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Commentators have missed the significance of President Barack Obama’s acerbic criticism of Saudi Arabia and Sunni states long allied to the US for fomenting sectarian hatred and seeking to lure the US into fighting regional wars on their behalf. In a series of lengthy interviews with Jeffrey Goldberg published in The Atlantic magazine, Mr Obama explains why it is not in the US’s interests to continue the tradition of the US foreign policy establishment, whose views he privately disdains, by giving automatic support to the Saudis and their allies.  Obama’s arguments are important because they are not off-the-cuff remarks, but are detailed, wide ranging, carefully considered and leading to new departures in US policy. The crucial turning point came on 30 August 2013 when he refused to launch air strikes in Syria. This would, in effect, have started military action by the US to force regime change in Damascus, a course of action proposed by much of the Obama cabinet as well by US foreign policy specialists.  Saudi Arabia, Turkey and the Gulf monarchies were briefly convinced that they would get their wish and the US was going to do their work for them by overthrowing President Bashar al-Assad. They claimed this would be easy to do, though it would have happened only if there had been a full-scale American intervention and it would have produced a power vacuum that would have been filled by fundamentalist Islamic movements as in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya. Mr Goldberg says that by refusing to bomb Syria, Obama “broke with what he calls, derisively, ‘the Washington Playbook’. This was his liberation day”.

It will be important to know after the US election if the new president will continue to rebalance US foreign policy away from reliance on Sunni powers seeking to use American military and political “muscle” in their own interests. Past US leaders have closed their eyes to this with disastrous consequences in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria. Mr Goldberg says that President Obama “questioned, often harshly, the role that America’s Sunni Arab allies play in fomenting anti-American terrorism. He is clearly irritated that foreign policy orthodoxy compels him to treat Saudi Arabia as an ally”.  What is truly strange about the new departures in US foreign policy is that they have taken so long to occur. Within days of 9/11, it was known that 15 out of the 19 hijackers were Saudi, as was Osama bin Laden and the donors who financed the operation. Moreover, the US went on treating Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Pakistan and the Gulf monarchies as if they were great powers, when all the evidence was that their real strength and loyalty to the West were limited. 

Though it was obvious that the US would be unable to defeat the Taliban so long as it was supported and given sanctuary by Pakistan, the Americans never confronted Pakistan on the issue. According to Goldberg, Obama “privately questions why Pakistan, which he believes is a disastrously dysfunctional country, should be considered an ally of the US at all”. As regards Turkey, the US President had hopes of its President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, but has since come to see him as an authoritarian ruler whose policies have failed.

A bombshell White House memo has revealed for the first time details of the ‘deal in blood’ forged by George Bush and Tony Blair over the Iraq War.The damning memo, from secretary of state Colin Powell to president George Bush, was written on March 28, 2002, a week before Bush’s famous summit with Blair at his Crawford ranch in Texas.The Powell document, headed ‘Secret... Memorandum for the President’, lifts the lid on how Blair and Bush secretly plotted the war behind closed doors at Crawford. In it, Powell tells Bush that Blair ‘will be with us’ on military action. Powell assures the president: ‘The UK will follow our lead’.The classified document also discloses that Blair agreed to act as a glorified spin doctor for the president by presenting ‘public affairs lines’ to convince a skeptical public that Saddam had Weapons of Mass Destruction - when none existed.In return, the president would flatter Blair’s ego and give the impression that Britain was not America’s poodle but an equal partner in the ‘special relationship’. 

The sensational leak shows that Blair had given an unqualified pledge to sign up to the conflict a year before the invasion started.It flies in the face of the UK Prime Minister’s public claims at the time that he was seeking a diplomatic solution to the crisis.He told voters: ‘We’re not proposing military action’ - in direct contrast to what the secret email now reveals. 

The disclosure is certain to lead for calls for Sir John Chilcot to reopen his inquiry into the Iraq War if, as is believed, he has not seen the Powell memo.A second explosive memo from the same cache also reveals how Bush used ‘spies’ in the Labour Party to help him to manipulate British public opinion in favor of the war.The documents, obtained by The Mail on Sunday, are part of a batch of secret emails held on the private server of Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton which U.S. courts have forced her to reveal.Former UK Conservative shadow home secretary David Davis said: ‘The memos prove in explicit terms what many of us have believed all along: Tony Blair effectively agreed to act as a frontman for American foreign policy in advance of any decision by the House of Commons or the British Cabinet.

As President Obama laid out his “strategy” last night for dealing with the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), and as bipartisan leadership in Congress pushes to approve as much as $4 billion to arm Syrian “rebels,” it should be noted that the keystone to his anti-Assad policy — the “vetted moderate” Free Syrian Army (FSA) — is now admitting that they, too, are working with the Islamic State. This confirms PJ Media’s reporting last week about the FSA’s alliances with Syrian terrorist groups. On Monday, the Daily Star in Lebanon quoted a FSA brigade commander saying that his forces were working with the Islamic State and Jabhat al-Nusra, al-Qaeda’s official Syrian affiliate — both U.S.-designated terrorist organizations — near the Syrian/Lebanon border. “We are collaborating with the Islamic State and the Nusra Front by attacking the Syrian Army’s gatherings in … Qalamoun,” said Bassel Idriss, the commander of an FSA-aligned rebel brigade. “We have reached a point where we have to collaborate with anyone against unfairness and injustice,” confirmed Abu Khaled, another FSA commander who lives in Arsal. “Let’s face it: The Nusra Front is the biggest power present right now in Qalamoun and we as FSA would collaborate on any mission they launch as long as it coincides with our values,” he added.

In my report last week I noted that buried in a New York Times article last month was a Syrian “rebel” commander quoted as saying that his forces were working with ISIS and Jabhat al-Nusra in raids along the border with Lebanon, including attacks on Lebanese forces. The Times article quickly tried to dismiss the commander’s statements, but the Daily Star article now confirms this alliance. Among the other pertinent points from that PJ Media article last week was that this time last year the bipartisan conventional wisdom amongst the foreign policy establishment was that the bulk of the Syrian rebel forces were moderates, a fiction refuted by a Rand Corporation study published last September that found nearly half of the Syrian “rebels” were jihadists or hard-core Islamists.

Another relevant phenomenon I noted was that multiple arms shipments from the U.S. to the “vetted moderate” FSA were suspiciously raided and confiscated by ISIS and Jabhat al-Nusra, prompting the Obama administration and the UK to suspend weapons shipments to the FSA last December. In April, the Obama administration again turned on the CIA weapons spigot to the FSA, and Obama began calling for an additional $500 million for the “vetted moderate rebels,” but by July the weapons provided to the FSA were yet again being raided and captured by ISIS and other terrorist groups. Remarkably, one Syrian dissident leader reportedly told Al-Quds al-Arabi that the FSA had lost $500 million worth of arms to rival “rebel” groups, much of which ended up being sold to unknown parties in Turkey and Iraq.

“I had absolutely no idea this was coming,” Parada said. Sitting in a glass-walled meeting room in his offices, at the law firm Foley Hoag, he paused, searching for the right word to describe what has happened in his field. “Rogue,” he decided, finally. “I think the investor-state arbitration system was created with good intentions, but in practice it has gone completely rogue.”

The White Helmets have been demonstrated to be a primarily US and NATO funded organisation embedded in Al Nusra and ISIS held areas exclusively. This is an alleged “non-governmental” organisation, the definition of an NGO, that thus far has received funding from at least three major NATO governments, including $23 million from the US Government and $29 million (£19.7 million) from the UK Government, $4.5 million (€4 million) from the Dutch Government. In addition, it receives material assistance and training funded and run by a variety of other EU Nations. A request has been put into the EU Secretary General to provide all correspondence relating to the funding and training of the White Helmets. By law this information must be made transparent and available to the public. There has been a concerted campaign by a range of investigative journalists to expose the true roots of these Syria Civil Defence operatives, known as the White Helmets.  The most damning statement, however, did not come from us, but from their funders and backers in the US State Department who attempted to explain the US deportation of the prominent White Helmet leader, Raed Saleh, from Dulles airport on the 18th April 2016.

To condense our research on the Syria White Helmets, we have collated all relevant articles and interviews below.  We condemn wholeheartedly any senseless murder but we recommend that there is serious public and political re-evauluation of the morality of funding a US NATO organisation established to further “regime change” objectives in Syria. Mass murder is being committed across Syria and the region by US and NATO proxy terrorist militants. Funding the White Helmets will serve to prolong the suffering and bloodshed of the Syrian people.

Vanessa Beeley 21st Century Wire Who are the White Helmets? This is a question that everyone should be asking themselves. A hideous murder of a rising star in UK politics, Jo Cox MP, has just sent shock waves across the world. Within hours of her death, a special fund was established in her name to raise money for 3 causes. One of those causes is the Syrian White Helmets. Are we seeing a cynical and obscene exploitation of Jo Cox’s murder to revive the flagging credibility of a US State Department & UK Foreign Office asset on the ground in Syria, created and sustained as first responders for the US and NATO Al Nusra/Al Qaeda forces?

The United Kingdom Supreme Court heard arguments this week in two critical cases concerning the UK’s role in the United States’ rendition, detention, and interrogation efforts in the years after 9/11. In both cases, the UK government is arguing that the claims cannot be considered by English courts. If the government succeeds, one potential practical implication would be to limit the extent to which individuals could seek redress for wrongs done against them, including torture, where the alleged wrongs involve other States. The first case, Belhaj & another v. Straw & others, involves one of the most controversial claims of rendition involving the UK. The government has appealed against the lower court’s ruling, which found against the government for its alleged role in the 2004 abduction of Libyan national, Abdul-Hakim Belhaj, and his wife, and their subsequent rendition to Libya and mistreatment at the hands of US and other foreign officials. In December 2013, the High Court dismissed a civil suit brought by Belhaj on the basis that it lacked jurisdiction because of the act of state doctrine (a rule of English law which prevents courts from considering claims where the court would have to examine the acts of a foreign state). But in October 2014, the UK Court of Appeal ruled that the act of state doctrine did not preclude Belhaj’s claim against the British government, citing, among other reasons, the universal condemnation of torture and the “stark reality” that these allegations would escape judicial investigation unless the English courts were able to exercise jurisdiction over the case.

Specifically, the Court found that: [T]he present case falls within the established limitation on the act of state doctrine imposed by considerations of public policy on grounds of violations of human rights and international law and that there are compelling reasons requiring the exercise of jurisdiction. The Court of Appeal also rejected the government’s controversial attempt to invoke the domestic law on immunity of foreign states from domestic proceedings as a bar to any claim against the UK government whenever the conduct of foreign states may be called into question, a concept known as the doctrine of indirect impleader in state immunity.

The government’s appeal against the Court of Appeal’s decision in Belhaj is being heard jointly with the appeal in another case, Ministry of Defense and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office v. Yunus Rahmatullah, involving a Pakistani citizen captured by British forces in Iraq. In 2004, Rahmatullah was transferred from UK to US custody in Iraq and thereafter rendered to Bagram air base in Afghanistan, with UK knowledge and in breach of Article 45 and Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention. Held by the US without trial for more than a decade, Rahmatullah was denied access to a lawyer and subjected to numerous acts of torture and mistreatment before being repatriated to Pakistan and released without charge in May 2014. He now seeks to sue the British government for damages. The main thrust of the UK government’s argument, in both cases, is that the litigation will most likely damage the UK’s relationship with the United States. If accepted by the Supreme Court, this argument may lead the Court to find that it lacks jurisdiction to hear the claims. The far-reaching implications of such a ruling would be to protect individual states and their institutions from the scrutiny of British courts in cases where it is alleged that they acted in concert with other states, even if their actions were unlawful. Such an expansive interpretation of a “but they did it too” excuse would constitute a notable limitation on British courts’ jurisdiction in the context of events arising from the so-called global war on terror. Since Belhaj and Rahmatullah, and others like them, are unlikely to secure redress directly in a US court, a ruling in favor of the government would essentially preclude them from securing redress in any forum. You can find the full Court of Appeal judgment here and below.   Belhaj v. Straw – Court of Appeal Judgment (30 Oct 2014) by Just Security

The 29-year-old former NSA contractor and source of the Guardian's NSA files coverage will – with the help of Glenn Greenwald – take your questions today on why he revealed the NSA's top-secret surveillance of US citizens, the international storm that has ensued, and the uncertain future he now faces. Ask him anything.

I did not reveal any US operations against legitimate military targets. I pointed out where the NSA has hacked civilian infrastructure such as universities, hospitals, and private businesses because it is dangerous. These nakedly, aggressively criminal acts are wrong no matter the target. Not only that, when NSA makes a technical mistake during an exploitation operation, critical systems crash. Congress hasn't declared war on the countries - the majority of them are our allies - but without asking for public permission, NSA is running network operations against them that affect millions of innocent people. And for what? So we can have secret access to a computer in a country we're not even fighting? So we can potentially reveal a potential terrorist with the potential to kill fewer Americans than our own Police? No, the public needs to know the kinds of things a government does in its name, or the "consent of the governed" is meaningless.

I was debriefed by Glenn and his peers over a number of days, and not all of those conversations were recorded. The statement I made about earnings was that $200,000 was my "career high" salary. I had to take pay cuts in the course of pursuing specific work. Booz was not the most I've been paid.

Jeremy Corbyn delivered his uncompromising stance on Western warmongering from the back of a London taxi last week. As the cab raced through the streets of the capital, the new Labour leader revealed his vision for an ethical foreign policy in his 17-minute interview with Middle East Eye.

Asked how he would deal with ISIS, the anti-war campaigner was uncompromising. “ISIS (a.k.a. ISIL & Daesh, edt.) didn’t come from nowhere, they’ve got a lot of money that’s come from somewhere. They have a huge supply of arms that have come from somewhere and they are, not in total but in part, a creation of western interventions in the region,” he said. According to Corbyn, he would deal with the terror group by economically isolating its members. He says he would attempt to unite other groups in the region and stressed the importance of supporting autonomy for Kurdish groups. On the rise of ISIS, he pointed to the vast amount of arms that Britain sells, particularly to Saudi Arabia, declaring they must have ended up somewhere and are now being used. Corbyn was vehemently opposed to the 2013 Parliamentary vote on military intervention in Syria and remains adamant that bombing the country now would create more mayhem. He told Middle East Eye it would be very unclear who the alliances would be with.

On the region in general, he referred to Israel and Palestine as a massive issue. Unlike his British counterparts, he expressed grave concern at the illegal Israeli settlements, military occupation of the West Bank, and lack of reconstruction in Gaza. Praising the recent agreement with Iran, he said he wished it had included the issue of human rights,

Some thirteen years after the event, the shadow of the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in Manhattan and the Pentagon still darkens our world. The legacy of that terrible day has impacted not only our foreign policy, bequeathing to a new generation an apparently endless "war on terrorism," it also has led directly to what is arguably the most massive assault on our civil liberties since the Alien and Sedition Acts. Getting all the information about what happened that day – and why it happened – is key to understanding the course we have taken since. This was supposed to have been the purpose of the 9/11 Commission, whose massive report is now looked to as the primary source on the subject. Yet there is another, far more specific investigative report, the one issued by the intelligence committees of both houses of Congress, entitled "Joint Inquiry into Intelligence Community Activities Before and After the Terrorist Attacks of September 11, 2001." If you actually take the time to read the report, all goes along swimmingly (except for occasional redactions) until you get to p. 369, whereupon the text is blacked out for the next twenty-eight pages.

Some thirteen years after the event, the shadow of the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in Manhattan and the Pentagon still darkens our world. The legacy of that terrible day has impacted not only our foreign policy, bequeathing to a new generation an apparently endless "war on terrorism," it also has led directly to what is arguably the most massive assault on our civil liberties since the Alien and Sedition Acts. Getting all the information about what happened that day – and why it happened – is key to understanding the course we have taken since. This was supposed to have been the purpose of the 9/11 Commission, whose massive report is now looked to as the primary source on the subject. Yet there is another, far more specific investigative report, the one issued by the intelligence committees of both houses of Congress, entitled "Joint Inquiry into Intelligence Community Activities Before and After the Terrorist Attacks of September 11, 2001." If you actually take the time to read the report, all goes along swimmingly (except for occasional redactions) until you get to p. 369, whereupon the text is blacked out for the next twenty-eight pages.

Do you get the impression someone has something to hide? The censored section is entitled "Finding, Discussion and Narrative Regarding Certain Sensitive National Security Matters," and the introduction – left largely intact – is instructive: "Through its investigation, the Joint Inquiry developed information suggesting specific sources of foreign support for some of the September 11 hijackers while they were in the United States. The Joint Inquiry’s review confirmed that the Intelligence Community also has information, much of which has yet to be independently verified, concerning these potential sources of support. In their testimony, neither CIA nor FBI officials were able to address definitively the extent of such support for the hijackers globally or within the United States or the extent to which such support, if it exists, is knowing or inadvertent in nature."

David Cameron will urge MPs to support air strikes against Isis in Iraq but is unlikely to ask them to approve military action in Syria against the militant extremist group. The Independent understands that the Liberal Democrats and Labour are reluctant to endorse air strikes in Syria, forcing the Prime Minister to think again. Last week, he argued that action in Syria would not need the support of the Assad regime, saying: “President Assad has committed war crimes on his own people and is therefore illegitimate.”However, MPs believe there are serious legal doubts about action in Syria.There was confusion at the top of the Government today as Downing Street slapped down Philip Hammond, the Foreign Secretary, after he said Britain would not bomb Isis targets in Syria.

It followed Barack Obama’s announcement that the United States would extend its air strikes against Isis in Iraq to Syria. In a White House address, the US President vowed to "degrade and ultimately destroy" Isis and said almost 500 more US troops will be dispatched to Iraq to assist its security forces.Mr Cameron wants to secure the approval of the Commons before launching air strikes. Soundings by whips suggest there could be a majority in the three main parties for action in Iraq, where the new Government is expected to request such intervention, but not in Syria. One Minister admitted: “For the Lib Dems and Labour, Syria is very different to Iraq.”

Nick Clegg and Ed Miliband are likely to back UK air strikes in Iraq if the US puts together a “coalition of the willing” that includes countries in the region. But they would baulk at a US-UK only operation.Mr Cameron is anxious to avoid a repeat of his humiliating defeat a year ago, when the Commons voted by 285 to 272 to oppose air strikes against the Assad regime after it used chemical weapons against its own people.Mr Hammond appeared to reflect the private soundings among MPs when he said in Germany: “Let me be clear, Britain will not be taking part in air strikes in Syria. I can be very clear about that. We have already had that discussion in our Parliament last year and we won't be revisiting that position."

HERE WAS A SIMPLE AIM at the heart of the top-secret program: Record the website browsing habits of “every visible user on the Internet.” Before long, billions of digital records about ordinary people’s online activities were being stored every day. Among them were details cataloging visits to porn, social media and news websites, search engines, chat forums, and blogs. The mass surveillance operation — code-named KARMA POLICE — was launched by British spies about seven years ago without any public debate or scrutiny. It was just one part of a giant global Internet spying apparatus built by the United Kingdom’s electronic eavesdropping agency, Government Communications Headquarters, or GCHQ. The revelations about the scope of the British agency’s surveillance are contained in documents obtained by The Intercept from National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden. Previous reports based on the leaked files have exposed how GCHQ taps into Internet cables to monitor communications on a vast scale, but many details about what happens to the data after it has been vacuumed up have remained unclear.

Amid a renewed push from the U.K. government for more surveillance powers, more than two dozen documents being disclosed today by The Intercept reveal for the first time several major strands of GCHQ’s existing electronic eavesdropping capabilities.

The surveillance is underpinned by an opaque legal regime that has authorized GCHQ to sift through huge archives of metadata about the private phone calls, emails and Internet browsing logs of Brits, Americans, and any other citizens — all without a court order or judicial warrant

This is the way the multi-trillion dollar Global War on Terror (GWOT) ends: not with a bang, but with a bigger bang. The GWOT, since its conceptualization 13 years ago, in the aftermath of 9/11, is the gift that keeps on giving. And no gift is bigger than a Transformer Al-Qaeda on steroids – bigger, brasher, and wealthier than anything Osama Bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri had ever dreamt of; the IS (Islamic State, formerly known as ISIS) of Caliph Ibrahim, former Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. US President Barack Obama, before deploying his golf holidays in Martha’s Vineyard, casually dropped that bombing the Caliph’s goons in Iraq will take months. One may interpret it as another layer of the Obama administration’s self-avowed “Don't Do Stupid Stuff” foreign policy doctrine, not so subtly mocked by prospective presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. Shock and Awe in 2003 destroyed the whole of Baghdad’s infrastructure in only a few hours. Obama also confirmed the US was showering Iraq again with humanitarian bombing “to protect American interests” (first and foremost) and, as an afterthought, “human rights in Iraq.” One could not possibly expect Obama to declare the US would now bomb “our” allies the House of Saud, who have supported/financed/weaponized IS, in Syria and Iraq. The same erstwhile ISIS that thoroughly enjoyed the marvels of US military training in a secret base in Jordan.

Obama also could not possibly explain why the US always supported ISIS in Syria and now decides to bomb them in Iraq. Oh, the perils of ‘Don’t Do Stupid Stuff’. So a quick translation applies.

Obama’s bombing of the Caliph’s goons has absolutely nothing to do with US ambassador to the UN Samantha Power’s much beloved R2P (‘responsibility to protect’) doctrine – as in the responsibility to protect up to 150,000 Yazidis, not to mention Kurds and remaining Christians, from a ‘potential’ genocide carried out by the Caliph’s goons. The whole fighter jets + drones bombing exercise, lasting ‘months’, has to do with the Benghazi syndrome. The Caliph’s goons were dead set on conquering Irbil - the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan. The Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) is led by the wily Massoud Barzani – a long-time US client/vassal. The US maintains a consulate in Irbil. Crammed with CIA types. Or, as the New York Times so lovingly puts it, “thousands of Americans.” Enter Benghazi. This is an electoral year. Obama is absolutely terrified of another Benghazi – which Republicans have been trying non-stop to blame on his administration’s incompetence. The last thing Obama needs is the Caliph’s goons killing ‘diplomats’ in Erbil. That would certainly raise a tsunami of questions all over again about the shady CIA weapon-smuggling racket – as in arming Syrian ‘rebels’ with weapons from Libya - at the time Benghazi took place. As secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, of course, also knew about it all. But then, and especially now, no one should know that the CIA was weaponizing the bulk of the future Caliph’s forces.

The United States government has already declared that in regards to what it alleges to be a Russian cyberattack against the U.S. Democratic Party, the U.S. reserves the right to go to war against Russia. NATO has accordingly changed its policy so as to assert that a cyberattack (in this case actually cyber-espionage, such as the U.S. government itself perpetrates against even its own allies such as Angela Merkel by tapping her phone) constitutes an act of war by the alleged cyberattacker, and so requires all NATO member nations to join any cyberattacked NATO nation in war against its alleged (cyber)attacker, if the cyberattacked member declares war against its alleged cyberattacker. Excuses are being sought for a war against Russia; and expanding the definition of “invasion,” to include mere espionage, is one such excuse. But it’s not the only one that the Obama Administration has cooked up. U.S. Senator Mike Lee has asserted that President Barack Obama must obtain a declaration of war against Syria — which is allied with and defended by Russia — before invading Syria. Syria has, for the past few years, already been invaded by tens of thousands of foreign jihadists (financed mainly by the royal Sauds and Qataris, and armed mainly with U.S. weaponry) who are trying to overthrow and replace the Syrian government so that pipelines can be built through Syria into Europe to transport Saudi oil and Qatari gas into the EU, the world’s biggest energy-market, which now is dominated by Russia’s oil and gas. Since Syria is already being defended by Russia (those royals’ major competitor in the oil and gas markets), America’s invasion of Syria would necessarily place U.S. and Russia into an air-war against each other (for the benefit of those royal Arabs — who finance jihadist groups, as even Hillary Clinton acknowledges): Syria would thus become a battleground in a broader war against Russia. So: declaring war against Syria would be a second excuse for World War III, and one which would especially serve the desires not only of U.S. ‘defense’ firms but of the U.S. aristocracy’s royal Arabic allies, who buy much of those ‘defense’ firms’ exports (weaponry), and also U.S. oilfield services firms such as pipelines by Halliburton. (It’s good business for them, no one else. Taxpayers and war-victims pay, but those corporations — and royal families — would profit.)

The U.S. government also declares that Russia ‘conquered’ Crimea in 2014 and that Russia must restore it to Ukraine. The U.S. government wants Ukraine to be accepted into NATO, so that all NATO nations will be at war against Russia if Russia doesn’t return Crimea to Ukraine, of which Crimea had only briefly (1954-2014) been a part, until Crimeans voted on 16 March 2014 to rejoin Russia. This Crimean issue is already the basis for America’s economic sanctions against Russia, and thus Russia’s continuing refusal to coerce Crimeans to accept again being part of Ukraine would be yet a third excuse for WW III.

Hillary Clinton says “As President, I will make it clear, that the United States will treat cyber attacks just like any other attack.” She alleges that when information was unauthorizedly made public from Democratic National Committee computers, the cyberattacker was Russia. She can be counted as a strong proponent of that excuse for WW3. She’s with Barack Obama and the other neocons on that. She has furthermore said that the U.S. should shoot down any Russian and Syrian bombers in Syria — the phrase for that proposed U.S. policy is to “establish a no-fly zone” there. She makes clear: “I am advocating the no-fly zone.” It would be war against not only Syria, but Russia. (After all: a no-fly zone in which the U.S. is shooting down the government’s planes and Russia’s planes, would be war by the U.S. against both Syria and Russia, but that’s what she wants to do.) She can thus be counted as a strong proponent of those two excuses for WW3.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Thursday there is evidence that the West is supplying chemical weapons to militants in Syria. “Yes, it’s true,” she told the state-funded Vesti FM radio station on Thursday morning. "Western countries and regional powers are directly and indirectly supplying militants, terrorists and extremists in Syria with banned toxic substances.” The comment came after Syria’s Deputy Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad said on Wednesday that chemical weapons supposedly produced by the United States and Britain had been found in areas previously held by Islamic State.*  The Syrian regime of President Bashar Assad, which Russia backs, has been been widely accused of using chemical weapons. In June, a report by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) said the banned nerve agent sarin had been used in an attack in northern Syria in April.A joint United Nations and OPCW investigation earlier said Syrian government forces had used chlorine gas in three attacks in 2014 and 2015.During the interview, Zakharova said the West was also providing terrorists in Syria with small arms, money and “informational support,” citing the White Helmets, a volunteer group which works in opposition-held territory in Syria, as an example.

In the duration of the “revolutionary frenzy” that categorized western media coverage of the Libyan Civil War in 2011, public audiences were captivated with both tales of rebels aspiring for “democracy” and with complimenting stories of unabated brutality by Gaddafi forces. Without any serious mainstream criticism, an imperialist mythology centered on the interventionist doctrine of the “Responsibility to Protect” was cemented in public consciousness with even usually non-mainstream and “anti-imperialist” figures such as Juan Cole deliberately misrepresenting the situation in Libya. In Cole’s perspective, no reference to armed militants from the start of the conflict or the role of extremism and western premeditation found its way into the narrative and he predicted a simplistic narrative where the overthrow of Gaddafi would lead the region into an era of unity, prosperity and freedom. Libya Today How is Libya today? If one denied the existence of hell, they need not look further than Libya to observe a case of hell on Earth. Libya as a functioning, cohesive state has virtually ceased to exist, having been replaced by a myriad of conflicting factions divided on tribal and religious lines. While mainstream media tends to obscure the identity of these factions and their connection to western imperialists, Eric Draitser in his analysis, “Benghazi, the CIA, and the War in Libya” shows the beyond the fractious infighting, both primary factions engaging in direct combat have been beneficiaries of the NATO imperialist powers in their systematic aggression against the Libyan state.

“Confirmed: U.S. Armed Al Qaeda to Topple Libya’s Gaddaffi” with a very astonishing admission by “top military officers, CIA insiders and think-tankers” confirming the obvious truth that “conspiracy theorists” have been saying since 2011. The US backed Al Qaeda in Libya and that the Benghazi attack was a byproduct of this. Washington’s Blog notes that in 2012, it documented that: The U.S. supported opposition which overthrew Libya’s Gadaffi was largely comprised of Al Qaeda terrorists. According to a 2007 report by West Point’s Combating Terrorism Center’s center, the Libyan city of Benghazi was one of Al Qaeda’s main headquarters – and bases for sending Al Qaeda fighters into Iraq – prior to the overthrow of Gaddafi: The Hindustan Times reported last year: “There is no question that al Qaeda’s Libyan franchise, Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, is a part of the opposition,” Bruce Riedel, former CIA officer and a leading expert on terrorism, told Hindustan Times. It has always been Qaddafi’s biggest enemy and its stronghold is Benghazi. Al Qaeda is now largely in control of Libya.  Indeed, Al Qaeda flags were flown over the Benghazi courthouse once Gaddafi was toppled. What was once deemed conspiracy theory became confirmed reality when the Daily Mail reported as Washington’s Blog subsequently pointed out:

A self-selected group of former top military officers, CIA insiders and think-tankers, declared Tuesday in Washington that a seven-month review of the deadly 2012 terrorist attack has determined that it could have been prevented – if the U.S. hadn’t been helping to arm al-Qaeda militias throughout Libya a year earlier. ‘The United States switched sides in the war on terror with what we did in Libya, knowingly facilitating the provision of weapons to known al-Qaeda militias and figures,’ Clare Lopez, a member of the commission and a former CIA officer, told MailOnline. She blamed the Obama administration for failing to stop half of a $1 billion United Arab Emirates arms shipment from reaching al-Qaeda-linked militants. ‘Remember, these weapons that came into Benghazi were permitted to enter by our armed forces who were blockading the approaches from air and sea,’ Lopez claimed. ‘They were permitted to come in. … [They] knew these weapons were coming in, and that was allowed.. ‘The intelligence community was part of that, the Department of State was part of that, and certainly that means that the top leadership of the United States, our national security leadership, and potentially Congress – if they were briefed on this – also knew about this.’

But even with the West's capitulation in Syria, and months passing without a shred of credible evidence produced, hacks among Western media continue to perpetuate the original narrative. Among these are of course corporate-financier funded think-tanks and propaganda fronts like the Brookings Institution, Foreign Policy Magazine, the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies (FDD), and establishment papers like the Guardian. In the middle of it all is couch-potato self-proclaimed weapons expert, Eliot Higgins, a representation of the West's propaganda 2.0 campaign.  UK-based Higgins lost his job and now spends his days combing social media sites for "evidence" he then analyzes and reports on. The Western media, with its propagandists expelled from Syria and many of its "sources" in Syria exposed in humiliating attempts to fabricate and manipulate evidence, quickly picked Higgins up and elevated his armchair blogging to "expert analysis." Since then, Higgins has joined the already discredited "Syrian Observatory for Human Rights" another UK-based individual, as the basis upon which the West's Syrian narrative spins. 

Whitaker is desperately attempting to keep the wheels on the establishment's new propaganda 2.0 vehicle - manipulating social media, much the way Hersh describes intelligence being manipulated, to create any outcome necessary to bolster a predetermined narrative.  What he doesn't address is the fact that Higgins' work almost entirely depends on videos posted online by people he does not know, who may be misrepresenting who they are, what they are posting, and their motivations for doing so - such is the nature of anonymity on the web and why this evidence alone is useless outside of a larger geopolitical context.  Both Whitaker and Higgins, who maintain that the Syrian government was behind the attacks, fail to address another glaring reality. A false flag attack is designed to look like the work of one's enemy. In other words, terrorists in Syria would use equipment, uniforms, weapons, and tactics that would pin the crime on the Syrian government. All Higgins has proved, thus far, is that the superficial details of the operation made for a convincing false flag attack. 

Toward the end of Higgin's piece, he, like his friends at the Guardian, attempt to claim Al Nusra, contrary to Hersh's report, are most likely not capable of producing sarin.

On October 30 an international conference on Syria  agreed on a framework for ending the conflict in Syria. The communiqué states: While substantial differences remain among the participants, they reached a mutual understanding on the following: 1) Syria’s unity, independence, territorial integrity, and secular character are fundamental. ... 6) Da'esh, and other terrorist groups, as designated by the U.N. Security Council, and further, as agreed by the participants, must be defeated.... Ministers will reconvene within two weeks to continue these discussions.” Secretary of State Kerry had already accepted the "secular" point in earlier talks with his Russian colleague. The next meeting this Friday will mainly be about the question of who is a terrorist and must thereby be defeated. Propagandist for the Jihadis call this a "Russian trap".

So far the U.S. and its allies have supported various fundamentalist groups who's deeds and proclaimed philosophies surely put them into the same category as the Islamic State and al-Qaeda. The British Foreign Minister accuses the U.S. of supporting such terrorist groups and said that this needs to change: The world powers trying to end the civil war in Syria are drawing up a list of "terrorist" groups, Britain said Tuesday, warning that some countries may have to drop support for allies on the ground. "It will require deep breaths on several sides, including the US side," British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond warned, speaking to reporters in Washington. Some of the groups that qualify as terrorists, so Hammond, do get support from the U.S. and it will take a "deep breaths" by the U.S. to refrain from further supporting them. As part of this, Hammond said, the countries backing various factions within the country would have to decide which are moderate enough to be included in the political process and which would be excluded. "I'm not so sure I would write off the possibility of agreeing on who is a terrorist," he said, in remarks at the British embassy the morning after talks with US Secretary of State John Kerry. But he warned that there would be horse trading ahead.

Can one "horse trade" who is a terrorist? Is it "moderate enough" to only cut off the heads of prisoners of war instead of burning them alive? How much would that "trade" cost? Hammond seems to believe that a money-for-values deal is possible and needed. Here is his horse trade: On one side the Saudis want the Jihadists they support to be recognized as non-terrorists: "The Saudis are never going to sign up to Ansar al-Sham being categorized as terrorists," he said, citing the example of one Sunni armed group reported to receive outside Arab backing. "So we have to see whether we can reach a pragmatic solution on these areas," Hammond added.

If you had been a reader of The American Conservative magazine back in December 2011, you might have learned from an article written by me that “Unmarked NATO warplanes are arriving at Turkish military bases close to Iskenderum on the Syrian border, delivering weapons [to the Free Syrian Army] derived from Colonel Muammar Gaddafi’s arsenals…” Well, it seems that the rest of the media is beginning to catch up with the old news, supplemented with significant details by Sy Hersh in the latest issue of the London Review of Books in an article entitled “The Red Line and the Rat Line.” The reality is that numerous former intelligence officials, like myself, have long known most of the story surrounding the on-again off-again intervention by the United States and others in Syria, but what was needed was a Sy Hersh, with his unmatched range of contacts deep in both the Pentagon as well as at CIA and State Department, to stitch it all together with corroboration from multiple sources. In a sense it was a secret that wasn’t really very well hidden but which the mainstream media wouldn’t touch with a barge pole because it revealed that the Obama Administration, just like the Bushies who preceded it, has been actively though clandestinely conspiring to overthrow yet another government in the Middle East. One might well conclude that the White House is like the Bourbon Kings of France in that it never forgets anything but never learns anything either.

The few media outlets that are willing to pick up the Syria story even now are gingerly treating it as something new, jumping in based on their own editorial biases, sometimes emphasizing the CIA and MI6 role in cooperating with the Turks to undermine Bashar al-Assad. But Hersh’s tale is only surprising if one had not been reading between the lines over the past three years, where the clandestine role of the British and American governments was evident and frequently reported on over the internet and, most particularly, in the local media in the Middle East. Far from being either rogue or deliberately deceptive, operations by the U.S. and UK intelligence services, the so-called “ratlines” feeding weapons into Syria, were fully vetted and approved by both the White House and Number 10 Downing Street. The more recent exposure of the Benghazi CIA base’s possible involvement in obtaining Libyan arms as part of the process of equipping the Syrian insurgents almost blew the lid off of the arrangement but somehow the media attention was diverted by a partisan attack on the Obama Administration over who said what and when to explain the security breakdown and the real story sank out of sight.

So this is what happened, roughly speaking: the United States had been seeking the ouster of President Bashar al-Assad of Syria since at least 2003, joining with Saudi Arabia, which had been funding efforts to destabilize his regime even earlier. Why? Because from the Saudi viewpoint Syria was an ally of Iran and was also a heretical state led by a secular government dominated by Alawite Muslims, viewed as being uncomfortably close to Shi’ites in their apostasy. From the U.S. viewpoint, the ties to Iran and reports of Syrian interference in Lebanon were a sufficient casus belli coupled with a geostrategic assessment shared with the Saudis that Syria served as the essential land bridge connecting Hezbollah in Lebanon to Iran. The subsequent Congressional Syria Accountability Acts of 2004 and 2010, like similar legislation directed against Iran, have resulted in little accountability and have instead stifled diplomacy. They punished Syria with sanctions for supporting Hezbollah in Lebanon and for its links to Tehran, making any possible improvement in relations problematical. The 2010 Act even calls for steps to bring about regime change in Damascus. The United States also engaged in a program eerily reminiscent of its recent moves to destabilize the government in Ukraine, i.e., sending in ambassadors and charges who deliberately provoked the Syrian government by meeting with opposition leaders and openly making demands for greater democracy. The last U.S. Ambassador to Syria Robert Ford spoke openly in support of the protesters while serving in Damascus in 2010. On one occasion he was pelted with tomatoes and was eventually removed over safety concerns.