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Bild Interviews Vladimir Putin

January 17, 2016 //

ALEXANDER KADOBNOV/AFP/GettyImages

“if someone is not happy with our stance, they could find a better option than declaring us an enemy every time. Would not it be better to listen to us, to critically reflect on what we say, to agree to something and to look for a common solution?” -Vladimir Putin, 5 January 2016

Vladimir Putin’s interview with [German newspaper] Bild:

Bild: Mr President, We have just marked the 25th anniversary of the end of the Cold War. Last year, we witnessed a great number of wars and crises across the world, something that had not happened for many years. What did we do wrong?

President of Russia Vladimir Putin: You have started just with the key question. We did everything wrong from the outset. We did not overcome Europe’s division: 25 years ago the Berlin Wall fell, but Europe’s division was not overcome, invisible walls simply moved to the East. This created the foundation for mutual reproaches, misunderstanding, and crises in the future. Many people, including in the Federal Republic [of Germany], criticise me for my well-known speech at the Munich Conference on Security. But what was so unusual that I said?

After the Berlin Wall fell, there were talks that NATO would not expand to the East. As far as I remember, the then Secretary General of NATO, national of the Federal Republic Manfred Woerner said that. By the way, some German politicians of that time gave warnings and proposed their solutions, for example, Egon Bahr.

You know, before meeting with German journalists I, naturally, thought that we would anyway come to the issue you have touched upon now, so I took archived records of talks of that period (1990) between Soviet leaders and some German politicians, including Mr Bahr. They have never been published.

Bild: Are these interviews?

Vladimir Putin: No, these are working discussions between German politicians Genscher, Kohl, Bahr and Soviet leadership (Mr Gorbachev, Mr Falin, who, I think, headed the International Division of the Central Committee of the Communist Party). They have never been made public. You and your readers will be the first to learn about this talk of 1990. Look what Mr Bahr said: “If while uniting Germany we do not take decisive steps to overcome the division of Europe into hostile blocs, the developments can take such an unfavourable turn that the USSR will be doomed to international isolation.” That was said on June 26, 1990.

Mr Bahr made concrete proposals. He spoke about the necessity to create a new alliance in the centre of Europe. Europe should not go to NATO. The whole of Central Europe, either with East Germany or without it, should have formed a separate alliance with participation of both the Soviet Union and the United States. And then he says: “NATO as an organisation, at least its military structures must not extend to include Central Europe.” At that time, he already was the patriarch of European politics, he had his own vision of Europe’s future, and he was telling his Soviet colleagues: “If you do not agree with it, but on the contrary agree with NATO’s expansion, and the Soviet Union agrees with it, I will never come to Moscow again.” You see, he was very smart. He saw a deep meaning in that, he was convinced that it was necessary to change the format radically, move away from the times of the Cold War. But we did nothing.

Bild: Did he come to Moscow again?

Vladimir Putin: I do not know. This talk took place on February 27, 1990. This is a record of the conversation between Mr Falin representing the Soviet Union and Mr Bahr and Mr Voigt representing German politicians.

So what has actually happened? What Mr Bahr had warned about – that’s what has happened. He warned that the military structure – the North Atlantic Alliance – must not expand to the East. That something common, uniting the whole of Europe must be created. Nothing like that has happened; just the opposite has happened what he had warned about: NATO started moving eastwards and it expanded.

We have heard a thousand times the mantra from our American and European politicians, who say: “Each country has the right to choose its own security arrangements.” Yes, we know that. This is true. But it is also true that other countries have the right to make decisions to expand their own organisation or not, act as they consider appropriate in terms of global security. And leading NATO members could have said: “We are happy that you want to join us, but we are not going to expand our organisation, we see the future of Europe in a different way.”

In the last 20–25 years, especially after the collapse of the Soviet Union when the second centre of gravity in the world disappeared, there was a desire to fully enjoy one’s sole presence at the pinnacle of world fame, power and prosperity. There was absolutely no desire to turn either to international law or to the United Nations Charter. Wherever they became an obstacle, the UN was immediately declared outdated.

Apart from NATO’s expansion eastwards, the anti-ballistic missile system has become an issue in terms of security. All this is being developed in Europe under the pretext of addressing the Iranian nuclear threat.

In 2009, current President of the United States Barack Obama said that if Iran’s nuclear threat no longer existed there would be no incentive for establishing the ABM system; this incentive would disappear. However, the agreement with Iran has been signed. And now the lifting of sanctions is being considered, everything is under the IAEA control; first shipments of uranium are already being transported to the Russian territory for processing, but the ABM system is being further developed. Bilateral agreements have been signed with Turkey, Romania, Poland, and Spain. Naval forces that should operate as part of missile defence are deployed in Spain. A positioning area has already been created in Romania, another one will be created in Poland by 2018; a radar is being installed in Turkey.

We strongly objected to developments taking place, say, in Iraq, Libya or some other countries. We said: “Don’t do this, don’t go there, and don’t make mistakes.” Nobody listened to us! On the contrary, they thought we took an anti-Western position, a hostile stance towards the West. And now, when you have hundreds of thousands, already one million of refugees, do you think our position was anti-Western or pro-Western?

Bild: As far as I understood, you have summed up the mistakes made by the West with regard to your country. Do you believe that Russia on its part has made any during these 25 years?

Vladimir Putin: Yes, it has. We have failed to assert our national interests, while we should have done that from the outset. Then the whole world could have been more balanced.

Bild: What you just said, does that mean that starting from 1990–1991, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, all the years after it, Russia has failed to clearly assert its national interests?

Vladimir Putin: Absolutely.

Bild: We know that you have special attitude towards Germany. Ten years ago in an interview given to us on the occasion of the 60th anniversary of the end of World War II you said: “Russia and Germany have never been so close to each other as they are now.”

What do you believe has been left of that closeness to this day?

Vladimir Putin: Our relations are based, most importantly, on mutual attraction of our peoples.

Bild: So nothing has changed in this respect?

Vladimir Putin: I think, no. Despite all the attempts (you and your colleagues have been making) to upset our relations using mass media and anti-Russia rhetoric, I believe that you have failed to do this to the extent that you wanted to. Of course, I do not mean you personally. I refer to the media in general, including German ones. In Germany, the media are under a strong foreign influence, first and foremost from the other side of the Atlantic.

You have said that I have summed up everything that we see as the mistakes made by the West. That was far from everything, I have named but a few most important points. After the Soviet Union collapsed, equally adverse processes emerged inside Russia itself. Those included a drop in industrial production, the collapse of social system, separatism, and the most evident onslaught of international terrorism.

Certainly, we are responsible, there is no one but us to blame. At the same time, for us it was an obvious fact that the international terrorism was also used as a means of fighting against Russia, while everyone either turned a blind eye on that or provided support to terrorists (I refer to political, information, financial or in some cases even armed support to the actors fighting against the Russian state). Certainly, at that moment we realised that discussions and geopolitical interests are completely different things.

As for the Russian-German relations, indeed, they reached an excellent level in 2005, and would have developed successfully further. The trade turnover between our two countries grew to over $80 billion.

In Germany, a huge number of jobs were created thanks to Russian-German cooperation. We tried to prevent negative developments in the Middle East, particularly in Iraq, together.

We made major steps in furthering our energy cooperation. A lot of German entrepreneurs opened businesses in Russia, and thousands of enterprises were established. Exchanges between our citizens expanded, and humanitarian contacts developed. The Petersburg Dialogue public forum was also established at that time.

As I have said, our trade turnover used to reach $83–85 billion, and in the first months of 2015 it fell by half. I believe as of the end of the year it will stand at about $40 billion, at 50 percent of what it was. Nevertheless, we maintain relations, and the Federal Chancellor and I meet regularly at various events. I think, I met her seven times, and had 20 telephone conversations with her in 2015. We still hold reciprocal Years of the Russian Language and Literature in Germany and Years of the German Language and Literature in Russia. This year is to be the year of youth exchanges. So the relations are still developing, thank God, and I hope they will develop further. We will overcome the difficulties we are facing today.

Bild: If I got you right, NATO should have told the East European states there and then that it would not admit them? Do you believe NATO could have survived that?

Vladimir Putin: Certainly.

Bild: Yet this has been set forth in the NATO Charter.

Vladimir Putin: The Charter is written by people, isn’t it? Does the Charter say that NATO is obliged to admit everyone who would like to join? No. There should be certain criteria and conditions. If there had been political will, if they had wanted to, they could have done anything. They just did not want to. They wanted to reign.

So they sat on the throne. And then? And then came crises that we are now discussing. If they had followed the advice the old wise German, Mr Egon Bahr gave them, they would have created something new that would unite Europe and prevent crises. The situation would have been different, there would have been different issues. Perhaps they would not have been that acute, you see.

Bild: There is a theory saying that there are two Mr Putins: the first one was young pre-2007 Mr Putin who showed solidarity with the United States and who was friends with Mr Schroeder, and then, after 2007, another Mr Putin came. Back in 2000 you said, “We should have no confrontations in Europe, we should do everything to overcome them.” And now we have found ourselves in such confrontation.

May I ask you a straightforward question? When we are going to have the first Mr Putin back?

Vladimir Putin: I have never changed. First, I still feel young today. I was and I continue to be Mr Schroeder’s friend. Nothing has changed.

My attitude to such issues as the fight against terrorism has not changed either. It is true, on September 11 I was the first to call President Bush and express my solidarity. Indeed, we stood ready to do everything to combat terrorism together. Not so long ago, after the terrorist attacks in Paris, I called and then met the President of France.

If anyone had listened to Gerhard Schroeder, to Jacques Chirac, to me, perhaps there would have been none of the recent terrorist attacks in Paris, as there would have been no upsurge of terrorism in Iraq, Libya, or other countries in the Middle East.

We are faced with common threats, and we still want all countries, both in Europe and the whole world, to join their efforts to combat these threats, and we are still striving for this. I refer not only to terrorism, but also to crime, trafficking in persons, environmental protection, and many other common challenges. Yet this does not mean that it is us who should agree with everything that others decide on these or other matters. Furthermore, if someone is not happy with our stance, they could find a better option than declaring us an enemy every time. Would not it be better to listen to us, to critically reflect on what we say, to agree to something and to look for a common solution? That was what I referred to at the celebration of the 70th anniversary of the United Nations in New York.

Bild: I would like to express the view that today the fight against Islamic terrorism is such an acute issue that it could bring Russia and the West back together in this fight, but the problem of Crimea arises. Is Crimea really worth putting cooperation with the West at stake?

Vladimir Putin: What do you mean when you say ‘Crimea’?

Bild: Redrawn boundaries.

Vladimir Putin: And what I mean is people – 2.5 million of them. These are the people that were frightened by the coup; let’s be frank, they were worried by the coup d’état in Ukraine. And after the coup in Kiev – and it was nothing but a coup d’état, no matter how the extreme nationalist forces, the forces that were coming to power at that moment and largely stayed there, tried to sugar it up – they just began to openly threaten people. To threaten Russians and Russian-speaking people living in Ukraine and in Crimea in particular, because it was more densely populated by Russians and Russian-speaking than other parts of Ukraine.

What was our reaction? We did not make war, nor did we occupy anyone; there was no shooting, no one got killed during the events in Crimea. Not a single person! We used the Armed Forces only to stop more than 20,000 Ukrainian service members stationed there from interfering with the free expression of will by the residents of Crimea. People came to the referendum and cast their vote. They chose to be part of Russia.

Here is a question: what is democracy? Democracy is the will of the people. People voted for the life they wanted. It is not the territory and borders that I am concerned about but the fates of people.

Bild: But borders are a component of the European political order. You have previously said that this is actually very important, including in the context of the NATO expansion.

Vladimir Putin: It is important to always respect international law. In Crimea, there was no violation of international law. Under the United Nations Charter, every nation has the right to self-determination. Concerning Kosovo, the UN International Court of Justice ruled that, when it comes to sovereignty, the opinion of the central government can be ignored. If you are a serious periodical that is honest with its readers, find the transcript of the statement made by the German representative in the International Court of Justice in the archives and cite it. Take the letter, which I believe was written by the US Department of State, or the statement made by the British representative. Find them and read them. Kosovo declared its independence, and the whole world accepted it. Do you know how it in fact happened?

Bild: After the war?

Vladimir Putin: No, it was done by a decision of the Parliament. There was even no referendum held.

What happened in Crimea? Firstly, the Crimean Parliament was elected in 2010, that is when Crimea was still part of Ukraine. This fact I am talking about is extremely important. The Parliament that had been elected while Crimea was part of Ukraine met and voted for independence and called a referendum. Then the citizens voted at the referendum for reunification with Russia. Moreover, as you pointed out quite correctly, the events in Kosovo took place after several years of war and the de-facto intervention by NATO countries, after the bombing of Yugoslavia and missile strikes targeting Belgrade.

Now I want to ask you this: if the Kosovans in Kosovo have the right to self-determination, why don’t the Crimeans have the same right? If we want the relations between Russia and our friends and neighbours in Europe and around the world to develop in a positive and constructive manner, at least one condition must be observed: we need to respect each other, each other’s interests and follow the same rules instead of constantly changing them to suit someone’s interests.

You asked me if I was a friend or not. The relations between states are a little different from those between individuals. I am no friend, bride or groom; I am the President of the Russian Federation. That is 146 million people! These people have their own interests, and I must protect those interests. We are ready to do this in a non-confrontational manner, to look for compromise but, of course, based on international law, which must be understood uniformly by all.

Bild: If, as you say, there was no violation of international law in Crimea, how can you explain to your people that because of that step the West, including at Ms Merkel’s initiative, imposed sanctions against Russia that the Russian population is now suffering from?

Vladimir Putin: You know, the Russian people feel in their hearts and understand in their minds very well what is happening. Napoleon once said that justice is the embodiment of God on earth. In this sense, the reunification of Crimea with Russia was a just decision.

As to the reaction of our western partners, I believe that it was wrong and it was not aimed at supporting Ukraine but at suppressing the growth of Russia’s capabilities. I believe that this should not be done and this is the main mistake; on the contrary, we need to use each other’s capabilities for mutual growth, to address common issues together.

You have mentioned sanctions. In my view, this was a foolish decision and a harmful one. I have said that our turnover with Germany amounted to $83–85 billion, and thousands of jobs were created in Germany as a result of this cooperation. And what are the restrictions that we are facing? This is not the worst thing we are going through, but it is harmful for our economy anyway, since it affects our access to international financial markets.

As to the worst harm inflicted by today’s situation, first of all on our economy, it is the harm caused by the falling prices on our traditional export goods. However, both the former and the latter have their positive aspects. When oil prices are high, it is very difficult for us to resist spending oil revenues to cover current expenses. I believe that our non-oil and gas deficit had risen to a very dangerous level. So now we are forced to lower it. And this is healthy…

Bild: For the budget deficit?

Vladimir Putin: We divide it. There is the total deficit and then there are non-oil and gas revenues. There are revenues from oil and gas, and we divide all the rest as well.

The total deficit is quite small. But when you subtract the non-oil and gas deficit, then you see that the oil and gas deficit is too large. In order to reduce it, such countries as Norway, for example, put a significant proportion of non-oil and gas revenues into the reserve. It is very difficult, I repeat, to resist spending oil and gas revenues to cover current expenses. It is the reduction of these expenses that improves the economy. That is the first point.

Second point. You can buy anything with petrodollars. High oil revenues discourage development, especially in the high technology sectors. We are witnessing a decrease in GDP by 3.8 percent, in industrial production by 3.3 percent and an increase in inflation, which has reached 12.7 percent. This is a lot, but we still have a surplus in foreign trade, and the total exports of goods with high added value have grown significantly for the first time in years. That is an expressly positive trend in the economy.

The reserves are still at a high level, and the Central Bank has about 340 billion in gold and foreign currency reserves. If I am not mistaken, they amount to over 300. There are also two reserve funds of the Government of the Russian Federation, each of which amounts to $70 to $80 billion. One of them holds $70 billion, the other – $80 billion. We believe that we will be steadily moving towards stabilisation and economic growth. We have adopted a whole range of programmes, including those aimed at import replacement, which means investing in high technologies.

Bild: You have often discussed the issue of sanctions as well as the issue of Crimea with Federal Chancellor Angela Merkel. Do you understand her? Do you trust her?

Vladimir Putin: I am certain that she is a very sincere person. There is a framework within which she has to work but I have no doubt that she is sincere in her efforts to find solutions, including to the situation in southeast Ukraine.

You spoke of sanctions. Everyone says that the Minsk Agreements must be implemented and then the sanctions issue may be reconsidered. This is beginning to resemble the theatre of the absurd because everything essential that needs to be done with regard to implementing the Minsk Agreements is the responsibility of the current Kiev authorities. You cannot demand that Moscow do something that needs to be done by Kiev. For example, the main, the key issue in the settlement process is political in its nature and the constitutional reform lies in its core. This is Point 11 of the Minsk Agreements. It expressly states that the constitutional reform must be carried out and it is not Moscow that is to make these decisions.

Look, everything is provided for: Ukraine is to carry out a constitutional reform with its entry into force by the end of 2015 (Paragraph 11). Now 2015 is over.

Bild: The constitutional reform must be carried out after the end of all military hostilities. Is that what the paragraph says?

Vladimir Putin: No, it is not.

Look, I will give you the English version. What does it say? Paragraph 9 – reinstatement of full control of the state border by the government of Ukraine based on the Ukrainian law on constitutional reform by the end of 2015, provided that Paragraph 11 has been fulfilled, which stipulates constitutional reform.

Consequently, the constitutional reform and political processes are to be implemented first, followed by confidence building on the basis of those reforms and the completion of all processes, including the border closure. I believe that our European partners, both the German Chancellor and the French President should scrutinise these matters more thoroughly.

Bild: Do you think this is not so?

Vladimir Putin: I think they have a lot of problems of their own. But if we are addressing this matter then we must scrutinise it. For example, it says here that changes to the Constitution should be permanent. The Ukrainian Government introduced the law on the special status of those territories, a law that had been adopted earlier, into the transitional provisions. But this law, which they incorporated in the Constitution, was adopted for the duration of three years only. Two years have already passed. When we met in Paris, both the German Chancellor and the French President agreed that this law should be changed and included in the Constitution on a permanent basis. Both the President of France and the Chancellor of Germany confirmed that. Moreover, the current version of the Constitution has not even been approved and the law has not become permanent. How can demands be made on Moscow to do what in fact must be done inline with the decisions of our colleagues in Kiev?

Bild: What is your attitude towards the Federal Chancellor now? You said some time ago that you admired many of her personal qualities. How do things stand now?

Vladimir Putin: When did I say that?

Bild: That you respect her.

Vladimir Putin: I feel the same way now. I have already said that she is very sincere and highly professional. In any case, I think the level of trust between us is very high.

Bild: Let me ask you a personal question. When the Federal Chancellor visited you in Sochi in January 2007, did you know that she was afraid of dogs?

Vladimir Putin: No, of course not. I did not know anything about that. I showed her my dog because I thought she would like it. I told her so later and apologised.

Bild: Mr President, will you take any steps to re-establish the G7 format as the G8?

And another question: what did you think when the US President said that Russia is a regional power?

Vladimir Putin: I did not think anything in particular. Every individual, all the more so the President of the United States, is entitled to his or her own opinion on anything, on partners and on other countries. That is his own opinion, as I also know his opinion that the American nation, the United States is unique. I cannot agree with either of those opinions.

Let me clarify a few things about Russia. First, we do not claim the role of a superpower. This role is very costly and it is meaningless. Our economy is fifth or sixth in the world in terms of volume. It may have moved down to a lower place at present taking into account the economic difficulties I have mentioned but we are confident that we have very good development prospects and potential. We occupy, roughly, the sixth place in the world in terms of purchasing power parity.

If we say that Russia is a regional power, we should first determine what region we are referring to. Look at the map and ask: “What is it, is it part of Europe? Or is it part of the eastern region, bordering on Japan and the United States, if we mean Alaska and China? Or is it part of Asia? Or perhaps the southern region?” Or look at the north. Essentially, in the north we border on Canada across the Arctic Ocean. Or in the south? Where is it? What region are we speaking about? I think that speculations about other countries, an attempt to speak disrespectfully about other countries is an attempt to prove one’s exceptionalism by contrast. In my view, that is a misguided position.

Bild: And what about the G8?

Vladimir Putin: We planned to host the G8 summit in 2014. I think Russia never became a full-fledged G8 member, since there were always separate negotiations between foreign ministers of the other seven countries. I would not say that this mechanism is useless. Meetings, discussions, seeking solutions together are always beneficial.

I believe that Russia’s presence was useful, since it provided an alternative view on some issues under discussion. We examine pretty much the same issues within the G20, APEC in the East and within BRICS. We were ready to host the G8 summit in 2014. It was not us who did not go somewhere; other countries did not come to Russia. If our counterparts decide to come for a visit, they will be most welcome, but we have not booked any tickets yet.

Bild: What do you think about the possibility of re-establishing cooperation, if not within the G8, then, perhaps, with NATO? There was the Russia-NATO Council after all, and you conducted joint military exercises. Is there a chance to re-establish such cooperation or should we forego the prospect altogether?

Vladimir Putin: At the outset, the idea of creating the Council was actively supported, if not initiated, by Mr Berlusconi, the former Prime Minister of Italy, and I believe it was in Italy that we signed the document on establishing the Russia-NATO Council. It was not Russia that cut off cooperation through the G8 or the Russia-NATO Council. We are willing to interact with everyone, once there is a matter for common discussion. We think that there is one, but a relationship can be happy only when the feeling is mutual. If we are not welcome as partners, that is fine with us then.

Bild: Regrettably, at the moment the Russia-NATO relations are at the stage of confrontation, rather than cooperation. Turkish military forces have downed a Russian aircraft, and Russian and Turkish warships are reported to come dangerously close to one another all the more often. Do you think that such developments may at a certain point cause an escalation from a cold war to actual hostilities?

Vladimir Putin: Turkey is a NATO member. However, the problems that have emerged have nothing to do with Turkey’s NATO membership; nobody has attacked Turkey. Instead of trying to provide us with an explanation for the war crime they committed, that is, for downing our fighter jet that was targeting terrorists, the Turkish government rushed to NATO headquarters seeking protection, which looks quite odd and, in my view, humiliating for Turkey.

I repeat, NATO has to protect its members from attack, but nobody has attacked Turkey. If Turkey has vested interests elsewhere in the world, in the adjacent countries, does it mean that NATO must protect and secure these interests? Does it mean that Germany, as a NATO member, must help Turkey to expand into neighbouring territories?

I hope that such incidents will not cause large-scale hostilities. Of course, we all realise that Russia, once under threat, would defend its security interests by all available means at its disposal, should such threats against Russia arise.

Bild: Now let’s turn to Syria, if you do not mind.

We say that we are tackling common challenges there. This is the joint fight against ISIS in Iraq and Syria. However, some people in the West say that Russian military forces in Syria are fighting the anti-Assad rebels, rather than ISIS. What would be your response to the allegations that Russia is hitting the wrong targets?

Vladimir Putin: They are telling lies. Look, the videos that support this version appeared before our pilots even started to carry out strikes against terrorists. This can be corroborated. However, those who criticise us prefer to ignore it.

American pilots hit the Doctors Without Borders hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan, by mistake, I am sure. There were casualties and fatalities among civilians and doctors. Western media outlets have attempted to hush this up, to drop the subject and have a very short memory span when it comes to such things. They mentioned it a couple of times and put it on ice. And those few mentions were only due to foreign citizens from the Doctors Without Borders present there.

Who now remembers the wiped out wedding parties? Over 100 people were killed with a single strike.

Yet this phony evidence about our pilots reportedly striking civilian targets keeps circulating. If we tag the “live pipelines” that consist of thousands of petrol and oil tankers as civilian targets, than, indeed, one might believe that our pilots are bombing these targets, but everyone is bombing them, including the Americans, the French and everyone else.

Bild: However, it is clear that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is carrying out strikes against his own population. Can we say that al-Assad is your ally?

Vladimir Putin: You know, this is a rather subtle issue. I think that President al-Assad has made many mistakes in the course of the Syrian conflict. However, don’t we all realise full well that this conflict would never have escalated to such a degree if it had not been supported from abroad through supplying money, weapons and fighters? Tragically, it is civilians who suffer in such conflicts.

But who is responsible for that? Is it the government, which seeks to secure its sovereignty and fights these anti-constitutional actions, or those who have masterminded the anti-government insurgency?

Regarding your question if al-Assad is an ally or not and our goals in Syria. I can tell you precisely what we do not want to happen: we do not want the Libyan or Iraqi scenario to be repeated in Syria. I have to give due credit to Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, and I told him this myself, because had he not taken on the responsibility, demonstrated fortitude and brought the country under control, then we might have witnessed the Libyan scenario in Egypt. In my view, no effort should be spared in strengthening legitimate governments in the region’s countries. That also applies to Syria. Emerging state institutions in Iraq and in Libya must be revived and strengthened. Situations in Somalia and other countries must be stabilised. State authority in Afghanistan must be reinforced. However, it does not mean that everything should be left as is. Indeed, this new stability would underpin political reforms.

As far as Syria is concerned, I think that we should work towards a constitutional reform. It is a complicated process. Then, early presidential and parliamentary elections should be held, based on the new Constitution. It is the Syrian people themselves who must decide who and how should run their country. This is the only way to achieve stability and security, to create conditions for economic growth and prosperity, so that people can live in their own homes, in their homeland, rather than flee to Europe.

Bild: But do you believe al-Assad is a legitimate leader if he allows the destruction of his country’s population?

Vladimir Putin: It is not his goal to destroy his country’s population. He is fighting those who rose up against him with deadly force. And if the civilians suffer, I think that the primary responsibility for this is with those who fight against him with deadly force as well as those who assist armed groups.

As I have already said, though, this does not mean that everything is all right out there and that everyone is right. This is exactly why I believe political reforms are needed so much there. The first step in that direction should be to develop and adopt a new Constitution.

Bild: If, contrary to expectations, al-Assad loses the elections, will you grant him the possibility of asylum in your country?

Vladimir Putin: I think it is quite premature to discuss this. We granted asylum to Mr Snowden, which was far more difficult than to do the same for Mr al-Assad.

First, the Syrian people should be given the opportunity to have their say. I assure you, if this process is conducted democratically, then al-Assad will probably not need to leave the country at all. And it is not important whether he remains President or not.

You have been talking about our targets and means, and now you are talking about al-Assad being our ally. Do you know that we support military operations of the armed opposition that combats ISIS? Armed opposition against al-Assad that is fighting ISIS. We coordinate our joint operations with them and support their offensives by airstrikes in various sections of the frontline. This is hundreds, thousands of armed people fighting ISIS. We support both the al-Assad’s army and the armed opposition. Some of them have publicly declared this, others prefer to remain silent, but the work is on-going.

Bild: Finally, I would like to touch upon a topic that has never come up before, that is the rift between Saudi Arabia and Iran, as if Syria was not enough. Does it mean that this rift can lead us to a very grave conflict?

Vladimir Putin: It hampers the efforts to settle the Syrian crisis and the fight against terrorism, as well as the process of halting the inflow of refugees to Europe, that much is certain.

As for whether this will lead to a major regional clash, I do not know. I would rather not talk or even think in these terms. We have very good relations with Iran and our partnership with Saudi Arabia is stable.

Of course, we regret that these things happened there. But you have no death penalty in your country, right? Despite a very hard period in the 1990s–early 2000s, when we were fighting terrorism in Russia, we abolished the death penalty. And there is no death penalty in Russia at present. There are certain countries that use the death penalty – Saudi Arabia, the United States and some others.

We regret this has happened, especially given that the cleric had not been fighting against Saudi Arabia with lethal force. Yet it is true that an embassy attack is a totally unacceptable occurrence in the modern world. As far as I know, the Iranian authorities have arrested several perpetrators of the assault. If our participation in any form is needed, we are ready to do everything possible to resolve the conflict as soon as possible.

Bild: One last question, Mr President.

During the preparations for the Winter Olympics in Sochi, there was heavy criticism in the West of democratic development and human rights situation in Russia. Do you expect similar criticism to arise again during the preparations for the 2018 FIFA World Cup?

I think the Russian language is more extensive than German. (Noting the long translation of the question from German into Russian.)

Vladimir Putin: I would say the German language is more precise.

The Russian language is more diverse, more elegant. However, such genius minds as, say, Goethe make the German language sound very elegant and beautiful. One can feel its beauty only in German, and to be able to feel it one needs to understand it.

As far as democracy is concerned, the ruling classes usually talk about freedom to pull the wool over the eyes of those whom they govern. There is nothing new about democracy in Russia. As we have already identified, democracy is the rule of the people and the influence of the people over the authorities. We have learned very well the lesson of one-party rule – that of the Communist Party (CPSU). Therefore, we made our choice long ago and we will continue developing democratic institutions in our country. At present, 77 political parties can take part in parliamentary elections in Russia. We have come back to direct gubernatorial elections.

We are advancing the instruments of direct democracy, meaning various public organisations, and will continue to do so. There can be no identical clichés in democracy – be it American, European (German), Russian or Indian. Do you know that twice in American history the President was elected by the majority of delegates representing the minority of voters? Does it mean the absence of democracy? Of course not. But it is not the only or the most important problem. One of the European leaders once told me: “In the United States it is impossible to run for presidency without a few billion dollars in your pocket.”

Now, regarding the parliamentary system of democracy.

I am repeatedly asked: “How long have you been President?” But in a parliamentary democracy, the person number one is the Prime Minister, who can head the Government an unlimited number of times.

We have returned to direct elections of regional heads. In some countries, however, heads of regions are appointed by the central government. I am not sure, I may be wrong, it is probably better to leave it out or to double-check it, but, as far as I know, that is the case in India.

We still have a number of problems to solve before people feel confident that they have real influence over the authorities and that the authorities respond to their demands. We are going to work towards improving our instruments.

As for the attempts to use sport in political rifts and political competition, I believe that is a huge mistake. That is what stupid people do. If problems arise, particularly at the interstate level, sport, art, music, ballet and opera are the very means that should bring people closer together rather than divide them. It is vital to foster this role of art and sport rather than belittle and suppress it.

Bild: Thank you, Mr President, for a wonderful and very detailed conversation.

Tags 2016, Bild, English, Germany, interview, January, NATO, Russia, Syria, Ukraine, Vladimir Putin

Categories international law, philosophy, politics, social responsibility

Seymour Hersh & Mythology

December 26, 2015 //

What’s wrong with this picture?

The New Yorker magazine’s “regular columnist” Seymour Hersh had defected to the The London Review of Books in recent times, in matters of the national security state, apparently because the New Yorker had not been publishing Hersh’s more dangerous or damning materials. There is a full two years gap, March 2013 to March 2015, the New Yorker had not published anything by Hersh at all and those two pieces are mostly more or less ‘harmless’ (to the national security state) materials of either a retrospective or philosophical bent. It had been April 2012 since Hersh’s “Our Men in Iran” had last poked a stick in the American intelligence community’s eye at the New Yorker. Fortunately (or in some cases, perhaps not so fortunately) Hersh found a new platform for his articles.

Now, if I were Seymour Hersh’s ‘national security’ professor at his local community college over the semester and a half since the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 (counting semesters in geopolitical decades), now is about the time I would call Hersh into my office and let him know he is in serious danger of flunking the academic year:

One incomplete end of 1st semester assignment he stated he’d be turning in, and has not, on Dick Cheney’s “executive assassination ring”, promised in April, 2009 but still ‘under construction’ a full six years later.

Insofar as the current semester:

January 2011, Class presentation ‘speech at Doha‘ (Qatar) graded B- … Hersh quite accurately describes the Joint Special Operations Command as “Crusaders” with the mission statement equivalent to “‘we’re gonna change mosques into cathedrals'” … however his reduced grade stems from the fact it’s not just the JSOC but the larger command structure at the Pentagon per se. If this crusading element were limited more or less to JSOC (where there is indeed a severe infection) and not the larger Pentagon command structure, e.g. we would have seen the USA military’s number one uber-right evangelical/proselytizing cult, the Air Force Academy, cleaned up. Instead, what we see is a sustained pretense of dealing with the hard core evangelical elements in the USAF officer corps where a necrotic fundamentalism is the demanded, de facto norm, throughout the institution. We’ll come back to this infection.

April 2012, Our Men in Iran; paper graded C+ … excellent beginning work on the Iranian dissident group Mojahedin-e-Khalq having been trained by the Americans on behalf of the Israelis to carry out assassinations in Iran. Reduced grade for overlooking the USA had blackmailed the Mojahedin-e-Khalq into returning to the business of terror (after they’d renounced armed struggle) by holding a large portion of the rank and file membership hostage; initially at Camp Ashraf in Iraq, and subsequently at what amounts to a prison annex at the Baghdad airport. These are a few thousand MeK veteran troops have been imprisoned in Iraq, under threat of being handed over to Iran, since surrendering to the Americans, without hostilities, at the outset of the Iraq invasion. Other MeK dissidents are scattered across Europe, where they operate as an Iranian ‘human rights’ front in Berlin, as well large numbers are in Paris where the leadership enjoys a decadent luxury and the ‘friendship’ of some notable American neocons, not least Rudy Giuliani. Meanwhile, the MeK ‘de-listing’ as a terror group by the USA’s Department of State appears to coincide with MeK re-entering the terror game, under duress, on the side of American and Israeli interests, in a cynicism that is typical of western geopolitical realities.

December 2013 is Hersh’s ‘whose sarin‘ initial outline of doubts Assad’s government is the perpetrator of the ongoing chemical weapons attacks in Syria. We’ll consider this a beginning syllabus on the subject Hersh returns to in the next piece. No grade.

April 2014, with The Red Line and The Rat Line Hersh takes the ball forward on the case for sarin gas employ in Syria in what the spooks call a false flag, in this case Turkey’s MIT or external intelligence has facilitated the delivery of all the necessary components to assemble sarin to al-Nusra (al-Qaida) in Syria. His article, if somewhat incomplete with the details, does nail the real perpetrators. Considering his sources are American, and he actually managed to get into the facts, we have to give him a solid B … the reduced grade reflects either 1) USA intelligence is handicapped in the matter (not likely) or 2) Hersh or his sources are hedging, which is more likely the case. In fact, USA intelligence almost certainly knew it was Turkey behind the gas blamed on Assad by the time of Hersh writing his ‘syllabus’ four months previous to this and either they or Hersh held that card until comfortable with its release. Why the hedge? This professor smells a rat we’ll come back to. Hersh should have smelled it too.

May 2015, Hersh pens The Killing of Osama bin Ladin, a piece detailing too many lies, turnabouts and misleads to count within the American ‘security apparatus’ on the supposed death of a man already dead a full 13 years by the time of the Hersh narrative. Second semester mid-term exam F for EPIC FAIL. Central Intelligence had last met with their long time asset bin Ladin in July of 2001 at the American Hospital in Dubai where he was being treated for renal failure and a diagnosis of two years to live, maximum. Imagine, just three months later, a frail ‘two years to live’ bin-Ladin puts his portable dialysis machine on mules, together with a portable electric grid or generator, diesel or petrol, and goes to live in a cave in the Hindu Kush. Spare parts for all the machines and backup generator included. On top of having escaped Kandahar with the USA invasion of October, this ‘mule train’ (or whatever substituted for travel over terrain that denied motorized vehicle use, I doubt they were using Uzbek ‘coolies’ to haul generators, dialysis machine and fuel) traveled to Tora Bora which immediate vicinity was subsequently bombed to shards by B-52 heavy bombers raining down ordinance to a point “the landscape has been changed” or enough carpet bombing to level a small city. Now, having to escape THAT, bin-Ladin’s ‘mule train’ consisted of (imagine the tune ‘Twelve Days of Christmas’)

12 Uzbek-Qaida muleskinners
11 mules with shoes a-sparkin
10 Jerrycans a-clanging
9 B-40 rockets a-swingin
80 MmmRrrrEees…
7 cases of 7.62 x 39 mm
6 cell phones with no signal
50 TaleeeBan…
4 ISI agents
3 Pashtun guides
2 generators
and a dialysis machine with spare parts.

Supposedly having left Tora Bora unnoticed, bin-Ladin was never heard from again by SIGNIT (signals intelligence, Tora Bora radio intercepts were his last.) The man was dead. He never made it to Pakistan. However he was still useful as a boogeyman because no one could produce his body and the CIA morons on location presumed bin-Ladin escaped (no doubt with his mule train) rather than admit they didn’t (and don’t to this day) know what actually happened. Bonered up CIA cowboy Gary Berntsen (hiya Gary, how tricks since I buggered your ass at San Feliu de Guixols, 2010? FYI what I did to you is called a ‘dry cob’ job) and CIA moron Cofer Black decided to pin their onerous (odious, actually) failure on the military, and Alfreda Bikowsky, who actually sent the FBI to search for Black al-Qaida cells in Montana (what a story that is), was subsequently put in charge of looking for a dead man.

The most likely consequent scenario is, nearly nine years later it was becoming increasingly clear to the Pakistani ISI that in fact bin-Ladin never survived December-January 2001-2002 and the legend has to be finished off. With an axe to grind with the CIA (the botched Khan nuclear black market sting), they set up a ‘dangle’ (a former ISI officer walks in to bag the $25 million reward) for the CIA which rushes to take the bait. What to do when the raid on the Abbottabad kills several harmless people and at best nets a bin-Ladin look-alike? No photo release and bury him at sea without any ships crew witnessed this and all military records seem to be ‘lost?’ Then SEAL Team Six in the hands of some of the best combat aviator coordinators in the world has a totally unprofessional- incompetent demise and we are assured by the DoD this was not the unit involved in the bin-Ladin ‘body snatch’ (we’re supposed to take the DoD’s word for it.) The Abbottabad bin-Ladin relatives are subsequently held incommunicado (no press interviews) by the Pakistanis and simply vanish, supposedly sent off to live happily ever after in some nirvana-like life courtesy of the House of Saud. Sure, that ought to work. Especially when considering the absolute morons running the CIA throughout this period would be perfect to set up for an inter-intelligence-agency sting. Shit happens.

So, what to do when ‘the prez’ has announced to the world that bin-Ladin has been killed before the DNA samples tested negative? Tell him? Probably not. Classify everything ‘lost’ (that’s what the Department of Defense did) and likely put a counterfeit DNA result into whatever report was necessary over at CIA and then bury it in classification at the highest level (with the ‘original samples ‘lost’ or destroyed, no doubt.) The numerous lies and conflicting stories Seymour Hersh turns up in his ‘The Killing of Osama bin Ladin’ make more sense when looked at in the circumstance of an agency (the CIA) which had been ‘snookered’ and no one knew what story to tell because no one wanted to take on the responsibility of getting all the complicit idiots (liars) on the same page in a situation of no competence. The circumstance precluded creating a consistent mythology. But this is not the case with Hersh’s next avowed set of facts:

December 2015 (the January 2016 issue of the London Review of Books) Hersh’s Military to Military sets out a case for the Pentagon flirting with treason (Hersh does not call it that) with undermining Commander-in-Chief Obama’s objectives in Syria. Hersh’s ‘rendition’ of the facts, in short, is the Pentagon has indirectly propped up Assad with intelligence sharing through the Russian military, so as to prevent the collapse of Syria into the chaos that typifies today’s Libya, only worse. The White House didn’t know this, or if they did, they didn’t know what to do about it except to nominate a hard core right wing Catholic and perfect Russophobe-cold-war-dick named Joe Dunford to take over as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and get the loose-cannon generals back under the control of moroness policy advisers like Sam Power and her reptilian reflex approach of ‘if we can fuck it, it will be fucked.’ Hersh’s narrative presents the following, coherent seeming mythology:

Our Generals under recently retired Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Dempsey, come across as sensible, sane and motivated to the common good in this endeavor.
The White House, by contrast, comes across as senseless, trapped in their incompetence, even insane, or a perfect world peace threatening ‘cluster-fuck’ in the mean vernacular.

Hersh closes his piece with entertaining a mystery; why is it insisted on by the Obama White House we will follow the path of least resistance to absolute world chaos? Or in Hersh’s own words:

The Joint Chiefs and the DIA were constantly telling Washington’s leadership of the jihadist threat in Syria … [t]he message was never listened to. Why not?

The tongue-in-cheek answer would be everyone at the White House is infected with David Icke’s lizard DNA. But not so fast, because I have the real intelligence on the Pentagon and our generals aren’t some crew of goody-two-shoes boy scouts. These guys are real reptiles (a metaphor, let’s not be too friendly with the theology of David Icke) with the ethical motivations of a monitor lizard. This brings us back (as promised) to Hersh’s feeble understanding of the religious right in our military’s officer corps at the very top. General Dempsey, the focus of sanity in Hersh’s presentation, has been little more than an alter boy to the Opus Dei Hersh accuses of hijacking the JSOC [Joint Special Operations Command] in his Doha speech, a dyed in the wool, conservative Catholic through and through. Let’s have a look at where the recently retired [former] chairman Dempsy has landed:

American Grand Strategy (AGS) is an interdisciplinary initiative across Duke University that creates and shares new knowledge in the grand strategy field. The program’s mission is to prepare the next generation of strategists by studying past generations and interacting with current strategic leaders. We are building a research community of faculty, graduate students, and undergraduates who are committed to deepening their understanding of America’s role in the world – past, present and future.

AGS hosts The Ambassador Dave and Kay Phillips Family International Lecture series: endowed for the purpose of bringing prominent figures in international security, foreign policy, and diplomacy to Duke University in order to engage with students, faculty, and the larger Duke community about issues of international importance. Contemporary leaders who have attended include, Mitt Romney, Stephen Hadley, Ray Odierno, Karl Eikenberry, David Petraeus, Karl Rove, Howard Dean, Condoleezza Rice, Martin Dempsey, Robert Gates, and Fareed Zakaria

If ever there were a snake-pit of ruinous geopolitical policy-makers and pundits (liars for Jesus) on the right wing of American politics, that’s it. This is Seymour Hersh’s protagonist Dempsey in his real colors. Of the no less than four generals and one Secretary of Defense listed; Odierno, Eikenberry, Petraeus, Dempsey and Gates respectively, all were in position to influence and reduce the radical Christian right’s pervasive influence in the USA’s armed forces. None of them did. Eikenberry and Odierno firmly sat on their hands. Dempsey protected them. Petraeus endorsed them. Gates promoted them and what’s more is, was key in setting the Obama administration down the wrong road at its inception when working with Petraeus to more closely integrate the JSOC to the CIA (not to mention instigating the failed Afghanistan ‘surge.’) Of the non-military personalities, Condoleezza Rice is a rabid right wing evangelical. Her deputy, Hadley, had his fingerprints all over the Bush Jr crimes sprees including the frame-up of Saddam for possession of uranium (Plame affair.) Rove devised the strategy which handed the USA, lock, stock & barrel, to the American religious right. Dean is complicit in providing cover for the Mojahedin-e-Khalq terror de-listing even as that group was blackmailed into reentering the game versus Iran but now on the side of Israel with USA supported assassination training, that very training being the subject of Hersh’s ‘Our Men in Iran.’ Zakaria comes up a CIA media whore for geopolitics in nearly every direction one looks, not least his FORD Foundation funding for past projects. Every one of those listed at the Duke program is a snake dripping venom on the right wing of politics, including stealth neocon Dean, who worked together with Rudy Giuliani and Tom Ridge, when ‘rehabilitating’ Mojahedin-e-Khalq for Bibi Netanyahu’s outsourced assassinations of Iranian nuclear scientists. Now, looking at Dempsey in that cesspool when compared with the sanity assigned by Hersh in his ‘Military to Military’, Hersh’s portrayal of Dempsey can’t hold up.

Then, we have another problem. Why would Hersh’s sympathetic sources rat out the supposedly sane generals trying to keep the insanity from spiraling out of control in Syria? That doesn’t smell right. Not only does it not smell right, it violates his sources intelligence training. All military sources would have the necessary intelligence training to operate at the level Hersh is reporting the leaks from and the discipline not to compromise themselves and associates. Are Hersh’s essential facts on intelligence sharing with Assad through the Russians properly lined up? Probably. So, what’s up? Why the leaks to Hersh?

Behind the Mythology

I’ve seen some of the confidential statements to Mikey Weinstein of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation by the few of our secular General Officers pointing to the rampant treason against our constitution by Christian dominion personalities they dare not speak about or challenge openly. If our secular Generals and Admirals don’t dare speak out, what should that say to a reasonable person? Who controls the tactical nuclear weapons that are held independently of the President’s ‘football’ controlling a strategic nuclear launch? Personalities like NATO Supreme Commander (US Air Force General) Phillip Breedlove who is clearly itching for a war with Russia. It would appear he just got an (Obama appointed) ally in Joe Dunford who has replaced Hersh’s faux hero (snake in the grass) General Dempsey as JCS chairman.

Whoever ratted out the Russian connection to Hersh has an agenda and that agenda is not preserving the sanity (probably accurately) portrayed by Hersh. What we are more likely looking at is, the struggle between the Christian dominion and secular officers, the elephant in the living room no one dares bring up. The radical right wing had got wind of what is up and pulled a bait and switch on the reading public by a duped Seymour Hersh who was used as the ‘cut out’ to 1) collapse the secular officers intelligence sharing scheme 2) take credit in the public eye for sanity by those very same insane officers and most importantly 3) undercut Hillary on whose watch the badly fucked up Syria policy was set in motion. What an irony, because Hillary would so deserve this and double rich in irony as it was then CIA director & rabid right wing evangelical David Petraeus did the dirty work initiating the hit job on the Assad regime.

Don’t worry about this all not making much common sense, if Obama’s ‘national security’ squeeze Susan Rice never saw a ‘humanitarian intervention’ she didn’t like, the religious right generals at the Pentagon will take every one of them gratefully; all the while ‘praising Jesus’ on the road to Armageddon and pointing the finger of blame at people who’re just plain stupid and have been played to precisely the generals agenda of seeing the return of Jesus via apocalyptic events in the middle east per their theology and ‘Bible Prophecy’ … while Obama’s ‘girls’ … Hillary Clinton, Samantha Power and Susan Rice get the full credit for taking us all to hell in a hand-basket when in fact they only deserve the one half of it. Meanwhile you can take in your Pentagon Bible study HERE

Now, on the overdue paper from last semester, if Hersh’s study of Cheney tracks down the Kosovo criminal ring that harvested Cheney’s replacement heart for his transplant, I’ll pass Hersh for the academic year with a solid C grade 😉

Related: Bin Laden & the Fourth Estate

Tags Pentagon, Seymour Hersh, Syria

Categories assassinations, CIA, counter intelligence, crime, false flag, information operations, intelligence, Israel, Morons, MOSSAD, politics, propaganda, religion, transcendent warfare, treason, Uncategorized

Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity

December 23, 2015 //

I don’t know who are the strategists for the group Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity but I’ll say this about their ‘open letter’ (pasted in, below) demanding USA Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov lay out the facts concerning the Ghouta, Syria, sarin gas attack:

Asking Kerry to come clean on Ghouta is like appealing to Foghorn Leghorn to properly identify a chicken. Asking Lavrov to confront the Obama administration with the facts is demanding his boss, President Putin, surrender applying ‘realpolitik’ in his dealings with the USA which seems nearly as unlikely. Why not hit home with the evidence (it’s out there) at German parliament, the office of the German federal prosecutor and office of the prosecutor at the International Criminal Court with an online writing campaign? The German political establishment is sensitive to the issue of gassing people, the German people are not (yet) entirely a flock trained to stay within the electric fence of the official positions set out by their leadership and German intelligence has been demonstrably complicit in the attempted overthrow of Assad.

Open letters are a joke. What is needed is a deluge of letters demanding accountability; effectively hammering at either there is a rule of law or there is not a rule of law, while putting what are supposed to be accountable institutions on the spot:

Send a Letter

If ‘Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity’ would get behind the (above linked) letter campaign or do something similar themselves, they’d quit looking like the current edition of ‘Meet the Fockers‘

MEMORANDUM FOR: U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, and Foreign Minister of Russia Sergey Lavrov

FROM: Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS)

SUBJECT: Sarin Attack at Ghouta on Aug. 21, 2013

In a Memorandum of Oct. 1, 2013, we asked each of you to make public the intelligence upon which you based your differing conclusions on who was responsible for the sarin chemical attack at Ghouta, outside Damascus on Aug. 21, 2013. On Dec. 10, 2015, Eren Erdem, a member of parliament in Turkey, citing official documents, blamed Turkey for facilitating the delivery of sarin to rebels in Syria.

Mr. Kerry, you had blamed the Syrian government. Mr. Lavrov, you had described the sarin as “homemade” and suggested anti-government rebels were responsible. Each of you claimed to have persuasive evidence to support your conclusion.

Neither of you responded directly to our appeal to make such evidence available to the public, although, Mr. Lavrov, you came close to doing so. In a speech at the UN on Sept. 26, 2013, you made reference to the views we presented in our VIPS Memorandum, Is Syria a Trap?, sent to President Obama three weeks earlier.

Pointing to strong doubt among chemical weapons experts regarding the evidence adduced to blame the government of Syria for the sarin attack, you also referred to the “open letter sent to President Obama by former operatives of the CIA and the Pentagon,” in which we expressed similar doubt.

Mr. Kerry, on Aug. 30, 2013, you blamed the Syrian government, publicly and repeatedly, for the sarin attack. But you failed to produce the kind of “Intelligence Assessment” customarily used to back up such claims.

We believe that this odd lack of a formal “Intelligence Assessment” is explained by the fact that our former colleagues did not believe the evidence justified your charges and that, accordingly, they resisted pressure to “fix the intelligence around the policy,” as was done to “justify” the attack on Iraq.

Intelligence analysts were telling us privately (and we told the President in our Memorandum of Sept. 6, 2013) that, contrary to what you claimed, “the most reliable intelligence shows that Bashar al-Assad was not responsible for the chemical incident that killed and injured Syrian civilians on August 21.”

This principled dissent from these analysts apparently led the White House to create a new art form, a “Government Assessment,” to convey claims that the government in Damascus was behind the sarin attack. It was equally odd that the newly minted genre of report offered not one item of verifiable evidence.

(We note that you used this new art form “Government (not Intelligence) Assessment” a second time – again apparently to circumvent intelligence analysts’ objections. On July 22, 2014, just five days after the shoot-down of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, after the media asked you to come up with evidence supporting the charges you leveled against “pro-Russian separatists” on the July 20 Sunday talk shows, you came up with the second, of only two, “Government Assessment.” Like the one on the chemical attack in Syria, the assessment provided meager fare when it comes to verifiable evidence.)

Claims and Counterclaims

Speaking to the United Nations General Assembly on Sept. 24, 2013, President Obama asserted: “It’s an insult to human reason and to the legitimacy of this institution to suggest that anyone other than the [Syrian] regime carried out this attack [at Ghouta].”

Mr. Lavrov, that same day you publicly complained that U.S. officials kept claiming “’the Syrian regime,’ as they call it, is guilty of the use of chemical weapons, without providing comprehensive proof.” Two days later you told the U.N. General Assembly you had given Mr. Kerry “the latest compilation of evidence, which was an analysis of publicly available information.” You also told the Washington Post, “This evidence is not something revolutionary. It’s available on the Internet.”

On the Internet? Mr. Kerry, if your staff avoided calling your attention to Internet reports about Turkish complicity in the sarin attack of Aug. 21, 2013, because they lacked confirmation, we believe you can now consider them largely confirmed.

Documentary Evidence

Addressing fellow members of parliament on Dec. 10, 2015, Turkish MP Eren Erdem from the Republican People’s Party (a reasonably responsible opposition group) confronted the Turkish government on this key issue. Waving a copy of “Criminal Case Number 2013/120,” Erdem referred to official reports and electronic evidence documenting a smuggling operation with Turkish government complicity.

In an interview with RT four days later, Erdem said Turkish authorities had acquired evidence of sarin gas shipments to anti-government rebels in Syria, and did nothing to stop them.

The General Prosecutor in the Turkish city of Adana opened a criminal case, and an indictment stated “chemical weapons components” from Europe “were to be seamlessly shipped via a designated route through Turkey to militant labs in Syria.” Erdem cited evidence implicating the Turkish Minister of Justice and the Turkish Mechanical and Chemical Industry Corporation in the smuggling of sarin.

The Operation

According to Erdem, the 13 suspects arrested in raids carried out against the plotters were released just a week after they were indicted, and the case was closed — shut down by higher authority. Erdem told RT that the sarin attack at Ghouta took place shortly after the criminal case was closed and that the attack probably was carried out by jihadists with sarin gas smuggled through Turkey.

Small wonder President Erdogan has accused Erdem of “treason.” It was not Erdem’s first “offense.” Earlier, he exposed corruption by Erdogan family members, for which a government newspaper branded him an “American puppet, Israeli agent, a supporter of the terrorist PKK and the instigator of a coup.”

In our Sept. 6, 2013 Memorandum for the President, we reported that coordination meetings had taken place just weeks before the sarin attack at a Turkish military garrison in Antakya – just 15 miles from the Syrian border with Syria and 55 miles from its largest city, Aleppo.

In Antakya, senior Turkish, Qatari and U.S. intelligence officials were said to be coordinating plans with Western-sponsored rebels, who were told to expect an imminent escalation in the fighting due to “a war-changing development.” This, in turn, would lead to a U.S.-led bombing of Syria, and rebel commanders were ordered to prepare their forces quickly to exploit the bombing, march into Damascus, and remove the Assad government.

A year before, the New York Times reported that the Antakya area had become a “magnet for foreign jihadis, who are flocking into Turkey to fight holy war in Syria.” The Times quoted a Syrian opposition member based in Antakya, saying the Turkish police were patrolling this border area “with their eyes closed.”

And, Mr. Lavrov, while the account given by Eren Erdem before the Turkish Parliament puts his charges on the official record, a simple Google search including “Antakya” shows that you were correct in stating the Internet contains a wealth of contemporaneous detail supporting Erdem’s disclosures.

Mr. Kerry, while in Moscow on Dec. 15, you said to a Russian interviewer that Syrian President Assad “has gassed his people – I mean, gas hasn’t been used in warfare formally for years – for – and gas is outlawed, but Assad used it.”

Three days later The Washington Post dutifully repeated the charge about Assad’s supposed killing “his own people with chemical weapons.” U.S. media have made this the conventional wisdom. The American people are not fully informed. There has been no mainstream media reporting on Turkish MP Erdem’s disclosures.

Renewed Appeal

We ask you again, Secretary Kerry and Foreign Minister Lavrov, to set the record straight on this important issue. The two of you have demonstrated an ability to work together on important matters – the Iran nuclear deal, for example – and have acknowledged a shared interest in defeating ISIS, which clearly is not Turkish President Erdogan’s highest priority. Indeed, his aims are at cross-purposes to those wishing to tamp down the violence in Syria.

After the shoot-down of Russia’s bomber on Nov. 24, President Vladimir Putin put Russian forces in position to retaliate the next time, and told top defense officials, “Any targets threatening our [military] group or land infrastructure must be immediately destroyed.” We believe that warning should be taken seriously. What matters, though, is what Erdogan believes.

There is a good chance Erdogan will be dismissive of Putin’s warning, as long as the Turkish president believes he can depend on NATO always to react in the supportive way it did after the shoot-down.

One concrete way to disabuse him of the notion that he has carte blanche to create incidents that could put not only Turkey, but also the U.S., on the verge of armed conflict with Russia, would be for the U.S. Secretary of State and the Russian Foreign Minister to coordinate a statement on what we believe was a classic false-flag chemical attack on Aug. 21, 2013, facilitated by the Turks and aimed at mousetrapping President Obama into a major attack on Syria.

One of our colleagues, a seasoned analyst of Turkish affairs, put it this way: “Erdogan is even more dangerous if he thinks that he now has NATO license to bait Russia — as he did with the shoot-down. I don’t think NATO is willing to give him that broader license, but he is a loose cannon.”

FOR THE STEERING GROUP, VETERAN INTELLIGENCE PROFESSIONALS FOR SANITY

Philip Giraldi, CIA, Operations Officer (ret.)

Larry Johnson, CIA & State Department (ret.)

John Kiriakou, Former CIA Counterterrorism Officer

Edward Loomis, NSA, Cryptologic Computer Scientist (ret.)

David MacMichael, National Intelligence Council (ret.)

Ray McGovern, former US Army infantry/intelligence officer & CIA analyst (ret.)

Todd E. Pierce, MAJ, US Army Judge Advocate (Ret.)

Scott Ritter, former Maj., USMC, former UN Weapon Inspector, Iraq

Coleen Rowley, FBI Special Agent and former Minneapolis Division Legal Counsel (ret.)

Robert David Steele, former CIA Operations Officer

Peter Van Buren, U.S. Department of State, Foreign Service Officer (ret.) (associate VIPS)

Kirk Wiebe, former Senior Analyst, SIGINT Automation Research Center, NSA

Ann Wright, Col., US Army (ret.); Foreign Service Officer (resigned)

A Spy vs Spy notation by Ronald

Whereas the Enemy of Your Friend is Your Favorite F**K

Tags Ghouta, John Kerry, Sarin, Sergei Lavron, short bus, Syria, Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, VIPS

Categories CIA, corruption, crime, false flag, intelligence, international law, Morons, politics, propaganda, social responsibility, transcendent warfare, treason, Uncategorized, war crimes

Send a Letter

December 7, 2015 //

Hello friends of social consciousness ( I presume ; )

If you would be so kind as to read the text of a linked (below) article on NATO actor Turkey involvement with chemical warfare, a news story not reported on AT ALL in western press, I would like to point you all to a world class criminal event where you could make a difference with little effort. It is as easy as copying and pasting a few addresses from the provided email list of senior members of the German parliament (plus the German constitutional court & office of the prosecutor at the International Criminal Court) into the address field of an email of your own composition or an email that copies the proposed email presented below and demand as little as two words: Do something! The rational here is, German intelligence, or their political bosses are complicit in concealing the truly culpable parties to a gas attack in Syria, a crime where the actual details have become known. It was NATO’s Turkey gassed the Syrians in what’s known in spy-craft as a ‘false flag operation.’ It is unconscionable that German intelligence (or their bosses) would fail to faithfully and honestly report on a war crime or crime against humanity where poison gas had been used.

Thank you and sincerely

Ronald Thomas West

Send to a few of the following (not too many, so your mail is not rejected as spam) hans-christian.stroebele@bundestag.de, ulla.jelpke@bundestag.de, irene.mihalic@bundestag.de, michael.hartmann@wk.bundestag.de, armin.schuster.wk@bundestag.de, norbert.lammert@bundestag.de, peter.hintze@bundestag.de, johannes.singhammer@bundestag.de, edelgard.bulmahn@wk.bundestag.de, ursula.schmidt@wk.bundestag.de, petra.pau@bundestag.de, claudia.roth@bundestag.de, marieluise.beck@bundestag.de, omid.nouripour@bundestag.de, stefan.liebich@bundestag.de, niels.annen@bundestag.de, roderich.kiesewetter@bundestag.de, gregor.gysi@bundestag.de, Posteingangsstelle@bgh.bund.de, OTP.InformationDesk@icc-cpi.int,

Dear Members of the German Parliament

I wish to draw attention to recent information regarding your NATO ally Turkey. It had been revealed by two courageous members of Turkey’s parliament that in fact it was Turkey’s federal intelligence services were behind the August 2013 Ghouta, Syria sarin gas attack, killing more than one thousand three hundred ordinary Syrians, an attack NATO nations had blamed on the regime of Basher al-Assad. Your own Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND) intelligence agency should have been aware of this fact from very nearly the beginning, as they have been proactively engaged in Syria and the Syrian conflict, as well as spying on Turkey.

This raises strong questions of possible BND criminal complicity considering Germany’s support for certain NATO nations directly in relation to the Syrian conflict. What did the BND know and when? Has the BND, when passing intelligence on Syria to Assad’s opposition through its NATO allies, supported the actors who gassed the Syrians? Is Germany’s supportive relationship to the Erdogan government a lawful one, in light of this recent evidence? Has the BND contributed to the geopolitical disinformation blaming Assad for the August 2013 Sarin attack? Has your parliament been deceived in this matter, particularly your intelligence oversight committee?

Clearly the Sarin case, considering Germany, as a knowledgeable or complicit actor in Syria, should be pursued against the culpable officials in Turkey via the legal mechanism of Völkerstrafgesetzbuch (universal jurisdiction), as well as domestic prosecutions of those German officials, noting the BND particularly, who’ve failed in their reporting requirements and/or conspired to conceal a war crime or crime against humanity.

These should be questions and demand you will present to the federal prosecutor.

What’s more is, state actor Turkey initiating the Sarin attack is not some undocumented allegation. As you can see from the attached reporting, there was a proper investigation by Turkish authorities with developed evidence and indictments. I regret to inform you in this case, President Erdogan is personally demanding or initiating the prosecutions that have seen some 30 journalists jailed or facing jail for making these sort of revelations, as well he jails those lawful authorities who pursue investigating crimes perpetrated by the Edogan administration, undermining de jure government institutions.

Text of the (linked) competent article by reputable Turkish journalists:

Two deputies from the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) have claimed that the government is against investigating Turkey’s role in sending toxic sarin gas which was used in an attack on civilians in Syria in 2013 and in which over 1,300 Syrians were killed.

CHP deputies Eren Erdem and Ali Şeker held a press conference in İstanbul on Wednesday in which they claimed the investigation into allegations regarding Turkey’s involvement in the procurement of sarin gas which was used in the chemical attack on a civil population and delivered to the terrorist Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) to enable the attack was derailed.

Taking the floor first, Erdem stated that the Adana Chief Prosecutor’s Office launched an investigation into allegations that sarin was sent to Syria from Turkey via several businessmen. An indictment followed regarding the accusations targeting the government.

“The MKE [Turkish Mechanical and Chemical Industry Corporation] is also an actor that is mentioned in the investigation file. Here is the indictment. All the details about how sarin was procured in Turkey and delivered to the terrorists, along with audio recordings, are inside the file,” Erdem said while waving the file.

Erdem also noted that the prosecutor’s office conducted detailed technical surveillance and found that an al-Qaeda militant, Hayyam Kasap, acquired sarin, adding: “Wiretapped phone conversations reveal the process of procuring the gas at specific addresses as well as the process of procuring the rockets that would fire the capsules containing the toxic gas. However, despite such solid evidence there has been no arrest in the case. Thirteen individuals were arrested during the first stage of the investigation but were later released, refuting government claims that it is fighting terrorism,” Erdem noted.

Over 1,300 people were killed in the sarin gas attack in Ghouta and several other neighborhoods near the Syrian capital of Damascus, with the West quickly blaming the regime of Bashar al-Assad and Russia claiming it was a “false flag” operation aimed at making US military intervention in Syria possible.

Suburbs near Damascus were struck by rockets containing the toxic sarin gas in August 2013.

The purpose of the attack was allegedly to provoke a US military operation in Syria which would topple the Assad regime in line with the political agenda of then-Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and his government.

CHP deputy Şeker spoke after Erdem, pointing out that the government misled the public on the issue by asserting that sarin was provided by Russia. The purpose was to create the perception that, according to Şeker, “Assad killed his people with sarin and that requires a US military intervention in Syria.”

He also underlined that all of the files and evidence from the investigation show a war crime was committed within the borders of the Turkish Republic.

“The investigation clearly indicates that those people who smuggled the chemicals required to procure sarin faced no difficulties, proving that Turkish intelligence was aware of their activities. While these people had to be in prison for their illegal acts, not a single person is in jail. Former prime ministers and the interior minister should be held accountable for their negligence in the incident,” Şeker further commented.

Erdem also added that he will launch a criminal complaint against those responsible, including those who issued a verdict of non-prosecution in the case, those who did not prevent the transfer of chemicals and those who first ordered the arrest of the suspects who were later released.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon announced in late August that an inquiry had been launched into the gas attacks allegedly perpetuated by both Assad’s Syrian regime and rebel groups fighting in Syria since the civil war erupted in 2011.

However, Erdem is not the only figure who has accused Turkey of possible involvement in the gas attack. Pulitzer Prize winner and journalist, Seymour M. Hersh, argued in an article published in 2014 that MİT was involved with extremist Syrian groups fighting against the Assad regime.

In his article, Hersh said Assad was not behind the attack, as claimed by the US and Europe, but that Turkish-Syrian opposition collaboration was trying to provoke a US intervention in Syria in order to bring down the Assad regime.

The original link is no longer good as Turkey’s government seized Today’s Zaman and shut down the English website and deleted all articles but anticipating this, the article is preserved in full HERE with screenshots.

Original link:

http://www.todayszaman.com/national_chp-deputies-govt-rejects-probe-into-turkeys-role-in-syrian-chemical-attack_402180.html

Headline screenshot:

Note on the preceding; all of the allegations concerning the proposed letter are well founded in open source. The Seymour Hersh article on the sarin gas attack: The Redline and the Ratline

Tags Bundesnachrichtendienst, false flag, Sarin, Syria

Categories corruption, counter intelligence, crime, Espionage, false flag, intelligence, Law, Morons, politics, propaganda, social responsibility, transcendent warfare, treason, Uncategorized, war crimes

Season of the Lemmings

November 24, 2015 //

I left this as a comment at Phill Giraldi’s Unz Review column. Time to time my comments are inspiration for my blog but this is the first one I’m bringing over here verbatim:

When the middle east was ‘decolonized’ (in name only) there were artificial boundaries left behind resembling those of the American Indian reservations where tribes with a long history of mutual animosity were forced into cohabitation. Secular strongmen kept a lid on the religious animosity between Shia and Sunni (the main and most problematic rivalry) in a region with an otherwise naturally decentralized body politic represented in various tribes and clans with local tradition of authority. There is no nation state tradition per se in the sense we know in ‘the west.’

The folly of attempting to impose western style (liberal) democracy on what amount to artificial entities to begin with (‘states’ comprised of arbitrary, colonial era drawn borders, incorporating peoples with longstanding differences and simmering animosities) is certain to see profound consequence. As much as it might be an undesirable short term and self-centered interest of less than noble parties to break these artificial entities up, the reality is any previous delicate balance has been so deeply compromised and poisoned, and the historic animosity between the areas indigenous rivals so stirred, there is no going back to the old status quo. ‘All the king’s horses and all the king’s men won’t put this humpty back together again.’

In the short term, America’s neo-cons (and neo-liberals) have, in a sense, won. But what? No one can predict where, when or what is going to come of this incredibly stupid gambit where the attempted overthrow of Assad was so great a fascination of converging, short-sighted interests, to go so far as to knowingly allow, nay, actually make that fostering, the rise of Islamic State.

Sunni Iraq is de facto broken off from Shia Iraq, Sunni Syria is effectively broken off from Alawite and Christian Syria and the Kurds, the largest stateless ethnic group in the world, is a wild card determined to have what they should have been allowed in the beginning, their own nation-state. Most Kurds are in Turkey with sizable populations in Iraq, Iran and Syria. Kurd national aspirations trump their largely Sunni religious affiliation. Erdogan, reflecting a long time Turkish chauvinism in relation to other ethnic groups, has destroyed what little rapprochement had been accomplished with not only Turkey’s own Kurdish population, but has alienated the Kurds of Syria and Iraq.

Phil [Giraldi’s] ‘destroying ISIS but how?’ has to take the long view where all of these complications are in play. Turkey, Israel, Saudi Arabia and Qatar all might give lip service to reasonable solution but the only solution they actually desire is Assad’s ouster and a compliant puppet to replace him. Meanwhile, the western powers have so much ego invested, they can hardly stand to turn a new page if they can’t write the script, although the ‘chickens come home to roost’ in Paris might have slapped some sense into Hollande, but we won’t know this for certain right away.

That sole, overarching fact is, international law and the United Nations, based in western traditions, are no match for the forces released with the meddling in this region by the no less than incredible stupidity of the western powers leadership. When the dust settles, let’s just hope it’s not radioactive –

Tags Daesh, France, Iran, iraq, IS, ISIL, ISIS, Islamic State, NATO, Paris, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Turkey, usa

Categories CIA, corruption, counter intelligence, crime, culture, international law, Israel, Morons, MOSSAD, transcendent warfare, treason, war crimes

The Real Intelligence on Our Leaders

November 18, 2015 //

Today’s media, FOX being the poster child, is exploiting the ignorant and narcissistic hate endemic to the uneducated White lower class in the USA, while parroting the official line. There is a deep and abiding fear underlies this hate, a social-cultural phenomenon rooted in a history of class exploiting race, whether the racism of ‘manifest destiny’ in relation to considering Native Americans sub-human to justify theft and murder; or the ‘White trash’ whose racism had been historically fed and exploited by the ‘southern aristocracy’ for political and pecuniary purpose.

Social phenomena being what it is, it follows there is the inter-generational aspect where the ignorance is sustained within family and community. ‘Mean people make little mean people.’ This ignorance is, in turn, exploited by the politics of fear mongering in the present.

Whether it is the fairly straightforward lies of the Rupert Murdochs (FOX News) in our world or the more insidious Hasbara of Israel, example given, posing as White, racist, anti-Semites in the article comments at Unz Review to smear authors like Phillip Giraldi with a false flag generating guilt by association, it is old tactic in play.

Now, Arabs (and Brown anybodies) are the new Native American to be feared as ‘savages’ in the 21st century edition of empire (manifest destiny) and, of course, there is underhanded play aplenty to radicalize just enough of the new ‘savages’ to insure a few will behave shockingly enough for media sensation. Meanwhile ’empire media’ will present ‘White Europe’ as the model of civilization under attack by barbarians, never mind we prop up the likes of ®Saudi Barbaria™.

Saudi Arabia, whom the USA has just sold another billion dollars plus in arms, exports Wahabi Islam that crucifies, beheads and delivers lashes in increments of 50 over years of torture as the victim is allowed to heal between the last fifty and next fifty to the number of 1,000. This cruelty is reflected in the close Saudi connections to, and support for, al-Qaida and Islamic State and with the Saudis financing mosques across Europe, what would one expect? That Brussels, example given, would become Europe’s ‘jihadi’ hotbed? The result is bringing discredit on ordinary, law abiding people of Muslim heritage everywhere, secular and religious.

This matrix of evil is all interconnected in the USA’s so-called ‘vital national interests’ where intelligence agencies, backed by corporate co-opted media, geo-engineer entire societies, whether via ‘color revolutions’, coups d’état or in the present ‘Arab Spring’ attempted overthrow of Syria’s Assad.

This immediate preceding case is where the so-called ‘Arab Spring’ had been prostituted in a case of converging interests; Saudi Arabia and Qatar looking to overthrow Assad to essentially to poke Iran in the eye with a sharp stick. Turkey to quash its paranoia of the Kurds exercising of any right of self determination exterior to its borders. Israel supporting al-Nusra to remove a thorn its side constituting the Golan Heights where they will be looking for a surrender of sovereignty in a weakened and compliant Syria broken off from Iran and Hezbollah in Lebanon. The USA appeasing Israel, and as well, appeasing ally (oil supplier) Saudi Arabia at odds with Iran also plays into the equation, as well USA, France, Germany and Britain play if only because they’re addicted to the profits from weapons sales propping up corporate neo-colonialism.

The result has been establishing (by the CIA in concert with Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Israel and to some extent the British, German and French intelligence agencies) the so-called ‘Free Syrian Army’ which has served as little more than a front to train and arm Salafist (extreme Wahabi) militia represented in al-Qaida and the emergence of Daesh (Islamic State, IS, ISIL, ISIS) as a device to overthrow the secular regime of Syria, noting any ‘real’ moderates are fighting on the side of the secular regime.

The result has been several fold; the flood of refugees out of Syria, the Paris massacre, the accelerated rise of a police state in the so-called ‘free world’ and not least, the overall increase of the value of stocks in the so-called ‘security industry’ (includes the profit margin increases of armaments producers across the board.)

All of this can be accomplished in the case of manipulating press to insure an ill educated and misinformed populace is thoroughly fear mongered; terrorists here, terrorists there, terrorists everywhere:

They see you when you’re sleeping (CNN)
They know when you’re awake (Al Jazeera)
They know when you’re out to dine (Le Monde)
So stay home for safety’s sake! (Der Speigel)
So you better watch out (The Daily Mail)
You’d better not fly (Canadian Broadcasting Corp)
Al-Baghdadi is coming to town (The Jerusalem Post)

Now, if any of you have any doubts as to the preceding, take a look (again) at what I’ve been hammering on at this site; we have a bonafide, (no doubt mistakenly or incredibly courageously) declassified intelligence report from the Defense Intelligence Agency that says in no uncertain terms the rise of Islamic State, as stated by the boss of the Defense Intelligence Agency when that very report was written, and speaking to that very same report, was “willful” and “a policy decision”

Now, ask yourselves, who is to blame for the attacks in Paris? I’ll name the names at the top: USA’s Obama, Turkey’s Erdogan, the House of Saud, the rulers of Qatar, France’s Hollande (and Sarkozy prior to Hollande), Britain’s Cameron, Germany’s Merkel and Israel’s Netanyahu.

Now, ask yourselves the more difficult questions; what western democratic constitution allows for intelligence agencies to engineer the rise of terrorist organizations for sake of geo-political manipulations? The plain answer is none. If Iran is the world’s premier sponsor of state terror as alleged by the USA Department of State, what are the so-called western democracies by comparison? It wasn’t Iran butchered the Parisians, it wasn’t Hezbollah and it wasn’t Assad either. The massacre in Paris is the direct result of the USA, in concert with Britain, France, Germany, Turkey, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Israel deliberately creating and feeding the conditions that saw the rise of Daesh (Islamic State, IS, ISIL, ISIS.) A secondary, but no less malignant result, will be the rise of the far right and nationalism in Europe, breeding fear, loathing and Islamophobia with growing radicalism on all parties part.

It should come as no surprise that those nations arming a dark ages regime such as Saudi Arabia would be criminal regimes in their own right, particularly noting in addition to the USA, France, Britain and Germany. Meanwhile, the criminal leadership of the western democracies has been cutting their own people’s throats. In every nation named, the actions of their respective intelligence agencies is directed from the executive level.

This is the real intelligence on our leaders and it’s not rocket science:

Note on the preceding: This essay, in slightly modified format, has been sent as a letter to eighteen German federal parliamentarians (BCC addresses omitted)

Hans Christian Stroebele <hans-christian.stroebele@bundestag.de>,
ulla.jelpke@bundestag.de,
irene.mihalic@bundestag.de,
michael.hartmann@wk.bundestag.de,
armin.schuster.wk@bundestag.de,
norbert.lammert@bundestag.de,
peter.hintze@bundestag.de,
johannes.singhammer@bundestag.de,
edelgard.bulmahn@wk.bundestag.de,
ursula.schmidt@wk.bundestag.de,
petra.pau@bundestag.de,
claudia.roth@bundestag.de,
marieluise.beck@bundestag.de,
omid.nouripour@bundestag.de,
stefan.liebich@bundestag.de,
niels.annen@bundestag.de,
roderich.kiesewetter@bundestag.de,
gregor.gysi@bundestag.de

Tags Britain, Cameron, Daesh, Erdogan, France, Germany, Hollande Merkel, House of Saud, IS, ISIL, ISIS, Islamic State, leadeership, Obama, Paris, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Turkey, usa

Categories CIA, counter intelligence, crime, false flag, information operations, politics, propaganda, transcendent warfare, treason, war crimes

Friday the 13th in Paris

November 13, 2015 //

“We’ve seen an outrageous attempt to terrorize innocent civilians, this is an attack not just on Paris, it is an attack not just on the people of France, but it is an attack on all of humanity and the universal values we share” -Barack Obama

Better had Obama truthfully stated ‘our clandestine agencies employing state terror to overthrow Assad has backfired’

Speaking directly to the above intelligence report, the western powers enabling the rise of Islamic State, according to the former boss of the Defense Intelligence Agency, General Mike Flynn, “was willful” & “a policy decision”

Why didn’t Obama, Hollande and company consider their clandestinely promoting the rise of Islamic State as a device to overthrow Assad was “an outrageous attempt to terrorize innocent civilians [and] an attack on all of humanity and the universal values we share” ??

Tags Bataclan, Daesh, Defense Intelligence Agency, Friday the 13th, Hollande, iraq, ISIL, ISIS, Islamic State, Michael Flynn, NATO, Obama, Paris, Syria

Categories counter intelligence, crime, culture, transcendent warfare, treason

Lies by Omission

November 1, 2015 //

What the western press will not report; United Nations General Secretary Ban Ki Moon stating:

“The future of President Assad must be decided by the Syrian people. It is totally unfair and unreasonable one person takes the whole political negotiation process hostage

“The Syrian government insists that President Assad should be part of [the transitional government]; many countries, particularly the West, say that there is no place for him

“Because of this we have lost three years, with more than 250,000 dead, more than 13 million people, over half of the population, is displaced inside Syria in urgent need of humanitarian aid, more than 50% of hospitals, schools and infrastructure have been destroyed”

Now, how does one read this? If you carefully look at the context indicating Assad’s future is up to the Syrian people in the first sentence, the second sentence of the 1st paragraph only makes sense if Moon is referring to the 2nd paragraph’s western demands Assad must go is how it came about one person ‘takes the whole negotiation process hostage.’

Time, CNN, Washington Post, New York Times and the lot of America’s CIA media whores…

“The Central Intelligence Agency owns everyone of any significance in the major media” -William Colby, former CIA Director

…will never report the United Nations Secretary General has pointed his finger squarely at the Western democracies as responsible for the train wreck that is Syria –

Tags Ban Ki Moon, lie by omission, media lies, Syria

Categories CIA, counter intelligence, crime, information operations, propaganda, transcendent warfare, war crimes

Zero Hedge

October 1, 2015 //

Example of the excellent reporting/analysis from Zero Hedge. For *mostly* consistent, accurate information, go to http://www.zerohedge.com/ but be a little bit wary, no site seems to be perfect, here’s example of a Zero Hedge screw-up: Zero Hedge Drinks the Kool-Aid

From Zero Hedge:

Now that Russia has officially begun conducting airstrikes on anti-regime forces operating in Syria, commentators, pundits, and analysts around the world will be keen to compare and contrast the results of Moscow’s efforts with the year-old US-led air campaign against ISIS targets in Syria and Iraq.

Clearly, Russia has a very real incentive to ensure that its airstrikes are effective.

Preserving the global balance of power means preserving the Assad regime and, by extension, ensuring that Iran maintains its regional influence.

On the other hand, the US and its regional allies actually have an incentive to ensure that their airstrikes are minimally effective. That is, for the US, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar, the idea is not to kill Frankenstein, but rather to ensure that he doesn’t escape the lab.

As we documented earlier today, Russia wasted no time launching strikes against anti-regime targets once the country’s lawmakers gave the official go-ahead and the West wasted no time accusing Russia of breaking protocol by targeting “modetrate” Syrian rebels (like al-Qeada) that aren’t aligned with ISIS.

It’s against that backdrop that we present the following footage released by the Russain Ministry of Defense which depicts the opening salvo in The Kremlin’s battle against terrorism in the Middle East (note the vehicle traveling towards the compound at a particularly inopportune time towards the end).

And predictably, Western media reports regarding civilian casualties and Russia’s alleged targeting of “moderate” rebels (as opposed to ISIS) were countered by Moscow’s sharp-tongued spokeswoman and US foreign policy critic extraordinaire Maria Zakharova.

Via RT:

Russia has struck eight Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL) targets in Syria, the country’s Defense Ministry said, adding that “civilian infrastructure” was avoided during the operations.

“Today, Russian aerospace force jets delivered pinpoint strikes on eight ISIS terror group targets in Syria. In total, 20 flights were made,” spokesperson for the Russian Defense Ministry, Igor Konashenkov, said.

“As a result, arms and fuel depots and military equipment were hit. ISIS coordination centers in the mountains were totally destroyed,” he added.

Konashenkov said that all the flights took place after air surveillance and careful verification of the data provided by the Syrian military. He stressed that Russian jets did not target any civilian infrastructure and avoided these territories.

“Russian jets did not use weapons on civilian infrastructure or in its vicinity,” he said.

Reuters reported that Russia targeted opposition rebel groups in Homs province instead of Islamic State forces. The agency cited Syrian opposition chief Khaled Khoja, who put the death toll of the bombardment at 36 civilians.

“Russia is intending not to fight ISIL [Islamic State], but to prolong the life of [Syrian President Bashar] Assad,” Khoja said.

Similar claims were made by the BBC, Fox News, Al Jazeera and numerous other news outlets.

Moscow harshly criticized the reports, labeling them an information war.

“Russia didn’t even begin its operation against Islamic State… Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov didn’t even utter his first words at the UN Security Council, but numerous reports already emerged in the media that civilians are dying as a result of the Russian operation and that it’s aimed at democratic forces in the country (Syria),” Maria Zakharova, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, told media.

“It’s all an information attack, a war, of which we’ve heard so many times,” she added.

Zakharova also said that she was amazed by the scale and speed of what she called “info injections” into social networks such as “photos of alleged victims” that appeared on the web as soon as the Russian operation began.

“What can I say? We all know perfectly how such pictures are made,” she said, remembering a Hollywood flick ‘Wag the Dog,’ which described the US media reporting on a fake war in Albania.

For those who missed it, see here for our assessment of the Western media’s take on the first round of Russian airstrikes (and by the way we, like Maria, were surprised at how quickly the propaganda machine kicked into high gear). Here is the bottom line:

The bottom line going forward is that the US and its regional and European allies are going to have to decide whether they want to be on the right side of history here or not, and as we’ve been careful to explain, no one is arguing that Bashar al-Assad is the most benevolent leader in the history of statecraft but it has now gotten to the point where Western media outlets are describing al-Qaeda as “moderate” in a last ditch effort to explain away Washington’s unwillingness to join Russia in stabilizing Syria. This is a foreign policy mistake of epic proportions on the part of the US and the sooner the West concedes that and moves to correct it by admitting that none of the groups the CIA, the Pentagon, and Washington’s Mid-East allies have trained and supported represent a viable alternative to the Assad regime, the sooner Syria will cease to be the chessboard du jour for a global proxy war that’s left hundreds of thousands of innocent people dead.

@ http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-09-30/how-russia-handles-terrorists-moscow-releases-video-syria-strikes

Tags Russia, Syria, usa

Categories counter intelligence, crime, information operations, intelligence, transcendent warfare

Letter to German Parliament 4 Sept 2015

September 4, 2015 //

Emailed to: Hans Christian Stroebele <hans-christian.stroebele@bundestag.de>, gregor.gysi@bundestag.de, ulla.jelpke@bundestag.de, irene.mihalic@bundestag.de, michael.hartmann@wk.bundestag.de, Armin Schuster <armin.schuster@bundestag.de>, armin.schuster.wk@bundestag.de, norbert.lammert@bundestag.de, peter.hintze@bundestag.de, Johannes Singhammer <johannes.singhammer@bundestag.de>, edelgard.bulmahn@wk.bundestag.de, ursula.schmidt@wk.bundestag.de, petra.pau@bundestag.de, claudia.roth@bundestag.de, marieluise.beck@bundestag.de, omid.nouripour@bundestag.de, stefan.liebich@bundestag.de, niels.annen@bundestag.de, roderich.kiesewetter@bundestag.de, philipp.missfelder@bundestag.de

CC addresses omitted

Re: intel assessment from Zero Hedge

To the several German parliamentarians:

Up to date intelligence from ‘Tyler Durden’ (pseudonym) at Zero Hedge, a consistent source of accurate intelligence, is pasted in, below.

Relevant to this very good assessment, another, 2012 Defense Intelligence Agency assessment, should be recalled; bluntly stating the “western powers” strategy had been the support of al-Qaida and rise of ‘a Caliphate” (predicting Islamic State.) @ https://www.scribd.com/doc/268764979/DIA-assessment-public-domain

This raises a long overdue question; when have western oil companies fusion with the “western powers” intelligence agencies creating policy via the several western democracies executive branches become anti-democratic criminal enterprises?

USA, UK & Germany complicity @ http://www.tamilguardian.com/article.asp?articleid=5582

CIA’s David Petraeus complicity (laundered via Saudi Arabia) @ http://english.al-akhbar.com/node/19443

All preceding examples stem from initial strategy to overthrow Assad in 2012, resulting in Europe awash in refugees from the crimes of those attempting to geopolitically engineer Assad’s overthrow, crimes dwarfing the crimes of Assad.

Now, David Petraeus is lobbying (would appear includes current German Minister of Defense whom he’d been in attendance with at Bilderberg) to legitimize Al-Nusra (al-Qaida) as a “western powers” strategic asset @ http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/08/31/petraeus-use-al-qaeda-fighters-to-beat-isis.html

All of the preceding, taken together with the new intelligence assessment (below) point to escalation of criminal geopolitical engineering undermining stability throughout our world. Which democratic principles authorize this? Any of this?

Ron West

What’s behind the spies & political lies?

“The history of the great events of this world are scarcely more than a history of crime” -Voltaire

Two days ago we reported something which we had anticipated for a long time but nonetheless did not expect to take shape so swiftly: namely, that with Assad’s regime close to collapse and fighting a war on three different fronts (one of which is directly supported by US air and “advisor” forces), Putin would have no choice but to finally intervene in the most anticipated showdown in recent history as “Russian fighter pilots are expected to begin arriving in Syria in the coming days, and will fly their Russian air force fighter jets and attack helicopters against ISIS and rebel-aligned targets within the failing state.”

This was indirectly confirmed the very next day when an al-Nusra linked Twitter account posted pictures of a Russian drone and a Su-34 fighter jet – the kind which is not flown by the Syrian air force – flying over the Nusra-controlled western idlib province.

Another twitter account said to have captured Russian soldiers in Zabadani “while fighting for Assad”

Also, one day after our report, the Telegraph reported that “Syrian state TV reportedly broadcasts footage of Russian soldiers and armoured vehicle fighting alongside pro-Assad troops.” According to the article, “the video footage claimed to show troops and a Russian armoured vehicle fighting Syrian rebels alongside President Bashar al-Assad’s troops in Latakia. It is reportedly possible to hear Russian being spoken by the troops in the footage.”

It added that “a Russian naval vessel was photographed heading south through the Bosphorus strait carrying large amounts of military equipment, according to social media and a shipping blog” while “an unnamed activist with the Syrian rebel group the Free Syrian Army told The Times: “The Russians have been there a long time.”

“There are more Russian officials who came to Slunfeh in recent weeks. We don’t know how many but I can assure you there has been Russian reinforcement.” ”

Then earlier today we got the closest thing to a confirmation from the White House itself which confirmed that “it was closely monitoring reports that Russia is carrying out military operations in Syria, warning such actions, if confirmed, would be “destabilising and counter-productive.”

Obama spokesman Joshn Earnest essentially confirmed Russia was already operating in Syria when he said that “we are aware of reports that Russia may have deployed military personnel and aircraft to Syria, and we are monitoring those reports quite closely.”

“Any military support to the Assad regime for any purpose, whether it’s in the form of military personnel, aircraft supplies, weapons, or funding, is both destabilising and counterproductive.”

And another confirmation: “a US official confirmed that “Russia has asked for clearances for military flight to Syria,” but added “we don’t know what their goals are.”

“Evidence has been inconclusive so far as to what this activity is.”

Other reports have suggested Russia has targeted Islamic State group militants, who have attacked forces loyal to Russian-backed Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad.

Both the White House and the Pentagon refused to say whether they had intelligence suggesting the reports were accurate.

Of course, what is left unsaid is that since Russia is there under the humanitarian pretext of fighting the evil ISIS, the same pretext that the US, Turkey, and the Saudis are all also there for, when in reality everyone is fighting for land rights to the most important gas pipeline in decades, the US is limited in its diplomatic recoil.

Indeed as we sarcastically said last week: “See: the red herring that is ISIS can be used just as effectively for defensive purposes as for offensive ones. And since the US can’t possibly admit the whole situation is one made up farce, it is quite possible that the world will witness its first regional war when everyone is fighting a dummy, proxy enemy which doesn’t really exist, when in reality everyone is fighting everyone else!”

Which now effectively ends the second “foreplay” phase of the Syrian proxy war (the first one took place in the summer of 2013 when in a repeat situation, Russia was supporting Assad only the escalations took place in the naval theater with both Russian and US cruisers within kilometers of each other off the Syrian coast), which means the violent escalation phase is next. It also means that Assad was within days of losing control fighting a multi-front war with enemies supported by the US, Turkey and Saudi Arabia, and Putin had no choice but to intervene or else risk losing Gazprom’s influence over Europe to the infamous Qatari gas pipeline which is what this whole 3 years war is all about.

Finally, it means that the European refugee crisis, which is a direct consequence of the ISIS-facilitated destabilization of the Syrian state (as a reminder, ISIS is a US creation meant to depose of the Syrian president as leaked Pentagon documents have definitively revealed) is about to get much worse as 2013’s fabricated “chemical gas” YouTube clip will be this years “Refugee crisis.” It will be, and already has been, blamed on Syria’s president Assad in order to drum up media support for what is now an inevitable western intervention in Syria.

The problem, however, has emerged: Russia is already on the ground, and will hardly bend over to any invading force.

@ http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-09-03/flashpoint-white-house-confirms-russian-presence-syria-warns-it-destabilizing

Tags BND, David Petraeus, German Parliament, intelligence, President Bashar al-Assad, Russia, Syria, western powers

Categories CIA, counter intelligence, crime, false flag, intelligence, social responsibility, transcendent warfare, treason, war crimes

ALEXANDER KADOBNOV/AFP/GettyImages

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