Canada Remains Eco-Threat: Militarism and Greed Rules Ottawa Roost Yet

World’s Climate Threatened by Greed and Militarism, Official Canada Remains Part of the Problem, Not Solution

by Roger Annis  - CounterPunch

January 18, 2016

A leading columnist in Canada’s Globe and Mail daily newspaper known in the past to voice concern about the global warming emergency has penned two columns recently in support of Alberta tar sands pipelines, including praising the efforts of the premier of Alberta to sell the construction of these project to an increasingly sceptical and wary public in Canada

Jeffrey Simpson has argued for years for a more rational capitalist approach to energy production in which some account would be made for the global warming emergency. He co-authored a book in 2007 with several climate scientists titled Hot Air: Meeting Canada’s Climate Change Challenge.[1] But his columns in the January 14 and 15 editions of the Globe reveal him as just a born again shill for the Alberta tar sands industry.

Simpson begins his Jan 14 column (accessible online to Globe subscribers only) with, “Alberta Premier Rachel Notley, to her government’s great credit, has tried for the first time to outline a comprehensive and serious plan for the province to curb greenhouse gas emissions that cause climate change.”

Simpson is referring to Premier Notley’s fanfare announcement on November 22, 2015 purporting to be an energy “plan” with greenhouse gas reduction components. The “plan” includes a few piecemeal promises such as reducing coal-fired electricity production in Alberta over the next few decades (presently, the province generates 50 per cent of its electricity from coal). But the centrepiece of her “plan” is to green light an increase in tar sands production in the coming years by as much as 43 per cent, most of which would be sold in foreign markets. A plan to “curb greenhouse gas emissions”, indeed.

Edmonton writer Gordon Laxer explained in a commentary published in the Edmonton Journal December 3:

It was quite a sight: The CEOs of Alberta’s oil sands projects stood with NDP Premier Rachel Notley [in Edmonton on Nov 22] to announce Alberta’s climate plan before the climate talks in Paris. The CEOs had the widest smiles.

No wonder. Alberta’s climate plan targets the 28 per cent of Alberta’s greenhouse gases from power generation and transportation (driving), and leaves the 46 per cent of the province’s emissions from the production of oil and gas almost scot-free.

Under Alberta’s plan, oil sands and other oil and gas emissions can grow by 43 per cent and will cancel out the carbon pollution reductions in electrical power and driving. Ordinary Albertans are called upon to reduce their carbon pollution to make room for Big Oil’s expansion of oil sands emissions and profits…

The big lie: Energy East pipeline will “replace imported oil”

Another dead giveaway in Simpson’s column revealing him as an industry apologist is the big lie he pens: “Remember that Energy East’s oil [sic] will be replacing imported oil.”

The terminal for the Energy East pipeline will be located on the Atlantic Ocean in Saint John, New Brunswick, located a whopping 5,000 kilometres (!) from the tar sands region. Now why would the pipeline stretch so far and be located in one of Canada’s least-populated provinces, far from the country’s largest markers for refined fossil fuel product when Energy’s East’s product, according to Simpson, is to “replace imported oil”?

Saint John is the location of Canada’s largest oil refinery, owned by the Irving family dynasty. So maybe that’s the reason for the distance illogic? No. The Irving Oil refinery in Saint John is not equipped to process Alberta bitumen (which, to get technical, first requires an ‘upgrade’ to synthetic oil before it can be refined). And Irving has no announced plan to invest the billions of dollars required for such capacity. In any event, it would make no sense to ship bitumen all the way across Canada for upgrading or refining, only to ship it back to the largest marker of central Canada. Why not upgrade and refine in Alberta, or perhaps in Canada’s largest-populated provinces, Ontario and Quebec? What is going on?

To further complicate the mystery, Alberta’s capacity to upgrade bitumen is already maxed out at approximately 40 per cent of existing tar sands production. Apart from the Sturgeon Refinery under construction in the province, destined to produce diesel fuel but which is facing massive cost overruns and market uncertainty, there is no new upgrading capacity under construction or projected in Canada. And here is where the proverbial cat escapes from the bag–what Irving Oil is planning for Energy East bitumen product is to build an export terminal.

Thus stands exposed the talk of Energy East as a project to “replace imported oil” and provide Canada with home-grown “energy security”–the talk of ‘replacing imported oil’ is just so much ruse. And thus stands exposed a journalist once purportedly concerned about the global warming crisis but now reduced to writing as an apologist for the oil industry.

Bizarre advocacy of Keystone XL

Simpson has compromised himself further in a January 15 column where he argues in favour of the dead-in-the-water Keystone XL pipeline. That is something of an environmental equivalent to defending cigarette smoking against public health advocates.

On November 6 of last year, facing intense pressure for years by environmental advocates in the U.S. and internationally (though not so much from Canada), President Barak Obama announced his administration will not approve construction of Keystone XL. The pipeline proposal would have seen tar sands bitumen product shipped to upgraders and refineries in Texas or to export terminals on the U.S. Gulf coast.

Needless to say, Simpson’s argument against Obama’s cancellation of the project had nothing to do with greenhouse gas emissions and global warming. It was, rather, a plea on behalf of Canadian business interests and a complete whitewash of the fact that Alberta tar sands bitumen is one of the worst polluting sources of energy on the plant. Simpson’s argument was couched in language exposing the undoubted hypocrisy of the Obama administration’s decision, awash as it is in rising U.S. fossil fuel production. But that still leaves advocacy of Keystone XL an argument for ecological vandalism.

Simpson further exposed his political prejudices when he wrote:

“Keystone XL was supposed to deliver bitumen oil [sic] from Alberta to U. S. refineries of heavy oil on the Gulf of Mexico coast. These refineries for years had imported heavy oil – and therefore dirtier oil than conventional stuff – from such politically insalubrious places as Venezuela.”

Long before the baseline price of crude oil dropped below US$30 per barrel—and the price of Alberta crude is even worse, hovering around US$15–the economics of Energy East were looking like, well, a pipe dream. Energy East was projected in early 2015 to cost an already absurd $10 billion. By July, the head of TransCanada Corporation said $12 billion was more likely. In December, the company said its new estimate is $17.5 billion.

The very fact that this project is still being discussed in serious company following all that was said and done at the international summit meeting on climate change last month in Paris confirms that mainstream politics in Canada remains snared in a de facto climate change denial mode. This is the argument which I made in my article in October 2015 which surveyed the policies of the main parties in the federal election campaign.

Further confirmation of the climate change denial mode is that notwithstanding all the posturing and grandstanding by the Canadian government at the climate summit in Paris, the new Liberal government in Ottawa has affirmed in recent days that it is moving full steam ahead to approve the oil and tar sands pipeline expansions to the east and west coasts of Canada that industry wants. This is a tri-partisan effort uniting the federal Liberals and Conservative with the New Democratic Party Premier Notley.[2]

The doctrine of ecosocialism

Monthly Review editor John Bellamy Foster has published another excellent summary of the enormous stakes and political challenges for humanity and planet Earth as global temperatures continue an inexorable rise fed by rising greenhouse gas emissions. His essay appears in the December 2015 issue of Monthly Review, titled ‘Marxism and Ecology: Common Fonts of a Great Transition’.[3]

Foster explains that the capitalist classes of the world and their governments are refusing to confront the threat of catastrophic global warming. They cannot do so, he argues, because the very radical reductions in planetary greenhouse gas emissions that are required to slow and then reduce warming would place in question the entirety of the destructive and wasteful operations of the capitalist expansion business cycle.

In the essay, Foster outlines immediate, practical measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions which he says popular, environmental movements should champion. These measures are not a substitute for the long-term, revolutionary changes that are needed to the economic and political order. But those changes are still maturing and it will take more time before they can be achieved and then put to work in repairing the accumulated ecological damage of the past several centuries. In the meantime, practical steps can and must be taken.

One of these steps, Foster argues, is “cutbacks in military spending”.

Indeed, opposition to imperialist war and militarism is a vital part of what is needed to combat the climate emergency. But the movement known as ‘ecosocialism’ has ignored or poorly understood this issue and largely left it out of its program of action. For example, Naomi Klein’s 2014 book This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate has been lauded across the ecosocialist spectrum and yet it says not a word on the subject of militarism. (To her credit, Klein has begun to address the problem of militarism in her speeches.)

Genuine anti-capitalism in its intersection with opposition to climate and ecological degradation must include opposition to war, militarism and imperialism, and that, in turn, must encompass opposition to the attacks on democracy and human rights which accompany the scourge of militarism. This is especially important in the war-waging countries of the United States, the European Union and lesser imperialist countries such as Canada.

If the ecoscialism doctrine continues to fail on this score, then it will prove itself as merely an intellectual critique limited to the undeniable fact that unless capitalism and imperialism are defeated in their main bastions, our planet will be less and less able to support human society if not life itself. To date, there is a discernable failure by most ecosocialist luminaries to address these interconnections, including, for example, the case of the NATO military offensive in eastern Europe directed at Russia.

Starting points for the ecosocialist movement would be to opposition to the present imperialist wars in the Middle East and the NATO threats in eastern Europe. The movement should demand that all expenditures on nuclear weapons be cancelled. The latter is especially timely because the United States is embarked upon a trillion-dollar ‘modernization’ of its deadly nuclear arsenal.

Anti-militarism demands should be coupled with opposition to the two, new imperialist investment agreements that threaten the planet with ever more resource plunder–the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership and the proposed Canada-EU Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement. These investment and trade treaties weaken national sovereignty, including the capacity of national and local governments to legislate environmental protection, health and safety standards and patent laws. Corporations consider that such governmental powers undermine cherished profit margins.

Opposition to these treaties should be very high on the agenda of environmental movements and advocates. This is doubly the case now that Canada’s minister of international trade, Chrystia Freeland, has said no changes to the TPP are possible. Freeland says Canadians have a simple choice of ‘yes or no’ on the TPP, but that’s a laugh. IN reality, we have no choice except to mobilize in the streets in opposition. There are two things not on offer to Canadians with the secretive and authoritarian TPP: a meaningful voice on the matter, and a free vote. Such is the state of democracy in a world suffereing the triple scourges of militarism, economic austerity and climate-wrecking capitalist expansionism.


Notes:

[1] You can read a 2008 review by Ian Angus of Jeffrey Simpson et al’s Hot Air here. Ian Angus is the editor and publisher of the informative ecosocialist website Climate and Capitalism.

[2] See Alberta NDP, federal Tories demand pipelines to help ‘crippled’ energy industry, CBC News, Jan 16, 2016.

[3] This latest essay by Foster follows upon two other recent essays in the same theme by him, also in Monthly Review: ‘The Great Capitalist Climacteric Marxism and “System Change Not Climate Change‘, November 2015; and ‘Late Soviet Ecology and the Planetary Crisis‘, June 2015.

Roger Annis is a retired aerospace worker in Vancouver BC. He writes regularly for Counterpunch and compiles his writings on a ‘A Socialist in Canada’. He is an editor of the website The New Cold War: Ukraine and beyond. He can be reached at rogerannis@hotmail.com.

More articles by:Roger Annis

Solving ISIS for Aspiring Presidents

You Won't Like It, But Here's the Answer to ISIS: Giving Advice to a Presidential Candidate Who Wants to “Do Something”

by Peter Van Buren - TomDispatch

How can we stop the Islamic State?

Imagine yourself shaken awake, rushed off to a strategy meeting with your presidential candidate of choice, and told: “Come up with a plan for me to do something about ISIS!” What would you say? 

What Hasn't Worked 

You'd need to start with a persuasive review of what hasn't worked over the past 14-plus years. American actions against terrorism -- the Islamic State being just the latest flavor -- have flopped on a remarkable scale, yet remain remarkably attractive to our present crew of candidates. (Bernie Sanders might be the only exception, though he supports forming yet another coalition to defeat ISIS.) 

Tomgram: Peter Van Buren, How to Resolve the ISIS Crisis

Last Tuesday night, President Obama gave his final State of the (Dis)Union address. It was clearly meant to sweep Donald Trump preemptively into the dustbin of history. In case you hadn’t noticed, there’s no need to “make America great again.” From environmental achievements to less than $2 gas at the pump, job creation to military triumphalism, things simply could not be greater right now. American decline? An idle rumor. (“Anyone claiming that America's economy is in decline is peddling fiction.”) American weakness? A fantasy. In his Disneyesque vision of a country aglow, the president even managed to make his ongoing campaign against the Islamic State sound upbeat and his approach to defeating it little short of an antiwar statement. In a perfectly reasonable fashion, for instance, he suggested that, “as we focus on destroying ISIL, over-the-top claims that this is World War III just play into their hands. Masses of fighters on the back of pickup trucks and twisted souls plotting in apartments or garages pose an enormous danger to civilians and must be stopped. But they do not threaten our national existence.”

Resisting 2016 campaign proposals that range from the saturation bombing of civilians (“our answer needs to be more than tough talk or calls to carpet bomb civilians”) to establishing no-fly zones and sending in U.S. forces to take the Islamic State's "capital," Raqqa, Obama’s position is essentially: more of the same -- more planes, more drones, more bombs, more missiles, more “coalitions,” more “man-hunting,” and more destruction. That’s what now passes for an antiwar position in Washington. To steal a line from today’s TomDispatch author, what could possibly go wrong with such a plan -- especially when you’re talking about the country that, as the president proudly reminded us, spends “more on our military than the next eight nations combined” and whose troops “are the finest fighting force in the history of the world”? (Take that Attila the Hun and crew, Genghis Khan and company, you Roman legionnaires, and all those other pathetic fighting forces that preceded us!)

Mind you, American presidents have been stuck on that formulation for at least a decade or more, which might seem strange when talking about a military that, since its last significant victory in World War II, hasn't won much of anything against any force that offered it serious opposition, no matter how lightly armed or informally trained. It’s a military that, since 9/11, has proven incapable of effectively building allied armies in the Greater Middle East and has stumbled from one disaster to another in the region.

Despite this, the two poles of debate in Washington remain, militarily speaking, more of the same or staggeringly more of the same. Under the circumstances, we at TomDispatch decided to ask former State Department whistleblower Peter Van Buren what a third option might look like when it came to Washington’s Middle Eastern policy and the Islamic State. What, we wondered, would less of the same look like or, to go directly over a cliff, something else entirely? Here’s his answer. Tom 

 

You Won't Like It, But Here's the Answer to ISIS: Giving Advice to a Presidential Candidate Who Wants to “Do Something”

by Peter Van Buren

 

Why are the failed options still so attractive? In part, because bombing and drones are believed by the majority of Americans to be surgical procedures that kill lots of bad guys, not too many innocents, and no Americans at all. As Washington regularly imagines it, once air power is in play, someone else's boots will eventually hit the ground (after the U.S. military provides the necessary training and weapons). A handful of Special Forces troops, boots-sorta-on-the-ground, will also help turn the tide. By carrot or stick, Washington will collect and hold together some now-you-see-it, now-you-don't “coalition” of “allies” to aid and abet the task at hand. And success will be ours, even though versions of this formula have fallen flat time and again in the Greater Middle East.

Since the June 2014 start of Operation Inherent Resolve against the Islamic State, the U.S. and its coalition partners have flown 9,041 sorties, 5,959 in Iraq and 3,082 in Syria. More are launched every day. The U.S. claims it has killed between 10,000 and 25,000 Islamic State fighters, quite a spread, but still, if accurate (which is doubtful), at best only a couple of bad guys per bombing run. Not particularly efficient on the face of it, but -- as Obama administration officials often emphasize -- this is a “long war.” The CIA estimates that the Islamic State had perhaps 20,000 to 30,000 fighters under arms in 2014. So somewhere between a third of them and all of them should now be gone. Evidently not, since recent estimates of Islamic State militants remain in that 20,000 to 30,000 range as 2016 begins.

How about the capture of cities then? Well, the U.S. and its partners have already gone a few rounds when it comes to taking cities. After all, U.S. troops claimed Ramadi, the capital of Iraq’s al-Anbar Province, in 2003, only to see the American-trained Iraqi army lose it to ISIS in May 2015, and U.S-trained Iraqi special operations troops backed by U.S. air power retake it (in almost completely destroyed condition) as 2015 ended. As one pundit put it, the destruction and the cost of rebuilding make Ramadi “a victory in the worst possible sense.” Yet the battle cry in Washington and Baghdad remains “On to Mosul!”

Similar “successes” have regularly been invoked when it came to ridding the world of evil tyrants, whether Iraq’s Saddam Hussein or Libya’s Muammar Qaddafi, only to see years of blowback follow. Same for terrorist masterminds, including Osama bin Laden and Anwar al-Awlaki, as well as minor-minds (Jihadi John in Syria), only to see others pop up and terror outfits spread. The sum of all this activity, 14-plus years of it, has been ever more failed states and ungoverned spaces.

If your candidate needs a what-hasn’t-worked summary statement, it’s simple: everything.

How Dangerous Is Islamic Terrorism for Americans?

To any argument you make to your preferred presidential candidate about what did not “work,” you need to add a sober assessment of the real impact of terrorism on the United States in order to ask the question: Why exactly are we engaged in this war on this scale?

Hard as it is to persuade a constantly re-terrorized American public of the actual situation we face, there have been only 38 Americans killed in the U.S. by Islamic terrorists, lone wolves, or whacked-out individuals professing allegiance to Islamic extremism, or ISIS, or al-Qaeda, since 9/11. Argue about the number if you want. In fact, double or triple it and it still adds up to a tragic but undeniable drop in the bucket. To gain some perspective, pick your favorite comparison: number of Americans killed since 9/11 by guns (more than 400,000) or by drunk drivers in 2012 alone (more than 10,000).

And spare us the tired trope about how security measures at our airports and elsewhere have saved us from who knows how many attacks. A recent test by the Department of Homeland's own Inspector General's Office showed that 95% of contraband, including weapons and explosives, got through airport screening without being detected. Could it be that there just aren’t as many bad guys out there aiming to take down our country as candidates on the campaign trail would like to imagine?

Or take a look at the National Security Agency’s Fourth Amendment-smothering blanket surveillance. How'd that do against the Boston bombing or the attacks in San Bernardino? There’s no evidence it has ever uncovered a real terror plot against this country.

Islamic terrorism in the United States is less a serious danger than a carefully curated fear.

Introduce Your Candidate to the Real World

You should have your candidate's attention by now. Time to remind him or her that Washington’s war on terror strategy has already sent at least $1.6 trillion down the drain, left thousands of American troops and hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of Muslims dead. Along the way we lost precious freedoms to the ever-expanding national security state.

So start advising your candidate that a proper response to the Islamic State has to be proportional to the real threat. After all, we have fire departments always on call, but they don't ride around spraying water on homes 24/7 out of “an abundance of caution.”

We Have to Do Something

So here's what you might suggest that your candidate do, because you know that s/he will demand to “do something.”

Start by suggesting that, as a society, we take a deep look at ourselves, our leaders, and our media, and stop fanning everyone's flames. It’s time, among other things, to stop harassing and discriminating against our own Muslim population, only to stand by slack-jawed as a few of them become radicalized, and Washington then blames Twitter. As president, you need to opt out of all this, and dissuade others from buying into it.

As for the Islamic State itself, it can’t survive, never mind fight, without funds. So candidate, it’s time to man/woman up, and go after the real sources of funding.

As long as the U.S. insists on flying air attack sorties (and your candidate may unfortunately need to do so to cover his/her right flank), direct them far more intensely than at present against one of ISIS's main sources of cash: oil exports. Blow up trucks moving oil. Blow up wellheads in ISIS-dominated areas. Finding targets is not hard. The Russians released reconnaissance photos showing what they claimed were 12,000 trucks loaded with smuggled oil, backed up near the Turkish border.

But remind your candidate that this would not be an expansion of the air war or a shifting from one bombing campaign to a new one. It would be a short-term move, with a defined end point of shutting down the flow of oil. It would only be one part of a far larger effort to shut down ISIS’s sources of funds.

Next, use whatever diplomatic and economic pressure is available to make it clear to whomever in Turkey that it’s time to stop facilitating the flow of that ISIS oil onto the black market. Then wield that same diplomatic and economic pressure to force buyers to stop purchasing it. Some reports suggest that Israel, cut off from most Arab sources of oil, has become a major buyer of ISIS’s supplies. If so, step on some allied toes. C'mon, someone is buying all that black-market black gold.

The same should go for Turkey’s behavior toward ISIS. That would extend from its determination to fight Kurdish forces fighting ISIS to the way it’s allowed jihadis to enter Syria through its territory to the way it's funneled arms to various extreme Islamic groups in that country. Engage Turkey's fellow NATO members. Let them do some of the heavy lifting. They have a dog in this fight, too.

And speaking of stepping on allied toes, make it clear to the Saudis and other Sunni Persian Gulf states that they must stop sending money to ISIS. Yes, we’re told that this flow of “donations” comes from private citizens, not the Saudi government or those of its neighbors. Even so, they should be capable of exerting pressure to close the valve. Forget a “no-fly zone” over northern Syria -- another fruitless “solution” to the problem of the Islamic State that various presidential candidates are now plugging -- and use the international banking system to create a no-flow zone.

You may not be able to stop every buck from reaching ISIS, but most of it will do in a situation where every dollar counts.

Your candidate will obviously then ask you, “What else? There must be more we can do, mustn’t there?”

To this, your answer should be blunt: Get out. Land the planes, ground the drones, and withdraw. Pull out the boots, the trainers, the American combatants and near combatants (whatever the euphemism of the moment for them may be). Anybody who has ever listened to a country and western song knows that there’s always a time to step away from the table and cut your losses. Throwing more money (lives, global prestige...) into the pot won’t alter the cards you're holding. All you’re doing is postponing the inevitable at great cost.

In the end, there is nothing the United States can do about the processes now underway in the Middle East except stand on the beach trying to push back the waves.

This is history talking to us.

That Darn History Thing

Sometimes things change visibly at a specific moment: December 7, 1941, at Pearl Harbor, or the morning of September 11, 2001. Sometimes the change is harder to pinpoint, like the start of the social upheaval that, in the U.S., came to be known as “the Sixties.”

In the Middle East after World War I, representatives of the victorious British and French drew up national boundaries without regard for ethnic, sectarian, religious, tribal, resource, or other realities. Their goal was to divvy up the defeated Ottoman Empire. Later, as their imperial systems collapsed, Washington moved in (though rejecting outright colonies for empire by proxy). Secular dictatorships were imposed on the region and supported by the West past their due dates. Any urge toward popular self-government was undermined or destroyed, as with the coup against elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh in Iran in 1953, or the way the Obama administration manipulated the Arab Spring in Egypt, leading to the displacement of a democratically chosen government by a military coup in 2013.

In this larger context, the Islamic State is only a symptom, not the disease. Washington’s problem has been its desire to preserve a collapsing nation-state system at the heart of the Middle East. The Bush administration’s 2003 invasion of Iraq certainly sped up the process in a particularly disastrous fashion. Twelve years later, there can’t be any question that the tide has turned in the Middle East -- forever.

It’s time for the U.S. to stand back and let local actors deal with the present situation. ISIS’s threat to us is actually minimal. Its threat to those in the region is another matter entirely. Without Washington further roiling the situation, it’s a movement whose limits will quickly enough become apparent.

The war with ISIS is, in fact, a struggle of ideas, anti-western and anti-imperialist, suffused with religious feeling. You can’t bomb an idea or a religion away. Whatever Washington may want, much of the Middle East is heading toward non-secular governments, and toward the destruction of the monarchies and the military thugs still trying to preserve updated versions of the post-World War I system. In the process, borders, already dissolving, will sooner or later be redrawn in ways that reflect how people on the ground actually see themselves.

There is little use in questioning whether this is the right or wrong thing because there is little Washington can do to stop it. However, as we should have learned in these last 14 years, there is much it can do to make things far worse than they ever needed to be. The grim question today is simply how long this painful process takes and how high a cost it extracts. To take former President George W. Bush's phrase and twist it a bit, you're either with the flow of history or against it.

Fear Itself

Initially, Washington’s military withdrawal from the heart of the Middle East will undoubtedly further upset the current precarious balances of power in the region. New vacuums will develop and unsavory characters will rush in. But the U.S. has a long history of either working pragmatically with less than charming figures (think: the Shah of Iran, Anwar Sadat, or Saddam Hussein before he became an enemy) or isolating them. Iran, currently the up-and-coming power in the area absent the United States, will no doubt benefit, but its reentry into the global system is equally inevitable.

And the oil will keep flowing; it has to. The countries of the Middle East have only one mighty export and need to import nearly everything else. You can’t eat oil, so you must sell it, and a large percentage of that oil is already sold to the highest bidder on world markets.

It’s true that, even in the wake of an American withdrawal, the Islamic State might still try to launch Paris-style attacks or encourage San Bernardino-style rampages because, from a recruitment and propaganda point of view, it’s advantageous to have the U.S. and the former colonial powers as your number one enemies. This was something Osama bin Laden realized early on vis-à-vis Washington. He succeeded beyond his wildest dreams in drawing the U.S. deeply into the quagmire and tricking Washington into doing much of his work for him. But the dangers of such attacks remain limited and can be lived with. As a nation, we survived World War II, decades of potential nuclear annihilation, and scores of threats larger than ISIS. It’s disingenuous to believe terrorism is a greater threat to our survival.

And here’s a simple reality to explain to your candidate: we can't defend everything, not without losing everything in the process. We can try to lock down airports and federal buildings, but there is no way, nor should there be, to secure every San Bernardino holiday party, every school, and every bus stop. We should, in fact, be ashamed to be such a fear-based society here in the home of the brave. Today, sadly enough, the most salient example of American exceptionalism is being the world's most scared country. Only in that sense could it be said that the terrorists are “winning” in America.

At this point, your candidate will undoubtedly say: “Wait! Won't these ideas be hard to sell to the American people? Won't our allies object?”

And the reply to that, at least for a candidate not convinced that more of the same is the only way to go, might be: “After more than 14 years of the wrong answers and the disasters that followed, do you have anything better to suggest?”

Peter Van Buren, a TomDispatch regular, blew the whistle on State Department waste and mismanagement during the Iraqi reconstruction in We Meant Well: How I Helped Lose the Battle for the Hearts and Minds of the Iraqi People. A TomDispatch regular, he writes about current events at We Meant Well. His latest book is Ghosts of Tom Joad: A Story of the #99Percent. His next work will be a novel, Hooper's War.

Follow TomDispatch on Twitter and join us on Facebook. Check out the newest Dispatch Book, Nick Turse’s Tomorrow’s Battlefield: U.S. Proxy Wars and Secret Ops in Africa, and Tom Engelhardt's latest book, Shadow Government: Surveillance, Secret Wars, and a Global Security State in a Single-Superpower World.

Copyright 2016 Peter Van Buren

An Open Letter from a Poisoned City: Mr. Obama, Please Come to Flint!

President Obama, Please Come to Flint

by Michael Moore

January 16, 2016

Dear President Obama; I am writing this to you from the place where I was born -- Flint, Michigan. Please consider this personal appeal from me and the 102,000 citizens of the city of Flint who have been poisoned -- not by a mistake, not by a natural disaster, but by a governor and his administration who, to "cut costs," took over the city of Flint from its duly elected leaders, unhooked the city from its fresh water supply of Lake Huron, and then made the people drink the toxic water from the Flint River. This was nearly two years ago.

This week it was revealed that at least 10 people in Flint have now been killed by these premeditated actions of the Governor of Michigan. This governor, Rick Snyder, nullified the democratic election of this mostly African-American city -- where 41% of the people live below the "official" poverty line -- and replaced the elected Mayor and city council with a crony who was instructed to take all his orders from the governor's office.

One of those orders from the State of Michigan was this: "It costs too much money to supply Flint with clean drinking water from Lake Huron (the 3rd largest body of fresh water in the world). We can save a lot of money doing this differently. So unhook the city from that source and let them drink the water known as 'General Motors' Sewer' -- the Flint River."

And, lo and behold, the Governor was right. It was a lot cheaper! Fifteen million dollars cheaper! And for saving all that money, it is now estimated that to repair the damaged water system in Flint, it will cost at least $1.5 billion. Someone had suggested to the governor, before he did this, that the river contained many toxins. He ignored that. One of his own people said maybe they should add a safe-to-drink "corrosive protector" to the water so that the toxins in said water wouldn't leach the lead off the aging water pipe infrastructure and into the drinking water. "How much will that cost?" asked the governor's office.

"Just $100 a day for only 3 months," the governor was told. Oh, $100 a day?! THAT'S TOO MUCH!, came the reply from the governor. Don't worry about the lead. "Lead is a seasonal thing," he would later explain to the public. "Heck, there's lead in everything!" Just let them drink the river water.

This is a city full of poor black people, a city where half the population (including myself) found a way to escape the misery and the madness (the crime rate is so bad, we've lead the country in murders for most years -- and just to get an idea of what that means, if NYC had the same murder rate as Flint last year, over 4,000 New Yorkers would have been killed, instead of the 340 who actually were).

My city has been pummeled by General Motors, Wall Street and the State and Federal governments. It's no surprise that the Republicans who control our State Capitol in Michigan didn't have to worry about any push-back from the residents of Flint because, to them, that's just a bunch of eviscerated black people who have absolutely no power, "don't vote for us any way," and have NO means to fight back.

And now, after every single child in Flint has been poisoned with lead-filled water that the State knew a year ago was in that water, we learn that the governor's office sought to cover it up, hiding it not just from the defenseless African Americans they secretly fear and despise, but also hiding it from YOU and the federal government! (Link)

And, as if things couldn't get any worse, the news of 87 people with Legionnaires Disease happened this week. Ten Flint residents have been KILLED by this disease which is caused by tainted water. Not by gun violence, not in Afghanistan, but by an act of racism and violence perpetrated by the -- I'm sorry to say -- white, Republican governor of Michigan who knew months ago the water was toxic.

All fingers from the doctors and scientists point to the filthy, toxic Flint River as the cause of this Legionnaires Disease outbreak. 10 human souls deceased. In an average year, Flint already had an astounding 8 cases (and rarely a death) of people contracting Legionnaires Disease. Since the citizens of Flint were forced to use the water from the Flint River, EIGHTY-SEVEN CASES OF LEGIONNAIRES DISEASE have happened! AND TEN DEATHS! And the number is expected to rise.

President Obama -- the people of Flint are crying out to you for help. Our Congressman, Dan Kildee, has called the federal government for assistance. But he's been told that it's a "State issue" and that "the State of Michigan has to be the one asking the feds for the help."

NO! The STATE is the one who CAUSED THIS! That's like asking the fox if he could repair the chicken coop. No, Mr. President, we need YOUR help -- TODAY. 100,000 people have no water to drink, to cook with or to bathe in.

This week, you are coming to Michigan to attend the Detroit Auto Show. We implore you to come to Flint, less than an hour's drive north of Detroit. Do not ignore this tragedy taking place every day. This may be Gov. Snyder's Katrina, but it will become your Bush-Flying-Over-New Orleans Moment if you come to Michigan and then just fly away. I know you don't want that image of flying over us as you "fake-sad" look down on Flint just as Bush did in that never-to-be-forgotten photo-op over New Orleans. I know you are going to come to the rescue here in Flint. I can't imagine any other scenario.

We need:

• The CDC here at once to truly assess all of the disease and damage that has been forced upon the people of Flint. 
• 
  FEMA has to supply large water containers in every home in Flint -- and they must be filled by water trucks until the new infrastructure is resolved. 
• 
  The EPA must take over matters from the State (can the governor be removed and replaced like he did to the mayor of Flint?). Immediately. 

You must send in the Army Corps of Engineers to build that new water infrastructure. Otherwise, you might as well just evacuate all the people from Flint and move them to a white city that has clean drinking water -- and where this would never happen.

President Obama, I'm counting on you to give us a response. Can we expect to see you, in Flint, in the next few days?

Yours,
Michael Moore
Filmmaker
Flint native

UPDATE: P.S. President Obama, thank you for responding so quickly to us in Flint. To have you declare a Federal State of Emergency for Flint after our letter to you -- and to do it while we were all gathering for our rally in Flint today -- that was a big boost of hope to everyone present.

Until, that is, we all got home and actually read your Order.

It turns out you are sending only $5 million in aid -- and you are not sending it to Flint, you are sending it to the corrupt Governor Snyder who triggered the poisoning of Flint in the first place! Your Order says you're invoking FEMA -- and ONLY FEMA's --help for just 90 days, and that all FEMA is to do is ship in bottles of water and filters. No EPA being sent to Flint. No CDC. No Army Corps of Engineers! Are you kidding me? Do you have any idea of the catastrophe that has taken place here? The entire water infrastructure to every single home in Flint has been ruined. 102,000 people have been knowingly poisoned by a host of toxins -- including every single child who now has some level of irreversible brain damage. You read that right - every single child.

You need to strengthen and expand your emergency order to fix this disaster, and you need to come to Flint after you look at all the bright, shiny new cars at the Detroit Auto Show on Wednesday. Mr. Obama, if not to Flint, then where?

When "Oops!" Doesn't Cut It: Anniversary of Errant Nuke Bombing in Palomares, Spain

Palomares Anniversary

by ABC News

January 17, 2016

Fifty years ago today, the United States of America dropped four nuclear bombs on Spain. It was an accident.

On the morning of Jan. 17, 1966, an American B-52 bomber was flying a secret mission over Cold War Europe when it collided with a refueling tanker. Seven airmen involved, including all four members of the refueling tanker’s crew, were killed. But American officials feared much worse when they learned that the bomber’s payload, four B28 hydrogen bombs, had broken free in the collision and tumbled down towards the small Mediterranean beach town of Palomares, Spain.

Fail safe systems in the weapons mostly worked and none of the four bombs experienced a nuclear reaction upon impact, sparing the region and its hundreds of inhabitants from multiple nuclear blasts that would’ve dwarfed the explosion over Hiroshima. “Only a fortunate stroke of luck saved the Spanish population of the area from catastrophe,” a Soviet official said at the time.

But the conventional high explosives on two of the bombs did detonate, essentially turning those weapons into dirty bombs that blasted plutonium radiation across the countryside.

The story took another dramatic turn when hundreds of American soldiers, who rushed to the accident site to search for the bombs, were only able to locate three of four. As the exhausting search on land continued fruitlessly, military officials turned to the Mediterranean and launched what was then the most complex deep-water search and recovery operation in history – all while Russian ships and submarines lingered nearby, threatening to snatch the missing nuke for themselves.

A half century later, there is little obvious evidence of the dramatic incident in Palomares, short of a chain link fence and warning signs surrounding an area in which one of the bombs fell and radiation seeped into the ground. Not far away, on the beach, there is nothing to mark where another crashed down intact – and members of a nearby nudist colony stroll by in their natural glory seemingly without a care that they’re walking within feet of a five-decade-old nuclear accident.

[See link for full story.]

What Deer Cull Killing Looks Like - (You Don't Want to See It)

First Footage of Deer Cull Exposed In B.C.

by Jordan Reichert  - Victoria Animal News

The B.C. Deer Protection Society has released the first footage of the clover-trap and bolt-gun method of killing deer used in deer culls across British Columbia.

This footage was captured during a recent deer cull taking place in Cranbrook, B.C on January 5th, 2015. There is no other footage of deer being killed by the clover-trap/bolt-gun method of killing available to the public.

The video shows a fawn waiting in a trap prior to the contractors arriving, as they approach the fawn appears to become very distressed and begins trying to jump out of the trap. Once the trap is collapsed down on top of the fawn, it is bolt-gunned in the head once and then again approximately a minute later. It is unclear if the fawn is still alive after the first time it is bolt-gunned.

President of the BC Deer Protection Society, Kelly Carson, said that the deer cull had been “Touted as “humane” by the Ministry of Forests, Lands and Natural Resource Operations, and by mayors and councilors in several B.C. cities and towns, the public can now decide for themselves if this cull is humane.” When Carson was asked about what she thought of the video, she reported that “Seeing that the fawn had to be shot twice, as the first shot didn’t kill him/her, one has to realize how difficult it must be to “dispatch” an adult buck with antlers, or a full-grown doe. Seeing the difficulty that the contractor had in killing one young deer, we can only imagine how horrific it was when the time came to kill two at once.”

The BC Deer Protection Society has sent a letter to Minister Thomson urging an end to the cull in Cranbrook and asking that the contractor be investigated due to several permit infractions, including an instance where two fawns laid pinned under a collapsed trap for two hours before the contractor arrived. It is not known how the contractor was able to kill the two “humanely.” When the BCDPS contacted Ministry biologist for the Kootenay region, Irene Teske, she said it was “not uncommon” for two deer to be caught in the traps at once.

Deer culls have been used in various cities across B.C. including Invermere, Kimberley, Cranbrook, and Victoria to deal with what some in the community deem an “overpopulation” of deer in the various regions. However, deer population trends show the numbers of deer remaining steady or being in decline over the last several years. Furthermore, a more recent report shows a population drop of 31,000 deer in the Kootenay region between 2011 and 2014.

In Victoria, culls have been a topic of significant controversy when in early 2015 Oak Bay had their own deer cull. Eleven deer were killed in the Oak Bay deer cull which were heavily opposed by DeerSafe Victoria and the BCDPS due to concerns about the the methods used being inhumane. DeerSafe had requested to be witness to the cull, so that there may be some public oversight, but they never received a response from the municipality. They hope that this video will show citizens and communities considering a cull just how distressing it is for the deer.

Updated: A petition has now been started in opposition to deer culls across B.C. You can sign and share here.

Jordan Reichert

Victoria Animal News

Jakarta Terror Attack Payback for Saudi Snub?

Indonesia snubs Saudi ‘anti-terror’ coalition... then its capital gets hit 

by Finian Cunningham - RT

15 Jan, 2016

Indonesia joins a growing list of countries beyond the Middle East region reportedly hit by the Islamic State group or its affiliates. Is it a case of IS simply going global, or is there something else to the latest incident in Indonesia?

On the face of it, the attacks this week in downtown Jakarta – the Indonesian capital of 10 million people – are similar to those carried out in Paris last November, albeit with much less deadly results. Both involved a team of suicide bombers and gun attacks.

In the Paris attacks, some eight armed men killed 130 people when they struck at various public venues on November 13. This week in Jakarta up to 15 assailants armed with explosives and rifles managed to kill only two civilians; the other five reported dead were attackers who were shot by police or blew themselves up.

From the terrorists’ point of view, the Jakarta operation was a failure. That failure was partly due to the vigilance of Indonesian police, who had increased security across the capital in recent weeks due to what they said was the interception of terror communications.

Jakarta deputy police chief Budi Gunawan was quoted by The Wall Street Journal as saying that a homegrown Islamist network in the Java city of Solo had been plotting terror attacks with jihadists based in Syria.

“We detected communications between a Syria group and the Solo group,” said Gunawan. 

Following the Jakarta violence, the IS group reportedly claimed responsibility.

The question is: what’s behind the uptick in IS-affiliated activity in Indonesia? Police reportedly made several arrests against suspected IS operatives in recent weeks.

Indonesia is no stranger to terrorism carried out by Islamist groups. Between 2000 and 2009, there were six major terrorist atrocities. The biggest one was the bombings in the tourist resort of Bali in 2002 which killed over 200 people. But for the past five years, the country has enjoyed relative peace.

Author and expert on Indonesia Jeremy Menchik told France 24 in an interview Thursday night that the relative quiet in the world’s fourth largest nation has been achieved because of the country’s relatively democratic transition having been able to co-opt dissident Islamist groups.

With a population of over 240 million, Indonesia is the world’s most populous Muslim country. While the country suffered from a brutal dictatorship under Suharto from 1965 until the late 1990s, it has since managed to steer a more benign, inclusive and secular political path.

Under President Joko Widodo, elected in 2014, Indonesia has managed to contain its erstwhile radical Islamist problem.

Saudi revenge for Indonesia’s PR snub?

One month ago, on December 17, Saudi Arabia launched a 34 Islamic nation “anti-terror” coalition, with an ostentatious announcement in the Saudi capital Riyadh. The surprise initiative was welcomed by Washington and London, although it was greeted with skepticism by many observers given the documented role that the Saudi rulers have had in funding and arming terror groups, including the Islamic State and other Al Qaeda-linked militants.

Skeptics noted that the Saudi-led coalition of 34 Islamic nations appeared to be hastily cobbled together, with some of the nominal member countries later saying that they had not been consulted by the Saudis in its formation. Not included in the Saudi initiative of the “anti-terror” Islamic bloc were Iraq and Iran, perhaps unsurprisingly given the Saudi antagonism with these mainly Shiite countries.

Even more pointedly, two major Islamic nations, Algeria and Indonesia, explicitly declined to participate in the Saudi-led alliance.

Given the prominence of Indonesia as the world’s biggest Muslim country, the Saudi initiative was thus dealt a severe public relations blow by Jakarta’s refusal to sign up.

It is believed that Saudi Arabia has been behind the funding of radical Islamist groups within Indonesia going back several years, according to the Financial Times.

With that in mind, the Indonesia authorities most likely snubbed the Saudi “anti-terror” coalition last month for precisely the same reasons that many analysts dismissed it. Seeing it as a cynical public-relations gimmick by the Saudis who are trying to burnish their badly tarnished international image over suspected links with terrorism, particularly in Syria’s five-year conflict.

That raises the plausible conjecture that the terror attacks this week in Jakarta by an IS-connected group may have been orchestrated as a form of retaliation against the Indonesian government for its embarrassing snub against the Saudis last month.

If the Saudis and Western intelligence are indeed in some murky way driving jihadist terrorism for their geopolitical agenda, then it stands to reason that such terror groups could be manipulated by these same protagonists in Indonesia - or anywhere else for that matter.

A terror attack in the heart of Jakarta apparently carried out by the IS group would serve as a sharp warning to Indonesia over its derisory putdown of the Western-backed Saudi “anti-terror” coalition.

The sudden uptick in Islamist terror activity in Indonesia and the failure of the attackers in Jakarta to inflict greater damage suggest that the assault was hurriedly planned. As in the orders to the operatives were hastily dispatched and acted on.

That would fit with the theory that the Saudi sponsors of terrorism were looking for a quick counter to Indonesia undermining their anti-terror charade last month.

Finian Cunningham (born 1963) has written extensively on international affairs, with articles published in several languages. Originally from Belfast, Northern Ireland, he is a Master’s graduate in Agricultural Chemistry and worked as a scientific editor for the Royal Society of Chemistry, Cambridge, England, before pursuing a career in newspaper journalism. For over 20 years he worked as an editor and writer in major news media organizations, including The Mirror, Irish Times and Independent. Now a freelance journalist based in East Africa, his columns appear on RT, Sputnik, Strategic Culture Foundation and Press TV. 

Russia in Syria: White Knight, or Just Another Imperialist?

A Russian White Knight or an Interventionist Power?

The imperialist Violence in Syria, Part 6 of 7

by Kim Petersen and B.J. Sabri - Dissident Voice

January 17th, 2016

Read Part 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5.

It is noteworthy that the only government objecting to the substance of our initiative is the United States, which for many years has stood in almost complete isolation trying to block successive efforts of the international community to prevent an arms race in outer space.
– statement by Russian Foreign Ministry on resolution for no first deployment of weapons into outer space which was approved by UN General Assembly on 8 December 2015.1

Unlike the 4-year US active involvement in every aspect of the Syrian conflict, Russia’s direct intervention started just recently (30 September 2015). Russia’s intervention is important to distinguish under international law: unlike the US illegal bombardment of Syria, unlike the antics of states like Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar who operate in Syria in contravention to international agreements between sovereign states, Russia was invited by the legitimate government of Syria to assist in defeating the mercenary insurrection.

Do we need to debate that the US, Israel, and Saudi Arabia were not invited to assist—which would be ludicrous on its face: a regime asking states seeking its overthrow to assist it? (The latest news is that Obama is putting US boots on Syrian soil unbidden by that sovereign nation. Imagine the response by the US regime if, for example, in solidarity with Black Lives Matter, Africa unilaterally placed troops on US soil to protect African-American lives?)

It is also important to note that if the US regime and its anti-Assad instruments had not participated in the aggression against Syria, then there likeliest would have been no Russian involvement, and Syrians might have been able to settle the matter for themselves. Logically, any blame for casualties resulting from Russian military involvement must be directly attributed to the anti-Syrian regime coalition—it is the law of action and reaction. In the end, we see that the ultimate culpability for all those who died in Syria rests exclusively with those who initiated the violence in the first place.

About Russia: it can be argued that from the time of Gorbachev until the overthrow of the legitimate Ukrainian government by the CIA and its Ukrainian operatives, Russia had allowed the world to be damaged through passivity against American imperialist expansions. The present authors understand why that happened and realize the constraints put on Russia since the Yeltsin years. But when the imperialist heat reached its borders, Russia awakened. Honestly, we cannot ask too much of Russia (all countries threatened by the US’s march to absolutist empire must take their share of responsibility) and we cannot blame Russia for the treason committed by Gorbachev and Yeltsin. But we can blame it, under the first Putin presidency, for consenting to the joint US-British occupation of Iraq after strenuously opposing the planned invasion of 2003. We are also extremely critical of Russia’s consent, under the second Putin presidency, to UN Resolution 2216 that sanctioned an already started American-Saudi aggression against Yemen—an aggression that has thus far killed thousands of Yemenis, and destroyed much of the country. We have other problems with Russian policy, but this is not the forum.

Still, from our viewpoint as inflexible opponents of American imperialism, we are convinced that Russia’s entry to the side of the Syrian government has great potential for finally stopping the US from treating the world as a stepping-stone to unchallenged global hegemony. What was Russia supposed to do: wait for the US (and its anti-Assad allies) to enact regime change in Damascus and moving thereafter to its borders? Above all, what could be more dictatorial than outsiders determining by military means and violence who should govern a sovereign nation?

Russia’s intervention has another angle—it exposed the cruel geopolitical game the United States has been playing in Iraq and Syria. For openers, the United States is not bombing both countries to rid them of so-called ISIS; gargantuan evidence points to the contrary. This could not be otherwise—the US founded, armed, and trained this “state,” and it needs it as a means to destabilize and break up all Arab states.

Strong suspicions surround the US conduct toward ISIS thus leading to one unavoidable conclusion: ISIS is a multinational enterprise that the United States, the West, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Qatar created, financed, and armed to fight both the Syrian and Iraqi governments according to predefined objectives. For instance, when ISIS emerged as a military power and crossed into Iraq from Syria, the US did nothing to stop it. And when it moved its convoys to occupy the city of Mosul, then descending south to occupy the city of Baiji that houses Iraq’s largest oil refinery, the US and vassals just reported the news. And when ISIS occupied Tikrit and Ramadi, the only reaction coming from the US and regional supporters was to portray the American-trained Iraqi army as inept. And when ISIS was almost on the gates of Baghdad, the US and company just spoke of its imminent fall.

Something disrupted this chain of events though. In Iraq, ISIS sacked the Yezidi areas and moved their Toyota convoys toward Erbil, which the Kurds consider their provisional capital, and almost seized the oil-rich, multi-ethnic city of Kirkuk that the Kurds consider their future capital. In Syria, ISIS entered Ain al-Arab (Kobane) thus disrupting the connection between Iraqi Kurds and Syrian Kurds. At that point, the US, the West, European volunteers, and the Kurds made their combined moves to drive ISIS out of Kirkuk, Erbil, and Kobane. In the meanwhile, no action was taken to remove ISIS from the cities and territory it occupied in Iraq and Syria.

This must be by design. In fact, once the US started pounding ISIS entrenched near Kirkuk and Erbil, the Kurds—who have been claiming Kirkuk as theirs since the US invasion of Iraq—moved their Peshmerga forces to occupy the city immediately. At which point, the Baghdad government, itself a servant of Washington, declared the Kurdish occupation of Kirkuk null and promised to retake it once it finishes its business with ISIS.

What to conclude from all this is simple: For the US, disrupting the scheme to create a Kurdish state extending from Iraq to the Mediterranean while taking territory from Turkey and Syria was a red line that ISIS crossed. This explains why Turkey supports ISIS against Kurdish separatists. And it explains why Saudi Arabia supports ISIS under the pretext to fight Iran in Iraq and Syria. And when the Kurds declare that any area they “liberate” from ISIS become a Kurdish territory (as when they took, with American air support, the multi-ethnic cities of Duhok and Sinjar), then we cannot but conclude that ISIS is a player created by the West and regional powers to facilitate the partition of the Arab states in Western Asia. Kurds should not rejoice. The history of imperialism and colonialism warns that the final aim of the US and the West is not about caring for the national aspirations of the Kurds. Creating a Kurdish state at the service of American and Israeli objectives is the target. And the Kurds are moving into this trap. (Discussing the Kurdish issue goes beyond the scope of this work.)

Let us recap the ISIS move against Arab, Kurdish, Assyrian, and Yezidi areas in Iraq and Syria areas. Although ISIS is an American (and Saudi creation)—it provided the United States with the operational rationales for massive intervention in Iraq and Syria—its moves and attacks suggest one of two things: either it has developed a separate agenda, or it is following American orders as a part of a plan to rein in the moves of the Kurds. In the end, the US reasons for allowing ISIS to survive and expand despite pretentious bombardment and publicity balloons is all too evident: the US and Israel want to create a Kurdish state from parts taken out of Iraq, Iran, Turkey, and Iran,2 and ISIS is the means to implement it.

Are the Kurds and ISIS enemies? There is a plenty of evidence to suggest they were not when ISIS occupied Mosul only. In fact, once Mosul fell to ISIS and the weakness of Baghdad’s central government was exposed, it gave Kurds the opportunity to move instantly to occupy Kirkuk (with its Arab, Kurdish, Turkoman, Assyrian, and Armenian population) which Kurds have been claiming as theirs since the American invasion of Iraq. This is reinforced by the fact that when ISIS attacked Ain Al-Arab (a Syrian own with a Kurdish majority), Iraqi Kurds crossed into Syria to fight it.3 One can surmise, therefore, that the US has been effectively coordinating with ISIS to execute the strategic purpose of creating a de facto expansionist Kurdish state.

Overall, the US strategy regarding ISIS is apparent. 1) Keep the “islamic state” in Iraq viable to harass the Iraqi government—under US control, anyway—thus browbeating Iraq’s regime to give in to Kurdish demands to secede and form an independent state. 2) Keep “ISIS” strong enough in Syria to help with the toppling of the Assad government. 3) Keep spreading the propaganda that the “Islamic state” is real and here to stay; this will allow for protracted Western military intervention. 4)

Continue with current strategy to keep the region—with the exception of Israel—afire and permanently unstable. Ponder: how could we explain the fact that ISIS seems more intent on fighting Arab Muslims than fighting European Zionist Jews or American interests? What drives the rage to re-Islamize Arabs who have been Muslims for over 1500 years unless this drive was designed by Washington and Tel Aviv to discredit Muslims and prepare the path for the final conquest? What should one make of an organization that has no program about anything except making people worship in the regressive and oppressive Wahhabi way? This seems a premeditated plan for the total destruction of the Arab Muslim mind.

Keeping the preceding arguments in perspective, and tying them to the Russian intervention in Syria, we see this intervention in positive way. Unlike all the other uninvited interlopers, Russia intervened at the behest of Syria and its legitimate government. Yet, this is war, and war causes casualties including civilian deaths. However, since it became clear that Russia’s approach to eradicate Western-controlled violence was resolute, fake sources were formed to cast doubt on Russia’s role including the accusation of causing more civilian deaths than those caused by the US and its terrorist allies. Because we support Russia’s intervention to end violence in Syria, some might think that we are defending Russia. This is not the case. A balanced investigation, however, posits that when propaganda and disinformation contradict facts, we must debate it.

One dubious source is Airwars.org. This site reports of “104 incidents of concern in Syria in which Russian aircraft allegedly killed between 528 and 730 non-combatants.” Of those “incidents as fairly reported” there “are likely to have killed between 255 and 375 civilians.”4 The reliability of such reporting does not improve: “The number of Russian airstrikes which caused non-combatant deaths has to an extent been exaggerated.” This is self-contradicted somewhat later by the claims: “Even so, credible allegations of civilian fatalities inflicted by the Russan [sic] Air Force are worryingly high.”

A number of questions arise from such sources. First, for example, what denotes “fairly reported” and who determines what this is? What is the difference between a “credible allegation” and a “fact”? Second, what is one to make of imprecise, waffling phrases as “likely to,” “to an extent,” and again who determines this extent and likelihood? Third, who is Airwars.org?

From the source site: “Airwars.org is a collaborative, not-for-profit transparency project aimed both at tracking and archiving the international air war against Islamic State, in both Iraq and Syria. With a dozen nations reportedly bombing – along with the air forces of Iraq, Iran and Syria – there is a pressing public interest need for independent, trustworthy monitoring.” Airwars.org’s “data is drawn heavily from US and allied militaries. In addition to tracking the strikes, we also seek to report – and where possible follow up on – credible allegations of civilian casualties.”

Credible? What is the verisimilitude of information disseminated by US and allied militaries?

Nonetheless, even if the present writers accept on its face everything reported by US propagandists, it does not change the thesis of our argument: regrettably, in warring, civilian casualties are bound to occur. However, casualties occurring after the entrance of Russia to the violence in Syria have to be weighed against the quarter million people killed prior to Russia coming on the scene. Any subsequent deaths attributable to Russia’s air warfare against violent armed groups have to be weighed against those who would not have been saved if Russia didn’t enter the fray. Yes, Russia weaponry may have caused civilian deaths, but how does one calculate all the civilians saved from death at the hands of mercenaries and other killers?

Moreover, we are arguing that all deaths since Russia intervention are to be blamed on US-, Saudi-, Gulf state-, Turkey-, and other western-backed mercenaries and terrorists. Had these forces and their proxies never invaded Syria and Iraq, and had they never received protection in Turkey and Jordan, then Russian warplanes would not be fighting today.

To conclude our note on Russia, although it entered the war on the side of the legitimate government, Russia has never declared any strategy or long-term objective in Syria except the one supporting a legitimate UN member from not being overrun by American/Saudi-supported terrorists and mercenaries. Consequently, Western imperialists and their media stenographers have no moral underpinning or legal standing to criticize Russia.

Next: Leftists and Violence in Syria: Part 7 of 7 

Notes:
1. Matthew Bodner, UN Approves Russia-led Proposal To Limit Militarization of Space,” Moscow Times, 2 December 2015. 
2. Read article “Blood Borders” and see map by Ralph Peters. 
3. Read “Iraqi Kurdish forces enter Syria to fight Islamic State.” 
4. See Chris Woods, “International airstrikes and civilian casualty claims in Iraq and Syria: October 2015.” 

Kim Petersen is a former editor of Dissident Voice and can be reached at kim@dissidentvoice.org. B.J. Sabri is an observer of the politics of modern colonialism, imperialism, Zionism, and of contemporary Arab issues. He can be reached at b.j.sabri@aol.com. Read other articles by Kim and B.J..

Killing the Dream: BC Liberals Wacking Bennett's Vision for Province

How the BC Liberals killed WAC Bennett’s dream of affordable public power, ferries, rail

by Rafe Mair - Common Sense Canadian

January 16, 2016
 

Well, it’s all over but the shouting. WAC Bennett’s dream of cheap power, cheap rail, and cheap ferry service has been murdered.

Yes it’s murder – premeditated murder – not manslaughter.

To compound this catastrophe, the mainstream print media, especially Postmedia (the Vancouver Sun, Province and National Post) acted throughout as if nothing was happening.


Longtime BC Premier WAC Bennett’s
dream is dead, says former Socred
Minister Rafe Mair

NDP opposition asleep at the wheel

It’s actually worse than that because the opposition has been asleep from the beginning and, even when it had its eyes barely open, was still in a semi-comatose condition. This started at the end of the 90s when the NDP folded its tent and became a mere shadow of its former self, leaving the field wide open for the right wing.

New breed of “right wing”

Now, I’m not talking about the right wing as we used to know it in the old days under the Bennetts, who mixed capitalism, socialism, and sprinkled them with doses of populism to keep things exciting.

The new guy, calling himself a Liberal, Gordon Campbell, was an entirely different breed of cat. He combined a hearty dislike for crown corporations with an utter lack of any sensitivity toward people and communities.

Bennett had dreams

WAC Bennett had three dreams:

• British Columbians would be able to live on the coast and to move from place to place by sea at a reasonable cost, just as other British Columbians could by highway.
• He believed the same for rail and that the only way to open up this massive province was to provide cheap and reliable rail.
• He knew that affordable and available power was critical both to residents and to attract competitive industry.

He left us as his legacy: BC Ferries, BC Rail, and BC Hydro. Under the Campbell/Clark government all of this has gone.

Ferries, Rail, Hydro gone or ruined

 

WAC Bennett Dam (Damien Gillis)

The ferry system is now some hybrid, neither private not public, and down to the point of selling off its ferries to ex-employees for pennies.

BC Rail’s so called “sale” was a fraud, plain and simple, and British Columbians got taken to the cleaners.

Now we had BC Hydro, the jewel of our crown, and the Campbell/Clark government has dug its deadly talons into its back.

I am going to say it but once: “I told you so!” So did economist Erik Andersen in these pages. So did Damien Gillis. So did many others who wrote for us. The problem was that the theft and distraction was so obvious that nobody could believe that it was happening.

This is probably the best con game of all. The sucker can often work their way through a complicated scam, but give him a simple Ponzi scheme right before his very eyes and he is bowled over unto stupefaction.

The private power scam

It was scarcely a secret that Gordon Campbell hated crown corporations. Within two years of taking office he passed an energy policy which took away from BC Hydro its ability to create new power, except Site C, and forced it to buy all its new power from private companies who were given exclusive rights to make it. This required scores of our rivers to be decimated by what the private companies – euphemistically dubbed IPPs (“Independent” Power Producers”) – called “weirs” but were in fact small but destructive dams.

Construction of a private power project on the Ashlu River (Photo: Range Life)

Hydro had to pay twice or more the market cost of this power and it was forced to take it when it was produced even though it didn’t need it at that time. The Finance Minister, Campbell crony Colin Hansen, said these IPPs would be little “mom and pop”, which was 100% bullshit – unless one considers General Electric to be a “mom and pop” operation. The owner of your corner grocery store can tell you what happens if you follow these sorts of business practices.

As if that wasn’t bad enough, we now have the admission from minister Bill Bennett (who at least ought to have the decency to change his name) that the Christy Clark government has been milking huge “dividends” out of money BC Hydro has borrowed. Not earned, for God’s sake, but borrowed! BC Hydro is now in a financial mess from which it can never recover, short of a massive injection of public cash out of the treasury or by inflated electricity bills or both.

Thus, under Gordo and Christy, the power company that provided reliable and cheap power to the public and to industry has gone poof! And it has gone by way deliberate misfeasance by a political party which next year will be asking us, with a straight face, to support them because they are “business oriented”.

Site C: the latest chapter in Hydro fraud

This story is, of course, compounded by Site C, which promises to deliver power we don’t need now or in the foreseeable future at a cost that will surely exceed $10 billion and will destroy thousands of acres of good agricultural land – to say nothing of the way of life of farmers and First Nations who have lived in the area since time immemorial.

During this time, the NDP have scarcely been helpful and, in fact, in their latter days in power, also helped themselves to BC Hydro-borrowed money.

I don’t suppose there’s any point in stating the obvious that the mainstream media have paid no attention whatsoever to this disgraceful destruction of our heritage. I invite you to search the Vancouver Sun and Province for critical articles, editorials, or columns about the Campbell/Clark energy wipeout that’s been the last nail in the BC Hydro coffin. You’ll come up pretty well empty.

After all, don’t forget that Postmedia are now formal partners with the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers and that big-time tax evader and jungle burner, Sukanto Tanoto and his Woodfibre LNG.

It’s hard unto impossible for a hardworking, honest, decent citizen to find an ounce of honesty or decency amongst those, in the delicious words of the Anglican Book Of Prayer, “set in authority over us”.

Rafe Mair, LL.B, LL.D (Hon) a B.C. MLA 1975 to 1981, was Minister of Environment from late 1978 through 1979. In 1981 he left politics for Talk Radio becoming recognized as one of B.C.'s pre-eminent journalists. An avid fly fisherman, he took a special interest in Atlantic salmon farms and private power projects as environmental calamities and became a powerful voice in opposition to them. Rafe is the co-founder of The Common Sense Canadian and writes a regular blog at rafeonline.com.

More articles by Rafe Mair

Jewish Extremists Call for Final Solution to Israel's Christian Problem

Extremist Settlers: “Slaughter the Christians”

by IMEMC News and Agencies 

January 17, 2016

A group of extremist, right-wing Israeli settlers, on Sunday at dawn, sprayed slogans calling for the slaughter of Christians, on the walls of an old monastery in Jerusalem. The slogans are thought to have been written by the extremist “Pay The Price” group, which has repeatedly attacked Palestinian homes, churches and mosques overnight, including the Church of Loaves and Fishes (Tabgha), in Tibereas, and mosques in Ramallah and Nablus.

Following the attack on the church, back in May, Rabbis for Human Rights said that there have been 43 similar attacks against churches, mosques and monasteries in Israeli-occupied land, the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem since 2009, Reuters reported, according to the PNN.

Slogans read “Death for Christians, the enemies of Israel,” and calls to “Slaughter Christians and send them to hell,” in addition to inflammatory words against Jesus Christ.

Israeli police claimed to have opened an investigation in the case, but the extremists are expected to not be punished in Israeli law.

According to the Israeli human rights group, Yesh Din, Israeli police closed 85.3 percent of investigations due to the failure “to locate suspects or find sufficient evidence to indict suspects”; only 1.9 percent of Palestinian complaints against Israeli civilian/settler attacks resulted in a conviction, and 7.4 percent of investigations generated indictments against suspects.

Moreover, a Yesh Din report published this month found that, in the past five years, only 3 percent of the criminal investigations launched by the Military Police Criminal Investigations Division into alleged offenses by Israeli soldiers, against Palestinians, resulted in the indictment of suspects.

These groups are also responsible for deadly attacks on Palestinian families.

In July, they torched the home of the Dawabsha family overnight in Douma village, near Nablus, killing 11-month-old baby Ali Dawabsheh and both his parents. Only one member of the family survived, Ahmad Dawabsheh (4), and he is still recovering in the ICU.

They are also suspected in the murder of Muhammad Abu Khdeir (16), whom they abducted and burned alive, in July of 2014.

Israeli authorities often claim to start an investigation, but fail to hold the attackers accountable for their crimes, as in the Dawabsha case, where Israel said that the evidence against the suspects was “not enough” to try them.