Month: August 2018

Authored by Eric Zuesse via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

A contest for political control of Europe is gearing up between two American teams, one headed by the long-established George Soros, and the other now being set up by the upstart Steve Bannon, US President Donald Trump’s former campaign-manager. Soros has long led America’s liberal billionaires in controlling Europe, and Bannon is now organizing a team of America’s conservative billionaires to wrest that control from the liberal ones. Whereas Soros claims to represent the public’s interests, Bannon claims to represent the population’s interests  – that’s the ‘populist’ side of America’s billionaires, versus the established ‘public-interest’ (Soros) side of them. 

Two American brands of ‘philanthropists’ will thus now be fighting for control over Europe’s political markets (or institutions).

It’s a battle to serve either ’the public’ or else ’the people’, and each political brand will be struggling to keep Europe as an ally in American billionaires’ war against Russia (which all American billionaires want to defeat), but each team does this from a different ideological perspective, one being ‘liberal’, and the other being ‘conservative’. 

Just as there is liberal-conservative political polarization between billionaires domestically within a nation, there also is such political polarization between billionaires regarding their given nation’s foreign policies; and America’s billionaires are politically very highly polarized, both nationally and, increasingly, internationally as well. None of them is progressive, or left-populist. The only ‘populism’ that any billionaire currently promotes is right-‘populist’, which is Bannon’s team. (Stalin was left-‘populist’; and Hitler was right-‘populist’; but neither dictator really was at all populist, which is simply democratic and against the aristocracy.) Both teams demonize each other within the United States for control over the US Government, but both are now competing against each other internationally for control over the entire world, by two different brands: liberal versus conservative. Both brands endorse ‘democracy’ or “the allies”; and both support spreading that ‘democracy’ by means of invading and occupying ‘dictatorships’ or “the enemies.” In Europe, this is called “imperialism”; in America, it is called “neo-conservatism” or “neoconservatism”; but no American billionaire actively opposes it (because to oppose it would be to oppose the aristocracy itself, the billionaires’ control over the Government — the very system that has been enormously successful for them, far more than the public itself recognizes).

After World War II, America’s billionaires took control of, first western Europe, and, then, after 1990, once the Soviet Union and its communism and its Warsaw Pact military alliance ended, they gradually took all of Europe. They did this not only by expanding NATO after 1990 (even as its mirror-organization the Warsaw Pact had disappeared and thus NATO’s nominal raison d’etre was actually gone) but by means of the EU, which was created in the 1950s as a joint effort by American and European billionaires and their agents — all of them being anti-Russian (or, as the public line at the time went, ‘anti-communist’). Their real aim was conquest, first of all absorbing all allies of Russia, and then ultimately of absorbing Russia itself — complete global conquest.

The public announcement of this new war by American billionaires for control over Europe, appeared on 20 July 2018, in the US neoconservative (i.e., pro-imperialism) neoliberal propaganda-site, The Daily Beast (it’s pro-Soros, anti-Bannon; and so says that Soros has “given away $32 billion to liberal causes” instead of “paid $32 billion to liberal causes” — for isolating and ultimately defeating Russia). This “liberal” article, against the “conservative” Bannon, opened as follows:

HELLFIRE CLUB

Inside Bannon’s Plan to Hijack Europe for the Far-Right

Bannon is moving to Europe to set up The Movement, a populist foundation to rival George Soros and spark a right-wing revolt across the continent.

NICO HINES 07.20.18 9:57 PM ET

LONDON — Steve Bannon plans to go toe-to-toe with George Soros and spark a right-wing revolution in Europe.

Trump’s former White House chief advisor told The Daily Beast that he is setting up a foundation in Europe called The Movement which he hopes will lead a right-wing populist revolt across the continent starting with the European Parliament elections next spring…

Bannon has spent his career after the US military as an agent for various US billionaires, most recently for the ones that backed Donald Trump in the Republican primaries and so bought the Party’s nomination for him. Whereas the chief brain behind Democrat Hillary Clinton’s campaign was Google’s Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt, the chief brain behind Donald Trump’s was Steve Bannon who had been hired for this purpose by billionaire mathematician and private-equity chief Robert Mercer who partnered on the operation with billionaire venture capitalist Peter Thiel. After Trump won the nomination, Bannon stayed on and his operation came to be funded most by the US-Israeli casino billionaire couple, Miriam and Sheldon Adelson. But all of the Republican billionaires(Jewish, evangelical Christian, and even some otherwise) were big supporters of Israel. Israel, of course, is allied with the Sauds, who own Saudi Arabia; and both Israel and the Sauds are even more focused on destroying Iran than on destroying Russia (the US aristocracy’s chief goal). Only America’s billionaires are obsessed to conquer Russia. They’ve been that way ever since World War II ended.

As the columnist Ambrose Evans-Pritchard accurately summarized in Britain’s Telegraph, “The European Union always was a CIA project, as Brexiteers discover”: 

US intelligence funded the European movement secretly for decades, and worked aggressively behind the scenes to push Britain into the project. 

As this newspaper first reported when the treasure became available, one memorandum dated July 26, 1950, reveals a campaign to promote a full-fledged European parliament. It is signed by Gen William J Donovan, head of the American wartime Office of Strategic Services, precursor of the Central Intelligence Agency. 

The key CIA front was the American Committee for a United Europe (ACUE), chaired by Donovan. Another document shows that it provided 53.5 per cent of the European movement’s funds in 1958. The board included Walter Bedell Smith and Allen Dulles, CIA directors in the Fifties, and a caste of ex-OSS officials who moved in and out of the CIA.

Bill Donovan, legendary head of the war-time OSS, was later in charge of orchestrating the EU project.

Papers show that it [ACUE] treated some of the EU’s ‘founding fathers’ as hired hands, and actively prevented them finding alternative funding that would have broken reliance on Washington.

There is nothing particularly wicked about this. The US acted astutely in the context of the Cold War. The political reconstruction of Europe was a roaring success.

However, his opinion at the end there isn’t entirely true, because at the same time, the CIA was working with thousands of secret Nazi and Fascist agents in Europe, whom the OSS had secretly collected and protected at the end of WWII and who continued secretly throughout the Cold War to carry out CIA operations to subvert not just communist agents in Europe but, even more than that, to subvert democratic agents in Europe who favored not subordination to the US but instead the democratic sovereignty of Europeans, over their own land’s politics. Therefore, from the very get-go, the EU was a means to impose, upon Europeans, control by US international corporations, for the benefit of corporate America. That was the overriding purpose of the EU — subordination to America’s billionaires, no authentic democracy. Vassalage within the US empire was and is the goal of them all — to conquer, first, Europe, and then, the world.

Evans-Pritchard urges his readers: “In my view, the Brexit camp should be laying out plans to increase UK defence spending by half to 3pc of GDP, pledging to propel Britain into the lead as the undisputed military power of Europe.” This pro-imperialist view of his, is an extension of that by Cecil Rhodes late in the 1800s, for a UK-US global empire in which those two imperial powers — the old one and the new one — would gradually take control over the entire world. George Soros has been working for that objective feverishly. Steve Bannon is against that ‘internationalist’ viewpoint, and he favors instead the ‘nationalist’ one, but in both the liberal and the conservative versions, America’s billionaires will take in an increasing proportion of the world’s wealth. The contest between these two teams is over how best to achieve this objective.

There is also a second reason why America’s billionaires are rabid against today’s Russia, above and beyond that of America’s billionaires demanding to control the world. This reason is that, under Vladimir Putin, Russia’s policy has been to demand that all billionaires, both domestic and foreign, accept that in Russia, the welfare of the Russian public takes precedence over and above the welfare of any and all billionaires. This is a principle that billionaires everywhere, and especially the American ones who prior to Putin’s leadership were robbing the Russian federal treasury, cannot tolerate. So: in siding with America’s billionaires, Europeans have been siding also with billionaires as a class — siding with the super-rich — against the public, everywhere. Why would Europeans be doing such a thing? Aren’t they supposed to have at least some degree of choice in such a matter? Aren’t they supposed to live in a democracy?

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Amid the economic, political, and social collapse, Brazil has been described by many as being in the midst of a “zombie apocalypse” as years of corruption and violence spectacularly implodes all at once.

Horrified by the out of control violence and pessimistic about the nation’s political and economic outlook, thousands of wealthy Brazilians are now fleeing the country.

Thiago Lacerda, a high-profile actor, is one of the thousands of celebrities, bankers, lawyers and affluent Brazilians considering emigration before the next round of turmoil.

“I’m totally freaked out by what’s been happening, especially here in Rio [Rio de Janeiro],” Mr. Lacerda told The Wall Street Journal.

The 40-year-old actor said he has considered moving his family to Europe for the safety of his three children. “In several years, they’re going to want to go out, to start dating, without worrying about getting shot.”

Naercio Menezes Filho, director of the center for public policy at Insper, a São Paulo business school, commented on the situation and pointed out — the elite fleeing the country is the newest trend amid the threat of gang violence and economic instability.

According to a study published in June by Brazilian polling agency Datafolh, about 52 percent of the wealthiest Brazilians — those with a monthly income of more than $2,500 — want to emigrate, while 56 percent of college graduates have plans on leaving the country.

“The hope that Brazilians once had in their country has gone out the window, and many people are now reaching the conclusion that things are unlikely to change in the next few years,” said Mr. Menezes Filho.

Government figures show the number of Brazilians filing emigration notices with the federal tax office reached 21,700 in 2017, that is nearly three times the number in 2011, when officials started recording the data. WSJ notes that many are moving on the Portuguese Riviera and to US cities such as Orlando and Miami.

Since the economic collapse, Brazil’s murder rate has been increasing.

The response: Emigration notifications with the federal tax office explode higher.

And now, the country’s elite want out.

Marcelo Caio Corrêa de Melo, a 37-year-old e-commerce manager in Brazil, told WSJ that security is the top reason he is emigrating to Portugal at the end of this month with his wife and two children.

“At the beginning of this year, I was in the office and suddenly we heard a huge explosion outside, and everyone jumped up,” he said. “It was a grenade let off by criminals running from the police.” A few months later, he said his father was robbed at gunpoint — and that is when he decided to escape the collapsing country.

According to Datafolha, the economy could grow at a 1.5 percent pace this year, while unemployment remains elevated at 12.4 percent. Datafolha asked 16- to 24-year-old Brazilians would they emigrate, and the result was shocking: 62 percent said yes.

Besides violent crime and a collapsed economy, 16- to 24-year-old Brazilians may want to flee the country because of high taxes, stifling economic growth as a huge chunk of which goes to pensions, said Tony Volpon, chief economist at UBS in Brazil. For those with a good education, leaving “looks like a good decision,” he said.

WSJ cites Brazil’s foreign ministry, which indicates the US has the most significant share of Brazilian expats — more than a third of the three million Brazilians estimated to be living abroad.

“Things just work there. Infrastructure is better, and everything is not so expensive,” said Vinícius Barbosa da Silva, 20, a student from the south of Brazil who said he is preparing to migrate to the US by 2020.

Joseph Williams, a US entrepreneur who moved to Brazil eight years ago, said some Brazilians cannot comprehend why he is still transacting business in the country.

“I tell everyone who comes to Brazil that if someone comes at you with a gun, you give them what you have,” he said. Recently, in São Paulo, where he runs a real-estate advisory and investment firm, two men robbed the occupants in the car next to his at the traffic lights. “I threw my phone and my bag on the floor and slid down on the seat,” he said.

But for many Brazilians, leaving the country has become more appealing. “I want to give my kids a childhood, more freedom, more equality,” said Lacerda, the famous actor, adding that “the idea of cutting myself off from my country is unthinkable,” however, necessary as the country descends into further chaos.

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Authored by Patrick Cockburn via Counterpunch.org,

The British government purports to be re-establishing the UK as an independent nation state by leaving the EU, but British power and ability to decide its own policies are continuing to ebb in the real world.

The latest evidence of this is the decision by the Home Secretary Sajid Javid to give precedence to the US in putting on trial two alleged ISIS members from London, who belonged to the notorious “Beatles” group in Syria that specialised in torturing and beheading their captives.

The humiliating admission by a country that it is incapable of dealing effectively and legally with its worst criminals is normally made by states like Colombia and Mexico, which extradite drug lords to the US. Their governments are implicitly confessing that they are too feeble and corrupt to punish their most powerful lawbreakers.

The British authorities are encouraging the Syrian Kurds holding El Shafee Elsheik and Alexanda Kotey to extradite them to the US rather than Britain. The declared motive for this is that there is a better chance of a speedy trial and exemplary sentence before a US court than in a British one, though the record in the US since 9/11 makes this a dubious argument.

What does come across is that Britain is in a messy situation regarding Isis prisoners and the return of jihadis to UK, with which it is unable to cope. The decision is now being reviewed by a judge in the UK.

As with Mexico and Colombia, the overall impression left by Javid’s actions is one of weakness and incapacity.

First, he made the baffling and unexplained decision to drop the usual British condition that the UK would provide evidence and intelligence for a trial only if the death penalty was ruled out. Moreover, he not only abandoned the longheld British principle of opposing state executions but did so in secret, suggesting the government knew all too well the significance of its change of policy.

The simplest explanation for not seeking a “death penalty assurance” from the US is that Theresa May, Javid and Boris Johnson, foreign secretary when the decision was made, saw the “Beatles” as a political hot potato.

They would be squeezed between those who demand that Elsheik and Kotey be punished with extreme rigour, and those who believe that the worst way to respond to Isis is to be lured into some form of lynch law. It is possible that the Trump administration unofficially insisted that Britain step back from its open opposition to the death penalty.

An alternative solution would be to hand over the two accused men to the International Criminal Court in the Hague – the only real objection to this being that the US refuses to recognise the court and the British priority in the age of Brexit is, above all else, to keep onside with Washington.

Isis benefits from the imbroglio over these Beatles because its atrocities have always aimed at instilling fear, but at the same time provoking an over-reaction by those it targets. This strategy worked well for al-Qaeda after 9/11 when US judicial credibility was damaged beyond repair in the eyes of the world by rendition, waterboarding, imprisonment without trial at Guantanamo and ritualised mistreatment of prisoners at Abu Ghraib.

At every stage in the conflicts in Syria, Iraq, Libya and Afghanistan, successive British governments have made unforced errors. They never seem to grasp the nature of these civil wars and how difficult it is to give a fair trial to anybody caught up in them because anybody detained on the vaguest suspicion may be sent to prison, tortured into a confession and summarily executed.

I was in Taji, a Sunni Arab area north of Baghdad in June this year, a place which used to be an Isis stronghold. A farmer told me that several of his neighbours have not made the hour-long journey to Baghdad for 10 years because they are frightened of being detained at government checkpoints, imprisoned and forced into false confessions.

The same fears are pervasive in Syrian government areas. Several years ago, I was talking to Sunni Arab refugees living in a school in the partly ruined city of Homs, where fighting was particularly intense. I said that it must be dangerous for any man of military age to move on the roads.

This was greeted with bitter laughter from the older men who said they were in just as much danger as their younger relatives.

Often the only way to get out of prison is not proof of innocence, but a bribe to the right officials. This is expensive and does not always work because the bribe-takers do not necessarily deliver on their promises. Iraqis and Syrians commonly believe that those most likely to buy their way out of prison are Isis militants who can come up with large sums of money and are too dangerous to be short-changed by officials they have bribed.

After the capture of Mosul, the de facto Isis capital in Iraq, in 2017, local people told me they were aghast at seeing former Isis officials back on their streets after a short detention. They claimed that this was because of the wholesale bribery of Baghdad government security forces.

Iraqi soldiers in the front line were equally cynical and concluded that there was no point sending live prisoners back to Baghdad so they executed them on the spot.

The Beatles are more famous because they killed and mistreated Westerners, but otherwise they were no different from other cruel and murderous Isis gangs. It is claimed that one reason they could not be tried in Britain is that information from the intelligence agencies could not be used without compromising sources. This might be true but whenever secret intelligence from government agencies has been revealed by public inquiries over the past 15 years, it has turned out to be far shakier and less compelling than originally claimed.

Knowing who really was in Isis and what they did there is impossible in countries where torture is pervasive and false confessions the norm. The time to have dealt with British jihadis and the tens of thousands of other fanatical foreign fighters was several years ago when they were freely crossing the Turkish border into Syria.

But the British government and its allies showed little concern because the priority then was forcing regime change in Damascus, an aim shared by the jihadis.

Sajid Javid pretends that the principle of government opposition to the death penalty will only be set aside in this single exceptional case, though principles that can be discarded so easily at convenient moments automatically cease to be principles.

The controversy over the legal fate of the “Beatles” underlines once again the truth of Cicero’s saying that “the laws are silent in times of war”.

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Authored by John Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute,

“The horror… the horror…”—Apocalypse Now (1979)

Nearly 73 years ago, the United States unleashed atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, killing more than 200,000 individuals, many of whom were civilians.

Fast forward to the present day, and the U.S. military under President Trump’s leadership is dropping a bomb every 12 minutes.

This follows on the heels of President Obama, the antiwar candidate and Nobel Peace Prize winner who waged war longer than any American president and whose targeted-drone killings continued to feed the war machine and resulted in at least 1.3 million lives lost to the U.S.-led war on terror.

America has long had a penchant for endless wars that empty our national coffers while fattening those of the military industrial complex. Since 9/11, we’ve spent more than $1.6 trillion to wage wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. 

When you add in our military efforts in Syria and Pakistan, as well as the lifetime price of health care for disabled veterans and interest on the national debt, that cost rises to $5.6 trillion.

Even with America’s military might spread thin, the war drums continue to sound as the Pentagon polices the rest of the world with more than 1.3 million U.S. troops being stationed at roughly 1000 military bases in over 150 countries.

To this end, Americans are fed a steady diet of pro-war propaganda that keeps them content to wave flags with patriotic fervor and less inclined to look too closely at the mounting body counts, the ruined lives, the ravaged countries, the blowback arising from ill-advised targeted-drone killings and bombing campaigns in foreign lands, or the transformation of our own homeland into a warzone.

Nowhere is this double-edged irony more apparent than during military holidays, when we get treated to a generous serving of praise and grandstanding by politicians, corporations and others with similarly self-serving motives eager to go on record as being pro-military.

Yet war is a grisly business, a horror of epic proportions. In terms of human carnage alone, war’s devastation is staggering. For example, it is estimated that approximately 231 million people died worldwide during the wars of the 20th century. This figure does not take into account the walking wounded—both physically and psychologically—who “survive” war.

War drives the American police state.

The military-industrial complex is the world’s largest employer.

War sustains our way of life while killing us at the same time. As Pulitzer Prize-winning war correspondent and author Chris Hedges observes:

War is like a poison. And just as a cancer patient must at times ingest a poison to fight off a disease, so there are times in a society when we must ingest the poison of war to survive. But what we must understand is that just as the disease can kill us, so can the poison. If we don’t understand what war is, how it perverts us, how it corrupts us, how it dehumanizes us, how it ultimately invites us to our own self-annihilation, then we can become the victim of war itself.

War also entertains us with its carnage, its killing fields, its thrills and chills and bloodied battles set to music and memorialized in books, on television, in video games, and in superhero films and blockbuster Hollywood movies financed in part by the military.

War has become a centerpiece of American entertainment culture, most prevalent in war movies.

War movies deal in the extremes of human behavior. The best films address not only destruction on a vast scale but also plumb the depths of humanity’s response to the grotesque horror of war. They present human conflict in its most bizarre conditions—where men and women caught in the perilous straits of death perform feats of noble sacrifice or dig into the dark battalions of cowardice.

War films also provide viewers with a way to vicariously experience combat, but the great ones are not merely vehicles for escapism. Instead, they provide a source of inspiration, while touching upon the fundamental issues at work in wartime scenarios.

As film director Sam Fuller points out, “You can’t show war as it really is on the screen, with all the blood and gore. Perhaps it would be better if you could fire real shots over the audience’s head every night, you know, and have actual casualties in the theater.”

While there are many films to choose from, the following 10 classic war films touch on modern warfare (from the First World War onward) and run the gamut of conflicts and human emotions and center on the core issues often at work in the nasty business of war.

The Third Man (1949). Carol Reed’s The Third Man, which deals primarily with the after-effects of the ravages of war, is a great film by anyone’s standards. Set in postwar Europe, this bleak film (written by Graham Greene) sets forth the proposition that the corruption inherent in humanity means that the ranks of war are never closed. There are many fine performances in this film, including Orson Welles, Joseph Cotten and Alida Valli.

Paths of Glory (1957). This Stanley Kubrick film is an antiwar masterpiece. The setting is 1916, when two years of trench warfare have arrived at a stalemate. And while nothing of importance is occurring in the war, thousands of lives are being lost. But the masters of war pull the puppet strings, and the blood continues to flow. This film is packed with good performances, especially from Kirk Douglas and George Macready.

The Manchurian Candidate (1962). John Frankenheimer’s classic focuses on the psychological effects of war and its transmutation into mind control and political assassination. All the lines of intrigue converge to form a prophetic vision of what occurred the year after the film’s release with the assassination of John F. Kennedy. This chilling film is well written (co-written by Frankenheimer and George Axelrod) and acted. Frank Sinatra, Laurence Harvey and Angela Lansbury head a fine cast.

Dr. Strangelove, Or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Bomb (1964). One of the great films of all time, Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove burst onto the cinematic landscape and cast a cynical eye on the entire business of war. Strange and surreal, this film is packed full of amazing images and great performances. Peter Sellers should have walked off with the Oscar for best actor (but he didn’t). Sterling Hayden and George C. Scott are excellent in support.

The Deer Hunter (1978). Michael Cimino’s Academy Award-winning film is one of the most emotion-invoking films ever made. This story of a group of Pennsylvania steel mill workers who endure excruciating ordeals in the Vietnam War is one film that makes its point clear—war is the horror of all horrors. Superb performance by Christopher Walken, who won a best supporting actor Oscar.

Apocalypse Now (1979). I consider this Francis Ford Coppola’s best film. Based on Joseph Conrad’s novella, The Heart of Darkness, Captain Willard (Martin Sheen) treks to the Cambodian jungle to assassinate renegade, manic Colonel Kurtz (Marlon Brando). This antiwar epic is a great visual experience with fine performances from its ensemble cast.

Platoon (1986). This is not Oliver Stone’s best film, but it is one helluva war movie. Set before and during the Tet Offensive of January 1968, this is a gritty view of the Vietnam War by one who served there. Indeed, when Stone is not filling the screen with explosions, he makes the jungle seem all too real—a wet place for bugs, leeches and snakes, but not for people. Fine performances by Willem Dafoe and Tom Berenger.

Full Metal Jacket (1987). Stanley Kubrick’s take on Vietnam is one of the most powerful and psychological dramas ever made. Focusing on the schizophrenic nature of the human psyche—the duality of man—Kubrick takes us through a hell-like Parris Island boot camp and into the bowels of a surreal Vietnam through the eyes of Joker (Matthew Modine). Every facet of this film, as in all of Kubrick’s work, is top notch.

Jacob’s Ladder (1990). Adrian Lyne’s thriller hits the psyche like a thunderbolt. A man (Tim Robbins) struggles with what he saw while serving in Vietnam. Back home, he gradually becomes unable to separate “reality” from the surreal, psychotic world that intermittently intervenes in his existence. This bizarre film touches on the sordid nature of war and the corruption of those who manipulate and experiment on us while we fight on their behalf. Good cast (especially Elizabeth Peña), an excellent screenplay (Bruce Joel Rubin) and adept directing make this film one nice trip.

Jarhead (2005). Sam Mendes’ film follows a Marine recruit (Jake Gyllenhaal) through Marine boot camp to service in Operation Desert Storm, winding up at the Highway of Death. But what Mendes serves up is war as a phallic obsession in the oil-drenched sands of Kuwait and Iraq. Here soldiers fight not for causes but to survive in the nihilistic pursuit of destruction. Fine performance by Jamie Foxx as Sergeant Sykes.

As these films illustrate, war is indeed hell.

As I point out in my book A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State, what we must decide is whether we’re stuck with the grim reality of war, or whether we’re prepared to do as Martin Luther King suggested in his Nobel Peace Prize lecture and find an alternative to war.

Speaking in Oslo in 1964, King declared:

Man’s proneness to engage in war is still a fact. But wisdom born of experience should tell us that war is obsolete. There may have been a time when war served as a negative good by preventing the spread and growth of an evil force, but the destructive power of modern weapons eliminated even the possibility that war may serve as a negative good. If we assume that life is worth living and that man has a right to survive, then we must find an alternative to war.

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The Chinese Ambassador to Syria, Qi Qianjin, has shocked Middle East pundits and observers with statements this week indicating the Chinese military may directly assist the Syrian Army in an upcoming major offensive on jihadist-held Idlib province.

The “[Chinese] military is willing to participate in some way alongside the Syrian army that is fighting the terrorists in Idlib and in any other part of Syria,” the ambassador said in an interview with the pro-government daily newspaper Al-Watan, subsequently translated by The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI).

Substantial rumors from pro-Damascus sources of a major Syrian-Russian led offensive to take back Idlib, held since 2015 by a Nusra Front dominated coalition (since rebranding itself as Hayat Tahrir al-Sham/HTS), have been swirling since the now successful Assad campaign to take back the whole of the south was initiated, and these sources indicate the battle could begin as early as September.

But crucially, Idlib province is now the ground zero gathering point of nearly all jihadist and ISIS factions remaining in Syria, including foreign fighters. According to some estimates there are upwards of 40,000 armed jihadists within the main anti-Assad factions in Idlib, embedded within a population of about 2 million civilians and internally displaced persons (IDP’s). Thus the coming battle for Idlib is expected to be among the most bloody and grinding of the entire seven years of war, similar to Aleppo in 2016.

China is chiefly interested in allying with Syrian government forces to root out the significant component of Chinese Muslim foreign fighters operating in Idlib. The hardline Islamist Uyghur militants have entered Syria in the thousands over the past few years from the western Chinese province of Xinjiang, where the minority ethno-religious group has found itself under increased persecution and oversight by the state. 

In 2017 the Syrian government estimated their numbers at around 5,000.

Chinese Ambassador To Syria says: “We Are Willing To Participate In Some Way In The Battle For Idlib Alongside The Assad Army Because of The Uyghur Jihadists Fighting with the Opposition https://t.co/MhSO56oAm1

— Joshua Landis (@joshua_landis) August 3, 2018

Chinese Ambassador to Syria Qi Qianjin emphasized mutual counter-terror interests in his comments while making indirect reference to Uyghur jihadists, telling Al-Watan: “…There is positive military cooperation between China and Syria in the domain of counterterrorism. We know that the war on terror and Syria’s campaign against the terrorists serve not only the interests of the Syrian people but also the interests of the Chinese people and of [all] the peoples of the world.

He explained further of Chinese interests in the war: “There has been close cooperation between our armies in fighting the terrorists [who came to Syria] from all over the world, including terrorists who came from China. This cooperation between the armies and [other] relevant elements will continue in the future…”

When asked about the upcoming Idlib offensive, Qianjin replied that China “is following the situation in Syria, in particular after the victory in southern [Syria], and its military is willing to participate in some way alongside the Syrian army that is fighting the terrorists in Idlib and in any other part of Syria.”

And in a separate statement to Al-Watan, a Chinese military attaché to Syria, Wong Roy Chang, backed the ambassador’s statement, albeit in a more reserved tone. Chang said, “The military cooperation between the Syrian and Chinese armies is ongoing. We have good relations and we maintain this cooperation in order to serve the security, integrity and stability of our countries. We – China and its military – wish to develop our relations with the Syrian army.”

However, when pressed over whether Chinese troops would assist in the Idlib campaign, Chang said it was a “political decision” to be decided by Beijing.

Meanwhile in the broader context of this week’s broader escalating trade war with Washington, and as China has long eyed being first in line torebuild Syria in close economic partnership with Damascus, Chinese companies in the Middle East will increasingly find themselves targeted by the West, as the US is seeking to prevent further Chinese and Russian entrenchment in the Middle East. 

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Authored by Federico Pieraccini via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

In the current multipolar world in which we live, economic and military factors are decisive in guaranteeing countries their sovereignty. Russia and China seem to be taking this very seriously, committed to the de-dollarization of their economies and the accelerated development of hypersonic weapons.

The transition phase we are going through, passing from a unipolar global order to a multipolar one, calls for careful observation. It is important to analyze the actions taken by two world powers, China and Russia, in defending and consolidating their sovereignty over the long term. Observing decisions taken by these two countries in recent years, we can discern a twofold strategy. One is economic, the other purely military. In both cases we observe strong cooperation between Moscow and Beijing. The merit of this alliance is paradoxically attributed to the attitude of various US administrations, from George Bush Senior through to Obama. The special relationship between Moscow and Beijing has been forged by a shared experience of Washington’s pressure over the last 25 years. Their shared mission now seems to be to contain the US’s declining imperial power and to shepherd the world from a unipolar world order, with Washington at the center of international relations, to a multipolar world order, with at least three global powers playing a major role in international relations.

The Sino-Russian strategy has shown itself over the last two decades to consist of two parts: economic clout on the one hand, and military strength on the other, the latter to ward off reckless American behavior. Both Eurasian powers have their respective strengths and weaknesses in this regard. If Russia’s economy can hardly be compared to China’s, China plays second fiddle to Russia’s conventional and nuclear deterrents, and is quite some way behind Moscow in terms of hypersonic weapons. The cooperation between Moscow and Beijing aims to synergize their respective strengths.

Economic sovereignty

Both de-dollarization and the development of hypersonic weapons serve the purpose of defending both countries’ sovereignty. Economic sovereignty entails, among other things, elimination of dependence on the US dollar, the abandonment of an international banking system based on the SWIFT payment system, the inclusion and increase in the share of the yuan in the basket of international currencies, the reduction of dollar-denominated public debt, the constant accumulation of gold, and, of course, the elimination of any residual debt with international institutions that are part of the world governance model controlled and manipulated by Washington for its own interests.

Beijing, rather than seeking to replace the central role of the United States, seeks instead to expand its influence in existing organizations like the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), the World Bank, and the World Trade Organization (WTO).

From an economic point of view, the international order is very similar to a duopoly rather than anything multipolar, without forgetting that the European Union has an important role to play should it regain some form of sovereignty by freeing itself from dependence on Washington. For Moscow and Beijing, reducing public debt is one of the best ways of achieving strong economic sovereignty. The Russian Federation has reduced its public debt in relation to GDP from 92% at the beginning of 2000 to 12.9% today. The People’s Republic of China, over 20 years, has increased its public debt from 20% of GDP to around 48%. Compared to the public debt of European countries (Italy and Greece are over 120%, France 100%, the EU average is 85%), Japan (240%) and the United States (110%), Beijing and Moscow have paid particular attention to keeping their accounts in order. Another important strategy involves the steady accumulation of gold in the reserves of these two countries.

China and Russia are once again trending in an opposite direction to that of the West. Since 2005, Russia and China have accumulated huge amounts of gold, with the clear intention of diversifying their reserves. Both Moscow and Beijing are among the top 10 countries in terms of gold reserves, with an exponential increase over recent years.

Thanks to a limited public debt, huge quantities of gold, and a progressive reduction in the amount of US government bonds held, Moscow and Beijing have embarked on the path of full economic sovereignty, independent of the US dollar system and strongly protecting themselves against any future financial crises. In this respect, the creation of international financial bodies, to be added to those already existing, has the clear purpose of diluting Washington’s institutional influence over the economic affairs of the world.

A decided acceleration in this general direction was made following the exclusion of the Islamic Republic of Iran from the SWIFT system, a ringing alarm bell for the Eurasian duo. Despite their reduction of public debt and significant de-dollarization, both countries remain dependent on, and therefore vulnerable to, an economic and financial system that orbits around Washington and London. The workaround has therefore been to create two alternative bank-payment systems to SWIFT. In the case of Russia, there is the so-called system for the transfer of financial messages (SPFS), and in China, the Cross-Border Inter-Bank Payments System (CIPS). Initially conceived as a fallback in the event of exclusion from the SWIFT system, the SPFS and CIPS projects currently strongly intertwine with the energy agreements reached in 2015. Moscow’s selling of liquid natural gas (LNG) to Beijing takes place through an international payment system based on Chinese renminbi that is immediately converted into gold thanks through the innovative mechanism inaugurated at the Shanghai Gold Exchange. It is not excluded that these operations could not directly occur through the SPFS or CIPS systems in the future. Never mind the petrodollar system that is one of the main problems that China and Russia face when dealing with the international financial system. Efforts to progressively switch from USD to Yuan in paying oil commodities have been in place for years especially by Beijing.

This is an example of how countries like Russia and China have found ways of circumventing the means used to limit their sovereignty. The inclusion of the yuan in the IMF basket of world reserve currencies is associated with the Chinese strategy of supporting the renminbi for export, reducing the share of the US dollar. The strategy adopted by Moscow and Beijing seems to leave Washington unable to stop the protective measures of these two Eurasian powers.

In practice, we are already beginning to see the effects of this alternative economic world order. The sanctions imposed by Washington and her satraps on Moscow and Tehran are easily circumvented by Russia and Iran, with exchanges denominated in currencies other than the dollar (often gold), or simply through bartering.

China and Russia, with strongly diversified economies, with treasuries chock full of gold, and with minimal public debt, leave very little room for international speculators to have an effect on their domestic economies with actions that amount to financial terrorism.

Being able to minimize the impacts and risks of a new financial crisis, or resist the threats and blackmail of the international bodies steered largely by Washington and London, are the key means of being able to chart an economically independent course and ensure national sovereignty.

The military is the definitive guarantor of sovereignty

Without a clear and inviolable military sovereignty, the economic measures implemented can become ineffective in the event of war. For this reason, China and Russia continue to implement nuclear-weapons strategies, the ultimate and definitive deterrent. Moscow is at least equal to Washington in this regard, just as Beijing is at least equal to Washington in the economic field. China and the United States have an interconnected economy, but in the event of total war, Washington would suffer the greatest damage. The transfer to China of almost all American industry has a cost, and in the case of a complete rupture in relations between the two countries, Washington is well aware of its economic vulnerability to China.

In military terms, the strategy for ensuring territorial sovereignty focuses on certain key areas, namely the defense of airspace and maritime borders, and the ability to discourage any nuclear attack by guaranteeing a second-strike capability.

I have written about this in the past, noting that Russia and China have implemented complex and advanced systems in recent years to close the technological gap with the West, Moscow being at least equal to Washington in this regard, and sharing with Beijing some of its most important innovations. The sale of S-400s to China paves the way for a future joint defense of Eurasian airspace. As the process of union and cooperation between the two countries increases, their respective militaries will have the task of discouraging outside attempts to destabilize the region. This is the reason why the United States sees the sale of the S-400 systems (to Turkey, for example) as a red line not to be crossed. The ability to prevent access to one’s airspace upsets one of Washington’s principal doctrines of war. Without air supremacy and the ability to operate in an uncontested airspace, the American way of war is severely hobbled, it becoming practically impossible for the United States to impose its will militarily.

The second military focus for the Eurasians concerns the defense of their maritime borders, reflecting Moscow and Beijing’s need to keep the US Navy a good distance from their shores. The development of anti-ship weapons has been a priority for Beijing in recent years, as has been the development of islets in the South China Sea to ensure a constant protection of its borders, given the aggressive presence of the US Navy. Beijing aims to create areas of denial for the US military. Initially keeping US forces about 180 miles from their coast, the future intention is to push them even further back, to a distance of about 700 miles, thus obtaining an effective anti-access/area denial (A2/AD) space that prevents any amphibious assault or a maritime blockade of China’s sea lines of communication.

In the same way that de-dollarization represents an economic nuclear weapon in the hands of Russia and China, the development of hypersonic weapons is the linchpin of the Sino-Russian alliance’s ability to defend its territorial sovereignty. I wrote two very detailed articles on these amazing weapons, and so did my colleagues at the Strategic Culture Foundation. It is an exciting topic because for the first time in years, Washington has faced the accomplished fact of its geopolitical adversary’s impressive technological progress. Hypersonic weapons have no present weaknesses, and Moscow is the only country in the world capable of producing and using them. With this new capability, the range of action of the Russian Federation reaches unprecedented levels.

Hypersonic weapons have the crucial advantage of being able to hit mobile or fixed targets with unprecedented speed and power. The ability to obliterate in a matter of minutes a US Navy carrier group or ABM systems in Romania and Poland undoubtedly has a sobering effect on the US military. This is to leave aside the fact that the future S-500 system will have anti-satellite capabilities as well as ballistic-missile defense, and the new SS-28 Sarmat will not be able to be stopped by any current or future ABM system.

With the use of hypersonic weapons (some already operational) and the sophisticated S-400 and S-500 systems, US naval and air power is being strongly challenged. With nuclear weapons, even the Russian first- and second-strike capabilities become impossible for the US to overcome.

It is only a matter of time before hypersonic technology is brought to bear by the People’s Republic of China, probably with Moscow’s crucial assistance. The level of mutual trust and cooperation has never been so high between the two countries, and it is natural for them to collaborate militarily and economically, spurred by their common opponent.

Conclusion

The challenge for Russia and China is complex and ongoing. The transition from a unipolar to a multipolar world order is occurring as we speak, enabled by economic and military sovereignty. The challenge for these two Eurasian countries will be to increase their military and economic power, and correct the obvious imbalances in the current world order, without destroying it.

If this strategy proves successful, it will only be natural to start offering other countries the opportunity to hop onto the Eurasian train, enabling those willing to shift their military, economic and diplomatic leaning from the Atlantic to the Eurasian world. Given the momentous significance of India and Pakistan’s accession to the Shanghai Cooperation Organization as permanent members, it would seem that Moscow and Beijing are on track to eliminating the central role of the United States in international relations in favor of a multilateralism that will benefit everyone.

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Tommy Robinson told Fox News‘ Tucker Carlson about the conditions he suffered in a UK jail after his May 25th arrest and imprisonment for contempt of court. Robinson was taken into custody while filming and broadcasting from outside a pedophile grooming trial over Facebook Live. 

The UK activist, whose real name is Stephen Christopher Yaxley-Lennon, was released on bail Wednesday after three London judges ordered him retried on the contempt charge, citing in part the mere five hours between his arrest and imprisonment by a smirking Judge Geoffrey Marson QC. 

Once a judge heard what happened in the trial, we found so many illegal and wrongdoings within this kangaroo court that then it took another two weeks before I was freed. -Tommy Robinson

Robinson says that after being initially housed in a prison with a low Muslim population of just 7 percent, he was transferred to another prison with the largest Muslim population in the UK, and housed directly across from the mosque. Robinson tells Tucker: “What I’m known for is criticizing Islam, so there’s been many planned attempts to murder me and kill me in this country.” 

He said he was placed in solitary confinement where he spent “two months not seeing or speaking to anybody,” during which he lost 40 pounds from a diet of “one tin of tuna and a piece of fruit a day.” 

I was supposed to be in Her Majesty’s prison service, not Guantanamo Bay. I couldn’t open my windows because I have excrement and spit put through them. I believe this whole piece – and, Tucker, this isn’t the first

So, every prisoner would walk past my cell window. Everyone, as they walk out. So, when my windows were open, every prisoner is walking past. But the mosque for the prison was directly opposite my cell. -Tommy Robinson

Robinson said he had to close his window amid sweltering heat spells to avoid all the excrement and spit flying into his cell from passersby. 

He also said, reluctantly, also admitted that he was diagnosed with a form of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) which he has never spoken about publicly “because I don’t want to insult members of the military who have witnessed war to try and compare to being locked in a cell in solitary confinement.” 

Robinson also describes his arrest, and claims his lawyer (solicitor) has evidence that authorities said he was being released – only to be jailed hours later: 

CARLSON: I just want our viewers to understand why this happened to you in the first place. You went to prison in a supposedly free country for expressing unfashionable opinions in public. 

ROBINSON: There was a court case going on where 29 people were in court for gang raping up to 100 young children. 

Now, I stood outside of the court and I spoke. And all I had done was read a BBC news article, a BBC news article that is still online now for millions of people to see. And I was taken.

And everyone would I watch the video. They said for a breach of the peace. They transported me to a police custody. And then, my solicitor contacted the police custody. Then, they emailed my solicitor. So, the solicitor has this email, saying I was being released.

Then they took me in a van back to the court through the back door. They put me up before a judge. And the media reports have said that I pled guilty. At no point was I even asked whether I was guilty or not guilty.

Watch:

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Via Jesse’s Cafe Americain,

“None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe that they are free.”

– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

William Edward Binney is a former highly placed intelligence official with the United States National Security Agency (NSA) turned whistleblower who resigned on October 31, 2001, after more than 30 years with the agency.

He was a high-profile critic of his former employers during the George W. Bush administration, and later criticized the NSA’s data collection policies during the Barack Obama administration.

In 2016, he said the U.S. intelligence community’s assessment that Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election was false.

– Wikipedia, Bill Binney

Because of his analysis in conjunction with Veteran Intelligent Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) that has tended to carefully debunk the Russia Russia narrative, Binney has not been given much airtime on certain channels within the mainstream news media.

I found this recent interview to be very interesting.  I am not qualified or sufficiently well-informed to assess it, but listen to it for yourself and see what you think. It would seem to be worth your time at least.

He has some good things to say about Donald Trump and draining the swamp. And you know how I feel about his Presidency. So there must be something there for me to find it worth hearing.

He discussed a number of controversial topics including 9/11, etc.

Binney certainly has the right pedigree to be an informed whistleblower, and he has never been brought to heel or silenced, so he must have something going for him.  He does seem to be extraordinarily well-informed. I would imagine that if it was possible that he would be charged or discredited or smeared.

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Though no shocker as we predicted previously, China has refused to cut Iranian oil imports at the United States’ request in a severe blow to White House efforts to intensify pressure and economically isolate the Islamic Republic after the US withdrawal from the 2015 nuclear deal. However, Beijing has reportedly agreed not to accelerate purchases. 

China, itself a target of ratcheting US economic pressure especially after Wednesday’s shock news that President Trump may impose a 25 percent tariff on $200 billion worth of Chinese goods, remains the world’s top crude importer and is Iran’s top buyer.

Bloomberg reported overnight, citing two officials familiar with the negotiations, that limited concessions have been made, however:

Beijing has, however, agreed not to ramp up purchases of Iranian crude, according to the officials, who asked not to be identified because discussions with China and other countries continue. That would ease concerns that China would work to undermine U.S. efforts to isolate the Islamic Republic by purchasing excess oil.

China has long been on record as opposing unilateral sanctions and further according to Bloomberg accounted for 35 percent of Iranian exports last month, based on ship tracking data. 

Meanwhile Iran’s foreign minister welcomed the news: “The role of China in the implementation of JCPOA, in achieving JCPOA, and now in sustaining JCPOA, will be pivotal,” Mohammad Javad Zarif said, according to Reuters.

The Trump White House currently has teams of negotiators around the world pressuring European and other capitals to cut off trade with Iran — largely unsuccessful to date — in an attempt to cut its oil exports to zero by November 4.

This has been accompanied by the threat of sanctions for those who don’t comply with US demands to show “significant” progress in reducing Iranian oil purchases. Bloomberg reports that a US team led by Francis Fannon, the assistant secretary of state for the Bureau of Energy Resources, recently visited China to discuss sanctions, confirmed by a State Department spokesman. 

Crucially, it is as yet unclear how severe a toll this will take on the global oil market, as Bloomberg discusses the variables and unknowns at play:

The oil market has been speculating about how much of Iran’s exports could be eroded by the U.S. sanctions, with analysts from BMI Research to Mizuho Securities predicting that China might boost its imports of cheap supplies from the state and offset cuts by other nations. Countries including South Korea and Japan are reducing purchases from OPEC’s third-largest producer before the deadline to avoid the risk of buyers losing access to the U.S. financial system.

…The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, led by Saudi Arabia, has pledged to fill any supply gaps in the market after Trump’s complaints. That’s helped limit a rally in global benchmark Brent crude, which is trading near $73 a barrel after falling 6.5 percent last month. The London marker is still up about 40 percent from a year earlier.

Saudi Arabia, for geopolitical reasons, remains a close American oil partner in lobbying for global isolation of Iran at a moment when Iran’s military has threatened to block all regional exports from the Persian Gulf, initiating war games this week near the vital Straight of Hormuz, prompting the Pentagon to deploy additional US warships to the area. 

Meanwhile, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross told Fox Business Network on Thursday that there’s more pain ahead for Beijing while also attempting to calm fears of potential blowback on US consumers and businesses, assuring the public, “It’s not something that’s going to be cataclysmic”.

“We have to create a situation where it’s more painful for them to continue their bad practices than it is to reform,” Ross said of ratcheting up the pressure on China and in defense of the president’s escalatory rhetoric on tariffs. 

“The reason for the tariffs to begin with was to try and convince the Chinese to modify their behavior. Instead they have been retaliating. So the president now feels that it’s potentially time to put more pressure on, in order to modify their behavior,” he said.

Ross tried to calm fears further by saying Wednesday’s announcement of potentially raising planned tariff’s on $200 billion of Chinese imports from 10 percent to 25 percent would only amount to $50 billion — according to him a negligible fraction of the Chinese economy.

But the Chinese aren’t seeing it that way, as on Thursday Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi slammed talk of possible 25 percent tariffs: “Instead of achieving one’s own goal by doing this, we believe it will only hurt one’s own interests,” he told reporters at a press conference in Singapore. He continued, “Sixty per cent of Chinese exports to the US are actually made by foreign companies, including American firms in China. Is the US trying to put tariffs on its own companies?“

“For Chinese exports to the US, many of them are no longer produced in the US itself. Is the US administration trying to raise the living cost of its own consumers?” the Chinese FM said.

FM Wan Yi called for cooler heads to prevail: “While China is ready to talk to anyone ready to talk to us, including the US, this kind of dialogue has to take place on the basis of mutual respect and equality,” he concluded.

* * *

While as much as 2.3 million barrels a day of crude from the Persian Gulf state at risk per Trump’s sanctions, the White House has has now as predicted gotten the door slammed by China, while India or Turkey have already hinted they would defy Trump and keep importing Iranian oil. Together three three nations make up about 60 percent of the Persian Gulf state’s exports.

While next steps remain unclear, the potential outcome for the US isn’t: should China fully pivot away from US exports and replace them with Iranian product, the US trade deficit will resume rising, further adding to the pressure of what is Trump’s biggest economic hurdle: the double US deficits.

The flipside is that since less Iranian oil exports will go unused, it may provide a solace to the US consumer facing the highest gas prices in four years. However, if the ongoing pipeline bottleneck in the Permian is not resolved soon, said solace will prove to be short-lived.

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