Vladimir Putin’s Foreign-Policy Objectives, & His Desire for U.S. to Be an Ally

putin-conferenceTable-photolenta_big_photo-2

[dropcap]O[/dropcap]n September 4th, Russia’s President Vladimir Putin restated, as he has many times before, that he seeks a U.S.-Russian alliance to overcome the global Islamic jihad movement, in Syria, Iraq, and everywhere.

Then, on Tuesday September 8th, Yahoo News bannered, “Austria joins growing voices that say Assad must be part of Syrian solution,” and reported that Austria’s Foreign Minister Sebastian Kurz said: “In my opinion the priority is the fight against terror. This will not be possible without powers such as Russia and Iran.” German Economic News noted then that, “Spanish Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Garcia Margallo had already called on Monday for negotiations with Assad to end the war.”

Eric Zuesse, crosspost with strategic-culture.org (first iteration).

However, the U.S. government is strongly opposed to accepting Putin’s offer of an alliance to overcome Islamic jihad.

Putin’s foreign-policy objectives are consistent; and his latest turn fits with all that has preceded, which has been his single-minded focus, ever since he first became Russia’s leader in 2000: to defeat the global threat of Islamic jihad, which has been the chief military concern for Russia itself, ever since the First Chechen War, during 1994-96, radicalized the predominantly Sunni (Saudi-based) Muslim Chechen Republic, to separate themselves from the predominantly Orthodox Catholic Russia. By the time of Putin’s contest for the Presidency in 2000, Putin’s hard line against religious separatism became a leading factor in his electoral victory.

On 11 February 2004, this is how the pro-Western Moscow Times, which wikipedia refers to as “the first Western daily to be published in Russia,” described “Putin and the Chechen War: Together Forever”:

, Putin launched an “anti-terrorist operation” in Chechnya. Suddenly Putin was the No. 1 politician in the country. …

The Chechen fighters were operating on the assumption that the Kremlin would not tolerate substantial losses on the eve of the election. This is why Chechen detachments flouted military logic and remained in Grozny after it was surrounded, continuing to offer fierce resistance.

June 2000 Putin’s support would have evaporated. This concern probably explains Yeltsin’s decision to step down early, bringing the election forward by several months.

I [Alexander Golts] doubt that any Russian politician today would have the nerve to remind Putin of the promises he made back in 2000. He vowed “to crush the terrorist scum’.”

However, Simon Shuster, who likewise is anti-Putin, had this to say about Chechnya, in the cover story of TIME, eleven years later, on 22 June 2015:

Chechnya has undergone a striking transformation. Its cities have been rebuilt with money from Moscow. All traces of its separatist rebellion have been suppressed. And most importantly, a new generation has been raised to respect—at times even to worship—the Russian leader and his local proxies. With no clear memories of the wars for independence, the young people of Chechnya are now the best guarantee that Russia’s hold over the region will persist.

Putin might not have “crushed the terrorist scum,” but he has held it at bay for long enough a time to reestablish relative peace in Chechnya, along with a previously unparallelled degree of prosperity.

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]he International Crisis Group, a pro-Western and anti-Russian NGO, and an affiliate of NATO’s Atlantic Council, vigorously criticizes the authoritarianism and cult of personality that Putin has imposed in Chechnya, even while reluctantly acknowledging that:

The number of Chechens in the insurgency has been steadily decreasing. With their centuries-long record of being ready to die for their independence, Chechens do not seem very susceptible to the suicidal ideology of a global jihad. Many who are have joined the conflict in Syria, which has significantly drained the human resources of the North Caucasus insurgency overall, but especially in Chechnya. A Chechen interior ministry source estimated in 2013 that 200-500 Chechens were fighting in Syria.

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]he Islamic jihadists are more comfortable in, and more accepted by the residents of, the anti-Assad, pro-Sunni, areas of Syria, doing war against Shiia Muslims, and against the Russian-supported secular Shiia President Assad, than they are back home in their native land (Chechnya in Russia). Even Putin’s enemies acknowledge Putin’s successes against the Saudi-based Sunni international Islamic jihad movement. Putin has become an experienced specialist in the war against Islamic terrorism.

Whereas the United States simply spreads Islamic jihad, even while bombing jihadists and creating more martyrs for “the cause” of jihad, Russia has found ways instead to push back effectively against the Saudi-originated movement of Islamic jihad, and to develop, during decades, a peaceful regional diversity, which can encompass even areas where (as in Chechnya) Islamic or sharia law is imposed, and do this even within a predominantly Christian-majority nation (such as Russia, but this also describes the United States).

“The United States opposes Islamic jihad (a monster largely of its own invention), but it opposes Russia more…”

The U.S. never had to deal with the challenge that Russia has, of containing within itself a majority-Muslim state, and especially not containing a state whose majority are Sunni Muslim, the variant of Islam that (unlike Shiia Islam) produces jihadists, people with suicide-belts etc., who seek to impose a global Caliphate, a worldwide regime that imposes strict Islamic law.

The ICG report on Chechnya criticizes today’s Chechnya, by saying that, “Much of the population lives off pensions and welfare payments,” and that corruption and clan-rule are the norm, but all that’s really new in this is actually the peace, and the pensions: corruption and clan-rule have been the rule in Chechnya for centuries, at the very least.

Simon Shuster’s video at TIME, about today’s Chechnya, opens:

The kids growing up in Chechnya these days are a lot luckier than their parents and their grandparents. At least the youngest ones have only known their homeland to be a peaceful and even quite beautiful place, full of enormous mosques, and skyscrapers, and shopping districts, and fast-food joints.

Shuster then refers to the civil war, but he says, “Today, Chechnya is a very different place,” and he acknowledges that the adults there, who remember the wars, are much happier now, that the jihadists are gone, or dead.

Kadyrov: Moscow’s man in Chechnya, but more independent than many think.

[dropcap]A[/dropcap]l Jazeera television, which is controlled by gas-rich Qatar’s anti-Russian Sunni royal family, the Thanis, has criticized Putin for his placing in control of Chechnya the anti-jihadist Chechen Muslim, Ramzan Kadyrov. Thanis are also the chief financial backers for the Muslim Brotherhood, and, along with the Saud family (the main financial backers of Al Qaeda), are also among the main financial backers of the Syrian warriors who are fighting to replace the secular Shiite leader, Assad, by a sectarian Sunni Islamic regime in Syria.

The anti-Russian American newspaper, New York Times, headlined on 1 July 2004, “Qatar Court Convicts 2 Russians in Top Chechen’s Death,” and reported:

In U.S.-allied nations generally, anti-Russian jihadists have, to a large extent, been sympathetically received, and favorably reported (as in that cited NYT article).

So: Regardless of Putin’s success at dealing with Islamic jihadists, his invitation to the United States to work together to defeat the Sunni, and mainly Saudi and Thani-funded, international movement for Islamic jihad for a global Caliphate, will probably continue to meet only America’s cold shoulder. The United States opposes Islamic jihad, but it opposes Russia more.

Or, at least, the U.S. Government does. Obama primarily seeks to defeat Russia, not to ally with it — not even against Islamic jihad. And here’s how serious he is about that goal: In order to be able to install a NATO base on Russia’s doorstep in Russia’s neighbor Ukraine, the U.S. on 4 February 2014 selected a new leader for Ukraine, and installed that new leader in a coup three weeks later. This new government was/is rabidly anti-Russian. The U.S. and Russia have, accordingly, reactivated their nuclear-weapons arsenals, for a possible direct war, no longer merely conflicts via proxies. However, Putin still is inviting Obama to switch from being obsessed with defeating Russia, to becoming allied with Russia. He’s, in effect, saying to Obama: “Okay, if NATO is to continue, then let us into it, and let us all agree, together, that the enemy to peace and international progress is the Islamic jihadist movement, and all of the aristocrats who fund it.”

[dropcap]H[/dropcap]owever, Putin probably holds little hope of a favorable response to this. As the great investigative historian William F. Engdahl wrote, on 15 May 2015 at journal-neo.org:

Not long after the CIA and Saudi Intelligence-financed Mujahideen had devastated Afghanistan at the end of the 1980’s, forcing the exit of the Soviet Army in 1989, and the dissolution of the Soviet Union itself some months later, the CIA began to look at possible places in the collapsing Soviet Union where their trained “Afghan Arabs” could be redeployed to further destabilize Russian influence over the post-Soviet Eurasian space.

They were called Afghan Arabs because they had been recruited from ultraconservative Wahhabite Sunni Muslims from Saudi Arabia, the Arab Emirates, Kuwait, and elsewhere in the Arab world where the ultra-strict Wahhabite Islam was practiced. They were brought to Afghanistan in the early 1980’s by a Saudi CIA recruit who had been sent to Afghanistan named Osama bin Laden.

With the former Soviet Union in total chaos and disarray, George H.W. Bush’s Administration decided to “kick ‘em when they’re down,” a sad error. Washington redeployed their Afghan veteran terrorists to bring chaos and destabilize all of Central Asia, even into the Russian Federation itself, then in a deep and traumatic crisis during the economic collapse of the Yeltsin era.

In the early 1990s, Dick Cheney’s company, Halliburton, had surveyed the offshore oil potentials of Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, and the entire Caspian Sea Basin. They estimated the region to be “another Saudi Arabia” worth several trillion dollars on today’s market. The US and UK were determined to keep that oil bonanza from Russian control by all means.

Engdahl also included this:

Bin Laden brought in another Saudi, Ibn al-Khattab, to become Commander, or Emir of Jihadist Mujahideen in Chechnya (sic!) together with Chechen warlord Shamil Basayev. No matter that Ibn al-Khattab was a Saudi Arab who spoke barely a word of Chechen, let alone, Russian. He knew what Russian soldiers looked like and how to kill them.

Chechnya then was traditionally a predominantly Sufi society, a mild apolitical branch of Islam. Yet the increasing infiltration of the well-financed and well-trained US-sponsored Mujahideen terrorists preaching Jihad or Holy War against Russians transformed the initially reformist Chechen resistance movement. They spread al-Qaeda’s hardline Islamist ideology across the Caucasus. Under [Richard] Secord’s guidance, Mujahideen terrorist operations had also quickly extended into neighboring Dagestan and Chechnya, turning Baku into a shipping point for Afghan heroin to the Chechen mafia.

From the mid-1990s, bin Laden paid Chechen guerrilla leaders Shamil Basayev and Omar ibn al-Khattab the handsome sum of several million dollars per month, a King’s fortune in economically desolate Chechnya in the 1990s, enabling them to sideline the moderate Chechen majority.21 US intelligence remained deeply involved in the Chechen conflict until the end of the 1990s. According to Yossef Bodansky, then Director of the US Congressional Task Force on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare, Washington was actively involved in “yet another anti-Russian jihad, seeking to support and empower the most virulent anti-Western Islamist forces.” …

Basayev and al-Khattab imported fighters from the Saudi fanatical Wahhabite strain of Sunni Islam into Chechnya. Ibn al-Khattab commanded what were called the “Arab Mujahideen in Chechnya,” his own private army of Arabs, Turks, and other foreign fighters. He was also commissioned to set up paramilitary training camps in the Caucasus Mountains of Chechnya that trained Chechens and Muslims from the North Caucasian Russian republics and from Central Asia.

Enghdahl referred to a 26 April 2015 speech by Putin, which had that history as its background:

A short way into his remarks, the Russian President stated for the first time publicly something that Russian intelligence has known for almost two decades but kept silent until now, most probably in hopes of an era of better normalized Russia-US relations.

Putin stated that the terror in Chechnya and in the Russian Caucasus in the early 1990’s was actively backed by the CIA and western Intelligence services to deliberately weaken Russia. He noted that the Russian FSB foreign intelligence had documentation of the US covert role without giving details.

What Putin, an intelligence professional of the highest order, only hinted at in his remarks, I have documented in detail from non-Russian sources. The report has enormous implications to reveal to the world the long-standing hidden agenda of influential circles in Washington to destroy Russia as a functioning sovereign state, an agenda which includes the neo-nazi coup d’etat in Ukraine and severe financial sanction warfare against Moscow.

Brzezinski

[dropcap]N[/dropcap]ot all of this has remained as being secret. There have even been some proud public participants in the American aristocracy’s hatred of Russians. For example: the child of dispossessed Polish nobility who emigrated to the United States and who as an adult was brought by the oil-baron heir David Rockefeller into several U.S. Presidential Administrations, Zbigniew Brzezinski (who co-founded with Rockefeller the Trilateral Commission) was quite proud of his anti-Russian hatred. (He had actually been born near Lviv, in the most pro-Nazi and anti-Russian part of present-day Ukraine. A racist hatred of Russians was intense there.) He was interviewed on page 76 of France’s Le Nouvel Observateur, on 15 January 1998, translated by Bill Blum, posted at Global Research by Michel Chossudovsky:

today?

B: Regret what? That secret operation was an excellent idea. It had the effect of drawing the Russians into the Afghan trap and you want me to regret it? The day that the Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote to President Carter. We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam war. Indeed, for almost 10 years, Moscow had to carry on a war unsupportable by the government, a conflict that brought about the demoralization and finally the breakup of the Soviet empire.

Q: And neither do you regret having supported the Islamic fundamentalism, having given arms and advice to future terrorists?

B: What is most important to the history of the world? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some stirred-up Moslems or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the cold war?

Q: Some stirred-up Moslems? But it has been said and repeated Islamic fundamentalism represents a world menace today.

B: Nonsense!

There is even a video-clip, “Brzezinski And The Mujahideen 1979,” which shows Brzezinski in 1979, arriving in Afghanistan and telling the Mujahideen (soon to be called the Taliban), “Your cause is right, and god is on your side.”

In other words: the U.S. aristocracy wants to grab Russia’s natural resources; and the fact that Russia is no longer part of any international communist alliance, the fact that the Cold War is over, is not going to end the war by America’s aristocracy for control of Russia and its resources. All that the end of communism does for America’s aristocrats is remove what had been their excuse for revving up Joseph R. McCarthy, etc., to stir hatred of what had for decades been Russians’ ideology. All that’s left now is the American aristocracy’s own greed, and psychopathy. But Putin still is publicly inviting those people to join with Russia in a global alliance, perhaps an entirely new NATO, to crush the Islamic jihad movement.

The public should know about the invitation, and should know why it has always been (and is being) rejected.

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Is the New U.S. ‘Law of War Manual’ Actually ‘Hitlerian’?

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]he Obama U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) has quietly issued its important Law of War Manual, and, unlike its predecessor, the 1956 U.S. Army Field Manual, which was not designed to approve of the worst practices by both the United States and its enemies in World War II, or after 9/11, this new document has been alleged specifically to do just that: to allow such attacks as the United States did on Dresden, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki, and in Iraq, and elsewhere.

Eric Zuesse

Martin Edward “Marty” Dempsey is a United States Army general and the 18th and current Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Like the rest of the corporatized military, an unmitigated war hawk.

First here will be a summary of previous news reports about this historically important document; then, extensive quotations from the actual document itself will be provided, relating to the allegations in those previous news reports. Finally will be conclusions regarding whether, or the extent to which, those earlier news reports about it were true.

EARLIER REPORTS ABOUT THE MANUAL:

The document was first reported by DoD in a curt press release on June 12th, with a short-lived link to the source-document, and headlined, “DoD Announces New Law of War Manual.” This press release was published and discussed only in a few military newsmedia, not in the general press.

The document was then anonymously reported on June 25th, at the non-military site,

http://respect-discussion.blogspot.com/2015/06/the-usa-writes-their-own-version-of.html,

under the headline, “The USA writes their own version of ‘International Law’: Pentagon Rewrites ‘Law of War’ Declaring ‘Belligerent’ Journalists as Legitimate Targets.”

That news article attracted some attention from journalists, but no link was provided to the actual document, which the U.S. DoD removed promptly after issuing it.

A professor of journalism was quoted there as being opposed to the document’s allegedly allowing America’s embedded war journalists to kill the other side’s journalists. He said: “It gives them license to attack or even murder journalists that they don’t particularly like but aren’t on the other side.”

Patrick Martin at the World Socialist Web Site, then headlined on August 11th, “Pentagon manual justifies war crimes and press censorship,” and he reported that the Committee to Protect Journalists was obsessed with the document’s implications regarding journalists. A link was provided to the document, but the link is dead.

Then, Sherwood Ross headlined at opednews on August 13th, “Boyle: New Pentagon War Manual Reduces Us to ‘Level of Nazis’,” and he interviewed the famous expert on international law, Francis Boyle, about it, who had read the report. Ross opened: “The Pentagon’s new Law of War Manual(LOWM) sanctioning nuclear attacks and the killing of civilians, ‘reads like it was written by Hitler’s Ministry of War,’ says international law authority Francis Boyle of the University of Illinois at Champaign.” Ross continued: “Boyle points out the new manual is designed to supplant the 1956 U.S. Army Field Manual 27-10 written by Richard Baxter, the world’s leading authority on the Laws of War. Baxter was the Manley O. Hudson Professor of Law at Harvard Law School and a Judge on the International Court of Justice. Boyle was his top student.”

The Pentagon’s new Law of War Manual(LOWM) sanctioning nuclear attacks and the killing of civilians, ‘reads like it was written by Hitler’s Ministry of War”

Ross did not link to the actual document. The only new information he provided about it consisted of Boyle’s opinions about it.

Though the DoD removed the document, someone had fortunately already copied it into the Web Archive, and I have linked to it there, at the top of the present article, to make the source-document easily accessible to the general public. The document is 1,204 pages. So, finally, the general public can see the document and make their own judgments about it. What follows will concern specifically the claims about it that were made in those prior news articles, and will compare those claims with the relevant actual statements in the document itself. Reading what the document says is worthwhile, because its predecessor, the Army Field Manual, became central in the news coverage about torture and other Bush Administration war-crimes.

THE DOCUMENT:

[dropcap]F[/dropcap]irst of all, regarding “journalists,” the document, in Chapter 4, says: “4.24.2 Journalists and other media representatives are regarded as civilians;471 i.e., journalism does not constitute taking a direct part in hostilities such that such a person would be deprived of protection from being made the object of attack.472.” Consequently, the journalism professor’s remark is dubious, at best, but probably can be considered to be outright false.

The charge by the international lawyer, Professor Boyle, is a different matter altogether.

This document says, in Chapter 5: “5.3.1 Responsibility of the Party Controlling Civilian 5.3.1 Persons and Objects. The party controlling civilians and civilian objects has the primary responsibility for the protection of civilians and civilian objects.13[13 See J. Fred Buzhardt, DoD General Counsel, Letter to Senator Edward Kennedy, Sept. 22, 1972. …] The party controlling the civilian population generally has the greater opportunity to minimize risk to civilians.14[14 FINAL REPORT ON THE PERSIAN GULF WAR 614. …] Civilians also may share in the responsibility to take precautions for their own protection.15[15 U.S. Comments on the International Committee of the Red Cross’s Memorandum on the Applicability of International Humanitarian Law in the Gulf Region, Jan. 11, 1991. …]” This is directly counter to what Professor Boyle was alleged to have charged about the document.

The document continues: “5.3.2 Essentially Negative Duties to Respect Civilians and to Refrain From Directing Military Operations Against Them. In general, military operations must not be directed against enemy civilians.16 In particular:

• Civilians must not be made the object of attack;17

• Military objectives may not be attacked when the expected incidental loss of life and injury to civilians or damage to civilian objects would be excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage expected to be gained;18

• Civilians must not be used as shields or as hostages;19 and

• Measures of intimidation or terrorism against the civilian population are prohibited, including acts or threats of violence, the primary purpose of which is to spread terror among the civilian population.20″

Furthermore: “5.3.3 Affirmative Duties to Take Feasible Precautions for the Protection of Civilians and Other Protected Persons and Objects. Parties to a conflict must take feasible precautions to reduce the risk of harm to the civilian population and other protected persons and objects.27 Feasible precautions to reduce the risk of harm to civilians and civilian objects must be taken when planning and conducting attacks.28”

Moreover: “5.5.2 Parties to a conflict must conduct attacks in accordance with the principles of distinction and proportionality. In particular, the following rules must be observed:

• Combatants may make military objectives the object of attack, but may not direct attacks against civilians, civilian objects, or other protected persons and objects.66

• Combatants must refrain from attacks in which the expected loss of life or injury to civilians, and damage to civilian objects incidental to the attack, would be excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage expected to be gained.67

• Combatants must take feasible precautions in conducting attacks to reduce the risk of harm to civilians and other protected persons and objects.68

• In conducting attacks, combatants must assess in good faith the information that is available to them.69

• Combatants may not kill or wound the enemy by resort to perfidy.70

• Specific rules apply to the use of certain types of weapons.71”

In addition: “5.5.3.2 AP I Presumptions in Favor of Civilian Status in Conducting Attacks. In the context of conducting attacks, certain provisions of AP I reflect a presumption in favor of civilian status in cases of doubt. Article 52(3) of AP I provides that ‘[i]n case of doubt whether an object which is normally dedicated to civilian purposes, such as a place of worship, a house or other dwelling or a school, is being used to make an effective contribution to military actions, it shall be presumed not to be so used.’76 Article 50(1) of AP I provides that ‘[i]n case of doubt whether a person is a civilian, that person shall be considered to be a civilian.’”

Then, there is this: “5.15 UNDEFENDED CITIES, TOWNS, AND VILLAGES. Attack, by whatever means, of a village, town, or city that is undefended is prohibited.360 Undefended villages, towns, or cities may, however, be captured.”

Furthermore: “5.17 SEIZURE AND DESTRUCTION OF ENEMY PROPERTY. Outside the context of attacks, certain rules apply to the seizure and destruction of enemy property:

• Enemy property may not be seized or destroyed unless imperatively demanded by the necessities of war.”

These features too are not in accord with the phrase ‘reads like it was written by Hitler’s Ministry of War.’

However, then, there is also this in Chapter 6, under “6.5 Lawful Weapons”:

“6.5.1 Certain types of weapons, however, are subject to specific rules that apply to their use by the U.S. armed forces. These rules may reflect U.S. obligations under international law or national policy. These weapons include:

• mines, booby-traps, and other devices (except certain specific classes of prohibited mines, booby-traps, and other devices);38

• explosive ordnance.45

6.5.2 Other Examples of Lawful Weapons. In particular, aside from the rules prohibiting weapons calculated to cause superfluous injury and inherently indiscriminate weapons,46 there are no law of war rules specifically prohibiting or restricting the following types of weapons by the U.S. armed forces: …

• depleted uranium munitions;51”

[dropcap]M[/dropcap]ines, cluster munitions, incendiary weapons, herbicides, nuclear weapons, and depleted uranium munitions, are all almost uncontrollably violative of the restrictions that were set forth in Chapter 5, preceding.

There are also passages like this:

“6.5.4.4 Expanding Bullets. The law of war does not prohibit the use of bullets that expand or flatten easily in the human body. Like other weapons, such bullets are only prohibited if they are calculated to cause superfluous injury.74 The U.S. armed forces have used expanding bullets in various counterterrorism and hostage rescue operations, some of which have been conducted in the context of armed conflict.

The 1899 Declaration on Expanding Bullets prohibits the use of expanding bullets in armed conflicts in which all States that are parties to the conflict are also Party to the 1899 Declaration on Expanding Bullets.75 The United States is not a Party to the 1899 Declaration on Expanding Bullets, in part because evidence was not presented at the diplomatic conference that expanding bullets produced unnecessarily severe or cruel wounds.76”

The United States still has not gone as far as the 1899 Declaration on Expanding Bullets. The U.S. presumption is instead that expanding bullets have not “produced unnecessarily severe or cruel wounds.” This is like George W. Bush saying that waterboarding, etc., aren’t “torture.” The document goes on to explain that, “expanding bullets are widely used by law enforcement agencies today, which also supports the conclusion that States do not regard such bullets are inherently inhumane or needlessly cruel.81” And, of course, the Republicans on the U.S. Supreme Court do not think that the death penalty is either “cruel” or “unusual” punishment. Perhaps Obama is a closeted Republican himself.

The use of depleted uranium was justified by an American Ambassador’s statement asserting that, “The environmental and long-term health effects of the use of depleted uranium munitions have been thoroughly investigated by the World Health Organization, the United Nations Environmental Program, the International Atomic Energy Agency, NATO, the Centres for Disease Control, the European Commission, and others. None of these inquiries has documented long-term environmental or health effects attributable to use of these munitions.”

However, according to Al Jazeera’s Dahr Jamail, on 15 March 2013: “Official Iraqi government statistics show that, prior to the outbreak of the First Gulf War in 1991, the rate of cancer cases in Iraq was 40 out of 100,000 people. By 1995, it had increased to 800 out of 100,000 people, and, by 2005, it had doubled to at least 1,600 out of 100,000 people. Current estimates show the increasing trend continuing. As shocking as these statistics are, due to a lack of adequate documentation, research, and reporting of cases, the actual rate of cancer and other diseases is likely to be much higher than even these figures suggest.” If those figures are accurate, then the reasonable presumption would be that depleted uranium should have been banned long ago. Continuing to assert that it’s not as dangerous a material as people think it is, seems likely to be based on cover-up, rather than on science. Until there is proof that it’s not that toxic, the presumption should be that it must be outlawed.

Finally, though the press reports on this document have not generally focused on the issue of torture, it’s worth pointing out what the document does say, about that:

“5.26.2 Information Gathering. The employment of measures necessary for obtaining information about the enemy and their country is considered permissible.727

Information gathering measures, however, may not violate specific law of war rules.728

For example, it would be unlawful, of course, to use torture or abuse to interrogate detainees for purposes of gathering information.”

And: “9.8.1 Humane Treatment During Interrogation. Interrogation must be carried out in a manner consistent with the requirements for humane treatment, including the prohibition against acts of violence or intimidation, and insults.153

No physical or mental torture, nor any other form of coercion, may be inflicted on POWs to secure from them information of any kind whatever.154 POWs who refuse to answer may not be threatened, insulted, or exposed to unpleasant or disadvantageous treatment of any kind.155

Prohibited means include imposing inhumane conditions,156 denial of medical treatment, or the use of mind-altering chemicals.157”

Those provisions would eliminate George W. Bush’s ‘justification’ for the use of tortures such as waterboarding, and humiliation.

Furthermore: “8.2.1 Protection Against Violence, Torture, and Cruel Treatment. Detainees must be protected against violence to life and person, in particular murder of all kinds, mutilation, cruel treatment, torture, and any form of corporal punishment.29”

Therefore, even if Bush’s approved forms of torture were otherwise allowable under Obama’s new legal regime, some of those forms, such as waterboarding, and even “insults,” would be excluded by this provision.

Moreover: “8.2.4 Threats to Commit Inhumane Treatment. Threats to commit the unlawful acts described above (i.e., violence against detainees, or humiliating or degrading treatment, or biological or medical experiments) are also prohibited.37”

And: “8.14.4.1 U.S. Policy Prohibiting Transfers in Cases in Which Detainees Would Likely Be Tortured. U.S. policy provides that no person shall be transferred to another State if it is more likely than not that the person would be tortured in the receiving country.”

Therefore, specifically as regards torture, the Obama system emphatically and clearly excludes what the Bush interpretation of the U.S. Army Field Manual allowed.

CONCLUSIONS:

[dropcap]W[/dropcap]hat seems undeniable about the Law of War Manual, is that there are self-contradictions within it. To assert that it “reads like it was written by Hitler’s Ministry of War,” is going too far. But, to say that it’s hypocritical (except, perhaps, on torture, where it’s clearly a repudiation of GWB’s practices), seems safely true.

This being so, Obama’s Law of War Manual should ultimately be judged by Obama’s actions as the U.S. Commander in Chief, and not merely by the document’s words. Actions speak truer than words, even if they don’t speak louder than words (and plenty of people still think that Obama isn’t a Republican in ‘Democratic’ verbal garb: they’re not tone-deaf, but they surely are action-deaf; lots of people judge by words not actions). For example: it was Obama himself who arranged the bloody coup in Ukraine and the resulting necessary ethnic cleansing there in order to exterminate or else drive out the residents in the area of Ukraine that had voted 90+% for the Ukrainian President whom Obama’s people (via their Ukrainian agents) had overthrown. Cluster bombs, firebombs, and other such munitions have been used by their stooges for this purpose, that ethnic cleansing: against the residents there. Obama has spoken publicly many times defending what they are doing, but using euphemisms to refer to it. He is certainly behind the coup and its follow-through in the ethnic cleansing, and none of it would be happening if he did not approve of it. Judging the mere words of Obama’s Law of War Manual by Obama’s actions (such as in Ukraine, but also Syria, and Libya) is judging it by how he actually interprets it, and this technique of interpreting the document provides the answer to the document’s real meaning. It answers the question whenever there are contradictions within the document (as there indeed are).

Consequently, what Francis Boyle was reported to have said is, in the final analysis, true, at least in practical terms — which is all that really counts — except on torture, where his allegation is simply false.

Obama’s intent, like that of anyone, must be drawn from his actions, his decisons, not from his words, whenever the words and the actions don’t jibe, don’t match. When his Administration produced its Law of War Manual, it should be interpreted to mean what his Administration has done and is doing, not by its words, wherever there is a contradiction between those two.

This also means that no matter how much one reads the document itself, some of what one is reading is deception if it’s not being interpreted by, and in the light of, an even more careful reading of Obama’s relevant actions regarding the matters to which the document pertains.

Otherwise, the document is being read in a way that confuses its policy statements with its propaganda statements.

Parts of the document are propaganda. The purpose isn’t to fool the public, who won’t read the document (and Obama apparently doesn’t want them to). The purpose of the propaganda is to enable future presidents to say, “But if you will look at this part of the Manual, you will see that what we are doing is perfectly legal.” Those mutually contradictory passages are there in order to provide answers which will satisfy both the ‘hawks’ and the ‘doves.’

Investigative historian They’re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010, and of CHRIST’S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity.

…

FACT TO REMEMBER:
IF THE WESTERN MEDIA HAD ITS PRIORITIES IN ORDER AND ACTUALLY INFORMED, EDUCATED AND UPLIFTED THE MASSES INSTEAD OF SHILLING FOR A GLOBAL EMPIRE OF ENDLESS WARS, OUTRAGEOUS ECONOMIC INEQUALITY, AND DEEPENING DEVASTATION OF NATURE AND THE ANIMAL WORLD, HORRORS LIKE THESE WOULD HAVE BEEN ELIMINATED MANY YEARS, PERHAPS DECADES AGO. EVERY SINGLE DAY SOCIAL BACKWARDNESS COLLECTS ITS OWN INNUMERABLE VICTIMS.

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The GOP Debate is What Oligarchy Looks Like

Richard Eskow

[dropcap]I[/dropcap]n the run-up to the first Republican presidential debate, a flurry of news stories about the candidates offered glimpses of oligarchy in action. Consider:

Jeb Bush’s largest Super PAC has already raised $103 million, most of it collected before he even officially declared that he was running for president. (That may explain the exclamation point in his “Jeb!” logo.)

At least 20 individuals wrote checks to Bush’s Super PAC for $1 million or more, and an estimated 236 checks were received for $100,000 or more.

Roughly a third of the more than $380 million already raised for the 2016 election comes from less than 60 donations, according to the Associated Press.

For the first time in more than a century, most of the funding for a presidential election is being donated in amounts of six figures or more from corporations and wealthy individuals.

It took Ted Cruz three months to raise $10 million, according to the same AP account. He then more than doubled the size of his coffers by collecting $11 million with a single check from a hedge funder.

Donald Trump says he’s financing his own campaign – despite the fact that Trump-led corporations have filed for bankruptcy four times.

John Kasich’s super PAC raised $11 million in a little more than two months. Out of 166 reportable contributions, 34 were for $100,000 or more. A number of donors gave $1 million or more.

[dropcap]S[/dropcap]everal leading Republican presidential candidates received most of their funding from a few high-dollar donors. Marco Rubio and Scott Walker each received most of their backing from just four donors. The campaigns of Ted Cruz, Mike Huckabee and Rick Perry have each largely been financed by a single donor.

Some political high rollers don’t understand why that might be a bad thing. Silicon Valley investor Scott Banister, who gave $1.2 million to Rand Paul’s Super PAC, said, “I’d think that the fact that I’m willing to spend money in the public square rather than buying myself a toy would be considered a good thing.”

Mr. Banister may be well intentioned, but many Americans would rather see him buy a toy than let American democracy become a plaything of the rich.

For his part, Jeb Bush wasn’t apologizing. “I’m playing by the rules of the game, the way it’s laid out,” he said of his PAC fundraising. “And if people don’t like it, that’s just tough luck.”

But it’s not “luck” at all. It’s the product of a deliberate effort to undermine our democratic system of government and replace it with the rule of the rich. This is something that is being done to us – and, through the public financing of elections, it can be undone.

Recently five Republican presidential candidates paraded themselves before a group of mega-donors convened by the billionaire Koch brothers in Dana Point, California. The network run by Charles and David Koch has budgeted nearly a billion dollars ($889 million) to influence the outcome of next year’s election.

[dropcap]I[/dropcap]t was left to Trump, of all people, to play the role of truth-teller. “I wish good luck to all of the Republican candidates that traveled to California to beg for money etc. from the Koch Brothers,” Trump wrote on Twitter. “Puppets?”

Charles Koch has begun speaking of “injustices” and claiming that civil rights movements serve as his moral models. But his actions – in the form of donations and campaign contributions – belie those words. The Koch-backed American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) has pushed laws that benefit both corporate America generally, and Koch Industries specifically. It has also promoted voter ID laws that make it more difficult for lower-income citizens to vote – even as the Koch network spends hundreds of millions of dollars to influence the political process.

The interests of the big-money donors were reflected in Thursday’s debate – in what we heard, and even more so in what we didn’t hear. There was no mention of the great income transfer to the wealthiest among us, the perils of climate change, the economic threat posed by big banks, or the struggle of a declining middle class. The candidates never offered specific proposals to help working Americans, even when asked to do so by the moderators.

But then, is that any wonder? We’re told that the wealthy donors who gathered in Dana Point last week failed to line up behind a single candidate – and there are many other donors out there. With all that money still in play, this week’s debate wasn’t just a pitch to voters. It was also an extension of the Kochs’ California beauty pageant.

Charles Koch’s high-flown vagaries seem designed, more than anything else, to improve the brothers’ suffering public reputation. He seems determined to send the message that, while he and his friends may be our new oligarchs, they will be benevolent ones.

Thanks, Mr. Koch, but we’d rather take our chances with democracy instead.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License.

Richard (RJ) Eskow is a senior fellow at Campaign for America’s Future.

FACT TO REMEMBER:
IF THE WESTERN MEDIA HAD ITS PRIORITIES IN ORDER AND ACTUALLY INFORMED, EDUCATED AND UPLIFTED THE MASSES INSTEAD OF SHILLING FOR A GLOBAL EMPIRE OF ENDLESS WARS, OUTRAGEOUS ECONOMIC INEQUALITY, AND DEEPENING DEVASTATION OF NATURE AND THE ANIMAL WORLD, HORRORS LIKE THESE WOULD HAVE BEEN ELIMINATED MANY YEARS, PERHAPS DECADES AGO. EVERY SINGLE DAY SOCIAL BACKWARDNESS COLLECTS ITS OWN INNUMERABLE VICTIMS.

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Dr. Moti Nissani, 44 Days Radio Sinoland Interview Part 2. Direct Democracy or Extinction- 2015.7.5

Dispatch from Beijing } Jeff Brown‘s special reports

44 Days

Dr. Moti Nissani, 44 Days Radio Sinoland Interview Part 2. Direct Democracy or Extinction- 2015.7.5

Moti Mossani

This is Part 2 of Jeff’s very popular interview, with Dr. Moti Nissani. Picking up with the Fermi Paradox and highlighting some of the first installment’s key points, they then share a fascinating, wide-ranging, yet hopeful discussion about the only hope for human survival: direct democracy and localized production.

Find lots and lots more unique, informative non-mainstream media radio shows, interviews and articles about China at www.44days.net

https://soundcloud.com/44-days/moti-nissani-radio-sinoland-interview-part-2-201575

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The Ukrainian Failed State: Pravy Sektor vs. The Kiev Junta

JOAQUIN FLORES | Simulpost with Fort Russ

“Instability and failed states is one of the most favored US methods of maintaining control…”

[dropcap]I[/dropcap]n Rostislav Ishchenko’s latest brief titled: К событиям в Мукачево (The Events in Mukachevo), he gives us his view of what the headline grabbing situation in Mukachevo represents, what can be gained or lost from it, what is behind, and what the potential outcomes of it can be.

Ishchenko offers some good ideas, and some of the dynamics he describes are useful. Problematically though is that the foundation of the ideas in his brief rely on several essentially wrong assumptions about the way the US operates, what its goals are, how it understands power, and of course the question of who is behind the Pravy Sektor in the first place. This also places into question the entire understanding of the events leading up to and following the coup, and how the US orchestrated some things and yet was forced to react and compromise on others.

First it is important to say that in many cases it is generally not generous to critique a brief for the things it does not include. On any given subject, there are many variables which a brief cannot possibly cover. But underlying assumptions are evident in his piece, and furthermore by enumerating the options which lead to definite predictions, these seem to exclude other variables. Upon reflection, Ishchenko may even agree with elements of this rejoinder brief – which hopefully can be read by all as an addendum.

To understand what is incomplete in the Ishchenko brief, and what can be added, first we will look precisely at what was stated.

To summarize Ishchenko’s view, he essentially provides this: The fact that the Pravy Sektor and the Kiev Junta are having an open conflict is both inevitable and good. We are given three possible outcomes:

“1. Suppression of the Pravy Sektor.
2. The overthrow of Poroshenko.
3. A temporary compromise.”

It is stated that the third is not so good, but will inevitably lead to either 1. or 2. because the 3rd option only puts off the inevitable for a temporary amount of time.

He is optimistic about these developments because in the case of 1., then the Kiev Junta loses support of the Pravy Sektor, and because the war effort relies on their support, the Junta’s (i.e. Poroshenko’s) war efforts are doomed to fail.

In the case of 2., it is stated that this will lead to the establishment of a “Radical Nationalist Dictatorship”, which neither the US or Europe will be able to ignore.

In either event, whatever government results, it will not have support from key constituencies which it requires to pursue the war effort, or to maintain governmental functions.

He concludes in his bottom line, point 6.:

“ 6. In addition, this incident demonstrates that even the Americans cannot keep the situation under control.”

His last, bottom line point refers back to the three possible outcomes.

What is missing from his brief is the 4th option:

*Both sides continue hostilities with no end in sight*

This will lead towards an increase in the rate of deterioration of the situation, and general instability. This is what the US may in fact want.

[dropcap]S[/dropcap]urely, it can back both the Kiev Junta and the Pravy Sektor and any other faction that wants to get in on the free for all, so long as it makes Ukraine an unworkable project, and economically useless – in fact rather a total liability – to Belarus and Russia.

The Belgrade based public NGO, Center for Syncretic Studies was the first to detail the dynamics of this strategy.

Ishchenko operates from the premise that the US supports or controls Poroshenko, but does not control the Pravy Sektor, and this view is not corroborated either by theory or by the way that the US has operated on the ground.

To understand the actual mechanics, we must explain the following.

The National Endowment for Democracy and Radio Free Europe and its brand ‘Radio Liberty’ also called ‘Radio Svoboda’ is the foreign backbone for the Svoboda Party of Ukraine.

The Svoboda Party is the rebranding of the Social-Nationalist assembly. A legal party during the pre-coup regime, such as Svoboda cannot have an armed militia within the framework of legal institutions. This legal party is nominally led by Oleh Tyahnybok.

McCain speaks, Tyahnybok on his right. An appearance similar to his impromptu FSA support meetings in Syria.

To reconcile this, the US urged the Social-Nationalist assembly groups that did not form under the Svoboda Party brand to maintain independence. They continued with paramilitary training and preparation. In the period leading up to the coup, they were re-organized in a unified way that the Social-Nationalist assembly had done, under the umbrella brand ‘Pravy Sektor’. This is led by Dmytro Yarosh.

The US exerts total control over Svoboda, and uses its ‘hawk’ wing  (McCain, et al)  to support them publicly. Covertly they support and control the Pravy Sektor through numerous proxies, in-country oligarchs, and various charitable foundations run by fronts.

The US exerts the least control over Poroshenko – although to be clear, they had the most control over him and more so over Yatsenyuk, when compared to other relatively mainstream, i.e. electable people.

The EU also apparently favored Poroshenko, and the May 2014 elections, and the placement of Poroshenko came a whole phase later, a phase which was shaped by two events:

1.) February 2014 – Following the previous marginalization of the EU, the US going against the EU’s compromise with Russia to resolve the crisis peacefully with new elections, infamously characterized with Nulands ‘f*ck the EU’ statement.

2.) March 2014 Crimea surprise – Following the Crimeans’ vote to separate from Ukraine and join Russia, signaling a robust and clear Russian response.

Yatsenyuk and Klitschko: Nuland’s favorites

The US initially favored Yatsenyuk and Klitschko. That is what the leak clearly indicates from Nuland’s conversation.

Klitschko was the link between Tyahnybok and Yatsenyuk. Tyahnybok was scripted to play the ‘radical’ who pressured the ‘responsible’ Yatsenyuk and Klitschko. The ‘violence’ of Yarosh must be separated by two links from the ‘responsibleness’ of Yatsenyuk.

Tyahnybok is the link between Yarosh and Yatsenyuk. Tyahnybok’s leverage on Yatsenyuk would be – in the script – a reasonable response to placate or ameliorate the violence of Yarosh. In reality, all three are team USA.

Tyahnybok doing what he does best

But the two formative events, above, made this unworkable. To reformulate the plan, the US had to go back to the EU and make a compromise. The EU also could not make a compromise without some indication from Russia that such a compromise would be acceptable.
…
So the US was pushed back to the EU-Russia agreement of ‘new elections’. However, they still had the upper-hand because there were new facts on the ground (the coup, new radical formations emboldened, a new narrative, etc.).

“The Pravy Sektor are the ‘Wahhabis’ in the ‘Ukrainian Spring’…[Wittingly or unwittingly] the Pravy Sektor are US agents of destabilization. That is their assigned role.

Poroshenko was the candidate which the US, EU, and Russia could agree to. That Russia did not recognize the elections in Novorossiya the way they had with Crimea was their ‘proof’ that they were on board with the Poroshenko compromise. In that sense, it was not the old agreement which the US had already ‘f*cked’, but a new agreement which merely resembled the old agreement.

This fact is not widely publicized or discussed, and works against popular pro-Russian sentiments and memes, because of the war-crimes and crimes against humanity that Poroshenko subsequently became responsible for.

Russia would proceed to, in a surprisingly warm tone (in the language of international relations), through Lavrov, ‘welcome’ and recognize the May 2014 Kiev elections as legitimate, even though the constitution stipulates that it is not. It was not really legitimate by Ukraine’s own constitution due to the lack of participation of the rebellious regions, the de-facto martial law, as well as other factors.

Poroshenko and Yatsenyuk – newlyweds already having doubts.

The best analogy for Poroshenko, then, is the EU (not the US) – caught in a tug of war between the US and Russia, but also trying to look out for and define his own interest in the game, all the while being threatened with destruction.

It is most likely that Russia had no illusions that Poroshenko would also be compelled to try to push Russia into a premature or unpopular (in Europe and Russia) intervention. But Poroshenko was more committed to the semblance of normalcy and order – at least west of the Dnieper River – and was inclined to make numerous deals with Russia – including accepting coal and gas subsidies – all to maintain some modicum of a society, even with seriously eroded democratic, civil, pluralistic norms.

Ishchenko’s brief, however, reduces these complexities, recognizes the US’s support for Poroshenko, but does not consider either the degree of support, how it came about, or the way that the US uses the Pravy Sektor as well.

The brief thus points perhaps to the opposite conclusion that it should.

Now we return to Ishchenko’s bottom line, point 6.:

“ 6. In addition, this incident demonstrates that even the Americans cannot keep the situation under control.”

American practice on these matters, in light of the Color-Spring tactic is the role of creative destruction, control through chaos, surfing catastrophe. Ishchenko seems to operate purely from a Color Revolution understanding of the situation.

We can summarize Ishchenko’s understanding as follows: The US backed a Color Revolution in Ukraine to get ‘its government’ (Poroshenko and Yatsenyuk) into power. It used ‘useful and violent idiots’ of the Pravy Sektor to help with this. They served that purpose, and also a purpose in the war – but now they threaten to go rogue and do things the US does not want them to do.

This is not correct. So far we have discussed two US plans, one before the two formative events listed above, and one after. Both plans rely on total control of the Pravy Sektor as a hedge against any government that thinks that it might do something sane like stop the war, or pursue it half-heartedly.

Ishchenko seems to ignore the last four years in the evolution of the Color Revolution tactic into the Arab Spring tactic – which relies also on a Color beginning, but then transforms a civil opposition into an armed uprising (the FSA) and then creates a distinct force which it also controls like Al-Nusra, ISIS/ISIL and similar Al Qaeda type proxies.

This author was the first to explain that the Pravy Sektor are the “Wahhabis” in the “Ukrainian Spring”.

The goal in this strategy is not to effect some ‘transition of power’, but to make power itself impossible. It is not to change the government or its commitments, but to make government and commitments impossible to effect.

The Orange Revolution and the experience of Yulia Tymoshenko illustrate this point in the negative. Even after this traditional Color Revolution tactic was effectively employed, the overall strategy was frustrated by natural tendencies. Despite a rhetorically and culturally anti-Russian government, the actual policy of Tymoshenko actually engendered an increase of Ukraine-Russia bilateral trade. She is accused of possibly taking bribes from Gazprom officials for making a deal with them that was, perhaps, too good for Gazprom.

Whatever government there will be – even Poroshenko is evidence of this – will rely on Russia. If it also has something that it produces, any export at all, then Russia will benefit from this as well. This natural tendency, under regular peacetime norms, will bring different players to the table. The pragmatic tendency will be for any functioning Ukraine to drift back into the Russian sphere of influence.

Recall that in early February 2015, the US warned that “if Poroshenko and Yatsenyuk walk the path of Yushchenko and Tymoshenko, they will ‘wash their hands’ of them”. That path was having any kind of normal relations with their largest trading partner, Russia.

That is why there must be a war. This is not about regime change, but about destabilization. The Pravy Sektor are US agents of destabilization. When they take up arms against the Kiev Junta, they are performing their specific role, which is the opposite of going rogue.

As to Ishchenko’s conclusion that whatever outcome will be ‘good’. That is possible, but also debatable. Russia certainly has numerous contingencies in play, and enough time has gone by, and several events have unfolded, which tend to favor it over all. But this is separate from what Ishchenko seems to have in mind.

It is quite strange that the idea that Ukraine could become a Radical Nationalist regime would be something the US could not ignore, in the sense that this would present some problem for the US on ideological grounds. Europe may have a harder time selling this to the various publics within each European country, but this is still workable insofar as Europe is more finely tuned in the art of sitting in two chairs, opposing things in words which they support in policy, and other duplicitous ways of implementing policy.

It is logical that the US would not establish a Radical Nationalist ‘regime’ in Ukraine – but not for the reasons that Ishchenko thinks; not for its radicalism or nationalism, but for its governmental role as a ‘regime’. Regimes, at any rate, are relatively stable until the US makes them failed states. The problem for the US is stability, regardless of the governmental form.

The US has in fact put into power any number of radical nationalist, or authoritarian dictatorships, all around the world. It hasn’t even arguably done so in Europe since the 1930’s. But what Ishchenko may not understand is that, even with this, Ukraine is not considered Europe and never will be. Ukraine is up for standard colonial 3rd world treatment.

However, the US will not install a Pinochet, whether his name is Yarosh or Tyahnybok or Yatsenyuk. Despite his crimes against humanity, and a program of austerity and privatization inspired chiefly by the Chicago School of Economics and the Austrians, Chile was not a failed state in any sense of the word.

Thus in viewing Ishchenko’s ‘point 6.’, rather than “this incident shows that even the Americans cannot keep the situation under control”, it is the opposite: the Pravy Sektor is one American method of keeping the situation under control.
…
But if one confuses stability for control, then they would have lost the plot. Instability and failed states is one of the most favored US methods of maintaining control.

If we consider a ‘4th’ possible outcome, adding to Ishchenko, that would be the one that best suits the US if it cannot compel the government of Poroshenko to resume major hostilities in the east of former Ukraine. The Pravy Sektor is their vehicle to create that mayhem.

This could bleed into, and spin off into, any number of directions. Transcarpathia, Transdniestra; it could pull in Poland as the Pravy Sektor’s conception of greater Galicia includes parts of Poland. Crimes against the minority Hungarian population in Ukraine’s west could pull in Hungary. From here, so many more variables would be then included, creating the perfect recipe for the kind of ‘creative destruction’ which the US prefers.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

[box type=”bio”] Joaquin Flores is a Mexican-American expat based in Belgrade. He is a full-time analyst and director at the Center for Syncretic Studies, a public geostrategic think-tank and consultancy firm, as well as the co-editor of Fort Russ news service, and President of the Berlin based Independent Journalists Association for Peace. His expertise encompasses Eastern Europe, Eurasia, and he has a strong proficiency in Middle East affairs. Flores is particularly adept at analyzing ideology and the role of mass psychology, as well as the methods of the information war in the context of 4GW and New Media. He is a political scientist educated at California State University. In the US, he worked for a number of years as a labor union organizer, chief negotiator, and strategist for a major trade union federation.[/box]

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