Iraq – Page 5

Spanish parliament approves deployment of 300 soldiers to train Iraqi army to fight IS

October 23, 2014 by Nasheman

Iraqi Army soldiers march as part of a parade marking the founding anniversary of the army’s artillery section in Baghdad. © REUTERS/ Mahmoud Raouf Mahmoud

Madrid/RIA Novosti: The Congress of Deputies of Spain (the lower house of parliament) on Wednesday has voted in favor of sending troops to Iraq to train the country’s army to fight against the Islamic State (IS) militants, with 314 lawmakers out of 329 supporting the move.

“IS is a rather strong enemy. They have at least 30,000 militants, about 12,000 of which are foreigners. They have a lot of seized artillery ammunition in northern and central parts of the country,” Spanish Defense Minister Pedro Morenes said, addressing lawmakers.

Spanish soldiers will train the Iraqi military to take part in special, and mine clearance operations. The Spanish troops will not participate in military operations.

Morenes stressed that 300 Spanish soldiers will be deployed to Iraq in the end of 2014, or in the beginning of 2015. They will stay close to Iraqi city of Nasiriyah for up to six months, and the operation will cost Spanish government about $44 million.

“The participation of Spain in the international coalition against the IS shows country’s willingness to maintain peace and stability in the world,” Morenes added.

Twenty two countries already said that they are willing to provide some sort of assistance in battling IS, which has recently taken over swathes of Iraq and Syria, proclaiming an Islamic caliphate on the controlled territories.

Spain was the first country to withdraw their troops from Iraq in 2004, after a terrorist attack in Madrid on March 11, 2004, which claimed 191 lives.

Canada, at war for 13 years, shocked that ‘a terrorist’ attacked its soldiers

October 23, 2014 by Nasheman

Canada’s Prime Minister Stephen Harper outlines his government’s plan to participate in a military campaign against Islamic State militants, in the House of Commons on Parliament Hill in Ottawa on October 3, 2014. REUTERS/CHRIS WATTIE

by Glenn Greenwald, The Intercept

In Quebec on Monday, two Canadian soldiers were hit by a car driven by Martin Couture-Rouleau, a 25-year-old Canadian who, as The Globe and Mail reported, “converted to Islam recently and called himself Ahmad Rouleau.” One of the soldiers died, as did Couture-Rouleau when he was shot by police upon apprehension after allegedly brandishing a large knife. Police speculated that the incident was deliberate, alleging the driver waited for two hours before hitting the soldiers, one of whom was wearing a uniform. The incident took place in the parking lot of a shopping mall 30 miles southeast of Montreal, “a few kilometres from the Collège militaire royal de Saint-Jean, the military academy operated by the Department of National Defence.”

The right-wing Canadian government wasted no time in seizing on the incident to promote its fear-mongering agenda over terrorism, which includes pending legislation to vest its intelligence agency, CSIS, with more spying and secrecy powers in the name of fighting ISIS. A government spokesperson asserted “clear indications” that the driver “had become radicalized.”

In a “clearly prearranged exchange,” a conservative MP, during parliamentary question time, asked Prime Minister Stephen Harper (pictured above) whether this was considered a “terrorist attack”; in reply, the prime minister gravely opined that the incident was “obviously extremely troubling.” Canada’s Public Safety Minister Steven Blaney pronounced the incident “clearly linked to terrorist ideology,” while newspapers predictably followed suit, calling it a “suspected terrorist attack” and “homegrown terrorism.” CSIS spokesperson Tahera Mufti said “the event was the violent expression of an extremist ideology promoted by terrorist groups with global followings” and added: “That something like this would happen in a peaceable Canadian community like Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu shows the long reach of these ideologies.”

In sum, the national mood and discourse in Canada is virtually identical to what prevails in every Western country whenever an incident like this happens: shock and bewilderment that someone would want to bring violence to such a good and innocent country (“a peaceable Canadian community like Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu”), followed by claims that the incident shows how primitive and savage is the “terrorist ideology” of extremist Muslims, followed by rage and demand for still more actions of militarism and freedom-deprivation. There are two points worth making about this:

First, Canada has spent the last 13 years proclaiming itself a nation at war. It actively participated in the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan and was an enthusiastic partner in some of the most extremist War on Terror abuses perpetrated by the U.S. Earlier this month, the Prime Minister revealed, with the support of a large majority of Canadians, that “Canada is poised to go to war in Iraq, as [he] announced plans in Parliament [] to send CF-18 fighter jets for up to six months to battle Islamic extremists.” Just yesterday, Canadian Defence Minister Rob Nicholson flamboyantly appeared at the airfield in Alberta from which the fighter jets left for Iraq and stood tall as he issued the standard Churchillian war rhetoric about the noble fight against evil.

It is always stunning when a country that has brought violence and military force to numerous countries acts shocked and bewildered when someone brings a tiny fraction of that violence back to that country. Regardless of one’s views on the justifiability of Canada’s lengthy military actions, it’s not the slightest bit surprising or difficult to understand why people who identify with those on the other end of Canadian bombs and bullets would decide to attack the military responsible for that violence.

That’s the nature of war. A country doesn’t get to run around for years wallowing in war glory, invading, rendering and bombing others, without the risk of having violence brought back to it. Rather than being baffling or shocking, that reaction is completely natural and predictable. The only surprising thing about any of it is that it doesn’t happen more often.

The issue here is not justification (very few people would view attacks on soldiers in a shopping mall parking lot to be justified). The issue is causation. Every time one of these attacks occurs — from 9/11 on down — Western governments pretend that it was just some sort of unprovoked, utterly “senseless” act of violence caused by primitive, irrational, savage religious extremism inexplicably aimed at a country innocently minding its own business. They even invent fairy tales to feed to the population to explain why it happens: they hate us for our freedoms.

Those fairy tales are pure deceit. Except in the rarest of cases, the violence has clearly identifiable and easy-to-understand causes: namely, anger over the violence that the country’s government has spent years directing at others. The statements of those accused by the west of terrorism, and even the Pentagon’s own commissioned research, have made conclusively clear what motivates these acts: namely, anger over the violence, abuse and interference by Western countries in that part of the world, with the world’s Muslims overwhelmingly the targets and victims. The very policies of militarism and civil liberties erosions justified in the name of stopping terrorism are actually what fuels terrorism and ensures its endless continuation.

If you want to be a country that spends more than a decade proclaiming itself at war and bringing violence to others, then one should expect that violence will sometimes be directed at you as well. Far from being the by-product of primitive and inscrutable religions, that behavior is the natural reaction of human beings targeted with violence. Anyone who doubts that should review the 13-year orgy of violence the U.S. has unleashed on the world since the 9/11 attack, as well as the decades of violence and interference from the U.S. in that region prior to that.

Second, in what conceivable sense can this incident be called a “terrorist” attack? As I have written many times over the last several years, and as some of the best scholarship proves, “terrorism” is a word utterly devoid of objective or consistent meaning. It is little more than a totally malleable, propagandistic fear-mongering term used by Western governments (and non-Western ones) to justify whatever actions they undertake. As Professor Tomis Kapitan wrote in a brilliant essay in The New York Times on Monday: “Part of the success of this rhetoric traces to the fact that there is no consensus about the meaning of ‘terrorism.’”

But to the extent the term has any common understanding, it includes the deliberate (or wholly reckless) targeting of civilians with violence for political ends. But in this case in Canada, it wasn’t civilians who were targeted. If one believes the government’s accounts of the incident, the driver waited two hours until he saw a soldier in uniform. In other words, he seems to have deliberately avoided attacking civilians, and targeted a soldier instead – a member of a military that is currently fighting a war.

Again, the point isn’t justifiability. There is a compelling argument to make that undeployed soldiers engaged in normal civilian activities at home are not valid targets under the laws of war (although the U.S. and its closest allies use extremely broad and permissive standards for what constitutes legitimate military targets when it comes to their own violence). The point is that targeting soldiers who are part of a military fighting an active war is completely inconsistent with the common usage of the word “terrorism,” and yet it is reflexively applied by government officials and media outlets to this incident in Canada (and others like it in the UK and the US).

That’s because the most common functional definition of “terrorism” in Western discourse is quite clear. At this point, it means little more than: “violence directed at Westerners by Muslims” (when not used to mean “violence by Muslims,” it usually just means: violence the state dislikes). The term “terrorism” has become nothing more than a rhetorical weapon for legitimizing all violence by Western countries, and delegitimizing all violence against them, even when the violence called “terrorism” is clearly intended as retaliation for Western violence.

This is about far more than semantics. It is central to how the west propagandizes its citizenries; the manipulative use of the “terrorism” term lies at heart of that. As Professor Kapitan wrote yesterday in The New York Times:

Even when a definition is agreed upon, the rhetoric of “terror” is applied both selectively and inconsistently. In the mainstream American media, the “terrorist” label is usually reserved for those opposed to the policies of the U.S. and its allies. By contrast, some acts of violence that constitute terrorism under most definitions are not identified as such — for instance, the massacre of over 2000 Palestinian civilians in the Beirut refugee camps in 1982 or the killings of more than 3000 civilians in Nicaragua by “contra” rebels during the 1980s, or the genocide that took the lives of at least a half million Rwandans in 1994. At the opposite end of the spectrum, some actions that do not qualify as terrorism are labeled as such — that would include attacks by Hamas, Hezbollah or ISIS, for instance, against uniformed soldiers on duty.

Historically, the rhetoric of terror has been used by those in power not only to sway public opinion, but to direct attention away from their own acts of terror.

At this point, “terrorism” is the term that means nothing, but justifies everything. It is long past time that media outlets begin skeptically questioning its usage by political officials rather than mindlessly parroting it.

UPDATE: Multiple conservative commentators have claimed that this article and my subsequent discussion of it are about this morning’s shooting of a solider in Ottawa. Aside from the fact that what I wrote is expressly about a completely different incident – one that took place in Quebec on Monday – this article and my comments were published before this morning’s shooting spree was reported. So unless someone believes I possess powers of clairvoyance, the claim that I was commenting on the Ottawa shooting – about which virtually nothing is known, including the identity and motive of the shooter(s) – is obviously false.

Then there’s also the extremely predictable accusation that I was justifying the attack on the soldiers. I know from prior experience in discussing these questions that no matter how clear you make it that you are writing about causation and not justification, many will still distort what you write to claim you’ve justified the attack. That’s true even if one makes as clear as the English language permits that you’re not writing about justification: “The issue here is not justification (very few people would view attacks on soldiers in a shopping mall parking lot to be justified). The issue is causation.” If there’s a way to make that any clearer, please let me know.

One more time: the difference between “causation” and “justification” is so obvious that it should require no explanation. If one observes that someone who smokes four packs of cigarettes a day can expect to develop emphysema, that’s an observation about causation, not a celebration of the person’s illness. Only a willful desire to distort, or some deep confusion, can account for a failure to process this most basic point.

UPDATE II: In that brilliant essay I referenced above, published just three days ago in The New York Times, Professor Tomis Kaptian made this point:

Obviously, to point out the causes and objectives of particular terrorist actions is to imply nothing about their legitimacy — that is an independent matter….

That point is so simple and, as he said, “obvious” that I have a hard time understanding what could account for some commentators conflating the two other than a willful desire to mislead.

McCain insists on sending US ground troops to Syria, Iraq

October 22, 2014 by Nasheman

Senator John McCain (Reuters / Joshua Roberts)

by RT

If Republicans gain control of the US Senate following the November midterm elections, President Barack Obama should expect an old rival in a powerful position to push for US ground troops in Iraq and Syria.

Sen. John McCain, who lost the 2008 presidential election to Obama, is currently the most senior Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee. If his party wins a majority in the Senate, as it is expected to do, McCain would become chairman of the committee, which oversees defense policy and the military.

The longtime senator from Arizona said over the weekend that he would use his perch on the committee to advocate sending ground troops to buttress US-led airstrikes against extremist group Islamic State (also known as ISIS and ISIL), which has come to control large areas of Iraq and Syria since the latter’s civil war brought the group to prominence.

“Frankly, I know of no military expert who believes we are going to defeat ISIS with this present strategy,”McCain said at a Pacific Council on International Policy conference, according to The Huffington Post.

McCain has hit the campaign trail ahead of election day to support his party’s Senate candidates. The GOP has painted President Obama’s foreign policy and national security policies as weak as well as insufficient in the fight against jihadist group du jour, Islamic State.

“We may be able to ‘contain,’ but to actually defeat ISIS is going to require more boots on the ground, more vigorous strikes, more special forces, further arming the Kurdish peshmerga forces and creating a no-fly zone and buffer zone in Syria,” McCain said.

Syrian President Bashar Assad, a fellow foe of Islamic State, must be removed from office if the US wants to see success against extremism in the region, McCain added.

Many top congressional Republicans have stated a desire to send combat troops back to Iraq and into Syria ever since American airstrikes against Islamic State began this summer. President Obama has repeatedly said no ground troops will be sent to the region, despite the stated willingness of top Pentagon brass to suggest that this very option might be necessary to “destroy and degrade” Islamic State.

Public opinion seems to tilt slightly to the side of withholding troop deployments. A recent Gallup poll found that 54 percent of respondents opposed sending ground troops to fight Islamic State.

Outside of American troop deployments, McCain said the US must arm Kurdish forces currently fighting Islamic State, send more arms to the Free Syrian Army, and institute a no-fly zone and buffer zones to safeguard territory and appease regional allies like Turkey. US military leaders have signaled they are open to installing a no-fly zone over Syria.

“It’s immoral to tell [Syrians and Kurds] to fight ISIS but then let them get bombed by Assad,” McCain said.“It’s the most immoral thing since Henry Kissinger abandoned the Kurds many years ago.”

American-led airstrikes have been accompanied by airdrops of weapons, ammunition, and medical supplies to Kurdish forces in the Syrian city of Kobani.

McCain also stated that he was “very, very worried about the Iranians, not just because of the nuclear weapons issue but because of their other activities in the region.” The US and other world powers are in talks with Iran to decide how much and in what manner it must deplete its nuclear power program in order for an easing of draconian economic sanctions currently imposed by the West. McCain said he and other Republicans fear this deal will simply delay Iran’s achievement of a nuclear weapon.

McCain said that as chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee, he would seek to boost the defense budget after slight cuts in recent years. He added that a Republican-controlled Senate would work with the US House, already run by the GOP, to evade Obama’s reach.

“We could work with the House and leave the President two choices — either sign or veto. But I’m hoping that if we gain the majority, it will be incumbent on Obama to look at the last two years of his presidency and look at what we can accomplish together.”

Number of Iraqi orphans, widows rising with conflict

October 21, 2014 by Nasheman

Orphan boys share earphones as they listen to music in their room in the Safe House orphanage in Baghdad’s Sadr City, Feb. 11, 2009. (photo by REUTERS/May Naji)

by Omar al-Jaffal, Al Monitor

Naima Ibrahim, 36, lost her husband during the government’s bombing of Fallujah in May. She had intended to flee the city with her husband and children after the city fell to militants belonging to the Islamic State (IS) and some tribal groups, but her husband died in the shelling while out buying food. His death forced her to remain in Fallujah. She and her children now live on the money provided by her brothers and neighbors in addition to aid from humanitarian organizations in Anbar province.

Ali al-Hayali, a member of the Al-Khair Foundation, which operates out of Anbar, took it upon himself to help cases similar to Ibrahim’s. He estimates that about 400 children have been orphaned in the province since the start of the government’s military operations against the armed groups in December of last year. Hayali’s association, along with a group of other civil and humanitarian organizations, is trying to assess the extent of the destruction that befell Fallujah. The incessant shelling and blocking of roads between the province’s cities has made it difficult to compile accurate statistics on the number of orphans.

The local government in Anbar does not have specific statistics on these orphans, given its poor government services. The lack of clear information has worsened the orphan’s situation and prevented any future aid.

Hayali has, however, been able to reach some widows and give them food packages. “The local government in Anbar merely registers the orphans and widows in their records. It does not help them,” he told Al-Monitor by phone. Hayali acknowledged the difficulty facing the provincial government in taking heed of the orphans and widows, due to the worsening crisis, poor security situation and ongoing military operations. “Most of the employees of the concerned departments have been displaced,” he said.

Sabah Karhout, head of the Anbar Provincial Council, told Al-Monitor by phone, “The military operations and random shelling by the army and the militants have left many people dead, meaning an increase in the [number] of orphans.” He stressed, “The indiscriminate shelling operations must stop. … Anbar has requested the Baghdad government to stop the indiscriminate shelling and military operations in the province multiple times, but it did not respond.”

According to Karhout, his council has “repeatedly tried to find peaceful, rather than military, solutions to get out of the crisis.” He added, “Our demands are not heeded.” Karhout called on the new government to “stop the fighting and military operations, and find ways to communicate with the tribes to get out of the crisis as soon as possible.”

On Sept. 13, Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi issued orders to stop the bombardment of all cities where civilians are still present, even if members of IS are present. Abadi stressed that his government does not want more innocent victims. However, two days after Abadi’s decision, Fallujah’s hospital said it was hit by mortar rockets again.

Since the US-led invasion of Iraq in April 2003, local and international organizations have recorded a rise in the number of orphans and widows due to the worsening security situation. Iraq has not seen stability in more than 10 years, and this has begun to cast its shadows on society.

In 2011, UNICEF estimated that 800,000 children in Iraq had lost either one or both parents. This figure must have increased due to the severe attacks suffered by Iraq during the past couple of years, especially 2013, which the United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI) considered one of the bloodiest years Iraq has ever seen.

According to Ikhlas Dulaimi, a sociology researcher, “The rise in orphans in Anbar is caused by the wars.” She told Al-Monitor, “The worsening cases of orphans will reflect negatively on the province in the long term. They will be forced to work to support their families after they leave school.” Dulaimi also stated, “In the future, we will have thousands of uneducated youth who suffer from unemployment. They will be [recruited] by the armed groups that seek to destabilize the state — something that will be very easy.”

The Iraqi government does not have a clear strategy to deal with this issue, which will only worsen with time. Civil organizations have pointed to flaws in legislation that guarantees orphans’ rights and fail to oversee negligent orphanages. Iraq’s Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs pointed to 23 such orphanages that were not providing ample care and education to orphans. These orphans were unable to integrate into society after reaching working age. This situation, if it continues, will push these orphans toward unemployment or their recruitment by militias.

History of key document in IAEA probe suggests Israeli forgery

October 20, 2014 by Nasheman

IAEA Director General Yukiya Amano met with Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javed Zarif at IAEA headquarters in Vienna on 18 February 2014 on the margins of the nuclear-related talks between the E3+3 and Iran. IAEA Vienna, Austria (Photo: Dean Calma / IAEA)

by Gareth Porter, Inter Press Service

Western diplomats have reportedly faulted Iran in recent weeks for failing to provide the International Atomic Energy Agency with information on experiments on high explosives intended to produce a nuclear weapon, according to an intelligence document the IAEA is investigating.

But the document not only remains unverified but can only be linked to Iran by a far-fetched official account marked by a series of coincidences related to a foreign scientist that that are highly suspicious.

The original appearance of the document in early 2008, moreover, was not only conveniently timed to support Israel’s attack on a U.S. National Intelligence Estimate on Iran in December that was damaging to Israeli interests, but was leaked to the news media with a message that coincided with the current Israeli argument.

The IAEA has long touted the document, which came from an unidentified member state, as key evidence justifying suspicion that Iran has covered up past nuclear weapons work.

In its September 2008 report the IAEA said the document describes “experimentation in connection with symmetrical initiation of a hemispherical high explosive charge suitable for an implosion type nuclear device.”

But an official Iranian communication to the IAEA Secretariat challenged its authenticity, declaring, “There is no evidence or indication in this document regarding its linkage to Iran or its preparation by Iran.”

The IAEA has never responded to the Iranian communication.

The story of the high explosives document and related intelligence published in the November 2011 IAEA report raises more questions about the document than it answers.

The report said the document describes the experiments as being monitored with “large numbers of optical fiber cables” and cited intelligence that the experiments had been assisted by a foreign expert said to have worked in his home country’s nuclear weapons programme.

The individual to whom the report referred, Ukrainian scientist Vyacheslav Danilenko, was not a nuclear weapons expert, however, but a specialist on nanodiamond synthesis. Danilenko had lectured on that subject in Iran from 2000 to 2005 and had co-authored a professional paper on the use of fiber optic cables to monitor explosive shock waves in 1992, which was available online.

Those facts presented the opportunity for a foreign intelligence service to create a report on high explosives experiments that would suggest a link to nuclear weapons as well as to Danilenko. Danilenko’s open-source publication could help convince the IAEA Safeguards Department of the authenticity of the document, which would otherwise have been missing.

Even more suspicious, soon after the appearance of the high explosives document, the same state that had turned it over to the IAEA claimed to have intelligence on a large cylinder at Parchin suitable for carrying out the high explosives experiments described in the document, according to the 2011 IAEA report.

And it identified Danilenko as the designer of the cylinder, again basing the claim on an open-source publication that included a sketch of a cylinder he had designed in 1999-2000.

The whole story thus depended on two very convenient intelligence finds within a very short time, both of which were linked to a single individual and his open source publications.

Furthermore, the cylinder Danilenko sketched and discussed in the publication was explicitly designed for nanodiamonds production, not for bomb-making experiments.

Robert Kelley, who was the chief of IAEA teams in Iraq, has observed that the IAEA account of the installation of the cylinder at a site in Parchin by March 2000 is implausible, since Danilenko was on record as saying he was still in the process of designing it in 2000.

And Kelley, an expert on nuclear weapons, has pointed out that the cylinder would have been unnecessary for “multipoint initiation” experiments. “We’ve been taken for a ride on this whole thing,” Kelley told IPS.

The document surfaced in early 2008, under circumstances pointing to an Israeli role. An article in the May 2008 issue of Jane’s International Defence Review, dated Mar. 14, 2008, referred to, “[d]ocuments shown exclusively to Jane’s” by a “source connected to a Western intelligence service”.

It said the documents showed that Iran had “actively pursued the development of a nuclear weapon system based on relatively advanced multipoint initiation (MPI) nuclear implosion detonation technology for some years….”

The article revealed the political agenda behind the leaking of the high explosives document. “The picture the papers paints,” he wrote, “starkly contradicts the US National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) released in December 2007, which said Tehran had frozen its military nuclear programme in 2003.”

That was the argument that Israeli officials and supporters in the United States had been making in the wake of the National Intelligence Estimate, which Israel was eager to discredit.

The IAEA first mentioned the high explosives document in an annex to its May 2008 report, shortly after the document had been leaked to Janes.

David Albright, the director of the Institute for Science and International Security, who enjoyed a close relationship with the IAEA Deputy Director Olli Heinonen, revealed in an interview with this writer in September 2008 that Heinonen had told him one document that he had obtained earlier that year had confirmed his trust in the earlier collection of intelligence documents. Albright said that document had “probably” come from Israel.

Former IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei was very sceptical about all the purported Iranian documents shared with the IAEA by the United States. Referring to those documents, he writes in his 2011 memoirs, “No one knew if any of this was real.”

ElBaradei recalls that the IAEA received still more purported Iranian documents directly from Israel in summer 2009. The new documents included a two-page document in Farsi describing a four-year programme to produce a neutron initiator for a fission chain reaction.

Kelley has said that ElBaradei found the document lacking credibility, because it had no chain of custody, no identifiable source, and no official markings or anything else that could establish its authenticity—the same objections Iran has raised about the high explosives document.

Meanwhile, ElBaradei resisted pressure from the United States and its European allies in 2009 to publish a report on that and other documents – including the high explosive document — as an annex to an IAEA report. ElBaradei’s successor as director general, Yukia Amano, published the annex the anti-Iran coalition had wanted earlier in the November 2011 report.

Amano later told colleagues at the agency that he had no choice, because he promised the United States to do so as part of the agreement by Washington to support his bid for the job within the Board of Governors, according to a former IAEA official who asked not to be identified.

Russia denies agreement with U.S to share intel on Islamic State militants

October 17, 2014 by Nasheman

“An image made available by Jihadist media outlet Welayat Raqa, allegedly shows a member of the Islamic state militant group parading with a tank in a street in the northern rebel-held Syrian city of Raqa on June 30, 2014” (AFP)

– by Agence France-Presse

Moscow on Thursday denied a US assertion that it had agreed to ramp up intelligence-sharing with Washington over the Islamic State group, saying it would provide no such help without UN Secuity Council approval.

The statement by Russia’s foreign ministry contradicted a declaration by US Secretary of State John Kerry made after a meeting in Paris on Tuesday with his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov.

Moscow “will not join any ‘coalition’ set up without the backing of the UN Security Council and that violates international law,” the ministry said.

It pointed out that a bilateral commission involving Washington and Moscow that aimed to help tackle terrorism had been scrapped by the US.

Moscow also added that it was already giving “significant help” to countries including Syria and Iraq and would continue to do so.

The slapdown to Kerry appeared to underline yet again the fraught state of US-Russian relations, brought low by the crisis in Ukraine where pro-Russian rebels are fighting a pro-West government.

Kerry had said on Tuesday that he and Lavrov reached an agreement “to intensify intelligence cooperation with respect to ISIL (Islamic State) and other counter-terrorism challenges”.

He said Lavrov had “acknowledged their preparedness to help with respect to arms, weapons, they are doing that now, they already have provided some, and also potentially with the training and advising aspects”.

The US has imposed the toughest sanctions on Moscow since the end of the Cold War over its backing for the separatist rebels in Ukraine.

The two sides are also at loggerheads over the civil war in Syria, where Moscow has been a staunch ally of President Bashar al-Assad.

Washington is currently spearheading a coalition of Western and Arab nations conducting an air campaign against the Islamic State jihadists.

The Saudi oil war against Russia, Iran and the U.S

October 17, 2014 by Nasheman

A fisherman pulls in his net as an oil tanker is seen at the port in the northwestern city of Duba.(Reuters / Mohamed Al Hwaity)

– by Pepe Escobar, RT

Saudi Arabia has unleashed an economic war against selected oil producers. The strategy masks the House of Saud’s real agenda. But will it work?

Rosneft Vice President Mikhail Leontyev; “Prices can be manipulative…Saudi Arabia has begun making big discounts on oil. This is political manipulation, and Saudi Arabia is being manipulated, which could end badly.”

A correction is in order; the Saudis are not being manipulated. What the House of Saud is launching is“Tomahawks of spin,” insisting they’re OK with oil at $90 a barrel; also at $80 for the next two years; and even at $50 to $60 for Asian and North American clients.

The fact is Brent crude had already fallen to below $90 a barrel because China – and Asia as a whole – was already slowing down economically, although to a lesser degree compared to the West. Production, though, remained high – especially by Saudi Arabia and Kuwait – even with very little Libyan and Syrian oil on the market and with Iran forced to cut exports by a million barrels a day because of the US economic war, a.k.a. sanctions.

The House of Saud is applying a highly predatory pricing strategy, which boils down to reducing market share of its competitors, in the middle- to long-term. At least in theory, this could make life miserable for a lot of players – from the US (energy development, fracking and deepwater drilling become unprofitable) to producers of heavy, sour crude such as Iran and Venezuela. Yet the key target, make no mistake, is Russia.

A strategy that simultaneously hurts Iran, Iraq, Venezuela, Ecuador and Russia cannot escape the temptation of being regarded as an “Empire of Chaos” power play, as in Washington cutting a deal with Riyadh. A deal would imply bombing ISIS/ISIL/Daesh leader Caliph Ibrahim is just a prelude to bombing Bashar al-Assad’s forces; in exchange, the Saudis squeeze oil prices to hurt the enemies of the “Empire of Chaos.”

Yet it’s way more complicated than that.

Sticking it to Washington

Russia’s state budget for 2015 requires oil at least at $100 a barrel. Still, the Kremlin is borrowing no more than $7 billion in 2015 from the usual “foreign investors”, plus $27.2 billion internally. Hardly an economic earthquake.

Besides, the ruble has already fallen over 14 percent since July against the US dollar. By the way, the currencies of key BRICS members have also fallen; 7.8 percent for the Brazilian real, 1.6 percent for the Indian rupee. And Russia, unlike the Yeltsin era, is not broke; it holds at least $455 billion in foreign reserves.

The House of Saud’s target of trying to bypass Russia as a top supplier of oil to the EU is nothing but a pipe dream; EU refineries would have to be reframed to process Saudi light crude, and that costs a fortune.

Geopolitically, it gets juicier when we see that central to the House of Saud strategy is to stick it to Washington for not fulfilling its “Assad must go” promise, as well as the neo-con obsession in bombing Iran. It gets worse (for the Saudis) because Washington – at least for now – seems more concentrated in toppling Caliph Ibrahim than Bashar al-Assad, and might be on the verge of signing a nuclear deal with Tehran as part of the P5+1 on November 24.

On the energy front, the ultimate House of Saud nightmare would be both Iran and Iraq soon being able to take over the Saudi status as key swing oil producers in the world. Thus the Saudi drive to deprive both of much-needed oil revenue. It might work – as in the sanctions biting Tehran even harder. Yet Tehran can always compensate by selling more gas to Asia.

So here’s the bottom line. A beleaguered House of Saud believes it may force Moscow to abandon its support of Damascus, and Washington to scotch a deal with Tehran. All this by selling oil below the average spot price. That smacks of desperation. Additionally, it may be interpreted as the House of Saud dithering if not sabotaging the coalition of the cowards/clueless in its campaign against Caliph Ibrahim’s goons.

Compounding the gloom, the EU might be allowed to muddle through this winter – even considering possible gas supply problems with Russia because of Ukraine. Still, low Saudi oil prices won’t prevent a near certain fourth recession in six years just around the EU corner.

Reuters / Hamad I Mohammed

Go East, young Russian

Russia, meanwhile, slowly but surely looks East. China’s Vice Premier Wang Yang has neatly summarized it; “China is willing to export to Russia such competitive products as agricultural goods, oil and gas equipment, and is ready to import Russian engineering products.” Couple that with increased food imports from Latin America, and it doesn’t look like Moscow is on the ropes.

A hefty Chinese delegation led by Premier Li Keqiang has just signed a package of deals in Moscow ranging from energy to finance, and from satellite navigation to high-speed rail cooperation. For China, which overtook Germany as Russia’s top trading partner in 2011, this is pure win-win.

The central banks of China and Russia have just signed a crucial, 3-year, 150 billion yuan bilateral local-currency swap deal. And the deal is expandable. The City of London basically grumbles – but that’s what they usually do.

This new deal, crucially, bypasses the US dollar. No wonder it’s now a key component of the no holds barred proxy economic war between the US and Asia. Moscow cannot but hail it as sidelining many of the side effects of the Saudi strategy.

The Russia-China strategic partnership has been on the up and up since the “epochal” (Putin’s definition) $400 billion, 30-year “gas deal of the century” clinched in May. And the economic reverberations won’t stop.

There’s bound to be an alignment of the Chinese-driven New Silk Roads with a revamped Trans-Siberian railway. At the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit last month in Dushanbe, President Putin praised the “great potential” of developing a “common SCO transport system” linking “Russia’s Trans-Siberian railway and the Baikal-Amur mainline” with the Chinese Silk Roads, thus“benefiting all countries in Eurasia.”

Moscow is progressively lifting restrictions and is now offering Beijing a wealth of potential investments. Beijing is progressively accessing not only much-needed Russian raw materials but acquiring cutting-edge technology and advanced weapons.

Beijing will get S-400 missile systems and Su-35 fighter jets as soon as the first quarter of 2015. Further on down the road will come Russia’s brand new submarine, the Amur 1650, as well as components for nuclear-powered satellites.

Reuters / Hamad I Mohammed

The road is paved with yuan

Presidents Putin and Xi, who have met no less than nine times since Xi came to power last year, are scaring the hell out of the “Empire of Chaos.” No wonder; their number one shared priority is to dent the hegemony of the US dollar – and especially the petrodollar – in the global financial system.

The yuan has been trading on the Moscow Exchange – the first bourse outside of China to offer regulated yuan trading. It’s still at only $1.1 billion (in September). Russian importers pay for 8 percent of all Chinese goods with yuan instead of dollars, but that’s rising fast. And it will rise exponentially when Moscow finally decides to accept yuan under Gazprom’s $400 billion “gas deal of the century.”

This is the way the multipolar world goes. The House of Saud deploys the petrodollar weapon? The counterpunch is increased trade in a basket of currencies. Additionally, Moscow sends a message to the EU, which is losing a lot of Russia trade because of counter-productive sanctions, thus accelerating the EU’s next recession. Economic war does work both ways.

The House of Saud believes it can dump a tsunami of oil in the market and back it up with a tsunami of spin – creating the illusion the Saudis control oil prices. They don’t. As much as this strategy will fail, Beijing is showing the way out; trading in other currencies stabilizes prices. The only losers, in the end, will be those who stick to trade in US dollars.

Pepe Escobar is the roving correspondent for Asia Times/Hong Kong, an analyst for RT and TomDispatch, and a frequent contributor to websites and radio shows ranging from the US to East Asia.

United Nations turning into NATO tool of aggressions

October 15, 2014 by Nasheman

– by Ramsey Clark

What happens in the international community is not by chance, and what happened In Libya is not by chance, what is happening in Syria and Iran is not by chance. And what is happening in Syria and Iran?

Who is behind the acts of terrorism? What is behind the assassinations and murder of intellectuals and high-ranking officials in both countries? We are building up to what, exactly? And where is the truth in the international press?

As usual, the obedient press, along with the U.N. Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay has managed to come up with the same goods time and time again and so long as a gullible public, obediently swayed to where it is supposed to be by swallowing the tidy controlled media package daily, it is going to work: public opinion will acquiesce to the schemes of the arms and energy and banking lobbies which control Washington, and by proxy, NATO and the USA’s allies.

What you also do not know is that the squeaky-clean media package placed before you daily in your nice crisp newspaper or your TV News is the result of a process of sinister manipulation — brainwashing. How many people were informed of Colonel Gaddafi’s positive humanitarian record – for which he was to receive an award from the UN in March 2011?

How many people knew he was spending his time trying to reduce casualties among the terrorists attacking his country to the minimum, negotiating with them before an attack took place? Who informed the readers that NATO broke the rules, broke international law, supported terrorists on their own proscribed lists and committed acts of murder and war crimes? Now let us move on to Syria and Iran.

Where are the stories about the mass acts of murder inside both countries, taking out Generals, strategists and high-ranking politicians and scientists? Who is perpetrating these evil deeds, who are these terrorists? Why are these acts being committed? The answer is perfectly simple. Syria is the last frontier between sanity and a balanced international community, a world ruled by the forces of right and reason and good, and the Satanic desires of the evil and invisible lobbies which are currently in power in Washington, and which in turn control the foreign policy of its allies.

We are speaking here of those responsible for torture, for maintaining concentration camps such as Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay, those who urinate on dead, commit acts of sodomy on prisoners, those responsible for torture, for maintaining concentration camps such as Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay, who detain persons without due process, without the right to a lawyer, to an accusation or a trial, who commit rape and murder, who break international law, who breach the UN Charter and Geneva Conventions and commit war crimes. And this same evil clique is now swinging into action in the Middle East.

First objective: Lebanon and Syria; second objective: The Islamic republic of Iran; third objective: the resources of Central Asia, leading to direct confrontation with Russia and the People’s Republic of China, which passes by installing Washington-friendly regimes in all these countries so that guess who can siphon off the resources? This is why Syria is the final frontier, this is why Syria must resist the intrusion of enslaved by NATO Arab League and this is why Syria must destroy the demonic elements running amok inside the country committing acts of arson, butchery, terrorism, vandalism, murder and torture.

It is not difficult to stir up trouble, take advantage of internal divisions, divide and rule and reap the consequences from the chaos that is sown. That is exactly what the West has been doing for hundreds of years and continues to do today. It has to do not with freedom and democracy – why did NATO not allow the Libyan Jamahiriya government to hold an election? It has to do with control of resources and guaranteeing that the US dollar is used as the international currency in major deals, and that includes oil. Why is it that when a country threatens to swap the USD for another currency in its dealings, it is invaded?

As for what we can do, the bottom line is keep informed and hold the politicians responsible for their actions. Democracy does have a fatal fault for those who try to manipulate it, and that is the fact that the power lies ultimately in the hands of the people. Bring international policy onto the political agenda and don’t let them lie to you and fool you about what is really going on. If you really feel your vote makes a difference, then create the conditions for this to be the case. Let us use citizen power to avoid World War Three. After all those who push for it, will their sons be on the front line? Would anyone survive?

U.S. Intelligence Official: No evidence ISIL is planning imminent attack on America

October 14, 2014 by Nasheman

Obama’s plan to support the Shi’a and Kurds in Iraq could worsen sectarianism fighting, and a new report says arms sent to moderate Syrian rebels have ended up in ISIS’s hands.

– by The Real News Network

JESSICA DESVARIEUX, CAPITOL HILL CORRESPONDENT, TRNN: On the Hill, the jihadist extremist organization known as ISIS is on everyone’s radar.

REP. MIKE MCCAUL, U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES (R-TX): But the only way you can defeat ISIS is to attack them wherever they exist.

DESVARIEUX: At Wednesday’s hearing, titled “One Flight Away: An Examination of the Threat posed by ISIS Terrorists with Western Passports”, officials from the U.S. Customs and Border Protection to the Department of Homeland Security, as well as the State Department, all testified before the House Subcommittee on Homeland Security. When asked if ISIS posed a threat to the United States, the panelists were unanimous in their assessment.

TROY MILLER, CUSTOMS AND BORDER PROTECTION OFFICIAL: I do believe that it could be a short-term and long-term threat to the United States.

DESVARIEUX: But on closer examination of the testimony from Homeland Security’s Office of Intelligence and Analysis, Jennifer Lasley said ISIS is not a threat to the U.S. in the near-term.

JENNIFER LASLEY, HOMELAND SECURITY OFFICIAL: We currently have no credible information to indicate that the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, or ISIL, is planning to attack the homeland.

As I said, we don’t see a near-term threat directly from them. No evidence yet of that.

DESVARIEUX: But an attack on the homeland is what seven out of ten Americans think ISIS is capable of, according to a recent CNN/ORC poll. And almost half of Americans see ISIS as a very serious threat to the U.S. That’s about the same percentage of those that thought the same of al-Qaeda in 2003. On the Hill, ISIS is being compared to al-Qaeda, which may strike an emotional chord with many Americans, since the anniversary of 9/11 is on Thursday. But critics are concerned that another push for a war against terrorism won’t get to the root causes of Sunni extremism.

MATTHEW HOH, SENIOR FELLOW, CENTER FOR INTERNATIONAL POLICY: So what you have is, say, in Iraq with the Islamic State, is you have this organization that requires war, it requires chaos to function. It’s a parasitic organization. And it needs the United States to come in and be involved, because it eats the United States to be a villain, it needs the United States to fulfill that Crusader motif. It also needs the Sunni population–this is the most important thing–it needs the Sunni population to feel that they need the Islamic State’s help, that the Islamic State is actually fulfilling a role for them.

So if the United States jumps back into the Iraqi Civil War, takes the sides of the Shia or the Kurds, well, that pushes the Sunnis up against the wall, because you have this intersectarian, interreligious fighting going on in Iraq. If we go in and take one side, well, then the other side becomes desperate, and they turn to groups like the Islamic State.

And so, I think, by not understanding that dynamic, not understanding the political situation that exists in these countries, this sectarian fighting, this interreligious fighting, one side pushing the other side, one side persecuting the other side, that if we just lay over this veneer of this simple good-versus-bad narrative that we possess, then it becomes very complicated and we play right into the hands of these extreme groups.

DESVARIEUX: Matthew Hoh served with the U.S. Marine Corps in Iraq. He says that the civil war in Iraq was caused by our decade-long occupation of the country, and more military involvement will only prolong the civil war. Hoh said the American public should be wary of any officials trying to trap Americans into another conflict.

HOH: You have both the head of our counterterrorism center and Homeland Security saying that the Islamic State has no sleeper cells, has no members in the U.S., and that the Islamic State is not an imminent threat to the United States. And so I’m afraid that we’re falling right into this trap, falling right into this debate that the Islamic State needs and wants. They need us to come into the conflict, because they need the conflict to be continue to be stirred up. They need to have the U.S. as a villain to play that Crusader role in order to, one, fit their narrative and aid in their recruitment.

And the second thing is they want to fight us. These are men and women who believe in this religious conflict. And so they want to fight us. So by jumping right back in, rushing right back into the conflict, we give the Islamic State exactly what they need, and also what they want, as well as making the conflict much more difficult to achieve any type of political solution, because if we go in there on behalf of the Shias and the Kurds, then what incentive do the Shias and the Kurds have to give any concessions to the Sunnis? What reasons do they have to enter into any real negotiations? Why would the Kurds give up that increased territory they took over the last few months? Why would the Shia in Baghdad make any real reformations, bring the Sunnis back into the government, if the Americans are on their side? Why would you do that?

DESVARIEUX: But Democrats and Republicans both want further militarization.

HARRY REID, U.S. SENATOR (D-NV): As commander in chief, the president has the authority he needs now to act against ISIS. I believe the vast majority of members of Congress agree with that. For now, it’s critical we support our commander in chief as he takes this decisive action.

DESVARIEUX: This action would mean giving the White House authority to arm and train moderate Syrian rebels. The White House wants Congress to tack on what’s known as Title 10 authority to a stopgap spending bill that lawmakers were hoping to pass this week. That bill, if passed, would prevent another government shutdown. But there are those cautious to arm such factions, since evidence has been released linking ISIS with these moderate Syrian rebels.

A recent report by Conflict Armament Research found that ISIS is now in possession of lethal weapons formerly owned by moderate Syrian rebels, as well as a bulk of arms produced in the United States. You can see in pictures like these some of the arms that they mention. The report states that antitank rockets captured from ISIS forces in Syria are identical to M79 rockets transferred by Saudi Arabia to forces operating under the Free Syrian Army umbrella in 2013.

Such evidence could raise some questions. The White House has invited all members of Congress to a special closed briefing on ISIS on Thursday. But we’ll have to see if any members will question the president’s decision.

For The Real News Network, Jessica Desvarieux, Washington.

Islamic State now controls half of Syrian border town and intensifies attacks in Iraq

October 14, 2014 by Nasheman

Smoke rises from parts of Kobane bombed by US and Saudi warplanes. Photo: Getty Images

– by The Age

Mursitpinar: Jihadists have fought their way into the centre of the Syrian border town Kobane, while in Iraq more than 180,000 have fled fighting in Anbar province.

The breakthrough on Monday, nearly a month after the assault on the town on the Turkish frontier began, gave Islamic State half of Kobane, despite the desperate efforts of its Kurdish defenders, backed byUS-led air strikes.

US and Saudi warplanes targeted seven sites around Kobane, the US military said.

Fighting spread to less than a kilometre from the barbed wire frontier fence, with the jihadists carrying out three suicide car bomb attacks in the border zone, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

Kobane has become a highly visible symbol of resistance to IS and its fall would give the jihadists control of a long stretch of the Turkey-Syria border. But concern has also been growing over Iraq, where IS fighters have been threatening to seize more territory.

Fighting in Iraq’s western Anbar province has forced up to 180,000 people to flee since the city of Hit fell to Islamic State militants earlier this month, the United Nations said on Monday.

IS fighters extended that advance by overrunning a military base the Iraqi army had abandoned eight kilometres west of Hit earlier on Monday, according to an army officer and members of a government-backed Sunni militia.

In Baghdad, three bombs exploded in Shiite parts of the capital on Monday, killing 30 people, police and medical officials said, continuing a wave of attacks targeting Iraq’s majority religious group.

There was no claim of responsibility for the bombings, but IS fighters earlier claimed a string of attacks in Baghdad on Sunday that left 45 dead.

As a result of the fighting and air strikes in Anbar, carried out by the Iraqi government and a US-led military coalition, up to 30,000 families or 180,000 individuals had fled Hit, the UN’s Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs said.

In Kobane, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group reported more heavy fighting on Monday inside the city.

Rami Abderahman, of the Observatory, said IS militants had taken about half of the town.

“They now control the cultural centre, which means they have advanced further inside the town,” he said.

In a blow to US hopes, Turkey denied it had agreed to let the United States use its Incirlik air base in the fight against IS and sources at the Turkish Prime Minister’s office said talks on the subject were continuing.

The comments come after US national security adviser Susan Rice said Turkey had agreed to let forces from a US-led military coalition use its bases for activities inside Iraq and Syria and to train moderate Syrian rebels.

Syria’s air force, meanwhile, carried out strikes against rebels at more than double its usual rate on Monday, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

The intensified air strikes by President Bashar al-Assad’s government will add to the fear among Dr Assad’s opponents that he is taking advantage of the US strikes to crush other foes, including the “moderate opposition” that Washington backs.

The Observatory said the Syrian air force had struck 40 times on Monday in areas in Idlib and Hama provinces, including dropping oil drums packed with explosives and shrapnel. Typically, Damascus has carried out no more than 12 to 20 raids a day.

AFP, Reuters