Author: Alicia

There is growing evidence that ISIS is in the process of seizing control of the enormous heroin trafficking that emanates from Afghanistan. Russian officials have been sounding the alarm about that for well over a year, and Tuesday Iranian Interior Minister Abdolreza Rahmani Fazli, according to a report that appeared in the Young Journalists Club website, said that ISIS is funded to a great extent from the smuggling of illegal drugs: “We are seeing that the benefit gained from the agriculture of narcotics in Afghanistan feeds many terrorist groups. Aid going to the ISIS also comes from the benefits gained from the smuggling of narcotics. The group are themselves smugglers of narcotics.”

On Sept. 20 of this year, Carol Adl of YourNewsWire.com reported that Russia’s UN envoy Vitaly Churkin told a UN Security Council session that there is increasing heroin trafficking activities by the ISIS terrorists. “There is information that a group of militants from ISIS … already control a part of the routes of illegal drug supply from the Badakhshan Province” in northeastern Afghanistan. At that session, Adl said, Churkin had urged the UN body to closely monitor the situation of drugs in Afghanistan, given that it is one of the main routes of drug trafficking into Europe. Badakhshan Province, she noted, “is especially strategic since it extends into Afghanistan’s neighbors Pakistan, Tajikistan and the Xinjiang Province in China, which could also become a militant corridor for the ISIS group.”

On Oct. 8, the Russian news agency nakanune.ru reported that Gen. Valeri Gerasimov, chief of the Russian military’s General Staff, announced an estimate that Afghan heroin production will have increased 20% this year over 2014. Gerasimov also said that the General Staff estimates that two to three thousand Islamic State guerrillas are currently in Afghanistan.

Almost a year earlier, in late November 2014, Russia’s Federal Drug Control Service (FDCS) Director Victor Ivanov told the annual meeting in St. Petersburg of the Counternarcotics Group of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), that the enormous narcotics business in Afghanistan was a global threat to security and peace, citing the fast-developing role of the Islamic State terrorists and African coastal pirates as drug-runners. He said that ISIS was then handling the logistics for half of the heroin reaching Europe via Iraq and Africa, deriving steady financing from its drug-running. “Without the elimination of large-scale Afghan drug production,” Ivanov said, “there will be no settlement of the conflicts in these regions.”

Ivanov has also repeatedly noted the dependence of the world financial system on laundered drug money, and has presented programmatic proposals for the rapid industrial development of Afghanistan and the region as the antidote to the drug trade.

According to Argentina’s Foreign Minister-designate, Susana Malcorra, there are “very important indications” from both the White House and U.S. Ambassador to the UN Samantha Power, that Barack Obama will visit Argentina next year. “The idea is for the two Presidents”—Obama and neo-liberal President-elect Mauricio Macri—”to meet as soon as possible,” Malcorra said. Macri has spoken with Obama by phone and is anxious to forge a close working relationship with him.

In an interview with the daily La Nación published Monday, Malcorra stressed that under Macri, Argentina will seek a “non-ideological and mature” relationship with the U.S., as opposed to that of outgoing President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, which, Malcorra suggested, was immature because Fernández “politicized” everything. That is, she defied London and Wall Street’s policy dictates, and called things by their right name—never music to Obama’s large ears.

Echoing Obama’s own lies, Malcorra insisted that the vulture fund issue is not a political one, but purely economic and is being dealt with by the U.S. justice system. It has nothing to do with the U.S.-Argentine bilateral relationship, she added, insisting that Obama “doesn’t give orders” to Thomas Griesa, the New York Federal judge who has sided with the vulture funds against Argentina in every ruling for the past several years.

Vulture fund owners are beside themselves. “Finally, someone reasonable we can talk to!” commented one of the lawyers for NML, Ltd., the vulture fund owned by multibillionaire Paul Singer’s Elliott Associates, which has waged financial warfare against Argentina for years. The daily Ambito Financiero reported Dec. 4 that, immediately after the first round of Presidential elections Oct. 25, Macri sent a team to New York to meet with Elliott’s lawyer Robert Cohen, and in three private meetings hammered out the guidelines for future negotiations. Among other things, Macri will recognize $15 billion the vultures say Argentina owes them, which Cristina Fernández refused to do.

In a slight nod to reality, Malcorra, who has worked as UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon’s chief of staff since 2012, did say that just because Argentina seeks closer ties with the U.S., this doesn’t mean it will break off ties with BRICS member China, with which Fernández de Kirchner has signed many economic development agreements. “It is not in Argentina’s interest to break ties with China,” she said, but added that she would be reviewing all of the allegedly “secret” agreements signed with China, to ensure there is no evidence of wrongdoing.

The Xinhua coverage of Xi Jinping’s historic Africa tour this month includes some things left out of the Western coverage — namely, that in addition to being grateful for China’s $60 billion investment pledge over the next three years, African leaders emphasized that China, unlike the Western colonizers, is not piling conditions and political restraints on African nations, but is sincerely aiming at nation building.

Xi said in his keynote speech at the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) in South Africa last week: “China strongly believes that Africa belongs to the African people and that African affairs should be decided by the African people.”

Adji Ayassor, minister of state in the Togolese Ministry of Economy, Finance and Development Planning, told Xinhua on Friday that the Chinese president’s keynote speech told “the truth about the cooperation between China and Africa.” Contrary to what some claim in the West, China “is not colonizing Africa,” he said. “We believe that is the best way to develop Africa. … It (China) is taking a real path of Africa’s development. It is a real cooperation.”

Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe, who also holds the rotating African Union (AU)  chair, in his speech at the opening ceremony, thanked China for its “unconditional support” for Africa, and slammed actions by the West that have derailed progress there. “China has never been our colonizer, and while some detractors allege that our cooperation with Beijing is commercially driven, the reality on the ground does not conform to such a distorted view,” Mugabe said.

Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta told reporters Dec. 5 that “the perception that China is the new colonizer is a complete misrepresentation of Beijing’s activities here in Africa…. Achievement of mutual benefits is the basis of Sino-Africa cooperation. I don’t think that a partner who is helping us fight poverty and other development challenges can be called a colonizer.” Kenyatta said that what China is doing in Africa is what the colonialists failed to do in the past, namely help Africa out of poverty. “China is ready to help us develop and meet our socio-economic objectives without imposing its agenda on us. This is the outstanding aspect of our cooperation with China.”

A senior U.S. military source warned Monday that the Turkish deployment of a battalion of troops into the Mosul area of north Iraq, which the Iraq government has denounced as an invasion, is likely a prelude to a much larger invasion.  The source suggested that the battalion is the vanguard of a major Turkish military move, to backup allied Kurdish Peshmerga units that are anxious to launch an assault to take back the key city of Mosul. The source indicated that he expected Turkish Air Force support for such a Peshmerga action, that could also involve larger Turkish ground combat deployments as well.

Were such an action to be taken, independent of the Iraqi Army and the central government in Baghdad, it would be a clear step in the direction of the breakup of Iraq, with the Kurdish region becoming an independent entity—under Turkish tutelage.

The Turkish move into northern Iraq came just days after U.S. Defense Secretary Ashton Carter announced the deployment of several hundred more U.S. forces from the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC).  Washington sources confirm that the JSOC deployment is a major break from the Obama Administration’s earlier “train, equip, and advise” mission.  The JSOC teams will function as hunter-killer teams, targeting Islamic State leaders and infrastructure, and will operate autonomously, with no coordination or intelligence sharing with the Iraq Army or the government in Baghdad.  These JSOC killer squads were used by Gen. Stanley McChrystal in Iraq and then in Afghanistan, and they have been widely accused of indiscriminate killings, human rights violations and other actions that have actually further fueled recruitment by jihadists.

The Carter announcement has already triggered a backlash in Baghdad, where Shi’a members of the Iraq parliament have denounced the deployments and threatened to bring down the Abadi government if the Prime Minister does not order the U.S. to abandon the planned “ground invasion.”  Under pressure from within his own Dawa Party, Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi did denounce the U.S. planned deployment late last week.  Secretary of State John Kerry claimed that he had briefed Abadi on the U.S. escalation plan, and that he was making statements aimed at satisfying domestic critics. Statements by Shi’a parliamentarians and militia spokesmen warned that the U.S. operations could trigger a civil war and would likely result in the fall of the Abadi government soon.

In short, the Turkish and American actions could blow up the entire Iraq situation, which conforms precisely to the British plan for permanent sectarian war throughout the Middle East region.

There are meanwhile, numerous articles and interviews in Germany on the Saudi role in Islamic terrorism, worth special mention are three statements from the Dec. 5-6: Vice Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel said in an interview with Bild am Sonntag that Saudi Arabia is “financing Wahhabite mosques everywhere in the world,” and that “many Islamic trouble-makers are coming from these communities in Germany.” To solve regional conflict in Middle East, Germany depends on Saudi cooperation, “but we must make clear to the Saudis at the same time, that the period of looking the other way is over…. We must use the same standards against the Salafists as against right-wing radical extremists,” Gabriel said.

Thomas Oppermann, chairman of the SPD Bundestag group, called for the Verfassungsschutz, which is responsible for Germany’s domestic security, to have tight supervision over mosque activities and their financing, saying that Wahhabism is also providing “the entire ideology for the IS terrorist group” in other countries. “We don’t need it and don’t want that in Germany.”

Islam expert Guido Steinberg of the Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik, (the German Institute for International and Security Affairs, SWP) in Berlin also charged, in a radio interview with Deutschlandfunk (DLF), that “one of the origins of IS’ strength is that Saudi Arabia has been propagating this interpretation of Islam in the Arabic world, in the Islamic world, since the 1960s.” The core of Wahhabism and the core of the IS ideology are identical, Steinberg said, adding that “the Saudis don’t like that to be talked about.” What IS does in the areas it has under its control, is a “logical consequence of what the Saudi Arabian Wahhabites have preached for the past two-and-a-half centuries,” Steinberg said. The problem can only be solved by a roll-back against the Saudi religious influence in the Arab world and in Europe “with very drastic measures…. We should rethink our relations to Saudi Arabia somewhat. Our image of it is, in my view, so positive that it no longer fits with reality.”

So far so good: Just add the issue of the classified 28-page chapter of the Joint Congressional Inquiry into 9/11 and the longtime history of Empire dealings with the Saudis, which so far none of the critics of Saudi Arabia has done, despite the fact that we have supplied most of them with ample information.  But it may be hoped that the notorious “wendehals” phenomenon will compel some people sooner or later to also begin to mention the 28 pages.

Were Obama not a tool of the British Empire with their current bent on global thermonuclear confrontation, he might have gone on TV Sunday night with an anti-terror speech that would have genuinely assuaged the fear that is now building up in the souls of most Americans. That speech would start with a simple declaration: “I hereby declare that I will release the redacted 28 pages of the 9/11 Joint Congressional Inquiry report, pages which were redacted to protect the complicity of our Saudi allies in those atrocities.”

Writing in anticipation of Obama’s Sunday prime time performance, Consortium News editor and noted investigative reporter Robert Parry effectively said just that, in a piece titled “Obama’s Credibility Crisis.” Americans no longer trust their own government, Parry says, because they’ve been lied to so many times. From Bush’s WMD, to Obama’s TPP and NSA, and now to the Syria war, America (and the world) has built up a “white rage,” of resentment against the perpetrators. In fact, a recent State Department study of the effectiveness of U.S. government “anti-ISIS” internet propaganda showed that, in a direct comparison, even the “creepy head-choppers of ISIS” came out as more credible!

So, in what Parry calls the “Impossible Speech,” Obama would first, announce the release of the 28 pages, and “also could release other U.S. intelligence analyses on the role of the Saudis, Qataris and Turks in supporting al-Qaeda and ISIS. He could toss in what U.S. intelligence analysts have concluded about the 2013 sarin gas attack in Syria and about the 2014 shoot-down of MH-17 in Ukraine.” As history showed, such a speech was not to be.

Another demand for release of the 28 pages Monday morning, came from (Obama impeachment advocator) Dave Lindorff. Writing in Counterpunch, Lindorff begins by noting the vastly differing responses to what he calls “left wing” (Muslim) terror, versus “right wing” (Christian) terror, e.g. the Oklahoma City bombing, or the more recent slaughter at a church in Charleston, South Carolina, or at an abortion clinic in Colorado Springs. The difference, he says, seems to boil down to the fact that “Muslims” killed 3,000 people on 9/11, so, in response, “Christians” get a free pass.

“Okay,” Lindorff says in response, “that’s the story line. But if we Americans really cared about that particularly heinous act of terrorism, we’d want to know how the hell it happened. Certainly we would be demanding that the U.S. government release those sealed 28 pages of the 9/11 Commission’s official report [sic] which deal with the role of America’s ally in the Middle East, Saudi Arabia, which is known to have funded many of the alleged hijackers of the four planes involved. We haven’t done that. It’s still blacked out….

“We would also be demanding to know why the FBI lied at that commission hearing claiming that the black boxes of the two planes that hit the two towers were ‘never recovered’….

If Obama continues the cover-up of the Saudi, Turkish, British and American hand in supporting the global terror apparatus blowing up the world today, he must be impeached. That would bring peace on Earth and good will toward all men.

The 28 pages were not redacted from the 9/11 Commission Report, but from the 2002 Joint Congressional Inquiry—ed.

Concluding his much-lauded visit to Africa, Chinese President Xi Jinping has significantly upgraded the China-Africa relationship to a “comprehensive, strategic relationship” and laid out the beginning of a comprehensive strategy for African industrialization. Observers in the White House Africa office cannot be happy with the whirlwind tour the Chinese President has made to Africa, his second as President. In his speech to the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) on December 4, Xi underlined the importance of poverty reduction as fundamental. “Poverty is the root cause of chaos,” he said. “And development holds the key to resolving all problems.” He noted that the present situation opened up tremendous possibilities for development, but also dangers to be confronted, including terrorism, environmental degradation, and hegemonism.

The visit has created a tremendous sense of optimism among African experts. “China’s strategies of development and cooperation have helped the [african] continent to create fairly rapid, visible, and significant economic and social transformation,” said Professor Gerishon Ikiara, an associate director at Nairobi University’s Institute of Diplomacy and International Studies in Kenya. “Twenty years ago, China’s industrial capacity cooperation with Africa hardly featured in international discussions. However, this situation has radically changed with the African countries now regarding China as the most suitable partner in their national industrialization and other development programs,” Ikiara said.

“Africa’s manufacturing capacity failed to obtain meaningful development during the past decades,” said Fay Chung, an African scholar of Chinese descendant in Zimbabwe, “but it now provides huge opportunities for industrial cooperation between the two sides as well as enough space for further development.”

When the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation was first established in 2000, the trade volume between China and Africa stood at 10 billion dollars. Now China has become the continent’s largest trading partner, with two-way trade volume expected to reach 300 billion dollars in 2015, according to the Ministry of Commerce of China. But the orientation now is clearly refocused on infrastructure, particularly transportation and “capacity building.” China will train 200,000 Africans as qualified technical personnel in Africa, and will give technical training to 40,000 Africans brought to China to train.

While President Xi and more recently, Foreign Minister Wang Yi, have underlined the need to create a strong basis for Africa’s industrialization, Chinese investment will also be aimed at increasing agricultural production and productivity, focusing on large-scale farming, grain storage and processing, and animal husbandry. China will start agricultural projects in 100 African villages, and will be sending 30 teams of Chinese agricultural experts to help with the programs.

To enhance the cultural exchanges—one of the five important “pillars” outlined by the Chinese President as the basis of the enhanced relationship—China will build five cultural centers, introduce satellite broadcasts to villages, and bring 900 African scholars to China. It will also increase direct flights between China and African cities to enhance cultural exchanges and tourism.

Syrian President Bashar Assad, in an interview published by the Sunday Times of London Sunday, again warned the nations of Europe about their current disastrous course, and pointed in contrast to what Russia is doing:

But what European nations are doing, with the U.S., by bombing inside Syria without his government’s approval, is illegal, Assad said, and is only helping the ISIS cancer grow.

Assad nonetheless reiterated his earlier offer to work with anyone who is serious about destroying ISIS:

Former Secretary of Defense William Perry issued a stark warning, Thursday, against the danger of nuclear war between the United States and Russia. “We’re now at the precipice, maybe I should say the brink, of a new nuclear arms race,” Perry said at a Defense Writers Group breakfast. “This arms race will be at least as expensive as the arms race we had during the Cold War, which is a lot of money,” he said, according to Defense News.  He went on to argue that the risk of nuclear war is exacerbated by the dismantling of the relationship between Russia and the United States that was formed after the Soviet Union’s fall. Without clear military-to-military communication between those two nations, the risk of an accidental conflict increases. “Today—probably I would not have said this 10 years ago—but today we now face the kind of dangers of a nuclear event like we had during the Cold War, an accidental war,” he said. “I see an imperative,” Perry added, “to stop this damn nuclear arms race from accelerating again.” Perry singled out the ICBM force as the greatest source of threat, because of the launch-on-warning problem, as had been identified by Bruce Blair a week ago in an article in Politico, and Perry therefore called for the elimination of that force, reducing the nuclear triad to bombers and submarines, both of which are less subject to the “use it or lose it” problem. Perry referred to the ICBM as “destabilizing” in that it invites an attack from another power. ICBMs “aren’t necessary—they’re not needed. Any reasonable definition of deterrence will not require that third leg,” Perry concluded.

Perry also  criticized the program of the United States and NATO to install “Aegis-ashore” ballistic missile defense (BMD) systems in Romania and Poland, which triggered some of Putin’s nuclear saber rattling. “There is literally no justification for it. The reasons they give for it don’t stand up,” he said of the BMD sites.

Perry also attributed the collapse of U.S.-Russian relations as much to the United States as to anything Russia did. “It’s as much our fault as it is the fault of the Russians, at least originally. And it began when I was secretary,” he said, reports Sputnik. He called NATO expansion in the 1990s, “the first move down the slippery slope.” He said it was “stupid” for the United States to cut off military-to-military communications with Russia as a response to the 2014 Ukraine crisis. “That’s the time when you need your military-to-military relations most of all,” he said.