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(CNN)Authorities in China have approved a drug for the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease, the first new medicine with the potential to treat the cognitive disorder in 17 years.
(CNN)Authorities in China have approved a drug for the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease, the first new medicine with the potential to treat the cognitive disorder in 17 years.
Mikhail Khodarenok, military commentator for RT.com. He is a retired colonel. He served as an officer at the main operational directorate of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces.
Leading militaries of the world are currently processing and conceptualizing any experience they have of conducting warfare in big cities.
Early November marked three years since the start of the siege of Raqqa, Syria – the ‘capital’ of ISIS’ pseudo-caliphate. It should be noted that, ever since World War II, cases of large-scale warfare over cities have been exceedingly rare. However, modern conflicts in the Middle East have provided a wide array of examples demonstrating how battles can be fought for control over a major metropolitan area.
It is much clearer now what type of troops and what numbers are likely to be required, and how long an operation would last. It is also now possible to estimate the nature and potential extent of the damage to be inflicted on an urban area.
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The history of warfare over the last decade demonstrates that a large city is the most favorable battlefield for someone who is outnumbered and outgunned by his adversary. Within an urban area, not only can you form an active group of fighters in the tens of thousands, you can also conceal your troops from a superior enemy force and evade its fire power. Moreover, you can supply your troops with materiel, as well as fresh men and hardware to make up for any losses. In modern warfare, no mountain range, forest, or jungle can offer as favorable a terrain as a city.
An urban environment can help defenders and slow the enemy’s advance; it allows you to place the highest possible number of troops per unit of area; it can compensate for technical and numerical inferiority.
Commenting on the operation to take the city of Mosul in Iraq (population: 1.4 million), Pentagon officials said it involved “the toughest urban combat since World War II.”
For the Battle of Mosul, Iraq deployed its Armed Forces (30,000) and the Federal Police (30,000). The latter, Iraq’s de-facto internal troops, were tasked with encircling and isolating the battle area, which allowed the regular army to concentrate all of its efforts on their mission. During the assault, Iraq’s forces were supported by massive air strikes conducted by the US Air Force. As part of the operation, an effective reconnaissance system was established. Dozens of UAVs of various types were airborne at all times – from light tactical drones to heavy strategic reconnaissance machines.
There are a number of lessons the Americans learned from the Battle of Mosul: it is nearly impossible to isolate and cut off a big city; the operation becomes increasingly complex as the attacking troops move towards the city center; a dense urban environment can be of use not only to the defenders, but also to the troops storming the city.
What came as a surprise to the Americans is that, in urban warfare, irregular troops can be quite resilient and combat-capable.
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Still, the United States military command believes that capturing cities with a population of less than 100,000 does not present major difficulties. They are easy to encircle and blockade, making the whole area exposed to direct fire. In a city of this size, it is difficult to amass large stocks of resources and military hardware to supply a significant number of troops for a protracted period.
However, storming a city with a population of over 500,000 is a completely different thing. This is why the battles of Mosul, Basra, Aleppo, Damascus, and Raqqa were so protracted and grueling.
Both Aleppo and Damascus have a large population, well over a million people, but the battle affected only certain districts and suburbs of these cities that were controlled by the terrorists.
Another reason why an offensive campaign in any city presents a huge challenge today is the very low tolerance threshold for collateral damage. You can’t just bomb a city these days. Thus, any success of Bashar Assad’s military operation was met with a huge and well-orchestrated outcry on the part of the media. In some cases, foreign powers went as far as to threaten military intervention.
At the same time, we have never seen a case of a civilian population being completely evacuated out of a city prior to the operation to make the battle easier; it is something that just doesn’t happen.
Another present-day challenge has to do with the fact that cutting a city off from the rest of the world is extremely difficult today, with all the telecom systems and other infrastructure networks in place. Still, a siege is key to getting a city to surrender. In the cases of all of the cities mentioned above, it was a successful military blockade that secured ultimate victory. The terrorists were able to control East Aleppo and the suburbs of Damascus only as long as they had access to reinforcements and supplies.
Securing the support of the local population is another important factor for success. If the residents are on your side, whichever that may be, they can take care of numerous supply and delivery tasks, as well as managing repairs. They can also help with evacuating if the need arises, or provide medical aid. All of this allows valuable military personnel to focus exclusively on the operation.
Another important factor to consider here is that the Syrian cities in question have networks of underground tunnels that were taken advantage of by the terrorist forces. Over time, they evolved into entire underground settlements with full-scale supply routes – big enough to let trucks in and out. All of this helped the terrorists to minimize their damage and personnel losses, and maintain a clear maneuvering advantage, keeping control of city areas for a long time.
A deadly maneuver that never failed to inflict damage and cause panic in the government’s forces was the terrorists’ use of suicide car bombs, known as suicide vehicle-borne improvised explosive devices (SVBIEDs). Using them in urban warfare always has a particularly devastating effect.
In the near future, urban warfare is likely to involve the extensive use of reconnaissance, attack, and cargo UAVs, heavy multiple rocket launchers, high-capacity artillery and mortars (up to 240mm), precision air-launched weapons, and unmanned helicopter drones to evacuate the wounded.
The assault of a city will turn into a violent and protracted military operation. The Battle of Raqqa, a city with a population of 165,000, lasted 11 months; the operation to liberate eastern Ghouta, home to 400,000 people, took almost two months, and the operation to liberate eastern Aleppo, with a population of 300,000, lasted 10 months.
It seems that, in most cases, it would be impossible to avoid massive damage to urban areas and a high death toll among civilians. Raqqa can be used as an example to illustrate this point. The US Air Force bombed the official “capital” of the pseudo-caliphate for a year, nearly levelling the city.
That is why a much better solution would be to find a quick way of forcing the entrenched enemy troops out of the city. Still, in many cases, it would be impossible to avoid a lengthy and bloody assault.
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Combat operations in big cities are carried out by assault units and groups composed of highly trained and well-armed troops. As you may know, assault troops are temporary formations built from regular motorized rifle troops reinforced by combat engineers, mortar launchers, flamethrowers, artillery, and tanks. Apart from assault teams, specialized units are needed to complete the task – such as assault and obstacle-clearing engineer brigades.
Special military robots with AI capabilities could help minimize human losses during operations in large urban areas, but the current state of the world’s militaries is far from this futuristic vision.
In conclusion, any future war will inevitably involve assaulting and capturing large cities and urban areas. To be successful in this very specific type of combat situation, one can only rely on highly trained troops, sufficient resources, and adequate weaponry.
“…the evidence is glaring that the US has just moved blatantly to destroy the democratic process in Bolivia, to terrorize a nation and blackmail its president to resign. Yet Western media dutifully turn off that narrative to keep chasing their fantasies about Russia. Another illustration of why corporate Western media are more accurately defined as propaganda channels, not news outlets.”
Sourcesputniknews.com
Only days before Evo Morales stepped down as Bolivia’s president audio tapes were published implicating opposition politicians, the US embassy and American senators in a coup plot.
Among those US senators mentioned in the leaked tapes by the Bolivian politicians seeking Morales’ ouster were Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz, according to a report by Telesur.
It is believed that the US embassy in La Paz helped coordinate a deliberate campaign of street violence and media disinformation in order to destabilize the Andean country and force Morales to quit.
The whole scenario fits Washington’s standard-operating procedure for instigating coups or regime change against governments it disapproves of. Bolivia’s socialist president Evo Morales was in Washington’s cross-hairs for toppling.
What has happened in Bolivia is similar to the US-backed violent protests which earlier this year rocked the socialist government of President Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela. Fortunately for Maduro, the Venezuelan military has remained loyal to the constitution and was not turned by Washington’s pressure.
Unfortunately for Morales, however, sufficient pressure was exerted on the Bolivian military and police. When those institutions called for Morales to step down on Sunday, he did so in order to spare his nation from further deadly conflict. “The coup mongers are destroying the rule of law,” said Morales, who was re-elected for a fourth term on October 20.
Several countries have denounced what they see as a coup against the democratically elected leader. Russia, Cuba, Mexico, Venezuela and Argentina have all condemned the subversion of Bolivia’s constitution.
When Morales won the election last month, the Organisation of American States (OAS) alleged “manipulation” of the voting system. Such claims by the OAS were predictable because it has long served as a pro-Washington agency which is vehemently opposed to left-wing governments in Latin America. Critics call it a relic of the Cold War.
The organization has spearheaded international criticism of the Venezuelan government and served to whip up public disturbances earlier this year in that country which challenged the elected president, Nicolas Maduro. The orchestrated coup in Venezuela has since subsided over recent months.
Washington supplies the OAS with 60 per cent of its financial budget. It is, therefore, a tool for promoting US geopolitical interests across Latin America, as amply noted by the Grayzone.
It’s meddling in Bolivia seems to have succeeded, unlike its failed attempts in Venezuela.
The allegations of voting fraud in Bolivia gave immediate fuel for street protests by rightwing groups loyal to opposition politicians. Those opposition factions are linked to the past oligarchic regimes which ran Bolivia before Morales came to power in 2006. Morales was the first indigenous president in a country which has traditionally been dominated by a ruling class associated with Spanish colonialists. His policies gained much international praise for lifting millions of Bolivians out of poverty, especially the indigenous people who had historically been marginalized by the ruling elite.
For the past three weeks, since the election result designated Morales as the clear winner, Bolivia has been convulsed by extreme violence. Protesters attacked members of Morales’ party, burning homes and offices and intimidating journalists from broadcasting the scenes of anarchy on the streets. It is reported that one of Morales’ family relatives was kidnapped at the weekend.
Given the reign of terror threatening to destroy the country, the president was compelled to relinquish power at the weekend.
The implication of US senators colluding with Bolivia’s rightwing opposition to create a climate of hate and fear is straight out of the same playbook for subversion that Washington has used most recently in Venezuela and in dozens of other countries around the world. The coup d’état that occurred in Ukraine in February 2014 leading to a takeover by neo-Nazi parties is just one other example.
The irony is that Washington and its European partners are consumed with accusations made against Russia for allegedly interfering in their political systems. US and European media relentlessly claim with scant evidence that Moscow is running “influence campaigns” to distort elections.
Just this week the New York Times has published yet another report in a recent series of reports alleging that Russia is cranking up interference and meddling in African states.
Meanwhile, the evidence is glaring that the US has just moved blatantly to destroy the democratic process in Bolivia, to terrorize a nation and blackmail its president to resign. Yet Western media dutifully turn off that narrative to keep chasing their fantasies about Russia. Another illustration of why corporate Western media are more accurately defined as propaganda channels, not news outlets.
The views and opinions expressed in the article do not necessarily reflect those of Sputnik.
By Chris Hedges
Abridged by Lasha Darkmoon with brief commentary
November 11, 2019
https://www.darkmoon.me/2019/the-enemy-within-trump-vs-the-deep-state/#more-128182
“Trump committed political heresy when he dared to point out the folly of unchecked militarism. He will pay for it. The war between the deep state and Trump began the moment he was elected.” — Chris Hedges
Our democracy is not in peril. We do not live in a democracy. The image of our democracy is in peril.
Trump’s most unforgivable sin in the eyes of the deep state is his criticism of the empire’s endless wars, even though he lacks the intellectual and organizational skills to oversee a disengagement.
The deep state committed the greatest strategic blunder in American history when it invaded and occupied Afghanistan and Iraq. Such fatal military fiascos, a feature of all late empires, are called acts of “micro-militarism.” Dying empires historically squander the last capital they have, economic, political and military, on futile, intractable and unwinnable conflicts until they collapse.
They seek in these acts of micro-militarism to recapture a former dominance and lost stature. Disaster piles on disaster. The architects of our imperial death spiral, however, are untouchable.
The clueless generals and politicians who propel the empire into expanding chaos and fiscal collapse are successful at one thing—perpetuating themselves. No one is held accountable. A servile press treats these mandarins with near-religious veneration. Generals and politicians, many of whom should have been cashiered or put on trial, are upon retirement given lucrative seats on the boards of the weapons manufacturers, for whom these wars are immensely profitable. They are called upon by a fawning press to provide analysis to the public of the mess they created. They are held up as exemplars of integrity, selfless service and patriotism.
LD: The trendy phrase “deep state” appears to be the latest euphemism for international Jewry and their elite non-Jewish collaborators in the big corporations and military-industrial complex. These include the generals, bankers, corporatists, lobbyists, intelligence chiefs, government bureaucrats, technocrats, evangelical Christians, and the fawning presstitutes of the main stream media. All these gentile sycophants of Big Jewry have one thing in common: they are all passionate Zionists for whom the state of Israel is sacrosanct. They would rather see America go up in flames than suffer the loss of a singe acre of stolen land in Occupied Palestine. [LD]
After nearly two decades, every purported objective used to justify our wars in the Middle East has been upended.
The invasion of Afghanistan was supposed to wipe out al-Qaida. Instead, al-Qaida migrated to fill the power vacuums the deep state created in the wars in Iraq, Syria, Libya and Yemen. The war in Afghanistan morphed into a war with the Taliban, which now controls most of the country and is threatening the corrupt regime we prop up in Kabul.
The deep state orchestrated the invasion of Iraq, which had nothing to do with the attacks of 9/11. It confidently predicted it could build a Western-style democracy and weaken Iran’s power in the region. Instead, it destroyed Iraq as a unified country, setting warring ethnic and religious factions against each other. Iran, which is closely tied to the dominant Shiite government in Baghdad, emerged even stronger.
Then there is the fiasco in Syria. The deep state armed “moderate” rebels in Syria in an effort to topple President Bashar Assad, but when it realized it could not control the jihadists—to whom it had provide some $500 million in weapons and assistance—the deep state began to bomb them and arm Kurdish rebels to fight them. These Kurds would later be betrayed by Trump.
Next was Yemen. The “war on terror” spread like a plague from Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Libya to Yemen, which after five years of war is suffering one of the world’s worst humanitarian disasters. The financial cost for this misery and death is between $5 trillion and $8 trillion. The human cost runs into hundreds of thousands of dead and wounded, shattered cities, towns and infrastructure and millions of refugees.
Trump committed political heresy when he dared to point out the folly of unchecked militarism. He will pay for it. The deep state intends to replace him with someone—perhaps Mike Pence, as morally and intellectually vacuous as Trump—who will do what he is told.
The removal of Trump from office would not threaten corporate power. It would not restore civil liberties, including our right to privacy and due process.
It would not demilitarize the police or champion the rights of the working class.
It would not impede the profits of the fossil fuel and banking industries.
It would not address the climate emergency.
It would not disrupt the warrantless surveillance of the public.
It would not end extraordinary renditions, the kidnapping of those around the globe considered to be enemies of the state.
It would not halt the assassinations by militarized drones.
It would not halt the separation of children from their parents and the warehousing of these children in filthy, overcrowded conditions.
It would not remedy the consolidation of wealth and power by the oligarchs and the further impoverishment of the citizenry.
The expansion of our prison system and of black sites throughout the world, sites where we torture, would continue, as would the gunning down of poor, unarmed citizens in urban wastelands.
Most importantly, the catastrophic foreign wars that have resulted in a series of failed states and wasted trillions of taxpayer dollars, would remain sacrosanct, enthusiastically embraced by the leaders of the two ruling parties, puppets of the deep state.
The impeachment of Trump, despite the enthusiasm of the liberal elite, is mostly cosmetic. The entire political and governmental system is corrupt. Corporate lobbyists write the laws. The courts enforce them. There is no way in the American political system to vote against the interests of Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, AT&T, Amazon, Microsoft, Walmart, Alphabet, Facebook, Apple, Exxon Mobil, Lockheed Martin, UnitedHealth Group or Northrop Grumman.
We, the American public, are spectators. An audience. Who will be seated when the game of musical chairs stops?
Will Trump be able to hold on to power?
Will Pence be the new president?
Or will the deep state elevate a political hack like Joe Biden . . . or, God forbid, Hillary Clinton?
And what if the deep state fails?
The war between the deep state and Trump began the moment he was elected. Former CIA Director John Brennan and former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper—both now paid news cable commentators—along with former FBI head James Comey soon would accuse Trump of being a tool of Moscow. Intelligence agencies leaked salacious stories about “pee tapes” and blackmail, plus reports of “repeated contacts” with Russian intelligence. Brennan, Clapper and Comey were quickly joined by other former intelligence officials. Their attacks were then amplified by former senior military leaders.
The Russia conspiracy, after the release of the Mueller report, proved to be a dud. The deep state actors, however, were re-energized by Trump’s decision to pressure the government of Ukraine to investigate Biden. Trump, this time, seems to have given his deep state enemies enough rope to hang him.
The impeachment of Trump marks a new and frightening chapter in American politics. The deep state has shown its face. It has made a public declaration that it will not tolerate dissent, although Trump’s dissent is rhetorical and ineffectual.
The effort to impeach Trump sends an ominous message to the American left. Its resources to destroy those on the left are nearly inexhaustible.
There are no internal or external checks on the deep state.
The deep state will further expand the social inequality that has thrust half of Americans into poverty or near poverty, strip us of our remaining civil liberties and feed the rapacious appetites of the military and the war industry.
The resources of the state will be squandered as the federal deficit balloons. The frustration and feelings of stagnation among a disempowered and neglected citizenry, which contributed to the election of Trump, will mount.
There will come a moment of reckoning, as there has during the last few days in Lebanon and Chile. Social unrest is inevitable. Any population can be pushed only so far.
Trump, in the end, is not the problem. We are.
And if the deep state fails to rid itself of Trump it will, however reluctantly, use him to carry out its dirty work.
“Trump, if he manages to survive, will get his military parades.
We will get, with or without Trump, tyranny.”
— Chris Hedges
Federal Reserve: Out-sourcing the Monetary System to the Money Trust Oligarchs Since 1913
by Steve Brown
Today, ‘money’ is a guarantee to honor government debt, where the currency in our pockets represents tax claims as well as debt purchased by the Federal Reserve and others (1) from the US Treasury, so that the Federal Reserve may issue the notes that constitute the cash in your wallet. Just look at the face of any cash note in your wallet, where “Federal Reserve Note” appears at the top.
Besides Treasury support from regulation (taxation) the Federal Reserve purchases debt instruments from the Treasury to allow the Treasury to honor its debt by the issuance of Federal Reserve notes. In other words, the Federal Reserve purchases US public debt instruments (Treasury bonds/ bills and Mortgage Backed Securities – MBS, etc) from the Treasury in part to enable the Treasury to service its debt, and to pay interest on the outstanding national debt.
The Federal Reserve banks are privately owned corporations with commercial bank shareholders (paid dividends), and they enforce monetary policy in collusion with the US Treasury, and the Primary Dealer Banks of the Federal Reserve.
Other nations purchase US Treasury debt in significant amounts, including Japan; China; Saudi Arabia; Belgium; Caribbean banking centers, and oil exporters. However, a large share of US public debt issued by the US Treasury is held via the Federal Reserve and its primary dealers, with most public debt interest paid to whoever holds those debt instruments, whether the Fed itself, or the private Primary Dealer Banks of the Federal Reserve, or any other person or entity.
Thus, the Federal Reserve maintains and operates its own highly profitable market structure for buying/selling US debt on behalf of the US Treasury, via its own banks (or Desk) and these primary dealer banks:
Amherst Pierpont, Bank of Nova Scotia (Scotia), BMO Capital Markets Corp, BNP Paribas Securities, Barclays, B of A, Cantor Fitzgerald, Citigroup, Credit Suisse, Daiwa, Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs, HSBC, Jefferies LLC, J.P. Morgan, Mizuho, Morgan Stanley, NatWest, Nomura Securities, RBC Capital, Societe Generale, TD Securities, UBS, Wells Fargo
Besides the US Treasury and Fed itself, the above dealer banks are next to profit from the Fed’s permanent Open Market Operations, whether via Quantitative Easing (money issuance by the Fed on government debt purchased by the Fed), Operation Twist, the Fed’s Repurchase and Reverse Repurchase agreements (Repo’s), or by operations of the Exchange Stabilization Fund. For practical purposes these banks have “first market use” of the US dollar funds “created” by the Federal Reserve via its purchase of debt instruments from the US Treasury.
Mortgage Backed Securities (MBS) Treasury bonds and T-Bills are the usual debt instruments purchased from the Treasury by the Federal Reserve (FOMC “Desk”) or its Primary Dealer Banks and others. The Federal Reserve “Desk” is authorized to purchase any security or commodity in existence to support US Treasury operations, sometimes under the auspices of the Exchange Stabilization Fund. (2)
The US Treasury and Federal Reserve, have first use of the new USD (Federal Reserve Notes) created by the Federal Reserve’s purchase of US Treasury debt instruments, to manage monetary policy and service the government’s public debt, but first commercial market use of the funds created is via the Primary Dealer Banks.
After the Dealer Banks, then commercial and retail banks, and on down the line to the public. Finally, the Federal Reserve notes (cash notes in your wallet) are used by private individuals to pay for goods and services, thus trading the implicit value of the government debt represented by those notes to a third party, in exchange for those goods and services. Simply put, the “intrinsic value” of cash is the value associated with holding Federal Reserve notes representing US government debt including taxes owed, where intrinsic value is only based on the “value” of, or trust in, US debt and its tax revenues.
Here is the “use list” of US Dollars (USD) created by the Federal Reserve from US Treasury debt instruments, in order:
Some have stated that the Federal Reserve creates money out of “thin air” but that’s not strictly correct, because some debt instrument is required to create the new funds. In the case of a mortgage, the “money” created is only created by your signature on a note held by the mortgage company or bank. In the case of a bond (or Mortgage Backed Security) the “money is created” when some person or entity signs up for the purchase of that bond, T-bill, or MBS.
After the Treasury funds its programs with the capital created by the Federal Reserve in exchange for Treasury debt, the Treasury must pay interest on that debt to the Federal Reserve’s private banks and to the dealer banks engaged in Fed operations, and all other entities who hold US government debt instruments.
So, the Fed’s private banks and Primary Dealer Banks profit in part from the public debt, in the form of interest payments. Most profit realized by the Federal Reserve via “Desk” trades is returned to the US Treasury, but not all. At least 6% of the profit made by any single privately held Federal Reserve bank is paid in dividend to the shareholders in those banks, and only commercial banks may own those shares, and they may not be traded. Above a certain profit level, as much as 10% or more of the bank’s profit may be paid in dividend, with the percentage above 6% being equal to the high yield of the 10-year Treasury note as last auctioned.
The banks may then leverage incoming capital as needed to guarantee more capital (whether via repurchase agreements, MBS or other bond trades, T-Bills, share trades, currency swaps, proceeds from retail bank mortgages, etc, etc) using a method devised by gold dealers centuries ago, called Fractional Reserve Banking.
Fractional Reserve Banking
Fractional Reserve banking is based on the idea that no more than 10% of creditors will demand cash at any given time, an idea which harks back to antiquity and the Guild system of gold dealers. In the Fractional Reserve system, banks may keep 10% of depositors cash on hand, and loan out nine times that amount based upon the creation of new debt instruments, for example new mortgages.
As the depositor’s funds are fractionalized and then multiplied and spread between banks, the system debases US dollars in the form of “leverage”. For example, signing a note for a $180K home mortgage allows the receiving bank to exchange that debt obligation for other debt obligations worth a total of $1.6 million in total debt – this is why banks love mortgages.
During the 2002 to 2007 US economic boom, some institutions leveraged capital by 40-to-1 and in Europe many big bank counterparts leveraged a 24-to-1 capital leverage ratio. High fractional reserve ratios work well when all participants in the system do not demand solvency (which is different from liquidity) or sound money. When part of a sound money system, a reasonable fractional reserve ratio might allow banking investments as part of a practical plan for growth, which works well when the market is free from corruption and the leverage rate is relatively low.
Public Debt Interest
In summary, the Treasury pays interest on the national debt held by the Federal Reserve and held by the Fed’s dealer banks (and on their reserves) and to all others who hold US debt instruments, via Federal Reserve notes. When the primary dealer banks are paid interest by the Treasury on the money created by the Federal Reserve on the basis of the Treasury’s debt instruments, then the dealers use that cash to reinforce their balance sheets, purchase Wall Street shares, purchase more Treasury’s or commodities, property, ETF’s or precious metals, and so on, etc etc.
So long as the Fed and its Primary Dealers can leverage the Treasury debt instrument system in collusion with the Treasury, and foreign buyers also purchase US debt instruments, the system stays afloat. The monetary system by definition must then rely on the support of an ever-increasing debt burden and the issuing of new debt instruments, with an eventual potential for massive cyclical instability. (3)
From 1840 to 1934 the gold standard and US National Banks system (in the US) enforced some form of monetary discipline, resulting in occasional serious Financial Panics as well. With growing population density and demand for economic growth – as well as governmental need to finance defense, war, and public services – the Independent Treasury system could not be maintained by the early twentieth century, and the private Fed banks were introduced to act as a Central Bank. NB: The Bank of New York Mellon or BNY effectively operates as the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
Is the Federal Reserve System Fair?
Obviously, there is some unfairness and inequity in this system. Since the Federal Reserve banks are privately owned corporations, they must maintain markets in a way that is advantageous to them, and will prevent their banks from failing since it is possible for a Federal Reserve Bank to fail. This gives Federal Reserve banks an unfair advantage in the system, along with the private profit in public debt that they skim, and the interest they are paid on the public debt which goes to private profit, not to the public.
The Federal Reserve banks work in tandem with their Primary Dealer Banks, which provides an opportunity for rigged markets. And in some instances, for example reverse repurchase agreements, the Federal Reserve guarantees the Primary Dealer banks a profit. While a guaranteed profit works well for the Fed and its dealers, the dealer profit is entirely private, and none of that profit goes to the Treasury, except for taxes levied on the primary dealer profit. It may also be argued that for a Quasi-governmental entity like the Federal Reserve to guarantee a profit to a private bank (from public funding) is not only unethical, but also immoral. Also, the fact that the public does not own the interest related to the creation of its money, and is last to benefit from that creation, is likewise flawed.
Reform
Since the introduction of the Federal Reserve system in 1913, we must confront global monetary challenges as the fiat (by decree) monetary system – global floating currencies – may potentially catastrophically destabilize over time, as the system collapsed in the United States during the 2008-2009 financial crash. One potential remedy (for the United States) is based on a scholarly rework of the Chicago Plan of 1935 (4) but such great austerity would likely lead to political instability in the United States, and perhaps global instability too.
Another idea is to return the profit on public debt interest made by the Primary Dealers to the Treasury by effectively nationalizing the private Federal Reserve banks via transfer of ownership of Federal reserve bank shares to the Treasury. The US Treasury will then take back ownership of all public debt by once again issuing United States Notes via the Treasury (instead of by the Fed) while still supporting private banks as the Fed does now.
Put simply, the US Treasury will extinguish the debt of the Federal Reserve by issuing United States notes to gradually purchase the existing Fed debt while recalling Federal Reserve notes, and once again own the interest on the public debt. The US Treasury will then assume ownership of the shares of the current Federal Reserve banks, converting them to US-owned shares, just as the Bank of England operates now. All employees of the Federal Reserve Banks would then become federal employees of the US Treasury, instead of corporate employees. The Treasury will thus end the out-sourced money-issuance that the Federal Reserve has been engaged in since 1913, by issuing US Notes via a US-owned central bank and using US notes to extinguish the Fed’s balance sheet and put the Fed out of business.
In other words, the US Treasury will once again print the United States Note to replace the Federal Reserve note, meaning that United States Notes will be used to purchase back the debt held by the Federal Reserve, and extinguish that debt in exchange for public debt being issued and held by the Treasury itself. [5] The profits on that public debt are then owned by the US Treasury, instead of by the private Federal Reserve Banks as occurs now.
The foregoing can be compared to nationalisation of the Bank of England. But the Treasury will not own the private Primary Dealer banks, it will only own the interest paid on the public debt, and own the shares of the formerly private Federal Reserve banks; that change will occur on behalf of the people of the United States, instead of on behalf of the private Federal Reserve Banks and its private Dealer Banks as occurred in 1913. However, one can imagine that such reform would be opposed by the Fed itself and by the Dealer Banks, and even by the US Treasury, which more accurately colludes with the Federal Reserve, instead of having the Fed work on its behalf as the Treasury claims.
The idea to turn the system on its head by “ending the Fed” in its current form – even though the lender of ‘last resort’ will still be a US Central Bank owned by the Treasury – would certainly be strenuously opposed, to say the least, by those who lead the current system. When the US ended the Central Bank in 1834, the nation experienced the Hard Times era by the Panic of 1837, arguably induced by Nicholas Biddle’s sabotage of the system. So, if the Treasury were to nationalize the shares of the Federal Reserve banks today, as unlikely as that may be, the consequences imposed on the populace – and by extension the world – would likely be quite dire.
Other ideas for monetary reform, such as Warren Mosler’s “Modern Monetary Theory” or MMT, says that the current system should continue to operate with the same Keynesian authority that it employs today, encouraged by more fiscal responsibility and more efficient use of resources, by increasing government spending on what MMT considers to be a noble cause such as full employment. However, Mosler’s seeming advocacy for increased government spending tempered by efficient use of resources may seem like a great idea, however in practice the probability is high that many more inflationary dollars will enter the monetary base.
Since the 1950’s the practice of blowing up inflationary dollars in pointless US international interventionism, US military provocations, and wars has worked well for the US federal government to extinguish inflationary dollars. MMT seems to imply that the welfare state (effectively) should be expanded instead of the warfare state; however as we have seen, bankers always favour quick profit over noble causes, and the idea of putting many more dollars in the pockets of the poor would certainly result in high inflation. MMT also does not address the endangered status of the US dollar as global reserve currency and tends to look at US monetary issues in isolation, discounting that the bulk of all US dollars created are exported.
Inflation and Debasement of the Currency
Reviewing our data about monetary inflation we see that the chart is relatively flat until the creation of the Federal Reserve, which essentially placed the Money Trust (private banking families) back in charge of the monetary system as it was from 1793 until 1834. On the creation of the Federal Reserve as Central Bank, the chart documents the loss of 70% of the dollar’s purchasing power from 1971 to today, and this spike proves the glaring weakness of the current system.
At a minimum, Fractional Reserve ratios should be reasonably maintained noting that the derivative bubble and collateral (gold) is left out of this argument for reasons of brevity and clarity; likewise some slight attempt must be made to balance the US budget. With reform, money will again have some value and begin to work again as an incentive to production, employment, and commerce for the people.
Only public trust overall in the US Dollar and the ability of the Federal Reserve to maintain the system (in collusion with the US Treasury) keeps the USD currency system afloat, and as global reserve currency. If the US operated equitably and fairly perhaps trust in the ‘by decree’ monetary system can work forever, and the US Dollar may remain global reserve currency forever, as MMT for example maintains. However, the US financial system did collapse in 2008-2009 and the glaring inequity and growing disproportion – and even corruption – at the heart of the system certainly must endanger the US Dollar’s status as providing 62% of the globe’s currency as Federal Reserve notes.
Notes:
(1) The US Treasury’s financial instruments – usually Bonds, T Bills, TIPS or MBS – may be purchased by other sovereign entities, privately, or by the Federal Reserve itself.(2) The “Desk” and Exchange Stabilization Fund operate without independent oversight or and do not provide any detailed public disclosure.
(3) By 1844 Van Buren’s Independent Treasury operated privately owned Banks (which became the National Banks system in 1863) however the debt created and the interest on that debt were returned to the Independent Treasury (and thus the people of the United States) and not to private interests. The private National Banks do make profits from their banking activities but the public debt profit goes to the Treasury and not to a private central bank as a percentage of those profits do now.
(4) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_plan
(5) John F Kennedy as president of the United States re-introduced the United States note and actively embraced this idea, however issuance of the US Note ended in 1964 subsequent to his death.
Steve Brown is the author of “Iraq: the Road to War” (Sourcewatch) editor of “Bush Administration War Crimes in Iraq” (Sourcewatch) “Trump’s Limited Hangout” and “Federal Reserve: Out-sourcing the Monetary System to the Money Trust Oligarchs Since 1913”; Steve is an antiwar activist, a published scholar on the US monetary system, and has appeared as guest contributor to The Duran, Fort Russ News, Herland Report, The Ron Paul Institute, and Strategika51.
One of my family’s favorite things to do is wander the neighborhoods of Tokyo. The narrow streets, filled with colorful visual, olfactory, and aural details, never fail to fill me with a sense of wonder. Yesterday one of my daughters showed me a YouTube Channel called Nippon Wandering TV. The person who runs the channel uses a high resolution GoPro (strapped to his chest or head, I guess) and walks through different Tokyo neighborhoods at different times of the day. He doesn’t narrate the videos, and I’m glad he doesn’t, because it’s nice to hear the sounds of the streets — talking, cars, music, etc. Each video is about 30 minutes long.
A new generation of West Pointers joins America’s hopeless wars, writes Danny Sjursen.
Patches, pins, medals, and badges are the visible signs of an exclusive military culture, a silent language by which soldiers and officers judge each other’s experiences, accomplishments, and general worth. In July 2001, when I first walked through the gate of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point at the ripe young age of 17, the “combat patch” on one’s right shoulder — evidence of a deployment with a specific unit — had more resonance than colorful medals like Ranger badges reflecting specific skills. Back then, before the 9/11 attacks ushered in a series of revenge wars “on terror,” the vast majority of officers stationed at West Point didn’t boast a right shoulder patch. Those who did were mostly veterans of modest combat in the first Gulf War of 1990-1991. Nonetheless, even those officers were regarded by the likes of me as gods. After all, they’d seen “the elephant.”
We young cadets arrived then with far different expectations about Army life and our futures, ones that would prove incompatible with the realities of military service in a post-9/11 world. When my mother — as was mandatory for a 17-year-old — put her signature on my future Army career, I imagined a life of fancy uniforms; tough masculine training; and maybe, at worst, some photo opportunities during a safe, “peace-keeping” deployment in a place like Kosovo.
Sure, the U.S. was then quietly starving hundreds of thousands of children with a crippling sanctions regime against autocrat Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, occasionally lobbing cruise missiles at “terrorist” encampments here or there, and garrisoning much of the globe. Still, the life of a conventional Army officer in the late 1990s did fit pretty closely with my high-school fantasies.
You won’t be surprised to learn, however, that the world of future officers at the Academy irreparably changed when those towers collapsed in my home town of New York. By the following May, it wasn’t uncommon to overhear senior cadets on the phone with girlfriends or fiancées explaining that they were heading for war upon graduation.
As a plebe (freshman), I still had years ahead in my West Point journey during which our world changed even more. Older cadets I’d known would soon be part of the invasion of Afghanistan. Drinking excessively at a New York Irish bar on St. Patrick’s Day in 2003, I watched in wonder as, on TV, U.S. bombs and missiles rained down on Iraq as part of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld’s promised “shock-and-awe“ campaign.
Soon enough, the names of former cadets I knew well were being announced over the mess hall loudspeaker at breakfast. They’d been killed in Afghanistan or, more commonly, in Iraq.
My greatest fear then, I’m embarrassed to admit, was that I’d miss the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. It wasn’t long after my May 28, 2005, graduation that I’d serve in Baghdad. Later, I would be sent to Kandahar, Afghanistan. I buried eight young men under my direct command. Five died in combat; three took their own lives. After surviving the worst of it with my body (though not my mind) intact, I was offered a teaching position back at my alma mater. During my few years in the history department at West Point, I taught some 300 or more cadets. It was the best job I ever had.
I think about them often, the ones I’m still in touch with and the majority whom I’ll never hear from or of again. Many graduated last year and are already out there carrying water for empire. The last batch will enter the regular Army next May. Recently, my mother asked me what I thought my former students were now doing or would be doing after graduation. I was taken aback and didn’t quite know how to answer.
Wasting their time and their lives was, I suppose, what I wanted to say. But a more serious analysis, based on a survey of U.S. Army missions in 2019 and bolstered by my communications with peers still in the service, leaves me with an even more disturbing answer. A new generation of West Point educated officers, graduating a decade and a half after me, faces potential tours of duty in… hmm, Afghanistan, Iraq, or other countries involved in the never-ending American war on terror, missions that will not make this country any safer or lead to “victory” of any sort, no matter how defined.
New Generation of Cadets Serving the Empire Abroad
West Point seniors (“first-class cadets”) choose their military specialties and their first duty-station locations in a manner reminiscent of the National Football League draft. This is unique to Academy grads and differs markedly from the more limited choices and options available to the 80 percent of officers commissioned through the Reserve Officers Training Corps (ROTC) or Officer Candidate School (OCS).
Throughout the 47-month academy experience, West Pointers are ranked based on a combination of academic grades, physical fitness scores, and military-training evaluations. Then, on a booze-fueled, epic night, the cadets choose jobs in their assigned order of merit. Highly ranked seniors get to pick what are considered the most desirable jobs and duty locations (helicopter pilot, Hawaii). Bottom-feeding cadets choose from the remaining scraps (field artillery, Fort Sill, Oklahoma).
In truth, though, it matters remarkably little which stateside or overseas base one first reports to. Within a year or two, most young lieutenants in today’s Army will serve in any number of diverse “contingency” deployments overseas. Some will indeed be in America’s mostly unsanctioned wars abroad, while others will straddle the line between combat and training in, say, “advise-and-assist” missions in Africa.
Now, here’s the rub: given the range of missions that my former students are sure to participate in, I can’t help but feel frustration. After all, it should be clear 18 years after the 9/11 attacks that almost none of those missions have a chance in hell of succeeding. Worse yet, the killing my beloved students might take part in (and the possibility of them being maimed or dying) won’t make America any safer or better. They are, in other words, doomed to repeat my own unfulfilling, damaging journey — in some cases, on the very same ground in Iraq and Afghanistan where I fought.
Consider just a quick survey of some of the possible missions that await them. Some will head for Iraq — my first and formative war — though it’s unclear just what they’ll be expected to do there. ISIS has been attritted to a point where indigenous security forces could assumedly handle the ongoing low-intensity fight, though they will undoubtedly assist in that effort. What they can’t do is reform a corrupt, oppressive Shia-chauvinist sectarian government in Baghdad that guns down its own protesting people, repeating the very mistakes that fueled the rise of the Islamic State in the first place. Oh, and the Iraqi government, and a huge chunk of Iraqis as well, don’t wantany more American troops in their country. But when has national sovereignty or popular demand stopped Washington before?
Others are sure to join the thousands of servicemen still in Afghanistan in the 19th year of America’s longest ever war — and that’s even if you don’t count our first Afghan War (1979-1989) in the mix. And keep in mind that most of the cadets-turned-officers I taught were born in 1998 or thereafter and so were all of three years old or younger when the Twin Towers crumbled.
The first of our wars to come from that nightmare has always been unwinnable. All the Afghan metrics — the U.S. military’s own “measures for success” — continue to trend badly, worse than ever in fact. The futility of the entire endeavor borders on the absurd. It makes me sad to think that my former officemate and fellow West Point history instructor, Mark, is once again over there. Along with just about every serving officer I’ve known, he would laugh if asked whether he could foresee –or even define – “victory” in that country. Take my word for it, after 18-plus years, whatever idealism might once have been in the Army has almost completely evaporated. Resignation is what remains among most of the officer corps. As for me, I’ll be left hoping against hope that someone I know or taught isn’t the last to die in that never-ending war from hell.
My former cadets who ended up in armor (tanks and reconnaissance) or ventured into the Special Forces might now find themselves in Syria — the war President Donald Trump “ended” by withdrawing American troops from that country, until, of course, almost as many of them were more or less instantly sent back in. Some of the armor officers among my students might even have the pleasure of indefinitely guarding that country’s oil fields, which — if the U.S. takes some of that liquid gold for itself — might just violate international law. But hey, what else is new?
Still more — mostly intelligence officers, logisticians, and special operators — can expect to deploy to any one of the dozen or so West African or Horn of Africa countries that the U.S. military now calls home. In the name of “advising and assisting” the local security forces of often autocratic African regimes, American troops still occasionally, if quietly, die in “non-combat” missions in places like Niger or Somalia.
None of these combat operations have been approved, or even meaningfully debated, by Congress. But in the America of 2019 that doesn’t qualify as a problem. There are, however, problems of a more strategic variety. After all, it’s demonstrably clear that, since the founding of the U.S. military’s Africa Command (AFRICOM) in 2008, violence on the continent has only increased, while Islamist terror and insurgent groups have proliferated in an exponential fashion. To be fair, though, such counterproductivity has been the name of the game in the “war on terror” since it began.
Another group of new academy graduates will spend up to a year in Poland, Romania, or the Baltic states of Eastern Europe. There, they’ll ostensibly train the paltry armies of those relatively new NATO countries — added to the alliance in foolish violation of repeated American promises not to expand eastward as the Cold War ended. In reality, though, they’ll be serving as provocative “signals” to a supposedly expansionist Russia. With the Russian threat wildly exaggerated, just as it was in the Cold War era, the very presence of my Baltic-based former cadets will only heighten tensions between the two over-armed nuclear heavyweights. Such military missions are too big not to be provocative, but too small to survive a real (if essentially unimaginable) war.
The intelligence officers among my cadets might, on the other hand, get the “honor” of helping the Saudi Air Force through intelligence-sharing to doom some Yemeni targets — often civilian — to oblivion thanks to U.S. manufactured munitions. In other words, these young officers could be made complicit in what’s already the worst humanitarian disaster in the world.
Other recent cadets of mine might even have the ignominious distinction of being part of military convoys driving along interstate highways to America’s southern border to emplace what Trump has termed “beautiful“ barbed wire there, while helping detain refugees of wars and disorder that Washington often helped to fuel.
Yet other graduates may already have found themselves in the barren deserts of Saudi Arabia, since Trump has dispatched 3,000 U.S. troops to that country in recent months. There, those young officers can expect to go full mercenary, since the president defended his deployment of those troops (plus two jet fighter squadrons and two batteries of Patriot missiles) by noting that the Saudis would “pay” for “our help.” Setting aside for the moment the fact that basing American troops near the Islamic holy cities of the Arabian Peninsula didn’t exactly end well the last time around – you undoubtedly remember a guy named bin Laden who protested that deployment so violently – the latest troop buildup in Saudi Arabia portends a disastrous future war with Iran.
None of these potential tasks awaiting my former students is even remotely linked to the oath (to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic”) that newly commissioned officers swear on day one. They are instead all unconstitutional, ill-advised distractions that benefit mainly an entrenched national security state and the arms-makers that go with them. The tragedy is that a few of my beloved cadets with whom I once played touch football, who babysat my children, who shed tears of anxiety and fear during private lunches in my office might well sustain injuries that will last a lifetime or die in one of this country’s endless hegemonic wars.
A Nightmare Come True
This May, the last of the freshman cadets I once taught will graduate from the Academy. Commissioned that same afternoon as second lieutenants in the Army, they will head off to “serve” their country (and its imperial ambitions) across the wide expanse of the continental United States and a broader world peppered with American military bases. Given my own tortured path of dissent while in that military (and my relief on leaving it), knowing where they’re heading leaves me with a feeling of melancholy. In a sense, it represents the severing of my last tenuous connection with the institutions to which I dedicated my adult life.
Though I was already skeptical and antiwar, I still imagined that teaching those cadets an alternative, more progressive version of our history would represent a last service to an Army I once unconditionally loved. My romantic hope was that I’d help develop future officers imbued with critical thinking and with the integrity to oppose unjust wars. It was a fantasy that helped me get up each morning, don a uniform, and do my job with competence and enthusiasm.
Nevertheless, as my last semester as an assistant professor of history wound down, I felt a growing sense of dread. Partly it was the realization that I’d soon return to the decidedly unstimulating “real Army,” but it was more than that, too. I loved academia and “my” students, yet I also knew that I couldn’t save them. I knew that they were indeed doomed to take the same path I did.
My last day in front of a class, I skipped the planned lesson and leveled with the young men and women seated before me. We discussed my own once bright, now troubled career and my struggles with my emotional health. We talked about the complexities, horror, and macabre humor of combat and they asked me blunt questions about what they could expect in their future as graduates. Then, in my last few minutes as a teacher, I broke down. I hadn’t planned this, nor could I control it.
My greatest fear, I said, was that their budding young lives might closely track my own journey of disillusionment, emotional trauma, divorce, and moral injury. The thought that they would soon serve in the same pointless, horrifying wars, I told them, made me “want to puke in a trash bin.” The clock struck 1600 (4:00 pm), class time was up, yet not a single one of those stunned cadets — unsure undoubtedly of what to make of a superior officer’s streaming tears — moved for the door. I assured them that it was okay to leave, hugged each of them as they finally exited, and soon found myself disconcertingly alone. So, I erased my chalkboards and also left.
Three years have passed. About 130 students of mine graduated in May. My last group will pin on the gold bars of brand-new army officers in late May 2020. I’m still in touch with several former cadets and, long after I did so, students of mine are now driving down the dusty lanes of Iraq or tramping the narrow footpaths of Afghanistan.
My nightmare has come true.
Danny Sjursen, a TomDispatch regular, is a retired U.S. Army major and former history instructor at West Point. He served tours with reconnaissance units in Iraq and Afghanistan. He has written a memoir of the Iraq War, “Ghost Riders of Baghdad: Soldiers, Civilians, and the Myth of the Surge.” He lives in Lawrence, Kansas. Follow him on Twitter at @SkepticalVet and check out his podcast “Fortress on a Hill,” co-hosted with fellow vet Chris Henriksen.
This article is from TomDispatch.com.
How the Syrian Democratic Forces Were Suddenly Transformed into “Kurdish Forces”
NOVEMBER 11, 2019
That wars end very differently to our own expectations – or our plans – was established long ago. That “we” won the Second World War did not mean the Americans would win the Vietnam war, or that France would vanquish its enemies in Algeria. Yet the moment we decide who the good guys are, and who the evil monsters whom we must destroy, we relapse again into our old mistakes.
Because we hate, loathe and demonise Saddam or Gaddafi or Assad, we are sure – we are absolutely convinced – that they will be dethroned and that the blue skies of freedom will shine down upon their broken lands. This is childish, immature, infantile (although, given the trash we are prepared to consume over Brexit, it’s not, I suppose, very surprising).
Well, Saddam’s demise brought upon Iraq the most unimaginable suffering. So too Gaddafi’s assassination beside the most famous sewer in Libya. As for Bashar al-Assad, far from being overthrown, he has emerged as the biggest winner of the Syrian war. Still we insist that he must go. Still we intend to try Syrian war criminals – and rightly so – but the Syrian regime has emerged above the blood-tide of war intact, alive, and with the most reliable superpower ally any Middle East state could have: the Kremlin.
I despise the word “curate”. Everyone seems to be curating scenarios, curating political conversations or curating business portfolios. We seem to be addicted to these awful curio words. But for once I’m going to use it in real form: those who curated the story – the narrative – of the Syrian war, got it all wrong from the start.
Bashar would go. The Free Syrian Army, supposedly made up of tens of thousands of Syrian army deserters and the unarmed demonstrators of Darayya, Damascus and Homs, would force the Assad family from power. And, of course, western-style democracy would break out, and secularism – which was in fact supposed to be the foundation of the Baath party – would become the basis of a new and liberal Arab state. We shall leave aside for now one of the real reasons for the west’s support of the rebellion: to destroy Iran’s only Arab ally.
We didn’t predict the arrival of al-Qaeda, now purified with the name of Nusrah. We did not imagine that the Isis nightmare would emerge like a genie from the eastern deserts. Nor did we understand – nor were we told – how these Islamist cults could consume the people’s revolution in which we believed.
Still today, I am only beginning to learn how Syria’s “moderate” rebellion turned into the apocalyptic killing machine of the Islamic State. Some Islamist groups (not all, by any means, and it was not a simple transition) were there from the start. They were in Homs as early as 2012.
This does not mean that Syrian rebels were not brave, democratically minded figures. But they were mightily exaggerated in the west. While David Cameron was fantasising about the 70,000 Free Syrian Army (FSA) “moderates” fighting the Assad regime – there were never more than perhaps 7,000, at the most – the Syrian army was already talking to them, sometimes directly by mobile phone, to persuade them to return to their original government army units or to abandon a town without fighting or to swap the bodies of government soldiers for food. Syrian officers would say that they always preferred to fight the FSA because they ran away; Nusrah and Isis did not.
Yet now, today, as we report the results of the Turkish invasion of northern Syria, we are using a weird expression for Turkey’s Arab militia allies. They are called the “Syrian National Army” – as opposed to the Assad government’s original and still very extant Syrian Arab Army. Vincent Durac, a professor in Middle East politics in Dublin, even wrote last week that these Arab militia allies were “a creation of Turkey”.
This is nonsense. They are the wreckage of the original and now utterly discredited Free Syrian Army – David Cameron’s mythical legions whose mysterious composition, I recall, was once explained to British MPs by the gloriously named General Messenger. Very few reporters (with the honourable exception of those reporting for Channel 4 News) have explained this all-important fact of the war, even though some footage clearly showed the Turkish-paid militiamen brandishing the old Free Syrian Army green, white and black flag.
It was this same ex-FSA rabble who entered the Kurdish enclave of Afrin last year and helped their Nusrah colleagues loot Kurdish homes and businesses. The Turks called this violent act of occupation “Operation Olive Branch”. Even more preposterous, its latest invasion is named “Operation Peace Spring”.
There was a time when this would have provoked ribaldry and contempt. No longer. Today, the media have largely treated this ridiculous nomenclature with something approaching respect.
We have been playing the same tricks with the so-called “American-backed” Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). As I’ve said before, almost all the SDF are Kurds, and they have never been elected, chosen, or joined the SDF democratically. Indeed there was nothing at all democratic about the militia, and its “force” existed only so long as it was supported by US air power. Yet the Syrian Democratic Forces kept their title unscathed and largely unquestioned by the media.
But when the Turks invaded Syria, to drive them from the Syrian-Turkish border, they were suddenly transformed by us into “Kurdish forces” – which they largely were – who had been betrayed by the Americans – which they very definitely were.
An irony, which is either forgotten or simply unknown, is that when fighting began in Aleppo in 2012, the Kurds helped the FSA grab several areas of the city. The two were fighting each other seven years later when the Turks invaded the “free” Kurdish borderland of Rojava. Even less advertised was the fact that the Turkish-FSA advance into Syria allowed thousands of Arab Syrian villagers to return to homes taken over by the Kurds when they set up their doomed statelet after the war began.
But the narrative of this war is now being further skewed by our suspension of any critical understanding of Saudi Arabia’s new role in the Syrian debacle.
Deny and deny and deny is the Saudi policy, when asked what assistance it gave to the anti-Assad Islamist rebels in Syria. Even when I found Bosnian weapons documents in a Nusrah base in Aleppo, signed off by an arms manufacturer near Sarajevo called Ifet Krnjic – and even when I tracked down Krnjic himself, who explained how the weapons had been sent to Saudi Arabia (he even described the Saudi officials whom he spoke to in his factory) – the Saudis denied the facts.
Yet today, almost incredibly, it seems the Saudis themselves are now contemplating an entirely new approach to Syria. Already their United Arab Emirates allies in the Yemeni war (another Saudi catastrophe) have reopened their embassy in Damascus: a highly significant decision by the Gulf state, although largely ignored in the west. Now, it seems, the Saudis are thinking of strengthening their cooperation with Russia by financing, along with the Emiratis and perhaps also Kuwait, the reconstruction of Syria.
Thus the Saudis would become more important to the Syrian regime than sanctions-cracked Iran, and would perhaps forestall Qatar’s own increasingly warm – if very discreet – relations with Bashar al-Assad. The Qataris, despite their Al-Jazeera worldwide empire, want to expand their power over real, physical land; and Syria is an obvious target for their generosity and wealth. But if the Saudis decided to take on this onerous role, the kingdom would at one and the same time muscle both Iran and Qatar aside. Or so it believes. The Syrians – whose principle policy in such times is to wait, and wait, and wait – will, of course, decide how to play with their neighbours’ ambitions.
But Saudi interest in Syria is not merely conjecture. Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman remarked to Time magazine in August last year that “Bashar is going to stay. But I believe that Bashar’s interest is not to let the Iranians do whatever they want to do.” The Syrians and the Bahrainis are talking regularly about the post-war Levant. The Emirates might even negotiate between the Saudis and the Syrians. The Gulf states are now saying that it was a mistake to suspend Syria’s membership of the Arab League.
In other words, Syria – with Russian encouragement – is steadily resuming the role it maintained before the 2011 revolt.
This wasn’t what we in the west imagined then, when our ambassadors in Damascus were encouraging the Syrian street demonstrators to keep up their struggle against the regime; indeed, when they specifically told the protestors not even to talk or negotiate with the Assad government.
But those were in the days before two crazed elements emerged to smash all our assumptions, sowing fear and distrust across the Middle East: Donald Trump and Isis.
It’s the “Greatest Economy Ever,” right? Well, it depends on who you ask.
For instance, a new report sheds light on 53 million Americans, or about 44% of all US workers, aged 18 to 64, are considered low-wage and low-skilled.
Many of these folks are stuck in the gig economy, making approximately $10.22 per hour, and they bring home less than $20,000 per year, according to a Brookings Institution report.
An overwhelmingly large percentage of these folks have insurmountable debts if that are student loans, auto loans, and or credit card debt. Their wages don’t cover their debt servicing payments as their lives will be left in financial ruin after the next recession.
While the top 10% of Americans are partying like it’s 1999, most of whom own assets, like stocks, bonds, and real estate, are greatly prospering off the Federal Reserve’s serial asset bubble-blowing scheme and President Trump’s stock market pumping on Twitter.
Today’s artificial economy isn’t working for everyone as the wealth inequality gap swells to crisis levels.
The US is at the 11th hour, one hour till midnight, as the wealth inequality imbalance will correct itself by the eruption of protests on the streets of major metro areas, sort of like what’s been happening across the world in Chile, Hong Kong, Lebanon, and Barcelona.
An uprising, a revolution, people are waking up to the fact that unelected officials and governments have ruined the economy and has resulted in their financial misery of low wages and insurmountable debts.
The report shows almost half of all low-wage workers are clustered in ten occupations, such as a retail salesperson, cooks and food preparation, building cleaners, and construction workers (these are some of the jobs that will get wiped out during the next recession).
Shown below, most of these low-wage workers are centered in areas around the North East, Mid-Atlantic, and Rust Belt.
As we’ve detailed in past articles, millions of these low-wage and low-skilled jobs will never be replaced after the next recession, that’s due in part to mega corporations swapping out these jobs with automation and artificial intelligence.
The solution by the government and the Federal Reserve, to avoid riots in the streets, will be the implementation of various forms of quantitative easing for the people.
There’s a reason why you already hear the debate of universal income, central banks starting to finance green investments, and other various forms of short/long term stimulus, that is because the global economy is grinding to a halt — and the only solution at the moment is to do more of the same.