John Ward ANALYSIS: THE REAL ISIL-TO-UKRAINE CONNECTION

ANALYSIS: THE REAL ISIL-TO-UKRAINE CONNECTION

pipeblackwhiteIf you think there are some grey areas involving Ukraine, Syria and Iraq, here’s the truth in black and white

I’d just like to draw a couple of things to the World’s attention. Not that I’ve got delusions of grandeur or anything.

The following extract is typical of hundreds of media sites ‘reporting’ on ISIL and Jihadists in Syria: ‘JIHADISTS are on the verge of seizing the key Syrian border town of Kobane in Turkey after a three-week assault by the Islamic State’.

So, it’s a key border town. But it doesn’t make it into Google Maps – the little red blob showing location is there because I asked Big G a specific question about where it is:

syriaturkThe “key border town” is  given a population of of 300,000 by Al Jazeera. But Wikipedia and most other sources (including the Syrian census) say it holds 40,000. It is a administrative town for the Syrian canton of the same name. But why is it “key”? We’re not told. Far more ‘key’ to the Syrians, however, is Aleppo with a population of some 2.1 million. But the Jihadists haven’t gone anywhere near it.

But two days ago, ISIL was “closing in on Baghdad” as well. And last night the Washington Post said it was “on the verge of overruning” Anbar. Previously on MiddleEasters, ISIL had also been overrunning a military camp in Saqlawiya, near the city of Fallujah, a large Syrian military base on the outskirts of the city of Raqqa, an Iraqi air force base near Baghdad, and Qaraqosh, the largest Christian city in Iraq.

Examine this more closely, and it looks to me like ISIL is overunning in several directions at once. They race to Baghdad from Kobane, and then to both the North and East. At this rate, they’ll take the Turkish capital Ankara by the weekend after next:

syriaturkptHowever, I suspect it will all become clearer in the light of these media pronouncements:

‘Left unfettered, with only cosmetic airstrikes by an indecisive Obama administration to deal with, IS continues growing in strength and confidence, as Western powers again stand idly by…’ (US backed Middle East Forum)

‘….“Airstrikes alone are not going to do this,” Pentagon spokesman Rear Admiral John Kirby said, according to a press release issued by the Defense Department. “They’re not going to fix this. They’re not going to save the town of Kobani.” As he spoke, battles between ISIL terrorists and Kurdish fighters raged in and around that city, a strategic garrison along the Syrian-Turkish border. “We know that,” Kirby said. “We’ve been saying that over and over again. And yet we continue to get questions of, well, ‘why aren’t you doing more? And how come they aren’t more effective?’”…’ (WallSt Cheatsheet)

‘…Despite US pressure urging it to act militarily, Turkey (which has sheltered the refugees from Syria), remains a mute spectator as the ISIS goes on slaughtering people just few kilometres away in Kobani.

The US has been pressing Turkey to do more and act militarily against ISIS to prevent the massacre but Turkey has so far done nothing besides stationing tanks on its border with Syria. Turkey has refused to act militarily in favour of Kurdish fighters as it considers them an extended part of PKK, which they have branded as a terrorist group. Turkish inaction over Syria comes despite a nod by its parliament last week, allowing military strikes against ISIS.

To convince Turkey to act against the ISIS, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, as well as President Barack Obama’s two envoys to the anti-Islamic State coalition, retired Gen. John Allen and Ambassador Brett McGurk, arrived in Ankara on Thursday for talks with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan….’ (zeenews)

Sound familiar? 1. Air strikes alone aren’t going to cut it. 2. Let’s drag Turkey in because a key town on their border is being threatened. 3. ISIL is clearly much bigger than we thought so we need to rethink our level of military presence.

Funny, is it not, how this ISIL group has been so successful in destabilising Assad in three months flat, when other Jihadists got nowhere for over three years. Funny how they had 250 followers last January…and now the figure is close to 80,000. Funny how they seem to be everywhere at the same time.

My remote view remains cautious. I have yet to see photographic or other compelling evidence that (a) ISIL has the troop strength to really threaten Baghdad (b) that shelling really is going on in Baghdad suburbs (c) that Erdogan believes ISIL has the remotest intention of invading his country – he’s just as anti-Kurd as they are – and (d) why, if ISIL was a serious threat to a NATO member, they wouldn’t have gone for Aleppo instead.

I think ISIL is once more taunting the US into more invasive action – a great recruitment strategy for them, and a medium-term way to drive a wedge between the US and the Saudis. I think the McCain/Pentagon/GOP/CIA Hawk tendency is exaggerating the ISIL threat in order to sell arms and increase their influence over the White House. And I think GOP monkeys working for the oil business are working hard to stress the oilfield supply threat…an ancient but still powerful US obsession.

There are times when that latter factor is blindingly obvious. And to raise today’s second point, here we find the clear link between the propaganda applied to Ukraine, and that applied to ISIS: pipelines.

Contemporary U.S. policy in Ukraine has demonstrated an attempt to install an anti-Russian and pro-EU regime that will favour joining NATO, something which ousted President Viktor Yanukovych was against – as are a majority of Ukrainians. Obviously, U.S.-NATO control of Ukraine and the pipelines that supply the EU with much of its gas from Russia will weaken Russia in terms of its supply and export potential for oil.
On a broader global canvas, the US has already used price manipulation in the oil sector  to further reduce the value of Russian energy exporting. Crucially, however, if you look at American objectives in the Middle-East-to-Russia theatre as a whole, it becomes clearer still just how much is at stake:
mepipelinesptnetThe Western media ‘line’ has been that ISIS represents a “corridor of death” represented by the green circle and square on the above map; and that the “brutal barbarous beheadings” of Islamic State are being funded by the oilfields of Iraq and Syria. In fact, the US and UK (plus a few French jets) are in the region for a much simpler reason: energy sustainability.
Following the Iraq War, we got the interference in Syria…and faked Syrian bomber attacks on Turkey. Now we get ISIS taking ‘key towns’ and threatening Turkey.
But what links all three countries is protection of the newer pipeline that followed Saddam regime-change…marked in red on the map. Put simply, by bypassing Iran, the route cuts out Russia….and supplies direct to the EU via Turkey. It also provides alternative supplies to Israel and the SE Med until such time as the proposed Israel-Cyprus-Greece undersea oil and new metals development can come on stream. And that in turn explains why Recep Erdogan spends much of his time demanding access to Greek territory and energy resources…and why he often gets what he wants (as in Cretian gas rights): because NATO doesn’t want control of the Turkish pipe section to fall into anti-American hands.
The western media insist on simplistic rubbish about Russian aggression in Crimea, Russian atrocities against western Ukrainians, Russians shooting down passenger planes…..and all the rest of it. Equally, they insist that the prime Med-Eastern presence motive is to rid the world of decapitating Islamic extremists living off oil. It is all bollocks: as ever with the US, the one consideration underpinning all of it is energy supply.
Consider this:
1. The Russian ‘shooting down’ of MH17 was a fabrication, and the black box report a ridiculously vague whitewash of the cause: ground troop fire from Ukraine. Once Putin called Washington out on the false flag, Kerry blathered but said nothing of substance.
2. All four ISIL beheadings so far involved victims who have been completely misrepresented by Western mainstream media.
3. The Antics of John McCain (a man who changes his ‘rebel’ allegiances more often than most of us change  our underwear) reflects the interests of two groups: the Pentagon, and the oil business.The latter is his biggest funding source as a Congressman, and the former’s needs splice perfectly with his sponsorship by armaments suppliers in the aerospace sector.

4. Everyone involved in this charade – ISIS, the EU, the UK and the US – has a vested interest in escalation of both situations that would involve Turkey in the Middle Eastern theatre, and the US/EU backed Kiev regime resuming its military actions against Russian-speaking Ukrainian separatists. (I also continue to believe that Ukrainian success in developing weapons using the properties of graphene is an additional consideration for the Pentagon).
5. Medium and short-term NATO strategy remains one of keeping Russia in its box, such that in the longer term it becomes just another candidate for neoliberal colonisation. The post-Saddam pipeline development, the US-backed EU interference in the affairs of a non-member of the Union, and manipulation of the oil price to exacerbate its falling value in the context of global slump: they’re all designed to keep Moscow on the back foot and protect US commercial hegemony….using (albeit justified) anti-Jihadism as the rationale.

The vast majority of informed interneteers know most of this already; but the MSM paints it as conspiracy theory. And as such, that makes me a non-violent extremist. So at some point – by applying pressure via Washington and Wall Street to WordPress – the Cameron government will (if they get their anti-terrorism laws) be able to shut down The Slog.

This isn’t about anti-terrorism: it about protecting arms dealers and and US business interests. It’s about maintaining the supply of cheap energy to hard-pressed US homes and gas-guzzling automobiles. It’s about undermining the ability of the Russian bear to do equally despicable things via energy blackmail. And on my own home turf, its about ensuring that the switch to anti-democratic corporatist dictatorship goes ahead as planned.

Connected at The Slog: The fickle money behind false mavericks