With successful Syrian regime change, will US set sights on Iran regime change 2.0?
Walt Zlotow, West Suburban Peace Coalition, Glen Ellyn IL 30 Dec 24.
Seventy-one years ago the US and UK launched Operation AJAX, a jointly planned coup that deposed Iran’s legitimate ruler Dr. Mohammed Mosaddeq in August, 1953.
The Brits conceived the coup in 1952 and presented it to ‘Give ‘Em Hell’ Harry Truman, who told the Brits to go to Hell. A year later newbie Prez Ike greenlighted AJAX to allow Britain to grab back its Iranian oil monopoly nationalized by Mosaddeq, seeking to break free from US, UK dominance. For Ike, it was a chance to make his bones as a bonafide anti-communist, due to Mosaddeq’s unwillingness to crush Iranian leftist influence. In McCarthyite America and forever more, leftist governments posed a danger to US exceptionalism.
Leading this first official CIA coup against a foreign leader who wouldn’t do our bidding was Teddy Roosevelt’s grandson Kermit Roosevelt Jr. Our hand-picked successor was Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, son of the first Pahlavi monarch Reza Shah Pahlavi. His reluctance and indecision about being summoned as the US/UK puppet almost wrecked Uncle Sam’s best laid plans. But CIA coup leader Roosevelt disobeyed orders to shut down Ajax. He had his Iranian operatives masquerading as commies shed enough blood to turn the tide against Mosaddeq. Up in Warlovers Heaven, Grandpa Teddy beamed with pride.
The Shah ruled Iran for another 26 years, with his CIA trained secret police killing thousands who dared speak out against his tyrannical rule.
The CIA, emboldened by their success, toppled the Guatemalan government a year later and were on a roll till their delusional 1961 Bay of Pigs regime change operation failed spectacularly. This led to the Cuban Missile a year later that nearly got us all vaporized in nuclear war with Russia.
Seventy-one years later the US appears bent on Iran regime change 2.0. Goaded by Israel seeking to topple its only remaining rival for Middle East dominance, the incoming Trump administration is signaling a return to a belligerent anti Iran policy.
By withdrawing from the Iran nuclear agreement in 2018, Trump freed up Iran to start up a nuclear weapons program if it felt US/Israeli pressure posed an existential threat. Current warfare in Gaza, Lebanon and the Syrian regime change makes that more likely today. Trump’s return to power, staffing his foreign policy team with anti-Iran hardliners, s increases that likelihood. That could trigger implementation of a 21st century Operation Ajax with Israel replacing the UK as Uncle Sam’s co coup plotter against Iran. More ominous than the 1953 version, this one could lead to all out war posing extreme danger to 40,000 US troops in the region.
Iran is not now and never has been America’s enemy. But senselessly imagining a nuclear program that does not exist and plotting with Israel to topple its Middle East rival is a sure way to make Iran one.
China sanctions US defense firms
https://www.rt.com/news/610080-china-sanctions-us-defense-firms/ 27 Dec 24
Beijing has placed restrictions on Washington’s military assistance to Taiwan, the foreign ministry has said.
Beijing has imposed sanctions on seven US defense companies and their executives in response to Washington’s sale of arms to Taiwan in violation of the One-China principle, the Chinese Foreign Ministry announced on Friday.
The move comes after outgoing US President Joe Biden last week authorized a $571.3 million military aid package to Taiwan.
Washington’s actions “interfere in China’s internal affairs, and undermine China’s sovereignty and territorial integrity,” the Chinese Foreign Ministry said as it announced the restrictions.
The companies targeted by the sanctions include Insitu Inc., Hudson Technologies Co., Saronic Technologies, Inc., Raytheon Canada, Raytheon Australia, Aerkomm Inc., and Oceaneering International Inc.
The ministry said “relevant senior executives” of the companies had also been blacklisted, without providing any names.
The sanctions will freeze “movable and immovable” assets belonging to US firms and their executives within China, and ban organizations and individuals in the country from trading or collaborating with them, the ministry stated.
The restrictions, which will contribute to already strained relations between Beijing and Washington, were announced after Biden approved a record $895 billion defense budget, which surpassed last year’s allocation by $9 billion.
The bill does not refer to Ukraine aid, however, it contains measures aimed at strengthening the US presence and defense capabilities in the Indo-Pacific region, primarily to “counter China.” Beijing has already condemned the bill, citing its “negative content on China” and attempts to play up the ‘China threat’ narrative.
Beijing has repeatedly stressed that it considers the self-governing island of Taiwan to be an inalienable part of the country under the One-China principle. It has denounced Washington’s arms sales to Taipei, accusing the US of fomenting tensions over Taiwan.
High tide for Holtec
The study — Model-Based Study of Near-Surface Transport in and around Cape Cod Bay, Its Seasonal Variability, and Response to Wind — found that contrary to Holtec’s claims, the wastewater would not immediately disperse into the ocean, but would linger potentially for months, and wash up on the shores of area communities.
by beyondnuclearinternational, Linda Pentz Gunter
Tritium dumped into Cape Cod Bay will wash back onto community shores, says a new report
Holtec, the company that has purchased a number of permanently closed nuclear reactors in order to decommission them, has encountered yet another obstacle to its “dilution is the solution to pollution” plans.
One of the reactor sites Holtec has taken over is Pilgrim in Plymouth, Massachusetts, on the Cape Cod Bay, which closed permanently in 2019. Holtec’s not-so-little problem there is what do with what started out as at least 1.1 million gallons of radioactively contaminated wastewater stored at the site.
The company first suggested it would simply release the wastewater into Cape Cod Bay, assuring residents and the immediately alarmed fishing community not to worry because (a) the wastewater isn’t dangerous anyway (b) everyone does this all the time at reactor sites and no one has gotten sick so far and (c) it would quickly disperse into the wider ocean. Holtec chose this disposal method for one reason alone: it is the cheapest.
The proposal was vigorously fought by citizens, the state, and powerful Massachusetts Democrat, Senator Ed Markey. The state of Massachusetts effectively banned the discharge option, a decision Holtec is contesting.
That Final Determination to Deny Application to Modify a Massachusetts Permit to Discharge Pollutants to Surface Waters was issued by the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection Division of Watershed Management on July 18, 2024. A month later, Holtec launched its appeal to reverse the decision, something that could take months or longer to find its way to court.
In the meantime, help has come from a new quarter in the form of an in-depth study by the prestigious Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, also, as it happens, based on the Massachusetts shoreline, near Falmouth.
The study — Model-Based Study of Near-Surface Transport in and around Cape Cod Bay, Its Seasonal Variability, and Response to Wind — found that contrary to Holtec’s claims, the wastewater would not immediately disperse into the ocean, but would linger potentially for months, and wash up on the shores of area communities.
“We found virtually no out-of-the-Bay transport in winter and fall and slightly larger, but still low, probability of some of the plume exiting the Bay in spring and summer,” said Woods Hole study leader and physical oceanographer, Irina Rypina.
The radioactively contaminated wastewater stored at Pilgrim is contaminated with what Holtec and the Massachusetts Department of Public Health have described as “four gamma emitters —Manganese-54, Cobalt-60, Zinc-65 and Cesium-137 along with Tritium, a beta radiation emitter”.
While the Woods Hole Study did not look at the health outcomes of releasing the radioactive water into Cape Cod Bay — only at the plume pathway — there are plenty of data that demonstrate the harmful effects of these radioisotopes on human health, especially women and children…………………………………………………….. https://beyondnuclearinternational.org/2024/12/29/high-tide-for-holtec/
US Military Supported Syrian Rebel Offensive That Toppled Assad Government
Geopolitical Economy, By Ben Norton, 12 Dec 24
Syrian rebel commanders have boasted that the US military helped them overthrow the government of Bashar al-Assad.
They acknowledged this in a report published by major British newspaper The Telegraph, titled “US ‘prepared Syrian rebel group to help topple Bashar al-Assad’”.
The article revealed that a rebel group armed, trained, and funded by the United States, based in the south of Syria, collaborated with rebranded al-Qaeda in the north to jointly topple the Syrian government.
According to the report, the US military helped to create a Syrian militia called the Revolutionary Commando Army (RCA). The US and UK armed and trained the RCA. The Pentagon paid its fighters a salary of $400 per month, which The Telegraph noted was “nearly 12 times what the soldiers in the now defunct Syrian army were paid”. (This was because illegal unilateral Western sanctions on Syria had crushed the country’s economy, causing high rates of inflation that decimated local purchasing power.)
The US military knew that an offensive was being planned to topple Assad, The Telegraph reported. The Pentagon pressured disparate rebel groups and mercenaries in southern Syria to unify behind the US-funded RCA.
In the lead-up to the assault, which was launched in November 2024, US military officers met with Syrian rebel commanders in the Al-Tanf base that the US had built on the border with Iraq………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… more https://geopoliticaleconomy.com/2024/12/23/us-military-syria-rebels-assad/
Workers Seek Shelter As Hanford Nuclear Complex Issues Leak Alert
Oil Price, By Alex Kimani – Dec 23, 2024
Workers at the Hanford nuclear site were ordered to take cover on Friday after a large holding tank with ammonia vapor was discovered to be leaking near the vitrification plant in the 200 East Area. Workers in that area were told to shelter in place with doors, windows and ventilation closed while other workers were told to avoid the 200 East Area. The Hanford Site is a decommissioned nuclear production complex operated by the United States federal government on the Columbia River in Benton County in the U.S. state of Washington
The 200 East Area has a vitrification plant, built and commissioned to treat the tank waste for disposal. The waste was left from the past production of plutonium from World War II through the Cold War for America’s nuclear weapons program. Today, there are 177 underground storage tanks on the Hanford Site, holding about 56 million gallons of highly radioactive and chemically hazardous waste.
The Hanford incident highlights the ongoing challenges of dealing with nuclear waste. Currently, there are thousands of metric tons of used solid fuel from nuclear power plants worldwide and millions of liters of radioactive liquid waste from weapons production sitting in temporary storage containers, some of which have begun leaking their toxic contents. Nuclear waste is notorious for the fact that it can remain dangerously radioactive for many thousands of years. ……………..https://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News/World-News/Workers-Seek-Shelter-As-Hanford-Nuclear-Complex-Issues-Leak-Alert.html
Pentagon Admits It’s Been Lying About the Number of Troops in Both Iraq and Syria
December 25, 2024, By Dave DeCamp / Antiwar.com, https://news.antiwar.com/2024/12/23/pentagon-admits-its-been-lying-about-the-number-of-troops-in-both-iraq-and-syria/
The Pentagon said on Monday that the US has more troops deployed in Iraq than it has been disclosing, an admission that comes after it revealed there are significantly more US troops in Syria than the US has said.
For years, the Pentagon has said there are 900 troops in Syria and 2,500 in Iraq. Last week, Pentagon spokesman Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder revealed the US was lying about the number of troops in Syria, saying the real number is 2,000.
In a statement meant to clarify the situation that was released on Monday, Ryder also said there were more than 2,500 US troops in Iraq but refused to say how many. “However, due to operations security and diplomatic considerations, we do not have any more specifics to provide,” Ryder said.
Ryder’s statement revealed that the number of US troops in Syria has been higher than publicly disclosed since 2020. “In addition to the approximately 900 baseline troops, there are also approximately 1,100 US military personnel in Syria that deploy for shorter durations as temporary enablers in support of force protection, transportation, maintenance, or other emerging operational requirements,” Ryder said.
“The numbers of these additional temporary forces have fluctuated over the past several years based on mission needs but in general have increased over time as the threat has increased to baseline forces,” he added.
Lying about the actual number of US troops in Syria goes back to at least the Trump administration. In 2020, James Jeffrey, the outgoing US envoy for Syria at the time, admitted his team was “always playing shell games to not make clear to our leadership how many troops we had there.” In 2019, after reversing an order to withdraw all troops from Syria, Trump agreed to keep 200 in the country. But Jeffrey said there was “a lot more” than that deployed.
In his statement on Monday, Ryder also said that “some additional temporary enablers” had been deployed alongside the 2,500 US troops in Iraq.
Sources told CNN that the US had been lying about the number of US troops in Syria because it didn’t want to anger neighboring countries, particularly Iraq, where the presence of US troops is strongly opposed by many political factions.
The sources said the US was worried if Iraqi officials found out the US had more troops in Syria than it was disclosing, officials would fear the same is happening in Iraq. Ryder’s statement that there are more than 2,500 US troops in Iraq will likely cause trouble for Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani, who has been under significant pressure to get the US to leave.
Earlier this year, after a series of US airstrikes on Iraq, al-Sudani called for US troops to leave, and his government entered negotiations with the US. The two sides reached a deal that was announced in September, but it will only formally end the mission of the US-led anti-ISIS coalition and says US troops will remain in the country under a “bilateral security partnership.”
No more research for genocide at MIT !
Every human on this planet, especially those of us at MIT, is morally obligated to use their voice, body, and labor to make an immediate material impact toward ending the ongoing genocide.
By MIT Coalition For Palestine, Mondoweiss, December 22, 2024,
https://popularresistance.org/no-more-research-for-genocide-at-mit/
Despite Censorship And Intimidation We Continue To Make This Demand.
An MIT lab is collaborating with the Israeli military to develop AI surveillance algorithms and the university censored a campus publication that tried to expose it. We refuse to be intimidated and continue to demand: No More Research for Genocide.
On November 7th, we published an op-ed titled “Daniela Rus, The People Demand: No More Research for Genocide” in the MIT Tech. Our piece detailed how Prof. Daniela Rus, director of MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, uses Israeli Ministry of Defense money to develop algorithms with applications in “multirobot security defense and surveillance.” Rather than engage with these publicly verifiable facts, the Tech’s editorial board (under the guidance of Prof. Rus) retracted our op-ed.
MIT sent several of us “no contact” and “no harassment” orders for Prof. Rus, disciplining one student for simply writing our Op-Ed’s title on a public chalkboard! As if this naked intimidation wasn’t enough, the Tech indefinitely halted all Op-Eds after retracting our piece. This comes directly after the suspension and effective expulsion of MIT PhD student Prahlad Iyengar, in part due to an email he sent Professor Rus’ students “offering support” and a “safe space” to discuss her research.
We refuse to be intimidated by MIT. Professor Rus takes money from a genocidal army to do research with military applications (stated in her own papers here, here and here). Retractions and suspensions cannot change these simple facts. Here, we republish our article in full:
Daniela Rus, The People Demand: No More Research For Genocide
Today, MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) conducts research funded by the Israeli Ministry of Defense (IMoD), with direct applications to the ongoing genocide in Gaza. We, the MIT Coalition for Palestine, whose tuition and labor support CSAIL, call on CSAIL Director Daniela Rus to lead by example and end her IMoD-sponsored research.
Rus currently leads the project “Coreset Compression Algorithms,” which has received $425,000 in direct sponsorship from the IMoD since 2021, according to MIT’s 2024 Brown Books. This project develops AI algorithms for applications like “city-scale observation systems” and “surveillance and vigilance”. Many of these lightweight algorithms are ideal for teaching small unmanned vehicles, including drones, to track and pursue targets with increased autonomy. Notably, navigating human environments is central: “a human may provide the global path… and the robots will adapt their configuration automatically”.
Many of us have friends and family surveilled and killed by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) drones streamlined by Rus’s research. These quadrotor drones are used extensively to monitor, injure, and kill Palestinian civilians at close range. Last Wednesday, October 30, 2024, Palestinian poet Mosab Abu Toha shared videos showing Israeli bombs destroying his home, including footage of a quadrotor drone with a mounted machine gun just meters away. He described how Israel’s relentless indiscriminate bombardment in Gaza has wiped out entire families he knew. Stories like his have become the norm for families in Gaza.
As we write this piece, Jabalia has been under constant siege for a month. The Israeli military is targeting hospitals and burning patients alive. The government blocks access to life-saving humanitarian supplies, worsening Gaza’s already severe health crisis, all while threatening, targeting, and killing journalists attempting to report on these war crimes. At this time, it is our moral responsibility to do everything in our power to disrupt and dismantle all which enable the continuing of this genocide.
There has been a long-standing demand for Rus’s IMoD-sponsored projects to end.
The MIT Coalition for Palestine (C4P) is a group of MIT students, staff, faculty, community members, and campus organizations who refuse to devote their labor to companies complicit in Israeli apartheid, occupation, and the violation of Palestinian human rights. Daniela Rus was first contacted by the C4P on March 8th, 2024 by email where she was informed of how her IMoD-sponsored projects made her complicit in the ongoing genocide in Gaza.
Without response, we then emailed out to the graduate students in her lab informing them of these ties and of potential alternative funding arrangements. In April, we launched the Scientists Against Genocide Encampment, where we consistently highlighted her lab’s IMoD ties to the school and community.
Over a year of accelerating genocide has now since passed, seven months since we first contacted Rus, and she continues her research, violating MIT’s own rules for research sponsorship. On Tuesday October 22, 2024, the Coalition Against Apartheid, a member organization of C4P, delivered a second letter in-person to her CSAIL office, chanting and flyering in the process.
We are committed to engaging in continuing action because it works. For instance, The U.S. arm of Israeli defense contractor Elbit Systems recently ended its lease of office space in Cambridge after months of demonstrations by pro-Palestinian protestors. This win reinforces our resolve, and reminds us of a crucial lesson: the only way to make material disruptions for these inhumane systems is to continuously raise the cost for conducting research for genocide.
MIT’s police and disciplinary response against peaceful demonstrators was swift and unjust.
Within fifteen minutes, MIT escalated the situation with police force by violently arresting student protestors and detaining others for merely chanting and passing out flyers. At one point, there were four to six cops pinning down one person. Even those who were simply filming the arrests were detained, pushed around, and groped. There was no warning or attempt by faculty or administrators to engage with the students in order to understand their actions. Three days after the protest, eight students received interim sanction letters from the MIT Committee on Discipline (COD).
This interim letter did not indicate what charges students were being prosecuted for. Rather, they prohibited the students from entering common student spaces in CSAIL, where some of these students work. They also issued three no-contact orders to students: one for Rus, one for her collaborator on IMoD-funded projects Eytan Modiano, and one for Jack Costanza, a CSAIL employee who physically assaulted students in an attempt to unlawfully aid police in their arrests. None of the students were given the chance to review or respond to the charges. Once again, the COD demonstrates it operates primarily on the premise of treating political dissidents as “guilty until proven innocent.”
One week later, students received their alleged charges from the COD. All eight of them, whether they were chanting, putting a flyer up on a wall with painter’s tape, or simply video-taping the protest, received the same charges: assault, disorderly conduct, harassment, and threats/intimidation. COD Chair Tamar Schapiro later verbally admitted to one student in a meeting that she was aware none of the protestors assaulted anyone. Yet she still sent the letters accusing all eight of the students of assault. The COD systematically criminalizes the Coalition for Palestine as a community for protesting genocide. By indiscriminately instating a blanket no-contact order against all individuals who received a discipline letter, the COD draws a direct parallel between the acts of collective punishment MIT inflicts on pro-Palestinian advocates on its campus, and the collective punishment that Israel has long been inflicting on Palestinians themselves.
Discipline against pro-Palestinian students reinforces systemic racism at MIT.
Over the past year, MIT’s administration’s response to protests against genocide continues to be reflective of MIT’s longstanding racist and xenophobic systems. Students have attempted time and time again to address these issues, as described in this article by the Black Graduate Students Association. Despite the manufactured facade of an MIT community that is safe for students of minoritized backgrounds, racism at MIT has persisted over the last year at an institutional level.
At an institutional level, the MIT administration has been emboldened to continue to weaponize the police and inconsistent “academic” disciplinary proceedings in order to disproportionately target Black and Brown students. In the past year, 87% of the people MIT has disciplined, relating broadly to protest activity, have been people of color. Just consider MIT’s response to the letter delivery protest of Rus’ lab: people of color made up 8 out 13 student protestors present, yet 7 out of 8 people who received letters from the CoD were people of color. In addition to the disciplinary discrimination we face, many of us on campus feel incredibly unsafe, as the Institute of Discrimination Harassment and Reporting (IDHR) has failed to follow up on at least thirty reports of harassment against us. Simultaneously, IDHR selectively applies sanctions against us without evidence. To MIT, we are solely perceived as threats, never as victims. When Tamar Schapiro was asked to clarify the discipline, she told one female student that as a woman, she should understand that Daniela Rus felt unsafe by the demonstration, even though she was not even present in the lab at the time. What about the women in Gaza who fear being killed by the very technology Daniela Rus’s work contributes to? What about the women of color on campus who fear being unjustly brutalized by the frequent displays of disproportionate police violence? Tamar Schapiro, and MIT as a whole, fail to acknowledge the tangible fears of marginalized women, yet prioritize the theoretical fears of white women. This twisted, victim-blaming, racist logic matches the insinuation of Provost Barnhart in the previous Spring semester, wherein she justified the interim suspensions and eviction threats of 27 people by suggesting that MIT apply the same disciplinary measures previously reserved for when individuals are immediately at risk of sexual assault. As long as we have a broken reporting system, rapists and sexual offenders continue to freely walk on campus while students of color are treated as criminals for protesting a genocide.
To Daniela Rus and the world: no more labor for apartheid and genocide!
At the end of the day, MIT’s racism and racist discipline cannot counteract one fact: Daniela Rus is complicit in doing research for genocide. She has been complicit since 2012 when the sponsorship was first established through her then-postdoc, Dan Feldman, who currently works at University of Haifa in occupied Palestine. Professor Rus continues to deny her evident, present-day connections to the IMoD while flaunting her other morally dubious connections, such as her recent public statement of admiration, at her October book talk, for Marvin Minsky, alleged co-perpetrator of notorious pedophile Jeffrey Epstein.
As students of conscience, we cannot stand for this. The time to take action is now. We therefore call on Daniela Rus to immediately terminate all IMOD-funded projects and for MIT to provide transitional funding to all affected graduate students, in line with how MIT terminated financial ties with the Skoltech Institute in Russia the day after the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Why are we here at MIT? What purpose is there to any of the science and research being done on this campus when we know that ultimately our work will be used for mass murder and exploitation? It is the current leadership at MIT that is ensuring that the great potential of this community is being abused to oppress individuals globally. Therefore, it will take all people of conscience at this institution to change the course we are currently on to force MIT to embody the values it claims to have. We cannot rest until MIT completely cuts ties and divests from all entities that support genocide and colonialism.
Every human on this planet, especially those of us at MIT, is morally obligated to use their voice, body, and labor to make an immediate material impact toward ending the ongoing genocide.
Trump suggests Zelensky consider ceding territories – El Pais
COMMENT. We may not like Donald Trump much.
But sometimes he gets it right.
https://www.rt.com/news/609772-trump-zelensky-territorial-claims/ 24 Dec 24
America’s president-elect has reportedly relayed the message this week.
US President-elect Donald Trump has sent a message to Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky, asking him to start thinking about a ceasefire and to abandon claims to territories that are currently under control of Russia, El Pais reported on Sunday.
Trump has repeatedly pledged to end the Ukraine conflict within a day of taking office, but has yet to elaborate on how he plans to achieve this. His vows have raised concerns in Kiev that it may be facing not only a decline in aid but also an audit of the billions of dollars it has received from the White House under President Joe Biden.
“You look at some of these cities and there is not a single building in good condition left. So, when you say “restore the country,” restore what? This is a 110-year reconstruction,” the Spanish newspaper cited Trump as saying in a “message” to Zelensky from his Florida golf club this week.
Earlier this month, Trump called on both Ukraine and Russia to reach an immediate ceasefire. He posted the call on his social media platform Truth Social after meeting in Paris with Zelensky and President Emmanuel Macron.
The Wall Street Journal reported in early December, citing officials, that Trump had said Western Europe should deploy its troops to Ukraine to monitor a potential ceasefire. He reportedly added that the EU should play the main role in defending and supporting Kiev, while Washington could support the effort without sending troops.
Speaking at his end-of-year press conference on Thursday, Russian president Vladimir Putin reiterated that Moscow remains open to negotiating with Kiev without any preconditions, except those that had already been agreed upon in Istanbul in 2022, which envisaged a neutral, non-aligned status for Ukraine, as well as certain restrictions on deploying foreign weaponry. He also noted that such talks would have to respect the realities on the ground that have developed since that time.
Privatising Syria: US Plans Post-Assad Selloff
Global Delinquents Kit Klarenberg, Dec 24, 2024
Following the abrupt fall of Bashar Assad’s government in Syria, much remains uncertain about the country’s future – including whether it can survive as a unitary state, or will splinter into smaller chunks in the manner of Yugoslavia in the 1990s. For the time being at least though, members of ultra-extremist Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) appear highly likely to take key positions in whatever administrative structure sprouts from Bashar Assad’s ouster, after a decade-and-a-half of grinding Western-sponsored regime change efforts.
As Reuters reported December 12th, HTS is already “stamping its authority on Syria’s state with the same lightning speed that it seized the country, deploying police, installing an interim government and meeting foreign envoys.” Meanwhile, its bureaucrats – “who until last week were running an Islamist administration in a remote corner of Syria’s northwest” – have moved en masse “into government headquarters in Damascus.” Mohammed Bashir, head of HTS’ “regional government” in extremist-occupied Idlib, has been appointed the country’s “caretaker prime minister”.
However, despite the chaos and precariousness of post-Assad Syria, one thing seems assured – the country will be broken open to Western economic exploitation, at long last. This is clear from multiple mainstream reports, which state HTS has informed local and international business leaders it will “adopt a free-market model and integrate the country into the global economy, in a major shift from decades of corrupt state control” when in office.
As Alexander McKay of the Marx Engels Lenin Institute tells Global Delinquents, state-controlled parts of Syria’s economy may have been under Assad, but corrupt they weren’t. He believes a striking feature of the ongoing attacks on Syrian infrastructure from forces within and without the country, is economic and industrial sites are a recurrent target. Moreover, the would-be HTS-dominated government has done nothing to counter these broadsides, when “securing key economic assets is vital to societal reconstruction, and should therefore be a matter of priority”:
“We can see clearly what kind of country these ‘moderate rebels’ plan to build. Forces like HTS are allied with US imperialism and their economic approach will reflect this. Prior to the proxy war, the government pursued an economic approach that mixed public ownership and market elements. State intervention enabled a degree of political independence other nations in the region lack. Assad’s administration understood without an industrial base, being sovereign is impossible. The new ‘free market’ approach will see all of that utterly decimated.”
‘Global Economy’
Syria’s economic independence, and strength, under Assad’s rule, and the benefits reaped by average citizens as a result, were never acknowledged in the mainstream before or during the Western-fomented dirty war. Yet, countless reports from major international institutions amply underline this reality – which has now been brutally vanquished, never to return. For example, an April 2015 World Health Organization document noted how pre-war Damascus “had one of the best-developed healthcare systems in the Arab world.”
Not only that, but per a 2018 UN investigation, “universal, free healthcare” was extended to all Syrian citizens, who “enjoyed some of the highest levels of care in the region.” Education was likewise free, and before the conflict, “an estimated 97% of primary school-aged Syrian children were attending class and Syria’s literacy rates were thought to be at over 90% for both men and women [emphasis added].” By 2016, millions were out of school.
A UN Human Rights Council report two years later noted prior to 2011, Syria “was the only country in the Middle East region to be self-sufficient in food production,” its “thriving agricultural sector” contributing “about 21%” to GDP 2006 – 2011. Civilians’ daily caloric intake “was on par with many Western countries,” with prices kept affordable via state subsidy. Meanwhile, the country’s economy was “one of the best performing in the region, with a growth rate averaging 4.6%” annually.
At the time that report was written, Damascus had been reduced to heavy reliance on imports by Western sanctions in many sectors, and even then was barely able to buy or sell much in the way of anything, as the measures amounted to an effective embargo. Simultaneously, US military occupation of a resource-rich third of Syria cut off the government’s access to its own oil reserves and wheat. The situation only worsened with the Caesar Syria Civilian Protection Act’s passing in June 2020………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
EU and US-backed governments across the former Yugoslavia have enforced an endless array of neoliberal “reforms”, in order to ensure an “investor-friendly” environment locally for wealthy Western oligarchs and corporations. In lockstep, low wages and lacking employment opportunities locally stubbornly endure or worsen, while living costs constantly rise, producing mass depopulation, among other destructive effects. All along too, US officials intimately implicated in the country’s breakup have brazenly sought to personally enrich themselves from privatization of former state industries.
Does such a fate await Damascus? For Alexander McKay, the answer is a resounding “yes”. Now “free”, Syria will be forcedly made “dependent upon imports from the West” evermore. This not only fattens the Empire’s bottom line, but “severely restricts the freedom of any Syrian government to act with any degree of independence.” He notes similar efforts were undertaken worldwide throughout the post-1989 era of US unipolarity. This was well underway in Russia during the 1990s, “until a turnaround started under Putin, post 2000”:
“The aim is to reduce Syria to the same status as Lebanon, with an economy controlled by imperial forces, an army used primarily for internal repression, and an economy no longer able to produce anything but merely serve as a market for commodities produced elsewhere, and site of resource extraction. The US and its allies do not want independent development of any nation’s economy. We must hope the Syrian people can resist this latest act of neo-colonialism.” https://www.kitklarenberg.com/p/privatising-syria-us-plans-post-assad?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=552010&post_id=153534171&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=ln98x&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
Chris Hedges: How Fascism Came
By Chris Hedges / Original to ScheerPost, 23 Dec 24
For over two decades, I and a handful of others — Sheldon Wolin, Noam Chomsky, Chalmers Johnson, Barbara Ehrenreich and Ralph Nader — warned that the expanding social inequality and steady erosion of our democratic institutions, including the media, the Congress, organized labor, academia and the courts, would inevitably lead to an authoritarian or Christian fascist state. My books — “American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America” (2007), “Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle” (2009), “Death of the Liberal Class” (2010), “Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt” (2012), written with Joe Sacco, “Wages of Rebellion” (2015) and “America: The Farewell Tour” (2018) were a succession of impassioned pleas to take the decay seriously. I take no joy in being correct.
“The rage of those abandoned by the economy, the fears and concerns of a beleaguered and insecure middle class, and the numbing isolation that comes with the loss of community, would be the kindling for a dangerous mass movement,” I wrote in “American Fascists” in 2007. “If these dispossessed were not reincorporated into mainstream society, if they eventually lost all hope of finding good, stable jobs and opportunities for themselves and their children — in short, the promise of a brighter future — the specter of American fascism would beset the nation. This despair, this loss of hope, this denial of a future, led the desperate into the arms of those who promised miracles and dreams of apocalyptic glory.”
President-elect Donald Trump does not herald the advent of fascism. He heralds the collapse of the veneer that masked the corruption within the ruling class and their pretense of democracy. He is the symptom, not the disease. The loss of basic democratic norms began long before Trump, which paved the road to an American totalitarianism. Deindustrialization, deregulation, austerity, unchecked predatory corporations, including the health-care industry, wholesale surveillance of every American, social inequality, an electoral system that is plagued by legalized bribery, endless and futile wars, the largest prison population in the world, but most of all feelings of betrayal, stagnation and despair, are a toxic brew that culminate in an inchoate hatred of the ruling class and the institutions they have deformed to exclusively serve the rich and the powerful. The Democrats are as guilty as the Republicans.
“Trump and his coterie of billionaires, generals, half-wits, Christian fascists, criminals, racists, and moral deviants play the role of the Snopes clan in some of William Faulkner’s novels,” I wrote in “America: The Farewell Tour.” “The Snopeses filled the power vacuum of the decayed South and ruthlessly seized control from the degenerated, former slaveholding aristocratic elites. Flem Snopes and his extended family — which includes a killer, a pedophile, a bigamist, an arsonist, a mentally disabled man who copulates with a cow, and a relative who sells tickets to witness the bestiality — are fictional representations of the scum now elevated to the highest level of the federal government. They embody the moral rot unleashed by unfettered capitalism.”
…………………………………………………………………… The political philosopher Sheldon Wolin called our system of governance “inverted totalitarianism,” one that kept the old iconography, symbols and language, but had surrendered power to corporations and oligarchs. Now we will shift to totalitarianism’s more recognizable form, one dominated by a demagogue and an ideology grounded in the demonization of the other, hypermasculinity and magical thinking.
Fascism is always the bastard child of a bankrupt liberalism.
“We live in a two-tiered legal system, one where poor people are harassed, arrested and jailed for absurd infractions, such as selling loose cigarettes — which led to Eric Garner being choked to death by the New York City police in 2014 — while crimes of appalling magnitude by the oligarchs and corporations, from oil spills to bank fraud in the hundreds of billions of dollars, which wiped out 40 percent of the world’s wealth, are dealt with through tepid administrative controls, symbolic fines, and civil enforcement that give these wealthy perpetrators immunity from criminal prosecution,” I wrote in “America: The Farewell Tour.”
The utopian ideology of neoliberalism and global capitalism is a vast con. Global wealth, rather than being spread equitably, as neoliberal proponents promised, was funneled upward into the hands of a rapacious, oligarchic elite, fueling the worst economic inequality since the age of the robber barons. The working poor, whose unions and rights were stripped from them and whose wages have stagnated or declined over the past 40 years, have been thrust into chronic poverty and underemployment…………………………………………………
“The permanent lie is the apotheosis of totalitarianism,” I wrote in “America: The Farewell Tour”:………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….
It is not going to get better. The tools to shut down dissent have been cemented into place. Our democracy cratered years ago. We are in the grip of what Søren Kierkegaard called “sickness unto death” — the numbing of the soul by despair that leads to moral and physical debasement. All Trump has to do to establish a naked police state is flip a switch. And he will.
“The worse reality becomes, the less a beleaguered population wants to hear about it,” I wrote at the conclusion of “Empire of Illusion,” “and the more it distracts itself with squalid pseudo-events of celebrity breakdowns, gossip and trivia. These are the debauched revels of a dying civilization.” https://scheerpost.com/2024/12/23/chris-hedges-how-fascism-came/
U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission Releases Report Confirming Radioactive Material Lost in Transit — Shipping Container Arrives Damaged and Empty in New Jersey
WCBM: Dec. 18, 2024,
The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has confirmed that radioactive material was lost in transit earlier this month, heightening fears about public safety and sparking theories about mysterious drone activity in New Jersey.
Officer Lew, a prominent political commentator, highlighted the NRC’s event report during a review of regulatory alerts.
“While looking at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission Alerts. I can confirm that there is radioactive material that has gone missing on Dec 2nd, 2024 out of New Jersey. This might be the reason for the drones… just speculation at this point,” he wrote.
The missing material, identified as a Ge-68 pin source manufactured by Eckert & Ziegler, was reported lost by its licensee on December 3, 2024. Shipped for disposal, the container arrived at its destination severely damaged and empty.
According to the NRC’s report, the radioactive source, while classified as “Less than IAEA Category 3,” still poses potential risks if mishandled or exposed for prolonged periods.
According to the report:………………………………………….more https://wcbm.com/national-headline/u-s-nuclear-regulatory-commission-releases-report-confirming-radioactive-material-lost-in-transit-shipping-container-arrives-damaged-and-empty-in-new-jersey/?fbclid=IwY2xjawHUIsVleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHaC7ofrCr2kLP94TcSi7EYfOtaubssy-0TKBwUEdQvNgm4uJEV2_JCc9yQ_aem_BLSGE-89x-qjcSu3l2UQqw
Nuclear Power Plants Report Massive Uptick In Drone Sightings
The drone reports filed by nuclear power plant operators for the entire year nearly doubled in just the week after Dec. 10.
Howard Altman, The War Zone 21st Dec 2024
he number of drone flyovers of nuclear plants for the entire year nearly doubled in one week, from December 10th to December 17th, according to data provided to The War Zone by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC).
Between Jan. 1 and Dec.10, nuclear facility licensees reported a total of 15 drone events. As of about 1 p.m. Dec., 17, that number had jumped to 26, NRC spokesman Dave McIntyre told The War Zone on Friday in response to our query. While the timeline overlaps with a rash of drone sightings across the country and especially in the New Jersey area – including over military installations and energy infrastructure – it is unclear at the moment what, if any, connection there is to the dramatic increase in suspicious drone events over nuclear facilities…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… https://www.twz.com/news-features/massive-uptick-in-official-drone-sightings-by-nuclear-power-plants
Pentagon admits massive surge of US troops in Syria
https://www.rt.com/news/609720-pentagon-reveals-syria-troops/ 21 Dec 24
Washington insists it was a coincidence that reinforcements were sent before the collapse of President Bashar Assad’s government
The US has revealed that it has more than doubled its military presence in Syria, with a Pentagon spokesman saying that he “just recently learned” there were in fact roughly 2,000 American forces deployed in the country, rather than 900 troops as previously reported.
For years, the Pentagon had maintained that “about 900” US troops were stationed in the country, and officials continued to repeat this figure even after the overthrow of Syrian President Bashar Assad on December 8.
However, during a press conference on Thursday, Pentagon Press Secretary Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder said that “we recently learned that those numbers [are] higher.”
The US military has been active in Syria since as early as 2014, ostensibly to fight Islamic State (IS, formerly known as ISIS) terrorists, and has flown countless airstrikes against select militant groups and, at times, Syrian government forces.
Under President Barack Obama, Washington doled out hundreds of millions of dollars in weapons to an array of jihadist rebel factions seeking to overthrow Assad, although the effort later fizzled following Russian and Iranian military involvement at the request of Damascus.
In 2019, President Donald Trump ordered all US troops to withdraw, but Pentagon officials pushed back, and he backtracked later that year, saying: “We’re keeping the oil… We left troops behind only for the oil.”
Since then, the US has kept some 900 troops scattered across several bases. Syrian officials have repeatedly accused the Pentagon of “stealing” the country’s oil reserves from provinces in the northeast, where American forces have been embedded with Kurdish militia groups.
Earlier this month, Syrian opposition forces led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) jihadists launched a surprise offensive across the country, capturing Damascus and forcing Assad to resign as president and seek asylum in Russia.
On Friday, Washington sent a delegation to Damascus for the first time since 2012, and announced it will no longer offer a $10 million bounty for the HTS leader.
Trump And Israel Can’t Wait To Start Bombing Iran
Caitlin Johnstone, Dec 18, 2024
Both Israel and the incoming Trump administration are reportedly eager to start bombing Iran ASAP now that Assad’s out of the way.
Israeli media reports that the IDF now sees airstrikes on Iran as much easier to execute now that its pilots don’t have to worry about Syrian air defenses along the way, while The Wall Street Journal reports that the Trump team is weighing its options for airstrikes on Iran to prevent it from obtaining a nuclear weapon (which there’s no evidence Iran is currently trying to do).
A new article from The Washington Post titled “Syria’s collapse and Israeli attacks leave Iran exposed” reports that “Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has signaled a desire to capitalize on gains against Hamas and Hezbollah and take on Tehran more aggressively under a new U.S. administration.” The article notes that Trump has expressed openness to war with Iran, saying that “anything can happen”.
This comes as the al-Qaeda affiliates who captured Damascus assure the world that Syria will no longer allow itself to be used as a launchpad for attacks against Israel.
After Assad was ousted I got a bunch of weirdos in my comments claiming that Israel was somehow sad about this development, because Israel and Assad were secretly on the same side. This is one of the dumbest conspiracy theories I’ve been asked to believe in a long time, and I was asked to believe it not by crazy QAnoners or the liberal mass media but by a sector of pro-Palestine leftoids who also love NATO.
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The US hates al-Qaeda, then loves al-Qaeda, then hates al-Qaeda, then loves al-Qaeda. They split up, they get back together, they split up again. “We were on a break!” “We were not on a break!” Will they or won’t they? Keep watching and find out!………………………………………
Israel supporters will tell you antisemitism is one of the biggest problems in the world and then if you ask them for examples of where dangerous antisemitism is occurring in our society they’ll list things like the United Nations, Amnesty International, Ireland, and the pope.
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I often see questions like “Why are the billionaires destroying the world like this? What’s the point of amassing all that wealth if you’re just going to spend the rest of your life in some underground bunker?”………………………………………………………………………………………………….
Becoming a billionaire and becoming a heroin addict are both irrational destructive behaviors driven by irrational internal dynamics. The only difference is that the billionaires are taking the rest of us with them. https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/trump-and-israel-cant-wait-to-start?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=82124&post_id=153285034&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
Blinken Confirms the US Is in Direct Contact With al-Qaeda-Linked HTS
By Dave DeCamp / Antiwar.com, December 16, 2024, https://news.antiwar.com/2024/12/15/blinken-confirms-the-us-is-in-direct-contact-with-al-qaeda-linked-hts/
Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Saturday that the US has been in direct contact with Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, a US-designated terror organization that grew out of al-Qaeda in Syria and recently led the offensive that overthrew former Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
“Yes, we have been in contact with HTS and with other parties,” Blinken said on Saturday, confirming earlier reports that said the US was talking to HTS. “Our message to the Syrian people is this: We want them to succeed, and we’re prepared to help them do so.”
HTS and its leader, Abu Mohammad al-Julani, are overseeing the new “transitional” government in Syria. Blinken and other US officials have celebrated the ouster of Assad and made clear they’re willing to work with Julani despite his past as an ISIS and al-Qaeda leader.
Julani, who has been going by his real name, Ahmad al-Sharaa, has been presenting himself as a moderate in an effort to gain support from the West and began a rebranding campaign in 2016 by claiming his former group, the al-Nusra Front, was cutting ties with al-Qaeda. At the time, he thanked the “commanders of al-Qaeda for having understood the need to break ties.”
In 2017, Julani merged his group with several other Islamist factions to form Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, which the US State Department designated as a foreign terrorist organization in 2018. The US also placed a $10 million bounty on Julani’s head.
The Biden administration is reportedly considering removing the terror designation from HTS, which would allow the US to provide significant aid to an HTS-led government. Blinken released a statement a few days ago outlining conditions for US support.
“The United States reaffirms its full support for a Syrian-led and Syrian-owned political transition. This transition process should lead to credible, inclusive, and non-sectarian governance that meets international standards of transparency and accountability,” Blinken said.
While the US is flexible with HTS’s designation, it frequently points to the terror designations of groups like Hamas and Hezbollah to justify Israeli attacks that slaughter huge numbers of civilians.
1 This Month
No Nuclear in Cwm Llynfi! Stop the nuclear power station near Maesteg.
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