Even without Scheer, the right-wing values of the Conservatives run deep

Marc Lafrance, Concordia University

The Conservative party’s problems with social conservatism will not be solved solely by electing a new leader. An entirely new approach is required.

Andrew Scheer’s resignation as leader of the Conservatives came after months of avid speculation and mounting frustration on the part of those both inside and outside his party.

Scheer’s critics cite a variety of reasons for why he was unable to beat Justin Trudeau in the last election, such as his lack of transparency about his dual citizenship and his allegedly false claims about working as an insurance broker.

MacKay is seen in the House of Commons in 2015. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Fred Chartrand

But the reason critics cite most often is Scheer’s social conservatism which, as former Conservative cabinet minister Peter MacKay put it, hung around his neck like a “stinking albatross.”

Media commentators have suggested that if the Conservatives hope to win the next election, they must elect a leader who is capable of communicating a more convincingly centrist position on issues such as abortion and LGBTQ rights.

The commentators may well be correct, but their often exclusive focus on Scheer’s political beliefs — rather than on those of his newly elected caucus members — gives the impression that the party’s problem with social conservatism begins and ends with him.

Focusing exclusively on Scheer’s beliefs may lead some to conclude that all the Conservatives need to do to solve their problem is replace him with someone whose beliefs are more in line with current social realities. The facts, however, suggest otherwise.

Social conservatism runs deep in party

A careful inspection of the current Conservative caucus reveals that the party’s radical right-wing values run deep.

For example, Campaign Life Coalition — Canada’s biggest anti-abortion group — says that 46 out of the 121-member caucus is pro-life, which amounts to almost 40 per cent of the party’s sitting MPs.

RightNow, another anti-abortion group, goes further. It contends that 68 members of the Conservative caucus are pro-life, which works out to 56 per cent of those who recently took office.

RightNow’s post-election analysis was emphatic: “The House of Commons is now more pro-life than before, the Conservative Party of Canada caucus is more pro-life than before, and some of the staunchest pro-abortion Conservative female (MPs) have been replaced by younger, more diverse, pro-life Conservative female (MPs).”

Anti-abortion activists march on Parliament Hill in Ottawa in May 2010. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Sean Kilpatrick

The anti-abortion beliefs of Conservative caucus members matter for reasons that go beyond reproductive rights. A recent nationwide survey in the United States found that “anti-abortion voters are among the most likely — if not the most likely — segment to hold inegalitarian views.”

In other words, those who agree that abortion should be illegal are less likely to be egalitarian — particularly when it comes to gender — than those who agree that it should be legal.

Anti-abortion vs pro-choice voters

Anti-abortion voters tend to differ from pro-choice voters when it comes to their views on the status of women, according to the survey.

Only 23 per cent of anti-abortion voters believe that the lack of women in office affects women’s equality, compared with 70 per cent of pro-choice voters. Only 27 per cent of those who oppose abortion think access to birth control affects women’s equality, compared with 74 per cent of those who support abortion. And only 19 per cent of anti-abortion voters feel that society is systemically set up to give men more opportunities than women, compared with 66 per cent of pro-choice voters.

Anti-abortion voters also tend to differ from pro-choice voters when it comes to their views on how women think and act. Seventy-seven per cent of anti-abortion voters agree that women are too easily offended, compared with 38 per cent of pro-choice voters. Seventy-one per cent of voters who oppose abortion think that most women interpret innocent acts as being sexist, compared with 38 per cent of voters who support abortion rights. And 54 per cent of voters against abortion agree that men generally make better leaders than women, compared with 24 per cent of pro-choice voters.

What do these statistics say in the context of the Conservative Party of Canada?

Anti-abortion views = inegalitarian views

Given that being against abortion tends to be strongly associated with being inegalitarian, the significant number of anti-abortion MPs in the Conservative caucus should be cause for concern.

It should also indicate that the Conservative Party’s problem with its radical right wing will not be solved solely by electing a new leader.

The problem is at the very centre of the party, not its margins, and will not be solved over the course of one election cycle alone. An entirely new approach is required, one that must champion social justice for all and take aggressive action on climate change.

Neither of these things will be possible unless the party makes fundamental changes to how it conceives of itself, its members and its political operatives.

Scheer not out of step with his party

On both federal and provincial levels, Canada’s Conservatives seem unlikely to make these changes any time soon. Regardless of who replaces Scheer, the most public faces of conservatism in the country are unambiguously aligned with the radical right.

In Ontario, Doug Ford has made headlines for being photographed with far-right activist Faith Goldy as well as for his rollback of the sex ed curriculum, his ongoing association with evangelical leader Charles McVety and his private meetings with controversial public speaker Jordan Peterson.

Kenney speaks with reporters in following a speech in Ottawa. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Adrian Wyld

In Alberta, Jason Kenney has promised to remove “political agendas” from social studies through his party’s curriculum review, has been praised by groups with social conservative values for his “100 per cent voting record on pro-life and pro-family issues” and has invested $30 million in an energy war room aimed at undermining opponents of the oil industry.

While he may have lacked the strategic ability to keep his views from causing him problems on the campaign trail, Scheer’s beliefs are not out of step with those of the party he represents. So if the party wants to shed the social conservatism label, it has to do more than just replace him. It has to completely transform itself.

MEANWHILE IN CANADA 

HAVE YOU BEEN HACKED 

LifeLabs data breach: Hackers could still hold health records of 15M Canadians

Richard Frank, Simon Fraser University

Government privacy commissioners are investigating a data breach at one of Canada's largest medical services companies, after hackers gained access to the personal information of 15 million customers.

LifeLabs — Canada’s major provider of lab diagnostics and testing services — announced on Dec. 17., 2019, that hackers had potentially accessed computer systems with data from “approximately 15 million customers” that “could include name, address, email, login, passwords, date of birth, health card number and lab test results.”

LifeLabs is one of Canada’s largest medical services providers; the health data of millions of customers was hacked in October 2019.

As a Canadian citizen whose data and whose family’s data is probably among the 15 million records stolen, my first thought is about the implications of this breach.

Data marketplaces

At the International CyberCrime Research Centre in the School of Criminology at Simon Fraser University, we’ve been studying online hacker communities for about seven years and the Dark Web for the past four years. The Dark Web, with its large number of marketplaces (called cryptomarkets, think eBay for drugs and stolen data), is a fascinating place where all sorts of products, data and services are made available for purchase. Payments are made using anonymous (mostly) untraceable digital currencies. I would expect parts of LifeLab’s database to eventually end up in a marketplace like that.

So how did this happen? Details of the hack have not been revealed due to the ongoing investigation, but hopefully we will eventually learn the specifics. According to the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner of Ontario (IPC) and the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner for British Columbia (OIPC), “cyber criminals penetrated the company’s systems, extracting data and demanding a ransom,” which LifeLabs paid.

This points to a likely ransomware attack, where the attacker encrypts the data on a computer system and makes it inaccessible. Unless a backup of the data exists, the only way to recover the data is by paying the attacker a ransom, who sends the victim the decryption keys to unlock the data. Most of these ransomware attacks use encryption so strong that even security firms cannot unlock the files, which has led to a new type of business where consultants help ransomware victims negotiate and pay the ransom.

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Read more: Cybersecurity: high costs for companies

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In most ransomware cases the data remains on the victim’s computer, but its access is revoked through strong encryption. This implies that the attackers do not actually have a copy of the data and thus the chances for future revictimization remain low. However, the language of the OIPC indicates that in this case, the data were “extracted.” This puts a new twist on the story.

Holding data hostage

Ransomware attackers sometimes do use ransomware — software that threatens to block access or publish data — that not only locks files, preventing the victim from doing anything, but also leaks the files back to the attackers. This allows the attackers to potentially extort more money from the victim, as happened a few weeks ago to Allied Universal, a security firm in California. That seems to be the case with LifeLabs.

If this is true, then our data is out there, in the hands of cybercriminals, and will remain out there. LifeLabs has stated that they have “retrieved the data by making a payment,” but if the cybercriminals already have a copy, then retrieving it will not suddenly disallow the attackers from further using that data.

Did LifeLabs not have a proper backup and recovery procedures in place so it could recover from this failure without having to resort to paying a ransom?

Customer protection

The likely scenario is that LifeLabs fell victim to a ransomware attack, possibly sparked by a phishing email with a malicious link or attachment, which resulted in up to 15 million customers’ information (our information, not LifeLabs’) being extracted to the attackers. LifeLabs paid the ransom to regain access to the data and continue business.

What can we, as customers, do? Unfortunately, not much.

The data theft is beyond our control. Periodically we must do business with third-parties that require our personal information and we have no choice but to hand it over. Implicit in this transaction is that the other party (LifeLabs, for example) will protect that data. The only available option we have as customers is to be vigilant of our personal information, including financial and health details; but this is after the data theft.

We must check our credit card statements, our credit histories, our insurance claims. We must not use the same password in multiple places and should use two-factor authentication whenever possible.

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Read more: It's time we demanded the protection of our personal data

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Potentially the best way to prevent future breaches would be to incentivize organizations that collect our personal details to secure them properly. This could be done by changes to the legislation, like in the European Union and its new General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) introduced in 2018.

In August 2018, the British Airways website was breached and 500,000 customer details stolen. The United Kingdom’s Information Commissioner’s Office handed down a fine of £183 million (approximately $321 million), based on a new U.K. law designed to mirror the EU’s GDPR. With penalties like that, third-party organizations would have no choice but to take data security seriously, rather than as an operational cost.

Change Alberta

WE MAY NEED A FEDERAL INVESTIGATION OF WHETHER THE WAR ROOM VIOLATES CHARTER GUARANTEES OF FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION

https://ablawg.ca/…/the-alberta-inquiry-and-freedom-of-exp…/

Our colleagues Martin Olszynski and Shaun Fluker have posted concerns about the Alberta Inquiry into Anti-Alberta Energy Campaigns from the perspective of the rule of law and procedural fairness (see here and here). Amnesty International has also raised concerns about the Inquiry’s “aggressive a...

ABLAWG.CA

The Alberta Inquiry and Freedom of Expression |

WHAT DO YOU MEAN WE MAY NEED
 WE DO NEED ONE NOW AND AN INJUNCTION 
AGAINST COSTING TAXPAYERS FOR THE OIL PARTIES PLAY ROOM

SEE https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/search?q=MINTZ

OPERATION CONDOR 2.0
Ousted President Evo Morales Says Transnational Corporations, US Gov’t Were Behind Bolivia Coup

In a tell-all interview with Glen Greenwald from Mexico, ousted Bolivian President Evo Morales recounted the US’ heavy hand in fomenting a coup in his country and the reasons behind it.

December 18th, 2019

By Alan Macleod @AlanRMacLeod

Ousted Bolivian President Evo Morales did not hold back on his criticism of U.S. empire in an interview with Intercept co-founder Glenn Greenwald in Mexico. Morales was overthrown last month in a U.S.-backed coup that has left dozens dead and a country in upheaval. While faces in the White House may change, the same imperialist policies remain in place, Morales explained. Between Obama, Bush and Trump, he said:

 I doubt that there are differences between them. Maybe in their form, but at the end of the day, there are no differences between them. They all speak of peace, but none speak of social justice or the independence of states, the dignity or identity of the people…so, as far as I see, democracy in America deceives its people into voting but neither the people nor the government rule, it is the transnational corporations who govern, whether it’s the Democrats or Republicans.”

The longtime democratically elected president of Bolivia claimed that he was under pressure from the U.S. from day one of his presidency to put Washington and American corporations before his people. The U.S. Ambassador immediately instructed him that his country could not have any relations with Iran or neighboring states Cuba and Venezuela. “We are not a colony of the United States!” Morales told Greenwald. The calm and affable president, wearing a humble local jacket, told him that one former head of state warned him to “watch out for the U.S.” joking that there are no coups in America because there are no American embassies there.

“The US would take me to Guantanamo”

The exiled president revealed that there had been multiple attempts to capture him in the weeks of violence that preceded the November 11 coup d’état. He said that members of his security team had been offered $50,000 each to betray him and that, multiple times, his presidential plane had been diverted by the military in an attempt to take him to an air force base where he could be detained. Many of the country’s military, including the leaders of the November coup, had received training at the infamous School of the Americas at Fort Benning, GA, a U.S. military institution that has trained tens of thousands of Latin America’s most notorious torturers. However, each time he had been able to contact his supporters, who came out in their thousands, storming the runway to prevent him from being captured. Morales and Vice-President Alvaro Garcia Linera eventually decided to resign to prevent more bloodshed. Their allies had had their houses burned down and been kidnapped, tortured or threatened by the police, military and right-wing paramilitaries. “Without the police, without the armed forces and with a mobilized right-wing,” he told Greenwald, there could have been no coup. His children have fled to Argentina and other government officials remain trapped inside the Mexican Embassy in La Paz.

The progressive president of Mexico, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, sent an aircraft to rescue him from the coup. Morales revealed that the Trump administration also sent a plane to pick him up, but he knew far better than to board it. “They’d take me to Guantanamo!” he exclaimed, pronouncing that there is a “new Operation Condor” afoot in Latin America, referencing Henry Kissinger’s successful strategy of overthrowing Latin American democracies (including Bolivia) and replacing them with fascist dictatorships. Since 2009, multiple elected heads of state have been deposed with U.S. backing, including in Honduras, Paraguay and Brazil.

“It’s a lithium coup d’état”

Morales pointed to the role of big business and his decision to sign deals with China and Europe to sell them his country’s prized resource, lithium. Lithium is an expensive metal crucial in the production of a myriad of electronics.

“This is not just an internal coup d’état; orchestrated by the Bolivian oligarchy, some members of the armed forces and the police. It is also an external conspiracy. My crime, my sin, is to be an Indian. And secondly, to have nationalized our natural resources and removed international corporations from the hydrocarbon sector and mining. But also that I reduced extreme poverty with social programs. Transnational corporations are behind this coup, as is the United States too, because of the lithium issue.”

Morales branded his ouster a “lithium coup d’état” as the United States could not accept that indigenous people and worker movements could liberate themselves and control an important natural resource for their country’s benefit. He also took aim at the capitalist system that breeds imperialism, and necessarily condemns the majority to poverty, claiming it cannot be the solution for life or dignity. “That’s the difference between the right and the left throughout the world” he told Greenwald, “Who is with the people and who is with the empire? Who is with the ordinary people, the poor and who sustains the economic power and puts wealth in just a few hands.”

For Morales, it was clear that new president Jeanine Añez was the face of the wealthy, oligarchic elite. “She has a racist mentality, she’s a racist person,” he said, referencing her claims about Bolivia’s indigenous majority being satanic sub-humans. Greenwald pressed him on his own errors, including the controversial move to abolish term limits in his country. “I’ve made mistakes but I am not a traitor [like Añez]” he replied, pointing to European leaders like Angela Merkel who have ruled for longer than he has and are rarely presented as dictators or elected monarchs by the press. Despite his ouster, he appeared unrepentant and undefeated: “The class struggle continues,” he concluded.

MintPress News has extensively covered the events in Bolivia. For more, click here.

Feature photo | Bolivia’s former President Evo Morales gives a press conference in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Dec. 17, 2019. Natacha Pisarenko | AP

Alan MacLeod is a MintPress Staff Writer as well as an academic and writer for Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting. His book, Bad News From Venezuela: Twenty Years of Fake News and Misreporting was published in April.

Republish our stories! MintPress News is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 International License.

COVERT CONNECTIONS

The Israel Lobby’s Hidden Hand in the Theft of Iraqi and Syrian Oil

The outsized role of U.S. Israel lobby operatives in abetting the theft of Syrian and Iraqi oil reveals how this powerful lobby also facilitates more covert aspects of U.S.-Israeli cooperation and the implementation of policies that favor Israel.

by Agha Hussain and Whitney Webb

KIRKUK, IRAQ — “We want to bring our soldiers home. But we did leave soldiers because we’re keeping the oil,” President Trump stated on November 3, before adding, “I like oil. We’re keeping the oil.”

Though he had promised a withdrawal of U.S. troops from their illegal occupation of Syria, Trump shocked many with his blunt admission that troops were being left behind to prevent Syrian oil resources from being developed by the Syrian government and, instead, kept in the hands of whomever the U.S. deemed fit to control them, in this case, the U.S.-backed Kurdish-majority militia known as the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).

Though Trump himself received all of the credit — and the scorn — for this controversial new policy, what has been left out of the media coverage is the fact that key players in the U.S.’ pro-Israel lobby played a major role in its creation with the purpose of selling Syrian oil to the state of Israel. While recent developments in the Syrian conflict may have hindered such a plan from becoming reality, it nonetheless offers a telling example of the covert role often played by the U.S.’ pro-Israel lobby in shaping key elements of U.S. foreign policy and closed-door deals with major regional implications.

Indeed, the Israel lobby-led effort to have the U.S. facilitate the sale of Syrian oil to Israel is not an isolated incident given that, just a few years ago, other individuals connected to the same pro-Israel lobby groups and Zionist neoconservatives manipulated both U.S. policy and Iraq’s Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) in order to allow Iraqi oil to be sold to Israel without the approval of the Iraqi government. These designs, not unlike those that continue to unfold in Syria, were in service to longstanding neoconservative and Zionist efforts to balkanize Iraq by strengthening the KRG and weakening Baghdad.

After the occupation of Iraq’s Nineveh Governorate by ISIS (June 2014-October 2015), the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) took advantage of the Iraqi military’s retreat and, amidst the chaos, illegally seized Kirkuk on June 12. Their claim to the city was supported by both the U.S. and Israel and, later, the U.S.-led coalition targeting ISIS. This gave the KRG control, not only of Iraq’s export pipeline to Turkey’s Ceyhan port, but also to Iraq’s largest oil fields.

Israel imported massive amounts of oil from the Kurds during this period, all without the consent of Baghdad. Israel was also the largest customer of oil sold by ISIS, who used Kurdish-controlled Kirkuk to sell oil in areas of Iraq and Syria under its control. To do this in ISIS-controlled territories of Iraq, the oil was sent first to the Kurdish city of Zakho near the Turkey border and then into Turkey, deceptively labeled as oil that originated from Iraqi Kurdistan. ISIS did nothing to impede the KRG’s own oil exports even though they easily could have given that the Kirkuk-Ceyhan export pipeline passed through areas that ISIS had occupied for years.

In retrospect, and following revelations from Wikileaks and new information regarding the background of relevant actors, it has been revealed that much of the covert maneuvering behind the scenes that enabled this scenario intimately involved the United States’ powerful pro-Israel lobby. Now, with a similar scenario unfolding in Syria, efforts by the U.S.’ Israel lobby to manipulate U.S. foreign policy in order to shift the flow of hydrocarbons for Israel’s benefit can instead be seen as a pattern of behavior, not an isolated incident.
“Keep the oil” for Israel

After recent shifts in the Trump administration in its Syria policy, U.S. troops have controversially been kept in Syria to “keep the oil,” with U.S. military officials subsequently claiming that doing so was “a subset of the counter-ISIS mission.” However, Secretary of Defense Mark Esper later claimed that another factor behind U.S. insistence on guarding Syrian oil fields was to prevent the extraction and subsequent sale of Syrian oil by either the Syrian government or Russia.

One key, yet often overlooked, player behind the push to prevent a full U.S. troop withdrawal in Syria in order to “keep the oil” was current U.S. ambassador to Turkey, David Satterfield. Satterfield was previously the assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern Affairs, where he yielded great influence over U.S. policy in both Iraq and Syria and worked closely with Brett McGurk, the former Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Iraq and Iran and later special presidential envoy for the U.S.-led “anti-ISIS” coalition.

Over the course of his long diplomatic career, Satterfield has been known to the U.S. government as an Israeli intelligence asset embedded in the U.S. State Department. Indeed, Satterfield was named as a major player in what is now known as the AIPAC espionage scandal, also known as the Lawrence Franklin espionage scandal, although he was oddly never charged for his role after the intervention of his superiors at the State Department in the George W. Bush administration.


David Satterfield, left, arrives in Baghdad with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, right, and Joey Hood, May 7, 2019. Mandel Ngan | AP

In 2005, federal prosecutors cited a U.S. government official as having illegally passed classified information to Steve Rosen, then working for AIPAC, who then passed that information to the Israeli government. That classified information included intelligence on Iran and the nature of U.S.-Israeli intelligence sharing. Subsequent media reports from the New York Times and other outlets revealed that this government official was none other than David Satterfield, who was then serving as Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for Near East Affairs.

Charges against Rosen, as well as his co-conspirator and fellow AIPAC employee Keith Weissman, were dropped in 2009 and no charges were levied against Satterfield after State Department officials shockingly claimed that Satterfield had “acted within his authority” in leaking classified information to an individual working to advance the interests of a foreign government. Richard Armitage, a neoconservative ally with a long history of ties to CIA covert operations in the Middle East and elsewhere, has since claimed that he was one of Satterfield’s main defenders in conversations with the FBI during this time when he was serving as Deputy Secretary of State.

The other government official named in the indictment, former Pentagon official Lawrence Franklin, was not so lucky and was charged under the Espionage Act in 2006. Satterfield, instead of being censured for his role in leaking sensitive information to a foreign government, was subsequently promoted in 2006 to serve as the Coordinator for Iraq and Senior Adviser to then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

In addition to his history of leaking classified information to AIPAC, Satterfield also has a longstanding relationship with the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a controversial spin-off of AIPAC also known by its acronym WINEP. WINEP’s website has long listed Satterfield as one of its experts and Satterfield has spoken at several WINEP events and policy forums, including several after his involvement with the AIPAC espionage scandal became public knowledge. However, despite his longstanding and controversial ties to the U.S. pro-Israel lobby, Satterfield’s current relationship with some elements of that lobby, such as the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA), is complicated at best.

While Satterfield’s role in yet another reversal of a promised withdrawal of U.S. troops from Syria has largely escaped media scrutiny, another individual with deep ties to the Israel lobby and Syrian “rebel” groups has also been ignored by the media, despite his outsized role in taking advantage of this new U.S. policy for Israel’s benefit.


US Israel Lobby secures deal with Kurds


Earlier this year, well before Trump’s new Syria policy of “keeping the oil” had officially taken shape, another individual with deep ties to the U.S. Israel lobby secured a lucrative agreement with U.S.-backed Kurdish groups in Syria. An official document issued earlier this year by the Syrian Democratic Council (SDC), the political arm of the Kurdish majority and U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), a New Jersey-based company, founded and run by U.S.-Israeli dual citizen Mordechai “Motti” Kahana, was given control of the oil in territory held by the SDC.

Per the document, the SDC formally accepted the offer from Kahana’s company — Global Development Corporation (GDC) — to represent SDC in all matters pertaining to the sale of oil extracted in territory it controls and also grants GDC “the right to explore and develop oil that is located in areas we govern.”


The SDC’s formal acceptance of Global Development Corporation’s offer to develop Syrian oil fields. Source | Al-Akhbar

The document also states that the amount of oil then being produced in SDC-controlled areas was 125,000 barrels per day and that they anticipated that this would increase to 400,000 barrels per day and that this oil is considered a foreign asset under the control of the United States by the U.S. Department of the Treasury.

After the document was made public by the Lebanese outlet Al-Akhbar, the SDC claimed that it was a forgery, even though Kahana had separately confirmed its contents and shared the letter itself to the Los Angeles Times as recently as a few weeks ago. Kahana previously attempted to distance himself from the effort and told the Israeli newspaper Israel Hayom in July that he had made the offer to the SDC as means to prevent the “Assad regime” of Syria from obtaining revenue from the sale of Syrian oil.


The Kurds currently hold 11 oil wells in an area controlled by the [Syrian] Democratic Forces. The overwhelming majority of Syrian oil is in that area. I don’t want this oil reaching Iran, or the Assad regime.”

At the time, Kahana also stated that “the moment the Trump administration gives its approval, we can begin to export this oil at fair prices.”

Given that Kahana has openly confirmed that he is representing the SDC’s oil business shortly after Trump’s adoption of the controversial “keep the oil policy,” it seems plausible that Kahana has now received the approval needed for his company to export the oil on behalf of the SDC. Several media reports have speculated that, if Kahana’s efforts go forward unimpeded, the Syrian oil will be sold to Israel.

However, considering Turkey’s aversion to engaging in any activities that may benefit the PKK-SDF – there are considerable obstacles to Kahana’s plans. While the SDF — along with assistance from U.S. troops — still controls several oil fields in Syria, experts assert that they can only realistically sell the oil to the Syrian government. Not even the Iraqi Kurds are a candidate, considering Baghdad’s firm control over the Iraq-Syria border and the KRG’s weakened state after its failed independence bid in late 2017.

Regardless, Kahana’s involvement in this affair is significant for a few reasons. First, Kahana has been a key player in the promotion and funding of radical groups in Syria and has even been caught hiring so-called “rebels” to kidnap Syrian Jews and take them to Israel against their will. It was Kahana, for instance, who financed and orchestrated the now infamous trip of the late Senator John McCain to Syria, where he met with Syrian “rebels” including Khalid al-Hamad – a “moderate” rebel who gained notoriety after a video of him eating the heart of a Syrian Army soldier went viral online. McCain had also admitted meeting with ISIS members, though it is unclear if he did so on this trip or another trip to Syria.

In addition, Kahana was also the mastermind behind the “Caesar” controversy, whereby a Syrian using the pseudonym “Caesar” was brought to the U.S. by Kahana and went on to make claims regarding torture and other crimes allegedly committed by the Assad-led government Syria, claims which were later discredited by independent analysts. He was also very involved in Israel’s failed efforts to establish a “safe zone” in Southern Syria as a means of covertly expanding Israel’s territory from the occupied Golan Heights and into Quneitra.

Notably, Kahana has deep ties — not just to efforts to overthrow the Syrian government — but also to U.S. Israel lobby, including the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP) where Satterfield is as an expert. For instance, Kahana was a key player in a 2013 symposium organized by WINEP along with Syrian opposition groups intimately involved in the arming of so-called “rebels.” One of the other participants in the symposium alongside Kahana was Mouaz Moustafa, director of the “Syrian Emergency Task Force” who assisted Kahana in bringing McCain to Syria in 2013. Moustafa was listed as a WINEP expert on the organization’s website but was later mysteriously deleted.

Kahana is also intimately involved with the Israeli American Council (IAC), a pro-Israel lobby organization, as a team member of its national conference. IAC was co-founded and is chaired by Adam Milstein, a multimillionaire and convicted felon who is also on the boards of AIPAC, StandWithUs, Birthright and other prominent pro-Israel lobby organizations. One of IAC’s top donors is Sheldon Adelson, who is also the top donor to President Trump as well as the entire Republican Party.

Though the machinations of both Kahana and Satterfield to guide U.S. policy in order to manipulate the flow of Syria’s hydrocarbons for Israel’s benefit may seem shocking to some, this same tactic of pro-Israel lobbyists using the Kurds to illegally sell a country’s oil to Israel was developed a few years prior, not in Syria, but Iraq. Notably, the individuals responsible for that policy in Iraq shared connections to several of the same pro-Israel lobby organizations as both Satterfield and Kahana, suggesting that their recent efforts in Syria are not an isolated event, but a pattern.


War against ISIS is a war for oil


In an email dated June 15, 2014, James Franklin Jeffrey (former Ambassador to Iraq and Turkey and current U.S. Special Representative for Syria) revealed to Stephen Hadley, a former George Bush administration advisor then working at the government-funded United States Institute of Peace, his intent to advise the KRG in order to sustain Kirkuk’s oil production. The plan, as Jeffery described it, was to supply both the Kurdistan province with oil and allow the export of oil via Kirkuk-Ceyhan to Israel, robbing Iraq of its oil and strengthening the country’s Kurdish region along with its regional government’s bid for autonomy.

Jeffrey, whose hawkish views on Iran and Syria are well-known, mentioned that Brett McGurk, the U.S.’ main negotiator between Baghdad and the KRG, was acting as his liaison with the KRG. McGurk, who had served in various capacities in Iraq under both Bush and Obama, was then also serving Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Iraq and Iran. A year later, he would be made the special presidential envoy for the U.S.-led “anti-ISIS” coalition and, as previously mentioned, worked closely with David Satterfield.


James Jeffrey, left, meets with Kurdish Regional Government President Massoud Barzani, April 8, 2011, at an airport in Irbil, Iraq. Chip Somodevilla | AP

Jeffrey was then a private citizen not currently employed by the government and was used as a non-governmental channel in the pursuit of the plans described in the leaked emails published by WikiLeaks. Jeffrey’s behind-the-scenes activities with regards to the KRG’s oil exports were done clandestinely, largely because he was then employed by a prominent arm of the U.S.’ pro-Israel lobby.

At the time of the email, Jeffrey was serving as a distinguished fellow (2013-2018) at WINEP. As previously mentioned, WINEP is a pro-Israel foreign policy think-tank that espouses neoconservative views and was created in 1985 by researchers that had hastily left AIPAC to escape investigations against the organization that were related to some of its members conducting espionage on behalf of Israel. AIPAC, the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee, is the largest registered Israel lobbyist organization in the US (albeit registration under the Foreign Agents Registration Act would be more suitable), and, in addition to the 1985 incident that led to WINEP’s creation, has had members indicted for espionage against the U.S. on Israel’s behalf.

WINEP’s launch was funded by former President of the Jewish Federation of Los Angeles, Barbara Weinberg, who is its founding president and constant Chairman Emerita. Nicknamed ‘Barbi’, she is the wife of the late Lawrence Weinberg who was President of AIPAC from 1976-81 and who JJ Goldberg, author of the 1997 book Jewish Power, referred to as one of a select few individuals who essentially dominated AIPAC regardless of its elected leadership. Co-founder alongside Weinberg was Martin Indyk. Indyk, U.S. Ambassador to Israel (1995-97) and Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs (1997-99), led the AIPAC research time that formed WINEP to escape the aforementioned investigations.

WINEP has historically received funding from donors who donate to causes of special interest for Zionism and Israel. Among its trustees are extremely prominent names in political Zionism and funders of other Israel Lobby organizations, such as Charles and Edgar Bronfman and the Chernicks. Its membership remains dominated by individuals who have spent their careers promoting Israeli interests in the U.S.

WINEP has become more well-known, and arguably more controversial, in recent years after its research director famously called for false-flag attacks to trigger a U.S. war with Iran in 2012, statements well-aligned with longstanding attempts by the Israel Lobby to bring about such a war.


A worthy partner in crime


Stephen Hadley, another private citizen who Jeffrey evidently considered as a partner in his covert dealings discussed in the emails, also has his own past of involvement with Israel-specific intrigues and meddling.

During the G.W. Bush administration, Hadley tagged along with neoconservatives in their numerous creations of fake intelligence and efforts to incriminate Iraq for possessing chemical and nuclear weapons. Hadley was one of the promoters from within the U.S. government of the false claim that 9/11 hijacker Mohammed Atta met with Iraqi officials in Prague.

Hadley also worked with then-Chief of Staff to the Vice President, Lewis Libby — a neoconservative and former lawyer for the Mossad-agent and billionaire Marc Rich — to discredit a CIA investigation into claims of Iraq purchasing yellowcake uranium from Niger. That claim famously appeared in Bush’s State of the Union address in 2002.

What this particular claim had in common with the ‘Iraq meets Atta in Prague’ disinformation, and other famous lies against Iraq fabricated and circulated by the dense neocon network, was its source: Israel and pro-Israel partisans.

The distribution network of these now long-debunked claims was none other than the neoconservatives who act a veritable Israeli fifth column that has long sought to promote Israeli foreign policy objectives as being in the interest of the United States. In this, Hadley played his part by helping to ensure that the United States was railroaded into a war that had long been promoted by both Israeli and American neoconservatives, particularly Richard Perle — an advisor to WINEP — who had been promoting regime change in Iraq for Israel’s explicit benefit for decades.

In short, for covert intrigues to serve Israel that would likely be met with protest if pitched to the government for implementation as policy, Hadley’s resume was impressive.


Israeli interests pursued through covert channels


Given his employment at WINEP during this time, Jeffrey’s intent to advise the KRG to sustain Kirkuk’s oil production despite the seizure of the Baiji oil refinery by ISIS is somewhat suspect, especially since it required that 100,000 barrels per day pass through ISIS-controlled territory unimpeded.

Jeffrey’s email from June 14, therefore, demonstrated that he had foreknowledge that ISIS would not disturb the KRG as long as the Kurds redirected oil that was intended originally for Baiji to the Kirkuk-Ceyhan export pipeline, facilitating its export and later sale to Israel.

Notably, up until its liberation in mid-2015 by the Iraqi government and aligned Shia paramilitaries, ISIS kept the refinery running and, only upon their retreat, destroyed the facility.

In July 2014, the KRG began confidently supplying Kurdish areas with Kirkuk’s oil per the plan laid out by Jeffrey in the aforementioned email. Baghdad soon became aware of the arrangement and lashed out at Israel and Turkey, whose banks were used by the KRG to receive the oil revenue from Israel.

One would normally expect ISIS to be opposed to such collusion given that the KRG, while a beneficiary of the ISIS-Baghdad conflict, was not an ally of ISIS. Thus, a foreign power with strategic ties to ISIS used its close ties to the KRG and assurances that it was on-board for the oil trade, to deliver a credible guarantee that ISIS would ‘cooperate’ and that a boom in production and exports was in the cards.

This foreign power — acting as a guarantor for the ISIS-KRG understanding vis-a-vis the illegal oil economy, represented by Jeffrey and clearly not on good terms with Iraq’s government — was quite clearly Israel.

Israel established considerable financial support as well as the provision of armaments to other extremist terrorist groups active near the border between the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights and Southern Syria when war first broke out in Syria in 2011. At least four of these extremist groups were led by individuals with direct ties to Israeli intelligence. These same groups, sometimes promoted as ‘moderates’ by some media, were actively fighting Syria’s government – an enemy of Israel and ally of Iran – before ISIS existed and eagerly partnered with ISIS when it expanded its campaign into Syria.

Furthermore, Israeli officials have publicly admitted maintaining regular communication with ISIS cells in Southern Syria and have publicly expressed their desire that ISIS not be defeated in the country. In Libya, Israeli Mossad operatives have been found embedded within ISIS, suggesting that Israel has covert but definite ties with the group outside of Syria as well.

Israel has also long promoted the independence of Iraqi Kurdistan, with Israel having provided Iraq’s Kurds with weapons, training and teams of Mossad advisers as far back as the 1960s. More recently, Israel was the only state to support the KRG independence referendum in September 2017 despite its futility, hinting at the regard Israel holds for the KRG. Iraq’s government subsequently militarily defeated the KRG’s push for statehood and reclaimed Kirkuk’s oil fields with assistance from the Shia paramilitaries which were responsible for defeating ISIS in the area.


A 2014 map shows the areas under ISIS and Kurdish control at the time. Source | Telegraph

This arrangement orchestrated by Jeffrey, served the long-time neoconservative-Israeli agenda of empowering the Kurds, selling Iraqi oil to Israel and weakening Iraq’s Baghdad-based government.

WINEP’s close association with AIPAC, which has spied on the U.S. on behalf of Israel several times in the past with no consequence, combined with Jeffrey’s long-time acquaintance with key U.S. figures in Iraq, such as McGurk, provided an ideal opening for Israel in Iraq. Following the implementation of Jeffrey’s plan, Israeli imports of KRG oil constituted 77 percent of Israel’s total oil imports during the KRG’s occupation of Kirkuk.

The WINEP connection to the KRG-Israel oil deal demonstrates the key role played by the U.S. pro-Israel Lobby, not only in terms of sustaining U.S. financial aid to Israel and ratcheting up tensions with Israel’s adversaries but also in facilitating the more covert aspects of U.S.-Israeli cooperation and the implementation of policies that favor Israel.

Yet the role played by the U.S. Israel lobby in this capacity, particularly in terms of orchestrating oil sale agreements for Israel’s benefit, is hardly exclusive to Iraq and can accurately be described as a repeated pattern of behavior.

Feature photo | Graphic by Claudio Cabrera

Agha Hussain is an independent researcher based in Rawalpindi, Pakistan. He specialized in Middle Eastern affairs and history and is an editorial contributor to Eurasia Future, Regional Rapport and other news outlets. Read more of his work on his personal blog.

Whitney Webb is a MintPress News journalist based in Chile. She has contributed to several independent media outlets including Global Research, EcoWatch, the Ron Paul Institute and 21st Century Wire, among others. She has made several radio and television appearances and is the 2019 winner of the Serena Shim Award for Uncompromised Integrity in Journalism.
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