Movements on the right and left are changing the political culture. Their impact can be seen in the Democratic and Republican primaries, but the media does not report it.

BALTIMORE— Confusion reigns in the Democratic and Republican primaries. Huffington Post political reporters write, "It's Time To Admit: Nobody Knows Anything About The 2016 Campaign," now that "the old 'rules' of presidential politics no longer seem to apply."

Why the confusion? Media pundits have not given credit to the popular movements on both the right and left. This election cycle is showing the impact of social movements on the primary campaigns — both in the polling results and in the candidates' rhetoric.

Tea Party and Occupy change the political culture

On the Republican side, Tea Party anger is showing itself. Republicans co-opted this movement, but its members are dissatisfied with elected Republicans and are turning to non-politicians. Why are they angry? Because the core of Washington politics continues: crony capitalism, wherein government writes the rules and doles out the cash for their big business donors.

One example of many was giving President Barack Obama fast track trade authority to negotiate deals that undermine our democracy, economy and sovereignty. Voters know that these crony capitalist trade deals, like the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which is larger and farther-reaching than NAFTA, have been bad for the U.S. economy. Speaker John Boehner was forced to resign because of his heavy-handedness in insisting Republicans support fast track for Obama and punishing those who led opposition to it.

Occupy Wall Street protesters.

The role of corporate Democrats has been evident in the Democratic Party for a long time. The Democratic Leadership Council, founded by Bill Clinton, Al Gore and others, was successful at destroying Howard Dean, an insurgent, but definitely not a radical one. The DLC has evolved into the Third Way Democrats, whose donors are funding former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and will seek to ensure the defeat of Sen. Bernie Sanders.

The Democratic Party needs a complete overhaul away from its pro-corporate, "Third Way" stance if it wants to be in synch with the grassroots. The Occupy movement and its offshoots — Fight for $15, Black Lives Matter, OUR Walmart, Strike Debt, and United We Dream, among others — hold views opposite from corporate Democrats.

Tea Party activists cheer during the "Exempt America from Obamacare" rally, on Capitol Hill, September 10, 2013 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

Tea Party activists cheer during the "Exempt America from Obamacare" rally, on Capitol Hill, September 10, 2013 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

Occupiers were never part of the Democratic Party because the Democrats are in bed with Wall Street, while Occupy saw Wall Street as a root of corruption. The Sanders campaign could not have existed without Occupy changing the corporate political culture. Clinton has had to mould her rhetoric to fit the new political reality. Again, the TPP is one example of many where the "gold standard" TPP has now become unacceptable to the former Secretary of State. Why? The movement that has developed against it is so broad that the TPP is "Toxic Political Poison."

More revolts are coming as Washington continues on the same corrupt path.

Movements and electoral politics

Police remove activist Margaret Flowers for protesting the Trans-Pacific Partnership during a Senate hearing in January. (Reuters/Kevin Lamarque)

Mass movements need an electoral arm, one that comes out of the movement with candidates who are accountable to the movement. In fact, to help achieve that, Margaret Flowers, co-director of Popular Resistance, will be taking a leave of absence as she seeks the Green Party nomination for the U.S. Senate in Maryland.

The movement needs to build an alternative to challenge the United States' mirage elections and pro-corporate parties. U.S. elections consist of two corporate candidates running against each other. The two political parties rig the system to prevent insurgent challenges inside the duopoly and to stop third alternatives outside the duopoly.

Movements have a lot of work to do to create real democracy; basics include universal voter registration, uniform ballot access, verifiable voting systems and public funding of public elections. Much more needs to be done to create a representative democratic system that allows for minority parties to have a voice in the legislature, i.e. proportional representation, as well as a break from monopoly voting districts to protect the duopoly. We also need to build more direct democracy like voter initiatives and participatory budgeting. These are a few examples of how the U.S. badly needs to update its electoral system to catch up with world experience.

Experiences outside the US

The U.S. is the most ingrained two-party system in the world; that is not a compliment but a description of a system that does all it can to prevent alternatives to the two corporate parties.  People in the U.S. can look at Spain, Greece and even Canada to see how alternatives to the two corporate parties can advance and represent the interests of the people.

In Canada, people were astounded earlier this year to see a third party elected to lead Alberta, the oil capital of Canada. Writing for EcoWatch, David Suzuki describes how the voters gave the New Democratic Party a strong majority in response to austerity measures taken by the Conservative Party that reigned for 44 years in Alberta. The NDP is a long-time third party in Canada that was born out of the labor movement in 1961 and is credited with bringing Medicare to all Canadians. Its first leader, Tommy Douglas, remains the most popular Canadian in history. He explains the futility of two-party politics in this video.

https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/gqpFm7zAK90?rel=0&showinfo=0

Spain recently held local and regional elections that produced astounding results. The elections took place in 13 of Spain's 17 regions and included more than 8,000 towns and cities. The ruling parties lost power in many major cities as smaller parties, for the first time, challenged the two dominant parties. Writing for radical online journal ROAR Magazine, Carlos Delclós reported in May:

"On Sunday, May 24, the two parties that have ruled Spain since the country's transition to democracy in the late 1970s were dealt yet another substantial blow, this time in regional and municipal elections. Nationwide, the ruling Popular Party saw support fall from the nearly 11 million votes they received in 2011 to just under 6 million this year."

This means that candidates from the Indignado Movement will actually govern. In Barcelona, a "prominent anti-evictions activist Ada Colau won the city's mayoral race." In many of the largest cities the mayor will not belong to either of the two major parties. How did these parties build their power? Delclós reported:

". . . [T]heir roots in prominent local struggles, their independence with respect to the established parties and their willingness to spearhead bottom-up processes seeking a confluence between new or smaller parties, community organizations and political independents around a set of common objectives determined through radical democratic participation."

The Spanish elections, like the Greek elections earlier this year, are an example of bottom-up, grassroots organizing and power-building. The roots of this success are longer than is often discussed:

"In Catalonia, the Popular Unity Candidacies of the left-wing independence movement have had a notable presence in smaller towns for several years (they also quadrupled their 2011 results on Sunday, for what it's worth). At the southern end of the country, the Andalusian village of Marinaleda is a well-documented experiment in utopian communism that has been going on for over three decades now."

The new electoral movement is a "municipal movement," participants tell their story in a video that provides a "recipe" for such a movement.

People arrive to the main square of Madrid during a Podemos (We Can) party march in Madrid, Spain, Saturday, Jan. 31, 2015. Tens of thousands of people, possibly more, are marching through Madridís streets in a powerful show of strength by Spainís fledgling radical leftist party Podemos (We Can) which hopes to emulate the electoral success of Greeceís Syriza party in elections later this year. Supporters from across Spain converged onto Cibeles fountain before packing the avenue leading to Puerta del Sol square. Podemos aims to shatter the countryís predominantly two-party system and the ìMarch for Changeî gathered crowds in the same place where sit-in protests against political and financial corruption laid the partyís foundations in 2011. Andres Kudacki/AP

As we have seen with Syriza's election in Greece, governing in a new way is no easy task. In an interview with Alexandros Orphanides for In These Times, Frances Fox Piven, a social movements scholar, discussed the complex challenges in Greece as being "not so much to do with Syriza but with the ability of a nation-state, especially of a small nation-state, and its elected political rulers to determine its own economic policy in a very interconnected and global world, in which the centers of financial power are very ominous and powerful."

In discussing Syriza, Piven talks about the differences between movements and electoral politics:

"Anybody who is running for an election wants to win enough votes to take the seat for which she or he is campaigning. To do that, they tend to be conciliatory; they don't want to make any enemies. They want to win just enough to get over the electoral barrier. They tend to be consensual, they tend to not want to make trouble. They want to keep everyone that voted for them last time and add the few more that they need to get over the hump.

Movements are very different. They are dynamic. How they grow, how they succeed is very different. Protest movements in particular do two things. They identify issues that politicians want to ignore, because the politicians want to paste together a coalition that can win. Movement leaders, on the other hand, want to identify the issues that can mobilize people. They don't care about voting, because we don't know a movement exists by the number of votes it can get—we know by how many people it can pull into the streets. So movement leaders are attracted to contentious issues that make trouble for the parties.

And movements often have a capacity for disruption, for withdrawing cooperation, for bringing things to a halt, for various kinds of strike actions. Parties don't do that."

And that is why many recognize the importance of continuing to build an independent movement even if movement candidates win elections. There continues to be a need to disrupt the system to pressure other forces that seek to block progress.

In Spain, a group of militants who see the declining numbers of people in the streets because of electoral progress are seeking to build new street actions. The group, Apoyo Mutuo (Mutual Aid), has doubts about the electoral path and wants to return to popular horizontalism outside of government. They see their work as parallel to Podemos, not in reaction to it but because "politics cannot be limited to the election of representatives at the ballot box every four years. We can't delegate our responsibility; as a pueblo we need to be active agents in the decision-making process."

The US electoral system

The U.S. is very different from Europe. Each country in Europe is the size of one state in the U.S. Countries in Europe have systems where even parties that get a minority percentage of votes can be represented in parliament. While many countries have two parties that dominate the political system, there is a greater possibility of participation.

This June an NBC/Wall Street Journal poll found that 50 percent of Americans consider themselves independent and fewer than 30 percent align with either major party. A 2015 Gallup poll similarly found arecord high number of Americans — 43 percent — consider themselves independents, with only 30 percent considering themselves Democrats and 26 percent considering them Republicans.

The independent nature of U.S. voters is not reflected in elections, which makes it very difficult for alternatives to the duopoly to participate. At the same time, elections are funded by a shrinking group of the extremely wealthy. The U.S. is now widely recognized as an oligarchy, where big business and moneyed interests rule, and where democracy is a mirage.

There have been some recent examples at the local level where people from outside of the duopoly have won elections. Most notable is Kshama Sawant, the Seattle City Council member, who Chris Hedges describes asthe "most dangerous woman in America." Sawant ran with Socialist Alternative, winning 93,000 votes in a citywide race. Sawant came out of the Occupy Movement, fought housing foreclosures and made the Fight for $15 her signature issue. Sawant is up for re-election on Nov. 3 this year; she won the first round of voting in August with 52 percent.

In 2013, Ohio showed a break between the Democrats and labor. Two dozen city councilors were elected on an"Independent Labor" ticket. Lorain County AFL-CIO President Harry Williamson explained: "When the leaders of the [Democratic] Party just took us for granted and tried to roll over the rights of working people here, we had to stand up."

In 2007, Richmond, California, elected a Green mayor, Gayle McLaughlin, with Greens, independents and progressive Democrats controlling the City Council through the Richmond Progressive Alliance. Big Oil failed in its attempts to defeat them in last year's elections.

The confusion of the Bernie Sanders campaign

Bernie Sanders, a lifelong independent, is running for president in the Democratic primaries and pledging to support whomever the Democrats nominate if he is not elected. He has entered a rigged Democratic primary system that has successfully blocked insurgent candidates in every election in the last 35 years. The rigging begins with super delegates who make up 20 percent of the delegates needed for nomination, it includes the frontloading of primaries so there are 23 states voting in March requiring hundreds of millions of dollars. And this year they limited debates to only six, when in 2008 there were more than two dozen. This is all designed to stack the primary in favor of establishment candidates like Hillary Clinton or Joe Biden.

Hillary Rodham Clinton, right, and Sen. Bernie Sanders, of Vermont, speak during the CNN Democratic presidential debate Tuesday, Oct. 13, 2015, in Las Vegas. (AP Photo/John Locher)

Howie Hawkins, the recent New York Green Party gubernatorial candidate, writes in "Bernie Sanders is No Eugene Debs" that Debs, the five-time Socialist Party presidential candidate between 1900 and 1920, understood that it is essential for a movement to have its own political vehicle as a matter of principle. Hawkins recognizes that Sanders is good on most domestic issues (not as good on foreign policy) but:

"… [H]is positions on the issues is secondary to the question of whether his politics are helping the working class act for itself or subsume itself under the big business interests in charge of the Democratic Party. By entering the Democratic primaries with the promise of supporting Clinton as the lesser evil to the Republicans, Sanders is not helping the working class to organize, speak and act for itself."

Sanders has called for a revolution against the billionaire class, but accomplishing that inside a political party owned by Wall Street and other big business interests is an absurdity.

While Sanders is misleading people to stay inside the Democratic Party, he is doing useful education on domestic economic issues. This is valuable to the movement's task of building national consensus. But, when Sanders loses, which is a near certainty in the rigged Democratic Party primaries, people need to understand the problem is not his positions on the economy but the corruption of the Democratic Party. People need to flee the party and support a third-party alternative like Jill Stein, who is likely to be the strongest third-party candidate in 2016. This is not a wasted vote — though the media will try to convince people that it is. It is voting for what you want and help building an alternative to the corporate duopoly.

How independent movements and third parties have won transformational change

In his article, Howie Hawkins points out that from the 1840s to the 1930s there was a series of independent parties tied to movements to end slavery, secure voting rights for women, allow the development of unions, empower workers, and break up monopolies. The combination of an independent movement and independent electoral politics built power. In 1936, the unions decided to work within the Democratic Party, undermining both independent politics and the union movement.

Ralph Nader in his campaign vehicle during his 2008 presidential bid. (AP/Lisa Poole)

The Nader campaigns of 2000, 2004 and 2008 raised the banner of the "Tweedledum" and "Tweedledee" nature of the two parties. Now the American public is catching on, with a majority being independent of the corporate duopoly. The combination of an independent mass movement and independent electoral politics is once again on the horizon. We already see the movement creating confusion in the duopoly; if the movement continues to grow, an independent electoral movement will follow to accomplish the task of the era – end corporate rule and bring economic, racial and environmental justice.

Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers co-direct Popular Resistance, @PopResistance.

Part II

In Part I of this essay entitled Big Pharma Dangerous Drugs and "Drug-Injured Patients, I wrote about some of the ethical concerns that I have had with the modern medical profession. Over my 40 years of practicing medicine I have experienced increasing frustration with its direction, mainly because the business of medicine has been increasingly distorting the ethics I was taught in medical school. The profession has become increasingly difficult to recognize over the 40 year span.

Big Pharma Dangerous Drugs and "Drug-Injured Patients"By Dr. Gary G. Kohls, October 29, 2015

Like many other physicians who have tried to take the Hippocratic Oath seriously ("first do no harm"), I also tried to resist the increasing corporate influences that eventually made the once-honorable practice of medicine into a crass profit-making industry. I makes me sad to report that outside forces have gradually made us physicians into computer bound high class technicians that are largely prescribers/providers of Big Pharma's often toxic and always unaffordable drugs. In the current profit-above-all-else era, it is not even remotely possible for us physicians to be the compassionate healers of the long-gone era that I knew.

Way too often, the money-making Big Business of medicine is being controlled by institutional shareholders  (who demand increasing dividends or increasing shareholder value) whose CEOs are often amoral Masters of Business Administration graduates who are equally at home leading Wall Street banks, tobacco companies, weapons manufacturers or brothels – or big clinics or hospitals. In this era the term "business ethics" (just like "military justice") is an oxymoron.

Fraudulent Marketing and Hiding Serious Adverse Effects

In fact, every major psycho-pharmaceutical company has been taken to court by thousands of injured and deceived patients over fraudulent marketing, fraudulent advertising and/or fraudulently hiding the serious adverse effects that the drug companies didn't reveal to the FDA, prescribing physicians or the public.

The "chump change" multibillion dollar, usually out-of-court settlements (always with "gag rules" so that the plaintiffs couldn't say anything about the awards) didn't convince Lilly to take those three hugely profitable drugs off the market, nor did the FDA ban the drugs. The permanent damages done to unsuspecting patients – including many suicides and other deaths – were regarded by the drug companies and their CEOs as just another cost of doing business.

I mention this because every major psycho-pharmaceutical company has been guilty of similar legal entanglements because their synthetic drugs and neurotoxic, heavy metal-laden (mercury and aluminum) vaccines are inherently dangerous, especially when given in batches. Lilly (who also invented neurotoxic vaccine preservative Thimerosal – which was in so many vaccines during the explosion of autism that occurred in the 1990s) was the company that had done the most damage to my unaware patients' brains and bodies, and they had gotten away with it. It was also Lilly that was the first drug company to seduce me – as a naïve med student – into falsely believing that the psycho-pharmaceutical drug industry was a force for good in the world. Be assured that Pfizer, Merck, GlaxoSmithKline, Roche, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Novartis, AstraZeneca, Janssen, Bayer, Abbott, Sanofi Aventis, et.al. have all been as guilty of malfeasance as Lilly.

Cognitive Dissonance and the Drug Industry

I implore concerned readers to Google some of my fellow whistle-blowing medical heretics like Peter Breggin, David Healy, Russell Blaylock, Robert Whitaker, Joseph Glenmullen, Loren Mosher, Peter Gotzsche, Gary Null, Martha Rosenberg, and then, starting with http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9I6_BkqjWN8, watch the many YouTube videos that expose some of the unwelcome truths about Big Pharma's psych drugs. Also consider watching some of my video-interviews on YouTube by typing in 'gary kohls' after accessing the YouTube site. Www.cchrint.org is a valuable website that contains a number of powerful and very well-made documentaries about the dangers of psychotropic drugs.

Cognitive dissonance is the psychological discomfort that most people experience when their deeply held beliefs are contradicted by new information that disproves their old beliefs. Since it is impossible for truly thinking persons to simultaneously hold two mutually exclusive beliefs, anxiety and confusion can result. I am happy to say that, given my personal and professional experiences with Big Pharma's dangerous drugs, I had no cognitive dissonance when my patients were telling me the stories about the medications that had sickened them.

Denial, Ad Hominem Attacks, and Killing the Messenger

However, cognitive dissonance, especially in people (or doctors) that might have been brain-washed from childhood in dogmatic systems (such as religion or medical school), often causes the sufferer to go into denial concerning the new facts, or they may ignore of become hostile to the bearer of the new information. The hostile reaction against the bearer of the new information often takes the form of "ad hominem attacks".

Attacking the messenger of a new unwelcome truth, rather than rationally dealing with the truth, is a commonly used tactic when the new information can't be refuted using logic.

Unfair and endlessly repeated verbal attacks against whistle-blowers (including peacemakers, environmentalists, feminists, human rights/anti-racism/antiwar activists -and some physicians) often succeed in angering-up the listener-supporters of talk show host celebrities like Rush Limbaugh (whose devotees proudly call themselves "DittoHeads"). These blinded and blinkered supporters of half-truths are then distracted from hearing all sides of an important issue. So uninformed conclusions are drawn that then become rigid, unexamined doctrinal beliefs that make the believers in the false propaganda ripe for refusing to deal with the truth. Politics in America have been deeply polarized lately because of the cognitive dissonance and anti-democracy realities of mud-slinging and name-calling.

But cognitive dissonance is also rampant among America's psychotropic drug prescribers, psychotropic drug consumers, the corporate drug-makers and the corporate-controlled media. Whenever these groups are confronted with the fact that the drugs they once trusted and profited from are not as safe or as effective as they had previously believed, they go into denial. Or as Upton Sinclair once said:

"It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it."

Big Pharma and many of their willing and eager partners in the many medical industry trade groups that profit from quick-fix drug treatments have done cunningly effective, mass media work in discrediting potentially curative, non-drug approaches like psychotherapy, psychoeducation, nutritional therapy, naturopathy, massage therapy, etc, all of which are regarded by Big Pharma as dangerous competitors that need to be crushed.

Over 90% of the drug research in America has, for decades, been designed, funded, ghost-written, published and totally controlled by the pharmaceutical industry, in whose interest it is to ensure – by hook or by crook – that its wholly-owned company researchers and company statisticians will massage the numbers enough so that they will get the FDA to approve the drug for marketing.

Mainstream medical journal editors are often beholden to the drug companies that so generously subsidize their magazines. Mainstream medical journals have large numbers of drug companies and medical device companies that advertise in them. Journal articles that promote the drugs or devices from these companies are often published, but the mainstream medical journal editors rarely allow any space for peer-reviewed articles that contradict the pro-drug reports from the companies that advertise in the journals.

The same conflicts of interest are on display at most major medical conventions and conferences. These so-called educational conferences are heavily subsidized by the drug industry. Most thinking physicians are appalled at the large numbers of pharmaceutical companies that give out free trinkets and food in order to attract physicians to their tables so that they can pitch their newest, unaffordable blockbuster drug.

I have also observed that medical meetings that are dependent on pharmaceutical company money do not invite researchers who want to present information about non-drug alternatives that go up against drug and medical industry dogma. Whistle-blowers and medical heretics are not welcome at such medical conventions. Truth-tellers rain on Big Pharma's parade and so they are excluded.

Whatever Happened to Fully Informed Consent?

I was taught in my medical school training that before prescribing a treatment, the physician was ethically and medico-legally obliged to fully inform the patient about the potential hazards of a drug (or a surgical procedure). Then the patient was to be given an opportunity to refuse or accept the recommended prescription or procedure. Consent to surgical procedures was to be signed and the signature witnessed. Alternatives to the suggested treatment program were also to be offered.

Unfortunately, and often tragically, obtaining fully informed consent before prescribing a drug no longer seems to be the standard of care in the Big Business of modern medicine, where high productivity, high patient turnover and high income-generation for the clinic is the norm. Such "efficiencies" often short-change thoroughness and quality time that should be spent listening to the concerns of the patient. Stopping to fully discuss the potential dangers of medications is often replaced by the handing out of computer-generated lists and a coerced signature from the patient that (falsely) states that she has been fully informed of the pros and cons of the treatment. Medical malpractice lawyers assure us physicians that such short-cuts to consent hold up in court.

Most of the patients that came to me in my holistic mental health care practice, did so because they knew that they had become addicted to and simultaneously sickened by their psychiatric drugs (usually involving combinations of two or more drugs that had never been thoroughly tested for safety or efficacy – even in the animal labs).

Most of those patients had already failed in their attempts to get off their offending drugs because of the terrible withdrawal symptoms that had occurred when they had tried to cut down the dose. Withdrawal syndromes always involved totally new symptoms that hadn't been there prior to starting the drug – no matter what the original diagnosis had been.

I saw hundreds of patients in my practice who were totally unaware that their drug could cause permanent tardive dyskinesia, dementia, brain damage, permanent drug-induced disabilities, temporary or permanent sexual dysfunction, akathisia, violence, aggression, homicidality, suicidality, Parkinsonism, depression, mania, psychotic reactions, atrophy (shrinkage) of the brain, diabetes, obesity, insomnia, hyperlipidemia, loss of IQ points, loss of memory, etc, etc, all of which they or their physicians could have read about in the pharmacy's prescription handouts or in the PDR (Physician's Desk Reference).

It is important to point out that the above short list of serious – even life-threatening – adverse drug effects have been documented again and again in the medical literature but likely were not mentioned by the too-busy prescribing physician. Most importantly, my patients had never been fully informed that they could become dependent on those substances and therefore could suffer serious withdrawal symptoms when trying to go stop their drug.

Obtaining fully informed consent is a time-consuming problem for modern medical practitioners, and it always has been. But, given 1) the millions of drugs that are being prescribed today just in America (many of which can cross the blood brain barrier and enter the brain), 2) the 3,600 virtually unreadable fine print pages in the PDR and 3) the enormous numbers of adverse effects from the drugs that had been ingested for weeks, months or years, the problem has to be far worse now than when I was prescribing drugs early in my career (the toxic natures of which I had also been kept unaware). Knowing what I know now, I shudder to think of the harm that my choices in prescribing did to my unsuspecting patients in decades past.

It's an increasingly dangerous road for physicians to travel, but it is even worse for their patients. If my medical heresy has come about because of my truth-seeking and my ethical concern for patients, I accept the label gladly.

DISCLAIMER: Readers who are interested in reducing their psych drug use should consult their prescribing physician and not suddenly stop them. Stopping drugs suddenly can be more dangerous than starting them. They should consult a physician knowledgeable in neuroscience, brain nutrition and with experience in helping people safely discontinue psychiatric medications.

Dr Kohls is a retired physician who practiced holistic, non-drug, mental health care for the last decade of his family practice career. He now writes a weekly column for the Reader Weekly, an alternative newsweekly published in Duluth, Minnesota, USA.

For elaboration on some of the statements above, please consider reading some of his past columns archived on Global Research

The original source of this article is Global Research

Copyright © Dr. Gary G. Kohls, Global Research, 2015

http://www.globalresearch.ca/big-pharma-and-the-money-making-business-of-medicine/5485017

Reading the transcript of a joint press conference by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and British Prime Minister Tony Blair, which was held on the 25th day of the Anglo-American-led invasion of Afghanistan, makes it abundantly clear why another Anglo-American-led genocidal war had been launched against Syria nearly ten years later.

The Guardian, 1 November 2001

Press conference: PM and President Assad of Syria

[transcript of the joint press conference in Damascus by Syria’s President Assad and British Prime Minister Tony Blair on October 31, 2001]

Number10.gov.uk (official website of the British government) via European Security & Defence website

Editorial note: This press conference was held 24 days after the launch of the Anglo-American-led invasion of Afghanistan.

The day after his visit to Damascus, Mr Blair met Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in Jerusalem. (emphasis added)

PRESIDENT ASSAD (via interpreter):  I am welcoming Mr Tony Blair, the Prime Minister of Britain and the accompanying delegation in Syria and I would like to indicate that it is the first visit of senior British officials at this level since the independence of Syria in the 1940s and certainly before then, decades before then, and this has many indications and many importance and many meanings and it indicates the development of the relations between Syria and Great Britain.

Despite the fact that the visit is very short the talks were very rich and we had time to discuss many issues and many topics. We agreed on many of the analyses that we discussed in the talks and there were many points of understanding and there was also some points that each undertook to the other.

The main issues that we discussed during these talks, of course we concentrated on the issue of terrorism and the peace process and the Middle East, of course. We talked quickly about the bi-lateral relations and we agreed to consolidate these relations through the ideas which were discussed between Syrian and British officials whether in Syria or in Britain. As for the issue of terrorism, there was a sound condemnation of what had taken place on 11 September in the United States and, I think this goes without saying, I don't think there is any country in the world that would say it agrees with terrorism. It is a principle for all countries.

But the condemnation that Syria has announced was not only a result of what had taken place on 11 September, but it is an outcome of our principles, all the principles throughout our history in Syria, social principles, it was an outcome to our religious principles that are here in our Arab region, whether as Arabs or as Muslims or as Christians. It is a result of our suffering from terrorism, especially during the mid-1970s and the consequent period, and of course, at the same time, we differentiated – and I personally differentiated – between resistance and terrorism and between Islam and terrorism.

There is a difference between resistance as a social right, as a religious right, it's a legal right, and it is a right that is safeguarded through the United Nations' resolutions.

Of course Islam and all holy religions have the same source and they were sent to people by the same God. These religions were not sent for war but they were sent for peace and for the combating of terrorism.

We talked about the root causes of terrorism and I mentioned many causes. But I mentioned particularly one important cause of terrorism and it is a reason that many citizens in the Arab or Muslim regions feel; it is a feeling of the difference and the human value between the citizen in this region and the human values of the citizen in the West. Especially as terrorism is there for a long time in Syria, since 1985, the late President Hafez Al-Assad sent Syrian senior officials to Western European countries to ask for convening an international conference to combat terrorism. So the issue of combating terrorism is very old for Syria, and although the combating of terrorism came quite late, it is better late than never. The important point is that combating terrorism should have started before, and many people in the region feel there is a gulf that the Western people should fill, that the human person is a human person anywhere and terrorism is terrorism anywhere, whether it is in the Middle East or Europe or in Asia and everywhere in the world.

We spoke about combating terrorism and I said that combating terrorism should start by defining this again. We can't fight an enemy without knowing who this enemy is, what shape is he, where is he, is he North, East, West or South. We have to define our enemy first and we have to specify its appearance and its existence and then we have to analyse the reasons which brought this terrorism. Therefore, in order to combat terrorism, we have to address the root causes and not the effect. Until now only the effects of terrorism are being addressed but the root causes are not being addressed or it is at the beginning of being addressed. Addressing the root causes of terrorism, as I have said, should be first political, it should be cultural, it should be media, informative, security and intelligence addressed. And the terrorism works as a network; it doesn't have a certain head whether it is a person or an organisation. It is a network, terrorism is a network that could be found anywhere, and therefore combating terrorism and fighting its causes should come through international co-operation and not through having one side or one country that fights terrorism. Terrorism is there everywhere and therefore combating terrorism should be done by every country in the world.

We spoke about peace in the Middle East. As we say always, Syria did not change its stand towards peace. Reaching a just and comprehensive peace in the region was always our principle, despite all the difficult circumstances, despite all the setbacks that the peace process has suffered from, the Syrian stand towards peace has not changed because it is a strategic position and not a tactical position, but Israel as far as we are concerned, is proving every day that it is against this peace, and therefore the desire for peace cannot coincide with the desire for killing. The list for assassinations cannot be an expression of a desire to reach peace and stability in this region.

We also spoke in the peace process about the international consensus in the world, especially after 11 September events, about the necessity of achieving peace in the Middle Eastern region, and I said that this international consensus is a golden opportunity that might not be repeated in the future. It is an opportunity for the world, but it is to a large extent an opportunity for the American administration that could move without taking into account the domestic pressure that might influence its neutral role as co-sponsor of the peace process.

We did not differentiate in our talk (inaudible) that peace and terrorism. Some people linked the issue of the Middle East to terrorism directly and it is understood as if the Middle East is a source of terrorism, and this is not correct. Despite our point of view as Arabs, because Israel is practising the state terrorism regularly and this is definite, but the Middle Eastern region often influences activating terrorism, because terrorists always need a cover. This cover could be a national issue, it could be a pan-national issue, it could be a social issue, and therefore closing the hot areas in the world will deprive these terrorists of the cover they always seek.

Of course we — and the last point I would like to say about peace is that in Syria we cannot see with one eye as some people see. We cannot separate the issue of terrorism that we see every day and we live every day that Israel is practising against the Palestinians. We cannot separate between this kind of terrorism and the terrorism that is taking place in the world, and we can't really look with one eye. Some people see with one eye, some people see with closed eyes and we cannot, we look at the issues with wide-open eyes in order to see what has taken place, and in order to see things from a very realistic perspective.

And therefore no one can say small details can see small details without seeing the big issues, and the closer issues. People in the Arab region, and in the Muslim world cannot see the international terrorism without seeing Israeli terrorism, and therefore addressing this kind of terrorism is one.

Some people say that achieving peace will make a big step for combating terrorism, this is correct. But also combating terrorism in Israel would help to reach (5 second break in audio) highly appreciate what I have heard from Mr Prime Minister, because of his high appreciation and his great respect to Islam as a religion, and his high respect to the Muslim people in Britain. I am going to leave the floor to Mr Prime Minister to address you.

PRIME MINISTER BLAIR:  Mr President, first of all can I thank you for hosting me here in Syria, and say how much I welcome the talks that we have had this morning and I know we will continue later.

And as you said right at the very outset this is candid dialogue. But it is a dialogue I would like to think could be pursued by us both as people trying to reach an understanding of each other's perspectives. And trying to work together as partners for the greater good of the wider world.

And there are two main issues obviously that we discussed. The first was the attacks of the 11 September in the United States of America. And I very much welcomed the strong statement of condemnation that you have made to me, and repeated again now Mr President. I think that is important that the entire world knows that the world community is united in condemning what happened on the 11 September as an atrocity.

The second thing is that that attack was carried out by extremists who do not represent in any way, shape or form, the true faith or voice of Islam. And your strong statement to that effect is also most welcome.

I believe it is important therefore that we send out a very clear message and signal that there is a strong international coalition against terrorism. And in Syria, and indeed the countries in this entire region are united as part of that coalition.

In respect of the Middle East peace process, whatever the differences of perspective, we both understand the importance of restarting the Middle East peace process properly, of getting back to a situation in which differences are resolved by a process of talking and dialogue. And that in that regard violence from whatever quarter is equally unhelpful, and what we require is the space and the time to get people talking together again.

And the objective that we seek, and I believe again this is shared by you, and shared by people in this region, is a situation where Israelis and Palestinians can live side by side in peace together. That is in the end the only possible long-term solution.

So Mr President I thank you for inviting me here today, I have very much welcomed the talks together. I know that for you as you were saying to me earlier, there is a relationship not just between Britain and Syria that is part of our history, but a personal relationship for you, since you have lived and worked in Britain.

And I hope that the candid dialogue that we have begun today can strengthen over time. Because there are huge differences in understanding between West and Islam, between west and the Arab world.

And yet if one can come out of the terrible events of the 11 September, it is an attempt to bridge that gulf of misunderstanding, and create the right circumstances for partnership in the future, and I believe that that is possible.

And so I hope that the dialogue we have begun today can continue over time, so that we achieve the objectives we both want to achieve. Which is an end to terrorism in all its forms, wherever it exists, and a proper and lasting peace and solution for the province of the Middle East. Thank you.

QUESTION:  Could I ask (inaudible) if they discussed the current action in Afghanistan during their talks? Whether any pledges, promises, guarantees, anything of that nature were sought by President Assad, and given or not by Prime Minister Blair.

PRIME MINISTER BLAIR:  Well of course we have discussed the current situation in Afghanistan. And I think that the most important thing to emphasise is that people accept that what happened on the 11 September was wrong, and that it is necessary for the international community to act.

Now we are acting in Afghanistan, we have set out our objectives there very, very clearly. And I think that the desire of everyone is to make sure that we bring that action to a successful conclusion as swiftly as possible. That is our desire I think that is the desire of all people in this region and elsewhere.

PRESIDENT ASSAD (via interpreter):  As far as we are concerned in Syria we (inaudible) appreciate that we announced our stand right from the beginning. A very clear stand that we condemn terrorism, and with an international coalition for combating terrorism. But we should differentiate between combating terrorism, and between war.

We did not say we support an international coalition for launching a war, we are always against war, it is a point of principle, because wars have always a negative effect on societies. And we believe that combating terrorism cannot be done through war, but it can be done through political cultural intelligence cooperation amongst relevant countries.

And therefore, at least we do not like to see more wars taking place in the world, because we have suffered from many wars, especially as we see some civilians, innocent civilians falling every day.

QUESTION:  And Mr Prime Minister Tony Blair, and the American President George Bush, and your Excellency have announced your support to establishing a Palestinian, independent Palestinian state to establish the ability in the region. How do you see the execution of the (inaudible) in the light of the dangerous (inaudible) of pulling down houses, expanding settlements, and ignore all international requests, including your request, and the request of the American administration.

PRIME MINISTER BLAIR:  What is necessary if we are going to restart the peace process in the Middle East is that two things happen. First of all we have got to agree what the fixed points of principle are. And those fixed points of principle to my mind are that Israel is entitled to exist, has its right to exist, and be confident of its own peace and security within its own borders.

And secondly that alongside the state of Israeli there is a Palestinian state where there is justice and equality for people. Now I believe that based on that, based on the United Nations resolutions, it is possible to restart a proper process that can achieve those aims.

The second thing however that is necessary, as well as agreement on those fixed points of principle, is that we have an end to violence of all sorts, in order to give space and time for a peace process to begin again. Because whilst violence is continuing, of whatever nature, it is difficult for the political process to work, and if I can say to you, certainly to borrow from the process of peace in Northern Ireland, which, in a very different context, has some similarities in terms of divided communities and great bitterness and hostility, it is vital, in order for the political process to work, that violence ends, of all types, because it is the people of violence that want to displace the political process, and what I would like to see is, based on those six points of principle, based on the United Nations Resolution, a peace process begin again that allows us to take back control of the situation for politics and not for violence.

QUESTION:  Can I ask the Prime Minister whether you did discuss the situation of the terrorist groups which the Americans believe were operating in this country, whether you asked the President to restrain them, and may I ask the President whether you are prepared to take action against those groups, in particular the one that has claimed responsibility for the recent assassination in Israel?

PRIME MINISTER BLAIR:  First of all, if I can say that, as I just made clear a moment or two ago, it is our belief that all groups involved in violence must cease their activities, so that the political process is given a chance to work. Now, there are going to be differences in perspective and views about the issue, both of the Middle East peace process, about the action that we take in respect of Afghanistan. But what I think is important is to recognise that unless we can bring about the situation in which the violence really does cease in the Middle East and the political process begin to work, then it is very difficult to see how we are going to get a just, negotiated solution to the problems that we face, and as I say, whatever the differences in perspective are – and we said it was a candid dialogue – whatever the differences in perspective, I think that is accepted by both of us. We both want to see a situation where the violence ends and ends completely, on all sides, so that the peace process can get started again.

PRESIDENT ASSAD (via interpreter):  I would like to give a comment about this question. Of course the issue of the Middle East issue is for the countries concerned and one of the first countries who are concerned and we are more capable to decide the nature of the organisations and the people who are in the region. As I said in the beginning, resisting occupation is an international right nobody can deny, and therefore we have many organisations, many people who support the liberation and who support the resistance fighters who seek to liberate their lands. The act of resistance is very different from the act of terrorism. As I said, we differentiate. In the west you have one example in France, for example, one of the most important personalities or one of the symbols is President de Gaulle, who fought for liberating the French land. Can any one of you accuse President de Gaulle of being a terrorist? No way, because what President de Gaulle did is the same thing that's being done by the resistance fighters in this region, and therefore it's the same measure that should be applied.

QUESTION:  Mr Prime Minister Tony Blair, the peace process was started ten years ago and peace has not been achieved at a time when violence was not there in the region, and the peace was not achieved due to the Israeli policies. Is there any initiative or intention by the Europeans or by international community to restart the peace process (inaudible) according to the United Nations Resolution and the land for peace principles (inaudible) for the region's (inaudible)?

PRIME MINISTER BLAIR:  Well of course there's an intention to do that. It's precisely what we want to achieve. We want the process to begin again so that there is the possibility, through dialogue, of resolving the issues in the Middle East. But in order for that to happen, what is important is that there is an end to all forms of violence, where there is restraint, an end to violence, and the opportunity then to get people to talk about the issues, and over the last ten years, as you know, there have been many, many attempts to get the peace process moving ahead. Now those attempts have not yet succeeded, but my message to people in whatever part of the region I will be over the next couple of days is there is no alternative. When all the killing and the bloodshed stops, people will have to come back and try and resolve their differences through dialogue. There is no alternative to that, just as there is no realistic alternative to a situation where the right of Israel to exist, confident in its own security, and the right of the Palestinians to their own state, is accepted as the basic principles of that dialogue.

Now I believe that can happen, but it needs the space and the time, as I say, to do it and even before the 11 September — sometimes I know in this part of the world it has been said that people like myself and President Bush were only interested in the issue of the peace process in the Middle East once the 11 September had occurred. This is not true. When I met President Arafat a few days ago in London, that was my eleventh meeting with him. Before the 11 September we already had the Tenet (?) Plan, the Mitchell Plan; as you know the Americans were preparing a new process in order to try and restore some momentum to the Middle East peace process. So we have, right from the very beginning, understood the importance of this issue, but we need the help of everybody, of all countries in this region, in order to get it done, and the single most important thing that will allow us to get it done is an end to violence from whatever quarter, in whatever form.

QUESTION:  It seems that the focus now is to implement the Mitchell Plan and the Tenet Plan to cement the shaky ceasefire between the Palestinians and the Israelis. Do you think that's a good start? Is it enough of a start? And would you, at some point, encourage what you perceive as legitimate resistance to halt their attacks to give the Mitchell Plan a chance?

PRESIDENT ASSAD (via interpreter):  We have our perspective about the Mitchell Report. We did not participate in it and Syria was not consulted about it, but the failure of many attempts did not take into account the necessary requirements for the peace (inaudible) including the rights of the Palestinian people, and the people in the region have proven that our perspective, our point of view, was correct, so the right thing is that the ceasefire, agreement for a ceasefire, but it is not the terms of reference for a peace process. The terms of reference for a peace process is the Security Council Resolution and the Madrid terms of reference. When we speak about initiatives regardless of the names of these initiatives, or when we speak about negotiations, all these are the means, but the important thing is justice; justice is peace.

We have to put one rule for the elements and for the objective, in order to achieve this objective. When we want to say — or let us assume that there's an initiative, and the Palestinian citizen is going to ask, "What is the objective of this initiative? Is it to stop violence?" Stopping violence is perhaps necessary to reach peace, but it is not everything; the more important thing is what this citizen is going to achieve, what are the rights he is going to achieve when the peace process ends, when — any initiative depends on United Nations Resolutions, on Madrid terms of reference, and so directing the peace process, or the co-sponsor should be neutral, should be an honest broker, and this is what was not achieved during the last ten years, and that's why peace has failed, and that's why all the attempts have failed. If you don't have the right way to conduct the peace process through the means and through the objectives we are going to meet in press conferences with other senior officials ten years from now to speak about launching a peace process.

PRIME MINISTER BLAIR:  I'd like to just respond to that if I might, for a moment. Sorry, let me just respond to that for a moment please. I think the President said something that is very important there, that the Tenet and the Mitchell plans are valid plans in order to bring about a different security situation and end the violence. But I agree that is the first step, it is not the end of the process. What must then happen is that we resolve the actual issues that are outstanding. And I think that what he said there too, in respect of the UN resolutions and the Madrid conclusions is also important. And I hope very much there will come a point in time when Syria is able to resume negotiations also with Israel in order to get the outstanding issues between them sorted out.

So I agree with the fact that the end to violence is the context in which the key issues can be resolved. It's not the resolution of the issues themselves. So we've got to end the violence and then go on to resolve those key issues. And I think that if there is agreement on that and if there is an agreement, as I say, on those two fixed points of reference – on Israel and on the Palestinian state – I think that we could start to make a great deal more progress. Sorry, sir.

QUESTION:  Mr Prime Minister, Tony Blair, many Arabs and Moslems feel a kind of frustration and oppression and injustice because of the non-implementation of Israel into the United Nations resolution and because of the double standards. Do you, Mr Prime Minister, have a plan, especially the European Union, to address this issue – this very sensitive issue — and which really is the source of tension in the region? Thank you.

PRIME MINISTER BLAIR:  Well, first of all, I want to say this very directly to public opinion here – and we should never forget, coming from my country, that public opinion in your country may be in a different place from public opinion in Britain or Europe or the United States of America – but I hope whatever part of the world we're in we can agree on this: what happened on 11 September cannot be excused and neither can those that carried out the 11 September attack, in which, I may say, thousands of innocent people — Christians, Jews, Moslems, people of no faith at all — died. That cannot be excused on the basis of any court and, as the President said a moment or two ago, there are always people — the extremists always want to use a cause as cover for the extremist acts that they carry out.

Now, it is also important — so I hope that condemnation is accepted by everyone and that no one should think that the people that carried out the 11 September attack represent, in any shape or form, true Arab or Moslem opinion. And that's an important statement. But of course we understand that there is legitimate concern about the breakdown of the Middle East Peace Process and a desire to get that started again. And we understand that and what you have got to understand from us is that we know there is a serious issue here that must be resolved. And we are willing to put all our energy and ability into trying to resolve it.

Now it's not for me to come here and issue plans and so on but it is for me to come here and say to people very clearly, "We want to try and resolve this issue. We want to get the Middle East Peace Process started again. Give us the opportunity of doing that by making sure that the conditions in which people can talk again, and of which dialogue is the way forward, can be created." And that's why I say to you that the violence from whatever quarter has to end. And I understand the different perspectives there will be between Syria and Britain or between Syria, obviously, and Israel. There will be fundamental differences of perspectives. But we both, in the end, know there is no alternative but to us sitting down and working out these differences, not by violence or by terrorism of whatever form but by partnership and by trying to resolve the issues constructively. And I think that can happen. And one of the reasons for us coming here – and I say this to you again, absolutely openly – it is difficult because of the history and the differences to come here, to have a press conference such as this but I happen to believe that if anything good can come out of the terrible events of the 11 September, it is an attempt to find new understanding and a new way forward to resolve the differences that we have. Now maybe we won't be able to but let's at least try. And let's at least try doing so, understanding the perspective from which the other person comes.

Okay? Yeah, I don't mind. Yeah — I can take another one, if you want. Well, this lady here. I should say this is the generosity of the president that is allowing this! (laughter)

QUESTION:  Mr Prime Minister, I was very interested in what you said about the military action in Afghanistan. Are you now requesting, British Prime Minister, to stop the military action and would you go so far as to define it, in a way, as a form of terrorism?

PRESIDENT ASSAD (via interpreter):  We are not asking for anything and we are not a party to it in order to ask for putting an end to it but we have a perspective, we have a point of view, a general point of view about this war and about any other war. The history of Syria stretches for 6,000 years, 4,000 years before Christ, and the Assyrians were great fighters and that then since that time until no, there is a defence of Syrian territory. But there was — that Syria was never an aggressor or an occupier of any other country or killing of any innocent citizens. This is a principle, a Syrian principle. But, at the same time, we cannot accept what we see every day on television screens, killing the innocent civilians [in Afghanistan]. There are hundreds now who are dying every day. I don't think anybody in the West accepts or agrees to that.

QUESTION:  (Several inaudible words) Mr Prime Minister, some voices in Europe after 11 September are asking for closing the frontier in the way of Arabs and Moslems. How do you see these races called and what are you doing towards them?

PRIME MINISTER BLAIR:  Well, as you probably know, just as Syria has some 2 million Christians, we have many, many Moslems in Britain. Millions of Moslems live in Europe and we defend, absolutely and totally, their rights to exist free from racism or stigmatising of any kind at all. There are many, many Moslems indeed, who live in the United States of America and I think what is important is that one of the common values that we should stand for in the aftermath of the 11 September is a complete rejection of all forms of racism, of religious intolerance, of discrimination against people, whatever their race or religion or creed.

Just to say, in respect of the action in Afghanistan, we understand as well the issue and opinion here about the nature of the action we take but I would just like to say this to you: the action that we take is designed, in so far as we possibly can, to minimise civilian casualties. The action that was taken on the 11 September was action designed to maximise the number of civilian casualties. So whatever the differences again of perspective there, we too want to see this action brought to an end as swiftly as possible but it can be done at any point in time that the Taliban regime and the al-Qaida network shut down the network of terror there.

PRESIDENT ASSAD (via interpreter):  We thank you very much and, as I said to Mr Prime Minister at the end of our meeting, however bloody the picture might be, we can extract some light out of it if we enjoin (?) the will (?) and the media can participate in that directly and in a helpful way, particularly in the West, so we would like the media in the West to play a very effective role in this crisis. Thank you very much.__________________________________

source:  Rifkind attacks Blair's 'unwise' mission to the Middle East, Daily Telegraph, 3 November 2001

Flashback to 2003:

"[W]e have maintained the understanding that in bad days the two allies need to act shoulder-to-shoulder. Turkey has indeed been alongside the United States in nearly every major military conflict, from Korea to the Gulf War, from Bosnia to Somalia, Kosovo and Afghanistan.  (*)

Based on an urgent U.S. request on March 19, [2003] we reapplied to the National Assembly [i.e. Turkey’s parliament] to get authorization for the opening of Turkish air space to the coalition forces led by the U.S. The Assembly approved this request on March 20, the day the war began in Iraq. Turkish airspace was made available to the coalition forces on the very next day."[Turkey’s Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, My Country Is Your Faithful Ally and Friend , Wall Street Journal, 31 March 2003.Mr Erdogan’s article was published 11 days after the launch of the Anglo-American-led invasion of Iraq.]

(*)  Mr Erdogan refers to Turkey's participation in U.S.-led wars against Korea (1950), Iraq (1991-), Bosnia (1994), Somalia (1993), Serbia (1999) and Afghanistan (2001-)

Related:

Propaganda alert:  Cameron: 'British air strikes on Syria would be legally justified'

by Cem Ertür, Indybay, 7 September 2014

President Bashar al-Assad sworn in for a new term, addresses Syrians in milestone speech

[transcript of the inauguration speech by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad]

SANA, 17 July 2014

Flashback to 2003: "Major combat in Iraq is over, U.S. warns rogue Syria"

propaganda alert by Cem Ertür, Indybay, 16 April 2014

Flashback to 2003: President Assad: US seeks war on Iraq in order to redraw the map of Middle East

by Cem Ertür, Indybay, 20 June 2014

A shocking video has emerged recording a loud verbal threat from the Israeli military to residents of Aida refugee camp near Bethlehem. As a military jeep rolls down an empty quiet street a threatening voice comes over the loudspeaker:

 "You throw stones and we will hit you with gas until you die."

The words spoken seem almost unfathomable.

Middle East Eye (MEE) reports the video was recorded on October 29 by a youth, 17-year-old Yazan Ikhlayel, on his iPhone. Ikhlayel was at Aida's community center with a clear view of the road below. As Ikhlayel recorded the scene the jeep slows and then come to a halt as the threats continue. You can begin to see stones being thrown at :28 in the video. The threat also warns they were holding a person "one of you" and if they didn't stop throwing stones they would slaughter the person:

Transcript:

People of Aida Refugee camp we are the occupation army. You throw stones and we will hit you with gas until you all die. The children, the youth, the old people, you will all die, we won't leave any of you alive. And we have arrested one of you, he is with us now. We took him from his home and we will slaughter and kill him while you are watch if you keep throwing stones. Go home or we will gas you until you die. Your families, your children, everyone we will kill you. Listen to me, all of you go home, it's better for you.

The Middle East Eye spoke with Ikhlayel, "The most important thing I want people to see when they watch this video is to realise what the Israeli 'democracy' really is".  He also insisted this will not stop the protests:

They have said it for us now, they are an occupation – they said 'we are the occupation army'. It is proof, this is an apartheid country, it is not democratic at all.

"This is the first time I heard them say something like that over a speaker for everyone to hear," Ikhlayel continued.

The young people aren't accepting what the soldiers are doing particularly now. They're going to the streets [to protest] everyday, and they aren't stopping. They aren't scared of them.

When asked if he thinks the soldier's message would scare the youth enough to stop the protests, Ikhlayel shook his head adamantly.

"This will not stop until the occupation ends," he insisted.

MEE also interviewed filmmaker and photo journalist Mohammed al-Azza, who has been targeted and attacked by Israeli forces in the past.  Like Ikhlayel, al-Azza also emphasized the soldier's (unusual) self identification as  "occupation" forces:

"It's been a long time since we've seen the soldiers get on a speaker like that," al-Azza said.

But really we were surprised by one word – usually they call themselves the IDF (Israel Defence Forces), they don't say the IOF (Israeli Occupation Forces) like we do, but that is something good for us, and for people outside the country to hear. They said it to us, 'we are the occupation'….

Usually when we talk about Palestine we are telling people abroad what happened, and it's usually after the Israelis have done whatever they did, but now it's good that the people can hear it from the soldiers. They said 'we are going to kill you and we are going to do this and that' in their message. It's very important for international people to hear this sort of stuff that we are hearing all the time from them.

Ma'an News reports: Israeli soldiers tell Palestinians: 'We will gas you until you die':

In this statement, we see — among a range of potential criminal offences — a public threat to kill Palestinian civilians, and to execute a prisoner,"Simon Reynolds, Legal Advocacy Coordinator at the BADIL Resource Center for Palestinian Residency and Refugee Rights, told Ma'an.

Though such threats are appalling, they are not necessarily surprising. In light of the mounting civilian death toll among Palestinians, such threats merely add words to the deed.

What we are seeing is an apparent policy of lawlessness in which Israeli forces can wield deadly force with virtual impunity. Especially troubling is that this is a policy that seems to have, at the very minimum, the tacit acceptance of the highest levels of government."Numerous rights groups have publicly condemned Israel's disproportionate military response while policing demonstrations and responding to alleged attacks.

Indiscriminate or deliberate firing on observers and demonstrators who pose no imminent threat violates the international standards that bind Israeli security forces,"Kenneth Roth, executive director of Humans Rights Watch said on Oct. 11, after a HRW research assistant was shot and injured while observing a demonstration near Ramallah.

 Annie Robbins is Editor at Large for Mondoweiss, a mother, a human rights activist and a ceramic artist. She lives in the SF bay area. Follow her on Twitter @anniefofani 

The lion's share of Islamic State illegal oil exports is conducted through Turkey and Kurdish areas. Although Washington could curb the illegal traffic, it has chosen to focus on other issues, a former CIA officer told the Sputnik news agency.

"It's a question of priorities. They have never allocated enough resources to do so. Other goals and missions have been rated as having more urgent calls on intelligence and tactical resources," John Kiriakou, a former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) counterterrorism officer and US Senate Foreign Relations Committee senior investigator, told Sputnik.

He said Islamic State's (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) oil revenue lifeline could be cut short, if Washington made an effort to do so.

"I do believe that," Kiriakou stressed.

IS makes about $40 million a month on oil sales, raking in close to $500 million a year, a US Treasury Department spokesperson told the news agency earlier this week.

According to Kiriakou, someone on the Turkish side of the border has been making enough money out of it. "There are too many vested interests involved for it to stop. They greased the right people."

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He added:

"It's not the official Turkish government. [It's] probably corrupt elements of the Turkish military and officials in local and regional governments in southwest Turkey who are involved in this."

The richest oil fields Islamic State can access are south of Irbil in Iraq, and the most likely direction for the extremists to move oil is westwards through Kurdish territory, Kiriakou told Sputnik. Kiriakou says IS' illegal oil trade actually followed the same pattern Saddam Hussein used to defy international economic sanctions. Most of the oil secretly exported from Iraq was moved west through Kurdish territory back then. "[Selling and transporting oil] through Turkey was the way Saddam Hussein for years beat the sanctions regime imposed on him." According to Kiriakou, the US should team up with Russia to cut Islamic State's oil revenue flow.

"We should be working with the Russians to achieve a settlement of the conflict in Syria. We have basically the same aims that they do. Both of us agree that Islamic State is a bad idea and we both want to get rid of it. But we're not working with them on this," the former CIA officer said. President Barack Obama is reportedly considering several new strategies to target IS in Iraq and Syria. Under consideration is targeting of IS' production and sale of oil on the black market. The US-led military coalition has struck oil refineries controlled by the terrorist group, but officials are looking at using different kinds of weapons to hit the facilities. A commander of the Free Syrian Army (FSA), Hussam Alawak, told RT earlier this week that a number of FSA officers have recently joined IS.

They [IS] took lots of people from our army to achieve their goals of expansion, to control oil regions in Syria. They attacked us with very heavy fire in the Al-Bab region [Aleppo province, northern Syria], so we had to tactically retreat to other places.

The IS advance has already resulted in Iraq losing up to 400,000 barrels of oil daily, the Iraq Oil Ministry spokesman Assem Jihad told Sputnik on Friday. But the Iraqi army had managed to win back almost all the oil deposits captured by the radical Islamic group, according to the spokesman. "The army and security forces managed to drive IS out of the Saladin Governorate. At the moment, terrorist groups are controlling only a small amount of developed oilfields in the Nineveh Governorate," he said. Last year, Islamic State seized the biggest oil refinery in Iraq at Baiji, but Baghdad reportedly retook the refinery in October. According to the OPEC Monthly Oil Market Report, Iraq produced 4.14 million barrels per day in September. The country is the cartel's second biggest crude producer after Saudi Arabia.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/isis-oil-exports-worth-500-million-a-year-conducted-through-turkey/5485920

Press TV has conducted an interview with Ian Williams, a senior analyst with the Foreign Policy in Focus from New York, to ask for his take on an apology from former British Prime Minister Tony Blair over the 2003 war against Iraq.

Watch interview here.

The following is a rough transcription of the interview.

Press TV: What does it mean in your perspective to apologize when we're talking about the displacement of millions of people, the killings of hundreds of thousands and total chaos and disruption of life for the Iraqi people and for much of the region? How can an apology suffice?

Williams: Well, an apology doesn't suffice. It's not intended to suffice. It's intended to have the head off. The impending Chilcot report and a week or so ago Colin Powell memo showed very clearly thatTony Blair had lied through his teeth to the Chilcot inquiry and not he had every intention of starting a war with Iraq even before the weapons of mass destruction issue, even before the question of a UN authorization for the invasion.

So, when he apologizes that he did mistakes, what he's trying to do is to convert admission to a crime into a mistake. And an analogy that occurred to me is the famous Victorian murderer in Britain, Jack the Ripper, could have apologize because he was just trying out surgical techniques when he dismembered his victims.

And not something like what Blair is doing here. It is pure spin. He knows he's on the ropes. And he is now trying to anticipate the results of Chilcot inquiry and convert it from a discussion of policy rather than a discussion of criminal behavior in waging a war without UN authorization, without the support of the people and without his own stated justifications.

Press TV: Well, is he on the ropes? Can we really expect him to pay the price for what he and his American counterpart George W. Bush had done?

Williams:  Unfortunately, we can't count on it. But let's say it's increasingly serious enough to be worrying to him. And I think Tony Blair is rapidly joining Henry Kissinger and other people around the world.

Now, he's got to consult international lawyers as well as travel agents, before he travels anywhere, because they may have a prima facie case for his prosecution either in British courts or foreign courts under universal jurisdiction or with the International Criminal Court, because there is clear evidence now that he is somebody who waged an illegal war of aggression, violating the United Nations' charter and was responsible for all of those deaths.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/blair-lied-through-his-teeth-regarding-iraq-war-admission-to-a-crime-cannot-be-categorized-as-a-mistake/5485899

The human rights provisions of the EU­-Israel Association Agreement are being continuously violated by the supply of arms and military equipment from the UK and other member states which are used to implement both an illegal occupation of the West Bank as well as the six year illegal blockade of essential goods to 1.8 million civilians in Gaza. This is leading to increased violence and the threat of a bloody intifada that could see the Holy City in flames.

It is, of course, a complete tragedy that the US congress is in the pocket of Netanyahu and the Israel Lobby. This has resulted in the recent authorisation of more millions of dollars' worth of arms and killing machines to the Israeli government for use by the infamous IDF against an unarmed civilian population in the Occupied Territories.

However, the European Union is not a lobby-­subservient American congress but a democratic, primarily Christian, union of 28 independent nation states. We should not be colluding in illegal occupations, settlements and blockades against a dispossessed, indigenous people of five million souls whether black, white, Muslim or anyone else.

It is now high time that the European Parliament enforced the human rights provisions of the EU Association Agreement with the Netanyahu government and implements an immediate ban on all arms trade with the Israeli military occupation.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/call-for-ban-on-arms-sales-to-israel/5485780

http://www.globalresearch.ca/eu-member-states-sell-weapons-to-israel-help-enforce-israels-illegal-settlement-in-occupied-territories/5485890