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France is convinced that once the “Muslim Brotherhood” came to power in Turkey, headed by Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey has become a major headache for Western politicians, says Le Figaro. According to its journalists, Turkey used to be an ally of the West, however, it is nothing of the kind anymore. Relations with Turkey took a U-turn once Erdogan started systematically “undermining” Turkey’s strategic relations with Israel which were stable since 1949. Anti-Turkish sentiments in the West were aggravated even further by the games Erdogan had been playing during the “Arab Spring”, when he first became a close friend of Bashar al-Assad, and then stabbed him in the back by allowing jihadists from around the world to swarm into Syria by crossing through Turkey’s territory. When the sworn enemies of Erdogan – local Kurds were dying in a heroic defense of the city of Kobani, Turkey did nothing to relieve their suffering, waiting for Western countries to save the population of the city instead. In this context it’s curious what the former NATO commander of Europe, Ret. General Wesley Clark, has been saying about Turkey : “Let’s be very clear: ISIL is not just a terrorist organization, it is a Sunni terrorist organization. It means it blocks and targets Shia, and that means it’s serving the interests of Turkey and Saudi Arabia even as it poses a threat to them All along there’s always been the idea that Turkey was supporting ISIS in some way… Someone’s buying that oil that ISIL is selling, it’s going through somewhere. It looks to me like it’s probably going through Turkey, but the Turks have never acknowledged it.” Here’s the reason why Russia was stabbed in the back by a NATO member country.

Once Russia began military operations against ISIL in Syria, Ankara’s relations with Washington started deteriorating rapidly. The situation we have on our hands now is further complicated by the fact that it was “defenseless” Turkomans who were shooting Russian pilots as they descended with parachutes, along with bringing down a Russian helicopter that was sent to rescue the pilots. All the recent NATO meetings have been stained by concerns that the Turkish agenda in Syria has little to do with the position of the West. Now that Erdogan’s arrogance has become apparent to everyone, even though he allowed the US Air Force to use a base in Turkey’s territory, he has also been launching attacks against Syrian Kurds that remain the most faithful allies of Washington in the fight against ISIL. It is, therefore, hardly surprising that a retired US Major General Paul Vallely accused the Turkish government of an attempt to create a new Ottoman Empire. According to him, due to all well-known facts of Ankara’s assistance to the Islamic State, Turkey should be expelled from NATO. The Washington Times is also questioning Turkey as a member state of NATO, while underlying that the attack on the Russian Su-24 makes this debate particularly relevant and timely. The newspaper notes that Ankara has been providing ISIL units with close air support when the latter was fighting Kurds in Syria and Iraq. Its journalists are convinced that Turkey has been turned into a theocratic Islamist dictatorship, where the freedom of the press is gradually been destroyed.

The conservative American Thinker goes even further by claiming it’s about time to replace Turkey with Russia in NATO, since the West has more in common with Russia than with the Islamist Turkey. To support this position, the magazine notes that when Turkey joined NATO back in February 1952, the advocates of this step argued that they need an Islamic state to prevent Soviet expansion in the region from happening. But it’s clear that this was a deal with the devil. After all, it was the Turkish invasion of Cyprus in 1974 that broke the alliance apart, forcing Greece to withdraw its troop from under NATO command. In 2012, Syria shot down a Turkish fighter since it was deliberately violating its airspace. Later that same year, Turkey bombarded government facilities in Syria. For decades, Turkey has used NATO membership, in order to achieve its own objectives, which, as a rule, do not coincide with the interests of the alliance. In the early 2000s, Turkey chose to demonstrate its support of Islamism, which has always been a more serious threat to the West than the Soviet Union. Therefore, it seems that the American Thinker has expressed the opinion of a larger part of the western public, by urging NATO to get in an alliance with Russia against Islamism, including the “Islamic state of Turkey.”

After Obama assumed office, the US government opted for a new strategy. In June 2009, then Defense Secretary Robert Gates installed Stanley McChrystal, a four-star general who had served in Iraq, as commander of US forces in Afghanistan. McChrystal promoted the aggressive pursuit of the Taliban. Obama sent 33,000 additional troops to Afghanistan, but their deployment was tied to a demand that military officials provide a binding date for the withdrawal of US forces. At the same time, the president distanced himself from the grand objectives the West had proclaimed when it first marched into Kabul. The United States would not try to make Afghanistan "a perfect place," said Obama. Its new main objective was to fight the insurgency.

This marked the beginning of one of the bloodiest phases of the war. Some 2,412 civilians died in Afghanistan in 2009. Two-thirds of them were killed by insurgents and 25 percent by NATO troops and Afghan security forces. The number of operations against the Taliban rose sharply, to between 10 and 15 a night. The operations were based on the lists maintained by the CIA and NATO -- Obama's lists. The White House dubbed the strategy "escalate and exit." McChrystal's successor, General David Petraeus, documented the strategy in "Field Manual 3-24" on fighting insurgencies, which remains a standard work today. Petraeus outlined three stages in fighting guerilla organizations like the Taliban. The first was a cleansing phase, in which the enemy leadership is weakened. After that, local forces were to regain control of the captured areas. The third phase was focused on reconstruction. Behind closed doors, Petraeus and his staff explained exactly what was meant by "cleansing." German politicians recall something that Michael T. Flynn, the head of ISAF intelligence in Afghanistan, once said during a briefing: "The only good Talib is a dead Talib."

Under Petraeus, a merciless campaign began to hunt down the so-called shadow governors and local supporters aligned with the Islamists. For the Americans, the fact that the operations often ended in killings was seen as a success. In August 2010, Petraeus proudly told diplomats in Kabul that he had noticed a shifting trend. The figures he presented as evidence made some of the ambassadors feel uneasy. At least 365 insurgent commanders, Petraeus explained, had been neutralized in the last three months, for an average of about four killings a day. The existence of documents relating to the so-called Joint Prioritized Effects List (JPEL) has only been described in vague terms until now. The missions by US special units are mentioned but not discussed in detail in the US Army Afghanistan war logs published by WikiLeaks in 2010, together with the New York Times, the Guardian and SPIEGEL. The documents that have now become accessible provide, for the first time, a systematic view of the targeted killings. They outline the criteria used to determine who was placed on the list and why.

When an operation could potentially result in civilian casualties, ISAF headquarters in Kabul had to be involved. "The rule of thumb was that when there was estimated collateral damage of up to 10 civilians, the ISAF commander in Kabul was to decide whether the risk was justifiable," says an ISAF officer who worked with the lists for years. If more potential civilian casualties were anticipated, the decision was left up to the relevant NATO headquarters office. Bodyguards, drivers and male attendants were viewed as enemy combatants, whether or not they actually were. Only women, children and the elderly were treated as civilians. Even officers who were involved in the program admit that these guidelines were cynical. If a Taliban fighter was repeatedly involved in deadly attacks, a "weighing of interests" was performed. The military officials would then calculate how many human lives could be saved by the "kill," and how many civilians would potentially be killed in an airstrike.

The document also reveals how vague the basis for deadly operations apparently was. In the voice recognition procedure, it was sufficient if a suspect identified himself by name once during the monitored conversation. Within the next 24 hours, this voice recognition was treated as "positive target identification" and, therefore, as legitimate grounds for an airstrike. This greatly increased the risk of civilian casualties. Probably one of the most controversial decisions by NATO in Afghanistan is the expansion of these operations to include drug dealers. According to an NSA document, the United Nations estimated that the Taliban was earning $300 million a year through the drug trade. The insurgents, the document continues, "could not be defeated without disrupting the drug trade."

According to the NSA document, in October 2008 the NATO defense ministers made the momentous decision that drug networks would now be "legitimate targets" for ISAF troops. "Narcotics traffickers were added to the Joint Prioritized Effects List (JPEL) list for the first time," the report reads. In the opinion of American commanders like Bantz John Craddock, there was no need to prove that drug money was being funneled to the Taliban to declare farmers, couriers and dealers as legitimate targets of NATO strikes.

In early 2009, Craddock, NATO's Supreme Allied Commander for Europe at the time, issued an order to expand the targeted killings of Taliban officials to drug producers. This led to heated discussions within NATO. German NATO General Egon Ramms declared the order "illegal" and a violation of international law. The power struggle within NATO finally led to a modification of Craddock's directive: Targets related to the drug production at least had to be investigated as individual cases. The top-secret dossier could be highly damaging to the German government. For years, German authorities have turned over the mobile phone numbers of German extremists in Afghanistan to the United States. At the same time, the German officials claimed that homing in on mobile phone signals was far too imprecise for targeted killings. This is apparently an untenable argument. According to the 2010 document, both Eurofighters and drones had "the ability to geolocate a known GSM handset." In other words, active mobile phones could serve as tracking devices for the special units.

The classified documents could now have legal repercussions. The human rights organization Reprieve is weighing legal action against the British government. Reprieve believes it is especially relevant that the lists include Pakistanis who were located in Pakistan. "The British government has repeatedly stated that it is not pursuing targets in Pakistan and not doing air strikes on Pakistani territory," says Reprieve attorney Jennifer Gibson. The documents, she notes, also show that the "war on terror" was virtually conflated with the "war on drugs." "This is both new and extremely legally troubling," says Gibson.

A 2009 CIA study that addresses targeted killings of senior enemy officials worldwide reaches a bitter conclusion. Because of the Taliban's centralized but flexible leadership, as well as its egalitarian tribal structures, the targeted killings were only moderately successful in Afghanistan. "Morover, the Taliban has a high overall ability to replace lost leaders," the study finds.

Ukraine says Russia has already deployed almost 20,000 troops in Crimea, which ordinarily hosts the sailors and soldiers affiliated with Russia’s Black Sea Fleet, ahead of Sunday’s referendum. Tens of thousands more – plus artillery and tank units – are currently taking part in snap exercises in areas near Russia’s border with eastern Ukraine, while Kiev is hastily mobilizing a new National Guard to supplement its own underprepared military forces.Worries are high that Russia will decide to send troops into eastern Ukraine, which has seen violent clashes this week between pro-Russian and pro-Kiev protesters in the cities of Kharkiv and Donetsk.The Russian Foreign Ministry said Saturday that it was “receiving many appeals from peaceful citizens who are asking for protection.” The requests for Russian help “will be considered,” the ministry said.

Russia used its veto power at the United Nations Security Council to block a draft resolution Saturday that criticized the referendum. Thirteen of the 15 members of the Security Council supported the motion, while China abstained.

And, based on the information provided by the international mass media, the Saudi leadership has split in their opinion on whether to continue funding Syria or to begin reducing their financial commitment. “Riyadh is facing a choice: to give more support to the moderate opposition or to look for a compromise,” an American expert on national security, James Farvell, wrote in The National Interest. The expert explained that if Saudis offer more support, that would trigger a confrontation with Russia, but if they side with Moscow, Russia’s regional influence might be reinforced and that might, in turn, challenge Saudi Arabia’s interests. Because of this dilemma, controversial information regarding Saudi’s decisions are appearing in the press. On the one hand, Saudi Arabia was one of the first to condemn Russia after the beginning of the Russian military operation in Syria on September 30. It accused Russia of bombing the troops of moderate opposition instead of ISIS. “These attacks resulted in the deaths of numerous innocent victims. We call for a stop it immediately,” demagogically and groundlessly said the representative of Saudi Arabia Abdallah al-Muallimi in the UN. Simultaneously 53 religious leaders signed an online appeal to support a jihad against the Syrian authorities as well as the presence of Russia and Iran in this country. They appealed to the countries of the Muslim world to render “moral, financial, military and political support to those who are called the ‘holy warriors of Syria’.” The authors of the appeal explicitly stated that if they fail, the other Sunni states in the region, and, first of all, Saudi Arabia will be the next victims.

With reference to a high-ranking Saudi official who wished to remain anonymous, the BBC stated that armed groups of the so-called moderate opposition would receive new, high-tech weapons, including tank destroyers. Jaish al-Fath, The Free Syrian Army and The Southern Front moderate opposition groups will also receive support. According to the source, it is quite likely that the “moderate opposition” in Syria will receive surface-to-air systems as well. Keeping in mind that Russia is carrying out air strikes across not only the facilities of ISIS, but also the above listed groups, a scenario when Saudis turn their weapon against Russian aviation is quite possible. On the other hand, a curious document, apparently a copy of the instructions issued for the embassies of Saudi Arabia in the Middle Eastern countries, has been uploaded to the Internet. The main idea of the documents is that all the diplomatic representative offices should gradually cease financial support of the armed Syrian opposition, apparently owing to the low efficiency of militants’ activities. The authenticity of the document raises certain doubts, as is always the case with such documents. However, specialists in the Arabic language concluded that the text was written by a native speaker, and that the document’s design conforms to the style adopted in Saudi Arabia. It shouldn’t be ruled out that the drying up of the source of funding, that militants used to receive from the Saudis, against the backdrop of a certain degree of success of the government troops as well as the increasing military and technical assistance to Syria on the part of Russia, have convinced many “oppositionists” to surrender and change masters. This process is expected to only accelerate in the future.

On Sunday, October 11, the Defense Minister, Mohammed bin Salman, visited Sochi. The search for common ground on the issues related to the situation in Syria was the main theme of the meeting held by the son of the Saudi king and Vladimir Putin. The parties also discussed the prospects of their economic cooperation. And, since Saudi Arabia is currently experiencing certain financial difficulties and is in the “clutches” of economic uncertainty, this topic was of a special interest. It was the second visit to the Russian Federation of the Saudi prince, who currently carries out sensitive missions related to the complex relations between the two countries. It should be noted that King of Saudi Arabia Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud has been admitted to hospital in a critical condition and is currently being kept in the intensive care unit of the King Faisal royal hospital in Riyadh.

President Obama for his repeated misrepresentations about the bulk collection program (calling the wiretap court "transparent" and saying "all of Congress" knew "exactly how this program works") while in effect acknowledging the public value of the Edward Snowden leaks by ordering the long-overdue declassification of key documents about the NSA's activities, and investigations both by a special panel and by the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board. The PCLOB directly contradicted the President, pointing out that "when the only means through which legislators can try to understand a prior interpretation of the law is to read a short description of an operational program, prepared by executive branch officials, made available only at certain times and locations, which cannot be discussed with others except in classified briefings conducted by those same executive branch officials, legislators are denied a meaningful opportunity to gauge the legitimacy and implications of the legal interpretation in question. Under such circumstances, it is not a legitimate method of statutory construction to presume that these legislators, when reenacting the statute, intended to adopt a prior interpretation that they had no fair means of evaluating." (p. 101)

Even an author of the Patriot Act, Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner (R-WI), was broadsided by the revelation of the telephone metadata dragnet. After learning of the extent of spying on Americans that his Act unleashed, he wrote that the National Security Agency "ignored restrictions painstakingly crafted by lawmakers and assumed plenary authority never imagined by Congress" by cloaking its actions behind the "thick cloud of secrecy" that even our elected representatives could not breech. Clapper recently conceded to the Daily Beast, "I probably shouldn't say this, but I will. Had we been transparent about this [phone metadata collection] from the outset … we wouldn't have had the problem we had." The NSA's former deputy director, John "Chris" Inglis, said the same when NPR asked him if he thought the metadata dragnet should have been disclosed before Snowden. "In hindsight, yes. In hindsight, yes." Speaking about potential (relatively minimal) changes to the National Security Agency even the president acknowledged, "And all too often new authorities were instituted without adequate public debate," and "Given the unique power of the state, it is not enough for leaders to say: Trust us. We won't abuse the data we collect. For history has too many examples when that trust has been breached." (Exhibit A, of course, is the NSA "watchlist" in the 1960's and 1970's that targeted not only antiwar and civil rights activists, but also journalists and even members of Congress.)

The Archive established the not-so-coveted Rosemary Award in 2005, named after President Nixon's secretary, Rose Mary Woods, who testified she had erased 18-and-a-half minutes of a crucial Watergate tape — stretching, as she showed photographers, to answer the phone with her foot still on the transcription pedal. Bestowed annually to highlight the lowlights of government secrecy, the Rosemary Award has recognized a rogue's gallery of open government scofflaws, including the CIA, the Treasury Department, the Air Force, the FBI, the Federal Chief Information Officers' Council, and the career Rosemary leader — the Justice Department — for the last two years. Rosemary-winner James Clapper has offered several explanations for his untruthful disavowal of the National Security Agency's phone metadata dragnet. After his lie was exposed by the Edward Snowden revelations, Clapper first complained to NBC's Andrea Mitchell that the question about the NSA's surveillance of Americans was unfair, a — in his words — "When are you going to stop beating your wife kind of question." So, he responded "in what I thought was the most truthful, or least untruthful, manner by saying 'no.'"

The Emmy and George Polk Award-winning National Security Archive, based at the George Washington University, has carried out thirteen government-wide audits of FOIA performance, filed more than 50,000 Freedom of Information Act requests over the past 28 years, opened historic government secrets ranging from the CIA's "Family Jewels" to documents about the testing of stealth aircraft at Area 51, and won a series of historic lawsuits that saved hundreds of millions of White House e-mails from the Reagan through Obama presidencies, among many other achievements.

After continuing criticism for his lie, Clapper wrote a letter to Chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Dianne Feinstein, now explaining that he misunderstood Wyden's question and thought it was about the PRISM program (under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act) rather than the telephone metadata collection program (under Section 215 of the Patriot Act). Clapper wrote that his staff "acknowledged the error" to Senator Wyden soon after — yet he chose to reject Wyden's offer to amend his answer. Former NSA senior counsel Joel Brenner blamed Congress for even asking the question, claiming that Wyden "sandbagged" Clapper by the "vicious tactic" of asking "Does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans?" Meanwhile, Steve Aftergood of the Federation of American Scientists countered that "it is of course wrong for officials to make false statements, as DNI Clapper did," and that in fact the Senate Intelligence Committee "became complicit in public deception" for failing to rebut or correct Clapper's statement, which they knew to be untruthful. Clapper described his unclassified testimony as a game of "stump the chump." But when it came to oversight of the National Security Agency, it appears that senators and representatives were the chumps being stumped. According to Representative Justin Amash (R-Mich), the House Intelligence Committee "decided it wasn't worthwhile to share this information" about telephone metadata surveillance with other members of Congress. Classified briefings open to the whole House were a "farce," Amash contended, often consisting of information found in newspapers and public statutes.

Director Clapper joins an undistinguished list of previous Rosemary Award winners: 2012 - the Justice Department (in a repeat performance, for failure to update FOIA regulations for compliance with the law, undermining congressional intent, and hyping its open government statistics) 2011- the Justice Department (for doing more than any other agency to eviscerate President Obama's Day One transparency pledge, through pit-bull whistleblower prosecutions, recycled secrecy arguments in court cases, retrograde FOIA regulations, and mixed FOIA responsiveness) 2010 - the Federal Chief Information Officers' Council (for "lifetime failure" to address the crisis in government e-mail preservation) 2009 - the FBI (for having a record-setting rate of "no records" responses to FOIA requests) 2008 - the Treasury Department (for shredding FOIA requests and delaying responses for decades) 2007 - the Air Force (for disappearing its FOIA requests and having "failed miserably" to meet its FOIA obligations, according to a federal court ruling) 2006 - the Central Intelligence Agency (for the biggest one-year drop-off in responsiveness to FOIA requests yet recorded).   ALSO-RANS The Rosemary Award competition in 2013 was fierce, with a host of government contenders threatening to surpass the Clapper "least untruthful" standard. These secrecy over-achievers included the following FOI delinquents:

Admiral William McRaven, head of the Special Operations Command for the raid that killed Osama Bin Laden, who purged his command's computers and file cabinets of all records on the raid, sent any remaining copies over to CIA where they would be effectively immune from the FOIA, and then masterminded a "no records" response to the Associated Press when the AP reporters filed FOIA requests for raid-related materials and photos. If not for a one-sentence mention in a leaked draft inspector general report — which the IG deleted for the final version — no one would have been the wiser about McRaven's shell game. Subsequently, a FOIA lawsuit by Judicial Watch uncovered the sole remaining e-mail from McRaven ordering the evidence destruction, in apparent violation of federal records laws, a felony for which the Admiral seems to have paid no price. Department of Defense classification reviewers who censored from a 1962 document on the Cuban Missile Crisis direct quotes from public statements by Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev. The quotes referred to the U.S. Jupiter missiles in Turkey that would ultimately (and secretly) be pulled out in exchange for Soviet withdrawal of its missiles in Cuba. The denials even occurred after an appeal by the National Security Archive, which provided as supporting material the text of the Khrushchev statements and multiple other officially declassified documents (and photographs!) describing the Jupiters in Turkey. Such absurd classification decisions call into question all of the standards used by the Pentagon and the National Declassification Center to review historical documents.

Admiral William McRaven memo from May 13, 2011, ordering the destruction of evidence relating to the Osama bin Laden raid. (From Judicial Watch)

The Department of Justice Office of Information Policy, which continues to misrepresent to Congress the government's FOIA performance, while enabling dramatic increases in the number of times government agencies invoke the purely discretionary "deliberative process" exemption. Five years after President Obama declared a "presumption of openness" for FOIA requests, Justice lawyers still cannot show a single case of FOIA litigation in which the purported new standards (including orders from their own boss, Attorney General Eric Holder) have caused the Department to change its position in favor of disclosure.

There is a slight problem though. Buried in sensationalist reports in Le Monde or Liberation is the fact that the French scientific analyses - based on two samples, one of them collected by Le Monde reporters - do not specify who used sarin, the government or the "rebels". Even UN experts, in their official report, have admitted as much.

The Susan and Samantha show And now, to compound the drama, we have Susan Rice as the new US National Security Adviser and Samantha Power as the new US ambassador at the UN Security Council. It's always helpful to remember that along with Hillary Clinton, these were the Three Graces of "humanitarian intervention" that forcefully pushed for the bombing and destruction of Libya. Whatever replay strategy Susan and Samantha may come up with, Russia and China will veto. Moreover, even the Washington establishment admits all options are noxious. [4] To top it off, Turkey has been plunged into the Taksim/Occupy Gezi/Down with the Dictator maelstrom - and the last thing an embattled Erdogan will be thinking about is to further empower a bunch of "rebel" losers.

In both roles he emphatically endorsed the Iraq embargo, thus the silent monthly infanticide. Madeleine Albright in trousers. Iraq’s new born and under fives for her were: “ … a price worth it.” Then came the 2003 dodgy Downing Street dossier used by Colin Powell at the UN for the invasion’s justification, the subsequent perhaps one and a half million deaths in a country where near half the population were children – the rest is holocaustal history. Between Madeleine Albright’s admission (12th May 1996) that “over half a million children had died” and Blair’s tenure between 1997 to the invasion, six years later, a further near half a million children died (do the maths.) Yet Save The Children – whose commitment “No Child Born to Die” is at the top of each page of the charity’s website – honour this tyrant.

It has to be hoped that this shameful lauding of a man who should be answering to a Nuremberg model Tribunal and on whom the Chilcot Inquiry is still to release it’s findings, has nothing to do with the fact that the Chief Executive of Save the Children, Justin Forsyth was in 2004: “ … recruited to No 10 (Downing Street) by Tony Blair …” and later became Blair’s successor: “ Gordon Brown’s Strategic Communications and Campaigns Director …” (6)

Another Save The Children executive, Chief Financial Officer Sam Aharpe: “worked for nearly 30 years with the UK Government development programme” including under Tony Blair, according to their website – whilst Fergus Drake, Director of Global Programmes since 2009: “Prior to this … worked for the Office of Tony Blair in Rwanda advising President Kagame …” The day after Blair’s Gala Award, Save The Children, with UNICEF and other aid agencies released a statement: “On the 25th anniversary of the Convention on The Rights of the Child – Stepping up the global effort to advance the rights of every child.” The enshrined commitments were: “ … not only to some children, but to all children … not only to advance some of their rights, but all their rights – including their right to survive and to thrive, to grow and to learn, to have their voices heard and heeded, and to be protected from discrimination and violence in all its manifestations.” (7) Irony, chutzpah, hypocrisy eat your hearts out.

Of course, as Gaza was decimated again in July and August, defenceless, with no army, navy or air force, resulting in over 2,000 deaths, including nearly 500 children, the Middle East “Peace Envoy” fled his posh pad in Jerusalem and gave a two month early “surprise birthday party” for his wife in one of his seven UK mansions, safely out of the firing line – and said nothing about saving the children, or indeed anyone else. He has subsequently been silent about Gaza’s 475,000 souls living in emergency conditions, 17,200 destroyed homes and 244 damaged schools (8.) Incidentally, if you are considering donating to Save the Children or buying their Christmas cards, give generously. Mr Forsyth and his colleagues struggle along on about 160 thousand pounds a year and the Chief Executive makes do on 234 pounds annually (9.)

Children saving seems to be somewhat selective at this agency which operates in “more than 120 countries.” For example, in November 2003, the Guardian reported that: “Senior figures at Save the Children US . . . demanded the withdrawal of the criticism and an effective veto on any future statements blaming the invasion for the plight of Iraqi civilians’ suffering malnourishment and shortages of medical supplies.” Fast forward to the run up to another US extrajudicial assassination of the man purported to be Osama bin Laden in May 2011 in Abbottabad, Pakistan. Save The Children: “had been under suspicion from authorities ever since a doctor accused of assisting the CIA in its search for the al-Qaida leader claimed that Save the Children had introduced him to US intelligence officers.” (11.) Dr Shakil Afridi, currently serving 33 years in jail was: “accused of setting up a bogus hepatitis B vaccination campaign in the Abbottabad area to try to pinpoint Bin Laden’s exact location”, via DNA samples which: “were to be tested by the CIA for genetic matches to Bin Laden.”

Whilst: “Afridi never succeeded in persuading (people) to give blood, his collaboration with a foreign intelligence service is regarded as an act of treason by Pakistan’s security establishment.” Save The Children which emphatically denied employing or paying Dr Afridi or indeed having a vaccination programme in Abbottabad were nevertheless expelled from Pakistan in September 2012. In spite of denials, internal mails on the dispute obtained by the Center for Investigative Reporting in Pakistan (12) which can be read in full (13) make interesting reading.

A relatively recent Save The Children initiative has been to appoint Samantha Cameron, wife of current UK Prime Minister David Cameron as their “Ambassador” for Syria. Since the organization cannot work in Syria, she has brought stories of “innocent childhoods being smashed to pieces” from neighbouring countries. Of course Britain under Cameron is arming and training the Syrian insurgents. (14.) Cameron is a Blair admirer, on record as taking his advice. “Peace Envoy” Blair is on record as enthusiast for another illegal overthrow in Syria with “no regrets” over Iraq.

As the fury mounts over Blair’s Award and Christmas approaches, Denis Halliday, former UN Coordinator in Iraq who resigned over the embargo during Blair’s premiership stating that it was “genocide”, reminded me of Christmas 1998 when Blair stood in front of his Christmas tree outside 10 Downing Street and declared that the UK and US were again (illegally of course) bombing Iraq. During this further blitz, Halliday’s successor, Hans von Sponeck, who was also to resign in disgust, was sleeping on the floor in the UN building in Baghdad, with his staff and families, the building was further out of town and seemed safer for those who took rescue. So as Save The Children lauds Blair and trumpets the Rights of the Child, perhaps they should reflect the horror he has wrought. In Iraq one in four surviving children now has stunted physical or intellectual development due to malnutrition. There are an estimated 35,000 infant deaths annually, over a quarter of Iraqi children, three million, suffer post traumatic stress disorder. (War Child: “Mission Unaccomplished”, 2013.)

In light of all this, it’s difficult to take seriously Netanyahu’s most recent claim that he supports the creation of a Palestinian state. At best, he has in the past expressed support for a Palestinian “entity” with some features of self-governance (an idea that has well-known historical precedents), but certainly not one that affords genuine independence, freedom or statehood to its inhabitants. At his most brazen, he has denied the possibility of even that limited form of self-determination, stating bluntly that Israel will control the entire West Bank and keep its inhabitants under indefinite military subjugation. Netanyahu has nonetheless been allowed to maintain a convenient fiction that he supports the negotiated goal of Palestinian self-determination. In reality, he has never really supported it. Thanks in large part to Netanyahu’s leadership, a Palestinian state will likely never emerge. Due to his own obstinance, as well as American indulgence, a binational state or a formalized Apartheid regime have now become the most probable remaining outcomes to this disastrous, decades-long conflict.

As much as Russia may be downsizing, Iran (and Hezbollah) are not. Tehran has trained and weaponized key paramilitary forces – thousands of soldiers from Iraq and Afghanistan fighting side by side with Hezbollah and the Syrian Arab Army (SAA). The SAA will keep advancing and establishing facts on the ground. As the Geneva negotiations pick up, those facts are now relatively frozen. Which brings us to the key sticking point in Geneva – which has got to be included in the possible grand bargain. The grand bargain is based on the current ceasefire (or "cessation of hostilities") holding, which is far from a given. Assuming all these positions hold, a federal Syria could emerge, what could be dubbed Break Up Light.

And yet, in the shadows, lurks the possibility that Russian intel may be ready to strike a deal with the Turkish military – with the corollary that a possible removal of Sultan Erdogan would pave the way for the reestablishment of the Russia-Turkey friendship, essential for Eurasia integration.

Only the proverbially clueless Western corporate media was caught off-guard by Russia’s latest diplomatic coup in Syria. Consistency has been the norm. Russia has been consistently upgrading the Russia-China strategic partnership. This has run in parallel to the hybrid warfare in Ukraine (asymmetric operations mixed with economic, political, military and technological support to the Donetsk and Lugansk republics); even NATO officials with a decent IQ had to admit that without Russian diplomacy there’s no solution to the war in Donbass. In Syria, Moscow accomplished the outstanding feat of making Team Obama see the light beyond the fog of neo-con-instilled war, leading to a solution involving Syria’s chemical arsenal after Obama ensnared himself in his own red line. Obama owes it to Putin and Lavrov, who literally saved him not only from tremendous embarrassment but from yet another massive Middle East quagmire.

Russia will be closely monitoring the current “cessation of hostilities”; and if the War Party decides to ramp up “support” for ISIS/ISIL/Daesh or the “moderate rebel” front via any shadow war move, Russia will be back in a flash. As for Sultan Erdogan, he can brag what he wants about his “no-fly zone” pipe dream; but the fact is the northwestern Syria-Turkish border is now fully protected by the S-400 air defense system. Moreover, the close collaboration of the “4+1” coalition – Russia, Syria, Iran, Iraq, plus Hezbollah – has broken more ground than a mere Russia-Shi’te alignment. It prefigures a major geopolitical shift, where NATO is not the only game in town anymore, dictating humanitarian imperialism; this “other” coalition could be seen as a prefiguration of a future, key, global role for the Shanghai Cooperation Organization.

As we stand, it may seem futile to talk about winners and losers in the five-year-long Syrian tragedy – especially with Syria destroyed by a vicious, imposed proxy war. But facts on the ground point, geopolitically, to a major victory for Russia, Iran and Syrian Kurds, and a major loss for Turkey and the GCC petrodollar gang, especially considering the huge geo-energy interests in play. It’s always crucial to stress that Syria is an energy war – with the “prize” being who will be better positioned to supply Europe with natural gas; the proposed Iran-Iraq-Syria pipeline, or the rival Qatar pipeline to Turkey that would imply a pliable Damascus. Other serious geopolitical losers include the self-proclaimed humanitarianism of the UN and the EU. And most of all the Pentagon and the CIA and their gaggle of weaponized “moderate rebels”. It ain’t over till the last jihadi sings his Paradise song. Meanwhile, “time out” Russia is watching.