RADIO BAGHDAD

Twenty years after the invasion and beginning of the Anglo-American occupation, what did the manual of Western democracy leave the Iraqis?

By Ali Al Najafi

Thirteen years of a brutal embargo and intermittent aggression would be more than enough to break any country and render its people ungovernable. That was the period from 1990 to 2003 in which the US and Britain closed in on Iraq. The Iraqis knew this very well and despite the efforts of Washington and London to crush the will of the then nationalist government of President Saddam Hussein, constantly demonized by the Western media, all this was not enough and so they carried out a collective punishment that would cost a whopping more than a million and a half human beings dead. At that time, was there any interest from the Tribunal in The Hague for these crimes?

No one saw any prosecutor from that “high court” worry about prosecuting them. Were Iraqi Arabs not considered human beings as the conspirators of this aggression or the laureate employees of CNN and the BBC ruminated? The facts would demonstrate the underestimation that the invaders had for the life of the Iraqis.

Nor was the invasion based on false arguments and evidence (such as the alleged “Anthrax” exposed by a liar Colin Powell) a reason for a prosecutor to prosecute the case. What happened to international law at that time? The hypocrisy of Western governments shone with all its power and today they try to stand as actors with some degree of morality.

But the Iraqis never considered themselves victims of this injustice and that is why they did not sit back and wait for international organizations (including the United Nations) to come to their aid, nor did they hesitate for a minute to put all their efforts into fighting the Anglo-American invaders. Blood more than 4,000 years old runs through the veins of the inhabitants of Mesopotamia, the cradle of humanity. Do they think that barely 300 years of political literature and intellectual rinses of European origin were going to inhibit them or teach Iraqis how to defend their right to resist? And despite the fact that the Iraqis did not count on external aid, much less the generous help of NATO like the one they are deploying today with the pro-American regime in Kiev, the Iraqi resistance (not insurgency) was crucial and heroic in avoiding the total dissolution of the state.

The occupation was a separate and sinister chapter of the aggression and invasion that began in March 2003. It was a very dark process in which they literally tried to cleanse the local intelligentsia and with it the idea of ​​national unity to replace it with an ochlocracy. led by mere criminals dressed as politicians. The result of this was the regime of butchers led by representatives like Yalad Alawi and Nouri Al Maliki, handpicked by Washington, who have perpetuated to the present a reality of misery and lack of future.

Since then we have not seen characters from the neoconservative-Zionist sect such as Robert Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, Dick Cheney or George W. Bush himself have been called to account for their felony and for countless war crimes and crimes against humanity. Not even the great military leaders have sat on a bench of accused. So what authority does the Anglo-American political elite and their European lackeys have to condemn or demand legal proceedings against the Russian authorities?

The appearance of ISIS in 2014 was just another stepping stone in these crimes, deliberately installed and arising from the deceptions elaborated by its intelligence agencies and which they have tried to recreate unsuccessfully in Ukraine.

No need to try to convince anyone about this. The Iraqis themselves knew it from the first moment and today they are living firsthand the consequences of all that. A devastated country, without an economy and with a failed state, run by criminal mafias that have subverted the entire society and have installed a culture of full corruption, kleptocracy and endless violence, is the legacy left by the “democratic” occupation.

From a regional powerhouse in oil production, Iraq has become an impoverished, bleak and stuck country where its inhabitants (and those lucky enough to have one) cannot fill the tank of their car because of the cost. According to Transparency International, Iraq is one of the most corrupt countries in the world, occupying position 157 out of 180. After the fall of Saddam, the secular and multicultural state built around the Arab nationalist party “Baath” collapsed, which it grouped in its basic institutions to Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds who made Iraq a modern republic amid Arab monarchies and Islamic theocracies.

Today, for example, the corruption of the army is as extensive or greater than that which existed when “Daesh” appeared and its officialdom is not even the shadow of the professionalism that existed during the days of Saddam Hussein. Who benefits from this Status Quo?

Destroying that political unity was one of the central objectives of the plans previously formatted by the neoconservatives and Zionists in the Project for the New American Century, who fomented and fed the sectarianism that would be promoted by the interference of the Turkish, Saudi and jordans intelligence agencies.

Under the banner of democracy and freedom, Washington and its associates chipped away at the foundations of the Iraqi state, and once they succeeded in fragmenting it, they simply trampled Iraqis like ants as a demonstration that they were no longer needed. At the end of those bloody days and in the distance, the big winners with all this were the US military-industrial complex, the oil companies, the miserable private companies that outsourced the dirty tasks of the military and the CIA, and the opportunistic state of Israel.

This same trick was tried to infuse the Syrian population during all the aggression deployed since 2011 by their then Turkish and Saudi partners, but it was precisely what happened to the Iraqis that made them aware and prevented them from falling into the same trap. Likewise, today the Americans keep the oil province of “Dier Ezzor” occupied, which they control with the collaboration of Syrian Kurdish groups and the Barzani Clan in Iraqi Kurdistan, where they hold the “Kirkuk” oil fields captive.

 

 

 

REALINEAMIENTOS

¿Para dónde irá la Argentina en la actual turbulencia internacional?

 

Por Charles H. Slim

El mundo nunca ha estado tan interconectado como lo esta hoy y quienes lo habitamos, y en especial los gobiernos deberían estar más conscientes de los problemas que nos incumben a todos sin distinciones de nacionalidad, etnias ni religiones, pero la sordera y los engaños siguen siendo la pauta en las relaciones internacionales, un serio problema para lograr establecer soluciones en común.

La Argentina actual no es una excepción y en realidad nunca lo fue. Sus políticos han creído que los valores agregados de las vastas riquezas de su territorio, los recursos naturales y su situación geográfica eran suficiente para presentar a su país como una potencia digna de créditos sin condicionamientos. Bueno, estaban equivocados y hoy lo están sintiendo en carne viva.

Al ver tan solo como se halla la situación institucional se podría decir que más que un país, existen veinticuatro ya que, ese es el número de provincias que conforman el sistema de reparto territorial de tipo federal. Prueba de esto es el desdibujado y parco papel del presidente de la república Alberto Fernández quien solo ha servido para poner en evidencia la escuálida y débil situación institucional y política en la que se halla el estado argentino. Tanto es así que en Pekín y Washington se han hecho la misma pregunta ¿Con quién debemos tratar?

Pero a esto hay que inevitablemente sumarle el contexto internacional que tiene efecto sobre toda la economía global y que ciertamente impacta con mayor agudeza sobre las economías más precarias y poco desarrolladas, entre ellas la de la Argentina.

Esto no significa validar las exageraciones del presidente Fernández que alude para excusar su calamitosa gestión hablando de la pandemia ni de la guerra en Ucrania y ello por el simple motivo de que en ninguno de estos casos hubo un involucramiento directo que justifique esos argumentos. Si nos referimos a la pandemia por el contrario, la falta de recursos para gestionar soluciones y la falta de medios logísticos para transporte de elementos sanitarios como las vacunas, no fue por la pandemia en sí, sino por una incompetencia demostrada con la desestructuración de su Fuerza Aérea ejecutada por su propia gente y la notable falta de inversión en las áreas críticas del país. 

Pero en este particular momento, por estas horas, no solo la Argentina está en una crisis. En lo particular que ocurre con Argentina no es otra cosa que la reedición de un drama lacrimógeno en el que los argentinos son protagonistas y siguen incurriendo de manera cíclica como en aquella película del día de la marmota. A ello se suma el mundo en vilo ante una escalada que se puede advertir con las maniobras militares más grandes que la OTAN llevara a cabo desde su fundación en 1949.

¿Y en qué puede afectar esto a la Argentina? Primero que todo, el país tiene una base de la OTAN en el atlántico sur a menos de 300 kilómetros de su costa patagónica y a la vez, una base de comunicaciones de la república popular China. Con este tablero, Buenos Aires no puede escaparse por la tangente con su acostumbrada neutralidad y sin excusas deberá tomar partido. El gobierno se aferrará como sea para lograr un apoyo de China mientras que la oposición brega por regresar a la órbita de EEUU.

Profundizando en esto preguntemos por qué el 17 de abril pasado llego -aunque se diga que estaba programada- sin aviso la Jefa del Comando sur (SOUTHCOM) la generala Laura Richardson para entrevistarse con el presidente Fernández y su responsable del ministerio de defensa Guillermo Taiana, que dicho sea de paso no fue una visita social ni tampoco para reafirmar los marcos de cooperación institucional entre el Pentágono y unas Fuerzas Armadas inoperativas por un abandono propiciado por sus gobiernos.

Las tratativas por acceder a los aviones chinos JF-17 con la posible instalación de una fábrica para su producción nacional, la cooperación estratégica satelital mediante tecnología que proporcionaría la firma china NORINCO y la construcción de un puerto multipropósito en Ushuaia es sin dudas la base de esta visita, aunque ciertamente se enmarca en una situación política mucho más amplia y compleja de interés para Washington y sus socios de la OTAN que abarca otras áreas más allá de la relación bilateral y hemisférica.

No hay perder de vista que el escenario de la actual guerra entre EEU-OTAN contra Rusia, no se reduce a la Europa del este ni tampoco a la potencial extensión de este al Mar de la China. Todo el mundo es un teatro de operaciones no declarado y es por ello que Washington esta tratando de unificar las lealtades en todo el hemisferio ante una posible escalada no convencional que no solo implicaría el uso de armas nucleares sino de las silenciosas e invisibles armas biológico-químicas.

Las posibilidades de este tétrico escenario se potencian con un posible fracaso de un intento de contraofensiva de las fuerzas ucranianas que podría lanzarse en breve. Según fuentes de inteligencia, Joe Biden y su gente no están dispuestos a que eso pase y mucho menos que la guerra tenga un final abrupto.

El espectro geopolítico se está moviendo rápidamente y aunque Buenos Aires no lo quiera es parte del mismo. La OTAN esta programando mega ejercicios militares tanto en Europa como en el Asia-Pacífico con una velada y advertible intensión que no tiene nada de pacífica. Se trata de una gigantesca provocación dirigida particularmente a China, principal rival de los intereses de EEUU.

En lo regional, al Departamento de Estado lo que realmente preocupa son los acercamientos políticos y las tratativas comerciales para llevar las actividades de inversión chinas tanto para desarrollo de infraestructura sobre la Hidrovía en el río Paraná como la extracción del Litio que se extienden tanto en el norte argentino como en Chile y Bolivia.

El posicionamiento de Brasil y su abierto cuestionamiento a la subordinación del dólar para el comercio exterior en boca de su presidente en la última cumbre del BRICS saco de quicio a los burócratas de Washington quienes ven en eso un peligroso eje en el que se alinean Brasilia, Pekín y Moscú. En este contexto a los norteamericanos les interesa que Brasil no arrastre a sus vecinos y en especial a la Argentina que tiene una importante presencia china en su territorio. 

Como no podía ser de otro modo, los sectores liberales y libertarios argentinos (políticos, medios y empresariales) quienes forman parte del llamado círculo rojo, se alinean incondicionalmente detrás de Washington y es por ello que aplauden con entusiasmo las visitas de estos altos exponentes del poder estadounidense con la esperanza de que sea la solución para una crisis marcada por una explosión de los precios de los bienes básicos y una trepada rampante del dólar que está licuando los salarios de los argentinos.

En resumen de cuentas se puede intuir que una parte del gobierno está tratando de reforzar el alineamiento con China mientras que la oposición compuesta por un rejunte de oportunistas y conversos que hoy se declaran liberales buscan pulsear por EEUU ¿Viene un menemismo del siglo XXI?

 

 

 

BOND'S FAULT

The fatal flaws of the Ukrainian intelligence services SBU would be responsible for Russia's entry into Ukraine and suggest further failures to come, but who runs the SBU?

By Sir Charlattam

When someone wants to take the blame for something, they will accuse someone else, even if it is notoriously wrong. Governments do the same thing all the time, regardless of nationality, and that includes the British government. We can say that this is part of human nature, so we do not apply it to a particular nationality. A few days ago an American media report charged that Russia's success in its incursion into Ukraine was due to the work of Ukrainian SBU double agents who in turn served the FSB and the Russian SVR.

As quoted in this article (https://www.politico.eu/article/ukraine-double-agent-russian-invasion-fsb-intelligence-operatives/ ), the Americans are surprised by these Russian "moles" and even somehow try to argue that Moscow's penetration into Ukraine predated the launch of Special Operation Z, as if this was the reason for the capture of important strategic points in the country. Clever and witty indeed, but this argument fails to explain Washington's position and the interference that the Americans and their partners have been having inside Ukraine.

If Russian intelligence was operating under Kiev's nose, why did NATO-controlled counter-intelligence fail to disrupt the Russian network?

It is worth remembering that when the Warsaw Pact was dissolved in July 1991, not only did NATO remain intact, but Washington continued its creeping advance eastwards. They were obviously already discreetly in Ukraine establishing contacts, but they were there. At that very moment both the Americans and the MI6 boys set their sights on Russia because Ukraine has always been the strategically important point of penetration into Russian domains. Do you think the Russians didn't know that, why would they allow their Western partners to play dirty in their backyard?

This makes it clear that the issue in Ukraine did not start on 24 February 2022 or even after the coup d'état of February 2014, or even after the so-called colour revolution of November 2004. All these are just episodes of the same cause and executed by the same hand that takes us back to that 1991 when the Soviet Union was crumbling and I would even dare to think that the first steps were already being taken after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 which by the way did not fall because of the magic words of Ronald Reagan.

Of course, from London, our parliamentary politicians looked down from the lectern and, like servile seconds, held out their hands to a George H. Bush who, embarking on the final stages of a planned war in the Persian Gulf, declared on 11 September 1990 that a "New World Order" was being born.

So in London they immediately turned to Washington for instructions and cried out What can we do for you? In what they do best.

Intrigue and deception is the Foreign Office's best known business or rather, they run that business as it is run by the boys in MI6, MI5 and resources of the SAS and SBS (Naval Intelligence Division) who in turn are subservient to the games of the American CIA. I'm not saying anything new that they don't know in Whitehall, let alone Vauxhall. All the talents were supposedly put on standby under NATO's wing but were never disconnected. Indeed, during the romance of Perestroika that disconnection was partial and apparent as many sections continued to operate in the breakaway republics that sought to break away from Moscow's administrative and political control at a time when political and economic crisis was devouring Russia. Chechnya and Dagestan were specific examples of such operations, supporting first the pro-independence and then the Islamists who - despite being labelled terrorists - were sheltered in London.

The dangers to peace were not extinguished by Fleming's James Bond and certainly not by the real-life archetype of the British agent operating for governmental shenanigans. On the contrary, what a boon to stability and world peace British intelligence gave British intelligence by cooperating for decades (and secretly) with neo-Nazi groups and mafia criminals in Eastern Europe with the fixation of screwing Russia. While the government propaganda machine was intoxicating the minds of Western citizens with a tuxedoed Bond and an unstirred milkshake drink who didn't muss his hair when fighting, the real, silent, shadowy British agent was contacting sinister Ukrainian ex-Nazis and their puppies who jumped the fence to work on our side against the USSR.

With the collaboration of reformer Mikhail Gorbachev and the subsequent ramshackle management of Boris Yeltsin, the opportunity to fragment and carve up the spoils of an impoverished Russia came within a millimetre of being achieved. Through the cracks of that fragmentation crept MI6 and the CIA working tirelessly to achieve their goals that were not and never will be for the benefit of the Russians. Bond's cunning and charm were supposed to have opened the doors of the Kremlin itself to Britain. Why did they fail to achieve those aims? No doubt it was the appearance of Vladimir Putin.

There are no manners or glitter with today's agents operating abroad. The reality is more cruel and revealing than any spy movie and the reality is that there was never any glamour. The dirty deeds and intelligence methodology did not, do not and will not appear to have anything democratic about them. Russia knows how far the British can go in their games and Syria (with the use of chemical weapons) was a field of glaring evidence of this.

Today MI6 is refining its tactics to dangerous levels to play dirty in the midst of the NATO-Russia struggle. There is little difference between one of them and mere football hooligans. The problem is that they serve the British government supposedly for the security and defence of the UK, but in reality we remain the caboose of White House decisions and NATO plans. At the end of the day, when it all goes wrong and things turn against us, who will Downing Street hold responsible?