Why did President Joe Biden visit the African nation of Angola in the dwindling hours of his presidency? No other US president has visited this resource-rich southern African nation. Biden was just finishing presiding over the slaughter of over 50,000 Palestinians.

The real reason is likely money. It may have been a repeat of a shady deal with Ukraine which put Biden’s ne’er-do-well son, Hunter, on the board of a large Ukrainian energy company, Burisma. I almost bought a Ukrainian industrial company and saw the level of corruption involved.

As far as we know, the younger Biden got paid off handsomely; Biden senior did not receive funds from the Ukrainian firm. Still, the whole business has a smell of high-level corruption. Biden recently pardoned his son, shocking many Democrats.

But why Angola? I covered the civil war there in 2000. The Soviets and Cubans were waging a fierce bush war in southern Angola against South African expeditionary forces, quietly backed by CIA based in Kamina, Congo (today Zaire). Angolan anti-communist forces known as UNITA, led by the charismatic Jonas Savimbi, a close ally of South Africa, were battling the Marxist forces (known as MPLA).

It was a fascinating war fought in one of the world’s remotest places where wild animals competed with heavily armed guerilla bands. I was with Savimbi in his remote bush camp at Jamba and spent time with this remarkable man, whom I thought of as the most intelligent, inspiring leader of southern Africa.

Savimbi started off as a Moscow-based Marxist but later became a pro-western ideologue who sought to bring free markets to Angola, a rich nation with an undersized population.

Angola and its Cabinda Enclave were important producers of oil, always catnip to the Americans. In 2002, the US made an important oil deal with the Angolan communists. Washington no longer needed Savimbi and this UNITA movement. The Marxists of MPLA were suddenly America’s new best friends in post Cold War Africa.

That year, Gen. Savimbi was heading to the town of Moxico when his small convoy was ambushed. Savimbi was riddled with bullets and buried in the bush. The Angolan army claimed credit for killing Savimbi. This was false.

Savimbi was tracked and killed by an elite Israeli hit squad paid for by the US government. This fact was confirmed to me by a high-level American diplomat who was then in Angola. Washington no longer needed its old ally Savimbi and decided to get rid of him. As Henry Kissinger famously said, ‘it’s often more dangerous being America’s ally than its enemy.’

Watching Biden make nice to Angola’s Marxist rulers is revolting. Is there no honor or loyalty? Not, apparently, when it comes to oil. The US invasion of Afghanistan was sparked by Washington’s desire to secure oil pipelines south from Central Asia.

Savimbi himself was no angel. Brutalities in Angola’s 27-year long civil war were common. But Savimbi was head and shoulders above the other African leaders of his time. He was right to align himself with white-run South Africa to win the war and modernize Angola. Today, Angola is an utterly corrupt backwards mess. But, like Ukraine, it knew which American politicians and officials to buy. So why did the doddering Biden go all the way to Angola, so distant that planes had to refuel in the Cape Verde Islands to get there from the US? We wonder.

What is clearly a joint US-Israeli plan to remake the Mideast map is now well underway. Changes will be seismic.

The Biden administration, by now almost totally controlled by pro-Israel neocons, is making its final major moves by loosing a Parthian shaft into the heart of the Mideast.

Syria – or what’s left of it – was divided up into zones – a third of the country with all its oil and gas fields is under the control of US military forces. Revenues from this oil and gas accounted for half of Syria’s income and paid its armed forces. Deprived of pay and munitions, the Syrian armed forces faded away, leaving the roads to Damascus open to Islamist forces, branded ‘terrorists’ by the west.

Israel collaborated closely. In two days alone its powerful air forces launched 480 attacks against Syrian military and strategic targets, including Syria’s tiny navy on the coast and major air bases. Israeli forces occupied a UN-sanctioned demilitarized zone on its northern border with Syria.

While western media and politicians waxed euphoric over the fall of former Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, there was amnesia about the history of Syria’s nasty dictatorship. Not for me, of course, as a frequent visitor to the Assad’s frightening Syria.

The first time I visited Syria, there was a public hanging in front of my hotel. Later, I was arrested at the airport for carrying a hand-held dictaphone, described by guards as ‘a CIA radio device.’ Syria was even scarier than awful Iraq. Paranoia and suspicion were everywhere. But I also met with government officials and walked most of the Syrian side of the heavily militarized Golan Heights, later seized and annexed by Israel.

What our heavily biased media in the US and Britain don’t tell you is that the US has been trying to overthrow Syria’s different regimes since the 1950’s. I refer readers to a delightful book, ‘The Game of Nations,’ written by a former CIA agent based in Syria, Miles Copeland. He recounts how the US sought to order about successive Syrian regimes or overthrow them.

Syria’s worst years were under an Alawite air force general, Hafez al-Assad, who seized power in a 1971 coup. Until his death in 2000, he misruled Syria with an iron hand, battling attempts by Islamists, communists, Nasserites, Baathists, CIA, Britain’s MI6, France’s DGSE, Saudi intelligence, Turkey and Israel to unseat him. Syria suffered eight coups since 1946.

These efforts led to the brutal repressiveness of the Syrian regimes. I was in the city of Hama shortly after its Islamists revolted against the Assad regime. Tens of thousands were killed there.

Hafez Assad did America’s bidding when he sent troops to attack Iraq in 1991. The US long sent Arab captives to Syria to be tortured, particularly to link Iraq to non-existent nuclear weapons. Hafez’s oldest son Basil, who was slated to replace Hafez after his death in 2000, killed himself in a car crash. In true Mafia style, the Assad family forced the mild-mannered, Bashar, a British-trained ophthalmologist, to become president. His brutal brother Maher became the real power behind the throne.

Today, a third of Syria and Iraq are occupied by US forces. The mighty US air force rules the Mideast skies, along with its ally, Israel. When I was asked to the Pentagon to consult with the Air Force’s strategic planners, I was amazed to see many uniformed Israeli air force officers there. Qatar has become an aircraft carrier for the US Air Force. Jordan, Bahrain, Egypt and Kuwait all host powerful US forces.

Syria is crushed. Almost 50,000 Palestinians have been killed. Gaza is rubble. Israel is openly considering annexing more parts of Syria as well as slices of Lebanon. Israel’s hard expansionist right is cock-a-hoop over grabbing more land. The incoming Trump administration, flush with a $100 million gift from the casino magnates, Israeli-American Adelsons, and packed by Israel supporters, is giving Israel’s far right government carte blanche.

Will there be more targets? Possibly. One of the heroes of the Afghan War, Khalil Haqqani, was just murdered in Kabul, allegedly by an Islamic State suicide bomber. We don’t know who is really behind Islamic State, but the killing sounds a lot like some assassinations recently carried out by Israel’s intel agency, Mossad. Or was it delayed American revenge for its defeat in Afghanistan?

Syria is the mother of all mysteries. Even the Romans couldn’t figure out all the intrigues, plots, factions, coups and assassinations that were common there. Nor could they understand or deal with its hotbed of religions and weird sects.

Two thousand years later, not much has changed. This week, irregular forces of a former al-Qaida outfit named Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) appeared out of the countryside and seized Syria’s second most important city, Aleppo. Syria’s dormant 14-year-old civil war suddenly went critical. A few days later, the newly re-emergent Tahrir stormed the important Syrian city of Hama. In both cases, Syrian government forces of the ruling al-Assad family simply and inexplicably melted away after fighting the jihadists for 14 years.

I have a personal interest in this fight. In 2017, my Eric S. Margolis Foundation to protect animals joined the Four Paws group out of Vienna to mount the daring rescue of an entire zoo in Aleppo. The wretched animals there, bears, huge tigers, lions, dogs, and chimps had been trapped in the city’s private zoo by years of war. While they starved, the war between various jihadist factions and government troops raged as Aleppo, once Syria’s second city, was relentlessly reduced to rubble.

I also went to Hama while trying to visit the magnificent Crusader castle Krak des Chevaliers. There, the troops of President Hafez al-Assad (father of the current ruler Bashar,) were slugging it out with jihadists. Tens of thousands died in the fighting. Much of Hama was also reduced to ruins.

A sizeable portion of Syria’s 23 million people are Alawites, a mysterious breakaway Muslim sect from the Shias that many majority Sunni Muslims call heretics. Turkey’s minority Alevi Muslims are often confused with the Alawis, whom they brand as heretics. Poor Alawis flocked to the army where they eventually seized power, led by iron-fisted General Hafez al-Assad. Lebanon’s Druze, a mysterious mountain sect, are sometimes close to the Alawites. Maronite Christians also are highly influential, so too Druze and Armenians. Lebanon’s civil war, which I covered, ran from 1975 to 1990 until the Syrian Army ended the bloody conflict.

As a veteran war correspondent, it seems to me that at least many foreign powers are now backing HTS. The US and Israel have been trying to overthrow the Assad regimes since 2011. Israel wanted to cement its hold on the strategic Golan Heights that it captured from Syria. The US, which now occupies the oil producing NE third of Syria, has at least 9,000 troops there and, with Israel, helps the jihadists while publicly denouncing them.

Turkey, whose leader hates Assad, is also highly active in Syria and is most likely providing logistic support to HTS and other jihadist groups while also battling leftist Kurdish groups. Add Russian air units near Latakia, occasional help from Hezbollah groups and minor operations from small Iranian forces. In short, the evolving war in Syria looks increasingly like the awful, madhouse Thirty Year’s War in the 1600’s.

Interestingly, Israel’s far right coalition leaders keep referring to their ambition to ‘remake the face of the Mideast.’ This obviously refers to genocide in Gaza, the open-air prison camp for Palestinians driven in 1948 from their homes in what is today Galilee.  But Israel’s expansionist hard right also has its gaze fixed on Lebanon around the Litani River, the region’s last remaining free water source. It has also long coveted southern Syria, including Damascus, and overthrowing President Bashar al-Assad, a staunch supporter of the Palestinians. Remember, also, that large parts of Iraq are now occupied by US ground forces and air bases. So, a ‘new face’ of the Levant may be indeed emerging out of its current chaos.

Pakistan is the world’s most important Muslim nation. It has 251 million people, nuclear weapons, the world’s sixth largest armed forces, intelligent, capable people, vast lands and major sources of water.

Yet Pakistan is a giant mess. Its current politics are a form of tribal warfare. Corruption engulfs almost everything. Disease, particularly diabetes, afflicts its long-suffering people. Polio is making return.

In recent years, Pakistan has suffered vast floods that have ravaged this nation. Equally menacing, next-door India remains an ever-present danger. Far-right Hindu extremists who are heavily represented in the current Modi government, keep talking about ‘reabsorbing’ Pakistan into ‘Mother India.’ This would have happened long ago except for Pakistan’s important nuclear arsenal and delivery systems.

India has also built an extensive nuclear arsenal, including three new submarines armed with intermediate-ranged nuclear missiles. This while people in India and Pakistan starve in the streets. And 60% of homes in India lack indoor plumbing.

The only institution in Pakistan that really works well is the armed forces. I have met many of its generals: most of them are intelligent, combat-ready officers. I knew Gen. Akhtar Abdur Rahman Khan, the ferocious chief of ISI intelligence service who led the anti-Soviet war in Afghanistan. He was murdered with the tough tank general Zia ul Haq who ruled Pakistan until his aircraft was sabotaged in 1988. Zia was a great Islamic warrior and man of steel. Many Pakistanis still believe he was assassinated by the US though there is no direct evidence.

I was friends with the late Benazir Bhutto, a fascinating and alluring woman who was murdered in 2007. I interviewed Gen. Pervez Musharraf in 1999, a man who seemed insignificant compared to Gen. Zia.

Benazir Bhutto, whose father Zulfikar was ordered hanged by Zia, used to tease me, ‘oh Eric, you love your Pakistani generals.’ I did. Most were fierce Pashtuns from the NW Frontier, born warriors. They first defeated the Soviet Union, then the mighty USA.

I also took to some of the Indian generals that I met. They and their Pakistani counterparts had none of the slipperiness and deceit of most politicians.

This brings me to the jailed, 51-year-old former cricket star, Imran Khan, Pakistan’s most popular political figure. Khan was jailed on fake charges over receiving gifts, when the ruling oligarchy feared Khan would win a landslide in elections. His wife was also thrown into prison.

Imran Khan’s chief enemies were the Sharif brothers, Shebhaz and Nawaz. Both were rich Punjabi industrialists often accused of egregious corruption. I came out of war-torn Afghanistan to interview Nawaz. He left me unimpressed, particularly after the time I spent with the fiery General Zia.

The United States and Britain, vocal champions of democracy, had nothing to say about the illegal imprisonment of Pakistan’s most popular democratic politician. It was clear they were supporting the Sharif brothers who were more amenable to America’s wishes and anti-Islamic policies. Pakistan’s influential army appears to be backing the Sharif regime.

This is interesting. Washington, which makes so much noise about democracy, is now supporting undemocratic regimes in Morocco, Tunisia, totalitarian Egypt, Jordan, Oman, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and the Gulf, not to mention Africa and Latin America. The CIA installed the current Ukrainian regimes. Efforts are again afoot to overthrow the Assad regime in Syria and, of course, to crush the life out of Palestinians.

What Washington really wants around the globe is total obedience, not real democracy. Pakistan is a sad example. President Pervez Musharraf told me that a senior State Department official warned him that if Pakistan did not allow US troops to use his nation to attack Taliban-ruled Afghanistan ‘we will bomb you back to the Stone Age.’

Great powers want to have their way. Democracy and common sense too often do not stand in the way. At least the new Trump administration in Washington is being brutally frank about its wants and needs unlike the honey-tongued hypocrites of the Biden years.

In 54 BC, Marcus Licinius Crassus, a rich, ambitious Roman businessman, got himself named governor of the wealthy province of Syria. Crassus had been sharing power in Rome with Pompey and Julius Caesar. Call him the Donald Trump of his day.

Crassus decided to invade neighboring Parthia, which is today Turkey and Iran. At the battle of Carrhae, retreating Persian horse archers loosed arrows over the back of their horses, giving us the literary term for a parting shot, `Parthian shaft.’

The moribund Biden administration loosed its own Parthian shaft this week by having Ukraine fire US-supplied ATACMS tactical missiles – with the help of US military technicians. A handful of British Storm Shadow and French Scalp air-launched missiles were also fired at Russia.

This was clearly an act of war between nuclear powers. Russia responded by launching one of its new hypersonic missiles with multiple warheads at Dnipro, Ukraine. The new Russian medium-ranged missile carried conventional, not nuclear, warheads. But the message was loud and clear: all western Europe was in range.

What, one must ask, was the lame duck Biden administration doing? Clearly trying to provoke an even larger war with Russia.

The outgoing administration is still filled with fanatical Russia-haters. In fact, the Pentagon, CIA, NSA and the rest of America’s 18 national security agencies were packed with dunderheads who think we are still fighting the Cold War and yearn to break up Russia into little Balkanized mini states such as happened to Yugoslavia.

So, the low IQ Biden administration has managed to get itself into a real, unwinnable war in Ukraine and the genocidal disaster in Gaza that also threatens to drag the US into war with Iran (former Parthia) while a huge conflict with China looms just over the geopolitical horizon. Meanwhile, Israel’s extreme right-wing government of fanatical settlers and nouveau rightists seems to be acquiring most of the levers of power in the US. And this is before the uber Israel-first Trump & Co. enters office.

Fools should not be allowed to play with matches. Biden’s foolish neocons can still cause a lot of mayhem before 20 January. Trump keeps vowing to uproot Washington’s deep-seated neocon ‘secret government’ that is the real power behind the scenes. But he is really part of this cabal and seems to share its views. Perhaps Trump will keep his word and begin to break the war party’s grip on power before they manage to ignite a nuclear war with Russia.