Going Underground's Afshin Rattansi interviews the former British Ambassador to Syria on the irony of London hosting a Syria conference to aid refugees while Cameron drops bombs to create more. "This week London hosted the Syrian Donor conference in an attempt to raise money for the people UK bombs continue to displace to the shores of Europe. But as Philip Hammond mulls sending guns to Libya to quell the rise of Isis - made possible by the British toppling of Gadaffi - should we really even believe his claims that Russia is helping ISIS/Daesh by bombing Cameron's supposedly 'moderate' rebels." (Afshin Rattansi) First published at https://www.rt.com/shows/going-underground/331567-assange-detainment-syria-conference/
Below is the video of the full show, embedded. The Peter Ford interview sequence starts at 17minutes 40 seconds into show:
A frank discussion about the consequences of Merkel's open borders on Denmark, with a number of references to the Australian system for processing refugees. Note, however, that refugees do not usually achieve permanent resettlement in Europe, whereas they usually do in Australia. When European governments talk about taking in refugees, they are talking about a temporary situation. In this interview Oksana Boyko of RT asks Ft. Anders Vistisen about the Danish plan to confiscate valuables from refugee applicants to pay for their costs and how many more refugees can Denmark accept. Why is Denmark moving refugees to rural camps? Won't that detract from their integration?
You stay, you pay Ft. Anders Vistisen, Danish member of the European Parliament
"As spring approaches, refugee flows from the Middle East into Europe are expected to intensify, putting Europe in a race against time to get a handle on the refugee challenge. Is a collective solution still possible or will EU members have to go their separate ways? To discuss that, Oksana is joined by Anders Vistisen, a Danish member of the European Parliament." (Introduction to program.)
North Korea has apparently just tested an H-bomb - a shocking development, even though some doubt it actually was a hydrogen bomb. Already, Washington lawmakers are grabbing the moment to push through reinforcement of America’s presence in the Asia Pacific, already catalyzed by the “pivot to Asia” plan aimed against China. As Europe lines up to strike lucrative deals with Beijing, Washington is growing increasingly worried, even counter-attacking with the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement. The world is already an uneasy place, with Jihad rampant and now we have potentially deadly armament at the hands of unpredictable Pyongyang. Will the US and China be able to co-operate? Why is the West is so afraid of Beijing? This program dives deep into the world of Asia Pacific political games with the president of the Shanghai Institute of International studies, Dongxiao Chen, on Sophie&co. This interview was first published at https://www.rt.com/shows/sophieco/328252-us-china-sea-war/ on 8 Jan, 2016 09:53
Sophie Shevarnadze:Dongxiao Chen, president of the Shanghai Institute of International studies, it’s great to have you on our show today, welcome.
Dongxiao Chen: Thank you.
SS: So London has given President Xi a royal welcome recently, and that’s after UK criticizing China on a number of issues for years and years. What’s going on? Is UK after some lucrative deals or is it something else right now?
CD: Well, you see that nowadays we are living in an economically globalized world, and I think that the leaders, if they are really concerned of national interests, they should be more concerned about those practical and benefit of their economic interests. This should be always on their high agenda, and I think that to compare with the complementarity of both sides of the economic development and as well as this huge potential of this cooperation, not only on the economic side but on the other side - I think that that’s the main reason driving London more closer to Beijing.
SS: Lucrative deals, right?
CD: Yeah, to some extent.
SS: You know, this cozying up of UK and China towards each other has drawn criticism from Washington. Why is that two sovereign countries can’t have a relationship without irritating America?
CD: I think that some Washington people - I am not quite sure whether the President Obama or those officials publicly would criticize those economic relations between London and Beijing…
SS: But you know they’re annoyed, right? If I know, you should know…
CD: Yeah, of course, but there are some people, in Washington, they could not understand why: London used to be the closest ally and now seems to have shifted away from Washington and more closer to Beijing. I think that they could not adapt themselves to a more multi-polarized world in which China has much more important role, particularly in economic aspect, and that London, if it is to continue to maintain its status of financial center, then they should do something to strengthen its ties with Beijing, if they are going to try to maintain their status of financial center.
SS: You have also said that there’s need to rethink the regional security order in the Asia-Pacific region. That would actually mean challenging the existing American alliance system that is already in place. But would it still mean that it has to include the U.S. in the new order?
CD: Of course. I think that if we’re going to construct, or build up a regional order, sustainable. It should be an inclusive multilateral process, including those bilateral alliances. But how to make this inclusive multilateral process connected or aligned with those bilateral? Big question. This is not a problem on China’s side. This is the challenge for Washington, for the U.S., because they still believe that this regional architecture, this regional security order should be based upon the bilateral alliance excluding China. So, I think that this is the problem: obstacles that the U.S. should overcome.
SS: We’re going to talk about excluding China from this architecture a bit later, but first, I want to talk about America’s pivot to Asia - and I’m talking about America redeploying its military in the Asia-Pacific region. Is it a real threat to China or this move has little substance, actually?
CD: Well, conceptually speaking, it should not be perceived as an existing threat. Because, based upon our reading of so-called “pivoting” or rebalancing, it is multidimensional. Of course, Washington said that it is going to shift 60% of its military force to Asia-Pacific, but that’s only part of it. In addition to that the U.S. tried to reap the benefit of dynamic economic cooperation in Asia-Pacific. Washington tried to grasp this opportunity. So, that’s both the military dimension, as well as the economic dimension. U.S. said it also tries to be much more engaged with East Asia, Asia-Pacific, as a stabilizing force. So, we just have to look and see to what extent - because deeds speak louder than those words.
SS: Let’s, for now, let’s focus on the military aspect; we will get to the economic aspect and all of that. China has staked claims South China sea, and then its neighbors have turned to America to actually dispute these claims. Do you think claiming this territory is worth this diplomatic row?
CD: The tensions rising over the South China Sea are not by China, rather, because of some other countries, some of the Asian countries included. They have occupied these territories that have been long claimed by China, but for a long period of time China has showed its self-restraint, and we hope that we can shift those differences over those territories’ sovereignty, through this joint exploitation. This is our strategy which we have been carrying on for many-many years. We have never changed that. But nowadays it’s the U.S. who used to say that the U.S. has “no position”, “tries to maintain its neutrality”. Now it seems to me that the U.S. has its position and tries to stir up the tension. That makes problems.
SS: But you now see U.S. and its allies staging naval drills in the waters next to China, and you have the Chinese press that calls for the nation’s military to be ready for provocations. Can a real confrontation glare up here?
CD: So far, I think that we have given quite clear message to Washington that the South China Sea is most important area. If we can keep sealine communications safe, there will be for public good for all countries, including China and the U.S.. So, don’t try to stir up these tensions. Let’s manage these differences. If we can maintain the stability - because the so-called “freedom of navigation”, U.S. is very concerned. It’s not a matter here. So I think, why not we - Washington, Beijing - work together?
SS: Okay, but this was a very scholar-like answer that you just gave me. I’m asking, the way things stay now, with America and its allies staging drills in the waters next to China - do you think there’s a real chance of an actual confrontation or its overexaggerated?
CD: Of course. The possibilities always stay there. If we could not manage those differences, it is quite likely that those incidents may escalate or spin out of control, based upon a miscalculation. Both sides understand the differences there, but they try to avoid those confrontation, because it is in their common interest.
SS: Because, I mean, the confrontation between these two powerhouses would be insane to even really consider, right? To even start to consider, it’s crazy, that America and China could actually confront each other.
CD: Of course.
SS: But you have said that peace between China and America will end once their mutual interests exhaust each other. What exactly does that mean?
CD: I mean that for a sustainable workable big country-relationship, the common interest is important but not enough. Both sides should also cultivate the sense of mutual respect. If both sides could cultivate this sense of mutual respect and can build up this shared common understanding of what will the regional order look like, or what it should be, it is more likely for them to, you know, solve these differences, even if they could not see eye-to-eye on this specific issues, but they, at least, understand that these are specific issues, we shall not have these specific differences of interests to hijack overall relationship. So, this is what I mean that even if these common interests are exhausted, at least there’s common understanding of these important norms of interacting with each other.
SS: So, okay, let’s say common interests are exhausted, but other common issues aren’t worked on - then what comes instead of peace?
CD: If we have a static perspective, if there’s no agreement on the vision of order or what order will be in future, it is very likely that both sides would not try to expand the list of their cooperation. They will just focus on their differences.
SS: Okay, so they just end their cooperation but it doesn’t mean they become adversaries.
CD: If both sides do not see each other as adversaries, if they believe that they can be partners for building a new world order, than they can find, they can expand these cooperative areas. For instance, if both sides could not agree with how to counter terrorism, then the terrorism itself will be an issue diving each other rather uniting each other. But if both sides can share their common understanding of how to counter terrorism ,then the terrorism, the so-called “third party issues” bring them together. So, aside of those existing bilateral common interests, there’s a huge number of potential common interests going beyond their bilateral scope, but that depends upon whether both sides -Washington and China can share some basic norms and visions of the future.
SS: I want to know your honest answer, your subjective opinion in this matter, not a scholar’s opinion - right now, if you put your hand on your heart, would you say America and China are partners or adversaries?
CD: Well, you know, China-U.S. relationship is extremely complicated. The single terms like “partner”, “adversary”, “competitor” is not sufficient enough to generalize. So, I would say that yes, it is a “competitive partnership”.
SS: So you’ve also said that when it comes to understanding Great Power relations, America has some blind spots. What do you mean?
CD: When I say that there’s a “blind spot”, I mean the U.S. strategic culture, their unique strategic culture, which, I would’ve called it a kind of “superpower autism”.
SS: Superpower autism?
CD: Egoism. You know, U.S., historically, because of its unique geographical location and also its culture of exceptionalism and in the past decades U.S. has enjoyed its superpower position and even a period of a unipolar moment. So, U.S. sometimes is too self-confident and always tries to reduce its own vulnerability to zero at the expense of other countries’ security. But, as a matter of fact, in real life, it’s impossible for a country to try to reduce its vulnerability to zero, but the U.S. try to pursue such kind of policy, what I call an “absolute security” - that is a kind of a blind spot, because when the U.S., Washington tries to pursue this absolute security, actually, it just puts other countries at a different level of threat, imposed by Washington, because U.S. would always try to enjoy, because of its technology, try to, you know, information superiority, cyber-superiority, military superiority or even try to control some of the outer space. That will impose a lot of challenges and security threats to other countries.
SS: So when President Obama comes out and says that the U.S. will not let China write the rules of the global economy - do you think it’s fair, that China can’t but for some reason America is entitled to it?
CD: Of course, it’s unfair. I think, we, Chinese, believe that we are living in a multipolar world and every country should have its own say in decision making of roles and norms.. It is impossible for a single country to try to set agenda. It’s not China, but of course, it’s not the U.S. We can compete. So, I think that all those countries should have their own voice. But nowadays there’s developing countries which are underrepresented…
SS: You’ve said that the voices of the developing countries aren’t heard enough - I wouldn’t call China a developing country, but I know that China ranks 6th in IMF voting share, as well as China is the second largest economy in the world. Is it fair that your country isn’t given a louder voice?
CD: Of course, we don’t believe that nowadays IMF or World Bank, those Bretton Woods systems need to be reformed, unless, I think, it could be a threat for the new balance of power, of the global economy. So far, this kind of reforms was slow. Partially, some of those reform proposals have been blocked by the U.S. within the Congress. It is unfair.
SS: Is that why China is coming up with the China-led Asia Infrastructure and Investment bank?
CD: It is partially a reason, because we believe that it will help, it will give some pressure on existing multinational institutions, including IMF and the World Bank to accelerate their reform pace and so I think it’s very good…
SS: So, it is about countering the Western influence after all?
CD: There is some competition, but it is also complimentary, because by reforming those reforming those existing multilateral economic institutions, it will also be beneficial in the long term for those developing countries. Because, even those developing countries, they believe that multilateral institutions - IMF or World Bank - they are too bureaucratic. It’s efficiency is so low, and they need to reform. But the Western interest there is to try and to block, to resist the reform. So we believe, we are rationally speaking, we think that if we can make this structure, organisation, much more clear, much more efficient - that will be good for all countries, not only for developing countries. So, at least, I’ve heard a lot of scholars and experts from Great Britain, from the U.S., they think that yes, it’s wrong for these kinds of reform proposals to be blocked in Washington DC or by the Congress.
SS: But what about politicians? Why do you think America reacted so actually about China coming up with the whole Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank, especially urging their partners like GB, France, Australia, Germany, not to join their venture - which they did anyways. Why were they so panicky about western countries joining this new institution?
CD: Washington, including President Obama himself have recognized that it’s a mistake. They totally misunderstand the mission and the function of the AIB. They believe that it is kind of counter-Western institution, it is kind of a conspiracy plan, that China, Beijing tried to set up a new kitchen; but actually, as China said, it’s not going to set up a new kitchen, but we are going to try to add up a new facility, make this old kitchen much more efficient. So that’s the way.
SS: Do you think America should join this venture?
CD: Of course, if they are willing to do that. I think that it is quite open. Chinese always keep Washington posted on process of AIB, including, we always even kept Tokyo informed, we always inform them about the status of what is going on and Washington, you know, they are quite clear about the process, it’s not secret, it’s not a “black box” operation.
SS: So, the U.S. has an extensive system of alliance in Asia Pacific. They’re actually coming up with a Trans-Pacific-Partnership deal right now, and they’re not being secretive about it - for them it's all about excluding China from the process. Should China be doing something more to counter that?
CD: China felt the pressure of the TPP on multi-faceted aspects, because TPP, it’s negotiated in secret, we just do not know what it’s really about, particularly it is has a potential of an active impact on China’s interests. So, we always, you know, we were quite clear to Washington colleagues that they should let this process be much more transparent.
SS: So it’s about transparency, not about being included in the process?
CD: This is one thing - I said, multi-faceted aspects. It should be transparent so that we should know what is going on. Secondly, so far, a lot of these articles, particularly in regard to this state-owned enterprises reform, in regard to this information, digital economy, in regard to labor force standard - they are quite new.
SS: The more interesting question is, will they be able to isolate China? Will this bill somehow manage to isolate China?
CD: I think, it is impossible, because China’s trade volume, it’s market, is extremely important, so without China’s involvement into TPP, I think the influence of the TPP, well, would important, of course, but not that important. So, Washington has already said: “we welcome China, it all depends on China’s decision”. We still try to wait and see, because it all depends on China’s own economic reform, whether we are ready. But at the same time, think, TPP is... sometimes we feel pressure, sometimes we think it will be a kind of leverage to be used pushing forward a reform at home.
SS: Funny you say that, because I was speaking to American Congressman, his name is Brad Sherman, and he’s against TPP, but he actually argues that TPP would be beneficial for China, meaning, you know, all these goods are mostly assembled in China and then they’re sent to the U.S. via TPP members like Vietnam. What do you think, could it actually be beneficial to China?
CD: No, I think if China won’t join TPP, for a long period of time, based upon a lot of surveys, a lot of research, that this impact will obviously be felt on quite a number of industries in China, particularly given this trade transferring from China to other countries, like Vietnam, Mexico. So, the long-term here is quite clear that the impact is obvious. But in short term, I don't know. The short term is not so obvious.
SS: Dongxiao Chen, president of the Shanghai Institute of International studies, thank you very much for this interesting insight into China-U.S. relations. It’s been great talking to you.
Australian freedom fighter and political refugee, Julian Assange, will take part in a discussion dedicated to information privacy and security in the digital age, organized as part of an RT conference on media and politics. Watch conference live.The WikiLeaks founder will tune in from the Ecuadorian embassy in London. He has been shamefully abandoned by the Australian government. (Introduction to this article which was republished from the RT site was by a candobetter.net editor).
Julian Assange will take part in a discussion dedicated to information privacy and security in the digital age, organized as part of an RT conference on media and politics. The WikiLeaks founder will tune in on Thursday from the Ecuadorian embassy in London.
The session, titled 'Security or Surveillance: Can the right to privacy and effective anti-terror security coexist in the digital age?' will also be attended by former counter-terrorism specialist and CIA military intelligence officer Philip Giraldi, whistleblower and former MI5 intelligence officer Annie Machon, noted CIA whistleblower Raymond McGovern, and historian, author, and strategic analyst Gregory Copley.
The discussion will be moderated by Thom Hartmann, host of RT America's political discussion program 'The Big Picture.'
Assange will be speaking from the Ecuadorian embassy in London, where he has been holed up for over three years after being granted asylum in order to avoid extradition to Sweden, where he faces sexual assault allegations. From Sweden, the WikiLeaks founder fears he would be extradited to the US for publishing classified US military and diplomat documents in 2010 – a move which amounted to the largest information leak in United States history.
The panel discussion is part of an RT conference titled 'Information, messages, politics: The shape-shifting powers of today's world.' The meeting aims to bring together politicians, foreign policy experts, and media executives from across the globe.
Discussions on a wide variety of international issues will take place, including Middle East security, Russia's role on the world stage, and the role of the media in today's world.
The conference will be held at Moscow's historic Metropol Hotel on Thursday, the 10th anniversary of RT's first news broadcast. To find out more, visit the official website of the conference.
Video inside:One of NATO imperialism's greatest chroniclers, Australian award-winning journalist and filmmaker, John Pilger, tells us how Washington, London and Paris gave birth to ISIS.
The Middle East conflict - war in Syria and Iraq - has already spilled over. No one is safe from the terrorist attacks, neither East, nor West. Islamic State claims it is still strong, and its ideas are attracting new recruits to replace those killed on the field. Islamic State says the horrors it perpetrates are done in the name Allah - spurring resentment against Muslims all across the globe. Today, we speak to an Islamic scholar, a Grand Mufti of Syria, Ahmad Badreddin Hassoun, to see how the jihadists have twisted the idea of Islam. And does their agenda have anything to do with Islam at all? Republished from
Sophie Shevardnadze:Thank you very much for being with us today. This is a great honor. We are delighted to have you, because there are so many things we want to discuss. You said that there is no such thing as a religious war, there are only political interests. But ISIL fighters want to conquer the whole world, they use Islam as their banner and call this fight a religious war. Are they guided by political interests?
Ahmad Badreddin Hassoun: First of all, I want to express my gratitude to the Russian Federation, because it sided with the truth. It did not separate Syrians by their Shia or Sunni background. It decided to support the Syrian people as a whole.
Syria is a secular, democratic society where different religious groups coexist – Christians, the Druze, Sunni and Shia Muslims. Those who call their wars religious, do so in order to provoke radicalism among Muslims. This of course goes against the true Islamic culture, because a person with values will never commit the atrocities ISIL is known for. They use religion as a pretext for conflict and bloodshed. I think there are two kinds of Islamic State fighters – those who know nothing about true Islam and those who have some religious background, but they use religion to promote their own agenda and kill others.
SS: How are ISIL leaders able to make so many young people follow them? They make them participate in violent acts, in combat – how do they do it?
ABH: What ISIL is doing is not new. This organization has existed before – under different names. They convince their followers that they are guided by religious convictions, spread their ideology, spending a lot of money on that work. We must remember it.
SS: Right! But they don’t buy these young people – they come from Europe, Russia, the U.S. young people from good families for some reason go to Syria and begin to fight for ISIL. How do Islamic State leaders achieve that? It does not matter how they name themselves. How do they do this? What goes on in people’s heads?
ABH: We met with some guys who came from the UK, France. Many of them were Syrians. They come here to build some sort of Islamic caliphate. They think that they will promote Islam and spread it to the whole world.
But we know that religion should not be preached with weapons – rather with love and solidarity. ISIL uses ideology to lead young people astray. But they do it for their own political purposes. Most of the people being killed in Syria today are Muslims. The majority of ISIL victims are Muslims!
SS: But why do these young men join ISIL? Why do young, healthy people that have good lives at home, go to fight for Islamic State?
ABH: Many young people go abroad, because they want to follow a new ideological trend – radical Islam. They are lost, and leading them back on the right path will take some serious effort. They end up with the wrong people, believing they can wage war in the name of religion. Now, after Russia began to bomb ISIL targets in Syria, many young Islamic State fighters ran off. What happened to their convictions? They fled.
If you want to create a true state, you need to build it on the basis of political values and democracy. We don’t impose any religion in Syria; we don’t say that there must be a Christian state, a Jewish state or a Muslim State. These ideas come from outside. The West is instigating such ideologies. The West is playing a big part in the process. I think a state should be founded on strong political and cultural elite. What we see in Syria today is similar to what happened in Yugoslavia - Croatia, Bosnia. There were major cultural elites there. But the West began to provoke different political and religious groups in order to start a civil war, which resulted in manslaughter. So in Syria we have to build a society that will have room for all religious and ethnic groups. We see this kind of order in Russia. Religion is distorted by those who want to start new conflicts, wars…
SS: We will talk more about religion. But first I wanted to ask you about extremists. Pope Francis warned about ISIL fighters entering Europe as refugees. Do you think Europeans should look at every refugee as a suspect?
ABH: Are all refugees Syrians? Of course not! These are people from different countries turned into conflict zones. We see people from Afghanistan, Iraq, Chechnya, Tajikistan and Libya. They are all running to Europe. And many of them have radical convictions. That’s true.
Europeans allowed this ideological trend to develop freely, they let radical Islam spiral out of control. I have seen this in France, the UK and the U.S.. There are Islamic centers financed by Saudi Arabia. These centers became magnets for new extremists, who later travel to the Middle East and start wars there. You reap what you sow. Now we are seeing the results of this policy.
SS: So today terrorism is a trend?
ABH: Terrorism is a dangerous political trend. It is also a cultural trend. And we have to study it in order to fight it. ISIL is trying to promote its political agenda through violence, using weapons. They tell their followers that they will go to paradise, “If you murder people, you will end up in paradise.” But this goes against the Prophet’s teachings, because, of course, nobody gets to paradise using these methods. We need to preach the idea that a person gets to paradise through cultural enlightening, education and solidarity.
SS: You’ve said many times that what is happening in Syria now has nothing to do with religion. Why is it that those who fight for the opposition, for ISIL, don’t hear you? Why are they not listening to you?
ABH: Most of those who are now fighting for ISIL came from other countries. They are not Syrians. They come from China, Russia, Europe… And the organizers of this movement indoctrinated them. So the fighters are not listening to us. Many of them don’t even know anything about me. Syria has always been a place where different religions co-existed in a civilized manner within one country. We’ve had different eras – Christian and Muslim conquests. But in the end there was always peace. For two thousand years we did not have people murdered for religious reasons in our land. Syria has never had a strict religious government system, unlike Lebanon, for example, where the president must be a Christian, and the Prime Minister – a Sunni Muslim. We could never imagine something like that in Syria. The current conflict is not about religion. Syria is an ancient country. I think what is happening in Syria today is a result of a conspiracy.
SS: But, conspiracy or not, people will always be people. There are good people and bad people everywhere. For example, I remember how Islamists in Egypt were burning Coptic churches, and Muslims created a human shield around the churches, so that Christians could worship in peace. What is the situation in Syria like in this respect? Do Syrians help Christians, the Druze?
ABH: In Egypt it was different. It was all internal. There was not much external interference there, no Blackwater personnel, for example. Egypt changed its political regime on its own, whereas in Syria the attempt to overthrow the government was orchestrated from abroad, by other countries. Syrians were provoked. But we are still there, despite the conspiracy.
SS: I am also asking about regular Syrians. Do they help Christians to survive, Christians who are also being attacked by ISIL extremists? Do they help each other in Syria?
ABH: Of course, we are afraid for our Christians. But, to be honest, we don’t divide our people into Christians and Muslims, we protect all Syrians. There are many Christian politicians in our country. Our former defense minister is one of them. We don’t make a distinction between Christians and Muslims… We live as one family and protect each other. We don’t divide people into the Druze, Sunni or Shia Muslims, and Christians. So, we are very concerned about the fact that so many Christians are now leaving the region. We will never let the situation get to the point where there are no more Christians in Syria, because this country also belongs to Christians. Of course, Islam recognizes Jesus Christ, as we all know. We don’t reject Mother Mary, don’t reject Jesus. Whereas ISIL doesn’t think about Christians, they just follow their own agenda. And fighters from different countries help them. That’s why we are now standing alongside Russia and believe that our strong friends will help us, because together we are strong. As for religion, today it is used to divide countries, to create so-called Islamic states, which would basically be weak states under Western control.
SS: Thank you again for being with us today. I want to talk more about ISIL. ISIL is not just fighting against everybody, right? They are also trying to create a state, with certain social institutions - education, etc. They pay salaries, give money to the poor. It may even seem that at times they are doing it better than the actual state – at least judging by the number of their followers.
ABH: I can’t quite agree with you. We see what is really going on there. They just steal the money. They steal the money, their business is contraband. They steal oil from Syrian and Iraqi fields and smuggle it out. They sell it at a low price to whoever is willing to buy it. So they are not just terrorists – they are also thieves and murderers. There is also money coming in from Qatar, Saudi Arabia – through so-called charities. They use the money to destroy our country, to destroy Syria. And the vicious cycle continues. Now ISIL fighters flee when they hear that Russian jets are coming. They left many Syrian oil fields where they used to steal oil and then sell it. So it is not a state, it is a criminal group. They are not trying to create anything. Look at what they’ve done in Palmyra. What state would do something like that? A true state will not destroy or sell historic treasures. Of course, they think that they are a state. But they are thieves, murderers and criminals.
SS: Why do they destroy historic landmarks? What is their goal? They also destroy mosques. What do they get from that? Of course, they have ideological differences with people from other religious groups. But destroying landmarks and mosques – what’s the point?
ABH: You tell me! Why did they vandalize the Iraqi museum? Nobody had ever done that. ISIL began its conquest in Iraq by ransacking the Mosul Museum. What for? ISIL wants to erase the history of our region, our legacy. The colonizers tried to do the same in South America, when they invaded the continent and tried to bring the locals to their knees, in order to tap the territories for resources. They also tried to erase the history. It is an attempt to rewrite history. This is how they plan to weaken the countries – rob people of their history. It is basically neocolonialism, but it is done through third parties. And of course they have some interests too. So they might use religious convictions as a pretext, but it leads to enslavement of people and nothing else. That’s what they’ve done.
SS: Let’s get back to one perennial issue. I hope nobody will get offended, but it is very important for us to get an understanding of this. You always emphasize that radical ideologies have nothing to do with real Islam. And most Muslim spiritual leaders agree with you. But could you please explain to me: with Muslim clergy almost unanimously condemning extremism, why is extremism still so explicit in Islam?
ABH: First of all, this is reaction. All this radicalization comes as a reaction to the enormous tragedies and frustrations that we’ve had throughout our history. For example, when the government doesn’t care about its citizens, when it doesn’t care about upholding religion, it certainly leads to the emergence of people who accuse the government of defying the foundations of religion. So extremism originally comes as a reaction to poor governance. Secular states, secular democratic nations, should undoubtedly support religion and their country's’ cultural heritage. They shouldn’t forget that religious and cultural heritage also plays an important role. And if you start destroying it, this may indeed lead to the rise of radicals as a kind of backlash. Religion and religious organizations must be present in society, because they are good for people. They provide not only for religious institutions or Islam as such, but for the entire public. They must be an indispensable part of the social fabric. But those people seek to set specific parts of society against the powers that be. In fact, much of what I’m talking about is evident in Europe. Do you remember the name of Germany’s major political party? It’s the Christian Democratic Union. That is to say that Europeans follow those principles themselves, even though religion must indeed be isolated from politics, and should primarily remain a social and cultural institution. Therefore, I believe the government must reserve a role for religion to play. But we must be very careful in drawing the line between state and religion. Religion is first and foremost a path of spiritual development for people. Our children may belong to different religions, but we should not divide the country because of religion. It is the same in Russia. As far as I know, you have secular laws – the criminal code and other regulations. And they have no reference to religion, because all citizens must be treated equally. The bottom line is that we must distinguish between religious ideas and government policies. A number of states see themselves as religious states: Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. President Erdogan aspires to do the same in Turkey. But in Syria, we do not use religion for political purposes, because religion must bring people together and teach them to love each other. We don’t want to use religion to oppress people. First and foremost, we need to approach religion globally, realizing that religion is one thing, and the state is something different.
SS: Let’s talk about the current situation. Regional countries together with big powers are trying to reach a consensus on Syria’s future. They’re even talking about a dialogue between the government and the opposition. But who should President Assad talk to if most of his opponents are religious fanatics?
ABH: The war has been going on for four years. All these years we’ve been inviting them to start a dialogue. Since the first day of the tragedy we started calling the opposition to come to the negotiation table. Russia encouraged the Syrian opposition to engage in talks three years ago. They refused. Today, their representatives visit Moscow. They agreed to participate in Geneva talks. So Russia has been calling for a dialogue for about 3 years. The Syrian government also sent 3 delegations to Moscow. We hold talks regularly. But we see that the so-called opposition is in no way a united organization. There are many groups fighting each other, fighting ISIL, fighting us. The Syrian opposition wants to recognize nothing – not talks, not Assad. When Russia launched an anti-ISIL military campaign, the initial response of the so-called moderate opposition was negative. Presently some commanders of the so-called Free Syrian Army say that they are ready to cooperate with the Russian Federation against ISIL. But we offer them to do more than that. What we want them to do is to act together against terrorists unconditionally. We see Western countries having a hidden agenda, and international players calling for compromise finding them under pressure. But Russia keeps urging the opposition to engage in a dialogue. But Russia’s calls often remain unheeded. Today a lot depends on the opposition sponsors. It’s them who make decisions, not the opposition itself. It has no independent opinion of its own. They say there should be a new government in Syria. But the government they want will be essentially a neocolonial government. We changed the Constitution for them; we held elections. Basically, we have a different government today. But they reject everything. The only language they understand is the language of weapons. That’s how they talk – with weapons. They destroy churches and mosques in the name of the so-called revolution. What kind of a revolution is this? You destroy your own country. You steal the country’s resources, destroy hospitals.
SS: Still, President Assad is a controversial figure. Do you think it will be easier to achieve peace if he steps down?
ABH: It’s not for me to decide. It is not up to me; it is not up to Bashar Assad. It’s up to the Syrian people to decide.
SS: But what do you think personally? It’s important.
ABH: I think if Assad steps down, this will result in a breakup of Syria. The reason they want President Assad to go is not to restore democracy. They just want to divide Syria into a number of small countries. We will only accept a decision made by the Syrian people. Let’s allow the Syrian people to speak. We have been hearing a lot of President Hollande, but the Syrian people aren’t allowed to express their opinion for some reason. Let’s stop listening to people from the U.S., the White House, the Élysée Palace, let’s hear what the ordinary Syrian people have to say. We have to let them talk. Just like it’s not up to Washington to decide who should be president of Russia, it’s not up to Washington to decide who should be president in Damascus. We will recognize the results of a fair independent election. It can be monitored by the UN or Russia. But they refuse, saying, ‘No, we won’t stop fighting until Assad is gone.’ But what is the alternative? Let’s say Assad steps down. What next? What is the alternative for the Syrian people? Let the Syrian people finally say something on the matter.
SS: I remember when the Syrian conflict just began you said that if we didn’t stop the war immediately, it would drag on for another 10-15 years. What’s your prognosis now? Will this terrible conflict drag on until 2025, or is it possible to end it sooner?
ABH: I hope it will end in 2016, that’s what I hope for, because we’ve begun making joint efforts in order to resolve this crisis. We can now see significant military success achieved on the Syrian-Lebanese border, with the army advancing towards the Syrian-Turkish border. Syria’s problem is external, not internal. Our problem is our so-called “friends and neighbors” that extend a helping hand to these terrorists. So when we clear the Syrian-Turkish border of terrorists there will be a dramatic improvement. The presence of the Russian air force coupled with the efforts of the Syrian army led to considerable success. Now a lot of territory along the Syrian-Turkish border has been cleared of terrorists. As for Idlib and Raqqa, we’ll continue operations there in the days to come. So I hope all the terrorists will simply scatter. I also hope your brave Russian pilots will come back home once peace is restored.
SS: I want to ask you a very personal question. When terrorists killed your son, you forgave them and asked the judge to forgive them, too. How is that possible? How did you overcome the burning desire for revenge? Are there many people like you in Syria?
ABH: It’s not the men that blew up his car that should be punished, it’s the people who finance them, the people who come to our country from abroad to do all of this. Of course I won’t forgive the radicals who urge people to kill, who put themselves above others, who say they’ve created some ‘Islamic state’, mutilating the very tenets of Islam. I condemn those people and I’m never going to forgive them because they are playing games with people’s lives at stake.
It’s the leaders of the Gulf countries, Turkey and the America that should stand trial, because they supplied the arms. The weapons that killed my son came from them. To me, all the people who were killed at their hands are like my son. Every Syrian that died in this war is my son.
SS: Mr. Mufti, thank you so much for the interview. I hope your voice will be heard by those who need it. I really hope that this war will end in the near future, because it has lasted for far too long. Thank you very much.
The Middle East conflict - war in Syria and Iraq - has already spilled over. No one is safe from the terrorist attacks, neither East, nor West. Islamic State claims it is still strong, and its ideas are attracting new recruits to replace those killed on the field. Islamic State says the horrors it perpetrates are done in the name Allah - spurring resentment against Muslims all across the globe. Today, we speak to an Islamic scholar, a Grand Mufti of Syria, Ahmad Badreddin Hassoun, to see how the jihadists have twisted the idea of Islam. And does their agenda have anything to do with Islam at all?
Sophie Shevardnadze:Thank you very much for being with us today. This is a great honor. We are delighted to have you, because there are so many things we want to discuss. You said that there is no such thing as a religious war, there are only political interests. But ISIL fighters want to conquer the whole world, they use Islam as their banner and call this fight a religious war. Are they guided by political interests?
Ahmad Badreddin Hassoun: First of all, I want to express my gratitude to the Russian Federation, because it sided with the truth. It did not separate Syrians by their Shia or Sunni background. It decided to support the Syrian people as a whole.
Syria is a secular, democratic society where different religious groups coexist – Christians, the Druze, Sunni and Shia Muslims. Those who call their wars religious, do so in order to provoke radicalism among Muslims. This of course goes against the true Islamic culture, because a person with values will never commit the atrocities ISIL is known for. They use religion as a pretext for conflict and bloodshed. I think there are two kinds of Islamic State fighters – those who know nothing about true Islam and those who have some religious background, but they use religion to promote their own agenda and kill others.
SS: How are ISIL leaders able to make so many young people follow them? They make them participate in violent acts, in combat – how do they do it?
ABH: What ISIL is doing is not new. This organization has existed before – under different names. They convince their followers that they are guided by religious convictions, spread their ideology, spending a lot of money on that work. We must remember it.
SS: Right! But they don’t buy these young people – they come from Europe, Russia, the U.S. young people from good families for some reason go to Syria and begin to fight for ISIL. How do Islamic State leaders achieve that? It does not matter how they name themselves. How do they do this? What goes on in people’s heads?
ABH: We met with some guys who came from the UK, France. Many of them were Syrians. They come here to build some sort of Islamic caliphate. They think that they will promote Islam and spread it to the whole world.
But we know that religion should not be preached with weapons – rather with love and solidarity. ISIL uses ideology to lead young people astray. But they do it for their own political purposes. Most of the people being killed in Syria today are Muslims. The majority of ISIL victims are Muslims!
SS: But why do these young men join ISIL? Why do young, healthy people that have good lives at home, go to fight for Islamic State?
ABH: Many young people go abroad, because they want to follow a new ideological trend – radical Islam. They are lost, and leading them back on the right path will take some serious effort. They end up with the wrong people, believing they can wage war in the name of religion. Now, after Russia began to bomb ISIL targets in Syria, many young Islamic State fighters ran off. What happened to their convictions? They fled.
If you want to create a true state, you need to build it on the basis of political values and democracy. We don’t impose any religion in Syria; we don’t say that there must be a Christian state, a Jewish state or a Muslim State. These ideas come from outside. The West is instigating such ideologies. The West is playing a big part in the process. I think a state should be founded on strong political and cultural elite. What we see in Syria today is similar to what happened in Yugoslavia - Croatia, Bosnia. There were major cultural elites there. But the West began to provoke different political and religious groups in order to start a civil war, which resulted in manslaughter. So in Syria we have to build a society that will have room for all religious and ethnic groups. We see this kind of order in Russia. Religion is distorted by those who want to start new conflicts, wars…
SS: We will talk more about religion. But first I wanted to ask you about extremists. Pope Francis warned about ISIL fighters entering Europe as refugees. Do you think Europeans should look at every refugee as a suspect?
ABH: Are all refugees Syrians? Of course not! These are people from different countries turned into conflict zones. We see people from Afghanistan, Iraq, Chechnya, Tajikistan and Libya. They are all running to Europe. And many of them have radical convictions. That’s true.
Europeans allowed this ideological trend to develop freely, they let radical Islam spiral out of control. I have seen this in France, the UK and the U.S.. There are Islamic centers financed by Saudi Arabia. These centers became magnets for new extremists, who later travel to the Middle East and start wars there. You reap what you sow. Now we are seeing the results of this policy.
SS: So today terrorism is a trend?
ABH: Terrorism is a dangerous political trend. It is also a cultural trend. And we have to study it in order to fight it. ISIL is trying to promote its political agenda through violence, using weapons. They tell their followers that they will go to paradise, “If you murder people, you will end up in paradise.” But this goes against the Prophet’s teachings, because, of course, nobody gets to paradise using these methods. We need to preach the idea that a person gets to paradise through cultural enlightening, education and solidarity.
SS: You’ve said many times that what is happening in Syria now has nothing to do with religion. Why is it that those who fight for the opposition, for ISIL, don’t hear you? Why are they not listening to you?
ABH: Most of those who are now fighting for ISIL came from other countries. They are not Syrians. They come from China, Russia, Europe… And the organizers of this movement indoctrinated them. So the fighters are not listening to us. Many of them don’t even know anything about me. Syria has always been a place where different religions co-existed in a civilized manner within one country. We’ve had different eras – Christian and Muslim conquests. But in the end there was always peace. For two thousand years we did not have people murdered for religious reasons in our land. Syria has never had a strict religious government system, unlike Lebanon, for example, where the president must be a Christian, and the Prime Minister – a Sunni Muslim. We could never imagine something like that in Syria. The current conflict is not about religion. Syria is an ancient country. I think what is happening in Syria today is a result of a conspiracy.
SS: But, conspiracy or not, people will always be people. There are good people and bad people everywhere. For example, I remember how Islamists in Egypt were burning Coptic churches, and Muslims created a human shield around the churches, so that Christians could worship in peace. What is the situation in Syria like in this respect? Do Syrians help Christians, the Druze?
ABH: In Egypt it was different. It was all internal. There was not much external interference there, no Blackwater personnel, for example. Egypt changed its political regime on its own, whereas in Syria the attempt to overthrow the government was orchestrated from abroad, by other countries. Syrians were provoked. But we are still there, despite the conspiracy.
SS: I am also asking about regular Syrians. Do they help Christians to survive, Christians who are also being attacked by ISIL extremists? Do they help each other in Syria?
ABH: Of course, we are afraid for our Christians. But, to be honest, we don’t divide our people into Christians and Muslims, we protect all Syrians. There are many Christian politicians in our country. Our former defense minister is one of them. We don’t make a distinction between Christians and Muslims… We live as one family and protect each other. We don’t divide people into the Druze, Sunni or Shia Muslims, and Christians. So, we are very concerned about the fact that so many Christians are now leaving the region. We will never let the situation get to the point where there are no more Christians in Syria, because this country also belongs to Christians. Of course, Islam recognizes Jesus Christ, as we all know. We don’t reject Mother Mary, don’t reject Jesus. Whereas ISIL doesn’t think about Christians, they just follow their own agenda. And fighters from different countries help them. That’s why we are now standing alongside Russia and believe that our strong friends will help us, because together we are strong. As for religion, today it is used to divide countries, to create so-called Islamic states, which would basically be weak states under Western control.
SS: Thank you again for being with us today. I want to talk more about ISIL. ISIL is not just fighting against everybody, right? They are also trying to create a state, with certain social institutions - education, etc. They pay salaries, give money to the poor. It may even seem that at times they are doing it better than the actual state – at least judging by the number of their followers.
ABH: I can’t quite agree with you. We see what is really going on there. They just steal the money. They steal the money, their business is contraband. They steal oil from Syrian and Iraqi fields and smuggle it out. They sell it at a low price to whoever is willing to buy it. So they are not just terrorists – they are also thieves and murderers. There is also money coming in from Qatar, Saudi Arabia – through so-called charities. They use the money to destroy our country, to destroy Syria. And the vicious cycle continues. Now ISIL fighters flee when they hear that Russian jets are coming. They left many Syrian oil fields where they used to steal oil and then sell it. So it is not a state, it is a criminal group. They are not trying to create anything. Look at what they’ve done in Palmyra. What state would do something like that? A true state will not destroy or sell historic treasures. Of course, they think that they are a state. But they are thieves, murderers and criminals.
SS: Why do they destroy historic landmarks? What is their goal? They also destroy mosques. What do they get from that? Of course, they have ideological differences with people from other religious groups. But destroying landmarks and mosques – what’s the point?
ABH: You tell me! Why did they vandalize the Iraqi museum? Nobody had ever done that. ISIL began its conquest in Iraq by ransacking the Mosul Museum. What for? ISIL wants to erase the history of our region, our legacy. The colonizers tried to do the same in South America, when they invaded the continent and tried to bring the locals to their knees, in order to tap the territories for resources. They also tried to erase the history. It is an attempt to rewrite history. This is how they plan to weaken the countries – rob people of their history. It is basically neocolonialism, but it is done through third parties. And of course they have some interests too. So they might use religious convictions as a pretext, but it leads to enslavement of people and nothing else. That’s what they’ve done.
SS: Let’s get back to one perennial issue. I hope nobody will get offended, but it is very important for us to get an understanding of this. You always emphasize that radical ideologies have nothing to do with real Islam. And most Muslim spiritual leaders agree with you. But could you please explain to me: with Muslim clergy almost unanimously condemning extremism, why is extremism still so explicit in Islam?
ABH: First of all, this is reaction. All this radicalization comes as a reaction to the enormous tragedies and frustrations that we’ve had throughout our history. For example, when the government doesn’t care about its citizens, when it doesn’t care about upholding religion, it certainly leads to the emergence of people who accuse the government of defying the foundations of religion. So extremism originally comes as a reaction to poor governance. Secular states, secular democratic nations, should undoubtedly support religion and their country's’ cultural heritage. They shouldn’t forget that religious and cultural heritage also plays an important role. And if you start destroying it, this may indeed lead to the rise of radicals as a kind of backlash. Religion and religious organizations must be present in society, because they are good for people. They provide not only for religious institutions or Islam as such, but for the entire public. They must be an indispensable part of the social fabric. But those people seek to set specific parts of society against the powers that be. In fact, much of what I’m talking about is evident in Europe. Do you remember the name of Germany’s major political party? It’s the Christian Democratic Union. That is to say that Europeans follow those principles themselves, even though religion must indeed be isolated from politics, and should primarily remain a social and cultural institution. Therefore, I believe the government must reserve a role for religion to play. But we must be very careful in drawing the line between state and religion. Religion is first and foremost a path of spiritual development for people. Our children may belong to different religions, but we should not divide the country because of religion. It is the same in Russia. As far as I know, you have secular laws – the criminal code and other regulations. And they have no reference to religion, because all citizens must be treated equally. The bottom line is that we must distinguish between religious ideas and government policies. A number of states see themselves as religious states: Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. President Erdogan aspires to do the same in Turkey. But in Syria, we do not use religion for political purposes, because religion must bring people together and teach them to love each other. We don’t want to use religion to oppress people. First and foremost, we need to approach religion globally, realizing that religion is one thing, and the state is something different.
SS: Let’s talk about the current situation. Regional countries together with big powers are trying to reach a consensus on Syria’s future. They’re even talking about a dialogue between the government and the opposition. But who should President Assad talk to if most of his opponents are religious fanatics?
ABH: The war has been going on for four years. All these years we’ve been inviting them to start a dialogue. Since the first day of the tragedy we started calling the opposition to come to the negotiation table. Russia encouraged the Syrian opposition to engage in talks three years ago. They refused. Today, their representatives visit Moscow. They agreed to participate in Geneva talks. So Russia has been calling for a dialogue for about 3 years. The Syrian government also sent 3 delegations to Moscow. We hold talks regularly. But we see that the so-called opposition is in no way a united organization. There are many groups fighting each other, fighting ISIL, fighting us. The Syrian opposition wants to recognize nothing – not talks, not Assad. When Russia launched an anti-ISIL military campaign, the initial response of the so-called moderate opposition was negative. Presently some commanders of the so-called Free Syrian Army say that they are ready to cooperate with the Russian Federation against ISIL. But we offer them to do more than that. What we want them to do is to act together against terrorists unconditionally. We see Western countries having a hidden agenda, and international players calling for compromise finding them under pressure. But Russia keeps urging the opposition to engage in a dialogue. But Russia’s calls often remain unheeded. Today a lot depends on the opposition sponsors. It’s them who make decisions, not the opposition itself. It has no independent opinion of its own. They say there should be a new government in Syria. But the government they want will be essentially a neocolonial government. We changed the Constitution for them; we held elections. Basically, we have a different government today. But they reject everything. The only language they understand is the language of weapons. That’s how they talk – with weapons. They destroy churches and mosques in the name of the so-called revolution. What kind of a revolution is this? You destroy your own country. You steal the country’s resources, destroy hospitals.
SS: Still, President Assad is a controversial figure. Do you think it will be easier to achieve peace if he steps down?
ABH: It’s not for me to decide. It is not up to me; it is not up to Bashar Assad. It’s up to the Syrian people to decide.
SS: But what do you think personally? It’s important.
ABH: I think if Assad steps down, this will result in a breakup of Syria. The reason they want President Assad to go is not to restore democracy. They just want to divide Syria into a number of small countries. We will only accept a decision made by the Syrian people. Let’s allow the Syrian people to speak. We have been hearing a lot of President Hollande, but the Syrian people aren’t allowed to express their opinion for some reason. Let’s stop listening to people from the U.S., the White House, the Élysée Palace, let’s hear what the ordinary Syrian people have to say. We have to let them talk. Just like it’s not up to Washington to decide who should be president of Russia, it’s not up to Washington to decide who should be president in Damascus. We will recognize the results of a fair independent election. It can be monitored by the UN or Russia. But they refuse, saying, ‘No, we won’t stop fighting until Assad is gone.’ But what is the alternative? Let’s say Assad steps down. What next? What is the alternative for the Syrian people? Let the Syrian people finally say something on the matter.
SS: I remember when the Syrian conflict just began you said that if we didn’t stop the war immediately, it would drag on for another 10-15 years. What’s your prognosis now? Will this terrible conflict drag on until 2025, or is it possible to end it sooner?
ABH: I hope it will end in 2016, that’s what I hope for, because we’ve begun making joint efforts in order to resolve this crisis. We can now see significant military success achieved on the Syrian-Lebanese border, with the army advancing towards the Syrian-Turkish border. Syria’s problem is external, not internal. Our problem is our so-called “friends and neighbors” that extend a helping hand to these terrorists. So when we clear the Syrian-Turkish border of terrorists there will be a dramatic improvement. The presence of the Russian air force coupled with the efforts of the Syrian army led to considerable success. Now a lot of territory along the Syrian-Turkish border has been cleared of terrorists. As for Idlib and Raqqa, we’ll continue operations there in the days to come. So I hope all the terrorists will simply scatter. I also hope your brave Russian pilots will come back home once peace is restored.
SS: I want to ask you a very personal question. When terrorists killed your son, you forgave them and asked the judge to forgive them, too. How is that possible? How did you overcome the burning desire for revenge? Are there many people like you in Syria?
ABH: It’s not the men that blew up his car that should be punished, it’s the people who finance them, the people who come to our country from abroad to do all of this. Of course I won’t forgive the radicals who urge people to kill, who put themselves above others, who say they’ve created some ‘Islamic state’, mutilating the very tenets of Islam. I condemn those people and I’m never going to forgive them because they are playing games with people’s lives at stake.
It’s the leaders of the Gulf countries, Turkey and the America that should stand trial, because they supplied the arms. The weapons that killed my son came from them. To me, all the people who were killed at their hands are like my son. Every Syrian that died in this war is my son.
SS: Mr. Mufti, thank you so much for the interview. I hope your voice will be heard by those who need it. I really hope that this war will end in the near future, because it has lasted for far too long. Thank you very much.
The hour long video inside gives excellent analysis of what is wrong with the TPP. Basically it is an attempt to bring about an overarching corporate world government that will invalidate national and state laws wherever they disagree with it. But with this government there are no voters, there are no citizens, there is no recourse. What can you do about this? Contact your local MP and ask they what they intend to do to stop the TPP? Are they going to vote against it? Let us know their response. You can read the full text of the TPP here, thanks to the New Zealand Government: http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-full-text-of-the-trans-pacific-partnership-tpp/
With the details of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) no longer secret, journalist Thom Hartmann discusses what’s in the trade deal with Public Citizen's Melinda St. Louis, radio host and author Ari Rabin-Havt, and the U.S. Business and Industry Council’s Kevin Kearns.
Genetically Modified Food labeling would be outlawed
"Democratic Congressman Peter DeFazio denounced a provision discretely hidden in pending trade legislation that would allow governments or corporations to sue countries or states over laws that mandate the labelling of genetically modified foods.
If approved by Congress, the legislation called Trade Promotion Authority, also known as “fast track,” would not allow Congress to amend or filibuster free trade agreements negotiated by the president and would require and up or down vote within 90 days. (Source: This content was originally published by teleSUR at the following address:
"http://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/US-Lawmaker-Slams-Monsanto-Provision-in-Fast-Track-Bill-for-TPP-20150429-0030.html". If you intend to use it, please cite the source and provide a link to the original article. www.teleSURtv.net/english.)
The TPP and International Corporate Control
"As the devastating conclusions of these and other researchers awaken people globally to the dangers of Roundup and GMO foods, transnational corporations are working feverishly with the Obama administration to fast-track the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a trade agreement that would strip governments of the power to regulate transnational corporate activities. Negotiations have been kept secret from Congress but not from corporate advisors, 600 of whom have been consulted and know the details. According to Barbara Chicherio in Nation of Change:
The Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) has the potential to become the biggest regional Free Trade Agreement in history. . . .
The chief agricultural negotiator for the US is the former Monsanto lobbyist, Islam Siddique. If ratified the TPP would impose punishing regulations that give multinational corporations unprecedented right to demand taxpayer compensation for policies that corporations deem a barrier to their profits.
. . . They are carefully crafting the TPP to insure that citizens of the involved countries have no control over food safety, what they will be eating, where it is grown, the conditions under which food is grown and the use of herbicides and pesticides.
Food safety is only one of many rights and protections liable to fall to this super-weapon of international corporate control. In an April 2013 interview on The Real News Network, Kevin Zeese called the TPP “NAFTA on steroids” and “a global corporate coup.” He warned:
No matter what issue you care about—whether its wages, jobs, protecting the environment . . . this issue is going to adversely affect it . . . .
If a country takes a step to try to regulate the financial industry or set up a public bank to represent the public interest, it can be sued . . . .
The Trans-Pacific Partnership Would Undermine Internet Freedom
"Remember SOPA - the "copyright" legislation before Congress last year that public outcry stopped cold? Well, the same corporations behind SOPA have pushed to insert its most pernicious provisions into TPP. Says who? The organizations that stopped SOPA like the Electronic Freedom Foundation and the ACLU.
Under this TPP proposal, Internet Service Providers could be required to "police" user activity (i.e. police YOU), take down internet content, and cut people off from internet access for common user-generated content.
Violations could be as simple as the creation of a YouTube video with clips from other videos, even if for personal or educational purposes.
Mandatory fines would be imposed for individuals' non-commercial copies of copyrighted material. So, downloading some music could be treated the same as large-scale, for-profit copyright violations.
Innovation would be stifled as the creation and sharing of user-generated content would face new barriers, and as monopoly copyrights would be extended. The TPP proposes to impose copyright protections for a minimum of 120 years for corporate-created content.
Breaking digital locks for legit purposes, such as using Linux, could subject users to mandatory fines. Blind and deaf people also would be harmed by this overreach, as digital locks can block access to audio-supported content and closed captioning." (Sourc: http://www.exposethetpp.org/TPPImpacts_InternetFreedom.html)"
At the bottom there is a link to a zip file containing all chapters or one can read and save each chapter PDF individually. The lengthy text contains a lot of business newspeak. However, various chapters deal with history’s biggest free trade move yet, pharmaceutical industries, business conduct in third-world and developing countries, agriculture, state-owned enterprises and designated monopolies (interesting terminology), government procurement, competition policies, and e-commerce.
In October, WikiLeaks claimed that they had a leaked copy of the full text and it contained information on trade secrets and top-down control of the Internet that are indeed found in chapter 18.
It is referred to as the “Agreement,” although most of the world’s people have never had any say at all in the decisions foisted on them below.
Audio podcast: This is a really good podcast discussion about what Russia is doing in Syria. The mainstream western media is desperately trying to come up with any reasons it can to say that Russia fighting ISIS is a bad thing. Tim Kirby and Robert Bridge rip through the hysteria and get to the bottom of what the mainstream is trying to obfuscate. (First published at http://www.rt.com/shows/tim-kirby/317446-syria-russia-strikes-media/ on 2nd October 2015.)
This is a really good podcast discussion about what Russia is doing in Syria. The mainstream western media is desperately trying to come up with any reasons it can to say that Russia fighting ISIS is a bad thing. Tim Kirby and Robert Bridge rip through the hysteria and get to the bottom of what the mainstream is trying to obfuscate. (First published at http://www.rt.com/shows/tim-kirby/317446-syria-russia-strikes-media/ on 2nd October 2015.
Europe is "not dealing with the cause" of the current refugee crisis, Syrian President Bashar Assad said in an interview with Russian media, RT among them, adding that all Syrian people want is "security and safety."
"It's not about that Europe didn't accept them or embrace them as refugees, it's about not dealing with the cause. If you are worried about them, stop supporting terrorists. That's what we think regarding the crisis. This is the core of the whole issue of refugees.
To see 1:49 minute interview, see original story, also linked to from the above image.
"If we ask any Syrian today about what they want, the first thing they would say - 'We want security and safety for every person and every family'," the Syrian president said, adding that political forces, whether inside or outside the government "should unite around what the Syrian people want."
The "Syrian fabric," as Assad has called it, includes people of many ethnicities and sects, including the Kurds. "They are not foreigners," the Syrian president said, adding that without such groups of people who have been living in the region for centuries "there wouldn't have been a homogeneous Syria."
Assad said that the dialogue in Syria should be continued "in order to reach the consensus," which cannot be implemented "unless we defeat the terrorism in Syria."
"If you want to implement anything real, it's impossible to do anything while you have people being killed, bloodletting hasn't stopped, people feel insecure," the Syrian president said.
"I would like to take this opportunity to call on all forces to unite against terrorism, because it is the way to achieve the political objectives which we, as Syrians, want through dialogue and political action," Bashar Assad said.
Read and watch the full version of the interview with President Bashar al-Assad interview on RT.com Live at 03:00 GMT (or 1:00PM 16 September in Australia's East or 11:00PM in Western Australia) on 16 September.
Read and watch the full version of the interview with President Bashar al-Assad interview on RT.com Live at 03:00 GMT (or 1:00PM 16 September in Australia's East or 11:00PM in Western Australia) on 16 September.
Question 1:Mr. President, thank you from the Russian media, from RT, from Rossiyskaya Gazeta, Channel 1, Russia 24, RIA Novosti, and NTV channel, for giving us all the opportunity to talk to you during this very critical phase of the crisis in Syria, where there are many questions that need to be addressed on where exactly the political process to achieve peace in Syria is heading, what's the latest developments on the fight against ISIL, and the status of the Russian and Syrian partnership, and of course the enormous exodus of Syrian refugees that has been dominating headlines in Europe.
Now, the crisis in Syria is entering its fifth year. You have defied all predictions by Western leaders that you would be ousted imminently, and continue to serve today as the President of the Syrian Arab Republic. Now, there has been a lot of speculation recently caused by reports that officials from your government met with officials from your adversary Saudi Arabia that caused speculation that the political process in Syria has entered a new phase, but then statements from Saudi Arabia that continue to insist on your departure suggest that in fact very little has changed despite the grave threat that groups like ISIL pose far beyond Syria's borders.
So, what is your position on the political process? How do you feel about power sharing and working with those groups in the opposition that continue to say publically that there can be no political solution in Syria unless that includes your immediate departure? Have they sent you any signal that they are willing to team up with you and your government? In addition to that, since the beginning of the crisis in Syria, many of those groups were calling to you to carry out reforms and political change. But is such change even possible now under the current circumstances with the war and the ongoing spread of terror in Syria?
President Assad: Let me first divide this question. It's a multi question in one question. The first part regarding the political process, since the beginning of the crisis we adopted the dialogue approach, and there were many rounds of dialogue between Syrians in Syria, in Moscow, and in Geneva. Actually, the only step that has been made or achieved was in Moscow 2, not in Geneva, not in Moscow 1, and actually it's a partial step, it's not a full step, and that's natural because it's a big crisis. You cannot achieve solutions in a few hours or a few days. It's a step forward, and we are waiting for Moscow 3. I think we need to continue the dialogue between the Syrian entities, political entities or political currents, in parallel with fighting terrorism in order to achieve or reach a consensus about the future of Syria. So, that's what we have to continue.
If I jump to the last part, because it's related to this one, is it possible to achieve anything taking into consideration the prevalence of terrorism in Syria and in Iraq and in the region in general? We have to continue dialogue in order to reach the consensus as I said, but if you want to implement anything real, it's impossible to do anything while you have people being killed, bloodletting hasn't stopped, people feel insecure. Let's say we sit together as Syrian political parties or powers and achieve a consensus regarding something in politics, in economy, in education, in health, in everything. How can we implement it if the priority of every single Syrian citizen is to be secure? So, we can achieve consensus, but we cannot implement unless we defeat the terrorism in Syria. We have to defeat terrorism, not only ISIS.
I'm talking about terrorism, because you have many organizations, mainly ISIS and al-Nusra that were announced as terrorist groups by the Security Council. So, this is regarding the political process. Sharing power, of course we already shared it with some part of the opposition that accepted to share it with us. A few years ago they joined the government. Although sharing power is related to the constitution, to the elections, mainly parliamentary elections, and of course representation of the Syrian people by those powers. But in spite of that, because of the crisis, we said let's share it now, let's do something, a step forward, no matter how effective.
Regarding the refugee crisis, I will say now that Western dealing in the Western propaganda recently, mainly during the last week, regardless of the accusation that those refugees are fleeing the Syrian government, but they call it regime, of course. Actually, it's like the West now is crying for the refugees with one eye and aiming at them with a machinegun with the second one, because actually those refugees left Syria because of the terrorism, mainly because of the terrorists and because of the killing, and second because of the results of terrorism. When you have terrorism, and you have the destruction of the infrastructure, you won't have the basic needs of living, so many people leave because of the terrorism and because they want to earn their living somewhere in this world.
So, the West is crying for them, and the West is supporting terrorists since the beginning of the crisis when it said that this was a peaceful uprising, when they said later it's moderate opposition, and now they say there is terrorism like al-Nusra and ISIS, but because of the Syrian state or the Syrian regime or the Syrian president. So, as long as they follow this propaganda, they will have more refugees. So, it's not about that Europe didn't accept them or embrace them as refugees, it's about not dealing with the cause. If you are worried about them, stop supporting terrorists. That's what we think regarding the crisis. This is the core of the whole issue of refugees.
Question 2:Mr. President, you touched on the subject of the internal Syrian opposition in your first answer; nevertheless, I would like to go back to that because it's very important for Russia. What should the internal opposition do in order to cooperate and coordinate with Syrian authorities to support them in battle… which is what they say they intend to do? How do you see the prospects for the Moscow-3 and Geneva-3 conferences? Will they be useful to Syria in the current situation?
President Assad: As you know, we are at war with terrorism, and this terrorism is supported by foreign powers. It means that we are in a state of complete war. I believe that any society and any patriotic individuals, and any parties which truly belong to the people should unite when there is a war against an enemy; whether that enemy is in the form of domestic terrorism or foreign terrorism. If we ask any Syrian today about what they want, the first thing they would say is: we want security and safety for every person and every family.
So we, as political forces, whether inside or outside the government, should unite around what the Syrian people want. That means we should first unite against terrorism. That is logical and self-evident. That's why I say that we have to unite now as political forces, or government, or as armed groups which fought against the government, in order to fight terrorism. This has actually happened.
There are forces fighting terrorism now alongside the Syrian state, which had previously fought against the Syrian state. We have made progress in this regard, but I would like to take this opportunity to call on all forces to unite against terrorism, because it is the way to achieve the political objectives which we, as Syrians, want through dialogue and political action.
Intervention:Concerning the Moscow-3 and Geneva-3 conferences; in your opinion, are there good prospects for them?
President Assad: The importance of Moscow-3 lies in the fact that it paves the way to Geneva-3, because the international sponsorship in Geneva was not neutral, while the Russian sponsorship is. It is not biased, and is based on international law and Security Council resolutions. Second, there are substantial differences around the ‘transitional body' item in Geneva. Moscow-3 is required to solve these problems between the different Syrian parties; and when we reach Geneva-3, it is ensured that there is a Syrian consensus which would enable it to succeed. We believe that it is difficult for Geneva-3 to succeed unless Moscow-3 does. That's why we support holding this round of negotiations in Moscow after preparations for the success of this round have been completed, particularly by the Russian officials.
Question 3:I would like to continue with the issue of international cooperation in order to solve the Syrian crisis. It's clear that Iran, since solving the nuclear issue, will play a more active role in regional affairs. How would you evaluate recent Iranian initiatives on reaching a settlement for the situation in Syria? And, in general, what is the importance of Tehran's support for you? Is there military support? And, if so, what form does it take?
President Assad: At present, there is no Iranian initiative. There are ideas or principles for an Iranian initiative based primarily on Syria's sovereignty, the decisions of the Syrian people and on fighting terrorism. The relationship between Syria and Iran is an old one. It is over three-and-a-half decades old. There is an alliance based on a great degree of trust. That's why we believe that the Iranian role is important. Iran supports Syria and the Syrian people. It stands with the Syrian state politically, economically and militarily. When we say militarily, it doesn't mean - as claimed by some in the Western media - that Iran has sent an army or armed forces to Syria. That is not true. It sends us military equipment, and of course there is an exchange of military experts between Syria and Iran. This has always been the case, and it is natural for this cooperation to grow between the two countries in a state of war. Yes, Iranian support has been essential to support Syria in its steadfastness in this difficult and ferocious war.
Question 4:Concerning regional factors and proponents, you recently talked about security coordination with Cairo in fighting terrorism, and that you are in the same battle line in this regard. How is your relationship with Cairo today given that it hosts some opposition groups? Do you have a direct relationship, or perhaps through the Russian mediator, particularly in light of the strategic relations between Russia and Egypt. President Sisi has become a welcome guest in Moscow today.
President Assad: Relations between Syria and Egypt have not ceased to exist even over the past few years, and even when the president was Mohammed Morsi, who is a member of the terrorist Muslim Brotherhood organisation. Egyptian institutions insisted on maintaining a certain element of this relationship. First, because the Egyptian people are fully aware of what is happening in Syria, and second because the battle we are fighting is practically against the same enemy. This has now become clearer to everyone. Terrorism has spread in Libya, Egypt, Yemen, Syria, Iraq, in other Arab countries, and in some Muslim countries like Afghanistan, Pakistan and others. That's why I can say that there is joint vision between us and the Egyptians; but our relationship exists now on a security level. There are no political relations. I mean, there are no contacts between the Syrian Foreign Ministry and the Egyptian Foreign Ministry, for instance. Contacts are done on a security level only. We understand the pressures that might be applied on Egypt or on both Syria and Egypt so that they don't have a strong relationship. This relationship does not go, of course, through Moscow. As I said, this relationship has never ceased to exist, but we feel comfortable about improving relations between Russia and Egypt. At the same time, there is a good, strong and historical relation between Moscow and Damascus, so it is natural for Russia to feel comfortable for any positive development in relations between Syria and Egypt.
Question 5:Mr. President, allow me to go back to the question of fighting terrorism. How do you look at the idea of creating a region free of ISIS terrorists in the north of the country on the border with Turkey? In that context, what do you say about the indirect cooperation between the West and terrorist organizations like the al-Nusra Front and other extremist groups? And with whom are you willing to cooperate and fight against ISIS terrorists?
President Assad: To say that the border with Turkey should be free of terrorism means that terrorism is allowed in other regions. That is unacceptable. Terrorism should be eradicated everywhere; and we have been calling for three decades for an international coalition to fight terrorism. But as for Western cooperation with the al-Nusra Front, this is reality, because we know that Turkey supports al-Nusra and ISIS by providing them with arms, money and terrorist volunteers. And it is well-known that Turkey has close relations with the West. Erdogan and Davutoglu cannot make a single move without coordinating first with the United States and other Western countries. Al-Nusra and ISIS operate with such a force in the region under Western cover, because Western states have always believed that terrorism is a card they can pull from their pocket and use from time to time. Now, they want to use al-Nusra just against ISIS, maybe because ISIS is out of control one way or another. But that doesn't mean they want to eradicate ISIS. Had they wanted to do so, they would have been able to do that. For us, ISIS, al-Nusra, and all similar organizations which carry weapons and kill civilians are extremist organizations.
But who we conduct dialogue with is a very important question. From the start we said that we engage in dialogue with any party, if that dialogue leads to degrading terrorism and consequently achieve stability. This naturally includes the political powers, but there are also armed groups with whom we conducted dialogue and reached agreement in troubled areas which have become quiet now. In other areas, these armed groups joined the Syrian Army and are fighting by its side, and some of their members became martyrs. So we talk to everyone except organizations I mentioned like ISIS, al-Nusra, and other similar ones for the simple reason that these organizations base their doctrine on terrorism. They are ideological organizations and are not simply opposed to the state, as is the case with a number of armed groups. Their doctrine is based on terrorism, and consequently dialogue with such organizations cannot lead to any real result. We should fight and eradicate them completely and talking to them is absolutely futile.
Intervention:When talking about regional partners, with whom are you prepared to cooperate in fighting terrorism?
President Assad: Certainly with friendly countries, particularly Russia and Iran. Also we are cooperating with Iraq because it faces the same type of terrorism. As for other countries, we have no veto on any country provided that it has the will to fight terrorism and not as they are doing in what is called “the international coalition” led by the United States. In fact, since this coalition started to operate, ISIS has been expanding. In other words, the coalition has failed and has no real impact on the ground. At the same time, countries like Turkey, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and Western countries which provide cover for terrorism like France, the United States, or others, cannot fight terrorism. You cannot be with and against terrorism at the same time. But if these countries decide to change their policies and realize that terrorism is like a scorpion, if you put it in your pocket, it will sting you. If that happens, we have no objection to cooperating with all these countries, provided it is a real and not a fake coalition to fight terrorism.
Question 6:What is the Syrian army's current condition? They've been fighting for over four years. Are they exhausted by the war, or become stronger as a result of engagement in military operations? And are there reserve forces to support them? I also have another important question: you said a large number of former adversaries have moved to your side and are fighting within the ranks of government forces. How many? And what is the extent of their help in the fight against extremist groups?
President Assad: Of course, war is bad. And any war is destructive, any war weakens any society and any army, no matter how strong or rich a country is. But things cannot be assessed this way. War is supposed to unite society against the enemy. The army becomes the most-important symbol for any society when there is aggression against the country. Society embraces the army, and provides it with all the necessary support, including human resources, volunteers, conscripts, in order to defend the homeland. At the same time, war provides a great deal of expertise to any armed forces practically and militarily. So, there are always positive and negative aspects. We cannot say that the army becomes weaker or stronger. But in return, this social embrace and support for the army provides it with volunteers. So, in answer to your question ‘are there reserves?'… yes, certainly, for without such reserves, the army wouldn't have been able to stand for four-and-a-half years in a very tough war, particularly since the enemy we fight today has an unlimited supply of people. We have terrorist fighters from over 80 or 90 countries today, so our enemy is enjoying enormous support in various countries, from where people come here to fight alongside the terrorists. As for the army, it's almost exclusively made of Syrians. So, we have reserve forces, and this is what enables us to carry on. There is also determination. We have reserves not only in terms of human power, but in will as well. We are more determined than ever before to fight and defend our country against terrorists. This is what led some fighters who used to fight against the state at the beginning for varying reasons, discovered they were wrong and decided to join the state. Now they are fighting battles along with the army, and some have actually joined as regular soldiers. Some have kept their weapons, but they are fighting in groups alongside the armed forces in different parts of Syria.
Question 7:Mr. President, Russia has been fighting terrorism for 20 years, and we have seen its different manifestations. It now seems you are fighting it head on. In general, the world is witnessing a new form of terrorism. In the regions occupied by ISIS, they are setting up courts and administrations, and there are reports that it intends to mint its own currency. They are constructing what looks like a state. This in itself might attract new supporters from different countries. Can you explain to us whom are you fighting? Is it a large group of terrorists or is it a new state which intends to radically redraw regional and global borders? What is ISIS today?
President Assad: Of course, the terrorist ISIS groups tried to give the semblance of a state, as you said, in order to attract more volunteers who live on the dreams of the past: that there was an Islamic state acting for the sake of religion. That ideal is unreal. It is deceptive. But no state can suddenly bring a new form to any society. The state should be the product of its society. It should be the natural evolution of that society, to express it. In the end, a state should be a projection of its society. You cannot bring about a state which has a different form and implant it in a society. Here we ask the question: does ISIS, or what they call ‘Islamic State', have any semblance to Syrian society? Certainly not.
Of course we have terrorist groups, but they are not an expression of society. In Russia, you have terrorist groups today, but they do not project Russian society, nor do they have any semblance to the open and diverse Russian society. That's why if they tried to mint a currency or have stamps or passports, or have all these forms which indicate the existence of a state, it doesn't mean they actually exist as a state; first because they are different from the people and, second, because people in those regions flee towards the real state, the Syrian state, the national state. Sometimes they fight them too. A very small minority believes these lies. They are certainly not a state, they are a terrorist group. But if we want to ask about who they are, let's speak frankly: They are the third phase of the political or ideological poisons produced by the West, aimed at achieving political objectives. The first phase was the Muslim Brotherhood at the turn of the last century. The second phase was al-Qaeda in Afghanistan in order to fight the Soviet Union. And the third phase is ISIS, the al-Nusra Front and these groups. Who are ISIS? And who are these groups? They are simply extremist products of the West.
Question 8:Mr. President, at the beginning of the Syrian crisis, the Kurdish issue started to be discussed more often. Previously, Damascus was severely criticized because of its position towards the Kurdish minority. But now, practically, in some areas, Kurdish formations are your allies in the fight against ISIS. Do you have a specific position towards who the Kurds are to you and who you are to them?
President Assad: First, you cannot say there was a certain state policy concerning the Kurds. A state cannot discriminate between members of its population; otherwise, it creates division in the country. If we had been discriminating between different components of society, the majority of these components wouldn't have supported the state now, and the country would have disintegrated from the very beginning. For us, the Kurds are part of the Syrian fabric. They are not foreigners - they live in this region like the Arabs, Circassians, Armenians and many other ethnicities and sects who've been living in Syria for many centuries. It's not known when some of them came to this region. Without these groups, there wouldn't have been a homogenous Syria. So, are they our allies today? No, they are patriotic people. But on the other hand, you cannot put all the Kurds in one category. Like any other Syrian component, there are different currents among them. They belong to different parties. There are those on the left and those on the right. There are tribes, and there are different groups. So, it is not objective to talk about the Kurds as one mass.
There are certain Kurdish demands expressed by some parties, but there are no Kurdish demands for the Kurds. There are Kurds who are integrated fully into society; and I would like to stress that they are not allies at this stage, as some people would like to show. I would like to stress that they are not just allies at this stage, as some suggest. There are many fallen Kurdish soldiers who fought with the army, which means they are an integral part of society. But there are parties which had certain demands, and we addressed some at the beginning of the crisis. There are other demands which have nothing to do with the state, and which the state cannot address. There are things which would relate to the entire population, to the constitution, and the people should endorse these demands before a decision can be taken by the state. In any case, anything proposed should be in the national framework. That's why I say that we are with the Kurds, and with other components, all of us in alliance to fight terrorism.
This is what I talked about a while ago: that we should unite in order to fight ISIS. After we defeat ISIS, al-Nusra and the terrorists, the Kurdish demands expressed by certain parties can be discussed nationally. There's no problem with that, we do not have a veto on any demand as long as it is within the framework of Syria's unity and the unity of the Syrian people and territory, fighting terrorism, Syrian diversity, and the freedom of this diversity in its ethnic, national, sectarian, and religious sense.
Question 9:Mr. President, you partially answered this question, but I would like a more-precise answer, because some Kurdish forces in Syria call for amending the constitution. For instance, setting up a local administration and moving towards autonomy in the north. These statements are becoming more frequent now that the Kurds are fighting ISIS with a certain degree of success. Do you agree with such statements that the Kurds can bet on some kind of gratitude? Is it up for discussion?
President Assad: When we defend our country, we do not ask people to thank us. It is our natural duty to defend our country. If they deserve thanks, then every Syrian citizen defending their country deserves as much. But I believe that defending one's country is a duty, and when you carry out your duty, you don't need thanks. But what you have said is related to the Syrian constitution. Today, if you want to change the existing structure in your country, in Russia for instance, let's say to redraw the borders of the republics, or give one republic powers different to those given to other republics - this has nothing to do with the president or the government. This has to do with the constitution.
The president does not own the constitution and the government does not own the constitution. Only the people own the constitution, and consequently changing the constitution means national dialogue. For us, we don't have a problem with any demand. As a state, we do not have any objection to these issues as long as they do not infringe upon Syria's unity and diversity and the freedom of its citizens.
But if there are certain groups or sections in Syria which have certain demands, these demands should be in the national framework, and in dialogue with the Syrian political forces. When the Syrian people agree on taking steps of this kind, which have to do with federalism, autonomy, decentralization or changing the whole political system, this needs to be agreed upon by the Syrian people, and consequently amending the constitution. This is why these groups need to convince the Syrian people of their proposals. In that respect, they are not in dialogue with the state, but rather with the people. When the Syrian people decide to move in a certain direction, and to approve a certain step, we will naturally approve it.
Question 10:Now, the U.S.-led coalition has been carrying out airstrikes on Syrian territory for about one year on the same areas that the Syrian Air Force is also striking ISIL targets, yet there hasn't been a single incident of the U.S.-led coalition and the Syrian Air Force activity clashing with one another. Is there any direct or indirect coordination between your government and the U.S. coalition in the fight against ISIL?
President Assad: You'd be surprised if I say no. I can tell you that my answer will be not realistic, to say now, while we are fighting the same, let's say enemy, while we're attacking the same target in the same area without any coordination and at the same time without any conflict. And actually this is strange, but this is reality. There's not a single coordination or contact between the Syrian government and the United States government or between the Syrian army and the U.S. army. This is because they cannot confess, they cannot accept the reality that we are the only power fighting ISIS on the ground. For them, maybe, if they deal or cooperate with the Syrian Army, this is like a recognition of our effectiveness in fighting ISIS. This is part of the willful blindness of the U.S. administration, unfortunately.
Question 11:So not event indirectly though, for example the Kurds? Because we know the U.S. is working with the Kurds, and the Kurds have some contacts with the Syrian government. So, not even any indirect coordination?
President Assad: Not even any third party, including the Iraqis, because before they started the attacks, they let us know through the Iraqis. Since then, not a single message or contact through any other party.
Question 12:Ok, so just a little bit further than that. You've lived in the West, and you, at one time, moved in some of those circles with some Western leaders that since the beginning of the crisis have been backing armed groups who are fighting to see you overthrown. How do you feel about one day working again with those very same Western leaders, perhaps shaking hands with them? Would you ever be able to trust them again?
President Assad: First, it's not a personal relation; it's a relation between states, and when you talk about relation between states, you don't talk about trust; you talk about mechanism. So, trust is a very personal thing you cannot depend on in political relations between, let's say, people. I mean, you are responsible for, for example in Syria, for 23 million, and let's say in another country for tens of millions. You cannot put the fate of those tens of millions or maybe hundreds of millions on the trust of a single person, or two persons in two countries. So, there must be a mechanism. When you have a mechanism, you can talk about trust in a different way, not a personal way. This is first.
Second, the main mission of any politician, or any government, president, prime minister, it doesn't matter, is to work for the interest of his people and the interest of his country. If any meeting or any handshaking with anyone in the world will bring benefit to the Syrian people, I have to do it, whether I like it or not. So, it's not about me, I accept it or I like it or whatever; it's about what the added value of this step that you're going to take. So yes, we are ready whenever there's the interest of the Syrians. I will do it, whatever it is.
Question 13:Regarding alliances in the fight against terrorism and ISIS, President Putin called for a regional alliance to fight the so-called ‘Islamic State'; and the recent visits of Arab officials to Moscow fall into that context, but Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem said that would need a miracle. We are talking here about security coordination, as described by Damascus, with the governments of Jordan, Turkey and Saudi Arabia. How do you envisage that alliance? Will it achieve any results, in your opinion? You said that any relationship is based on interests, so are you willing to coordinate with these countries, and what is the truth behind the meetings held between Syrian, and maybe Saudi, officials as reported by the media?
President Assad: As for fighting terrorism, this is a big and comprehensive issue which includes cultural and economic aspects. It obviously has security and military aspects as well. In terms of prevention, all the other aspects are more important than the security and military ones, but today, in the reality we now live in terms of fighting terrorism, we are not facing terrorist groups, we are facing terrorist armies equipped with light, medium and heavy weaponry. They have billions of dollars to recruit volunteers. The military and security aspects should be given priority at this stage. So, we think this alliance should act in different areas, but to fight on the ground first. Naturally, this alliance should consist of states which believe in fighting terrorism and believe that their natural position should be against terrorism.
In the current state of affairs, the person supporting terrorism cannot be the same person fighting terrorism. This is what these states are doing now. Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Jordan, who pretend to be part of a coalition against terrorism in northern Syria, actually support terrorism in the south, the north and the north-west, virtually in the same regions in which they are supposed to be fighting terrorism. Once again I say that, within the framework of public interest, if these states decide to go back to the right position, to return to their senses and fight terrorism, naturally we will accept and cooperate with them and with others. We do not have a veto and we do not stick to the past. Politics change all the time. It might change from bad to good, and the ally might become an adversary, and the adversary an ally. This is normal. When they fight against terrorism, we will cooperate with them.
Question 14:Mr. President, there is a huge wave of refugees, largely from Syria, going to Europe. Some say these people are practically lost to Syria. They are deeply unhappy with the Syrian authorities because they haven't been able to protect them and they've had to leave their homes. How do you view those people? Do you see them as part of the Syrian electorate in the future? Do you expect them to return? And the second question has to do with the European sense of guilt about the displacement happening now. Do you think that Europe should feel guilty?
President Assad: Any person who leaves Syria constitutes a loss to the homeland, to be sure, regardless of the position or capabilities of that person. This, of course, does not include terrorists. It includes all citizens in general with the exception of terrorists. So, yes, there is a great loss as a result of emigration. You raised a question on elections. Last year, we had a presidential election in Syria, and there were many refugees in different countries, particularly in Lebanon. According to Western propaganda, they had fled the state, the oppression of the state and the killing of the state, and they are supposed to be enemies of the state. But the surprise for Westerners was that most of them voted for the president who is supposed to be killing them. That was a great blow to Western propaganda. Of course, voting has certain conditions. There should be an embassy, and to have the custodianship of the Syrian state in the voting process. That depends on relations between the states. Many countries have severed relations with Syria and closed Syrian embassies, and consequently Syrian citizens cannot vote in those countries. They have to go to other countries where ballot boxes are installed, and that did happen last year.
As for Europe, of course it's guilty. Today, Europe is trying to say that Europe feels guilty because it hasn't given money or hasn't allowed these people to immigrate legally, and that's why they came across the sea and drowned. We are sad for every innocent victim, but is the victim who drowns in the sea dearer to us than the victim killed in Syria? Are they dearer than innocent people whose heads are cut off by terrorists? Can you feel sad for a child's death in the sea and not for thousands of children who have been killed by the terrorists in Syria? And also for men, women, and the elderly? These European double standards are no longer acceptable. They have been flagrantly exposed. It doesn't make sense to feel sad for the death of certain people and not for deaths of others. The principles are the same. So Europe is responsible because it supported terrorism, as I said a short while ago, and is still supporting terrorism and providing cover for them. It still calls them ‘moderate' and categorizes them into groups, even though all these groups in Syria are extremists.
Question 15:If you don't mind, I would like to go back to the question about Syria's political future. Mr. President, your opponents, whether fighting against the authorities with weapons or your political opponents, still insist that one of the most-important conditions for peace is your departure from political life and as president. What do you think about that - as president and as a Syrian citizen? Are you theoretically prepared for that if you feel it's necessary?
President Assad: In addition to what you say, Western propaganda has, from the very beginning, been about the cause of the problem being the president. Why? Because they want to portray the whole problem in Syria lies in one individual; and consequently the natural reaction for many people is that, if the problem lies in one individual, that individual should not be more important than the entire homeland. So let that individual go and things will be alright. That's how they oversimplify things in the West. What's happening in Syria, in this regard, is similar to what happened in your case. Notice what happened in the Western media since the coup in Ukraine. What happened? President Putin was transformed from a friend of the West to a foe and, yet again, he was characterized as a tsar. He is portrayed as a dictator suppressing opposition in Russia, and that he came to power through undemocratic means, despite the fact that he was elected in democratic elections, and the West itself acknowledged that the elections were democratic. Now, it is no longer democratic. This is Western propaganda. They say that if the president went things will get better. What does that mean, practically? For the West, it means that as long as you are there, we will continue to support terrorism, because the Western principle followed now in Syria and Russia and other countries is changing presidents, changing states, or what they call bringing regimes down. Why? Because they do not accept partners and do not accept independent states. What is their problem with Russia? What is their problem with Syria? What is their problem with Iran? They are all independent countries. They want a certain individual to go and be replaced by someone who acts in their interests and not in the interest of his country. For us, the president comes through the people and through elections and, if he goes, he goes through the people. He doesn't go as a result of an American decision, a Security Council decision, the Geneva conference or the Geneva communiqué. If the people want him to stay, he should stay; and if the people reject him, he should leave immediately. This is the principle according to which I look at this issue.
Question 16:Military operations have been ongoing for more than four years. It's likely that you analyze things and review matters often. In your opinion, was there a crucial juncture when you realized war was unavoidable? And who initiated that war machinery? The influence of Washington or your Middle East neighbours? Or were there mistakes on your part? Are there things you regret? And if you had the opportunity to go back, would you change them?
President Assad: In every state, there are mistakes, and mistakes might be made every day, but these mistakes do not constitute a crucial juncture because they are always there. So what is it that makes these mistakes suddenly lead to the situation we are living in Syria today? It doesn't make sense. You might be surprised if I tell that the crucial juncture in what happened in Syria is something that many people wouldn't even think of. It was the Iraq war in 2003, when the United States invaded Iraq. We were strongly opposed to that invasion, because we knew that things were moving in the direction of dividing societies and creating unrest. And we are Iraq's neighbours. At that time, we saw that the war would turn Iraq into a sectarian country; into a society divided against itself. To the west of Syria there is another sectarian country - Lebanon. We are in the middle. We knew well that we would be affected. Consequently, the beginning of the Syrian crisis, or what happened in the beginning, was the natural result of that war and the sectarian situation in Iraq, part of which moved to Syria, and it was easy for them to incite some Syrian groups on sectarian grounds.
The second point, which might be less crucial, is that when the West adopted terrorism officially in Afghanistan in the early 1980s and called terrorists at that time ‘freedom fighters', and then in 2006 when Islamic State appeared in Iraq under American sponsorship and they didn't fight it. All these things together created the conditions for the unrest with Western support and Gulf money, particularly form Qatar and Saudi Arabia, and with Turkish logistic support, particularly since President Erdogan belongs intellectually to the Muslim Brotherhood. Consequently, he believes that, if the situation changed in Syria, Egypt, and Iraq, it means the creation of a new sultanate; not an Ottoman sultanate this time, but a sultanate for the Brotherhood extending from the Atlantic to the Mediterranean and ruled by Erdogan. All these factors together brought things to what we have today. Once again, I say that there were mistakes, and mistakes always create gaps and weak points, but they are not sufficient to cause that alone, and they do not justify what happened. And if these gaps and weak points are the cause, why didn't they lead to revolutions in the Gulf states - particularly in Saudi Arabia which doesn't know anything about democracy? The answer is self-evident, I believe.
Mr. President, thank you for giving us the time and for your detailed answers to our questions. We know that in September you have your golden jubilee, your 50th birthday. Probably the best wishes in the current circumstances would be the return of peace and safety to your country as soon as possible. Thank you.
This article has been adapted from the original article which was published on RT on 10 Aug 2015. The fate awaiting Julian Assange should he be extradited to the United States is indicated by the treatment of fellow whistleblower Chelsea Manning at the hands of the United States Government. See Chelsea Manning faces indefinite solitary confinement, lawyer says (13/8/15) | RT.
Australian citizen Julian Assange is believed to have been 'victimized' by Swedish prosecutors following revelations that they interviewed 44 people in the UK, but refused to interview the WikiLeaks head in the Ecuadorian Embassy, where he has been for over three years.
A Freedom of Information request submitted by the Hazel Press news organization has revealed that Sweden has granted 44 requests to interview witnesses or suspects in the UK since 2010, the Press Association reports. This has led supporters of the WikiLeaks founder to claim that Assange has been "singled out," as he has also agreed to be interviewed by Swedish prosecutors inside the embassy concerning sex allegations in the Scandinavian country.
A member of Assange's legal team, Jen Robinson, says that a number of important questions have been raised, adding that "Julian hasn't been charged, yet he is being punished."
"First, they refused to take his testimony while he remained in Sweden. Then they refused to hear it in the UK, saying it was illegal to come here. Five years later, after being rebuked by their own courts, they say they'll consider it," she told the Press Association.
"Instead of hearing what he had to say, the prosecutor chose to cast a shadow of suspicion over Julian by seeking his extradition. We offered his testimony from London before the arrest warrant was issued, and have continued to offer it since."
In March, the Swedish director of public prosecutions, Marianne Ny, agreed to question Assange on Ecuadorian embassy soil, as the sexual assault allegations reach the statute of limitations in August.
However, the meeting planned for June 17 was called off at the last minute, as Ny said Sweden had not received official permission from Ecuador to enter its London embassy. Assange scorned Ny's decision, saying it was nothing more than "a public relations exercise."
Meanwhile, UK human rights campaigner Peter Tatchell#fn1" id="txt1"> 1 said that by agreeing to interview 44 people in the UK, but not Assange, Sweden was "guilty of double standards and victimization," adding they are "making an exception of him."
"It is wrong to deny Assange the option to be interviewed in the UK, which has been extended to others and which he has been offering for five years," the Press Association cited him as saying.
"The Swedish authorities are not applying the law about overseas interviews consistently and fairly. They are acting in an exceptional and discriminatory way towards Assange. Julian Assange has been in various forms of detention for five years, without ever having been charged with any offence. This amounts to pre-trial punishment and is a gross abuse of his human rights and the legal system."
If Assange steps out of the Ecuador Embassy, he will be arrested and extradited to Sweden. Police officers are keeping a round the clock watch on the Australian's refuge, which has already cost the British tax payer more than £12 million ($18.6 million).
"Will the Cameron government spend another £12 million to detain a person who hasn't been charged, simply because Sweden refuses to make use of the mechanisms available to resolve Julian's case?" Robinson asked.
The 43 year-old sought asylum in the embassy because he fears that his extradition to Sweden on suspicion of rape and sexual assault will lead to his transfer to the US, where he could face trial over WikiLeaks' publication of classified US documents.
Assange denies Sweden's accusations, calling them politically motivated. He claims that the ultimate goal of this legal process is to transfer him to the United States.
The country's rulers have ambitions to be a regional and, eventually global, power. Having nuclear weapons would give them leverage and a place at the top table in international affairs. Tehran calculates that the world would have to take them seriously, and would not be able to pressure them, if they had the bomb.
Iran's desire for expanded geo-political influence in the Middle East echoes the existing US and Saudi Arabian influence in the region. The ayatollahs are already projecting their power beyond their own borders; supporting Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Gaza and Assad in Syria.
Whatever may be the truth behind Peter Tatchell's claims that Iran persecutesgays in the above article and elsewhere, the scale of the alleged persecution seems trivial compared to mass killings in neighbouring Iraq since 1990 and Syria since 2011 at the hands of United States military and its proxy terrorists. See Former US Attorney General: US (& Australian) sanctions against Iraq are genocidal (Jan 2014).
I could find nothing about any of this on Peter Tatchell's web-site.
Candobetter.net Editor: NewsCorp have published an article, "Full transcript: Russian-backed rebels ransack the wreckage of MH17 in shocking 17-minute video", but the video does not bear this allegation out for me. It just looks to me as if the people examining the baggage around the crash site are trying to work out where the plane came from and documenting their findings on film. Julie Bishop, Minister for Trade and Foreign Affairs' 'disgust' at these actions seems inflammatory and unjustified. The soldiers searching the site initially think the plane is a Sukhoi-25 fighter plane which they shot at. Then they realise it is a passenger plane and they then think that the Sukhoi-25 fighter plane they brought down must have shot down the passenger plane in order to implicate the East Ukrainian self-defence forces. They hear that the Sukhoi-25 fighter plane went down in a nearby village and that people escaped with parachutes. Note, we have linked to a you-tube version of the Newscorp video. Judge for yourself: The following article published on RT originally and original contains copyright video footage from Newscorp. See http://www.rt.com/news/310082-mh17-video-another-aircraft/
News Corp Australia has obtained a previously unknown video allegedly taken minutes after Malaysian Airlines flight MH17 was downed in Ukraine exactly one year ago. The voices cited by the transcript of the full footage claim a warplane shot down the Boeing.
The four-minute clip posted by News Corp Australia is an extract from what is claimed to be a longer 17-minute video, which allegedly depicts the immediate aftermath of the MH17 Boeing crash. The clip shows rebel fighters who arrived at the scene, first looking to get things under control. Their commander is heard ordering them to clear the area of civilians and onlookers and search for the black boxes.
In the clip a man's voice is heard, which is thought to be that of a rebel commander, who receives a number of phone calls apparently from other rebel fighters at different sites where the debris fell. The man is heard saying “What? There’s another plane?” and orders the men to “establish a perimeter and keep civilians away”.
The four-minute clip posted by the News.com.au is followed by a transcript from a longer 17-minute video, which has not been released. News Corp Australia told RT that they "stand by the transcript, it was taken from the full video, which investigators now have."
The text cites a rebel commander as saying that "the Sukhoi [fighter jet] brought down the plane and we brought down the Sukhoi."
Later on, the man is quoted as saying that "there’s two planes taken down,” while a voice in the background says, "the fighter jet brought down this one [MH17 Boeing], and our people brought down the fighter. They [the Ukrainians] decided to do it this way, to make it look like we have brought down the plane."
According to the transcript, there were also between two and "five parachute jumpers" who landed at the nearby Grabove village. These included a pilot “roaming about Rassypnoe" [a nearby village] and a commander ordering his men go and get him immediately.
One of the rebels is also wondering who and why they [the Boeing] was given permission to fly over the warzone.
The four-minute clip shows rebels searching the debris for black boxes and finding one, as well as personal IDs of the passengers, which they then filmed on the camera.
Australia’s Foreign Minister Julie Bishop reacted upon the release of the video by saying that she could not verify its authenticity. “It is sickening to watch and, 12 months on from the downing of MH17, it is deeply concerning that this footage has emerged now," she told the Nine Network.
Bishop also said “it is certainly consistent with all that we were told, the advice that we received two months ago, that flight MH17 had been shot down by a... missile,” she said.
Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17, which was heading from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur, was downed in eastern Ukraine on July 17, 2014, killing all 298 people onboard.
Almaz-Antey, a Russian manufacturer of Buk missiles and Russia's main air-defense manufacturer has begun its own investigations into the MH17 affair, where a Malaysian air flight was downed over war-torn East Ukraine. Since this tragedy, NATO supporters have accused Russia of being the owner of a BUK missile which some believe may have been the thing that brought the Flight MH17 passenger aircraft down. Russians have responded by suggesting that if a missile was involved, it was probably a Ukrainian missile fired from East Ukraine when it was under Kiev military control. Although there are other theories, including one that another aircraft may have fired on MH17, the missile manufacturer itself is now trying to conduct its own investigation in order to have sanctions against it lifted. According to Almaz-Antey, missile manufacturers, the missile that likely struck the Boeing aircraft, 9M38-M1, was not produced in the Russian Federation since 1999, but they have evidence that the BUK-M1 air defense missile system and accompanying missiles were still deployed with the Ukrainian Armed Forces in 2005. According to their evidence, Ukraine had a total of 991 9M38M1 missiles at the time.
Article contains material republished from RT where originally published on June 02, 2015 at 9.46am. For live updates go to the original article.
Emergencies Ministry members walk at the site of a Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 plane crash, MH17, near the settlement of Grabovo in the Donetsk region, July 17, 2014. (Reuters/Maxim Zmeyev)
Russia’s air-defense systems manufacturer, Almaz-Antey, is holding a press conference on its appeal at the European Court of Justice against EU sanctions against it over the Boeing MH17 crash. The BUK missile manufacturer is to present its own findings.According to reporter, Daniel Bushell's tweets on this matter, Almaz-Antey, the missile manufacturer, have said that they cannot explain Ukraine air traffic control activity at time of crash, black box should reveal [this?].
Almaz-Antey have observed that there is a lot of absolutely contradictory information in Western media about circumstances of MH17 tragedy.
They say that they do not rule out other versions, but stand by their analysis that BUK M1 hit MH17.
The Ukrainian General Staff says that Ukraine possesses BUK M-1 missile systems, but that on the day of the MH17 crash Ukraine was not in control of the area where it is suspected the missile was fired.
Almaz-Antey say that they do technical analysis, but do not speculate on whether Kiev or self-defence side were to blame.
Almaz-Antey is still entertaining the possibility that another aircraft may have been involved in the downing of flight MH17 and state that the country that possessed the missile that hit flight MH17 remains unknown.
"If necessary, we can carry out a field test... with the participation of independent experts," Novikov says. "We are willing to carry out a demolition of a 9M38M1 missile at a specified angle and aimed at the same model of aircraft."
RT ask missile maker Almaz-Antey at media conference about location of MH17 shootdown and the missile makers responded that the angle of missile strike allows us to reveal MH17 was hit above the area of Zaroshchenske, not Snezhnoe as reported.
The missile could not have been fired from Snezhnoe, as the survey findings are consistent with it being fired from the Zaroschshenskoe village. If it were fired from Snezhnoe, "the entire front end of the cabin would have been blown off," state Almaz-Antey.
Almaz-Antey concluded their technical report and threw the session open to reporters. The question and answer session that followed elicited the following:
The missile that likely struck the Boeing aircraft, 9M38-M1, was not produced in the Russian Federation since 1999 - Almaz-Antey to reporters.
Almaz-Antey has evidence that the BUK-M1 air defense missile system and accompanying missiles have been still deployed with the Ukrainian Armed Forces in 2005. According to their evidence, they had a total of 991 9M38M1 missiles at the time, according to Head Engineer, Mikhail Malyshevsky.
“During the first stage of our investigation, the type of system was established. It was a Buk-M1 system [NATO reporting name SA-11], a 9?38-?1 rocket and a 9?314 warhead,” according to Malyshevsky.
He said the damage caused to the aircraft appears consistent with the 9M38-M1 missile, which has a specific "scalpel" trajectory, with 40 percent of shrapnel breaking apart in a perpendicular fashion to the initial trajectory of the missile.
The version of events that saw MH17 hit with a missile launched from the Snezhnoe area is full of inconsistencies. Further analysis proves that this was not the case, says Malyshevsky.
Traces of Buk 9M38M1 missile fragments found on remains of MH17 Boeing, Malyshevsky said.
The character of the damage caused to the aircraft is consistent only with the BUK9M38 and BUK9M38-M1 missiles, if the BUK missiles are in question, according to.
Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, a former Chief of Staff to former secretary of state, Colin Powell, says that the US government’s aspiration of turning Afghanistan into a stable place is nonsense. Only third parties, who are interested in stability, can resolve the problem, he says.
“The best we can hope for is that those powers – India, China, Pakistan primarily, but Iran too, and other powers with dog in a fight, Turkey for example – need to handle this situation on their own merits,” he said. “They’ve got a critical interest in the stability or near stability in Afghanistan.” Article originally published with videos at RT at http://rt.com/news/usa-afghanistan-war-expensive-337/
As America marks the 10th year of war in Afghanistan, the world is calling it the longest and the most expensive US war ever. And as Michael Shank from George Mason University told RT, the war is a failure in all ways.
“The war in Afghanistan is costing $1 million per soldier per year, so we are spending $325 million per day, $10 billion per month and $120 billion per year,” he said. “The history books will look at the success and sustainability of the strategies, and I would argue they are not successful and neither are they sustainable. We have tried every military strategy under the sun from counter-terrorism to counter-insurgency. That is not sustainable, neither is the development strategy. If we look at our diplomacy strategy, it failed as well,” he added.
It has been estimated that the Afghanistan and Iraq wars have cost the US a staggering $3.7 trillion so far. In times of financial hardship in the US and the world, this cannot be justified at any level, believes Shank.
“And if we end the wars now, we will save $1.4 trillion. The money we spent we did not actually have – that was all debt-funded and deficit-funded. We need to reduce the heavy military footprint and air print that is costing our coffers incredible amounts of money and pursue lighter footprints,” he stated.
Just a few days before 9/11, the Taliban offered to give up Osama bin Laden, and continued to do so after the campaign began. But the US did not take them up on that. According to Shank, the Taliban leaders went to negotiations several times, and were killed on the way.
“The real problem killing the top Taliban brass is that they were willing to negotiate. Now that you are killing them off, you have a younger breed, and they are less willing to negotiate. They have been fighting for fewer years. They are not that tired of the fighting. So when you are killing the top Taliban elder leadership, you are also killing off those most willing to negotiate,” he explained.
US should leave Afghanistan to those interested in stability
Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, a former Chief of Staff to former secretary of state, Colin Powell, says that the US government’s aspiration of turning Afghanistan into a stable place is nonsense. Only third parties, who are interested in stability, can resolve the problem, he says.
“The best we can hope for is that those powers – India, China, Pakistan primarily, but Iran too, and other powers with dog in a fight, Turkey for example – need to handle this situation on their own merits,” he said. “They’ve got a critical interest in the stability or near stability in Afghanistan.”
“[Afghanistan] can be fairly stable if India and Pakistan and others agree that their purpose and their maneuvers within the country are towards stability,” he added.
Wilkerson believes that Afghanistan should be stabilized with the people who are really “24/7 interested” in stability.
“So allowing some of these other people, who are much closer to the problem, to handle some of this instability has got to be a part of the future. And in order to do that, the United States has to predominantly get out,” Wilkerson concluded.
Imam Abdullah Antepli, a Muslim chaplain at Duke University in North Carolina, believes that ten years ago the US had many alternatives to violent invasion in Afghanistan.
“I think when we conducted this war ten years ago, 99 per cent of the global community was behind us,” he said. “We had absolutely a lot of capital to use soft power – diplomacy, talk, and to engage and mobilize a lot of humanitarian work, and create alliances and partnerships.”
Antepli believes that the US “pretty much wasted all those opportunities.”
“We only limited our options to the military solution,” he said. “We only relied on our muscle and military might. And we did very little in terms of pulling different forces around the world to help us to address the root causes of violence and terror in that part of the world.”
Although, “the result is far from impressive today,” with US troops on the ground, Abdullah Antepli believes that the local government will not be in a position any time soon to bring peace and provide Afghans with security after the withdrawal.
“Every indication shows that the local Afghan government neither has the strength and the potential nor to me even the vision to bring a kind of sustainable peace to Afghanistan,” he said.
If Russia and the United States led by President Roosevelt, had not cooperated, even the heroism and sacrifice of the Russian people may not have prevented a Nazi victory.
The RT#fnHl1" id="txtHl1"> 1 news service funded by the Russian government is a beacon of truth in a world of deceit of the corporate mainstream newsmedia. Had RT been around earlier, it is much less likely that the fabricated pretexts for war against Yugoslavia, Iraq, and Afghanistan would have been accepted and those wars could have been prevented.
Yet, for all its valuable contributions to truth and democracy, many of the journalists and reporters at RT still have considerable gaps in their understanding of the history of the 20th century and of the part played by the Soviet Union. (This article has been promoted from a comment here, owing to some important points it makes. It is not intended to detract from important commemorations in Russia of lives lost in the final battles in which Russia was victorious over Hitler and thus rid the world of WW2 Nazi threat.)
British historian Richard Overy, when interviewed by Oksana Boyko on the Worlds Apart episode of 7 May put a somewhat flawed view about Nazism and Communism. Whilst she was able to challenge a number of Richard Overy's claims, she left others unchallenged. One was Overy's assertion that Josef Stalin was a brilliant and inspired leader who led and inspired the Soviet people to victory over Nazi Germany.
In truth, millions more lives were lost than should have been necessary to defeat Nazi Germany as a result of 1) Stalin's blind trust in Hitler prior to the start of Operation Barbarossa on 22 June 1944, and 2) Stalin's treachery towards his own people and allies before and during the Second World War.
As a result of the surprise Hitler/Stalin pact of August 1939, Nazi Germany was able to conquer Poland and Western Europe whilst having vast amounts of raw materials shipped across the border from the Soviet Union. So much was sent that even Soviet industry and Soviet consumers suffered from the shortages.#fnHl2" id="txtHl2"> 2
As Hitler was using these raw materials to wage war against the West, he was also using these materials to secretly prepare for his invasion of the Soviet Union.
Stalin's treachery and poor judgement caused many millions more Soviet citizens to die than should have been necessary to defeat Nazism. Examples include: 1) his betrayal of countries fighting Nazi Germany prior to 22 June 1941, including Poland, France and Britain; and 2) his blind trust in Hitler after 23 August 1939 which caused him to ignore warnings from British and U.S. intelligence, and even one his own spies,#fnHl5"> 5 that Nazi Germany was preparing to launch an invasion.
Notwithstanding Stalin's unconscionable conduct towards Hitler, Western leaders including British Prime Minister Winston Churchill#fnHl3" id="txtHl3"> 3 and American President Franklin Delano Roosevelt understood that German Nazism, and not Communism, posed a mortal threat to humankind. They tried to warn Stalin of Hitler's plans, when their intelligence services made them aware of these preparations, but Stalin ignored these warnings.
Even Soviet agent, German communist Richard Sorge#fnHl5" id="txtHl5"> 5 , who worked in the German embassy in Tokyo, warned of the planned invasion, but his warning was ignored. A German soldier who swam across the River Bug to warn of the invasion, just prior to the invasion was shot for his trouble.#fnHl4" id="txtHl4"> 4
As a result the vast majority of Soviet soldiers were caught entirely by surprise on the morning of 2 June 1941. Hundreds of thousands were needlessly captured and killed in the first few months of the war.
Most of the more capable commanders of the Red Army, including Marshal Mikhail Tukhachevsky (pictured), had been killed by Stalin during the Great Purge of 1938. They were murdered after show trials because Stalin feared that they may have held a residual loyalty to their former commander-in-chief Leon Trotsky, then in exile in Mexico. Had the Red Army been led more capably by these officers, the scale of sacrifice necessary to defeat the Nazi invasion would not have been nearly as great.
Footnote[s]
#fnHl1" id="fnHl1">1.#txtHl1"> ↑ I previously understood 'RT' to have be the acronym for 'Russia Today' but this is apparently not the case.
#fnHl2" id="fnHl2">2.#txtHl2"> ↑ I read this in World War Two - a Short History (2043) by Norman Stone but, unfortunately, can't cite the page number.
#fnHl3" id="fnHl3">3.#txtHl3"> ↑ British Prime Minister Winston Churchill appears to have behaved commendably in the early stages of the war when he refused to make peace with Nazi Germany after its conquest of mainland Europe. Given that Churchill was soundly defeated by the Labor Party in the general elections of July 1945, it is not inconceivable that Churchill was motivated in part by wanting to hold on to power against the staunchly anti-Nazi opposition Labor Party
#fnHl4" id="fnHl4">4.#txtHl4"> ↑ World War Two - a Short History (2043) by Norman Stone p58.
The Japanese made three overtures to the Soviet Union, offering to trade Sorge for one of their own spies. However, the Soviet Union declined all the offers, maintaining that Sorge was unknown to them.
Richard Sorge was hanged on November 7, 1944, at 10:20 a.m. Tokyo time in Sugamo Prison; Hotsumi Ozaki was hanged earlier in the same day. The Soviet Union did not officially acknowledge Sorge until 1964. It was argued that Sorge's biggest coup led to his undoing, because Stalin could not afford to let it become known that he had rejected Sorge's warning about the German attack in 1941. ...
‘I was to play Rachmaninoff, not preach politics’ – fired pianist Valentina Lisitsa to RT. This article first published April 07, 2015 22:19 http://rt.com/news/247297-canada-orchestra-pianist-ukraine/ The Ukrainian-born pianist Valentina Lisitsa has become even more famous than she's already been among the online community, after her political views cost her a job with a Canadian orchestra. And she doesn't plan on being silenced, she told RT.
"I always separated music from politics and tried to keep enormous distance between the two," the pianist told RT's 'In the Now' host Anissa Naouai on Tuesday, after news of how she's been treated by Canada's Toronto Symphony Orchestra has spread globally.
The hashtag #LetValentinaPlay surged in popularity on social media, and thousands of supporters spoke out for the artist, who was offered to be paid not to play.
"I was about to play Rachmaninoff concertos with the orchestra, not to preach politics," Lisitsa, who was fired allegedly for her political views rather than lack of skill, told RT. The orchestra hasn't returned RT's requests to comment on the situation so far.
"I never expected my music to be silenced," the pianist said, adding that she's "totally for freedom of speech, freedom of discussion and freedom of heated argument."
"That's what I've been doing on Twitter," she said, explaining her extensive tweeting on Ukraine on the social platform, with her point of view not falling in line with the popular Western narrative, allegedly costing her a job.
Originally published under the title of "Iran's deputy FM: Yemen's president uses terrorists to fight rebels," this is the transcript, with links to the video, of Sophie Shevardnadze's interview with Iran Deputy Foreign Minister, Hossein Amir-Abdollahian. The beginning of the video is particularly instructive, as Hossein Amir-Abdollahian gives a run-down on what is happening from Iran's very close perspective. Among other things, it becomes clear that Iran does not believe that the United States is trying to stop IS. Saudi Arabia has said that it is going to develop nuclear weapons. Iran says it will not let this happen. It also says that it will not let Syria fall. The Minister says that the reason the United States wants to wreck Syria is that then it will have destroyed the main Russian foothold in the Middle East and that will allow the United States to dominate the region and maintain world hegemony. See also this Crosstalk episode where US realpolitik intentions and consequences and rhetoric are discussed in a very informed manner, particularly in relation to Yemen.
Iran's deputy FM: Yemen's president uses terrorists to fight rebels
Yemen has turned into another battlefield, raging across the region. ISIS is prospering on the ruins of state. The flames of war grow brighter with Saudi Arabia and its allies joining the combat on the side of the Yemen’s government forces. But is that a solution? Hasn’t the method of intervention discredited itself - just inspiring more violence? We look at the issue with Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian on Sophie&Co.
Sophie Shevardnadze: Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian,thank you for joining us again, we’re very happy to have you here. I’d like to start with the recent events. As you know, Yemen is on the verge of a civil war. Saudi Arabia and its allies have launched air strikes in Yemen against the Shia rebels who seized power. What is your opinion on this and what is Iran’s stance?
Hossein Amir-Abdollahian: In the name of Allah, the compassionate, the merciful. We believe that the situation in Yemen should be resolved through political means only. We are very – let’s put it this way – surprised that foreign countries launched a military operation in Yemen. We believe that foreign interference will not only fail to solve the problem, but also exacerbate it. It’s easy to start a war, but it’s extremely hard to finish one. The countries interfering in the situation in Yemen are putting themselves in a very difficult position, they will just sink into this mire. All the sides seeking power in Yemen should take part in a political process to determine the future of the country. The Houthi rebels who seized power in Yemen, that is, the Ansar Allah movement, are a very influential group. Their main objective is to fight terrorism. They seized certain territories to clear them of terrorists. Unfortunately, recently the ISIS forces, the Nigerian Boko Haram and Somalian Al-Shabaab started operating in the country. They cooperate with some intelligence services from other states to create chaos in Yemen. Ansar Allah took preventive steps against terrorist forces. We believe that a national dialogue should take place in Yemen to reach an agreement based on peace and cooperation. The countries of this region, including Saudi Arabia, shouldn’t hamper this process.
SS: That’s a lot of ‘shoulds’... In any case, the airstrikes have begun and what we have here is a direct military intervention. Do I understand correctly from what you just said that in this situation when Saudi Arabia and a coalition of Arab states are bombing Yemen, Iran will stay an observer rather than start actively interfering?
HA-A: We will keep supporting the fight against terrorism in the region, including in Yemen. In this respect we welcome the actions of Ansar Allah aimed at combating terrorism. We will support the dialogue in Yemen to the best of our abilities and we are willing to aid the start of the political process in this country. We don’t believe that the conflict in Yemen can be solved through military means. We don’t believe the Ansar Allah forces need to receive military aid. We will not facilitate military action in Yemen.We are in favor of national dialogue, and in this respect our stance is the same as Russia’s. During negotiations with my Russian counterpart we agreed to facilitate the start of a peace process in Yemen.
SS: You’ve said before that the Yemeni President should resign. Does it mean that you support the Houthis and not the legitimate president of Yemen?
HA-A: Indeed, we have criticized the Yemeni President and urged him to resign. Abd Rabbuh Mansour Hadimade a number of mistakes as president. His first obvious mistake was the initial decision to resign, and his second was to flee the capital and move to Aden. Using terrorist groups to fight Ansar Allah was his third mistake. Announcing that Aden is the new capital was another strategic mistake on his part. Why? Because some countries supported the decision to make Aden a temporary capital, which triggered further divisions in Yemen, pushing the country closer to war. Even before Saudi Arabia’s military intervention in Yemen we have very clearly stated that all Yemeni political forces, including the President, should gather in Sanaa and launch a dialogue based on peace and partnership in order to break the current deadlock. But instead Hadi tried to politically boycott Ansar Allah. We maintain contact with all the groups and movements in Yemen, including the interim government and Ansar Allah. But we believe that Yemen belongs to all the Yemeni people and a single movement cannot dominate the political arena.Yemeni leaders should make their own decision regarding the country’s future.
SS: But right now it’s ultimately about supporting either the Houthis that seized power or the rest. As for the Houthis, is there a guarantee that they will be able to unite the people, consolidate the power and prevent bloodshed?
HA-A: The Houthis are strongly supported by the population. The actions of President Hadi backed by some foreign states resulted in terrorists infiltrating Yemen. Ansar Allah had to respond. The Houthis honored their commitments, they were willing to take part in a dialogue, but the other side changed the rules. In this situation, when the war in Yemen has already begun, Ansar Allah is protecting itself and the country. They are still in favor of peace and political dialogue. People support Ansar Allah and respect its members. The only way to resolve the situation in Yemen is for all the political groups to cooperate and come to an agreement.
SS: Let’s talk about another military operation in the region, conducted by the US and the coalition of Arab states against ISIS. In your interview to Reuters you said that the United States is not acting to eliminate ISIS, it’s only interested in managing it. Did you mean that the US is controlling the Islamic State? How is that possible?
HA-A: In the beginning the Americans declared that they wanted to destroy ISIS. But then it became clear that in reality they were just weakening ISIS. Now it’s apparent that all they want is to control, to manage the Islamic State. The US built a coalition to fight ISIS in Iraq and Syria, but the action plansfor the two countries are different. The US is coordinating its actions with the government in Iraq, but this is not the case in Syria. The US simply informed the Syrian President of its intentions. It is not coordinating its actions with the Syrian military.We have proof that the Americans use double standards when it comes to combating terrorism. They have no unified strategy, and in some cases we see a connection between U.S. intelligence services and terrorist groups. We’ve expressed our concern about this to our American counterparts through diplomatic channels, but the U.S. maintains they are committed to fighting terrorism.
SS: You say direct military action is needed against ISIS.Would Iran support a U.S. on-the-ground military intervention into Iraq and Syria?
HA-A: We haven’t supported the US-led coalition against ISIS because we have serious doubts about America’s true objectives. One of the reasons for our doubts is that after Mosul fell, we saw that the U.S. are not taking any serious steps. It seems like they were waiting for some political changes to take place. There is a lot of controversy over the way the US has been fighting terrorism in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria in the recent years. If the Americans are combating terrorism, why are they now willing to negotiate with the Taliban after so many years of fighting it?
SS: Now you’ve brought up the issue -U.S. actions in Iraq have led to the chaos we’re seeing today with the Islamic State, U.S actions in Afghanistan failed to end the Taliban… Is it time forregionalpowers to step in and clear the mess?
HA-A: The Americans started fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan, but did they manage to get rid of it? Did the US succeed in eradicating the roots of terrorism in Afghanistan? We believe that ISIS is the result of the US military intervention in Iraq. The US created the conditions for the growth of terrorism in Iraq, and it won’t be eradicated until the U.S. stops behaving in such an ambiguous way.
SS:I’m not disputing that. My question was whether it was time for regional powers such as Iran and its neighbors to interfere and sort out this mess.
HA-A: When it comes to fighting terrorism, Iran was the first country that rushed to Iraq’s aid and the first country to help Syria. We will support any country in the region that is threatened by terrorism and help them within the framework of international law. Upon request from the Iraqi and Syrian governments we sent our military advisers there to fight terrorism. Some of them died as martyrs. We are closely cooperating with some countries of the region in order to create a joint mechanism to combat terror.
SS: The Iraqi Defense Minister recently praised Iran for its role in fighting the Islamic State. And you say Iran sent military advisers to Iraq.What role do military advisors play exactly? Are they Iranians who fight the Islamic State directly? I’ll explain why I’m asking. Just recentlythe leader of Iraq’s shiite militia has thanked Iran and an Iranian general - General Soleimani – for saving Baghdad from Isis.So does that mean the Iranian army is directly fighting ISIS in Iraq?
HA-A: When it comes to Iraq, it’s the Iraqi people and the Iraqi army that plays the most important role there. They are undertaking tremendous efforts to fight ISIS. Ayatollah al-Sistani’s fatwa which declared fighting ISIS a sacred duty greatly contributed to the mobilization of the Iraqi population. When we say that Iran’s military advisers are in Iraq, we mean people who offer advice to the Iraqi and Syrian armed forces. We share our experience in fighting terrorism. In no way does it mean that we send our soldiers there. Iraq and Syria have enough armed forces to fight terrorism.
SS: So you reaffirm that at the moment there are no Iranian soldiers directly involved in fighting Iraqi militants on the ground?
HA-A: No Iranian armed forces or militants are currently present in Iraq or Syria.
SS: Let me ask you this: whyaren’tyou fighting? Wouldn’t Iranian help be extremely useful in the current situation?
HA-A: We can help our partners organize the process and make military decisions. But Both countries have enough armed forces, there’s no need to send Iranian soldiers to Iraq or Syria.
SS: Okay, so both Iranian military advisers and American military advisers are currently in Iraq.Does that mean that Iranian military advisers are working side by side with the Americans and their allies? Is that right?
HA-A: We don’t have an agreement with the US regarding joint efforts to fight terrorism in Iraq.We don’t have direct military cooperation. But the Iraqi government is coordinating the work of the military advisors - In some parts of Iraq American military advisors consult the Iraqi forces, in other parts it’s the Iranian military advisers.We are very committed to combating terrorism and we’ve made considerable progress in Iraq. There’s no doubt that Baghdad was on the brink of falling into the hands of ISIS, but right now it’s under no danger. Other parts of the country should have been freed of ISIS with the help of the Americans, but we don’t see the U.S. taking any major steps. So we constantly criticize them for not being decisive and serious enough in fighting terrorism.
SS:I understand, but if the Iranian and American military advisers were to coordinate their work, wouldn’t it be more effective than offering different strategies to fight ISIS in different parts of the country? Right now it seems that both Iran and the US share the same interests in this region, that is, to defeat ISIS.
HA-A: We are committed to fighting terrorism, and we take planning and implementing concrete measures very seriously. We don’t agree with the steps the US is taking, so we see no point in coordinating our work. If the US proves its commitment to fight ISIS, we will of course welcome it.
SS: U.S. former commander in Iraq, Gen. David Petraeus has said that the Shiite militias confronting ISIS, “aided and guided by Iran”, are a bigger threat to Iraq than ISIS itself - should Baghdad refuse their help then?
HA-A: What Petraeus said indicates that he doesn’t have a good understanding of what is going on, even though he was the commander of the US forces in Iraq for years. The US has on a number of occasions expressed its concern over militias formed in Iraq.But I’ll have to state very clearly that volunteer militias were formed under the guidance of the Iraqi government and Iraqi military command. Iraqi militias are not independent. They operate within the framework of Iraq’s Constitution, under the command of the Defense Minister and work towards the same objective as the Iraqi army.
SS:If not the Shia forces, who should be fighting ISIS? Both the Iraqi army and the Sunni armed groupshaven’t been showing much progress before the militias stepped in...
HA-A: You see, people say that we help only the Shia in Iraq, but that’s not the case. Our military advisors are engaged together with the Iraqi army in operations in Tikrit, in Sunni areas. If Iran had not responded to a plea for help from the leader of Iraqi Kurds Mr. Masoud Barzani, ISIS would have been in Erbil by now. Mr. Barzani stated very clearly that they are thankful to the Islamic Republic of Iran for assistance in fighting ISIS. In other words, we have offered help in Shia-dominated areas, Kurdish areas, and now we are helping Iraqi Sunnis in Tikrit to fight terror. So saying that Shiite militias are the only ones fighting in Iraq is not exactly correct.
SS: With the nuclear negotiations between Iran and the Western powers showing signs of progress, why is there still such mistrust about Iran’s aid in the fight against the IS?
HA-A: First of all, we have even less trust in the West than they have in us. I don’t think they have any reasons for suspicion, because our counter-terrorist efforts have proved worthwhile. If you don’t believe me, ask the people of Iraq, Afghanistan or Syria.Why is the West apprehensive about this? That’s their problem.
SS: While Western allies focus their attention on Iraq, Syria remains a stronghold for the Islamic State…Your interior minister told me in a recent interview that you offer organizational, advisory assistance to Syria in the fight against the Islamic State. Are you planning to offer wider support?
HA-A: We will continue to provide assistance to Syria.We will not allow Syria to turn into another Libya or another Somalia. In spite of the chaos created by terrorists, in spite of the misguided international actions in the region, we always have and always will stand by the Syrian people. Iran backed the political process in Syria, government reforms, the demands of the moderate Syrian opposition. We support the inter-Syrian dialogue in Moscow. Iran will continue helping Syria combat terrorism and we will also continue providing economic assistance to Syria.
SS:Is Iran the only country helping Syria fight ISIS?
HA-A: Iran is the only country that officially helps Syria fight terrorism and coordinates its efforts with Syrian authorities. We provide them with military advice. Hezbollah has also been very effective in the fight against ISIS, it’s ensuring the security of Lebanon. Lately, many countries, some European and American politicians have acknowledged the issue of terrorism in Syria, and are emphasizing the need for a political settlement inside the country. We proudly declare that Tehran has prevented terrorists from overthrowing the political regime in Syria, even though some foreign intelligence agencies supported armed groups in Syria. Besides, some foreign governments contributed to the strengthening of ISIS in Syria.
SS:ISIS is strengthening its presence across the entire region, spreading beyond Syria and Iraq into Afghanistan, Egypt, Libya, and Yemen; they even have supporters in Nigeria.How has Iran, neighbored by Iraq and Afghanistan, managed to keep extremism out?
HA-A: The reason why we offer effective assistance to our neighbors is that our security services have a lot of experience in managing the situation and combatting terrorism. Even though we’re in between two of the world’s biggest terror hubs - Afghanistan and Iraq, Iran remains the most secure and stable country in the region. This is thanks to our security services and other units that specialize in fighting terrorism.
SS: That’s clear, but what exactly do you do? Each country uses its army and security forces for protection. But the countries targeted by ISIS also have their own security forces. So what makes you better at it?
HA-A: First, there must be no distinction between good terrorism and bad terrorism. You cannot use terrorism in your own interests. Second, you need to have adequate security forces to act against terror. Third, you need to enforce border control. And most importantly, you need to address the social and ideological roots of terror in the region. Every government must track the roots of terrorism to work out a solution. As for the measures we take, the specifics are up to security forces. This is not my domain. Russia, too, is taking very productive steps and building effective tools to ensure its own security. We see terror strikes in France and in the US; Russia is not immune, either. But why does Russia stay stable and secure? I think it’s all about running the country well and the counter-terrorist experience Russia has.
SS: In other words, countries are better at ensuring their security under the pressure of sanctions! All right – let’s move on to another topic. I’d like to touch upon falling oil prices. You are saying this is happening due to well-planned actions of some governments in the region. Which ones do you mean – beside Saudi Arabia?
HA-A: There are a handful of factors contributing to the falling oil prices. One of them is the law of supply and demand. The second one is the production of shale oil in the US. We know now for sure about the recent concerted effort by some of the countries in the region…
SS:Which ones?
HA-A: I’d rather not name them. Anyway, that was a concerted effort by some of the oil producers in the region and the US. One of their goals was to lean on Tehran and Moscow. Their idea was that the drop in the oil prices would increase economic pressure on Tehran and Moscow, so that Tehran would concede on its nuclear program, and Moscow on the Ukrainian crisis. But it is a two-way street: even the countries that expanded their oil production and are reducing oil prices will suffer from this policy very soon.
I believe that the region and the international community in general are being affected by strategic errors.The biggest error in the realm of security consists in the instrumental use of terror in some of the regional countries, like Syria and IraqThe biggest error in the realm of economy is keeping the oil prices at a low level. All of this breeds instability, undermines security and builds up extremism.The only stakeholders who benefit from it are the enemies of the region.
SS: Saudi Arabia has recently declared it is ready to start designing its own nuclear weapons. What will Iran do if Saudi Arabia makes a nuclear bomb?
HA-A: Our spiritual leader has banned production and use of nuclear weapons at the highest political and religious level. We seek to build a nuclear weapon-free zone. If Saudi Arabia wants to develop nuclear energy for peaceful purposes, we will be happy to see that Iran’s persistence in this issue has finally yielded fruit. Moreover, we are ready to share our experience with other countries in the region. But we strongly oppose building nuclear weapons, and we will not allow Saudi Arabia to make a nuclear bomb.
SS:I get it, but unfortunately Saudi Arabia has openly said they are talking about nuclear weapons, not nuclear research, and that they’re doing it in response to Iran’s nuclear program that has research purposes.
HA-A: Iran continues to talk with its partners on its nuclear program. So far the talks have confirmed that Iran is not engaged in developing nuclear weapons. So there is no need for Saudi Arabia to do this either.
SS: You are evading my question in a true diplomatic fashion. To make it clear, Saudi Arabia has announced its intentions to work on nuclear weapons. What is Iran’s stance on this?
HA-A: We do not make nuclear weapons, and we forcefully condemn other regional countries’ intent to acquire a nuclear bomb. All countries in the region, including Israel, must destroy their nuclear warheads.
SS: Thank you very much for this interview. I hope to see you again someday.
HA-A: I’d also like to thank you and wish your esteemed audience the best of success.
The United States has been gradually replacing its own military with military contractors to the degree now where they formed 50% of troops in Iraq and 70% of troops in Afghanistan deployed in its name. What happens to those business model troops when the US wants to wind down military activity in a particular place? They are private armies with power and money and the risk is that they will use it to extract a living, as in splintered Libya. The bigger risk is that they will form corporate military states in their own right - as ISIS pretends to. Professor Sean McFate spent some years - mostly in Africa - as a mercenary, largely because he was curious about this. "Mercenaries have always been there, where there is bloodshed going on. The times when whole armies of mercenary troops, or even personal regiments were bought and sold seemed to be long gone. But now, they are called Private Military Companies, and their popularity among the governments rises, with the US leading the trend of shopping at the market of force. Are we witnessing the end of the age of national armies? And why mercenaries are in such high demand these days? We put these questions to Professor Sean McFate, who once was a private military contractor himself." (Sophie Shevardnadze)
Sophie Shevardnadze: Professor Sean McFate, former private military contractor, now author, thank you for joining us in our show. Now, with the rise of mercenaries, private armies, contractors - are we heading towards a global market of conflict, or does it exist already?
Sean McFate: It’s been existing now for about 10 years, perhaps longer, but we’re definitely on the trajectory of having a more open and free market for force around the world after Iraq and Afghanistan.
SS: How so?
SMF: Well, the private military industry has always existed, but for the last couple of decades it’s mostly been underground with lone, sort of, mercenaries in Africa, in the wars of decolonization, but in 99s we started seeing a rise of it, with companies like “Executive Outcomes” in South Africa which was a truly mercenary corporation, and that the U.S. government hired a couple of companies in the Balkans, likeMPRI, in 1999s. But it wasn’t until Iraq and Afghanistan that the U.S. government really started to invest heavily in the private military industry, and now that the U.S. is winding down in Afghanistan, the question is - where will this multi-billion dollar industry go? They’re not going to sort of fold-up shop and go bankrupt as some policy makers in Washington hope; they’re going to look for future clients, and those clients could be anybody.
SS: We’ll take about it in detail, a little bit later on, but I want to talk about you - let’s take a look back. How did you become a private contractor? Was it for the money or for a thrill and hunger for war?
SMF: I started off as a U.S. army paratrooper, I was an officer and a paratrooper in 82nd AirborneDivision, and like many in the private military industry I got my start in the U.S. military, many serve other national armies or Marines, and then after that, I switched over, if you will, to the industry side. I worked for a company called DynCorp - it’s one of the largest private security companies in the world, and most of my work actually was in Africa. I was actually not in the Middle East. I did it out of curiosity - I mean, the money is a little better, but it’s not as good as some media reports have made it out to be over the years. The true interesting thing about the industry is that you get to be innovative, in ways that you cannot in the bureaucracies of large militaries. It also was curious to me how this industry operates. It’s a lot more pervasive around the world than most people think, they think it’s just Iraq, they think it’s just Afghanistan, it’s everywhere, this industry.
SS: But what was your most dangerous assignment?
SMF: My most dangerous assignment...again, I was in Africa. There was small country called Burundi, in Central Africa, it is next to Rwanda and many of your viewers will recall 1994, there was a huge Tutsi-Hutu genocide in Rwanda, but actually it wasn’t just Rwanda, it was just the entire region, including Burundi. In 2004 U.S. government intelligence believed that a violent extremist Hutu group hiding in the eastern Congo was going to try to assassinate the President of Burundi. They believed, the rebel group, as did the U.S. government that if the Burundian president was assassinated, it could re-trigger the genocide of 1994, in sort of reprisal killings, Hutus would take revenge on Tutsis and Tutsis will then take further revenge on Hutus, and it will spiral into a full-scale genocide. There have been precedents for this in the past. The U.S. government hired DynCorp international, the company I worked for to prevent this, and I was the person who led this program and we successfully did.
SS: Alright, so that mission in Burundi, besides the goal you were assigned - you had to keep your involvement, meaning U.S. involvement, a secret - how did you manage to do that?
SMF: One of the strange things about this industry is that offers what they call “plausible deniability”. That means, if a mission is too dangerous or too risky politically, it sometimes easier for the U.S. government or for clients more generally, to hire company to do it than, say, send in U.S. army people to do it. If the U.S. army soldiers get captured or killed in places like Africa or Burundi, that can cause a great political upheaval, a lot of press attention. But if contractors get killed, people seem to care less. So, by sending in a company to do this, if things get horribly wrong, the government in some ways is insulated from political blow-back.
SS: Obviously, you were a soldier at DynCorp, you had to follow orders no matter what. Did you ever think about right and wrong, did you ever have to weigh your orders against your moral compass? What would happen if you moral compass told you “No”?
SMF: Interestingly enough, you actually have more exercise for your moral compass in the private sector than you do in the public sector. So,if you’re a public sector soldier, if you are in the U.S. army or another country’s army, and you’re given orders - you have to do it. But if you work in a company, you can just say - no way, I am not leaving, sue me. And you can do that. You actually have more control over you assignments and you destiny in some ways as a soldier, working for PMC, than you do working for the U.S. military - which is very appealing to some soldiers who have done several tours, for example, in Iraq, back to back and their family life is a disaster and they don’t know what to do. So, you know, a lot of them actually leave the U.S. army to go to the private sector for some more control over their life.
SS:v Now that you bring up Iraq, there were more contractors in Iraq, employed by the U.S., than there were U.S. soldiers. Have the PMC become indispensable to waging a war?
SMF: That’s a great question, Sophie. The answer is - yes, they have. I mean, in WWII, the U.S. hired about 10% of its workforce overseas, 10% of people in combat zones were contractors. In Vietnam, there was like 20%, in Iraq - it was 50%. So 1 to 1 ratio of contractors to soldiers. In Afghanistan, there was 70%, and the question now is, if the U.S. fights wars… in a generation from now, there will be 80%, 90% - will the U.S. be fighting its wars mostly using contractor labor? The trends indicate “yes”. Either way, we’ve discovered that contractors have proven indispensable for stability operation like Iraq, Afghanistan. Contractors are also very good at raising security forces. So, for example, if the U.S. wanted to help professionalise Iraqi security forces to fight ISIS - that’s a job contractors would do, and that’s a job that… you know, you can put contractors on the ground and not have to report them as “boots on the ground”, which is publicly important to the U.S. of America, for politicians, they don’t want to report too many boots on the ground in Iraq, but if you have contractors, they don’t seem to count. Also, if contractors get killed, nobody seems to care much about that either. They care a lot of if U.S. marines come home in body bags, but nobody’s keeping count of contractor deaths. So, yes, I think, the U.S. has become increasingly dependent on that industry.
SS: Except of the political implications that you’ve just cited, the former CEO of Blackwater, Erik Prince, told me mercenaries are more effective than the U.S. army. Are they, in your opinion? And also, if they are, what’s wrong with using them?
SMF: Well, in some ways, there are more effective. They are certainly cheaper to use. If you have a well-trained a relatively good disciplined private military company, it can leverage innovation in the marketplace, it can lever to lot of private sector good, if you will, to get a job done more cheaply, and using this industry is cheaper than using the U.S. army, there’s no question about that, both in the short-term and also in long-term, because, in the long-term, if you’re done with U.S. army unit, it comes home, you’re still paying salaries, etc; you just end the contract with PMC, you don’t pay anything. But there are long-term risks for it too. Historically, unpaid or unsupervised PMC or mercenaries tended to become predatory. They become bandits, they create conflict, arguably, they elongate conflicts profit. I mean, this is profit motive meets warfare. So there are a lot of long-term risks.
SS: Can you give me an example of where mercenaries, actually, in order to create demand for themselves, can start a conflict or drag on a conflict - can you give an example of that?
SMF: So, less so in Iraq and Afghanistan, because the U.S. government is still there, the Consumer-in-Chief if you will, they pay all the bills; but we’ve seen examples off of the coast of Somalia. So, Somalia is a free market for force, there are mercenaries and privateers, and privateers are basically mercenaries on the seaways, that were hired to counter pirates in Somalia. And one company called “SomCan”which means “Somalia-Canada”, a somalia-canadian counter piracy company, worked for one of the factions in Somalia, and when it had a payment dispute, it became a pirate itself. They started taking down fishing vessels off the coast of Somalia. It is an example out-of-work mercenaries, in this case privateers, became pirates, became the enemy.
SS: So, I want to talk a bit about the reluctance of using PMC services, even though you say that in the long run it’s cheaper and more effective. For instance, Executive Outcomes, a mercenary company from Africa, they offered their help to the UN in stopping Rwandan genocide, and they were rebuffed. They were cheaper, they were effective, and willing to act - so what’s wrong with the scenario like that? Why does the UN refuse to work with mercenaries?
SMF: That’s a great question, and the topic you’re talking about is in 1994, again, at the Rwandan genocide; Mercenary company called “Executive Outcomes” came to the UN and offered to put a halt to the genocide, long enough so that a larger UN peacekeeping mission can get on the ground, which takes usually 6 months to generate, and the UN famously said “No”, it said the world is not ready for privatising peacekeeping. Of course, the world wasn’t ready to 800,000 people to be dead either, but one of the concerns is, with markets of force, will these companies create war for profit? Again, there’s a lot of historical precedent from middle ages to suggest “yes”. When you have an industry, invested in conflict, going to the most conflict-prone places on planet, like Africa, like the Middle East, like South Asia, you’ll have more war, and you’ll have less governance on force. States are losing the monopoly on force, and now its becoming commoditised, conflict is becoming commoditized; In such a world, we’ll have the super-rich that will become superpowers, big corporations will become superpowers, anybody who can afford the means to war and to wage them will become superpowers.
SS: Right, I get what you’re saying, but what I am asking is that, you know, locally, if the UN is helpless, why can it just hire a PMC and solve the problem?
SMF: I think UN should consider it, actually. I think the UN can be in a position that the U.S. was several years ago, where it can become sort-of “consumer-in-chief”. Certainly, its peacekeeping missions are thinning, and are in need of peacekeepers and I think they should consider a way to use this industry to augment peacekeeping missions, but they should do it under strict regulation, they should create a scheme for vetting who the private contractors are, for the type of training that they have to receive, for having accountability and transparency, to do all those regulatory things that the U.S. and others had not done in the last 10 years. The UN is in a good position to do that, and if they could do that, they could also incentivise best practices within this industry; I think the industry is like fire - it can be a force of good, but it can also be a force of great destruction.
SS: But, not only the UN, with the situation we’re seeing today in Iraq and Syria, wouldn’t it make sense to hire the PMC to combat Islamic State? Why doesn’t the international community invest in that?
SMF: Well, that’s another great question. I think the fear is of control. You can take PMC and they are able to do some combat on the ground in Iraq and Syria, whereas the international community, like the U.S. is just giving air-support. We don’t really have troops on the ground, could contractors make up troops on the ground, because you need land forces to control territory. You can’t control territory from air, and if you want to defeat ISIS you have to have people on the ground, so it is possible, but the problem is this: who are the PMC? We don’t really know, and what happens after that contract is done? Are they going to stay in Iraq? Will they set up shop for themselves? Again, looking back to history, a lot of mercenaries sort of took over land and then installed themselves as kings, in Italy. So, the bigger question is what happens after ISIS is defeated, what will the contractors do? Will they stay there, will go into business for themselves… who knows?
SS: So, basically you are saying nation-states are losing their monopoly on use of force. So, who pays these contractors, the ones that are employed? Is it always the government, or could a rich person hire them, for instance?
SMF: Right now, it could be anybody. Rich people can hire them, in fact, in 2008, an actressMia Farrowfrom Hollywood considered hiring Blackwater to stop the genocide in Darfur that was going on. Now, Blackwater andMia Farrowdecided not to go through with that, but they could have. The question is, will that happen again in the future, and I think - absolutely, there’s no reason to assume it won’t happen. Oil companies are starting to use industry, humanitarian organisations, working in dangerous places are hiring this industry… This industry, right now, is operating mostly in the defensive capacity, defending people, defending property, but a lot of the industry has the capability to do offensive combat, using drones, they can make kamikaze drones, they get private air forces, if you will - they think the future of warfare will be increasingly privatised, and there’s no reason to assume that state will own that.
SS: All the drones and military warfare that you’re talking about - where are they getting all these supplies, because I was thinking, it is usually the state who supplies the company with the military equipment.
SMF: No, it’s actually very easy. Small arms and light weapons, there’s an international market, both black and non-black market for this. If you go to conflict zones, where these companies are going to be drawn to, there’s obviously a large black market of small arms sloshing around. When I was in Africa, you could buy an AK-47 in most bazaars, for $20-30. Drones are commercially available, you can order them on Amazon, and you can outfit them yourself. We’re not talking about these huge U.S. air force drones, we’re talking about smaller drones, and you could, you know, make them into a kamikaze drones. It wouldn’t take a genius to arm them with something and make them into flying bombs.
SS: Telll me something - could we see a conflict between private corporations, just going back to what you were saying earlier, like, for instance, if they hired PMC’s not for protection but to a battle for a piece of land, for instance. Microsoft vs Apple ground war? Is that possible?
SMF: Well, I don’t know if Microsoft and Apple will engage in that. I think, certainly, in the extractive industry - it’s a possibility, and it’s not just between companies. Extractive industry is, like, oil, gas, timber - they don’t have a choice as to where their asset is. They have to go, you know, if you’re mining you have to go where the gold, the ore is; and there may be other companies out there, that could be governments and there could be rebel groups to contend there as well. So, you can imagine conflict between several actors, companies, weak governments, rebel groups, separatist groups, etc, and they could all hire PMC, because once you hire one, there’s always a possibility of escalation, where the other sides then must get into a sort of mercenary arms race. So, we might be seeing a lot of PMC coming out of Afghanistan in a year, looking for marketplace, and that might be something that will attract them, very much.
SS: From talking to you, I got the sense that accountability is the most pressing issue surrounding the PMC industry. So, while those in the army operate by army rules, the PMC’s don’t have to follow those rules, right?
SMF: That’s right.
SS: How do you make sure they’re accountable for their actions? Is there any way to make them accountable for their actions and be sure that they will be accountable for their actions?
SMF: That’s a great question, Sophie, and after 10 years or more of using this industry, the U.S. has not created any sort of regulatory framework with any sort of enforcement, nor has international community, and the reason is simple: if you regulate this industry too much, it will simply move offshore, beyond the realm of regulations, just like companies move offshore for tax havens. Really, strong regulation is not the answer, even if you have a regulatory framework, it’s really hard to enforce it. I mean, who’s going to enforce it? Is the UN going to go off and then arrest a thousand private military contractors in the middle of Congo? It will be very difficult to do. I think the only way you can do it is by shaping the market. PMC respond to logic of the marketplace, so if you make good behaviour profitable and bad behaviour unprofitable, that’s, though not satisfying, may be the best we can do.
SS: So tell me something, is there a danger of one company becoming and uber-player on the market, for instance there’s this british G4S security firm, and it’s second biggest private employer in the world, second only to Walmart. What could happen if the private war market becomes monopolised?
SMF: That’s a good question too. We’re talking about a market for force, so market analysis matters. Now, in some ways, you’ll have what they call “balancing” going on, so big companies, other companies who are smaller, will sort of compete against that big company to keep it down, just a way great powers compete each other to keep one down. So, there’s that, but if a company becomes so powerful or so big that it becomes dominant - that would be a huge political player, a new type of superpower that we haven’t seen in a very long time, sort of like the British East India company. That would be problematic for a global security.
SS: Here’s another side to it: PMCs are corporations, and if their reputation is tarnished by working for bad guys or acting out while on a mission - that will hurt business, won’t it? So, won’t the market itself provide best practices?
SMF: It will. So, again, this industry responds to market forces, the logic of the marketplace, so if we could make good, best practices profitable, and bad practices not profitable, then we could shape the industry. I think the UN should it decide to use private peacekeepers, has the power to do it in consistent manner. Certainly, Blackwater, after it killed 17 Iraqis in 2007 in Baghdad - it was sort of bounced out of marketplace. So, absolutely, some market logic can be used as a tool of accountability to some extent within this industry.
SS: Thank you very much for this interesting insight, Sean. We were talking to professor Sean McFate, former private military contractor, now author, talking about modern mercenaries and why the business of private warfare is growing larger. That’s it for this edition of Sophie &Co, I will see you next time.
For those of you who are confused about what is happening vis a vis Ukraine in European negotiations with Russia and the US talking up weapons-supply with Kiev , Peter Lavelle's Crosstalk, "Saving Ukraine" on RT today came up with some useful analysis from guests Mary Dejevsky (Independent and Guardian, columnist, UK), Alexander Mercouris, (writer and analyst on legal affairs, London), and James Jatras, (former advisor to the US Senate Republican leadership). The issue was, "Will peace be given one last chance? The French president and German chancellor head to Moscow for talks to end Ukraine’s civil war. At the same time the US Secretary of State arrives in Kiev to arrange training and arms transfers. Which approach will prevail?"
Emerging from this discussion was that the US's recent hawkish talk of supplying weapons to Kiev (the West Ukraine government that is bombing its people in East Ukraine) is going too far for Europe. Europe does not want a war on its territory. The US is showing incredible insensitivity to this rational unwillingness of Europeans to expand the Ukraine civil war. The US seems to expect European governments to do anything it wants. The Europeans are afraid of the US but they are more afraid of war in Europe. Angela Merkel (German Chancellor) and Francois Hollande (French President) have taken a crucial step of going to Russia to meet with President Putin independently of the United States. Whilst the European Union is under the thrall of US influenced financial institutions it is difficult for the members of the EU to act independently of the US. Only the threat of war could make them risk US disapproval. Someone had to stand up to the United States, however. Another reason that these two European leaders may have decided to act independently is that the people in their countries disapprove of the US role in drumming up war in the Ukraine. Furthermore, Greece's recent left-wing party, Syriza's win of government might precipitate a domino effect in the European Union with other left-wing parties achieving government and defaulting on their debts, making new alliances and abandoning the Euro.
Some facets of the discussion in the video above were:
The Kiev Donesk or Ukraine vs East Ukraine conflict is a civil war, but it is being presented by US media as if it were a conflict between Russia and the United States. John Kerry and Putin have already agreed on ways to resolve it but the Kiev Government and Donetsk won't carry these out. This is a really big war, with hundreds of thousands now dead because of it and one million refugees currently living in Russia. Russia's position was to stand back and encourage Ukraine to resolve the issue through federalisation, but the situation is now much deteriorated and it is unlikely that East Ukraine could accept that. It is not reasonable to propose a temporary buffer zone round East Ukraine when this could be broken at any time by renewed warfare - which happened when Kiev renewed hostilities after a ceasefire was negotiated in early December last year. If Kiev is incapable of regaining East Ukraine, would it become defacto Russian territory by default? If that happened there would be a danger of the US media misrepresenting this as a 'coup' by Russia.
Video inside: For those of you who can't remember how all this terrorism got started. Although we also have to keep in mind the longer history of colonialism and petroleum-hunting in the Middle East, which goes back to the 19th century and involves the descendants of the same national and corporate players.
Watch an old reporter turned politician do a few rounds in the ring with skilled Russian interviewer, Oksana Boyko of RT. Oksana gives him his head initially and he struts predictably, but things get interesting later, particularly on the issue of Australia's role and responsibility for the mess in the Middle East and Syria. (Bob Carr was a recent foreign affairs minister for Australia.) For me, it was fascinating listening to Carr's 'justifications'. Could a grown-up really believe this stuff? Who knows when Western leaders may really be called to account for their removal of order and warmongering in the Middle East. I wonder if this troubles them, if they lie awake at night going over their stories.
Video inside. 23 minute Russian documentary investigating the downing of MH17, using footage from reporters on the scene shortly after, and engineering analysis, plus follow-up on reports made early in the piece, but since buried in the western news. The official investigative teams have still not come up with any definitive answers, and certainly no evidence that Russians or even East Ukrainian separatists did it, let alone had any motive, despite prejudicial and inflammatory stances by our own primeminister, Mr Abbott. At the time of the tragedy, civil conflict in the area prevented international experts from conducting a full and thorough investigation. It seems that the western-backed Kiev government (under Poroshenko) went all-out to bomb the area continuously, leaving one to surmise that they wanted to destroy evidence and keep observers away. The wreckage should have been collected and scrupulously re-assembled to identify all the damage, but this standard investigative procedure was never carried out. Until that’s done, evidence can only be gleaned from pictures of the debris, the flight recorders or black boxes and eye-witnesses’ testimonies. This may be enough to help build a picture of what really happened to the aircraft, whether a rocket fired from the ground or gunfire from a military jet.
In an interview, conducted with Press TV on October 15, 2014 Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya explains in the reasons behind the ISIL (also known as ISIS) attack on the Syrian town of Kobani (Ain al-Arab) in the Syrian Kurdish autonomous region. Mahdi shows that the supposed campaign of bombardment against ISIS is illusory, with few bombs being dropped on ISIS fighters and far more being dropped on Syrian infrastructure. Turkey, whilst pretending to oppose ISIS is supporting ISIS against the Syrian Kurds to the point of provoking mass unrest against the Turkish government in which 40 Turkish Kurds have died.
Female Kurdish fighter featured in the film
Towards the end of the video, although the fighting around Kobani looks grim in many ways, Mahdi reminds us that Syria has many friends in the world. As well as people of good will in the West, there are the governments of Iran, Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, many Latin American countries and the resistance movement, Hezbollah in neighbouring Lebanon.
#fnKobani1" id="fnKobani1">1.#txtKobani1">↑ Previously published on Global Research as Nazemroaya: Crushing Kobani's Kurds is a Prerequisite to an Invasion of Syria. This was apparently only published on the front page of Global Research. Unlike other stories published on Global Research, this story does not seem to appear on a separate page. The YouTube page is here. - Ed.
RT#fnRT1" id="txtRT1"> 1 is an Internet news service funded by the Russian government. Unlike the commercial and government newsmedia in the west, which has repeatedly deceived the public about world events through narrow reporting. This has been particularly so for past and present wars in Libya, Syria, Ukraine and Iraq. RT, to the contrary, has reported a wide variety of views with abundant documentation about those conflicts. It has interviewed all sides and many different publicly verifiable sources, which the western newsmedia has ignored.
RT gives more detailed attention to geopolitical factors, which are often overlooked by the western media, which tends to reduce political issues to leaders' personalities. Whilst RT is not without flaws and shortcomings, to date it has performed an indispensible service to humanity in its fight against war and ecological devastation.
As we find articles on RT, which we think are of interest to visitors of candobetter.net, we will endeavour publish them on this page (http://candobetter.net/about/RT or http://candobetter.net/node/4107/) or else post links with explantory notes - Ed
RT gives more detailed attention to geopolitical factors, which are often overlooked by the western media, which tends to reduce political issues to leaders' personalities. Whilst RT is not without flaws and shortcomings, to date it has performed an indispensible service to humanity in its fight against war and ecological devastation.
RT ads were rejected for outdoor displays in London because of their "political overtones." Though posters had to be redacted, the original images could still be seen on them, with the help of a special mobile app.
The censored posters, part of RT's international "Second Opinion" ad campaign, were supposed to feature ex-US President George W. Bush and the former UK prime minister Tony Blair, but will instead show an empty space with a word "redacted" over it.
London outdoor advertising companies have refused to allow the original images to appear on the city's telephone booths and underground stations, citing the Communications Act 2003, which prohibits political advertising.
"RT's slogan is "Question More' and our advertising campaign has been calling exactly for that – to ask yourself a question of how would events develop, if the world media reported on different points of view," said RT's editor-in-chief, Margarita Simonyan, reacting to the refusal to place the company's advertising posters in London. "It's sad that some people do not want these issues to be raised at all."
The theme of the "Second Opinion" campaign is the Iraq war, and the politicians on the posters are the ones who launched the 2003 invasion of the country. The ads recall the fact that no weapons of mass destruction were found in Iraq, while the war launched under the pretext that Iraq possessed them led to more than 140,000 civilian deaths.
The RT ad campaign kicked off in August 2014 in New York and Washington, attracting the attention of many media outlets.
It was described as "provocative" by The Huffington Post, which added that it was "a serious dig at the way the US media reported on the Iraq war."
"[With these ads RT] tries to persuade New Yorkers to view it as an alternative to American channels," The New York Times wrote.
In the US, the ads appeared in the form of wild postings.
In London, the redacted posters can be viewed in full with the help of RTplus, an augmented reality mobile app. Having downloaded the application, people in the city will be able to scan the redacted image and see the pre-censored original ad.
Footnote[s]
#fnUkr1" id="fnRT1">1.#txtRT1">↑ 'RT' was formerly considered an acronym for 'Russia Today', but for reasons, which are not clear to me, RT staff no longer the case for. Possibly It is because RT reports on much more than what is going on in Russia.
"In Paris this week [week of September 20], the great and the gruesome came together to discuss the existential threat of ISIS, but the two countries actually doing something meaningful about that threat - Syria and Iran - were of course not invited. Confused? You won't be after you have heard our first guest, Hasib Risby, a commentator on the region and part of digital resistance." A very clear analysis of what is happening with ISIS, Syria, Iran, and the US in the Middle East, by George Galloway and Gayatri Pertiwi with Haseeb Rizvi. The original program (with no transcript) is at http://rt.com/shows/sputnik/189028-isis-summit-paris-uk/
GALLOWAY: A state of total confusion reigns in the western capitals about what to do about the catastrophe unfolding in Syria and in Iraq. The UK foreign secretary, Philip Hammond, rules out Britain going back to war in Iraq and is instantly repudiated by David Cameron. Still, at time of recording (September 20, 2014), who insists that 'all options remain open'.
GAYATRI: In the US, things are no more clear. There, the commander in chief of the US military, President Obama, is impudently contradicted by the top military brass. The president says that there will be absolutely no American boots on the ground. And yet, the generals, including the Chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, tells the Senate Armed Services Committee that there will be, in fact, boots on the ground, if necessary.
GALLOWAY: Cameron claims he can bomb ISIS in Syria from over Syrian airspace, without the permission of the Syrian government. The said Syrian government is armed and dangerous and entirely within its legal rights to shoot down any and all military aircraft over their territory, and has the military hardware to do so.
GAYATRI: Neither the US nor the UK governments who, some argue, caused the disaster in the first place, have any intention of helping the actual government of Iraq - a government only in power because of them. And they won't even deliver to Bagdad the weapons and planes they have already paid for, even though ISIS is at the gates.
GALLOWAY: In Paris this week [week of September 20], the great and the gruesome came together to discuss the existential threat of ISIS, but the two countries actually doing something meaningful about that threat - Syria and Iran - were of course not invited. Confused? You won't be after you have heard our first guest, Hasib Risby, a commentator on the region and part of digital resistance.
Haseeb, welcome to the show. Tell the viewers, first of all, how things are on the ground now, in Iraq. What territory does ISIS hold? Who's fighting them? Are there any indications of a change in the military situation on the ground?
HASEEB: So the situation varies from parts to parts, but primarily, we're talking about north east Syria and north west Iraq being under heavy ISIS influence. Not necessarily blanket control, but heavy segments of those areas. And, within those areas that they have control [over] there's various battles taking place along the borders of those regions that they control. So, for example, they're fighting with Kurds, they're fighting against other Syrian rebel groups, such as Al-Nusra and the Islamic Front, as well as, I think, the Free Syrian army as well. And, towards Iraq, they're fighting, obviously, the Iraqi armed forces as well as Shia militias that are defending their territory against further ISIS expansion. So, at the moment, ISIS are involved in a lot of battles. They're fighting quite a few people at the same time, to be honest. And the recent kind of resurgence of the Iraqi armed forces as well as from the US airstrikes and stuff has prevented futher expansion, but they are showing no sign of stopping. And that's kind of worrying. They seem to be still going about their day to day exectuions in a very kind of sophisticated, well-planned manner.
GALLOWAY: And they're still controlling major Iraqi cities.
HASEEB: Absolutely. And, you know, in Syria, for example, in the city of Ah-Raqqah [1], they more or less run the show there completely.
GALLOWAY: Which is thought to be the place where they're carrying out these hidious executions of foreigners.
HASEEB: Yeah, yeah. That part and various border towns between Iraq and Syria, where there is, you know, very loose control of anything, is where they'are operating, and they have pretty good control over those areas.
GALLOWAY: Now you mentoned the US airstrikes. I've seen US air strikes. I've seen them in Vietnam, I've seen them in Cambodia, I've seen them in the Iraq war, I've seen them in Afghanistan. These are not meaningful US airstrikes. Which leads me to wonder why? If the United States was really as concerned about ISIS as they say they are and that we should be, they would be bombing them a lot more seriously than they are. These are very desultory, very occasional, and very small airstrikes. Why?
HASEEB: Absolutely. And, you know, adding on to what you're saying, they should have reacted much sooner, one would imagine. It's taken this long for them to react to it, whilst previous prime minister Nuri Al-Maliki,[3] was constantly pleading to America for support against the growing threat of militancy in his country, but it fell on deaf ears, basically. What you see is as soon as for example, ISIS started threatening the Kurdish region, is when America suddenly started taking things more seriously -
GALLOWAY: Only there, in the Kurdish region, where their oil interests are -
HASEEB: Where their oil interests are -
GALLOWAY: And where they want to break Iraq up!
HASEEB: Well, there you go. It's a strategic place for them, Kurdistan, because, you know, they've got ties with Israel, and you've heard storied about Kurdistan selling oil to Israel, just a matter of weeks after ISIS took over and stuff like that, completely illegally. But you see that America and the west in general, only reacted then. Not when 2000 or so Shia army cadets were massacred
GALLOWAY: Why can't the regional players sort this matter out themselves?
HASEEB: What you have at the moment is these very confused blurred lines that exist where, whilst Saudi Arabia and all these countries, essentially, went to Paris for a deal, were the ones that essentially that kind of allowed ISIS to exist in the first place, through turning a blind eye to money and weapons being trafficked to them. And now they realise that it's going to come back to bite them. So now they're trying to react, but it's a bit too late, because the people inside these countries, already, inside Saudi Arabia, inside Qatar, they've been fed the sectarian rhetoric already. So they buy the ISIS line very easily, You see already, in places like Jourdan and Saudi Arabia, many ISIS flags have been raised, and there are a lot of people
GAYATRI: So the opposite of feeling threatened?
HASEEB: Exactly, so, to be honest with you, Saudi Arabia, any of these Gulf states, to try and intervene militarily against ISIS will just be counter-productive as well, just as much as it would be for the US to do so. Which then makes it another sticky situation. If Iran and Syria were the only ones to kind of attack ISIS, then it becomes, 'Oh, the Shias are attacking Sunnis!'
GALLOWAY: Hasib, there's a state of confusion. There's no Islamic State, but there's a state of confusion reigning over all this. I mean, even in ontological terms. What exactly are ISIS? Who are they? What do they want?
HASEEB: ISIS... if you try and simplify what they are, essentially is a collection of ruthless, angry and violent individuals that have come together under a false notion of, you know, a 'califphate',[4] under some sort of illusion that they're trying to do a good thing for the world. And their ethos essentially is something that has been fed by something that has been prevalent in Saudi Arabia for so long, under the teachings of Wahhabism and Salafism. And I understand, obviously that not all Wahhabis and not all Salafis are as extreme as ISIS,
GALLOWAY: - Of course not -
HASEEB: However, the fundamentals behind these sects have really spurred on the kind of ideological principles for why ISIS go about doing the things that they do. And further more, it's like, it seem that they've kind of tried to go one above Al Qaeda, with their ruthlessness. They've decided, you know, 'We're going to stand out!' - you know - 'This is going to be our brand!' - almost. And the way they celebrate and glorify their violence, and dehumanise those that they're killing, it's actually pretty chilling. And I don't we've seen a group like it.
GALLOWAY: Or the end of it.
GAYATRI: I mean, from the Free Syrian Army we've already witnessed the most horrible things -
HASEEB: And they're the moderate ones, by the way!
GAYATRI: - And now -
GALLOWAY: They were the moderates - the moderate heart-eaters, you mean! We haven't actually seen ISIS eating hearts yet. That's probably something still to come. They behave like a kidn of death cult.
HASEEB: Yeah.
GALLOWAY: There seems nothing Islamic about them.
HASEEB. No.
GALLOWAY: I hate it when people call them the Islamic State because they're neither Islamic nor are they a state. How do they find any theological justification for the mass excecution of helpless, handcuffed prisoners in the wartime? How do they justify theologically slicing off the heads of Aid workers and journalists that fall into their hands, and videoing it for the entertainment, presumably, of their own site?
HASEEB: Their justification, presumably, is that anyone that disagrees with their very specific set of thoughts is not worthy of life, essentially. Especially when you're on their land.
GALLOWAY: But it's not their land, is it?
HASEEB: Well -
GALLOWAY: The person slicing the heads off of these American and British journalists is thought to be English.
HASEEB: Yeah.
GAYATRI: Well, they're from London. That's the part I don't compute. Young men from London! You know, growing up in this modern global city and then going back -
HASEEB: For them, their land is essentially this Islamic caliphate land. You've seen the view of - I'm sure you've seen the picture of where they want to go eventually. So they've carved this section out for themselves and whatever they say goes in this area. I've seen videos of scholars - sorry - their clerics, rather, where they tell you that when you're cutting someone's head off, you should enjoy it. It shouldn't be like when you kill an animal - you should do that very mercifully - but when you kill a human being, because it's a enemy of God, you should enjoy it. Take your time. So it's very, very disturbing. There's this very kind of strong lust towards violence within this group that is - I don't think we've seen it before. I don't think we've seen, you know, a group like this before.
GALLOWAY: No.
Gayatri: They're hell on earth, isn't it.
HASEEB: Yeah. I mean, to be fair, it was in one of the newspapers, the Guardian, I think, that introduced ISIS in the British media as, 'Here's a group that is worse than Al Quaida.' And that stood out to me as well. I'm thinking, as a good way to put it -
GALLOWAY: They make Al Quaida look like boy scouts. Now, how do we follow Digital Resistance and what do you do?
HASEEB: So, what we do; we collate news from various media outlets to try and put together a story line that actually makes sense that's actually true as to what's happening. As well as that we provide analysis and opinions on various newstories. You can follow us on twitter @dgtlresistance or facebook.
In March 2013, during the Syrian civil war, Islamist jihadist militants from Al-Nusra Front and other groups overran the government loyalists in the city and declared it under their control after seizing the central square and pulling down the statue of the former president of Syria Hafez al-Assad.
The Al Qaeda-affiliated Al-Nusra Front set up a sharia court at the sports centre[ and in early June 2013 the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) said they were open to receive complaints at their Raqqa headquarters.
Since May 2013 the ISIS has been increasing its control over the city, at the expense of the Free Syrian Army and the Al-Nusra Front. The ISIS has executed Alawites and suspected supporters of Bashar al-Assad in the city and attacked the city's Shia mosques and Christian churches such as the Armenian Catholic Church of the Martyrs, which has since been converted into an ISIS headquarters. The Christian population of Ar-Raqqah, which was estimated to be as many as 10% of the total population before the civil war began, has largely fled the city.
In January 2014 it was reported that ISIS militants in the city gained control of the western part of a Syrian army base, while the group closed all educational institutions in the city, where it has withstood rebel assaults.
On 25 July, the Islamic State captured the Syrian Army base in Raqqah which garrisoned the 17th Division, and beheaded many soldiers.
[3] Nouri Kamil Mohammed Hasan al-Maliki, previous primeminister of Syria, current Vice President.
[4] A Caliphate is an islamic state, led by a political and religious leader, known as a caliph, seen as a successor to the Islamic prophet, Muhammad.
This article, of 19 June 2014 has been republished from RT.
The text of a 19-page, international trade agreement being drafted in secret was published by WikiLeaks on Thursday as the transparency group's editor commemorated his two-year anniversary confined to the Ecuadorian Embassy in London.
Fifty countries around the globe have already signed on to the Trade in Service Agreement, or TISA, including the United States, Australia and the European Union. Despite vast international ties, however, details about the deal have been negotiated behind closed-doors and largely ignored by the press.
Fifty countries around the globe have already signed on to the Trade in Service Agreement, or TISA, including ... Australia ... Details about the deal have been negotiated behind closed-doors ...
In a statement published by the group alongside the leaked draft this week, WikiLeaks said "proponents of TISA aim to further deregulate global financial services markets," and have participated in "a significant anti-transparency manoeuvre" by working secretly on a deal that covers more than 68 percent of world trade in services, according to the Swiss National Center for Competence in Research.
BREAKING:#WikiLeaks publishes secret Trade in Services Agreement (TISA) - Financial Services, covering 50 countries https://t.co/BT5QkAMTPo
Touting the deal earlier this year, the United States Chamber of Commerce said a successful TISA agreement would benefit America's services industry and its 96 million, or 84 percent, of the nation's private sector workers. "As its chief goals, the TISA should expand access to foreign markets for US service industries and ensure they receive national and most-favored nation treatment," the chamber said of the deal in February. "It should also lift foreign governments' sectoral limits on investment in services," "eliminate regulatory inconsistencies that at times loom as trade barriers" and "prohibit restrictions on legitimate cross?border information flows and bar local infrastructure mandates relating to data storage."
[This] trade deal has been hardly discussed in public ...
WikiLeaks warns that this largely important trade deal has been hardly discussed in public, however, notwithstanding evidence showing that the policy makers involved want to establish rules that would pertain to services used by billions worldwide.
"The draft Financial Services Annex sets rules which would assist the expansion of financial multi-nationals – mainly headquartered in New York, London, Paris and Frankfurt – into other nations by preventing regulatory barriers," WikiLeaks said in a statement. "The leaked draft also shows that the US is particularly keen on boosting cross-border data flow, which would allow uninhibited exchange of personal and financial data."
... the current draft also includes language inferring that, upon the finishing of negotiations, the document will be kept classified for five full years.
Additionally, the current draft also includes language inferring that, upon the finishing of negotiations, the document will be kept classified for five full years.
[Journalists reported] that ... the proposed changes ... "could undermineAustralia's capacity to independently respond to and weather any future global financial crisis.
In Australia, journalists at The Age#fnWiki1" id="txtWiki1">1 reported that experts say the proposed changes included within the WikiLeaks document "could undermine Australia's capacity to independently respond to and weather any future global financial crisis."
Dr. Patricia Ranald, a research associate at the University of Sydney and convener of the Australian Fair Trade and Investment Network, told the paper that the documents suggest the US wants to "tie the hands" of other governments, including allied ones, by way of sheer deregulation.
"Amendments from the US are seeking to end ... public pension funds, which are referred to as 'monopolies'
"Amendments from the US are seeking to end publicly provided services like public pension funds, which are referred to as 'monopolies' and to limit public regulation of all financial services," she said. "They want to freeze financial regulation at existing levels, which would mean that governments could not respond to new developments like another global financial crisis."
Earlier this week, US Trade Representative Michael Froman said the TISA deal was already well on its way to being put together.
Along with representatives from Canada, Israel, Mexico, New Zealand, Turkey and dozens others, American policy makers will meet in Geneva, Switzerland later this month starting June 23 to begin the next round of negotiations.
"The basic framework of the agreement is in place, initial market access offers have been exchanged, and sector-specific work in areas like telecommunications andfinancialservices is in full swing," Froman said, according to Reuters.
The document published this week by WikiLeaks is dated April 14 – two months before Froman last weighed in on the progress of the negotiations and six months after his office hailed previous re-write to the proposal. Along with representatives from Canada, Israel, Mexico, New Zealand, Turkey and dozens others, American policy makers will meet in Geneva, Switzerland later this month starting June 23 to begin the next round of negotiations.
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, meanwhile, remains confined to Ecuador's embassy in London where two years ago this Thursday he arrived seeking asylum. Assange, 42, is wanted for questioning in Sweden but fears his arrival there would prompt a swift extradition to the US due to his role in exposing American state secrets.
Footnote[s]
#fnWiki1" id="fnWiki1">1. #txtWiki1">↑ This helpful report by Peter Martin is an exception to the Age's typical misreporting of all the critical local, national and international issues. The Age can usually be depended upon to to misreport to serve interests of the local elites and the New World Order against the interests of the local people. An example is the Age's repeated calls for the overthrow of President Bashar al-Assad since the proxy war aginst Syria started in March 2011. However, after Syrians overwhelmingly voted for the allegedly corrupt and brutal tyrant Bashar al-Assad in the Presidential elections of 3 June 2014, the Age and other mainstream media presstitutes have toned their deceitful narrative. For now, they are confining their deceit to other conflicts such as Ukraine and the new insurgency in Iraq.
Video and transcript inside. Sophie Shevardnadze interviews war correspondent, John Pilger, about media coverage of war in the Ukraine and Syria. He describes the media bias of the west and says how it is impossible to get an unbiased view of what is happening unless you build your own from the internet. Because this man commands so much respect from a complacent and obedient old 'Left' in Australia, there may be some hope that Australians who see this interview will start to question what they are being told by their governments, oppositions, and mainstream media about Syria and Ukraine. Pilger confirms the impression that the United States is baiting Russia aggressively, trying to draw it into war, in order to take over that part of the world. So far Russia has refused to be drawn, despite extreme provocation from an apparently psychopathic Western foreign relations policy actors.
The Ukraine government has stepped up its assault in the eastern part of the country. Tensions are running high between the NATO bloc and Russia, as both sides carry out military exercises. Journalists are being arrested and deported from the battlefields in Ukraine. The media war goes full speed. What will the conflict bring in the future? Will the civil war in Ukraine spill over the borders? Today we ask these questions to a veteran journalist and war correspondent. John Pilger is on Sophie&Co.
Sophie Shevardnadze:John Pilger, veteran journalist, war correspondent, author, director – welcome, its really great to have you on our show today. Now, we’re just going to go ahead and start with Ukraine. Not a week goes by without journalists detained and assaulted in Ukraine – so why aren’t we hearing any condemnation of these incidents from the West?
John Pilger: I think in your part of the world you must be used to a pretty one-sided view coming from here. Over here in the West we don’t believe we’re biased at all – in fact, we believe we’re the essence of objectivity and impartiality, but of course when it comes to great power politics, that simply is not true. Ukraine has been presented here generally as an act of Russian manipulation and aggression. There has been some better reporting than that, but that generally is the view.
SS: Do you think we’re getting reliable information from the conflict zone in Ukraine? I mean, apart from Western media, the world media is involved in covering this conflict. You worked as a war reporter in Africa – is there such thing as one truth?
JP: No, it’s impossible to get an informed cover of pretty well anywhere [in] the world, unless you navigate your way through, these days, through the internet. If you don’t navigate, and you sit in front of your television set, then you’re likely to be given propaganda. It’s always been that way – it’s probably now more intense, but we do have alternatives now. We do have the internet, but as I say, it requires that research. Otherwise, we sit in front of the TV, or we pick up a newspaper, and we’re not so much informed as when we’re monitoring it or deconstructing it – that’s what I do as a journalist. We live in an age of intense propaganda.
SS: You have also said that the US is threatening to take the world to war over Ukraine – but there is already a civil war going on in Ukraine. Do you think it could get any more serious?
JP: Yeah. Well, we’ve just seen recently these nuclear strategic bombers arriving here at an Air Force base from the US. I mean, clearly, there’s a lot of news about that, and that’s clearly a statement – you know, it used to be called “saber rattling.” We used to have it year after year, during the Cold War, and yes, the civil war has been triggered in Ukraine, and that civil war could spill over into Russia. Those are the real problems, but behind this is an old American design – and that is the control of resources and trade and strategic areas right across the European and Asian landmass. That is not a secret, that has been going on pretty well since the US discovered itself as a great world power, right around the time of the Korean War.
SS: Now President Obama has approved $23 million worth of military aid to Ukraine since March. He has recently announced that the US is sending advisors and gear to the country, while the newly elected Ukrainian president wants more military aid from the US – what more can he expect?
JP: Well, what you can...I mean, it’s all an aggressive provocation. It seems almost incredulous that they should be doing this, to be on Russia’s border and provoking in the way they’re doing. It is almost as if NATO, Obama and the rest are trying to set a trap for Vladimir Putin. It’s an incredibly difficult time for Russia. As we all know we’re about to celebrate, we are about to commemorate the centenary of the First World War that began, yes, partly by design, but it also was triggered by a number of incidents. And any war can happen that way, that’s my experience as a war correspondent, although there may be a policy, a design, an aim, a strategy, but there can be incidents that can start the war without people wanting it to start. Now, when you have military exercises being conducted in Ukraine, which is essentially and always has been a buffer state, next to the Russian Federation, that is very, very dangerous.
SS: You know, since March, there also have been reports that US mercenaries are involved in operations in eastern Ukraine. Are you inclined to think that’s true?
JP: Well, I have no evidence of that, but I would think it’s almost certainly true. Ukraine has become a kind of awful theme park for those agencies which we know so well – CIA, FBI...The director of the CIA has dropped in, along with Vice President Biden…And the mercenaries – the successors of the infamous Blackwater organization – are said to be there. As I said, I don’t know, I don’t have evidence if they are, but this is an extraordinarily important operation and I repeat – operation – for the US. They finally gained access to the buffer state, to Ukraine. That almost is the last hurdle, if you like, before Russia.
SS: So you’re saying that Washington had foreseen a military standoff when it was supporting the opposition on Maidan? It was something that was planned, in your opinion?
JP: Well, yeah. Of course it was planned. We had the tapes of Victoria Nuland, boasting of the US spending several billion dollars to get rid of the regime that it didn’t like in Kiev, and install another regime. This is a US-installed regime.
SS: You’ve also written that Washington actually had plans to seize Russia’s naval base in Crimea, and the plans have failed – why do you think so? Do you have evidence of that?
JP: What is there in Ukraine for the US? Above all, there is strategic position, there is a toehold, more than a toehold, in a part of the world where it has only recently, relatively recently, been able to gain access. And the most important prize in that was undoubtedly Crimea. This was the home of the Russian Fleet. This was Russia’s access. This is where we now see US ships exercising within sight of the Russian base. I think, certainly, getting hold of that would have been...If the Kiev regime would have gotten hold of that, that would have meant the US would have got hold of that – there is no question about that. It was all part of, as I’ve said, a provocation. It’s a very intriguing mix – all the reasons why the US has behaved the way it has in Ukraine. Partly it is about strategic influence, partly it is about business, partly it is about provocation. They’re all different ingredients. This administration in Washington has been doing some very strange things. Also, it may have been, and I’m only guessing here, an attempt by the Obama administration to reassert itself, having really been trumped by Russia over Syria.
SS:You’ve also said that Obama is currently seeking a budget for nuclear weapons greater than during the Cold War – but where are you getting this information from, and what do you need it for?
JP: You just look it up! It’s all there, there’s no secret, the rising of the manufacture of warheads and of nuclear strategic materials has been steadily increasing over recent years. In many ways, that’s whether or not it is academic, because the US has many, many nuclear warheads, just as Russia still has nuclear warheads. That means when a so-called superpower and regional power, like Russia, finds themselves looking down each other’s gun barrels, and that’s a situation that we’ve got at the moment.
SS:So you think Obama is reinforcing its nuclear budget to confront Russia, is that it?
JP: There always is a chance. You know the nuclear clock has been at five minutes to midnight for many years now. There has always been a chance of nuclear war, there always will be while there is this kind of dangerous situation. I’m of course not going to predict there will or won’t be one, but the dangers are obvious. You only have to look or read what general Butler, the former head of the US Strategic Air Command, said – and I’ll paraphrase him. He said “the dangers are there every day.” But when you have a flashpoint with two nuclear powers engaged, even indirectly engaged – they are not directly engaged at the moment, but they are indirectly engaged – that’s extremely dangerous.
SS: But remember when there was a lot of talk about whether America should strike Syria with local strikes? The prospect of action in Syria got a very cold response from both Congress and the public – so what makes you think that Americans are as gung-ho over Ukraine as the military is?
JP: Well, I didn’t quite hear the beginning of the question, but I’ve heard the last bit. It’s very simple – American foreign policy is run pretty well in the straight line, since about 1950 – and you only have to consult the documentary record to answer that question. There is always a danger, but something else has happened recently. Certainly during the Bush years the military – the Pentagon in the US now is in the ascendancy – it has much greater power than it used to have. It has influence in the State Department, it has influence right throughout all the institutions of government in Washington. There is a military sense all the time about American foreign policy at a higher level than it used to be.
SS:The first part of my question which you didn’t hear was precisely about the American foreign policy that failed in terms of striking Syria. Because remember when there was talk about whether America would bomb Syria or not, it didn’t get any support from Congress or the general public...
JP: In many ways this is an administration that contradicts itself, which makes it even more dangerous. Syria seemed to be almost the design of the intelligence agencies of the US, the support for a lot of the radical groups came from the intelligence and what is called a “deep state” in the US. Whether or not the White House agreed with that, I have no idea. I mean that is one of the great contradictions – in Washington there is always a great deal of competition, and as a result, the White House was made to look rather foolish over Syria. It staked a lot on the allegation that the Assad regime had used chemical weapons. Well, according to Seymour Hersh, they didn’t use chemical weapons, and there is not a great deal of evidence to suggest that they did use chemical weapons. There is evidence to suggest that those whom the Americans were supporting used chemical weapons. So, into this contradictory and confusing and rather tumultuous situation, the almost “black and white” of the US foreign policy doesn’t work. Doesn’t work in their own terms.
SS:Since we’ve started talking about Syria. The issue of Syria has been completely eclipsed by Ukraine lately. No one seems to mention it anymore. Meanwhile, the American administration is still providing arms to the opposition...
JP: Unless you are Syrian!
SS:...Yeah. Could it be that the US is getting free reign there while Russia is busy?
JP: Possibly, possibly. I read the other day that there was going to be non-lethal and lethal aid to some of the opponents, the jihadists opposing the Assad regime. Yes, the world looks the other way, and things happen. I think that’s very possible. Where that is heading – it's almost impossible to know, because my understanding is that the US actually would like to have a settlement with Iran. That seemed to be the way it was heading, and that would mean kind of settlement with Syria. And then it could concentrate on what is really close to this administration’s heart – and that is confronting China, and perhaps also confronting Russia – certainly, dealing with its grand design on the Eurasian continent. Now, if for example, as I understand it, two-thirds of the US naval forces are going to be transferred to the Asia-Pacific region by the year 2020, that will mean the US will have to tidy up all these unfortunate problems that it has: Syria, Iran and so on. All I’m saying is that the US policy as it has acted out in Syria, is very, very confusing, because they don’t seem to be wanting to resolve matters there. They seem to want to stroke it instead of play some kind of broker role, calm it, and deal with it.
SS: I want to get back a little bit to NATO and war games that just took place in Eastern Europe, like the most recent ones in Latvia. So, do you think those are aimed at intimidating Russia? Is that their sole goal?
JP: I’ve thought about why this intimidation of Russia is going on, and I think it is partly historical. The Soviet Union was deeply resented just for existing, because it was getting in the way of an enormous part of the world that the US and its western allies had previously had a great deal to do with and they exploited it, and wanted to do that again. I think there is almost a historical sense of unfinished business. There is no question that US foreign policy finds its opponents or enemies in those governments that effect any form of independence. That is a rule that runs right through it. Now, the Russian government is independent – it’s a very powerful and very important independent government. And there is a history between Russia and the US – you can never underestimate this history.
SS:Where do you think the US' European allies' interests are in all of this? In the whole US vs. China, US vs. Russia? Can Europe act independently, or are they completely under US influence?
JP: Well, that’s a very good question. What are their interests? I don’t know! I mean, you know, the interests of trading peacefully with Russia and with China are demonstrable! Gas from Russia and every manufactured good we could think of from China! What is the problem, you might ask. And for Europeans to go along with this kind of Wild West kind of foreign policy is absurd. But Europe is divided. Europe in terms of foreign policy, often reluctantly, but it does – it falls in with the US. You only have to read the German press to see this. There is a kind of ambivalence, almost – what do we do? Oh, well, we’d better go with the US. Europe has never spoken with one voice that has been entirely representative or reflecting its own interests.
SS:Alright, Mr. Pilger, thank you so much for this interview. We were talking to John Pilger – author, journalist, war correspondent. We were talking about America’s interests in Ukraine, and also what NATO is going to do next. Thank you very much, that’s it for this edition of SophieCo, and we’ll see you next time.
Real insider information about the surveillance system in the United States, its history and its vulnerabilities. In this excellent interview, Binney is asked by RT's Sophie Shevardnadze of Sophie Co what he thinks will happen to Edward Snowden if he comes home to "man up" as John Kerry suggested, apparently with a straight face. Binney answers by describing what happened to him when he started asking official questions and how he managed to get the FBI to stop harassing him. Video and full transcript inside.
It’s a year since Edward Snowden first came out with revelations that turned the world upside down. What once sounded like Orwellian conspiracy theory turned out to be true – we all are being watched over by the Big Brother in Washington. Innumerable questions arise. What now? Has something changed 12 months later? Should we forget about privacy and safety when we are online? Sophie asks NSA veteran and whistleblower, the precursor of Snowden, Bill Binney.
Sophie Shevardnadze:I just want to go a little bit backward – before the program was exposed by Edward Snowden, ‘The Stellar Wind’ , there was something called ‘ThinThread’, which you helped create. But it was overlooked in favor of what the NSA has now. Why so, what was wrong with it?
Bill Binney: I think the main problem was that it didn’t cost enough money. In other words it didn’t support a large operation, a large set of contractors, a larger organization. So if it was cheap and efficient, why wasn’t it the thing they wanted to do? They wanted to build an empire, and build an industrial base.
SS:But it also had something to do with privacy of your citizens?
BB: Oh yes, we built-in privacy and capacity to get privacy, not just for US citizens, but everybody in the world, and that was something, I guess, they didn’t particularly care to have. So in other words it was one of the first things they eliminated from that program when they adapted part of it. What that meant was that they now had the capacity to look into all their political enemies internally, in the country, or anybody in the country that they wanted to. So it’s a very useful program for law enforcement in particular, who would be looking at the entire population and see if everybody is doing anything that was illegal, and they could use that data then to go after them. That’s what they’ve been doing.
SS: Alright, so you are saying the internet’s purpose was to monitor what people are doing and so that would be possible to nip out anybody’s life with all the collected data, and you are one of the creators… now, surely you saw the dangers – did you suspect it could be abused?
BB: Yes, and that’s why I’ve built in those protections to make that impossible to happen, and that was the whole idea for encrypting the information that that would identify individuals, and in fact, filter out any data that wasn’t relevant, any targets that you weren’t interested in. So we had a focus to tack in terms of collecting only information that was relevant to targets of interest, and we let everybody in the world go by. Plus, we encrypted all the information about the individuals so that until we had provable cause on them, we did not know their true identities, so that made it impossible to have, say, NSA analysts go in and do the love intelligence, that they are or have been doing at NSA, which is looking at their wives and girlfriends and seeing if they are cheating on them.
Well, you could do that if didn’t encrypt the information and didn’t collect it, or if you collect it and don’t encrypt it. But if you did what we did, which was filter it out right up front and then encrypt any attributes that came through, you could achieve that, and it would be possible for law enforcement to use that data either.
SS:So once you’ve thought it was something awfully wrong with the whole thing, you went through official channels to fight the NSA, and you failed. Now, could you have done the same thing that Snowden did?
BB: Yes, I suppose, I could have, but that’s not the… I, at the time, thought that if I raise these concerns internally, in the intelligence committees and also in the courts or in the Inspector-General’s Office, the Department of Justice or Department of Defense, that those would be addressed, because it’s an obvious violation of our Constitution and constitutional rights of the citizens, all the citizens of the US. That’s what our laws would cover. We didn’t have laws that would cover intelligence operations against foreigners, but we did when we are talking about looking at domestic intelligence. So I thought that by going to those particular points, that would be a way to turn it around.
SS:But Snowden was also saying that he sent a couple of letters to the senior officers and he didn’t get any reaction – seems like you didn’t get any reaction either, right?
BB: Well, yes, we did get a reaction, they sent the FBI at us to intimidate us and otherwise keep us quiet, and also they’ve blacklisted us and things like that, so the entire system attacked us. He saw that too, and I think that was part of the review that he was doing on what happened to whistleblowers before him, that’s what helped him make his decision.
SS:When Snowden went public with the revelations, what did you feel? Was it a relief for you? What did you think to yourself?
BB: Well, I thought there was another whistleblower who was actually taking documentation of the abuses outside of the government, and releasing them publicly, I already basically knew all this staff happening, and that was basically what I was trying to oppose internally, in government channels initially. So he saw that, he saw what happened to us, he saw what happened to Tom Drake and what happened to Chelsea Manning and also Julian Assange, so I think he said to himself, and I think he said this publicly that what helped him make the decision to take documentation of the allegations he was going to make outside of agency and expose them publicly.
SS: But what did you feel as someone who was fighting the same thing he was fighting – he went public with it, he made this known to the world, that everyone is being surveilled. He changed a world in a way, for better or for worse, I don’t know.
BB: Well I think he has exposed the dangers of this mass surveillance, this is the, if you want to call it ‘The Stasi’ on super-steroids, or J. Edgar Hoover on super-steroids, being able to monitor and have leverage and knowledge about everybody’s life in the world. That’s a very powerful set of knowledge to have and to trust to government, to any government, really.
So his whole concept was to show that documentation, and to me, when he showed that documentation, that simply gave me leverage to say “You see, this is what I’ve been talking about,” and now we can point to it in the public domain as direct evidence, and it’s governments evidence, so it’s direct evidence of what the government was doing.
SS:Like you’ve said, we all remember what happened to Chelsea Manning, Snowden is living in an exile… Now do you feel like the harsh punishments will actually stop future whistleblowers from speaking out?
BB: I think that’s exactly what’s happening now, I mean, even when it comes to reports trying to get information from the intelligence officials, they would usually give things off the record to them, or talk to them off the record, they won’t even do that now – because they are afraid of prosecution and persecution by the government. They’ve build in this tactic of fear into all people working for the government, so that they are now afraid to do this and they are intimidated by the government from the things they’ve with Tom Drake and Bradley [Chelsea] Manning, and Julian Assange and others, so they’re showing what they intend to do to you if you become a whistleblower.
SS:People, I guess, they wonder, how come you got away with it, and Snowden didn’t and neither did Bradley Manning. I mean, you got raided and investigated by the FBI, but its nearly not as much as what happened to Manning or Snowden, who is an exile.
BB: Yes. The reason that happened was because they attempted to indict myself plus others, the other whistleblowers from NSA and what we’re doing was fabricating evidence and trumping up a charge of conspiracy and various other charges that they were going to file against us. As part of that process, I also had that material – they probably thought I didn’t, but I had it, because I’ve shared it with other people and got it back from them after they raided us.
That gave me all of the expiatory data and the data that showed malicious prosecution on the part of the Department of Justice. So I made sure they understood that I had all this evidence and if they wanted to court and trial, I would expose them for this malicious prosecution and do a counter-charge against them. So they dropped all those charges at that point. That’s how I stopped them.
SS:So you got lucky. But in his last interview Snowden said that he really wants to go home, like there’s no other place he would rather be, and John Kerry told him to man up and return. But the best-case scenario would be he goes to jail, right? Do you think Snowden could trust the system of Justice, as Kerry said he should?
BB: If he can get a fair trial, yeah.
SS:Do you think he can trust the system?
BB: I don’t believe he’d ever get a fair trial here, no. He can’t trust the system at all.
SS: Why not?
BB: I think what John Kerry was saying, plus other officials in the in the row, because they manipulate things in the court. Because of national security they make it impossible for you to raise evidence, or they make it impossible for you to say things about certain things they were doing – because they claim “national security” or they claim they don’t have standing or some other reason, to keep it out of the court. So you can’t address the real issues. So you can’t get a real fair trial under those conditions.
I will also point out that John Kerry and all the other people in the US government is talking about the accountability, they need to own up to it too, they need to be accountable for their actions of violating our Constitution and rights and privileges under the Constitution to the citizens of the US. They are hiding behind secrecy and lies, and secret interpretations, and secret courts, to build a secret government with secret laws, to cover themselves. That’s what they are doing, and they need to own up to that, and they’re not doing that.
SS:James Clapper from national intelligence called on Snowden to return and expose documents. Do you think he should?
BB: I don’t believe he can. My understanding is that he turned over all those documents to reporters and no longer has them. So I don’t believe that would be possible for him to return them.
SS:But nobody knows how much exactly he took. Snowden said that himself as well. Why was security so vulnerable at the NSA as to allow this?
BB: There is a story behind that. I’ll tell you what the story is. I, basically, proposed that we - back in early 90s, 1992-93, somewhere in there - that we do a program that would monitor all the activity on the network that NSA had anywhere in the world. So we ended up with two opposing camps when we made that proposal. One was the analysts that said “I don’t want you monitoring me and what I’m doing.” They didn’t want anybody looking over their shoulder – basically what they were saying. The other camp was all of the managers in the NSA, because they didn’t want anybody watching what they were doing with the money, because they are playing a shell game with money. They keep moving money from one program to another, to try to prop up failing programs and things like that. But also they didn’t want anybody giving any kind of assessment on return of investment on any of the programs they were running, because they wanted the freedom to do things the way they wanted without any interference.
So given those two camps of opposition, that meant we were absolutely not going to do that kind of monitoring program. And when you didn’t do that, that meant that Snowden, for example, could go on the network, download anything he wanted to, and nobody really was following him. So he could take anything he wanted, and they are still trying, I guess, to find out what he took, because they don’t really know, because they didn’t monitor that log.
SS:Do you know what I never understood? The NSA collects so much information about everything and everybody – what do you guys do with it there? Surely it is just too much to analyze it all, no?
BB: Yeah, see, that’s one of the major problems they are having at that point; it is that by taking all this data, what they are doing is burying their analysts in the mound of massive amounts of data, so that they can’t figure out real threats or anything of significant intelligence. That’s basically why the White House issued their White House Big Data Initiative – I think in early 2012 – which was soliciting companies and private industry to come up with algorithms that would go through the large datasets to try to figure out what was important in that data for people to look at.
Well, that was primarily what we did with our program ‘Thin Thread’. The point was that that was that focus to tack, and that’s really what they are asking for now, because they are beginning to realize that they are buried in data and their analysts are dysfunctional because of it.
SS:Now the latest Snowden leak suggests that NSA is taking facial recognition tech to a whole new level, sorting out images from personal emails, texts, Facebook, even video conferences. Why does the NSA need a massive photo database of people who are just minding their own business? I mean, millions of people who are not representing any threat to anybody or anything.
BB: Well, again, that’s that idea of taking in this bulk acquisition of information, so you have it in case you need it. That’s the point that they are taking. But the real issue was to use it for law enforcement. So if they use it for law enforcement, then it does become useful. That is especially if they can map a picture of you to your name and all your attributes and all your activity. Then that adds that dimension to your profile for the law enforcement people.
SS:Another interesting thing that Snowden said in the interview was that his former colleagues at the NSA were shocked by the agency’s activities once he actually shared his concern with them. Is that something that you also encountered, do people inside the agency really don’t understand what’s going on?
BB: Yes, I think that’s true of a large number of them. Even Ed Loomis, who was one of our co-whistleblowers here, didn’t realize that this domestic spying was going on until just a few years ago. He didn’t realize that this was happening. He basically also didn’t want to believe that, because he thought we wouldn’t do that as a country. But in fact, we are and that is going on, and now he realizes that’s true. But up until just a few years ago, he didn’t believe it.
SS:Now, just a bit more about Snowden. I don’t know if you watched his last interview, but with all this new attention he is getting right now, there is a feeling that Snowden is no longer seen as an enemy only, and according to recent polls most Americans are actually supportive of his revelations about government’s surveillance programs and everything. Could Snowden become a hero figure?
BB: I think he is probably drifting that way anyway in terms of public opinion over here in this country anyway, because what people are looking at after all this materials coming out is that they are now realizing how invasive the surveillance is that the US government is doing on the population here in the US, as well as around the world.
For us, though, it’s a particular invasion, because it is a violation of our 1st, 4th and 5th and even, to a degree, the 6th Amendment to the Constitution. I guess our people are starting to get concerned in it and irritated by it, simply because it is a clear violation of the foundation of our country and the laws that we have through government, and all of our law enforcement, and all of our government officials. The oath of office that they take is to protect and defend that Constitution and they all violated it. In fact, in the Reuters article, which talked about law-enforcement using this material, they said - one of the Federal officers said - “This is such a great program. I hope we can just keep it secret.” Well, having a secret operation in a secret court, making a secret interpretation of laws and doing all of this in secret is not compatible with a democratic republic. That is not compatible with democracy at all, and that’s what the problem the public here in the US is really seeing.
SS: I want to take this issue and broaden it a little bit to international scale, because NSA spying isn’t only a domestic issue. US relations have been hurt with key allies and also with China, for example. They are very strained over this whole spying allegations. We know that both are snooping at each other, we know that. What now? What do you think is next?
BB: It’s hard to tell. I think a lot of this is for public show, but negotiations are going on in secret, part from one to another one country, they’ll show what the difference is. I mean, if they start raising tariffs and things like that, that can show what’s going on behind the scenes, but what they are saying in public is primarily for public consumption.
SS: But just because you know how it works, really quickly, who do you think is doing a better job of spying at each other, or it is pretty much on the same level?
BB: No, I think the US is much better at it than anybody else, simply because they basically own the fiber optic network of the world, or at least 80 percent of it. So that’s like the home-team advantage, giving you advantage of having the access to all of that fiber around the world. It gives you that extra access to information that others don’t have.
SS:Some of the most recent revelations say that NSA plants bugs in technical equipment shipped overseas. Is there a way for the receiving side to actually detect those bugs?
BB: Yeah, certainly you can have technicians go through and look for extra hardware, you can have people scanning the software – it takes a lot to do that, but it is possible to do. You just have to have smart technical people doing it. Only other alternative, by the way, is to buy your own…
SS:Is to buy all your equipment not in America. Too bad Americans are really good at all the technical stuff, and you guys always have all the advanced technologies, so that’s why people are buying it there. That’s a point of advantage for you, but yeah, we’ll make sure to detect the bugs once we receive it over here.
Another thing is that John Chambers, the head of the tech giant Cisco that produces the equipment, asked Obama to stop NSA’s illegal modifying of the company’s products. Do you think he will be heard?
BB: I think, obviously, it’s an economic decision that has to be made by the countries around the world, but I think that that is stimulating others to start up their own businesses as a counter or a competitor to US industry around the world. So I think they all are getting hurt, and I think it was a bad decision on everybody’s part to do this kind of thing, weakening systems and giving back towards the systems, reducing the security of individuals around the world. That basically was, in my view - even the PRISM program participants, or the Telecoms and their participation in the phone network, exchanging the information – was basically a short-sighted decision, that was made without consideration of being exposed to ramifications of that around the world, in terms of business and business transactions.
SS: I know that you’ve also said that NSA is vital to US security, and many people will agree with you. But, is it possible to reform the NSA so that it serves the greater good, or is spying on citizens something inevitable?
BB: I think, to a certain degree, spying is inevitable, but you can certainly control, there are ways and means to do that. We suggested some ways to make that happen, and make it effective, to the President and to Congress, and also to the EU, and it’s published on the web – the recommendations that we made. We made 21 recommendations to that.
SS:Now Obama appointed a review board that criticized the domestic data collection. In March, the president recommended ending the bulk domestic meta-data collection and last week, the House passed a bill to end it – is that an effective step, in reality? Will the NSA abide by it?
BB: I think the moves that have been made so far, is to basically transfer the storage of the information to the telephone companies or to telecoms, and that to me simply means absolutely nothing, it is simply a distributed storage query– in other words, if you are making a query into the database, instead of going to your local storage inside NSA, you’re going to the one at the Telecom. That’s like a distributed network storage like Google does, when you make your Google queries, that gets distributed across eight different storage places, and they give every response from those eight different places, and you get it listed on your computer to look at. So it’s very similar to that. It’s just like distributed storage network – you’re using the Telecom storage instead of NSA storage. I don’t really see any difference here.
Spending the weekend worrying about how our 'leaders' are dragging us into terrible wars? How can we combat this? By showing what is really happening in Ukraine. Unarmed residents of the Ukraine city of Kramatorsk came out to defend their 'self-defense forces' when these were herded by Kiev junta manned tanks into a small cluster in the central square. Elderly people, men and women were present, expressing their rage and disgust at these NATO-backed armed destroyers of democracy. After the hideous behaviour of Kiev-friendly thugs on Friday, could anyone still approve of the Australian government backing Kiev's unelected government? Only if they only watch the shamefully biased reporting by NATO-sympathising mainstream media such as the ABC and SBS and Fox version of these events.
'Defiant of the armed vehicles and sniper rifles pointed at them, residents were filmed approaching the troops to have their say.
“Fascists! Fascists!” the locals chanted, casting insults on the troops and the Kiev government.
Kiev authorities are commonly referred to as the “fascist junta” in the east of the country, because of their takeover of power in February and the government's alliance with nationalists – including the notorious Right Sector radical group.
“What kind of law and order are you bringing here?! We are the f*****g residents of the Donetsk Region, not you!” one man shouted.
Many of the soldiers interviewed by RT stringer Graham Phillips revealed they had come from western Ukrainian
regions, including Lvov and Ivano-Frankovsk. Kiev has been apparently relying on regional and ethnic differences in Ukraine while launching the military action, as a large part of eastern Ukrainian armed forces and police have been unwilling “to fire at our own people.”
The crowd in Kramatorsk grew even angrier as one of the Ukrainian APCs rammed a road sign, bringing it down.
“Get back to Kiev! You are not welcome here! Get out! It is our land!” residents shouted.
The troops could then be seen suddenly mounting the APCs and leaving the area. The crowd rushed to chase them, shouting “Donbass! Donbass! Glory to Donbass!”.
Going Underground's Afshin Rattansi interviews the former British Ambassador to Syria on the irony of London hosting a Syria conference to aid refugees while Cameron drops bombs to create more. "This week London hosted the Syrian Donor conference in an attempt to raise money for the people UK bombs continue to displace to the shores of Europe. But as Philip Hammond mulls sending guns to Libya to quell the rise of Isis - made possible by the British toppling of Gadaffi - should we really even believe his claims that Russia is helping ISIS/Daesh by bombing Cameron's supposedly 'moderate' rebels." (Afshin Rattansi) First published at https://www.rt.com/shows/going-underground/331567-assange-detainment-syria-conference/
A frank discussion about the consequences of Merkel's open borders on Denmark, with a number of references to the Australian system for processing refugees. Note, however, that refugees do not usually achieve permanent resettlement in Europe, whereas they usually do in Australia. When European governments talk about taking in refugees, they are talking about a temporary situation. In this interview 
Australian freedom fighter and political refugee, Julian Assange, will take part in a discussion dedicated to information privacy and security in the digital age, organized as part of an RT conference on media and politics. 
Video inside:One of NATO imperialism's greatest chroniclers, Australian award-winning journalist and filmmaker, John Pilger, tells us how Washington, London and Paris gave birth to ISIS.
The Middle East conflict - war in Syria and Iraq - has already spilled over. No one is safe from the terrorist attacks, neither East, nor West. Islamic State claims it is still strong, and its ideas are attracting new recruits to replace those killed on the field. Islamic State says the horrors it perpetrates are done in the name Allah - spurring resentment against Muslims all across the globe. Today, we speak to an Islamic scholar, a Grand Mufti of Syria, Ahmad Badreddin Hassoun, to see how the jihadists have twisted the idea of Islam. And does their agenda have anything to do with Islam at all? Republished from 
Candobetter.net Editor: NewsCorp have published an article, "Full transcript: Russian-backed rebels ransack the wreckage of MH17 in shocking 17-minute video", but the video does not bear this allegation out for me. It just looks to me as if the people examining the baggage around the crash site are trying to work out where the plane came from and documenting their findings on film. Julie Bishop, Minister for Trade and Foreign Affairs' 'disgust' at these actions seems inflammatory and unjustified. The soldiers searching the site initially think the plane is a Sukhoi-25 fighter plane which they shot at. Then they realise it is a passenger plane and they then think that the Sukhoi-25 fighter plane they brought down must have shot down the passenger plane in order to implicate the East Ukrainian self-defence forces. They hear that the Sukhoi-25 fighter plane went down in a nearby village and that people escaped with parachutes. Note, we have linked to a you-tube version of the Newscorp video. Judge for yourself: The following article published on RT originally and original contains copyright video footage from Newscorp. See 
Almaz-Antey, a Russian manufacturer of Buk missiles and Russia's main air-defense manufacturer has begun its own investigations into the MH17 affair, where a Malaysian air flight was downed over war-torn East Ukraine. Since this tragedy, NATO supporters have accused Russia of being the owner of a BUK missile which some believe may have been the thing that brought the Flight MH17 passenger aircraft down. Russians have responded by suggesting that if a missile was involved, it was probably a Ukrainian missile fired from East Ukraine when it was under Kiev military control. Although there are other theories, including one that another aircraft may have fired on MH17, the missile manufacturer itself is now trying to conduct its own investigation in order to have sanctions against it lifted. According to Almaz-Antey, missile manufacturers, the missile that likely struck the Boeing aircraft, 9M38-M1, was not produced in the Russian Federation since 1999, but they have evidence that the BUK-M1 air defense missile system and accompanying missiles were still deployed with the Ukrainian Armed Forces in 2005. According to their evidence, Ukraine had a total of 991 9M38M1 missiles at the time.
Originally published under the title of "Iran's deputy FM: Yemen's president uses terrorists to fight rebels," this is the transcript, with links to the video, of Sophie Shevardnadze's interview with Iran Deputy Foreign Minister, Hossein Amir-Abdollahian. The beginning of the video is particularly instructive, as Hossein Amir-Abdollahian gives a run-down on what is happening from Iran's very close perspective. Among other things, it becomes clear that Iran does not believe that the United States is trying to stop IS. Saudi Arabia has said that it is going to develop nuclear weapons. Iran says it will not let this happen. It also says that it will not let Syria fall. The Minister says that the reason the United States wants to wreck Syria is that then it will have destroyed the main Russian foothold in the Middle East and that will allow the United States to dominate the region and maintain world hegemony. See also 
The United States has been gradually replacing its own military with military contractors to the degree now where they formed 50% of troops in Iraq and 70% of troops in Afghanistan deployed in its name. What happens to those business model troops when the US wants to wind down military activity in a particular place? They are private armies with power and money and the risk is that they will use it to extract a living, as in splintered Libya. The bigger risk is that they will form corporate military states in their own right - as ISIS pretends to. Professor Sean McFate spent some years - mostly in Africa - as a mercenary, largely because he was curious about this. "Mercenaries have always been there, where there is bloodshed going on. The times when whole armies of mercenary troops, or even personal regiments were bought and sold seemed to be long gone. But now, they are called Private Military Companies, and their popularity among the governments rises, with the US leading the trend of shopping at the market of force. Are we witnessing the end of the age of national armies? And why mercenaries are in such high demand these days? We put these questions to Professor Sean McFate, who once was a private military contractor himself." (Sophie Shevardnadze)
For those of you who are confused about what is happening vis a vis Ukraine in European negotiations with Russia and the US talking up weapons-supply with Kiev , Peter Lavelle's Crosstalk, "Saving Ukraine" on RT today came up with some useful analysis from guests Mary Dejevsky (Independent and Guardian, columnist, UK), Alexander Mercouris, (writer and analyst on legal affairs, London), and James Jatras, (former advisor to the US Senate Republican leadership). The issue was, "Will peace be given one last chance? The French president and German chancellor head to Moscow for talks to end Ukraine’s civil war. At the same time the US Secretary of State arrives in Kiev to arrange training and arms transfers. Which approach will prevail?"
Video inside: For those of you who can't remember how all this terrorism got started. Although we also have to keep in mind the longer history of colonialism and petroleum-hunting in the Middle East, which goes back to the 19th century and involves the descendants of the same national and corporate players.
Watch an old reporter turned politician do a few rounds in the ring with skilled Russian interviewer, 
Video inside. 23 minute Russian documentary investigating the downing of MH17, using footage from reporters on the scene shortly after, and engineering analysis, plus follow-up on reports made early in the piece, but since buried in the western news. The official investigative teams have still not come up with any definitive answers, and certainly no evidence that Russians or even East Ukrainian separatists did it, let alone had any motive, despite prejudicial and inflammatory stances by our own primeminister, Mr Abbott. At the time of the tragedy, civil conflict in the area prevented international experts from conducting a full and thorough investigation. It seems that the western-backed Kiev government (under Poroshenko) went all-out to bomb the area continuously, leaving one to surmise that they wanted to destroy evidence and keep observers away. The wreckage should have been collected and scrupulously re-assembled to identify all the damage, but this standard investigative procedure was never carried out. Until that’s done, evidence can only be gleaned from pictures of the debris, the flight recorders or black boxes and eye-witnesses’ testimonies. This may be enough to help build a picture of what really happened to the aircraft, whether a rocket fired from the ground or gunfire from a military jet.
"In Paris this week [week of September 20], the great and the gruesome came together to discuss the existential threat of ISIS, but the two countries actually doing something meaningful about that threat - Syria and Iran - were of course not invited. Confused? You won't be after you have heard our first guest, Hasib Risby, a commentator on the region and part of digital resistance." A very clear analysis of what is happening with ISIS, Syria, Iran, and the US in the Middle East, by George Galloway and Gayatri Pertiwi with Haseeb Rizvi. The original program (with no transcript) is at 
Spending the weekend worrying about how our 'leaders' are dragging us into terrible wars? How can we combat this? By showing what is really happening in Ukraine. Unarmed residents of the Ukraine city of Kramatorsk came out to defend their 'self-defense forces' when these were herded by Kiev junta manned tanks into a small cluster in the central square. Elderly people, men and women were present, expressing their rage and disgust at these NATO-backed armed destroyers of democracy. After the hideous behaviour of Kiev-friendly thugs on Friday, could anyone still approve of the Australian government backing Kiev's unelected government? Only if they only watch the shamefully biased reporting by NATO-sympathising mainstream media such as the ABC and SBS and Fox version of these events.
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