War of Words: ‘Israeli’ Defeat, Humiliation Finally Forthcoming

 Nov 30, 2021

By Mohammad Youssef

Terminology and definitions have always been part of wars used by the West in general, and Washington and London in particular against resistance movements and freedom fighters.

Western governments orchestrate systematic misleading campaigns and spend billions of dollars to tarnish the resistance image and portray them as ‘terrorists, smugglers and drug traffickers.’

They depict them as groups that carry ‘illegal and criminal activities to introduce them to the public as groups of organized crime committers.’

This kind of baseless and unfounded accusations by the Western governments aims at justifying the use of violence reaching to killing the resistance operatives and activists whether political or military.

The whole issue emanates from the open and unabated support those governments pledge to ‘Israel.’

Both Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Palestine fall under this category and they truly represent their people’s struggle against the ‘Israeli’ occupation.

Hezbollah has become a beacon of light and hope to tens of millions across the world after its success in resisting the occupation and inflicting successive defeats against it, thus bringing continuous victories and glory to the whole Umma.

Many Western governments have designated the party as a ‘terrorist entity’ following endless, heavy, and persistent ‘Israeli’ efforts and lobbying to this effect.

Hamas received equal treatment and faced the same tough measures for its continuous fight to protect the Palestinian people.

After many unsuccessful wars by the ‘Israelis’ to eradicate them, and after they emerged triumphant from their battles and become icons of hope to the people, the ‘Israelis’ started a restless campaign not only to tarnish their image, but to force laws and regulations all over the world to criminalize them so they can clamp their support and criminalize any support or any assistance they could receive and even to make any contact with them and their representatives as illegal.

Those measures reflect how hopeless ‘Israel’ has become because of the resistance in Palestine and Lebanon.

But no matter how hard they might try, it is evident that their sinister, unjust, and aggressive decisions will not bring them any positive result.

The Western governments who aided ‘Israel’ in its effort should be questioned held responsible by their people for their support to the number one terrorist and apartheid entity in the world nowadays.

The so called international community, especially the United Nations and human rights organizations bear equal responsibility in saying the truth and revealing the true face of ‘Israel.’

‘Israel’ should be ready to know that those resistance movements are not separated or fragmented, contrary, they are now in a real axis that stretches from Gaza to Sanaa.

Tens of millions of supporters believe in their choice and support their resistance.

Hundreds of thousands of trained military personnel are ready to join any war against ‘Israel’ as pronounced by the leaders of this axis.

They are also supported by governments and states that strongly believe in the cause.

The resistance movements in Palestine and Lebanon have proved their effectiveness in protecting their people and liberating lands.

However, although the ‘Israeli’ efforts and western support against Hezbollah and Hamas could help the Zionist entity gain some publicity, this can never change one letter in the dictionary of battle against occupation.

Our people and our Umma are more decisive than any time in the past to liberate their sacred lands and protect them. This has already been written, the ‘Israelis’ have only to wait and see how many defeats they will receive and how many victories the resistance will gain, and it is only a matter of time!

River to Sea Uprooted Palestinian   

The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Blog!

UK Bans Hamas & Throws 2-State Solution In The Bin | By Robert Inlakesh

 

Nov 28, 2021

The U.K. government is set to ban Hamas as a terrorist group, throwing away the possibility of dialogue and siding with an Israeli government opposed to the 2-State Solution.

So did the Home Secretary Priti Patel, who moved to proscribe Hamas as a terrorist group act for the British public or instead on behalf of her Israeli allies?

Related

• Masar Badil: The New Palestinian Movement that Has Both Israel and the PA on Edge

River to Sea Uprooted Palestinian   

The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Blog!

“A Lot of Mistakes”: The Guardian and Julian Assange

 November 27th, 2021

By John McEvoy and Pablo Navarrete

Source

Three years on from the explosive Julian Assange/Paul Manafort story, we question whether the Guardian has honored its stated commitment to the truth.

MANCHESTER, ENGLAND — In 1921, the Manchester Guardian’s editor, Charles Prestwich Scott, marked the newspaper’s centenary with an essay entitled “A Hundred Years.” In it, Scott declared that a newspaper’s “primary office is the gathering of news. …Comment is free, but facts are sacred.”

One hundred years on from Scott’s famous essay, and on the three-year anniversary of the Guardian’s Julian Assange/Paul Manafort story, we question whether the Guardian’s coverage of Julian Assange has honored the newspaper’s stated commitment to the truth.

Based on private communications between a Guardian correspondent and their source inside a security company at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, as well as two exclusive interviews, we trace the events behind two of the Guardian’s most explosive stories this decade.

“Russia’s secret plan to help Julian Assange escape from UK”

On September 21, 2018, the Guardian published a bombshell report entitled “Revealed: Russia’s secret plan to help Julian Assange escape from UK.” The story detailed an alleged conspiracy between Russian diplomats and WikiLeaks to illicitly smuggle Assange out of the Ecuadorian Embassy in London.

During the months before publication, Guardian correspondent Stephanie Kirchgaessner seemed eager to connect Assange to a Russian plot to escape the embassy.

On July 12, 2018, Kirchgaessner wrote to a source at UC Global, the private security company hired by the Ecuadorian government to protect Assange and its embassy in London: “We heard that the Russians wanted to help Assange and maybe get him a diplomatic visa. This was last year. But then the plan was rejected. By the Russians or by Assange? Why? Can you help? Do you know?”

On August 30, 2018, three weeks before publication, Kirchgaessner wrote again: “Hello. I am trying you again. I want to write a story about the discussions last year to get JA out of the embassy. The talks that happened with the Russians. Can I send you some questions?”

When the article was eventually published, the authors — Kirchgaessner, Dan Collyns, and Luke Harding — claimed that “Russian diplomats held secret talks in London … with people close to Julian Assange to assess whether they could help him flee the UK” in late 2017.

Though it was acknowledged that “details of the Assange escape plan are sketchy,” the authors used two unnamed sources to assert that Fidel Narváez, the former consul at the Ecuadorian Embassy, “served as a point of contact with Moscow.”

The story appeared to add weight to the “Russiagate” narrative – the belief that the Donald Trump campaign colluded with Russia to subvert the 2016 U.S. presidential election, with help from WikiLeaks. The authors noted that the alleged escape plan “raises new questions about Assange’s ties to the Kremlin.”

The Guardian pulled out all the stops in its September 2018 report attempting to link Assange to Russia

Two individuals with first-hand knowledge of events reject the Guardian’s story, however, and provide details about what really happened in late 2017 when Assange tried to leave the embassy.

In an exclusive interview, Aitor Martinez, a lawyer who oversaw Ecuador’s effort to grant Assange diplomatic protection, explained that plans were drawn up to appoint Assange as an Ecuadorian diplomat and transport him to a third country. That way, Assange could legally leave the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, where he was subject to arbitrary detention and where his health was declining.

Martinez drew up a list of countries that Ecuador should approach: China, Serbia, Greece, Bolivia, Venezuela or Cuba, noting:

Of course, they were the countries that don’t have good relations with the U.S. and could accept the appointment. Russia was never, ever on that list. There was a huge conspiracy theory in the U.S. with Russiagate; it didn’t make sense. So those were the countries.”

Martinez continued:

It took two or three weeks and we didn’t get any answer from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. And suddenly the Ministry said that they had appointed him to Russia.”

Foreign Minister María Fernanda Espinosa’s cousin worked at the Ecuadorian Embassy in Moscow and, through this cousin, she concocted a plan to appoint Assange to the one country that was the subject of mass-media hysteria.

“Julian and all of us at the legal team refused this appointment,” Martinez explained. “We said, ‘that’s crazy, what are you talking about?’ We refused.”

After Assange’s legal team refused, a second passport was issued to replace the diplomatic passport appointed to Russia, and Martinez personally brought the second passport to Assange at the embassy.

On December 21, Rommy Vallejo — the head of the Ecuadorian intelligence agency, Senain — visited Assange at the embassy to discuss the logistics for his transfer to a third country. Martinez said:

As soon as Vallejo arrived, he left his mobile phone at the entrance. And UC Global opened the mobile and took the IMEI code and also the sim card, as usual. Take into account that Senain was the entity that hired UC Global and this was the chief of Senain, and they spied on him.”

Martinez continued, referring to open court documents:

According to the UC Global chat, they were listening through the door and everything. They knew everything about the operation and we didn’t know they were spying on us, and reporting everything to the Americans, according to the witness declarations before the Spanish court.”

Martinez can reveal how, over the following days, the U.S. learned of Assange’s plans to leave the embassy. The Minister of Foreign Affairs called Martinez and asked:

What the hell happened? This is crazy, this operation plan was secret, was handled just by five or six people, and suddenly the U.S. ambassador in Quito came to my office and told me: ‘We know that Julian Assange is about to leave the embassy using a diplomatic passport, and we will never allow it.’”

Martinez explained that, at the time, Assange’s legal team couldn’t figure out how the Americans learned about this operation. “Now we can assume that it was because UC Global sent information about the plan. So, she [the foreign minister] said we have to stop everything because the Americans know,” he said.

At this time, the U.S. intelligence agencies were pressuring UC Global to link Assange with Russia. Martinez said:

UC Global drafted exaggerated and faked reports for the Americans. The protected [UC Global] witness claimed before a court that they had drafted exaggerated reports just to feed the Americans with information and to show that UC Global is very important for them at the embassy. If you check UC Global reports, it’s very funny; they make up everything.”

A recent Yahoo! News article suggests that these reports were taken seriously.

As well as listening through the wall, UC Global staff secretly recorded video and audio footage of Assange and Vallejo’s meeting. “They even created a Dropbox link to send it – they took the data, cut the conversation and sent it to Morales,” said Martinez. This footage was then presumably sent to Morales’s handlers in the U.S.

Surveillance footage shows Assange meeting with a confidant at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London. Screenshot | El Pais

On November 12, 2018, Kirchgaessner contacted a source within UC Global requesting access to the transcript of Assange’s meeting with Vallejo.

Kirchgaessner wrote: “Hola. The transcript?”

Her source responded: “In this moment its [sic] difficult I think tomorrow I can”

Kirchgaessner was thankful: “Really? That would be amazing. You know which one I mean?”The next day, Kirchgaessner messaged again: “Hello. I mean the one with Rommy Vallejo.”

Kirchgaessner never received the transcript. Nonetheless, it is noteworthy that the Guardian knew that a security company hired to protect Assange was in fact compiling transcripts on his private meetings long before this became public knowledge, and this wasn’t treated as the story. The Guardian instead promoted a narrative that Assange’s team was conspiring with Russia to illicitly flee the embassy.

To the contrary, Martinez emphasised that Ecuador had tried to help Assange leave the embassy through legal diplomatic channels, before the U.S. caught wind of the plan through a corrupt security firm that was clandestinely spying on Assange.

“A lot of mistakes”

Fidel Narváez, former consul at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, categorically denies holding secret discussions with Russian diplomats. Narváez said:

I challenged the Guardian and I said this is false information – there was no Russian escape plan. To start with there was not an escape plan – escape, which means something clandestine, illicit, something not legal. That, there was not ever. Let alone something devised or orchestrated by a third country.”

Narváez lodged a formal complaint against the Guardian, attesting that “the Guardian has not, and cannot, substantiate with solid evidence its […] false assertions” that “Russian diplomats held secret talks in London last year;” and that “a tentative plan was devised that would have seen the WikiLeaks founder smuggled out of Ecuador’s London Embassy.”

On advice from its internal regulator, the Guardian amended the article to emphasize that “the plan in relation to Mr. Assange’s ability to be able to leave the Ecuadorian Embassy was not devised or instigated by Russia,” and that “there was nothing illicit about the ‘plan’ as described in the Article.

Guardian admits its reporters L. Harding, S. Kirchgaessner, and D. Collyns gave a “misleading impression to readers” and breached paper’s code in one of infamous series of fake news stories about Assange from 2018 which helped put him in Belmarsh.

There will be no repercussions. pic.twitter.com/VbDE2WNPlX

— Matt Kennard (@kennardmatt) December 23, 2019

The Guardian’s climbdown from its original assertions suggests a loss of confidence in the information provided by its unnamed sources. Indeed, Kirchgaessner was warned by a source inside UC Global that the Guardian was being fed with false information from questionable sources months before the article was published.

On May 16, 2018, following the Guardian’s reporting on Operation Hotel (Ecuador’s multi-million-dollar operation to support Assange’s embassy stay), Kirchgaessner was told by a UC Global source:

I’ve read part of your article and [Ecuadorian news agency] plan V; there are a lot of mistakes and things that are confused or mixed; there are people who have provided that information so you do not know why they have given that …”

Perhaps more concerningly, Kirchgaessner appeared to know about the relationship between UC Global’s activities at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London and the security company’s proximity to Trump megadonor Sheldon Adelson almost a year before it became public knowledge.

UC Global’s loyalties had shifted in 2016, when its CEO David Morales attended a security fair in Las Vegas and won a contract to guard Queen Miri, a multi-million-dollar yacht owned by Adelson. “Given that Adelson already had a substantial security team assigned to guard him and his family at all times,” wrote Max Blumenthal, “the contract between UC Global and Adelson’s Las Vegas Sands was clearly the cover for a devious espionage campaign apparently overseen by the CIA.” Blumenthal continued:

Throughout the black operations campaign, U.S. intelligence appears to have worked through Adelson’s Las Vegas Sands, a company that had previously served as an alleged front for a CIA blackmail operation several years earlier. The operations formally began once Adelson’s hand-picked presidential candidate, Donald Trump, entered the White House in January 2017.

The relationship between Adelson and UC Global’s operations at the Ecuadorian Embassy was first reported in El País in September 2019. Yet on October 12, 2018, Kirchgaessner emailed her source within UC Global: “Also the [Las Vegas] Sands and Sheldon Adelson – did he pay for the embassy to move?”

If Kirchgaessner knew about the relationship between Adelson and UC Global’s activities at the Ecuadorian Embassy, why was it not reported at the time? Indeed, evidence of an elaborate spying operation on Assange, with links to the Republican Party and the Trump administration, would seem to disrupt the narrative of a secret Assange-Trump-Russia plot to subvert American politics – a narrative that the Guardian would not abandon easily.

“Manafort held secret talks with Assange in Ecuadorian Embassy”

On November 27, 2018, while Narváez’s formal complaint to the Guardian about its Assange coverage was still being processed, the newspaper published another blockbuster story claiming that Paul Manafort, Donald Trump’s campaign manager and key aide during the 2016 U.S. presidential election, had “held secret talks with Julian Assange inside the Ecuadorian Embassy in London” in 2013, 2015, and Spring 2016.

The story was immediately picked up by the world’s largest news outlets, including CNN, MSNBC, the Daily Mail, and the Los Angeles Times. “If it’s right,” commented a U.S. national security reporter, “it might be the biggest get this year.”

Indeed, the article appeared to provide additional evidence of “collusion” between WikiLeaks, Trump, and Russia in the lead-up to the 2016 U.S. election, during which time WikiLeaks released thousands of Democratic National Committee emails.

As the article’s authors, Luke Harding and Dan Collyns, claimed, the last alleged meeting between Assange and Manafort in Spring 2016 “is likely to come under scrutiny and could interest Robert Mueller, the special prosecutor who is investigating alleged collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia.”

The Guardian’s Manafort scoop began to unravel almost as soon as it was published.

Remember this day when the Guardian permitted a serial fabricator to totally destroy the paper's reputation. @WikiLeaks is willing to bet the Guardian a million dollars and its editor's head that Manafort never met Assange. https://t.co/R2Qn6rLQjn

— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) November 27, 2018

The WikiLeaks Twitter account responded: “Remember this day when the Guardian permitted a serial fabricator to totally destroy the paper’s reputation. @WikiLeaks is willing to bet the Guardian a million dollars and its editor’s head that Manafort never met Assange.” Both Manafort and Assange denied that any of the visits took place.

Indeed, even the Guardian didn’t seem sure.

Though the Guardian’s sources were able to offer precise details about Manafort’s appearance (“casually dressed when he exited the embassy, wearing sandy-coloured chinos, a cardigan and a light-coloured shirt”) as well as the meeting’s duration (it “lasted about 40 minutes”), the authors were unable to establish exactly when Manafort allegedly visited.

Within a request for comment sent to WikiLeaks shortly before the article was published, Harding was not even able to specify during which month Manafort’s 2016 visit supposedly occurred. The meeting “took place,” Harding wrote, “in or around March 2016, around the time Manafort joined Donald Trump’s presidential campaign,” a detail that remained vague within the published article.

In the time since, the Guardian appears to have lost even more confidence in its own report.

Within hours of publication, the Guardian modified its headline to add “sources say” to the original claim that “Manafort held secret talks with Assange in Ecuadorian embassy.” The print edition, issued one day after online publication, added inverted commas: “Manafort ‘held secret talks with Assange’.”

Ninety minutes after publication the Guardian modifies its "Manafort held secret talks with Assange" headline to add ", sources say". pic.twitter.com/zcg8cQcYGq

— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) November 27, 2018

The main body of the report was also modified. Whereas the original claimed that “It is unclear why Manafort wanted to see Assange and what was discussed,” an updated version read that “It is unclear why Manafort would have wanted to see Assange and what was discussed.” [emphasis added]

Harding’s 2020 book, Shadow State: Murder, Mayhem, and Russia’s Remaking of the West, moreover, makes no mention of Manafort’s alleged meetings with Assange, even though the subject matter’s clear focus is malign Russian involvement in Western politics. Mueller did not mention the alleged meeting in his report on Russian interference in the 2016 election.

Despite watering down the article’s key claims, the Guardian has yet to add any correction notes or provide a retraction.

Visitor’s log

In paragraph 14 of the Guardian’s Manafort story, the authors note that: “Visitors normally register with embassy security guards and show their passports. Sources in Ecuador, however, say Manafort was not logged.”

It is curious that the Guardian glided over this crucial point. Narváez, who was in charge of the day-to-day functioning of the embassy, asserted that nobody could enter the building without being logged. Visitors required written approval from the ambassador, before registering their visit with security personnel and leaving a copy of their identification, which would be added to the visitor’s log.

Private UC Global discussions raise even more questions.

On November 22, 2018, five days before the Guardian published its Manafort story, an email was sent from UC Global CEO David Morales, asking: “Do we have a record that Paul Manafort during 2013, 2015, and 2016 visited the embassy?” UC Global staff discussed the matter:

Staff A: Hello… send me the name to search for

Staff B: Paul Manafort

Staff A: Ok, I’ll look and let you know

Any date?

I can’t find anything

Staff B: So there’s nothing?

Staff A: I can only find two Pauls… Stafford and Nigel

It seems that the Guardian’s request for information on visits to the embassy was flushed through Ecuadorian intelligence to UC Global and came back negative. Why did the Guardian glide over crucial evidence that contradicted its key claim, without offering any attempt at explaining why Manafort was not in the visitor’s log?

Indeed, the Guardian had relied on the visitor’s log for a separate story, and had privileged access to it.

On May 6, 2018, Kirchgaessner contacted a source within UC Global, saying:

I am interested in Nigel Farage because he went to see [Assange] once in 2017 and said it was the only time he went to see him. But other people think he went more and I am interested in knowing if that is true. Farage pushed for Brexit and he was also close to the Trump campaign.”

On May 18, 2018, Kirchgaessner emailed once more: “Have you seen what we published this week in the Guardian? We didn’t include the name of the company [UC Global]. […] Could you send me the list of visitors for the first week [sic] of 2016 (January – June 2016)?”

It is also curious that no video or photo evidence of Manafort’s alleged visit was provided, especially given that the Guardian had lines to access the embassy’s CCTV records.

On May 14, 2018, Kirchgaessner emailed a source at UC Global, asking: “Can you bring the video again of him [Assange] outside when you come [to a meeting] tomorrow?” Four days later, Kirchgaessner emailed again: “We are very interested in the video of JA [Julian Assange] outside. Do you think that you could get the film in a few weeks?”

If the Guardian could access CCTV footage at the embassy, why was it not able to provide material evidence of Manafort’s alleged visit? Did the Guardian even ask?

Concealed author

To this day, the online version of the Guardian’s Manafort story presents only two authors: Luke Harding and Dan Collyns.

In early December 2018, however, WikiLeaks wrote that the Guardian had “mysteriously hid[den the] third author of fabricated front page story” – Ecuadorian political activist and journalist Fernando Villavicencio.

In 2014, the Ecuadorian government pointed the finger at Villavicencio for providing the Guardian with allegedly forged documents relating to a secret $1billion “deal with a Chinese bank to drill for oil under the Yasuni national park in the Amazon.”

Even before the Guardian’s Manafort story was published, Villavicencio had promoted doubtful claims about Assange’s visitors at the Ecuadorian Embassy. On May 16, 2018, Villavicencio and Cristina Solórzano correctly wrote in La Fuente that “[Nigel] Farage visited Assange in March of last year, stayed for roughly 40 minutes and when asked about why he visited, responded ‘I don’t remember’.”

However, they added that, according to their source, “Farage returned to the embassy the next month, entering 28 April 2018 at 17:10 and leaving at 19:40.”

The allegation was almost certainly false. In late March 2018, the Ecuadorian authorities had removed Assange’s access to the outside world, including a ban on visitors. These rights were only partially restored in October 2018, meaning Farage had supposedly visited while Assange could not accept visitors.

Questions

A number of crucial questions remain unanswered by the Guardian:

• What did Kirchgaessner know about the relationship between UC Global, Sheldon Adelson, and the Ecuadorian Embassy security operation in 2018, before this was public knowledge? Why was this not reported on at the time?
• Why did the Guardian not report on the fact that Assange’s private conversations were being transcribed by a security company that was supposed to be protecting him?
• Did the Guardian continue to use sources in Ecuador’s intelligence service after it was warned that they were spreading disinformation?
• Given that the Guardian had lines to access CCTV footage at the Ecuadorian Embassy, did it try to attain material evidence of Manafort’s alleged visit? If not, why?
• Why has the Guardian not added any correction notes or provided a retraction to its Manafort story?
• Why is the third author of the Manafort story, Fernando Villavicencio, still not listed on the Guardian’s website? Why was he seen as a reputable journalist to cover Assange?

Until these questions are answered, the newspaper cannot credibly defend itself against the charge that it has committed serious journalistic malpractice in its coverage of Julian Assange.

The Guardian did not respond to a request for comment at the time of publication.

River to Sea Uprooted Palestinian   

The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Blog!

Possible motives for a provocation against Russia

NOVEMBER 25, 2021

A lot of commentators have pointed out that the West really does not want a full scale war with Russia because this would, at best, be a suicidal proposition.  True.

But there are some specific interests in the West which very much want to raise tensions as high as possible.  Today I will list just a few: (partial list)

The US energy sector

The energy sector is deeply concerned about Biden’s “green” rhetoric, combined with the fact that OPEC+ countries are not obeying US demands about prices.  Also, US shale gas is expensive.  Should a war happen between Russia and the Ukraine, it would also certainly completely derail Russian energy exports to the EU which, in turn, would create a very high demand for US energy in Europe (and worldwide).  This is an old US goal in Europe, to force the EU to purchase US energy even though Russian can provide it for a much better price

NATO

That one is simple: NATO has no raison d’être, but now NATO leaders can claim to be the only thing standing between the good, freedom loving EU countries and Putin’s hordes.

“Biden” option one

Biden’s ratings are almost as bad as Zelenskii’s.  If an anti-Russian provocation is executed and Russia has to openly intervene in the Ukraine, Biden can become a “wartime President” and he can wave the flag which will hopefully distract from his immense internal problems and make him look more “presidential” (which in US parlance means “more willing to use force”).

“Biden” option two

Say no provocation takes place and with time, all this hysteria eventually fizzles out.  Then Biden can claim that “he showed the Russkies who is boss” and “America’s” resolve “deterred and contained the Putin”, etc.  That would be like a mouse claiming that it deterred a sleeping bear from attacking it.  The proof?  Well, the evil bear did not attack, did it?  So what more proof do you need?

“Biden” option three

As I have mentioned in the past, there are signs that the US has farmed out the Ukraine to the Europeans, which in turn means that should a shooting war happen, and its outcome is not in doubt, “Biden” can say “we tried to help the Ukraine as much as we could, more than anybody else, but they cannot expect us to go to war with Russia to support them”.  In other words, letting “Ze” lose a war against Russia is a very elegant way to get rid of “Ze” and to blame the current full-spectrum chaos in the Ukraine on him, while deflecting any criticisms of the USA.

UK+EU politicians

UK and EU politicians have been faithfully parroting all the anti-Russian propaganda and now they are stuck in their own ideological corner: they hate Russia, but they need Russian energy.  This dilemma could be “solved” by a short but nasty war which would powerfully re-polarize the EU against Russia and, therefore, fully and totally place the EU in the iron grip of the USA.

US MIC

That one is obvious: the bigger and scarier the Russian boogeyman is, the more the peace-loving USA can be spend on “defense”.  And remember that the goal of US “Congresspersons” (love that newspeak!) is not to contribute to a sane US foreign policy, but to get re-elected.  That, in turns, means that keeping the US MIC up and running, a real financial bonanza for a country otherwise is terrible economic shape, is one of the best way to get reelected while projecting the image of a “patriotic” elected official.  Ted Cruz anybody?

The US deep state

The US deep state has always hated Russia and has always fanned the flames of hysterical russophobia.  The Neocons play a major role here, but they are far from being the only ones, it is quite clear that, besides the White House, the deep state also runs the Department of State, the CIA and the Pentagon.

The 3B+PU

It is now clear that the 3B+PU attempted to overthrow Lukashenko, and that they failed.  How to better conceal the magnitude of this failure from the general public than to have a short and ugly war against Russia, especially since the 3B+PU fully understand that Russia will never attack them first.  Here I have to make a special mention of Poland which currently feels like a giant, standing as they do, on the shoulders of the USA.  For them, it is a win-win situation: if Russia is defeated, they get to proclaim themselves the best soldiers in the history of the universe, if Russia wins, then they can declare themselves the most victimized nation on earth.  Either way, both option are a salvific manna from the heavens for Polish nationalists (who otherwise are in trouble with the EU).

‘Ze’

Zelenskii’s ratings are even worse than Biden’s.  Most of his former allies have turned against him and unless something very dramatic happens, his political future is pretty much zero, he will be lucky if he manages to escape the Ukraine on time, that is before somebody decides to take direct action against him (lots of different interests in the Ukraine are now openly and deeply hostile to ‘Ze’).

The British military/security establishment

The Brits have imperial phantom pains and they feel relatively safe, being far away from the Russian-Ukrainian line of contact.  They also feel that it is quite unthinkable to imagine that Russia would dare to actually strike at a British ship/aircraft or, even less so, at a location in the UK.  That latter belief is quite mistaken, by the way, because the Russians also realize that should they, say, sink a UK ship, or even hit a military facility in the UK, the latter would have two basic options:  1) do nothing by themselves and ask Uncle Shmuel for protection 2) counter-strike against Russia themselves, which would only expose themselves to more Russian counter-strikes.  If this sounds like a losing strategy to you, it is because it is.  But for the country of Litvenenko, Skripal, Bellingcat, and “highly likely” reality is never an impediment to action.  Besides, it really appears that the UK is run by a mentally deranged Prime Minister surrounded by petty bureaucrats and a senile Queen.

The folks nostalgic for the good old days of the white, western, empire

That’s folks like Josep Borrell and all those who wanted a unipolar world, run by the West, of course, where no country could dare defy the rule of the Single World Hegemon (don’t matter which country, as long as it is a western one).  These folks are the ones who need to get whacked, hard, by the Russian military every century or so.

In truth, there are many more groups in the West who want some kind of war, some want it quick and small, others want it bigger, while others want to stop the escalation just short of actual war.

As always, what happens next will be the result of of the sums of the many vectors influencing that outcome: each party will pull towards its interests as much as possible, and the sum vector of all of these unofficial foreign policies will result in what many of us will call “US foreign policy”, in spite of the fact that as such, no such policy exists (other than a sum of these different vectors).

Lastly, is the Putin-Biden being canceled?

Yesterday Psaki said that she was not aware of any preparations made for a summit between Biden and Putin.  Also, a quick look at the calendar makes me wonder: between the upcoming Summit for Democracy, Dec 9th-10th, and the period between the western holiday season (Dec 24th – 1 Jan) the time available to organize such a summit is shrinking quickly.  Following the initial announcement, the rhetoric in both Russia and the USA about such a summit has become much more vague as if both sides now appear to have second thoughts about this.

And if that summit is planned for sometime in January, then this just leaves more time for the Ukronazis to come up with any provocation they like.  If that happens, then any summit would the scrapped sine die anyway.

We can still hope that this summit will take place, and that would be an effective way for “Biden” to show to “himself” and his enemies (the other factions of the US power structure) that he, “Biden”, is still in control.  A bad peace is always preferable to a good war.  But with so many western interests vested into such a war, I am not very optimistic.

Andrei

• Possible motives for a provocation against Russia

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British regime complicit in the mass exodus of Christians from war torn Syria — The Wall Will Fall

SUNDAY 21 NOV 21

My talk that was scheduled to be given at the seventh Christian Conference held in Moscow on 24th October. Unfortunately I was unable to travel but they still published my talk in the final programme:

Deir Ezzor after liberation from ISIS and associated armed groups backed by US Coalition. Photo: Vanessa Beeley

My name is Vanessa Beeley, I am an independent investigative journalist who has worked on the ground inside Syria since 2016. I have been present during the majority of military operations to liberate cities and regions from the occupation of extremist armed groups sponsored by the US-led coalition whose agenda from the beginning has been regime change and destabilisation of a progressive and stable sovereign nation (prior to 2011).

My focus today is on what appears to be the deliberate ethnic cleansing of Christian communities from Syria and the region which has been ongoing since the externally orchestrated “uprising” erupted in Syria in 2011. This exodus of Christians is quite simply catastrophic for Syria as it alters the historic demographic and uproots one of the most important pillars of Syrian cultural diversity and heritage.

It is estimated that less than 700,000 Christians remain in Syria, less than 4% (reduced from 10%) of a 19 million population also itself decimated by forced displacement by the invasion of armed mercenaries and terrorist groups that are being funded, armed and promoted by the US Coalition media as “moderate rebels”. Christian communities have been targeted and persecuted mercilessly – from Aleppo to Damascus and beyond.

I was present in areas of Aleppo, historically Christian quarters, when the Nusra Front-dominated armed groups in East and West Aleppo fired hell cannon mortars, explosive bullets and rockets into residential areas killing and maiming civilians, including children. The armed groups gradually encroached into these areas, sniping residents as they advanced and drove people from their homes. According to faith leaders in Aleppo, 75% of Christians from the city have fled outside Syria to escape the threat of genocide by the NATO-backed armed groups. What happened in Aleppo happened throughout Syria and it is believed that 60% of Christians have been displaced from Syria.

Syria’s Christian tapestry comprises Eastern Orthodox, Melkite Catholic, Syriac Orthodox, Armenian Apostolic, Protestants, Anglicans, Assyrian, Chaldean Catholic and these communities have historically been targeted in the region by the Ottoman Empire, most notably in 1840, 1860 and during the Assyrian genocide/Sayfo of 1915. Turkey, a NATO member state, is once again responsible for ongoing attacks on Christian communities particularly in the North West, Idlib, and in the North East also under illegal occupation by the US and their Kurdish separatist contras.

Deir Ezzor January 2019. Photo: Vanessa Beeley

Turkey, under Erdogan, has provided air cover (drones), military and surveillance support to the sectarian extremist groups that are systematically destroying Syrian Christian towns and villages, desecrating churches, stealing artefacts and crucifying, executing and massacring Christian residents of the areas they invade and occupy.

In 2019, I interviewed an Armenian Christian refugee from Yakubiyah a predominantly Syrian Christian town (Armenian and Catholic) west of Idlib City and approx 10 km from the border with Turkey. Her name is Aline K. Aline informed me that residential homes had been forcibly seized and occupied by the militant gangs when they invaded the town. Houses and churches were looted and desecrated. Christian women were forced to wear the hijab. Many of the young people fled, leaving behind only the elderly who were physically not able to leave or refused to abandon their homes.

Aline told me that a group known as the White Helmets began to appear alongside the armed groups in 2015.

“They established their center in a complex of school and church buildings. When they arrived they were dressed like the terrorists, you couldn’t tell them apart but the White Helmets are a subsidiary of the terrorist groups. Most of the White Helmets were Syrian but the situation was chaotic, we didn’t know who was who, there were many foreigners among them. They (White Helmets and terrorists) left nothing untouched or unbroken. They were like locusts, they left no tree or building untouched. They stole our livelihood, our trees. They destroyed everything, reduced it to trash, our homes, our buildings, all destroyed.”

In July 2019, Suzanne Der Kirkour, a Syrian Christian woman was tortured and raped repeatedly by Al Qaeda terrorists before being stoned to death in Yaquibiye, Idlib. Suzanne was 60 years old, she had asked the terrorists to leave her farmland which triggered this barbaric attack and murder.

The White Helmets are a British/US intelligence creation. Founded in 2013, in Turkey and Jordan, by a former British military intelligence operative, James Le Mesurier, they work exclusively with the extremist armed groups in Syria, dominated by Al Qaeda, ISIS and affiliates. A recent leak of UK Foreign Office documents exposed the extent to which the British government ran million-pound media and PR campaigns for the militant groups and funded the White Helmets to produce false reports and staged events designed to  criminalise the Syrian state, Russia and allies in order to manufacture consent for further proxy military intervention and economic terrorism – illegal unilateral sanctions.

The UK claims that it has provided 2.8 billion in “humanitarian aid” during the ten-year conflict, a conflict it has helped maintain since 2011. In 2019 alone, 150 million was poured into Idlib via the White Helmets and other UK FCDO-incubated so-called NGOs. A Dutch investigative report in September 2018 had already concluded that the White Helmets could not offer sufficient assurances that EU funding was not being siphoned to the armed groups including Al Qaeda. Despite this finding, the UK FCDO continued financing their outreach agents embedded with the aforementioned armed groups.

Since 2011, successive British neocolonialist regimes have professed a desire to “protect the most persecuted religious group in modern times”. According to former UK Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt – “there is nothing more medieval than to despise someone on the basis of their faith”. Former UK Ambassador to Syria, Peter Ford, responded to this statement:

“Nothing more medieval? ‘Medieval’ is a good word to describe the ideology of these armed groups as they single out Christian villages on the edges of Idlib for merciless shelling. There must be a special place in Hell for hypocrites like Hunt and Johnson who feign concern for Christians while supporting vile jihadi groups in Syria.”

In fact, Peter Ford and Reverend Andrew Ashdown, who has regularly visited Syria in order to give a voice to Syrian faith leaders, both denounce the British government for its lack of inclusion of Syrian Christian clergy opinions. Ashdown told me:

“The British government and British Church leaders have consistently failed to take note of the views and experiences of religious leaders inside Syria since they mostly directly challenge the position of the British government.”

Ford made the same point – “Not only has the British government ignored Syrian Christians but it has tried to stifle their voice, by for example refusing visas for Syrian bishops to visit Britain just to put their case.”

Where, for example, are Hunt’s or Johnson’s condemnations of the massacre of civilians on a regular basis in the Syrian Christian towns of Al Sqeilbiyyeh and Mhardeh and villages in the surrounding countryside? These towns and villages are in the Syrian government-secured areas bordering Al Qaeda-dominated northern Hama and Idlib.

For eight years, these Syrian towns have been shelled and threatened with ethnic-cleansing invasion by the terrorist gangs marketed as “rebels” in the West and staunchly defended by Hunt and Johnson.

Women in these towns, wives, sisters, daughters of “martyrs” –the young men who have sacrificed their lives in the volunteer National Defence Forces to defend their communities against the sectarian hatred camped on their doorstep– have, themselves, taken up arms and trained as fighters to protect their people. The brutal gangs who would drive them from their homes and their land are, effectively, promoted and financed by the British government. As Ford says:

“It is the height of hypocrisy for the British government to affect concern for Christians when, in its obsession with overthrowing Assad, it has completely ignored the plight of Syrian Christians, who regard Assad as their sole bulwark against persecution. Worst of all, the British government continues to this day to support to the hilt jihadi groups in Syria”

While the UK regime claims it doesn’t directly supply weapons to the euphemistically labeled “Syrian opposition” – British MP Lloyd Russel-Mole begs to differ, accusing the UK FCDO of complicity in small arms and millions of rounds of ammunition mysteriously ending up in the hands of the extremist armed groups in Syria.

Christian military commanders who lead volunteer National Defence Forces that have been instrumental in protecting Christian towns like Sqeilbiyyeh and Mhardeh in northern Hama from US Coalition-backed genocidal armed groups are now being targeted by EU-funded and intelligence-linked media outlets threatening legal action against them and Christian NGOs who have stood in solidarity with their combat against the savagery of sectarian, extremist militias. Their crime? Defending their communities against extinction. They are being described as “war criminals” for doing so. I argue that the real war criminals are those countries enabling and power multiplying the mercenary Islamist forces intent on the destruction of Christianity in Syria and the region.

When the British regime vows to “protect persecuted Christians throughout the world”, they need to justify their support for the violent, armed sectarianism that is sweeping the Middle East. The responsibility for the eradication of regional cultural diversity lies with the British regime & members of the US-led neoconservative cabal. It is worth noting also the British regime bias against Syrian Christian refugees. Their excuse that “only 0.2% of Syrian Christian refugees have relatives in the UK”. Meanwhile members of the Al-Qaeda-linked White Helmets were given instant asylum in the UK after their evacuation (alongside armed group fighters and leaders) out of southern Syria facilitated by Israel. Did they all have relatives in the UK?

In May 2019, former Chancellor of the Exchequer, Sajid Javid, effectively offered 28 days amnesty for British terrorists fighting in Idlib. The same terrorists who will have ensured the continued persecution of Syrian Christians. In December

In December 2018, Jeremy Hunt commissioned an independent investigation into the rise of “Christophobia” –led by the Bishop of Truro– which was recently published. Peter Ford condemned the report for its failure to criticize the government “for all the support they have given to armed groups in Syria guilty of persecuting Christians”.

His Excellency, Jano Battah, Bishop of the Syriac Catholic Church, has said publicly that “were it not for the SAA and Russia we would have been slaughtered.”

Boris Johnson has “welcomed this review” and claims that he will “stand up for those facing persecution”. Well, why not start by lifting economic sanctions against Syria and ending the promotion and financing of the sectarian terrorist groups and their auxiliaries that are persecuting the Syrian people? As William Wilberforce, MP, said to the House of Commons with reference to the slave trade in 1791 – “you may choose to look the other way, but you can never again say you did not know.”

Photo: Commander of Al Sqeilbiyyeh National Defence Forces and Father Elias Zahlahoui 

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The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Blog!