The Iraq War Fueled the Destruction of the Middle East

Cesar Chelala

Fifteen years after it started, the Iraq war has nearly destroyed the country, one of the most prosperous in the Middle East, and destabilized the whole region by intensifying internecine and religious conflicts and giving rise to new and violent groups. And the human and material costs of the war keep mounting.

In addition to the American soldiers who were killed or injured, the war has had a considerable negative effect on the U.S. economy. The war has also had a negative impact on U.S. troops’ morale There  has also been a  high rate of suicides prevalent among those returning from the war.

Like a malicious octopus, the ill-named Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF) has extended its deadly tentacles into nearby countries, and turned the region into the unmanageable mess it is today. Major Danny Sjursen, a U.S. Army strategist who fought in Iraq recently wrote, “That ill-fated farce of an invasion either created the conditions, or exacerbated the existing tensions, which inform today’s regional wars.”

The war has increased Sunni-Shiite tension, fostered the emergence of Al-Qaeda in Iraq, and strengthened Iran as a military power in the region. Following the U.S. led invasion, the Iraqi Shiite Arab majority took a central role in government, an unprecedented event in the Middle East, which also encouraged the Shiites across the region. In a persistent crisis, the Sunnis in Iraq rebelled against the Iraqi Shiites, launching a rebellion against them that has claimed tens of thousands of lives.

There was no Al-Qaeda in Iraq before the U.S. and British invasion. It first appeared in Iraq in 2004, when Abu Musab al-Zarqawi formed an alliance with Al-Qaeda, pledging his allegiance to Osama bin Laden in return for his endorsement as the leader of the group’s franchise in Iraq. Al-Qaeda’s main targets were Iraqi Shiites, whom they attacked during religious processions or at their mosques and shrines. After 2007, Al-Qaeda was considerably weakened after the U.S. funded Sunni groups called “Awakening Councils” to expel this organization from Iraq.

Although less powerful than during its peak years, Al-Qaeda continues to be active in its violent activities, whose targets now also include Syria and Yemen. Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), the Yemeni branch of Al-Qaeda, is now thriving in Yemen, taking advantage of the chaotic environment in the country. A ravaged country, Yemen continues to be one of the poorest countries in the world.

In Syria, Al-Qaeda still has a presence, albeit less powerful now. Jabhat al-Nusra, Al-Qaeda’s ideological heir, and Hay’et Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), the group it formed, remain in eastern Ghouta, northern Hama and western Aleppo provinces, contributing to the prolongation of Syria’s bloody war.

At the same time, the militants of ISIS, the brutal offshoot of Al-Qaeda, have no restraints in pursuing brutal tactics to cement an Islamic emirate. In an ISIS propaganda video, after bulldozing the Syrian-Iraq border, an ISIS militant says, “We will break the barrier of Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, all the countries. This is the first of many barriers we will break.”

The Iraq war has proved to be a disaster for the Middle East. The destruction of Iraq, Syria, the ravaging of Yemen and a region swamped in weapons are connected, either directly or indirectly, to the Iraq war. It may be tempting to think that the war had some redeeming value. However, considering its consequences, one can only conclude that nothing will assuage the savage wounds of this senseless war.

The Ignorant and the Arrogant: How Pompeo and Bolton Bring Us Closer to War in the Middle East

Patrick Cockburn

Armed conflict between the US and Iran is becoming more probable by the day as super-hawks replace hawks in the Trump administration. The new National Security Adviser, John Bolton, has called for the US to withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal of 2015 and advocated immediate regime change in Tehran. The new Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, has said the agreement, which Trump may withdraw from on 12 May, is “a disaster”. Trump has told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that he will not accept a deal with “cosmetic changes” as advocated by European states, according to Israeli reporters. If this is so, then the deal is effectively dead.

The escalating US-Iran confrontation is causing menacing ripples that could soon become waves across the Middle East. The price of crude oil is up because of fears of disruption of supply from the Gulf. In Iran, the value of the rial is at its lowest ever, having fallen by a quarter in the last six months. In Iraq, Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi admits his greatest fear is a confrontation between the US and Iran fought out in Iraq.

A dangerous aspect of the super-hawk approach to Iran is similar to that of the Bush administration in the run up to the invasion of Iraq in 2003. In both cases, those calling for use of armed force had, or have, lethally little knowledge of what they were/are getting into. Pompeo had a simple solution to the Iranian problem when he was still a congressman, telling reporters it would take “under 2,000 sorties to destroy the Iranian nuclear capacity”.

Optimists, though these have become fewer on the ground in Washington in the last few weeks, are dismissive of such bellicose rhetoric. But whatever Trump and his lieutenants think they are doing, their words have consequences. Governments have to take threats seriously and devise counter-measures to meet them in case the worst comes to the worst. In the wake of the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003, American neo-conservatives boastfully proclaimed it would be “Baghdad today, Tehran and Damascus tomorrow”. These slogans were enough to ensure the Syrian and Iranian governments did everything in their power to make sure that the US could not stay in Iraq.

Looking back, the invasion of Iraq marked the turning point for the hegemony of the Anglo-Saxon powers – the US and the UK – on the world stage. The fraudulent justification for the war and the failure of those who launched it to get their way against relatively puny opponents turned a conflict which was meant to be a show of strength into a demonstration of weakness. Foreign intervention in Libya and Syria in 2011 produced similar calamities.

If we are on the edge of a fresh crisis in the Middle East, centring on Iran, then the US is in a much weaker position than it was pre-Trump. Domestically divided and short of allies, it can no longer control the rules of the game as it once did. Over the last year there are two examples of this: in May, Trump visited Saudi Arabia giving unequivocal backing to its rulers and blaming the troubles of the region on Iran. But it turned out that the prime target of Saudi Arabia and UAE was not Iran but tiny Qatar. All Trump had achieved was to break the previously united front of Gulf monarchies against Iran.

In another major misjudgement by the US in January, the supposedly moderate Secretary of State Rex Tillerson announced that the US would be keeping its forces in Syria after the defeat of Isis, and intended to get rid of President Bashar al-Assad and roll back Iranian influence. This ambition was largely fantasy, but the Russian and Turkish reaction was real. Four days after Tillerson’s arrogant declaration, the Turkish army poured into northern Syria with Russian permission and within two months had eliminated the enclave of Afrin, inhabited by Kurds who are the only US ally in Syria. The Kurds are now rather desperately hoping they will not be left in the lurch by the US in the event of a Turkish military assault on the main Kurdish-held territory in north-east Syria.

I was in the Kurdish-held zone in Syria earlier this month and wondered what the US will do if the Turks did decide to advance further. The north Syrian plain east of the Euphrates is dead flat with little cover, while the main Kurdish cities are right on the Turkish border and highly vulnerable. The US only has 2,000 troops there, and their effectiveness depends on their ability to call in devastating airstrikes by the US air force. This is a powerful option, but would the US really use it in defence of the Kurds against Nato ally Turkey?

What Trump claims was President Obama’s weakness of will and poor negotiating skills was in reality an astute ability to match US means to US interests and avoid being sucked into unwinnable wars. This was never really understood by the Washington foreign policy establishment, which is stuck in the pre-2003 era when US strength was at its height in the years after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Still less is it grasped by super-hawks like Bolton and Pompeo, with no idea of the political and military minefields into which they are about to stumble.

The US establishment and its allies may be aghast at Trump withdrawing from the nuclear deal, but it looks more than likely he is going to do it. Sanctions on Iran may be reimposed, but these are never quite the winning card that those imposing them imagine, whatever the suffering inflicted on the general population. Sanctions unilaterally imposed by Trump may damage Iran, but they will also isolate the US.

Whatever the outcome of a confrontation between the US and Iran, it is not going to “Make America Great Again”. The northern corridor of the Middle East, south of Turkey and north of Saudi Arabia, has always been the graveyard of US interventionism: this was true of Lebanon in the 1980s when the US embassy was blown up, and when 241 US services personnel (including 220 marines) were killed by a truck bomb in Beirut. This was true in Iraq between 2003 and 2011, and Syria from 2011 to the present day. The US has commonly blamed Iran for these frustrations, an explanation that has some validity, but the real reason is that the US has been fighting a sect rather than a single state. All these countries where the US has failed either have a Shia majority, as in the case of Iran and Iraq, a plurality, as in Lebanon, or are a ruling minority, as in Syria. As the most powerful Shia state, Iran has an immense advantage when it comes to fighting its enemies in such a sympathetic religious terrain.

The new line-up in Washington is being described as “a war cabinet” and it may turn out to be just that. But looking at ignorant, arrogant men like Bolton and Pompeo, it is difficult to avoid the feeling that it will all end in disaster.

Facebook and the Rise of Anti-Social Media

Rob Urie

It was a bit over four years ago that journalist Glenn Greenwald reported that British ‘intelligence,’ GCHQ, had developed a program to spread politically targeted disinformation over the internet. The revelation came from a presentation made to the ‘Five Eyes alliance,’ which includes the NSA and was released by Edward Snowden. In the context of Federal and commercial data collection, revelations that Facebook data was used for ‘private’ political purposes is both more and less than meets the eye.

As was widely reported with less manufactured outrage at the time, the Obama administration used Facebook data in Mr. Obama’s 2012 presidential bid in approximately the same manner that Cambridge Analytica is now accused of doing. Thanks to Edward Snowden, it has been known since 2013 that the NSA was using Facebook data for political purposes. And prior still, in 2011 the CIA reported that it was ‘using’ social media, some of which it had funded, toward its own ends.

There is good reason for political pushback here. A wide variety of corporate and state actors have instantiated the internet into the fabric contemporary economic and political life. With a history of bad faith and bad acts, the fantasy that the CIA, NSA and FBI serve national interests begs the question of whose nation? Past targets including the Black Panther Party, Occupy Wall Street and antiwar protestors were as (more) capable of defining American interests as government technocrats.

The ‘innovation’ of Five Eyes, the consortium of Anglophone intelligence agencies, is to expand the realm of competitive Party politics to that of national agencies working toward their own ends in a hidden supranational realm. The alternative frame of competitive state actors is undermined by the decision of GCHQ to reveal its methods to its ‘external’ partners. Precisely how do national governments ‘manage’ the methods and agendas of supranational agencies when they can evade national restrictions through ‘external’ relationships?

Following the Church Committee’s revelations in 1975 of U.S. intelligence agency’s illegal actions against U.S. and overseas citizens engaged in legitimate political dissent, the CIA, NSA and FBI moved to evade newly restrictive laws by ‘outsourcing’ political disruption to nominally private corporations. Facebook and Google were directly or indirectly funded by the CIA early on— to what ends? By evading the spirit of the law and hence the will of Congress, these agencies represent particular, not national, interests.

Most of what Cambridge Analytica is alleged to have done: acquire and analyze a large quantity of data in concert with psychologists who used the results to craft targeted, tactical and subliminal programs to sway large numbers of people into doing what it wants them to do, is standard practice for professional marketers. Outrage that psychological coercion is being used in the realm of the political begs the question of how using it to sell goods and services is any less ‘political?’

As Edward Bernays and Joseph Goebbels demonstrated in the first half of the twentieth century, whether or not propaganda— psychology in the service of commercial and / or political interests, ‘works’ is a function of who is using it and how it is used. The idea of ‘nation’ behind various incarnations of nationalism is a historical artifact, as are the social divisions of race, class and gender. Distinctions between psychological coercion and appeals to history— e.g. the current ‘Russian meddling’ hysteria, are less clear cut than commercial psychologists might suggest.

Micro-targeting can be conceived to augment mass appeals, to clean-up around the edges as in the battle for the votes of a few thousand suburban Republicans that has consumed national Democrats for the last three decades. But in terms of numbers, this strategy looks past the proverbial forest for the trees. Were U.S. voter participation rates to rise to those of other so-called developed nations, tens of millions of voters would be ‘in play.’ In this sense micro-targeting seems more an effort to avoid politics than an extension of it.

The GCHQ (British ‘intelligence’) presentation in Glenn Greenwald’s 2014 article served as the apparent template for Cambridge Analytica’s (CA) business model. Its starting position is of control of the internet, which CA doesn’t have. The follow-on is malevolent frat-boy 101— use every lever at one’s control to crush other actors. In this realm CA was / is but one actor among many. But it is control over the internet that gives the Five Eyes programs their political power, not brilliant insights into the human psyche.

For those who haven’t thought about it, the internet is insidious because of the very capacity that Cambridge Analytica claims to be able to exploit: customization. Users have limited ability to confirm the authenticity of anything they see, read or hear on it. Print editions can be compared and contrasted— technology limits print media to large-scale deceptions. With the capacity to create entire realms of deception— identities, content, web pages and entire online publications, trust is made a function of gullibility.

Differences between commercial and political goals disappear when economic power drives political results. Cambridge Analytica is a business whose ‘product’ is political outcomes. The internet, its alleged realm, is a late-capitalist ‘hive-mind’ where degrees of control determine authority. In this sense CA is an intelligence agency wannabe, a commercial result of a system where commerce and politics revolve around power and control. Phrased differently, the Five Eyes (NSA, CIA) are Cambridge Analytica with actual power through their control positions.

Public outrage that Facebook had inadequate controls is misdirection in the context how much information is controlled by political interests including Five Eyes. Politically motivated business interests— the Koch Brothers for one, own and control larger and more insidious databases than Facebook and regularly use them to enhance their own power. Facebook’s value to Five Eyes is the façade of joint interests implied by voluntary contributions to it. This gives cover to more explicitly malevolent data collection entities like the NSA.

Any thought that Cambridge Analytica is a moral outlier must get past the history of marketing in the service of selling unnecessary wars and convincing six year old Indonesian children to smoke cigarettes. Facebook made Mark Zuckerberg stupendously rich through speculation that its platform could be ‘monetized,’ meaning that both the platform and its embedded data could be sold to commercial interests. Facebook’s defense to date, that it didn’t intentionally allow CA to download its data, could most probably be restated as: it didn’t intend to let CA do so without direct payment to it. This is similar to the half-stated purposes the American intelligence agencies have given for their own data collection activities.

Social media exists atop computers developed by the Federal government, runs on the internet developed by the U.S. military (ARPA / DARPA), is transmitted through telecommunications channels controlled by companies acting in concert with the Federal government and was partially funded by the CIA through venture capital funds. The fantasy of spontaneous generation comes from the generation of children too enamored with technology and ignorant of history to have known that they were entrusting their publics ids to deeply malevolent forces.

More broadly, Americans have long had a paradoxical relationship with the idea of the ‘social.’ Social media is a claim about human being through the posture that the social is an aggregation of individual representations (postings). The architecture of social media reifies Reaganite / Thatcherite individualism complete with the paradox that deep and historical social contexts are needed to make individualism possible.

Social media is a logical extension of this tendency complete with the murky motives that drove Reaganism / Thatcherism. It is only superficially ironic that this ‘individualism’ was / is a strategy for social control. As freedom from political coercion, economic coercion was (1) de- politicized and (2) simply assumed away. The value of Facebook to the CIA, NSA and FBI is political and to Facebook stockholders it is economic. In both realms value is the measure of social control that can be garnered from it.

The potential disruption that the Cambridge Analytica fiasco poses is greater than has been publicly stated to date. Once it is popularly understood that nothing online is trustworthy, a tipping point if you will, regaining trust will mean plausibly exorcising the methods of deceit. As the methods of deceit are the commercial backbone of the internet and more broadly, modern commerce, there would ultimately be less to recover than is likely currently being imagined.

This isn’t to suggest more than a hiccup on the march toward capitalist Armageddon. As one who saw the promise in the early days of the internet— I suddenly had access to thousands of academic papers that I didn’t know existed, the cynical farce of social media provided clear evidence that the scramble for social control was on. The serial public ‘disappointments’ that are sure to follow l’affaire Facebook are as certain as they are too long in coming.

The British (Western) “Novichok” Plot against Russia

Ludwig Watzal

The West is doing everything to fabricate a cause of war against or to isolate Russia further internationally. So far, ‘Novichok’ rests on rumors. The affair was made up the British and the French intelligence agencies without having presented any evidence. The term ‘Novichok’ was used to sound Russian, in fact, this nerve agent is known internationally as A-234. Instead, the Western alliance presents this case as a foregone conclusion.  And the Western fawning media agitate as cheerleaders, having specialized in producing fake news a long time ago.

Many countries are producing this kind of nerve gas, among them a British company close to the town Salisbury, where the incident happened. What about the U.S., Israel, Uzbekistan, France, and the Brits themselves? Israel has a vast stockpile of biochemical weapons and does not allow internal inspections. To believe the British story, told by Theresa May or even Boris Johnson, is like thinking into Easter bunny.

So far, the Brits have been dining any requests by Russia to take part in the solving of this case. Why? As the public got told, Yulia Skripal, the daughter of double agent Sergei Skripal, is on the road to recovery. Both are still Russian citizens. Russia has been denied to care about its citizens. When can Yulia Skripal testify, do the British intelligence tells her what to say publically? Perhaps she can even ‘prove’ that President Putin himself committed the attack!!!

The Russian Embassy in London sent the following questions to the Foreign Ministry for clarification:

“1. Why has Russia been denied the right of consular access to the two Russian citizens, who came to harm on British territory?

2. What specific antidotes and in what form were the victims injected with? How did such antidotes come into the possession of British doctors at the scene of the incident?
3. On what grounds was France involved in technical cooperation in the investigation of the incident, in which Russian citizens were injured?
4. Did the UK notify the OPCW (Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons) of France’s involvement in the investigation of the Salisbury incident?
5. What does France have to do with the incident, involving two Russian citizens in the UK?
6. What rules of UK procedural legislation allow for the involvement of a foreign state in an internal investigation?
7. What evidence was handed over to France to be studied and for the investigation to be conducted?
8. Were the French experts present during the sampling of biomaterial from Sergei and Yulia Skripal?
9. Was the study of biomaterials from Sergei and Yulia Skripal conducted by the French experts and, if so, in which specific laboratories?
10. Does the UK have the materials involved in the investigation carried out by France?
11. Have the results of the French investigation been presented to the OPCW Technical Secretariat?
12. Based on what attributes were the alleged “Russian origin” of the substance used in Salisbury established?
13. Does the UK have control samples of the chemical warfare agent, which British representatives refer to as “Novichok”?
14. Have the samples of a chemical warfare agent of the same type as “Novichok” (in accordance with British terminology) or its analogs been developed in the UK?”

A similar list of questions was sent to the French foreign ministry by the Russian embassy in Paris. Russia wanted to know on what grounds France was involved in this case. How come that France got a sample of this nerve gas? Or do the French produce this gas themselves? The so-called free Western media do not ask these questions. Instead, they repeat the unfounded allegation by the Brits against Russia, which is so faring fact-free.

How credible is the West, after having staged several incidents that led to wars. Such as Pearl Harbor (Franklin D. Roosevelt knew about it in advance), the Gulf of Tonkin affair,  Operation Northwood, operation ‘Gladio’ where NATO countries maintained secret armies to commit terrorist attacks and put the blame on the left. The infamous incubator affair, where Saddam’s so-called henchmen trough new-born out of the incubators. But it doesn’t end here, the staging of the attack against Iraq by Colin Powell’s infamous speech before the UN about alleged Iraqi WMDs and the fabricated dossier of the Brits under Tony Blair.

The latest fabrication concerns the US elections. The so-called Russian collusion in the American electoral process was initiated under the Obama administration and puffed up after Hillary Clinton lost. Without the Deep State and the remains of the criminal Obama people in the administration, this engineering could have never taken place in a properly functioning democracy.

The real problems are not the crooks in the different Western administrations but the media. They have been hammering the fake news home to the minds of the people to believe it as reality. Without having presented any evidence in the so-called Russian collusion affair into the American elections nor the alleged Russian nerve gas attack against Skripal and his daughter, the media have established rumors as facts. That’s how Western ‘free’ media operate, and Western ‘democracy’ is functioning. For both, the future looks bleak.

Mass Deception and the Prelude to World War

Colin Todhunter

In Libya, NATO bombed a path to Tripoli to help its proxy forces on the ground oust Gaddafi. Tens of thousands lost their lives and that country’s social fabric and infrastructure now lies in ruins. Gaddafi was murdered and his plans to assert African independence and undermine Western (not least French) hegemony on that continent have been rendered obsolete.

In Syria, the US, Turkey, France, Britain, Saudi Arabia and Qatar have been helping to arm militants. The Daily Telegraph’s March 2013 article “US and Europe in ‘major airlift of arms to Syrian rebels through Zagreb’” reported that 3,000 tons of weapons dating back to the former Yugoslavia had been sent in 75 planeloads from Zagreb airport to the rebels. The New York Times March 2013 article “Arms Airlift to Syria Rebels Expands, With CIA Aid” stated that Arab governments and Turkey had sharply increased their military aid to Syria’s opposition fighters. This aid included more than 160 military cargo flights.

Sold under the notion of a spontaneous democratic uprising against a tyrannical political leader, Syria is little more than an illegal war for capital, empire and energy. The West and its allies have been instrumental in organising the war as elaborated by Tim Anderson in his book ‘The Dirty War on Syria’.

Over the last 15 years or so, politicians and the media have been manipulating popular sentiment to get an increasingly war-fatigued Western public to support ongoing wars under the notion of protecting civilians or a bogus ‘war on terror’. They spin a yarn about securing women’s rights or a war on terror in Afghanistan, removing despots from power in Iraq, Libya or Syria or protecting human life, while then going on to attack or help destabilise countries, resulting in the loss of hundreds of thousands of civilian lives.

Emotive language designed to instil fear about potential terror attacks in Europe or myths about humanitarianism intervention are used as a pretext to wage imperialist wars in mineral-rich countries and geostrategically important regions.

Part of the battle for the public’s hearts and minds is to keep people confused. They must be convinced to regard these wars and conflicts as a disconnected array of events and not as the planned machinations of empire. The ongoing disinformation narrative about Russian aggression is part of the strategy. Ultimately, Russia (and China) is the real and increasingly imminent target: Moscow has stood in the way of the West’s plans in Syria and both Russia and China are undermining the role of the dollar in international trade, a lynchpin of US power.

The countries of the West are effectively heading for war with Russia but relatively few among the public seem to know or even care. Many are oblivious to the slaughter that has already been inflicted on populations with the help of their taxes and governments in far-away lands. With the reckless neoconservative warmonger John Bolton now part of the Trump administration, it seems we could be hurtling towards major war much faster than previously thought.

Most of the public remains blissfully ignorant of the psy-ops being directed at them through the corporate media. Given recent events in the UK and the ramping up of anti-Russia rhetoric, if ordinary members of the public think that Theresa May or Boris Johnson ultimately have their best interests at heart, they should think again. The major transnational corporations based on Wall Street and in the City of London are the ones setting Anglo-US policy agendas often via the Brookings Institute, Council on Foreign Relations, International Crisis Group, Chatham House, etc.

The owners of these companies, the capitalist class, have off-shored millions of jobs as well as their personal and company tax liabilities to boost their profits and have bankrupted economies. We see the results in terms of austerity, unemployment, powerlessness, privatization, deregulation, banker control of economies, corporate control of food and seeds, the stripping away of civil liberties, increased mass surveillance and wars to grab mineral resources and ensure US dollar hegemony. These are the interests the politicians serve.

It’s the ability to maximise profit by shifting capital around the world that matters to this class, whether on the back of distorted free trade agreements, which open the gates for plunder, or through coercion and militarism, which merely tear them down.

Whether it is the structural violence of neoliberal economic policies or actual military violence, the welfare of ordinary folk around the world does not enter the equation. In an imposed oil-thirsty, war-driven system of globalised capitalism and over-consumption that is wholly unnecessary and is stripping the planet bare, the bottom line is that ordinary folk – whether workers in the West, farmers in India or civilians displaced en masse in war zones like Syria – must be bent according to the will of Western capital.

We should not be fooled by made-for-media outpourings of morality about good and evil that are designed to create fear, outrage and support for more militarism and resource-grab wars. The shaping of public opinion is a multi-million-dollar industry.

Take for instance the mass harvesting of Facebook data by Cambridge Analytica to shape the outcomes of the US election and the Brexit campaign. According to journalist Liam O’Hare, its parent company Strategic Communications Laboratories (SCL) has conducted ‘behavioural change’ programmes in over 60 countries and its clients have included the British Military of Defence, the US State Department and NATO. According to O’Hare, the use of the media to fool the public is one of SCL’s key selling points.

Among its activities in Europe have been campaigns targeting Russia. The company has “sweeping links” with Anglo-American political and military interests. In the UK, the interests of the governing Conservative Party and military-intelligence players are brought together via SCL: board members include “an array of Lords, Tory donors, ex-British army officers and defense contractors.”

O’Hare says it is clear is that all SCL’s activities have been inextricably linked to its Cambridge Analytica arm. He states: “International deception and meddling is the name of the game for SCL. We finally have the most concrete evidence yet of shadowy actors using dirty tricks in order to rig elections. But these operators aren’t operating from Moscow… they are British, Eton educated, headquartered in the City of London and have close ties to Her Majesty’s government”

So, what are we to make of the current anti-Russia propaganda we witness regarding the nerve agent incident in Salisbury and the failure of the British government to provide evidence to demonstrate Russian culpability? The relentless accusations by Theresa May and Boris Johnson that have been parroted across the corporate media in the West indicate that the manipulation of public perception is everything and facts count for little. It is alarming given what is at stake – the escalation of conflict between the West and a major nuclear power.

Welcome to the world of mass deception à la Edward Bernays and Josef Goebbels.

US social commentator Walter Lippmann once said that ‘responsible men’ make decisions and have to be protected from the ‘bewildered herd’ – the public. He added that the public should be subdued, obedient and distracted from what is really happening. Screaming patriotic slogans and fearing for their lives, they should be admiring with awe leaders who save them from destruction.

Although the West’s political leaders are manipulating, subduing and distracting the public in true Lippmannesque style, they aren’t ‘saving’ anyone from anything: their reckless actions towards Russia could lead towards a war that could wipe out all life on the planet.

Trump gives Liberian immigrants a year to leave or face deportation

Kevin Martinez

President Donald Trump announced in a memo last Tuesday to the Department of Homeland Security that he was formally ending the program known as Deferred Enforced Departure, which allowed Liberian immigrants to stay and work legally in the United States since 1999. The program was established by President Bill Clinton in response to the devastated social and economic situation in Liberia following the brutal civil war of the 1990s.

More than 800,000 Liberians fled their country during the civil war, with a small percentage reaching the United States, where an estimated 4,000 reside to this day. These workers now have a year to leave the country or face deportation.

The Deferred Enforced Departure program had been renewed by subsequent administrations since 1999, but Trump’s memo declared that improved conditions in Liberia meant that the program was no longer necessary.

“Liberia is no longer experiencing armed conflict and has made significant progress in restoring stability and democratic governance,” the memo said. “Liberia has also concluded reconstruction from prior conflicts, which has contributed significantly to an environment that is able to handle adequately the return of its nationals.”

In fact, Liberia has yet to recover from the devastating Ebola outbreak of 2014-2015 which claimed nearly 5,000 lives in Western Africa. As a result, the health care system is in shambles as well as the overall economy. Unemployment and government corruption have made Liberia rank 177 out of 188 on the United Nation’s Human Development Index, with 80 percent of the population living on $1.25 a day.

Liberia was founded by freed American slaves in 1822 but became a de facto colony of the US not long after. Rich in natural minerals, including oil, the country was heavily exploited by the US after World War II and during the Cold War.

Despite being one of the largest recipients of US aid on the African continent, Liberia’s population has remained mostly poor. With the end of the Cold War and the end of direct US economic support the country descended into civil war in the 1990s. The most recent conflict from 1999 to 2003 claimed the lives of some 300,000 people.

This will be the third time this year the Trump administration has announced an end for special immigration status for a whole host of countries. The White House announced an end for the Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for Salvadorans, Nicaraguans, Sudanese and Haitians, and is actively seeking an end to the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program which covers more than 800,000 brought by their parents to the US as children without proper documentation.

In January, Trump called for an end to immigration from “shithole countries” in a meeting with Congressional leaders. Trump later denied making the remarks but has made no attempt to conceal his contempt for foreigners and immigrants. The administration is now involved in a savage war on immigrants, implementing ever more restrictive measures every day.

Most of the 4,000 Liberians facing deportation live in Minnesota, home to the largest Liberian community in the country, around 30,000 people. Many work in the state’s health care industry and have families and ties to the community stretching back decades.

Democratic politicians in Minnesota had been urging Trump to extend the program with governor Mark Dayton writing an open later asking the president to reconsider, saying Liberians “are part of the social fabric of Minnesota.” Several hundred Liberians gathered from throughout the state on Monday at the capitol building in Saint Paul to demand that Trump renew Deferred Enforcement Departure. Despite these protests Trump refused to show any mercy towards Liberian immigrants.

Christina Wilson, a Liberian immigrant who escaped the country’s civil war in 2000 told Minnesota Public Radio, “Liberia is a place that I left long time. I don't know if I have a place there right now," adding, “Homes were destroyed. I have nothing to go to, to be frank.”

Wilson lives in Crystal, Minnesota, a suburb of Minneapolis, and works as a nursing assistant. She earned a culinary arts degree in the hopes that she would one day open up a restaurant; now she faces deportation.

Syria debacle deepens crisis of Trump administration

Patrick Martin

The last significant enclave held by US-backed groups near the Syrian capital of Damascus collapsed Sunday with the agreement of two groups to evacuate and of another to submit to Russian military police acting on behalf of President Bashar al-Assad.

The fall of Eastern Ghouta, with a population estimated at 400,000 people, is the biggest debacle suffered by the US-backed Islamist groups since the Assad regime recaptured the country’s largest city, Aleppo, in December 2016.

The largest rebel group in Eastern Ghouta, Jaish al-Islam, which controlled Douma, the biggest population center in the area, reached an agreement Sunday on evacuating the enclave, according to the Syrian government news service SANA. Other reports said Jaish al-Islam was still pressing for Russian military police to be introduced as a buffer force between its own fighters and Syrian army troops.

Jaish al-Islam agreed Saturday to evacuate its wounded to Idlib, in northwestern Syria, the last province in the country under the control of Islamist forces opposed to Assad. The group was in negotiations with the Assad government through Russian mediators.

Two smaller rebel groups reached a full evacuation deal with the Russian intermediaries, which called for the evacuation of 19,000 people to Idlib, including fighters from the Faylaq al-Rahman and Ahrar al-Sham groups, their families, and residents who wished to join them.

Douma and the surrounding Eastern Ghouta area, comprising eastern suburbs of Damascus and an adjacent rural area that served as a source of food, have been under the control of rebel forces since 2013, but largely cut off from other groups fighting the Assad regime.

The Syrian army stepped up its siege of the enclave in February, accompanied by heavy bombing raids by Russian warplanes, and then in March began incursions that systematically broke through rebel lines and separated the insurgents into isolated pockets that were overwhelmed or starved out one by one.

The biggest breakthrough came Friday and Saturday, after rebel resistance except in Douma itself effectively collapsed. The southern and western portions of the Ghouta region were evacuated by rebel forces Saturday afternoon.

It is the comprehensive defeat of the US-backed rebels and the consolidation of the Assad regime’s control over the last area from which attacks could be mounted on the capital that underlies the evident disarray in US policy in Syria.

On Thursday, President Trump told a campaign-style rally in Richfield, Ohio that US forces would “be coming out of Syria, like, very soon. Let the other people take care of it now.” While the remark came in the context of Trump boasting about the successes of US military forces against ISIS in eastern Syria and western Iraq, his suggestion that the 2,000 US troops now in Syria could soon be withdrawn contradicted the official policy of his own administration.

In a speech delivered by Secretary of State Rex Tillerson barely two months ago, the administration publicly declared its intention to stay in Syria more or less indefinitely, not merely to ensure the final destruction of ISIS, but to achieve the longstanding goal of US imperialist policy in the country, the ouster of the Assad regime, which is allied to Iran and Russia, and its replacement by a US puppet.

Tillerson’s pronouncement followed close on the release of a new US military strategy document that declared that the Pentagon was now making as its top priority, not the struggle against so-called terrorist groups, but great power conflicts, particularly with Russia and China, that could erupt into major, and even nuclear wars.

Trump fired Tillerson on March 13, and National Security Advisor General H. R. McMaster on March 22, but he proposed to replace them with even more belligerent figures, CIA Director Mike Pompeo to head the State Department, and John Bolton, ambassador to the UN under the Bush administration and a major architect of the Iraq war, to replace McMaster.

Accordingly, Trump’s sudden prediction that US forces would withdraw from Syria “very soon,” caused consternation at the Pentagon, the State Department, the National Security Council, and the editorial pages of pro-war publications like the Washington Post.

While the initial response of the military-intelligence agencies was to dismiss Trump’s comment as though it was a random tweet, the remark was followed by reports revealing that the White House had put on hold some $200 million in State Department funding for “stabilization projects” in Syria. Tillerson had announced the new spending on roads, water and sewer repairs in areas of eastern Syria captured from ISIS during a visit to the region in February.

The Associated Press reported Friday that Trump’s comment about pulling out of Syria “was not a one-off,” but reflected sentiments he had expressed in internal meetings with top aides for more than a month.

The corporate media has responded with a barrage of commentaries denouncing Trump’s comment as a surrender to Assad and to Russian President Vladimir Putin, Assad’s principal backer internationally, along with Tehran.

The Washington Post in particular has devoted column after column to demanding a long-term US commitment to military intervention in Syria. An Easter Sunday editorial sought to dismiss Trump’s comment as “the gap between the policies pursued by President Trump’s administration and what the president says when he is outside the range of a teleprompter…”

The editorial pointed to the conflict between Trump’s remark and the statements of Secretary of Defense James Mattis and other top officials, while warning, “the president’s words will surely encourage Russian and Iranian hopes of driving the United States out of the country, so they can entrench their military bases and political influence. That would pose a major threat to Israel and severely damage U.S. standing throughout the Middle East.”

Even more inflammable was an op-ed column by Josh Rogin, a member of the newspaper’s editorial board, under the remarkable headline, “In Syria, we ‘took the oil.’ Now Trump wants to give it to Iran.” Rogin was quoting Trump’s own comment about the real motive for the US war in Iraq, while pointing to US control of Syria’s oil-rich eastern provinces as a key point of leverage against Assad, Putin and Iran.

While assailing Trump’s comment at the Ohio rally, Rogin argued that it contradicts Trump’s own commitment to tearing up the nuclear agreement with Iran and otherwise confronting Iran throughout the region, a policy that “must begin in Syria.”

Congressional advocates of an all-out conflict with Iran were quick to criticize the suggested pullout from Syria. Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, a leading Republican war hawk, declared in an interview on Fox News Sunday that “It’d be the single worst decision the president could make.”

He continued: “If we withdraw our troops anytime soon, ISIS would come back, the war between … Turkey and the Kurds would get out of hand, and you’d be giving Damascus to the Iranians.”

US media’s silent complicity in Israeli massacre in Gaza

Jean Shaoul & Barry Grey

Major American media outlets, led by the New York Times, are treating the Israeli military’s mass killing and wounding of unarmed, peaceful Palestinian protesters in Gaza as a non-event.

On Friday, as tens of thousands of Palestinians gathered near the militarized border with Israel to protest Israeli expropriation of Palestinian land and demand the right of Palestinian refugees to return to their homeland, Israeli troops and sharpshooters opened fire, killing at least 16 people and wounding some 1,400 more.

Millions around the world reacted with shock and horror at the scenes of deliberate murder, using live ammunition. One video showed a young man running away from the border fence who was shot in the back and killed by Israeli troops. Another showed that at least two of those killed were unarmed as they walked slowly towards the Israel border.

The Israel Defence Forces (IDF) deployed troops and more than 100 snipers to shoot unarmed protestors demonstrating in the towns and cities of the tiny enclave as well as the thousands who gathered at the border with Israel.

According to Hamas, the bourgeois Islamist group that controls the Palestinian enclave, only five of those killed on Friday belonged to Hamas’s military wing, the rest being civilians.

The US intervened at the United Nations Security Council to block a resolution put forward by Kuwait calling for an independent investigation into the mass shooting, and Israeli spokesmen flatly rejected any such probe, congratulating the Israeli soldiers for “defending Israeli sovereignty.”

Israel’s chief military spokesman, Brigadier General Ronen Manelis, warned that the IDF would step up its violence on the Gaza border. He added that the IDF had restricted its actions thus far to the border fence, but it was prepared to “act against these terror organizations in other places too,” that is, within Gaza.

In line with the full support for the Israeli slaughter from the US government and both major parties, the New York Times published a perfunctory news story on the massacre in its Saturday edition and completely dropped the issue in its Sunday edition and on its website. This is despite the fact that the IDF and the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, emboldened by the muted response from Western governments and the media, continued the attack Saturday on a smaller turnout of demonstrators, wounding scores of protesters.

The same Sunday edition of the so-called “newspaper of record” featured a long article on alleged atrocities by the Syrian government and another article bemoaning the illegal poaching of abalone in South Africa.

The Israeli massacre was barely mentioned on the Sunday television interview programs and has evoked no editorial statements by major media outlets.

Friday’s demonstration was announced as the beginning of six weeks of peaceful protests, called the “March of Return,” to conclude on May 15, the 70th anniversary of the establishment of the state of Israel, which the Palestinians commemorate as Nakba (Catastrophe Day), when the US is set to open its embassy in Jerusalem. The transfer of the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, announced last year by President Donald Trump, is a massive provocation, as the Palestinians claim Jerusalem as the capital of a future state.

The massacre on Friday was the deadliest day of violence since Israel’s 2014 war on Gaza, which killed 2,250 Palestinians, the majority of whom were civilians. This followed criminal assaults on the besieged and impoverished enclave in 2008-2009 and 2012, killing 1,217 and 147 people, respectively, overwhelmingly civilians. All these war crimes were backed by Washington.

Israel has enforced a blockade on Gaza since 2007, joined by Egypt, which, along with the destruction of infrastructure by the Israeli military, has devastated the territory and its 1.9 million inhabitants. Power cuts have led to water shortages and untreated sewage, wages for thousands of public-sector workers have been cut or eliminated, and the Trump administration has withheld funding for food aid and for the United Nations Relief and Work Agency, which supports some 1.2 million people in Gaza.

One can only imagine the outraged editorials, commentaries and news exclusives that would flood the print and broadcast media if anything similar were carried out by Syrian or Russian forces. When Alexei Navalny, the far-right, anti-immigrant opponent of Vladimir Putin, is arrested, it immediately becomes front-page news.

For weeks, a completely manufactured scandal over the alleged poisoning of former Russian spy and British double agent Sergei Skripal and his adult daughter, based on entirely unsubstantiated allegations of Russian government involvement, has been used as the pretext for a massive escalation of the diplomatic and military offensive led by Washington against Moscow.

But the same media outlets take as a matter of course that Palestinians are shot down and murdered, as if they were insects.

The social media corporations, in line with their crackdown on freedom of speech on the Internet, are doing their part. Under Israeli and US pressure, Facebook last week shut down the page of a major Palestinian news outlet, the Safa Palestinian Press Agency, which has 1.3 million followers. Facebook defended its action as a move against “hate speech” and “incitement.”

Israel’s criminal and provocative actions against Gaza, with its promise of stepped-up action in the run-up to May 15, must be seen in the context of Tel Aviv and Riyadh’s mutual determination to wage war on Iran, with the blessings or direct participation of Washington. Netanyahu, by igniting a broader response from the Palestinians and workers throughout the region, is set on creating the necessary conditions for a massive intervention by the US against Iran and its regional allies.

The silence of the US media is an act of complicity in war crimes. It speaks for the international bourgeoisie, which stands aside in either open or tacit support for the homicidal policies of a gangster regime. For all the cynical blather in the capitalist media about “human rights”—when it serves as a cover for neo-colonial wars for regime change and plunder—the old saying holds: All morality is class morality.

The international working class must be warned: The events in Gaza are a sign of things to come. Reaction, militarism and the drive to dictatorship are sweeping across all of the major powers in response to the deepening of the world capitalist crisis and the growing signs of working-class resistance. An essential part of the working-class response is to come to the defence of the Palestinian masses and fight for the unity of all workers, across all religious and national lines, in the Middle East and internationally.

Youth Scholarships for first East and Southern Africa Menstrual Health Management Symposium 2018

Application Deadline: 10th April 2018.

Eligible Countries: Countries in East and Southern Africa

To Be Taken At (Country): Johannesburg, South Africa

About the Award: UNFPA East and Southern Africa Regional Office (ESARO) and SRHR Africa Trust (SAT) is calling for applications from young people who seek to showcase their creative solutions to menstrual health management challenges in Africa. We will sponsor 10 young people to attend the first East and Southern Africa Menstrual Health Management Symposium in Johannesburg, South Africa on 28 and 29 May 2018. You will have a high-level platform and regional exposure for your solution(s).
If this opportunity excites you, please make your proposal below as to why you should be one of the 10 young entrepreneurs selected for this important event.

Type: Workshop, Entrepreneurship

Eligibility: In order to participate in the East and Southern Africa Menstrual Health Management Symposium, you must meet the following minimum requirements:

• You must be aged between 18 to 35 years old.
• You must be able to demonstrate work/volunteer experience on issues related to menstrual health and management as community leaders, social entrepreneurs or advocates.
• You must have a valid passport.
• You must be based in East and Southern Africa.
• You must be available to travel to South Africa from 27 to 30 May 2018.

Young people, especially adolescent  girls and young women, working with youth-led organizations, movements, initiatives and networks are highly encouraged to apply.

Number of Awards: 10

Value of Award:

• Ten successful applicants will be sponsored to the Menstrual Health Management Symposium in Johannesburg, South Africa
• You will have a high-level platform and regional exposure for your solution(s).

Duration of Program: 28 and 29 May 2018

How to Apply: Apply on the Program Webpage

Visit the Program Webpage for Details

Award Providers: UNFPA

Commonwealth Distance Learning Scholarships at UK Universities for Developing Countries 2018/2019

Application Deadline: 20th June 2018 by 23.59 (BST)

Offered annually? Yes

Eligible Countries: Bangladesh, Cameroon, The Gambia, Ghana, Guyana, India, Kenya, Kiribati, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Nigeria, Pakistan, Papua New Guinea, Rwanda, Samoa, Sierra Leone, Solomon Islands, Sri Lanka, Swaziland, Tanzania, Tuvalu, Uganda, Vanuatu, Zambia

To be taken at: UK Universities

About the Award: Commonwealth Distance Learning Scholarships provide the opportunity for individuals to study for a UK Master’s degree while living and working in their home country. The scheme was established in 2002, as a direct response to the measures taken by its funder, the UK Department for International Development (DFID), to explore new methods of delivery as part of the drive for poverty reduction. To date, nearly 1,000 Commonwealth Distance Learning Scholarships have been awarded.

Offered Since: 2002

Type: Masters

Eligibility: To apply for these scholarships, you must:

• Be a citizen of or have been granted refugee status by an eligible Commonwealth country, or be a British Protected Person
• Be permanently resident in an eligible Commonwealth country
• Hold a first degree of at least upper second class (2:1) standard; a lower qualification and sufficient relevant experience may be considered in certain cases
• Be unable to afford to study your chosen course without this scholarship.

The CSC aims to identify talented individuals who have the potential to make change. We are committed to a policy of equal opportunity and non-discrimination, and encourage applications from a diverse range of candidates.

Selection Criteria: Selection criteria include:

• Academic merit of the candidate
• Potential impact of the work on the development of the candidate’s home country

How to apply:

• You should apply to study one of the taught Master’s courses offered under the Commonwealth Distance Learning Scholarship scheme. These scholarships support courses offered in partnership with local providers in developing countries, as well as courses delivered directly by UK universities. View a full list of eligible courses
• All applications must be made through your chosen university. You must check with your chosen university for their specific advice, admission requirements, and rules for applying. You must take the necessary steps to secure admission to your course at the same time as applying for a Commonwealth Distance Learning Scholarship. When you submit your application, you must hold an offer to start your chosen course in the 2018-2019 academic year. You must also provide the details of at least one referee in your application.
• You must make your application using the CSC’s application system, in addition to any other application that you are required to complete by your chosen university.
• You can apply for more than one course and/or to more than one university, but you may only accept one offer of a Commonwealth Distance Learning Scholarship.
• The CSC will not accept any applications that are not submitted via the CSC’s application system to your UK university, or any applications directly from individuals; such applications will not be acknowledged.
• The EAS will open for applications on 4 April 2018.

Visit the Scholarship Webpage for Details

Scholarship Provider: UK Department for International Development (DFID)

The Mosquito Gap: Climate Change and Infectious Diseases

Sarah Anderson

OK, I admit it, I’m a freeloader.

My neighbors asked if I’d go in on a mosquito control service last spring, and I turned them down. I was skeptical about whether the “eco-friendly” service would actually work. But I was mostly taken aback by the cost: $750 for the season.

Several neighbors went ahead and paid for the service, which proved so effective I was able to enjoy my back yard for the first time without first dousing myself with bug spray.

I felt guilty — and not just because I was mooching off somebody else’s pricy pest control. I’d also been forced to recognize yet one more way privileged people like me are often insulated from public problems.

As fears of mosquito-borne diseases increase and public pest management spending falls far short, private control services are rapidly expanding. The Zika outbreak in 2016 helped kick up residential mosquito control revenues by an estimated 12.6 percent. Demand has also created a market for automatic home spraying systems, which run about $4,000.

For low-income Americans, the cost of these services would be prohibitive. Yet poor neighborhoods are more likely to have severe mosquito problems.

A three-year study in Baltimore found that the greater prevalence of good mosquito breeding grounds in poor neighborhoods, including abandoned buildings and accumulated trash, led to worse infestations than in more affluent areas.

Another study in one Georgia county found that neighborhoods made up mostly of people of color were 4.5 times more likely than whites to be at risk of West Nile, while residents of high poverty areas were 5.5 times more likely to be at risk.

In 2017, the Centers for Disease Control received reports of more than 2,000 cases of West Nile virus from across the United States — and 121 people died from the disease. The actual number of cases is likely much higher, since the poor are also more likely to lack health insurance, and thus avoid seeking medical treatment if they do become ill.

Public health problems related to mosquitoes aren’t going away.

As climate change improves environmental conditions for mosquitoes, it increases the risks of the diseases they carry. According to Climate Central, in dozens of cities across the Midwest, Northeast, and along the Atlantic Coast, mosquito seasons have grown by at least 20 days over the past 35 years.

Despite this growing menace, public funding for mosquito control has declined by more than 60 percent since 2004, according to the National Association of County and City Health Officials.

In North Carolina, for example, the state government cut all funding for such programs in 2014. And while some counties and cities in that state began paying for private services, other cash-strapped communities have not. The Asian tiger mosquito, which has the ability to transmit West Nile virus as well as other diseases like Chikungunya and dengue fever, has been found in every county in the state.

In the long-term, the impacts of this underfunding could be catastrophic.

In 2017, a team of Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and other researchers analyzed the potential costs of a major Zika attack in the Southeast United States and Texas. They concluded that efforts to control and treat the disease, which causes neurological defects in growing fetuses, could cost from $1.2 billion to as much as $10.3 billion.

On top of all the other challenges facing people in poor communities, they shouldn’t have to worry about getting sick from mosquitoes. Unfortunately, the White House budget proposal for 2019 would cut resources for the Centers for Disease Control — the nation’s health protection agency — by 20 percent.

Closing the mosquito gap is going to take a much bigger commitment than that.