Global Research

Image: A mushroom cloud billows about one hour after a nuclear bomb was detonated above Hiroshima, Japan on Aug. 6, 1945. 

This August 6th and 9th millions of people will mark the 70th anniversary of the nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in those cities and at events around the world. Some will celebrate the recent deal in which Iran committed not to pursue nuclear weapons, and to comply with the non-proliferation treaty (NPT) and with requirements not imposed on any other nation.

Yet, those nations that have nuclear weapons are either violating the NPT by failing to disarm or by building more (U.S., Russia, U.K., France, China, India), or they have refused to sign the treaty (Israel, Pakistan, North Korea). Meanwhile new nations are acquiring nuclear energy despite possessing an abundance of oil and/or some of the best conditions for solar energy on earth (Saudi Arabia, Jordan, UAE).

Nuclear missiles containing more than the entire bombing power of World War II in a single bomb are aimed by the thousands at Russia from the United States and vice versa. A thirty-second fit of insanity in a U.S. or Russian president could eliminate all life on earth. And the United States is playing war games on Russia’s border. The acceptance of this madness as normal and routine is part of the continued explosion of those two bombs, begun 70 years ago and rarely properly understood.

The dropping of those bombs and the explicit threat ever since to drop more is a new crime that has given birth to a new species of imperialism. The United States has intervened in over 70 nations — more than one per year — since World War II, and has now come full-circle to the re-militarization of Japan.

The history of the first U.S. militarization of Japan has been brought to light by James Bradley. In 1853 the U.S. Navy forced Japan open to U.S. merchants, missionaries, and militarism. In 1872 the U.S. military began training the Japanese in how to conquer other nations, with an eye on Taiwan.

Charles LeGendre, an American general training the Japanese in the ways of war, proposed that they adopt a Monroe Doctrine for Asia, that is a policy of dominating Asia in the way that the United States dominated its hemisphere. In 1873, Japan invaded Taiwan with U.S. military advisors and weaponry. Korea was next, followed by China in 1894. In 1904, U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt encouraged Japan in attacking Russia. But he broke a promise to Japan by refusing to go public with his support for its Monroe Doctrine, and he backed Russia’s refusal to pay Japan a dime following the war. The Japanese empire became seen as a competitor rather than a proxy, and the U.S. military spent decades planning for a war with Japan.

Harry Truman, who would order the nuclear bombings in 1945, spoke in the U.S. Senate on June 23, 1941: “If we see that Germany is winning,” he said, “we ought to help Russia, and if Russia is winning we ought to help Germany, and that way let them kill as many as possible.” Did Truman value Japanese lives above Russian and German? There is nothing anywhere to suggest that he did. A U.S. Army poll in 1943 found that roughly half of all GIs believed it would be necessary to kill every Japanese person on earth. William Halsey, who commanded U.S. naval forces in the South Pacific, vowed that when the war was over, the Japanese language would be spoken only in hell.

On August 6, 1945, President Truman announced: “Sixteen hours ago an American airplane dropped one bomb on Hiroshima, an important Japanese army base.” Of course it was a city, not an army base at all. “Having found the bomb we have used it,” Truman declared. “We have used it against those who attacked us without warning at Pearl Harbor, against those who have starved and beaten and executed American prisoners of war, and against those who have abandoned all pretense of obeying international law of warfare.” Truman said nothing about reluctance or the price necessary for ending the war.

In fact, Japan had been trying to surrender for months, including in its July 13th cable sent to Stalin, who read it to Truman. Japan wanted only to keep its emperor, terms the United States refused until after the nuclear bombings. Truman’s advisor James Byrnes wanted the bombs dropped to end the war before the Soviet Union could invade Japan. In fact, the Soviets attacked the Japanese in Manchuria on the same day as the Nagasaki bombing and overwhelmed them. The U.S. and the Soviets continued the war on Japan for weeks after Nagasaki. Then the Japanese surrendered.

The United States Strategic Bombing Survey concluded that, “… certainly prior to 31 December, 1945, and in all probability prior to 1 November, 1945, Japan would have surrendered even if the atomic bombs had not been dropped, even if Russia had not entered the war, and even if no invasion had been planned or contemplated.” One opponent of the nuclear bombings who had expressed this same view to the Secretary of War prior to the bombings was General Dwight Eisenhower. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral William D. Leahy agreed: “The use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender.”

The war wasn’t just over. The new American empire was launched. “The revulsion against war … will be an almost insuperable obstacle for us to overcome,” said General Electric CEO Charles Wilson in 1944. “For that reason, I am convinced that we must begin now to set the machinery in motion for a permanent wartime economy.” And so they did. Although invasions were nothing new to the U.S. military, they now came on a whole new scale. And the ever-present threat of nuclear weapons use has been a key part of it.

Truman threatened to nuke China in 1950. The myth developed, in fact, that Eisenhower’s enthusiasm for nuking China led to the rapid conclusion of the Korean War. Belief in that myth led President Richard Nixon, decades later, to imagine he could end the Vietnam War by pretending to be crazy enough to use nuclear bombs. Even more disturbingly, he actually was crazy enough. “The nuclear bomb, does that bother you? … I just want you to think big, Henry, for Christsakes,” Nixon said to Henry Kissinger in discussing options for Vietnam. And how many times has Iran been reminded that “all options are on the table”?

A new campaign to abolish nuclear weapons is growing fast and deserves our support. But Japan is being remilitarized. And once again, the U.S. government imagines it will like the results. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, with U.S. support, is reinterpreting this language in the Japanese Constitution:

[T]he Japanese people forever renounce war as a sovereign right of the nation and the threat or use of force as means of settling international disputes. … [L]and, sea, and air forces, as well as other war potential, will never be maintained.

The new “reinterpretation,” accomplished without amending the Constitution, holds that Japan can maintain land, sea, and air forces, as well as other war potential, and that Japan will use war or threaten war to defend itself, to defend any of its allies, or to take part in a U.N.-authorized war anywhere on earth. Abe’s “reinterpretation” skills would make the U.S. Office of Legal Counsel blush.

U.S. commentators are referring to this shift in Japan as “normalization” and expressing outrage at Japan’s failure to engage in any wars since World War II. The U.S. government will now expect Japan’s participation in any threat or use of war against China or Russia. But accompanying the return of Japanese militarism is the rise of Japanese nationalism, not Japanese devotion to U.S. rule. And even the Japanese nationalism is weak in Okinawa, where the movement to evict U.S. military bases grows stronger all the time. In remilitarizing Japan, rather than demilitarizing itself, the United States is playing with fire.

David Swanson is an author, activist, journalist, and radio host. He is director of WorldBeyondWar.org and campaign coordinator for RootsAction.org. Swanson’s books include War Is A Lie. He blogs at DavidSwanson.org and WarIsACrime.org. He hosts Talk Nation Radio. He is a 2015 Nobel Peace Prize Nominee.

Se celebró en Canadá la Ceremonia por la Paz en memoria de las víctimas del bombardeo atómico contra Hiroshima, en Japón.

La ciudad de Montreal conmemoró el 70 aniversario del lanzamiento de la bomba atómica sobre la ciudad japonesa de Hiroshima al final de la II Guerra Mundial. Esta tragedia acabó con la vida de miles de personas en su mayoría civiles.

Desde 1998, la ciudad canadiense de Montreal organiza la Ceremonia por la Paz en memoria de las víctimas. El alcalde de Montreal, autoridades japonesas y público en general estuvieron presentes en este evento.

Hiroshima y Nagasaki son las únicas ciudades del mundo que han sufrido el ataque de bombas nucleares llevando a la muerte a más de 200 mil personas. Este bombardeo fue realizado por Estados Unidos el 6 y 9 de agosto de 1945.

Japón se convirtió en la primera víctima de las armas nucleares. Actualmente, los sobrevivientes de Hiroshima y Nagasaki sobrepasan los 180 mil.

Jorge Zegarra, Montreal.

“O terrorismo constitui uma ameaça direta contra a segurança dos países da Otan”, declarou o Conselho do Atlântico Norte ao condenar “os ataques terroristas contra a Turquia” e ao comprometer-se a acompanhar de muito perto as operações na fronteira oriental da Otan.

Só na Turquia, a Otan tem mais de vinte bases militares reforçadas por baterias de misseis estadunidenses, alemães e espanhois, com capacidade de destruir objetos voadores no espaço aéreo sírio. Na cidade de Izmir, a OTAN transferiu o Landcom, comando das forças terrestres dos vinte e oito países membros, hoje em plena atividade.

Como mostram as enquetes do New York Times et do The Guardian, sobretudo nas províncias turcas de Adana, Hatay e na Jordânia, a CIA abriu, há muito tempo, centros de treinamento de militantes islâmicos, oriundos do Afeganistão, Bosnia, Tchetchênia, Libia e outros países, os preparando e os armando para cometer ações terroristas na Síria. O apoio da CIA também destinou-se àqueles que formaram o ISIS (Estado islâmico do Iraque) para derrubar o governo de Damasco e que em seguida atacaram o Iraque no momento em que o governo do xiita al-Maliki se afastava de Washington e se aproximava de Pequim e Moscou. As armas que chegam via Arabia Saudita e Qatar entram na Siria por meio da fronteira turca, onde centenas delas transitam cada dia sem nenhum controle.

Por detrás do biombo da “luta contra o Estado Islâmico”, a Turquia ataca os curdos do partido dos trabalhadores do Curdistão (PKK) que lutam contra o grupo Estado Islâmico. Apoiado pela Casa Branca, o porta-voz Alistair Baskey define o PKK como um “grupo terrorista”, ao afirmar que “a Turquia tem o direito de se defender contra os ataques terroristas dos rebeldes curdos”.

Concomitantemente, Estados Unidos e Turquia chegaram a um acordo sobre um plano para a criação de uma “zona segura”, “livre do Estado islâmico”, ao longo de uma faixa que possui centena de quilômetros e que se estende do território sírio à fronteira turca. O plano prevê a utilização de caça-bombardeiros estadounidenses, presentes na Turquia e forças terrestres turcas, acompanhadas de operações secretas por forças especiais EUA/Otan.

Esta faixa territorial sobre a qual sera imposta “no-fly zone” deveria estar controlada por aqueles que o New York Times define como “rebeldes sírios relativamente moderados”, armados e treinados pelo Pentagono, entre os quais muitos se alistaram no grupo Estado islâmico e na Frente jihadista al-Nosra.

Ao autorizar ataques aéreos para apoiar os “rebeldes” treinados pelo Pentagono, Obama autoriza a guerra aérea EUA/Otan contra as forças governamentais sírias. Grupos “rebeldes” também são apoiados por Israel, como declarou o ministro da defesa Ya’alon (ver The Times of Israel, de 29 de junho de 2015). A criação da “zona segura” com fins humanitários para dar abrigo aos refugiados sírios constitui o começo do projeto oficial do desmantelamento da Siria, estado soberano e membro da ONU, que renunciou armas químicas, ao contrario de Israel que possui até armas nucleares.

A Otan “presta socorro” ao Iraque, ameaçado pelo Estado islâmico: a organização do Tratado do Atlântico Norte anunciou no dia 31 de julho que ela treinara, na Turquia e na Jordânia, combatentes iraquianos (selecionados por Washington para a balcanização do Iraque). Dessa maneira, a Otan utiliza a estratégia que visa a redesenhar o mapa do Oriente Médio, apagando, como foi feito na Iugoslavia e no Norte da África com a Líbia , os estados considerados como obstáculos aos interesses do Ocidente, provocando milhões de mortes e refugiados, enquanto a Casa Branca publica a petição popular contra a morte do leão Cecil, a fim de mostrar toda sua humanidade.

Manlio Dinucci

Artigo em italiano :

http://ilmanifesto.info/lantiterrorismo-della-nato/

Traduzido do francês por Maria Quitéria Turcios, para vermelho.org

Manlio Dinucci é jornalista, geógrafo e cientista político. Escreve regularmente no jornal italiano Il Manifesto

A bill pending before the U.S. Senate would not just deny consumers the right to know whether their food contains genetically modified organisms (GMOs), it could also strip states of their right to limit or regulate the use of dangerous herbicide chemicals widely sprayed over fields of GMO crops.

The bill in question, which passed a vote in the House of Representatives of July 22, is formally known as H.R. 1599, the Safe and Accurate Food Labeling Act, but has come to be known by organic and natural foods advocates as the Deny Americans the Right to Know (DARK) Act. That’s because far from ensuring accurate food labeling, the bill is actually designed to prevent the implementation of mandatory GMO labeling laws.

Bans any GMO labeling with teeth

A clear response by the GMO industry to the recent passage of mandatory labeling law in Vermont, the DARK Act would ban state governments from adopting any law involving the labeling of GMO foods. It would ban private GMO-free labels. It would even ban the federal government – specifically, the FDA – from adopting any mandatory labeling rule.

Instead, the DARK Act would institute a voluntary GMO labeling effort administered by the federal government. Under that scheme, food producers would need to pay the government to have their food labeled “GMO free.” Companies that did not want their food labeled GMO free – including all those making food with GMOs, of course – would pay nothing.

“And why should the burden of labeling fall on the producers of non-GMO foods, when the risk factor is associated with those foods that do contain GMOs?” asked the Organic Consumers Association in response.

It should come as no surprise that the GMO industry-backed bill is packaged in deceptive language. The industry-funded front group behind the bill, the “Coalition for Safe and Affordable Food,” was directly lying to members of Congress, telling them that mandatory GMO labeling would cost individual U.S. consumers $500 per year in increased food costs. But that statistic comes from only a single study, paid for by the Council for Biotech Information, whose members include Monsanto. That study has been repeatedly been debunked by independent research.

Bans regulation of toxic chemicals?

While most coverage of the DARK Act has focused on its impacts on GMO labeling, the law contains another, even more sinister provision: It bans states or counties from passing any laws regulating GMO crops at all. That might mean the federal government could try to block states from regulating the herbicides sprayed on GMO fields – proven toxic chemicals such as glyphosate (Roundup) and 2,4-D that have been linked to cancer, hormonal problems, suppressed immune function and Parkinson’s disease.

Because most GMO crops are engineered to be resistant to these herbicides, the chemicals are sprayed in enormous quantities across the 72 percent of U.S. cropland (228 million acres) that are planted with GMOs. This includes fields within a stone’s throw of schools, churches and other residential areas – to say nothing of the effects exposure to these poisons has on farm workers or on the consumers who eat GMO crops.

The DARK Act could be used to undercut efforts to protect all these people from the effects of this chemical violence.

If the DARK Act does become law, it is probably headed straight for court. That’s because the law is blatantly unconstitutional, infringing on states’ rights to regulate food and agriculture within their borders.

“Whatever your views on GMOs, there is no Constitutional justification for the federal government to preempt state laws in this area,” the Campaign for Liberty said. “There certainly is no justification for Congress to preempt private sector efforts to meet consumer demands for non-GMO foods, while allowing those who support the use of GMOs to do so.”

Sources:

http://www.ewg.org

http://www.naturalnews.com

www.organicconsumers.org

http://www.mnn.com

Let’s do the count:

Senators rallying and whipping their colleagues to support the Iran agreement: 0.

Senators admitting that Iran has had no nuclear weapons program and has never threatened or been a threat to the United States: 0.

Senators pushing the false idea that Iran is a nuclear threat but indicating they will vote to support the agreement precisely in order to counter that threat: 16
(Tammy Baldwin, Barbara Boxer, Dick Durbin, Dianne Feinstein, Kirsten Gillibrand, Martin Heinrich, Tim Kaine, Angus King, Patrick Leahy, Chris Murphy, Bill Nelson, Jack Reed, Bernie Sanders, Jeanne Shaheen, Tom Udall, Elizabeth Warren)

Republican (and “Libertarian”) senators indicating they will try to kill the agreement, thereby moving the United States toward a war on Iran: 54.
(All of them.)

Democratic senators inspired during the repulsive Republican debate Thursday night to announce that they will try to kill the deal (and would rather have a war): 1.
(Charles Schumer.)

Democratic senators who haven’t clearly stated a position: 29.

The number of those 29 who would have to join Schumer to kill the agreement and set the United States on a path toward self-isolation, international disgrace, and disastrous illegal immoral catastrophic war that will make Iraq and Afghanistan look like diplomacy: 12.

Can we keep the agreement protected from such a fate? Of course we can. We’ve been stopping a war on Iran for many years now. We stopped it in 2007. Such things never enter U.S. history books, but wars are stopped all the time. In 2013, the push for a massive bombing campaign on Syria was hard and absolutely bipartisan, yet public pressure played the key role in stopping it.

Now we have the White House on our side for godsake. When Obama wants a horrible corporate trade agreement fast tracked or a supplemental war spending bill rammed through or a “healthcare” bill passed, he twists arms and offers bribes, he gives rides on his airplane, he sends cabinet secretaries to do PR events in districts. If he really wants this, he’ll hardly need our help. So one strategy we need to keep after is making clear he knows we expect this of him.

Senator Sanders has a gazillion fans now, and something like all but 3 of them believe he is a hero for peace. If you’re a Bernie supporter, you can urge him to rally his colleagues to protect the Iran agreement.

In states like Virginia where one senator is taking the right position and one is keeping quiet, urge the first one (Kaine) to lobby the other one (Warner).

Would-be senators like Alan Grayson who want people to think of them as progressives but who have been pushing to kill the deal since before Schumer slithered out from under his rock, should be hounded everywhere they show their faces.

Schumer himself should not be permitted to appear in public without protest of his warmongering.

Just as in the summer of 2013, most senators and house members are going to be at public events in the coming weeks. Email and call them here. That’s easy. That’s the least anyone can do. And it had an impact last time in 2013. But also find out where they will be (senators and representatives both) and be there in small or large numbers to demand NO WAR ON IRAN.

The most expensive weapons system they’ve got (“missile defense”) has been using the mythical Iranian threat as a ridiculous justification for picking your pocket and antagonizing the world in your name for years and years. But Raytheon wanted those missiles to hit Syria, and Wall Street believed they would.

The Israel lobby has much of Congress bought and paid for. But the public is turning against it, and you can shame its servants.

In the long run, it’s useful to remember that lies do not set us free.

If both proponents and opponents of the agreement depict Iran falsely as a nuclear threat, the danger of a U.S. war on Iran is going to continue, with or without the deal. The deal could end with the election of a new president or Congress. Ending the agreement could be the first act of a Republican president or a Schumerian Democratic Leader.

So, don’t just urge the right vote while pushing the propaganda. Oppose the propaganda as well.

The Obama administration’s spy agencies have been keeping track of the movements, communications and activities of the new crop of Black activists. Although not surprising, the recent reports should give rise to “new strategies and tactics to exchange information among groups, and new modalities to circumvent infiltration and, ultimately, government sting operations.”

“The department frequently collects information, including location data, on Black Lives Matter activities.”

According to a recent investigation by The Intercept, the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI have launched state-sponsored surveillance against BlackLivesMatter activists as a component of safeguarding the homeland, i.e., the fight against terrorism. State-sponsored surveillance of civil rights activists started with the resistance movement that was prompted by the killing of unarmed Michael Brown. According to this report “the department frequently collects information, including location data, on Black Lives Matter activities from public social media accounts, including on Facebook, Twitter, and Vine, even for events expected to be peaceful.” The report verifies that the surveillance community utilized social media as an important tool, specifically in “Ferguson, Baltimore, Washington, DC and New York.“

In fact, according to the materials obtained by The Intercept, over the last few years, small bits of evidence indicate “that other counterterror intelligence organizations like the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force and state police intelligence groups have been involved in monitoring and apprehending Black Lives Matter activists.”

The 21^st century surveillance system, however, is substantially more dangerous than that of the 20^th century Counter Intelligence Program, known by the acronym COINTELPRO [1956 to 1971], in which the government manufactured criminal attacks against civil rights and peace activists, such as Dr. Martin Luther Kings, Jr,, the Black Panther Party, NAACP, etc. The efficiency and speed of data collection and the effectiveness of government secrecy and terror programs would make the civil rights era surveillance programs seem Paleolithic.

The president and the head of the National Security Agency (NSA) deny government spying on citizens. However, a memo regarding a demonstration in the Chinatown section of Washington, DC (4/29/15) is noted in the Intercept report:

“The ‘Watch Desk’ of the DHS’s National Capital Region, FEMA branch compiled this real-time information despite the fact that an FBI joint intelligence bulletin shared among several DHS officials the day before noted that there was ‘no information suggesting violent behavior is planned for Washington, DC’ and that previous anti-police brutality protests in the wake of Ferguson ‘have been peaceful in nature.’ The bulletin also said that for unspecified reasons ‘we remain concerned that unaffiliated individuals could potentially use this event to commit acts of violence in the Chinatown area.’”

These national security windfalls catch everyday citizens exercising their First Amendment rights. I attended the Washington, DC – Chinatown demonstration, referred to above, along with other BlackLivesMatter activists who have been profiled in BAR.

There are always “official” explanations for rouge government practices such as the Bush Administration justification of its “enhanced interrogation techniques, i.e., waterboarding, extra judicial murders of US citizens and torture of innocent civilians. In the myopic world of the FBI, COINTELPRO’s goal was to: “expose, disrupt, misdirect, or otherwise neutralize” groups that the FBI officials believed were “subversive” by instructing FBI field operatives to: create a negative public image for targeted groups (e.g. by surveilling activists, and releasing negative personal information to the public:)

* break down internal organization

* create dissension between groups

* restrict access to public resources

* restrict the ability to organize protests

* restrict the ability of individuals to participate in group activities.

In an article, entitled: “How Much Is the US Government Spying on Americans,” we learn:

“The government is spying on you through your phone … and may even remotely turn on your camera and microphone when your phone is off. As one example, the NSA has inserted its code into Android’s operating system … bugging three-quarters of the world’s smartphones.  Google – or the NSA – can remotely turn on your phone’s camera and recorder at any time ….And Microsoft has long worked hand-in-hand with the NSA and FBI so that encryption doesn’t block the government’s ability to spy on users of Skype, Outlook, Hotmail and other Microsoft services.”

Without high-speed computation, 21^st century satellite imagery, social media and other technological advances, the FBI and other spy agencies were inefficient and slow. Perhaps, one of the benefits of “old school” organizing was the lack of social media (a tool that has been thoroughly compromised by government and corporate surveillance,) that allowed civil rights leaders to develop strong personal relationships that included levels of accountability rooted in social institutions. Additionally, informal networks were strengthened, among civil rights activists in order to circumvent the intentions of an openly hostile and racist government.

Government surveillance of the BlackLivesMatter movement poses new technological and social terrain challenges. New strategies and tactics are required to exchange information among groups and new modalities are required to circumvent infiltration and, ultimately, government sting operations. The BlackLivesMatter movement is being taken seriously by those invested in thought control and African political suppression through fear. We are confronted with a government that tracks our whereabouts, our purchasing preferences and our communications. More importantly, the government through its surveillance program seeks to instill fear into the Black resistance movement as it courageously raises the mantle of liberation.

Dr. Marsha Coleman-Adebayo is the author of No FEAR: A Whistleblowers Triumph over Corruption and Retaliation at the EPA. She worked at the EPA for 18 years and blew the whistle on a US multinational corporation that endangered South African vanadium mine workers. Marsha’s successful lawsuit led to the introduction and passage of the first civil rights and whistleblower law of the 21st century: the Notification of Federal Employees Anti-discrimination and Retaliation Act of 2002 (No FEAR Act). She is Director of Transparency and Accountability for the Green Shadow Cabinet, serves on the Advisory Board of ExposeFacts.com and coordinates the DC-based Hands-Up Coalition.

The events that led to the dismissal of the German Attorney General Harald Range show the true extent of the preparations to erect an authoritarian state in which freedom of speech and basic democratic rights are suppressed.

In May, the German media launched a vicious smear campaign against the International Youth and Students for Social Equality (IYSSE) and the blog “Münkler-Watch” because both criticized the militaristic positions advanced by professors at the Humboldt University in Berlin. We warned at the time that the root cause of this attack on freedom of expression was “the turn to militarism with which the ruling class is reacting to the crisis of global capitalism. This extends into every pore of society and is incompatible with democracy.”

The investigation on treason charges initiated against the Netzpolitik.org blog by Attorney General Range prior to his sacking, has fully confirmed this warning. It is not only students who are being threatened, but anyone who dares to reveal and denounce the anti-democratic and militaristic machinations of the state.

On Tuesday evening the Tagesschau, the major news broadcast on Germany’s first television channel, commented:

“Investigations against journalists on charges of treason are the most powerful weapon one can use to intimidate them. These are the methods of dictatorships; there is no place for such measures in a constitutional state.”

Netzpolitik.org, an online magazine with few resources, three editors, and a half-dozen volunteers, has been selected to set an example to all. According to paragraph 94 of the German Criminal Code, serious cases of treason are punishable with imprisonment from five years to life. This massive threat is aimed at demonstrating to every journalist that he could possibly spend his life behind bars if he uncovers illegal activities of the intelligence agencies and the military.

The threats being directed at Netzpolitik.org are all out of proportion to the alleged secrets it has published. It published the economic plan for the Federal Office for Protection of the Constitution (BfV, the domestic secret service) for 2013 and documents on plans to intensify the surveillance of telecommunications. They contain no technical or operational details. When Green Party deputy Hans-Christian Ströbele presented questions on the content of these documents in the Bundestag on March 4, an Interior Ministry spokesman promptly gave him the requested information. Clearly, the assertion that the blog was dealing in state secrets is a mere pretext.

It is also unusual that the investigation is not targeting the whistleblowers who passed on the documents to the press, but the journalists who published them. If this becomes standard practice, any journalist who reported on the revelations of Edward Snowden, for example, would risk prosecution.

The initiative to prosecute Netzpolitik.org stemmed not from Range, but from Hans-Georg Maassen, the head of the BfV secret services. For some time, Maassen has complained that the secret services has been subjected to public criticism for their role in crimes committed by neo-Nazi terrorists and the mass surveillance of the population. The BfV laid the charges against Netzpolitik.org, reaffirming to the attorney general that the papers it had published contained a “state secret.”

Some press comments have assumed that Range, who was due to retire at the end of the year anyway, had taken his hat early to deflect blame from Maassen and his chief, German Interior Minister Thomas de Maizière. Both the interior minister and the Justice Department were informed of Range’s investigation for some time and allowed him to proceed. Justice Minister Heiko Maas only distanced himself from Range after the announcement of the investigation provoked sharp reactions in the public and the press.

The attorney general, however, was not prepared to be held back by the justice minister, though he is subject to the justice ministry’s supervision and the justice minister bears the political responsibility for his work. At the press conference he convened on Tuesday morning, Range issued an open challenge to the minister. This amounted to an act of insubordination by a state official to the elected government.

Range accused Maas of “intolerable interference” in the independence of the judiciary. It was unacceptable that “influence is exerted on investigations because their possible outcome appears politically inopportune”, he said. Freedom of the press and of expression are “not unlimited,” Range said, adding that it was the task of the judiciary to ensure that journalists complied with the law.

A state where the judiciary controls the media and ensures that the machinations of the secret services and the military remain secret is not democratic, but authoritarian. If it was down to Range, Maassen and their defenders, journalists like Carl von Ossietzky, who in 1931 revealed to the world details of the German army’s illegal rearmament, would once again land up behind bars—as happened at that time.

As a leading jurist, Range knew that his public assault on the government would result in his dismissal. He took this into account, aiming to set an example, foment a public campaign and encourage others to do the same. He has been successful, to some extent.

While most of the media has tried to downplay the significance of Range’s provocation and dismiss it as merely an internal bureaucratic conflict, the newspaper Die Welt has risen to Range’s defense and praised his behavior. The paper praised him as an example of “a free spirit, who is at the end of his career and refuses to buckle down,” and “the independence of political officials who do not tremble like cowards when confronted with the royal throne.”

The paper, owned by the right-wing Springer publishing house, bluntly spelled out the issues. “The natural tension between freedom of the press and the secret needs of the state must be re-adjusted in an epoch of whistle-blowing and its distorted view of the world”, it wrote. That is, freedom of the press must give way to the security priorities of the state.

The German Association of Judges (DRB) is also backing Range, and launched an attack on the justice minister. “It is unacceptable that the justice minister directly asserts his influence in the affair simply because the possible outcome of an investigation appears politically inopportune,” wrote Christoph Frank, the chairman of the judges association in Berlin. He alleged that the response of Justice Minister Maas discredited the work of the prosecutor’s office and undermined public confidence in the objective legal process.

The fact that the German Association of Judges equates the persecution of a blog which criticises the state with “objective legal process”, demonstrates that it has never broken with its vile historical traditions.

In its over one hundred year history, it has repeatedly supported authoritarian measures. In 1933, the organisation welcomed the elimination of the Weimar Republic and merged seamlessly into the Nazi Jurists association. After its reorganisation in 1945, it ensured that virtually all the members of the Nazi judiciary escaped answering for their crimes. Instead, most former Nazi judges and legal officials were able to continue their careers undisturbed in post-war West Germany.

Up to 700 refugees were on board a fishing boat that capsized 15 nautical miles off the Libyan coast on Wednesday. More than 200 are feared drowned. According to the Italian coast guard, around 400 people were rescued, while 26 bodies were recovered from the sea so far. One hundred refugees were below deck at the time and likely went down with the ship.

The small, overloaded fishing boat was caught in heavy seas and sent out a Mayday call. When the Irish coastguard ship LE subsequently approached the boat, several refugees apparently rushed to one side of the boat, causing it to capsize.

“It was a horrific sight,” said Juan Matias, coordinator of Doctors without Borders who was on the ship Dignity I, which also came to the assistance of the refugees. “People desperately clutching life belts, boats and anything, fighting for their lives among the drowning and those who were already dead.”

Dignity I received the call from the coastguard just as it was saving 100 refugees from another fishing boat that was in difficulty. “The fact that we were first called to assist this boat and then shortly afterwards sent to another one highlights the severe lack of resources available for rescue operations,” said Matias.

Wednesday’s tragedy was the first such mass drowning since 1,200 refugees lost their lives in a series of boat sinkings in April, prompting the EU to step up patrols on the Mediterranean and threaten air strikes against refugee boats before they left the Libyan coast.

Some 224,000 refugees have crossed the Mediterranean to Europe this year, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees announced Thursday. Italy has registered 97,000 boat refugees and Greece 91,000. One in three refugees traveling by boat comes from Syria, with other main countries of origin including Afghanistan, Eritrea, Somalia and Nigeria.

The death toll among those people desperately trying to reach Europe is shocking. On Tuesday, the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) stated in Geneva that more than 2,000 refugees have lost their lives trying to reach Europe since the beginning of the year.

According to IOM, these figures confirm that “the route across the Mediterranean is the most deadly for migrants,” a development which has intensified over the last six months. In 2014, the attempt to seek protection in Europe from persecution and poverty cost 3,279 refugees their lives.

“It is unacceptable that in the 21st century people fleeing from conflict, persecution, misery and land degradation must endure such terrible experiences in their home countries, not to mention en route, and then die on Europe’s doorstep,”

said IOM Director General William Lacy Swing.

Terrible incidents take place almost daily on the main route across the Mediterranean from Libya to Italy. On July 29, 14 refugees arrived dead in the Sicilian port of Messina, on a ship with 456 survivors. On August 1, a rescue ship from Doctors without Borders discovered five bodies on board a boat transporting 120 refugees.

The loss of life in the Mediterranean is not merely a tragic event, but a crime. The imperialist powers in Europe and the United States bear responsibility for the mass deaths of refugees at sea.

The number of refugees has dramatically increased over the past three years, according to calculations by the UN agency for refugees. Almost 60 million people were on the move in 2014, 40 percent more than in 2011.

The Syrian civil war, which was triggered by the United States and its Arab allies in 2011, and is still raging, has driven more than 3.5 million people over the border. An additional 7.5 million people within Syria have fled their homes.

The NATO-led war against the Gaddafi regime in Libya, which began almost simultaneously, turned more than 1 million people into refugees. A further 500,000 refugees from Syria, Sudan, Eritrea and Somalia are marooned on the Libyan coast, which is now under the control of rival militias, desperately hoping for a place on a boat to Europe.

Hundreds of thousands were forced from their homes as a result of the imperialist wars and subsequent famine crises in the Horn of Africa (Ethiopia, Eritrea and Somalia). The US-led wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have had disastrous consequences for the populations of both countries. In Yemen, the US-aligned Saudi Arabian regime’s bombing raids on the country, using US supplied weapons, together with Washington’s drone war, have forced countless people to flee.

In addition, there are numerous Palestinian refugees who lost their livelihoods in the Israeli war in the Gaza Strip and are effectively imprisoned by the closure of the border by the Israeli government, on one side, and the Egyptian military dictatorship on the other.

In western and central Africa, it is above all the neo-colonial policies of the European powers that have forced thousands to flee from Mali, Mauritania, Central African Republic, Niger and Chad in the face of wars and the plundering of these countries by European companies.

The European Union has responded to this humanitarian catastrophe by pulling up the drawbridge and expanding fortress Europe. The deaths of refugees on the EU’s external borders are meant to serve as a deterrent.

In Greece, Bulgaria, Hungary, and in the Spanish enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla, barriers several metres tall with razor-sharp spikes have been constructed to guard against refugees. In November 2013, the EU began the Eurosur programme for the surveillance of the Mediterranean with drones, satellites and reconnaissance aircraft.

Under pressure from the German government, the military mission conducted by the Italian government, which used warships to search for refugees throughout the Mediterranean, sending them back to Libya, was incorporated into Operation Triton, run by the EU border agency Frontex. The EU states cynically declared that the Italian mission, known as Mare Nostrum, had encouraged too many refugees to travel to Europe.

In response to the two tragedies in April this year, the EU sent additional warships to the Mediterranean. However, these ships were not primarily to focus on rescuing refugees from the sea, but to wage war against “smugglers” as part of the Eunavfor Med mission and destroy refugee boats. In addition, measures were agreed to accelerate the process of deporting refugees back to Africa and the crisis regions of the Middle East.

At the same time, the fight against the “root causes” of migration, proclaimed by the EU, has been revealed as an effort to arm dictatorial regimes in Africa so that they could more effectively prevent their populations from fleeing. The German television programme Monitor reported that Eritrea, Sudan, South Sudan and Egypt have been integrated more closely into the EU border management system through the training of their soldiers.

An earlier article discussed London Guardian revelations about Chicago police operating an “off-the-books (Homan Square) interrogation compound” – a “nondescript warehouse” using “CIA black site” practices.

Police brutality victims are lawlessly arrested, detained, denied access to lawyers, and tortured during secret interrogations. From September 2004 to July 2015, only three arrestees were visited by attorneys.

Unless all others waived their constitutional right, the facts show Chicago police lied saying “any individual who wishes to consult a lawyer will not be interrogated until they have an opportunity to do so.”

An arrestee or person-in-custody will be notified as soon as practicable upon the arrival at the police facility of his or her legal representative.

On August 5, the Guardian published a follow-up article titled “Chicago police detained thousands of black Americans at interrogation facility.”

A Guardian FOIA lawsuit revealed “overwhelming racial disparity” affecting Blacks unfairly, often for alleged offenses too minor to matter, never warranting detention and brutal interrogations.

Over the last decade, the Guardian learned at least 3,621 Americans were abusively detained – 82% were Black. Only three had access to counsel as required by law.

“Despite repeated denials from the Chicago police department that the warehouse is a secretive, off-the-books anomaly, the Homan Square files begin to show how the city’s most vulnerable people get lost in its criminal justice system,” the Guardian explained.

People held at Homan Square have been subsequently charged with everything from ‘drinking alcohol on the public way’ to murder. But the scale of the detentions – and the racial disparity (exposed) – raises the prospect of major civil-rights violations.

Victims were arrested, detained, painfully shackled for long hours or days, and tortured – mostly for possessing small amounts of illicit drugs, minor traffic violations, public urination, driving without a seat belt and other alleged nonviolent offenses at most warranting a reprimand, never harsh treatment.

Over 82% were Black, another 8.5% Caucasian. Over two-thirds of arrests occurred during Rahm Emanuel’s tenure as mayor – former Obama chief of staff/unindicted war criminal waging war on social justice and constitutional law since taking office – reelected in April for a second term, running Chicago more like a tinpot despot than legitimate public official.

One of his many broken campaign pledges was to end Chicago’s dark history of police abuse. With over 2,500 Homan Square victims on his watch, it’s worse than ever. He lied saying city police “follow all the rules” – only their own, enforced overwhelmingly against victimized Blacks.

One was a 42-year-old civil rights activist, said the Guardian (unnamed for his protection) – “abducted by masked officers, shackled, held on false charges and ‘with no food, no water, no access to the outside world’ at the behest of ‘covert operations.’ “

The victim was one of at least 118 others detained at Homan Square since the Guardian broke the Gitmo in Chicago story last March.

Another “young man held at the warehouse for 14 hours without any public listing of his whereabouts, was just shy of his 18th birthday; the courts sentenced him to community service and probation,” the Guardian explained.

An unnamed man not included in FOIA revealed data “said he fled Chicago after resisting police pressure to become an informant during multiple stints inside Homan Square,” the Guardian explained.

City police owned the warehouse since 1995. Records only date from 2004. “(T)hey exclude people eventually released without charge.”

After months of disputing the Guardian’s reporting, the Chicago police only made detailed information available after the Guardian sued them for it. Vast amounts of data documenting the full scope of detentions and interrogations at Homan Square remain undisclosed.

The full horror story remains to be told, if ever. Chicago-based People’s Law Office founder Flint Taylor said he’s “extremely troubled but sadly not shocked at the exceedingly broad scope and fundamentally racist nature of the unconstitutional police conduct at Homan Square that the Guardian’s most recent study documents.”

He was instrumental in pressuring Emanuel to pay reparations to victims of police torture. “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,” he added.

Given the city’s notorious reputation as America’s police repression capital, chances are virtually nil. Tradition dies hard in Chicago. Expect continued police brutality against its most vulnerable residents.

Another victim, unnamed for fear of police retribution, was arrested when plainclothes cops raided his home, discovered a small amount of marijuana and his father’s antique gun “collecting dust in the basement,” he said.

His father and brother were arrested, held for hours abusively at Homan Square handcuffed to a pole – “with no phone or attorney access.”

His father was released. He and his brother underwent further processing at police headquarters. Charged with possession, neither was tried, sentenced or jailed.

Law Professor Craig Futterman said Chicago 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.”

Without it present, they’re vulnerable to unintentional self-incrimination. Anything they say can be used against them – even innocent misinterpreted comments, why lawyers always advise clients to say nothing unless they’re present.

Rahm Emanuel took office in May 2011. He runs Chicago like a police state. About 70% of Homan Square detentions occurred on his watch – overwhelming affecting Black residents.

They’re denied Fifth Amendment Miranda and due process rights, Sixth Amendment right to counsel, and Eighth Amendment protection from cruel and unusual punishment.

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.

The Chinese authorities seized more than 881 pounds of baby milk formula that had been imported from Japan because it had been produced in areas known to be heavily contaminated with radioactive material emitted by three damaged nuclear reactors at the Fukushima-Daiichi complex. China’s Xinhua news agency reported that quarantine officials said that no excessive radioactive material was found in the formula, but the baby food was sent back to Japan because China has had a ban on any imports from the areas around Fukushima.

The July seizure of the Japanese baby formula came just a month after Japan had asked the Chinese to ease restrictions on Japanese food imports. On June 19, Japan’s Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries used a meeting in Beijing to request that the import bans – which still apply to 10 Japanese prefectures – be lifted. According to the South China Morning Post, the Japanese Agricultural Ministry had stressed “the safety of Japanese food.”

The Chinese may have scoffed at the lobbying effort since this is the second time Japanese infant milk formula has been recognized as dangerous by Chinese authorities. In December 2011, traces of cesium-137 was detected in Japanese baby formula. Shortly after, Tokyo-based Meiji Holding Company announced the recall of 400,000 cans of their baby formula as a precaution but said the levels of cesium detected were well below the government’s allowable limits. At the time, in a dubious statement, Meiji officials said, “Babies could still drink the formula every day without any effect on their health.”

Contrary to the clearly uninformed Meiji corporate opinion, many doctors and scientists warn that even the slightest internal radioactive contamination can cause cancer. Dr. John Goffman, Dr. Rosalie Bertell, Dr. Alice Stewart, Dr. Ernest Sternglass, Dr. Jay Gould, Dr. Helen Caldicott, and others, have all promoted the precautionary principle regarding any inhalation or ingestion of radioactive materials.

Scientific evidence indicates that the exposure to radiation suffered by fetuses, infants and children is far more serious than if the same exposure is suffered by adults. Also, the damage done to girls and women by radiation – compared to boys and men – is known to be more severe. The World Health Organization’s 2011 assessment of Fukushima notes that when children are exposed to radiation below the age of five, there is a 70 percent higher risk of cancer for girls than there is for boys.

Feeding radiation-tainted food to the most vulnerable is questionable at best and criminal at worst.

Mary Olson, a senior staff researcher with the Nuclear Information and Resource Service explains,

“If the alpha-emitting particles are hitting tissue from inside the body, estimates indicate that internal alpha particle damage is anywhere from seven to 1000 times more damaging to cell structures than is X-ray [external] exposure. Another way of saying this is that when there is no distance from the source of the alpha or beta particle to its target, the doses to the target are very much higher.”

When it comes to babies ingesting contaminated baby formula, no level is actually safe and this is known throughout scientific circles.

The principle radioactive poison that is being tested for in Japanese foods is cesium-137. Unfortunately, there are also other deadly poisons that have been spewed in lesser amounts by Fukushima disaster. These include americium-241, plutonium-236, uranium-238, thorium-232 and the extremely dangerous isotope, strontium-90. All of these contaminants may also be found in food from Japan, including in baby formula.

In July 2011, Tokyo officials discovered cesium-137 at levels 6.4 times the national limit in beef sold to restaurants and stores in at least five prefectures; in April 2011, radioactive iodine-131 was found in breast milk of mothers east of Tokyo; radioactive tea from Japan was seized in France in July 2011 when it was found with twice the permitted amount of cesium – not that even a trace can be called harmless. The tea had come from Shizuoka Prefecture, 300 miles south of Fukushima.

Image: Daniel Dayan, former chairman of the West Bank settlement council. Photo: Wikimedia Commons

Israel has appointed prominent settler-advocate Dani Dayan as new ambassador to Brazil. Dayan publicly opposes the two-state solution and has previously told the press that ‘those who do are either naive or liars’.

Brazil officially recognized the Palestinian state in December, 2010. However, Brazil has not established full diplomatic ties with Palestinians.

Following the disproportionate use of force during the Israeli offensive in Gaza in July 2014, Brazil called back its ambassador in Tel Aviv for consultation. This prompted Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor to lament Brazil’s decision and call it a “diplomatic dwarf” and an “irrelevant diplomatic partner”.

Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu confirmed Dayan’s appointment on Twitter:

Argentina native, Dani Dayan, 59, acts as foreign envoy of the Yesha Council, an organization formed to promote Jewish settlement in the West Bank and, before 2005, in the Gaza Strip as well. He served as chairman of the organization between 2007 and 2013. In 2012, he signed an op-ed in the New York Times titled “Settlers are here to stay”, in which he argued Israel “legitimately seized” the West Bank and the Gaza Strip in 1967 and has a “moral claim” to these areas:

Giving up this land in the name of a hallowed two-state solution would mean rewarding those who’ve historically sought to destroy Israel, a manifestly immoral outcome.[…] The insertion of an independent Palestinian state between Israel and Jordan would be a recipe for disaster. The influx of hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees from Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and elsewhere would convert the new state into a hotbed of extremism. […] The American government and its European allies should abandon this failed formula once and for all and accept that the Jewish residents of Judea and Samaria are not going anywhere.

Dayan publicly opposes the violent attacks carried out by Israeli extremist settlers, such as the attack last week which left an eighteen-month-old Palestinian baby dead and his family injured. He says these attacks threatens the settler movement’s credibility. For Israeli non-profit Peace Now Director Yariv Oppenheimer, who advocates for a two-state solution, Dayan became a sort of ‘rational face’ of the settler movement. He told Forward.com last year:

He has the same agenda as the most fanatic, right wing settlers. But he has this ability to hide it and to speak with the public with a much more sensible argument and a much more moderate image.

Shock of all shocks, the IMF announced the Chinese yuan will not be admitted into the SDR until at least Sept. 2016.

What exactly does this mean? I can tell you the gold community is so shell shocked and fearful at this point, it “must be bad for gold”, right?

Going back a couple of weeks, China announced they had accumulated another 600 tons or so of gold to the near panic of precious metals investors. This announcement would be used as another shot at taking price down because the Chinese “don’t like gold as much as we thought”. This was the prevailing sentiment.

What I think happened was China played “good boy” with the West and lied about their gold holdings. They announced enough gold to allow them into “the club” but not so much as to “offend” or intimidate anyone in the West. Their announcement was clearly bogus as they are importing 600 tons every three months …and we are to believe it took them six years? China had requested both “publicly and officially” to be included in the SDR. They were publicly humiliated with this move by the IMF. The Chinese are a very proud people, public humiliation would be last on my list of aggressions toward them!

Make no mistake, they will retaliate. I believe just as the IMF did this while China is having market problems and during a period of weakness, China will return the favor to the U.S. …at a very inopportune time for us. When our markets are convulsing, probably this fall, you can expect one of two responses from the Chinese. They will either come public with a true and VERY LARGE number for their gold holdings, or they will threaten to and actually dump some Treasury securities/dollar holdings…or both! I believe their response will be timed to hit us just as in a boxing match, when we are tired, down or vulnerable …for maximum effect.

Whether you want to believe it or not, the U.S. is in a financial war with nearly the rest of the entire world. To not include a rising China into the SDR makes no sense and is an impossible feat in the long term unless China decides it is not their desire. I see no upside whatsoever to this action. Does it “buy time” and postpone the inevitable? Maybe not. The action of poking the hornets nest may actually accelerate the collapse!

There are other possibilities but looking at the two retaliatory options mentioned above, what could result? First, were China to come clean and “admit” they have 10,000 tons of gold (or MUCH MORE), the yuan would immediately strengthen and move into the dollar’s territory as a settlement currency. Markets would quickly do the math and understand if China has this much gold …where oh where did it come from? China could even do an audit publicly and count the bars out in the open surroundings of their Olympic stadium in a “we’ve shown you ours, now you show us yours” fashion!

The other possibility comes with an “option A or B” for the Fed. If the Chinese decided to sell some of their Treasury holdings, could the Fed sit idly by? Option A, the Fed could let the market absorb the dumped Treasuries and allow interest rates to rise and watch as bond prices crater. This is not much of an option, especially in a world where all prices are generated and created “officially”. On the other hand, option B would be FORCED MONETIZATION! The Fed could decide they had to buy any and all Treasuries offered by China. I believe this is exactly what the Fed will decide they MUST do.

Not coincidentally, the Chinese know this. They also understand by using this tactic, they will be forcing the Federal Reserve to create an “exit door” especially for …and because of them. This is the reverse of the old story, if you owe the bank $1 million they own you, if you owe $1 billion then you own the bank. You see, in this instance the Chinese have a direct lever on our credit markets. It would be bad enough if they could control our interest rates which they certainly can now influence. What makes this really bad is they can FORCE the Fed to either monetize or face the immediate collapse of credit markets and thus all markets. As I mentioned above, the Chinese will not do this until the time is right. The time will “be right” when our markets display weakness. They will smile while doing this and politely (publicly) restore honor and dignity.

Before finishing and as long as we are talking about financial “war”, let’s briefly look at Russia. The U.S. and NATO are now crossing some very red lines in the sand when it comes to both Ukraine and Syria. Trainings and war games are taking place in western Ukraine while the U.S. is and has authorized airstrikes (with Israeli assistance) against Syria. Mr. Putin has said in no uncertain terms he will not allow the slaughter of Russians in Ukraine. He has also stated numerous times he will not stand by idly should allies Syria or Iran be attacked http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-08-04/russia-ready-send-paratroopers-syria . These are all very real sparks in the dry tinder of current geopolitics.

The question you need to ask yourself is this, do you really believe the current fairy tale pricing of assets, ALL ASSETS will hold during a financial war with China? Or during a real war with Russia? This is not fear mongering, it is what’s on our dinner table!

Shock of all shocks, the IMF announced the Chinese yuan will not be admitted into the SDR until at least Sept. 2016.

What exactly does this mean? I can tell you the gold community is so shell shocked and fearful at this point, it “must be bad for gold”, right?

Going back a couple of weeks, China announced they had accumulated another 600 tons or so of gold to the near panic of precious metals investors. This announcement would be used as another shot at taking price down because the Chinese “don’t like gold as much as we thought”. This was the prevailing sentiment.

What I think happened was China played “good boy” with the West and lied about their gold holdings. They announced enough gold to allow them into “the club” but not so much as to “offend” or intimidate anyone in the West. Their announcement was clearly bogus as they are importing 600 tons every three months …and we are to believe it took them six years? China had requested both “publicly and officially” to be included in the SDR. They were publicly humiliated with this move by the IMF. The Chinese are a very proud people, public humiliation would be last on my list of aggressions toward them!

Make no mistake, they will retaliate. I believe just as the IMF did this while China is having market problems and during a period of weakness, China will return the favor to the U.S. …at a very inopportune time for us. When our markets are convulsing, probably this fall, you can expect one of two responses from the Chinese. They will either come public with a true and VERY LARGE number for their gold holdings, or they will threaten to and actually dump some Treasury securities/dollar holdings…or both! I believe their response will be timed to hit us just as in a boxing match, when we are tired, down or vulnerable …for maximum effect.

Whether you want to believe it or not, the U.S. is in a financial war with nearly the rest of the entire world. To not include a rising China into the SDR makes no sense and is an impossible feat in the long term unless China decides it is not their desire. I see no upside whatsoever to this action. Does it “buy time” and postpone the inevitable? Maybe not. The action of poking the hornets nest may actually accelerate the collapse!

There are other possibilities but looking at the two retaliatory options mentioned above, what could result? First, were China to come clean and “admit” they have 10,000 tons of gold (or MUCH MORE), the yuan would immediately strengthen and move into the dollar’s territory as a settlement currency. Markets would quickly do the math and understand if China has this much gold …where oh where did it come from? China could even do an audit publicly and count the bars out in the open surroundings of their Olympic stadium in a “we’ve shown you ours, now you show us yours” fashion!

The other possibility comes with an “option A or B” for the Fed. If the Chinese decided to sell some of their Treasury holdings, could the Fed sit idly by? Option A, the Fed could let the market absorb the dumped Treasuries and allow interest rates to rise and watch as bond prices crater. This is not much of an option, especially in a world where all prices are generated and created “officially”. On the other hand, option B would be FORCED MONETIZATION! The Fed could decide they had to buy any and all Treasuries offered by China. I believe this is exactly what the Fed will decide they MUST do.

Not coincidentally, the Chinese know this. They also understand by using this tactic, they will be forcing the Federal Reserve to create an “exit door” especially for …and because of them. This is the reverse of the old story, if you owe the bank $1 million they own you, if you owe $1 billion then you own the bank. You see, in this instance the Chinese have a direct lever on our credit markets. It would be bad enough if they could control our interest rates which they certainly can now influence. What makes this really bad is they can FORCE the Fed to either monetize or face the immediate collapse of credit markets and thus all markets. As I mentioned above, the Chinese will not do this until the time is right. The time will “be right” when our markets display weakness. They will smile while doing this and politely (publicly) restore honor and dignity.

Before finishing and as long as we are talking about financial “war”, let’s briefly look at Russia. The U.S. and NATO are now crossing some very red lines in the sand when it comes to both Ukraine and Syria. Trainings and war games are taking place in western Ukraine while the U.S. is and has authorized airstrikes (with Israeli assistance) against Syria. Mr. Putin has said in no uncertain terms he will not allow the slaughter of Russians in Ukraine. He has also stated numerous times he will not stand by idly should allies Syria or Iran be attacked http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-08-04/russia-ready-send-paratroopers-syria . These are all very real sparks in the dry tinder of current geopolitics.

The question you need to ask yourself is this, do you really believe the current fairy tale pricing of assets, ALL ASSETS will hold during a financial war with China? Or during a real war with Russia? This is not fear mongering, it is what’s on our dinner table!

And so it begins. The first official airstrike was carried out by a U.S. drone that targeted ISIS strongholds inside Syrian territory. “A US drone today carried out one air strike in Syria near Raqa,” according to the Agence France-Presse (AFP). The Obama administration declared an air assault on the Islamic State through an “ISIL Free Zone” with Turkey along its border with Syria. It can be considered the start of another U.S. led war in an effort to remove Syrian President Bashar al-Assad from power.

What is slightly different about this latest attempt by the Pentagon is that the “new” Syrian rebels are trained to pinpoint certain ISIS targets within Syrian borders, but can also direct targets against Syrian government forces. At least 30 U.S. fighter jets are expected to arrive in the Incirlik airbase in southern Turkey to assist the Syrian rebels according to various reports. Washington’s plan was reported by The Wall Street Journal last February:

The U.S. has decided to provide pickup trucks equipped with mounted machine guns and radios for calling in U.S. airstrikes to some moderate Syrian rebels, seeking to replicate the success Kurdish forces, aided by American B-1B bombers, had over Islamic State last month.

The plan comes as the U.S. prepares to start training moderate rebels, who are waging a two-front fight against the extremists and Syrian regime forces. Defense officials said American trainers will be in place March 1 in Jordan, with a second site due to open soon after in Turkey

Now the Syrian rebels are ready to assist U.S. forces according to the Pentagon’s online news source ‘Stars and Stripes’, the Syrian rebels will be able to conduct communications with U.S. fighter jets from the ground to locate ISIS or Syrian government forces for airstrikes:

While offensive U.S. and coalition airstrikes in Syria will be limited to Islamic State targets, the New Syrian Forces “could potentially face a broader range of threats,” said Pentagon spokesman Navy Capt. Jeff Davis. “For defensive purposes, we will help defend them from other sources of threats”

“Other sources of threats” simply means Syrian government forces. The article reflects that the pentagon’s recruits were intent on removing President Bashar al-Assad from the start since “Many of the potential fighters are committed to defeating the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad, which the U.S. has been careful to say it is not trying to do.”

In a geopolitical sense, it’s an open invitation to war against Syria. The Syrian rebels fight against ISIS is just a smokescreen. Washington and Tel Aviv want Assad removed from power by any means (Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi was murdered by U.S. backed forces). Even prominent Israeli officials prefer “al-Qaeda” instead of Assad as reported by The Algemeiner, a Jewish news source based in the U.S. “According to Israel Hayom, senior Israeli officials were quoted as saying that “al-Qaeda control over Syria would be preferable to a victory by Assad over the rebels.” The reasoning behind such statements is that Assad is a close ally to Iran. Former Israeli ambassador to the U.S. Michael Oren was also quoted as saying in a 2013 Jerusalem Post interview that

“The initial message about the Syrian issue was that we always wanted [President] Bashar Assad to go, we always preferred the bad guys who weren’t backed by Iran to the bad guys who were backed by Iran.”

Yes, the bad guys who are not backed by Iran is ISIS, al-Nusra, al-Qaeda and other newly created terrorist networks funded and trained by the U.S. and Israeli intelligence agencies with support from Turkey and Saudi Arabia.

American and Israeli politicians including President Barack Obama have repeatedly called for Assad’s removal which is Washington’s main objective. ISIS is a useful tool against all U.S. and Israeli enemies including Iran and Hezbollah. Hezbollah has been confronted by ISIS militants this past June in the Northeast border town of Ras Baalbek according to the Lebanese-based newspaper ‘The Daily Star’:

“ISIS militants attacked four Hezbollah posts on the outskirts of the northeastern border town of Ras Baalbek Tuesday in a failed bid to capture two hills, sparking intense clashes that killed a number of jihadis, Al-Manar reported.”

So let me get this straight. ISIS is a threat to the entire Middle East and U.S. interests, yet ISIS attacks the sworn enemies of the U.S. and Israel including Hezbollah. The “new” Syrian rebels will be focusing on ISIS targets in Syria but the U.S. will defend its newly trained Syrian rebels from Assad’s forces which are fighting the same enemy. A confrontation between all parties involved including the U.S., Assad’s forces, the Syrian rebels and ISIS is obviously inevitable. The Washington Examiner reported in 2014 that Republican Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham who are senior members on the Senate Armed Services Committee prefer that the Syrian rebels attack both ISIS and the Assad government:

If the administration hopes to succeed in its mission, it must implement a comprehensive strategy that targets both [the Islamic State] and the Assad regime,” the pair said. “The Syrian people should not be forced to choose between terrorists or dictators”

The new military objectives are to hit Syrian government troops and institutions. In the middle of this chaos, the Obama administration made a deal with Iran concerning its nuclear program last month in Vienna. The irony is that Iran is Syria’s close ally.

The U.S. wants Assad removed to weaken Iran’s influence in the region. ISIS, al-Qaeda and every other terror groups created serve a useful purpose and that purpose is to fight, disrupt and divide the Arab world for its vast natural resources and for U.S. arms manufacturers to profit from the lucrative war industry. It is a careless foreign policy right out of Washington that can lead to a greater war in the Middle East.

Israel’s leaders hold the country out as a democracy … just like the U.S.

Of course, America is officially no longer a democracy … as wealth is so concentrated that it has broken the political system.

The same thing is true in Israel …

Lior Akerman – former Brigadier General and division head in the Shin Bet (Israel’s Security Agency) – writes in the Jerusalem Post that Israel has never been a democracy.

Forbes Israel warned of oligarchy in 2006.

In 2012, Amir Owen  wrote in Haaretz:

Since last week, Israel has been governed by an oligarchy. These are self-styled lords of the manor who have power over civil and military sectors, and share the spoils of rule between themselves. The subjects can talk, but have no influence. Israel has been transformed from the only democracy in the region, to a democracy where power is held by only a few.

Bloomberg noted in 2013 “Israelis rise up against the oligarchs“.

Alternet noted in 2013:

Most Americans probably don’t know that the 2nd most unequal “rich” country is the close ally and client state of Israel, whose own oligarchs own a significant slice of the Israeli economy.

***

Most Americans probably don’t know that the 2nd most unequal “rich” country is the close ally and client state of Israel, whose own oligarchs own a significant slice of the Israeli economy.

***

About 21 percent of Israelis live in poverty, the highest among developed countries that are part of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

And the Israeli people’s anger is increasingly being directed at the Israeli tycoons that hold an immense amount of wealth. Ordinary Israelis see the oligarchs as a testament to the vast gulf between the very rich and the rest of Israel. For many, inequality is the main economic issue in the country. But the Israeli economy didn’t always have such striking inequality. The country was a lot more equal when it was operating on a more social democratic model—at least for Jews—in the decades after 1948.

Today, about 20 Israeli families control a disproportionate amount of the Israeli economy. The families, whose holdings span the gamut of the Israeli economy, lay claim to about half the Israeli stock market and own one in four Israeli firms, according to the Financial Times. In 2010, a parliamentary report found that 10 business groups, most of them owned by wealthy families, control 30 percent of the market value of public companies. The families have holdings in real estate, financial services, supermarkets, the airline industry, telecommunications and more.

***

What it all adds up to is an oligarchy, a system where a tiny slice of Israelis maintain a stranglehold over much of the Israeli economy.

These facts are no shock to Israelis. They live it everyday, made all the more apparent by the high cost of housing. The government has taken a keen interest in the problem, particularly since massive protests sparked by the high cost of living and inequality. They’ve convened committees, like the Knesset committee on economic concentration, established in 2010.

A report from that committee singled out business groups that control both financial and non-financial companies. In November 2013, Israeli Prime Minister BenjaminNetanyahu criticized the high level of concentration in the economy. “The primary factor in the lack of competition in Israel is economic concentration fostered by cartels or the monopolistic behavior of wealthy individuals,” Netanyahu told the Israel Democracy Institute. The OECD has also singled out Israel’s concentration of wealth as a problem to be addressed.

***

The oligarchs‘ immense power, and the inequality that accompanies their economic might, stands in sharp contrast to what some Americans believe about the Israeli economy. In the American imagination, Israel’s economy is a high-tech paradise. Books like Start-Up Nation: The Story of Israel’s Economic Miracle have cemented that image.

Paul Krugman pointed out in March:

Israel is now right up there with America as one of the most unequal societies in the advanced world. And Israel’s experience shows that this matters, that extreme inequality has a corrosive effect on social and political life.

***

According to Luxembourg Income Study data, the share of Israel’s population living on less than half the country’s median income — a widely accepted definition of relative poverty — more than doubled, to 20.5 percent from 10.2 percent, between 1992 and 2010. The share of children in poverty almost quadrupled, to 27.4 percent from 7.8 percent. Both numbers are the worst in the advanced world, by a large margin.

And when it comes to children, in particular, relative poverty is the right concept. Families that live on much lower incomes than those of their fellow citizens will, in important ways, be alienated from the society around them, unable to participate fully in the life of the nation. Children growing up in such families will surely be placed at a permanent disadvantage.

At the other end, while the available data — puzzlingly — don’t show an especially large share of income going to the top 1 percent, there is an extreme concentration of wealth and power among a tiny group of people at the top. And I mean tiny. According to the Bank of Israel, roughly 20 families control companies that account for half the total value of Israel’s stock market.

***

Meanwhile, Israel’s oligarchs owe their position not to innovation and entrepreneurship but to their families’ success in gaining control of businesses that the government privatized in the 1980s — and they arguably retain that position partly by having undue influence over government policy, combined with control of major banks.

In short, the political economy of the promised land is now characterized by harshness at the bottom and at least soft corruption at the top. And many Israelis see Mr. Netanyahu as part of the problem.

Professor Shelly Gottfried owrote in March :

Israel’s economy and regulatory apparatus, which has become increasingly captured by special interest groups over the past two decades, enabled the rise of an Israelioligarchy comprising just ten pyramidal business groups, controlled by individuals or families – and affiliated professionals, such as accountants, lobbyists, lawyers, managers, consultants and other businessmen and business groups.

This oligarchy, whose power is embedded by the big banks, controls substantial shares of the market economy and the public’s financial assets, managing tight relations with state agents. It is further linked to other powerful monopolies in the public sector.

And it’s not only Israel’s oligarchs who have skewed Israeli’s political system … it’s also Americanoligarchs.

Hiroshima signalled a breach in war, radical in its annihilating scope, and merciless in its existential fury.  At the time, there was an almost desperate attempt on the part of the military establishment to normalise its use – in truth, the world war had hollowed out the very meaning of civilian protection. Total war also meant total death, and even if tens of thousands perished in the month of August in the two atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, tens of thousands had done so previously in fire bombing.  Charred remains were the order of the day.

Hardened to war, the hardliners in the Japanese military regime did not feel much for those civilians who had perished as the fodder of mass modern war.  Even on the morning of August 15, some 1,000 soldiers embroiled themselves in a foiled coup attempt to prevent the surrender broadcast of Emperor Hirohito from being sent out.

Hiroshima’s destruction took place amidst a numbers game, a crude battle of hypotheticals and arithmetic astrology.  How many American soldiers, for instance, might have perished in an invasion of the southern Japanese island of Kyushu?  Operation Olympic’s projections varied, from 40,000 to 300,000.  General George C. Marshall, as Admiral Leahy noted, told a White House meeting that American casualties would not exceed 63,000 for the Operation against southern Kyushu. But doubts remained – it might be much higher.

Secretary of the Navy James Forrestal explained the calculus operating in his mind at the time:  “We cannot go from Iwo to Iwo. We must find a formula to gain peace without this frightful bloodshed.”  The sentiment was repeated in aJune 18 meeting at the White House between the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Secretaries of War and Navy and President Harry S. Truman.  Truman had a pressing nightmare he wanted to avoid – that of “an Okinawa from one end of Japan to another.”

Truman would subsequently vary the number of potential American losses in such an invasion.  This inflation, evidenced by the drafts of his evolving memoirs, had a curious effect of not merely sanitising the use of the atomic weapons, but of humanising it.  (Even then, he was happy to point the finger of inspiration to Marshall, who “told me that it might cost half-a-million American lives to force the enemy’s surrender.”)

The salvaging qualities of the weapon were extolled; the victims were effectively silenced.  Even former Secretary of War, Henry Stimson, would bandy about a figure as high as a million.  This was the confetti of justification cast after the fact.

Such a history, which is, in a sense, an anti-history, is by its nature selfish. The historiography of the noble atomic bomb reads like sentimental kitsch and acceptable pornographic violence.  Bullies know best.  In 1981 historian Paul Fussell urged a narrowing of the bomb’s global consequences with a studied yet emotional myopia which insisted on the military significance of saving American lives.  He shifted the focus to the soldier, the American private away from home whose life could be spared by the use of the weapon.

Other narratives were submerged. The overall strategic dimension of the bomb’s use to stem Soviet influence in the region, to fire a robustly lethal shot across the bows to signal Washington’s power in a post-war world, would only start to come through with the New Left push in the 1960s.  Within Japan, the cult of the survivor was also developing, drawing upon something of a false innocence.  Victimhood does have its political advantages, and militarists found themselves transformed into profiteers of that legacy. Having lost the war, they would busy themselves winning the peace.

The great casualties remained, as ever, the civilians.  The survivors, or the hibakusha, suffered a double exclusion: from their own communities, where they had become scarred freaks of circumstance, casualties of war’s merciless toll; and, at least initially, from the historical record which proved assiduously selective.

Even after the use of the weapons, the US administration in occupation refused to disseminate information about the effects of atomic warfare.  Japanese doctors were left in the dark of a military medical nightmare.  John Hersey’s descriptions of the Hiroshima bomb in the New Yorker were censored by the occupation sentinels.  As Ian Buruma notes, “Films and photographs of the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, as well as medical data, were confiscated by American authorities” (New York Times, Jul 28).

The salvaging credentials of atomic warfare became noble even to victims.  In using such weapons, the military industrial establishment would be doing its bit for merciful killing.  General Leslie Groves, the director of the Manhattan Project which had been instrumental in putting together the atomic weapon, told the US Senate that death from radiation occurred “without undue suffering” being, in fact, “a very pleasant way to die.”  Even today, this reads like the grandest of apologias for mass murder, inflicted with appropriate pleasantness.

From Rotterdam to Nagasaki, the Second World War was characterised by the collusive mass criminality of aerial bombing. The most fascinating feature of it was that it evaded the prosecutor’s books at Nuremberg and Tokyo.  All sides had dabbled, if not happy engaged in it, levelling entire cities, often gratuitously.  It was the single most overt effort of employing the technological means of military forces against urban populations.  The lenses of Hiroshima, for that reason, are broad, and its impact, cast over the decades, permanent.

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

The Arab League’s “Arab Peace Initiative Committee” has called for Jewish settlers and their organisations to be placed on terrorist lists and prosecuted in international courts for their crimes.

According to a report by Anadolu, the committee also called for regional and international discussions for a new draft resolution by the UN Security Council about the terrorism by Israeli settlers against the Palestinians. The draft requests the council to bear its responsibility for bringing an end to Israeli settlement building in the land earmarked for the state of Palestine, especially in occupied East Jerusalem.

While the Arab League affiliate called for support for the measures claimed to be taken by Palestine to file a complaint to the International Criminal Court in the wake of the arson attack which burnt a Palestinian baby alive last week, it also called for international protection for the Palestinians living under Israeli occupation.

However, the London-based Palestinian Affairs Centre (PAC) has pointed out that the Palestinian Authority has not lodged a complaint against Israeli settlers with the ICC.

“The ICC is in summer recess from 16 July until 10 August,” explained Ibrahim Hamami. The head of the PAC said that the ICC does not accept any complaints during this time. As such, he believes that the PA is “lying” about this issue. In any case, he added, the ICC does not accept complaints about issues like this due to its lack of jurisdiction on such matters.

Meanwhile, the Arab Peace Initiative Committee called for the Palestinian factions to form a national unity government to be able to tackle the challenges facing the Palestinian cause and to hold elections. It also expressed concern about the financial crisis gripping the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees, UNRWA.

Image: US military bases in Okinawa

Japan is living under the shadow of US militarism, write Taisuke Komatsu & Semanur Karaman – and most of all in Okinawa, the nation’s southernmost archipelago. Against overwhelming local opposition but backed by Japan’s government, the US is building a new military base that is seizing land and threatens the unique ecology of Oura Bay with its seagrass beds, dugongs and coral reefs.

The history of Okinawa, a group of small islands located in the East China Sea, is not known to many.

Before it was forcibly annexed by the Japanese government in 1879 through military force, the islands were independently governed under theRyukyu Kingdom.

The archipelago housed diverse religions and languages, and enjoyed its strategic trading location between Japan, Taiwan, the Chinese mainland and the Philippines.

US Marines in amphibious assault vehicles taking part in a US military exercise in Oura Bay, Okinawa, Japan, 2nd November 2014 Photo: Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Raul Moreno Jr. / US Navy via Flickr (CC BY-SA).

As the vastly unique culture and religions which had existed since 1429 was halted through Japanese colonization, assimilation policies were imposed on the people of Okinawa, including a ban on using indigenous languages and practicing religious and other forms of cultural tradition.

Okinawa was ordered to serve important strategic purposes for the Japanese government during the Pacific War. In addition to approximately 80,000 soldiers from outside Okinawa, 25,000 adults and teenagers including boys and girls under 18 years old were recruited locally to protect the interests and ensure the safety of mainland Japan.

The legacy of war: a strong desire for sustainable peace

Of the 1,888,136 people who were killed in the Battle of Okinawa, a quarter of the death toll was the local population. Inevitably, this left strong resentment among the locals and a strong desire for sustainable peace. The people of Okinawa no longer wanted to be sacrificed for Japanese or US military interests.

Currently, 74% of the entire US military presence is situated in Okinawa, even though Okinawa only comprises 0.6% of Japan’s total land area.

During the period following the Pacific war, Okinawa, which came under US control for 20 years until 1972, witnessed an escalation of human rights abuses. The land of the locals was confiscated to build military bases and facilities. Women and children were reportedly raped, and a disturbing number of locals were killed by US soldiers or in US aircraft crashes.

The victims of grave human rights violations were hardly given any justice under the foreign administration, which escalated the locals’ bitter feelings towards the US military bases.

Since 1972, despite demands from the local population for self-determination, Okinawa is by law Japanese territory, and the US continues to enjoy a strong military presence there through bilateral agreements with the central government. What is of grave concern is that, in order to protect US interests in East Asia, the Japanese government has agreed to extend this presence by establishing a new military base.

Fierce local resistance to further militarisation

The people of Okinawa are furious. They have not forgotten about the kidnapping, rape and murder of a 13 year old girl in 1995 by three US soldiers. This has also triggered a strong opposition campaign against the Futenma Air Station, “the most dangerous air station in the world”, located in the middle of a populated residential area including a university campus.

Eventually, the Japanese and US governments agreed to relocate the Futenma Air Station. Yet their latest decision again outraged the people of Okinawa, since it plans to build a new military base in Okinawa, ignoring the people’s will to decrease the heavy military presence.

Henoko, a suburb in northern Okinawa, was chosen to construct this highly controversial base. Its Oura Bay hosts a diverse ecological system of dugongs’ sea grass beds and corals. The proposed military base will be the largest US military base in East Asia and will have an adverse impact on the ecological balance of the island, while taking more land away from the locals.

To stop the construction plan, environmental and peace activists and concerned citizens are staging protests on and off shore. The survey conducted by a local newspaper and TV corporation in May 2015 shows that 77.2% of respondents oppose the construction plan, while 83% demand relocation outside Okinawa.

In its annual international 2014 report, Amnesty International reports that “Japan continued to move away from international human rights standards.” Coupled with the increasing US military presence, the right to freedom of expression and assembly in Okinawa is severely violated.

On 17th May 2015, thousands of protestors took to the streets carrying “Get out! Don’t kill! Don’t die”, “Don’t destroy nature” and “Get out Marines” posters while images of Japanese police dragging protestors exercising their most fundamental right to peaceful protest were circulated in the social media.

Railroading democratic freedoms

Freedom of expression is also constrained by the many slanderous statements of government officials addressing news outlets critical of the Japanese government’s plan to build an additional military base.

The Okinawa Times and Ryukyu Shimpo, two daily newspapers in Okinawa highly critical of the plan to establish an additional military base were targeted by lawmakers of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP). On 25th June, referring to the two newspapers, Naoki Hyakuta, a writer and former governor of NHK (Japan Broadcasting Corporation), said they “must be closed down by any available means” in a workshop of LDP lawmakers.

Although dominant capital is favouring the construction of the US military base, local politicians in Okinawa convey a different sentiment. In a speech delivered on June 23, the governor of Okinawa, Takeshi Onaga, said that he hoped that the Japanese government will cancel its plan to extend a US military presence in Okinawa because

“it is impossible to build a cornerstone of peace if freedom, equality, human rights and democracy are not guaranteed equally for all citizens.”

Although the Japanese government holds the primary responsibility for ensuring an effective and democratic response to the legitimate demands of citizens of Okinawa, the international community bears responsibility too.

It is time international human rights mechanisms, including the UN, take concrete action to end the decades of suffering imposed through military ambitions on Okinawa.

And it is time activists across the globe extended solidarity to those protesting to prevent the construction of a new military base in Okinawa and struggling for full control over their land and livelihood despite the Japanese government’s hostile attitude towards any form of dissent.

Taisuke Komatsu is a human rights advocate from Japan currently working as the UN Advocacy Coordinator of the International Movement Against All Forms of Discrimination and Racism (IMADR). Before joining IMADR, he worked at Good Neighbors Japan (Tokyo), René Cassin (London, UK), Minority Rights Group International (London, UK) and Amnesty International Japan (Tokyo). He holds a masters degree in Theory and Practice of Human Rights from the University of Essex in the UK.

Semanur Karaman is a feminist activist from Turkey. Prior to joining AWID she worked as a Policy and Advocacy Officer at the global civil society organization CIVICUS and a researcher for the local Turkish NGO Third Sector Foundation of Turkey. Sema also has experience in working as a Parliamentary Assistant at the UK Parliament. an MA in Human Rights and Cultural Diversity at the University of Essex and a fellowship on Public Policy and Democracy at the London School of Economics.

Image: US military bases in Okinawa

Japan is living under the shadow of US militarism, write Taisuke Komatsu & Semanur Karaman – and most of all in Okinawa, the nation’s southernmost archipelago. Against overwhelming local opposition but backed by Japan’s government, the US is building a new military base that is seizing land and threatens the unique ecology of Oura Bay with its seagrass beds, dugongs and coral reefs.

The history of Okinawa, a group of small islands located in the East China Sea, is not known to many.

Before it was forcibly annexed by the Japanese government in 1879 through military force, the islands were independently governed under theRyukyu Kingdom.

The archipelago housed diverse religions and languages, and enjoyed its strategic trading location between Japan, Taiwan, the Chinese mainland and the Philippines.

US Marines in amphibious assault vehicles taking part in a US military exercise in Oura Bay, Okinawa, Japan, 2nd November 2014 Photo: Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Raul Moreno Jr. / US Navy via Flickr (CC BY-SA).

As the vastly unique culture and religions which had existed since 1429 was halted through Japanese colonization, assimilation policies were imposed on the people of Okinawa, including a ban on using indigenous languages and practicing religious and other forms of cultural tradition.

Okinawa was ordered to serve important strategic purposes for the Japanese government during the Pacific War. In addition to approximately 80,000 soldiers from outside Okinawa, 25,000 adults and teenagers including boys and girls under 18 years old were recruited locally to protect the interests and ensure the safety of mainland Japan.

The legacy of war: a strong desire for sustainable peace

Of the 1,888,136 people who were killed in the Battle of Okinawa, a quarter of the death toll was the local population. Inevitably, this left strong resentment among the locals and a strong desire for sustainable peace. The people of Okinawa no longer wanted to be sacrificed for Japanese or US military interests.

Currently, 74% of the entire US military presence is situated in Okinawa, even though Okinawa only comprises 0.6% of Japan’s total land area.

During the period following the Pacific war, Okinawa, which came under US control for 20 years until 1972, witnessed an escalation of human rights abuses. The land of the locals was confiscated to build military bases and facilities. Women and children were reportedly raped, and a disturbing number of locals were killed by US soldiers or in US aircraft crashes.

The victims of grave human rights violations were hardly given any justice under the foreign administration, which escalated the locals’ bitter feelings towards the US military bases.

Since 1972, despite demands from the local population for self-determination, Okinawa is by law Japanese territory, and the US continues to enjoy a strong military presence there through bilateral agreements with the central government. What is of grave concern is that, in order to protect US interests in East Asia, the Japanese government has agreed to extend this presence by establishing a new military base.

Fierce local resistance to further militarisation

The people of Okinawa are furious. They have not forgotten about the kidnapping, rape and murder of a 13 year old girl in 1995 by three US soldiers. This has also triggered a strong opposition campaign against the Futenma Air Station, “the most dangerous air station in the world”, located in the middle of a populated residential area including a university campus.

Eventually, the Japanese and US governments agreed to relocate the Futenma Air Station. Yet their latest decision again outraged the people of Okinawa, since it plans to build a new military base in Okinawa, ignoring the people’s will to decrease the heavy military presence.

Henoko, a suburb in northern Okinawa, was chosen to construct this highly controversial base. Its Oura Bay hosts a diverse ecological system of dugongs’ sea grass beds and corals. The proposed military base will be the largest US military base in East Asia and will have an adverse impact on the ecological balance of the island, while taking more land away from the locals.

To stop the construction plan, environmental and peace activists and concerned citizens are staging protests on and off shore. The survey conducted by a local newspaper and TV corporation in May 2015 shows that 77.2% of respondents oppose the construction plan, while 83% demand relocation outside Okinawa.

In its annual international 2014 report, Amnesty International reports that “Japan continued to move away from international human rights standards.” Coupled with the increasing US military presence, the right to freedom of expression and assembly in Okinawa is severely violated.

On 17th May 2015, thousands of protestors took to the streets carrying “Get out! Don’t kill! Don’t die”, “Don’t destroy nature” and “Get out Marines” posters while images of Japanese police dragging protestors exercising their most fundamental right to peaceful protest were circulated in the social media.

Railroading democratic freedoms

Freedom of expression is also constrained by the many slanderous statements of government officials addressing news outlets critical of the Japanese government’s plan to build an additional military base.

The Okinawa Times and Ryukyu Shimpo, two daily newspapers in Okinawa highly critical of the plan to establish an additional military base were targeted by lawmakers of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP). On 25th June, referring to the two newspapers, Naoki Hyakuta, a writer and former governor of NHK (Japan Broadcasting Corporation), said they “must be closed down by any available means” in a workshop of LDP lawmakers.

Although dominant capital is favouring the construction of the US military base, local politicians in Okinawa convey a different sentiment. In a speech delivered on June 23, the governor of Okinawa, Takeshi Onaga, said that he hoped that the Japanese government will cancel its plan to extend a US military presence in Okinawa because

“it is impossible to build a cornerstone of peace if freedom, equality, human rights and democracy are not guaranteed equally for all citizens.”

Although the Japanese government holds the primary responsibility for ensuring an effective and democratic response to the legitimate demands of citizens of Okinawa, the international community bears responsibility too.

It is time international human rights mechanisms, including the UN, take concrete action to end the decades of suffering imposed through military ambitions on Okinawa.

And it is time activists across the globe extended solidarity to those protesting to prevent the construction of a new military base in Okinawa and struggling for full control over their land and livelihood despite the Japanese government’s hostile attitude towards any form of dissent.

Taisuke Komatsu is a human rights advocate from Japan currently working as the UN Advocacy Coordinator of the International Movement Against All Forms of Discrimination and Racism (IMADR). Before joining IMADR, he worked at Good Neighbors Japan (Tokyo), René Cassin (London, UK), Minority Rights Group International (London, UK) and Amnesty International Japan (Tokyo). He holds a masters degree in Theory and Practice of Human Rights from the University of Essex in the UK.

Semanur Karaman is a feminist activist from Turkey. Prior to joining AWID she worked as a Policy and Advocacy Officer at the global civil society organization CIVICUS and a researcher for the local Turkish NGO Third Sector Foundation of Turkey. Sema also has experience in working as a Parliamentary Assistant at the UK Parliament. an MA in Human Rights and Cultural Diversity at the University of Essex and a fellowship on Public Policy and Democracy at the London School of Economics.

Much of the grim and murky circumstances of the Zionist ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in the late 1940s have gradually been exposed over time. One aspect – rarely researched or deeply discussed – is the internment of thousands of Palestinian civilians within at least 22 Zionist-run concentration and labor camps that existed from 1948 to 1955. Now more is known about the contours of this historical crime, due to the comprehensive research by renowned Palestinian historian Salman Abu Sitta and founding member of the Palestinian resource center BADIL Terry Rempel.

The facts are these.

The study – to be published in the upcoming issue of the Journal of Palestine Studies – relies on almost 500 pages of International Committee of the Red Cross’s (ICRC) reports written during the 1948 war, that were declassified and made available to the public in 1996, and accidentally discovered by one of the authors in 1999.

Civilians captured during the fall of Lydda and Ramle around the time of July 12, 1948 and taken to labour camps. In the July heat they were thirsty and were given a drop of water carried by a child under soldiers’ guard.
(Photo: Salman Abu Sitta, Palestine Land Society)

Furthermore, testimonies of 22 former Palestinian civilian detainees of these camps were collected by the authors, through interviews they conducted themselves in 2002, or documented by others during different moments of time.

With these sources of information, the authors, as they put it, pieced together a clearer story of how Israel captured and imprisoned “thousands of Palestinian civilians as forced laborers,” and exploited them “to support its war-time economy.”

Digging up the crimes

“I came across this piece of history in the 1990s when I was collecting material and documents about Palestinian,” Abu Sitta told Al-Akhbar English. “The more and more you dig, the more you find there are crimes that have taken place that are not reported and not known.”

At that time, Abu Sitta went to Geneva for a week to check out the newly-opened archives of the ICRC. According to him, the archives were opened to the public after accusations that the ICRC had sided with the Nazis during World War II. It was an opportunity that he could not miss in terms of seeing what the ICRC had recorded of the events that occurred in Palestine in 1948. It was there he stumbled onto records discussing the existence of five concentration camps run by the Israelis.

He then decided to look for witnesses or former detainees, interviewing Palestinians in occupied Palestine, Syria, and Jordan.

“They all described the same story, and their real experience in these camps,” he said.

One question that immediately struck him was why there was barely any references in history about these camps, especially when it became clearer the more he researched that they existed, and were more than just five camps.

“Many former Palestinian detainees saw the concept of Israel as a vicious enemy, so they thought their experience labouring in these concentration camps was nothing in comparison to the other larger tragedy of the Nakba. The Nakba overshadowed everything,” Abu Sitta explained.

“However, when I dug into the period of 1948-1955, I found more references like Mohammed Nimr al-Khatib, who was an imam in Haifa, who had written down interviews with someone from al-Yahya family that was in one of the camps. I was able to trace this man all the way to California and spoke with him in 2002,” he added.

More references were eventually and slowly discovered by Abu Sitta that included information from a Jewish woman called Janoud, a single masters thesis in Hebrew University about the topic, and the personal accounts of economist Yusif Sayigh, helped to further flesh out the scale and nature of these camps.

After more than a decade, Abu Sitta, with his co-author Rempel, are finally presenting their findings to the public.

From burden to opportunity: concentration and labor camps

The establishment of concentration and labor camps occurred after the unilateral declaration of Israel’s statehood on May 1948.

Prior to that event, the number of Palestinian captives in Zionist hands were quite low, because, as the study states, “the Zionist leadership concluded early on that forcible expulsion of the civilian population was the only way to establish a Jewish state in Palestine with a large enough Jewish majority to be ‘viable’.” In other words, for the Zionist strategists, prisoners were a burden in the beginning phases of the ethnic cleansing.

Those calculations changed with the declaration of the Israeli state and the involvement of the armies of Egypt, Syria, Iraq, and Transjordan, after much of the ethnic cleansing had occurred. From that moment, “the Israeli forces began taking prisoners, both regular Arab soldiers (for eventual exchange), and – selectively – able-bodied Palestinian non-combatant civilians.”

The first camp was Ijlil, which was about 13 km northeast of Jaffa, on the site of the destroyed Palestinian village Ijlil al-Qibiliyya, emptied of its inhabitants in early April. Ijlil was predominately made up of tents, housing hundreds and hundreds of prisoners, categorized as POWs by the Israelis, surrounded by barbed wire fences, watchtowers, and a gate with guards.

As the Israeli conquests grew, in turn exceedingly increasing the number of prisoners, three more camps were established. These are the four “official” camps that the Israelis acknowledged and were actively visited by the ICRC.

The study notes:

All four camps were either on or adjacent to military installations set up by the British during the Mandate. These had been used during World War II for the interment of German, Italian, and other POWs. Two of the camps – Atlit, established in July about 20 kms south of Haifa, and Sarafand, established in September near the depopulated village of Sarafand al-Amar in central Palestine—had earlier been used in the 1930s and 1940s to detain illegal Jewish immigrants.

Atlit was the second largest camp after Ijlil, it had the capacity of holding up to 2,900 prisoners, while Sarafand had the maximum capacity of 1,800, and Tel Letwinksy, near Tel Aviv, held more than 1,000.

All four camps were administered by “former British officers who had defected their rankswhen British forces withdrew from Palestine in mid-May 1948,” and the camp’s guards and administrative staff were former members of the Irgun and the Stern Gang – both groups designated as terrorist organizations by the British before their departure. In total, the four “official” camps were staffed by 973 soldiers.

A fifth camp, called Umm Khalid, was established at a site of another depopulated village near the Zionist settlement of Netanya, and was even assigned an official number in the records, but never attained “official” status. It had the capacity to hold 1,500 prisoners. Unlike the other four camps, Umm Khalid would be “the fist camp established exclusively as a labor camp” and was “the first of the “recognized” camps to be shut down…by the end of 1948.”

Complementing these five “recognized” camps, were at least 17 other “unrecognized camps” that were not mentioned in official sources, but the authors discovered through multiple prisoner testimonies.

Civilians in a labour camp in Ramleh, July 1948. (Photo: Salman Abu Sitta, Palestine Land Society)

“Many of [these camps],” the authors noted, “[were] apparently improvised or ad hoc, often consisting of no more than a police station, a school, or the house of a village notable,” with holding capacities that ranged from almost 200 prisoners to tens.

Most of the camps, official and unofficial, were situated within the borders of the UN-proposed Jewish state, “although at least four [unofficial camps] – Beersheba, Julis, Bayt Daras, and Bayt Nabala – were in the UN-assigned Arab state and one was inside the Jerusalem “corpus separatum.”

“[T]he situation of civilian internees was ‘absolutely confused’ with that of POWs, and… Jewish authorities ‘treated all Arabs between the ages of 16 and 55 as combatants and locked them up as prisoners of war.’” – ICRC report, 1948

The number of Palestinian non-combatant detainees “far exceeded” those of Arab soldiers in regular armies or bona fide POWs. Citing a July 1948 monthly report made by ICRC mission head Jacques de Reynier, the study states that de Reynier noted, “that the situation of civilian internees was ‘absolutely confused’ with that of POWs, and that the Jewish authorities ‘treated all Arabs between the ages of 16 and 55 as combatants and locked them up as prisoners of war.’” In addition, the ICRC found among the detainees in official camps, that 90 of the prisoners were elderly men, and 77 were boys, aged 15 years or younger.

The study highlights the statements by an ICRC delegate Emile Moeri in January 1949 of the camp inmates:

It is painful to see these poor people, especially old, who were snatched from their villages and put without reason in a camp, obliged to pass the winter under wet tents, away from their families; those who could not survive these conditions died. Little children (10-12 years) are equally found under these conditions. Similarly sick people, some with tuberculosis, languish in these camps under conditions which, while fine for healthy individuals, will certainly lead to their death if we do not find a solution to this problem. For a long time we have demanded that the Jewish authorities release those civilians who are sick and need treatment to the care of their families or to an Arab hospital, but we have not received a response.

As the report noted, “there are no precise figures on the total number of Palestinian civilians held by Israel during the 1948-49 war” and estimates tend to not account for “unofficial” camps, in addition to the frequent movement of prisoners between the camps in use. In the four “official” camps, the number of Palestinian prisoners never exceeded 5,000 according to figures in Israeli records.

In general, the living conditions in the “official” camps were far below what would be considered appropriate by international law at that time. Moeri, who visited the camps constantly, reported that in Ijlil in November 1948: “”[m]any [of the] tents are torn, that the camp was “not ready for winter,” the latrines not covered, and the canteen not working for two weeks. Referring to an apparently ongoing situation, he stated that “the fruits are still defective, the meat is of poor quality, [and] the vegetables are in short supply.”

Furthermore, Moeri reported that he saw for himself, “’the wounds left by the abuse’ of the previous week, when the guards had fired on the prisoners, wounding one, and had beaten another.”

As the study shows, the civilian status of the majority of the detainees were clear for the ICRC delegates in the country, who reported that the men captured “had undoubtedly never been in a regular army.” Detainees who were combatants, the study explains, were “routinely shot on the pretense that they had been attempting to escape.”

The Israeli forces seemed to always target able-bodied men, leaving behind women, children, and the elderly – when not massacring them – the policy continued even after there were low levels of military confrontation. All in all, as the Israeli records show and the study cites, “Palestinian civilians comprised the vast majority (82 percent) of the 5,950 listed as internees in the POW camps, while the Palestinians alone (civilian plus military) comprised 85 percent.”

The wide-scale kidnapping and imprisonment of Palestinian civilians tend to correspond with the Israeli military campaigns. For example, one of the first major roundup occurred during Operation Danj, when 60-70,000 Palestinians were expelled from the central towns of Lydda and Ramleh. At the same time, between a fifth and a quarter of the male population from these two towns who were over the age of 15 were sent to the camps.

The largest round-up of civilians came from villages of central Galilee who were captured during Operation Hiram in the fall of 1948.

One Palestinian survivor, Moussa, described to the authors what he witnessed at the time.

They took us from all villages around us: al-Bi’na, Deir al-Asad, Nahaf, al-Rama, and Eilabun. They took 4 young men and shot them dead…They drove us on foot. It was hot. We were not allowed to drink. They took us to [the Palestinian Druze village] al-Maghar, then [to the Jewish settlement] Nahalal, then to Atlit.

A November 16, 1948 UN report collaborated Moussa’s account, stating that some 500 Palestinian men “were taken by force march and vehicle to a Jewish concentration camp at Nahlal.”

Maintaining Israel’s economy with “slave labor”

The policy of targeting civilians, particular “able-bodied” men, was not accidental according to the study. It states, “with tens of thousands of Jewish men and women called up for military service, Palestinian civilian internees constituted an important supplement to the Jewish civilian labor employed under emergency legislation in maintaining the Israeli economy,” which even the ICRC delegation had noted in their reports.

The prisoners were forced to do public and military work, such as drying wetlands, working as servants, collecting and transporting looted refugee property, moving stones from demolished Palestinian homes, paving roads, digging military trenches, burying the dead, and much more.

As one former Palestinian detainee named Habib Mohammed Ali Jarada described in the study, “At gunpoint, I was made to work all day. At night, we slept in tents. In winter, water was seeping below our bedding, which was dry leaves, cartons and wooden pieces.”

Another prisoner in Umm Khalid, Marwan Iqab al-Yehiya said in an interview with the authors, “We had to cut and carry stones all day [in a quarry]. Our daily food was only one potato in the morning and half dried fish at night. They beat anyone who disobeyed orders.” This labor was interspersed with acts of humiliation by the Israeli guards, as Yehiya speaks of prisoners being “lined up and ordered to strip naked as a punishment for the escape of two prisoners at night.”

“[Jewish] Adults and children came from nearby kibbutz to watch us line up naked and laugh. To us this was most degrading,” he added.

Abuses by the Israeli guards were systematic and rife in the camps, the brunt of which was directed towards villagers, farmers, and lower class Palestinians. This was so, the study said, because educated prisoners “knew their rights and had the confidence to argue with and stand up to their captors.”

What is also interestingly noted by the study is how ideological affiliations between prisoners and their guards had another effects in terms of the relationship between them.

Citing the testimony of Kamal Ghattas, who was captured during the Israeli attack in the Galilee, who said:

We had a fight with our jailers. Four hundred of us confronted 100 soldiers. They brought reinforcements. Three of my friends and I were taken to a cell. They threatened to shoot us. All night we sang the Communist Anthem. They took the four of us to Umm Khaled camp. The Israelis were afraid of their image in Europe. Our contact with our Central Committee and Mapam [Socialist Israeli party] saved us .… I met a Russian officer and told him they took us from our homes although we were non-combatants which was against the Geneva Conventions. When he knew I was a Communist he embraced me and said, “Comrade, I have two brothers in the Red Army. Long live Stalin. Long Live Mother Russia”.

Yet, the less fortunate Palestinians faced acts of violence which included arbitrary executions and torture, with no recourse. The executions were always defended as stopping “escape attempts” – real or claimed by the guards.

Ultimately, by the end of 1949, Palestinian prisoners were gradually released after heavy lobbying by the ICRC, and other organizations, but the releases were limited in scale and very focused to specific cases. Prisoners of Arab armies were released in prisoner exchanges, but Palestinian prisoners were unilaterally expelled across the armistice line without any food, supplies, or shelter, and told to walk into the distance, never to return.

It would not be until 1955 when most of the Palestinian civilian prisoners would finally be released.

Forced Labour Camps Atlas. (Source: Salman Abu Sitta, Palestine Land Society)

The importance of this study is multifaceted. Not only does it reveal the numerousviolations of international law and conventions of the age, such as 1907 Hague Regulations and the 1929 Geneva Conventions, but also shows how the event shaped the ICRC in the long run.

Because the ICRC was faced with a belligerent Israeli actor who was unwilling to listen and conform to international law and conventions, the ICRC itself had to adapt in what it considered were practical ways to help ensure the Palestinian civilian prisoners were protected under the barest of rights.

Citing his final report, the study quotes de Reynier:

[The ICRC] protested on numerous occasions affirming the right of these civilians to enjoy their freedom unless found guilty and judged by a court. But we have tacitly accepted their POW status because in this way they would enjoy the rights conferred upon them by the Convention. Otherwise, if they were not in the camps they would be expelled [to an Arab country] and in one way or another, they would lead, without resources, the miserable life of refugees.

In the end, the ICRC and other organizations were simply ineffective as Israel ignored its condemnations with impunity, in addition to the diplomatic cover of major Western powers.

More importantly, the study sheds more light on the extent of the Israeli crimes during its brutal and bloody birth. And “much more remains to be told,” as the final line of the study states.

“It is amazing to me, and many Europeans, who have seen my evidence,” Abu Sitta said, “that a forced labor camp was opened in Palestine three years after they were closed in Germany, and were run by former prisoners – there were German Jewish guards.”The study essentially shows the foundations and beginnings of Israeli policy towards Palestinian civilians that comes in the form of kidnapping, arrest, and detainment.

“This is a bad reflection of the human spirit, where the oppressed copies an oppressor against innocent lives,” he added.

The study essentially shows the foundations and beginnings of Israeli policy towards Palestinian civilians that comes in the form of kidnapping, arrest, and detainment. This criminality continues till this day. One merely has to read the reports on the hundreds of Palestinians arrested prior, during, and after Israel’s latest war on Gaza mid-summer of this year.

“Gaza today is a concentration camp, no different than the past,” Abu Sitta concluded toAl-Akhbar English.

Yazan al-Saadi is a staff writer for Al-Akhbar English. Follow him on Twitter: @WhySadeye

On Monday (3rd August) when the Athens Stock Exchange reopened after a five-week shutdown, the share price index plunged by more than 23 percent in early trading. The banking index covering Greece’s biggest banks witnessed the largest decline, down to its 30 percent daily limit. This was the worst stock market bloodbath in decades despite an ongoing ban on short selling in Greek markets. Only in 1987, its share index collapsed by 15 percent in the wake of Wall Street stock market crash, popularly known as “Black Monday.”

The massive sell-off on Monday was partially triggered by the release of three surveys which revealed that Greek manufacturing output has plummeted to its lowest level in July 2015. The surveys have indicated that Greece will suffer a further contraction in its economy this year. The investors are wary about the dismal outlook of the Greek economy which was in recession during 2008-14. In addition, there is general uncertainty over the country’s membership of the eurozone.

The Protracted Negotiations

Even though Greece struck a €86 billion bailout-for-reform deal with its official creditors on 12th July, news reports on the ongoing negotiations doubt whether an agreement could be reached in time to service the debt due this month. Greece is keen to conclude the negotiations on bailout deal by mid-August so that it gets the money before debt repayments are due.

In August, Greece needs as much as €24 bn to service its debt, recapitalize the banks and to meet other financing needs. This figure includes €7 bn to repay an emergency bridge loan, €3.2 billion towards Greek bonds held by European Central Bank and close to €10 towards recapitalisation of Greek banks. If no agreement with creditors could be reached before 20th August, Greece may seek another bridge loan to avoid a doomsday scenario.

It is very difficult to predict the outcome of the ongoing negotiations as the troika is demanding the strict implementation of austerity measures by Greece. The creditors will only release money if Greece implements tough austerity measures.

The Third Bailout Program

On 23rd July, the governing Syriza party won crucial approval from the Greek parliament for the new bailout reform program being negotiated with creditors. Much of the opposition came from Syriza’s Left Platform faction which is opposed to austerity measures sought by creditors.

The new bailout deal on the table is much more stringent and wider in scope than the previous ones. The new deal demands large-scale privatization of public assets (such as electrical and utility companies, airports and ports), substantial cuts in pensions, overhauling of value added taxes and changes in labour laws.

It is important to note that many of these demands were earlier rejected by the Syriza government as well as by voters in a referendum held on 5th July. The Greek public is still struggling to understand the abrupt change of course by Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras by accepting all terms dictated by creditors. In its July 8 letter seeking a new bailout program, the Greek government has agreed to implement pension and tax reforms as early as mid-July.

One of key controversial elements of the new deal is the setting up of an externally supervised fund to manage the privatization of Greece’s public assets. The Greek government has accepted the demand put forward by Eurozone leaders that Greek public assets worth up to €50 bn should be transferred to an independent fund. Based in Luxembourg, the proposed fund will be run by an entity overseen by Germany’s finance minister, Wolfgang Schäuble.

But the moot question is: Would the people of Greece benefit from the money generated by this fund. The answer is No. Bulk of the money generated by the fund through assets sales will be used for repaying money borrowed from creditors and reducing the debt burden. There is no provision for channelizing the money to support social programs or investing in social and physical infrastructure.

Given the real situation of the economy, Greece may not achieve the creditors’ targets for the primary budget surplus. A primary budget surplus occurs when tax revenues exceed government spending (excluding debt interest payments) which enables the government to deploy surplus revenue to pay the public debt.

The creditors are demanding that Greece achieve a primary budget surplus of 3.5 percent of GDP by 2018. In its previous negotiations with creditors, the Syriza government had sought a gradual increase in primary budget surplus to ensure that austerity measures should not act as a drag on economic recovery. Due to slowdown in business activity in Greece, the target of a budget surplus of 1 percent this year is likely to be missed. Rather, a deficit is expected this year. The next year target of 2 percent can only be achieved through a heavy dosage of austerity measures as the introduction of new tax measures may take some months.

Further, the long-standing demand of Syriza government seeking substantial debt relief is not part of new bailout package. Nor is there any assurance by creditors that debt relief would be forthcoming in future. This is despite the fact that the International Monetary Fund has expressed its unwillingness to participate in the new bailout program unless substantial debt relief is immediately granted to Greece. Can Germany and other European creditors sign a new deal without the IMF?

Lack of Popular Support

The kind of popular support needed to implement tough policy measures is squarely missing in Greece. The government is finding it difficult to convince citizens that debt relief is still not under consideration. The proposed privatization fund and other austerity measures are deeply unpopular in Greece. There is considerable opposition to privatization fund within the Syriza party. Hence, it would be very challenging for Syriza-led government to implement demands of creditors while maintaining its social base.

Needless to say, Syriza is the first anti-austerity party to take power in Greece. It won election in January 2015 promising to end the austerity measures and renegotiate the country’s debt. Already some commentators are reading the ongoing negotiations as a “sell-out” by the Syriza on its election promises. Most likely, the government may seek a fresh mandate by holding snap elections in September or October.

As things stand out, the prospects of an economic recovery in Greece appear bleak. Many forecasts have predicted that Greece will be unable to break the vicious cycle on the current path and its debt-to-GDP ratio will rise over 200 percent by 2018. Without rapid economic recovery, Greece’s debt burden will remain unsustainable. The growing public debt and its servicing costs will burden economy further. And if Greece continues to remain in the eurozone, a fourth bailout cannot be ruled out in future.

Kavaljit Singh is Director of Madhyam, a policy research institute based in New Delhi.

The latest Pew international poll finds that whereas U.S. and global sentiments toward Russia were rather moderate, not hostile, until after U.S. President Barack Obama’s re-election in 2012, the sentiments toward Russia both in the U.S. and in most countries are now generally sharply hostile. This is an achievement for President Obama, toward which he has worked tirelessly, both publicly and in private.

Pew’s new report, dated August 5th, covers 39 countries, and is headlined, “Russia, Putin Held in Low Regard around the World: Russia’s Image Trails U.S. across All Regions.” It finds that “Russia’s Image” is 30% “Favorable,” and 51% “Unfavorable,” across the 39 countries.

A previous Pew international poll, published on 3 September 2013, had not found the same thing to be the case. It was bannered, “Global Opinion of Russia Mixed: Negative Views Widespread in Mideast and Europe.” This poll found that “Russia’s Global Image” was 36% “Favorable,” and 39% “Unfavorable,” across the 38 countries that were polled. Russia’s image has gone down one-sixth (lost 6% of its previous 36%) in “Favorable” ratings, and increased 31% (by 51%/39%) in “Unfavorable” ratings.

During the interim between those two polls, President Obama’s Administration, as it began its second term in 2013, replaced its top State Department official who ran policymaking for Europe and Asia, with an aide to Hillary Clinton who comes from the leading “neo-conservative” family and who had previously been the top foreign policy advisor to Vice President Dick Cheney, Victoria Nuland, whose husband Robert Kagan, had been a co-founder (along with Bill Kristol) of PNAC, the organization that, even before President George W. Bush was inaugurated, had led the voices calling for Sadam Hussein’s overthrow, and for other pro-Saudi, pro-Israeli, anti-Russian, U.S. foreign policies.

President Obama also replaced his first-term’s U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine by Geoffrey Pyatt, another “neo-conservative.” Pyatt was assigned to execute inside Ukraine the instructions that he receives from Ms. Nuland, who is based in Washington. Here is one of the key phone-conversations that leaked out, in which Ms. Nuland tells Mr. Pyatt whom to place at the head of the Ukrainian government when Ukraine’s democratically elected President, Viktor Yanukovych, will be overthrown, which overthrow happened 18 days later. That man, “Yats,” did become appointed to lead the “interim” government, and he is still in power there, though a figurehead President has been elected, by voters in the regions of Ukraine that had voted against Yanukovych. The turnout in that 25 May 2014 election (the first post-coup election) was almost nil in the pro-Yanukovych districts. It was actually nil in the area of Ukraine commonly called “Donbass,” where over 90% of the voters had voted for Yanukovych. They did not accept the Obama Administration’s coup. It was an extremely violent coup. President Obama subsequently supported an ethnic cleansing operation to get rid of the residents in the area of Ukraine that had voted 90%+ for Yanukovych; that is, in Donbass. This is necessary for Obama to do in order to establish stability for the anti-Russian government that Obama has installed in Ukraine, because, otherwise, there is no way that the natural resources in that part of Ukraine can be retained by Obama’s government if the voters who live there, stay there and vote in future Ukrainian elections. For American policy in Ukraine to succeed, those people must be gotten rid of. Many have fled to nearby Russia. This exodus actually helps Obama’s purpose, to get rid of them: they can’t vote in Ukraine. So: it, too, serves Obama’s objective.

The people in Donbass had hoped that, like with Crimea, the Russian government would accept their region as being part of Russia. Russia’s President Vladimir Putin was mute on that request until mid-September of 2014, at which time he told the leaders there that they should instead remain as part of Ukraine, but with a form of independence there so that Ukraine wouldn’t be able to continue the ethnic cleansing to get rid of them (which Ukraine calls by the name of “Anti Terrorist Operation,” or ATO). In other words: Putin wants those people to be voting in Ukrainian elections, not in Russian ones. He doesn’t want them to be killed, but he also doesn’t want them to be in Russia. He wants as many of them as possible to stay alive, but inside Ukraine, whose government wants them to be dead or else gone. That’s the real issue between Obama and Putin: Obama wants those people to be dead or else in Russia, while Putin wants those people to be alive and voting in Ukrainian elections, not in Russia ones (where their presence or not will make no difference to the government in power: immaterial).

During the coup, Obama’s hired people in Ukraine massacred busloads of Crimeans who had travelled to the capital in Kiev to protest the coup there while it was occurring. As a result of that massacre, Crimeans in Crimea sought and obtained from the Russian government (and this was prior to the start of the ethnic cleansing program in Donbass) the protection by Russia’s soldiers, many of whom were already stationed at Russia’s naval base in Crimea, which had been located there since 1783. The Russian government complied with that request from Crimeans, and held a referendum in Crimea to allow the people there to decide whether Crimea should remain as part of Ukraine, which it had been only since 1954, or instead to become again part of Russia, as it had been for centuries before 1954. The U.S. Government had sponsored Gallup polls to be taken in Crimea both before the coup and after, in order to determine whether there would be any way that such a referendum might be challenged by the United States, but the results both times showed overwhelming, in some cases near-100%, support of Crimeans for rejoining Russia, and for their no longer being part of Ukraine.

Obama, of course, has opposed both the people in Donbass and the people in Crimea, and has condemned Russia’s protection of Crimea and Russia’s military and other assistance (including extensive shipments of food, water, and medicines) to the people of Donbass. (The Ukrainian government has protested those shipments.) He has done everything that he can to turn global sentiment against Russia for responding to the coup that the U.S. had carried out next door to Russia, in Ukraine.

Here are some instances in which President Obama, during his second term, has expressed his intention to isolate Russia (and he always gives as the reason for isolating Russia the relationship between Ukraine and Russia):

17 Mar. 2014: https://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2014/03/17/president-obama-announces-new-ukraine-related-santions

“We’ll continue to make clear to Russia that further provocations will achieve nothing except to further isolate Russia and diminish its place in the world.”

17 Mar. 2014: https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2014/03/17/statement-president-ukraine

“to isolate Russia for its actions”

20 Mar. 2014: https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2014/03/20/statement-president-ukraine

“Russia must know that further escalation will only isolate it further”

29 Jul. 2014: https://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2014/07/29/president-obama-russia-once-again-isolating-itself-international-community

“Russia Is Once Again Isolating Itself from the International Community”

11 Sep. 2014: https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2014/09/11/statement-president-new-sanctions-related-russia

“These measures will increase Russia’s political isolation”

20 Jan. 2015: https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2015/01/20/remarks-president-state-union-address-january-20-2015

“it is America that stands strong and united with our allies, while Russia is isolated with its economy in tatters. That’s how America leads.”

25 Jan. 2015: https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2015/01/25/statements-president-obama-and-prime-minister-modi-republic-india

“… what’s at stake in Ukraine. And what we have done is to consistently isolate Russia on this issue and to raise the costs that Russia confronts.”

June 8, 2015: https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2015/06/08/remarks-president-obama-press-conference-after-g7-summit

“This is now the second year in a row that the G7 has met without Russia — another example of Russia’s isolation.”

As regards the background of the February 2014 Ukrainian coup, it preceded Obama’s second term. It was long in planning. Steve Weissman at Reader Supported News did one superb article on that. And Brandon Turbeville at his site did another. Moreover, according to Ms. Nuland speaking in December 2013, just two months before the coup, “We’ve invested over five billion dollars” to prepare for it.

So: what Pew’s polls are showing is that, concerning international opinion, America’s President has been very successful at persuading the world that Russia is, as Obama stated in his National Security Strategy 2015 (which referred to Russia in 17 of its 18 usages of the various forms of the word “aggressor”), evil.

The allegations that Obama does not know what he is doing in foreign affairs are false. And, moreover, his effort here is a bipartisan one: this ia an American achievement, not merely a personal victory for Obama. It’s an excellent example of the way the U.S. government functions, not merely of the way Mr. Obama does.

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.

This article first published in August 2008 outlines the historical origins of  what is now routinely referred to as the New Cold War. 

August 7, 2008, seven years ago, the US sponsored war on South Ossetia sets the stage of the “New Cold War” and the crisis in Ukraine. The 2014-2015 Ukraine war is part of a broader agenda which seeks to destabilize the Russian Federation.  

Michel Chossudovsky, August 7, 2015

The ongoing crisis in the Caucasus is intimately related to the strategic control over energy pipeline and transportation corridors.

There is evidence that the Georgian attack on South Ossetia on August 7 was carefully planned. High level consultations were held with US and NATO officials in the months preceding the attacks. 

The attacks on South Ossetia were carried out one week after the completion of extensive US – Georgia war games (July 15-31st, 2008). They were also preceded by high level Summit meetings held under the auspices of GUAM, a US-NATO sponsored regional military alliance. 

War in Georgia Time Line

July 1-2, 2008 GUAM Summit in Batumi, Georgia.

July 1,  “US-GUAM Summit” on the sideline of the official GUAM venue.

July 5 -12,  Russian Defense Ministry hold  War Games in the North Caucasus region under the codename “Caucasus Frontier 2008”.

July 9, 2008 China and Kazakhstan announce the commencement of construction of the Kazakhstan-China natural gas pipeline (KCP)

July 15-31,  The US and Georgia  hold War Games under the codename Operation “Immediate Response”. One thousand US servicemen participate in the military exercise.

August 7,  Georgian Ground Forces and Air Force Attack South Ossetia

August 8,  Russian Forces Intervene in South Ossetia.

August 14, 2008 Signing of US-Polish Agreement on the stationing of “US Interceptor Missiles” on Polish Territory

Introduction: The GUAM Summit Venue

In early July 2008, a regional summit was held in the Georgian city of Batumi under the auspices of GUAM

GUAM is a military agreement between Georgia, Ukraine, Azerbaijan and Moldova, first established in 1997. Since 2006, following the withdrawal of Uzbekistan, GUAM was renamed: The Organization for Democracy and Economic Development – GUAM.

GUAM has little to do with “Democracy and Economic Development”. It is a de facto appendage of NATO. It  has been used by the US and the Atlantic Alliance to extend their zone of influence into the heartland of the former Soviet Union.

The main thrust of GUAM as a military alliance is to “protect” the energy and transportation corridors, on behalf of the Anglo-American oil giants. GUAM countries are also the recipients of US-NATO military aid and training.

The militarization of these corridors is a central feature of US-NATO planning. Georgia and Ukraine membership in NATO is part of the agenda of controlling the energy and transport corridors from the Caspian Sea basin to Western Europe.

The July 1-2, 2008 GUAM Summit Batumi meetings, under the chairmanship of President Saakashvili, focused on the central issue of pipeline and transportation corridors. The theme of the Summit was a “GUAM – Integrating Europe’s East”, from an economic and strategic-military standpoint, essentially with a view to isolating Russia.

The presidents of Azerbaijan, Georgia and the Ukraine (respectively  Ilham Aliyev, Mikheil Saakashvili and Viktor Yushchenko) were in attendance together with the presidents of Poland, Lech Kaczynski, and Lithuania, Valdas Adamkus. Moldova’s head of State flatly refused to attend this summit.

Map No 1: Georgia

Undermining Russia 

The GUAM Summit agenda focused on undermining Moscow’s influence in the Caucasus and Eastern Europe. The Polish President was in attendance.

US-NATO installations in Eastern Europe including the Missile Defense Shield are directly related to the evolving geopolitical situation in the Caucasus. Barely a week after the bombing of South Ossetia by Georgian forces, the US and Poland signed an agreement (August 14) which would allow the US Air Force to deploy US “interceptor missiles” on Polish soil:

“… As military strategists have pointed out, the US missiles in Poland pose a total existential threat to the future existence of the Russian nation. The Russian Government has repeatedly warned of this since US plans were first unveiled in early 2007. Now, despite repeated diplomatic attempts by Russia to come to an agreement with Washington, the Bush Administration, in the wake of a humiliating US defeat in Georgia, has pressured the Government of Poland to finally sign the pact. The consequences could be unthinkable for Europe and the planet. ” (William Engdahl, Missile Defense: Washington and Poland just moved the World closer to War, Global Research, August 15, 2008)

The “US-GUAM Summit” 

Barely acknowledged by the media, a so-called “US-GUAM Summit” meeting was also held on July 1st on the sidelines of the official GUAM summit venue.

US Deputy Assistant Secretary of State David Merkel met both GUAM and non-GUAM delegations behind closed doors. Several bilateral meetings were held including a Poland GUAM meeting (during which the issue of the US missile defense shield on Polish territory was most probably addressed). Private meetings were also held on July 1st and 2nd at the residence of the Georgian President.

US-Georgia War Games

Barely two weeks following the GUAM Summit of July 1-2, 2008, US-Georgian military exercises were launched at the Vaziani military base, outside Tbilisi,

One thousand U.S and six hundred Georgian troops began a military training exercise under Operation “Immediate Response”. US troops included the participation of the US Air Force, Army, Marines and National Guard. While an Iraq war scenario had been envisaged, the military exercises were a dress rehearsal for an upcoming military operation. The  war games were completed on July 31st, a week before the onset of the August 7th Georgian attacks on South Ossetia.

Troops from Ukraine and Azerbaijan, which are members of GUAM also participated in Operation “Immediate Response” Unexpectedly, Armenia which is an ally of Russia and a staunch opponent of Azerbaijan also took part in these games, which also served to create and “train and work together” environment between Azeri and Armenian forces (ultimately directed against Russia).

Brig. Gen. William B. Garrett, commander of the U.S. military’s Southern European Task Force, was responsible for the coordination of the US-Georgia war games.

Gen. William B. Garrett and Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili

Russia’s War Games in the North Caucasus

Russia began large-scale military exercises involving some 8,000 military personnel, some 700 armored units and over 30 aircraft ( in the North Caucasus republics of the Russian Federation on July 5th. (Georgian Times, July 28, 2008)

The Russian war games were explicitly carried out in response to the evolving security situation in Abhkazia and South Ossetia. The exercise, dubbed  “Caucasus Frontier 2008”, involved units of the 58th Army and the 4th Air Force Army, stationed in the North Caucasus Military District.

A Russian Defense Ministry spokesman acknowledged that the military exercises conducted in the Southern Federal District were being carried out in response to “an escalation in tension in the Georgian-Abkhaz and Georgian-Ossetian conflict zones,…[and] that Russia’s North Caucasian Military District was ready to provide assistance to Russian peacekeepers in Abkhazia and South Ossetia if needed.” (Georgian Times, July 28, 2008, RIA-Novosti, July 5, 2008)

These units of the North Caucasian Military District (Army and Air Force) were subsequently used to lead the Russian counterattack directed against Georgian Forces in South Ossetia on August 8th.

Pipeline Geopolitics

A central issue on the GUAM-NATO drawing board at the July GUAM Summit in Batumi, was the Odessa-Brody-Plotsk (Plock on the Vistula) pipeline route (OBP) (see Maps 3 and 4), which brings Central Asian oil via Odessa, to Northern Europe, bypassing Russian territory. An extension of OBP to Poland’s port of Gdansk on the Baltic sea is also envisaged.

It should be noted that the OBP also links up with Russia’s Friendship Pipeline (Druzhba pipeline) in an agreement with Russia.

Washington’s objective is ultimately to weaken and destabilize Russia’s pipeline network –including the Friendship Pipeline and the Baltic Pipeline System (BPS)— and its various corridor links into the Western Europe energy market.

It should be noted that Russia has established as part of the Druzhba pipeline network, a pipeline corridor which transits through Belarus, thereby bypassing the Ukraine. (See Maps 2 and 3 below)

The Baltic Pipeline System (BPS) also operated by Russia’s Transneft links Samara to Russia’s oil tanker terminal at Primorsk in the Gulf of Finland. (See map below) It carries crude oil from Russia’s Western Siberian region to both North and Western European markets.

Another strategic pipeline system, largely controlled by Russia, is the Caspian Pipeline Consortium (CPC). The CPC  is a joint venture arrangement between Russia and Kazakhstan, with shareholder participation from a number of Middle East oil companies.

The Baltic Pipeline System (BPS) is tied into the Atyrau-Samara (AS) pipeline, which is a joint venture between Russia’s Transneft and Kazakhstan’s national pipeline operator, KazTransOil. The AS pipeline in turn links up with the Russia-Kazakhstan Caspian Petroleum Consortium (CPC), which pumps Tengiz crude oil from Atyrau (Western Kazakhstan) to the CPC’s Russian tanker terminal near Novorossiysk on the Black Sea.

On July 10, 2008, barely a week following the GUAM Summit, Transneft and KazTransOil  announced that they were in talks to expand the capacity of the Atyrau-Samara pipeline from 16 to 26 million tons of oil per year. (RBC Daily, July 10, 2008).

The GUAM Transportation Corridor 

The GUAM governments represented at the Batumi GUAM Summit also approved the further development of  The GUAM Transportation Corridor (GTC),  which complements the controversial Baku Tblisi Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline. The latter links the Caspian Sea basin to the Eastern Mediterranean, via Georgia and Turkey, totally bypassing Russian territory. The BTC pipeline is controlled by a oil consortium led by British Petroleum.

Both the GTC and the BTC corridors are protected militarily by GUAM and NATO.

The GTC corridor would connect the Azeri capital of Baku on the Caspian sea to the Georgian ports of Poti/ Batumi on the Black Sea, which would then link up with the Ukrainian Black sea port of Odessa. (And From Odessa, through maritime and land routes to Western and Northern Europe).

Map No 2: Strategic Pipeline Routes. BTC, Friendship Pipeline, Baltic Pipeline System (BPS), CPC, AS

Map No. 3. Russia’s Druzhba pipeline system

Map No 4  Eastern Europe. Plock on the Vistula

The Baku Tblisi Ceyan (BTC) Pipeline

The BTC pipeline dominated by British Petroleum and inaugurated in 2006 at the height of the war on Lebanon, has dramatically changed the geopolitics of the Eastern Mediterranean, which is now linked, through an energy corridor, to the Caspian sea basin:

 “[The BTC pipeline] considerably changes the status of the region’s countries and cements a new pro-West alliance. Having taken the pipeline to the Mediterranean, Washington has practically set up a new bloc with Azerbaijan, Georgia, Turkey and Israel, ” (Komerzant, Moscow, 14 July 2006)

Map No 5. The Baku, Tblisi Ceyan pipeline (BTC)

Pipeline Geopolitics and the Role of Israel

Israel is now part of the Anglo-American military axis, which serves the interests of the Western oil giants in the Middle East and Central Asia. Not surprisingly, Israel has military cooperation agreements with Georgia and Azerbaijan.

While the official reports state that the BTC pipeline will “channel oil to Western markets”, what is rarely acknowledged is that part of the oil from the Caspian sea would be directly channeled towards Israel. In this regard, an underwater Israeli-Turkish pipeline project has been envisaged which would link Ceyhan to the Israeli port of Ashkelon and from there through Israel’s main pipeline system, to the Red Sea.

The objective of Israel is not only to acquire Caspian sea oil for its own consumption needs but also to play a key role in re-exporting Caspian sea oil back to the Asian markets through the Red Sea port of Eilat. The strategic implications of this re-routing of Caspian sea oil are farreaching.

What is envisaged is to link the BTC pipeline to the Trans-Israel Eilat-Ashkelon pipeline, also known as Israel’s Tipline, from Ceyhan to the Israeli port of Ashkelon. (For further details, see Michel Chossudovsky, The War on Lebanon and the Battle for Oil, Global Research, 26 July 2006)

Map No 6. Trans-Israel Eilat-Ashkelon pipeline

America’s Silk Road Strategy: The Trans-Eurasian Security System

The Silk Road Strategy (SRS) constitutes an essential building block of US foreign policy in the post-Cold War era.

The SRS was formulated as a bill presented to the US Congress in 1999. It called for the creation of an energy and transport corridor network linking Western Europe to Central Asia and eventually to the Far East.

The Silk Road Strategy is defined as a “trans-Eurasian security system”. The SRS calls for the  “militarization of the Eurasian corridor” as an integral part of the “Great Game”. The stated objective, as formulated under the proposed March 1999 Silk Road Strategy Act, is to develop America’s business empire along an extensive geographical corridor.

While the 1999 SRS legislation (HR 3196) was adopted by the House of Representatives, it never became law. Despite this legislative setback, the Silk Road Strategy became, under the Bush Administration, the de facto basis of US-NATO  interventionism, largely with a view to integrating the former Soviet republics of the South Caucasus and Central Asia into the US sphere of influence.

The successful implementation of the SRS required the concurrent “militarization” of the entire Eurasian corridor from the Eastern Mediterranean to China’s Western frontier bordering onto Afghanistan, as a means to securing control over extensive oil and gas reserves, as well as “protecting” pipeline routes and trading corridors. The invasion of Afghanistan in October 2001 has served to support American strategic objectives in Central Asia including the control of pipeline corridors. Afghanistan border onto Chinese Western frontier. It is also a strategic landbridge linking the extensive oil wealth of the Caspian Sea basin to the Arabian Sea.

The militarization process under the SRS is largely directed against China, Russia and Iran. The SRS, called for:

“The development of strong political, economic, and security ties among countries of the South Caucasus and Central Asia and the West [which] will foster stability in this region, which is vulnerable to political and economic pressures from the south, north, and east. [meaning Russia to the North, Iraq, Iran and the Middle East to the South and China to the East] (106th Congress, Silk Road Strategy Act of 1999)

The adoption of a neoliberal policy agenda under advice from the IMF and the World Bank is an integral part of the SRS, which seeks to foster “open market economies… [which] will provide positive incentives for international private investment, increased trade, and other forms of commercial interactions”. (Ibid).

Strategic access to South Caucasus and Central Asian oil and gas is a central feature of the Silk Road Strategy:

“The region of the South Caucasus and Central Asia could produce oil and gas in sufficient quantities to reduce the dependence of the United States on energy from the volatile Persian Gulf region.” (Ibid)

The SRS is also intent upon preventing the former Soviet republics from developing their own economic, political and military cooperation ties as well as establishing broad ties up with China, Russia and Iran. (See Michel Chossudovsky, America’s “War on Terrorism”, Global Research, Montreal, 2005).

In this regard, the formation of GUAM, which was launched in 1997, was intended to integrate the former Soviet republics into military cooperation arrangements with the US and NATO, which would prevent them from reestablishing their ties with the Russian Federation.

Under the 1999 SRS Act, the term “countries of the South Caucasus and Central Asia” means Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. (106th Congress, Silk Road Strategy Act of 1999).

The US strategy has, in this regard, not met its stated objective: Whereas Ukraine, Azerbaijan and Georgia have become de facto US protectorates, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Armenia and Belarus are, from a geopolitical standpoint, aligned with Moscow.

This extensive Eurasian network of transport and energy corridors has been defined by Washington as part of an American sphere of influence:

“In the Caspian-Black Sea Region, the European Union and the United States have concentrated on setting up a reliable logistics chain to connect Central Asia with the European Union via the Central Caucasus and Turkey/Ukraine. The routes form the centerpiece of INOGATE (an integrated communication system along the routes taking hydrocarbon resources to Europe) and TRACECA (the multi-channel Europe-Caucasus-Asia corridor) projects.

The TRACECA transportation and communication routes grew out of the idea of the Great Silk Road (the traditional Eurasian communication channel of antiquity). It included Georgian and Turkish Black Sea ports (Poti, Batumi, and Ceyhan), railways of Georgia and Azerbaijan, the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline, ferry lines that connect Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan with Azerbaijan across the Caspian Sea/Lake (Turkmenbashi-Baku; Aktau-Baku), railways and highways now being built in Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, and China, as well as Chinese Pacific terminals as strategically and systemically important parts of the mega-corridor.” (See GUAM and the Trans-Caspian Gas Transportation Corridor: Is it about Politics or Economics?),

The Kazakhstan-China Natural Gas Pipeline (KCP)

Barely a few days following the GUAM Summit in Batumi, China and Kazakhstan announced (July 9, 2008) the commencement of construction work of a 1,300-kilometer natural gas pipeline. The inaugural ceremony was held  near Kazakhstan’s capital Almaty.

The pipeline which is to be constructed in several stages is expected to start pumping gas in 2010. (See silkroadintelligencer.com, July 9, 2008)

“The new transit route is part of a larger project to build two parallel pipelines connecting China with Central Asia’s vast natural gas reserves. The pipes will stretch more than 7,000 kilometers from Turkmenistan, cross Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, and enter China’s northwestern Xinjiang region. Uzbekistan started construction of its part this month while Turkmenistan launched its segment last year.” (Ibid)

Map No 7. Kazakhstan-China natural gas pipeline (KCP)

China’s National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) which is  the leading operator of the consortium, “has signed deals with state oil and gas firms of Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan giving them 50 percent stakes in their respective parts of the pipeline.”

The KPC pipeline project encroaches upon US strategic interests in Eurasia. It undermines the logic of America’s Silk Road Strategy. The KPC is part of a competing Eurasian based transportation and energy strategy, largely dominated by Russia, Iran and China.

Competing Eurasian Strategy protected by the SCO-CSTO Military Alliance

The competing Eurasian based corridors are protected (against US-NATO encroachment) by two regional military alliances: the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO)  and the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO)

The SCO is a military alliance between Russia and China and several Central Asian former Soviet republics including Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. Iran has observer status in the SCO.

The Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), which plays a key geopolitical role in relation to transport and energy corridors, operates in close liaison with the SCO. The CSTO regroups the following member states: Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.

Of significance, since 2006, the SCO and the CSTO member countries have conducted joint war games and are actively collaborating with Iran.

In October 2007, the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) signed a Memorandum of Understanding, laying the foundations for military cooperation between the two organizations. This SCO-CSTO agreement, barely mentioned by the Western media, involves the creation of a full-fledged military alliance between China, Russia and the member states of SCO/CSTO. It is worth noting that the SCTO and the SCO held joint military exercises in 2006, which coincided with those conducted by Iran. (For further details see Michel Chossudovsky, Russia and Central Asian Allies Conduct War Games in Response to US Threats, Global Research, August 2006)

While remaining distinct from an organizational standpoint, in practice, these two regional military alliances (SCO and SSTO) constitute a single military block, which confronts US-NATO expansionism in Central Asia and the Caucasus.

Full Circle 

The US-NATO protected SRS Eurasian transport and energy corridors, are slated to link Central Asia to the Far East, as outlined in the Silk Road Strategy. At present, the Eastward corridors linking Central Asia to China are protected militarily by the SCO-CSTO.

In terms of Washington’s global military and strategic agenda, the Eurasian corridors contemplated under the SRS would inevitably encroach upon China’s territorial sovereignty.The proposed US-NATO-GUAM pipeline and transportation corridors are intended to connect, at some future date, with the proposed transport and energy corridors in the Western hemisphere, including those envisaged under the North American Security Prosperity Partnership (SPP). 

The Security Prosperity Partnership (SPP) is to North America what the Silk Road Strategy (SRS) is to the Caucasus and Central Asia. They are strategic regional constructs of America’s business empire. They are the building blocks of the New World Order.

The SPP is the result of a similar process of strategic planning, militarization and free market economic integration, largely based on the control of strategic resources including energy and water, as well as the ” protection” of energy and transportation corridors (land and maritime routes ) from Alaska and Canada’s Arctic to Central America and the Caribbean basin.

Author’s Note: This article has focused selectively on key pipeline corridors with a view to analyzing broad geopolitical and strategic issues.
An examination of the overall network of Eurasian pipeline corridors would require a far more detailed and comprehensive presentation.

Related Article:

War in the Caucasus: Towards a Broader Russia-US Military Confrontation?

– by Michel Chossudovsky – 2008-08-10

Michel Chossudovsky is the author of the international bestseller America’s “War on Terrorism”  Global Research, 2005. 

To order Chossudovsky’s book  America’s “War on Terrorism”, click here

Young Mursi cattle herders. Photo: Rod Waddington via Flickr (CC BY-SA).

USAID, the UK’s DFID and the World Bank are among those covering up for severe human rights abuses against indigenous peoples in Ethiopia’s Omo Valley, inflicted during forced evictions to make way for huge plantations, writes Will Hurd. Their complicity in these crimes appears to be rooted in US and UK partnership with Ethiopia in the ‘war on terror’.

I’d translated for this official and his colleagues, both from DFID and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), during a joint visit they made, in January 2012, to the Lower Omo Valley of Southwest Ethiopia.

They wanted to talk to members of the Mursi and Bodi ethnic groups about a controversial government sugar development project. DFID was indirectly helping to fund the forced eviction and resettlement of thousands of people affected by this project, through a World Bank-organized funding program called ‘Promoting Basic Services’ (PBS).

DFID was the biggest state contributor to this program, which had also been accused of indirectly funding resettlement of Anuak in the nearby Gambella region. In Gambella, vast land leases were being given to international and domestic companies. During the visit to the Omo Valley, I turned on an audio recorder.

What struck me about the phone conversation with the DFID official was how much concern he had for his own livelihood and family, and how little concern he and DFID were showing for the hundreds, or even thousands, of families in the Omo Valley.

I acted on his request and left him unnamed.

Aid to ‘help the poor’ opens the way to international agribusiness

The resettlements were happening to clear the land for industrial-scale, international and national, companies. The donors deny a connection between the resettlements and the land leases, but the connection is all too obvious.

The behemoth Gibe III dam is under construction upstream on the Omo River. Its control of the river’s water level allows irrigation dams and canals to be built in the Omo Valley for plantations.

PBS is a $4.9 billion project led by the World Bank, with UK and other funding, under the guiding hand of the Development Assistance Group (DAG). The DAG is 27 of the world’s largest donor organizations, including 21 national government aid agencies.

The full membership of the DAG comprises: the African Development Bank, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, European Union, FAO, Finland, France, Germany, IMF, India, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, The Netherlands, Norway, Spain (AECID), Sweden, Switzerland, Turkish International Cooperation Agency (TIKA), UK (DFID), UNDP, UNESCO, USAID, and the World Bank.

It is supposed to provide teacher and health worker salaries and water development in these resettlement sites. This is controversial in itself-only providing services to people who move off their land into resettlement sites – but some of the money was used by the Ethiopian government to pay for implementation of the resettlement scheme.

DFID and the DAG say that this resettlement plan is entirely about providing services to the people. If they believe this, they gravely misunderstand the aims of the Ethiopian Government, which have to do with political control.

Ethiopia’s long-standing plan to pin down the pastoralists

Most of the groups targeted in the southwest are people who depend on cattle and tend to move with the cattle-pastoralists. Pastoralists are difficult for governments to control. For the last 118 years pastoral peoples in the Omo Valley have successfully dodged many of the abuses suffered by settled agricultural tribes in the region, at the hands of the state.

The pastoralists simply gathered their cattle together and moved away, returning when government forces had left. With the help of the DAG, the government is now planning, finally, to pin the pastoralists down in resettlement sites.

David Turton, an anthropologist who has worked in the Omo Valley for more than 45 years, warned me about the possible motives of DFID and USAID for visiting the Omo at that particular time – January 2012.

“They may be reacting to the recent Human Rights Watch report which severely criticized their role in resettlement activities in Gambella”, he wrote. “It’s known that Human Rights watch is planning a report on the Omo, which is likely to be equally critical.

“So, by going to the Omo now, DFID and USAID will be able to argue that they have been keeping ‘a close eye’ on events there. In other words, their trip may have more to do with protecting their own backs against politically embarrassing revelations than with protecting the human rights of the Mursi and Bodi.”

But I’d once had a good experience with the World Bank, when it refused to give money to a conservation organization that was threatening to evict indigenous people from their land in the Omo Valley. I thought it might do good to show these aid agencies the gravity of the situation.

Off to the Omo Valley

We set off in a Land Rover through the grasslands of the Omo Valley. We stopped in a small Mursi village and arranged a meeting with approximately 40 Mursi. At the beginning, a Mursi man asked me, “Did you bring these people?” meaning did I vouch for them. “Yes”, I said.

This let the Mursi feel they could speak freely. DFID and USAID heard many accounts from the Mursi of forced eviction, beatings, rape, and coercion in agreements with the government. Some of these accounts were firsthand. We went on to a Bodi village and heard much the same thing.

Here is a translator telling what the Bodi next to him said:

“This man used to live in the Usso area. In that place one was able to grow a lot of grain … The government has thrown him out of his place and he doesn’t know what to do. His former place is behind that mountain. He says they are going to give it to someone else, a plantation investor.”

The accounts were irrefutable and I thought they must cause the donors to act. Months went by and the donors said they could not substantiate human rights violations in the Gambella region. But they had refused to visit Anuak refugees, although invited by the Anuak themselves, who had been evicted from their land in Gambella.

These Anuak were now living in refugee camps in Kenya and Sudan where they could have spoken of their experiences without fear of government reprisal. I was worried that the donors would also say they could find no evidence of violations in the Omo Valley.

So, I wrote DFID and USAID asking if anything had been done. I told them I had the tape recording transcripts. Had they taken this up with the DAG? I got the above call from a DFID official, after which they stopped responding to emails.

The donors report

Later DFID and USAID said in their report that the allegations of human rights abuses they had heard during their visit to the Omo Valley “could not be substantiated”.

The then British Minister for Overseas Development, Justine Greening, reported the same to UK Parliament. DFID and USAID had used the Mursi and Bodi to protect their reputation, and the reputation of the Ethiopian government.

But I had the tape recording.

At this time, there was strong disagreement between the reports that Human Rights Watch had published out about resettlement in the Gambella region, and the accounts that members of the DAG were putting out of their investigative trips to the same region.

Human Rights Watch was on the ground as the resettlement was being implemented and they also visited Anuak who had fled to refugee camps outside Ethiopia. From both populations they received reports that forced evictions, murders, and beatings had occurred.

The DAG, on the other hand, was saying it could not substantiate any human rights abuses. So, where was the disconnect?

One of the translators for the DAG investigation in Gambella said the communities had told DAG “to their face” of the human rights abuses. But still DAG reported nothing. What was important about the audio recording I’d made was it showed the inside of this investigation process by DAG, and it wasn’t pretty.

I heard in detail about one of the subsequent DAG trips in the Omo Valley in early August, 2013. Ethiopian government representatives had gone to a village in Bodi and told them they were bringing foreigners to ask what the Bodi thought of the resettlement.

The Bodi said, “This is good. When they come we will tell them the truth! How you swindle us, what you did wrong and about the people who abused us. We will tell it straight!” Some days later the villagers saw the caravan of aid agency officials and government officials drive past, on their way to another village.

Pushback

I published the recordings, HRW published a report about abuses in the Omo Valley, the World Bank Inspection Panel investigated the Bank’s resettlement program in Ethiopia, and earlier this year the tide began to turn. DFID pulled its funding from the PBS program.

The World Bank Inspection Panel report on the PBS program was also leaked. It contained damning evidence of human rights violations, and although the World Bank rejected the report findings, World Bank president Jim Yong Kim admitted to serious flaws with its resettlement programs.

This is all to the good, as the aid agencies have been faced with the consequences of their actions, but it doesn’t mean there are any protections for the ethnic groups of Southwest Ethiopia. The plantations and dam are moving ahead as before.

In April, reports surfaced that the Kwegu, the smallest ethnic group in the Omo Valley, were starving. They were not able to grow crops below an irrigation dam the government constructed on the Omo River for its sugarcane plantations. The Kwegu were giving their children to the cattle-herding Bodi to look after, so the kids would have milk to drink.

How can a $4.9 billion program be implemented and leave people starving? The answer, I think, is aid may not be the primary function of some of these organizations. Aid often is a way of paying a foreign government to provide a service for the country ‘giving’ the aid.

The long strings attached to aid

The US government needs Ethiopia as a stable and strategic place to carry out military operations in ‘the War on Terror’ in East Africa and the Middle East. The Horn of Africa has long been Washington’s ‘back-door of the Middle East’. The US now has a drone base in Arba Minch, with range to Somalia and Yemen. Arba Minch is not so far from Mursi territory. Aid has a long history of murky dealings.

In 1990, when the US was trying to get clearance from the UN to attack Iraq in the Gulf War, it bribed many UN member states for ‘yes’ votes with debt relief, gifts of weapons, and other things. When Yemen defied US wishes and voted against the attack, a senior American diplomat declared, “That was the most expensive ‘no vote’ you ever cast.” In three days, a $70 million USAID project was cancelled to one of the world’s poorest countries.

On its website, DFID explained its decision to pull its funding from the PBS Program as follows: “Recognising Ethiopia’s growing success, the UK will now evolve its approach by transitioning support towards economic development to help generate jobs, income and growth.”

But in the UK High Court where it was fighting a case brought against it by an Anuak refugee, ‘Mr O’. DFID said that it had pulled out of the PBS Program because “of ongoing concerns related to civil and political rights at the level of the overall partnership in Ethiopia … and continued concerns about the accountability of the security services.”

The DAG published a letter to the Ethiopian government on its website in February this year, in which it reported on visits it had made in August, 2014 to the Omo Valley and Bench Maji Zone. In this letter, it announced that it had found “no evidence of the Ethiopian Government forcibly resettling people.”

The truth is very different

Many more Bodi and Mursi have been imprisoned since the plantations started. Some were imprisoned after disagreeing with plantation and resettlement plans in meetings. Bodi cultivation sites and Mursi grain stores were bulldozed against their wishes.

Bodi have been in armed conflict with the police and military about the plantations. The Bodi were forbidden by the government to plant at the Omo River and told to move into the resettlement sites. When food aid didn’t arrive they went to plant against government wishes.

The Mursi were told by government officials that if they didn’t sell off their cattle, the cattle would be injected with poison. This caused the Mursi in the north to leave their best cultivation land on the Omo River and in the grasslands in order to protect their cattle. They’ve lost three annual harvests so far as a result.

Thousands of acres of Bodi territory were taken for the plantations and the Bodi ended up with small plots of land with no shade. When the Bodi left these plots, the government took them back for sugarcane. The DAG missed all of this. When are the DAG aid agencies going to start aiding the people of the Omo Valley, and Gambella, instead of participating in their demise?

Ethiopia has the right, and need, to develop its economy and industries, but impoverishing some of its most vulnerable people in the process is counterproductive.

The Mursi and Bodi have been trying to implement the Mursi-Bodi Community Conservation Area. This would capitalize on the already abundant tourism and wildlife in the area, in conjunction with Omo and Mago National Parks. If the government were to approve this, and let it be fully implemented, it may provide benefits for both local people and state.

Will Hurd lived in Ethiopia for eight years, primarily with the Mursi of the Southwest, who are now threatened by a 175,000 hectare sugar plantation. He speaks the Mursi language. He is director of the small non-profit, Cool Ground.

Post-9/11 repressive legislation made America more of a police state than earlier.

Obama wants more on top of current freedom-destroying laws, executive orders, national security and homeland security presidential directives, military orders when issued, and extrajudicial diktats at his discretion.

Most disturbing is too few Americans realize or even care about their fundamental constitutional and international law mandated rights disappearing in plain sight.

America never was a democracy – less so now than ever with monied interests controlling everything, rigged elections for top government posts mattering most, ordinary people’s rights and wishes entirely ignored, and repressive laws cracking down hard on nonbelievers.

If that doesn’t define a police state, what does? Proposed new legislation Obama wants passed intends driving another nail in what little remains of a free society.

The Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act (CISA) targets fundamental civil liberties for elimination, including scant privacy protections left.

It’s repressive CISPA (Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act) in new form. The earlier legislation was introduced in 2011, died, resurfaced in 2013 and went nowhere again – because of overwhelming public opposition.

It would have given government and corporate interests unlimited access to personal/privileged information online. It would have permitted transferring private communications to government agencies and let them share it with business on the false claim of protecting cyber security.

Throughout his tenure, Obama waged extrajudicial cyberwar. In response to CISPA 2.0, the ACLU said it would compromise privacy rights.

It would let “companies share sensitive and personal American internet data with the government, including the National Security Agency and other military agencies.”

CISPA does not require companies to make reasonable efforts to protect their customers’ privacy and then allows the government to use that data for undefined ‘national-security’ purposes and without any minimization procedures, which have been in effect in other security statutes for decades.

It would permit destroying civil liberties on the bogus pretext of protecting cyber security. In response to proposed CISA legislation, the ACLU, Electronic Frontier Foundation, Project Censored, the Media Freedom Foundation, the National Whistleblower Center, and dozens of other civil liberties and open government groups wrote members of Congress strongly condemning the proposed legislation.

Saying in part it “threatens to create a gaping loophole in existing privacy law that would permit the government to approach private companies; ask for ‘voluntary’ cooperation in sharing sensitive information, including communications content; and then use that information in various law enforcement investigations, including the investigation and prosecution of government whistleblowers under the Espionage Act.”

Proposed provisions violate core constitutional protections. They circumvent fundamental rights on the pretext of cybersecurity. Separately, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) said CISA provides no funding for security research or training federal government personnel – nor do anything to enhance computer and network security.

Instead, unconstitutional information sharing is proposed, circumventing civil liberties, including privacy concerns.

CISA will “grant companies more power to obtain ‘cyber threat indicators’ “ and share personal information collected with federal government agencies “without a warrant.”

It “requires real time dissemination to military and intelligence agencies, including the NSA.” Online and other privacy rights are entirely ignored.

Information gotten can be used for purposes unrelated to cybersecurity – including “a wide range of crimes involving any level of physical force,” said EFF.

Corporations will be able “to launch countermeasures against potentially innocent users” – with no accountability for potential harm caused. They’ll be immune from lawsuits demanding damages for unjustifiable reasons.

Over 800,000 signatures were collected in response to an anti-CISPA “Stop Cyber Spying Week” campaign. EFF urges everyone “take action today. Stop Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act (CISA).”

House members passed the Protecting Cyber Networks Act in late April. Click this link. Email your senators and House representative. Send them the message EFF suggests or your own.

Tens of thousands of concerned Americans got CISPA rejected. “(W)e need your help again,” said EFF. Act now before it’s too late.

Tell your senators and congressional representative to oppose CISA. Help kill this Orwellian freedom destroying measure.

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.

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Oh plaintive cry for justice, for change, for the world we must create, welling up from a tiny island nation in the Pacific Ocean. I can only pray: Let there be an authority large enough to hear it.

My first reaction, upon learning that the Republic of the Marshall Islands — former U.S. territory, still ravaged and radioactive, the site of 67 H-bomb tests between 1946 and 1958 — has filed lawsuits against the nine nations that possess nuclear weapons demanding that they eliminate their arsenals, as per the provisions of the 1968 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, was cringing disbelief. Are they serious? I couldn’t imagine an action more futile.

But the disbelief was mixed with hope, and the hope remains vibrant as the world marks the 70th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the launching of the geopolitics of M.A.D. (Mutually Assured Destruction). Could hope possibly be more painful?

The anti-nuke lawsuits were filed in April 2014, in both U.S. Federal Court and the International Court of Justice in The Hague. It was no big surprise when the U.S. suit was dismissed some months ago due to being “speculative” and because the Marshall Islands “lacks standing” to bring the suit.

Yeah, an upstart nation of no international significance. All the Marshall Islands did was to serve as an expendable swath of atolls in the middle of nowhere, a site ideal to absorb multiple megatons of nuclear testing over a dozen years. The islands’ inhabitants were, in the racist parlance of the time, simple “savages” whose culture, whose very lives, had far less value than the technological advancements the testing yielded. Cancer, birth defects and other consequences of radiation are the lasting results, but who cares? Three decades ago, the U.S. settled its genocidal debt to the islanders with a payment of $150 million “for all claims, past, present and future.” This pittance — this nuisance settlement — is, of course, long gone. Too bad.

“What many Americans seem to want to forget,” wrote scholar Sandra Crismon, as quoted recently by Robert Alvarez in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, “is that for the Marshallese, nuclear testing is not a historical event, as they continue to deal with the huge environmental and human health costs.”

But their lawsuits in the two courts, with a decision still pending from the ICJ, isn’t seeking additional compensation. The suits merely seek to hold the nuclear-armed nations accountable to the Non-Proliferation Treaty, which calls for the dismantling of all nuclear weapons. How did that small provision get overlooked? Five of these nations — the U.S., U.K., France, Russia, and China — are signatories to the agreement. The other four — Israel, India, Pakistan and North Korea — though they’ve snubbed the treaty, are nonetheless accountable to international law, the lawsuit maintains.

If nothing else, the tiny island nation is standing eyeball to eyeball with superpower arrogance and crippled morality.

As Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif wrote last week in The Guardian:

“One of the many ironies of history is that non-nuclear-weapon states, like Iran, have actually done far more for the cause of non-proliferation in practice than nuclear-weapon states have done on paper. Iran and other nuclear have-nots have genuinely ‘walked the walk’ in seeking to consolidate the non-proliferation regime. Meanwhile, states actually possessing these destructive weapons have hardly even ‘talked the talk,’ while completely brushing off their disarmament obligations under the non-proliferation treaty.”

History’s conquerors will not be the ones who free humanity from its suicidal vise. This is the paradox. The transition we have to make must emerge beyond the institutions that have trapped us.

Nuclear weaponry is the outcome of 10,000 years of human experimentation with war, outside the circle of life. The institutions we’ve built, the logic we’ve adhered to, lead us nowhere, except to more of the same and worse. Desperate as we are to keep Iran from developing nuclear weapons, we devote billions of dollars annually to upgrading our own. There are still nearly 16,000 nuclear weapons on the planet, some 1,800 on Cold War-era hair-trigger alert. We’ve been on the brink of self-annihilation for 70 years. What sanity can we access to save ourselves?

“Everything turned red — the ocean, the fish, the sky and my grandfather’s net. And we were 200 miles away from ground zero. A memory that can never be erased.”

These are the words of Tony DeBrum, minister of foreign affairs for the Republic of the Marshall Islands, who, Alvarez tells us in his Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists essay, addressed the recent Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference. DeBrum was 9, out fishing with his grandfather, on March 1, 1954, when the Castle Bravoblast — all 15 megatons of it, the largest U.S. nuclear test ever — was detonated on Bikini Atoll. To its innocent witnesses, it must have foretold the end of the world.

The Marshall Islands lawsuits ask: If not us, who? If not now, when? These are the questions asked by those who have no choice. That means all of us should be asking them.

Originally published at WhoWhatWhy.org

Today marks the 70th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima —  followed three days later by the bombing of Nagasaki. While the world is now aware of the horrifying aftermath of these events, this wasn’t always the case. This is the first in a three-part series on the US’s decades-long deliberate effort to hide the true extent of the atom bombs’ mass devastation.

In June of 1946, Lt. Daniel McGovern hauled 90,000 feet of color footage to the Pentagon and submitted it to General Orvil Anderson. Locked away and declared top secret, it did not see the light of day for more than thirty years.

The first in a three-part series.

“A Hole in American History”

Dozens of hours of film footage shot in Hiroshima and Nagasaki in the fall and winter of 1945-1946 by an elite U.S. military unit was hidden for decades and almost no one could see it.  The raw footage, in striking color, languished in obscurity. As the writer Mary McCarthy observed, the atomic bombing of Japan nearly fell into “a hole in human history.”

As our nuclear arms race with the Soviet Union escalated, all that most Americans saw of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were the same black-and-white images: a mushroom cloud, a panorama of emptiness, a battered building topped with the skeleton of a dome—mainly devoid of people.

Once top secret, the shocking images now carry an “unrestricted” label. You have, quite possibly, seen a few seconds of clips on television or in film documentaries. If so, those images may be burned into your mind. Yet no one was allowed to view them when the horror they captured might have prevented more horror by slowing down or even halting the nuclear arms race.

Compounding the cover-up, the American military seized all of the black-and-white footage of the cities shot by the Japanese in the immediate aftermath of the bombings. They hid the film away for many years. It was known in Japan as the maboroshi, or “phantom,” film. It, too, rests in the National Archives today.

“Never again.” At least not with outmoded bombs.

To find out how and why all of this historic footage was suppressed for so long, I tracked down the man who oversaw the handling of both the Japanese and American film. His name is Lt. Col. (Ret.) Daniel A. McGovern. He told me that high officials in the Pentagon “didn’t want those images out because,

“…they showed effects on man, woman and child…. They didn’t want the general public to know what their weapons had done—at a time they were planning on more bomb tests.”

Not incidentally, those planned tests were designed to help the U.S. military build bigger and better nuclear bombs.

McGovern also said, “We didn’t want the material out because…we were sorry for our sins.”

Read the rest here

Greg Mitchell is the author of more than a dozen books, including “Atomic Cover-up.” He is the former editor of Nuclear Times and Editor & Publisher and writes a daily column at The Nation.

Next:  Part II—Coming Soon.

Yes, I think the election season is a disastrously overlong distraction. If people’s interest in it can be used to get them to ask their heroes to lead on important matters — such as asking Bernie Sanders to rally the Senate for the Iran agreement or against the TPP — then that’s a nice silver lining. If people want to get drunk watching Republicans debate rather than some other poorly conceived tragicomedy on TV, what do I care?

But there’s usually little of moving the beloved leader forward on anything, because supporters take on the role of servants, not masters. Criticism equals endorsement of some other leader. Advice equals endorsement of some other leader. And facts are seen through glasses tinted the shade of one’s preferred public commander.

RootsAction’s petition asking Sanders to talk about the military has nearly 14,000 signatures. It’s produced a number of claims that Bernie in fact does talk about the military, and has a great record on it, etc. Following up on each of these claims thus far has led to virtually nothing new. If you go to Bernie’s website and click on ISSUES and search for foreign policy or war or peace or overall budget priorities (militarism now actually gets 54% now), you’ll be searching forever — unless he adds something. His “issues” page acts as if 199 nations and 54% of the budget just don’t exist.

If Senator Sanders were to add anything about war to his website, judging by his standard response when asked, it would be this:

The military wastes money and its contractors routinely engage in fraud. The Department of Defense should be audited. Some weapons that I won’t name should be eliminated. Some cuts that I won’t even vaguely estimate should be made. All the wars in the Middle East should continue, but Saudi Arabia should lead the way with the U.S. assisting, because Saudi Arabia has plenty of weapons — and if Saudi Arabia has murdered lots of its own citizens and countless little babies in Yemen and has the goal of overthrowing a number of governments and slaughtering people of the wrong sect and dominating the area for the ideology of its fanatical dictatorial regime, who cares, better that than the U.S. funding all the wars, and the idea of actually ending any wars should be effectively brushed aside by changing the subject to how unfair it is for Saudi Arabia not to carry more of the militarized man’s burden. Oh, and veterans, U.S. veterans, are owed the deepest gratitude imaginable for the generous and beneficial service they have performed by killing so many people in the wars I’ve voted against and the ones I’ve voted for alike.

A brilliant and talented friend of mine named Jonathan Tasini is about to publish a book on Sanders’ platform on numerous issues. I asked to read an early copy because I had a huge hope that perhaps Sanders had addressed what he’s silent on in an interview with Tasini. He’s silent on how much he’d cut the military, even within a range of $100 billion. He’s silent on alternatives to war. He’s usually silent on U.S. subservience to Israel. He’s silent on drone murders. He’s silent on militarism and military spending driving the wars, the civil liberties losses, the militarization of local police, the militarization of the borders, the nasty attitudes toward immigrants and minorities, etc. He’s silent on the public support for two, not one, great sources of revenue: taxing the rich (which he’s all over) and cutting the military (which he avoids). I admit that I also had a secret fear that Tasini’s book would not mention foreign policy at all.

Well, the book turns out not to include new interviews but just to collect past speeches and remarks and interviews and legislative records, carefully selected to paint the most progressive picture. So, wars Sanders opposed are mentioned. Wars he supported are not. Critiques of wasteful spending are included. Support for wasteful spending when it’s in Vermont is not. Etc. I do recommend getting the book as soon as it comes out. No similar book could be produced about any other candidate in the two mega parties. But take it all with a grain of salt. You’ll still have no grasp of Sander’s basic budgetary platform or approach to diplomacy or foreign aid or international law or demilitarization or transition to peaceful industries — assuming he develops any approach to some of those things.

And to those who are already telling me that Sanders has to censor his actually wonderful secret desires to move the world from war to peace (and presumably a 12-dimensional chess move by which Saudi Arabia check mates all the warmongers and fossil fuel consumers) — that he has to keep quiet or he’ll have powerful forces against him or he’ll be assassinated or he’ll lose the election — I’m going to say what I said when people told me this about Obama: IT’S NEVER WORKED THAT WAY IN THE HISTORY OF THE WORLD! WHAT ARE YOU SMOKING? We’re lucky if candidates keep half the promises they make. Getting them to keep promises they never made but we fantasized has never been done.

I also had hopes for the wonderful and admirable Nicole Sandler’s radio show on Thursday. She’d said that Sanders had no reluctance at all to discuss militarism. But of course I didn’t expect him to refuse to talk. I expected him to just muddle through the same old same old. And so he did. He talked about cost overruns and waste, fraud, a DoD audit. He said he’d eliminate some weapons (but didn’t name a single one). He said he’d make cuts but “I can’t tell you exactly how many.” Can you tell us roughly how many? He said he wanted “Muslim countries” to help with fighting the wars. Sandler prompted him with his Saudi Arabia thing, and he went off on that, and the host agreed with him.

So the Socialist wants to turn foreign affairs over to a royal theocratic dictatorship, won’t say what he’d do to the largest item in the budget even though it’s WAR, and he’s bravely come out against fraud and waste without naming any instances of it.

And now I have a choice of being satisfied or an ungrateful perfectionist secretly supporting Hillary, even though her record on militarism is worse than that of almost any human alive and her website lists Iran, ISIS, Russia, and China as enemies to be stood up strong against. Oh, forget it. What time do the Republicans come on? Pass the whiskey.

In our previous media alert, we described ‘the panic-driven hysterical hate-fest campaign’ being waged against Labour leadership candidate Jeremy Corbyn right across the corporate media ‘spectrum’.

This week, Guardian readers’ editor Chris Elliott responded to readers’ complaints:

‘I read or viewed 43 pieces of journalism published between 21 and 30 July… Seventeen of the 43 pieces struck me as neutral… there were 10 pieces that could broadly be described as either being comment pieces in favour of Corbyn or news stories reporting positively about him.’

Elliot would only concede that ‘in the early days of Corbyn’s charge, the readers rightly got a sniff that on occasions we weren’t taking him seriously enough. That has changed…’.

We wrote to Elliott:

‘Hi Chris

‘Hope you’re well. Thanks for your piece: “Analysing the balance of our Jeremy Corbyn coverage.”…

‘Could you let us know, please, which 17 pieces struck you as neutral, and which 10 pieces were in favour of Corbyn, or reporting positively about him?’ (Email, August 4, 2015)

Elliott replied:

‘Dear Mr Edwards,

‘I am sorry but I have set out all that I had time and resource to do. I cannot help you further.

‘Best wishes

‘Chris Elliott’ (Email, August 4, 2015)

We were, of course, grateful for the response.

In his article, Elliott rightly warned that, ‘This is not a scientific piece of research – we don’t have the resources.’

In reality, evaluating Guardian bias on Corbyn does not require scientific method, just simple common sense.

Consider, for example, an article written by arch-Blairite Peter Hain, who is up to his neck in responsibility for Iraq sanctions, invasion and occupation. Hain’s piece was titled:

‘Jeremy Corbyn’s policies may be popular – but they don’t add up to a platform’

The article jumped out at us because it contained rare criticism of two other candidates for the Labour leadership:

‘The two most credible candidates – Andy Burnham and Yvette Cooper – have been underwhelming: cautious and austerity-lite.’

This does indeed qualify as mild criticism. But compare it with Hain’s comments on Corbyn:

‘Those inside the Westminster bubble have been transfixed, indeed bewildered, by Jeremy Corbyn’s soaring campaign for Labour leader. The more he is denounced, the better he seems to do.

‘Have Labour members gone mad, party luminaries wonder? Has the Militant Tendency’s 1980s entryism been somehow reincarnated from its current impotence, headlines ask?’

Hain continued:

‘Nobody – least of all him [Corbyn], ironically – imagines he could be prime minister, or even that as opposition leader he could survive the high noon bearpit of Prime Minister’s Questions, or deliver an effective instant response to a George Osborne budget speech.’

And:

‘But the reason I won’t vote for Corbyn is that, underneath his appealing slogans and rousing values, there is no programmatic substance… His economic policy amounts to an unelectable platform of “tax and spend” – an anguished cry of protest, not a serious alternative for a Labour government… He demonstrates little understanding of the immensely arduous challenge of electing, let alone running, a social democratic or democratic socialist government…’.

If this isn’t clear enough, a simple observation should make it clearer: there is more damning personal and political criticism in this single piece on Corbyn than we found in several hundred Guardian articles on Burnham, Cooper and Kendall over the last month combined.

By contrast, the following comment from a Guardian news report indicates the level of criticism that has only rarely been directed at these three candidates:

‘A senior Labour politician… attributed Corbyn’s success so far to the failure of Burnham, Cooper and Kendall to grip the imagination.’

We also managed to find this from Rafael Behr in the Guardian:

‘Kendall has misjudged the balance between delivering hard truths to the party and charmlessly rubbing it up the wrong way, which in turn raises doubts about the tuning of her political antennae.’

A Guardian leader commented:

‘Mr Burnham’s campaign, with its heavy emphasis on emotional reconnection with the party’s core electorate, is steeped in nostalgia.’

Again, minor, low-level criticism; nothing that could be considered a personal and political demolition in the style of Hain.

Comedian Frankie Boyle wrote a piece criticising ‘passive’ Labour. He referred obliquely to ‘leadership candidacy androids’ who lack ‘personality and charm’ in a party that is to the right of John Major. Burnham, Cooper and Kendall were not mentioned by name; their role as New Labour Blairites supporting the Iraq crime and other horrors was not discussed. Seumas Milne, the Guardian’s resident leftist fig-leaf, also referred to the ‘New Labour machine politician’ alternative to Corbyn, supplying rare, substantial criticism of the other candidates for moving ‘sharply to the right’.

The fiercest personal criticism came from John Harris:

‘As Corbyn rises, Andy Burnham is suddenly styling himself as the faux-radical saviour of a party “scared of its own shadow”.’

And yet his campaign began ‘with a speech at the City offices of a corporation associated with huge tax avoidance…’.

Yvette Cooper exhibits ‘that awful modern Labour tendency to boil even the great causes of the age down to borderline inanity and talk to people as if they are stupid’.

Not that Harris is a Corbyn fan: ‘I am less interested in him than what his candidacy, in tandem with Labour’s new voting system, has let loose.’

Vanishingly rare exceptions aside, the other three leaders have been criticised for being charmless, overly nostalgic, dull, hypocritical, inane, and so on. Clearly, none of this compares to the many articles passionately warning readers against the ‘madness‘, the ‘catastrophe‘, of voting for Corbyn when ‘Nobody – least of all him, ironically – imagines he could be prime minister.’

The Worm-Eating Stage – Think Of Your Children!

Anne Perkins was outraged by criticism of the female candidates in a Guardian article titled: ‘How bad must it get before Labour elects a woman?’ Perkins wrote:

‘Yvette Cooper and Liz Kendall are cringingly quizzed about their weight, fertility and fashion choices, and the implication from one of the other camps that they might not be tough enough for the five years ahead.’

By ironic contrast, Perkins wrote an impassioned piece titled:

‘Labour party members, please think before you vote for Jeremy Corbyn’

She commented:

‘Jeremy Corbyn as leader would fit tidily into the pattern the Conservative party established in its wilderness years.’

The Corbyn vote is a vote for self-destruction, then. Perkins added:

‘There is room for a party of the emotional spasm in British politics but that is a party of protest, not a party of government.’

Corbyn and his supporters are part of ‘an apocalyptic tendency’. In conclusion, Perkins pleaded with her readers:

‘Think what kind of country you want for you and your children and, even more importantly, think how you might get there. Now think, is Jeremy Corbyn in the middle of that picture? I don’t think so.’

Last week, we noted how senior columnist Polly Toynbee had described support for Corbyn as ‘summer madness’ promoting ‘a 1983 man’, ‘a relic’. This week, Toynbee commented again under the title:

‘Free to dream, I’d be left of Jeremy Corbyn. But we can’t gamble the future on him’

Toynbee wrote:

‘At hustings he shines by offering virtue, while the rest wrestle with the wretched realities of British politics.’

As so often, then, Corbyn was depicted as a fantasist divorced from the real world inhabited by serious politicians. Once again, Toynbee warned voters off:

‘Can Corbyn overcome all with sheer conviction? I wish it were so. But Labour people, motivated by the plight of the needy in a grossly unjust society, shouldn’t gamble the future of the weak on such a slender chance… A Cooper leadership offers an infinitely better hope of success than a Jeremy Corbyn/Tom Watson ticket.’

Tim Bale wrote an article under the title:

‘A Corbyn-inspired split would be a Labour catastrophe’

The Guardian’s Suzanne Moore described Corbyn as a ‘slightly less feral version of Ken Livingstone’. Moore understood why the less enlightened were attracted to Corbyn’s authenticity, ‘but Blair is right, surely, to talk of the challenges of the future’.

Moore thus respectfully cited, and sided with, one of the great neocon war criminals of our time. If Corbyn’s campaign achieves nothing else, it has already exposed the reality that the deaths of one million human beings in Iraq have done nothing to alter the Guardian Blairites’ view of their idol.

Moore bitterly rejected the self-harming lunacy of supporting Corbyn:

‘The Labour party can choose to be part of what is happening or it can further cut itself off. Right now they appear to be in the process known to post-Marxists as the “Nobody loves me. Everybody hates me. I am going down the garden to eat worms” stage.’

Martin Kettle followed his earlier dismissal with a second under the title:

‘Labour can back from the brink. But it seems to lack the will to do so’

Kettle added:

‘His socialism, though, is more a matter of faith than a viable programme… Corbyn’s position is essentially made up of attitudes and slogans…’

The Guardian’s Zoe Williams was amazed that she was even discussing Corbyn:

‘How did this man… get on the ballot in the first place?’

Williams was not suggesting that this is an exciting opportunity to support genuinely progressive policies – her focus was on how to ‘neutralise Corbyn’. Of his enemies, Williams wrote:

‘On a more profound level, though, they’re coming at him with the wrong truncheon. The charge of being unrealistic actually oxygenates rather than smothers the spark Corbyn has created… The most memorable, salient, powerful thing about Blair was that he embodied hope… That’s what made him unstoppable. And that, in the end, is what would neutralise Corbyn: not ever-shriller accusations of the danger he poses but a more forceful articulation of what hopeful Labour would look like, and what its hopes would be.’

The ‘most memorable, salient, powerful thing about Blair’ was that he sold himself to one of the most vicious hard-right US regimes in living memory. And of course no journalist in the Guardian has sought to identify the right ‘truncheon’ to ‘neutralise’ Burnham, Cooper or Kendall. Chris Elliott recommendedthis piece to a reader outraged by the Guardian’s negative coverage.

As one reads through the hundreds of articles mentioning the four Labour candidates, it becomes overwhelmingly clear that serious, much less harsh, criticism of the New Labour triumverate is not on the agenda. It just becomes obvious that there are no forces within the Guardian willing to support such a focus. Burnham, Cooper and Kendall are to be treated as serious, respectable politicians; potential leaders worthy of due deference and respect. Corbyn can be dissed and dismissed, treated any which way – almost literally anything goes.

Thus the Guardian’s Simon Hattenstone, who interviewed Corbyn before his leadership campaign dramatically surged. Imagine any journalist writing anything comparably disrespectful of an Obama or a Cameron before an election; or indeed of a Burnham, Cooper or Kendall:

‘If this were a job interview, Corbyn would have already been shown the door. And not just because of his age – 66. Corbyn is the anti-Blair, in every way. Whereas you cannot be unaware of Blair when he is in the room (he is all charisma), you might well not notice Corbyn arriving or leaving.

‘You would expect Corbyn to have charisma by the bucketload and a leonine ego, but he doesn’t… He still has a touch of Citizen Smith about him (without the laughs) and even his biggest fans admit he can’t open his mouth without expressing the need for peace, justice and solidarity.’

For younger readers, ‘Citizen Smith’ was a reference to a 1970s BBC comedy series that mocked a deluded, preachy, unemployed London leftist who had dreams of leading a Cuban-style revolution from Tooting, with his grandiose dreams always ending in pathetic farce.

Hattenstone reported questions that might have been asked of a child rather than a leadership candidate in a democratic election: ‘How would he feel if he actually won?… Would it scare him?’

The conclusion was as haughtily dismissive: ‘Like the rest of the country, Corbyn doesn’t think he has a chance of winning.’ Elliott also recommended this piece to the reader angered by negative Guardian coverage.

By dramatic contrast, the Guardian’s front-page interview with Yvette Cooper was deferential to the point of cringe-making idolatry.

Or consider this small comment in a Guardian news report:

‘Labour leadership candidate Liz Kendall has said it will be a disaster for the party if polling proves accurate and the leftwinger Jeremy Corbyn wins the contest.’

No comparable news report has warned of the ‘disaster’ – for the climate, for victims of US-UK ‘humanitarian intervention’, for the poor in Britain – if one of the three other candidates is elected.

Corbyn is also alone in having been the butt of Guardian ‘humour’. One article title asked:

‘Can Jeremy Corbyn ever be funny? Only on my joke Twitter feed’

Another:

‘Did you hear the one about Jeremy Corbyn on Twitter?’

The piece mentioned Corbyn’s ‘self-proclaimed “parsimonious MP’s” lack of visible humour’.

Assistant editor Michael White also sniggered beneath the title:

‘Did Jeremy Corbyn used to wear open-toed sandals around Westminster in hot weather? Does he still?’

White added:

‘So Jeremy Corbyn may actually become leader of the Labour party. I struggled to type those words because I still find it hard to believe. Not since it elected the admirable but unworldly pacifist, George Lansbury (1932-35), after the great Ramsay MacDonald split, will it have been so reckless.’

A news piece was titled in all seriousness:

‘Jeremy Corbyn caught looking gloomy on night bus’

A ‘gloomy’ Corbyn was pictured simply looking at the ground, or perhaps talking to someone. This was somehow perceived as material for a negative news story – perhaps the campaign was already too much for the ageing fantasist. Real leaders – the people we are trained to admire and respect – ride in smart, chauffeur-driven cars at high speed. Corbyn rides a bus. We tweeted the journalist responsible, Jessica Elgot:

‘Have you written stories about other politicians looking gloomy/melancholy/pensive? Could you send links?’

We received no reply.

Finally, as this alert was being written, the Guardian published a piece by former Labour Health Secretary and Education Secretary, Alan Johnson. Yet again, the title focused on the insanity:

‘Why Labour should end the madness and elect Yvette Cooper’

Corbyn ‘never had the ambition or the appetite that this job requires’; he has ‘been cheerfully disloyal to every Labour leader he’s ever served under’, and so on.

Conclusion

Chris Elliott’s response mocks his claim to be a genuinely independent readers’ editor. Has the Guardian published favourable comment pieces about Corbyn? Quite obviously, yes. Does that mean the Guardian has been fair, impartial and unbiased in its coverage of Corbyn’s campaign? Absolutely not.

As we have seen, high-profile Guardian journalists and others have been lined up to direct a flood of ‘disaster’ warnings, dismissals, derision, disbelief and mockery at Corbyn, and only Corbyn. Nothing remotely comparable has been directed at Burnham, Cooper or Kendall. This is a spectacular example of bias.

Put simply, like the rest of the ‘mainstream’ media, the Guardian – a major corporation deeply embedded in the ‘centrist’ political and economic establishment – is waging a propaganda war on British democratic choice.

DE

Illusions are at play in the modern tragedy that is the Greek economic system, particularly when it comes to notions of who benefits most from the latest bailout.

SAINT-JEROME, Quebec –— Modern Greek tragedy is at play, and so are illusions.

The big myth is that Greece overspent and the Greek government was reckless with its budgets, ultimately indebting Athens. It is true that Greek officials tried to gain influence and political support through spending. It’s also true that they signed lucrative contracts with local businesses.

Athens, however, is no exception here; this type of conduct has been displayed by politicians throughout the European Union and around the world.

The fact is that this is not what created the economic crisis in Greece. What is really taking place in Greece and the eurozone is something altogether different. The Greek bailouts appear to be part of a rigid restructuring of the EU that is placing other members under the control of Germany.

Red spray paint covers a French-language Bank of Greece sign to read ‘Bank of Merkel’ in reference to German Chancellor Angela Merkel in Athens, Monday, July 6, 2015.

Banker Bailouts versus National Bailouts

We are not dealing with national bailouts for failing economies, but with banking sector bailouts. Almost all the money that has been given to Greece, Cyprus, Ireland, and Portugal has gone to the banks of the creditor lenders.

In his 2013 documentary “The Secret Bank Bailout,” German investigative journalist Harald Schumann documents how the peoples of Ireland, Cyprus and Spain were not bailed out. The biggest recipients of the Irish bailout that saved Anglo-Irish Bank were British, French and German banks, including Union Investment Privatfonds, Rothschild et Compagnie Gestion, and Deutsche Bank. German and French banks accounted for 50 out of the 80 bondholders. The blogger Guido Fawkes revealed that the Irish government was protecting German investors when he published a list of the bondholders that he had obtained from an insider.

Watch The Secret Bank Bailout:

Éric Toussaint, the Belgian spokesperson for the Committee for the Abolition of Third World Debt (CADTM), accurately describes this in an interview with Rosa Moussaoui, explaining that the private banks managed to transfer their debts to the Greek people through the bailout arrangements in 2012.

Think Schumann and Toussaint are alone? Not by far. Even mainstream media and prominent analysts admit this is exactly what happened in Greece.

The bailouts were not “geared to the requirements of the people of Greece but to the needs of the international financial markets, meaning the banks,” economist Christian Rickens candidly reported in a 2012 commentary in Der Spiegel.

The synopsis of Rickens’ commentary reads: “The bailout package about to be agreed by the euro finance ministers will help Greece’s creditors more than the country itself. EU leaders should channel the aid into rebuilding the economy rather than rewarding financial speculators for their high-risk deals.”

Likewise, in analysis for Forbes, Agustino Fontevecchia wrote:

“As it stands right now, the Greek bailout and debt deal agreed by European Finance Ministers is a farce, a program designed to pay Greece’s international creditors and buy time to somehow engineer growth in a completely uncompetitive economic environment.”

A pedestrian passes graffiti referring to the officials from the European Union, European Central Bank and International Monetary Fund, together known as the troika, in Athens, Wednesday, July 29, 2015. Representatives of Greece’s creditors, its European Union partners and the International Monetary Fund, are currently meeting officials in Athens to discuss the terms of the new bailout, designed to provide 85 billion euros over three years. (AP Photo/Thanassis Stavrakis)

 Modern Pillaging

Greece is being pillaged. Following a neoliberal economic formula, Greek publicly owned assets are forcibly being sold to foreign investors to pay the debts of the banks. All the means for the Greek government to generate income have been liquidated to private enterprises.

“[V]aluable Greek assets of [50 billion euros] shall be transferred to an existing external and independent fund like the Institution for Growth in Luxembourg, to be privatized over time and decrease debt. Such fund would be managed by the Greek authorities under the supervision of the relevant European institutions,” eurozone leaders demanded in mid-July.

On July 13, Time magazine reported that a proposal was geared towards “locking up Greek assets in a special fund emerged on Saturday from Germany.”  “The German Finance Ministry even suggested moving the titles to Greek assets to an ‘external fund’ in Luxembourg so that Athens could not renege on their sale,” the magazine reported.

Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras and his Syriza-led government acquiesced to the demands to privatize more public property and infrastructure. Athens handed control of its public assets to German bankers. These assets, Time reported, will include publicly owned “buildings, possible areas of land, and even islands” that are home to Greek ruins and other archeological national treasures.

The illusions go on. Not even the so-called “troika” that organized the Greek bailout is real. Though it’s composed of the European Commission, the European Central Bank, and the International Monetary Fund, the troika is really a duet. While the European Commission is the executive branch of the EU, the European Central Bank is one of the six other institutions of the EU. Athens was really dealing with the EU and IMF.

Why the insistent narrative about a troika? It may be that the European Central Bank is being presented as a separate entity that is beyond the power of the public, thus preventing the public from demanding any oversight.

A woman uses her cell phone next to a poster depicting German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble placed by supporters of the No vote to the referendum in the northern Greek port city of Thessaloniki, Friday, July 3, 2015. Greeks will vote Sunday on whether to accept a proposal that creditors had made of specific reforms in exchange for loans. European Union institutions are framing it as a vote for or against the euro. (AP Photo/Giannis Papanikos)

The Greek bailout is for Germany and Western Europe, not Greeks

Not only is it more than likely that German banks and creditors are the benefactors of Greek bailout(s), German corporations are also part of the picture. While the austerity regime that forced the Greek people’s living standards to fall has reduced their wages by hundreds of millions of euros, Greek media reports started mentioning that the Greek Administrative Court of Appeals ruled that the biggest tax evader inside the country was Germany’s biggest construction company, Hochtief Aktiengesellschaft.

In October, the Greek journalist Costas Efimeros reported what happened with Hochtief. The Athens International Airport that Hochtief had managed vis-à-vis Hochtief Airport Capital was ordered to pay over 500 million euros in value-added taxes or general sales taxes and dividend taxes. This was because the airport had been in a stretched out fiscal dispute over tax payments with Athens since 2001. The International Court of Arbitration in London ruled in 2013 that the international airport did not need to pay the taxes “until it makes a return on its initial investment,” according to Efimeros.

This is where the story gets complicated. Although the Greek government owns the 55 percent majority stake in the Athens International Airport, the contract Athens was forced to sign stipulates that Hochtief, with its 40 percent share through Hochtief Airport Capital, selects the management and runs the airport. The German management amplified its losses in the books, and then in 2013 it sold Hochtief’s shares to a Canadian insurance company. Hochtief would eventually merge with the Spanish construction and engineering giant GrupoACS, leaving what the Greek government calls a big “smudge” and cautiously transferring its Greek debt over.

 The Greek government’s strange Kalamatiano

Something is rotten in the Hellenic Republic. Athens has been acting schizophrenically. While Greek officials have threatened to leave the EU, they have solidified Greece’s ties to Brussels. Athens has ignored the results of the national referendum on the bailout and flirted with Moscow. Despite Syriza’s anti-war rhetoric and pro-Palestinian declarations, it has also moved Greece militarily closer with Israel.

Prime Minister Tsipras and his Syriza-led government held a national referendum to decide whether to accept the troika’s demands on July 5. Domestic opponents argued the referendum was unconstitutional, saying that under Article 44 of the Greek Constitution referendums could only concern: (1) significant national matters and (2) important social matters, with the exception  of fiscal matters. Greece’s economic crisis fell under the first clause of Article 44 as an important national issue.

In the referendum, 3,558,450 out of a total of eligible 6,161,140 Greek voters voted against the referendum. The rejection of the troika’s demands won with 61.31 percent of the votes.

After the referendum to reject the bailout terms was won, Tsipras and the Greek government went ahead and approved the bailout. There was internal mutiny in Syriza and many Greeks felt betrayed. It was argued that Athens only called a referendum to gain leverage in negotiations. But can a decision made by the majority of those Greeks who voted in a national plebiscite simply be ignored?

The Greek government has been involved in a strange dance where it has flirted with Russia and its BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) partners. Greece and Russia have even formed some type of agreement for extending the “TurkStream” natural gas pipeline, which is scheduled to take natural gas from Russia to Turkey via the Black Sea. The TurkStream will export Russian natural gas to the Greeks by eventually extending into Greece. Despite the courtship of Russia and the Syriza-led coalition government’s threats to leave the EU and the eurozone, the Greek government’s threats have proved to be mostly bluffs.

With the okay of Prime Minister Tsipras and Syriza, Greek Defense Minister Panagiotis Kammenos has even signed a deal with the Israeli military. Visiting Israel last month, Kammenos signed a status of forces agreement, which essentially means Greece will be hosting Israeli military personnel. What does this mean? The previous Greek government had allowed Israel to conduct long-range flight exercises simulating an attack on Iran. Is Tsipras allowing the Israelis to continue those preparations?

Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras reads his notes as he prepares to answer opposition questions in Athens, on Friday, July 31, 2015. The third bailout includes a new punishing round of austerity measures heaped on a country reeling from a six-year recession and more than 25 percent unemployment. Tsipras has pledged to back the new cutbacks, while saying that he disagrees with them.

 A United States of Europe?

The Greek tragedy also has a strange twist. Where there is crisis for some, there is opportunity for others.

France has proposed that the 19 EU members in the eurozone form their own federal government complete with a single budget, one treasury department/ministry, and a unified parliament as a means of tackling the economic crisis in Greece. French President François Hollande penned an article in the Journal du Dimanche last month, calling for the formation of what is essentially a “United States of Europe” that would effectively relegate all existing governments in the eurozone into provincial or state-level governments.

Hollande’s proposal signals the consolidation of what appears to be German control over Greece and the other countries of the EU.

This article was originally printed for Mint Press News by Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya on August 5, 2015.

Radiation emitted from wireless devices can cause a metabolic imbalance in users, which can lead to various health risks including cancer and neurodegenerative disease, according to a new study.

The scientists were right — your cellphone can give you cancer. http://t.co/RBBNsV1fSh pic.twitter.com/m5UNFIDfX9

— New York Daily News (@NYDailyNews) July 30, 2015

Yakymenko said that cellphone use for 20 minutes a day for five years can boost the risk of one type of brain tumor by three times, while using a cellphone for an hour a day for four years and increase the risk of certain tumors by three to five times.

The National Cancer Institute in the United States estimated that about 23,400 new cases of primary malignant brain and central nervous system cancers were diagnosed in 2014 across the US.

Yakymenko also cautioned that brain and related cancers can take as many as 30 years to develop.

The “data were obtained on adults who used cell phones mostly up to 10 years as adults,” he said, according to the New York Daily News. “The situation can dramatically differ for children who use cells phone in childhood, when their biology much more sensitive to hazardous factors, and will use it over the life.”

READ MORE: Nearly 200 scientists warn of cellphone health risks 

Skeptics emphasized that the new study is a “meta-study,” or one that is a compilation of many other reviews. The larger study, in turn, inherits any and all inadequacies of those evaluations, including possible inaccuracies in study-participant reporting, recall bias, and changes in technology.

Links between cellphone use and cancer have cropped up over the years, especially as cellphone use has increased. In the United States, for example, use tripled from 2000 to 2010, according to the Cellular Telecommunications and Internet Association.

Allegations of such links are fueled by cellphones’ emission of non-ionizing radiation via radio waves and the body’s absorption of this kind of energy.

In 2011, the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer said cellphone usage is “possibly carcinogenic” following a review of all available scientific evidence on the topic. The 31 IARC scientists that took part in the review said more research was needed to arrive at a more definite conclusion.

Specifically, IARC found an increased risk for glioma, a brain cancer, associated with cellphone use.

Mobile phones ARE linked to cancer, study claims: Long-term use ‘is associated with… http://t.co/XAndlAh6Q8

— Tom Brady (@torsionshield) July 31, 2015

After IARC’s report, Cancer Research UK pointed out that there are known “weaknesses” to studies that the likes of IARC took into account. In 2014, Cancer Research UK said “it seems unlikely that using a mobile phone can cause brain tumours, particularly as lab research hasn’t shown a biological way this could happen.”

The organization, though, added that there still “isn’t enough good evidence to say with absolute confidence that no risk exists.”

The National Cancer Institute in the US has also expressed doubts about any cancer-cellphone links.

“Although there have been some concerns that radiofrequency energy from cell phones held closely to the head may affect the brain and other tissues, to date there is no evidence from studies of cells, animals, or humans that radiofrequency energy can cause cancer,” the sub-agency of the National Institutes of Health said in 2013.

“It is generally accepted that damage to DNA is necessary for cancer to develop. However, radiofrequency energy, unlike ionizing radiation, does not cause DNA damage in cells, and it has not been found to cause cancer in animals or to enhance the cancer-causing effects of known chemical carcinogens in animals.”

RT @CBSHealth Should #cellphones come with #health warnings?http://t.co/mI4h90dAbt pic.twitter.com/9A1MWG0zER

— Dr. Mallika Marshall (@mallikamarshall) July 28, 2015

In May, a group of nearly 200 biological and health scientists from around the world urged the World Health Organization and governments to take precautions that address cellphones’ links to cancer.

“Putting it bluntly they are damaging the living cells in our bodies and killing many of us prematurely,” said Dr. Martin Blank, from the Department of Physiology and Cellular Biophysics at Columbia University.

“We have created something that is harming us, and it is getting out of control. Before Edison’s light bulb there was very little electromagnetic radiation in our environment. The levels today are very many times higher than natural background levels, and are growing rapidly because of all the new devices that emit this radiation.”

Next month in Berkeley, California, a Right to Know ordinance will go into effect requiring cellphone sales outlets to offer customers a handout or display a sign informing of federal guidelines regarding how much radiation cellphones can emit, as well as safety instructions for safe cellphone use.

Turkey has been acting pretty erratic these past couple of weeks, launching a surprise dual offensive in Syria and Iraq, condemning Russia for alleged ‘oppression’ against the Crimean Tatars, and suspending the Balkan Stream pipeline negotiations. All of this is somewhat unexpected – after all, Turkey had thus far refrained from the US’ pleas to launch a conventional attack on Syria; never had any serious issues about Crimea’ reunification before; and had earlier agreed to the Balkan Stream in order to enhance its own geostrategic clout. While each of Turkey’s actions pertaining to these three circumstances can be attributable to their own situational peculiarities, they all share two inseparable components, which are Erdogan’s electioneering efforts prior to the probable snap vote and his pipeline posturing with respect to Balkan Stream gas discounts.

The article begins by briefing the reader about the ‘official story’ behind each of Erdogan’s seemingly erratic actions in the three aforementioned situations. It then segues into a deeper, more focused look at how the two inseparable components clearly explain the real motivation for his decisions. Finally, the piece wraps up by assessing the success of Erdogan’s initiatives as regards his true motives, concluding that while he might succeed in garnering enough nationalist votes for a forthcoming parliamentary majority, he’s clumsily slipped up when it comes to increasing his bargaining position vis-à-vis the Balkan Stream talks.

The Official Narrative

Here’s how Turkey officially spins its behavior in the last three scandals that it’s gotten itself into over the weeks:

The Dual Offensives:

According to the Turkish authorities, the Suruc bombing was carried out by ISIL and proved to be the trigger for Ankara’s supposed attacks against it in northern Syria. At the same time, if those same authorities are to be believed, the Kurds just so happened to reinitiate their insurgency against the Turks for no reason whatsoever, which is why Erdogan is also bombing northern Iraq now, too. The happenstance timing has thus resulted in Turkey waging dual offensives against both Syria and Iraq, heralding in a grandiose return to the Neo-Ottoman policies that were thought to have largely been put on the backburner over the past couple of months.

Crimea Criticism:

In an uncomfortably rambunctious manner, Erdogan recently voiced his rejection of Crimea’s reunification with Russia, rambling on at the ‘Second World Congress of the Crimean Tatars’ in Ankara about how:

Turkey did not and will not recognize Crimea’s annexation. Our priority in the Ukrainian crisis is peace, prosperity and security for Crimean Tatars. We are taking every step and conducting all necessary negotiations in order to overcome pressure and difficulties they are facing. You can be sure that we will continue our support.

In Erdogan’s official understanding, the Crimean Tatars weren’t oppressed by their negligent and totally incompetent former Ukrainian administrators, but are somehow brought to a sudden state of duress by the same Russian authorities that they themselves voted to reunify with.

Balkan Stream Balking:

Turkey’s last majorly ‘erratic’ move has been to temporarily suspend talks on the Balkan Stream project. Media reports indicate that this was because Russia wouldn’t agree to the low-ball discount price that Turkey was proposing for its domestic imports. Officially, however, Turkish Energy Minister Taner Yildiz said that while there are certain disagreements between both sides (over Syria, recognition of the Armenian Genocide, etc.), the decision to cooperate on Balkan Stream hasn’t been affected by them, and that the real reason for the temporary hold-up is that Turkey still needs to form a coalition government. Russia has gone along with this charade for the time being because it realizes how counterproductive it would be to push back against Turkey’s semi-plausible explanation at this time, despite how obvious it appears that the dispute is over pricing.

The Real Story

President Erdoğan arrives in Baku to discuss energy framework for the region with President Putin, June 2015

Turkey has presented publicized excuses to various degrees of convincingness that seek to explain its behavior in the three examined instances, but this doesn’t take away from the truth that they’re all really predicated on two major considerations – early electioneering and pipeline posturing. Viewed through this prism, Erdogan’s actions become a lot less ‘erratic’ and actually somewhat understandable in terms of what he’s trying to achieve (although this is not in any way to justify or endorse his decisions):

The Dual Offensives:

Early Electioneering

As fully explained in the author’s recent article about this topic, one of the main considerations guiding Erdogan’s military initiative is that he wants to simultaneously attract votes from the conservative Nationalist Movement Party as well as justify the suppression of the People’s Democratic Party. The end goal of this Machiavellian scheme is to ensure that his AKP party receives the parliamentary majority that he’s hoping for so that they can amend the constitution and institutionalize a stronger presidency.

Pipeline Posturing

Although not as significant as the electioneering motivation or the anti-Kurdish American-laid trap he’s fallen into, Erdogan does realize that his moves in Syria could potentially be used as a bargaining chip for negotiating a lower gas price from Russia. Ankara has yet to fully commit to attacking Syria in an all-out conventional offensive as has been feared, choosing only to launch airstrikes and artillery barrages for the time being. This may not be solely ascribable to Erdogan getting ‘cold feet’ at the last minute or playing some type of ‘hard to get’ game with the US, but could be partially due to Ankara’s hope that its delayed offensive could be permanently put off if Moscow suddenly acquiesces to the proposed discount in gas exports to Turkey. Likewise, even if it is initiated (as it’s been threatening), Turkey could call it off or scale it down as part of a more robust, multifaceted deal with Russia.

After all, Lavrov and his affiliates are engaged in a flurry of shuttle diplomacy over the conflict escalation in Syria (that Erdogan himself helped create with his latest offensive), with the Russian Foreign Minister meeting with Kerry in both Doha and Kuala Lumpur, and Russian Special Envoy to the Mideast Mikhail Bogdan meeting with the Syrian and Iranian Foreign Ministers in Tehran. Factor in that Putin has suggested a regional anti-ISIL coalition comprised of Turkey, Syria, Iraq, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia, as well as Moscow’s recent inroads with Riyadh, and it appears as though the Eurasian giant might be more than willing to cut a pipeline deal with Turkey for the sake of saving Syria. It’s with this in mind that Erdogan has thus far refused to be resolute in his latest military adventure, despite extraordinary pressure from the US to immediately do so, and why he might be willing to reconsider any forthcoming large-scale offensive if Russia can sweeten the deal with something more than a gas price discount (whatever that might happen to be).

Crimea Criticism:

Early Electioneering

Erdogan’s public rabblerousing about this sensitive bilateral issue is overly theatric and indicates a lack of sincerity when it comes to his position. Had he truly felt this way and believed that the issue was such an impediment to relations with Russia, then the characteristically loud-mouthed politician wouldn’t have bit his tongue for over a year and a half until now. What’s more probable, then, is that he’s timed his ‘policy announcement’ for when it would be most effective in rallying his domestic audience, which makes sense when one figures that he’ll likely call early elections to end the political deadlock plaguing his government’s formation.

Pipeline Posturing

Equally important in this case as the early electioneering motivation, Erdogan is betting that he can use his Crimea policy as yet another negotiating chip in his pipeline ploy against Russia. In all truth, Moscow doesn’t really care which countries formally recognize its reunification with Crimea because it’s already a fait accompli as it is, but of course, those that do (whether silently or publicly) are accorded with certain political-economic benefits. In this case, however, Turkey is playing a much more high stakes game than merely bargaining its recognition of Crimea’s reunification for a sizeable gas discount. Erdogan’s previously cited statement indicates that Turkey is “taking every step and conducting all necessary negotiations in order to overcome pressure and difficulties [Crimean Tatars] are facing” in Crimea, which is a loud signal that Ankara might support terrorist activity by its ethnic relations there against Russia just as it does with the Uighurs in Xinjiang against China. It’s not forecast that Ankara would go that far, but it seems as though it’s intimating as such in order to pressure Russia into a more favorable gas deal, no matter how risky and unethical this ‘negotiating tactic’ may be.

Balkan Stream Balking:

Early Electioneering

Erdogan will never succeed in courting voters from the Republic People’s Party, the main oppositionists staunchly opposed to his rule (and receivers of 24.95% of the popular vote last time around), but he knows that he can have a lot more success in doing so with those affiliated with the Nationalist Movement Party (which scored 16.29% of the tally). Thus, his ‘hard ball’ behavior over the Balkan Stream pipeline makes a lot more sense, since he knows that this will be received quite positively by the nationalist elements in society. Amid other potentially favorable attributes that Erdogan could cultivate before the likely early election (such as his ‘tough on terror’ persona via the dual offensives), this might be the one factor that tips some nationalist voters over the edge into supporting his candidacy. Overall, one mustn’t preclude the lengths that Erdogan will desperately go to in ensuring that his party clinches the parliamentary majority that he so feverishly wants, even if this includes tarnishing his government’s business reputation by behaving in an irresponsible and unprofessional manner towards a major strategic partner.

Pipeline Posturing

Out of the three studied instances, the decision to suspend negotiations on Balkan Stream’s construction is obviously the one most directly related to Turkey’s pipeline considerations. Erdogan is keenly aware of the geostrategic necessity that Russia sees in building Balkan Stream, ergo why he knows that any strategically engineered disruption that he could pull off would garner the immediate attention of the Kremlin and place him in a more advantageous position to dictate his wants to Putin. Turkey is thus exploiting its role as Balkan Stream’s initial transit country in order to squeeze financial benefit from Russia, which sounds like a foolproof and profitable (albeit unethical) plan until one fathoms exactly how far Ankara misstepped in its War on the Kurds and how this egregious miscalculation might directly end whatever advantageous negotiating position Erdogan formerly thought he was in.

No Happy Ending

Much to Erdogan’s dismay, the story of his early electioneering and pipeline posturing gambit doesn’t have an entirely happy ending. On the one hand, it’s increasingly likely that his AKP party will attain their fabled parliamentary majority as a result of Erdogan’s political manipulations, but on the other, the cost of doing so has been to hamper Turkey’s negotiating strength when it comes to Balkan Stream. This is largely credited to the Kurdish attack against the Baku-Tbilisi-Erzurum (BTE) pipeline, which despite being scheduled to be shut down this month for repairs and thus of negligible impact to Turkey’s energy security (or that of its downstream partners), clearly signals the vulnerability that it and other lines such as TANAP have to militant sabotage. Turkey’s much-hoped-for plan to become the energy crossroads of Eurasia was originally premised on an assumption that the Kurdish-dominated southeast would remain peaceful and secure, but with Erdogan having returned the region to an indefinite wartime environment, such a grand strategic vision is now critically endangered.

Accordingly, this state of affairs makes Balkan Stream even more important than ever for Turkey, since the pipeline’s geographic route immunizes it from the ethnic-secessionist violence that has now been proven capable of negatively affecting the country’s other energy projects. Whereas Erdogan had thought that it was Russia which needed Balkan Stream more than Turkey did, the strategic necessity is steadily moving towards a more equitable balance, since the deteriorating state of security in the country’s southeast could call into question Turkey’s ability to adequately defend the BTE and TANAP lines. It could very well be that the current Kurdish insurgency might end up becoming a prolonged campaign much as its more than 30-year-long forerunner was, which would mean that in an objectively comparative perspective, TANAP would require an incontestably costlier security investment (both in financial and physical terms) than Balkan Stream would. Additionally, there’s more of a practical will for Russia and Europe to continue their decades-established energy partnership (should they be able to weather the US’ destructive intrigues against it) than there is for Europe to bear the destabilizing potential that its Azeri-originated energy imports could fall victim to continued Kurdish sabotage.

The latest explosion on a natural gas pipeline between Iran and Turkey on July 27 2015 was commited by the Kurdistan Workers’ Party.

All of this comes together to place Erdogan smack dab in the center of a classic dilemma – the longer he continues his War on the Kurds, the more endangered his grand energy transit plans become (and subsequently, the more dependent he is on the creation of Balkan Stream); while any move to cut short his campaign against the Kurds (after having engendered so much supportive nationalism behind it) would be absolutely disastrous for the AKP party’s standing in a forthcoming snap election. Given how obsessed Erdogan has lately become over winning his envisioned parliamentary majority, it’s predicted that he’ll fiendishly continue with his anti-Kurdish offensive no matter what the long-term consequences are, since he sees this as his most surefire way to political godhood. His tunnel vision has shielded him from the wider repercussions of his actions, and he’s oblivious to the fact that his short-sighted electoral strategy has been destructive to Turkey’s eternal geo-energy imperatives. Erdogan is arrogantly wagering that the Kurds would accept a ceasefire of sorts after the probable early elections grant his party the expected parliamentary majority that he craves, but he’s not considering that by then, they might not even want to stop their struggle, let alone without some type of major political-economic compensation that he obviously won’t be willing to provide. The entire cyclical dynamic puts him ‘between two chairs’, as the Russians say, and this completely unenviable position is incredibly all of his own making.

Concluding Thoughts

Erdogan latest behavior regarding Syria, Crimea, and Balkan Stream appears extraordinarily erratic for a man who some deem to be an expert geopolitical strategist. Upon closer examination, however, it’s unmistakable that these three seemingly separate instances are connected via two common threads – Erdogan’s early electioneering campaign and his attempt at pipeline posturing vis-a-vis Russia. The Turkish President thought that he could have it both ways – ensuring his AKP party’s parliamentary majority in a forthcoming snap election and reaching a better negotiating position for gas imports from Russia – but in his crazed pursuit for political power, he remarkably miscalculated the consequences that it would have for his country’s energy interests (even those irrespective of Russia). Erdogan’s War on the Kurds has opened up the real risk that the BTE and TANAP energy infrastructure in the southeast could become a continued target for rebellious militants, thus throwing Turkey’s grand strategic plan to become the energy crossroads of Eurasia into jeopardy. Parallel to that, this threat has correspondingly elevated the significance of Balkan Stream to unheard of heights for the country, since it’s in actuality the only secure and reliable energy route available in the event that the current Kurdish insurgency is indicative of a more robust and prolonged campaign against the government. All said, Erdogan might finally end up with his sought-after parliamentary majority, but the enormous costs that this entails to the country’s unity and perpetual energy interests might leave many Turks wondering whether it was ultimately all worth it.

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

On 1 September 1939 – the date of the beginning of the Second World War – the President of the United States of America, Franklin D. Roosevelt, wrote to «the Governments of France, Germany, Italy, Poland and His Britannic Majesty» saying that 

«The ruthless bombing from the air of civilians in unfortified centres of population during the course of the hostilities which have raged in various quarters of the earth during the past few years, which has resulted in the maiming and in the death of thousands of defenceless men, women, and children, has sickened the hearts of every civilized man and woman, and has profoundly shocked the conscience of humanity».

He was rightly appalled about the aerial slaughter of civilians and desired each country to which he addressed his appeal «to affirm its determination that its armed forces shall in no event, and under no circumstances, undertake the bombardment from the air of civilian populations or of unfortified cities, upon the understanding that these same rules of warfare will be scrupulously observed by all of their opponents».

We are now marking the seventieth anniversary of the explosion of the atomic bombs that destroyed the Japanese cities of Hiroshima on 6 August 1945 and Nagasaki three days later, killing a total of over 100,000 «defenceless men, women, and children,» prompting the nuclear scientist Robert Oppenheimer to quote from the Bhagavad Gita, the Hindu religious and philosophical text, that «Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds».

Development of the atomic bomb began in 1939 but went into high gear as the Manhattan Project three years later. What is intriguing is that President Roosevelt approved the programme on 9 October 1941, a full two months before the Japanese attacked America at Pearl Harbor killing 2,403 people — including civilians. The subsequent declaration of war by the US resulted in concentration on means of war-winning by any means, and resulted in development of the ultimate weapon.

Even before the atomic explosions it was apparent that the major nations involved in the Second World War had no qualms about inflicting devastation. The British considered that their «aim is, therefore, twofold: namely, to produce (i) destruction, and (ii) the fear of death» and to that end mercilessly bombed German cities. The rationale was that it was the Germans who started it and who in 1940-41 subjected London to a non-stop 60 days and nights of aerial bombardment that killed 30,000 people.

In a macabre game of explosive ping-pong the countries at war sought more and deadlier ways to wreak havoc on their opponents, and it would have been difficult to have found a citizen of any of these countries who would have failed to agree with the actions of their government. It was thus that Project Manhattan received its massive impetus, and in an amazing display of technical prowess and organisational proficiency its scientists designed and produced the Atom Bomb.

It was astonishing that President Roosevelt had not told his Vice-President, Harry Truman, one single thing about the bomb project which some well-informed people believed was a potentially catastrophic venture. The first bomb was tested on 16 July 1945 at Alamogordo in New Mexico and caused concern among the scientists who had been involved in its development, 70 of whom sent a letter to President Roosevelt pointing out that use of the atomic bomb would likely presage «an era of devastation on an unimaginable scale» and that «a nation which sets the precedent of using these newly liberated forces of nature for purposes of destruction may have to bear the responsibility of opening the door to an era of devastation on an unimaginable scale».

Their letter wasn’t allowed to reach the President. He never knew of its existence, but in any event was convinced that the A-bomb was essential and had written to Oppenheimer, who had grave doubts about the military’s attitude to nuclear developments, that «whatever the enemy may be planning, American science will be equal to the challenge». The Bomb was going to be used, no matter the consequences, although the president who gave the order to drop the bombs in August 1945 was Harry Truman, who learned of the project’s existence on 13 April 1945, the day after Roosevelt died.

As recorded by Eric Schlosser in his edifying book Command and Control, there had been air attacks on Japan of staggering intensity in the months before the atom bombs were employed. On the night of 9 March 1945, for example, «American planes struck Tokyo with 2,000 tons of bombs containing napalm and jellied gasoline… Within hours the firestorm consumed one quarter of the city. It killed about 100,000 civilians… «Worse was yet to come because Truman icily warned that the Japanese «may expect a rain of ruin from the air, the like of which has never been seen on this earth».

There were not many large concentrations of Japanese that had not been subjected to firebombing, and choosing the ultimate victims was not easy. Kyoto was removed from the list of four targets because the Secretary of War, Henry Stimson, pointed out that it was a major cultural centre of great importance to Japanese art and history — and Nagasaki was chosen instead. By such decisions are the fates of human beings decided. Countless thousands of Kyoto citizens were spared, but 39,000 in Nagasaki were condemned to death.

First came Hiroshima, where on 6 August «a firestorm engulfed the city» and 66,000 people were killed. Next on the target list was Kokura, and in yet another horrible twist of fate the city was covered in smoke and haze and the plane was diverted to Nagasaki where the second bomb, hideously named Fat Man, was dropped on 9 August.

The war against Japan then ended, but it should be remembered that between the destruction of the two cities there was a Charter was being approved, on 8 August in the German city of Nuremburg, signed by the victorious allies, that included guidelines for the forthcoming trial of German war criminals by the International Military Tribunal. In an alarming example of double standards, the judges were informed that «The following acts, or any of them, are crimes coming within the jurisdiction of the Tribunal for which there shall be individual responsibility… (b) War Crimes: namely, violations of the laws or customs of war. Such violations shall include… wanton destruction of cities, towns, or villages». It did not include the words of President Roosevelt, that it was sickening to «undertake the bombardment from the air of civilian populations or of unfortified cities,» but made it clear that such attacks were against the laws of war.

The Nuremburg Charter guided the conviction of German war criminals, and it is hideous coincidence that it was signed at the very time when «Death, the destroyer of worlds» was thundering down on Japan in what Truman called «a rain of ruin from the air».

Which goes to show that justice is reserved for those who win wars.

Really, Sad Nuclear Anniversary.

Brian Cloughley writes about foreign policy and military affairs. He lives in Voutenay sur Cure, France.

Source: Strategic Culture Foundation

Scientists and environmentalists are concerned that a new technique for generated “supercharged” genetically modified organisms (GMOs) could be misused and trigger a health emergency or natural disaster.

The “gene drive” technology allows GMOs to spread rapidly in the wild. The fear is that these organisms could fall into the wrong hands or accidentally spark a catastrophe. The technology is being touted as a way to revolutionize medicine and agriculture, and supporters say it could, in theory, halt the spread of mosquito-borne diseases like malaria and yellow fever, and eliminate crop pests and invasive species like rats and can toads. [1]

But many scientists are warning that people with nefarious intentions or fumbling handlers could release the gene-drive technology from the lab and harm the environment and human health. It even has the potential to be used by terrorists as a bio-weapon directed against people or livestock because the genes – which are capable of spreading like a virus – will be cheap and easy to produce. [1]

“Just as gene drives can make mosquitoes unfit for hosting and spreading the malaria parasite, they could conceivably be designed with gene drives carrying cargo for delivering lethal bacterial toxins to humans,” said David Gurwitz, a geneticist at Tel Aviv University in Israel. [1]

Biotech World: 7 Genetically Modified Animals

A group of senior geneticists are calling on the international community to safeguard researchers who want to generate drives by putting security measures in place at laboratories to prevent the genes from escaping accidentally and causing widespread GMO contamination. [1]

The U.S. National Academy of Sciences launched an extensive review last week of gene-drive technology in “non-human” organisms. This week, the journal Science will publish a group of 27 leading geneticists’ call on the scientific community to be open and transparent about the ‘risks and benefits’ of gene drives. The researchers have produced a minimum set of safety rules to guard against laboratory escapes.

Gene-drive technology is similar to a nuclear chain reaction in that it allows GM genes to be amplified within a breeding population of insects and other animals without any more intervention once the trait has been introduced, including a potentially dangerous one. Lab experiments on fruit flies have shown that a GM gene introduced to just one fly can “infect” nearly every other fly within the breeding population in just a few generations, which defies the normal rules of genetics.

Gene drives rely on a “cassette” of genetic elements that allow a GM gene to jump from one chromosome to another within the same individual with means that within a few generations, all of the sperm or eggs of the animal would carry that GM trait, rather than half. Eventually, none of the animal’s offspring would be free of the trait.

Gurwitz believes the specific instructions for creating gene drives should be classified, just like the technology for making nuclear weapons. At least 27 geneticists have objected to this notion, saying that openness and transparency is the best way to protect against the use of gene drives as a bio-weapon, and that classifying the information would prove to be ineffective and politically counterproductive. [1]

[1] The Independent

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Welcome to this week’s installment of the “Daily Shooter,” another episode tailormade for American audiences…

According to authorities, a man armed with a gun, pepper spray and a hatchet, was killed Wednesday afternoon after a fire fight with law enforcement officers in a movie theater outside Nashville, Tennessee.

UPDATE* – Authorities reveal the alleged gunman’s identity –  As 29 year-old Vincente David Montano from Nasville.

The main suspect, was listed as a “51-year-old white local man,” who was shot by police upon leaving the Carmike Hickory 8 Theater in the town of Antioch, while at a screening of Mad Max: Fury Road.

‘Live Drill?’ – A large response for very little injuries or casualties. (Photo washingtonpost)

However, reports now state that the gunman was a 29-year-old white male.

The change in the alleged shooter’s age is a strange twist to an already scripted-like story.

All told, the main suspect was the only person killed in the incident, as three others were treated after being pepper sprayed at the scene.

ABC reports: “As he fled out the back, Montano encountered a SWAT team and was shot dead, Aaron said. About two dozen gunshots could be heard in a 10-second period in raw video footage posted online by WKRN TV.”

The whole scene sounds very similar to the heavily staged Canada shooting last year.

‘Shooter or Patsy?’ – older-looking Vincente David Montano. Is Montano really 29 years of age? (Photo abclocal)

The latest Tennessee shooting, comes just two weeks after a suspicious theater shooting in Lafayette and three weeks after a bizarre shooting incident in Chattanooga at a military facility, along with being nearly six weeks after the polarizing shooting at a church in Charleston, South Carolina. All of these shooting events come as jurors in the trial for the Aurora Theater Shooting decide the fate of ‘mentally ill’ lone gunman, James Holmes, who killed 12 and injured 70 others during his alleged shooting spree in 2012. Holmes may face the death penalty.

In recent weeks, we’ve seen how these televised shooting events have become a staple part of our day to day lives, complete with identical gunman profiles, media talking points and staged press conferences – a buffet laid out for America, and always within just minutes or hours of each alleged ‘active shooter’ event.

Operation Overkill

According to reports and Don Aaron, a spokesman for the Metropolitan Nashville Police Department:

“The only person shot was the suspect as he emerged out of the rear door,” Aaron said. There were eight people, including the gunman, at the time of the attack, he said.

Police were called to the theater, which was playing “Mad Max: Fury Road,” at around 1:15 p.m. local time (2:15 p.m. ET) and officers arrived “within minutes” Aaron said. The gunman was wearing a backpack worn on the front of his chest and was wearing a surgical mask.”

DRILL? Dozens of federal agents could be seem festooning around the crisis site for hours after the alleged incident.

So officers just happened to be there at the theater. What a lucky break. And then, as if by magic, over 100 officers and agents from 10 different local and federal law enforcement agencies and EMS units – all appear at the scene. Within minutes, you had the Nashville Metro Police, ATF, SWAT Teams, TBI, FBI, DHS, Fire Department (with 3 fire trucks) EMS (at least 4 ambulances), Highway Patrol, and last but not least – the Bomb Squad. If there was ever a multi-agency ‘active shooter’ or crisis management drill – this certainly was it.

According to CNN: 

A woman who worked at a Sprint store near the scene told CNN’s Brooke Baldwin that about three hours earlier, a man with two backpacks tried to enter her store through their back door.

With so many ‘theatrical’ shootings occurring back-to-back – you have to wonder if the entire event wasn’t a police drill meant to test both “security and emergency protocols.”

SHOW OF FORCE: CNN and other US news outlets made a concerted effort to train their cameras on heavily-armed officers pacing back and forth in front of the cameras, carrying assault rifles and shotguns. They were shown continuously for hours even after the shooter was allegedly subdued. This particular tough-looking, bearded ‘officer’ (likely a hired contractor) was kept on heavy rotation by CNN for hours, long after the alleged threat had been ‘neutralized’.

Exactly like the recent shootings in Charleston, Chattanooga and Lafayette, the Nashville shooting featured a gunman suffering from “mental illness”. In a CNN report were told Montano had a history of mental illness and had been missing for two days according to police reports:

Vincente David Montano was committed twice in 2004 and twice in 2007, said Aaron, citing officials in Rutherford County. Montano had been arrested Murfreesboro, Tennessee, in 2004 in a case of assault and resisting arrest, police said.

“We have no motive for (Wednesday’s attack),” Aaron said.

Montano had an airsoft pistol with him that he aimed and fired at police in the theater, Aaron said. Such a weapon looks like a semiautomatic pistol but fires plastic or BB pellets.

Montano’s mother filed a missing person’s report with Texas Rangers two days ago and they had notified authorities in Tennessee, Aaron said.

In the report, his mother, Denise Pruitt, told authorities that Montano was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia in 2006.

“Ms. Pruitt advised Vincente has several other health issues and has a hard time taking care of himself,” the report says. It lists his address as “homeless.”

Pruitt, who lives in Florida, last saw her son in Illinois in March 2013.

Montano’s history of mental illness, trouble with the law and overall ‘drifter’ persona, provides the typical backdrop of a law enforcement informant or patsy – someone who could be used during a staged drill.

‘Hickory Hatchet Man’ – Police tape up quite a distance from the theater. (Photo nydailynews)

One of the apparent victims, who has elected to only use his first name, was injured by the hatchet wielding gunman with a backpack. Here is portion of that report below:

The man who was injured by the axe, who only identified himself as Steven, said he has no idea why he and his family were attacked. A 53-year-old woman, and a 17-year-old woman were also treated for pepper spray exposure, officials said.

“I would ask anyone to pray for his family, because he obviously has mental problems or something else,” Steven told reporters.”

“I’m very, very grateful that no one else got injured here today other than the person who perpetrated this,” he said, and thanked police for their swift response.

Miraculously, police were nearby at a traffic accident when a group of people ‘ran over’ to alert them that gunman was in the theater.

Authorities will likely ‘shore-up’ the timeline of events very soon explaining the use pepper spray on three apparent victims, and the ‘hoax device’ strapped to the alleged shooter, whose identity they have seemingly withheld to this point.

NERVOUS: As the media continued to fire more inane and trivial questions at Fire Chief Haas, he grew more visibly nervous and short tempered. Did Haas know something he wasn’t saying?

Bizarrely, Brian Haas, a public affairs officer for the Nashville Fire Department, remarked that injuries sustained during the incident looked like “bruises.”

If the victim was truly ‘attacked’ with a hatchet), then how on earth did he only sustain a bruise?

In another conflicting report, CNN reported that the victim (Steven) suffered minor cuts: “(Don) Aaron told reporters that one patron at the screening of “Mad Max: Fury Road” suffered a minor cut on a shoulder from a hatchet before officers killed the suspect.”

Was he bruised, or cut?

The Tennessean reports the following:

After the incident, police discovered two suspicious backpacks: One on the suspect and one left in the theater. By 4 p.m., they had detonated one of the bags. Police determined the bag strapped to the suspect’s chest contained a hoax explosive device.

A second bag, found inside the theater, had yet to be detonated. A bomb squad is on the scene.

Many critics of these types of events, have long asserted that ‘crisis actors’ are often used during police active-shooter drills and that at any moment those events could go live.

The idea that staged recreations of a shooting scenarios  “improve response times and inter-agency organization” is not much better than ‘hair-trigger’ video game culture we live in. The new‘shoot first’ methodology we see in today’s law enforcement operations –  pushes the public into accepting new “rules of engagement” based on new, fear-based ‘anti-government’ profiling.

Over the next 24 hours, you will see the media, along with those others at the scene, turn this incident into a PR packed event with new mental health proposals and predictable tales for heroism.

Here you can see the drill-like look of the event at Hickory Hallow Mall…

Lights, camera, action – more from RT below…

‘Heavy Response’ – Over 100 police and agents gather, hang out for hours, talking in groups – outside a cinema near Nashville. (Photo newsnet5)

‘Heavy Response’  – Over 100 police and agents gather, hang out for hours, talking in groups – outside a cinema near Nashville. (Photo newsnet5)

RT.com

A SWAT team responded to an active shooter situation at the Carmike Hickory 8 theater in the 900 block of Bell Road in Antioch, a suburb southeast of Nashville, Tennessee. Officials say the attacker had a gun and a hatchet. The movie was reportedly ‘Mad Max’.

A couple of weeks ago a group of influential German figures, the members of Willy Brandt Circle, have signed an Open Letter to SPD (German Social-Democrats) Bundestag delegates and cabinet ministers urging them to abandon the confrontational course in relations with Russia. The authors reviewed the degrading EU-Russia ties in the context of Ukraine’s crisis which was the direct result of mutual misunderstandings and controversies. Hereby ORIENTAL REVIEW publishes an exclusive English translation of the Letter in full:

***

Europe is experiencing the worst crisis since the end of the East-West conflict. Not only dealing with Greece and the thousands of refugees heighten tenses across the continent, but also the ceasefire negotiation process in Ukraine remains fragile. As long as the conflict over the future of Ukraine is unsolved, the real danger of escalation is on the table.

A comprehensive peace treaty for Europe, envisioned by the Charter of Paris 1990, is still needed. Europe has no interest in aggravating old controversy between the United States and the USSR, bringing Russia to its knees. There is a difference between the European and the American interests: pan-European problems cannot be solved without Russia or even against Russia. Recent history shows: Russia and the peoples of the Soviet Union contributed more than anyone to the liberation of Europe from fascism and later to the unification of Germany. Therefore, Germany has a special responsibility to win Russia as a negotiating partner in the European peace order.

In 1990 it seemed that the answer to these questions is found once and for all: Russia became a co-architect of the European integration. Russia, alongside with the USA, would naturally become an anchor and an equal partner. Since then Russia’s expectations have been deeply disappointed: EU and, what’s more important, NATO enlargement policy totally excluded the possibility of Russia’s membership. It was too difficult, as the country was too big. Moreover, some Eastern European states claimed that their quick accession to NATO membership was a military precaution against Russia. Having no perspective to join NATO itself, more and more patriotic Russia sees the expansion of the structures of the Western alliance as a threat. NATO expansion nourished Russia’s old fear of being surrounded and it was gradually forced to thinking in geopolitical categories and zones of influence.

The Ukrainian crisis is a reflection of a major conflict between Russia and the Euro-Atlantic structures. It may lead to a catastrophe if the ongoing arms race, military provocations and confrontational rhetoric is not stopped. We strongly appeal to all responsible politicians and peace-loving citizens but first and foremost directly to the SPD:

In this situation bold political initiative is needed comparable to the initiatives that helped to stop the conflict spiral during Berlin Wall and Cuban Missile Crisis. It was German social democracy that paved the way to the new Willy Brandt’s Ostpolitik and the détente. In 2015 we require such courage and political wisdom to counter the threat of renewed confrontation and division of Europe. We call to stop the confrontation and restart our relations with Russia before it is too late for all of us.

• The Ukraine crisis cannot be solved by political sanctions against Russia. The underlying causes of the Russian-European alienation should be discussed at EU-Russia summit talks. Lasting reconciliation of interests can only be achieved through dialogue and negotiation. The economic sanctions undermine the development of Europe as a common economic area. Cooperation is an engine of confidence building. Energy infrastructure that has already been affected by the current sharpening of contradictions is a vital part of our mutual interests and bilateral trade.
• The European Union that is partially responsible for the roots of the crisis must contribute to its solution on the basis of consensus. The interaction of Germany, France and Poland with Ukraine and Russia in Minsk II Agreement is an innovative approach. Implementation of Minsk II may bridge the credibility gap. A wider European integration is needed. Germany must throw into the say its position as a future OSCE president and act in the spirit of dialogue.
• The United States as the most important partner of the new Ukrainian government has also high responsibility to find a solution to the crisis. All available international fora should be used to bring Russia and the US together. In times of crisis we need to maintain close ties in order to communicate effectively. Therefore, G7 should involve Russia and the work of the NATO-Russia Council should continue as soon as possible. Essential ways to negotiate in crisis should not be limited but broadened.
• The incorporation of the Crimea into Russia is a violation of international agreements. At the same time it is a political reality that cannot be undone against the will of the majority of Crimea’s voters. The status quo must not undermine the constructive cooperation with stakeholders of the common European interest.
• Ukrainian crisis is also the result of a weak federal structure in a relatively new state. Only through a strong federal system the country can protect itself from ethnic strife and the threat of secession. The experience of other European countries with federal structure should be offered to Ukraine if needed.
• NATO membership for Ukraine will not enhance Alliance’s security. It will fuel the flame of Russia’s fears about NATO objectives and increase the risks of unwanted military confrontation. The framework of the OSCE and the “Vienna Document” 2011 is vital in times of crisis and should be implemented to bring together political and military bodies of all European states.
• The Ukraine crisis threatens the European arms control. Arms race, transfer of lethal military equipment and new troop deployments on both sides of the Russian border undermine the existing system of arms control treaties. The participation of German troops in the military training of the “intervention force” can trigger on the Russian side memories of the German invasion and aggravate tension, which is unnecessary. Disengagement of troops, non-proliferation and arms curbs are goals to be achieved as soon as possible.
• During the Ukraine crisis we saw alarming rise of nuclear intent once again. There is a risk of rearming with medium range nuclear missiles in Europe as it happened in the 1980-es. Nuclear weapons must be finally outlawed. A matter of principle weapons of total annihilation should not be part of employable forces.
• European peace order is not only an order of states. It is based on strong civil societies and, among other, international cooperation in the field of culture, media, sports and science. Restart of European youth exchange programs with Russia and Ukraine may help to overcome stereotyping and encourage better understanding of each other and, consequently, build better relations.

Europe needs Russia and Russia needs Europe. We stand at a tipping point. Either we enter a more or less Cold war with dim future or pave the way together the new common European peace order.

Now is the time to act!

Berlin, July, 21, 2015

Egon Bahr and Willy Brandt

Signers:

Prof. Egon Bahr was the creator of the “Ostpolitik” promoted by West German Chancellor Willy Brandt, for whom he served as Secretary of the Prime Minister’s Office from 1969 until 1972. Between 1972 and 1990 he was an MP in the Bundestag.

Prof. Dr. Walther Stützle was the Deputy Minister of Defense in 1998-2002.

Dr. Christoph Zöpel is the SPD politician, Foreign Minister in 1999-2002.

Prof. Dr. Ingomar Hauchler, Bundestag MP (SPD) from 1983 to 1998.

Dr. Edelbert Richter is a Member of the European Parliament in 1991-1994, German Bundestag MP in 1994-2002, member of the Federation of German Scientists.

Dr. Hans Misselwitz is a functionary of the SPD and a founding member of the Institute Solidarity modernity.

Prof. Dr. Götz Neuneck is the Deputy Director of the Institute for Peace Research and Security Policy at the University of Hamburg (IFSH) and Director of the Interdisciplinary Research Group Arms Control and Disarmament (IFAR).

Antje Vollmer, is a member of the German Green Party. From 1994 to 2005, she was one of the vice presidents of the Bundestag.

Wolfgang Schmidt is the Hamburg Commissioner to the Federal Government, the European Union and of Foreign Affairs; Member of the Committee of the Regions.

Prof. Dr. Dieter Klein is the Head of the Commission on the Future of the Rosa Luxembourg Foundation and a member of its Board.

Prof. Dr. Gustav Horn is the Professor of Economics at the University of Flensburg, Scientific Director of the Institute of Macroeconomic Research in the Hans Böckler Foundation.

Dr. Rainer Land is the German social scientist and economist.

Axel Schmidt-Gödelitz is the Chairman of the East-West Forum.

Prof. Dr. Rolf Reissig is a member of the Scientific Advisory Board of the Rosa Luxembourg Foundation.

Prof. Dr. Elmar Brähler, was the Professor of Medical Psychology and Medical Sociology at the University of Leipzig.

Prof. Dr. Peter Brandt is the German historian and retired Professor for Modern and Contemporary History at the University of Hagen.

Prof. Dr. Michael Schneider is the German political journalist and literary critic.

Prof. Klaus Staeck is a German lawyer and publisher.

Dr. Friedrich Dieckmann is the author of essays, reviews, stories and radio features.

Prof. Dr. Hans-Joachim Gießmann is the Executive Director of Berghof Foundation.

Prof. Dr. Lutz Götze, Professor Emeritus of the University of Saarland.

Dr. Enrico Heitzer, Researcher of the Brandenburg Memorials Foundation.

Gunter Hofmann is the German journalist working for Die Zeit.

Dr. Irina Mohr is the leader of Forum Berlin of the Friedrich Ebert Foundation.

Dr. Friedrich Schorlemmer, is a German Protestant theologian, civil rights activist and member of the SPD.

Volker Braun is the prominent German writer living in Berlin.

Daniela Dahn is the writer, journalist and essayist.

Ingo Schulze is a German writer from Dresden.

One of my recent articles at several sites, “Jimmy Carter Is Correct That the U.S. Is No Longer a Democracy” generated many reader-comments (such as here) saying things like, “The US has always been a republic. There are no true democracies in the modern world.” This will be my response to all who expressed that view:

You miss the point that Carter made, and that I there documented to be true, which is no semantic issue (“democracy” versus “republic”), but which instead concerns the basic lie about what the United States of America really is now:

Is this a representative democracy, such as its Founders intended and such as it was famous and honored throughout the world for being, until at least around 1980? Or, is it instead a nation that’s ruled by a tiny elite, an aristocracy, which in this country consists of its 500 or so billionaires, who buy the politicians whom ‘we’ ‘elect’?

Is the U.S. now, basically, a fraud? Is it a dictatorship, instead of a democracy? Is it some kind of aristocracy, which controls the government here?

That’s not a semantic issue, at all. America’s first political party was called the “Democratic Republican Party,” but could as well have been called the Democratic Party or the Republican Party, because those two terms are essentially synonymous in any nation that has a large population, in which the public elect representatives to represent them, instead of directly vote on the policies that the government is to pursue — to place into its law, and to enforce by its duly authorized police or otherwise, and to adjudicate by democratically appointed judges and/or juries.

The only democracies that can exist, except for tiny ones, are representative democracies: they are republics. Republics are the only type of democratic nations that exist, practically speaking.

Where, then, does the apparently common misconception that there is a difference between the two terms arise?

I shall here present a theory about that: This widespread misconception arises because the rulers in a dictatorship — i.e., in an elite-controlled or “aristocratic” government, as opposed to in a government that authentically does represent the public — can thereby fool many people into misconceiving what the real issue, the real problem, there is.

The real issue is whether the country is controlled by its aristocracy (a dictatorship), or instead by its public (its residents).

Let’s be frank and honest: an aristocratically controlled government is a dictatorship, regardless of whether that “aristocracy” is in fascist Italy, or in Nazi Germany, or in Communist USSR, or in North Korea, or in the United States of America.

That’s what Jimmy Carter was talking about, and it’s what I was documenting to be true.

To varying and rather extraordinary degrees throughout earlier U.S. history, this nation really was a democracy; that is to say, a republic. But we’re not actually like that any more (as I documented there).

If this problem is not faced — and honestly, not by means of semantic games and misdirections — then surely there will be not even a possibility to restore the democracy, the republic, the democratic republic, or whatever one prefers to call it, which our Founders had intended, and which lasted for around two centuries on these shores, and was widely admired and even (by some) envied throughout the world.

The aristocracy and its many fools might not want this enormous problem to be addressed, but Jimmy Carter clearly does. And so do I.

One of the ways to misdirect about this problem is to obsess about “good residents” (“citizens”) versus “bad residents” (“aliens”), because that nationalistic way of viewing things enables the aristocracy to split the public against itself and thereby to maintain its own grip on power against, actually, that entire public. Nazi Germany did this.

Another way they misdirect it is to buy control over all of the political parties that stand a chance of dominating the government, and so to create basically a ‘democratic’ or ‘republican’ controlled government which, in any case, is actually controlled by that aristocracy, even if, perhaps, by a different faction within it. Even if a different faction within the aristocracy takes control, it’s still the same dictatorship. Because the public is not in control.

There are many ways to deceive the public. There are many ways to rule the public. But all of them are aristocratic; all of them are elite — and typically monied-elite — dictatorships.

In a democracy (or republic) the government does not rule, the government represents. It represents honestly, because it doesn’t need to do so by misdirection, by deceits.

In an aristocracy (or dictatorship) the government does not represent — at least not honestly — because they don’t want the people to see how their sausages are made.

Will a violent revolution be required to overthrow it? If so, then won’t the likelihood be high that it will merely replace one group who rule by force, by a different group who rule by force? For example: isn’t that what happened in the Russian Revolution and its aftermath?

Jimmy Carter challenged America to restore democracy. And he was right to do so. But can it be done? And, if so, then how?

It’s the great issue in 2016. Because if it’s not dealt with then, the dictatorship, the aristocracy that controls it, will become so deeply lodged that it won’t be able to be dislodged without great violence. And the outcome of that would not solve the problem, at all. It would be hell. But avoiding that hell by means of accepting continuance of aristocratic control would also be hell, because aristocracy would then become even more deeply entrenched.

America needs to deal with it, not postpone solving it.

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.

Economic relations between China and Latin America are living increasing tensions. As a result of deflation (fall in prices) on a global scale, the South American region is suffering the consequences of concentrating the bulk of its exports to China on commodities. However, the opening of the first yuan financial center in Latin America, in Santiago de Chile, agreed during Prime Minister, Li Keqiang’s visit, is bound to attract a number of technological investments which could drive peripheral industrialization and decrease the dollar’s dominance in Southern Cone countries.

During his visit to Brazil, Colombia, Peru, and Chile, the Prime Minister Keqiang advanced Chinese influence in Latin America by fulfilling 2 fundamental goals: transforming the region’s economic map to underpin Chinese prominence, and driving the yuan’s prominence on South American territory with Santiago de Chile as the launching pad.

The first goal was accomplished with Brazilian and Peruvian Governments by means of an agreement to build more than 5,000 kilometers of railway lines which shall connect the Atlantic and the Pacific with the aim of increasing the size and speed of trade with China^[1].

This “Silk Road” thus extended to South America^[2] would be an alternative to shipping transit through the Panama Canal (under American control for decades) and, at the same time, would supplement the capabilities of the also planned Nicaragua Canal.

Chinese funding is prominent in both canals’ construction projects, as a result of the country’s interests in the supply of strategic commodities (oil, metals, minerals, etc.), and its privileged trade links with Managua and South American markets, even ahead of the US and Europe.

Nonetheless, the increase in the trade flows between China and the Latin American region, especially since China joined the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2001, bears no relation at present with the incipient use of the yuan.

While trade with China multiplied by 22 between 2000 and 2014, according to the UN Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC)^[3], from 2009 onwards ‘swap’ agreements (‘currency swap’) agreements were signed only with Brazil and Argentina in order to promote yuan transactions among enterprises (through central banks). Not even the biggest exporters of oil and minerals of the Asia-Pacific region, such as Venezuela and Peru, managed to build financial cooperation links with Beijing.

This explains the importance of this second agreement reached during Li Keqiang’s tour: Chile, the first South-American country to recognize China in the diplomatic arena 45 years ago and to subscribe a Free Trade Agreement (FTA) with the country in 2005, will now be the main player in the launch of the yuan’s first financial center in Latin America, thanks to the adoption of 3 key agreements.

Firstly, the Chilean government was qualified by the Chinese authorities to take part in the Renminbi Qualified Foreign Institutional Investor (RQFII) program. As a result, Chilean banks, pension funds, insurance companies, and mutual funds will have the opportunity to invest in the Chinese capital market^[4] up to a limit of 50 billion yuan (8.1 billion US dollars).

Secondly, an agreement was reached to open a clearing bank in the “people’s currency” (‘renminbi’) in the Americas, after the first one opened in North America, namely in Canada^[5]. With an initial investment of 189 million US dollars and under the supervision of the Chinese Construction Bank (CCB), Chile and the Asian giant expect to decrease the cost of their transaction (credit operations, foreign trade payments, etc.) and it will facilitate currency exchange.

The CCB is a worldwide entity that has made operations outside of China for more than 7 trillion yuan and over 19,000 clients. With several branches already operating in Chile, it plans to extend its financial services to all other South American^[6] countries.

And lastly, an agreement was signed between Chile’s Central Bank and the People’s Bank of China to open a foreign-currency credit ‘swap’ line for 22 billion yuan (3.5 billion US dollars) which on one hand should cushion the effects of the dollar’s volatility in trade and investment flows and, on the other hand, should help the Chilean peso and the yuan gain ground in the billing of their bilateral exchanges^[7].

“We hope that Chile-China cooperation in the financial arena will drive industrial and investment cooperation between China and the whole of Latin America”, emphasized Li Keqiang during his visit^[8]. His statement reflects the increasing concerns among wide sections of left-wing politicians about the kind of relationship led up to now with the Asian dragon: exports and capital inflows focused on products and activities of the extractive industry.

It is a fact that, after the downturn in commodity prices and the dramatic slowdown of emerging markets, China’s muscle does not suffice to trigger an economic revival in Southern Cone countries.

Despite all of this, China’s government has expressed their readiness to further the terms of their economic links with Latin American countries^[9]. Quoting poets Pablo Neruda and Xin Qiji, the Chinese Prime Minister argued in ECLAC’s headquarters that “nothing will stop the river of dawn” and that “its waters shall flow towards the Orient”.

To succeed in this commission, he called for the urgent need to increase technological investment to better help the creation of high added value regional chains that, in turn, can transform South America’s growth model.

In this sense, setting up the yuan’s first financial hub in Latin America, namely in in Santiago de Chile, become a de facto laboratory for a huge challenge on the part of Beijing’s officials: on one hand, to finally allow for peripheral industrialization and, on the other hand, to strengthen the yuan’s internationalization with the support of South American governments.

Ariel Noyola Rodríguez is an Autonomous National University of Mexico Economist graduate.

Translation: Ines Condoy Franco.

Notes

Those of us in alternative news media shoulder a growing responsibility of shedding light on the truth where little to none exists anymore either in government and mainstream media. As such, citizens of the world but especially of America need to know that the so called Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) like al Qaeda before them are the created, well-paid, well-armed secret mercenary ally of the US Empirein cahoots with Israel, other Western nations, NATO, and US Muslim allies Saudi Arabia, Turkey and other oil-rich Gulf state puppets.

Overwhelming evidence has been amassed to expose this basic fundamental fact. This sobering reality in and of itself proves that key members of the international crime syndicate posing as the US government have violated their sworn oaths to protect and defend America from both foreign and domestic enemies and clearly committed repeated acts of treason. The same neocons responsible for murdering 3000 of their own American citizens on 9/11 have also been the creators of ISIS and they have the blood of five US servicemen on their hands in Chattanooga… not to mention the millions of people in the Middle East and North Africa.

No sooner did Islamic State forces invade Iraq in June 2014, within days a groundswell of relentless warnings ever since have been pumped out of the feds’ echo-chambers, be it Homeland Security, the US intelligence community, law enforcement, Border Patrol and prominent Republican politicians like Senator Lindsey Graham, all insisting sooner than later another 9/11-like attack by ISIS is imminent on US soil. In Graham’s own words:

The seeds of 9/11’s are being planted all over Iraq and Syria. They want an Islamic caliphate that runs through Syria and Iraq… and they plan to drive us out of the Mideast by attacking us here at home.

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers (R-MI) warned:

I guarantee you: this is a problem that we will have to face and we’re either going to face it in New York City or we’re going to face it here. These are not monkey bar terrorists out in the desert somewhere planning some very low-level attack. These are sophisticated, command and controlled, seasoned combat veterans who understand the value of terrorism operations external to the region, meaning Europe and the United States. That is about as dangerous a recipe as you can put together.

The Intelligence Committee Chairman in Congress must know that these ISIS fighters as US mercenary allied boots on the ground in Syria, Iraq, Libya, Yemen and spreading globally are extremely well financed, trained and armed by his own US coffers. Meanwhile, Army Colonel Kenneth King, a US detention camp commander in Iraq, reminded theDaily Beast last year that when the current ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was let out of his prison in 2009, he promised, “I’ll see you guys in New York.” According to Edward Snowden documents, to top it all off, Baghdadi is reputedly a born and bred Israeli citizen and Mossad agent named Elliot Shimon.

A host of high profile shills from the dirty politics game including former Texas governor (and still GOP presidential wannabe) Rick Perry the same week he was indicted for felony fraud charges last year jumped on the bandwagon chorus raising fears in Americans that there are terrorists sneaking across the US border by way of Obama’s flagrant open door policy. It’s directly out of the old “Red Scare”playbook from the 1950’s that for years had US citizens worried that there’s “a Commie lurking under every American bed.”

Of course politicians are notorious masters of deceit, preying on public fear by constantly planting false information and propaganda to manipulate and shape citizens’ perceptions and opinions for votes and popularity. Since 9/11 the all too familiar national security card has been constantly utilized to arouse fear as a means of controlling Americans while stripping us of our civil liberties and constitutional freedoms, perpetrating mass deception as if enslavement to tyranny is making us any more secure. And since the feds and the terrorists are secretly on the same demonic team together, Islamic State attacks against innocent Americans on domestic soil may actually come to pass, potentially as soon as the next false flag.

Leave it to Fox News to drive home the open border issue with documentarian pundit Dennis Michael Lynch’s emphatic assertion that “ISIS are already here!” In recent years a number of whistleblowing Border Patrol agents have come forth complaining and lamenting that Washington has intentionally tied their hands to prevent them from doing their job to securely protect our border with Mexico. Overriding directives from Obama’s Homeland Security Department have consistently sabotaged border protection. Border Patrol whistleblower Hector Garcia told CNN that the Obama administration is “aiding, abetting and facilitating the smuggling of illegal aliens across the border,” adding that the US border is being “organized and orchestrated” by the Mexican drug cartels. Vice President of the National Border Patrol Council Shawn Moran told Breitbart last October, “We are simply being ordered to stand down and stop tracking and trying to apprehend the criminals, including possible terrorists,” adding that this Obama policy applies to Border Patrol agents across the boards from California to Texas.

In May 2014 Obama declared the Organ Mountains-Desert Peaks as a National Monument along a large chunk of the New Mexico-Mexico border (containing 500,000 acres) which restricts Border Patrol mobility since it can neither make arrests nor gain access. With only foot traffic permitted, Obama’s intervention is good only for the Mexican drug cartels, undocumented immigrants, criminal gangs and ISIS. Additionally, the steady flow of humans destroys the natural environment, the very rationale Obama uses to designate land as National Forests, Wildlife Refuges and National Monuments. Enormous sized gaps along the Texas, New Mexico and Arizona borders provide safe haven passageways for thousands of illegals that may well include terrorists to freely enter the United States. More than a third of the near 2,000 mile stretch of the US-Mexico border has been deemed unsecured. Hence, Obama’s open border policy is clearly not in the best interests of either the United States or its citizens.

Of course last summer also marked the humanitarian crisis when 60,000 unsupervised children mostly from Central America converged on our southern border tying up and exhausting Border Patrol personnel and resources, forcing them to become babysitters and social workers. 70% of the Border Patrol agents were assigned to processing the illegals, leaving only 30% of the workforce to patrol and protect our border. It was a free pass not only for the minors but also for drug smugglers, human traffickers and criminal elements including terrorists.

A full year ago and less than a month after ISIS entered Iraq, US intelligence officials were predicting that the Islamic State terrorists intend to mobilize their power far beyond the Middle East. Of course over this last year, the IS jihadists have more than proven this statement true. A photo of a hand holding an ISIS flag in front of the White House was tweeted with the message dated August 9^th, 2014, “A message from ISIS to U.S. – We are in your state. We are in your cities. We are in your streets.”

A UN report stated that just from June 2014 to March 2015 alone, the ISIS ranks grew by a whopping 25,000 foreign volunteer recruits signing up to kill infidels, many new members originating from the West spanning most countries on earth. This spike marked a 71% increase in Islamic State terrorists in only nine months. With such a fast growing, menacing force, is it any wonder ISIS is spreading like a cancer around the globe?

Anyone who understands how ISIS came to be should not be surprised by the success of the US created Islamic State expanding its territorial control globally from the Middle East (Iraq, Syria, Yemen) into North Africa (Libya, Tunisia, Algeria) and further south into sub-Saharan Africa partnering with Nigeria’s Boko Harem and Somalia’s al-Shabaab. A couple months ago the Pentagon and Defense Intelligence Agency documents clearly showed that back in 2012 even before ISIS was ISIS that its rapid growth was by Empire design. Several weeks prior to this embarrassing revelation being uncovered, the same Pentagon was caught hiding the Islamic State’s massive expansion. And now the latest movement has ISIS spreading into Ukraine while working feverishly eastward towards the South Caucasus of Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan and northeastward into Russia by way of Chechnya and Dagestan.

ISIS’ overt promises to attack Americans on US soil has been reverberated repeatedly by neocon warnings that Islamic State is waging a global war invading and perpetrating jihadist terrorism worldwide. Not by accident, the one nation that seems most immune from any Islamic State violence thus far is none other than Israel. PerhapsNetanyahu’s trips to his Golan Heights hospital cheering up his wounded jihadi terrorists are paying off.

The diabolical symbiotic relationship between the US-Israeli criminal governments and the Islamic State co-depend on each other for sustainable power and influence. Ironically and hypocritically, it was Secretary of State John Kerry who described Syrian President Assad’s relationship with ISIS as “symbiotic.” Between the three globally destructive forces, US Empire, apartheid Israel and ISIS all share the same designed outcomes wherever their killing machines spread, effectively destabilizing and “balkanizing” every violent hotspot in the Middle East, Africa and Eastern Europe leaving in their wake more ravaged, war torn failed states with the list growing yearly. So far the tag team trio’s batting .1000.

Last October Breitbart news posted an FBI internal documentwarning of homegrown violent extremists (HVE) and radicalized ISIS sympathizers carrying out attacks against law enforcement and government personnel within the US. This FBI bulletin came in response to ISIS social network messages posted by none other than big daddy Baghdadi himself instructing jihadists and domestic wannabes to kill cops and soldiers in both America and abroad.

And then like clockwork just nine months later an ISIS sympathizer allegedly shows up at the two local Chattanooga US military sites three weeks ago and slaughters four Marines and a sailor. Within hours of opening day of the infamous Jade Helm 15 exercises, the July 16^th shooting raises a number of questions and suspicions that it too appears to be another false flag, joining the growing list of proven false flag events regularly employing crisis actors from 9/11 to Sandy Hook to the Boston Marathon bombing to this year’s recent Charleston AME church shooting.

Prior to the announcement that Muhammad Youssef Abulazeez was the identified killer, a twitter account claiming to be ISIS was already taking credit just moments after the initial story broke. A sinister federal agenda using its state sponsored domestic terrorism is preying on the fears of Americans in order to justify the $38.2 billion Homeland Security budget at financially strapped taxpayer expense. The feds are even carelessly resorting to hiring the same crisis actors in multiple false flag incidents. Another perhaps most important function that these false flags serve is paving the way for progressively more devastating false flags in the future, priming the US populace into passively fearfully accepting the despicable lies and deceptions of its government’s official narrative.

The Chattanooga shooting last month was not the first supposed ISIS terrorist act in America. Three months ago ISIS claimed responsibility for another false flag event inGarland Texas, the same state designated “hostile” as the Jade Helm hotly debated battlefront. The timing of the US Special Forces announcement of Jade Helm and the firestorm it created in Texas followed so closely by the Charlie Hebdo-like shooting of two radicalized ISIS wannabes in Garland reeked of false flag stench. The would-be terrorists were allegedly shot dead before even entering the building where the cartoon contest lampooning Mohammad was taking place.

The Los Angeles Times as early as September last year began reporting that the government watchdog group called Judicial Watch was claiming that ISIS was present in Ciudad Juarez. The Judicial Watch report stated that ISIS was planning to attack the US with “car bombs or other vehicle borne improvised explosive devices.” Nearby Fort Bliss in El Paso along with Homeland Security and the Defense and Justice Departments were placed on high alert. The Timesarticle went on to quote a former CIA operations officer confirming the chummy relationship between the Mexican drug cartels and al Qaeda and now ISIS. As it turned out no such terrorist attacks near the US border have occurred in the subsequent year that’s followed. But that neither precludes terrorism from being committed on US soil in the future nor does it fail to psychologically condition and prepare Americans for its eventuality. Last year’s heightened hype alert becomes part of the ongoing process that is programming Americans to blame ISIS and Muslims in general (despite the fact that IS hired thugs are not practicing true Islam) instead of the real culprits behind the violence and terror, the crime cabal US government and the globalists controlling and dictating the feds’ policies.

Back in mid-April this year Judicial Watch was at it again reporting that just eight miles from the US border near El Paso ISIS was busily preparing for war against America at a joint drug cartel training camp. The Judicial Watch sources were a high ranking Mexican field grade officer and a Mexican Federal Police officer. Another ISIS cell is said to be operating further west across the New Mexico border. Apparently a joint operation by the Mexican Army and the Federales allegedly discovered ISIS documents in Arabic language along with Muslim prayer rugs and plans for attacks on Fort Bliss.

The Juarez cartel control the area along the US border and their coyotes are alleged to be moving ISIS fighters through the unsecured open stretches that Obama makes off limits to Border Patrol in New Mexico as well as Texas. ISIS is reported to be engaging in reconnaissance missions scoping out potential US targets that include Fort Bliss, home of the Army’s 1^st Armored Division, America’s largest military post the White Sands Missile Range and government facilities in Alamogordo, New Mexico, Holloman Air Force Base, electric power plants and regional universities.

Last October Judicial Watch disclosed that four ISIS terrorists had been caught in a 36-hour period crossing the border into the US. In a separate incident in February this year a Russian operative posing as a military trainer was caught and released by Border Patrol. For every potential terrorist enemy caught, no doubt dozens are entering the US through one of Obama’s safe corridors. The official response of the Obama administration allowing this undeniable threat to American lives to continue unabated is simply to deny, deny, deny.

“No imminent threat is posed by ISIS at the US southern border” according to both Homeland Security and the FBI. The Council on Foreign Relations that dictates US foreign policy released an article in its Foreign Affairs just this last February boasting a title claiming “ISIS is on the run.”

And from the six oligarch owned mainstream media corporations controlling the news, not a peep was heard about terrorists at our border. Perhaps because Obama, the FBI, DHS, the CFR and their presstitute press corps are all working covertly with ISIS to destroy America.

Obviously the FBI and others in government are sending out mixed signals as FBI Director James Comey also in February stated, “We have investigations of people in various stages of radicalizing in all 50 states.” Shortly after the ISIS wannabe killed 5 US military personnel last month, retired General Wesley Clark took to the airwaves calling for the government to lock up disloyal Americans as extremists and enemies of the state. Such an inflammatory totalitarian statement brings us ever closer to the critical mass of FEMA camp roundups and civil war in America.

Homegrown radicalized Islamic State terrorists of course fuel Obama, war criminal General Clark and Homeland Security’s drive to wage war against a much broader segment of the US population, including all dissidents, protestors, constitutionalists, environmentalists, veterans, gun owners, Tea Partiers, right wing groups, anti-abortionists, fundamentalist Christians, home schoolers, or anyone who speaks out against the federal government’s tyranny and oppression. The arbitrary labels of belligerents, enemy combatant sympathizers, and domestic terrorists can then be applied to locking up virtually anyone in a FEMA camp or worse yet be murdered by the militarized police state.

Obama and his fascist regime have long recognized that more Americans are growing angrier each year at the grosstwo-tiered injustice system (one for the privileged elite and the other for the rest of us), the pervasive police state killing of its own citizens (especially African Americans), and the fact that this increasingly armed and dangerous world of global tyranny has only deceptively made us all far less safe. The growing impoverishment resulting from the bankrupt global house of cards debtor system economy on the verge of total collapse has only accelerated the globalists’ doomsday endgame scenario.

After every staged fake ISIS beheading, out come the parade of former CIA propagandists and neocon shills on all the MSM newscasts pontificating how ISIS cells are already operating and multiplying throughout the United States. After all, this charade game’s been going on now long enough that waves of American and Canadian jihadists fresh from the Iraqi and Syrian battlefronts are coming home to plot terror on North American turf. Or the CIA dis-informers will reassure Americans that more of those staged beheadings are on the way in reaction to recent US air strikes that never seem to make any real dent in reducing Islamic State’s ever-growing numbers. Or are they talking about all the US bombskilling off innocent civilians in Iraq and Syria.

Obama’s now bombing Assad’s troops, manipulating what he was determined to do two years ago when the world stopped him as Putin brokered the last minute deal to get Assad to turn in his cache of chemical weapons (despite Obama-backed rebels being guilty of the attack on the Damascussuburb). Obama’s real agenda all along has been to go after Assad, not ISIS. Under the pretense of “rooting out ISIS,” the US and Israeli bombs have attacked Syria’s energyinfrastructure by destroying oil refineries and grain storage silos. Anything but wiping out ISIS… kind of like the so called “misplaced” airdrops of vital food, medical and arms supplies that are supposed to be going to the only real fighting force that has half a chance of defeating ISIS, the Kurds in Iraq. But somehow (accidentally on purpose) who seems to invariably wind up with all those supplies? Of course,Empire’s closet ally ISIS, who else? Bottom line, if US Empire possessed the political will, the most potent killing machine on earth could eliminate ISIS in two or three week tops. But the Empire’s forever war on terror would have to end if ISIS suddenly ceased to exist.

Dozens of those pundits from neocon think tanks and prior administrations have been sounding the MSM alarm promoting the idea that a coalition partnership-in-crime has already been forged between the various drug cartels, the MS13 gang and the Islamic State. They also recirculate the belief that Osama bin Laden delivered nuclear technology to al Qaeda operatives here in the US by way of suitcase nukes and they could easily be in Islamic State’s possession now. In actuality, it’s far more likely that the only suitcase nukesstrategically planted in various US cities are part of Israel and Mossad’s Sampson Option, global blackmail to the world powers in order to ensure that Israel never gets attacked by any other powerful nation or Israel will nuke the whole lot of us. Nonetheless, no doubt there are evil enough nuke or biological/chemical warfare peddlers out there willing to sell WMD’s for the right price to the likes of ISIS. And based on the money flowing into Islamic State hands from a number of sources like the US, the Saudis and other wealthy Gulf statesalong with the IS revenue generated from the black market sales of pirated oil and drugs, anything is possible.

Speaking of nuclear material, a month ago Mexican officials had to admit for the third time in less than a year that a truck containing deadly radioactive Iridium-192 was stolen from an area controlled by a drug cartel, the same one training with ISIS. Though in this latest case the material was later recovered, previously missing nuclear substances and evenmissing nuclear warheads remain unaccounted for. Because a pattern of lost nukes over time persists, it seems inevitable that at some point one or more fall into the wrong hands, particularly when ISIS hands are so well-funded.

In a similar vein, current DHS chief Jeh Johnson in one breath tells 60 Minutes that a number of the returning American IS jihadists from fighting in Syria and Iraq “have been arrested or investigated and we have systems in place to track these individuals.” Then in the very next breath he slips in the small print, “But you can’t know everything.” His last statement is pretty flippantly cavalier, considering it’s his job to keep extremely close tabs on known terrorists operating inside America. Yet in effect he is admitting that it’s not a question of if but when before ISIS kills Americans… oops, it just happened in Chattanooga. Like when the LA earthquake hits, you know the big one, the same holds true for when ISIS strikes America with the big one, instead of five servicemen dying, the big one could take out an entire US city or a few hundred or a few thousand Americans at a time. “Oops, we can’t know everything.” Yet another sobering thought is 5000 Europeans have left home to fight with ISIS and Western Europeans don’t even need visas to enter the US. Oh well, DHS “can’t know everything…” (in)famous last words.

To provide a full backdrop for what’s to come, a brief overview of President Obama’s foreign policy in Latin America will offer insight and understanding of the precarious stage currently being set. Obama’s record south of the border follows suit with his foreign policy everywhere – disastrous except for the globalists pulling his strings. Hilary’s State Department and CIA induced regime change coupousted the Honduran president in 2009 followed by several more coup attempts that failed to overthrow Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro (recall Bush’s multiple failures at ousting Maduro’s defiant predecessor Hugo Chavez who rightly called Bush “the devil”). Obama policies have empowered criminal gangs such as the MS13 along with the all-powerful Latin American drug cartels to rule much of the Southern Hemisphere with absolute impunity, rampantly inflicting increasing lawless violence on both sides of the US border. Obama has been financing weak, corrupt puppet governments in Central America and Mexico owned and controlled by the drug cartels, enabling both the cartels as well as the United States government to continue bilking enormously obscene profit obtained illegally from theinternational drug trade boosted also by bumper crop yields of opium and heroin smuggled in from Afghanistan.

Obama is complicit in causing the crime and murder rates in Central American nations to soar among the highest in the entire world. As an example, Honduras’ murder rate is the highest in the world. In El Salvador the lawlessness and lethal dangers facing citizens struggling to work their jobs every day is now so out of control that their feeble government cannot even protect them. The crime cabal gangs and cartels blatantly responsible for the skyrocketingviolence are demanding that their extortion fees be codified into law by the national government. In the meantime, El Salvador’s murder rate is up by 50% over last year and with the work force unsafe to leave their homes, the nation’s economy seems in its final death throes. With gang turf wars raging, June saw El Salvador’s highest homicide rate since the civil war nearly a quarter century ago.

As a direct result of all this rampant instability and violent chaos, our treasonous president has burdened an over-strained US tax base with a huge influx of foreign nationals pouring into the US particularly from Central America while endangering American lives by permitting not just decent hardworking people desperately seeking a better life here but outright criminal and terrorist elements free access into the United States. Obama has simply done what he’s been told by his puppet master superiors – destroy America both from within and from outside sources by eroding and weakening the US as a sovereign independent nation. The globalists have orchestrated this same disastrous policy in Europe with an overflow of migrant refugees from North Africa and the Middle East. Meanwhile Obama’s failed policies in Latin America have only enabled Russia to gain a strong military foothold within a growing number of South American countries that to a great extent have boldly rejected US imperialism. Six and a half years of Obama’s so called incompetence by NWO design has set the stage for an imminent CIA-neocon planned ISIS invasion of America.

Just as the invented, made-in-the-USA’s new and improved bogey man splashed onto the headlines last year, right on cue ever since the very government insiders who in fact created and have been financing this latest enemy on steroids have been spewing out dire warnings of catastrophic proportions that lay ahead for America, as if to prep and condition Americans into readily swallowing the feds’ cover-up lies following the terrorist acts likely soon to be executed on US soil. The foreign invasion by ISIS, their attacks and murder of Americans, and likely war that will break out under Obama’s martial law in actuality is the globalist fast tracking their eugenics plan by hard kill methods to reduce the US and world population by 90%.

All these unfolding doom and gloom events have been pre-scripted and planned long in advance.

From 9/11 to London’s 7/7 attack to January’s Paris Charlie Hebdo attack, from Sandy Hook to the Boston Marathon bombing to the so called Charleston AME church massacre in June, right up to the most recent Chattanooga shooting last month, every one of these incidents have false flag fingerprints diabolically smudged all over them.

In their totality they concretely underscore how low the US federal government has degenerated, morally, ethically and criminally. All act as precursor events that are part of the sinister apparatus leading us to global governance according to a thinly veiled elitist plan that includes the end of the United States, war on American soil and an ultimate doomsday Armageddon endgame scenario for the world. With their underground cities, bunkers, highway and rail systems well in place, globalists believe they actually have the means and stockpiled reserves to outlast even the worst case scenario of nuclear war above ground. Hence, their grandiose sense of omnipotence is pathologically reflected by their reckless abandon and apparent willful calculation to potentially destroy the earth and all its life forms.

In addition to the old divide and conquer strategy, the Hegelian dialectic has also proven to be a successful formula repeatedly utilized by globalists to further their New World Order agenda. Once pumping incessant propaganda into a dumbed down masses that will believe anything when heard often enough, and the latest created target enemy is firmly etched in the public’s mind, traitors in the international crime cabal government in DC then resort to creating a series of false flag crises blaming the designated enemy that then justifies implementing an identified ready-made solution that most often manifests in the form of waging yet more war and violence. This predictable outcome in turn leads to a proliferation of yet more draconian measures deceitfully using their lame “national security” excuse to gain even more totalitarian control over the masses. This strategy has been their tried and true method of choice and in the coming months of upheaval and turmoil will only continue to be used against the human population for nefarious purposes.

The globalists have heavily invested military application of artificial intelligence (AI) technology for not only ultra-invasive surveillance but tactical military purposes on the battlefield as well. Enter Jade Helm as the beta tester for its PSYOPS andJade Helm 2 AI software. Artificial intelligence through automated mechanization on the modern battlefield will take the human error out of war-making murder and mayhem and efficiently eliminate any human opposition attempting the now obsolete guerilla warfare. The ruling elite has harnessed incredible advances in electronic and weapons technology to exponentially increase its absolute power and control over the global population. The feds’ deployment of human personnel like ISIS is currently being augmented by AI and very soon human soldiers will largely be replaced by armies of militarized killing robots. The most egregious, most horrific science fiction scenarios are already developed and ready for deployment today in the here and now.

With unprecedented levels of war weapons, military vehicles including UN, tanks, and MRAP’s all moving around North America just in time for Jade Helm 15, the largest military operation on domestic soil in US history involving the military’s elite forces along with the DHS, NSA, FBI, CIA, DEA, Border Patrol and local law enforcement in nine states, and the countless contradictions and misrepresentations by inept military propagandists, what seems most apparent is the feds are withholding the truth from the American public. What the government is not disclosing is that it is most likely preparing for a major war on US soil, yet the evidence strongly suggests that is what awaits this nation. And with the false flags unfurling nearly every week this year, a foreign invasion and large scale acts of terrorism by ISIS combined with a cyberattack on the banking infrastructure that Homeland Security has spent years planning and preparing for, reinforced by outgoing DHS head Janet Napolitano’s  farewell warning to America, the recurring pattern of yet another exercise going live seems more than probable in the next month or two. Be it an ISIS invasion from Mexico or possibly one from Cuba after ISIS

The Manchurian candidate president has dutifully carried out his treasonous role as a globalist puppet to systematically undermine and destroy the United States. His fast trackedTrans Pacific Partnership despite a recent snag acts as the ultra-secret blueprint weapon for one world government to take form. Absolute global tyranny under the elite’s New World Order has been rapidly unfolding through disturbing events and developments virtually all year long. With Jade Helm scheduled to end next month and likely going live in response to the staging of yet more created false flag crises, accompanied by Pope Francis’ history-making address before a joint session of Congress on September 24^th and the United Nations on the 25^th, it appears that the stage has long been set for the fall of America timed with the New World Order’s official launch. The globalists will be in victory celebration in their mansions. Hope and pray for the best, be prepared for the worst.

Joachim Hagopian is a West Point graduate and former US Army officer. He has written a manuscript based on his unique military experience entitled “Don’t Let The Bastards Getcha Down.” It examines and focuses on US international relations, leadership and national security issues. After the military, Joachim earned a master’s degree in Clinical Psychology and worked as a licensed therapist in the mental health field for more than a quarter century. He now concentrates on his writing and has a blog site at http://empireexposed. blogspot. com/. He is also a regular contributor to Global Research.

In an effort to preserve centuries of the written word from possible pillage by Islamic State militants, the Baghdad National Library is rushing to scan ancient works to create digital archives.

The work undertaken by the microfilm department is truly a hefty task, as a vast proportion of the collection of manuscripts is in bad shape. Over the centuries, several have either been burned or ruined by dampness. Others have even fossilized over time and now look like large rocks.

A man walks between the shelves containing historical documents in Iraq’s National library in Baghdad
© Mohammed Ameen / Reuters

“Those are the most difficult books to restore,” Fatma Khudair, from the museum restoration department told AP. “We apply steam using a specialized tool to try to loosen and separate the pages.”

Khudair noted that some damage over the years is “irreversible.” Currently the library staff is working to preserve the documents dating back to the Ottoman empire.

Preservation process is long and tedious. Specialists first sterilize manuscripts for 48 hours. Then, page by page restorers use Japanese tissue paper to fill in torn edges or to apply an extra layer of protection to make the paper more durable. “Once restoration for some of the older documents from the Ottoman era, 200 to 250 years ago, is completed, we will begin to photograph those onto microfilm,” said Mazin Ibrahim Ismail, the head of the microfilm department. The need to preserve the old books first became apparent in April of 2003, after the US led-invasion of the country, when the National Library and Archives were burned and looted. More than 25 percent of its books and some 60 percent of its archives were lost. Before the destruction, the collection held 417,000 books, 2,618 periodicals dating from the late Ottoman era to modern times, and a collection of 4,412 rare books and manuscripts.

During the invasion of Iraq, “we had an alternative site for the most important books and documents at the Department of Tourism,” said Jamal Abdel-Majeed Abdulkareem, acting director of Baghdad libraries and archives. “Then books and the important documents were exposed to water because the American tanks destroyed the water pipes and water leaked onto these important cultural materials.”

However, assessing current threats to the collection, library officials have stressed that the Islamic State’s (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) hardline ideology is by far the biggest contemporary challenge posed to rare manuscripts.

The militants “want history to reflect their own views instead of the way it actually happened,” Abdulkareem said.

One way to combat ISIS is not only to preserve the books but share the knowledge contained inside them with people who have recently suffered from a jihadist occupation. This year the Baghdad library donated some 2,500 books to branches in Iraq’s Diyala province after Iraqi forces took back the territory from Islamic State militants.

“So when an area is liberated, we send them books to replenish whatever was stolen or destroyed, but also, so that Iraqis in this area have access to these materials so they can always feel proud of their rich history,” Abdulkareem said.

Islamic State fighters take pride in publicly destroying artifacts on the territory they control in Syria and Iraq.

Sledgehammering statues stolen from the ancient Syrian city of Palmyra was by far the most talked about cultural tragedy this year. Demolishing a 13th-century tomb near the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk also made headlines.

Disregarding all the international pleas to spare the ancient treasures, IS continues to regard antiquities as sacrilegious remnants of the past that deserve to be wiped off the face of the Earth. The destruction drive is always accompanied by propaganda videos and photos, as seen by the wreckage of a museum in Mosul, Iraq, and the destruction of archaeological sites in Nimrud, Hatra and Nineveh, Iraq.

At the start of the year, IS burned down the Mosul public library which had been home to over 8,000 rare books and manuscripts. The UN has called the event “one of the most devastating acts of destruction of library collections in human history.”

The “destruction marks a new phase in the cultural cleansing perpetrated in regions controlled by armed extremists in Iraq. It adds to the systematic destruction of heritage and the persecution of minorities that seeks to wipe out the cultural diversity that is the soul of the Iraqi people,” UNESCO’s Director general Irina Bokova said at the time.

Shyness and self-restraint aren’t her attributes, along with a whole lot of other dubious qualities.

Revealed email content she sent and received on official State Department business as its head using her private account increasingly is coming back to haunt her – perhaps enough to derail her presidential bid along with much more about her disreputable private and public affairs, repeatedly crossing the line of legality, propriety, ethical standards, common decency and good sense.

It’s hard imagining a worse head of state – a totally unacceptable candidate, a sort of Manchurian one programmed to “assassinate” world peace, stability and security.

Perhaps primary voters will eliminate her from contention. Unfortunately, other candidates are just as reprehensible – not a people’s choice in the bunch from either major party, the usual hacks across the board assuring business as usual.

Political criticism using pejoratives isn’t out of the ordinary – only when what was meant to be private becomes public information.

Hillary’s received and sent email revelations are far more than a sideshow while campaigning for the nation’s highest office. They’re another example of why voters increasingly don’t trust her. She reflects virtually everything ordinary Americans should oppose. There’s nothing redeeming about her. She reflects pure evil.

Pejoratives her confidant Sidney Blumenthal used via emails to her to describe British Prime Minister David Cameron and London Mayor/MP Boris Johnson weren’t what political aspirants want made public.

Cameron is “aristocratic, unsure, inexperienced, oblique and largely uncommitted.” Johnson is a “Tory clown,” said Blumenthal.

Clinton called a 2009 London Guardian article about how Cameron infuriated French, German and Spanish leaders at the time for an attempt to wreck the Lisbon Treaty “so revealing and wacky.”

The subject line of a Blumenthal email to Clinton read “Decline and fall of the British Empire, 2009 edition.” Weeks later, he said a future Cameron government would be “more aristocratic and even narrowly Etonian than any Conservative government in recent memory…”

If elected, “Cameron would be superficially friendly (to the Obama administration) and privately scornful.”

Blumenthal and Clinton discussed via email wanting (unindicted war criminal, hugely unpopular at the end of his prime ministerial tenure) Tony Blair to become EU president.

Blumenthal said otherwise “the position will likely be filled by a third rank nonentity…continuing the feebleness of Europe as a political idea and reality.”

A Downing Street spokeswoman put on a brave face, saying “(t)he special relationship between the UK and the United States is as strong as ever and the president recently acknowledged the importance of the alliance to the US.”

Both nations partner in each other’s crimes. It’s traditional whether Democrats or Republicans run America – Tories or Labour in Britain.

At the same time, Blumenthal warned of a fraying relationship because of “the Obama administration’s denigration of the UK.”

These and other revelation were among the thousands of pages of emails Clinton gave the State Department earlier this year – following the controversy over using her private email system for official business, a hugely indiscreet (perhaps illegal) practice.

She remains the frontrunner for her party’s presidential nomination. Her disturbing baggage could derail her. As first lady, US senator and secretary of state, her deplorable record speaks for itself.

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: Source: amrfum

Mahathir bin Mohamad held the post of the Prime Minister for 22 years from 1981 to 2003, making him Malaysia’s longest-serving Prime Minister. As an experienced statesman he knows what he is talking about

This video is excerpt from RT documentary MH17: ‘No one deserves to die that way’ 

Greek, along with Italian, military forces are soon to train in Israel.

This is the latest indicator of the deepening military alliance being forged between Israel and Greece’s government led by the leftist Syriza party.

Last month, Israeli helicopter pilots completed an unprecedented 11-day combat training exercise near Greece’s Mount Olympus.

In May, the Syriza-led government also signed amilitary accord with Israel, matched only by a similar one between Israel and the US, granting legal immunities to each other’s military personnel while training in the other’s territory.

An image posted by the Israeli air force shows an Israeli pilot embracing a Greek colleague. The Israeli’s face is obscured in the original.

The military deal was signed on behalf of the government by Panagiotis Kammenos, the defense minister from Independent Greeks, Syriza’s rightwing, junior coalition partner. But there is no doubt that Syriza is giving its full backing: in July, the Syriza-nominated Foreign Minister Nikos Kotzias traveled to Jerusalem for high-level talks with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to “strengthen bilateral ties between the two countries.”

Earlier this year Israeli warplanes carried out extensive training missions in Greece, experience that will undoubtedly be used to attack the Gaza Strip in future Israeli military assaults.

Israeli helicopters in Greece

According to an Israeli air force press release, “Israeli-Greek cooperation is gaining momentum over the last years and in light of the success of recent deployments, the mutual flights will probably continue in 2016.”

“We understand the great importance of the joint activity with the State of Israel, which contributes to the security of both countries,” Greece’s Colonel Dormitis Stephzanki, the commander of Larissa Airbase where the Israeli helicopters were based during the exercises, is quoted as saying.

“Over the past few days we have been working together in a special way,” Dormitis added. “The common language, the deep friendship and the things we’ve learnt together have contributed to the enhancement of cooperation between the forces.”

Dormitis said he believes that the training in Greece had improved the Israelis’ “capability to deal with flying wherever needed.”

An image posted by the Israeli air force shows Israeli warplanes at the Larissa Airbase in Greece.

“We flew over mountainous areas that do not exist in Israel and practiced long-distance flights from the airbase in Israel to Greece,” Israel’s Lt. Col. Matan, a commander of a squadron of US-built Apache helicopters said. (Israeli forces only supply first names, likely to protect personnel from potential war crimes charges.)

The Apache – named after Native American peoples targeted by genocidal colonial expansion in North America – has been extensively used by Israel to carry out extrajudicial executions of Palestinians.

It was used during massacres of civilians in Gaza last summer.

Col. Y, a commander of an Israeli reconnaissance unit, described Israel’s participation in the exercise as “historic,” adding that “it was the first time the intelligence-gathering aircraft had worked with foreign aircraft in challenging, unknown terrain.”

Supporting war crimes

According to The Jerusalem Post, Greek helicopter pilots will train in Israel in coming months.

Greek fighter jets “will also arrive as part of the multinational Blue Flag exercise, to be held over southern Israel,” the newspaper reports.

A report in Haaretz in June reveals that Italian, Greek and US air forces will take part in the exercise.

The military cooperation between Israel, Italy and Greece continues despite the fact that a recently publishedindependent inquiry commissioned by the UN Human Rights Council found massive evidence of war crimes by Israel during its attack on Gaza last summer that killed more than 2,200 Palestinians.

Amnesty International last month published its own inquiry into Israel’s attack on the southern Gaza town of Rafah – again concluding that hundreds of civilians were killed as Israel committed grave war crimes.

“Public statements by Israeli army commanders and soldiers after the conflict provide compelling reasons to conclude that some attacks that killed civilians and destroyed homes and property were intentionally carried out and motivated by a desire for revenge – to teach a lesson to, or punish, the population of Rafah,” Amnesty found.

Inam Ouda Ayed bin Hammad, quoted in the Amnesty report, recalled the shelling and bombing that took place near her home in the al-Tannur neighborhood of Rafah: “The minute I left the house, an Apache … started shooting at us.”

Perhaps some of the same Apaches and their pilots were sharing moments of camaraderie in Greece.

The UN report and Amnesty called for accountability for the war crimes committed in Gaza and the occupied West Bank.

Instead, Greece’s and Italy’s ostensibly left-wing governments, and of course the US administration of President Barack Obama, only offer Israel complicity and rewards.

The Vaccine industry, Big Pharma, and the mainstream media have some advice for vaccine zealots attempting to bully parents questioning the safety or effectiveness of vaccines into changing their minds – Don’t argue the facts! Show scary pictures!

In what can only be described as an instruction manual as to how to shame, bully, and shout a person down who simply has a different take on the best and safest way to raise their children, it is clear that the religion of vaccines and “scientism” now has the hallmark of any faith determined to spread itself – the presence of evangelicals.

The new vaccine evangelical movement is being provided with a script sheet of what to say and what to avoid when attempting to convert others to their belief system. Like most religions, the goal among the leaders and the zealots is a world where differing modes of thought no longer exist and where other opinions no longer force them to question the way they view that world.

Articles like “How To Change An Anti-Vaxxer’s Mind” by Jeffrey Kloger of TIME, are a perfect example of the recent propaganda blitz coming from the mainstream media. Kloger’s article is being quickly copied and rewritten in mainstream media outlets all across the country with the real vitriol being found in the more trendy hipster markets.

The recent propaganda push is being based upon a study by researchers at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. It’s not certain exactly how much time and effort was put into the study to discover what most undergraduate marketing students and any remotely successful politician, salesman, or sociopath already knows – that scary pictures are more effective at convincing hordes of people of an idea (true or false) than facts, reasoning, or logic.

In other words, the study and the mainstream media have determined that it is best to go after the emotional vulnerabilities of those who are either under-researched, on the fence, or who have been subjected to bullying and social pressure since hipsters and the cool kids realized it was the “in” thing this year to attack “anti-vaxxers.”

Consider the passage by Jeffrey Kloger of TIME who writes,

That’s a very noble goal, but it’s also one of the things that makes it so bloody hard to change their minds on the topic of vaccines. Public service campaigns don’t work; nor do one-on-one explanations of why the rumors about a vaccine-autism link are wrong. In some cases, there is even a backfire effect: the greater the effort expended to persuade the anti-vaxxers, the more convinced they become that they’re right.

So it’s extremely good news that researchers at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign may at last have come up with a way to cut through the misinformation and get the truth across: Don’t just tell parents to vaccinate their children, show them what happens if they don’t.

In other words: Don’t argue with them! Just show scary pictures! The hope is to catch someone unaware, in a weakened state, or someone who is unfortunately not as well-versed on the subject.

Of course, if you can’t convince someone by providing facts, logic, and reasoning there is always the chance that the person is irrational. But there is also the very real chance that they are quite lucid and that you, in fact, armed with all your talking points, media-induced outrage, and perceived intellectual superiority, are simply wrong.

Kloger does make an important point though. Most “anti-vaxxers” are unconvinced when confronted with the typical pro-vaccine argument. But that is not because they are necessarily rigid of belief, it is mostly because the typical pro-vaccine argument tends to be baseless propaganda, rooted in rhetoric instead of science. As for the social aspect, if “anti-vaxxers” didn’t abandon their beliefs when the first few waves of obnoxious Big-Pharma propaganda came blasting through the airwaves, they are generally not impressed when their friends, family, or even complete strangers take it upon themselves to give them a regurgitation of the talking points they heard about vaccines on NPR, CNN, or read in TIME magazine.

After all, social shaming and bullying – if one’s opinions are strong enough – tend to produce the opposite of the desired effect.

This idea of showing scary pictures, however, is not just a rudimentarily effective propaganda method, it can also be quite dangerous, particularly when the scary pictures are being broadcast over every outlet in the mainstream media.

Take the spate of articles posted in the New York Times, for example. Propaganda narratives like “My Patient Doesn’t ‘Do’ Vaccines,” “The Dangers Of Vaccine Denial,” “A Discredited Vaccine Study’s Continuing Impact On Public Health,” are all aimed at painting the science surrounding the numerous demonstrations of vaccine dangers as pseudo-science and parents who question the safety of vaccines as delusional, obsessive, Luddites. They are designed to produce a false consensus within society that vaccines are safe and effective. Basically, they are designed to create a self-fulfilling prophecy – if enough people read the propaganda and believe it, particularly if they think the majority of others believe it, the victim population will come to believe the propaganda.

Now, apparently, the New York Times and its ilk will be sharing scary pictures to go along with their tripe.

Of course, we all know what happened the last time the New York Times posted scary pictures and emotional words. Maybe one day we will finally leave Iraq….

Image credit: farsight 3 

Brandon Turbeville is an author out of Florence, South Carolina. He has a Bachelor’s Degree from Francis Marion University and is the author of six books, Codex Alimentarius — The End of Health Freedom, 7 Real Conspiracies, Five Sense Solutions and Dispatches From a Dissident, volume 1 andvolume 2, and The Road to Damascus: The Anglo-American Assault on Syria. Turbeville has published over 500 articles dealing on a wide variety of subjects including health, economics, government corruption, and civil liberties. Brandon Turbeville’s podcast Truth on The Tracks can be found every Monday night 9 pm EST at UCYTV.  He is available for radio and TV interviews. Please contact activistpost (at) gmail.com. 

Former CIA Executive Director Buzzy Krongard told BBC on Monday that the CIA did engage in torture:

[BBC] asked Buzzy Krongard, the CIA’s former executive director, if he thought waterboarding and painful stress positions were torture:

“Well, let’s put it this way, it is meant to make him as uncomfortable as possible. So I assume for, without getting into semantics, that’s torture. I’m comfortable with saying that,” he explained.

Krongard isn’t the first high-level official to admit that what the CIA did was torture.  The following officials also admitted that the CIA tortured:

• President Obama

• Eric Holder, U.S. Attorney General

• Ramsey Clark, U.S. Attorney General
  

• Tom Ridge, head of the Department of Homeland Security

• Lt. Gen. Michael D. Maples, the director of the Defense Intelligence Agency

• Barry McCaffrey, 4-Star General, who was awarded three Purple Hearts, two Distinguished Service Crosses, and two Silver Stars

• David Irving, Brigadier General

• The Senate Intelligence Committee

• Colonel Morris Davis, the Chief Prosecutor of the Guantanamo military commissions

• Darrel Vandeveld, former prosecutor in the Guantanamo military commissions

• Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, former chief of staff to Colin Powell

• Malcolm Nance, an advisor on terrorism to the US departments of Homeland Security, Special Operations and Intelligence

• Matthew Alexander, a former top Air Force interrogator who led the team that tracked down Abu Musab al-Zarqawi

• Jack Cloonan, Mike Marks, Jim Clemente, Joe Navarro, and Luis Busquets, FBI officers

• John Kiriakou, CIA officer and interrogator

• Ricardo Sanchez, Lieutenant General and the former top coalition commander in Iraq

• Thomas Romig, Major General and Army JAG

• Antonio Taguba, Major General

• The United Nations Office of the High Commissioner

• Downing Street

• The United States has always considered waterboarding to be a crime of torture, including when the Japanese did it in WWII (and see this)

Why does this matter?

Because top experts say that torture doesn’t work to provide evidence (even in a “ticking time bomb” scenario) … and that it severely harms America’s national security.

Ostensibly independent groups reported to have close ties to a candidate account for 96 percent of total outside fundraising

A public school district in Eastern Texas is under fire amid allegations it made up quotes by famous figures in order to promote Christianity to its students, posting them to the walls of the four schools in the district. The Mount Vernon Independent School District is accused of misattributing quotes to George Washington and Ronald Reagan among others and faces demands to remove the false statements from its walls.

“It is impossible to govern a nation without God and the Bible,” George Washington said—according to the district. “Within the covers of the Bible are the answers for all the problems men face,” it claims Ronald Reagan opined.

The Freedom from Religion Foundation, a non-profit organization, says these quotes are false. It recently wrote a letter to the school district asking that they correct their misattributions. Staff Attorney Sam Grovercalled the alleged Reagan quote “dubious, and, incidentally, intellectually lazy since that is not a direct quotation.” In a letter to the district, he alleged it, along with other quotes, had been taken out of context to promote Christianity specifically.

“When MIVSD manipulates historical quotes by removing context and isolating lines that promote Christianity and religion in general, it violates the right of conscience of its students,” Grover wrote. He accused the school of misquoting (or using quotes misattributed to) John Adams and Thomas Jefferson (in addition to George Washington and Ronald Reagan).

Image credit: Freedom From Religion Foundation

Grover also objected to the district’s framing of the “golden rule” as directly attributable to Jesus, in spite of the fact that “the Golden Rule existed in both ancient Eastern and Western thought, as well as in world religions like Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, Zoroastrianism, and many others.”

However, the FFRF’s problem with MIVSD is not only with the school’s manipulation of quotes. Rather, it is with the promotion of any religion in public school. Grover noted that “it is a fundamental principle of Establishment clause jurisprudence that a public school may not advance, prefer, or promote religion.”

It’s unknown where the schools got the lines from, but after a quick Google search, it’s clear that there are plenty of misattributions of these very same quotes found on internet memes.

While the schools’ misattributions and blatant promotion of one religion over others appear to be undoubtedconstitutional violations, the story highlights an even deeper issue with belief.

It is telling that the quotes on the walls of the schools in the district frequently quote political figures. Whether it be “founding fathers” or the more recent leader, Ronald Reagan, the school district is attempting to use political authority to promote another dogmatic belief. This faith in the United States—so often expressed as nationalistic faith in government institutions themselves—has led to a manipulation of facts similar to what the Texas school district is accused of committing.

While in recent years, the Texas school board moved to change the curriculum to promote Christianity, last year Colorado students walked out of school in protest of proposed changes to their district’s history program. The changes would have downplayed the significance of civil disobedience, among other things. The Advanced Placement (AP) board, a non-government body that offers college-level classes to high school students, recently changed its standards to promote “American exceptionalism” in an attempt to pacify outraged politicians who claimed the prior curriculum insulted the United States. The AP softened its standards on discussions of slavery and American colonialism that decimated the natives’ way of life. It strengthened sections that promote the idea that United States’ military intervention has not only been successful, but necessary.

Whether the religion is Christianity, Islam, Judaism or the State, it remains that dogmatic adherence to any set of beliefs can lead to desperate attempts to protect faith. While not all Christians would endorse the school district’s misleading actions—just as not all Americans favor sugarcoating their country’s history—attachment to collective identities continues to prove a dangerous element in society’s drift from truth.

Image: Protest against the murders of photojournalist Rubén Espinosa and four women [Credit: Eneas de Troya]

Thousands of demonstrators have taken to the streets of Mexico City and other major cities in response to the brutal July 31 murder of Rubén Espinosa Becerril, a photographer and investigative reporter, along with four women.

In the capital Sunday, several thousand marched carrying placards bearing the journalist’s photograph and chanting, “It was the state, it was the state.”

Twenty-four hours after family members reported his disappearance, on Friday afternoon police discovered his body with those of the four women in a Mexico City apartment. They had been bound, tortured and each received acoup de grâce to their heads with 9mm bullets.

Image: March in protest of the assassinations of photojournalist Rubén Espinosa and four women [Credit: Eneas de Troya]

This is a clear political execution-style murder of a critic of the repression of the press and of Mexican corruption.

Rubén’s death followed three years of government persecution, intimidation and beatings at the hands of police in the southeastern Mexican state of Veracruz, which he fled because of threats to his life. He is the thirteenth reporter from Veracruz to be murdered since 2011 (the fourth this year). Three others have disappeared and are presumed dead.

Veracruz is a microcosm of a nationwide state terror campaign against reporters, journalists, photographers and other media workers. According to a Mirada Crítica (Rompeviento TV), some 103 journalists have been killed since the year 2000. Another 17 are missing. Others have been detained unlawfully for long periods of time, or kidnapped for ransom.

An entry in Wikipedia confirms those numbers. For Veracruz, Wikipedia lists the following individuals:

Noel López Olguín, Miguel Ángel López Velasco, Misael López Solana, Yolanda Ordaz, Regina Martínez, Guillermo Luna Varela, Gabriel Huge Córdova, Esteban Rodríguez, Victor Manuel Báez Chino, Irasema Becerra, Gregorio Jiménez, Moisés Sánchez Cerezo. Rubén Espinosa.

The three listed as disappeared are Sergio Landa Rosales, Miguel Morales Estrada, and Manuel Gabriel Fonseca Hernández.

In addition there have been scores of unresolved deaths of young people and human rights activists.

No one in Veracruz has been convicted of any of these crimes.

Rubén worked as a photojournalist for various agencies, including the AVC news (covering daily news), the left-leaning Proceso weekly magazine in Mexico City (covering social struggles) and the Cuartoscuro photography journal. In 2007 he settled in Xalapa, Veracruz. He was passionately committed to the struggle against the repression of newspaper reporters by Veracruz state authorities.

He had been the object of death threats by government officials for taking photographs exposing government attacks on students, workers and reporters. Veracruz, like the federal government, is governed by the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) of President Enrique Peña Nieto.

An article published in Proceso chronicles Espinosa’s activity while in Veracruz:

In November 2012, during the anniversary of the Méxican Revolution, [Espinosa] covered student protests against governor Javier Duarte [PRI] over the assassination of Proceso’s main correspondent in Veracruz [Regina Martinez], and was prevented from taking photographs of police beating some students. At that point, a State Government official grabbed him and menaced him: “stop taking pictures if you do not want to end up like Regina”.

Following the first series of murders of his fellows, Rubén participated actively in the mobilizations and demonstrations by reporters demanding justice for their comrades and an end to attacks.

On September 14, 2013, while covering the repression of Veracruzana University teachers and students rallying in Lerdo Square in Xalapa, he and other reporters were attacked by State security forces that confiscated their equipment and forced them to erase their photographs. Rubén was beaten. He sued in court over the threats, the beating, and intimidation; the persecution campaign aimed at Rubén by the Veracruz government only accelerated after that.

The campaign of intimidation, torture and executions of journalists continued; by February 2014, following the execution of reporter Gregorio Jimenez, also in Veracruz, the newspaper photographers collective Fotorreporteros rallied in Mexico City demanding governor Duarte’s resignation. Rubén Espinosa was actively involved in the protests.

Back in Veracruz, Duarte ordered the massive purchase of the February 15 2014 issue of Proceso, with his picture on the cover, and an article analyzing Duarte’s regime, to remove the magazine from newsstands. After noticing that in Veracruz he was being constantly followed and photographed by armed men, and fearing for his life, Rubén moved to Mexico City two months ago, but continued denouncing Duarte’s terror regime. It now appears that his executioners followed him to the Mexican capital. His body was found, shot to death together with those of four women:

One of the female victims, Nadia Vera Pérez, 32, originally from Oaxaca State, had also been politically active in Veracruz, as a member of the #Yo soy 132student protest movement that rejected president Enrique Peña Nieto and the ruling PRI. Vera was raped before her execution.

She herself had been among those beaten by members of the Public Security Agency during the November 2012 protest. Nadia had been a member of the Xalapa Student Assembly; was an anthropologist and a promoter of culture; she was executive producer of Cuatro X Cuatro, a contemporary dance company, and coordinated the independent film and video festival OftálmicaIn an interview with Rompeviento TV that took place last November, Nadia Vera declared that if anything happened to her or her fellow activists, the culprits would surely be Governor Duarte and his cabinet.

Vera also spoke of the underground repression (by drug gangs) working in tandem with the official repression (by the government) to exploit, blackmail and repress the population.

A second female victim was identified as Yesenia Quiroz Alfaro, 18, a make-up professional, originally from Mexicali, Baja California.

The other two victims were identified as Alejandra, a domestic employee, and Simone, a Colombian woman.

The war on media workers in Veracruz and other Mexican states goes hand in hand with a general war against the working class and youth. Behind its democratic façade and under the cover of a US-backed war on drugs, the Mexican military together with federal and state police agencies, have taken on the role of occupying force, free to beat, torture, execute, disappear, and detain for as long as it sees fit, anyone that is perceived as a threat to the Mexican ruling class.

On July 30, a day before the killing of Rubén Espinosa, Nadia Vera, and the other three women, Peña Nieto appeared in a ceremony honoring the Mexican Army and Navy for their role in internal security. The president applauded the military for being an example of loyalty and patriotism, despite the involvement of the military in the execution of 21 youth in Tlatlaya, Mexico state, in June 2014 and the disappearance of the 43 normal school students in Iguala, Guerrero State in September 2014.

Today’s regime in México, under Peña Nieto and with the collusion of all the political parties, more and more resembles the Southern Cone fascist-military-fascist dictatorships of the 1970s. Twenty-five years following the end of the Pinochet dictatorship in Chile, the Mexican government terrorizes the population in order to impose the privatization of state-owned enterprises, and the destruction of public education in the interests of the financial aristocracy.

On Sunday, journalists and media workers demonstrated in Mexico City, Xalapa, Oaxaca, Zacatecas, Sinaloa, Puebla, Guadalajara and Washington DC, denouncing Peña Nieto and Duarte and demanding justice for Rubén Espinosa, Nadia Vera and the others.

Defending the nuclear accord reached last month with Tehran, President Barack Obama said Wednesday that congressional blockage of the deal would rapidly lead to war against Iran.

In a chilling passage of the speech delivered at American University in Washington, DC, Obama declared:

“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…

“Does anyone really doubt that the same voices now raised against this deal will be demanding that whoever is president bomb those nuclear facilities?… So let’s not mince words. The choice we face is ultimately between diplomacy or some form of war. Maybe not tomorrow, maybe not three months from now, but soon.”

These words were the centerpiece of an address aimed at recruiting a sufficient number of Democratic congressmen and senators to sustain a presidential veto against a virtually certain vote in both the House of Representatives and the Senate to scuttle the agreement when Congress returns from its summer recess on September 8.

Obama’s speech was an exercise in hypocrisy and deceit. The agreement reached last month between Iran and the so-called P5 + 1 (US, Britain, France, Russia, China and Germany) provides for the suspension of the most onerous sanctions against Tehran in exchange for sweeping concessions by Iran, including acceptance of an inspection regime over the country’s civilian nuclear program of historically unprecedented intrusiveness. It also includes a so-called “snap back” provision that allows Washington to claim that Iran is in breech of the agreement and quickly reimpose sanctions, including an oil embargo, that have devastated the country’s economy.

Obama framed his response to opponents of the deal, including virtually all Republican members of Congress, a section of Democrats, the Israeli government and influential pro-Israel organizations in the US, and media organizations headed by the Wall Street Journal, as a commitment to diplomacy and the peaceful resolution of international disputes, in opposition to war hawks who demand unilateral US military action. He began by invoking the 1963 speech by President John F. Kennedy delivered at the same university, in which Kennedy called for a nuclear test ban treaty and a policy of peaceful diplomacy with the Soviet Union.

Kennedy’s policy, announced just months after the Cuban missile crisis, proved to be successful, Obama said, because it created “the time and space to win the Cold War without firing a shot at the Soviets.”

The clear implication was that Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran would provide the best conditions for eliminating Iran as an obstacle to US imperialist policy in the Middle East and internationally without entailing the risks and costs of a major war. To bolster his argument, Obama linked the present-day opponents of the Iran nuclear agreement with those who advocated the 2003 invasion of Iraq, which Obama characterized as a strategic disaster.

The president touted his supposed anti-war credentials, citing his opposition to the Iraq invasion, which he used to appeal to anti-war and anti-Bush sentiment in his 2008 election campaign. He did not bother to square this pretense with his record in office—continuing the Iraq bloodbath for another two years after coming to power, massively expanding the war in Afghanistan, organizing the war for regime-change that left Libya in a permanent state of chaos, and orchestrating a catastrophic civil war for regime-change in Syria.

Over the past year, he has launched a new war in Iraq, initiated the bombing of Syria and backed a murderous war by Saudi Arabia in Yemen. Just days before his speech at American University, he backed the carving out of a “buffer zone” in Syria by Turkish forces and sanctioned US air strikes against Syrian government forces in support of US-funded and trained mercenaries operating in the country.

Moreover, he made a point in his speech of reiterating that even with a nuclear agreement, Washington would retain the option of war against Iran. At one point he said:

“[I]f 15 or 20 years from now, Iran tries to build a bomb, this deal ensures that the United States will have better tools to detect it, a stronger basis under international law to respond, and the same options available to stop a weapons program as we have today, including—if necessary—military options.”

At another point he declared:

“The defense budget of the United States is more than $600 billion. To repeat, Iran’s is about $15 billion. Our military remains the ultimate backstop to any security agreement that we make. I have stated that Iran will never be allowed to obtain a nuclear weapon. I have done what is necessary to make sure our military options are real. And I have no doubt that any president who follows me will take the same position.”

He all but boasted: “I’ve ordered military action in seven countries,” adding, “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.”

There are sharp divisions within the American ruling class and state and with traditional US allies in the region over the Iran agreement and any attempt to line up the Iranian regime behind US imperialism’s drive for hegemony over the entire Eurasian land mass. They are bound up with the mounting crises and contradictions facing the United States as it seeks to offset its relative economic decline by means of military violence, economic and diplomatic bullying and brazen disregard for international law.

A major factor behind Washington’s turn to some sort of accommodation, at least for the present, with Iran is its desire to focus more political and military resources on its drive to isolate and militarily encircle Russia and China.

But Obama’s attempt to cast this policy shift as a commitment to peaceful diplomacy and adherence to international law is a transparent fraud. The basic premise behind his entire speech was the assumption that the United States has the right to pre-emptively attack Iran or any other country it deems an impediment to its striving for domination of the resources, markets and working masses of the entire planet.

For the president to assert categorically that scuttling the agreement with Iran will bring imminent war can only mean that detailed plans for a massive assault have already been drawn up, behind the backs of the American people, and powerful sections of the ruling elite and the military-intelligence establishment are intent on implementing them.

Friends of Greece,

On 3 August 2015, Mikis Theodorakis, the Greek world famous music composer and Resistance figure, called upon the Greek people – and the peoples of the world – to respect Democracy – the very Democracy, born in Greece some 2500 years ago and given to the world as a set of values for respect for each other, for humanity – for equal rights and for free expression.

He referred in particular to the Greek referendum in which the Greek people on 5 July 2015 voted with an overwhelming 61% against the continuation of the economic and financial strangulation of Greece by the infamous troika – the European Central Bank (ECB), the European Commission (EC) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Severe austerity imposed during the last 5 years has already caused misery and countless deaths especially among children and elderly, because of deprivation of vital medical services.

Instead of respecting the vote, the Tsipras Government has ignored it, made a U-turn and accepted even harsher austerity measures for an additional € 86 billion debt, of which not one euro would reach the Greek government for the restauration of its vital social services. Mr. Tsipras’ action is anti-constitutional and illegal.

The following text summarizes Mikis Theodorakis’ appeal to stop the Syriza Government from selling out the Greek people’s country and stop the currently – almost in secret – ongoing negotiations with the troika on the modalities of the € 86 billion loan and the details of the new austerity measures – “negotiations” to be concluded by about 20 August 2015.

Mr. Theodorakis and his co-signatories want not only the Greek people to wake up, but the whole world to open their eyes, as the financial sledgehammer waged by the bankster mafia knows no scruples, no limits – and may well hit any other country tomorrow.

Peter Koenig, August 5, 2015

A dramatic appeal by Mikis Theodorakis and other known Greek personalities, asking for respecting the No vote of the Greek people and defending Greece and democracy

3 August 2015

In a dramatic appeal to the Greek people (and all the peoples of the world), the music composer Mikis Theodorakis, a world known symbol of Resistance to all oppressors and of struggles for freedom, democracy and independence, top Greek constitutional expert George Kasimatis, journalist and writer Dimitris Konstantakopoulos, Dr. Dimitris Bellantis of the CC of SYRIZA and tens of other known intellectuals, activists and politicians, ask for the respect of the will of the Greek people, directly expressed during the referendum of the 5^th of July and for the immediate interruption of the program of “economic assassination” of Greece and its people, applied since 2010.

The direct mandate of the Greek citizens given through a referendum is mandatory, according to the most basic principles of any democratic state, of the Greek constitution and of European Law, it is stated in the appeal. The decision of the referendum cannot be changed by decisions of the government, of the parliament or of European institutions. It can be changed only by another referendum.

The respect of the will of the Greek people is the only way to preserve democracy and civil peace in Greece and democracy in Europe, it is also said in the appeal. It is the only way to save Greece and its people, from a total and unprecedented destruction. The program applied in Greece since 2010 constitutes a huge contravention of the Greek constitution, of the European and of the international law. It has already provoked the biggest, by far, economic and social disaster in Europe after 1945. Its interruption is a question of life or death for the Greek nation and the only way to preserve the most basic moral and material prerequisites for its survival. “It is better to stop this program in agreement with the other countries of the EU, but if this is not possible, we should do it unilaterally”, states the appeal.

The signatories warn that the new agreement signed by the Greek government, under pressure and blackmail and imposed by humiliating and illegal means to Greece, will lead, among other things, to the looting of the public and private property of Greeks, including their first residence, the land of the peasants and the Greek banks and to a new wave of massive emigration of young, well educated Greeks, in a moment the country needs them desperately.

The appeal is criticizing strongly the Greek government because it is acting, after the referendum, as if the Greeks had voted Yes. It is accusing it that, instead of organizing the defense of the country, it is itself disseminating discouragement, fear and even panic to the Greek people, in order to justify its policies.

The appeal reminds that the two governing parties are governing because they promised the interruption of the program applied in Greece. It is accusing them that, during three years and until the very last moment, they did not prepare themselves, the people and the country for the need to resist, in the very probable case that negotiations would fail. It is accusing them also of blindly believing assurances they had from abroad.

The signatories call on the Greek people, in those tragic moments of their history, “not to succumb, not to lose their courage and their capacity of a right judgment”. They call them to remember that their fathers and grand fathers were able to sustain, survive, resist and win under the most terrible conditions of the German occupation of 1941-44 and of the famine of the winter of 1941-42. They express the certainty that the Greek “sense of honor” (“filotimo”) and the patriotism will finally win over fear and the force of the enemy, leading to the victory of Greece, of Democracy and of Democratic Europe.

The appeal calls also the Greek people to organize and do everything possible to help the weakest confront the famine, the illness, the dispossession, to help people safeguard their dignity. It is calling Greek citizens to help sustain the most vital state and social functions, under direct threat from the new agreement imposed by European governments and institutions and to resist, everywhere they can and by whatever means they can, to the imposition of the new anti-popular measures.

The signatories of the appeal call to the Greek people to draw “the painful but necessary conclusions from their own experience and built a serious and credible front of resistance, not trusting again self-described saviors, adventurers and opportunists”.

The signatories are calling “all the peoples of the world, to realize that the struggle of the Greek people is also their struggle”. They are calling especially “the Europeans who expressed solidarity with Greeks during the black period of military dictatorship, to stop the coup d’ etat their own governments organize in Greece”, in cooperation with IMF and ECB, under the guidance of the international Finance, in order to impose the dictatorship of the Creditors in Greece today, in all Europe tomorrow”.

“If the forces that have planned and are executing the transformation of a country of the European Union to a sort of Iraq or Libya, through “financial bombing” will win, they will destroy not only Greece but all human kind. In front of the new totalitarianism of the “Markets”, the same if not more dangerous than totalitarianisms of the ‘30s and ‘40s, we don’t have other alternative than to unite and fight. Tomorrow it risks being too late”, concludes the appeal.

The text of the appeal is signed by

Mikis Theodorakis

Venios Angelopoulos, Professor Emeritus of Mathematics, Athens National Polytechnic School, member of the Central Committee of SYRIZA

Dr. Yiorgos Vihas, doctor, member of the administration of the Medical Association of Athens, one of the creators of the movement of Social Medicine in Greece

Kleanthis Grivas, psychiatrist and writer

Katerina Thanopoulou, Vice-president of the Regional Administration of Attica (the major agglomeration of the Athens region), responsible for social policy, member of the Central Committee of SYRIZA

Kostas Karaiskos, editor of the newspaper “Antifonitis” in Thrace

George Kasimatis. Professor Emeritus of constitutional law, Athens University, founding member and honorary President of the International Association of Constitutional Law, legal advisor of PM Andreas Papandreou

Father Andreas Kefaloyiannis, from the historic town of Anogeia in Crete (cradle of the Cretan revolutions and of the resistance to the Nazis during the occupation)

Yannis Kimpouropoulos, journalist

Stathis Kouvelakis, Professor of Political Science, King’s College, London, member of the Central Committee of SYRIZA

Nikos Koutsou, MP from Famagusta, one of the two Cypriot deputies resisting to the end the voting of the laws legalizing the financial coup in Cyprus, in 2013

Marios Kritikos, vice president of the General Council of ADEDY (Union of Greek Public Servants)

Dimitris Konstantakopoulos, journalist and writer, coordinator of the “Delphi Initiative”, member of the editorial committee of the international review for self-management, “Utopie Critique”

Lefteris Konstantinides, leading cadre of PAK, one of the main resistance formations during the military dictatorship (1967-74), ex-deputy of PASOK

Spyros Lavdiotis, economist and writer, ex high ranking official of the Central Bank of Canada

Yannis Mavros, member of the National Council for the Claiming of debts of Germany to Greece

Yiorgos Moustakis, film director

Dimitris Bellantis, lawyer, Dr. in Constitutional Law, member of the Central Committee of SYRIZA

Maria Negreponti-Delivanis, Docteur d’Etat ès Sciences Economiques (Sorbonne), three times elected Dean of the University of Macedonia, Thessaloniki

Panagiotis Pantelides, economist-researcher

Dimitris Patelis, Prof. of Philosophy, Polytechnic School of Kriti

James Petras, Bartle Professor (Emeritus) of Sociology at Binghamton University, New York, ex-advisor of PM Andreas Papandreou, ex-Director of the Institute of Mediterranean Studies in Athens, advisor of various Latin Americans leaders and movements

Eleni Portaliou, Professor of Architecture, National Polytechnic School of Athens, member of the Central Committee of SYRIZA

Stathis (Stathis Stavropoulos), cartoonist

Themos Stoforopoulos, Ambassador

Μihalis Stylianou, journalist, director of the Greek emission of the French state Radio ORTF during the Greek military dictatorship

Yannis Schizas, writer

Fotis Terzakis, writer

Maria Fragiadaki, member of the Central Committee of SYRIZA, ex-member of the direction of GSEE (General Confederation of Workers of Greece)

Stathis Habibis, physicist

The contact mail of the signatories of this appeal is [email protected].

$25 million to support megalomaniac ambitions of Israeli Prime Minister

The U.S. Zionist lobby is to spend $25 million in an effort to turn American public opinion against President Obama, their own elected head of state, in a bid to encourage war against Iran and the inevitable deployment of Israeli nuclear weapons.

In a frightening political development, the Zionist lobby in the U.S. is to spend huge sums of money in a television campaign urging Americans to oppose their own president and to torpedo the proposed vital peace agreement with Iran that has been negotiated by the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council plus Germany.

Apparently under the delusion that he is the U. S. Secretary of State, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu has appealed to 10,000 American Zionists to lobby their congressional representatives to vote against the proposed bill in an action, if successful, would inevitably mean another major war in the Middle East with hundreds of thousands of casualties including huge numbers of American soldiers.

All to bolster the dangerous megalomaniac ambitions of an Israeli prime minister, sitting with the keys to his huge nuclear weapons stockpile, desperate to persuade America not to make peace with Iran.

On the occasion of 20^th anniversary of the end of the civil war on the territory of ex-Yugoslavia (1991−1995) it is necessary to reassess the real causes and cardinal perpetuators of the process of Yugoslavia’s internal and external bloody destruction.

Introduction

In the western scientific literature the “liberal democracy” scholars (as journalists and policymakers) have, for the last 25 years a standard cliché which is that the cause of Yugoslavia’s destruction is the Serbs as a nation[1] and that Yugoslavia’s only destroyer was Slobodan Milosevic – the “Balkans butcher”.[2] However, the same scholars (and journalists and policymakers) paid no attention to other internal or external “destroyers” of the country. In the case of Croatia, the authoritarian and neo-Nazi (Ustashi) regime of Dr. Franjo Tudjman’s Croatian Democratic Union (the HDZ) played a central role.

To illustrate for example, Franjo Tudjman is not included into the anthology of the top-20^th century South-East European strongmen, authoritarian rulers and dictators, edited by Bernd J. Fischer, however Slobodan Miloshevic is.[3] This text is to contribute more accurately to the dialogue on the reasons and causers of Yugoslavia’s death in 1991−1995, especially as relating to Franjo Tudjman’s Ustashi regime in Croatia.

The HDZ in Power

The HDZ took power in Croatia with a majority, after the spring parliamentary and presidential elections in 1990. The party (est. in 1989) had an absolute majority in Croatia’s Parliament (Sabor) with Franjo Tudjman as both Croatia’s President and the party leader – a fact which allows the HDZ to establish, in effect, a full scale dictatorship in Croatia for the decade to 2000. A direct consequence of such electoral results in Croatia, inspired also by the electoral results in Bosnia-Herzegovina, was election in Serbia of Slobodan Miloshevic and his Socialist Party of Serbia (the SPS) in December 1990. The election of Miloshevic and his SPS in Serbia was Serbia’s answer to the electoral results in Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina – two Yugoslav republics in which the ultra-right political parties won power at the eve of the new civil war.

The majority of the Serbs in ex-Yugoslavia feared the Ustashi regime in Croatia, followed by the Islamic fundamentalist Party of Democratic Action (the SDA) of Alija Izetbegovic in Bosnia-Herzegovina. These were, largely, the driving forces for Serbia’s electorate  voting for its own strongman and nationalist to protect their brethren Serbs in other Yugoslav republics (Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina) fearing a continuation of the WWII Magnum Crimen against the Serbs.[4] For Croatia’s Serbs (the “Survivors” of the WWII Ustashi-led holocaust), especially in the Krajina region, Franjo Tudjman was a new Ante Pavelic (the WWII Nazi Croat leader) with the HDZ mirroring the WWII Nazi Croat Ustashi movement.[5]

HDZ’s authorities using the propaganda of creation of a Greater Serbia, soon succeeded in introducing a state-building at absolute odds with the idea of political liberal democracy and a society of multicultural and multiethnic coexistence. The party’s policy was mainly based on traditional Croatian clerical right-wing nationalism somewhat mirroring the extreme Croat national movement and rhetoric of the 1941−1945 Independent State of Croatia (the NDH). A German Nazi NSDAP salutation was even used in the Parliament in Zagreb by the HDZ’s members during the official parliamentary sessions.[6]

Nevertheless, in the HDZ’s Croatia a new political elite was much less interested in introducing of the Western liberal model of political democracy based on the rights and role of the Parliament in the national political system, free media and speech, than in continuation of the WWII policy of the “Final Solution” of the Serb Question in a Greater post-WWII Croatia with attempts to annex a greater part of Bosnia-Herzegovina. In such political atmosphere the ultra-right and even Nazi ideologies found ground in post-socialist Croatia – a country directly supported by Vatican and Western democracies and primarily by Germany. Among all ex-socialism East European countries, Croatia was the best example of transition from a state socialism to quasi-democracy by brutal nationalism and exclusivism.

Creation of a new ideological foundation is essential in the process of making a new state. In the 1990s war-time Croatia, the new political leadership of the HDZ drawn on extreme nationalistic and ultra-right political-national ideology, broadly based on Serbophobia, in order to gain massive public support for their political goals.

An ideological framework of anti-Serbism was the main ground on which the HDZ’s Government was building a new independent state of Croatia, creating a new army, security forces, institutional framework and promoting a “democratic and pro-European Croatia”. It is of extreme importance to stress that establishing a new order was essential in the chaotic atmosphere of the final collapse of the state socialism system with its own norms and values.  Croatia’s declaration of state independence in June 1991 and the outbreak of the conflict against both the central authorities in Belgrade and Croatia’s Serb population who decisively opposed living in any kind of independent Croatia taking primarily into account their  bloody experience from the time of the WWII NDH.

Furthermore, establishing a new normative order was important to legitimize political actions of the new authorities and to mobilize the ethnic Croats for the state-building process and above all for the “Final Solution” of the Serb Question in Croatia. Thus, the new Government succeeded in directing mass actions of the ethnic Croats in regime-approved ways: a war against the Yugoslav army and Croatia’s Serbs in the mid-1991 and finally the ethnic cleansing of majority of Croatia’s Serbs in the mid-1995. The ultra-right nationalistic ideology provided the biggest part of the content of the new Croatia’s order and values, with profound ethno-political consequences.

The pravashi

The Croat ultra-right nationalism and nationalistic ideologies are mainly based on the 19^th century ideology of the Croat “state rights”, favored and maintained by the pravashi (the rightists). They and their groups and political parties espouse the same ethno-political goals as the leader of the 19^th century extremist and racist strand of the same Croat national movement and Croatian Party of Rights (the HSP, est. 1861), Ante Starchevic. They appropriated the very essential elements of the HSP national ideology:

1. A creation of a Greater Croatia with Bosnia-Herzegovina and some other South Slavic territories.
2. An extermination of all Orthodox Serbs from a Greater Croatia or their Croatization.[7]

Ante Starchevic urged the creation of a Greater Croatia, not recognizing the existence of any other South Slavs except the Croats and Bulgarians.[8] His ideology and the HSP party’s program and narrative were markedly colored by anti-Serb tone. Consequently, both of them became the main ideological framework for the extermination of the Serbs on the territory of the NDH, 1941−1945 and for the ethnic cleansing of the Serbs by Tudjman’s regime in 1995 (the “Flash” and “Storm” military-police operations in May and August). In 1895, the even more radical and nationalistic Pure Party of Rights (the ČSP) was established, headed by Josip Frank whose members and ideological followers took active participations in the pogroms against the Serbs in Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina during the WWI.[9]

The post-Yugoslav HSP, as the largest and most influential the extreme Ustashi party, was re-established in February 1990 by domestic and émigré Croat Nazi Ustashi followers. The party  soon became relatively popular with a membership of approximately 100.000 by 1992, when the party received 7 percent of the vote for the national Parliament. However, the HSP became a “favorable opposition party” of the HDZ in the 1990s and as such, in reality, unofficial spokesman of the ruling HDZ. The coalition between these two ultra-right nationalistic parties resulted in the HDZ violating the Croatian electoral law in 1995 in order to permit the HSP to cross the statutory 5 percent threshold (5.1). After 1993 when the party leadership changed, the HSP became a tool of the ruling HDZ in Croatia’s political arena. In February 1996 the HSP was cleansed of all party leadership who opposed HDZ-HSP coalition and cooperation.

Different factional struggles within the pravashi bloc led to the creation of several new ultra-right political parties in Croatia like the HSP-1861, the Croatian Pure Party of Rights, the National Democratic League and the Independent Party of Rights. All of them, including unofficial groups and movements of the Croat extremists, trying to propagate their nationalistic messages through mass media almost totally controlled by the governmental HDZ. In these media efforts only those groups who had been “approved” by the HDZ (firstly the HSP) succeeded in sending their messages to the audience.

A “Herzegovinian lobby”

One of the most important features of Croatia’s political scene in the early 1990s was the fact that the HDZ itself was gradually passing to the hands of a “Herzegovinian lobby” (like Vladimir Sheks, Vice Vukojevic, Gojko Shushak) within the party leadership, which meant that the WWII Ustashi ideology and practice ultimately won against all other options in both the Central Board of the HDZ and the Government of Croatia.[10] However, the crucial point of this HDZ’s course was that  the party and State leadership became crucially dependent on – even governed – by the Croat (Ustashi) émigré groups with whom the HDZ “Herzegovinian lobby” had extremely close relations, especially Gojko Shushak, a Minister of Defense, who was manager and owner of several firms in Canada before returning to Croatia in 1990 to become a member of the Central Board of the HDZ. Franjo Tudjman favored Gojko Shushak exactly for the reason that he was a key figure in maintaining contacts with a Croat diaspora which was giving substantial financial support for the HDZ’s policy.

This “Herzegovinian lobby” succeeded in strengthening it’s own position within the HDZ, primarily by using regional identity as a basis for establishing necessary networks of power, influence, and favors (for instance, with Herzegovinian extremist Ivic Pashalic). The HDZ’s “Herzegovinians” are usually seen as the cardinal factor which firmed Tudjman as a dictatorial strongman in the party and the state.

Tudjman’s sympathy with and support to the “Herzegovinian” extremists is unquestionable, especially in authoritarianism on the domestic front and in dealing with Croatia’s Serbs. He was driven by his personal and his HDZ party’s “historic mission” to bring State independence for (a Greater) Croatia and to finally solve the Serbian Question within her borders. He shared the standpoint of the traditional Croat nationalists, that all aspects of the transition from State socialism to (quasi)liberal democracy and market economy have to be subordinated to the State-building process. Nonetheless, Tudjman was astute enough to project a “democratic” image abroad. This prevented many  foreign observers and politicians from recognising the reality of his ultra-right views and politics, especially in dealing with Croatia’s Serbs.

A Rehabilitation of the WWII NDH

From the point of ideology of the extreme Croat nationalism, the cardinal goal of ultra-right nationalistic parties, groups, ideologists and politicians was to create, for the first time after 1102, an independent, as well as a Greater and finally “Serben-frei” Croatia. In the 1990s it was ultra-right nationalistic ideology that provided the main background for creation of the new order and values in the HDZ’s Croatia.

For all Croat ultra-nationalists, a crucial political reference in regard to the state-building process is the (1941−1945 created) NDH. They finally succeeded – with great support by Tudjman and his HDZ – to rehabilitate the NDH and even to recognize its contribution to the Croat State-building efforts. This was achieved mainly by a brutal falsification of historical facts and self-interpretation of historical events and the role and deeds of the Croat Ustashi personalities. For the HDZ’s Croatia there were at least four reasons for praising the Ustashi WWII state:

1. The NDH gave a political-historical foundation for the post-Yugoslav Croatia’s statehood.
2. It annexed majority of  Croat claimed South-East European territories and as such became a kind of historical realization of a Greater Croatia projected by Pavao Ritter Vitezovic in 1700.[11]
3. The Ustashi regime showed a way of solving the “Serb Question”, thus, in regard to this historical process, became a blueprint for the coming generations of the Croat “patriots”.
4. The existence of the NDH provided a necessary link of a self-imagined “proof” of the so-called “Thousand-year-old” legal continuity of the Croatian statehood.

All political parties and organizations in Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina of the “Croatian rights” openly propagated their direct connections with the NDH and its führer (poglavnik) Ante Pavelic who himself was a member of the “Croatian Rights” party.[12] Here is worth to notice that Franjo Tudjman, during the WWII, fought for several months in the Ustashi uniform – a fact which gave a huge credibility to him in the eyes of any Croat extremist despite his Communist past.

It seems obvious that the ultimate ethno-political goals of both the pre- and WWII Ustashi movement and post-Yugoslav “Croat Rights” are  identical including the concept of “solving” the “Serb Question” in a Greater Croatia. This was largely the case with the re-established HSP in 1990. Originally this party defined its program exclusively in relation to the NDH and the WWII Ustashi movement widely using various NDH symbols and iconography. Nevertheless, an original 1990 HSP’s leader, Dobroslav Paraga, never accepted any fascist or Nazi face of the NDH even claiming that the State was anti-fascist.[13]

For all Croat extremists, including Tudjman himself, the NDH represented democratic wishes of overwhelming majority of ethnic Croats for their own independent state (from Yugoslavia as a “Greater Serbia”) and was legitimate continuation of the independent Kingdom of Croatia which became incorporated into the Kingdom of Hungary in 1102. Furthermore, all of them deny any engagement of the NDH’s regime in any systematic and organized persecutions or genocide committed on the racial, confessional or ethnic grounds. Moreover, the HSP insists that the Ustashi terror against the Serbs in 1941−1945 was provoked by the Serbs themselves, i.e. by the Partisan uprising in July 1941 against the legitimate and internationally recognized NDH[14] neglecting the fact that the Ustashi genocide against the Serbs started three months before the outbreak of the Serb-(Partisan and non-Partisan) revolt in the NDH.

HSP’s political cynicism even indulged absurd claims that many of the massacred Serb civilians had, in fact, been killed by the Serb-Chetniks or Partisans dressed in the Ustashi uniforms. Nevertheless, a common issue among all Croat extremists regarding the “Serb Question” is the WWII practice of creation of an Autocephalous Croatian Orthodox Church as a bridge toward the final Catholization and Croatization of Croatia’s Serbs.

The excuse for Ustashi violence in the NDH is usually followed by the claim that the Nazifascist feature and iconography of the NDH were forced upon the Ustashi authorities by Germany and Italy, that the Ustashi Government did as much as possible to protect the Jews within the NDH, and finally, and of the crucial importance, that the real number of murdered Croatian Serbs is very much overestimated by the pro-Serb Yugoslav authorities after the WWII.

For instance, instead of 700.000 killed people in the death camp of Jasenovac (“Yugoslav Auschwitz”, of whom 500,000 were the Serbs) today official Croatia recognizes just 86.000. In the other words, Jasenovac is a great Serbian falsification and political propaganda: a myth projected by the supporters of an idea of a Greater Serbia.[15] For the Croat extremists, among the victims of Jasenovac the largest number have been the ethnic Croats but not the Serbs.[16] The Croat rightists as apologists for the Ustashi movement claim that the NDH is falsely represented for pure political reasons and therefore the picture of the NDH has to be repainted. However, such repainting or rewriting of the NDH’s history is at odds with historical sources and scientific account of non-partisan historiography. Finally, Dr. Franjo Tudjman himself, as a professional historian, in his most important book (Wastelands of Historical Reality) sought to minimize the crimes of the Ustashi regime in the WWII against both the Serbs and the Jews.[17]

A rehabilitation of the legacy of the NDH and Ustashi ideology with the NDH’s iconography was, however, only a formal problem for Franjo Tudjman and his HDZ who have been officially ambivalent toward it. Tudjman knew very well that any close association with the NDH and Ustashi ideology and iconography will cause many problems for Croatia’s image abroad especially among the cluster of the Jewish communities and political lobbies. However, on the other hand, for Tudjman the NDH was giving the State-building example, as Croatia for the centuries did not have any experience of a real and internationally recognized statehood. For that reason, for the HDZ’s ideologists the NDH became a crucial element for completing the main party’s task – to unify within the umbrella of the HDZ all different strands of Croatness.

In addition, the NDH was giving a link to Vatican as the main supporter of both the Ustashi and the HDZ regimes and ideology.[18] Subsequently, the HDZ’s authorities did not and do not openly endorse the Ustashi movement and the NDH, as it is the case with of “Croat rightists”, but on the other hand both Tudjman and his HDZ had avoided any clear denunciation of the NDH’s Nazi, totalitarian, genocidal and above all Serbocide aspects. Moreover, the HDZ’s Croatia adopted all important symbolic and iconographic aspects of the WWII NDH (like kuna currency, state insignias, etc.) and dedicated streets, squares and monuments in Croatia to the Ustashi WWII officials. Tudjman himself as a President of Croatia nominated, for instance, two ex-WWII Ustashi officials to high state posts: Ivo Rojnic – Ustashi commander in Dubrovnik who became Croatia’s ambassador in Argentina and Vinko Nikolic – an official in the Ministry of Education of the NDH who gained a Parliamentary seat. With the rehabilitation of the Nazi NDH, Tudjman’s Croatia was also rehabilitated as was the WWII Croatian Roman Catholic Church headed by an Archbishop of Alojzije Stepinac who directly collaborated with the Ustashi regime.[19]

A linguistic nationalism or purification of the official standardized Croat language in the public usage, but mainly from the Serb language based lexemes was an agenda of the Croatization of Croatia by Tudjman regime.[20] However, a lexical purification of the Croatian language in Tudjman’s Croatia was executed, basically, according to the NDH’s pattern. One of the first steps in the process of Croatization and purification of the Croat language by the new HDZ’s authorities was to make a clear difference between the Croat and Serb languages from lexical, orthographic and grammatical points of view. This was undertaken in a set of scientific editions by the linguists and philologists who have been at the same time trying to present and a “proper” history of the Croat language. The ultimate aim was to prove that the Croat and the Serb always have been two different ethno-national languages and of the most importance, that the Shtokavian dialect was always the Croat national language, not only the Serb.[21] The final ethno-political consequence of the HDZ’s policy of linguistic nationalism was that the Serb ethnic name was expelled from the official name of the standardized language and its orthography in Croatia and likewise everything in connection with the Serbs in regard to the Croat language.[22]

Nevertheless, as the best means to hide its de facto support for the Ustashi ideology and the WWII NDH’s legacy, Tudjman’s regime officially  supported the “anti-fascist” Josip Broz Tito’s Partisans from the WWII[23] with the political rhetoric of the post-Yugoslav Croatia building her own Statehood, the “anti-fascist” People’s/Socialist Republic of Croatia, post 1945.

However, at the same time, the HDZ created a clear atmosphere in Croatia in which the victims of the Ustashi terror (primarily the Serbs) are regarded as the national enemies. To illustrate, to January 1996 around 3,000 “Partisan” monuments were destroyed or removed in Croatia.[24] Tudjman launched an initiative to transform the memorial centre to the Jasenovac death camp  (on the Sava River on Croatia’s side) from the “victims of fascism” to the “victims of the civil war” – an initiative which also camouflaged association with the NDH, which pleased all Croat extremists.

Even before the beginning of the civil war in Croatia in 1991 the Croat security forces heavily structurally damaged the Jasenovac museum building and a large part of documentation and torture evidence simply disappeared. The monument itself was not destroyed or damaged since it is composed by four Ustashi “U” letter-symbols.

Franjo Tudjman, a Ph.D., in history, ran in to conflict with the Yugoslav Communist authorities in the mid-1960s when he started to refute the official number of murdered ethnic Serbs in Jasenovac as too high, accusing at the same time the Yugoslav Communists for deliberately falsifying the truth on Jasenovac. It cost him dismissal from the post of a head of the Institute for the History of the Workers Movement in Croatia (in Zagreb) but this action marked the beginning of the process of Tudjman’s transformation from a Partisan General, to the Croat nationalist and extremist. Nonetheless, his cosmetic political moves, as removing a prominent Ustashi extremist Tomislav Merchep from the HDZ’s Executive Committee at the Third General Convention of the HDZ in October 1995, could not hide the HDZ’s infatuation with the Ustashi iconography, ideology, legacy and ethno-political goals.

Conclusions

Tudjman’s and HDZ’s preoccupation with Croatia’s state-building and solving the “Serb Question”, rather than establishing liberal-democratic political systems and institutions, meant that the NDH’s legacy continued to play very important role in the HDZ’s strategy and policy of creation of the new order and values. In the other words, the political-ideological mainstream of the HDZ’s Croatia was and is grounded in the NDH’s legacy.

Today, as a result of the HDZ’s policy of extreme ethno-confessional nationalism, Croatia is, since mid-1995, “more ethnically homogeneous than ever was in the historic past”.[25] The Serb population on the present-day territory of Croatia fell from 24 percent in 1940 to 12 percent in 1990 and 4 percent in 1996 with the practice of its everyday assimilation (Croatization) and emigration from Croatia.

Copyright, Truthout. Reprinted with permission.

Russia has delivered two RD-181 engines to the US Orbital Sciences Corporation for its Antares rocket under a $1bn contract, signed despite several rounds of Western-imposed sanctions and hot debates in Congress over US dependency on Russia for national security space launches.

“On July 16 the first two engines were delivered to the US,” Russian rocket producer Energiya (NPO Energomash) said in a press release on Tuesday, RIA reported.

Energia which has been conducting activities in the rocket-space industry since 1946 did not mention when the next batch of RD-181 will be delivered to its American partners. Under a $1 billion contract with Orbital Sciences Corporation, signed in January, the Russian manufacturer is to eventually deliver 60 RD-181engines for the Antares rockets.

Orbital expects that the first deliveries of the newly built RD-181 engines will be ready to use for next Antares flight in early 2016.

Sanford (Sandy) Weill, the Man Who Put the Serially Charged Citigroup Behemoth Together

Citigroup, the bank that played a central role in bringing America to its knees in 2008; received the largest taxpayer bailout in the history of finance to resuscitate its insolvent carcass; pleaded guilty to a felony count of rigging foreign currency trading in May and was put on a three year probation – is now under a string of criminal and civil investigations.

On August 3, Citigroup filed its quarterly report (10Q) with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Instead of reporting a pristine slate free of transgressions as one would expect from a felon on probation, Citigroup reported that it had settled allegations of money laundering with the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and the Commissioner of the California Department of Business Oversight involving its Banamex USA unit. The bank was, as typical, able to pay a penalty of $140 million and avoid an admission of guilt.

What Citigroup did not report on its 10Q is that it is also under another criminal money laundering probe by the Justice Department for its Mexican-based Banamex unit, according to a Bloomberg Business report. On July 24, Bloomberg reported the following:

“The U.S. Justice Department is investigating whether Citigroup Inc. let customers move illicit cash through its Mexico unit, setting the bank’s biggest international operation in the path of an expanding money-laundering probe.”

Publicly-traded companies are required to report material information to investors. Citigroup’s 10Q was filed on August 3 while the Bloomberg report was filed 10 days earlier, indicating that subpoenas had been issued to the company. Why Citigroup did not report the new investigation is unknown. Citigroup has a serial history of money laundering allegations, as Wall Street On Parade reported in 2013.

Also during the month of July, Citigroup reached a settlement with the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) over charges of bilking its credit card customers. The CFPB charged Citigroup’s commercial bank, Citibank, with a raft of illegal acts, including charging credit card customers for fraud and identity theft services that were never provided, and deceptive marketing practices to bilk customers out of illegal fees. The bank was ordered to return $700 million to 8.8 million customers and pay a penalty of $35 million.

A paltry penalty of $35 million dollars for ripping off 8.8 million customers for a felon bank on probation with a serial history of wrongdoing seems like a serious mismatch of punishment matching the crime.

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Italy is internationally known mainly for three things: its cuisine, its abysmal politics, and its vistas and beaches. In recent months, a series of events has developed that involve those three aspects. Activists, farmers and a government inquiry have shed some light on what could be a potential covert assault by the biotech industry on one of the pillars of Italy’s culture and culinary heritage: olive trees.

The area of Salento, in Puglia, is home to some of the most ancient olive orchards on Earth. The centuries-old trees are not only considered the property of the orchard owners, but also the collective heritage of the Italian people. Their presence has provided a livelihood to thousands of people for millenia. In recent months, however, a phenomenon called CoDiRo, or Rapid Complex Desiccation of Olive Trees, has caused many of the trees to dry out. Among the causes of this condition there could be a bacterium called Xylella fastidiosa, which attacks, among others, the xylem in citrus trees  and grape vines, dries them and their outgrowths, and often prevents the creation of fruits. Before 2014, there was no recorded case of these bacteria infecting olive trees.

At the beginning of the agriculture crisis, the progression of this condition was being referred to by the regional authorities as the result of a multiplicity of factors and pathogens, hence the word “Complex” in the name. At least four fungal infections, together with a xylem-feeding insect and the Xylella fastidiosa pathogen were considered to be potentially responsible for spreading the infection. This claim was confirmed by an independent investigative team from the European Union. A document issued by the local government in 2014 also admitted that the dessication of olive trees has presented “a rather complex phyto-sanitary issue due to the different factors at play.” The Forest Guard commander in charge of containing the outbreak, Giuseppe Silletti himself, initially stated that simply turning the ground around the olive trees “has been successful in eradicating 90 percent of the population of insects vector of the bacteria.”

Nevertheless, governmental and biotech lobbies, as well as the big-corporation friendly media, quickly began to shift the blame exclusively on the Xylella fastidiosa bacteria while ignoring other contributing factors such as the depletion of the soil due to the use of herbicides and pesticides and possible selection for certain species of insects. The complexity of the case was therefore drastically simplified, in order to present a threat that might not even have existed. The Italian government decided on a radical solution to confront this seemingly serious problem: the complete annihilation of all trees suspected of being infected and those near them. For months, farmers and activists opposed what would be the death sentence of the centennial olive trees, as well as the destitution of the farmers’ livelihood. The battle for the trees reached its peak in late May 2015, when the local government decided to go ahead with the eradication of the trees, while environmental activists took up positions on some of them to prevent this from happening. To defend its practices, the government of the region of Puglia claimed that it had received orders from the EU to carry out the eradication, a claim that was flatly denied by the concerned European officials.

The main question at this point is whether the Xylella bacteria are solely responsible for the CoDiRO. Many Italian agronomists have publicly stated that they believe the primary causes of the condition are associated with excessive agro-chemical usage and other factors, rather than the infamous bacterial agent. Furthermore, they postulate that the local strain of Xylella may be endemic and asymptomatic. Echoing these concerns, the Italian Federation of Organic and Biodynamic Agriculture maintains that there are effective and less destructive methods of fighting the condition. These include the utilization of non-invasive and ancient pest-control methods, such as the use of copper sulphide and calcium hydroxide, insect nets, and organic pesticides, which are also in line with the principles of organic farming. Answers are lacking but, as explained by the laboratory of Dr. Rodrigo Almeida at the University of California, Berkeley:

“In plant pathology, conclusive evidence that a pathogen causes a specific disease requires the fulfillment of Koch’s postulates….. Researchers in Italy are currently working on fulfilling Koch’s postulates for strain CoDiRO and olive.”

In essence, the answer is that we don’t know, and presently there is no scientific evidence to prove this hypothesis. Given the lack of certainty, farmers and environmental activists claim that the measures that the local and national government want to employ are excessively radical, and that they may be a smokescreen for a larger operation. Naturally, the next question arises: is this disease simply a catastrophic natural occurrence precipitated by human behavior, or are there grounds to suspect foul play?

Let’s go back to 2010, when a network of plant pathologists, named Cost 873, met  in the Italian city of Bari. Among the attendees were scientists from the Mediterranean Institute of Agronomy of Bari who had brought samples of the Xylella pathogen from California “for the purposes of scientific research.” During the meeting, a hypothetical scenario was discussed in which the Xylella bacteria would be released in parts of Europe as part of an effort to determine how the countries would react to a “bio-terrorist attack.” This is a bizarre scenario to imagine in itself, but it doesn’t conclusively prove anything. They claim to have disposed of the pathogen, and that the bacteria  present in Italy are of a different variety than the one they had brought. This could not be known for sure, however, since the lead investigator, the commander of the Forest Guard Giuseppe Silletti, has refused to do a genetic comparison of the allegedly introduced bacteria to those involved in the current infections.

Many do not understand the government’s insistence on the measure of eradication, particularly given the lack of concrete evidence and the existence of effective alternative policies. Many have pointed their fingers at the biotech industry. There are good reasons for this: the institution that brought the pathogen into Italy in the first place is funded by biotech companies. Furthermore the biotech giant Monsanto, known for its predatory practices, owns Allelyx, a company entirely devoted to the creation of GMO strains resistant to the bacteria, and the name of which, what an irony, is Xylella spelled backwards. Given these links, which are interesting but not conclusive, and the unwillingness of the government to conduct a thorough investigation, many have alleged that there is collusion between the government and the biotech industry. The popular belief is that this crisis could have been engineered for the purpose of eradicating local olive trees. The reasons for this are still debated, but the dominant hypothesis is to force local cultivators to switch to GMO varieties resistant to the disease. There is only one problem with this notion: there are currently no studies of GMO olive trees available.

During this investigation a Monsanto spokesperson was contacted for comments, as well as the University of Wageningen, and the Mediterranean Agronomic Institute of Chania. They all denied being involved in, or knowing about, any research on GMO olives. The only experiments in existence were conducted in Italy starting in the 1970s, and the trees were eradicated in 2012 after the passing of a law that prohibits any field test of GMO crops. This does not prove that there is no nefarious involvement but keeps the investigation open. Furthermore, it is not certain that the answers of the institutions that were contacted were, in fact, honest. The research may be carried on in secret, awaiting the spread of the disease to critical levels before being released.

There is a second hypothesis that is wisely considered and seems to have serious grounds of legitimacy. In this scenario the tourism industry, and not the biotech one could be to blame. Indeed, the area most hit is a tourism hotspot. In the past two years, room booking requests have increased by 45 percent, which has prompted the local authorities to enact a ban on the construction of new tourist villages and resorts. This might change if the olive industry is decimated. Whether directly responsible or simply taking advantage of a “good crisis”, tourism businesses are already cashing in on the situation. Properties that have been deemed to be infected by the Xylella bacteria are being sold at extremely low prices, and many of them have already been purchased with the express intention of building nightclubs or hotels. Before this can proceed, the lands have to be reassigned, from being farming lots, to residential and commercial use – a measure that the region will most likely consider should they require increased income to offset the decrease in the olive business.

Since July 2015, Italian police seems to have pursued this case more aggressively by confiscating hard-drives and files from the Ministry of Agriculture and the Mediterranean Institute of Bari. Meanwhile, the regional administrative tribunal of Lecce and Rome have called for an immediate freeze of the eradication policy (called the Silletti Plan) while an investigation is undertaken. Pursuant to this case are twenty-six organic olive oil brands and numerous farmers. The Italian Minister of Agriculture Maurizio Martina, the major proponent of the eradication plan, has already promised that he will file an appeal should the farmers win the court case.

If  an answer is found and even if it bears the name Xylella, this should be cause for mourning – over 800,000 trees are poised to be cut down. Meanwhile the question remains: is the biotech industry deliberately attacking Italy’s olive trees? The one thing that is certain is that without the conclusive, transparent, and independently acquired scientific proof, these questions will remain unanswered. If this is the case, thousands of centennial olive trees will be eradicated for no good reason or, even worse, to serve a nefarious covert agenda.

Editor’s Note: Photographs one, seven and eight by Francesco; photograph four and six by Paolo Margari; photograph two by Sean O’ Casaidhe; three by Yellow Cat; five from Light Brigading archive and photograph nine by Steve Rhodes.

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