From Syria to Iran and China
Russia for Desert
Berletic on the War Against China
This broadcast by Brian Berletic was published three days ago, entitled Syria Today, Iran Tomorrow, and Inevitably China, and is well supported with evidence. From the web-site there is a list of supporting references.
The piece is particularly important and confirms the drift of my references in a recent post to the (East) Turkistan Islamic Party, an organization listed as terrorist by many countries - including the US up until a little while ago, when the US determined, falsely that the organization no longer existed - and which has played a role in assisting the equally dubious and formerly terrorist-listed organization HTS in bringing down the Assad government.
East Turkistan is a fictional country invented by the US in league with a violent Islamic terrorist movement that has evolved out of or was implanted in among the vast Uyghur population of Xinjaing province of China. It is noted for a continuing trail of horrific ISIS-style violence against Han Chinese and even Uyghurs themselves. It is also a contributory source of disinformation for the US propaganda invention of the “Uyghur genocide hoax” - see my previous article on this here (Uyghur Genocide Hoax).
As noted in my recent post the Turkistan Islamic Party (TIP) is now being prepared by Washington as a tool, along with many other such proxies between West and East Asia (e.g. the Balochistan Nationalist Movement in Pakistan; Operation 1027 in Myanmar) for the purposes of sabotaging Chinese Belt and Road initiatives and Chinese government personnel.
The appearance of TIP in Syria raises the question as to the meaningfulness, if any, of the Trump transition team’s apparent concern for an end to the Ukraine confict. Yes, certainly the efforts are likely sincere, even though they appear badly misinformed as to what Russia, victorious on the battlefields, would be prepared to negotiate, and even if, at the end of the day, the chances of success are slim.
But from the point of view of those who oppose the continuation of US hegemony at the expense of multi-polarity, what difference, really, does the Ukraine conflict make if the actual, ultimate goal of Washington and its subalterns, is China - by way, as Berletic argues, of Iran?
If there is a chance of keeping Russia quiet (another way, really, of dividing Russia from China), then Washington can busy itself with taking Iran apart and hitting at what we might loosely refer to as Chinese “supply routes” - the B&R initiative - just as Russian troops do as they approach every Ukrainian settlement that they plan on seizing in the SMO.
Once the great project of containing and fragmenting China is achieved, and dozens more mercenary “Islamic” militia are created out of the remnants of Iran and the pieces of an emasculated China, what chance will Russia have?
Syrian Black Farce
Self-appointed HTS “leader” of Syria, al-Jalani or Ahmed al-Sharaa has said it may take four years to hold elections, and three to draft a new constitution.
Jalani claims to be talking with the US-backed Kurdish SDF about integrating the SDF into a new Syrian army. Given that HTS is a Turkish proxy and that its invasion has had backing from the US, this may suggest that Turkey is finding a way of resolving the conflict with the US over the Kurds through this compromise measure.
HTS spokesmen have also said many cordial things about Israel, even as (1) Israel subjects the entire country to heavy bombing and yesterday killed 17 people, mostly civilians, in what is reported to have been an arms depot in Adra, Damascus, and even (2) as Israel’s Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar has condemned HTS as lacking legitimacy and what he calls its extreme ideologies.
Gideon’s disgust at illegitimate power presumably does not extend to southern Lebanon, where since the ceasefire between Israel, the Lebanese government and Hezbollah, Israel has committed 329 violations (mostly violent) and has said it probably will not withdraw within 60 days as promised. Instead it has recently attacked Wadi al-Hujeir, and invaded the settlements of Qantara and Taybeh, moving close to the Litani river, confronting little resisance from Hezbollah.
And while all this is going on in Lebanon, back in Syria reports continue to surge of the killings of minorities by HTS forces, with former soldiers and civilians being expelled from their homes or abducted and executed simply for being Alawite and even, in some cases, after they had surrendered their weapons. In Maaloula, Aramite Christians are fleeing from an escalation of threats, gunfire, attacks and expulsion. Washington Post reporters have borne withness to extrajudicial killings.
Syria Futures
Writing for Consortium News, As’ad Abukhalil identifies six possible scenarios for Syria:
1. Libyan Model
This would take the form of regional conflicts between those who support the Islamists and those who abhor them. Islamist militia in Syria have a history of bloodshed. HTS is not a large force and faces challenges from various fronts. Russia, Turkey, Qatar, UAE and the U.S. will all be involved. And then there is Israel, which harbors a keen interest in establishing a client regime in Damascus. HTS does not even seem interested in liberating territory seized by Israel.
2. Military Coup
The UAE and Saudi Arabia may very well arrange for a military coup to install a client military despot, like Sisi in Egypt. The UAE was instrumental in the Egyptian coup of 2013 and its media have been alone in expressing alarm regarding the new regime in Damascus. The UAE’s ruler was in close contact with Assad to the very end and was steering him away from Iran and the “axis of resistance.” This coup scenario would work to establish a regional alliance of republican despotic regimes tied to the Saudis and the Emiratis. Of the two, the UAE has thus far been more successful in imposing its political and military will in Somalia, Yemen (south), Libya, Sudan (with the RSF) and Egypt. BUT, the UAE is the chief opponent of the Muslim Brotherhood in the region that wields influence in Syria, which would mean imposing brute force against them just like in Egypt, which had been the Brotherhood’s base before and after the fall of Hosni Mubarak.
3. Democracy
See above for Jolani’s prediction that it might take four years for there to be elections. Unlike some commentators, I do find evidence of democracy in Assad’s Syria, even if it is not the first-past-the-post, two-party system of democracy so beloved and privileged by Americans and Europeans. However, Abukhalil claims that a democracy of the latter kind would not suit the interests of the West nor of Israel who always prefer despotic rule (!).
4. HTS Dictatorial Rule
This would alarm religious minorities and women, but The U.S. and Israel might favor this scenario if the alternative is an uncontrollable democracy near Palestine.
5. Syria Breaks Up
In this scenario Syria becomes a patchwork of semi-independent, sectarian enclaves. This scenario would be too alarming for Turkey, at least with respect to a Kurdish enclave (but then, there has been such an enclave in Syria already for some two decades or more). The West and Israel would favor such an outcome (they love former nations split up into small bits: it is what they hope for Russia and China, too). Abukhalil thinks that Northern Lebanon (Tripoli and Akkar) might ask to join a Sunni enclave.
6. Restoration
This is the least likely. It would involve the restoration of the old regime with the assistance of Iran and Hezbollah, but these are angry over Assad’s betrayal, as they see it, by colluding with the UAE to distance Syria from Iran. Further, both Iran and Hiezbollah have been weakened and don’t want to trigger Israeli hostility.
BBC Pro-Israel Propaganda
The Cradle today (Cradle), citing a report in Drop Site News, tells the story of how BBC Staffers revealed that an editor’s ‘entire job’ was to whitewash Israeli war crimes. The story concerns BBC editor Raffi Berg (who wrote a book praising clandestine Mossad operations), and how he enjoyed almost complete control of the BBC’s online coverage of Israel’s war on Gaza and in ensuring that all events were reported with a pro-Israel bias.
“Drop Site News spoke to 13 current and former staffers who stated that the BBC’s coverage consistently devalues Palestinian life, ignores Israeli atrocities, and creates a false equivalence in an entirely unbalanced conflict…
“There was an extreme fear at the BBC, that if you ever wanted to do anything about Israel or Palestine, editors would say: ‘If you want to pitch something, you have to go through Raffi and get his signoff,” another journalist explained…
“In one case, Berg downplayed Amnesty International’s accusation that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza…
Berg chose a headline that stated, “Israel rejects ‘fabricated’ claims of genocide,” to describe the Amnesty report and failed to post the story for 12 hours after it was written to suppress its online reach..
The journalists interviewed by Drop Site also noted that the Amnesty report was not covered on the BBC’s flagship news programs…”
Undermining Hezbollah
The New York Times’ today (Hezbollah) carries a long investigative triumphal report of how it claims Israel undermined Hezbollah over a period of decades
“A New York Times investigation, based on interviews with more than two dozen current and former Israeli, American and European officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss classified operations, reveals just how extensively Israeli spies had penetrated Hezbollah. They recruited people to plant listening devices in Hezbollah bunkers, tracked meetings between one top commander and his four mistresses, and had near constant visibility into the movements of the militia group’s leaders.
It is a story of breakthroughs, as in 2012 when Israel’s Unit 8200 — the country’s equivalent of the National Security Agency — stole a trove of information, including specifics of the leaders’ secret hide-outs and the group’s arsenal of missiles and rockets”.
Colluding with Genocide
The Intercept today (Intercept) reports the contents of a previously unknown 35-page assessment that could sway future war crimes trials of EU politicians for complicity in Israel’s assault against Gaza.
“The appraisal was written by the EU’s special representative for human rights Olof Skoog and sent to EU ministers ahead of a council meeting on November 18, as part of a proposal by the head of the EU’s foreign policy to suspend political dialogue with Israel. The proposal was rejected by the council of foreign ministers from EU member states.
Skoog’s analysis laid out evidence from United Nations sources of war crimes by Israel, Hamas, and Hezbollah since October 7, 2023. Much of its strongest language was reserved for the Israel Defense Forces. This has implications for senior officials from arms-exporting countries to Israel. The very distribution of the report to EU ministers carries significance because the Europeans will not be able plead ignorance.
Skoog was commissioned by the EU’s foreign service, the European External Action Service, to investigate. He produced an initial assessment in July.
“The document was discussed internally as part of the EU’s foreign service propsal to suspend “political dialogue” with Israel, the only aspect of the relationship the union’s foreign service has power over; Skoog’s paper effectively backed the plan to freeze it. The proposal, however, was rejected by the EU ministers, along with a de facto recommendation to ban arms exports to Israel.
“The report found that because the death toll in Gaza corresponds to the demographic breakdown of the territory’s civilian population, the pattern of killing indicated “indiscriminate attacks” that could constitute war crimes.
Sanctioning Russian Gas and the new European Energy Crisis.
Reports from Bloomberg and the Wall Street Journal strongly indicate that even in its final weeks the Biden administration will proceed with a raft of new sanctions against Russian oil and gas exports and on the so-called “shadow” or “ghost” fleet that carries much of them.
The new sanctions will target ship/tanker owners who cooperate in this trade. The immediate result, and we are already seeing this in a rise of energy prices in Europe - will be less oil, higher prices (including higher prices for US LNG exports to Europe) and inflation for all, including for US consumers - at least until Russian traders find alternative ways of getting their oil to market (an absolute certainty given the scale of demand and the resouces available to those who will meet that demand), which may take a month or so even if the negative economic consequences will linger (as prices will rise anyway, given the additional exertions and risks that the carriers must bear).
The sanctions will create further disruption for Trump. It might be argued that such measures could help “soften” Russia for the benefit of Trump and those of his team who want to start negotiations as soon as possible. Indications of these appeared today in reports of a Russian mission to Washington over the last few days whose purpose may have been to pave the way towards negotiations. Lavrov says there are no direct talks.
I am skeptical that the sanctions will have any such “softening” effect, for the following reasons:
(1) scarcer oil and gas pushes up prices, and Russia, as a major exporter of oil and gas, will benefit, perhaps taking in even more revenue than at present;
(2) shippers of Russian oil and gas will inevitably find a way around these sanctions (perhaps by operating their ships under other titles or other flags); they always do;
(3) Russians are not stupid, certainly not as stupid as their Washington counterparts. They can see what is going on, and they understand the games that are being played, both behind Washington’s feeble proposals for what a “peace” in Ukraine might look like, and in the implications of the fall of Syria (its air defenses now almost completely destroyed by Israel) at the hands of mercenary terrorists whom Washingon will next reorient towards Chinese assets along the Belt and Road.
Continuing manifestation of Western bad faith is reflected in Lavrov’s recent comments on the Kelenskiy (+Biden) attempt to set up a second “peace” conference, following the debacle of the first in the summer. As before, the idea was that Russia would be trapped into accepting an invitation to a conference in which, instead of being able to participate, it would be kept in a separate room and then presented with an ultimatum from the other attendees demanding that it return to its 1991 boundaries.
Russia did not fall for this the first time, nor will it a second.
But all this is a powerful reminder to Moscow that the war is far broader than Ukraine since it has to do with the increasing necessity for a diminution of Western hegemonic power in favor of a new multi-polar world order, something that Russia must fight to achieve along with China and its other allies, including those already in the BRICS as either founder members or as partners.
More US Taxpayer Money for Ukraine
In the meantime, in face of overwhelming evidence that all of Washington’s and all of Europe’s financial and miitary support to Ukraine has failed completely to enable Ukraine to win the war, the Biden administration has authorized two further packages of aid to Ukraine (representing a total of $6 billion).
Antiwar.com reports that the aid includes $3.4 billion in “direct budget support,” a form of assistance meant to pay for Ukrainian government services, salaries, pensions, and other types of spending. It has also been used to subsidize Ukrainian small businesses and farmers.
The $3.4 billion are the last remaining funds for budgetary aid from the 2024 Ukraine Security Supplemental Appropriations Act (the $50 billion package that Congress passed in the spring). Ukraine is also receiving nearly $2.5 billion in military aid from the US, which includes $1.22 billion from the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative, a program that allows the US to purchase weapons for Ukraine. The remaining military aid is in the form of the Presidential Drawdown Authority, which enables President Biden to ship weapons directly from US military stockpiles.
The new aid coincides with news that the Biden administration believes that Ukrainian forces are on the verge of a total loss in Russia’s Kursk Oblast and is now advising Kiev to pull its troops back.
America is Great
The Economist wants us to know (for the second time in a month) that the US economy is doing really great!
Yes, yes, it concedes, in purchasing-power-parity (PPP) terms America’s share of the global economy has indeed shrunk, from 21% in 1990 to 16% now, but America has “grown” faster than other big rich countries.
That America’s share of global GDP in PPP terms has decreased is less a comment on its own trajectory, The Economist contends, than on the growth “spurts” of the two most populous countries, China and India (which is precisely why the days of US hegemony are numbered). China’s output per person, says the Economist, remains less than a third of America’s; India’s is smaller still. (Is this not a sign of the vast growth potential that still await these economies?)
And the US has outperformed its peers among the mature economies (so, in other words it is doing slightly better than the moribund, some of whom are being crushed by the US over Ukraine?). Sure, in 1990 America accounted for about two-fifths of the overall GDP of the G7 group of advanced countries while today it is up to about half (hmm, isn’t two-fifths awfully close to half?). On a per-person basis, American economic output is now about 40% higher than in western Europe and Canada, and 60% higher than in Japan—roughly twice as large as the gaps between them in 1990. Average wages in America’s poorest state, Mississippi, are higher than the averages in Britain, Canada and Germany (well, perhaps not, because we have to put this in the language of purchasing-power-parity).
Coupling this growth with the dollar’s strength translates into heft for America and wealth for Americans. That can be seen in the huge numbers of Americans travelling and spending record sums overseas. A decade ago (as Chinese travellers too were demonstrating their wealth) many analysts thought that China would, by now, have overtaken America as the world’s biggest economy at current exchange rates. Instead its GDP has been slipping of late, from about 75% of America’s in 2021 to 65% now.
And what is the reason for all this magnificence?
Well, American companies benefit from scale, we are told, America has a big, well-integrated labour market, allowing people to move to better-paying jobs and drawing workers to more productive sectors, and it has a long, porous southern border which allows the labour force to steadily grow (not if Trump can help it!) and fill the hard, dirty jobs so detested by unemployed Americans (really?).
Techniques for extracting hydrocarbons from shale rocks have turned America into the world’s biggest producer of oil and gas (but, the shale revolution is already in decline). America has the world’s deepest financial markets, making it easier for startups to raise equity and this has boosted the attractiveness of its markets. Having the world’s dominant currency is an advantage (for only as long as this withstands the winds of BRICS change). America has the world’s best universities, and they attract the world’s best students (China produces several times more scientists than the US, up to and including PhD level). America has a more relaxed (corrupted, reckless?) approach to business regulation (which helps explain many of its social and environmental problems).
Indeed, the Economist acknowledges that there are actual problems in this apparent paradise. Life expectancy has fallen to three years shorter than the average in western Europe, a reflection of its problems of obesity, opioids, guns and unsafe roads. But please don’t worry, says the Economist: the “widely held belief” that the top 1% are taking it all is “overdone”.
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New readers should know that my Substack posts are dedicated to surveillance of matters related to a central premise, and that premise, put at its simplest, is that the collective West, made ever more desperate and ruthless because of its unsustainable debt load, is attempting to beat back the multiple forces of multipolarity. It is currently doing this on three main fronts: against Russia over the proxy excuse of defending Ukraine; against Iran over the proxy excuse of defending Israel; against China over the proxy excuse of defending Taiwan. But there is no limit to the number of fronts that the West will entertain.