Author: Steven Sahiounie

By S. Brian Willson It continues to be very difficult for we US Americans to acknowledge that our political system and its capitalist economy is deeply corrupt and fixed, that we find it easier to always distract ourselves by demonizing others. In some ways, it is irrelevant whether the Clinton and Podesta emails were leaked or hacked, as the Democrats created the hoax of Russiagate to avoid severe self-examination of their own corruption and deceptive practices. The Democrats have ignored working people’s needs for at least 40 years as it became corporate. And the large amount of disenfranchisement among US voters…

Two mortar rounds have struck the Balad air base north of Baghdad on Thursday, agencies reported citing Iraqi military sources. There were no casualties. Balad is located approximately 80 kilometers (50 miles) north of Baghdad. In addition to Iraqi security forces, it is home to an unknown number of US troops and contractors involved in the fighting against Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS) terrorists, who once controlled large portions of Iraq and Syria. Thursday’s mortar attack comes just two days after five rockets struck another Iraqi base housing US forces. The attack on Al-Asad airbase in the Anbar province likewise…

Washington has spent “the past couple years” working to make sure its allies around the world are aware of the risks of working with companies such as Huawei, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said in Lisbon on Thursday. “The United States’ mission has been to share what we know, what we understand and then how America’s thinking about decision we will have to make in light of where America’s information travels,” Pompeo told reporters. He made the statement when asked about the Chinese electronics giant’s “involvement in Portugal,” Reuters reported. He did not cite the company by name, instead referring…

Yemeni forces have intercepted and shot down a third surveillance drone belonging to the Saudi military coalition, flying in the skies over the border of the southwestern Saudi region of Jizan. The unmanned aerial vehicle was downed with a precision-guided missile over the Jahfan area of the region on Thursday, the Arabic-language al-Masirah television network said. The spokesman for Yemeni Armed Forces, Brigadier General Yahya Saree, earlier said in a statement that Yemeni forces and their allies shot down Saudi reconnaissance spy drones on Wednesday. “One spy drone was shot down near the border of the southwestern Saudi region of Jizan, while the other drone was downed near the southern Saudi region of Asir,”…

At least two Syrian civilians have been killed and six others sustained injuries as a result of two bomb attacks in the northeastern province of Hasakah. Two explosive-laden cars went off in the Kurdish town of Ra’s al-Ayn in Hasakah on Thursday afternoon, Syria’s official SANA news agency reported. The report further said several residential buildings in the southern part of the town and its nearby villages were also destroyed following the blasts. There has been no immediate claim for the bombings. On Monday, Turkish military forces killed at least 11 civilians, including eight children, in an artillery attack that struck…

Tehran has allegedly taken advantage of the ongoing unrest in the neighboring nation to stockpile its secret arsenal of short-range ballistic missiles, US intelligence and military officials claim. A possible offshore Iranian arsenal could allegedly provide superiority to Tehran and the nation’s military in a possible standoff with the United States and its regional allies, The New York Times said Wednesday, citing US military and intelligence officials. According to the media report, the intelligence sources declined to name the exact type of missiles allegedly smuggled into Iraq, noting however, that short-range missiles have a range of just over 600 miles, meaning that one fired…

The Pentagon may further reduce the number of US troops in Syria if European allies contribute to the mission there, US Defence Secretary Mark Esper said in an interview with Reuters that was published Thursday. “The coalition is talking a lot again. We could see some allies want to volunteer troops,” Esper said. According to the agency, the defence secretary gave no indication that a new contribution was imminent. “If an allied country, a NATO country, decided to give us 50 people, I might be able to turn off 50 people,” Esper added in the interview, which was taken on…

Steven Sahiounie, political commentator The Uyghur people are an ethnic group of Muslims in western China and they speak the ancient Turkic language, which is the root of the modern Turkish language. Their province is Xinjiang, and their capital city is Urumqi. China is a huge country, and to keep peace and harmony all ethnicities work together, and while respecting each other’s rights, they live as one people, like America. Recently, both US President Trump and the US House have made dramatic accusations against the Chinese government on sensitive domestic policies involving counter-terrorism measures and domestic safety issues. The US…

By Pepe Escobar We are cruising on a pristine, 380 km-long four-lane superhighway from Almaty to Khorgos – finished in 2016 for $1.25 billion, 85% of the cost covered by a World Bank loan. And then, suddenly, riding parallel to us, there’s the real superstar of New Silk Road connectivity. Meet Yuxinou, the container cargo train plying back and forth along the 11,000 km-long railway corridor connecting Chongqin in Sichuan province via Xinjiang and Kazakhstan to Russia, Belarus, Poland and finally Duisburg in the Ruhr valley. And all that in a mere 13 days. Along the way, the Yuxinou stops in,…

By Douglas Valentine, Heidi Boghosian, and Michael Steven Smith In the following interview, Valentine reflects on a variety of issues including the Phoenix Program, plausible deniability, paramilitary wars, drug trafficking, sabotage, blackmail, propaganda, Operation GLADIO, class interests of the CIA establishment, Trump, the Mueller Report and the Bidens. Heidi Boghosian: In 1947, Congress passed the National Security Act, which led to the formation of the National Security Council and, under its direction, the CIA. Its original mandate was to collect and analyze strategic information for use in war. Though shrouded in secrecy, many CIA activities such as covert military and cybersecurity operations have…