Global Research

Scotland announced yesterday that it will ban GM crops from being grown on its territory to protect its “clean and green brand,” and because of a lack of evidence showing that Scottish consumers want GM products. [1]

Palestinians in Gaza shopping for the latest smartphone. Technology Bangladesh is set to buy from Verint was developed using systemic spying on ordinary Palestinians. Majdi Fathi/APA images

The Israeli-American firm Verint Systems looks set to win another mass public surveillance contract in South Asia, this time in Bangladesh.

The Dhaka-based newspaper The Daily Star reported last week that Verint is one of several firms set to share a Ministry of Home Affairs contract for the mass wiretapping of Bangladeshi phone and internet communications.

This is the latest example of technology Israel developed to intercept Palestinian telecommunications being exported for governments abroad to monitor their citizenry.

Bangladesh formed the National Telecommunication Monitoring Centre (NTMC) in 2010 to expand its surveillance capabilities. The Bangladeshi government at the time could monitor and record no more than 5,000 devices at one time. Later technology expanded that reach to 50,000 devices in 2013.

According to The Daily Star, the “present NTMC monitoring system is old and lacks the capacity to control the modern information technology.” The paper explains that “more modern equipment is required to assume more control over obstructing or recording users’ telephonic or online communications so that intelligence activities could be conducted more smoothly.”

To enhance its capabilities the NTMC is buying a series of monitoring systems from seven firms including Verint Systems.

Selling anti-Palestinian expertise

Unit 8200 is the technology division of the Israeli military’s Intelligence Corps. Former Unit 8200 member Idan Tendler explained in March that ”instead of relying on outside research and development, the 8200’s technologists work directly with their ‘customers’ (the intelligence officers). All of the unit’s technology systems, from analytics to data mining, intercept, and intelligence management, are designed and built in-house. Technologists sit side by side with their users on a daily basis to ensure that their ‘products’ meet the intelligence officers’ specific requirements.”

Another former Unit 8200 officer, Gil Kerbs, wrote in 2007 how Verint’s then most popular system the Logger “is based on the Unit’s technology.”

Unit 8200 and other elite Israeli military units are “the nation’s equivalent of Harvard, Princeton and Yale” and their “graduates, after leaving service, can parlay their cutting-edge snooping and hacking skills into jobs in Israel, Silicon Valley or Boston’s high-tech corridor.”

As The Financial Times reports, the education comes from, “snoop[ing] on Palestinians living under Israeli occupation in the West Bank or naval and air blockade in the Gaza Strip, according to a whistle-blowing leak that created a stir last year. In an open letter in September 2014, published by Israel’s Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper and broadcast on Channel 10, a group of 43 serving and former 8200 reservists revealed what they said were coercive spying tactics being used on innocent Palestinians, including the collection of embarrassing sexual, financial or other information.”

That data collection and surveillance of Palestinians is the basis for the technological expertise ex-Israeli military personnel bring to Verint and other Israeli security and surveillance firms. This is what is now sought by the Bangladeshi government.

The Bangladeshi government says the system will be deployed to surveil “criminals” and those that threaten national security. The government has been repressing Bangladesh’s ongoing labor insurgency raising concerns about what populations the government is defining as criminal.

Verint has sold similar mass telecom surveillance systems to India, Mexico and most famously, to the United States where Verint was implicated with another Israeli firm in the National Security Agency wiretapping scandal.

Chicago, IL – The Chicago Police’s CIA-style black site, Homan Square, has seen more people detained than died on 9/11 or imprisoned at Guantanamo, according to a new report by the Guardian. The newspaper, which sued the Chicago police to obtain further details on Homan Square, reports overwhelming targeting of minorities as well as other sordid and violative policies.

From 2004 to 2015, at least 3,500 people were detained at Homan Square. These records do not cover the full span of the facility’s tenure, as it has been open since 1995. According to the Guardian, a grossly disproportionate ratio of detainees were minorities, “many accused of low-level drug crimes, [and] faced with incriminating themselves before their arrests appeared in a booking system by which their families and attorneys might find them.”

The majority of arrests were for low-level drug crimes. As the Guardian details, there were 1,175 arrests for heroin, 526 for cannabis, 484 for cocaine, and 464 for “unspecified” drug charges. 244 arrests were made in relation to firearms while other arrests were for “minor infractions such as traffic violations, public urination and driving without a seatbelt.” Other charges ranged from drinking alcohol in public to murder. More than half of all Homan Square arrests occurred 2.5 miles or less from the facility. Of 3,621 arrest records provided to the Guardian, about 3,540 incurred charges (the newspaper notes that “[v]ast amounts of data documenting the full scope of detentions and interrogations at Homan Square remain undisclosed”).

Though blacks make up 33% of Chicago’s population, 82% of those detained at Homan Square were black. Of the 3,500 detained, only three were allowed official visits from attorneys, two of which were on the same day in 2013. The Guardian noted it was able to find eight other instances of lawyers entering the facilities, though four were to accompany clients turning themselves in.

Craig Futterman of the University of Chicago Law School observed that “In Chicago, the police do not provide people with attorneys at the police station at the times they most need them: when they’re subject to interrogation…That’s what the Miranda warning is all about: the right to counsel while interrogated by police.” Though police have said that “any individual who wishes to consult a lawyer will not be interrogated until they have an opportunity to do so,” the Guardian notes that this would mean 3,500 people waived their right to an attorney.

Former top Obama aide and current Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, who presided over ⅔ of the arrests— 2,522 since he took office in 2011—has insisted that Chicago police “follow all the rules.” However, in addition to the lack of access to attorneys, first-hand accounts reveal a starkly different story.

In February, the Anti-Media reported on detainees held for marijuana, shackled to poles, and denied lawyers. Since the initial news broke that month, 118 arrests have been made. Charles Jones was arrested (for a second time) on March 17 after police officers broke in his door looking for a 5’8” man. Jones is 6’4”, but when officers—some masked— found a firearm in his air conditioning unit, they took him back to Homan Square. He was shackled to a pole in an “interrogation room” and his requests for a lawyer were denied over the course of six to eight hours (others claim to have had similar experiences while other allegations include sexual abuse, starvation, sensory deprivation, and beatings).

Jones suspects they conduct such arrests to extract information on drug dealers.

“The only reason you’re brought to Homan and Fillmore [the facility’s cross streets] is to extract information,” he said. “The police probably feel they need those covert operations because that’s the only way to get the intel they need instead of doing the good work – the hard work…It’s easy to just go grab someone, throw ’em somewhere – no food, no water, no access to the outside world, intimidating and threatening ’em.”

Jones’ wife and mother of his three children was unable to locate him once he was arrested, in spite of her slew of calls to police departments across the city. Jones is currently in the midst of suing the police department for a separate 2012 case where he claims he was charged for refusing to “give them information and cooperate with them.”

Rich Dressman, a white 50-year-old man, says he left town to evade pressure from police to act as an informant. “My life would be a lot easier if I gave them information,” he said. “I’d be home with a nice long shower and all that bullshit.”

Though police insist there is nothing disreputable about the facility, saying the square “merely house[s] undercover units,” the number and nature of arrests paint a markedly different reality. More people have been detained and charged at the formerly secret black site than were killed on 9/11, though such abuses are oftenjustified by the terrorist attacks that occurred that day (even as the Patriot Act and Homan arrests overwhelmingly focus on drug “crimes”). More people have been illegally detained at Homan than suspected terrorists at Guantanamo Bay, the globally infamous military torture facility scorned for flouting due process and holding innocent people for a decade. Guantanamo has been open longer than the span of released records from Homan Square.

That the Chicago police continued to arrest people—even after news of its abuses sparked widespread outrage—highlights the impunity with which they operate. That the numbers far surpass other outrageous figures demonstrates the United States’ increasingly misplaced priorities and disregard for the justice and freedom it claims to protect.

As Flint Taylor, who helped pressure Mayor Emanuel and the police to provide compensation to victims of police abuses said, “Hopefully, Chicago’s political leadership and its establishment media will finally take notice and stop collaborating to bury this story, so righteously championed by the Guardian, under the rug of denial and false ignorance.”

On August 6 “The Advisory Panel on the History of the 20th Century and on Japan’s Role and World Order in the 21st Century” submitted its report to Prime Minister Abe Shinzo. Abe established this panel in February to provide input for his forthcoming statement commemorating the 70^th anniversary of Japan’s wartime defeat. At the Advisory Panel press conference, members insisted that it is entirely up to Abe whether or not to apologize as his predecessors did in 1995 and 2005. All signs are that Abe will not say what needs to be said because he seeks to end what revisionists deride as Japan’s apology diplomacy and masochistic history.

Much is riding on what Abe says, and doesn’t say, as South Korea and China are especially sensitive to any perceived backsliding on Japan’s war responsibility and contrition. Japan finds itself isolated in East Asia over this history of colonial rule and imperial aggression and there are concerns among Japan’s neighbors that Abe’s rigid revisionist agenda will lead him to downplay Japan’s misdeeds.

The Advisory Panel is unexpectedly critical of Japan’s conduct in the 1930s and 1940s, condemning Japan’s “reckless war” and concluding, ”it is inaccurate to claim that Japan fought to liberate Asia as a matter of national policy.” It is an assessment that is bound to antagonize Abe and his supporters. Later in the report, however, there is homage to the unintentional consequences of the nation’s wartime regional rampage: “Whether or not Japan intended to liberate Asia, it did wind up promoting the independence of the colonies in Asia.”

Curiously, the panel could not come to a consensus about whether in fact Japan’s actions constituted aggression, and thus the report includes a footnote that states: 1) the definition of “aggression” has not been established under international law; 2) there is objection from a historical perspective to stating that the series of events from the Manchurian Incident onward constituted “aggression”; and 3) there is a sense of reluctance towards stating that only the actions of Japan constituted “aggression” while other countries were taking similar actions.

This caviling about Japanese military aggression may strike readers as bizarre, but as Akiko Hashimoto argues in her superb analysis of Japan’s history problem in The Long Defeat (2015), there are three main narratives about wartime Japan—heroes, victims and perpetrators-—revisionists are keen to marginalize the latter.(See also her article “Something Dreadful Happened in the Past”: War Stories for Children in Japanese Popular Culture The Asia-Pacific Journal, Vol. 13, Issue. 30, No. 1, July 27, 2015, http://japanfocus.org/-Akiko-Hashimoto/4349/article.html)

After vaguely noting that Japan’s reckless war “created many victims across wide areas”, the report goes into greater detail about the US firebombing and atomic bombing of Japanese cities and the horrors inflicted in Okinawa. From these accounts of Japan’s victimization, the report abruptly veers to discussion of Japanese colonial rule: “In the colonies, Japan acted counter to the tide of self-determination. Colonial rule became particularly harsh from the second half of the 1930s on. It must be said that the responsibilities of the Japanese government and military leaders from the 1930s and beyond are very serious indeed.”

Seoul has the most to object to in this report. There is a churlishly condescending tone toward Korean criticism of Japan’s desultory reckoning of colonial subjugation of the peninsula 1910-45, with repeated assertions that South Korean leaders have been too emotional and irrational. Japan emerges as blameless in provoking contemporary Korean antagonism over this shared past. President Park Geun-hye is lambasted for her hard-line views on history, but the panel shies from probing Abe’s inflammatory views on history and how these have undermined Japan’s regional relations. At the press conference, members argued that assessing Abe’s views was not part of the panel’s remit, but they did not hesitate to disparage current Chinese or Korean views on the shared past.

The Advisory Panel contends that Japan’s failure to achieve reconciliation with regional victims is not really Tokyo’s fault. Japan is often invidiously compared to Germany in terms of forthrightly facing the past and thereby achieving reconciliation, but the report contends that this was because Germany’s victims magnanimously responded “with a heart of tolerance”. But of course it is easier to be magnanimous, tolerant and future oriented when the perpetrator is not denying, downplaying, diluting, and otherwise shifting blame and responsibility, or glorifying and valorizing the wartime past, as well as resisting official compensation to victims, as Japan’s revisionists continually do. The report asks what are the differences in how victims in Europe and Asia have embraced reconciliation without probing the differences between the perpetrators’ stance on war responsibility, i.e. Germany’s unequivocal acceptance versus Japan’s incomplete, grudging approach.

In lavish understatement, the report concludes that, “it cannot be said that reconciliation with China and the Republic of Korea has been fully achieved.” Going forward requires “remorse over the past and reclosing the buttons done up incorrectly in the past.” But those buttons have proven quite tricky given the revisionists’ fumbling fingers.

Although President Park is disparaged for “pushing ahead with emotion-based diplomacy”, an allusion to her stress on the “comfort woman” issue, the report finds glimmers of hope in China’s stance on the issues: “While the history issue remains a major concern in present Japan-China relations, incumbent President Xi Jinping has clearly committed himself to the continuation of mutually beneficial relations based on common strategic interests.”

Abe will also find solace in the report’s fulsome support for his efforts to strengthen security relations with the US. These efforts are nevertheless why Abe is imploding in public opinion polls; a recent Nikkei poll finds cabinet support down 9 % in a month, slumping to 38% with 50% now expressing disapproval. This nosedive is primarily due to widespread opposition to Abe’s collective security legislation and the manner in which he is currently bulldozing it through the Diet. But the report reassures that such opposition is to be expected and that “Japan must not halt in its path of proactive contribution to peace.”

The public, however, has deep reservations not only about Abe’s aggressive tactics in forcing it through the Diet but also about the fact that Abe has been evasive in explaining under what circumstances Japan’s Self-Defense Forces might be dispatched overseas. Many Japanese are fearful that Japan will be dragged into war at Washington’s behest, taking to the streets to voice their opposition and staging mass anti-Abe rallies. Moreover, there is a consensus among constitutional scholars that the laws are unconstitutional. The public worries that Abe is seeking to bypass Article 9 of the constitution that imposes constraints on Japan’s military, a key proviso that is embraced as a touchstone of national identity and symbol of pacifism. The release of the report on August 6 is curious since it coincided with ceremonies commemorating the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, a day that reminds Japanese about the folly of war and the disastrous consequences of reckless leaders operating without constraints.

Jeff Kingston is the Director of Asian Studies, Temple University Japan. He is the editor of Natural Disaster and Nuclear Crisis in Japan: Response and Recovery after Japan’s 3/11, Routledge 2012 and Critical Issues in Contemporary Japan, Routledge 2014 and Asian Nationalism Reconsidered (Routledge 2015), and author of Contemporary Japan. (2^nd edition),Wiley 2013 and Asian Nationalism Since 1945 (Wiley 2016).

It is a story that is becoming all-too-common: parents provide permission for their daughters to receive HPV vaccines, believing it to be the “right” thing to do to keep their children healthy. But instead, the previously healthy girls suffer a serious illness after receiving the immunization.

This is the scenario that is increasingly playing out around the world. Girls are suffering a broad range of HPV vaccine side effects. Yet, government health officials seem dismissive of the evidence, insisting there is not enough scientific evidence to link the vaccine and documented illnesses in patients after immunization.

’Mysterious’ health symptoms connected to the HPV vaccine

The serious side effects observed in girls receiving HPV vaccinations is not confined to a single geographical area. In Denmark, the case of three girls who suffered serious medical conditions after receiving HPV vaccines was widely publicized. In a documentary in that country about the girls’ plight, it was noted that the three girls had one thing in common with thousands of girls around the world: all were healthy prior to receiving HPV vaccines.

In the case of the children featured in the Danish documentary, the girls suffered a number of serious, new medical conditions. While the girls received a comprehensive physical examination, no clear diagnosis was made. Unfortunately, similar cases in other countries also remain undiagnosed.

Most often, girls suffering symptoms after receiving the HPV vaccine reported feeling dizzy and often pass out. The vast majority report suffering from severe headache, which becomes chronic in some. They also report abdominal pain and nausea, along with odd muscle movements that cannot be controlled. Patients also report feeling overly tired.

No surprise: Government health officials ignore the problem

Warnings to governmental health officials continue to go unheeded, around the world. In Denmark, for example, several physicians had contacted the country’s health agency to warn of possible serious side effects from the vaccinations. Yet, the Danish Health and Medicines Authority did not admit having received any such notification during creation of the documentary featuring the three girls and their symptoms.

It is reported that in the UK, adverse reactions to the HPV vaccine far outnumber complications from other immunizations. In the past 10 years, there were over 8,000 reports of adverse reactions with over one-fourth documented as “serious.”

Health statistics reveal only a fraction of the problem

Sadly, the United Kingdom’s Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency states that such numbers are almost certainly lower than reality, due to the strong likelihood of under reporting. In fact, the agency believes it receives reports from only about 10 percent of those actually suffering adverse effects from the HPV vaccine.

Meanwhile, the HPV continues to be a recommended immunization for girls in the United States and other countries around the world. Recently, Japan withdrew its governmental recommendation for the HPV vaccine due to reported serious side effects. However, the vaccine is still widely available and the Japanese Pediatric Society still recommends its use.

The entire Danish documentary is available – at no cost – on YouTube with English subtitles: (video below)

HPV Vaccines: A Danish Documentary

http://www.naturalnews.com/050264_HPV_vaccines_Denmark_documentary.html
http://www.danmedj.dk/portal/page/portal/danmedj.dk/dmj_forside/PAST_ISSUE/2015/DMJ_2015_04/A5064
http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/thousands-of-teenage-girls-enduring-debilitating-illnesses-after-routine-school-cancer-vaccination-10286876.html

US federal, state, county or city authorities circumventing constitutional protections with de facto or de jure martial law based on exaggerated state of emergency conditions reveals police state America in plain sight – enforced against the nation’s most vulnerable, grievously abused, justified in demanding redress.

Killer cops murder Blacks in America with virtual impunity hundreds of times a year – on city streets, in rural areas, private homes, commercial spaces, jail cells among other places.

Ferguson, MO is Exhibit A. Last August, officer Darren Wilson murdered 18-year-old African-American Michael Brown – in cold blood without probable cause. Would he have shot or otherwise abused him if he was Caucasian – especially if he lived in a privileged neighborhood? Would he have been exonerated for murder? He’s one of hundreds of killer cops free to kill again with impunity.

Brown was unarmed. He threatened no one. He had no criminal record. Yet an independent autopsy showed he was shot six times – assassinated by a killer cop knowing he’d be unaccountable.

At the time, ACLU staff attorney Nusrat Choudhury said killing Brown raised disturbing questions about how often police brutalize unarmed African-American and Latino men in America. “(F)ar too often,” she stressed. What happened in Ferguson is epidemic nationwide with nothing done to stop it.

During an August 9 peaceful march in Ferguson commemorating Michael Brown’s murder a year ago, shots were fired. Police wounded 18-year-old Tyrone Harris – a good friend of Brown. He remains in critical condition following emergency surgery.

Both youths graduated together in the same Normandy High School class. Two other protesters were shot. Harris’ father said “(w)e think there’s a lot more to this than what’s being said.” The official police account is “all a bunch of lies.”

Witnesses told him his son was unarmed. He was “running for his life” when police shot him multiple times, the same brutality resulting in Brown’s death a year ago.

Harris clings to life precariously in intensive care. He committed no crimes. Yet county prosecutors outrageously charged him with 10 felony offenses – including shooting at a motor vehicle even though he had no gun.

Two days of nonviolent protests expressed justifiable anger over no redress from continued out-of-control police abuse (with likely more coming). Dozens of arrests were made. Cops attacked crowds violently – tear gas and pepper spray used against peaceful demonstrators.

St. Louis County executive Steve Stenger declared a state of emergency – circumventing rule of law principles, violating constitutional protections, authorizing police to “exercise all powers and duties necessary to preserve order, prevent crimes, and protect the life and property of our citizens” – code language giving them authority to crush legitimate activism for justice and kill with impunity.

Homeland Security officers were involved – collaborating with local police, part of Obama’s war on freedom, using legislative and street brutality tactics, including cold-blooded murder to suppress the constitutional right to petition government for redress of grievances.

On Monday, nonviolent demonstrators declared a “day of civil disobedience.” They marched from St. Louis’ Christ Church Episcopal Cathedral to the Thomas Eagleton federal courthouse.

Dozens formed a living chain – chanting “No justice, no peace.” “The people united shall never be defeated.” They expected police brutality, including multiple arrests.

Prominent academic/activist Cornel West was abused like a criminal, handcuffed and arrested. So were Black Lives Matter activists Deray McKesson and Johnetta Elzie for filming the peaceful protest.

Americans today are threatened by state terror, police state injustice, hot wars, financial ones, anti-populism, mass incarceration, erosion of fundamental rights, killer cops murdering with impunity, and increasing tyranny heading toward becoming full-blown.

Justifiable resistance more than ever is needed. Abuses at all governmental levels are too great to tolerate.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at [email protected].

His new book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.”

http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

Listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network.

It airs three times weekly: live on Sundays at 1PM Central time plus two prerecorded archived programs.

Scotland’s small-scale farmers have welcomed their government’s decision to prevent the growing of GM crops, aimed at enhancing the country’s ‘clean, green status’, among a coalition of green NGOs.

Farmers will not be allowed to grow genetically modified (GM) crops in Scotland, Rural Affairs Secretary Richard Lochhead announced over the weekend.

The Scottish Government intends to take advantage of new EU rules allowing countries to opt out of growing EU-authorised GM crops, he said, in effect making Scotland’s long-standing and widely supported moratorium on GMOS permanent.

“Scotland is known around the world for our beautiful natural environment – and banning growing genetically modified crops will protect and further enhance our clean, green status”, he said.

There is no evidence of significant demand for GM products by Scottish consumers and I am concerned that allowing GM crops to be grown in Scotland would damage our clean and green brand, thereby gambling with the future of our £14 billion food and drink sector.

The Scottish Government will shortly submit a request that Scotland is excluded from any European consents for the cultivation of GM crops, including the variety of genetically modified maize already approved and six other GM crops that are awaiting authorisation.

The risks outweigh any potential benefits

The move has been welcomed by the Scottish Crofting Federation, which represents the nation’s small-scale farmers, together with other civil society organisations who penned an open letter of support to the Scottish government:

We underline the precautionary principle that the Scottish Government upholds – that the potential risks from GMOs to public health and our environment outweigh any potential benefits of the technology. As stakeholders in Scotland’s food system, we recognise the importance of protecting and enhancing Scotland’s reputation for good, clean food.

We are aware that many of our major export customers have concerns about GM, while many EU member states including Germany and France are likely to join Scotland in opting out of GM food growing. We note that Scotland’s world-class seed potato industry cannot afford any risk to its reputation for high quality seed – which includes many blight resistant varieties developed through conventional breeding techniques.

The letter concludes with a critique of the effects of GM crops and the way they have been used, mainly in the US, Canada and South America, over the last 20 years. The technology, the NGOs say,

• concentrates power and control in the global food system, with a handful of companies dominating the market for seeds and pesticides
• makes small farmers run faster to stand still, increasing input costs for seed and herbicides while global commodity prices are falling
• reduces diversity of food, seeds and plants and the resilience of local food economies
• has stolen the limelight from other more viable, less risky scientific solutions for more sustainable modes of production and distribution of food.

Food for people – not a commodity for profit

They stress that they are “not against science” – their opposition arises because “with good reason we do not trust the claims made by corporations with a vested interest in controlling our food system.”

The letter also sets out a vision of agriculture very different to that of large scale commercial farming promoted by the UK government in England, not only as regards GMOs but in its broader purpose and philosophy.

We encourage the Scottish Government to build on this decision by supporting closer co-operation between Scotland’s farmers, growers, fisherfolk, and Scotland’s people to tackle the central challenge of ensuring that everyone can feed themselves and their family well, without degrading the environment.

“We want to see food for people – rather than food as a commodity – at the heart of Scotland’s vision for agriculture. Diversity of crops and food, farming with nature, not against nature, and short food chains between producers and citizens are the keys to Scotland becoming a good food nation – and a global contributor to fair and sustainable food for all.

As well as the Scottish Crofting Federation, signatories on the letter include Nourish Scotland, Friends of the Earth Scotland, Global Justice Now, Unite, Common Good Food, CommonWeal, Compassion in World Farming and Scotland’s Allotments and Gardens Society.

Standing out in favour of GMO crops was the National Farmers Union Scotland, whose president Allan Bowie said: “It is very disappointing. We thought they had possibly started to understand the potential benefits. The hope was to have open discussion and allow science to show the pros and cons for all of us to understand either the potential benefits or potential downsides. What we have now is that our competitors will get any benefits and we have to try and compete. It is rather naïve.”

But Richard Lochhead insisted that the move was in the interests of Scotland’s economy, consumers and farming sector: “The Scottish Government has long-standing concerns about GM crops – concerns that are shared by other European countries and consumers, and which should not be dismissed lightly.

I firmly believe that GM policy in Scotland should be guided by what’s best for our economy and our own agricultural sector rather than the priorities of others.

Image: Map showing Calais in relation to London and Paris

Island states often host regimes short on nerve and, if they be wealthy, compassion. Britain’s Calais problem is part manufacture, and part evasion. If UK Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond’s comments are anything to go by, the sceptred isle continues veering between land of refuge and hope, and gnawing fear about such things as living standards and sacred property. The British tradition of rights and liberties remains, as ever, a conservative one.

Hammond certainly did not mince what would have otherwise been ill chosen words. He has been eyeing the 3,000 refugees and “marauding” migrants who have gathered at the French port town of Calais. He has deemed it appropriate to note their “African” background, and their search for better “living standards”.

He has also been noting the grievances of Channel Tunnel operators, who cite incompetence on the part of British and French authorities. Other ports are similarly paying host. A sense that the refugees are about to pounce and enter Britain illegally has gotten reactionaries into quite a state. The death toll is rising.

When clarification was sought about Hammond’s position, things did not get much better. At a press conference in South Korea, he insisted on focusing on themes of dreaded locomotion.

“We have a significant number of people around the Calais areas moving in numbers. And because they are moving en masse in numbers they can pose a threat to the security of the Channel Tunnel, which was the context in which the question was asked.”

The image of arterial blockage, posing a security threat that kills the host, is palpably strong.

In this, he keeps company with the Prime Minister, David Cameron. In July, the entire issue of migrants preoccupied the emergency Cobra committee on disruptions to Channel ports. Cameron staked a claim to be the strongman here, promising to keep migrants from the ports, while fulminating that he had to break his vacation.

Then came a choice of words that was not so much Freudian slip as an all too evident revelation: Britain was besieged by enterprising, rapacious “swarms”. This came sufficiently close to the intemperate views of Nigel Farage of the UK Independence Party, who obsesses to his audiences about being “stuck on the motorway and [being] surrounded by swarms of potential migrants”. (Farage, being an opportunist, attempted to cover his tracks on this one, attacking Cameron for being too extreme at the end of July for remarks that seemed to reek of the UKIP touch.)

Few on the Tory frontbench seem willing to consider an international intervention that would involve British and French cooperation. Home Secretary Theresa May has attempted to use various “fast-track” detention schemes which have fallen foul of the law. A UN facilitated solution would, at least in some instrumental way, internationalise what is otherwise being done unilaterally. Instead, we are getting pugnacity and addled vitriol, the shadow boxing that proves how ineffectual the British stance actually is.

Conservative MP Andrew Percy has resorted to a historical blame game worthy of the school yard scuffle. The French, he snorts, did it. “The French are unable to guard against the infringements of our border. It is time we considered more radical options, including the use of the army.”

Tabloid hysteria has been ample, with headlines screaming of “the battle to secure Calais” and the pressing need to “send in the gurkhas”.[1] The latter impudent suggestion had to come from Kevin Hurley, the police and crime commissioner for Surrey, who reflects that age old tradition of presuming that those who do not abide by standard regulations must be criminal. “The Gurkhas are a highly respected and competent force, and are just around the corner. They could help ensure that our border is not breached.” Terrorists, invaders, refugees – differences don’t matter in the coalescing nonsense of security.

Yvette Cooper, shadow home secretary and candidate for the Labour leadership, is looking for the UN to disentangle Britain from the mess. Her suggestion is that the UN high commissioner for refugees (UNHCR) begin registering asylum applications of those encamped at Calais (Guardian, Aug 10). “The government’s impractical and frankly shameful response to Calais is unacceptable.”

Cooper, to brush up her credentials, is mindful of what happened under the last Labour government, when “a deal was hammered out to close Sangatte and process those living there to prevent the dangerous situation we are seeing now – people risking their lives tyring to enter the UK illegally.”[2]

The Guardian has editorialised on the subject of Calais at length, arguing for strategy over “swarms”.[3] Even the editors had to concede that the British holiday maker, or the residents of Kent “are entitled to expect some reassurance.” The comfort principle excludes other humans who may encroach, even if that remains a fiction of circumstance.

Demagoguery remains the easiest of substitutes, suspending the need to have vision, while embracing the hobgoblins of fear and calculation. Regional approaches to processing the claims of asylum seekers and refugees is not something many states are willing to take.

Conflation is far easier than subtle distinctions – the refugee, the migrant, and the asylum seeker, have all been cobbled together in the same dark, sinister matter, all violators of sovereignty and border security. Tory Britain is lifting the drawbridge.

Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne. Email:[email protected]

Notes

[1] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/immigration/11772155/Send-Army-to-halt-Calais-crisis-police-chief-says.html

[2] http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/aug/10/yvette-cooper-calls-un-intervention-escalating-calais-migrant-crisis

[3] http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jul/31/the-guardian-view-on-cameron-and-calais-strategy-not-swarms

Erdogan’s War on the Kurds has opened up yet another Pandora’s Box in the Mideast, with it looking ever more likely that the current conflict isn’t just a flash in the pan, but rather the first stages of a protracted campaign by both sides.

The first part of the article argues that this is indeed the case, and accordingly, it takes a proactive stance in analyzing the interests of the four main state players – Turkey, Israel, Iran, and the US – in order to game out the probable scenarios that might unfold in the coming couple of years. Part II then examines the four most likely ones (which follow somewhat of a sequential, intertwined logic) and then summarizes the strategic conclusions from the entire exercise, before concluding with a few closing thoughts about the topic.

Identifying The Interests

The first step in constructing accurate scenarios is to identify the guiding interests for each of the four examined actors – Turkey, Israel, Iran, and the US – so that one can understand their geostrategic imperatives in the developing Kurdish conflict:

Turkey:

The essence of Turkey’s position is that it is unenviably caught between two dueling dilemmas. As for the first one (elaborated more in-depth in the author’s earlier pieceon the topic), it deals with the competing trends of nationalist sentiment and anti-government expression, which are coming even more intensely to a head as a result of the anti-Kurdish campaign. Erdogan planned for the war to unleash an outpouring of nationalist support for his AKP party that would allow them to sweep any forthcoming snap elections and attain the parliamentary majority that he’s been hoping for, but he also unwittingly created a political pressure valve for growing anti-government tension that might spill over and ruin his electoral hopes. The Republican People’s Party opposition might team up with the Kurdish-affiliated People’s Democratic Party (either formally or tactically) and take votes away from AKP party and Nationalist Movement Party’s supporters disillusioned by Erdogan’s aggressive and domestically divisive policies, especially if the Kurdish campaign isn’t as rapidly successful as the President has planned for it to be. Should this occur, then it would embarrassingly deal a second devastating political defeat for Turkey’s leader and all but end whatever dreams he has of further transforming the country in accordance to his vision.

The second dilemma, meanwhile, is directly related to the first, in that it deals with the tactical aspects of the anti-Kurdish campaign that would have the strongest reverberations on public opinion, and thus, on their perception of the President and whether or not citizens will vote to support his party in any upcoming elections. In order for Erdogan to be in as militarily advantageous of a position as possible for launching a feared attack on the Syrian Arab Army and thus also maximizing his nationalist appeal in the country, he must first “finish what he started” with the Kurds in Turkey, Iraq, and Syria, or otherwise risk being bogged down to the point of having to abandon the entire anti-Syrian operation entirely. He could, of course, make a go for it regardless, but then he runs the very probable chance of an even more emboldened Kurdish uprising upsetting his rear guard defenses in southeast Turkey, and thus ‘stabbing him in the back’ while his most experienced and battle-hardened military forces are focused on attacking the Syrian Arab Army. The crux of this dilemma is that the longer any punitive (and if he intends to invade Syria and avoid an opportunistic rear guard attack, ‘tactically necessary’) anti-Kurdish operations are undertaken, and particularly if they’re met with lackluster success or even unexpectedly huge casualties, the more likely it is that support for Erdogan and his war will falter, thus negating the nationalist benefit that he hoped to receive from the war and transfer into political capital. As previously said, it can also offset the entire plan for invading Syria, too, which would place him in hot water with his American allies that are depending on him in the coming weeks.

Israel:

Israel’s plan for the Middle East as presented by Oded Yinon, an Israeli journalist and a former officer of the Foreign Ministry of Israel.

Tel Aviv’s interests in Turkish Kurdistan are very straightforward, and they pertain primarily to safeguarding the nearby BTC pipeline that supplies Israel with 40% of its oil needs. Kurdish militants recently attacked the line last week, and although causing scant material damage or service disruptions (it was scheduled in advance to be shut down this month for maintenance), it did raise questions about its overall vulnerability to repeat attacks if the Turkish-Kurdish War isn’t resolved soon. Still, Israel isn’t all that worried because it’s historically enjoyed warm relations with the Kurds, especially the ones in Iraq whose independence it publicly spoke out in favor of last summer. While the Kurds are somewhat of a disparate people in terms of their local languages and recent historical memory, it’s very possible that Israel can activate the goodwill its gained from the Iraqi-based members of the community (the ‘torch bearers’ of any possible independence) to expand its influence over their counterparts across the border, at least in order to receive (paid-for) guarantees that its strategic pipeline will remain safe from further attacks.

But this is Israel that’s being discussed, after all, and given its history of regional intrigue, there are other, deeper interests involved here as well, the main gist of which is the promotion of the Yinon Plan. In a nutshell, this relates to the physical destruction of the Muslim countries east of Israel’s borders through the support of secessionist identity divisions among their diverse populations. While not officially incorporating Turkey as part of its original plan, it’s quite foreseeable that the country would get sucked into it regardless as Tel Aviv tries to promote its plan for a ‘geopolitical Israel’ rising out of Kurdistan. This scenario will be described more in the next section, but the idea is simple enough – a new, transnational pro-Western stateemerging out of the borders of established ones in the heart of the Mideast would allow Israel and its American ally to project influence all around its frontier and further undermine Syria, Iraq, Iran, and, if it decides to pivot eastward, even Turkey. This ploy would thus help the West weaken the Resistance Arc between Damascus and Tehran (passing through Baghdad) that presents a serious impediment to the implementation of its hegemonic designs in the region.

Iran:

Interestingly enough, like Israel, Iran also has energy-motivated reasons that compel it to have a positive relationship with the Turkish Kurds, albeit of a different nature than Tel Aviv’s. No significant infrastructure has yet been developed between the two (save for the fledgling Tabriz-Ankara pipeline), but it’s the future prospects of such that are guiding Tehran’s decision makers in this matter. There’s excited talk in the EU that Iran could one day supply it with all the gas it wants via a linkup to the Southern Energy Corridor through the TANAP pipeline (itself a branch of BTC pipeline breaking off from Erzurum, incidentally the same place that the Kurds attacked last week). Taking matters even further, Iran might even be hoping to geographically facilitate the shipment of Turkmen gas exports to the EU as well, via a Turkmen-Iranian-Turkish pipeline that feeds into TANAP. Provoking such a juicy geopolitical forecast is that Turkey and Turkmenistan signed an agreement on energy cooperation earlier this year, and in a post-sanctions environment yet one in which the issue of Caspian delineation has yet to be settled, it would make a lot more sense for Ashgabat’s exports to traverse Iran en route to Turkey than to expensively go under the undefined Caspian and then detour through Azerbaijan and Georgia to get to the same destination.

It should also go without saying that in general, Iran wants a stable border with Turkey so as to facilitate real-sector economic trade between the two, and by extension, between it and the EU through the Anatolian transit state. This means that Iran can be expected to maintain positive relations with both Turkey and the Kurds, not wanting to incite either of them and advocating for a peaceful settlement (and perhaps even playing a mediation role) between the two. As optimistic as that may sound, however, it’s still not likely to happen in the near future (or at all, given the overall premise that the clashes are the opening part of a protracted campaign), so Iran’s going to have to balance its diplomatic initiatives with both of them in order to avoid upsetting the other. It would prefer for a united Turkey to continue into perpetuity as a stable and geographic facilitator of Iranian-Western trade, but the chaotic and somewhat uncontrollable processes unleashed by the US in the pursuit of its “New Middle East” might require a policy revision. This is because Iran is also home to a sizeable minority of Kurds itself, and upsetting that domestic community via statements and/or actions regarding their Turkish counterparts could be the trigger for a secessionist campaign inside the Islamic Republic (one which was hinted at during the early May ‘test run’ in Mahabad).

Map of Kurdistan

Iran is thus apprehensive about an independent Kurdistan in general (be it in Turkey, Iraq, or the combined Kurdish portions of both states), which is heightened by its fear that such an entity could become a pro-American irredentist irritant against it, but if it shows signs of being neutral towards or possibly even supportive of Iran (as was suggested by the author back in January), then Tehran could reluctantly accept its existence, although it might by no means be actively supportive of its armed struggle. One must always remember that Iran is in favor of stability around all of its borders, and that destabilization in its periphery, specifically in Turkey, is detrimental towards its grand strategy of achieving a peaceful and mutually prosperous Mideast. The Kurdish insurgency might also realistically complicate Iran’s plans to become a central node along China’s New Silk Road, because even if it ends soon enough with minimal border destabilization and negligible economic impact, the creation of an unreliable pro-American client state between Iran and Turkey would mean that the US could always play a Ukraine-like hand at having the geo-pivotal transit state interfere with gas and good shipments between the two. This is yet another geostrategic calculation that must be taken into consideration by Iran, and one which drives it to maintain a positive connection with Turkey’s Kurdish community no matter what the outcome of the latest war might eventually be.

US:

The US is playing a double-sided game between Turkey and Kurds, but it’s one in which it stands to benefit regardless of the outcome. The core of the matter is that the US overly supported Kurdish nationalists under the banner of fighting ISIL in order to pressure Turkey into a conventional invasion of Syria on Washington’s terms (incidentally, also under the cover of ‘fighting ISIL’, which has become the hegemon’s favored excuse for the latest round of regional aggression). Ankara didn’t bite the bait until recently, hoping to hold out as long as possible in order to procure the most favorable terms that it could prior its prospective ‘adventure’, but it turned out that Kurdish nationalism had somewhat unexpectedly (for Turkey) become too big too quickly for it to ignore, and the killing of two policemen by PKK militants in the aftermath of the suspicious ISIL-attributed Suruc suicide bombing necessitated an electioneering-minded military response by Erdogan.

The position of the US is in this conflict is Machiavellian to the max. It supports the Turks as they battle the PKK, but it’s also giving aid to the Syrian-based PYG Kurdish militia and the Kurdish Regional Government in Iraq, knowing full well that the training and weapons it provides will likely be funneled to their affiliated PKK partners in fighting Turkey. This circular logic isn’t incidental, as it’s all part of a larger plan by the US. One the one hand, it wants to see how far along Turkey can go in invading Syria, and when/if it hits a wall (be it with the Syrian Arab Army and/or the Kurds), it could then reverse its support for Ankara (ergo the semi-critical talk about a “proportionate response” in attacking the PKK) and try to turn all the Kurdish groups against it in order to begin the formal dismemberment of the Mideast and give birth to the ‘geopolitical Israel’ of Kurdistan.

Looked at in this way, the US is treating Erdogan as if he were a crazed and charging bull, and the Kurds are the red cape used to provoke him. Part of the latter might sustain some damage during the highly publicized event, but a master matador will never let his muleta get shredded (let alone himself impaled) as he patiently carries on with the long-running bull-killing spectacle. To say it more directly, the Kurds are the cannon fodder that the US has successfully used to lure Erdogan into Syria, and when he oversteps in some way or another (which seems to be inevitable at this point, as per the dueling dilemmas described earlier), the US plans to turn around and use the Kurds against him to inflict a crippling blow against Turkey that will lead to the creation of an independent Kurdistan. Therefore, the US is simply biding its time and watching how events unfold, knowing that its strategic intervention (or lack thereof) at any juncture of time can likely succeed in guiding the scenario towards one of its two anticipated win-win foreign policy victories, be it having Turkey conventionally invade Syria (with the US ignoring the Kurds’ plea for more covert support) or midwifing the birth of a pro-American Kurdish state (provided that the Kurds don’t cozy up too closely to Iran before then).

To be continued…

Andrew Korybko is the political analyst and journalist for Sputnik who currently lives and studies in Moscow, exclusively for ORIENTAL REVIEW.

Gaddafi officials still facing persecution four years after the imperialist-backed counter-revolution

A video released last week showing the beating and torture of Saadi Gaddafi is not an anomaly in contemporary Libya where the Pentagon and NATO waged a war of regime-change in 2011.

Saadi Gaddafi was shown tied up and being struck across the face and head. Sounds of other inmates being tortured could be heard by him during the violent interrogation process.

Later this former football player in Europe had his feet placed in a metal grip where he was struck repeatedly on his souls. Saadi Gaddafi was blindfolded during the process of torture conducted by several men wearing uniforms.

This stark illustration of life under the neo-colonial rebels in Libya is a direct result of the war of regime-change initiated four years ago in the eastern city of Benghazi.

The situation in Libya is aggravated by the lack of any consistent legal, judicial or political system. Various militias which were armed and funded by the United States and NATO still patrol the cities, towns and villages across the country harassing, robbing, accosting and murdering civilians.

Also due to the social and economic impact of the war against Libya, the country is totally incapable of addressing the burgeoning migration crisis in North Africa. Thousands of African, Middle Eastern and Asians migrants have died this year off the coast of North Africa in the Mediterranean.

Human traffickers lure and load migrants onto rickety vessels in an often tragic quest for asylum in Europe. Obviously the currently divided regimes and militias based in Libya lack the capacity to halt this practice or are profiting from this human tragedy.

A State of Lawlessness and Deprivation

In addition to the documentation of torture, several high-level officials of the ousted Jamahiriya government under Muammar Gaddafi were sentenced to death, including Seif al-Islam, by a court system that has no creditably in regard to due process.

A highly questionable Libyan court on July 28 sentenced Muammar Gaddafi’s heir apparent and son, Saif al-Islam, and eight others to death over alleged war crimes including the killings of protesters during the 2011 counter-revolution that was funded and coordinated by the imperialist countries and their allies.

These former officials of the Jamahiriya system under Gaddafi were sentenced to execution by firing squad. Some of these previous leaders include former intelligence director Abdullah al-Senussi and ex-prime minister Baghdadi al-Mahmoudi.

Legal proceedings in their cases were not subject to transparency so there is no indication what real evidence was presented against the defendants. Thousands of former government officials and supporters have been locked in camps and prisons for the last four years.

The current regime that is ostensibly in control of the capital of Tripoli is backed up by the Libya Dawn militia which emanates from Misrata, where some of the most violent and racist rebels were based during the 2011 war. Another regime which is recognized by the imperialist states is headquarters at a hotel in the eastern city of Tobruk.

Although Seif al-Islam was sentenced to death by a court in Tripoli, he was not present during the hearing that condemned him. This prisoner is being held by another militia in Zintan.

Even the Human Rights Watch (HRW) organization based in New York City, which said virtually nothing during the imperialist war against Libya in 2011, when nearly 10,000 bombs were dropped on the country, and militias carried out indiscriminate attacks against officials and civilians, resulting in 50,000-100,000 deaths, has spoken out against the show trials, convictions and sentencings.

Joe Stork, Deputy Director for North Africa and the Middle East of HRW said in a statement on July 28 that “There are serious questions about whether judges and prosecutors can be truly independent where utter lawlessness prevails and certain groups are unashamedly shielded from justice. This trial was held in the midst of an armed conflict and a country divided by war where impunity has become the norm.”

The Hague-based International Criminal Court (ICC) had filed charges against Muammar Gaddafi, Saif al-Islam and Abdullah al-Senussi during the war waged by the Libyan people to defend their country against the imperialist onslaught. Later the ICC in 2013 granted the Libyan rebels the right prosecute the former governmental officials despite their utter failure to demonstrate the capacity to conduct such a highly-politicized trial.

Libya, which was once the most prosperous state in Africa, has fallen into economic decline since the war of 2011. The enormous oil reserves inside the country are now a source of conflict among the various militia groups.

Unemployment and poverty are widespread while women, migrants and people of various Muslim and Christian communities face beatings, bombings and murder. Neighboring states such as Tunisia and Egypt have closed border crossings and are engaged in military efforts against the rising presence of the Islamic State and other rebel organizations.

Pro-Gaddafi Demonstrations Held in Benghazi

Meanwhile a pro-Gaddafi demonstration was held on August 4 in Benghazi, the birthplace of the counter-revolution of 2011. This protest was broken up immediately through gunfire scattering the crowd.

According to a recent article published by the Guardian, such is the despair with the counter-revolution, “in the past few days small numbers of Libyans have demonstrated in several cities, including Benghazi, holding up pictures of Saif and chanting: ‘Zintan, Zintan, free Saif al-Islam.’”

Due to the repressive atmosphere inside the country this is a rare occurrence indeed.

Supporters of the former government have been banned from involvement in political activity in Libya. Efforts to rehabilitate the image of the rebel regimes in the country have failed and even officials of the same imperialist states that overthrew Gaddafi have been forced to acknowledge the chaos prevailing since 2011.

U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens and several Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) operatives were killed in an attack on a compound in Benghazi during September 2012. The-then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who played a pivotal role in the war against Libya has never been seriously questioned about her role in the overthrow and assassination of Gaddafi although she is currently running for the Democratic Party nomination for the presidency of the U.S. In addition, there are questions lingering over the attacks on the U.S. compound in September 2012 and what Clinton actually knew about the incident.

More Negotiations Planned to End Chaos

The United Nations is convening a new round of talks attempting to stabilize the chaotic situation by bringing together the divided rebel groups that were empowered by the U.S. and NATO.

These talks, the latest in a series of failed efforts, were scheduled to begin on August 10. Nonetheless difficulties arose even before the negotiations could begin.

The Latin American Herald Tribune reported “The United Nations confirmed on Monday (August 10) that negotiations between rival Libyan political factions, which were scheduled to start in Geneva on Monday, have been postponed until Tuesday, according to a U.N. spokesperson in Geneva. In a related development, the U.N. special representative and head of the United Nations Support Mission in Libya, Bernardino Leon, has not yet arrived in Geneva.”

This same article goes on saying “Neither of the Libyan political delegations, each from its own autonomous government, has arrived in Geneva, while it is unclear if they are still willing to participate in peace talks. The new round of negotiations was announced last week following a series of consultations conducted by Leon with representatives of the main Libyan factions, while around 30 delegates were expected to participate.”

There can be no resolution to the Libyan quagmire until the people are united under a political program designed to place the country back on a trajectory of national sovereignty and anti-imperialism. The western imperialist states which destroyed Libya cannot put the country back together. This enormous task can only be carried out by the people of Libya themselves in solidarity and unity with other progressive forces throughout the regio

In this analysis, the author definitively explains collective life capital as the missing base of the economy under systemic attack by life-blind market globalisation, and exactly defines the life-value standards and compass to steer out of a cumulatively eco-genocidal disorder to real economic sustainability.

Sometimes value assumptions are so deeply ingrained they govern thought automatically. For example, “Columbus discovered America” presupposes that only Europeans exist. But who notices the deep false assumption? A more systemic example is that all values are assumed as money values so that life value itself is only what people are willing to pay for. Private money gain or loss is the ruling substance, yardstick and unit of account of all worth. Life value is assumed as what money can buy – the fundamental premise of marginal utility theory.

What is not recognised is that this understanding of ‘the economy’ is life-blind in principle. There are no life coordinates at any moment of money-value exchanges. There is no life need in the economy, only market demand. They are falsely equated so that life necessity at any level – even of climate stability or green-space – is abstracted out. The accumulating life-ground crash going on underneath is thus absurdly conceived as an economic “externality”.

The Global Life Capital Crash

When acquiring money value in exchange is all that matters, it and not life value decide the life and death, health or morbidity of societies and individuals. “All must compete in the global market, or not survive”. Underneath this ever more frenetic competition to stay above water for most and to gain ever more for few, a fatal problem of the real economy and the species itself grows vast and unseen.

The air, soil and water all cumulatively degrade. The climates and oceans destabilise to greater extremes. Species become extinct at spasm rates across continents. Pollution cycles and volumes increase to endanger life systems at all levels from sea bottoms to insectivores. The sun becomes dangerous to play in and children grow ever more unfit. Public sectors and services are defunded and privatised in every domain while tax evasions of the rich multiply in forms and amounts. The global food system produces more and more disabling and contaminated junk without nutritional value as non-contagious diseases multiply to the world’s biggest killer with only symptom cures. The global financial system ceases to function for productive investment in life capital and goods. Perhaps most dismally, the vocational future of the next generation is driven to collapse.

Every one of these degenerate trends are grave forms of collective life capital loss and destruction – the real bottom line of the wealth of humanity and the world. They are the lost base of the economy – the life value stock that produces more life value stock without loss and with cumulative gain through time. This life capital base of the real economy is for the first time in history systemically run down and poisoned. Always however more money sequences, commodities, profits and wastes are produced, and bizarrely assumed as “economic activities”. Life-coherent regulation to save the real base of the economy is repudiated as “too costly” or “anti-business”.

Every one of these degenerate trends are grave forms of collective life capital loss and destruction – the real bottom line of the wealth of humanity and the world.

Even now more than half way through the liquidation, depletion, poisoning and exhaustion of natural and social life support systems of humanity and the planet, the common life capital of all of them is blocked out of economic theory, practice and accounts. Only money exchanges and results count, and only if private profits are served is action normally taken. This is the insanity of the system. What is called ‘Economics’ is like the medieval Church denying the material reality on the other side of Galileo’s telescope, but far vaster in blindness and eco-genocidal consequences.

Re-Setting to Collective Life Capital as the Economic Base of all Value

There is no real value in the economy that is not life value. This is a self-evident truth, but not recognised in the world where any value is the price it can get. But people do come to understand that junk foods or cigarettes that dispose their consumers to ill-being and disease are not real values. They come to ground in life value instead. But what is it? The objective ground, standard and measure of life-value can be stated in three basic philosophical steps. They provide us with the life-value compass we require in steering any rational economic or material course or life:

(1) all value whatever is life value,
(2) good versus bad equals the extent to which life is more coherently enabled versus disabled, by
(3) greater/lesser ranges or capacities of thought, felt being and action through time.

For example, the collective life capital of the world’s water in planetary hydrological cycles or a community’s clean water supply through time is a great, essential and foundational good to the extent that it enables all people’s lives, all of which are reduced or destroyed in proportion to their deprivation of it. Life capital and the life value it bears is no more a matter of opinion than “sufficient water/nutrition/heat/waste-disposal cycle/space to move in” are opinions. The necessity of the life values and goods that life capital produces here is an objective matter.

Collective life capital refers to all universal life-value bases. Natural cycles and social constructions work together to sufficiently provide them – the ultimate substance of a real economy. We can tell thus how well or badly an economy does by how it suffices to reproduce and develop the material life goods of its members. The universal life necessities it must provide for are always that without which life capacities are diminished or destroyed in proportion to their loss – the criterion of all economic necessity and goods. Nordic economies do relatively well here, the US poorly for 40% of the population (although they are richer in average per-capita money terms). Collective life capital development is the rational measure of a real economy – what produces and reproduces life goods, not priced bads, through generational time.

These real goods include not only those necessities defined above, but more generally all the evolved social constructs that distinguish human from non-human lives – language in all forms of symbolic transmission with knowledge as the ultimate collective life capital of human evolution. Yet this ever advancing life capital base is also under threat by corporate copyright closure to transmission and silos of commercial expertise as well as mass media with no criterion of information, entertainments for sale in place of understanding, and – in general – what drives them all, transnational private money sequences multiplying to more as an end in itself. Here the truth is what sells, even if its mass production kills tens of millions of people a year.

Other evolved collective life capital formations are similarly at risk – life -protective laws and their enforcement, for example. They are widely dismantled by radical de-regulation of borderless money sequences multiplying through organic, social and ecological life hosts with no life standards to govern their “freedom from government intervention”.

The Underlying Equations of the Money-Sequence Growth System

The organising principles of this system can be laid bare in five steps. The first is already implicit in every textbook and corporate charter as primary axiom. Yet the implications that follow from it are not faced or discussed. They are avoided by myriad layers of rationalisation:

Rationality = Self-Maximising Choice

= Always More Money-Value for Self is Good
= Self-Multiplying Sequences of Ever More Money to the Top
= the Ruling Growth System with No Committed Life Functions
= All Else is Disposable Means to this Multiplying Money-Sequence Growth

Sustaining this unexamined but ruling inner code is a master superstition: that purely self-maximising atomic selves in the market necessitate the best of possible worlds by an invisible hand of competition. This is the essence of the global market ethic and religion. But since life costs do not compute, this system’s operations are consistent with destroying life support systems by their multiplying demand growth. The “optimum” is at best true for private money costs of investors and consumers. This is why it appears true. But this selective case ignores all else, including all collective life capital bases and evolved planetary life itself. Their cumulative collapse is proof of the ultimate fatal error built into the reigning doctrine.

While people still blame population growth for such cumulative destruction of the life bases of the evolved human and ecological world, they ignore the facts and actual causal pattern. Population rates have declined by over half to negative growth in the most developed societies, while global money demand multiplies far faster and exponentially to propel every degenerate trend of collective life capital reported above. The catastrophic trends are not connected or seen within this thought system because they demonstrate its eco-
genocidal failure.

Revealingly, everything that makes a society liveable is excluded from the ruling value calculus – life-protective laws including sufficient minimum wages and environmental regulations, common water and sewage systems for all, free movement pathways and life spaces without price, non-profit healthcare and disease-prevention by public institution, public income security from disemployment, old age and disability, primary to higher education without unpayable debts, family housing, food and life means assistance for children lacking parental money, public libraries and arts facilities with accessible books, films and works of art; and all ecological life support systems except as they can maximise profit at least cost to investors.

As the Invisible Hand is Life-Blind, So is the Market God

What is least of all seen is that all this collective life capital devastation is in perfect fulfillment of the invisible hand of the market. Priced commodity supply by private enterprises meeting private demand of those with money to spend is the ultimate law of the system. Even eco-genocide is not a problem for it. This is why the oceans, rivers, aquifers, coral reefs, and fisheries can be run down and polluted without government regulation to protect them, why the forests and arable soil are exhausted by transnational factory-industrial farming without controls, why hydrological cycles can be destabilised without emission regulation, why the sun’s rays turn toxic and the very food cycles of the planet and humanity are poisoned, and why ever larger majorities are without life security in the world.

Still societies are everywhere ‘restructured’ by ‘austerely programmes’ to hasten this transformation of humanity and the world into commodities, profits, wastes and desperation – a condition in which the equivalent of the price of a cup of coffee to is proclaimed to “lift millions out of poverty”. Leading the hollowing-out dispossession and ruin of social and ecological life hosts is a private bank system creating tidal notes of bets, credit and debt without legal tender, and partnering with transnational corporations in predation of local economies across the world.

As on the organic level where the cell community does not recognise the uncontrolled multiplication of ever grosser cancer cells devouring the life-host, so too here. An invasively multiplying system of de-regulated transnational money demand crosses borders at will in tidal flows borne by untouchable corporate investment vehicles with no committed life function and unlimited rights to exploit and move on with the lifeblood of economies controlled in nano-seconds by private banknotes of highly leveraged demand.

Re-Grounding in Collective Life Capital: the Missing Link and Base across Divisions

Every human life suffers and degenerates towards disease and death without the universal life necessities no economic theory recognises: breathable and unpolluted air, clean water and waste cycles, nourishing food and drink, protective living space, supportive love, healthcare when needed, a life-coherent environment, symbolic interaction, and meaningful work to perform. All life goods are found here. All are measurable in sufficiency across cases. All are now degraded, polluted or perverted by a private transnational money-sequence system. Where there is exception, there is life value and ground.

Collective life capital is the long-missing principle of the common interest beneath the devastation. It goes deeper than class, race, gender, culture or individual differences, and includes past as well as future generations by definition. It supersedes ruinous man-nature and economy-environment splits, and cannot in principle go wrong. Obviously a real economy would regulate for life capital conservation and advance, with money demand as the means not the driver. In this evolutionary re-set, the rules are as simple as they are self-evident once seen. There are always: (1) life value regulators from start to finish, (2) production of more life value capacity through generational time, (3) life-value measure to tell greater from lesser in any domain by margins of life capacity loss or gain, (4) cumulative life gain always the organising goal, and (5) the meta principle that the more coherently inclusive any decision or action is in enabling life capacities, the better it always is for collective life capital and the world.

What misleads all is the opposite direction of the global corporate commodity and money-sequence system which captive states increasingly subsidise, de-regulate, privatise and militarily enforce in public-relations masks. But the moving lines of the global war between the life-blind and the life-serving economy form the fateful emergent choice space of the species.

Professor John McMurtry is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada whose work is translated from Latin America to Japan. He is the author of the three-volume Philosophy and World Problems published by UNESCO’s Encyclopedia of Life Support Systems (EOLSS), and his last book is The Cancer Stage of Capitalism/ from Crisis to Cure.

Image: MV Mavi Marmara, by OntheWay (CC BY-SA 2.0)

GAZA, OCCUPIED PALESTINE — Mint Press News‘ “Behind the Headline” series hosted by Mnar Muhawesh conducted an exclusive interview with Kevin Neish, survivor of the latest Freedom Flotilla aid ship. The Floatilla was headed to the besieged Gaza Strip when it was attacked and hijacked by Israeli soldiers in international waters.

It has been one year since Israel waged a war against the Gaza Strip in 2014 under Operation Protective Edge. Over 2,000 Palestinians were killed including over 500 children. The majority of victims were civilians and not Hamas fighters, whereas Israel’s casualties were mostly invading soldiers with less than five civilian casualties including the three kidnapped teens. Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were left homeless and severe damage to essential infrastructure was damaged or destroyed. Gaza is often called the world’s largest open air prison.

Israeli soldiers of conscience anonymously blew the whistle on how they received order after order to deliberately target civilians without cause, challenging the mainstream media’s “human shields” myth. Israel had leveled entire towns and villages within Gaza. After all the bloodshed and destruction, Israel admitted that no one from Hamaswere responsible for the 3 kidnapped Israeli teens after all. Netanyahu purposefully withheld the information from the grieving victims’ parentsso that his government could mass murder Palestinians.

With estimates of rebuilding Gaza to its prior state being as high as 100 years, activists have taken it upon themselves to bring aid to Gaza since Israel’s blockade keeps out essential items for medicine, shelter, infrastructure, and food. A total of three Freedom Floatillas have set sail in attempts to break the blockade. Israel’s wanton, unprovoked and inhuman violence was exposed to the world. On the first voyage, 10 unarmed international aid workers did not return home as they were brutally murdered by IDF soldiers, some execution style.

Kevin Neish was on the 1st and 3rd Floatillas and helped to photograph the violence and many of the bodies of dead activists who just wanted to make life better for those who experience this type of violence on a daily basis for the past 60 years of the Israeli occupation.

In initial reports of the capture of the most recent Floatilla, the IDF lied and said they boarded the ship non-violently in an attempt to appear as if their behavior of non-violently breaking international law is a step up from murdering unarmed activists. Neish and other activists tell a different story of a hostile takeover of the ship, tasering, and illegal detention. This takeover occurred in international waters, proving Israel’s disregard for international law.

Like last time, Neish captured footage of the illegal raid and will once again present it to the International Criminal Court. He was detained in Israel for several days afterward and was abused by Israeli soldiers. IDF prison guards placed their own fecal matter on towels in the prison shower that Neish had hoped to use to dry himself.

Neish mentioned that the boat used for the Freedom Floatilla was of Swedish national origin, where the government recognized the state of Palestine. The ship did intend to legally enter the state of Palestine, instead of illegally entering Israel as the IDF claims. Also, Neish noted that Israel attacking the ship is tantamount to an act of war against Swedish soil.

The ICC dismissed the original case of the 10 murders on the first Floatilla, even though they admitted it was a war crime. The current appeal now has a much larger base of evidence including the legal equivalent of invading Swedish soil. If the ICC rejects it again, it will certainly bring up questions about the legitimacy & neutrality of the ICC, as if Israel’s blatant war crimes against Gaza aren’t sufficient grounds for international war crimes prosecution at The Hague.

To watch the full interview, click here.

Mint Press News is an independent watchdog journalism organization that provides issue-based original reporting, in-depth investigations, and thoughtful analysis of the most pressing topics facing our nation. We focus our coverage on issues relating to the effects of special interest groups, big business and lobbying efforts and how they shape policies at home and abroad, including American foreign policy. Through the lens of social justice and human rights, we report on how these dynamics drive our foreign affairs and impact the world, and examine the effects they have on our democracy and freedoms as defined by the constitution.

August 11, 1965 represented a turning point in the struggle for African American liberation

Just five days after the signing of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the Watts Rebellion erupted lasting several days.

Coming out of the Selma campaign, the-then United States Democratic President Lyndon B. Johnson was forced to introduce legislation designed to ensure the right to the franchise for African Americans living in the South and other regions of the country.

Nonetheless, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the subsequent Voting Rights legislation the following year was not nearly enough to assuage the African American people in their quest for full equality and self-determination. Unemployment, poverty, racist violence and substandard education fueled the anger of working class and poor youth throughout the urban and rural areas of the U.S.

As early as May 11, 1963 in Birmingham, an often forgotten rebellion occurred in the midst of the largely nonviolent struggle to break down legalized segregation. In 1964, a series of violent outbreaks occurred in the Kensington section of Philadelphia, Harlem New York, and several cities in New Jersey.

Malcolm X, El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz, broke with the Nation of Islam in March 1964 and later formed the Organization of Afro-American Unity (OAAU) calling for a revolutionary organization urging self-defense against racist violence and international solidarity with the African and Middle Eastern independence movements and progressive governments.

Contributing to the loss of faith in the Democratic Party, the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP), an independent organization which challenged the seating of the racist Democratic Party delegates at the national convention that year in Atlantic City, was refused recognition despite its mobilization and organization of tens of thousands of African American workers, youth and farmers throughout that racist state. Mrs. Fannie Lou Hamer, vice-chair of the MFDP, delivered an impassioned plea to the credentials committee of the Democratic national convention documenting the horrors under which the African American people of Mississippi were living under in 1964.

However, the Johnson administration utilizing Minnesota Senator Hubert Humphrey who became his running mate and the-then Minnesota Attorney General Walter Mondale sought to convince the MFDP to accept two seats at-large on the promise that segregated party delegations would not be allowed at the next convention in 1968. The compromise was rejected by the MFDP although Johnson went on to win the presidential elections against Barry Goldwater by a landslide that November.

Watts Changed the Course of History

On August 11 the rebellion in Los Angeles was sparked by police harassment of an African American motorist and his family. Underlying the rebellion was the continuing national oppression and the failure of Civil Rights laws to ensure full political and economic rights to the Black masses.

This rebellion was ignited by a very common incident on August 11, 1965 when Marquette Frye, an African American youth and his brother, was stopped and later arrested by Lee W. Minikus, a white California Highway Patrolman. Minikus said that Frye was suspected of being under the influence of alcohol and resisted arrest. Soon his mother came on the scene and moved in to protect her sons who were being accosted by the cops.

In a matter of minutes a crowd of people gathered at the scene of Frye’s arrest on Avalon and 116^th Street. The decades-long strained relations between police officers and the community exploded in a confrontation.

This skirmish prompted by Frye’s arrest soon spread throughout the area centered in the commercial district of Watts, which at the time was an extremely impoverished African American area in South Central Los Angeles. During the course of the next week, tens of thousands of people took to the streets overturning and burning automobiles, liberating and destroying supermarkets, liquor stores, retail outlets, and pawnshops.

A week-long rebellion in Los Angeles required over 14,000 California National Guard troops mobilized across a curfew zone covering forty-five miles to restore stability. The rebellion resulted in the loss of thirty-four lives, and more than one thousand reported injuries.

Four thousand people were arrested before order was restored on August 17. Over the period of the rebellion, elected officials and law-enforcement agencies promoted the notion that the unrest was the result “outside agitators.”

Nonetheless, the McCone study, commissioned by California Governor Pat Brown, discovered what the African American community had known for years: that the rebellion was the direct outcome of the people’s subjection to high unemployment rates, substandard housing, and inadequate schools. Despite the McCone Commission study’s findings following the rebellion, municipal and state officials systematically refused to reform police-community relations as well as create the conditions for the social and economic advancement of African Americans living in the Watts area.

According to the website blackpast.com, “In spite of the protest, the Watts Rebellion did not significantly improve the lives of the community’s Black population. While the revolt inspired the federal government to implement programs to address unemployment, education, healthcare, and housing under Lyndon B. Johnson’s ‘War on Poverty,’ much of the money allocated for these programs was eventually absorbed by the Vietnam War. Today most of the population of Watts is Latino with many residents from the Central American countries of El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras. Although the population has changed, many of the issues of poverty, alienation and discrimination still plague the community today.”

The Legacy of the Watts Rebellion

The Watts Rebellion was the largest of such an outbreak led by African Americans up until that time. Watts was followed by hundreds of other rebellions taking place during the years of 1965-1970 throughout the U.S.

In 1966, Black Power became the rallying cry of millions stemming from the “March Against Fear” through Mississippi in June of that year. Organizers for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) such as Stokely Carmichael (later known as Kwame Ture), H. Rap Brown (later Jamil Abdullah al-Amin) and Willie Ricks (Mukassa Dada) placed greater emphasis on self-determination, Black Nationalism and Pan-Africanism.

Thousands of African Americans were elected to public office and millions entered higher educational institutions and employment categories where they had been previously excluded. Nonetheless, the fundamental problems of racial capitalism and national oppression remained entrenched.

When the world economic system began a massive restructuring during the mid-to-late 1970s, many of the gains won through the Civil Rights, Black Power and Women’s Movements were eroded. By the first decade of the 21^st Century affirmative action programs were outlawed in various states throughout the U.S. The downsizing of educational and public systems of governance disproportionately impacted the oppressed communities since it was in these sectors of the economy that the most profound advances had been made.

Out of these rebellions came an emphasis on revolutionary politics, armed struggle and self-determination. It was only after the urban rebellions that any serious movement towards affirmative action, electoral reform and community control were enacted.

Significance of Watts in 2015

Today urban rebellion remains a key element in the struggle of the African American people against national oppression and economic exploitation. Since 2012, with the vigilante killing of Trevon Martin and the resultant acquittal of George Zimmerman, a rising consciousness and intolerance for racism has been rapidly accelerating.

When 18-year-old Michael Brown was gunned down by Darren Wilson on August 9, 2014, a rebellion erupted in Ferguson, Missouri, prompting mass demonstrations throughout the U.S. and around the world. Another rebellion in Baltimore during late April of this year, further illustrated the reemerging militant character of the African American people.

These rebellions and demonstrations must be organized into an independent revolutionary movement. The U.S. capitalist system fundamentally has nothing to offer oppressed youth in the way of jobs, economic opportunities, quality education and decent housing.

The plight of African Americans and other oppressed nations have not been addressed at all by the current administration of President Barack Obama. Presidential candidates for the Democratic and Republican nominations are conveniently sidestepping the question of the national oppression of the people of color communities.

Such a political atmosphere provides vast avenues of opportunity for a revolutionary movement to organize these constituencies in opposition to the ruling class. The unrest in Ferguson surrounding the first anniversary of the killing of Michael Brown illustrates that people are ready to fight and only needs the effective organization to give expression to their social and political aspirations.

Do you remember when real reporters existed? Those were the days before the Clinton regime concentrated the media into a few hands and turned the media into a Ministry of Propaganda, a tool of Big Brother. The false reality in which Americans live extends into economic life. Last Friday’s employment report was a continuation of a long string of bad news spun into good news. The media repeats two numbers as if they mean something—the monthly payroll jobs gains and the unemployment rate—and ignores the numbers that show the continuing multi-year decline in employment opportunities while the economy is allegedly recovering.

The so-called recovery is based on the U.3 measure of the unemployment rate. This measure does not include any unemployed person who has become discouraged from the inability to find a job and has not looked for a job in four weeks. The U.3 measure of unemployment only includes the still hopeful who think they will find a job.

The government has a second official measure of unemployment, U.6. This measure, seldom reported, includes among the unemployed those who have been discouraged for less than one year. This official measure is double the 5.3% U.3 measure. What does it mean that the unemployment rate is over 10% after six years of alleged economic recovery?

In 1994 the Clinton regime stopped counting long-term discouraged workers as unemployed. Clinton wanted his economy to look better than Reagan’s, so he ceased counting the long-term discouraged workers that were part of Reagan’s unemployment rate. John Williams (shadowstats.com) continues to measure the long-term discouraged with the official methodology of that time, and when these unemployed are included, the US rate of unemployment as of July 2015 is 23%, several times higher than during the recession with which Fed chairman Paul Volcker greeted the Reagan presidency.

An unemployment rate of 23% gives economic recovery a new meaning. It has been eighty-five years since the Great Depression, and the US economy is in economic recovery with an unemployment rate close to that of the Great Depression.

The labor force participation rate has declined over the “recovery” that allegedly began in June 2009 and continues today. This is highly unusual. Normally, as an economy recovers jobs rebound, and people flock into the labor force. Based on what he was told by his economic advisors, President Obama attributed the decline in the participation rate to baby boomers taking retirement. In actual fact, over the so-called recovery, job growth has been primarily among those 55 years of age and older. For example, all of the July payroll jobs gains were accounted for by those 55 and older. Those Americans of prime working age (25 to 54 years old) lost 131,000 jobs in July.

Over the previous year (July 2014 — July 2015), those in the age group 55 and older gained 1,554,000 jobs. Youth, 16-18 and 20-24, lost 887,000 and 489,000 jobs.

Today there are 4,000,000 fewer jobs for Americans aged 25 to 54 than in December 2007. From 2009 to 2013, Americans in this age group were down 6,000,000 jobs. Those years of alleged economic recovery apparently bypassed Americans of prime working age.

As of July 2015, the US has 27,265,000 people with part-time jobs, of whom 6,300,000 or 23% are working part-time because they cannot find full time jobs. There are 7,124,000 Americans who hold multiple part-time jobs in order to make ends meet, an increase of 337,000 from a year ago.

The young cannot form households on the basis of part-time jobs, but retirees take these jobs in order to provide the missing income on their savings from the Federal Reserve’s zero interest rate policy, which is keyed toward supporting the balance sheets of a handful of giant banks, whose executives control the US Treasury and Federal Reserve. With so many manufacturing and tradable professional skill jobs, such as software engineering, offshored to China and India, professional careers are disappearing in the US.

The most lucrative jobs in America involve running Wall Street scams, lobbying for private interest groups, for which former members of the House, Senate, and executive branch are preferred, and producing schemes for the enrichment of think-tank donors, which, masquerading as public policy, can become law.

The claimed payroll jobs for July are in the usual categories familiar to us month after month year after year. They are domestic service jobs—waitresses and bartenders, retail clerks, transportation, warehousing, finance and insurance, health care and social assistance. Nothing to export in order to pay for massive imports. With scant growth in real median family incomes, as savings are drawn down and credit used up, even the sales part of the economy will falter.

Clearly, this is not an economy that has a future.

But you would never know that from listening to the financial media or reading the New York Times business section or the Wall Street Journal.

When I was a Wall Street Journal editor, the deplorable condition of the US economy would have been front page news.

El pasado 24 de julio del 2015, Costa Rica solicitó poner un término al procedimiento arbitral interpuesto por la empresa minera canadiense Infinito Gold ante el Centro Internacional de Arreglo de Disputas entre Inversionistas Extranjeros y Estados (más conocido como CIADI en español, ICSID en inglés). Unos días antes, el 15 de julio del 2015, se había informado en la prensa especializada (ver  nota de prensa  titulada “Infinito Gold Ltd. Announces Resignation of All Directors and Officers“) de la renuncia de todos los directivos y funcionarios de la empresa debido a su delicada situación financiera: “As a result of the aforementioned working capital deficit and given the fact that the Company’s major shareholder and creditor has advised the Company that it is unwilling to advance any further funds to the Company, the Company has concluded that it will not be possible for it to continue operations“. Dos días después, en un sitio especializado en valores bursátiles (ver sitio de Bloomberg.com ) se mencionaba que: ”Further to the TSX Venture Exchange (TSXV) Bulletin and Infinito Gold Ltd.’s press release both dated July 15, 2015, effective at the opening on July 17, 2015, trading in the shares of the company will be suspended for failure to maintain Exchange requirements“. (colocar sección “Snapshot” para leer la nota completa). La sección “Charts” en este mismo enlace sobre acciones bursátiles – colocar los últimos 5 o 10 años – permite apreciar cuán sensible fue el valor bursátil de las acciones en Canadá de Infinito Gold Ltd a eventos ocurridos en Costa Rica, incluidos los episodios que se dieron ante los estrados judiciales costarricenses, en particular a partir de octubre del 2008. Cabe indicar que la salud financiera de la empresa canadiense Infinito Gold había sido objeto de un interesante artículo de opinión del activista canadiense Rick Arnold, publicado en mayo del 2015 en Costa Rica, titulado: ”Op-ed: ‘Zombie’ Canadian mining company, Infinito Gold, stalks Costa Rica”: en la parte final del  texto, se lee por parte del periódico que lo publicó que:” The Tico Times sought a response from Infinito Gold to this opinion piece. Calls made to the company’s Costa Rica office and to its Canadian headquarters were not returned, and emails were unanswered”.

El CIADI en América Latina:

Como bien se sabe, el CIADI es un mecanismo arbitral creado en 1965 mediante la Convención de Washington (ver  texto  completo, pp. 7-33) para dirimir las controversias entre Estados e inversionistas extranjeros. Contrario a una opinión generada desde algunos sectores, no es necesario ratificar este tratado para atraer inversión extranjera: en América Latina, Brasil, Cuba, México, República Dominicana son un claro ejemplo de ello (ninguno ha ratificado la Convención de 1965). A  ellos, se pueden sumar los logros económicos más recientes obtenidos por Bolivia y Ecuador, Estados que denunciaron este tratado en el 2007 y en el 2009 respectivamente (por considerar abusivas algunas demandas planteadas ante el CIADI y cuestionables varias de sus decisiones). Para completar el panorama de la comunidad hispanoparlante, cabe mencionar que España ha experimentado un reciente aumento de demandas en su contra ante el CIADI (muchas de ellas debido al cambio en la legislación sobre energías renovables tendiente a reducir las subvenciones públicas) colocándola, según algunos medios de prensa, justo detrás de Argentina y Venezuela en cuanto a número de demandas registrada (ver  nota  de El País): al momento de redactar esta nota, España contabiliza 18 demandas pendientes de resolución ante el CIADI, detrás de Venezuela (con 25 casos pendientes) y Argentina (con 18). Después de Argentina en América Latina, están Costa Rica (con 4 casos pendientes), Ecuador, Panamá y Perú (con 3 cada uno).

En cuanto a los Estados del hemisferio americano, el último Estado en aceptar el sistema establecido en el CIADI es Canadá, que anunció su adhesión tan solo el pasado 1ero de noviembre del 2013.

Es importante recordar que hasta 1996, el CIADI funcionó de manera sumamente esporádica a nivel mundial: 1972 es la fecha del primer caso registrado (el único del año), el año 1974 registra 4 casos, y luego siguen años sin ningún caso registrado: 1973, 1975, 1979, 1980, 1985, 1988, 1990 y 1991. El aumento exponencial en la cantidad de casos por año desde 1996 (1997: 10 casos por año, 38 para el año 2011, y 50 para el 2012) se explica gracias al efecto de los numerosos tratados bilaterales de protección y promoción de inversiones (más conocidos como TBI, o BIT por sus siglas en inglés) firmados a partir de los años 90. Estos tratados representaban el 63% de la base del consentimiento a la jurisdicción del CIADI para el conjunto de casos registrados en el 2011 (ver gráfico, p. 10 de las  estadísticas  oficiales 2011-2): este porcentaje se ha mantenido casi incólume (61,8%) según las últimas  estadísticas  a 2015-1 (p. 10). En América Latina, Argentina, Estado que suscribió 58 de estos tratados bilaterales en los años 90 (ver recuadro en p. 4 de este interesante estudio ) es el Estado que más demandas ha registrado ante el CIADI en toda la historia (90 demandas contra Argentina, de las cuáles 18 siguen pendientes de resolución). En un estudio sobre las demandas de inversionistas contra Estado (cuya lectura recomendamos), un autor como Patxi Zabalo ha llegado a concluir, a partir de la triste experiencia de Argentina y de otros Estados de la región, que: “A la vista del lastre que las demandas inversor-estado están suponiendo para el desarrollo de diversos países latinoamericanos, y de la insuficiencia de las medidas adoptadas hasta ahora para evitarlo, resulta necesario realizar una seria reconsideración del camino emprendido” (Nota 1).

En lo que respecta al estudio objeto de estas breves reflexiones, es menester recordar que Costa Rica  firmó el Convenio de Washington que crea el CIADI en 1981 y que lo ratificó en 1993, bajo presión externa debida a la no resolución del caso de Santa Elena (Nota 2).

Algunas precisiones terminológicas

En el sitio oficial del CIADI, se lee en la  ficha  técnica relacionada con la demanda interpuesta por Infinito Gold contra Costa Rica, de las cuatro actualmente pendientes de resolución ante el CIADI y una más ante otro mecanismo arbitral (Nota 3) que: “the Respondent files a request for the discontinuance of the proceeding pursuant to ICSID Arbitration Rule 44 on July 24, 2015“. Si, pese a las reservas sobre la falta de transparencia del sistema CIADI, tomamos como base este dato, la situación resultante es la siguiente. El artículo 44 sobre regulaciones arbitrales al que refiere el CIADI se lee como sigue: “If a party requests the discontinuance of the proceeding, the Tribunal, or the Secretary-General if the Tribunal has not yet been constituted, shall in an order fix a time limit within which the other party may state whether it opposes the discontinuance. If no objection is made in writing within the time limit, the other party shall be deemed to have acquiesced in the discontinuance and the Tribunal, or if appropriate the Secretary-General, shall in an order take note of the discontinuance of the proceeding. If objection is made, the proceeding shall continue“. La versión en castellano de la misma regla procesal 44 aplicable a los procedimientos de arbitraje (ver  texto  en pp. 101 y subsiguientes) se lee como sigue: “Regla 44. Terminación a solicitud de una de las partes Si una de las partes solicita que se ponga término al procedimiento, el Tribunal, o el Secretario General si aquel no se ha constituido todavía, fijará mediante resolución el plazo dentro del cual la otra parte podrá oponerse a la terminación. Si no se formula objeción alguna por escrito dentro del plazo fijado, se presumirá que la otra parte ha consentido en la terminación y el Tribunal, o en su caso, el Secretario General, dejará constancia, en una resolución, de la terminación del procedimiento. Si se formula una objeción se continuará el procedimiento“. La versión en español que habla de “solicitud de poner término al procedimiento” para la expresión inglesa “request of discontinuance of the proceeding” aclara el panorama y permite apreciar mucho mejor el alcance del término de “suspensión” usado (de manera incorrecta, a nuestro modesto parecer) en medios de prensa en Costa Rica en días recientes. En efecto, la noción de “suspensión” puede ser interpretada como una suspensión provisional, o como una acción momentánea que puede dar pié a una reconducción ulterior del procedimiento. Lo que establece la versión castellana de lo que hay que entender por “discontinuance” es muy distinto a una “suspensión”: se trata de solicitar poner fin a un procedimiento. La última frase de la Regla 44 es aún más clara en cuanto al alcance de esta figura: si existe objeción a esta solicitud de poner término al procedimiento, dicho procedimiento continúa.

En declaraciones dadas a la prensa en días recientes, el Ministro de Comercio Exterior indicó – sin querer ahondar en las razones o motivaciones del equipo jurídico a carga de la defensa de Costa Rica- que se objetó en el mes de julio la solicitud de un nuevo plazo  hecha por parte de la empresa (ver  nota de prensa del programa radial Amelia Rueda con audio incorporado): no se tiene información sobre el punto de saber si la empresa objetó – o no – la solicitud hecha por Costa Rica el 24 de julio con base en el artículo 44.

Esta breve aclaración de carácter terminológico realizada intenta responder a una confusión generada por algunos titulares de prensa a partir del 24 de julio leídos en los medios de prensa de Costa Rica: títulos tales como “Infinito Gold pidió suspender demanda contra Costa Rica, mientras dejó de operar como empresa” ( nota de CRHoy) o  “Minera Infinito pide congelar pleito internacional contra país” ( nota de La Nación) u otro aún más confuso, como “País pide a centro de arbitraje internacional no suspender litigio contra minera Infinito” (ver nota del Programa radial de Amelia Rueda). El 24 de julio, no hubo ninguna suspensión solicitada por parte de la empresa, ni tampoco solicitud hecha por la empresa como tal. Se trata de una solicitud de poner fin al procedimiento por parte del Estado y puede extrañar un poco que ningún titular así lo haya reseñado.

Un proyecto minero frenado por la justicia costarricense

La empresa minera canadiense Infinito Gold presentó su demanda contra Costa Rica por poco menos de 94 millones de US$ en el mes de febrero del 2014 (ver  texto  integral de la demanda), debido a la anulación de los permisos, concesión, viabilidad ambiental y decreto de conveniencia nacional (todos emitidos por el Poder Ejecutivo) por parte de los tribunales de Costa Rica en el año 2010: remitimos a lector al  texto completo  de la sentencia del Tribunal Contencioso Administrativo (TCA) de noviembre del 2010, confirmada en noviembre del 2011 por la Sala Primera en todos sus extremos (ver texto completo). La sentencia del TCA concluía precisando que: “Se anulan las resoluciones número 3638-2005-SETENA, número 170-2008-SETENA, número R-217-2008-MINAE, número 244-2008-SCH y el Decreto Ejecutivo número 34801-MINAET. Se condena a los demandados Industrias Infinito Sociedad Anónima, al Estado y al Sistema Nacional de Áreas de Conservación, a la reparación integral de los daños ambientales provocados con la tala rasa llevada a cabo en las propiedades de Industrias Infinito Sociedad Anónima, con posterioridad al dictado de la resolución N°244-2008-SCH, mismos que se determinarán en fase de ejecución de sentencia /…/”. Adicionalmente, los tres jueces del Tribunal Contencioso Administrativo indicaron que la extraña actitud del Estado tendiente a cometer tantas ilegalidades en tan poco tiempo (y que calificaron como una verdadera “orquestación de voluntades”) se debía investigar desde el punto de vista penal, abarcando dicha investigación a altos funcionarios, incluyendo al Presidente Oscar Arias, a su Ministro de Ambiente Roberto Dobles, a Sonia Espinoza, Secretaria Ejecutiva de la Secretaría Nacional para el Ambiente (SETENA) entre otros. Los jueces hicieron esta indicación en los siguientes términos: “Se ordena comunicar esta sentencia al Ministerio Público para que allí se determine seguir una causa penal en contra de las siguientes personas: Oscar Arias Sánchez, Roberto Dobles Mora, Sonia Espinoza Valverde, Eduardo Murillo Marchena, José Francisco Castro Muñoz, Cynthia Cavallini Chinchilla, Sandra Arredondo Li y Arnoldo Rudín Arias.“.

Uno de los abogados litigantes que llevaron este caso, y profesor especialista en derecho ambiental, Alvaro Sagot, indicó después de leída la sentencia (ver nota) que: ”Lo que queda perfectamente de manifiesto, y así se deja entrever de algunas frases de la sentencia, es que la SETENA olvidó que es un órgano técnico y estaba tomando decisiones políticas”. El mismo jurista sentenció en un artículo posterior que: “Si bien el proyecto auguraba aparentes beneficios locales, nunca un pueblo puede beneficiarse y sentar un supuesto progreso económico o social amparado en ilegalidades, puesto que esto distorsiona a todo un Estado, que a la postre tendría que seguir permitiendo irregularidades, en nombre de un espejismo” (Nota 4).

Con relación a la ejecución de la sentencia del TCA del 2010 confirmada en el año 2011, las organizaciones ecologistas y sus abogados debieron proceder a reunir peritos para cuantificar el daño: una primera evaluación del daño ambiental causado en la zona concluye con una cuantificación del daño que asciende a más de 4,6 millones de US$ (ver informe, p. 76). Una segunda evaluación realizada esta vez por un equipo que sí pudo realizar una visita in situ unos meses después sitúa el monto en más de 10 millones de US$  (ver nota de prensa). El procedimiento de ejecución se dilato en el período 2012-2013 debido a la estrategia de la empresa (ver nota de CRHoy). La audiencia convocada por la jueza a cargo de la ejecución del fallo prevista en junio del 2015 fue pospuesta nuevamente, a solicitud de la empresa (ver  nota  de Radio Santa Clara).

Un proyecto minero polémico

Para quienes viven fuera de Costa Rica y lo han visitado atraídos por la exuberancia de su naturaleza y la imagen verde que proyecta hacia el mundo desde hace muchos años, puede resultar un tanto sorprendente que ahí se quisiera desarrollar un proyecto como el de Infinito Gold, que pretendía ser el mayor proyecto minero de toda Centroamérica. La sorpresa (mezclada de estupor) lo fue también para muchos de sus habitantes cuando este mismo proyecto se declaró de “conveniencia nacional e interés público” en un Decreto Ejecutivo inconsulto a mediados de octubre del año 2008. Ubicado en la remota localidad de las Crucitas, en la Zona Norte de Costa Rica, se ubicaría a 3 kilómetros del Río San Juan, fronterizo con Nicaragua, en uno de las zonas con los últimos vestigios de bosque tropical de la Zona Norte, santuario de varias especies en vías de extinción y en una zona del trópico húmedo con los mayores índices de precipitaciones a nivel mundial. El apoyo irrestricto a este proyecto por parte de las autoridades a partir del 2008 provocó una fuerte reacción de la sociedad costarricense, y dio lugar a una de las mayores luchas de sectores ecologistas, sociales y académicos de Costa Rica de los últimos tiempos, en medio de inéditas polémicas. El “contubernio” Estado/empresa fue la palabra usada para un titular sobre una inédita actuación del Poder Ejecutivo ante un primer ejercicio realizado ante el juez constitucional (ver nota del Semanario Universidad).  Un episodio anterior realizado en septiembre del 2009 en el sitio del proyecto con dos integrantes de la Sala Constitucional de la Corte Suprema de Justicia arrojó una sensación muy similar (ver nota del Semanario Universidad), esta vez con relación a la actuación de ambos magistrados. Denuncias de la prensa que involucraron a las más altas autoridades del Estado (como por ejemplo esta  nota  de La Nación de febrero del 2011 sobre llamadas recibidas por la Procuradora General, o esta otra  nota  de abril del 2011, sobre una donación a la Fundación Arias) estremecieron una y otra vez a la sociedad costarricense. Estas y muchas otras irregularidades llegaron a tal punto, que inspiraron a un realizador, Pablo Ortega, quién las plasmó en un documental producido por la Universidad de Costa Rica (UCR) y titulado “El Oro de los Tontos“, disponible en  Youtube . El documental fue presentado en junio del 2011 y  su éxito en Costa Rica fue tal que se optó por poner en línea una versión subtitulada en inglés (“Fool´s Gold (Gold Mining in Costa Rica documentary”, disponible en este enlace).

Algunos de los profesores universitarios entrevistados en este documental fueron demandados por la empresa minera por supuesta difamación por un monto de 1 millón de US$ cada uno, provocando una ola de repudio generalizada, antes de que los tribunales los absolvieran de todo delito (remitimos al lector a la nota publicada en Canadá: “Mining Company Fails to Silence Critic” (y su versión en francés. “Une société minière échoue dans sa tentative de faire taire les critiques“). Además de los dos académicos de la UCR, la empresa demandó por supuesta difamación a un líder comunal por un millón de US$, así como a dos diputados costarricenses. La ausencia de los abogados de la empresa minera a los juicios penales entablados contra los tres primeros llevo a los demandados a hacer ver en distintos medios de prensa lo extraño que resultaba acudir a audiencias con ausencias justificadas por dolencias tan repentinas como repetidas (ver artículo de opinión titulado “Audiencias con el Infinito: ausencias…”  publicado en La Nación en julio del 2012).

Este proyecto minero estuvo también en el epicentro de uno de los mayores escándalos judiciales de Costa Rica, con la filtración de un borrador de sentencia en noviembre del 2011 a los abogados de la empresa, filtración denunciada por el ex vocero de la misma empresa (ver  nota  del Semanario Universidad). En este   artículo  de CRHoy,  sobre la investigación realizada por la magistrada Julia Varela con relación a esta filtración, se lee que: “Varela intentó por todos los medios establecer quién o quiénes fueron las personas que sustrajeron el borrador de la sentencia de la Sala Primera contra el recurso interpuesto por Industrias Infinito, en el caso “Crucitas”, sin embargo, nunca pudo determinar con certeza quién lo hizo, según se desprende del informe que presentó ante la Corte Plena”.

El proyecto minero ubicado en Las Crucitas también dio lugar a una inédita acción de la empresa minera tendiente a solicitar formalmente a la UCR modificar la lista de exponentes en un seminario y descartar a varios de ellos: referimos al lector a la petición (en nuestra modesta opinión, insólita) enviada por los representantes de la empresa canadiense y a la respuesta del Rector de la UCR en julio del 2012, disponibles al final de  este artículo publicado en el portal de la UCR. El seminario de la UCR inició en agosto del 2012 sin mayores contratiempos (ver nota), mientras que los representantes de más de 68.000 académicos en Canadá enviaron una carta a los directivos de la empresa minera en la que le exigían cesar sus acciones legales contra la UCR en términos raramente leídos en Costa Rica: “We urge you to immediately withdraw any current legal actions against the University of Costa Rica and their academics and to put an end to the aggressive threats and inappropriate interference undermining their freedom to teach” (ver  texto completo  de la carta).

Otro escándalo como el ocurrido en la Asamblea Legislativa en noviembre del 2012 en un intento (fallido) de varias bancadas tendiente a separar al Magistrado Fernando Cruz de la Sala Constitucional – o Sala Cuarta – fue analizado por algunos abogados como una maniobra no del todo ajena a un recurso presentado por la empresa minera contra la decisión de la Sala Primera: la nota “Abogados del caso Crucitas: Salida del magistrado Cruz podría inclinar la balanza en la Sala Constitucional” permite leer interesantes aseveraciones al respecto. Sobre esta última acción legal de la empresa minera, vale la pena indicar que parecía existir una “falta de acuerdo” entre los magistrados de la Sala Constitucional, según lo que se lee en una entrevista de su Presidenta (ver nota  del Semanario Universidad de mayo del 2012) en la que textualmente afirma que: “Ese asunto vengo presentándolo a la Sala desde el mes de diciembre, que ya tenía un planteamiento específico y no se ha podido resolver. No nos hemos puesto de acuerdo”. No obstante,  la Sala Constitucional rechazó la petición en junio del 2013 (ver nota de prensa de La Nación): la disonancia interna que pudo dejarse entrever en votos salvados de alguno de los siete integrantes de la Sala Constitucional (o en la división existente al momento de aprobar una decisión) se desvaneció por completo: el rechazo a este último intento de la empresa se aprobó por acuerdo unánime.

Pese a tratarse de un Decreto Ejecutivo de conveniencia nacional firmado en octubre del 2008 por dos altos funcionarios, la Fiscalía General de la República optó – sin brindar mayores explicaciones – por dividir las causas. En enero del 2015 fue condenado en primera instancia por el juez penal uno de los firmantes del texto, el Ministro de Ambiente (ver  nota  de La Nación): es posible esta decisión sea apelada ante el sistema judicial costarricense y que la acusación penal no resista a una apelación ulterior.

Estos y muchos otros episodios, algunos de los cuales han sido desestimados uno tras uno por el Ministerio Público, explican que se haya concluido un modesto artículo de opinión nuestro publicado en noviembre del 2011 (ver  texto ) refiriendo al carácter un tanto novelesco de este “proyecto minero ubicado en una remota localidad que pareciera llevar el inmejorable nombre de “Las Crucitas”, y que pareciera, al mismo tiempo, escogido por el destino para constituirse en una novela sin fin“.
El procedimiento seguido ante el CIADI

En la carta enviada en abril del 2013 a las autoridades de Costa Rica, la empresa minera notificó que iniciaba el plazo de 6 meses para lograr un acuerdo satisfactorio, y que, de lo contrario, acudiría  al mecanismo de arbitraje internacional previsto en el tratado bilateral de inversiones (TBI) vigente entre Costa Rica y Canadá. En la carta enviada (ver texto completo), se hacía referencia a la inseguridad jurídica en la que se encontraba la empresa, concluyendo que “/…/ Industrias Infinito has not been treated fairly, transparently and  consistently and finds itself in a situation of complete legal insecurity that prevents it from further developing the Las Cristinas project” (sic) (p.3). La referencia al proyecto minero Las Cristinas (ubicado en Venezuela) puede entenderse – al menos en parte – como evidencia de la premura con la que se redactó y se firmó dicha carta. En una misiva, varias ONG de Canadá, pendientes de este anuncio, indicaron a la empresa que: “We demand that Infinito Gold respect the will of the vast majority of Costa Ricans and drop the threat of international arbitration” (ver  carta ).

En el texto de la demanda con fecha del 6 de febrero del 2014 enviada al CIADI (ver texto integral de 32 páginas y anexos varios incorporados), la empresa minera detallaba las distintas violaciones al TBI entre Canadá y Costa Rica que alegaba haber sufrido y se refiere a la (supuesta) contradicción entre el fallo de la Sala Constitucional de abril del 2010 y la decisión del TCA de noviembre del 2010 y a  inseguridad jurídica resultante de esta situación. En cuanto a los montos indemnizatorios solicitados, se lee (párrafo 110) que sus representantes legales incluyeron otros montos que podrían derivarse de acciones legales pendientes de resolución ante los tribunales de Costa Rica (en particular  – aunque no lo mencionaran expresamente – la condena en costas por la fallidas acciones por presunta difamación y sentencia de ejecución (aún pendiente) de la decisión del TCA: “Pursuant to this provision, Infinito requests that the tribunal award to it or to Industrias Infinito:

(i) damages for expenses of at least USD $93,896,794;

(ii) damages for any amounts paid in accordance with the Supreme Court (Sala I)’s decision condemning Industrias Infinito to pay damages to restore the Crucitas project area to its pre-construction state;

(iii) damages for expenses incurred in connection with the Crucitas project after the filing of this Request for Arbitration;

(iv) costs associated with these proceedings, including all professional fees and disbursements;

(v) pre-award and post-award interest at a rate to be fixed by the Tribunal; and

(vi) such further relief as counsel may advise and this Tribunal may permit.”.

Pese a algunas posiciones hechas públicas en octubre del 2013 (ver  nota  del Semanario Universidad) y a un debate público organizado por la UCR (ver nota sobre foro realizado en marzo del 2014) tendientes a externar a las autoridades que el CIADI no fue previsto para revisar sentencias de tribunales nacionales, y que existe una cláusula  en el mismo TBI entre Costa Rica y Canadá (ver texto del TBI Canadá Costa Rica), Artículo XII 3 b) que prohíbe recurrir al arbitraje si el inversionista optó por acudir a los estrados judiciales nacionales, las autoridades de Costa Rica que ejercieron sus funciones hasta mayo del 2014  accedieron a la petición de la empresa de remitir el caso al CIADI. Se pudo leer en un  artículo  de opinión del geólogo Allan Astorga, ex Secretario General de la SETENA, publicado en febrero del 2014 que: “Siendo así las cosas, resulta altamente recomendable que el Poder Ejecutivo revise sus argumentos y se cuestione con toda seriedad si acepta ir a un arbitraje, en donde los aportadores de insumo técnico para el mismo son instituciones que en su momento formaron parte de la “orquesta” de entidades que fueron partícipes de autorizaciones y viabilidades ambientales que no tenían sustento técnico ni científico. De no haber sido por el accionar de la sociedad civil, hace muchos años que la empresa habría extraído el oro de Crucitas”.

Otro llamado, entre muchos, esta vez a las nuevas autoridades a partir de mayo del 2014 fue el del economista ambiental Joan Martínez Alier, quién concluyó un artículo titulado “Crucitas, Costa Rica y el CIADI” de la siguiente manera: “¿debería Costa Rica bajo su nuevo presidente acudir al CIADI en Washington para defenderse en cancha contraria contra la absurda pretensión de Infinito Gold en un tema ya juzgado?  ¿Debería  retirarse totalmente del CIADI, dando un buen ejemplo a otros países de la región?”: no obstante, las nuevas autoridades electas optaron en este caso (como en muchos otros) por continuar con el proceder heredado de la administración de la Presidenta Laura Chinchilla (2010-2014).

Un detalle, que da una idea de lo que significa para cualquier Estado defenderse ante el CIADI, merece mención: en febrero del 2014, se indicó por parte de las autoridades que el costo en honorarios para la defensa de Costa Rica en el caso de la demanda presentada por Infinito Gold ascendería a 2 millones de dólares anuales (ver  nota  del Tico Times) (Nota 5).

En el mes de agosto/septiembre del 2014, se conformó el tribunal arbitral, según lo que estipula el Artículo 37(2) de la Convención que crea el CIADI de 1965: la empresa designó a un jurista belga, Costa Rica a una jurista francesa, y el CIADI designó como Presidente a una jurista suiza (ver nota de CRHoy del 4/10/2014) así como la hoja de vida de los tres árbitros disponibles en este enlace del CIADI). Dicho tribunal tuvo su primera sesión el 22 de enero del 2015 y el 17 de febrero del 2015, indicó a las partes el procedimiento y plazos de presentación de escritos acordados por sus integrantes.

Montos indemnizatorios, demandas, y preguntas sin responder

La empresa minera había inicialmente amenazado con presentar una demanda contra Costa Rica ante el CIADI en octubre del 2013 por un monto de 1.092 millones de US$ (ver  nota  de La Nación). La prensa canadiense se hizo eco de este anuncio, precisando (ver nota) que: ”Les 1,092 milliards réclamés par la compagnie se décomposent en 92 millions au titre des investissements déjà réalisés et un milliard au titre du manque à gagner sur la production envisagée”. No obstante, en febrero del 2014, la demanda que se presentó formalmente ante el CIADI fue por poco menos de 94 millones de US$: a la fecha no se tiene explicación por parte de la empresa de tan vertiginosa revisión a la baja de sus pretensiones. En noviembre del 2013, una petición con 14.000 firmadas reunidas en Canadá y en Costa Rica fue entregada de forma personal a los directivos de la empresa, solicitándoles (independientemente del monto solicitado) abandonar la idea de demandar internacionalmente a Costa Rica (ver  nota  publicada en el sitio de Canadians.org). Sobre el monto indemnizatorio solicitado, vale la pena recordar que cuando la empresa antecesora a cargo del proyecto minero en Las Crucitas, Vanessa Ventures, demandó a Costa Rica en el año 2005 (debido a la no aprobación del estudio de impacto ambiental por parte de la SETENA, equivalente, según ella, a una nacionalización), lo hizo por un monto de 276 millones de US$ (ver  nota  de La Nación). En una carta con fecha del 3 de octubre del 2005 (ver  texto completo), la empresa minera retiró formalmente su demanda aduciendo estar en negociaciones con el gobierno de Costa Rica de la época. Al haber la SETENA dos meses después (diciembre del 2005) aprobado el Estudio de Impacto Ambiental que había rechazado anteriormente, la expresión “reasonably optimistic” mencionada por la empresa en esta carta de octubre del 2005 adquiere particular significado. A la fecha, se desconoce quiénes en nombre del Estado “negociaron” con la empresa en el 2005 y cuál fue el objeto de dichas negociaciones.

Remitimos al lector a una  breve nota  sobre los montos indemnizatorios de las demandas realizadas por mineras canadienses a Costa Rica, publicado en agosto del 2010 en La Nación, con ocasión de un inédito anuncio por parte de las autoridades de Costa Rica: su Vicepresidente adelantó la suma de 1.700 millones de US$ como indemnización a pagarle a la empresa en caso de derogar el decreto de conveniencia nacional por parte del Ejecutivo (ver declaraciones en nota de La Nación del 27/7/2010). A la fecha, se desconoce la identidad de los integrantes del “Grupo de Trabajo” luego llamado “Comisión de Alto Nivel” que llevaron al Vice Presidente de Costa Rica a semejante aseveración. En una  nota  del Semanario Universidad de febrero del 2014, se lee que el despacho de uno de los diputados de la Zona Norte (al parecer más preocupado que los demás 56 restantes sobre la identidad de quiénes asesoran a la autoridades en temas de relevancia nacional) intentó obtener la lista de los integrantes de esta comisión: “Felipe Arguedas, asesor del diputado Manrique Oviedo aseguró que no han recibido respuesta a un oficio enviado hace más de tres años en el que solicitaban los nombres de los asesores nombrados por Piva. Ahora se les volvió a solicitar los nombres nuevamente, pero todavía están dentro del plazo para responder, agregó Arguedas“.

En el caso de la investigación relacionada con la Fundación Arias, la Fiscalía anunció en junio del 2013 que recibió documentación de Canadá (lo cual al parecer preocupó a la vocera de la empresa minera según se lee en esta nota de CRHoy); finalmente, optó por desestimar la causa abierta contra el Presidente Oscar Arias en octubre del 2014 (ver nota de CRHoy). Activistas canadienses percibieron cierto desinterés por parte de sus propias autoridades para responder a los requerimientos más específicos de información enviados desde el Ministerio Público de Costa Rica desde el 2013: una solicitud de información a las autoridades de Canadá fue hecha por parte de Peter Julian, congresista canadiense, (ver nota de CRHoy del 22/12/2014), en los siguientes términos, que nos parece pertinente reproducir:  “(a) does the Minister of Justice or his Department have any information regarding an amount of $200,000 sent to the Arias Foundation for Peace in 2008 and, if so, what are details, including the identity of the sender and the relationship between the sender and Infinito Gold, Ronald Mannix, the Norlien Foundation, and Coril Holdings Ltd.; and (b) did the Department of Justice answer the Costa Rican Attorney General’s questions in the first request letter (#08-000011-033-PE) sent on Tuesday, December 10, 2013, as well as in the second request letter (#12-000124-621-PE) dated Tuesday, February 4, 2014, (i) if so, what answer was provided, (ii) if not, why not?”.

Al parecer, esta solicitud de información del este congresista tampoco fue contestada por las autoridades de Canadá.

En junio del 2015, una demanda planteada contra el Fiscal General por desestimar la causa contra el Ex Presidente Oscar Arias fue rechazada por un juez penal, alegando que para ello, se debe primero demonstrar en qué la desestimación de la causa contra el ex Presidente afecta a la persona que presenta este tipo de acciones (ver  nota  de prensa).

Algunas valoraciones

Las dudas y muchas otras interrogantes que han surgido a raíz de tan peculiar actuar de las instituciones públicas de Costa Rica en el “caso Crucitas” en estos últimos años (incluyendo a un Ministerio Público que se muestra poco efectivo para investigar y sancionar  graves irregularidades, y más generalmente denuncias en casos de corrupción) serán tal vez algún día objeto de una detallada publicación que aclare lo que las limitadas investigaciones de la Fiscalía han ido descartando.

Con relación al arbitraje transnacional  inversionista-Estado en el caso de Crucitas, habíamos tenido la oportunidad de detallar con más precisión las distintas amenazas de demanda internacional hechas por la empresa minera canadiense en distintos momentos (y el eco a estas amenazas por parte de las mismas autoridades para justificar su accionar): remitimos al lector a una pequeña nota publicada por Kioscos Ambientales/UCR, que concluía indicando que: “La buena fe de un inversionista extranjero sugiere más bien que, al saber que una concesión minera está siendo cuestionada antes los tribunales, hay que esperar la decisión de un tribunal antes de iniciar operaciones, y no adelantarse a invertir sin saber a ciencia cierta si los permisos (en este caso la concesión minera) serán declarados vigentes o no. La lectura de las 170 páginas del reciente fallo del Tribunal Contencioso Administrativo revela de manera muy detallada y documentada que palabras usadas como “fraude”, “grosero”, “malicioso”, “orquestación” cuentan con un sólido y variado sustento probatorio, tanto en relación a la conducta de las autoridades nacionales como de la empresa. En cambio, no aparece ningún registro de la “buena fe” del inversionista en el texto de esta sentencia que pudiese serle de alguna utilidad en un eventual recurso ante el CIADI”.

Concretada finalmente la amenaza contra Costa Rica en febrero del 2014, constituido el tribunal arbitral, y fijados los plazos para presentar los escritos ante el CIADI, el incumplimiento de la empresa de presentar su escrito el 10 de julio ha llevado a Costa Rica el pasado 24 de julio a solicitar formalmente poner un término al procedimiento.

Más allá de las dificultades financieras de la empresa minera que han dado pié para solicitar por parte del Estado poner fin al procedimiento, este caso ilustra (nuevamente) la imperiosa necesidad de buscar la manera de proteger a Costa Rica de demandas abusivas de este tipo. En un estudio que detalla el vertiginoso aumento de las demandas de inversionistas extranjeros debido al efecto de los TBI se lee: “En los últimos años, el riesgo de que el Estado sea demandado por un inversor ha aumentado considerablemente debido a varios factores. En primer lugar, estos procesos cobraron mayor notoriedad en el mundo empresarial. En consecuencia, la cantidad de juicios se disparó desde una docena a mediados de los años 1990 hasta 568 a fines de 2013” (Nota 6). Recientemente (ver nota de La Nación) un consejero económico de la embajada de China en Costa Rica urgió la aprobación del TBI pendiente de ratificación por parte de Costa Rica: ante las dificultades que encuentran las empresas chinas concesionadas para implementar sus proyectos en Costa Rica, la amenaza de demandas podría resultar de gran utilidad, como la ha sido para otras empresas en Costa Rica.

Un reciente informe publicado en Canadá que analiza las demandas planteadas por inversionistas canadienses contra Estados de América Latina y de otras partes del mundo, refiere de igual forma al carácter abusivo de estas demandas en los siguientes términos: “Despite the government’s posturing, this study has shown that Canada’s ISDS regime does not work as its proponents suggest it should. Instead of facilitating restitution where domestic legal systems have failed, Canada’s promotion of ISDS abroad has resulted too often in investors abusing the process to claim compensation from governments acting in the public interest” (Nota 7).

Conclusión

No cabe duda que el caso Crucitas evidencia cuán receptivos pudieron ser los decisores políticos a la amenaza de una demanda internacional en los últimos años en Costa Rica. Revisar decididamente las cláusulas contenidas en algunos tratados bilaterales de inversión o tratados de libre comercio, reconsiderar la pertenencia al sistema CIADI sin ningún tipo de salvaguardas, a la luz de algunas experiencias recientes (que desafían el dogma según el cual “si no hay CIADI y TBI, no hay inversión extranjera”) permitiría reducir el riesgo que conllevan estas costosas demandas que se dirimen ante el CIADI: además de Bolivia, Ecuador, Venezuela, o de un Brasil totalmente ajeno al sistema establecido por el CIADI, Indonesia, Sudáfrica y otros Estados receptores de flujos de inversión han también optado por resguardarse de los apetitos (siempre voraces y a menudo insaciables) de algunos inversionistas extranjeros favorecidos por este tipo de cláusulas (Nota 8). El caso (pendiente de resolución) de la demanda interpuesta en el 2010 ante el CIADI por la transnacional Philip Morris contra Uruguay por 25 millones de US$ (con base en el TBI Suiza-Uruguay) a raíz de la adopción de una legislación para proteger a los uruguayos de los efectos del fumado (ver ficha) es más que ilustrativo a este respecto.

Vale la pena recordar que América Latina, en los años 60, fue la única región del mundo que adversó la idea de crear una instancia como el CIADI: el primer borrador de convención CIADI elaborado en 1963 fue aprobado por la Junta de Gobernadores del Banco Mundial el 10 de septiembre de 1964, durante la reunión anual del Banco Mundial en Tokio. No obstante, en esa oportunidad, los siguientes Estados (además de Irak y de Filipinas) votaron en contra, en lo que se denomina en la literatura especializada el “No de Tokio”: Argentina, Bolivia, Brasil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, República Dominicana, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haití, Honduras, México, Nicaragua, Panamá, Paraguay, Perú, Uruguay y Venezuela (Nota 9).

Nicolas Boeglin

Notas:

Nota 1: Véase ZABALO P., “América Latina ante las demandas inversor-Estado”, documento digital, 30 páginas, disponible  aquí.

Nota 2: El caso de la adhesión de Costa Rica a la Convención CIADI es bastante ilustrativo. Costa Rica firmó la Convención en 1981, pero la ratificó tan solo 12 años después, en 1993.  Este plazo se debe a la renuencia de Costa Rica a ratificarla mientras no se resolviera el caso de Santa Elena ante sus tribunales nacionales. El caso Santa Elena refiere a una expropiación realizada con motivo de la creación del Parque Nacional Santa Rosa en 1978, la cual dio lugar a un reclamo por parte de la Compañia de Desarrollos de Santa Elena SA, controlada por ciudadanos norteamericanos, por 6,400.000 US$: el Estado ofrecía un monto de 1,900.000 US$, considerando que la propiedad había sido adquirida en 1970 por dicha sociedad a un precio de 395.000 US$. Ante la falta de acuerdo, y posterior a la ratificación de Costa Rica en 1993 de la Convención CIADI, la compañía reclamó el 31 de mayo de 1995 a Costa Rica el pago de 41 millones de US$, y el CIADI decidió en su  laudo  del 17 de febrero del 2000 ordenar un pago indemnizatorio de 16 millones de US$. Se lee en  un  memorandum  de la GCAB (Global Committee of Argentina Bondholders) sobre la situación en Argentina que esta decisión de Costa Rica resultó de presiones directas de Estados Unidos en relación al caso Santa Elena: ” En los años 90, después de un reclamo por una supuesta expropriación de un inversionista norteamericano, Costa Rica se rehusó a someter la controversia a un arbitraje del CIADI. El inversionista norteamericano  invocó la enmienda Helms y se suspendió un préstamo de 175 milliones de US$ del Banco Interamericano de Desarrollo a Costa Rica. Costa Rica consintió someterse al procedimiento del CIADI, y el inversionista norteamericano recuperó 16 millones US$” (Tradución libre del autor). En una nota de La Nación de 1997 (ver  nota ) sobre acciones indebidas de parte del senado Helms por problemas de ciudadanos norteamericanos, se lee que: ”La conducta de este senador compagina con su pretensión, en 1993, de bloquear los préstamos para Costa Rica del Banco Interamericano de Desarrollo (BID) para que se pagara la expropiación de la hacienda Santa Elena, propiedad de Joseph Hamilton”.

Nota 3: Ante el CIADI está registrados, además de la demanda de Infinito Gold, los siguientes casos contra Costa Rica. Supervision y Control S.A. v. Republic of Costa Rica, ICSID Case No. ARB/12/4: se trata de una solicitud de arbitraje de la empresa Riteve por 262 millones de US$: en una conferencia de prensa, (ver nota de Diario Extra, del 16/06/2012) el viceministro del Ministerio de Obras Públicas y Transporte (MOPT), Rodrigo Rivera, «explicó que para el Estado era más barato permitirle a Riteve quedarse operando 10 años más y de esta manera asegurarse no tener que pagar los $280 millones si perdía el arbitraje». Se aduce violación al BIT entre Costa Rica y España: Costa Rica revalidó la concesión por 10 años más a Riteve en el 2012, pero la demanda se mantiene ante el CIADI. Se lee en la  ficha  de este caso que el pasado 20 de julio del 2015, sucedió algo un tanto inédito “The Claimant files a proposal for disqualification of arbitrators Claus von Wobeser, Joseph P. Klock Jr. and Eduardo Silva Romero. The proceeding is suspended in accordance with ICSID Arbitration Rule 9(6)”. El 11 de marzo del 2013, se introdujo un nuevo caso, Cervin Investissements S.A. and Rhone Investissements S.A. v. Republic of Costa Rica (ICSID Case No. ARB/13/2) por 30 millones de US$ (ver  ficha ): se trata de un grupo de accionistas que controla la empresa Gas Zeta, y se aduce violación del BIT entre Suiza y Costa Rica. En diciembre del 2014, el tribunal arbitral del CIADI se declaró competente (ver  fallo  del 15 de diciembre del 2014 y su  versión  en castellano). Se registra también el Caso Spence International Investments et al. v. Republic of Costa Rica (ICSID Case No. UNCT/13/2), en la que se alega violaciones al Tratado de Libre Comercio (TLC) con Estados Unidos y Centroamérica, y se exige el pago de un monto de 49 millones de US$ (ver  solicitud  de arbitraje del 10 de junio del 2013): ello debido a limitaciones para desarrollar un proyecto en las playas de Santa Cruz, Guanacaste. En abril del 2015, El Salvador presentó, como Estado Parte al TLC, su interpretación sobre ciertas cláusulas (ver  texto ) así como Estados Unidos (ver  texto ). Ante otra instancia a cargo de resolver disputas de este naturaleza, se registra ante la UNCITRAL el siguiente caso, en la que se alega también violaciones al TLC con Estados Unidos:  David Aven, Samuel Aven, Carolyn Park, Eric Park, Jeffrey Shioleno,Giacomo Buscemi, David Janney and Roger Raguso v. Costa Rica: ver documento enviado por la Ministra de COMEX del 24 de febrero del 2014 en respuesta a la solicitud de arbitraje (ver  texto ). El último fallo sobre el fondo del CIADI contra Costa Rica fue dado en el 2012, en su  decisión  del 16 de mayo del 2012 en al caso  M. & R. Unglaube c. Costa Rica (ARB/09/20)  en la que se condenó a Costa Rica a pagar más de 4 millones de US$ a una pareja alemana: se alegaba en la demanda interpuesta en el 2008, violación al TBI entre Alemania y Costa Rica, al no poder desarrollar su proyecto en Playa Grande, Guanacaste y al considerar ser objeto de una expropiación. Es de notar que los demandantes exigían en su demanda el pago de 8,8 millones de US$.

Nota 4: Véase SAGOT RODRIGUEZ A., “Las ilegalidades y lo justo en Crucitas”, Revista Ambientico, Numero 2010, UNA, Marzo 2011, pp.5-6, p. 6. Número disponible aquí.

Nota 5: En el caso de una demanda presentada ante el CIADI en el 2004 por la minera canadiense Vanessa Ventures contra Venezuela por 1.045 millones de US$ debido a la suspensión del proyecto minero Las Cristinas en 1999, se determinó (ver párrafo 235 del fallo del CIADI a favor de Venezuela con fecha de diciembre del 2012,  texto  en español) que Venezuela y la empresa gastaron ambos 20 millones de US$ en su defensa.  En el largo caso Pacific Rim contra El Salvador, iniciado por una minera canadiense en el 2008 exigiendo una indemnización por 301 millones de US$ (ver ficha de este caso en el sitio oficial del CIADI), es posible este monto sea ampliamente superado. Sobre la complejidad de este caso, y las reacciones que ha suscitado, tanto en El Salvador como fuera, remitimos a un artículo de The Guardian titulado “Lawsuit against El Salvador mining ban highlights free trade pitfalls” publicado en mayo del 2015.

Nota 6: Véase EBERHARDT P., “La protección de las inversiones en una encrucijada: La TTIP y el futuro del derecho global de las inversiones”, Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, 2014, pp.5-6. Texto de este detallado estudio disponible  aquí.

Nota 7: Véase, MERTINS-KIRKWOOD H., “A Losing Proposition: The Failure of Canadian ISDS Policy at Home and Abroad”, Report of Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, August 2015, p. 38, Informe disponible aquí.

Nota 8: Recientemente Indonesia puso fin al TBI con Países Bajos, efectiva a partir del 1ero de julio del 2015 (ver  nota) y se lee en una breve referencia que “The Netherlands embassy also stated that the Indonesian Government had mentioned it intended to terminate all of its 67 BITs” (ver nota). Se trata de una marcada tendencia en la que también incursionó el mayor receptor de inversión extranjera en el continente africano, Sudáfrica (ver  nota). En América Latina, Brasil ha suscrito una gran cantidad de TBI sin ratificar ninguno y no se vislumbra cambio alguno con relación a la Convención que crea el CIADI (que tan siquiera ha firmado). Ecuador, Bolivia y Venezuela  – quiénes denunciaron dicha convención en el 2007, 2010 y 2012 respectivamente – han de igual forma procedido a revisar estos tratados bilaterales, algunos de los cuales incluyen cláusulas muy favorables al inversionista extranjero: en el 2008 Venezuela denunció su TBI con Países Bajos suscrito en 1991 (ver  ficha  técnica), el cual sirvió de base para unas 10 demandas ante el CIADI. Un estudio del 2010 de la UNCTAD sugiere que: ”Finally, a State wishing to rule out the possibility of ISCID arbitration may negotiate with its BIT partners with a view to removing the ICSID clause from the BITs altogether” (p. 8 de estudio titulado “Denunciation of the ICSID Convention and BITAS: impact on investor-state claims” y disponible  aquí). Sobre los recientes intentos en América Latina remitimos al lector a un modesto análisis publicado en el 2013: BOEGLIN N., “ICSID and Latin America. Criticism, withdrawal and the search for alternatives”, BrettonWoods project, disponible  aquí,  así como su  versión  en español, “El CIADI y América Latina. Críticas, denuncias y busca de alternativas”.

Nota 9: Véase ICSID, History of the ICSID Convention. Documents Concerning the Origin and the Formulation of the Convention on the Settlement of Investment Disputes between States and Nationals of Other States, Washington DC, ICSID, vol. II-1, pp.606-608. Ver también un detallado análisis, FACH GOMEZ K., “Latin America and ICSID: David versus Goliath”, publicación digital, 2010, en p. 2,. Texto integral del artículo disponible aquí.

Nicolas Boeglin : Profesor de Derecho Internacional Público, Facultad de Derecho, Universidad de Costa Rica (UCR)

La comunidad haitiana de la ciudad canadiense de Montreal se movilizó contra la situación de apartheid que viven los haitianos en República Dominicana.

Una marcha de solidaridad se realizó en Montreal para denunciar la deportación masiva que enfrentan los haitianos y dominicanos de origen haitiano en República Dominicana. Más de 200 mil personas están amenazadas de expulsión en este país caribeño.

En 2013, el tribunal constitucional dominicano decidió privar a miles de personas de su ciudadanía estipulando que los hijos de haitianos nacidos en República Dominicana desde 1929, no eran dominicanos. Los haitianos indocumentados tenían hasta junio de este año para regularizar su situación migratoria.

Según un reporte de la organización pro derechos humanos Human Rights Watch (HRW), los dominicanos de origen haitiano no pueden registrar el nacimiento de sus hijos, tampoco inscribirse en las escuelas y establecimientos de enseñanza superior ni participar en la economía formal del país.

La Organización de las Naciones Unidas (ONU) solicitó al gobierno dominicano que tome medidas contra las expulsiones arbitrarias, el racismo y la xenofobia hacia las personas de origen haitiano.

Jorge Zegarra, Montreal

The predatory motives behind NATO’s genocidal covert war on Syria are getting ever more transparent.

“The Assad regime, frankly, is the root of all evil here.” [U.S. Department of State’s Deputy Spokesperson Mark Toner, daily press briefing, 6 August 2015]

Takvim, 5 August 2015

Aleppo [to become] the 82nd [province of Turkey]

A “buffer zone” will be set up in the north of Syria. This area, which includes Aleppo, will be fully controlled by Turkey.

[Once] U.S. and Turkey sealed the “Incirlik [Airbase] Agreement”, the political and military balances began shifting rapidly. […]

U.S. newspapers reported that “the new map [of Syria] will be drawn during Erdogan’s meeting with Obama”. […]

As for the British media, they published more detailed analyses [and] put forward the claim that “the buffer zone [in Syria] will be granted to Turkey”.

Takvim produced a map of that area [in northern Syria] which is preparing to become our 82nd province.

[editorial note: According to the map in Takvim’s front page, the prospective “buffer zone” contains not only Aleppo but also Idlib and the north of Latakia.]

Hürriyet, 7 August 2015
Nevada-Incirlik operation

A Predator [drone] hit the ISIL [DAESH] targets in Syria’s [Raqqa province] after taking off from Incirlik [NATO Airbase in southern Turkey]. It was operated by a a drone pilot located 11,100 kilometres away at Creech Air Force Base in Nevada.

Turkey’s Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, Defence Minister Vecdi Gonul, Interior Minister Sebahattin Ozturk, Minister of Finance
Mehmet Simsek, outgoing Chief of Staff Necdet Ozel, Land Forces Commander (and incoming Chief of Staff) Hulusi Akar
visit ‘Dag’ military outpost at Turkey-Syria border, Kilis province, 8 August 2015

Daily Sabah, 4 August 2015

Wall Street Journal, 3 August 2015

Washington Post, 27 July 2015

Hurriyet Daily News, 25 July 2015

Sunday Times, 19 July 2015

Note: ‘Daily Sabah’ and ‘Hurriyet Daily News’ are the English editions of Turkish newspapers Sabah and Hürriyet

From the archives:

Turkish ‘elections’: AKP & MHP joined by ‘opposition’ & ‘pluralistic’ HDP Kurds in NATO war on Syria

by Parliament Square Peace Campaign, 4 June 2015

“The spirit of Ashma”: Ocalan joins other Kurdish ‘political’ leaders collaborating with NATO to try & unleash invasion of Syria

by Parliament Square Peace Campaign, 25 March 2015

False flag alert: ‘Assad plans to instigate chaos in Turkey ahead of general elections’

propaganda alert by Cem Ertür, Indybay, 14 March 2015

NATO and Turkey’s genocidal war on Syria

by Cem Ertür, Axis of Logic, 7 April 2014

The of Turkey in the –Israeli on Syria

Turkey’s false-flag operation against Syria backfires: The Reyhanli bombing attacks in a larger context

by Cem Ertür, Global Research, 29 May 2013

Turkish daily: Turkey’s plan to finish off Assad

propaganda alert by Cem Ertür, Indybay, 11 February 2012

Turkey’s final warning to Syria: Tomorrow may be too late for reforms

propaganda alert by Cem Ertür, Indybay, 18 June 2011

Accepting the absurdity of everything around us is one step, a necessary experience: it should not become a dead end. It arouses a revolt that can become fruitful.– Albert Camus

In 2015 we are barrelling towards a third world war at breakneck speed and much like the First and Second World Wars, oblivion to this trend is commonplace. From the complete resurgence of fascism in Ukraine to the overt funding and training of terrorism, to the rapid erosion of the planet’s health, crises around the world are converging into situations that affect of us. In the meantime what used to be real life has devolved into twenty-four-hour-a-day reality television. Most people do not care (or know) about Obama’s legacy as a warmonger and leader of the most war-hungry nation on earth; they do, however, praise his tweets to Caitlyn Jenner, and other shallow products of the western system of distraction. Whereas 2014 was one of the years in the 21st century in which the possibility of a third world war was reinforced as an inevitability, 2015 has become the year in which such a war is a matter of casual promotion by the mainstream press. The year 2016 looms on the horizon and with an American presidential election set to dominate it, the construction of fallout shelters is now an idea less absurd than that of any sort of peace under Hillary Clinton or Jeb Bush (or perhaps Donald Trump?).

The United States is a nation whose supremacy relies solely on its projection of military aggression as a means of coercion and political manoeuvring. US national debt is difficult to comprehend when juxtaposed with its supposed status as a thriving, global superpower. While much of this military aggression has been disguised as humanitarian aid or democracy promotion, in reality it is the use of soft power as a means of colonisation and resource extraction. Programs such as Africom continue in their quiet recolonisation of Africa; meanwhile other US initiatives of ‘peace and democracy’ are loudly and violently bringing the world closer to war.

The utter disaster of US-led western intervention in Ukraine has been so widely ignored by the mainstream press that, with the rise of any new Ukrainian crises, the response is guaranteed to be a one sided attack on Putin. To highlight the perpetual insanity of contemporary ‘Russia-blaming’ one need only peruse the openly biased articles of just a single writer from what passes as a news-site today.

The fact of widespread Ukrainian fascism is something that the western media has gone from reporting (as recently as to outright ignoring when it became an inconvenient truth in the quest to destabilise Russia and seize control of Ukrainian resources. When Ukraine’s increasingly powerful fascist paramilitary group Praviy Sektor took the spectre of Ukrainian law into its own hands and became involved in a deadly shoot-out with Ukrainian police, western media described it as ‘Russian propaganda coming true’. This aversion to acknowledging the reality of the chaos in Ukraine and its western roots becomes understandable if one remembers that the NATO supreme commander has called for the ‘western group of nations as an alliance to engage in this informational warfare’ against Russia.

The use of the mainstream press to completely ignore the truth and instead attack Russia at every opportunity has led to total misinformation with regard to just how dire the situation is in Ukraine. How commonplace is the knowledge of the brazen removal of Ukrainian gold reserves to the US? What about the quickly hushed up fact that both the Maidan protestors and Berkut police were shot by the same snipers? Perhaps this is nothing new to the readers of increasingly marginalised independent viewpoints, but to the majority, even in the face of facts, there is one popular and easy-to-remember phrase that counteracts all of these so-called conspiracy theoriesBlame Putin. Blame Russia.”

Where does all of this white-washing and misinformation lead? I was reminded of one of the results while waiting for a lecture for a class entitled Cold War Europe 1945-1991 classmates were discussing how the effects of the cold war can still be felt today and the phrase ‘Putin’s Russia’ was continuously bounced around the room. Naturally I asked what they meant by ‘Putin’s Russia’ and the answers I received were synonymous with the daily headlines and hit-pieces that have been so expertly manufactured by a corporate media. Putin’s Russia according to the class was a place of medieval living standards with a failing economy, murder on the streets, and virulent, dictatorial propaganda.

In response I asked what they thought of ‘Obama’s America’ with its perpetual unrest in response to police brutality, drone strikes, imprisonment of journalists, colossal debt and hugely disproportionate gap between the ultra-rich and the poor. What about ‘Abbott’s Australia’? ‘Cameron’s Britain’? And so on. The answers to these questions were of course that none of these could compare to Putin’s Russia. The obvious and occasionally infuriating problem that is encountered again and again is that while one can propose and defend actual facts with regard to why Russia is no worse and in many ways better than the west, my colleagues approached the topic with emotionally-charged yet factually-lacking ideas that have been shaped by the popular media and the ghost of Ivan Drago. If a war against Russia was announced tomorrow, their likely reactions would be of casual support. Perhaps now Russia could be gifted with what they believe to be democracy.

Needless to say it is often easiest to concede a general defeat to the propensity for people to think and act in droveslthough concerning to think what it it will take for the truth about Ukraine and Syria and every other demonised nation to truly reach the mainstream. What assault on the comfort of western exceptionalism will this truth take the form of? The likeliest scenarios appear to be either global war or global environmental catastrophemore likely both. In this year alone the United States is projected to spend least 598 billion dollars on its military while only spending 13.8 billion dollars on food and agriculture. This, while California, a major agricultural producer is facing its fourth consecutive year of crippling droughtone so severe that many scientists believe that the state is literally running out of water. In the meantime American war-hawks call for increasing military ‘aid’ to Ukraine, and mainstream columnists continue to churn out pieces encouraging the escalation of conflict

In the midst of this global tension, it is admirable that Russian diplomats continue to call their western counterparts “partners”, but with a complete lack of reciprocity this is perhaps no more fruitful than Neville Chamberlain daftly conceding Europe to Hitler while proclaiming that he had achieved “peace in our time”. Russia and the non-western world will always be an ‘existential threat‘ to America regardless of whether the latter is under McCarthyism or McCainism. The purpose of the lackey mainstream media is to inflate such a fear by reinforcing the image of the bogeymen of ISIS and ‘Russian aggression’. To simply look one step further than what is presented as “The News” is to see the elaborate-yet-clear workings of an imperial mindset that is violently struggling to maintain power. One can only hope that more people will reject the conformity of manufactured fear and further reject the calls to war, because this time it will not be another Viet Nam or another Iraq. Now the entire world faces the consequences of a rabid aggression that has largely survived with the help of a morally bankrupt media.

Image: Cassad.net

The movement for autonomy in West Ukraine has barely been reported by the Western media. Below is a report translated from Russian, which suggests that the movement for regional autonomy is by no means limited to Donbass. The Galicia protest is firmly opposed to the Kiev regime and its Neo-Nazi collaborators. What is unfolding is a process of political fracturing of Ukraine as a nation state. (M. Ch. GR ed) 

Pravyi Sektor tried to intervene, but despite the protests of the Pravyi Sektor Lviv chapter, about three hundred activists from various social organizations came out today with demands for real autonomy for the Lviv region. The rally of the supporters of Galician autonomy began at 16:30 in front of the Lviv Regional State Administration. The protesters blocked traffic on Vinnichenko street. Participants at the rally were holding placards that read: “Poroshenko has betrayed his people!”, “Special status for Galicia—real autonomy for the Lviv region!”, “Galicia is Europe!”, “Stop feeding the thieves in Kiev!” “Taxes should remain in the Lviv region!”

Activists of Pravyi Sektor tried to block the protest rally; however, as the main forces of the Pravyi Sektor are currently in Mukachevo, the “autonomists” were able to hold their event despite the interference.

The day before the “autonomists’” campaign, the Lviv chapter of the Pravyi Sektor issued a statement, in which it called on law enforcement agencies to prevent the gathering: “The Pravyi Sektor calls on the Lviv SBU and the Ministry of the Interior to prevent manifestations of separatism in Ukraine and, in particular, in Lviv. We would like to remind you that in the Donbass everything also began under the guise of “peaceful protests”, which were orchestrated by the Kremlin propagandists and then escalated into a war. If you do not stop such displays now, it may be too late tomorrow. In case of inactivity on the part of the SBU and the Ministry of the Interior, we reserve the right to fight all manifestations of separatism in Western Ukraine.” However, the organizers of the protest denied any connection between their actions and the activities of the separatists.

Danilo Povidalchik, the organizer of the rally, said: “At a time when a constitutional reform has been announced, we, the residents of the cradle of Ukrainian statehood—Galicia—risk becoming second-class citizens in our own country. In the circumstances when corruption has not been defeated by the central government, the money that rightfully belongs to the workers and the pensioners of our region ends up in the pockets of the thieving Kiev officials. Nothing has changed since the days of Yanukovych. Therefore, we demand real autonomy for the Lviv region as part of the Constitutional reform process that has been announced by President Petro Poroshenko.”

The participants in the event also demanded that Galicia be given the right to implement an independent customs policy, a special foreign trade regime with the European Union and an autonomous tariff policy. The resolution adopted at the rally and incorporating these requirements has been conveyed to the head of the Lviv Regional State Administration Oleg Sinyutka, and personally handed to him at the building of the Regional State Administration.

Post Scriptum: Separation of Galicia would have been a wonderful gift—they could have devoted themselves to building their “European Piedmont” separately and apart from everyone else and stopped polluting everyone’s minds with their Banderite ideology. But who would let them?

Things for the Pravyi Sektor could not be going worse. Porohsenko, having secured support from the Americans, is threatening to conduct yet another ATO (the “Anti-Terrorist Operation” in the Donbas—Ed.) and to deal with them once and for all. Yarosh is desperately looking for a way out, having realized that his forces are no match for the Ukrainian security apparatus. This evening, he started begging forgiveness, even though only a few hours earlier he called for Poroshenko’s resignation and for the dissolution of the Supreme Rada. Looks like Yarosh was finally told in no uncertain terms that he has lost his sense of reality.

Original: Gazeta.ru

Dmitry Yarosh (the leader of the Pravyi Sektor) said that he accepts responsibility for what happened in Mukachevo and proposed that Kiev offers amnesty to the fighters. In case of refusal, he threatened resistance and protest actions.

I am aware of our responsibility for what happened there,” Yarosh was quoted as saying by Channel 112, “They are my brothers—I fought with them, took Karlovka, Avdeevka, Peski, stayed with them under shelling, ate from the same pot, and we will not abandon them. In the autumn of last year, I drew the authorities’ attention to the fact that veterans who return from there, from the “front line,” see the world differently, and if the government does not radically bring order to the state, does not address the issues that are most pressing for the Ukrainian people, then they (the Pravyi Sektor militants—Ed.) will resolve these issues in their own way, to their own liking.

According to Yarosh, when the Pravyi Sektor fighters opened fire, “they fought with the system, did what they felt was right, just as they fought at the front lines before that.”

The events in Mukachevo have led to a political statement, but there has been no break with the Pravyi Sektor.

Yarosh proposed that amnesty be offered to the Pravyi Sektor fighters that opened fire in Mukachevo, in exchange for Pravyi Sektor joining the Ukrainian Armed Forces: “They would pay for their sins with their own blood. For the fact that they succumbed to a provocation.” The head of the Pravyi Sektor says that unregistered weapons left over from last year’s revolution and that ended up with the fighters played a role in what happened. From now on, Yarosh and his people are willing to identify unregistered weapons and deliver them to the area of the ATO.

According to Yarosh, in the case of an assault, the fighters encircled in the forest [near Mukachevo] are prepared to defend themselves. He is surprised that to fight a couple dozen Pravyi Sektor members the security forces sent spetsnaz (special forces) commandos with aviation and armoured vehicles: “five in every village.”

On Friday, President Poroshenko dismissed the heads of district administrations of the Transcarpathian region. Earlier, he appointed Gennady Moskal, who had previously served as the head of the Ministry of the Interior in the region, to be the head of the Transcarpathian Regional Administration. Moskal has the notoriety of a security forces hardliner and a man who radically fought against smuggling in the area of the ATO. The new governor has already laid blame on the regional prosecutor’s office for its corrupt ties with the soldiers of the Pravyi Sektor.

At a conference on Friday, Yarosh announced an urgent meeting of the Pravyi Sektor, to be held next week in the Maidan to protest the “disinformation campaign” orchestrated by Kiev. The commander of the Pravyi Sektor Ukrainian Volunteer Corps, Andrei Stempitsky, said that about a thousand militants are fighting on the front lines, and several thousand are in reserve. However, as shown by previous actions of the Pravyi Sektor, the organization is not really capable of mass protests.

Post Scriptum: If previously the Praviy Sector militants fought desperately against being incorporated into the security forces subordinated to Poroshenko, now they are asking for it as charity, no longer threatening to seize state power, but to perish heroically. This is nothing more than cheap pathos from a desperate loser. The only question that remains is whether Poroshenko is prepared to make any concessions to Praviy Sector or if he intends to finish them off, as he already did with Nalyvaichenko and Kolomoisky. In principle, Pravyi Sector dying a glorious death will not be the worst scenario, but the chances of something like that happening are slim to none.

Original: Boris Rozhin / Colonel Cassad LiveJournal
Translated from Russian by @ThreeTimesNine / Edited by Moti Nissani

A small town of Distomo is just 150 kilometers from Athens, positioned in the heart of Greece, literally squeezed between two great world heritage sites: Delphi, the cradle of the European democracy, and a stunning Byzantine monastery of Hossios Luckas.

But Distomo is much more than some picturesque village surrounded by mountains and history. Here, On June 10, 1944, according to Greek government records, but also according to Western mass media sources like the BBC, “for over two hours, Waffen-SS troops of the 4th SS Polizei Panzergrenadier Division under the command of SS-Hauptsturmführer Fritz Lautenbach went door to door and massacred Greek civilians as part of a ‘retaliation measure’ for a partisan attack upon the unit. A total of 214 men, women and children were killed in Distomo.‪‬ According to survivors, SS forces “bayoneted babies in their cribs, stabbed pregnant women, and beheaded the village priest.”‬‬‬‬‬

Distomo was not the only place where German troops performed despicable crimes against humanity. During the WWII, Greece lost around 8% of its population.

But Distomo became one of the symbols of Fascist madness on European soil, not unlike Guernica or Lidice.

Now on top of the hill overlooking Distomo, a monument commemorates the victims of the massacre. The names of the martyrs are engraved into the stone. And the poll is carrying an enormous Greek flag.

But at a closer examination, instead of serenity, this place is once again radiating eeriness and horror. The flag is torn to pieces at the end, and the entire hill is black – trees and grass are burned to ashes.

Below the hill, several houses and services are standing as ghosts, abandoned, with broken windows and violent graffiti “decorating” the walls.

In a local cafe, I ask a waitress what happened to the hill. She is friendly but firmly refuses to give details:

“It is man-made, but I can’t tell you more.”

Has it been a warning or an act of desperation? A reaction to recent humiliation, to a rape that Greece once again suffered at the hands of Germany, its politicians and banks, and in the paws of the rest of the European Union?

We ask around. Everybody knows but nobody speaks. A local man utters between his teeth: “I know who did it… We all know… But we will not tell”.

It is truly an eerie feeling; being in Greece, in one of the most outspoken countries on earth, but in a Greece that is suddenly too frightened, too humiliated, to even open its mouth and to speak, to shout, to howl.

What have they done to you, Greece? How did they manage to terrify you so thoroughly?

I don’t like the West. And after all that plunder, mass murder and gang rape that this continent, Europe, has been committing all over the world for centuries, I don’t feel comfortable coming here even for a short period of time.

But after Distomo, and after travelling all over Greece on two different occasions this year, I suddenly feel an upsurge of sympathy, of compassion, of love. Not for Europe, but for this country that is both its member and its victim – Greece.

In the recent history, Greece already lost countless sons and daughters during the German, Italian and Bulgarian fascist occupation. It was also choked by North American and British imperialism, which supported Greek military and its horrid dictatorship. That is when the Pinochet-style disappearances, torture, and assassinations took place. Hundreds of thousands of Greek patriots had to flee, and seek asylum at distant shores.

I met Greek intellectuals, Greek doctors, who grew up in Czechoslovakia, a country that gave them both political asylum and free education. It goes without saying that they and their families had never received one single penny in compensation from the United States or the United Kingdom.

Greece was never really compensated for the terror committed against its people during and after the WWII. People of Distomo tried to seek justice. They went to Greek courts. They won. But Germany refused to pay its dues. When Distomo people brought the case to German courts, where the claim was rejected at all levels. Subsequently Italy got involved, allowing Greek plaintive to take over German property on Lake Como, but in 2012, The International Court of Justice passed its final judgment, ruling that “Italy had violated Germany’s state immunity, and directed that the judgment by the Italian courts be retracted”.

German’s state immunity! How sensible, really! At the end, Germany, the country that had been murdering Greek babies got easily away with some of the most repulsive crimes committed in the 20th century. The Western “Allies” kept rewarding Germany, eventually turning it into their elite colony. And at some point it was allowed to become one of the toughest industrial neo-colonialist bullies. First – the West Germany and then so called “united Germany”. Now of course, Germany is not a colony, but a colonizer.

After spending some time there, it becomes obvious what really happened in Distomo. Someone burned the hill on which the monument rests. It was a symbolic act, a gruesome protest. Then the flag was lowered and shredded, turned into a rug… and then raised again, for everyone to see what has been done to Greece!

Greece is now obviously on the same hit list of the Empire, as are countless other “unruly” nations, from Ecuador and Venezuela, to Russia, China and Iran. I described the system and many of the victims in my latest book, “Exposing Lies of The Empire”. But many Greek people do not realize, yet, what is really occurring, although the Empire has already destroyed several EU-member countries like Bulgaria.

When I saw the faces of people of Distomo, I was overwhelmed. I felt wrath.

In my mind, I kept addressing the Prime Minister of Greece:

Mr. Tsipras… not comrade Tsipras anymore… Oh no. Mr. Tsipras, what had been done to your people? The Greek nation always consisted of fun loving, good-hearted individuals. Of people who like to sing, to dance, and to speak loudly about things that are hurting them, concerning them, outraging them. Greeks are brave people. They fight when there is no other alternative! I don’t always agree with them, but I admire them nevertheless. What is this fear, this dark defeatism that is choking your country? These are not Greek people; this is not the Greek nation that I know. Mr. Prime Minister, your people told me that they are scared!

It was obvious that people were scared to speak, to even complain. At Distomo, they did not even look into our faces.

Instead, in a local cafe on the main square, locals were watching on a huge screen, as if hypnotized, some water gymnastics competition. A Chinese girl was really jumping well, entering water in an elegant, confident style. But what the hell had gymnastics to do with collapsing, blackmailed Greece, or with the hill devastated by fire, or with abandoned and destroyed houses of Distomo?

“You were elected in order to serve your people”, I was hissing, maliciously, at Tsipras. “You are obliged to protect them, their interests, not the interests of carnivorous neoliberalism, and the Western/EU fascism”.

But Alexis Tsipras was in Athens, and we were near Delphi.

“Why are you not fighting, or at least not protesting?” We asked at Delphi, at the “cradle of Western democracy”.

A local man, well educated and pensive, replied:

We are scared. We have no leadership. The government uses water cannons and rubber bullets against us, but we have no one to show us direction.

Is there any democracy left in Greece? After the “NO-vote, and after the grand betrayal, or call it a treason, do people of Greece and of Delphi still believe that they live in a democracy?

No!” comes almost the immediate answer. No hesitation; a man does not need to think for more than a few seconds. It is obvious that he already meditated on this topic for many days. Therefore the answer is short and definite: NO!

I photograph the shattered Greek flag, through the horrifying, black, burned threes and branches.

Then I salute the flag.

This time I came to Greece “undecided”, not really sure whether I wanted to get involved.

But by now I know.

Before this, I had no use for “the prestigious EU Greek flag”. But this rag, this flag of a suffering nation is truly sacred.

Internationalists are with you, Greece. We are embracing you. You are not alone. Your flag is our flag now.

But please understand that we are standing by you, hoping that you see by now what the Western imperialism is all about. Hoping that you will join forces with those who are fighting against Western fascism. We are not with you so you could reach another set of agreements, to remain in that “prestigious EU club”, and stay in NATO, the organization that is ruining our entire Planet. We are not with you so your farmers could get further billions in subsidies; money taken away from other starving and destroyed nations, mainly those in Africa and Asia. We are not with you, so your soldiers could help terrorize the world through your membership in NATO.

We are with a new, revolutionary Greece, with the country that voted NO! We are with the country based on solidarity, justice, social equality and international non-interference or better still, on internationalism.

There May Be A Civil War

The “Prosfygika” housing complex in Athens is old, dilapidated, with crumbling walls. It was originally built in 1930’s, to accommodate some of those Greeks who arrived in the capital after a 1923 “population exchange” with Turkey after WWI.

Now it is a home to local squatters, and foreign refugees. But it is also one of the centers of resistance, where Communists and Anarchists are organizing their actions, plotting their strategy.

Local left-wing cadres call this place “self-organized community”.

Mr. Evangelis (perhaps not his real name) is extremely coherent and precise in his analyses. He agreed to speak to us about the situation in his country:

The Poor have been betrayed. We have no political center, right now, but we will manage to create it, again… soon. Greece is heading for a big class war; a class struggle.

People around him are nodding.

Syriza was promoting itself as a movement of class cooperation… Therefore, when the rich said “we will not cooperate” and the government could clearly do nothing about it, it was time to kick the government out.

Then Evangelis says something that could be applied in so many other countries, all over the world:

The government is now scared of us, of those who voted “No!” therefore – of the majority. The government betrayed its people but many of us saw it coming, and it was no shock. I believe that our 1949 civil war never really ended. Those Greeks who were collaborating with the Nazis, and later with the US and the UK – they are the same people who are in power now.

We are asking about that bizarre calm, which is felt all over Greece. There are no strikes and no mass protests. Twice we visited the areas in front of the Parliament and the ministries. There were only few tourists, watching changes of guards.

We are told that Syriza’s betrayal was well planned. It came in the middle of a hot summer, during the time of vacations and holidays.

We will regroup”, promises Evangelis. “We will reorganize the movement. There will be strikes, and huge school protests. We are planning a huge protest on 20 August. Universities are now closed, and union leaders are on vacation, far from Athens. It will all change, soon.

In Greece, it all feels like a calm before a huge storm.

People are being fired from their jobs, we are told.

Hospitals are overcrowded and local doctors are overstretched, but working, heroically, with low, unrealistically low budgets and deeply reduced salaries. But they are working!

No matter what the mainstream Western mass media “reports”, Greece is suffering, but it is not collapsing.

Pensioners are now barely surviving on amounts lower than those in Thailand and in most of Latin America. But they are surviving, due to the strong (un-European) family structure and solidarity of Greek people.

Back in Delphi, a man keeps talking about fear:

We don’t see much hope… Actually, no hope… And we are not sure how to fight, anymore. They harm us when we go to the streets. If we would feel that we could change things, we’d go and risk our lives. 61% voted No! But Tsipras did what he did, anyway. We are afraid now!

But isn’t this actually the reason? To go and to fight, exactly because what was done?

We are afraid.

Afraid of what?

Of everything… of rubber bullets and of water cannons. Of Greece being pushed out of Europe…

But how could it be pushed out? Greece is in Europe.

We are afraid of consequences…

It is all messed up.

On the touristy island of Kos, German tourists, showing indifference, even spite, are stuffing themselves on fresh seafood, downing gallons of local wine. This year, “Greece is bit cheaper than other destinations”, a German couple at Athens’s airport tells me. “That is why we come”. Few meters from the seafront of Kos, a local hospital literally collapsed, with no ability to save human lives.

On top of it, thousands of destitute refugees from destabilized countries (destabilized by the West) from all over the world are now everywhere, at every corner of Kos. It feels like “the last supper of Europe”, repulsive orgy of indifference, consumerism, and moral decay.

But no artist bothers to depict it, as there is hardly any political art left in Europe.

My friend and comrade, Peter Koenig, has been desperately trying to convince Greece to default, as Argentina did very successfully, many years ago. Peter is a former World Bank economist, now one of the most outspoken critics of Western institutions and neoliberalism. He and his wife Monica, a Peruvian artist, have been travelling with me all over the country.

Peter loves Greece. He fights for Greece. He is desperately trying to convince Greek intellectuals to leave the European Union, the Eurozone and the NATO. Peter strongly believes that the drachma, pre-EU Greek currency, should be re-introduced.

“But people here are torn”, he told me. “Many still see the European Union as some sort of “prestigious club””.

“Prestigious club that plunders the world and now even devours its own children”, I utter.

“Russia and China would bail out Greece, if the Greek government would approach them…”

We discuss this topic, constantly. Of course, the Greek government had to “promise” to the Troika that it would not be seeking any funding from “outside” the EU. But as our friend, an international lawyer Christopher Black, pointed out: all these agreements are not valid, as they were reached under duress.

Whenever we talk to Greek people, it all goes in circles: betrayal by the government… shock… uncertainty… what to do next, what steps to take?

It is all very unsettling… This agony, this injustice that is so difficult to confront!

But Greek people are proud and brave. They will not give up easily. They will confront their torturers. They will rise.

At one point, I am overwhelmed by an unbridled desire to test whether Greek humor is still there, still alive.

We enter a psychiatric clinic, and I request to speak to a doctor on duty.

When he arrives, I introduce myself as an internationalist philosopher and investigative journalist. Doctor shakes my hand, enthusiastically.

“Sir”, I begin. “I have unconfirmed but very reliable information that at least 5 cabinet ministers of the Greek government had been admitted to your clinic after what the government dared to do, recently…”

The doctor is staring at me for several seconds, in total bewilderment.

Then his face brightens. He produces a roaring laughter. He hugs me.

“Not yet… But we hope they will bring them here, soon”, he chuckles.

“Greece will be fine”, I say to myself.

If I had been a survivor from the Nazi Holocaust in Europe in 1945, I would have supported the proposition of Israel becoming a nuclear power so that the world would know that the mass ethnic murder of millions could never happen again.

The vast majority of today’s five million American Jews, however, are not Holocaust survivors and have no connection with such families. Many do not even know precisely where London is, never mind Berlin. However, a substantial minority have succumbed to political pressure to indiscriminately support the Israel lobby in the U.S. that acts as an agent for a foreign, nuclear power.

AIPAC is a high-powered, multi-financed, political pressure group working exclusively in the interests of 6 million Israelis and not for the welfare or benefit of the 300 million citizens of the United States of America. It raises massive sums of money in order to ensure that the House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate are both populated by members who support its political and economic agenda in priority over that of the United States of America although it would have you believe that the two are identical – which any high-school, American child could tell you is patent nonsense.

Israel works for Israel and ensures that America does likewise and, somewhat unbelievably, will also deploy American troops to fight for it. However, there is now increasingly a national contention that believes that AIPAC’s influence and power over the U.S. Congress are wholly disproportionate; are contrary to democratic governance and need to now either be prohibited or heavily regulated, by law. The first step would appear to be for the President of the United States to have AIPAC designated as an ‘Agent for a Foreign Power’ and, as such, be prohibited from having any influence on the selection, or election, of members of the United States legislature.

In this context, it must be kept in mind that the State of Israel is the only undeclared nuclear weapons entity in the world, with an estimated secret arsenal of up to 400 nuclear warheads – all of which are outside the inspection of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) of the United Nations, which makes it potentially the greatest threat to global peace in the history of mankind.

That means that there could well be another holocaust, but one that could wipe out not six million, but six billion of us – from London to Los Angeles and from Beirut to Beijing and everyone in between. That is the horrific, but factual position today, in 2015.

The most valuable legacy that President Obama could leave would be to make foreign influence over the U.S. Congress both unconstitutional and illegal. An undeclared nuclear Israel, outside the inspection of the IAEA is a grave enough global problem without it being supported and financed by a lobby-controlled House of Representatives without any mandate from the people it was elected to represent.

(C) EUnewsdesk. August 2015, London

Big Lies repeated ad nauseam get most people to believe them. The long ago discredited canard about Russian aggression in Ukraine continues being repeated – on Saturday by neocon Washington Post editors.

They lied claiming “(n)early six months after Russia agreed to an immediate cease-fire in eastern Ukraine, its forces continue to shell and rocket Ukrainian positions on a daily basis.”

Far from pulling back heavy weapons or withdrawing its troops as required by the agreement, it has built military bases and deployed 9,000 troops inside Ukraine and stationed another 50,000 just outside the border…

The sources: US-dominated NATO, Britain’s hawkish Royal United Services Institute (RUSI – a defense and security think tank), and Kiev junta authorities – knowingly and willfully proliferating Big Lies.

Poroshenko  claims around 50,000 Russian troops operate in Ukraine. It’s hard taking him seriously. His buffoon-like comments are ludicrous.

US-dominated NATO is no better, saying Russian forces still operate in eastern Ukraine. Last month Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg wrongfully accused Moscow of “behaving aggressively – continu(ing) (to) provid(e) separatists…with modern weapons (and) sends troops there. This is an act of aggression.”

Russia is ready to use force against Ukraine, Georgia and Moldova. Russia more often mentions nuclear weapons as part of its defense strategy. What is more, they conduct unexpected maneuvers to conceal aggressive actions against its neighbors.

Britain’s RUSI lied claiming 42,000 Russian troops are directly or indirectly involved in Donbass fighting. The report’s author, Igor Sutyagin, is a former Military-Technical and Military-Economic Policy head at the Russian Academy of Sciences Institute for US and Canadian Studies.

He was convicted on espionage charges, imprisoned for 11 years, then released in a prisoner swap with Washington for alleged Russian spies. In 2014 he began working for RUSI. His credibility is dubious at best.

He lied saying Russian troops are “either stationed (in Southeastern Ukraine), delivering artillery fire against Ukrainian territory from Russian soil, or directly participating in combat operations on Ukrainian sovereign territory.”

He claims 9,000 to 11,000 Russian soldiers operate inside Ukraine. Yet he fails to provide any corroborating evidence. There is none. His claims along with others from NATO and Kiev are a complete fabrication.

No alleged “Russian aggression” exists – none any time since Kiev began waging naked aggression on Donbass in April 2014 – continuing unabated today with multiple daily shellings of residential and other areas.

On July 27, Ukraine’s deputy chief of general staff general Hennadii Vorobiov lied claiming “a high probability of a full-scale invasion of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation.”

In early July, Kiev’s national security and defense council absurdly warned about readied Moscow preparations for a massive new invasion from three directions along the contact line in Donbass.

Russia massed “a record number of troops” along the border with Ukraine, it added. Poroshenko turned truth on its head saying thousands of Ukrainian forces in Donbass are “trying to stem the advance of Russian-backed forces.”

WaPo editors shamelessly repeated this rubbish as fact. They absurdly claim Putin wants to “cripple (Ukraine’s nonexistent) democracy and independence.”

Malicious anti-Russian propaganda proliferated since before Ukrainian crisis conditions erupted in fall 2013.

The bigger the lie, the more frequent the repetition. WaPo editors want Washington heavily arming Kiev more than already – “so that Russia will be deterred from the (nonexistent) offensive it is threatening.”

You can’t make this stuff up. It’s hard imagining anyone believes it. In early July, WaPo deputy editorial page editor Jackson Diehlclaimed “a large new Russian military base” operates in Donbass – based on so-called Kiev junta drone footage, the same kind NATO and Ukraine manufactured earlier, later proved bogus.

Expect unrelenting Russia bashing to continue. Expect no letup in accusing Putin and Donbass freedom fighters of Kiev junta crimes.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at[email protected].

His new book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.”

http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

Listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network.

It airs three times weekly: live on Sundays at 1PM Central time plus two prerecorded archived programs.

Our refusal to acknowledge the human cost our violence blinds us to the malevolence of US imperialism

According to the Pentagon, US led airstrikes against ISIS have killed only two civilians: both children – “likely in Syria”.

A new report compiled by the non-profit group Airwars, which tracks coalition airstrikes in the Middle East, documents up to 591 civilian deaths from more than 50 credible incidents – involving 5,600 airstrikes.

In 1928, when Arthur Ponsonby, a British politician, said, “When war is declared, the first casualty is the truth” – he never specified what the distorted “truth” might be. If one were to examine all wars the US has engaged in modern history, however, one might conclude the casualty to be civilian death counts.

Photo: Archive picture of an Islamic State fighter in Iraq – not in the United States (AFP)

The US government and its ever-reliable mainstream media cheerleaders rarely, if ever, discuss, debate, or dwell on civilian casualties. To do so would be to acknowledge our own sins. To acknowledge our sins would be to acknowledge the US is as barbaric and uncivilised as those the US pretends pose an existential threat.

“When enemies commit crimes, they’re crimes. In fact, we can exaggerate and lie about them with complete impunity,” says Noam Chomsky in an interview featured in Imperial Ambitions: Conversations in a Post-9/11 World. “When we commit crimes, they didn’t happen.”

Now even if you file US-caused civilian casualties under the horribly euphemistic moniker “collateral damage,” you must, at the very least, file those casualties accurately. But the US has a history of underreporting civilian casualties at best, and proactively concealing at worst.

In 2004, The New York Times ran a piece about the tapes that recorded conversations between President Nixon and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. In one exchange, Kissinger says he wants to sweep the 1969 My Lai massacre, where US Marines mass murdered as many as 500 civilians, “under the rug”.

As the air campaign against North Vietnam and the South Vietnamese Viet Cong continued to fail, Nixon angrily expressed his frustration. “They’re not only not imaginative but they are just running these things – bombing jungles,” Nixon said. ”They have got to go in there and I mean really go in. I want them to hit everything. I want them to use the big planes, the small planes, everything they can that will help out there, and let’s start giving them a little shock.”

Kissinger immediately relayed the order to the Pentagon: ”A massive bombing campaign in Cambodia. Anything that flies on anything that moves.”

Chomsky says this is the “most explicit call for what we call genocide when other people do it that I’ve ever seen in the historical record”.

More than a numbers game

So how many civilians did the US kill in both Vietnam and Cambodia? Well, it depends on whom you ask. If you ask the US government, “official records,” you get to a number around 2 million. If, however, you ask NGOs that track civilian casualties, you get to a number closer to 4 million.

While there’s a big difference between 2 and 4 million, there’s an even bigger discrepancy between 4 million and the number of civilian casualties the average American believes were killed in Vietnam by US military actions. In The Gulf War: A Study of the Media, Public Opinion, and Public Knowledge, the authors conducted a poll in which Americans were asked to estimate the number of Vietnamese killed in the war. The mean answer was 100,000, which represents 5 percent of official US estimates, and 2.5 percent of more credible estimates.

Of course, neither the above official and credible figures include the estimated 500,000 who have died slow and painful deaths over the course of the post-war decades from exposure to chemical weapons – Agent Orange and other dioxins.

More recently, the story of the 2003–2010 US invasion and occupation of Iraq is a story of Bush administration officials fudging the numbers on Iraqi casualties. In a 2005 press conference, President Bush was asked about the Iraqi death toll. With what became his typical befuddled and dismissive manner, Bush declared that only “30,000 Iraqi citizens” had been killed in the conflict thus far.

Lancet, a highly regarded British medical journal, however, published an “epidemiological study” in November 2004 that concluded more than 100,000 Iraqis had been killed in “violent actions” since the invasion. In 2006, two household surveys – considered to be the most accurate methodology for calculating casualties – put the Iraqi death toll at somewhere between 400,000 to 650,000 – thus making a mockery of Bush’s “30,000.”

“This inattention to civilian deaths in America’s wars isn’t unique to Iraq,” observes John Tirman, author of The Deaths of Others: The Fate of Civilians in American Wars. “There’s little evidence that the American public gives much thought to the people who live in the nations where our military interventions take place.”

Tirman likens US indifference to civilian casualties to what social psychologists call the “just world theory,” which argues, “Humans naturally assume that the world should be orderly and rational. When that ‘just world’ is disrupted, we tend to explain away the event as an aberration” and that when wars start to go badly for the US, Americans tend to “ignore or even blame the victims”.

US indifference

America’s indifference to civilian casualties is also rooted in racism via what cultural historian Richard Slotkin calls “the myth of the Frontier,” which posits America is always trying to subdue a “savage enemy” and that it is this myth that drives the way Americans see themselves and the world around them. “The savage enemy kills and terrorises without limit . . . in order to exterminate or drive out the civilised race (and) the civilised race learns to respond in kind. A cycle of massacre and revenge is thus inaugurated that drives both sides toward a war of extermination,” writes Slotkin.

Indifference to foreign “savages” and suffering is even codified into the US public education system. Susan Fujita, an assistant professor of US modern history, carried out a study of US history textbooks that were published in the United States between 1949 and 2010.

Of 58 textbooks that mentioned the atomic bomb, only 42 mentioned the civilian death toll of Hiroshima and only 18 mentioned the civilian death toll of Nagasaki. For Hiroshima, 35 of the textbooks gave a lower figure than official United Nations estimates. For Nagasaki, nearly all gave a lower figure than official United Nations estimates.

So what were the United Nations estimates? For Hiroshima, 140,000 killed civilians. For Nagasaki, 70,000 killed civilians. Now compare these estimates to official US estimates, which were carried out by the US Strategic Bombing Survey, which had killed civilians at 70,000 and 35,000, respectively.

Our refusal to acknowledge the human cost our violence inflicts upon those we seek to dominate, subjugate and occupy blinds us to both the realities of war and the malevolence of US imperialism. “It is in the nature of imperialism that citizens of imperial power are always among the last to know – or care – about circumstances in the colonies,” wrote the late philosopher Bertrand Russell.

Chomsky says we’re the last to know because of “massive propaganda campaigns” that keep us from knowing and that “when you’re silent about your own crimes, that’s propaganda, too”.

Go ahead. Conduct your own poll the next time you’re chatting with Americans. Ask how many civilians were killed in Vietnam, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Iraq, Syria, Panama, Cuba, Nicaragua, Korea, etc. I bet they either don’t know or care. And that’s what – as Chomsky wrote in a 2014 op-ed – makes America the “leading terrorist state and proud of it”.

Syria is winning. Despite ongoing bloodshed and serious economic pressure, Syria is advancing steadily towards a military and strategic victory that will transform the Middle East. There is clear evidence that Washington’s plans – whether for ‘regime change’, for rendering the state dysfunctional or for dismembering the country on sectarian lines – have failed.

That failure will fatally wound the US dream, announced a decade ago by Bush junior, for a subservient ‘New Middle East’. Syria’s victory is a combination of coherent popular support for the national army, in face of a vicious sectarian Islamists (takfiris), firm backing by key allies, and fragmentation of the international forces lined up against them.

The economic hardships, including regular blackouts, are now worse but have not broken the Syrian people’s will to resist. The government ensures basic foods are affordable and maintains education, health, sports, cultural and other services. A string of formerly hostile states and UN agencies are resuming their relations with Syria. An improved security situation, the recent big power agreement with Iran and other favourable diplomatic moves are all signs that the Axis of Resistance has strengthened.

You wouldn’t know much of this by reading the western media, which has lied persistently about the character of the conflict and developments in the crisis. Key features of that deception have been to hide NATO’s backing for the takfiri groups, yet trumpet their advances and ignore the Syrian Army roll-backs. In fact, these western-backed terrorists have made no real strategic advance since a flood of foreign fighters helped them take parts of northern Aleppo, back in mid-2012.

In my second visit to Syria during the crisis, in July 2015, I could see how security had improved around the major cities. In my first visit in December 2013, although NATO’s throat-cutters had been ejected from much of Homs and Qsayr, they were in the ancient village of Maloula and along the Qalamoun Mountains, as well as attacking the road south to Sweida. This year we were able to travel freely by road from Sweida to Damascus to Homs to Latakia, with just one minor detour around Harasta. In late 2013 there was daily mortaring of eastern Damascus; this year it was far less common. The army seems to control 90% of the heavily populated areas.

Fact check one: there never were any ‘moderate rebels’. A genuine political reform movement was displaced by a Saudi-backed Islamist insurrection, through March-April 2011. In the first few months of the crisis, from Daraa to Homs, key armed groups like the Farouq brigade were extremists backed by Saudi Arabia and Qatar, who practised public atrocities and blew up hospitals, using genocidal slogans and practising sectarian ethnic cleansing (1). Syrians these days call them all ‘Daesh’ (ISIL) or just ‘mercenaries’, not bothering too much with the different brand names. The recent statement by ‘moderate rebel’ leader Lamia Nahas that Syria’s ‘minorities are evil and must be disposed of’, just as Hitler and the Ottomans disposed of minorities (2), only underlines that fact. The character of the armed conflict has always been between a confrontation between an authoritarian but pluralist and socially inclusive state, and Saudi-style sectarian Islamists, acting as proxy armies for the big powers.

Fact check two: almost all the atrocities blamed on the Syrian Army have been committed by western-backed gangs, as part of their strategy to attract deeper western intervention. That includes the discredited chemical weapons claims (3) and the collateral damage claims of the so-called ‘barrel bombing’. US journalist Nir Rosen wrote back in 2012, ‘Every day the opposition gives a death toll, usually without any explanation … Many of those reported killed are in fact dead opposition fighters but … described in reports as innocent civilians killed by security forces’ (4). Those opposition reports are still relied on by partisan groups such as Amnesty International (US) and Human Rights Watch, to bolster the war propaganda. The Syrian Army has indeed executed captured terrorists, and the secret police continue to detain and mistreat those suspected of collaborating with those terrorists. But this is an army which enjoys very strong public support. The Islamist gangs, on the other hand, openly boast of their atrocities and have minimal public support.

Fact check three: while there is a terrorist ‘presence’ in large parts of Syria, neither Daesh/ISIL nor any other armed group ‘controls’ much of the populated Syrian territory. Western agencies (such as Janes and ISW) regularly confuse presence with control. Notwithstanding the Daesh/ISIL offensives in Daraa, Idlib and Eastern Homs, the heavily populated areas of Syria are under noticeably stronger army control than they were in 2013. Only a few areas have been held for months or years. In any sustained confrontation, the Army generally wins; but it is under pressure and not infrequently makes a tactical retreat, because it is fighting on dozens of fronts.

The Syrian Army has tightened its cordon around northern Aleppo, Douma and Harasta, and has had recent victories in Hasaka, Idlib and Daraa. With Hezbollah forces the Army has virtually eliminated Daesh/ISIL and its squabbling partners from the Qalamoun mountains, along the border with Lebanon.

Despite years of mass terrorism and western sanctions the Syrian state is functioning surprisingly well. In July 2015 our group visited large sports centres, schools and hospitals. Millions of Syrian children attend school and hundreds of thousands still study in mostly fee-free universities. Unemployment, shortages and power blackouts plague the country. Takfiri groups have targeted hospitals for demolition since 2011. They also regularly attack power plants, leading to government rationing of electricity, until the system is back up. There are serious shortages and widespread poverty but, despite the war, everyday life goes on.

For example, there was controversy in 2014 over building the ‘Uptown’ complex in New Sham, a large satellite city outside Damascus. The facility comprises restaurants, shops, sports facilities and, at the centre, children’s rides and other entertainment. ‘How could the state spend so much money on this, when so many people were suffering from the war?’ one side of the argument ran. On the other side it was said that life goes on and families have to live their lives. After Ramadan, during Eid, we saw thousands of families making use of this very child-friendly complex.

Security procedures have become ‘normal’. Frequent army checkpoints are met with remarkable patience. Syrians know they are for their security, especially against the car and truck bombs used by the Islamists. Soldiers are efficient but human, often exchanging friendly chat with the people. Most families have members in the Army and many have lost loved ones. Syrians do not endure curfews or cower from soldiers, as so many did under the US-backed fascist dictatorships of Chile and El Salvador, in the past.

In the north, the Mayor of Latakia told us that this province of 1.3 million now has over three million, having absorbed displaced people from Aleppo, Idlib and other northern areas affected by incursions of sectarian terrorists. Most are in free or subsidised government housing, with family and friends, renting or in small businesses. We saw one group of about 5,000, many from Hama, at Latakia’s large sports complex. In the south, Sweida has been hosting 130,000 displaced families from the Daraa area, doubling the population of that province. Yet Damascus holds the greater part of the six million internally displaced people and, with a little help from the UNHCR, the government and army are the main ones organising their care. The western media only tells you about the refugee camps in Turkey and Jordan, facilities mostly controlled by the armed groups.

The ‘regime attacking civilians’ or ‘indiscriminately’ bombing civilian areas only has a basis in the Islamist propaganda on which much of the western media relies. The fact that, after three years, Syrian planes and artillery have not flattened hold-out areas like Jobar, Douma and parts of northern Aleppo, gives the lie to claims against the Army. You can be almost certain that the next time western media say ‘civilians’ are being killed by ‘indiscriminate’ Syrian government bombing, it is the Islamist sources themselves who are under attack.

This war is being fought on the ground, building to building, with many army casualties. Many Syrians we spoke to said they wished the government would indeed flatten these ghost towns, saying that the only civilians left there are the families of and collaborators with the extremist groups. The Syrian Government proceeds with greater caution.

Regional states see what is coming, and have begun to rebuild ties with Syria. Washington still pushes its chemical weapons lies (in face of the independent evidence), but lost its stomach for any major escalation back in late 2013, after the confrontation with Russia. There is still much sabre rattling (5), but it is noteworthy that Egypt and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), enemies of Syria just a little while back, are now normalising their diplomatic relations with Damascus.

The UAE, perhaps the most ‘flexible’ of the Gulf monarchies, but also linked by Vice President Joe Biden to support for Daesh/ISIL (6), has its own worries. It recently arrested dozens of Islamists over a plot to turn the absolutist monarchy into an absolutist caliphate (7). Egypt, back in military hands after a short-lived Muslim Brotherhood Government that wanted to join in the attacks on Syria, is now dealing with its own sectarian terrorism, from that same Brotherhood. The largest of Arab countries now defends the territorial integrity of Syria and backs (at least verbally) the Syrian campaigns against terrorism. Egyptian analyst Hassan Abou Taleb calls this message ‘a condemnation and rejection of Turkey’s unilateral moves’ against Syria (8).

The Erdogan Government tried to position Turkey at the head of a Muslim Brotherhood region, but has lost allies, is often at odds with its anti-Syrian partners and faces dissent at home. Washington has tried to use the separatist Kurds against both Baghdad and Damascus, while Turkey sees them as key enemies and the Saudi-backed Islamists slaughter them as ‘apostate’ Muslims. For their part, the Kurdish communities have enjoyed greater autonomy and acceptance under Iran and Syria.

Washington’s recent agreement with Iran is an important development, as the Islamic Republic remains the most important regional ally of secular Syria and a firm opponent of Saudi-style Islamists. Affirmation of Iran’s role in the region upsets the Saudis and Israel, but bodes well for Syria. All commentators see a diplomatic jockeying for position after the Iran deal and – despite Iran’s recent exclusion from a meeting between Russian, US and Saudi foreign ministers – there can be little doubt that Iran’s hand has been strengthened in regional affairs. An unusual meeting between Syria’s intelligence chief, Brigadier-General Ali Mamlouk, and the Saudi Defence Minister, Prince Mohammed Bin Salman (9), also shows that the Syrian Government has resumed direct discussions with the major sponsor of terrorism in the region.

Syria is winning because the Syrian people have backed their army against sectarian provocations, mostly fighting their own battles against NATO and Gulf Monarchy sponsored multi-national terrorism. Syrians, including most devout Sunni Muslims, will never accept that head-chopping, vicious and sectarian perversion of Islam promoted by the Gulf monarchies.

Syria’s victory will have wider implications. It spells an end to Washington’s roller coaster of ‘regime change’ across the region, from Afghanistan to Iraq to Libya. Out of the death and misery caused by this dirty war we are seeing the emergence of a stronger ‘Axis of Resistance’. Syria’s victory will also be that of Iran and of the Lebanese Resistance, led by Hezbollah. Further, the conflict has helped built significant measures of cooperation with Iraq. The gradual incorporation of Baghdad into this Axis will seal the humiliating defeat of plans for a US-Israel-Saudi dominated ‘New Middle East’. This regional unity comes at a terrible cost, but it is coming, nonetheless.

References

(1) Tim Anderson (2015) ‘Daraa 2011: Syria’s Islamist Insurrection in Disguise’, Global Research, 5 June, online:http://www.globalresearch.ca/daraa-2011-syrias-islamist-insurrection-in-disguise/5460547

(2) The Angry Arab (2015) ‘This is what the candidate for Syria’s provisional (opposition) government wrote on Facebook: a holocaust’, 4 August, online: http://angryarab.blogspot.fr/2015/08/this-is-what-candidate-for-syrias.html

(3) Tim Anderson (2015) ‘Chemical Fabrications: East Ghouta and Syria’s Missing Children’, Global Research, 12 April, online:http://www.globalresearch.ca/chemical-fabrications-east-ghouta-and-syrias-missing-children/5442334

(4) Nir Rosen (2012) ‘Q&A: Nir Rosen on Syria’s armed opposition’, Al Jazeera, 13 Feb, online: http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2012/02/201221315020166516.html

(5) Press TV (2015) ‘Syria ‘should not interfere’ in militant ops by US-backed groups’, 3 August, online: http://www.presstv.com/Detail/2015/08/03/423141/us-syria-isis-isil-assad-josh-earnest

(6) Adam Taylor (2014) ‘Behind Biden’s gaffe lie real concerns about allies’ role in rise of the Islamic State’, Washington Post, 6 October, online: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2014/10/06/behind-bidens-gaffe-some-legitimate-concerns-about-americas-middle-east-allies/

(7) Bloomberg (2015) ‘U.A.E. to Prosecute 41 Accused of Trying to Establish Caliphate’, 2 August, online:http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-08-02/u-a-e-to-prosecute-41-accused-of-trying-to-establish-caliphate

(8) Reuters (2015) Egypt defends Syria’s territorial unity after Turkey moves against IS’, 2 July, online: http://uk.reuters.com/article/2015/07/29/uk-mideast-crisis-syria-egypt-idUKKCN0Q31AY20150729

(9) Zeina Karam and Adam Schreck (2015) ‘Iran nuclear deal opens diplomatic channels for Syria’, AP, 6 August, online:http://news.yahoo.com/iran-nuclear-deal-opens-diplomatic-channels-syria-161740195.html

Whatever happens on 12 September, the cork is out the bottle, the candle is burning bright, the ideas are shining and there is a change in the air. Jeremy Corbyn, The Independent, Aug 9, 2015

Skittled at the last elections, Britain’s rattled Labour Party has been on the search for options. This has not taken the usual, management form, where committees prevail over individuals and individuals comply. The satirical magazine, Private Eye, decided to weigh in with a front cover featuring how “Loony Lefty sweeps to Power.” Hence the fixation with Jeremy Corbyn, member of Islington North since 1983, and a figure who is revisiting some of the old, abandoned ground of traditional Labour in an attempt to win the party’s leadership.

On the weekend, Corbyn told The Independent that he was considering “restoring clause IV as it was originally written” – in other words, a return to the public ownership idea deemed crippling and rank by Tony Blair and his gang of Thatcherite modernisers: “I think we should talk about what the objectives of the party are, whether that’s restoring the clause IV as it was originally written or it’s a different one, but I think we shouldn’t shy away from public participation, public investment in industry and public control of the railways.”[1]A spokesman for Corbyn subsequently came out to dampen the issue, suggesting that the front runner for the Labour leadership did not want “a big ‘moment’ such as that”.[2] A mixed approach to public ownership needed to be placed on the table, rather than a rule of unnerving dogmatism. May such spokesmen be few and far between in suggesting such “moments”.

The original article stems from the 1918 text of the UK Labour party’s written constitution which ostensibly enshrined its official socialist identity. The Manchester Guardian went so far as to deem this “the birth of a socialist party” an article of identifiable faith. It has been the brainchild of the co-founder of the London School of Economics and Fabian, Sidney Webb:

To secure for the workers by hand or by brain the full fruits of their industry and the most equitable distribution thereof that may be possible upon the basis of the common ownership of the means of production, distribution, and exchange, and the best obtainable system of popular administration and control of each industry or service.

The terms of reference to common ownership has tended to be the sticking point in the cultural and economic battles that have afflicted Britain, and more broadly the Left, for decades. Labour leader Hugh Gaitskell thought of amending the clause after Labour lost the 1959 general election, and failed. The Labour party continued to weather storms and suggestions that the clause be altered till 1995, when Blair won the vote as part of his New Labour project. “Let no one say that radical politics is dead. Today a new Labour party is being born.”

What New Labour entailed was technocratic mania, the commitment to a “dynamic economy” – and the acceptance that the only true radical politics had to incorporate the sting of neo-conservatism. “Labour will work in pursuit of these aims, with trade unions, co-operative societies and other affiliated organisations and also with voluntary organisations, consumer groups and other representative bodies.” The Tories, at least in the market sense, had insinuated themselves into the Labour temple. The gobbledygook of the “Third Way”, with its mystical centrism, was born.

Corbyn’s sentiment is far from remarkable, which is exactly why he is being deemed loony and radical. He is raising a host of unspeakable things: opening up a discussion on crumbling infrastructure, debating the issue of privatisation, long accepted as part of the ideological consensus. The British are famed for lamenting how the trains do not run on time – and Thatcher’s privatisation program simply affirmed the rule, at even higher costs.

The Corbyn drive will send the usual jitters down Blairite spines. Corbyn’s rival Liz Kendall has suggested that Corbyn’s stance is cryogenic, showing “there is nothing new about [his] politics. It is just a throwback to the past, not the change we need for our party or our country.” Such is the babble when management speak pollutes vision.The Corbyn challenge is a necessary move prompted by what amounts to an emergency in British politics. The Liberal Democrats, with whatever wet policies they might have had, have been well and truly defanged, while Labour comprehensively lost Scotland in what amounted to a northern bloodbath. The Tories, by the usual run of stumbling luck, are running the show with a majority. If Corbyn does nothing else, he will at least push Labour into winning back traditional territory and restoring shredded values. Being electable for Britain will be another issue.

Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne. Email:[email protected]

Notes

[1] http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/jeremy-corbyn-to-bring-back-clause-four-contender-pledges-to-bury-new-labour-with-commitment-to-public-ownership-of-industry-10446982.html

[2] http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/aug/09/clause-iv-of-labour-party-constitution-what-is-all-the-fuss-about-reinstating-it

The people who own this country don’t like euthanizing one of their own. But they’ll do it in heartbeat if they think their world of privilege, patronage and power is at risk.  Last Thursday, Donald Trump overstepped his bounds and crossed a line. In off-the-cuff remarks to a Fox moderator during the GOP presidential debates, Trump provided a window into a corrupt political system that is thoroughly marinated in the money of private donors.

He explained in detail how the system is rigged in favor of the rich and powerful, and he admitted that wealthy donors contribute to political candidates so they “do whatever the hell you want them to do.” In one short 20-second exchange, the brash Trump revealed the quid pro quo that assures that the coffers at both the Democrat and Republican headquarters remain full-to-the-brim. He said:

“I was a businessman. I give to everybody. When they call, I give. And do you know what? When I need something from them two years later, three years later, I call them, they are there for me. And that’s a broken system.”

Dear reader, there are things you can say in America and there are things you cannot say. You can criticize the government, support torture, applaud the racist arrest and incarceration immigrants looking for work, and cheerlead the bombing of civilians in the many countries around the world where the US has launched its vicious wars of aggression.  But you cannot stand in front of an audience of 24 million Americans on national Television and explain in excruciating detail  how the political system really works, how the tycoons and moguls pay for favors from the sock-puppet politicians, how the politicians do whatever they are told to do, and why the system is a complete and utter fraud.

The people who own the system will not allow that, after all, it is their system, a system which they created, which they control, and that provides the very foundation upon which their wealth and power depend. They have no intention of allowing a loudmouth, upstart casino operator to seriously threaten the credibility of their precious system by blurting out all kinds of insider information that exposes the rot at the heart of the machine. That’s not something they want to hear, and that’s not something they’re going to hear.  Donald Trump is about to be crushed and destroyed in ways he never could have imagined. He’s about to discover a painful truth, that the vindictive and merciless people who run this country are not to be trifled with.

As of Saturday morning, there were 2105 articles in the mainstream news covering the details of a comment Trump allegedly made about Fox’s Megyn Kelly. This is how the landslide begins. The media settles on a particular narrative, and then reiterates that narrative from every paper, every televised newscast, and every privately-owned bullhorn at their disposal. Of the 2,000 or so articles written on the topic, nearly all of them are cookie-cutter hit-pieces that repeat the same unsubstantiated claims as the others. This is how elites shape public perceptions, by sheer volume and repetition, by deluging the masses with the same storyline over and over again however inconsistent, inane or mendacious it may be. In this case, the narrative has been fine-tuned at the nation’s premier propaganda headquarters, the New York Times, who led off with this tidbit in Saturday’s paper:

Donald J. Trump’s suggestion that a Fox News journalist had forcefully questioned him at the Republican presidential debate because she was menstruating cost him a speaking slot Saturday night at an influential gathering of conservatives in Atlanta. It also raised new questions about how much longer Republican Party leaders would have to contend with Mr. Trump’s disruptive presence in the primary field…..

With Mr. Trump at center stage, the event Thursday shattered television viewership records for primary debates: Nearly 24 million people watched. But any hopes that he would try to reinvent himself inside the Cleveland arena as a sober-minded statesman, or that he would collapse under scrutiny and tough questions, vaporized in the opening minutes.” (“Hand-Wringing in G.O.P. After Donald Trump’s Remarks on Megyn Kelly“, New York Times)

“She was menstruating”, you say?

Older readers may remember that– after President Bill Clinton raised taxes on the rich– he faced the wrath of the plutocrats followed by years of vicious harassment. Whitewater, Troopergate, Vince Foster etc, etc, etc. One spurious brickbat after the other. It culminated in claims of “oral sex” in the Oval Office, a term that was invoked purely for shock-value, just as  “menstruating” appears to be the verbal weapon of choice this time around. What it shows is that Donald Trump has replaced Putin as the new Hitler and has risen to the top of the media’s hit list where he will remain until they destroy him, his reputation, and his future.

But beyond the reference to menstruation, what can we deduce from this short clip from the Times? 

Well, it’s clear that the Times thinks Trump is a sexist pig and a “disruptive presence” that needs to be removed from the campaign. Keep in mind, that this is the same narrative that appears in the vast majority of US print-media, which means that–among the elites who own the media–the consensus view is that Trump has got to go, even though he is the GOP frontrunner, even though he is the only person on the slate who generates any public interest, and even though he has not had any opportunity to acquit himself on allegations that he claims are false.

Why? Why have they decided to give “The Donald” the old heave-ho when it clearly hurts their chances of reclaiming the White House in the next election? Is it really because he made a crude sexist remark about Fox moderator Megyn Kelly? Is that it?

Since when has the GOP become the great defender of women’s rights? Is this a recent development or did I miss something?

The idea is absurd, just as it is absurd to think that the Times reporting is impartial coverage of the facts. It’s not. The Times is obviously inserting itself into the process, just as Megyn Kelly inserted herself into the process when she pummeled Trump with one incriminating question after another and then proceeded to lob softballs to the dreary and utterly lifeless Jeb Bush.

This is why people are angry, right, because they think Trump was treated unfairly. And this is why they’re not buying the media’s BS storyline, because they’re sick of the media telling them  how to feel, what to think and who to pick. They resent it, in fact, it pisses them off.

Now you’d think that if you had a brand-spanking media-machine that can crank out 2000 cookie cutter articles overnight blasting “sexist” Trump as a first-class scoundrel and praising the dainty Ms Kelly as the unwitting victim of abusive male bullying, then dastardly Trump would plunge in the polls, right?

Wrong.  Trump is still comfortably in the lead and more popular that ever.

Why?

Because people don’t trust the lying media. Because people don’t trust the lying liars who run the Republican party.(or the Democratic party) And because people resent the fact that they’re being manipulated. Is that so hard to understand? The feeling now, is that, “if the assho**s who run this country are against Trump, then I’m for him. It’s that simple. It’s not about populism or channeling anger and frustration to a rebel candidate. Trump is no rebel, and he’s no reformer either. And he’d probably be a shitty president too. But Trump has one thing going for him that is sadly lacking in all the other candidates, all the party honchos, and all the flannel-mouth, stuffed-shirt fake politicians who are presently in office. What is that, you ask?

He tells the truth, at least it sounds like the truth to a lot people. And that makes all the difference.

Think about that. Think about what that says about the pathetic state of our national politics, that the bar has dropped so low, that a brassy, outspoken business tycoon can move to the head of the pack simply because people believe “He speaks his mind and doesn’t pull his punches.”

That’s why Trump’s popularity has not been impacted by the media’s irritating smear campaign. Just look at the blogs, the comments sections of the daily papers, and the twitter storm that has focused overwhelmingly on Fox’s blonde Rottweiler, the amiable Ms Kelly. She’s getting totally raked-over-the-coals, skewered at every turn, and (surprisingly) nearly all the criticism is from right wingers who feel thoroughly betrayed by Fox News, a station they trusted and that they thought shared their values, but now they realize they were wrong.   Fox doesn’t share their values. It’s a freaking franchise for rich fu**ers who want to manipulate conservative principles to fit their own self-aggrandizing agenda. That’s Fox News in a nutshell.

This whole Trump-flap has sparked a rebellion in the conservative ranks, a rebellion that anyone who is even slightly interested in politics should be paying close attention to. The workerbees appear to be increasingly suspicious of the party leadership and their wavering commitment to conservative values. Case in point: Here’s an excerpt from an article that appeared at the far right WND website titled “Rush (Limbaugh): ‘Orders from GOP donors to take out Trump’. Here’s an excerpt:

“Who won the great debate?

According to the mainstream media, the winner was … Fox News.

According to Rush Limbaugh, the loser was … Fox News.

At least, in the sense that the network may have blown its credibility with conservatives.

And Limbaugh said he saw it coming.

“Everybody should have known this was gonna happen,” he said. “This is presidential politics, and Republican candidates are where media people score their points. It’s where they build their careers. It’s where they establish their credentials.”

The conservative talk-radio giant saw another motivation for the moderators’ attack-dog tactics.  He said GOP bigwigs ordered Fox to take out Trump.

On Friday, Limbaugh began by telling listeners how, on the day of Thursday’s debate, he had learned “that big-time Republican donors had ordered to take out Donald Trump in the debate last night.”…

Rush said it was clear that Fox News had it out for Trump when his colleagues refused to pile on, even when given multiple opportunities to bash the front-runner.

“Not one of the remaining nine candidates joined Megyn Kelly in taking the shot at Trump. Not one. Yet we have been told that there were orders from Republican donors to take Trump out.”….

As for which candidate actually won the debate, reactions were all over the map. Opinion appeared evenly divided on whether Trump helped or hurt himself. But, according to the Drudge Report poll…he was the landslide winner.”

(“Rush: ‘Orders from GOP donors to take out Trump‘, Garth Kant, WND)

Is Limbaugh right; did the “big-time Republican donors”  order that Trump be taken out? And, if so, doesn’t that suggest that the “menstruation” allegations are just a phony pretext for demonizing Trump in the media?

Of course they are. It’s all fake. None of this has anything to do with Megyn Kelly. None of it.  According to Limbaugh, Trump was a  “marked man” from the get-go, before the first question was ever asked.  Kelly was just one of three stooges chosen to play the role of political assassin. She’s just a bit-player in a much bigger drama.

So now we move on to Phase 2, where the bullyboy puppetmasters come down on Trump like a ton of bricks. He’ll never know what hit him.   One day he’ll be playfully sparring with the press corps on the front steps of his Manhattan penthouse,  and the next thing you know he’ll be frog-marching across Times Square in handcuffs and leg-irons.  You can bet on it.

Trump’s got to know what’s coming next. He’s a smart guy and he’s seen this play out many times before.  The bottom line, is that if you fu** with these guys, you’re going to wind up “sleeping with the fishes.”  It’s that simple.  He ought to know that by now.

The reign of police violence in the US claimed 16 more victims over the past week.

On Friday, Christian Taylor, an unarmed 19-year-old black man, was killed in Arlington, Texas by a police officer who shot him four times. The officer, Brad Miller, was unharmed and has been placed on administrative leave.

The same day, Matthew Russo, a 26-year-old white man, died after a Hartford, Connecticut police officer responding to a “medical-related disturbance” shocked him with a Taser.

Just over a week earlier, Zachary Hammond, a white 19-year-old, was gunned down in a parking lot in Seneca, South Carolina. He was on a first date and the passenger in his car was eating an ice cream cone. An independent autopsy found that Hammond was shot from the side, contradicting police claims that he was attempting to ram an officer.

These are only the latest in an endless series of cases in which unarmed workers and youth, posing no threat to the police, are gunned down, tasered or beaten to death. The police do their best to cover up the facts, often lying on incident reports.

There have been so many unarmed people killed by police in recent months that it is impossible to list them all. It is one year since 18-year-old Michael Brown was shot dead by officer Darren Wilson in Ferguson, Missouri. Since then, 1,144 people have been killed by the police, or more than three per day. By way of comparison, fewer than 10 people are killed by police each year in Germany, and less than three in Great Britain.

The political establishment, led by the Obama administration, has responded to growing popular opposition to police brutality with empty gestures of concern, while helping shield the vast majority of killer cops from prosecution and seeing to it that the killing machine continues.

Despite the widespread protests that erupted last year, the rate at which people are killed by the police in the US has accelerated. Since the beginning of this year, there have been 705 casualties in this internal war, 45 more than had been killed by the same date last year.

What accounts for the regularity of police killings in United States? Why is this national ignominy, which makes a mockery of America’s pretenses to be a beacon of democracy, so resistant to popular opposition?

To the extent that the question of police violence is discussed within the political establishment, it is universally presented as a question of race relations, in which white officers kill black people. While there is no doubt that racist and other backward sentiments are encouraged among police officers, this official explanation ignores the fact that, according to a survey compiled by the Guardian newspaper, nearly twice as many white people were killed by police this year as blacks.

The focus on race is aimed at obscuring the more basic class issues involved. In his seminal book, The State and Revolution, the Russian revolutionary leader and Marxist political theorist Vladimir Lenin wrote that the “state power” at its root was composed of “special bodies of armed men having prisons, etc. at their command.”

The state, he stressed, was fundamentally “a product and a manifestation of the irreconcilability of class antagonisms.” Lenin, quoting Frederick Engels, noted that the public power “grows stronger … in proportion as class antagonisms within the state become more acute.”

Observing American society from the outside, as a doctor would observe a patient, one would conclude that the state, including the police and the military, is dangerously enlarged and inflamed. The symptoms of the disorder include not only systematic police brutality, but also the massive and overgrown prison system, an intelligence apparatus that spies on the views and communications of all Americans and carries out torture and assassinations, and a military apparatus that increasingly dominates domestic political life.

The American state is led by a president who revels in carrying out extrajudicial murders, including of American citizens, and boasts about people who are “gone” thanks to the US drone killing program. Millions of lives have been sacrificed in the drive of the American ruling class to dominate the world, including in the seven countries where Obama last week bragged he had authorized military action.

The violence and barbarism inflicted on the victims of US imperialism abroad are being visited ever more directly on working people at home.

The growth of militarism has paralleled the cancerous growth of social inequality in the US, driven by decades of deindustrialization, financialization and attacks on workers’ living standards that have only accelerated under the Obama administration.

Beginning with the manufactured recession of 1980–82 and the breaking of the PATCO air traffic controllers strike in 1981, the working class in America has been the target of three-and-a-half decades of relentless attacks. Over this period, the capitalist ruling elite turned from productive investment to the scrapping of factories, the slashing of workers’ wages and pensions, and the amassing of ever greater personal wealth by means of financial speculation.

As a result, the number of manufacturing jobs in the US fell by nearly half, from about 20 million at its peak in 1985 to about 12 million today. This deindustrialization turned large swaths of cities such as Detroit, Baltimore, St. Louis and Philadelphia into the industrial graveyards they are today.

In these devastated neighborhoods, where the unemployment rate is sometimes more than 50 percent and youth unemployment is even higher, the police operate as virtual death squads. Drawn primarily from the most backward elements of society, and encouraged to feel hatred and resentment for workers and youth, the police carry out daily acts of violence, brutality and intimidation, interpreting any reluctance to obey as a license to kill.

The American financial oligarchy has no solutions to the vast poverty and inequality that dominate American society. As with any historically doomed social class, it turns more and more openly to violence and repression to defend its power.

In a television interview broadcast Sunday, President Barack Obama reiterated his warning that opponents of his nuclear agreement with Iran offer no alternative but a new American war in the Middle East.

Invited by CNN’s Fareed Zakaria to pull back from his comparison of Senate Republicans to the elements in Iran opposed to the deal, Obama instead repeated the charge, saying both the Republicans and the hardliners in Tehran opposed any easing of US-Iranian relations.

The interview came only days after New York Senator Charles Schumer responded to Obama’s August 5 speech warning that the alternative to the nuclear deal was a war that could extend well beyond Iran and the Middle East by announcing he would vote against the agreement. Schumer is expected to succeed Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid as the top Democrat in the upper chamber of the US Congress next year.

The ultimate fate of the agreement, which includes Britain, France, Russia, China and Germany and is backed by the United Nations, remains unclear. The US Congress is expected to vote on the deal after it returns from its summer recess on September 8.

Virtually the entire Republican caucus in both chambers is set to disapprove of the agreement, along with a significant faction of Democrats. The White House is scrambling to secure sufficient votes among Democrats to prevent the House and Senate from overriding a presidential veto of a bill blocking US implementation of the accord.

The conflict within the American state presents the spectacle of a large majority in Congress, speaking for powerful forces within the ruling elite and the intelligence and military apparatus, pushing for imminent war against Iran and risking a breakup of the US-Europe alliance and the outbreak of a Third World War. Obama gives the impression of a “commander in chief” who is losing control over a drive to war far greater than the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

He seeks to present himself as an advocate of peace, despite boasting in his August 5 speech of having sent American forces into combat in seven countries since he took office in 2009. Both factions in the conflict that has erupted over the Iran deal are committed to the defense of American imperialist interests around the world and to the use of massive violence when deemed expedient.

The differences have arisen, in part, because the previous interventions by the Bush and Obama administrations have produced debacles for US imperialism in the Middle East. Iraq, Syria, Libya and Yemen, to name only the most obvious, have disintegrated into bloody civil war as a consequence of US military operations and political subversion.

The Obama administration is seeking to carry out a tactical shift, testing whether the Iranian bourgeois regime headed by President Hassan Rouhani can be induced, through a combination of economic sanctions, diplomatic pressure and the threat of war, to align itself more directly with Washington.

It sees the nuclear deal as the potential precursor to Iranian assistance to US-backed forces in Iraq, Iranian backing for the removal of the Assad regime in Syria and a reorientation of Iranian economic ties from Russia and China to the Western imperialist powers.

In his interview broadcast Sunday, Obama said he had been “encouraged… that the Russians are now more interested in discussions around what a political transition—or at least framework for talks—would look like inside of Syria.” He continued, “And presumably, Iran is seeing some of the same trends that are not good for them.”

The US Congress will take up the Iran nuclear deal when it returns from its August recess, with votes set in both the House and Senate on resolutions to disapprove the deal and block any lifting of US economic sanctions on Iran. A resolution backed by the Republican leadership is certain to pass the Republican-controlled House, but requires 60 votes—meaning at least six Democrats—to overcome a Senate filibuster.

If Congress adopts the resolution of disapproval, Obama will veto it and his opponents will seek to override the veto through a two-thirds vote of each house. Assuming every Republican supports it, the veto override would need the support of 13 Democrats in the Senate and 44 Democrats in House.

Reacting to Senator Schumer’s statement opposing the nuclear deal, White House spokesman Josh Earnest commented that he “wouldn’t be surprised” if Senate Democrats took Schumer’s dissent into account in the leadership vote set for the end of 2016.

Referring to the New York Democrat’s vote for the 2002 authorization of the war in Iraq, Earnest said, .

“There’s no denying that this difference of opinion that emerged overnight is one that has existed between Senator Schumer and President Obama for over a decade.”

“Senator Schumer is advocating an approach to foreign policy that minimizes the likelihood of success in diplomacy and relies far too much on the ability of the United States to unilaterally impose our will through force,”

Earnest continued.

The comment raises obvious questions, since Schumer was far from the only leading Democrat to vote for the Bush administration’s war in Iraq. Hillary Clinton, now the frontrunner for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2016, Vice President Joseph Biden and Secretary of State John Kerry, who negotiated the Iran deal, also voted for the war resolution.

In his final question to Obama in the CNN interview broadcast Sunday about the dangers that would follow a congressional rejection of the deal with Iran, Zakaria concluded as follows: “[A]re you worried that you would confront, within your remaining term, the strong possibility that you might have to use nuclear-that you might have to use military force to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon?”

The apparent Freudian slip was a reference to the possible use by Washington of nuclear weapons against Iran. Obama turned the question aside, saying he preferred “not to anticipate failure” in getting the Iran deal ratified. But the fact remains: a US war against Iran would not be limited to air strikes against nuclear energy production sites and might not be limited to the use of conventional weapons.

The aim of such a war would be the military conquest of Iran and installation of a puppet government. To accomplish this against a country of 80 million people, four times the size of Iraq, would require an American occupation force in the hundreds of thousands, or the use of nuclear weapons, or both.

On behalf of Matterhorn Asset Management AG / GoldSwitzerland, Zurich, Lars Schall spoke with Peter Boehringer, initiator of the German public campaign “Bring Back Our Gold“. They discuss the importance of national gold reserves and the problematic state of the German gold reserves, officially the second largest gold reserve in the world.

Boehringer points out the many shortcomings of the custodian of the German gold which is the Deutsche Bundesbank.

Peter Boehringer is a licensed and fully independent asset manager for private clients and asset consultant for institutional investors and funds. Active in stocks, bonds, real estate, raw materials and precious metals. He founded PBVV Vermögensberatung in Munich in 2003 and is a founding board member of the German Society for Precious Metals. He is also the initiator of the internationally acclaimed Citizens’ Initiative “Holt our Goldheim” www.gold-action.de (since 2011) and author of the book by the same name (2015).

Peter Boehringer has authored numerous technical papers on precious metals and commodities as well as macro-themes. He also has been awarded the “Roland-Baader-Award” and is a member of the Friedrich A. von Hayek Society.

Prior to 2003, he worked for ten years in various positions at international companies, including Booz & Co Inc., Technology Holding GmbH, 3i plc and the European Telecom Holding AG. Peter Boehringer has a degree in business administration and computer scientience (European Business School).

On Saturday, August 8th, Ukraine’s Interfax News Service announced that the Security Bureau of Ukraine had just issued, on Friday, a list of 14 ‘artists’ (mainly Russian actors) who ‘pose a threat to Ukraine’s national security.’ The Ukrainian State Film Agency is, under Ukrainian law, now prohibited from authorizing or allowing distribution of their films or other works. These artists are thus officially banned.

The list also includes French actor Gerard Depardieu, and even Russian economist Mikhail Khazin. Khazin claims that the gold price has been manipulated downward, and that gold is therefore way undervalued. In 2004, he published a book, The Decline of the Dollar Empire and the End of the Pax Americana.One of the first things that the United States did after its coup that installed the present Ukrainian regime in February 2014 was to ship all or almost all of the Ukrainian central bank’s gold to the U.S. Federal Reserve vault in the Wall Street area.

The Ukrainian government has remained silent on the matter, other than to say “there is almost no gold left in the Central Bank vault.” So, this economist, Khazin, isn’t only Russian; he alleges that the 36 tons of gold that was transferred to the United States will some day soar in value. The Ukrainian government isn’t saying that the gold is in NYC only temporarily; they refuse to answer any questions about it, not even whether it left Ukraine at all.

As I had reported about the gold matter on 12 July 2014: “Immediately [after the coup], the U.S. received a big payoff from [the coup]. A Right Sector official Stepan Kubiv was appointed on February 24th as Chairman of the National Bank of Ukraine, Ukraine’s Ben Bernanke. As I have reported on several occasions (here with links to multiple sources), ‘more than 40 heavy boxes’ of gold were reported to have been secretly flown from the National Bank of Ukraine to the U.S. Federal Reserve Bank’s sub-basement at 33 Liberty Street off Wall Street, in the early morning hours of March 7th. This happened within less than two weeks of the coup. This gold would constitute about $2 billion being paid to the U.S.

”The French actor Depardieu was included on the list because Russia’s President, Vladimir Putin, had granted him Russian citizenship after Depardieu left France for Belgium when France raised its total tax-rate on him to 87% (according to Depardieu), and because the actor had said, in expressing appreciation of this citizenship, that Putin “has done a lot for Russian culture.”

Depardieu said that he felt better about handling the matter this way than if he had taken the more normal path: stashing his money in a foreign tax-haven bank account. According to Britain’s Telegraph, “‘I don’t need to hide,’ he said.” But, as a consequence, his films now won’t be able to be seen in Ukraine.

So, a government that has been installed by the United States is banning ‘artists.’ It’s not the sort of thing the U.S. government pumped to the public before its coup. Here is Victoria Nuland of the U.S. State Department on 13 December 2013 talking about the U.S. government’s efforts to establish ‘democracy’ in Ukraine. Here she is, two months later, on 4 February 2014, in private, telling America’s Ambassador in Kiev whom to install to lead the ‘interim’ government after the coup, which occurred 18 days later. (She called her appointee “Yats.” He’s still in the same post to which she had him become appointed.) In Brussels on 26 March 2014, a month after Obama’s coup in Ukraine, which had overthrown Ukraine’s actually democratically elected and legal government, Obama praised “the university student, wrapped in the Ukrainian flag, expressing her hope that ‘every country should live by the law’,” and he said (with links added here by me, to his statement):

Yes, we believe in democracy — with elections that are free and fair; and independent judiciaries and opposition parties; civil society and uncensored information so that individuals can make their own choices. Yes, we believe inopen economies based on free markets and innovation, and individual initiative and entrepreneurship, and trade and investment that creates a broader prosperity. And, yes, we believe in human dignity — that every person is created equal, no matter who you are, or what you look like, or who you love, or where you come from. That is what we believe. That’s what makes us strong.

The 14 people who were banned by Obama’s government in Ukraine, supposedly do not support the values that he holds (even though they do support the values that he expresses).

Officials of the European Union didn’t know that the overthrow was a coup, until right after it had happened; they first learned that it had been a coup, on 26 February 2014. They have, however, consistently stated, and continued to state, that, “The EU is committed to supporting Ukraine in its path towards a modern European democracy.”

The new Ukrainian government is doing all they can to achieve U.S. President Obama’s objectives. That’s why they have banned those 14 ‘artists,’ as being ‘a threat to Ukraine’s national security.’ This is what the U.S. government is now referring to when it espouses ‘democracy.’ And, apparently, it’s now also what the European Union holds as its ideal. Or, if not as its ideal, then, as its goal. It’s where the world is heading, anyway. Or, if not the world, then its aristocracy. This is their ideal, and it’s also their actual goal. Their goal-and-ideal is being realized today, in Ukraine, by banning 14 ‘artists.’Furthermore, those ‘artists’ are lucky they’re not regular individuals inside Ukraine, who can be simply seized, and eliminated at night. Or bombed, or shelled. No banning of them is necessary. Sometimes, it’s even done to terrorize potential ‘terrorists,’ or anyone else who rejects Obama’s Ukrainian coup. Some survivors of the massacre of Crimeans who were escaping from Ukraine right before the coup were able to tell their accounts on video.

These 14 ‘artists’ have it easy.

Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of They’re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010,and of CHRIST’S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity.

Palestine solidarity activists in France are expressing outrage that a “Tel Aviv beach” is being created in Paris to promote Israel.

For a few hours on 13 August, a section of river bank in the French capital near the Pont d’Arcole, will be turned into “Tel Aviv sur Seine” (Tel Aviv on the Seine), complete with falafel stands and “Israeli nightlife.”

According to Coolisraël, a website that markets Israel to a French-speaking audience, the propaganda event is a joint project of the Paris and Tel Aviv municipal governments.

A promotional image for “Tel Aviv Sur Seine” shows what an area of Paris will look like on 13 August when it is refashioned as an Israeli beach.

A promotional image for “Tel Aviv Sur Seine” shows what an area of Paris will look like on 13 August when it is refashioned as an Israeli beach.

Tel Aviv sur Seine will be held at “Paris Plage,” a simulated beach the city sets up in the summer.

Lionel Choukroun, director of Agence Culturelle, the company that is producing the event, says the idea is “to give Parisians and tourists the Tel Aviv experience without having to go anywhere.”

The Israeli embassy in Paris is heavily promoting Tel Aviv sur Seine on its Facebook page and Twitter accounts.

Beach massacre

In August last year, Israel was in the midst of its 51-day attack on Gaza, dropping the equivalent of an atomic bomb on the besieged territory, killing more than 2,200 people including 551 children and causing utter devastation. While people were partying on Tel Aviv beaches, Palestinian children were being slaughtered by Israeli shells a few miles away on Gaza’s beach. A year later, Israeli bombs are still causing horror in Gaza. On Wednesday,leftover Israeli ordnance exploded, ripping through a house near Rafah. Four members of the Abu Nukira family were killed by the blast; dozens more Palestinians were injured.

“Festive”

The Paris municipality is sending a form response to citizens who email MayorAnne Hidalgo to express outrage at Tel Aviv sur Seine. The city’s response, a copy of which was seen by The Electronic Intifada, states: “This festive day, open to all, underscores the strong cultural and high-tech ties between Paris and [Tel Aviv].” The city says that the project was conceived as a result of Hidalgo’s visit last May to present-day Israel and the occupied West Bank. It adds – in a form of balancing rejected by the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel – that Paris plans to pursue “partnerships with Bethlehem,” in the occupied West Bank, “in the field of water management.”

“Provocation”

BDS France, a national coalition that supports the Palestinian campaign for boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel, has denounced Tel Aviv sur Seine. “One year after Israel’s ‘Operation Protective Edge’ in Gaza, less than one month after the Israeli parliament voted to authorize the force-feeding of prisoners, one week after the latest colonial violence burned alive the members of the Dawabsha family in Duma in the occupied West Bank killing 18-month old baby Ali, the incursion of Tel Aviv onto Paris Plage is a real provocation,” BDS France said in a statement. “Tel Aviv is not a city like others,” BDS France added, “it is built on top of the ruins of seven Palestinian villages.” BDS France called on the public to email Paris City Hall and to leave comments on Mayor Hidalgo’s Facebook page. There is perhaps one unintended irony in the event organizers’ desire to give Parisians a taste of Tel Aviv without them actually going there. That might be the only way they’ll experience Israel given that tourists have been staying away from it in droves since last summer’s attack on Gaza. Ali Abunimah’s blog

Summer reigns all over Europe, from Greece to Sweden. Vacations have emptied the offices, and filled the beaches. Flowers bloom all over, and their fragrance flows like a river. Endless festivals, performances and art compositions embellish the quaint old cities. But things are not as ever before. The old continent is sick. Living is easy, but not for you. Fish are jumping, and unemployment is high.

‘Austerity for all but banksters and the corrupt politicians’ is the motto of the day. The welfare state shrinks, but military budgets expand, and NATO grows despite the austerity. The EU member countries (save Germany) are de-industrialised, their workers lose skills and go into services. A golf caddy is less likely to cause trouble than an industrial worker. Never has democracy felt so much a sham as nowadays.

After the Syriza debacle of Greece, there is a very little trust for left-wing rhetoric. In the whole modern history of Europe, there was not such a shameful surrender, or even treason. ‘Alexis Tsipras’ is a Greek translation of ‘Vidkun Quisling’ or of ‘Maréchal Pétain’. The man received the full support of his people, and chickened out. (The first step of Syriza after the fiasco was to enter into military cooperation with Israel.) Now only the far-right Golden Dawn speaks loudly against surrender to the bankers, but this is a party in opposition, and it risks nothing by speaking out.

Rolf_52 / Shutterstock.com

The parties of the left and of the right are now quite similar. Europe has neither true Left nor true Right anymore. The pseudo-Left supports imperialist wars and unmans the man. The pseudo-Right supports imperialist wars and cuts taxes for the wealthy. It was more fun with the traditional parties, with the Right hating financiers, supporting tradition, church, and family, and the Left fighting the bourgeoisie, caring for workers, and aiming for social justice. In Douglas Adams’ words, “men were real men, women were real women and small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri were real small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri.” Now they all promote women to the boards of multinationals, compete for Jewish donations and argue who is better for the gays.

In important questions, they are same-same, as my Chinese landlady used to shrill. Both left and right stands for more immigration, though the left explains that by humanitarian reasons and by anti-racism, while the right looks for a cheap work force to keep native workers obedient. The bottom line is the same.

People threatened by mass immigration often vote for the right, as they mistakenly think some token racism will be translated into action. Alas, in vain. Consider Nicolas Sarkozy, the former French President. He would drop a racist line, to flirt with his electorate, but by bombing Libya he sent more immigrants to France than any left-winger would. Well, perhaps François Hollande, the present President, can compete with him, as his support for Syrian rebels did send a million refugees to Europe.

In the UK, Tony Blair destroyed Labour. He turned the old party of workers and miners into Tory Lite. Blair supported every American military campaign and earned the honourable title of the British Poodle. A great friend of Israel and of the Israel Lobby is another of his titles. Blair is out, but his party supporters are still in. And they keep losing.

The Labour rank-and-file would like to see Jeremy Corbyn as their leader. Blair hates him, and this is surely a good recommendation. He is supposed to be a new Michael Foot, who was a great man in pre-Thatcher Britain. Corbyn stands for nuclear disarmament, he spoke positively of Hamas and Hezbollah, voted against AmericanDrang nach Osten wars. Littlewood called him “the antidote to zionist bite”. He would change things, if he ever makes it. Probably they will keep him out: the people behind the parties prefer weak and wet politicians.

The far-right BNP claims to be the heir of true Labour. They say the British workers vote for them. Their claim is not entirely without merit. True Left – whether the Soviet variety, the Chinese or the Cuban one – was strictly against immigration. But immigration is only one issue among many, while the BNP narrowed its field to anti-Muslim politics. They do not even try to deal with the real problem – the excessive wealth of the few built upon the impoverishment of the many.

The Front National in France has more redeeming features, and more supporters. In reality, the FN is probably the only alive and kicking French party, the rest are dead. The FN is for taking France out of NATO and out of the EC, for friendship with Russia and for regaining France’s lost sovereignty. Their arrival at Palais d’Elysée would change things in Europe: if it would ever occur.

The main problem of Europe is American occupation. This is the source of trouble. In 1945, the continent was shared between the US and the USSR. In 1991, the Russians moved out, but no freedom came: the Americans moved in, occupying the whole of Europe from Narva in Estonia to Oeiras in Portugal, from Souda Bay on Crete to Ørland in Norway. Beside military hardware, they enforced their political agenda. Their yoke lies heavy upon Europe’s grey stones. The steps they force the European leaders to take hurt the continent. The leaders make wrong decisions, and the people pay for them.

Europe had a great buyer for its output. Russia bought its machinery and cheeses, abundant wine and cars, and delivered cheap gas and oil. The US stopped this profitable trade in its tracks. Now the Europeans dump their apples and cheese, spend more on military purchases and import expensive American gas.

Europe had a maverick friend over the sea, a retired colonel Kaddafi. He sold cheap oil, imported European goods for his prosperous small population, and kept millions of Africans occupied in Libya. Under American guidance, NATO bombed Libya, the colonel was sodomized by a gun barrel and lynched, his country destroyed. Africans went to Europe on every small boat they could find.

Europe had a friend in Damascus, an ex-eye doctor from London. He bought European goods, kept his country ship-shape, visited Paris. Under American guidance, this gentle man was called a ‘génocidaire’; weapons were delivered to his enemies, the fanatic Muslim takfiris. His country was devastated, and millions of Syrian refugees escaped to Europe.

They followed the Iraqis, whose country was laid low by the US invasion of 2003. The most advanced country of the Middle East, with free education and free medical care, with best engineers and a strong army, was turned into a nest of sectarian strife, while millions of Iraqis went to Europe. The Afghanis, Palestinians, Arabs, Africans pour into Europe from their countries smashed by the iron fist of the US Armed Forces.

My friend, Roger van Zwanenberg of Pluto books, thinks that terrible destruction of the Middle East in the US-led wars is due to Zionist influence and it serves Israel’s desire to fragment the region and subdue it in the Greater Land of Israel from Nile to Euphrates paradigm. It is a plausible thought, bearing in mind the recent scene of Netanyahu’s veneration in the US Congress. The promoters of the wars were mainly Israel-firsters, neocons, Wolfowitz, Perle et al. They pushed for invasion of Iraq, they demanded war on Iran.

But why would these megalomaniacs limit their dreams of dominance to the Middle East? Why not world dominance? If they want to break into pieces the old societies of the Middle East, they can do it in Europe as well, by the same coin. Europe is a victim of the conflict. Without these wars, waves of immigration would not cover Europe. So whoever planned and executed these wars probably intended to undo Europe as well as the Middle East, and Europe was the most important intended victim, as it needed to be subdued on the path to world dominance. And the Middle East is not the only source of refugees and immigrants.

Once the EU was a union of successor states of Charlemagne’s empire, and perhaps, a conceivable idea. But the US took control over Brussels, and forced them to accept East European states, all led by anti-communist devotees of America. Within the EU, the developed countries of the old union devoured the less developed outsiders. The Baltic states lost over third of their populations. Latvia went down from 2.7 million in the end of Soviet days to 1.9 million now. Lithuania went down from 3.7 to 2.9 million. Romania, once freed by the iron will of Nicolae Ceausescu from its debts, now once again is indebted to the hilt. Their impoverished citizens crowded the cities of the Western Europe.

Consider Sweden. This is coldest summer for many years in Sweden. July was as cool as April, but the cold did not stop the inflow of refugees. In front of every supermarket, of every underground and rail station of Sweden, from Kiruna to Lund, sits a gypsy beggar with a plastic cup for alms in his or her hand. They came from Romania and Hungary, fellow EU states, with quite a low standard of living, but within the Schengen Zone, so they do not need a visa. They do not come by their volition, they were sent by their barons who build huge castles and furnish them in the best garish gypsy style on the levy the beggars pay them. After three months on the Swedish pavements, they go home to be replaced by another bunch of beggars.

The Swedish police does not interfere with these beggars. They say there is no law to stop gypsies. They are afraid to be condemned for race profiling if they will. The gypsies are colourful; there are men and women, old and middle age, no more than two at every place. Logistics can’t be easy: so many people so evenly distributed, but the gypsy barons manage it smoothly: I never observed a fight, or even a quarrel, between the beggars. They have been trained to smile; something you never see in Eastern Europe, where beggars are as grim as 1950s buildings.

Refugees from Somalia and Sudan, victims of previous US interventions, do not beg. They crowd smaller Swedish towns; the Swedish state pays for their accommodation and provides some small money for their living. They are not allowed to work, and there is no demand for their labour anyway. They just sit and wait while their applications for refuge are being processed and (usually) declined. Then they disappear from the radar.

Do not weep for all the Swedes, though. The landlords make a fortune from this arrangement, so do officials. The Swedish state pays SEC 500 (€50) per night per room for the refugees. This is a very good business in small far-away towns. Usually, the state prefers bigger landlords with many rooms to offer, and they are able to offer a kick-back to the official in charge of the accommodation. Amusingly, the man considered “the most outspoken Swedish racist” and a fighter against immigration, Bert Karlsson, made mega-bucks renting rooms for the Somalis.

In addition to refugees and immigrants delivered to Sweden by the US wars and US-dictated enlargement of the EU, Sweden and other West European countries are undermined by the US-led gender rearrangement of life. There are few children; schools are being closed. Gays have their fullest rights; women have priority in taking jobs. Boys have fewer opportunities: from state TV to barbershops, the jobs are taken by women. The priests of the Swedish church are mainly females; the state appointed bishops known for their support for female priesthood.

“Sweden is the Saudi Arabia of feminism”, quipped Julian Assange, the Wikileaks’ founder, imprisoned for the third year in the Ecuador embassy in London. He is an expert: two Swedish girls complained he raped them because he had consensual but unprotected sex with them. The Swedish prosecutor Marianne Ny said that in such cases, a man should be in jail, even if it turns out he is innocent. Sweden has the highest rate of rape complaints, and the highest rate of these complaints dismissed as untrue. This does not promote love between sexes.

The education amounts to unmanning of men, and gorgeous Swedish girls often prefer more masculine foreign males. (I know, as a tanned and moustachioed foreign male, I married a gorgeous Swedish girl, many years ago). Swedes marry less and less, and have fewer children, despite very generous government assistance.

Many conservative observers put the blame on feminists. Yet even though men have clearly lost the war, the victory of women wilts under examination. Once upon a time women had a choice: they could join the business world or stay at home with the kids. Once upon a time women could raise a family without guilt. Once upon a time women could enjoy being flirted with. Not any more. The unmanning of man was quickly followed by the un-womaning of woman.

There is an understanding between the holders of power that feminised men are easier to control – this is a reason why they encourage homosexuality. Unmanning men is a linchpin in the reprogramming of mankind into an obedient herd, because strong men are unpredictable. Strong men are prone to rebellion, ready for sacrifice and primed for action. It is no coincidence that the enemies of Empire are all masculine males, be they Qaddafi, Castro, Chavez, Lukashenko, Putin – or Julian Assange. It appears the men have been targeted for elimination; the working ants need no sex.

Swedes have made a cult of blacks, also imported from the US, if we can judge byRachel Dolezal. The blacks are supposed to be better and smarter than whites. In theTerminator movie, it is a black scientist who invents the marvellous chip; he fights together with the white woman-fighter against evil white men. A black Morpheus in the Matrix is a Zion (sic!) operative, saving human race. There was a black President in the Fifth Element before Obama. Many childless Swedes adopt imported black and Asian children, another American cultural trend established by Angelina Jolie. This reverse racism is no different from the ordinary variety. Blacks are fine, but in no way they are better than pink-and-white Swedes.

Ordinary Swedes are unhappy. In a small town with high percent of refugees and immigrants, some 40% vote for the far right party, the Sweden Democrats. They have got 12% in the whole of the country despite a ferocious campaign against them in the media.

The Left received a relative majority of the seats in the Parliament, after years of Right rule. After the election, the mainstream Left and Right joined forces on a compromise agenda, ostensibly – to keep the Sweden Democrats out. The Left voters felt cheated. Why bother and vote, if the result is a compromise between the parties?

Do not weep over the Sweden Democrats’ fate, either. This is a timid pro-Zionist party whose best known political action to-date was to stage a gay parade through a Muslim neighbourhood. They extoll the Jewish state, as their brethren in other European countries do. They accept the gender agenda of the New World Order. They are against immigrants and refugees, never against those who send the waves of the immigrants to Sweden. The other way around: they support the Kiev regime, this pet bastard of the Neocons, and hate Russia as every good NWO supporter should.

So, it is difficult to see where the freedom of the continent will come from, and whether it can come at all.

Israel Shamir can be contacted at [email protected]

First published at the Unz Review

The Syrian warplanes pounded the strongholds of Al-Nusra Front terrorist group in the province of Lattakia over the last 24 hours, killing tens of terrorists and injuring dozens more.

The ISIL Takfiri group has reportedly killed at least 300 members of the national electoral commission in the Iraqi city of Mosul. 

The terror group executed the civilians by firing squad at the al-Ghazlani camp on Friday afternoon, Mahmoud Surchi, a spokesman for Popular Mobilization units, told the country’s al-Sumaria satellite TV network.

The ISIL took over Mosul last June and later seized swathes of land in northern and western Iraq. The terrorists have since been committing heinous crimes against the people of all faiths and communities there, including both Muslims and Christians of either Arab or Kurdish ethnicity.

In March, Iraqi government forces backed by Shia and Sunni volunteer fighters managed to retake the major city of Tikrit from the ISIL as part of their quest to wrest control of Mosul.

Iraqi parliament speaker Salim al-Jabouri confirmed on Friday “the execution of more than 2,000 innocent citizens at the hands” of the ISIL since the group seized Iraq’s second-largest city in June 2014.

Furthermore, local sources in and around Mosul have said in interviews with AFP that 2,070 people have been killed by the ISIL since June last year.

Former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair should face a war crimes trial, according to the left-wing Labour Party leadership contender Jeremy Corbyn. Blair is already facing criticism in published inquiry for the invasion of Iraq.

Vladimir Putin! Now you’ve really done it. You have had the temerity to declare our National Endowment for Democracy (NED), America’s most important Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) to be “undesirable.” Where will this end? Don’t you respect our right, as a US Government-financed NGO, to meddle in internal Russian affairs? After all, we are the most important NGO of the world’s Sole Superpower. We can go wherever we want and do whatever we like. We are truly upset!

This is the clear reaction of Washington to the decision by the Russian Prosecutor General’s Office on July 28 to declare the activities of the US National Endowment for Democracy as “undesirable in the territory of Russia.” The official statement stated that, “the National Endowment for Democracy used Russian commercial and non-commercial organizations under its control to take part in campaigns aimed at denying the legitimacy of results of Russian elections; organize political actions designed to influence the authorities’ decisions and discredit the service in the Russian Armed Forces.” It further elaborated, “In pursuit of these goals, the fund allocated about 2.5 million US dollars to Russian commercial and non-commercial organizations in 2013-2015.”

Under Russia’s law on Undesirable NGOs, adopted by the Duma or parliament and signed into law by President Putin this May, any foreign or international non-governmental organization could become “undesirable” if it threatened the foundations of Russia’s constitutional order, the country’s defense capability and the security of the Russian state.

Significantly, in a statement regarding the decision, Russia’s Foreign Ministry named Carl Gershman, the neo-conservative who has been president since NED was founded in 1983. They noted that Gershman said – absolutely openly – that the NED organization was intended to be a beautiful facade for distributing funds among opposition circles in foreign countries. That suggests they have done their homework very well before banning the NED.

In a Washington Post OpEd responding to the ban, NED President Gershman cynically wrote that the move is, “the latest evidence that the regime of President Vladimir Putin faces a worsening crisis of political legitimacy.” He failed to note that despite US economic sanctions put in place by Victoria Nuland’s neo-conservative friends in the Obama Administration, Vladimir Putin’s poll popularity currently stands at 89% according to Russia’s independent Levada Center.

‘Doing what the CIA used to do…’

The NED, along with Freedom House, has been at the center of all major US State Department-financed ‘color revolutions’ in the world since 2000 when it was used to topple Milosevic in Serbia. The NED was created during the Reagan Administration to function as a de facto CIA, privatized so as to allow more freedom of action.  Allen Weinstein, who helped draft the legislation establishing NED, said in a Washington Post interview in 1991, “A lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA.”

The NED was the brainchild of Reagan’s CIA Director, Bill Casey. Casey wanted to create a funding mechanism to support groups inside foreign countries that would engage in propaganda and political action that the CIA had historically organized and paid for covertly. To partially replace that CIA role, the idea emerged for a congressionally funded entity that would serve as a conduit for this money. The main revenue to finance NED activities in countries like Russia, China, Myanmar, Venezuela, Uzbekistan and other places where the regime is not 100% on Washington’s music page, comes from the United States Congress. That is supplemented by such dubious organizations as George Soros’ Open Society Foundations, which seems to always pop up where the CIA and NED want to topple a regime as in Ukraine in 2013-14.

Casey wanted to be sure to hide the strings being pulled by the CIA. In a letter to Reagan’s White House Counselor, Edwin Meese III, Casey wrote, “Obviously we here [at CIA] should not get out front in the development of such an organization, nor should we appear to be a sponsor or advocate.” To hide the CIA’s role, Casey urged creation of a “National Endowment.”

NED President since 1984 has been Carl Gershman, previously with the Freedom House, another “democracy” front for the US intelligence community involved in every Color Revolution. NATO General and former Presidential candidate Wesley Clark, the man who led the US bombing of Serbia in 1999, and who recently called for aggressive US military response to Russia, also sat on the NED Board.

The majority of the historic figures linked to clandestine CIA actions have at some time been members of the Board of Directors or the Administrative Council of the NED, including Otto Reich, John Negroponte, Henry Cisneros, and Elliot Abrams. The Chairman of the NED Board of Directors in 2008 was Vin Weber, campaign fundraiser for George W. Bush in 2000. Gershman, head of the NED since its creation to the present, worked closely with Richard Perle, Elliott Abrams and Frank Gaffney. Gershman was in a sense ‘present at the creation’ of the political-intelligence faction known as neo-conservativism.

On September 26, 2013, weeks before Ukraine President Viktor Yanukovich announced he would join Russia’s Eurasian Economic Union rather than the less appealing EU “associate membership”, Gershman wrote an OpEd to the Washington Post where he called Ukraine “the biggest prize,” explaining that pulling it into the Western camp could contribute to the ultimate defeat of Russian President Putin. Gershman wrote, “Ukraine’s choice to join Europe will accelerate the demise of the ideology of Russian imperialism that Putin represents. Russians, too, face a choice, and Putin may find himself on the losing end not just in the near abroad but within Russia itself.”

In other words, NED is a US government-financed entity that intends to topple Russia’s elected President because he displeases the folks in the Washington neo-con war faction.

Among NED projects in Russia has been to finance Russian anti-Putin opposition activist Alexei Navalny, member of a group called Russian Opposition Coordination Council. Navalny received money from the National Endowment for Democracy (NED).

The NED has sub-units: National Republican Institute, which is headed by Senator John McCain, the man who played a key role in the 2014 USA coup d’etat in Ukraine. The National Democratic Institute, tied to USA Democratic Party and chaired now by Clinton Secretary of State and Serbian bombing advocate, Madeline Albright. The NED Board of Directors includes the kernel of the Bush-Cheney neo-conservative warhawks like Elliott Abrams; Francis Fukuyama; Zalmay Khalilzad, former Iraq and Afghan US ambassador, and architect of Afghan war; Robert Zoellick, Bush family insider and ex-World Bank President.

Among projects in Russia the NED financed in 2014 according to their abridged annual report was $530,067 under a category, Transparency in Russia: “To raise awareness of corruption.” Are they working with Russian prosecutors or police? How do they find the corruption they raise awareness of? That naturally also has a side benefit of giving Washington intimate details of corruption, real or imagined, that can be later used by its trained activist NGOs such as Navalny groups. Another project under their NED heading, Democratic Ideas and Values: $400,000 for something called “Meeting Point of Human Rights and History–To raise awareness of the use and misuse of historical memory, and to stimulate public discussion of pressing social and political issues.” It sounds suspiciously like the State Department’s recent campaign to rewrite the history of the Second World War and the fact that Russia and her affiliated Soviet regions lost 27 million lives in bearing the brunt of the victory over Hitler.

The only real question is not why the Russian government has banned the NED as the first under their new law on Undesirable NGOs. The question is why they did not ban it twenty years ago, or at least in 1999 when Putin first became President? NATO today is in a state of semi-war against Russia. In such circumstances, banning hostile foreign NGOs like NED is prudent self-defense.

In May, referring to the passage of the new Russian Undesirable NGO law, US State Department spokesperson, Marie Harf, said the United States was, “deeply troubled” by the new law, calling it “a further example of the Russian government’s growing crackdown on independent voices and intentional steps to isolate the Russian people from the world.” Before she became State Department media Spokesperson, Harf was Press Spokesperson at the CIA where she started her career. Interesting.

Notably, at the same time as Russia is banning NED under its new Undesirable NGO law, China has just signed into law its Overseas NGO Management Law to restrict foreign NGO’s there. Last October, the same National Endowment for Democracy financed the Hong Kong Umbrella Revolution protests and the NED is financing Uygur separatists in China’s Xinjiang Province, cross-roads of all major Chinese oil and gas pipelines from Russia and Kazakhstan.

F. William Engdahl is strategic risk consultant and lecturer, he holds a degree in politics from Princeton University and is a best-selling author on oil and geopolitics, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

This is one of those videos that is a shock to the system. Hats off to Dane Wigington for the amazing presentation.

Dane Wigington presents hard data which reveals what these catastrophic programs have done to our planet to date and what they will do if they are allowed to continue. Please take the time to watch this video, follow up with some investigation of your own on our site — http://www.geoengineeringwatch.org, and share this information far and wide.

This video presentation discusses the reality of weather modification and global warming.

This video helps us understand the difference between normal jet engine “condensation” trails (and “chemtrails” (which everybody has seen, often without recognition), which last for hours, dispersing slowly into a silvery hazy.

This video comes from www.geoengineeringwatch.org.

People who see with their own eyes the obvious evidence that is so easily obtained online and still try to discredit the truth as only a “conspiracy theory” are, according to the narrator, either in denial, seriously ignorant, clinically blind, psychopathic or paid liars trying to cover up for the evil entities (mostly governmental or corporate) that are causing and covering-up the problems.

Meteorologists appear to have been instructed to avoid this important subject, even when they predict clear skies the next day and then those with eyes to see, observe the spraying that artificially creates a thin cloud-like haze.

For another perspective on Chemtrails:

“What in the World are They Spraying? at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jf0khstYDLA

“Why in the World are They Spraying?” at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mEfJO0-cTis&feature=kp

Commentary by  Gary G. Kohls

About 75% of US employees work 40 hours or longer, the second longest among all OECD countries, exceeded only by Poland and tied with South Korea.  In contrast, only 10% of Danish workers, 15% of Norwegian, 30% of French, 43% of UK and 50% of German workers work 40 or more hours.  With the longest work day, US workers score lower on the ‘living well’ scale than most western European workers. 

Moreover, despite those long workdays US employees receive the shortest paid holidays or vacation time (one to two weeks compared to the average of five weeks in Western Europe).  US employees pay for the costliest health plans and their children face the highest university fees among the 34 countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).

James Petras (right)

In class terms, US employees face the greatest jump in income inequalities over the past decade, the longest period of wage and salary decline or stagnation (1970 to 2014) and the greatest collapse of private sector union membership, from 30% in 1950 down to 8% in 2014.

On the other hand, profits, as a percentage of national income, have increased significantly.  The share of income and profits going to the financial sector, especially the banks and investment houses, has increased at a faster rate than any other sector of the US economy.

There are two polar opposite trends: Employees working longer hours, with costlier services and declining living standards  while finance capitalists enjoy rapidly rising profits and incomes.

Paradoxically, these trends are not directly based on greater ‘workplace exploitation’ in the US.

The historic employee-finance capitalist polarization is the direct result of the grand success of the trillion dollar financial swindles, the tax payer-funded trillion dollar Federal bailouts of thecrooked bankers, and the illegal bank manipulation of interest rates.  These uncorrected and unpunished crimes have driven up the costs of living and producing for employees and their employers.

Financial ‘rents’ (the bankers and brokers are ‘rentiers’ in this economy) drive up the costs of production for non-financial capital (manufacturing).   Non-financial capitalists resort to reducing wages, cutting benefits and extending working hours for their employees, in order to maintain their own profits.

In other words, pervasive, enduring and systematic large-scale financial criminality is a major reason why US employees are working longer and receiving less – the ‘trickle down’ effect of mega-swindles committed by finance capital.

Mega-Swindles, Leading Banks and Complicit State Regulators

Mega-swindles, involving trillions of dollars, are routine practices involving the top fifty banks, trading houses, currency speculators, management fund firms and foreign exchange traders.

These ‘white collar’ crimes have hurt hundreds of millionsof investors and credit-card holders, millions of mortgage debtors, thousands of pension funds and most industrial and service firms that depend on bank credit to meet payrolls, to finance capital expansion and  technological upgrades and raw materials.

Big banks, which have been ‘convicted and fined’ for mega-swindles, include Citi Bank, Bank of America, HSBC, UBS, JP Morgan, Barclay, Goldman Sachs, Royal Bank of Scotland, Deutsch Bank and forty other ‘leading’ financial institutions.

The mega-swindlers have repeatedly engaged in a great variety of misdeeds, including accounting fraud, insider trading, fraudulent issue of mortgage based securities and the laundering of hundreds of billions of illegal dollars for Colombian, Mexican, African and Asian drug  and human traffickers.

They have rigged the London Interbank Official Rate (LIBOR), which serves as the global interest benchmark to which hundreds of trillions of dollars of financial contracts are tied.  By raising LIBOR, the financial swindlers have defrauded hundreds of millions of mortgage and credit-card holders, student loan recipients and pensions.

Bloomberg News (5/20/2015) reported on an ongoing swindle involving the manipulation of the multi-trillion-dollar International Swaps and Derivatives Association (ISDA) fix, a global interest rate benchmark used by banks, corporate treasurers and money managers to determine borrowing costs and to value much of the $381 trillion of outstanding interest rate swaps.

The Financial Times (5/23/15, p. 10)   reported how the top seven banks engaged in manipulating fraudulent information to their clients, practiced illegal insider trading to profit in the foreign exchange market (forex), whose daily average turnover volume for 2013 exceeded $5 trillion dollars.

These seven convicted banks ended up paying less than $10 billion in fines, which is less than 0.05% of their daily turnover.  No banker or high executive ever went to jail, despite undermining the security of millions of retail investors, pensioners and thousands of companies.

The Direct Impact of Financial Swindles on Declining Living Standards

Each and every major financial swindle has had a perverse ripple effect throughout the entire economy.  This is especially the case where the negative consequences have spread downward through local banks, local manufacturing and service industries to employees, students and the self-employed.

The most obvious example of the downward ripple effect was the so-called ‘sub-prime mortgage’ swindle.  Big banks deliberately sold worthless, fraudulent mortgage-backed securities(MBS) and collateralized debt obligation (CDO)  to smaller banks, pension funds and local investors, which eventually foreclosed on overpriced houses causing low income mortgage holders to lose their down payments (amounting to most of their savings).

While the effects of the swindle spread outward and downward, the US Treasury propped up the mega-swindlers with a trillion-dollar bailout in working people’s tax money.  They anointed their mega-give-away as the bail out for ‘banks that are just too big to fail”!  They transferred funds from the public treasury for social services to the swindlers.

In effect, the banks profited from their widely exposed crimes while US employees lost their jobs, homes, savings and social services.  As the US Treasury pumped trillions of dollars into the coffers of the criminal banks (especially on Wall Street), the builders, major construction companies and manufacturers faced an unprecedented credit squeeze and laid off millions of workers, and  reduced wages and increased the hours of un-paid work.

Service employees in consumer industries were hit hard as wages and salaries declined or remained frozen.  The costs of theFOREX, LIBOR and ISDA fix swindles’ fell heavily on big  business, which passed the pain onto labor: cutting pension and health coverage, hiring millions of ‘contingent or temp’ workers at minimum wages with no benefits.

The bank bailouts forced the Treasury to shift funds from ‘job-creating’ social programs and national infrastructure investment to the FIRE (finance, insurance and real estate) sector with its highly concentrated income structure.

As a result of the increasing concentration of wealth among the financial swindlers, inequalities in income grew; wages and salaries were frozen or reduced and manufacturers outsourced production, resulting in declines in production.

Employees, suffering from the loss of income brought on by the mega-swindles, found that they were working longer hours for less pay and fewer benefits.  Productivity suffered.  With the total breakdown of the ‘capitalist rules of the game’, investors lost confidence and trust in the system.  Mega-swindles eroded ‘confidence’ between investors and traders, and made a mockery of any link between performance at work and rewards.  This severed the nexus between highly motivated workers, engaged in ‘hard work, long hours’ and rising living standards, and between investment and productivity.

As a result, profits in the finance sector grew while the domestic economy floundered and living standards stagnated.

Financial Impunity:  Regulatees Controlling the Regulators

Despite the proliferation of mega-swindles and their pervasive ripple effects throughout the economy and society, none of the dozens of federal or state regulatory agencies intervened to stop the swindle before it undermined the domestic economy.  No CEO or banker was ever arrested for their part in the swindle of trillions.  The regulators only reacted after trillions had ‘disappeared’ and swindles were ‘a done deal’.  The impunity of the swindlers in planning and executing the pillage of hundreds of millions of employees, taxpayers and mortgage holders was because the federal and state regulatory agencies are populated by ‘regulatory administrators’ who came from or aspired to join the financial sector they were tasked with ‘regulating’.

Most of the high officials appointed to lead the regulatory agencies had been selected by the ‘Lords of Wall Street, Frankfurt, the City of London or Zurich.’  Appointees are chosen on the basis of their willingness to enable financial swindles.  It therefore came as no surprise on May 28 2015 when US President Obama approved the appointment of Andrew Donahue, Managing Director and Associate General Council for the repeatedly felonious, mega-swindling banking house of Goldman Sachs to be the ‘Chief of Staff’ of the Security and Exchange Commission. His career has been typical of the Washington-Wall Street ‘Revolving Door’.

Only after fraud and swindles evoked the nationwide public fury of mortgage holders, investors and finance companies did the regulators ‘investigate’ the crimes and even then not a single major banker was jailed, not a single major bank was closed down.

There were a few low-level bond traders and bank employees who were fired or jailed as scapegoats.  The banks paid puny (for them) fines, which they passed on to their customers.  Despite pledges to ‘mend their ways’ the bankers concocted new schemes with their windfalls of billions of  Federal ‘bailout’ money while the  regulators looked on or polished their CV’s for the next pass through the ‘revolving door’.

Every top official in Treasury, Commerce and Trade, and every regulator in the Security Exchange Commission (SEC) who ‘retired to the private sector’ has ended up working for the same mega-criminal banks and finance houses they had investigated, regulated and ‘slapped on the wrist’.

As one banker, who insists on anonymity, told me: ‘The most successful swindlers are those who investigated financial transgressions’.

Conclusion

Mega-swindles define the nature of contemporary capitalism.  The profits and power of financial capital is not the outcome of ‘market forces’.  They are the result of a system of criminal behavior that pillages the Treasury, exploits the producers and consumers, evicts homeowners and robs taxpayers.

The mega swindlers represent much less than 1% of the class structure.  Yet they hold over 40% of personal wealth in this country and control over 80% of capital liquidity.

They grow inexorably rich and richer, even as the rest of the economy wallows in crisis and stagnation.  Their swindles send powerful ripples across the national economy, which ultimately freeze or reduce the income of the skilled (middle class) employees and undermine the living conditions for poor working-class whites,   and especially under and unemployed Afro-American and Latino American young workers.

Efforts to ‘moralize’ capital have failed repeatedly since the regulators are controlled by those they claim to ‘regulate’.

The rare arrest and prosecution of any among the current tribe of mega-swindlers would only results in their being replaced by new swindlers.  The problem is systemic and requires deep structural changes.

The only answer is to build a political movement independent of the two party system, willing to nationalize the banks and to pass legislation outlawing derivatives, forex trading and other unnatural parasitic speculative activities.

Ever since the Scottish Independence Referendum campaign I have been envying the Scots for the liveliness and engagement of their political thought and conversation and wondering how the phlegmatic English could be prodded into really thinking about the politics that run this country.  The answer appears to be Jeremy Corbyn.

Many people, battered and depressed by the result of the general election and the prospect of an all-Tory government for the next 5 years, with its austerity for the poor and tax breaks for the rich, cheered up when Jeremy announced he was entering the Labour leadership contest.  Not because we were ‘leftwing Commie nutters’ or for any other silly reason.

No.  The ‘surge’ for Jeremy started because many of us already knew him.  Anyone who has campaigned on behalf of peace, human rights, against the UK’s illegal military actions, on the plight of the Palestinians or for ridding the world of nuclear weapons knows Jeremy.  The word spread as people listened to what he was saying.

From the first televised Labour leadership hustings, he engaged the public.  He said what people wanted, needed to hear.  And, despite what the papers say, it isn’t just the politically innocent young who are engaged.  Nor the disillusioned old who had given up on the Labour party after Blair’s Iraq debacle.  It is all those who hear an honest man who does not hunger for power, but who does hunger for a just, caring and engaged society.

There is one simple reason why Jeremy can start this much-needed conversation, a reason that was highlighted by the presenter of the LBC debate Iain Dale, when he said that the reason Jeremy was ahead in the polls was because he was the only one of the four who gave a straight answer to a straight question.

And this particular question – ‘would you give ex-Labour leader Ed Miliband a job?’ – demonstrates how far apart he is.  None of his rivals are really willing to commit themselves to any action or policy; there are too many ifs, buts, maybes and we have to wait and see.  Jeremy is commitment personified.  You may not like what he stands for but at least you know where he stands. Where he has always stood.

At a rally in Norwich, when talking about re-nationalising the railways, he said that whenever journalists ask him about railways they have a problem – because he answers them!  (He takes an interest in railways because, as a non-driver, he uses them, frequently).  It says a lot about our media when an MP actually answering questions would pose a problem.

The average politician rarely answers the question – witness David Cameron’s record in Prime Ministers Questions – and when they do the answer is so full of waffle and piffle and qualifications that it is impossible to work out what they really mean.  In fact, their answers are deliberately unclear.  It enables them to say, five years later when they are challenged on some broken pledge, “Ah, if you look at the record, I didn’t actually say that…”

Jeremy on the other hand answers “Yes, because…” or “No, because…”  Whether you agree or disagree, he has provided a simple debating point that anyone can discuss.  It stops people from being vague about their own views.  Perhaps it even makes us think, not something the Westminster bubble would like us to do.  In fact, the clarity Jeremy offers presents a huge challenge.  So what do they do?  Both Tories and senior Labour figures, aided by a rightwing media resort to name-calling and threats.

But they never learn.  What has happened is a repeat of the Independence campaign.  The more Westminster and its cronies insulted Scotland, in a peculiar hope that would keep Scotland in the United Kingdom, the more Scots wanted independence.  And losing the Referendum has not made that disappear.  The push for independence has increased, the conversation is carrying on.  So, for each insult and denigration of Jeremy, another person signs up in support.

The people who nominated him were called ‘morons’.  The ex-Middle East Peace Envoy Tony Blair said that anyone who wanted Corbyn for leader needed a heart transplant.  Liz Kendall says Corbyn voters were ‘traumatised’.  Haaretz labelled him as the “Loony-left front-runner…” after he spoke up for Palestinians at a leadership hustings sponsored by the Jewish Chronicle, saying that his “view on Middle Eastern terrorist groups wasn’t interesting when he was on the political sidelines. But now, when polls claim he could end up leading the Labour, it gets more attention.”  They’d obviously missed the fact that his peace making efforts had gained him an International Peace Award from the Ghandi Foundation – something Blair hasn’t achieved.

All this nastiness, the name-calling, the denigration, the fear and doom mongering, is precisely the kind of behaviour that occurred in the run-up to the Independence Referendum.  I was disgusted then.  I am now.  It shows all too clearly that mainstream politics, backed by mainstream media, has run out of vision and honesty.  It was no surprise that so many people became members of the SNP after the Referendum, having decided they could live without the insults from Westminster.  And it is no surprise now that people are signing up in droves to back this ‘leftwing’ MP.

The language is inevitable.  Jeremy comes from the ‘hard left’, the ‘far left’.  It will open the doors to the old Militant Tendency.  It will drag the Labour Party away from the centre.  Politics these days is all about the centre or the centre right.  And it’s all nonsense.

Jeremy becoming leader will, they say, split the party.  No.  But it may very well create a much-needed reform of the party.  It will make them unelectable.  Are they electable now?  The party will lose its major donors.  But would that matter to a greatly enlarged, committed and active membership?  Another threat, from Galloway himself, is that George Galloway will rejoin the party if Jeremy becomes the leader. (Regardless of his way with words, Galloway was ever one to jump on a bandwagon, and he seems to have forgotten that he didn’t resign from the party, he was sacked.)

As I said, nonsense.  Waffle and piffle from all sides except Jeremy’s.  I don’t know if there is a word in Gaelic for ‘waffle and piffle’ and if there was I wouldn’t know how to pronounce it.  But at last the conversation that we so need south of the border is taking off, as people finally discover that the ‘centre ground’ they have been voting for is actually rather more to the right than they had realised, and that the ‘loony left’ is not as loony as they had been told.

And there is one thing these Westminster folk don’t get.  Among the people (rather than the media), the conversation is not so much about Jeremy but about the politics he is offering.  And no, people don’t see those as a return to the past, but as a positive re-figuring of the future.  The conversation has finally started.

Years ago people like me were genuinely in the ‘centre’.  There were some conservative policies that made sense; there were others, liberal or socialist, that also made sense – and please note the small ‘c’, ‘l’ and ‘s’.  We were not wedded to any one party, but made up our minds as to the best option on offer for each election.  But over the years we stayed very much where we had been while the politics moved ever rightwards, something that up till now, few political commentators have noticed.

This is a difficult concept for politicians, particularly those running against Corbyn for the Labour leadership, but he and his ever-increasing supporters are now standing in the centre. Both he and they really are not the ‘hard’ left.  Policies and aims that want a fair and just society, that see people, jobs, wages, housing, education without debt for the young and care for the old and vulnerable as far more important than profits for big business are actually very soft and humanitarian in their intent.  Very threatening to the rich one percent of course, but I for one care as little for that as they apparently care for us.

Because it turns out that Jeremy is speaking for a majority – who are not red or blue, left or right; who are young, middle aged and old; well-off and poor – who also want rid of austerity, nuclear weapons made illegal, railways renationalised, higher taxes for the rich and other loony things.  One Facebook comment said “It is time we had somebody less middle of the road”.  But surely, if the majority want these things and back the person who, they hope, will have a chance of pushing them through, isn’t that the middle of the road?  Isn’t the centre ground where the majority stands?

So let’s start talking.

Saad Dawabsha died early Saturday morning from severe third-degree burns covering 80% of his body – caused by arson committed by racist Israeli settlers.

Authorities let them rampage freely against Palestinian civilians. Official expressions of outrage against the murder belie Israel’s longstanding genocidal policy.

Saad’s 18-month-old son Ali was burned alive in the vicious attack. It wasn’t the first time extremist settlers set a Palestinian home ablaze. For sure not the last.

Saad’s wife Riham and four-year-old son Ahmad remain in critical condition – suffering from third-degree burns covering most of their bodies. They’re clinging to life precariously.

Longstanding Israeli high crimes against defenseless Palestinians continue unaccountably. Settlers are protected by Israeli soldiers and police. They commit violence and vandalism repeatedly. Rarely is anyone held accountable.

On Saturday, settlers firebombed another Duma village Palestinian home where the Dawabsha family lives. Mahmoud Fazza al-Kaabna’s house was attacked.

Settlers threw firebombs at its outer wall. They didn’t smash windows and hurl them inside – the way they destroyed the Dawabsha home.

Israeli police say they’re unable to identify settlers responsible for the arson deaths. It begs the question whether they’re even trying.

Reports indicate Duma village security cameras were removed – perhaps to suppress incriminating evidence. Israeli police spokeswoman Luba Samri said more leads are needed.

Although right-wing extremist/racist Meir Kahane’s grandson Meir Ettinger was arrested, he’s not a Dawabsha arson attack suspect.

He’s detained “because of his activities in a Jewish extremist organization,” according to a Shin Bet statement.

He’s suspected of committing “nationalist crimes” – including July’s arson attack on the Church of the Multiplication of the Loaves and Fishes on the Sea of Galilee’s northwest shore, on the site of two earlier churches, the oldest dating from 380AD. Arson damaged the church. Two people were injured.

On Friday, Israeli warplanes terror bombed central Gaza near the Nuseirat refugee camp. At least four Palestinians required hospitalization. It’s unclear how severely they’re injured.

Israel repeatedly attacks Gaza for any contrived reason or none at all. The entire 1.8 million population is threatened. It remains lawlessly besieged.

A year after Israel’s summer 2014 aggression, it continues blocking enough construction materials to let affected Gazans rebuild their shattered lives.

Earlier this week, Israel without notice or justifiable reason cut off Kafr Qaddoum village’s water supply. Hundreds of cattle, chickens and other animals perished. Only residents with water tanks or stored water bottles have anything to drink.

If supplies aren’t restored, more livestock and crops will be lost. The Israeli company Mekorot steals underground reservoir water on privately owned Palestinian land, selling it for profit. Most Palestinians depend on agriculture for survival. Everyone needs enough water to survive.

A permanent Israeli state of war on defenseless Palestinian exists – including soldiers committing cold-blooded murder and brutal security force attacks against peaceful West Bank marches for long denied justice.

Friday was like most other days. Soldiers viciously attacked Palestinians joined by activist Israeli and foreign activists. Bil’in, Nabi Saleh and al-Masara peaceful marches were targeted.

One participant said “the crime of burning Dawabsha (family members) and the ongoing violence will increase our persistence on popular resistance.”

Others urged Palestinians to “respond to settlers, close roads and burn (settler) properties.” Israeli military orders prohibit peaceful demonstrations – including displaying Palestinian flags, banners and other symbols publicly.

Nonviolent resistance is considered “terrorism.” Soldiers and police brutalize Palestinians freely – at times attacking them with live fire.

Nations committing these type crimes are considered outlaw regimes under international law – none more ruthless than America and Israel.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at [email protected].

His new book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.”

http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

Listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network.

It airs three times weekly: live on Sundays at 1PM Central time plus two prerecorded archived programs.

Image: German troops in front of buildings set ablaze in Distomo, during the massacre.

Voice from Hellas. Distomo is a small town of about 5,000 souls, nestled in the rolling hills of central Greece. Its access road is hardly visible from the main road to Delphi, the historic place, in the heart of the country and the heart of Greek philosophy, where in the temple of Apollo, it is said the concept of democracy was born some 2,500 years ago.

Entering Distomo, less than 20 km away from Delphi, one can feel an air of deep sorrow. At the outskirts of the village, to the left of the main road on top of a small hill a memorial had been erected for the victims of the horrifying massacre perpetrated by Nazi German SS troops. The bushes and small trees around the hill leading up to the monument were freshly burned. The sooty smell was still in the air.

In the village people appeared depressed, resigned. Nobody wanted to talk, let alone to foreigners. When asked who set the hill ablaze, one elderly man consulted with his friends in Greek, and then said, ‘we know but we don’t want to talk about it.’ – On reflection, the deliberate and horrific hill fire must have brought back livid memories of the bloody horrors that were committed to their village 71 years ago by Nazi Germany. No wonder, they don’t want to revive that memory.

In nearby Delphi a similar air of resignation permeated the small town. Delphi, today a renowned tourist town, was almost empty. A restaurant owner sadly said – there is no more democracy in Greece – there is no more democracy in Europe – and he added – in the world, period. With all the extra taxes the government is levying on real estate property, he lamented, I may lose this restaurant which has been owned by my family for hundreds of years. He has no good word for Germany in particular and Europe as a whole and concluded, with this turn-about by Tsipras against the overwhelming will of the Greek people, the left is promoting the right – and that will lead to even more disaster. “What can we do? We are in shock. Nobody dares to move.”

On 10 June 1944, German Waffen SS-troups of the 4^th SS Polizei Panzergrenadier Division went door to door and butchered Greek civilians, 218 in all – babies, children, elderly, women and men – no discrimination. Then they burned the village down to the ground. According to survivors, they were “bayonetting babies in the cribs, stabbing pregnant women, and beheading the village priest.” – Their ‘justification’ (sic) was an act of revenge for the villagers participation in a partisan attack on the German unit – which later was proven to be a lie.

The most illustrative account of the mass murder is documented in the book, “My Odyssey” by the then Head of the International Red Cross in Greece, the Swede Sture Linner (Min Odysse (Stockholm: Norstedt, 1982). He writes:

We were married on June 14 [Sture Linner and his wife Cleo]. Emil Santrom, chair of the Greek Committee, organized a wedding banquet for the occasion. Late in the evening he approached me and pulled me aside to a corner, away from the laughs and voices, to talk privately.

He showed me a telegram he had just received: The Germans had been slaughtering for three days the people of Distomo, near Delphi, and then they burned the village down. If there were any survivors, they would be in need of immediate assistance.

Distomo was within the region of my responsibility for the supply of food and medicines. I passed on the telegram to Cleo to read. She winked and we immediately departed discretely from the festivity.

About an hour later we were on our way in the darkness of the night. It took several agonizing hours to travel the ravaged roads and pass several roadblocks. It was dawn by the time we finally reached the main road that led to Distomo.

Vultures were rising slowly and hesitantly at a low height from the sides of the road when they heard us coming. For hundreds of yards along the road, human bodies were hanging from every tree, pierced with bayonets – some were still alive.

They were the villagers, who were punished this way – they were suspected of providing help to the guerillas of the region, who had ambushed an SS unit.

The odor was unbearable.

In the village the last remnants of the houses were still burning. Hundreds of dead bodies of people of all ages, from elderly to newborns, were strewn around on the dirt. Several women were slaughtered with bayonets, their wombs torn apart and their breasts severed; others were lying strangled with their own intestines wrapped around their necks. It seemed as if no-one had survived…

There! An old man at the end of the village! He had miraculously survived the slaughter. He was shocked by the horror around him, with an empty gaze, his utterances incomprehensible. We descended in the midst of the disaster and yelled in Greek: “Red Cross! Red Cross! We came to help!”

From the distance a woman approached with hesitation. She told us that only a handful of villagers managed to escape before the attack begun. Together with her we started searching for them. It was after we had set off in this search that we realized she was shot in the hand. We operated on her immediately with Cleo performing the surgery.

It was our honeymoon!

Not long after this horrific massacre, our connection with Distomo would conclude with this remarkable epilogue.

When the German occupation forces were forced to leave Greece [after the defeat of Nazi Germany], things did not go as planned for them. A German unit was surrounded by guerillas exactly in the same area, at Distomo. I thought that this might be taken by the Greeks as an opportunity for a bloody revenge, especially when considering that for quite a while the region had been cut off from any food supplies. I loaded with food necessities a few lorries, I wired to Distomo word of our planned arrival, and we found ourselves on the same road, once again, Cleo and I.

When we reached the outskirts of the village, we were met by a committee led by the elderly priest. He was an old fashioned patriarch, with a long, wavy, white beard. Next to him the guerilla captain, fully armed. The priest spoke first and thanked us on behalf of everybody for the food supplies. Then he added: “We are all starving here, both us and the German prisoners. Now, though we are famished, we are at least in our land. The Germans have not just lost the war; they are also far from their country. Give them the food you have with you, they have a long way ahead.”

At this phrase Cleo turned her eyes to me. I suspected what she wanted to tell me with that look, but I could not see clearly any more. I was just standing there weeping…. 

This story tells more about Greece, the Greek people, than thousands of words could say.

Relatives of the victims initiated legal proceedings against the German government for reparation payments. In October 1997 a Greek court awarded them damages of 28 million euros, a judgment confirmed by the Greek High court in 2000. However, the ruling was not enforced because under Greek law a judgment against a sovereign state requires prior consent of the Ministry of Justice – which was not given.

The victims’ families took the case to court in Germany. The case was rejected at all levels of German courts, referring to a 1961 bilateral agreement concerning enforcement and recognition of judgments between Germany and Greece, and Section 328 of the German Code of Civil Procedure. These legislations require Greece to have jurisdiction – which it does not have. The horrific mass-murders carried out by the Nazi troops are considered ‘sovereign acts’ by a state. Following “fundamental principles of international law, each country is immune from another state’s jurisdiction.”

Similar principles were applied to other reparation payments Germany should have made to brutally assailed countries by the Nazi troops, including the overall reparation payments Germany owed Greece of about 170 billion dollars (in today’s terms at least 350 billion euros).

Germany got literally away with murder. Why is that? Why are such international laws not adjusted to realities on the ground? Why do they allow the strong to butcher the weak without consequences?

Could not, under such international ruling, Greece claim that her entire debt is a sovereign debt (which the troika claims it is) and that nobody, least Germany, has a right to legally pursue Greece for reimbursement? – It is even better; international law also proclaims that any contract concluded under duress, coercion, corruption or blackmail is illegal. All of Greece’s debt, including the latest € 86 billion of which details are being negotiated in secret as I write these lines, were acquired under duress, coercion, blackmail and corruption. Thus, it is illegal.

Why does Greece not seize this international legal protection and claim its debt illegal and null?  – And start afresh, with a clean slate? – Outside of the Eurozone, gaining respect from her southern fellow-countries and the rest of the world for having the backbone to stand up against the globalized looters and the banksters?

Greece has lost 8% of its population during the WWII by Nazi Germany, proportionally the most of any country fighting the Nazis.

Greece is still vulnerable; their people’s friendliness, their attitude of non-confrontation, has put them again in the fangs of the same predators – a Germany that slaughters with banks instead of tanks, a Germany of no scruples, a Germany with heartless leaders – a Germany that again strives for dominance for hegemony for their place in the sun alongside the Washington led neoliberal empire. Have they, the Germans, not noticed that they may be used again by the master hegemon as forerunner to absorb Europe? It would ‘only’ be the third time in 100 years. Weapons change. The modes of wars change – but the objective stays the same.

We are doomed to fall into the US trap yet again, lest we wake up and sidestep the German wannabe European hegemon. Greece could be the eye-opener. Greece could create a precedent for others to follow.

Peter Koenig is an economist and geopolitical analyst. He is also a former World Bank staff and worked extensively around the world in the fields of environment and water resources. He writes regularly for Global Research, ICH, RT, Sputnik News, TeleSur, The Vineyard of The Saker Blog, and other internet sites. He is the author of Implosion – An Economic Thriller about War, Environmental Destruction and Corporate Greed – fiction based on facts and on 30 years of World Bank experience around the globe. He is also a co-author of The World Order and Revolution! – Essays from the Resistance

The New York Times is a very good newspaper, except where ideology and party line demands intrude. Unfortunately these intrusions occur often and are of great importance.

The Times is the paper of record of an imperial superpower whose leaders have long and regularly flaunted international law and used their great military and economic power recklessly, in good part because they can get away with it. They push and push, eventually starting or provoking a war when their target refuses to surrender (see Gareth Porter’s Perils of Dominance). The collapse of the Soviet Union worsened this situation by removing a force of containment.

As a leading U.S. client, arguably a tail that wags the dog, Israel also can engage in long-term ethnic cleansing, regular cross-border bombing attacks and invasions, and continuous violations of international law, and get away with it. And it, like its parent, falls under the protection of the editors of the Times. (Barbara Erickson’s blog, TimesWarp provides regular and compelling evidence of Times protection of the tail.)

As the top establishment newspaper the Times invariably strives to put imperial (and imperial client) violence in a good light. This goes back a long way, but let me just describe briefly the cases of Guatemala and Vietnam before looking at the present scene. The United States supported a nasty dictator in Guatemala for several decades before a 1945 revolution, not supported by this country, overthrew him and installed a democratic order. This democratic order fell into U.S. disfavor with the passage of a law protecting workers rights in 1947, and then became a regime change target when a land reform bill encroached on United Fruit Company’s (El Pulpo’s) rights. A U.S.-sponsored invasion force, aided by U.S. propaganda, air force assistance and diplomatic cover, ousted the elected regime in 1954 and began a long stint of undemocratic and terror state rule. The main U.S. propaganda cover for this hostility and violence was that Communism was taking over in Guatemala. This was a lie, but was front-and-center in the New York Times as well as in the mainstream media in general, and even reached the Nation magazine. The New York Times featured this terrible threat repeatedly from 1950 onward (one favorite, Sidney Gruson’s “How Communists Won Control of Guatemala,” March 1, 1953).

The U.S.-sponsored replacement regime in Guatemala was a terror state almost without compare, and as it terrorized its population and carried out genocidal operations against its Mayan Indian population, the U.S. government continued to help it over many years with arms, training and Green Beret assistance. And the Times and its colleagues remained sufficiently quiet to allow this remarkable state terrorism to run on without any “humanitarian intervention” for decades. The Guatemalan peasants and Indians were “unworthy” victims, and in the Herman-Chomsky table comparing U.S. media coverage of Popieluszko and the 100 U.S. client state victims, the New York Times’s news reports on the single victim of the Polish Communist state exceeded by ten times their reports on 23 Guatemalan victims taken together (see further on Guatemala, Manufacturing Consent, 66-90).

Many people have been under the impression that the New York Times opposed the Vietnam war. This is mistaken. The paper had several good reporters who reported things the war-makers wanted kept under cover. But throughout the war the editors, and even their best reporters, accepted all the premises of the war-makers and questioned only the tactics. Throughout they accepted that North Vietnam was aggressing and never questioned the U.S. right to be over there propping up a U.S. puppet that had minimal local support and openly admitted its inability to compete on a purely political basis. The paper’s editors and journalists took each U.S. peace gesture as real and not as an invitation to surrender and a PR effort (which they all were). It collaborated with Nixon in demonizing the Vietnamese for not releasing U.S. prisoners of war till a final peace treaty, treating them as holding “hostages.” The paper refused to give opinion space to critics who disagreed with the war policy on principle rather than on tactics. Their top reporter, James Reston, a fervent war supporter, formulated the Orwellian classic, in explaining the U.S. invasion of Vietnam, as allegedly derived from “the guiding principle of American foreign policy since 1945;” that “no state shall use military force or the threat of military force to achieve its political objectives.” This kind of self-delusion helps sustain apologetics for real aggression and mass murder. (For more details, seeManufacturing Consent, chapter 5)

Things have not changed noticeably since the Vietnam war. Why should they? The print media and TV are under more competitive pressure for advertising from new media forms, which makes them less willing than ever to challenge national party lines. And Fox News, a major TV channel, has joined the Wall Street Journal editorial page in producing flak to help contain any dissent. But these are hardly needed. Establishment media protect establishment interests, and if those interests have dictated even more aggressive power projection in the post-Soviet-containment world, with the military-industrial complex and pro-Israel lobby pressing steadily in the same direction, the media will cooperate. That is why a paper like the Times will swallow the obvious Bush administration lies on Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction in 2002-2003, and why it will press ahead on Iran’s nuclear weapons threat even before the ink had dried on its quasi-apology for its little mistake on Iraq.

So the treatment of Russia, Putin and Ukraine is not surprising, spectacular though the bias, demonization and crudity of the propaganda service has been. It is in a great tradition of all the news and opinion that we deem fit to print. So while the very accommodating Boris Yeltsin was treated kindly, and his corrupt election victory in 1996 was “A Victory for Russian Democracy” (NYT ed., July 4, 1996), Putin’s electoral victories are treated harshly, his domestic policies are deemed failing, and his foreign policies are found devious and threaten international peace and stability. He joins a long assemblage of the demonized.

In support of this demonization the Times has had a stream of op-ed columns putting the villain in a bad light, none lauding or defending him. A notable illustration, showing nicely the depths to which the editors sink in their defense of the indefensible, is their centerpiece op-ed of May 25, 2015, by Sergei Guriev and Daniel Treisman, “Rule by Velvet Fist.” Of course, ruling by a velvet fist, meaning by “soft power,” would seem better than ruling by violence, but Guriev and Treisman make this a selection based on public relations expediency, not any aversion to violence, which, they argue, their targets use when really needed. The bad guys, of course, include Vladimir Putin and Hugo Chavez (no mention of Maduro), and the really violent regimes cited are Syria and North Korea, but not Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Israel, Rwanda (Kagame), or Uganda (Museveni). Or the United States. Doesn’t the United States surpass Russia and Venezuela in the use of violence (hard power) externally with its steady stream of wars and assassinations; and internally with its numerous police killings and mass imprisonment? Doesn’t it give critical support to violent regimes like Saudi Arabia and Israel? Isn’t it the champion user of “soft power” as well, again both abroad and at home? When Guriev and Treisman talk about the new authoritarians using “propaganda, censorship and other information-based tricks to inflate their ratings,” and bribing media owners with ad dollars and urging pro-regime parties to acquire media, is this worse than prosecuting whistleblowers, allowing greater media concentration, and carrying out public campaigns of target demonization and falsification of evidence?

Does soft power include the ability of a monied elite to dominate elections and assure that no real populist can qualify for high office? Is it not remarkable that a Barack Obama and George W. Bush can struggle to reach a 50 percent popularity rating whereas a Putin can reach into the 80 percent category even in the midst of an economic crisis?

One of Guriev-Treisman’s tricks is to smear their target villains as a class with words that hardly apply to all of them—notably “authoritarians,” “autocrats” and “dictators.” They acknowledge that Chavez came into power with a free election, but that doesn’t relieve him of being an autocrat. They claim that the autocrats “preserve pockets of democratic opposition to simulate competition.” They know by instinct that these pockets are just preserved for this reason. The West, on the other hand, is good, and has to “address it own role in enabling these autocrats.” It doesn’t have to address its own use of hard and soft power, nor its role in enabling autocrats unmentioned by Guriev and Treisman like the rulers of Saudi Arabia, Israel and Rwanda. For the empire’s paper of record, the empire ought to rule more efficiently.

Edward S. Herman is professor emeritus of finance at the Wharton School of Business of the University of Pennsylvania and a media analyst with a specialty in corporate and regulatory issues as well as political economy.

“We are grateful to the Washington Post, The New York Times, Time Magazine and other great publications whose directors have attended our meetings and respected their promises of discretion for almost 40 years. It would have been impossible for us to develop our plan for the world if we had been subjected to the lights of publicity during those years. But the world is more sophisticated and prepared to march towards a world government. The supranational sovereignty of an intellectual elite and world bankers is surely preferable to the national auto-determination practiced in past centuries.” – David Rockefeller, Bilderberg, 1991 (emphasis added)

If you wish to live in a world that is “sophisticated” enough to be a world government run by an intellectual elite and global bankers, then by all means, continue to read the Washington Post, New York Times, and Time Magazine to get all your information. If, however, the idea of a select coterie of a global intellectual-financial elite running the world does not sound like the ideal society for humanity’s future, we must continue to shine the lights of publicity on the actions of powerful individuals and institutions, bringing a critical eye to their ideologies and actions.

This is the aim and objective of Global Research and the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG), which holds no “promises of discretion” and have not attended Bilderberg meetings. The aim is plainly stated: we are here to battle the tide of misinformation and expose the ‘New World Order.’

We have been able to develop our activities thanks to contributions from our readers. To maintain our independence, we do not seek donor support from private or public foundations. Our commitment is to make Global Research articles available to the broadest possible readership, on a noncommercial basis, without the need for a login for paid subscribers.

With a view to achieving the above objectives, while improving the form and content of our website, we have a membership program for Global Research readers with FREE GIFTS for our members! You can also make a donation to Global Research. (click donate icon for details)

Start the new year with an Annual Membership from Global Research!

What You Will Get with your Global Research Annual Membership:

All new members (annual basis) as well as all membership renewal (annual basis) will receive a FREE copy of “The Global Economic Crisis: The Great Depression of the XXI Century“, edited by Michel Chossudovsky and Andrew Gavin Marshall, as well as a FREE copy of the new book from Global Research, “The Globalization of War: America’s “Long War” against Humanity“ by Michel Chossudovsky. (Click here for details)

These books from Global Research offer information on a broad range of issues, from the history of central banking, to the national security state, think tanks, financial warfare, debt slavery, war, and empire.

So begin your Annual Membership today and receive TWO FREE BOOKS from Global Research!

Our readership has increased dramatically in the last year, but so have our costs.  All our authors as well as most of the GR staff are volunteers.

You can also donate to Global Research.

Help support us and let us continue to “shine the lights of publicity” on the intellectual elite and world bankers who destroy our economies, control our resources, take our liberties, make our wars, impoverish us and oppress us, and plunder all the world around us.

Thank You,

Sincerely,

The Global Research Team

Start your Annual Membership online, by mail, or by faxing in your payment! Full details can be found by following this link to our MEMBERSHIP PAGE

What is the relationship between war in a military theater and “economic warfare”? 

An act of war is invariably an economic undertaking which supports dominant corporate interests. The conduct of US-NATO military operations is carried out on behalf of powerful financial institutions. 

US led wars in the Middle East under the humanitarian mantle of the “global war on terrorism” largely serve the interests of Wall Street, the Anglo-american oil conglomerates, the so-called ‘defense contractors”, the biotech conglomerates (Monsanto et al), Big Pharma and the corporate media.

But modern warfare is by no means limited to the sphere of military and intelligence operations. Washington not only imposes economic sanctions on countries which do not support its imperial agenda, it also fosters the outright destabilization of national economies. While the Pentagon and NATO coordinate military operations against sovereign countries, Wall Street carries out concurrent destabilizing actions on financial markets including the rigging of the oil, gold and foreign exchange markets directed against Russia and China.

It’s called “financial warfare”, it’s part of the same global agenda, it’s implemented alongside and in coordination with the Worldwide deployment of the US-NATO’s military machine.

In this regard, Obama’s “Pivot to Asia” directed against China involving the deployment of US naval forces in the South China Sea, is reinforced through concurrent destabilizing actions on the Shanghai stock exchange. The ultimate intent is to undermine –through non-military means– the national economy of the People’s Republic of China.

War and Financial Warfare

Is financial warfare coordinated with political decision-making pertaining to major military and intelligence operations?

Acts of financial warfare require intelligence;  they often require consultation and coordination at the highest levels of government. While the decision making process between the military-intelligence apparatus and the corporate financial system is by no means integrated, it nonetheless overlaps through a system of cross appointments and consultations.

Overlapping appointments

Amply documented, the mega-banking institutions on Wall Street and their related hedge funds exert their influence at the highest levels of the US government including the State Department, the Pentagon and the White House.

The system of cross-appointments together with corporate lobbying is part of this process.  National security advisers and former Pentagon officials are appointed to the World Bank,  etc.  Former prime ministers, senior government officials take on consulting positions with major banking institutions,  CIA officials are involved as advisers in key trade negotiations, etc. Conversely, Wall Street bankers are appointed to key positions in government.

In early August, Goldman Sachs appointed NATO’s former Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen as a financial consultant.

Over the last five years (2009-2014), Rasmussen was actively involved in coordinating NATO’s humanitarian bombing raids in the Middle East not to mention NATO military deployments on Russia’s doorstep in Eastern Europe, the Baltic States and the Black Sea.

During his stint as Prime Minister of Denmark (2001-2009), Rasmussen was involved (under a neoliberal policy agenda) in dismantling Denmark’s welfare state alongside the privatization of state assets.

Rasmussen’s consulting advice will be used as part of Goldman’s political lobbying in the EU, namely the process of influencing political and strategic decision making.

Moreover, Goldman’s multibillion dollar investment decisions, its inside trading operations, its various speculative actions on the commodities, forex, precious metals markets, etc, require detailed inside information/ political coordination pertaining to geopolitical and military affairs.

Rasmussen joins a long list of  prominent officials and political personalities who are acting as consultants for Goldman Sachs.

Mayor of Chicago Rahm Emanuel who was Obama’s Chief of Staff, was also consultant to Goldman. His role “was to “introduce us to people”, in the words of one Goldman Sachs partner at the time.”

Peter Sutherland who was EU commissioner, trade negotiator and subsequently Director General of the World Trade Organization (WTO) was appointed in 2005 to Goldman Sachs as a non-executive Chairman. He ended his 20 year stint with Goldman in 2015.

Robert Zoellick, former president of the World Bank joined Goldman Sachs in 2013 as chairman of the bank’s board of international advisers. Zoellick had previously held several high ranking positions in the US administration. He was Deputy Secretary of State (2005–2006) under the Bush administration.

It works both ways: government officials are appointed to Goldman; in turn Goldman Sachs officials are appointed to key positions in government.  George W. Bush’s Secretary of the Treasury Henry Paulson (2006-2009) (image left) was a former Goldman Sachs chairman and CEO. He was appointed to the Treasury two years before the 2008 financial crash.

These appointments enable Goldman Sachs among other Wall Street mega banks to manipulate government policy.

It also provides them with an inroad into the corridors of the Treasury, not to mention the central banks: e.g, the notorious appointment of  a former Goldman Sachs official (and Canadian citizen) Mark Carney to the position of governor of the Bank of England. Carney previously held  the position of Governor of the Bank of Canada. He also heads the G20’s Financial Stability Board.

Mario Draghi, was vice chairman and managing director of Goldman Sachs International (2002–2005), before his appointment as Governor of the Bank of Italy (2005-2009). In 2011, he was appointed Governor of the European Central Bank (ECB).

Goldman Sachs is a Trojan Horse with its former banking officials deployed in key governmental positions.  These appointments provide Goldman Sachs with the ability to influence and oversee the conduct of macro-economic policy.

Regulating The Next Wall Street Financial Crash 

Barely acknowledged by the financial media, another notorious appointment of a Goldman official pertains to the Security and Exchanges Commission (SEC)  In May 2015, Goldman official Andrew J. “Buddy” Donohue  was appointed SEC chief of staff for Mary Jo White which enables him to “regulate Wall Street” so to speak on behalf of Wall Street.

This is a timely appointment. Financial markets including the multi-trillion trade in derivatives are in a state of disarray. They are exceedingly unstable, largely as a result of market rigging and speculative activity by powerful actors, not to mention the lack of regulatory procedures.

Goldman Sachs Inc. played a central role in the 2008 financial meltdown, with their former chairman and CEO Henry Paulson in charge of the US Treasury.

In a bitter irony, Institutional speculators  are in charge of regulating financial markets. The next financial crash, were it to occur, will be be “regulated” by the SEC with former Goldman Sachs official Andrew J. “Buddy” Donohue in the driver’s seat, acting on behalf of a handful of “too big to fail, too big to jail” financial institutions.

Let us not despair: Goldman Sachs does not control the US Treasury.  It’s in the hands of a former Citigroup official Jacob Lew -who according to expert opinion is slated to act “responsibly” in the case of a stock market crisis.

During his stint at Citigroup which preceded the 2008 financial crisis, Lew was in charge of a speculative hedge fund investment unit which consisted according to a 2010 Huffington Post Report in shorting or betting “on the housing market to collapse.”:

[Concern was expressed when he was appointed Budget Director regarding] his unit’s investments in a hedge fund that bet on the housing market to collapse — a reality suffered by millions of American homeowners.  … But in an age in which the housing collapse led to a financial upheaval that cost 8 million American jobs and plunged the nation into its deepest recession since the Great Depression, bets [coordinated by Jack Lew] that profited off the collapse may not be perceived in the best light.

It is worth noting that Treasury Secretary Jack Lew was also involved in what is best described as “legal tax evasion” through the transfer of Citigroup funds to the Cayman islands. According to the Weekly Standard (February 2013), Jack Lew:

“oversaw as many as a hundred Cayman Island investments when he worked at Citi Bank as chief operating officer of the alternative investment services unit, SEC disclosures reveal. It has previously been reported that Lew himself had been invested in a fund that was based in the Cayman Islands.  …

SEC documents ending in the year 2007 reveal that at least 90 subsidiaries of Citi were based in the Cayman Islands. A couple weeks later, in January 2008, Jack Lew took the high-ranking executive job at Citi.

Names of the Citi subsidiaries include: Asia Mortgage Finance, Azabu Credit Management Company Ltd., Alternative Investments MGR, Ltd., Asia Enterprise III Offshore L.P., Baltic Pharma Limited, BISYS Hedge Fund Director Services Limited, Brennan Limited, and many, many more.

By the end of 2008 that number of Citi subsidiaries in the Cayman Islands, which fell under the jurisdiction Lew was in charge of, jumped to 113.

In the 2012 presidential campaign, the Obama campaign called Mitt Romney’s own Cayman Island investments “bets against America.”

But only months after the election ended, Obama nominated his former chief of staff Jack Lew, who himself had similar investments and even oversaw investment funds there, to be the next treasury secretary.

When asked this morning [February 13, 2013]  at a Capitol Hill hearing about his investment in the Cayman Islands-based fund, Lew plead ignorance. He claimed today that he “actually didn’t know” the fund he invested in was housed in the Cayman Islands. Besides, he said, my “benefit was really very small.”

Financial Meltdown. Could it happen Again?

Who are the main actors?

We are dealing with a complex process of rigging and manipulation. This article has skimmed the surface focussing on selected key appointments on behalf of Wall Street’s mega banks.

Let us address the issue of so-called “fiscal responsibility”:

A speculator and tax evader (Jack Lew) is in charge of fiscal and monetary policy at the US Treasury and the regulation of major US stock markets at the Security and Exchange Commission (SEC) is in the hands of Goldman Sachs, which also means that the SEC cannot be used to indict Goldman Sachs, CitiGroup et al. on charges of inside trading and financial fraud.

The Globalization of War is undoubtedly one of the most important books on the contemporary global situation produced in recent years. 

In his latest masterpiece, Professor Michel Chossudovsky shows how the various conflicts we are witnessing today in Ukraine, Syria, Iraq and Palestine are in fact inter-linked and inter-locked through a single-minded agenda in pursuit of global hegemony helmed by the United States and buttressed by its allies in the West and in other regions of the world.   Dr Chandra Muzaffar, President of the International Movement for a Just World (JUST)

The Globalization of War: America’s “Long War” against Humanity

Michel Chossudovsky

$14.00, Save 39%

The Book can be ordered directly from Global Research Publishers. 

Freedom in America is being systematically destroyed: one police state law at a time – with most people ignorant and/or indifferent about what happening.

Washington’s criminal class is bipartisan – in lockstep against government representing everyone equitably and fairly, serving privileged interests only.

S. Res. 1705: Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2016 compromises free expression and privacy rights already gravely eroded.

If enacted, Section 603 will require online companies to inform Washington of any “actual knowledge” of “facts and circumstances” related to undefined “terrorist activity” – meaning warrantless searches and seizures of personal electronic content will be authorized, potentially subjecting countless numbers of innocent people to unjustifiable scrutiny.

Vague language makes independent journalists, political, anti-war, and social justice activists, academics and students doing legitimate research, as well as others vulnerable to being called suspected terrorists.

The possibility could encourage self-censorship. Service providers may over-report to show compliance with the law. Online users could be flagged for using suspect words or phrases.

One definition of terrorist activity can be another’s way of describing freedom fighting. Legitimate government criticism could be misinterpreted and misused.

Anyone ideologically opposed to US policies could become vulnerable to arrest, prosecution, conviction and imprisonment for expressing their views online. Police states operate this way.

Provisions like Section 603 violate fundamental constitutional and international law guaranteed rights. At stake is further erosion of First and Fourth Amendment freedoms.

Senate members overwhelmingly support S. 1705. Before recessing until September, they were set to pass it by voice vote until Senator Ron Wyden objected.

He wants normal debate procedure followed. He noted valid concerns raised by Internet companies about Section 603.

The Internet Association representing dozens of technology companies said vague language about what constitutes terrorism creates “an impossible compliance problem.”

It’ll result in “massive reporting of items that are not likely to be of material concern to public safety.” Wyden said “Internet companies should not be subject to broad requirements to police the speech of their users.”

He knows of no law enforcement or intelligence agencies suggesting Section 603 will help identify terrorists. He urges revision or elimination of this section altogether.

Thirty-one civil liberties organizations and trade associations expressed opposition to Section 603 in a letter sent Senate leaders.

They include Project Censored, the Media Freedom Foundation, the ACLU, National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, Electronic Frontier Foundation, Consumer Federation of America, Bill of Rights Defense Committee, and American Library Association among others.

They warned of concerns raised above. Innocent people committing no crimes would be at risk. “Complying with Section 603 would create a chilling effect on constitutionally protected speech and would impermissibly burden individuals’ First and Fourth Amendment rights,” they said.

“Whether a given comment is a true threat of violence, an expression of a sincerely held religious belief, or a simple joke among friends is a determination that providers are ill-suited to make, particularly when the consequence is reporting a person to the government under the suspicion of involvement in terrorist activities.”

Section 603 is unconstitutional. It way oversteps. Under the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, Internet companies may report any content they believe relates to criminality.

“Section 603’s reporting requirement threatens individuals’ constitutional rights to privacy and freedom of expression and would burden US-based providers without providing a clear benefit to law enforcement. For these reasons, we urge you to reject this flawed provision and to remove it from the Intelligence Authorization Act,” the signatories said.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at [email protected]. 

His new book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.”

http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com. 

Listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network.

It airs three times weekly: live on Sundays at 1PM Central time plus two prerecorded archived programs. 

In an extraordinary speech delivered Wednesday, US President Barack Obama went public with a warning that powerful factions within Congress and the state apparatus are determined to carry out a war against Iran that would have incalculable consequences.

Speaking on the eve of the 70th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, Obama said that a scuttling of the nuclear deal with Iran that was announced last month would mean war with Iran—a country nearly four times as large and with almost triple the population of Iraq. He further suggested, harking back to World War II and the Cold War, that a war with Iran could open the door to a Third World War.

At this juncture, it is not at all clear how the vote in Congress on the nuclear accord negotiated between Iran and the P5+1 (the US, China, Russia, Britain, France and Germany) and approved by the United Nations will go. Obama has announced that he will veto any measure that blocks the United States from implementing the agreement. Whether there are sufficient votes in both houses of Congress to assure the two-thirds majorities required to overturn a presidential veto is still undecided.

What is beyond dispute is that a large majority of the US Congress will vote for a policy that is predicated on a catastrophic escalation of American militarism.

If the House of Representatives and the Senate override his veto, Obama warned, war will come, and “soon.” The commander-in-chief gave the unmistakable impression that control over the movement toward war was slipping out of his hands.

As Obama spelled out: “Congressional rejection of this deal leaves any US administration that is absolutely committed to preventing Iran from getting a nuclear weapon with one option, another war in the Middle East. I say this not to be provocative; I am stating a fact.”

The debate over this accord shows that the American political establishment, including its vast military and intelligence complex, is deeply divided over whether US imperialism should pursue its global interests by means of yet another, and far more dangerous, war in the Middle East. What is not in dispute is Washington’s supposed prerogative to wage preemptive war, i.e., criminal aggression, against whatever nations or peoples it chooses. The US president underscored this point, citing his own record.

“As commander-in-chief, I have not shied away from using force when necessary,” he boasted. “I have ordered tens of thousands of young Americans into combat… I’ve ordered military action in seven countries. There are times when force is necessary, and if Iran does not abide by this deal, it’s possible that we don’t have an alternative.”

Yet, for all his multiple interventions, drone missile murders and massacres, Obama considers war with Iran a highly dangerous undertaking. His argument is that Washington can pursue its interests by using the nuclear accord as leverage to shift the Iranian regime behind US imperialism, while keeping “the military option on the table” should this strategy fail.

The reasons for Obama’s fear of a precipitous confrontation with Tehran go beyond the bloodbath that a war on Iran would entail. The US president warned that a repudiation of the nuclear deal would provoke a dangerous confrontation with Russia and China. It would also, he strongly suggested, inflame relations with Washington’s allies in Europe, in the first instance Germany, as well with those in Asia. None of them, he declared, will bow to the “dictates of the US Congress” and enforce a unilateral American sanctions regime that has already cost their economies billions upon billions of dollars.

Germany, France, Italy and other European countries have already dispatched high-level delegations to Tehran to negotiate lucrative contracts. They have made it clear that they will not return to the negotiating table, much less to sanctions.

Berlin’s second-highest-ranking diplomat in Washington warned Thursday that a US repudiation of the nuclear deal “would be a nightmare…a catastrophe,” driving Iran and possibly other countries to rapidly pursue nuclear weapons in the knowledge that no negotiated agreement will be respected by the US.

If the US military attacks Iran as European capitalism attempts to penetrate its market, the end result could well be the death of the NATO alliance and the eruption of military tensions between Europe and America.

Obama also called attention to the implications of any attempt to force China to return to the sanctions regime. “We’d have to cut off countries like China from the American financial system,” he said. “And since they happen to be major purchasers of our debt, such actions could trigger severe disruptions in our own economy, and, by the way, raise questions internationally about the dollar’s role as the world’s reserve currency.”

Implicit in such an outcome is a military confrontation with China. It would also plunge the US and world economy into a full-scale Depression, Obama suggested.

But precisely such a course is being plotted by powerful sections of the American ruling elite. They are doing so behind the backs of the American people, who overwhelmingly oppose war. Given the chilling implications of Obama’s warnings, the reaction of the American media has been remarkably muted.

With the 2016 election campaign already under way, popular antiwar sentiment finds no expression whatsoever in the corrupt and bankrupt US political system. Millions of people may well wake up some time after the congressional vote on the Iran agreement in September to find the US at war once again, on a far greater scale than the interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq combined. They could be suddenly engulfed by a collapse of employment and living standards, with the entire planet on the precipice of a third, nuclear, world war.

The policies of those prepared to drive the world down this path are a reflection of the desperate crisis of the US capitalist system and the determination of the ruling class to offset American capitalism’s global decline by military means. Frustrated by the failure of US wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria to secure undisputed US hegemony over the Middle East and Central Asia, they now want another roll of the dice for the much higher stakes of militarily subduing Iran, the country that bridges these two energy-rich regions.

In the most cowardly section of his speech, Obama attributed the rabid opposition to the Iran deal within the American establishment to

“sincere affinity for our friend and ally Israel, an affinity that…I deeply share.”

There is nothing “sincere” about this poisonous relationship. The alignment with the Israeli regime by the most reactionary and reckless elements of the American political establishment is bound up with their common support for war.

The continuation and spread of what Obama’s predecessor termed “the wars of the 21st Century,” now including the promotion of war with Iran, also express the need to divert outward—in the form of ever greater eruptions of American militarism—the internal class tensions generated by growing social inequality.

This points to the only means of defeating American militarism and the threat of a Third World War—the development of the class struggle and the conscious preparation of the socialist revolution in the US and internationally.

Image: Mikhail Gorbachev, Photo by Michael Schilling (CC-BY-SA-3.0)

Aging and illness months earlier haven’t affected his outspokenness on issues as vital as preventing nuclear war. Interviewed by Spiegel Online, he said as long as these weapons exist, “sooner or later they will be used.”

They’re not going away – at least no time soon. Washington intends spending $1 trillion over the next 30 years upgrading its already formidable arsenal – a warning of intent to use against Russia, China or any other nation challenging its quest for world dominance.

Gorbachev’s message is clear. If these weapons aren’t eliminated, they’ll eliminate us. Founder of America’s nuclear navy Admiral Hyman Rickover said the same thing in 1982 congressional testimony.

“In all wars, man has used the best weapons available to him.” he stressed. “If history has any meaning for us, it shows that men will continue to use (them) to win.”

Thermonuclear wars are madness. They risk humanity’s destruction. Yet the risk is perhaps greater than ever. Thucydides trap conditions exist.

The Greek historian warned 2,400 years ago about the risk of war because of an established power’s fear about a rising one. Today, Mikhail Gorbachev and many others like him warn of today’s unprecedented risk.

America’s rage for world dominance threatens everyone. It’s shocking to think bipartisan lunatics in charge may kill us all. A nation spending as much or more on militarism and war-making than all others combined is “an insurmountable obstacle” to a peaceful nuclear-free world, Gorbachev explained.

“Can we really imagine a world without nuclear weapons if a single country amasses so many conventional weapons that its military budget nearly tops that of all other countries combined,” Gorbachev asked – leaving no doubt which country he meant!

America “would (still) enjoy total military supremacy if nuclear weapons were abolished,” he added.

They’re “unacceptable (and) inhumane” – able to “wipe out the entirety of civilization” in short order. “Weapons like this have never existed before in history, and they cannot be allowed to exist” – if humanity expects to have any chance to survive.

Demilitarization is vital, Gorbachev stresses – including “reduc(ed) military budgets, a moratorium on the development of the new types of weapons and a prohibition on militarizing space.”

Without all these actions, demilitarization will be meaningless, he explained. “The world would then become less safe, more unstable and unpredictable. Everyone will lose, including those now seeking to dominate the world.”

Gorbachev expressed great concern about possible nuclear war. Current conditions should scare everyone. Nuclear armed nations “have thousands of warheads” and sophisticated long-range delivery systems with pinpoint accuracy.

Major cities can be turned to smoldering rubble in short order – their entire populations incinerated, radioactive fallout leaving them unable to support human and other species’ life.

Washington’s rage to militarize space and control it makes the “danger of nuclear proliferation…greater than ever before.” During his tenure as Soviet leader, Washington and Moscow stepped back from the brink.

“Thousands of nuclear warheads were destroyed and several types of nuclear weapons, such as intermediate-range missiles, were disposed of,” said Gorbachev.

We can be proud of that. We accomplished all that together. It should be a lesson for today’s leaders: for Obama, (whoever succeeds him in 2017), Putin and Merkel.

Continuing the madness of nuclear proliferation may doom us all.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at[email protected].

His new book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.”

http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

Listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network.

It airs three times weekly: live on Sundays at 1PM Central time plus two prerecorded archived programs.

In Libya, Syria, Ukraine, and other countries at the periphery or edges of Europe, U.S. President Barack Obama has been pursuing a policy of destabilization, and even of bombings and other military assistance, that drives millions of refugees out of those peripheral areas and into Europe, thereby adding fuel to the far-rightwing fires of anti-immigrant rejectionism, and of resultant political destabilization, throughout Europe, not only on its peripheries, but even as far away as in northern Europe.

Shamus Cooke at Off-Guardian headlines on 3 August 2015, “Obama’s ‘Safe Zone’ in Syria Intended to Turn It into New Libya,” and he reports that Obama has approved U.S. air support for Turkey’s previously unenfoceable no-fly zone over Syria. The U.S. will now shoot down all of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s planes that are targeting the extremist-Muslim groups, including ISIS, that have taken over huge swaths of Syrian territory.

Cooke reports:

Turkey has been demanding this no-fly zone from Obama since the Syrian war started. It’s been discussed throughout the conflict and even in recent months, though the intended goal was always the Syrian government. And suddenly the no-fly zone is happening — right where Turkey always wanted it — but it’s being labeled an ‘anti-ISIS’ safe zone, instead of its proper name: ‘Anti Kurdish and anti-Syrian government’ safe zone.

The New York Times reported on July 27th, that,

“the plan calls for relatively moderate Syrian insurgents to take the territory, with the help of American and possibly Turkish air support.”

However, the Times, stenographically reporting (as usual) from and for their U.S. Government sources (and so propagandizing for the U.S. Government), fails to define “relatively moderate,” but all of the “relatively moderate insurgent” groups in Syria cooperate with ISIS and help them to find and decapitate, or sometimes hold for ransoms, any non-Muslims there. Under Assad, Syria has been a non-clerical state, and has enjoyed freedom of religion, but all of the Syrian opposition to Assad’s rule is alien to that. The U.S. is now, even more clearly than before, anti-Assad, pro-Islamist.

Seymour Hersh reported in the London Review of Books on 17 April 2014, that the Obama Administration’s Libyan bombing campaign in 2011 was part of a broader program to bring sarin gas from Libya to the al-Nusra Front in Syria, in order to help produce a gas-attack upon civilians, which the U.S. Administration could then blame upon Assad, as being an excuse to bomb there just as Obama had already so successfully done in Libya. Both dictators, Gaddafi and Assad, were allied with Russia, and Assad especially has been important to Russia, as a transit-route for Russia’s gas supplies, and not for Qatar’s gas supplies — Qatar being the major potential threat to Russia’s status as the top supplier of gas into Europe.

Obama’s top goal in international relations, and throughout his military policies, has been to defeat Russia, to force a regime-change there that will make Russia part of the American empire, no longer the major nation that resists control from Washington.

Prior to the U.S. bombings of Libya in 2011, Libya was at peace and thriving. Per-capita GDP (income) in 2010 according to the IMF was $12,357.80, but it plunged to only $5,839.70 in 2011 — the year we bombed and destroyed the country. (Hillary Clinton famously bragged, “We came, we saw, he [Gaddafi] died!”) (And, unlike in U.S. ally Saudi Arabia, that per-capita GDP was remarkably evenly distributed, and both education and health care were socialized and available to everyone, even to the poor.)

More recently, on 15 February 2015, reporter Leila Fadel of NPR bannered “With Oil Fields Under Attack, Libya’s Economic Future Looks Bleak.” She announced: “The man in charge looks at production and knows the future is bleak. ‘We cannot produce. We are losing 80 percent of our production,’ says Mustapha Sanallah, the chairman of Libya’s National Oil Corporation.”

Under instructions from Washington, the IMF hasn’t been reliably reporting Libya’s GDP figures after 2011, but instead shows that things there were immediately restored to normal (even to better than normal: $13,580.55 per-capita GDP) in 2012, but everybody knows that it’s false; even NPR is, in effect, reporting that it’s not true. The CIA estimates that Libya’s per-capita GDP was a ridiculous $23,900 in 2012 (they give no figures for the years before that), and says Libya’s per-capita GDP has declined only slightly thereafter. None of the official estimates are at all trustworthy, though the Atlantic Council at least made an effort to explain things honestly, headlining in their latest systematic report about Libya’s economy, on 23 January 2014, “Libya: Facing Economic Collapse in 2014.”

Libya has become Europe’s big problem. Millions of Libyans are fleeing the chaos there. Some of them are fleeing across the Mediterranean and ending up in refugee camps in southern Italy; and some are escaping to elsewhere in Europe.

And Syria is now yet another nation that’s being destroyed in order to conquer Russia. Even the reliably propagandistic New York Times is acknowledging, in its ‘news’ reporting, that, “both the Turks and the Syrian insurgents see defeating President Bashar al-Assad of Syria as their first priority.” So: U.S. bombers will be enforcing a no-fly-zone over parts of Syria in order to bring down Russia’s ally Bashar al-Assad and replace his secular government by an Islamic government — and the ‘anti-ISIS’ thing is just for show; it’s PR, propaganda. The public cares far more about defeating ISIS than about defeating Russia; but that’s not the way America’s aristocracy views things. Their objective is extending America’s empire — extending their own empire.

Similarly, Obama overthrew the neutralist government of Viktor Yanukovych in Ukraine in February 2014, but that was under the fake cover of ‘democracy’ demonstrations, instead of under the fake cover of ‘opposing Islamic terrorism’ or whatever other phrases that the U.S. Government uses to fool suckers about America’s installation of, and support to, a rabidly anti-Russia, racist-fascist, or nazi, government next door to Russia, in Ukraine. Just as Libya had been at peace before the U.S. invaded and destroyed it, and just as Syria had been at peace before the U.S and Turkey invaded and destroyed it, Ukraine too was at peace before the U.S. perpetrated its coup there and installed nazis and an ethnic cleansing campaign there, and destroyed Ukraine too.

Like with Libya before the overthrow of Gaddafi there, or Syria before the current effort to overthrow Assad there, or the more recent successful overthrow of Ukraine’s democratically elected President Viktor Yanukovych, it’s all aimed to defeat Russia.

The fact that all of Europe is sharing in the devastation that Obama and other American conservatives — imperialists, even — impose, is of little if any concern to the powers-that-be in Washington DC, but, if it matters at all to them, then perhaps it’s another appealing aspect of this broader operation: By weakening European nations, and not only nations in the Middle East, Obama’s war against Russia is yet further establishing America to be “the last man standing,” at the end of the chaos and destruction that America causes.

Consequently, for example, in terms of U.S. international strategy, the fact that the economic sanctions against Russia are enormously harming the economies of European nations is good, not bad.

There are two ways to win, at any game: One is by improving one’s own performance. The other is by weakening the performances by all of one’s competitors. The United States is now relying almost entirely upon the latter type of strategy.

Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of They’re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010, and of CHRIST’S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity.

It has occurred almost without notice. While the U.S. continues to claim its foremost world status as a democracy, since 9/11 it has shifted its model of government to something far more concerning. This shift is instanced perfectly in a story that appeared in very few of the news media outlets during the last week of July: two animal rights activists were charged with “domestic terrorism” and jailed for freeing caged animals on a fur farm and for vandalizing the property of the corporation that ran it. Federal law now makes it a crime of terrorism to engage in acts that threaten the ability of a business or a corporation to make a profit.

This speaks directly to a shift that has occurred in the model of government on the federal level, from what the lawyer and philosopher David Luban calls “the war model” to an even more force-oriented model: what we will call “the terrorist model.” We will show the structures of such a model by first defining “terrorism.” Then we can apply that definition to U.S. actions and policies. This will allow us to see the shift in the governing model the U.S. now uses, both abroad and domestically.

Terrorism

Definitions of terrorism are nearly as numerous and varied as are the writers of them. The United States government alone has four official definitions of terrorism: Defense Department, FBI, State Department, and U.S. Code. They are all similar, but different. The most detailed definition, though, comes in the U.S. Code.

The official U.S. Code divides terrorism into two types: international and domestic. However, the definition of each is precisely the same. Thus, according to Title 18, Part I, Chapter 113B, “international terrorism” means activities that:

(A) involve violent acts or acts dangerous to human life that are a violation of the criminal laws of the United States or of any State;

(B) appear to be intended—

(i) to intimidate or coerce a civilian population;

(ii) to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion; or

(iii) to affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination, or kidnapping; and

(C) occur primarily outside the territorial jurisdiction of the United States, or transcend national boundaries in terms of the means by which they are accomplished, the persons they appear intended to intimidate or coerce, or the locale in which their perpetrators operate or seek asylum. [with the obvious change in the definition of “domestic terrorism” to acts that “occur primarily within the territorial jurisdiction of the United States”].

As might be expected, there are some problems with the U.S. definitions of terrorism. First, note that by definition the U.S. government cannot be terrorist or engage in terrorist actions. Terrorism is just what others do to the U.S. government. This raises the obvious question as to whether the actions of a government such as the U.S. which fit these descriptions while fighting terrorism are in reality and morally themselves terrorist, even if they have legally ruled out themselves as potentially guilty of terrorist activities. If so, then there are a plethora of actions of the United States that could rightfully be considered to be terrorism, such as the support of the Contras in Nicaragua, the attacks on Grenada and Panama, both wars on Iraq (1991 and 2002), the invasion of Libya, and drone strikes.

Second, note how broad the definition is. It is this breadth that has allowed the government to charge animal rights activists with “terrorism.” But it doesn’t and won’t stop with only those activists, as we will see below.

Third, the U.S. definition makes no distinction between terrorism and counterterrorism, the latter of which is official U.S. policy. Fourth, Noam Chomsky has observed that the definitions do not distinguish between international terrorism and aggression, nor between terrorism and resistance (e.g. freedom fighters). Were Nelson Mandela and the African National Congress terrorists or freedom fighters? The U.S. and Israel were the sole nations to hold to the former, as evidenced by their vote on the 1987 U.N. General Assembly resolution that recognized “the right to self-determination, freedom, and independence” of people “forcibly deprived” by “colonial and racist regimes and foreign occupations,” and that these very rights, placed in a proclamation condemning terrorism, were to be held as prior in importance to the characterization of those who sought them as terrorists. The vote was 153-2, the U.S. and Israel casting the only no votes. It is the same with the Palestinians today.

Fifth, there is an important question that remains unasked, and is not raised in the definitions just discussed: are we warring on terror—a tactic; a verb—or are we warring on terrorists, non-state individuals and groups? If the latter, how are the ethics and the laws of war supposed to be applied, if at all? It is important to note in this respect that every modern-day U.S. President has declared a “war on terror:” Nixon; Reagan; Bush I; Clinton; Bush II; Obama, all under different pretenses and definitions. But with each of these wars, no one has bothered to be precise about the definition. If whatever entity—government or individual—is painted by the U.S. as “terrorist,” that automatically allows forceful and military intervention. That this is part of the model of the terrorist state will be established below.

In terms of assessing the morality of terrorism, we can appeal to the widespread and consistent intuitive rejection of terrorism that maintains that taking innocent lives is wrong; targeting innocents for physical or psychological abuse is wrong; and that killing and/or abusing certain humans is wrong.

State Terrorism

Given our previous, largely agreed-upon definition of “terrorism,” the definition of State terrorism would be similar to that one, removing the government’s self-exemption clauses: a violent attack on civilians for the purpose of intimidating or coercing a civilian population by a given state. Interestingly, nearly all contributors to discussion regarding state terrorism focus on the issue of morally legitimate responses to terrorism (e.g. responses for which the U.S. has moral justification in taking action against terrorists after 9/11). In other words, their analyses begin with the U.S. being attacked and reflect on “what we can do to them.”

Some scholars (e.g. Igor Primoratz), argue that the new U.S. war on terrorism is not state terrorism, because the wars on terrorism (e.g. in Afghanistan; Iraq; Syria) do not deliberately attack civilians. However, these writers immediately and critically nuance that evaluation by stating that there are both serious concerns regarding the proportionality of civilian deaths to terrorist deaths in U.S. bombing campaigns, and also that there must be clearer attention paid to the proviso that the harm to civilians must be deliberately reduced.

In contradistinction to that position, Douglas Lackey offers a detailed evolution of how U.S. foreign policy became progressively a state terrorist one, from WWII city bombings to U.S. nuclear strategy (“The Evolution of the Modern Terrorist State”), while Noam Chomsky regularly catalogues the clear cases of U.S. state terrorism across the globe (in 9-11; Hegemony or Survival; Failed States; “Simple Truths, Hard Problems;” and “Terror and Just Response”).

Beyond that, I would add that it is important to note that very few commentators write about state actions that breed terrorism, such as the following:

i) State terrorism of one nation-state against another that predates and may even cause terrorist attacks on the state doing the terrorizing (e.g. U.S. drone attacks in Pakistan);

ii) State enhancement of terrorism—i.e. support of terrorism of other nations that engage in terrorism (e.g. U.S. arming Israel to attack Lebanon and Palestine; U.S. arming anti-government forces in Syria, etc.);

iii) Whether state terrorism may be classed as a nonviolent kind (e.g. U.S. economic sanctions on Iraq prior to the invasion of 2003, or U.S. putting military bases in Saudi Arabia. Both actions directly antagonize the civilian population of each country).

Regardless of the definition, it would seem that, in all cases, state terrorism is worse than non-state terrorism, due to the asymmetry of violence-capability by each, the secrecy and duplicity of state terrorism, the illegality of state terrorism, and inability of states to plead that there is “no alternative” to terrorism. While this places a much higher moral responsibility on states than on non-state actors, the general consensus seems to be that states may respond to terrorist attacks with violence provided that they respect the principles of discrimination/noncombatant immunity and proportionality of damaged caused to the good sought.

The conclusion of this part of the analysis would have to be that there is a morally presumptive illegitimacy to the use of state terrorism. In State practice today, however, the distinction between war crimes, terrorism, and counterterrorism has become blurred.

The War Model of Government

David Luban, in his seminal article “The War on Terrorism and the End of Human Rights” (Philosophy and Public Policy Quarterly, 2002), convincingly argues that the latest war on terrorism (the one declared after 9/11), is a hybrid model combining U.S. government foreign war policies and actions with the domestic and traditional “law model” of democratic rule at home. The results are not good for citizens. In effect, the war model allows the government to use its broader war powers to apply not only to other nations and their citizens, but to certain of its own citizens, as well. This allows government to see dissenters as terrorists, and to take any action it deems necessary, from incarceration without charge at home, to assassination of its own citizens abroad, simply by declaring the legal status of any dissenter by this term, without having to prove its charge.

According to Luban, there are several characteristics of the war model of government, each one having to do with both human and civil rights.

First, civilians from another nation are now susceptible to attack by government without apology or remuneration, by changing the legal concept of “unintended death of innocent civilians” to the war model concept of civilian deaths as simply “collateral damage.” The obvious example of this is the mounting number of civilian deaths caused by U.S. drone strikes. A second, more specific example can be seen in the July report released by Amnesty International, concluding that there is “strong evidence” that Israel committed war crimes and possibly crimes against humanity during its assault on Gaza last summer. The report underscored the “relentless and massive bombardment of residential areas … displaying a shocking disregard for civilian lives.” The findings echo an earlier U.N. report which found both Israel and Palestinian militants committed possible war crimes during the assault, which killed 2,200 Palestinians (Democracy Now, July 29). We can extend this example. Witness the confessions of Israeli soldiers earlier this year, summarized succinctly by one soldier, who said: “every Palestinian within 200 yards of I was told to consider as an enemy.”

Second, the requirements of evidence and proof that someone is actually an enemy are drastically weaker in the war model of government than they are in the law model of traditional democratic governance. All that is required in the war model is intelligence information that leads to suspicion. Then an attack may commence. This model directly leads to the killing of innocent civilians on the basis of faulty intelligence or mistakes. The specific cases of the U.S. doing this in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Yemen are multitudinous, from Uruzgan in Afghanistan, to Fallujah in Iraq.

Third, in the war model of government, legitimate targets include anyone who might harm State interests; not those who have harmed the State in any way. Luban gives an example from January 2002, when U.S. forces in Bosnia seized five Algerians and a Yemeni suspect and took them to Guantanamo Bay. The six had been jailed, tried, and released in Bosnia for lack of evidence. The U.S. reason for kidnapping them off the street was, as U.S. advisor Ruth Wedgwood stated, that they might have been planning terrorist attacks. This is also the weapon the U.S. uses to legitimate bellicose rhetoric and actions against non-allied states, like Iraq in the 2000’s and Iran in the 2010’s.

Connected with this—and this is Luban’s main concern—is the sharp reduction in both human and civil rights when one is detained on charges of terrorism under the war model. The paradigm example of this is the U.S. prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The war model used with these detainees is precisely the opposite of the law model, since the war model holds that those being held there lack the rights of any criminal suspect: the presumption of innocence, the right to a hearing to determine guilt, the right to habeas corpus, the right to trial, etc. Two prominent cases that demonstrate how this has already been applied to U.S. citizens are the cases of Yasser Hamdi and Jose Padilla, both U.S. citizens, both denied due process rights after their arrest and detention (Hamdi in Guantanamo Bay) for three years. A third case, the most drastic of all, is the assassination of U.S. citizen Anwar Awlaki, and then, two weeks later, the assassination of his sixteen year-old son, Abdulrahman, who was also an American citizen.

We have just examined how the war model has already been applied to U.S. citizens, both in detention and assassination. But Luban’s analysis, while quite insightful, omits one element of the war model when it is applied domestically, that would demonstrate more clearly the method of a terrorist state. Here is the last element: when the war model is combined with the law model of domestic governance, it becomes permissible for the state to negate or bypass legal protection for its citizens to dissent from the State’s actions, no matter what level of dissent it is, simply by declaring that person or persons “terrorist.” Here is where the case cited at the start of this article comes into play. Under the 2006 “Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act,” any individual or group that causes any damage to a corporation’s ability to profit from animal products may be prosecuted as a “terrorist.” As if to underscore this aspect of the new U.S. model of government, General Wesley Clark, commenting on MSNBC on July 17, stated that citizen dissidents should be place in internment for the duration of the war on terrorism. This would be tantamount to indefinite incarceration, since the loose definition of terrorism combined with the terrorist model of government makes any declaration of warring on terrorism basically an eternal war.

In sum, we can see that using the U.S.’s own definition of terrorism, and adding Luban’s war model of government that the U.S. is now using, with only a few small steps, becomes a terrorist state model of government when those government presumptions are used against its own citizens. We now also can see that this is where we stand today.

Analysis of the Terrorist/War Model of Government

Overall, Luban’s analysis underscores the fact that a change in government structural operations to a war model is a model that ignores and erodes both human and civil rights. Any government that is willing to embrace such a model does not seek the good of its citizens, but rather its own dominance. As such, that government is not democratic, because it eschews human rights, which are fundamental to democracy. But there is more to be said.

On the foreign level, the model gives government wide and sweeping powers well beyond its need to protect its citizens, by arguing that American forces can fight as warriors, but if the enemies they war against fight back or even plan to fight back, they are not warriors, but criminals, and may on both counts be captured and detained with no rights. In other words, the government has now outlawed fighting against it by belligerents against whom the State is warring.

Second, under such a model, torture becomes endemic to the system and accepted as such—e.g. U.S. “black sites” around the world used by U.S. to secretly torture its detainees.

Third, the rights of foreign civilians not to be attacked and killed are made null and void; civilians simply become “collateral damage” in the war on terror.

Fourth, it aims to upend the traditional aim of war: capitulation of the enemy by force. The war on terror overtly aims only to kill or capture all those whom the state declares to be either domestic or international terrorists until they are all gone—i.e. perpetual war.

Fifth, the war model gives other States the pretext to do the same thing—e.g. Russia attacks Chechens; China attacks Uighurs; Israel attacks Palestinians. All of these examples are part of a model of government that deliberately and publicly refuses to abide by international law and especially the distinction between combatants and civilians. Further, they were all were done under the banner of a war on terror, all of which appealed to the U.S. model.

On the domestic level, as part of this new model of government, we can observe the increased willingness of local police forces to use force against civilians who are either driving while black, or peacefully protesting. Connected with this and perhaps just as alarming is the militarization of local police forces, and their equal willingness to use military-level weapons against civilians.

Second, the new model abolishes the rights of enemies and potential enemies and replaces them with government fiat concerning who the terrorists are and what rights they should have. This replaces the legal model requirement of producing a preponderance of evidence required by moral or legal principles. The most plausible reason for this change is that because the U.S. government does not want those it accuses of terrorism to have these human rights.

Finally, the suspension of human rights under the new model is not temporary, but permanent, due to its being based on the interminable nature of the war on terrorists.

In short, on the domestic front as well, the government now engages in “violent acts or acts dangerous to human life,” that are “to intimidate or coerce a civilian population,” and that “occur primarily outside the territorial jurisdiction of the United States.” Thus, excising the self-exempt elements of the government’s definition of terrorism, and combining it with the war model, we can make a case that the government is itself using a terrorist model to control its citizens.

We can draw two general conclusions regarding the main moral issue of state terrorism. First, as long as the State allows itself to war on terror(ism), human rights will be minimal and will fade fast from government focus. Second, any moral argument against terrorism must be universal—i.e. not just consistent over time, but over parties engaging in it; so it should be applied to states as well as to non-state actors. Note that the thesis of this reflection was not that a full-fledged terrorist model of government is in place; only that our federal government has stepped dramatically in that direction, and is now experimenting with such a model. My best educated guess is that we will see how far our government is willing to go in that current direction if and when it is confronted with a mass popular uprising to economic, political, and/or social conditions in the U.S. Until then, we need to be aware that the mechanisms for a terrorist state are already in place, and we are walking more steadily in that direction in the way we see government act, both abroad and at home.

Dr. Robert Abele holds a Ph.D. in Philosophy from Marquette University and M.A. degrees in Theology and Divinity. He is a professor of philosophy at Diablo Valley College, in California in the San Francisco Bay area. He is the author of four books, including A User’s Guide to the USA PATRIOT Act, and The Anatomy of a Deception: A Logical and Ethical Analysis of the Decision to Invade Iraq, along with numerous articles. His new book, Rationality and Justice, is forthcoming (2016).

The Orthodox Church and the Christian tradition have always assumed a role of primary importance in Russian history and tradition.

The origins of Christianity in Russia go back to 988 and coincide with the baptism of Prince Vladimir the Great. He had come to Constantinople, following which the evangelization of the Principality Kievan Rus’ started. The latter included the space currently occupied by the areas of Russia, the Ukraine and Belarus, considered the predecessor of the Russian Empire. Formed by Igor in 882, the Principality Kievan Rus’ is the first political form organised by the Oriental Slav tribes placed on those territories. This gave rise to the common orthodox faith and the Russian people’s sense of national belonging.

Retracing the path of the Principality one can indeed observe that the Orthodox Christian Faith was immediately embraced by those populations. It also succeeded in asserting itself in the Eastern zones, where there was strong pagan influence. This barely digested the advent of the new creed and accompanied their evolution, acting as a stalwart for the Country’s national and cultural identity. Orthodoxy is even granted with Scripture, which is surely a culture’s fundamental principle. It was introduced via the spread of Christianity among the Slav tribes through the creation of the Cyrillic characters due to two great saints, Cyril and Methodius. It also constituted the prerequisite for the political and cultural development of the Principality of Kiev, leaving a heritage that would last even after its disintegration.

Indeed, following the collapse of the Soviet Union, Orthodox religion regained that role it traditionally enjoyed.

To understand the extent of this phenomenon, one can analyze some statistics carried out by the International Social Survey Programme:“Russians return to religion, but not to Church 10/02/2014” relating to the number of the faithful in the Country between 1988 and 2008.

If in 1988, before the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Russian Orthodox church counted 67 dioceses, 21 monasteries, 6,893 parishes, 2 academies and 3 theological seminars. In 2008 it counted 133 dioceses, over 23,000 parishes, 620 monasteries (including 298 male ones), 322 convents, 5 academies and 32 theological seminars, 43 schools for seminary preparation, 1 theological institution, 2 orthodox universities and 2 female diocesan theological schools.

Examining the data also reveals that between 1991 and 2008, the share of Russian adults considering themselves orthodox had grown from 31% to 72%, while the share of the Russian population not considering themselves religious had dropped from 61% to 18%. However, research carried out by the International Social Survey Programme also reveals that the return to religion does not correspond to its practice. The research demonstrates two substantial facts: only one in ten of those declaring themselves religious attended mass at least once a month; the growth in practisers was ridiculous when compared to that in believers. The latter is borne out by the fact that from 1991 to 2008 it was just 5 percent, going from 2% to 7%.

The growth in the population towards the various religious affiliations was also analyzed over various demographic groups. This analysis revealed that from 1991 to 2008 there was an increase of around 38% in women approaching Orthodox religion, going from 43% to 81%; and an increase of 46% in men, going from 17% to 63%. It also reveals that the increase in identification with Orthodox religion grew by 43% in youthful groups, aged between 16 and 49, going from 26% in 1991, to 69% in 2008, and by 39% amongst those aged over 50, going from 40% in 1991 to 79% in 2008. One may further register that approach to the Orthodox Faith grew substantially in the population with a high level of education, and in particular graduates. This can be augmented by the facts that in 2008, women of faith were the majority and practicing more than men, and that the over-70s were a more religious group than the youngsters. Reference to age therefore, highlights that the elderly form the most religious: 82% of the over-70s declare they are orthodox, in comparison with 77% of people aged between 50 and 69 and 74% of those aged between 30 and 49. Finally, the 62% of youths aged between 16 and 29 remains.

Although the above-mentioned study displays a clear discrepancy between the practicing and non-practicing faithful, the great rebirth of orthodoxy in the Russian people cannot be denied. In this regard, it is interesting to quote the episode of great mass participation occurring in November 2011. Three million Muscovites, facing the cold and rain, poured onto the streets to venerate the belt of the Virgin. This had benn brought from Mount Athos to the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour (the church destroyed by Stalin and substituted by a pool, but rebuilt in a few years under El’cin).

There is no doubt that this rebirth was supported by the collaboration between the Church and political power. This significantly grew over time and intensified on the occasion of two events in particular: the election of Archbishop Cyril Somolensk as patriarch of Moscow and all Russia in 2009, and Vladimir Putin’s return to power in 2012.

The Orthodox church’s policies can actually be easily reconciled with Putin’s vision and his strong call to the Country’s traditions. Patriarch Alexei II had already set himself clearly apart from the Western concepts of “human rights” and “globalization”, considering them unsuited to Russian specifics. Further, Cyril I, his successor, issued the “Declaration of Human Rights of Russia’s Orthodox church”, after repudiating the Western Universal Declaration of Man’s Rights.

The intensification of relations between Church and State has become even more evident in recent years. Indeed, on the forth anniversary of the nomination of Patriarch Cyril, the Kremlin explicitly wished for the Orthodox church to raise its beneficent role in society. In a meeting between the State and religious exponents, held on 11 February 2013, Putin also underlined the need to give the Orthodox church more space. This extended, to political questions regarding matters like the family, education of youths and the patriotic spirit. With reference to defending these values, in particular the family, Russia has often wished to confirm and remark defending traditional, natural values of human society. To this end it has underlined its conception of “family” – understood as the basic element in ordered development for State and society – and the realization of a political and social strategy favouring it. These have decisively contributed to inverting the very negative demographic trend afflicting the Country over the last decades, warding off out-and-out social disaster. If one considers that the “demographic Winter” striking Russia around 1991 to 2005 is now a common situation in most European states, there can be no doubt that the Russian model constitutes an international example.

Keeping these facts in mind, in some alarming cases the attempt to define and orient States’ policies supporting families and young mothers is even more important and current. It aims to guarantee correct demographic development, crucial for effect on the process of State’s main internal and external policy. In this regard, President Putin has often insisted how humanity today clashes with very serious challenges, like continuous attacks on the institution of the family. This explains why Putin’s Russia is very interested in demographic and family matters. Protecting the rights and interests of families, motherhood and childhood is a priority for public authorities. This actively support and encourage politics and initiatives in their favour: they, benefit from the close collaboration with non-governmental organisations and voluntary citizen associations. Russia’s objective is to defeat this long-lasting demographic deficit, by reaching a fertility rate with a replacement ratio of 2,1 instead of its current 1,7.

Indeed, for the Russian authorities the problem of birth reduction cannot only be attributed to the economic sphere. It has deeper, cultural roots hence the need to intervene in the fields of education and information too. On many occasions, both Putin and Patriarch Cyril have emphasised that the globalised financial system caused the world economic crisis as of 2008, creating and making hegemonic speculative, parasitical financing. It is also responsible for the ethical, moral yielding developing internationall to create a dangerous ‘tendency to destroying human society’. This moral crisis had exacerbated a tendency to selfishness and individualism. These phenomena appear in Russia as the “social orphan”: 80% of abandoned children normally have both parents, who intentionally choose not to bring them up.

One may further note that a new agreement between the Church and the Counts’ Court was recently signed in Moscow. It aimed to raise morale in Russia, impaired by corruption, a real blight there; and safeguard the national spiritual, historical and cultural heritage, necessary for the social good. On the occasion of signing, Patriarch Cyril declared that “The work of the Counts’ Court has a substantial impact on society’s moral climate. We know that corruption degrades human beings. And if corruption reaches a significant extent, it erodes the healthy fabric of society and undermines the basis of the State.”

In fact, for Cyril, the “current vices, connected with theft of public and state property” are attributed to the difficulties faced by the population in the ’90’s and early 2000’s. They are, “the collapse of the economy, the destruction of certain ideals and the attempt to create new ones”.

For these reasons, the Kremlin considers the Church a fundamental ally to preserve Russia’s spiritual and cultural identity. Politics and the Church are intertwined: the Kremlin needs to promote the Church as an organ representing the nation’s values to regroup consensus; it is opportune for the Church to collaborate with politics to promote choices protecting the family and safeguarding public morality. With reference to safeguarding life, the Orthodox church has worked hard to explain that abortion is nothing but the killing of an innocent human being. The work of many NGOs promote the pro-life cause in Russia.

Another emblematic case of the common political strategy linking the Orthodox church and the Kremlin is the anti-blasphemy. This was adopted following the episode of three feminist activists, Pussy Riot, who played in the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour in Moscow. Their rock music, blasphemous in character, was performed on the platform of the altar, to protest against Putin’s policy. For the secular authorities the gesture was considered as one by hooligans or vandals; for the Ecclesiastical leaders it was blasphemous profanity.

Further, the Church supported the new regulations limiting access to abortion; and Putin’s law forbidding the publication of material portraying homosexuals, lesbians, bisexuals and transsexuals.

The Orthodox church’s action also spreads internationally, appearing as the promoter of dialogue between different religions and cultures. Patriarch Cyril actually stated the need to build orthodox geopolitics, in line with Putin’s foreign policy. To favour this role, the “Inter-Religious Council of the Russian Federation” and its analogous “Inter-religious Council of the CSI” (Community of Independent states) were set up in 1998. Orthodox Christians, 230 million in all, include: countries orthodox by tradition (Belarus, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Georgia, Greece, Macedonia, Moldavia, Montenegro, Romania, Russia, Serbia, the Ukraine), with their own orthodox national Churches, countries containing orthodox ethnic-cultural minorities (Albania, Czech Republic, Finland, Poland, Slovakia), and countries containing orthodox faithful, principally in Western Europe. Patriarch Cyril often visits countries from the former Soviet belt to consolidate cultural, religious, but also political relations. The Orthodox church moves in the former Soviet area, which the Kremlin aims to regroup. All this, supports the government’s foreign policy, continually appealing to a shared values between the “sister nations” with “a unique story, a unique Church and unique future”.

To closer understand the importance of it, one may refer to Eirini Patsea’s luminary work, “Church diplomacy: Greece, Russia and beyond”. The author stresses that “after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the Orthodox post-Soviet states chose to submit to the spiritual leadership of the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople; not the Patriarchate of Moscow. It was important, for those states and for their western interlocutors, that they cut the cord from the ROC and the Soviet politics”. Or, as prof. Anis H. Bajrektarevic vividly remarked in his recent editorial on Greece: “Russia is a legal, not an ideological, successor of the late Soviet Union. Many in Greece and Latin America mingled the two”.

With reference to foreign policy, the situation lived in the Ukraine following the conflict is also interesting. In this country Orthodox church exponents were submitted to pressure from the Ukraine’s new “nationalist” authorities and other organisations. The latter wished to take over faculties to transfer the clergy depending on the Moscow Patriarch under the Kiev Patriarch (the latter not recognised, not even by the Constantinople Patriarch). In this regard it should be stressed that the Ukraine counts the highest number of orthodox parishes after Russia.

To conclude, it is fundamental to underline that this type of collaboration between Church and state has facilitated the rebirth of faith in Russia. It is possible in the traditional acephalus-national reality of Orthodoxy, which has made the “symphonic” Caesaropapism the true foundation of Russian identity for centuries. It is then clear that the model cannot be exported. However, the National character of the orthodox Ecclesiastical reality has not hindered the possibility of an “orthodox ecumenism” open to international dialogue between cultures and religions.

Dr Filippo Romeo, Director, Infrastructure and Development Programme, IsAG Rome, Italy.

First published by www.moderndiplomacy.eu

The map below shows the territorial and military situation in the Arctic and describes the Russian military devepolments in the region. This product is relised due to your support. Help produce interesting content and join our struggle by donating via PayPal: [email protected] or via: http://southfront.org/donate/

The Arctic shelf is the one of the reasons why the United States would like to destabilize Russia. The Arctic contains up to 30 percent of the world’s oil and gas. As technologies have advanced, more and more of hydrocarbons have become recoverable and viable. The stretch of sea can also provide new shipping lanes for goods traveling between Asia and America and Europe. Hoping to get its hands on the entire Arctic, Washingtonis militarizing the region and reportedly wants to bring regime change in Russia.

In 2014, the Arctic Joint Strategic Command “North” was established by the Russian military on the basis of the North Fleet, then reinforced with manpower and hardware from the Western, Central and Eastern Military Districts stationed in circumpolar areas. Russia is also in the process of building of 10 airfields and 13 air-defense radar stations in the Novoribirskie Islands, Frans Josef Land, Novaya Zemlya and other points of Russian Arctic.The ground element of the command will incorporate two Arctic motorized infantry brigades, Air Defense forces consisting of Pantsir-S1 missile and other systems and the Northern Fleet will become its main striking force. Furthermore, by 2017 the Tiksi airport complex will be operational, and it will be garrisoned with upgraded MiG- 31 interceptors

The next important thing is that Russia has established the Independent Military Group of Aerospace Forces in the Arctic region. The Aerospace Forces as a new branch of the military was activated on the 3rd August. They have been formed by the merger of the Russian Air Force (VVS) and the Russian Aerospace Defense Forces (VKO). The VKO is responsible for providing airborne protection of the country; to be able to defeat opposinf forces using both conventional and nuclear weapons; to provide aviation support for the other armed services; protect against ballistic missiles; provide early warning; launch military and dual-use satellites; maintain military satellites; and monitor, identify, and protect Russia from space threats.

The U.S.-Canada North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) is a vital opponent of Russian VKO in the Arctic. Officially defensive combined organization NORAD publicly states that it is ready to hit any targets and prevent threats in zone of its responsibility. Indeed, the defensive U.S.-Canadian organization claims its zone of responsibility includes all Arctic region including Russian coast.

We give the detailed data about the Northern Fleet to showcase the approximate power of the Arctic Joint Strategic Command “North”.

NORTHERN FLEET OF THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION

The Northern Fleet (NF) is an operational-strategic association of the Navy of Russia. It includes:

Surface fleet:

• Aircraft carrier – 1

• Cruiser – 4

• Frigate – 9

• Small warship – 10

• Minesweeper – 11

• Large landing craft – 4

• Assault landing craft – 4

Submarine fleet:

• Strategic heavy missiles underwater cruiser – 10

• Multi-role cruise-missile-carrying nuclear submarine – 4

• Nuclear-powered attack submarine – 14

• Atomic deep submergence station – 7 (no pukka gen)

• Diesel-electric submarine – 8

• Experimental submarine – 1

Auxiliary fleet:

• Nuclear maintenance ship – 4

• Repair ship – 9

• Special liquids tanker – 2

• Shuttle tanker – 5

• Sar vessel – 2

• Medical service vessel – 1

• Recon ship – 3

SouthFront Team is digging deeply to improve our products. The next update of the Arctic map will include additional information about the military forces and developments in the region. Wait it in the nearest time.

It’s true! President Barack Obama beat Russia’s President Putin to the punch by recognizing the right of Donbass to ascend to the fraternity of nations first. He has unwittingly reaffirmed this every year he has been in office.

The Captive Nations Week Resolution passed by both the Senate and House of Representatives in 1959 and reissued as a Presidential Proclamation every year for the last 56 years (also known as Public Law 86-90) affirms the RECOGNITION of the “Don” (Donetsk and Lugansk Peoples Republics are core countries of a Cossackia) as well as a future Zaporozhyian Republic (currently Zaporozhye Oblast).

Cossackia is the American geopolitical term describing the regions where Cossacks lived in the former USSR and Russia. This proclamation is still CURRENT US law and tradition.

Written by Neo-Nazi leader Stepan Bandera’s follower Lev Dobriansky under the tutelage of Yaroslav Stetsko (Bandera’s 2^nd in command), Dobriansky as president of the UCCA (Ukrainian emigre lobby) included a future nation or nations GENERALLY known as Cossackia in the unanimously passed proclamation made into law.

Stepan Bandera

Included in the text of the Proclamation- Public Law 86-90 is “Whereas the imperialistic policies of Communist Russia have led,, through direct and indirect aggression, to the subjugation of the national independence of Poland, Hungary, Lithuania, Ukraine,… Cossackia …”

The United States of America was 1^st to Recognize Independent Donbass Republics Independence.

Ukraine and Cossackia (Donbass and Zaporozhye) are listed in the proclamation as separate countries and separate peoples. Both have equal status under US law as having a right to exist. Both nations were preemptively recognized by the United States in 1959.

As late as July 17^th 2015, President of the United States, Barrack H. Obama reaffirmed his commitment to this proclamation, subsequent law, and thereby Donbas by proclaiming …

”we have striven to realize the promise of our Nation and cement our reputation as a beacon of opportunity throughout the world, we have also fought to expand democracy’s reach — because we believe that self-determination is not just a Western value but a universal value, and that all people in all nations have the right to choose their own destiny.

Decades later, upholding peace and security continues to be the responsibility of every nation. During Captive Nations Week, we stand in solidarity with those who still yearn for a stake in their future, and we renew our commitment to advancing freedom’s cause…

The Congress, by joint resolution approved July 17, 1959 (73 Stat. 212), has authorized and requested the President to issue a proclamation designating the third week of July of each year as “Captive Nations Week.”

NOW, THEREFORE, I, BARACK OBAMA, President of the United States of America, do hereby proclaim July 19 through July 25, 2015, as Captive Nations Week.

• Why Would Stepan Bandera and the UCCA Recognize Donbass and the Cossack Peoples as Independent Nations?
• Why did the nazi Banderites recognize an independent Donbass andZaporozhye? Why did the UCCA which is now driving the war in Donbas DEMAND that Cossackia be included in the proclamation at all if it was part of Ukraine?

To quote the late great philosopher Vinnie the Lech “Hey! Are Dey Jus Faakeeng Stupeed?”

When the Bolshevik revolution occurred the Cossack nations became persona non grata in Soviet Russia. The Cossacks and especially the Don Cossacks were the Tzars personal army and bodyguard. They led the fight to defend the Czar of Russia.

Under the first nationalist government set up in what is now Ukraine, the nazi leader Simon Petlura signed an agreement with the Cossacks in Kuban to join his country. This is the basis for Ukrainian claims that Kuban belongs to them. The agreement was never ratified. After murdering over 50,000 people Petlura was forced into exile.

After this to punish the Cossacks, Lenin ordered Donbass under the administrative jurisdiction of Soviet Ukraine. These Cossacks are the only group listed on the Captive Nations Proclamation in Eastern Europe that did not fight for Adolf Hitler. They are the people of Donbass and Zaporozhye.

To Finish the Maidan Revolution Ukraine Will Dissolve

About 80 years ago Stepan Bandera promised every nazi exile group which supported him they would gain their own country at the defeat of the Soviet Union and now Russia. Starting with the Promethean groups which he absorbed, Bandera cobbled together what became a series of the most powerful lobbies in history. The first was the China Lobby. The practice is still used today by Banderites world wide.

The problem the Banderites didn’t count on was that these groups want the piper paid. They did their job and now the Eastern European groups want their own countries. The Transcarpathians have been demanding this since May 2014. Some want the area returned to Hungary, others want an independent Ruthenia. Even Galicia, the capital of Banderite nationalism wants autonomy from Kiev.

The ethnic Romanians are demanding autonomy from Kiev.

“A group of ethnic Romanians in western Ukraine have demanded autonomy from Kiev amid dissatisfaction with the nation’s internal security and economic situation, according to a report Thursday.”

Bessarabia and Odessa want autonomy to protect their citizens also.Bulgarians, which make up the second largest nationality in Bessarabia are concerned about discrimination and security. Over the last year most of Ukraine has been making the same overtures.

Propaganda from the Ukrainian Junta

The propaganda the Ukrainian government has been filling the airwaves with is failing. The Ukrainian info war with NATO’s help is failing on the home front no matter well it plays in the west. Nedilya UA recently did a poll asking Ukrainians which leader they would trust to lead the country. Even though the Ukrainians are constantly barraged with a “Russian invasion,” President Vladimir Putin led the poll with 84% of the vote. The highest ranked Ukrainian, President Poroshenko got 1%.

What this Means for Ukrainian Nationalists in Kiev, America, and Canada

The writing is on the wall so to speak. When the Ukrainian émigrés wake up to the fact that they aren’t even Ukrainian but actually Russyan, Bukovinian, Romanian, Hungarian, and Galician and their real family ties are now being threatened and oppressed by the same Banderites they supported all these years- what do you think they’ll say?

According to Wasyl Veryha former Ukrainian World Congress president- read how he describes the populations of émigrés from “Ukraine

“In fact, the diverse nomenclature for the Ukrainian ethnic group caused a great deal of confusion not only at the turn of the century but also at a later period (through the 1930’s). The people of the province of Galicia and Bukovina, generally called themselves “Rusyny” (Ruthenians), Galicians, Bukovinians and Austrians… the Greek Catholic Church, to which at that time the overwhelming majority of Ukrainian immigrants adhered, preferred the term “Ruthenian”…both within the Austrian and the Russian Empires where the term “Ruthenian” and “Little Russian” respectively had begun to give way to the new, but at the same time old term, “Ukrainian”(person on the borderlands), as a national designation…The paper (Ukrainian Voice) was really a pioneer in transforming the “Austrians”, Ruthenians”, “Galicians” and “Bukovinians” into Ukrainians.. It popularized the term “Ukrainian” as a replacement for “Ruthenian.” Wasyl Veryhas Masters of History Thesis

Can Poroshenko or Yarosh Legitimately Claim the Bandera Mantle?

In October 1959 the Ukrainian nazi leader Stepan Bandera was assassinated by a fellow Galician.

The summer of 1959’s Captive Nation Proclamation was the last act of Stepan Bandera. Can Yarosh or Poroshenko claim his mantle and ignore his last act? Does the war and persecutions in Ukraine which are now spreading west make them traitors to Bandera? They are both overseeing the destruction of Ukraine because they are ignoring the compact Stepan Bandera made with the entire emigre world.

What will their supporters say when they realize the US government will drop them like a hot potato rather than for individual Senators and Congressmen being investigated for breaking a law they affirm every year?

Will the American “almost” Ukrainians still risk breaking Federal Law and doing prison time? Sending money to purchase weapons is a jail term when prosecuted.

The Honor of the US President

According to President Barack Obama and the US Congress, the honor of the USA is at stake in holding up the Captive Nations Proclamation which they reaffirmed is the law of the land. Perhaps the president didn’t know where Cossackia was? Perhaps Jen Pisaki gave him a geography lesson.

I simply pointed out when Congress and the President reaffirmed the proclamation, they beat Russia’s president Putin to the punch by recognizing Donetsk and Lugansk Peoples Republic first. With it enshrined in our law should Europe continue to do as you say and not as you do?

Should Mr. Obama call Mr. Putin and invite him to recognize the republics too?

Now its time to live up to our obligations. We must stop funding the murder of Donbass people.

Last night’s FOX News GOP Presidential Debate Extravaganza featured the most riveting two minute political exchange ever heard on national television. During a brief colloquy between Republican frontrunner  Donald Trump and Fox moderator Brett Baier, the pugnacious casino magnate revealed the appalling truth about the American political system, that the big money guys like Trump own the whole crooked contraption lock, stock, and barrel, and that, the nation’s fake political leaders do whatever they’re told to do.  Without question, it was most illuminating commentary to ever cross the airwaves. Here’s the entire exchange direct from the transcript:

FOX News Brett Baier (talking to Trump): Now, 15 years ago, you called yourself a liberal on health care. You were for a single-payer system, a Canadian-style system. Why were you for that then and why aren’t you for it now?

TRUMP: As far as single payer, it works in Canada. It works incredibly well in Scotland. It could have worked in a different age, which is the age you’re talking about here.

What I’d like to see is a private system without the artificial lines around every state. I have a big company with thousands and thousands of employees. And if I’m negotiating in New York or in New Jersey or in California, I have like one bidder. Nobody can bid.

You know why?

Because the insurance companies are making a fortune because they have control of the politicians, of course, with the exception of the politicians on this stage. (uneasy laughter) But they have total control of the politicians. They’re making a fortune.

Get rid of the artificial lines and you will have…yourself great plans…

BAIER: Mr. Trump, it’s not just your past support for single-payer health care. You’ve also supported a host of other liberal policies….You’ve also donated to several Democratic candidates, Hillary Clinton included, and Nancy Pelosi. You explained away those donations saying you did that to get business-related favors. And you said recently, quote, “When you give, they do whatever the hell you want them to do.”

TRUMP: You’d better believe it.

BAIER: — they do?

TRUMP: If I ask them, if I need them, you know, most of the people on this stage I’ve given to, just so you understand, a lot of money.

TRUMP:  I will tell you that our system is broken. I gave to many people, before this, before two months ago, I was a businessman. I give to everybody. When they call, I give. And do you know what? When I need something from them two years later, three years later, I call them, they are there for me. And that’s a broken system.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What did you get from Hillary Clinton and Nancy Pelosi?

TRUMP: Well, I’ll tell you what, with Hillary Clinton, I said be at my wedding and she came to my wedding. You know why?

She didn’t have a choice because I gave. I gave to a foundation that, frankly, that foundation is supposed to do good. I didn’t know her money would be used on private jets going all over the world. It was.

BAIER: Hold on…..We’re going to — we’re going to move on.” (Transcript: Read the Full Text of the Primetime Republican Debate, Time, emphasis added)

There it is, two glorious minutes of pure, unalloyed truth on national television. How often does that happen?

How often does a fatcat billionaire-insider appear on TV and announce that the whole system is a big-fat scam run by crooks and patsies?

Never, that’s when. But that’s what Trump did last night. And that’s why the clatter of ruthless miscreants who run the system behind the smokescreen of fake politicians are sharpening their knives right now before Manhattan’s rogue elephant does even more damage to their precious system.

Just think about what the man said. He not only explained that the whole system is rigged (Baier: “And when you give, they do whatever the hell you want them to do.”…TRUMP: “You’d better believe it.”), he also said that the politicians will do whatever they’re told to do.  (TRUMP: Well, …with Hillary Clinton, I said be at my wedding and she came to my wedding. You know why? She didn’t have a choice because I gave.”)

Doesn’t that confirm your darkest suspicions about the way the system really works, that money talks and that elections are just a way to get the sheeple to rubber-stamp a corrupt, fraudulent system?

Of course, it does.

So, let’s summarize: Moneybags capitalist loudmouth explains to 80 million dumbfounded Americans watching prime time TV, that the system is a total fraud, that the big money runs everything, and that even he thinks the system is broken.

How do you beat that? Seriously, my wife and I were laughing and high-fiving and like we just won the lottery.

Thanks for that, Don. We owe you one.

In his desperation to sink the Iran nuclear deal, Bibi Netanyahu is taking a hellish gamble.

Israel depends upon the United States for $3 billion a year in military aid and diplomatic cover in forums where she is often treated like a pariah state. Israel has also been the beneficiary of almost all the U.S. vetoes in the Security Council.

America is indispensable to Israel. The reverse is not true.

Yet, without telling the White House, Bibi had his U.S. ambassador arrange for him to address a joint session of Congress in March – to rip up the president’s Iran nuclear deal before it was even completed.

The day the deal was signed, using what The Washington Post calls “stark apocalyptic language,” Bibi accused John Kerry of giving the mullahs a “sure path to a nuclear weapon” and a “cash bonanza of hundreds of billions of dollars … to pursue its aggression and terror.”

Bibi has since inspired and led the campaign to get Congress to kill the deal, the altarpiece of the Obama presidency.

Israel Ambassador Ron Dermer, a former Republican operative now cast in the role of “Citizen Genet,” has intensively lobbied the Hill to get Congress to pass a resolution of rejection.

If that resolution passes, as it appears it will, Obama will veto it.

Then Israel, the Israeli lobby AIPAC, and all its allies and auxiliaries in the think tanks and on op-ed pages will conduct a full-court press to have Congress override the Obama veto and kill his nuclear deal.

Has Bibi, have the Israelis, considered what would happen should they succeed? Certainly, there would be rejoicing in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, and Bibi would be crowned King of Capitol Hill.

But they will have humiliated an American president by crushing him by two-to-one in his own legislature. Such a defeat could break the Obama presidency and force the resignation of John Kerry, who would have become a laughing stock in international forums.

The message would go out to the world. In any clash between the United States and Israel over U.S. policy in the Middle East, bet on Bibi. Bet on Israel. America is Israel’s poodle now.

With the Gulf nations having joined Britain, France, Germany, China and Russia in backing the deal, Israel is isolated in its opposition. And, two weeks ago, Kerry warned that if Congress rejects the deal, “Israel could end up being more isolated and more blamed.”

Hardly an outrageous remark.

Yet, Israel’s ex-ambassador to the U.S. Michael Oren fairly dripped condescension and contempt in his retort: “The threat of the secretary of state who, in the past, warned that Israel was in danger of being an apartheid state, cannot deter us from fulfilling our national duty to oppose this dangerous deal.”

But this is not Israel’s deal. It is our deal, and our decision. And Israel is massively interfering in our internal affairs to scuttle a deal the president believes is in the vital interests of the United States.

When the U.S. and Israel disagree over U.S. policy in the Mideast, who decides for America? Them or us?

Why does Barack Obama take this? Why does John Kerry take this?

One can only imagine what President Eisenhower would have done had he seen Bibi at the rostrum of the U.S. House of Representatives, ripping apart his Middle East policy. Or had Ike learned that an Israeli ambassador was working the halls of Congress to kill an arms deal he and John Foster Dulles had just negotiated.

Lest we forget, Ike told his wartime colleague, Prime Minister Anthony Eden, to get his army out of Suez or he would sink the British pound. Ike then told Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion to get his army out of Sinai or face U.S. economic reprisals.

Eden and Ben-Gurion did as they were told.

That was an America respected by friend and foe alike.

When Harry Truman felt that Gen. Douglas MacArthur had been insubordinate in resisting presidential restrictions on his actions in Korea, Truman fired the general and astounded the nation.

Yet this president and John Kerry have been wimpishly seeking for weeks to placate Netanyahu. And Bibi is no Douglas MacArthur.

Time to stop acting like wusses.

The president should declare Dermer persona non grata and send him packing, then tell the Israeli government we will discuss a new arms package when you have a prime minister who understands that no nation interferes in the internal affairs of the United States. None.

That could bring Bibi’s government, with its single-vote majority, crashing down. And why not? After all, Bibi was a virtual surrogate for Mitt Romney when Mitt was trying to bring down Obama.

Obama and Kerry are never running again. Deep down, they would surely relish taking Bibi down. And they could do it.

Deal or no deal, it is time America started acted like America again.

Patrick J. Buchanan is the author of Churchill, Hitler, and “The Unnecessary War”: How Britain Lost Its Empire and the West Lost the World. To find out more about Patrick Buchanan and read features by other Creators writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Web page at www.creators.com.

COPYRIGHT 2014 CREATORS.COM

In light of the fact that Israel is in possession of at least 200 (surreptitiously-built) nuclear warheads, and considering the reality that, according to both US and Israeli intelligence sources, Iran neither possesses nor pursues nuclear weapons, the relentless hysterical campaign by Israel and its lobby against the Iran nuclear deal can safely be characterized as the mother of all ironies—a clear case of chutzpah.

As I pointed out in a recent essay on the nuclear agreement, the deal effectively establishes US control (through IAEA) over the entire production chain of Iran’s nuclear and related industries.

Or, as President Obama put it (on the day of the conclusion of the agreement),

“Inspectors will have access to Iran’s entire nuclear supply chain—its uranium mines and mills, its conversion facility and its centrifuge manufacturing and storage facilities. . . . Some of these transparency measures will be in place for 25 years. Because of this deal inspectors will also be able to access any suspicious location.”

IAEA Board of Governors Meeting

Even a cursory reading of the text of the agreement shows that, if ratified by the US congress, the deal would essentially freeze Iran’s nuclear program at a negligible, ineffectual level of value—at only 3.67% uranium enrichment. Israel and its lobby must certainly be aware of this, of the fact that Iran poses no “existential threat to Israel,” as frequently claimed by Benjamin Netanyahu and his co-thinkers.

So, the question is: why all the screaming and breast beating?

There is a widespread perception that because the nuclear agreement was reached despite the lobby’s vehement opposition, it must therefore signify a win for Iran, or a loss for Israel and its allies. This is a sheer misjudgment of what the deal represents: it signifies a win not for Iran but for Israel and its allies. And here is why: under the deal Iran is obligated to (a) downgrade its uranium enrichment capabilities from 20% of purity to 3.67%, (b) freeze this minimal level of 3.67% enrichment for 15 years, (c) reduce its current capacity of 19000 centrifuges to 6104 (a reduction of 68%), (d) reduce its stockpile of low grade enriched uranium from the current level of 7500 kg to 300kg (a reduction of 96%), and (e) accept strict limits on its research and development activities. While some restrictions on research and development are promised to be relaxed after 10 years, others will remain for up to 25 years.

In addition, Iran would have to accept an extensive monitoring and inspection regime not only of declared nuclear sites but also of military and other non-declared sites where the monitors may presume or imagine incidences of “suspicious” activity. The elaborate system of monitoring and inspection was succinctly described by President Obama on the day of the conclusion of the agreement in Vienna (July 14, 2015): “Put simply, the organization responsible for the inspections, the IAEA, will have access where necessary, when necessary. That arrangement is permanent.”

These are obviously major concessions that not only render Iran’s hard-one (but peaceful) nuclear technology ineffectual, but also weaken its defense capabilities and undermine its national sovereignty.

So, the lobby’s frantic objection to the nuclear agreement cannot be because the deal represents a win for Iran, or a loss for Israel. Quite to the contrary the agreement signifies a historic success for Israel as it tends to remove, or drastically undermine, a major challenge to its expansionist schemes in the Middle East—the challenge of independent, revolutionary Iran that consistently opposed such colonial schemes of expansion and occupation.

Thus, the reasons for the lobby’s panicky, or more likely feigned, protestations must be sough elsewhere. Two major reasons can be identified for the lobby’s vehement opposition to the nuclear deal.

The first is to keep pressure on negotiators in pursuit further concessions from Iran. Indeed, the lobby has been very successful in quest of this objective. A look back at the process of negotiations indicates that, under pressure, Iran’s negotiators have continuously made additional concessions over the course of the 20-month long negotiations. For example, when negotiations began in Geneva in November 2013, discussion of Iran’s defense industries or inspection of its military sites were considered off the limits of negotiations. Whereas in the final agreement, reached 20 months later in Vienna, Iran’s negotiators have regrettably agreed to such highly intrusive, once-taboo measures of national sovereignty.

The lobby is of course aware of the fact that the 159-page long nuclear deal is fraught with ambiguities and loopholes, which leaves plenty of room for haggling and maneuvering over the many contestable aspects of the deal during its 25-year long implementation period. This means that, even if ratified by the US congress, the deal does not mean the end of negotiations but their continuation for a long time to come.

The shrill, obstructionist voices of the lobby’s operatives are, therefore, designed to continue the pressure on Iran during the long period of implementation in order to extract additional concessions beyond the agreement.

The second reason for the lobby’s relentless campaign to sabotage the nuclear agreement is that, while the agreement obviously represents a fantastic victory for Israel, it nonetheless falls short of what the lobby projected and fought for, that is, devastating regime change by military means, similar to what was done to Iraq and Libya.

This is no conspiracy theory or idle speculation. There is well-documented, undeniable evidence that the lobby, as a major pillar of the neoconservative forces in the US and elsewhere, set out as early as the late 1980s and early as 1990s to “deconstruct” and reshape the Middle East in the image of radical Zionist champions of building “greater Israel” in the region, extending from Jordan River to Mediterranean coasts.

Indeed, radical Zionists’ plans to balkanize and re-mold the Middle East are as old as the state of Israel itself. Those plans were actually among the essential designs of Israel’s founding fathers to build a Jewish state in Palestine. David Ben Gurien, one of the Key founders of the state of Israel, for example, stated unabashedly that land grabbing, expulsion of non-Jewish natives from their land/homes and territorial expansion is best achieved through launching wars of choice and creating social chaos, which he called “revolutionary” times or circumstances. “What is inconceivable in normal times is possible in revolutionary times; and if at this time the opportunity is missed and what is possible in such great hours is not carried out—a whole world is lost” [1].

While the plans to foment war and create social convulsion in pursuit of “greater Israel” thus began with the very creation of the state of Israel, systematic implementation of such plans, and the concomitant agenda of changing “unfriendly” regimes in the region, began in earnest in the early 1990s—that is, in the immediate aftermath of the collapse of the Soviet Union.

As long as the Soviet Union existed as a balancing superpower vis-à-vis the United States, US policy makers in the Middle East were somewhat constrained in their accommodations of territorial ambitions of hardline Zionism. That restraint was largely due to the fact that at the time the regimes that ruled Iraq, Syria and Libya were allies of the Soviet Union. That alliance, and indeed the broader counter-balancing power of Soviet bloc countries, served as a leash on the expansionist designs of Israel and the US accommodations of those designs. The demise of the Soviet Union removed that countervailing force.

The demise of the Soviet Union also served as a boon for Israel for yet another reason: it created an opportunity for a closer alliance between Israel and the militaristic faction of the US ruling elites—elites whose interests are vested largely in the military-industrial-security-intelligence complex, that is, in military capital, or war dividends.

Since the rationale for the large and growing military apparatus during the Cold War years was the “threat of communism,” US citizens celebrated the collapse of the Berlin Wall as the end of militarism and the dawn of “peace dividends.”

But while the majority of the US citizens celebrated the prospects of what appeared to be imminent “peace dividends,” the powerful interests vested in the expansion of military-industrial-security-intelligence spending felt threatened. Not surprisingly, these influential forces moved swiftly to safeguard their interests in the face of the “threat of peace.”

To stifle the voices that demanded peace dividends, beneficiaries of war and militarism began to methodically redefine the post-Cold War “sources of threat” in the broader framework of the new multi-polar world, which purportedly goes way beyond the traditional “Soviet threat” of the bipolar world of the Cold War era. Instead of the “communist threat” of the Soviet era, the “menace” of “rogue states,” of radical Islam and of “global terrorism” would have to do as new enemies.

Just as the beneficiaries of war dividends view international peace and stability inimical to their interests, so too the militant Zionist proponents of “greater Israel” perceive peace between Israel and its Palestinian/Arab neighbors perilous to their goal of gaining control over the “promised land.” The reason for this fear of peace is that, according to a number of the United Nations’ resolutions, peace would mean Israel’s return to its pre-1967 borders. But because proponents of “greater Israel” are unwilling to withdraw from the occupied territories, they are therefore afraid of peace—hence, their continued attempts at sabotaging peace efforts and/or negotiations.

Because the interests of the beneficiaries of war dividends and those of radical Zionism tend to converge over fomenting war and political convulsion in the Middle East, an ominously potent alliance has been forged between them—ominous, because the mighty US war machine is now supplemented by the almost unrivaled public relations capabilities of the hardline pro-Israel lobby in the United States.

The alliance between these two militaristic forces is largely unofficial and de facto; it is subtlely forged through an elaborate network of powerful neoconservative think tanks such as The American Enterprise Institute, Project for the New American Century, America Israel Public Affairs Committee, Middle East Media Research Institute, Washington Institute for Near East Policy, Middle East Forum, National Institute for Public Policy, Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, and Center for Security Policy.

In the immediate aftermath of the Cold War, these militaristic think tanks and their hawkish neoconservative operatives published a number of policy papers that clearly and forcefully advocated plans for border change, demographic change and regime change in the Middle East. Although the plan to change “unfriendly” regimes and balkanize the region was to begin with the removal of Saddam Hussein’s regime, as the “weakest link,” the ultimate goal was (and still is) regime change in Iran.

For example, in 1996 an influential Israeli think tank, the Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies, sponsored and published a policy document, titled “A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm,” which argued that the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu should “make a clean break” with the Oslo peace process and reassert Israel’s claim to the West Bank and Gaza. It presented a plan whereby Israel would “shape its strategic environment,” beginning with the removal of Saddam Hussein and the installation of a Hashemite monarchy in Baghdad, to serve as a first step toward eliminating the anti-Israeli governments of Syria and Iran.

The influential Jewish Institute for the National Security Affairs (JINSA) also occasionally issued statements and policy papers that strongly advocated “regime changes” in the Middle East. One of its hardline advisors Michael Ladeen, who also unofficially advised the George W. Bush administration on Middle Eastern issues, openly talked about the coming era of “total war,” indicating that the United States should expand its policy of “regime change” in Iraq to other countries in the region such as Iran and Syria. “In its fervent support for the hardline, pro-settlement, anti-Palestinian Likud-style policies in Israel, JINSA has essentially recommended that ‘regime change’ in Iraq should be just the beginning of a cascade of toppling dominoes in the Middle East [2].

It follows from this brief sketch of the lobby’s long-standing plans of regime change in Iran that, as mentioned earlier, its opposition to the nuclear deal is not because the deal does not represent a win for Israel, or a loss for Iran, but because Iran’s loss is not as big as the lobby would have liked it to be, that is, a devastating regime change through bombing and military aggression, as was done in Iraq or Libya.

What the lobby seems to overlook, or more likely, unwilling to acknowledge or accept, is that regime change in Iran is currently taking place from within, and the nuclear deal is playing a major role in that change. The lobby also seems to overlook or deny the fact that the Obama administration opted for regime change from within—first through the so-called “green revolution” and now through nuclear deal—because various US-Israeli led attempts at regime change from without failed. Indeed, such futile attempts at regime change prompted Iran to methodically build robust defense capabilities and geopolitical alliances, thereby establishing a military and geopolitical counterweight to US-Israeli plans in the region.

Furthermore, The Obama administration’s plan of “peaceful” regime change seems to be more like an experimental or tactical change of approach to Iran than a genuine commitment to peace, as it does not rule out the military option in the future. If Iran carries out all its 25-year long obligations under the deal, regime change from within would be complete and military option unnecessary—in essence, it would be a gradual, systematic retrogression to the days of the Shah. But if at any time in the long course of the implementation of the deal Iran resists or fails to carry out some of the highly draconian of those obligations, the US and its allies would again resort to military muscle, and more confidently too because success chances of military operations at that time would be much higher, since Iran would have by then greatly downgraded its military/defense capabilities.

Ismael Hossein-zadeh is Professor Emeritus of Economics (Drake University). He is the author of Beyond Mainstream Explanations of the Financial Crisis (Routledge 2014), The Political Economy of U.S. Militarism (Palgrave–Macmillan 2007), and the Soviet Non-capitalist Development: The Case of Nasser’s Egypt (Praeger Publishers 1989). He is also a contributor to Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion.

References

[1] Quoted in Norman Finkelstein, Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict, Introduction to German edition (10 July 2002).

[2] William D. Hartung, How Much Are You Making on the War, Daddy? New York: Nation Books 2003, p.109.

When Foreign Policy magazine recently claimed, “Turkey Goes to War,” in their article of the same title, what they really meant was “the US goes to war.” That is because the lengthy plan they described in their article is not of the Turks’ creation, but a long-standing US plan committed to policy papers since at least as early as 2012.

The article claims:

Both the United States and Turkey agree that the Islamic State should be driven from its territory along the Turkish border, though U.S. officials only speak of an “ISIL-free zone” while Turkish officials describe a vision for a “de facto safe zone” where displaced Syrians could find refuge from both regime and jihadi attacks.

However, these “safe zones” are precisely what US policy think tank the Brookings Institution has conspired to create over the entire course of the Syrian conflict, under different pretexts – first predicated on feigned “humanitarian”  concern similar to the ruse used to justify NATO’s war on Libya in 2011, and now using the so-called “Islamic State” (ISIS) as a pretext.

Brookings’ 2012 “Middle East Memo #21″ “Assessing Options for Regime Change” would state:

An alternative is for diplomatic efforts to focus first on how to end the violence and how to gain humanitarian access, as is being done under Annan’s leadership. This may lead to the creation of safe-havens and humanitarian corridors, which would have to be backed by limited military power. This would, of course, fall short of U.S. goals for Syria and could preserve Asad in power. From that starting point, however, it is possible that a broad coalition with the appropriate international mandate could add further coercive action to its efforts.”

Clearly, while the justification for Western meddling constantly shifts with the political winds, the underlying plan to divide, destroy, incrementally invade, occupy, and eventually overrun Syria remains.

In reality the latest pretext, ISIS, was created and to this day perpetuated by US, Saudi, Israeli, Jordanian, and Turkish support. ISIS is incapable of sourcing the weapons, cash, and fighters within Syria and Iraq alone, and admittedly receives the vast majority of all three from abroad. In Turkey alone, hundreds of trucks a day pass by Turkish border checkpoints destined for ISIS territory in Syria and Iraq. So overt are these supply convoys that a Deutsche Welle’s camera crew spent a day filming them and interviewing locals describing the daily torrent feeding state-sponsored terrorism just across the border in northern Syria.

Likewise, reports from Israel’s own Haaretz newspaper admitted that the Israeli Defense Force was rendering aid to Al Qaeda’s al Nusra Front, long listed by the US State Department as a foreign terrorist organization and having cooperated openly with ISIS in the past. The report titled, “Israel halts medical treatment for members of Syria’s Nusra Front,” admitted that:

A senior Israel Defense Forces officer revealed Monday that Israel has stopped treating members of an extremist Syrian rebel group wounded in that country’s ongoing civil war. The policy change concerning the Al-Qaida-linked Nusra Front was made about six weeks ago. 

According to the officer, a number of injured Nusra Front fighters had received medical treatment in Israel.

Growing complaints from Israel’s Druze community prompted the public statement which proves that Israel, like Turkey to Syria’s north, is providing material support for Al Qaeda terrorists – the very terrorists the West and its regional allies are attempting to use as a pretext to yet further escalate the Syrian conflict.

If Turkey Really Wanted to Stop ISIS… 

Were Turkey serious about ending the ISIS menace, its first order of business should be to stop harboring their fighters in their territory. Stricter measures along Turkey’s borders would be implemented to prevent new fighters from streaming into Syria and joining ISIS’ ranks, and the endless torrent of supplies flowing into ISIS territory in Syria and Iraq, apparently through NATO-member Turkey’s territory, would also be interdicted immediately.

One may notice that Turkey is the virtual port-of-call for all fighters from across the world seeking to join ISIS – whether they are Uyghur terrorists the US and Turkey are trafficking from China, or patsies recruited by Western intelligence services across North America and Europe sent to and from Turkey before carrying out spectacular terrorist attacks back home. In fact, it was to Turkey that one of several of the French Charlie Hebo shooting suspects attempted to flee in an attempt to rejoin ISIS fighters in Syria.

For years now, these options were clearly on the table and at any point Turkey could have exercised them. But Turkey has not. That is because eliminating ISIS is not the objective of this most recent attempt to militarily intervene in Syria, rather the objective is to carve out “safe zones” as described by US policymakers in 2012, from which to topple the Syrian government.

Turkey has no intention of “stopping ISIS.” There are no “moderate” fighters Turkey has to back in its alleged, upcoming military operation. It will carve out Syrian territory in a defacto invasion, and push the front closer to Damascus in a desperate bid to once again shake the resolve of both the Syrian people, and the Syrian Arab Army. It also seeks to shatter the resolve of Syria’s allies who have thus far stood with Damascus. By threatening to carve out Syrian territory in a defacto invasion under the pretense of “fighting ISIS,” when in all reality ISIS will simply be provided with NATO aircover to further build its otherwise inexplicable fighting capacity, NATO hopes to force concessions from Syria’s allies to salvage what would be left after the operation concluded.

The US and Turkey’s planned invasion of northern Syria is a power move born of a frustrated, stalled conspiracy to topple the Syrian government in quick succession after the fall of Libya’s in 2011. A well-calculated power move by Syria’s allies is in order to counter it.

Tony Cartalucci, Bangkok-based geopolitical researcher and writer, especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”. 

It’s been coming for a long time – facilitated by repeated Big Lies about Bashar al-Assad, ignoring his overwhelming public support, especially for defending Syria against an imported Islamic State and other takfiri terrorists, enlisted by Washington as foot soldiers to topple his government.

Obama upped the stakes a year ago by authorizing the bombing of Syrian infrastructure targets, a bandit diktat without Security Council or congressional authorization – on the phony pretext of fighting IS.

Now in collaboration with Turkey, plans are to establish (illegal) buffer and no-fly zones in northern Syria bordering southeastern Turkey.

Its airbases are being used to bomb Syrian sites – again on the phony pretext of fighting IS. Belligerent comments from Washington suggest full-scale war may be imminent.

Deputy State Department spokesman Mark Toner lied saying Washington seeks a political solution to Obama’s war. It “cannot include President Assad,” he added. A litany of Big Lies followed:

Toner: “The Assad regime has carried out brutal attacks on the civilian population of Syria.”

Fact: Syrian military forces defend the civilian population against US enlisted death squad invaders.

Toner: Assad “had been instrumental in creating the kind of lawless area to the north where ISIL has been able to” get control.

Fact: Blaming victims is longstanding US policy. Washington, rogue NATO partners, Israel and other regional allies bear full responsibility for nearly four-and-a-half years of conflict in Syria.

Toner: “(W)e’re trying to dislodge (IS), destroy it, defeat it.”

Fact: IS is a US creation – a proxy death squad force to do Washington’s killing for it on the ground wherever it’s deployed.

Toner: Iran is excluded from efforts to resolve Syria’s conflict diplomatically as “long as it supports Assad.”

Fact: Tehran supports his legitimate right of self-defense. UN/Arab League envoy to Syria Staffan de Mistura believes Iran’s involvement is essential to have any hope for resolution.

Toner: “The Assad regime, frankly, is the root of all evil here. It has created conditions in which we find ourselves.”

Fact: Truth is polar opposite. This comment and numerous others like it show Obama’s war will continue until Assad is toppled, assuring Syria will be more greatly ravaged and destroyed than already.

All signs point to Obama intending to use US warplanes extrajudicially (with no Security Council or congressional authorization) against Syria’s military, strategic sites, as well as perhaps Damascus and other cities – putting civilians more in harm’s way than already.

Libya 2.0 may be imminent – maybe launched while Congress is on summer break, political focus is on the 2016 presidential race, and many Americans are enjoying summer activities.

Reports indicate Turkish military forces are deployed near Syria’s border. Washington warned Assad against attacking so-called moderate rebels or face a direct US response.

No moderate elements exist. Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moualem said “(f)or us…there is no moderate opposition and immoderate opposition. Whoever carries weapons against the state is a terrorist.”

All other countries operate by the same standard. They’d act no differently from Syria in defending their territory against foreign invaders. It’s a fundamental obligation.

Assad responsibly defending Syria and its population from US enlisted IS and other terrorists may now become pretext for Obama initiating full-scale war – perhaps jointly with Turkey and other NATO partners.

Another Libya-type conflict looms – perhaps planned all along because imported terrorists can’t topple Assad on their own. They’re no match against Syria’s superior military in head-to-head fighting.

With full-scale US war perhaps imminent, the fate of another regional country hangs in the balance.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at [email protected].

His new book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.”

http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

Listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network.

It airs three times weekly: live on Sundays at 1PM Central time plus two prerecorded archived programs.

While Saudi Arabia is trying its best to supplant Israel in terms of crime, terror and barbarism, pushing a whole country to the edge of the abyss to general indifference, the poorest of the Arab countries gives the world a lesson in courage, dignity and lucidity, following the example of the Palestinian people.

See also: War without mercy in Yemen

The Saudi-American war against Yemen has now lasted for more than four months. It has caused more than 4,000 deaths, including 3,000 directly caused by the terrorist bombings of the Arab coalition against Yemen, with 20,000 injured and nearly 1.3 million displaced. 6.5 million people are immediately threatened by famine, while 13 million – half the population – lack access to the most basic means of subsistence and are reduced to a permanent struggle to gather their daily bread. According to a recent report by Oxfam entitled Yemen: Struggling to Break the Fast,

Yemen is a pressure cooker that is reaching its critical point. Attacked from the air, from the ground and cut-off by land, sea and air – Yemenis are in desperate need and have nowhere to go. […] Thousands more face death and impairment due to the secondary effects of this conflict – not least of which is hunger, malnutrition and disease. To prevent Yemen from reaching a tipping-point, the international community need to urgently lift restrictions on imports and implement a permanent ceasefire which facilitates safe movement of goods across the country. […] 

Even for Yemen, a country with chronic food insecurity, this is the highest ever recorded number of people living in hunger in Yemen. Four months of intense airstrikes, shelling and ground fighting and restrictions on imports imposed by the Saudi-led coalition have left the country in tatters. A lack of food is leaving people hungry and causing an increase in malnutrition levels, particularly among women and children, and is putting hundreds of thousands of lives at risk. […]

Nuha Al Saeedi, Oxfam Deputy Programme Manager and a resident of the capital Sanaa said: “Even if we survive the bombs we are running out of food”. The violence, the restrictions on imports and the cost of fuel means that what limited supplies exist, are only sporadically available, and at hugely inflated prices. Price hikes have pushed vital food, fuel and medical supplies out of the reach of cash-strapped families, most of whom have not had regular income for several months. A lack of food in the market, high prices, difficult access to markets, and a lack of income, have all contributed to a rapid increase in the number of Yemeni’s going hungry. […]

 Families fleeing violence are placing additional strain on the communities that now host them, as they arrive empty-handed and communities share what little they have. […]

UNICEF has announced that the child malnutrition rate has passed the critical stage. Drinking water is sorely lacking, and curable infectious diseases spread and cause hundreds of deaths due to lack of medicine. The lack of fuel, gas and electricity alone can trigger yet another disaster. Must we wait until we really start talking about genocide? The plight of the Yemeni people is beyond anything words and statistics can express, and even the most heartbreaking of pictures can only imperfectly help to represent the horror.

The Oxfam report was relayed by the UK and US press, and these images are so unbearable that despite the Western media blackout, they made their way to the Daily Mail, a sensationalist and voyeuristic British newspaper. But the French public was spared of such a spectacle, the report having had no echo in their media that keeps a discreet silence on the humanitarian crisis in Yemen. It is true that the Saudi aggression enjoys the full support of the United States and Great Britain, and it is carried out with French weapons in particular, which currently play a major role in Aden – the very ones which, as the Mistral saga was supposed to show, would never be delivered to belligerent parties.

While many Middle Eastern countries have for years been torn by bloody and unprecedented conflicts, which continue to make the news headlines, Yemen already stands out because of the vulnerability of its society, which was one the poorest in the world and depended almost entirely on outside importations. Also, its location puts it at the mercy of the ruthless naval blockade imposed on it, and prevents the population from joining the millions of refugees who fled the devastation of their country by hordes of bloodthirsty terrorists supported covertly by the very countries who, in their rage and spite, now openly unleash their colossal resources to destroy the weakest of the Arab countries, with no red line. Even truces are systematically violated by new airstrikes right from their implementation. The Saudi-American coalition also assists Daech and al-Qaeda in Yemen, working closely with them. Yet despite this extreme disparity between forces, Yemen heroically resists and promises to be a new Leningrad to the Saudi aggressor.

Since the beginning of the war, Abdul-Malik al-Houthi, head of the Yemeni Resistance, has condemned with the utmost vehemence the “Trinity of Evil”, composed of the United States, Israel and Saudi Arabia, the “horn of Satan” which is entirely subject to their interests. He describes it as their armed wing in the region, in whose service it brought forth the Daesh/ISIS monster, and emphasizes the atrocious crimes it perpetrates against the Yemeni people. But what is most notable in his last speech is the recurrent mention he made of Palestine, the suffering of the Palestinian people and the struggle against Israel, which he said remains the central cause of the Yemeni people despite the dramatic and unprecedented situation in which it is found.

Indeed, on the 10th of July 2015, on the occasion of the International Al-Quds (Jerusalem) Day, commemorated every last Friday of Ramadan in solidarity with the Palestinian people, tens or even hundreds of thousands of Yemeni people took part in the demonstrations to express their unwavering commitment to the Palestinian cause. And this despite the fact that the humanitarian truce, proclaimed by the United Nations for the last ten days of the holy month of Ramadan, after more than 100 days of a ruthless and unprecedented attack against Yemen, was violated daily by Saudi Arabia.

On the occasion of his speech commemorating the Quds day, Hassan Nasrallah, the Secretary General of Hezbollah, spoke of the millions of people filling streets around the world to show their support for the Palestinian cause (Iran, Iraq, Syria, Jordan, Saudi Arabia itself, Tunisia, Mauritania, Sudan, Palestine, Turkey, Pakistan, and more modestly in other western and European cities, until the Place du Trocadero in Paris, seat of the most pro-Zionist government in the world), but he made a special tribute to the Yemeni people in these words:

Let me pause especially on two events, two anniversaries: the first in Yemen, where these dear and noble (brothers) took to the streets of Sanaa, protesting for Palestine and Al-Quds, and despite the continued Saudi-American aggression against their country, their towns and villages, and absolutely everything they possess of living beings and (inanimate) stones. Despite the ongoing strikes reaching even Sanaa, against the interior of Sanaa and the suburbs of Sanaa, tens of thousands – If not hundreds of thousands – came out and demonstrated for Al-Quds, for Palestine, for Gaza and for the Palestinian people.

Of course, psychologically, we understand that. The Yemeni people have the feeling that the world has abandoned them, for the Arab world and the Islamic world have abandoned them. The world has not divided between supporters and opponents of the war, but between support for the aggression against Yemen and those who are silent about it. And those who oppose this war are few.

Nevertheless, despite this painful, shocking and shameful reality, the Yemeni people were not brought to declare that they had nothing to do with Palestine, Al-Quds, Gaza or the Palestinian people. That deserves respect and honour, and indeed – I cannot find words strong enough – glorification and exaltation, admiration and veneration faced with the will of the Yemeni people, their awakening and resistance, as well as the sincerity of this people who today confirmed its commitment in principle, politically, in combat and morally for the cause of Palestine.

And the second point I want to discuss is Bahrain. For what unites Bahrain and Yemen, is abandonment. Abandonment by the Arab and Islamic world, and the rest of the world.

For other countries of the world where there are oppositions, armed groups, popular revolutions – call them what you will – we find many powerful countries supporting them financially, with weapons, media, they organise international conferences, sessions in the Security Council, and considerable regional and international movements. But for Bahrain and Yemen, it is quite different. Both countries are victims of a special injustice and oppression, and that is why I have distinguished them in particular.

This tribute to Yemen by the Lebanese Hezbollah, who, in 1982-2000 and again in summer 2006, found himself in a similar situation of devastation and abandonment – recall that in 1982, the invasion of Lebanon by Israel had been overshadowed in the Arab world by the Soccer World Cup, which Hassan Nasrallah has already repeatedly denounced –, and is the forefront of the struggle against Israel, underlines the exceptional nature of the commitment of the Yemeni people for the Palestinian cause, and their great clear-sightedness in reading the events that occur in the region. Hassan Nasrallah had already stressed that in 2011-2012, Yemen had massive protests in solidarity with Syria to denounce the international terrorist war that was being carried out, while the Arab world was plunged into blindness and torpor. And according to Abdel-Malik al-Houthi, the US-Israeli-Saudi obstinacy is indeed due to this remarkable awakening of the Yemeni people, and their desire for independence and realignment of the cause of the Arab peoples, like Iran and in flagrant opposition to the Saudi project of allegiance and collaborationism:

To pretend (the reality of the Iranian influence) is an attempt at delusion: the Saudi regime is trying to deceive the peoples of the region. He who manifests hostility to Israel, they describe him by saying that he is a (hostile) Iranian; one that provides full support for the Palestinian and Lebanese resistance in their struggle against Israel, they say he is Iranian. They thus try to deceive and silence everyone, and create a new balance in strategic causes in the region so that the normalisation of relations with Israel and cooperation with Israel becomes the heart of the Arab identity, so that it becomes a defence of the Arab national security. They want that the struggle against Israel and against Israeli rule, and that solidarity with the Palestinian people, the sense of responsibility towards the Al-Aqsa Mosque (in Jerusalem) and holy places in Palestine should become an Iranian cause, and they believe that whoever builds his policy in this direction must be targeted and accused by all as having wandered away from Arabism. Does Arabism mean collaborationism, humiliation, degeneration, surrender, submission to Israel? The assimilation to the regimes that collaborate with Israel? This distortion shall profit you nothing, absolutely nothing, for your cooperation with Israel is revealed for all to see. You have clearly become (Israeli) you the Saudi regime and takfiri instruments (Daech and Al Qaeda), your identity has emerged as Zionist and your allegiance is clearly to Israel. […]

One of the main causes of this disastrous role and the targeting of our noble Yemeni people is what is known of this dignified people, namely its values, ethics, principles, and major and active engagement with the Arab peoples towards Palestine and the Palestinian cause, as well as a marked hostility to Israel. When the growing awareness of our Yemeni people became apparent, and when its level of commitment and responsiveness greatly developed in marches and demonstrations of solidarity, to the point that in this first anniversary of the [2014] aggression against Gaza, we can remember demonstrations very large in scale in Yemen throughout the war against Gaza, to a point unmatched by any other Arab country, huge, spectacular demonstrations, with great response from our people, to the point that in truth, hundreds of thousands of Yemeni people desire, hope and aspire to be side by side with the Resistance in Palestine and the resistance in Lebanon to fight the Israeli enemy directly. This is the Yemeni people, about which one can say with certainty that this is the Arab people the most committed to the Palestinian cause, the one that showed the most solidarity and compassion with Palestine, at the human and moral levels, but our people is unfortunately very poor financially because of the policy of impoverishment and targeting he has suffered for decades. Likewise, this Yemeni people have always been subject to war, a war of a very large scope, and we are witnessing intensified violence and aggression targeted against them, to a point that has further increased their awakening and consciousness, and commitment to this important cause.

Following the events that have shaken the Arab world since its so-called “Springtime of the Peoples” in 2011, the greatest danger that threatens the Palestinian cause is that every government, every people and every Arab country (and up to the international public), taken in their own internal crises and struggles, put aside the question of Israel, Palestine and the US-Israeli domination project in the region, of which Daesh/ISIS is only the latest avatar. Sayed Ali Khamenei and Hassan Nasrallah have constantly recalled this, and Abdel Malik al-Houthi, and with him the Yemeni people in their majority, clearly share their views and commitment, going as far as apologizing to the Palestinian people for not being able to help them, in their extreme destitution and while being submitted to the most vicious aggression! This is very moving and revealing indeed. Moreover, as noted by the head of the Yemeni resistance, the Saudi barbarism eclipses even the Israeli crimes in Gaza, which is the height of infamy and an act of treason perhaps even greater than that of Sadat:

They [the Saudi regime] have no humanity in them, no honour, no morals, no values. They have no (human) quality. They are monsters in every sense of the word. Who commits such crimes? Targeting markets, crowds of people in the markets in all provinces, here and there, in both the north and the south? Through all these crimes, they reveal their monstrosity: they have no humanity and no values that men respect even during wars. They have no such conception. For them, the one who has money can do whatever he wants, without any limits, and distribute the money here and there, such a sum for the Council of Human Rights, such a sum for the United Nations, for such and such a country, and its aggression will be covered and legitimated, and there will be no problem. […]

The demonic Israeli hold on the Saudi regime has managed to cause this Saudi furious madness in its aggression against Yemen, this terror, this barbarity in the commission of the most atrocious and the most heinous crimes against the dignified, Muslim and Arabic Yemeni people. The demonic Israeli hold on the Saudi regime is reflected in what this regime is perpetrating, horrible and unspeakable crimes which are an affront to humanity itself, crimes that do not have an example in the region. And one can even say that Israel has succeeded in pushing the Saudi regime to do worse than it had done itself so that this regime appears in the global consciousness as the worst of all, the biggest, most heinous and the most atrocious criminal, the more tyrannical in its aggression. Israel has managed to do this, as it managed to push all takfiris in that direction.

Again, Sayed Ali Khamenei and Hassan Nasrallah also stressed this “achievement” of Saudi Arabia in surpassing the Israeli massacres in Gaza, an exceptional fact given their fundamental and unsurpassable hostility toward Israel, the ultimate enemy. But they predicted a humiliating defeat for the attacker, or even the fall of the Saudi regime. Indeed, on the slogans “”Death to Israel” and “Death to America”, traditional in Yemeni streets, was superimposed “Death to the House of Saud”, an unprecedented development which appears as the indispensable preliminary, the necessary condition for the end of the Usraelian hegemony in the Middle East, which Nasser already called for. And this is actually a horizon that is emerging more and more clearly for all to see.

Since Hezbollah’s direct involvement in Syria alongside the Syrian Arab Army, Hassan Nasrallah has often explained that according to the vision of Hezbollah – a vision supported by all the recent developments – the struggle against Israel and the liberation of Palestine and Al-Quds necessarily goes through Syria, “by the Qalamoun by Zabadani, by Homs, by Aleppo, by Dera’a, by Sweida, by Al-Hasakah. Because if Syria falls, Palestine also falls and Al-Quds will be lost”, as he recalled in his speech on July 10th. But concerning Yemen, he also added:

The way (of liberation) of Al-Quds also goes through Yemen. It is imperative that the Saudi-American aggression against Yemen ceases, of which we reiterate our condemnation and our vehement denunciation. And in Hezbollah, we move closer to the Most High God at any hour, at any time and on any occasion by declaring openly, loudly and clearly, our condemnation of this barbaric, inconsistent and inhuman aggression against Yemen and the people of Yemen on the part of Saudi Arabia and its supporters. The attack has lasted for 107 days. What is the result? Failure upon failure. I will not be long, I am fasting and you too, but you know the record and we have already spoken in the past: remind to me the objectives of the operation “Decisive Storm”, my dear ones, and show me what you have accomplished. And remind me the objectives of the operation “Renewal of Hope”, my loved ones, and show me what you have achieved. You will not find but failure upon failure. Is it not time for Saudi Arabia – for the Saudi regime – to realize that the war is hopeless? And that it is unable to break the will of the Yemeni people? And that the hope that it founds on its armed groups inside Yemen has no other result than to increase the killings? And that the continuation of air strikes will not break the will of the Yemeni people determined to gain independence, freedom and sovereignty, as well as a noble and dignified life? Just see the demonstrations in Sanaa today, you’ve seen them and you’ve heard the slogans. After 107 days of massacres! 107 days of bombings that have spared absolutely nothing: hospitals, cities – even during the month of Ramadan – markets… They see that it’s a market, it’s not a mistake, it’s not because someone has placed a Katyusha in this market, it’s only a simple market, in the heart of Yemen, from where a rocket cannot possibly be launched on to Saudi territory, they bombard it, and dozens of martyrs fall daily. But this people took to the streets today, and announced its position, they revealed their determination.

It appears, my brothers and sisters, the Saudi war has no more goals. It has no political goals and its only remaining goal is revenge against Yemen and the people of Yemen. What is happening in Yemen today is not a military operation, because where could the Saudi (land) army intervene? It must defend its border posts. I do not remember all their names, but you hear every day that Yemenis took such and such border post, the Saudis have deserted their posts and that the Yemenis have withdrawn because they would need for air defence to keep those positions and that Saudi planes bombard them, and so it’s their air force which must intervene. But either way, any country that has planes can do such a thing, bomb, destroy, perpetrate massacres … What your army must first be able to do is keep its border posts, and then we will see if you are capable or not of entering Yemen territory. It is neither a military operation nor a political operation. We are facing a revenge operation: “You, the Yemeni people, you have ceased to obey the master (because the Saudis consider themselves the masters), you have ceased to be slaves of the Saudi Lord, you want to be the masters of yourselves, but this is not allowed in this region, it is not permissible that the Yemeni people be so, so then, pay the price of your choice.” What is the price? The bombing, destruction, massacres, crushing, etc. There is no other way. This is what is happening.

Nevertheless, Saudi Arabia must stop, and the world must help it to descend from the tree (on which it is perched), to descend from its roost. The assaulted who is defending himself, and who has chosen to defend his dignity, his family, his sovereignty and freedom has no other choice but to continue to defend himself, as long as the war may last. As for the aggressor, it is for him to review his choices. And I think Saudi Arabia has begun to review its choices.

Day after day, the Yemeni people reveals its determination to defend its independence and its principles, and its rejection of any surrender facing the US-Saudi aggression, whatever the sacrifices. Yemen seems clearly moving into the way of the Lebanese Islamic Resistance, both in terms of its unwavering commitment to the Palestinian cause as by its historic victories – past and future. Similarly, the Arab-Muslim public opinion is awakening more and more to the reality of the takfiri project in the region and to the collusion of the forces of imperialism, and the smoke screen that covered the true identity of Saudi Arabia, adorned with its deceptive title of the cradle of Islam and guarantor of its holy places, is irremediably fading away. The Saudi aura can only diminish in the future, while the Resistance Axis’ cannot but grow.

Yemen today displays an example of courage and lucidity to the world, and its heroic and tragic struggle for independence, despite the shameful abandonment of the entire world – with the exception of Iran and Hezbollah –, honours the Arab world and all humanity by its example, like the struggle of the Palestinian people.

Translated from French by Jenny Bright for Tlaxcala

Who would’ve thought it would come to this? Certainly not the Obama Administration, and their brilliant geo-political think-tank neo-conservative strategists.

John Kerry’s brilliant “win-win” proposal of last September during his September 11 Jeddah meeting with ailing Saudi King Abdullah was simple: Do a rerun of the highly successful State Department-Saudi deal in 1986 when Washington persuaded the Saudis to flood the world market at a time of over-supply in order to collapse oil prices worldwide, a kind of “oil shock in reverse.” In 1986 was successful in helping to break the back of a faltering Soviet Union highly dependent on dollar oil export revenues for maintaining its grip on power.

So, though it was not made public, Kerry and Abdullah agreed on September 11, 2014 that the Saudis would use their oil muscle to bring Putin’s Russia to their knees today.

It seemed brilliant at the time no doubt.

On the following day, 12 September 2014, the US Treasury’s aptly-named Office of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence, headed by Treasury Under-Secretary David S. Cohen, announced new sanctions against Russia’s energy giants Gazprom, Gazprom Neft, Lukoil, Surgutneftgas and Rosneft. It forbid US oil companies to participate with the Russian companies in joint ventures for oil or gas offshore or in the Arctic.

Then, just as the ruble was rapidly falling and Russian major corporations were scrambling for dollars for their year-end settlements, a collapse of world oil prices would end Putin’s reign. That was clearly the thinking of the hollowed-out souls who pass for statesmen in Washington today. Victoria Nuland was jubilant, praising the precision new financial warfare weapon at David Cohen’s Treasury financial terrorism unit.

In July, 2014 West Texas Intermediate, the benchmark price for US domestic oil pricing, traded at $101 a barrel. The shale oil bonanza was booming, making the US into a major oil player for the first time since the 1970’s.

When WTI hit $46 at the beginning of January this year, suddenly things looked different. Washington realized they had shot themselves in the foot.

They realized that the over-indebted US shale oil industry was about to collapse under the falling oil price. Behind the scenes Washington and Wall Street colluded to artificially stabilize what then was an impending chain-reaction bankruptcy collapse in the US shale oil industry. As a result oil prices began a slow rise, hitting $53 in February. The Wall Street and Washington propaganda mills began talking about the end of falling oil prices. By May prices had crept up to $62 and almost everyone was convinced oil recovery was in process. How wrong they were.

Saudis not happy

Since that September 11 Kerry-Abdullah meeting (curious date to pick, given the climate of suspicion that the Bush family is covering up involvement of the Saudis in or around the events of September 11, 2001), the Saudis have a new ageing King, Absolute Monarch and Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques, King Salman, replacing the since deceased old ageing King, Abdullah. However, the Oil Minister remains unchanged—79-year-old Ali al-Naimi. It was al-Naimi who reportedly saw the golden opportunity in the Kerry proposal to use the chance to at the same time kill off the growing market challenge from the rising output of the unconventional USA shale oil industry. Al-Naimi has said repeatedly that he is determined to eliminate the US shale oil “disturbance” to Saudi domination of world oil markets.

Not only are the Saudis unhappy with the US shale oil intrusion on their oily Kingdom. They are more than upset with the recent deal the Obama Administration made with Iran that will likely lead in several months to lifting Iran economic sanctions. In fact the Saudis are beside themselves with rage against Washington, so much so that they have openly admitted an alliance with arch foe, Israel, to combat what they see as the Iran growing dominance in the region—in Syria, in Lebanon, in Iraq.

This has all added up to an iron Saudi determination, aided by close Gulf Arab allies, to further crash oil prices until the expected wave of shale oil company bankruptcies—that was halted in January by Washington and Wall Street manipulations—finishes off the US shale oil competition. That day may come soon, but with unintended consequences for the entire global financial system at a time such consequences can ill be afforded.

According to a recent report by Wall Street bank, Morgan Stanley, a major player in crude oil markets, OPEC oil producers have been aggressively increasing oil supply on the already glutted world market with no hint of a letup. In its report Morgan Stanley noted with visible alarm, “OPEC has added 1.5 million barrels/day to global supply in the last four months alone…the oil market is currently 800,000 barrels/day oversupplied. This suggests that the current oversupply in the oil market is fully due to OPEC’s production increase since February alone.”

The Wall Street bank report adds the disconcerting note, “We anticipated that OPEC would not cut, but we didn’t foresee such a sharp increase.” In short, Washington has completely lost its strategic leverage over Saudi Arabia, a Kingdom that had been considered a Washington vassal ever since FDR’s deal to bring US oil majors in on an exclusive basis in 1945.

That breakdown in US-Saudi communication adds a new dimension to the recent June 18 high-level visit to St. Petersburg by Muhammad bin Salman, the Saudi Deputy Crown Prince and Defense Minister and son of King Salman, to meet President Vladimir Putin. The meeting was carefully prepared by both sides as the two discussed up to $10 billion of trade deals including Russian construction of peaceful nuclear power reactors in the Kingdom and supplying of advanced Russian military equipment and Saudi investment in Russia in agriculture, medicine, logistics, retail and real estate. Saudi Arabia today is the world’s largest oil producer and Russia a close second. A Saudi-Russian alliance on whatever level was hardly in the strategy book of the Washington State Department planners.…Oh shit!

Now that OPEC oil glut the Saudis have created has cracked the shaky US effort to push oil prices back up. The price fall is being further fueled by fears that the Iran deal will add even more to the glut, and that the world’s second largest oil importer, China, may cut back imports or at least not increase them as their economy slows down. The oil market time bomb detonated in the last week of June. The US price of WTI oil went from $60 a barrel then, a level at which at least many shale oil producers can stay afloat a bit longer, to $49 on July 29, a drop of more than 18% in four weeks, tendency down.

Morgan Stanley sounded loud alarm bells, stating that if the trend of recent weeks continues, “this downturn would be more severe than that in 1986. As there was no sharp downturn in the 15 years before that, the current downturn could be the worst of the last 45+ years. If this were to be the case, there would be nothing in our experience that would be a guide to the next phases of this cycle…In fact, there may be nothing in analyzable history.”

‘October Surprise’

October is the next key point for bank decisions to roll-over US shale company loans or to keep extending credit on the (until now) hope that prices will slowly recover. If as strongly hinted, the Federal Reserve hikes US interest rates in September for the first time in the eight years since the global financial crisis erupted in the US real estate market in 2007, the highly-indebted US shale oil producers face disaster of a new scale. Until the past few weeks the volume of US shale oil production has remained at the maximum as shale producers desperately try to maximize cash flow, ironically, laying the seeds of the oil glut globally that will be their demise.

The reason US shale oil companies have been able to continue in business since last November and not declare bankruptcy is the ongoing Federal Reserve zero interest rate policy that leads banks and other investors to look for higher interest rates in the so-called “High Yield” bond market.

Back in the 1980’s when they were first created by Michael Millken and his fraudsters at Drexel Burnham Lambert, Wall Street appropriately called them “junk bonds” because when times got bad, like now for Shale companies, they turned into junk. A recent UBS bank report states, “the overall High-Yield market has doubled in size; sectors that witnessed more buoyant issuance in recent years, like energy and metals mining, have seen debt outstanding triple or quadruple.”

Assuming that the most recent downturn in WTI oil prices continues week after week into October, there well could be a panic run to sell billions of dollars of those High-Yield, high-risk junk bonds. As one investment analyst notes, “when the retail crowd finally does head for the exits en masse, fund managers will be forced to come face to face with illiquid secondary corporate credit markets where a lack of market depth…has the potential to spark a fire sale.”

The problem is that this time, unlike in 2008, the Federal Reserve has no room to act. Interest rates are already near zero and the Fed has bought trillions of dollars of bank bad debt to prevent a chain-reaction US bank panic.

One option that is not being discussed at all in Washington would be for Congress to repeal the disastrous 1913 Federal Reserve Act that gave control of our nation’s money to a gang of private bankers, and to create a public National Bank, owned completely by the United States Government, that could issue credit and sell Federal debt without the intermediaries of corrupt Wall Street bankers as the Constitution intended. At the same time they could completely nationalize the six or seven “Too Big To Fail” banks behind the entire financial mess that is destroying the foundations of the United States and by extension of the role of the dollar as world reserve currency, of most of the world.

F. William Engdahl is strategic risk consultant and lecturer, he holds a degree in politics from Princeton University and is a best-selling author on oil and geopolitics, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.