Desperately lying Trump
Tag: US Imperialism
Yankee Bases: A Trojan Horse
Gearóid Ó Loingsigh
Reprinted from author’s substack 11 March 2026 and reformatted for Rebel Breeze
(Reading time: mins.)
On February 28th the Zionist regime of Israel and the USA commenced a lethal bombing campaign against Iran, choosing as their first target a school where more than 168 girls were murdered.
The Western press took its time in questioning the attack and the western governments never really did.
The press “explains” that the school was near a centre of the Revolutionary Guard, but they don’t explain that it was a cultural centre and a clinic and pharmacy all of which enjoy protection under the Geneva Conditions.
They tell us that these places “perhaps explain the attack.”[1] Well no, they don’t. They remain war crimes.
Iran’s response was robust. So robust that the western press and politicians condemned it and asked Iran to not attack the other states of the region (calling the Emirates countries or nations is a bit much).
They never asked the US or its attack dog, Israel, to cease its attacks.
Iranian civilians are less important than investments in Dubai and other places. Iran attacked military bases, radar installations and hotels housing US soldiers who had transferred there given the possibility of an attack on their bases. The counterattacks uncovered some truths.
The first one is that the Arab monarchies of the region are nothing more than US lapdogs and the myths about their economies went up in smoke in seconds. They are not safe places to invest in and less so to live in as shown by the mass of tiktokers crying into the camera.
It is worth pointing out that many of them boasted about not paying taxes and one or other explicitly stated they had set up in the region in order not to pay taxes and now they want their respective governments to spend taxes that they not only didn’t pay but didn’t want to in order to rescue them.
It might be that Dubai and the other monarchies never fully recover.
Another truth that was revealed is the real role of US military bases. The Yanks like to say that it is to protect and defend the countries they are located in against attacks.
That myth also went up in smoke just like the myth of Dubai as a safe place for digital nomads, tiktokers, bankers and even drug traffickers like the Kinahans who have lived there openly for the last number of years.[2] They will all have to think of other places.
The military bases were not capable of defending the monarchies and moreover the US transferred a good part of its military capability to Israel and left them to their fate.
Recently the president of South Korea announced that the USA had transferred part of its defence system to Israel.[3] The presented lamented the situation but explained that there was little he could do, i.e. the USA decides everything.
In the case of Spain, President Sánchez said he would not allow the USA to use the shared military bases in the country to launch attacks on Iran. Trump’s response revealed the real role these bases play and the real authority over them.
He said they didn’t need them, but if they want to, no one is going to tell them no.[4] In many of the military bases, in law, it is the host country that commands and controls the base. The reality is otherwise and Trump showed it.
In others cases, particularly in Japan and some European countries it is the US that has formal control.
The bases are not there to defend the host countries but rather to defend US interests and to act as they see fit. The Arab monarchies have just learnt that lesson the hard way. Spain has yet to, but Trump has warned them that it is in practice he who decides what is done, where and how.
This brings us to the question of military bases in Colombia. Theoretically Colombia has authority over the bases and can limit what is done. In practice it is not so.
The supposedly progressive government of Gustavo Petro never did anything to expel the Yanks from the bases in the country. Nor is he going to do so in the few remaining months of his presidency.
The question is what will the new government that comes into office on August 7th do? For the moment it looks like the next president will be Iván Cepeda from the same political force as Gustavo Petro.
In the midst of tensions between Colombia and the USA Cepeda stated from Madrid that Colombia wasn’t a Yankee colony.[5] When he is president he will have ample time to prove it and can start on August 7th by ordering the north American troops out of the country.
The rest of the countries in the world should do the same.
It is clear that the bases are an extension of the USA and at all times serve it and nobody else.
End.
Note: You may wish to read other articles by Gearóid Ó Loingsigh on his substack https://gearoidloingsigh.substack.com/
Note: If you found this article of interest, why not register with Rebel Breeze for free, so that you will be notified by email of subsequent articles. You can de-register any time you wish.
NOTES
1] The Guardian (10/03/2026) Minab school bombing: what evidence is there that the US was responsible? Tess McClure. https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2026/mar/10/iran-minab-school-bombing-shajareh-tayyebeh-primary-what-evidence-us-responsible
[2] Middle East Eye (08/03/2026) Investigation finds ‘notorious cartel leaders’ living openly in Dubai. https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/investigation-finds-kinahan-cartel-leaders-living-openly-dubai
[3] The Korea Times (10/03/2026) S. Korea regrets transfer of USFK air defense assets to Middle East, Lee says. Anna J. Park. https://www.koreatimes.co.kr/southkorea/defense/20260310/s-korea-regrets-transfer-of-usfk-air-defense-assets-to-middle-east-lee-says
[4] PBS (04/03/2026) Spain denies cooperating with US military operations in Middle East, contradicting White House. AP. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/spain-denies-cooperating-with-u-s-military-operations-in-middle-east-contradicting-white-house
[5] See
DUBLIN EMERGENCY SOLIDARITY WITH VENEZUELA
Clive Sulish
(Reading time: 3 mins.)
On Saturday morning, Dubliners checking messages or news on their phones or laptops, or listening to or watching news on TV or radio – or even reading a newspaper, learned that the USA had bombed Venezuela and abducted its President.
An emergency protest and solidarity demonstration was called for 3pm in the city centre and under a clear blue sky but in bitter cold, many attended to line the iconic Ha’penny Bridge, which only a week ago had hosted a New Year’s Eve demonstration in solidarity with Palestine.
Among the crowd on the Bridge, a few Venezuelan national flags fluttered against the sky or the riverside buildings, along with a number of Irish Tricolours and one green and gold Starry Plough,1 while placards were attached to the railings along the sides of the Bridge.
The well-known slogan of US military – Out of Shannon! was among the call-and-answer chants of course, along with the easily-imagined Hands off Venezuela! But there were some innovative ones too, such as the Irish-language/ English mix of Deirimís go léir le chéile – Hands off Venezuela!
Entirely in Castilian Spanish there was also Viva, viva – La Resistencia! Another was USA – Nothing but thieves! – a specific reference to Trump’s nakedly-declared wish to grab the country’s oilwells.
People from a number of different political parties participated as did a large number of independent activists, constituting an ad-hoc and informal anti-imperialist broad front.
Among the crowd were veteran activists but also too many of the younger ones, grown in political awareness and action in recent years of Palestine solidarity, a deep educational experience, including some facing charges from actions in Dublin or Shannon to be tried in the coming months.
It is to be hoped that their support and solidarity will also be broad.
The latest news is that the kidnapped President Maduro has been charged in the US on counts including drug trafficking and possession of weapon. As the President of Venezuela and titular head of its armed forces, presumably he does indeed hold weapons.
The very existence of the drug cartel of which Trump and his cabal claim Maduro is head is very doubtful, including even to views leaked from US intelligence departments and of course, not one iota of evidence has been produced to date of the alleged drug trafficking.
In the lead-up of months of bullying to this invasion, US forces sank many boats, killing at least 115, including one survivor of a bombing in the water. No evidence of their alleged drug-running has been produced in a single case and even so would not merit death penalty under US law.
Following the US attack on Venezuela, Defence Minister Vladimir Padrino López, reportedly from his control bunker, broadcast in military uniform to the nation condemning the imperialist attack and promising resolute resistance.
Diosdado Cabello, Venezuela’s Minister of Interior, Justice, and Peace, was videoed in the street wearing helmet and body protection equipment, calling on citizens to place their trust in the political and military leadership and to give no assistance to invading forces.
Vice-President Celcy, now Acting President made her first ever broadcast demanding the release of the Presidential couple, affirming that “there is only one president in this country, and his name is Nicolás Maduro,” and insisting that Venezuela “will never be a colony of any nation.”
Earlier, mainstream media had reported that Celcy had fled to Russia and that Lopez had been killed, such errors perhaps being caused by the ‘fog of war’ but recalling also the part played by the mainstream media in preparing the ground for the US-instigated Chilean coup of 1973.
The US attack and kidnapping was condemned today by Russia and by President Petro of Colombia. Kallas, on behalf of the EU, while condemning Maduro’s rule, voiced some weak platitudes about the EU Charter but voiced no condemnation of this attack upon a sovereign nation.
President of the USA Trump boasted publicly about how viewing the attack and kidnapping operation had been like watching a TV show and proclaiming that the US are now “going to run” Venezuela for a while “and get the oil flowing.”2
Tomorrow, Sunday, the Anti-Imperialist Action organisation has called a protest demonstration to take place at the US Embassy in Ballsbridge, Dublin for 1pm, in defence of sovereignty and in opposition to imperialism.
End.
Note: If you found this article of interest, why not register with Rebel Breeze for free, so that you will be notified by email of subsequent articles. You can de-register any time you wish.
Footnotes:
1The design of the flag of the Irish Citizen Army, a workers’ defence militia against police during the Lockout/ Strike of 1913 and that also fought in the 1916 Rising.
2https://www.cbsnews.com/live-updates/venezuela-us-military-strikes-maduro-trump/
AFTER A 12-DAY WAR – HOW DOES THE BALANCE LOOK?
Diarmuid Breatnach
(Reading time: 5 mins)
Both the USA and its proxy Israel carried out an unprovoked attack on Iran, both attacking nuclear facilities and Israel, as per their playbook, bombing civilians and their public facilities.
Iran targeted every category in Israel (generally not civilians) matching those the IOF bombed in Iran, assassinations excepted. And replied to the USA’s attack by hitting their most forward base in a Middle Eastern state, Al-Udeid in Qatar.1
The objectives of the US and of Israel were ostensibly to wreck Iran’s nuclear program. But more than that, to achieve a change of regime to one amenable to the western powers, such as is the case with most of the Middle Eastern regimes.
The regime change was to take place internally by subversion, terrorism and uprisings as it was fighting bombing by Israel.
Neither the US nor Israel achieved those listed objectives.
Iran’s objectives were to maintain its sovereignty and independence in general and, because of the US and Israeli public focus, defend its sovereignty with regard to uranium enrichment to improve its nuclear energy and by-products.
Iran achieved those objectives,2 at least for the time being and it will probably now leave the IAEA with justification3 so western powers will know very little of what is going one with Iran’s nuclear program, which is to Iran’s benefit.
Iran however also wanted the lifting of sanctions and it has not achieved that.
Once the Israeli attack started, Iran’s objectives were a) to recover from the initial external and internal assaults and assassinations; b) defend the state from internal subversion and terrorism and from Israeli bombing; b) strike back at Israel and punish it so thoroughly as to prevent repetition.
Iran successfully and quickly recovered from internal assaults and assassinations; b) put up a strong defence but was unable to down enemy planes other than drones, which was not a success;4 c) punished Israel very severely, to an extent that will become clearer as time goes on.
But the level of Iran’s attack was not enough to ensure Israel will never attack it again and the Zionist entity’s political and military leadership is probably even now concentrating on how to rebuild itself to strike again.
Once the USA attacked, Iran had to show that it was capable of eliminating US bases across the region and would do so if attacked again. The strike on its evacuated Al-Udeid base in Qatar was largely symbolic but in fact proved Iran’s point and willingness to go that far if necessary.
In that, Iran was resoundingly successful. No other state has attacked a Middle Eastern US base, albeit warned and evacuated at the time, without serious repercussion.
This conflict ended overall as a draw but with the preponderance of success on Iran’s side.
It is more difficult to assess the political wins and losses but in so far as there is any change in the overall political situation one would have to say it has shifted in Iran’s favour.
One process of assessment is to investigate what the antagonists think:
- Iran is celebrating nationally before turning to the funerals of their martyrs, in particular state funerals of victims of assassinations;
- Israel is full of recriminations against its leadership but also against the US5 for not going further and imposing a ceasefire;
- The USA leadership seems divided but opinion is increasingly mounting that Trump is mistaken in his assessment of ‘obliteration’ of Iran’s enriched uranium production sites.
Another measure is the relative financial expenditure and loss.
- Although this picture is far from clear from either side we know of over 39,000 insurance claims in Israel so far6and the state spent $5 Billion in the first week of the war.7
They lost a prominent military science development site and lost or sustained damage to military and military intelligence sites too but it will be some time before the true level or even approximation will escape Israeli military censorship.
Israel also lost presumably a great deal of its Mossad-run sabotage and terrorist network in Iran which exposed itself as part of Israel’s attack, much of which is now under interrogation, on trial or already executed.
- U.S. spending on aid for Israeli military operations in Gaza and elsewhere in the region between Oct. 7, 2023 – Oct. 7, 2024 was calculated at over $17.9 billion; spending on related U.S. operations in the region at over $4.86 billion.8
- Iran produces missiles much more cheaply than Israeli munitions and has greater productive capacity; its greatest loss was the human cost (the disparity in civilian deaths shows who was really targeting civilians) and it lost a lot of scientists through Israeli assassinations.
On the political-psychological level, an extremely important one:
- Iran emerged as a strong state with popular support in defence of sovereignty that cannot easily be defeated. Internally this has led to greater unity, at least for the moment.
Externally, Russia and China will see it not only worthwhile but important to support Iran and possibly even to part-arm them (which Pakistan too may do).
Iran’s western-friendly neighbours will be wondering whether US airbases brings them greater security or the opposite and also whether any alliance with Israel is a good idea, even though pushed by the USA and other Western powers.
Israel has seen its image of military superiority and even invincibility destroyed, internally by its war in Gaza and externally by its recent war with Iran and this process will increase as those from other areas view the damage in ‘Tel Aviv’ for example.
For a decade the state has been seeing a steady exodus of dual-nationality Israelis, particularly among its technocrat population and during this war mass evacuations by boat and land after the Israeli State closed its airports.10
The degradation of the IOF through mental fatigue, injuries and deaths (totalling more than 10,000 since their Gaza offensive), along with damaged armour, will continue in a deeply divided body politic.11
- The USA’s population will continue to see protests not only against the wars in the Middle East and genocide in Palestine but also against the increasing decrees and police repressing free speech and the right to organise and participate in protests.
- Western capitalist companies will continue to reduce or even end their investment in – or relationships with – the Israeli state,12 pushed in part by targeted protests and probably more largely by doubts about how financially safe Israel really is, even in the mid-term.
IN CONCLUSION
Iran is the overall winner, Israel definitely the big loser and the USA somewhat also (not forgetting that any Israeli loss is ultimately one for the US also). But the Zionazis will rearm and increase spying, sabotage and probably covert assassination operations in Iran.
Iran will rearm also, possibly even in nuclear terms and will intensify its intelligence war against subversion and spying and always viewing future attacks on it as inevitable.
The US will continue to view Iran as its primary adversary in the Middle East, in terms of its sovereignty and military capabilities.
Also viewing Iran as a necessary obstacle to remove before its future full confrontation with China, a state financially and economically already ahead of the US and a strong proponent of a multi-polar world against the existing unipolar version with the US as its head.
The world geopolitically-militarily will not be a better place as the result of the outcome of this 12-day war and may even be worse for it – after all, Israel and the US were permitted by the rest of the western alliance to bomb nuclear installations while continuing to support genocide in Gaza.
But with the weakening of US Imperialism and Israeli Zionism, it will offer opportunities for reversing damaged sovereignty, for anti-imperialist revolutions and for social progress.
End.
FOOTNOTES & SOURCES
1https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cdjxdgjpd48o
2https://thecradle.co/articles/european-intel-says-irans-enriched-uranium-survived-us-attacks
3https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jun/25/irans-parliament-approves-bill-to-suspend-cooperation-with-iaea
4Sharmine Narwani on the Cradle podcast https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PK8tYo3jdIk pointed out that none of the many Israeli photos taken from the air over central Iran could be ascertained as typically originating from IOF planes and were instead likely taken from drones. This raised the possibility that all the air-launched missiles of the IOF were all from airspace outside Iran (and we know that the Iraqi Government complained about the US violation of its airspace by opening it to the IOF). This also seems to answer a question that was bothering me: What happened in this war to the sophisticated radar that allegedly caused enemy planes to veer away from Iranian airspace in the attack last year, with some leaks alleged from pilots claiming that the Iranians were able to ‘see’ and target the latest stealth fighter planes. However ‘seeing’ fighters is not the same as ‘targeting’ them and may not even be possible at all with US B2 bombers – see interesting short presentation from this hostile source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fz6cd9tHiyM No doubt scientists are working on the problem and technology will develop further so that stealth bombers may be detected and fighters and bombers targeted, with US technology developing technology to confuse the targeting and so on … and on.
5Including reported tweets and comments calling for Israel to bomb the US!
6https://www.aa.com.tr/en/middle-east/israel-receives-nearly-39-000-compensation-claims-for-damages-caused-by-iranian-missiles/3611868 and https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/israel-multi-billion-shekel-price-tag-iran-war
7“The David’s Sling system, used to intercept short- and long-range threats, costs around $700,000 per activation when firing its minimum of two interceptors.” https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/middle-east/12billion-a-month-the-cost-of-israels-daily-strikes-and-defence-against-iran-war-at-a-premium/articleshow/121979978.cms
9https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/25/world/middleeast/gulf-states-iran-attack-us-qatar-base.html
10Even before the retaliation by Iran https://www.trtworld.com/middle-east/over-550000-israelis-flee-country-amid-gaza-war-data-shows-18176225 and during the war reported leaving by sea and land, after Israel closed airports https://www.newarab.com/news/israelis-quietly-flee-europe-yacht-escape-iran-missiles
11https://www.aa.com.tr/en/middle-east/over-10-000-israeli-soldiers-killed-or-wounded-in-gaza-war-says-military-officer/3587606
12The largest European consumers’ cooperative with 2,700,000 members (Wikipedia) joins boycott of Israeli products European retailers drop Israeli goods in solidarity with Gaza – TRT Global
The feminist call to war
Gearóid Ó Loingsigh 24 June
Reprinted in full from G.Ó.L’s substack and formatted for the Rebel Breeze blog.
Feminism used to be associated with pacifist anti-militarist movements, but times have changed and now there are feminists who call for war, whilst they still continue to blame all wars on men. It is an enormous contradiction.
For the last two years Gaza has lived under a siege and a genocide, supported by some sectors of feminism and in the midst of the conflict with Iran, once again feminist voices come out with a clamour for war. The reason is their supposed rush to free the women of Iran.
Four female political prisoners in Evin prison in Tehran (before it was bombed by Israel), conscious of the cynicism of some feminist groups in the West issued a communiqué denouncing the war and those who support it.
They stated that Israel wanted a submissive and weak Middle East and they opted to continue their own struggle against the government in Tehran without allying themselves with Yankee imperialism.
Our liberation…from the dictatorship ruling the country is possible through the struggle of the masses and by resorting to social forces – not by clinging to foreign powers or placing hopes in them.
The powers that have always brought destruction to the countries of the region through exploitation and colonisation, by inciting wars and killing in pursuit of greater benefits, will have no way out for us except for new destruction and exploitation.[1]
The four women are pro-Kurdish and also women detained in the protests following the death of Masha Amini at the hands of the Morality Police in 2022. One of them fought against ISIS in Syria. They are not coffee house feminists.
They branded as traitors those Iranian who have called for war, amongst them the son of the despotic Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the Shah imposed by the USA in 1953 following the CIA coup.
He ruled with an iron hand murdering and torturing the opposition, both the Left and Right, men and women. His son wants to go back to robbing the country’s coffers.
Traitors to Iran and traitors to the peoples of the Middle East and traitors to the people’s years of freedom-seeking struggles against oppression will know that their betrayal and disdain will be recorded in the memory of the Iranian people and in history.
Future generations will remember with shame those who stand on the corpses of defenceless people and trample them.[2]
Whilst these women who did actually rise up against the regime are opposed to the war, in the West there are those bourgeois feminists who in between their macchiatos ask for more attacks on Iran, in order to “free” the women.
They only think of Iran when a US president or the Nazis in Tel Aviv want to attack the country. They believe that the sexual predator who acts as US president is going to fight for the women. Maybe the way he did in Syria by installing ISIS.
One of the first to invoke the repression of women was none other than Netanyahu,[3] a man who has bombed maternity hospitals in Gaza killing women and children all around.
The US said something similar about Afghanistan and various bourgeois feminists came out to justify the war, deliberately ignoring that without US support the Taliban would never have existed.
It was Jimmy Carter and then Reagan who started to finance the troglodytes of the Mujahadeen and later the Taliban i.e. the bourgeois feminists too.
I should clarify that many of those feminists are not bourgeois in the sense of their social class, they have no capital, they are not rich, though there is no lack of those who are.
They are bourgeois in an ideological sense, although they use terms such as liberal, radical, separatist etc., but what unites them is their defence of capitalism and the bourgeoisie.
You could say right wing feminists but many of them like to present themselves as progressive when they are bourgeois, or in the case of the less wealthy ones, acolytes of the bourgeoisie.
Hillary Clinton, a bourgeois feminist (both in the ideological sense and also in terms of her bank balance) who has her hands stained with the blood of women in Libya and other parts is one of the spokeswomen for bourgeois feminism.
Much though they may shout, down with patriarchy! Their favourite slogan is Long Live Capitalism and Imperialism! This includes feminist intellectuals like Julie Bindel.
They kept silent about the genocide in Gaza and now believe that whoever criticises the war against Iran supports the regime. I suppose this includes the political prisoners who don’t sip macchiatos in their cells.
Bindel writing in The Sun said that those who criticise the war support Iran and the oppression of women. She repeated the usual lies about October 7th, mixed with some truths about Iran with the aim of supporting the war.[4] Bindel has kept silent about the massacres of women in Gaza.
She doesn’t support the women of Iran, but rather the West. It is worth pointing out that the owner of the paper, where she writes, has supported reactionary governments around the world, including in Great Britain where Bindel lives.
It is a misogynist, homophobic paper that frequently runs campaigns against the poor and migrants. Bindel is not alone, Kelly Jay Keen shares videos of the son of the Shah, perhaps to indicate that she supports the monarchy.[5]
The bourgeois feminists, like all of the bourgeoise in practice see other cultures as inferior ones. They use the same imperialist language to justify wars as did Rudyard Kipling, the author of the infamous poem The White Man’s Burden. They boast about the White Woman’s Burden.
It should be remembered that Kipling wrote that poem to seek and to justify the US invasion of the Philippines.
Take up the White Man’s burden
The savage wars of peace
Fill full the mouth of Famine
And bid the sickness cease;
And when your goal is nearest
The end for others sought,
Watch Sloth and heathen Folly
Bring all your hopes to nought.
Then they say that men are to blame for wars and not their dear capitalist system. Over and again the bourgeois feminists call for war.
But if they want wars and invasions, well why not ask for the US to be invaded, where women are pursued fleeing from one state to another to obtain an abortion, or where access to sex education is restricted and deficient as is access to contraceptives,[6] where women earn less than men and are under-represented in a wide range of fields.
Afghanistan is a country where women are more repressed than in any other part of the world. Throughout the conflict the US financed the Mujahadeen and later the Taliban.
They had the option of supporting organisations such as the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan, a women’s organisation that opposed the Islamists and also the Russians and later the US invasion.[7]
No, between one macchiato and another our dear bourgeois feminists let the men in the Carter, Reagan, Bush and Clinton support the Taliban troglodytes.
They said the same in Iraq. I am sure more than one reader is asking themselves what Iraq has to do with it all. It was a secular country, that promoted women’s education and participation.
However, one of the reasons bandied about by Bush was that he was rescuing and defending women and he compared their situation to that of Afghanistan, despite Saddam promoting women’s education.[8]
In fact, under Saddam, 30% of faculty staff were women, trained in Europe and the USA with full funding from the government. It is no longer like that, in fact there is no intellectual world in Iraq, the bombs the bourgeois feminists asked for, put paid to that.[9]
In the US the bourgeois feminists paid to go to universities, but Iraq promoted women as a state policy, something the Yanks have never done. In Britain, just 31% of the lecturers were women.
Iraq almost beat them, but in-between macchiatos the bourgeois feminists called for a war to improve the situation of women in Iraq and of course their investment portfolios.
Now the drums of war are beating again and the bourgeois feminists once more give themselves over to the war, despite believing that wars are a male product rather than a capitalist one.
They are not going to analyse their own participation, whilst a refugee from one of their wars prepares another macchiato for them.
As the female political prisoners in Evin said, it will be the Iranian people and the Iranian women who will free Iran and the Iranian women and not the bourgeois with the macchiatos, wine and caviar.
They are just as much the enemy of the women of Iran as the male bourgeois and are as deserving of our contempt.
There is no lack of Iranian voices asking for war and not just the son of the despot Pahlevi. Masih Alinejad is an exiled journalist. She took part in the movement against the obligatory use of head coverings in Iran and other things.
So far so good, unlike others she has fought against the oppression of women in the country.
But in exile, she turned out to be a Zionist and in the first Trump government met with the hawk Mike Pompeo and also worked at the official US propaganda radio station, Voice of America, transmitting programmes in Farsi.
Now she criticises Netanyahu, but not for bombing Iran and killing civilians but because of his bad timing. She believes he should have waited for protests against the government and attacked at that time. Of course the bombs were not going to fall on her, safe in New York.
Those feminists who keep silent about the genocide in Gaza do not seek the liberation of women in Iran, but rather a geopolitical reorganisation of the region and the victory of Zionism.
But that slogan doesn’t sound too good and you can easier convince the dozy in the world by talking about the rights of women in Iran. Meanwhile they have little to say about why their governments installed and recognised the Islamists from ISIS in Syria.
It is an exercise in public relations rather than real concern for the future of women in Iran. At the end of the day bourgeois feminists defend the bourgeoisie more than they defend women.
End.
NOTES
[1] Middle East Eye (19/06/2025) Iran: Jailed women activists issue letter condemning Israeli attacks. https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/jailed-female-activists-iran-issue-letter-condemning-israeli-attacks
[2] Ibíd.,
[3] See https://link.sbstck.com/redirect/ab68f07d-68ef-4e79-9561-0c8062663882?j=eyJ1IjoiMzBqYW1wIn0.0Y_uIvVCiPFxQqpA0lVO04u7LmUWrBGajjuhH6mjvNk
[4] The Sun (23/06/2025) Stupid ignorant lefties who support Iran when it stones women for adultery are mad and immoral. https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/35536772/support-iran-death-cult-opinion-julie-bindel/
[5] See https://x.com/Mylovanov/status/1937201198370549828
[6] The Guardian (23/01/2025) As Trump returns, state lawmakers pursue bills that would treat abortion as homicide. Carter Sherman. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jan/23/abortion-homicide-bills
[7] See http://www.rawa.org/index.php
[8] The New Arab (22/10/2021) Colonial feminism and the un-liberation of women in Iraq. Jyhene Kebsi. https://www.newarab.com/opinion/colonial-feminism-and-un-liberation-women-iraq
[9] Al Jazeera (01/10/2013) The Destruction of Iraq’s Intellectuals. Matthew Schweitzer. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2013/10/1/the-destruction-of-iraqs-intellectuals
The Palestine Struggle in Cartoons – April/ May
Diarmuid Breatnach
Like many others through much of the genocidal attack on Gaza since October last 2022, I’ve been attending pickets, demonstrations and vigils organised by others. I’ve also written some reports on those events and analyses of the solidarity movement.
But in addition, I’ve been drawing cartoon comments in a sketch book, most unpublished and I thought I would publish a selection here.
Covert Crusade: Washington’s $600m digital war on Iran
For over a decade, the US State Department’s NERD fund has covertly funnelled hundreds of millions into regime-change efforts in Iran, disguising digital warfare and opposition funding as ‘democracy promotion’ – but a sudden funding freeze has thrown these operations into chaos.
Kit Klarenberg FEB 21, 2025
(Reprinted with kind permission of author from https://thecradle.co/articles/covert-crusade-washingtons-600m-digital-war-on-iran)
(Reading time: 6 mins.)
Earlier this month, The Cradle exposed how in 2023, the US State Department’s shadowy Near East Regional Democracy (NERD) fund earmarked $55 million to stoke unrest in Iran during the following year’s elections.
This was part of a wider US campaign of interference designed to disrupt and destabilize the Islamic Republic.
As that investigation noted, details on where this money goes – and who benefits – are strictly confidential as a matter of policy. Still, there are clues in the public domain pointing to at least some recipients.
Regime change by another name
As a US Congressional Research Service report records, due to hostile US–Iran relations, and Tehran’s well-founded view of NERD “as a means of financing regime change,” its programs rely on “third-country training” as well as “online training and media content.”
The report further confirms that despite NERD being Washington’s primary “foreign assistance channel” for projects targeting Iran, “activities, grantees, [and] beneficiaries” are not advertised “due to the security risks posed by the Iranian government.”
It continues:
“NERD was created in 2009 as a ‘line item for Iran democracy’ but was not (and is still not) technically Iran-specific … For 2024, the Biden Administration requested $65 million for NERD … to ‘foster a vibrant civil society, increase the free flow of information, and promote the exercise of human rights,’ including at least $16.75 million for internet freedom.”
What was unstated in the report is that NERD represents a simple rebranding of the Iran Democracy Fund, created by former president George W. Bush in 2006 with the explicit goal of toppling the Islamic Republic.
The initiative was ostensibly shut down under Barack Obama three years later, eliciting bitter condemnation from much of the western media, neoconservative pundits, and lawmakers.
However, as the BBC acknowledged at the time, the move was in fact “welcomed by Iranian human rights and pro-democracy activists”:
“These US funds are going to people who have very little to do with the real struggle for democracy in Iran and our civil society activists never received such funds,” a Tehran-based human rights lawyer told the British state broadcaster.
“The end to this program will have no impact on our activities whatsoever.”
Internet interference
In reality, the program never ended – it was merely repackaged. White House officials maintained the fiction that NERD was focused on democratization rather than regime change, a claim undermined by a June 2011 New York Times exposé.
That investigation revealed the Obama administration’s so-called “Internet Freedom” initiative aimed to “deploy ‘shadow’ internet and mobile phone systems dissidents can use to communicate outside the reach of governments in countries like Iran, Syria, and Libya.”
In other words, Washington sought to build a covert legion of regime change operatives in Tehran, and provide them with the technology to coordinate in secret. It is clear from the Congressional report’s marked reference to “internet freedom” that these machinations continue today.
Moreover, as a 2020 report by the DC-based Project on Middle East Democracy noted, organizations genuinely committed to advancing Iranian rights still steer well clear of NERD. An anonymous NGO worker described its “style” as “aggressive.”
Another implied NERD is engaged in deeply dirty work:
“We choose not to apply for NERD grants because we do not want to get pulled into [anything] crazy.”
‘Non-Iranian’
The same year, the Financial Times (FT) reported how NERD efforts had become turbocharged under US President Donald Trump’s administration, explicitly to facilitate and encourage “anti-Tehran protests.”
This included “providing apps, servers, and other technology to help people communicate, visit banned websites, install anti-tracking software,” and more in the Islamic Republic, in order to offer “Iranians more options on how they communicate with each other and the outside world.”
Curiously, while portraying Iran as a digital prison, the FT admitted that major western social networks remain accessible in the country, and Iranians can easily view western media.
As usual, recipients of NERD funds remained unnamed – except for Psiphon, a VPN provider long-associated with discredited exiled Iranian opposition figures and, by then, controlled by the Open Technology Fund (OTF).
The FT estimated that just three million Iranians used Psiphon, less than four percent of the population.
OTF was an “Internet Freedom” product – one of its board members has openly admitted the Fund’s agenda is “regime change.”
Fast forward to September 2024; as former US president Joe Biden’s administration was seeking increased funds for NERD – mere months after the $55 million invested the previous year failed to produce desired mass unrest and upheaval around that year’s elections in Iran – a White House meeting was convened with major tech giants, encouraging them to offer more “digital bandwidth” for OTF-bankrolled apps and tools.
As fund chief Laura Cunningham explained, a “sizeable chunk” of OTF’s budget was taken up by the cost of hosting all the network traffic generated by its vast array of digital destabilization apps, which included Signal and Tor.
While OTF sought to support “additional users” of these products, it lacked resources to keep up with “surging demand.” What came of this meeting, which was attended by representatives of Amazon, Cloudflare, Google, and Microsoft, is not clear.
Yet, if further “digital bandwidth” was granted to OTF, it is clear the Trump administration’s “pause” in overseas aid funding has thrown all NERD’s meddling efforts in Iran into total – and potentially permanent – disarray.
A 27 January report in the Saudi-funded, anti-Islamic Republic Iran International quoted numerous anonymous beneficiaries of US financing bemoaning how grantees, including foreign-run Persian-language media outlets and organizations documenting purported “abuses” to keep the Islamic Republic “accountable,” had been abruptly shuttered.
An anonymous “human rights activist” told the outlet Washington’s freeze on aid spending “(will) impose restrictions on projects that address human rights violations or investigate governmental and military corruption which have impacted Iran’s economy and social conditions in favor of foreign terrorist activities and money laundering.”
They said “several non-Iranian American institutions [emphasis added] have been using these funds to investigate corruption and money laundering.” Now though, “these organizations will be forced to halt their activities.”
‘Severe implications’
US-supplied Virtual Private Network (VPN) services also loomed large among the malign resources impacted by the aid “pause.” A nameless “activist” told Iran International that 20 million Iranians used such tools “to bypass Tehran’s internet curbs.”
The outlet further quoted an article published by Human Rights Activists in Iran, a US-funded NGO not based in the Islamic Republic, but Virginia, near the CIA’s Langley headquarters: “In today’s Iran, the internet has no meaning without VPNs.”
Such dire warnings were echoed by Ahmad Ahmadian, head of California-based tech firm Holistic Resilience, which “aims to advance internet freedom and privacy by developing and researching censorship circumvention.”
An Iranian expat and alumni of Tehran University, Ahmadian warned major US tech firms “may not be willing or able to continue their support for providing anti-censorship tools” without government support.
Such remarks highlight how these supposedly popular resources lack grassroots backing or financing, being wholly dependent on Washington’s sponsorship to operate:
“The leadership of the US government has been crucial in urging big tech companies to provide public services. Without the encouragement of the US government, these companies wouldn’t take the initiative on their own.”
Other unnamed activists further warned Iran International, “the consequences of Trump’s executive order will not remain limited to internet censorship circumvention tools.”
They believe that if NERD’s activities “do not receive an exemption within the next month” – by the end of February – “they will either collapse entirely or be deeply curtailed.”
One declared, “the impact of this freeze might not be immediately noticeable, but its severe implications will become evident over time.”
Meanwhile, “internet experts” cautioned that “even if US aid starts again” after the 90-day pause, “the damage is irreversible since many people … might never fully return to using US-backed secure services.”
As The Cradle noted on 11 February, Washington’s forced withdrawal from meddling in Iran could create fresh opportunities for genuine diplomatic engagement between the two long-time adversaries.
But another possibility looms: after spending $600 million over a decade with little success, the US may simply be preparing to test out new, potentially more malign regime-change strategies.
End.
USAID, Friend or Foe?
Gearóid Ó Loingsigh Feb 7 (Reading time: 7 mins.)
NB: Edited by RB from original article for formatting purposes
Trump’s decision to suspend funding of USAID (United States Agency for International Development) provoked the ire of many liberals.
Trump took the decision for all the wrong reasons; he is not very intelligent nor is he analytical and is incapable of understanding the big picture — and the liberals who were horrified and criticised his actions also did so for all the wrong reasons.
They came out in defence of the agency stating that all the dictators in the world will be happy,[1] ignoring that USAID has throughout its history financed projects for dictatorial or authoritarian regimes.
They even went as far as the stupidity of saying that Elon Musk wanted this as vengeance against USAID for its role in defeating Apartheid.[2] Nothing could be further from the truth.
What little role it played in the country was to ensure that capitalism would be safe, but it did not bring an end to Apartheid.
The US government and all its agencies supported the racist regime, just like they supported the new “black” capitalism as an integral part of the usual “white” capitalism, as capitalism really doesn’t have a colour.
So, what is the agency? And what role does it play in the world? These are questions that have prefabricated answers from those who have remained silent in the face of many of the US’ barbarities. There are exceptions of course.
Mehdi Hasan is a journalist who is now famous worldwide for his positions on the genocide in Gaza, but in general, all those who answer those two questions positively, answer questions on the role of the US positively, even in the case of Palestine.
Firstly, we should be clear about how the agency defines itself and how it has been seen by successive US governments. In 2002, George Bush described foreign aid as the third pillar of US national security, along with defence and diplomacy.[3]
The same document Foreign Aid in the National Interest explains various lines of work of the agency such as financing the “development” of agriculture etc. They demand changes and reforms in the countries they “help”, just as does the World Bank.
When they clash with governments that are not given to implement the reforms they seek, they bluntly state that they will give funds to functionaries, ministers and others in the country to promote their agenda for change.
That is even if at that precise moment the beneficiaries of the programmes have no political power to implement such changes.[4] They play the long game. They openly state that they have to finance NGOs that promote “democracy”.[5]
This is what is nowadays called Colour Revolutions i.e. where through an NGO a situation of instability is generated in a country against a government or regime, whether it be democratic or authoritarian.
What is important is whether its economic and foreign policy coincide with Washington’s interests or not.
Colombia, for example, has always been a recipient of USAID’s programmes despite the murders of journalists, social leaders, opposition politicians, such as the Patriotic Union, trade unionists etc.
Not in the worst years of the bloodbath was it proposed to limit the aid or even pressure the government to introduce democratic reforms. Colombia has always served US interests.
In the case of Colombia, the negative impacts of the supposed North American aid can be clearly seen. In 1961, Kennedy announced a new programme for Latin America, the Alliance for Progress and he also set up USAID.
As part of that programme wheat was donated to certain countries, amongst them Colombia, but it was no favour. In 1961 there were 160,000 hectares of wheat in the country with a crop of 142,100 tonnes.
The following year the area sown fell to 150,000 hectares and so it went every year until in 2023 there were barely 3,000 hectares of wheat with a crop of 9,354 tonnes. They collapsed the production of a basic crop in the Colombian diet.
In reality, USAID is prohibited by law from financing crops and other economic activities that compete with US companies. They were always going to collapse wheat production.
They did similar things in other parts of the world, collapsing local markets, though they always say that it is not their intention.
Biden and Harris announced a new USAID pilot programme to supply emergency food and it consisted of sending one billion in food to 18 countries, all of them in Africa with the exceptions of Haiti, Yemen and Bangladesh.
Amongst the products to be exported were “wheat, rice, sorghum, lentils, chickpeas, dry peas, vegetable oil, cornmeal, navy beans, pinto beans and kidney beans – commodities that align with traditional USAID international food assistance programming.” [6]
It is nothing more than a subsidy to the cereal sector in the US dominated by just four large companies (Cargill, Cenex Harvest States, Archer Daniels Midland ([ADM] and General Mills), who get rid of their surpluses this way.
Looking at the list one sees that it includes countries with high levels of food insecurity, but they are not the worst in the world. Five of them are amongst the top ten countries with people suffering food insecurity in terms of absolute numbers of people suffering food insecurity.
In terms of percentages, just three of them are in the top ten countries with a percentage in excess of 30%. Afghanistan was not selected by the USA as they are no longer interested in the country, despite 46% of the population suffering from food insecurity, i.e. 19.9 million people.
Neither did they select Syria with 55% where they were only interested in replacing the Ba’athist regime with ISIS, which they achieved this year.
The causes of this insecurity are varied. In twelve countries it was due to weather extremes, affecting 56.8 million people and in another 27 countries economic shocks affecting 83.9 million people. And lastly 117.1 million people affected by conflicts in 19 countries.
It is worth pointing out that two of those countries were Syria and Ukraine, both of them conflicts in which the USA and Europe play a deciding role, not just in the start of the conflict but also in its course and duration.[7]
In the case of Ukraine the war had a dramatic effect on the price and supply of cereals in many parts.
USAID’s initial work consisted of economic aid programmes that included promoting US companies and so-called free enterprise. Later in the 2000s it allied itself more closely with US companies, giving them contracts to benefit themselves and not the countries.
Dupont, one of the companies that most pollutes water in the US, won a contract to supply drinking water to Ethiopia! The jokes write themselves.
An opportunity is never lost for multinational capital. Before the war with Iraq had even begun, USAID was signing contracts for the reconstruction of the country once the war was over.
One of the beneficiaries was Bechtel, a company that drummed up public support for the war and obtained one billion in contracts after the war.[8] USAID is an arm of the US government and its policies and contacts always favour their interests and never anyone else’s.
As for the threat that this represents to freedom of the press and expression etc. the mainstream press has raised an outcry.
It is true that for the moment the USA will have to look to another agency to help foment discontent and carry out the so-called Colour Revolutions and other coups d’etat. The CIA will have to finance those organisations directly and not through USAID as they have done up till now.
It has to be said that many of the regimes overthrown were not a bit progressive but neither were those who replaced them. The US supported them because they were useful to their interests, and nothing more.
Assad in Syria was replaced by Jolani from ISIS and in the ex-soviet republics, all of those governments have dubious human rights records. USAID never financed opposition groups, nor alternative press in Colombia despite its human rights record.
It never financed those that sought to overthrow the dictator Pinochet in Chile, nor in Bolsonaro’s Brazil, nor currently in Milei’s Argentina.
Now, various NGOs around the world, including Colombia, weep. They are organisations that are only interested in their own slice of the cake. We lose nothing with them. The sooner they go bankrupt the better.
They will say that there are good projects that USAID finances and they are right. Of course there are.
The soft power of a country cannot be 100% Machiavellian, not everything is absolute greed and power. In order for the US soft power to work there must be modicum of projects that are good in and of themselves or at least not as evidently open to criticism. That is what it is about.
These projects serve to generate an atmosphere conducive to US activities and give it the right to opine on internal policies and present itself as a friend of the government — or the people when it wants to carry out a coup d’etat.
Neither Trump nor Musk understand this. They are not intelligent people; their abilities have always been to take advantage of what others build.
Thus, they have no ability to think about what soft power means as a tool of real domination in other countries, nor as a means to justify the hard power of a coup or colour revolution. The closure of USAID is an own goal of imperialism.
Elon Musk stated in Twitter that the agency was a nest of anti-American Marxist vipers. The Indian Marxist Vijay Prashad replied that Marxists such as him detested USAID as it was a nest of liberal imperialists. Prashad is right, so the answer to the headline question of this article is clear.
USAID is the foe, and no one on the left should mourn its passing. Good riddance. And those who mourn it, run to get your thirty pieces of silver whilst they are still signing cheques.
End.
NB: For more articles by Gearóid see https://gearoidloingsigh.substack.com
NOTES
[1] The Guardian (06/02/2025) Authoritarian regimes around the world cheer dismantling of USAid. Joseph Gedeon. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/feb/06/authoritarian-usaid-elon-musk
[2] The Ink (03/02/2025) USAID fought Apartheid. Musk is killing it.
The.Ink
USAID fought apartheid. Musk is killing it
As we speak, an unelected billionaire, born in South Africa, is staging an unconstitutional coup in the United States, shutting down an agency that happened to fight the apartheid regime he and his family thrived under as rich whites…
Read more
14 days ago · 222 likes · 29 comments · The Ink
[3] USAID (2002) Foreign Aid in the National Interest. USAID. Washington D.C. pIV https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/GOVPUB-S18-PURL-LPS46120/pdf/GOVPUB-S18-PURL-LPS46120.pdf
[4] Ibíd., P.51
[5] Ibíd., P.44
[6] USDA (18/04/2024) USDA, USAID Deploy $1 Billion for Emergency Food Assistance. https://www.usda.gov/about-usda/news/press-releases/2024/04/18/usda-usaid-deploy-1-billion-emergency-food-assistance
[7] Statistics taken from Global Report on Food Crises 2023, https://www.fsinplatform.org/report/global-report-food-crises-2023/
[8] Current Affairs (10/03/2021) Aid for Profit: The Dark History of USAID. Saheli Khastagir. https://www.currentaffairs.org/news/2021/03/aid-for-profit-the-dark-history-of-usaid
Manufacturing Rebels: How the US and UK empowered HTS
by Kit Klarenberg (republished and somewhat reformatted with kind permission from his article in The Cradle) https://thecradle.co/articles/manufacturing-rebels-how-the-uk-and-us-empowered-hts
(Reading time: 7 mins.)
On 18 December, The Telegraph published an extraordinary investigation into how the UK and US trained and “prepared” fighters in the Revolutionary Commando Army (RCA).
This was a “rebel” force that collaborated with Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) in the mass offensive toppling of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad weeks earlier.
In an unprecedented disclosure, the outlet revealed that Washington not only “knew about the offensive” well in advance, but also had “precise intelligence about its scale.”
Washington’s now-confirmed “effective alliance” with HTS was described as “one of many ironies” emerging from the decade-and-a-half-long proxy war.
The Telegraph suggested this collaboration was inadvertent – simply a symptom of how Syria’s grinding, protracted civil war gave birth to “a bewildering array of militias and alliances, most of them backed by foreign powers.”
US support of HTS: A ‘necessary’ alliance
Alliances were fluid, with groups often splintering, merging, and shifting allegiances. Fighters frequently found themselves switching sides, blurring lines between factions.
Yet, ample evidence indicates the UK and the US maintained deliberate, long-standing ties with the dominant rebels of HTS.
For instance, in March 2021, President-elect Donald Trump’s former lead Syria envoy, James Jeffrey, gave a revealing interview to PBS, during which he disclosed that Washington secured a specific “waiver” from then-secretary of state Mike Pompeo to assist HTS.
While this did not permit direct funding or arming of the UN/US-designated terrorist organization, the waiver ensured that if US-supplied resources “somehow” ended up with HTS, western actors “[could not] be blamed.”
The fungibility of weapons on the Syrian battlefield was something Washington counted on heavily.
In a 2015 interview, CENTCOM spokesman Lieutenant Commander Kyle Raines was quizzed about why Pentagon-vetted fighters’ weapons were showing up in the hands of the Nusra Front (precursor to HTS).
Raines responded: “We don’t ‘command and control’ these forces – we only ‘train and enable’ them. Who they say they’re allying with, that’s their business.”
This legal loophole enabled Washington to “indirectly” support HTS, ensuring the group did not collapse while maintaining its designation as a terrorist organization.
This status was complete with a now-rescinded $10 million bounty on leader Abu Mohammad al-Julani, who now goes by his real name Ahmad al-Sharaa.
Jeffrey rationalized this strategy, calling HTS “the least bad option” for preserving “a US-managed security system in the region,” and thus worth “[leaving] alone.” HTS’s dominance, in turn, gave Turkiye a platform to operate in Idlib.
Meanwhile, HTS sent unmistakable messages to their US patrons, pleading:
“We want to be your friend. We’re not terrorists. We’re just fighting Assad.”
‘Safe haven’
Since Assad’s fall, officials in London have markedly taken the lead in legitimizing the HTS-led interim administration as Syria’s new government.
The group was added to the UK’s list of proscribed terrorist organizations in 2017, its entry stating HTS should be considered among “alternative names” for the long-banned Al-Qaeda.
While UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer declared it “too early” to rescind the group’s designation, British officials met HTS representatives on 16 December – despite the illegality of such meetings.
This likely signals an impending, highly politicized western rehabilitation of HTS. Throughout Syria’s dirty war, UK intelligence waged extensive psychological operations to promote “moderate rebels,” crafting atrocity propaganda and human-interest stories.
These efforts were ostensibly aimed at undermining groups like HTS, ISIS, and Al-Qaeda. Yet leaked documents from UK intelligence reveal how HTS remained intertwined with Al-Qaeda post-2016, directly contradicting media narratives.
In other words, throughout the decade-and-a-half-long crisis, HTS was officially considered on par with the most fundamentalist, genocidal elements in the country.
British documents also make a total mockery of the common refrain that HTS severed all ties with Al-Qaeda in 2016. A 2020 file described how Al-Qaeda “co-exists” with HTS in occupied Syrian territory, using it as a launchpad for transnational attacks.
The document warned that HTS’s domination created a “safe haven” for Al-Qaeda to train and expand, fueled by instability. British psyops against HTS spanned years but ultimately failed.
Instead, leaked files lament HTS’s growing influence, territorial gains, and re-branding as an alternative government.
“[Al-Qaeda] remains an explicitly Salafi-Jihadist transnational group with objectives and targets which extend outside Syria’s borders. [Al-Qaeda’s] priority is to maintain an instability fuelled safe haven in Syria, from which they are able to train and prepare for future expansion. HTS domination of north west Syria provides space for [Al-Qaeda] aligned groups and individuals to exist.”
British-backed propaganda benefiting HTS
British intelligence psyops attempting to hinder HTS were in operation from the group’s founding until recently.
Yet, they appear to have achieved nothing. Numerous leaked files reviewed by The Cradle bemoan how HTS’s “influence and territorial control” had “dramatically grown” over the years.
Its successes allowed the extremist group “to consolidate its position, neutralize opponents, and position itself as a key actor in northern Syria.” But HTS’s “domination” was secured in part by the group re-branding itself as an alternative government.
HTS-occupied territory was home to a variety of parallel service providers and institutions, including hospitals, law enforcement, schools, and courts.
The group’s domestic and international propaganda specifically promoted these resources as a demonstration of an “alternative” Syria awaiting roll-out across the entire country.
Ironically, many of these structures and organizations – such as the infamous White Helmets, who also operated in ISIS-run territories – were direct products of British intelligence, created for regime change propaganda purposes.
Moreover, they were aggressively promoted by London at enormous expense.
Repeated references are made in leaked UK intelligence documents to the importance of “[raising] awareness of moderate opposition service provision,” and providing domestic and international audiences with “compelling narratives and demonstrations of a credible alternative to the [Assad] regime.”
There is no consideration evident in the files that these efforts might be assisting HTS greatly in its own efforts to present itself as a “credible alternative” to Assad.
Nonetheless, it is acknowledged that Syrians in occupied territory would accommodate HTS “particularly if [they are] receiving services from it.”
Even more eerily, the documents note, “HTS and other extremist armed groups are significantly less likely to attack opposition entities that are receiving support” from the UK government’s Conflict, Stability, and Security Fund (CSSF).
This was the mechanism through which Britain’s Syrian propaganda war and organizations like the White Helmets and extremist-linked Free Syrian Police were financed.
These UK-run governance structures and opposition elements, which were allegedly intended to “undermine” HTS, operated in areas controlled by the group safe from violent reprisals for their foreign-funded work, as they “demonstrably provide key services” to residents of occupied territory.
There is also the darker prospect that HTS was well aware these “opposition entities” were bankrolled by British intelligence, and they were unmolested on that very basis.
Coordinated offensive
As The Telegraph‘s report explains, “the first indication that Washington had prior knowledge” of HTS’s offensive was when its RCA proxies were given a rousing pep talk by their US handlers three weeks prior.
At a secret meeting at the US-controlled Al-Tanf air base close to the borders of Jordan and Iraq, the militants were told to scale up their forces and “be ready” for an attack that “could lead to the end” of Assad. A quoted RCA captain told the outlet:
“They did not tell us how it would happen. We were just told: ‘Everything is about to change. This is your moment. Either Assad will fall, or you will fall.’ But they did not say when or where, they just told us to be ready.”
This followed US officers at the base, swelling the RCA’s ranks by unifying the group with other UK/US-trained, funded, and directed Sunni desert units and rebel units operating out of Al-Tanf under joint command.
According to The Telegraph, “RCA and the fighters of HTS … were cooperating, and communication between the two forces was being coordinated by the Americans.”
This collaboration proved to be of devastating effect in the “lightning offensive,” with RCA rapidly seizing key territory across the country upon explicit US orders.
RCA even joined forces with another rebel faction in the southern city of Deraa, which reached Damascus before HTS. RCA now occupies roughly one-fifth of the country, pockets of territory in Damascus, and the ancient city of Palmyra.
Hitherto “heavily defended” by Russia and Hezbollah, Moscow’s local base has now been taken over by RCA. “All members of the force continued to be armed by the US,” receiving salaries of $400 monthly, nearly 12 times what Syrian Arab Army (SAA) soldiers were paid.
It is uncertain whether this direct financing of the RCA and other extremist militias that toppled the Assad government continues today. What is clear, though, is that the UK and US supported HTS from the group’s inception, even if “indirectly.”
In turn, this covert backing played a pivotal role in positioning HTS financially, geopolitically, materially, and militarily for its “lightning” swoop on Damascus and assumption of government today.
Reinforcing the interpretation that this was the objective of London and Washington all along, following Assad’s ouster, Starmer promptly declared that the UK would “play a more present and consistent role” in West Asia as a result.
While western and certain regional capitals may celebrate the apparent success of their lavishly funded, blood-soaked campaign to dismantle decades of Baathism, British intelligence had long cautioned that the outcome would grant Al-Qaeda an even larger “instability-fueled safe haven” for “future expansion.”
THE MYSTERY OF THE NORD STREAM 2 EXPLOSION SOLVED?
Clive Sulish
(Reading time: 6 mins.)
On 26 September 2022, an explosion blew a section of the Nord Stream 2 gas supply pipeline from Russia to Germany, incidentally causing an environmental disaster for sea-life in the area. Investigations confirmed that it was an act of sabotage.1
Amidst accusations and theories,2 no perpetrator was conclusively identified.
But two years later, in September 2024, an important item of previously-suppressed information came to light in a Danish newspaper. It was not however picked up by the mainstream western media, despite its potentially crucial contribution to solving the mystery.
Alternative sources however alighted on it and it is now coming into the public light.
In any investigation of culpability for a human action, one of the first established principles to investigate is – and targets of investigation should be — cui bono? (in Latin, who benefits?). Next, Qui habet potestatem? — Who has the means? Finally, Who had the opportunity?
Potentially, any in the anti-Russian coalition around NATO stood to benefit by harming not only a Russian installation but also a major source of financial benefit to Russia, i.e of sales of gas to Germany. Many eyes turned towards Russia’s opponent in the Ukraine, the Zelensky regime.
However, neither Russia nor any other serious commentators ever considered that NATO proxy to be the culprit. Russia and others stated that the operation required a major state, both in the depths concerned, in surface support needed and in the explosive type and detonation system.
A number of commentators pointed the finger at the USA, which denied any involvement. Well, the USA is a major state and certainly had the motive, as Russia was and remains its major target in the Ukraine war and it also had the potential technical and personnel means.
It would also of course, as an enemy of Russia, benefit from harm to its opponent. It would benefit the USA financially too, though that was yet to become clear.
From whom would Germany buy its power to warm its population and production through the winter as an alternative to Russian gas? That new source would turn out to be – yes, the USA.
OK, so suspicion should fall heavily on the USA, leader of NATO and chief among the enemies of Russia. But did it have the opportunity?
Since there was no record of a US naval presence in the area at the time of the explosion (even though they had been there previously in one of those major joint exercises they like to carry out to bring their allies closer and intimidate their opponents), the media investigation floundered.
Russia asked at the UN Security Council for an investigation, which was rejected. No decision of the Council can be made against a veto of even one of the five Permanent Members, of which three are part of the NATO coalition (USA, UK and France).
A number of alternative theories began to be put around, including mention of large yacht in the area and a Ukrainian oligarch financier. Official investigations were launched by two states in whose economic zone the operation must have taken place: Denmark and Sweden.3
Both regimes are part of the US/NATO/EU coalition and there may have been suspicions that their investigations might not be sufficiently thorough. In any case, in February this year both states closed their investigations without having identified the perpetrator.
Germany’s investigation is ongoing and it issued an arrest warrant for a Ukrainian oligarch who fled to NATO proxy Ukraine with assistance of NATO member Poland. However Russia and serious commentators have always said that a major state, something Ukraine is not, was culpable.
On 17 July 2024, the German government refused to publish the preliminary results of the investigation after the Alternative für Deutschland (AFD) party asked for it, or to comment about the possible involvement of American intelligence services or Ukraine in the pipeline attack.4
In October 2024, the Swiss newspaper Die Weltwoche wrote an article based on an interview given to Danish Politiken by John Anker Nielsen, the harbourmaster of Christianso in Denmark on the day of the two-year-anniversary of the Nord Stream pipelines sabotage.
Back in September 2023, the Christianso harbourmaster detected the presence of ships in the area with their transponders, equipment identifying the ship and its course, silent. Assuming some kind of accident, Nielsen sailed out to investigate, finding US Navy there.
With no evidence of disaster and a request that he leave, Nielsen turned for home. (Suppose that information had been included in the Danish investigation, would the fingers pointing at the USA not have multiplied?)
Nielsen says he was told to keep quiet about what he knew but decided to end his silence in September and his story was published in a local newspaper. Later alternative commentators such as Glen Greenwald and others on X picked up on it and now it’s finding its way into wider media.
The Swiss newspaper article went on to note that the USS Keararge three months earlier had participated in the BALTOPS 2022 exercise that included unmanned underwater vehicles suitable for demining and other underwater operations.5
Such vessels as those could transport explosive charges suitable for blowing the Nord Stream pipelines. The Swiss newspaper claimed this new information calls into question the assumption that a Ukrainian group was responsible for the sabotage and that investigations are continuing.6
OUTCOMES
The outcomes to date are that Russia has received heavy financial damage, both in the cost of the pipe and any repair costs but also through loss of a customer who might well have resumed its purchase of gas from Russia in preference to dearer fuel from elsewhere.
The USA has benefited financially because it is also an energy exporter, including to Germany, where Russia was its main competitor.
In 2022, Germany imported 44.65 million tonnes of hard coal. Its leading coal suppliers were Russia (29.2%), the United States (20.8%) and Colombia (16.3%).7 So in the event of any embargo on Russian hard coal, the US stands to benefit enormously.
But what about natural gas, formerly supplying 55% of Germany’s power supply, no longer possible from Russia through the Nord Stream 2 pipeline? About 45% …. comes from Norway through pipelines, 4% from the Netherlands, 5% domestic production … the rest from western neighbours.8
Norway and the United States were the top suppliers of gas to the EU in 2023. Norway provided almost 30% of all gas imports. But the actual origin of those supplies is not so easy to identify and reports even estimate that a small percentage of the EU’s supply is actually Russian.
Although additional suppliers include North African countries, the UK and Qatar, in 2023, the United States was the largest LNG supplier to the EU, representing almost 50% of total LNG imports. In 2023, comparing to 2021, imports from the US almost tripled.9
It seemed likely that some at least – and perhaps a lot – of Germany’s current LNG supply, though perhaps through another country, would actually be of US origin. And it turns out that the US has been the dominant LNG supplier to Germany since 2022 at 82% of total imports.10
IN CONCLUSION
While the USA has benefited significantly financially from the pipeline explosion and strategically through damaging an opponent, Germany has at the same time suffered a loss in having to buy more expensive fuel (from the USA).11 But Germany is an ally of the USA and a prominent one in NATO.
This episode demonstrates that 1) the USA, in advancing its own interests, is prepared to break the law and to see an ally suffer but also that 2) a major European capitalist power has surrendered a substantial portion of its own interests for the benefit of the USA, as a price of membership of the NATO club.
Germany, though an enthusiastic supporter of NATO, due to its dependence on natural Russian gas, had been reluctant to engage fully in the economic sanctions against Russia proposed by NATO. The blowing up of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline removed that dependence, transferring it to the USA.
The USA benefited, both politically/ militarily in hurting its opponent and in increasing the dependence of an ally. It also benefited subsequently financially, in gaining a major customer market share. The USA had more than enough Motive to carry out the sabotage.
It also had the Means (the capability) and now, as we know, the Opportunity also! Circumstantial? Sure but a mountain of evidence nevertheless.
End.
FOOTNOTES
MAIN SOURCES (see also Footnotes)
Unlikelihood of Ukraine culpability: https://ukraineworld.org/en/articles/analysis/wrong-allegations-against-ukraine
1https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nord_Stream_pipelines_sabotage
2Including an unbelievable one that Russia had done it themselves in order to blame the USA.
3https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nord_Stream_pipelines_sabotage
4Receiving the answer: “after careful consideration, the Federal Government has come to the conclusion that the question cannot be answered for reasons of public interest”.
5https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nord_Stream_pipelines_sabotage
6Ibid.
7https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/germanys-dependence-imported-fossil-fuels
8https://www.cleanenergywire.org/news/germany-have-two-more-floating-lng-import-terminals-operation-winter-operator
9https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/infographics/eu-gas-supply
10https://www.spglobal.com/commodityinsights/en/market-insights/latest-news/natural-gas/013024-german-gas-industry-group-slams-us-pause-on-new-lng-export-permits
11https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/nord-stream-insurers-say-policies-did-not-cover-war-risks-kommersant-reports-2024-04-18/
rebelbreeze 