No sooner had a ceasefire been declared in Lebanon ending one invasion, then another invasion broke out in Syria. It is now clear what the Zionist intention was behind their invasion of Lebanon. Not so much to conquer Southern Lebanon, which was beyond the capacity of the Israeli forces, and recognised to be so, as much as it was to draw Hezbollah fighters back into Lebanon from Syria.
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Issue 24/22, 13 December 2024
Welcome to the final edition of Statewatch News for 2024. Before we share our work from the last two weeks with you, we want to provide an overview of what we’ve done this year – and ask for your support as we head into 2025.
During Israeli army chief of staff Herzi Halevi’s trip to the UK, it has now been revealed that he was issued a certificate that granted him diplomatic immunity so that he couldn’t be arrested. This is now being viewed as an indictment of the British government, who felt the need to issue such diplomatic immunity.
The troubled biotechnology company AquaBounty has announced it will stop production of all genetically modified salmon and is closing its last working facility, at Bay Fortune in Prince Edward Island (PEI), Canada, reports Canadian Biotechnology Action Network (CBAN). AquaBounty released the world’s first GM food animal – a GM salmon – onto the market in 2017 but is now culling the last of its fish. Yesterday, the company announced that it does not have sufficient liquidity to maintain its “only remaining operating farm” at Bay Fortune and its chief executive officer, David Melbourne, has resigned. “This struggling company has survived largely due to investor hype along with decades of government funding and the support of the federal policy to deny consumers mandatory labelling of GM food. The company couldn’t make producing GM salmon viable even with all the government subsidies and supportive policies,” said Lucy Sharratt, coordinator of CBAN. AquaBounty’s announcement comes just weeks after the Canadian federal and PEI governments announced $231,095 in funding for the company. GMWatch
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Dear friends,
Greetings from the desk of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research.
The eighth continent is the Continent of Sleaze. You and I have never been there, only heard rumours about it. On that continent, there are rivers of money in which corporate executives bathe and from which they extract whatever they want in order to increase their power, privilege, and property. The corporate executives venture out to lay their hands on the wealth of the world and carry it back to their Continent of Sleaze. What remains is dust and shadows, barely enough for people to survive so that they can continue to labour and produce more social wealth for the Continent of Sleaze. Everyone sees this wealth being syphoned off to this other continent, but few want to acknowledge it. Most blame themselves for their poverty rather than the structure of corruption and pillaging that are inherent to the neocolonial capitalist system. Disconnected from social struggle, it is far easier to live innocently without that dangerous knowledge, that outrageous Promethean fire.
The standard modus operandi of the Hegemon is always Divide and Rule. Cornered by the inexorable rise of the multi-nodal (italics mine) reality, they saw an opening for an imperial reboot, betting everything on establishing the “Greater Middle East” outlined still during the Cheney era.
War Propaganda and the Fall of Syria
Margaret Kimberley, BAR Executive Editor and Senior Columnist
A succession of U.S. presidents have been committed to regime change in
Syria. That long-held goal has been achieved in part through a sustained
campaign of war propaganda.
“Let me have war, say I; it exceeds peace as far as day does night: it’s spritely waking, audible, and full of vent. Peace is a very apoplexy, lethargy; mull’d, deaf, sleepy, insensible; a getter of more bastard children than war’s a destroyer of men.” – Shakespeare, Coriolanus
Long ago, but what seems like only yesterday, I didn’t go to the U.S. war against Vietnam but the war came to me. It was when my exile began.
The NATO-Israeli cabal cheering on Damascus’s fall will get more than they bargained for. Power struggles and infighting among extremist militias and civil society, each backed by different regional and foreign actors who want a piece of the pie.
Photo Credit: The CradleThe short headline defining the abrupt, swift end of Syria as we knew it would be: Eretz Israel meets new-Ottomanism. The subtitle? A win-win for the west, and a lethal blow against the Axis of Resistance.
BBC Middle East correspondent Yolande Knell, 5 December, 2024
Imagine that the world’s largest and most respected human rights group issued a report detailing Russian war crimes in Ukraine and concluding that Russia was committing genocide. Western news media would devote massive coverage to the report. Newspaper and website headlines, together with television and radio broadcasts, would highlight Russia’s genocide and the bitter denunciations of Western leaders.
🔺 The West may, in the medium term, try to unleash a global armed conflict, with the epicenter in Eurasia;
🔺 The West is fully prepared to resort to extreme measures to hold on to its dominance;
🔺 The United States is losing the initiative on all fronts, from the Middle East to Asia and Africa, and is suffering outright failures in the post-Soviet domain;
🔺 The Anglo-Saxons have resorted to flagrant terror and attempts to physically eliminate opponents, a prime example of this is the assassination attempt targeting Slovakia’s PM Fico;
🔺 Regarding the threats against Vucic and Orban: Dynamic leaders of the emerging multipolar world are under attack by the Anglo-Saxons;
🔺 According to the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR), the post-Soviet realm remains a priority target for attacks by American and British intelligence agencies.
About Russia’s Special Military Operation
🌏 The Ukrainian forces are on the brink of collapse;
🌏 Russia is close to achieving its set goals, the strategic initiative on all fronts belongs to the Russian military;
🌏 The Zelensky regime has completely lost its legitimacy and, as a result, its ability to negotiate;
🌏 The West plans to fight Russia down to the last Ukrainian, and then force the Balts, East Europeans, and Germans to fight in the future;
🌏 Further escalation will not lead to the exhaustion of Russia, as Washington and London believe, rather it will culminate in the strategic defeat of the West itself.
The swift collapse of Assad’s regime raises troubling questions. In 2015, under far grimmer odds, Syria’s Republican Guard et Tiger Forces held the line against larger US-Turkish-Israeli proxies. Latakia’s coast and critical supply routes were defended heroically, and Damascus, despite being struck almost daily, stood resolutely. Today, that same Damascus has fallen without a fight. What changed? Was this collapse engineered by a series of covert deals and betrayals among those Assad once trusted to safeguard Syria’s sovereignty?
Ali Larijani, advisor to Iran’s Supreme Leader, met Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, Damascus, December, 6, 2024
Iran and Russia are the two big losers in the ouster of Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad on Sunday by the Sunni Islamist groups affiliated to al-Qaeda. Assad fled in the nick of time after giving orders that there be a peaceful handover of power. The likelihood is that he is in Russia. At any rate, a rollback of the Islamist takeover in Syria is out of the question.
Brian Berletic
🇺🇸🇸🇾I’m asked why the Syrian Arab Army collapsed so quickly…
The Syria army was hollowed out from years of fighting and a crippled economy.
Russia prioritizes Ukraine and would not have been able to supply Syria with the arms/ammunition in the quantities required to fight off a NATO-armed/trained army.
Editorial Comment: I agree with Brian’s analysis, yet I have many questions that demand answers. Not only did Syria’s allies fail to stop the fall of Syria, they did nothing to end the genocide in Palestine or the advance of the war to Lebanon and Syria. In fact, Russia repeatedly sabotaged negotiations in Syria by insisting on Turkey’s inclusion, not respecting the sovereignty of Syria when it demanded the departure of all Turkish forces from Syrian territory. Repeatedly Russia supported Turkey and established joint security patrols, which amounted to protecting land illegitimately occupied by Turkish forces.
HTS fighters in Damascus on Sunday, December 8, 2024. OMAR SANADIKI / AP
US backed al Qaeda takeover of Syria follows Israeli retreat from Lebanon
The US backed al Qaeda takeover of Syria follows Israeli retreat from Lebanon Within hours of the Israeli-Lebanese cease fire – essentially an Israeli retreat after making no progress against Hezbollah in the ground war in south Lebanon, indicted war criminal Netanyahu turned his attention to Syria, warning Syrian President Bashar al Assad that he was “playing with fire.”
The New Dark Age 