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by zangtang » Sun Nov 01, 2015 10:34 am
by AlicetheKurious » Tue Nov 03, 2015 5:22 am
26.10.2015 Author: F. William Engdahl
Genies and Genocide: Syria, Israel, Russia and Much Oil
The geopolitical stakes in the Middle East have just gotten higher by an order of magnitude. Take a little-known Newark, New Jersey oil company, the contested Golan Heights between Syria and Israel, add a reported major oil discovery there just as Russia’s bombing campaign in Syria goes into high gear, shake it vigorously and we have a potential detonator for World War III.
Initially–going back more than a decade when Washington neo-conservative think-tanks and the Bush-Cheney Administration were devising their Greater Middle East regime-change agenda–competing natural gas pipelines through Syria to Turkey or via Lebanon to the Mediterranean played a definite “supporting” role in Washington’s war on Syria’s Assad. Now oil, lots of oil, comes into the play, and Israel is claiming it’s theirs. The only problem is that it isn’t. The oil is in the Golan Heights which Israel illegally took from Syria in the 1967 Six Day War.
Genie in a stinky bottle
What do Dick Cheney, James Woolsey, Bill Richardson, Jacob Lord Rothschild, Rupert Murdock, Larry Summers and Michael Steinhardt have in common? They all are members of the Strategic Advisory Board of a Newark, New Jersey-based oil and gas group with the name, Genie Energy. It’s quite a collection of names.
Dick Cheney, before becoming George W. Bush’s “shadow president” in 2001, was CEO of the world’s largest oilfield services company, Halliburton, also reported to be a CIA-linked company tied to the Bush family cabal. James Woolsey, a neo-con former CIA Director under Bill Clinton, today sits as the chairman of the neo-con think-tank, Foundation for Defense of Democracies, and is a member of the pro-Likud Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP). He was a member of the infamous Project for a New American Century (PNAC), along with Cheney, Don Rumsfeld and a gaggle of neo-cons who later staffed the Bush-Cheney administration. After September 11, 2001 Woolsey referred to the Bush-Cheney War on Terror as “World War IV,” counting the Cold War as World War III. Bill Richardson is a former US Secretary of Energy. Rupert Murdock, owner of major US and UK media including the Wall Street Journal, is the major financier of the neo-conservative Weekly Standard of Bill Kristol, who founded the PNAC. Larry Summers was US Treasury Secretary and drafted the laws that deregulated US banks from the 1933 Glass-Steagall Act, in effect opening the floodgates to the US financial crisis of 2007-2015. Michael Steinhardt the hedge fund speculator, is a philanthropic friend of Israel, of Marc Rich and a board member of Woolsey’s neo-con Foundation for the Defense of Democracies. And Jacob Lord Rothschild is a former business partner of convicted Russian oil oligarch, Mikhail Khodorkovsky. Before his arrest Khodorkovsky secretly transferred his shares in Yukos Oil to Rothschild. Rothschild is a part-owner of Genie Energy which in 2013 was granted exclusive oil and gas exploration rights to a 153-square mile radius in the southern part of the Golan Heights by the Netanyahu government. In short, it’s quite an eye-popping board.
Golan Heights and international law
The Israeli government gave the concession to Genie in the disputed Golan Heights in 2013 when the US-led destabilization of the Syrian Assad regime was in full force. Conveniently, Israel also began building fortifications at that time to seal off the illegally-occupied Golan Heights from Syria, knowing there was little Assad or Syria could do to stop it. In 2013, as Genie Energy began moving into Golan Heights, Israeli military engineers overhauled the forty-five mile border fence with Syria, replacing it with a steel barricade that includes barbed wire, touch sensors, motion detectors, infrared cameras, and ground radar, putting it on par with the Wall Israel has constructed in the West Bank.
Now, as Damascus fights for its life, apparently, Genie has discovered a huge oil field precisely there.
The Golan Heights, however, are illegally occupied by Israel. In 1981, Israel passed the Golan Heights Law, imposing Israeli “laws, jurisdiction and administration” to the Golan Heights. In response the UN Security Council passed Resolution 242 which declared Israel must withdraw from all lands occupied in the 1967 war with Syria, including the Golan Heights.
Again in 2008 a plenary session of the UN General Assembly passed a resolution 161–1 in favor of a motion on the Golan Heights that reaffirmed Security Council resolution 497, which was passed in 1981 after the Israeli de facto annexation, declaring the Golan Heights Law, “null and void and without international legal effect,” and called on Israel to desist from “changing the physical character, demographic composition, institutional structure and legal status of the occupied Syrian Golan and, in particular, to desist from the establishment of settlements…from imposing Israeli citizenship and Israeli identity cards on the Syrian citizens in the occupied Syrian Golan and from its repressive measures against the population of the occupied Syrian Golan.” Israel was the only nation to vote against the resolution. As recently as June 2007 Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert sent a secret communique to Syrian President Bashar Assad saying that Israel would concede the Golan Heights in exchange for a comprehensive peace agreement and the severing of Syria’s ties with Iran and militant groups in the region.
Genie claims huge discovery
On October 8, into the second week of Russian airstrikes against ISIS and other so-called “moderate” terrorists at the request of the Assad government, Yuval Bartov, chief geologist from Genie Energy’s Israeli subsidiary, Afek Oil & Gas, told Israel’s Channel 2 TV that his company had found a major oil reservoir on the Golan Heights: “We’ve found an oil stratum 350 meters thick in the southern Golan Heights. On average worldwide, strata are 20 to 30 meters thick, and this is 10 times as large as that, so we are talking about significant quantities.”
This oil find has now made the Golan Heights a strategic “prize” that clearly has the Netanyahu government more determined than ever to sow chaos and disorder in Damascus and use that to de facto create an Israeli irreversible occupation of Golan and its oil. A minister in the Netanyahu coalition government, Naftali Bennett, Minister of Education and Minister of Diaspora Affairs and leader of the right-wing religious party, The Jewish Home, has made a proposal that Israel settle 100,000 new Israeli settlers across the Golan in five years. He argues that with Syria “disintegrating” after years of civil war, it’s hard to imagine a stable state to which the Golan Heights could be returned. Further a growing chorus in Tel Aviv is arguing that Netanyahu demand American recognition of Israel’s 1981 annexation of the Golan as an “appropriate salve to Israeli security concerns in the wake of the nuclear deal with Iran.”
Energy war has been a significant component of US, Israeli, Qatari, Turkish, and, until recently, Saudi, strategy against Syria’s Assad regime. Before the latest Golan Heights oil discovery, the focus on Assad pivoted on the huge regional natural gas resources of both Qatar and of Iran on opposite sides of the Persian Gulf, comprising the largest known gas discovery in the world to date.
In 2009 the government of Qatar, today home to the Muslim Brotherhood and a major funder of ISIS in Syria and Iraq, met with Bashar al-Assad in Damascus.
Qatar proposed to Bashar that Syria join in an agreement to allow a transit gas pipeline from Qatar’s huge North Field in the Persian Gulf adjacent to Iran’s huge South Pars gas field. The Qatari pipeline would have gone through Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Syria and on to Turkey to supply European markets. Most crucially, it would bypass Russia. An Agence France-Presse report claimed Assad’s rationale was “to protect the interests of his Russian ally, which is Europe’s top supplier of natural gas.” In 2010 Assad instead joined talks with Iran and Iraq for an alternative $10 billion pipeline plan that would also potentially allow Iran to supply gas to Europe from its South Pars field in the Iranian waters of the Persian Gulf. The three countries signed a Memorandum of Understanding in July 2012 – just as Syria’s civil war was spreading to Damascus and Aleppo.
Now an apparent discovery of huge volumes of oil by a New Jersey oil company whose board includes Iraq war architect, Dick Cheney, neo-con ex-CIA head James Woolsey, and Jacob Lord Rothschild, business partner of one of Vladimir Putin’s most bitter critics, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, bring the stakes of the Russian intervention on behalf of Syria’s Assad against ISIS, Al Qaeda and other CIA-backed “moderate” terrorists” to a new geopolitical dimension. The US coup in Ukraine in 2014, and its financing and training of ISIS and other “moderate” terrorist gangs in Syria all have one prime target–Russia and her network of allies, a network, ironically, which Washington and Israeli policies are expanding almost by the hour.
F. William Engdahl is strategic risk consultant and lecturer, he holds a degree in politics from Princeton University and is a best-selling author on oil and geopolitics, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”. Link
by AlicetheKurious » Tue Nov 03, 2015 5:33 am
Washington plans up to $1 billion hike in military aid to Israel
Defense Minister Ya’alon to visit U.S. next week.
Gili Cohen
21.10.2015 | 22:15
Israeli and American teams are putting together a plan to increase annual U.S. military aid to Israel by as much as $1 billion, on top of the current $3.1 billion, a source close to the military aid process said Wednesday.
Talks on military aid started recently, and are now being discussed by the professional staffs of the two countries’ defense establishments. For now, Israeli defense officials are calling news of the large aid increase “rumors.”
Israel refused to hold talks on the military aid framework and the “compensation package” it will receive because of the Iranian nuclear agreement, until that agreement was approved.
A senior defense official said that because the Iranian nuclear agreement would require the arming of various Arab countries, particularly the Gulf states, “an answer for preserving [Israel’s] qualitative military edge was required — and everyone is aware of this.”
The Israeli decision to wait until the final approval of the Iranian nuclear agreement was not well received in the Obama administration, which saw the postponing of the talks as a waste of time in improving Israel’s defensive capabilities with the American aid.
The agreement on U.S. military aid to Israel allows Israel to purchase weapons as well as other equipment and supplies, such as fuel. Among the items included are F-35 airplanes. A significant increase in this aid would allow Israel to also buy V-22 tilt rotor aircraft, a deal agreed to last year but postponed due to shortage of funds. The V-22 deal is estimated at a cost of $1.3 billion.
U.S. military aid to Israel began in 1962, with the cumulative sum now standing at about $100 billion.
Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon is scheduled to visit the United States at the beginning of next week for what is described as a “work trip.” He will meet with his U.S. counterpart Defense Secretary Ashton Carter. American military aid is expected to be a main topic of their meeting. Ya’alon’s visit was scheduled a long time ago, but because of the present security situation it was cut short by two days. Link
by zangtang » Tue Nov 03, 2015 7:05 am
by AlicetheKurious » Tue Nov 03, 2015 4:43 pm
zangtang » Tue Nov 03, 2015 1:05 pm wrote:I wonder if ultimately, what the US is scared of......(given the endlessly catastrophic nature of the relationship)
is - Jehovah ?
by Elvis » Tue Nov 03, 2015 5:02 pm
backtoiam wrote:Breaking Story: Israeli General Captured in Iraq Confesses to Israel-Isis Coalition
by Wombaticus Rex » Tue Nov 03, 2015 5:21 pm
Elvis » Tue Nov 03, 2015 4:02 pm wrote:I kinda cringe to see VT linked here, even.
by IanEye » Tue Nov 03, 2015 6:09 pm
by conniption » Thu Nov 05, 2015 9:09 am
ICH
Why does the government of the United States hate Syrian president Bashar al-Assad
By William Blum
November 04, 2015 "Information Clearing House"
Is it because, as we’re told, he’s a brutal dictator? But how can that be the reason for the hatred? It would be difficult indeed to name a brutal dictatorship of the second half of the 20th Century or of the 21st century that was not supported by the United States; not only supported, but often put into power and kept in power against the wishes of the population; at present the list would include Saudi Arabia, Honduras, Indonesia, Egypt, Colombia, Qatar, and Israel.
The United States, I suggest, is hostile to the Syrian government for the same reason it has been hostile to Cuba for more than half a century; and hostile to Venezuela for the past 15 years; and earlier to Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia; and to Dominican Republic, Uruguay, and Chile; and so on continuing through the world atlas and history books.
What these governments have had in common can be summarized in a single word – independence … independence from American foreign policy; the refusal to be a client state of Washington; the refusal to be continuously hostile to Washington’s Officially Designated Enemies; insufficient respect and zeal for the capitalist way of life.
Are you confused by the Middle East? Here are some things you should know. (But you’ll probably still be confused.)
continued...
by conniption » Fri Nov 13, 2015 5:48 am
c-span
video at link
November 12, 2015
U.S. Policy Toward Syria
Secretary of State John Kerry spoke about U.S. policy in Syria and the ongoing campaign against ISIS.*
* The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), or DAISH/DAESH in Arabic is a militant group that has called itself the Islamic State.
by conniption » Thu Nov 19, 2015 8:22 am
Published on Nov 18, 2015
SHOW NOTES AND MP3 AUDIO: https://www.corbettreport.com/?p=16975
F. William Engdahl of WilliamEngdahl.com joins us today to give his perspective on the Paris attacks. We discuss the historical background to what is taking place now in Syria, how it plays into the current geopolitical agenda of the US/NATO military powers, and what it means for France, Syria and the world moving forward.
by backtoiam » Thu Nov 19, 2015 6:41 pm
by identity » Fri Nov 20, 2015 3:42 am
Vancouver property developer Ian Gillespie is refurbishing and furnishing a 12-unit property in the city's West End in order to provide temporary accommodations for Syrian refugees.
Gillespie, founder of Westbank Developments, has offered the building to the Immigrant Services Society to be used as first-stop housing for refugees waiting for permanent homes in B.C.
"For me, it started with what I'm best able to do," Gillespie told CBC News on Thursday.
"Some can volunteer time, donate money.… We're in the property business, so it seemed an obvious place to start."
The company did an audit, he said, and found that the unit — scheduled for demolition as part of a major redevelopment by the company — was sitting empty while waiting for city permits to come through.
Gillespie, just this week named No. 1 on Vancouver magazine's Power 50 list, called the Immigrant Services Society offering a minimum commitment of four months' use.
"I don't even think he finished his sentence before I said yes," the group's Chris Friesen told CBC News.
Fearful? Grow up
Gillespie said he has been disappointed by some negative reactions over the arrival of the refugees.
"Some of the dialogue you're hearing isn't particularly Canadian," he said, "I think a lot of people need to show some leadership and turn the conversation into a positive.
"We had a well-earned reputation for being good citizens. I think we lost some of that and have lost the concept of [us all] being immigrants. We are one of the most multicultural cities in the world."
Gillespie said we all have a responsibility to help, and that he hopes his company will be able to do more.
"And to those who might be fearful," he said, "grow up."
by AlicetheKurious » Fri Nov 20, 2015 7:29 am
U.S., Turkey Joint Operation Designed To Save ISIS, Not Destroy It
NOVEMBER 18, 2015
By Brandon Turbeville
With Russia annihilating terrorist vermin all across Syria from the air and the SAA personally mopping up the remainders in village after village, it appears the West has shifted from utter panic to an attempt to launch a Hail Mary and save its jihadist pets as well as the plan to overthrow the secular government of Bashar al-Assad.
This Hail Mary appears to be coming in the form of an attempt to secure the “Safe Zone” area discussed and agreed upon by the Turks and the United States in the past under the guise of fighting ISIS and protecting “moderate rebels” and civilians. In reality, however, the “Safe Zone” is nothing but a trafficking corridor for ISIS and other related terrorist organizations supported by NATO, financed by the GCC, and funneled through Turkey into Syria.
It is for this reason that the U.S. and Turkey have announced an agreement to “shut off Turkey’s border with Syria as part of a joint military operation.” In an interview with CNN, U.S. Secretary of State and Skull and Bones member John Kerry stated, “The entire border of northern Syria – 75 percent of it has now been shut off. And we are entering an operation with the Turks to shut off the other remaining 98 kilometers.”
Kerry did not elaborate as to what form the operation would take or when it would take place. He also neglected to mention whether or not U.S. troops would be deployed in order to take part in the operation.
Turkish officials have hinted at the possibility of some type of imminent military operation occurring, with Foreign Minister Feridun Sinirlioglu stating that a “new military operation against Daesh” may take place “in a matter of days.” Deputy Minister Numan Kurtulmus, however, stated that no ground operation was planned.
Of course, the dimensions of the territory in the crosshairs of this “joint military operation” between Turkey and the United States are immensely important.
The Kurds have seized and now maintain control of an area that spans the Turkey-Syria border from its western to eastern extremities all except for one small pocket in the middle – from Jarablus in the East to Dabiq in the West. Others have described the zone in slightly different dimensions as being from Jarablus in the East to Afrin in the East. Regardless, this corridor, also known as a “safe zone,” is about the exact dimensions of the ISIS supply lines coming in from Turkey to Syria and, if either the Syrian military or the Kurds were able to capture this small section of land on the border, ISIS supply lines would be entirely cut from the North. With Assad’s forces tightening their grip in the South and Southwestern portions of the country and the SAA/Hezbollah forces cracking down on any ISIS movements on the Syria-Lebanon border, and most notably the Russian bombing campaign aiding the Syrian military in retaking full control of Aleppo and other parts of northern Syria, ISIS would essentially be cut off from most avenues of outside assistance.
It is thus important to note that the Syrian military had nearly reached the Euphrates river when the terror attacks in Paris took place.
It is for this reason – the threat the Kurds pose to ISIS – that Turkey has engaged in such a heavy bombing campaign against the Kurds, alongside an alleged campaign against ISIS, the latter campaign being one that is questionable to say the least. Remember, the American airstrikes against ISIS have largely targeted Syrian infrastructure and civilian areas. In those areas where ISIS has been struck, it has been nothing more than an exercise in death squad herding.
The “ISIL-Free Zone” should be renamed the “ISIL Free Range Zone” since it is nothing more than a hedge of protection set up over the terrorists with the United States and Turkey once again acting as the ISIS Air Force. This zone, now under the protection of NATO forces will then be used as a Forward Operating Base for terrorism deeper inside the country as Turkey unilaterally bombs the Kurds away from territory they currently hold.
Earlier this month, the Kurds launched an assault on that corridor, threatening to close the last supply route for ISIS that exists in the north. Indeed, not only one of the last, it is the main lifeline for the terrorist organization supported by the West.
On November 7, Webster Tarpley and the Tax Wall Street party wrote in their Daily Briefing that “Resistance to this urgently needed policy will inevitably come from Erdogan of Turkey.” Tarpley and the TWSP cited a report by Aaron Stein of War on the Rocks, which stated,
Turkey has made one thing very clear: It will not tolerate a YPG presence west of the Euphrates, and will therefore not accept a Kurdish-led offensive on the ISIS-held city of Jarablus, or any YPG-led effort to unite its territory with the Kurdish-controlled enclave in Efrin in northwestern Syria. In the days before the election, the Turkish military fired upon YPG forces trying to cross the Euphrates, ostensibly to shore up their front line with the Islamic State.
Turkey has long feared the creation of a Kurdistan in Northern Syria, particularly because the creation of such an entity would not only inflame the tensions between the Turkish Kurds and the Turkish government but would essentially carve out a good portion of Turkish territory. With the establishment of a Kurdistan virtually anywhere in the region but especially on the Turkish border or in Turkey itself, Erdogan’s foolish dreams of being the new Ottoman emperor will fade away.
For that reason, the Turks are in no way going to assist in the sealing of Turkey’s border with Syria by the Kurds. Considering the reports coming from media outlets friendly to the Turkish government and the propaganda being spouted by Erdogan’s stooges in the Turkish ruling party, it is the Kurds who are considered the great enemy of Turkish “civilization” (meaning Erdogan’s delusions of grandeur) and not ISIS.
With the growing awareness of the importance of the Jarablus corridor amongst researchers, observers, and the interested national parties, the recent Turkish/U.S. joint military operation agreement stands as a last ditch effort to solidify the ISIS/NATO presence in Syria. By engaging troops and military hardware over the “safe zone” of the Jarablus corridor, NATO will be able to ensure that ISIS supplies and soldiers continue to pour into Syria unabated. By placing NATO interests in the midst of the corridor and declaring the zone a “safe zone” the hope is that the Russians will see the zone as off limits.
At that point, the real question becomes just how long the Russians and the SAA can avoid their own attacks on the Jarablus corridor before they realize that the inability to do so is merely prolonging the war and is ultimately a losing strategy. Once that realization is made, the question will become whether or not the Russians and the SAA will attack the zone despite the NATO presence.
The answer to that question is one that is deeply important to us all. Link
by AlicetheKurious » Fri Nov 20, 2015 9:01 am
State group.French Strikes on ISIL Oil Facilities in Syria Unjustified by Self-Defense
00:02 20.11.2015 (updated 00:37 20.11.2015)
A senior Russian diplomat said that Russia does not support French airstrikes targeting oil facilities in Syria controlled by ISIL militants as they are not approved by the legitimate Syrian government and cannot be justified by self-defense claims.
MOSCOW (Sputnik) — Russia does not support French airstrikes targeting oil facilities in Syria controlled by Islamic State (ISIL) militants as they are not approved by the legitimate Syrian government and cannot be justified by self-defense claims, a senior Russian diplomat said.
"We cannot support such actions primarily because they are carried out without the consent of the Syrian government," Ilya Rogachev, head of the Department for New Challenges and Threats (DNCT) at the Foreign Ministry said in an interview with the Russian Kommersant newspaper to be published on Friday.
Rogachev suggested that the French airstrikes on oil facilities in Syria could pursue goals that contradict the announced drive to ensure France's self-defense in light of the growing terrorist threat.
"Because the French authorities consider [Syrian President] Bashar Assad and Islamic State as equal priority enemies of France, the airstrikes are designed to hurt both. For your knowledge, the French do not attack similar targets in Iraq," Rogachev stressed.
The Russian diplomat explained that if the oil facilities remain intact, they will likely return under the control of the legitimate Syrian authorities once ISIL radicals are defeated.
"I suspect that the French partners anticipate the ultimate success of the Syrian army offensive [against IS militants] and subsequent return of oil facilities under control of the Syrian government," Rogachev said.
France launched major airstrikes in Syria after the November 13 terrorist attacks in Paris, which took the lives of 129 people, injuring over 350. The Islamic State (ISIL) jihadist group, operating in Syria and Iraq, claimed responsibility for the attacks.
On Thursday, French President Francois Hollande ordered to increase the intensity of military operations against the ISIL in Iraq and Syria.
According to French Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian, airstrikes against various non-military facilities of the ISIL, including oil facilities that are needed to support the militants’ financing, are essential to defeat the jihadist organization.
Earlier in November, France conducted airstrikes against oil pumping stations controlled by ISIL on Syrian territory. Link
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