Home » Posts tagged 'guardian' (Page 3)

Tag Archives: guardian

First Panama Papers Casualty? Former Iceland Premier Calls On Current PM To Resign To “Prevent An Uprising”

April 3, 2016

First Panama Papers Casualty? Former Iceland Premier Calls On Current PM To Resign To “Prevent An Uprising”

One of the more prominent names featured in the Panama Papers disclosure is that of Iceland’s Prime Minister Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson. The reason is that according to the leaked files, Prime Minister Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson and his wife secretly owned a company called Wintris set up in 2007 on the Caribbean island of Tortola in the British Virgin Islands, to hold investments with his wealthy partner, later wife, Anna Sigurlaug Pálsdóttir.

As Guardian reports, the couple were living in the UK at the time and had been advised to set up a company in the tax haven in order to hold and invest substantial proceeds from the sale of Pálsdóttir’s share in her family’s business back in Iceland.

Gunnlaugsson owned a 50% stake in Wintris for more than two years, then transferred it to Pálsdóttir, who held the other 50%, for one dollar. The prime minister’s office now says his shareholding was an error and “it had always been clear to both of them that the prime minister’s wife owned the assets”. Once drawn to the couple’s attention in late 2009, the error was corrected.

Towards the end of Gunnlaugsson’s time as a Wintris shareholder, having returned to Iceland, he was elected to parliament as leader of the Progressive party.

Gunnlaugsson, who became prime minister four years later, never disclosed his Wintris shares on Iceland’s parliamentary register of MPs’ financial interests.

As the Guardian also reported earlier, in the video clip below, PM Gunnlaugsson walks out of an interview with Swedish television company SVT. Gunnlaugsson is asked about Wintris, which he says has been fully declared to the Icelandic tax authority. Gunnlaugsson says he is not prepared to answer such questions and decides to discontinue the interview, saying: ‘What are you trying to make up here? This is totally inappropriate.’

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Wikileaks Reveals IMF Plan To “Cause A Credit Event In Greece And Destabilize Europe”

April 2, 2016

Wikileaks Reveals IMF Plan To “Cause A Credit Event In Greece And Destabilize Europe”

One of the recurring concerns involving Europe’s seemingly perpetual economic, financial and social crises, is that these have been largely predetermined, “scripted” and deliberate acts.

This is something the former head of the Bank of England admitted one month ago when Mervyn King said that Europe’s economic depression “is the result of “deliberate” policy choices made by EU elites. It is also what AIG Banque strategist Bernard Connolly said back in 2008 when laying out “What Europe Wants”

To use global issues as excuses to extend its power:

environmental issues: increase control over member countries; advance idea of global governance

terrorism: use excuse for greater control over police and judicial issues; increase extent of surveillance

global financial crisis: kill two birds (free market; Anglo-Saxon economies) with one stone (Europe-wide regulator; attempts at global financial governance)

EMU: create a crisis to force introduction of “European economic government”

This morning we got another confirmation of how supernational organizations “plan” European crises in advance to further their goals, when Wikileaks published the transcript of a teleconference that took place on March 19, 2016 between the top two IMF officials in charge of managing the Greek debt crisis – Poul Thomsen, the head of the IMF’s European Department, and Delia Velkouleskou, the IMF Mission Chief for Greece.

In the transcript, the IMF staffers are caught on tape planning to tell Germany the organization would abandon the troika if the IMF and the commission fail to reach an agreement on Greek debt relief.

More to the point, the IMF officials say that a threat of an imminent financial catastrophe as the Guardian puts it, is needed to force other players into accepting its measures such as cutting Greek pensions and working conditions, or as Bloomberg puts it, “considering a plan to cause a credit event in Greece and destabilize Europe.”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

How to survive a global disaster: a handy guide

February 10, 2016

How to survive a global disaster: a handy guide

Whether it’s a natural disaster, bioterrorist attack or pandemic, experts reckon society as we know it will collapse within 13 days of a catastrophic event. So what do you do next?

Ubisoft’s role-playing shooter The Division wouldn’t be as much fun if players followed Nafeez Ahmed’s advice and stayed rural.
Photograph: Ubisoft

On 22 June, 2001, Tara O’Toole and Thomas Inglesby of the Johns Hopkins Center for Civilian Biodefense Strategies, organised a war game like no other. The two researchers, working with an array of bodies such as the ANSER Institute for Homeland Security, set out to simulate the effects of a biological attack on the US. The project was called Operation Dark Winter.

What they discovered was that the country was ill prepared to cope. Within two weeks there would be enormous civilian casualties, a catastrophic breakdown in essential institutions, and mass civil unrest. Food supplies, electricity and transport infrastructures would all collapse.

In short, the world would get medieval on America’s ass. And the same thing would happen all over the globe.

These days we’re spoiled for choice in terms of potential catastrophes. Natural and ecological disasters, nuclear weapons, terrorism, experimental technological accidents (“Oops, we’ve accidentally created Skynet”) – they’re all in the game. In 2008 a group of experts met at an Oxford University conference and suggested that there was a 19% chance of a global catastrophic event before 2100 (with super intelligent AI and molecular nanotechnology weapons at the top of the threat list). It was just a bit of fun, and they added plenty of caveats to that figure, but still, something to think about, eh?

With all this in mind, the Guardian spoke to the academic and author Nafeez Ahmed, who has studied global crises and mass violence, and recently advised Ubisoft on the authenticity of its post-pandemic video game, The Division.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

6 Cities in Michigan Have Even Higher Levels of Lead than Flint

January 29, 2016

6 Cities in Michigan Have Even Higher Levels of Lead than Flint

(ANTIMEDIA) As the nation rightly focuses on Flint’s ongoing water crisis, other cities in the state of Michigan face even higher levels of lead contamination. The alarming pervasiveness of potentially toxic drinking water extends across the United States.

The Detroit News reports that “Elevated blood-lead levels are seen in a higher percentage of children in parts of Grand Rapids, Jackson, Detroit, Saginaw, Muskegon, Holland and several other cities, proof that the scourge of lead has not been eradicated despite decades of public health campaigns and hundreds of millions of dollars spent to find and eliminate it.”

Of over 7,000 children tested in the Highland Park and Hamtramck areas of Detroit in 2014, 13.5 percent tested positive for lead. Among four zip codes in Grand Rapids, one in ten children had lead in their blood. In Adrian and south-central Michigan, more than 12 percent of 640 children tested had positive results.

These overall numbers are higher than Flint’s, where Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha found lead in up to 6.3 percent of children in the highest-risk areas; while The Guardianreported Dr. Hanna-Attisha has also said the rate is as high at 15 percent in certain “hot spots,” the size of those samples was not listed. Even so, the overall figures across Michigan are lower than in previous years. In 2012, children tested across Michigan had lead in their blood at a rate of 4.5 percent, about five times less than the rate ten years prior, which reached an alarming 25 percent. In spite of the decrease in recent years, however, thousands of children in Michigan are still affected.

“In 2013, that level sank to 3.9 percent and fell again to 3.5 percent in 2014. But that is still 5,053 children under age 6 who tested positive in 2014,” the Detroit News explained. “Each had lead levels above 5 micrograms per deciliter.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Nations Scramble to Compete in ‘Currency War’ as China’s Yuan Falls to Five-Year Low

January 7, 2016

Nations Scramble to Compete in ‘Currency War’ as China’s Yuan Falls to Five-Year Low

Allan Ajifo / (CC BY 2.0)

China, Europe and Japan are driving down the value of their currencies in order to make their exports more attractive on the global market, leaving millions of workers in associated industries “protected or vulnerable, depending on which side they find themselves,” writes Guardian economics correspondent Phillip Inman.

Governments devalue their currencies to make their goods cheaper and thus increase the volume of their exports. It’s an attempt to shift what economists call the “balance of trade” in a country’s favor, with the intended net effect of increasing a home economy’s size and overall wealth.

Inman continues:

The phrase “currency war” speaks to a seemingly phoney battle between the world’s major trading powers over the price of exports. It has all the attributes of an illusory conflict because no one ever agrees that a genuine dispute has taken place. And as long as everyone denies they have drawn swords to slash their currency to compete with rival powers, talk of a war fizzles and dies.

There is a fringe constituency of analysts who have long argued that, much like the hundred years’ war of intermittent battles between England and France, currency wars make headlines only when there is a lurch in policy, which is the equivalent of deploying archers and unleashing the cavalry.

China’s decision to set its benchmark for the yuan at a five-year low is such a moment. It makes clear what has been true since last August, namely that the Communist leadership believes it needs a low-valued currency to help bail out its ailing export industries. The problem is that everyone wants to use the same trick.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

ISIS: The ‘Enemy’ the US Created, Armed, and Funded

January 3, 2016

ISIS: The ‘Enemy’ the US Created, Armed, and Funded

To delve into Daesh’s convoluted money trail, one must first explore its equally convoluted origins. And in both areas, the role of the U.S. and its allies can not be ignored.

(MINTPRESS) Out of nowhere, it seems, Daesh, also commonly referred to as ISIL or ISIS, spontaneously formed, a group that perverts aspects of Islam for its own violent ends, and threatens, we are told, all that the civilized world holds dear.

The “war on terror,” governments inform their citizens, has a new front. And that front is Daesh.

Let us not be too hasty. Things are not always what they appear. Daesh is well-financed, and that money must be coming from somewhere other than a ragtag band of malcontents. Daesh soldiers have advanced weaponry and sophisticated communications methods. They have tanks and Humvees. None of these can be obtained without significant funding. Though the source is quite illusive, there is some evidence that will lead to a trail.

First, we must look at Daesh’s origins, and even that is not easily discernible. Writing for The Guardian in August 2014, Ali Khedery suggests:

“Principally, Isis is the product of a genocide that continued unabated as the world stood back and watched. It is the illegitimate child born of pure hate and pure fear – the result of 200,000 murdered Syrians and of millions more displaced and divorced from their hopes and dreams. Isis’s rise is also a reminder of how Bashar al-Assad’s Machiavellian embrace of al-Qaida would come back to haunt him.

Facing Assad’s army and intelligence services, Lebanon’s Hezbollah, Iraq’s Shia Islamist militias and their grand patron, Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, Syria’s initially peaceful protesters quickly became disenchanted, disillusioned and disenfranchised – and then radicalised and violently militant.”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Why the oil price slump hasn’t kickstarted the global economy

December 27, 2015

Why the oil price slump hasn’t kickstarted the global economy

There has only been a modest boost to global growth despite the oil price plummeting to as low as $35 a barrel. But as prices fall so the risks to producers rise

An oil pump at sunset in the desert oilfields of Sakhir, Bahrain. As the low oil price endures, so the risks rise for producers. Photograph: Hasan Jamali/AP

One of the biggest economic surprises of 2015 is that the stunning drop in global oil prices did not deliver a bigger boost to global growth. Despite the collapse in prices, from over $115 a barrel in June 2014 to $45 at the end of November 2015, most macroeconomic models suggest that the impact on global growth has been less than expected – perhaps 0.5% of global GDP.

The good news is that this welcome but modest effect on growth probably will not die out in 2016. The bad news is that low prices will place even greater strains on the main oil-exporting countries.

The recent decline in oil prices is on par with the supply-driven drop in 1985-1986, when Opec members (read: Saudi Arabia) decided to reverse supply cuts to regain market share. It is also comparable to the demand-driven collapse in 2008-2009, following the global financial crisis. To the extent that demand factors drive an oil-price drop, one would not expect a major positive impact; the oil price is more of an automatic stabilizer than an exogenous force driving the global economy. Supply shocks, on the other hand, ought to have a significant positive impact.

Although parsing the 2014-2015 oil-price shock is not as straightforward as in the two previous episodes, the driving forces seem to be roughly evenly split between demand and supply factors. Certainly, a slowing China that is rebalancing toward domestic consumption has put a damper on all global commodity prices, with metal indices also falling sharply in 2015.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Paris Attacks Are Being Used to Justify Agendas They Have Nothing to Do With

November 21, 2015

The Paris Attacks Are Being Used to Justify Agendas They Have Nothing to Do With

Georgie Pauwels / CC BY 2.0

The aftermath of the Paris terrorist attacks has “devolved into a dark and dishonest debate” in which governments consider banning encryption and barring Syrian refugees from entering their countries—even though the attackers were neither Syrian nor refugees and there’s no evidence they used encryption to communicate, Trevor Timm writes at The Guardian.

First, there’s the loud “we need to ban encryption” push that immediately spawned hundreds of articles and opinions strongly pushed by current and former intelligence officials the day or two after the attacks, despite the government quietly admitting there was no evidence that the attackers used encryption to communicate. It was a masterful PR coup: current and former intelligence officials got to sit through a series of fawning interviews on television where they were allowed to pin any of their failures on Edward Snowden and encryption – the bedrock of privacy and security for hundreds of millions of innocent people – with virtually no pushback, or any critical questions about their own conduct.

The entire encryption subject became a shiny scapegoat while the truth slowly trickled in: as of Tuesday, it was clear that American and/or French intelligence agencies had seven of the eight identified attackers on their radar prior to the attacks. The attackers used Facebook to communicate. The one phone found on the scene showed the terrorists had coordinated over unencrypted SMS text messages – just about the easiest form of communication to wiretap that exists today. (The supposed ringleader even did an interview in Isis’s English magazine in February bragging that he was already in Europe ready to attack.) …

As dishonest as the “debate” over encryption has been, the dark descension of the Republican party into outright racism and cynically playing off the irrational fears of the public over the Syrian refugee crisis has been worse.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Leaked Map Reveals Big Gas Is Setting Its Sights on the Most Biodiverse Place on Earth

October 25, 2015

Leaked Map Reveals Big Gas Is Setting Its Sights on the Most Biodiverse Place on Earth

Part of a map from Pluspetrol, an exploration and production company, showing its interest in areas of Manú National Park in Peru’s Amazon. (Pluspetrol)

A leaked map shows that a private energy corporation based in Argentina is eyeing Manú National Park in Peru’s Amazon, one of the most biodiverse places on earth.

In a detailed article in The Guardian, environment writer David Hill, who researches forest governance in Peru from his location in the Amazon, traces the back-and-forth of Pluspetrol’s apparent quest for the hydrocarbons beneath the protected land:

The map vaguely and ignorantly – or hopefully? Disdainfully? – calls Manu a “reserve”, where gas operations are permitted. Not so in national parks. Peru’s 1997 Law of Protected Natural Areas states “the extraction of natural resources is not permitted” in parks, while the 2001 regulations for “protected natural areas” states the “settlement of new human groups and the exploitation of natural resources is prohibited.” In addition, the 1993 Constitution “obliges” the government “to promote the conservation of biological diversity and protected natural areas.”

Manu isn’t just any national park. It is home to members of several indigenous peoples – the Matsigenka, “Matsigenka-Nanti”, “Mashco-Piro”, Nahua, Quechua and Yine – while UNESCO, which has designated it a biosphere reserve and World Heritage Site, says that the biodiversity “exceeds that of any other place on earth.” In early 2014 scientists described Manu as “top of the [world’s] list of natural protected areas in terms of amphibian and reptile diversity”, and back in 2006 other scientists found that the number of bird and mammal species is the “largest for any similarly sized area in the world.”

“For 10 years [Manu] has held the title as the world’s richest protected area for birds and mammals,” Bruce Patterson, from The Field Museum in the US, told the Guardian.

Hill writes that the map was featured in April 2013 in a report by the Peruvian nongovernmental organization Ecodess. So why draw attention to it now?

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The world economic order is collapsing and this time there seems no way out

October 11, 2015

The world economic order is collapsing and this time there seems no way out

Europe has seen nothing like this for 70 years – the visible expression of a world where order is collapsing. The millions of refugees fleeing from ceaseless Middle Eastern war and barbarism are voting with their feet, despairing of their futures. The catalyst for their despair – the shredding of state structures and grip of Islamic fundamentalism on young Muslim minds – shows no sign of disappearing.

Yet there is a parallel collapse in the economic order that is less conspicuous: the hundreds of billions of dollars fleeing emerging economies, from Brazil to China, don’t come with images of women and children on capsizing boats. Nor do banks that have lent trillions that will never be repaid post gruesome videos. However, this collapse threatens our liberal universe as much as certain responses to the refugees. Capital flight and bank fragility are profound dysfunctions in the way the global economy is now organised that will surface as real-world economic dislocation.

The IMF is profoundly concerned, warning at last week’s annual meeting in Peru of $3tn (£1.95tn) of excess credit globally and weakening global economic growth. But while it knows there needs to be an international co-ordinated response, no progress is likely. The grip of libertarian, anti-state philosophies on the dominant Anglo-Saxon political right in the US and UK makes such intervention as probable as a Middle East settlement. Order is crumbling all around and the forces that might save it are politically weak and intellectually ineffective.

The heart of the economic disorder is a world financial system that has gone rogue. Global banks now make profits to a extraordinary degree from doing business with each other. As a result, banking’s power to create money out of nothing has been taken to a whole new level. That banks create credit is nothing new; the system depends on the truth that not all depositors will want their money back simultaneously.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

TPP Chapter Released by WikiLeaks Would Let Governments Curtail Trials So as to Contain Information

October 11, 2015

TPP Chapter Released by WikiLeaks Would Let Governments Curtail Trials So as to Contain Information

T / CC BY-ND 2.0

What WikiLeaks claims to be the full intellectual property chapter of the Trans-Pacific Partnership appears to give countries greater power to stop sensitive information from going public.

The Guardian reports:

One chapter appears to give the signatory countries (referred to as “parties”) greater power to stop embarrassing information going public. The treaty would give signatories the ability to curtail legal proceedings if the theft of information is “detrimental to a party’s economic interests, international relations, or national defense or national security” – in other words, presumably, if a trial would cause the information to spread. …

Among the provisions in the chapter (which may or may not be the most recent version) are rules that say that each country in the agreement has the authority to compel anyone accused of violating intellectual property law to provide “relevant information […] that the infringer or alleged infringer possesses or controls” as provided for in that country’s own laws.

The rules also state that every country has the authority to immediately give the name and address of anyone importing detained goods to whoever owns the intellectual property.

That information can be very broad, too: “Such information may include information regarding any person involved in any aspect of the infringement or alleged infringement,” the document continues, “and regarding the means of production or the channels of distribution of the infringing or allegedly infringing goods or services, including the identification of third persons alleged to be involved in the production and distribution of such goods or services and of their channels of distribution.”

The Guardian further reports that a drafter’s note says every participating country’s individual laws about whistleblowing would still apply—though whether or not they would be applied would of course be up to the officials empowered to execute those laws.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Heading Toward a Collision: Syria, Saudi Arabia and Regional Proxy Wars

October 2, 2015

Heading Toward a Collision: Syria, Saudi Arabia and Regional Proxy Wars

A recent Guardian article (“Saudi Arabia says there is no future for Assad in Syria”) Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeil is quoted saying, “This [the Syrian civil war] could be a more lengthy process and a more destructive process but the choice is entirely that of Bashar al-Assad.” The foreign minister did not specify how Assad would be forcibly removed, only that Saudi Arabia would tolerate nothing short of a complete regime change in Syria. Jubeil but claimed that Saudi Arabia is backing “moderate rebels” in the civil war.”

The Saudis are indeed backing ‘moderate’ rebels — if the Nusra Front, an al-Qaida affiliate is considered ‘moderate’. It is ostensibly allied with Saudi Arabia.) With memories of Afghanistan in mind, Saudi Arabian officials are genuinely concerned about “blowback,” and for good reasons. A branch of Islamic State (aka: ISIS or ISIL) in Saudi Arabia has already carried out attacks in its northeastern, predominantly Shi’ite province and against the Saudi government itself. Saudi officials are well aware that Islamic State, with its own roots in Saudi Wahhabism (an extreme form of fundamentalist Islam) the ruling family could come under attack, in part because of its close relationship to Washington.

A February 2014 report by Reuters reported that Saudi Arabia had recently banned its citizens from fighting in ‘foreign wars’, promising 3-20 years imprisonment for violating this law. It also banned its citizens from sending material support to certain Jihadi groups fighting in Syria. It cannot stop private individuals inside or outside the Kingdom from giving millions to support the actions of ISIS, however, considered by some to be a form of ‘Islamist fascism’.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Oil Giants Crush California Bill Aimed at Reducing Gasoline Use

September 11, 2015

Oil Giants Crush California Bill Aimed at Reducing Gasoline Use

Steve Snodgrass / CC BY 2.0

The oil industry has derailed an environmental bill in California designed to reduce gasoline use by up to 50 percent by 2030.

The Guardian reports:

Senate president pro tempore Kevin de Leon announced on Wednesday that he would amend the bill, SB350, to drop the petroleum provisions. It will be changed in the assembly’s natural resources committee as soon as Thursday to deal only with increasing the state’s renewable electricity supply and boosting energy efficiency in buildings through retrofits and upgrades.

With only two days left in the legislative session, “we could not cut through the million-dollar smokescreen created by a single special-interest with a singular motive and a bottomless war chest”, he said in a statement.

The Western States Petroleum Association – a trade organization representing petroleum companies including Shell, Chevron and ExxonMobil, said in a statement that the fuel provisions were “arbitrary and infeasible”, but with that portion of the bill deleted, “we can move forward and work together on other climate change efforts”.

SB350 has been the focus of an intense media and lobbying campaign by petroleum interests in recent weeks.

The City’s stranglehold makes Britain look like an oh-so-civilised mafia state

September 9, 2015

The City’s stranglehold makes Britain look like an oh-so-civilised mafia state

Dodgy donations, misselling, trading scandals, tax evasion: wherever you sniff, something stinks

Illustration by Sebastian Thibault on Britain as mafia state

‘The financial sector exploits an astonishing political privilege: the City of London is the only jurisdiction in the UK not fully subject to the authority of parliament.’ Illustration: Sébastian Thibault

Be reasonable in response to the unreasonable: this is what voters in the Labour election are told. Accommodate, moderate, triangulate, for the alternative is to isolate yourself from reality.

You might be inclined to agree. If so, please take a look at the reality to which you must submit. To an extent unknown since before the first world war, economic relations in this country are becoming set in stone. It is not just that the very rich no longer fall while the very poor no longer rise. It’s that the system itself is protected from risk. Through bailouts, quantitative easing and delays in interest-rate rises, speculative investment has been so well cushioned that – as the Guardian economics editor, Larry Elliott, puts it – financial markets are “one of the last bastions of socialism left on Earth”.

Public services, infrastructure, the very fabric of the nation: these too are being converted into risk-free investments. Social cleansing is transforming central London into an exclusive economic zone for property speculation. From a dozen directions, government policy converges on this objective.

The benefits cap and the bedroom tax drive the poor out of their homes. Theforced sale of high-value council houses creates a new asset pool. An uncapped and scarcely regulated private rental market turns these assets into gold. The freeze on council-tax banding since 1991, the lifting of the inheritance tax threshold, and £14bn a year in tax breaks for private landlords all help to guarantee stupendous returns.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

MI6 ISIS Rat Line & The Threat To India

September 8, 2015

MI6 ISIS Rat Line & The Threat To India

The prosecution of a Swedish national accused of terrorist activities in Syria has collapsed at the Old Bailey after it became clear Britain’s security and intelligence agencies would have been deeply embarrassed had a trial gone ahead, the Guardian reported.

Bherlin Gildo was due to stand trial at London’s Old Bailey accused of attending a terrorist training camp between 2012 and 2013 and possessing information likely to be useful to a terrorist. But the case against him was dropped and he was cleared of the charges after a wrangle between lawyers and the British and Swedish security services.

On 1^st June 2015, writes Seumas Milnethe trial in London of a Swedish man, Bherlin Gildo, accused of terrorism in Syria, collapsed after it became clear British intelligence had been arming the same rebel groups the defendant was charged with supporting.

The prosecution abandoned the case, apparently to avoid embarrassing the intelligence services. The defence argued that going ahead withthe trial would have been an “affront to justice” when there was plenty of evidence the British state was itself providing “extensive support” to the armed Syrian opposition. That didn’t only include the “non-lethal assistance” boasted of by the government (including body armour and military vehicles), but training, logistical support and the secret supply of “arms on a massive scale”.

Reports were cited that MI6 had cooperated with the CIA on a “rat line” of arms transfers from Libyan stockpiles to the Syrian rebels in 2012 after the fall of the Gaddafi regime.

Interestingly, a recently declassified secret US intelligence report, written in August 2012, uncannily predicts – and effectively welcomes – the prospect of a “Salafist principality” in eastern Syria and an al-Qaida-controlled Islamic state in Syria and Iraq.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Tag Archives: guardian

Content

Post categories

Economic Links

Energy/Resource Links

Environmental Links

Geopolitical Links

Liberty Links

News Links

Other Links

Survival Skills

Post Archives by Category

Allan Ajifo / (CC BY 2.0)

Post navigation

Latest Posts