Mahama Kicks Against All Inclusiveness

Ghanaian President John Mahama

By Ekow Mensah

President John Dramani Mahama has given the idea of forming an all-inclusive government a kick in the butt.

He says emphatically that his government will “not jump into an incestuous relationship with our opponents, the NPP”.

President Mahama thinks that the formation of an all inclusive government “would amount to short changing the people of Ghana”.

In an interview with Africa Watch magazine, he said “Any arrangement to change the “first past the post”  “winner takes all” system must be done through a review of our constitution”.

 According to him “there must however be space within the parameters of our current constitution for us to be less partisan and for people to be able to serve their country irrespective of which party is in power.

“There is a bitter rivalry between the two main parties that makes it difficult to work together.”

Asked if that is the only reason, he replied, “Well, because of the rivalry it has become very difficult for us to work together as a country. In other countries once elections are over the country comes together. Yes there is competition on policies and other issues but still, to a large extent, when the interest of the country is involved, all come together to make sure the country continues to move forward.”

Editorial

JUSTIFICATION

 The public Utility Regulatory Commission is out and about defending its very unpopular decision to increase utility tariffs.

The Insight is not surprised that the Commission has embarked upon this fruitless journey but we are worried about the implied insults to the people of Ghana.

We believe that the people of Ghana are very sophisticated and understand what is happening in the utility sub-sector and therefore any attempt to talk down to them can only be insulting.

The claim that the tariffs increases have been occasioned by rising inflation and the fall in the value of the cedi clearly not acceptable.

Why should the poor consumers of the utilities be made to pay for the inefficiencies of national economic manager?

The main point is that the vast majority of the people of Ghana are unable to make ends meet and the increase in tariffs can only make things worse.

An economy is sustainable only when it respects the principles of ecology 

It was the market that formed the current devastating economic model that, because it sustains itself on a scale of increasing production to "meet" exaggerated consumption levels, it squanders the main ecosystem services, depleting environmental resources above the regeneration capacity of the ecological system.

Even this level of consumption is not being extended to all, it is seen to be concentrated in a few hands, and injures natural heritage substantially. The numbers that make this argument are illustrative: Just over 250 people, with assets exceeding $1 billion each, together have more than the combined gross product of the 40 poorest countries, where 600 million people live. The wealthiest 16% of the world are responsible for 78% of total world consumption. And 92,000 people accumulate in tax havens over $20 trillion. The 500 million richest people on the planet are responsible for 50% of the emission of carbon dioxide, exacerbating the greenhouse effect.

According to the report "The State of the World" (elaborated by the Worldwatch Institute) in 2008 68 million vehicles, 85 million refrigerators, 297 million PCs and 1.2 billion mobile phones were sold worldwide. The consumption in goods and services rose from U.S. $4.9 trillion in 1960 (calculated in USD at 2008 values), to U.S. $23.9 trillion (1996), reaching $30 trillion (2006), and $41 trillion, in 2012.

The sumptuous consumption, conspicuous in the " Economese language " rages apace, "consuming" the planet's natural capital. Spending on cosmetics annually in the U.S.  alone reaches the importance of U.S. $9 billion. Europe (with 740 million inhabitants) spends on cigarettes, also yearly, more than $50 billion and a further $105 billion is spent on alcoholic beverages. The annual global expenditure on armaments and military equipment is approaching $900 billion, while only $9 billion (so 1% of the sum that the major powers spend to kill innocent people) would be enough to bring water and sanitation for all the world's population.

This economic model of high production "fed" with exaggerated consumption, as we said, is destructive of the ecosystem's services. It is enough to see the widespread damage in the four ecosystems that provide our food - forests, grasslands, fisheries and farmland. Specifically, in these last two, the economic activity has manifested itself over time as being very invasive. Of the 17 known ocean fish stocks worldwide, 11 of them have withdrawal rates greater than the capacity to restock. Four billion hectares of the world's land surface are damaged. The last 50 years of economic activity account for 60% of the damage to ecosystems.

Related to this, population growth and hence their "needs", present at a faster rate than nature can bear. Excluding the deaths, every day 220,000 new people are born in the world - that  is, 80 million per year. Over the past 112 years, the population has grown more than 350%, from 1.5 billion in the year 1900 to the current 7 billion. Therefore, from 1980 until now, the global consumption of resources has increased 50% - each year 60 billion tons of resources are extracted.

When the material consumption exceeds the required level, well-being consequently declines. Perhaps this explains the need to create a new economy, a new economic model designed for the Earth - not for the market - and one which is considered sustainable, within the meaning of the term, only, and necessarily, if ecological principles are respected. Reaching this new stage of economic model it is necessary, beforehand, to change the modus operandi of the economic system.

It is unacceptable to keep it the way it is, creating increasing futile needs. That's how this model is supported, not worrying about fully meeting the needs of the population, but in continuing to create new productions to feed consumerism in general, of futility, while maintaining a high level in these "needs". For this, economic output is stimulated at a breakneck pace, "offering", as a sort of "reward", to the biosphere more pollution, more ecological degradation.

Programmed obsolescence (mechanism to shorten the life of the products thus forcing new sales) occupies considerable space in this dynamic. Just to illustrate: only in 2012, the Brazilian population discarded (threw in the trash) 200 million mobile phones.
Together with the insidious advertising industry (the second largest world budget, second only to military spending) the capitalist dynamics "surfs" that consumerist wave more and more. The one who suffers from it is the planet whose surface is scratched by the claws of this voracious consumption, albeit restricted to just a few hands.

CIA Admits

On the 60th anniversary of the 1953 military coup in Iran that overthrew the government of radical nationalist Mohammad Mossadegh, the US has declassified documents detailing how the CIA’s secret operation brought the country’s Shah back to power.

“American and British involvement in Mossadegh’s ouster has long been public knowledge, but today’s posting includes what is believed to be the CIA’s first formal acknowledgement that the agency helped to plan and execute the coup,” the US National Security Archive said.

Monday’s publication under the US Freedom of Information Act came as something of a surprise, since most of the materials and records of the 1953 coup were believed to have been destroyed by the CIA, the Archive said. The CIA said at time that its “safes were too full.”

The newly-revealed documents declassify documents about CIA’s TPAJAX operation that sought regime change in Iran through the bribery of Iranian politicians, security and army high-ranking officials, and massive anti-Mossadegh propaganda that helped to instigate public revolt in 1953.

Among the declassified documents there are several examples of CIA propaganda presenting Iranian PM Mossadegh disparagingly.

“This propaganda piece accuses the Prime Minister of pretending to be ‘the savior of Iran’ and alleges that he has instead built up a vast spying apparatus which he has trained on virtually every sector of society, from the army to newspapers to political and religious leaders,” the Archive said. “Stirring up images of his purported alliance with ‘murderous Qashqai Khan’ and the Bolsheviks, the authors charge: ‘Is this the way you save Iran, Mossadegh? We know what you want to save. You want to save Mossadegh’s dictatorship in Iran!’”

In April 1951 Iranians democratically elected the head of the National Front party, Dr. Mohammad Mossadegh, as prime minister. Mossadegh moved quickly to nationalize the assets in Iran of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (the forerunner of today’s BP) a step that brought his government into confrontation with Britain and the US.

Britain’s MI6 military intelligence then teamed up with the CIA and planned, elaborated and carried out a coup that ousted Mossadegh in August 1953 and returned Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi to power. 

The first attempted coup failed after Mossadegh got wind of the conspiracy, but American and British intelligence services in Iran then improvized a second stage of the coup, pulling pro-Shah forces together and organizing mass protests on August 19, 1953. These protests were immediately supported by army and police. Mossadegh’s house was destroyed after a prolonged assault by pro-coup forces, including several tanks.

Mossadegh was replaced with Iranian general Fazlollah Zahedi, who was handpicked by MI6 and the CIA. Mossaddegh was later sentenced to death, but the Shah never dared to carry out the sentence. Mossadegh died in his residence near Tehran in 1967.

The Shah’s pro-Western dictatorship continued for 27 years and ended with the Islamic Revolution of 1979, which paved the way for today’s Iran, where anti-American sentiments remain strong. The 1953 coup still casts a long shadow over Iranian-US relations. 

The declassified documents originated from an interim report, called “The Battle for Iran,” prepared by a CIA in-house historian in the mid-1970s. The historian wrote: “[T]he military coup that overthrew Mossadegh and his National Front cabinet was carried out under CIA direction as an act of U.S. foreign policy.” The report also mentions that the US establishment feared that Iran could be “open to Soviet aggression,” and therefore initiated Operation TPAJAX, which eventually became the American part of the joint US-British ‘Operation Ajax’ that brought the Shah to power.

The “aggression” mentioned by the CIA historian is likely a reference to the Soviet Union’s intervention in Iran during WWII, when a USSR-Iran treaty signed in 1940 enabled Moscow to establish military prescriptive in Iran in case of any threat to the borders of the Soviet Union. Moscow did put this treaty to use during the WWII and partly occupied Iran in 1941-1945.

The National Security Archive said it that while it “applauds the CIA’s decision to make these materials available, today’s posting shows clearly that these materials could have been safely declassified many years ago without risk of damage to national security.”

Though at least two US Presidents, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, have publicly acknowledged the US role in the Iranian coup, the intelligence services in Washington have always been reluctant to admit direct involvement in the 1953 coup.

After the collapse of the USSR, the CIA proclaimed a “policy of openness” and made a commitment to declassify some documents regarding Cold War covert operations, including the coup in Iran, by US intelligence.

Three successive CIA directors – Robert M. Gates, R. James Woolsey, and John M. Deutch – promised to publish documents, but none delivered.

Archive deputy director Malcolm Byrne appealed to the US intelligence community “to make fully available the remaining records on the coup period.”

“There is no longer good reason to keep secrets about such a critical episode in our recent past. The basic facts are widely known to every schoolchild in Iran. Suppressing the details only distorts history, and feeds into myth-making on all sides,” Byrne said. 

Global Firms Eye African Market

By Oscar Nkala

Projections that African defense spending will surpass US $20 billion over the next decade have sparked cut-throat competition between non-African companies looking to snap up supply, joint venture and technology transfer agreements with African firms. Meanwhile, other companies are giving themselves a more competitive edge by setting up shop in the continent.

According to defense market analysts, demand for military hardware in Africa is set to increase as governments gear up to fight terrorists and Islamic militants. Nations say they need better firepower, modernized forces, improved armed mobility and stronger force protection to fight militants that have become the scourge of nations throughout East, West and North Africa.

“The scramble for the African defense market has just begun, and it will continue over the next decade,” Zimbabwean military and strategic defense analyst retired Col. Joseph Sibanda said.

South African defense equipment manufacturers are benefiting the most from the new interest, having signed wide-ranging arms sales and production deals with Swiss, US, Russian, Brazilian, Malaysian and French companies. US-based Colt Defense recently launched its bid for the Southern African market when it signed an agreement with specialized South African sniper rifle manufacturer Truvelo Armory for the joint manufacture and sale of all Colt firearms to regional police and military forces.

Speaking at the signing ceremony in South Africa, Thomas Sullivan, Colt Defense’s international sales manager, said although the company hopes to continue expanding the strong civilian customer base it has in South Africa, it is setting its sights on the regional military, law enforcement and sporting rifle markets.

“South Africa will become a target market [for police and military firearms]. There is a demand here, and we want to meet that,” Sullivan said.

Alexa Gerrard, Truvelo’s head of sales and marketing, said the joint venture with Colt Defense, which has a bigger market share in North Africa, will help the South African company expand its product range to include highly accurate barrel products, precision rifles, high-quality pistols, carbines and assault rifles.

A few days after the signing of the Colt Defense-Truvelo deal, Denel and Swiss company B&T signed a technology transfer agreement paving the way for the South African state-owned company to produce and market small arms ranging from sub-machine-guns to grenade launchers.

According to the agreement, Denel will initially manufacture the weapons using Swiss-made parts while upgrading its production plant to produce the parts locally. Among the weapons set for production is the GL-06 40mm single-shot grenade launcher for the police and military. Denel will also adapt B&T’s MP9 9mm sub-machine gun and reproduce it as the GMP9, a closed-bolt weapon that is standardized for different attachments such as suppressors, shell catchers, red-dot sighters and holsters. A lighweight and modular weapon, the GMP9 can accept 15- to 30-round magazines.

The two companies are also working on upgrading the manufacture kits for Denel’s SS77 7.62mm machine gun, including a redesigned rail, top cover, magazine and belt attachments.

On the aviation side, over the past two months, Denel Aviation signed a repair and service agreement with Eurocopter, a division of Europe-based EADS, covering all AS332 Super Puma, Bo 105, AS350 Ecureuil and Alouette helicopters in Africa.

More than 250 Eurocopter helicopters are used in the private sector, corporate civil operators, the military, law enforcement, emergency rescue and para-public organizations in Southern Africa and Kenya. The agreement also stipulates that Denel Aviation will overhaul specialized helicopter transmission systems and rotor blades for Puma and Super Puma helicopters. The company’s responsibilities also extend from light to deep maintenance, servicing and repairs of individual components up to complete overhauls covering both civil and military helicopters.

Eurocopter Southern Africa CEO Fabrice Cagnat hailed the agreement as a recognition of “Denel’s proven rotorcraft engineering expertise and its reputation for top quality and competitively priced service.” The agreement becomes its second major international military and civilian aviation service deal following the signing of a maintenance, repair and overhaul agreement for Russian-made Mi-8 and Mi-17 helicopters across Africa.

Denel Aerostructures has also clinched a deal to support the development of Airbus Military’s A400M airlifter in a package worth more than $2 million. Denel Aerostructures will design the A400M’s aero-structures and manufacture the ribs, spars and swords that form the plane’s support structure.

Turkish armored vehicle manufacturer Otokar is also seeking to expand its presence on the African continent with its Cobra light armored vehicle.

The company, which first displayed its armored products at the Africa Aerospace and Defence Exhibition last year, said it is pushing hard to develop new defense equipment supply deals with Africa. Algeria, which has a number of Cobra light armored vehicles, is among the African countries targeted for Otokar’s expansion into Africa.

Competition for East African armored vehicles stiffened in October when South African expeditionary and tactical equipment manufacturer Osprea Logistics established a factory to manufacture Mamba Mk5 armored personnel carriers in Mombasa, Kenya. The move brings the company closer to Somalia and Sudan where the Mamba Mk5 is widely used by United Nations and African Union peacekeeping forces there.

The Serbian Military Technology Institute last year secured a foothold in the African defense market when it signed a deal to supply Yugo-import Lazar BVT mine-resistant, ambush-protected vehicles and 18 Nora B-52-155mm artillery systems to the Kenyan Defence Force.

Together with Serbian ammunition manufacturers Krusik, Sloboda and Prvi Partizan, Yugo-import last year was awarded a $400 million contract to build three military factories in Libya, Egypt and Algeria to meet the regional demand for military hardware. Sensing the high demand for armored military vehicles, United Arab Emirates-based Tawazun Holdings also last year signed an agreement to set up a plant to manufacture NIMR armored vehicles in Algeria for the North African market.

Sibanda, the defense analyst, said Africa will remain attractive for international defense equipment manufacturers due to heightened demand.

African nations, he said, also need to refocus their strategic defense and deterrent capacities to protect newly found on-shore and off-shore hydro-carbon resources, such as natural gas and petroleum interests.

“Africa will in the next few years rise to become a defense market almost at the same level with Southeast Asia and the Middle East. Defense products like military aircraft, armored vehicles and advanced artillery systems will be top on the list as African militaries and law enforcement authorities modernize to meet new security threats,” Sibanda told Defense News. “South African companies are especially better positioned to make the best out of this business opportunity given their excellent track record in meeting continental defense needs.”

 The West’s 1953 coup against Iran goes on

Iran President Hasan Rouhani

By Jim W. DeanShare | Email | Print

“If journalists are unable to penetrate the secrecy with which officialdom seeks to cloak its enterprises, they should go back as historians to make the record whole and clear,” ... wrote Kennett Love, former New York Times Mideast correspondent (1924 - May13th, 2013)

The hard copy CIA archive confirmation of its engineering the 1953 Iranian coup in cahoots with Britain's MI6 was a news headline this past week. But as pointed out by Press TV, it was old news. Anyone who wanted to know already did.

This continued charade of governments and their security organs pretending that they can somehow control public perceptions about “what really happened” when everybody already knows, continues to undermine public trust. The public correctly views this as an attitude of contempt by those in government sworn to protect and serve us.

To that you can add the historical government refusal of accepting any responsibility for its misguided and failed policies. This is especially so if such policies were never really designed for the public, but for special interests, both the visible kind and worse ... the invisible.

The whole world is facing crises in governments of almost every kind, everywhere. Despite the Hollywood and Madison Avenue public relations campaigns to hide it as a minor systemic problem which all suffer, corruption runs deep throughout most of them and always has.

By burying away under security classifications and everything that citizens really need to accurately measure the effectiveness of their governments, and even their loyalty, it makes calling them democracies a bad joke. Our Founding Fathers warned that an informed citizenry would be crucial to maintaining a true republic, and frankly, we have failed.

There is a token rationale for the continued secrecy which drives contemporary governments from hiding the past misdeeds of those before them for which the new people had no real responsibility. Why would the innocent join the guilty by covering up previous misdeeds?

I must admit it took me a while to find an answer, that they did so to avoid the public rage from such past revelations. Why? Because it would trigger questions and inquiries about whether such misdeeds were continuing today, the answer to which is yes, they obviously are.

That is why the devil's spawn serve the devil. They do not want to face public contempt for their currently betraying the public trust. In short, they want to save their own behinds, so they hope someone will also hide their own bad deeds.

Those of you who have been reading my columns know that when I do a 450 word lead in like this it is because I feel the framing is critical for what I am about to cover with you. I had the good fortune to have done a two-day video interview with Kennett Love back in 2005.

He was the last non-Jewish New York Time Middle East correspondent. Media jobs like that became a “for Jews only” club, similar to those like Federal Reserve chairman and many others in our government. Our State Department is heavily penetrated by deep cover Israeli agents.

You have probably never heard of Kennett Love because crooks in government do not want their critics to get much public recognition because they compare so poorly to them. Fortunately, for us Kennett Love had one of the most historically important journalist assignments during a critical time in world history where WWII was being morphed into the new Cold War.

The New York Times had a better reputation back then. It is now a wholly owned subsidiary of the tribe, and certainly not alone in that regard as the cancer runs deep. As the premier publication of its day and due to its worldwide reach, the New York Times was a forum where Mideast leaders could have their opinions and concerns viewed favorably.

Hence, interview time with the NY Times Mideast correspondent was viewed as an important opportunity to garner a favorable world opinion. This put someone like Kennett Love, a WWII Navy pilot veteran and a Columbia graduate in journalism, in a position of confidence with some of the key Middle East leaders of that day, which I doubt any reporter has had since.

The video crew and my sponsor were shocked by Kennett's revelations that he became so trusted that he was used by some of these state leaders to pass personal messages to each other where they did not want even their own foreign offices to know the subject matter or content. Love's closest relationship was with Nasser of Egypt, who willingly spent many hours reviewing the complexities of his “caught in the middle” position between the East and the West, a tightrope that he was not able to walk.

Mr. Love's only book was an 800-page tome, Suez: The Twice Fought War ... which is almost impossible to find now. In the preface he left a message in a bottle for those journalists coming after him. In his New York Times report on the coup at the time he was later criticized for publishing information helpful to the coup plotters. But, of course, he could only report based on what he knew at the time, which is not always accurate. From this painful lesson, he left us this advice.

“If they (journalists) are unable to penetrate the secrecy with which officialdom seeks to cloak its enterprises, they should go back as historians to make the record whole and clear.”

We had been doing this at Veterans Today without being aware of Love's quote, as has Press TV. This is why subversionists in the West who fear the bright light of the journalists and historians, and are well aware that it is not up for sale, have been so active in trying to block Press TV’s reach.

Kennett Love filed his Iran coup New York Times dispatch on August 20th, 1953. Here are a few excerpts.

“Dr. Mossadegh's defenders put up a stubborn battle during which Sherman tanks mounting 75-mm. Cannon dueled and closed quarters for nearly two hours ... In the assault on the Mossadegh home, the attackers captured Col. Exatollah Mumtaz, who had betrayed the Royalists to Dr. Mossadegh Saturday night. They literally tore him to pieces.”

Many years later, with the benefit of more information, Mr. Love worked to correct what he had not known of the CIA and MI6 involvement in his initial reporting. In a 2007 Bill Moyers TV show segment on the coup, he said:

“George Carroll (CIA Agent) He was the one that paid money to the street gangs. He was the one that invented the idea, that make everyone identify himself as a shah’s partisan, so therefore the opposition would not be able to group in the streets ... anyone in a car not displaying the shah's picture would be dragged out and beaten up, even killed.”

“Nearly everybody in Iran of any importance has had a brother, mother, father, sister or a son jailed, tortured ... deprived of their property without due process ... I mean and absolutely buccaneering dictatorship in our name that we supported. SAVAK was created by the CIA.”

He highlights that the coup was a prelude to the Islamic Revolution of Iran led by late Imam Khomeini.

“… the hostage crisis is a direct consequence, and the resurgence of the Shia is a direct consequence of the CIA's overthrow of Mossadegh in 1953,” Love wrote.

I had done my interviews with Kennett in 2005 where he had added to the Mossadegh coup story that the CIA and MI6 had cranked up a terror bombing campaign on public transportation, blowing up buses and trains of commuters.

This sordid affair did have a Cold War backdrop to it where being an independent nation was almost impossible. As our last George Bush president will be remembered for presenting in such a simple manner, “You're either for us, or against us.”

Iran's wanting to correct a former leadership having allowed British and American oil companies to loot Iran's oil, that was deemed a “pro Soviet act” ... that is, if the West did not get control of Iran's oil then the Soviets would.

President Eisenhower spelled it out in his letter of June 29th, 1953, refusing economic aid unless Iran “agreed to accept proposals of foreign monopolies on the oil question.”

We can look back now and see that there has been a continuing commercial war to keep Iran's huge petrochemical reserves from obtaining a larger share of the world's market. This has in effect rigged the petroleum markets to transfer huge amounts of average citizen wealth into the oil giants. It has also fed the forward deployment of our military industrial complex and been an engine for the decline of the western middle class.

Similar threat deceptions have been used, like the hoax of Iran's wanting to become a nuclear threat to the West when it really sees it as a big market for it oil and gas reserves. I don't know of too many businesses that think killing their customers is really a good thing.

What is inherent in this anniversary of the 1953 coup is that after the Shah was thrown out, the West, led by the US and Israel, have been imposing a continuing coup on post-revolutionary Iran, and manipulating public opinion today with the bogus threat ploy as ruthlessly as it did back in 1953.

It is time for the rest of us to heed Kennett Love's words above, that WE should go back as historians and make the record clear. I think we can do this if we can avoid getting sucked into the divide and conquer game which has been such an effective tool against us by the elites everywhere.

Those who would swindle us out of our history, there is nothing they would not steal from us. So, it is way past time for our putting their feet to the fire instead of each other as is happening in Syria and now Egypt. As Kennett Love saw, they will never stop ... until we stop them.

The big fight is over for Kennett Love. He died May 13th, at the age of 88. He spent his post journalistic years serving mankind in the Peace Corps and teaching journalism at the American University in Cairo. He even married his actress bride beside the Pyramid of Kefren at Giza in 1973 ... a serious romantic indeed.

Besides his writing, he became an accomplished painter, photographer, and deep water sailor ... even managing to slip in some theater stage work. He was also co-founder of War Tax Resistance with the War Resisters League during the Vietnam years.

Kennett Love gave us a lot. We shall miss him. And we will try to do the best we can to replace him with others as worthy of admiration and respect. That ... is a thank you he earned and deserves.

France will repent for backing al-Qaeda

French Prez Frabcois Hollande

By Yusuf Fernandez

In late February, some international agencies reported that hundreds of foreign rebels were fleeing from the Idleb Province in Northwestern Syria through Turkey under the claim that they were planning to join al-Qaeda militants in Mali in order to fight against French troops deployed there.

The reason of this withdrawal is not clear. Some observers said that the real reason behind it was the Syrian army´s offensive against terrorist groups in the province and the disappointment of some militants who have seen that their fight is not popular in Syria, as their recruiters had made them believe before going to Syria.

The irony is that France, which invaded Mali some weeks ago to theorically fight against radical groups in that country, will have to end up fighting against the same groups that the French government has been openly funding. These militants have used French money and training in Syria in order to gain combat experience and they will implement this newly-acquired knowledge against French troops in Mali.

According to observers, France has become the most prominent Western backer of Syria´s armed opposition and is now directly funding terrorist groups around Aleppo and other parts of the Arab country as part of a new attempt to overthrow the Syrian government. Large sums of money have been delivered by French government proxies across the Turkish border to rebel commanders, diplomatic sources have confirmed. The money has been used to buy weapons inside Syria and to fund armed operations against government forces.

On March 14, French FM Laurent Fabius announced that France and the UK would ignore a EU ban on sending weapons to Syria in order to supply terrorist groups fighting there with more arms. The goal remains the same: to overthrow Bashar al Assad´s government. The French newspaper Le Figaro also reported in those days that French military advisers had recently met with rebel groups inside Syria, in an area between Lebanon and Damascus. It is worth pointing out that sending military personnel to a country without the permission of its government amounts to a military invasion.

Despite all this support, the political goal of France in Syria seems to be as far as ever. “Things are not moving. The solution that we had hoped for, and by that I mean the fall of Bashar and the arrival of the (opposition) coalition to power, has not happened”, acknowledged Fabius on January 24. In December 2012, he had claimed that the “end is nearing” for the Syrian president. A senior Lebanese official who visited the France towards the end of last year told the daily Al Safir that “France was surprised by the fact that Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, his regime and his army could resist”.

For its part, the Syrian government has condemned this French interference in its internal affairs. “France is acting like a hostile nation”, said National Reconciliation Minister Ali Haidar to AFP. “It is as if it wants to go back to the time of the occupation,” he added, referring to the French rule in Syria after World War I. Damascus has made it clear that France´s current policies will weaken or even eliminate its political, economic and cultural influence in Syria, maybe forever.

Moreover, France is now getting nervous about the possibility of reprisals from the al-Qaeda-linked groups, similar to those it is funding in Syria, for its intervention in Mali. On March 1, three suspected militants were arrested in southern France for allegedly planning an attack in the deays ahead, the Paris prosecutor said.

Change of foreign policy

The boomerang effect of supporting terrorism in Syria is just one of the disastrous consequences of the change of the French policy towards the Arab and Muslim world, which started when the pro-Israeli and pro-NATO Nicolas Sarkozy became President. Prior to that fact, France had gained a solid reputation due to its Gaullist foreign policy, one of whose pillars was the independence of the country with respect to the United States. In February 2003, French Foreign Minister, Dominique de Villepin, was universally applauded when he opposed Colin Powell´s pathetic attempts to justify the then-forthcoming invasion of Iraq with blatant lies about the non-existent Iraqi weapons of mass destruction.

The new French foreign policy, under influence of Zionist politicians such as Sarkozy himself, Bernard Kouchner or Laurent Fabius and Zionist activists as Bernard Henry-Levy, changed the equation. France began to promote pro-Israeli and neo-colonial policies in Africa and the Middle East, where France adopted an even more radical stance against Syria and Iran than any other Western country.

In Africa, Paris has increased its military presence in recent years. France´s intervention in Mali, with a contingent of 750 troops, has sought to bolster the Malian army against the al-Qaeda rebels, who have controlled the north of the country for about two years. However, the war in Mali is still beginning and, even worse, it is becoming another asymmetric and far-reaching war which could involve France for years, although Paris has repeatedly announced its willingness to evacuate its army from the African country as soon as possible.

Qatar, France´s ally, supported extremists in Mali

On the other hand, Qatar, which just happens to be a major ally of France in the Syrian question, has criticized Paris´s intervention in Mali arguing that the force would not solve the problem. French officials have openly accused Qatar of funding the Mali rebels.

The first accusations of Qatari involvement with Tuareg separatists and al-Qaeda-linked groups came in a June 2012 article in French weekly the Canard Enchainé. The publication quoted an unnamed source in French military intelligence saying: “The MNLA (secular Tuareg separatists), al-Qaeda-linked Ansar Dine and MUJAO [movement for unity and Jihad in West Africa] have all received cash from Doha.” “The French government knows perfectly well who is supporting these terrorists. Qatar, for example, continues to send so-called aid and food every day to the airports of Gao and Timbuktu.”

The speculation is that Qatar is keen to increase its influence in Mali in order to develop business ties with this nation, which is believed to have significant oil, gas and uranium resources. Moreover, its presence in Mali “greatly increase the Emirate´s influence in West Africa and the Sahel region”, regional geopolitical expert Mehdi Lazar, who specialises on Qatar, wrote in French weekly news magazine L’Express in December. Qatar would also be trying to destabilize Algeria, one of the Arab countries remaining free from its political influence.

France, for its part, is determined to help the pro-French military junta rule the entire nation and sees Qatari activities in Mali with dismay. The Canard Echainé wrote: “Earlier this year, several notes from the DGSE (the French Intelligence Service) alerted the Elysee Palace on international activities and, dare we say, the emirate of Qatar.”

On 22 January, French news site France24 published an article entitled “Is Qatar fuelling the crisis in north Mali?” which claimed that Doha had taken sides with the Mali insurgents. According to author Segolene Allemandou, Qatari rulers aim to spread extremism in Africa with the help of these rebels. The subtle message was clear: the emirate´s support for terrorism will damage its long-term image in Europe.

Destroying a pluralist Syria

In this context, everyone can understand that Saudi and Qatari support extremists who fight against a multifaith and multicultural Syria and against all the religious groups supporting interfaith cooperation and coexistence, such as mainstream Sunni Muslims, Shiites, Alawites and Christians. After all, in Saudi Arabia only the Wahabi current enjoys full religious freedom. The rest of the faiths are discriminated, persecuted or banned. But some people can find it difficult to understand why the West, including France, is allied with extremist Salafist groups persecuting Christians and destroying churches.

The anwer is that France and other Western governments are actually not interested in democracy or political and religious freedom but in pursuing their own political, strategic and economic interests at any cost. French aggressions in Africa have led to the death of thousands of innocent people and have ruined the lives of millions of others, not to mention its involvement in the Rwandan genocide in 1994. With its current policies towards Syria, Paris only tries to reimpose their neo-colonial yoke on that country. However, after many decades of independence and of enjoying their sovereignty, Syrian people are not willing to become slaves of European goverments or of corrupt, backward, terrorist-friendly and despotic regimes as the Saudi or the Qatari.

By funding and delivering weapons to terrorist groups, the French government, alongside with its allies, is not only violating the international law but it is also destroying the possibility of a peaceful solution to the Syrian conflict and leaving its resolution in the hands of the military. In this way, Syria´s friends should take good note of this fact and multiply their military aid to Syria in order to prevent their own interests from being damaged. The Syrian state is strong and its people is indomable, but there is no doubt that Syria will need all kind of support from free people in the world in order to resist this aggression. 

Dollar era drawing to its end

By Yuri Skidanov

At the G-20 summit in St. Petersburg the discussion of U.S. aggression against Syria overshadowed the economic issues. Meanwhile, there have been certain developments in this area that are crucial for the future of the global economy. The first steps were made to rid the banking and financial system of the dictatorship of the U.S. dollar as the world reserve currency.

U.S. power is determined by two components: the dollar as the world reserve currency and the army. When the U.S. dollar becomes weaker, the army starts acting, arranging demonstrations and beneficial in the long run aggressions "oil in exchange for democracy." There are many examples of this, especially after the collapse of the great Soviet Union, when the United States began organizing local wars and conflicts nearly every year. Syria is a good example: Obama spoke of an armed strike after he became aware of the official debt of 17 trillion dollars, and according to unofficial estimates of Californian scientists this number is much larger.

A great invention of the financiers Rothschild and Rockefeller - the U.S. Federal Reserve System (FRS) is a private company that since 1943 (adoption of the Bretton Woods system, the replacement of gold with the dollar as a reserve currency) has been dictating to the world how to live, and where and how to spend money. All international transactions are made in dollars, and the emission of national currencies is firmly tied to the amount of dollars that sovereign central banks formally purchase from the Federal Reserve. It is clear that under such circumstances it is not difficult to determine how to develop a particular economy, of course, in the interests of the United States. With this in mind, it is easy to understand the reasons behind Russia's inability to get out of the role of the world colonial raw materials appendage that is unusual for it, in spite of all the declarations and appeals of the President of the Russian Federation Vladimir Putin.

All known attempts to get rid of the dollar leash have failed. The failed attempts included the intentions of Iran to abandon the dollar in payments for export crude oil and the organization of Petroleum Exchange in St. Petersburg designed exclusively to trade oil in rubles. The U.S. is rigidly and rigorously guarding its dollar monopoly, believing that it is better than any threats and ideology for keeping the entire world under control.

In St. Petersburg, Russia signed a series of agreements that undermine this monopoly. On the first day of the summit, Gazprom and the Chinese state oil company signed an agreement on the basic conditions of supply of gas and oil and gas development in Russia. It is imperative that the currency of the agreement is the yuan or ruble, and the price of the supplied hydrocarbons will be determined on a bilateral basis without a reference to the Anglo-Saxon index Henry Hub determined on the London Stock Exchange. This guarantees that speculative impact on the Russian economy due, for example, to shale gas supplies, will be minimized.

Another unprecedented step towards getting rid of the monopoly of the dollar is the creation of a stabilization fund of the BRICS countries and the Development Bank. Its goal, as stated by the President of the Russian Federation, is to contribute to the improvement of the financial markets after the U.S. ends the policy of quantitative stimulation. This was a diplomatic statement, but its meaning translated into vernacular formula would sound something like "get lost with your dollar."

The initiative would create a full-fledged monetary union. The BRICS sovereign fund along with the Bank may lend money to the countries participating in the fund without the consent of the Federal Reserve. The residents of these countries represent 44 percent of the world's population. The Bank will have the opportunity to buy securities of the Fund as well as debt securities of the participating countries. This means a sovereign issue according to the rules of today's financial market, bypassing the Federal Reserve System. In times of an acute economic crisis launched by the U.S., the fund may take over the function of the new financial center of the world, reducing the role of the compromised dollar to zero.

President Putin has consolidated BRICS countries around Russia in order to create sovereign issue tools in addition to the Federal Reserve that did not exist since the time of the Soviet Union. These are the outlines of a future world order where there will be no place for the greedy hegemony of the U.S. and its Anglo-Saxon satellites. The U.S. authorities are unable to prevent such a development. In terms of military potential BRICS countries are as strong as the U.S. and NATO, even if we assume that they will choose a suicidal nuclear mission.