campaign against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and have occurred without the consent of the Syrian government. A U.S. State Department official confirmed that the Syrian government was not asked for authorisation, saying: “We did not seek the regime’s permission, we didn’t coordinate our actions with the Syrian government, and Secretary [of State John] Kerry did not send a letter to the Syrian regime.” The U.S. airstrikes are therefore a clear violation of international law, as Damascus had earlier said that any direct action by the United States within Syria would constitute an act of war and a breach of its sovereignty. The U.S. administration lawyers have used spurious excuses, invoking Iraq’s right to self-defence and the weakness of the Assad government as twin justifications for U.S. bombing in Syria. However, the fact of the matter is: without United Nations authorisation or approval from the Syrian government, airstrikes on Syria are a violation of basic international law. The legal circumlocutions to avoid requesting a UN Security Council resolution match similar efforts to avoid requesting specific legal authority from the U.S. Congress. Fearing that U.S. politicians up for re-election in November may balk at voting for a third military attack on Iraq and being sucked into a Syrian quagmire, the White House has avoided seeking a fresh authorisation of the use of military force, preferring to rely on early authorisations against al-Qaida granted after the 11 September 2001 attacks. [ISIS] [Legality]
• Karzai joins a long list of leaders ungrateful for U.S. support
  By Adam Taylor September 25 at 3:30 AM ? Outgoing Afghan President Hamid Karzai speaks during a gathering of government employees in Kabul on Sept.23, 2014. Karzai on Tuesday blamed the United States for his country's long war, a final swipe at the country that helped bring him to power 13 years ago but toward which he has become increasingly bitter. REUTERS/Mohammad Ismail You might expect a world leader whose country has received more than $100 billion in U.S. taxpayer money to express gratitude when they step down. You'd be wrong. In a parting shot before he leaves office next week, Afghan President Hamid Karzai took aim not at his domestic political rivals, but at the United States. “We don’t have peace because Americans didn’t want peace,” Karzai said at a gathering of several hundred Afghan government employees on Tuesday. Karzai has never been afraid to speak his mind, and over the past few years he has frequently lashed out at Washington. “To the American people, give them my best wishes and my gratitude," he said during an interview with The Post this year. "To the U.S. government, give them my anger, my extreme anger.” It'd be easy to dismiss Karzai's comments as hypocritical or an attempt to deflect criticism. But foreign leaders have often come to the conclusion that U.S. attention has done more harm than good for them, and there is a long legacy of world leaders enjoying considerable support from the United States while also being critical of the country. Here's a selection of criticism, ranging from schadenfreude to outright anger, that has been directed at Washington over the years. [Client] [Karzai]
• Stolen US-made equipment a key focus in ISIS fight
  By Bryan Bender | Globe Staff September 23, 2014 WASHINGTON — As a US-led coalition began strikes against the Islamic State in Syria this week, one target is likely to be American-made military equipment stolen by the terrorist group - a cache that has already played a key role in the conflict in Iraq. Over the past six weeks US warplanes have destroyed at least three dozen US-made Humvees that were by stolen by the Islamic State in Iraq. Earlier this week, the Islamic State forces used Humvees to overrun an Iraqi Army post in the country’s western region. The Islamic State’s reliance on American-made equipment has highlighted concerns about plans to supply $500 million worth of high-tech weapons to the rebels known as the Free Syrian Army. Congress approved the plan but the majority of the Massachusetts delegation opposed it, with some basing their opposition partly on concerns about where the arms may end up. Representative Joseph P. Kennedy III, a Brookline Democrat who voted against the proposal, said in an interview he worried that the allegiance of rebel groups would change and whether “we would have some control over the end use of the arms provided.” Representative Michael Capuano, a Somerville Democrat who also opposed the measure, wrote bluntly to his constituents: “Let’s not forget, a year ago many ISIS fighters would have been trained by the US. as part of a ‘trusted’ force.” [Outsourcing] [ISIS]
• Can Iraq crack down on ISIS' oil riches?
  By Luay al-Khatteeb, Special to CNN September 22, 2014 -- Updated 1519 GMT (2319 HKT) / Tens of thousands of Kurds flee Syria STORY HIGHLIGHTS • Luay al-Khatteeb says ISIS now controls 60% of Syria's oil assets and a slice of Iraq's • The oil is sold through black market routes, particularly into Turkey • Iraq appointed a new oil minister this month, who could help crack down on ISIS • al-Khatteeb says the minister can assist by backing big oil projects that create jobs Editor's note: Luay al-Khatteeb is visiting fellow at the Brookings Doha Center, focusing on the geopolitics and political economy of the GCC and Iraq. He is the founder and director of the Iraq Energy Institute and serves as senior adviser to the federal parliament of Iraq for energy policy and economic reform. Follow him on Twitter. (CNN) -- Luay al-Khatteeb has spoken to CNN previously about the impact of ISIS' march through northern Iraq, and the militant group's control of some oil fields. The crisis has escalated, and CNN has revisited the conversation to find out how Iraq could crack down on ISIS' oil riches under the guidance of its new oil minister, Adel Abdul Mahdi. This is al-Khatteeb's analysis of the situation. How much oil does ISIS control? Luay al-Khatteeb ISIS, in control of a large swathe of eastern Syria, is now handling 60% of the country's oil assets and producing 50,000 barrels a day. This is not full capacity -- pre-conflict, the assets would have produced around 220,000 barrels a day out of the country's 385,000, according to Iraq Energy Institute figures. However, ISIS do control key oil fields including Al Omar, Tanak and Shadadi. ISIS also handle at least 25,000 barrels of oil a day in north and mid-west Iraq, but that is only a small slice of the country's total production. This oil has found its way to the global economy through Turkey's southern corridor. This black-economy zone is known for its oil trades, smuggling antiquities from Iraq and Syria's ancient sites, and funneling thousands of jihadists to both countries. Many observers see Turkey turning a blind eye on a zone that is actively contributing to the instability of the Middle East. Southern Turkey has become ISIS' safe haven for treating wounded fighters, a gateway for foreign jihadists, and a financial hub that brings ISIS over $3 million a day in oil money. [ISIS] [Turkey]
• U.S. to face challenge keep Arab allies on track
  Secretary of State John F. Kerry, appearing before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Sept. 17, points to a newspaper photo of the recent Arab summit in Saudi Arabia as an example of the kind of coalition he expected in combating Islamic State extremists in Iraq and Syria. (J. Scott Applewhite / Associated Press) By Paul Richter contact the reporter SyriaRussiaIslamic StateIraq Crisis (2014)Barack ObamaArmed ConflictsWars and Interventions U.S. got five Arab nations to join bombing campaign against Islamic State. Can it keep the coalition going? U.S. coalition with Arab nations faces challenges with conflicting goals, questions about Turkey's role The Obama administration was more successful than many expected in convincing five Arab nations to join its air campaign against the Islamic State militant group in Iraq. Holding the group together for what could be a long campaign, however, is likely to prove challenging. 8 “Having different members of the coalition pulling in different directions could be harmful to the coalition, and it raises the risk that countries like the United States will get in deeper than they wanted,” said Julien Barnes-Dacey, of the European Council on Foreign Relations. “Saudi Arabia would like to see the United States escalate this campaign.” Most people support Jordan in fighting terrorism, but with great caution, because there are groups that fear that this may affect Jordan's stability through reprisal attacks. - Fahd Khitaan, an Amman-based political analyst Another potential source of conflict lies in the issue of which groups will take control of the Syrian territory if Islamic State militants can be forced to retreat. Washington is championing the so-called moderate rebel groups, who are weak and disorganized, while some Arab countries would like the more potent groups with Islamist leanings to take control. [Strategic incoherence] [Client] [Outsourcing]
• Obama’s Playstation Bombardiers
  by Pepe Escobar The Tomahawks are finally flying again – propelled by newspeak. 42 Tomahawks fired from a Sixth Fleet destroyer parked in Mare Nostrum, plus F-22s raising hell and Hellfires spouted by drones, that’s a neat mini-Shock and Awe to honor Caliph Ibrahim, aka Abu Bakr al -Baghdadi, self-declared leader of Islamic State. It’s all so surgical. All targets – from ”suspected” weapons depots to the mayor’s mansion in Raqqah (the HQ of The Caliph’s goons) and assorted checkpoints – were duly obliterated, along with “dozens of”, perhaps 120, jihadis. And praise those “over 40? (Samantha Power) or “over 50? (John Kerry) international allies in the coalition of the unwilling; America is never alone, although in this case mightily escorted, de facto, only by the usual Gulf petrodollar dictatorships and the realm of King Playstation, Jordan, all none too keen to engage in “kinetic activities”. Aseptic newspeak aside, no one has seen or heard a mighty Gulf Cooperation Council air force deployed to bomb Syria. After all the vassals are scared as hell to tell their own populations they are - once again – bombing a fellow Arab nation. As for Damascus, it meekly said it was ”notified” by the Pentagon its own territory would be bombed. Nobody really knows what the Pentagon is exactly telling Damascus.
• The Absurdity of US Policy in Syria
  by Patrick Cockburn If the United States and its allies want to combat the Islamic State jihadists (IS, formerly known as Isis) successfully, they should arrange a ceasefire between the forces of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and the non-IS Syrian opposition. Neither the Syrian army nor the “moderate” Syrian rebels are strong enough to stop IS if they are fighting on two fronts at the same time, going by the outcome of recent battles. A truce between the two main enemies of IS in Syria would be just that, and would not be part of a broader political solution to the Syrian crisis which is not feasible at this stage because mutual hatred is too great. A ceasefire may be possible now, when it was not in the past, because all parties and their foreign backers – the US, Saudi Arabia, Russia and Iran – are frightened of the explosive advance of the Islamic State. US Secretary of State John Kerry told the US Security Council on Friday that there is room for everybody “including Iran” in an anti-IS coalition. President Obama was much criticised for admitting that he had no strategy to cope with IS and, despite his address to the nation on 10 September, he still does not have one. Assuming he is not going to send a large US land army to the region, he lacks a credible and effective local partner in either Syria or Iraq with the necessary military force to take advantage of air strikes, even if they are intensified in Iraq and extended to Syria. [US Syria policy] [Strategic incoherence]
• NGOs Are Cages
  by Stephanie Mcmillan We really need to understand the methods used by NGOs* to undermine radical political organizing efforts and divert us into political dead ends. The People’s Climate March is a good case study because it’s so blatant. In South Florida, we saw the exact same process after the BP oil spill. Once the NGOs came in to the organizing meetings and were given the floor, all potential resistance was blocked, strangled, and left for dead. NGOs will descend on any organizing effort and try to take it over, dilute it, and bring it eventually to the Democratic Party. We can also see an identical set-up with the established labor unions and many other organizations. If organizers are being paid, usually they are trapped in this dynamic, whether or not they want to be. While combining a job with organizing to challenge the system sounds very tempting and full of potential, it’s overwhelmingly not possible. They are two fundamentally incompatible aims, and those funding the job definitely do not have the aim of allowing its employees to undermine the system — the very system that allows the funders to exist, that they feed off of. Capitalists aren’t stupid, and they know how to keep their employees chained to a post, even if the leash feels long. With NGOs, capitalism has set up a great mechanism for itself both to generate revenue, and to pacify people who might otherwise be fighting to break the framework. “The unity of the chicken and the roach happens in the belly of the chicken.” [NGO]
• ISIL: Who Benefits?
  It’s a well known fact that ancient Romans while leisuring under olive trees and sipping cold wine were able to deduce offenders. Mind you that it was long before the times of Hercule Poirot, Sherlock Holmes, let alone Nat Pinkerton. Ancient lawyers fully relied on the famous dictum: Cuiprodest? Cui bono? – Who benefits? Roman books tell us that judges before ruling their decision inquired on who could be a beneficiary. as a rule, this was the way of recognizing an offender, and (or) the puppet master behind him. Let’s follow a good example! Is this rule still viable today? Is it possible to trace an offender by learning “who benefits?” The unexpected rise of a terrorist organization Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, that is now has become known as an Islamic State (IS) couldn’t have possibly been spontaneous. Initially the IS along with the notorious Al Qaeda fought in Syria against the legitimately elected Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad. Then the leader of the IS, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi recognized that they were not achieving any noticeable results in the fight against the regular Syrian army, so he decided to move its fighters to Iraq where they unexpectedly hit a jackpot. Islamists have managed to occupy a relative large area of Iraq with predominantly Sunni population they’ve also managed to capture a noticeable amount of weapons that were initially used by the Iraqi army. Now the IS was able to accumulate substantial financial resources obtained through vulgar bank robberies, ransoming and selling oil cheap to the black market. [ISIS] [Outsourcing]
• Despite Airstrikes, ISIS Appears to Hold Its Ground in Iraq
  By David D. Kirkpatrick Sept. 22, 2014 BAGHDAD — After six weeks of American airstrikes, the Iraqi government’s forces have scarcely budged Sunni extremists of the Islamic State from their hold on more than a quarter of the country, in part because many critical Sunni tribes remain on the sidelines. Although the airstrikes appear to have stopped the extremists’ march toward Baghdad, the Islamic State is still dealing humiliating blows to the Iraq government forces. On Monday, the government acknowledged that it had lost control of the small, northern town of Sichar and lost contact with several hundred of its soldiers who had been trapped for several days at a camp north of the Islamic State stronghold of Falluja, in Anbar Province. By midday, there were reports that hundreds of soldiers had been killed in battle or mass executions. Ali Bedairi, a lawmaker from the governing alliance, said more than 300 soldiers had died after the loss of the base, Camp Saqlawiya, although his count could not be confirmed. “They did not have any food and they were starving for four days,” a soldier who said he was one of 200 who managed to escape said in a videotaped statement that he circulated online. “We drank salty water, we could not even run.” [ISIS]
• Sam Brownback’s failed ‘experiment’ puts state on path to penury
  By Editorial Board September 21 at 6:23 PM GOV. SAM BROWNBACK of Kansas says he has come to regret characterizing his policy agenda as a “real live experiment” that would test the efficacy of deep tax cuts to spur jobs and economic growth. In fact, Mr. Brownback’s choice of words was apt. Few if any governors have undertaken such an extreme trial-by-revenue-deprivation in a state so clearly lacking the economic means to withstand it. Now, as the damaging social and budgetary impacts of his slash-and-burn fiscal measures have become apparent, Mr. Brownback, a conservative Republican seeking reelection this fall in a state where every statewide elected official is also a Republican, is in the disorienting position of trailing his Democratic challenger in the polls. Mr. Brownback’s Kansas trial is rapidly becoming a cautionary tale for conservative governors elsewhere who have blithely peddled the theology of tax cuts as a painless panacea for sluggish growth. Most key indicators suggest that job creation and economic growth in Kansas are lagging those of its neighbors. [Brownback] [Tax]
• Russia, Iran challenge Kerry’s plan for anti-IS unity at UN
  The Sept. 19 UN Security Council meeting on the Islamic State (IS) laid bare the regional rivalries that risk undermining calls for a united front against the extremist group. The two countries slammed the US and Sunni states for trying to cut out Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Author Julian Pecquet Posted September 19, 2014 US Secretary of State John Kerry, presiding over the UN forum, opened the session with an upbeat assessment that some 50 countries have joined the fight against the group also known as ISIS (the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham) or ISIL (the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant) in some form or another. That message of unity was quickly undermined by strong opposition from countries critical of US plans to act in Syria without Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s approval. “The international coalition against ISIL, which is said to be in the offing, has yet to decide to pursue a serious strategy,” said Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi. Such a strategy, Araghchi said, should discourage “centrifugal forces” inside Iraq — namely, the Kurds — while working with Assad’s forces in Syria. “A successful fight against ISIL requires helping and enabling the relevant central authorities to deal with this menace,” he said. “Any strategy that undermines these authorities — including the Syrian government, which has resisted ISIL for a few years — or differentiates between segments of the population in terms of protection, will be a recipe for defeat.” Russia’s ambassador to the UN for his part flatly faulted the US invasion of 2003 and its support of the Syrian uprising for the current woes. “We’re extremely concerned by the publicly mentioned intentions to strike ISIL in Syrian territory without cooperating with the Damascus government,” Vitaly Churkin said. “This would not only be a gross violation of the fundamental norms of international law, but could also have a destructive practical consequence, including for the humanitarian situation in Syria.” [ISIS] [US global strategy] [Legality]
• Four Pinocchios for Rand Paul’s claim that McCain met with the Islamic State
  By Glenn Kessler September 18 (Nikki Kahn/The Washington Post) “Here’s the problem. He [Sen. John McCain] did meet with ISIS, and had his picture taken, and didn’t know it was happening at the time.” –Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), in an interview with The Daily Beast, Sept. 16, 2014 Just because it’s on the Internet, it doesn’t mean it’s true. Yet here’s a U.S. senator, repeating a rumor about one of his GOP colleagues, as if it were an actual fact. Paul cited it as part of his argument that U.S. funding of attacks against the terrorist group Islamic State, also known as ISIS, will be problematic because it “really shows you the quandary of determining who are the moderates and who aren’t.” The Fact Checker takes no position on whether it is necessary to fund the Syrian rebels. But for the benefit of Paul, and others who may have heard this rumor, here’s what didn’t happen. [ISIS] [McCain] [Islamists]
• Samantha Power Predicts: U.S. Won’t Conduct Airstrikes in Syria Alone
  Sep 21, 2014 11:23am U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power made the bold prediction today on “This Week” that if the United States should go forward with airstrikes against ISIS targets in Syria, it would not do so alone — even though no country has yet to publicly commit to joining the U.S. in such an effort. “I will make you a prediction George, which is that we will not do the air strikes alone, if the president decides to do the air strikes,” Power told ABC News “This Week” anchor George Stephanopoulos. “It will be up to each country to announce for itself whether it’s prepared to participate, whether in a combat role or to provide military equipment,” the U.N. ambassador said earlier in the interview. President Obama will appear in front of the United Nations General Assembly this week as he attempts to strengthen his case for international action against ISIS. Power told Stephanopoulos she believes the U.S. has the legal basis it needs to go forward with action against ISIS without a U.N resolution — one that Russia could potentially veto. “The Iraqis have appealed to the international community to come to their defense not only in Iraq, but also to go after safe havens in foreign countries. And what they mean by that of course is Syria,” Power said. “So they have made an appeal to the international community for collective defense. And we think we have a legal basis we need.” [Legality]
• Fear of a Caliphate
  by Andrew Levine Now that Barack Obama the dove has metamorphized into Barack Obama the hawk, the President and his people are more than usually in over their heads. It isn’t just that their past and present enemies in Iraq and Syria – Iran and the Assad government – are now also their de facto allies; or that those “Syrian moderates,” who haven’t exactly panned out in past iterations of American meddling, are now, again, their great Islamic hope. They are so confused by the situation they helped bring about that, at first, they couldn’t even decide what to call their enemy. Nor could they figure out whether to call this latest phase of the Bush-Obama perpetual Middle Eastern war a “war” or something that public opinion might find more congenial. They were inclined, at first, to follow the example of their fascism-friendly Ukrainian protégés, by calling it an “anti-terror operation” – supplemented by some adjective like “heightened” that would imply that it would be more or less permanent. In the end, they settled on “war.” From Obama’s point of view, it is emphatically not a war of choice; not his choice, anyway. Candidate Obama famously used that expression to disparage George Bush’s 2003 invasion of Iraq. He still takes credit for winding Bush’s ruinous adventure down, even as he is starting it up again. His point was that the Iraq War was Bush’s and Dick Cheney’s choice in the sense that they had no compelling reason to start it. To be sure, they had grandiose, and patently unrealistic, geopolitical objectives in mind, but basically they, and the neocons they empowered, just wanted to overthrow the Iraqi government and to take that country over. And so, there it was; and still is. Obama, on the other hand, didn’t want this war. The man is a god-awful President, but he isn’t stupid. However, with an election in the offing, and with Republicans, right-wing Democrats, and the usual gaggle of pundits calling for blood — along with Hillary Clinton – he had no choice. Resisting the pressure would take courage. That is therefore out of the question. [ISIS]
• Obama's dysfunctional coalition of the unwilling
  Bob Rigg
  16 September 2014 The US' call for "the broadest coalition of nations" to fight ISIS is simply an invocation of past moral crusades. But other states' wilingness to commit to war is much different than 2003. https://www.opendemocracy.net/opensecurity/bob-rigg/obama%27s-dysfunctional-coalition-of-unwilling Initial statements by President Barack Obama, John Kerry and Chuck Hagel revealed that they saw a great need for a US-led military intervention in Iraq that would go beyond weapons supplies, advisers and airstrikes, and would hopefully include other people’s boots on the ground, as well as supplies, intelligence, and humanitarian assistance for refugees and displaced persons. Although they carefully avoided the poisoned phrase ‘coalition of the willing’, they spoke of needing “the broadest coalition of nations” to prevent the “cancer of ISIS” from spreading to other countries. A new war on terror has been unleashed, this time against the ‘Islamic State’ (IS). Recent US-led interventions in Central Asia and the Middle East have blown up in the face of these regions, arguably triggering the seismic political shifts now paving the way for the rise of IS and other militant Islamic organisations. [ISIS] [Strategic incoherence]
• Genealogies of empire: the Islamic State as a western symptom
  Samson Bezabeh 19 September 2014 The butcher of Foley has in a sense defied the genealogies of empire and the “ be with us or against us” mentality now once again at the forefront of politics. Empires come and go. The demise of an empire often bears the seed of its successor. Before American global supremacy, there was the British Empire, and before them other empires, such as the Ottoman, for the re-establishment of which, some Islamic militants are currently fighting. Empires, however, do not only produce the seed of an empire to follow, they also produce human genealogies. The recent beheading of the American journalist James Foley by the Islamic State of Iraq has brought this underpinning of genealogies to the surface. In a speech that he made following the beheading of Foley, the US president, Barack Obama, asserted that the entire world is shocked. As a leader of a country whose global power has so far been unmatched, Obama is here speaking at a meta-level. His assumption of the mantle of humanity is typical of a commander of an empire. His vision of the world is holistic and singularised. He speaks of the presence of an "entire world" that shares the same emotion, hence a single body of humanity is brought together and made whole by a single empire. Obama's vision of humanity and of a united world, however, quickly fades once we start to look more closely at the story that surrounds the death of Foley. After the beheading of Foley, what was reported as shocking in the western media was the fact that Foley’s butcher was a British man, part of a British threesome who refer to themselves as ‘the beatles’. This was the shock - that the killer has a British accent and therefore he comes from the west. What is here demonstrated is a certain pack mentality founded on racial and civilisational dichotomies. The butcher of Foley has in a sense defied the genealogies of empire and the “ be with us or against us” mentality now once again at the forefront of politics. He did so by undermining the assumptions made by empire from within: a Briton is not supposed to act in this way, as only ‘the Barbaric others’ engage in such acts. [ISIS] [Imperialism]
• James Clapper: We underestimated the Islamic State’s ‘will to fight’
  By David Ignatius Opinion writer September 18 at 8:13 PM The United States has made the same mistake in evaluating fighters from the Islamic State that it did in Vietnam — underestimating the enemy’s will, according to James Clapper, the director of national intelligence. Clapper’s comments came in a telephone interview Wednesday, in which he summarized the elements of a new National Intelligence Strategy released this week. Clapper also answered some broader questions about intelligence issues confronting the country. Asked whether the intelligence community had succeeded in its goal of providing “anticipatory intelligence” about the extremist movement in Syria and Iraq that has declared itself the Islamic State, Clapper said his analysts had reported the group’s emergence and its “prowess and capability,” as well as the “deficiencies” of the Iraqi military. Then he offered a self-critique: “What we didn’t do was predict the will to fight. That’s always a problem. We didn’t do it in Vietnam. We underestimated the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese and overestimated the will of the South Vietnamese. In this case, we underestimated ISIL [the Islamic State] and overestimated the fighting capability of the Iraqi army. .?.?. I didn’t see the collapse of the Iraqi security force in the north coming. I didn’t see that. It boils down to predicting the will to fight, which is an imponderable.” [Intelligence] [ISIS] [Ukraine]
• Is Syrian army US' best option against IS?
  As the US military campaign ramps up in Iraq against the Islamic State (IS), many important questions remain unanswered in regard to the operation's imminent counterpart in Syria. It seems clear that US policy in Syria will involve some sort of force on the ground to complement the airstrikes targeting IS positions, heavy weaponry and troops. The Americans have guessed correctly that IS cannot be defeated unless taken out in Syria as well, and airstrikes alone are not enough to do that. Too many uncertainties about "moderate" Syrian rebels make them the least effective option for confronting the Islamic State, leaving the Syrian regime the only realistic alternative. Author Edward Dark Posted September 18, 2014 IS has already withdrawn from prominent buildings it took as headquarters in towns and cities such as Raqqa, instead adopting a lower profile and hiding among the locals and abandoning heavy armor for more mobility and stealth via lighter cars and vehicles. The million-dollar question is: Who will take on the role of the peshmerga and the Iraqi army in Syria? Read more: http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2014/09/syria-rebels-fight-islamic-state-regime-option.html?utm_source=Al-Monitor+Newsletter+%5BEnglish%5D&utm_campaign=caf8b742f5-September_19_2014&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_28264b27a0-caf8b742f5-100372581#ixzz3DprtyRHY [US Syria policy] [Strategic incoherence]
• Stop Postulating the Clash of Civilizations
  Ending the Oppression of Muslims
  by DR. MAHATHIR MOHAMAD The British are mystified by their Muslim citizens becoming “jihadists” and joining the so-called Islamic State. They are horrified by the beheading of an American journalist by “John” a British citizen and member of the IS. I must admit that I, too am horrified. It is not Islamic at all. Islam does not advocate violence and terror. The people who were defeated by the Prophet were not even converted to Islam, much less executed. The Quran says, “There is no compulsion in Islam.” But we are seeing more and more violence and atrocities committed by Muslims. And now we have the Islamic State “Jihadists”, some of whom come from countries where they had migrated to because life is good there. Having enjoyed the good life, why are these people opting to join revolutionary movements and live dangerous lives, fighting against the very people who are their hosts. Could it be, as some people suggest, that they have been reading books such as “Islam for Dummies?” Why? Recently we saw the mass killings of Muslims and destruction of their homes and towns by Israelis in Gaza. More than 2000 Muslims have been killed. They include little children and old people, non-combatants all. Thousands more have been seriously wounded, many losing arms and legs. No concern or sympathy has been shown by the Europeans and Americans. In fact the Americans gave money and arms for Israelis to kill more Muslims and destroy their homes and towns. If the beheading of a European Journalist is evidence of the barbarity of Muslims, cannot there be the same perception of Israeli killings of Muslims in Gaza? [Double standards] [Islam]
• Is the CIA’s ISIS Cult Already Collapsing in Iraq?
  William Engdahl Since the early 1950’s, when the CIA station chief in Munich became aware of the effective use of radical Jihadist Sunni Muslims from the Soviet Union by Gerhard von Mende’s wartime Ostministerium, US intelligence has sought to use the fanaticism of radical Islamists to its advantage. In my latest book I call it, “Amerikas Heiliger Krieg.” The alliance of nominally Christian American forces with nominally Muslim Salafists to kill and destroy was justified with a peculiar American brand of self-appointed Holy Mission. In reality the alliance between CIA and radical Islam was never holy. The events surrounding ISIS demonstrate. The CIA’s creation of Sunni Mujahideen “freedom fighters” in Afghanistan after 1979, with the essential aid of a Saudi named Osama bin Laden to drive the Red Army from Afghanistan was but the beginning of decades-long covert manipulation of Holy War Muslim fanatics to wage active war as surrogates for the geopolitical agenda of certain Washington circles. The Muslim fighters were sometimes purely mercenary, sometimes devout Salafists or Wahhabite Sunnis. The main point for the backers in Washington was that the Juhadists killed the right “enemy.” First appeared: http://journal-neo.org/2014/09/17/is-the-cia-s-isis-cult-already-collapsing-in-iraq/ [ISIS] [Outsourcing] [Nazism]
• House approves Obama’s Iraq-Syria military strategy amid skepticism
  By Ed O'Keefe and Paul Kane September 17 at 9:03 PM ? The House on Wednesday approved President Obama’s plan to train and equip moderate Syrian rebels to counter the growing threat of the Islamic State organization, even though lawmakers in both parties remain deeply skeptical about its chances for success. The vote placed Congress one step closer to authorizing the third significant U.S. military operation in Iraq in the past quarter century, and it put lawmakers on record approving U.S. engagement in the years-long Syrian civil war. It delivered Obama much-needed domestic political support as he seeks an international coalition to combat the growing threat of Islamist terrorism in the Middle East. But the tally — 273 to 156 — also revealed widespread misgivings in both parties about the plan’s chances of success, even among lawmakers who voted in favor of it. [ISIS] [US Syria policy]
• 'Fundamental fallacy' in Obama's plan to arm Syrian rebels?
  The Obama administration fleshed out its goals for US-trained Syrian rebels on Sept. 16, prompting bipartisan concerns even among some of the opposition fighters' biggest supporters on Capitol Hill. Lawmakers of both parties expressed disbelief that the rebels will stick to the role the United States wants to carve out for them. Author Julian Pecquet Posted September 16, 2014 Defense officials told lawmakers on the Senate Armed Services Committee that they were confident the rebel force would put its three-year war with Bashar al-Assad's forces on the back burner as the Syrian opposition focuses on battling the Islamic State (IS). They insisted that would prevent the US from getting sucked into Syria's civil war while creating an acceptable partner to combat IS inside its home base. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., dismissed the notion as a "fundamental fallacy" of President Barack Obama's plan during a heated exchange wtith Joint Chiefs of Staff Martin Dempsey. "It seems to me you're going to have to neutralize Bashar al-Assad's air assets if you're going to protect the people you are arming and training and sending in to fight," McCain insisted. "What you're hearing us express is an [IS]-first strategy," Dempsey replied. "I don't think that we'll find ourselves in that situation given what we intend to do." [US Syria policy] [ISIS] [Strategic incoherence] [Threat]
• US strikes in Syria won’t turn locals against Islamic State
  AL-BAB, Syria — Hell is inescapable. With the terror of living under regime or rebel bombing, Islamic State (IS) barbarism and the nightmarish destitution of refugee camps and death boats adrift at sea, hell is the price of being Syrian today. “This is the Syrian’s lot,” Abu Riad told Al-Monitor, “we are destined never to find peace except in our graves.” Contrary to widespread belief, the Islamic State has largely succeeded in winning hearts and minds in the areas it rules by providing services and order. Author Edward Dark Posted September 16, 2014 Abu Riad is a relative I recently visited near the town of Al-Bab east of Aleppo in the heart of IS territory. He echoed the fear of many others now that the United States has put together a coalition to wage war on the terror group, a war that will likely involve airstrikes against targets in Syria and inevitably cause more carnage and loss of innocent life. In Abu Riad’s words, “We have been living in absolute terror for a week now under regime airstrikes. Now we have the Americans coming to bomb us too. Where do we go? Why is everyone killing us; what have we done to deserve this?” Indeed, Al-Bab has suffered heavy barrel bombing in the past few days, resulting in many casualties, which prompted me to avoid going to the town altogether and remain in the relative safety of rural areas. Caught between the hammer of regime bombings and the anvil of imminent US airstrikes, many people have started doing the same, fleeing the towns for safer areas. Even IS, as reported by the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, has begun to evacuate its headquarters to avoid putting people’s lives at risk, or at least that is what the group claims. Regardless, it would be foolish to believe that US military action against IS is popular here or will go down well, especially when civilian casualties start to mount. On the contrary, it will most likely prove counterproductive, stoking anti-Western resentment among the population and increasing support for IS, driving even more recruits to its ranks. Read more: http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2014/09/syrians-support-islamic-state-refuse-us-strike.html?utm_source=Al-Monitor+Newsletter+%5BEnglish%5D&utm_campaign=96b70532c9-September_17_2014&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_28264b27a0-96b70532c9-100372581#ixzz3De8wiYdx [ISIS]
• Air strikes on Isis in Syria could be illegal
  Andrew Grice Political Editor Monday 15 September 2014 David Cameron has been warned that UK air strikes against Isis in Syria could be illegal under international law. Officials in the House of Commons Library have cast doubt on the Prime Minister’s view that Isis targets could be bombed in Syria as well as Iraq on the grounds that the Assad regime in Syria is “illegitimate.” In a briefing paper for MPs, officials said: “Action in Syria will be difficult to justify legally without a request for assistance from the Assad government, and it is unlikely that the West could be seen to be responding to such a request. “The British Government has said that any action in Syria will comply with international law, and the most likely way to achieve this would be to claim that military action is for humanitarian purposes, using the Responsibility to Protect doctrine. This remains controversial, however, without a United Nations Security Council resolution to authorise it.” Barack Obama is expected to chair a security council session to discuss Isis during the UN general assembly in New York next week. Although the US President and Mr Cameron will use the meeting to lobby other UN members to join an international coalition against Isis, a vote on military action is unlikely to be taken. Russia, an ally of Syria, could veto air strikes in Syria. [Legality] [Imperialism] [Legitimacy]
• Turkish villages smuggle IS oil through makeshift pipelines
  HACIPASA, Turkey — For some time now, Turkey has been accused of either supporting or tolerating the activities of the Islamic State group (IS). Turkey’s hesitation to contribute to the coalition Washington is trying put together has only intensified the accusations. Since Turkey opened its borders without restriction to those fighting against the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, others have been exploiting the lax border control. More than facilitating the crossings of militants, the security loophole has also contributed to substantial financial resources for the armed groups dominating the liberated areas of Aleppo, Raqqa and Deir ez-Zor. The group profiting the most has been IS, which has been transporting to Turkey the oil it's extracting with primitive methods in its occupied areas. In the village of Hacipasa, almost every house is connected to an illegal oil pipeline smuggling IS oil into Turkey. Author Fehim Tastekin Posted September 15, 2014 Translator(s)Timur Goksel In the Hacipasa village of Altinozu in Hatay province, the scope of this oil smuggling mechanism is clear. On the Turkish side of the Asi river, which forms the border with Syria, lies the village of Hacipasa, with the village of Ezmerin on the Syrian side. The saga of Hacipasa is surely one of the most telling outcomes of the Syria policy then Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu so passionately defended in parliament when he boasted, “We will lead the wave of change in the Middle East. A new Middle East is being born. We will continue to be the owner, pioneer and servant of this Middle East." [Turkey] [ISIS]
• It’s “Third Force” Time in Syria
  Ever since President Obama gave his crISis ™ speech, I’ve pushed back against what I considered to be simplistic predictions of the effort’s doom, along the lines of “air power cannot occupy” and “arming anti-Assad ostensibly moderate Syrian rebels is always an exercise in futility”. On September 12, I wrote: The depressing part of the US strategy is that, as far as I can tell, it views the anti-IS campaign as a Trojan Horse, a chance to favor, strengthen, and advance anti-Assad forces. So instead of cooperating with literally the only Middle Eastern state willing to field an army against IS—Syria—the US is refusing to work with Syria and instead will train and equip an anti-Assad and anti-IS force, reportedly in Saudi Arabia, that is less of a US-backed militia of venal “insurgents” and more of a controlled and disciplined military strike force created, controlled, and deployed by the CIA and, unlike our most famous previous experiment in this vein, the Bay of Pigs invasion, this force will have lots and lots of airpower. The idea, presumably, is that as IS is pummeled by drones and air strikes (and its fleet of tanker trucks ferrying crude oil to Turkey is destroyed) and retreats, the US-backed force will advance and occupy the vacated territories before Assad can. And hopefully, the force will attract the fairweather allies of IS who prefer a US paycheck and immunity from air strikes to getting plastered. And then the US can orchestrate demands from a finally viable Syrian opposition for Assad to step down in the name of national unity, full US support, and an all-out war against IS. Victory! My admittedly imperfect knowledge of US government decision making implies to me that somebody had to bring President Obama a proposal like this for an American win in Syria—or at least a borderline plausible case for a chance for an American win in Syria--before he made the politically unpalatable decision to re-enter the Middle East quagmire. A clear harbinger of this approach was the statement by the Free Syrian Army that it would not join the anti-IS coalition. You got that right. Not join. Even the FSA is totally getting its ass handed to it by IS and could certainly some US help. The group’s founder, Colonel Riad al-Asaad, stressed that toppling Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is their priority, and that they will not join forces with US-led efforts without a guarantee that the US is committed to his overthrow. Most likely, Colonel al-Asaad was justifiably suspicious of the new US initiative since it was clear that the CIA was already dealing and negotiating directly with his most viable and capable commanders to poach them from the FSA. [Syria] [CIA]
• Syrian “Moderate” Rebels and Islamic State Jihadists “Make Peace”. What Will Obama do Now?
  By Timothy Alexander Guzman Global Research, September 14, 2014 Well, Well, Well, what do we have here? According to a new report by Agence-France Presse (AFP) “Syrian rebels and jihadists from the Islamic State have agreed a non-aggression pact for the first time in a suburb of the capital Damascus, a monitoring group said on Friday.” What will the Obama administration do now? Originally President Obama said in a televised speech that he will support “military assistance to the Syrian opposition.” Here is what he said: Across the border, in Syria, we have ramped up our military assistance to the Syrian opposition. Tonight, I again call on Congress to give us additional authorities and resources to train and equip these fighters. In the fight against ISIL, we cannot rely on an Assad regime that terrorizes its people; a regime that will never regain the legitimacy it has lost. Instead, we must strengthen the opposition as the best counterweight to extremists like ISIL, while pursuing the political solution necessary to solve Syria’s crisis once and for all. This is an interesting development since Washington wants to authorize airstrikes against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) or ISIS on Syrian territory. It is a move that the Assad government and Russia say that would be an act of aggression and a breach of International law. Will the mainstream media report this peace agreement between these two organizations? Washington would welcome this development because both groups consider the Assad government a common enemy. Online news organization Middle East Eye reported that both moderate Syrian rebels and the Islamic State’s common enemy is the Assad government: The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported that moderate and Islamist rebels had signed a ceasefire deal for the first time in a suburb of the capital Damascus. “The two parties will respect a truce until a final solution is found, and they promise not to attack each other because they consider the principal enemy” to be Assad’s government and his forces. [Syria] [Jihadist] [Outsourcing]
• Islamic State: ‘US failure to look into Saudi role in 9/11 has helped Isis’
  In an exclusive interview, the Senator who led inquiry into attack says Obama’s plan to confront Sunni jihadis repeats past mistakes Patrick Cockburn Sunday 14 September 2014 The rise of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isis) has been aided by the continuing failure of the US Government to investigate the role of Saudi Arabia in the 9/11 attacks and its support of jihadi movements such as al-Qaeda in the years since, says former Senator Bob Graham, the co-chairman of the official inquiry into 9/11. Senator Graham, who chaired the Senate Intelligence Committee, said that successive administrations in Washington had turned a blind eye to Saudi support for Sunni extremists. He added: “I believe that the failure to shine a full light on Saudi actions and particularly its involvement in 9/11 has contributed to the Saudi ability to continue to engage in actions that are damaging to the US – and in particular their support for Isis.” [Jihadist] [ISIS] [Saudi Arabia]
• Marriott to urge guests to tip their housekeepers as part of new campaign
  By Abha Bhattarai September 15 at 3:30 AM ? Marriott International wants to give its housekeepers a raise — and it is hoping customers will chip in. Beginning this week, a number of the company’s hotels will begin providing envelopes in guest rooms to encourage visitors to tip workers. The initiative, called “The Envelope Please,” is a partnership with A Woman’s Nation, a nonprofit organization founded by journalist and former California first lady Maria Shriver. “In conversation with Maria, she said it had struck her that too often women are in positions that we forget to acknowledge,” Arne Sorenson, chief executive and president of Bethesda, Md.-based Marriott, said in an interview. “In a hotel, obviously we tip the bellman or wait staff. But often we don’t see our housekeepers. We don’t have that personal interaction, so we just don’t think about it.” The American Hotel and Lodging Association, a trade association, suggests tipping housekeepers between $1 and $5 per night, and recommends tipping daily rather than at the end of a stay to ensure that the money goes to the person cleaning the room each day. Housekeepers make up the largest group of employees within hotels managed by Marriott, comprising more than 20,000 positions in the United States and Canada alone. They are paid by the hour, and their schedules tend to vary throughout the year on the basis of hotel occupancy levels. Many of the jobs created in the Washington area after the economic downturn have been in hospitality and tourism, industries in which low-wage positions dominate. In the year ending in July 2014, leisure and hospitality hiring accounted for 7,000 new jobs in the Washington area — second only to the retail industry, which added 8,000 jobs. In 2012, maids and housekeepers earned a median salary of $19,780, or approximately $9.51 per hour, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. [Capitalism]
• Russia Warns Against Strikes on Syria Without Regime's Consent
  By Stacy Meichtry in Paris and Maria Abi-Habib in Amman, Jordan Updated Sept. 15, 2014 4:52 p.m. ET A conference to discuss how to combat the Islamic State is under way in Paris. Made up of 26 countries, including the U.S., Saudi Arabia and Russia, it aims to show a united front on fighting the militant group. WSJ's Mark Kelly reports U.S. efforts to build a broad military coalition to combat Islamic State stumbled Monday amid sparring over whether Iraq's neighbors—particularly Iran and Syria—should have a role in any military campaign to eradicate the militant group. A group of 26 countries gathering in Paris—including the U.S., Saudi Arabia and Russia—vowed to support Baghdad's fight against the Sunni extremist organization "by any means necessary, including appropriate military assistance." But the meeting failed to make progress on the key goal of persuading regional allies such as Turkey and Saudi Arabia to participate in a military campaign. The U.S. also faced stern criticism from Russia for its plans to extend airstrikes to Islamic State strongholds in Syria without coordinating its campaign with Damascus and Tehran. "One cannot but feel concerned by publicly stated intentions to attack the (Islamic State) positions in Syria's territory without interaction with the Syrian government," Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said. "Syria, as well as Iran, are our natural allies in the fight." [ISIS] [US global strategy] [Syria] [Legality] [Client]
• Iran’s Participation in Meeting to Aid Iraq Is ‘Not Appropriate,’ Says Kerry
  By Michael R. Gordon Sept. 12, 2014 ANKARA, Turkey — Secretary of State John Kerry said on Friday that “it would not be appropriate” for Iran to attend an international conference on the security crisis in Iraq that is to be held in Paris next week because of what he called the role that Iran’s paramilitary Quds Force is playing in the fighting in neighboring Syria. France is the host of the Monday meeting, which is to coordinate aid to the new Iraqi government for its fight against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. French officials have left open the possibility that Iran might attend. But during a visit here to consult with Turkish officials on the international effort against ISIS, Mr. Kerry said he opposed including Iran. “Under the circumstances, at this moment in time, it would not be right for any number of reasons,” said Mr. Kerry, who noted that the French had not consulted with him on the question. [US dominance] [Subordinate] [France] [Iran]
• Why won’t Turkey join the fight against Islamic State?
  By Hannah Allam McClatchy Washington Bureau September 12, 2014 Updated 10 hours ago WASHINGTON — A U.S. official on Friday acknowledged that NATO ally Turkey had complicated efforts to build a moderate Syrian rebel force by coordinating with groups, including al Qaida’s Nusra Front, that were considered off limits by the Obama administration. The disagreements hamstrung progress on identifying and building a trusted rebel force that could fight on two fronts, against the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad as well as against extremists from the Islamic State or Nusra Front. While Turkey in recent months has taken a harder line toward the militants, the dispute has resurfaced because the Syria leg of the strategy President Barack Obama outlined to combat the Islamic State relies heavily on an on-the-ground opposition partner, which still doesn’t exist in any viable form. [ISIS] [Turkey]
• U.S. intelligence agencies remain uncertain about danger posed by Islamic State
  By Greg Miller and Juliet Eilperin September 13 at 9:57 PM ? Hours before President Obama announced a new U.S. military offensive against the Islamic State, one of his top counter­terrorism officials testified to Congress that the al-Qaeda offshoot had an estimated 10,000 fighters. The next day a new assessment arrived from the CIA: The terrorist organization’s ranks had more than doubled in recent months, surging to somewhere between 20,000 and 31,500 fighters across Iraq and Syria. The enormous discrepancy reflects, in part, significant uncertainty among U.S. intelligence agencies over the dimensions of and danger posed by America’s latest Islamist adversary. But the trajectory of those numbers — and the anxiety that they have induced among U.S. counter­terrorism and military officials — also helps to explain Obama’s decision to go to war against an Islamist group that has yet to be linked to any plot against the United States. [ISIS] [Threat]
• War fever: Overselling the war against Islamic State?
  Having failed to ask tough questions before the Iraq War, this time around will the media aggressively investigate if ISIS really poses a profound terrorist threat to the U.S.? By Peter Beinart | Sep. 14, 2014 | 12:08 AM It wasn’t much fun to be a journalist in the aftermath of the Iraq War. When it became clear that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction, many Americans rightly lambasted the media for not asking tougher questions about the Bush administration’s pre-war claims. In the fevered run-up to war, many in the press had taken it as self-evident that Saddam Hussein had the capacity and desire to threaten the United States. Once the war went south, it didn’t look so self-evident after all. It’s important to remember that moment now, amid our current bout of war fever. It may be worth attacking Islamic State for purely humanitarian reasons. After all, the United States launched air wars against Serbia (twice) and Libya without claiming that their regimes posed a national-security threat, and Islamic State is more savage than either Slobodan Milosevic or Muammar Gaddafi. It may be worth attacking Islamic State because of the threat it poses to our allies in the Middle East. If unchecked, the group could destabilize not only Iraq and Syria, but potentially Jordan and Saudi Arabia too. (Judging by social media, Islamic State has a lot of fans in the kingdom of Saud.) But, for the most part, that’s not how this war is being sold. It’s being sold as a war to protect the United States homeland against a profound terrorist threat. Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein recently said, “The threat ISIS poses cannot be overstated.” Her Republican colleague Jim Inhofe has claimed that Islamic State is “rapidly developing a method of blowing up a major U.S. city” and that as a result, “We’re in the most dangerous position we’ve ever been in as a nation.” This time, the press needs to aggressively investigate whether that’s true. [ISIS] [Hysteria] [Media] [Threat]
• How the West Created the Islamic State
  by Nafeez Ahmed Part 1 – Our Terrorists “This is an organisation that has an apocalyptic, end-of-days strategic vision which will eventually have to be defeated,” Gen Martin Dempsey, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, told a Pentagon press conference in August. Military action is necessary to halt the spread of the ISIS “cancer,” said President Obama. Yesterday he called for expanded airstrikes across Iraq and Syria, and new measures to arm and train Iraqi and Kurdish ground forces. “The only way to defeat [IS] is to stand firm and to send a very straightforward message,” declared Prime Minister Cameron. “A country like ours will not be cowed by these barbaric killers.” Missing from the chorus of outrage, however, has been any acknowledgement of the integral role of covert US and British regional military intelligence strategy in empowering and even directly sponsoring the very same virulent Islamist militants in Iraq, Syria and beyond, that went on to break away from al-Qaeda and form ‘ISIS’, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or now simply, the Islamic State (IS). Since 2003, Anglo-American power has secretly and openly coordinated direct and indirect support for Islamist terrorist groups linked to al-Qaeda across the Middle East and North Africa. This ill-conceived patchwork geostrategy is a legacy of the persistent influence of neoconservative ideology, motivated by longstanding but often contradictory ambitions to dominate regional oil resources, defend an expansionist Israel, and in pursuit of these, re-draw the map of the Middle East. [ISIS] [Outsourcing]
• Obama the Irresolute
  by Andrew Levine By the summer of 2009, it was already clear that Barack Obama couldn’t govern his way out of a paper bag. Obama apologists blamed Republicans; they still do. By then, though, anyone who was not still deluded by candidate Obama’s seeming infallibility understood that the President’s aloofness was also part of the problem. The Obama way was to deliver a speech and then retreat, leaving the burden on others to act on his words. They seldom did. Had his aim been to frustrate expectations, he could not have found a better way. Even his speeches were disappointing. Ask not for even one memorable turn of phrase. There haven’t been any since that silly riff at the 2004 Democratic Party convention about how there are no “red states or blue states…just the United States.” Lately, for all his vaunted eloquence, Obama’s speeches have actually gotten worse. The one he delivered in prime time Wednesday night, outlining his new “strategy” for fighting the Islamic State (IS) — essentially a hodgepodge of the strategies that created the IS in the first place – concluded with a pathetic recitation of golden oldie pieties. Those troops of ours must really be as wonderful as he says to survive all those “God blesses.” And lets not forget how great our economy is – God and Obama bless it too, just not so as anyone can tell. Needless to say (but say it anyway), America is “exceptional,” and its worldwide reach benefits all but the irredeemably evil. The only thing newsworthy about that speech was that the President was able to get through it with a straight face, and that the pundits on hand to review it showed no visible signs of becoming nauseated. [Obama] [Hillary Clinton] [Strategic incoherence]
• The Latest Evil Force, Since the Last Evil Force
  by Robert Fisk Resurrection, reinvention and linguistics. Barack Obama did the lot. And now he’s taking America to war in Syria as well as Iraq. Oh yes, and he’s going to defeat Isis, its “barbarism”, “genocide”, its “warped ideology” – until the bad guys are “vanquished from the earth”. What happened to George W Bush? But let’s go through this with a linguistic comb. First, Obama is going to resurrect the Sunni “Awakening Council” militias – a creature invented by a certain General David Petraeus – who were paid to fight al-Qaeda by the Americans during the US occupation of Iraq, but who then got blasted by al-Qaeda and betrayed by the Shia-dominated Iraqi government. Obama has even invented a new name for these militias: he called them “National Guard Units” who will “help Sunni communities secure their own freedom from Isil”. National Guard indeed! Then there’s the reinvention of the “moderate” Syrian opposition which was once called the Free Syrian Army – a force of deserters corrupted and betrayed by both the West and its Islamic allies – and which no longer exists. This ghost army is now going to be called the “Syrian National Coalition” and be trained – of all places – in Saudi Arabia, whose citizens have given zillions of dollars to al-Qaeda in Iraq, Isis, Isil, IS (you decide on the acronym), Jabhat al-Nusra and sundry other bad guys whom Obama now wants to “vanquish from the earth”. [ISIS]
• Obama Launches His War, Finally
  Melkulangara Bhadrakumar | 12.09.2014 | 00:00 The United States President Barack Obama unveiled in a major speech on Wednesday his strategy to «degrade and ultimately destroy» the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. The strategy has no timeline and, quintessentially, the US will pit Muslims against Muslims in a grim war through the deployment of ‘smart power’, which would ensure that American casualties are avoided. From all appearance, it will also be a self-financing war funded by the petrodollar Gulf Arab states of the Middle East. The strategy is built on three pillars – firstly, setting well-defined limits to the actual American intervention in military terms, secondly, resuscitating the ‘regime change’ agenda in Syria and, thirdly, dispensing with any mandate from the United Nations. In essence, it becomes a repackaged version of the crudely unilateralist US intervention in the Middle East by the George W. Bush administration. Clearly, Obama delayed the unveiling of his strategy until the public opinion in the US ‘matured’. Opinion polls show a high degree of approval rating in America for renewed US military intervention in Iraq and Syria. The gruesome killing of two American journalists by the Islamic State has no doubt inflamed public anger. But the main factor is the fear that has been injected into the American mind through weeks and months of media campaign projecting that the Islamic State posed a direct threat to the US’s ‘homeland security’. The ploy indeed worked, as the opinion polls testify. Obama’s timing is perfect, as he deftly chose the eve of the 11th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks to unveil his strategy before the American public. [Obama] [Syria]
• Iran Foreign Ministry casts doubt on US coalition against IS
  Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokeswoman has said there are “ambiguities” about the coalition US President Barack Obama presented in his speech Sept. 10 to fight the Islamic State group (IS) and accused the United States of attempting to fight IS with the same countries that helped create it. Iran's Foreign Ministry said that the US-led coalition to fight the Islamic State includes countries that had helped fuel terrorism in the region. Author Arash Karami Posted September 11, 2014 “The coalition known as the international coalition to fight IS … is faced with serious ambiguities and there are fundamental doubts about its seriousness to fight against the root and true reasons for terrorism,” said Marzieh Afkham. She said, “Some of the countries in the coalition are among financial and military supporters of terrorists in Iraq and Syria, and some others have reneged on their international duties.” Afkham did not name these countries, but Saudi Arabia and Qatar have been two of the main sponsors of Syria’s armed opposition. Iran has been the main supporter of Syria’s government, along with Russia. In Iraq, Iran has supported the Shiite-led governments since the 2003 overthrow of former leader Saddam Hussein, while Saudi Arabia has kept its distance. Read more: http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2014/09/iran-foreign-ministry-doubts-us-is-coalition.html?utm_source=Al-Monitor+Newsletter+%5BEnglish%5D&utm_campaign=45daa0e579-September_12_2014&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_28264b27a0-45daa0e579-100372581#ixzz3D7z9JMWP [ISIS] [Strategic incoherence]
• U.S. Secretary of State Kerry: Iran won't be part of anti-Islamic State campaign
  Kerry says he is comfortable broad-based coalition against jihadi group will be established, refuses to detail role of each country in campaign. By Nick Tattersall Sep. 12, 2014 | 9:42 PM The battle against Islamic State is pushing Iran closer to the 'Great Satan' By Zvi Bar'el | Sep. 6, 2014 | 10:52 PM | 2 By Jack Khoury, Reuters and The Associated Press Sep. 12, 2014 | 2:23 PM REUTERS - U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said on Friday he was comfortable that the United States would form a broad-based coalition to fight Islamic State militants but said it would not be appropriate for Iran to be involved in the efforts. [ISIS] [Strategic incoherence]
• White House’s legal rationale for airstrikes in Syria comes under scrutiny
  President Obama outlined a four-step plan on combating the threat of the Islamic State. Here are the highlights from his speech. (Nicki DeMarco and Ashleigh Joplin/The Washington Post) By David Nakamura and Sari Horwitz September 11 at 9:17 PM Top lawyers at the Justice Department signed off on the White House’s conclusion that President Obama had sufficient legal authority to approve airstrikes in Syria, people familiar with the deliberations said Thursday, as the administration faced growing criticism for not first seeking congressional backing. Obama aides consulted with lawyers at the Office of Legal Counsel in the lead-up to the president’s announcement Wednesday night that he was expanding U.S. military operations aimed at destroying the Islamic State, a radical Sunni group that is operating in Syria and Iraq. In a televised prime-time address, Obama said he had “the authority to address the threat” and did not need a formal vote on Capitol Hill. It is unclear whether the Justice Department provided the White House with a detailed, written opinion or relayed its interpretation of the law orally. [Legality]
• Isis air strikes: Obama's plan condemned by Syria, Russia and Iran
  Claims that strikes would violate sovereignty, as Syrian rebels welcome move and other Arab states offer 'appropriate' support Ian Black, Middle East editor, and Dan Roberts in Washington theguardian.com, Friday 12 September 2014 07.42 BST The Syrian government and its close allies in Moscow and Tehran warned Barack Obama that an offensive against Islamic State (Isis) within Syria would violate international law yesterday, hours after the US president announced that he was authorising an open-ended campaign of air strikes against militants on both sides of the border with Iraq. [Legality] [Sovereignty]
• With IS, US Getting Ready for Its “Suez Crisis” Post-Imperial Close-Up
  Though an anti-war type I am not on the same page with many anti-war types when it comes to poo-pooing President Obama’s call for military action against the IS caliphate. The caliphate is a big deal, in my opinion, a big bad transnational deal with significant consequences throughout Asia, and something should be done. “Something”, unfortunately, would be a big, disruptive military campaign coordinated through the UN Security Council and Arab League, spearheaded by Saudi Arabia and Turkey, and involving lots of Saudi and Turkish casualties, both military and civilian, and a prolonged, agonizing, and expensive effort to reassert the control of the Iraqi and Syrian governments over the territory they had lost. Understandably, nobody, including the United States, is willing or able to make sure that something actually gets done and it looks like what we are getting is a collection of ineffectual half-measures justified by hyped-up “threat to the homeland” agitation whose main purpose is to exploit the crISis in order to enhance US clout in the region. IS took root in Iraq and Syria, in large part because of the Obama administration’s willingness to enable a jihadi solution to its dump-Assad problem and the very, very bad decision of Turkey and Saudi Arabia to support the operation. [Outsourcing] [ISIS] [Blowback]
• Analysis: US strikes unsettling for Damascus
  . By ZEINA KARAM Associated Press BEIRUT -- Syrian President Bashar Assad's government is angry Washington has not taken it on as a partner in the international campaign to hit the Islamic State group, likely for a very significant reason: It is worried that once the United States has crossed the Rubicon of airstrikes in Syria, it could next turn its sights on Assad himself, aiming for his eventual downfall. Such a scenario may not be an imminent one, but it is bound to be rattling Damascus. Already, the American plan includes beefing up rebel factions to the biggest extent yet in the 3 ½-year war. For now, analysts say Washington's aim beyond destroying the Islamic State group, which is also known by the acronyms ISIS or ISIL, will be to create a new dynamic on the ground that would put enough pressure on Assad to go back to the negotiating table. "The campaign against ISIS is going to put a lot of pressure on the Assad regime and in the end, it's not going to just degrade ISIS, it's also going to degrade the regime's ability to resist a settlement that includes the departure of Assad himself," said Amr al-Azm, a professor at Shawnee State University in Ohio. "It's going to further weaken the ability of Assad to survive. There's no way he's not going to get drawn into that," he said. [Syria] [Imperialism]
• Six Steps Short of War to Beat ISIS
  Weakening ISIS requires eroding the support it relies on from tribal leaders, military figures, and ordinary Iraqi Sunnis. Here's how to do it without bombs. By Phyllis Bennis, September 10, 2014. Originally published in The Progressive. President Obama is right: There is no military solution to the problem of ISIS. Military actions will not set the stage for political solutions; they will prevent those solutions from taking hold. The bottom line is there is no immediate action that will make ISIS disappear, even if U.S. airstrikes manage to get the right target somewhere and take out an APC or a truckload of guys with RPGs or whatever. You can’t destroy an ideology—or even an organization—through bombing (look at the efforts to do so with Al Qaeda: lots of members killed in Afghanistan, but the organization took root in a bunch of other countries). And arming the so-called “moderate” opposition in Syria doesn’t mean supporting the good guys. It means sending arms to the Free Syrian Army which, according to the New York Times, “went on to behead six ISIS fighters…and then posted the photographs on Facebook.” A military strike might bring some immediate satisfaction, but we all know revenge is a bad basis for foreign policy, especially when it has such dangerous consequences. [ISIS] [Liberal] [US global strategy]
• US Violations of International Law
  by Rick Sterling President Obama plans to increase funding and training of “moderate rebels” in Syria while escalating air strike operations against ISIS in Iraq and into Syria. From Central America in the 80s to Syria today, the US has supported proxy armies in violation of international law. [Legality] [US global strategy]
• Five takeaways from President Obama’s Islamic State speech
  By Chris Cillizza September 10 ? President Obama delivered a rare primetime address Wednesday night, laying out his strategy for dealing with the growing threat posed by the Islamic State. The speech will be picked through -- and apart -- for days and weeks (and maybe even years) but I jotted down a few of my immediate takeaways. They are below. You can -- and should -- read the full text of Obama's remarks here. * The Reassurer-in-chief: Obama opened the speech with what amounted to a rundown of his foreign policy/national security successes including the killing of Osama bin-Laden and the ending of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. "Thanks to our military and counterterrorism professionals, America is safer," Obama said, in what will surely be one of the most quoted -- and debated -- lines of the speech. Of course, by asserting that the country is safer, Obama inevitably begs the question of why he is asking for the public support for a military action against a terrorist group. * ISIL, 101: The President clearly grasped that most Americans have no idea what ISIS/ISIL/Islamic state really is or why they pose a real threat to us. "They execute captured prisoners," Obama said of the group. "They kill children. They enslave, rape, and force women into marriage." This sort of stakes-setting is absolutely necessary when it comes to selling the American public on what the president promised would be a "comprehensive and sustained" fight against the Islamic State. Obama knows just how war-weary Americans are -- it's why he led with all he had accomplished to end the wars -- and how high a bar they now hold for any American involvement abroad. * This is not Iraq. This is not Iraq. This is not Iraq.: Hovering over the entirety of Obama's speech was his insistence that this conflict in no way, shape or form resembled what happened during the Iraq war. Twice he emphasized that there would not ever be American combat troops fighting in Iraq. He carefully described the fight against the Islamic State as a "counter-terrorism campaign", not a war or even an armed conflict. And he cast it as consistent with the actions has taken in the past; "this strategy of taking out terrorists who threaten us, while supporting partners on the front lines, is one that we have successfully pursued in Yemen and Somalia for years," Obama said. * I'll do it myself -- if I need to: Obama made clear that he believes he already has all the authority he needs to pursue the strategy he laid out tonight against the Islamic State. But he also made clear he'd like to have Congress behind him if at all possible. "I believe we are strongest as a nation when the President and Congress work together," he said at one point. He didn't shy away though from some direct lobbying for Congress to get behind him; "I again call on Congress to give us additional authorities and resources to train and equip these fighters," Obama said.
  * America is #1: The closing moments of Obama's speech, which were noticeably free -- or close to it -- of the sort of soaring oration his allies love and his detractors loathe, was essentially a paean to American exceptionalism. "America is better positioned today to seize the future than any other nation on Earth," Obama said as he began his close. He went on to note the exceptional role the U.S. had played in beating back an ever-aggressive Russia, our country's work to contain Ebola and the U.S.'s key contribution to ridding Syria of chemical weapons. "America, our endless blessings bestow an enduring burden," Obama insisted, a line -- and a sentiment -- that Ronald Reagan would have loved. [Obama] [Exceptionalism] [Rhetoric] [Burden]
• Syria's Deputy Foreign Minister: We're 'Fighting the Same Enemy'
  By Bill Neely DAMASCUS — Syria has “no reservations” about U.S. airstrikes against ISIS and wants to team up with Washington to tackle the militants, the country’s deputy foreign minister told NBC News. Faisal Mekdad called Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad “a natural ally” for the U.S. in its battle against ISIS, saying in an exclusive interview that both countries are “fighting the same enemy” and should be working together — not antagonizing each other. “When it comes to terrorism, we should forget our differences… and forget all about the past,” Mekdad said. “It takes two to tango...We are ready to talk." He urged the U.S. administration to come forward "energetically and courageously" to join with Syria in the fight against ISIS, suggesting a broad coalition against the militants that would also include Russia, China and Iran. [ISIS] [US global strategy] [Strategic incoherence]
• Turkey overflowing with $36 billion in mystery funds
  The pace of foreign currency coming to Turkey from unknown sources for the past 12 years keeps on climbing. Nobody says where the money is coming from. In the Central Bank’s “balance of payments” table these unregistered funds are shown under the item “net error and deficit.” Inflowing money from unknown sources during Turkey's 12 years of AKP rule totals $36 billion. Author Mehmet Cetingulec Posted September 10, 2014 But all economists know that it is impossible to conceal such high amounts. Anyhow, they have learned to look under the “net error and deficit” column to follow the movement of mystery funds. This flow of funds from unknown sources is closely linked to political changes in Turkey in the last 12 years and to regional developments. Mahfi Egilmez, a former undersecretary of the Treasury, has prepared a detailed table which clearly shows that following the Justice and Development Party's (AKP) victory in the first elections it contested in November 2002 there has been a boom in mystery funds coming to Turkey. In 2002, $758 million exited Turkey but in 2003 $4.489 billion entered. The pouring in of mystery funds gained momentum in 2007, when the AKP also took over the presidency of the country, thus giving rise to confidence that AKP would be governing for a long time to come. While the incoming mystery funds were $517 million in 2007, in 2008 that increased sixfold to $3 billion. The year 2011 was a record-breaker, with $9.4 billion arriving in mystery funds. In the 11 years before the AKP, the unrecorded funds were flowing in the other direction. Read more: http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2014/09/turkey-central-bank-mystery-funds.html#ixzz3D50LlWEF [Turkey] [Islamist]
• The Return of Fascism in Contemporary Capitalism
  by Samir Amin Samir Amin is director of the Third World Forum in Dakar, Senegal. His books published by Monthly Review Press include The Liberal Virus, The World We Wish to See, The Law of Worldwide Value, and, most recently, The Implosion of Contemporary Capitalism. This article was translated from the French by James Membrez. It is not by chance that the very title of this contribution links the return of fascism on the political scene with the crisis of contemporary capitalism. Fascism is not synonymous with an authoritarian police regime that rejects the uncertainties of parliamentary electoral democracy. Fascism is a particular political response to the challenges with which the management of capitalist society may be confronted in specific circumstances. Unity and Diversity of Fascism Political movements that can rightly be called fascist were in the forefront and exercised power in a number of European countries, particularly during the 1930s up to 1945. These included Italy’s Benito Mussolini, Germany’s Adolf Hitler, Spain’s Francisco Franco, Portugal’s António de Oliveira Salazar, France’s Philippe Pétain, Hungary’s Miklós Horthy, Romania’s Ion Antonescu, and Croatia’s Ante Pavelic. The diversity of societies that were the victims of fascism—both major developed capitalist societies and minor dominated capitalist societies, some connected with a victorious war, others the product of defeat—should prevent us from lumping them all together. I shall thus specify the different effects that this diversity of structures and conjunctures produced in these societies. Yet, beyond this diversity, all these fascist regimes had two characteristics in common: [Fascism] [Capitalism]
• Why US Middle East Policy is Fraught with Danger
  by Patrick Cockburn The United States is reluctantly but decisively becoming engaged in the civil wars in Iraq and Syria as it seeks to combat Isis, which calls itself Islamic State. President Barack Obama will outline his plans in a speech today to create a grand coalition of Western and regional powers to contain and defeat Isis, which has established a quasi-state stretching from the frontiers of Iran to the outskirts of Aleppo.
  Lacking a moderate military opposition to support as an alternative to Isis and the Assad government, the US has moved to raise such a force under its own control. The Free Syrian Army (FSA), once lauded in Western capitals as the likely military victors over Mr Assad, largely collapsed at the end of 2013. The FSA military leader, General Abdul-Ilah al Bashir, who defected from the Syrian government side in 2012, said in an interview with the McClatchy news agency last week that the CIA had taken over direction of this new moderate force. He said that “the leadership of the FSA is American”, adding that since last December US supplies of equipment have bypassed the FSA leadership in Turkey and been sent directly to up to 14 commanders in northern Syria and 60 smaller groups in the south of the country. Gen Bashir said that all these FSA groups reported directly to the CIA. Other FSA commanders confirmed that the US is equipping them with training and weapons including TOW anti-tank missiles. It appears that, if the US does launch air strikes in Syria, they will be nominally in support of the FSA which is firmly under US control. [Outsourcing] [Syria]
• Syria’s Assad thinks he is winning. He could be wrong.
  Syrian President Bashar Assad, shown on Aug. 31 in Damascus, is said to be confident that the U.S. and its allies will soon seek his partnership in an international coalition against terrorism. (Sana/EPA) By Liz Sly September 9 ? BEIRUT — Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s hold on power is looking less certain than his recent assertions of victory suggest, as America snubs his appeals for a partnership, Islamic State militants inflict defeats on his troops and his own Alawite constituency shows signs of growing discontent. Far from looking invincible, the man who blamed terrorists for the rebellion against him instead is at risk of being cast as the leader under whose watch they flourished and who now can’t do anything to check — much in the way Iraqi leader Nouri al-Maliki was held to account for the fall of the city of Mosul. The shift does not appear to have registered with Assad, who remains confident, his supporters say, that the United States and its allies will soon be forced to seek his partnership in an international coalition against terrorism. [Syria] [Bashar Assad]
• The 1% May Be Richer Than You Think, Research Shows
  By Jeanna Smialek Aug 8, 2014 2:14 AM GMT+1200 Aug. 7 (Bloomberg) -- Bloomberg’s Matthew Miller and Olivia Sterns discuss the top billionaires offshore financial wealth and the difficulty of tracking down their assets. They speak with Betty Liu on “In The Loop.” (Source: Bloomberg) The 1 percent is literally rich beyond measure, depriving nations of billions in tax revenue and obscuring shifts in global inequality. Research conducted separately by European Central Bank economist Philip Vermeulen and London School of Economics’ Gabriel Zucman show the wealth of the super-affluent -- hidden by tax shelters and nonresponse to questionnaires -- is undercounted. Correcting for similar lapses in income data almost erases progress made from 1988 to 2008 in narrowing the gap between the world’s rich and poor, World Bank research found. “We always suspected there was some low-balling of the top 1 percent,” said Joseph Stiglitz, a Nobel-prize winning economist and author of “The Price of Inequality. “There’s a growing sense that our system is rigged and unfair.” Failure to get a better handle on the actual amount of wealth and income means economists and policy makers don’t have a proper understanding of the degree of disparity, which represents a hurdle in addressing it. For instance, knowing that earnings and assets are more concentrated could spur support for changing the tax structure, Zucman said. [Inequality]
• The Virtue of Subtlety: A U.S. Strategy Against the Islamic State
  Geopolitical Weekly Tuesday, September 9, 2014 By George Friedman U.S. President Barack Obama said recently that he had no strategy as yet toward the Islamic State but that he would present a plan on Wednesday. It is important for a president to know when he has no strategy. It is not necessarily wise to announce it, as friends will be frightened and enemies delighted. A president must know what it is he does not know, and he should remain calm in pursuit of it, but there is no obligation to be honest about it. This is particularly true because, in a certain sense, Obama has a strategy, though it is not necessarily one he likes. Strategy is something that emerges from reality, while tactics might be chosen. Given the situation, the United States has an unavoidable strategy. There are options and uncertainties for employing it. Let us consider some of the things that Obama does know. [US global strategy]
• What Happens to Electric Utilities When It Is Cheaper for Consumers to Generate Their Own Power?
  David Von Hippel 19 March 2014 Nautilus Institute David von Hippel is a Nautilus Institute Senior Associate working on energy and environmental issues in Asia, as well as on analysis of the DPRK energy sector. Utilities have been in the business of generating electricity and distributing it to consumers since the 1880s. Utilities pass on to consumers the costs of providing that power—the costs of building, owning, and operating power plants, substations, transmission lines, distribution lines, and other equipment, as well as administrative costs, fuel costs, and power purchase costs, to name just a few. In many countries, electricity tariffs are set so that the utility recovers those costs, plus some profit. Some countries, including in Asia (Korea is a current example, as is Mongolia), use other government income to subsidize power costs to some or all consumers through utilities that are state-owned or state-controlled. With the exception of some large industrial customers, a few “early adopters” (customers eager to try new technologies without much regard for cost), and those living “off grid” (too remote from the electrical grid for cost-effective service), most consumers do not think much about generating their own power, being content to allow the utilities to perform that function and/or unaware that they have an option. A recent report, The Economics of Grid Defection: When and Where Distributed Solar Generation Plus Storage Competes with Traditional Utility Service, by authors from the Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI), Homer Energy and CohnReznick Think Energy, suggests that within a few decades—and much sooner in some places—the combination of advances in solar photovoltaic and battery technologies, and marked decreases in prices for both, may well result in huge changes in the role of the consumer in power provision, and in the role of the utility in providing power. The RMI report compared the projected per-unit cost of utility power with the cost of “off grid” power from solar PV/battery power systems for residential and commercial customers living in five US States: Hawaii, California, Texas, Kentucky, and New York. These states represent a range of power costs and solar resources. They explored a “base case” scenario, with “an average of generally accepted cost forecasts for solar and battery systems”, an “[a]ccelerated technology improvement” scenario offering faster improvements in system cost and performance, a scenario in which users of solar/battery systems also adopt demand-side energy efficiency improvements to reduce the energy and power that the system must supply, and a scenario in accelerated technology and demand-side improvements are combined. The report found that for some consumers in Hawaii, the costs of solar/battery systems are already less than that of grid electricity, that under an increasing number of scenarios, and for more and more locations and customer groups, solar/battery systems will reach cost “parity” with grid electricity over the next 10 to 30 years. Parity will be reached before 2050 for commercial customers in all five states, and for residential customers in three of the five states, even under the base case scenario. As more consumers adopt on-site renewable energy systems, whether grid-connected or grid-independent, the fixed costs of power provision, including the costs of power plants and other long-lived assets, must be spread over a reduced pool of electrical energy sales, pushing electricity rates up, and making renewable energy systems even more cost-effective and attractive. [Energy]
• Is Turkey the weakest link in anti-IS coalition?
  Turkey is likely to be the weakest, most reluctant and most timid member of the coalition Western allies are building to combat the Islamic State (IS), judging by Ankara’s initial reactions, the situation on the ground and the ideological constraints and political weaknesses of the Justice and Development Party (AKP) government. Summary? Print Held back by political weaknesses and ideological constraints, Ankara is likely to be the weakest and most reluctant member of the planned coalition against the Islamic State. Author Kadri Gursel Posted September 8, 2014 Translator(s)Sibel Utku Bila At the Sept. 4-5 NATO summit in Wales, US Secretary of State John Kerry said the coalition — comprising the United States, Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Australia, Turkey, Italy, Poland and Denmark — should come up with concrete plans and greater support from regional powers by the time the UN General Assembly convenes in New York on Sept. 16. Turkey is the group’s only Muslim nation and the only country that borders crisis-ridden Syria and Iraq. One may suggest these two peculiar features could legitimately entitle Turkey to certain caveats in the coalition. Yet, initial signals indicate that seeking caveats could lead also to serious rifts between the allies. Turkish press reports from bilateral talks between the Turkish delegation, led by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and US counterparts on the fringes of the NATO summit have already laid bare the challenges to Turkish-American unison in the coalition. The Cumhuriyet daily reported Sept. 6 that Erdogan, in his meeting with US President Barack Obama, voiced reservations about the planned coalition. It quoted Erdogan as saying, “We are opposed to this would-be coalition supplying weapons to the central government in Baghdad in particular. The weapons left there [the weapons the United States left the new Iraqi army when withdrawing from Iraq] are today in the hands of [IS]. The weapons could undermine our settlement process [with the Kurds]. They could have an adverse impact on the process. … The coalition to be formed against [IS] should not be strengthening [Syrian President Bashar al-] Assad.” [Turkey] [Jihadist]
• The Islamic State: Who Is ISIS? An Open Source Investigation
  By James Corbett Global Research, September 07, 2014 The hysteria over the supposed threat posed by the Islamic State (IS) is now undeniable. Every day new stories emerge focusing on the group’s brutality, its resources, its capabilities and its intention to strike out at the West. The US Defense Secretary, Secretary of State, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and ranking Senators have all delivered somber assessments of the group’s evil aims in recent weeks, and have they been joined in that effort by a host of counterparts in foreign nations. The mainstream media, for their part, report these pronouncements without question, and with only a bare minimum of context to help their audience understand the group.isis-army-700x430 An open source investigation is desperately needed to sort through the hype to determine the facts behind this shadowy terror group. In this article we will examine the background, current status and future aims of the group, as well as the numerous facts that have been carefully omitted from the officially-sanctioned narrative of the group. [Not a Corbett Report member? Sign up today.] Background – History of ISIS The Islamic State is a caliphate established by a jihadist Islamic group in June 2014. Their expressed goal is to establish Salafist government over the Levant region of Syria, Lebanon, Israel, Jordan, Cyprus and Southern Turkey. The group’s leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, has been declared caliph and “leader for Muslims everywhere.” The Islamic State has gone through numerous name changes since its founding in Iraq in 1999. originally known as Jama?at al-Taw?id wa-al-Jihad (JTJ), (“The Organization of Monotheism and Jihad”), it changed to Tan?im Qa?idat al-Jihad fi Bilad al-Rafidayn (“The Organization of Jihad’s Base in the Country of the Two Rivers”) in 2004 after the group swore allegiance to Osama Bin Laden. During this period it was popularly known as Al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI). In 2006 it became the Islamic State of Iraq (ISI), but changed again in 2013 after expanding into Syria. At that point it became Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) or Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS). Its latest moniker, the “Islamic State,” came about after the proclamation of a new caliphate on June 29, 2014. [ISIS]
• Obama: U.S. military to provide equipment, resources to battle Ebola epidemic in Africa
  By Lena H. Sun and Juliet Eilperin September 7 at 8:22 PM ? President Obama said Sunday that the U.S. military will begin aiding what has been a chaotic and ineffective response to the Ebola epidemic in West Africa, arguing that it represents a serious national security concern. The move significantly ramps up the U.S. response and comes as the already strained military is likely to be called upon further to address militant threats in the Middle East. The decision to involve the military in providing equipment and other assistance for international health workers in Africa comes after mounting calls from some unlikely groups — most prominently the international medical organization Doctors Without Borders — demonstrating to the White House the urgency of the issue. [Ebola] [cbw] [Militarisation]
• Instead of Boots on the Ground, US Seeks Iraq Contractors
  Stars and Stripes | Sep 08, 2014 | by Seth Robson Wary of putting combat troops in Iraq, the U.S. government is gauging contractors' interest in advising the Iraqi Defense Ministry and Counter Terrorism Service in a range of capacities, including force development, logistics and planning and operations. The U.S. Army Contracting Command posted a notice last month seeking contractors willing to work on an initial 12-month contract, who should be "cognizant of the goals of reducing tensions between Arabs and Kurds, and Sunni and Shias." They would focus on administration, force development, procurement and acquisition, contracting, training management, public affairs, logistics, personnel management, professional development, communications, planning and operations, infrastructure management, intelligence and executive development, the notice stated. [Mercenaries] [Privatisation]
• Stop and seize
  Aggressive police take hundreds of millions of dollars from motorists not charged with crimes
  Written by Michael Sallah, Robert O’Harrow Jr., Steven Rich Published on September 6, 2014 After the terror attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, the government called on police to become the eyes and ears of homeland security on America’s highways. Local officers, county deputies and state troopers were encouraged to act more aggressively in searching for suspicious people, drugs and other contraband. The departments of Homeland Security and Justice spent millions on police training. The effort succeeded, but it had an impact that has been largely hidden from public view: the spread of an aggressive brand of policing that has spurred the seizure of hundreds of millions of dollars in cash from motorists and others not charged with crimes, a Washington Post investigation found. Thousands of people have been forced to fight legal battles that can last more than a year to get their money back. Stop and Seize: In recent years, thousands of people have had cash confiscated by police without being charged with crimes. The Post looks at the police culture behind the seizures and the people who were forced to fight the government to get their money back. Part 2: One training firm started a private intelligence-sharing network and helped shape law enforcement nationwide. (Coming Monday) Part 3: Motorists caught up in the seizures talk about the experience and the legal battles that sometimes took more than a year. (Coming Tuesday) Behind the rise in seizures is a little-known cottage industry of private police-training firms that teach the techniques of “highway interdiction” to departments across the country. One of those firms created a private intelligence network known as Black Asphalt Electronic Networking & Notification System that enabled police nationwide to share detailed reports about American motorists — criminals and the innocent alike — including their Social Security numbers, addresses and identifying tattoos, as well as hunches about which drivers to stop. Many of the reports have been funneled to federal agencies and fusion centers as part of the government’s burgeoning law enforcement intelligence systems — despite warnings from state and federal authorities that the information could violate privacy and constitutional protections. A thriving subculture of road officers on the network now competes to see who can seize the most cash and contraband, describing their exploits in the network’s chat rooms and sharing “trophy shots” of money and drugs. Some police advocate highway interdiction as a way of raising revenue for cash-strapped municipalities. [Governance] [Repression]
• The Atlantic Alliance’s “Holy War” against the Islamic State (ISIS): NATO’s Role in the Recruitment of Islamic Terrorists
  According to Israeli Intelligence News Source By Prof Michel Chossudovsky Global Research, September 05, 2014 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) [ISIS] [Jihadists] [Outsourcing]
• Mitt Romney: The need for a mighty U.S. military
  By Mitt Romney September 4 The writer is the former governor of Massachusetts. In 2012, the Republican Party nominated him for president of the United States. Russia invades, China bullies, Iran spins centrifuges, the Islamic State (a terrorist threat “beyond anything that we’ve seen,” according to the defense secretary ) threatens — and Washington slashes the military. Reason stares. Several arguments are advanced to justify the decimation of our defense. All of them are wrong. The president asserts that we must move to “a new order that’s based on a different set of principles, that’s based on a sense of common humanity.” The old order, he is saying, where America’s disproportionate strength holds tyrants in check and preserves the sovereignty of nations, is to be replaced. It is said that the first rule of wing-walking is to not let go with one hand until the other hand has a firm grip. So, too, before we jettison our reliance on U.S. strength, there must be something effective in its place — if such a thing is even possible. Further, the appeal to “common humanity” as the foundation of this new world order ignores the reality that humanity is far from common in values and views. Humanity may commonly agree that there is evil, but what one people calls evil another calls good. There are those who claim that a multipolar world is preferable to one led by a strong United States. Were these other poles nations such as Australia, Canada, France and Britain, I might concur. But with emerging poles being China, Russia and Iran, the world would not see peace; it would see bullying, invasion and regional wars. And ultimately, one would seek to conquer the others, unleashing world war. [Romney]
• Both Journalists Documented the Reality of Free Syria Army
  Foley & Sotloff’s Reporting Show Why the US Should Stop Its Proxy War on Syria by Rick Sterling President Obama and his team should discard the propaganda and read then reflect on some of the articles written about Syria by recently murdered American journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff. Although they were both embedded with Syrian “moderate rebels”, they documented some of the reality not myths about the Syrian “revolution”. [ISIS]
• In northeast Syria, Islamic State builds a government
  By Mariam Karouny BEIRUT Thu Sep 4, 2014 10:44am EDT Smoke rises after what activists said was an air raid by Syrian government forces at the eastern Syrian city of Raqqa August 18, 2014. Credit: Reuters/Stringer (Reuters) - In the cities and towns across the desert plains of northeast Syria, the ultra-hardline al Qaeda offshoot Islamic State has insinuated itself into nearly every aspect of daily life. The group famous for its beheadings, crucifixions and mass executions provides electricity and water, pays salaries, controls traffic, and runs nearly everything from bakeries and banks to schools, courts and mosques. While its merciless battlefield tactics and its imposition of its austere vision of Islamic law have won the group headlines, residents say much of its power lies in its efficient and often deeply pragmatic ability to govern. [ISIS] [Governance]
• Chalabi predicts Iraqi oil could net IS up to $150 million in 2014
  Former Iraqi Oil Minister Issam al-Chalabi said on Aug. 27 that estimates from reliable reports confirm that the Islamic State (IS) would reap between $100-150 million from the smuggling of Iraqi oil during 2014. He said that the quantity of the smuggled oil is so large that it is impossible to monitor and determine the dealers involved in this trade. Chalabi, an international energy consultant whose headquarters is in the Jordanian capital of Amman, stressed in statements made to Azzaman that there are no accurate figures on IS’ oil revenues. He added that statements about the revenues of IS are mere speculation. The Islamic State is expected to reap between $100-150 million from smuggling Iraqi and Syrian oil to several countries, including Turkey. Author Nidal al Laythi Posted August 29, 2014 Translator(s)Sahar Ghoussoub He explained that Turkish parties — whether individuals or institutions — are the only beneficiaries of oil smuggling from Iraq and Syria. He also said that the smuggled oil of these two countries by IS cannot help but pass through Turkey. Chalabi told Azzaman that international oil companies are involved in these kinds of operations, given the return that has been achieved and the low price at which they purchase smuggled oil. [Smuggling] [Oil] [ISIS]
• The west must understand the Islamic State's worldview, and accept its own failings, if it is to meet the challenge.
  Paul Rogers 5 September 2014 In the early months of 2014, there was little particular concern in the west about the movement then known as the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIS or ISIL), and now as the Islamic State (IS). That changed radically with the group's rapid advance through parts of Iraq, including the capture of the city of Mosul, in the first half of June. Now, even greater concern is raised by the gruesome killings - staged for propaganda purposes - of two journalist hostages, James Foley and Steven Sotloff. There is some caution over an immediate military response to the murders, amid recognition that this may be what Islamic State wants. Indeed, the murders may be a direct incitement to just such action (see "Second execution video shows that Islamic State has a grim strategic plan", The Conversation, 3 September 2014). It's clear that the debate about how western states should respond needs to be based on understanding the movement's current status and motivation. At least five elements are important here. First, IS is well organised and coherent in the running of the territory it now controls - an area about the size of the UK and with well over 4 million people under varying degrees of control. [ISIS]
• How America made ISIS?
  Tom Engelhardt 5 September 2014 The American record in these last 13 years is a shameful one. Do it again should not be an option. Whatever your politics, you’re not likely to feel great about America right now. After all, there’s Ferguson (the whole world was watching!), an increasingly unpopular president, a Congress whose approval ratings make the president look like a rock star, rising poverty, weakening wages, and a growing inequality gap just to start what could be a long list. Abroad, from Libya and Ukraine to Iraq and the South China Sea, nothing has been coming up roses for the US. Polls reflect a general American gloom, with 71% of the public claiming the country is “on the wrong track.” We have the look of a superpower down on our luck. What Americans have needed is a little pick-me-up to make us feel better, to make us, in fact, feel distinctly good. Certainly, what official Washington has needed in tough times is a bona fide enemy so darn evil, so brutal, so barbaric, so inhuman that, by contrast, we might know just how exceptional, how truly necessary to this planet we really are. In the nick of time, riding to the rescue comes something new under the sun: the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), recently renamed Islamic State (IS). It’s a group so extreme that even al-Qaeda rejected it, so brutal that it’s brought back crucifixion, beheading, waterboarding, and amputation, so fanatical that it’s ready to persecute any religious group within range of its weapons, so grimly beyond morality that it’s made the beheading of an innocent American a global propaganda phenomenon. If you’ve got a label that’s really, really bad like genocide or ethnic cleansing, you can probably apply it to ISIS's actions.
  Establishing an American Caliphate Facing such unmatchable evil, the United States officially went to war as it might have against an enemy military power. Under the rubric of the Global War on Terror, the Bush administration launched the unmatchable power of the US military and its paramilitarized intelligence agencies against... well, what? Despite those dramatic videos of al-Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan, that organization had no military force worth the name, and despite what you’ve seen on “Homeland,” no sleeper cells in the US either; nor did it have the ability to mount follow-up operations any time soon. In other words, while the Bush administration talked about “draining the swamp” of terror groups in up to 60 countries, the US military was dispatched against what were essentially will-o’-the-wisps, largely representing Washington’s own conjured fears and fantasies. [ISIS] [Blowback] [Hysteria] [MISCOM]
• G4S private army of Gurkhas wins medals for gallantry in Kabul
  Clare Sambrook 3 September 2014 • Honour citation sheds light on security industry's role in 'War on Terror'. • G4S Gurkhas deployed against environmental protesters in the UK. Four former British Army Gurkhas employed by G4S have become the first private security operatives to receive the Queen’s Gallantry Medal (QGM) for exemplary acts of bravery. G4S soldiers-for-hire Deepak Kumar Thapa, Janga Bahadur Gurung, Jeetman Sharu Magar and Shayam Kumar Limbu received the honour for resisting an attack on the British Council compound in the Afghan capital, Kabul, in August 2011, according to the Civilian Gallantry List published yesterday. The citation describes a “complex attack” on the compound, involving two explosive-laden suicide vehicles and “an assault by four heavily armed insurgents”.
  The company’s private army of ex-Gurkhas is also deployed against civilians in the UK. [Mercenaries]
• Libya sinking into chaos
  The constant eruption that Libya has faced since the fall of the regime of former President Moammar Gadhafi appears like an inevitable chain, interspersed with periods of violent acceleration in this eruption. The fighting between rival militias for control of the main airport in the capital could contribute to pushing diplomatic missions to leave the country in a hurry. No central authority remains in Libya, and the state of generalized and extremely violent chaos between rival groups inside the country could transform the country into a center for regional instability. As the conflict in Libya expands, the need for a political solution becomes all the more pressing. Author Omar Ben Dorra Posted September 1, 2014 Translator(s)Tyler Huffman The current stage of the crisis is characterized by the emergence of regional bases on the ground that are joined around tribal and clan affiliations, which — at times — are jihadist affiliations as well. The warring militias are not seeking to gain control of the central authority as occurs in every political process; rather, they seek to acquire infrastructure so that they can "secure" it in exchange for financial gain. This is in addition to the goal of establishing their presence as effective political parties. The rebels and "revolutionaries" have transformed into militiamen who only owe allegiance to local leaders, whether tribal, religious or both. Thus, the control of seaports, airports, oil fields and export sites has become a locus of bloody confrontations that have led to the deaths of dozens of civilians. [Libya]
• US slouches toward Syria (II). It is Obama’s war, but does he need one?
  Melkulangara Bhadrakumar | 31.08.2014 | 00:00 Senior US officials told the Wall Street Journal newspaper this week that the Pentagon is «preparing to send surveillance aircraft, including drones, into Syrian airspace to gather intelligence on Islamist targets, laying the groundwork for a possible expansion of the limited US military air campaign beyond Iraq». The daily noted it as «the first tangible signs that the Obama administration may be preparing for military operations in Syria». The US officials simply shrugged off Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Al- Muallem’s suggestion on Monday that his country is prepared to be «the centre of the international coalition to fight Islamic State [ISIL]» and his insistence that the US must coordinate with his government before launching any air strikes on its territory. They said Washington would do what it plans to do «without any Syrian regime approval or authorization». Their explanation was that «fighting a common enemy [ISIL] doesn’t make the Syrian regime a US ally». The US Secretary of Defence Chuck Hagel also maintained last weekend at a Pentagon briefing that President Assad is the «problem» rather than «solution». On Monday, US State Department spokesperson Jen Psaki declared, «Just because the Syrian regime may be taking on the Islamic State… it certainly doesn’t mean we’re on the same side of the coin here». These statements have an ominous overtone. They hint at the strong likelihood that the US intervention in Syria could well be turned around at some point to advance the agenda of regime change in Damascus. ‘All options are on the table’, as American presidents would say. [Syria] [US global strategy]
• You Can't Understand ISIS If You Don't Know the History of Wahhabism in Saudi Arabia
  Alistair Crooke Posted: 08/27/2014 11:56 am EDT Updated: 08/28/2014 3:59 pm EDT BEIRUT -- The dramatic arrival of Da'ish (ISIS) on the stage of Iraq has shocked many in the West. Many have been perplexed -- and horrified -- by its violence and its evident magnetism for Sunni youth. But more than this, they find Saudi Arabia's ambivalence in the face of this manifestation both troubling and inexplicable, wondering, "Don't the Saudis understand that ISIS threatens them, too?" It appears -- even now -- that Saudi Arabia's ruling elite is divided. Some applaud that ISIS is fighting Iranian Shiite "fire" with Sunni "fire"; that a new Sunni state is taking shape at the very heart of what they regard as a historical Sunni patrimony; and they are drawn by Da'ish's strict Salafist ideology. Other Saudis are more fearful, and recall the history of the revolt against Abd-al Aziz by the Wahhabist Ikhwan (Disclaimer: this Ikhwan has nothing to do with the Muslim Brotherhood Ikhwan -- please note, all further references hereafter are to the Wahhabist Ikhwan, and not to the Muslim Brotherhood Ikhwan), but which nearly imploded Wahhabism and the al-Saud in the late 1920s. Many Saudis are deeply disturbed by the radical doctrines of Da'ish (ISIS) -- and are beginning to question some aspects of Saudi Arabia's direction and discourse.
  In the collaborative management of the region by the Saudis and the West in pursuit of the many western projects (countering socialism, Ba'athism, Nasserism, Soviet and Iranian influence), western politicians have highlighted their chosen reading of Saudi Arabia (wealth, modernization and influence), but they chose to ignore the Wahhabist impulse. After all, the more radical Islamist movements were perceived by Western intelligence services as being more effective in toppling the USSR in Afghanistan -- and in combatting out-of-favor Middle Eastern leaders and states. Why should we be surprised then, that from Prince Bandar's Saudi-Western mandate to manage the insurgency in Syria against President Assad should have emerged a neo-Ikhwan type of violent, fear-inducing vanguard movement: ISIS? And why should we be surprised -- knowing a little about Wahhabism -- that "moderate" insurgents in Syria would become rarer than a mythical unicorn? Why should we have imagined that radical Wahhabism would create moderates? Or why could we imagine that a doctrine of "One leader, One authority, One mosque: submit to it, or be killed" could ever ultimately lead to moderation or tolerance? Or, perhaps, we never imagined. [Jihadist] [Outsourcing] [Saudi Arabia]
• Najibullah’s Prophecy
  Decisions have consequences. I wonder when there will be a Global Truth & Reconciliation Commission to deal with the ruinous decision of the United States to partner with Saudi Arabia and the Gulf nations to cultivate, employ, exploit and/or unleash jihadism and religious sectarianism to destroy unfriendly or unhelpful secular/socialist regimes in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and Syria. Butcher’s bill so far: maybe 300,000 dead in Afpak & Iraq, another 200,000 dead in Syria. Using a conservative wounded to killed ratio of 3:1, at least 1.5 million lives shortened or physically shattered. Add another 8 million or so refugees for whom the social and economic fabric of their lives has been torn apart. Judging by first impressions—that the United States will seek to contain and manage IS as an asset in its effort to unseat Assad in Syria, just as it used the IS threat to shoulder Maliki out of power in Iraq—America is unable to shake its jihadi addiction as it seeks to wield influence in the Middle East without putting “boots on the ground”. [Jihadist] [Outsourcing] [US global strategy]

• Scotland's complicity with empire does not disqualify it from independence
  My own ambivalence about September's vote has a different source from the glory and shame of the union invoked by partisans on either side
  Pankaj Mishra The Guardian, Saturday 30 August 2014 Alex Salmond The best argument against Scottish independence may be Alex Salmond, writes Pankaj Mishra. Photograph: Jeff J Mitchell/Getty The hills and lochs of Scotland are an unlikely place to recall the words of India's first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, but they kept echoing in my head last week as I headed west from Glasgow: "A moment comes, which comes but rarely in history, when we step out from the old to the new, when an age ends, and when the soul of a nation, long suppressed, finds utterance." This affirmation of the 20th-century religion of national self-determination was made on the eve of India's independence from British rule. Its memory couldn't help but evoke some ironies to this Indian in Scotland. How, for instance, Great Britain, which hastily drew arbitrary lines in the sand in too many places, condemning hundreds of millions of people across the world, from Ireland to Kashmir, Sudan to Palestine, to decades of violence and hatred, should now be facing drastic scission. Or that Scotland, avid participant for over two centuries in the splendour and folly of empire, as the opulent houses near Glasgow and the Indian cemeteries full of young Campbells attest, should now wish to disown its senior partner. This shrewd complicity with empire doesn't, of course, disqualify Scots from a separate nation-state today. My own ambivalence has a source different from the glory and shame of the union, which some Yes and No partisans atavistically invoke. It lies in the fact that most of us from the postcolonial world, though intuitively sympathetic to the idea of self-determination, cannot claim to have fulfilled even partially its extravagant promise. [Independence] [Anti-colonialism] [Inequality]
• US slaps more sanctions over Iran's nuke program
  Xinhua, August 30, 2014 The United States on Friday imposed sanctions on a number of Iranian individuals and entities while pledging continued work toward a comprehensive solution to the Islamic republic's controversial nuclear program. The Department of Treasury targeted the networks for their alleged support to Iran's missile and nuclear programs as well as terrorism, and for helping Tehran evade the existing sanctions. "Treasury's action against over 25 entities and individuals -- who are involved in expanding Iran's proliferation program, supporting terrorism in the region, and helping Iran evade U.S. and international sanctions -- reflects our continuing determination to take action against anyone, anywhere, who violates our sanctions," said David Cohen, under secretary of Treasury for terrorism and financial intelligence, in a statement. [Dissension] [Treasury] [Iran] [Sanctions] [Governance]
• Iran says US sanctions will hinder nuclear talks
  Foreign ministry warning follows US imposition of sanctions on more than 25 businesses, banks and individuals • • Kevin Rawlinson and agencies • • theguardian.com, Saturday 30 August 2014 13.59 BST • The Iranian president, Hassan Rouhani, said the country should resist the US sanctions. Photograph: Behrouz Mehri/AFP/Getty Images US sanctions against Iran will hinder talks over the country's nuclear programme, the Iranian foreign ministry has warned. The comments came as Iran's president, Hassan Rouhani, said the country should "resist" the measures. On Friday, the US imposed sanctions on more than 25 businesses, banks and individuals it suspected of working to expand Iran's nuclear programme, support terrorism and help Iran evade existing sanctions. The measures bar Americans from engaging in transactions with any of the designated parties, freeze their assets and block their property under US jurisdiction. Iran's foreign ministry spokesman Marzieh Afkham said the new sanctions would jeopardise a nuclear deal between Iran and world powers, the official IRNA news agency reported on Saturday. "These actions have a negative and non-constructive impact on the trend of the talks. The Islamic Republic of Iran rejects any unilateral and self-serving interpretation of last year's Geneva deal," she said. "Iran strongly believes that the sanctions are against commitments made by the United States under the Geneva deal." [Dissension] [Sanctions] [Iran]
• Captives held by Islamic State were waterboarded
  By Adam Goldman and Julie Tate August 28 at 8:43 PM ? At least four hostages held in Syria by the Islamic State, including an American journalist who was recently executed by the group, were waterboarded in the early part of their captivity, according to people familiar with the treatment of the kidnapped Westerners. James Foley was among the four who were waterboarded several times by Islamic State militants who appeared to model the technique on the CIA’s use of waterboarding to interrogate suspected terrorists after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Waterboarding often involves strapping a person down on a gurney or bench and pouring cold water over a cloth covering the face. It causes the sensation of drowning. “The wet cloth creates a barrier through which it is difficult — or in some cases not possible — to breathe,” according to a Justice Department memo in May 2005 about the CIA’s use of the technique. President Obama has condemned waterboarding as torture. [Torture] [Double standards]
• US slouches toward Syria, again (I). A war by some other name
  Melkulangara Bhadrakumar | 29.08.2014 | 00:00 The Americans have a habit of first naming their imminent war before the troops march out and it will be interesting to see how this one is going to be christened. There seems some ambiguity about the war ahead in Iraq and Syria – what it is really going to be as it gathers momentum. That probably explains the shyness in naming it. What began as ‘humanitarian intervention’ in Iraq has since spread from Kurdistan to Baghdad to Anbar and in the past forty-eight hours or so reached Syria with the US president having given approval for sustained air reconnaissance missions in its airspace. So far, the US’s intervention in Iraq has been episodic but it produced some gains. These gains have been far from consolidated or irreversible, but are important enough. Humanitarian aid has apparently reached the beleaguered Yazidi community on Mount Sinjar and some areas lost to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Lebanon [ISIL] in northern Iraq – Gwer, Makhmour and the Mosul Dam – have been retaken by the Kurdish forces with the help of US air strikes. An ISIL advance toward the Kurdish capital of Erbil has been stalled for the present. However, there are widely-shared misgivings too that the ISIL might have been bruised but is far from defeated and the spectre of a quasistate run by a terrorist entity with worldwide networking is presented as the challenge facing the US. The American pundits are quibbling over the efficacy of a ‘containment’ strategy toward the ISIL, but most experts agree that there is no alternative to defeating the network by eliminating its sanctuaries. Having said that, the challenge is not merely a military one because also that the ISIL banks on key power centres within Iraq – tribes, former Baath military officers, disaffected Sunnis – and in the region and is estimated to have a daily ‘income’ of over $1 million and has a huge stockpile of weapons and considerable financial wherewithal. But the debates view this as a peripheral issue and the focus is on the military part. [ISIS]
• Saudi-Iranian thaw will take time
  The interpretation that comes readily to mind regarding the visit to Riyadh by the Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Amir Abdollahian and his talks on Tuesday with the Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud Al-Faisal would be that a thaw is in the offing in the ties between the two countries. The time for a thaw may appear propitious. The surge of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant [ISIL] is a matter of concern to both Tehran and Riyadh and, arguably, they have a shared interest in countering the tidal wave of extremism and terrorism sweeping Iraq and Syria. Certainly, Iran played a key role in the replacement of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, which also happened to be a long-standing Saudi demand — although Tehran had its own weighty reasons to promote the transition in Baghdad. Most certainly, Iran is working hard for a national unity government in Baghdad, which is inclusive and would accommodate Sunni aspirations and preserve Iraq’s unity and territorial integrity, as the recent visit to Iraq by Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif to Iraq testifies. The Saudis have been clamoring for an inclusive approach in Iraqi politics. Again, make no mistake, Iran aspires to be a factor of stability in Iraq. Zarif’s consultations in Iraq displayed the spectacular reach of Iranian influence in Iraq — be it in Erbil, Baghdad, Najaf or Karbala. Thus, it may come as no surprise that the Iranian account of Abdollahian’s consultations with Faisal is on a manifestly positive note, highlighting their commonality of interests on the grave issues buffeting regional security in the Middle East today. IRNA says the two diplomats “stressed the importance of opening new page in the political relations between the two countries.” (here). However, there is no word in the report about the languishing invitation from Faisal in May to Zarif to visit Saudi Arabia. Zarif has been extensively touring the Gulf Cooperation Council region but has studiously sidestepped Saudi Arabia so far. (Zarif is currently in Ankara on his second visit to Turkey in, perhaps, as many months.) Indeed, the Saudi-Iranian tango is never quite visible to the naked eye. What is extremely significant is that even as Faisal was holding Abdollahian’s hand in Riyadh, Tehran let it be known in a characteristically roundabout way quoting ’sources’ that the Israeli spy drone that Iran shot down on Monday had only flown from a Saudi air base. [Iran] [Saudi Arabia] [Israel Saudi Arabia]
• U.S. air strikes on Syria would face formidable obstacles
  By Matt Spetalnick and Phil Stewart Washington Thu Aug 28, 2014 10:47am EDT U.S. President Barack Obama delivers a statement from Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts during his vacation August 20, 2014. Credit: Reuters/Kevin Lamarque (Reuters) - American forces face formidable challenges as President Barack Obama considers an air assault on Islamist fighters in Syria, including intelligence gaps on potential targets, concerns about Syria’s air defenses and fears that the militants may have anti-aircraft weapons, current and former U.S. officials say. [Strategic incoherence]
• War of attrition pointless in Gaza
  If the report that appeared in the Qatari Al Sharq newspaper on Aug. 24 can be trusted, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas is preparing a somewhat unpleasant surprise for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The report claimed that at a meeting this past weekend in Doha between Abbas and Khaled Meshaal, head of Hamas' political bureau, it was agreed that Abbas would present US Secretary of State John Kerry with a deadline. He would tell Kerry that the United States has a month to recognize a Palestinian state within the 1967 borders as the basis for negotiations with Israel, or he would dismantle the Palestinian Authority and hand all the occupied territories, including the Gaza Strip, back to Netanyahu. When Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu threatened Hamas with a war of attrition, he ignored that in such a war the winner is not the strongest army, but the side that has the least to lose. Author Akiva Eldar Posted August 25, 2014 Translator(s)Danny Wool This report was preceded by a surprising interview that Meshaal gave to the Hamas website Aug. 11. In response to the question of whether he can imagine one day sitting down at the negotiating table with Israel, Meshaal responded, “Negotiations between enemies is a well-known phenomenon throughout all of history and politics. It is not forbidden from a religious perspective. Negotiations have their own foundations and calculations. There is a verse in the Quran that says, 'And if they incline to peace, then incline to it [also].'" That same verse appeared on street signs greeting Egyptian President Anwar Sadat back to Cairo when he returned from his breakthrough visit to Jerusalem in November 1977. Eight years earlier, his predecessor Gamal Abdel Nasser said, “I cannot take over Sinai, but I can break the spirit of Israel by attrition” (more accurately “bloodletting” in Arabic). The term “war of attrition,” which was used to describe the lengthy war that took place mainly on the Egyptian front from mid-1968 to August 1970, has entered Israel’s political discourse once again, now that the negotiations in Cairo have reached a dead end and the cease-fire is over. At an Aug. 20 press conference, Netanyahu said, “Hamas thinks that it can wear us down. It is mistaken. The Israeli people are strong. Instead of attrition, Hamas will be crushed — its infrastructures, terrorists and commanders. … Our policy toward Hamas is simple: If they fire, they will be hit, and not just hit but hit very hard. And if Hamas does not understand this today, it will understand it tomorrow. And if not tomorrow, then the day after tomorrow.” In Hebrew, the speech uses the term for “determination” five times, implying that in the Middle East, one needs not just military power but stamina and patience.
  The problem with this approach is that in many cases, such as the current war, an opponent may have less determination and stamina, but also less assets to lose. [Asymmetry]
• Nuclear standoff between the Arab League and the west
  Bob Rigg 26 August 2014
  For decades the west has covertly supported Israel’s nuclear programme while pretending to support a nuclear weapons-free Middle East. Exasperated by this, the Arab League is spearheading a major international move to challenge the west’s double standards. Negev Nuclear Research Center at Dimona, Israel, photographed in 1968Negev Nuclear Research Center at Dimona, Israel, photographed in 1968 by American reconnaissance satellite. US Government/Wikimedia Commons. Public domain. On 16 June the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Vienna circulated a request backed by 18 members of the Arab League calling on Israel to place its nuclear facilities under the IAEA’s inspection regime and to formally commit to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT). [Nuclear weapons] [Israel] [Double standards]
• Colonization by Bankruptcy: The High-stakes Chess Match for Argentina
  By Ellen Brown Global Research, August 25, 2014 If Argentina were in a high-stakes chess match, the country?s actions this week would be the equivalent of flipping over all the pieces on the board. ? David Dayen, Fiscal Times, August 22, 2014 Argentina is playing hardball with the vulture funds, which have been trying to force it into an involuntary bankruptcy. The vultures are demanding what amounts to a 600% return on bonds bought for pennies on the dollar, defeating a 2005 settlement in which 92% of creditors agreed to accept a 70% haircut on their bonds. A US court has backed the vulture funds; but last week, Argentina sidestepped its jurisdiction by transferring the trustee for payment from Bank of New York Mellon to its own central bank. That play, if approved by the Argentine Congress, will allow the country to continue making payments under its 2005 settlement, avoiding default on the majority of its bonds. Argentina is already foreclosed from international capital markets, so it doesn?t have much to lose by thwarting the US court system. Similar bold moves by Ecuador and Iceland have left those countries in substantially better shape than Greece, which went along with the agendas of the international financiers. [Finance]
• Egypt and UAE strike Islamist militias in Libya
  By Anne Gearan August 25 at 8:23 PM ? The United Arab Emirates and Egypt have carried out a series of airstrikes in the Libyan capital, Tripoli, U.S. officials said Monday, marking an escalation in the chaotic war among Libya’s rival militias that has driven American and other diplomats from the country. The Obama administration did not know ahead of time about the highly unusual military intervention, although the United States was aware that action by Arab states might come as the crisis in Libya worsened, said one official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter. The airstrikes appear tied to fear over the growing muscle of Islamist militias. The region’s monarchies and secular dictatorships are increasingly alarmed about Islamist gains from Libya to Syria and Iraq. And the airstrikes may signal a new willingness by some Arab states to take on a more direct military role in the region’s conflicts. [Client] [Decline] [Libya]
• Keynes is Dead; Long Live Marx!
  by Ismael Hossein-Zadeh Many liberal economists envisioned a new dawn of Keynesianism in the 2008 financial meltdown. Nearly six years later, it is clear that the much-hoped-for Keynesian prescriptions are completely ignored. Why? Keynesian economists’ answer: “neoliberal ideology,” which they trace back to President Reagan. This study argues, by contrast, that the transition from Keynesian to neoliberal economics has much deeper roots than pure ideology; that the transition started long before Reagan was elected President; that the Keynesian reliance on the ability of the government to re-regulate and revive the economy through policies of demand management rests on a hopeful perception that the state can control capitalism; and that, contrary to such wishful perceptions, public policies are more than simply administrative or technical matters of choice—more importantly, they are class policies. The study further argues that the Marxian theory of unemployment, based on his theory of the reserve army of labor, provides a much robust explanation of the protracted high levels of unemployment than the Keynesian view, which attributes the plague of unemployment to the “misguided policies of neoliberalism.” Likewise, the Marxian theory of subsistence or near-poverty wages provides a more cogent account of how or why such poverty levels of wages, as well as a generalized predominance of misery, can go hand-in-hand with high levels of profits and concentrated wealth than the Keynesian perceptions, which view high levels of employment and wages as necessary conditions for an expansionary economic cycle [1]. [Capitalism]
• ISIS Raises the Stakes
  by Patrick Cockburn The killing of James Foley by Isis caused an upsurge of international revulsion and condemnation with harsh words from the US defence secretary and others. But the Obama administration is trying hard not to be sucked into a war that could be more serious than the US invasion and occupation of Iraq between 2003 and 2011. What Isis showed by Foley’s very public murder is that it will always raise the stakes in any confrontation with the US and anybody else. It trumped America’s reassuring portrayal of the recapture of Mosul Dam by the Kurds aided by US air strikes as a JihadisReturn_WebAd_2014_08_20_Counterpunch_Square_300x300 sign that Isis could be defeated. How much has really been changed by the US airstrikes? Possibly less than first appeared: one of Isis’s great strengths is that it can switch its military campaigns from Iraq to Syria and back again, and much that happens on the Syrian battlefields remains unreported. It helps Isis that the US, Britain and their Arab allies don’t know how to retreat without humiliation from their three-year attempt to bring down President Bashar al-Assad, Isis’s main opponent in Syria. The rest of the Syrian armed opposition is retreating, disintegrating or changing sides. In the long term the US and their allies may well develop a degree of mostly covert co-operation with the Assad government but it will probably be too late. [Strategic incoherence] [ISIS]
• If Britain were a U.S. state, it would be the second-poorest, behind Alabama and before Mississippi
  By Hunter Schwarz August 26 at 10:48 AM If Britain were to join the United States, it would be the second-poorest state, behind Alabama and ahead of Mississippi. The ranking, determined by Fraser Nelson, an editor of The Spectator magazine, was made by dividing the gross domestic product of each state by its population, and it took into account purchasing power parity for cost of living. Several other European countries were also included in the ranking. Ranking by GDP per capita instead of just GDP means that states with mega-economies such as California, which has the top GDP in the United States (its GDP is also larger than most countries’), was knocked down to 14th place among the states when divided by its more than 38 million residents. Alaska comes in first, with a GDP of more than $59 million divided by a population of 735,000. [GDP]
• Closing the Jihadist Highway
  by Patrick Cockburn The murder of the US journalist James Foley by a British jihadi has reignited the barren debate in Britain about new government powers to tackle extremist Islamic groups. Dubious counter-terrorism specialists, the exact nature of their expertise frequently elusive, speak of the effectiveness of new controls in thwarting actual or potential jihadis. Much of what is said is irrelevant to the real circumstances in which Muslims leave Britain or other foreign countries to fight in Syria and Iraq. The discussion, driven by politicians responding to media hysteria, produces a sort of intellectual fog in which effective measures that can be taken swiftly disappear from view. The point at which jihadis should be best identified, intercepted and stopped is not within Britain or even Europe, but as they cross from Turkey into Syria. The Turks have a 560-mile border with Syria and it is across this that jihadis must travel if they are to reach their destination, primarily but not exclusively the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isis), to offer their services. Those who head for Iraq must also take what Turkish journalists call “the Jihadist Highway”, a network of roads across Turkey and Syria. [ISIS] [Turkey] [Jihadist]
• Provoking quandary for US, embattled Syrian government asks for help fighting Islamic State
  By Roy Gutman McClatchy Foreign Staff August 25, 2014 ISTANBUL — One day after losing a major airbase to Islamic extremists, Syria said Monday it was willing to work with other countries to fight terror groups in Syria provided they show respect for the Syrian regime and operate only with its permission. At least one third of Syrian territory is said to be in the hands of the radical Islamic State, and the loss of Tabqa airbase Sunday put the entire east Syrian province of Raqqa in the militant’s hands, a severe setback for the regime of President Bashar Assad. Walid Al Moallem, the Syrian Deputy Prime Minister, told reporters that Syria is willing to cooperate with other countries “as long as this cooperation is approached in a serious manner, without double standards” and does not “weaken Syria.” Referring to a recent U.N. Security Council resolution, he said: “Cooperation should be carried out through the Syrian government, which is a symbol of national sovereignty,” the official SANA news agency quoted him as saying. But he said the resolution “does not authorize anyone to act alone against any country.” “Being serious in combating terrorism isn’t achieved by transgressing against others’ sovereignty. It is a achieved through serious political work to dry up its sources and cooperating with the Syrian government, because we know better than anyone else what is happening on our land.” Moallem’s hedged welcome for international assistance seemed to be directed at the Obama administration, which has bombed Islamic State forces in Iraq and has refused to rule out unilateral operations in Syria. [ISIS] [Strategic incoherence]
• True Story. Sharp Turn in Polish History
  Pyotr Gromov | 25.08.2014 | 00:00 In August one of Russian TV channels presented a documentary film by Radik Kudoyarov True Story. Sharp Turn in Polish History. Archives, photo and cinema material is used to highlight some burning problems of Polish foreign and internal policy in the period between the two world wars. The half-fascist dictatorship led by Pilsudski closely cooperated with Hitler’s Germany. The both governments reached a full understanding on the Munich collusion, the conquest of Austria and the division of Sudetenland. The authors of the film have come to a right conclusion saying that if Poland had joined the Soviet Union against Germany, the humanity could have been spared the horrors of the Second World War. Since Poland stopped being a part of Russian empire to become independent in 1918 the country’s leadership stepped on the path of confrontation with Russia, especially after the Red Army held a victory near Warsaw and Ukraine was divided into two parts. Germany developed friendly ties with Pilsudski playing a double game. On the one hand, Berlin was pushing the Polish government to support the German policy of occupying Austria and Czechoslovakia; on the other hand, it incited Ukraine’s nationalists to strike Poland from behind. The film proves that Ukraine’s nationalists, including well-known OUN (the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists) leaders like Bandera and Lebed, had contacts with German intelligence since 1923. According to some Polish and German historians, they were involved in the assassination of Polish Minister of Internal Affairs Bronislaw Wilhelm Pieracki on July 16, 1934. The very next day the Polish government announced the establishment of the first concentration camp in Bereza Kartuska (Kartuz Bereza Biaroza Kartuskaja), the territory of contemporary Belarus, near Kobrin or Kobryn, a city in the Brest oblast of Belarus and the center of the Kobryn region.
• Syria warns against strikes on Islamic State on its soil
  By Liz Sly August 25 at 11:48 AM ? BEIRUT — Syria warned the United States on Monday not to extend its air war against radical Islamist militants into Syria, saying that it would regard any attempt to do so as an act of “aggression.” The warning came a day after fighters with the Islamic State group overran another important Syrian military facility, putting them in full control of the north-central province of Raqqah. American photojournalist James Foley was held for much of his captivity in the province before he was beheaded last week by a masked Islamic State guard with a British accent. Raqqah is also the site of a failed rescue attempt earlier this summer in which Delta Force commandos sought to snatch Foley and a group of other Americans held by the Islamic State from a prison east of the city of Raqqah, according to U.S. officials and witnesses in the area. U.S. officials have not ruled out extending the airstrikes launched in Iraq earlier this month into Syria, where the Islamic State has been battling the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. On Monday, Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moualem signaled that Damascus would not be prepared to tolerate unilateral action against the extremists even in the parts of the country that the government no longer controls. He told reporters that his government was “ready to cooperate and coordinate on the regional and international level in the war on terror.” But fighting terrorism should be undertaken in cooperation with the Syrian government, “not through transgression against countries’ sovereignty,” he said. [Media] [Syria] [ISIS] [Sovereignty] [Legality] [Conditionality]
• Friends of Israel
  The lobbying group AIPAC has consistently fought the Obama Administration on policy. Is it now losing influence? By Connie Bruck For AIPAC, it is crucial to appeal across the political spectrum. But Israel has become an increasingly divisive issue with the public. For AIPAC, it is crucial to appeal across the political spectrum. But Israel has become an increasingly divisive issue with the public. Credit Illustration by Matt Dorfman On July 23rd, officials of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee—the powerful lobbying group known as AIPAC—gathered in a conference room at the Capitol for a closed meeting with a dozen Democratic senators. The agenda of the meeting, which was attended by other Jewish leaders as well, was the war in the Gaza Strip. In the century-long conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians, the previous two weeks had been particularly harrowing. In Israeli towns and cities, families heard sirens warning of incoming rockets and raced to shelters. In Gaza, there were scenes of utter devastation, with hundreds of Palestinian children dead from bombing and mortar fire. The Israeli government claimed that it had taken extraordinary measures to minimize civilian casualties, but the United Nations was launching an inquiry into possible war crimes. Even before the fighting escalated, the United States, Israel’s closest ally, had made little secret of its frustration with the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. “How will it have peace if it is unwilling to delineate a border, end the occupation, and allow for Palestinian sovereignty, security, and dignity?” Philip Gordon, the White House coördinator for the Middle East, said in early July. “It cannot maintain military control of another people indefinitely. Doing so is not only wrong but a recipe for resentment and recurring instability.” Although the Administration repeatedly reaffirmed its support for Israel, it was clearly uncomfortable with the scale of Israel’s aggression. AIPAC did not share this unease; it endorsed a Senate resolution in support of Israel’s “right to defend its citizens,” which had seventy-nine co-sponsors and passed without a word of dissent. AIPAC is prideful about its influence. Its promotional literature points out that a reception during its annual policy conference, in Washington, “will be attended by more members of Congress than almost any other event, except for a joint session of Congress or a State of the Union address.” A former AIPAC executive, Steven Rosen, was fond of telling people that he could take out a napkin at any Senate hangout and get signatures of support for one issue or another from scores of senators. AIPAC has more than a hundred thousand members, a network of seventeen regional offices, and a vast pool of donors. The lobby does not raise funds directly. Its members do, and the amount of money they channel to political candidates is difficult to track. But everybody in Congress recognizes its influence in elections, and the effect is evident. In 2011, when the Palestinians announced that they would petition the U.N. for statehood, AIPAC helped persuade four hundred and forty-six members of Congress to co-sponsor resolutions opposing the idea. [AIPAC] [Lobby] [Corruption]
• Davutoglu faces uneasy relationship with Assad
  Turkish President-elect Recep Tayyip Erdogan, when announcing his successor as prime minister and chairman of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) would be Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, spoke about how this move would affect Turkish foreign policy. Ahmet Davutoglu declared two years ago in his role as foreign minister that he would rather resign than shake Bashar al-Assad’s hand; he now has to find a way to coexist with Syria. Author Kadri Gursel Posted August 24, 2014 Translator(s)Timur Goksel “With our decision, we are showing how much we seek peace and solidarity in our region and in the world. Davutoglu, who has attached priority to conscience elements of foreign policy, will now defend that even more forcefully at national and global levels.” When looking back on Davutoglu’s five years and four months as Turkey's foreign minister, we see — besides this “conscience element” — many other foreign policy dimensions that are seriously lagging behind, have weakened or collapsed. For example, the process of Turkey’s EU membership is in the freezer, left to die. During the Davutoglu years, Turkey’s relations with Europe were consciously neglected, and the country made a strategic choice to distance itself from the West. The paradigm that was used to cite “an influential Turkey in the Middle East reinforced by its strengthened European connection” has long collapsed. The definition of this paradigm in international relations was a “multidimensional foreign policy.” Davutoglu has not been able to mention this for quiet a while, because that, too, has fallen apart. What Turkey has achieved in the Middle East with its so-called new foreign policy that gives priority to the “conscience element” can only be described as a disaster. The ambition of “being the designer of regional order and a leader,” which was based on a romantic and ideological foreign policy, pushed Turkey into unprecedented isolation. Today, Turkey doesn’t have an ambassador in the most important Arab country, Egypt. Diplomatic relations with Israel are at the lowest level possible and cannot break out of the "cold war" format. Sectarian foreign policy implemented in the entire region and especially in Iraq brought relations with Baghdad to the breaking point. Turkey became a party to the Sunni Islamist opposition in Syria’s civil war with the objective of toppling the Bashar al-Assad regime, but that only worsened already-tense relations with Iran. Today, the only country Turkey has good relations with in the region is Qatar; the Kurdistan Regional Government can only be regarded as a proto-state. If foreign policy is the art of “managing contradictions,” Davutoglu did not do well. He simply could not reconcile the contradictions between the “conscience element” that he harps on so much and the “real politics dimension” that looks out for the common interests of the nation. This partially collapsed, partially clogged foreign policy must compel new Prime Minister Davutoglu to take stock of this conscience element. One cannot make an account of conscience without first recounting what happened, especially in the Syrian crisis that has become the mother of faulty judgments, misguided analyses and policies. Here, we must remember a statement Davutoglu made on Dec. 15, 2012: “Let’s say we made a mistake, we miscalculated and Assad is there for a few more years. This will not be the case, but let’s assume it is. We couldn’t do anything different, even if Assad were to stay. Personally, at this point, if Assad is to remain, I'd prefer to resign than to shake his hand.” True, Davutoglu made many mistakes and gross miscalculations. The incorrect design and application of the Syria policy of the Erdogan-Davutoglu team had a major role in the dramatic developments in today's Syria and Iraq, and the emergence of new regional powers and alliances. Erdogan-Davutoglu mistakes summarized If Turkey had not opened its border with Syria in both directions to al-Qaeda-derivative Islamic State (IS), if so many fighters had not crossed the border into Syria with their guns and equipment and if this group had not used Turkey as a base, IS could not have amassed its current strength in Syria. IS gained its strength in Syria because of the facilitating role Ankara played, which allowed IS to occupy Mosul, the second-largest city in Iraq. If IS had not captured Mosul, it would not have seized the Turkish Consulate and taken 49 Turkish nationals hostage. Today, Turkey is a hostage to IS because of the Erdogan-Davutoglu policy on Syria. Because IS captured Mosul, it was able to seize the Mosul Dam and Sinjar, and threaten Erbil. [Turkey] [ISIS] [Jihadist]
• Paul: Hillary Clinton a “war hawk”
  By David Lightman McClatchy Washington Bureau August 24, 2014 Updated 2 hours ago Hillary Clinton is a “war hawk,” Sen. Rand Paul said Sunday, as he warned that image will hurt Democrats’ chances in 2016. “If you want to see a transformational election in our country, let the Democrats put forward a war hawk like Hillary Clinton and you’ll see a transformation like you’ve never seen,” Paul, R-Ky., told NBC’s “Meet the Press.” Paul s seen as a possible Republican presidential candidate. “People are going to find that, and I think that's what scares the Democrats the most, is that in a general election, were I to run, there's gonna be a lot of independents and even some Democrats who say, 'You know what? We are tired of war,'" he said. "We're worried that Hillary Clinton will get us involved in another Middle Eastern war, because she's so gung-ho." Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2014/08/24/237508_paul-hillary-clinton-a-war-hawk.html?sp=/99/104/244/112/&rh=1#storylink=cpy [Hillary Clinton]
• Ebola is a warning sign of a much bigger crisis
  Geoffrey York The Globe and Mail Published Friday, Aug. 22 2014, 5:52 PM EDT A frightening disease hit an African country this month, infecting thousands of people and killing dozens. Hospital wards were jammed, health workers struggled to cope. As cases soared, overwhelmed officials called the impact “staggering.” But this outbreak didn’t provoke any global headlines, because it was just another cholera outbreak in Ghana – an almost annual event in the capital, Accra. Ebola, of course, has captured the media’s attention: It has a much higher death rate than other diseases, and it has had a devastating effect on Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea. The world is right to send medical aid to those countries and to stay alert to suspected new cases. But it’s also true that Ebola is less contagious than other diseases; it is transmitted by bodily fluids, not by air, water or mosquitoes. The virus has been spread by commercial airplane only once, by an ill passenger to Nigeria. Other diseases, including malaria and diarrheal diseases such as cholera, routinely kill far more people than Ebola across Africa. In the Ghana outbreak alone, more than 3,100 people were infected and nearly 50 were killed. Even at the epicentre of the Ebola outbreak, malaria has caused up to 35 times more deaths than Ebola this year. But Ebola is a warning sign of a much bigger crisis: the fragility of African health and sanitation systems after many years of poverty, illiteracy, neglect and, in some countries, catastrophic civil war. Even in countries that have recently seen impressive economic growth and foreign investment, the money is failing to reach the hospitals and health-care workers who can prevent disease outbreaks.
  Government authority has been almost non-existent in many West African regions, including, crucially, the border crossings in the Ebola “hot zone” where a million people live. Hospitals and clinics, meanwhile, are severely under-staffed, suffer from shortages of equipment (even such basics as disposable rubber gloves) and medicine, and often lack even electricity and running water.
  Everywhere the signs of state collapse have been exposed. Bodies of Ebola victims, often lie uncollected in homes and streets for days at a time. Some hospitals have been completely abandoned after staff and patients fled. Quarantine efforts sometimes fail because people simply walk around the checkpoints. [Collapse]
• The Governorate of Homs: the Islamic State’s new fiefdom?
  Romain Caillet 22 August 2014 The Islamic State (IS), has been able to assert its dominance over wide areas of Iraq and Syria. The Province of Homs is particularly interesting, because the IS is expanding there, but has been unable to establish its authority over all rebel forces. On July 17, 2014 combatants from the Islamic State (IS) announced that they had taken control of the Sha‘ir gas field in the desert area of the Governorate of Homs. The takeover of this gas complex, which was retaken by the Syrian Army on July 26, was followed by the massacre of most of the prisoners that the IS had taken – soldiers from the regular army, militia members from the “National Defence Forces”, loyalists of Bashar al-Assad’s regime and some of the site’s civilian workers. [ISIS]
• Socialists will not make the ballot in Michigan
  By Sarah Ferris August 23 at 6:00 AM ? A federal appeals court ruled against a group of Socialists in Michigan this week, rejecting claims that the state’s election laws discriminated against new parties. Matt Erard, a 29-year-old Socialist from Detroit, filed a lawsuit against the state in July arguing that the election laws were too strict and stunted the growth of new parties. The case was rejected by U.S. District Judge Stephen Murphy, a decision that was upheld this week. In his challenge, Erard wrote that Michigan’s laws were unfair to new parties because “the number of signatures is approximately twice the number of votes for an old party to remain on.” He also took aim at the language of the state’s candidate petitions, which he said “discourages voters from signing.” Newly formed political parties must submit 32,261 valid signatures to qualify for the ballot in Michigan. Erard fell short by 31,075 votes. [Democracy]
• US’ Skewed Policy Priorities
  Melkulangara Bhadrakumar | 23.08.2014 | 00:00 The US State Department has maintained that continuity rather than change in the American policy is what should be expected in the aftermath of the killing of photojournalist James Foley by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria early this week. The State Department’s media briefings insisted that there has been an «ongoing policy initiative», an «ongoing effort» on the part of Washington to meet the ISIL threat and «we will continue doing what we’re doing in Iraq.» So, on Wednesday, the US military took an additional 14 air strikes around the Mosul Dam. Second, the US reserves the right to take action against Fowley’s killer and won’t be «ruling anything in or out» – including military operations inside Syria. That is to say, the «principles that guide» will be the same that guided earlier occasions of a similar kind such as in the hunt for Osama bin Laden. Third, the Syrian regime remains a ‘Pariah’, no matter its hostility towards the ISIL, insofar as the US cannot forget that Damascus «allowed this group to flourish» and «facilitated their movement to Iraq.» Therefore, the US would rather focus on building «capable partners» in Iraq and among the «moderate opposition» in Syria that can take on the ISIL and will continue to seek the replacement of President Bashar al-Assad. Fourth, the US will continue to partner its regional allies who now «understand that ISIL is a threat to them.» The only addition to the partnership, perhaps, could be of Iran, provided that country is «interested in playing a constructive role in helping to degrade ISIL’s capabilities.» Finally, President Barack Obama proposes to host a heads of government level UN Security Council summit in late September in New York on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly session «to focus on the acute threat posed by foreign terrorist fighters». Through this, the US hopes specifically to get the Security Council to adopt a resolution specifically «to address the phenomenon [of foreign fighters], emphasize the need for states to have the tolls and mobilize the resources to help prevent it.» The US state Department’s estimation is that there are around 12000 foreign terrorist fighters who have joined the conflicts in Syria and Iraq.
  All this really may sound somewhat like the doomed Bourbon kings who never forgot, but never learnt. [US global strategy] [ISIS]
• From Gaza to Ferguson: Exposing the Toolbox of Racist Repression
  Mass incarceration and militarized police forces are two of the most potent tools in a panoply of repressive instruments of power used by Israel and the U.S. By Corinna Mullin and Azadeh Shahshahani, August 21, 2014. From the death and destruction in Israel’s latest war on Gaza to the dramatic arrival of the national guard on the streets of Ferguson, Missouri, there have been plenty of brutal reminders on display of the violence that underpins racial hierarchies in Israel and the United States. But amid the headlines, one could easily forget the more sustained and entrenched forms of oppression through which hierarchies of race, citizenship, nationality, and class are produced and maintained—in the United States as well as Israel. Among the most significant of these is mass incarceration. In his acclaimed novel No Name in the Street, James Baldwin suggested asking “the wretched how they fare in the halls of justice” to determine whether a country has “any love for justice, or any concept of it” at all. If, as Baldwin insinuates, the law itself “is guilty” in the production of local and global inequalities, what does that tell us about the prospects for justice in Israel and the United States? [Human rights] [Incarceration] [Prisoners]
• Was Putin right about Syria?
  By Ishaan Tharoor August 22 at 1:47 PM ? What a difference a year makes. Around this time last year, the West was gearing up for military action against the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, who was accused of carrying out chemical weapons attacks on his own people. That intervention never came to pass, not least because domestic public opinion in countries such as Britain and the United States was opposed to further entanglements in the Middle East. Now, the U.S. is contemplating extending airstrikes on Islamic State militants operating in Iraq in Syria — fighters belonging to a terrorist organization that is leading the war against Assad. The Islamic State's territorial gains in Iraq and continued repression and slaughter of religious minorities there and in Syria have rightly triggered global condemnation. "I am no apologist for the Assad regime," Ryan Crocker, a former U.S. ambassador to Syria, told NPR. "But in terms of our security, [the Islamic State] is by far the greatest threat." The irony of the moment is tragic. But to some, it doesn't come as much of a surprise. Many cautioned against the earlier insistence of the Obama administration (as well as other governments) that Assad must go, fearing what would take hold in the vacuum. One of those critics happened to be Russian President Vladimir Putin, who warned against U.S. intervention in Syria in a New York Times op-ed last September. [Syria] [Outsourcing] [Putin]
• America and Islamic State: mission creeping?
  Paul Rogers 21 August 2014 The United States is increasing support of its Iraqi and Kurdish allies and escalating attacks on its jihadist enemies. Islamic State's long-term plan, though, remains on track. When President Obama authorised the use of United States air-power against Islamic State (IS) forces on 7 August 2014, there were just two stated purposes: to protect refugees, especially the Yazidi, and to counter any IS move towards the Kurdish regional capital of Irbil, the argument being that it was necessary to protect US personnel based in that city. By that time there were reported to be around 1,000 US military deployed to Iraq because of the crisis, They joined US citizens already in the country employed in diplomatic, military-training or private-security roles, though it is hard to estimate the exact number (see "Islamic State, Iraq, America: a new front", 14 August 2014). In the first few days of the air-strikes, few targets were hit, mainly IS artillery and logistics support that was considered too close to Irbil. There was some irony in this, since much of the IS equipment was American and had been seized by IS from Iraqi army bases in and around Mosul. It was, at least, good news for US defence companies, with their weapons being used by the US navy to destroy their weapons: a truly win-win situation, profit-wise. [ISIS]
• Crocodile Tears for Iraq
  by Nick Alexandrov “This is an act of ethnic cleansing, if you will, almost genocide,” a U.S. military official warned. He was referring to bombings that killed nearly 800 members of the minority Yazidi sect in northern Iraq. “Among the wounded, one in five suffered serious injuries,” while “families of the wounded were so shaken by the attack that they insisted on taking their badly broken relatives back to their villages,” away from the hospitals treating them, the New York Times reported. U.S. officials attributed this atrocity to al-Qaeda. Surely it called for a calibrated intervention—a series of airstrikes, perhaps, to prevent a potential slaughter. But these bombings happened in August 2007, years after the U.S. invasion. In that phase of the occupation, Bush “doubled the U.S. presence in Iraq” by sending “150,000 to 170,000 private forces to support the mission there, all with little or no congressional or public knowledge—let alone consent,” as two U.S. academics described the type of democracy Washington prefers. And its preferred foreign policies—“invading, occupying, weakening and looting Iraq”—“brought al-Qaeda into the country,” Juan Cole writes, emphasizing that the Islamist organization had zero presence there before March 2003. [War crimes] [Hypocrisy] [Iraq]
• How Israel Undermines International Law Through "Lawfare"
  Globalizing Gaza by Jeff Halper Operation Protective Edge was not merely a military assault on a primarily civilian population. As in its previous “operations” (Cast Lead in 2008-9 and Pillar of Defense in 2012), it was also part of an ongoing assault on international humanitarian law (IHL) by a highly coordinated team of Israeli lawyers, military officers, PR people and politicians, led by (no less) a philosopher of ethics. It is an effort not only to get Israel off the hook for massive violations of human rights and international law, but to help other governments overcome similar constraints when they embark as well on “asymmetrical warfare,” “counterinsurgency” and “counter-terrorism” against peoples resisting domination. It is a campaign that Israel calls “lawfare” and had better be taken seriously by us all. The urgency of this campaign has been underscored by a series of notable legal setbacks and challenges Israel has incurred over the past decade or so, beginning with the indictment of Ariel Sharon in 2001 by a Belgian court over his involvement in the Sabra and Shatila massacres, for which he escaped trial. In the wake of Operation Defensive Shield in 2002, when Sharon’s government oversaw the demolition of hundreds of Palestinian homes in the West Bank, the utter destruction of virtually all the infrastructure of Palestinian cities, the death of 497 Palestinians and the arrest of 7000 people, Israel was accused of war crimes, but succeeded in foiling a UN investigation. [Legality] [Softpower] [Gaza] [Israel]
• Food additives on the rise as FDA scrutiny wanes
  Thousands of consumers say a protein-rich fungus in Quorn products has caused them to experience allergic reactions and severe bouts of vomiting and diarrhea. The manufacturer says allergic reactions are rare and that their vegetarian product line is safe and healthy. (Bill O'Leary/The Washington Post) By Kimberly Kindy August 17 at 10:08 PM ? The explosion of new food additives coupled with an easing of oversight requirements is allowing manufacturers to avoid the scrutiny of the Food and Drug Administration, which is responsible for ensuring the safety of chemicals streaming into the food supply. And in hundreds of cases, the FDA doesn’t even know of the existence of new additives, which can include chemical preservatives, flavorings and thickening agents, records and interviews show. “We simply do not have the information to vouch for the safety of many of these chemicals,” said Michael Taylor, the FDA’s deputy commissioner for food. The FDA has received thousands of consumer complaints about additives in recent years, saying certain substances seem to trigger asthmatic attacks, serious bouts of vomiting, intestinal-tract disorders and other health problems. At a pace far faster than in previous years, companies are adding secret ingredients to everything from energy drinks to granola bars. But the more widespread concern among food-safety advocates and some federal regulators is the quickening trend of companies opting for an expedited certification process to a degree never intended when it was established 17 years ago to, in part, help businesses. A voluntary certification system has nearly replaced one that relied on a more formal, time-consuming review — where the FDA, rather than companies, made the final determination on what is safe. The result is that consumers have little way of being certain that the food products they buy won’t harm them. [Decline] [Governance]
• Autopsy: Michael Brown shot six times, twice in the head
  By Justin Moyer August 18 at 12:49 AM ? Michael Brown, the 18-year-old killed by police in Ferguson, Mo., on Aug. 9, was shot at least six times, including twice in the head, the New York Times reported. The findings came Sunday after a preliminary private autopsy, the second performed on Brown, by Michael M. Baden, former chief medical officer for the state of New York, at the request of the Brown family. The first autopsy was performed by the St. Louis County Medical Examiner’s office. “There were at least six entry wounds, there might have been seven, but we’ll have to correlate that with what was found in the first autopsy,” Baden, who retired from the New York state police in 2011, told the Wall Street Journal.
  He cautioned against drawing conclusions from the autopsy. “Right now there is too little information to forensically reconstruct the shooting,” he told the Times, but added: “In my capacity as the forensic examiner for the New York State Police, I would say, ‘You’re not supposed to shoot so many times.’” [Governance]
• Wary of lifting Iran sanctions, EU overrides own courts
  Despite scores of Iranian individuals and companies successfully proving in European courts that the sanctions placed upon them are illegal under EU law, many remain listed, as the EU executive effectively overrides the decisions of its own courts. Although some Iran sanctions have been officially declared to be placed in manifest error in EU courts, it appears they will stay in place. Author Arron Merat Posted August 17, 2014 Since the start of 2012, the European Union, once Iran’s biggest trading partner, has imposed stringent sanctions on entities involved in the Islamic Republic’s oil and banking sectors on the basis that they are supporters or financiers of nuclear proliferation. Sanctions mean that companies’ assets held in European banks are frozen; and travel bans are imposed on listed individuals. The European Council, the EU's executive branch, regularly provides insufficient evidence to justify its claims that sanctioned entities are in fact involved in proliferation, which has left it exposed to the legal annulment of its sanctions. After several long and expensive legal battles, many sanctions on Iranian banks, shipping companies, insurers, oil contractors, engineering firms and universities have been declared by EU judges to have been placed in “manifest error.” But lawyers representing the Iranian plaintiffs say that several key firms remain sanctioned, despite their wins. “If the [European] Council loses in court, it sometimes re-lists for amended reasons and sometimes re-legislates,” said Maya Lester, a barrister in London’s Brick Court Chambers, who has represented several Iranian applicants over the past few years. “It sometimes shifts the legal goalposts by saying it has new legal criteria on which to list the same company.”
  The courts are loath to question such practices due to what lawyers describe as systemic “judicial deference to foreign policy.” [Sanctions] [Legality] [EU]
• US 'told Syria rebels' to seek intervention
  Washington wants opposition to call on international community for support in fighting Islamic State group, sources say. Last updated: 16 Aug 2014 08:28 The Islamic State group has seized swaths of territory in Iraq and Syria and declared a caliphate [Reuters] US officials have asked the Syrian opposition to call on the international community to hit positions belonging to the Islamic State group and help rebels eliminate the self-declared jihadists, Al Jazeera has learned from sources inside the opposition. The Syrian National Coalition, the main political opposition bloc, and the leadership of the Free Syrian Army, a loose conglomeration of armed rebel, are expected to make the appeal from Turkey on Saturday, the sources said. [ISIS]
• A lasting presence for IS in Iraq and Syria: interview with Romain Caillet
  Romain Caillet and Christelle Gence 13 August 2014 On 29 June, after the spectacular takeover of Mosul and other Iraqi cities, the Islamic State (IS) declared a caliphate in Iraq and Syria. How can the sudden rise to power of IS be explained? What is the future of the caliphate, and of the region as a whole? Romain Caillet provides an assessment. Interview. Christelle Gence conducted the following interview with Romain Caillet in French, originally published on 15 July 2014 by SaphirNews under the title L’Etat islamique va s’installer durablement en Iraq et en Syrie. Due to the dynamic nature of the situation in Iraq, the author later added some paragraphs in August. Saphirnews: How do you explain the rise of the Islamic State in recent weeks, particularly since the capture of Mosul? Romain Caillet: The Islamic State (IS) – initially the Islamic State in Iraq, then the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant, and now the Islamic State – has been a state within a state in Iraq for years. It has the support of the majority of Iraq's Sunnis, who feel marginalised by the Shiite regime of Nuri al-Maliki, which they see as sectarian. There was some evidence to suggest that Mosul, Iraq's second largest city, was a fiefdom of IS, so it was no surprise to see them take Mosul. S. What does this indicate about the situation in Iraq? RC. The collapse of the regime of Nuri al-Maliki, which allowed IS to take many cities, not only in the region of Nineveh, but also in the regions of al-Anbar, Kirkuk, and Diyala, shows two things: the failure of al-Maliki to govern Iraq on the one hand, and the total failure of the Americans to remove the Sunni Arab elite from Iraq’s governance and army. We see the results of this today. Despite the billions of dollars sunk into Iraq, the Americans have been unable to form either a government with the Shiite community or a new army – a strategy that has resulted in the marginalisation of the Sunni community. S. You say that the majority of Sunnis support IS? RC. The overwhelming majority of Sunnis supported insurgency against the al-Maliki regime. It turns out that this insurgency is led by IS. Maybe it will not last, maybe people will eventually refuse literalist applications of sharia by IS or find them too authoritarian. However, virtually all Sunnis today support this insurrection. Without an air force, helicopters or any real heavy weapons, and with the means that they do have, IS would have been unable to take all these cities if they did not have the broad support of the population. [ISIS]
• Isis makes further advances in Syria while West vacillates over Iraq
  Pershmerga forces are not capable of resisting extremists, while Washington is blind to the threat further north Patrick Cockburn Thursday 14 August 2014 As the West dithers about how to respond to the plight of Christians and Yazidis fleeing fundamentalist gunmen, the fighters of Isis, which calls itself Islamic State, are making important gains hundreds of miles away in Syria. In the last two days they have taken the towns of Turkmen Bareh and Akhtarin 30 miles from Aleppo, enabling them to take over the strategically valuable country on the way to the Turkish border. The Isis offensive started on Tuesday, reinforcing the position of the movement as the dominant force in the military opposition to President Bashar al-Assad. Isis already controls one-third of Syria, including most of its oil wells, while Sunni rebel groups hostile to Isis are fleeing, disintegrating or joining the victors. These little-reported developments in Syria illustrate how far the US, UK and their allies are from developing a strategy to deal with Isis and the rapidly expanding caliphate, now encompassing much of northern Syria and Iraq. Western policy in the two countries remains contradictory and self-defeating. [ISIS] [Strategic incoherence]
• Money, power draw young Iraqis to IS
  Since 2003, Jurf al-Sakhar (60 kilometers, or about 37 miles, southwest of Baghdad) has been a city whose people volunteer in the Iraqi army, join the Sahwa security forces, conduct bombings or join armed groups, most recently the Islamic State (IS). Many young people from Jurf al-Sakhar in Iraq are volunteering to join the Islamic State (IS) to secure a monthly income. Author Wassim Bassem Posted August 12, 2014 Translator(s)Rani Geha Imad Farouq, 22, told Al-Monitor about the region’s population: “The people have been loyal to two contradictory sides, but recently, they are tending toward joining IS.” Farouq quit the government’s Sahwa forces and fled to Latifiyah, south of Baghdad, because he fears, “like many others, the tyranny of IS, which has the support of some in the region for ideological reasons.” Farouq said, “The main reason why some young people are attracted to IS is because they are looking for jobs and it is easy to join it. IS has opened the door for Sunnis in the area that stretches from southern Baghdad to the outskirts of the city of Fallujah, by providing a good salary.” Fakher al-Jubouri, a young man from al-Haswah (40 kilometers, or about 25 miles, north of Hillah in Babil province), told Al-Monitor, “Many young people either join the security forces or the armed groups for the purpose of obtaining a monthly income.” Read more: http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2014/08/iraq-jurf-al-sakhar-men-join-islamic-state.html#ixzz3ARRjmKss [ISIS] [Unemployment]
• Should America Fear a New Sino-Russian Alliance?
  BY Michael J. Green AUGUST 13, 2014 - 03:14 PM Is the new alignment between Russia and China a threat to the United States? Aimed at further hamstringing the U.S.-led neoliberal order, the emerging relationship appears to have factored into the current entropy in U.S. foreign policy -- Moscow and Beijing have not been this close in half a century. Under Chinese President Xi Jinping's "New Model of Great Power Relations" there are two great powers: the United States and Russia. Chinese strategy documents indicate the intention is to "manage" the United States and "ally" with Russia. The two countries, after all, share significant interests. Xi and Russian President Vladimir Putin have a common opposition to colored revolutions (coordinated advice for authoritarian Eurasian regimes began in 2004 through the Shanghai Cooperation Organization). They also both deploy an ethnic nationalist discourse, glorifying the Rossiya (the Russian people) and Han Chinese civilizational themes, respectively. In May at the Shanghai meeting of the Conference on Interaction and Confidence-Building Measures in Asia (CICA) Xi Jinping made the most direct verbal assault on the U.S.-led San Francisco Treaty system in Asia since Gorbachev's 1985 Vladivostok speech, echoing the same themes of peaceful coexistence, multilateralism, and opposition to alliances and blocs in Asia. Putin signed on to Xi's theme of a new Eurasian-centered concept of security clearly aimed to counter the maritime alliances of the United States. The $400 billion Sino-Russian gas deal in May demonstrated China's utility to Moscow as the West tries to isolate Russia over Ukraine. [China Russia] [NCW] [US global strategy] [Alliance]
• Iran dismisses direct US talks
  Iran's Supreme Leader says nuclear talks will continue but there is no point in talks with the US on other issues. Last updated: 13 Aug 2014 14:54 A statement on Khameini's website said Iran would only talk to the US on certain circumstance [EPA] Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has said nuclear talks with world powers would continue, though there was no point in holding talks with the United States on other issues. The country's most senior religious leader said there was no benefit in negotiating with the US except in certain cases, a statement published on his website said on Wednesday. "Of course, in the area of nuclear talks, we will not stop them," his website quoted him as saying. Khamenei, who has final say over all state matters in Iran and was addressing foreign ministry officials when the comments were made, criticised the US, saying direct talks with its diplomats did not help reduce sanctions or decrease its animosity towards Tehran, the AP news agency reported. "Some pretended that if we sit down with Americans at the negotiating table, many of the problems will be resolved,'' Iranian state television quoted Khamenei as saying. Iran and the six world powers it is negotiating with over its nuclear programme, including the US, agreed to a four-month extension of negotiations. Shared concerns After decades of frought relations between the country and western powers, diplomatic relations have thawed with the election of President Hassan Rouhani last year. Iran shares similar concerns as the West over Iraq, where much of the country's west and north have collapsed in the face of an offensive by Sunni rebels led by the Islamic State group. Khameini joined the US and other Western powers in praising the appointment of Haider al-Abadi as Iraq's new prime minister. "I hope the designation of the new prime minister in Iraq will untie the knot...and teach a good lesson to those who aim for sedition in Iraq," Khamenei said according to the Reuters news agency. The statement is seen as the strongest sign yet that Tehran was no longer standing by its old ally Nouri al-Maliki. [US negotiating] [Iran] [Bilateral]
• The United States and Torture
  by William Blum Two of the things that governments tend to cover-up or lie about the most are assassinations and torture, both of which are widely looked upon as exceedingly immoral and unlawful, even uncivilized. Since the end of the Second World War the United States has attempted to assassinate more than 50 foreign leaders and has led the world in torture; not only the torture performed directly by Americans upon foreigners, but providing torture equipment, torture manuals, lists of people to be tortured, and in-person guidance and encouragement by American instructors, particularly in Latin America. Thus it is somewhat to the credit of President Obama that at his August 1 press conference he declared “We did a whole lot of things that were right, but we tortured some folks. We did some things that were contrary to our values.” And he actually used the word “torture” at that moment, not “enhanced interrogation”, which has been the euphemism of preference the past decade, although two minutes later the president used “extraordinary interrogation techniques”. And “tortured some folks” makes me wince. The man is clearly uncomfortable with the subject. But all this is minor. Much more important is the fact that for several years Mr. Obama’s supporters have credited him with having put an end to the practice of torture. And they simply have no right to make that claim. [Torture]
• Angela Lights Fuse
  Dmitriy Sedov | 11.08.2014 | 00:26 he history of international relations offers no examples of a large and influential state calling for partners to uncover the “moles” working on its territory. The logic of such request would imply “I don’t recruit spies and won’t let you do it.” Now the precedent is set. The government of Angela Merkel requests other countries to submit full lists of their special services agents working in Germany. Few of German agents have ever been uncovered. It is not because the German intelligence is so good or, to the contrary, sleeps on the job. When in power the Social Democrats managed to reduce dependence on spying against the East thanks to agile diplomatic efforts along with personal contacts at the top level. For instance, Egon Bahr, who was close to then Chancellor Willie Brandt, reached an effective agreement on classified information exchange with the USSR. The BND (Bundesnachrichtendienst – the Federal Intelligence Service) could only dream of such efficiency. Germany strictly complied with the agreements between special services and did not recruit spies in allied states. It made Anglo-Saxons happy; they never adhered to any reached agreements whatsoever. There was rather limited demand for the BND information. In truth, the BND has never been a top-flight espionage outfit. Now the service is lagging behind the partners when it comes to human intelligence. Angela Merkel used this in her political game. In a way, it gives her a right to say “I don’t recruit spies and won’t let you do it.” What is the reason behind the Chancellor’s demand to give away other countries agents working in Germany? She perfectly understands that a ban on human intelligence activities conducted by other countries is no more effective than a ban on prostitution. You can ban it in so many ways on so many days; it will always exist everywhere you go. [Espionage]
• Aleppo's forgotten Christians
  ALEPPO, Syria — Walking through the largely Christian neighborhoods of Aleppo city — Azizieh, Siryan, Sulaimaniyah and Midan — you can still see the posters of the two bishops kidnapped by Islamist militants last year hanging on shop windows, walls and even cars. The people here haven’t forgotten them; the event is still as painful and fresh as if it had happened just yesterday. The bishops’ kidnapping was a symbolic event, indicative of the larger collapse of interfaith communal relations in a country under the strain of a sectarian civil war, and marked the end of a long era of relative peace and safety for the Christians of Syria. The ethnic cleansing of Christians in Mosul has alarmed Aleppo's large Christian community, which criticizes the West for failing to protect the Middle East's Christians. Author Edward Dark Posted August 11, 2014 [Syria] [Christians]
• Why America Still Needs Nukes
  U.S. Allies View Nuclear Deterrence as Indispensable By Evan Moore In a highly anticipated report, a bipartisan group of former civilian and military leaders recently concluded that U.S. security could face grave dangers if Washington fails to quickly reverse a decade’s worth of deep cuts to defense spending. Known as the National Defense Panel (NDP), they urge immediate and sustained investments to improve the readiness, capacity, and capability not only of America’s conventional forces, but also of the nation’s nuclear arsenal. Amid Russia’s violations of a key nuclear arms control pact, and China’s efforts to grow the size and scope of its nuclear arsenal, it’s critical that policymakers and lawmakers act on the NDP panel’s recommendations, especially on America’s offensive and defensive strategic forces. [Nuclear weapons] [Spin]
• Hillary Clinton: 'Failure' to Help Syrian Rebels Led to the Rise of ISIS
  The former secretary of state, and probable candidate for president, outlines her foreign-policy doctrine. She says this about President Obama's: "Great nations need organizing principles, and 'Don't do stupid stuff' is not an organizing principle." Jeffrey Goldberg Aug 10 2014, 12:01 AM ET President Obama has long ridiculed the idea that the U.S., early in the Syrian civil war, could have shaped the forces fighting the Assad regime, thereby stopping al Qaeda-inspired groups—like the one rampaging across Syria and Iraq today—from seizing control of the rebellion. In an interview in February, the president told me that “when you have a professional army ... fighting against a farmer, a carpenter, an engineer who started out as protesters and suddenly now see themselves in the midst of a civil conflict—the notion that we could have, in a clean way that didn’t commit U.S. military forces, changed the equation on the ground there was never true.” Well, his former secretary of state, Hillary Rodham Clinton, isn’t buying it. In an interview with me earlier this week, she used her sharpest language yet to describe the "failure" that resulted from the decision to keep the U.S. on the sidelines during the first phase of the Syrian uprising. “The failure to help build up a credible fighting force of the people who were the originators of the protests against Assad—there were Islamists, there were secularists, there was everything in the middle—the failure to do that left a big vacuum, which the jihadists have now filled,” Clinton said. As she writes in her memoir of her State Department years, Hard Choices, she was an inside-the-administration advocate of doing more to help the Syrian rebellion. Now, her supporters argue, her position has been vindicated by recent events. [Hillary Clinton] [US global strategy] [Syria]
• All Agent Orange Ingredients Unearthed at U.S. Military Dumpsite on Okinawa
  Jon Mitchell Aug. 11, 2014 More than six months after dozens of rusty chemical barrels were unearthed from former U.S. military land in Okinawa City, their contents have been identified - and they appear to offer conclusive proof that the toxic Vietnam War defoliant Agent Orange was buried on the island.1 Workers unearth barrels at the Kadena Air Base, January 2014. Announced in early July, the results of two separate studies - one conducted by Okinawa City and one by the Okinawa Defense Bureau - both detected the three signature components of Agent Orange: the herbicides 2,4,5-T and 2,4-D as well as highly-toxic TCDD dioxin. This is the first time that all three ingredients have been discovered on ex-Pentagon property on Okinawa. About half of the 61 barrels also bore markings from the Dow Chemical Company - one of the largest manufacturers of Agent Orange for the U.S. military. Commenting on the results, defoliant expert, Wayne Dwernychuk, stated, “The presence of 2,4,5-T, that portion of Agent Orange containing TCDD and 2,4-D, the other half of the Agent Orange mixture, unequivocally defines at least some of the media sampled as being contaminated with this defoliant. Dow Chemical markers on the drums further contribute to this conclusion that the original contents of some of these drums was Agent Orange.” [cbw] [Agent Orange] [Okinawa] [Vietnam]
• Dirty Wars: French and American Piaster Profiteering in Indochina, 1945-75
  Jonathan Marshall With its economy devastated by war, its national glory sullied by ignominious defeats at the hands of Germany and Japan, and its colonial legacy morally undercut by the Atlantic Charter, France in 1945 faced immense challenges. Especially daunting was the job of restoring its empire, particularly in distant Indochina. For French political leaders and imperialists who equated empire with national greatness, simply granting Indochina its independence was out of the question. But reoccupying the lost colony would be no easy matter. Certainly the tremendous task of rebuilding at home left few resources to spare for a tropical war against native rebels thousands of miles away. Mobilizing the needed resources would require generating political enthusiasm, not mere public acquiescence, for a costly foreign adventure. Yet the once powerful colonial lobby,1 composed of overseas traders, investors, bankers, soldiers and civil servants, had seen its economic base largely wiped out by the war. Supporters of France’s imperial mission hit upon a novel way to restore the economic fortunes and thus the political clout of the colonial lobby: issuing a decree to overvalue the Indochinese piaster. That obscure and apparently technical financial decision gave soldiers, bureaucrats and businessmen a powerful profit motive to serve in Indochina. Above all, it greatly inflated their buying power. By giving them more francs for every piaster they earned in Indochina, a high exchange rate allowed them to stretch their money. They could import goods from France on the cheap, including luxuries they could otherwise never afford. Any piasters they chose to save rather than spend could be repatriated at a premium in francs to family members or others in France. Of course, this huge subsidy to colonial interests was not free: It had to be paid for either by French taxpayers or through the “printing” of francs by government monetary authorities, creating inflation that taxed the purchasing power of French consumers. As long as the cost was modest, it could be easily disguised, minimizing any political consequences. Over time, however, the cost soared and this financial policy blew up in the face of French leaders who instituted it as a tool for promoting colonialism. Beneficiaries, including not only French citizens in Indochina but their privileged Indochinese allies, figured out how to reap huge profits from currency exchange rackets between Indochina and France. The resulting piaster traffic ballooned the cost of war and corrupted the French polity. The profiteering unleashed by the currency racket eventually triggered one of the Fourth Republic’s worst political scandals and fed the public’s darkest suspicions about their leaders. The epithet “dirty war” stuck inexorably to the Indochina campaign, setting the stage for popular acceptance of France’s withdrawal from the colony. In taking over from France in 1954 as the dominant foreign power, the United States inherited all the challenges that made Paris capitulate after immense loss of lives and treasure. Washington had a chance to learn from France’s mistakes. Instead, among the many lessons that American policy makers failed to learn from the French defeat was the cost—political as well as economic—of trying to buy support for an unpopular war. In Vietnam, and to a lesser extent Laos, hundreds of millions of dollars in U.S. aid went to support over-valued exchange rates, in turn spawning profiteering and corruption. As in the French era, these rackets tainted the war effort. Spreading corruption sapped the moral underpinnings of the anti-Communist cause, casting a mercenary pall over the righteous claims of war supporters. Piaster profits did not cause the two Indochina wars, but they did initially sustain—and then powerfully undermine—both the French and American operations. [Vietnam] [Colonialism] [Currency]
• Ebola: between public health and private profit
  Bob Rigg 11 August 2014
  Known to the international community since 1976, why has the world dragged its feet for decades to find a vaccine for ebola–and where has the money gone for public health research? Fears of ebola spread to the US. Will this finally galvanize action to find a (affordable) cure for the virus? Demotix/Richard Levine. All rights reserved. The current focus of public attention is on the unprecedented west African outbreak of ebola, a virulent disease with a high mortality rate that can be accompanied by the almost complete breakdown of normal bodily functions, as well as by extreme incontinence and bleeding from all orifices. A horrific way of dying. Of the five types of ebola, the currently active Zaire ebolavirus is the most aggressive and lethal, with an extremely high mortality rate up to about 90%. But mass media are not asking possibly the most fundamental question about ebola–given that ebola has been known to the international health community since 1976 (featuring in about 34 outbreaks), why was a vaccine not developed long ago? [Ebola]
• Five Facts that the Israeli Government Would Prefer you did not Know
  By Anthony Bellchambers Global Research, August 07, 2014 1. Binyamin Netanyahu claims to speak for the majority of world Jewry although, in fact, he represents only a minority of Jewish Israelis and Americans ? those who support his right-wing, Likud Party. To many others, particularly in Europe, he is considered a US-financed, Zionist rabble-rouser with an extremist political agenda that rejects any Palestinian state and requires the ?transfer? of all indigenous Arabs out of former Palestine.
• Fighters abandoning al-Qaeda affiliates to join Islamic State, U.S. officials say
  By Greg Miller August 9 at 4:22 PM ? U.S. spy agencies have begun to see groups of fighters abandoning al-Qaeda affiliates in Yemen and Africa to join the rival Islamist organization that has seized territory in Iraq and Syria and been targeted in American airstrikes, U.S. officials said. The movements are seen by U.S. ­counterterrorism analysts as a worrisome indication of the expanding appeal of a group known as the Islamic State that has overwhelmed military forces in the region and may now see itself in direct conflict with the United States. “Small groups from a number of al-Qaeda affiliates have defected to ISIS,” as the group is also known, said a U.S. official with access to classified intelligence assessments. “And this problem will probably become more acute as ISIS continues to rack up victories.” The influx has strengthened an organization already regarded as a menacing force in the Middle East, one that has toppled a series of Iraqi cities by launching assaults so quickly and in so many directions that security forces caught in the group’s path have so far been unable to respond with anything but retreat. U.S. officials attribute the Islamic State’s rapid emergence to factors both psychological and tactical. Its core group of fighters honed their skills against the armies of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and the United States when it occupied Iraq. The group has used raids and ransoms to stockpile weapons and cash. And its merciless reputation triggered rampant defections among Sunni members of Iraq’s security forces already disenchanted with the Shiite-led government in Baghdad. [ISIS]
• Coroner Is Said to Rule James Brady’s Death a Homicide, 33 Years After a Shooting
  By Nick Corasaniti Aug. 8, 2014 WASHINGTON — The death this week of James S. Brady, the former White House press secretary, has been ruled a homicide 33 years after he was wounded in an assassination attempt on President Ronald Reagan, police department officials here said Friday. Officials said the ruling was made by the medical examiner in Northern Virginia, where Mr. Brady died Monday at 73. The medical examiner’s office would not comment on the cause and manner of Mr. Brady’s death. “We did do an autopsy on Mr. Brady, and that autopsy is complete,” a spokeswoman said. Gail Hoffman, a spokeswoman for the Brady family, said the ruling should really “be no surprise to anybody.” “Jim had been long suffering severe health consequences since the shooting,” she said, adding that the family had not received official word of the ruling from either the medical examiner’s office or the police. The ruling could allow prosecutors in Washington, where Reagan and Mr. Brady were shot on March 30, 1981, by John W. Hinckley Jr., to reopen the case and charge Mr. Hinckley with murder. The United States attorney’s office said Friday that it was “reviewing the ruling on the death of Mr. Brady” and had no further comment. [Bizarre] [Legality]
• Could ISIS retaliate against the West?
  By Paul Cruickshank, CNN August 9, 2014 -- Updated 1838 GMT (0238 HKT) STORY HIGHLIGHTS • European militants who have traveled to Syria could go back home and launch attacks • So far, militants in Iraq and Syria haven't seen attacking the West as a priority • But officials also fear the conflict could create new terror ties, bomb technology, lone wolves (CNN) -- The U.S. air strikes carried out Friday against ISIS are likely to have one unintended consequence: immediately increase the terrorist threat in Europe and the United States, Western counter-terrorism officials tell CNN. Within hours of U.S. military jets and drones conducting a strike on ISIS artillery that had been used against Kurdish forces defending Irbil, ISIS supporters called for retaliatory attacks against the United States. "It is a clear message that the war is against Islam and the mujahideen. The mujahideen must strive and seek to execute proactive operations in their own home, America, to discipline America and its criminal soldiers," Abu al-Ayna al-Khorasani, an administrator of Shumukh al-Islam, the top-tier forum for ISIS propaganda, wrote on his account Friday, according to a translation by the SITE Intelligence group.
  1. ISIS could unleash a crash program to attack the West
  2. Returned fighters could take matters into their own hands
  3. 'Lone wolves' could lash out [Jihadists] [Blowback]
• Bill Clinton’s Most Abominable Freedom Fighters Uncloaked
  by James Bovard Former president Bill Clinton continues to pirouette around the world as a visionary humanitarian and senior statesman. But the sordid truth about some of his favorite “freedom fighters” is finally becoming undeniable. A European Union task force last week confirmed that the ruthless cabal he empowered by bombing Serbia in 1999 has committed atrocities including murdering individuals to extract and sell their kidneys, livers, and other body parts. Clint Williamson, the chief prosecutor of a special European Union task force, declared that senior members of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) had engaged in “unlawful killings, abductions, enforced disappearances, illegal detentions in camps in Kosovo and Albania, sexual violence, forced displacements of individuals from their homes and communities, and desecration and destruction of churches and other religious sites.” A special war crimes tribunal is planned for next year. [Humanitarian intervention] [Hypocrisy] [Bill Clinton] [Yugoslavia] [Kosovo]
• HRW: Human Rights Watch or Hypocritical Representatives of Washington? (Part 2)
  As I noted in Part 1 of this article, Human Rights Watch (HRW) is an integral part of the West’s propaganda machine. I noted that “HRW serves as intermediary between the facts on the ground, and the western public who rely on the organization (and similar NGOs such as Amnesty International) to accurately tell the story of a given conflict.” But of course the function of HRW runs far deeper than simply presenting information in a biased way. Rather, HRW shapes the narratives of conflicts, narratives which become solidified through repetition, and which eventually become regarded as undeniable facts. Moreover, the language HRW employs, far from being simply stylistic choices, is deliberately utilized to obscure the reality of war zones in the service of the Empire. This is undoubtedly the case with the Israel/Palestine conflict where Israeli actions are never outright war crimes, while Palestinian ones are. It is equally true of Ukraine. This is also the case in Libya, Syria, and Venezuela, countries where HRW has played a critical role in constructing narratives in the interests of its financier and corporate paymasters, not to mention of course the US foreign policy agenda. [HRW] [Shill] [NGO] [Human rights]
• Iraq airstrikes will test a war-weary American public
  By Scott Clement and Peyton Craighill August 8 at 12:22 PM ? For years, Americans have made one thing very clear: They want no part of overseas conflicts. In Iraq, that long-standing aversion is being put to the test. President Obama’s authorization late Thursday for airstrikes and humanitarian aid in Iraq will undoubtedly bring back a host of emotions for Americans, whose forces withdrew from that same country less than three years ago. Americans have so far been deeply ambivalent toward further military action in Iraq. A June Washington Post-ABC News poll found fewer than half, 45 percent, supported launching airstrikes against Sunni extremists in the country, and only 30 percent supported deploying ground troops. Separate surveys found majorities believing the U.S. does not have a responsibility to stop violence in the country. [Iraq] [Intervention] [Public opinion] [Imperialism] [Petard]
• US sent Latin youth undercover in anti-Cuba ploy
  By DESMOND BUTLER, JACK GILLUM, ALBERTO ARCE and ANDREA RODRIGUEZ — Aug. 4, 2014 6:22 PM EDT You are here WASHINGTON (AP) — Fernando Murillo was typical of the young Latin Americans deployed by a U.S. agency to work undercover in Cuba. He had little training in the dangers of clandestine operations — or how to evade one of the world's most sophisticated counter-intelligence services. Their assignment was to recruit young Cubans to anti-government activism, which they did under the guise of civic programs, including an HIV prevention workshop. Murillo was instructed to check in every 48 hours and was provided with a set of security codes. "I have a headache," for instance, meant the Costa Rican thought the Cubans were watching him and the mission should be suspended. Over at least two years, the U.S. Agency for International Development — best known for overseeing billions of dollars in U.S. humanitarian aid — sent nearly a dozen neophytes from Venezuela, Costa Rica and Peru to gin up opposition in Cuba. The danger was apparent to USAID, if not to the young operatives: A USAID contractor, American Alan Gross, had just been hauled away to a Cuban jail for smuggling in sensitive technology. He remains there still. [Subversion] [NGO] [USAid]
• $11 Billion Later, High-Speed Rail Is Inching Along
  By Ron Nixon Aug. 6, 2014 WASHINGTON — High-speed rail was supposed to be President Obama’s signature transportation project, but despite the administration spending nearly $11 billion since 2009 to develop faster passenger trains, the projects have gone mostly nowhere and the United States still lags far behind Europe and China. While Republican opposition and community protests have slowed the projects here, transportation policy experts and members of both parties also place blame for the failures on missteps by the Obama administration — which in July asked Congress for nearly $10 billion more for high-speed initiatives. Instead of putting the $11 billion directly into those projects, critics say, the administration made the mistake of parceling out the money to upgrade existing Amtrak service, which will allow trains to go no faster than 110 miles per hour. None of the money originally went to service in the Northeast Corridor, the most likely place for high-speed rail. On a 30-mile stretch of railroad between Westerly and Cranston, R.I., Amtrak’s 150-m.p.h. Acela hits its top speed — for five or 10 minutes. On the crowded New York to Washington corridor, the Acela averages only 80 m.p.h., and a plan to bring it up to the speed of Japanese bullet-trains, which can top 220 m.p.h., will take $150 billion and 26 years, if it ever happens. Florida, Ohio and Wisconsin, all led by Republican governors, canceled high-speed rail projects and returned federal funds after deeming the projects too expensive and unnecessary. “The Obama administration’s management of previously appropriated high-speed rail funding has been as clumsy as its superintending of the Affordable Care Act’s rollout,” said Frank N. Wilner, a former chief of staff at the Surface Transportation Board, a bipartisan body with oversight of the nation’s railroads. [HSR] [Decline]
• Americans more skeptical of climate change than others in global survey
  A new international survey shows that Americans are more divided and doubtful about climate change than people in other leading countries, even as the scientific evidence supporting it keeps piling up. Ipsos-MORI, one of the largest market research companies in Great Britain, released its new Global Trends 2014 survey covering data from 200 questions with over 16,000 interviewees in 20 countries. The survey asked about a variety of issues, including technology, the economy, privacy, government and the environment. When asked if they agreed with the statement, "The climate change we are currently seeing is largely the result of human activity," just 54 percent of Americans surveyed said yes. Although this number indicates a majority, the United States still ranked last among 20 countries in the poll. The U.S. number was ten points lower than the next lowest countries on the list, Britain and Australia, where 64 percent agreed that humans are causing climate change. China topped the list, with 93 percent of its citizens agreeing that human activity is causing climate change. Large majorities also agreed in France (80 percent), Brazil (79 percent), Germany (72 percent) and other countries. Similarly, 91 percent of those from China agreed with statement, "We are heading for environmental disaster unless we change our habits quickly." Only 57 percent of Americans thought so -- again, last among 20 nations surveyed. [Climate change] [Public opinion] [Decline]
• Harvard historian: strategy of climate science denial groups 'extremely successful'
  Professor Naomi Oreskes says actions of climate denialists are laying the foundations for the government interventions they fear the most In 1965, US President Lyndon Johnson had a special message for the American Congress on conservation of the environment. Worried about the "storm of modern change" threatening cherished landscapes, Johnson said: “This generation has altered the composition of the atmosphere on a global scale through… a steady increase in carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels.” The same quote appears at the beginning of the 2010 book Merchants of Doubt: How A Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming by science historians Erik Conway and Professor Naomi Oreskes. Plainly the line – almost half a century old now – was picked to show just how long the impacts of fossil fuel burning have been known in the corridors of the highest powers. [Climate change]
• Is Human Rights Watch Too Close to the U.S. Government?
  Human Rights Watch continues to face charges from activists, including Nobel Laureates, who say the group is too close to Washington to criticize U.S. foreign policy. By Latifah Azlan, July 31, 2014. In the realm of human rights advocacy, few organizations enjoy the influence commanded by Human Rights Watch (HRW). With outposts and contacts all over world, the New York-based NGO enjoys a reputation for assiduously chronicling human rights abuses and leveraging its political clout to hold abusers to account. HRW experts routinely testify before Congress, and HRW scholars enjoy access to a range of media outlets—from the New York Times on down to Foreign Policy In Focus. The organization employs many courageous and conscientious researchers, but critics say its influence may come at a cost. In recent months, some activists have charged the organization with having a “revolving door” relationship with the U.S. government, which they say gives it a blind spot for abuses that originate in Washington. It began with a May 12 letter signed by two Nobel Peace Prize Laureates and over 100 academics, journalists, and human rights activists. The letter called on the organization to end its exchange of personnel with the U.S. government, arguing that the relationship has affected HRW’s research and advocacy against human rights abuses, particularly those committed by the U.S. government. [HRW] [Human rights] [NGO] [US global strategy] [Softpower]
• 'No one should die penniless and alone': the victims of Britain's harsh welfare sanctions
  David Clapson was found dead last year after his benefits were stopped on the grounds that he wasn't taking the search for work seriously. He had an empty stomach, and just £3.44 to his name. Now thousands of other claimants are being left in similarly dire straits by tough new welfare sanctions Amelia Gentleman The Guardian, Sunday 3 August 2014 18.00 BST David Clapson when he was in the army … he was found dead last year, after his benefits were stopped We know that David Clapson was actively searching for work when he died because a pile of CVs he had just printed out was found a few metres from his body. The last time he spoke to his sister, a few days before he died, he told her he was waiting to hear back about an application he had made to the supermarket chain Lidl. But officials at the Jobcentre believed he was not taking his search for work seriously enough, and early last July, they sanctioned him – cutting off his benefit payments entirely, as a punishment for his failure to attend two appointments. Clapson, 59, who had diabetes, died in his flat in Stevenage on 20 July 2013, from diabetic ketoacidosis (caused by an acute lack of insulin). When Gill Thompson, his younger sister, discovered his body, she found his electricity had been cut off (meaning that the fridge where he kept his insulin was no longer working). There was very little left to eat in the flat – six tea bags, an out-of-date tin of sardines and a can of tomato soup. His pay-as-you-go mobile phone had just 5p credit left on it and he had only £3.44 in his bank account. The autopsy notes reveal that his stomach was empty. [Human rights]
• The Fourth Branch: the rise of the national security state
  Tom Engelhardt 4 August 2014 Though the US may be finally addressing some of the fictions propping up its security policies, the question remains: who rules Washington? As every schoolchild knows, there are three check-and-balance branches of the US government: the executive, Congress, and the judiciary. That’s bedrock Americanism and the most basic high school civics material. Only one problem: it’s just not so. During the Cold War years and far more strikingly in the twenty-first century, the US government has evolved. It sprouted a fourth branch: the national security state, whose main characteristic may be an unquenchable urge to expand its power and reach. Admittedly, it still lacks certain formal prerogatives of governmental power. Nonetheless, at a time when Congress and the presidency are in a check-and-balance ballet of inactivity that would have been unimaginable to Americans of earlier eras, the Fourth Branch is an ever more unchecked and unbalanced power center in Washington. Curtained off from accountability by a penumbra of secrecy, its leaders increasingly are making nitty-gritty policy decisions and largely doing what they want, a situation illuminated by a recent controversy over the possible release of a Senate report on CIA rendition and torture practices. [National Security State] [MISCOM]
• U.S. general killed in attack at Afghan military academy
  A man dressed in an Afghan army uniform opened fire on foreign troops at a military base on Tuesday, killing at least one U.S. soldier and wounding 15, authorities said. (AP) By Dan Lamothe and Pamela Constable August 5 at 5:00 PM ? A man believed to be an Afghan soldier opened fire at an Afghan military academy in Kabul on Tuesday, killing a U.S. general and wounding up to 15 other personnel, including a German general and eight Americans, U.S. and coalition officials said. Army Maj. Gen. Harold J. Greene, deputy commanding general of Combined Security Transition Command-Afghanistan in Kabul, is the highest-ranking U.S. service member killed in Iraq or Afghanistan. U.S. officials said five of the eight wounded Americans are in serious condition; a number of British soldiers and three Afghan troops were also wounded. Greene previously served as the Army’s deputy for acquisition and systems management, a role in which he oversaw acquisition reform initiatives. He was commissioned as an engineer officer in 1980 after graduating from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, N.Y. The attack occurred about 12:23 p.m., according to an official at the German Embassy in Washington, who confirmed the wounding of a German brigadier general in the attack. The assailant was killed, said Rear Adm. John Kirby, the Pentagon press secretary. He would not say whether the shooter was killed by coalition troops or Afghans. [Client]
• Pushing LBJ Into War
  Robert S. McNamara and the Real Tonkin Gulf Deception by Gareth Porter For most of the last five decades, it has been assumed that the Tonkin Gulf incident was a deception by Lyndon Johnson to justify war in Vietnam. But the U.S. bombing of North Vietnam on August 4, 1964 in retaliation for an alleged naval attack that never happened — and the Tonkin Gulf Resolution that followed was not a move by LBJ to get the American people to support a U.S. war in Vietnam. The real deception on that day was that Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara’s misled LBJ by withholding from him the information that the U.S. commander in the Gulf who had initially reported an attack by North Vietnamese patrol boats on U.S. warships had now expressed serous doubts about the initial report and was calling for a full investigation by daylight. That withholding of information from LBJ represented a brazen move to usurp the president’s constitutional power of decision on the use of military force. McNamara’s deception is documented in the declassified files on the Tonkin Gulf episode in the Lyndon Johnson library, which this writer used to piece together the untold story of the Tonkin Gulf episode in a 2005 book on the U.S. entry into war in Vietnam. It is a key element of a wider story of how the national security state, including both military and civilian officials, tried repeatedly to pressure LBJ to commit the United States to a wider war in Vietnam. [Vietnam] [False flag] [National Security State]
• Turkey wakes up to Islamic State threat
  One of the first things the Islamic State (IS) did after capturing Mosul was to seize the Turkish consulate in the city and take 49 Turkish nationals, including the consul general, hostage. An inflammatory sermon in Istanbul has made Turkey realize that the Islamic State has become a serious threat to its internal security and stability. Author Orhan Kemal Cengiz Posted August 6, 2014 Translator(s)Timur Goksel As the government tends to do whenever faced with unpleasant issues, it arranged for a court to impose a gag order on all reporting about the hostage issue — hence the low-key coverage. The Turkish media in general prefers to remain silent, reporting only on government officials saying they expect them to be released soon. But IS is now on Turkey’s radar not because of its massacres in Iraq or hostage Turks, but because of the activities of people affiliated with the group inside Turkey. On Juy 29, the first day of the Eid al-Fitr holiday marking the end of Ramadan, the sight of mass outdoor prayers performed by a large crowd of long-bearded men in white robes and the sermon that followed ignited a serious debate in Turkey. The sermon included, among other things, “Those who believe, those who … participate in jihad on the path of Allah with their lives and all their beings will be rewarded generously. They are the ones who will survive. Our plea to Allah Almighty is to accept us jihadists. We beg him to compassionately help the mujahideen, those in jihad … to hit their targets accurately.” [Jihadist] [Turkey]
• Hungarian despotism: Europe must act
  Lorenzo Marsili 6 August 2014 Hungarian PM Viktor Orban has openly vowed to turn the country into an ‘illiberal state’. Europe cannot let this happen. “Hungary’s Mussolini Vows to Make the EU Member an Illiberal State”, titles Newsweek. Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orban has finally come in the open. At a recent rally of party supporters he has admitted that he is out to turn the country into an illiberal state. He pointed out that liberal western democracies cannot remain globally competitive, and that China, Russia, and Turkey should be taken as the example to follow. These worrying statements are, unfortunately, backed up by facts. They follow years of increasingly restrictive laws in Hungary, which have endangered the independence of the judiciary, the media, and civil society, and entrenched the power of the ruling party, Fidesz. [Hungary]
• Hamas’s Chances
  Nathan Thrall You are invited to read this free essay from the London Review of Books. Subscribe now to access every article from every fortnightly issue of the London Review of Books, including the entire LRB archive of over 12,500 essays and reviews. The current war in Gaza was not one Israel or Hamas sought. But both had no doubt that a new confrontation would come. The 21 November 2012 ceasefire that ended an eight-day-long exchange of Gazan rocket fire and Israeli aerial bombardment was never implemented. It stipulated that all Palestinian factions in Gaza would stop hostilities against Israel, that Israel would end attacks against Gaza by land, sea and air – including the ‘targeting of individuals’ (assassinations, typically by drone-fired missile) – and that the closure of Gaza would essentially end as a result of Israel’s ‘opening the crossings and facilitating the movements of people and transfer of goods, and refraining from restricting residents’ free movements and targeting residents in border areas’. An additional clause noted that ‘other matters as may be requested shall be addressed,’ a reference to private commitments by Egypt and the US to help thwart weapons smuggling into Gaza, though Hamas has denied this interpretation of the clause. During the three months that followed the ceasefire, Shin Bet recorded only a single attack: two mortar shells fired from Gaza in December 2012. Israeli officials were impressed. But they convinced themselves that the quiet on Gaza’s border was primarily the result of Israeli deterrence and Palestinian self-interest. Israel therefore saw little incentive in upholding its end of the deal. In the three months following the ceasefire, its forces made regular incursions into Gaza, strafed Palestinian farmers and those collecting scrap and rubble across the border, and fired at boats, preventing fishermen from accessing the majority of Gaza’s waters. The end of the closure never came. Crossings were repeatedly shut. So-called buffer zones – agricultural lands that Gazan farmers couldn’t enter without being fired on – were reinstated. Imports declined, exports were blocked, and fewer Gazans were given exit permits to Israel and the West Bank. Israel had committed to holding indirect negotiations with Hamas over the implementation of the ceasefire but repeatedly delayed them, at first because it wanted to see whether Hamas would stick to its side of the deal, then because Netanyahu couldn’t afford to make further concessions to Hamas in the weeks leading up to the January 2013 elections, and then because a new Israeli coalition was being formed and needed time to settle in. The talks never took place. The lesson for Hamas was clear. Even if an agreement was brokered by the US and Egypt, Israel could still fail to honour it. [Gaza] [Israel]
• Gaza and the Press
  by Robert Fisk There was a time when our politicians and media had one principal fear when covering Middle East wars: that no one should ever call them anti-Semitic. So corrosive, so vicious was this charge against any honest critic of Israel that merely to bleat the word “disproportionate” – as in any normal wartime exchange rate of Arab-to-Israeli deaths – was to provoke charges of Nazism by Israel’s would-be supporters. Sympathy for Palestinians would earn the sobriquet “pro-Palestinian”, which, of course, means “pro-terrorist”. Or so it was until the latest bloodbath in Gaza, which is being so graphically covered by journalists that our masters and our media are suffering a new experience: not fear of being called anti-Semitic, but fear of their own television viewers and readers – ordinary folk so outraged by the war crimes committed against the women and children of Gaza that they are demanding to know why, even now, television moguls and politicians are refusing to treat their own people like moral, decent, intelligent human beings. [Gaza] [Media] [False balance]
• Wiretapped: Israel Eavesdropped on John Kerry in Mideast Talks
  US Secretary of State John Kerry has been the victim of eavesdropping by Israeli intelligence. AP US Secretary of State John Kerry has been the victim of eavesdropping by Israeli intelligence. New information indicates that Israeli intelligence eavesdropped on telephone conversations by US Secretary of State John Kerry. Sources told SPIEGEL the government then used the information obtained from the calls during negotiations in the Mideast conflict. SPIEGEL has learned from reliable sources that Israeli intelligence eavesdropped on US Secretary of State John Kerry during Middle East peace negotiations. In addition to the Israelis, at least one other intelligence service also listened in as Kerry mediated last year between Israel, the Palestinians and the Arab states, several intelligence service sources told SPIEGEL. Revelations of the eavesdropping could further damage already tense relations between the US government and Israel. During the peak stage of peace talks last year, Kerry spoke regularly with high-ranking negotiating partners in the Middle East. At the time, some of these calls were not made on encrypted equipment, but instead on normal telephones, with the conversations transmitted by satellite. Intelligence agencies intercepted some of those calls. The government in Jerusalem then used the information obtained in international negotiations aiming to reach a diplomatic solution in the Middle East. In the current Gaza conflict, the Israelis have massively criticized Kerry, with a few ministers indirectly calling on him to withdraw from peace talks. [Cyberespionage] [Kerry] [Israel] [Decline]
• Land Grabbing – A New Political Strategy for Arab Countries
  By Mona Alami BEIRUT, Jul 30 2014 (IPS) - Food price rises as far back as 2008 are believed to be the partial culprits behind the instability plaguing Arab countries and they have become increasingly aware of the importance of securing food needs through an international strategy of land grabs which are often detrimental to local populations. Between 2007 and 2008, rises in food prices caused protest movements in Egypt and Morocco. “This has become an important concern for countries in the Arab region which want to meet the growing demands of their populations,” notes Devlin Kuyek, a researcher at GRAIN, a non-profit organisation supporting small farmers and social movements in their struggles for community-controlled and biodiversity-based food systems. Arab countries ... have become increasingly aware of the importance of securing food needs through an international strategy of land grabs which are often detrimental to local populations Arab countries, which appear to have started losing confidence in normal food supply chains, are now relying on acquisitions of farmland around the world. Globally, land deals by foreign countries were estimated at about 80 million ha in 2011, according to figures provided by the World Bank. The 2008 international food price crisis caused alarm among policy-makers and the public in general about the vulnerability of Arab countries to potential future food supply shocks (such as, for example, in the event of closure of the Straits of Hormuz) as well as the perceived continued sharp increase in international food prices in the long term, explains Sarwat Hussain, Senior Communications Officer at the World Bank. Increasing food prices are caused by entrenched trends that include population growth combined with high urbanisation rates, depleting freshwater sources, increased demand for raw commodities and biofuels, as well as speculation over farmland. To face such threats, Arab countries have worked on buying or leasing farm land in foreign countries. “Investment in land often takes the form of long-term leases, as opposed to outright purchases, of land. These leases often range between 25 and 99 years,” says Hussain. Currently, the United Arab Emirates accounts for around 12 percent of all land deals, followed by Egypt (6 percent) and Saudi Arabia (4 percent), according to GRAIN. [Agriculture] [ODI] [Overseas farming]
• To fight Britain’s privatisation dogma, Labour should look to the US military
  State-owned enterprises can be successful, as some unlikely global examples prove Ha-Joon Chang The Guardian, Thursday 31 July 2014 18.23 BST VARIOUS A Honeywell computer under the control of Michael Caine In the 1967 film Billion Dollar Brain. It was used to connect to the Arpanet – developed by the US military as a precursor of the internet.. Photograph: Snap/Rex Features Since Margaret Thatcher came to power in 1979 the UK has led the world in privatisation. The Conservative government sold off state-owned enterprises throughout the 1980s and the 1990s – electricity, oil, gas, rail, airline, airports, telecommunications, water, steel, coal, you name it. In the worldwide fever for selling off state assets that gripped those decades, the rest of the world looked up to Britain as the guiding example. Privatisation was halted under Labour. However, the belief in the superiority of the private sector was such that, when it brought the rail infrastructure back under state control in 2002 following a series of rail disasters, Labour made sure it did not take the form of re-nationalisation – at least in legal terms. Network Rail, the owner and operator of the rail infrastructure, was set up as a private company, although on a not-for-profit basis and without shareholders. [Privatisation] [US military] [Military economy]
• HRW: Human Rights Watch or Hypocrites Representing Washington (Part 1)
  Unlike previous centuries and epochs, modern warfare is not restricted solely to the battlefield. Rather, it extends into the information sphere where the dissemination of propaganda and the construction of narratives are of equal importance to weapons and soldiers. For today, the legitimacy of a war in the eyes of public opinion in many ways determines victory or defeat. It is here, in the realm of public opinion, that an organization such as Human Rights Watch (HRW) becomes indispensible to the Empire, not so much for the facts that it presents, but the narrative that it shapes. Put another way, HRW serves as intermediary between the facts on the ground and the western public who rely on the organization (and similar NGOs such as Amnesty International) to accurately tell the story of a given conflict. It is precisely this position as an “information middleman” that makes HRW both relevant and dangerous for the simple fact that the manner in which it presents information, along with the critical facts it chooses to omit or otherwise distort, can have a tremendous impact on how the world views a conflict and, consequently, how the world responds. [NGO] [Propaganda] [False balance] [Shill]
• Human Rights Watch (HRW) Whitewashes Israel, The Law Supports Hamas: Reflections on Israel’s Latest Massacre
  By Norman Finkelstein Global Research, July 24, 2014 Jadaliyya 20 July 2014 [The analysis and data in this article refer to the period prior to the Israeli ground invasion.] On 7 July 2014, Israel unleashed Operation Protective Edge against Gaza. When it launched a ground invasion on 18 July 2014, Israel had already killed 230 Gazan Palestinians, of whom 75 percent (171) were civilians and 20 percent (48) children, wounded more than 1,700, and destroyed or rendered uninhabitable hundreds of homes leaving more than 10,000 Gazans without shelter. On the other side, according to daily updates Palestinian projectiles had killed one Israeli civilian, wounded 18, and damaged three Israeli homes. It’s hard to conceive of a more disproportionate balance sheet in an alleged “war.” Nonetheless, Human Rights Watch (HRW), in its legal reckoning, didn’t so much even out as reverse the balance sheet. It never explicitly accused Israel of committing war crimes, whereas its first press release already accused Hamas of committing war crimes. If in fact HRW accurately interpreted the laws of war, the only rational conclusion would be that these laws are morally bankrupt and deserving of contempt: they would not be distilling but instead grossly distorting the moral realities of war, as they exonerate the major perpetrators of war crimes. But did HRW accurately interpret the laws of war, or did this influential human rights organization give Israel a green light to commit war crimes on a yet more massive scale during the ground invasion? Let’s look at the record. [NGO] [Shill] [Israel] [False balance]
• Islamic State defector says Saudi Arabia next stop for group
  Away from social media networks — especially Twitter, which is the most prominent outlet for jihadists and the most important observatory of their movements and statements — and through reliable mediators, As-Safir had a long phone interview with a Syrian leader who has defected from the Islamic State (IS) and identified himself as Sheikh Maher Abu Ubaida. He said that he was the Wali [ruler] of the desert before he defected from the group. Summary? Print As-Safir speaks to a Syrian opposition leader who has defected from the Islamic State. Author Alaa Halabi Posted July 31, 2014 Translator(s)Joelle El-Khoury During the interview, Ubaida appeared indignant with the group, and insisted on calling it “ISIS,” which is the term used in the media to identify the group. He explained, “It has deviated from its basic objective and has transformed into a militia of mercenaries that steals oil and derails from the eternal path,” he said. Ubaida explained that he joined the group in early 2013, when he was trained in the Anbar camp in Iraq, and met briefly, on two occasions, with the group’s leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. He confirmed, “Baghdadi is the one who appeared in the recently surfaced video that has raised doubts among the Iraqi intelligence services with respect to its authenticity.” On Baghdadi, Ubaida said, “He is Ibrahim Awad al-Badri, born in 1970, and is a lecturer in Islamic studies. He is married to three women, one of whom hails from Samarra. He was the imam at Ahmad ibn Hanbal Mosque, and preacher at the Great Mosque in Baghdad. He traveled to Afghanistan and established strong ties with Ayman al-Zawahri (the current leader of al-Qaeda), where he spent some time, as some of his close associates told As-Safir. While he was there, he succeeded in establishing a network of good ties with leaders on the ground. He brought them to Iraq and Syria after he assumed the leadership of the group as successor of Abu Musab Zarqawi, where the group started to strongly emerge and expand.
  On the reason why he joined IS and not Jabhat al-Nusra, Ubaida said, “I am an imam and preacher at a mosque in Syria, and when Jabhat al-Nusra began to emerge, it considered all of the imams and preachers in Syria as regime agents. It started to pursue them, and I was scared of them. Thus, the emergence of IS was very convenient for me and for many others who believe in the Islamic rule.” At the same time, he emphasized, “There is no fundamental ideological difference between IS and Jabhat al-Nusra; their dispute is only over leadership and control.” [ISIS]
• How Qatar's hand casts Syrian shadows
  Thomas MacManus 1 August 2014 As Qatar assumes an increasing role in the political diplomacy of the Middle East, its subtler interventions in Syria's civil war continue unquestioned. A 2012 demonstration at the front of the Qatar embassy in Rome. Demotix/Stefano Montesi. The asymmetrical proxy conflict currently being fought in Syria has many interested state parties and Qatar has taken a prominent, multi-track approach to influence the outcome. The Qataris have met with Assad, armed rebels, provided facilities for the US to train militants, paid defectors and–employing a novel methodology– used the trappings of civil society in the form of a ‘report’ on torture and the coverage provided by a ‘free press’. Qatar’s participation raises some interesting questions: What is the goal of this geopolitical manoeuvring? Are they using a civil society façade to achieve state goals? [Proxy] [Qatar] [Syria]
• $5 million, $50 million or even more – just how rich is Hillary Clinton? Here’s why we don’t know.
  By Alexander Becker July 30 at 11:19 AM ? File: Hillary Rodham Clinton during her recent book tour. (AP Photo/Gero Breloer) Ever since Hillary Clinton drew attention to her finances by claiming her family was "dead broke" when they left the White House, speculation has focused on a seemingly simple question: Exactly how rich are the Clintons? The answer, at least for the time being, is that there's no way for the public to know. The couple's wealth since Bill Clinton's presidency ended in early 2001 has been generated largely from paid speeches, lucrative book deals and successful investments. Some of that wealth has been detailed over the years in the financial disclosure forms Hillary Clinton was required to file as a senator and as secretary of state, as well as in tax returns she released as part of her 2008 presidential run. These forms record income from both Clintons jointly. But loose federal disclosure rules, requiring that officials report the value of their holdings using only wide ranges, leave much room for interpretation. [Hillary Clinton]
• The rape of Gaza
  Gaza has turned from the world's biggest concentration camp to the world's biggest graveyard. Last updated: 31 Jul 2014 15:04 Haidar Eid More than 1300 Palestinians have been killed in the Israeli offensive on Gaza [EPA] "A terrorist, like those who kidnapped the boys and killed them, the only thing that will deter them, is if they know that either their sister or mother will be raped if they are caught," said Middle East scholar Mordechai Kedar of Bar-Ilan University How can one describe the ongoing massacre in Gaza with language that has long been proven to be slippery? Where is one to start and finish if one wants a semiological analysis of the dramatic footage of children bleeding to death despite Israel's attempts to convince us that these children were not the targets, but the militants were? If there were any questions to be asked, they would be about the nature of a hegemonic modern ideology that dehumanises toddlers and drives soldiers to shoot women, shell hospitals and schools used as shelters for those who have become homeless. It is definitely not the right time for such grandiose philosophical questions. But what is the Palestinian to do when she or he lives such a crude political reality?
  Yet mainstream media has systematically sanitised the images that have been coming out of Gaza to present a more "acceptable" picture of violence. To echo Edward Said and Noam Chomsky, how can the international media - read western - be objective when they are controlled by five transnational corporations, all of which have intimate relationships with the US defence industry? Are the more than 200 children killed in Gaza only "regrettable" collateral damage?
  The Palestinians of Gaza get blamed for being shot and bombed because they did not run away; they get blamed for being in the same building that they have lived in all their short, brutal lives; they get blamed for not being able to run in 57 seconds; they get blamed for letting their children play on the beach. And they get blamed for refusing to let the coloniser, the occupier, the oppressor, the murderer and its allies dispossess them and dishonour their dead with their false words, their biased media channels, their fake empathy and their useless shuttle diplomacy that has no intention of giving Palestinians their rights under international law. Hence, the unprecedented brutality continues! [Media] [Gaza] [Victim]

• Lancet: an Open Letter for the People of Gaza
  by Paola Manduca, Iain Chalmers, Derek Summerfield, Mads Gilbert, and Swee Ang We are doctors and scientists, who spend our lives developing means to care and protect health and lives. We are also informed people; we teach the ethics of our professions, together with the knowledge and practice of it. We all have worked in and known the situation of Gaza for years. On the basis of our ethics and practice, we are denouncing what we witness in the aggression of Gaza by Israel.
• WikiLeaks reveals Australian gagging order over political bribery allegations
  Superinjunction reported to have been issued on 19 June to block reporting of claims involving international politicians Robert Booth The Guardian, Wednesday 30 July 2014 WikiLeaks screensaver In a statement published with the leak, Julian Assange, Wikileaks founder, said the gagging order relates to a case that “concerns the subsidiaries of the Australian central bank”. Photograph: Karen Bleier/AFP/Getty Images A sweeping gagging order issued in Australia to block reporting of any bribery allegations involving several international political leaders in the region has been exposed by WikiLeaks. The prohibition emerged from a criminal case in the Australian courts and applies throughout the country. It was issued by the criminal division of the supreme court of Victoria in Melbourne "to prevent damage to Australia's international relations that may be caused by the publication of material that may damage the reputations of specified individuals who are not the subject of charges in these proceedings". The Australia-wide gagging order is a superinjunction, which means it also contains a clause insisting that the terms of the order itself should remain secret. It was issued on 19 June and states: "Subject to further order, there be no disclosure, by publication or otherwise, of any information (whether in electronic or paper form) derived from or prepared for the purposes of these proceedings including the terms of these orders." [Corruption]
• Dirty Bombs:’ Reason To Worry? – Analysis
  July 30, 2014 Published by the Foreign Policy Research Institute A. INTRODUCTION The recent report that the jihadist group Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) seized a quantity of heretofore unreported material from a university laboratory in Iraq sparked much commentary about the possibility of a malefactor fashioning and detonating a so-called “dirty bomb”—formally, an explosive radiological dispersal device or “Erdd.” Knowledge of three recent incidents involving the theft or attempted theft of radiologic material in Mexico further amplified discussions about the risk that such material could be moved covertly into the United States and fashioned into an eRDD for detonation in a major American city. The purpose of this essay is to further explore recent incidents involving the theft or attempted theft of radiologic material, and to assess whether, and if so what, threat such material may pose. [Terrorism] [Nuclear weapons]
• Islamic State works to win hearts, minds with bread
  The Islamic State (IS) has captured headlines recently with its military victories, bank robberies and brutal executions. However, equally if not more important is how IS governs the territories it now controls. The Islamic State is investing heavily in social services in a bid to legitimize and consolidate its rule. Author José Ciro Martínez Brent Eng Posted July 29, 2014 Before its dramatic rise to fame, IS had long wielded the rhetoric of Islamic state-building, but few took the organization seriously. Perhaps, then, it is unsurprising that most coverage of IS’ rise has focused on attention-grabbing details like its surprising military prowess and antiquated punishments, rather than the programmatic aspects of its politics. This coverage has left one central and pressing question open: How could an underground extremist group turn into the new face of global jihad? The answer lies not just in ample illicit funding, well-trained soldiers and clever use of social media. IS is also serious about social services. Military successes have been crucial to advancing IS’ stated ambition of establishing an Islamic state. After all, a state needs land to govern. Recently, IS allegedly seized control of strategic areas near the Syrian and Iraqi borders, opening up passage between the two countries. But it is IS’ work off the battlefield that may consolidate its rule. Crucial to IS’ efforts are the production and distribution of Syria’s staple food: bread. Before the onset of the conflict, bread had provided more than 40% of the caloric needs of the Syrian people. Today, many drink and eat little else but tea and bread. But in Syria, bread is not only about nutrition. It is also wedded to politics. Read more: http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2014/07/islamic-state-bread-subsidies-syria-iraq-terrorism.html?utm_source=Al-Monitor+Newsletter+%5BEnglish%5D&utm_campaign=e65193085a-July_30_2014&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_28264b27a0-e65193085a-100372581#ixzz38z4yHVjL [ISIS] [Governance]
• President Obama’s competence problem is worse than it looks
  By Chris Cillizza July 28 at 5:14 PM ? Guatemala's President Otto Perez Molina, left, and Honduran President Juan Hernandez, right, listen as U.S. President Barack Obama speaks to the media, after they met to discuss Central American immigration and the border crisis in the Cabinet Room of the White House Friday, July 25, 2014, in Washington. (AP Photo) You can understand President Obama's current political problems -- and how those problems could make things very tough for his party in this fall's midterm election -- in a single word. And that word is "competence". Obama was elected in 2008 on a stated promise that he would restore competence to government. He pitched himself as the antidote to "Heck of a job, Brownie" and the Bush years, the person who would always put the most qualified candidate in every job in his Administration. That the basic functioning of government would never be in question. [Obama] [Incompetence]
• On the Causes of Investment Decline in the US Economy
  by Jack Rasmus Is the chronically stagnant US economic recovery since 2009 (predicted in my 2010 book, ‘Epic Recession: Prelude to Global Depression’), the result of insufficient income growth for most households—that is then necessary to stimulate consumption demand that, in turn would result in real investment that would create jobs? Or has the escalation of financial asset prices since 2009—itself the consequence of $10-$15 trillion of Fed and central bank liquidity injections— resulted in lower real investment in the US and thus the failure of job and income growth? To restate more simply: does the lack of wage and income growth determine real asset investment; or are the expanding opportunities for more profitable financial asset speculative profits globally driving the decline of US real asset investment (and thus jobs, wages, and income growth)? Which is the more primary causal relationship? If one believes lack of income is the primary cause of declining real investment today in the USA, then the solution is simply to raise wages and income of households that typically spend by whatever means—tax cuts, subsidies, etc. The problem is simply an insufficient level of income. But what if, alternatively, it is not income that determines real investment, but rather the addiction of investors to financial asset speculation and investing that is the main determinant of slowing real asset investment? If the latter is primary, then simply raising wages and incomes alone will not necessarily ensure real investment returning to historical levels in the US economy. That is, the determinants of real asset investment lay just not with inadequate income growth in the US, but with the expanding and more profitable financial investment opportunities in a 21st century finance capital world in which investors are increasingly addicted to financial speculation. [Investment] [Recession] [Globalisation]
• US retreats post-haste from Libya
  The closure of the American embassy in Libya was probably overdue, as that country has descended into anarchy. The wheel has turned full circle since the Western invasion of Libya three years ago under the NATO flag, pushing the agenda of ‘regime change’. From wherever he is, the late Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi must be watching with glee that the Europeans and Americans who hunted him down are themselves now running away in panic, fearing the prospect of butchery and sudden death, while the NATO cannot be of any use anymore. In any case, NATO has its hands full, busy mobilizing in the Black Sea and the Baltic states. [Libya] [Outsourcing] [Blowback] [Sovereignty]
• How US Embassy Personnel Got Out of Libya
  Jul 26, 2014, 8:51 PM ET By Luis Martinez and Dean Schabner At dawn today, all the American personnel from the U.S. Embassy in Tripoli, Libya -- more than 150 of them, including the dozens of Marines who provide security for the compound -- were whisked away. All the personnel were driven in a convoy some 250 miles to Tunisia, under heavy military guard from the ground, the air and at sea. The move comes amid fierce fighting between rival militias that has been growing closer to the embassy, and there was a tweet from the U.S. ambassador in Tripoli within the last 24 hours, warning of the nearing violence. "At the request of the Department of State, the U.S. military assisted in the relocation of personnel from the U.S. Embassy in Tripoli, Libya on Saturday, July 26," Pentagon Press Secretary Rear Admiral John Kirby said today. The mission was conducted under security from "F-16s, ISR assets and an Airborne Response Force with MV-22 Ospreys," he said. "The mission was conducted without incident, and the entire operation lasted approximately five hours." [Libya] [Outsourcing] [Blowback] [Sovereignty]
• Huge blaze out of control in Tripoli battle as Libya slides into chaos
  By Patrick Markey and Aziz El Yaakoubi TRIPOLI Mon Jul 28, 2014 1:01pm EDT Credit: Reuters/Hani Amara Foreigners evacuated amid Libya violence (Reuters) - A huge fuel depot in Libya's capital burned out of control on Monday, set ablaze in fighting between rival militias that has driven the country to chaos three years after the NATO-backed revolt that toppled Muammar Gaddafi. Combat over control of the nearby airport forced firefighters to withdraw, abandoning their attempts to extinguish the blaze ignited by a missile strike that hit millions of litres of fuel. Foreign governments have looked on powerless as anarchy sweeps across the North African oil producer. Western countries have urged their nationals to leave, shut their embassies and pulled diplomats out, after two weeks of clashes among rival factions of former rebels killed nearly 160 people in Tripoli and the eastern city of Benghazi. The Netherlands, the Philippines and Austria on Monday prepared to evacuate diplomatic staff. The United States, United Nations and Turkish embassies have already shut operations after the worst violence since the 2011 uprising. Two rival brigades of former rebels fighting for control of Tripoli International Airport have pounded each other's positions with Grad rockets, artillery fire and cannons for two weeks, turning the south of the capital into a battlefield. "It is out of control. The second tank has been hit and the firefighters have withdrawn from the site as the fighting has resumed in the area," said Mohamed Al-Harrai, a spokesman for the national oil company said of the blaze, which choked the sky above the city with black smoke. In the three messy years since the fall of Gaddafi, Libya's fragile government and fledging army have been unable to control heavily armed former anti-Gaddafi fighters, who refuse to hand over weapons and continue to rule the streets. Libya has appealed for international help to stop the country from becoming a failed state. Western partners fear chaos spilling across borders with arms smugglers and militants already profiting from the turmoil. After the U.S. evacuation, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said the "free-wheeling militia violence" had been a real risk for American diplomats on the ground, and called for an end to the violence. U.S. ambassador Chris Stevens was killed by militants along with three others in Benghazi in September 2012. In neighbouring Egypt, President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi has repeatedly warned about militants capitalising on Libya's chaos to set up bases along their mutual frontier. [Libya] [Outsourcing] [Blowback]
• Venezuelan government joy as Aruba frees former military intelligence head
  President Maduro's supporters jubilant after Hugo Carvajal is released instead of facing extradition to the US Reuters in Caracas theguardian.com, Monday 28 July 2014 01.58 BST Venezuela's former military intelligence head Hugo Carvajal, wanted by the United States over drug accusations and arrested four days ago on the Caribbean island of Aruba, was released on Sunday. Instead of being extradited to the US, the retired general flew home after the Netherlands government ruled he had diplomatic immunity, his lawyer and Venezuelan officials said. Jubilant Venezuelan officials at a congress of the ruling Socialist Party celebrated the release as a "victory" over their ideological foes in Washington who wanted to extradite him. [Extraterritoriality] [Legality] [Drugs] [Pretext]
• US evacuates Tripoli embassy as rival militias push Libya towards war
  Memories revived of Benghazi assault in which American ambassador died as last-minute ceasefire talks collapse Chris Stephen in Tripoli The Observer, Saturday 26 July 2014 18.04 BST The US embassy in Tripoli staged a dramatic evacuation in the early hours of Saturday, with other embassies debating whether to follow suit as Libya hovers on the brink of full-scale war. Efforts by diplomats and prime minister Abdullah al-Thinni to engineer a last-minute ceasefire between warring militias have collapsed and the capital echoes to the sound of artillery and rockets. Fighting is also continuing in the eastern city of Benghazi, part of a nation-wide struggle between an Islamist-led alliance and fragmented opposition. [Libya] [Outsourcing] [Blowback]
• Libya’s Destruction a Warning to Egypt, Syria, & Ukraine
  RT’s article, “90% of aircraft destroyed at Tripoli airport, Libya may seek international assistance,” reported that: Libya is considering a deployment of international force to re-establish security amid a flare-up of violence in Tripoli which saw dozens of rockets destroy most of the civilian aircraft fleet at its international airport. “The government is looking into the possibility of making an appeal for international forces on the ground to re-establish security and help the government impose its authority,” a government spokesman, Ahmed Lamine said in a statement. The “democratic tomorrow” promised by NATO in 2011 has been realized – that is – in the form of predictably fraudulent elections accepted by no one, leaving a power vacuum apparently to be settled through increasingly violent armed conflict. Perhaps most ironic of all is that these conflicts are being waged between NATO’s various armed proxies it used to carry out the ground war while it bombarded Libya from the air over the majority of 2011. [Libya] [Outsourcing] [CIA]
• Beyond Propaganda: Discourse of War and Doublethink. “When the Lie Becomes the Truth”
  By Jean-Claude Paye and Tülay Umay Global Research, July 25, 2014 Since the attacks of September 11, we are witnessing a transformation of the way the media report the news. They lock us in the unreal. They base truth not on the coherence of a presentation, but on its shocking character. Thus, the observer remains petrified and cannot establish a relation to reality. The media are lying to us, but at the same time, they show us that they are lying. It is no longer a matter of changing our perception of facts in order to get our support, but to lock us in the spectacle of the omnipotence of power. Showing the annihilation of reason is based on images that serve to replace facts. Information no longer focuses on the ability to perceive and represent a thing, but the need to experience it, or rather to experience oneself through it. From Bin Laden to Merah, through the “tyrant” Bashar al-Assad, media discourse has become the permanent production of fetishes, ordering surrender to what is “given to see.” The injunction does not aim, as propaganda, to convince. It simply directs the subject to give flesh to the image of the “war of civilizations”. The discursive device of “War of Good against Evil,” updating the Orwellian doublethink process must become a new reality that de-structures our entire existence, of everyday life in global political relations. [Propaganda] [IO]
• What is Clintonism?
  by Andrew Levine There are no American politicians whose views on politics merit serious consideration for any reason other than the power they wield. With only minor exceptions (from long ago), it has been this way since the founders’ generation passed. From genuine (though often mindless) conviction or to enhance their electoral prospects or to further their pecuniary interests, politicians sometimes do wax “ideological.” But they don’t work with ideas or fashion theories or practices on their basis. They wouldn’t know how. This is one reason why “Reaganism” is a misnomer. It is a convenient and frequently used term, but it gives too much credit to a maleficent actor who could barely keep more than one idea in his head at a time. “Neoliberalism” would be a better name, except that it suggests too narrow a focus on economic policy issues. Reaganism is not just about economics; it is a retrograde political phenomenon as well. The term denotes a theory and practice that a few currently celebrated but vastly overrated economists and political theorists concocted by reviving long dormant strains of classical liberal thought. It is a lackluster confection, void of intellectual cogency and moral appeal. But thanks mainly to the vicissitudes of late capitalism, it has won the day. [Hillary Clinton]
• It is Time to Know a Little More About Realities
  by Fidel Castro In our era, problems are increasingly more complex and news is produced at the speed of light, as many know. Nothing happens today in our world, which does not teach something to those of us who wish, and are still able, to understand new realities. The human being is a strange mixture of blind instinct, on one hand, and conscience, on the other. We are political animals, as, not without reason, affirmed Aristotle, who perhaps influenced humanity’s thinking more than any other ancient philosopher through his almost 200 treatises, according to reports, of which only 31 have been preserved. His teacher was Plato, who left for posterity his famous utopia about the ideal state, which in Syracuse, where he tried to apply it, almost cost him his life. His Political Theory has endured as a designation used to describe ideas as good or bad. Reactionaries often describe both Marx and Lenin as theorists, without taking into consideration that their utopias inspired Russia and China, the two countries called upon to lead a new world which will allow for human survival, if imperialism does not first unleash a criminal, exterminating war. The Soviet Union, the socialist camp, the People’s Republic of China and North Korea helped us resist, with essential supplies and weapons, the implacable blockade of the United States, the most powerful empire ever to exist. Despite its immense power, it has not been able to squash the small country which has, a few miles off its coasts, for more than half a century, withstood its threats, pirate attacks, the hijacking of fishing boats and sinking of merchant ships, the in-flight destruction of a Cubana Airlines airplane over Barbados, the burning of schools and other similar misdeeds. When it attempted to invade our country with mercenary forces in the vanguard, transported by U.S. warships as the first wave, it was defeated in less than 72 hours. Later, counterrevolutionary bands organized and equipped by the U.S. committed acts of vandalism which led to loss of life and injury to thousands of compatriots.
• How the US's terrorism watchlists work – and how you could end up on one
  Long-withheld document provides insight into secretive system in which people can be placed on terrorism databases with astounding ease, and without any way to get off Spencer Ackerman in New York theguardian.com, Thursday 24 July 2014 22.41 BST Placement on a terrorism watchlist is a life-changing event. Your travel is monitored and in many cases restricted. If overseas, you could be stranded, costing your employment or reunion with your family. You could be detained and, certain lawsuits allege, tortured by foreign governments. Yet the ease with which someone can be placed on US watchlists and terrorism databases contrasts markedly with the impact placement has. A long-withheld document published on Wednesday by the Intercept detailing the guidelines for placement shows that the standards for inclusion are far lower than probable cause, and the ability for someone caught in the datasets to challenge their placement do not exist. In 2013, the government made 468,749 nominations for inclusion to the Terrorist Screening Database, up from 227,932 nominations in 2009; few are rejected. [Terrorism] [Surveillance]
• Germany begins spying on Britain and America for the first time since 1945
  Government responds to a series of spy scandals which began last year with revelations that the NSA had bugged Chancellor Angela Merkel’s mobile phone berlin Thursday 24 July 2014 Chancellor Angela Merkel has ordered her counter-espionage services to begin surveillance of British and American intelligence gathering in Germany for the first time since 1945 in response to a series of US spy scandals which have badly soured relations between Berlin and Washington. The Süddeutsche Zeitung and two-state funded German TV channels, WDR and NDR, quoted an unnamed Berlin government source who said Ms Merkel’s Chancellery and her interior and foreign ministries had agreed to launch counter-espionage measures against Britain and the US for the first time. “Right now we need to send a strong signal,” the Süddeutsche Zeitung quoted the source as saying. The extraordinary measures are a direct response to a series of embarrassing US and British spying scandals in Germany which began last year with revelations that the US National Security Agency had bugged Ms Merkel’s mobile phone. The Chancellor protested on several occasions that she was “not amused” by the disclosures [Espionage] [Client]
• US seeks longer-term exit strategy for Gaza war
  As US Secretary of State John Kerry shuttled through the Middle East to discuss how to bring and end to the war in Gaza, US officials voiced support for a longer-term plan, beyond a cease-fire, to exit the cycle of conflict between Israel and Hamas, the third in just six years. Summary? Print US officials are voicing support for a solution to the frequent cycles of violence between Hamas and Israel, one which may borrow from the UN resolution that ended the 2006 war with Lebanon. Author Laura Rozen Posted July 23, 2014 "There has to be some way forward that does not involve Hamas having the ability to continue to rain down rockets on Israeli civilians," US deputy national security adviser Antony Blinken told NPR’s "Morning Edition" July 23. "One of the results, one would hope, of a cease-fire would be some form of demilitarization, so that … this doesn't … repeat itself." [Double standards] [Gaza] [Israel]
• Egypt media applaud tough security check on John Kerry
  Egyptian CBC Extra TV showed John Kerry being checked by security at the palace A highly unusual security check that US Secretary of State John Kerry and his senior aides were subjected to at the presidential palace in Cairo before meeting Egyptian President Abdul Fattah al-Sisi has made a splash in the local press. The top US diplomat is usually treated with every courtesy in Cairo, but the front-page coverage in both private and state-owned papers hovers between factual reports and applause, describing the check with a hand-held metal detector as a "surprise" and saying that Mr Kerry had had to "comply" with orders of the security officers. A note of pride can also be detected in the headlines. "Checking Kerry at the doors of 'al-Ittihadiyah'," announces private daily Al-Tahrir. The report mentions twice that "Kerry and his team complied" with the procedures. Similarly, privately-owned daily Al-Dustur's headline proclaims in red letters: "A heavy surprise: John Kerry subject to strict inspection procedures before his meeting with Al-Sisi". The paper complements the report with a photo showing Kerry passing through the security scanner at the doors of Al-Ittihadiyah Palace. And, again in red ink, private daily Al-Yawm al-Sabi adds to its headline: "Bravo Sisi" State-owned newspapers echo their private brethren: "Checking Kerry and his aides before meeting Al-Sisi", daily Al-Akhbar's headline says. [Egypt] [Client] [Decline]
• Head of Syria opposition government sacked
  The Qatar-backed head of the Syrian opposition's interim government was sacked Tuesday, under pressure from Saudi Arabia, once again exposing the sharp divisions between the opposition's main backers. Since the National Coalition was created in late 2012, rivalries between Riyadh and Doha have consistently undermined the group, which acts as the main opposition body. "The Coalition's General Assembly has relieved Ahmad Tohme, head of the interim government, of his functions, after a dawn vote," said Samir Nashar, veteran dissident and Coalition member. Sixty-six Coalition members voted for Tohme's dismissal, while 35 voted for him to stay in his post. A replacement will be named in the coming weeks. Tohme was named head of the opposition's interim government 10 months ago. The vote was held in Istanbul after a meeting that ran through Sunday and Monday. Speaking to AFP by phone, Nashar said Tohme was sacked "for political reasons, but also because of his management" of the interim body. Tohme is close to Syria's Muslim Brotherhood, which has a strong influence in the opposition but is despised by Saudi Arabia. Backed by Qatar, "the Muslim Brotherhood dominated the government... and Saudi Arabia let its allies (in the opposition) know that they needed to cut ties with the group", said Nashar. [Proxy] [Qatar] [Saudi Arabia] [Muslim Brotherhood]
• Turkey’s Syrian refugee problem spirals out of control
  Turkey’s Syrian refugee problem continues to fester and grow with no apparent resolution in sight, while threatening to spiral out of control and leading to social tensions across the country. It is not just in towns and cities near the Syrian border — with a high concentration of refugees — where confrontations with locals are on the increase. Syrian refugees in Turkey are regularly subject to hostilities by locals, a trend Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan implies the opposition is responsible for. Author Semih Idiz Posted July 20, 2014 Translator(s)Ezgi Akin The problem is also spreading to cities far from the Syrian border, which have a better capacity to absorb outsiders due to their large populations. Istanbul, with a population of 14 million, is a case in point. The governor of Turkey’s largest city and financial capital is talking about drastic measures that include plans to expel Syrians dwelling and begging on the streets of the city to camps near the Syrian border. This in turn has led to unease in parts of the country being mentioned in this connection. These developments also continue to pose an embarrassment for Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government, which insists that Turkey will maintain its open-door policy for Syrians fleeing the Bashar al-Assad regime. The issue is also providing political fodder for Erdogan’s opponents on the eve of the presidential elections in which he is also a candidate. Erdogan — for his part — is on the defensive, saying in a patronizing manner that he knows who is behind the recent attacks against Syrians in the southeastern Turkish cities of Gaziantep, Adana and Kahramanmaras, although he has not named anyone or any group. Addressing a crowd in the Black Sea province of Sakarya this week, Erdogan said 1.1 million Syrians had sought help from Turkey and taken refuge here. “Are we to abandon these people to bombs?” he asked. [Turkey] [Syria] [Outsourcing] [Jihadists] [Blowback]
• Congress may take up bill to withdraw US advisers from Iraq
  Congress may vote next week on legislation to withdraw the military advisers President Barack Obama has sent to Iraq. Author Julian Pecquet Posted July 18, 2014 The House is weighing “possible consideration” of bipartisan legislation that would give the administration until the end of the year to withdraw all troops except those needed to protect US diplomatic facilities and personnel, the office of House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va., announced late July 18. The privileged resolution was introduced last Friday, July 11, by war critics James McGovern, D-Mass., Walter Jones , R-N.C., and Barbara Lee, D-Calif. “Now is the time for Congress to debate the merits of our military involvement in this latest Iraq conflict. Openly. Transparently. Do we approve of these deployments and any future escalation? If so, we should vote to authorize it. If we do not support it, then we should bring our troops back home,” McGovern said on the House floor at the time of introduction. “The time for that debate is now. Not when the first body bag comes home from Iraq. Not when the first US airstrikes or bombs fall on Iraq. Not when we are embedded with Iraqi troops trying to take back an ISIS-held town. And, worst-case scenario, not when our troops are shooting their way out of an overtaken Baghdad.” [Governance] [Iraq] [Congress]
• Special Report: How Iraq's Maliki defined limits of U.S. power
  By Warren Strobel, Missy Ryan, David Rohde and Ned Parker WASHINGTON/BAGHDAD Mon Jun 30, 2014 3:40pm BST 1 of 10. U.S. President Barack Obama (L) and Iraq's Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki arrive to lay a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknowns at Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington, Virginia, in this December 12, 2011 file photo. Credit: Reuters/Jonathan Ernst/Files (Reuters) - In November 2010, the United States faced a painful dilemma in Iraq. The man Washington had picked from near-obscurity four years earlier to be Iraq's prime minister, Nuri al-Maliki, had narrowly lost an election but was, with help from Iran, maneuvering to stay in power. The clock was ticking as a U.S. troop drawdown gathered pace. American diplomats and Iraqi politicians cast about for alternatives to lead Iraq. But Iraqis had elected a hung parliament and there were no candidates with clear-cut support. Fearing chaos, Washington settled again on Maliki. [Client] [Maliki] [Iraq]
• Planned Chaos in the Middle East—and Beyond
  by Ismael Hossein-Zadeh Geopolitical observers of the Middle East turbulence tend to blame the raging chaos in the area on the presumed failure of the “incoherent,” “illogical” or “contradictory” policies of the United States. Irrefutable evidence (some of which presented in this study) suggests, however, that in fact the chaos represents the success, not failure, of those policies—policies that are designed by the beneficiaries of war and military adventures in the region, and beyond. While U.S. policies in the region are certainly irrational and conflicting from the standpoint of international peace, or even from the standpoint of the U.S. national interests as a whole, they are quite logical from the viewpoint of economic and geopolitical beneficiaries of war and international hostilities, that is, from the viewpoint of (a) the military-industrial complex, and (b) the militant Zionist proponents of “greater Israel.” The seeds of the chaos were planted some 25 years ago, when the Berlin Wall Collapsed. Since the rationale for the large and growing military apparatus during the Cold War years was the “threat of communism,” U.S. citizens celebrated the collapse of the Wall as the end of militarism and the dawn of “peace dividends”—a reference to the benefits that, it was hoped, many would enjoy in the United States as a result of a reorientation of part of the Pentagon’s budget toward non-military social needs. But while the majority of the U.S. citizens celebrated the prospects of what appeared to be imminent “peace dividends,” the powerful interests vested in the expansion of military/security spending felt threatened. Not surprisingly, these influential forces moved swiftly to safeguard their interests in the face of the “threat of peace.” To stifle the voices that demanded peace dividends, beneficiaries of war and militarism began to methodically redefine the post-Cold War “sources of threat” in the broader framework of the new multi-polar world, which goes way beyond the traditional “Soviet threat” of the bipolar world of the Cold War era. Instead of the “communist threat” of the Soviet era, the “menace” of “rogue states,” of radical Islam and of “global terrorism” would have to do as new enemies. [MISCOM] [Controlled chaos] [Israel] [PR]
• Syria fights to free gas field from Islamic State
  By Mousab Alhamadee McClatchy Foreign Service July 19, 2014 ISTANBUL — The Syrian military and the Islamic State engaged in fierce battle Saturday as the government tried unsuccessfully to dislodge the radical Islamists from a gas field seized two days earlier in an attack marked by the executions of 200 soldiers, sources close to the scene said. Using 23-mm heavy machine guns, forces of the Islamic State were able to chase government aircraft away from the Sha’er gas field in the Syrian desert east of Homs, anti-government activist Bybars Tillawi told McClatchy by Skype. At least 20 government troops were killed, he said. Abu Bilal al Homsi, an official of the Islamic State, told McClatchy that after conquering the site Thursday, the al Qaida offshoot executed 200 government troops. A video posted on YouTube on Thursday showed militants of the Islamic State walking through the gas field and speaking with animation as they examined what appeared to be more than 50 bodies, many with gunshot wounds in the head, chest and legs. Fifteen fighters of the Islamic State died in Thursday’s clashes, Homsi told McClatchy by Skype. Homsi said the radical Islamists had also captured 200 civilians and plans to put them on trial under Islamic Sharia law. They are likely to be found guilty and executed because they had been working with the Syrian government, he said via Skype. Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2014/07/19/233828/syria-fights-to-free-gas-field.html#storylink=cpy [Syria] [ISIS]
• We’re No. 1? Americans increasingly don’t think so.
  By Aaron Blake and Jaime Fuller July 3 A new Pew Research Center poll shows that the number of Americans who think the United States "stands above all other countries" has declined from 38 percent three years ago to 28 percent today. A strong majority of Americans (58 percent) say the U.S. is merely "one of the greatest countries." (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin) Just 12 percent say other countries are clearly better. So we've got that going for us, which is nice. (USA! USA!) WereNo1 The decline in American exceptionalism has even taken hold among those who have often been the biggest proponents of it: Republicans. Just 37 percent view the United States as a singularly great country -- down 15 points from 2011. [Decline] [Public opinion]
• ISIS should be catalyst for new Middle East alliance
  The events unfolding in Iraq are a grave development, accelerating the expansion of radical Islam in the Middle East. To thwart this advance, three threats in particular need to be neutralized: a growing political and terrorist subversion of Iran that has been abetted by the acquiescence of Western democracies; a spillover of jihadist activity from Syria and Iraq into Jordan; and the failure of Egypt's recently elected Abdel Fattah al-Sisi government to rebuild the country's economy. The author, who served as a minister in several Israeli governments and as a brigadier general in the Israel Defense Forces, makes the case for an Israel-Saudi Arabia-Egypt alliance, anchored in an Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement. Author Ephraim Sneh Posted July 2, 2014 Translator(s)Ezgi Akin The following steps are required to deal with these dangers: •Confronting Iran with a strong regional coalition possessing superb military and intelligence capacities. •Helping Jordan defend itself and protect its borders and its stability. •Strengthening the non-jihadist members of the Syrian opposition. •Assisting the new Egyptian government through foreign investments in energy, industry and national economic infrastructure. Unfortunately, America’s allies in the region can't entirely rely on it to take all these steps. For example, the US administration preaches democracy to Gen. Sisi, but has denied him the vital tools (Apache helicopters, for example) to fight Islamist guerrillas in the Sinai Peninsula. Read more: http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2014/07/isis-israel-new-reality-alliances-iraq-syria.html?utm_source=Al-Monitor+Newsletter+%5BEnglish%5D&utm_campaign=8f31c4476a-July_3_2014&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_28264b27a0-8f31c4476a-100372581#ixzz382gvdEbI [Israel] [Saudi Arabia] [Egypt] [Democracy] [ISIS]
• This surprising map explains how the world smokes pot
  By Terrence McCoy July 2 Worldwide, weed news couldn’t be hotter. It’s now legal in Colorado and Washington — and Uruguay just became the first country to legalize it. The nation now has bold, new weed plans that include, among others, giving medical marijuana to prisoners in its jails. The catch: Despite Uruguay’s weed affinity, only 8.3 percent of its inhabitants actually smoke it, according to the United Nations 2014 World Drug Report. The country that, surprisingly, has the highest percentage of stoners? Iceland. That’s right, 55,000 of its residents light up — nearly one-fourth of the population — even though marijuana remains an expensive commodity, according to some. Today, its president wants the trade legalized. “If we allow the sale of alcohol,” he said, “there is no reason to ban the soft drugs any longer.” Other countries with a high percentage of potheads include the United States, New Zealand, Canada and … Nigeria. [Drugs]
• ISIS announces Islamic caliphate, changes name
  History is witnessing a 90-year-old setback. In 1924, the Islamic caliphate was abolished by virtue of a decision issued by late Turkish President Kemal Ataturk. Two days ago, June 28, and on the first day of the month of Ramadan 2014, the Shura Council of the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) decided to bring back the caliphate, declared its rule once again, and proclaimed Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi as the first “caliph of Islam” in this new era. The Shura Council of the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham has announced the establishment of the Islamic caliphate on the first day of the month of Ramadan. Author Abdallah Suleiman Ali Posted June 30, 2014 Translator(s)Pascale el Khoury The planned caliphate knows no limits to its expansion and spread, since the Shura Council decided to replace the denomination of Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham with the name Islamic State, in a clear indication that this organization was no longer confined to one or two countries. As-Safir had exclusively published in an article issued on June 3, 2014, the date planned for the announcement of the Islamic caliphate, when sources close to ISIS were quoted as saying that the “proclamation of the caliphate is being seriously discussed in the corridors of the organization, awaiting for the appropriate conditions, especially the developments in the field.” The sources confirmed that “there is no caliphate in Syria alone or in Iraq alone, but the land of the new caliphate must extend from Anbar in Iraq through Deir ez-Zor in Syria all the way to Raqqa.” The sources added that if ISIS successfully controlled Deir ez-Zor and ousted the Sahwat, it would be able to proclaim the caliphate “in the month of Ramadan.” Indeed, the Islamic caliphate was only announced after ISIS managed to join together its territories in Syria and Iraq, thus opening the road from Raqqa to Mosul. [ISIS]
• The Sunni Ramadan Offensive and the Lessons of Tet
  Geopolitical Weekly Tuesday, July 1, 2014 - By George Friedman In February 1968, the North Vietnamese Army and the Viet Cong launched a general offensive in Vietnam during Tet, the Vietnamese New Year. From mid-1966 onward, the North Vietnamese had found themselves under increasing pressure from American and South Vietnamese forces. They were far from defeated, but they were weakening and the likelihood of their military victory was receding. The North Vietnamese decided to reverse the course of the war militarily and politically by marshaling available forces, retaining only limited reserves and going on the offensive throughout South Vietnam. The attack had three strategic purposes. First, the North Vietnamese wanted to trigger a general uprising against the Americans and the South Vietnamese government. Second, they wanted to move the insurgency to the next stage by seizing and holding significant territory and resisting counterattack. And third, they wanted to destabilize their enemy psychologically by demonstrating that intelligence reports indicating their increasing weakness were wrong. They also wanted to impose casualties on the Americans at an unprecedented rate. The American metric in the war was the body count; increasing the body count dramatically would therefore create a crisis of confidence in the U.S. public and within the military and intelligence community. General Offensives and Crises of Confidence From a military standpoint, the offensive was a failure. The North Vietnamese military was crippled by its losses. While seizing Hue and other locations, the North Vietnamese were unable to hold them. But they succeeded psychologically and politically by raising doubts about U.S. intelligence and by creating a political crisis in the United States. In war, perception of the enemy's strength and will, and confidence in your own evaluation of those things, shifts the manner in which one fights. The U.S. intelligence estimate before Tet was more right than wrong, but by marshaling all forces for a general offensive, the North caused U.S. trust in that evaluation to collapse. Even though the North Vietnamese were militarily far weaker after the offensive, the military failure proved less relevant than this creation of a crisis of confidence.
• The enduring spectre of chemical weapons in Iraq
  Bob Rigg 30 June 2014 The US's failure to destroy the remnants of Iraq's chemical weapons stock, along with many others, haunts as ISIS continues its advance - now with access to this dangerous and unstable arsenal. Remnants of Saddam Hussein's chemical weapons stock. Another gift left by the Americans for ISIS? Flickr/wstera2. Some rights reserved. After the 1990-1991 Gulf War inspectors with a UN mandate located and destroyed large quantities of chemical weapons on Iraqi territory. But the US and the UK kept on insisting that Iraq was still concealing nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons programs and finally attacked in 2003, in violation of the UN Charter. After the invasion, increasingly desperate US attempts to prove the existence of Iraqi WMD came up empty-handed. George W. Bush later said that his biggest regret was "the intelligence failure" in Iraq. Relatively small caches of chemical weapons were eventually uncovered, all of which had been inadequately disposed of by the Iraqis. They were brought together at the Al Muthanna chemical weapons complex, previously the nerve centre of Iraq’s chemical weapons production. In June 2006 Lt. Gen. Michael Maples, then Director of the US Intelligence Agency, advised the Senate Armed Services Committee that the munitions in question had been produced in the 1980s: “badly corroded, they could not currently be used as originally intended." Maples specifically noted that “the agent remaining in the weapons would be very valuable to terrorists and insurgents”. A colleague commented that this was true even considering any degradation of the chemical agents that may have occurred. [Iraq] [cbw]
• BRICS bank rattles the 'Washington Consensus'
  Five emerging economies set up $100bn development bank, seen as direct competition to World Bank and IMF. Last modified: 18 Jul 2014 06:02 Gabriel Elizondo is an Al Jazeera staff correspondent based in Sao Paulo, Brazil. FORTALEZA, Brazil – In a sprawling events hall in this sun-soaked, laid-back northeastern city, the leaders of the world's most important emerging economies dropped a sledge hammer to the so-called Washington Consensus and also took the most concrete step to show the BRICS alliance is more than just a catchy acronym. The leaders of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa came together to sign by far and away the most concrete agreement in the six-year history of the BRICS group, the creation of the New Development Bank, a potential direct challenge to the World Bank/IMF, Washington-centric, grip on global lending. Rousseff, Putin, Jinping, Modi and Zuma wanted the new bank to be taken seriously immediately, so they jointly committed to $100bn in initial capital. After the agreement was done, I tracked down Luciano Coutinho, one of Brazil's most influential behind-the-scenes economic players. Coutinho is the longtime president of Brazil's uber-powerful national development bank, the BNDES, and he was part of the Brazilian negotiating delegation for the new bank. He called the new institution a "historic initiative and a breakthrough". [BRICs] [Reserve]
• Reserves crisis jeopardizes Libya's future
  Libya is a rich, large country. It is among the few countries in the Arab region and the world which are not indebted to international or regional financial funds. The most important is that its population, as compared with other oil producing and exporting countries, is considered small, not exceeding 6 million. Before the political change, Libya’s reserve amounted to $165 billion, and its annual oil returns were $60 billion. Despite Libya's wealth, its currency reserves are slowly diminishing as oil production struggles to reach pre-conflict levels. Author Samir Sobh Posted July 20, 2014 Translator(s)Steffi Chakti These reserves, however, are being gradually eaten away, while the gold reserve volume was never announced. The reason behind this is the decline that revenues witnessed as production decreased from 1.6 million barrels per day in mid-2012 to less than 300,000 barrels per day due to unrest and protests that took place in the main oil facilities, leading to the shutdown of prominent oil ports despite signs of a solution looming on the horizon. Also, refinery stations were rendered dysfunctional, which led Libya to import fuel. This comes in addition to the oil smuggling operations that have been going on for three years. [Libya]
• Pax Syriana: neither vanquished, nor all-conquering
  Kamal Alam 30 June 2014 Why is the Syrian Army, against all predictions, winning the war in Syria? One has to delve into the history of the Syrian state since independence to understand how the military shaped the state and learned to divide its opponents. Syria´s president Hafez al-Asad and Defense Minister Mustapha Tlass, during the Arab-Israeli War of 1973, at the Golan front. Wikimedia/The Online Museum of Syrian History. Public domain. The Syrian Army has fought on now for more than three years without disintegrating as had been predicted by many commentators. Indeed it is the Army of the Syrian Arab Republic (al-Jaysh al-’Arabi as-Suri) which has kept the state intact. The Syrian state institutions of which the Army is the foremost guarantor have held firm in the onslaught of all the non- state actors as well as regional neighbours. How is it that the Syrian Arab Army has held together? Contrary to what most observers say, the overwhelming factor in this has not been because this was an Allawite army. Had this been the case, it would not have been able to hang on for so long. The most prominent Chiefs of Staff and General Staff officers have been a combination of Sunni, Christian and Allawite. Nor was the army constructed along sectarian or ethnic lines. To take its three major contemporary personalities--Mustafa Tlass, Fahd Jassem Frejj and the late Daoud Rajiha--they are respectively Sunni and Greek Orthodox. The elder Tlass is now retired, but he was the man who shaped the Syrian armed forces with Hafez al Assad in the 1970s. History, ethnicity and structure of the Syrian Army However to understand how the Syria Army became what it is today one has to delve into the history of the Syrian state since independence and how the military shaped the state. Since March 1949, Syria has experienced sixteen army coups nine of which were successful in overthrowing the incumbent rulers. The army had never really gone back to barracks before the arrival of Hafez al Assad. [Syria] [Military]
• Images of Gaza war shift perception of Israel
  War is often remembered by images. Who can forget the photograph of the Vietnamese girl running naked down a road after being exposed to US napalm bombs? Or the American sailor kissing an anonymous nurse in Times Square following the announcement of the end of World War II? For the current war on Gaza, two images that have gone viral and the stories behind them are reflective of the real price of war in terms of human suffering, unbridled hate and revenge. Decisions by media networks to censor their reporters in Gaza will not prevent the truth of Israeli actions from emerging. Author Daoud Kuttab Posted July 18, 2014 The first image is of a young man carrying a dead Palestinian boy on the beach in Gaza and the tweet by NBC reporter Ayman Mohyeldin that he had just been playing soccer with the slain child and the three others killed along with him. The boys, ages 9, 10 and 11, were attacked by the Israeli navy for no reason other than they lived in the overcrowded and besieged Gaza Strip. The second image was transmitted by a CNN reporter, of Israelis watching gleefully as the Israeli army mercilessly pounded Palestinians in Gaza with missiles. A tweet by the reporter Diana Magnay, which has since been deleted, stated, “Israelis on hill above Sderot cheer as bombs land on #gaza; threaten to ‘destroy our car if I say a word wrong’. Scum.” More than anything else, these two images shatter two key narratives that Israel has worked so hard to perpetuate: first, that the war on Gaza is a war on terror and against Hamas militants who launch rockets at peace-loving Israelis, and second, that Israel is morally superior, a claim on which Israel has often prided itself. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu boasted about this moral supremacy in his eulogy of the three Israelis killed near a Jewish settlement in an area under Israeli control in June. In his remarks, Netanyahu said that Palestinians “rejoice over the spilled blood of the innocent” and pronounced that “a deep moral abyss separates between us and our enemies. They sanctify death, we sanctify life. They sanctify cruelty, and we sanctify mercy.” Pressure on the media and threats against journalists are nothing new. [[Gaza] [Propaganda]
• Battle for Baghdad
  Patrick Cockburn You are invited to read this free essay from the London Review of Books. Subscribe now to access every article from every fortnightly issue of the London Review of Books, including the entire LRB archive of over 12,500 essays and reviews. In early June, Abbas Saddam, a private soldier from a Shia district in Baghdad serving in the 11th Division of the Iraqi army, was transferred from Ramadi, the capital of Anbar province in western Iraq, to Mosul in the north. The fighting started not long after he got there. But on the morning of 10 June the commanding officer told his men to stop shooting, hand over their rifles to the insurgents, take off their uniforms and get out of the city. Before they could obey, their barracks were invaded by a crowd of civilians. ‘They threw stones at us,’ Abbas recalled, ‘and shouted: “We don’t want you in our city! You are Maliki’s sons! You are the sons of mutta!?* You are Safavids! You are the army of Iran!”’ The crowd’s attack on the soldiers shows that the fall of Mosul was the result of a popular uprising as well as a military assault by Isis. [ISIS] [Iraq]
• Ukraine separatists may have mistaken Malaysian airliner for military aircraft; 298 aboard die
  By Olga Iva, Jonathan S. Landay and Matthew Schofield McClatchy Washington Bureau July 17, 2014 Updated 6 hours ago People walk amongst the debris, at the crash site of a passenger plane near the village of Grabovo, Ukraine, Thursday, July 17, 2014. KIEV, Ukraine — A Malaysia Airlines passenger jet with 298 people on board crashed Thursday after apparently being struck by a missile over an area of eastern Ukraine where government forces have been battling pro-Russia separatists. There were no survivors. Ukrainian officials accused the separatists of downing the plane with a missile from a Soviet-era anti-aircraft system and vowed to find those responsible, while leaders of the self-declared Donetsk Peoples Republic, the region where the plane fell, denied any involvement. A social network post by a separatist commander, however, suggested that his men may have mistaken the plane for a Ukrainian military aircraft. In Washington, a U.S. official said that “all indications are the aircraft was shot down by a surface-to-air missile.” The official, who requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue, said that further analysis would be required before a final determination was made. [MH17]
• What is Hezbollah learning from Hamas?
  Never before has a flare-up in Gaza failed to grab the attention of the Arab world like the current round. Led by Egypt, the majority of the Arab League’s members have been unwilling to come to Hamas’ rescue, while much of the Arab street remains preoccupied with the almost Quranic battle between Shiites and Sunnis in Iraq, the endless massacres in Syria and Libya’s disintegration. Any action taken by Hamas against Israel is likely being carefully studied by Hezbollah for future conflict purposes. Author Daniel Nisman Posted July 17, 2014 Translator(s)Inga Michaeli Despite keeping a low profile throughout the Gaza conflict, Hezbollah is one regional player that cannot afford to ignore the fighting. After eight years of quiet that preceded the Second Lebanon War, the Shiite Islamist group is studying Israel’s strategy on all fronts as it prepares for its own future round with the Israeli military. Maj. Stephane Cohen, a former officer in the Israel Defense Forces' (IDF) Liaison’s Lebanon division and defense analyst at The Israel Project, told Al-Monitor, “Hezbollah is a learning organization. They are focusing on the Israeli response, not only the military response but also the political behavior of the Israeli government and how other regional players respond to the crisis.”
• Lawmakers: Kerry floats new sanctions on Iran
  US Secretary of State John Kerry told lawmakers July 17 that passing new triggered sanctions on Iran might help unlock a nuclear deal, a complete reversal from the policy of the President Barack Obama administration until now, several House Democrats of different ideological stripes told Al-Monitor. The secretary of state has told lawmakers that passing triggered sanctions could help get a nuclear deal. Author Julian Pecquet Posted July 17, 2014 Kerry made the remarks at a State Department meeting with a group of Jewish lawmakers who are regularly briefed on issues pertaining to Israel. He discussed the likely need for an extension of the negotiations of up to four months as well as the Israel-Gaza conflict. He made it clear that he was just floating ideas, several lawmakers said, and had not gotten Obama to sign off on them. "He said it might be useful as a spur," one lawmaker said. "But he said he hadn't checked with the White House." The State Department denies any change of policy. [US Negotiating]
• Germany and the United States: Unprecedented Breach
  Immanuel Wallerstein Commentary No. 381, July 15, 2014 On July 10, the German government demanded the immediate departure of the head of the CIA mission in Berlin. Such demands are not unusual, even between ostensible allies. What is unusual is that it should be publicly announced, and with much fanfare. What accounts for what some are already calling an "unprecedented breach" in the very close relations after 1945 between the United States and the German Federal Republic? It only took one day for the subject to become the occasion of two major articles, one an op-ed in the Los Angeles Times and the other a major story in Germany's Der Spiegel. Both are pessimistic that the unprecedented breach can be swiftly, if ever, repaired. The op-ed in the Los Angeles Times, written by Jacob Heilbrun, was entitled "The German-American Breakup." The word "breakup" is unequivocal, or almost. After an overview of various German commentaries, Heilbrun ends with this admonition: "If Obama is unable to rein in spying of Germany, he may discover that he is helping to convert it from an ally into an adversary. For Obama to say Auf Wiedersehen to a longtime ally would deliver a blow to American national security that no amount of secret information could possibly justify." If Heilbrun seems to have little hope that his viewpoint will be heard in Washington, it pales before the lead article in Der Spiegel on the same date. The long article is entitled "Germany's Choice: Will It Be America or Russia?" One section of the article is entitled "The Last Straw." It cites not someone on the left or someone who has long advocated closer relations with Russia. It cites instead a conservative advocate of the free economy and of rocksolid relations with the United States, who chairs an organization called Atlantic Bridge. In a tone of desperation, he says: "If [the latest allegations about spying] turn out to be true, it's time for this to stop." Note that the article says it's time for it to stop, not that it's time for further discussions or negotiations about it. Just stop. One last poignant detail: The U.S. ambassador to Germany speaks no German. The Russia ambassador is so fluent one scarcely notices his accent. Entrance to the U.S. Ambassador's office is protected by the highest-level security possible, surpassing that which governs the entrance to the White House's Oval Office. Entrance to the Russian embassy is so casual that it prompts disbelief. That is what Europeans in general, and now Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany in particular, are realizing. The United States has become a very unreliable "partner." So even those in Germany and elsewhere in Europe who are nostalgic for the warm embrace of the "free world" are reluctantly joining the less nostalgic others in deciding how they can survive geopolitically without the United States. And this is pushing them into the logical alternative, a European tent that includes Russia. As the Germans, and the Europeans in general, move inexorably in this direction, they have their hesitations. If they can no longer trust the United States, could they really trust Russia? And, more importantly, could they make a deal with the Russians that the Russians would find it worthwhile and necessary to observe? You can bet that this is what is being discussed in the inner circles of the German government today, and not how to repair the irreparable breach of trust with the United States. [Germany US] [Germany Russia]
• Why we stuck with Maliki — and lost Iraq
  U.S. President George W. Bush, right, walks with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to a news conference at the White House in 2006. (Jason Reed/Reuters) By Ali Khedery July 3 Ali Khedery is chairman and chief executive of the Dubai-based Dragoman Partners. From 2003 to 2009, he was the longest continuously serving American official in Iraq, acting as a special assistant to five U.S. ambassadors and as a senior adviser to three heads of U.S. Central Command. In 2011, as an executive with Exxon Mobil, he negotiated the company’s entry into the Kurdistan Region of Iraq. To understand why Iraq is imploding, you must understand Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki — and why the United States has supported him since 2006. I have known Maliki, or Abu Isra, as he is known to people close to him, for more than a decade. I have traveled across three continents with him. I know his family and his inner circle. When Maliki was an obscure member of parliament, I was among the very few Americans in Baghdad who took his phone calls. In 2006, I helped introduce him to the U.S. ambassador, recommending him as a promising option for prime minister. In 2008, I organized his medevac when he fell ill, and I accompanied him for treatment in London, spending 18 hours a day with him at Wellington Hospital. In 2009, I lobbied skeptical regional royals to support Maliki’s government. By 2010, however, I was urging the vice president of the United States and the White House senior staff to withdraw their support for Maliki. I had come to realize that if he remained in office, he would create a divisive, despotic and sectarian government that would rip the country apart and devastate American interests. America stuck by Maliki. As a result, we now face strategic defeat in Iraq and perhaps in the broader Middle East. [Client] [Iraq]
• How did 'Islamic State' proclaim caliphate?
  The organization of the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) changed its designation with its June 28 announcement of the Islamic State, thus uniting the entire Muslim world under one caliph, Abdullah Ibrahim al-Samarrai, 43, known as Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. This represented an unprecedented move; since the establishment of the Umayyad dynasty in Andalusia by Abd al-Rahman al-Dakhil in 138 A.H. [the year 756], no Muslim has so proclaimed himself in nearly 13 centuries to be a caliph ruling over all Muslims in the world. Summary? Print Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of the Islamic State, raised the organization from a local Iraqi group to the most powerful jihadist organization in the world. Author Abdelwahed al-Ansari Posted July 7, 2014 Translator(s)Pascale el Khoury Original Article ???? ?????? ?????? ?????? ??????? ISIS, which now calls itself the Islamic State, was established in 2006 following an agreement by jihadist factions for an alliance dubbed back then as Hilf al-Mutayyibin after the death of its first leader, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who founded the Tawhid and Jihad group in 2004. The latter had stepped up his operations in Iraq until his death in 2006, which prompted Abu Omar al-Baghdadi to pledge allegiance to him. Subsequently, ISIS claimed responsibility for a large number of high-quality operations, resulting in growing persecution of ISIS and its leaders in Iraq and the world, which led to the killing of Abu Omar and his successor, Abu Hamza al-Muhajir in April 2010. Subsequently, Baghdadi (the caliph) took over the reins of ISIS, which was then still known as the Islamic State in Iraq.
  It is noteworthy that Baghdadi is known in the media and some security agencies in the Arab countries under the name of Abdullah Ibrahim Awad Ibrahim al-Badri al-Samarrai al-Qurashi. He was born in 1971 and he has a bachelor’s degree, a master's degree and a Ph.D. from Iraq. He operated under the leadership of Zarqawi, and became his successor in 2010. [ISIS] [Baghdadi]
• 21st-Century Energy Wars
  Posted: 07/08/2014 9:32 am EDT Iraq, Syria, Nigeria, South Sudan, Ukraine, the East and South China Seas: Wherever you look, the world is aflame with new or intensifying conflicts. At first glance, these upheavals appear to be independent events, driven by their own unique and idiosyncratic circumstances. But look more closely and they share several key characteristics -- notably, a witch’s brew of ethnic, religious, and national antagonisms that have been stirred to the boiling point by a fixation on energy. In each of these conflicts, the fighting is driven in large part by the eruption of long-standing historic antagonisms among neighboring (often intermingled) tribes, sects, and peoples. In Iraq and Syria, it is a clash among Sunnis, Shiites, Kurds, Turkmen, and others; in Nigeria, among Muslims, Christians, and assorted tribal groupings; in South Sudan, between the Dinka and Nuer; in Ukraine, between Ukrainian loyalists and Russian-speakers aligned with Moscow; in the East and South China Sea, among the Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese, Filipinos, and others. It would be easy to attribute all this to age-old hatreds, as suggested by many analysts; but while such hostilities do help drive these conflicts, they are fueled by a most modern impulse as well: The desire to control valuable oil and natural gas assets. Make no mistake about it, these are 21st-century energy wars. [Energy]
• The ‘perfect Aryan’ child used in Nazi propaganda was actually Jewish
  By Terrence McCoy July 7 ? The newlyweds came to Berlin as students, a pair of Latvian Jews who wanted to make it big in singing. In 1934, just after Adolf Hitler took control of Germany, the young Jewish woman became pregnant with a child who would soon become known as the “perfect Aryan.” The photo was everywhere. It first adorned a Nazi magazine that held a beauty contest to find “the perfect Aryan” and then was later splashed across postcards and storefronts. [cbw] [Syria]
• Egypt’s poor bear the brunt of Sisi’s austerity plan
  CAIRO — On Jan. 17, 1977, Egypt's then-Deputy Finance Minister Abdemonem al-Qaisony stood in front of the parliament to declare a number of economic policy changes. The changes were basically increasing the prices of fuel, bread and 25 other consumer goods. Those decisions were ordered by President Anwar Sadat. Back then, Sadat (who was to be assassinated four years later) was celebrated as the man who had defeated Israel and had brought Israelis to peace talks; he also believed he was invincible. Summary? Print A reduction in state subsidies has caused fuel, bread and other prices to rise dramatically in Egypt, stoking anger from consumers, taxi drivers and shop owners. Author Mohannad Sabry Posted July 6, 2014 Egypt literally went ablaze in the two days following the irrational decisions of the Sadat regime. Sadat's presidential rest houses were the first to go. The luxurious mansions scattered in almost every governorate across the country were ransacked by hundreds of thousands of infuriated people who barely made a living before the proposed austerity measures. Police stations, government offices and state-owned businesses were attacked in every city. The world dubbed it "the bread riots," while Sadat mocked it as the "thieves' uprising." A very similar action was taken by Egypt's government three days ago, on July 3, the anniversary of the toppling of President Mohammed Morsi that was orchestrated by Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, who became president of Egypt one month ago. Sisi now is in much the same position as Sadat in 1977 — Sisi is a military strongman who has recently won major battles against the Muslim Brotherhood and other opposition factions, with every sign indicating he very much believes he is also invincible. The government's decisions, all publicly defended by Prime Minister Ibrahim Mehleb, raised the prices of every form of fuel for both ordinary consumers and industrial facilities and the prices of electricity and natural gas supplies for household use. It shocked the market into raising the prices of everything from sandwiches to real estate. Hajj Mahmoud, the chief of a very rundown, downtown Cairo tea shop I patronize, was the first person I discussed the government decisions with. "You paid a pound and a half for tea last night, today you pay two pounds, but in the end, poor people like me pay for everything and everyone, including you and Sisi, whom we brought to the presidency."
  Mahmoud described the situation pretty precisely. Vehicles in Egypt run on five different kinds of fuel, the priciest of which is unleaded gasoline — locally referred to as 95 — usually used by the newest and most expensive cars. The price of 95 went up 7%. Next came the 92 gasoline, the most commonly used fuel by ordinary sedans, which was raised 41%. The 80 gasoline, used by public and private transport buses and minibuses, went up 78%. Diesel fuel, used mainly by cargo trucks, saw its price increase 64%. Then, last and most shocking, came natural gas, the most preferred fuel for taxis across the country, whose price went up 175%. [Sisi] [Inequality]
• Iran Said to Name U.S.-Trained Economist Its New UN Envoy
  By Kambiz Foroohar and Sangwon Yoon Jul 7, 2014 9:00 AM GMT+1200 Save Photographer: Jerome Favre/Bloomberg Iranian President Hassan Rouhani is considering Mohammad Nahavandian, who holds a Ph.D. in economics from George Washington University, for the position as the country’s next envoy to the United Nations, according to two UN Security Council diplomats and one European diplomat, who asked not to be identified. Iranian President Hassan Rouhani is considering Mohammad Nahavandian, who holds a Ph.D.... Iranian President Hassan Rouhani is considering Mohammad Nahavandian, who holds a Ph.D. in economics from George Washington University, for the position as the country’s next envoy to the United Nations, according to two UN Security Council diplomats and one European diplomat, who asked not to be identified. Iranian President Hassan Rouhani may name his American-educated chief of staff to be the country’s next envoy to the United Nations, after the U.S. denied a visa to his previous choice. Rouhani is considering Mohammad Nahavandian, 60, who holds a Ph.D. in economics from George Washington University, for the position, according to two UN Security Council diplomats and one European diplomat, who asked not to be identified because they weren’t authorized to comment. Nahavandian also has been cited as the likely nominee in Iranian media. In April, the Obama administration denied a visa to Hamid Aboutalebi after Bloomberg News reported on his involvement with the militant group that seized the U.S. Embassy in Tehran in 1979 and held 52 Americans hostage for 444 days. Iran may fill the post after the conclusion of the current round of talks with world powers in Vienna over the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program. The stated goal is to reach an agreement by July 20. Rouhani’s decision to appoint a high-ranking cabinet member who’s represented Iran in meetings with American politicians signals his intention to improve relations with the U.S. and avoid another visa fiasco, said Suzanne Maloney, an Iran expert at the Brookings Institution, a Washington public policy research organization. Close to Rouhani “He is someone who is close to Rouhani, and that means the president will have greater involvement in foreign policy,” she said. The decision to nominate a new ambassador signals a reversal by Iran, which had insisted that Aboutalebi was its only choice. “The senior people in Iran knew that Aboutalebi wasn’t going to be accepted,” said Gary Sick, a former U.S. National Security Council official who now teaches at Columbia University in New York. “The hostage issue remains a sensitive issue, and Iran needs to move on.” [Iran] [UNUS] [Legality]
• Iran Pursues Subtle Strategy on Iraq
  Country Trying to Support Shiites Without Pushing Sectarian Conflict
  By Bill Spindle connect July 4, 2014 5:02 p.m. ET QOM, Iran—Iran is pursuing a delicate strategy of supporting fellow Shiite Muslims and preserving its influence in neighboring Iraq—where the government is under siege by radical Sunni militants—without pushing the confrontation into outright sectarian warfare. For the second straight week, influential clerics, who are appointed by the Islamic Republic's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, used their Friday sermons to denounce the militant groups and support Iraq's government. But their speeches steered clear of explicitly encouraging individual Shiites to act against the Sunni insurgents. "We are ready to help Iraq as they ask for help," Ayatollah Mohammad Saeedi told thousands of Iranians gathered for Friday prayers in Qom, Iran's religious capital. The country has openly sent top military advisers to help the Iraqi government, and blamed a collection of foreign enemies from Saudi Arabia to Israel and the U.S. for the violence. It deployed at least three battalions of elite Revolutionary Guards units to Iraq, according to Iranian security officials—an action Iran's foreign ministry denied. Yet it has stopped short of sending in large numbers of its own troops and discouraged ordinary Iranians from crossing the border to fight or defend holy sites in Iraq. [Iran] [Iraq] [Sectarianism]
• Syrian ‘moderates’ aren’t so moderate in Iraq
  Who are the 'moderate' rebels President Obama wants to train and arm? Robert Fisk Friday 27 June 2014 Well, God bless Barack Obama – he’s found some “moderate” rebels in Syria. Enough to supply them with weapons and training worth $500m. Congress wants to arm these brave freedom fighters, you see. And Obama, having sent his 300 elite Spartan lads to Iraq to help Nouri al-Maliki fight the rebels there, needs to send help to the rebels in Syria – even though most of them are on the side of the rebels in Iraq whom Obama wants Maliki to defeat. [Outsourcing] [Jihadists]
• ISIS in Syria
  by Patrick Cockburn Isis fighters have captured much of eastern Syria in the past few days while international attention has been focused on the Israeli bombardment of Gaza. Using tanks and artillery seized in Iraq, it has taken almost all of oil-rich Deir Ezzor province and is battling to crush the resistance of the Syrian Kurds. Isis is establishing dominance over the opposition to Syria’s President, Bashar al-Assad, as other rebel groups flee or pledge allegiance to the caliphate declared by the Isis leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, after the capture of Mosul on 10 June. On Monday, the jihadists took over the rebel held half of Deir Ezzor on the Euphrates river, raising their black flag over the city and executing the rebel commander from Jabhat al-Nusra, the al-Qa’ida affiliate that was previously in control. The recent Isis advances in Syria, following victories in Iraq last month, are altering the balance of power in the whole region. The opposition military forces not aligned with the Syrian government or Isis are being squeezed out of existence, making obsolete the US, British, Saudi and Turkish policy of backing groups hostile to both Assad and Isis. [ISIS] [Outsourcing] [Jihadist] [Syria]
• Saudi Complicity in the Rise of ISIS
  by Patrick Cockburn How far is Saudi Arabia complicit in the Isis takeover of much of northern Iraq, and is it stoking an escalating Sunni-Shia conflict across the Islamic world? Some time before 9/11, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, once the powerful Saudi ambassador in Washington and head of Saudi intelligence until a few months ago, had a revealing and ominous conversation with the head of the British Secret Intelligence Service, MI6, Sir Richard Dearlove. Prince Bandar told him: “The time is not far off in the Middle East, Richard, when it will be literally ‘God help the Shia’. More than a billion Sunnis have simply had enough of them.” The fatal moment predicted by Prince Bandar may now have come for many Shia, with Saudi Arabia playing an important role in bringing it about by supporting the anti-Shia jihad in Iraq and Syria. Since the capture of Mosul by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isis) on 10 June, Shia women and children have been killed in villages south of Kirkuk, and Shia air force cadets machine-gunned and buried in mass graves near Tikrit. [ISIS] [Saudi Arabia]
• Quarter of world has no U.S. ambassador
  By William Douglas and Jonathan S. Landay McClatchy Washington Bureau July 16, 2014 Updated 24 minutes ago WASHINGTON — The United States does not have ambassadors in more than a quarter of the countries in the world, hindering U.S. efforts on issues ranging from counterterrorism work in Africa to the flood of children fleeing Central America for the U.S. border. The vacancies are driven by the Senate, where President Barack Obama’s nominations for ambassadors are caught in a partisan feud between the Democrats and the Republicans, and by complaints that Obama is nominating an unusually large percentage of political supporters rather than career diplomats. Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2014/07/16/233525/quarter-of-world-has-no-us-ambassador.html?sp=/99/104/244/112/#storylink=cpy [Governance]
• Legendary Marine Maj. Zembiec, the ‘Lion of Fallujah,’ died in the service of the CIA
  By Thomas Gibbons-Neff July 15 at 8:49 PM ? In the foyer of the Central Intelligence Agency’s headquarters, there is a marble wall covered in stars. They are carved divots that represent those who have fallen in the service of the CIA. Below them, jutting out from the polished rock, is a black book entombed in a case of glass and steel. The book is a guide to the stars, giving the names of some of those who died and withholding the names of others. On the pages of the CIA’s Book of Honor are 111 hand-drawn stars organized by the years those officers died. For 2007, there is a single, anonymous star. It belongs to Marine Maj. Douglas Alexander Zembiec. Long thought to be an active-duty Marine when he was killed in Baghdad, Zembiec was actually serving with the CIA’s paramilitary arm. While the CIA would not comment on whether Zembiec worked for the agency, former U.S. intelligence officials said in interviews that he died in an alley in Sadr City on May 11, 2007, as a member of the Special Activities Division’s Ground Branch. It was the final chapter in the life of a Marine known to many as the Lion of Fallujah but whose story, until now, has never been fully told. He is one of the few Americans to be simultaneously honored by the military and the CIA for his actions. But because he was working covertly, his role was never acknowledged publicly. [CIA]
• The tide is turning against the scam that is privatisation
  The international revival of public ownership is anathema to our City-led elite. But it's vital to genuine economic recovery o Seumas Milne o o The Guardian, Wednesday 9 July 2014 20.37 BST o The Neurath-based power station of German firm RWE. ‘Control of essential services has not only passed to giants based overseas, but those companies are themselves often state-owned.' Photograph: Ina Fassbender/Reuters Privatisation isn't working. We were promised a shareholding democracy, competition, falling costs and better services. A generation on, most people's experience has been the opposite. From energy to water, rail to public services, the reality has been private monopolies, perverse subsidies, exorbitant prices, woeful under-investment, profiteering and corporate capture. Private cartels run rings round the regulators. Consumers and politicians are bamboozled by commercial secrecy and contractual complexity. Workforces have their pay and conditions slashed. Control of essential services has not only passed to corporate giants based overseas, but those companies are themselves often state-owned – they're just owned by another state. Report after report has shown privatised services to be more expensive and inefficient than their publicly owned counterparts. It's scarcely surprising that a large majority of the public, who have never supported a single privatisation, neither trust the privateers nor want them running their services. But regardless of the evidence, the caravan goes on. David Cameron's government is now driving privatisation into the heart of education and health, outsourcing the probation service and selling off a chunk of Royal Mail at more than £1bn below its market price, with the government's own City advisers cashing in their chips in short order. [Privatisation]
• Libya will exhaust monetary reserves in 5 years
  The Central Bank of Libya recently reassured all Libyans worried about the breakdown of the country’s national economy and the collapse of the dinar’s exchange rate that such an eventuality would never occur as a result of the bank’s large reserves in foreign currencies, valued at $113 billion, bolstered by an additional 116 tons of gold. Summary? Print More than three years after the outbreak of the Libyan revolution, instability remains, leading to a severe drain on monetary reserves. Author Adnan Karimah Posted July 13, 2014 Translator(s)Kamal Fayad However, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which confirmed that Libya possessed important reserves that would help it overcome the crisis in the short term, also warned of the imbalance seen in oil production, and the increase in expenditures, which would drain those reserves in less than five years. In this regard, the director of the Libyan Stock Exchange, Misbah al-Akkari, stated that available liquidity surpassed 4.6 billion dinars ($3.8 billion), both inside and outside the country, with state accounts holding more than $110 billion abroad. But, according to him, the problem still revolved around the ability to move required liquidity from the central bank to commercial banks as lawlessness continued to spread. [Libya]
• How Washington protects itself
  By Noam Chomsky
  The question of how foreign policy is determined is a crucial one in world affairs. In these comments, I can only provide a few hints as to how I think the subject can be productively explored, keeping to the United States for several reasons. First, the US is unmatched in its global significance and impact. Second, it is an unusually open society, possibly uniquely so, which means we know more about it. Finally, it is plainly the most important case for Americans, who are able to influence policy choices in the US - and indeed for others, insofar as their actions can influence such choices. The general principles, however, extend to the other major powers, and well beyond. There is a "received standard version", common to academic scholarship, government pronouncements, and public discourse. It holds that the prime commitment of governments is to ensure security, and that the primary concern of the US and its allies since 1945 was the Russian threat. There are a number of ways to evaluate the doctrine. One obvious question to ask is: What happened when the Russian threat disappeared in 1989? Answer: everything continued much as before. [Imperialism]
• It’s official: Americans say Mitt Romney was pretty much right about Russia
  By Aaron Blake July 14 at 4:32 PM ? Back in March, when Vladimir Putin's Russia was rearing its increasingly antagonistic head, supporters of Mitt Romney saw a measure of vindication. Russia, it seemed, had become the United States' No. 1 geopolitical foe -- the same distinction Romney claimed for it in 2012 (and President Obama scoffed at). Well, here we are, four months later, and we finally have some good data to evaluate that claim. And we can say that, at least for now, the American people agree with Mitt Romney (pretty much). According to a new survey from the Pew Research Center, Americans see Russia as the No. 1 future threat to the United States. Twenty-three percent of Americans give that distinction to Russia, while 19 percent say it's China and 16 percent say it's Iran. (Just 7 percent cite North Korea.) Here are all the numbers: Threat2 Pew Research Center The data on Russia, though, are still somewhat mixed. While Americans see Russia as perhaps the top threat, they don't necessarily see it as a clear enemy. [Russia confrontation] [Propaganda] [Threat]
• Behind German Spy Cases, Twists Worthy of Films
  By Alison Smale JULY 12, 2014 Chancellor Angela Merkel needs “something” from Washington to save face, a top official says. Credit Martin Schutt/DPA, via Associated Press BERLIN — The Cold War is long since over, the capital is no longer Bonn, the “small town in Germany” of John le Carré fame, and few nations have exhibited a stronger reaction against the modern surveillance state. Yet recent weeks have brought new reminders that the Spy vs. Spy game goes on in Germany, which remains caught geographically and historically between Russia and the West. The espionage cases that have caused severe new strains between the United States and Germany grew, paradoxically, out of German concerns about renewed Russian intelligence activity. Based on German news reports and sketchy information provided by government officials on both sides of the Atlantic, the two cases also appear to be linked, at least tangentially. The more troubling of the cases centers on a 31-year-old midlevel employee of the federal intelligence service who was arrested on July 2. He was detained on suspicion of spying for Russia, but then astonished his interrogators by claiming to have passed 218 German intelligence documents to the United States. [Espionage] [Client] [Chutzpah] [Germany]
• Congress flexes muscles ahead of Iran deal
  Congress is putting the Obama administration on notice that it has strict expectations for a nuclear agreement with Iran as the July 20 deadline fast approaches. Summary? Print Lawmakers are making their demands clear as the July 20 deadline for a nuclear agreement approaches Author Julian Pecquet Posted July 10, 2014 Some 344 House members — almost 80% of the lower chamber — signed a letter to President Obama on Thursday, telling him he would be "wise" to listen to what lawmakers have to say if he wants them to lift sanctions on Iran as part of a nuclear deal. Meanwhile, in the Senate, two hard-liners filed legislation to slap sanctions on President Hassan Rouhani and the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, in what's likely to be one of several Iran bills introduced in the next few weeks. [US negotiating] [Iran] [Congress] [Governance]
• Smart-Power Bounty of RIMPAC 2014
  by Nicole Forrester Pacnet #54 Thursday, July, 10, 2014 Nicole Forrester (Nicole@pacforum.org) is director of the Young Leaders Program at Pacific Forum CSIS. She is a former Australian diplomat and senior international relations adviser. The online version is available here and at http://bit.ly/1mPLB75. Amidst the flurry of activity and cacophony of accents, Adm. Harry B Harris, commander of the US Pacific Fleet, stood on the deck of the HMAS Success surveying one of the many RIMPAC festivities celebrating the arrival of 21 guest nations, 25,000 personnel, 49 surface ships, six submarines, and 200-plus aircraft for five weeks of shore and sea phase training activities in Hawaii this month. The biannual Rim of the Pacific (RIMPAC) 2014 is the world's largest maritime exercise. This year marks the 24th iteration since 1971, and includes veteran participants - Australia, Canada, Chile, Colombia, France, India, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Peru, the Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, Tonga, and the UK - and first-timers China and Brunei. RIMPAC's traditional maritime drills include integrated exercises, joint assaults, interceptions and landings, evacuation and resupply operations, as well as more recent non-traditional humanitarian assistance and disaster relief, and medical exchanges. But RIMPAC is more than just a military-military training mechanism to improve communication, coordination, and interoperability across navies - most of which do not usually [Joint US military] [F&E] [Seapower] [Softpower] [Alliances]
• The Return of George Orwell and Big Brother’s War
  On Israel, Ukraine and Truth by John Pilger The other night, I saw George Orwells’s 1984 performed on the London stage. Although crying out for a contemporary interpretation, Orwell’s warning about the future was presented as a period piece: remote, unthreatening, almost reassuring. It was as if Edward Snowden had revealed nothing, Big Brother was not now a digital eavesdropper and Orwell himself had never said, “To be corrupted by totalitarianism, one does not have to live in a totalitarian country.” Acclaimed by critics, the skilful production was a measure of our cultural and political times. When the lights came up, people were already on their way out. They seemed unmoved, or perhaps other distractions beckoned. “What a mindfuck,” said the young woman, lighting up her phone. As advanced societies are de-politicised, the changes are both subtle and spectacular. In everyday discourse, political language is turned on its head, as Orwell prophesised in 1984. “Democracy” is now a rhetorical device. Peace is “perpetual war”. “Global” is imperial. The once hopeful concept of “reform” now means regression, even destruction. “Austerity” is the imposition of extreme capitalism on the poor and the gift of socialism for the rich: an ingenious system under which the majority service the debts of the few. [propaganda] [Inversion]
• The Revolving Door at Human Rights Watch
  by Mairead Maguire, Adolfo Perez Esquivel, Richard Falk, Hans von Sponeck & Keane Bhatt Dear Kenneth Roth, While we welcome your stated commitment to Human Rights Watch’s independence and credibility, we are dismayed by your rejection of our common-sense suggestion for strengthening them: bar those who have crafted or executed U.S. foreign policy from serving as HRW staff, advisors or board members—or, at a bare minimum, mandate lengthy “cooling-off” periods before and after any associate moves between HRW and the foreign-policy divisions of the U.S. government. [Human rights] [NGO] [Double standards]
• Eric Holder on threats from Syria: ‘It’s more frightening than anything I think I’ve seen as attorney general.’
  By Jaime Fuller July 13 at 10:28 AM ? Attorney General Eric Holder went on ABC's "This Week with George Stephanopoulos" to discuss Republican complaints about the White House and the Justice Department. Holder, who gave the interview in London, also discussed international issues, namely Syria, where reports indicate that terrorists are working to build undetectable explosives. "It's something that gives us really extreme, extreme concern," Holder said. "In some ways, it's more frightening than anything I think I've seen as attorney general." [Outsourcing] [Blowback] [Syria]

• America’s “Nonconventional War” against Syria: Western Media Narrative Enters into Comedy Act
  By Sam Muhho Global Research, June 28, 2014 “If all the world is a stage,” as William Shakespeare once said, then the current mainstream media narrative on Syria must be the comedy act; this time, however, it isn’t very funny. Having spent the last three years failing to exert their desire for regime change in Syria, the western imperialist, globalist powers and the corporate financier interests that sustain them are becoming increasingly desperate for a change in the geopolitical tide. Beginning in 2014, they have constantly attempted to leverage any potential outlet as a means of toppling Assad and proceeding in the implementation of their hegemonic agenda across the Middle East and Eurasia. One example was their attempt to spin the Geneva II communiqué to falsely imply that it mandated Assad should step down. This was done in context to the fact that the Syrian National Council was vastly shedding any remaining legitimacy it may have had; one must not forget an excellent Guardian piece by Charlie Skelton titled, “The Syrian Opposition: Whose Doing the Talking?”, which documented the clear connections between the leading Syrian National Council front-group members and western corporate-financier interest. By January 2014, many members were resigning over the illegitimacy of the council as noted by Nile Bowie who stated: In a recent letter explaining his resignation, former SNC Secretary-General Mustafa al-Sabbagh concedes that the organization failed to extend humanitarian relief efforts and to make any political or military progress; he describes the SNC as “a body that is entirely separate from the Syrian domestic arena.” Former member Mohammad Bassam Imadi’s description is no less critical; he stated in a recent interview that the SNC “…was only some expatriates who were living outside Syria, they lost touch with reality in Syria. They didn’t know what was going on… They thought that within a few months they will become presidents or ministers so they were not interested in doing anything other than contacting the foreign powers…” [Syria] [Outsourcing]
• What Does ISIS Really Stand For?
  by David Stansfield The Islamic extremists known as ISIS are a great deal more dangerous than most of us realize. The reason for this is hidden in plain sight in the name itself: ISIS. In English, this stands for Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, but that’s not what it stands for in Arabic: ad-Dawlat al-Islamiyya fi’l-‘Iraq wa’sh-Sham: The Islamic State in Iraq and Ash-Sham. The crucial difference is the word Sham, a word that resonates in the Arabic-speaker’s mind on multiple levels. To see why, let’s step into a time machine. All we have to do is start to read any passage of written Arabic, and we find ourselves traveling down that passage, all the way back to a certain day in the Arabian desert circa 630 A.D. It doesn’t matter whether what we are reading is from a novel or from today’s headlines, it is — and always will be — written in exactly the self-same Arabic, letter for letter and dot for dot, that was used almost 1,400 years ago.
  So back to Sham, and all the ponderously heavy cultural baggage this word entails. What in God’s name does it mean? Well, one thing it does NOT mean is the truncated Syria that was created by the French in 1922. Rather, it means the “North,” the “Greater Syria” that encompasses, not only Cyprus and part of southern Turkey, but also the artificial states the British and the French carved out of the Ottoman Empire after World War One: Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Transjordan, Palestine – and subsequently Israel. For most of the last three thousand years, all these regions were one, not only under the empires of the Ottomans, the Caliphs, the Byzantines, the Romans, the Greeks and the Persians, but also under the AsSYRIAns, and even more ancient civilizations before that, dating all the way back to 2,500 B.C [ISIS]
• Tony Blair accused of conflict of interests in Middle East
  Critics unite to demand his sacking as Quartet's envoy as evidence emerges of his private business interests expanding in region Ian Black and Patrick Kingsley The Guardian, Friday 27 June 2014 19.39 BST Tony Blair. Rumours are circulating in London and Cairo of plans by Blair to advise the Egyptian government under President Abdel Fatah al-Sisi. Photograph: John Alex Maguire/Rex Features Iraq's latest bloody crisis and its links to the 2003 war brought Tony Blair back into the headlines this week, along with calls for him to step down as a Middle East peace envoy – but new evidence has emerged that his private business interests in the ever-volatile region are expanding. Aides to the former prime minister confirmed that he was actively considering opening an office in Abu Dhabi, capital of the United Arab Emirates, which is in the frontline of the struggle against political Islam. But a spokesperson denied suggestions by a leading Arab economist that he was being considered for a job advising Oman on its long-term development, after his controversial £27m consultancy project for the Kuwaiti government in recent years. Retired diplomats and political enemies united to demand Blair be sacked as the envoy of the Quartet – the UN, US, Russia and EU – after achieving little to promote Israeli-Palestinian peace in seven years. [Blair]
• With ISIS surging in Iraq, Europe fears rise in ‘jihadi-tourists’
  By Matthew Schofield McClatchy Foreign Staff June 27, 2014 BERLIN — After being injured fighting the Syrian government, 31-year-old Mohannad reached his home in Frankfurt, Germany, with a simple plan: rest, recuperate, then rejoin the fight with the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria. As related in German newspaper accounts, which by law couldn’t identify him by his full name, Mohannad even transferred the equivalent of $6,800 to a Syrian bank for use by the terror organization. With that as evidence that he was supporting a terrorist organization, German authorities seized his passport and prevented him from returning to Turkey _ the jumping-off point for radicals seeking to join the fight in Syria. But Mohannad was the exception. Officials concede that they rarely have such an extensive file against so-called “jihadi-tourists” to stop them from reaching Turkey _ and Syria beyond. Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2014/06/27/231781/with-isis-surging-in-iraq-europe.html?sp=/99/117/#storylink=cpy [Jihad] [Blowback]
• What Really Happened in Congo
  The CIA, the Murder of Lumumba, and the Rise of Mobutu
  By Stephen R. Weissman From our July/August 2014 Issue t didn’t take long for Congo’s transition from Belgian colony to sovereign state to turn ugly. Both the Soviet Union and the United States were keeping a close eye on the mineral-rich country at the heart of Africa when, on June 30, 1960, it gained independence under a democratically elected government headed by Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba. A charismatic nationalist, Lumumba led the only party in parliament with a nationwide, rather than ethnic or regional, base. Within days, however, Congo’s troops mutinied against their all-white officer corps (a holdover from the colonial era) and started terrorizing the European population. Belgium responded by sending forces to reoccupy the country and helping Congo’s richest province, Katanga, secede. The United States, declining the appeals for help from the new Congolese government, instead threw its support behind a UN peacekeeping mission, which it hoped would obviate any Congolese requests for Soviet military assistance. But Lumumba quickly came into conflict with the UN for its failure to expel the Belgian troops and end Katanga’s secession. After issuing a series of shifting ultimatums to the UN, he turned to Moscow for help, which responded by sending transport planes to fly Lumumba’s troops into Katanga. [CIA] [Congo]
• Moderate Syrian Rebel Application Form
  Posted by Andy Borowitz WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—After announcing, on Thursday, that it would seek $500 million to help “train and equip appropriately vetted elements of the moderate Syrian armed opposition,” the White House today posted the following Moderate Syrian Rebel Application Form:
  
  Welcome to the United States’ Moderate Syrian Rebel Vetting Process. To see if you qualify for $500 million in American weapons, please choose an answer to the following questions:
  
  As a Syrian rebel, I think the word or phrase that best describes me is:
  A) Moderate
  B) Very moderate
  C) Crazy moderate
  D) Other
  
  
  I became a Syrian rebel because I believe in:
  A) Truth
  B) Justice
  C) The American Way
  D) Creating an Islamic caliphate
  
  If I were given a highly lethal automatic weapon by the United States, I would:
  A) Only kill exactly the people that the United States wanted me to kill
  B) Try to kill the right people, with the caveat that I have never used an automatic weapon before
  C) Kill people only after submitting them to a rigorous vetting process
  D) Immediately let the weapon fall into the wrong hands
  
  I have previously received weapons from:
  A) Al Qaeda
  B) The Taliban
  C) North Korea
  D) I did not receive weapons from any of them because after they vetted me I was deemed way too moderate
  
  I consider ISIS:
  A) An existential threat to Iraq
  B) An existential threat to Syria
  C) An existential threat to Iraq and Syria
  D) The people who will pick up my American weapon after I drop it and run away
  
  Complete the following sentence. “American weapons are…”
  A) Always a good thing to randomly add to any international hot spot
  B) Exactly what this raging civil war has been missing for the past three years
  C) Best when used moderately
  D) Super easy to resell online
  
  Thank you for completing the Moderate Syrian Rebel Application Form. We will process your application in the next one to two business days. Please indicate a current mailing address where you would like your weapons to be sent. If there is no one to sign for them we will leave them outside the front door. [Intervention] [Syria]
• With Syrian Chemicals Gone, U.S. Moves to Aid Rebels
  June 27, 2014 A Syrian rescue worker points toward a burning building after an alleged Syrian army airstrike in Aleppo earlier this month. The Obama administration on Thursday said it is seeking $500 million for a new Pentagon program to train and equip rebels in Syria. (Khaled Khatib/AFP/Getty Images) U.S. officials unveiled new plans to support enemies of Syria's regime, days after it finished surrendering chemical arms, the Wall Street Journal reports. The White House on Thursday asked lawmakers to fund a $500 million Defense Department initiative to supply weapons and training to moderate opponents of President Bashar Assad's government. The Obama administration previously avoided seeking substantial support for Syria's rebels, reportedly over fears that such aid could have prompted Damascus to stop transferring chemical weapons out of the country's violence-stricken territory. On Monday, though, international authorities confirmed the removal of the regime's final known chemical arms, ending a fast-track disarmament drive launched late last year. Assad's regime has denied ever employing its stockpile of warfare agents in combat, but agreed to give up the arsenal amid threats of an international military response to an August 2013 sarin-gas attack. [cbw] [Intervention] [Syria]
• Qatar's annus horribilis
  What a difference a year makes in the Middle East. One year ago this week, Qatar's emir, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, handed over power to his son Sheikh Tamim, joining a short but seemingly growing list of monarchs who have abdicated in favor of their relatives. At the time of his abdication, Hamad left behind an empire of soft power and influence that spanned the entire region. Twelve months on, things could not be more different. Qatar has taken a sharp turn in fortune in the past year, going from influential regional power to almost complete isolation. Author Sultan Sooud Al Qassemi Posted June 26, 2014 Only 72 hours after Tamim's ascension to the throne, the Muslim Brotherhood — arguably Qatar’s biggest ally that the Gulf state has propped up with billions of dollars and favorable media coverage through Al Jazeera Arabic — was swept from power in Egypt. The movement, which only a few days before held the presidency, the premiership, cabinet posts and parliament, was chased underground, jailed and exiled. President Mohammed Morsi did not even have time to send a cable of congratulations to the young emir. Elsewhere, Tunisia’s Islamist Ennahda movement, another close ally of Qatar, agreed to give up power and appoint a caretaker cabinet only a few weeks after the Brotherhood was ousted in Egypt. In Libya, where Qatar committed money, media and military power, former Gen. Khalifa Hifter has pledged to “purge” his country of Muslim Brotherhood members. The Qatari-backed and Muslim Brotherhood-dominated Syrian National Coalition no longer plays a significant role, with the opposition now headed by the Saudi-backed Ahmed al-Jarba, leading one political pundit to comment on Qatar’s influence that "Politically, it is in the back seat — or maybe not even in the car." [Qatar]
• Who Won Iraq?
  Iraq today is George W. Bush’s nightmare and Osama bin Laden’s wet dream. By Tom Engelhardt, June 19, 2014. Originally published in TomDispatch. Iraq-Bush-ISIS-ISIL-Baghdad-Obama-MissionAccomplished The geopolitical dreams of the Bush era are buried somewhere deep in the rubble of Iraq. (Photo: Juan E. Diaz/Wikimedia) As Iraq was unraveling last week and the possible outlines of the first jihadist state in modern history were coming into view, I remembered this nugget from the summer of 2002. At the time, journalist Ron Suskind had a meeting with “a senior advisor” to President George W. Bush (later identified as Karl Rove). Here’s how he described part of their conversation: “The aide said that guys like me were ‘in what we call the reality-based community,’ which he defined as people who ‘believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.’ I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. ‘That’s not the way the world really works anymore,’ he continued. ‘We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality – judiciously, as you will – we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors… and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.’” As events unfold increasingly chaotically across the region that officials of the Bush years liked to call the Greater Middle East, consider the eerie accuracy of that statement. The president, his vice president Dick Cheney, his defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld, and his national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, among others, were indeed “history’s actors.” They did create “new realities” and, just as Rove suggested, the rest of us are now left to “study” what they did. And oh, what they did! Their geopolitical dreams couldn’t have been grander or more global. [Iraq] [Imperialism] [George W Bush] [Hubris]
• Congrats, America. You have less economic opportunity than you did in 1970
  By Jim Tankersley and Jeff Guo June 24 at 3:24 PM ? Mark Ralston-AFP/Getty Images Americans today have more social and educational opportunity than they did 40 years ago -- but they have less economic opportunity, thanks to a bruising recession and the alarming economic trends that preceded it. That's the sobering conclusion of a detailed study out today from Opportunity Nation and Measure of America, which quantifies the evolution in community, educational and economic opportunity from 1970 to 2010. The Historical Report of Opportunity sizes up the nation's progress on 10 factors, including school graduation, violent crime, poverty, access to health care, jobs, wages and economic inequality. The report factors each component into an overall score called the Opportunity Index. That index, the report finds, has increased over the decades, meaning the United States as a whole enjoys more opportunity today than it did four decades ago. [Decline] [Inequality] [Labour]
• The USA and Biological Weapons
  On June 16 this year more than 80 scientists and laboratory technicians of the U.S. National Laboratory to Prevent Bioterrorism in Atlanta, GA under very strange and as yet unknown circumstances, were placed in uncontrolled contact with the anthrax bacteria may have been infected with this deadly disease. The bacterium Bacillus anthracis is the causative agent of an infectious disease that is very dangerous for animals and humans. It is characterized by high stability in the environment, since it forms spores that can persist for years and survive dryness, heat, and even disinfectants, which makes it especially dangerous. Anthrax bacteria have previously been used by terrorists as weapons of mass destruction. For example, following the terrorist attack on September 11, 2001, in the U.S. there was an incident with anthrax bacteria in which terrorists sent letters to several media offices and two Democratic senators, killing five people and infecting seventeen more. Then the investigation led to a virologist who worked for some time at the American Institute of Military Medical Research of Infectious Diseases at Fort Detrick, MD. [cbw]
• Sisi warns Kerry of jihadist threat in Syria
  Author: Geoffrey Aronson Posted June 24, 2014 On Egypt’s domestic scene, President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi is being lauded as an early-rising drill sergeant demanding 24/7 performance from a newly efficient and energized government. And in the foreign policy arena, a re-empowered Egyptian presidency is also moving beyond both the somnambulant legacy of the later years of the regime of deposed President Hosni Mubarak and the abbreviated and contentious era of deposed President Mohammed Morsi. Summary? Print Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi is already taking a more assertive role in Syria and Arab affairs. Author Geoffrey Aronson Posted June 24, 2014 Nowhere is this new look in Egypt’s foreign activism more evident than on Syria. Days before Sisi’s election, a delegation of Syrian opposition figures assembled in Cairo at the invitation of Foreign Minister Nabil Fahmy. Syrian opposition figures are scattered throughout the region, but in Cairo the only permanent resident for many months has been Haytham Maleh, a peripheral player in the Syrian scene. Those invited to Cairo, however, included former National Coalition for Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces leader Moaz al-Khatib, writer and activist Haytham Manna, economist Aref Dalila, former Foreign Ministry spokesman Jihad Makdissi and film producer Jamal Suliman. These figures are not represented among the exiles of the Syrian National Coalition and their interests set them apart from the organization and its sponsors. None are close to the Muslim Brotherhood and all advocate a far more nuanced approach to the regime of President Bashar al-Assad based on political engagement, an idea shunned by the “official” opposition but which has grown in importance over the last year. The presence of such personalities in Cairo at Sisi’s invitation offers clear evidence that a reinvigorated Egyptian presidency is seeking to make its mark in Syria and beyond. [Egypt] [Syria] [Jihad]
• Western-born jihadists rally to ISIS's fight in Iraq and Syria
  By Atika Shubert and Bharati Naik, CNN June 24, 2014 -- Updated 1237 GMT (2037 HKT) Could Western Jihadists join ISIS? STORY HIGHLIGHTS • Sunni terror group ISIS is drawing support from would-be jihadists born outside the Middle East • Soufan group says there are hundreds from France, Russia and Britain waging jihad in region • One 25-year-old Briton says he was inspired by an American militant to carry out a suicide attack (CNN) -- The extremist Sunni militants sweeping across Iraq may have a singular goal, but there's a broad coalition of recruits from outside of the Middle East willing to help them achieve it. The so-called Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, or ISIS, wants to establish an Islamic state stretching from northern Syria into Iraq. And as the brutal terror group racks up victory after victory on the battlefield, more foreign fighters are considering joining their ranks. Who are they? Three young men we spoke to have traveled to Syria to answer the call to jihad. They agreed to speak to us from the northwestern city of Idlib over Skype, provided we masked their identities and didn't use their real names. Abu Anwar, as he asked to be called, is 25 years old and from Britain. "I'm from the south of England. I grew up in a middle class family," he told us. "Life was easy back home. I had a life. I had a car. But the thing is: You cannot practice Islam back home. We see all around us evil. We see pedophiles. We see homosexuality. We see crime. We see rape." SEE MAPS: Where ISIS has taken over in Iraq We spoke with Abu and his friends as so many of these young men do: online. Their posts, many featuring photos of them posing with guns, attempt to make jihad sound cool. And this is a big draw to many youngsters who want to be part of this war, but have little or no combat experience. [Jihad]
• UN: All of Syria's chemical weapons material removed
  China.org.cn, June 24, 2014 The United Nations- Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) Joint Mission announced Monday that Syria has removed all of its declared chemical arsenal from its territory. In this screenshot of Syria's state TV released on Oct. 8, 2013, an expert from the chemical weapon checking group is investigating chemical weapon facilities in Syria. [File photo/Chinanews.com] In this screenshot of Syria's state TV released on Oct. 8, 2013, an expert from the chemical weapon checking group is investigating chemical weapon facilities in Syria. [File photo/Chinanews.com] "The Joint Mission welcomes the removal of the remaining 7.2 percent of chemical weapons material from the Syrian Arab Republic, " the international team of experts overseeing the elimination of chemical weapons program in Syria said in a press release. "With this last movement, the total of declared chemical weapons materials destroyed or removed from Syria has reached 100 percent," said the Joint Mission. "The most operationally challenging task within the effort to eliminate the Syrian chemical weapons program has come to an end." [cbw] [Syria]
• Tony Blair should be sacked as Middle East envoy, say former ambassadors
  Former UK prime minister is tainted by Iraq war and his achievements for quartet are negligible, signatories of letter say Nicholas Watt, chief political correspondent The Guardian, Monday 23 June 2014 18.11 BST Tony Blair and Mahmood Abbas 'The impression of activity created by [Blair's] high-profile appointment has hindered genuine progress towards a lasting peace,' the letter says. Photograph: Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images A group of former British ambassadors have joined a campaign calling for Tony Blair to be removed from his role as Middle East envoy after his recent attempt to "absolve himself" of responsibility for the crisis in Iraq. The letter, organised by the makers of George Galloway's film The Killing of Tony Blair, says the 2003 invasion of Iraq was to blame for the rise of "fundamentalist terrorism in a land where none existed previously". The signatories, led by Blair's former ambassador to Iran Sir Richard Dalton, describe the former prime minister's achievements as Middle East envoy as "negligible". Other former diplomats to sign the letter are Oliver Miles, who was ambassador to Libya when diplomatic relations were severed in 1984 after the killing of WPC Yvonne Fletcher, and Christopher Long, ambassador to Egypt between 1992-95. Other signatories include former London mayor Ken Livingstone, the human rights barrister Michael Mansfield QC, the former Liberal Democrat peer Lady Tonge – who resigned her party's whip in 2012 after declaring that Israel would not last forever – the former Tory prisons minister Crispin Blunt, George Galloway, the Green MP Caroline Lucas and the Daily Telegraph columnist Peter Oborne. [Blair]
• Records show how Iraqi extremists withstood U.S. anti-terror efforts
  By Hannah Allam McClatchy Washington Bureau June 23, 2014 Updated 11 hours ago WASHINGTON — The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria sprang from a largely self-funded, corporation-style prototype whose resilience to counterterrorism operations was proven by the time Abu Bakr al Baghdadi assumed command in 2010. The militant group Baghdadi inherited had in place a sophisticated bureaucracy that was almost obsessive about record-keeping. Its middle-managers detailed, for example, the number of wives and children each fighter had, to gauge compensation rates upon death or capture, and listed expenditures in neat Excel spreadsheets that noted payments to an “assassination platoon” and “Al Mustafa Explosives Company.” Income from the Sunni Muslim militants’ looting of Shiite Muslim-owned property was recorded as “spoils.” [ISIS]
• The United States Has Unfinished Business in Ukraine and Iraq
  Geopolitical Weekly Tuesday, June 24, 2014 - 03:03 ? Print ? Text Size ? Stratfor By George Friedman In recent weeks, some of the international system's unfinished business has revealed itself. We have seen that Ukraine's fate is not yet settled, and with that, neither is Russia's relationship with the European Peninsula. In Iraq we learned that the withdrawal of U.S. forces and the creation of a new Iraqi political system did not answer the question of how the three parts of Iraq can live together. Geopolitical situations rarely resolve themselves neatly or permanently. These events, in the end, pose a difficult question for the United States. For the past 13 years, the United States has been engaged in extensive, multidivisional warfare in two major theaters -- and several minor ones -- in the Islamic world. The United States is large and powerful enough to endure such extended conflicts, but given that neither conflict ended satisfactorily, the desire to raise the threshold for military involvement makes logical sense. [US global strategy]
• Report: Polish foreign minister calls U.S. ties worthless
  Secretary of State John Kerry, left, speaks during a press conference after talks with Polish Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski in Warsaw on Nov. 5, 2013. (Alik Keplicz/AP) June 22 at 9:45 PM WARSAW — A Polish magazine said Sunday that it has obtained recordings of a private conversation in which Radek Sikorski, Poland’s foreign minister, says the country’s strong alliance with the United States was worthless and “even harmful because it creates a false sense of security.” A person identified as Radek Sikorski also allegedly criticized Poles as naive in a conversation with a former finance minister, according to a short transcript of the talk cited by Wprost — the latest revelation by the magazine to rattle Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s government. The Foreign Ministry declined to comment, but did not deny that Sikorski made the remarks. Malgorzata Kidawa-Blonska, a government spokeswoman, said officials would comment only after the recording is published in full. Wprost has only provided excerpts of the conversation, which it said was recorded in the spring. The magazine has said the sound files will be published Monday or Tuesday. Using vulgar language and expletives, Sikorski argued that the Polish-U.S. alliance could alienate two key neighbors of Poland, Russia and Germany. “The Polish-American alliance isn’t worth anything. It is even harmful because it creates a false sense of security for Poland,” the person said. “.?.?. The problem in Poland is that we have shallow pride and low self-esteem.” [Poland] [Sidelined]
• Saudi king's short victory lap in Egypt
  Author: Bruce Riedel Posted June 22, 2014 It had the feel of a victory lap, albeit short and quick. Saudi King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz visited Cairo on June 20 to congratulate Egypt's new President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi on his inauguration. For the ailing monarch it was a symbol of the kingdom's success in turning back what he labeled the "strange chaos" of the Arab Spring. Summary? Print Saudi King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz makes a rare visit to Egypt for Abdel Fattah al-Sisi's inauguration, as the threat from the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) complicates its regional policies. Author Bruce Riedel Posted June 22, 2014 The king never left his specially built royal airplane at the airport, and received Sisi inside its palatial interior. The stop was only a couple of hours between Morocco, where the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques was recuperating from medical treatment and Saudi Arabia. Still, Abdullah is the first foreign head of state to visit Sisi since his inauguration. Abdullah was the only head of state Sisi mentioned in his inaugural address. The king's official party included Prince Bandar bin Sultan, who resigned as the kingdom's intelligence czar earlier this year. The prince's inclusion in the Cairo visit shows he remains a player in Saudi decision-making. Abdullah was the first foreign leader to congratulate Sisi after his coup last July, only minutes after he seized power. Sisi was Egypt's defense attache in Riyadh before becoming director of military intelligence. [Saudi Arabia]
• Asia’s Cult of Intelligence
  With its ‘cult of ignorance and anti-intellectualism’ the U.S. risks falling behind rivals in Asia.
  By John W. Traphagan June 17, 2014 I have been traveling to East Asia (and many other parts of the world) for more than 25 years and over that time one of the things that has always struck me is how intelligent the general public in countries like Japan appear to be. It’s not that there aren’t dummies in East Asia, but it always seems that the average level of education and ability to think about the world intelligently and critically is impressively widespread. I’ve often thought about why this is the case and also why the same seems more difficult to say about the U.S. The answer, I think, can be found in a comment science fiction writer Isaac Asimov made about the U.S. while being interviewed in the 1980s: “There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.” Asimov is right on the mark, and this cult of ignorance is the most serious national security issue facing the U.S. today. It is more important than the external threats from terrorists or the rise of a politically and economically powerful China. And a major part of the reason it is such an major issue for Americans to fix is that our immediate competitors, particularly those in Asia, have managed to create a culture in which rather than a cult of ignorance, a cult of intelligence plays a major role in shaping attitudes about the world and, thus, policies about dealing with other countries. [Decline] [Education]
• Cuba rejects U.S. accusation over human trafficking
  Xinhua, June 22, 2014 Cuba on Saturday dismissed a U.S. report which put the island nation on a black list of "human trafficking countries." "The Cuban government rejects categorically as unfounded this unilateral move offending our people," Josefina Vidal, director-general of the U.S. Department at the Cuban Foreign Ministry, said in a statement. "Cuba has not requested the U.S. assessment, nor needed recommendations from the United States, a country with the gravest problem on trafficking children and women in the world," the statement said. About 200,000 Americans are believed to have been trafficked within the United States, according to the statement. The U.S. State Department released its annual report on Friday with a list of 189 countries ranked by the level of compliance with the Law on Protection of Victims of Trafficking. Cuba was blacklisted among 23 countries for failing to meet the standards against human trafficking. Cuba's official Granma newspaper described the U.S. report as "manipulative" and "politically motivated." [Human rights] [Manipulation]
• Tony Blair 'was told of Syrian WMDs' says former intelligence chief
  John Morrison, former head of defence intelligence staff, writes in Observer that Blair must have known of chemical weapons Mark Townsend The Observer, Saturday 21 June 2014 19.30 BST Tony Blair Tony Blair has said he only became aware that Syria had chemical weapons in 2012. Photograph: Matt Rourke/AP A former senior intelligence official has accused Tony Blair of attempting to "rewrite history" over what he really knew about President Bashar al-Assad's chemical weapons capability. Last week Blair launched a passionate defence of his decision to invade Iraq, during which he claimed that the west did not know Assad was manufacturing chemical weapons until the regime began using them in 2012. However, John Morrison, former head of the defence intelligence staff and the deputy chief of defence intelligence between 1994 and 1999, says in a letter to the Observer that, for more than a decade before the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Blair must have been aware that Syria had a chemical attack capability because intelligence officials had told him so. Morrison, also an ex-member of the joint intelligence committee (JIC), added that Syria's chemical stockpile was a recurring theme in reports by the JIC, which advises the prime minister and the cabinet of security matters. "The issue was not whether he [Assad] had them but when and how he might use them," he writes. [cbw] [Blair]
• The Truth of Libya (Finally) Goes Mainstream
  More than three years after the US and its NATO allies unleashed an “intervention” and regime change in Libya, the US establishment admits they maybe have “got it wrong.” Naturally, there were many of us who were demonized endlessly for speaking out against that war, and against all those politicians, analysts, and “activists” on the left and right, who championed the “humanitarianism” of waging war on Libya. We were attacked as “soft on dictators,” “conspiracy theorists,” and “anti-Americans.” And yet, today it is our voices that still proclaim loudly the immorality and illegality of that war. Thankfully, it seems the establishment is beginning to hear us. One of the most highly regarded politico-academic institutions in the US – the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University – has issued a report which undermines the established narrative of the war in Libya, laying bare the cold, hard reality of what Libya was at the outset of the war, what really happened in the early days, and what Libya has become today. Of course, responsibility for the tragic and lasting effects of that war should be laid at the feet of Obama, Cameron, Sarkozy, and the other participants, in addition to those media outlets and NGOs that deliberately spread lies about the reality on the ground in Libya. All must be held accountable. [Libya] [Humanitarian intervention] [Pretext] [Disinformation]
• Indonesia presidential candidate Prabowo Subianto hit by human rights accusations
  Updated Fri 20 Jun 2014, 12:09am AEST Photo: Former military commander and the head of the Gerindra party, Prabowo Subianto, addresses his supporters in Jakarta. (AFP) Map: Indonesia Indonesian presidential candidate Prabowo Subianto has faced fresh accusations of criminal behaviour after his former boss released details of a military council's findings that led to his discharge from the armed forces nearly 16 years ago. Opinion polls suggest that Mr Prabowo has been closing in on the front-runner ahead of the July 9 presidential election. But his campaign has been repeatedly dogged by accusations of widespread human rights abuses during his days as a top general, in particular during unrest that brought down his former father-in-law and long-serving autocrat Suharto in 1998. The latest accusations were detailed at a news conference by Suharto's last armed forces chief, Wiranto, who now heads a small political party which is backing Joko "Jokowi" Widodo, the man polls predict should win the two-man race for the presidency. Mr Wiranto, whose comments were carried live on a pro-Jokowi television station, read out details from the findings of a military council which said Mr Prabowo has deliberately misinterpreted orders and told troops who were not under his command to arrest activists. [Human rights] [Kirby]
• Indonesia Presidential Hopefuls Play Up Nationalistic Credentials in Debate
  Subianto, Widodo Engage in Third Debate Leading Up to July 9 Election By Ben Otto And Andreas Ismar June 22, 2014 1:02 p.m. ET Indonesian presidential candidates Prabowo Subianto, at left, and Joko Widodo shake hands during a televised debate Sunday in Jakarta, Indonesia. The country is scheduled to hold its presidential election July 9. Associated Press JAKARTA, Indonesia—The country's presidential candidates struck nationalistic tones in their third debate Sunday night, hoping to sway voters amid an increasingly tight race just weeks before elections in the world's third-largest democracy. Former army general Prabowo Subianto and Jakarta Gov. Joko Widodo both stressed the need to strengthen the military, better protect the archipelago nation's maritime borders and take care of millions of overseas migrant workers while maintaining cordial but assertive relations with close neighbors such as Australia. A nationalistic refrain was expected for the night, given topics of national security and international relations and the appeal of such rhetoric to voters, who head to the polls July 9, analysts said. Rising resource nationalism in recent years has given rise to regulations limiting foreign investment and activity that are popular across party lines in the trillion-dollar economy.
  The two men took different approaches, however. Mr. Widodo showed his breadth of understanding of a variety of issues, while Mr. Subianto repeatedly hit on a theme that Indonesia is losing money to exploiters of natural resources. He brought back many points to the idea that national security depends on social welfare. "Too much of our assets have been taken outside Indonesia," Mr. Subianto said. "We export bauxite, and then import aluminum. That is a leakage." "The biggest threat coming from the domestic front is poverty and the lack of control by Indonesia of its assets," he added. [Exploitation] [Capitalism]
• Libya Coming Full Circle. When A Deemed “Conspiracy Theory” Becomes Reality
  By Sam Muhho Global Research, June 18, 2014 In the duration of the “revolutionary frenzy” that categorized western media coverage of the Libyan Civil War in 2011, public audiences were captivated with both tales of rebels aspiring for “democracy” and with complimenting stories of unabated brutality by Gaddafi forces. Without any serious mainstream criticism, an imperialist mythology centered on the interventionist doctrine of the “Responsibility to Protect” was cemented in public consciousness with even usually non-mainstream and “anti-imperialist” figures such as Juan Cole deliberately misrepresenting the situation in Libya. In Cole’s perspective, no reference to armed militants from the start of the conflict or the role of extremism and western premeditation found its way into the narrative and he predicted a simplistic narrative where the overthrow of Gaddafi would lead the region into an era of unity, prosperity and freedom. Libya Today How is Libya today? If one denied the existence of hell, they need not look further than Libya to observe a case of hell on Earth. Libya as a functioning, cohesive state has virtually ceased to exist, having been replaced by a myriad of conflicting factions divided on tribal and religious lines. While mainstream media tends to obscure the identity of these factions and their connection to western imperialists, Eric Draitser in his analysis, “Benghazi, the CIA, and the War in Libya” shows the beyond the fractious infighting, both primary factions engaging in direct combat have been beneficiaries of the NATO imperialist powers in their systematic aggression against the Libyan state. [Jihad] [Outsourcing][Libya]
• Blowback? U.S. Trained ISIS At Secret Jordan Base
  Described as covert aid to insurgents targeting al-Assad By Aaron Klein June 18, 2014 "ICH" - "WND" - JERUSALEM – Members of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, or ISIS, were trained in 2012 by U.S. instructors working at a secret base in Jordan, according to informed Jordanian officials. The officials said dozens of ISIS members were trained at the time as part of covert aid to the insurgents targeting the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in Syria. The officials said the training was not meant to be used for any future campaign in Iraq. The Jordanian officials said all ISIS members who received U.S. training to fight in Syria were first vetted for any links to extremist groups like al-Qaida. [Jihad] [Outsourcing]
• Embattled Iraqi Prime Miniser Nouri al-Maliki ‘will not go quietly,’ foes and friends say
  Correction: Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki on Thursday announced salaries for volunteers who joined the country’s security forces, not private militias as suggested by an earlier version of this article. This version has been corrected. By Liz Sly June 20 at 6:34 PM ? BAGHDAD — Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki will not readily surrender power and is unlikely to do so unless chief ally Iran insists that he go, Maliki’s foes and supporters are warning as pressure mounts on the embattled Iraqi leader to make concessions to rivals or step aside. The pressure intensified Friday with an appeal by Iraq’s most revered Shiite cleric for the swift formation of a new government capable of uniting Iraqis against the threat posed by Sunni militants who have seized large chunks of Iraqi territory over the past 10 days. Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani did not directly mention Maliki, but he called for the creation of a government that has “broad national support,” a clear reference to Maliki’s failure to win the confidence of the country’s Sunnis during his eight years in office. The message was delivered by his representative Ahmed al-Safi in the holy city of Karbala. Sistani’s message echoed one delivered by President Obama on Thursday that hinted at a withdrawal of U.S. support for Maliki, whose authoritarian style and discriminatory behavior toward Iraq’s Sunni minority are widely blamed for the bloodshed threatening to tear the country apart.
• What Really Happened in Iran
  The CIA, the Ouster of Mosaddeq, and the Restoration of the Shah By Ray Takeyh From our July/August 2014 Issue B ack in 2009, during his heavily promoted Cairo speech on American relations with the Muslim world, U.S. President Barack Obama noted, in passing, that “in the middle of the Cold War, the United States played a role in the overthrow of a democratically elected Iranian government.” Obama was referring to the 1953 coup that toppled Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddeq and consolidated the rule of the shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. Obama would go on to remind his audience that Iran had also committed its share of misdeeds against Americans. But he clearly intended his allusion to Washington’s role in the coup as a concession -- a public acknowledgment that the United States shared some of the blame for its long-simmering conflict with the Islamic Republic. [CIA] [Iran] [Democracy]
• When drones fall from the sky
  Written by Craig Whitlock Published on June 20, 2014 More than 400 large U.S. military drones have crashed in major accidents around the world since 2001, a record of calamity that exposes the potential dangers of throwing open American skies to drone traffic, according to a year-long Washington Post investigation. Since the outbreak of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, military drones have malfunctioned in myriad ways, plummeting from the sky because of mechanical breakdowns, human error, bad weather and other reasons, according to more than 50,000 pages of accident investigation reports and other records obtained by The Post under the Freedom of Information Act. Commercial drone flights are set to become a widespread reality in the United States, starting next year, under a 2012 law passed by Congress. Drone flights by law enforcement agencies and the military, which already occur on a limited basis, are projected to surge. The documents obtained by The Post detail scores of previously unreported crashes involving remotely controlled aircraft, challenging the federal government’s assurances that drones will be able to fly safely over populated areas and in the same airspace as passenger planes. [UAV]
• Can Syria help defeat ISIS?
  The military advances by the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) and its coalition of Sunni allies in Iraq and Syria threaten to establish the pre-eminence of ISIS in the heart of the Mashreq and in the process divide Iraq. The Barack Obama administration now faces the cost of its failure to realize that the real prize in the battle for Syria, especially for the Syrian revolt’s paymasters in the Gulf, was Baghdad. The Syrian government, which has recently engaged the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) in battle, might share an interest with the United States in defeating the terror organization. Author Geoffrey Aronson Posted June 19, 2014 With the Iraqi capital now in the sights of a nascent Sunni army drawing its own map of the contested region reaching from Damascus to Baghdad, the most bitter fruits of supporting the revolt against Damascus cannot be avoided. Today, Washington simply cannot lend its hand to a campaign against ISIS in Iraq, which poses an existential threat to a key US ally, while tolerating if not encouraging policies and alliances in Syria that (whether it likes it or not) are meant to have exactly the opposite effect. [Jihad] [Outsourcing] [Strategic incoherence] [Blowback]
• Jordan Could Be the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant's Next Target
  Analysis June 17, 2014 Jordan Could Be the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant's Next Target ??Iraqi tribesmen gather in Baghdad to show their readiness to join Iraqi security forces in the fight against militants on June 16. (Photo credit should read AHMAD AL-RUBAYE/AFP/Getty Images) Summary The Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant, buoyed by its recent successes in Iraq, wants to expand its regional reach. Reports that Iraq has withdrawn forces from western towns close to its 180-kilometer (110-mile) border with Jordan have left Amman feeling vulnerable, and the Hashemite kingdom, certainly a target of interest for the jihadist movement, has deployed additional security personnel along the border. However, taking on Jordan would be tough for the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant. The group has the ability to stage terrorist attacks in the country, but significant constraints will prevent it from operating on the levels seen in Iraq and Syria. [Blowback]
• The Long March of Folly in Iraq
  by Andrew Levine If you are powerful enough, you don’t have to be smart. This truism explains a lot about American military history. It explains how the North beat the South, and how the West was won, or rather taken, along with the rest of the continent, from the peoples who inhabited it. It also explains many of America’s military successes. When the United States doesn’t actually win the wars it fights, as has been happening a lot lately, it nevertheless lays its enemies waste and emerges comparatively unscathed. Overwhelming might explains this too. It also explains how a few European countries, while still at their peak, made a mess of the rest of the world. [US global strategy] [Incompetence]
• CIA hatched plan to make demon toy to counter Osama bin Laden’s influence
  In 2006, the CIA with the help of a toymaker in China developed three prototypes of an Osama bin Laden action figure doll. The CIA said it nixed the project before any figures were shipped to South Asia. (Adam Goldman/The Washington Post) By Adam Goldman June 19 ? For more than a decade, the CIA has deployed drones, satellites, spies, informants and tracking devices to thwart al-Qaeda in Pakistan. The spy agency also considered a plan to wage war with toys. Beginning in about 2005, the CIA began secretly developing a ­custom-made Osama bin Laden ­action figure, according to people familiar with the project. The face of the figure was painted with a heat-dissolving material, designed to peel off and reveal a red-faced bin Laden who looked like a demon, with piercing green eyes and black facial markings. The goal of the short-lived project was simple: spook children and their parents, causing them to turn away from the actual bin Laden. [Propaganda] [Osama]
• ISIS advance in Iraq forces Gulf donors to rethink their patronage
  Gulf donors who backed rival militants in Syria's civil war are being drawn to ISIS by its success in Iraq, whose government accuses Saudi Arabia of supporting a Sunni rebellion. By Elizabeth Dickinson, Correspondent June 18, 2014 When the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS) escalated its fight against fellow rebels in Syria late last year, private donors in the Persian Gulf were rattled. For three years, a network of clerics and Sunni politicians had funded anti-regime groups in Syria, including other jihadi factions such as Ahrar al-Sham and Jabhut al-Nusra – groups now at war with ISIS. First, the donors tried reasoning with ISIS: all rebels should work together against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. In October, Kuwaiti donor Mohammed Haif announced on Twitter that there had been a meeting of elders trying to reason with ISIS members and their families. Another Saudi cleric, Yousef bin Abdallah Al Ahmad, tried to broker peace between the leader of ISIS and Salafi brigade Ahrar al Sham. But by early 2014, it was clear the talks had failed. Mr. Haif warned ISIS to withdraw from Syria. Other donors alleged sedition: ISIS is “actively seeking to burn all the gains of the Syrian jihad,” another Kuwaiti donor, the cleric Shafi Al Ajmi, wrote in a Tweet. In the last two weeks as ISIS has seized large swathes of Iraq, however, the Gulf donor community is regrouping. ISIS’s military success appears likely to attract new support to its cause, even from former critics who want to back a winner. Yet that very military success – and the spoils that it brought to ISIS and its Sunni allies in Iraq – makes the group less dependent on outside sponsors and ultimately harder to control. [Jihad] [Client]
• How ISIS Games Twitter
  June 18, 2014 By J. M. Berger The Atlantic The advance of an army used to be marked by war drums. Now it’s marked by volleys of tweets. The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), the Sunni militant group that seized Iraq’s second-largest city last week and is now pledging to take Baghdad, has honed this new technique -- most recently posting photos on Twitter of an alleged mass killing of Iraqi soldiers. But what’s often overlooked in press coverage is that ISIS doesn't just have strong, organic support online. It also employs social-media strategies that inflate and control its message. Extremists of all stripes are increasingly using social media to recruit, radicalize and raise funds, and ISIS is one of the most adept practitioners of this approach. One of ISIS's more successful ventures is an Arabic-language Twitter app called The Dawn of Glad Tidings, or just Dawn. The app, an official ISIS product promoted by its top users, is advertised as a way to keep up on the latest news about the jihadi group. [Propaganda] [Social media] [Jihad]
• Poverty hits twice as many British households as 30 years ago
  The UK economy has doubled in size since the early 1980s – yet the number of those suffering below-minimum living standards has grown by more than twice, a study claims Steven Morris The Guardian, Thursday 19 June 2014 Basic needs … the research suggests that one in three Britons live in inadequately heated homes. Photograph: Christopher Furlong/Getty Images The number of British households falling below minimum living standards has more than doubled in the past 30 years, despite the size of the economy increasing twofold, a study on poverty and deprivation in the UK claims . According to the study, 33% of households endure below-par living standards – defined as going without three or more "basic necessities of life", such as being able to adequately feed and clothe themselves and their children, and to heat and insure their homes. In the early 1980s, the comparable figure was 14%. The research, billed as the most detailed study ever of poverty in the UK, claims that almost 18 million Britons live in inadequate housing conditions and that 12 million are too poor to take part in all the basic social activities – such as entertaining friends or attending all the family occasions they would wish to. It suggests that one in three people cannot afford to heat their homes properly, while 4 million adults and children are not able to eat healthily. Having someone in the household in work does not prevent British families from facing tough living conditions, according to the research, undertaken by the Poverty and Social Exclusion project (PSE). It found that many households that were struggling had at least one adult in work. [Thatcherism] [Inequality]
• The Responsibility of Intellectuals Redux: Humanitarian Intervention and the Liberal Embrace of War in the Age of Clinton, Bush and Obama
  Jeremy Kuzmarov In a New York Times op-ed following the public’s rejection of president Barack Obama’s call for air strikes on Syria, Michael Ignatieff, a professor at the Harvard Kennedy School and former leader of the Canadian liberal party, sought to reaffirm the doctrine of humanitarian intervention, stating that while the public had become weary over the failure of wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya, Western democracies had a responsibility to protect civilians when they are threatened with mass killing. In his view, the use or threat of force may be “illegal but legitimate,” and the US sometimes needs to “go at it alone to stop atrocity crimes…..Rebuilding popular democratic support for the idea of our duty to protect civilians when no one else can or will,” thus represents “a critical challenge in the years ahead.”1 Samantha Power at the United Nations With colleagues such as Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times and Samantha Power, US ambassador to the UN and author of the book, “A Problem From Hell,” which criticizes the US for failing to intervene historically to halt genocide, Ignatieff has for years been an influential liberal intellectual championing military intervention on humanitarian grounds. He and his associates in the “cruise missile left,” as Edward S. Herman labeled them, have often been more hawkish than neo-conservatives, championing wars in Libya, Syria and initially Iraq as well as escalation in Afghanistan-Pakistan. [Humanitarian intervention] [Imperialism]
• Is Open-Ended Chaos the Desired US-Israeli Aim in the Middle East?
  by Thomas S. Harrington During the last week we have seen Sunni militias take control of ever-greater swathes of eastern Syria and western Iraq. In the mainstream media, the analysis of this emerging reality has been predictably idiotic, basically centering on whether: a) Obama is to blame for this for having removed US troops in compliance with the 2008 Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) negotiated and signed by Bush. b) Obama is “man enough” to putatively resolve the problem by going back into the country and killing more people and destroying whatever remains of the country’s infrastructure. This cynically manufactured discussion has generated a number of intelligent rejoinders on the margins of the mainstream media system. These essays, written by people such as Juan Cole, Robert Parry, Robert Fisk and Gary Leupp, do a fine job of explaining the US decisions that led to the present crisis, while simultaneously reminding us how everything occurring today was readily foreseeable as far back as 2002. What none of them do, however, is consider whether the chaos now enveloping the region might, in fact, be the desired aim of policy planners in Washington and Tel Aviv. Rather, each of these analysts presumes that the events unfolding in Syria and Iraq are undesired outcomes engendered by short-sighted decision-making at the highest levels of the US government over the last 12 years. Looking at the Bush and Obama foreign policy teams—no doubt the most shallow and intellectually lazy members of that guild to occupy White House in the years since World War II—it is easy to see how they might arrive at this conclusion. But perhaps an even more compelling reason for adopting this analytical posture is that it allows these men of clear progressive tendencies to maintain one of the more hallowed, if oft-unstated, beliefs of the Anglo-Saxon world view. What is that? It is the idea that our engagements with the world outside our borders—unlike those of, say, the Russians and the Chinese—are motivated by a strongly felt, albeit often corrupted, desire to better the lives of those whose countries we invade. [Dysfunction] [Controlled chaos]
• Syrian Army Foils Turkish-Al-Nusrah Plot to Attack Damascus with Chemical Weapons
  TEHRAN (FNA)- The Syrian army managed to thwart a joint plot by Turkey and the terrorist Al-Nusra Front to carry out chemical attacks in Damascus during the swearing-in ceremony of President Bashar al-Assad due July 17 after being reelected in the June election. Informed sources told the Lebanese al-Akhbar daily on Monday that last Saturday the Syrian intelligence forces informed the army that al-Nusra ringleaders have gathered in the Southern countryside of Damascus to make the last coordination to wage a chemical attack on Damascus using Sarin gas.
• Afghan Sitrep II: Another Grunt Sounds Off
  By Chuck Spinney July 26, 2011 The old German army had a term of art for describing the US strategy in Afghanistan: nicht schwerpunckt, meaning there is no center of effort or unifying idea around which to shape and coordinate the ever-changing kaleidoscope of supporting efforts as well as the tactical and grand tactical maneuvers, and counter maneuvers, all of which are, or should be, the reflections of a coherent strategy. The lack of coherence can be seen in the fact that over time our strategic aims have become increasingly unfocused and mutable: How can we be engaged in nation building when we are propping up a corrupt government that will never be able to survive on its own? Are we trying to destroy the Taliban or are we trying to negotiate with the Taliban? Are we trying to find an exit strategy or are we trying to establish conditions for a permanent presence to keep out Al Qaeda or the Chinese, the Iranians, the Pakistanis, or someone else? Is the absence of focus a reflection of a general impulse to empire as many libertarians believe or the unpredictable interplay of money with domestic politics or both? Etc. Thinking about the absence of a strategic focus brings us to one timeless feature of war. Once begun, war gains a life of its own, and if this life gains the upper hand, an aimlessness takes over to dominate the course of events. World War I is perhaps the classic case in point where a kind of mindlessness took over that was perhaps best evoked in a mournful ditty the Tommys used to sing as they went over the top and marched like sheep into slaughterhouses like the Somme or Passchendaele: “We’re here because we’re here because we’re here … because we’re here because we’re here because we’re here … because we’re here because …” Afghanistan may not have a strategic schwerpunckt, but the same can not be said of the Pentagon and its partners in industry and Congress who are feeding off its unending aimlessness — and that gets us to the roots of the real problem. Money. The renowned American strategist Colonel John R. Boyd (USAF Ret. — see bio) put it succinctly, “People say the Pentagon does not have a strategy. They are wrong. It does have a strategy. It is: Don’t interrupt the money flow, add to it.” [Intelligent design] [Strategic incoherence]
• How to Evolve an Exit Strategy From America’s Foreign Policy Shambles
  by Franklin C. Spinney and William R. Polk Attached beneath my introductory comment is an essay by the American historian William R. Polk. His subject is the American predilection for non-learning in foreign policy. My comment is intended to set the stage by summarizing the dangerous shambles that now passes for foreign policy in the United States. Introductory Comment In a nutshell, recent events in Iraq, Syria, Libya, Afghanistan, and Ukraine show there is no grand-strategic focus to America’s increasingly militarized foreign policy. A German officer in the old imperial army might say, kein Schwerpunkt! What we call foreign policy and grand strategy in the 21st Century — i.e., that ‘you are either with us or with the terrorists’* — has devolved into a self-righteous welter of bluster, threats, arms transfers, puny demonstrations (e.g., deployments of two or three B-2s), proxy wars, and bombing (especially, targeted liquidations with drones from a safe distance instead of a bullet in the back of the head), all aimed ad hoc in reaction to any crisis du jour. The pattern is more like a giant whack-a-mole game than a sensible grand strategy aimed at ending conflicts on favorable terms, while paying due regard to strengthening our bonds at home and with our allies, undermining the cohesion of our adversaries, and coping efficiently with the internal constraints limiting our actions [Imperialism]
• Libya’s 'friends' desert failed state
  On March 12, I was among 17 exhausted and agitated passengers flying from Paris to Tripoli on the French-piloted Afriqiyah Airways Flight 8U900 — exhausted because our flight should have left at noon the day before, agitated because we had spent the entire previous day at Charles de Gaulle before we were transported to a nearby hotel for the night. Summary? Print Three years after Libya’s liberation, the country barely exists. Author Mustafa Fetouri Posted June 17, 2014 All the passengers were Libyan except for three Frenchmen and one American businessman. Being a small group, we got acquainted quickly and talked about everything except politics, upon my request. I thought it would be best to avoid the topic. The Frenchmen were the least talkative and far less sociable among the group, while the young, blond American was more actively engaging. All of them were going to Libya for business. Some of them worked for big companies already operating there, while others had been sent by their companies to try to establish themselves in the oil-rich country. Since the NATO and Qatari-backed rebels toppled the regime of Moammar Gadhafi in 2011, everyone seems to be trying to sell us Libyans something, be it industrial hardware, services, expertise, consumer goods or even training for our civil servants. Once on the ground in Tripoli, I noticed more Europeans who had just landed. Certainly, they were here for business. Who would risk coming to Libya if not for the money? Over the last three years, hardly a month has passed without some kind of businessman contacting me, seeking help accessing the Libyan market. I’ve noticed the high number of foreign delegations visiting the country since 2012. Almost all of them have been business-seeking delegations, both governmental and private. Dozens of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) have also marched into the country in what seems like an endless marketing invasion. I have been approached many times with requests for help or offers of some kind of product or services to market in Libya. While in Tripoli, I visited different government departments and private and public companies and talked to business people only to find more foreigners embarked on endless marketing rounds. On one such visit, I came across an Italian delegation trying, through a Libyan partner, to sell their management-training package. The Libyan head of the training department said to me after the meeting, “Since the war ended, I have received an endless stream of people trying to sell us something. I have not yet met that guy who came to Libya to help us or offer us something we really need.” The NGOs come to Libya to teach Libyans how to vote, manage elections, count votes, protect women’s rights, abide by the law and, of course, tolerate gays. Unfortunately, not a single NGO has come to try to help us be one nation again or to be what we used to be: tolerant, accommodating, helpful and forgiving. No help on how to become patriotic in our own country, or what remains of it, or how to be reconciliatory [Libya] [Dysfunction]
• The Engineered Destruction and Political Fragmentation of Iraq. Towards the Creation of a US Sponsored Islamist Caliphate
  The Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham: An instrument of the Western Military Alliance
  By Prof Michel Chossudovsky Global Research, June 14, 2014 The Western media in chorus have described the unfolding conflict in Iraq as a “civil war” opposing the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham against the Armed forces of the Al-Maliki government. (Also referred to as Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) or Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS)) The conflict is casually described as “sectarian warfare” between Radical Sunni and Shia without addressing “who is behind the various factions”. What is at stake is a carefully staged US military-intelligence agenda. Known and documented, Al Qaeda affiliated entities have been used by US-NATO in numerous conflicts as “intelligence assets” since the heyday of the Soviet-Afghan war. In Syria, the Al Nusrah and ISIS rebels are the foot-soldiers of the Western military alliance, which oversees and controls the recruitment and training of paramilitary forces. The Al Qaeda affiliated Islamic State of Iraq (ISI) re-emerged in April 2013 with a different name and acronym, commonly referred to as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). The formation of a terrorist entity encompassing both Iraq and Syria was part of a US intelligence agenda. It responded to geopolitical objectives. It also coincided with the advances of Syrian government forces against the US sponsored insurgency in Syria and the failures of both the Free Syrian Army (FSA) and its various “opposition” terror brigades. [Dysfunction] [Terrorism] [Jihad] [Outsourcing]
• Boris Johnson denounces Tony Blair as 'unhinged' on Iraq
  The mayor of London has issued a strong condemnation of the former prime minister's views on the Middle East Press Association theguardian.com, Sunday 15 June 2014 23.22 BST By Boris Johnson Boris Johnson said the former prime minister is unhinged. Photograph: Stuart C Wilson/Getty Tony Blair's "unhinged" attempt to rewrite history is undermining arguments for western intervention in Iraq, the London mayor Boris Johnson has claimed in an extraordinary personal attack on the former prime minister. Blair took to the media over the weekend to make the case for a tough response to the extremist insurgency in Iraq, insisting it was caused by a failure to deal with the Syria crisis rather than the 2003 US-led invasion. His intervention was met with widespread criticism from Labour figures and others as extremists posted pictures apparently showing the killing of dozens of Iraqi soldiers by jihadist fighters. In his condemnation of Blair the London Mayor accused the ex-Labour leader of having sent British forces into the bloody conflict in part to gain personal "grandeur". [Iraq] [Blair]
• 'Inoffensive' new Black Pete causes offence
  Netherlands tries to rescue Christmas character from accusations of racism but fails to satisfy critics, says Siji Jabbar Siji Jabbar for This is Africa, part of the Guardian Africa network theguardian.com, Friday 13 June 2014 10.00 BST Spot the difference: a traditional Black Pete, an alternative Black Pete in blue and a new Black Pete. This new one doesn't have frizzy hair, is brown, has less red-coloured lips and doesn't wear golden earrings. A new Black Pete, an alternative Black Pete and a traditional Black Pete (left to right). The new one is supposed to appease critics. Photograph: Evert Elzinga/EPA For years black people in the Netherlands, and many white people too, have protested against the practice of blacking up in December to play the troublesome character known as Zwarte Piet (Black Pete) – Santa's helper. Last year the complaints and protests went all the way to the UN – which might explain why officials decided it was time for change, despite the prime minster's attempt to brush off the character as harmless: So this week the Dutch Centre for Intangible Cultural Heritage introduced a new and – in their opinion – inoffensive Black Pete, following interviews with 30 people and more than 9,000 emails. Still black, with slightly less prominent lips and red lipstick. But, hey, no earrings or curly hair! You can watch the introduction here (it’s in Dutch, but the images tell you all you need to know). Oh dear, they just don’t get it do they?
• Clegg: Britain may let US planes use its bases to target extremist forces in Iraq
  Deputy prime minister discusses possible UK support for 'well-judged and well-targeted' action by US Nicholas Watt and Patrick Wintour theguardian.com, Monday 16 June 2014 12.44 BST LibDems election programme Nick Clegg spoke about possible US action at the launch of the first phase of the Liberal Democrat general election manifesto. Photograph: Danny Lawson/PA Britain may be prepared to let US war planes use British bases to target extremist forces in Iraq, Nick Clegg has said as he spoke of possible UK support for "well-judged and well-targeted" action by the US. The foreign secretary, William Hague, said on Monday that Britain may provide counter-terrorism expertise to the Iraqi government, and it has emerged that he has also been in telephone talks with his Iranian counterpart Mohammad Javad Zarif to see how the Iranians can play a role in easing the conflict in Iraq. But the deputy prime minister said the coalition insisted that the UK would not be involved in any direct military action in Iraq.
• Extremist-Ruled Mosul: Why Some Iraqis Are Returning
  By Piotr Zalewski June 16, 2014 Iraqi tribesmen carry their weapons as they gather to show their readiness to join Iraqi security forces in the fight against Jihadist militants who have taken over several northern Iraqi cities on June 16 in Baghdad Photograph by Ahmad Al-Rubaye/AFP via Getty Images Iraqi tribesmen carry their weapons as they gather to show their readiness to join Iraqi security forces in the fight against Jihadist militants who have taken over several northern Iraqi cities on June 16 in Baghdad Luqman decided to flee his hometown of Mosul after he heard of the new rules for local residents published by the militants who took the city from the Iraqi government on June 9. According to the oil company accountant, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) had banned alcohol, drugs, and cigarettes, instructed women to go out only if necessary and only while veiled, and pledged to punish thieves by amputating their hands. Luqman, who declined to be identified by his last name, had a more pressing reason to escape the city’s new rulers: He is a Shiite, a member of a religious sect that the Sunni extremists consider apostate. “As long as Da’ash are in Mosul,” he says, using the group’s abbreviated Arabic name, “I cannot come back.” On Saturday, about 20 miles east of Mosul, Luqman’s car was one of a mass of vehicles waiting to be waved into Erbil, the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan, the wealthy, semiautonomous enclave that has so far avoided the violence of Iraq’s accelerating implosion. A Kurdish fighter manning the checkpoint says that at the beginning last week the road had been backed up for several miles, with hundreds of thousands of people fleeing Mosul after its lightning-quick capture by ISIS. The flood of refugees, he says, has since slowed considerably. In fact, there seems to be a noticeable uptick in traffic returning to the fallen city—and it’s further evidence of the way Iraq is divided between Sunni and Shiite factions. Even with their neighborhoods under ISIS control—and even with reports that the jihadists had executed as many as 1,700 Iraqi soldiers, all Shiites, in the city of Tikrit 140 miles to the south—many Mosul residents were choosing to head back home from the autonomous region ruled by the Kurdish people, an ethnic group distinct from the Sunni and Shiite Arabs who predominate the rest of Iraq. Most of those returning were Sunni Arabs [Iraq] [ISIS] [Sectarianism]
• China, Iran and Russia: Restructuring the global order
  Powerful countries are alarmed by the threats against Russia as they see themselves as potential future targets. Last updated: 20 May 2014 10:56 Seyed Mohammad Marandi Seyed Mohammad Marandi is professor of North American Studies and dean of the Faculty of World Studies at the University of Tehran. Countries with major oil and gas reserves such as Russia, Iran and Iraq are already turning eastward, writes Marandi [Getty Image] At the Fourth Summit of the Conference on Interaction and Confidence-Building Measures in Asia (CICA) that opens May 20 in Shanghai, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani will meet with both Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin. Among other things, the summit will underscore how rising non-Western powers are playing ever more prominent roles on the global stage. However, Western elites remain stuck in a time warp, wherein the United States and its European partners are the imperial masters of all they survey. In this regard, it is an interesting coincidence how mainstream Western media outlets consistently produce narratives that are almost indistinguishable from official government statements regarding countries and leaders with dissimilar worldviews from their Western counterparts. For instance, we repeatedly hear about the democratically elected "dictators" in Venezuela, yet we are assured that friendly dictators are "moderate reformers". Another fascinating coincidence is that Western human rights organisations pursue initiatives and policies closely aligned with those of their own governments. [Realignment] [Media] {NGO] [Double standards]
• Tony Blair rejects 'bizarre' claims that invasion of Iraq caused the crisis
  'We have to liberate ourselves from the notion that "we" caused this', argues former prime minister in website essay Tracy McVeigh and Mark Townsend The Observer, Saturday 14 June 2014 22.16 BST Tony Blair says it would be 'extraordinary' to suggest that Iraq would be more stable if Saddam Hussein had remained in power. Photograph: Chris Jackson/PA Tony Blair has strongly rejected claims that the 2003 US-UK invasion of Iraq was to blame for the current crisis gripping the country, pointing the finger instead firmly at the Maliki government and the war in Syria. In a passionate essay published on his Faith Foundation website, the former prime minister said it was a "bizarre" reading of the situation to argue that the US-British invasion of Iraq had allowed the growth of Sunni jihadist groups such as the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (Isis), whose fighters have swept through towns and cities north and west of Baghdad over the past week. "We have to liberate ourselves from the notion that 'we' have caused this. We haven't. We can argue as to whether our policies at points have helped or not: and whether action or inaction is the best policy. But the fundamental cause of the crisis lies within the region not outside it. "We have to put aside the differences of the past and act now to save the future," says Blair, adding that force may be necessary. "Where the extremists are fighting, they have to be countered hard, with force." [Blair] [Iraq] [Chutzpah] [Agency]
• On the front lines in Pentagon press room as war returns to Iraq
  By James Rosen McClatchy Washington Bureau June 13, 2014 WASHINGTON — Thousands of miles away from the actual fighting in Iraq, the Pentagon briefing room was under siege Friday. Like incoming rhetorical missiles, dozens of reporters’ questions rained down on Rear Adm. John Kirby, the Pentagon press secretary. Will Baghdad fall? Are emergency evacuation plans in place for U.S. Embassy staff? What if Iran intervenes? Did the United States waste billions of dollars and thousands of lives trying to shore up an Iraqi army? Is Iraq, like Libya and Syria before it, descending into civil war?
• The Battle to Establish an Islamic State Across Iraq and Syria
  by Patrick Cockburn Islamic fundamentalists have opened new fronts in their battle to establish an Islamic state across Iraq and Syria as they launch attacks in cities which were previously under the control of the Baghdad government. A multi-pronged assault across central and northern Iraq in the past four days shows that the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isis) has taken over from the al-Qa’ida organisation founded by Osama bin Laden as the most powerful and effective extreme jihadi group in the world. Isis now controls or can operate with impunity in a great stretch of territory in western Iraq and eastern Syria, making it militarily the most successful jihadi movement ever. [Jihadist]
• 'Public has no idea how NATO spends money': Dutch auditors call for more transparency
  Published time: June 11, 2014 13:33 Edited time: June 11, 2014 20:23 Dutch auditors claim NATO member states - which contribute to the organization’s budget from a combined $1 trillion in defense spending - are largely unaware of how these funds are being spent, as most of the alliance’s expenditures remain classified. For decades the accounting records of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, which marked its 65th anniversary in April, remained largely ‘blotted out’ as classified, leaving billions of NATO dollars unaccounted for, claim auditors from the Netherlands. The official controlling body of the Dutch government, the Netherlands Court of Audit (NCA), which also audits the funds annually allocated by Netherlands government on NATO activities, collected information from open sources on NATO expenditures over the last 40 years. The results of this extensive research have been published last Tuesday on a specially-created English language website. The NCA stipulates it has no “specific mandate to audit NATO,” yet the organization is involved in advising the International Board of Auditors for NATO (IBAN). Financial inspections of the last six years have brought auditors from IBAN, the NCA and other NATO member states to the conclusion that bloc’s finances are not in order. State officials from all of NATO’s 28 member states actually have no idea where the alliance’s funds go and who’s the final recipient of huge amounts of money, the NCA claims. [NATO] [MISCOM]
• The Syrian Vote
  by Chandra Muzaffar If one is sincere about resolving the bloody three year-old conflict in Syria, one would regard the outcome of the presidential election held on the 3rd of June 2014 as an opportunity for working out a viable solution. The election was a genuine endorsement of the leadership of Bashar al-Assad. 73% of eligible voters cast their ballots in the first ever multi-candidate direct presidential election in Syria. Assad secured 88.7 % of the votes. There were no allegations of electoral fraud or manipulation. It is significant that Syrian refugees in Lebanon and Jordan — hosts to the majority of refugees from the on-going war in Syria — voted overwhelmingly for Assad. It is of course true that those parts of the country which are still in rebel hands could not vote. This would be mainly some parts of rural Syria and one medium-sized city. But all the other cities — and they account for the majority of the population — went to the ballot-box. US officials and the Western media have dismissed the election result contemptuously because a portion of the electorate could not vote, ignoring the fact that the vast majority participated enthusiastically in the polls. They have conveniently forgotten that in the presidential election in Ukraine on the 25th of May millions of Russian speaking voters in the eastern part of the country refused to participate and yet the verdict was endorsed by the centres of power in the West. This is yet another example of blatant double standards. Instead of rubbishing the election result, Western leaders and commentators should try to find out why the Syrian people showed so much enthusiasm for the election and why they gave so much support to Assad. One, for the vast majority of Syrians, the election was their repudiation of the war and the killings that have claimed tens of thousands of lives since March 2011. It was their way of affirming their commitment to peace and stability. The proud and dignified Syrian citizen had chosen the ballot-box to appeal to the world to end the war and to usher in peace. Two, the Syrians know that the only leader who can bring peace and stability to their land is Bashar al-Assad since he has always commanded the support of the majority of his people. The election proved his popularity. In spite of what the Western and most of the West Asian media have been telling us about how the majority Sunnis are revolting against a minority Alawite-Shia leader, most of the Sunnis voted for Assad, as did various minority groups, from Shias to Christians. Assad also has the backing of the armed forces, the public service and the business community. [Syria] [Election]
• What? Iraq? Members of Congress show no interest in country’s burgeoning crisis
  By Nancy A. Youssef McClatchy Washington Bureau June 11, 2014 Updated 8 hours ago WASHINGTON — The government of Iraq, where American soldiers fought and died for the better part of a decade, is in full retreat before an onslaught from a radical Islamist group dedicated to establishing an Islamic state in Iraq, Syria and Lebanon. But the magnitude of the crisis has yet to capture the attention of Washington. As fighters from the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria on Wednesday tightened their grip on Iraq’s second largest city, captured the hometown of Saddam Hussein and pushed to less than 100 miles from the Iraqi capital, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee met to question the man President Barack Obama has nominated to be the next ambassador to Iraq. Yet not a single senator asked him directly about the Iraqi government’s apparent loss of control. Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2014/06/11/230077/what-iraq-members-of-congress.html#storylink=cpy [Decline] [Governance] [Iraq]
• Iraq: The Armed Conflict has Gone Wild
  564564Armed clashes in the northern and central Iraq are getting more intense after the successful attack of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant on June 10 that resulted in the occupation of the northern Nineveh province and its administrative center – the city of Mosul (the second largest urban area in Iraq with total population of over 1 million people). More than 500 inhabitants of Mosul fled the city to seek refuge in the Kurdistan region, building tent camps around the city of Erbil and other settlements. This might be the first indication of the upcoming humanitarian catastrophe. In addition, radical Islamists now have a chance to infiltratrate those camps in order to destabilize the situation in the Kurdish Autonomous Region. The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant armed groups on June 11 were moving rapidly south in Baghdad’s direction. They’ve managed to capture the town of Baiji, that is known for its massive refinery capacities, and while the chances of Tikrit and Kirkuk to repel the attackers are looking rather slim. The latest reports show that militants were seen some 200 kilometers from the Iraqi capital.
• Insurgents in northern Iraq seize key cities, advance toward Baghdad
  By Loveday Morris and Liz Sly June 11 at 6:27 PM ? IRBIL, Iraq — Insurgents inspired by al-Qaeda rapidly pressed towards Baghdad on Wednesday, confronting little resistance from Iraq’s collapsing security forces and expanding an arc of control that now includes a wide swath of the country. By nightfall, the militants had reached the flashpoint city of Samarra, just 70 miles outside Baghdad, after having first seized Tikrit, Saddam Hussein’s hometown, and other cities while pressing southward from Mosul. The stunning speed with which the rout has unfolded in northern Iraq has raised deep doubts about the capacity of U.S. -trained Iraqi security forces, and it has also kindled fears about the government’s grip on the capital itself. In a country already fraught with sectarian tension, with parts of western Iraq already in Sunni militant hands, the latest gains by insurgents from the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria prompted ominous cries of alarm from leaders of Iraq’s Shiite Muslim majority. It appeared that the militants were facing more robust resistance as they moved south, where Iraq’s Shiites have a stronger presence. But several experts said that it would be wrong to assume that heavily fortified Baghdad, with its large Shiite population and concentration of elite forces, could easily fend off an ISIS attack. Rouhani says Iran ready to 'fight and combat' terrorists in Iraq TEHRAN, Iran — The rapid advance of Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) forces and the quick fall of Mosul on June 10 has become a matter of concern in Tehran, as the Iraqi army showed shocking weakness in this first serious encounter since the US withdrawal from Iraq. Mosul is closer to the Iranian border than it is to Baghdad, which has been victimized by jihadist terrorism and might be within ISIS's sights. Summary? Print Iranian President Hassan Rouhani and senior Iranian officials are calling for an international response to combat terrorists in Iraq. Author Ali Hashem Posted June 12, 2014 In an interview with Al-Monitor, a senior Iranian National and Regional Security Affairs official who requested anonymity said, “Some countries are trying to take revenge in Iraq for their defeat in Syria.” He accused countries who fueled the war in Syria of being behind the latest developments in Iraq, if indirectly. “The fire will burn those are backing ISIS. The United States and Saudi Arabia will feel the heat soon. They adopt double standards on one side, they place ISIS on their terror lists, and on another they give weapons to the Syrian opposition,” he said. “The Saudi government have to give a clear position on this. There should be a regional and international effort to fight terrorism. If we agreed that terrorism is becoming a common danger, then we can save the region.” [Strategic incoherence] [Controlled chaos] [Jihad]
• US to Iran: No sanctions relief without nuclear transparency
  House members sent the White House a clear message on Tuesday that Congress won't "budge an inch" on sanctions on Iran unless the country comes clean about the suspected military dimensions of its nuclear program. US lawmakers are beginning to lay out their demands for a tough inspection regime in exchange for any sanctions relief. Author Julian Pecquet Posted June 10, 2014 In the first in a series of hearings on the ongoing nuclear talks, key members of the House Foreign Affairs panel reiterated their demands that any final agreement contain strong verification procedures. But they also insisted that Iran allow access to suspected military sites before lawmakers are asked to approve a final deal — or even a six-month extension of the current interim agreement beyond the July 20 deadline, should it prove necessary. "Before we would ever consider the possibility of extending this interim agreement for another six-month period, certainly we should expect that the Iranians would at least be willing to grant that access to the areas where for more than a decade we've had these concerns," said Rep. Ted Deutch, D-Fla., the top Democrat on the Middle East and North Africa panel. [Iran] [US negotiating] [Governance]
• ISIS bids for global jihad leadership with Mosul attack
  The ghost of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the founder of what is today the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) has become the next generation of "al-Qaedism" — more violent, ruthless and extreme than any of its predecessors. ISIS made a bold gamble for its stunning victory in Mosul, taking both a historic great city and symbolic leadership of the global jihad. Summary? Print Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham, is seeking the mantle of founder Abu Musab al-Zarqawi with his bold attack on Iraq's second largest city. Author Bruce Riedel Posted June 11, 2014 Zarqawi, a nom de guerre, was the Jordanian gangster who created al-Qaeda in Iraq, the base from which ISIS evolved, to fight the US invasion. He started from scratch in 2002 even before the invasion began, since then-President George W. Bush made his plans known well in advance of the war. Zarqawi set a trap and built cells ready to strike after the invasion. Then Zarqawi plunged the country into civil war and through his extreme violence persuaded most of Washington that the war was a bad mistake. Although he died in 2006, his legacy survives. Late al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden was always suspicious of his Jordanian protege even before Sept. 11, 2001, and sought to keep him at arm's length. Bin Laden exiled Zarqawi for a time to western Afghanistan because he distrusted Zarqawi's loyalty and his extreme sectarian violence against Iraq's Shiites. But he valued Zarqawi's efficiency once the Iraq war started. The Bush surge in 2007 did not destroy Zarqawi's empire. A residual US ground force would not have eliminated it, either. Decapitating the group and buying the Sunni tribes only forced it deeper into the angry Sunni underground. Only sustained good and smart governance could kill it, and that was something post-Saddam Hussein Iraq could not produce, with or without the United States. [Jihad] [ISIS] [Al Qaeda]
• Empire of Prisons
  by James P. Jordan This article explains how the United States is exporting its model of mass incarceration and social and political control to at least 25 countries. This “prison imperialism” is rooted in the Program for the Improvement of the Colombian Prison System signed in March, 2000 by the US Embassy and Colombia’s Ministry of Justice. That program coincided with a rapid increase in Colombia’s prison population including a rise in political arrests and the militarization of the prison system. Other aspects of this experience are worsened overcrowding, human rights abuses and unhealthy conditions. Nevertheless, the US-Colombia collaboration has become the standard for prison imperialism around the world with Colombian training programs forming a major component. US involvement in international prison systems is carried out by several government agencies including the Bureau of Prisons, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the Pentagon, and the US State Department’s Bureaus of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement (INL), Democracy, Human Rights and Law Enforcement (DRL) and Consular Affairs, as well as state penal systems. This article provides close-ups of prison imperialism in Colombia, Mexico and Honduras and ends with a discussion of international resistance to the US model by Prisoners of Empire and their allies. The author especially wishes to thank the Colombian human rights group, Lazos de Dignidad (Links of Dignity) for their invaluable help in researching and developing the ideas presented herein, and for their tireless advocacy for Colombia’s political prisoners. This article is a result of an ongoing joint effort between Lazos and the Alliance for Global Justice (AfGJ) in exposing and resisting the Empire of Prisons, and in standing up for its antidote: peace with justice and real, participatory democracy.) Prison Imperialism: an Overview The United States, which leads the world in imprisonment rates, is exporting its model of mass incarceration to developing countries around the world. This “prison imperialism” is one of the foundational components to the infrastructure of Empire. Along with the militarization of police forces and borders, mass incarceration enables neoliberal economies to manage by force and intimidation the inevitable consequences of global capitalism: widespread social disruption and rising political dissent. (Neoliberalism is a system including free trade agreements, austerity programs and other measures that assure profitability is treasured above any other social value, and in the developing countries of the US Empire, it is backed up by the US military and its allies.) Since 2000, there has been an explosion in US efforts to augment and restructure international penitentiary systems, providing training for prison personnel and/or building new jails in at least 25 different countries. The first of these efforts was the Program for the Improvement of the Colombian Prison System, signed by the US Embassy and the Colombian Department of Justice on March 31, 2000. The program was funded as part of the $9 billion the US has invested since 1999 in Plan Colombia mostly to benefit the military and law enforcement. By 2002 in Afghanistan, and 2003 and 2004 in Iraq, the US was building and managing prisons as part of the invasion and occupation of those countries. These programs were connected from the start with the so-called “Global War on Terrorism” as well as the “Drug War”, through which many prison efforts have been funded. Closely related was the establishment of the Guantanamo Bay Detention Camp in January 2002. Many have heard the horror stories of abuses in Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo and the Bagram military detention camps. What most are unaware of is that US involvement in foreign jails has become a worldwide affair and is not just associated with direct military occupations. [Prisoners] [Human rights]
• New York's Met opera house on edge of precipice, says Peter Gelb
  Threat of bankruptcy at world's biggest and richest opera house contrasts strongly with 'cracking season' in UK Tom Service and Maev Kennedy The Guardian, Friday 6 June 2014 19.25 BST New York's Metropolitan opera spent $169,000 on this poppy field set for Borodin’s Prince Igor New York's Metropolitan Opera spent $169,000 on this poppy field set for a production of Borodin’s Prince Igor. Photograph: Cory Weaver/Metropolitan Opera Grand opera is dying along with its increasingly ancient audience, according to Peter Gelb, general manager of one of the grandest operas in the world, the Metropolitan in New York. The renowned 3,800-seat opera house is fighting a losing battle on many fronts, and could face bankruptcy within three years, he says – and the crisis he sees in his own company could be a warning to many other opera houses. A long-running dispute with unions, which are threatening strike action, is only one of his many problems. Box office receipts are flatlining, and seat occupancy was down to 80% in the most recent season, while costs are soaring: the opera recently spent $169,000 (£100,000) on a spectacular poppy field set for a new production of Borodin's Prince Igor. The Met's much vaunted innovation of HD live broadcasts to cinemas, pioneered by Gelb and copied by opera companies across the world including the Royal Opera in Covent Garden, is merely entertaining an existing and dwindling audience, he says, rather than creating a new one. "What we've basically done is to extend the lifespan of the opera-goer. In the US, 75% of the cinema audience are 65 or over. And 30% are over 75. Those are people who are so old that they can't go the Met, to the theatre, any more."
• Ashton, Burns retirements, changes in Congress worry Iran in push for deal
  With the July 20 deadline for expiration of the interim nuclear agreement with Iran fast approaching, senior and former US officials have given mixed signals about whether the interim deal will have to be extended. But there are compelling reasons to reach a deal before the end of this year that have to do with both domestic politics and bureaucratic considerations. Among them: The upcoming retirements of two key Western officials and the possibility that Republicans may take over the US Senate might contribute to a sense of urgency to reach a nuclear deal between the P5+1 and Iran. Author Barbara Slavin Posted June 2, 2014 •An informed source has told Al-Monitor that Wendy Sherman, the undersecretary of state for political affairs who currently heads the US negotiating delegation in Vienna, will be nominated to replace Deputy Secretary of State Bill Burns. Burns, who also led back channel talks with Iran, is retiring in October. The Barack Obama administration, the source said, would like Sherman to conclude the Iran negotiations before promoting her. An administration official responded to a query from Al-Monitor by saying that Secretary of State John Kerry has not yet made a decision about who will replace Burns. •Catherine Ashton, the European Union’s high representative for foreign affairs, will be stepping down by the end of the year at the conclusion of a five-year term. Her team, which has been negotiating with the Iranians since talks resumed in 2011, will also leave office. Ashton and her subordinates have earned the trust of both the US and the Iranians and it would be difficult to bring a new team up to speed quickly to conclude these complex talks. •US congressional elections in November could result in Republicans taking over both houses of Congress next year. This argues for a deal sooner so that the administration can begin to implement the agreement with less likelihood of congressional interference, including possible steps to impose new sanctions on Iran. •Iranian President Hassan Rouhani will mark the anniversary of his cabinet’s first year in office at the end of August. He could be weakened and domestic political foes emboldened by a failure to deliver on campaign promises to revive the economy, which relies in large part on getting sanctions relief. Read more: http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2014/06/ashton-burns-retire-congress-changes-worry-iran.html?utm_source=Al-Monitor+Newsletter+%5BEnglish%5D&utm_campaign=a491b6c75d-June_3_2014&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_28264b27a0-a491b6c75d-100372581##ixzz33jxdoYoE [US negotiating] [Iran]
• Bashar al-Assad wins re-election in Syria as uprising against him rages on
  Assad captures another seven-year term after winning almost 90% of the vote, with polling only held in government-held areas Associated Press in Damascus theguardian.com, Wednesday 4 June 2014 20.48 BST bashar al-assad voting Syrian president Bashar al-Assad has won the election in a landslide, though polling has been described by western onlookers as a 'farce'. Photograph: UPI/Landov/Barcroft Media Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has been re-elected in a landslide, officials said on Wednesday, capturing another seven-year term in the middle of a bloody three-year-old uprising against his rule that has devastated the country. Syria's parliament speaker, Jihad Lahan, announced the final results from Tuesday's election, saying Assad garnered 10,319,723 votes, or 88.7%. Laham said Assad's two challengers, Hassan al-Nouri and Maher Hajjar, won 4.3% and 3.2% respectively. The supreme constitutional court put turnout at 73.42%. After the results were released, Damascus erupted into a thunderous, rolling clap of celebratory gunfire that appeared to include heavy weaponry. On the streets of the capital, men cheered and whistled. Some broke into the familiar pro-Assad chant: "With our souls, with our blood, we sacrifice for you, Bashar!" [Syria] [Election] [Media]
• Presidential Election in Syria: the West has Lost its Game
  66345On June 3 the people of Syria, despite the numerous attempts made by the West to disrupt or obstruct the election, despite countless terrorist attacks of the armed opposition, have finally got a chance to get their say on today’s Syrian policy. On this day they had to elect Syria’s president choosing from three candidates. The leader of the campaign – Bashar Assad, whose term in office expires on July 17, a Communist from Aleppo, a member of the the Popular Front for Liberation and Change party, Maher Abdel Hafiz Hajjar and a former state minister who now heads the National Initiative for Reform, Hassan Abdel Illyahi en-Nuri. According to the new constitution, that came into effect in February of 2012, a new president is to obtain his mandate by direct popular election for a term of 7 years and has the right to be re-elected only once. And Bashar al-Assad, that has become a symbol of nation’s resistance to foreign aggression for more than three years, has won with 88% of ballots cast in his favour. The Syrian conflict sponsored by the Arabian monarchies, and supported by the United States and several NATO countries, like France to topple Assad has not reached its goal. According to most experts, today there is no real alternative to Assad in Syria. Unfortunately, Syrian refugees were not able to exercise their constitutional rights. Authorities in Lebanon, Iraq, Turkey, Germany, France and the US, along with a number of the Arab States of the Gulf, have effectively banned Syrians from voting. Additionally the polling was not held in those areas of Syria controlled by militants and foreign Islamist mercenaries. A total of registered voters has reached the number of 15.8 million people (while in 2012 the official population of Syria amounted to 22.4 million people). [Syria] [Election]
• Re-shaping the Taliban Leadership? Sustaining “America’s War on Terrorism”
  Obama's decision to suddenly free five of the most important Taliban members from Guantanamo Bay By Umberto Pascali Global Research, June 04, 2014 Is this a way to send back to Afghanistan five top Taliban leaders who have been “re-conditioned” and “turned” in Guantanamo and are now working for the US? Is this a move against the “unloyal” President Karzai & his successors? The Taliban leadership has been, reportedly, decimated by the drones assassinations. It is not difficult to imagine what will happen with the arrival of five of the very top Taliban political leaders after many years of detention in Guantanamo: The creation of a new leadership. Why would the US do that after having spent so much money and blood trying to decapitate the Taliban elite and, reportedly, succeeding? You need terrorists to sustain the “war on terrorism”? Officially, the sudden decision was taken by President Obama to rescue Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl who has been in the hands of the Taliban since 2009 and who allegedly left voluntarily to the point that many of his fellow colleague are accusing him of “desertion”. There are reports that Bergdhal did not want to leave his captivity. If the reason of the exchange was to spare the sergeant further pain and suffering, or to give a signal that no US soldier is left behind — then why wasn’t Bergdhal freed before? Why are now – right now – the five Taliban leaders returned to an Afghanistan deprived of leaders? Is there any connection with the increasing Afghanistan willingness to forge closer links with BRICS, China, and Russia? Is there any connection with the recently established good contacts between Pakistan and Russia to the point that Russia lifted his arms embargo on Pakistan immediately before the announced Five Taliban liberation? Is this a [desperate] way to keep some form of “strategic” presence in an area where both India and Pakistan are taking the distances from the Anglo-Americans and are looking at the BRICS instead? Is this a way to slow down the recognition that Brzezinski & Co. have lost Central Asia’s Great game? [Afghanistan]
• Syrian refugees return to vote in presidential ballot
  03/06 17:05 CET Thousands of Syrian refugees in Lebanon gathered at the Masnaa border crossing point to briefly enter Syria and vote in the presidential election. The ballot is expected to extend the rule of President Bashar al-Assad. Lebanese media reported last week that Interior Minister Nouhad al-Machnouk had said that Syrian registered refugees who entered Syria to vote would lose their refugee status when returning to Lebanon. But that did not deter the crowds at Masnaa. Waiting in line to cross the border, Syrian national Ghadda Maki said: “It is a national duty to vote, so we overcome this period of crisis happening in Syria.” [Syria] [Election] [Refugees]
• Syrian Refugees in Lebanon Take Part in Syria Elections along Border
  Al- Manar correspondent reported that hundreds of Syrian refugees in Lebanon were flocking to polling stations on the border between Lebanon and Syria. The correspondent said that long queues were seen for Syrian refugees at Jdaidet Yabous point, noting that the refugees were raising the Syrian flags and photos for President Bashar al-Assad. Earlier on Saturday, Interior Minister Nouhad al-Mashnouq announced that Syrian refugees in Lebanon will lose their status as such if they return home for a visit.Syrian refugees casting ballots at Jdaidet Yabout point However, al-Manar correspondent reported that the Lebanese General Security were issuing badges for the refugees who are heading to the border to elect and then return to Lebanon. The correspondent pointed out that these badges are for specific duration. “That means that the Syrians in Lebanon can vote without losing their status as refugees,” the correspondent added. For its part, the Lebanese National News Agency (NNA) reported that the Syrian border is currently witnessing a traffic jam because the Syrian refugees are heading to Syria to participate in the Presidential elections. “The General Security is implementing security measures in accordance with the Syrian elections along the border to organize their entry to Syria and their return to Lebanon,” NNA added. [Syria] [Election] [Refugees]
• 
  Syrian expatriates living in Lebanon cast their ballots in the country's presidential elections at the Syrian Embassy in Yarze east of Beirut on May 28, 2014. (Photo: AFP-Joseph Eid) By: Firas Abou-Mosleh Published Monday, June 2, 2014 The Future Movement could not easily digest the presidential election scene at the Syrian embassy in Yarze. It wanted to use the Syrian refugees to pressure the regime in Damascus, instead the refugees turned into a source of political concern for the movement. This concern prompted the interior minister to issue a decision that blackmails Syrian refugees and turns them into prisoners in Lebanon. The interior and municipalities minister, Nouhad al-Machnouk, tried yesterday in vain to lessen the effect of the shock that befell his political team upon seeing droves of Syrian voters heading to their country’s embassy in Lebanon’s Yarze last week to take part in the presidential election. He said they were at most six percent of the total number of Syrians in Lebanon. He threw numbers around haphazardly and could not justify the reason that prompted him to issue a decision to revoke the refugee status of any Syrian citizen who visits their country. Machnouk wanted to proceed with the US-Saudi-European decision to block the Syrian elections. He tried to keep Syrians in Lebanon from participating in the election so he issued a decision that prevents them from holding “political gatherings.” But the scene in Yarze prompted him to raise the bar a notch. He gave the refugees two options, to either participate in the elections or maintain their status as refugees, claiming that it is impossible to do both. The purpose of Machnouk’s actions is to prevent Syrian refugees from being anything but supporters of the Syrian opposition . [Syria] [Election]
• The tears of Lady Macbeth
  By: Pierre Abisaab Published Thursday, June 5, 2014 The “official” position we have been hearing from Western governments regarding the presidential elections in Syria is not very far from the truth. However, the problem with the truth is that it changes according to what we see, or rather to what we wish to see, depending on the awareness and interests of the onlooker. In the midst of the violence, death and destruction, Syria’s presidential elections weren’t held under normal conditions indispensable for any sort of elections. Not a single honest advocate of democracy in the world can deny this fact. At the same time, no honest advocate of democracy, would expect bandits, takfiris and the mercenaries of oppressive regimes who dominated the scene in the months following the aborted uprising - as dictated by Western colonialists of course - to provide the Syrian people with a satisfactory alternative to the current political regime. The chance of achieving peaceful change was stolen from the people, and our decades-long dreams of progress have withered. It is true that the Syrian regime, as other regimes in the Arab world, (except the current Tunisian model, as fragile as it is) has ignored the fundamental principles of freedom, pluralism, and the succession of power. Yet, the chance of achieving peaceful change was stolen from the people, and our decades-long dreams of progress have withered, just like the illusions of change that have, unfortunately, been crumbling before our eyes in many ways, from Benghazi to Cairo. Yes, the Syrian regime is today the sole player controlling the rules and conditions of the game as well as its participants. However, it came out victorious from a global war waged against it by multiple forces that no one believes were seeking the best interest of the people in the region. As the West preaches to us about democracy, it monopolizes the evaluation of good and evil and merges its civilized peaceful values with bloody strategic interests. But today, it’s time for it to finally admit defeat. Here it is, just like Lady Macbeth, living its own nightmare as Western “jihadists” fighting in Syria are returning home. In spite of everything, Syrian ballot boxes have a lot to say to those who want to listen. In fact, a significant segment of the population is rediscovering civilian life and is choosing the lesser of two evils. This segment of the Syrian population voted for a political solution, and against the fake projects that took them into the abyss. They voted against fatal illusions that they may have believed in once upon a time. The Syrian elections are a sign of climate change in the region. It is the end of the “Arab Spring” that was murdered by the West [Syria]
• The octopuses of war: WW1 propaganda maps in pictures
  From John Bull charging across the Channel to take charge of Europe to scrapping dogs of all nations, these remarkable caricatures and cartoons show how cartography can be turned into a rhetoric of war Tim Bryars theguardian.com, Tuesday 3 June 2014 16.56 BST [Propaganda]
• For ex-rebels in Syria, detention is part of transition to freedom
  By Jonathan S. Landay McClatchy Washington Bureau June 3, 2014 Updated 14 hours ago HOMS, Syria — Hungry, encircled by better-armed Syrian troops and desperate to flee the Islamist rebels who’d tortured him for months before forcing him to join them, Alaa al Dagastani seized his chance during a U.N.-brokered evacuation of civilians from the shell-blasted ruins of the Old City of Homs. “To be honest, at first we were scared to return to the government. We were afraid we’d be killed,” recounted Dagastani, a former soldier who was one of hundreds of insurgents who surrendered during the six-day evacuation in February. “We walked out between the civilians.” But Dagastani still isn’t free. He and about 120 other former insurgents who were promised amnesty in return for surrendering are living under armed guard in a dilapidated art school for women. They sleep in dingy classrooms on grimy mattresses on the floor, undergoing counseling by clerics and psychologists as they wait to be released. The makeshift detention center is part of what President Bashar Assad’s regime says is a program to rehabilitate some of those who’ve fought against it during the civil war, now in its fourth year. Some 10,000 former insurgents have been granted amnesty in just over the past year, according to the Ministry of Reconciliation. There’s no way to confirm the number. Maj. Ammar Heshme, the army intelligence officer who runs the al Andalus school detention center, said detainees were freed once investigations determined that there were no outstanding criminal charges or court cases against them. Their names are then removed from nationwide “wanted” lists, he said. “This war has lasted three years, and during those three years we collected a lot of information. So we know a lot about who was where and what they were doing. We believe that many of these guys joined these rebel groups without knowing what they were doing,” said Heshme, a father of two whose face was disfigured by a sniper’s bullet in June 2012. [Syria]
• Syrian election sends powerful signal of Assad’s control
  Supporters of Syria's President Bashar al-Assad celebrate in front of a polling center in Damascus. Syrians voted on Tuesday in an election expected to deliver an overwhelming victory for al-Assad but which his opponents have dismissed as a charade in the midst of Syria's devastating civil war. Khaled Al-Hariri /Reuters By Liz Sly and Ahmed Ramadan June 3 at 7:15 PM BEIRUT — Syrians voted on in a tightly controlled election Tuesday that reinforced President Bashar al-Assad’s tenacious hold on power, underscoring the failure of U.S. policies aimed at inducing him to step down. Three years after Assad’s brutal suppression of nationwide protests plunged Syria into a vicious civil war, the election seems certain to deliver him a third seven-year term in office, defying President Obama’s 2011 call for him to “step aside.” The vote came as the former U.S. ambassador to Syria Robert Ford delivered a scathing indictment of the Obama administration’s cautious approach to Syria, saying he resigned in March because he could no longer countenance the United States’ policies. [Syria] [Election] [Media]
• Syrian election shows depth of popular support for Assad, even among Sunni majority
  Published June 04, 2014 ·Associated Press DAMASCUS, Syria – For all the serious flaws in Syria's election, it underscored the considerable support that President Bashar Assad still enjoys from the population, including many in the majority Sunni Muslim community. Syria's conflict is often portrayed through one of its many prisms — that of a sectarian struggle, in which overwhelmingly Sunni Muslim rebels seek to topple Assad, who belongs to the minority Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shiite Islam. The country's rich tapestry of Christian and Muslim minorities, meanwhile, help keep Assad in power, fearing their fate if he were to fall. Without Sunni support, however, Assad's rule would have collapsed long ago amid a civil war that activists say has killed more than 160,000, displaced at least a third of Syria's prewar population of 23 million, and destroyed wide swaths of the country. That support was on display as Syrians voted overwhelmingly Tuesday to give Assad another seven-year term. He won 88.7 percent of the vote, the speaker of parliament announced Wednesday night, although the outcome was never in question. [Syria] [Election] [Bashar Assad]
• Syria presidential election: a stage-managed show of democracy by Assad
  Bashar al-Assad is certain to win, but will need to make reforms during his third term as president – as well as restore security Lina Sinjab in Damascus and Ian Black The Guardian, Tuesday 3 June 2014 Women walk past election posters of Syria's President Bashar al-Assad along a street in Damascus Election posters for President Bashar al-Assad in Damascus. Photograph: Khaled Al-Hariri/Reuters Syrians go to the polls on Tuesday in the shadow of a bloody war, but no surprises are expected in an election in which Bashar al-Assad is running for the presidency on his ability to restore security and stability. Assad is facing two other candidates for the first time, but although officially 15 million people are eligible to vote this can only happen in areas under government control. "Military and security forces are on maximum alert to ensure the security of Syrians who wish to vote," the pro-government newspaper al-Watan reported on Monday . Rebels are boycotting what they call a "blood election", and the 9,000 polling stations will be closely guarded. [Media] [Syria] [Election]
• Anger explodes over treatment of Bergdahl’s release as veterans, troops call him a deserter
  By Hannah Allam and Jonathan S. Landay McClatchy Washington Bureau June 2, 2014 Updated 7 hours ago WASHINGTON — For all the yellow ribbons strewn across his hometown in Idaho and the gratitude expressed by his parents in an emotional visit to the White House on Saturday, it’s looking increasingly unlikely that Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl will receive a hero’s welcome when he returns to the United States after nearly five years in Taliban captivity. From military forums across the country, a groundswell of anger is rising over the Obama administration’s silence on perhaps the most controversial question surrounding the deal that freed Bergdahl in exchange for five senior Taliban members: Was he a deserter? So far, the U.S. government has shied away from the long-nagging question, which raged anew Monday with growing clamor on the Internet about the circumstances of Bergdahl’s disappearance from his unit’s small forward position in Afghanistan on June 30, 2009. Military-related blogs, Twitter accounts and Facebook pages were filled with screeds from commenters accusing Bergdahl of being a “traitor” or a Taliban “collaborator.” The online publication The Daily Beast published a nearly 2,000-word first-person account by a former Army infantry officer who said he was privy to details of Bergdahl’s disappearance and who stated flatly that “he was a deserter, and soldiers from his own unit died trying to track him down.”
• Why Obama has changed his mind on Syria
  By Doyle Mcmanus Los Angeles Times June 2, 2014 Updated 18 hours ago President Obama's foreign policy speech at West Point last week was in large part a list of all the things he doesn't want to do. He doesn't want to withdraw from the world. At the same time, he doesn't want to use military force to solve every problem. Above all, he doesn't want to get stuck in another war in the Middle East, or anywhere else, for that matter. But there's an exception to the Obama Doctrine of restraint: terrorism. Obama is ready and willing to use U.S. military power - indirectly if possible, directly if needed - against terrorists who pose a threat to the United States. That's why, even as he has withdrawn troops from Iraq and Afghanistan, the president has sent military advisers to Africa. And that's why, almost unnoticed, he has approved a gradual but significant escalation of U.S. action on the most complicated and dangerous battlefield of all: Syria. Only two years ago, when then-Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and other aides proposed a U.S. effort to arm and train moderates among the rebels fighting the government of Bashar Assad, Obama rejected the idea. The rebels weren't capable or well organized, he said. A commitment to their fight might draw the U.S. onto a slippery slope of military intervention, he worried. But now Obama has taken the steps he once refused. Aides say the president has agreed to "ramp up" the modest weapons supplies the United States began last year. Perhaps more important, he wants to send U.S. troops to Jordan or other countries near Syria to train rebel units, assuming Congress and the other countries agree. What's changed? Not the moderate rebels' chances of victory in their fight against both Assad and al-Qaida. After a series of military setbacks, those rebels are in worse shape on the ground than they were two years ago. Instead, it's the alarming growth and reach of extremist Islamist groups in Syria - some allied with al-Qaida - that is driving Obama's decisions. [Syria] [Strategic incoherence] [Outsourcing]
• Mongolia’s confident new strategy towards prosperity
  1 June 2014 Author: Luvsanvandan Bold, Minister for Foreign Affairs, Mongolia Mongolia’s ancestors were risk-takers who built the largest contiguous land empire in world history ranging from the Korean Peninsula to Poland, including the Middle East and Southern China. They ruled this vast territory and countless peoples wisely. During the period of the Mongol Empire, now referred to as Pax Mongolica, trade between the West and the East flourished through the famous Silk Road, along which ‘a small girl with baskets of gold could have peacefully travelled all around the empire with no fear’. After the collapse of the empire, the quests for the rich Orient greatly triggered the sea travel that resulted in great geographical discoveries. Two decades ago, as the descendants of this courageous people, Mongolians took the risk of complex transitions in all spheres of political and economic life. We chose the fastest way to cover the distance; we are always in a hurry because we are horse riders. The early 1990s were a difficult time; income per capita was about US$200 and all centrally planned and state-owned enterprises were in bankruptcy after the Soviet Union — on which 70 per cent of the economy was dependent — collapsed together with the communist camp. Moreover, it was an odd decision given all other Asian nations eventually chose step-by-step transitions as the safe move — economy first, political next. Two decades later, the culture of risk-takers has received tremendous paybacks. Mongolia is a flourishing democracy and led the Community of Democracies in 2011–13. The country has gradually overcome the painful economic transition and become a middle-income country with the highest economic growth in the world. [Mongolia] [Imperialism] [Spin]
• Republicans claim Bowe Bergdahl release deal encourages terrorists
  • Senator Ted Cruz decries 'very dangerous precedent' • Susan Rice says US had honoured 'sacred obligation' • Bergdahl 'has trouble speaking English' • Analysis: Bergdahl release opens new political battle • Exclusive video: Bob Bergdahl speaks to the Guardian Rory Carroll in Los Angeles theguardian.com, Sunday 1 June 2014 18.14 BST Republicans have lambasted the White House for releasing five Taliban leaders in exchange for Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl, saying the “dangerous” deal violated US policy on not talking to terrorists and may have broken the law. GOP leaders rounded on the Obama administration on Sunday, accusing it of bypassing Congress and of encouraging terrorists to seize other US service members as hostages. Susan Rice, Obama's national security adviser, appeared on two talk shows to mount the administration's defence of the decision. She justified the swap and the decision not to inform Congress of its imminence in terms of a “sacred obligation” to leave no US soldier behind. The defence secretary, Chuck Hagel, told NBC: “We didn't negotiate with terrorists. As I said and explained before, Sergeant Bergdahl was a prisoner of war. That's a normal process in getting your prisoners back." [US Negotiating]
• French suspect in Brussels Jewish museum attack spent year in Syria
  Mehdi Nemmouche arrested in Marseille in connection with the killing of two Israeli tourists and a French volunteer Anne Penketh in Paris theguardian.com, Sunday 1 June 2014 18.04 BST European fears of spillover from the Syrian war were amplified on Sunday when it emerged that a Frenchman arrested in connection with a deadly attack at a Jewish museum in Brussels last week spent much of last year with jihadist fighters in Syria. Mehdi Nemmouche, 29, was arrested in Marseille in connection with the killing of two Israeli tourists and a French volunteer at the museum nine days ago. Prosecutors said that among his possessions were weapons identical to those used in the Brussels attack, as well as a 40-second video confession. The guns were wrapped in a white sheet scrawled with the name of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, an extremist group fighting in Syria, the Paris prosecutor François Molins said. He said the suspect had spent about a year in Syria. At a news conference in Brussels, the Belgian state prosecutor Frédéric van Leeuw said the voice in the film admitted to the attack "against Jews and [threatened to] set Belgium on fire". The speaker, believed to be Nemmouche, who is not seen on camera, said he tried to record the actual shooting, but that the camera did not work. The officials said Nemmouche, who is from Roubaix, in northern France, travelled to Syria last year to join jihadist fighters after becoming radicalised in prison. [Syria] [Islamist] [Unintended consequences]
• “False Flag Terrorism” to Sustain America’s “Humanitarian” Agenda
  Sustaining the US Empire’s Killing Machine. The Modus Operandi of US Led Wars By Joachim Hagopian Global Research, June 02, 2014 In late May 2014, President Obama rolled out his foreign policy initiatives at West Point and said nothing new. Every lie he uttered is just a retread cover for the same old, same old disastrous foreign policy the US has engaged in since the cold war began shortly after World War II. The fact is Washington has been regularly practicing this same modus operandi for over sixty years. Through constant use of false flags deceptively blaming the designated enemy of the United States, starting with the dual threat of the Soviet Union and China’s spreading Communism in the early 1950’s, then in this century fabricating the al Qaeda enemy’s spreading terrorism and now back to a revitalized cold war stopping the expansionist spread of Russia and China again, the US has been busily justifying its aggressive interventionist policy throughout the world. For nearly seven decades the US Central Intelligence Agency has been the chief operating engineer and primary culprit covertly orchestrating this entire diabolical front engaging in acts of terrorism to ensure that Obama’s unabashed exceptionalism in the form of an overstretched, morally bankrupt, imperialistic American Empire in decline reaches every corner of the planet. Though false flag terrorism has been utilized throughout human history, including Nero’s Great Fire as the Roman Empire literally went down in flames, its deployment in modern times has been increasingly frequent. By definition a false flag operation involves a government or organization committing egregious acts of violence on its own citizens or members in order to deceitfully blame its enemy and initiate wars. Though this presentation shall focus primarily on the US government’s false flag events committed within the last 60 years, many nations other than America have also engaged in false flag operations. [False flag]
• Bashar al-Assad supporters stage rallies in Australia ahead of Syrian poll
  Hundreds are expected to sign petitions backing al-Assad at rallies in major cities, in absence of polling stations Michael Safi theguardian.com, Friday 30 May 2014 03.42 BST Poster of Bashar al-Assad The Syrian government has been unable to set up overseas polling stations in Australia because the country’s embassy shut in June 2012. Photograph: Khaled Abdullah/Reuters Australians backing Bashar al-Assad in the upcoming Syrian presidential elections are staging rallies across the country to help expats register their support. Hundreds are expected to sign petitions backing al-Assad at rallies in Sydney, Adelaide and Melbourne ahead of the 3 June poll. The petitions will then be sent to Damascus, organisers said. The Syrian government has been unable to set up overseas polling stations in Australia because the country’s embassy shut in June 2012, a month after top Syrian diplomats were expelled. A consulate still operates in Sydney, but is not large enough to facilitate the poll. [Syria] [Election] [Bashar Assad]
• Syrians in Lebanon battle crowds to vote for Bashar al-Assad
  Massive turnout for 'expatriate' voting in embassies before Syria's June election though many refugees boycott polls Associated Press in Yarze, Lebanon theguardian.com, Wednesday 28 May 2014 16.22 BST Syrians vote in Yarze, Lebanon, 28 May 2014 Syrians cast ballots in Yarze, east of Beirut, Lebanon, for the presidential election back home. Photograph: Rex/Rawan Hundreds of Syrians desperate to vote for Bashar al-Assad tried to rush their embassy near Beirut on Wednesday, scuffling with Lebanese troops using batons and sticks to beat the crowds back as voting abroad started ahead of Syria's national election on 3 June. Tens of thousands of Assad supporters flocked to the hilltop embassy in a town south-east of the Lebanese capital to cast ballots, snarling traffic outside, keeping schoolchildren trapped in buses for hours and forcing some schools to cancel scheduled exams. Lebanon has more than a million Syrian refugees. "With our souls, with our blood, we will sacrifice for you, Bashar" and "long live Syria!" were some of the chants heard from many in the crowd. Despite the carnage in Syria, the country's president has retained significant support among large sections of the population, particularly among Christians, Alawites and other religious minorities. [Syria] [Election]
• A Middle East Tragedy: Obama's Syria-Policy Disaster
  "How many more Syrians need to die before Washington rethinks its policy?" Flynt Leverett ,Hillary Mann Leverett May 30, 2014 For over three years, the United States has sought to overthrow Syrian President Bashar al-Assad by supporting an Al Qaeda-infused opposition that Washington either knew or should have known would fail. Yet, in his commencement address at West Point on Wednesday, President Obama promised the American people and the rest of the world more of the same. Obama’s vague pledge to “ramp up” support for selected oppositionists is a craven sop to those claiming that U.S. backing for the opposition so far—nonlethal aid, training opposition fighters, coordination with other countries openly providing lethal aid, and high-level political backing (including three years of public demands from Obama that Assad “must go”)—has been inadequate, and that Assad could be removed if only America would do more. This claim should be decisively rejected as a basis for policy making, rather than disingenuously humored, for it is dangerously detached from reality. From the start of the conflict, it has been clear that the constituencies supporting Assad and his government—including not just Christians and non-Sunni Muslims but also non-Islamist Sunnis—add up to well over half of Syrian society. [Syria] [Dysfunction] [US global strategy] [Public opinion]
• Clapper says Syrian al-Qaida wants to attack US
  By Kimberly Dozier — Jan. 29, 2014 3:59 PM EST WASHINGTON (AP) — The Syrian militant group tied to al-Qaida, the al-Nusra Front, wants to attack the United States and is training a growing cadre of fighters from Europe, the Mideast and even the U.S., the top U.S. intelligence official told Congress on Wednesday. Director of National Intelligence James Clapper told the Senate Intelligence Committee that such al-Qaida groups in Syria have started training camps "to train people to go back to their countries" — one of the newest threats emerging in the past year to U.S. security. He said "al-Nusra Front, to name one .... does have aspirations for attacks on the homeland." Clapper didn't elaborate or offer any evidence of al-Nusra's desire to attack the U.S. [Islamists] [Syria] [Outsourcing] [Unintended consequences]
• Amid war, Syria prepares for an election Assad is sure to win
  By Loveday Morris, Published: May 29 DAMASCUS, Syria — Shoppers milled under a huge poster of the president in the Syrian capital’s ancient central market, its bustling streets newly crisscrossed with miniature flags ahead of an election. A few yards away in the majestic central Umayyad Mosque, where bands of protesters once chanted for freedom, the tone at Friday prayers was triumphant. “All the plans of the West have been destroyed,” said the imam, Sheikh Maamoun Rahmeh, referring to U.S. support for Syrian rebels. “The Americans, among others, were stupid.” He implored worshipers to vote on June 3 for the most “qualified” person and ignore outside attempts to derail what he called Syrian democracy. “Yes to the leader of this nation: Bashar al-Assad,” he declared. “Yes to the one who protected our blood.” Much of the world has written off Syria’s upcoming presidential election as a parody. [Syria] [election]
• Obama drops Asia-Pacific ‘pivot’ from U.S. security vision
  President focuses on anti-terrorism battle in Middle East, North Africa by Matthew Pennington AP • May 29, 2014 WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama laid out a sweeping vision for U.S. foreign policy on Wednesday but made no mention of what has been a signature tune of his administration’s diplomacy: the “pivot” to Asia. The concept was that by winding down U.S. involvement in the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, American military and diplomatic resources would be freed up to focus on the Asia-Pacific regions after a decade of relative neglect. Yet in Obama’s speech, delivered a day after he outlined plans to pull U.S. forces out of Afghanistan by the end of 2016, there was not a single reference to that touted shift in regional focus. That was partly due to the purpose of the address — to push back against critics who contend that Obama’s approach to global crises, such as in Ukraine and Syria, has been too cautious and has emboldened adversaries. He offered a broader perspective on the role that the United States should play in international affairs, still leading on the world stage and eschewing isolationism, but less ready to embark on military adventures. Yet Obama made clear that the threat of terrorism that has preoccupied Washington since the 9/11 attacks remains an abiding concern. He said as the U.S. reduces its Afghan presence, it can do more to address emerging threats in the Middle East and North Africa. It is a far cry from the tone Obama struck in another keynote foreign policy speech he delivered in Australia in November 2011, when he declared that in the Asia-Pacific of the 21st century, “the United States of America is all in.” [US global strategy] [Pivot]
• Why are They Afraid of the Syrian Elections?
  by Rick Sterling The Presidential Election in Syria takes place next Tuesday, June 3. With a revised 2012 Constitution, Syria is no longer a one party state and there are multiple candidates for office. Running against Bashar al Asad are former communist and legislator Maher al Hajjar and business person Hassan al Nouri. The election has been vehemently opposed by the so called “Friends of Syria” (NATO members Turkey, Germany, France, UK, Italy, USA, plus the Gulf monarchies UAE, Qatar, Saudi Arabia plus Jordan and Egypt). Since 2011 the “Friends” have met periodically to coordinate funding, arming and training the rebels plus trying to promote and consolidate a credible outside political leadership. According to the pro opposition Syrian Observatory for Human Rights the result of this externally supported uprising has been over 62,000 dead Syrian soldiers and militia, plus another 80,836 dead civilians. Many of the civilians were killed by rebels. Just looking at the number of dead Syrian soldiers and security forces, can you imagine what would happen if 10% that number (6,000 soldiers and security) were killed in the USA? Given the extent of the violence, the well publicized fanaticism of the most active rebels and evident difficulty to manage the political operatives who were supposed to be anointed “leaders”, one might wonder whey the USA and others persist in trying to force regime change in Syria. But instead of viewing the multi-candidate election in Syria as a step forward, they are viewing it as a mortal threat. “Assad’s staged elections are a farce,” Kerry said after the so-called Friends of Syria meeting in London on Thursday May 15. “They’re an insult. They are a fraud on democracy, on the Syrian people and on the world,” he added. France, Germany, Belgium and the Gulf States have all prohibited voting in the Syrian election. Syrian Embassies in the US and Canada have been forced to close, removing the chance for Syrians living in these countries to vote. [Syria] [Elections]
• For many in military, Shinseki remains an American hero
  By Nancy A. Youssef McClatchy Washington Bureau May 30, 2014 Updated 10 hours ago WASHINGTON — As the words left President Barack Obama’s lips on Friday that he had accepted the resignation of retired Army Gen. Eric Shinseki as secretary of veterans affairs, a pained groan emerged from a crowd of troops, veterans and civilians who’d gathered around television sets at the Pentagon. Even as calls grew in Congress for Shinseki, 71, to step down, and details emerged of an effort to misreport scheduling delays for patient appointments, many in the uniformed military had remained decidedly in Shinseki’s camp, convinced that an American hero _ maimed in Vietnam and humiliated for publicly questioning Iraq policy during the Bush administration _ was being made a scapegoat. His resignation does not fix the intractable problems that have plagued the Department of Veterans Affairs for decades, Shinseki supporters said; perhaps it will make them worse. Particularly galling to some in uniform was that Shinseki was well known for loving the soldiers he commanded and that he had risen to become the chief of staff of the Army, the highest-ranking Asian American in U.S. military history.
• Syrians in Damascus say they’ll vote for Assad
  By Jonathan S. Landay McClatchy Washington Bureau May 30, 2014 DAMASCUS, Syria — As the cavalcade rolled down the sun-baked boulevard, young men leaning from the vehicles’ windows interspersed calls to vote for President Bashar Assad with choruses of a popular song blaring from roof-mounted speakers. “Obama, Obama, Maher’s still in his pajamas!” Maher is Assad’s younger brother and reputedly one of his most ruthless military chiefs. The song is one of contempt, a nose-thumb at President Barack Obama’s failure to carry out threatened military attacks last year in retaliation for a chemical weapons attack outside Damascus. Syrians will vote on Tuesday in a presidential election that no one doubts will re-anoint Assad and extend his family’s 4-decade-long rule. Defiance of the United States is a cornerstone of the traffic-jamming processions, hagiographic media hoopla, tsunamis of banners and bunting that are the Assad campaign. “God loves Bashar. So we love him,” said Jehan Gogo, 23, who sells cellphone covers emblazoned with Assad’s slogan “Together” in central Damascus, where Assad portraits _ some the length of multistory buildings _ blanket almost every sidewalk, traffic circle, shop window and high-rise. Those of his two nominal, little-known rivals _ this is the first election in which he’s faced challengers _ are all but invisible. As Syria’s brutal civil war rages into a fourth year with no end in sight, the vote has been derided as a sham by the United States and other Western powers, and as a “parody of democracy” by Assad’s U.S.-backed opponents-in-exile. But many here are taking the election seriously as an authentic exercise in democracy. Whether genuine or out of fear of the ruling Baath Party-dominated security services, every person but one questioned by a McClatchy correspondent during a weeklong visit said they’d vote for Assad. [Syria] [Election] [Bashar Assad]
• What the Drones Strike: Targets Attacked by CIA Drones in Pakistan – Most are Houses
  By Alice K Ross and Jack Serle Global Research, May 30, 2014 The Bureau of Investigative Journalism 23 May 2014 The Bureau is publishing, for the first time, data showing the types of targets that have been reportedly attacked by CIA drones in Pakistan. The research is a joint project by the Bureau, Forensic Architecture, a research unit based at Goldsmiths University, London, and Situ Research in New York. The data feeds this interactive website mapping the strikes, the types of target attacked, and their relative scale. Download the data here This data reflects our understanding of the strikes as of May 2014. It will not be updated – so if new information emerges about the attacks, it will not be included in this dataset, although it will be included in our main drones databases. Below is a brief methodology showing how we compiled the data and the definitions we used. There is a more detailed methodology for our broader research on drones here. [UAV]

• Kerry calls Snowden a 'coward' and 'traitor'
  China.org.cn, May 29, 2014 U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry Wednesday called the whistleblower Edward Snowden a "coward" and a "traitor" in response to the latest comments Snowden made in an interview with NBC. "Edward Snowden is a coward, he is a traitor and he has betrayed his country," Kerry told NBC. "And if he wants to come home tomorrow to face the music, he can do so." "If this man is a patriot, he should stay in the United States and make his case," he said. "Patriots don't go to Russia, they don't seek asylum in Cuba, they don't seek asylum in Venezuela, they fight their cause here." "The bottom line is this is a man who has betrayed his country," Kerry said in an interview with CBS, "He should man up and come back to the United States if he has a complaint about what's the matter with American surveillance, come back here and stand in our system of justice and make his case." [Snowden] [Vituperation]
• Obama signals foreign policy shift but insists: 'America must always lead'
  • President promises less armed conflict and more diplomacy • Tells cadets: 'We have been through a long season of war' Dan Roberts in Washington The Guardian, Wednesday 28 May 2014 16.53 BST America should provide global leadership with less recourse to military might in future, Barack Obama announced on Wednesday, proposing a new foreign policy doctrine focused on soft power diplomacy and launching financial grants to fight terrorism through international partnerships instead. In a graduation speech to cadets at the US military academy in West Point, New York, the president sought to carve a middle way between the relentless US interventionism of recent decades and a growing isolationist tendency that some fear will leave the world less stable and without a dominant superpower. The much-anticipated foreign policy address came after Obama presented a delayed timetable for withdrawing troops from Afghanistan but amid growing criticism from Republicans of foreign policy “weakness” after setbacks in Syria and Ukraine. Yet the president rejected the choice between fighting wars or withdrawing from foreign challenges, arguing it was possible for the US to lead through example and by creating international alliances. “We have been through a long season of war,” he told the first West Point class to graduate since 9/11 who are unlikely to be sent immediately into combat. In future, he said: “US military action cannot be the only – or even primary – component of our leadership in every instance. Just because we have the best hammer does not mean that every problem is a nail.” [US global strategy] [Obama]
• Beyond Obama's West Point speech: a foreign puzzle, not a real foreign policy
  The president wants us to look past Afghanistan and Iraq. OK, fine: from drones to Damascus and Putin to the planet, these are parts of a not very unified whole Carne Ross theguardian.com, Wednesday 28 May 2014 17.05 BST Even before President Obama spoke to the US military academy at West Point on Wednesday, the White House trumpeted his commencement address as offering a unifying vision of US foreign policy – one that is "both interventionist and internationalist, but not isolationist or unilateral". With an introduction like that, it came as a welcome surprise that the speech was merely intelligible. I liked the anti-thoughtless-intervention line – "Just because we have the best hammer does not mean that every problem is a nail" – but much of the nearly hour-long speech was a dull checklist of world problems (and the UN Law of the Sea Convention!), most addressed by the routine oversimplifications required on such occasions. Obama's "vision" was peppered with confusing vocabulary about "realists" and "interventionists", both depicted as straw men, and too many predictable bromides about international cooperation, democracy and "human dignity". And I say this as a former speechwriter who also used to lean on such filler. There was no over-arching theme to this rhetoric, save Obama's recommitment to American exceptionalism ("with every fiber of my being") and his rejection of mindless invasions. Not much to disagree with there, but not much new either. One couldn't avoid the impression that this speech marked the end of a war-laden chapter for the US – with little clear idea of what the next chapter should really mean, save the repetitious evocation of "American leadership". The leitmotif of Obama's foreign policy – and the first item of his West Point talk – is withdrawal, as Tuesday's announcement about drawdown in Afghanistan reconfirmed. So what about the rest of Obama's foreign policy? Facts, not rhetoric, paint a picture of this administration's troubling and often counterproductive inconsistency abroad. There is some good, but there is plenty that's really bad. [Strategic incoherence] [Obama]
• At West Point, President Obama binds America’s hands on foreign affairs
  By Editorial Board, Thursday, May 29, 7:21 AM PRESIDENT OBAMA has retrenched U.S. global engagement in a way that has shaken the confidence of many U.S. allies and encouraged some adversaries. That conclusion can be heard not just from Republican hawks but also from senior officials from Singapore to France and, more quietly, from some leading congressional Democrats. As he has so often in his political career, Mr. Obama has elected to respond to the critical consensus not by adjusting policy but rather by delivering a big speech. In his address Wednesday to the graduating cadets at West Point , Mr. Obama marshaled a virtual corps of straw men, dismissing those who “say that every problem has a military solution,” who “think military intervention is the only way for America to avoid looking weak,” who favor putting “American troops into the middle of [Syria’s] increasingly sectarian civil war,” who propose “invading every country that harbors terrorist networks” and who think that “working through international institutions?.?.?. or respecting international law is a sign of weakness.” During the 2014 West Point commencement address, President Obama declared that the U.S. remains the world's most indispensable nation, even after a "long season of war," but argued for restraint before embarking on more military adventures. Few, if any, of those who question the president’s record hold such views. Instead, they are asking why an arbitrary date should be set for withdrawing all forces from Afghanistan, especially given the baleful results of the “zero option” in Iraq. They are suggesting that military steps short of the deployment of U.S. ground troops could stop the murderous air and chemical attacks by the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad. They are arguing that the United States should not be constrained by Cyprus or Bulgaria in responding to Russia’s invasion and annexation of parts of Ukraine. [Obama] [US global strategy]
• Arab world waits for Egypt
  As Egypt continues building its great state structure by electing a new president of the republic, other Arab “countries” are seeing their structures failing and their very existence threatened. Summary? Print The Arab world cannot rise again without Egypt recovering its irreplaceable role, and that may take awhile. Author Talal Salman Posted May 28, 2014 Translator(s)Rani Geha I. In Syria there’s a “president” of the republic poised to renew his mandate to start a third term while the “state” of the Syrian Arab Republic is torn apart. Turkey is looting Syria’s north, which is controlled by Islamist militias having various flags and goals. Syria’s south, which has long been the front that blocks any incursion by the Israeli enemy to the Syrian interior, is now the scene of conflict between the state’s army and armed and Islamist militias that are supported by Saudi Arabia under US supervision. The US aim is to have continuous turmoil without becoming directly responsible for Syria’s partition. What’s happening in Iraq has made the central authorities in Baghdad and Damascus join forces to face a common threat and work toward a common goal: resisting terrorism by Islamic organizations that branched from al-Qaeda. [Controlled chaos] [US global strategy]
• The Obama Doctrine: Death By a Thousand Cuts
  I was rather beguiled at first by President Obama’s commencement speech at West Point. Not just because everybody else dumped all over it, and I wanted to exercise my contrarian’s prerogative to defend the indefensible. It’s because the central premise—what I call the Obama Doctrine—is rather attractive to me: Here’s my bottom line: America must always lead on the world stage. If we don’t, no one else will. The military that you have joined is, and always will be, the backbone of that leadership. But U.S. military action cannot be the only -- or even primary -- component of our leadership in every instance. Just because we have the best hammer does not mean that every problem is a nail. President Obama’s unwillingness to employ military action against Syria or in the Ukraine is, I think, a reflection of his bedrock principle, his aversion to committing US military power unless it is absolutely necessary, a conviction that he has maintained at some cost against determined pushback by hawks within his administration, in Washington, and internationally. No more Vietnams or Iraqs. Good for him. Unfortunately, the flip side of the Obama doctrine is that the United States remains committed to a forward counterterrorism posture and US“leadership” i.e. the ability to shape events overseas even without using military power. Even when holding back on military power, there are plenty of ways for the United States to cripple a designated adversary. There’s economic sanctions; financial warfare through the international banking, economic, and trade system; there’s subversion, through the Internet, through support of dissident parties and insurrectionists; there’s proxy wars. There’s JSOC. And of course, there’s drones. And the most terrifying of all, the non-stop yammering of neo-liberal pundits advocating and excusing the latest US exercise in humanitarian intervention. In other words, the United States still reserves the right to cruelly and counterproductively f*ck up any country with any and all means short of the direct commitment of US military forces. That means plenty more Syrias. [US global strategy] [Obama] [Dysfunction] [Hillary] [Controlled chaos]
• What Obama Should Say at West Point, But Won't
  The president's biggest foreign-policy speech in a year will be showy and ambitious but can't paper over his administration's lack of focus. BY Stephen Walt MAY 27, 2014 President Obama will give the commencement address at West Point tomorrow morning. I don't know what he is going to say, of course, but I'm sure he'll say it well. The New York Times says the speech will be part of a broader administration effort to explain its handling of foreign policy, and that Obama will use this opportunity to defend his measured approach to overseas intervention and his preference for a "middle course between isolationism and military intervention." No doubt the speech will offer up the usual list of "achievements" (Osama bin Laden is dead, we're out of Iraq, etc.), and rumor has it that he's going to announce a new program of assistance for the Syrian opposition. Given the setting, it is bound to strike a patriotic tone and contain some typically soaring Obamian rhetoric. But what the president really needs to do is provide the strategic coherence that has been lacking ever since he took office in 2009. Although he seems to have recognized from the start that the United States had to reduce its global burdens in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis and the debacles in Iraq and Afghanistan, neither Obama nor his advisors ever managed to articulate and stick to a set of core strategic principles. The result has been an overly ambitious foreign-policy agenda that kept top officials busy but failed to produce significant positive results. [Strategic incoherence]
• The Revival of the Movement of Non-Aligned Countries
  By Samir Amin Global Research, May 27, 2014 If the repeated discourse of the Western media is to be believed, the idea of the revival of Non-Alignment is unrealistic. According to that discourse, all that happened in the world between 1945 and 1990 can be explained merely by the ‘cold war’ and nothing else. The Soviet Union disappeared and the page of the Cold War has been turned, and any posture analogous to what we have known has no meaning. Let us examine the ineptitude of this discourse and its incredibly dismissive prejudice – nay, even racism. What is its basis? The real story of Bandung and Non-Alignment that arose from it showed that the peoples of Asia and Africa actually seized at the time an initiative by themselves and for themselves. The reader will find in what I have written a demonstration that the Non-Alignment was already a movement of countries non aligned on globalisation ’ in contrast to the globalisation that the imperialist powers wanted to impose on countries that had regained their independence, substituting the deceased colonialism with a neocolonialism. Non-Alignment constituted a refusal to comply with the requirements of this renewed imperialist globalisation. Imperialism won the battle, for the moment at least [Imperialism] [NAM]
• Thomas Piketty's real challenge was to the FT's Rolex types
  If the FT's attack on the radical economist's 'rising inequality' thesis is right, then all the gross designer bling in its How To Spend It section can be morally justified Paul Mason The Guardian, Monday 26 May 2014 20.00 BST Rolex watch The adverts in the FT and other reputable papers – mainly for large watches, first-class air travel, portable fine art etc – should be collectively retitled How To Hide It Thomas Piketty's Capital was still No 3 on the Amazon bestseller list when the Financial Times dropped its front-page bombshell. By picking through the spreadsheets the "rock-star French economist" had placed online, the FT concluded that his key data appeared to be "constructed out of thin air". Piketty's claim that inequality in the west has risen since the 1970s is wrong, says the FT's Chris Giles. And on this basis, Piketty's view that rising inequality is the central contradiction of capitalism, and will get worse, is also wrong. It is always right to trawl through data. There is so much grossing and smoothing in economics, and so little of the realtime peer review that happens in science, that data should always be challengable. But the gleeful response to Piketty's "errors" on the rightwing Twittersphere did not happen because some FT pointy-heads discovered a few fat-finger inputs. It happened because, if Giles is right, then all the gross designer bling advertised in the FT's How To Spend It can be morally justified: it is evidence of rising social wealth in general, not the excess of a few Rolex types. But the attack does not quite come off. [Inequality]
• Syrian rebels describe U.S.-backed training in Qatar in new documentary
  By Nancy A. Youssef McClatchy Washington Bureau May 26, 2014 WASHINGTON — With reports indicating that forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar Assad are gaining ground in that country’s brutal civil war, moderate Syrian rebels have told a visiting journalist that the United States is arranging their training in Qatar. In a documentary to be aired Tuesday night, the rebels describe their clandestine journey from the Syrian battlefield to meet with their American handlers in Turkey and then travel on to Qatar, where they say they received training in the use of sophisticated weapons and fighting techniques, including, one rebel said, “how to finish off soldiers still alive after an ambush.” The interviews are the latest evidence that after more than three years of warfare, the United States has stepped up the provision of lethal aid to the rebels. In recent months, at least five rebel units have posted videos showing their members firing U.S.-made TOW anti-tank missiles at Syrian positions. The weapons are believed to have come from Saudi Arabia, but experts on international arms transfers have told McClatchy that they could not have been given to the rebels without the approval of the Obama administration. [Syria] [Intervention] [Outsourcing]
• Week ahead: Syrian opposition scores in Senate defense bill
  The Syrian opposition's recent lobbying blitz on Capitol Hill is beginning to pay off, with the Senate's defense bill recognizing the Western-backed rebels as a US ally in the war on terror. Summary? Print A look at the Middle East issues Congress will be addressing the week of May 26. Author Julian Pecquet Posted May 23, 2014 The National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) "authorizes the Secretary of Defense to provide equipment, training, supplies, and defense services to assist vetted members of the Syrian opposition," according to a summary of the bill released May 23. The language is included in a section of the summary that touts the bill's potential to enhance "the capability of the U.S. armed forces and the security forces of allied and friendly nations to defeat al Qaeda, its affiliates and other violent extremist organizations" — a symbolic victory for the beleaguered opposition. "This is a momentous occasion," Syrian National Coalition (SNC) adviser Oubai Shahbandar told Al-Monitor. "This is the first stop in clearly defining the convergence of American national security interests with strengthening the Free Syrian Army [FSA], which is actively fighting al-Qaeda and actively fighting Iranian-backed international terrorist forces in Syria." [Strategic incoherence] [Governance]
• Ukip have torn up the map
  After their success in the local elections, Ukip are poised to wreak havoc in 2015. Robert Ford and Ian Warren explain where and how the battle will be fought By Robert Ford and Ian Warren 8:41PM BST 26 May 2014 Nigel Farage scored a spectacular triumph in the early hours of Monday morning, leading Ukip to the first nationwide victory for a new political party in almost a century. Coming on top of Ukip’s success in the local elections, it was hailed as heralding the age of “four-party politics” in England. Mr Farage had shattered the mould of British democracy, and thrown next year’s general election – already set to be the closest and most unpredictable for a generation – into turmoil. These claims may seem exaggerated. But the more you look at the data – the further you drill down into how people actually voted on Thursday – the more you can see that predictions that Ukip will fade away are a case of wishful thinking. It is now crystal clear that the party really does have the potential to cause chaos in 2015, affecting all three parties in unforeseen and unpredictable ways. To see why, it helps to understand what matters most about these results, at least in terms of the general election. For, while Ukip’s European triumph has stolen the headlines, their less dramatic advances at local level will ultimately be more important. [Migration]
• Philantrocapitalism: Gates, the World’s Largest and Most Powerful Foundation
  By Jacob Levich Global Research, May 22, 2014 “You’re trying to find the places where the money will have the most leverage, how you can save the most lives for the dollar, so to speak,” Pelley remarked. “Right. And transform the societies,” Gates replied.1 In 2009 the self-designated “Good Club” – a gathering of the world’s wealthiest people whose collective net worth then totaled some $125 billion – met behind closed doors in New York City to discuss a coordinated response to threats posed by the global financial crisis. Led by Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, and David Rockefeller, the group resolved to find new ways of addressing sources of discontent in the developing world, in particular “overpopulation” and infectious diseases.2 The billionaires in attendance committed to massive spending in areas of interest to themselves, heedless of the priorities of national governments and existing aid organizations.3\ [NGO] [Capitalism]
• Russia, China veto draft resolution on Syria
  China.org.cn, May 23, 2014 Russia and China, two permanent members of the UN Security Council, on Thursday vetoed a draft resolution to refer the Syrian civil war to the International Criminal Court (ICC). Russia and China, two permanent members of the UN Security Council, on Thursday wielded veto power over a draft resolution which is intended to refer the Syrian civil war to the International Criminal Court (ICC).[Xinhua] 13 members on the security council voted in favor of the draft, proposed by France. "The draft resolution has not been adopted owing to the negative votes of permanent members of the council," said Oh Joon, the South Korean permanent representative to the United Nations, who holds the rotating council presidency for the month of May. The Thursday vote at the 15-nation UN body made it a fourth double veto by Russia and China on a West-drafted resolution on Syria. Syria is not a state party to the Rome Statute which established the ICC, so the only way the Middle East country can be referred to The Hague-based tribunal is by the Security Council. Under the UN Charter, the adoption of a draft resolution requires nine votes in favor and the absence of a negative vote by any of the five permanent members of the Security Council. [Syria] [ICC] [UNUS]
• Javad Zarif on Iran’s Nuclear Negotiations
  Posted by Robin Wright I first met Mohammad Javad Zarif, the Iranian foreign minister, in the nineteen-eighties, when he was a junior member of the Iranian delegation at the United Nations. This week’s issue of The New Yorker includes a Profile based on twenty-five years of conversations with him, including four in Tehran and New York since last September. Zarif is now the pivotal broker in nuclear talks between his government and six world powers—Britain, China, France, Germany, Russia, and the United States. After eight months of diplomacy, the serious drafting of terms for a long-term deal to insure that Iran does not acquire a nuclear weapon began last week, in Vienna. The deadline for reaching an agreement is July 20th. A nuclear deal would almost certainly affect Iran’s political future. “If we can ascertain and show to our people that the West is ready to deal with Iran on the basis of mutual respect and mutual interests and equal footing, then it will have an impact on almost every aspect of Iran’s foreign policy behavior—and some aspects of Iran’s domestic policy,” Zarif said. Iran and the six powers must address points of contention on virtually every aspect of a nuclear deal, from the future of suspect facilities to accounting for past programs, but Zarif has been noticeably upbeat about prospects for a breakthrough. I asked him how difficult it would be to reach an agreement. The red lines—particularly between Washington and Tehran—often seem insurmountable. “It’s going to be both hard and easy,” he said. “Easy, because ostensibly we have a convergence of views on the objectives. We don’t want nuclear weapons, and they say the objective is to insure Iran does not have nuclear weapons. So, if that is the objective, in my view it’s already achieved. We just have to find mechanisms for agreeing on the process.” [Iran] [Acceptance]
• Misreading Syria
  While Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad prepares to stand for re-election on June 3, and his forces edge toward military victory, it is no secret that the Barack Obama administration initially underestimated their staying power. Summary? Print The United States misjudged the ability of the Syrian army to evolve and adapt, with assistance from Hezbollah and Iran, leading to faulty predictions that Bashar al-Assad’s days were numbered. Author Richard Sale Posted May 22, 2014 One former intelligence official said that Assad’s advances were reaching the stage where they might prove hard to reverse, and despite the mounting violence, Assad was staying and there was no end in sight for the war. In August 2011, President Obama, viewing the determined onslaught of Assad on his domestic protesters, said that Assad should step aside. By February, Obama changed his tone and, in an interview with The Atlantic Monthly, said, "It is our estimation that (Assad's) days are numbered. It's a matter not of if but when." Andrew Terrill of the Strategic Studies Institute offered a rationale for this change of tone, suggesting, “Obama's statement that Assad's days were numbered may have been a vague statement of solidarity with the Syrian demonstrators rather than a prediction. Sort of like a lot of 'dustbin of history' statements that were being made.” In 2012, the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) predicted that Assad would remain in power until at least early 2013, according to public remarks by David Shedd, a senior DIA analyst. To Joshua Landis, head of the Center of Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Oklahoma, such views represent a trap for the unwary: “We did get some fairly high-ranking defectors early on in the uprising who we thought could help us sort out questions of morale in the military, but they were likely to spin the information to make it sound like everyone was on the verge of defection if given the right incentives.” Wayne White, deputy director of INR/NESA (Bureau of Intelligence and Research/Near East and South Asia) at the State Department, added, “I think that the advocates of the hollow Syrian army theory were wrong for a couple of reasons. The defections of some units truly did hurt the Syrian government a bit, but there were enough loyalist units and militias for the security forces to continue to function even if large numbers of Sunnis defected. They didn’t. The Hezbollah troops were also immensely helpful.” [Syria] [Subversion] [outsourcing] [Intelligence]
• High speed silk roads: the birth of a Eurasian century
  Pepe Escobar and Tom Engelhardt 23 May 2014 No amount of US "pivoting" can prevent the emergence of a multipolar, multi-powered world along a Eurasian axis that challenges western neoliberal hegemoy. Consider this: our advanced robotic creatures, those drone aircraft grimly named Predators and Reapers, are still blowing away human beings from Yemen to Pakistan. Meanwhile, the Pentagon is now testing out a 14,000-pound drone advanced enough to take off and land on its own on the deck of an aircraft carrier -- no human pilot involved. (As it happens, it’s only a "demonstrator" and, at a cost of $1.4 billion, can’t do much else.) While we’re talking about the skies, who could forget that the US military is committed to buying 2,400 F-35 Joint Strike Fighters, already dubbed, amid cost overruns of every sort, "the most expensive weapons system in history." The bill for them: nearly $400 billion or twice what it cost to put a man on the moon. In similar fashion, the US Navy, with 10 aircraft carriers afloat on a planet on which no other nation has more than two, is now building a new class of “supercarriers.” The first of them, the USS Gerald R. Ford, is due for delivery in 2016 at an estimated cost of more than $12 billion. It, too, is experiencing the sort of cost overruns and performance problems that now seem to accompany all new US weapons systems. In the meantime, Washington has dispatched one of its littoral combat ships (a troubled $34 billion weapons system) to Singapore; is flying manned aircraft and drones over the Nigerian bush; and as for building national security state infrastructure of just about any sort, seldom has a problem getting Congress to pony up - as in the $69 million now in the 2015 defense budget for the latest prison being constructed at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, meant to house just 15 “high-value” prisoners. Similarly, when it comes to the infrastructure needed to listen in on the world, the sky’s the limit, including an almost $2 billion data center built for the National Security Agency in Bluffdale, Utah. In such "infrastructural" realms, the US is today without serious competition. On the other hand, if we’re talking about purely civilian infrastructure, just consider that, at this very moment, Congress is dilly-dallying while the crucial Highway Trust Fund that keeps American roads and interstates in shape is “heading for a cliff” and projected to go bankrupt in August. This from the country that once turned the car into a poetic symbol of freedom. Meanwhile, the nation's overall infrastructure, from levees and dams to wastewater and aviation, now regularly gets a grade of D+ from the American Society of Civil Engineers. As a rising power in the nineteenth century, the US moved toward global status on the basis of an ambitious program of canal building and then of government-sponsored transcontinental railroads. Jump a century and a half and the country that, until recently, was being called the planet’s “sole superpower” has yet to build a single mile of high-speed rail. Not one. Even a prospective line between Los Angeles and San Francisco, which looked like it might be constructed, is now blocked coming and going. If, however, you happen to be looking for a twenty-first century rising power that has put its money on the American (rail)road to success, check out China. When Chinese state expenditures are discussed in the US, the American concern is always military spending (definitely on the rise), but China’s domestic spending on high-speed rail is staggering. As of 2012, the country already had a 10,000-kilometer network, including the longest line in the world, and it’s expected to hit 15,000 kilometers by the end of 2015, not to speak of - as Pepe Escobar notes today - high-speed “silk roads” that could, in the end, reach across Eurasia. Someday, if Chinese engineering dreamers are to be believed, there might even be a two-day8,000-mile line from Beijing via the longest underwater tunnel ever built through Canada to the United States. [Infrastructure] [Militarisation] Decline] [Railways]
• Boko Haram and the West’s Military Intervention in Nigeria
  By Kola Ibrahim Global Research, May 21, 2014 The kidnapping of hundreds of schoolgirls in Chibok town some three weeks ago has drawn widespread global opprobrium. Instinctively, Nigerians and people globally, pricked by human feeling, have seen the latest barbaric onslaught on poor Nigerians by the murderous Boko Haram terrorists, as an assault on human dignity and safety. To most people, this terror sect has reached its crescendo with the abduction of innocent schoolgirls. Jonathan Government’s Stunning Callousness Ironically, the Nigerian government, led by Goodluck Jonathan did not see reason why it must be bothered about kidnap of schoolgirls. For it, the logic that this is not the first time justifies its lukewarm attitude. This explains government’s careless attitude to the plight of the pupils and their parents. Even at the peak of the outcry by the parents to the government, the Jonathan government did not issue a single statement, at least to console the parents. On the contrary, it exploited the issue for its political interests. For instance, while the government did not sanction senior security chiefs who misled the nation by claiming that most of the schoolgirls have been rescued, many protesters, especially in the north were illegally arrested.
• Cracking The “Conspiracy Theories’” Psycholinguistic Code: The Witch Hunt against Independent Research and Analysis
  By James F. Tracy Global Research, May 21, 2014 A new crusade appears to be underway to target independent research and analysis available via alternative news media. This March saw the release of “cognitive infiltration” advocate Cass Sunstein’s new book, Conspiracy Theories and Other Dangerous Ideas. In April, the confirmed federal intelligence-gathering arm, Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), released a new report, “Agenda 21: The UN, Sustainability, and Right Wing Conspiracy Theory.” Most recently, Newsweek magazine carried a cover story, titled, “The Plots to Destroy America: Conspiracy Theories Are a Clear and Present Danger.” As its discourse suggests, this propaganda campaign is using the now familiar “conspiracy theory” label, as outlined in Central Intelligence Agency Document 1035-960, the 1967 memo laying out a strategy for CIA “media assets” to counter criticism of the Warren Commission and attack independent investigators of President John F. Kennedy’s assassination. At that time the targets included attorney Mark Lane and New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison, who were routinely defamed and lampooned in major US news outlets. Declassified government documents have proven Lane and Garrison’s allegations of CIA-involvement in the assassination largely accurate. Nevertheless, the prospect of being subject to the conspiracy theorist smear remains a potent weapon for intimidating authors, journalists, and scholars from interrogating complex events, policies, and other potentially controversial subject matter. As the title of Newsweek’s feature story indicates, a primary element of contemporary propaganda campaigns using the conspiracy theory/ist label is to suggest that citizens’ distrust of government imperatives and activities tends toward violent action.
• Prince Charles proves he's a chip off the old block after Hitler-Putin gaffe
  Heir to British throne compares Russian leader to Nazi dictator in 'private' remark that stirs up storms from Halifax to Moscow Robert Booth, Matthew Weaver and Rowena Mason The Guardian, Wednesday 21 May 2014 21.34 BST It was, said Marianne Ferguson, "just a little remark. I didn't think it was going to make such a big uproar." But – after the Prince of Wales told the 78-year-old during a royal visit to Canada that he thought Vladimir Putin was behaving like Adolf Hitler – Downing Street, Buckingham Palace, Ed Miliband, the Kremlin and even Nigel Farage were sucked into a controversy that sparked a call for Charles to abdicate. Ferguson, a volunteer at the Canadian Museum of Immigration in Halifax, had told the heir to the throne about her flight from Poland to Canada in 1939 and how the family she left behind perished in Nazi camps. He then reportedly said: "And now Putin is doing just about the same as Hitler." In a flash of royal diplomacy worthy of his father's famous gaffes, Charles had blundered far beyond his usual "meddling" interventions in architecture, the environment and medicine into a simmering international conflict. [Russia confrontation] [Putin]
• Indonesian presidential election suddenly looks like a real race
  By Fergus Jensen and Kanupriya Kapoor JAKARTA Mon May 19, 2014 11:52am BST (Reuters) - Indonesia's presidential election abruptly turned into a tight two-horse race on Monday after the country's second-largest party suddenly switched its support away from frontrunner Joko "Jokowi" Widodo to his main rival. With Golkar's substantial support, ex-general Prabowo Subianto now has a slightly larger coalition to campaign for him ahead of the July 9 election than frontrunner Jokowi. [Human rights]
• US ambassador says Libyan general is going after 'terrorists'
  WASHINGTON — US Ambassador to Libya Deborah Jones said Wednesday that she would not condemn the actions of Gen. Khalifa Hifter, a former officer in Moammar Gadhafi’s army who has declared war on Islamic “terrorists” in Libya and forced the country to call new parliamentary elections for June 25. Author Barbara Slavin Posted May 21, 2014 Speaking at the Stimson Center in Washington, Jones repeated US State Department assertions that the Barack Obama administration did not support and had no advance knowledge of Hifter’s actions — which included sending forces to kill scores of Islamist fighters in eastern Libya last week and storming Libya’s parliament in Tripoli over the weekend. But she added that “it’s very difficult to step up and condemn” Hifter given that his forces are “going after very specific groups … on our list of terrorists.”
  “I am not going to come out and condemn blanketly what he did,” she said.
  Hifter defected from Gadhafi’s military two decades ago after a failed war in Chad and moved to northern Virginia where he acquired US citizenship. He has claimed that the US government backed him in the 1990s in unsuccessful efforts to overturn the Gadhafi regime. Karim Mezran, an expert on Libya at the Atlantic Council, told Al-Monitor that there are “widespread rumors that Egypt and the United Arab Emirates” are backing Hifter in hopes that he will expunge the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamist elements from the Libyan government and even take power as Abdel Fattah al-Sisi did in Egypt after ousting President Mohammed Morsi. “If they can conquer the east, the military balance will be in their favor,” Mezran said of Hifter’s forces. [Libya] [CIA] [US global strategy]
• The Pre-Eminent Historian of War
  Gabriel Kolko, 1932-2014 by Jeffrey st. Clair We received word this morning that our friend and long-time CounterPunch writer Gabriel Kolko died yesterday at his home in Amsterdam. Kolko, author of The Triumph of Conservatism, Anatomy of a War: the United States, Vietnam and the Modern Historical Experience, and Century of War: Politics, Conflicts and Society Since 1914, was one of the pre-eminent historians of our time. Kolko was born in Paterson, New Jersey in 1932. He attended Kent State University and received his doctorate in history from Harvard. Along with Saul Landau, Kolko was one of the circle of historians trained at University of Wisconsin by the great William Appleman Williams. Kolko taught history for many years at York University in Toronto. He moved to Amsterdam soon after his retirement. Kolko’s books on the progressive era, the Cold War, Vietnam and the war on terror stand as some of the most trenchant and revealing documents of our time. For the past few years, Gabe had been working feverishly on an assessment of Vietnam in the decades after the war. Kolko had a profound influence on my thinking and it was a privilege to publish his writing over the last 15 years. A fuller appraisal of Kolko’s life and work is forthcoming.
• We Have Always Been At War With Eastasia…Or Is It Eurasia?
  Current US China policy seems to be “Who Needs Russia? We’ve got…The Philippines!” Unless President Obama has absolute faith in the ability of the United States and the Asian democracies to restrain the PRC, there would seem to be some disturbing developments for the United States in Asia. First of all, the People’s Republic of China parked its HYSY 981 oil rig in waters that Vietnam claims as its Exclusive Economic Zone, triggering a heated response from Vietnam, anguished writhing from ASEAN, and a stern “don’t engage in provocations” fingerwag from the United States. The PRC, however, is not yielding, implicitly highlighting the fact that the United States is failing in its self-proclaimed mission to assure peace and prosperity in the South China Sea (as I pointed out in a previous piece, the PRC’s oil-rig shenanigans accentuate the essential sovereignty/EEZ character of disputes between China and its South China Sea neighbors, and undercut the “freedom of navigation” hobbyhorse that the US has crafted to ride to the rescue of the SCS). [US global strategy] [NCW] [China Russia]
• The Globalization of Special Forces
  The Art of War By Manlio Dinucci Global Research, May 20, 2014 ilmanifesto.it Region: Middle East & North Africa, sub-Saharan Africa Special Forces have been designed to use military means to conduct unconventional warfare operations, mainly to cause riots and murder political opponents. Washington already secretly used them in 78 countries, while denying the very existence of their missions, although their budget exceeds 10 billion dollars annually. The globalization of these forces should enable it to expand its invisible dictatorship. An accident, sometimes, permits the discovery of a “secret war”. This is what happened in Yemen, where, at Sana, a member of U.S. Special Forces and CIA shot two men and killed them. According to the official version, these were simply two Al Qaeda terrorists they wanted to remove. The incident, far from simple, sparked a wave of protests against the government, already under indictment because it allows CIA drones to operate in Yemen starting from a Saudi base. The Pentagon ­ confirms the New York Times - has intensified the actions of its special forces in Yemen. Yemen is a country of great importance for its strategic position on the Strait of Bab el-Mandeb between the Indian Ocean and the Red Sea, crossed by major oil and trade routes linking Asia and Europe. Djibouti, in front of Yemen, 30 kms away on the African coast, is where Joint Task Force – Horn of Africa is parked, consisting of approximately 4,000 men of the U.S. Special Forces. With helicopters and special aircraft, they carry out night raids, particularly in neighboring Somalia and Yemen, flanked by elite contractors and technical experts of the assassination shooter category. Special forces available to the Africa Command (AFRICOM) operate in Nigeria and many other African countries. They are part of joint operations Command (USSOCOM ), which, after being used by the Republican Bush especially in Afghanistan and Iraq, has now taken on a new importance with the Democratic Obama. The Obama administration – wrote the Washington Post - “prefers covert action rather than the use of conventional force.” USSOCOM commander, Admiral William McRaven, declared a month agot to a Senate committee that U.S. special operations forces operate in 78 countries worldwide, either by direct action or by training local units. [Special forces]
• CIA: No more vaccination campaigns in spy operations
  Hosam Katan/Reuters - An activist health worker administers a polio vaccination to a child in Aleppo. By Lena H. Sun, Tuesday, May 20, 10:46 AM E-mail the writer Three years after the CIA used an immunization survey as a cover in its hunt for Osama bin Laden, the White House has promised that the agency will never again use a vaccination campaign in its operations, an official said Monday. Responding to a letter from the deans of 12 U.S. public health schools, Lisa Monaco, the assistant to the president for homeland security and counterterrorism, informed them last week that the CIA will no longer conduct such campaigns, White House spokeswoman Caitlin Hayden said. [NGO]
• Global crisis on torture exposed by new worldwide campaign
  13 May 2014 Over the last five years, Amnesty International has documented on torture and other forms of ill-treatment in at least 141 countries. Over the last five years, Amnesty International has documented on torture and other forms of ill-treatment in at least 141 countries. © Amnesty International At a Glance •Amnesty International has reported on torture or other ill-treatment in 141 countries over the past five years. •New global survey of more than 21,000 people in 21 countries across every continent reveals fear of torture exists in all these countries. •Nearly half of respondents fear torture if taken into custody. •More than 80% want strong laws to protect them from torture. •More than a third believe torture can be justified. Governments around the world are two-faced on torture - prohibiting it in law, but facilitating it in practice. ” Salil Shetty, Amnesty International's Secretary General. Amnesty International has accused governments around the world of betraying their commitments to stamp out torture, three decades after the ground-breaking Convention Against Torture was adopted by the UN in 1984. “Governments around the world are two-faced on torture - prohibiting it in law, but facilitating it in practice” said Salil Shetty, Amnesty International’s Secretary General, as he launched Stop Torture, Amnesty International’s latest global campaign to combat widespread torture and other ill-treatment in the modern world. “Torture is not just alive and well – it is flourishing in many parts of the world. As more governments seek to justify torture in the name of national security, the steady progress made in this field over the last thirty years is being eroded.” [Torture]
• Washington spends £200m creating intelligence hub in Britain
  RAF Croughton, near Milton Keynes, is to have 1,250 staff and will cover US operations in Africa Cahal Milmo Sunday 18 May 2014 Washington is to spend almost £200m to turn one of its British military bases – already implicated in mass surveillance and drone strikes – into one of its largest intelligence hubs outside the mainland United States. RAF Croughton, a US Air Force (USAF) base near Milton Keynes, which has a direct cable link to Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) at Cheltenham, is to be the site for an ultra-secure intelligence centre staffed by up to 1,250 personnel and covering operations in Africa, a current focus for US counterterrorism activities. The $317m (£189m) project, which includes an installation for the Defense Intelligence Agency, the Pentagon's main military espionage service, underlines RAF Croughton's position as a centre for clandestine and classified US communications in Britain. [Bases][Intelligence] [Surveillance]
• Inside America's Shadow War on Terror—and Why It Will Never End
  The American war in Afghanistan will end. Perpetual U.S. war against jihadis will not. A rare look at the secret forces nowhere near finished with the fight. By James Kitfield May 15, 2014 The muezzin's call to predawn prayers had not yet woken the seaside Somali town of Barawe when a lone figure stepped out of a two-story villa near the water's edge. In the darkness of a walled compound, he smoked a cigarette, the glow of ash rhythmically illuminating his face. It was an effect that was heightened by the night-vision goggles focused on him. When the man stepped back inside, the commander of Navy SEAL Team Six, his own face hidden under black grease, directed his commandos to take up their positions and storm the villa. The date was Oct. 5, 2013, and inside was a Kenyan named Abdikadir Mohamed Abdikadir, or Ikrimah—the leader of al-Shabaab suspected of masterminding the gruesome killing of non-Muslims at Nairobi's Westgate Mall. [Global insurgency] [Permanent War]
• Khalifa Hifter, the ex-general leading a revolt in Libya, spent years in exile in Northern Virginia
  (Anja Niedringhaus/ AP ) - Then-senior rebel commander Khalifa Hifter leaves a press conference in Benghazi in March 2011. By Abigail Hauslohner and Sharif Abdel Kouddous, Published: May 20 | Updated: Wednesday, May 21, 3:28 AM Two weeks before he masterminded an assault on two major Libyan cities, Khalifa Hifter hosted a dinner to court a potential ally. Hifter was normally a confident man, a former general who had gone on to spend years in Northern Virginia as an exiled opposition leader before returning home for the 2011 Libyan revolution. But that night he seemed unsteady. It said the decision was aimed at keeping the country stable after six months of sometimes violent political unrest. It denied a coup d’etat was underway. The former general was frustrated with violence associated with the militias, a friend says. “Do you think I’m committing suicide?” Hifter asked his new friend and supporter, businessman Fathallah Bin Ali, as they dined in the eastern city of Benghazi. Today, Hifter, 71, is leading what may be the most serious challenge to the Libyan government since the overthrow of Moammar Gaddafi in 2011. Attacks by Hifter’s forces on rival militias in Benghazi and Tripoli in recent days have left more than 70 people dead and dozens more injured. Militiamen loyal to him have overrun parliament. Libya may now be sliding into civil war. On Monday, additional militias threw their weight behind Hifter, including those at an air force base in the far-eastern city of Tobruk, fighters who have occupied swaths of the country’s oil infrastructure, and members of an important Benghazi militia. Meanwhile, fighters from the powerful city-state of Misurata said they would soon move on Tripoli to counter Hifter’s assault. Hifter had plotted his operation for months, friends say. His goal is to rid the country of the Islamist militias that he accuses of terrorizing the country, assassinating and kidnapping their political rivals, in the three years since they all fought on the same side to oust a dictator. Libya’s weak central government has failed to form a unified army and police force from the scores of well-armed militias that emerged from the revolution. And it has failed to stop the murders and kidnappings that have plagued this oil-rich country. That has led to an explosive situation in the young democracy. “At this point, people are desperate,” said Bilal Bettamer, a 24-year-old Benghazi resident who organized a mass demonstration against the Islamist militias in the city in 2012. He said he was willing to trust Hifter, “if he proves to be successful, and he proves that it’s not just for the personal glory.” [Outsourcing] [CIA] [Libya]
• Iran is at breaking point under US sanctions – and its leaders feel the heat
  Despite talk of a defiant 'resistance economy', the consequences may be dire if a nuclear deal with the west does not come soon Simon Tisdall in Tehran theguardian.com, Sunday 18 May 2014 14.32 BST Street vendor in central Tehran A woman buys fruit from a street vendor in central Tehran. Signs of improvement in Iran's economy after Rouhani came to office have given way to renewed gloom. Photograph: Behrouz Mehri/AFP/Getty Images At the car repair shop on Soreana Avenue in central Tehran, Homayoon is happy to talk; after all, there is not much else to do. Business is bad, he says, as he wipes his hands with an oily cloth. It's the same for everybody. "It's not good at all. Petrol is expensive, so people drive less, so they break down less," Homayoon says. Wearing a grubby red T-shirt advertising Axol Lubes, he laughs and shrugs when asked whether American sanctions are to blame for high prices and lack of customers. "Of course it's sanctions!" interrupts Ali, another mechanic. "The economy is sick. My friends have small businesses like this one. Electricity is up 25%, water up 30%, petrol up 75%, business tax up, VAT up. Interest rates are 25%, so they can't borrow. They can't handle it," he says. "I don't know about those things," says Homayoon, still smiling. "That's for the government to decide. I like the Americans. They're great. I don't care what they say at Friday prayers." What they say at Friday prayers is less forgiving. A day earlier, Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati, one of the Islamic Republic's most venerable imams, treated the weekly televised gathering at Tehran University stadium to a stern anti-American diatribe. With white beard, flowing robe, turban and walking stick, Jannati is every inch the mullah – a Shia fundamentalist cleric of the old school. He preaches under the slogan "Any diversion from the true path will be the path of accursed Satan". Today, Jannati is treading the path of self-sufficiency and what the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, calls the resistance economy – Iran's supposed answer to the crushing American-led oil, banking and trade embargoes. Iran must make what it cannot buy abroad and learn the skills it needs, he says. "Workers and teachers are the backbone of our society. We should be self-sufficient in all areas of the economy and in all fields." In Egypt and now in Ukraine, the US has toppled elected presidents and installed its "favourites", Jannati says. Fortunately, Russia has foiled America's Kiev plot. But his dire implication is plain: Iran may be next. [Sanctions] [Iran] [US negotiating]
• Wealth of Britain's richest 1,000 people hits new high of £519bn
  'Astonishing' year for richest Britons sees fortunes rise 15.4%, according to Sunday Times Rich List Julia Kollewe theguardian.com, Sunday 18 May 2014 11.57 BST Queen Elizabeth The Queen had a good year, adding £10m to her personal fortune, the list showed. Photograph: Steve Parsons/PA The combined fortune of Britain's richest 1,000 people has hit a new high of £519bn – equivalent to a third of the nation's economic output, and double the figure of five years ago. The worth of Britain's rich elite is up 15.4% from last year's total of £450bn, according to the Sunday Times Rich List. Philip Beresford, who compiled the rankings, said: "I've never seen such a phenomenal rise in personal wealth as the growth in the fortunes of Britain's 1,000 richest people over the past year. The richest people in Britain have had an astonishing year." [Inequality]
• In Venezuela, fears that U.S. sanctions could rally public support for unpopular government
  By Emilia Diaz-Struckand Nick Miroff, Sunday, May 18, 10:15 AM E-mail the writer CARACAS, Venezuela — Even as frustrated opposition leaders iced their talks with President Nicolas Maduroin the past week, they expressed little support for possible U.S. sanctions against top Venezuelan officials and business associates of his government. With Maduro’s escalating crackdown on anti-government protesters bringing new allegations of abuse, several U.S. lawmakers have proposed targeted sanctions to freeze the assets of high-level Venezuelan security officials and other key figures in the Maduro government while also barring them from receiving U.S. visas. “We are going to sanction and punish and name and shame individuals responsible for human rights violations,” said Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), co-sponsor of a Senate bill to bring sanctions. The top State Department official for the hemisphere, Roberta Jacobsen, testified in a Senate hearing this month that Venezuelan opposition leaders were advising against sanctions. But when those leaders denied making any such request, she retracted her statements, saying she was confused during the hearing. But analysts say there are several reasons that calls for sanctions in Washington appear to be drawing a tepid response in Caracas from opponents of the Maduro government. With Venezuela’s economic crisis deepening and polls showing support for Maduro dropping to its lowest level yet, the threat of U.S. sanctions could provide an opportunity for the president to “change the subject,” said Rafael Romero, a political scientist at the Central University of Venezuela. “Right now, everyone is talking about crime, food shortages, the students and their protests,” he said, but U.S. sanctions would give Maduro a chance to rally his base by “blaming outside interference and foreign meddling.” [Sanctions] [Unintended consequences]
• Cold War Obama-Style
  by Andrew Levine Is a new Cold War looming? It seems so. This shouldn’t be happening, but it is. The confusion that followed the end of the old Cold War is one reason why. That confusion has been a problem for the anti-imperialist left. While the Cold War was on, there was seldom any need to fall back on principles. Then it was easy for right thinking, well-informed people to side with insurgencies fighting imperial domination; that was what common decency required. This has not been the case in recent years. The empire’s stewards in the Obama administration and in the military-national security state complex are taking full advantage. So are ostensibly independent NGOs. It is a risky business – made all the riskier by the cluelessness of the principals. On Team Obama, they know not what they do. There is a more general problem as well: navigating one’s way through the present, as events unfold, is bound to seem complicated, even when, it is not. It is only in retrospect that the complications melt away. The past, after all, is over. The future is open and how it goes depends, in part, on what we do. Knowing what to do at the moment when events are unfolding requires sound and quick judgment; something in rare supply. It is therefore wise to be wary of comparisons between the present and the past. With this caution in mind, I would nevertheless hazard that, some two and a half decades ago, taking sides did indeed become more complicated. [Imperialism] [MISCOM]
• Fearing militia control of Libya’s airports, U.S. moves troops to Sicily in case evacuation needed
  By Nancy A. Youssef McClatchy Washington BureauMay 16, 2014 The damage in front of the Benghazi, Libya, offices of the U.S.-funded al Hurra news organization is seen June 14, 2013, after someone detonated an explosive in front of its office NANCY A. YOUSSEF — MCT WASHINGTON — Alarmed by developments in Libya, the United States this week moved 200 troops to a base in Sicily so that they could respond more quickly if the U.S. needs to evacuate its embassy in Tripoli, two administration officials have told McClatchy. The troop move is the latest acknowledgment from the Obama administration that three years after a NATO bombing campaign helped topple the government of Moammar Gadhafi, conditions in the oil-producing country are deteriorating and security concerns that previously were confined to Benghazi and Libya’s east have spread to Tripoli, the capital, and the country’s west. Of special concern is that Islamist militias could easily close Tripoli’s airport, complicating any effort to evacuate U.S. diplomats if the situation deteriorates further. Militias also are in position to seize control of Libya’s other airports, including the one in Benghazi, where militants in 2012 attacked U.S. diplomatic facilities, killing four Americans including the ambassador, Christopher Stevens. [Outsourcing] [Unintended consequences] [Libya]
• U.S. “Political” Breakout Demand Could Derail Nuclear Talks
  Analysis by Gareth Porter Reprint | WASHINGTON, May 15 2014 (IPS) - As diplomats began drafting a comprehensive agreement on the Iranian nuclear programme and Western sanctions in Vienna Tuesday, U.S. officials were poised to demand a drastic cut in Iran’s enrichment capabilities that is widely expected to deadlock the negotiations. Iran is almost certain to reject the basic concept that it should reduce the number of its centrifuges to a fraction of its present total, and the resulting collapse of the talks could lead to a much higher level of tensions between the United States and Iran. The Obama administration’s highly risky diplomatic gambit rests on the concept of “breakout time”, defined as the number of months it would take Iran to accumulate enough weapons grade uranium for a single nuclear weapon. The Barack Obama administration’s highly risky diplomatic gambit rests on the concept of “breakout time”, defined as the number of months it would take Iran to accumulate enough weapons grade uranium for a single nuclear weapon. Both Secretary of State John Kerry and former U.S. proliferation official Robert Einhorn have explained the demand that Iran give up the vast majority of its centrifuges as necessary to increase Iran’s “breakout time” to at least six months, and perhaps even much longer. [US Negotiating] [Iran]
• Syrian Conflict and the Crisis in Ukraine – the Proof of US Duplicity
  The successful resistance Damascus has shown to the forces of internal opposition, backed by neighboring countries and Western powers has started to gradually move the tides in favor of the Syrian President Bashar al-Assad . It would seem that three years of war against terrorists and mercenaries, along with enduring the sanctions imposed by the West and a number of Arab countries, would have caused the Assad regime to collapse, despite the support Russia and Iran had been giving it. But as of now there’s no implications that his rule in Damascus can be effectively compromised, one way or another. Washington, Riyadh and Doha, along with a number of high-profile French diplomats, predicted the imminent fall of the Syrian government and members of the Syrian opposition couldn’t wait to witness it firsthand. How surprisingly naive were the assumptions that the Assad regime would collapse like a house of cards, and detachments of armed rebels would succeed in breaking through the defensive lines of Damascus. And now, three years later, despite hundreds of thousands dead or missing, despite the fact that millions of Syrians have become refugees, despite the incalculable damage to the Syrian economy, the country and its legitimate authorities are still standing tall. And Bashar Assad is not going anywhere. Moreover, he is preparing for the presidential elections, provoking outbursts of anger among the ranks of the Syrian opposition and his external enemies who reckon that these elections will provide his rule even more legitimacy. The Syrian army is pursuing new victories, and now the opposition’s actions are mainly limited to negotiating for escape routes for the remnants of its militants, as was the case last week with a symbolic recapture of the “capital of the revolution” – the city of Homs.
  Apparently , the success of Bashar al-Assad can be explained by two factors.
  First — it was definitely affected by a strategic decision of the US not to seek the direct military overthrow of the regime , as it did with Saddam Hussein in Iraq and Muammar Gaddafi in Libya. The American think tanks knew that a military operation in Syria may well become another shameful American fiasco in the region. And with the support of Moscow and Tehran, it seems that Damascus is quite capable of withstanding a joint effort by regional players, led by Saudi Arabia and Turkey.
  The second reason is an error made by the two Wahhabi states blinded by anger and hatred – Saudi Arabia and Qatar [Syria] [Islamist] [Outsourcing]
• Drone war: Remote and personal
  By Pratap Chatterjee Enemies, innocent victims, and soldiers have always made up the three faces of war. With war growing more distant, with drones capable of performing on the battlefield while their "pilots" remain thousands of miles away, two of those faces have, however, faded into the background in recent years. Today, we are left with just the reassuring "face" of the terrorist enemy, killed clinically by remote control while we go about our lives, apparently without any "collateral damage" or danger to our soldiers. Now, however, that may slowly be changing, bringing the true face of the drone campaigns Washington has pursued since 9/11 into far greater focus. Imagine if those drone wars going on in Pakistan and Yemen (as well as the United States) had a human face all the time, so that we could understand what it was like to live constantly, in and out of those distant battle zones, with the specter of death. In addition to images of the "al-Qaeda" operatives who the White House wants us to believe are the sole targets of its drone campaigns, we would regularly see photos of innocent victims of drone attacks gathered by human rights groups from their relatives and neighbors. And what about the third group - the military personnel whose lives revolve around killing fields so far away - whose stories, in these years of Washington's drone assassination campaigns, we've just about never heard? After all, soldiers no longer set sail on ships to journey to distant battlefields for months at a time. Instead, every day, thousands of men and women sign onto their computers at desks on military bases in the continental United States and abroad where they spend hours glued to screens watching the daily lives of people often on the other side of the planet. Occasionally, they get an order from Washington to push a button and vaporize their subjects. [UAV] [Assassination]
• The two GOP establishments
  By E.J. Dionne Jr., Published: May 15 The language commonly used to describe the battle going on inside the Republican Party is wrong and misleading. The fights this spring are not between “the grass roots” and “the establishment” but between two establishment factions spending vast sums to gain the upper hand. Their confrontation has little to do with the long-term philosophical direction of the GOP. Very rich ideological donors, along with tea party groups, have been moving the party steadily rightward. Political correctness of an extremely conservative kind now rules. This explains the indigestion some Republican politicians are experiencing as they are forced to eat old words acknowledging a human role in climate change. It’s why party leaders keep repeating the word “Benghazi” as a quasi-religious incantation, why deal-making with President Obama is verboten and why they stick with their “repeal Obamacare” fixation.
• The Three-War Doctrine
  Hyping threats from Russia, China, and the rest of the world, the U.S. War Party is gearing up to reassert American power. By John Feffer, May 14, 2014. military-spending-two-war-doctrine-three-war-doctrine-iran-russia-china If the War Party wins in 2016, the U.S. will prepare to fight in the Eurasian heartland, the South China Sea, and the resource-rich lands of Africa. If we’re lucky, we’ll avoid any outright conflict. But the price will nevertheless be bankruptcy. (Photo: U.S. Army / Flickr) U.S. troops have left Iraq and are leaving Afghanistan. The “war on terrorism” now seems so last decade. U.S. military spending has leveled off, and the Pentagon is looking at some fairly serious reductions after 2015. Last month, President Obama finally pulled the various threads of his foreign policy approach into a “doctrine” that emphasizes incremental diplomacy and leaves military intervention as a last resort. We are, it would seem, at an epochal moment in U.S. history. The Reagan and Bush Jr. administrations attempted to deepsix the Vietnam syndrome and resurrect the U.S. military as the principle tool of U.S. foreign policy. But after the failures of Iraq and Afghanistan, the syndrome has returned in an industrial-strength version. Finally, it seems as if the United States is willing to take the cop out of cooperation. But before we stick flowers into the barrels of the Special Forces’ combat assault rifles and celebrate the transformation of the CIA’s drones into Amazon delivery vehicles, let’s evaluate what will likely be a very substantial backlash to the Obama doctrine. Depending on what happens in the mid-terms and more importantly the next presidential elections in 2016, we might be looking at yet another effort to drive a stake through the heart of the Vietnam-Afghanistan-Iraq syndrome and reassert, once again, American military power. [US global strategy] [Militarisation]
• ICC to examine claims that British troops carried out war crimes in Iraq
  Court to conduct preliminary examination of around 60 alleged cases of unlawful killing and claims of mistreatment Ian Cobain The Guardian, Tuesday 13 May 2014 18.34 BST British troops in Kuwait The ICC will examine separate allegations, mostly from former detainees held in British miltiary custody in Iraq. Photograph: Ian Waldie/Getty Images Allegations that British troops were responsible for a series of war crimes after the invasion of Iraq are to be examined by the international criminal court (ICC) at The Hague, the specialist tribunal has announced. The court is to conduct a preliminary examination of what have been estimated to be 60 alleged cases of unlawful killing and claims that more than 170 Iraqis were mistreated while in British military custody during the conflict. British defence officials are confident that the ICC will not move to the next stage and announce a formal investigation, largely because the UK has the capacity to investigate the allegations itself. However, the announcement is a blow to the prestige of the armed forces as the UK is the only western state that has faced a preliminary investigation at the ICC. The court's decision places the UK in the company of countries such as the Central African Republic, Colombia and Afghanistan. [ICC]
• US child workers 'endangered' by nicotine exposure in tobacco fields
  Human Rights Watch report said interviewed children began work around age 13 planting, weeding and harvesting nicotine plants Amanda Holpuch in New York theguardian.com, Wednesday 14 May 2014 05.00 BST US tobacco fields employ hundreds of children, some as young as 13, according to a Human Rights Watch report released on Wednesday that says the children are being exposed to health dangers posed by nicotine. Nearly three quarters of the children interviewed for the report said they had experienced the sudden onset of symptoms of acute nicotine poisoning, also known as Green Tobacco Sickness: vomiting, loss of appetite, dizziness, rashes and other irritations. “As the school year ends, children are heading into the tobacco fields, where they can’t avoid being exposed to dangerous nicotine, without smoking a single cigarette,” said Margaret Wurth, children’s rights researcher at Human Rights Watch (HRW) and co-author of the report. “It’s no surprise the children exposed to poisons in the tobacco fields are getting sick.” From May to October 2013, HRW conducted interviews with 141 child tobacco workers between the ages of seven and 17 in the four states where 90% of tobacco is cultivated in the US: North Carolina, Kentucky, Tennessee and Virginia. [Child labour]
• U.S. alone among Western countries on lack of paid maternity leave, UN finds
  By John Zarocostas McClatchy Foreign Staff May 13, 2014 Link The International Labor Organization report. GENEVA — The United States is the only Western country _ and one of only three in the world _ that does not provide some kind of monetary payment to new mothers who’ve taken maternity leave from their jobs, a new U.N. study reports. Two other countries share the U.S. position of providing “no cash benefits during maternity leave,” according to the report, which was released Tuesday by the International Labor Organization: Oman, an absolute monarchy in the Persian Gulf; and Papua New Guinea, a South Pacific nation where the U.S. State Department says violence against women is so common that 60 percent of men in a U.N. study acknowledged having committed a rape. The other 182 countries surveyed provide either a Social Security-like government payment to women who’ve recently given birth or adopted a child or require employers to continue at least a percentage of the worker’s pay. In 70 countries, paid leave is also provided for fathers, the report said, including Australia, which introduced 14 days of paid paternity leave last year, and Norway, which expanded its paternity leave from 12 to 14 weeks [Human rights] [Health]
• Revolution U
  BY Tina Rosenberg February 16, 2011 Early in 2008, workers at a government-owned textile factory in the Egyptian mill town of El-Mahalla el-Kubra announced that they were going on strike on the first Sunday in April to protest high food prices and low wages. They caught the attention of a group of tech-savvy young people an hour's drive to the south in the capital city of Cairo, who started a Facebook group to organize protests and strikes on April 6 throughout Egypt in solidarity with the mill workers. To their shock, the page quickly acquired some 70,000 followers. But what worked so smoothly online proved much more difficult on the street. Police occupied the factory in Mahalla and headed off the strike. The demonstrations there turned violent: Protesters set fire to buildings, and police started shooting, killing at least two people. The solidarity protests around Egypt, meanwhile, fizzled out, in most places blocked by police. The Facebook organizers had never agreed on tactics, whether Egyptians should stay home or fill the streets in protest. People knew they wanted to do something. But no one had a clear idea of what that something was. The botched April 6 protests, the leaders realized in their aftermath, had been an object lesson in the limits of social networking as a tool of democratic revolution. Facebook could bring together tens of thousands of sympathizers online, but it couldn't organize them once they logged off. It was a useful communication tool to call people to -- well, to what? The April 6 leaders did not know the answer to this question. So they decided to learn from others who did. In the summer of 2009, Mohamed Adel, a 20-year-old blogger and April 6 activist, went to Belgrade, Serbia. The Serbian capital is home to the Center for Applied NonViolent Action and Strategies, or CANVAS, an organization run by young Serbs who had cut their teeth in the late 1990s student uprising against Slobodan Milosevic. After ousting him, they embarked on the ambitious project of figuring out how to translate their success to other countries. To the world's autocrats, they are sworn enemies -- both Venezuela's Hugo Chávez and Belarus's Aleksandr Lukashenko have condemned them by name. ("They think we are bringing a revolution in our suitcase," one of CANVAS's leaders told me.) But to a young generation of democracy activists from Harare to Rangoon to Minsk to Tehran, the young Serbs are heroes. They have worked with democracy advocates from more than 50 countries. They have advised groups of young people on how to take on some of the worst governments in the world -- and in Georgia, Ukraine, Syria-occupied Lebanon, the Maldives, and now Egypt, those young people won. [Subversion] [CANVAS] [NGO]
• Syria crisis: Iran and Assad have won, say top Tehran foreign policy figures
  Insiders say western strategy in Syria encouraged radicals and backfired, leading to threat to European security from returning jihadis Simon Tisdall in Tehran The Guardian, Sunday 11 May 2014 15.58 BST Bashar al-Assad, the Syrian president. Senior Iranian officials say: 'The Americans wanted to replace Assad, but what was the alternative? All they have done is encourage radical groups and made the borders less safe.' Photograph: Uncredited/AP Iran and its close ally President Bashar al-Assad have won the war in Syria, and the US-orchestrated campaign in support of the opposition's attempt to topple the Syrian regime has failed, senior Iranian officials have told the Guardian. In a series of interviews in Tehran, top figures who shape Iranian foreign policy said the west's strategy in Syria had merely encouraged radicals, caused chaos and ultimately backfired, with government forces now on the front foot. "We have won in Syria," said Alaeddin Borujerdi, chairman of the Iranian parliament's national security and foreign policy committee and an influential government insider. "The regime will stay. The Americans have lost it." Terrorism perpetrated by al-Qaida-linked jihadist groups and individuals armed and funded by Sunni Muslim Arab countries was now the main threat facing the Syrian people, Borujerdi said. Many foreign fighters who had travelled to Syria from Britain and other European countries could soon return. [Unintended consequences] [Islamist]
• Rich list: more than 100 billionaires in Britain for the first time
  Britain has more billionaires per head of population than any other country, annual survey finds Press Association theguardian.com, Sunday 11 May 2014 06.20 BST The number of billionaires living in Britain has risen to more than 100 for the first time, a study has found. Some 104 billionaires are now based in the UK – more than triple the number from a decade ago – with a combined wealth of more than £301bn, according to the Sunday Times rich list. It means Britain has more billionaires per head of population than any other country, while London's total of 72 sterling billionaires is more than any other city in the world, the study found. Indian-born brothers Sri and Gopi Hinduja top the list of the UK's wealthiest billionaires with a fortune of £11.9bn. The London-based pair, who run the global conglomerate Hinduja Group, saw their wealth rise by £1.3bn in the last year, the study found. [Inequality]
• Nigerian kidnapping, other crises underscore limits of U.S. power in Africa
  By Anne Gearan, Published: May 10 E-mail the writer Secretary of State John F. Kerry just spent a week touting economic growth and opportunity in Africa, and the power of young entrepreneurs and political activists to transform their continent and reap its many bounties. Kerry traveled to places few Americans could readily find on a map, including Kinshasa, Congo, and Luanda, Angola, with a mostly upbeat message about what the United States can do in partnership with Africa, and what Africa can do for itself. His trip was little noticed at home, however, and was immediately overshadowed by one of the many bad-news stories coming out of Africa lately — the tale of abducted Nigerian schoolgirls that has outraged Americans and led President Obama to personally pledge action. The mass abduction of the more than 200 schoolgirls has refocused attention on the spread of radical Islamist ideology on the continent. But it has also underlined the limits of U.S. influence and fed the narrative, common in Africa, that Washington only cares about Africa in times of crisis or insecurity. [US Africa] [China competition]
• Britons fighting in Syria must have passports revoked, MPs demand
  Home affairs committee report says alarming numbers of Britons are travelling to Syria and calls for urgent government action Ewen MacAskill, defence correspondent The Guardian, Friday 9 May 2014 Keith Vaz's home affairs committee questioned Sir Mark Waller, Intelligence Services Commissioner, on Tuesday The committee's chairman, Keith Vaz, said the terrorist threat to the UK was 'as grave as at any point in the past 13 years'. Photograph: Martin Godwin A cross-party group of MPs will call for more Britons travelling to fight in Syria to have their passports revoked, as two more were reported to have been killed. The report by the House of Commons home affairs committee says the number of Britons travelling to Syria has reached alarming levels, and calls for urgent action by the government. The MPs say revoking passports is a vital tool and express surprise that only 14 passports have been revoked since April last year. [Syria] [Unintended consequences]
• USA RIP?
  by John K. White American pharmaceutical giant Pfizer wants to become British, joining the ranks of other major corporations opening “headquarters” in low-tax-rate countries. At 21.0 percent in the U.K. versus 32.8 percent in the U.S., it’s a no-brainer. At the same time, roads, bridges, and airports – infrastructure that helped make the U.S. great more than a half century ago – is falling apart. Is there a connection? Pfizer’s move is an old-fashioned takeover, hoping to acquire AstraZeneca for more than $100 billion, creating the world’s largest pharmaceutical group in the process. The modern part is the right to pay almost 40% less tax than legislated in the U.S. One calculation put the savings at $3.8 billion. [Tax]
• U.N. Probe Chief Doubtful on Syria Sarin Exposure Claims
  by Gareth Porter The head of the U.N. team that investigated the Aug. 21, 2013 Sarin attack in the Damascus suburbs, Ake Sellstrom, is doubtful about the number of victims of the attack reported immediately after the event. Sellstrom has suggested that many people who claimed to have been seriously affected by Sarin merely imagined that they had suffered significant exposure to the chemical. Despite the paucity of the most fundamental indicator of exposure to Sarin, 31 of the 36 were found to have a trace of Sarin in their blood samples. Underlying Sellstrom’s doubts are data on symptoms from a sample of people who said they were severely affected by the Sarin attack. The data, published in the September report, appear to belie the claims of Sarin intoxication by those in the sample, according to experts who have analysed them. [Syria] [cbw]
• The Jean McConville killing: I'm completely innocent. But what were my accusers' motives?
  Four days of interrogation produced not a scrap of evidence. This was an assault by sinister forces on the peace process itself
  Gerry Adams
  The Guardian, Wednesday 7 May 2014 21.04 BST My recent detention and interrogation was a serious attempt to bring charges against me. It was conducted by the retrospective major investigation team (Remit) of the Police Service of Northern Ireland, which is based at Carrickfergus, County Antrim. I had contacted the PSNI in March to tell them I was available to meet them. This followed another intense round of the media speculation that has tried to link me to the killing in 1972 of Jean McConville. It is part of a sustained malicious, untruthful and sinister campaign going back many years. Last Monday the PSNI said it wanted to speak to me. I was concerned about the timing. Sinn Féin is currently involved in very important EU and local government elections. Notwithstanding this, I travelled to the Antrim serious crime suite where I arrived at 8.05pm. En route I talked to the senior investigating officer. He was insisting that I meet him in the car park opposite the PSNI barracks. He told me that I must get into a squad car and that he would then arrest me and drive me into the barracks. He said he couldn't arrest me inside the barracks under the legislation. I told him I was going directly to the station of my own accord, voluntarily. As it turned out there is no legislative bar on me being arrested within the station. And subsequently that's exactly what happened.
• Researchers warn Oklahoma quakes linked to fracking boom could get stronger
  By Sean Cockerham McClatchy Washington Bureau May 6, 2014 Washington — Seismologists are warning that Oklahoma’s skyrocketing earthquakes linked to oil and gas activity are liable to get stronger and more dangerous. Oklahoma has seen a 50 percent rise in earthquakes since October of last year. Since 2009, after the nation’s fracking boom began, the earthquake activity in Oklahoma has been approximately 40 times higher than in the 30 previous years, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. The recent surge in the rate of the quakes has prompted the USGS and the Oklahoma Geological Survey to issue a warning that the earthquakes could get stronger, with the agencies saying there is a significantly increased chance for a damaging magnitude 5.5 or greater quake in central Oklahoma. “While it’s been known for decades that Oklahoma is earthquake country, we hope that this new advisory of increased hazard will become a crucial consideration in earthquake preparedness for residents, schools and businesses in the area,” said Bill Leith, senior science advisor at the USGS. A USGS analysis suggests a likely contributing factor to the increase in earthquakes is drilling wastewater injected into deep geologic formations. Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2014/05/06/226647/researchers-warn-oklahoma-quakes.html?sp=/99/200/328/#storylink=cpy [Fracking]
• Foreign Jihadis in Syria Pledge Their Own 9/11
  by Patrick Cockburn It is only a matter of time before jihadis in al-Qa’ida-type groups that have taken over much of eastern Syria and western Iraq have a violent impact on the world outside these two countries. The road is open wide to new attacks along the lines of 9/11 and 7/7, and it may be too late to close it. Those who doubt that these are the jihadis’ long-term intentions should have a look at a chilling but fascinating video posted recently by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isis), formerly al-Qa’ida in Iraq. It shows a group of foreign fighters burning their passports to emphasise their permanent commitment to jihad. Many of the passports thrown into the flames have grass-green covers and are Saudi; others are dark blue and must be Jordanian. Some of the fighters show their faces while others are masked. As each one destroys his passport, sometimes tearing it in half before throwing it into the fire, he makes a declaration of faith and a promise to fight against the ruler of the country from which he comes. A Canadian makes a short speech in English before switching to Arabic, saying: “It is a message to Canada, to all American powers. We are coming and we will destroy you.” [Islamists] [Unintended consequences] [Syria]
• What Obama botched in Libya
  By Editorial Board, Tuesday, May 6, 11:35 AM REPUBLICANS HAVE a potentially strong case to make against the Obama administration’s handling of Libya, as the latest political developments there underline. On Sunday, a disputed vote in parliament led to the swearing-in of a new prime minister — the sixth since former dictator Moammar Gaddafi was overthrown in 2011 with the help of U.S. and NATO air forces. The new leader, an Islamist from the city of Misurata, replaced pro-Western prime minister Ali Zeidan, who was driven out of the country this year after his government proved unable to stop a militia from filling a tanker with stolen oil. From the safety of Europe, Mr. Zeidan conceded what was obvious all along: Libya’s post-Gaddafi government has no army and no way of establishing its authority over the hundreds of militias that sprang up in the vacuum that followed the revolution. Libya has fragmented into fiefdoms, its oil industry is virtually paralyzed, massive traffic in illegal weapons is supplying militants around the region and extremist groups such as Ansar al-Sharia, which participated in the Sept. 11, 2012, assault on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, are unchecked. The Obama administration and its NATO allies bear responsibility for this mess because, having intervened to help rebels overthrow Gaddafi, they then swiftly exited without making a serious effort to help Libyans establish security and build a new political order. Congress might usefully probe why the administration allowed a country in which it initiated military operations to slide into chaos. [Libya] [Outsourcing] [Obama]
• Thomas Piketty’s “Capital”, summarised in four paragraphs
  May 4th 2014, 23:50 by R.A. IT IS the economics book taking the world by storm. "Capital in the Twenty-First Century", written by the French economist Thomas Piketty, was published in French last year and in English in March of this year. The English version quickly became an unlikely bestseller, and it has prompted a broad and energetic debate on the book’s subject: the outlook for global inequality. Some reckon it heralds or may itself cause a pronounced shift in the focus of economic policy, toward distributional questions. This newspaper has hailed Mr Piketty as "the modern Marx" (Karl, that is). But what’s it all about? - See more at: http://www.economist.com/blogs/economist-explains/2014/05/economist-explains#sthash.WdLFQRKj.dpuf [Inequality] [Capitalism]
• Hassan Rouhani faces growing criticism in Iran over nuclear talks
  Rightwing activists claim negotiators are ignoring national interests and that west has not shown the same honesty as Iran Simon Tisdall in Tehran theguardian.com, Sunday 4 May 2014 12.29 BST Hassan Rouhani and Mohammad Javad Zarif Hassan Rouhani, left, and his foreign minister and chief nuclear negotiator, Mohammad Javad Zarif. Photograph: Michel Euler/AP The Iranian president, Hassan Rouhani, is facing growing criticism from a broad array of political hardliners and rightwing opponents who say his government is being duped by the US in an over-hasty attempt to clinch a nuclear deal with the west and end economic sanctions. At a meeting at the former American embassy building in central Tehran on Saturday, a newly formed group of MPs and rightwing activists calling itself "We're Worried" claimed Iran's negotiating team was ignoring national interests in the nuclear talks, which resume on 13 May in Vienna. [US Negotiating] [Iran]
• Sweden Uses Ukraine to Heat Up NATO Entry Debate
  Andrei Akulov | 05.05.2014 | 00:00 The Swedish government has made public plans to beef up its defence forces by fitting its Gripen fighters with new long-range cruise missiles. Defence Minister Karin Enstr?m said the high-precision weapons are needed to deter other countries from attacking Sweden and «increase the effectiveness» of the country’s defense. «They would give new capabilities by offering a longer reach, but also the ability to fight targets that are further away», she told Sveriges Radio (SR) on April 24. The range is around 1,000 kilometers, twice as much in comparison with the systems Sweden uses now. The new missiles can fly at low altitude, have GPS guidance, and can manoeuvre like an aircraft. Last year Foreign Minister Carl Bildt said that cruise missiles would «Never be relevant for Sweden. Our defence is a defence». According to Gunnar Hult, a professor at Sweden's National Defence College, the Bildt’s comments had been made long before the events in Ukraine, «There is a clear contradiction here. Before the Ukraine crisis, a move like this would have been perceived as quite aggressive», he said adding that after the events in Ukraine «Sweden has obviously seen the need to stock up on the missiles». [Sweden] [MISCOM]
• Big budgets, little oversight in war zones
  By Scott Higham, Jessica Schulberg and Steven Rich, Monday, May 5, 10:59 AM E-mail the writers In 1998, an ordained minister with the United Church of Christ and his wife from the war-wrecked region of Bosnia-Herzegovina began a humble international humanitarian effort out of a modest office in downtown Washington. After the United States launched the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the mom-and-pop nonprofit corporation boldly ramped up, undertaking some of the federal government’s biggest and most ambitious projects in the battle zones, everything from building roads to funding wheat production. Graphic During the past decade, International Relief and Development received more in grants and cooperative agreements from USAID than any other nonprofit organizations — $1.9 billion. The humanitarian group worked in Iraq and Afghanistan and provided 38 employees with $3.4 million in bonuses between 2008 and 2012. Here are the bonuses given to IRD employees compared to other nonprofits operating in hazard zones between 2010 and 2012. Click Here to View Full Graphic Story During the past decade, International Relief and Development received more in grants and cooperative agreements from USAID than any other nonprofit organizations — $1.9 billion. The humanitarian group worked in Iraq and Afghanistan and provided 38 employees with $3.4 million in bonuses between 2008 and 2012. Here are the bonuses given to IRD employees compared to other nonprofits operating in hazard zones between 2010 and 2012. In doing so, International Relief and Development increased its annual revenue from $1.2 million to $706 million, most of it from one corner of the federal government — the U.S. Agency for International Development. IRD has received more grants and cooperative agreements from USAID in recent years than any other nonprofit relief and development organization in the nation — $1.9 billion. Along the way, the nonprofit rewarded its employees with generous salaries and millions in bonuses. Among the beneficiaries: the minister, Arthur B. Keys, and his wife, Jasna Basaric-Keys, who together earned $4.4 million in salary and bonuses between 2008 and 2012. [NGO] [Aid] [Corruption]
• Role reversal: how Japan became America’s ally and China fell from grace
  4 May 2014 Author: Jean-Pierre Lehmann, IMD Ask ‘who were the allies in WWII?’ and the answer will likely be: ‘the US, the USSR and Britain’. The fourth ally, China, has been airbrushed from history. Yet China fought valiantly and suffered hugely. Had the Chinese not kept up the war with Japan in the Pacific, the US would not have been able to concentrate its military efforts on the Atlantic. Only after the war was won in Europe was the US able to hop across the Pacific, capture Iwo Jima in February 1945, Okinawa in April, drop the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August, and force Tokyo’s unconditional surrender. In a bizarre twist — after China and the US had suffered at Japanese hands — the positions of the two East Asian countries vis-à-vis the US were reversed: Japan became the ally, China the enemy. This has been the paradigm since; it informed Barack Obama’s visit to Tokyo and the need he felt to show support for Tokyo in its rift over the Senkaku/Diaoyu islands with Beijing. [US Japan alliance] [China confrontation] [1945]
• Singapore’s history wars
  30 April 2014 Author: Geoff Wade, ANU As we move towards 2015, a year that will mark Singapore’s 50th anniversary as a nation, a battle over the past of that country is slowly gaining steam. Lee Kuan Yew waves to supporters ahead of submitting his nomination papers to contest in the 2011 elections in Singapore on 27 April 2011. (Photo: AAP) The increasingly frail health of Lee Kuan Yew, the man depicted in the establishment histories as the ‘father of Singapore’, is making this battle more important for both sides. The People’s Action Party (PAP) is heavily invested in ensuring that their story remains the story of Singapore. And key to that story has been the framework provided by the two-volume autobiography penned by Lee Kuan Yew, prime minister from 1965 to 1990 and still today a member of the Singapore Parliament. The Singapore Story and From Third World to First established the base for the story, upon which have been laid down layer upon layer of hagiographic books such as Lee Kuan Yew: The Grand Master’s Insights on China, the United States, and the World and One Man’s View of the World, together with Lee’s ‘collected works’ — The Papers of Lee Kuan Yew: Speeches, Interviews and Dialogues 1950–1990 and 1990–2011. The Singapore press — entirely state-controlled — has been a necessary participant in this exercise, giving these histories acres of attention, calculated to leave Singapore and the world with a very positive image of a man who has in fact enjoyed a rather chequered reputation both domestically and regionally. Further, as with Lenin, Stalin, Mao and Deng Xiaoping, the history presented in Lee’s collected works is intended not only to perpetuate memory of the individual but also to bolster the legitimacy of the party that he led. Cadre histories such as Men in White have cemented the PAP into this story. [Singapore]
• Syria’s Terror Blowback Threatens Europe and the United States
  The flow of foreign fighters to Syria to join the war against Bashar Assad’s dictatorship is becoming the largest in the history of the global jihad, and the Syrian battleground is on the way to outstripping the 1980s Afghan war against the Soviets as a training ground for Islamic militants. Security services around the world are becoming increasingly alarmed at the implications for the safety of their citizens American intelligence officials now put the number of foreign fighters who have gone to Syria since the war began in 2011 at between 8,000 and 10,000. Other sources put the total even higher, up to 12,000. The largest contingent is probably Saudis. Saudi sources put the number of their citizens who have gone to wage jihad in Syria at 1,200, of whom 300 are reported to have died on the battlefield. Jordanian sources report about a thousand Jordanians have gone to fight in their northern neighbor. Figures for other Arab countries are largely unavailable. There are no coherent governments counting the flow of fighters from broken states like Yemen, Libya or Iraq, but we know from previous experience they are likely sources of jihadists. Virtually every country in Western Europe has reported that some of its Muslim citizens have gone to Syria. A small but significant number have died in the war and become martyrs back in the United Kingdom, France, Belgium, and other states with sizable Muslim minorities. Even tiny Luxembourg has had one jihadi martyr already . Americans are now fighting in Syria as well. [Islamist] [Syria] [Unintended consequences]
• Terminal neglect? How some hospices decline to treat the dying
  By Peter Whoriskey and Dan Keating, Sunday, May 4, 12:34 PM E-mail the writers TAMPA — The 85-year-old hospice patient was close to death. Ying Tai Choi lay on a hospital bed arranged in the living room of her daughter’s house. A pulse oximeter pinged an intermittent warning about her oxygen levels. She heaved for breath sometimes and panted at others. Sounds of gurgling and congestion came from her throat. The skin behind her fingernails was turning dark. “She is leaving soon,” the hospice nurse told Choi’s daughter. Then the nurse left the house and drove away, even though the hospice had said it would provide Choi with “continuous care,” according to records. “No relief arrived at this time,” the nurse wrote in her notes, according to state investigative documents. “Exiting the residence.” Choi’s daughter Ching Cheung was stunned. She tried giving her mother a few drops of water, but she felt helpless. “I kept calling hospice and they said no one is available,” Cheung said. “My mother was struggling. It was terrible.” Her mother died within an hour. For more than a million patients every year, the burgeoning U.S. hospice industry offers the possibility of a peaceful death, typically at home. But that promise depends upon patients getting the medical attention they need in a crisis, and hundreds of hospices provide very little care to such patients, a Washington Post investigation has found. [Health] [Decline] [Human rights]
• Do sanctions always bite?
  By Jin Liangxiang China.org.cn, May 4, 2014 Sanctions have always been an instrument that the United States and the West employ for political purposes. Yet 2013 through 2014 witnessed several cases of both effective and ineffective sanctions. Sanctions did work in changing Iran's policy on the nuclear issue, but failed to reverse Russia's annexation of Crimea. This suggests that sanctions ordered by the West do work in some scenarios, but are not panaceas in a globalized world. [Sanctions] [US global strategy] [Iran] [Russia]
• US: NATO’s larger members must increase spending
  By Michael Hernandez, Saturday, May 03, Russia's actions in Ukraine have made NATO's value abundantly clear', Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel WASHINGTON, D.C. – NATO’s larger members must step up their military spending, said U.S. Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel Friday, emphasizing that Russia’s actions in Ukraine have shown the value of the alliance. Since the end of the Cold War, Washington’s military spending has become “increasingly disproportionate” within the alliance, Hagel said. U.S. gross domestic product is smaller than that of the combined GDP of the other 27 alliance members, Hagel noted, but the U.S. continues to spend triple that of its allies on defense. “We must see renewed financial commitments from all NATO members,” said Hagel, while speaking at the Wilson Center think tank in Washington. “Russia's actions in Ukraine have made NATO's value abundantly clear.” [Militarisation] [MISCOM] [Russia confrontation] [Military balance]
• Congress seeks more control over government news agency
  On April 30, the House Foreign Affairs Committee approved reforms to the government news agency that require it to promote US foreign policy goals and give Congress greater oversight over its operations, notably in the Middle East. Summary? Print A key panel has voted to reform a US news agency whose Middle East coverage has long frustrated lawmakers. Author Julian Pecquet Posted May 1, 2014 The bill, which passed by unanimous voice vote, would replace the Broadcasting Board of Governors with a US International Communications Agency overseeing Voice of America. It would consolidate other news operations — including the Middle East Broadcasting Network — under a separate Freedom News Network. The move comes as lawmakers — and the administration — are increasingly frustrated at the US government's inability to counter what they call Russian propaganda. "Traveling to Eastern Ukraine, our delegation witnessed the Russian propaganda machine — now in overdrive — and its attempts to undermine regional stability," committee chairman Ed Royce (R-Calif.) said at Wednesday's mark-up. "Unfortunately, US broadcasters — the Voice of America, Radio Free Europe, Radio Free Asia and others — are competing with a hand tied behind their back." The bill aims to streamline a service that government auditors have long called dysfunctional. US international broadcasting would be placed under the authority of two CEOs instead of a board that only meets once a month. Its proposed reforms to the US broadcasters' mission statements, however, have ignited a firestorm of controversy. The bill would require that Voice of America produce "accurate" and "objective" content that nevertheless "is consistent with and promotes the broad foreign policies of the United States." The mission of the broadcaster, which has a Farsi service but no longer broadcasts in Arabic, would be focused more narrowly on bringing US news to a foreign audience. The proposal has outraged many Voice of America journalists. They fear a service that has long strived to appear independent of the government will end up operating like the Russian and Chinese foreign-language services, whose broadcasts closely toe the government line. [Media]
• Sweden, No Longer a Force for Good?
  by Jan Oberg Over the last 25-30 years Sweden’s military, security and foreign policy elite has changed Sweden’s policy 180 degrees. These fundamental changes were initiated by the Social Democratic government under Goran Persson and foreign minister Anna Lindh and have been carried through virtually without public debate. The rapproachment with interventionism, militarism and US/NATO in all fields has been planned, incremental, furtive and dishonest; in short, unworthy of a democracy. This elite is more loyal with Brussels and Washington than with the Swedes. If your image of Sweden is that it is a progressive, innovative and peace-promoting country with a global mind-set and advocate of international law, it is – sad to say – outdated. How Sweden has changed Sweden is no longer neutral and it is only formally non-aligned; there is no closer ally than US/NATO. [Sweden]
• Reseachers blast U.S. prison policies
  By Michael Doyle McClatchy Washington Bureau April 30, 2014 Updated 11 hours ago The United States incarcerates too many people, a new National Research Council report concludes. Adding more evidence to a growing debate, the elite scientific panel noted with alarm that “the U.S. penal population of 2.2 million adults is by far the largest in the world.” Nearly one out of every 100 U.S. adults is in prison or jail, a rate five to 10 times higher than that in Western Europe and other democracies. “We are concerned that the United States is past the point where the number of people in prison can be justified by social benefits,” said committee chair Jeremy Travis, president of John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City. “We need to embark on a national conversation to rethink the role of prison in society.” The study panel attributed the “historically unprecedented” and “internationally unique” growth in prison population to mandatory sentencing, long sentences for violent and repeat offenses and the once politically popular “war on drugs.” The burden does not fall evenly, the 400-plus page report notes. Of those incarcerated in 2011, about 60 percent were African-American or Hispanic. African-American males under the age of 35 who did not finish high school are more likely to be behind bars than employed in the labor market, the study found. In 2010, the imprisonment rate for African-Americans was 4.6 times that for whites. Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2014/04/30/226063/reseachers-blast-us-prison-policies.html?sp=/99/200/365/#storylink=cpy [Incarceration][Racism] [Prisoners]
• On the Contradictions between Washington and Berlin on Ukraine
  Vladimir Sedov | 01.05.2014 | 00:00 The United States is stubbornly pushing the Kiev regime toward the use of military force against the protesting Donets Basin. This gives rise to doubts: does Washington really care about the fate of the Kiev junta? Is the U.S. perhaps provoking tensions on the Ukrainian-Russian border for other purposes which lie not so much in the plane of relations with Russia as in relations with its European allies, first and foremost with Germany? Let us recall that in October 2013 Germany's Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik and the German Marshall Fund of the United States presented a joint report titled «New Power, New Responsibility: Elements of a German Foreign and Security Policy for a Changing World». [Russia confrontation] [Germany] [US dominance]
• Trans-Atlantic global leadership at stake in Ukraine – Kerry
  Published time : April 30, 2014 07:07 / US Secretary of State John Kerry (AFP Photo/Mandel Ngan NATO must return to its original goal of fending off Russia, seizing the chance presented by the Ukrainian crisis to sever Europe from Moscow and move it closer to America, the US secretary of state said. Or else the bloc’s global leadership may be lost. John Kerry delivered the confrontational call in a speech to the Atlantic Council think tank in Washington, DC. He said the stand-off in Ukraine had resulted from a “uniquely personally-driven set of choices” and is “a wake-up call” for NATO. He added that now the military bloc must turn the page on two decades of focusing on expeditionary operations and take a stand against “Putin’s Russia.” “After two decades of focusing primarily on our expeditionary missions, the crisis in Ukraine now call us back to the work that this alliance was originally created to perform,” Kerry told the audience. NATO’s original purpose was to oppose the Communist Soviet Union, giving the West the military backbone to the ideologically-driven stand-off with the East . Kerry described it as “to defend alliance territory and advance trans-Atlantic security.” “Today, Putin’s Russia is playing by a different set of rules,” the secretary stated. “Through its occupation of Crimea and its subsequent destabilization of eastern Ukraine, Russia seeks to change the security landscape of Eastern and Central Europe.” “Together we have to push back against those who try to change sovereign border by force. Together we have to support those who simply want to live as we do,” he added. [Russia confrontation]
• House panel calls for US to stop recognizing Assad government in Syria
  A key House panel passed two non-binding resolutions on Wednesday urging the Obama administration to turn the screws on Bashar al-Assad in the latest bipartisan push for more action in Syria. Summary? Print The House Foreign Affairs Committee on Wednesday approved two non-binding resolutions calling on the Obama administration to stop recognizing Bashar al-Assad as president of Syria and to push for the creation of a Syria war crimes tribunal. Author Julian Pecquet Posted April 30, 2014 The House Foreign Affairs Committee by voice vote adopted a resolution from panel chairman Ed Royce, R-Calif., and ranking member Eliot Engel, D-N.Y., urging the United States and the United Nations to stop recognizing Assad's regime as the "rightful" government of Syria and "redirect" humanitarian assistance to private aid organizations. That last provision was not in the resolution when it was first introduced last month. The new language comes as three dozen top lawyers and law professors from around the world signed onto a letter this week urging the UN to end its "overly cautious interpretation of international humanitarian law" and start cross-border aid deliveries. Doing so isn't without risks, however. "If we don't negotiate access across borders carefully," the head of the World Food Program's London office told The Guardian, "we could jeopardize the access to about four million people we already have inside the country." The House panel also adopted a resolution from Rep. Chris Smith, R-N.J., the chairman of the subcomittee on human rights, urging the administration to instruct US Ambassador to the UN Samantha Power to seek the creation of a Syrian war crimes tribunal. "In addition to calling for the Obama Administration to withdraw its official, diplomatic recognition of the Assad regime, the measures passed by the Committee today demand an end to attacks on civilian aid workers such as Syrian American medical professionals and call for the establishment of an international tribunal to hold accountable those responsible for the numerous atrocities in Syria," Royce said at the markup. "Congressional approval of these measures will send a strong signal of support to the Syrian people." [US global strategy] [Syria] [ICC]
• How the US created the Afghan war - and lost it
  Anand Gopal 30 April 2014 The unreported story of how the Haqqani network became America's greatest enemy. .. Unlike other Taliban groups, the Haqqanis’ approach to mayhem was worldly and sophisticated: they recruited Arabs, Pakistanis, even Europeans, and they were influenced by the latest in radical Islamist thought. Their leader, the septuagenarian warlord Jalaluddin Haqqani, was something like Osama bin Laden and Al Capone rolled into one, as fiercely ideological as he was ruthlessly pragmatic. And so many years later, his followers are still fighting. Even with the US withdrawing the bulk of its troops this year, up to 10,000 Special Operations forces, CIA paramilitaries, and their proxies will likely stay behind to battle the Haqqanis, the Taliban, and similar outfits in a war that seemingly has no end. With such entrenched enemies, the conflict today has an air of inevitability - but it could all have gone so differently. Though it’s now difficult to imagine, by mid-2002 there was no insurgency in Afghanistan: al-Qaeda had fled the country and the Taliban had ceased to exist as a military movement. Jalaluddin Haqqani and other top Taliban figures were reaching out to the other side in an attempt to cut a deal and lay down their arms. Tens of thousands of US forces, however, had arrived on Afghan soil, post-9/11, with one objective: to wage a war on terror. As I report in my new book, No Good Men Among the Living: America, the Taliban, and the War Through Afghan Eyes, the US would prosecute that war even though there was no enemy to fight. To understand how America’s battle in Afghanistan went so wrong for so long, a (hidden) history lesson is in order. In those early years after 2001, driven by the idée fixe that the world was rigidly divided into terrorist and non-terrorist camps, Washington allied with Afghan warlords and strongmen. Their enemies became ours, and through faulty intelligence, their feuds became repackaged as “counterterrorism.” The story of Jalaluddin Haqqani, who turned from America’s potential ally into its greatest foe, is the paradigmatic case of how the war on terror created the very enemies it sought to eradicate. [Afghanistan] [MISCOM] [Client]
• Catastrophe, Reform or Revolution?
  by Andrew Levine Catastrophes loom on the horizon: an ecological catastrophe caused by our reliance on fossil fuels; a nuclear catastrophe, caused by our reliance on nuclear power; and another kind of nuclear catastrophe caused by our government’s failure to pursue nuclear disarmament. To this end, it is obviously useful to revisit ways of thinking that did address fundamental structural problems in revolutionary ways. It is especially useful to recall an idea, formulated expressly by Marx and Engels in The Communist Manifesto more than a century and a half ago: that history is the history of class struggles. We have been hearing seemingly from time immemorial how antiquated that dictum has become. Why then does it nowadays ring more true than ever?
  On the face of it, this is not what Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century is about. But what it is about speaks to the issue indirectly, and what Piketty has to say is of such importance that, from now on, anyone concerned with fundamental social, political, and economic change must take his work into account. [Inequality] [Capitalism]
• Useful Idiots Dance to Interventionists' Tune in Attacking Obama's Foreign Policy Restraint
  The barrage of criticism of President Obama's foreign policy has cast a new and favorable light on the President and his role in the generally grisly parade of foreign policy cockups that have characterized his two administrations. Particularly, it has highlighted the dissatisfaction of the neoliberal and neocon interventionists with President Obama's chariness in committing military power to advance their cherished initiatives. And that's a good thing. For Obama. IMO. I discussed this issue in yesterday's post, where I characterized the President's position as "don't use stupid actions to follow up on stupid policies". Remarkably, given the considerable energy and intellectual power exhibited in America's non-stop overseas jiggery-pokery, US geopolitical strategy has abounded in stupid policies. And, in my opinion, that's no accident. I think it has to do with the mindset of the interventionist caucus in the US foreign policy government and private sector apparatus, which has been dragging or guiding the US government into wars (and enhancing its own power, profits, and influence) for generations. The gold standard for ham-fisted intervention is still Iraq War II, but it seems there is an inexhaustible supply of wonks, pundits, advocates, and agitators within the Beltway ready to be "heroes in error" for the next US crusade. [US global strategy] [Obama] [MISCOM]
• Americans Want to Pull Back From World Stage, Poll Finds
  Nearly Half Surveyed in WSJ/NBC Poll Back Anti—Interventionist Stance That Sweeps Across Party Lines Janet Hook connect April 30, 2014 12:05 a.m. ET A WSJ/NBC News poll shows that approval of President Barack Obama's handling of foreign policy sank to the lowest level of his presidency. Pictured, Mr. Obama at a news conference in Tokyo on April 24. Bloomberg Americans in large numbers want the U.S. to reduce its role in world affairs even as a showdown with Russia over Ukraine preoccupies Washington, a Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll finds. In a marked change from past decades, nearly half of those surveyed want the U.S. to be less active on the global stage, with fewer than one-fifth calling for more active engagement—an anti-interventionist current that sweeps across party lines. [US global strategy] [Intervention] [Public opinion]

• Syria’s War Economy
  Jihad Yazigi Three years into a conflict that has killed at least 140,000 people, much of the Syrian economy lies in ruins. As the violence has expanded and sanctions have been imposed, assets and infrastructure have been destroyed, economic output has fallen, and investors have fled the country. Unemployment now exceeds 50 percent and half of the population lives below the poverty line. Food inflation is above 100 percent, the foreign exchange reserves painfully accumulated during the short oil boom of the 1990s are dwindling, and the budget deficit has exploded from less than 3 percent of GDP in 2010 to 33 percent.1 The human development index (HDI) has fallen back to where it stood 37 years ago. It is estimated that even with an average annual growth rate of 5 percent it would take nearly 30 years to recover Syria’s 2010 GDP value.2 This brief argues that, against this backdrop, a war economy is now entrenching itself across the country, particularly in opposition-controlled areas, creating significant new economic networks and business activities that feed off the violence gripping the country. This war economy is to some extent creating incentives for those now making money from the conflict to prolong it. Significant sectors of the economy now live and thrive off the conflict, creating a growing pool of individuals and groups that have no interest in seeing the conflict end. At the same time, however, the Syrian economy is fragmenting as areas controlled by the regime and the opposition become increasingly disconnected from each other. As new interests and power centres emerge, it is increasingly difficult to imagine a return to the strong, centralised state that existed before the conflict. But this fragmentation could also be part of the solution to the conflict – in particular as a way of working towards a new national consensus from the bottom up. [Syria] [Economy]
• In the long run, wars make us safer and richer
  By Ian Morris, Published: April 26 E-mail the writer Ian Morris, a professor of classics at Stanford University, is the author of “War! What is it Good For? Conflict and the Progress of Civilization from Primates to Robots.” Norman Angell, the Paris editor of Britain’s Daily Mail, was a man who expected to be listened to. Yet even he was astonished by the success of his book “The Great Illusion,” in which he announced that war had put itself out of business. “The day for progress by force has passed,” he explained. From now on, “it will be progress by ideas or not at all.” He wrote these words in 1910. One politician after another lined up to praise the book. Four years later, the same men started World War I. By 1918, they had killed 15 million people; by 1945, the death toll from two world wars had passed 100 million and a nuclear arms race had begun. In 1983, U.S. war games suggested that an all-out battle with the Soviet Union would kill a billion people — at the time, one human in five — in the first few weeks. And today, a century after the beginning of the Great War, civil war is raging in Syria, tanks are massing on Ukraine’s borders and a fight against terrorism seems to have no end. So yes, war is hell — but have you considered the alternatives? When looking upon the long run of history, it becomes clear that through 10,000 years of conflict, humanity has created larger, more organized societies that have greatly reduced the risk that their members will die violently. These better organized societies also have created the conditions for higher living standards and economic growth. War has not only made us safer, but richer, too. [Militarisation] [Myopia]
• Egyptian judge sentences 720 men to death
  Lawyers and rights campaigners say rulings infringe basic law after defence unable to present case and witnesses not heard Patrick Kingsley in Minya theguardian.com, Monday 28 April 2014 15.13 BST Link to video: Grief as 720 Egyptians sentenced to death Fears for Egypt's democracy deepened on Monday when a judge sentenced 683 men to death in the country's latest mass trial, while another banned a youth movement that helped inspire Egypt's 2011 revolution. The 683 men – including the Muslim Brotherhood leader, Mohamed Badie – were condemned to death in the southern city of Minya on charges of killing a policeman last August. [Egypt] [Double standards]
• Forces of Divergence Is surging inequality endemic to capitalism?
  by John Cassidy March 31, 2014 If current trends continue , Thomas Piketty sees “potentially terrifying” consequences. Illustration by Michael Gillette. In the stately world of academic presses, it isn’t often that advance orders and publicity for a book prompt a publisher to push forward its publication date. But that’s what Belknap, an imprint of Harvard University Press, did for “Capital in the Twenty-first Century,” a sweeping account of rising inequality by the French economist Thomas Piketty. Reviewing the French edition of Piketty’s book, which came out last year, Branko Milanovic, a former senior economist at the World Bank, called it “one of the watershed books in economic thinking.” The Economist said that it could change the way we think about the past two centuries of economic history. Certainly, no economics book in recent years has received this sort of attention. Months before its American publication date, which was switched from April to March, it was already the subject of lively online discussion among economists and other commentators. Piketty, who teaches at the Paris School of Economics, has spent nearly two decades studying inequality. In 1993, at the age of twenty-two, he moved to the United States to teach at M.I.T. A graduate of the élite École Normale Supérieure, he had recently completed his doctorate, a dense mathematical exploration of the theory behind tax policies. Plenty of bright young European scholars move across the Atlantic, of course, and many of them end up staying. Piketty was not to be one of them. “It was the first time I had set foot in the United States,” he recalls in the introduction, “and it felt good to have my work recognized so quickly. Here was a country that knew how to attract immigrants when it wanted to! Yet I also realized quite soon that I wanted to return to France and Europe, which I did when I was twenty-five. Since then, I have not left Paris, except for a few brief trips.” [Inequality] [Capitalism]
• Is the Hillary Clinton Coterie Pushing Obama Further Into Lame-Duck Territory?
  Tuesday, April 29, 2014 Uh-oh. Looks like things are getting somewhat Ides-of-Marchy within the Obama administration. I think the coterie of Hillary Clinton supporters and enthusiasts have something to do with it. From today’s LA Times: Those who want him to act more forcefully include not only Republicans but also liberal internationalists and some members of his staff. [emphasis added] I should say I’m pretty much on board with President Obama’s hesitations about using military force, which I would gloss as “Don’t use stupid actions to follow up on stupid policies.” The US foreign policy establishment has come up with a series of stupid policies that it would like to get bailed out of with some showy military action. Case in point: the anti-Russian enthusiasts (Victoria, I’m lookin’ at you) in the State Department overreached with the Kyev coup, now Obama won’t back them up by threatening to employ the U.S. military to buck up the government and deter Russia. [Hillary Clinton] [Obama][US global strategy]
• The boycott fear? Israel expanding trade offices in Asia, Africa at the expense of Europe
  Published April 28th, 2014 - 03:55 GMT via SyndiGate.info Cohen says, that, over the past five years, Israel has been expanding trade attaché offices in Asia and Africa at the expense of its presence in Europe, and that this trend will continue in the coming years. The Ministry of the Economy is opening trade attaché offices in Asia, Africa, and South America, as Foreign Trade Administration director Ohad Cohen turns to emerging markets. On Monday, a new class of 12 new cadets will begin a course with a focus on the markets of Africa, China, and India. Cohen says, that, over the past five years, Israel has been expanding trade attaché offices in Asia and Africa at the expense of its presence in Europe, and that this trend will continue in the coming years, in line with the change in Israel's balance of trade. For the first time , in 2014, Israeli exports with Asia will exceed trade with the US, pushing it from second to third place (behind the EU). Foreign Trade Administration data show that, in 2013, Asia accounted for 21% of Israel's exports, just behind the US, with 21.6%, after the steady relative decline in US trade since the 2008 economic crisis. It predicts that the growth in trade with Asia and the decline in trade with the US will continue, and in 2018, Asia will account for 24.5% of Israeli exports and the US will account for 20.3%. Europe, Israel's largest and closest trading partner, will continue to account for 40% of exports. [Israel] [Client] [Realignment]
• Toxic trail shadows US-Philippine bases deal
  As US and Philippines sign a military pact ahead of Obama's visit, worries over the toxic legacy of US bases resurface. Ted Regencia Last updated: 28 Apr 2014 13:30 Luisa Devillena believes her son Romar died as a result of exposure to contaminants [Ted Regencia/Al Jazeera] Subic Naval Base, Philippines - It has been 13 years since Luisa Devillena's son Romar died of leukaemia at the age of four. She remembers how "sweet" Romar was, recalling how he frequently ran a fever and had swollen joints even as a one-year-old. Devillena's eyes turned watery recounting how her firstborn would insist on playing, even when a catheter tube from chemotherapy dangled from his arm. Despite medical advice, the family insisted that Romar receive full treatment for Stage 3 cancer of the bone marrow - even if that meant selling his paternal grandparents' small piece of land and moving into rental housing in Olongapo City, a highland slum north of Manila. Romar's doctors could not be certain about the cause of his cancer. But they told Devillena that exposure to carcinogenic contaminants was likely to blame. She suspects that frequent trips during her pregnancy to the beach in nearby Subic, a former US naval base, was a contributing factor. Her suspicions grew after learning about the death of a neighbourhood child with cerebral palsy and other recorded cases of child abnormalities in Olongapo. On Monday, the United States and the Philippines signed a new military agreement expanding the presence of American troops in the country, shortly before the arrival of President Barack Obama in Manila. [Bases] [Health]
• Rouhani honeymoon over as Iran's economy bites
  AFP , Sunday 27 Apr 2014 Iran's President Hassan Rouhani was elected on hopes that he could revive the country's sanctions-neutered economy, but the public's goodwill towards him is showing the first signs of fading. Having raised expectations of more moderate rule and wider engagement after eight years under the acerbic leadership of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Rouhani has established a cautious detente with the West since taking power last August. At home he has started to slow the inflation rate that stemmed from his predecessor's spending programmes which, though meant to keep the economy going as Iran became more isolated because of sanctions, ultimately deepened its difficulties. His tenure has so far been played out mostly on the world stage over the chances of a deal to end global suspicion of Tehran's nuclear activities, but domestic pressures are now growing. Although there is a general acceptance that prospects for economic growth are positive under Rouhani, Iranians are being squeezed and they speak of being no better off now than when he took charge. "It's just the same," said Nahid Pakmiat, a retired university administrator, as she bought groceries in Ali Abad, a lower-middle class area of southern Tehran. Most sanctions remain in place and the economy is still in recession. [Sanctions] [Iran] [US negotiating]
• Antagonizing Iran: A strategic miscalculation?
  Seyyed Mohammad Marandi On Line: 23 April 2014 16:21 In Print: Thursday 24 April 2014 Even though it was a major exporter of crude oil and held some of the world's largest natural gas reserves, Iran made a compelling case over half-a-century ago that it needed, almost immediately, to produce an additional 20,000 megawatts of electricity by constructing 23 nuclear power plants. At the same time, Iran's government made the case that the country needed to acquire the capacity to enrich uranium in order to fabricate the reactor fuel for such an ambitious program . Western governments eagerly endorsed these arguments, praising Iran's then Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi's ambition to rapidly modernize Iran while overlooking the reality that he was presiding over a ruthless dictatorship and diverting much needed capital to purchase massive amounts of weapons from the U.S. and other Western countries. And so, during the 1960s and 1970s, billions of dollars were invested in establishing an Iranian nuclear program and training thousands of Iranian nuclear experts in the West - until Iran's 1979 Islamic Revolution replaced the monarchy with an Islamic Republic. After charging enormous sums of money to build the infrastructure for a comprehensive nuclear industry in Iran, Western companies pulled out of the country, leaving large numbers of highly qualified experts and scholars wondering about their fate. Iran's new political leaders recognized the importance of an advanced nuclear program to progress in fields such as medicine, agriculture, industry and energy; attempts were made to find foreign partners to complete the projects, but with little success. Progress in Iran's nuclear development only resumed after Iranians learned to rely on themselves and their own scientists to move the program forward. [Iran] [Nuclear energy] [Imperialism] [Unintended consequences]
• Obama's biggest strategic blunder
  By Zhao Jinglun China.org.cn, April 26, 2014 U.S. President Barack Obama is committing his biggest strategic blunder by simultaneously taking on both great powers China and Russia. Ted Galen Carpenter of the Cato Institute calls it "a cardinal sin in foreign policy." On the eve of his visit to Japan, Obama committed two firsts: for the first time, a sitting U.S. president declared that the U.S.-Japan security treaty applied to China's Diaoyu Islands. In a written response to questions published in Japan's Yomiuri Shimbun, Obama said, "The policy of the United States is clear: The Senkaku islands are administered by Japan and therefore fall under the United States-Japan Treaty," he wrote. "We oppose any unilateral attempts to undermine Japan's administration of these islands." His statement seems to reassure Japan that the United States would come to its defense if China were to seize the islands. China's Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang responded that China holds "indisputable sovereignty" over the islands, and said "the so-called Japan-United States alliance should not harm China's territorial rights." He added, "We firmly oppose applying the Japan-United States security treaty to the issue of the Diaoyu Islands. The United States should respect facts, take a responsible attitude, remain committed to not taking sides on territory and sovereignty issues, speak and act prudently and earnestly play a constructive role in regional peace and stability." [US global strategy] [Obama] [Strategic incoherence]
• Washington’s Biggest Strategic Mistake
  By Ted Galen Carpenter This article appeared on National Interest (Online) on April 18, 2014. The United States is on the brink of committing a cardinal sin in foreign policy: antagonizing two major powers simultaneously. There are frictions in bilateral ties with both Moscow and Beijing that have reached alarming levels over the past year or so. It is a disturbing development that could cause major geopolitical headaches for Washington unless the Obama administration takes prompt corrective measures and sets more coherent priorities. [US global strategy] [Obama] [Strategic incoherence]
• The Dirty Hand of the National Endowment for Democracy in Venezuela
  by Eva Golinger Anti-government protests in Venezuela that seek regime change have been led by several individuals and organizations with close ties to the US government. Leopoldo Lopez and Maria Corina Machado- two of the public leaders behind the violent protests that started in February – have long histories as collaborators, grantees and agents of Washington. The National Endowment for Democracy “NED” and the US Agency for International Development (USAID) have channeled multi-million dollar funding to Lopez’s political parties Primero Justicia and Voluntad Popular, and Machado’s NGO Sumate and her electoral campaigns. These Washington agencies have also filtered more than $14 million to opposition groups in Venezuela between 2013 and 2014, including funding for their political campaigns in 2013 and for the current anti-government protests in 2014. [NGO] [NED] [Subversion]
• Kuwait, a U.S. ally on Syria, is also the leading funder of extremist rebels
  By Karen DeYoung, Saturday, April 26, 11:54 AM E-mail the writer Kuwait, a U.S. ally whose aid to besieged Syrian civilians has been surpassed only by the United States this year, is also the leading source of funding for al-Qaeda-linked terrorists fighting in Syria’s civil war, according to Obama administration officials. The amount of money that has flowed from Kuwaiti individuals and through organized charities to Syrian rebel groups such as Jabhat al-Nusra totals in the hundreds of millions of dollars, according to experts whose estimates are endorsed by the Treasury Department. Video Amateur video suggests much of Syria’s infrastructure has been destroyed as bombings and battles continue across the country. More than 150,000 people have been killed in the 3-year-old conflict. Amateur video suggests much of Syria’s infrastructure has been destroyed as bombings and battles continue across the country. More than 150,000 people have been killed in the 3-year-old conflict. Karen DeYoung 1:54 PM ET U.S. officials are expressing frustration at its ally’s unwillingness to curb the flow of contributions. Until recently, tiny, oil-rich Kuwait avoided public scrutiny as attention to terrorist financing focused more sharply on Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar. But the fact that those countries have made strides in addressing the problem, a senior Treasury official said, has “shed more light on the less forward-leaning steps taken in Kuwait.” Last month, the administration decided to go public with its concerns. In a remarkably undiplomatic statement that officials said had been cleared at senior levels, Treasury Undersecretary David S. Cohen called Kuwait “the epicenter of fundraising for terrorist groups in Syria.” [Islamist] [Kuwait] [Strategic incoherence]
• The U.S. Middle Class Cedes Gold to Canada
  By Sheelah Kolhatkar April 23, 2014 Coming as it does soon after the Olympic hockey loss to our northern neighbors, word that the U.S. middle class is no longer the wealthiest in the world—and the fact that Canadians are No. 1—is sure to draw special attention from U.S. policymakers to our rising levels of income inequality. A desire to avoid falling behind Canada may even prompt them to do something about it. According to a survey conducted by the New York Times for its fancy new economic-data Web channel, The Upshot, the richest Americans have been getting richer faster than their brethren in other countries, while the middle and lower-middle classes have been doing worse those in other advanced countries. Since 2000, middle-class incomes have grown 19.7 percent in the U.K., 16.2 percent in Ireland, 13.9 percent in the Netherlands, and 4.1 percent in Spain, according to the Times. Those in the U.S. have not grown at all. After-tax middle-class incomes in Canada, which have also grown 19.7 percent since 2000, now appear to be higher than those in the U.S. [Inequality]
• Why We’re in a New Gilded Age
  Paul Krugman May 8, 2014 Issue Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, translated from the French by Arthur Goldhammer Belknap Press/Harvard University Press, 685 pp., $39.95 Thomas Piketty, professor at the Paris School of Economics, isn’t a household name, although that may change with the English-language publication of his magnificent, sweeping meditation on inequality, Capital in the Twenty-First Century. Yet his influence runs deep. It has become a commonplace to say that we are living in a second Gilded Age—or, as Piketty likes to put it, a second Belle Époque—defined by the incredible rise of the “one percent.” But it has only become a commonplace thanks to Piketty’s work. In particular, he and a few colleagues (notably Anthony Atkinson at Oxford and Emmanuel Saez at Berkeley) have pioneered statistical techniques that make it possible to track the concentration of income and wealth deep into the past—back to the early twentieth century for America and Britain, and all the way to the late eighteenth century for France. [Inequality] [Capitalism]
• Oligarchs R’ US. That “Iron Law” Of Oligarchy Is Back To Haunt Us
  By Danny Schechter Global Research, April 25, 2014 For years, it was a term only used in connection with those big bad and sleazy Mafioso-type businessmen in Russia. Russia had Oligarchs; we didn’t. That became a big difference between the official narrative of what separated our land of the free and the home of the brave from THEM, the snakes in the shades and private planes, in the post-Soviet period. Actually, I first heard the term oligarchy when I was studying labor history at Cornell a half a lifetime ago. We were taught about something called the “Iron Law of Oligarchy.” It was a concept coined by Robert Michels, a friend of sociology guru, Max Weber, way back in 1911. Here’s how it was defined in that relic of another age: The Encyclopedia Britannica: “Michels came to the conclusion that the formal organization of bureaucracies inevitably leads to oligarchy, under which organizations originally idealistic and democratic eventually come to be dominated by asmall, self-serving group of people who achieved positions of power and responsibility. This can occur in large organizations because it becomes physically impossible for everyone to get together every time a decision has to be made.” So, oligarchies have been with us seemingly forever—it’s an “iron law,” says he– but in current usage the term references the small elite—the 1% of the 1% that dominates economic and political decision making. [Oligarchy]
• UK military operations since cold war have cost £34bn, says study
  Study says bulk of money was spent on Iraq and Afghanistan, interventions judged later to be 'strategic failures' Richard Norton-Taylor The Guardian, Wednesday 23 April 2014 18.45 BST Britain's military operations since the end of the cold war have cost £34.7bn and a further £30bn may have to be spent on long-term veteran care, according to an authoritative study. The bulk of the money has been spent on interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan judged to have been "strategic failures", says the study, Wars in Peace, published by the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI). [Imperialism]
• World Cuts Back Military Spending, But Not Asia
  Driven by a rising China and arms exports from the United States, military spending in Asia is on the increase. By John Feffer, April 17, 2014. Originally published in Inter Press Service. military-spending-asia-sipri-pacific-pivot-south-china-sea Asian countries are spending more on their militaries even as other regions cut back. (Photo: U.S. Pacific Command / Flickr) For the second year in a row, the world is spending a little less on the military. Asia, however, has failed to get the memo. The region is spending more at a time when many others are spending less. Last year, Asia saw a 3.6-percent increase in military spending, according to figures just released by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. The region — which includes East Asia, South Asia, Central Asia, and Oceania — posted topping off a 62 percent increase over the last decade. In 2012, for the first time, Asia outpaced Europe in its military spending. That year, the world’s top five importers of armaments all came from Asia: India, China, Pakistan, South Korea, and (incredibly) the city-state of Singapore. [Military expenditure]
• Iran asks U.N. to act on U.S. ban on new ambassador
  By Michelle Nichols UNITED NATIONS Wed Apr 23, 2014 12:01am EDT (Reuters) - Iran asked the United Nations on Tuesday to demand that the United States grant a visa to Tehran's proposed new U.N. envoy, while Washington stood firm on its decision to deny entry to Hamid Abutalebi over his suspected links to hostage-takers. The United States has said it would not grant a visa to Abutalebi because of his connection to the 1979-1981 Tehran hostage crisis when Iranian students seized the U.S. Embassy and held 52 Americans hostage for 444 days. Abutalebi has said he acted only as a translator. The U.N. Committee on Relations with the Host Country, which deals with the issues of states operating in the United States such as immigration, security, banking and parking violations, met on Tuesday at Iran's request to discuss the matter. "We firmly believe that this is a very serious issue and the committee should address it in an urgent and serious way," Iran's Deputy U.N. Ambassador Hossein Dehghani told the panel. Washington's denial of a visa for Abutalebi was "so obviously" a breach of a 1947 "headquarters agreement" between the United States and the United Nations that "the committee should deal with it in an extraordinary way," Dehghani said. Under the pact, the United States is generally required to allow access to the United Nations for foreign diplomats. Washington has said it can deny visas for "security, terrorism, and foreign policy" reasons.
• UN committee takes no action on Iran envoy dispute
  Political Desk On Line: 23 April 2014 16:14 In Print: Thursday 24 April 2014 TEHRAN – A UN committee took no action Tuesday on the U.S. refusal to grant a visa to Iran’s chosen ambassador to the United Nations after hearing from both sides, the Associated Press reported. Instead, Cypriot Ambassador Nicholas Emiliou, who chairs the committee, told reporters after the closed meeting that the issue remains on the committee’s agenda “and we will revert to it if necessary.” U.S. President Barack Obama signed legislation on April 18 to block Iranian Ambassador Hamid Aboutalebi from entering the United States to become Iran’s permanent representative to the UN because of his ties to the 1979 seizure of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran. Aboutalebi has said that he only served as a translator during the incident. Iran says the U.S. has set a dangerous precedent by violating the right of sovereign states to designate representatives to the United Nations. Tehran has refused to designate another UN ambassador to replace Aboutalebi. On Tuesday, UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said, “as far as we know this is a unique case involving a permanent representative.” At Tuesday’s meeting, Emiliou said, “Iran and the United States presented their views on the well-known incident concerning the denial of visa to the new permanent representative of Iran.” “There was a discussion ... with the participation of several delegations,” he said. According to diplomats at the meeting, speaking on condition of anonymity because the session was private, North Korea, Cuba and Belarus spoke up in support of Iran. They said that no country spoke in support of the U.S. position. [UNUS] [Legality]
• Why Economist Thomas Piketty Has Scared the Pants Off the American Right
  If you call rigorous economic research on inequality a Communist plot, will it go away? Thomas Piketty is no radical. His 700-page book Capital in the 21st Century is certainly not some kind of screed filled with calls for class warfare. In fact, the wonky and mild-mannered French economist opens his tome with a description of his typical Gen X abhorrence of what he calls the “lazy rhetoric of anticapitalism." He is in no way, shape, or form a Marxist. As fellow-economist James K. Galbraith has underscored in his review of the book , Piketty "explicitly (and rather caustically) rejects the Marxist view" of economics. But he does do something that gives right-wingers in America the willies. He writes calmly and reasonably about economic inequality, and concludes, to the alarm of conservatives, that there is no magical force that drives capitalist societies toward shared prosperity. Quite the opposite. He warns that if we don't do something about it, we may end up with a society that is more top-heavy than anything that has come before — something even worse than the Gilded Age. For this, in America, you get branded a crazed Communist by the right . In this past weekend's New York Times, Ross Douthat sounds the alarm in an op-ed ominously tited " Marx Rises Again." The columnist hints that he and his fellow pundits have only pretended to read the book but nevertheless feel comfortable making statements like "Yes, that’s right: Karl Marx is back from the dead" about Piketty. The National Review's James Pethokoukis joins in the games with a silly article called " The New Marxism" in which he repeats the nonsense that Piketty is some sort of Marxist apologist. For Douthat and his tribe, the proposition that unfettered capitalism marches toward gross inequality is not a conclusion based on carefully collected data, strenuous research and a sweeping view of history. It has to be a Communist plot. [Inequality]
• Experts: U.S. must have OKd transfer of missiles seen in Syria rebel videos
  By Mitchell Prothero and Jonathan S. Landay McClatchy Foreign Staff April 22, 2014 BEIRUT — The heavy anti-tank missiles recently shown in videos being fired by Western-backed Syrian rebels were manufactured in the United States, and their transfer to the rebels would have required direct American government approval, according to experts in international weapons deals. That makes the videos the first hard evidence that the Obama administration has undertaken what may be a test of the rebels’ ability to adapt to advanced weaponry in a conflict that to date has been primarily a battle of outdated Soviet-era equipment. [Syria] [Intervention]
• Syria's chemical weapons wild card: chlorine gas
  Tue Apr 22, 2014 10:38pm IST * Opposition says chlorine used in three areas this month * Chlorine not declared by Syria to chemical weapons watchdog * Canisters likely delivered by air-dropped barrel bombs * Deadline for removal of chemical weapons is April 27 (Updates with new OPCW figure on chemicals removed, par 4) By Oliver Holmes BEIRUT, April 22 (Reuters) - Chlorine gas attacks in Syria this month, if proven, expose a major loophole in an international deal to remove chemical weapons from the war-torn country and suggest chemical warfare could persist after the removal operation has finished. [cbw] [False flag]
• Russia-US crisis may soon spread to Near East
  It seems that the tendency toward a needless exacerbation of US-Russian relations, which started with the crisis in Ukraine, has now begun to spread to the Near East as well. This time the area of confrontation has become Syria. The Russian-US “honeymoon,” more precisely the time allotted for eliminating the Syrian chemical arsenal, will soon be over and all signs indicate that the plan will be fulfilled as agreed. But proposed Geneva III talks have clearly lost traction. Fierce fighting among the members of the Syrian opposition has severely hurt their potential and the chances of even a minimal agreement between those who are generally considered to be the moderate opposition (although the assessments of Moscow and Washington differ here in some respects). According to Yezid Sayigh, “The National Coalition’s reprieve during the Geneva talks also momentarily masked the extent of its incapacitation by renewed Saudi-Qatari competition for influence over the Syrian opposition.” Meanwhile, the designation by Riyadh of the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization dealt a serious blow to this organization’s standing in Syria, where it plays a major role in both the National Coalition and the Syrian National Council, that is to say, the very organizations that most of the world community regards as moderate. Despite a likely win for US-Russia cooperation on eliminating Syria's chemical weapons, the provision of anti-tank weapons by the United States and its allies to moderate Syrian opposition forces will only destabilize Syria further, in Moscow's view. Author Vitaly Naumkin Posted April 21, 2014 Leaders of the diverse organizations forming the Syrian opposition have long asked the West for supply of modern antitank and anti-aircraft weapons to turn the tide in the war against President Bashar al-Assad. In the course of a series of recent meetings in Moscow with officials (such as Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov), experts and journalists, a group of Syrian oppositionists presented their “charter for democratic reform,” which in one way or another came down to discussing the need to arm the rebel groups with modern weapons to resolve the crisis. Moscow, as is known, is against this method of resolving the crisis. For the time being, Western governments, above all the United States, have withstood intensive lobbying by Saudi Arabia and Qatar to arm the rebels with such dangerous weapons systems, primarily out of fear that the arms may end up in the wrong hands. The experience of Afghanistan — where the mujahedeen turned the weapons they received against the very people who had given them — had not been forgotten. Recently, however, Washington has changed its position. On April 18, The Wall Street Journal (in an article by Ellen Knickmeyer, Maria Abi-Habib and Adam Entous) confirmed previous reports by Agence France-Presse that “the US and Saudi Arabia have supplied Syrian rebel groups with a small number of advanced American antitank missiles.” [Syria] [Escalation] [NCW]
• Obama: “Remaking the Middle East”: The American Gulag
  By Prof. James Petras Global Research, April 22, 2014 During the beginning of his first term in office President Obama promised “to remake the Middle East into a region of prosperity and freedom”. Six years later the reality is totally the contrary: the Middle East is ruled by despotic regimes whose jails are overflowing with political prisoners. The vast majority of pro-democracy activists who have been incarcerated, have been subject to harsh torture and are serving long prison sentences. The rulers lack legitimacy, having seized power and maintained their rule through a centralized police state and military repression.Direct US military and CIA intervention, massive shipments of arms,military bases, training missions and Special Forces are decisive in the construction of the Gulag chain from North Africa to the Gulf States. We will proceed by documenting the scale and scope of political repression in each US backed police state. We will then describe the scale and scope of US military aid buttressing the “remaking of the Middle East” into a chain of political prisons run by and for the US Empire. The countries and regimes include Egypt, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Iraq, Yemen, Jordan and Turkey . . . all of which promote and defend US imperial interests against the pro-democracy majority, represented by their independent social-political movements. [Prisoners] [Repression]
• Michael Lewis: 'Wall Street has gone insane'
  Flash Boys, an exposé of the murky world of 'rigged' high-frequency trading, has sold 130,000 copies in its first week and is already being turned into a film. Its author, Michael Lewis, explains why the story is so compelling – and why our brightest minds make the most dangerous bankers Emma Brockes The Guardian, Wednesday 16 April 2014 18.23 BST Michael Lewis, Flash Boys author Michael Lewis looks and sounds a lot like the people he is writing about. Photograph: Ann Johansson for the Guardian On a sliding scale of difficulty, writing a general-interest book about high-frequency trading is slightly harder than making baseball statistics interesting, but easier than animating the role played by quantitative analysis in the 2007 financial collapse. "Collateralised debt obligations," says Michael Lewis, who has written about all three, "are impossible to describe. There's nothing harder. However, trying to show a reader how a market moves? How stock prices move? You can already see them tuning out." That was the concern when he wrote Flash Boys, an investigation into what he calls the "rigged" underbelly of Wall Street trading. In the event, the book has sold a staggering 130,000 copies in the US in its first week of publication. (By comparison, The Big Short, his biggest seller to date, sold 60,000 in its first week.) Lewis has been on every talk show and financial news panel in the land, arguing with, among others, Bill O'Brien, the president of the Bats Global Markets stock exchange, about whether or not he and his cohorts are ripping off their customers. If the 53-year-old started off angry, opposition to the book has sharpened his stance into a moral crusade. "I find this story really upsetting," he says over lunch in LA, where his publicity tour just ended. "The idea that the smartest, richest elites of society find this an acceptable activity. This predatory activity." If it's emotional for Lewis, then the responses have been emotional too, given how unequivocal his accusations are. The cornerstone of Flash Boys is a discovery made by an obscure Canadian banker, Brad Katsuyama, who noticed that whenever he tried to execute a trade, the stock price moved before the order went through. A long and tortured investigation revealed that the variable speeds at which trading information travels down fibre-optic cables to the exchanges was being exploited by brokers and high-frequency traders – so-called for the volume of trades they make – to jump the queue, buy the stocks in question and sell them back at a higher price to the person who expressed the original interest. [Corruption] [Banking]
• US is losing its positions in the Middle East due to the Ukrainian Crisis
  By taking an extremely hostile position against Russia in the Ukrainian crisis Washington has managed to hasten the reorientation of Moscow towards the East, especially the Middle one. And Iran is among the states that can expect the future development of bilateral relations with Russia, since it is one of the most influential countries in the region. The stability of the Persian Gulf along with the whole Middle East largely depends on Iran, on top of all Iran is indispensable for the US strategic interests. Russian media has recently reported that Moscow and Tehran had signed a $ 20 billion worth deal. Russia agreed to buy Iranian oil, and Iran in return would buy Russian goods. The preparation of this Oil-for-Goods deal began in December of the last year. In essence the oil would be sold at a price of a few percent lower than the market for a wide range of Russian products — from agriculture to engineering ones, additionally Russia will participate in Iranian industrial projects. Thus Iran would obtain a guaranteed sale of its oil, and Russia — an access to the Iranian market . The contract is mutually beneficial and does not affect the interests of any other country. [Russia confrontation] [NCW] [Iran]
• U.N. Denies Dragging Its Feet on U.S.-Iran Visa Dispute
  By Thalif Deen UNITED NATIONS, Apr 18 2014 (IPS) - After two long weeks of raging controversy over Washington’s refusal to grant a U.S. visa to the Iranian envoy to the United Nations, the U.N.’s office of legal affairs is being accused of moving at the pace of a paralytic snail – only to seek more time while remaining non-committal on the dispute. But U.N. Spokesperson Stephane Dujarric challenged the timeline, pointing out that the United Nations would see events quite differently. “The suggestion of allowing this matter to linger for two weeks is hardly accurate,” he told IPS Friday. [UNUS] [Legality] [Iran]
• Israel takes strategic alliance with US for granted
  This time, it’s not an anti-American declaration by a marginal, right-wing minister, which has been taken “out of context,” or leaked criticism by a senior minister against the US secretary of state. Summary? Print Israel’s neutrality toward the crisis in Ukraine is a dangerous precedent in Israel's relations with the US, when taking into account that it can exist without Russia’s help, but not without American support. Author Akiva Eldar Posted April 20, 2014 Translator(s)Ruti Sinai The absence of Israel’s UN ambassador, Ron Prosor, from the vote condemning the Russian invasion of Crimea and declaring support for the territorial integrity of Ukraine, is a milestone in Israel-US relations. In defense-diplomatic parlance, a no-confidence vote against the United States, at the height of a severe confrontation with Russia, is almost a declaration of cold war. After all, instructing a UN ambassador to “vote with his feet” on an issue which has serious diplomatic implications is not a decision that’s taken lightly. It’s one of those decisions made after detailed examination, internal deliberation and weighty consideration. In recent years we’ve gotten used to seeing the (Israeli) tail wagging the (American) dog. But after a slight tug, it usually straightens up and calms down. As far as the confrontation over the Ukraine crisis between the two bulldogs, Israel has forgotten which of the two protects it. The strategic asset known as “the special relationship between the US and Israel” has become “a normal relationship between two states.” [Client] [Israel]
• The Dulles Brothers, Harry Dexter White, Alger Hiss, and the Fate of the Private Pre-War International Banking System
  Peter Dale Scott The election of Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1952 had permanent consequences for U.S. foreign policy. The U.S. major oil companies, which before the election were facing criminal charges for their cartel arrangements, instead were freed to continue their activities, until “In some of the faraway countries where it did business.… Exxon’s sway over local politics and security was greater than that of the United States embassy.”1 Parallel to this was a radical escalation in 1953 of CIA covert operations. Major plots to overthrow the governments of Iran and Guatemala, both of which had been turned down by Truman and his Secretary of State, Dean Acheson, now proceeded, redefining America’s relationship to the third world.2 The key to this important change was not Eisenhower but the Dulles brothers, formerly both partners in the firm Sullivan and Cromwell, which for years had represented the oil cartel: As long as his brother, John Foster Dulles, was Secretary of State, [CIA Director] Allen Dulles had no need to chafe under political “control.”…. An adventurous director… whose brother held the second highest office in the administration… was able to act almost at will as he was shielded from any unpleasant consequences.3 [Cold War]
• Death From Above: How American Drone Strikes Are Devastating Yemen
  On the ground in a country where unmanned missile attacks are a terrifyingly regular occurrence An unmanned U.S. Predator drone Kirsty Wigglesworth/AP Images By Vivian Salama April 14, 2014 10:00 AM ET The people of Yemen can hear destruction before it arrives. In cities, towns and villages across this country, which hangs off the southern end of the Arabian Peninsula, the air buzzes with the sound of American drones flying overhead . The sound is a constant and terrible reminder: a robot plane, acting on secret intelligence, may calculate that the man across from you at the coffee shop, or the acquaintance with whom you've shared a passing word on the street, is an Al Qaeda operative. This intelligence may be accurate or it may not, but it doesn't matter. If you are in the wrong place at the wrong time, the chaotic buzzing above sharpens into the death-herald of an incoming missile. New Report Documents the Human Cost of U.S. Drone Strikes in Yemen Such quite literal existential uncertainty is coming at a deep psychological cost for the Yemeni people. For Americans, this military campaign is an abstraction. The drone strikes don't require U.S. troops on the ground, and thus are easy to keep out of sight and out of mind. Over half of Yemen's 24.8 million citizens – militants and civilians alike – are impacted every day. A war is happening, and one of the unforeseen casualties is the Yemeni mind. [UAV] [Yemen]
• American-Israeli relations: US still Israel's best friend but no longer country's only friend
  April 16, 2014 Israel is no longer an impoverished, embattled, emotionally needy client state. It is an emerging international power with options it never had before. By Zev Chafets Late last month the United States introduced a U.N. resolution condemning Russia’s de facto seizure of Crimea from Ukraine. As expected, the resolution passed the General Assembly easily. Unexpected, though, was the decision by Israel, long America’s most reliable U.N. vote (and vice versa), to absent itself from the ballot. This shook up the Obama administration. National Security Adviser Susan Rice met with Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman and demanded an explanation. Lieberman blandly blamed it on a strike at the foreign ministry. What was he supposed to do, ask Israeli diplomats to cross a picket line? Israel is no longer an impoverished, embattled, emotionally needy client state. It is an emerging international power with options it never had before. At home he was more candid. “We have good, trusting relations with the Americans and the Russians,” he told a TV interviewer. “I don’t see why we need to get caught up in this.” General Amos Gilad, a senior figure in the Ministry of Defense, seconded this new, even-handed approach. “Our security interests should not be defined as identical to that of anyone else, even the United States,” he said. Ha’aretz, a left-wing Israeli newspaper, reported that White House officials “nearly went crazy” with shock and anger when they heard such ungrateful sentiments. If so, Rice and her colleagues haven’t been paying close attention. Israel is no longer an impoverished, embattled, emotionally needy client state. It is an emerging international power with options it never had before. Locked doors are now wide open. Old enemies want to be given another chance. America is still Israel’s best friend, but it is no longer its only friend. [Israel] [Client]
• The Aggressive Feminine Face of U.S. Diplomacy
  Nikolai Bobkin | 18.04.2014 | 00:00 The United States is represented in the UN by Samantha Power, who recently has been shocking diplomats with her hysterical retorts, unpredictable behavior and invective from the podium of the world's main international organization. The lady who has been nicknamed Obama's «humanitarian hawk» is in such a rage over the impotence of the U.S. in Ukraine that occasionally she spouts total nonsense: that Russia has no right to forget that it is the loser, not the winner, that Moscow's behavior is outrageous because by blackmailing the U.S. with nuclear weapons, Moscow is humiliating America, etc. In general, one of the most outstanding drama queens of recent years in the American establishment is Hillary Clinton.
• The big test facing Iraq
  As the first elections loom since the US left four years ago, Iraq struggles to avoid splitting apart amid escalating violence and political paralysis. By Jane Arraf, Correspondent / April 13, 2014 • 'Will Iraq crack?' is the cover story of the April 14, 2014 issue of The Christian Science Monitor Weekly. • At low tide, the carcasses of destroyed oil tankers are half sunk into the ocher mud. They are rusting relics from a devastating eight-year war three decades ago that began over access to the shallow ribbon of water – Iraq's only lane to the deep-sea waters of the Gulf. "When you see it on the ground, you see how sensitive these issues are ... and how stupid decisions destroyed this country," says Mr. Zebari, a onetime Kurdish guerrilla who fought Saddam Hussein's regime from the mountains and has been foreign minister throughout the life of postwar Iraq. "Since its establishment, Iraq has struggled with this issue. It's been a victim of geography and history." Now Iraq is once again confronting a tumultuous moment bound up in geography and history. Eleven years after the United States toppled the despotic Hussein, concern has shifted from whether the once-hegemonic Arab nation poses a threat to the region to something far different: whether the internal divisions that beset the country could lead to its eventual breakup. [Iraq] [Fragmentation]
• Angela Merkel denied access to her NSA file
  Frustration with US government rises over failure to clear up questions about surveillance of German chancellor's phone • • Paul Lewis in Washington and Philip Oltermann in Berlin • • theguardian.com, Thursday 10 April 2014 18.31 BST Angela Merkel, the German chancellor. The US government's refusal to allow Merkel access to her own NSA file contrasts with the ease with which Germans can see files relating to the activities of the Stasi. Photograph: Ronny Hartmann/AFP/Getty Images The US government is refusing to grant Angela Merkel access to her NSA file or answer formal questions from Germany about its surveillance activities, raising the stakes before a crucial visit by the German chancellor to Washington. Merkel will meet Barack Obama in three weeks, on her first visit to the US capital since documents leaked by whistleblower Edward Snowden revealed that the NSA had been monitoring her phone. [Surveillance]
• Top Five Things Kindle Doesn't Want Authors To Know
  March 24, 2014 I recently published a book on Amazon Kindle, and was fortunate to have it become a #1 bestseller in two music categories. Along the journey of Kindle self-publishing, I was given an unexpected education - or, to use the vernacular of the day, I was "schooled". Just about everything I had planned for my beautifully designed, interactive and educational multimedia book had to be scrapped. What was left in the fallout was a ghost of what I had imagined, and the "royalties" ended up being equally transparent (see #4 on this list). [Kindle]
• Iran Protests UN Ambassador Ban to United Nations
  UNITED NATIONS April 15, 2014 (AP) Iran has formally protested Washington's refusal to grant a visa to its new U.N. ambassador, saying the move damages international diplomacy and sets a "dangerous" precedent. The U.S. State Department and White House have said that Iran's selection of Hamid Aboutalebi to be its United Nations envoy is not acceptable. Aboutalebi was a member of the group responsible for the 1979 takeover of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran that held 52 Americans hostage for 444 days. Aboutalebi has insisted his involvement in the group was limited to translation and negotiation. Iran's U.N. Mission sent a delegation to meet with the United Nations' office of Legal Affairs on Tuesday afternoon about the issue, U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric said. The Iranian Mission filed a letter with the U.N.'s Committee on Relations with the Host Country and released a copy of it Monday night. The 19-nation Host Country committee, chaired by Cyprus, can hold a hearing on the issue but cannot change the U.S. decision. The United States is one of the members of the committee, which is expected to meet next on April 22. [UNUS] [Iran] [Legality]
• 'Remaining chemical weapons can be removed from Syria within 15 days' – OPCW chief
  © Collage: Voice of Russia Director-General of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) Ahmet Uzumcu is visiting Russia. During his stay in Moscow, Mr. Uzumcu has held a series of meetings in the Federal Assembly and the Foreign Ministry. From Moscow, he will travel to the Russian republic of Udmurtia to visit a unique chemical weapons disposal plant, which was put into operation in December. Mr. Uzumcu has repeatedly voiced hope that the experience of constructive cooperation within the OPCW framework can be helpful in negotiations on the settlement of the Syrian crisis. He spoke more about it in his interview with the Voice of Russia. Mr. Uzumcu, you have repeatedly emphasized that delays in Syria’s chemical disarmament are mostly due to attacks by opposition militants. The threat remains. Nevertheless, you believe that it is still possible to complete Syria’s chemical disarmament by the agreed deadline. What makes you so confident? As the current situation in Syria makes it impossible to dispose of the chemicals inside the country, the work has been moved outside its territory. Normally, chemical weapons are destroyed in the country in which they are deployed. But in Syria, this is impossible because of the civil war. Certain delays have occurred during the reloading and transportation of chemicals, for which purely technical difficulties were chiefly to blame at first. Time is needed to transport the substances and equipment. Other technical problems emerged along the way. One should give the Syrian government credit - it has done its best to speed up the process. But due to some objective factors concerning security, it sometimes failed to fully cope with its commitments as scheduled. Some countries argue that security problems must not delay the transportation of chemicals. Others show understanding. [cbw] [Syria]
• The FBI and Its Lethal Informants
  by Peter Lee Lot of talk about bad guys being FBI assets recently. Thanks to his lawyers, the Interwebs are a-hum with speculation that the FBI neglected to hoover up Tamerlan Tsarnaev a.k.a. the Elder before the Boston marathon bombing because the Bureau was already in touch with him and trying to turn him as an asset, not because the Russians withheld crucial information. [FBI]
• Jordanian jihadis returning from Syria war rattle U.S.-aligned kingdom
  By Suleiman Al-Khalidi AMMAN Thu Apr 17, 2014 9:43am EDT (Reuters) - Jordanian Islamist Ahmad Mahmoud fought with rebels in Syria for six weeks earlier this year, then slipped back across the border to seek treatment for a war wound - even though the authorities had warned him not to return. Within a week the bearded 23-year-old fighter found himself in the dock at a military court, facing terrorism charges filed by authorities who are taking an increasingly tough stance against homegrown militants fighting in Syria's civil war. Their rising numbers have rattled the Hashemite kingdom, a U.S. ally against Islamist militancy. Amman treats returning jihadists as a security threat to be nipped in the bud and, with an eye to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's potential to tough out the uprising against him, wants to keep channels open to a government with which it retains diplomatic and trade ties. [Islamist] [Tribute] [Jordan]
• It’s Our Party
  Iranians have a sovereign right to choose whomever they want to represent them at the UN, just as Texans have the right to choose whatever Ivy League meathead they want to represent them in Congress. By John Feffer, April 16, 2014. [UNUS]
• Music plays on in Damascus
  In a poem titled “Ode to Bab Tuma,” poet Muhammad al-Maghut wrote: In the Bab Tuma neighborhood of the old city of Damascus, death and war did not break the residents’ will to go on with their lives. Author Carmen Jokhadar Posted April 16, 2014 “I wish I were colorful pebbles on the sidewalk, or a long song in the alley. There, in a hole of smooth mud, I wish I were a Damascene rose in some garden. A wearisome poet picks me up at the end of the day. Or a cabaret of red wood, attended by rain and strangers.” In that part of the world, the women of Bab Tuma have beautiful eyes. They stroll around fully dressed up after midnight in the narrow side streets, coming back from a party, despite the fact that war and mortars have stained windows with blood. In Bab Tuma, the sound of carols of the Church of St. Hanania — one of the world’s oldest churches — fills the streets in the morning, while music comes from the pubs at night. “The sound of music was stifled” after bloody mortars targeted the Greek Orthodox Virgin Mary Church in Bab Sharqi. Residents, however, got used to the mortars. They frequent Qassaa souk during the day, and go out to coffee shops and pubs at night. “Between October 2013 and January 2014, 15 to 20 mortars were launched on Bab Tuma everyday, and 15 mortars on Jaramana,” said Noel Kharouf, the owner of a pub in Bab Tuma. He noted: “At first, residents would panic and streets would be deserted. But today, mortars have become yet another normal thing whose effect ends after a short while.” Noel, who is also a dentist, continued, “They did everything they could to chase us away, but we stayed. The will of life we have is stronger than the death they tried to spread. Sometimes, when mortars were fired, we would turn up the music, dance and sing louder.” [Syria]
• Who supports who in Syria opposition?
  Those wearing the hats of the Free Syrian Army (FSA) were once upon a time described as the driving engine of the situation in Syria. But they have now shifted either to the ranks of jihadist Salafists — who go strong with their “money, guns and ideology” formula — or have since become looting warlords, lost their effectiveness and were confined to their limited turf. Summary? Print There are hundreds of different groups fighting among the ranks of the Syrian armed opposition, and while the United States and Saudi Arabia have been selective when it comes to courting potential allies, Turkey has not. Author Fehim Tastekin Posted April 16, 2014 Translator(s)Timur Goksel Original Article ORIJINAL YAZIYI TÜRKÇE OKUYABILIRSINIZ But the legend of “moderates” still persists. In my article on April 11 titled “Those becoming moderates with sarin gas,” I wrote that groups trained in Jordan by the Americans and Saudis were actually colluding with Jabhat al-Nusra, which the Americans had added to their list of terrorist organizations and many of whom adhere to al-Qaeda’s ideology. I had also noted that the Syrian Revolutionary Front — one of the few groups the Syrian National Coalition (SNC) was able to establish links with — was cooperating with the Saudi-backed Army of Islam and Yarmuk Brigade, which were coordinating with Jabhat al-Nusra. This is not remarkable as such. Former SNC head Moaz al-Khatib, once considered a potential head of the Syrian state by Washington, was also upset when Jabhat al-Nusra was branded a terrorist group. Jabhat al-Nusra, which got its first taste of war in Iraq in the ranks of the Islamic State of Iraq, is the Syrian extension of al-Qaeda. It's now accused by Seymour Hersh as being behind the chemical attack on Ghouta. [Islamists] [Turkey]
• The US Is the World’s Worst Human Rights Violator
  By Joachim Hagopian Global Research, April 16, 2014 The US government has always been the first to call out other nations with poor track records on human rights abuses. Invariably they are the two nations viewed most threatening to America’s global hegemony and power – rivals Russia and China. Other loudly criticized countries are those less powerful Third World nations that most defy US dominance. Any nation on earth is at risk of America’s wrath that fights to protect its own self-interest over and above the American Empire’s in a noble effort to minimize economic exploitation in the plundering of precious natural resources and subjugating and locking its native population into permanent Third World serfdom. But any country going against the world’s most powerful nation is automatically deemed an enemy of the Empire and subject to such labels as axis-of-evil and a serious affront to human rights. No surprise that countries like Venezuela, Cuba, Iran, Syria and North Korea are all targeted in the crosshairs of the next war or next regime change living under decades of heavy-handed economic sanctions designed to break the will of these independent smaller nations bold enough to resist US aggression, superpower control and full frontal dominance. [Human rights]
• Syrian Economic Forum: Developing the Economic Foundation for Syrian Relief and Recovery
  After three years of conflict, the Syrian economy is in shambles, and the business community is in a state of shock. To promote effective economic relief and lay the groundwork for eventual recovery, CIPE supports the Syrian Economic Forum (SEF) — an independent think tank founded by owners of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) across Syria. SEF is dedicated to a free, pluralistic, and independent Syria grounded in a strong, inclusive economy. It has served as a crucial source of fact-based analysis and economic policy for the democratic Syrian opposition: After conducting a field survey in northern Syria, SEF produced a landmark damage and needs assessment of SMEs, detailing the condition of factories and establishing priorities for relief and recovery. SEF presented the assessment to leading members of the opposition, business leaders, and diplomats at a major conference in Gaziantep, Turkey. From its Gaziantep headquarters, SEF has developed close relationships with the Syrian business community, opposition leadership, and other pro-democracy activists. [Syria] [Turkey] [NGO]
• Revealed: the radical clerics using social media to back British jihadists in Syria
  Academic study points to radical preachers cheerleading western Muslims in fight against Bashar al-Assad Shiv Malik, and Michael Safi in Australia The Guardian, Tuesday 15 April 2014 22.30 BST Two radical Muslim clerics have been identified as influential online cheerleaders for fighters seeking to topple the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, in a pioneering academic study published on Wednesday. Researchers based at King's College London reveal how social media is being harnessed by a network of radical preachers to inspire and guide British and other western Muslims waging jihad in Syria. By examining tweets and Facebook postings used by certain rebels, people who follow the conflict from abroad and the two clerics, the academics say they have been able to provide a "unique and unfiltered window into the minds" of western and European foreign fighters in Syria. The information allowed the analysts to identify a "set of new spiritual authorities" who have the largest followings. The report says they are the American-based cleric Ahmad Musa Jibril and the Australian preacher Musa Cerantonio. Both speak English and are based in the west. [Islamists] [Social media]
• U.N. Visa Denials Appendage of U.S. Foreign Policy
  By Thalif Deen UNITED NATIONS, Apr 15 2014 (IPS) - The United States has rarely, if ever, denied a visa to a head of state seeking to visit the United Nations to address the 193-member General Assembly, the highest policy making body in the organisation . But it did so last November, prompting Sudan to register a strong protest before the U.N.’s legal committee: a protest that went unsung and unnoticed. "Washington believes it can deny visas whenever it chooses to do so and most governments, fearful of negative consequences, remain silent and do not make a fuss." -- James A. Paul Hassan Ali, a senior Sudanese diplomat, told delegates, “The democratically-elected president of Sudan, Omar Hassan Al-Bashir, had been deprived of the opportunity to participate in the General Assembly because the host country, the United States, had denied him a visa, in violation of the U.N.-U.S. Headquarters Agreement.” [UNUS] [Legality] [ICC]
• China, Russia Seek 'Enhanced Mutual Political Support'
  During the Russian Foreign Minister’s visit to Beijing, China and Russia extolled their growing relationship. By Shannon Tiezzi April 16, 2014 Russia’s Foreign Minister, Sergey Lavrov, was in China Tuesday. During his visit, Lavrov held meetings with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi as well as President Xi Jinping. According to a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson, Lavrov’s visit was primarily designed to “lay the groundwork” for President Vladimir Putin’s scheduled visit to China in May. In addition to paying an official state visit, Putin will also attend the quadrennial Conference on Interaction and Confidence Building Measures in Asia (CICA) Summit, to be held in Shanghai. China and Russia have been working hard to tighten their relationship, especially since Xi Jinping assumed the presidency in March 2013. Since then, Xi has visited Russia three times, most recently to attend the opening ceremony of the Sochi Olympics. Russia was, in fact, the destination chosen for Xi’s very first trip abroad, symbolizing the importance Xi and China’s government place on ties with Moscow. During his meeting with Lavrov, Xi Jinping said that relations between China and Russia “are at their best” and have played “an irreplaceable role in maintaining world peace and stability.” China’s Foreign Ministry dubbed China-Russia ties the “major-country relationship that boasts the richest contents, the highest level and the greatest strategic significance.” Of course, China’s other main “major-country relationship” is with the United States—spokesperson Hua Chunying was implicitly contrasting the progress in China-Russia relations with recent tensions in the China-U.S. relationship. [Russia China] [NCW]
• US position over Iran’s ambassador generates confrontation with UN
  Bob Rigg 16 April 2014 If the UN does not act to reject this precedent, it will contribute to an international erosion of faith in its own integrity and independence -precisely the kind of behaviour which the carefully crafted ‘headquarters agreement’ was designed to prevent. Just a few weeks ago a handful of far-right Republican Senators alleged that Hamid Aboutalebi, the senior Iranian diplomat designated to be Iran’s ambassador at the UN in New York, had been amongst the young Iranians who had occupied the US embassy in Tehran in 1979. They also held 52 US diplomats and others hostage for 444 days. Aboutalebi had, they alleged solely on the basis of unsubstantiated evidence, participated in the occupation of the embassy, and was undoubtedly a “terrorist”. Iran steadfastly stood by its man, pointing out that he was a very competent senior diplomat with a wealth of international experience. Aboutalebi denied that he had occupied the embassy, saying that his participation had been limited to translating a few documents. He was attacked, in a process of demonization which some Americans seem to reserve for Iran’s hostage takers, amongst other things as a “terrorist mastermind.” In ideologically heated situations US congressmen can fall prey to wild generalisations mobilising latent stereotypes, as we also see with regard to Ukraine at present. Does the increasing narrowness, insularity and intolerance of US political life make it unsuitable as a home for the UN? [UNUS] [Legality] [Iran]
• Guardian and Washington Post win Pulitzer prize for NSA revelations
  Pair awarded highest accolade in US journalism, winning Pulitzer prize for public service for stories on NSA surveillance Ed Pilkington in New York The Guardian, Monday 14 April 2014 20.01 BST Edward Snowden The Guardian revealed the NSA's bulk collection of phone records 10 months ago based on Edward Snowden's leaks. Photograph: AFP/Getty Images The Guardian and the Washington Post have been awarded the highest accolade in US journalism, winning the Pulitzer prize for public service for their groundbreaking articles on the National Security Agency’s surveillance activities based on the leaks of Edward Snowden. The award, announced in New York on Monday, comes 10 months after the Guardian published the first report based on the leaks from Snowden, revealing the agency’s bulk collection of US citizens’ phone records. In the series of articles that ensued, teams of journalists at the Guardian and the Washington Post published the most substantial disclosures of US government secrets since the Pentagon Papers on the Vietnam war in 1971. [Surveillance]
• Rebel videos show first U.S.-made rockets in Syria
  By Peter Apps LONDON Tue Apr 15, 2014 3:34pm EDT (Reuters) - Online videos show Syrian rebels using what appear to be U.S. anti-tank rockets, weapons experts say, the first significant American-built armaments in the country's civil war. They would signal a further internationalization of the conflict, with new rockets suspected from Russia and drones from Iran also spotted in the forces of President Bashar al-Assad. None of that equipment, however, is seen as enough to turn the tide of battle in a now broadly stalemated war, with Assad dominant in Syria's central cities and along the Mediterranean coast and the rebels in the interior north and east. It was not possible to independently verify the authenticity of the videos or the supplier of the BGM-71 TOW anti-tank rockets shown in the videos. Some analysts suggested they might have been provided by another state such as Saudi Arabia, a U.S. ally, probably with Washington's acquiescence. [Destabilisation]
• Saudi spy chief, architect of Syria policy, replaced
  By Angus McDowall RIYADH Tue Apr 15, 2014 3:29pm EDT (Reuters) - Saudi Arabian intelligence chief Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the architect of Riyadh's attempts to bring down Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, has been removed from his post, state media reported on Tuesday. His departure, months after he was quoted warning of a "major shift" from the United States over its Middle East policy, may help to smooth relations with Washington as Riyadh pushes for more U.S. support for Syrian rebels. Prince Bandar, who has recently spent time in the United States and Morocco for medical treatment, was replaced on an interim basis by a deputy. [Bandar]
• New Banksy? Mural near GCHQ depicts agents listening in on phone box
  The guerrilla graffiti artist Banksy is believed to be behind an artwork which has appeared on the side of a house in Cheltenham. The Gloustershire Echo reported that the owner of the house, Karren Smith, 48, said she saw men packing a white tarpaulin into a van at about 7.30am on Sunday. She said: 'They were taking it down and putting it into the back of the van. I thought it might be something to do with the police, like when a crime happens. I saw these people looking and then saw the graffiti. It's pretty good. It livens up the street.' The work, on the corner of Fairview Road and Hewlett Road, surrounds a BT telephone box and is already drawing fans. The new artwork comes in the wake of the storm over surveillance by GCHQ and the NSA revealed by the whistleblower Edward Snowden Jonathan Haynes theguardian.com, Monday 14 April 2014 07.45 BST [Surveillance]
• Collapsed health care system may be biggest threat to Syrians
  WASHINGTON — More Syrians have died from lack of adequate medical care than from actual combat as the war grinds on into its fourth year, according to Kristalina Georgieva, the European Union’s commissioner for international cooperation, humanitarian aid and crisis response. Summary? Print The European Union’s senior humanitarian official tells Al-Monitor that normally preventable diseases are killing twice as many Syrians as fighting. Author Barbara Slavin Posted April 11, 2014 In an interview with Al-Monitor on April 11 in Washington, where she attended a coordination meeting at the US Agency for International Development (USAID) with other groups struggling to keep up with the spreading humanitarian consequences of the Syrian crisis, Georgieva said that “over 200,000 people have died because treatment is not available anymore in the collapsed health system of Syria.” While Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad has consolidated control over a significant part of territory, the country’s economy has fallen apart, the European commissioner said, and nearly half the population — almost 10 million people — need assistance. Increasingly, aid workers are reporting cases of malnutrition and starvation, which make weakened populations even more vulnerable to diseases such as measles, Georgieva said. She said she recently visited the northern Kurdish section of Iraq, which is now home to some 230,000 Syrian refugees. “A large proportion of them flee not because of the fighting,” she said, “but because their children are starving and they cannot access very basic necessities.” Read more: http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2014/04/syria-disease-healthcare-humanitarian-eu-georgieva.html#ixzz2ytaCj0ft [Syria] [Health]
• Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens
  April 9, 2014 Martin Gilens Princeton University mgilens@princeton.edu Benjamin I. Page Northwestern University b-page@northwestern.edu forthcoming Fall 2014 in Perspectives on Politics Each of four theoretical traditions in the study of American politics – which can be characterized as theories of Majoritarian Electoral Democracy, Economic Elite Domination, and two types of interest group pluralism, Majoritarian Pluralism and Biased Pluralism – offers different predictions about which sets of actors have how much influence over public policy: average citizens; economic elites; and organized interest groups, mass-based or business-oriented. A great deal of empirical research speaks to the policy influence of one or another set of actors, but until recently it has not been possible to test these contrasting theoretical predictions against each other within a single statistical model. This paper reports on an effort to do so, using a unique data set that includes measures of the key variables for 1,779 policy issues. Multivariate analysis indicates that economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence. The results provide substantial support for theories of Economic Elite Domination and for theories of Biased Pluralism, but not for theories of Majoritarian Electoral Democracy or Majoritarian Pluralism. Who governs? Who really rules? To what extent is the broad body of U.S. citizens sovereign, semi-sovereign, or largely powerless? These questions have animated much important work in the study of American politics. While this body of research is rich and variegated, it can loosely be divided into four families of theories: Majoritarian Electoral Democracy, Economic Elite Domination, and two types of interest group pluralism – Majoritarian Pluralism, in which the interests of all citizens are more or less equally represented, and Biased Pluralism, in which corporations, business associations, and professional groups predominate) Each of these perspectives makes different predictions about the independent influence upon U.S. policy making of four sets of actors: the Average Citizen or “median voter,” Economic Elites, and Mass-based or Business-oriented Interest Groups or industries. Each of these theoretical traditions has given rise to a large body of literature. Each is supported by a great deal of empirical evidence – some of it quantitative, some historical, some observational – concerning the importance of various sets of actors (or, all too often, a single set of actors) in U.S. policy making. This literature has made important contributions to our understanding of how American politics works and has helped illuminate how democratic or undemocratic (in various senses) our policy making process actually is. Until very recently, however, it has been impossible to test the differing predictions of these theories against each other within a single statistical model that permits one to analyze the independent effects of each set of actors upon policy outcomes. Here – in a tentative and preliminary way – we offer such test, bringing a unique data set to bear on the problem. Our measures are far from perfect, but we hope that this first step will help inspire further research into what we see as some of the most fundamental questions about American politics.
  The central point that emerges from our research is that economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while mass-based interest groups and average citizens have little or no independent influence. Our results provide substantial support for theories of Economic Elite Domination and for theories of Biased Pluralism, but not for theories of Majoritarian Electoral Democracy or Majoritarian Pluralism. [Democracy]
• White House 'sheepishly followed right wing politicians to ban Iran's envoy'
  April 12, 2014 18:27 Reuters/Ramin Rahimian By rejecting visa to Iran's new UN envoy, Washington is jeopardizing the nuclear talks, Kaveh Afrasiabi, political analyst on Iran told RT. The move by the Statethe State Department also shows the power of right wing politicians in US decision making process. RT: GivenGiven the significant improvement in relations we have seen between Tehran and Washington, why is such a move being taken now, do you think? Kaveh Afrasiabi: This is a very regrettable decision by the White House that is legally questionable and politically unwise. It reflects the White House has appeased reactionary right wing elements of the US Congress who are at the forefront of opposing nuclear talks and the recent breakthrough in the Geneva agreement. And these same elements have now taken siege of this issue in order to throw some monkey rage in the process and wipe away some of the goodthe good will generated between Iran and the US as a result of a nuclear breakthrough. So I really think it is politically motivated and should be opposed by the United Nations' leadership. RT: The visa ban prevents Hamid Abutalebi from entering the US, but essentially it stops him from going to the UN, which is an international territory. LegallyLegally , is the US in breachbreach of regulations? KA: Exactly, because this decision puts the US in contempt of its international obligations. There is a series of international obligations with the UN that the US has as the host country. They are supposed to exempt foreign diplomats from the normal immigration screening procedure, for instance. And it is not up to the US to decide who Iran should choosechoose as a staff diplomat at the UN. In fact Iran has chosen a very apt diplomat, a veteran diplomat who is Sorbonne educated, who is modern and aand a pragmatist. [Iran] [UNUS] [Legality]
• School Privatization and the Charter School Scam: Corporate America’s Neo-Feudal Assault on Education
  By Chris Macavel Global Research, April 11, 2014 “The new feudalism reverses the trend of the past thousand years toward the assumption by the government of basic public amenities like policing, public roads and transport networks, and public schools. In the United States—to a degree unmatched in any other industrial democracy—these things are once again becoming private luxuries, accessible only to the affluent few.”—Michael Lind “The privatization of schooling would produce a new, highly active and profitable industry.”—Milton Friedman American schools are in crisis. This is especially palpable in the inner cities. Although stemming from larger social and societal problems—coupled with a federal policy that facilitates school disruption—the cause of the crisis has been leveled solely on teachers. On a largely bipartisan basis, the solution has been to fire teachers en masse, coupling this with a massive wave of school closings. Subsequently, these public schools are massively privatized, mostly in the form of charter schools. This chain of events, far from unconnected phenomena, are part of the overall project for privatizing public schools. It is an attempt, inter alia, at windfall profits and to overturn the centuries-long commitment of the state to free compulsory education. In other words, neo-feudalism. [Education]
• Iran rejects U.S. ban on pick for U.N. envoy, vows legal action
  By Mehrdad Balali DUBAIDUBAI Sat Apr 12, 2014 9:46am EDT Hamid Abutalebi, Iran's proposed U.N. ambassador, gestures in this undated handout photo provided by President.ir. The United States said on Friday it would not grant a visa to Abutalebi, citing the envoy's links to the 1979-1981 hostage crisis, in a rare step that raises questions about how much influence the White House can wield over the world body. Credit: Reuters/President.ir/Handout via Reuters (Reuters) - Iran on Saturday rejected a U.S. decision to deny a visa for its newly appointed ambassador to the United Nations, pledging to take up the case directly with the worldthe world body in a dispute that has reopened old wounds dating to the 1979 Islamic Revolution. The United States, which hosts the United Nations, said Iran's candidate Hamid Abutalebi was unacceptable given his role in a 444-day crisis in which radical Iranian students stormed the U.S. embassy in Tehran and took 52 Americans hostage. President Barack Obama had come under strong domestic pressure not to allow Abutalebi into theinto the United States to take up his position in New York, raising concerns that the dispute would disrupt delicate negotiations between Tehran and six world powers including Washington over Iran's nuclear program. "We have no replacement for Mr. Abutalebi and we will pursue the matter via legal mechanisms envisioned at the United Nations," Abbas Araghchi, a senior Foreign Ministry official, was quoted by Iran's official IRNA news agency as saying. "Based on an agreement with the United Nations, America is bound to act according to its international commitments," Araghchi said, as quoted by IRNA. The United Nations said it had no comment at this time on the U.S. decision. American law allows the Washington government to bar U.N. diplomats who are considered national security threats. But Obama's potentially precedent-setting step could open the United States to criticism that it is wielding its position as host nation to improperly exert political influence. [Extraterritoriality] [UNUS] [Iran]
• New US reality: An empire beyond salvation
  By Ramzy Baroud US Secretary of State John Kerry couldn't hide his frustration anymore as the US-sponsored Palestinian peace process continued to falter. After eight months of wrangling to push talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority forward, he admitted while on a visit to Morocco on April 4 that the latest setback had served as a "reality check" for the peace process. But confining that reality check to the peace process is hardly representative of the painful reality through which the United States has been forced to subsist in during the last few years. The state of US foreign policy in the Middle East, but also around the world, cannot be described with any buoyant language. In some instances, as in Syria, Libya, Egypt, Ukraine, and most recently in Palestine and Israel, too many calamitous scenarios have exposed the fault lines of US foreign policy. The succession of crises is not allowing the US to cut its losses in the Middle East and stage a calculated "pivot" to Asia following its disastrous Iraq war. US foreign policy is almost entirely crippled. For the Obama administration, it has been a continuous firefighting mission since George W Bush left office. In fact, there have been too many "reality checks" to count. [Decline] [US global strategy]
• Angela Merkel denied access to her NSA file
  Frustration with US government rises over failure to clear up questions about surveillance of German chancellor's phone Paul Lewis in Washington and Philip Oltermann in Berlin theguardian.com, Thursday 10 April 2014 18.31 BST Jump to comments (590) Angela Merkel, the German chancellor Angela Merkel, the German chancellor. The US government's refusal to allow Merkel access to her own NSA file contrasts with the ease with which Germans can see files relating to the activities of the Stasi. Photograph: Ronny Hartmann/AFP/Getty Images The US government is refusing to grant Angela Merkel access to her NSA file or answer formal questions from Germany about its surveillance activities, raising the stakes before a crucial visit by the German chancellor to Washington. Merkel will meet Barack Obama in three weeks, on her first visit to the US capital since documents leaked by whistleblower Edward Snowden revealed that the NSA had been monitoring her phone. The face-to-face meeting between the two world leaders had been intended as an effort to publicly heal wounds after the controversy, but Germany remains frustrated by the White House's refusal to come clean about its surveillance activities in the country. [Surveillance] [NSA] [Merkel]
• U.S. blocks Iran’s pick as envoy to U.N., setting up new confrontation
  By Anne Gearan, Saturday, April 12, 6:41 AM The Obama administration on Friday said it would block Iran’s nominee as ambassador to the United Nations from entering the United States, setting up a new confrontation with Tehran just as relations with the Islamic Republic appeared to be improving. The decision to bar entry to the diplomat, who was allegedly involved in the 1979 seizure of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, followed intense political pressure on the administration from both Republicans and Democrats on Capitol Hill. But it also marked a rare instance in which Washington has effectively vetoed another country’s preferred choice as envoy to the United Nations. White House press secretary Jay Carney did not offer a reason for the decision not to grant an entry visa to the diplomat, Hamid Aboutelabi, but said officials had “communicated with the Iranians at a number of levels, and made clear our position on this.”
  Although there was no immediate response from Tehran, the move to bar Aboutelabi was sure to anger Iran and possibly other governments that would view Washington’s action as contravening its commitments as the host country for the United Nations. [Governance] [Iran] [United Nations] [Legality]
• Agreement Between the United Nations and the United States Regarding the Headquarters of the United Nations, Signed June 26, 1947, and Approved by the General Assembly October 31, 1947
  SECTION 11 The federal, state or local authorities of the United States shall not impose any impediments to transit to or from the headquarters district of (1) representatives of Members or officials of the United Nations, or of specialized agencies as defined in Article 57, paragraph 2, of the Charter, or the families of such representatives or officials; (2) experts performing missions for the United Nations or for such specialized agencies; (3) representatives of the press, or of radio, film or other information agencies, who have been accredited by the United Nations (or by such a specialized agency) in its discretion after consultation with the United States; (4) representatives of nongovernmental organizations recognized by the United Nations for the purpose of consultation under Article 71 of the Charter; or (5) other persons invited to the headquarters district by the United Nations or by such specialized agency on official business. The appropriate American authorities shall afford any necessary protection to such persons while in transit to or from the headquarters district. This section does not apply to general interruptions of transportation which are to be dealt with as provided in Section 17, and does not impair the effectiveness of generally applicable laws and regulations as to the operation of means of transportation. SECTION 12 The provisions of Section 11 shall be. applicable irrespective of the relations existing between the Governments of the persons referred to in that section and the Government of the United States. SECTION 13 (a) Laws and regulations in force in the United States regarding the entry of aliens shall not be applied in such manner as to interfere with the privileges referred to in Section 11. When visas are required for persons referred to in that Section, they shall be granted without charge and as promptly as possible. [Legality] [UNUS]
• The State of U.S. Power: Perceptions across the Globe
  By Kathleen H. Hicks, Ernest Z. Bower, Heather A. Conley, Jennifer G. Cooke, Andrew C. Kuchins, Carl Meacham, Richard M. Rossow Apr 8, 2014 In December 2013, the Pew Research Center released data suggesting that Americans’ views of U.S. power and prestige abroad had reached a 40-year low. That poll came in the wake of the first releases of National Security Agency (NSA) documents by Edward Snowden and the August 2013 Syria crisis and amid heated battles in Washington over the federal budget. More recently, controversy over the adequacy of defense funding in the President’s FY2015 Budget Request and Russia’s annexation of Crimea have renewed concern about how the United States is perceived beyond its borders. Kathleen Hicks, senior vice president, Henry A. Kissinger Chair, and International Security Program director at CSIS, recently sat down with some of CSIS’s most prominent regional scholars to discuss foreign views of the United States and practical steps we can take to improve U.S. standing in the world. Joining her were Ernest Bower, senior adviser and Sumitro Chair for Southeast Asia Studies; Heather Conley, senior fellow and director, Europe Program; Jennifer Cooke, director, Africa Program; Andrew Kuchins, senior fellow and director, Russia and Eurasia Program; Carl Meacham, director, Americas Program; and Richard Rossow, senior fellow and Wadhwani Chair in U.S.-India Policy Studies. [US global strategy]
• Inside the FBI’s secret relationship with the military’s special operations
  By Adam Goldman and Julie Tate, Published: April 11 E-mail the writers When U.S. Special Operations forces raided several houses in the Iraqi city of Ramadi in March 2006, two Army Rangers were killed when gunfire erupted on the ground floor of one home. A third member of the team was knocked unconscious and shredded by ball bearings when a teenage insurgent detonated a suicide vest. In a review of the nighttime strike for a relative of one of the dead Rangers, military officials sketched out the sequence of events using small dots to chart the soldiers’ movements. Who, the relative asked, was this man — the one represented by a blue dot and nearly killed by the suicide bomber? After some hesi­ta­tion, the military briefers answered with three letters: FBI. The FBI’s transformation from a crime-fighting agency to a counterterrorism organization in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks has been well documented. Less widely known has been the bureau’s role in secret operations against al-Qaeda and its affiliates in Iraq and Afghanistan, among other locations around the world. [FBI] [Legality] [Pacification]
• Continental Drift
  by Conn Hallinan “Happy families are all alike: every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” – “Anna Karenina” by Leo Tolstoy The opening to Tolstoy’s great novel of love and tragedy could be a metaphor for Europe today, where “unhappy families” of Catalans, Scots, Belgiums, Ukrainians, and Italians contemplate divorcing the countries they are currently a part of. And in a case where reality mirrors fiction, they are each unhappy in their own way. While the U.S. and its allies may rail against the recent referendum in the Crimea that broke the peninsula free of Ukraine, Scots will consider a very similar one on Sept. 18, and Catalans would very much like to do the same. So would residents of South Tyrol, and Flemish speakers in northern Belgium. On the surface, many of these succession movements look like rich regions trying to free themselves from poor ones, but, while there is some truth in that, it is overly simplistic. [Separatism]
• Assad There to Stay?
  by Nicola Nasser Long gone the days when the U.S.-led so-called “Friends of Syria” could plausibly claim that two thirds of Syria was controlled by rebel forces, that Syrian capital Damascus was under siege and its fall was just a matter of time and that the days of President Bashar al-Assad were numbered and accordingly he “should step down.” The war on Syria has taken a U-turn during the past year. Assad now firmly holds the military initiative. The long awaited foreign military intervention could not take off; it was prevented by the emerging multi-polar world order. Syrian and non-Syrian insurgents are now on the run. Assad stands there to stay. The thinly veiled UN legitimacy, which was used to justify the invasions of Iraq and Libya under the pretexts of the responsibility to protect on humanitarian grounds, failed to impose no-fly zones, humanitarian corridors and other instruments of foreign intervention; they foundered on the borders of Syrian national sovereignty. The official Syrian Arab Army (SAA), which was strategically organized and stationed to fight a regular war in defence against the Israeli occupying power in the western south of the country, was taken by surprise by an internationally and regionally coordinated unconventional attack on its soft civilian backyard where it had zero presence. Within a relatively short period of time the SAA succeeded in containing the initial attack, in adapting trained units to unconventional guerrilla war in cities and in winning over the support of the civilian population, without acceding any ground of its defence vis-à-vis Israel. Ever since, the SAA was gaining more ground, liberating more civilian centers from insurgent terrorists, closing more border crossing points used for infiltration of foreign fighters into the country, cutting of their supply lines and besieging pockets of their presence in inner old cities and in their isolated concentrations in the countryside. The capital Damascus, more than 95% of the common borders with Lebanon and the central heart of Syria around Homs are now secured. Except the northern city of Raqqa, no where in Syria the insurgents can claim exclusive control. The SAA is winning all its battles. [Syria]
• U.S. uses ‘diplospeak’ to evade tough truths on Ukraine, other crises
  By Hannah Allam McClatchy Washington Bureau April 9, 2014 WASHINGTON — By now, most people know that Russian President Vladimir Putin took over the neighboring Crimea region of Ukraine and formally annexed it after a hastily called referendum there that drew outrage from across the globe. U.S. officials don’t dispute what happened _ they saw the Russian celebration of the “return” of Crimea and heard the challenge to Western domination in Putin’s speech _ but the official government lexicon hasn’t caught up to the facts on the ground. The State Department’s latest verbal twist is to refer to Putin’s land grab as an “attempt” at annexation, to underline U.S. opposition to a move it considers illegitimate. Such language causes eye rolling among foreign policy specialists, some of whom harbor more serious concerns that the empty wording also signals a lack of policies that factor in the uncomfortable realities of places such as Ukraine, Syria, Egypt and China. “Isn’t this already a fait accompli? It’s already taken,” a reporter pointed out at a recent State Department briefing where spokeswoman Marie Harf defended the use of “attempted annexation” for the Crimea crisis.
• Edward Snowden: US government spied on human rights workers
  Whistleblower tells Council of Europe NSA deliberately snooped on groups such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International Luke Harding The Guardian, Tuesday 8 April 2014 16.49 BST The US has spied on the staff of prominent human rights organisations, Edward Snowden has told the Council of Europe in Strasbourg, Europe's top human rights body. Giving evidence via a videolink from Moscow, Snowden said the National Security Agency – for which he worked as a contractor – had deliberately snooped on bodies like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. He told council members: "The NSA has specifically targeted either leaders or staff members in a number of civil and non-governmental organisations … including domestically within the borders of the United States." Snowden did not reveal which groups the NSA had bugged. The assembly asked Snowden if the US spied on the "highly sensitive and confidential communications" of major rights bodies such as Amnesty and Human Rights Watch, as well as on similar smaller regional and national groups. He replied: "The answer is, without question, yes. Absolutely." [Surveillance] [Snowden]
• Iran not getting sanctions relief it was promised
  Iran is seeing less economic benefit than it was promised from an interim nuclear accord, in part because foreign companies and banks are unwilling to risk re-engaging the Islamic Republic on a short-term basis. Summary? Print Iran's problems getting temporary sanctions relief could increase foreign leverage to reach a longer-term nuclear deal, but decrease confidence in Iran that the present and future US administrations will be able to grant relief in exchange for nuclear concessions. Author Barbara Slavin Posted April 8, 2014 Al-Monitor has learned from an Iranian official, who spoke on condition that he not be named, that a major multinational company has refused an Iranian request for aircraft maintenance services — authorized by the Nov. 24 deal — on grounds that the company could not complete the work by the end of July. That’s when implementation of the interim nuclear accord is due to expire unless it is renewed by Iran and the five permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany (P5+1), or it is superseded by a longer-term deal. (The company is not Boeing, which recently received a license to provide spare parts and maintenance for planes sold to Iran before the 1979 revolution.) Iran’s economy has stabilized somewhat since the interim accord was reached, but most of the benefits appear to have been psychological or have come from better management by President Hassan Rouhani’s team compared to that of former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Iran’s economy contracted 3.1% from last March to last September, according to the official Islamic Republic of Iran News Agency. And while foreign trade delegations have been flocking to Tehran, they have not signed any agreements that could violate US-led sanctions. [Iran] [Sanctions] [US Negotiating]
• The Caucasus Emirate: From Anti-Colonialist Roots to Salafi-Jihad
  Islamist militants in the North Caucasus previously struggled to freefree themselves from Moscow’s yoke, but that narrow focus no longer applies. According to Derek Henry Flood, establishing a Salafist emirate is now the core objective for most of the region’s extremists. By Derek Henry Flood for Combating Terrorism Center (CTC) This article was originally published in the CTC Sentinel (Volume. 7, Issue 3) on 26 March 2014 by the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point. On October 21, 2013, a lone suicide bomber from Dagestan boarded a bus in Volgograd, Russia, and detonated an explosive device that killed six people[1] Media outlets quickly noted that the attack occurred both outside the restive North Caucasus and before the Winter Olympic Games in February 2014. Less than two months later, on December 29, 2013, a suicide bomber entered Volgograd’s principal railway terminal and blew himself up, and the followingfollowing day another suicide bomber in Volgograd detonated explosives on a trolleybus. The consecutive bombings killed a total of 34 people and created further apprehension regarding security in not just Sochi, but across southern Russia.[2] [Islamist]
• U.N. Non-Committal over U.S. Visa Refusal to Iranian Envoy
  By Thalif Deen Reprint UNITED NATIONS, Apr 8 2014 (IPS) - When New York City was picked as the location for the United Nations many moons ago, the politically-important decision was followed by the 1947 U.S.-U.N. Headquarters Agreement which obligated Washington to facilitate – not hinder – the smooth functioning of the world body. But over the years, there have been clear violations of this agreement, as evidenced in the refusal of a visavisa to Palestinian leader Yassir Arafat to address the U.N. General Assembly back in 1988, and the current mass cancellations of bank accounts of over 70 U.N. missions and their diplomatic staff in New York. "Iran is a founding membermember of the U.N. - regardless of political inclination." -- former ASG Samir Sanbar And on Monday the U.S. Senate voted unanimously to urge the administration of President Barack Obama to refuse a visa to Iran’s newly appointed U.N. ambassador, Hamid Aboutalebi, on the grounds he was involved in the 1979 forcible takeover of the U.S. embassyembassy and its diplomatic personnel in Tehran. [UNUS] [Iran] [Legality] [Ban Ki-moon]
• Report Ties Turkey to Syrian Chemical Assaults
  People gather near the site of a reported Syrian government airstrike in Aleppo on Sunday. A former U.S. intelligence official has described indications that opposition forces in Syria carried out sarin-gas strikes in the country with support from Turkey. (Zein al-Rifai/AFP/Getty Images) A U.S. intelligence veteran suggests Turkey helped Syrian rebels to conduct sarin-gas strikes aimed at spurring foreign intervention in Syria's civil war. The unnamed source -- described as a retired high-ranking insider -- asserted that the Defense Intelligence Agency and other U.S. spy services believe that Turkey supplied opposition forces with the sarin nerve agent released on the outskirts of Damascus last August, investigative journalist Seymour Hersh reported in a Sunday article in the London Review of Books. The U.S. official said the "principal evidence" for the claim came after the Aug. 21 strike, in the form of "joy" and "back-slapping" expressed in eavesdropped communications by individuals tied to Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's government. "We now know it was a covert action planned by Erdogan's people to push Obama over the red line," the source said, referring to President Obama's threat to respond strongly against any use of chemical arms by Assad's regime. "The Turks also provided the training in producing the sarin and handling it." The Obama administration has exclusively blamed Syrian President Bashar Assad's government for a series of chemical attacks in the country, including the Aug. 21 strike that spurred heightened talk of potential military involvement in the war. The discussion abated after Assad's regime agreed the following month to dismantle its chemical arsenal. [cbw] [False flag] [Media]
• Media Blackout over Syria
  By Brad Hoff Global Research, April 06, 2014 Media Blackout of New Syria Revelations On April 6, The London Review of Books published in its online journal Seymour Hersh’s “The Red Line and the Rat Line.” Hersh continues to expose details surrounding the staged August 21 chemical attack incident in Syria, which apparently pretty much everyone in Washington’s intelligence bureaucracy suspected was carried out by the rebels as soon as it happened. [Syria] [False flag] [Media]
• I Learned to Fight Like an American at the FSA Training Camp in Jordan
  By Sara Elizabeth Williams, Photos: Anonymous Apr 3 2014 Fighter A aims his AK47 in Daraa “I do not want to mention my name,” says a 20-year-old FSA fighter, “because the camp we practiced in was highly classified.” So classified, in fact, that the CIA – who are rumoured to be running the camp (but declined to comment for this article) – still won’t acknowledge it exists. For nearly a year, rumours have swirled about a covert, US-run training camp for FSA fighters in the vast Jordanian desert. (Jordanian intelligence also did not respond to requests for comment on this article.) And, last week, it was reported that the Obama administration appears to be expanding "its covert programme of training and assistance for the Syrian opposition". However, despite all this speculation, little is known about how this supposed Jordanian camp works, who trains there and what tactics they learn. However, I recently tracked down a fighter who said he'd completed the course and was willing to talk. "Fighter A" is from Daraa, just a stone’s throw from the Jordanian border in southern Syria. He was at secondary school when the revolution twisted into civil war, and his plans to study law were set aside for a Kalashnikov, joining the FSA at just 18 years old. One day last May, when Fighter A was 19, he was taken aside and given some good news. “I was selected by the brigade commander to go to training camp,” he says. “I was told we would be trained on heavy weapons and anti-tank and anti-aircraft missiles.” But he didn’t know exactly what to expect: “I had heard of military camps taking place, but I didn’t know where and when.” The next morning, Fighter A and 39 other young men like him headed south into Jordan, their journey jointly choreographed by Daraa’s FSA military council and, allegedly, Jordanian intelligence. Mobile phones were confiscated, to be returned at the end of camp. No questions were asked. These men were going off the grid. When the group finally arrived at a high-security military facility deep in the Jordanian desert, Fighter A found the last thing he expected: Americans. [Syria] [Destabilisation]
• No-fly-list America
  Peter Van Buren and Tom Engelhardt 7 April 2014 Sad as it may be, the Ibrahim case is a fairly benign example of ordinary Washington practices in the post-9/11 era. And one thing is clear, no-one is guarding the guards. Here’s what the US president said in June 2013, while reassuring the American people about the National Security Agency’s collection of their phone metadata: “When it comes to telephone calls, nobody is listening to your telephone calls. That’s not what this program’s about. As was indicated, what the intelligence community is doing is looking at phone numbers and durations of calls. They are not looking at people’s names, and they’re not looking at content.” And indeed, the NSA was analyzing the metadata it was collecting from all of us. Only one small problem (shades of the Bush era): it was also listening in and reading, too. To be exact, without warrants and using a “backdoor loophole” in the law, the agency repeatedly plunged into massive databases that, while gathering emails and phone calls from "foreign targets," swept up prodigious numbers of American ones in the process. (Evidently, the CIA and the FBI were using similar backdoors to similar ends.) It’s true that, strictly speaking, those calls and emails were being collected by a different program than the one the president was referring to; so, if you’re a stickler for details, he didn’t exactly, officially lie. In any case, it’s nothing you or I should really worry our little heads about, not when it turns out that whatever was done was perfectly "legal." [Surveillance]
• The American Deep State, Deep Events, and Off-the-Books Financing
  Peter Dale Scott The Asia-Pacific Journal, Vol. 12, Issue 14, No. 3 I have been writing about deep politics since 1993, when I gave the example of how the United States after World War sent American mafia figures to fight communism in Italy, thereby creating a corrupted politics that was soon out of control – as bad as the influence the mafia once possessed in cities like Marseille, or Chicago.1 Since then I have written about deep events, by which I mean mysterious events, like the JFK assassination, the Watergate break-in, or 9/11, which repeatedly involve law-breaking or violence, and are embedded in fact in deep politics. Some of these may be low-level, as when data is filched from a personal computer, or mid-level, like the murder of Karen Silkwood. But what I have called structural deep events are large enough to affect the whole fabric of society, with “consequences that enlarge covert government, and are subsequently covered up by systematic falsifications in media and internal government records.” We still live in the official state of emergency imposed after the last great deep event – 9/11; and this has left us in a deconstitutionalized era of warrantless surveillance, warrantless detentions, and militarized homeland security.2 In the remainder of this essay, the deep events I refer to will all be structural deep events. [Deep state]
• 'Saudi America' faces a barren future
  By Michael Klare Of all the preposterous, irresponsible headlines that have appeared on the front page of the New York Times in recent years, few have exceeded the inanity of this one from early March: "US Hopes Boom in Natural Gas Can Curb Putin." The article by normally reliable reporters Coral Davenport and Steven Erlanger suggested that, by sending our surplus natural gas to Europe and Ukraine in the form of liquefied natural gas (LNG), the United States could help reduce the region's heavy reliance on Russian gas and thereby stiffen its resistance to Vladimir Putin's aggressive behavior. Forget that the United States currently lacks a capacity to export LNG to Europe, and will not be able to do so on a significant scale until the 2020s. Forget that Ukraine lacks any LNG receiving facilities and is unlikely to acquire any, as its only coastline is on the Black Sea, in areas dominated by Russian speakers with loyalties to Moscow. Forget as well that any future US exports will be funneled into the international marketplace, and so will favor sales to Asia where gas prices are 50% higher than in Europe. Just focus on the article's central reportorial flaw: it fails to identify a single reason why future American LNG exports (which could wind up anywhere) would have any influence whatsoever on the Russian president's behavior. The only way to understand the strangeness of this is to assume that the editors of the Times, like senior politicians in both parties, have become so intoxicated by the idea of an American surge in oil and gas production that they have lost their senses. [US global strategy] [Energy] [Russia confrontation] [Climate change]
• Iran, Orientalism and Western illusions about Syria
  Over 100,000 deaths and millions of refugees later, is the Western narrative similar to what Iranians have been saying? Last updated: 06 Apr 2014 09:11 Seyed Mohammad Marandi Seyed Mohammad Marandi is professor of North American Studies and dean of the Faculty of World Studies at the University of Tehran. One of the many strange paradoxes promoted for decades in the Western narrative on the Islamic Republic of Iran - consistently repeated by so-called "Iran experts", government officials, and the Western propaganda machine in general - is that Iran is growing increasingly unstable and unpopular (if not imploding), yet simultaneously it is on the rise and its "menacing" influence can be felt throughout the region and beyond. Of course, the internal contradictions of this discourse are linked to Orientalist stereotypes and attitudes prevalent in the West among mainstream secular liberals, pseudo-progressives, and neo-conservatives alike, who cannot grasp the possibility of a stable and legitimate political order that is not based on Western "values". For such people - even those critical of Western support for despots, extremism, apartheid in Palestine, mass surveillance and cyber warfare, hegemony, liberal capitalism, plutocracy, secret prisons and torture as well as the perpetual pursuit of "liberation" through coups, wars, drones, terror, assassinations, and carnage - these "values" and "ideas" are still somehow universal. Thus, they view Western states as effectively exceptional or at least more civilised than others. Even for the so-called "progressives", despite these characteristics that have existed at least since the rise of colonialism, in the words of Joseph Conrad, "what redeems it is the idea only". Hence, pundits, academics, native informants, and other "experts" in Western think-tanks and corporate media, hold discussions and write books and articles, analysing the "pathologies" of countries like Iran for the benefit of a Western audience and often with an eye towards policymakers and funders. Pundits, academics, native informants, and other 'experts' in Western think-tanks and the corporate media hold discussions and write books and articles, analysing the 'pathologies' of countries like Iran for the benefit of a Western audience and often with an eye towards policymakers and funders. At times they may critique Western governments, but mostly because they are not seen to be true to their values. When it comes to the Islamic Republic of Iran, though, there are no values. Hence, these people feel free to enhance Western "knowledge" and control with a free conscience, like their Orientalist forerunners. [Iran] [Orientalism]
• Ted Cruz-sponsored bill to bar Iran’s U.N. envoy from entering U.S. passes Senate
  By Ed O'Keefe and Robert Costa, Tuesday, April 8, 11:08 AM E-mail the writers A measure that would bar Iran’s recently appointed ambassador to the United Nations from entering the United States easily passed the Senate on Monday, delivering a rare legislative victory for its lead sponsor, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.). Cruz, a first-term senator who is considering a run for president in 2016, has spent the last several days railing against Iran’s appointment of Hamid Aboutalebi as its new top envoy to the United Nations in New York. [Legality] [Dissension] [Iran] [United Nations] [Governance]
• Global military spending in a day is almost double annual budget of UN
  US_NEWY - 08.04.2014 12:43:12 At the opening on Monday (7 Apr) of the 2014 session of the Disarmament Commission, the Deputy Secretary-General of the United Nations Jan Eliasson stressed that not even the Cold War prevented progress on vital issues in this area. However, quoting parts of the first sentence of the resolution that established the original Commission in 1952, he said "the General Assembly still remains moved by anxiety at the general lack of confidence plaguing the world and leading to the burden of increasing armaments and the fear of war." Eliasson also said "we are justifiably shocked when we note and learn that global military spending in just one day –in just one day- is almost double the regular annual budget of the United Nations;" adding in "we are frustrated and disappointed when we face difficulties achieving Millennium Development Goals so important for millions and millions of people around the world because of lack of resources." He underlined "the world is over-armed and peace is under-funded." [Military expenditure]
• John Kerry, U.S. Military Clash on Approach to Syria's Rebels
  Pentagon Opposes Direct Military Intervention Against Assad
  AdamAdam Entous And Julian E. BarnesBarnes connect Updated April 7, 2014 8:35 p.m. ET Rebel fighters monitor government forces outside Damascus on Monday. Reuters WASHINGTON—Frustrated by the stalemate in Syria, Secretary of State John Kerry has been pushing for the U.S. military to be moremore aggressive in supporting the country's rebel forces. Opposition has come from the institution that would spearhead any such effort: the Pentagon. Mr. Kerry and United Nations Ambassador Samantha Power have advocated optionsoptions that range from an American military intervention to weaken the regime of President Bashar al-Assad to using U.S. special operations forces to train and equip a large number of rebel fighters. Such moves would go far beyond the U.S.'s current engagement. In recent White House meetings, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Martin Dempsey and Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel have pushed back against military intervention, said senior officials. They say the risk is high of being dragged into an open-ended foreign entanglement. [Syria] [Intervention]
• U.S. Defense Policy in the Wake of the Ukrainian Affair
  Geopolitical Weekly Tuesday, April 8, 2014 - 02:59 Stratfor By George Friedman Ever since the end of the Cold War, there has been an assumption that conventional warfare between reasonably developed nation-states had been abolished. During the 1990s, it was expected that the primary purpose of the military would be operations other than war, such as peacekeeping, disaster relief and the change of oppressive regimes. After 9/11, many began speaking of asymmetric warfare and "the long war." Under this model, the United States would be engaged in counterterrorism activities in a broad area of the Islamic world for a very long time. Peer-to-peer conflict seemed obsolete. There was a profoundly radical idea embedded in this line of thought. Wars between nations or dynastic powers had been a constant condition in Europe, and the rest of the world had been no less violent. Every century had had systemic wars in which the entire international system (increasingly dominated by Europe since the 16th century) had participated. In the 20th century, there were the two World Wars, in the 19th century the Napoleonic Wars, in the 18th century the Seven Years' War, and in the 17th century the Thirty Years' War. Those who argued that U.S. defense policy had to shift its focus away from peer-to-peer and systemic conflict were in effect arguing that the world had entered a new era in which what had been previously commonplace would now be rare or nonexistent. What warfare there was would not involve nations but subnational groups and would not be systemic. The radical nature of this argument was rarely recognized by those who made it, and the evolving American defense policy that followed this reasoning was rarely seen as inappropriate. If the United States was going to be involved primarily in counterterrorism operations in the Islamic world for the next 50 years, we obviously needed a very different military than the one we had. [US global strategy]
• Seymour Hersh, Sarin, Syria and, Maybe, a Missing Saudi Arabia Connection?
  Sunday, April 06, 2014 Seymour Hersh has an important piece up at the London Review of Books implicating Turkey in the August 2013 sarin gas incident that almost triggered a US attack on Syria. I wonder how much traction it will get. Specifically, will it get more traction than the recent clandestine Youtube release of the confab between the Turkish foreign minister and the spooks concerning the mechanics of manufacturing a false flag operation in northern Syria to justify a Turkish incursion? In response the Turkish government banned Youtube, a ban that has attracted considerably less attention than its ban on Twitter. [Syria] [cbw] [False flag] [Turkey] [Saudi Arabia]
• The Red Line and the Rat Line
  Seymour M. Hersh on Obama, Erdo?an and the Syrian rebels
  In 2011 Barack Obama led an allied military intervention in Libya without consulting the US Congress. Last August, after the sarin attack on the Damascus suburb of Ghouta, he was ready to launch an allied air strike, this time to punish the Syrian government for allegedly crossing the ‘red line’ he had set in 2012 on the use of chemical weapons.?? Then with less than two days to go before the planned strike, he announced that he would seek congressional approval for the intervention. The strike was postponed as Congress prepared for hearings, and subsequently cancelled when Obama accepted Assad’s offer to relinquish his chemical arsenal in a deal brokered by Russia. Why did Obama delay and then relent on Syria when he was not shy about rushing into Libya? The answer lies in a clash between those in the administration who were committed to enforcing the red line, and military leaders who thought that going to war was both unjustified and potentially disastrous. [Syria] [cbw] [False flag] [Turkey]
• [Column] What the Crisis in Ukraine Means for Northeast Asia
  Posted on : Apr.7,2014 12:51 KST John Feffer By John Feffer, co-director of Foreign Policy In Focus International borders are manmade. They are arbitrary, although they often conform to some natural feature of the landscape. And they are very difficult to change. It is a cornerstone of the international system that borders should not be altered by force. Particularly since the end of World War II, the international system has resisted any changes to the map. Of course, the map of the world has changed, often quite dramatically, since 1945. The end of colonialism produced many new states and some new borders in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Independence movements very occasionally forced a change in boundaries, creating the new UN members Bangladesh, Eritrea, East Timor, and South Sudan. And the dissolution of multi-ethnic federations – the Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia – forced cartographers to go back to the drawing board.[Ukraine]
• The Council on Foreign Relations vs. Global Research
  By Prof Michel Chossudovsky and Julie Lévesque Global Research, April 03, 2014 While Global Research operates on a shoe string budget compared to the well-endowed establishment think tanks, it has more readers than the powerful Council on Foreign Relations (CFR at cfr.org). (see graph below). In late January, however, on the day of Obama’s State of the Union address, the number of CFR readers shot up and then tumbled down again. One would expect that with ample financial resources and a panoply of “authoritative” authors and analysts, the CFR website would have a broad and diversified readership. Source: Alexa. Global Research is ranked among the 11,000 most popular websites Worldwide Why are people not reading the CFR? Why are they reading GR? The CFR is a mouthpiece for US foreign policy. It’s in close liaison with Wall Street and the US State Department. The CFR’s authors go out of their way to “give a human face” to America’s wars and covert military operations in different parts of the World. originalCountries which do not abide by Washington’s diktats are the object of a carefully orchestrated smear campaign. They are singled out as “rogue states”. Political leaders who oppose Washington’s demands are casually tagged as “dictators” or “war criminals”, not withstanding the fact the US has since the end of World War II committed countless atrocities in the name of “Western democracy”. More recently, extensive war crimes have been committed against the people of Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria and the former Yugoslavia. The CFR will justify the deployment of US special forces in the Middle East and Africa as a means to going after and “taking out” Al Qaeda. [Media]
• USAID effort to undermine Cuban government with fake ‘Twitter’ another anti-Castro failure
  J. David Ake/AP - On Thursday, the United States Agency for International Development confirmed the broad outlines of a report exposing the clandestine creation of a phony “Cuban Twitter” network that was meant to undermine the Castro government. By Manuel Roig-Franzia, Friday, April 4, 1:23 PM E-mail the writer On April 6, 1960, a U.S. diplomat named Lester Mallory wrote a secret memo about Cuba. Subject line: “The Decline and Fall of Castro.” Make Cubans unhappy, argued the memo, which was a precursor to the U.S. embargo. Saddle them with “economic dissatisfaction and hardship.” They’ll sour on Fidel Castro. Or, others thought, get him with an exploding cigar. Contaminate his scuba suit with tuberculosis. Have the Mafia off him. [Destabilisation] [Cuba] [Sanctions] [Assassination]
• As election looms, Afghanistan's history offers lessons – and hope
  As foreign troops draw down and a new president takes office, the sort of dealmaking among Afghans that could promote stability might actually grow easier. A triumphant Taliban march on Kabul – or even their old stronghold of Kandahar – is unlikely. By Dan Murphy, Staff writer / April 4, 2014 On Feb. 15, 1989, the last Soviet tank rolled over the Amu River, which marks the frontier between Afghanistan and what is now Uzbekistan. • In Pictures Afghanistan today • Are Afghan security forces ready to keep order as US draws down? A decade-long slog to impose a Soviet vision on Afghanistan was over. The Afghan state immediately collapsed, starting a civil war that ended in the Taliban's seizure of Kabul in 1996 and the murder of the man Moscow left in charge. Correct? Not entirely. That version of events is a common misconception. Understanding why Afghanistan collapsed 25 years ago contains lessons, and even a little hope, about what comes next as Afghans elect a new president April 5 and the United States and NATO edge toward the withdrawal of troops by the end of the year. While the sporadic violence currently roiling the country is likely to continue , a triumphant Taliban march on the capital city of Kabul – or even their old stronghold of Kandahar – is unlikely. In fact, the kind of dealmaking among Afghans that could promote stability might grow easier – particularly with the foreign troop presence, a major recruiting tool for the Taliban, either gone or reduced to a fraction of its heights. Afghanistan, 1989 When Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev ordered the withdrawal of troops from the mountainous region he called the Soviet Union's "bleeding wound," the Afghan regime he left behind did not immediately self-destruct. Then-Afghan leader Mohammad Najibullah was well funded and armed by his Soviet backers. He had little trouble keeping the Pakistan and US-backed mujahideen – a patchwork of ethnically based militias and Islamist groups that fought the Soviets – in the countryside and on the country's political fringes. A spring offensive by the mujahideen in the eastern city of Jalalabad in 1989 was handily defeated by Mr. Najibullah's troops and caused splintering in the insurgency's ranks, with some commanders cutting peace deals with the central government in the wake of defeat. Najibullah's resilience was not surprising given Afghanistan's history, says Thomas Barfield, a Boston University anthropologist who has studied Afghanistan since the 1970s and sees no reason why the long-term pattern won't continue . "Gorbachev didn't give Najibullah's government more than six months," says Mr. Barfield. "But he outsurvived the Soviet Union Union , and I think if [the Soviet Union] hadn't collapsed that we might be going to Najibullah's 20th anniversary in power right now." But the Soviet Union did implode at the end of 1991, and with its fall the flow of cash and arms to the Afghan government dried up. Najibullah held power until April 1992. He then lived in the United Nations compound in Kabul until the city was overrun in 1996. Then the Taliban came for him, dragging him through the streets before hanging him and his brother from a traffic light in the center of town. [Afghanistan] [Agency]
• Dag Hammarskjöld's plane may have been shot down, ambassador warned
  Newly declassified 1961 cable called for grounding of Belgian mercenary hours after UN secretary general crashed in Africa Julian Borger theguardian.com, Friday 4 April 2014 14.27 BST Dag Hammarskjöld in New York in 1956: a panel of retired judges called last year for a fresh inquiry into the crash. Photograph: Bettmann/Corbis Hours after a plane carrying the UN secretary general, Dag Hammarskjöld, crashed over central Africa in September 1961, the US ambassador to Congo sent a cable to Washington claiming that the aircraft could have been shot down by a Belgian mercenary pilot. In the newly declassified document, the ambassador, Ed Gullion, does not directly implicate the Belgian or Rhodesian governments in what he calls "this operation", but calls for US pressure on them to ground the mercenary, adding it was "obviously [a] matter of highest importance". He said the pilot had been hampering UN operations and warned that if not stopped "he may paralyse air-rescue operations". The document was released after an international panel of retired judges called last year for a fresh inquiry into the Hammarskjöld crash, saying that new evidence "undoubtedly" existed. The UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, decided in February to put the panel's findings on the agenda of the UN general assembly.
• The Navy's Newest Destroyer Is a Drone
  By Drake Bennett April 02, 2014 The USS Zumwalt, a destroyer Courtesy General Dynamics Photo/US Navy When the U.S. Navy christens the first of its newest class of destroyers this month, it will launch the first ship with a brain of its own. Among the high-tech features included on the USS Zumwalt—cannons that fire rocket-propelled, GPS-guided rounds and stealth design that gives the 610-foot ship the radar signature of a small fishing vessel—there’s also a computer intelligence capable of preparing the ship for battle and engaging enemy targets on its own. Think of it as a gigantic floating drone: “Most UAVs [unmanned aerial vehicles] are a few million dollars,” says Wade Knudson, who heads the Zumwalt project for Raytheon (RTN), which made most of the ship’s computer systems. “This is a $5 billion UAV.” Unlike aerial drones, however, the Zumwalt will still have a human crew and it will know how to anticipate their needs. If the ship’s smoke alarms and cameras detect a fire, the ship will turn on the sprinklers and seal off the area. When the fire is out, the ship knows to drain the water so the crew can investigate. All of this automation means the ship will carry a crew of just over 150—half of what would normally be required on a ship of this size. In a pinch, it can be manned by a crew of 40. [Military balance] [Seapower]
• Nigel Farage claims Syrian rebels carried out chemical attack last summer
  Ukip leader's remarks – at odds with most expert opinion – follow criticism of his admiration for Vladimir Putin Patrick Wintour and Conal Urquhart theguardian.com, Wednesday 2 April 2014 19.02 BST The Ukip leader, Nigel Farage, has broken the consensus inside western intelligence by telling the BBC before his Europe debate with Nick Clegg that he believes the chemical attack in Syria last summer was conducted by the Syrian rebels, and not by the forces of the president, Bashar al-Assad. Under continued pressure over his admiration for the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, Farage said: "I did admire what he had done over Syria. We were about to go to war in Syria because poison gas, sarin gas, had been used and everybody in London and Washington and Brussels assumed it had been used by Assad. And Putin said: 'Hang on a second, don't be so sure.' It turns out it is more than likely it was the rebels that used the gas. If Putin hadn't intervened we would now be at war in Syria." He added: "I admire him as operator and head," adding that he was head and shoulders above Clegg. His remarks are at odds with most expert opinion and the views of western intelligence. When he appeared on Russia Today in August Farage appeared to be more cautious in suggesting that the attack was by the rebels. [Farage] [Syria] [False flag]
• U.S. secretly created ‘Cuban Twitter’ to stir unrest
  Franklin Reyes/AP - A woman uses her cellphone in Camajuani, Cuba. The U.S. Agency for International Development masterminded the creation of a “Cuban Twitter,” a communications network designed to undermine the communist government in Cuba. By Associated Press, Updated: Thursday, April 3, 7:51 PM WASHINGTON — In July 2010, Joe McSpedon, a U.S. government official, flew to Barcelona to put the final touches on a secret plan to build a social media project aimed at undermining Cuba’s communist government. McSpedon and his team of high-tech contractors had come in from Costa Rica and Nicaragua, Washington and Denver. Their mission: to launch a messaging network that could reach hundreds of thousands of Cubans. To hide the network from the Cuban government, they would set up a byzantine system of front companies using a Cayman Islands bank account, and recruit unsuspecting executives who would not be told of the company’s ties to the U.S. government. McSpedon didn’t work for the CIA. This was a program paid for and run by the U.S. Agency for International Development, best known for overseeing billions of dollars in U.S. humanitarian aid. [Subversion] [Destabilisation] [Aid]
• Disappearance of Malaysian Airlines Flight MH 370: The Trillion Dollar Question to the U.S. and Its Intelligence Services
  Malaysian media should pose critical questions to the US and its Intelligence Services and not to the Malaysian Government By Matthias Chang Global Research, March 29, 2014 Let me state from the outset that I totally agree with the press statements by Malaysia’s Defence Minister and Acting Transport Minister, Datuk Seri Hishammuddin Hussein that “we have conducted ourselves fairly, responsibly and history will judge us for that.” And to a mischievous and presumptuous question from a correspondent of the Financial Times, Datuk Seri with confidence and integrity rightly said without any fear of contradiction that, “I don’t think we could have done anything different from what we have already done.” Well done! The Financial Times, CNN and other foreign media ought to pose similar questions to the US and its intelligence services and stop insinuating that Malaysia has not been transparent and/or engaged in a cover-up. Foreign media should stop engaging in dirty politics! It is my hope that following the publication of this article, Malaysian mass media will focus on questioning the integrity of the US’s assistance to Malaysia in the first three weeks of the SAR mission, notwithstanding its recent offer of more assistance. I take comfort that my reservations about the US and its intelligence services as well as other intelligence services closely linked to the US, especially British secret service, have been more than vindicated by Reuters in its news report on 28th March, 2014 entitled Geopolitical games handicap hunt for flight MH370 [MH370] [Intelligence] [Satellites]
• Why aren't Europe's young people rioting any more?
  Denied their dreams of education and jobs, young people have been sapped of rebellious energy. But their anger is growing Costas Lapavitsas and Alex Politaki The Guardian, Tuesday 1 April 2014 18.00 BST People protest in Madrid in 2011 against Spain's economic crisis and its sky-high jobless rate People protest in Madrid in 2011 against Spain's economic crisis and its sky-high jobless rate. ‘The frustration cannot find an outlet in mainstream parties, which strike many young people as far too timid.’ Photograph: Pedro Armestre/AFP/Getty Images In December 2008, in Athens, a "special security officer" shot dead a young student, igniting demonstrations, strikes and riots. Young people were at the forefront of the protests, in a country with a long tradition of youth participation in social and political movements. Several commentators at the time spoke of a "youth rebellion". In late 2009 it became clear that Greece had been living through a period of false prosperity and was in effect bankrupt. The country fell into the tender embrace of the troika – the EU, the IMF and the European Central Bank. Following severe austerity measures in 2010-11, there were again mass demonstrations and strikes, culminating in the "movement of the squares" – protests against the destruction of private and social life. Young people were again prominent, lending enthusiasm and spirit to the movement. Then there was nothing [Alienation]
• The Prospects for Survival
  Noam Chomsky
  Tuesday, 01 April 2014 10:23 By Noam Chomsky, Truthout | Op-Ed This is Part II of an article adapted from a lecture by Noam Chomsky on Feb. 28, sponsored by the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation in Santa Barbara, Calif. The previous article explored how security is a high priority for government planners: security, that is, for state power and its primary constituency, concentrated private power - all of which entails that official policy must be protected from public scrutiny. In these terms, government actions fall in place as quite rational, including the rationality of collective suicide. Even instant destruction by nuclear weapons has never ranked high among the concerns of state authorities. To cite an example from the late Cold War: In November 1983 the U.S.-led North Atlantic Treaty Organization launched a military exercise designed to probe Russian air defenses, simulating air and naval attacks and even a nuclear alert. These actions were undertaken at a very tense moment. Pershing II strategic missiles were being deployed in Europe. President Reagan, fresh from the "Evil Empire" speech, had announced the Strategic Defense Initiative, dubbed "Star Wars," which the Russians understood to be effectively a first-strike weapon - a standard interpretation of missile defense on all sides. Naturally these actions caused great alarm in Russia, which, unlike the U.S., was quite vulnerable and had repeatedly been invaded. Newly released archives reveal that the danger was even more severe than historians had previously assumed. [Joint US military] [1983] [Soviet Union]
• Propaganda Psy-Op? “Worldwide Wave of Action”. The “Global Spring” Begins
  By Prof Michel Chossudovsky Global Research, April 01, 2014 anonymous “The Worldwide #WaveOfAction begins April 4th and runs through July 4th…” Washington’s Blog has brought to our attention a series of videos produced by “ Wave of Action ” and “Anonymous” concerning the launching of a “Worldwide Global Awakening”, a so-called “Global Spring.” “What do you think, Powerful or Impotent? Genius or Idiocy? Productive or Counterproductive?” asks Washington’s Blog. The videos use powerful and emotional quotes, yet they fail to acknowledge the dramatic economic, social and geopolitical realities affecting humanity. “Move out and do it”. But in relation to what? Does the Wave of Action have an Action Program? Beautiful slogans: Can you hear me, wherever you are, We are coming into a new World The Glorious Future The solar planet has been given wings On April 4th a Global Spring begins. Moment of Clarity Our Time has Come Begin to Form Affinity Groups and Then Do It. Evolve society Let’s make transforming the world the cool thing to do. Let’s create a culture of transformation.”
• Militants in Syria prepare chemical attack in Damascus – UN envoy
  Published time: April 01, 2014 17:42 Edited time: April 02, 2014 10:45 / A handout image released by the Syrian opposition's Shaam News Network shows a Syrian couple mourning in front of bodies wrapped in shrouds ahead of funerals following what Syrian rebels claim to be a toxic gas attack by pro-government forces in eastern Ghouta, on the outskirts of Damascus on August 21, 2013. (AFP Photo / Shaam News Network) Armed gangs in Syria are conspiring to stage a chemical attack in the Damascus suburbs in order to later lay the blame on the Bashar Assad’s government, Syria's UN Ambassador Bashar Jaafari has warned the Security Council. “Competent Syrian authorities intercepted a wireless communication between two terrorists in the Jawbar area of the Damascus governorate,” Jaafari said in a letter addressed to Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and the Security Council. The letter was published on Tuesday on the UN website. [cbw] [False flag] [Syria]
• Scotland to switch to driving on the right if independence given green light
  Current road signage system would also be scrapped under scheme nationalists say helps show country is 'part of Europe' Bruce Roberts The Guardian, Tuesday 1 April 2014 Link to video: Scottish roads plan explained Scottish nationalist leaders will attempt this week to give the trailing yes campaign a boost by revealing a series of measures aimed at showing what an independent country would look like. Seeking to capitalise on the arguments this week about "bullying" England and keeping the pound, they will unveil an ambitious scheme to scrap the current – English inspired – road signage system. M for motorway will be replaced with a new S – for Scotland and the A trunk roads will become N roads – for Nationalist in honour of the new country. Blue will be the predominant backing colour. [April 1st]
• Jane Goodall blames 'chaotic note taking' for plagiarism controversy
  Scientist revises her book Seeds of Hope after allegations 12 sections were lifted from other websites Matthew Taylor theguardian.com, Tuesday 1 April 2014 00.10 BST Leading primatologist Jane Goodall has blamed a "hectic work schedule" and her "chaotic method of note taking" for a plagarism controversy surrounding her reissued book.
• U.S. Students Strong at Problem Solving, but Trail Other Nations
  By MOTOKO RICHAPRIL 1, 2014 Fifteen-year-olds in the United States scored above the average of those in the developed world on exams assessing problem-solving skills, but they trailed several countries in Asia and Europe as well as Canada, according to international standardized tests results being released on Tuesday. The American students who took the problem-solving tests in 2012, the first time they were administered, did better on these exams than on reading, math and science tests, suggesting that students in the United States are better able to apply knowledge to real-life situations than perform straightforward academic tasks. Still, students who took the problem-solving tests in countries including Singapore, South Korea, Japan, several provinces of China, Canada, Australia, Finland and Britain all outperformed American students. [Decline] [Education]
• Gains for China, India in new cold war
  By M K Bhadrakumar China and India need to meditate over zen and the art of responding to the Ukraine crisis. If they cherry-pick thoughtfully, they stand to gain significantly out of the rising tensions in the relations between the United States and Russia. In terms of co-relation of forces - to use the jaded Marxist-Leninist concept - the international environment is becoming very promising. Much depends on how China and India choose to respond to the courtship that can be expected from the West and Russia in a foreseeable future and extract advantages. [NCW]
• CIA misled on interrogation program, Senate report says
  By Greg Miller, Adam Goldman and Ellen Nakashima, Published: April 1 A report by the Senate Intelligence Committee concludes that the CIA misled the government and the public about aspects of its brutal interrogation program for years — concealing details about the severity of its methods, overstating the significance of plots and prisoners, and taking credit for critical pieces of intelligence that detainees had in fact surrendered before they were subjected to harsh techniques. The report, built around detailed chronologies of dozens of CIA detainees, documents a long-standing pattern of unsubstantiated claims as agency officials sought permission to use — and later tried to defend — excruciating interrogation methods that yielded little, if any, significant intelligence, according to U.S. officials who have reviewed the document. “The CIA described [its program] repeatedly both to the Department of Justice and eventually to Congress as getting unique, otherwise unobtainable intelligence that helped disrupt terrorist plots and save thousands of lives,” said one U.S. official briefed on the report. “Was that actually true? The answer is no.” [CIA] [Torture] [Intelligence]
• A Decisive Turnaround in the Syrian War: Al-Assad’s Victory in the Qalamoun Valley
  Dmitry Minin | 28.03.2014 | 00:32 Against the background of what is happening in and around Crimea, the war in Syria has been somewhat relegated to the sidelines of world politics. In the meantime, the country has experienced some extremely important events in the last few days that have spoiled the mood of the White House even further. The Syrian army has cleared the Qalamoun region of opposing forces, which is strategically as important as the Panjshir Valley in Afghanistan. Qalamoun, with the town of Yabroud at its centre, stretches for several dozen kilometres along the main Damascus-Aleppo highway towards the Lebanese border. Over a long period of time, the 10,000 or so fighters that had gathered there under the protection of the surrounding mountains, the main backbone of which was around 5,000 fighters of the Islamic Front’s military commander and ‘spiritual leader’ Zahran Alloush, have been prevented from developing a fully-fledged offensive in the north by the government’s army, which has also actively hindered their efforts in the Greater Damascus region. Washington had placed a huge bet on Alloush in the overall Syria game, seeing him as one of the country’s future leaders. His close ties with the Saudi intelligence agency and the CIA are also well-known. According to some reports, Americans have even asked for Moscow’s help in influencing al-Assad to stop any further offensives in the region, as these could apparently «create tension in Lebanon». From this alone it was clear that Qalamoun had to be taken! [Syria]
• Manufactured Crisis: the Untold Story of the Iran Nuclear Scare
  Edward Herman Sunday, 30 March 2014 23:08 By Gareth Porter Review by Edward S. Herman Journalist-scholar Gareth Porter has published another fine book on U.S. aggression, Manufactured Crisis: The Untold Story of the Iran Nuclear Scare, which follows in the footsteps of his 2005 study, The Perils of Dominance. The earlier book had as it main theme the idea that dominant U.S. military power in the 1950s and 1960s caused the U.S. leadership to believe that the threat of indefinite escalation would induce their Vietnamese enemy to surrender on U.S. terms, which the Vietnamese refused to do (his subtitle was “Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam”). A main theme of the new book is that U.S. power has permitted it to bully and manipulate the UN, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and other elements of the “international community,” with the collaboration of Israel and its other Western allies, into selective harassment and even low-level warfare against Iran for its alleged quest for nuclear weapons. A semi-permanent crisis has been manufactured and institutionalized by the militarily dominant world bully, damaging the well-being of millions of Iranian civilians and posing the threat of open warfare. [US global strategy] [UNUS] [Iran]

• Hospital ratings show sharp differences in safety, chance of dying
  By Sharon Begley NEW YORK Thu Mar 27, 2014 9:08am EDT A surgical tech prepares an operating room in a file photo. Credit: Reuters/Jonathan Bachman (Reuters) - An analysis of government data on hospital safety, including how likely patients are to die of avoidable surgical complications, shows that hospitals vary markedly on these measures and that patients are at higher risk in some nationally-known facilities than at tiny hospitals little known outside their rural communities. The safety ratings of 2,591 hospitals, released by Consumer Reports magazine on Thursday, come at a time when estimates of the number of Americans killed by hospital errors is soaring. According to the 1999 report by the Institute of Medicine that first put a spotlight on the issue, the death toll from medical mistakes in hospitals was at least 98,000 then. In 2010, however, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) inspector general said that poor hospital care contributed to 180,000 deaths every year - and that was only among Medicare patients, those 65 or older. And a 2013 study estimated such deaths at a minimum of 210,000 annually and as many as 440,000. If the highest number is correct, poor hospital care would be the country's third leading cause of death, after heart disease and cancer. [Health] [Decline]
• Looking Backwards, Pivoting Sideways
  Washington's past and present foreign policies are sustaining the fraught security environment in East Asia. By Alexis Dudden, March 25, 2014. pacific-pivot-china-japan-east-china-sea-tensions-militarism Vice President Joe Biden meets with Chinese officials in Los Angeles. For any U.S. balancing act in Asia to gain traction over the next 100 years, the U.S. must accept responsibility for America’s role in the region’s modern past — not just its wars but their aftermaths as well. (Photo: Antonio R. Villaraigosa / Flickr) A shout out to Confucius is necessary because he gets at the heart of the problem with U.S. East Asia policy today: “When the names are not correct, language does not match the truth of things.” What began as a “pivot” several years ago is now a “rebalance.” Yet it is neither. And since the U.S. government doesn’t appear to have the resources to pay for its new Asia policy, the final result will not likely correspond to the initial vision. In the attempt to explain what “it” is — which remains more an attempt to explain what “it” is not — Washington has succeeded in making clear that the Navy wants lots of cool new stuff. Beyond that, American policy in East Asia remains confused at best. On a country-by-country level, different “desks” at the State Department may appear to have a handle on what practitioners are doing. But such efforts — especially regarding China and Japan — are now openly at cross-purposes. Specifically, the vibrant China envisaged in U.S. policy is on a collision course with the more self-reliant Japan likewise championed, while Korea falls into the gap. [Strategic incoherence] [Pivot]
• Turkish Security Breach Exposes Erdogan Power Struggle
  March 28, 2014 ANKARA — Turkey's spymaster discusses possible military intervention in Syria with army and civilian chiefs, and days later their words are broadcast on the internet for all the world to hear. The breach appeared to highlight a disturbing truth for Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan: that Turkey can no longer keep even top-level security planning secret, despite his purge of thousands of officials as part of an effort root out a covert network of enemies he accuses of trying to sabotage the state and topple him. "This crisis is one of the biggest in Turkish history," a senior government official, who declined to be named, told Reuters. "A serious concern has certainly emerged regarding what follows now. If a meeting such as this has been listened to, others may have. We do not know who is in possession of [the recordings]." Erdogan was out of public action on Friday, resting a voice strained by campaigning for local elections over the weekend — the first in a string that will decide the future of a man who has reformed Turkey fundamentally but is now accused by critics of authoritarian and divisive tendencies. Even without the principal actor, the drama played on over the leaked audio recording that appeared on YouTube on Thursday; by far most serious of a stream of illegal intercepts of state communications, many involving Erdogan himself. Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, in whose office the security meeting took place, said "everyone and everything within the Foreign Ministry will be investigated with utmost scrutiny" — a measure of the alarm stirred by the recording. A body close to the Hizmet movement of U.S.-based cleric Fethullah Gulen, whom Erdogan accuses of running a "dirty campaign" of espionage to implicate him in corruption, said suggestions Gulen was involved were "beyond comedy." The leaking of such sensitive material could also raise alarm among NATO allies who see Turkey as occupying a crucial position on the edge of a volatile Middle East. Telephone conversations between Erdogan and his family have been intercepted; calls from foreign leaders may also be in unknown hands. The recorded meeting discussed whether to send forces across the Syrian border to secure the tomb of Suleyman Shah, grandfather of the founder of the Ottoman Empire, in an area largely controlled by militant Islamists fighting the Damascus government. Ankara regards the tomb as Turkish territory. One leftist daily carried the headline "I'll Send Four Men, Fire Eight Rockets," referring to a comment on the recording attributed to intelligence chief Hakan Fidan — one of Erdogan's closest allies — that indicated, if necessary, he could send four men to Syria with eight rockets and fire onto empty land. This, the voice said, could be used to justify Turkish intervention. [False flag] [Sectarianism] [Turkey]
• How West Infiltrated Iran’s Nuclear Program, Ex-Top Nuclear Official Explains
  Iran's View Mar 28th, 2014 Senior Iranian nuclear scientist Fereydoon Abbasi, who was appointed as chief of the Iranian Atomic Energy Organization in 2010 by then-president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has revealed new details about West’s wicked plots on Iran’s peaceful nuclear progress in an interview with Khorasan Daily. During the interview, Abbasi argued that Stuxnet malware was not the first and last of such attacks by the US and Israel against Tehran’s nuclear program and said they have repeatedly infiltrated Iranian nuclear facilities’ supply chains in recent years. Abbasi maintained that western espionage agencies also continuously use the IAEA reports about Iran’s nuclear activities and glean details about the program in a bid to sabotage its progress. “The IAEA has access to all the details about uranium enrichment processes in Iran,” said Abbasi. [Espionage] [UNUS] [IAEA] [Sabotage]
• The Obama Paradox
  by Andrew Levine Barack Obama ran for office promising change; he delivered continuity. But then, continuity brought change – for the worse. In 2008, “change” meant whatever voters wanted it to mean. Like the candidate, the word was a Rorschach inkblot. Many, probably most, Obama voters had no clear idea what kind of change they expected. All they knew was that, under George W. Bush, the country had veered dramatically off course. They thought Obama would fix that. Some voters did have more specific expectations. Some thought that Obama would wean the country off neoliberalism. With a financial and economic meltdown raging, the time was ripe. Some expected him to restore the rule of law at least to pre-9/11 levels; many hoped and expected that Bush era war criminals would be brought to justice. Others thought that the Democratic Party would become more like what it had been before the Clintons had had their way with it. The list goes on. Of course, nobody knew what “change” meant to Obama. Perhaps Obama didn’t know either. He could hardly have been more vague. On one point, though, everybody, except perhaps the candidate himself and his close advisors, agreed: Obama would transform the post-9/11 Bush-Cheney regime beyond recognition. They could not have been more wrong. [Obama] [Putin]
• Syrian forces take two villages near Lebanon
  Syrian regime forces gained control of Flita and Ras Maara villages near Lebanon’s border, a gain that helps President Bashar al-Assad secure the route to transport chemical agents out of Syria. (File photo: Reuters) Text size A A A Staff writer, Al Arabiya News Saturday, 29 March 2014 Syrian regime forces seized control of Flita and Ras Maara, two villages near Lebanon’s border, after driving rebels out of them, state media said on Saturday. "The Army and Armed Forces restored stability and security to the towns of Ras Maara and Flita ... after getting rid of the fleeing terrorists and destroying their weapons," state news agency SANA said. The gain helps President Bashar al-Assad secure the route connecting Damascus to Aleppo and the Mediterranean, Reuters reported. The President needs to secure the course to be able to transport chemical agents out of Syria via its coast, part of an agreement with the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) to remove Syria's chemicals weapons arsenal. [Syria] [cbw]
• Pro-regime Sunni fighters in Aleppo defy sectarian narrative
  regime, March 13, 2014. (photo by REUTERS/Sultan Ketaz) ALEPPO, Syria — This month marks three years of an uprising that has swept through Syria, leaving death and ruin in its wake. Aleppo has suffered 18 months of brutal, divisive conflict. The city now lies split, both in territorial control and along social, political fault lines. Summary? Print Pro-regime militias such as the Al-Quds and Baath Brigades are at the forefront of the battle against rebels in Aleppo, and they're mostly Sunni. Author Edward Dark Posted March 14, 2014 Translator(s)Sibel Utku Bila The conflict in Syria has taken on many shapes as it mutated from a popular mass movement for political change into a proxy civil war with sectarian undertones. Each region of this land, a diverse tapestry with intricately interwoven social, ethnic and religious ties bound together with the strings of a shared history, has experienced the conflict in distinct ways. Aleppo is perhaps unique in this respect, deviating from the standard Syrian model in that the conflict here follows the stratification of society along class and clan lines, rather than the general sectarian rift that delineates the conflict elsewhere. A large number of Sunnis from all backgrounds, including the working and rural classes, fight alongside the regime in militias or as willing conscripts. In other provinces, however, the split could be more or less described as halves of a once coherent social order split along purely confessional lines. In Aleppo, the splits are more blurred. Needless to say, the entirety of the rebel forces — except for the foreigners fighting with the al-Qaeda affiliates — fighting under Islamist or mainstream groups are composed of poorer Sunnis from the countryside. The urban fabric of the city was very cosmopolitan and home to a large minority of Christian, Armenian and Kurdish constituents, which, along with the prosperous Sunni bourgeoisie, initially rendered the city immune to the revolutionary fervor that swept through large swathes of the country. The majority of rural Aleppo, though, identified with the broader uprising, through shared feelings of religious or economic persecution by the ruling order. Such conclusions are very convenient, but they don’t satisfactorily answer many pressing questions, nor do they accurately describe the nature of the conflict on the ground. This Sunni-Sunni split in Aleppo seems to defy explanation. [Syria] [Sectarianism] [Class]
• On third anniversary of Syrian rebellion, Assad is steadily winning the war
  Video: The estimated death toll from the violence in Syria is more than 146,000 as the conflict enters its fourth year. The Post's Liz Sly explains the impact on the region and what we can expect moving forward. By Liz Sly, Published: March 15 E-mail the writer BEIRUT — Three years into the revolt against his rule, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is in a stronger position than ever before to quell the rebellion against his rule by Syrians who rose up to challenge his hold on power, first with peaceful protests and later with arms. Aided by the steadfast support of his allies and the deepening disarray of his foes, Assad is pressing ahead with plans to be reelected to a third seven-year term this summer while sustaining intense military pressure intended to crush his opponents. The strategy is not new, but in recent months it has started to yield tangible progress in the form of slow but steady gains on several key fronts on the battlefield that call into question long-held perceptions of a stalemate. Most notably, the government has pushed the rebels back or squeezed them into isolated pockets in large swathes of the territory surrounding Damascus, diminishing prospects that the opposition will soon be in a position to seriously threaten the capital or topple the regime. [Syria]
• Misremembering America’s Asian Wars: The Pentagon’s Latest “Mission Accomplished” Moment
  Mar. 18, 2014 Nick Turse [Please note - This article contains graphic images. These reflect the experience of victims of war and official concealment of those realities.] It’s 2053 -- 20 years since you needed a computer, tablet, or smart phone to go online. At least, that’s true in the developed world: you know, China, India, Brazil, and even some parts of the United States. Cybernetic eye implants allow you to see everything with a digital overlay. And once facial recognition software was linked to high-speed records searches, you had the lowdown on every person standing around you. Of course, in polite society you still introduce yourself as if you don’t instantly know another person’s net worth, arrest record, and Amazooglebook search history. (Yes, the fading old-tech firms Amazon, Google, and Facebook merged in 2033.) You also get a tax break these days if you log into one of the government’s immersive propaganda portals. (Nope, “propaganda” doesn’t have negative connotations anymore.) So you choose the Iraq War 50th Anniversary Commemoration Experience and take a stroll through the virtual interactive timeline. [Vietnam] [Disinformation]
• Former US President believes he's being spied on
  8:33 AM Monday Mar 24, 2014 Former US president Jimmy Carter has admitted he uses snail mail to evade monitoring by the National Security Agency and that he feels such surveillance methods have been abused. "When I want to communicate with a foreign leader privately, I type or write a letter myself, put it in the post office, and mail it," Carter said with a laugh, as he was questioned on the matter on NBC's Meet the Press program. "I have felt that my own communications are probably monitored," he said on the Sunday show. A trove of documents leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden have sparked outrage in the US and abroad about the vast capabilities of America's intelligence programs. Officials have defended the methods as necessary to thwart terror attacks but President Barack Obama has ordered reforms in the wake of the disclosures. Asked whether the programs were necessary, Carter said he thought they had "been extremely liberalised and, I think, abused by our own intelligence agencies". "I believe if I send an email, it will be monitored," he said. - AFP [Surveillance] [Jimmy Carter]
• When Will Americans Come to Their Senses?: Ukraine and Yugoslavia
  by Diana Johnstone “I sometimes get the feeling that somewhere across that huge puddle, in America, people sit in a lab and conduct experiments, as if with rats, without actually understanding the consequences of what they are doing.” – Vladimir Putin, 4 March 2014 Paris. Five years ago, I wrote a paper for a Belgrade conference commemorating the tenth anniversary of the start of the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia. In that paper I stressed that the disintegration of Yugoslavia had been used as an experimental laboratory to perfect various techniques that would subsequently be used in so-called “color revolutions” or other “regime change” operations directed against leaders considered undesirable by the United States government. [Fragmentation] [Ukraine] [Russia confrontation]
• Why Sanctions Don’t Work
  by Andrew Cockburn In 1919, after allied sanctions on food shipments had starved the Kaiser’s Germany into submission, President Wilson endorsed the continued use of sanctions to settle international disputes as an “economic, peaceful, silent, deadly remedy.” Almost a century later, the weapon is more popular than ever, mostly because of a wholly mistaken belief that it makes the targets do what we want. Currently, the United States is enforcing no fewer than 24 separate sanctions regimes directed at targets ranging from the Balkans to Zimbabwe. Now, of course, with Vladimir Putin proving fractious, Washington has opened another financial offensive, this time against Russia. [Sanctions] [Iran]
• Afghan president Hamid Karzai backs Russia's annexation of Crimea
  Referendum reflected people's 'free will' to decide their future, says President Karzai in unexpected move Emma Graham-Harrison in Kabul theguardian.com, Monday 24 March 2014 15.40 GMT Afghanistan's President Hamid Karzai speaks during a joint news conference with Pakistan's Prime Min Hamid Karzai announced his stance on Crimea at a meeting with a US congressional delegation. Photograph: Mohammad Ismail/Reuters The Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, has backed Russia's annexation of Crimea, saying a much-criticised referendum on its future reflected its people's "free will" to decide their future. That stance, announced at a meeting with a US congressional delegation, puts Afghanistan in company with Venezuela, Syria and a few other nations. It was an unexpected move from a man who has little stake in Ukraine's future, spent years fighting to evict Soviet forces from his own country, and now leads a democracy funded largely by the western nations that have slapped sanctions on Moscow. However, Karzai has always been keen to counter accusations that he is a foreign puppet, and more recently has been at odds with the United States over everything from air strikes and the forthcoming presidential election to the recent release of dozens of prisoners captured by foreign troops [Karzai] [Client]
• Anger in Egypt as 529 Morsi supporters sentenced to death
  Muslim Brotherhood calls protests as judge accused of acting out of spite after two-day trial over policeman's death in Minya Patrick Kingsley and Manu Abdo in Cairo The Guardian, Monday 24 March 2014 18.46 GMT Fears for the integrity of Egypt's legal system deepened on Monday after 529 supporters of the ousted Islamist president Mohamed Morsi were sentenced to death for the murder of a single policeman, in a mass trial that lasted less than two days. Lawyers and analysts said the sentences were likely to be commuted on appeal. But their scale and the brisk way they were enforced heightened concern for Egypt's rule of law amid a crackdown on political opposition. At least 16,000 mainly Islamist dissidents have been arrested since Morsi's overthrow in July. [Egypt] [Democracy] [Double standards]
• NATO Aggression on FRY-15 Years Later
  Marina RAGUSH | 24.03.2014 | 22:40 On March 24th 1999, NATO began its aggression of Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (FRY). Mission ‘Allied Force’ gathered the most powerful countries of Western civilization. They manifest all the power and disproportionate force mainly on innocent civilians and nonmilitary targets. Bombing destroyed around 1 026 civilian facilities, industrial sites and energy installations were destroyed: bridges, radio and TV stations, National broadcasting network RTS, 19 hospitals, 20 health care buildings, 18 kinder gardens, 69 primary and secondary schools, 29 monasteries, 35 churches were damaged. Human casualties during aggression on FRY: about 2000 civilians, 599 soldiers, 172 policemen have died… Around 10 000 were wounded. Six civilians, among them three children were killed in village of Murino( Montenegro, then a constitutive part of FRY): Julija Brudar (10), her sister Olivera Maximovic (13), Miroslav Kneyevic (13), Milka Kocanovic (69), Manojlo Komatina (69) and Vukic Vuletic (56). During 78-day air-strikes, NATO used, also forbidden cluster bombs and ordnance containing depleted uranium/DU (U238). Each and every location in Serbia was hit by different weapons. NATO has tried everything that was available on their scale of weapons. According to official information, some 31, 000 warheads were used, with a total coming on for 10 (or 15) tones of DU. [NATO] [Yugoslavia] [cbw]
• Report on Bush-era war on terror may further divide Congress, CIA
  BY Bradley Klapper & Stephen Braun, Associated Press March 24, 2014 at 11:13 AM EDT The U.S. flag flies over the Camp Delta maximum security area at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Photo by Paul J. Richards/AFP/Getty Images WASHINGTON (AP) — If senators vote this week to release key sections of a voluminous report on terrorist interrogations, an already strained relationship between lawmakers and the CIA could become even more rancorous, and President Barack Obama might have to step into the fray. The Senate Intelligence Committee hopes that by publishing a 400-page summary of its contentious review and the 20 main recommendations, it will shed light on some of the most unsavory elements of the Bush administration’s “war on terror” after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Despite now serving Obama, the CIA maintains that the report underestimates the intelligence value of waterboarding and other methods employed by intelligence officials at undeclared, “black site” facilities overseas. The entire investigation runs some 6,200 pages. [Torture]
• What Will Come of the Saudi-Qatari Feud?
  TEHRAN (FNA)- The nearly 100-year-old tribal struggle between Al-Saud dynasty from Anza and Al-Thani dynasty from Tamim in the region of Najd in the Arabian Peninsula, has become part of the fault line of the strategic axis of the world’s politics. This is not due to either tribe’s cunning, but rather due to their three greatest assets, energy, religion and terrorism. Saudi Arabia is seeking to isolate Qatar in both the domestic and international arena, and is now going after the very tool that the small (Persian) Gulf monarchy uses to interfere in other states: the Muslim Brotherhood. In fact, the Saudis have been launching a vicious attack against Qatar but we are only aware of what is being circulated in public. Meanwhile, Riyadh has other measures on its agenda. Secretly, Qatari interests are being threatened in Saudi Arabia and the conflict might even result in a military clash. Qatar, a small country with a tiny population but massive wealth, adopted a successful strategy to protect itself and to strengthen its position globally. However, Qataris control their own terrorist networks, and they would no doubt respond to Saudi interests in Syria, or even in Dubai. Maybe they would even strike in Saudi Arabia itself, by giving a political and media cover to the Shia opposition. Of course , this clash between the two Wahabi strongholds would be in the best interest of the Arab and Islamic world. Syrian blood will not be shed in vain, and the resistance axis won’t have to face Saudi-Qatari terrorism as the two sides will destroy each other in an inevitable war. [Qatar] [Saudi Arabia]
• Syrian endgame triggers realignments
  When senior Pakistani editor Najam Sethi can’t figure out why Saudi Arabia deposited a princely amount of $1.5 billion in the State Bank of Pakistan recently, we are at a dead end. Sethi said in a TV interview, “money is money and if something is taken, something has to be given in return and that is being kept secret. Saudi Arabia had made a request [to Pakistan].” There have been reports about a Saudi-Pakistani understanding about Syria — Pakistani advisers to train a Syrian rebel army and for supplying weapons for equipping the rebel fighters. But the advisor to Pakistani prime minister Nawaz Sharif in foreign and security policies Sartaj Aziz has flatly denied that. But then, Aziz merely says it is “gifted money .” So, Sethi’s tantalizing question remains: why such a generous gift? [Pakistan] [Saudi Arabia]
• Was shoot down of Syrian plane linked to Turkish elections?
  If I had begun this article by saying, "The shooting down of a Syrian MiG-23 warplane that allegedly violated Turkish airspace at 1:14 p,m. March 23, with a missile fired from a Turkish F-16 has suddenly shifted the attention of Turkish public opinion to the Syria border,” it would have been an incomplete lead. Summary? Print Is it possible to disentangle the shooting down of a Syrian plane on March 23 from the Turkish local elections on March 30? Author Kadri Gursel Posted March 24, 2014 The first sentence of any news analysis about the Syrian plane shot down March 23 cannot be complete unless it notes that the plane was shot down one week before the March 30 local elections. On March 24, as this article was being written, Ankara authorities had not yet released sufficient or persuasive information to the public that the Syrian plane was posing a direct and critical security threat that needed to be eliminated. The Turkish chief of the general staff, in a statement issued at 4 p.m. March 23, said the Syrian plane violated Turkish airspace by about one kilometer (six-tenths of a mile) at 1:12 p.m. local time in the area of the Camli border outpost in the Hatay/Yayladagi area, then turned west and flew about 1.5 kilometers (close to a mile) in Turkish airspace. Even if we assume that this warplane was flying slower than its usual speed, its violation of Turkish airspace can only be expressed in seconds. These facts tell us that the Syrian plane had committed a very limited airspace violation. The Turkish military statement confirms this determination. The statement said that the F-16 that intercepted the Syrian plane fired a missile at 1:14 p.m., one minute after the violation, and that the Syrian MiG-23 that was hit crashed in the Kassab area of Syria, about 1,200 meters (nearly 4,000 feet) south of our border. Turkey’s shooting down of a military plane of a country such as Syria — a country we are not at war with — and its timing cannot be explained only in technical terms. The decision to shoot down the Syrian plane was a political one. Therefore, we have to consider the entirety of the incident from a fully political angle. [Diversion] [Election]
• Assessing the theories about Flight 370’s disappearance
  By Joel Achenbach, Published: March 20 E-mail the writers The missing plane left behind a vapor trail of scenarios, and they have grown increasingly elaborate in the absence of information. Aviation consultants sense that this could be a 9/11 plot gone awry. Or perhaps it is a 9/11 plot brilliantly executed and still operational. And yet an accident of some kind still hasn’t been ruled out. The crucial evidence about what happened to Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 on March 8 may be 2 ½ miles deep in the Indian Ocean.
• Western banks cold-shoulder Iran trade finance scheme
  Reuters, 14/03 19:44 CET By Jonathan Saul and Parisa Hafezi LONDON/ANKARA (Reuters) – Despite a diplomatic thaw, Western banks are steering clear of attempts by Iran to get them involved in financing humanitarian transactions, fearing they could be penalised under U.S. sanctions, bankers and government officials told Reuters. Iran was never barred from buying food or other humanitarian goods under sanctions imposed because of its disputed nuclear programme, but measures by the European Union and the United States have made trade generally more difficult over the past two years by hindering payments and shipping. As part of talks in Geneva over the nuclear question, Tehran is pressing world powers to speed up trade finance arrangements on humanitarian deals involving both Western and Iranian banks, according to an Iranian government document seen by Reuters and sources familiar with the initiative. [Iran] [Sanctions]
• America's Oligarch Strategy
  Saturday, March 15, 2014 a.k.a. Empire in the Age of the 1% At US behest, Austria arrested a Ukrainian oligarch named Dmytro Firtash in Vienna on some corruption and bribery charge that appears to be involved tangentially with the United States. Apparently, Firtash was small fry, 14th on the Ukraine list, worth only $673 million. Being an oligarch is, in itself, no crime in Ukraine. Yulia Tymoshenko is an oligarch (the “Gas Queen); the new Ukrainian government openly appointed oligarchs Igor Kolomoisky and Serhiy Taruta as governors in two western provinces in order to keep a lid on pro-Russian sentiment; and the great white hope of the Maidan activists, the “good oligarch” Petro Poroshenko, a.k.a. “The Chocolate King” is the seventh-richest man in Ukraine, worth about $1 billion. Firtash’s problem is that the US identified him with the Yanukovych camp and close to Russia because of his gas dealings. It also looks like Firtash moved into Tymoshenko’s gas interests while she was in prison, which may account for the FBI obligingly dropping the hammer on him. More importantly, I expect, Firtash’s arrest is meant to send a message to another oligarch-heavy area, Russia, in anticipation of Western sanctions for the Crimea referendum. [Ukraine] [Oligarch] [Russia confrontation]
• From Kiev to Beijing...and Taipei
  A certain amount of attention, and rightly so, has been paid to the discomfiture of the People's Republic of China (PRC) with Crimea unilaterally declaring independence from Ukraine. The PRC abstained on the UN Security Council condemnation of the vote, instead of supporting Russia with a "nay". The PRC possesses or covets several significant territories whose inhabitants, if given the opportunity, might eagerly defy the One China policy to announce, organize, and pass a referendum of independence: Tibet, Xinjiang, Hong Kong, Inner Mongolia, Macau, and Taiwan. Certainly, the PRC would have preferred that Russia persisted in its relatively principled and consistent opposition to the unilateral declaration of independence by Kosovo (which the West engineered at the expense of Serbian sovereignty and in order to get around footdragging by Russia on the adoption of a Kosovo constitution that would have led to independence anyway in pretty short order). Instead, Russian diplomats cited that instance of unilateral Western high-handedness to excuse the shenanigans of Crimea's parliament. [Ukraine] [Taiwan] [US global strategy]
• On The March With Syria's Army: ‘Unusually, the Syrian army took rebel prisoners. Ominously, I saw none’
  In the first dispatch from Syria, Robert Fisk reports from the town of Yabroud – reoccupied at the weekend by government forces – and witnesses the destruction and trauma caused by a brutal civil war By Robert Fisk March 18, 2014 "Information Clearing House - "The Independent"- The battle for Yabroud is over, but its Greek Catholic church has been savagely vandalised by its former rebel occupants, its streets carpeted with cartridge cases, its houses smashed with shell holes. Syria’s soldiers – along with a host of Hezbollah fighters from Lebanon – watched General Badi Ali raise the government flag on Monday, too late to save the beautiful frescoes slashed into ribbons by the men of the Jabhat al-Nusra and the Islamic Front in Syria’s oldest church. The Greek Catholic Church of Our Lady is a place of shame, of burnt copies of the New Testament, paintings slashed with knives - many were lying in strips of gold and red fabric beside the altar's broken cross - and mosaics chiselled from the walls. Sceptics may ask if the regime performed this act of sacrilege - for the benefit of cameras - but it must have taken weeks to have wrecked this place of worship with its ancient columns and to have gouged out the eyes of the mosaic saints. The Islamists had attacked a mosaic of St George and the Dragon - and had even gouged out the dragon's eyes as well as those of the unfortunate knight. You cannot call such sacrilege an infamy. But you have to ask how Syria can ever repair relations between its Muslims and Christians after such vandalism. Perhaps the answer is never, although in an act of immense courage, the Muslim civilians of this ancient town protected their Christian neighbours to the end. [Syria]
• US sailors hand over control of captured oil tanker to Libyan forces
  Libyan militia attempt to sell its shipload of crude stopped by US navy seals as clashes broke out between Libyan rebels and troops in oil ports Associated Press in Tripoli theguardian.com, Saturday 22 March 2014 14.16 GMT Libya oil tanker morning glory A North Korean-flagged tanker, the Morning Glory, is seen docked at the Es Sider export terminal in Ras Lanuf in this March 8, 2014 file photo. Photograph: Esam Omran al-Fetori /Reuters American sailors handed over control of a captured North Korean-flagged oil tanker to Libyan forces while in international waters Saturday, a spokesman for the Libyan navy said. Ayoub Qassem said that the tanker, Morning Glory, is now heading to the port at Zawiya refinery, 40 kilometers (25 miles) west of the capital Tripoli. Qassem told the official news agency LANA that three Libyan navy ships escorted the vessel into national waters. Last week, US navy seals seized the ship off the Mediterranean island of Cyprus, stopping an attempt by a Libyan militia to sell its shipload of crude in defiance of Tripoli. A Pentagon spokesman said Friday that 34 sailors from the frigate USS Elrod are aboard the tanker. [Libya] [Legality]
• An American in Maidan
  Daniel Heintz 21 March 2014 Suspecting that neither Ukrainians nor people elsewhere were being given an accurate portrayal of what has been going on in Kyiv, I felt I had no choice but to travel there and offer an honest portrait of Maidan as I saw it. The physical layout of Maidan is both impressive and inspiring. Piles of sandbags, tyres, household furniture and concrete paving blocks form the barricades that guard the entrances to the square. Inside are countless tents and makeshift shelters which people have occupied for nearly four months now. Graffiti, fliers and stickers, written in Ukrainian, Russian and English, cover any vacant space on walls; dozens of Ukrainian flags flap in the wind… And there’s no way you can miss the flowers. Piles upon piles of flowers, spread all over Maidan, commemorate those who lost their lives there. Scattered among the flowers you can find photographs of Maidan’s lost ‘Heavenly Hundred’, with a constant flow of family members, friends and fellow countrymen quietly mourning nearby. It is never hard to find a family with small children going for a stroll around the square. Makeshift kitchens offer food, free of charge, to anyone who wants a hot meal. The large stage that dominates the center of the square provides a round-the-clock platform for citizens, musicians, priests, and politicians to share their messages and perspectives. A little way off from the stage, a leftover Christmas tree, now known to Kyiv residents as ‘the most famous Christmas tree in the world’, is covered in an assortment of flags and banners that have come to symbolize the movement. In the most prominent corner of the square, the charred remains of a large burnt-out building loom over the activity below, a constant reminder of Maidan’s darkest days. Among all this, there is still a normal flow and rhythm to life on Maidan. You can hop into the McDonalds inside the barricade for a Big Mac or grab a coffee at one of the many cafes still open for business, and it is never hard to find a family with small children going for a stroll around the square. The streets are clean and there are no remnants of the debris or ashes that blanketed the area during the worst days of the demonstrations. Despite the fact that Maidan is the focal point of this movement which has caught the world’s attention, there is a sense of normality and routine on the square. My expectations overturned When I was preparing to travel to Kyiv, I expected the overall atmosphere to be very different from that of my three previous visits to the city in less turbulent times. During those visits, I recall hearing almost exclusively Russian being spoken in public. This time around, I naively expected to hear mostly Ukrainian and, being a Russian speaker, I thought I might feel marginalized for my inability to speak Ukrainian. Those thoughts could not have been further from the truth. From the second I arrived at Kyiv’s airport, I heard only Russian - the woman at passport control and the taxi drivers offering me rides spoke in Russian, and the driver of the (local) bus that took me to the city center made all his announcements in the same language. In fact, for the entire 40-minute bus ride, a Russian radio station was blasting over the speakers. It was three or four hours before I heard a single word of Ukrainian. [Ukraine]
• Saudi Arabia v. Qatar
  by Patrick Cockburn Saudi Arabia intends to close the local office of the Qatari-owned al Jazeera satellite television station in the latest episode in the escalating conflict in which the Saudis, United Arab Emirates and Bahrain are in confrontation with Qatar, say local media. At the heart of the dispute is Qatar’s backing for the Muslim Brotherhood, which Saudi Arabia banned last Friday, and Qatari opposition to the regime of Field Marshall Abdel Fattah al-Sisi in Egypt that came to power in a coup last summer. Riyadh and Doha now differ on almost every aspect of foreign policy, notably Qatar’s support for jihadi rebels in Syria and al Jazeera’s willingness to provide a television platform for critics of the Gulf monarchs and their allies. [Qatar] [Saudi Arabia]
• Tony Benn, veteran Labour politician, dies aged 88
  Former cabinet minister died at his home in west London surrounded by family members Patrick Wintour and Rowena Mason theguardian.com, Friday 14 March 2014 08.14 GMT The former Labour minister Tony Benn smokes his trademark pipe during an anti-war rally in 2007. Photograph: Daniel Berehulak/Getty Images Tony Benn – the lodestar for the Labour left for decades, orator, campaigner, diarist and grandfather – has died aged 88 after a long illness, his family announced today. Tributes poured in for one the country's most extraordinary and controversial MPs, who, in what he described as the blazing autumn of his career outside Westminster, came to be regarded as an anti-establishment voice for democracy. Although he famously said self-deprecatingly in one of his later interviews "all political careers end in failure, mine just happened to end earlier than most", many regarded his final decades outside Westminster with greatest affection.
• Back to the future: America's new model for expeditionary warfare
  Nick Turse 14 March 2014 In a world of supposed cutbacks, the US military continues to quietly move into Africa in a distinctly below-the-radar fashion. The Pentagon’s newest tactic: refight the colonial wars in partnership with the French. Lion Forward Teams? Echo Casemate? Juniper Micron? You could be forgiven if this jumble of words looks like nonsense to you. It isn’t. It’s the language of the US military’s simmering African interventions; the patois that goes with a set of missions carried out in countries most Americans couldn’t locate on a map; the argot of conflicts now primarily fought by proxies and a former colonial power on a continent that the US military views as a hotbed of instability and that hawkish pundits increasingly see as a growth area for future armed interventions. Since 9/11, the US military has been making inroads in Africa, building alliances, facilities, and a sophisticated logistics network. Despite repeated assurances by US Africa Command (AFRICOM) that military activities on the continent were minuscule, a 2013 investigation by TomDispatch exposed surprisingly large and expanding US operations - including recent military involvement with no fewer than 49 of 54 nations on the continent. Washington’s goal continues to be building these nations into stable partners with robust, capable militaries, as well as creating regional bulwarks favorable to its strategic interests in Africa. Yet over the last years, the results have often confounded the planning - with American operations serving as a catalyst for blowback (to use a term of CIA tradecraft). [US global strategy] [Africa]
• Senators Okay With Spying On Citizens, But Outraged It Happened To Congress
  WASHINGTON -- Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), a staunch defender of government surveillance of ordinary citizens, took to the Senate floor Tuesday with the stunning accusation that the Central Intelligence Agency may have violated federal law to spy on Congress. Feinstein, head of the Senate Intelligence Committee, railed against the CIA for compromising the legislative branch 's oversight role -- a theme echoed by many of her Senate colleagues throughout the day. The outrage was palpable among lawmakers on both sides of the aisle, and some suggested CIA Director John Brennan should resign if the allegations are true. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), who has stuck up for intelligence agencies in the past, declared a potential war. "This is Richard Nixon stuff," Graham told reporters. "This is dangerous to the democracy. Heads should roll, people should go to jail if it’s true. If it is, the legislative branch should declare war on the CIA." When former contractor Edward Snowden revealed last year that the National Security Agency was secretly collecting phone and electronic records from millions of ordinary Americans, the response in Congress was far more muted. Top senators insisted the surveillance was critical to U.S. counterterrorism activities. "It's called protecting America," Feinstein said then. Graham said he was glad Verizon was turning over customer records to the government to ensure that his phone was not linked to any terrorist activity. [Surveillance]
• Qatar’s Isolation: A Geopolitical Trick?
  By Tony Cartalucci Global Research, March 13, 2014 New Eastern Outlook The sudden shift in Qatar’s standings in the Middle East has left much of the world perplexed, suspicious, and skeptical. Others are hopeful that it indicates a fraying in an axis that has been sowing violence and destabilization across much of North Africa and the Middle East for years. The Irish Times reported in its article, “Saudi Arabia threatens to blockade Qatar over terrorism,” that: Saudi Arabia has threatened to blockade neighbouring Qatar by air, land and sea unless Doha cuts ties with Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, closes global channel al-Jazeera, and expels local branches of the US Brookings Institution and Rand Corporation think tanks. The threat was issued by Riyadh before it withdrew its ambassador to Doha and branded as “terrorist organisations” the brotherhood, Lebanon’s Hizbullah and al-Qaeda-linked Islamic State of Iraq and Syria and Jabhat al-Nusra. Although the kingdom has long been the font of Sunni ultra-orthodox Salafism and jihadism, it now seeks to contain radical movements and media and other organisations giving them publicity. [Qatar] [Saudi Arabia]
• Iraq, past and future war
  Paul Rogers 13 March 2014 The retreat from Afghanistan is proving hard enough for the United States. But its military return to Iraq is much more serious. The United States has so far failed to secure an agreement with Hamid Karzai's government to deploy some forces in Afghanistan after the main troop withdrawal at the end of 2014. Washington’s intention had been to keep up to 10,000 military personnel there, some of them instructors for the Afghan security forces but many engaged in drone-operations and special-forces activities. The aim was to prevent Afghanistan becoming a safe area for al-Qaida-linked groups with a transnational agenda. There is now little prospect of securing this aim, at least not on the scale originally envisaged. [Iraq]
• CIA Director Brennan says Syria army remains resilient
  WASHINGTON — CIA Director John Brennan said on March 11 that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad “probably feels more confident” that his regime will survive as a result of his army’s recent performance and the impact of fighting between Islamist rebels. Summary? Print In a rare public appearance, John Brennan said the US relationship with Saudi Arabia remains “on strong and solid ground” despite differences over Iran, Syria and Iraq, and denied that the CIA hacked into the computers of Senate investigators. Author Barbara Slavin Posted March 11, 2014 Speaking at the Council of Foreign Relations in a rare public appearance, Brennan, who spent much of his career at the CIA before serving as chief White House counterterrorism adviser in President Barack Obama’s first term, said the Syrian army had proven to be more resilient than many had anticipated after the uprising began three years ago. “Syria has a real army,” Brennan said in reply to a question from Al-Monitor about how long Assad might stay in power. The Syrian military, he added, has benefited from years of training and equipping by Russia and is “a large conventional military force with tremendous firepower.” While acknowledging the proficiency of some of the Islamist fighters battling the Assad regime, Brennan noted that “internecine fighting” among the rebels has hurt their cause. [Syria]
• Saudi preacher rapes, kills daughter, 5, over her 'virginity'
  A “celebrity” Saudi preacher accused of raping, torturing and killing his daughter, 5, has reportedly been released from custody after agreeing to pay “blood money,” the Independent reported Sunday. Fayhan al-Ghamdi had been accused of killing his daughter Lama, who suffered multiple injuries including a crushed skull, broken back, broken ribs, a broken left arm and extensive bruising and burns. Social workers say she had also been repeatedly raped and burnt. [Human rights]
• White House says Turkey's Erdogan misrepresenting his phone call with Obama
  By Roy Gutman McClatchy Washington Bureau March 7, 2014 Updated 5 hours ago WASHINGTON — In an unusual rebuke, the White House said Friday that Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan had misrepresented a telephone conversation with President Barack Obama last month. A White House official said Erdogan’s version of the Feb. 19 conversation, which he’s now repeated twice, is “not accurate.” The statement came after Erdogan, in a television interview Thursday, said he’d gotten a sympathetic response from Obama to his complaint about a Turkish Islamic scholar living in self-imposed exile in rural Pennsylvania. Cleric Fetullah Gulen leads a movement that is said to have enormous influence in the Turkish judiciary and police. After a graft and corruption scandal erupted in mid-December, Erdogan reassigned the prosecutors and thousands of police and charged Gulen with creating a “state within a state.” Erdogan has fired four ministers in the scandal, but a series of purported wiretaps leaked YouTube last week implicated the prime minister and members of his family in the scandal. Erdogan has charged Gulen and his supporters with responsibility for the eavesdropping and with leaking phone intercepts. Erdogan said he told Obama “that the person who is responsible for the unrest in Turkey lives in your country, in Pennsylvania. I told him this clearly, ” the official Anadolu Agency quoted Erdogan as saying. “I said, ‘I expect what’s necessary (to be done).’ You have to take the necessary stance if someone threatens my country’s security.” Erdogan said Obama “looked at it positively. ‘We got the message,’ he said.” The White House said Friday that “the response attributed to President Obama with regard to Mr. Gulen is not accurate.”
• The State, the Deep State, and the Wall Street Overworld
  Peter Dale Scott In the last decade it has become more and more obvious that we have in America today what the journalists Dana Priest and William Arkin have called two governments: the one its citizens were familiar with, operated more or less in the open: the other a parallel top secret government whose parts had mushroomed in less than a decade into a gigantic, sprawling universe of its own, visible to only a carefully vetted cadre – and its entirety…visible only to God.1 And in 2013, particularly after the military return to power in Egypt, more and more authors referred to this second level as America’s “deep state.”2 Here for example is the Republican analyst Mike Lofgren: There is the visible government situated around the Mall in Washington, and then there is another, more shadowy, more indefinable government that is not explained in Civics 101 or observable to tourists at the White House or the Capitol. The former is traditional Washington partisan politics: the tip of the iceberg that a public watching C-SPAN sees daily and which is theoretically controllable via elections. The subsurface part of the iceberg I shall call the Deep State, which operates according to its own compass heading regardless of who is formally in power.3 At the end of 2013 a New York Times Op-Ed noted this trend, and even offered a definition of the term that will work for the purposes of this essay: DEEP STATE n. A hard-to-perceive level of government or super-control that exists regardless of elections and that may thwart popular movements or radical change. Some have said that Egypt is being manipulated by its deep state.4 The political activities of the deep state are the chief source and milieu of what I have elsewhere called “deep politics:” “all those political practices and arrangements, deliberate or not, which are usually repressed rather than acknowledged.”5 [Deep state]
• Saudi Arabia, Qatar openly funding carnage in Anbar: Maliki
  Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki accused Saudi Arabia and Qatar of openly funding the insurgents his troops are battling in western Anbar province, in his strongest such statement since fighting started there early this year. "I accuse them of inciting and encouraging the terrorist movements. I accuse them of supporting them politically and in the media, of supporting them with money and by buying weapons for them," Maliki told France 24 television late on Saturday. "I accuse them of leading an open war against the Iraqi government. I accuse them of openly hosting leaders of al-Qaeda and takfiris (extremists)," he said in the interview when asked about possible Saudi and Qatari links to the violence. [Saudi Arabia] [Qatar] [Iraq] [Sectarianism]
• U.S. Foreign Assistance: More Guns than Butter
  Aid to foreign militaries is quickly eclipsing development assistance in the U.S. foreign aid budget. By James Kennedy, March 4, 2014. Even as President Obama has promised to get the United States off a permanent war footing, Washington continues to deliver money, guns, equipment, and training to foreign military and police forces around the globe. (Photo: Wikipedia) Even as our two major wars come to a close and President Obama has promised to get the country off a permanent war footing, the United States continues to deliver more and more money, guns, equipment, and training to foreign military and police forces around the globe. Two facts should give us pause. First, the United States is now providing essentially equal parts “guns” and “butter” in its foreign assistance. Second, this money is being spent with little congressional oversight, and it is often unclear where the money is going and whether it is effective. These developments suggest skewed national priorities. They also reinforce a negative U.S. image overseas as a country more committed to pumping up militaries than building up economies. In this year’s budget, Congress authorized the Pentagon and the State Department to spend almost the same amount on foreign military and police assistance ($19.1 billion) as it did for State and USAID to use for non-security purposes such as health, education, and food security programs ($21.5 billion). While the Pentagon’s spending is difficult to track because of its opaque reporting process, it is possible to isolate several troubling trends. [Militarisation]
• Pentagon: Ground Forces Can Fight in One Theater, Support Air, Sea Forces in Another
  Feb. 24, 2014 - 03:45AM | By PAUL McLEARY A smaller US Army would still be able to fight a major theater conflict while also supporting forces in a second theater, says Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel. (US Army)Filed Under World News Americas WASHINGTON — When it comes to the US Army and Marine Corps, there were no real surprises in Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel’s peek today of the 2015 defense budget. The Marines only merited one line, when Hagel confirmed that the Corps would lose 8,000 grunts in coming years as it drops to 182,000 personnel, and if sequestration returns in 2016, would shrink further to 175,000. The Army, on the other hand, actually leaped ahead of the secretary in recent months, laying out time and again everything that would happen to the force in coming budgets. In summing up his budget, Hagel nodded to the obvious reason for the pain that the services have been enduring, acknowledging that “as we end our combat mission in Afghanistan, this will be the first budget to fully reflect the transition DoD is making after 13 years of war — the longest conflict in our nation’s history.” His comments reflected those made by Lt. Gen Keith Walker, director of the Army Capabilities Integration Center, who bluntly stated on the opening day of the Association of the United States Army’s symposium on Feb 19: “We have transitioned from an Army at war to an Army preparing for war.” [US military]
• Russia-US discord over Ukraine may lead to military intervention in Syria
  Syria has agreed to show its miniature reactor in Damascus to IAEA inspectors. But so far, the situation in the country does not allow sending experts there, the Agency's Director General, Yukiya Amano, reports. Meanwhile, clouds are piling up over Damascus again. President Barack Obama has officially asked the Congress for permission to conduct a military operation in Syria. There are no nuclear weapons in Syria, and it has never sought to develop them. The only reactor in the country is a miniature neutron producer. It is located near Damascus and used solely for scientific and medical purposes. The IAEA knows about it. The Syrian authorities are ready to allow international inspectors to visit the facility in order to stop any speculations on this subject. As for the chemical weapons, the liquidation process is underway. At the end of February, stockpiles of mustard gas - sulfur mustard - were taken out of Syria. The Syrian leadership and Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) have corrected the schedule of sending the remaining military toxins out of the country. Originally, it was necessary to transport 1,300 tons of ammunition by February 5. The situation in the country did not allow them to meet the deadline, and Damascus asked for an extension until the end of May. The OPCW was not satisfied with this. [cbw]
• Syria Accelerates Chemical Weapons Disarmament
  Chemicals Include Mustard Gas and Precursor to Sarin Syria will have moved 23% of its most dangerous chemicals out of war-torn country by the end of the week , according to international weapons inspectors. By Naftali Bendavid Dock workers tie mooring ropes as the U.S. MV Cape Ray berths at the naval airbase in Rota, near Cadiz, Spain. Priority 1 materials will be destroyed on the ship. Reuters Syria is expected to have removed 23% of its most dangerous chemicals by the end of the week, according to international weapons inspectors Tuesday, as the regime of President Bashar al-Assad faces growing international pressure to quicken the pace of its disarmament. That marks a clear acceleration of the process which began in earnest in October. After destroying their manufacturing equipment and letting inspectors see their sites, Damascus missed the initial Dec. 31 deadline for removal. As recently as Feb. 21, only 4.5% of the high-priority chemicals had been removed from Syrian territory for destruction, prompting a U.S. official to complain that Damascus “continues to put its energy into excuses instead of actions.” [cbw]
• Saudi Arabia: Besieged and Fearful
  Immanuel Wallerstein Commentary No. 372, Mar. 1, 2014 The Saudi regime has long been considered a pillar of political stability in the Middle East, a country that commanded respect and prudence from all its neighbors. This is no longer true, and the first ones to recognize this are those who are important internal players in the regime. Today, they feel besieged on all sides and quite fearful of the consequences of turmoil in the Middle East for the survival of the regime. This turn-around derives from the history of Saudi Arabia. The kingdom itself is not very old. It was created in 1932 through the unification of two smaller kingdoms on the Arabian peninsula, Hejaz and Nejd. It was a poor, isolated part of the world that had liberated itself from Ottoman rule during the First World War, and came then under the paracolonial aegis of Great Britain. The kingdom was organized in religious terms by a version of Sunni Islam called Wahabism (or Salafism). Wahabism is a very strict puritanical doctrine that was notably intolerant not only of religions other than Islam but of other versions of Islam itself. The discovery of oil would transform the geopolitical role of Saudi Arabia. It was an American firm, later called Aramco - not a British firm - that succeeded in getting the rights for prospection in 1938. Aramco sought assistance from the U.S. government to exploit the fields. One consequence of Aramco's interest combined with President Franklin Roosevelt's vision of the geopolitical future of the United States was a now famous, then little noticed, meeting of Roosevelt and the ruler of Saudi Arabia, Ibn Saud, on Feb. 14, 1945 aboard a U.S. destroyer in the Red Sea. Despite Roosevelt's grave illness (he was to die two months later) and Ibn Saud's lack of any previous experience with Western culture and technology, the two leaders managed to forge a genuine mutual respect. British Prime Minister Winston Churchill's attempt to undo this in a meeting he immediately arranged soon after that turned out to be quite counter-productive, as he was seen as "arrogant" by Ibn Saud. [Saudi Arabia]
• J-Street President Calls Israel's Palestine Policy 'Unacceptable'
  Sitting in the lobby of a hotel in Tel Aviv, Jeremy Ben-Ami gazed out the window, watching the placid ocean. At precisely the same time, his wife, Alisa, and his children, Shira and Ari, were without power in their Washington home, hoping that hurricane Sandy will blow over. Electricity and phones were down and their only means of communication was texting. Although ostracized by right-wing circles and dubbed pro-Arab by the Knesset, lobby group J Street’s president and founder Jeremy Ben-Ami, whose father was an Irgun member, explains that everything he does is for Israel. Moshe Ronen interviewed one of the most influential Jews in the world just shy of the US and Israeli elections. Moshe Ronen 1, 2012 President and founder of the Jewish lobby J Street Ben Ami is used to living between Israel and the US. He understands Hebrew but is deeply involved in American politics. Formerly President Bill Clinton’s advisor on domestic policy, he nevertheless knows Israeli politics through and through. While AIPAC invariably espouses right-wing positions, supporting Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu unreservedly, Ben-Ami’s J Street was founded four years ago as a pro-Israeli alternative — yet on the left. “There are things that have to do with Israel that no political candidate in the United States can say anything about,” Ben-Ami told Yedioth Ahronot in an interview. “Everyone is convinced of the power of the Jewish vote and is afraid of it.”
  Is the Jewish voter really that powerful?
  “Jews make up 2% of the US population and 3% of the electorate. But according to polls, they make up 40% of the donors to the Democratic Party,” he said. [Israel]
• The Revenge of History: Chomsky on Japan, China, the United States, and the Threat of Conflict in Asia
  Mar. 02, 2014
  Noam Chomsky Interview by David McNeill In the 1930s and 40s, a young, politically precocious Noam Chomsky was much affected by the Great Depression and the slow, seemingly inexorable slide toward world war. The jingoism, racism and brutality unleashed on all sides were appalling, but it seemed to him from his home in Philadelphia that America had reserved a special level of animosity for the Japanese. When Washington ended a campaign of mass civilian slaughter from the air with the atomic bombing of Hiroshima in the summer of 1945, the 16-year-old, deeply alienated by the celebrations around him, walked off into the local woods to mourn alone. “I could never talk to anyone about it and never understood anyone’s reaction,” he said. “I felt completely isolated.” In the subsequent two decades, Chomsky built a glittering academic career, transforming the study of linguistics with a string of convention-shattering theories. During the Vietnam War, he reluctantly forged another identity – the one for which he is best known around the world – as an unrelenting critic of U.S. foreign policy. Much of his intellectual life since has been spent stripping away what he calls America’s “flattering self-image” and the layers of self-justification and propaganda he says it uses in its naked pursuit of power and profit around the planet. Unlike most mainstream commentators, Chomsky did not view the Vietnam quagmire as an aberration but as the inevitable product of imperial overreach. [Imperialism]
• From Riyadh to Beirut, Fear of Syria Blowback
  BISARIYEH, Lebanon February 28, 2014 (AP) By BASSEM MROUE and AYA BATRAWY Associated Press The once-tranquil, religiously mixed village of Bisariyeh is seething: Two of its young men who fought alongside the rebels in Syria recently returned home radicalized and staged suicide bombings in Lebanon. The phenomenon is being watched anxiously across the Mideast, particularly in Saudi Arabia, where authorities are moving decisively to prevent citizens from going off to fight in Syria. The developments illustrate how the Syrian war is sending dangerous ripples across a highly combustible region and sparking fears that jihadis will come home with dangerous ideas and turn their weapons against their own countries. In Lebanon, where longstanding tensions between Sunnis and Shiites have been heightened by the conflict next door, the fear of blowback has very much turned into reality. The social fabric of towns and villages across the country is being torn by conflicting loyalties and a wave of bombings carried out by Sunni extremists in retaliation for the Iranian-backed Shiite group Hezbollah's military support of Syrian President Bashar Assad. In the past few months, at least five Sunni men have disappeared from Bisariyeh, an impoverished, predominantly Shiite village in south Lebanon, and are believed to have gone to fight in Syria. Two of them — Nidal Mughayar and Adan al-Mohammad — returned and blew themselves up outside Iranian targets in Beirut. The blasts, by Mughayar on Feb. 19 and al-Mohammad on Nov. 18, killed scores. "He was a good man with a good heart, but it seems that people who have no conscience brainwashed him," Hisham al-Mughayar said of his 20-year-old son. As news spread in the village that Nidal was one of the bombers, angry Shiite residents marched to his parents' home and set it on fire along with the family's grocery and four vehicles. "He destroyed himself and destroyed us with him," said the father, as he took an Associated Press reporter on a tour of his torched, two-story house, much of its furniture reduced to ashes. Concern about such radicalization has sent Mideast governments scrambling into action. After years of often turning a blind eye to jihadists taking up arms abroad, Saudi Arabia is enacting new laws and backing a campaign to stop its citizens from joining Syria's civil war. The intention is to send a clear message that those who defy the law are to fight to the death and are not welcome back. The move, in part, reflects pressure from Saudi ally the U.S., which wants to see the overthrow of Assad but is alarmed by the rising influence of hard-line foreign jihadists — many of them linked to al-Qaida — among the rebels. Many Saudis have been easy recruitment targets for jihadist organizations. Osama bin Laden and 15 of the 19 hijackers on 9/11 were Saudi. The oil-rich kingdom was among several nations that backed the anti-communist mujahedeen forces fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan in the 1980s, and Saudi fighters have traveled to other Muslim hotspots around the world since then. [Saudi Arabia] [Unintended consequences]
• instaPoll: Will reducing the carrier fleet harm US national security? J Randy Forbes
  This week, our carrier fleet was added to the list of programs to be cut from the military’s budget, continuing a troubling trend of applying a lowest-common-denominator approach to national security. For the past 70 years, aircraft carriers have provided our nation with a powerful tool to project military power and an unrivaled means to demonstrate diplomatic resolve around the world. Given our global requirements, the Navy has frequently said we are an 11-carrier Navy living in a world that demands 15 carriers. As part of the Defense Department’s budget preview for Fiscal Year 2015, Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel announced that the USS George Washington (CVN-73) could be cut next year if sequestration continues, thereby reducing our nation’s fleet from eleven carriers to ten. instaPoll: Do you believe that reducing the carrier fleet will leave the United States less capable of meeting national security needs? * [US Military] [Carrier] [MISCOM]
• Barrel bombings cause mass evacuation in east Aleppo
  ALEPPO, Syria — The regime’s Aleppo campaign has reached a new crescendo, with the controversial barrel bombing taking center stage in what is essentially a drive to depopulate the rebel-held east of the city. It's a horrific tactic that kills and maims innocents, and such indiscriminate heavy bombing may amount to a war crime. The battle has begun in earnest, although any anticipated all-out assault has so far failed to materialize. Instead, it is a careful, drawn-out and tactfully planned operation, seizing upon changing factors both on and off the battlefield — stalled peace talks in Geneva and rebel infighting. Author Edward Dark Posted February 27, 2014 Regime forces, bolstered by local militias such as the Quds Battalion, drawn from the Nayrab Palestinian refugee camp, and the National Defense Forces (NDF), comprised mainly of local Sunni tribes as well as foreign militias such as Hezbollah and the Iraqi Shiite Abu Fadl al-Abbas Brigades, have been making slow but steady gains in their campaign to recapture the city and surrounding towns, skewering vital links to rebel-held territories in the north and the northeast along the Turkish border. The momentum in Aleppo has shifted decisively in favor of the regime recently, and it is no secret that the Syrian government came perilously close to losing the city on several occasions, most notably when it seemed powerless to stop rebel advances into new territory in the west, or lift the crippling siege that cut off the only means of resupply via the Damascus highway and the Khanaser military route. [Syria] [Islamist]
• On Academic Labor
  by NOAM CHOMSKY The following is an edited transcript of remarks given by Noam Chomsky via Skype on 4 February 2014 to a gathering of members and allies of the Adjunct Faculty Association of the United Steelworkers in Pittsburgh, PA. Prof. Chomsky’s remarks were elicited by questions from Robin Clarke, Adam Davis, David Hoinski, Maria Somma, Robin J. Sowards, Matthew Ussia, and Joshua Zelesnick. The transcript was prepared by Robin J. Sowards and edited by Prof. Chomsky. On hiring faculty off the tenure track That’s part of the business model. It’s the same as hiring temps in industry or what they call “associates” at Wal-Mart, employees that aren’t owed benefits. It’s a part of a corporate business model designed to reduce labor costs and to increase labor servility. When universities become corporatized, as has been happening quite systematically over the last generation as part of the general neoliberal assault on the population, their business model means that what matters is the bottom line. The effective owners are the trustees (or the legislature, in the case of state universities), and they want to keep costs down and make sure that labor is docile and obedient. The way to do that is, essentially, temps. Just as the hiring of temps has gone way up in the neoliberal period, you’re getting the same phenomenon in the universities. The idea is to divide society into two groups. One group is sometimes called the “plutonomy” (a term used by Citibank when they were advising their investors on where to invest their funds), the top sector of wealth, globally but concentrated mostly in places like the United States. The other group, the rest of the population, is a “precariat,” living a precarious existence. This idea is sometimes made quite overt. So when Alan Greenspan was testifying before Congress in 1997 on the marvels of the economy he was running, he said straight out that one of the bases for its economic success was imposing what he called “greater worker insecurity.” If workers are more insecure, that’s very “healthy” for the society, because if workers are insecure they won’t ask for wages, they won’t go on strike, they won’t call for benefits; they’ll serve the masters gladly and passively. And that’s optimal for corporations’ economic health. At the time, everyone regarded Greenspan’s comment as very reasonable, judging by the lack of reaction and the great acclaim he enjoyed. Well, transfer that to the universities: how do you ensure “greater worker insecurity”? Crucially, by not guaranteeing employment, by keeping people hanging on a limb than can be sawed off at any time, so that they’d better shut up, take tiny salaries, and do their work; and if they get the gift of being allowed to serve under miserable conditions for another year, they should welcome it and not ask for any more. That’s the way you keep societies efficient and healthy from the point of view of the corporations. And as universities move towards a corporate business model, precarity is exactly what is being imposed. And we’ll see more and more of it. [Education] [Neoliberalism]
• MI6 informant found guilty of murder in secret trial
  January 17, 2009 by intelNews Leave a comment By IAN ALLEN | intelNews | A Chinese anti-communist dissident who worked for years as a Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) informant has been found guilty of murdering an elderly British author and attempting to steal his identity. The British external intelligence agency admitted to have hired Wang Yam as a “low-level informant” since the mid 1990s, after the well-known anticommunist campaigner moved to London from Hong Kong. MI6 gave Yam British citizenship and tasked him with gathering information about Chinese expatriates living in Britain. In addition to working for MI6, however, Yam launched a number of fraudulent schemes, including online credit card fraud networks and several shady business ventures. In 2006, after going bankrupt, he targeted his elderly neighbor, millionaire author and Royal Society of Arts Fellow Allan Chappelow, with the aim of accessing the author’s bank accounts. After Chappelow’s body was discovered in his multimillion-dollar mansion, Yam escaped to Switzerland, where he was eventually caught and extradited to Britain. Interestingly, most of Yam’s court case was held in secret, after MI6 claimed that his defense rested on his informant activity. The court’s acceptance of MI6's claim marked the first-ever instance of a British murder trial “covered by a secrecy order on the ground of national security”. Yam’s case is the second time in recent months that a British law enforcement agency is found to be hiring lawbreakers. Last December, the London Metropolitan Police was found to be employing Mohamed Ali Harrath as an “anti-terrorism advisor”. Harrath, who lives in London, is currently wanted by the Tunisian authorities and by Interpol because of its links to the Tunisian Islamic Front (FIT). [Espionage] [Bizarre]
• Chinese dissident fails in effort to get murder case heard at European court
  Wang Lam, convicted in secret trial at Old Bailey of killing reclusive writer, argues that he did not receive a fair trial Duncan Campbell and Richard Norton-Taylor theguardian.com, Friday 28 February 2014 11.00 GMT Police mugshot of Wang Yam, wearing glasses and a goatee beard Wang Yam argued that because his trial was held in secret, potential witnesses, who might support his story, would not come forward. Photograph: Met Police/PNS A Chinese dissident convicted of murder after an Old Bailey trial held in secret has lost his attempt to present his whole defence case to the European court of human rights. The decision comes as potentially significant new evidence has emerged – a potential new witness – as a result of a Guardian report on the case last month. Wang Yam, the grandson of Chairman Mao's third in command, fled China and was granted refugee status in Britain in 1992. In 2009 he was convicted of the murder of Allan Chappelow, 86, a retired journalist found battered to death in his home in Hampstead, north London. The prosecution suggested that Yam had stolen bank details from Chappelow's mailbox and had possibly been caught in the act by Chappelow, whom he had then beaten to death. His defence case was held in camera on the grounds of "national security" and the media were barred from reporting it or even speculating on what it might be. He was convicted after a retrial and jailed for life. [Espionage] [Bizarre]

• Ukraine's Got Problems? Blame Russia!
  Orwell would be pleased that the pro-European opposition in the Ukraine stuck it to Putin and the ex-Bolshies. Maybe he would have been less pleased with the linguistic legerdemain that is emerging the as the mainstay of the new Ukrainian regime. The current situation in Ukraine is apparently pretty grim: flatlining growth, imminent insolvency, consternation and anger among the sizable ethnic-Russian community, a whiff of separatism in the Crimea, a bunch of outright Fascists who apparently see the coup as their Reichstag moment and a chance to bully their way into control of a decisive bloc of votes in the Parliament… And it looks like the US-inspired coup that blew away an EU-sponsored transition pact has also stripped away Russian (as in Putin) and ethnic-Russian (as in the eastern & southern portions of the country) enthusiasm for helping the new government out in dealing with Ukraine’s difficulties. [Ukraine]
• For the NSA, espionage was a means to strengthen the US position in climate negotiations
  At the Copenhagen Climate Summit in 2009, the world's nations were supposed to reach an agreement that would protect future generations against catastrophic climate change. But not everyone was playing by the rules. A leaked document now reveals that the US employed the NSA, its signals intelligence agency, to intercept information about other countries' views on the climate negotiations before and during the summit. According to observers, the spying may have contributed to the Americans getting their way in the negotiations On December 7 2009, a document was posted on an internal National Security Agency (NSA) website. The document, from the agency’s division S17 for Economic and Global Issues, outlines NSA efforts to collect intelligence about the COP15, the UN climate summit in Copenhagen. Its central paragraphs are classified as 'top secret'. The document, which Information has obtained via NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, describes how, »analysts here at NSA, as well as our second party partners, will continue to provide policymakers with unique, timely, and valuable insights into key countries' preparations and goals for the conference, as well as the deliberations within countries on climate change policies and negotiation strategies.« [NSA] [Espionage] [Climate change]
• The Secret Playbook of Social Media Censors – The “Counter Reset”
  By Washington's Blog Global Research, February 26, 2014 Glenn Greenwald’s piece on manipulation of the Internet by intelligence agencies gives examples – based upon documents leaked by Edward Snowden – of how governments disrupt social media websites. Other whistleblowers have provided very specific information about how agents disrupt social media news sites. This essay will focus one specific technique: the “Counter Reset”. To explain the Counter Reset technique, we have to understand the concepts of “momentum” and “social proof”. Specifically, the government spends a great deal of manpower and money to monitor which stories, memes and social movements are developing the momentum to actually pose a threat to the status quo. For example, the Federal Reserve, Pentagon, Department of Homeland Security, and other agencies all monitor social media for stories critical of their agencies ... or the government in general. Other governments – and private corporations – do the same thing. Why? Because a story gaining momentum ranks high on social media sites. So it has a high probability of bursting into popular awareness, destroying the secrecy which allows corruption, and becoming a real challenge to the powers-that-be. “Social proof” is a related concept. Social proof is the well-known principle stating that people will believe something if most other people believe it. And see this. In other words, most people have a herd instinct, so if a story ranks highly, more people are likely to believe it and be influenced by it. That is why vested interests go to great lengths – using computer power and human resources – to monitor social media momentum. If a story critical of one of these powerful entities is gaining momentum, they will go to great lengths to kill its momentum, and destroy the social proof which comes with alot of upvotes, likes or recommendations in social media. [Social media] [IO]
• On the “Noble” Shift From Human Rights to Mega Contracts: The Curious Case of the Baroness of Winterbourne and Iraq
  by Haifa Zangana PM David Cameron has recently appointed Baroness Emma Nicholson of Winterbourne as his Trade Envoy to Iraq. The Baroness described Iraqi economy as “vibrant and booming “, urging the UK to make “the best of the enormous opportunities Iraq offers us”. The pre invasion high profile of Nicholson on Iraq was related to human rights, so what does this switch to being the Prime Minister’s trade envoy mean? And is there a link between the old and new roles? As to be expected, Nicholson made no mention of the massive human rights abuses in Iraq, documented by international bodies, or in its sectarian policy and bombardment of cities. No mention also, even in terms of regret or remediation, of the human cost , long passed hundreds of thousands, caused by the US –UK invasion and occupation. And on trade, no mention, even as hope for improvement, of the institutionalised corruption of the regime which made Iraq ranks 171st among 177 nations on the list of corruption index. One might argue, why should she? The Baroness, after all, is a politician cashing on behalf of her political party and government. Well, this could have been acceptable have the politician we’re talking about is not Emma Nicholson who for many decades presented herself to the world as the mother Teresa of human rights, defending in particular, Iraqis’ human rights under Saddam’s rule. Until 2003, Nicholson was known as one of the most outspoken British politicians against Saddam Hussain (even Tony Blair was not a competition) defending relentlessly the Human Rights of the Sukan Al-ahwar (Marsh Arabs of Iraq) and the Kurds in Halabja. [Human rights] [Double standards] [Iraq]
• Yahoo webcam images from millions of users intercepted by GCHQ
  • Optic Nerve program collected Yahoo webcam images in bulk • 1.8m users targeted by UK agency in six-month period alone • Yahoo: 'A whole new level of violation of our users' privacy' • Material included large quantity of sexually explicit images Spencer Ackerman and James Ball theguardian.com, Thursday 27 February 2014 16.16 GMT Jump to comments (1681) Yahoo webcam image. The GCHQ program saved one image every five minutes from the users' feeds. Photograph: Chris Jackson/Getty Images Britain's surveillance agency GCHQ, with aid from the US National Security Agency, intercepted and stored the webcam images of millions of internet users not suspected of wrongdoing, secret documents reveal. GCHQ files dating between 2008 and 2010 explicitly state that a surveillance program codenamed Optic Nerve collected still images of Yahoo webcam chats in bulk and saved them to agency databases, regardless of whether individual users were an intelligence target or not. In one six-month period in 2008 alone, the agency collected webcam imagery – including substantial quantities of sexually explicit communications – from more than 1.8 million Yahoo user accounts globally. Yahoo reacted furiously to the webcam interception when approached by the Guardian. The company denied any prior knowledge of the program, accusing the agencies of "a whole new level of violation of our users' privacy". [Surveillance]
• A proxy war Washington denies
  By Zhao Jinglun China.org.cn, February 26, 2014 The conflict in Ukraine is a proxy war that Washington denies. But it has declared that it firmly supports all decisions made by the opposition, which is in control of the parliament for now. The opposition ousted Yanukovych, the democratically elected president and issued an order for his arrest. Both London and the opposition have warned Russian President Vladimir Putin to not even consider using force to regain sway over the embattled Ukraine. White House spokesman Jay Carney insisted that "the Ukrainian people are not substitutes for anyone in this conflict. They are expressing their desires, not U.S. or European desires. Our desires are only that they be listened to by their government." That is typical Western government and media formulation, which is basically false. It is an attempt to bring about a regime change in the streets that could not be accomplished in the polls. [Ukraine] [Subversion] [US global strategy] [Proxy]
• Why does the Vatican drink so much wine?
  Vatican City consumes more wine per head than any other country, says the California-based Wine Institute. Is life really so tough within those walls? Here's a full-bodied statistic that needs a really good swill. Vatican City consumes more wine per head than any other country. According to the California-based Wine Institute, the tiny state's populace averaged 74 litres of wine each in 2012. Assuming they drink the standard size, that's around 98 bottles. There is no passing this off as a celebratory blip to wet the head of the new pope. He didn't start till 2013. So why does the Vatican drink so much? Is life really so tough within those walls? [Wine]
• Ukraine’s Sickness and Europe’s Cure: Neo-Liberalism and Neo-Fascism Join Hands
  By Eric Draitser Global Research, February 25, 2014 The situation in Ukraine is evolving by the hour. Right wing ultranationalists and their “liberal” collaborators have taken control of the Rada (Ukrainian parliament) and deposed the democratically elected, though utterly corrupt and incompetent, President Yanukovich. Former Prime Minister, and convicted criminal, Yulia Tymoshenko has been freed, and is now making common cause with Noe-Nazi Right Sector, Svoboda, and other fascist elements, while the opposition’s nominal leaders such as Arseny Yatsenyuk and Vitali Klitschko begin to fade into the background. In Moscow, Russian President Vladimir Putin undoubtedly watches with anxiousness. In Washington, Victoria Nuland and the Obama administration rejoice. However, perhaps the most critical development of all is soon to emerge in Europe, as the forces of Western finance capital prepare to welcome Ukraine into the fold. They will come bearing the usual neoliberal gifts: austerity and “economic liberalization.” With the overthrow of the Yanukovich government, the $15 billion of promised Russian financial assistance to Ukraine is in doubt. According to Moody’s rating agency, “Ukraine will require $24 billion to cover a budget deficit, debt repayments, natural gas bills and pension support just in 2014.” Without Moscow’s continued bond purchasing and other forms of financial aid, and with pro-EU forces taking control of the country’s economic and foreign policy, the outcome is not hard to predict: a rescue package from Europe and the IMF with all the usual austerity conditions attached. [Ukraine]
• Looks Like US Played Hardball in the Ukraine...and Against the EU
  When the EU mediated a deal between the opposition and the government, I thought Yanukovich had dodged the bullet. Not quite. In parsing the circumstances of Yanukovich’s downfall, it is interesting to look for the machinations of Victoria Nuland, the State Department neo-con (wife of Robert Kagan) who was apparently given a free hand in matters Ukrainian by President Obama. Consider this: The background of Nuland’s notorious Fuck the EU audio was her feeling that the EU was insufficiently confrontational with the Ukranian government, especially on the issue of sanctions. [Neocon] [Subversion] [Ukraine]
• How Washington Is Playing Venezuela Like a Fiddle
  By Carl Gibson, Reader Supported News 21 February 14 nited States foreign policy can be summed up as hard power vs. soft power. An example of hard power is the US backing the unsuccessful 2002 military coup d’état against Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez, when businessman Pedro Carmona Estanga briefly took power. An example of the US’s soft power is the current situation in Venezuela. A leaked document from November of 2013 shows that the US Agency for International Development (USAID) collaborated with the Colombian government and Venezuelan opposition leaders to destabilize Venezuela and stoke massive protests. The document, obtained by journalist and attorney Eva Golinger, was the product of a June 2013 meeting between US-based FTI Consulting, the Colombian Fundación Centro de Pensamiento Primero Colombia (Centre for Thought Foundation of Colombia First), and Fundación Internacionalismo Democratico (Democratic Internationalism Foundation). The third tactic outlined in the 15-point strategy document openly called for sabotage: "Maintain and increase the sabotage that affect the population's services, particularly the electricity system, that puts blame on the government for assumed inefficiencies and negligence.” Coincidentally, during one of Nicolas Maduro's televised speeches outlining his economic plan in early December, the power went out for 60% of Venezuelans for several hours. Maduro blamed the act on sabotage. The current situation in Venezuela is eerily reminiscent of 1950s Iran. Democratically-elected Iranian leader Mohammed Mossadegh threatened to nationalize the country’s vast oil supply. President Eisenhower sent Kermit Roosevelt, the grandson of Theodore Roosevelt and the CIA’s near-east and Africa division leader, to Iran to oust him. After sustained protests and civil unrest engineered by Kermit Roosevelt, Shah Mohamed Reza Pahlavi took power. What followed was 25 years of cruel brutality and fear for the Iranian people, and sustained energy trading with the United States. It was the CIA’s first successful overthrow of a foreign government, and it wouldn’t be the last. [Subversion]
• The Brown Revolution in Ukraine
  by Israel Shamir I am a great fan of Kiev, an affable city of pleasing bourgeois character, with its plentiful small restaurants, clean tree-lined streets, and bonhomie of its beer gardens. A hundred years ago Kiev was predominantly a Russian resort, and some central areas have retained this flavour. Now Kiev is patrolled by armed thugs from the Western Ukraine, by fighters from the neo-Nazi -Right Sector, descendants of Stepan Bandera, the Ukrainian Quisling’s troopers, and by their local comrades-in-arms of nationalist persuasion. After a month of confrontation, President Viktor Yanukovych gave in, signed the EC-prepared surrender and escaped their rough revolutionary justice by the skin of his teeth. The ruling party MPs were beaten and dispersed, the communists almost lynched, the opposition have the parliament all to themselves, and they’ve appointed new ministers and taken over the Ukraine. The Brown Revolution has won in the Ukraine. This big East European country of fifty million inhabitants has gone the way of Libya. The US and the EU won this round, and pushed Russia back eastwards, just as they intended. [Ukraine] [Subversion]
• Gene Sharp: The Machiavelli of non-violence
  In a long life of scholarship and dissent, Gene Sharp has been imprisoned and persecuted, but never silenced. His ideas continue to inspire resistance movements across the world. by John-Paul Flintoff Published 3 January, 2013 - 06:47 Gene Sharp is not a typical pacifist. “When I used to lecture, I would always get complaints from the pacifists,” says the academic, who turns 85 this month. “They would say I wasn’t pure. They said that what I was proposing was ‘still conflict’.” Military people often understood him better. A retired US army colonel, Robert Helvey, heard Sharp lecture 20 years ago and persuaded him to visit Burma, where rebels asked Sharp to give them advice. He wrote a pamphlet. “I didn’t know Burma well,” he recalls. “So I had to write generically: if a movement wanted to bring a dictatorship to an end, how would they do it?” That pamphlet, From Dictatorship to Democracy (1993), contained the idea for which Sharp is now known all over the world – that power is held only by the consent of the people over whom it is exercised, and that consent can be withdrawn. All regimes depend on certain pillars of support and, with a proper strategy, resisters can remove those pillars non-violently. The book was originally published in English and Burmese. “And I thought that was it,” Sharp says. But it went on display in a bookshop in Bangkok. From there, nobody knows exactly how it spread. But it did – everywhere. “I’m still amazed. It didn’t spread because of propaganda or some sales pitch but because people found it usable, and important.” “I had no idea how useful it would be,” confirms Srdja Popovic, a leader of Otpor, the movement that toppled Slobodan Milosevic in Serbia in 2000. Others have described the effect of reading Sharp’s work as “mind-blowing”, because it showed that what had seemed impossible might not be impossible after all. [Subversion]
• Was the Ukraine Coup America’s Main Event at the Sochi Olympics?
  Tuesday, February 25, 2014 In my previous post, I speculated that the US and EU orchestrated the climax of the Ukraine crisis to occur while Vlad was preoccupied with presiding over his beloved Olympics, and unwilling or unable to destroy the soft power vibe by intervening forcefully in the Ukraine, or even giving the matter his more complete attention. Clever, clever America, if this was the case. Of course, with what we know now about the aggressive Western destabilization effort in Ukraine—which included subversion, coercion, and even comfort and aid to violent insurrectionists against Yanukovich’s hapless elected government—it is rather ironic that the Western media anointed Putin History’s Greatest Monster February 2014 Edition. You remember that, don’t you? The mean, anti-democratic, gay-hating, Pussy-Riot whipping autocrat who might unleash tyrannical Russian might against the freedom fighters in Maidan Square? Well, it is also ironic that Putin preached non-intervention and let Ukraine (and Yanukovich, obviously not his BFF) stew, while it was the West and the ever-reliable Western media that engaged in active cheerleading and more, intervening in Ukraine to facilitate the overthrow of an elected government on Russia’s borders. [Ukraine] [Subversion] [Democracy] [US global strategy]
• Why does Putin fear Maidan?
  Carmen Claudín 24 February 2014 The popular upheaval in Ukraine reveals how the Kremlin thinks, says Carmen Claudín. Maidan marks a milestone for all of Europe. Although Yanukovych has fled and now denounces a coup d’état, the fact remains that a regime which lost legitimacy long ago has been ousted as a result of mass protest [Democracy] [Double standards]
• Decoding Iran’s 'resistance economy'
  In a decree issued Feb. 19, Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei introduced the general policies of Iran’s “resistance economy.” The following are some of the key objectives presented in this document: Summary? Print Iran’s economic plan is to build domestic capacity to reduce Iran’s vulnerabilities to sanctions and external shocks. Author Bijan Khajehpour Posted February 24, 2014 •Domestic capacity building with maximal utilization of the country’s resources, with a special focus on the participation of lower and middle-income classes in wealth generation •Promotion of a knowledge-based economy through drafting and implementing a comprehensive, scientific plan for the country and promoting innovation with the ultimate goal of becoming the No. 1 knowledge-based economy of the region •Increased efficiency in economic activity, improvement of economic competitiveness •Utilization of subsidy reforms to optimize energy consumption in the country, increase employment and domestic production and promote social justice •Improve Total Factor Productivity based on the empowerment of domestic human resources through skills education •Promotion of domestic production, especially in strategic products and services and the consequent reduction of dependence on imports [Iran] [Sanctions] [Juche]
• Charting a course for Asian integration and security
  24 February 2014 Author: Peter Drysdale, Editor, East Asia Forum This week another round of TPP negotiations is taking place in Singapore. USTR Michael Froman is talking up protections for US vested interests at home in order to obtain Congressional authority to complete the negotiations, rather than free trade across the region. The package on the table in TPP still has very little in it for countries like Australia, especially if the Australia-Japan trade deal is pulled off separately. An outcome that does not go much further on agriculture and secure commercially meaningful access in key markets for Australian services providers and investors would be a difficult economic and political sell. Australia’s Trade and Investment Minister, Andrew Robb, says the talks are well advanced but that the race will be won or lost right at the end. As the negotiations approach the end-game, negotiators will have to push extremely hard to ensure that countries’ offers improve sufficiently in these and other areas and to protect its interests in new disciplines, such as intellectual property. Or they will need to opt out, in their own national interests. While so-called ‘fast track’ authority has not been granted in the United States, negotiators would be mad to reach an in-principle deal and be left open to US congressional blackmail. There’s pressure enough with partners to these negotiations keeping US political face, pressure which in the end could deliver a very bad deal. [TPP]
• Who is Behind Regime Change? “Revolution Business” NGO Supported by Wall Street and US Intelligence
  Exposed: Globally Renowned Activist Collaborated with Intelligence Firm Stratfor By Carl Gibson and Steve Horn Global Research, February 23, 2014 Nation of Change Serbia’s Srdja Popovic is known by many as a leading architect of regime changes in Eastern Europe and elsewhere since the late-1990s, and as one of the co-founders of Otpor!, the U.S.-funded Serbian activist group which overthrew Slobodan Miloševic in 2000. Lesser known, an exclusive Occupy.com investigation reveals that Popovic and the Otpor! offshoot CANVAS (Centre for Applied Nonviolent Action and Strategies) have also maintained close ties with a Goldman Sachs executive and the private intelligence firm Stratfor (Strategic Forecasting, Inc.), as well as the U.S. government. Popovic’s wife also worked at Stratfor for a year. These revelations come in the aftermath of thousands of new emails released by Wikileaks’ “Global Intelligence Files.” The emails reveal Popovic worked closely with Stratfor, an Austin, Texas-based private firm that gathers intelligence on geopolitical events and activists for clients ranging from the American Petroleum Institute and Archer Daniels Midland to Dow Chemical, Duke Energy, Northrop Grumman, Intel and Coca-Cola. Referred to in emails under the moniker “SR501,” Popovic was first approached by Stratfor in 2007 to give a lecture in the firm’s office about events transpiring in Eastern Europe, according to a Stratfor source who asked to remain confidential for this story. In one of the emails, Popovic forwarded information about activists harmed or killed by the U.S.-armed Bahraini government, obtained from the Bahrain Center for Human Rights during the regime’s crackdown on pro-democracy activists in fall 2011. Popovic also penned a blueprint for Stratfor on how to unseat the now-deceased Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez in September 2010. [NGO] [Subversion]
• Warning: Saudi mayhem ahead
  By Pepe Escobar Move over, Peter O' Toole. It's Charles of Arabia time. Prince Charles switched to Lawrence mode when he went schmoozing and dancing in Riyadh this past Tuesday with the natives. And just like clockwork, the next day BAE Systems - Europe's number one weapons peddler - announced that the UK and the House of Saud had agreed on "new pricing" for an extremely juicy deal; 72 Eurofighter Typhoon jets. [Saudi Arabia] [Islamists] {UK] [Arms sales] [Double standards]
• Saudi Arabia seeking weapons from Pakistan for Syrian rebels
  AFP February 24, 2014 Saudi Arabia seeking weapons from Pakistan for Syrian rebels DUBAI: Saudi Arabia is in talks with Pakistan to provide anti-aircraft and anti-tank rockets to Syrian rebels to try and tip the balance in the war to overthrow President Bashar al-Assad, a Saudi source said on Sunday. The United States has long opposed arming the rebels with such weapons, fearing they might end up in the hands of extremists, but Syrian opposition figures say the failure of Geneva peace talks seems to have led Washington to soften its opposition. Pakistan makes its own version of Chinese shoulder-launched anti-aircraft missiles, known as Anza, and anti-tank rockets – both of which Riyadh is trying to get for the rebels, said the source, who is close to Saudi decision makers, requesting anonymity. The source pointed to a visit to Riyadh earlier this month by army chief General Raheel Sharif, who met Crown Prince Salman bin Abdul Aziz. Prince Salman himself last week led a large delegation to Pakistan, shortly after Saudi’s chief diplomat Prince Saud al-Faisal visited the kingdom’s key ally. Jordan will be providing facilities to store the weapons before they are delivered to rebels within Syria, the same source said. [Saudi Arabia] [Syria] [Proxy]
• What the hell is Barack Obama's presidency for?
  His ascent to power had meaning, but now his interventions are too rare and too piecemeal to constitute a narrative Gary Younge The Guardian, Sunday 23 February 2014 20.28 GMT President Barack Obama Speaks at a Meeting of the Democratic Governors Association ‘There’s precious little that Obama’s done that any of his primary opponents would not have done.’ Photograph: TJ Kirkpatrick/Corbis A few days after John F Kennedy's assassination, Lyndon Johnson sat in his kitchen with his key advisers working his first speech to Congress. It was the evening of Kennedy's funeral – Johnson was now president. The nation was still in grief and Johnson, writes Robert Caro in The Years of Lyndon Johnson: The Passage of Power, was not yet able to move into the White House because Kennedy's effects were still there. He had been a hapless vice-president; now he had to both personify and project the transition from bereavement to business as usual. In the midst of the cold war, with Vietnam brewing, the Kennedy administration had been trying to get civil rights legislation and tax cuts through Congress. There was plenty of business to attend to. Johnson's advisers were keen that he introduced himself to the nation as a president who could get things done. For that reason, writes Caro, they implored him not to push for civil rights in this first speech, since it had no chance of passing. "The presidency has only a certain amount of coinage to expend, and you oughtn't to expend it on this," said "one of the wise, practical people around the table". Johnson, who sat in silence at the table as his aides debated, interjected: "Well, what the hell's the presidency for." "First," he told Congress a few days later, "no memorial oration or eulogy could more eloquently honour President Kennedy's memory than the earliest possible passage of the civil rights bill for which he fought so long." Over the next five years he would go on to sign the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act, launch the war on poverty and introduce Medicaid (medical assistance for low-income families) and Medicare (for seniors). That's what his presidency was for. Barack Obama has now been in power for longer than Johnson was, and the question remains: "What the hell's his presidency for?" [Obama]
• Budget cuts to slash Army size to smallest since World War Two
  WASHINGTON Mon Feb 24, 2014 1:30pm EST Feb 24 (Reuters) - The Pentagon said on Monday it would slash the Army to pre-World War Two levels, eliminate the popular A-10 aircraft and reduce military benefits in order to meet 2015 spending caps, setting up an election-year fight with Congress over defense priorities. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, discussing the Pentagon's plan for meeting its new spending caps ahead of the formal budget presentation on March 4, advanced a number of ideas that have been attempted in the past but rejected by Congress or are likely to be unpopular in a congressional election year. As the United States winds down the war in Afghanistan and looks to cut billions in defense spending, the Pentagon plans to continue shifting its focus to the Asia-Pacific and will no longer need a land Army of the size currently planned, Hagel said. The department plans to reduce the size of the Army to between 440,000 and 450,000 soldiers, he said. The Army is currently about 520,000 soldiers and had been planning to draw down to about 490,000 in the coming year. A reduction to 450,000 would be the Army's smallest size since 1940 before the Second World War, when it had a strength of 267,767 troops, according to Army figures. The Army's previous post-Second World War low was 479,426 in 1999. [US military] [Military expenditure]
• Iraq signs deal to buy arms, ammunition from Iran: document
  BAGHDAD: Iran has signed a deal to sell Iraq arms and ammunition worth $195 million, according to documents seen by Reuters - a move that would break a UN embargo on weapons sales by Tehran. The agreement was reached at the end of November, the documents showed, just weeks after Iraq’s Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki returned from Washington, where he lobbied the Obama administration for extra weapons to fight al Qaeda-linked militants. Some in Washington are nervous about providing sensitive US military equipment to a country they worry is becoming too close to Iran. Several Iraqi lawmakers said Maliki had made the deal because he was fed up with delays to US arms deliveries. A spokesman for the Iraqi prime minister would not confirm or deny the sale, but said such a deal would be understandable given Iraq’s current security troubles. “We are launching a war against terrorism and we want to win this war. Nothing prevents us from buying arms and ammunition from any party and it’s only ammunition helping us to fight terrorists,” said the spokesman, Ali Mussawi. The Iranian government denied any knowledge of a deal to sell arms to Iraq. It would be the first official arms deal between Iran and Iraq and highlight the growing bond between them in the two years since the departure of US troops from Iraq. [Unintended consequences] [Arms sales]
• The Geopolitics of Ukraine's Schism
  Immanuel Wallenstein Commentary No. 371, Feb. 15, 2014 Ukraine has been suffering a profound internal schism for some time now, one that is threatening to become one of those ugly civil wars that are occurring in more and more countries. The boundaries of present-day Ukraine include an east-west cleavage that is linguistic, religious, economic, and cultural, each side being close to 50% of the total. The present government (said to be dominated by the eastern half) is accused in public demonstrations by the other side of corruption and authoritarian rule. No doubt this is true, at least in part. It is not however clear that a government dominated by the western half would be less corrupt and less authoritarian. In any case, the issue is posed internally in geopolitical terms: Should Ukraine be part of the European Union, or should it knit strong ties with Russia? It is therefore perhaps unexpected that YouTube is now featuring a tape in which the U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs, Victoria Nuland, is shown discussing U.S. political strategy vis-à-vis Ukraine with the U.S. Ambassador. In this tape, Ms. Nuland poses the issue as a geopolitical struggle between the United States and Europe (and more particularly Germany). She is caught in a diatribe, in which she says "Fuck the Europeans" - the Europeans, not the Russians. Before we proceed with the analysis, let us take a moment to offer generic sympathy to all important people these days. In the last few years, there has been much discussion about the loss of privacy in communications. But this discussion has always been about little people subject to spying by governments, in particular by the U.S. National Security Agency. It seems however that this loss of privacy now extends to people like Ms. Nuland. There is much speculation about exactly who bugged her conversation and made it go viral on YouTube. The point is that poor Ms. Nuland is no longer safe in saying anything - or at least anything that she wouldn't want the whole world to know. Let us take a look at who is Victoria Nuland. She is a surviving member of the neocon clique that surrounded George W. Bush, in whose government she served. Her husband, Robert Kagan, is one of the best-known ideologues of the neocon group. It is an interesting question what she is doing in such a key position in the Department of State of an Obama presidency. The least he and U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry were supposed to do was to remove the neocons from such a role. [Neocon] [Ukraine]
• What’s Really Happening in Venezuela?
  by CHRIS GILBERT Caracas, February 16, 2014. Venezuela’s traditional “Youth Day” fell on Wednesday of last week, and President Nicolás Maduro’s 10-month-old government had planned a sizable celebration in the city of La Victoria (Aragua State) where exactly 200 years ago to the day the national hero José Félix Ribas led a youth militia against the royalist army. The celebration included new monuments, military marches, a special light show, and performances by the youth orchestra – all in a triumphalist spirit that was understandable given the electoral victories of last year. These victories establish what one analyst calls “an electoral plateau” during the upcoming two years: a period in which, without being distracted by campaigns, the new President and cabinet can concentrate on governing until late 2015. Yet on that day Maduro made a serious error of judgment. [Venezuela]
• Smuggled video testimony documents harsh rule of Syrian Islamist group
  Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant has imposed strict interpretation of sharia law since taking control in Raqqa Peter Beaumont theguardian.com, Wednesday 19 February 2014 12.45 GMT Link to video: Inside Raqqa, the Syrian city ruled by Islamists Moving testimony of how a jihadi group, the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (Isis), has imposed its own strict interpretation of sharia law has emerged in a series of video interviews smuggled out of the northern Syrian city of Raqqa. The group – which operated under the auspices of al-Qaida until it recently severed the association – gained full control the city after lethal clashes with other brigades in the Syrian opposition left hundreds of dead. The group has also been one of the most prominent kidnappers of western journalists, a number of whom are reputedly being held in Isis prisons in Raqqa. Although the brutal rule of Isis has been well documented – most recently in an Amnesty International report in December, which detailed killings, arbitrary trials and detention and the abuse of children as young as eight – the new interviews that have emerged provide an intimate and chilling depiction of day-to-day life under the group. Since taking control of Raqqa the group has banned music, signing and smoking, with the threat of severe penalties for any violators including public flogging. [Syria] [Islamist]
• Israel and Saudi Arabia’s Priorities in Syria. Covert Militarism and the “Lebanonization Strategy”
  By Phil Greaves Global Research, February 18, 2014 Israeli-Saudi Alliance Current developments both inside and outside of Syria have shown that the primary sponsors of the extremist-dominated insurgency – namely, the United States, France, the United Kingdom, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, Israel and Turkey – aren’t quite ready to throw in the towel. One may be forgiven for thinking the Obama administration had decided to abandon the policy of regime change following the failed attempt to incite intervention, through the chemical weapons casus belli in August. But the harsh reality remains that the above mentioned alliance is indeed continuing its covert military support of the insurgency, in one form or another, in the full knowledge the vast majority of rebels are religious fundamentalists with a sectarian agenda, and vehemently opposed to any form of democracy or political pluralism. Primarily, the continued support is a product of the American Empires’ overarching strategy of Full Spectrum Dominance over resource-rich and strategically placed regions of the globe, via subversion, economic and military aggression; a policy imposed to varying degrees upon any state unwilling to accept full US subordination. This aggressive US stance is by no means exclusive to periods of heightened tension or crises; it is a permanent one, brought forward to its violent climax purely through Machiavellian opportunism. In Syria’s case, the Arab uprisings provided the United States and its allies the perfect opening to set in motion the subversive plans they had been working on since at least 2006. The possibility of removing an opposing government that refuses to abide by American/Israeli diktat was simply too good a chance to be missed. Accordingly, and from a very early stage, the US made attempts to facilitate and support the violent elements in Syria, while its media arms were busy conflating them with localised legitimate protesters. [Sectarianism] [Fragmentation] [Dysfunctional]
• Crossing the Battleline in Damascus
  by PATRICK COCKBURN It is a surprising sight but one that may become more common in Damascus. Under the terms of a local ceasefire in the outlying district of Babbila in the south of the capital, armed members of the rebel Free Syrian Army mingle with Syrian soldiers and appear on friendly terms. The images show fighters from both sides talking and joking together. Residents of the neighbourhood were said to be “overjoyed” by the truce. According to the AFP news agency, a group began chanting: “One, one, one! The Syrian people are one!” The inside of the district, long under siege and bombarded by the army, will be policed by the FSA. Inhabitants who appear on the streets look overjoyed that for the moment the danger is over. The terms of the truce in Babbila, assuming it is similar to that negotiated in other former rebel strongholds like Barzeh and Muadamiyat, provide for the FSA to hand over heavy weapons, but its fighters will stay in Babbila or can join the army. There will be a mixed FSA/army checkpoint at the entrance to Babbila and the army will not enter the district where the FSA will retain some of its positions in case the truce is broken. The government guarantees a rebuilding programme. The main street is full of half-ruined buildings hit by artillery, but the government agrees to reconnect the water and electricity supply and reopen roads. How far are these ceasefires and truces the shape of things to come? [Syria]
• Comrades say Marine heroism tale of Iraq veteran was untrue
  Written by Ernesto Londoño Published: February 22 E-mail the writer After his death in 2004 in Fallujah, Sgt. Rafael Peralta became perhaps the most lionized Marine of the Iraq war. Shot in the head during an intense firefight, the story went, the infantryman scooped a grenade underneath his body seconds before it exploded, a stunning act of courage that saved the lives of his fellow Marines. The Navy posthumously awarded Peralta the Navy Cross, the service’s second-highest decoration for valor; named a destroyer after him; and made plans to display his battered rifle in the Marine Corps museum in Quantico, Va. The tale of heroism has become emblematic of Marine valor in wartime. But new accounts from comrades who fought alongside Peralta that day suggest it may not be true. In interviews, two former Marines who were with Peralta in the house when he was shot said the story was concocted spontaneously in the minutes after he was mortally wounded — likely because several of the men in the unit feared they might have been the ones who shot him. [Iraq]
• The Political Retirement of Muqtada al-Sadr
  by Patrick Cockburn The surprise announcement by the influential Shia religious leader Muqtada al-Sadr that he is withdrawing from active politics will only add to the political turmoil in Iraq at a moment when violence is in a state of sharp escalation. Mr Sadr’s unexpected statement comes two months before national parliamentary elections and was sparked by some members of his own party, which holds 40 out of 325 seats in parliament, voting for a controversial bill giving MPs generous pensions. The $8,000-a-month salaries and high pensions of MPs has become a symbol in Iraq of the corruption of a political elite which has visibly failed to solve Iraq’s problems since the fall of Saddam Hussein. It is unclear if Mr Sadr’s withdrawal will be permanent or temporary, though a Sadrist official emphasised that it was wrong to use the word “retirement” to describe Mr Sadr’s departure from politics. He added that Mr Sadr’s disillusionment with Iraqi politics went beyond the issues of corruption and excessive parliamentary pay and he was disappointed that so many people “are sympathetic to sectarian policies”. He has accused the prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, of playing the sectarian card in the upcoming election by presenting himself as the leader of the Shia community in the face of an attack by the Sunni minority. Iraq is facing a deepening political crisis as the insurgency in Sunni parts of the country intensifies, with anti-Shia jihadi groups, including the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS) taking over Fallujah, 40 miles west of Baghdad, five weeks ago. Last week ISIS fighters seized the town of Sulaiman Pak 100 miles north of Baghdad and government soldiers were battling to win it back at the weekend in the face of strong resistance from snipers and with many entrances to the town mined. [Iraq]
• Life is bleak for the 'lost generation'
  Nicholas Barrett 19 February 2014 A new generation of British graduates are now living back at home, unemployed, and losing any hope of having a 'proper job'. It's not easy. Unemployment might be on the decline in Britain, but for recent graduates the outlook appears decidedly bleak. Finding a job that validates years of higher education is a difficult thing to do without the holy grail of experience. Since the economic crash, youth unemployment has dramatically increased, along with the price of rent, electricity, travel and heating. As a result a new generation of British graduates are growing up slowly, resigned to searching for low paid work from the bedrooms they grew up in. Meanwhile, thousands of young and educated economic refugees are abandoning the bailed out Mediterranean nations for the windowless shop floors of Northern Europe. Largely cut off from the aspiration, consumerism and self-determination enjoyed by their parents, the countless cohorts of skilled and educated young adults may have to redefine the meaning of freedom in the twenty-first century. One does not simply walk into the Peckham branch of Jobcentre Plus. If you try to enter you will be stopped by a pair of private security guards who will demand to know your business. There are at least two henchmen deployed to every room, hinting at the possibility of sudden drama, that somebody might lose their last lifeline at any moment and see no reason to remain civil. The first meeting is cold and sterile and I am referred to as ‘a customer’. There are no ‘good mornings’, no eye contact and no help whatsoever. The welfare state is being starved by its reluctant foster parents and those who need it are regarded as parasites and ‘nudged’ back towards to street. What remains is a grey cloud of intrusive bureaucratic process; all watched over by machines of loathing grace in G4S uniforms. [Unemployment] [Alienation]
• Why is the World Turning a Blind Eye to US Drone Strikes?
  by ROBERT FISK Karim Khan is a lucky man. When you’re picked up by 20 armed thugs, some in police uniform – aka the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) – you can be “disappeared” forever. A mass grave in Balochistan, in the south-west of the country, has just been found, filled with the “missing” from previous arrests. But eight days after he was lifted and – by his own testimony, that of his lawyer Shasad Akbar and the marks still visible on his body – tortured, Mr Khan is back at his Pakistani home. His crime: complaining about US drone attacks – American missiles fired by pilotless aircraft – on civilians inside Pakistan in President Obama’s Strangelove-style operation against al-Qa’ida. There are, as the cops would say, several facts “pertaining” to Mr Khan’s kidnapping. Firstly, his son Hafiz Zaenullah, his brother Asif Iqbal and another man – a stonemason called Khaliq Dad – were killed by a drone attack on Mr Khan’s home in December 2009. Secondly, he had filed a legal case in Pakistan against the American drone strikes, arguing that they constituted murder under domestic law. And thirdly – perhaps Mr Khan’s most serious crime – he was about to leave for Brussels to address European Union parliamentarians on the dangers of American drone strikes in Pakistan. In Madiha Tahir’s recent documentary film Wounds of Waziristan, Mr Khan had talked about his family loss. His son Hafiz was a security guard at a local girls’ school, and also studying for Grade 10. Asif, who had a Master’s in English, was a government employee. Karim Khan saw what was left of their bodies, “covered in wounds”. He found some of their fingers in the rubble of his home. Thanks to constant reports of his kidnapping in the courageous Pakistani media and to the Rawalpindi bench of the Lahore High Court who ordered the Pakistani government to produce Karim Khan by next Thursday, the anti-drone campaigner is safe. For the moment. But this is going to set the world on fire [UAV]
• The American Public's Indifference to Foreign Affairs
  Geopolitical Weekly Tuesday, February 18, 2014 - 04:13 ? Print ? Text Size ? By George Friedman Last week, several events took place that were important to their respective regions and potentially to the world. Russian government officials suggested turning Ukraine into a federation, following weeks of renewed demonstrations in Kiev. The Venezuelan government was confronted with violent and deadly protests. Kazakhstan experienced a financial crisis that could have destabilized the economies of Central Asia. Russia and Egypt inked a significant arms deal. Right-wing groups in Europe continued their political gains. Any of these events had the potential to affect the United States. At different times, lesser events have transfixed Americans. This week, Americans seemed to be indifferent to all of them. This may be part of a cycle that shapes American interest in public affairs. The decision to raise the debt ceiling, which in the last cycle gripped public attention, seemed to elicit a shrug. The Primacy of Private Affairs The United States was founded as a place where private affairs were intended to supersede public life. Public service was intended less as a profession than as a burden to be assumed as a matter of duty -- hence the word "service." There is a feeling that Americans ought to be more involved in public affairs, and people in other countries are frequently shocked by how little Americans know about international affairs or even their own politics [Domestic]
• Rupert Murdoch's empire receives $882m tax rebate from Australia
  Payment revealed by News Corp in US likely to reignite debate over how much tax is paid by international corporations Martin Farrer theguardian.com, Monday 17 February 2014 03.00 GMT Rupert Murdoch’s media group received a $882m tax rebate from Australia last year in a revelation that is likely to reignite the debate over how much tax is paid by international corporations. The payment by a “foreign tax authority” was revealed in accounts published by News Corporation in the US earlier this month and related to a $2bn claim by News Corp for historic losses on currency transactions by its Australian subsidiaries. The payment was estimated to be worth $600m to News Corp but the final figure grew to $882m after interest charges. It was one of the the biggest single factors in the multi-billion dollar federal budget blowout announced by Australian treasurer Joe Hockey in December. The Australian Tax Office wanted to challenge the claim but was overruled by the Federal Court of Appeal in July last year, the Australian Financial Review reported on Monday. The refund amounted to one of the largest ever faced by the ATO but a decision over whether to appeal against the ruling came amid the build-up to the federal election with News Corp’s Australian titles launching a series of attacks on the then Labor government. The ATO decided not to appeal the case after consideration by “senior officers and after seeking legal opinion”. “All decisions on whether to appeal a court decision are made by senior technical officers. Careful consideration is given to a range of factors, including the costs to all parties of proceeding and the importance of the particular case to clarifying the law for the benefit of the wider community,” an ATO spokesman said. “The ATO seeks external legal counsel opinion on the prospects of success for an appeal before making a decision. News Corp reported in its half yearly accounts published on 6 February that “a foreign tax authority’’ paid $882m which included the original tax and interest. “The Company previously filed refund claims for certain losses in a foreign jurisdiction that had been subject to litigation. “In the first quarter of fiscal 2014, the foreign tax authority determined that it would not appeal a favorable court ruling received by the company in July 2013 and therefore, a portion of the uncertain matter was resolved.” Although the paper loss on the currency transactions involved the Australian businesses and dated back to 1989, the tax refund was paid to Murdoch’s newly created entertainment business 21st Century Fox under the terms of the split of the empire last year, the accounts said. The Australian Treasury was forced to include the sum in its December budget update which forecast a deficit for this fiscal year of $47bn – a $17bn increase on earlier forecasts. This led the AFR to calculate that the News Corp payment was the “single biggest factor in the budget deterioration” in the four months between August and December. Announcing the blowout, Hockey warned Australians to expect spending cuts. The deficit was “not sustainable” and that “doing nothing is not an option for Australia”. News Corp declined to comment. [Tax]
• Adding DCS to US Intelligence Effort – Slam Dunk Thing
  Andrei Akulov | 17.02.2014 | 00:00 John Bennet, senior congressional reporter at Defense News, a well-known and widely respected expert, says in his brilliant piece Analysis: Defense Clandestine Service Is Here To Stay that the US Defense Clandestine Service (DCS) is a done deal. According to Defense News, «Senior US officials and lawmakers are sending new signals that a fledgling cadre of military spies is a done deal, despite no real substantive public debate». Despite unresolved questions about operational and budgetary redundancy, Congress has rubber-stamped the Pentagon’s plans and President Obama is adamant in his desire to go the whole hog and make it all come to fruition. Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, a former military intelligence official, and Defense Intelligence Agency Director Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn faced the Senate Armed Services Committee on February 11. The way the deliberations go, it is likely that the DCS will have no serious obstacles to overcome, it’s becoming a full-fledged intelligence community element is a cut-and dried decision. Pentagon] [Intelligence] [Espionage]
• Analysis: Defense Clandestine Service Is Here To Stay
  | By JOHN T. BENNETT Feb. 12, 2014 - 03:45AM WASHINGTON — Senior US officials and lawmakers are sending new signals that a fledgling cadre of military spies is a done deal, despite no real substantive public debate. The Pentagon last year proposed creation of the Defense Clandestine Service (DCS), saying the military needed its own team of spies to gather human intelligence across the globe. The country already has a civilian clandestine service within the CIA, which is itching to ditch some of its post-9/11 roles and return full-time to the spying and analysis business. Yet, despite unresolved questions about operational and budgetary redundancy, Congress rubber-stamped the Pentagon’s plans. And by approving the Defense Department plans as included in its last budget request, so did President Barack Obama, who seems enamored with the country’s myriad intelligence tools. [Pentagon] [Intelligence] [Espionage]
• Billionaires' Wealth Is Skyrocketing. Their Philanthropy Is Not
  By Nick Summers February 14, 2014 The Chronicle of Philanthropy released its annual “Philanthropy 50” list this week, detailing the gifts of the most generous donors in America. These individuals are “ditching the caution that marked so much of their giving as the economy stalled and are roaring back” with $7.7 billion in contributions, 4 percent more than in 2012, the publication says. Some $7.7 billion is nothing to scoff at. It’s also possible that the figure would be higher if anonymous donations were included. The Chronicle publishes an excellent data set, however, and a closer look at the numbers suggests there is not quite a “surge” or “boom” in the largest gifts. This chart shows the top 50 over the last 13 years, adjusted for inflation—with an asterisk: [inequality]
• Obama Revisits Military Option on Syria
  Melkulangara Bhadrakumar | 14.02.2014 | 00:00 The United States’ narrative on Syria dramatically changed during the past fortnight. President Barack Obama has publicly discussed the military option on Syria. An unseen hand would seem to have stealthily reshuffled the order of the heap of Syrian files stacked up on his desk in the Oval Office and brought to the fore the «all-options-are-open» file dated August 31 last year, which was when Obama stalled on his plan to launch a «limited» attack on Syria and took the detour to seek approval from the US Congress for use of military force to «deter, disrupt, prevent and degrade» the potential for chemical attacks in Syria. In two highly publicized testimonies by US spy chiefs at two senate hearings during the past fortnight, the Obama administration worked on the American public’s awareness of the Syrian situation. Simultaneously, it also disclosed through media leaks that with Congressional approval, the US has been supplying weapons to Syrian rebels. Between the two Senate hearings, the Obama administration sized up the al-Qaeda problem in Syria. The National Intelligence Director James Clapper assessed that the strength of the Syrian opposition fighting inside Syria is estimated at anywhere between 75000 to 115000 fighters out of which «somewhere in the neighborhood of between 20000 and maybe up to a top range of 26000 we [US intelligence] regard as extremists. And they are disproportionately influential because they are among the most effective fighters on the battlefield». The message to the American public was three-fold: • Al-Qaeda is making Syria its main operational base. • The «homeland security» is threatened insofar as extremists are being trained in camps with specific plans to attack America and its allies. • The Syrian conflict threatens to be a protracted one posing grave dangers to international security and the US’ vital interests. Besides, certain allegations were also made at the senate hearings: a) Syrian government is dragging feet in implementing the accord on chemical weapons; b) an «apocalyptic disaster» (to use Clapper’s expression) threatens Syria in terms of the humanitarian crisis and appalling level of civilian casualty; and, c) in Clapper’s «professional opinion», Syrian government has committed large scale atrocities. Clapper assessed that any expectations out of the Geneva 2 conference need to be «pretty modest» and prospects for a long-term political solution to the three-year-long conflict remain «problematic». He highlighted that among foreign fighters present in Syria, there are al-Qaeda veterans from Afghanistan and Pakistan who aspire to attack Europe and the US. In sum, the Senate hearings served to flag in the domestic opinion the imperative need for the US to act on Syria. [Strategic incoherence] [Military option] [UAV] [Islamist]
• A Pleasant Beijing Visit by John Kerry...
  ...Will Not Stop America's Merry Dash Into the Collective Self Defense/Deterrence Cul-de-Sac... John Kerry recently concluded a friendly visit to Beijing, with both sides chatting about matters of mutual concern in a way that implied these two great powers have areas of shared concern and interest. Some observers might fear that peace might break out. Don’t worry. My personal opinion is that a dwindling group of PRC doves in the Obama administration are being rolled by military and think tank hawks who sense the weakness of the individuals with suspected panda hugger inclinations, such as Joe Biden and John Kerry, and also smell blood in the water with President Obama’s emerging lame duck status and the likely return of a down-the-line China hawk civilian slate with the expected election of Hillary Clinton as President in 2016. The result has been a spate of articles calling the White House, especially Joe Biden, soft on China and pointing the finger at John Kerry for being excessively preoccupied with the Middle East and thereby allowing the precious Pivot to Asia to languish. I, for one, detect a pretty effective tag team between the Abe administration and US anti-China/pro-Japan hawks. [China confrontation] [US Japan alliance] [Dissension] [Hawks]
• The Struggle of Memory Against Forgetting
  “Good” War, “Bad” War by JOHN PILGER Fifty years ago, E.P. Thompson’s The Making of the English Working Class rescued the study of history from the powerful. Kings and queens, landowners, industrialists, politicians and imperialists had owned much of the public memory. In 1980, Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States also demonstrated that the freedoms and rights we enjoy precariously — free expression, free association, the jury system, the rights of minorities — were the achievements of ordinary people, not the gift of elites. [Korea War] [Imperialism]
• Leaving Afghanistan
  Artemy M. Kalinovsky 15 February 2014 Twenty five years ago today, Soviet General Boris Gromov oversaw the final withdrawal from Afghanistan. How will the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) leave Afghanistan? Twenty nfive years ago today, Soviet General Boris Gromov left Afghanistan with the last Soviet soldiers still in that country. Halfway across the ‘Friendship Bridge’ linking Termez in Soviet Uzbekistan with Hairatan in Afghanistan, he jumped off a troop carrier and made the rest of his way on foot. With reporters from around the world flown in to record the scene, Gromov’s son ran across the bridge, and the two made their way back to Soviet soil together. The scene was deliberately choreographed – the Soviet leadership needed to prove to doubters (and there were many, internationally and at home) that Soviet troops were indeed coming home. Gromov told the assembled journalists: ‘There is not a single Soviet soldier or officer left behind me - our nine-year stay ends with this.’ [Afghanistan] [Soviet Union] [US global strategy] [Islamist]
• Has Obama Forgotten about Asia?
  Posted on : Feb.11,2014 09:58 KST By John Feffer, co-director of Foreign Policy In Focus Last year was a tough time for President Obama. The health care roll-out was plagued by website malfunctions. His ambivalent approach to intervening in Syria satisfied neither hawks nor doves. Congress stalled on major legislation like immigration reform. And the leaks by Edward Snowden revealed that the National Security Agency was spying on American citizens without court approval, a major embarrassment for the administration. In his State of the Union address last month, the president tried to put 2013 behind him and lay out his plans for the rest of his term in office. Much of the hour-long speech focused on the U.S. economy and the presidential push for a higher minimum wage and extension of unemployment insurance. He appeared to give up on his earlier hopes of gaining bipartisan approval for his plans. Instead, on such issues as the minimum wage, Obama vowed to issue executive orders, bypassing Congress. [US global strategy] [Pivot]
• Prompt Global Strike: Another Stride to Ambitious Incarnation
  Andrei Akulov | 13.02.2014 | 00:00 This February Zachary Keck, a well-known expert and Associate Editor of The Diplomat and a columnist for The National Interest, published a brilliant piece saying the US Navy is exploring the feasibility of sub-launched hypersonic missiles for conventional prompt global strike program (CPGS). He refers to an Inside Defense report which says the Navy’s Strategic Systems Programs office is soliciting proposals for «two-year industry trade studies to flesh out technology options and architecture for an intermediate-range conventional prompt global strike weapon». The report said that the competition was part of the Defense Department’s «fiscal year 2014 plan to investigate a launcher, missile and glide body for a weapon with potential game-changing capabilities». The office is announcing competition and is ready to award contracts, «to evaluate technology options and compare the performance and technology cost considerations of these options». Over a decade ago, in its effort to maintain military superiority and a powerful deterrent, the United States identified the need for a new capability. This led the U.S. military to create the controversial concept of a high precision global strike capability. The program is currently in the research and development phase and mainly boils down to the development of long-range high-precision conventional weapons capable of reaching a target anywhere in the world within one hour. The Obama administration has indicated that it intends to make an acquisition decision till the end of the term. [PGS] [US global strategy]
• “We are hungry in three languages”: citizens protest in Bosnia
  Valerie Hopkins 13 February 2014 Demonstrations have spread rapidly across Bosnia, with citizens organizing popular assemblies to voice their frustration with the country’s institutional paralysis. Through the adamantly non-ethnic nature of the demonstrations, the protesters are taking aim at the entire political elite. Valerie Hopkins reports from Sarajevo. On Friday afternoon, less than 24 hours after a Sarajevo canton’s premier declared that the people of Sarajevo would not riot because there was “no hunger” in Bosnia’s capital, his administrative building was in flames. So was the presidency and 16 other government buildings across the country, in what has been the worst episode of violence since Bosnia’s 1992-1995 war. The politician, Suad Zeljkovic, had been responding to protests that began on Wednesday in the northern city of Tuzla after those laid off from several formerly successful factories took to the streets. His remark was reviled by citizens in a country with an official unemployment rate of 27.5 percent (estimated to climb into the 40s with the grey economy included.) “They should have leveled [the building],” said an old man at the protests, in a video now circulating on youtube. “These are the people who are burying us…Twenty years they’ve been suffocating us, holding us down.”
• War, Peace, and Prosperity
  The shift from a permanent war footing to permanent diplomacy has significant promise for prosperity as well as peace. By Charles F. Dambach, February 7, 2014. A new index from the Institute for Economics and Peace confirms common sense: prosperity follows peace. (Photo: Maxime Bonzi / Flickr) World news headlines over the last few months have featured more diplomatic initiatives than body counts. Ongoing conflicts in Syria, Egypt, Central African Republic, and elsewhere still provide violence vultures with ample stories. But high-stakes negotiations with Iran, Israel and Palestine, and even South Sudan have become dramatic, and drama makes news. Furthermore, against the urging of a few hawks, the United States is not sending troops with guns and bombs to intervene whenever and wherever trouble emerges. In his State of the Union address, President Obama spoke of ending wars, not starting new ones, and he insisted on the primacy of diplomacy to avert violence and build a safe and secure future. [MISCOM]
• Obama’s Arms Sales Policy: Promotion or Restraint?
  The Obama administration’s pledge to restrain the global arms trade doesn't square with its aggressive promotion of U.S. arms exports. By William D. Hartung, February 6, 2014. In a recent policy directive, the Obama administration pledged to forgo arms sales to parties that violate human rights. But at the same time, it gave U.S. exporters free reign to export many new classes of weapons and equipment. (Photo: Redfishingboat / Flickr) The United States is far and away the world’s leading arms trafficking nation, with $60 billion in arms transfer agreements last year alone. In 2011, the last year for which full global statistics are available, U.S. companies and the U.S. government controlled over three-quarters of the international weapons trade. The Obama administration is proud of its accomplishments on this front and regularly touts the role of U.S. officials — from embassy personnel on up to the president himself — in promoting U.S. arms sales. Acting Assistant Secretary of State for Political-Military Affairs Tom Kelly underscored this point in April 2013 testimony to Congress: “It is an issue that has the attention of every top-level official who’s working on foreign policy throughout the government, including the top officials at the State Department,” he said. “In advocating on behalf of our companies and doing everything we can to make sure that these sales go through . . . we take it very, very seriously and we’re constantly thinking of how we can do better.” [Arms sales]
• Launch of the Asia Society Policy Institute
  Join us for the launch of the Asia Society Policy Institute featuring Henry Kissinger Tuesday, April 8, 2014 9:15 AM - 12:15 PM ET Asia Society 725 Park Avenue New York, NY Asia Society is proud to announce the launch of the Asia Society Policy Institute on April 8, 2014. Former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, an Honorary Counselor of the Institute, will join us for a conversation about strategic trends in U.S.-Asia relations starting at 9:15 AM. A pair of panel discussions featuring policy and business leaders from Asia and the United States will follow. Please hold the date for this special event. More details will be available soon. [US global strategy] [Kissinger]
• Do Only Some Massacres Matter?
  by Alison Weir The Washington Post has published a moving article, “Russian Jews remember Israeli athletes murdered at 1972 Munich Olympic Games.” Unfortunately, it gets a few things wrong and provides a one-sided context for the tragedy. Allow me to correct the report and fill in a few of the missing facts. Just 23 years before the Olympic incident, Israel had been created through ethnically cleansing much of the indigenous Palestinian population. This had been accomplished through at least 33 massacres and was maintained in the years following by still more acts of ethnic cleansing and additional massacres. (These included areas from which the Munich kidnappers came). Five years before the Munich incident, Israel violently conquered even more Palestinian land (illegal under international law), pushing out another 325,000+ Palestinian men, women, and children, and killing at least 13,000 Arabs in all. About 800 Israelis died. The violence continued, and beginning in 1968 Israeli forces repeatedly savaged 150 or more towns and villages in south Lebanon alone. By the time of the Munich Olympics, Israel held hundreds of prisoners in its notorious prison system. It is widely known, but rarely stated, that the goal of the Munich hostage-taking was not to kill them; it was to return the athletes to Israel in return for Israel returning its Palestinian prisoners. [Double standards] [Israel]
• Britain's 100 years of conflict
  British forces are set to withdraw from Afghanistan by the end of 2014. If 2015 is a year of peace for the UK, it will be the first for at least 100 years. Here the Guardian charts every conflict in which British forces have engaged since 1914
• Stuart Hall obituary
  Influential cultural theorist, campaigner and founding editor of the New Left Review David Morley and Bill Schwarz The Guardian, Monday 10 February 2014 13.00 GMT Stuart Hall was born in Jamaica and won a Rhodes scholarship to Oxford University, arriving in 1951. He always saw himself as a 'familiar stranger' in Britain. Photograph: Eamonn McCabe When the writer and academic Richard Hoggart founded the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies at Birmingham University in 1964, he invited Stuart Hall, who has died aged 82, to join him as its first research fellow. Four years later Hall became acting director and, in 1972, director. Cultural studies was then a minority pursuit: half a century on it is everywhere, generating a wealth of significant work even if, in its institutionalised form, it can include intellectual positions that Hall could never endorse. The foundations of cultural studies lay in an insistence on taking popular, low-status cultural forms seriously and tracing the interweaving threads of culture, power and politics. Its interdisciplinary perspectives drew on literary theory, linguistics and cultural anthropology in order to analyse subjects as diverse as youth sub-cultures, popular media and gendered and ethnic identities – thus creating something of a model, for example, for the Guardian's own G2 section.
• US Military Intervention in Africa: The East African Response Force, A Creation of the Pentagon
  By Abayomi Azikiwe Global Research, February 11, 2014 Growing instability in East and Central Africa will be the focus of Washington’s intervention Over the last two months developments in Central and East Africa has dominated the news coverage of the continent. The split within the ruling Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army (SPLA), a close ally of Washington, and the deployment of French and African troops in the Central African Republic, has brought the escalation of Pentagon troops in these states. Recently the Department of Defense announced the formation of an East African Response Force. This new unit is part of the United States Africa Command (AFRICOM) which has been strengthened and enhanced under the administration of President Barack Obama. A recent drone attack in southern Somalia is representative of the growing aggression of Washington in Africa. The government of Djibouti, a former French colony where the U.S. has a military base with over 4,000 soldiers at Camp Lemonnier, released a statement saying that such strikes are “vital” in the so-called war on terrorism. The drone strike was launched from the Pentagon military installations in Djibouti. Prior to the creation of the East African Response Force Washington operated in the region under the framework of the Combined Joint Task Force Horn of Africa (CJTF-HOA). U.S. Brigadier-General Wayne Grigsby, who is the commander of CJTF-HOA, says that his forces are in East Africa only to assist governments in their military campaigns to defeat the so-called terrorist threat posed by Al-Shabaab, a Somalia-based guerrilla organization which has fought the Washington-backed regime in Mogadishu for the last six years. “Our mission here is to enable our East African partners to actually neutralize violent extremists throughout eastern Africa,” Grigsby said. Yet if this was the case then why would it be necessary to have such a formidable military force in the Horn of Africa region that conducts periodic bombings and commando raids in Somalia. (Shabelle Media Network, Feb. 7) However, Brigadier-General Grigsby does say that “It also enables strategic access and freedom of movement. The purpose is to protect the United States and its interests abroad.” Consequently, even the military leaders themselves must acknowledge that the underlying reasons for the build-up in Africa are clearly related to the economic and class interests of Washington and Wall Street. East and Central Africa is a vast repository of oil, natural gas and strategic minerals. [US global strategy] [Africa] [Camouflage]
• Convicted criminal who plotted to kill Prince Harry jailed for three years
  Ashraf Islam said he had a 'moral right to judge' the prince because he disagreed with the work of the armed forces Press Association The Guardian, Monday 10 February 2014 18.34 GMT A convicted criminal who plotted to kill Prince Harry has been jailed. Ashraf Islam, 31, said he had a "moral right to judge" the royal because he disagreed with the work of the British Armed Forces, of which Prince Harry is a member. The judge at Isleworth Crown Court in London described Islam's plot as "vague and unlikely to succeed", but said he presented a risk to the public. Islam, of no fixed address but who had been living in west London, was handed a three-year jail term. Islam pleaded guilty to making a threat to kill Prince Harry, at Uxbridge Magistrates Court in May last year. He had earlier handed himself in to police and volunteered the information about the plot, defence counsel Roxanne Morrell said. [Human rights]
• Germany’s Ukraine Policy
  Nikolai MALISHEVSKI | 11.02.2014 | 00:00 Common vision of the Ukraine’s situation could be an important prerequisite for creation of German-Polish partnership in Europe and it makes Berlin and Warsaw move closer to each other. That’s what is stated in a report that had appeared before the maidan protests in Kiev started. The idea to prepare the paper After Vilnius: Poland and Germany Must Advance the EU Eastern Policy (Über Vilnius hinaus denken: Polen und Deutschland müssen die EU-Ostpolitik vorantreiben) was initiated in Germany to involve German and Polish diplomats and politicians, members of Bundestag, ministers. Former Polish foreign ministers Adam Daniel Rotfeld and Andrzej Marian Olechowski were also among the contributors. The vibrant Washington’s activities towards Ukraine make pale the attempts undertaken by Europeans to narrow the gaps inside the European Union while tackling the issue of Ukraine. Meanwhile Germans and Poles continue to actively engage Ukraine. They resort to the carrot and stick policy to perpetuate the conflict in the country.
• Lebanese army arrests Syrian army defector
  Xinhua, February 10, 2014 The Lebanese army arrested Sunday a defecting Syrian army colonel in the eastern Bekaa border town of Arsal, the National News Agency reported. "Mahmoud Abbas, a defecting Syrian colonel and a member of the Syrian Revolution Military Council, was arrested in Arsal's Wadi Hmayyed," the report said. Abbas was previously in charge of the army's front in Al Qusair, a Syrian town adjacent to the Lebanese border. The town was the scene of a fierce battle in mid-2013, which saw the Syrian army rout the rebels from their stronghold. Later Sunday, the Lebanese army announced the arrest of two Syrian nationals, Omar Mahmoud Othman and Radwan Mahmoud Ayyoush, in Wadi Hmayyed for illegal entry. "The detainees are being interrogated under the supervision of relevant judicial authorities," the army said in a statement.
• Washington’s military aid to Israel: fake peace process, real war process
  Chase Madar 10 February 2014 Will Americans ever acknowledge their government's active role in destroying the chances for a just and lasting peace between Palestine and Israel? We Americans have funny notions about foreign aid. Recent polls show that, on average, we believe 28% of the federal budget is eaten up by it, and that, in a time of austerity, this gigantic bite of the budget should be cut back to 10%. In actual fact, barely 1% of the federal budget goes to foreign aid of any kind. In this case, however, truth is at least as strange as fiction. Consider that the top recipient of U.S. foreign aid over the past three decades isn’t some impoverished land filled with starving kids, but a wealthy nation with a per-head gross domestic product on par with the European Union average, and higher than that of Italy, Spain, or South Korea. Consider also that this top recipient of such aid - nearly all of it military since 2008 - has been busily engaged in what looks like a nineteenth-century-style colonization project. In the late 1940s, our beneficiary expelled some 700,000 indigenous people from the land it was claiming. In 1967, our client seized some contiguous pieces of real estate and ever since has been colonizing these territories with nearly 650,000 of its own people. It has divided the conquered lands with myriad checkpoints and roads accessible only to the colonizers and is building a 440-mile wall around (and cutting into) the conquered territory, creating a geography of control that violates international law. “Ethnic cleansing” is a harsh term, but apt for a situation in which people are driven out of their homes and lands because they are not of the right tribe. Though many will balk at leveling this charge against Israel - for that country is, of course, the top recipient of American aid and especially military largesse - who would hesitate to use the term if, in a mirror-image world, all of this were being inflicted on Israeli Jews? [US global policy] [Israel] [Client]
• The Israeli Surveillance State: Did The “Shin Bet” Just Hack My Computer?
  By Jonathan Cook Global Research, February 09, 2014 I have been pondering – probably more than is wise – what happened yesterday, when I lost control of my computer for an hour shortly after I had contacted the Israeli prime minister’s spokesman for a comment from the Shin Bet. I was working on a story about the various ways the Shin Bet seeks to exert pressure on Palestinians to recruit them as collaborators. For details of what happened, you can read about it here. Several people have pointed out, following my post last night, that we should all assume that we are being watched all the time, and especially people like journalists. Much as I would be secretly flattered to think that I have my own dedicated Shin Bet agent analysing my every keystroke, as I laboriously tap out my stories, I am realist enough to know that is a little unlikely. Even the Shin Bet must have worked out by now that it is simpler to wait a day or two to read the posts on my website. The Shin Bet has limited resources, and I and people like me are still a marginal problem (though maybe not for much longer). [Israel] [Surveillance]
• Immigration minister Mark Harper resigns over illegal immigrant cleaner
  Minister behind controversial campaign telling illegal migrants to 'go home' stands down after learning cleaner did not have legal residency The Observer, Sunday 9 February 2014 Mark Harper Mark Harper, who has resigned from the government. Photograph: Graeme Robertson for the Observer Mark Harper, the immigration minister behind the controversial campaign that put "go home" adverts on vans to urge illegal immigrants to leave Britain, has resigned after learning that his private cleaner for seven years did not have permission to work in the UK. Harper, who was steering an immigration bill through the Commons that warns employers of their duty to check the status of employees, notified David Cameron on Friday, when his resignation was accepted "with regret". Downing Street, however, said there was no evidence that Harper "knowingly employed an illegal immigrant". Harper's resignation was accepted just 24 hours after he discovered his cleaner was in the UK illegally. It prompted a mini-reshuffle, with Home Office minister James Brokenshire promoted to Harper's position and Karen Bradley, Conservative MP for Staffordshire Moorlands, filling the former's position. Harper's time in the Home Office will be best remembered for last summer's campaign, which saw mobile "go home" adverts deployed in parts of London. It was a drive that proved futile as well as divisive; within months, Theresa May had conceded the ads were "too much of a blunt instrument" amid reports that only one immigrant had gone home as a result. Other heavily criticised initiatives were the introduction of spot checks in London tube stations.
• The truth about the criminal bloodbath in Iraq can't be 'countered' indefinitely
  The media cover-up has been a weapon in the crimes of western states since the first world war. But a reckoning is coming for those paid to keep the record straight John Pilger The Guardian, Friday 7 February 2014 16.30 GMT A baby in a Baghdad hospital in July 2003. 'Half a million Iraqi infants died as a result of sanctions, according to Unicef.' Photograph: Joseph Barrak/AFP/Getty Images The BBC's Today programme is enjoying high ratings, and the Mail and Telegraph are, as usual, attacking the corporation as leftwing. Last month a single edition of the Radio 4 show was edited by the artist and musician PJ Harvey. What happened was illuminating. Harvey's guests caused panic from the moment she proposed the likes of Mark Curtis, a historian rarely heard on the BBC who chronicles the crimes of the British state; the lawyer Phil Shiner and the Guardian journalist Ian Cobain, who reveal how the British kidnap and torture; the WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange; and myself. There were weeks of absurd negotiation at Broadcasting House about ways of "countering" us and whether or not we could be allowed to speak without interruption from Today's establishment choristers. What this brief insurrection demonstrated was the fear of a reckoning. The crimes of western states like Britain have made accessories of those in the media who suppress or minimise the carnage. [Iraq] [Sanctions] [War crimes]
• Nuland: Obscene Remarks Normal among Top Politicians
  Natalia Meden | 09.02.2014 | 11:31 German Chancellor Angela Merkel called an obscene remark about the EU «absolutely unacceptable». She had to repeat it again commenting on the way the US treats its European allies. The Ukrainian security service taped the conversation between top level American officials. It was posted on Youtube giving rise to an international row. She said the same thing last summer upon getting information on NSA spying activities, now the reason was an obscene remark by Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland. She has already apologized for the contents of the leaked conversation. State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki refused to confirm the conversation, saying that she was «not going to confirm private diplomatic conversations». The President of the United States has also shied away from comments while refusing to confirm the fact that US special services bugged the cell phone of Chancellor Merkel. New NSA chief Vice-Admiral Michael Rogers said the Agency would practice spying on foreign leaders in case US national security is threatened. [US EU] [Subordinate]
• US Torpedoes Karzai’s Contacts with Taliban
  Melkulangara Bhadrakumar | 09.02.2014 | 00:00 By now it clear that the Afghan President Hamid Karzai has kept his word that there will surely be a political transition in Afghanistan following the elections slated for April 5. The innuendos by American commentators and media reports, amply supplemented with conspiracy theories by Karzai’s Afghan adversaries, had put a question mark on the sincerity of Karzai’s pledge and had prophesied that he intended to hold on to power for as long as he could. Today, that malicious propaganda stands exposed as canard. The six-week long campaign work for the election by the eleven candidates in the field formally began last weekend. Meanwhile, the US has decided not to hold any more opinion polls in Afghanistan, ostensibly to give an impression of strict neutrality. But in reality, the US manipulation is shifting into high gear. The launch of former foreign minister Abdullah Abdullah’s election campaign in a blaze of publicity with a high-voltage interview with Christiane Amanpour of the CNN speaks for itself. The American opinion-makers are creating an impression that Abdullah is the ‘frontrunner’. He is of course media savvy, is close to American think tanks and has a pro-western outlook. From the US viewpoint, Abdullah robustly backs the US-Afghan Bilateral Security Agreement. However, there are some boulders impeding his victorious march. Abdullah lacks a Pashtun identity and remains unacceptable to the Taliban while his links with hardline elements in India are viewed with suspicion in Pakistan. Equally, there is not only an ethnic polarization in Afghanistan, but also overlapping regional tensions, which makes it difficult for Abdullah to forge a pan-Afghan identity. The recent abortive attempt to assassinate the charismatic leader of western Afghanistan Ismail Khan and the murder of two of Abdullah’s election agents soon after in Herat underscores intra-Tajik tensions. (Ismail Khan is opposing Abdullah in the April election.) Again, the ‘Panjshiri’ camp to which Abdullah belongs is also faction-ridden today. [Afghanistan] [Karzai] [Client]
• The Hypocrisy of Human Rights Watch
  By Keane Bhatt Global Research, February 08, 2014 nacla 5 February 2014 Over more than a decade, the rise of the left in Latin American governance has led to remarkable advances in poverty alleviation, regional integration, and a reassertion of sovereignty and independence. The United States has been antagonistic toward the new left governments, and has concurrently pursued a bellicose foreign policy, in many cases blithely dismissive of international law. So why has Human Rights Watch (HRW)—despite proclaiming itself “one of the world’s leading independent organizations” on human rights—so consistently paralleled U.S. positions and policies? [NGO] [Human rights] [Manipulation] [Shill]
• JFK, RFK and Some Myths About American Foreign Policy
  by William Blum On April 30, 1964, five months after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, his brother, Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, was interviewed by John B. Martin in one of a series of oral history sessions with RFK. Part of the interview appears in the book “JFK Conservative” by Ira Stoll, published three months ago. (pages 192-3) RFK: The president … had a strong, overwhelming reason for being in Vietnam and that we should win the war in Vietnam. MARTIN: What was the overwhelming reason? RFK: Just the loss of all of Southeast Asia if you lost Vietnam. I think everybody was quite clear that the rest of Southeast Asia would fall. MARTIN: What if it did? RFK: Just have profound effects as far as our position throughout the world, and our position in a rather vital part of the world. Also it would affect what happened in India, of course, which in turn has an effect on the Middle East. Just as it would have, everybody felt, a very adverse effect. It would have an effect on Indonesia, hundred million population. All of those countries would be affected by the fall of Vietnam to the Communists. MARTIN: There was never any consideration given to pulling out? RFK: No. MARTIN: … The president was convinced that we had to keep, had to stay in there … RFK: Yes. MARTIN: … And couldn’t lose it. RFK: Yes. These remarks are rather instructive from several points of view: [Kennedy] [Vietnam] [US global strategy] [Continuity]
• Spy Agency Launched False Flag Attacks and Used Honey Traps: Snowden
  By Washington's Blog Global Research, February 08, 2014 Washington's Blog Spy Agencies Use Dirty Tricks We’ve repeatedly noted that the spy agencies aren’t just like giant peeping Tom’s, but they use their capabilities in mischievous offensive actions. We’ve warned since 2009 (and see this) that the government could be launching cyber “false flag attacks” in order to justify a crackdown on the Internet and discredit web activists. A new report from NBC News shows that the British spy agency used “false flag attacks” and other dirty tricks: British spies have developed “dirty tricks” for use against nations, hackers, terror groups, suspected criminals and arms dealers that include releasing computer viruses, spying on journalists and diplomats, jamming phones and computers, and using sex to lure targets into “honey traps.” *** The agency’s goal was to “destroy, deny, degrade [and] disrupt” enemies by “discrediting” them, planting misinformation and shutting down their communications. Sound familiar? It should: Between 1956 and 1971, the FBI operated a program known as COINTELPRO, for Counter Intelligence Program. Its purpose was to interfere with the activities of the organizations and individuals who were its targets or, in the words of long-time FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, to “expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit or otherwise neutralize” them. NBC continues: [The agency] also uses “false flag” operations, in which British agents carry out online actions that are designed to look like they were performed by one of Britain’s adversaries. *** JTRIG used negative information to attack private companies, sour business relationships and ruin deals. *** Changing photos on social media sites and emailing and texting colleagues and neighbors unsavory information. [False flag] [Snowden]
• Syria, a vital proposal
  Paul Rogers 7 February 2014 The Geneva conference offers little hope of a breakthrough to halt Syria's nightmare. This makes a different approach all the more urgent. The first round of the Geneva II talks on Syria ended with no real progress, though arrangements for limited evacuation of civilians from the besieged city of Homs will give welcome relief to a few. The meeting is due to reconvene on 10 February, amid continuing violence across much of Syria. Bashar al-Assad's regime seems uninterested in serious negotiations, while the rebel participants are hardly representative of the opposition as a whole. They certainly do not speak for the more radical Islamists; one such group, ISIL, may have been quite badly damaged by attacks from other rebel groups but others on the Islamist wing continue to provide the strongest opposition to Damascus. The military situation on the ground offers numerous indications that the regime is holding its own, and has even grown stronger over the past year. The director of national intelligence in Washington, James D Clapper, says the regime has gained even as massive damage has been done to the country (see Michael R Gordon & Mark Mazzetti, “Assad strengthens grip on Syria, U.S. security chief says", International New York Times, 6 January 2014). The victims of this damage include the most vulnerable. A United Nations report confirms what non-government groups such as Every Casualty have found, that at least 10,000 children have been killed, The UN also identifies frequent torture and abuse of children; most of this is perpetrated by pro-government forces, but much evidence exists of appalling acts by rebel factions. [Syria] [Sterile]
• Misreading Iran’s Intentions
  by Gareth Porter When Western intelligence agencies began in the early 1990s to intercept telexes from an Iranian university to foreign high-technology firms, intelligence analysts believed they saw the first signs of military involvement in Iran’s nuclear program. That suspicion led to US intelligence assessments over the next decade that Iran was secretly pursuing nuclear weapons. The supposed evidence of military efforts to procure uranium enrichment equipment shown in the telexes was also the main premise of the International Atomic Energy Agency’s investigation of Iran’s nuclear program from 2003 through 2007. But the interpretation of the intercepted telexes on which later assessments were based turned out to have been a fundamental error. The analysts, eager to find evidence of an Iranian nuclear weapons program, had wrongly assumed that the combination of interest in technologies that could be used in a nuclear program and the apparent role of a military-related institution meant that the military was behind the procurement requests. In 2007-08, Iran provided hard evidence that the technologies had actually been sought by university teachers and researchers. [dual use]
• A Short History of Syrian Orphans
  by BARBARA NIMRI AZIZ Are others as bewildered as I am by news stumbling and reeling interminably out of Syria–those accounts of starving, besieged children? We are moved by the stories yet also immobilized. The “worst humanitarian tragedy of our time”, say experts of catastrophes. (As if we need their authority.) Anyway, how can I distinguish between a 4-year old alawite corpse and a 6 month old miasmatic christian infant, between an orphan and a refugee? Prospects for relief are bleak. Impossible to comprehend who is fighting whom and how can it possibly worsen? Who is responsible? Maybe we find solace in having yet another out-of-favor-dictator on whom to heap responsibility. I hesitate to join any chorus, recalling an early story of Syrian orphans. Today it seems like a mythical tale from this ancient land of Syria. But it was just four years—forty eight short months–ago in 2009. Told to me unsolicited by Samir, a proud college student from Darra. That quiet rural region bordering Jordan would gain international recognition as the site of the earliest civil uprisings in Syria in 2011 following the 2010 revolts in Tunisia and Egypt. March 2011 was unimaginably distant from this story, an anecdote of what transpired at a local Darra orphanage. It was during Eid al-Fitr feast that marks the end of holy Ramadan month. Customarily, officials and celebrities visit orphanages distributing gifts and celebrating the talents and progress of the youngsters. Mosques and churches across the region are especially generous and attentive to orphans and the government supports many children’s centers too. Feeling the encounter at the Darra orphanage was particularly noteworthy, my student Samir recalled it with pride when I met him on my first teaching assignment in the country. He told me how an orphan, barely 6, had asked the visiting dignitary, a lady from Damascus, whether she had a little boy. And when she replied that yes she had, he countered with: “Then why have you not brought his daddy with you?”. The next day, the woman returned, now accompanied by her husband. She called for the orphan and introduced the man at her side with these tender words: “Here is my boy’s daddy.” The lady, of course ,was Asma Al-Assad. [Syria]
• US warns France against business with Iran after trade trip to Tehran
  John Kerry issues warning to counterpart after large French delegation travels to Iranian capital Kim Willsher in Paris and Saeed Kamali Dehghan theguardian.com, Wednesday 5 February 2014 13.09 GMT R The US has warned France against doing business with Iran after a large trade delegation representing more than 100 French companies travelled to Tehran this week. [Iran] [Sanctions] [Subordinate] [US negotiating]
• US Assistant Secretary Nuland Visits Ukraine – Some Thoughts to Share (I)
  Andrei Akulov | 05.02.2014 | 15:57 The United States increases its pressure on Ukraine while preparing sanctions against it. It sends a high-level Foggy Bottom official to visit the country only a month after her previous visit. US Assistant Secretary for European and Eurasian Affairs Victoria Nuland is going to Kiev on Thursday, February 6. The event is coordinated with the European partners. EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton will also visit Ukraine on February 5. According to US State Department’s statement, in Kiev the Assistant Secretary will meet with government officials, opposition leaders, civil society and business leaders «to encourage agreement on a new government and plan of action that can put Ukraine back on track toward fulfilling the aspirations of the Ukrainian people for democracy, respect for human rights, European integration and economic growth». It means the US is to lend a helping hand only to the Ukrainians who want to associate with the EU. Those who don’t should be looking for support somewhere else. No taking sides and meddling in, of course. That’s how democracy and impartiality are interpreted by the State Department.
• Why So Much Anarchy?
  Global Affairs Wednesday, February 5, 2014 By Robert D. Kaplan Twenty years ago, in February 1994, I published a lengthy cover story in The Atlantic Monthly, "The Coming Anarchy: How Scarcity, Crime, Overpopulation, Tribalism, and Disease are Rapidly Destroying the Social Fabric of Our Planet." I argued that the combination of resource depletion (like water), demographic youth bulges and the proliferation of shanty towns throughout the developing world would enflame ethnic and sectarian divides, creating the conditions for domestic political breakdown and the transformation of war into increasingly irregular forms -- making it often indistinguishable from terrorism. I wrote about the erosion of national borders and the rise of the environment as the principal security issues of the 21st century. I accurately predicted the collapse of certain African states in the late 1990s and the rise of political Islam in Turkey and other places. Islam, I wrote, was a religion ideally suited for the badly urbanized poor who were willing to fight. I also got things wrong, such as the probable intensification of racial divisions in the United States; in fact, such divisions have been impressively ameliorated.
• VW Plant's Union Vote Could Be a Southern Labor Breakthrough
  By Justin Bachman February 04, 2014 Workers at a Volkswagen AG (VOW:GR) auto plant in Tennessee will vote next week on union representation in an exercise being watched as a potential bellwether for labor organization efforts at other foreign-owned automakers in the South. The secret ballot, being held with the company’s cooperation from Feb. 12-14 at the Chattanooga sedan plant, would establish representation by the United Auto Workers and create a works council similar those used at every other VW plant, except for those in China. Works councils, common across German industry, are employee-elected bodies that help management resolve labor disputes and guide company decisions. “Some things under the traditional jurisdiction of the union would be overseen by the works council,” said Gary Casteel, the UAW’s regional president. “And until the workers actually sit down and negotiate that configuration, it’s hard to say what that would look like.” The vote comes after several months of negotiations between the union and Volkswagen officials in which the German company hasn’t moved to oppose labor organizers. Frank Fischer, chairman and chief executive officer of Volkswagen Chatttanooga, said in a statement that the company is “committed to neutrality and calls upon all third parties to honor the principle of neutrality.” VW considers labor-management cooperation a competitive advantage, and the company has said it concluded that the creation of a works council in the U.S. would require union representation at the plant. [Labour]
• What Links the Threat of a U.S. Default with the Destabilization of Ukraine?
  Nikolai Malishevski | 05.02.2014 | 00:00 At the Munich Security Conference the Ukrainian opposition and the U.S. essentially agreed on a plan to force Viktor Yanukovich to capitulate. Arseniy Yatsenyuk told of this plan of action, which was worked out with the direct participation of Western representatives, after a meeting with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and EU officials. While the «Euromaidan» is shoring up its tents, showing that it is there for the long haul, the State Department has appointed a time by which the regime change operation in Ukraine is to be finished: March 24. That is how the message which appeared on the official site of the U.S. State Department on January 24 could be interpreted: «Ukraine Travel Alert. The U.S. Department of State alerts U.S. citizens of the potential risks of travel to Ukraine due to the ongoing political unrest and violent clashes between police and protesters. Protest-related violence, particularly in Kyiv, has escalated sharply since January 19, resulting in several deaths and hundreds of injuries. Protesters have occupied Kyiv’s Independence Square and several government buildings in Kyiv and other cities throughout Ukraine. Groups of young men, popularly called “titushky,” have attacked journalists and protesters and committed other random acts of violence in Kyiv and other cities. U.S. citizens are advised to avoid all protests, demonstrations, and large gatherings. U.S. citizens whose residences or hotels are located in the vicinity of the protests are cautioned to leave those areas or prepare to remain indoors, possibly for several days, should clashes occur. This travel alert expires on March 24, 2014». The start of implementation of the regime change plan most likely will coincide with February 7. Two significant events are to occur on this date: the start of the Olympic Games in Sochi and the deadline on suspension of the cap on the U.S. state debt agreed upon by the President and the Congress.
• Why the universities strikes are about more than just a ‘measly’ pay offer
  Des Freedman 5 February 2014 Universities It's not just the money, it's the direction our marketised universities are taking - enormous rewards at the top combined with a race to the bottom approach for all other staff, and a system of fees that is exacerbating inequality. It's wrong and we oppose it. Academics and support staff in UK universities are taking their third full day of strike action on Thursday as part of an increasingly bitter campaign for ‘fair pay’ that is likely to escalate to a full-scale refusal to mark student work in the summer term. Many staff are outraged that while they have been offered a 1% pay rise, a pay cut in the light of inflation running at 2.7%, university vice-chancellors continue to reward themselves generously. VCs received an average increase of just over 5% last year although there were some notable exceptions. Sir Keith Burnett at Sheffield University received a 39% increase taking his salary up from £269,000 to £374,000 even though Sheffield still refuses to guarantee a living wage to its staff; Craig Calhoun, director of the London School of Economics, saw his pay grow 61% to £435,000, more than three times that of the prime minister. Indeed, all but five of the over 140 vice-chancellors in the UK are now paid more than David Cameron. Perhaps he needs to join a trade union. While ordinary staff have seen their pay decline by 13% over the last five years – even the employers’ association UCEA grudgingly admits that ‘real earnings levels have been eroded since 2008’ – operating surpluses, fuelled by tuition fees, are growing rapidly. [Education] [Marketisation]
• Stalemate on Syria’s Frontlines
  by Patrick Cockburn Damascus. The Syrian army was in a triumphant mood. It claimed that it had beaten back a rebel assault in the al-Qadam district of south Damascus aimed at cutting the main road to Jordan. An army commander, who gave his name as Abu Yusuf, said: “The attack started at 10 in the morning last Sunday and was intended to coincide with the Geneva conference.” He said the rebels had lost 120 dead and had burned the bodies of 40 other fighters to conceal the fact they were foreign jihadis. All this was impossible to check yesterday morning, as I was standing in a command post defended by two tanks on the other side of the road from al-Qadam. The only point that could be verified was that traffic was flowing freely in both directions and that drivers and passengers did not look apprehensive. The reason I had been brought there appeared to be that the Syrian army was annoyed by reports on al-Jazeera and al-Arabiya satellite television channels that the main highway south had been cut. It is intermittent skirmishing like this, with large and inflated losses claimed as having been inflicted on the other side, that is the day-to-day reality of the Syrian war. Houses and shops in al-Qadam facing the road had chunks of cement gauged out of them by explosions and were clearly abandoned. The rusty television satellite dishes on what was left of their roofs seem to show that their inhabitants had fled months ago. The fact that the army was so pleased over such a small victory underlines the fact that there is a military stalemate in Syria. Government forces are making some gains, particularly in Damascus and Homs, but they are not winning decisively. Their main tactic is to seal off rebel districts with checkpoints and then bombard the area so most of the civilian population flees and those that remain are isolated. The front lines change very slowly. Damascus is getting used to this kind of war. People no longer automatically flinch in government-held sectors when they hear the distant explosion of a mortar shell. In the early evening, people crowd the bustling streets – in contrast to a year ago when most went home early. [Syria]
• A More Assertive German Foreign Policy
  Tuesday, February 4, 2014 - 04:00 By George Friedman and Marc Lanthemann The Ukrainian crisis is important in itself, but the behavior it has elicited from Germany is perhaps more important. Berlin directly challenged Ukraine's elected president for refusing to tighten relations with the European Union and for mistreating Ukrainians who protested his decision. In challenging President Viktor Yanukovich, Berlin also challenged Russia, a reflection of Germany's recent brazen foreign policy. Since the end of World War II, Germany has pursued a relatively tame foreign policy. But over the past week, Berlin appeared to have acknowledged the need for a fairly dramatic change. German leaders, including the chancellor, the president, the foreign minister and the defense minister, have called for a new framework that contravenes the restraint Germany has practiced for so long. They want Germany to assume a greater international role by becoming more involved outside its borders politically and militarily. [Germany] [Resurgence] [Decline]
• Ten trends that will shape Asia in 2014
  27 January 2014 Author: Evan A. Feigenbaum, Carnegie Endowment A fraught 2014 lies ahead for Asia. Political risks will rise, security tensions will increase and scepticism will continue to grow about whether major Asian governments are sufficiently committed to growth-conducive reforms. Ten trends will shape this more volatile Asia over the next 12 months and beyond. First, the good news: Asia’s relationship to the world economy is changing in dramatic, and positive, ways. For decades, G7 countries beat a path to Asia’s door — buying Asian exports and investing heavily in Asian economies. But Asia has become a major factor in the advanced economies’ own growth stories. And where others have long consumed goods from Asia, it is Asians who are now investing and consuming more from overseas. Take the United States: Asians are now major consumers of American corn and soybeans (for their animal feed), pork (for their tables), and natural gas (for their power plants). Increasingly, they are buying stakes in US companies and resources too. [predictions]
• El Salvador: former leftwing guerrilla takes lead in presidential election
  Salvador Sanchez Ceren was rebel leader in bloody civil war but with nearly half votes counted he is favourite to win March run off Reuters in San Salvador theguardian.com, Monday 3 February 2014 02.00 GMT Salvadorean presidential candidate of ruling party FMLN Salvador Sanchez Ceren after casting his vote accompanied in Sunday's election with his wife Margarita Villalta. Salvadorean presidential favourite Salvador Sanchez Ceren after casting his vote accompanied in Sunday's election with his wife Margarita Villalta. Photograph: Roberto Escobar/EPA A former leftwing guerrilla leader took a strong early lead in El Salvador's presidential election on Sunday but he could still face a run-off against a conservative rival who wants to deploy the army to fight powerful street gangs, early results showed. Salvador Sanchez Ceren, a rebel commander who rose to the top of the now-ruling leftist Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN) during El Salvador's civil war, had 49.2% support with votes in from about 45.4% of polling booths. His rightwing opponent, former San Salvador mayor Norman Quijano, had 38.9%. If no one wins more than half of the vote, the two leading candidates will go to a run-off on March 9.
• Washington denies pressing for direct talks with Syrian government
  • State Department says US offered discussions 'on a staff level' • Syrian foreign minister claimed to have rebuffed American offer Reuters in Washington and Beirut theguardian.com, Saturday 1 February 2014 21.11 GMT Washington on Saturday denied claims by Syria's foreign minister that US diplomats had sought to negotiate directly with their Syrian counterparts at last week's “Geneva II” peace conference in Switzerland. The State Department spokeswoman, Jen Psaki, said the US had offered to connect with Syrian officials "on a staff level" through the United Nations and joint special representative, Lakhdar Brahimi. "At no point did the United States offer to negotiate directly with the Syrian regime," she said, adding that the US had made similar offers throughout the conflict. Psaki was responding to a query from Reuters after the Syrian foreign minister, Walid al-Moualem, said the Americans had requested direct negotiations in Montreux, the Swiss city where talks began on 22 January, before moving to Geneva. "We refused to do so before Secretary of State John Kerry apologises for what he said at the conference," Moualem told reporters aboard the Syrian government delegation's flight back to Damascus. [Syria] [US negotiating]
• Is Israel Getting Ready to Rethink its Strategy in Syria?
  Dmitry Minin | 02.02.2014 | 00:00 On 24 January, a senior officer in the Israeli military intelligence held a special briefing, at which it was reported that there is «the possibility» of Israel rethinking its strategy in the Syrian conflict. The reason? The sharp rise in the number of militants in Syria linked to al-Qaeda who are uncompromising when it comes to Israel. Just two years ago they numbered 2,000, but today this number has increased to 30,000. They have travelled to Syria from countries in the Middle East, Europe, America... Israel is starting to come to the conclusion that if Bashar Assad is overthrown and the militants’ immediate goal realised – the creation of a large Islamic state from Syria and parts of Iraq – then these forces are going to come down on them hard. Hence the need for Israel to look at the possibility of carrying out its own large-scale operations in Syria, apparently. According to the Israelis, the Islamist groups in Syria that pose a threat to their country include: [Syria] [Islamist] [Unintended consequences]
• Obama Takes on Inequality
  by Andrew Levine Because the level of inequality in the United States is so extreme, because the condition of the “middle class” is deteriorating, and because there is so much need in the midst of plenty, increasing numbers of Americans are becoming troubled. Inequality has been on the rise since the mid-1970s though, for a long time, few seemed to notice or care. Evidently, we have now reached a tipping-point. Hardly anyone blames the root cause, capitalism itself. The idea that neoliberal globalization, the dominant factor in the current phase of capitalist development, is at fault is more widely appreciated. [Inequality]
• The Politics of Starvation in Syria
  by Patrick Cockburn Homs, Syria. “Bread is a dream for children inside Yarmouk Camp,” says Fuad, a Syrian Palestinian music teacher who tries to help bring food to the 20,000 Palestinians besieged inside Yarmouk. Standing by a barrier of sand and rubble that blocks an entrance to the camp in south Damascus, he adds that “people have been trapped in there for 185 days and are sick because they are eating weeds we used to feed our animals”. Syria is dotted with sieges and blockades of cities, towns and districts which in some cases are producing mass starvation. International attention is currently focused on the Old City of Homs where between 2,500 and 4,000 civilians are besieged along with several thousand rebel fighters. A World Food Programme convoy waits for permission to enter from the Syrian government. It says it does not want the aid to go armed opposition fighters. Unnoticed by the outside world, the largest single community currently besieged and on the edge of starvation in Syria lives in two Shia towns west if Aleppo, Zahraa and Nobl, with a combined population 45,000. In this case the besiegers are Sunni rebels who accuse the Shia townspeople of supporting the government of President Bashar al-Assad and are seeking to starve them into submission. Zahraa and Nubl form an isolated Shia pocket in an area where most of the people are Sunni supporting the rebels. The towns have received no supplies from the outside apart from an occasional delivery by a government helicopter. Raul Rosende, the head of the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in Syria said: “We are concerned about the situation in Zahraa and Nubl where 45,000 people are under siege.” A few Shia have escaped into Turkey and then crossed back into Kurdish-controlled north-east Syria. [Syria]
• Snowden revelations of NSA spying on Copenhagen climate talks spark anger
  Documents leaked by Edward Snowden show NSA kept US negotiators abreast of their rivals' positions at 2009 summit John Vidal and Suzanne Goldenberg theguardian.com, Thursday 30 January 2014 17.54 GMT Developing countries have reacted angrily to revelations that the United States spied on other governments at the Copenhagen climate summit in 2009. Documents leaked by Edward Snowden show how the US National Security Agency (NSA) monitored communication between key countries before and during the conference to give their negotiators advance information about other positions at the high-profile meeting where world leaders including Barack Obama, Gordon Brown and Angela Merkel failed to agree to a strong deal on climate change. Jairam Ramesh, the then Indian environment minister and a key player in the talks that involved 192 countries and 110 heads of state, said: "Why the hell did they do this and at the end of this, what did they get out of Copenhagen? They got some outcome but certainly not the outcome they wanted. It was completely silly of them. First of all, they didn't get what they wanted. With all their hi-tech gizmos and all their snooping, ultimately the Basic countries [Brazil, South Africa, India and China] bailed Obama out. With all their snooping what did they get?" [Surveillance]

• Britain entering first world war was 'biggest error in modern history'
  Historian Niall Ferguson says Britain could have lived with German victory and should have stayed out of war Maev Kennedy The Guardian, Thursday 30 January 2014 Niall Ferguson Niall Ferguson said arguments about honour resonated now as in 1914, 'but you can pay too high a price for upholding the notion of honour'. Photograph: Christian Sinibaldi for the Guardian Britain could have lived with a German victory in the first world war, and should have stayed out of the conflict in 1914, according to the historian Niall Ferguson, who described the intervention as "the biggest error in modern history". In an interview with BBC History Magazine, Ferguson said there had been no immediate threat to Britain, which could have faced a Germany-dominated Europe at a later date on its own terms, instead of rushing in unprepared, which led to catastrophic costs. "Britain could indeed have lived with a German victory. What's more, it would have been in Britain's interests to stay out in 1914," he said before a documentary based on his book The Pity of War, which will be screened by BBC2 as part of the broadcaster's centenary season. The Laurence A Tisch professor of history at Harvard University rejected the idea that Britain was forced to act in 1914 to secure its borders and the Channel ports. "This argument, which is very seductive, has one massive flaw in it, which is that Britain tolerated exactly that situation happening when Napoleon overran the European continent, and did not immediately send land forces to Europe. It wasn't until the peninsular war that Britain actually deployed ground forces against Napoleon. So strategically, if Britain had not gone to war in 1914, it would still have had the option to intervene later, just as it had the option to intervene after the revolutionary wars had been under way for some time." [1914]
• Obama talks lofty foreign policy talk
  by Evan Hill @evanchill January 29, 2014 6:00AM ET Analysis: But crumbling Afghanistan and Iraq, and a wilting Arab Spring, belie years of the president’s SOTU promises President Barack Obama delivers his State of the Union speech on Capitol Hill on Tuesday.Larry Downing/Reuters The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are over, Iran has halted its nuclear program, drones and government spying are under control, and the United States is supporting democracy “from Tunisia to Burma.” Such was the world of President Barack Obama’s fifth State of the Union speech Tuesday night. The reality, however, is far crueler: U.S.-led invasions have left behind two ravaged and ill-governed nations, revelations of mass surveillance have damaged trust domestically and abroad, and democracy is on life support in most of the same Arab countries whose uprisings captivated foreign audiences, including Obama, in 2011. If Obama’s first State of the Union speech, in 2010, approached what may have been his most grandiose aspirations for U.S. national security and foreign policy — rejecting “the false choice between protecting our people and upholding our values” — four years of grim experience made the 2014 edition an inadvertent reality check notable mostly for its lacunas. [US global strategy] [Obama]
• Insight: After Syria, al Qaeda expanding in Lebanon
  By Mariam Karouny BEIRUT Thu Jan 30, 2014 8:44pm IST Fighters from the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) try to calm civilians demonstrating against the rebel infighting in Aleppo January 6, 2014. Credit: Reuters/Jalal Alhalabi (Reuters) - Faced with recent setbacks in Iraq and Syria, al Qaeda is slowly but firmly gaining influence in Lebanon, helped by the country's increasing sectarian violence and the turmoil caused by Syria's civil war, sources close to the group say. Lebanon, a small Mediterranean state with a fragile sectarian power sharing system, has seen the worst of the Syria's war spillover with car bombs in Beirut and Tripoli, gunfights in city streets and rocket fire in the Bekaa Valley. The violence is exacerbated by Lebanon's own sectarian divisions and entrenching them. Shi'ite Hezbollah supports President Bashar al-Assad while his rebel opponents are backed by Sunni Muslims including Islamists and al Qaeda fighters. [Al Qaeda] [Unintended consequences] [Syria]
• Rather Than Jobs Creator, TPP is the Biggest Corporate Power Grab
  Michele Swenson Author, activist Posted: 01/29/2014 5:53 pm Of all the recent hostage-takings and betrayals of working people by Washington, the most profound corporate power grab to date takes the form of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a so-called "trade agreement" negotiated in secret, and heir to the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Reform Party presidential candidate Ross Perot in 1992 memorably and presciently predicted that the passage of NAFTA would be accompanied by the "giant sucking sound" of American companies fleeing the United States for Mexico, where employees would work for less pay, without benefits. Indeed, the history of such trade deals has been continuous U.S. jobs deficits rather than promised jobs growth. Fast-track trade authority legislation -- called The Bipartisan Congressional Trade Priorities Act of 2014 -- has been introduced in the Senate and House, and would permit the administration to pass the TPP without congressional input or oversight. The press release by bill sponsors, House Ways and Means Chair Dave Camp (R-MI) and Senate Finance Committee Chair Max Baucus (D-MT), names the legislation that greases passage of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) "critical... to boosting U.S. exports and creating jobs" -- a misrepresentation of a deal negotiated in secret over three years with 600 corporate "advisors," and designed to accelerate the offshoring of good-paying jobs. [TPP]
• GDP turns 80. Time to retire!
  Lorenzo Fioramonti 29 January 2014 As GDP systematically disregards key sectors in the economy and neglects critical costs, no reasonable businessman would use it to run a company. The gross domestic product (GDP) has just turned eighty. It was indeed in 1934 that a young economist by the name of Simon Kuznets (who would later on receive a Nobel Prize for this) presented his first report on the design of national income accounts to the US congress. Those were the hard times of the Great Depression and governments were desperately seeking some type of indicator to gauge if and how the economy was recovering. GDP did exactly that: it conflated the amount of spending in goods and services into one single number, which would go up in good times and down in bad times. [GDP]
• Rouhani and the 1914 remix
  By Pepe Escobar Iranian President Hassan Rouhani is at the moment the hardest-working man in (geopolitical) show business. He has just stepped into the lion's den - or goldfish bowl; the World Economic Forum at Davos. And he charmed them all just with his "prudent moderation" strategy, which broadcasts what every Master of The Universe, real or fake, really wants to hear; Iran is open for business. Rouhani stressed what even BRIC-inventor Jim O'Neill has acknowledged; Iran has the potential to become one of the world's Top Ten economies before 2040. His strategy to achieve it is extremely sound; a very balanced foreign policy subordinated to boosting economic development. It starts with a definitive deal with the P5+1 - the permanent members of the United Nations Security Council plus Germany - until the end of 2014; the lifting of all sanctions; and then a steady flow of investment by the West.
  As for "rising geopolitical tensions", no one at Davos seems to have the balls to name where they come from; the decline of the American Empire with all is centrifugal and centripetal convulsions; the fear of many in the West and especially Japan in the East of an unstoppable, rising China; and the unholy alliance of Israel and the House of Saud to keep the wider Middle East mired in sectarian conflict. These are the real "geopolitical tensions" that could revamp 1914; not Iran, China or Russia's foreign policy strategies. [Decline] [Inequality] [Unemployment]
• The NSA, CIA, and the Promise of Industrial Espionage
  by David Price In a weekend interview with German ARD public television network, Edward Snowden revealed that the U.S. government uses its broad electronic surveillance capabilities to engage in industrial espionage. Snowden told ARD TV that, “I will say is there is no question that the U.S. is engaged in economic spying,” Snowden gave the example that, “If there is information at Siemens that they think would be beneficial to the national interests, not the national security, of the United States, they will go after that information and they’ll take it.” Snowden left hanging what exactly is done with such potentially useful economic intelligence, and he provided little additional information on this subject beyond indicated the news outlets holding copies of yet published NSA leaked documents could provide more specific information. As we await further NSA documents, we should recall that such abuses of surveillance powers, and the powers deriving from the lawless swagger of intelligence operations have long existed in the United States and other nations. In some instances, national security intelligence operations have historically been corrupted to serve private, rather than national interests. One such historical example involved famed CIA operative Kermit “Kim” Roosevelt Jr. Kim Roosevelt was a classic early Cold War CIA agent, who had come to the Middle East espionage during the Second World serving State Department, OSS, and US Army operations in Cairo, and his postwar CIA years included key roles in Egyptian and Syrian CIA operations but his most famous CIA actions involved his helping engineer the 1953 Operation TPAJAX CIA coup in Iran—deposing Mosaddegh and installing the Shah as an American client, and restoring British Petroleum’s domination over Iranian oil. While Roosevelt enjoyed the adventure brought by these and other CIA exploits, eventually the financial realities of needing to live the life of a Roosevelt (with the growing expenses associated with four children heading off to attend college, and the demands of reciprocal entertaining) and the financial limits of what was then a paltry CIA salary weighed increasingly heavy, and Kim Roosevelt retired from CIA in 1958. Upon retirement Roosevelt undertook a series of private sector jobs, working for multinational firms including: Gulf Oil, Northrop, Raytheon, Tenneco, and in 1964 establishing his consulting firm, Kermit Roosevelt Associates, Inc. His firm became an important force connecting American corporate interests with several Arab governments in the Middle East, and he amassed a private fortune from this work. [Cyberespionage] [Industrial espionage] [Privatisation]
• Relationship between Hamid Karzai and US grows ever more poisonous
  To some, the Afghan president's reported suspicion of a US role in suicide attacks is further evidence of his loose grip on reality Emma Graham-Harrison theguardian.com, Wednesday 29 January 2014 01.24 GMT Hamid Karzai speaking at a press conference last week. The Washington Post has reported that he believes many insurgent style attacks are masterminded by the US. Photograph: S Sabawoon/EPA Each time it seems that fraught ties between Washington and Kabul could not get worse, a new revelation proves the apparent nadir just another waypoint on the road to greater hostility. The latest is a report that the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, believes many insurgent-style attacks are masterminded by the US. The Washington Post quoted senior officials inside the presidential palace saying Karzai has kept a list of complex bombings across the country that he suspects were planned by Americans, although the officials also admit they have no firm evidence of a US role. Topping his list of possible American plots is a recent suicide assault on a high-end restaurant in the Afghan capital, where three American citizens were among the 21 dead. The idea that Washington is trying to violently undermine a government it has spent billions propping up, while carelessly taking the lives of its own citizens, provoked even the normally temperate US envoy to Kabul into a strong response. "It's a deeply conspiratorial view that's divorced from reality," ambassador James Cunningham told the paper, adding that though he was aware of such allegations he had never heard them directly from the president. "It flies in the face of logic and morality to think that we would aid the enemy we're trying to defeat." [Karzai] [Client] [Friction]
• Three charged with stealing food from skip behind Iceland supermarket
  Crown Prosecution Service claims there is 'significant public interest' in prosecuting men arrested for taking discarded food Amelia Gentleman The Guardian, Tuesday 28 January 2014 19.56 GMT Paul May and fellow defendants will appear before magistrates charged with stealing food from a bin Paul May and his two fellow defendants will appear before magistrates charged under an obscure section of the 1824 Vagrancy Act. Photograph: Martin Godwin A man will stand trial next month after being caught taking some tomatoes, mushrooms and cheese from the dustbins behind a branch of Iceland. It is expected Paul May, a freelance web designer, will argue that he was taking the food because he needed it to eat and does not consider he has done anything illegal or dishonest in removing food destined for landfill from a skip. The case will require magistrates to scrutinise the phenomenon of "skipping" – taking discarded supermarket waste to cook and eat, and will highlight the issue of how much supermarket food is discarded, despite long campaigns to reduce the waste. It will also focus attention on a group of people taking radical steps to feed themselves as they struggle with the rising cost of living in London. [Inequality] [Repression]
• The NAP Guide to the 2014 State of the Union Address
  This year’s State of the Union address focused on topics including energy, education, climate change, and gun violence. The National Academies Press provides resources directly related to these issues. Below, we’ve annotated the complete text of the President’s State of the Union speech with relevant reports from the National Academies that provide authoritative, independent guidance on these issues.
  Here are the results of your efforts: The lowest unemployment rate in over five years. A rebounding housing market. A manufacturing sector that’s adding jobs for the first time since the 1990s. More oil produced at home than we buy from the rest of the world – the first time that’s happened in nearly twenty years. Our deficits – cut by more than half. And for the first time in over a decade, business leaders around the world have declared that China is no longer the world’s number one place to invest; America is. [Obama]
• Academic Fraud for College Jocks Reaches Across the Country
  By Paul M. Barrett January 08, 2014 North Carolina Tar Heels in 2013 Photograph by Peyton Williams/UNC/Getty Images North Carolina Tar Heels in 2013 Jan Boxill apparently doesn’t want to talk. The chairwoman of the faculty council at the University of North Carolina’s flagship campus hasn’t returned my e-mail or phone messages. That’s odd, because I’m becoming a minor thorn in the vaunted Tar Heel. Boxill is one of the most important academic officials at one of the nation’s most revered public institutions of higher learning. Her reticence, along with her past (lack of) leadership, help illuminate what’s gone very wrong in Chapel Hill, N.C. A new CNN national investigative survey of academic underperformance by college athletes, to which I’ll return in a moment, underscores why the UNC story should be of concern not just in North Carolina, but across the country. [Corruption]
• University of North Carolina Apologizes for Fake Classes, Promises Real Change
  By Paul M. Barrett January 27, 2014 An aerial view of the University of North Carolina campus in Chapel Hill, North Carolina Photograph by Lance King/Getty Images An aerial view of the University of North Carolina campus in Chapel Hill, North Carolina James Dean, the executive vice chancellor and provost of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, flew to New York, arriving at Bloomberg headquarters on Saturday to deliver a heartening message. He wanted to do it in person. “We made mistakes. Horrible things happened that I’m ashamed of,” he said over coffee in our newsroom, sparsely populated on a weekend. “Student-athletes and other students, too, were hurt” as a result of hundreds of phony classes offered beginning sometime in the 1990s. “The integrity of our university was badly damaged.” Chapel Hill’s top executive for academics, its No. 2 official overall, came to New York to underscore that his fine university—a pillar of public education and a force in Division 1 sports—”hasn’t been clear enough about what went wrong.” He said he and his boss, Chancellor Carol Folt, are determined to change direction. “To fix things, we have to understand what actually happened in the past,” Dean added. He came to us because Bloomberg Businessweek has been examining the corruption of academics at Chapel Hill—although such problems are not unique to the school—as an illustration of how the drive to win lucrative college basketball and football championships undermines the education of undergraduates. NCAA Inc. is a multibillion-dollar industry with tens of millions of avid customers—college sports fans. Holding UNC and the rest of the National Collegiate Athletic Association accountable, therefore, seems appropriate. [Corruption]
• Return to Damascus
  by Patrick Cockburn Damascus. I was just thinking that Damascus was a lot quieter than six months ago – at that time the sound of government artillery pounding the rebel-held districts resounded daily across the capital – when there was the crash of a mortar bomb exploding a few hundred yards away. Fired from a rebel area, it had landed in Bab Touma, a Christian part of the Old City, where I am staying. It turned out not to have killed anybody, unlike the last time I was here, when a couple of mortar rounds landing in Straight Street killed four people. “Things have not changed much since last summer,” said a local businessman. “The biggest change is that people are more used to living in a permanent state of war in which survival is the main objective in life. After all, we are entering the fourth year of fighting.” He also admitted that there were fewer exchanges of fire between government and opposition districts in which the Syrian Army uses by far the heavier weapons. But he did not expect the present military deadlock to change radically and he added: “We do not expect much from the Geneva II talks.” The fighting has eased somewhat around Damascus in recent weeks. This is in large part because the rebels are fully engaged in fighting their own “war within the civil war”, pitting a disparate coalition of rebels against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isis) in a struggle that killed 1,395 people in the first three weeks of January. Isis has retaken the one rebel-held provincial capital, Raqqa, and is insisting that women wear the niqab, the all-enveloping cloak and veil, and has banned music, pictures and cigarettes. [Syria] [Islamist]
• WikiLeaks and the Release of the Secret TPP Environment Report
  Martin J. Frid WikiLeaks has done it again – made available important documents that governments and corporate interests have tried to keep secret from the general public. Until this new release, we had almost no idea what was going on within the secret Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) negotiations involving an extraordinarily diverse group of 12 large and small as well as rich and poor nations of East and Southeast Asia, Australasia, and North and South America. The twelve are Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, the United State and Vietnam, with the US driving the agenda. South Korea and Taiwan have also indicated that they may want to join. This time, we get a glimpse of the status of the Environment Chapter with important implications for the people and nature of the region. [WikiLeaks Press Release]1 In this cartoon accompanying the release, WikiLeaks shows Mickey Mouse crossing his fingers while promising that “Of course, the environment is in the TPP!” Note the corporate logos symbolizing Texaco and Apple, while the (usually copyrighted) Disney character is singing his merry tune to the crowd of birds and geese (or are they ducks?) representing environmental organization. Crossing fingers can mean wishing for luck but, of course, it also signifies breaking a promise. How appropriate. [TPP]
• Media Disinformation: What’s Really Going On in Ukraine?
  By Andy Dilks Global Research, January 27, 2014 You’d be forgiven for knowing very little about the unrest in Ukraine – the violence, the rioting on the streets, the armed protesters storming government buildings amidst plumes of thick black smoke rising from makeshift barricades. Most of the public have once again been Beibered by the mainstream media – the arrest of this precocious, spoilt physical embodiment of crass corporate culture proving newsworthy enough for an MSNBC host to interrupt an interview with a member of Congress discussing the true scale of NSA spying. In this climate of superficial distractions and media inanity, you’d be equally forgiven for not really knowing why there is political unrest in Ukraine. Most of the explanations for the violence offered by the mainstream media present the information in simplistic soundbytes – talking points without the relevant wider political and historical context which renders current events coherent. [Ukraine] [NGO] [Subversion]
• Cuba's Castro calls for integration free of US
  by PETER ORSI Associated Press HAVANA -- Cuban President Raul Castro called on Latin American and Caribbean leaders Tuesday to work together on pressing regional problems at a gathering of all Western Hemisphere nations except the U.S. and Canada. In his keynote speech as head of the host nation for the summit of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States, or CELAC for its initials in Spanish, Castro argued that the bloc should aspire to unity despite diversity, and is "the legitimate representative of the interests of Latin America and the Caribbean." "We should establish a new regional and international cooperation paradigm," Castro said. "In the context of CELAC, we have the possibility to create a model of our own making, adapted to our realities, based on the principles of mutual benefit." The summit's main theme is fighting poverty, inequality and hunger. According to the UN's Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, 28.2 percent of the region's inhabitants live in poverty and 11.3 percent in extreme poverty.
• Congress secretly approves U.S. weapons flow to 'moderate' Syrian rebels
  By Mark Hosenball WASHINGTON Mon Jan 27, 2014 10:35pm GMT People stand on a street lined with damaged buildings in the besieged area of Homs January 27, 2014. Credit: Reuters/Yazan Homsy (Reuters) - Light arms supplied by the United States are flowing to "moderate" Syrian rebel factions in the south of the country and U.S. funding for months of further deliveries has been approved by Congress, according U.S. and European security officials. The weapons, most of which are moving to non-Islamist Syrian rebels via Jordan, include a variety of small arms, as well as some more powerful weapons, such as anti-tank rockets.
• Snowden says 'significant threats' to his life
  By Erik Kirschbaum BERLIN Sun Jan 26, 2014 6:25pm EST A picture of Edward Snowden, a contractor at the National Security Agency (NSA), is seen on a computer screen displaying a page of a Chinese news website, in Beijing in this June 13, 2013 photo illustration. Credit: Reuters/Jason Lee (Reuters) - Former U.S. National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden told German TV on Sunday about reports that U.S. government officials want to assassinate him for leaking secret documents about the NSA's collection of telephone records and emails. In what German public broadcaster ARD said was Snowden's first television interview, Snowden also said he believes the NSA has monitored other top German government officials along with Chancellor Angela Merkel. Snowden told ARD that he felt there are "significant threats" to his life but he said that he nevertheless sleeps well because he believes he did the right thing by informing the public about the NSA's activities. "I'm still alive and don't lose sleep for what I did because it was the right thing to do," said Snowden at the start of what ARD said was a six-hour interview that was filmed in a Moscow hotel suite. ARD aired 40 minutes of the six-hour interview. [Snowden] [Assassination]
• Snowden: NSA involved in industrial espoinage
  China.org.cn, January 27, 2014 In an interview with Germany's ARD TV channel, U.S. whistleblower Edward Snowden claimed that the National Security Agency (NSA) is involved in industrial espionage. Snowden said the NSA would spy on big German companies that rival with U.S. companies. Snowden said if German engineering company Siemens had information that would be "beneficial to the national interests, not the national security, of the United States," the NSA will go after that information and take it. Snowden said that he no longer had any NSA documents for he had turned them to a number of selected journalists and that he no longer had influence over the release of the files [Cyberespionage] [Snowden]
• Fraudster paid government to help promote fake bomb detectors
  Documents reveal ability of UK firms to hire top diplomats and serving soldiers without checks on products' authenticity Robert Booth The Guardian, Sunday 26 January 2014 19.00 GMT The government accepted thousands of pounds from a fraudster to assist a global trade in fake bomb detectors despite a Whitehall-wide warning that such devices were "no better than guessing" and could be deadly. The Kent businessman Gary Bolton paid the government to enlist serving soldiers and a British ambassador in what turned out to be the fraudulent sale of bomb detectors based on novelty golf ball finders. Bolton, 48, was sentenced to seven years in jail last year for fraud after claims that use of his handheld devices cost lives and resulted in wrongful convictions. The ability of UK firms to hire top diplomats to arrange introductions for as little as £250 a time, and serving soldiers to act as salesmen for £109 a day plus VAT, without checks on the authenticity of products, is revealed in Whitehall documents about Bolton's dealings with the UK government released to the Guardian under the Freedom of Information Act. [Arms sales] [Incompetence] [Bizarre]
• US Marine Corps Reshapes to Meet Contingencies
  Andrei AKULOV | 27.01.2014 | 00:00 The Marine Corps is developing new units across the globe as it shifts from fighting in Afghanistan to responding to a variety of crises and hostilities in other regions of the globe. The United States has asked Spain for permission to expand its 500-strong Marine rapid-reaction force for Africa by at least 50 percent and extend its presence at the Morón de la Frontera base by one more year, Spanish government sources said. The request was formulated during Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy’s visit to the White House January 13, 2014. (1) The Spanish government first authorized the deployment of 500 Marines and eight aircraft to the Morón airbase in April 2013 as an element of rapid-reaction strategy mainly aimed at dealing with crisis situations in Africa. The US approached Spain with the initiative triggered by the September 2012 attack against the US consulate building in Libya. [US global strategy] [Marines]
• NSA and GCHQ target 'leaky' phone apps like Angry Birds to scoop user data
  • US and UK spy agencies piggyback on commercial data • Details can include age, location and sexual orientation • Documents also reveal targeted tools against individual phones • James Ball theguardian.com, Monday 27 January 2014 17.30 GMTGCHQ documents use Angry Birds – reportedly downloaded more than 1.7bn times – as a case study for app data collection. The National Security Agency and its UK counterpart GCHQ have been developing capabilities to take advantage of "leaky" smartphone apps, such as the wildly popular Angry Birds game, that transmit users' private information across the internet, according to top secret documents. The data pouring onto communication networks from the new generation of iPhone and Android apps ranges from phone model and screen size to personal details such as age, gender and location. Some apps, the documents state, can share users' most sensitive information such as sexual orientation – and one app recorded in the material even sends specific sexual preferences such as whether or not the user may be a swinger. Many smartphone owners will be unaware of the full extent this information is being shared across the internet, and even the most sophisticated would be unlikely to realise that all of it is available for the spy agencies to collect. Dozens of classified documents, provided to the Guardian by whistleblower Edward Snowden and reported in partnership with the New York Times and ProPublica, detail the NSA and GCHQ efforts to piggyback on this commercial data collection for their own purposes. [Surveillance]
• Pakistan’s Saudi-Iran Balancing Act
  Qasim A. Moini Published 2014-01-26 07:38:50 A NUMBER of high-profile Saudi visitors have been in Islamabad recently. Saudi Foreign Minister Saud Al Faisal visited the capital on Jan 7; this was said to be the most high-level Saudi visit to Pakistan in six years. On Monday, another prince from the desert kingdom, Salman bin Sultan, who is also his country’s deputy defence minister, was in Islamabad to meet the prime minister and army chief heading a 17-member defence delegation. There has been much speculation about the ‘real’ nature of the visits, ranging from the Saudis wanting to seek Pakistani help to train the Syrian rebels, to talk of Riyadh bailing out Pervez Musharraf, saving the former president-general from the ignominy of a messy public trial. What is clear is that Nawaz Sharif enjoys the confidence of the Saudis and the visits mark renewed warmth in ties between Riyadh and Islamabad. Interestingly, the Saudis largely gave a cold shoulder to the Asif Zardari-led PPP government during its tenure. [Pakistan] [Saudi Arabia] [Sectarianism]
• Extremist religion is at root of 21st-century wars, says Tony Blair
  Former prime minister will reignite debate on Iraq as he calls on governments to switch tactics Toby Helm, political editor The Observer, Saturday 25 January 2014 21.00 GMT Tony Blair says that religious extremism has become the biggest source of conflict around the world. Photograph: Blair Gable/Reuters Tony Blair has reignited debate about the west's response to terrorism with a call on governments to recognise that religious extremism has become the biggest source of conflict around the world. Referring to wars and violent confrontations from Syria to Nigeria and the Philippines, Blair, writing in the Observer, argues that "there is one thing self-evidently in common: the acts of terrorism are perpetrated by people motivated by an abuse of religion. It is a perversion of faith." Identifying religious extremism as an ever more dangerous phenomenon, the spread of which is easier in an online age, he says: "The battles of this century are less likely to be the product of extreme political ideology, like those of the 20th century – but they could easily be fought around the questions of cultural or religious difference." The former prime minister, who led the country into the Iraq conflict in 2003, appears to acknowledge that previous aspirations to export liberal democracy focused too much on political objectives. [Blair] [Spin] [Double standards] [Religion]
• Ukrainian president offers surprise concessions as protests turn violent
  Viktor Yanukovych says he will make opposition leader prime minister and offer amnesty, but protesters demand more Shaun Walker and Oksana Grytsenko in Kiev The Observer, Saturday 25 January 2014 23.08 GMT Ukraine's embattled president, Viktor Yanukovych, on Saturday night made a surprising and wide-ranging compromise offer to the protesters who have occupied his capital, promising to make an opposition leader prime minister, give amnesty to those involved in clashes with police and institute major constitutional reforms. The trio of politicians who have become the de facto leaders of the protests rejected the offer but said they were willing to negotiate. After several hours of discussions on Saturday, it was announced that Yanukovych had offered the prime minister's job to Arseny Yatsenyuk, of jailed former prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko's Fatherland party. He also offered a deputy prime minister post to Vitali Klitschko, a former heavyweight boxer, and promised public debates with him.
• U.S. coming under fire from Mideast allies, who see retrenchment
  Secretary of State John Kerry disputes the assertions that the U.S. is scaling back its role as Mideast power broker and peacemaker. By Paul Richter January 24, 2014, 6:23 p.m. WASHINGTON — Five years after President Obama vowed to expand U.S. relations with the Arab world and the broader Middle East, his administration is under fire from allies worried that the United States is scaling back its historic role as a power broker and peacemaker despite growing turmoil across the region. With a bitter power struggle intensifying between Iran and Saudi Arabia and widening crises in Syria, Iraq, Libya and Egypt, Washington's relative lack of influence and involvement has become a diplomatic problem and may be contributing to a growing threat from Islamic extremists, diplomats say. [US global strategy] [Middle East] [Strategic incoherence]
• Rectification of Names II: Let’s Call a Putsch a Putsch
  As part of China Matters’ campaign to rectify names, most recently marked by the classification of current Japanese foreign policy as “Japan’s Military Restoration” I hereby decree that events in Egypt, Thailand, and the Ukraine are not revolutions—they are putsches. A revolution, as its name implies, involves the overturn of an existing system of rule, usually authoritarian, in favor of a newly constituted system of rule, usually more democratic. A putsch, on the other hand, involves a vociferous group using street action to overturn an elected government it finds disagreeable. Egypt 2013 was a putsch against an elected government by a critical mass of people in the streets and barracks who didn’t want the inconvenience of waiting a year or two for their crack at power through the ballot. This ugly state of affairs has caused a certain amount of brainhurt for people infatuated with the vision of heroic, democracy-loving, and reliably liberal masses overthrowing authoritarian regimes. [US global strategy] [Democracy]
• Everyone thought Iran's foreign minister was a pragmatist. They were wrong.
  BY ALI ALFONEH AND REUEL MARC GERECHT “To my esteemed enemy, Mohammad-Javad Zarif.” Iran’s former ambassador to the United Nations remains very proud of this dedication in his copy of Henry Kissinger’s Diplomacy. The book was a statesman’s gift, a polite and perhaps hopeful gesture from a former secretary of state to a man who certainly seemed, before the coming of the crude populist Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, destined to serve as Iran’s foreign minister. With the election of Hassan Rouhani, the American-educated Zarif, who was exiled to the Iranian Foreign Ministry’s university during most of Ahmadinejad’s eight-year presidency, made a comeback. As foreign minister he now leads the Iranian delegation to the Geneva nuclear talks. He is in personality the polar opposite of his nuclear predecessor, Saeed Jalili, who lost his leg, his sense of humor, and his patience for diplomacy in the Iran-Iraq War decades ago and became one of the Supreme Leader Ali ?Khamenei’s favorite minions. Kissinger likely didn’t really want Zarif as an enemy: he has always had trouble with the Islamic Republic, a revolutionary land that stubbornly refuses to pass into Thermidor and the raison d’état politics in which he feels at home. Zarif has a small legion of American admirers in New York and Washington—journalists and think tank experts especially—whom he assiduously cultivated while at Turtle Bay. Perhaps even as much as Rouhani, he is the Iranian “pragmatist” in whom the White House now has put its atomic hopes. So is Zarif a good bet? Is he actually a realist in ?the Kissingerian tradition? We may now answer these questions more precisely, since Zarif’s memoir Aqa-ye Safir: Goftegou ba Mohammad-Javad Zarif, Safir-e Pishin-e Iran dar Sazeman-e Melal-e Mottahed, or Mr. Ambassador: A Conversation with Mohammad-Javad Zarif, Iran’s Former Ambassador to the United Nations, has just been published in Tehran. The answer is not entirely edifying. To the extent that his book accurately reflects Zarif’s worldview and fundamental beliefs, the affable foreign minister turns out to be every bit as religiously ideological as the radicalized student activist he was in the late 1970s. [Iran] [Myopia]
• 2013 GLOBAL GO TO THINK THANK INDEX & ABRIDGED REPORT
  James G. McGann, Ph.D. Director Think Tanks and Civil Societies Program University of Pennsylvania Philadelphia, PA USA Background on the Think Tanks and Civil Societies Program The Think Tanks and Civil Societies Program (TTCSP) at the University of Pennsylvania conducts research on the role policy institutes play in governments and civil societies around the world. Often referred to as the “think tanks’ think tank,” TTCSP examines the evolving role and character of public policy research organizations. Over the last 25 years, the TTCSP has developed and led a series of global initiatives that have helped bridge the gap between knowledge and policy in critical policy areas such as international peace and security, globalization and governance, international economics, environmental issues, information and society, poverty alleviation, and healthcare and global health. These international collaborative efforts are designed to establish regional and international networks of policy institutes and communities that improve policy making while strengthening democratic institutions and civil societies around the world. [Think tanks]
• The Secret War in Libya
  by Eric Draitser The battles currently raging in the South of Libya are no mere tribal clashes. Instead, they represent a possible burgeoning alliance between black Libyan ethnic groups and pro-Gaddafi forces intent upon liberating their country of a neocolonial NATO-installed government. On Saturday January 18th, a group of heavily armed fighters stormed an air force base outside the city of Sabha in southern Libya, expelling forces loyal to the “government” of Prime Minister Ali Zeidan, and occupying the base. At the same time, reports from inside the country began to trickle in that the green flag of the Great Socialist People’s Libyan Arab Jamahiriya was flying over a number of cities throughout the country. Despite the dearth of verifiable information – the government in Tripoli has provided only vague details and corroboration – one thing is certain: the war for Libya continues.
• Moallem: Aleppo proposal a response to Kerry's call for local cease-fires
  MONTREUX, Switzerland — Walid Moallem, Syria’s minister of foreign affairs and expatriates, said his proposal last week to halt military operations in Aleppo was in direct response to an appeal from US Secretary of State John Kerry for a “localized cease-fire” in Aleppo. Summary? Print In an exclusive interview with Al-Monitor, Syrian Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates Walid Moallem said he proposed a plan for ending military operations in Aleppo last week in response to US Secretary of State John Kerry's appeal for a cease-fire there. Author Andrew Parasiliti Posted January 22, 2014 “I presented a plan for ending the military and security operation in Aleppo city, and I still wait for the response from the American side,” Moallem said in an exclusive interview with Al-Monitor. Moallem, who led Syria’s delegation to the opening of the United Nations peace conference on Syria today, Jan. 22, in Montreux, Switzerland, and will lead the government in talks with the opposition in Geneva on Jan. 24, said he would give priority in subsequent discussions to so-called confidence-building measures such as local cease-fires, humanitarian relief and prisoner exchanges. “We want to see how much this opposition is related to the armed group in Aleppo,” he added . Moallem, who also serves as deputy prime minister, said today, “We will go on Friday to start the Syrian dialogue, bearing in mind that what we will see, the [Syrian National] Coalition (SOC), in fact, they are not the real representatives of the Syrian people.”
  Moallem: I know well that the Islamic Front is composed by Saudi Arabia. Jabhat al-Nusra is supported by Qatar. ISIS, which is the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham, belongs to al-Qaeda, Ayman al-Zawahiri.
  Al-Monitor: The past few days the media have been reporting on a study by some distinguished international lawyers that includes accusations of systematic torture by your government, including graphic photos, which were smuggled out by a photographer who said he worked for the security services. This report comes in the context of other reports about violations of human rights by the Syrian government. Could you respond to this charge and the broader issue of human rights? Moallem: Well, first of all, before the ... Gulf council ministers met in Kuwait, and they agreed in their secret agreement to have united efforts to support the coalition, politically, through the media, and legally. My information is that Qatar paid three lawyers in Britain to fabricate the whole story. The date is the opening of the conference. If they had these documents, why did they not show them before opening this conference? Why during the meeting of the conference? This is the first question mark. Second question mark: If you want people to believe you, you make your lie very big. If we have 11,000 prisoners in Syria, I assure you this crisis is ended. This number is very much exaggerated. And why kill them, why torture them? They are coming voluntarily to speak in front of Syria TV to say who financed them, who supported them, so we don’t need to torture them. So it is totally a big lie. You can, from your intelligence, question why now during the conference? [Syria] [Propaganda] http://www.eastwestcenter.org/publications/rebalancing-the-us-army-towards-asia> Rebalancing the US Army Towards Asia
  Summary Paul Lushenko, Captain in the US Army, explains that "Unfortunately, poor messaging has obscured understanding of how the US Army intends to achieve its security goals in Asia which are primarily to avoid major armed conflict." [Pivot] [US military]
• US Feigns “Horror” Over Cooked-Up Report on Syrian War They Engineered
  Qatar - chief financier of Al Qaeda in Syria - commissions "report" on atrocities published just ahead of Geneva conference. By Tony Cartalucci Global Research, January 22, 2014 Land Destroyer As with every Western-backed conference assembled regarding Syria, dramatic fabrications revealed just ahead of proceedings are intended to give them and their predetermined outcomes both gravity and “urgency.” Upcoming “peace talks” to be held in Switzerland are no exception. A report cooked up by the unelected dictatorship in Qatar is based on an anonymous source, codename “Caesar,” and remains admittedly unverified. The BBC’s report, “US and UN express horror at Syria torture report,” claims: The report, by three former war crimes prosecutors, is based on the evidence of a defected military police photographer, referred to only as Caesar, who along with others reportedly smuggled about 55,000 digital images of some 11,000 dead detainees out of Syria. The BBC then reveals the propaganda value the report is intended to serve in upcoming talks by stating: US state department spokeswoman Marie Harf said it “underscores that it makes it even more important that we make progress [at Geneva II]. The situation on the ground is so horrific that we need to get a political transition in place, and we need to get the Assad regime out of power.” Of course, spokesman for UN Human Rights Chief Navi Pillay would admit the report remains unverified (emphasis added): Rupert Colville, spokesman for UN human rights chief Navi Pillay, told AFP: “This report is extremely alarming, and the alleged scale of the deaths in detention, if verified, is truly horrifying. Codename Caesar, Codename Curveball Image: From Independent’s “Man whose WMD lies led to 100,000 deaths confesses all: Defector tells how US officials ‘sexed up’ his fictions to make the case for 2003 invasion.” In retrospect, the corporate-media has no problem admitting the insidious lies that were told to justify the invasion and occupation of Iraq – the lead up to the war was another story. A verbatim repeat of these admitted lies are being directed at Syria amidst the West’s failure to overthrow the government with terrorist proxies. [Syria] [Propaganda]
• Why Iran's presence in Geneva II is critical for any progress
  Opinion Iranian involvement raises vexing issues related to regional and international confrontations. Last updated: 21 Jan 2014 07:19 Rami G. Khouri Rami G. Khouri is director of the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs at the American University of Beirut. He tweets at @ramikhouri Iran has shown that it is prepared to go to great lengths to maintain Assad's incumbency. [Reuters] The fierce diplomatic controversy that erupted Monday over UN Secretary-General Ban-ki Moon's announcement that he had invited - and subsequently disinvited - Iran to attend this week's Geneva II talks on exploring ways to end the Syrian conflict, highlights the contradictory regional and international complexities that define this situation: Foreign interventions in Syria have helped bring this war to its terrible current situation, and yet only robust international engagement can offer any hope of winding it down. The easy answer to the question of whether Iran should attend the Geneva meetings is a straightforward and emphatic "yes", because Iran's assistance to the Syrian government headed by President Bashar al-Assad is crucial for keeping the Damascus government in place. [Syria] [Iran]
• US Struggle With Iran's Peace Offensive
  By Eric Margolis September 21, 2013 "Information Clearing House - Iran’s newly elected president, Hassan Rouhani, has lost no time in trying to end the 34-year old political and economic siege imposed on his nation by the United States and its allies. President Barack Obama, having just been wrong-footed over Syria, now faces a surprise Iranian diplomatic and public relations offensive that will be hard to resist. America’s war party is furious: its dreams of seeing US power crush Syria, then Iran are in jeopardy. Ever since a popular revolution ousted the US-installed regime of Shah Pahlavi in 1979, Washington has sought to overthrow Iran’s Islamic republic.
• Rwanda and the New Scramble for Africa: “An Eye-Opener and Essential Reading…”
  By Edward S. Herman Global Research, January 21, 2014 Z Magazine 1 January 2014 Rwanda and the new Scramble for Africa Available now at Baraka Books and on the Global Research online store Rwanda and the New Scramble for Africa. From Tragedy to Useful Imperial Fiction. *** Robin Philpot’s important new book Rwanda and the New Scramble for Africa is an eye-opener and essential reading for anybody who wants to understand the recent history of Rwanda, ongoing U.S. and Western policy in Africa, and how efficiently the Western propaganda system works. As in the case of the wars dismantling Yugoslavia, there is a “standard model” of what happened in Rwanda both in 1994 and in the preceding and later years, a model that puts the victorious Tutsi expatriate and Ugandan official Paul Kagame, his Rwanda Patriotic Front (RPF), and his Western supporters in a favorable light and the government of Rwanda, led by the Hutu Juvenal Habyarimana, in a negative light. Philpot challenges this model in all of its aspects and shows convincingly that, in a virtual miracle of systematic distortion, this version of history stands the truth on its head. One important feature of the standard model is its portrayal of the West as a regrettably late intervener in the Rwanda struggle, with oft-cited ex-post apologies from Bill Clinton and Madeleine Albright during their visits to Rwanda in 1997 and 1998 for U.S. and allied failure to intervene to prevent the massive killings in 1994. Demolishing this distortion of history, Philpot shows that U.S. and Western intervention in Rwanda was crucial both in preparing the ground for the 1994 bloodbath and in the failure to stop it after it was well underway. The United States and Britain saw to it that UN peacekeeping forces were smaller in 1994 than had been agreed to in the 1993 Arusha Peace Accords and that they were cut sharply in February and then in April 1994 when killings were raging. The Rwanda government called repeatedly for a ceasefire, but the United States was supporting Kagame’s and the RPF’s conquest of Rwanda and, with a Kagame victory in sight, the U.S. intervention at that point was to protect the RPF killing machine from any outside interference. Philpot quotes former UN Secretary-General Boutros Boutros- Ghali’s repeated assertion that, “The genocide in Rwanda was one hundred percent the responsibility of the Americans.”
• Robert Gates’ Self-Serving and Duplicitous Memoir
  by MELVIN A. GOODMAN Robert M. Gates’s “Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War” is the type of memoir that the Washington press corps savors. It is vivid, colloquial, and seemingly straight-from-the shoulder, which easily lends itself to reportage. The memoir is also self-serving, duplicitous, arrogant, and even venal, but understanding this requires the kind of analysis that the mainstream media too often abhors. The mean-spirited and angry memoir indicates that Gates realized that he had become an outlier in the Obama administration–just as Vice President Dick Cheney had become an outlier in the Bush administration. In the last year of his administration, President George W. Bush ignored the importuning of his vice president on the use of military force in Iran and Syria as well as on the pardoning of his aide, Lewis “Scooter” Libby. In Gates’ last year as secretary of defense, President Obama was no longer taking Gates’ recommendations on Afghanistan, Libya, the raid against Osama bin Laden, the insubordination of General Stanley McChrystal, or the timing for ending “don’t ask, don’t tell.” Gates’ greatest anger is with Vice President Joe Biden for trying to coach the president on dealing with the military and for criticizing the ineptitude of the Bush administration on major policy issues. [Robert Gates]
• On the Threshold of Geneva II: The U.S. Wager on Moderate Islam in Syria an Utter Failure
  Dmitry MININ | 22.01.2014 | 00:00 On the eve of the international Middle East peace conference scheduled to take place January 22 in Geneva, the situation in Syria has again abruptly taken a turn for the worse. Various groups of Islamists have entered into a fierce armed conflict. Casualties on both sides have already greatly exceeded 1000 people. The troublemaker was the Islamic Front (IF), formed around two months ago from several groups and numbering approximately 50,000-60,000 fighters. On January 3 its troops attacked armed groups from the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), which has proclaimed itself part of al-Qaeda and is estimated to number up to 22,500 fighters, in several places… It was immediately obvious that it was on the IF that the West had placed its bets in the Syrian civil war after the Free Syrian Army (FSA) lost its fighting effectiveness in conflicts with government troops. In early December 2013 the leaders of the IF met with U.S. and British representatives in Ankara, mediated by Qatar; here, in the opinion of experts, they were promised military assistance and participation in the division of power in exchange for forcing «open al-Qaedaites» out of the country. The IF began by seizing the FSA's largest weapons storage facilities along the Turkish border, supposedly without the Americans' knowledge, but with no condemnation from them either. It was awkward for them to openly acknowledge the transfer of weapons to Islamists, to whom they had previously promised not to supply arms. It seems that the «unauthorized seizure» was agreed upon in advance, and the Americans, as usual, simply «dumped» their «democratic allies» from the FSA. [Syria] [Islamists] [Strategic incoherence]
• UN withdraws Iran's invitation to Syria talks
  China.org.cn, January 21, 2014 UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon Monday withdrew his invitation to Iran to attend a United Nations conference on ending the nearly three-year-old Syrian civil war, voicing "deep disappointment" that Iranian public statements were totally inconsistent with oral assurances he had been given. [UNUS] [Ban Ki-moon]
• Evidence of 'industrial-scale killing' by Syria spurs call for war crimes charges
  Senior war crimes prosecutors say photographs and documents provide 'clear evidence' of systematic killing of 11,000 detainees Read the Syria report in full Ian Black, Middle East editor The Guardian, Tuesday 21 January 2014 A picture of Bashar al-Assad riddled with holes Calls for Assad or other officials to face justice at the international criminal court in The Hague have foundered on the problem that Syria is not a member of the court. Photograph: Reuters Syrian government officials could face war crimes charges in the light of a huge cache of evidence smuggled out of the country showing the "systematic killing" of about 11,000 detainees, according to three eminent international lawyers. The three, former prosecutors at the criminal tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Sierra Leone, examined thousands of Syrian government photographs and files recording deaths in the custody of regime security forces from March 2011 to last August. Most of the victims were young men and many corpses were emaciated, bloodstained and bore signs of torture. Some had no eyes; others showed signs of strangulation or electrocution. The UN and independent human rights groups have documented abuses by both Bashar al-Assad's government and rebels, but experts say this evidence is more detailed and on a far larger scale than anything else that has yet emerged from the 34-month crisis. The three lawyers interviewed the source, a military policeman who worked secretly with a Syrian opposition group and later defected and fled the country. In three sessions in the last 10 days they found him credible and truthful and his account "most compelling". They put all evidence under rigorous scrutiny, says their report, which has been obtained by the Guardian and CNN. The authors are Sir Desmond de Silva QC, former chief prosecutor of the special court for Sierra Leone, Sir Geoffrey Nice QC, the former lead prosecutor of former Yugoslavian president Slobodan Milosevic, and Professor David Crane, who indicted President Charles Taylor of Liberia at the Sierra Leone court. [Syria]
• Naked Gold Shorts: The Inside Story of Gold Price Manipulation
  By Dr. Paul Craig Roberts and David Kranzler Global Research, January 18, 2014 Url of this article: The deregulation of the financial system during the Clinton and George W. Bush regimes had the predictable result: financial concentration and reckless behavior. A handful of banks grew so large that financial authorities declared them “too big to fail.” Removed from market discipline, the banks became wards of the government requiring massive creation of new money by the Federal Reserve in order to support through the policy of Quantitative Easing the prices of financial instruments on the banks’ balance sheets and in order to finance at low interest rates trillion dollar federal budget deficits associated with the long recession caused by the financial crisis. The Fed’s policy of monetizing one trillion dollars of bonds annually put pressure on the US dollar, the value of which declined in terms of gold. When gold hit $1,900 per ounce in 2011, the Federal Reserve realized that $2,000 per ounce could have a psychological impact that would spread into the dollar’s exchange rate with other currencies, resulting in a run on the dollar as both foreign and domestic holders sold dollars to avoid the fall in value. Once this realization hit, the manipulation of the gold price moved beyond central bank leasing of gold to bullion dealers in order to create an artificial market supply to absorb demand that otherwise would have pushed gold prices higher. The manipulation consists of the Fed using bullion banks as its agents to sell naked gold shorts in the New York Comex futures market. Short selling drives down the gold price, triggers stop-loss orders and margin calls, and scares participants out of the gold trusts. The bullion banks purchase the deserted shares and present them to the trusts for redemption in bullion. The bullion can then be sold in the London physical gold market, where the sales both ratify the lower price that short-selling achieved on the Comex floor and provide a supply of bullion to meet Asian demands for physical gold as opposed to paper claims on gold. The evidence of gold price manipulation is clear. In this article we present evidence and describe the process. We conclude that ability to manipulate the gold price is disappearing as physical gold moves from New York and London to Asia, leaving the West with paper claims to gold that greatly exceed the available supply. [Reserve] [Gold]
• Surveillance and scandal :? time-tested weapons for US global power
  Alfred McCoy 20 January 2014 The US president’s recent NSA speech makes it clear that genuine “change” or “reform” isn't on the agenda, that little that matters will alter in the NSA’s methodology, and that nothing will be allowed to shake the system itself. Why not give an inch? For more than six months, Edward Snowden’s revelations about the National Security Agency (NSA) have been pouring out from the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Guardian, Germany’s Der Spiegel, and Brazil’s O Globo, among other places. Yet no one has pointed out the combination of factors that made the NSA’s expanding programs to monitor the world seem like such a slam-dunk development in Washington. The answer is remarkably simple. For an imperial power losing its economic grip on the planet and heading into more austere times, the NSA’s latest technological breakthroughs look like a bargain basement deal when it comes to projecting power and keeping subordinate allies in line - like, in fact, the steal of the century. Even when disaster turned out to be attached to them, the NSA’s surveillance programs have come with such a discounted price tag that no Washington elite was going to reject them. For well over a century, from the pacification of the Philippines in 1898 to trade negotiations with the European Union today, surveillance and its kissing cousins, scandal and scurrilous information, have been key weapons in Washington’s search for global dominion. [Surveillance] [Decline] [Imperialism]
• Building America’s secret surveillance state
  By James Bamford June 10, 2013 “God we trust,” goes an old National Security Agency joke. “All others we monitor. Given the revelations last week about the NSA’s domestic spying activities, the saying seems more prophecy than humor. First, the Guardian reported details on a domestic telephone dragnet in which Verizon was forced to give the NSA details about all domestic, and even local, telephone calls. Then the Guardian and the Washington Post revealed another massive NSA surveillance program, called Prism, that required the country’s major Internet companies to secretly pass along data including email, photos, videos, chat services, file transfers, stored data, log-ins and video conferencing. While the Obama administration and Senate intelligence committee members defend the spying as crucial in its fight against terrorism, this is only the latest chapter in nearly a century of pressure on telecommunications companies to secretly cooperate with NSA and its predecessors. But as stunning technology advances allow more and more personal information to pass across those links, the dangers of the United States turning into a secret surveillance state increase exponentially. [Surveillance]
• The World's 85 Richest People Are as Wealthy as the Poorest 3 Billion What exactly does that mean?
  Derek Thompson Jan 21 2014, 11:27 AM ET More Reuters The report that everybody's talking about this morning is Oxfam's opus on global inequality, which leads with an eye-popping statistic: The richest 85 people in the world own more wealth than the bottom half of the entire global population. Yes, that equation works out to: 85 > 3,000,000,000. Before we dig into the document, a programming note about wealth inequality. Wealth isn't income. Salary is income. But investments—stocks, houses, or equity in a business—build wealth. Wealth comes from the money you don't immediately spend. Since poor people spend more of their income immediately, and rich people save/invest more of their income immediately, it's predictable that wealth inequality be much worse than income inequality. That said, the document is chock full of figures that will make the inequality community's heads explode. Here are five. 1) Seven in ten people live in countries where inequality has increased, and the United States is leading the wave. This graph from the report looks at national income (not wealth) accumulation to the top one percent, but it makes a clear point that inequality is rising everywhere, but nowhere more than the U.S. [Inequality]
• Syria chem rockets ‘could have never been fired from govt controlled territory’
  Published time: January 19, 2014 18:57 Opposition fighters, civilians and journalists stand near a United Nations (UN) vehicle as UN arms experts inspect the site where rockets had fallen in Damascus' eastern Ghouta suburb on August 28, 2013, during an investigation into a suspected chemical weapons strike. (AFP Photo / Mohamed Abdullah / Shaam News Network) Opposition fighters, civilians and journalists stand near a United Nations (UN) vehicle as UN arms experts inspect the site where rockets had fallen in Damascus' eastern Ghouta suburb on August 28, 2013, during an investigation into a suspected chemical weapons strike. (AFP Photo / Mohamed Abdullah / Shaam News Network) There is no way Washington could have a definite proof of who was behind the chemical attack in Ghouta because the toxic missiles could have “never” been fired from territory controlled by President Assad’s forces, co-author of the MIT report told RT. Richard Lloyd, a former UN weapons inspector, who now works at the Tesla Laboratories Inc., studied the White House report and the UN report on the August 21 sarin gas attack in Syria together with Theodore Postol, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). After calculating the possible range and trajectories of the missile used in the attack, the two men published their own report titled “Possible Implications of Faulty US Technical Intelligence in the Damascus Nerve Agent Attack of August 21, 2013.” In an interview with RT, Lloyd pointed out the inconsistencies of the White House report and map, and of the statements of US Secretary of State John Kerry, who claimed to have evidence of Syrian President Bashar Assad’s forces being responsible for the attack. [cbw] [Syria] [False flag] [Evidence]
• Open Fire and Open Markets: The Asia-Pacific Pivot and Trans-Pacific Partnership
  Christine Ahn 14 January, 2014 – Foreign Policy In Focus The struggle for food sovereignty in the Pacific got a major boost last December when Billy Kenoi, mayor of Hawai’i’s Big Island, signed a law that prevents farmers from growing any new genetically engineered crops (with the exception of papaya). This follows a successful push on Kauai, at the other end of the islands, to force large growers to disclose the pesticides they use and which genetically engineered crops they are growing. This is a major step in the battle for more ecologically sustainable agriculture in Hawai’i, which has suffered for over a century under the heavy weight of U.S. corporate and military domination. [TPP]
• Iraq calls on UN to hold Saudi Arabia accountable for Wave of Terror Attacks
  by nsnbc Iraqi P.M. Nouri al-Maliki informed UN Secretary General Ban Kyi-moon, that Saudi Arabia must be held accountable for the wave of terror attacks that has cost the lives of 640 in Iraq over the first 17 days of 2014. nsnbc : UN Secretary General Ban Kyi-moon and Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki met in the Iraqi capital Baghdad, where the two touched on the wave of terrorism that has cost the lives of 640 over the first 17 days of 2014. Al-Maliki held Saudi Arabia and Qatar accountable for sponsoring terrorism in Iraq and the UN Secretary General considers reviewing Iraqi reports with the UN Security Council. [Terrorism] [Proxy] [Sectarianism] [Saudi Arabia] [Qatar]
• Crossing Larry Speakes
  Posted by Jane Mayer I wish I could add a fond remembrance of Larry Speakes, who died Friday at the age of seventy-four, in his home state of Mississippi, after suffering from Alzheimer’s disease, and who served as Reagan’s press secretary for several of the years when I covered the White House for the Wall Street Journal. There have been plenty of accolades, and I’m sure there will be more. But it’s worth adding a note about how Speakes treated reporters who strayed from the company line. Every White House has its own approach to the press and, in many ways, the Reagan White House was far more accommodating than the Obama White House is, but that was because Reagan’s successive chiefs of staff, including James Baker, Donald Regan, Howard Baker, and Ken Duberstein, all understood that they would get better coverage if they met regularly with reporters for background briefings, which they did, sometimes weekly. Speakes, on the other hand, reveled in cutting off access at the slightest infraction, leaning in to the microphone at the podium in the press room, in front of the curtain bearing the Presidential seal and, with a reddened face and a southern drawl, declaring to whatever reporter had challenged him too aggressively, “You are out of business.” He wasn’t kidding about this. [Media]
• You Can’t Spell “Oscar” Without “JSOC”. Almost.
  Nowadays, it appears mandatory that at least one movie built around the murderous heroics of US Special Forces gets an Oscar nod. Last year, it was Zero Dark Thirty. This year, there are two nominations in the “Special Forces Shoot Brown Guy in Head” category. Captain Phillips, the Somali pirate drama, garnered a nomination for Best Picture. Special Operations are also represented by the nomination of Dirty Wars, based on Jeremy Scahill’s book of the same name, for Best Documentary. [Special forces] [Propaganda] [Media]
• When Iraq Unravels
  by Andrew Levine There is always a chance that Barack Obama’s luck will hold and therefore that the face saving way he concocted for getting U.S. combat troops, and not much else, out of Iraq won’t unravel while he is still in office. But events on the ground portend otherwise. Now is therefore a good time to reflect on the importance of saving face, and on what losing face can mean. Military might is indispensible for superintending a global empire. But being able to fight several wars at once and to annihilate the planet thousands of times over is not enough. America needs “credibility.” It has commitments to honor – to the global capitalist order and to national elites. And, from time to time, it has rebellions to quell. It doesn’t always have to prevail in fact. But it cannot seem to have been bested in a way that makes it look weak. Above all, it must never lose face. It can be instructive to think of a superpower as a criminal organization writ large. For both, strength matters. But the appearance of strength matters more. It was this way too when the Soviet Union existed, and it will be this way again if and when China assumes superpower status. It has been this way for all empires at all times. Saving face has always been deemed crucial. There is no American exceptionalism here. [Imperialism] [Image] [Credibility] [US global strategy]
• Defense Spending: Putting Toys Before Boys
  by Franklin C. Spinney Being pro-defense in the Hall of Mirrors of Versailles on the Potomac means, in the salty words of my late friend Col. David Hackworth, one of the U.S. Army’s most decorated combat soldiers, putting “the toys before boys.” Hackworth meant the number one budget priority in the Pentagon and the Halls of Congress is to reward the domestic political faction that benefits from buying and operating high cost, high complexity weapons at the expense of (1) weapons that work for the the men and women at the pointy end of the spear and (2) providing an affordable defense program that does not rob taxpayers of money needed for other national needs — like roads and sewers, schools, social security, etc. The faction that benefits from a policy to spend on “toys” is the coalition of (1) weapons contractors, (2) military officers and civilians who promote those weapons to enhance their careers and post retirement employment opportunities, and (3) legislators who benefit from the increasing flows of dollars, jobs, and profits to their districts. This trinity is the primary faction that benefits from the development, procurement, and contracted support dollars associated with buying hyper-expensive programs like the F-35, the B-2 bomber, the new aircraft carrier, etc. But but it is not the only grouping that benefits. There are other less obvious players in the Military – Industrial – Congessional Complex (MICC) — including, inter alia: influence peddlers and wannabees in lobbying firms, so-called intellectuals in think tanks who derive their funding and influence by rationalizing the party line for the programs and money flowing to MICC. Their collective behaviour is lubricated by the network — really an intricately woven tapestry — of revolving doors leading into and out of jobs in the Pentagon, Congress and industry. Other beneficiaries of this promotional network include those who make money or gain access to power by hyping the benefits of the ‘toys,’ including members of the press, particularly the broadcast media, movie makers (e.g., Top Gun), novelists (e.g., the late Tom Clancy). There is slew of lesser important fringe players as well, including professors in universities, and all sorts of enthusiasts and groupies, feeding off the tributaries of the golden flow to the main players. [MISCOM] [Military expenditure]
• Tunnel Vision: Will the Air Force kill its most effective weapon?
  By Andrew Cockburn Early one evening in May 2012, an extraordinary hour-long radio conversation attracted the attention of various listeners among the NATO forces in the Afghan theater. On one end of the conversation were the pilots of two U.S. Air Force A-10 Thunderbolt II attack planes, who had been patrolling the eastern province of Paktia, not far from the Pakistani border. They were on call for any ground unit needing “close air support,” a task for which the A-10 was expressly designed. On the other end was a Joint Terminal Attack Controller (JTAC), a specialist whose job is to assign and direct air strikes. The JTAC was reporting Troops in Contact (TIC) — meaning that American soldiers were under fire. Although the entire, acronym-sprinkled transmission was on a secure “strike frequency,” such communications can enjoy a wider audience, not only among the crews of other planes in the neighborhood but at various headquarters across the theater and beyond. Such was the case with this particular mission, making it possible to piece together an account of the ensuing tragedy.
• Hamas’ response to the Syrian uprising
  Nasrin Akhter 18 January 2014 Are we now witnessing a third phase in Hamas’s response towards the Syrian Uprising? In an interview with the pro-Syrian Al Mayadeen channel based in Beirut, the Hamas deputy chief, Mousa Abu Marzouk was said to have asserted in October 2013 that Khaled Meshaal was ‘wrong’ to have raised the flag of the Syrian revolution on his historic return to Gaza at the end of last year. While on the face of it, Marzouk’s comment may not in itself hold much significance, referring only to the literal act of raising the flag, an inadvertent error made during an exuberant rally in which a number of other flags were also raised, subsequent remarks by Marzouk during the course of the interview describing the Syrian state as the ‘beating heart of the Palestinian cause’ and acknowledging the previous ‘favours’ shown the movement by the Syrian regime, may be more indicative of a shift in Hamas’s position of open opposition towards the Assad regime. Are we now witnessing a third phase in Hamas’s response towards the Syrian Uprising? [Syria] [Palestine]
• UN Mission to Investigate Allegations of the Use of Chemical Weapons in the Syrian Arab Republic - Press Conference
  Ms. Angela Kane, UN High Representative for Disarmament Affairs; Dr. Åke Sellström, Head of the United Nations Mission to Investigate Allegations of the Use of Chemical Weapons in the Syrian Arab Republic; Mr. Scott Cairns of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) and Dr. Maurizio Barbeschi of the World Health Organization (WHO). [Video] [cbw] [Syria]
• Possible Implications of Faulty US Technical Intelligence in the Damascus Nerve Agent Attack of August 21, 2013
  Richard Lloyd Former UN Weapons Inspector Tesla Laboratories Inc.|Arlington, VA
  Theodore A. Postol Professor of Science, Technology, and National Security Policy Massachusetts Institute of Technology
  MIT Science, Technology, and Global Security Working Group Washington, DC January 14, 2014
  What is the Main Policy Issue?
  The Syrian Improvised Chemical Munitions that Were Used in the August 21, Nerve Agent Attack in Damascus Have a Range of About 2 Kilometers The UN Independent Assessment of the Range of the Chemical Munition Is in Exact Agreement with Our Findings This Indicates That These Munitions Could Not Possibly Have Been Fired at East Ghouta from the “Heart”, or from the Eastern Edge, of the Syrian Government Controlled Area Shown in the Intelligence Map Published by the White House on August 30, 2013. This mistaken Intelligence Could Have Led to an Unjustified US Military Action Based on False Intelligence. A Proper Vetting of the Fact That the Munition Was of Such Short Range Would Have Led to a Completely Different Assessment of the Situation from the Gathered Data Whatever the Reasons for the Egregious Errors in the Intelligence, the Source of These Errors Needs to Be Explained. If the Source of These Errors Is Not Identified, the Procedures that Led to this Intelligence Failure Will Go Uncorrected, and the Chances of a Future Policy Disaster Will Grow With Certainty. [cbw] [Syria] [Intelligence] False flag] [Disinformation]
• UN Weapons’ Inspector: Syria Chemical Weapons Were Fired from Rebel Held Territory
  By Washington's Blog Global Research, January 17, 2014 But U.S. Is Still Calling for Regime Change The head of the UN weapons inspectors said that the American case for Syrian government firing chemical weapons was weak, because the rockets can only go 2 miles … but government-held territory is much further away. Similarly, McClatchy reported yesterday: A team of security and arms experts, meeting this week in Washington to discuss the matter, has concluded that the range of the rocket that delivered sarin in the largest attack that night was too short for the device to have been fired from the Syrian government positions where the Obama administration insists they originated. *** The authors of a report released Wednesday said that their study of the rocket’s design, its likely payload and its possible trajectories show that it would have been impossible for the rocket to have been fired from inside areas controlled by the government of Syrian President Bashar Assad. [Syria] [cbw] [False flag]
• Obama's NSA 'reforms' are little more than a PR attempt to mollify the public
  Obama is draping the banner of change over the NSA status quo. Bulk surveillance that caused such outrage will remain in place
  Glenn Greenwald Friday 17 January 2014 19.23 GMT In response to political scandal and public outrage, official Washington repeatedly uses the same well-worn tactic. It is the one that has been hauled out over decades in response to many of America's most significant political scandals. Predictably, it is the same one that shaped President Obama's much-heralded Friday speech to announce his proposals for "reforming" the National Security Agency in the wake of seven months of intense worldwide controversy. The crux of this tactic is that US political leaders pretend to validate and even channel public anger by acknowledging that there are "serious questions that have been raised". They vow changes to fix the system and ensure these problems never happen again. And they then set out, with their actions, to do exactly the opposite: to make the system prettier and more politically palatable with empty, cosmetic "reforms" so as to placate public anger while leaving the system fundamentally unchanged, even more immune than before to serious challenge. [Surveillance] [Snowden]
• U.S. to Shift Aircraft Carrier to Pacific
  The U.S. Navy will dispatch a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier from the Atlantic to the Pacific Fleet, it said Wednesday, and replace the USS George Washington at a naval base in Yokosuka, Japan with the newer USS Ronald Reagan next year. The move is part of President Barack Obama's "Pivot to Asia" policy and aimed at containing China's naval expansion in the region. The aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt will be moved from its base in Norfolk, Virginia to San Diego, California to be incorporated into the Third Fleet, which covers the eastern and northern Pacific. The Roosevelt, commissioned in 1986, is a Nimitz-class carrier with a loaded displacement of 117,200 tons capable of carrying 90 aircraft. The U.S. currently has 10 aircraft carriers in active service, five in the Pacific and five in the Atlantic, but the move will shift the weight. "The security environment in the Indo-Asia-Pacific requires that the U.S. Navy station the most capable ships forward," the U.S. Navy said. The USS Gerald Ford, currently under construction, will also be commissioned in 2016 to join the Pacific Fleet. [China confrontation] [US global strategy]
• US stationing more aircraft carriers and troops in Asia-Pacific region
  Posted on : Jan.17,2014 16:45 KST The USS Theodore Roosevelt aircraft carrier, which the US government announced will be moved from Virginia to a port on the Pacific in San Diego. The photo was taken in the Atlantic Ocean on Oct. 26, 2013. (provided by the US Navy) “Pivot to Asia” policy moving forward due to US security concerns regarding China, N. Korea and Russia By Park Hyun, Washington correspondent Signs of a bigger US military presence in the Asia-Pacific region have been increasingly evident in 2014, suggesting the Barack Obama administration “pivot to Asia” policy is gaining momentum. On Jan. 14, the US Navy announced on its official home page that as part as of the Asia-Pacific “rebalancing to Asia” the USS Theodore Roosevelt was being relocated to the Pacific port of San Diego. The Nimitz-class aircraft carrier previously belonged to the 2nd Fleet on the Atlantic coast, with a homeport in Norfolk, Virginia. The Navy also said the USS Ronald Reagan, part of the 3rd Fleet based in San Diego, was being sent to replace the USS George Washington, a forward-deployed 7th Fleet carrier based in Yokosuka, Japan, that is currently being overhauled. [China confrontation] [Buildup]
• The Strategic Consequences of Edward Snowden's Revelations (I)
  Dmitry MININ | 17.01.2014 | 00:00 «If I defected at all, I defected from the government to the public». E. Snowden ?ne of the most important world events of 2013 was Edward Snowden's revelation that the United States is attempting to keep all of humanity under surveillance using cutting-edge electronic devices. In the final days of last year, the former U.S. National Security Agency contractor addressed the international community in a televised speech in order to once again point out the seriousness of the problem. In his speech Snowden referred to George Orwell's novel ‘1984’, saying that the means of monitoring people described by Orwell (the novel was written in 1948) seem laughable compared to what is being done today... «The conversation occurring today», he said, «will determine the amount of trust we can place both in the technology that surrounds us and the government that regulates it». Alas, Snowden's video speech was broadcast only on Britain's Channel 4. The largest world media outlets tried as much as they could to belittle the significance of his words. The BBC, for example, did this at the expense of the authority of its own colleagues, pointing out that previously Channel 4 had given airtime to former Iranian president Mahmud Ahmadinejad and even cartoon character Marge Simpson. However, as hard as Washington might try to forget the nightmare of Snowden's revelations as soon as possible, their influence on world politics continues, and in some areas has taken on a strategic character. [Snowden]
• Analysts question US intel on Syria chem attack
  Experts agree that the chemical weapons attack in the Syrian capital of Damascus could not have happened the way the US government contends. Meanwhile, the planned destruction of the weapons has been delayed. Sarin gas is one of the most toxic poisons known In the early hours of August 21, 2013, rebel-controlled areas of the Syrian capital Damascus were attacked with chemical weapons. Not long afterwards, videos, photos, and eyewitness accounts appeared on the Internet, and experts examining the symptoms concluded quickly that the nerve agent Sarin was used to kill and injure hundreds of people. According to the US government, 1,429 people were killed, including 426 children. Nine days later, US Secretary of State John Kerry accused Syrian government troops of having committed a war crime. Speaking at a press conference, he presented a map of Damascus showing which areas were government-controlled, and which were controlled by rebels. He then went on to appear before a Senate hearing in Washington on September 3, and said, "We are certain that none of the opposition has the weapons or capacity to effect a strike of this scale, particularly from the heart of regime territory." No attack from government quarters Mass grave in Syria Questions about the attack have not changed the fact that it happened This statement has now come under fire. In a 23-page report, two US experts from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) concluded that the attack could not have originated from "the heart" of the regime-controlled area. In detail, the former United Nations weapons inspector Richard Lloyd and national security expert Theodore A. Postol explained that the rockets were much too short-range to have been fired from the center of the government-controlled areas. The "heart" of Damascus, they said, is between five and ten kilometers from the scene of the strike, while the missiles in question could only have flown two kilometers. [cbw] [Syria] [Evidence]
• Rich/poor gap the biggest threat to global economy: Davos
  Davos group says gap between rich and poor is a concern for all The Associated Press Posted: Jan 16, 2014 10:09 AM ET Last Updated: Jan 16, 2014 1:53 PM ET A homeless man holds a cup of tea given to him out of charity on a winter morning in New Delhi this week. (The Associated Press ) Related Stories • Wealthiest 1% earn 10 times more than average Canadian The gap between the rich and the poor is the most likely threat to the global economy in coming years, the World Economic Forum said Thursday in a risk assessment ahead of the gathering of political and business leaders in the Swiss ski resort of Davos. The Forum, which hosts the annual gathering, said income disparity in the wake of the global financial crisis is the "most likely risk to cause an impact on a global scale in the next decade" and warned of a "lost generation" of young people that could stoke tensions in society. "The generation coming of age in the 2010s faces high unemployment and precarious job situations, hampering their efforts to build a future and raising the risk of social unrest," the Forum said in Global Risks 2014, which was compiled with contributions by 700 global experts. [Inequality] [Unemployment] [Labour]
• Developing Countries Are More Than Economic Rivals and Terror Threats
  It’s time to develop a new framework for assessing the post-Cold War, post-9/11 world. Charles Kenny Jan 17 2014, 8:00 AM ET The cocktail circuit in Washington has a new vision of the developing world—home to six out of seven people on the planet. In some ways, the vision is more advanced than it used to be. During the Cold War, the prevailing image featured a Third World morass of peasant economies run by a small elite who could be bought off and kept out of the Soviet orbit with aid and weapons. Today, there is a new, bifurcated view. On the one hand are failed states and hopeless cases like Afghanistan and Haiti, breeding grounds for instability and terror. On the other are newly rich countries like China, competitors for our jobs and power. The three worlds used to be capitalist, communist, and the rest. Now they are the West, the failed states, and the emerging challengers. But that's still too simple a view. A small and declining number of developing countries are charity cases. And none are competitors with us in a zero-sum game . Rather than dividing most of the planet into two threatening classes, we need to see states of the developing world as vital partners—both in strengthening the global economy and in preserving the global environment. [US global strategy]
• Comparative Connections Summaries: January 2014 issue
  Regional Overview: Self-Inflicted Wounds by Ralph A. Cossa and Brad Glosserman 2013 ended with a series of self-inflicted wounds. President Obama, with a huge assist from the US Congress, reinforced apprehensions about the US commitment to the region by skipping both the East Asia Summit and the APEC Economic Leaders Meeting. Setting an unreachable yearend goal to finalize the Trans-Pacific Partnership was another in the series. So too was President Xi’s decision to announce China’s East China Sea Air Defense Identification Zone. Not to be left out, Japanese Prime Minister Abe closed out the year by visiting Yasukuni Shrine, further alienating Beijing and Seoul while drawing a rare rebuke from Washington as well. How much this will impact his “go south” policy to build better relations with ASEAN remains unclear. North Korea’s regent Jang Song Thaek saw his career go to the dogs – at least figuratively. Many fear that the prospect for Chinese-style reform in North Korea died with him.
• A Blank Check For War on Iran
  By Pat Buchanan - January 14, 2014 As we approach the centennial of World War I, we will read much of the blunders that produced that tragedy of Western civilization. Among them will be the "blank check" Kaiser Wilhelm II gave to Vienna after the assassination by a Serb terrorist of the Austrian Archduke Francis Ferdinand. If you decide to punish the Serbs, said the Kaiser, we are with you. After dithering for weeks, Austria shelled Belgrade. Within a week, Germany and Austria were at war with Russia, France and Great Britain. Today the Senate is about to vote Israel a virtual blank check -- for war on Iran. Reads Senate bill S.1881: If Israel is "compelled to take military action in legitimate self-defense against Iran's nuclear weapons program," the United States "should stand with Israel and provide ... diplomatic, military and economic support to the Government of Israel in the defense of its territory, people and existence." Inserted in that call for U.S. military action to support an Israeli strike on Iran, S.1881 says that, in doing so, we should follow our laws and constitutional procedures. Nevertheless, this bill virtually hands over the decision on war to Bibi Netanyahu who is on record saying: "This is 1938. Iran is Germany." Is this the man we want deciding whether America fights her fifth war in a generation in the Mideast? Do we really want to outsource the decision on war in the Persian Gulf, the gas station of the world, to a Likud regime whose leaders routinely compare Iran to Nazi Germany? The bill repeatedly asserts that Iran has a "nuclear weapons program." Yet in both 2007 and 2011, U.S. intelligence declared "with high confidence" that Iran does not have a nuclear weapons program. [Client] [Israel] [Iran]
• Democrats Could Wreck Obama's Biggest Foreign Policy Success
  Derailing Iran negotiations means risking another military conflict in the Middle East. David Rohde Jan 15 2014, 5:15 PM ET By design or accident, it is increasingly clear that the centerpiece of President Barack Obama’s second-term foreign policy is a nuclear agreement with Iran. Whether Obama can succeed, however, now depends on Congress staying out of the negotiations. Over the last few weeks, 16 Democratic senators have supported a bill that would impose new sanctions on Iran over its nuclear program . They have defied the White House’s intense campaign to block Congress from adding new conditions to any deal. In this way, Obama is the victim of an increasingly craven Washington—where members of his own party are abandoning him out of political expedience. At the same time, the White House is also a victim of its sometimes erratic responses to events in the Middle East. For the last six years, the president has repeatedly declared that he does not want the United States entangled in another conflict in the Middle East. As a result, allies and enemies at home and abroad , from members of Congress to Israeli and Iranian hawks, question his commitment to use force against Iran if negotiations fail. Experts warn that the stakes are enormous. Political opportunism, maximalist positions, and mixed messages could take on a life of their own, scuttle the talks, and inadvertently spark military action. [US negotiating] [Domestic] [Dissension]
• Gates: Syria Red Line Was ‘Serious Mistake’
  By Rebecca Ballhaus Former Defense Secretary Robert Gates said it was a “serious mistake” for the Obama administration to declare a red line on chemical weapons use in Syria, a step that readied U.S. missile cruisers for an attack last summer. More broadly, “One should be extremely careful about preventive war,” he said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal when asked to define the “Gates doctrine.” Such wars depend on high levels of accuracy and confidence in U.S. intelligence, and “frankly, we shouldn’t have that much confidence that we can get it right,” he said, citing the Iraq war as an example. Mr. Gates spoke with the Journal as part of a tour to discuss his new book, “Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War,” in which he criticizes the Obama administration and some of the top figures with whom he served. (See more clips and the full interview at the bottom of this post.) In the interview, Mr. Gates discussed issues that have arisen since he left office in 2011. He praised the administration’s recent diplomatic efforts with Iran, but said a military intervention in Syria would have been unwise. Mr. Obama declared a “red line” against the Syrian regime’s use of chemical weapons in 2012. When a large-scale chemical weapons attack was documented in 2013, Mr. Obama moved U.S. ships into position in the eastern Mediterranean Sea, then went to Congress for approval, meeting with opposition. “I always used to say to presidents, ‘If you cock the pistol, you gotta be willing to fire it,’” Mr. Gates said. “American people are frankly sick of war,” Mr. Gates said, explaining why a military effort in Syria would have been a mistake. But, he added: “Could we have done more in terms of both overt and covert assistance earlier to the opposition? I think the answer is, almost certainly, yes.” An international conference on Syria is set for next week in Geneva, though leaders are not confident of a quick resolution to the civil war. [Gates] [US global strategy] [Syria]
• European Spies Reach Out to Syria
  By Maria Abi-Habib Updated Jan. 14, 2014 10:41 p.m. ET Fighters from Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham try to calm civilians demonstrating against the rebel infighting in Aleppo on Jan. 6. Reuters BEIRUT—European intelligence agencies secretly met with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's delegates to share information on European extremists operating in Syria, Western and Middle Eastern officials said, the first known encounters since withdrawing their ambassadors. The meetings were intended to gather information on at least 1,200 European jihadists that Western officials say have joined militant groups in Syria, amid European concerns these citizens will pose a threat when they return home. European intelligence agencies secretly met with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's delegates to share information on European extremists operating in Syria, the first known encounters since withdrawing their ambassadors. Sam Dagher reports. Photo: AP. The talks are narrowly focused on the extremists and on al Qaeda's growing might in Syria and don't represent a broader diplomatic opening, the Western and Middle Eastern officials and diplomats said. [Unintended consequences] [Syria] [Islamists]
• Robert Gates: UK military becoming unviable as a fighting force
  Former US defence secretary warns cuts will leave British forces seriously compromised and lacking 'full-spectrum capabilities' Press Association theguardian.com, Thursday 16 January 2014 06.19 GMT Britain will be unable to fight as a full partner alongside the US if it goes ahead with military cuts, Robert Gates has said Britain will be unable to fight as a full partner alongside the US if military cuts continue, Robert Gates has said. Photograph: Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Cuts to Britain's armed forces would mean the UK could no longer be a full military partner to the United States, a former American defence secretary has warned. Robert Gates told the BBC that cuts in the number of military staff would limit the UK's global position. The government is planning major cuts to the military. The army is being cut from 102,000 to 82,000 over a number of years, with the 20,000 posts expected to be gone by 2020. Navy numbers are expected to fall by 6,000 while the RAF will lose 5,000 staff. Gates, who served under Barack Obama and George Bush, told BBC Radio 4's Today programme that naval cuts were particularly damaging, noting that for the first time since the first world war Britain lacked an operational aircraft carrier. "With the fairly substantial reductions in defence spending in Great Britain, what we're finding is that it won't have full spectrum capabilities and the ability to be a full partner as they have been in the past." This referred to the ability to fight on land, sea or in the air. His concerns echoed those of senior military staff in the UK. Last month General Sir Nicholas Houghton, the chief of the defence staff, warned that manpower was increasingly seen as an "overhead" and that Britain was in danger of being left with hollowed-out armed forces boasting "exquisite" equipment but lacking the soldiers, sailors and airmen needed to operate it. He told the Royal United Services Institute military thinktank that the navy was "perilously close" to losing its "critical mass" in terms of manpower. [Subordinate] [UK] [Military balance]
• New analysis of rocket used in Syria chemical attack undercuts U.S. claims
  A series of revelations about the rocket believed to have delivered poison sarin gas to a Damascus suburb last summer are challenging American intelligence assumptions about that attack and suggest that the case U.S. officials initially made for... [Syria] [cbw] [Evidence]
• Nuclear Issues: Words and Deeds (I)
  Andrei AKULOV | 16.01.2014 | 00:00 US President Obama has stated his goal of nuclear-free world. The 2010 Nuclear Posture Review said the United States was prepared to reduce its nuclear arsenal to 1,000 warheads or fewer. In the summer of 2013 he offered to launch talks on further strategic arms cuts that Russia refused. Obama's guidance directed the Pentagon to reduce the role of nuclear weapons in the overall U.S. security strategy and narrow the focus of nuclear strategy to deterrence, the White House 2013 fact sheet states. Many started to say the US has lost interest in nukes, while the plans to lower the threshold hit the snag in the form of Russia’s refusal to follow suit. The NATO’s 2012 Deterrence and Defence Posture Review document links changes in the alliance’s nuclear posture to Russia’s nuclear policy by stating that «NATO is prepared to consider further reducing its requirement for non-strategic nuclear weapons assigned to the Alliance in the context of reciprocal steps by Russia». In a June 19, 2013 address at the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, Obama said, «We may no longer live in fear of global annihilation, but so long as nuclear weapons exist, we are not truly safe». Sounds emotionally moving. The view is spread around that after Obama proposed a new round of nuclear arms cuts with Russia in June in Berlin, Moscow immediately rejected that proposal and continues to reject it (and to grow and modernize its nuclear arsenal). By the end of last year Russian President Vladimir Putin made a string of statements announcing intentions to keep the country’s strategic nuclear deterrent robust with new systems coming into the inventory. All these issues are to top the propaganda agenda before the Nuclear Security Summit to be held in the Hague on 24 and 25 March 2014. Obama announced that the United States would also host a nuclear security summit in 2016. Has the US really «lost interest in nukes»? Does Russia boost its potential without any reason or provocation? Does this argument hold water? Or is it a retaliatory measure on the part of Moscow to keep up the existing balance? A cursory look at facts will help to make a judgment… [US global strategy] [Military balance]
• How to poison the Iran talks
  A push in Congress for new sanctions complicates already delicate nuclear negotiations. By The Times editorial board January 14, 2014 Over the weekend, diplomats from Iran and six major world powers finalized the details of an interim agreement designed to stop progress on the Islamic Republic's nuclear program while negotiations proceed on a permanent deal to deprive Iran of nuclear weapons. But a bipartisan group of U.S. senators continues to press recklessly for new sanctions legislation. Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.), a cosponsor of the Nuclear Weapon Free Iran Act of 2013, has called the legislation an "insurance policy" in case negotiations fail. A better description is "poison pill." Not only would the legislation authorize new sanctions at a time when the world has decided to offer Iran relief from some previous penalties as an inducement to forswear nuclear weapons; it also ties sanctions relief to conduct by Iran that has nothing to do with nuclear power, and it expresses the "sense of Congress" that the United States should "stand with Israel" if that nation launches a military attack on Iran. [US negotiating]
• NSA reportedly using radio waves to snoop on offline computers worldwide
  The National Security Agency has placed software on nearly 100,000 computers around the world that allows the U.S. to conduct surveillance on those machines using radio frequency technology, The New York Times reported Tuesday. The secret technology allows the agency to gain access to computers that other countries have tried to protect from spying or cyberattacks, even if they aren't connected to the Internet, The Times reported, citing NSA documents, computer experts and U.S. officials. The software network could also create a digital highway for launching cyberattacks by transmitting malware, including the kind used in attacks by the U.S. against Iran's nuclear facilities, according to the report. The NSA describes the effort an "active defense" and has used the technology to monitor units of the Chinese Army, the Russian military, drug cartels, trade institutions inside the European Union, and sometime U.S. partners against terrorism like Saudi Arabia, India and Pakistan, the Times reported. [Cyberespionage]
• Islamic Front no answer for Syria conflict
  ALEPPO, Syria — Another extraordinary week in Syria, which has seen the fortunes of the once powerful Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) take a sharp turn for the worse, sparking a bloody and bitter interfactional war among Islamist groups for supremacy over rebel territories in the north. So what prompted the allies of yesterday to commit "jihadist fratricide" today? What of the timing of these unprecedented, coordinated attacks across many fronts on ISIS positions, effectively catching them by surprise in a sucker punch that unseated them from many former strongholds? Summary? Print The ascendance of the Islamic Front, while contributing to the recent military defeats of the Islamic State of Iraq and Al-Sham (ISIS), may also be a setback for Geneva II and a political solution to the conflict. Author Edward Dark Posted January 13, 2014 Make no mistake, this is not a “resurgence” of the Syrian revolution, nor is it another popular uprising against a different tyrannical oppressor, as the Syrian people are now too split, demoralized and war-weary to attempt any of that. It is simply a cutthroat struggle for power, between jihadist groups of similar ideology, distinct only in name and the identity of their backers, albeit with slightly differing methods of imposing their doctrines on the ground. [Syria] [Islamist] [Proxy]
• Dubai ruler calls for lifting Iran sanctions –BBC
  Mon Jan 13, 2014 1:41pm IST * Dubai ruler says "everybody will benefit" if Iran sanctions lifted * Egyptian army chief better off staying in army (Adds quotes on Egypt and human rights) Jan 13 (Reuters) - The ruler of Dubai, a Gulf trade and investment hub with strong links to Iran, said in remarks broadcast on Monday that the international community should ease sanctions on the Islamic Republic. Under a deal struck in November, Iran is expected to curb its nuclear activity in exchange for a limited easing of the international sanctions. The pact will come into force Jan. 20, Iran and world powers agreed on Sunday. Asked whether he thought it was time to lift the sanctions, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, who is also the Prime Minister of the United Arab Emirates, told British broadcaster the BBC: "I think so and give Iran a space... Iran is our neighbour and we don't want any problem, he said, adding that "everybody will benefit". Despite a decade of sanctions, Iran has managed to get most of the commodities and goods it needs via Dubai's flourishing re-export market, although new embargoes imposed by the United States and its allies in late 2011 and early 2012 have hit it hard. The vast majority of trade between Iran and its Gulf Arab neighbours is routed through Dubai, home to tens of thousands of ethnic Iranians and one of seven emirates making up the United Arab Emirates. [Iran] [Sanctions] [UAE]
• Back to Vietnam
  by JUDY GUMBO ALBERT I am one among millions of people around the globe who protested the American war in Viet Nam. I am also one of perhaps 400 people from the United States who visited Viet Nam while the war still raged. I returned this past January 2013, part of a delegation of former peace activists, spouses, partners and supporters. We called ourselves the Hanoi 9, invited to help celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Paris Peace Accords. I had been ridiculously nervous before this second trip, which I put down to fear of losing my illusions. Would this country which once embodied my highest ideals still maintain its moral hegemony in a 21st century world of Starbucks and a Ho Chi Minh City stock exchange?
• What We Did to Afghanistan
  by PATRICK COCKBURN A few years ago in Kabul, I was listening to a spokesman for an Afghan government organisation who was giving me a long, upbeat and not very convincing account of the achievements of the institution for which he worked. To relieve the tedium, and without much expectation of getting an interesting reply, I asked him – with a guarantee of non-attribution – what benefits the Afghan government had brought to its people. Without hesitation the spokesman replied that these benefits were likely to be very limited “so long as our country is run by gangsters and warlords”. It was at about this time that I decided that the main problem in Afghanistan was not the strength of the Taliban but the weakness of the government. It does not matter how many Nato troops are in the country because they are there in support of a government detested by much of the population.
• Who Benefits from Terror Plague? The Answer is Blowing in the Wind
  Olga SHEDROVA | 13.01.2014 | 00:00 Terrorism came into being as soon as humanity appeared, but the US special services turned it into a threat of global scale. The end of the 1970s can be considered as the starting point. Back then the Central Intelligence Agency launched a training program for «Islamic brigades» to entangle the Union of Soviet Socialist Republic into the war in Afghanistan. In 1998 Zbigniew Brzezinski wrote, «According to the official version of history, CIA aid to the Mujahedeen began during 1980, that is to say, after the Soviet army invaded Afghanistan, 24 Dec 1979. But the reality, secretly guarded until now, is completely otherwise. Indeed, it was July 3, 1979 that President Carter signed the first directive for secret aid to the opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul. And that very day, I wrote a note to the president in which I explained to him that in my opinion this aid was going to induce a Soviet military intervention». That was the time Osama bin Laden was recruited. According to Shamseddin Yusef, one of Chechen leaders, the former Foreign Secretary in Dudaev's government, bin Laden visited Chechnya in 1992 holding a US passport. He said it was later when bin Laden fell out with the United States government. No surprise the family of George Bush has rubbed shoulders with the «terrorist N 1». The US supported Afghan mujahedeen to embroil all the Muslim countries into the war against the USSR. In 1982-1992 citizens of approximately 40 Muslim states fought in Afghanistan. In March 1985 US President Ronald Reagan signed National Security Decision Directive 166, which authorized stepped-up covert military aid to the mujahedeen and it made clear that the secret Afghan war had a new goal: to defeat Soviet troops in Afghanistan through covert action and encourage a Soviet withdrawal. The new covert U.S. assistance began with a dramatic increase in arms supplies – a steady rise to 65,000 tons annually by 1987,… as well as a ‘ceaseless stream’ of CIA and Pentagon specialists who traveled to the secret headquarters of Pakistan’s ISI on the main road near Rawalpindi, Pakistan. According to Abdel Monam Saidali, of the Al-Aram Center for Strategic Studies in Cairo, bin Laden and the «Afghan Arabs» had been imparted «with very sophisticated types of training that was allowed to them by the CIA». [Terrorism] [CIA] [US global strategy]
• Is Congress about to kill Iran nuclear deal against Obama's wishes?
  Congress appears to be moving toward approving new sanctions against Iran with a veto-proof majority, potentially undermining the interim nuclear deal now being implemented. By Howard LaFranchi, Staff writer / January 13, 2014 President Obama is warning Congress against steps that could scuttle a deal that he says is the best chance to peacefully stop Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon. But a dubious Congress appears close to taking veto-proof action to approve new economic sanctions on Iran – a step the United States has specifically agreed not to take in the nuclear accord with Iran, and one which officials from countries that are party to the agreement say would likely doom diplomatic efforts to curb Iran’s nuclear ambitions. Some Iran experts say new sanctions would only bolster the hardliners in Iran who want negotiations to fail. But others say new sanctions are needed to disabuse Tehran of any notion that the interim plan put in motion an unraveling of sanctions that will be hard if not impossible to put back in place. A new round of rhetorical confrontation between the White House and Congress was set off by Sunday’s agreement between Iran and six world powers – the US, Russia, China, Britain, France, and Germany – on an implementation plan for the interim nuclear accord reached in November. [Iran] [Dissension] [US Negotiating]
• Kazakhstan Biological Laboratory: What Does Pentagon Need it For?
  Dmitry POPOV | 09.01.2014 | 00:00 The US Department of Defense (DOD) is building an extremely expensive dual purpose biological laboratory in Kazakhstan. These kinds of facilities are built by the Pentagon along the Russian border creating a potential threat for the Russian Federation and the states of Central Asia. The construction of Central reference-laboratory on the basis of former Soviet anti-plague research institute in Almaty was started in 2010 with funds provided by the US Defense Department. It is to become operational in 2015. A new decease detection early warning station situated in the populated area of Otar (supposedly on the basis of agricultural research institute – DNISHI) will add to its capability. The station is slated to start functioning in April 2014; the US has allocated $5, 6 for the purpose. Formally the Almaty Central laboratory is to provide for the safety of especially dangerous pathogens left as remnants of Soviet biological program. It is to study the ways to provide protection against them, as well as to create jobs for former military experts on biological warfare. There are some signs confirming the fact that the laboratory may be used for military research conducted by the USA. The program is overseen by Richard Lugar, the Senator who is known to have close ties to military establishment. He had dealt with dismantling former Soviet nuclear facilities in Kazakhstan and other states of CIS switching later to tackling the issue of biological weapons, in particular in Ukraine and Georgia (the latter had no biological weapons in the times of the Soviet Union, but the laboratory named after Richard Lugar has been built there in our days)… [cbw]
• Basra: Profiting from their Destruction, the British are Back
  By Felicity Arbuthnot Global Research, January 09, 2014 In December 2007, Major General Graham Binns, Commander of British Forces in Basra, handed illegally occupied Basra Province back to the Iraqis, with Basra city centre “festooned with flags, lights and banners to mark the occasion.” In fact, the whole nonsense was window dressing. British soldiers had been under siege in their bases between February and September that year and had withdrawn to Basra Airport, on the city’s outskirts, leaving just seven hundred soldiers in Basra, squatting in one of Saddam Hussein’s palaces. They too slunk out to the airport, under cover of darkness on 3rd September. At the hand over, Major General Binns said that Basra had been successfully wrested from its enemies and was now being handed back to its friends. However, at the time, a poll of 1,000 Basra residents for BBC’s Newsnight programme showed 85% saying British troops had been a negative effect on the Province for their five year occupation. Given the litany of claims of murder, torture, abuse, theft, against the British army being handled by lawyers in the UK, for Basra region residents, ”negative” seems a bit of an understatement.
• Iran-Sanctions Bill Clears Crucial U.S. Senate Threshold
  Jan. 9, 2014 By Jordain Carney National Journal A proposal to increase sanctions against Iran now has a majority backing, with 54 senators supporting the legislation. Senators John Barrasso (R-Wyo.), Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), John Hoeven (R-N.D.), Richard Burr (R-N.C.), Michael Bennet (D-Colo.), and Dean Heller (R-Nev.) became cosponsors of Senator Robert Menendez's bill on Wednesday, according to Congress.gov, which tracks legislation as it moves through Congress. In total, the legislation now has 53 cosponsors -- more than double the 26 it had when it was introduced in mid-December. The proposal would increase sanctions against Iran if it backs away from the current interim -- or potential final -- agreement over its nuclear program. Officials from the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, France, China, Russia, and Iran reached an interim agreement in November. Two-day talks are under way in Geneva about how to implement the agreement, though there are still areas of disagreement that need to be resolved. [Iran] [Sanctions] [Dissension] [US Negotiating]
• Big money behind war: the military-industrial complex
  More than 50 years after President Eisenhower's warning, Americans find themselves in perpetual war. Last updated: 11 Jan 2014 07:42 Jonathan Turley Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University and has testified before Congress on the dangerous expansion of presidential powers. In January 1961, US President Dwight D Eisenhower used his farewell address to warn the nation of what he viewed as one of its greatest threats: the military-industrial complex composed of military contractors and lobbyists perpetuating war. Eisenhower warned that "an immense military establishment and a large arms industry" had emerged as a hidden force in US politics and that Americans "must not fail to comprehend its grave implications". The speech may have been Eisenhower's most courageous and prophetic moment. Fifty years and some later, Americans find themselves in what seems like perpetual war. No sooner do we draw down on operations in Iraq than leaders demand an intervention in Libya or Syria or Iran. While perpetual war constitutes perpetual losses for families, and ever expanding budgets, it also represents perpetual profits for a new and larger complex of business and government interests. The new military-industrial complex is fuelled by a conveniently ambiguous and unseen enemy: the terrorist. Former President George W Bush and his aides insisted on calling counter-terrorism efforts a "war". This concerted effort by leaders like former Vice President Dick Cheney (himself the former CEO of defence-contractor Halliburton) was not some empty rhetorical exercise. Not only would a war maximise the inherent powers of the president, but it would maximise the budgets for military and homeland agencies. This new coalition of companies, agencies, and lobbyists dwarfs the system known by Eisenhower when he warned Americans to "guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence… by the military-industrial complex". Ironically, it has had some of its best days under President Barack Obama who has radically expanded drone attacks and claimed that he alone determines what a war is for the purposes of consulting Congress. Investment in homeland security companies is expected to yield a 12 percent annual growth through 2013 - an astronomical return when compared to other parts of the tanking economy. Good for economy? While few politicians are willing to admit it, we don't just endure wars we seem to need war - at least for some people. A study showed that roughly 75 percent of the fallen in these wars come from working class families. They do not need war. They pay the cost of the war. Eisenhower would likely be appalled by the size of the industrial and governmental workforce committed to war or counter-terrorism activities. Military and homeland budgets now support millions of people in an otherwise declining economy. Hundreds of billions of dollars flow each year from the public coffers to agencies and contractors who have an incentive to keep the country on a war-footing - and footing the bill for war. Across the country, the war-based economy can be seen in an industry which includes everything from Homeland Security educational degrees to counter-terrorism consultants to private-run preferred traveller programmes for airport security gates. Recently, the "black budget" of secret intelligence programmes alone was estimated at $52.6bn for 2013. That is only the secret programmes, not the much larger intelligence and counterintelligence budgets. We now have 16 spy agencies that employ 107,035 employees. This is separate from the over one million people employed by the military and national security law enforcement agencies. The core of this expanding complex is an axis of influence of corporations, lobbyists, and agencies that have created a massive, self-sustaining terror-based industry. The contractors In the last eight years, trillions of dollars have flowed to military and homeland security companies. When the administration starts a war like Libya, it is a windfall for companies who are given generous contracts to produce everything from replacement missiles to ready-to-eat meals. In the first 10 days of the Libyan war alone, the administration spent roughly $550m. That figure includes about $340m for munitions - mostly cruise missiles that must be replaced. Not only did Democratic members of Congress offer post-hoc support for the Libyan attack, but they also proposed a permanent authorisation for presidents to attack targets deemed connected to terrorism - a perpetual war on terror. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) offers an even steadier profit margin. According to Morgan Keegan, a wealth management and capital firm, investment in homeland security companies is expected to yield a 12 percent annual growth through 2013 - an astronomical return when compared to other parts of the tanking economy. [MISCOM]
• Fallujah’s lessons for Afghanistan
  The stunning occupation of the Iraqi cities of Fallujah and Ramadi in Anbar province by the al-Qaeda-affiliated Islamic State of Iraq and Lebanon over the weekend carries grim warnings for Afghanistan. Yet, it is important that the lessons learnt should be the correct ones. Unfortunately, despite the vehement opposition in the US public opinion to continued US troop presence in Afghanistan beyond 2014, a body of dissent is surfacing that the Iraq developments underscore the importance of the US and NATO sticking it out in the Hindu Kush. Unsurprisingly, this outlandish opinion dovetails with the no-holds-barred campaign against US president Barack Obama by the Republican Right who would like to caricature the White House as having ‘lost’ Iraq. Prima facie, this opinion, also seems a logical conclusion. As the editorial comment in Britain’s conservative newspaper Telegraph argues, here, it may seem that the western troop presence is what actually stands between Afghanistan and the deluge. In India, too, there are many votaries to this thesis. [Decline] [Fallujah] [Afghanistan]
• Lasers Could Prove Crucial To Navy Survival In The Western Pacific
  This Chinese Luhu-class guided missile destroyer is emblematic of the growing resources Beijing is spending on forces capable of dominating the Western Pacific. Although not sophisticated by Western standards, it has enabled the Chinese navy to evaluate technologies now being incorporated into more capable warships. In combination with new land-based missiles, strike aircraft and other military systems, China’s navy will pose a growing threat to the survivability of the U.S. Pacific Fleet in future conflicts. (Photo Credit: U.S. Navy / Released) The U.S. Navy’s Pacific Fleet is swimming against the tide of history in the East Asian littoral. After three decades of double-digit growth China has emerged as the world’s preeminent industrial power, greatly out-producing America in everything from steel to smart phones. Now it is seeking to translate its burgeoning economic might into military power, and the Pacific Fleet is in the way. Chinese military leaders view development of stealthy strike aircraft, long-range missiles, and undersea warships as defensive moves after centuries of weakness and vulnerability. U.S. military leaders have a different take, viewing the same programs as “anti-access” and “area denial” capabilities that threaten to drive U.S. forces from the region. Both sides are right: the Chinese are pursuing greater regional influence in much the same manner that other rising nations have in the past, but their goal can only be achieved by reducing American influence in the Western Pacific. This isn’t just a regional issue for Washington, because East Asia has become the industrial heartland of the new global economy. If China continues growing its local military power and political influence, it could come to dominate not only the region but much of the world’s productive capacity. Growing realization of what China’s rise meant led the Obama Administration to announce in early 2012 that the United States would shift the main locus of its military planning to the Western Pacific after a dozen years of counter-insurgency warfare in Southwest Asia. Naval forces will necessarily be the main agent of this shift, augmented by long-range air power. But therein lies the central dilemma that the Pacific Fleet faces. How can 200 warships and a thousand aircraft possibly hope to compete with the world’s greatest industrial power on its home turf? The Seventh Fleet comprising the Western Pacific component of the force is operating many thousands of miles from the U.S. homeland. China’s military is operating so close to home that it doesn’t even need a first-class Navy to become the dominant regional power. For Pentagon planners, this challenge breaks down into a series of specific operational issues, the most important of which is how U.S. warships in the area can be protected against large-scale Chinese attacks once the People’s Liberation Army acquires the intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities to direct its increasingly precise weapons against high-value targets. Aircraft carriers and other U.S. naval assets are not easy to find when operating on a war footing at sea — the Western Pacific is a very big place — but China is working hard to solve the problem. Once the targeting problem is solved, the small number of warships that America’s Navy operates near China could potentially be subject to barrages of anti-ship missiles — both air-breathing and ballistic — in a future war. The Pentagon’s most recent assessment of Chinese military capabilities states that the People’s Liberation Army is making rapid progress in deploying long-range cruise missiles and ballistic weapons with maneuvering warheads that can be used to disable warships far from Chinese shores. The cruise missiles can be launched from aircraft, warships and land bases, while the ballistic missiles can be carried on mobile launchers that are hard to target. The U.S. Navy has developed layered defenses for intercepting such systems before they can reach their targets at sea, but there is a practical limit to how many defensive weapons can be carried. In addition to space constraints aboard U.S. warships, the defensive weapons cost a million or more dollars each, with the most advanced missile interceptors currently carrying price-tags of $9-15 million. Thus, a single shoot-look-shoot engagement against a maneuvering anti-ship ballistic warhead might cost over $20 million, and the Navy will have to plan for hundreds of such engagements in a major conflict. This presents a compelling case for putting more of the Pacific Fleet’s capabilities on submarines, since China will probably be unable to track and target them. The Navy is developing a module for insertion into the current Virginia class of nuclear-powered attack subs that will greatly increase their capacity to strike surface targets from ocean sanctuaries using cruise missiles — thereby making them the weapon of choice in many Pacific scenarios. But the Navy’s surface warships can’t simply abandon the Western Pacific as Chinese anti-ship missiles proliferate. They need active defenses that can improve the cost-exchange equation for defenders by greatly reducing the cost of successful engagements. Some senior officials, including apparently the Chief of Naval Operations, think lasers might be the answer. Lasers are tightly focused beams of electromagnetic energy that hit targets at the speed of light, while costing only a few dollars per engagement. The Navy has proven it can hit fast-moving targets with them even in turbulent weather and high seas. (Disclosure: Most of the U.S. companies developing laser weapons, including Boeing BA -0.16%, Northrop Grumman NOC +0.64% and Raytheon RTN +0.73%, contribute to my think tank.) [China confrontation] [MISCOM] [Seapower] [Think tank]
• Democrat de Blasio
  by ANDREW LEVINE Democrat de Blasio: Was His Swearing In a Tip Off? In the early 2008 primaries, Barack Obama ran to the right of everyone except Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton. By the time it became a two-way race, it took a keen eye to discern even trivial differences between Clinton and Obama. Nevertheless, it was reasonable to expect that if Obama won the nomination and then the general election, a full-fledged Clintonite Restoration would be less likely than if Clinton won. Obama would be more inclined to make at least cosmetic changes and to bring in fresh faces. There was no evidence supporting this conjecture however and, as it turned out, it was too optimistic. But in 2008 that wasn’t yet clear and, for want of any more promising expectation, it should have been reason enough, for anyone planning on voting Democratic, to seal the case for Obama. What right thinking liberal would not jump at a chance to say adieu to the Clintons once and for all? But liberals are a strange bunch. There are even polls that suggest that many of them hold Bill and Hillary in high regard. Incredible, but true. [Obama] [Democracy] [Inequality] [Co-option]
• British politicians and generals targeted in Iraq abuse case
  Army chief General Sir Peter Wall and Geoff Hoon, ex-defence secretary, among those named at international criminal court theguardian.com, Sunday 12 January 2014 03.01 GMT The government has insisted it will fight a bid to trigger prosecutions of former British ministers and senior military figures over alleged war crimes in Iraq. A complaint filed with the international criminal court (ICC) accuses British forces of abusing and killing detainees in their custody. The head of the army, General Sir Peter Wall, ex-defence secretary Geoff Hoon and former defence minister Adam Ingram are among those named in the 250-page dossier, according to the Independent on Sunday. Human rights lawyers have drawn on the cases of more than 400 Iraqis, arguing they represent "thousands of allegations of mistreatment amounting to war crimes of torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment". They describe incidents ranging from "hooding" prisoners to burning, electric shocks, threats to kill and "cultural and religious humiliation". Other forms of alleged abuse between 2003 and 2008 include sexual assault, mock executions, and threats of rape, death, and torture. The formal complaint to the ICC was lodged on Saturday by Public Interest Lawyers (PIL) and the European Centre for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR). It calls for an investigation into the alleged war crimes under Article 15 of the Rome statute. [Iraq] [War crimes]
• Senate support grows for new Iran sanctions, amid White House opposition
  Published January 11, 2014 Associated Press Fifty-nine senators now back a new sanctions package they say would increase the pressure on Iran to make nuclear concessions, according to congressional aides. The count brings Congress closer to passing a bill the Obama administration considers a threat to a historic diplomatic opportunity. The senators in favor include every Republican except Jeff Flake of Arizona and Rand Paul of Kentucky, aides said. Sixteen Democrats are on board including Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York, a top ally of President Barack Obama. Many more are understood to be sitting on the fence. [Iran] [Dissension] [US negotiating] [Sanctions]
• U.S. war gains in Iraq now lost or threatened
  Oren Dorell, USA TODAY 7:21 a.m. EST January 12, 2014 A nation once seen as a great hope in the Middle East is unraveling, as al-Qaeda sinks its teeth in, and a bloodied America wonders what could have been. (Photo: AP) Story Highlights • The Obama administration has acknowledged that the terror group responsible for the 9/11 attacks is stepping up operations • Yet Obama insists it was time for the Iraqis to defend themselves • The cities of Fallujah and Ramadi were captured this past week by al-Qaeda When the last U.S. combat troops departed Iraq in December 2011, they left behind a defeated al-Qaeda and an Iraq where traditional rivals Sunni and Shiite Muslims were sharing power in the world's only Arab democracy. Two years later, al-Qaeda has seized major cities where hundreds of U.S. troops died while fighting alongside their Iraqi brethren. The population once freed by the U.S.-Iraqi alliance has now watched those same jihadist insurgents return to command the streets and impose their will. Indeed, Iraqis are threatened again by civil war over charges of treason and resistance to an authoritarian government. Many significant gains of the 8-year-long Iraq war in which more than 4,400 Americans died have been lost or are now threatened unless swift actions evict the insurgents. "I fear it's only the beginning and much worse will evolve," says Fred Kagan, a military historian and former adviser to President George W. Bush and U.S. military commander David Petraeus. "And I believe it was avoidable." [Iraq] [Myopia]
• The Most Iconic Photos Of The 1940s
  From Hitler in Paris to Nagasaki and the first computer
• The Saudi Bull in Arab China Shop. The Saudi-Israeli Marriage of Convenience against Syria and Iran
  By Nicola Nasser Global Research, January 08, 2014 Obsessed with the “Iran threat,” which leads to its warmongering in Syria, Saudi Arabia is acting like a bull in a china shop, wreaking regional havoc in an already Arab fragile political environment and creating what George Joffe’ of Cambridge University’s Centre of International Studies, on last December 30, called the “second Arab cold war,” the first being the Saudi-led cold war with the Pan-Arab Egypt of Gamal Abdul Nasser since the 1960s. The kingdom stands now almost isolated politically. Its “going it alone” in the Syrian conflict has cornered Saudi Arabia into a self-inflicted foreign policy no-win deadlock, to be at odds with three super powers, including its strategic U.S. ally as well as Russia and China, in addition to regional heavy weights in Iran, Iraq, Egypt and Algeria, all who advocate a political settlement of the conflict. Within the six-member Cooperation Council for the Arab States of the Gulf (GCC), the kingdom navigates no better. It is at loggerheads with Qatar over the latter’s sponsorship of the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) and consequently over the two countries’ disagreement over the removal of the MB-led Mohammad Morsi’s presidency. [Saudi Arabia]
• The Dutch media monopoly kills journalism in the Netherlands: internet doesn’t help
  Tabe Bergman 9 January 2014 We all grew up with the standard formula: journalism plays a crucial role in making western democracies work by providing citizens with the information that enables them to make informed judgments about urgent issues of general interest. Therefore, the fundamental question for those who study the western new media is: Do they in fact do what they are supposed, and claim, to do? In the Netherlands, the common answer according to most (Dutch) journalists and researchers is: yes. Usually this claim is followed by a few caveats that amount to non-systemic criticism or an admission that exceptions to the general rule do exist. In reality the answer is: only very rarely. Dutch journalism often provides an uncritical platform to political and corporate propaganda, for instance during the run-up to the war with Iraq, and as a rule impedes democracy instead of promoting it. Throughout the twentieth century and up to the present, Dutch journalism has primarily served, not the interests of the population but those of elites. [Media]
• From Syria to Bosnia: Memoirs of a Mujahid in Limbo
  A Syrian national who fought in Bosnia and now languishes in an immigration detention center reflects on the Bosnian war, his predicament, and the civil war in Syria. By Franco Galdini, December 19, 2013. When foreign fighters rally to the cause of a rebel army locked in a local conflict, this is bound to draw in competing agendas and identities even among putative allies. And these cleavages may persist long after the fighting ends. “Upon arrival,” according to one account, “foreign mujahedin settled in various locations and did not form a homogeneous entity.” Eventually, “local Muslims started to join the foreign mujahedin,” coalescing into a unit known as the Foreign Fighters’ Battalion. Still, “notwithstanding instances of participation in combat alongside each other, it appears that [the different] groups were anxious to maintain their distinct identities. There were religious and ideological differences between [locals and foreigners], which resulted in occasional violent clashes.” Despite their differences, according to this account, locals continued to be attracted to the Foreign Fighters’ Battalion for its “stricter regimental discipline, greater degree of organization, superior equipment and combat morale, religious dedication, and the material benefits” bestowed by “many organizations and individuals from the Islamic world.” If you are thinking this is Syria, think again. This is Bosnia, 1993: different country, different war, same story. It is now common knowledge that Western intelligence agencies actively facilitated the flow of foreign fighters—who were being funded and trained, mother of all ironies, by Saudi Arabia and Iran—into Bosnia and Herzegovina (henceforth simply “Bosnia”). One of those fighters was Imad al-Husein, aka Abu Hamza al-Suri, a Syrian national. When war broke out in Bosnia, Abu Hamza was a medical student in what was then the Socialist Republic of Croatia, Yugoslavia. He enlisted in the ranks of the mujahedin on the other side of the border with the help of a U.S.-registered but Saudi-funded non-profit called the Benevolence International Foundation, which covertly channeled funds and equipment to foreign fighters in Bosnia. Abu Hamza joined the jihad for a spell in 1992-1993 and again in 1994-1995, with a stint in between organizing papers and logistics for the fighters coming in and out of Bosnia under the cover of Benevolence International. For any of today’s foreign fighters hoping to start anew in Syria after the war, however, Abu Hamza’s case offers a cautionary tale about the limits of solidarity. [Islamist] [NGO] [Saudi Arabia]
• America: Hooked on Hegemony
  Lord Acton famously stated that power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. It would appear, however, that the United States has access to a secret Actonian codicil that states, “…but US hegemonic power? That’s frickin’ awesome!” Because the United States government seems to be wilfully blind to the costs, perils and abuses inherent in the acquisition and assertion of global hegemony. Hegemony—the unmatched ability to direct events, as opposed to power sufficient to protect and deter—is unambiguously baked into US policy. As President Obama put it in a document titled Sustaining U.S.Global Leadership (understandably asserting that US leadership is “demanded” by the world, rather than pursued as a matter of US interests): [Hegemony] [US global strategy] [Taiwan]
• The Militarization of Foreign Policy
  by MICHAEL BRENNER The militarization of American foreign policy is an accomplished fact. ‘Security’ is the term used promiscuously to characterize whatever challenges to the nation’s well-being are out there – or perceived as existing. The seeming imperative to protect that “security“ instinctively points us toward coercive force as the answer. Hostile jihadist groups anywhere in the world, anxieties among our Sunni Arab allies in the Persian Gulf about their political stability of their regimes, unrest around the periphery of the Sahara or the Horn of Africa, insurrection in Pakistan, unpredictable conditions in energy rich Central Asia1, the ever active drug cartels of Latin America? The habitual first, and often last resort is military action or military deployment. An extraordinary record of failure chalked up by our efforts does nothing to alter the thinking or slow the momentum behind this reliance on military assets. Strategic dogma has hardened into something that more closely resembles faith – faith impervious to evidence or reason. [Militarisation]
• Democracy needs whistleblowers. That's why I broke into the FBI in 1971
  Like Snowden, we broke laws to reveal something that was more dangerous. We wanted to hold J Edgar Hoover accountable Bonnie Raines theguardian.com, Tuesday 7 January 2014 18.22 GMT I vividly remember the eureka moment. It was the night we broke into an FBI office in Media, Pennsylvania, in March 1971 and removed about 1,000 documents from the filing cabinets. We had a hunch that there would be incriminating material there, as the FBI under J Edgar Hoover was so bureaucratic that we thought every single thing that went on under him would be recorded. But we could not be sure, and until we found it, we were on tenterhooks. A shout went up among the group of eight of us. One of us had stumbled on a document from FBI headquarters signed by Hoover himself. It instructed the bureau's agents to set up interviews of anti-war activists as "it will enhance the paranoia endemic in these circles and will further serve to get the point across there is an FBI agent behind every mailbox." That was the first piece of evidence to emerge. It was a vindication [Whistleblower] [FBI]
• Obama defends Biden after scathing criticism from former Defense Secretary
  By Lesley Clark McClatchy Washington Bureau January 7, 2014 Updated 6 hours ago President Obama provided a passionate defense of vice president Joe Biden Tuesday -- after his No. 2 came in for scathing criticism in an upcoming book by former Obama administration Defense Secretary Bob Gates. In a statement, National Security Council spokesperson Caitlin Hayden said Obama "disagrees with Secretary Gates' assessment" -- that Biden was "wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades." Biden, Hayden said, "from his leadership on the Balkans in the Senate, to his efforts to end the war in Iraq...has been one of the leading statesmen of his time, and has helped advance America’s leadership in the world. President Obama relies on his good counsel every day.” [Dissension] [US global strategy] [Robert Gates]
• Robert Gates offers criticism of Obama, Biden, praises Hillary
  By Lesley Clark McClatchy Washington Bureau January 7, 2014 Updated 8 hours ago President Obama lost faith in the troop increase he ordered in Afghanistan and it was ultimately "all about getting out," of the country, says his former defense secretary, Robert Gates, in an upcoming memoir, according to stories in the New York Times and the Washington Post. The Times says the book details Gates' "personal wars with Congress, the Pentagon bureaucracy and, in particular, Mr. Obama’s White House staff over the four and a half years he sought to salvage victory in Iraq and Afghanistan." And it includes a scathing review of vice president Joe Biden, whom Gates, a Republican holdover from the Bush administration, calls a “a man of integrity,” who nevertheless was "wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades." He has nicer words for former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, writing he found her ,“smart, idealistic but pragmatic, tough-minded, indefatigable, funny, a very valuable colleague, and a superb representative of the United States all over the world." He accuses the Obama administration of a “controlling nature” and says the White House and the national security staff “took micromanagement and operational meddling to a new level." The book, "Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War," is due out Jan. 14. One bookseller calls it a "strikingly candid, vivid account of serving Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan." [Dissension] [US global strategy] [Robert Gates]
• America's black-ops blackout
  Nick Turse 7 January 2014 The Pentagon has divided the whole globe like a giant pie into six slices through U.S. Special Operations Command. And in the post-9/11 era, this secretive military's reach and ambition has only grown. “Dude, I don’t need to play these stupid games. I know what you’re trying to do.” With that, Major Matthew Robert Bockholt hung up on me. More than a month before, I had called U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM) with a series of basic questions: In how many countries were U.S. Special Operations Forces deployed in 2013? Are manpower levels set to expand to 72,000 in 2014? Is SOCOM still aiming for growth rates of 3%-5% per year? How many training exercises did the command carry out in 2013?Basic stuff. And for more than a month, I waited for answers. I called. I left messages. I emailed. I waited some more. I started to get the feeling that Special Operations Command didn’t want me to know what its Green Berets and Rangers, Navy SEALs and Delta Force commandos -- the men who operate in the hottest of hotspots and most remote locales around the world -- were doing. [Special Forces]
• Bombings, Invasion, Misery: Fallujah, Symbol of Iraq’s Unending Tragedy
  By Felicity Arbuthnot Global Research, January 04, 2014 “If war should come, whichever side may claim ultimate victory, nothing is more certain that victor and vanquished alike would glean a gruesome harvest of human misery and suffering.”(UK Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, July 31, 1939, to the House of Commons.) Fallujah has become a symbol of Iraq’s suffering since the onslaught on the country in 1991, numerous, uncounted interim US-UK bombings, then the 2003 invasion, occupation – and misery unending. In 1991, a busy market was bombed, as was a hotel, which was “leveled.” Two hundred people were incinerated. Another attack: “destroyed a row of modern, concrete, five and six story apartment buildings, as well as several other houses nearby.” Middle East Watch recorded: “All buildings for four hundred meters on both sides of the street, houses, markets, were flattened.” Fallujah merchant Hamid Mesan, lost his son, brother and nephew in a bombing and: “saw the bombs from one attack hit a market. ‘’ This pilot said he had come to hit the bridge, on the television and it was a mistake. But we’re a distance of one and a half kilometers from the bridge. In our minds, we are convinced the attack was to the market, to kill our people.” That attack was seemingly by the British Royal Air Force, who, in a tired, all too familiar excuse, said that their “precision-guided” missiles had missed their target.(i) One man’s “collateral damage” is another man’s son, brother and nephew. In 2004, the US military launched a revenge attack on Falluja after US troops, who had taken over a school, shot peaceful demonstrators, which led to four Blackwater mercenaries being hung from a bridge. To describe the “liberators” aggression as a blood bath would be massive understatement. [Fallujah] [cbw]
• Poll: Cyberwarfare Is Top Threat Facing US
  Jan. 5, 2014 - 03:45AM | By ZACHARY FRYER-BIGGS WASHINGTON — Cyberwarfare is the most serious threat facing the United States, according to almost half of US national security leaders who responded to the inaugural Defense News Leadership Poll, underwritten by United Technologies. But while the leaders in national security policy, the military, congressional staffs and the defense industry are united in the seriousness of the cyber threat, agreement on the next greatest threat breaks down clearly along party lines. Terrorism is viewed as the next greatest threat by leaders who identified themselves as Republicans, while climate change was cited by those identifying as Democrats. The poll sheds new insight into what is often seen as a monolithic and even nonpartisan national security community. More than 350 senior defense leaders responded to the poll in late November, answering two dozen questions across the gamut of defense issues. Respondents were far more likely to identify as Republicans than Democrats (38.5 percent vs. 13.5 percent). That’s radically different than the public at large, which typically tilts toward Democrats — 30 percent Democrat to 24 percent Republican in a December Gallup poll.That difference is even more dramatic among respondents who said they worked for the military, where Republicans outnumbered Democrats by seven to one (56.9 percent vs. 7.7 percent). Independents also made up a large percentage of respondents (34.2 percent). On the cyber threat, 45.1 percent of respondents said Cyberwarfare is the greatest threat to the United States, with 42.4 percent of Democrats joining 36.3 percent of Republicans and a whopping 55 percent of independents agreeing. [Cyberwar] [Threat]
• Syria Violence Blocks Inspectors From Chemical-Arms Stocks
  Jan. 6, 2014 Intensifying danger across Syria has cut off inspectors from key chemical-arms installations, a top international official said in an al-Monitor report. The development could complicate monitoring of Syrian-government steps on a commitment to surrender its entire deadly arsenal, according to Ahmet Üzümcü, director general of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons. [Syria] [cbw]
• In Iraq, a Sunni revolt raises specter of new war
  View Photo Gallery — The intertwined conflicts in Syria and Iraq:?An eruption of violence in Iraq is raising the specter of a new civil war in a region already buckling under the strain of the conflict in Syria. By Liz Sly, Tuesday, January 7, 12:58 PM E-mail the writer BEIRUT — An eruption of violence in Iraq is threatening to undo much of what U.S. troops appeared to have accomplished before they withdrew, putting the country’s stability on the line and raising the specter of a new civil war in a region already buckling under the strain of the conflict in Syria. In the western Iraqi province of Anbar, Sunnis are in open revolt against the Shiite-dominated government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. Militants affiliated with al-Qaeda have taken advantage of the turmoil to raise their flag over areas from which they had been driven out by American troops, including the powerfully symbolic city of Fallujah, where U.S. forces fought their bloodiest battle since the Vietnam War. The Iraqi army, trained and equipped at great expense by the U.S. military before it pulled out of the country in 2011, is struggling to hold its own against what is at once a populist revolt and a militant insurgency. [Decline] [Iraq] [Syria] [Unintended consequences]
• The role of arctic hydrocarbons for future energy security
  by Katherine Keil January 2013 This Special Report was originally published as a Working Paper 2013-3 by the Center for Energy, Governance and Security at Hanyang university, Seoul. I. Introduction Against the background of a growing demand for energy worldwide, many claim that the hydrocarbon resources of the Arctic region have become an important variable for future energy security. Multiple factors seem to render Arctic energy resources attractive: the expected persistence of fossil fuels (especially oil and gas) in the global energy mix, instability in oil-supplying countries in the Middle East, and the unclear future of nuclear energy after the Fukushima disaster. Nonetheless, the complexity of resource exploitation in such a remote region as the Arctic, as well as the potential for environmental disasters, raises significant questions about such a proposition. Rather, how promising Arctic resources really are for future energy security concerns is an empirical question requiring careful evaluation. How many resources are actually in the Arctic relative to resources farther south? What are the conditions under which they could be viably and commercially exploited? What interest do the states possessing Arctic hydrocarbons, i.e. the five Arctic littoral states US, Canada, Russia, Norway and Denmark/Greenland, have in exploring and exploiting their Arctic resources? Only after answering these questions is it possible to come to tangible conclusions about the role of Arctic oil and gas for future energy security concerns. [Oil]
• The Case of the Missing Economic Recovery
  By Dr. Paul Craig Roberts Global Research, January 04, 2014 Have you seen the economic recovery? I haven’t either. But it is bound to be around here somewhere, because the National Bureau of Economic Research spotted it in June 2009, four and one-half years ago. It is a shy and reclusive recovery, like the “New Economy” and all those promised new economy jobs. I haven’t seen them either, but we know they are here, somewhere, because the economists said so. Congress must have seen all those jobs before they went home for Christmas, because our representatives let extended unemployment benefits expire for 1.3 million unemployed Americans, who have not yet met up with those new economy jobs, or even with an old economy job for that matter. By letting extended unemployment benefits expire, Congress figures that they saved 1.3 million Americans from becoming lifelong bums of the nanny state and living off the public purse. After all, who do those unemployed Americans think they are? A bank too big to fail? The military-security complex? Israel? What the unemployed need to do is to form a lobby organization and make campaign contributions. Just as economists don’t recognize facts that are inconsistent with corporate grants, career ambitions, and being on the speaking circuit, our representatives don’t recognize facts inconsistent with campaign contributions. [Crisis]
• The Saudi challenge to US Syria policy
  Saudi Arabia begins 2014 with plans for an assertive regional policy which include continuing the war in Syria until president Bashar al-Assad is deposed. Summary? Print Saudi Arabia proposes a military force to deter Iran and assist rebel forces to overthrow the Syrian government. Author Week in Review Posted January 5, 2014 Nawaf Obaid, a fellow at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government and a senior fellow at the King Faisal Center for Research and Islamic Studies, and someone with deep knowledge of Saudi decision-making, writes this week: “Of utmost importance for stability in the Arab world is the creation of a military force that can successfully deter Iranian activities and assist the Syrian rebels in bringing down the Assad regime in Damascus. A military command based at its new headquarters in Riyadh will be established in 2014. The Gulf command will be built into a 100,000 standing military force with the Saudis contributing anywhere between 50,000 to 75,000 troops. The ultimate objective is to guarantee that this new global powerhouse bloc will effectively dominate and significantly alter the political, economic and security landscape of the MENA region.” The plan for a 100,000-strong Gulf command force, based in Riyadh, raises several questions about Saudi capabilities and intentions. [Saudi Arabia]
• Tony Blair businesses amass £13m cash after surge in profits
  Companies House filings reveal former PM's Windrush Ventures had 50% jump in profits to just under £2m in year to March 2013 Katie Allen The Guardian, Sunday 5 January 2014 17.47 GMT Two businesses owned by Tony Blair have amassed a cash pile of more than £13m after a key part of his empire enjoyed a jump in profits. New accounts filed with Companies House reveal that one venture in the former prime minister's complex network of financial legal entities saw profits jump almost 50% to just below £2m. Since stepping down from politics in 2007, Blair has received millions of pounds from a mix of business interests that include advising governments, consultancy work for US investment bank JP Morgan and the lucrative international speaking circuit. [Blair]
• Koch-backed political network, designed to shield donors, raised $400 million in 2012
  AP - Bloomberg News - Conservative billionaires Charles, left, and David Koch have built a massive political network that shields the identities of its donors through a maze of organizations, according to an analysis of new tax returns and other documents. By Matea Gold, Monday, January 6, 12:59 PM E-mail the writer The political network spearheaded by conservative billionaires Charles and David Koch has expanded into a far-reaching operation of unrivaled complexity, built around a maze of groups that cloaks its donors, according to an analysis of new tax returns and other documents. The filings show that the network of politically active nonprofit groups backed by the Kochs and fellow donors in the 2012 elections financially outpaced other independent groups on the right and, on its own, matched the long-established national coalition of labor unions that serves as one of the biggest sources of support for Democrats. The resources and the breadth of the organization make it singular in American politics: an operation conducted outside the campaign finance system, employing an array of groups aimed at stopping what its financiers view as government overreach. Members of the coalition target different constituencies but together have mounted attacks on the new health-care law, federal spending and environmental regulations. [NGO] [Thinktank]
• Fueled by Syria war, al Qaeda bursts back to life in Iraq
  By Suadad al-Salhy BAGHDAD Mon Jan 6, 2014 12:11pm EST Tribal fighters who have been deployed onto the streets, patrol in the city of Falluja, 50 km (31 miles) west of Baghdad January 5, 2014. Credit: Reuters/Stringer (Reuters) - Al Qaeda gunmen seeking to form a radical Islamic state out of the chaos of Syria's civil war are fighting hard to reconquer the province they once controlled in neighboring Iraq, stirring fears the conflict is exporting ever more instability. Exploiting local grievances against Baghdad's rule and buoyed by al Qaeda gains in Syria, the fighters have taken effective control of Anbar's two main cities for the first time since U.S. occupation troops defeated them in 2006-07. Their advance is ringing alarm bells in Washington: The United States has pledged to help Baghdad quell the militant surge in Anbar -- although not with troops -- to stabilize a province that saw the heaviest fighting of the U.S. occupation. [Outsourcing] [Unintended consequences]
• Fred Kaplan Reliably Wrong on Snowden Clemency
  Since I pretty much made a meal out of this issue over on Twitter, I’m returning from 140-character land to the reassuringly logorrheic surroundings of my blog to share my thoughts on the Fred Kaplan think piece that made the case for denying clemency to Edward Snowden. I was rather bemused by the hosannas this piece attracted from certain quarters. It’s the usual collection of sneering tropes, innuendo, and speculation, marshaled in this case to repudiate a New York Times editorial urging clemency for Snowden. Kaplan puts his gloss on what he regards as Snowden’s vile shenanigans to conclude that Snowden would not agree to get strapped to a polygraph for a pre-deal debriefing about what Kaplan regards as his disingenous statements about footsie with the Chinese and Russians and thereby asserts (in the title of his piece) that Snowden “won’t (and shouldn’t) get clemency.” [Snowden]
• Rebels battle al-Qaeda-affiliated fighters across northern Syria
  By Liz Sly, Updated: Sunday, January 5, 8:17 PM E-mail the writer BEIRUT — Syrian rebels battled al-Qaeda-affiliated fighters across northern Syria on Saturday in an attempt to stem the sudden rise in influence of the extremists who have been staging attacks and conquering territory from Baghdad to Beirut. At the same time, Iraqi government forces fought to contain an expanding revolt in the western province of Anbar by Sunni tribes, some of which have linked up with al-Qaeda militants to score significant gains in recent days. The battles on both sides of the border signaled a defining moment for the increasingly entwined conflicts in Iraq and Syria, which have enabled the al-Qaeda-linked Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) to emerge as one of the region’s most powerful players. [Al Qaeda] [Sectarianism]
• Tehran foodies flock to American-style burger joints
  View Photo Gallery — Greasy burger joints have been part of Tehran’s fast-food landscape for decades, even in the years just after the 1979 Islamic revolution, when any symbol of U.S. culture was denounced as an example of “Westoxification.” Now, though, high-end burger restaurants are suddenly popping up across the city, making the gut-busting American institution the latest trend in Tehran dining. By Jason Rezaian, Published: January 4 TEHRAN — At the Garage Grill in an upscale Tehran neighborhood, classic rock plays from the speakers, and photos of Paul Newman, James Dean and hot rods line the walls. It could be an old-time American diner, except that its hamburger prices reflect a wealthier target market here. Right next door, Dukkan Burger serves its fare on butcher paper, with plenty of Heinz ketchup and French’s mustard supplied on request. The clientele includes young women clutching designer purses, arriving with their dates in European luxury cars. Greasy burger joints have been part of Tehran’s fast-food landscape for decades, even in the years just after the 1979 Islamic revolution, when any symbol of U.S. culture was denounced as an example of “Westoxification.” Those eateries were mostly in downtown working-class neighborhoods, serving laborers in need of a blast of calories or students watching their budgets. Now, though, high-end burger restaurants are suddenly popping up across the city, making the gut-busting American institution — and the quest for the best burger — the latest trend in Tehran dining. [Softpower] [Middle class] [Iran]
• Al-Qaeda-linked force captures Fallujah amid rise in violence in Iraq
  By Liz Sly, Saturday, January 4, 8:41 AM E-mail the writer BEIRUT — A rejuvenated al-Qaeda-affiliated force asserted control over the western Iraqi city of Fallujah on Friday, raising its flag over government buildings and declaring an Islamic state in one of the most crucial areas that U.S. troops fought to pacify before withdrawing from Iraq two years ago. The capture of Fallujah came amid an explosion of violence across the western desert province of Anbar in which local tribes, Iraqi security forces and al-Qaeda-affiliated militants have been fighting one another for days in a confusingly chaotic three-way war. [Al Qaeda]
• Volgograd and the Conquest of Eurasia: Has the House of Saud seen its Stalingrad?
  By Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya Global Research, January 03, 2014 The Motherland Calls The events in Volgograd are part of a much larger body of events and a multi-faceted struggle that has been going on for decades as part of a cold war after the Cold War—the post-Cold War cold war, if you please—that was a result of two predominately Eurocentric world wars. When George Orwell wrote his book 1984 and talked about a perpetual war between the fictional entities of Oceania and Eurasia, he may have had a general idea about the current events that are going on in mind or he may have just been thinking of the struggle between the Soviet Union and, surrounded by two great oceans, the United States of America. So what does Volgograd have to do with the dizzying notion presented? Firstly, it is not schizophrenic to tie the events in Volgograd to either the conflict in the North Caucasus and to the fighting in Syria or to tie Syria to the decades of fighting in the post-Soviet North Caucasus. The fighting in Syria and the North Caucuses are part of a broader struggle for the mastery over Eurasia. The conflicts in the Middle East are part of this very grand narrative, which to many seems to be so far from the reality of day to day life. “Bandar Bush” goes to Mother Russia For the purposes of supporting such an assertion we will have to start with the not-so-secret visit of a shadowy Saudi regime official to Moscow. Prince Bandar bin Sultan bin Abdulaziz Al-Saud, the infamous Saudi terrorist kingpin and former House of Saud envoy to Washington turned intelligence guru, last visited the Russian Federation in early-December 2013. [Saudi Arabia] [Russia]
• Iraq Arrests 26 Terrorists on Eve of Arbayeen
  TEHRAN (FNA)- Iraq's security forces have arrested scores of militants who plotted to launch terrorist attacks on Shiite mourners on Arbayeen, the end of 40 days of mourning following the anniversary of the martyrdom of Prophet Mohammed (PBUH)'s grandson and Shiite Muslims' third Imam, Hossein ibn-e Ali (AS), media sources said on Sunday. “The anti-terrorism squad of Iraq announced today that it has arrested 26 people who were plotting to carry out terrorist attacks against Shiite pilgrims in the Northern parts of Babel,” Al-Sumeriya News website reported on Sunday. The arrested people are under interrogation at a security center in Iraq.
  Saudi Arabia, the most important supporter of Takfiri groups in Syria and Iraq, has not spared any effort to destabilize the two Shiite nations, specially after a plot by its intelligence chief, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, to create an excuse for the US intervention in Syria through a false-flag chemical attack operation in a Damascus countryside ended in failure and couldn't stop or slow down the Syrian army's major advances in the battlefield which has now found even an accelerating momentum. Meantime, the historic deal between Iran and the six major world powers on November 24 dealt a heavy blow to Saudi Arabia, and led Riyadh to openly criticize the US and the West in general. Prince Mohammed bin Nawaf, a member of the Saudi royal family, mentioned in an article in New York Times that the West’s approach towards Iran and Syria represents a threat to security and stability in the Middle East. The Saudi officials’ criticism of the US reveals the depth of their dissatisfaction with the West’s deal with Iran, and has drawn Saudi Arabia’s Wahhabi regime closer to the Zionist regime of Israel. Riyadh, however, was not able to achieve its objectives in neighboring Iraq either. [Saudi Arabia] [False flag] [Iraq] [Sectarianism]
• ‘Saudis send terrorists into Iraq’
  Fri Jan 3, 2014 7:28AM GMT Press TV has conducted an interview with Sa’ad al-Muttalibi, from the State of Law Coalition (Baghdad), to discuss Iraqi military’s operations against militants linked to al-Qaeda in al-Anbar. A rough transcription of the interview follows. Press TV: The particular landscape in Iraq in the past six months or so has resulted in the deaths that we have seen in such high numbers. I am going to put it bluntly, who is behind it and what benefits and what gains are there behind what we are seeing in Iraq? Muttalibi: With the new political map being drawn in the Middle East, we have been expecting such atrocities, such a rise in violence because of the shifting sand and the movement of what is happening in Syria. We have been warning the United States for now a couple of years that the troubles in Syria will spill over neighboring countries. The improving relationship between the United States or the possible improvement of the relationship between the United States and important regional countries who are historic rivals to the United States, have moved the Saudi Arabians to increase their efforts in pushing more ammunition and more guns and more supplies through Syria into Iraq. We have now actual evidence and guns and ammunition that were supplied to the insurgents in Syria that ended up in Iraq and originated from Saudi Arabia. [Saudi Arabia]
• Al-Qaida's idea, three years on
  Paul Rogers 2 January 2014 The Arab awakening promised democratic change and the end of violent jihadism. Today, the losers of 2010-11 are again on the rise. At the turn of 2013-14, the al-Qaida idea is making progress in three theatres of conflict: Iraq, Syria and the Caucasus. In other regions, the same symptoms are apparent. This process is very different to what many anticipated at the start of the Arab awakening exactly three years ago. At the end of 2013, the Iraq Body Count project found that there had been 9.472 civilian deaths during the year, more than twice the annual figure for 2010-12. Lily Hamourtziadou reports that much of the explanation lies in the rise of determined Sunni paramilitaries loosely linked to the al-Qaida idea: [Al Qaeda]
• Foreign Policy? Follow the Money
  By James Gibney Dec 5, 2013 4:10 AM GMT+1300 Photographer: Matthew Lloyd/Bloomberg There's more to the State Department than B-52s, but they do make for the best pictures. In foreign policy as in life, budgets generally say more than speeches. You wouldn't know that from the recent 14-page special report on U.S. foreign policy in the Economist, which doesn't even mention the State Department's budget. [US global strategy] [Softpower]
• What Happened to the Asia Pivot in 2013?
  Authors: Elizabeth C. Economy, C.V. Starr Senior Fellow and Director for Asia Studies, Council on Foreign Relations Tim Huxley, Executive Director, International Institute for Strategic Studies, Asia Michael Fullilove, Executive Director, Lowy Institute for International Policy Sheila A. Smith, Senior Fellow for Japan Studies, Council on Foreign Relations Interviewer(s): Beina Xu, Online Writer/Editor December 20, 2013 A range of crises in the Middle East dominated the U.S. foreign policy agenda in 2013, raising questions about the vigor of President Obama's Asia "pivot." Four experts offer perspectives on how the region is reacting to U.S. moves in Asia. China has reacted with "assertive authoritarianism," CFR's Elizabeth Economy writes, while Southeast Asian governments remain ambivalent to the supposed shift, according to Tim Huxley of the International Institute for Strategic Studies. The Lowy Institute's Michael Fullilove says without a strong U.S. presence in the Pacific, the region runs the risk of a destabilizing rivalry. And CFR's Sheila Smith says despite some promising developments, the Obama team may be misreading cues on Japan. [US global strategy] [Pivot]
• NSA seeks to build quantum computer that could crack most types of encryption
  By Steven Rich and Barton Gellman, Friday, January 3, 10:24 AM E-mail the writers In room-size metal boxes ­secure against electromagnetic leaks, the National Security Agency is racing to build a computer that could break nearly every kind of encryption used to protect banking, medical, business and government records around the world. According to documents provided by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, the effort to build “a cryptologically useful quantum computer” — a machine exponentially faster than classical computers — is part of a $79.7 million research program titled “Penetrating Hard Targets.” Much of the work is hosted under classified contracts at a laboratory in College Park, Md. [NSA] [Surveillance]
• The Bête Noire of the French Establishment
  by Diana Johnstone Paris. French mainstream media and politicians are starting off the New Year with a shared resolution for 2014: permanently muzzle a Franco-African comedian who is getting to be too popular among young people. In between Christmas and New Year’s Eve, no less than the President of the Republic, François Hollande, while visiting Saudi Arabia on (very big) business, said his government must find a way to ban performances by the comedian Dieudonné M’Bala M’Bala, as called for by French Interior Minister, Manuel Valls. The leader of the conservative opposition party, UMP, Jean-François Copé, immediately chimed in with his “total support” for silencing the unmanageable entertainer. In the unanimous media chorus, the weekly Nouvel Observateur editorialized that Dieudonné is “already dead”, washed up, finished. Editors publicly disputed whether it was a better tactic to try to jail him for “incitement to racial hatred”, close his shows on grounds of a potential “threat to public order”, or put pressure on municipalities by threatening cultural subsidies with cuts if they allow him to perform. The goal of national police boss Manuel Valls is clear, but the powers that be are groping for the method. The dismissive cliché heard repeatedly is that “nobody laughs at Dieudonné any more”. In reality, the opposite is true. And that is the problem. On his recent tour of French cities, videos show large, packed theaters roaring with laughter at their favorite humorist. He has popularized a simple gesture, which he calls the “quenelle”. It is being imitated by young people all over France. It simply and obviously means, we are fed up. [quenelle]
• When Your Phone Is Not Your Friend
  Gadzooks! They've cracked the iPhone!? Newly leaked documents from the National Security Agency highlight Dropout Jeep, a piece of software that could target one of the country's most popular devices -- the iPhone. According to documents published by the German news website Spiegel Online and dated Oct. 1, 2008, Dropout Jeep would give the NSA the ability to retrieve contact information, read through text messages, listen to voicemails and even turn on the iPhone camera and microphone. The document goes on to say that while Drop Jeep was currently limited to installation through "close access methods," the NSA would research ways to install the program remotely in future versions. [Surveillance]
• The Future of Lebanon
  by KARIM MAKDISI A new phase in the conflict in the Arab mashriq (Levant) has begun, and it is Lebanon, as ever, where the message has been delivered. After several deadly car bombs in Beirut and Tripoli over the past year designed to terrorize ordinary civilians and destabilize the country, a prominent politician has been assassinated. Mohamad Chatah, a well-respected senior advisor to the anti-Syrian political coalition in Lebanon, March 14, was murdered on December 27 by a car bomb in the downtown area of Beirut. Various Western and Lebanese media sites immediately re-produced Chatah’s final anti-Hizbullah tweets and, posthumously, an open letter he was writing to Iran—in which he called for its assistance in ending Hizbullah’s military role in Syria and the disbanding of its weapons—as apparent evidence that Hizbullah must have been involved in this heinous crime. Prominent March 14 politicians quickly pointed the finger at Hizbullah and its regional patrons, the Syrian regime and Iran. Indeed, Fouad Siniora, head of the March 14 parliamentary bloc and Lebanese Prime Minister during the 2006 Israeli invasion of Lebanon and the inter-Lebanese sectarian war of 2005 to 2008, announced March 14’s intention to ‘liberate’ the country of Hizbullah’s large stockpile of weapons.
  This does not at all suggest that the Saudis or Israelis are behind Chatah’s assassination in some cynical attempt to trigger a war; nor that Hizbullah, the Syrian regime, or Iran cannot possibly have been behind it. In all likelihood, as with most of the other assassinations in Lebanon, we will never have definitive proof one way or the other, and bitter, sectarian-fueled speculation will continue. [Lebanon] [Saudi Arabia] [Assassination]
• Saudi Arabia Seeks to Extend Influence-Buying With Lebanon Arms
  By Glen Carey and Donna Abu-Nasr December 30, 2013 Saudi Arabia’s decision to send $3 billion of military aid to Lebanon’s army is the latest sign of an increasingly assertive foreign policy that seeks to buy regional influence and counter Iranian power. Saudi Arabia is spending billions to support its allies, and funneling money to confront its enemies, so far with little success in achieving either. The Arab world’s largest economy has stepped up assistance to allies across the region, including $5 billion to the Egyptian authorities who overthrew President Mohamed Mursi, growing support for mainly Sunni rebels battling Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and $3.25 billion for Yemen last year. “Simply writing checks will not resolve deep-rooted causes of instability, especially in Yemen and Lebanon,” said Paul Sullivan, a Middle East specialist at Georgetown University in Washington. “The $3 billion to Lebanon is to buy arms. This could lead to increased instability in that area depending on how the arms are used.” [Saudi Arabia] [Sectarianism]
• How the New Great Game Will be Played
  by PEPE ESCOBAR The big story of 2014 will be Iran. Of course, the big story of the early 21st century will never stop being US-China, but it’s in 2014 that we will know whether a comprehensive accord transcending the Iranian nuclear program is attainable; and in this case the myriad ramifications will affect all that’s in play in the New Great Game in Eurasia, including US-China. As it stands, we have an interim deal of the P5+1 (the UN Security Council’s five permanent members plus Germany) with Iran, and no deal between the US and Afghanistan. So, once again, we have Afghanistan configured as a battleground between Iran and the House of Saud, part of a geopolitical game played out in overdrive since the US invasion of Iraq in 2003 along the northern rim of the Middle East all the way to Khorasan and South Asia. Then there’s the element of Saudi paranoia, extrapolating from the future of Afghanistan to the prospect of a fully “rehabilitated” Iran becoming accepted by Western political/financial elites. [Iran] [US global strategy]
• Egypt arrests Al Jazeera journalists, alleges ties to Muslim Brotherhood
  By Nancy A. Youssef McClatchy Foreign Staff December 30, 2013 CAIRO — The Egyptian government has broadened its campaign against the Muslim Brotherhood with the arrest of the entire Al Jazeera news team here, prompting fears that reporting anything other than the government’s views could trigger reprisals. The arrests are the latest in a violent campaign by the government against the Brotherhood, the secretive organization through which ousted Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi ascended to the presidency. In the last week, three students have died and more than 300 have been involved in clashes on campuses with security forces. Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2013/12/30/213120/egypt-arrests-al-jazeera-journalists.html#storylink=cpy [Egypt]
• FBI: Homegrown terrorists don't fit just one profile
  By RICK PLUMLEE The Wichita EagleDecember 29, 2013 Updated 17 hours ago FacebookTwitterGoogle PlusRedditE-mailPrint WICHITA, Kan. — When Terry Lee Loewen allegedly attempted to blow up Wichita Mid-Continent Airport this month, his case became part of a recent surge in homegrown jihad-inspired terrorist plots. Since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and through the end of August 2013, federal authorities say they have discovered 71 such plots that were planned to take place either on American or foreign soil. Fifty of those have come since April 2009, according to a report titled "American Jihadist Terrorism: Combating a Complex Threat" and written by the Congressional Research Service, a nonpartisan branch of the Library of Congress. Five of those 71 actually occurred, including April's Boston Marathon bombing and the 2009 shooting at the Army's Fort Hood in Texas, the report says. The uptick in discovering the plots is both real and the result of improved intelligence and sharing of that information between law enforcement jurisdictions, authorities and experts say. Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2013/12/29/213032/fbi-homegrown-terrorists-dont.html#storylink=cpy [Terrorism] [Response]
• Syria blamed for missed deadline on chemical arsenal
  By Joby Warrick, Tuesday, December 31, 12:55 PM E-mail the writer The Obama administration Monday called on Syria to honor promises to surrender its chemical weapons stockpile, a day after international experts acknowledged delays in removing some of the most lethal toxins from the country. U.S. officials conceded that a Tuesday deadline for ridding Syria of hundreds of tons of liquid poisons would not be met, citing stalled progress in transporting the chemicals across war-ravaged countryside to ships that will carry them out of the region. But the officials insisted that the overall effort to destroy President Bashar al-Assad’s chemical arsenal was on track. [Syria] [cbw] [Agency] [Media]
• 2014 Will Bring More Social Collapse
  By Dr. Paul Craig Roberts Global Research, December 30, 2013 2014 is upon us. For a person who graduated from Georgia Tech in 1961, a year in which the class ring showed the same date right side up or upside down, the 21st century was a science fiction concept associated with Stanley Kubrick’s 1968 film, “2001: A Space Odyssey.” To us George Orwell’s 1984 seemed so far in the future we would never get there. Now it is 30 years in the past. Did we get there in Orwell’s sense? In terms of surveillance technology, we are far beyond Orwell’s imagination. In terms of the unaccountability of government, we exceptional and indispensable people now live a 1984 existence. In his alternative to the Queen’s Christmas speech, Edward Snowden made the point that a person born in the 21st century will never experience privacy. For new generations the word privacy will refer to something mythical, like a unicorn. Many Americans might never notice or care. I remember when telephone calls were considered to be private. In the 1940s and 1950s the telephone company could not always provide private lines. There were “party lines” in which two or more customers shared the same telephone line. It was considered extremely rude and inappropriate to listen in on someone’s calls and to monopolize the line with long duration conversations. [Surveillance] [Prisoners] [Double standards]
• The Crisis of the Middle Class and American Power
  Geopolitical Weekly Tuesday, December 31, 2013 - 04:01 Editor's Note: The following Geopolitical Weekly originally ran in January 2013. By George Friedman When I wrote about the crisis of unemployment in Europe, I received a great deal of feedback. Europeans agreed that this is the core problem while Americans argued that the United States has the same problem, asserting that U.S. unemployment is twice as high as the government's official unemployment rate. My counterargument is that unemployment in the United States is not a problem in the same sense that it is in Europe because it does not pose a geopolitical threat. The United States does not face political disintegration from unemployment, whatever the number is. Europe might. At the same time, I would agree that the United States faces a potentially significant but longer-term geopolitical problem deriving from economic trends. The threat to the United States is the persistent decline in the middle class' standard of living, a problem that is reshaping the social order that has been in place since World War II and that, if it continues, poses a threat to American power. [Inequality] [Middle class] [Decline]

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