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Hillary’ Secret Speeches to Corporate Lobbyists & CEOs
ERIC ZUESSE | 16.10.2016
Hillary’ Secret Speeches to Corporate Lobbyists & CEOs
Wikileaks has recently released what the press refers to as Hillary Clinton’s paid secret speeches to corporations, but that’s a gross mischaracterization of the Wikileaks data-dump, because not a single one of her at least 91 paid secret speeches has been released anywhere. Only excerpts, brief quotations from them, have been released. The Wikileaks dump isn’t of her speeches at all, but instead from the email file and other computer files of her campaign chief, John Podesta, when he told his staff to look through her speeches and send to him brief passages that might be used against Hillary’s campaign if the passages were to leak out prior to the election.
Even Podesta hadn’t read the speeches, and he didn’t select the passages that would he «flagged». The complete file is an 80-page docx document (titled «HWA Speech Flags,» meaning excerpts that might cause problems for Hillary) which file Wikileaks unfortunately failed to convert into the universally available, free-of-charge, and more-easily-usable pdf format. (Wikileaks apparently doesn’t much care about accessibility of the information it leaks.)
Podesta’s staff excerpted only non-incriminating passages, which actually won’t be particularly disturbing to progressives, other than indicating that Hillary proudly self-identifies as being part of the monied elite, not as being part of the masses — and conservatives wouldn’t be at all disturbed at her pro-aristocracy views; they too admire the aristocracy; only progressives (including Sanders supporters) might find such passages disturbing. As I’ll indicate at the end of this article, her speeches actually did contain some seriously incriminating passages, but Podesta’s staff failed to include any of them. Perhaps Podesta’s staff are so conservative that that’s the reason why the far-right-wing things she said in her speeches weren’t flagged by them — Hillary’s blatantly fascist assertions didn’t strike them as being at all controversial.
First, then, from the Wikileaks dump, here are some of the excerpts that I found to be marginally interesting (and nothing, really, in the wikileaked dump, was more than that):
Hillary Clinton Said There Was «A Bias Against People Who Have Led Successful And/Or Complicated Lives,» Citing The Need To Divese Of Assets, Positions, And Stocks.* «SECRETARY CLINTON: Yeah. Well, you know what [GoldmanSachs then Citigroup] Bob Rubin said about that. He said, you know, when he came to Washington, he had a fortune. And when he left Washington, he had a small – MR. BLANKFEIN [GoldmanSachs head]: That’s how you have a small fortune, is you go to Washington. SECRETARY CLINTON: You go to Washington. Right. But, you know, part of the problem with the political situation, too, is that there is such a bias against people who have led successful and/or complicated lives. You know, the divestment of assets, the stripping of all kinds of positions, the sale of stocks. It just becomes very onerous and unnecessary». [Goldman Sachs Builders And Innovators Summit, 10/29/13]
It’s found on page 55 of Podesta’s master-file of all of the excerpts (that’s the docx file).
Hillary Clinton is there opposing the requirement for extremely wealthy people to separate, or otherwise insulate, their wealth from becoming impacted by (grown by) political decisions that they might make while serving as public officials. According to this excerpt, she gave that speech on 29 October 2013. She was implying there that her listeners, if they should decide to leave «the private sector» for «public service» like she has done, oughtn’t be required to sacrifice anything of their existing private income-stream (much less required not to use their public office for enhancing their wealth) — that such personal ‘sacrifice’ should instead be able to be ‘rewarded’ in ways that currently aren’t legal.
She’s implicitly praising both herself and them, as being especially valuable persons, who therefore have an intrinsic right to use their private wealth in any way that they want, not be restrained by ‘unnecessary’ anti-corruption laws, which shouldn’t even exist for such terrific people, who have earned the right to be living «complicated lives». (She speaks in code, which they understand.)
Here’s another excerpt from that speech, and it’s on page 54 of the complete file:
Many of you in this room are on the cutting edge of technology or health care or some other segment of the economy, so you are people who look over the horizon. And coming into public life and bringing that perspective as well as the success and the insulation that success gives you could really help in a lot of our political situations right now.
So: these rich people shouldn’t be required to separate their personal investments from the decisions that they would be making if they were to come to be holding public office (and is she referring to herself there?), but they should be taking advantage of, or exploiting «the insulation that success gives you,» because, somehow, supposedly, it «could really help in a lot of our political situations right now». But does that really make any good sense, from the standpoint of the public? Or is it instead perhaps dangerous to the public?
On page 22 of the complete file, is this:
Hillary Clinton Praised The Increase In Gas And Oil Production In The US, Saying «We Are Now Energy Independent, Something We Have Hoped For And Worked For Over Many, Many Years». In her remarks at Ameriprise, Hillary Clinton said, «And as we speak, Gazprom is attempting to take over other strategic energy infrastructure in Europe. This is pure power politics. And that’s why as secretary of state, starting in March of 2009, I pushed the Europeans to get serious about finding alternative energy sources, and to invest real resources in their infrastructure so they would not be at Putin’s mercy. […]
And we’re in such a great position to do that because of the increase in gas and oil production in our own country, we are now energy independent, something we have hoped for and worked for over many, many years. That gives us tools we didn’t have before. And it also gives us the opportunity not only to invest those resources in more manufacturing and other activities that benefit us directly here at home, but to be a bulwark with our supplies against the kind of intimidation we see going on from Russia». [Hillary Clinton’s Remarks at Ameriprise, 7/26/14]
She elsewhere was pushing Europe to do all that it can to reduce its purchases of oil and gas from Russia. On page 25:
Hillary Clinton Began Urging Europe To Be More Energy Independent And Pushing For »A More Competitive Marketplace For Energy». «HILLARY CLINTON: [On Putin] Secondly, the effort to undermine the market in oil and gas and commodities goes right at the source of Russia’s wealth. When I was Secretary I cannot say I saw this coming, but what I saw was that in 2006 in January he cut off gas to Eastern Europe. I think like a dozen people froze to death in Poland. He did it again in 2009, primarily focused on Ukraine. He has used his energy weapon to intimidate Europe. And starting in 2009 I began having conversations with the Europeans that they had to do more to be more independent and to push for a more competitive marketplace for energy. I formed something called the US-EU Energy Council and began trying to look at what more we could do to really wean people away from Russian supplies. The more we can do that the more difficult it will be for Putin to maintain his hold on leadership, even with his inner circle without changing course». [Hillary Clinton Remarks at Marketo, 4/8/14]
Europe’s main supplier of oil and gas is Russia. The US fracking companies, including especially the majors, would benefit by Europe’s importing more of America’s oil and gas from them, less from Russia. Also, US companies work with, and could build pipelines for, oil and gas from Saudi Arabia, Qatar, UAE, and Kuwait, all of which royal families are likewise anti-Russian, which means pro-American-aristocracy. Hillary is making clear to her financial supporters, that she’s on their side, against Russia. She portrays «a dozen people frozen to death in Poland» referring actually to a situation where Russia’s gas supplies through Ukraine had been halted due to Ukraine’s demanding even bigger price-discounts than Russia already was granting to them, but her listeners are anti-Russian and she is bonding with them. Then, on page 38 is this, likewise assuming that when the stockholders of US-based companies benefit, the United States is necessarily benefiting — in other words: assuming that the interests of America’s corporate owners are necessarily identical to the interests of ‘America’:
Hillary Clinton: «I Visited The Boeing Design Center In Moscow… I Made The Case That Boeing’s Jet Set The Global Gold Standard». «In 2010, President Obama set a target of doubling America’s exports over five years, and at the State Department I made export promotions a personal mission. So as I traveled the world on behalf of our country, I did everything I could to go to bat for American companies trying to break into new markets and compete on a level playing field. It took me to some really interesting places, particularly now with all the problems we’re seeing with Russia and President Putin. Back in 2009, when Dmitri Medvedev was actually president, I visited the Boeing Design Center in Moscow, because Boeing had been trying to secure a contract for new planes with the Russians. And I made the case that Boeing’s jet set the global gold standard. And after I left, our embassy kept at it, and in 2010 Russians agreed to buy 50 737s for almost $4 billion, which translates into thousands of American jobs». [Hillary Clinton Remarks at the Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries Convention, 4/10/14]
She was there equating the interests of America’s big exporters — that’s to say the large international corporations that are headquartered in the US — as constituting the interests of «America». «As I traveled the world on behalf of our country,» she was saying there that ‘our country’ was people like themselves — the major executives and stockholders in US international corporations, and their lobbyists. That’s the Wall Street view of ‘America’. But if she had been selling Medvedev planes that were made in America by American workers but for Airbus or another non-US-owned-and-run company, then would Wall Street, and Hillary Clinton, equally think that to be patriotic, or «on behalf of our country»? Clearly: she is equating the United States with the owners and top executives of corporations, instead of with the workers, or the consumers. No wonder, then, that her entire career has been financed by Wall Street — her viewpoint is consistently theirs. She doesn’t have to say that it’s true; she displays that it’s true, regarding her mindset. But she speaks it in code, because saying such things in direct language doesn’t sound nearly so kosher, much less pretty.
On page 60, she pretends that she had no awareness at all of the coup that weeks earlier overthrew the democratically elected President of Ukraine, for whom 75% of Crimeans and 90% of Donbass residents had voted — the February 2014 coup that her own State Department (including her close friend Victoria Nuland) had started preparing inside the US Embassy in Ukraine by no later than 1 March 2013, which was a year before the coup itself culminated; the coup that included a massacre by US-hired mercenaries of the racist Right Sector, against Crimeans who had demonstrated peacefully against the overthrow; she pretended utter ignorance about it all, and alleged that instead it was Putin — not she and Obama — who was copying Hitler by invading an independent country (in this case Ukraine, by means of that bloody Kiev coup):
Hillary Clinton Stated What She Said Yesterday Is That Claims By Putin And Other Russians That They Had To Go Into Crimea Was Reminiscent Of Germany In The 1930s. »What I said yesterday is that the claims by President Putin and other Russians that they had to go into Crimea and maybe further into Eastern Ukraine because they had to protect the Russian minorities. And that is reminiscent of claims that were made back in the 1930s when Germany under the Nazis kept talking about how they had to protect German minorities in Poland, in Czechoslovakia, and elsewhere throughout Europe. So I just want everybody to have a little historic[al — she’s so illiterate that she uses «historic» when she actually means historical] perspective. I’m not making a comparison, certainly, but I am recommending that we, perhaps, can learn from this tactic that has been used before». [03052014 HWA Remarks at UCLA.DOC, p. 19]
Finally, and not at all included in the Wikileaks dump, there was a reporter who, unlike the people on the Clinton campaign staff, did happen to obtain access to, and find to be shockingly fascist, not merely one thing but two things that that reporter actually heard her deliver, and made note of at that time, when he managed to sneak into the particular event where Hillary was giving that particular speech. This occurred at the Biotechnology Industry Organization convention in San Diego, on 25 June 2014, a $225,000 speech that she was giving to lobbyists for GMO firms, a speech that ended up being excerpted-from in just two brief and innocuous excerpts in the Wikileaks dump, but that actually — based upon what the local newspaper reporter heard and transcribed from it — contained far worse in it than Podesta’s ‘researchers’ found and reported to him. As I wrote summarizing the matter, in my own article about this speech, two years after the speech, on 26 June 2016:
In other words: As President, she would aim to sign into law a program to provide subsidies from US taxpayers to Monsanto and other biotech firms, to assist their PR and lobbying organizations to eliminate what she says is «a big gap between the facts and what the perceptions are» concerning genetically modified seeds and other GMOs. In other words: she ignores the evidence that started to be published in scientific journals in 2012 showing that Monsanto and other GMO firms were selectively publishing studies that alleged to show their products to be safe, while selectively blocking publication of studies that — on the basis of better methodology — showed them to be unsafe. She wants US taxpayers to assist GMO firms in their propaganda that’s based on their own flawed published studies, financed by the GMO industry, and that ignores the studies that they refuse to have published. She wants America’s consumers to help to finance their own being poisoned by lying companies, who rake in profits from poisoning them.
The original 25 June 2014 article about the speech, written by reporter Ken Stone in the Times of San Diego, was appropriately titled, «Hillary Clinton Cheers Biotechers, Backing GMOs and Federal Help». It makes clear that she really does feel that Americans should be subsidizing, not resisting, the GMO foods industry, and that Americans even should be subsidizing those corporations’ propaganda, so as to boost those companies’ sales to America’s consumers.
Hillary’s top donor for 2016 is Paloma Partners, advisors to Wall Street. Previously, her top contributors were virtually all of Wall Street. She has all the right support, from all the far-right people, irrespective of their political Party. She is expecting the American public to tag along behind them. Current polls suggest that they probably will.
The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Blog!
U.S. bringing world to the brink of nuclear war, while Americans have been kept in the dark
U.S. bringing world to the brink of nuclear war
By Cindy Sheehan, Excerpts from TeleSur, 14/10/2016
What’s happening in Syria has been going on for over five years and it’s not a civil war.
U.S. imperialism has been exporting disaster around the world for over a century now, but not since the “Cuban” missile crisis in 1962, has the U.S. put the world on the brink of such a disaster as we are witnessing today.
The conflict began as a U.S.-funded effort to depose President Bashar Assad and install a puppet government in Damascus friendly to U.S. interests. I am sure there are some legitimate forces in Syria who oppose the government of Assad, but the U.S. does not care about democracy — afterall Assad was elected by his people.
Also in Syria, approximately one dozen militias are not only trying to overthrow the Assad government but they are also fighting amongst themselves. The ranking Democrat on the U.S. Congressional House Intelligence Committee, uber-Zionist Adam Schiff of California, said of the phenomena of CIA-funded militias fighting in places like Aleppo, “It’s part of the three-dimensional chess game.” This chess game, played by empires for millennia, profit the wealthy and as always, the people pay the heavy price.
Today we learned that China is contemplating joining Russia and Syria in their alliance to protect the sovereignty of Syria and for stabilization in the Middle East.
The U.S. has long invaded and provoked weaker countries like Afghanistan and Iraq which have little hope of retaliating but nonetheless use what resources they have to fight off U.S. imperialism. However, provoking Russia in places like Syria and Ukraine seems to be the height of arrogance and stupidity on the part of the U.S.
For many years, Russian President Vladimir Putin has been the rational actor in this insane U.S. provocation, but Russia is getting ready to fight back—reportedly holding civil defense drills, warning Russians abroad, and even testing nuclear missiles.
Some of us see no hope for the mis-leaders here in the U.S. to provide some sanity in its foreign policy. In the last U.S. presidential debate between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, the war criminal Clinton reaffirmed her hardcore stance to go to war with Russia, through Syria, if necessary. Clinton also declared her support for a “no fly zone” over Syria, which the chair of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff Joseph Dunford said would require 70,000 U.S. troops to maintain and would definitely mean war with Russia…(…read more…)
RELATED:
U.S. Has Been Preparing for WW3,
Americans Have Been Kept in The Dark,
while Russian TV tells civilians to find out
where their nearest bomb shelter is
If the American people, those that get their “news” by reading the NYT, Washington Post, watching CNN, or some other mainstream media source, are now wondering why all of a sudden everyone is talking about war, it is because Americans have been deliberately kept in the dark over the last few years about how the U.S. government has been making prepartions for a nuclear conflict.
The MSM has trickled a little information here and there, while downplaying the importance of certain stories, such as the April 2015 news that NORAD and the Pentagon were moving their communications equipment to Stargate Mountain, the cold-war era Cheyenne Mountain bunker that’s naturally EMP-hardened. That raised massive red flags for ANP and other alternative news sites, as we warned the U.S. government was making preparations for World War III.
In June 2016, Russian President Vladimir Putin issued a severe warning to journalists, making it very clear that World War III, a nuclear war, was on our doorstep, losing patience with how the severity of the situation was being hidden from the world.
President Putin stated “We know year by year what’s going to happen, and they know that we know. It’s only you that they tell tall tales to, and you buy it, and spread it to the citizens of your countries. You people in turn do not feel a sense of the impending danger – this is what worries me. How do you not understand that the world is being pulled in an irreversible direction? While they pretend that nothing is going on. I don’t know how to get through to you anymore”.
According to the Russian site Znak.com, administration staff, regional administrators, lawmakers of all levels and employees of public corporations have been ordered to take their children out of foreign schools immediately.
Russian political analyst Stanislav Belkovsky is quoted as stating “This is all part of the package of measures to prepare elites to some ‘big war’.”
That was on October 12, 2016, and just two days later, October 14, 2016… today, we see that state run Russian television is telling civilians to find out where their nearest bomb shelter is.
One apocalyptic broadcast told viewers on Moscow’s state-owned TV channel NTV: “If it should one day happen, every one of you should know where the nearest bomb shelter is. It’s best to find out now.”
SOURCES Excerpts from: TeleSur InformationClearingHouse AllNewsPipeline submitted by Lone Bear (Lone_Bear) War Press Info Network at: https://syrianfreepress.wordpress.com/2016/10/14/usa-to-nuclear-war/ ~
The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Blog!
A Glimpse into Jewish Guilt and Aggression
By Gilad Atzmon
Some Jews were not delighted by Donald Trump’s recent reference to ‘International Bankers”. Trump declared this week that his rival Hilary Clinton is somehow “an instrument of a vast conspiracy involving scads of money and international banks”
You may note that Trump didn’t refer to Jews nor did he point at any ethnicity or religious group. However, , the CEO of the Anti-Defamation League was quick to react using the twitter platform. “Trump should avoid rhetoric and tropes that historically have been used against Jews and still spur antisemitism,” Greenblatt said and then added “Let’s keep hate out of campaign.”
One may wonder at this stage why a leading American Jew sees ‘hatred’ in Trump’s critical reference to ‘International Banking’?is it because Greenblatt knows that the International Bankers who fund Clinton’s presidential affair belong to one particular ethnic group? Is it possible that Greenblatt believes that the bankers at Goldman Sachs, along with individuals like Haim Saban and George Soros, may have one or two things in common apart from being filthy rich?
The Jewish Telegraphic Agency was also alarmed by Trump’s true observation that “This election will determine if we are a free nation or whether we have only the illusion of democracy, but are in fact controlled by a small handful of global special interests rigging the system”
Once again Trump didn’t refer specifically to Jews, yet the JTA must have gathered that he had Jews in mind. The JTA probably knows something many of us may gathered but prefer to suppress.
I guess that the good news is the sudden appearance of Jewish guilt. Greenblatt and the JTA act out of guilt. They do know that international banking is a Jewish territory and that makes them feel uncomfortable. But the tragic news is Jewish guilt hardly leads towards ethical reflection, too often it is quick to transform into aggression.
If Greenblatt was genuinely concerned with defamation and safety of American Jews he should have lobbied the herd of Jewish international bankers to remove themselves from American politics. But for Greenblatt and others within his tribal milieu, Jewish power is the power to silence the discussion on Jewish power!
In practice, Greenblatt, an American Jewish leader, is telling the Republican presidential candidate which topics to avoid.
I would like to tell Greenblatt and his acolytes that this development is very dangerous to American people and to American Jews in particular.
The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Blog!
The Widening US-Russian Rift
Do you want total war? If necessary, do you want a war more total and radical than anything that we can even imagine today?” asked Germany’s Minister of Propaganda, Joseph Goebbels, in one of his most famous speeches delivered on 18 February 1943.

Goebbels’s so-called ‘Sportpalast speech’ came at a time when luck had started turning its back on Nazi Germany, with the Soviet liberation of Stalingrad taking place.
The high-ranking Nazi official called for decisive action, asserting that unless the Russians were defeated, Bolshevism would swallow Germany up, along with the whole of Europe.
Today, Moscow finds itself on the receiving end of similar rhetoric, now coming from the capitals of western powers, which – much like the Weimar Republic in 1943 – have come to the realization that the zenith of their military superiority has passed.
War Is Almost Guaranteed
“The established world order is undergoing a foundational shake-up… war is almost guaranteed… we will stop you and we will beat you harder than you have ever been beaten before.”
One can be forgiven for thinking that the quote above is a continuation of Goebbels’s speech. However, it was the US Army’s chief of staff, Gen. Mark A. Milley, who uttered those words.
Speaking earlier in October, Milley singled out “Russia, Iran, China, and North Korea” as countries hoping to defeat the US, warning that future warfare with a near-peer adversary will “be highly lethal, unlike anything our Army has experienced at least since World War II.”
Ramping up the rhetoric against Moscow, US Secretary of State John Kerry called for a war crimes investigation into Russian and Syrian military operations in Aleppo.
“Russia and the [Syrian] regime owe the world more than an explanation about why they keep hitting hospitals and medical facilities, and children and women,” Kerry told reporters, adding that, “these are acts that beg for an appropriate investigation of war crimes.”
Aside from the undiplomatic choice of words by the US Secretary of State to describe his Russian counterparts as ‘war criminals’, Kerry’s comments serve another purpose.
From a historical standpoint, war crimes trials are generally reserved for American adversaries that lose the war. As such, Kerry is not only implying that a direct military confrontation with the Russians is on the cards, but he is also alluding to an American victory.
The Cuban Missile Crisis at the height of the Cold War brought the world to the brink of a nuclear holocaust, marking the lowest point in relations between Moscow and Washington. But even in 1962, when the USSR was referred to as the ‘evil empire’ in the US, western officials refrained from calling for their counterparts in the Kremlin to stand trial for war crimes.
The director at The Crisis Research Institute, Mark Almond, believes that, “we have passed the stage of the initiation of the new Cold War. We are now actually in some ways in the atmosphere before the First World War.”
In late September, US State Department spokesman John Kirby suggested that if the Russian/Syrian offensive against militants continued, Moscow “will continue to send troops home in body bags, and… to lose resources, perhaps even aircraft.”
A senior expert at the Russian Institute for Strategic Studies, Sergei Ermakov, points out that, “Washington did not allow itself to make such frank statements even during the Cold War. Factually, behind Kirby’s words is a direct threat.”
Syrian Roulette
Anything and everything to do with the war in Syria is focused on the battle for Aleppo – more specifically on the eastern militant-controlled part of the city.
This city is Syria’s Stalingrad and the outcome of the battle in Aleppo will be the most significant factor in determining how the rest of the war unfolds.
This explains why the west is becoming increasingly anxious and is willing to use all of its recourses to prevent the liberation of the terrorist bastion.
The mainstream media’s hysteria about civilian casualties, which makes no mention of the Nusra Front’s stranglehold on eastern Aleppo or the group’s attacks on the western half of the city, is helping to turn the tide towards western military intervention in Syria.
The war hawks are all weighing in, including former US National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski, who wrote: “To halt the relentless attacks on the innocent in Aleppo, available US power should assert its capabilities.”
So What Does This Mean Exactly?
According to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, the conflict in Syria is part of Washington’s primary goal to impose global hegemony.
“The whole issue is about keeping the hegemony of the Americans around the world, not allowing anyone to be a partner on the political or international arena, whether Russia or even their allies in the West,” the Syrian leader told the Russian Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper.
But the Russians have responded both diplomatically and militarily.
Aside from suspending a 16-year-old deal that called for reducing stockpiles of weapons-grade plutonium, the Kremlin added the S-300 surface-to-air missile defense system to the already deployed S-400 in Syria – effectively shutting down Syrian airspace for unfriendly aircraft.
Last week, Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Maj. Gen. Igor Konashenkov warned Washington that the range of the S-300 and S-400 missile defense systems would be a “surprise” to any country operating its aircraft over Syria.
“I would recommend to our colleagues in Washington to carefully weigh possible consequences,” Konashenkov said, while adding that “dilettante illusions about stealth planes could collide with disappointing realities.”
Several days later, Russian President Vladimir Putin went a step further, approving a law ratifying Moscow’s deal with Syria to deploy its forces in the country indefinitely.
These measures have forced the Americans to choose between following through on their threats – that could result in another Cuban-style nuclear standoff with a different outcome – or accepting the demise of a unipolar world.
No one can say for sure which one Washington will choose.
A lot depends on whom the American people elect as their new president on November 8.
A lot depends on whom the American people elect as their new president on November 8.
With Hillary Clinton in the White House and the right number of disgruntled neocons who would rather burn the whole world than accept the end of American ‘hegemony’, a nuclear Armageddon is entirely plausible.
Source: al-Ahed News
15-10-2016 | 09:34
Uprooted Palestinian
The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Blog!
No document agreed at Syria talks in Lausanne: source
By Leith Fadel –
16/10/2016

(TASS) No agreement has been reached or set out in a final document at the ministerial meeting on Syria held in the Swiss lakeside city of Lausanne, a source from a foreign delegation told TASS on Saturday.
“Agreements could not have been reached,” the source said. “The composition of participants did not make for it,” he added, explaining that he meant both a considerable number of participants and divisions among them.
The four-and-a-half hours’ ministerial meeting in the Swiss lakeside city of Lausanne centered on restoring truce in Syria. Initially, five nations had been expected to attend the meeting — Russia, the United States, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar. Eventually, the foreign ministers from Russia, US Iraq, Iran, Turkey, Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Qatar alongside UN Special Envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura participated in the talks.
In particular, Turkey and Iraq have serious disagreements over Ankara’s plans to take part in the liberation of Mosul. Earlier, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said that the issue would be discussed at the meeting in Lausanne.
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Uprooted Palestinian
The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Blog!
Amazing words by Donald Trump
October 15, 2016
I know, I know. These are just words. But listen to these words, these are absolutely amazing words, nobody before dared say what Trump says. At the very least, I think that we have to give him the benefit of the doubt.
What if Trump is really sincere? I am not saying that he is. But I am wondering –what if?!
The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Blog!
Russia’s First Year of Operations in Syria
15.10.2016 –
Written and produced by SF Team: J.Hawk, Daniel Deiss, Edwin Watson
To put Russia’s one year of peacemaking operations in Syria in perspective, one should think back to what the situation was like on the eve of the arrival of the first Russian aircraft, support personnel, military advisors, and military equipment, to Syria. By all accounts, Syrian government forces were in retreat on all fronts, being pushed back in Raqqa, Aleppo, Hama, Idlib, and Latakia provinces. The Islamic State, the Jabhat al-Nusra, the so-called “Free Syrian Army”, and many other smaller rebel formations were conquering towns and military bases, with their advance triggering a flood of refugees into Turkey, Jordan, and other countries. Syria stood practically alone, with some Iranian assistance for sure, against a seemingly motley group of rebel formations which, however, enjoyed generous financial, military, and even operational support by several outside powers, including the United States, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey, with Jordan and Israel maintaining a state of benevolent neutrality toward the rebels. In September of 2015, the days of the Assad government seemed numbered.
In September of 2016, virtually nobody expects the Assad government to fall. Even the US Secretary of State John Kerry, in conversations with Syrian opposition which were made available to US media, acknowledged that the anti-Syrian coalition has been outmaneuvered to the point that the long-standing US/NATO/EU mantra of “Assad must go” has become obsolete. To the extent that nearly everyone recognizes that the world is now multipolar, Russia’s effective use of military power in Syria is the single most important factor behind that shift. How did Russia manage to effect such a dramatic change in spite of seemingly overwhelming odds against it, in what is becoming a classic exercise in the use of military force?
The first secret of its success was the strict adherence to international law.To put it bluntly, US military operations on or over Syria’s territory have no legal justification at all. Similarly, the support of the rebel groups listed above, most of whom allegedly pursue a radical agenda, employ large numbers of mercenaries, and don’t hesitate from committing atrocities to impose alien political dogmas, violates all manner of fundamental international norms, not the least of which are the concept of national sovereignty and self-determination. In contrast, Russian operations are being conducted at the invitation of the sole internationally recognized government of Syria. If the comprehensive campaign of disinformation and propaganda that is intended to shield Western audiences from the reality of the war in Syria is any indication, Western governments are keenly aware of the immorality and illegality of their actions. And so is the rest of the world.
Secondly, and also in stark contrast with the US and NATO uses of military power, Russia’s leadership appears to be aware of both the limits of the country’s power and of what can be accomplished using solely military force. There is no trace of hubris, of “Russian exceptionalist” rhetoric in either the political aims being pursued, or the military means which are used to accomplish them. In military sense, the goal of the operation is a modest one–the denial of victory to the West-backed jihadist coalition. Once that objective is achieved, once every major anti-Syrian actor acknowledges that Syria’s legitimate government or Russia’s military presence in Syria cannot be dislodged by any combination of political and military measures, they will be forced to negotiate a peace settlement that will preserve both the territorial and political integrity of the Syrian state.
To be sure, that modest military objective did require a wide range of measures to accomplish. The most urgent was the refashioning of the crumbling Syrian Arab Army into a military force capable of recovering the lost territories. While in the immediate term that task could be addressed by an aggressive bombing campaign that took the jihadists, unaccustomed to being opposed by a modern air force, by surprise. But the air campaign was not intended to defeat the jihadists by itself, but rather gain time for the re-equipment and re-training efforts to bear fruit, which they began to by the first months of 2016. Moreover, in the event the jihadists were expecting to outlast Syrian and Russian forces, the campaign of aerial interdiction of rebel supply routes and the Islamic State’s oil infrastructure was aimed at undermining the opposition’s long-term ability to sustain the war effort.
However, the jihadists and wild geeze aren’t the most dangerous foes faced by Syria. The Russian military had to minimize the prospect of a direct NATO military operation against the Syrian military and government that, as in the case of Libya, would have been spearheaded by US airpower. The goal of conventional deterrence against both air and land NATO incursions was achieved, though only after the loss of one Su-24 bomber, treacherously shot down over Syria by Turkish fighters, by the deployment of advanced S-400 air defense systems, Su-35 fighters, and Iskander-M tactical ballistic missiles, and the demonstration of the power of Russia’s air- and sea-launched cruise missiles which would have struck US air bases throughout the Middle East in the event of any escalation.
This effort has not been without a cost. 20 Russian servicemembers have lost their lives in Syria in the space of last year. The Russian military has also lost, in addition to the Su-24 bomber, several attack and transport helicopters
The effect, however, has been nothing short of spectacular. Rebel forces are in retreat on nearly every important sector of the front, and even the crucial struggle for Aleppo, which has reached the scale of a general battle that will decide the future of Syria, has decisively swung in Syria’s favor. Outside Syria, both friend and foe have taken note. Russia’s engagement has served as a veritable “seed capital” that drew larger contingents of Iranian Revolutionary Guards, Iraq’s Shia militias, and Lebanon’s Hezbollah, into the fray. Turkey has opted for what amounts to a negotiated “separate peace” with Russia and Syria in exchange for a free hand to focus on the Kurdish threat to its own sovereignty. Even the US, whose leaders are perennially invoking “Plan Bs” in an effort to intimidate Russia, is finding itself without viable policy options. While the war is still far from over, after one year of intervention all the political and military trends in Syria are now in a positive direction.
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