Global Research

President Obama has ordered that if the official tasked with investigating corruption in the Department of Justice wants access to sensitive files, he’ll have to get permission from — the Department of Justice.

That directive was part of a 58-page ruling delivered by the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel and it makes it very hard for the inspector general to get access to wiretaps, grand jury, and credit information necessary to expose fraud and other misdeeds perpetrated by the Justice Department.

“Without such access, our office’s ability to conduct its work will be significantly impaired, and it will be more difficult for us to detect and deter waste, fraud, and abuse, and to protect taxpayer dollars,” Inspector General Michael Horowitz said in a statement published by the Washington Post.

“Congress meant what it said when it authorized Inspectors General to independently access ‘all’ documents necessary to conduct effective oversight,” he added.

A bipartisan group of congressmen agree.

In a statement published on his website on July 23, Senator Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) joined three of his colleagues in condemning the Obama administration’s attempt to block the inspector general investigation:

The Inspector General Act of 1978 directs that Inspectors General have a right to access all records, documents and other materials.  If the Inspector General deems a document necessary to do his job, then the agency should turn it over immediately.  The clear command of that law is being ignored far too often by agencies across the executive branch.  By this opinion’s tortured logic, “all records” does not mean “all records,” and Congress’s recent attempt to underscore our original intent with an appropriations restriction is nothing but a nullity. The prospect of the Obama administration using this opinion to stonewall oversight, avoid accountability, and undermine the independence of inspectors general is alarming.

Congressman Bob Goodlatte, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, stated,

Today’s Office of Legal Counsel opinion contains the same kind of outcome-oriented lawyering that produced the Department of Justice’s infamous recess appointments memorandum, which was unanimously rejected by the Supreme Court in 2014. The law is clear that the Office of the Inspector General should have unfettered access to materials for its investigations, but political lawyers at the Department of Justice have engaged in legal gymnastics to shield key information from government watchdogs.

What would the Justice Department have to hide?

The Justice Department is stiff-arming the inspector general’s requests for records relating to several DOJ scandals, including: (1) whether the Department had violated the civil liberties and civil rights of individuals detained in national security investigations following 9/11, (2) Operation Fast and Furious, (3) the FBI’s use of National Security and Exigent letters, (4) the DEA’s (Drug Enforcement Administration’s) sex parties scandal, (5) the DEA’s use of confidential sources, and (6) the DEA’s use of administrative subpoenas to obtain bulk data collections.

Last February, Horowitz told a congressional committee that “the FBI has failed to turn over key records in several whistleblower cases,” the Post reports.

That’s not surprising.

Despite campaign promises to “strengthen whistleblower laws to protect federal workers who expose waste, fraud, and abuse of authority in government, President Obama has single-handedly prosecuted (and persecuted) more whistleblowers than any of his predecessors.

With the formal filing of the charges against NSA leaker Edward Snowden, this president has charged eight whistleblowers under the Espionage Act.

One of the targets of the president’s prosecution and persecution of those he promised to protect was trying to expose the details of the Department of Justice’s “Operation Fast and Furious” gun running program. As reported by The New American in October 2013:

The Obama administration, and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) in particular, are under fire from across the political spectrum again after they were publicly exposed trying to censor a key whistleblower in the Fast and Furious federal gun-running scandal by preventing him from publishing a book about it.

Claiming that publication of ATF Special Agent John Dodson’s manuscript would harm agency morale, official documents show that the out-of-control bureaucracy sought to violate the First Amendment in an apparent effort to avoid further scrutiny of its lawless activities. However, that attempt failed miserably, and the scandal is back in the headlines with a vengeance.

The Fast and Furious revelations showed, among other deadly serious scandals, that the ATF, disgraced Attorney General Eric Holder’s Justice Department, and other top officials conspired to send thousands of high-powered weapons to Mexican drug cartels at U.S. taxpayer expense. Many of those guns were used to murder Mexican citizens and even U.S. law-enforcement officers. It was later learned from official documents that the supposed “drug lords” allegedly being “investigated” were already on the FBI payroll, and that the administration was plotting to use the Fast and Furious violence to advance its unconstitutional assault on the Second Amendment.

As for the FBI, that agency has been on a tear through the Fourth Amendment for years.

Just days ago, FBI Director James Comey told the members of the Senate Judiciary Committee that in order to stay a step ahead of the bad guys, the g-men should have access to any available technology to decode encrypted data. And that the government should be the arbiter of when decryption is necessary or not.

Last year, the Obama Justice Department asked that a committee be empaneled to amend Rule 41 of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure (FRCP).

In plain terms, Rule 41 mandates that judges may issue search warrants only within the districts where they have jurisdiction. The FBI wants this restriction removed.

Specifically, the FBI wants a judge to be able to issue an electronic surveillance warrant authorizing the feds to search the contents of a computer, regardless of where that computer is physically located.

In an article from April 2013, the Washington Post’s Ellen Nakashima wrote,

“Driven by FBI concerns that it is unable to tap the Internet communications of terrorists and other criminals, the task force’s proposal would penalize companies that failed to heed wiretap orders — court authorizations for the government to intercept suspects’ communications.”

In that proposal, the FBI would give Internet companies a chance to develop their own plan to place the wiretaps on clients’ online activity. There are limits to this “freedom,” however.

If the company’s solution fails to meet federal muster, the FBI would mandate the enforcement of its own surveillance standards and practices.

Finally, at a hearing of the Senate Judiciary Committee on June 19, 2013, former FBI Director Robert Mueller testified that his agency had used drones to monitor American citizens within the United States.

In light of all these scandals, it’s no wonder the president wants to take extraordinary steps to stop the inspector general from getting eyes on sensitive, likely inculpating evidence of the Justice Department’s darkest deeds.

Image: Green MEPs protested against Shale Gas outside the European Parliament 2012. greensefa under a Creative Commons Licence 

News was announced today (23 July) that a coalition of human rights lawyers and academics will put fracking on trial at hearings to be held in Britain and the United States.

The Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal (PPT), based in Rome, is a descendant of the 1967 Vietnam War Crimes Tribunal and hears cases in which prima facie evidence suggests a breach of the basic rights of ordinary citizens. Between 5 and 7 jurists of high standing in international human rights will hear witness testimony on the issue of fracking before deciding whether sufficient evidence exists to indict certain nation states on charges of ‘failing to adequately uphold universal human rights as a result of allowing unconventional oil and gas extraction in their jurisdictions’.

Fracking has taken place around the world in spite of powerful public opposition and with large numbers of citizens claiming that their concerns and human rights have been ignored by those who are meant to represent them. Importantly, this PPT will examine those allegations in an ‘even-handed and judicial way’ and will consider the indictment of nation states, rather than the industry itself, because states, not the fracking companies, bear a direct legal responsibility to human rights law.

The human rights dimensions of a whole range of potential impacts will be examined: human and animal health, environmental, climatic, seismic, hydrologic and economic impacts – as well as those on local physical and social infrastructures.

Exercising a truly global reach, testimony will be invited from witnesses all over the world – who may also wish to hold preliminary mini-tribunals in their own countries. Evidence and findings from those early tribunals can then be submitted to later plenary hearings in the US and Britain which, in turn, will play an important role in laying down an informal but highly expert precedent, with potential for future use in national and international courts of law.

For me, as a campaigner, a crucial feature of this PPT relates to how it will respond to what 20th century philosopher and mathematician Bertrand Russell described as ‘the crime of silence’. Since the Vietnam War Crimes Tribunal of 1967, this term has been widely used to refer to the wrongs suffered by all violated communities. I believe it is extremely relevant for those of us engaged in the current struggle against fracking.

The unconventional gas and oil industry is highly potent. Its wealth affords it the ability to lobby governments and powerful individuals; to engage PR companies and to influence the media with the promotion of its own agenda – at the expense of important truths.

In the US, the ‘Halliburton Loophole’, by which hydraulic fracturing was made exempt from the Safe Drinking Water Act 2005, had the effect of smothering evidence of water contamination by driving those affected by contamination directly to the companies involved. Offers of compensation were often dependent upon the signing of non-disclosure agreements – with lifetime gag orders given to children as young as 7 years old.

While the fracking industry and the politicians who support it continue to deny evidence that fracking causes harm, the List of the Harmed, compiled by the Pennsylvania Alliance for Clean Water and Air, currently itemizes no fewer than 16,000 instances of harm from the oil and gas industry – accounts that are dismissed as ‘anecdotal’ by those who have a vested interest in driving the truth further underground with drilling.

Government reports on the negative effects of fracking are redacted; ministers and industry personnel escape public scrutiny by refusing to attend debates, and democracy is eroded with government plans to limit the consultation periods for communities to object to fracking applications – none of which diminishes the commitment of those same communities to line up against fracking in a fight that might rightly be billed as ‘passions versus payroll’.

While the vast majority of fracking victims cannot afford to gain a legal hearing, let alone reparation for their harm, campaigners have fought on their behalf, and our own, for justice and the exposure of truths that governments and fracking companies would prefer remain hidden in redaction or denial. The PPT on fracking now promises a route to justice by offering a legitimate platform to those whose voices, until now, have been silenced.

There can be no justice without truth and the first step of an important journey toward revealing the truth behind fracking has been taken today with news of the Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal.

You can support the Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal on fracking by submitting testimony, organizing smaller national re-PPT initiatives and/or helping with the crowdfunding of tribunal costs: tribunalonfracking.org

Julie Wassmer is a writer and environmental campaigner. A member of East Kent Against Fracking and Mothers Against Fracking, she also sits on the Environment Committee of CPRE Kent.

Image: Cubans celebrate the dawn of the Cuban Revolution | Photo: teleSUR

Fidel Castro led the attack along with small group of rebels that sparked the events that ousted the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista.

Cubans celebrated on Sunday the 62nd anniversary of the first armed uprising launched by Fidel Castro’s guerrillas against the army of U.S.-backed dictator Fulgencio Batista in 1953.

A crowd of around 10,000 people attended a ceremony marking one of the most important holidays on the Cuban calendar, today known as the Day of Rebellion.

Cuban President Raul Castro addressed the rally as did Vice President attended Sunday’s celebration alongside artistic performances. In his speech, Vice President Jose Ramon Machado Ventura referred to a new era of relations with the U.S but also demanded the ending of the embargo and the return of the Guantanamo Naval Base.

“Now begins a long and complex road toward normalization of bilateral relations that includes among other aspects the end of the blockade and the return of the Guantanamo naval base,” Ventura said.

On July 26, 1953, the struggle against the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista began when Fidel Castro led a small group of rebels on a mission to take the Moncada barracks.

The attack was routed, and the Castro brothers were captured by government forces. During a court appearance in the aftermath of the event, Fidel famously stated, “history will absolve me”.

Although the assault failed, five years later the Cuban revolution was victorious. Under Batista, 43 percent of the rural population was illiterate and 60 percent of Cubans lived in huts with dirt floors. Today Cuba is free of illiteracy.

Image: Susiya Protest – Image By Bassam Shweiki / Hebron Defense Committee

The Israeli daily Haaretz has reported that a document released by the Civil Administration Office of the Defense Ministry affirms that Susiya village, in the southern West Bank district of Hebron, is built on private Palestinian property.

But in spite of this admission, the Israeli military has stated that they will continue with a plan to demolish the village, and forcibly relocate the Palestinian families who live there.

The Jabour and Nawaja families, based in Susiya for hundreds of years, have in their possession ownership documents of their land that date back to the Ottoman empire of the late 1800s.

Susiya Protest – Image By Bassam Shweiki / Hebron Defense Committee

They are among the 40 extended families (around 350 people) who live in Susiya who are facing forced relocation by the Israeli government.

The residents of Susiya are caught between conflicting Israeli orders: they have been told that their homes and farms lack the proper construction permits, while at the same time, Israeli officials have been ordered not to issue any construction permits for Palestinian residents of the area because of what the Israeli government termed a “lack of ownership papers”.

Although multiple families in the village do have the Ottoman-era ownership papers, the Israeli government had, up to this point, refused to recognize them because the property lines and geographical references were allegedly unclear.

But now, an Israeli civil servant assigned to the task of investigating the Palestinian claims of ownership has identified the geographical elements referenced in the original ownership documents, and has confirmed that the families do indeed own the land on which they have lived for generations.

The civil servant, Moshe Meiri, presented his findings this week to the Israeli Civil Administration, and concluded that the demolition orders issued against the Jabour and Nawaja families must be rescinded.

Despite this finding, the Israeli military has resumed plans to demolish the family homes, barns and stables in Susiya village.

The 350 Palestinian residents of the village have been joined by international solidarity activists in a round-the-clock vigil to try to stop the demolitions from proceeding.

In 2013, the residents of Susiya had submitted a master plan for the future development of their village, but the Israeli civil administration rejected the plan, saying that the residents should instead be forcibly relocated to allow for the expansion of the illegal Israeli settlements being constructed in the area.

The right-wing group Amana filed a case in the Israeli court system to try to push for the demolition of the village. And while the court initially ruled against the residents of Susiya, the court also called for an investigation into the ownership papers, which has now been completed and has confirmed Palestinian ownership of the land.

U.S. State Department spokesman John Kirby stated on July 17th, just over a week ago, that “We’re closely following developments in the village of Susiya in the West Bank, and we strongly urge the Israeli authorities to refrain from carrying out any demolitions in the village. Demolition of this Palestinian village or of parts of it, and evictions of Palestinians from their homes would be harmful and provocative. Such actions have an impact beyond those individuals and families who are evicted. We are concerned that the demolition of this village may worsen the atmosphere for a peaceful resolution and would set a damaging standard for displacement and land confiscation, particularly given settlement-related activity in the area.”

Despite this statement and the most recent findings of the civil servant charged with investigating ownership of the land, the Israeli planning council continues to move forward with a plan to demolish the village and forcibly transfer the residents of Susiya to the town of Yatta nearby.

The world’s most advanced and expensive multi-role fighter program could come short of the US Department of Defense (DOD) and Pentagon hopes, as years of weak development saw cost overruns and perpetual delays.

Problems with design and computer systems made the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program even more frustrating; for thirteen years Pentagon has defended its position on the F-35, but it looks like now could be the right time to shift priorities.

Let’s look the truth in the eye:  the overall cost of developing and purchasing the jets amounts to $400 billion while operating and maintenance costs are skyrocketing upwards of $1.5 trillion. And why have we not seen any positive outcomes yet?

The Lockheed-Martin F-35 was billed as the US Department of Defense’s “focal point for defining affordable next generation strike aircraft weapon systems for the Navy, Air Force, Marines, and our allies.”

Moreover,the most expensive weapon in history lost to a 1970s-designed F-16 during a mock aerial dogfight last January.

The Pentagon claimed that they would need exactly 2,443 combat F-35s, plus 14 development aircraft, to restrain and battle with potential military rivals like China. The question asks itself: the US, country with alternate number enemies from without, which sees threats lurking in almost from every corner, shouldn’t it reconsider the role F-35 plays in its defense?

Marine Corps commandant General Joseph F. Dunford, the next chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff nominee, told the Senate Armed Services Committee that the F-35 development and purchasing plan is under review.

“Until the analysis is complete, we need to pursue the current scheduled quantity (2,443 aircraft) buy to preclude creating an overall near-term tactical fighter shortfall,” said Dunford.

“The jet fighter lacks the sensors, weapons and speed that allow a warplane to reliably detect and shoot down other planes in combat. At least not compared to modern Chinese- and Russian-made jets - the planes the F-35 is most likely to face in battle in some future war,” said War is Boring report.

Recently the Australian military canceled plans to purchase the F-35B Joint Strike Fighter landing aircraft.

The United Kingdom’s former defense chief, Nick Harvey, criticized the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, saying “You could argue it was already one of the biggest white elephants in history a long time ago.”

US military and intelligence officials expressed concern over Russia’s PAK-FA fighter jet noting “It has greater agility with its combination of thrust vectoring, all moving tail surfaces, and excellent aerodynamic design, than does the F-35.”

Vaccines work as intended for drug company profits – at the expense of human health. They’re inherently unsafe. More on this below.

Others will have to decide if Rep. Frederica Wilson (D. FL) means well or not. She calls herself “a voice for the voiceless.”

She was a teacher, a local school board member and elementary school principal “st(anding) up for the health of her students by opposing the construction of an environmentally dangerous waste facility” close to her school.

So why as Florida’s 24th district representative did she introduce HR 2232: Vaccinate All Children Act of 2015? Maybe she doesn’t know vaccines can cause diseases they’re supposed to prevent.

Dr. Viera Scheibner is a world renown vaccine expert. Her research shows drug companies produce pseudo-science inconsistent with hard evidence revealing vaccine dangers.

Numerous peer-reviewed studies show they can cause an array of degenerative diseases, anaphylaxis, infections, behavioral problems and other serious health issues.

Vaccines don’t immunize, Scheibner explains. They can damage internal organs and leave children or adults vulnerable to severe autoimmune diseases – including diabetes, arthritis, hepatitis, multiple sclerosis, osteoporosis, polio and numerous others.

They’re a potential minefield of future trouble. Some vaccines can kill. Others risk a lifetime of disability and pain. Autoimmune diseases result from toxins in drugs, food, air, water and other unsafe ingested substances.

Thousands of severe adverse vaccine reactions occur annually – including permanent disabilities and at times death. None of this gets reported. Instead, the myth of safe vaccines and importance of getting them persists.

They’re dangerous, unreliable and should be avoided – causing diseases they’re supposed to prevent. Claims otherwise are patently false. No evidence supports them.

No one should be forced to be vaccinated despite all US states requiring them – with exemptions (varying by states) for persons susceptible to adverse reactions, religious, philosophical or personal reasons, as well as legal challenges.

Government immunization policies are driven by politics, not science or public health concerns – except in cases of outbreaks of infectious diseases.

Vaccines are biological weapons able to weaken or destroy human immune systems. Scheibner is clear and unequivocal saying “there is no evidence whatsoever of the ability of vaccines to prevent any diseases. To the contrary, there is a great wealth of evidence that they cause serious side effects” harming human health.

US politicians have a long history of conspiring with corporate interests benefitting them at the expense of human health and welfare. Harmful GMO foods and ingredients perhaps are the best known examples.

Too few people know about vaccine hazards. Perhaps Rep. Wilson is one of them. If HR Res. 2232 becomes law, all children nationwide will be required to have HPV (human papillomavirus), hepatitis A, hepatitis B, rotavirus, annual flu shots and many other vaccinations. Until now, it’s been up to states to decide. Those not complying with federal law risk losing Public Health Services Act authorized “preventative health services” grants and perhaps others.

Parents not wanting their children vaccinated would be violating federal law, leaving them vulnerable to prosecution besides not letting them enroll their children in school. Exemptions for reasons explained above would be hard or impossible to get.

America already is a police state. Mandating harmful vaccines would let politicians and bureaucrats make health decisions over medical professionals.

It would violate the American Academy of Pediatrics code of ethics – requiring parental consent for any medical procedure.

“(P)arents or other surrogates (should) provide informed permission for diagnosis and treatment of children with the assent of the child whenever appropriate,” AAP says.

Politicians and bureaucrats should stay entirely out making health decisions for anyone but themselves.

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. 

During their election campaign, the Syriza movement promised the people of Greece an end to the inhumane politics of austerity and the dictatorship of the Troika.

After being elected in January, Prime Minister Tsipras and his Finance Minister Varoufakis negotiated with the EU commission, the ECB and the IMF for almost five months. While fulfilling almost all of their financial demands, Syriza’s leaders openly criticized the “institutions” for their tough bargaining and resisted some of their harshest measures.

At the beginning of July, the Troika tightened its grip on Greece. Tsipras and Varoufakis in return called for a referendum in which the people of Greece took a very clear stance and said “no” to the continuation of austerity politics.

Rather than fulfill this mandate, Tsipras responded with a 180-degree turnaround. He dismissed his finance minister, went to Brussels and accepted the most far-reaching austerity measures ever imposed on his country.

Meanwhile Tsipras has survived two votes in the Greek parliament with the support of exactly those forces whom he once called his political adversaries. He has also removed all those members from his cabinet that were unwilling to follow his new course.

Last Wednesday, both Tsipras and his former finance minister went even further by giving their consent to a reform package that will facilitate foreclosures and home evictions. Given the disastrous economic situation, high unemployment and the ongoing capital controls, thousands of home owners will fall into arrears with their interest and repayment installments in the coming months and thus become victims of this new legislation, which will go into effect on 1 January 2016.

Tsipras and Varoufakis, who loved posing as the advocates of the common people during their election campaign, are thus frankly siding with collecting agencies and openly turning their backs on working people strangled by debt.

However, there was worse to come in Wednesday’s vote. Pretending to “protect “Greek taxpayers, Tsipras and Varoufakis also gave their consent to the EU’s Bank Recovery and Resolution Directive (BRRD). This legislation provides for the replacement of bailouts of banks with taxpayers’ money by the partial expropriation of savers, depositors and shareholders.

To understand the true nature of a bail-in, one only has to take a look at what happened in Cyprus in the spring of 2013. There, depositors with more than 100,000 euros in their accounts lost 40 percent of their money, which was used to ’recapitalize’ their bank.  The measure was a devastating blow for the middle class, small businesses and retirees who lost a large part of their lifetime savings.

Although deposits under 100,000 euros are officially protected within the EU, this is no guarantee that they will be left untouched. After most large depositors removed their money during the past months, the four biggest banks in Greece – Piraeus Bank, Alpha Bank, Eurobank and the National Bank of Greece – presently only hold deposits of around 130 billion euros. It is estimated that 40 to 50 percent of their loans are not being serviced and only 40 percent of customers’ deposits exceed 8,000 euros. Strangled by bad loans, these four banks that make up 90 percent of Greece’s banking business, are desperate to increase their equity capital and therefore urgently need fresh money.

By the way, the agreement between the Troika and the government of Cyprus in 2013 was not based on any existing laws, but concluded on the basis of a quickly resolved “agreement” between the rulers in Nicosia and the EU. Implementing a similar “emergency agreement” in Greece would probably not present a big problem to the EU or the Troika. As reported by the Financial Times and confirmed by one of the banks concerned, such a measure has already been discussed. According to their sources, Greek authorities are aiming at a 30 percent haircut for all deposits exceeding 8,000 euros.

Tsipras as well as Varoufakis must have known this when they voted in favor of the BRRD on Wednesday. They have thus willingly contributed to a further deepening of the assaults not only on the working people and the middle class of Greece, but also on millions of savers, depositors and small enterpreneurs in Serbia, Albania, Bulgaria, Macedonia and Romania who maintain their accounts at the regional subsidiaries of the large Greek banks and whose living standards in some cases are far below those of Greece. They, too, will in all probability be subjected to a bail-in.

On the weekend before before the vote, Yannis Varoufakis gave an interview to the Spanish newspaper El Mundo in which he described the creditors of his country as “terrorists”. Is there a better way of demonstrating one’s moral depravity than by consenting to the partial expropriation of working people and the destruction of the lifelong work of small entrepreneurs only three days after making a statement like that?

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad said Sunday that the West still deals with terrorism in a hypocritical way, adding that any political presentation that does not essentially rely on combating terrorism and ending it is practically ‘ineffective’.

In a speech before heads and members of public organizations; vocational syndicates; and chambers of industry, trade, agriculture and tourism, President Assad said the West call it ‘terrorism’ when it hits them, and ‘revolution, freedom, democracy and human rights’ when it hits us.

“In spite of the complexities of the situation in Syria, the reality has appeared clearly and masks have dropped from many faces and fake terminologies have fallen down and lies have been divulged,” Assad said.

 “How could those who spread the seeds of terrorism combat it?” President al-Assad wondered, adding that “who wants to combat terrorism could do it through rational and realistic policies based on justice and the respect of peoples’ will of determining their future, managing their affairs, restoring their rights on the basis of spreading knowledge, combating ignorance, improving economy, raising awareness of the society as well as developing it.”

“Changes of the West cannot be counted on as long as they follow the double-standards policy,” the President said, adding that “we have not depended but on ourselves since the first day.”

On Russia and China’s stances, the President said that “Russia has constituted, along with China, a safety valve that prevented the transformation of the Security Council into a tool for threatening peoples and a platform for aggression on  states, particularly Syria.”

“Our approach has always been the response to all initiatives that we receive regardless the intentions because the Syrian blood is above all else and halting war is a priority,” the President added.

President Assad said that Iran has provided support to Syria stemming from the fact that the battle is not a battle of state, a government or a president rather it is the battle of integrated axis, which does not represent states in so far as it represents an approach of independence, dignity, interests of nations and stability of homelands.

“After years of war, the Syrian people have been resilient, sacrificing for the sake of the homeland, and if they had wanted to give up, they would not have waited all this time and paid as much as that.”

“Any political presentation that does not essentially rely on combating terrorism and ending it is practically ineffective,” President al-Assad said, adding that “countries supporting terrorists have increased their support to them recently and in some cases, they directly intervened to back them.”

President Assad also said: “The blood of our faithful brothers from the Lebanese Resistance has mixed with the blood of their brothers in the Army and they have their prominent role and effective performance along with the Army in making achievements.”, clarifying that …it is impossible for non-Syrian brothers or friends to come and defend our homeland on behalf of us, “Each part of Syria is precious and invaluable and each spot equals in its demographic and geographic importance all other spots.”

The President stressed that there is a huge difference between the foreign-produced “opposition”, which gets orders from its masters abroad and the internal opposition that participates with us for overcoming the crisis and increasing the immunity of the homeland.

It is probable that the current U.S. House of Representatives will be judged by history as the most supine, inept and easily manipulated legislative assembly [by a foreign power], ever to have been given control of the lives of the American people and the drafting and implementation of U.S. foreign policy.

However, although we in Europe can have no influence over so-called ‘Democracy American style’, what we can do is to ensure that the EU Parliament/ Commission does not follow suit by submitting to intimidation and effective control by Mr Netanyahu’s lobbyists for Israel.

Criminal Negligence

Already, Israel is the only undeclared nuclear weapons power in the world, its arsenal of warheads being outside any inspection by the IAEA because the Israeli state refuses to be a party to the NPT Non-Proliferation Treaty and its international controls. That has allowed it to gain a degree of influence over American foreign policy that is entirely disproportionate to its size and actual importance – Israel’s total population being just 8 million i.e. less than that of London.

Furthermore, there is very little that Israel exports that cannot be obtained at the same price or less from suppliers within the EU, so for any European government to allow its national defence arrangements to be held hostage to a supplier that is a non-member of the EU and also a non-member of NATO, is to potentially endanger that state’s future national security.

And that would be a violation of allegiance to one’s country by virtue of negligence.

‘The failure to use reasonable care to avoid consequences that threaten or harm the safety of the public and that are the foreseeable outcome of acting in a particular manner’ – being a definition of criminal negligence.

The West should always be acutely aware of dubious inter-state relationships entered into for political expediency. Israel with its secret nuclear arsenal and nuclear- armed submarine fleet in the Mediterranean may be a beneficiary of US aid and a claimed ally of Europe now – but tomorrow is a different matter because there is no certainty who will be our friends, or our enemies, next year. Therefore, the national defence systems of all 28 EU member states should be entirely independent of linkage with any state in the Middle East. That is just common sense.

Image: FIFA’s President Sepp Blatter shakes hands with Russia’s President Vladimir Putin. © Stringer / Reuters

FIFA has passed a resolution assuring full support for holding the 2018 World Cup in Russia, Sepp Blatter, the president of the world football’s governing body said at a meeting with Russia’s President Vladimir Putin.

“I would like to inform you that the executive committee has recently adopted a new resolution in which FIFA assures the Russian Federation of its full support in carrying out the World Cup in Russia in 2018,” Blatter said, speaking at the opening the ceremony of the preliminary draw in St. Petersburg on Saturday.

Blatter was speaking alongside Russia’s President Vladimir Putin who welcomed the decision saying that the country is ready for the championship. “We will do everything to provide security at the championship,” Putin said. “I would like to reiterate that all obligations undertaken by Russia will be implemented.” Putin added that a series of measures have been taken to ensure the comfort of players and fans, including visa-free travel for those with World Cup tickets. “Holding the championship is one of our key goals, it’s a good opportunity to show the world the multifaceted and open Russia which can amaze and inspire,” he said. “Today is an important day. We are looking forward [to an] exiting evening, [an] exciting draw and exciting Russia,” Blatter added. Over 200 states have signed up for the preliminary draw which was carried out at the historic Konstantinovsky Palace in Strelna.

The matches of the World cup will be held between June 14 and July 15 2018 at 12 stadiums located across Moscow, St. Petersburg, Sochi, Kazan, Saransk, Kaliningrad, Volgograd, Rostov-on-Don, Nizhny Novgorod, Yekaterinburg and Samara.

© Stringer, Reuters

 The recent corruption scandal in FIFA has fueled speculation about the possibility of depriving Russia of the World Cup. However, Russian officials have repeatedly dismissed such suggestions. Blatter has been resolute in his support for Russia hosting the 2018 World Cup. Along with the bribery scandal being conducted by the US, in May Swiss prosecuting authorities launched a criminal inquiry into money laundering concerning the 2018 and 2022 bidding processes. Amid the scandal and arrests of seven soccer officials on corruption charges in a separate case, Blatter who has led world soccer’s governing body for 17 years, announced his resignation four days after he was reelected on May 29. However, he will continue to serve as president until a new extraordinary session elects a new head.

Grigory Dukor, Reuters

© Stringer, Reuters

© Maxim Shemetov, Reuters

“We should expect conflicts in which adversaries, because of cultural affinities different from our own, will resort to forms and levels of violence shocking to our sensibilities.” (Department of Defense, 1999, with thanks to William Blum.)

One quote has reverberated throughout the United States decades of decimations of the lands of others. Journalist Peter Arnett, reporting from Vietnam, in a piece published on 7^th July 1968, quoted an American officer saying of the provincial capital Bến Tre: “It became necessary to destroy the town to save it.” He was referring to the decision to bomb and shell the town no matter what the cost of civilian lives, in order to rout the Vietcong. (1)

The US led “coalitions” of recent years have, it seems, moved on from destroying towns, now entire sovereign nations are laid to waste to free, liberate, and democratize them. The cemeteries and ruins of much of Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya are recent silent witness to this munificence, with Syria set to be the latest centre of the eye of the storm.

ISIS/ISIL/IS has replaced the Vietcong and the “town” is where ever the liberating bombs, missiles, drone strikes blast homes and humanity across the entire country and of course in neighbouring Iraq, bombed in the name of protection and salvation for 24 years – approaching a quarter of a century.

In context, prior to the illegal invasion of 2003, from 1993 onwards, wrote John Pilger (7^th August 2000):

 “ The Royal Air Force, together with the US, bombs Iraq almost every day. Since December 1998, the Ministry of Defence has admitted dropping 780 tonnes of bombs on a country with which Britain is not at war. During the same period, the United States has conducted 24,000 combat missions over southern Iraq alone, mostly in populated areas. In one five-month period, forty one per cent of casualties were civilians: farmers, fishermen, shepherds, their children and their sheep – the circumstances of their killing were documented by the United Nations Security Sector”, it was: “the longest such campaign since the Second World War.”

The Foreign Office Minister Peter Hain in a breath taking lie, even by UK Minister’s standards told Parliament on 2^nd May 2000: “As I have told the House on many occasions, we are not conducting a bombing campaign against Iraq . . .”

On 6^th July 2000, commentator Jonathan Power pointed out that: “the Pentagon says more than 280,000 sorties have been flown in the near decade since no-flight zones were imposed on Saddam in the north and south of the country.”

“L’Angleterre, ah, la perfide Angleterre” (“England, oh treacherous England”) admonished the 17^th century French Bishop Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet (1627-1704) in a sermon. The intervening centuries have wrought little change.

Turkey has now given permission for the US to use the country’s Incirlik air base “after months of negotiations”, according to the BBC. Since the US also used the base during the 1991 Iraq war and in 2001 at the start of the attack on Afghanistan, it has to be wondered what further horror is planned for Syria.

In the last forty eight hours Turkey has enjoined in bombing Syria and has also bombed northern Iraq. There are unconfirmed reports of Turkish troops in Aleppo.

In spite of the UK Parliament voting not to become militarily involved in Syria, it transpired this week that British Air Force pilots have anyway been bombarding Syria in defiance of Parliament. They simply swopped their uniforms and fighter jets for those of countries who were involved in the attacks.

Although the US has been terrorizing Iraq and Syria since 8^th August 2014, they took until 15^th of October to dream up another silly name for another mass slaughter and announced that “Operation Inherent Resolve” was: “officially designated as the name given to US military operations against ISIL in Iraq and Syria.” The name is intended: “to reflect the unwavering resolve and deep commitment of the US and partner nations … to eliminate ISIL …” Heaven help the people of Syria and Iraq.

The US military is clearly not a superstitious body. 15^th of October was not an auspicious day for Empire. On that day in 1793, Queen Marie Antoinette of France was condemned to death and executed the following day; Napoleon 1^st began his exile on St Helena.

In 1863, following his defeat at the Battle of Gettysburg in the American Civil War, General Robert E Lee proffered his resignation to Confederate President Jefferson Davis.

The population of Syria is just 22.85 million, it is being assaulted by the US, population 318.9 million, Turkey population 74.93 million, the UK with a population of 64.1 million, plus a few other less visible and enthusiastic members of the “coalition” -Jordan, Canada, Bahrain, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the UAE, though the UAE stopped flying in December reportedly after a dispute over the US not providing sufficient combat air rescue. By 6^th February the US had mounted nine hundred and forty six air strikes in Syria, with Jordan, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia completing just seventy nine. (News, websites.)

The number of weapons rained down on Syria between August 2014 and June 30^th 2015 is staggering. According to the US Department of Defence (2):

2014:

August: 211

September: 760

October: 1,641

November: 1,407

December: Unaccounted for

Total: 5,886

2015:

January: 2,308

February: 1,756

March: 1.600

April: 1,685

May: 2,010

June: 1,686

Total: 11,045

The Average cost, August 8^th 2014 to June 18^th 2015 is $9.2 million a day for the 315 killing days (3.) To 22^nd June this year “Targets Damaged or Destroyed” in Syria and Iraq include 98 tanks, 325 trucks, 472 staging areas (these are illustrated with a tent, so presumably could be displaced families mistaken for “terrorists”) 2,045 buildings, 1,859 “fighting positions” (again, as Iraq, how many people gathered for a wedding, funeral, waiting for transport were designated “fighters” from the safety of 35,000 ft?) 154 oil infrastructures and “other targets” 2,702. Total 7,655.

The carnage is ongoing. The most recent are the 21^st July with ten airstrikes on Syria and fifteen on Iraq, on 24^th July eight on Syria and nineteen in Iraq and 25^th July, nine air strikes on Syria and twenty two on Iraq with drones also being used (4.) The “assessments” of that destroyed is tragic and sometimes farcical. In Iraq “an ISIS excavator” for example, could it not just be some soul mending a road? Two “ISIS bridges” near mortally damaged Fallujah – Iraq is divided by the Tigris and Euphrates rivers – the great soaring engineering triumphs that are the country’s bridges are the arteries of the nation’s body. Now they are designated “ISIS bridges” and destroyed – again.

As Syria’s President Assad  said today (26^th July) in an address to the nation:

“The West calls it ‘terrorism’ when it hits them, and ‘revolution, freedom, democracy and human rights’ when it hits us.’ “

Notes

1.         https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bến_Tre

2.         http://www.defense.gov/home/features/2014/0814_iraq/docs/30_June_2015.pdf

3.         http://www.defense.gov/home/features/2014/0814_iraq/

4.         http://www.defense.gov/news/newsarticle.aspx?id=129351

 On July 23, 2015, the United States House of Representatives voted upon and passed (by a 275-150 majority) H.R. 1599, the so-called “Safe and Accurate Food Labeling Act of 2015,” otherwise known as the DARK Act. 

The DARK Act is a more accurate description of the bill – which must now be taken up by the Senate – as the acronym “Deny Americans the Right to Know” more aptly tells us what Congress is doing here: Negating all existing and future GMO labeling laws at State and local levels so that consumers will not be able to make an informed choice as well as eliminating numerous non-Federal laws regulating genetically engineered crops.

In particular, the DARK Act – if passed by the Senate and signed into law by Obama – will:

• Preempt State and local laws regarding the production and sale of GMO crops, not just the labeling of GMO foods;
• Eliminate “GMO-Free” zones;
• Unfairly burden traditional farmers and food producers to label their food as “GMO-free,” requiring certification from the pro-GMO USDA;
• Further muddy the food definition of “Natural,” allowing companies to make “natural” claims on packaging even if the food contains GMOs; and
• Allow dairy products from animals fed bioengineered foods and foods developed using bioengineered processing aids or enzymes to still be labeled as non-bioengineered.

             Although touted as a means of ending a “confusing patchwork” of GMO labeling laws, the DARK Act is really nothing more than camouflage for the removal of Americans’ right to know what is in their food and drink.  The Act ends the “confusing patchwork” in the same way that Attila the Hun ended the “confusing patchwork” of tribes in his sweeping path: He just annihilated them. We need real GMO labeling so that we can all make informed food choices.

The many Republicans and few Democrats who voted for this Act should be ashamed, while the many Democrats and few Republicans who voted against it are to be commended. It was the triumph of moneyed interests over the wishes of the voters. More than 90% of Americans have demanded mandatory GMO labeling, as shown by every substantial poll taken. Even Republican voters have expressed an 89% support for mandatory labeling.  Yet, Congress – including my long-time friend Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA), who voted for the bill – has ignored this overwhelming support for clear GMO labels.  Ironically enough, many of NHF’s long-time health-freedom opponents in Congress voted on the right side of this issue. (See https://www.govtrack.us/congress/votes/114-2015/h462)

The U.S. Senate is the next battleground here.  Senator John Hoeven (R-ND) is preparing his own GMO labeling bill, which appears to be no improvement over the House version. Still, the Senate will consider the DARK Act or Senator Hoeven’s bill, or even perhaps another, more consumer-friendly bill in the near future. It is up to us to make this happen as you can be sure that the GMO industry (Monsanto) will not be idle in peddling its influence into the darkest corners of Capitol Hill.

Our very health is at stake.  As Robert Cohen (one of NHF’s resident experts on GMO foods and their health dangers) recently observed, “The September 2015 issue of Chemosphere (pages 135:53-60) includes a study just in time for Monsanto-paid reviewers: ‘Roundup exposure promotes gills and liver impairments, DNA damage and inhibition of brain cholinergic activity in the Amazon teleost fish Colossoma macropomum’ [where] researchers found: ‘Our findings show that biomarkers in tambaqui are organ specific and dependent on (Roundup) concentration.

Alterations in gills structural and respiratory epithelium were followed by changes in hematological parameters such as concentration of hemoglobin…In addition, (Roundup) concentrations affected the biotransformation process in gills of tambaqui negatively. Instead, liver responses suggest that a production of reactive oxygen species (ROS) occurred in fish exposed (to Roundup), as seen by imbalances in biotransformation and antioxidant systems. The increased DNA damage observed in red blood cells of tambaqui exposed (to Roundup) is in agreement with this hypothesis.’  Marine scientists concluded: ‘Thus, we can suggest that (Roundup) is potentially toxic to tambaqui and possibly to other tropical fish species.’ (emphasis added)  Today’s information might be twisted by paid Monsanto deceivers.  Truth is painful. The truth hurts. Through their well-paid spokesmen, Monsanto continues to ignore that the facts are the facts.”

The NHF just returned from Geneva, Switzerland where we helped to defeat Codex Alimentarius’ adoption of a standard for a genetically modified bovine growth hormone.  We need your help to defeat this home-grown threat to our health.  What poisons the World cannot help but poison us.  As at Codex, let’s defeat this latest threat.  Your active participation is vital for NHF’s continued work against the Food Giants. Please visit: http://www.thenhf.com/donations-historical/ to make your support known today.

Until the UK government applies its own criteria to the arms trade, we need to keep up our own public review process to hold our government to its word 

Last week, the UK government announced the outcome of a review of military export licences whose legality had been called into question during Israel’s attacks on the Gaza Strip last summer. The outcome, which came 11 months after the review began, concluded that there is no risk that weapons being shipped from the UK to Israel could be used in violations of international law.

This outcome shows that the UK government consistently fails to implement its own criteria for arms export licensing, criteria supposedly in place to ensure that arms exported from the UK are not used for violations of international law.

Rami Joundiye, 22, lost his leg after Israel’s attacks on Gaza a year ago, poses at his house in Gaza City 10 July (AFP)

The core function of the Israeli military is to enforce its illegal occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip through a system of control that includes: an Apartheid Wall snaking through the West Bank; a network of checkpoints manned by the Israeli military, preventing Palestinians from moving freely; systematic arrest and incarceration, with 5,750 Palestinians held as political prisoners, kidnapped from their homes with military force. All of this on top of Israel’s periodic bombing campaigns on the already occupied and besieged Gaza Strip, the most recent of which in 2014 resulted in 2,205 Palestinians dead, 521 of whom were children.

Some of the weaponry used to commit such massacres is manufactured in the UK.

It doesn’t take a military expert to know what kinds of weapons are used by the Israeli military to carry out this brutal occupation: combat aircraft units, drones for surveillance and bombing, and weapons night sight technology. All of these items, along with many others, were approved by the UK government to be shipped to Israel in the six months prior to last summer’s attack on Gaza. Does the UK government think that Israel was just saving them up for the next war? And even if that were the case, does that justify their export?

Decisions to grant arms export licences are made on a case-by-case basis according to the Consolidated EU and National Arms Export Licensing Criteria. These criteria dictate that the government should take into account the buyer country’s “respect for international law”. Other criteria were highlighted by the government as specifically relevant to Israel: for example, when there is a clear risk of the equipment being used for internal repression, and where there is a “clear risk that the intended recipient would use the items aggressively…to assert by force a territorial claim”.

The licensing criteria outlining what exports should be prohibited cover what is essentially a laundry list of the Israeli military’s main activities. If the UK export licensing criteria were applied, there would be a de facto arms embargo on Israel. Despite this, in the four months immediately following Israel’s 2014 bombing of Gaza, over £4 million worth of licences for military equipment were approved for export to Israel.

So why won’t the UK apply its own criteria to restrict licences on military equipment bound for Israel?

There is certainly no lack of evidence showing that the Israeli military uses weapons for violations of international law. In fact, only weeks before the review outcome, an independent UN inquiry into the Gaza war found evidence suggesting that Israel committed multiple violations of international law, including war crimes.  The UK government voted to accept the report in the UN Human Rights Council. Surely that is enough evidence to say that there is at least a “clear risk”.

The review that just finished is a good example of how the arms export control process works – or doesn’t – and also holds the key of how we can challenge this system of complicity.

Only days before the export licence review was announced last summer, 150,000 people marched in the streets of London to protest Israel’s war on Gaza, demanding an end to the UK-Israel arms trade. In 2009 there was a similar story, when public pressure compelled the government to respond, and at that time, actually revoke some export licences. But it was too little and too late for the victims of Israel’s massacre to be saved.

There is an absolute correlation between public awareness and pressure and the government taking action on the issues. But it is not only through voting or writing to MPs that we create pressure. It is by taking to the streets and showing that we are not willing to smile and nod at the sham review process or other symbolic gestures.

In August 2014, nine people occupied the roof of the UAV Engines factory in Shenstone, where drone engines bound for Israel are made. The factory is one of several in the UK owned by Israel’s largest weapons manufacturer, Elbit Systems. These protestors shut down operations at the factory for two days before they were arrested. Months later, the charges against them were dropped after the company would not provide details of the arms export licences it had been granted. If the trial had gone ahead, the UK government and/or the company would have had to provide evidence countering the protestors’ claim that these weapons are used in violation of international law.

Later in the year, a small group of protestors gathered at another Elbit-owned factory in the UK, shutting it down for a day, and successfully preventing shipments from arriving to the factory.

These smaller actions reached a crescendo on 6 July 2015 when over a hundred people protested outside the Elbit-owned factory in Shenstone again, as well as two other Elbit-owned factories in the UK. In all, three Elbit-owned factories in the UK were shut down by protests.

These protests went ahead despite attempts by the Shenstone factory to sabotage these efforts. The factory asked the High Court to impose an injunction with a “forbidden area” 250-meters around the factory, an area including public land which would ban anyone associated with protests from entering, including the peace vigil that local Staffordshire campaigners have been holding at the factory since 2009. On the day of the protest, police came out in massively disproportionate force, and 19 people were arrested.

The company manufacturing weapons for export to Israel used draconian measures to silence any dissent over their actions. Luckily, campaigners made sure that the injunction would not go unchallenged, and on 22 July, the High Court lifted the ban from the “forbidden area” around the factory.

The response to the protests show that the UK government, in collusion with Israeli arms companies, is willing to go to great lengths to suppress democratic public debate over the illegality of the UK-Israel arms trade. But the protests themselves show that the Stop Arming Israel campaign continues to grow, regardless of attempts to repress it.

Until the UK government applies its own criteria to the arms trade, and imposes an immediate two-way arms embargo on Israel, we need to keep up our own public review process to hold our government to its word, and push it to put an end to these dirty deals.

 – Ryvka Barnard is the Senior Campaigner on Militarism and Security at War on Want. 

At least 10 Palestinian worshipers on Sunday morning were injured during clashes with Israeli police private units, after they broke into and severely assaulted Al-Aqsa mosque. The clashes are still ongoing. 

Private units in the morning broke into the mosque, vandalized it, threw rubber-coated metal bullets on the worshipers and assaulted some youths. In addition, more than 250 settlers have broke into the mosque from Al Magharba gate.

4 Israeli border guards were injured in the clashes. Two of them were moved to hospital for treatment, and had light injuries.

Israeli police private units break into, severely assault Al-Aqsa mosque Sunday morning

In the midst of these attacks, the Israeli minister of agriculture, Uri Ariel from the Jewish Home right-wing party has also provocatively broke into Al-Aqsa mosque, in coordination with the ministry of interior, heavily guarded.

Israeli forces set flying checkpoints on the gates of Al-Aqsa, preventing men under 50 from entering it. Women and seniors were forced to leave their ID cards on the entrance.

After 6:30 this morning, IOF closed the gates for everyone.

The Israeli police have also broken the fire system in the mosque, making the water leak all through the building .

On Saturday, Israeli settlers severely assaulted a Palestinian child near one of the gates leading to Al-Aqsa Mosque compound in the Old City of Jerusalem.

According to WAFA news agency, eyewitnesses said that extremist Israeli settlers assaulted the child, who was not identified, near al-Ghawanma Gate, prompting a group of Palestinians to intervene and save him. Settlers eventually managed to flee the scene.

Israeli settlers repeatedly break into Al-Aqsa mosque in a provocative manner, backed by Israeli occupation right-wing government and military.

In Islamic belief, Al-Aqsa mosque in East Jerusalem,  is considered the third holiest place in Islam.  Israel claims sits upon the proclaimed temple mount, which is the holiest place in Judaism.

James Jeffrey Bradstreet, whose body was found floating in a North Carolina river on June 19, had successfully treated over 1,700 autistic children with GcMAF. On June 16 the FDA obtained a search and seizure order targeting his Buford Georgia medical clinic.

Over the past several weeks no less than seven established doctors have either been killed or died under unusual circumstances (e.g. here and here).

What do these physicians have in common and what remedies are they researching or advocating? Do any of their proposed treatments pose a threat to the multi-billion dollar pharmaceutical cartel? If so, would government agencies and/or private contractors be commissioned to harass and perhaps even assassinate such individuals?

The answer may lie in an understanding of nagalese, a protein made by cancer cells and viruses. Nagalese is a primary cause of immunodeficiency given its ability to block the body’s production of GcMAF, otherwise known as “Vitamin D binding microphage activating factor,” a naturally-produced immune regulating compound that aids in fighting what are traditionally considered terminal diseases. Some researchers suggest that nagalese is one of many toxic components found in the immunizations commonly administered to children, including the Measles-Mumps-Rubella vaccine.

Read the rest of this entry »

In an article on April 13, I used the so-called Civil War and the myths with which court historians have encumbered that war to show how history is falsified in order to serve agendas. I pointed out that it was a war of secession, not a civil war as the South was not fighting the North for control of the government in Washington. As for the matter of slavery, all of Lincoln’s statements prove that he was neither for the blacks nor against slavery.

Yet he has been turned into a civil rights hero, and a war of northern aggression, whose purpose Lincoln stated over and over was “to preserve the union” (the empire), has been converted into a war to free the slaves.

As for the Emancipation Proclamation, Lincoln said it was “a practical war measure” that would help in defeating the South and would convince Europe, which was considering recognizing the Confederacy, that Washington was motivated by “something more than ambition.” The proclamation only freed slaves in the Confederacy, not in the Union. As Lincoln’s Secretary of State put it: “we emancipated slaves where we cannot reach them and hold them in bondage where we can set them free.”

A few readers took exception to the truth and misconstrued a statement of historical facts as a racist defense of slavery. In the article below, the well-known African-American, Walter Williams, points out that the war was about money, not slavery. Just as Jews who tell the truth about Israel’s policies are called “self-hating Jews,” will Walter Williams be called a “self-hating black?” Invective is used as a defense against truth.

Racist explanations can be very misleading. For example, it is now a given that the police are racists because they kill without cause black Americans and almost always get away with it. Here is a case of a true fact being dangerously misconstrued. In actual fact, the police kill more whites than blacks, and they get away with these murders also. So how is race the explanation?

The real explanation is that the police have been militarized and trained to view the public as enemy who must first be subdued with force and then questioned. This is the reason that so many innocent people, of every race, are brutalized and killed. No doubt some police are racists, but overall their attitude toward the public is a brutal attitude toward all races, genders, and ages. The police are a danger to everyone, not only to blacks.

We see the same kind of mistake made with the Confederate Battle Flag. Reading some of the accounts of the recent Charleston church shootings, I got the impression that the Confederate Battle Flag, not Dylann Roof, was responsible for the murders. Those declaring the flag to be a “symbol of hate” might be correct. Possibly it is a symbol of their hatred of the “white South,” a hatred that dates from the mischaracterization of what is called the “Civil War.” As one commentator pointed out, if flying over slavery for four years makes the Confederate flag a symbol of hate, what does that make the U.S. flag, which flew over slavery for 88 years?

Flags on a battlefield are information devices to show soldiers where their lines are. In the days of black powder, battles produced enormous clouds of smoke that obscured the line between opposing forces. In the first battle of Bull Run confusion resulted from the similarity of the flags. Thus, the Confederate Battle Flag was born. It had nothing to do with hate.

Americans born into the centralized state are unaware that their forebears regarded themselves principally as residents of states, and not as Americans. Their loyalty was to their state. When Robert E. Lee was offered command in the Union Army, he declined on the grounds that he was a Virginian and could not go to war against his native country of Virginia.

A nonsensical myth has been created that Southerners made blacks into slaves because Southerners are racist. The fact of the matter is that slaves were brought to the new world as a labor force for large scale agriculture. The first slaves were whites sentenced to slavery under European penal codes. Encyclopedia Virginia reports that “convict laborers could be purchased for a lower price than indentured white or enslaved African laborers, and because they already existed outside society’s rules, they could be more easily exploited.”

White slavery also took the form of indentured servants in which whites served under contract as slaves for a limited time. Native Indians were enslaved. But whites and native Indians proved to be unsatisfactory labor forces for large scale agriculture. The whites had no resistance to malaria and yellow fever. It was discovered that some Africans did, and Africans were also accustomed to hot climates. Favored by superior survivability, Africans became the labor force of choice.

Slaves were more prominent in the Southern colonies than in the north, because the land in the South was more suitable for large scale agriculture. By the time of the American Revolution, the South was specialized in agriculture, and slavery was an inherited institution that long pre-dated both the United States and the Confederate States of America. The percentage of slave owners in the population was very small, because slavery was associated with large land holdings that produced export crops.

The motive behind slavery was to have a labor force in order to exploit the land. Those with large land holdings wanted labor and did not care about its color. Trial and error revealed that some Africans had superior survivability to malaria, and thus Africans became the labor force of choice. There was no free labor market. The expanding frontier offered poor whites land of their own, which they preferred to wages as agricultural workers.

A racist explanation of slavery and the Confederacy satisfies some agendas, but it is ahistorical.

Explanations are not justifications. Every institution, every vice, every virtue, and language itself has roots. Every institution and every cause has vested interests defending them. There have been a few efforts, such as the French Revolution and the Bolshevik Revolution, to remake the world in a day by casting off all existing institutions, but these attempts came a cropper.

Constant charges of racism can both create and perpetuate racism, just as the constant propaganda out of Washington is creating Islamophobia and Russophobia in the American population. We should be careful about the words we use and reject agenda-driven explanations.

Readers are forever asking me, “what can we do.” The answer is always the same. We can’t do anything unless we are informed.

From LewRockwell.com

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2015/07/walter-e-williams/was-1861-a-civil-war/ 

Historical Truth

By Walter E. Williams
July 21, 2015

We call the war of 1861 the Civil War. But is that right? A civil war is a struggle between two or more entities trying to take over the central government. Confederate President Jefferson Davis no more sought to take over Washington, D.C., than George Washington sought to take over London in 1776. Both wars, those of 1776 and 1861, were wars of independence. Such a recognition does not require one to sanction the horrors of slavery. We might ask, How much of the war was about slavery?

Was President Abraham Lincoln really for outlawing slavery? Let’s look at his words. In an 1858 letter, Lincoln said, “I have declared a thousand times, and now repeat that, in my opinion neither the General Government, nor any other power outside of the slave states, can constitutionally or rightfully interfere with slaves or slavery where it already exists.” In a Springfield, Illinois, speech, he explained: “My declarations upon this subject of Negro slavery may be misrepresented but cannot be misunderstood. I have said that I do not understand the Declaration (of Independence) to mean that all men were created equal in all respects.” Debating Sen. Stephen Douglas, Lincoln said, “I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of making voters or jurors of Negroes nor of qualifying them to hold office nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races, which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality.”

What about Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation? Here are his words: “I view the matter (of slaves’ emancipation) as a practical war measure, to be decided upon according to the advantages or disadvantages it may offer to the suppression of the rebellion.” He also wrote: “I will also concede that emancipation would help us in Europe, and convince them that we are incited by something more than ambition.” When Lincoln first drafted the proclamation, war was going badly for the Union. London and Paris were considering recognizing the Confederacy and assisting it in its war against the Union.

The Emancipation Proclamation was not a universal declaration. It specifically detailed where slaves were to be freed: only in those states “in rebellion against the United States.” Slaves remained slaves in states not in rebellion — such as Kentucky, Maryland, Delaware and Missouri. The hypocrisy of the Emancipation Proclamation came in for heavy criticism. Lincoln’s own secretary of state, William Seward, sarcastically said, “We show our sympathy with slavery by emancipating slaves where we cannot reach them and holding them in bondage where we can set them free.”

Lincoln did articulate a view of secession that would have been heartily endorsed by the Confederacy:

“Any people anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up and shake off the existing government and form a new one that suits them better. … Nor is this right confined to cases in which the whole people of an existing government may choose to exercise it. Any portion of such people that can may revolutionize and make their own of so much of the territory as they inhabit.”

Lincoln expressed that view in an 1848 speech in the U.S. House of Representatives, supporting the war with Mexico and the secession of Texas [from Mexico].

Why didn’t Lincoln share the same feelings about Southern secession? Following the money might help with an answer. Throughout most of our nation’s history, the only sources of federal revenue were excise taxes and tariffs. During the 1850s, tariffs amounted to 90 percent of federal revenue. Southern ports paid 75 percent of tariffs in 1859. What “responsible” politician would let that much revenue go?

Dr. Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy and associate editor of the Wall Street Journal. He was columnist for Business Week, Scripps Howard News Service, and Creators Syndicate. He has had many university appointments. His internet columns have attracted a worldwide following. Roberts’ latest books areThe Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism and Economic Dissolution of the West and How America Was Lost.

Israel gives Judaism a bad name. More proof came Sunday morning. soldiers stormed the Al-Aqsa Mosque, firing tear gas and rubber-coated steel bullets at nonviolent worshipers to clear way for extremist Jews to access Islam’s third holiest site where they don’t belong.

Israel has no shortage of synagogues for worshipers to pray any day of the year for any reason. Forcibly entering a Muslim holy place with plenty of supportive military muscle constitutes a criminal act.

Photo by Andrew Shiva

Settlers came on a Jewish fast day (Tisha B’Av – marking the destruction of Jerusalem, two holy temples and other ancient tragedies).

Dozens of Palestinian worshipers were injured – from tear gas and pepper spray inhalation, rubber-coated bullet injuries, and beatings with rifle butts and other blunt objects.

Soldiers entered the compound’s Moroccan, Chain, and Hutta Gates, closed them with chains, and attacked Muslim worshipers inside the holy site.

Palestinian security guards were assaulted and overwhelmed by brute force – prevented from protecting their own people.

Notorious racist agriculture minister Uri Ariel (wanting all land between the Jordan River and Mediterranean Sea exclusively for Jews) entered the compound along with other extremist Jews.

Earlier Sunday morning, Israeli forces restricted Muslim worshipers wanting access to Al-Aqsa to men aged 50 or over and women. After 6:30AM, all Palestinians wanting entry were denied.

Israel reportedly wants the compound open to non-Muslim worshipers. It’s where Jews believe the first and second temples once stood.

Since occupation began in June 1967, Israel agreed not to allow non-Muslim prayer in the area – only at the adjacent Western Wall, the second temple’s remaining remnant.

Israeli pledges are worthless. Extremist Jews regularly enter the compound – heavily protected by soldiers and police, justifiably enraging Muslim worshipers.

Separately on Saturday, Jewish settlers assaulted a Palestinian child near al-Ghawanma Gate leading to Al-Aqsa’s compound. Intervention by other Palestinians witnessing what happened saved him.

At the same time, Jewish settlers performed Talmudic rituals at the King Faisal and al-Qattanin Gates. Right-wing Jewish groups urged them to storm Al-Aqsa’s compound.

They demanded Muslims be entirely excluded from Saturdayevening to sunset Sunday – as well as from 7:30 – 11:30AM for provocative scheduled Israeli tours this Monday through Thursday.

Extremist Jews want Al-Aqsa destroyed – replaced by a Jewish temple, a notion justifiably enraging all Islam. A Knesset measure proposed dividing the compound into Jewish and Muslim sectors – an idea Palestinians reject.

A Final Comment

Israeli violence against Palestinians occurs multiple times daily throughout the Occupied Territories. The IDF intermittently bombs Gaza targets at its discretion or attacks them by ground incursions.

Israeli soldiers attack weekly Friday Bil’in village nonviolent protests against the illegal apartheid wall and settlements on stolen Palestinian land.

They march peacefully, carry Palestinian flags, demand all political prisoners be released and call for Palestine’s liberation.

They demand Israeli criminals be held accountable in international tribunals. They want Palestine freed from repressive rule.

On Friday and Saturday, Israeli forces attacked Silwad, Betunia, Nabi Saleh and Kufur Qaddoum village residents. Many were injured.

Homes were invaded so soldiers could fire on Palestinians from rooftops. During the week ending July 15 alone, Israeli forces conducted 30 forceful incursions into West Bank Palestinian communities – arresting 28 nonviolent victims, including seven children.

Daily persecution targets millions of Palestinians wanting only to live on their own land in peace – free from militarized occupation, denying them fundamental rights everyone deserves.

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.  

Latin America’s relationship with the U.S. government has been difficult to say the least. The U.S. has been intervening in Latin America since President James Monroe established the Monroe Doctrine, a foreign policy that prevented European powers from colonizing any sovereign nation in “their backyard” (that was America’s job!). The Monroe Doctrine became an instrumental tool for Washington to advance American style Democracy and dominate governments in South and Central America and the Caribbean which brings us to Cuba.

Cuba was one of the last colonial possessions under Spanish rule just 90 miles south of Florida. As Spain’s Imperial power was in decline, Washington had imperial ambitions to expand its influence on Cuba. Cuba had the potential to produce unlimited profits for U.S. business interests. Even organized crime got into the picture when they became a major player in Cuba since the early 1930’s. The mafia controlled the gaming industry, prostitution and the drug trade in the U.S. mainland also had their sights on Cuba. The mafia managed to expand their operations to Cuba to avoid harassment from the U.S. government. Cuba was to be their base of operations as they were looking to expand into other Caribbean nations. During that time, Cuba was under the leadership of President Fulgencio Batista who had close political ties to Washington and its multinational corporations. Batista was also a good friend to organized crime. Cuba became a cesspool of corruption, illegal drugs and prostitution which became a playground (metaphorically speaking) for the rich and famous while the majority of ordinary Cubans lived in extreme poverty. This is an historical account of Cuba before 1959, a time period that explains why Cuba’s Revolution was a long time in the making.

Cuba Independence and the American Civil War

Back in 1823, US President James Monroe established the Monroe Doctrine, a US foreign policy directive that prevented any European power from colonizing countries in Latin America to protect its sphere of influence. US interests took precedence over any land disputes with European powers except Cuba, who was still under Spanish rule.

At the start of the American Civil War, the Union (the national government of the North) was concerned that the Confederacy (who formed a breakaway republic in the South) would have received military aid from Spain. The Union was also concerned that Spain would have eventually intervened on the side of the Confederates since Cuba was an ideal place to expand slave plantations with the possibility of creating a new state to counter balance the rise of free states to the North. The Confederacy wanted the Union to purchase Cuba and turn it into a Slave plantation despite the fact that the Cuban people demanded freedom and independence from Spain. However, President Abraham Lincoln sent a newly appointed Minister to Spain by the name of Carl Schurz to prevent Spain’s recognition of the Confederacy and any form of military aid during the war. Minister Schurz convinced the Spanish court that the Confederates wanted to annex Cuba. Spain declared neutrality on June 17, 1861.

By 1868, the Ten Years War for Cuba’s independence had begun but was eventually defeated by Spanish government by 1878. The Pact of Zanjón, a treaty that ended the ten year war and liberated slaves who fought in the war. The treaty did not satisfy the Cubans who wanted full independence from Spain. José Martí, a revolutionary philosopher and advocate for Cuba’s independence was in exile. Marti had planned an invasion of Cuba with groups from the Dominican Republic, Costa Rica and the United States (which was prevented by American officials) to invade Cuba through different routes and create an uprising by the Cuban people. Marti and his revolutionaries began the ‘Grito de Baire,’ a guerilla war which the Spanish government eventually defeated.

The USS Maine, Yellow Journalism and the Road to the Spanish-Cuban-American War

As revolts against the Spanish government continued, U.S. President McKinley decided to take action in support of the Cuban
resistance. McKinley wanted to end the revolt through a peaceful resolution, so he threatened the Spanish government with his administration and U.S. companies that manufacture weapons would consider recognizing Cuba’s status and provide weapons to the Cuban insurgents. He sent Stewart L. Woodford to Madrid to negotiate an end to the conflict. Negotiations followed with the Prime Minister of Spain, Práxedes Sagasta, (who supported Cuban autonomy) proved to be a success. Cuban autonomy was set to begin on January 1, 1898.

After the Cuban Autonomous government came to power, riots followed after Spanish officers who were offended by newspapers critical of General Valeriano Weyler’s policies. Future US President and Nobel Peace Prize recipient Theodore Roosevelt was the Assistant Secretary of the Navy at the time and a staunch supporter of war against Spain over Cuba. Roosevelt supported the Monroe Doctrine and prepared the Navy and the Asiatic Squadron led by Admiral George Dewey for war against Spain. He advocated the Army to recruit an all-volunteer force who would eventually become the 1st U.S. Volunteer Cavalry known as the “Rough Riders.” The US military’s readiness for war was evident.

Then McKinley sent the USS Maine to Havana to protect American interests. The US notified the Spanish government prior to its arrival. On October 1897, the USS Maine was to be deployed to Key West, Florida as part of a strategy with other US Naval ships located in close proximity to Cuba in case of a war with Spain due to political tensions between Madrid and Washington. On February 15, 1898, the USS Maine exploded in the Havana Harbor after a massive explosion. Propaganda to sell newspapers took center stage during the crisis as Joseph Pulitzer of the New York World and William Randolph Hearst of the New York Journal took advantage of the situation and sold war to the public. Both newspaper outlets covered the entire situation in Cuba regarding Spain’s alleged actions. The explosion caused 266 sailors their lives. In 1975, an investigation by US Admiral Hyman Rickover concluded that there was no evidence of any external explosion and that the explosion was an “internal incident” caused by a coal dust explosion. However, due to the power of ‘Yellow Journalism’, the American public’s negative attitude towards Spain because of the explosion demanded a swift military response. The U.S. government and its business entities had “special interests” in Cuba. But it was disrupted by the incident as it created uncertainty about the future of Cuba.

President McKinley asked Congress for $50 million for defense, which was unanimously approved by Congress. The cause of the explosion was unknown during that time, but the American government and the public were angered by Spain’s actions, so war was unavoidable. For Spain there were no diplomatic solutions to prevent the coming war. Spain appealed to the European powers and advised Spain not to enter a war with the US. But, it was too late. Most of the conflict was fought in close proximity to Spanish territories, namely Cuba and the Philippines. In both theaters of war, the Spanish naval squadrons were defeated by a superior U.S. naval fleet. Both victories left the Spanish land forces isolated from their naval forces and their homeland. After a brief resistance, Spanish forces surrendered. The defeat marked the end of Spain’s colonial empire and the rise of the US imperial power. The war lasted ten weeks. US Ambassador to the United Kingdom, John Hay wrote a letter to Theodore Roosevelt declaring that the conflict was “a splendid little war”. Renowned historian and author of ‘A People’s History of the United States’ Howard Zinn wrote:

Businessmen had been interested, from the start of the Cuban revolt against Spain, in the effect on commercial possibilities there. There already was a substantial economic interest in the island, which President Grover Cleveland summarized in 1896:

It is reasonably estimated that at least from $30,000,000 to $50,000,000 of American capital are invested in the plantations and in railroad, mining, and other business enterprises on the island. The volume of trade between the United States and Cuba, which in 1889 amounted to about $64,000,000, rose in 1893 to about $103,000,000”

After Spain’s defeat, one dictatorship after another soon followed. Cuba became an important economic trade zone for American businesses. Once the U.S. gained control of Cuba, it expanded its economic and political monopoly expanding its power over the Cuban people.

Cuba’s Independence under “American Democracy”: Batista’s Rise to Power

U.S. congress passed the ‘Teller Amendment’ in 1898 which did guarantee Cuba’s independence but was replaced in 1901 by the ‘Platt Amendment’ which gave Washington the power to intervene in Cuba if their interests were threatened. By 1908, Cubans who fought against Spain created a new independent political party but were oppressed and eventually massacred by the U.S. backed Cuban government. The Partido Independiente de Color (PIC) was composed of former African slaves and war veterans of the1896 Cuban War of Independence. The PIC won enough votes that undermined the ruling liberal party under President José Miguel Gómez. President Gomez ordered the party to disband under Cuban law which outlawed any political party based on race although the law favored white Cubans. The PIC staged a revolt under General Evaristo Estanoz. However, General Jose de Jesus Monteagudo suspended constitutional rights and ordered an attack against Afro-Cubans. The US intervened and sent troops to back President Gomez and protect its vital business interests. More than 5,000 Afro-Cubans were massacred by lynch mobs because of their skin color. All Afro-Cubans were under suspicion by the Gomez regime.

Gerardo Machado y Morales was President of Cuba from 1925 until 1933 and a former general of the Cuban War of Independence who was interested in ending the Platt Amendment. Machado was an elitist and an industrialist who wanted to turn Cuba into the“Switzerland of the Americas.” By 1928, an economic depression was taking place in Cuba due to a decline in sugar prices and the stock market crash of 1929 which led to political instability. On December 23, 1931, political opposition in Cuba grew which called for fair elections, but Machado remained resistant to the opposition. By 1933, a civil war was brewing due to escalating violence between the Machado regime and the political opposition groups including students, organized labor and other various groups.

On May 8 1933 Sumner Welles, a U.S. envoy was sent by U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt to analyze the “Cuban situation.” By July 21st, Welles demanded that Machado reinstitute the constitutional guarantees that he removed under his leadership. Machado refused, so Welles negotiated an end to Machado’s presidency which paved the way for a new presidency under Carlos Manuel de Céspedes. Cespedes became provisional president, but was overthrown during the Revolt of the Sergeants. The Coup was led by Fulgencio Batista y Zaldívar, an army sergeant and a stenographer on September 5th, 1933. Soon after the coup, the University of Havana representative for the students and professors Ramón Grau San Martín became president and Batista became the Army Chief of Staff as a colonel. This was when Batista’s rise to power became evident because he controlled the short-lived five-member Presidency known as the ‘Pentarchy of 1933’ which included representatives from the anti-Machado factions. Batista oversaw the purge of commissioned officer corps who was forced to retire and some were possibly executed.

Batista had full control over numerous puppet presidents until 1940. Grau was president for more than 100 days before Batista forced him to resign in 1934 with the backing of Sumner Welles. Carlos Mendieta was made President which Washington immediately recognized as Cuba’s new President of the government. However, the new government of Mendieta lasted for about eleven months. Then a number of short-lived puppet governments led by José Barnet and Miguel Mariano Gómez and then Federico Laredo Brú, who was president of Cuba from December 1936 to October 1940. Batista was then elected President to a 4-year term in 1940 and eventually became the de-facto dictator from 1952 to 1959.

Batista then re-instated the 1940 Constitution of Cuba which ironically was considered a progressive platform. He supported labor unions which the old Communist party was pleased with. He established economic reforms and even declared war on Nazi Germany, Mussolini’s Italy and Franco’s Spain in 1941. When his Presidential term was over in 1944 he chose Carlos Saladrigas Zayas to be his successor but was defeated by Ramon Grau. Batista then decided to live in the United States but was still heavily involved in Cuban politics and in 1948 was elected to the Cuban Senate in absentia. He returned to Cuba to run for president. President Grau at the time gave Batista permission to form the United Action Party then he founded the Progressive Action Party. Batista lost popularity among the Cuban people but the unions remained supportive of Batista. But that did not prevent Batista’s desire to rule Cuba.

Back with a Vengeance

B
atista returned to Cuba for an uncertain presidential run in 1952 that faced an uphill battle with polls that suggested otherpresidential candidates were in the lead. Elections were canceled since Batista’s party was in last place, so he led a military coup against President Carlos Prio Socarras that put him back in power. Washington immediately recognized the new Cuban government. Batista took action and suspended the 1940 Constitution he initially supported and canceled the Cuban people’s remaining civil liberties. He also backed wealthy landowners who owned sugar plantations.

When Batista took over the Cuban economy, it was already in a steady decline. However, during the 1950’s, Cuba was a developed nation with a GDP ratio equal to Italy. The gap between rich and poor widened and government corruption became rampant although industrial worker’s wages did rise significantly. Batista began to reap enormous profits from Cuba’s business interests. He aligned himself with the Italian and the Jewish mafia from the United States who controlled drugs, gambling and prostitution rings in the U.S. The Batista government was favored by American-based corporations that had invested in Cuba. It was clear that Batista’s new policies were not as progressive as his first term in office.

Civil Unrest and the ‘July 26 Movement’

There was a growing anger among the Cuban population in reaction to Batista’s policies. Batista took control over the media by way of censorship. Batista created an anti-Communist secret police to silence the public with violence, torture and public executions. It is estimated that there were between 10,000 to 20,000 people murdered under the Batista regime with financial and military support from the Washington. During Batista’s reign of terror, the July 26 Movement organized by Fidel Castro and other anti-government groups throughout Cuba were forming a rebellion against the Batista government.  Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. who was a writer, historian, speechwriter and a Special Assistant to President John F. Kennedy who worked primarily on Latin American issues analyzed Batista’s Cuba on the president’s request and said:

The corruption of the government, the brutality of the police, the regime’s indifference to the needs of the people for education, medical care, housing, for social justice and economic justice is an open invitation to revolution

It began on July 26, 1953; an attack on the Moncada Barracks in Santiago led by Fidel Castro but was defeated by Batista’s armed forces. Leaders of the insurgency were imprisoned while others fled Cuba. By 1954, Batista held elections as a candidate of a political coalition of three different parties including the Progressive Action Party, the Radical Union Party and the Liberal Party which did win by fraud and intimidation. The elections were boycotted by the parties who participated in the elections because potential voters were harassed and terrorized by Batista’s supporters.

Student riots and anti-Batista protests became the norm due to high-unemployment rates especially among college graduates. Batista’s forces dealt with the protests through repressive actions. The University of Havana was temporarily closed on November 30, 1956 due to anti-Batista student protests. Torture and murder of suspected revolutionaries took place in the inner cities. Batista was concerned about Castro so he ordered his secret police to torture and murder people in public to install fear in the population in case they were considering joining the growing revolution. Batista’s actions only angered the Cuban people and increased support for the July 26 Movement. Many organizations joined the movement from all types of backgrounds from the middle class including lawyers, doctors, accountants and many others united with the poor (who were already fighting against government forces).

The U.S. provided military aid to the Batista regime in an effort to defeat the insurgency. Then on March 1958, the U.S. government stopped selling arms to the Cuban government followed by an arms embargo although the wealthy land owners and many in the West continued to support Batista. A new election were supposed to take place on June 1958, but was temporally delayed until November due to Castro’s revolutionaries who called for a general strike as violence continued to plague Cuba.

The Mafia in Cuba 1933-1959

Organized crime infiltrated Havana with gambling operations, drugs and prostitution rings. They also controlled racetracks and nightclubs that mostly catered to American and Cuban elites. Hollywood has produced films about the mafia avoiding the U.S. government from prosecution, but that was further from the truth. Throughout history, the mafia and the U.S. government have collaborated on a number of occasions.

Operation Underworld was an example of how the U.S. government, in this particular case, the Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI)
collaborated with Italian and Jewish organized crime from 1942 to 1945 to counter enemy spies (Nazi’s, Italian and Japanese fascists) infiltrating the U.S. northeastern seaboard ports. The head of the Italian mafia, Charles “Lucky” Luciano was serving time for running prostitution rings and Meyer Lansky of the Jewish mafia (actually Zionist in nature, but it is known as the Jewish mafia in Hollywood and the media) both agreed to work with the U.S. government. Meyer Lanksy was an actual Zionist and a staunch supporter of Israel. His daughter, Sandra Lanksy co-wrote ‘Daughter of the King: Growing up in Gangland’ with William Stadiem said that her father was an avid supporter of Israel:

I had never even thought of him, or myself as a Jew. Suddenly, I realized what I was, what we were, and that anti-Semitism was worth fighting against, whether in World War II, or in America. Moses Polakoff, the professor, was also a master of public relations. He let it slip to the press that not only had daddy thwarted Hitler’s agents on the docks in the war, but he was a major financial supporter of Israeli independence in 1948, by buying Israel bonds and providing arms for Israel’s freedom fighters

Lucky Luciano was eventually released from prison on the condition that he would be deported to Italy but ended up traveling to Cuba. As early as 1946, mafia figureheads such as Luciano had big plans for Cuba. In ‘Havana Nocturne: How the Mob Owned Cuba and then Lost it to the Revolution’ (an excellent expose of how the mafia operated in Cuba) by T.J. English wrote:

When Charles Luciano of Naples, Italy boarded a huge freighter in the autumn of 1946 and headed out to sea, he had many things on his mind but only one thing that mattered: Cuba. The Pearl of the Antilles was to be his salvation, the place where he would ascend once again to the top of the most powerful crime organization in the free world. After a long decade of prison and exile, he deserved nothing less

However, the mafia did protect east coast docks stationed by the Atlantic Ocean from saboteurs and even crushed labor union strikers. They also prevented any theft of U.S. war supplies and equipment. The mafia saw it as an opportunity. If they protected the docks as a favor, they would be allowed to continue their criminal enterprises without government interference.

Operation Underworld began after the attack on Pearl Harbor when the U.S. lost numerous merchant ships to German U-boats and merchant raiders during the ‘Battle of the Atlantic.’ Operation Underworld is proof that the U.S. government’s ‘Office of Strategic Services’(OSS) which eventually became the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and organized crime has an extensive history together dating back to World War II.

The U.S. government collaborated with organized crime (who hated Castro for nationalizing their casinos and other properties) to assassinate Fidel Castro. The Guardian published a report in 2007 called ‘CIA conspired with mafia to kill Castro’ based on a newly released CIA dossier called ‘Family Jewels’:

The CIA conspired with a Chicago gangster described as “the chieftain of the Cosa Nostra and the successor to Al Capone” in a bungled 1960 attempt to assassinate Fidel Castro, the leader of Cuba’s communist revolution, according to classified documents published by the agency yesterday.

The disclosure is contained in a 702-page CIA dossier known as the “Family Jewels” compiled at the behest of then agency director James Schlesinger in 1973. According to a memo written at the time, the purpose of the dossier was to identify all current and past CIA activities that “conflict with the provisions of the National Security Act of 1947″ – and were, in other words, illegal

Al Capone’s successor was Sam Giancana.  One of the only Hollywood films that touches upon the mafia involved with the U.S. government which received a lot of criticism from the main-stream media was Oliver Stone’s ‘JFK’. One other film that exposes the mafia having extensive relationship with the CIA was Robert Deniro’s ‘The Good Shepherd’ when a CIA official Edward Wilson (Matt Damon) threatens mafia boss Joseph Palmi (who was based on real life mob bosses Sam Giancana and Santo Trafficante jr) played by Joe Pesci to cooperate with the CIA to assassinate Fidel Castro or face deportation. Cuba’s dilemma with the Batista government collaborating with the Jewish and Italian mafia was troubling. There were other mafia interests on the island-nation such as prostitution and bribery of government officials. An American journalist by the name of David Detzer wrote ‘The Brink: Cuban Missile Crisis 1962’ stated what he saw when he visited Cuba during Batista’s reign of terror:

Brothels flourished. A major industry grew up around them; government officials received bribes, policemen collected protection money. Prostitutes could be seen standing in doorways, strolling the streets, or leaning from windows. One report estimated that 11,500 of them worked their trade in Havana. Beyond the outskirts of the capital, beyond the slot machines, was one of the poorest, and most beautiful countries in the Western world

Havana was the Las Vegas of the Caribbean that reaped gambling, prostitution and drug profits (cocaine and marijuana) for the mafia. Mobsters were making a fortune on the backs of the Cuban people as were corrupt law-enforcement and high-ranking political officials aligned with Batista. Batista’s relationship with Meyer Lansky and Lucky Luciano was a gangster’s dream. Havana became to be known as the ‘Latin Las Vegas’.

Meyer Lansky knew Batista since the 1930’s. Lansky traveled to Havana in 1933 to meet then Cuban Armed Forces Chief Fulgencio\

Batista for a business plan that would involve gaming rights for casinos and for the control of the Hotel Nacional Casino. Batista allowed the mafia to run its businesses without any interference which gave them equal power to the multinational corporations operating in Cuba. The mafia presence in Cuba began when Batista rose through the ranks from a sergeant to a colonel and then as the chief of the armed forces in 1933. From a constitutional president in 1940 to becoming the de-facto dictator of Cuba after the 1952 coup, Batista was in a position of absolute power that benefitted not only himself but his close allies including the mafia. According to T.J. English’s account of Cuba’s environment under Batista:

The Island’s cadre of corrupt business and political figures was energized by what promised to be the opening of the floodgates in Havana. But even they knew that the criminal know-how and the flow of capital would have to come from outsiders. For those who operated within the island’s nexus of commerce, politics and corruption, this was no problem. For nearly a century, Cuba’s social elite had been intertwined with outside corporate interests, forming a ruling cartel that was a mix of U.S. industrialists, sugar barons, tourism magnates and international financiers

With Luciano and Lansky settled in Cuba, it was business as usual. Luciano ran the casinos although Batista had to eventually deport him on request by the U.S. government. Batista was looking for large investments in Cuba’s casinos and nightclub’s, so anyone who would invest would have received a gaming license with no harassment from the government. Cuba became the center of the international drug trafficking under Lansky. The infamous ‘Hotel Nacional’ became a casino along with other hotels and nightclubs filled with prostitutes for American tourists and Cuban business elites. Lansky and Luciano’s operations kept other mafia bosses happy with its enormous profits while at the same time making Batista a wealthy man with political contributions ending up in his foreign Swiss bank accounts. Cuba became a lucrative market for legal and illegal business activities for both the Mafia and multinational corporations all made possible under Batista’s government. In a 1960 speech at a Democratic dinner in Cincinnati, Ohio, U.S. President John F. Kennedy stated the facts on who really owned Cuba’s economy when he said:

At the beginning of 1959 United States companies owned about 40 percent of the Cuban sugar lands—almost all the cattle ranches—90 percent of the mines and mineral concessions—80 percent of the utilities—practically all the oil industry—and supplied two-thirds of Cuba’s imports. Of course, our private investment did much to help Cuba. But our action too often gave the impression that this country was more interested in taking money from the Cuban people than in helping them build a strong and diversified economy of their own

In one of Francis Ford Coppola’s classic film trilogy ‘The Godfather II’ based on the book by Mario Puzo exposes a historical truth. Michael Corleone (played by Al Pacino) and Hyman Roth who was Meyer Lansky in real life played by Lee Strasberg along with several representatives of major multinational corporations had major business interests in Cuba. In the film, Roth wanted Michael Corleone assassinated, but in real life the Italian and Jewish mafia were partners in Cuba looking to further expand their operations in the Caribbean.

As an “expression of gratitude” in both real life and in the film, the ITT Corporation, a U.S. based multinational telephone company bestowed a ‘Golden Telephone’ in Batista’s honor for the rate increase he imposed in Cuba (as requested by the U.S. government) which made telephone usage expensive for the majority of the Cuban people. ‘The Godfather II’ was closer to the truth then what the main-stream media would have reported during that time period. The U.S. media portrayed Batista in a positive light until the very end of his dictatorship.

The End of Batista’s Rule

On December 11, 1958, U.S. Ambassador Earl Smith told Batista that the United States could no longer support his government. The U.S. denied Batista asylum and suggested that he go to Spain. On New Year’s Eve party, Batista told his government officials that he was leaving Cuba and flew to the Dominican Republic with between $300 and $700 million according to various estimates. Portugal’s António Salazar, a dictator allowed Batista to enter his country. By 1972, Batista settled in Marbella, Spain where he eventually died of a heart attack.

On January 1st 1959, Cuban forces led by Fidel Castro entered Havana with no resistance from Batista’s defeated forces. Fidel Castro entered Havana several days later on January 8th with a victory march over a U.S. backed dictatorship that had mob ties. It was a new chapter in history for Cuba, but for Washington, it was the start of a political and economic war against the Castro government.

Former Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis has claimed that he was authorized by Alexis Tsipras last December to look into a parallel payment system that would operate using wiretapped tax registration numbers (AFMs) and could eventually work as a parallel banking system, Kathimerini has learned.

In a teleconference call with members of international hedge funds that was allegedly coordinated by former British Chancellor of the Exchequer Norman Lamont, Varoufakis claimed to have been given the okay by Tsipras last December – a month before general elections that brought SYRIZA to power – to plan a payment system that could operate in euros but which could be changed into drachmas “overnight” if necessary, Kathimerini understands.

Varoufakis worked with a small team to prepare the plan, which would have required a staff of 1,000 to implement but did not get the final go-ahead from Tsipras to proceed, he said.

The call took place on July 16, more than a week after Varoufakis left his post as finance minister.

The plan would involve hijacking the AFMs of taxpayers and corporations by hacking into General Secretariat of Public Revenues website, Varoufakis told his interlocutors. This would allow the creation of a parallel system that could operate if banks were forced to close and which would allow payments to be made between third parties and the state and could eventually lead to the creation of a parallel banking system, he said.

As the general secretariat is a system that is monitored by Greece’s creditors and is therefore difficult to access, Varoufakis said he assigned a childhood friend of his, an information technology expert who became a professor at Columbia University, to hack into the system. A week after Varouakis took over the ministry, he said the friend telephoned him and said he had “control” of the hardware but not the software “which belongs to the troika.”

Recorded call

You can find extracts from the conversation below. Varoufakis was advised that the call was being recorded when it began.

Varoufakis: “I have to admit we did not have a mandate for bringing Greece out of the euro. What we had was a mandate to negotiate for a kind of arrangement with the Eurogroup and the ECB that would render Greece sustainable within the eurozone. The mandate went a bit further, at least in my estimation. I think the Greek people had authorised us to pursue energetically and vigorously that negotiation to the point of saying that if we can’t have a viable agreement, then we should consider getting out.”

“We don’t have a currency which we can devalue vis a vis the euro, we have the euro”

“[Wolfgang] Schaeuble, the finance minister of Germany, is hell-bent on effecting a Grexit so nothing is over. But let me be very specific and very precise on this. The prime minister before he became PM, before we won the election in January, had given me the green light to come up with a Plan B. And I assembled a very able team, a small team as it had to be because that had to be kept completely under wraps for obvious reasons. And we had been working since the end of December or beginning of January on creating one. But let me give you if you are interested some of the political and the institutional impediments that made it hard for us to complete the work and indeed to activate it. The work was more or less complete: We did have a Plan B but the difficulty was to go from the five people who were planning it to the 1,000 people that would have to implement it. For that I would have to receive another authorisation which never came.”

“But let me give you an example. We were planning along a number fronts. I will just mention one. Take the case of the first few moments when the banks are shut, the ATMs don’t function and there has to be some parallel payment system by which to keep the economy going for a little while, to give the population the feel that the state is in control and that there is a plan.”

“What we planned to do was the following. There is the website of the tax office like there is in Britain and everywhere else, where citizens, taxpayers go into the website they use their tax file number and they transfer through web banking monies from the bank account to their tax file number so as to make payments on VAT, income tax and so on and so forth.”

“We were planning to create, surreptitiously, reserve accounts attached to every tax file number, without telling anyone, just to have this system in a function under wraps. And, at the touch of a button, to allow us to give PIN numbers to tax file number holders, to taxpayers. So let’s take for instance the case the state owed 1 million euros to some pharmaceutical company for drugs purchased on behalf of the National Health Service. We could immediately create a digital transfer into that reserve account of the tax file number of the pharmaceutical company and provide them with a pin number so that they could use this as a kind of parallel payment mechanism by whichever part of that digital monies to any tax file number for whom they owed money or indeed to use it to in order to make tax payments to the state. That would have created a parallel banking system while the banks were shut as a result of the ECBs aggressive action to deny us some breathing space.”

“This was very well developed and I think it would have made a very big difference because very soon we could have extended it, using apps on smartphones and it could become a functioning parallel system and of course this would be euro denominated but at the drop of a hat it could be converted to a new drachma.”

“But let me tell you – and this is quite a fascinating story – what difficulties I faced. The General Secretary of Public Revenues within my ministry is controlled fully and directly by the troika. It was not under control of my ministry, of me as minister, it was controlled by Brussels. The general secretary is appointed effectively through a process which is troika-controlled and the whole mechanism within. It’s like the Inland Revenue in the UK being controlled by Brussels. I am sure as you are hearing these words your hair is standing on end.”

“Ok, so problem number one: The general secretary of information systems on the other hand was controlled by me, as minister. I appointed a good friend of mine, a childhood friend of mine who had become professor of IT at Columbia University in the States and so on.  I put him in because I trusted him to develop this.”

“At some point, a week or so after we moved into the ministry, he calls me up and says to me: “You know what? I control the machines, I control the hardware but I do not control the software. The software belongs to the troika controlled General Secretary of Public Revenues. What do I do?””

“So we had meeting just two of us – nobody else knew – and he said: “Listen, if I ask for permission from them to start implementing this program then the troika will immediately know we are designing a parallel system.” But I said:  “That won’t do, we don’t want to reveal our hand at this stage.””

“So I authorised him – and you can’t tell anyone that, this is totally between us…”

Normal Lamont interrupts: “There are certainly others listening but they will not tell it to their friends.”

Varoufakis (laughing): “I know. I know they are. And even if they do I will deny I said it, so we decided to hack into my ministry’s own software program in order to be able break it up to just copy just to copy the code of the tax systems website onto a large computer in his office so that he can work out how to design and implement this parallel payment system.”

“And we were ready to get the green light from the PM when the banks closed in order to move into the General Secretariat of Public Revenues, which is not controlled by us but is controlled by Brussels, and to plug this laptop in and to energize the system.”

“So I am trying to convey to you the kind of institutional problems that we had, institutional impediments we had to carrying out an independent policy for ameliorating the effects of having our banks being closed down by the ECB.”

On Schaeuble

“Schaeuble has a plan. The way he described it to me is very simple. He believes that the eurozone is not sustainable as it is. He believes there has to be some fiscal transfers, some degree of political union. He believes that for that political union to work without federation, without the legitimacy that a properly elected federal parliament can render, can bestow upon an executive, it will have to be done in a very disciplinary way. And he said explicitly to me that a Grexit is going to equip him with sufficient bargaining, sufficient terrorising power in order to impose upon the French that which Paris has been resisting. And what is that? A degree of transfer of budget making powers from Paris to Brussels.”

How can the life of such a man
Be in the palm of some fool’s hand?
To see him obviously framed
Couldn’t help but make me feel ashamed to live in a land
Where justice is a game.—Bob Dylan, “Hurricane”

Attorney John W. Whitehead opens a recent posting (see below) on his Rutherford Institute website with these words from a song by Bob Dylan. Why don’t all of us feel ashamed? Why only Bob Dylan?

I wonder how many of Bob Dylan’s fans understand what he is telling them. American justice has nothing to do with innocence or guilt. It only has to do with the prosecutor’s conviction rate, which builds his political career. Considering the gullibility of the American people, American jurors are the last people to whom an innocent defendant should trust his fate. The jury will betray the innocent almost every time.

As Lawrence Stratton and I show in our book (2000, 2008) there is no justice in America. We titled our book, “How the Law Was Lost.” It is a description of how the protective features in law that made law a shield of the innocent was transformed over time into a weapon in the hands of the government, a weapon used against the people. The loss of law as a shield occurred prior to 9/11, which “our representative government” used to construct a police state.

The marketing department of our publisher did not appreciate our title and instead came up with “The Tyranny of Good Intentions.” We asked what this title meant. The marketing department answered that we showed that the war on crime, which gave us the abuses of RICO, the war on child abusers, which gave us show trials of total innocents that bested Joseph Stalin’s show trials of the heroes of the Bolshevik Revolution, and the war on drugs, which gave “Freedom and Democracy America” broken families and by far the highest incarceration rate in the world all resulted from good intentions to combat crime, to combat drugs, and to combat child abuse. The publisher’s title apparently succeeded, because 15 years later the book is still in print. It has sold enough copies over these years that, had the sales occurred upon publication would have made the book a “best seller.” The book, had it been a best seller, would have gained more attention, and perhaps law schools and bar associations could have used it to hold the police state at bay.

Whitehead documents how hard a not guilty verdict is to come by for an innocent defendant. Even if the falsely accused defendant and his attorney survive the prosecutor’s pressure to negotiate a plea bargain and arrive at a trial, they are confronted with jurors who are unable to doubt prosecutors, police, or witnesses paid to lie against the innocent defendant. Jurors even convicted the few survivors of the Clinton regime’s assault on the Branch Davidians of Waco, the few who were not gassed, shot, or burned to death by US federal forces. This religious sect was demonized by Washington and the presstitute media as child abusers who were manufacturing automatic weapons while they raped children. The charges proved to be false, like Saddam Hussein’s “weapons of mass destruction,” and so forth, but only after all of the innocents were dead or in prison.

The question is: why do Americans not only sit silently while the lives of innocents are destroyed, but also actually support the destruction of the lives of innocents? Why do Americans believe “official sources” despite the proven fact that “official sources” lie repeatedly and never tell the truth?

The only conclusion that one can come to is that the American people have failed. We have failed Justice. We have failed Mercy. We have failed the US Constitution. We have failed Truth. We have failed Democracy and representative government. We have failed ourselves and humanity. We have failed the confidence that our Founding Fathers put in us. We have failed God. If we ever had the character that we are told we had, we have obviously lost it. Little, if anything, remains of the “American character.”

Was the American character present in the torture prisons of Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo Bay, and hidden CIA torture dungeons where US military and CIA personnel provided photographic evidence of their delight in torturing and abusing prisoners? Official reports have concluded that along with torture went rape, sodomy, and murder. All of this was presided over by American psychologists with Ph.D. degrees.

We see the same inhumanity in the American police who respond to women children, the elderly, the physically and mentally handicapped, with gratuitous violence. For no reason whatsoever, police murder, taser, beat, and abuse US citizens. Every day there are more reports, and despite the reports the violence goes on and on and on. Clearly, the police enjoy inflicting pain and death on citizens whom the police are supposed to serve and protect. There have always been bullies in the police force, but the wanton police violence of our time indicates a complete collapse of the American character.

The failure of the American character has had tremendous and disastrous consequences for ourselves and for the world. At home Americans have a police state in which all Constitutional protections have vanished. Abroad, Iraq and Libya, two formerly prosperous countries, have been destroyed. Libya no longer exists as a country. One million dead Iraqis, four million displaced abroad, hundreds of thousands of orphans and birth defects from the American ordnance, and continuing ongoing violence from factions fighting over the remains. These facts are incontestable. Yet the United States Government claims to have brought “freedom and democracy” to Iraq. “Mission accomplished,” declared one of the mass murderers of the 21st century, George W. Bush.

The question is: how can the US government make such an obviously false outrageous claim without being shouted down by the rest of the world and by its own population? Is the answer that good character has disappeared from the world?

Or is the rest of the world too afraid to protest? Washington can force supposedly sovereign countries to acquiesce to its will or be cut off from the international payments mechanism that Washington controls, and/or be sanctioned, and/or be bombed, droned, or invaded, and/or be assassinated or overthrown in a coup. On the entire planet Earth there are only two countries capable of standing up to Washington, Russia and China, and neither wants to stand up if they can avoid it.

For whatever the reasons, not only Americans but most of the world as well accommodate Washington’s evil and are thereby complicit in the evil. Those humans with a moral conscience are gradually being positioned by Washington and London as “domestic extremists” who might have to be rounded up and placed in detention centers. Examine the recent statements by General Wesley Clark and British Prime Minister Cameron and remember Janet Napolitano’s statement that the Department of Homeland Security has shifted its focus from terrorists to domestic extremists, an undefined and open-ended term.

Americans with good character are being maneuvered into a position of helplessness. As John Whitehead makes clear, the American people cannot even prevent “their police,” paid by their tax payments, from murdering 3 Americans each day, and this is only the officially reported murders. The actual account is likely higher.

What Whitehead describes and what I have noticed for many years is that the American people have lost, in addition to their own sense of truth and falsity, any sense of mercy and justice for other peoples. Americans accept no sense of responsibility for the millions of peoples that Washington has exterminated over the past two decades dating back to the second term of Clinton. Every one of the millions of deaths is based on a Washington lie.

When Clinton’s Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright, was asked if the Clinton’s regime’s sanctions, which had claimed the lives of 500,000 Iraqi children, were justified, she obviously expected no outrage from the American people when she replied in the affirmative.

Americans need to face the facts. The loss of character means the loss of liberty and the transformation of government into a criminal enterprise.

The American Nightmare: The Tyranny of the Criminal Justice System

John W. Whitehead
The Rutherford Institute
July 22, 2015

Justice in America is not all it’s cracked up to be.
Just ask Jeffrey Deskovic, who spent 16 years in prison for a rape and murder he did not commit. Despite the fact that Deskovic’s DNA did not match what was found at the murder scene, he was singled out by police as a suspect because he wept at the victim’s funeral (he was 16 years old at the time), then badgered over the course of two months into confessing his guilt. He was eventually paid $6.5 million in reparation.

James Bain spent 35 years in prison for the kidnapping and rape of a 9-year-old boy, but he too was innocent of the crime. Despite the fact that the prosecutor’s case was flimsy—it hinged on the similarity of Bain’s first name to the rapist’s, Bain’s ownership of a red motorcycle, and a misidentification of Bain in a lineup by a hysterical 9-year-old boy—Bain was sentenced to life in prison. He was finally freed after DNA testing proved his innocence, and was paid $1.7 million.

Mark Weiner got off relatively easy when you compare his experience to the thousands of individuals who are spending lifetimes behind bars for crimes they did not commit.Weiner was wrongfully arrested, convicted, and jailed for more than two years for a crime he too did not commit. In his case, a young woman claimed Weiner had abducted her, knocked her out and then sent taunting text messages to her boyfriend about his plans to rape her. Despite the fact that cell phone signals, eyewitness accounts and expert testimony indicated the young woman had fabricated the entire incident, the prosecutor and judge repeatedly rejected any evidence contradicting the woman’s far-fetched account, sentencing Weiner to eight more years in jail. Weiner was only released after his accuser was caught selling cocaine to undercover cops.

In the meantime, Weiner lost his job, his home, and his savings, and time with his wife and young son. As Slate reporter journalist Dahlia Lithwick warned, “If anyone suggests that the fact that Mark Weiner was released this week means ‘the system works,’ I fear that I will have to punch him in the neck. Because at every single turn, the system that should have worked to consider proof of Weiner’s innocence failed him.”

The system that should have worked didn’t, because the system is broken, almost beyond repair.

In courtroom thrillers like 12 Angry Men and To Kill a Mockingbird, justice is served in the end because someone—whether it’s Juror #8 or Atticus Finch—chooses to stand on principle and challenge wrongdoing, and truth wins.

Unfortunately, in the real world, justice is harder to come by, fairness is almost unheard of, and truth rarely wins.

On paper, you may be innocent until proven guilty, but in actuality, you’ve already been tried, found guilty and convicted by police officers, prosecutors and judges long before you ever appear in a courtroom. Chronic injustice has turned the American dream into a nightmare. At every step along the way, whether it’s encounters with the police, dealings with prosecutors, hearings in court before judges and juries, or jail terms in one of the nation’s many prisons, the system is riddled with corruption, abuse and an appalling disregard for the rights of the citizenry.

Due process rights afforded to a person accused of a crime—the right to remain silent, the right to be informed of the charges against you, the right to representation by counsel, the right to a fair trial, the right to a speedy trial, the right to prove your innocence with witnesses and evidence, the right to a reasonable bail, the right to not languish in jail before being tried, the right to confront your accusers, etc.—mean nothing when the government is allowed to sidestep those safeguards against abuse whenever convenient.

It’s telling that while President Obama said all the right things about the broken state of our criminal justice system—that we jail too many Americans for nonviolent crimes (we make up 5 percent of the world’s population, but our prison population constitutes nearly 25% of the world’s prisoners), that we spend more money on incarceration than any other nation ($80 billion a year), that we sentence people for longer jail terms than their crimes merit, that our criminal justice system is far from color-blind, that the nation’s school-to-prison pipeline is contributing to overcrowded jails, and that we need to focus on rehabilitation of criminals rather than retribution—he failed to own up to the government’s major role in contributing to this injustice in America.

Indeed, while Obama placed the responsibility for reform squarely in the hands of prosecutors, judges and police, he failed to acknowledge that they bear the burden of our failed justice system, along with the legislatures and corporations who have worked with them to create an environment that is hostile to the rights of the accused.

In such a climate, we are all the accused, the guilty and the suspect. As I document in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, we’re operating in a new paradigm where the citizenry are presumed guilty and treated as suspects, our movements tracked, our communications monitored, our property seized and searched, our bodily integrity disregarded, and our inalienable rights to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” rendered insignificant when measured against the government’s priorities.

Every American is now in jeopardy of being targeted and punished for a crime he did not commit thanks to an overabundance of arcane laws. Making matters worse, by allowing government agents to operate above the law, immune from wrongdoing, we have created a situation in which the law is one-sided and top-down, used as a hammer to oppress the populace, while useless in protecting us against government abuse.

Add to the mix a profit-driven system of incarceration in which state and federal governments agree to keep the jails full in exchange for having private corporations run the prisons, and you will find the only word to describe such a state of abject corruption is “evil.”

How else do you explain a system that allows police officers to shoot first and ask questions later, without any real consequences for their misdeeds? Despite the initial outcry over the shootings of unarmed individuals in Ferguson and Baltimore, the pace of police shootings has yet to slow.

For those who survive an encounter with the police only to end up on the inside of a jail cell, waiting for a “fair and speedy trial,” it’s often a long wait. Consider that 60 percent of the people in the nation’s jails have yet to be convicted of a crime. There are 2.3 million people in jails or prisons in America. Those who can’t afford bail, “some of them innocent, most of them nonviolent and a vast majority of them impoverished,” will spend about four months in jail before they even get a trial.

Not even that promised “day in court” is a guarantee that justice will be served.

As Judge Alex Kozinski of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals points out, there are an endless number of factors that can render an innocent man or woman a criminal and caged for life: unreliable eyewitnesses, fallible forensic evidence, flawed memories, coerced confessions, harsh interrogation tactics, uninformed jurors, prosecutorial misconduct, falsified evidence, and overly harsh sentences, to name just a few.

In early 2015, the Justice Department and FBI “formally acknowledged that nearly every examiner in an elite FBI forensic unit gave flawed testimony in almost all trials in which they offered evidence against criminal defendants over more than a two-decade period…. The admissions mark a watershed in one of the country’s largest forensic scandals, highlighting the failure of the nation’s courts for decades to keep bogus scientific information from juries, legal analysts said.”

“How do rogue forensic scientists and other bad cops thrive in our criminal justice system?” asks Judge Kozinski. “The simple answer is that some prosecutors turn a blind eye to such misconduct because they’re more interested in gaining a conviction than achieving a just result.”

The power of prosecutors is not to be underestimated. Increasingly, when we talk about innocent people being jailed for crimes they did not commit, the prosecutor plays a critical role in bringing about that injustice. As The Washington Post reports, “Prosecutors win 95 percent of their cases, 90 percent of them without ever having to go to trial…. Are American prosecutors that much better? No… it is because of the plea bargain, a system of bullying and intimidation by government lawyers for which they ‘would be disbarred in most other serious countries….’”

This phenomenon of innocent people pleading guilty makes a mockery of everything the criminal justice system is supposed to stand for: fairness, equality and justice. As Judge Jed S. Rakoff concludes, “our criminal justice system is almost exclusively a system of plea bargaining, negotiated behind closed doors and with no judicial oversight. The outcome is very largely determined by the prosecutor alone.”

It’s estimated that between 2 and 8 percent of convicted felons who have agreed to a prosecutor’s plea bargain (remember, there are 2.3 million prisoners in America) are in prison for crimes they did not commit.

Clearly, the Coalition for Public Safety was right when it concluded, “You don’t need to be a criminal to have your life destroyed by the U.S. criminal justice system.”

It wasn’t always this way. As Judge Rakoff recounts, the Founding Fathers envisioned a criminal justice system in which the critical element “was the jury trial, which served not only as a truth-seeking mechanism and a means of achieving fairness, but also as a shield against tyranny.”

That shield against tyranny has long since been shattered, leaving Americans vulnerable to the cruelties, vanities, errors, ambitions and greed of the government and its partners in crime.

There is not enough money in the world to make reparation to those whose lives have been disrupted by wrongful convictions.

Over the past quarter century, more than 1500 Americans have been released from prison after being cleared of crimes they did not commit. These are the fortunate ones. For every exonerated convict who is able to prove his innocence after 10, 20 or 30 years behind bars, Judge Kozinski estimates there may be dozens who are innocent but cannot prove it, lacking access to lawyers, evidence, money and avenues of appeal.

For those who have yet to fully experience the injustice of the American system of justice, it’s only a matter of time. America no longer operates under a system of justice characterized by due process, an assumption of innocence, probable cause, and clear prohibitions on government overreach and police abuse. Instead, our courts of justice have been transformed into courts of order, advocating for the government’s interests, rather than championing the rights of the citizenry, as enshrined in the Constitution.

Without courts willing to uphold the Constitution’s provisions when government officials disregard them, and a citizenry knowledgeable enough to be outraged when those provisions are undermined, the Constitution provides little protection against the police state.

* * *

The day I read John Whitehead’s article (July 22), there were new reports of a number of police murders of innocent American citizens. Sandra Bland, a black women who protested police violence against blacks was found hanged in her cell in a Texas jail after her false arrest.

Just a few days ago Samuel Dubose was murdered by a police officer with a shot to his head while he sat inside his car.

A 3o-year old asthmatic white chemical engineer was without cause hog-tied by Mississippi police with face positioned to prevent breathing, resulting in his death.

Americans are in more danger from police than from terrorists. During the Iraqi war, American police murdered more Americans than the number of US troops killed in combat.

In this age of perverted justice and government-sanctioned tyranny, the Constitution is no safeguard against government wrongdoing such as SWAT team raids, domestic surveillance, police shootings of unarmed and unthreatening citizens, indefinite detentions, asset forfeitures, prosecutorial misconduct, etc.

Today in the United States of America citizens are as unprotected by law as the aristocracy in England prior to the Magna Carta. America has far more in common with the Medieval dungeon state than it does with the Declaration of Independence.

In a country in which the citizens have no protection from the state and can be shot down in their streets and homes by unaccountable police, detained indefinitely without charges or conviction, executed on suspicion alone without due process of law, there is no freedom, no democracy, no accountability of government to the people.

The United States of America is no longer the hope of mankind. The USA has become the source of evil and dread. Will America destroy the world as well as itself?

Dr. Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy and associate editor of the Wall Street Journal. He was columnist for Business Week, Scripps Howard News Service, and Creators Syndicate. He has had many university appointments. His internet columns have attracted a worldwide following. Roberts’ latest books areThe Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism and Economic Dissolution of the West and How America Was Lost.

So, the U.S. government has finally decided to help some 2,000 Air Force personnel exposed to Agent Orange residue left over in airplanes used during the Vietnam War. They are now eligible for disability, medical and survivor benefits.

“Opening up eligibility for this deserving group of Air Force veterans and reservists is the right thing to do,” Veterans Affairs Secretary Bob McDonald announced.

Really? Then why didn’t the VA take this step long ago? These new recipients flew in Fairchild C-123 aircraft from 1969 to 1986. That’s between 46 and 29 years ago!

And if it’s the “right thing to do” for those folks then what about the countless other Vietnam era military personnel whose cries for help have been ignored even though they suffer from some or many of the 14 diseases needed to claim Agent Orange benefits?

The longstanding rule says if a veteran had boots on-the-ground in Vietnam they are automatically accepted for special benefits. All others making Agent Orange disability claims have to prove they handled the toxic chemical or worked near it.

Over the decades I have spoken to dozens of vets who suffer from an “approved” disease. Among them: Hodgkin’s, Parkinson’s, prostate or respiratory cancers, soft tissue sarcoma, diabetes mellitus (Type 2), chronic B-cell leukemia, ischemic heart disease and debilitating chloracne. Many fear they have passed their ill health on to their children and grandchildren.

These veterans are ignored, according to the few lawyers willing to challenge the VA on their behalf, because the Defense Department claims they can find no records proving they were in proximity to Agent Orange. Records were poorly kept, lost and, in at least one case, destroyed by fire.

If ever there was a deserving group of citizens with a reason to sue for redress, this is it. But, oh yeah, the U.S. government is conveniently immune from lawsuits.

These men and women who loyally served their country are convinced that the government’s strategy has been to “deny, deny, until they die,” since Agent Orange benefits already account for one out of six disability checks issued by the VA.

Take the case of Air Force Master Sergeant LeRoy Foster who spent 10 years (from 1968 to 1978) assigned to the 43rd Supply Squadron at Anderson Air Force Base in Guam. His duties included spraying herbicides around the base to get rid of weeds. In sworn testimony to the U.S. Congress, and in several affidavits to the VA, Foster swore that Agent Orange — which contains deadly TCDD dioxin — was among the defoliants he regularly loaded into his 750-gallon, trailer-mounted sprayer and dispersed base-wide. Other military personnel on Guam at the time — such as Sgt. Ralph Stanton — confirm the account and reported they were “routinely soaked” by Foster’s spray.

They gave me personal photographs from their days at Anderson AFB showing stacks of chemical barrels they swore carried the telltale Agent Orange markings. Other photos showed G.I.’s cooking on barbecue grills fashioned out of the empty drums.

A U.S. government analysis of the island’s soil confirmed the presence of Agent Orange toxins. Guam currently has an extraordinarily high cancer rate.  Yet, to this day the DOD maintains it has no records proving the military ever transported Agent Orange to that strategically important Vietnam-era island.

The Pentagon also denies Agent Orange was ever present on Okinawa, another location U.S. vets maintain was an AO hot spot where they first began to experience major health issues.

Checking in this week with Foster and Stanton I discovered both men were still alive but deathly ill. Foster is battling devastating rectal cancer.

“I am down to 150 (pounds) now,” Foster wrote. “The weight is falling off of me. I believe there is no reversing it.”

Stanton wrote of his health, “It’s kind of like a juggling act because of the number of things wrong with me.”

Hundreds of Guam- and Okinawa-based veterans have filed VA claims citing exposure to Agent Orange as the cause of their health problems, but the vast majority were rejected. And none of the 200,000 so-called “Blue Water” vets who say they were exposed to Agent Orange while serving aboard deep-water naval vessels stationed off Vietnam’s coast has been awarded special benefits.

Who can’t be happy for the 2,000 Air Force vets who were recently added to the Agent Orange rolls? But excuse me if I don’t applaud the VA’s massively delinquent action.

Our government did a terrible thing when it continued to spray millions of gallons of deadly Agent Orange long after it was clear it caused devastating health problems. But what’s worse is its obstinate refusal over the years to take full responsibility for all sick and dying veterans.

Deny, deny until they die. Shameful.

Rockland resident Diane Dimond is a syndicated columnist, author, regular guest on TV news programs, and correspondent for Newsweek/Daily Beast. Visit her at www.DianeDimond.net or reach her via email [email protected]

25/07/2015 ~ Report from an Aleppo resident.

Travelling to the other part of the city

A friendly taxi driver we know wanted to visit his house on the other side of Aleppo.  An area where the terrorists and the so-called “rebels” are in control. He had heard that the Syrian jets attacked the area and bombed a place close to his house. He went in the Eid vacation (17-19th of July) with his wife for 2 days. A trip that used to take 20-30 min from one part of the city to another, took something like 7 hours, because they had to go around 25 miles away from the city to make a U-turn and come back from another area  They had to pass through many villages under  terrorist control, till they reached the eastern part of Aleppo city, and finally their home.

They went in a bus, and he didn’t take his taxi car as terrorists might take it from him by force. He told me that the trip costs them $70-$100 over 2 days (transport, eating …etc), he was complaining because it’s a lot of money for him (it’s equal to 100-150 paid trips he could make with his taxi, he might need a week of hard working to compensate that money). They took most of their clothes that were still there, thanks to their only 2 neighbours who are still living in the building who protected their apartment. The remaining apartments and houses in the quarter had been robbed, broken into or damaged because they had been converted into nesting places for the terrorists.

Many good people are still going from one part of the city to the other. Many people didn’t deserve to be kicked out from their homes, and it wasn’t their choice to stay in one place or became refugees in another place.   Visiting each side is still possible for people, but it’s dangerous, and I won’t do it no matter what.

Citadel

My understanding is that on the 13th/14th of July, the Syrian army – who are occupying the very strategic acropolis hill of the ancient citadel of Aleppo in the middle of the ancient walled city, which is under the terrorists’ control – knew about a new tunnel that the terrorists were digging and filling up with explosives, very close to the citadel’s borders.  The Army made a counter attack and forced the terrorists out of the tunnel in a hurry.  Unfortunately the terrorists detonated these explosives before they left, and that explosion was enough to destroy part of the ramparts of the citadel. I cant help thinking if the Army hadn’t discovered this tunnel and if terrorists had drilled a longer and deeper tunnel, and armed it with 10 times more explosives, maybe the whole citadel would have collapsed.

I saw some new and clear digital images from the citadel to the old city via a friend of my friend, however these photos are dated a couple of days prior to this attack. The few buildings around the citadel, had been damaged totally or partially.

Khosrawiyya/Chusruviyya mosque, the first and oldest Ottoman mosque in Aleppo (built in 1544) had disappeared. Same for Carlton Hotel which occupied a century old building as a multi million investment. The building of the municipality or where the Mayor used to work (~75 years old?, 12 stories?) had been 80% destroyed. A Memluk or Ayyoubid period small mosque and religious school (~700-1,000 years old) had disappeared apart from its gate and its little minaret above the gate.

The Traditional/Turkish Bath of Yalbogha al-Nasseri (~700-800 years old) is still there, but some of its big domes have collapsed. Another century-old building – that I remember sitting in for 3-4 hours 15 years ago, manually copying some information to use in my graduation project – had been damaged so badly, especially its beautiful double mirrored spiral stairs at the entrance, they have disappeared without a trace.

Those buildings have all been destroyed by the same terrorist techniques, within the last 4 years of war in the city: digging tunnels, or using ancient existing networks of tunnels under the whole old city of Aleppo.  Filling them up with explosives, to bomb everything above them. While these explosions serve as a distraction, terrorist troops will attack another goal, mostly the citadel where the Syrian army is encamped. They failed so far to control it, but damage to the citadel is extensive.

Although what I mentioned above is horrible, and I know about other famous areas (markets, bazaars, mosques and churches) that have been sabotaged or destroyed; I was pleased that way more areas and buildings of the old city are still there, as I know them.  Maybe they are not that famous or masterpieces, but they are still there untouched and intact.

The war targeted the symbols of Aleppo (and the same strategy in all Syria, of course). The bazaar of Aleppo, which was there since the 4th century AD, since the Hellenistic era, is a symbol, and it had been burned totally (it took a week of continuous burning, and the burning smell reached every corner in the city).

The Great / Umayyad Mosque is a symbol, it’s almost 1000-year-old minaret had been destroyed by dynamite, and its preaching stage has been dismantled (most of it taken to Turkey), several walls and sides of it had been completely destroyed, and they turned the mosque into its original and oldest land use: an Agora (Plaza) in the Hellenistic era. A similar fate for all the other lost places and monuments.

The last symbol left of Aleppo, is the most famous one: the Citadel. I can see part of it from our balcony, but I can see it more clearly from the roof of the building. It’s still there, resisting the terrorists and their funding states. It has been badly injured,  but it’s still there,  dominating the city skyline. It’s where they found the Storm God’s Temple (~2nd millennium BC) few years ago. It withstood many invaders, including the Mongols and Crusaders. It has been damaged severely several times through history, but it has been rebuilt  over and over again, as an immortal symbol to the inhabitants of one of the oldest living cities in history. I just pray I dont live to witness its total destruction as I have seen happen to many of the surrounding buildings.

Socially

Aleppo city has shrunk to a fifth of its original size, and became so crowded with refugees that fled their areas after they fell into terrorist hands. I walk everyday in the city. I see children and girls without limbs because of a mortar over here or shrapnel over there that hit them randomly and caused them a terrible wounds and horrific memories that will never leave them. The girl who lost one leg is standing on her good leg and selling bread, while the little boy who lost one arm is selling chewing gum. Those are the “injured” people who come in the news, just numbers in one line of a report, after each attack from the terrorists. “Injured” doesn’t mean scratched or having a bleeding finger; it means someone lost his eyes or her limbs.

At nights, some areas in Ramadan were still playing live music while audiences smoke their sheesha and have cold beverages. I admired that the spirit of musicians is still over there, resisting all the harsh situation of the crisis.

On the other side, and because of the war and lack of income, many females are selling themselves for money. Prostitution has become so normal in Aleppo, and it has affected all social classes and levels.

The daily talk of every youth is emigration and leaving the city. Everyone wants to leave to Europe, mostly to Sweden, which accepted a lot of Syrian refugees so far. The usual trip starts from Syria to Turkey, then they go in boats to Greece, and that is a very dangerous trip because many have lost their lives and have drowned. Once they reach Greece, they go into a long process, and end up either in Germany or Sweden. There is a new “market” for smuggling people to Europe in such illegal ways. Everyone is believing the myths that once they reach Sweden, the government will give them free houses and 500 Euros per person.

I keep telling them that this amount of money might be a fortune in Syria, but it’s not over there, and life is not that cheap. However, they just want to  leave and work doing anything over there, because they are worried about their children’s future and safety.

What happened in Syria in general, and Aleppo in particular, is something like a great “shock” which people are still unable to believe. Between 2006-2011; Turkey, Qatar, Saudi and mostly all Europe and the U.S. opened all their relations with Syria and funded many international investments in the country. History will eventually reveal if that act was a trap or a bribe or a bad luck, to shower the people with unprecedented wealth, and take it all back within few years,  replacing that shower with mortars and shelling .

All of a sudden, malls started to spring up in big cities like mushrooms. Brand new cars and vehicles were commonplace to see in the streets, including Porsches, Lamborghini, and Ferraris. In my neighborhood and other areas, many new buildings replaced old ones. Many friends I know told me that they were paying $20,000 – $25,000 as salaries for workers in factories and contractor firms per week! Work was amazing, everyone was happy, a lot of money, wealth, and marriages and having new kids became more than normal.

My aunt’s husband, who is an architect living in Germany, came back to Syria to work on an architectural project for a Dutch firm in Damascus. All of Syria and its people were taken to the peak of wealth, and then it all collapsed as if an earthquake had destroyed everything in its path.  Unbelievable tragedy.

My brother saw his once rich and wealthy friend selling small items (plastics, gums, ..etc) on the street in front of a mosque, and he didn’t believe it. He told him that he lost everything, and he has a family to feed and to put food on the table. Turkey dismantled and stole his factory, his land had been burned, his properties had been either damaged or stolen, and he was bankrupt in no time at all.

Each day, there is new story, real tragedies, that reach my ears and heart. All of a sudden, everything ended.

Factories that cost $8 million and more had been stolen by Turkey, and the owner had a stroke and died because of such losses.

The worker who used to have his salary from an architect or an investor, became a leader of “rebellion” battalion, and now he can rape unlimited ladies, and have millions of US dollars, and came back with his militia to destroy the work of this architect or that investor, out of God knows what… Rage? Seeking lust and more wealth in shorter way? Revenge?

Another person who I met yesterday, told me that he had been kidnapped and they asked for a huge ransom that bankrupt him after he had been so wealthy. He lost his factories as well, and trade, and now he is suffering from diabetes and blood pressure and heart troubles.

You’ll see it in each person’s eyes: a type of sparkle with a slight smile, while remembering how they were so rich and wealthy, travelling to Europe 3 times a year for pleasure and tourism, having the best life ever over here in Syria, and having great dreams for their children and potential promises for building the country and modernizing their cities…. Then, all of a sudden, everything disappeared.

One old friend told me that his youngest 2 girls, who are 4 and 6 years old, didn’t know what  sea and mountains looked like until a couple of months ago when he managed to take his family for a trip to the coast and mountains. They didn’t leave their house for 4-5 years, and they only saw mountains and sea through cartoons or illustrated tales.

A neighbour’s girl came back to her parents with her 3 teenage girls after the terrorists occupied her house in another “infected” area in the city. They looted whatever they could, and didn’t leave before looting and sacking the whole house . Sabotaging could entail burning or breaking furniture, but when someone sees all his rooms and beloved furniture and family pictures stained with human faeces, that is so disgusting and humiliating. I actually heard such stories when I was still in outside Syria, but I thought it was an individual act, not a common strategy in that sector of the city, to humiliate people and push them to leave their areas. So, their daughter sold her apartment and didn’t want to see it again, and went back to her parents’. Others became refugees. Others sold their daughters to the prostitution market… stories and stories, that break my heart, and make me wonder how all that happened, and who planned for it.

I’ll leave it there. Thanks to everyone. Have a great weekend.”

Today we know that the risk of heart attack and stroke may occur early in treatment, even in the first weeks … “There is no period of use shown to be without risk,” says Judy Racoosin, M.D., M.P.H., deputy director of FDA’s Division of Anesthesia, Analgesia, and Addiction Products.

– FDA website

In case you missed it: The FDA has just issued a warning on various prescription and non-prescription drugs that Americans ingest by the boatload. As it happens, these seemingly benign pain relievers can kill you even if you scrupulously follow the recommended dosage. But don’t take my word for it. Here’s a blurb from the FDA website:

FDA is strengthening an existing warning in prescription drug labels and over-the-counter (OTC) Drug Facts labels to indicate that nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) can increase the chance of a heart attack or stroke, either of which can lead to death. Those serious side effects can occur as early as the first few weeks of using an NSAID, and the risk might rise the longer people take NSAIDs. (FDA Strengthens Warning of Heart Attack and Stroke Risk for Non-Steroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drugs, FDA website)

Notice how the FDA refers to “death” as “a serious side effect.” How’s that for an understatement? Here’s more from the FDA warning:

The OTC drugs in this group are used for the temporary relief of pain and fever. The prescription drugs in this group are used to treat several kinds of arthritis and other painful conditions. Because many prescription and OTC medicines contain NSAIDs, consumers should avoid taking multiple remedies with the same active ingredient.” The New York Times includes “Motrin IB, Aleve and Celebrex” in this group of “widely used painkillers .

Why isn’t this headline news? People take tons of these chemicals everyday thinking they’ve been thoroughly tested and are totally safe. Now we find out that’s not the case. Now we discover that you can get a heart attack or stroke “as early as the first few weeks of using” them. Doesn’t that come as a bit of a shock to you, dear reader? Doesn’t that make you suspect that the FDA is not telling the whole truth here, but is simply covering up for a profit-obsessed industry that doesn’t give a rip about its customers health?

Take a look at some of these articles I dredged up on Google News on the topic:

Doctors issue Ibuprofen toxicity warning.” Daily Telegraph. “Warning: Runners May Be At Risk From Ibuprofen Use.” Australian Marathon Review. “Ibuprofen ‘trebles the risk of a stroke’ doctors warn”, Daily Mail Online. “Ibuprofen Side Effects Land Thousands in the Hospital”, Side-Effects. com. “The FDA’s Dilemma About Ibuprofen And Cardiovascular Risk”, Forbes. “Ibuprofen Blunts Aspirin’s Cardioprotection. FDA Issues Warning”, lexi.com. “Aspirin, Ibuprofen Warnings Advised–Health: Consumers need to be told the painkillers can cause internal bleeding and kidney damage, a panel tells the FDA., LA Times.

And how reliable is FDA in determining the toxicity of these medications anyway? Wasn’t the so-called “watchdog” agency implicated in pay-to-play flap just a couple years ago? Some readers might recall another incident when the FDA was caught in a “spying program on its own scientists, lawmakers, reporters and academics” to “discourage whistleblowing.” According to Truthout’s Martha Rosenberg: “top FDA managers “committed the most outrageous misconduct by ordering, coercing and intimidating FDA physicians and scientists to recommend approval, and then retaliating when the physicians and scientists refused to go along.” Review procedures at the agency (which approves stents, breast implants, MRIs, and other devices and machinery) were so faulty that unsafe devices – including those that emit excessive radiation – were approved, charged the scientists, provoking an OSC investigation … For reporting the safety risks, the scientists became targets of the now-disclosed spy program and some lost their jobs. “…

(According to FDA drug reviewer Ronald Kavanagh) “While I was at FDA, drug reviewers were clearly told not to question drug companies and that our job was to approve drugs. We were prevented, except in rare instances, from presenting findings at advisory committees. In 2007, formal policies were instituted so that speaking in any way that could reflect poorly on the agency could result in termination. If we asked questions that could delay or prevent a drug’s approval – which of course was our job as drug reviewers – management would reprimand us, reassign us, hold secret meetings about us, and worse. Obviously in such an environment, people will self-censor.” (Former FDA Reviewer Speaks Out About Intimidation, Retaliation and Marginalizing of Safety, Martha Rosenberg, Truthout)

Nice, eh? And this is the agency that’s supposed to protect the public from risky drugs?

Right. Does the name “Vioxx” ring a bell? If not, here’s a little refresher from an article by Fred Gardener in Counterpunch titled “Merck Pays a Pittance for Mass Deaths”:

Merck has agreed to pay $950 million and has pleaded guilty to a criminal charge over the marketing and sales of the painkiller Vioxx,” the New York Times reported Nov. 23 …

The FDA had initially approved Vioxx (after a hasty “priority review”) in May, 1999 to treat osteoarthritis, acute pain, and menstrual cramps. By September 30, 2004, when Merck announced its “voluntary recall,” some 25 million Americans had been prescribed the widely hyped drug. Evidence that using Vioxx doubled a patient’s risk of suffering a heart attack or stroke —based on a review of 1.4 million patients’ records— was about to be published in Lancet by David Graham, MD, an FDA investigator. The FDA director’s office, devoted valet of Big PhRMA, had contacted the Lancet in a futile effort to stop publication of their own scientist’s findings.

Graham’s data indicate that 140,000 Americans suffered Vioxx-induced heart attacks and strokes; 55,000 died, and many more were permanently disabled. The Merck executives’ real crime was conspiracy to commit murder … An early clinical trial had alerted them to the fact that Vioxx caused coronary damage. Their response was to exclude from future trials anyone with a history of heart trouble!

Once Vioxx was approved, Merck spent more than $100 million a year advertising it … Sales hit $2.5 billion in 2003. And when brave Dr. Graham first presented his irrefragable evidence to an FDA advisory committee in February 2004, Merck argued that the “unique benefits” of Vioxx warranted its remaining on the market. The FDA committee voted 17-15 to keep it available with a black box warning. Ten of the 32 committee members had taken money from Merck, Pfizer or Novartis (which were pushing drugs similar to Vioxx) as consultants. If these MDs had declared their conflicts of interest, Vioxx would have been pulled from the market by a vote of 14-8. By buying an extra seven and a half months, Merck made an extra billion or two, and killed 6,000 more Americans.

Worldwide, Vioxx was used by 80 million people. Assuming their dosages were similar to the 1.4 million Kaiser Permanente patients whose records Dr. Graham analyzed, the death toll exceeds 165,000.” (Merck Pays a Pittance for Mass Deaths, Fred Gardner, CounterPunch)

Is that what’s going on? Is some prestigious organization like Lancet about to release a damning report on these dubious pain relievers, so the FDA is trying to get ahead of the story to save their own kiester? How much has the culture at the FDA really changed since the Vioxx scandal? Is the agency still owned and operated by the industries its supposed to regulate?

Do you really need to ask? The better question would be: What regulatory agency in the U.S. ISN’T owned corporate America? They own it all; lock, stock and barrel.

And, keep in mind, (according to Gardner) Vioxx killed over 165,000 people.

Now guess how many Merck executives went to jail?

Yep. Zero.

I’m not saying these medications don,t help to relieve chronic pain from “debilitating conditions, including osteoarthritis, rheumatoid arthritis‎, gout and other rheumatological and painful conditions”. They do. But whether they’re useful or not doesn’t change the fact that “even small amounts” of this crap can put you at risk of a heart attack or stroke. That’s what the public needs to know, and that’s the FDA’s job. Here’s an excerpt from an article in the NYT that tries to minimize the dangers:

The broader context is important. The relative risk of heart attack and stroke from the drugs is still far smaller than the risk from smoking, having uncontrolled high blood pressure or being obese.

True, and it’s probably less risky that bungee-jumping off the Empire State Building, but what difference does that make. The fact is, it can kill you, the FDA KNOWS it can kill you, and yet they haven,t done anything to counter the relentless tsunami of industry generated propaganda that has convinced the American people that these medications are risk free. Here’s more on that from the Times:

The agency said it would ask drug manufacturers to change the labels to reflect new evidence that the drugs increased the risk of heart attack and stroke soon after patients first started taking them, and that while the risk was higher for people with heart disease, it surfaced even for people who had never had heart problems.

Let me get this straight: The FDA knows that these anti inflammatories are killing people and they’re going to “ask” the drug companies if they’ll change the labels? Is this how regulation works in the US nowadays; the agencies basically have to grovel before these cutthroat industries just to get them to do the right thing?

I have a better idea: Why not just prosecute a few of these drug-pushing executives for manslaughter?
That ought to do the trick, don’t you think?

Here’s one last blurb from the Times:

“There is great concern that people think these drugs are benign, and they are probably not,” (said Dr. Peter Wilson, a professor of medicine and public health at Emory University in Atlanta) “The thought is these are good for short-term relief, probably for your younger person with no history of cardiovascular trouble.”

There it is from the horses mouth. Do not presume that these medications are safe just because they’re hyped in the media. Do your own research and decide for yourself whether the benefits outweigh the risks.

Image: Matt York/AP

A recent visit to a federal penitentiary by President Obama has prompted the United Nations to give another shot at seeking permission to visit the U.S. prison system.

When U.S. President Barack Obama visited the El Reno Correctional Facility in Oklahoma last week to check on living conditions of prisoners incarcerated there, no one in authority could prevent him from visiting the prison.

Obama, the first sitting president to visit a federal penitentiary, said “in too many places, black boys and black men, and Latino boys and Latino men experience being treated different under the law.”

The visit itself was described as “unprecedented” and “historic.”

But the United Nations has not been as lucky as the U.S. president was. Several U.N. officials, armed with mandates from the Geneva-based Human Rights Council, have been barred from U.S. penitentiaries which are routinely accused of being steeped in a culture of violence.

Back in 1998, Radhika Coomaraswamy, the U.N. Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women, was barred from visiting three Michigan prisons to probe sexual misconduct against women prisoners.

Although she had made extensive preparations to interview inmates, Michigan Governor John Engler barred Coomaraswamy on the eve of her proposed visit.

The late Senator Jesse Helms, former chairman of the powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee, blocked a proposed prison visit by Bacre Waly Ndiaye, head of the U.N. Human Rights Office in New York, who was planning to observe living conditions in some of the U.S. prisons.

Obama’s visit has prompted the United Nations to give another shot at seeking permission to visit the U.S. prison system.

The U.N. Special Rapporteur on torture, Juan E. Méndez, and the Chairperson of the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, Seong-Phil Hong, have jointly called on the U.S. government to facilitate their requests for an official visit to U.S. prisons to advance criminal justice reform.

“I look forward to working with the U.S. Department of Justice on the special study commissioned by the President on the need to regulate solitary confinement, which affects 80,000 inmates in the United States, in most cases for periods of months and years,” Méndez said early this week.

“The practice of prolonged or indefinite solitary confinement inflicts pain and suffering of a psychological nature, which is strictly prohibited by the Convention Against Torture,” he said.

“Reform along such lines will have considerable impact not only in the United States but in many countries around the world,” he noted.

Hong, who leads the U.N. Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, said a visit to federal and state institutions “will be an excellent opportunity to discuss with authorities the ‘Basic Principles and Guidelines on the right to anyone deprived of their liberty to bring proceedings before a court’, and to promote its use by the civil society.”

The Working Group has already drafted a set of Principles and Guidelines that “will help establish effective mechanisms to ensure judicial oversight over all situations of deprivation of liberty.”

The document will be considered by the Human Rights Council in September.

According to published reports, there have been charges of unhealthy living conditions and physical beatings, specifically against minorities, including African-Americans and Latin Americans, in the U.S. jail system.

Last month, the administration of New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio and the office of the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District announced far reaching reforms, including the proposed appointment of a Federal Monitor to probe continued prisoner abuses in Riker’s Island, described as the second largest jail system in the United States.

Other measures include restrictions on the use of force by prison guards and the installation of surveillance cameras.

Asked whether U.N. Special Rapporteurs (UNSRs) have previously been permitted into U.S. prisons, Tessa Murphy at Amnesty International (AI), told IPS that Juan Mendez hasn’t visited any U.S. supermaximum facility prisons in his role as UNSR.

He has, however, visited Pelican Bay in California as an expert witness in ongoing litigation there.

She also said AI has called on the U.S. State Department to extend an invite repeatedly requested by the UNSR to visit the United States to examine the use of solitary confinement in federal and state facilities, including through on-site visits.

“AI believes this external scrutiny is particularly important in the case of ‘super-maximum’ security facilities where prisoners are isolated within an already closed environment. We continue to call for this access to be provided.”

She pointed out that AI has released several reports calling for access – based on an extensive body of work on long-term solitary confinement and its damaging effects.

Antonio M. Ginatta, Advocacy Director, U.S. Programme at Human Rights Watch (HRW), told IPS it is a momentous time in the United States as it re-examines and moves to reform its criminal justice system.

President Obama himself just spoke to the need for this reform, and specifically highlighted the harms caused by solitary confinement.

“Yet the State Department continues to fail to allow the Special Rapporteur on torture access to U.S. confinement facilities to review their use of solitary confinement. It’s as if they missed the President’s speech,” he said.

Ginatta said an invitation to the Special Rapporteur is years overdue.

“In light of the president’s speech and his visit to the El Reno prison, the U.S. Department of State should change course and immediately extend an unrestricted invitation to Special Rapporteur Mendez and the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention,” he declared.

After his prison visit, Obama said: “My goal is that we start seeing some improvements at the federal level and that we’re then able to see states across the country pick up the baton, and there are already some states that leading the way in both sentencing reform as well as prison reform and make sure that we’re seeing what works and build off that.”

Providing details of its meetings with U.S. State Department officials, Amnesty International told IPS that in February it met with Deputy Assistant Secretary Scott Busby in the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor and Director William Mozdzierz in the Bureau of International Organization Affairs, Human Rights and Humanitarian Affairs to emphasise the importance of facilitating external scrutiny by the SRT as well as to hand over a petition to the State Department (with over 20,000 signatures, on the same issue.)

AI said SRT Mendez has provided them with a list of prisons he wishes to visit, including in Louisiana, California, Arizona, Pennsylvania, New York, and the Federal Bureau of Prisons.

Secretary Mozdzierz, stressed to AI that the State Department has a strong national interest in ensuring that the United States lives up to international treaty obligations.

Deputy Assistant Secretary Scott Busby emphasised how committed the U.S. government is in providing access for the SRT.

However, Secretary Mozdzierz emphasised that access to state prisons is dependent on the individual governors and state Attorney Generals being amenable, and there are no mechanisms by which the State Department can ensure a positive response.

He also made it clear that he would stress to state authorities the importance of facilitating the SRT’s requests. Both Directors acknowledged that BOP ADX prison in Colorado was ‘unavailable’ to SRT Mendez.

SRT Mendez, who met with AI prior to the meetings above, asked AI to seek an explanation for the reason that he had been told in correspondence with State Department that federal prisons were “unavailable” to him.

Secretary Mozdzierz confirmed that the reason federal prisons were “unavailable” to the SRT was because of ongoing litigation in ADX; Cunningham V BOP, which has been in a structured settlement process since last year.

Image: A US-made AGM-154 air-to-ground missile being brought to the flight deck of an aircraft carrier

The US Defense Department has awarded major weapons maker Raytheon to provide the Persian Gulf Kingdom of Saudi Arabia with 355 air-to-ground missiles amid its persisting campaign of aerial strikes against civilian and economic targets in neighboring Yemen.

According to a Pentagon announcement cited Saturday by the Russia-based Sputnik News, in a $180-million contract assigned to the arms manufacturer, Raytheon is to deliver the AGM-154 series missiles to the Saudi regime in a move clearly regarded as a bid to support the aerial strikes against Yemen.

The AGM-154 is described as a Global Positioning System and infrared guided air-to-ground missile with stand-off capability.

The contract, the report adds, also includes the delivery of 200 AGM-154C-1 missiles to the US Navy.

Washington, the report adds, has justified the missile sales to Riyadh as part of an agreement by Persian Gulf Arab dictatorships to expand their military cooperation with Washington amid “concerns” over the recent nuclear talks conclusion with Iran as well as the Islamic Republic’s persisting influence as a major power and the most stable nation in the strategic region.

Meanwhile, the oil-rich Saudi Arabia, widely regarded as a US client in the Persian Gulf region, has been among the world’s largest importers of lethal weaponry over the years and has significantly expanded its purchase of armaments in recent months, becoming the world’s top importer in 2015 so far.

This is while Riyadh signed major arms deals worth billions of dollars with France last month for the purchase of patrol ships, border guard helicopters and aircraft as it escalated its war effort against Yemen.

The announcement of the deals came during a visit by Saudi Deputy Crown Prince and Defense Minister Mohammed bin Salman bin Abdul Aziz Al Saud to Paris.

French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius defended the selling of French patrol boats to Riyadh, claiming that they are meant “to enhance the capability of the Saudi Coast Guard, which is today facing growing threats.”

Saudi Arabia has been carrying out airstrikes against Yemen since March 26 without a UN mandate. The strikes are meant to undermine the Houthi Ansarullah movement and restore power to fugitive former President Abd Rabbuh Mansour Hadi, a staunch ally of the Al Saud regime.

Thousands have been killed and at least 11,000 more injured in the airstrikes.

The US National Archives has finally released pictures showing the tense atmosphere which gripped the White House on September 11, 2001, following the attacks on New York City’s World Trade Center.

A Freedom of Information Act request filed by coordinating producer for Kirk Documentary Group Colette Neirouz Hanna was acknowledged by the US National Archives on Friday. The photos of the scenes which evolved after US senior officials learned about the terror attacks have been made public nearly fourteen years later.

© The U.S. National Archives / Flickr

In the pictures, the faces of Vice President Cheney, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice and Deputy Chief of Staff Joshua Bolten reveal shock and grief.

© The U.S. National Archives, Flickr

The never-before-released photograph was taken in the President’s Emergency Operations Center (PEOC), where Vice President Cheney gathered with senior staff to discuss the unfolding situation.

© The U.S. National Archives, Flickr

The pictures, taken by the vice president’s staff photographer, show Dick Cheney in his office captivated by the tragedy, which was unfolding live on TV.

© The U.S. National Archives, Flickr

President George W. Bush made his way to a secure bunker buried beneath the East Wing of the White House for a briefing after cutting short his visit to a Florida school. It was in the bunker that he made preparations for addressing the nation. 

© The U.S. National Archives, Flickr

PEOC was constructed to withstand a nuclear hit, and during the first hours after the attacks, senior staff were taken there to monitor all the developments from underground.

© The U.S. National Archives, Flickr

While the Bush administration responded to the tragedy, Cheney appeared deep in thought.

© The U.S. National Archives, Flickr

On September 11, 2001, almost 3,000 people died in a series of suicide terrorist attacks, conducted by members of the international terrorist group Al-Qaeda, who hijacked four airplanes and then crashed them into the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York, the Pentagon in Virginia and a field in Shanksville.

After over a year of FALSE reports that the HAARP IRI antenna array in Gakona Alaska was going to be “torn down”, after two years of reports that it was going to be “closed down”, we now have word that the facility has actually been under management by the Air Force Research Laboratories for the past 2 years. 

Now, ownership will be transferred to the University of Alaska for continued research going forward.  New ownership of the HAARP IRI facility goes into effect on August 11, 2015.

This new report refutes unsubstantiated reports to the effect that the HAARP Facility was slated to be “demolished”.

Mainstream media video report below:

Global Research has provided extensive coverage of the HAARP facility including its military applications.

 For a review of Global Research article on HAARP click here

For a mainstream perspective, see annex below

ANNEX 

News release July 14, 2015:

Alaska Military Site That Has Fueled Conspiracy Theories Will Be Transferred to Civilian Operators

https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/07/13/military-site-center-conspiracy-will-transferred-civilian-operators/

A charity campaigning on behalf of the families of those who have died in police custody in the U.K. are warningthat the latest independent investigation could be just another PR exercise.

The probe was announced hours after statistics from the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) revealed that such deaths have reached a four-year high. Seventeen people have died in or following detention by police in 2014-15, an increase of six from the previous year and the highest since 2010-11, when 21 people died.

On top of these figures, the campaigning charity INQUEST has also pointed to separate, troubling findings revealing that 250 young people aged between 18-24 committed suicide in custody between 2010-2015.

Home Secretary Teresa May launched the investigation on Thursday afternoon after a series of high profile cases and allegations of wrongdoing. A meeting with INQUEST and the families of Sean Rigg andOlaseni Lewis, who both died after being restrained by police officers, prompted the Home Secretary to declare a desire to “solve  significant problems for those fighting for justice following the deaths of relatives.”

Responding to the launching of the review, Deborah Coles, Co-Director of INQUEST, said, “For the review to be effective bereaved families, their lawyers and INQUEST will need to play an integral role in the review, and the Reviewer will need to take full account of their views and experiences. It must also address why so many previous recommendations from reviews, inquiries and inquests have not been acted upon. It is too early to tell if this is more about a public relations exercise than a real attempt to bring about effective systemic change and the necessary accountability of police officers.”

In her blog for the Huffington Post, Marcia Riggs, mental health activist and Sean Rigg’s sister, described her brother’s treatment in custody. “The cops treat the mentally ill like criminals. Even in patient wards, Tasers and prolonged prone restraint are used to subdue patients. The latter more than minimally contributed to Sean’s death, the inquest jury found. As his body laid lifeless and unresponsive, the custody sergeant insisted he was ‘feigning unconsciousness’. [sic] Sean was assumed guilty, even in his death.”

In their tireless campaigning to change policies and practices related to deaths in custody in the U.K., INQUEST has collated shocking figures revealing over 4,500 deaths in prison and police custody in England and Wales between 1990 and 2013.  The investigation will examine the procedures and processes surrounding such incidents, including the events leading up to them, the immediate aftermath, and through to the conclusion of investigations.

The charity describes patterns of institutionalised reluctance to approach custody deaths as potential homicides, even where there have been systemic failings and gross negligence. Many of the deaths also raise serious issues about a failure to care for the vulnerable in a system where institutional violence, racism, inhumane treatment and abuse of human rights are recurrent themes.

In response to the announcement of the review, Ajibola Lewis, mother of Olaseni Lewis, said, “For our part, we are surprised that the proposed review, its purpose and its scope is being announced without any prior consultation with us or other families in our position.  If the review is going to be more than an exercise in public relations, and if it is to enjoy the confidence of families in our position, it must find a meaningful way to learn from and reflect our experiences. We find deep seated and repeated failures on the part of all of the agencies of the state to whom we look to take responsibility to investigate and prevent such deaths, including those concerned within the senior management of our police service, the Independent Police Complaints Commission, the Crown Prosecution Service and the Coroners Courts.”

She added, “…we find that these agencies of the state do not seem to understand that if they listen to us, if they enable us to take part properly in the process, they would allow us to help them achieve a more effective investigative process and more effective outcomes – that this would be in the best interests of all concerned, families as well as the officers whose actions resulted in the deaths of our loved ones.”

Humanitarian crisis continues with no end in sight as forces armed and supported by the United States continue to terrorize the people of Yemen

Here we go again. A drifter and lone wolf is somehow off his meds. His anger boils over while he has access to guns. He then goes on a shooting spree killing innocents who just happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

How many times will the media avoid the most important questions in these recurring tragedies?

First, was John Russell Houser on or off his meds at the time of the shooting in the movie theater in Lafayette, Louisiana? If he was on them, what exactly was he taking? Was he also drinking at the same time? Was he taking other prescriptions simultaneously?

If he was not taking his prescribed psychoactive medications, were there withdrawal effects he may have been experiencing from stopping them? It’s clear from the news report that the family had a difficult time keeping him on his meds.

Since bipolar disorder can be very difficult to manage when not on the appropriate medication, the role that the psychiatric condition played is also a major unknown in this tragic episode.

What’s the point?

Powerful psychotropic drugs can have some serious side effects. The pharmaceutical companies rarely admit to some of the most radical psychological repercussions because of the obvious liability they would sustain, both legal and financial.

The same Big Pharma corporations are also quite experienced at avoiding any and all responsibility for any detrimental physical outcomes or aberrant psychological behavior associated with their drug products.

The current case in LA is very similar to the many that have come before, as follows:

The picture that emerged Friday of the gunman who killed two women and wounded nine other people in a theater here was one filled with instability and rage, from a history of mental illness, to vandalizing and booby-trapping a house, to venting his fury at women’s rights, minorities and liberals. [1]

The obvious observation is that when powerful psych meds are thrown in this mix of mental illness, and their use is not closely monitored, anything can happen depending on the patient’s reaction to the drugs or unadvised termination of the medication.

A Disproportionate Number of Mass Murderers have Been on Psych Meds, or Abruptly Stopped Taking Them

Many unsupervised patients simply stop taking their medication because of how it affects them. In some cases, the physical side effects are too much to bear. In others, the psychological symptoms are intolerable. Hence, they feel there is no way out and simply stop taking the meds out of desperation. This was the case with Batman shooter James Holmes, among others.

There are also those instances where the disturbed individual associates their prescription meds with the “system.” The doctor with the white coat is the representative of the system whom they may no longer trust. Their growing paranoia, which is sometimes totally justified, can lead to an abrupt discontinuation of the needed medication.

Why Does The Mainstream Media (MSM) Never Report the Details Surrounding the Medication Issue?

What is particularly curious is how the MSM strictly avoids coverage of this critical link to violent behavior. It’s as though their many Big Pharma sponsors demand that the MSM stay away from making any correlations between gun-related deaths and their pharmaceutical medications. The threat of huge losses in advertising revenues is always a looming risk.

Consequently, each of these successive shooters has escaped the necessary scrutiny that might alert the “system” of the next rogue gunman. The MSM reflexively blames the problem on the availability of guns just as the government always does. In this way they function as a tag team attempting at every turn to repeal the Second Amendment.

Then there is the problem of what the MSM does focus on in their reports

“Mr. Houser believed that women should not work outside their homes, and ‘had a lot of hostility toward abortion clinics,’ Mr. Floyd said. ‘He was the sort of person who believed “that all the trouble started when they took Bibles out of school and stopped prayer.’” [1]

What the excerpt from the New York Times article reveals is their subtle agenda linking a raging murderer to pro-life groups that oppose abortion, as well as to devout Christians who disagree with the removal of the Holy Bible and prayer from schools. The same folks also tend to be much more conservative in their politics, as well as traditional in their values and principles.

Conclusion

The relentless secularization of American society has created intensifying tensions around religion and race, socio-economic class, and gender. It manifests in many different ways and now touches every U.S. citizen. The resulting polarity has cultivated an environment that breeds much anger and frustration. People everywhere are now on edge and tempers are quick to explode.

Unfortunately, there are those like Mr. Houser who reach a breaking point. The real question is: What exactly are all of those other forces and sometimes hidden influences that pushed him to snap in such an anti-social way.

Sources

[1] The New York Times

Reports indicate Washington intends releasing Pollard as a sop to Israel – perhaps a teaspoon of sugar to help the Iran nuclear deal go down, something Israeli hardliners running things won’t accept and are going all-out to undermine.

In 1985, Pollard was arrested, pled guilty in 1986, then sentenced in 1987 on spying for Israel charges while working as a civilian intelligence analyst for the Naval Intelligence Support Center (NISC) and Navy human intelligence (HUMINT) – part of the Navy Field Operational Intelligence Office (NFOIO), a branch of Naval Intelligence Command (NIC).

He’s the only American ever sentenced to life imprisonment for passing classified information to an ally. Customary punishment is 10 years except in cases involving a US agent’s death – or others with regard to “nuclear weaponry…war plans, communications intelligence or cryptographic information.”

According to a CIA 1987 damage assessment, Pollard wasn’t asked to spy on US military activities – just collect US information on Arab states, Soviet Russia and Pakistan, especially their key weapons systems.

Israelis asked for a signals intelligence manual. They wanted it to monitor Soviet advisers in Syria.

The CIA said Israel “never expressed interest in US military activities, plans, capabilities or equipment.”

Pollard voluntarily supplied more than his handlers requested – over 1,500 daily Middle East and North Africa Summar(ies) (MENAS), Mediterranean Littoral Intelligence Summar(ies) (MELOS), Indian Ocean Littoral Intelligence Summar(ies), plus over 800 other stolen documents.

The CIA suggested his personal life and professional behavior warranted alerting his superiors about a potential security risk. US officials said documents he stole would have measured 6 x 6 feet wide and 10 feet tall – a huge amount of information Israel found invaluable. It didn’t admit paying Pollard for services rendered until 1998.

It made repeated attempts to secure his release – unsuccessful until perhaps now. It granted Pollard citizenship in 1995 – what’s near automatically afforded all Jews wishing to emigrate.

Reports suggest Pollard could be free in weeks – or possibly be delayed until after his scheduled November parole hearing. His last one was in early July. His lawyer, Eliot Lauer, said he’s gotten no parole commission feedback so far.

US and Israeli officials are largely tight-lipped on what may or may not be planned. A White House spokesperson referred questions to the Justice Department. Its spokesperson declined to comment – as did Mark Regev representing Netanyahu.

US sentencing laws require parole consideration for convicted felons. Many are turned down – especially individuals authorities want kept locked up.

Obama commented on Pollard’s case last year, saying:

“I have no plans for releasing Jonathan Pollard immediately, but what I am going to be doing is to make sure that he, like every other American who’s been sentenced, is accorded the same kinds of review and the same examination of the equities that any other individual would provide.”

Release ahead of a parole hearing usually requires special intervention or deteriorating health. Pollard has numerous ailments, perhaps sufficient reason to release him.

At the same time, his case is so high-profile, freeing him will require federal authorization. Parole board members will rubber-stamp their decision.

When sentenced, Reagan Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger said it was hard imagining “greater harm to national security than that caused by” Pollard – hyperbole perhaps because he stole plenty before getting caught.

Throughout his imprisonment, Justice Department, CIA and FBI officials opposed releasing him. His chance now is much greater than earlier – especially after over three decades in prison.

Pollard is a national hero in Israel. When US officials visit, “Free Pollard” signs line their motorcade route. They’re pressed to get him released.

Former Israeli ambassador to Washington, Michael Oren said his release if forthcoming “will not change in any way our position on the nuclear deal.”

Pollard claimed he spied out of love for Israel. He was well paid for his efforts. If Obama wants him released, he’ll be freed – not without flack from bipartisan hardliners like Senator/Republican presidential aspirant Lindsey Graham saying his release “would be nothing more than a pathetic attempt by a weak administration to curry favor with our Israeli allies who across the board reject this dangerous deal with Iran.”

Spokesman for former senator/2nd time presidential aspirant Rick Santorum said releasing Pollard won’t “compensate for the tremendous damage the Obama administration has done to Israeli-American relations and the damage the Iran deal poses.’’

If released as expected, Pollard will likely emigrate to Israel. He’ll get considerable help to build a new life in a welcoming environment.

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. 

Author’s Note

This article first published in July 2008 raises important issues which are relevant to the current situation.

What is Washington’s agenda pending a final acceptance of the Iran nuclear deal? 

War on Iran (in support of Israel) or the acquisition of Iran’s oil wealth through “foreign investment” in key areas of the Iranian economy?

It is worth noting that already in 2008, Iran had contemplated a divestment program which was to transfer the ownership of State assets into private hands including foreign capital.  

In response to this initiative, the US Congress had called for the imposition of economic sanctions.

Under the threat of war, was  this 2008 initiative by Tehran to privatize key industries intended to meet the demands of the Washington?  

The issue of investing in Iran is currently (in the post-sanctions era) is a talking point on Wall Street, and among the Texas oil conglomerates.

One can assume that if the normalization of US-Iran relations goes ahead, privatization and foreign investment in Iran’s oil economy will be part of that process.

The following is what I wrote seven years ago in relation to Tehran’s State divestment program, which was applauded by the IMF.  

*     *     *

Iran: War or Privatization: All Out War or “Economic Conquest”?

by Michel Chossudovsky

July 4, 2008

Is the war against Iran on hold?

Tehran is to allow foreign investors, in what might be interpreted as an overture to the West, to acquire full ownership of Iran’s State enterprises in the context of a far-reaching “free market” style privatization program.

With the price of crude oil at 140 dollars a barrel, the Iranian State is not in a financial straightjacket as in the case of most indebted developing countries, obliged by their creditors to sell their State assets to pay off a mounting external debt.

What are the political motivations behind this measure? And why Now?

Several Western companies have already been approached. Tehran will allow foreign capital  “to purchase unlimited shares of state-run enterprises which are in the process of being sold off”.

While Iran’s privatization program was launched during the government of Mohammed Khatami  in the late 1990s, the recent sell-off of shares in key state enterprises points to a new economic design. The underlying measure is far-reaching. It goes beyond the prevailing privatization framework applied in several developing countries within America’s sphere of influence:

“The move is designed to attract greater foreign investment and is part of the country’s sweeping economic liberalization program.

Iran will no longer make a distinction between domestic and foreign firms that wish to purchase state-run companies as long as the combined foreign ownership in any particular industry does not exceed 35%. … As an example, a foreign firm may purchase an Iranian steel company but it would not be allowed to buy every business enterprise in Iran’s steel industry.

Among the new incentive measures announced, foreign firms may also transfer their annual profit from their Iranian company out of the country in any currency they wish.” (Iran to Allow 100% Foreign Ownership, Press TV, June 30, 2008)

It is important to carefully analyze this decision. The timing of the announcement by Iran’s Privatization Organization (IPO) coincides with mounting US-Israeli threats to wage an all out war against Iran.

Moreover, the divestment program is compliant with the demands of the “Washington Consensus”. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has confirmed, with some reservations, that Tehran is committed to a “continued transition toward a viable and efficient market economy” while also implying .that the building of “investor confidence” requires an acceleration of  the privatization program.

In its May 2008 Review (Art. 4 Consultations), the IMF praised Tehran for its divestment program, which essentially transfers the ownership of State assets into private hands, while also underscoring that the program was being carried out in a speedily and efficient fashion.

Under the threat of war, is this renewed initiative by Tehran to privatize key industries intended to meet the demands of the Bush Administration?

The Bretton Woods institutions are known to directly serve US interests. They are not only in liaison with Wall Street and the US Treasury, they are also in contact with the US State Department, the Pentagon and NATO. The IMF-World Bank are often consulted prior to the onslaught of a major war. In the war’s aftermath, they are involved in providing “post conflict reconstruction” loans.  In this regard, the World Bank is a key player in channelling “foreign aid” to both Iraq and Afghanistan.

The privatization measures suggest that Iran is prepared to allow foreign capital to gain control over important key sectors of the Iranian economy.

According to the chairman of the Iranian Privatization Organization (IPO) Gholamreza Kord-Zanganeh some 230 state-run companies are slated to be privatized by end of the Iranian year (March 2009). The shares of some 177 State companies were offered on the Tehran Stock Exchange in the last Iranian year (ending March 2008).

Already the state-owned Telecommunication Company of Iran (TCI) has indicated that “a number of foreign telcos have expressed an interest in acquiring its shares when the government sells off part of its interest in a month’s time. Local press reports did not name the potential investors. TCI has a monopoly in Iran’s fixed line market and is also the country’s largest cellular operator via its subsidiary MCI.” France’s Alcatel, the MTN Group of South Africa and Germany’s Siemens already have sizeable interests in Iran’s telecom industry.

Other key sectors of the economy including aluminum, copper, the iron and steel industry have recently been put up for privatization, with the shares of State companies floated on the Tehran Stock Exchange (TSE)

More than Meets the Eye

Is this decision by Tehran to implement a far-reaching privatization program, in any way connected with continuous US saber rattling and diplomatic arm twisting?

At first sight it appears that Tehran is caving into Washington’s demands so as to avoid an all out war.

Iran’s assets would be handed over on a silver platter to Western foreign investors, without the need for America to conquer new economic frontiers through military means?

But there is more than meets the eye.

Washington has no interest in the imposition of a privatization program on Iran, as an “alternative” to an all out war. In fact quite the opposite. There are indications that the Bush adminstration’s main objective is to stall the privatization program.

Rather than being applauded by Washington as a move in the right direction, Tehran’s privatization program coincides with the launching (May 2008) of a far-reaching resolution in the US Congress (H.CON. RES 362), calling for the imposition of Worldwide financial sanctions directed against Iran:

“[H. CON. RES. 362] urges the President, in the strongest of terms, to immediately use his existing authority to impose sanctions on the Central Bank of Iran, … international banks which continue to conduct financial transactions with proscribed Iranian banks; … energy companies that have invested $20,000,000 or more in the Iranian petroleum or natural gas sector in any given year since the enactment of the Iran Sanctions Act of 1996; and all companies which continue to do business with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.” (See full text of H.CON RES 362) (emphasis added)

The resolution further demands that “the President initiate an international effort to immediately and dramatically increase the economic, political, and diplomatic pressure on Iran …. prohibiting the export to Iran of all refined petroleum products; imposing stringent inspection requirements on all persons, vehicles, ships, planes, trains, and cargo entering or departing Iran; and prohibiting the international movement of all Iranian officials not involved in negotiating the suspension of Iran’s nuclear program.”(emphasis added)

Were these economic sanctions to be carried out and enforced, they would paralyze trade and monetary transactions. Needless to say they would also undermine Iran’s privatization program and foreclose the transfer of Iranian State assets into foreign hands.

Economic Warfare

Now why on earth would the Bush administration be opposed to the adoption of a neoliberal-style divestment program, which would strip the Islamic Republic of some of its most profitable assets?

If “economic conquest” is the ultimate objective of a profit driven military agenda, what then is the purpose of bombing Iran, when Iran actually accepts to hand over its assets at rock-bottom prices to foreign investors, in much the same way as in other compliant developing countries including Indonesia, the Philippines, Brazil,  etc?

The largest foreign investors in Iran are China and Russia.

While US companies are notoriously absent from the list of foreign direct investors, Germany, Italy and Japan have significant investment interests in oil and gas, the petrochemical industry, power generation and construction as well as in banking. Together with China and Russia, they are the main beneficiaries of the privatization program.

One of the main objectives of the proposed economic sanctions under H. RES CON 362 is to prevent foreign companies (including those from the European Union and Japan) , from acquiring a greater stake in the Iranian economy under Tehran’s divestment program.

Other countries with major foreign investment interests in Iran include France, India, Norway, South Korea, Sweden and Switzerland. Sweden’s Svedala Industri has major interests in Iran’s copper mines.

France, Japan and Korea have interests in the automobile industry, in the form of licensing agreements with Iranian auto manufacturers.

Italy’s ENI Oil Company is involved in the development of phases 4 and 5 of the South Pars oil field amounting to 3.8 billion dollars.(See Iranian Privatisation Organization, 2008 report) Total and the Anglo-Dutch conglomerate Shell are involved in natural gas.

While the privatization process does not allow for the divestment of Iran’s State oil company, it creates an environment which favors foreign investment by a number of countries including China, Russia, Italy, Malaysia, etc. in oil refinery, the petrochemical industry, the oil services economy as well as oil and gas infrastructure including exploration and oil-gas pipelines.

While several US corporations are (unofficially) conducting business in Iran, the US trade sanctions regime (renewed under the Bush adminstration) outlaws US  citizens and companies from doing business in Iran. In other words, US corporations would not be allowed to acquire Iranian State assets under the privatisation program unless the US trade sanctions regime were to be lifted.

Moreover, all foreign firms are treated on an equal footing. There is no preferential treatment for US companies, no corrupt colonial style arrangement as in war-torn Iraq, which favors the outright transfer of ownership and control of entire sectors of the national economy to a handful of US corporations.

In other words, Tehran’s privatization program does not serve US economic and strategic interests. It tends to favor countries which have longstanding trade and investment relations with the Islamic Republic.

It favors Chinese, Russian, European and Japanese investors at the expense of the USA.

It undermines and weakens American hegemony. It goes against Washington’s design to foster a “unipolar” New World Order through both economic and military means.

And that is why Washington wants to shunt this program through a Worldwide economic sanctions regime which would, if implemented, paralyze trade, investment and monetary flows with Iran.

The proposed economic sanctions’ regime under H. CON 362 is intended to isolate Iran and prevent the transfer of Iranian assets into the hands of competing economic powers including China, Russia, the European Union and Japan.  It is tantamount to a declaration of war.

In a bitter irony, H CON 362 serves to undermine the economic interests of several of America’s allies. The Resolution would prevent them from positioning themselves in the Middle East, despite the fact that these allies (e.g. France and Germany) are also involved through NATO in the planning of the war on Iran.

War and Financial Manipulation

The Bush administration has opted for an all out war on Iran in alliance with Israel, with a view to establishing an exclusive American sphere of influence in the Middle East.

A US-Israel sponsored military operation directed against Iran, would largely backlash on the economic and financial interests of several of America’s allies, including Germany, Italy, France, and Japan.

More generally, a war on Iran would hit corporate interests involved in the civilian economy as opposed to those more directly linked to the military industrial complex and the war economy. It would undermine local and regional economies, the consumer manufacturing and services economy, the automobile industry, the airlines, the tourist and leisure economy, etc.

Moreover, an all out war feeds the profit driven agenda of global banking, including the institutional speculators in the energy market, the powerful Anglo-American oil giants and America’s weapons producers, the big five defense contractors plus British Aerospace Systems Corporation, which play a major role in the formulation of US foreign policy and the Pentagon’s military agenda, not to mention the gamut of mercenary companies and military contractors.

A small number of global corporations and financial institutions feed on war and destruction to the detriment of  important sectors of economic activity, Broadly speaking, the bulk of the civilian economy is threatened.

What we are dealing with are conflicts and rivalries within the upper echelons of the global capitalist system, largely opposing those corporate players which have a direct interest in the war to the broader capitalist economy which ultimately depends on the continued development of civilian consumer and investment demand.

These vested interests in a profit driven war also feed on economic recession and financial dislocation. The process of economic collapse which results, for instance, from the speculative hikes in oil and food prices, triggers bankruptcies on a large scale, which ultimately enable a handful of global corporations and financial institutions to “pick up the pieces” and consolidate their global control over the real economy as well as over the international monetary system.

Financial manipulation is intimately related to military decision-making. Major banks and financial institutions have links to the military and intelligence apparatus. Advanced knowledge or inside information by these institutional speculators regarding specific “false flag” terrorist attacks, or military operations in the Middle East is the source of tremendous speculative gains.

Both the war agenda and the proposed economic sanctions regime trigger, quite deliberately, a global atmosphere of insecurity and economic chaos.

In turn, the institutional speculators in London, Chicago and New York not only feed on economic chaos and uncertainty, their manipulative actions in the energy and commodity markets contribute to spearheading large sectors of the civilian economy into bankruptcy.

The economic and financial dislocations resulting from the hikes in the prices of crude oil and food staples are the source of financial gains by a handful of global actors. Speculators are not concerned with the far-reaching consequences of a broader Middle East war, which could evolve into a World War Three scenario.

The pro-Israeli lobby in the US indirectly serves these powerful financial interests.  In the current context, Israel is an ally with significant military capabilities which serves America’s broader objective in the Middle East. Washington, however, has little concern for the security of Israel, which in the case of a war on Iran would be the first target of retaliatory military action by Tehran.

The broader US objective consists in establishing, through military and economic means, an exclusive US sphere of influence throughout the Middle East.

No. The War on Iran is Not On Hold.

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

This article was originally published  by GR in May 2003 in the wake of the US-NATO led invasion of Iraq.

“It is easy. All you have to do is tell the people they are being attacked, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger.” -Hermann Goering

Genocide used to be a crime without a name. Although the most heinous of all crimes, the concept was not introduced into international language until after World War 2. Until then, military invasion and destruction of other peoples and cultures masqueraded under such slogans as progress and spreading civilisation.

I was shocked many years ago when I heard Noam Chomsky say that genocide was America’s defining political tradition. Then I realised that the United States (like Canada to a much lesser extent) was based on destroying the lives and cultures of the 25 million or so first peoples who had lived in America for millennia. In the case of the U.S., the story continued with the forcible seizure of Texas in 1845 from Mexican farmers and indigenous peoples, and Nevada, New Mexico, Arizona, California and other state territories shortly afterward in 1849. U.S. troops under the slave-owning General Zachary Taylor unilaterally invaded its southern neighbour under the false pretext of avenging American blood, and General Taylor soon vaulted into the White House as a presidential war hero. Even though a young Congressman, Abraham Lincoln, exposed the pretext, and connected it to a Anglo-British business strategy to impose free trade on the regions by financing the prior president, James Polk, into the White House as General Taylor’s commander.

In 1898, once again under the false pretext of self-defence (when the U.S.S. Maine sank from an internal explosion), the Philippines, Guam, Cuba in part, and Puerto Rico were seized from their peoples by another unilaterally provoked war. This war of aggression and occupation, like so many U.S. interventions since, was preceded by a media campaign of whipping up public hysteria and war fever. Media baron Randolf Hearst made the famous remark, “You furnish the pictures, I’ll furnish the war,” not unlike the U.S. cable and network media daily drum-beat in recent months for war on Iraq. War is a major violence entertainment, and in close partnership with the Pentagon it can go on for months to divert the masses.

The tradition of misleading the American people by false pretexts for aggressive wars is an old one in U.S. history, but since the fascist interregnum war criminal invasions of other countries have not been accepted by public opinion. The U.S. under the control of the corporate war party now seeks to reverse this trend. By dint of the permitted 9-11 plane attacks on the World Trade Centre, an open presidential blank-cheque has been granted by Congress for attacking third-world countries so as to occupy their countries and control their resources. The now known blueprint of Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz and others written in September of 2001 as the Project for the New American Century is clear on the plan to shape the international security order in line with American principles and interests. Armed domination of the Gulf region transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein.

Oil looms large in this plan to rule the world for American interests. According to a report sponsored by oil corporations from the Washington Centre for Strategic and International Studies, oil is no longer a commodity to be bought and sold within the confines of the traditional supply and demand balances, but a determinant of national security and international power.

The U.S. state military invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq in under two years are expressions of this new supra-market policy. Before we pass over the pattern of facts at work as merely realpolitik, we should note that this armed-state project resembles fascism: not only in war criminal attacks on other countries in violation of international law, but in repudiating market relations to seize others valuable goods by armed force.

Facing Facts

As demagogic glorification of genocidal invasion once again escapes naming by a flood of falsehoods and projections onto the latest U.S. Enemy, we need to remind ourselves of facts that no mass medium once discussed [the period] from October of 2002 to March of 2003. As we lay bare the ruling deceptions here, we should keep in mind the unifying principle which is not seen. U.S. state justifications always project onto the designated Enemy what the U.S. security state is doing itself. If it loudly condemns another weaker states weapons of mass destruction, chemical and biological weapons, violation of international laws, or attempts to impose its will on the world by terror, then we can deduce that this is exactly what the U.S. is planning more of, but is diverting attention from by accusing others. Test this underlying principle with every international accusation the U.S. makes next, and you will find that it is invariable confirmed.

The tactic works wonderfully with a lapdog press and political class who are excited into a kind of collective delirium by choral denunciations of the foreign demon who is the designated Enemy of the Day. (I will explain why in my analysis ahead of the ruling group-mind.) So exactly does the U.S. security state project its own violent policies onto others that one can tell what vicious policy it is about to escalate next by by the intensity with which the Other is accused of the crime. This is how we can best understand the endless accusation of the Soviet Union of a plot to rule the worldbefore 1991, and how we can best make sense of the official U.S. fixation on global terrorism today. Both predications disclose the inner logic of the U.S. war states own pattern of behaviour. I sometimes wonder whether this is a deliberate strategic tactic of diversion, or a structure of paranoid delusion built into the mind-set of U.S. culture.

Let us in this light examine the principal claims and concealments of the Bush Jr. administration in its pursuit of Iraq:

The Bush administration has tirelessly claimed to be upholding international law in its pressuring of the Security Council into action regarding Iraq’s violation of U.N. resolutions and international law. In fact, since its entry into office the Bush Jr. administration has sabotaged laws, covenants and monitoring protocols to protect individuals and peoples against nuclear weapons, biological weapons, chemical weapons, landmines, small arms, international ballistic missiles, torture, racism, discrimination against women, arbitrary seizure and imprisonment, mistreatment of prisoners, crimes against humanity and war crimes, military weather distortions, biodiversity loss, and international climate destabilisation. Its latest overriding of international law and due process has been the forcible usurpation of the Security Council inspections of Iraq. No rogue state in modern history has remotely matched this continuous and systematic violation of international law and procedures to implement international law.

The Bush administration’s preparation and threat of military invasion against a country thousands of miles from its borders is unequivocally a war crime under international law, including Principles 1, 2 and 6(a)1of the Nuremberg Charter and Article 54 of the Geneva Convention. The fact that this war crime of preparing for and planning an invasion of Iraq by U.S.-led armed forces whatever the UN decides has never been openly discussed promoted the very aggression which the U.N. is constituted to prevent.

It is not as if there were any doubt about the Bush administration’s clear intention to put itself above the law as it incessantly accused Iraq of doing so. It declared from the beginning that it would go it alone with whoever was willing, and yet not a word of this declared threat to international peace and security issued from any U.N. ambassador, including Canadas Bill Graham, that this was a lawless intention and plan.

The effect on Iraqi citizens of the long-planned U.S. war of aggression against Iraq is said to be their liberation. The targeted victims since the first war on Iraq have, however, been most of all infants and children. The Bush administration’s planned Operation Shock and Awe is a self-imagery of Godlike power which is more blind in hubris than in 1991 when the U.S. military assault caused mass infectious disease, child dysentery and birth mutilation by deliberate bombing of civilian electricity sources, sewage and water treatment facilities and by the deployment of nuclear waste in shells and weapons. Over 500,000 children in Iraq have already died as a consequence of the last war according to UNICEF-a figure predicted in 1991 by the New England Journal of Medicine, and substantiated in 1999 by the leading British medical research, Lancet.

Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction about which the Bush regime has most pervasively trumpeted its concern were sold to Saddam at great profit by the U.S., Britain and other Security Council members. This is why Bush officials took the original Iraq report to the U.N. from the Council chair (then the military client state, Colombia), and deleted all the pages documenting these military sales before distributing the text to non-permanent members. Secretary Rumsfeld, meanwhile, has refused to work with the relevant Senate committees to expose and ensure against continued military sales to Iraq or its middlemen by U.S. armament manufacturers.

U.S. demands for Iraq’s compliance with U.N. resolutions are not and have not been its true concern since far more U.N. resolutions over far more years have been ignored by the U.S. military partner, Israel. Thus continuing war crimes and crimes against humanity by Israeli administrations are still perpetrated with impunity in the illegally occupied territories of Palestine-for example, by land and property seizures and continuous enlargement of the illegal occupation, collective punishments of the population, increasing assassinations, and destruction of civilian infrastructure and homes. Twelve to eighteen UN resolutions prior to the inspections were said to have been violated by Iraq during its years of living with militarily enforced destruction of its society. Israel before, and since, has violated 64 UN resolutions with impunity. No double standard of international law has been so long-term, blatant and systematic, except by the U.S. itself.

The regime change all along demanded by the Bush administration cannot benefit the Iraqi people as promised because the projected U.S. military occupation has not been about getting rid of Saddam (who the U.S. armed and supported into power), but has ever more directly been the forced takeover of Iraq’s publicly owned and controlled oil reserves. These reserves since the 1950’s have (despite Saddams U.S.-supported coup detat) financed the most advanced social infrastructure in the Arab world, free education, and universal health care. During the demonization of Iraq over the last 6 months, its public oil revenues have enabled a government program of guaranteed food for all citizens by a publicly run distribution system which the U.N. World Food Program described as the most efficient in the world. With oil as with all else, the greatest enemy to this empire is the civil commons of publicly owned resources which obstructs corporate market control. That the Iraqi government has, moreover, put a run on the U.S. dollar by converting its oil revenues into Euros instead of dollars is another unspeakable fact which is blocked out of all corporate media reports.

Watching the War Crime Unfold

The ultimate target of the U.S. war party has long been the greatest and most accessible high-quality oil reserves on the planet. The Bush oil party has long coveted it, and U.S. military invasion has been the favoured blitzkrieg method for getting it over years of planning – with no response by the Security Council. But world public opinion has not covered its eyes like governments and the corporate media. Turkey’s people were 96% against invasion of Iraq as its government considered large bribes, and Spain’s people were over 90% opposed as its Falangist prime minister joined Tony the War Poodle in barking for the invasion. Over 30 million citizens from across the world demonstrated against a U.S.-led invasion in one weekend, an historically unprecedented event.

The U.S. president’s response to all this has been revealing. He has told the world throughout that the U.N. itself is on trial, with him as God’s judge. The Security Council has been told for months that it either agrees to a U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, or it is irrelevant. If it fails, the Bush administration will take the law into its own hands and invade distant and weak Iraq as America’s sovereign right. Try to remember when you heard this kind of demagoguery and defiance of international law before.

The difference has been most clearly in the use of the U.N. Pervasive aerial and ground inspections of Iraq’s territory, soften-up bombings of defences in the North and South, and successful commands to destroy short-range missiles which together had largely stripped Iraqs meagre defences by mid-March. During this process, U.S. and allied demands merely escalated from immediate abolition of weapons of mass destruction to-without any media noticing-demands for total disarmament. Best to have a helpless victim. Has history ever witnessed such a corruptly one-sided scheme to destroy and loot a defenceless country?

The Ruling Group-Mind

As I watched the Security Council Meeting on March 19 after military inspections of Iraq were forcibly terminated by the Bush Jr. administration’s decision to take the law into its own hands, I was struck by the intimidation of the Council members. They were in thrall to a ceremony of avoidance. The hard fact that the U.S. administration had just stopped the U.N.’s due process by its decision for lawless armed attack of Iraq was blocked out of view as if it had not been decided. That this massive armed military invasion was a grave violation of international law, the supreme international crime under the Nuremberg Charter, was never mentioned. The ritual of sacrifice prevailed instead as if in collective submission to the implacable ordinance of Fate.

Formal pieties and aversion of the facts ruled. The Secretary-General was congratulated for removing the inspection teams on the instruction of the U.S. adminstration so that they would not be harmed by its illegal invasion. The inspectors were again and again praised for inspecting Iraq’s military possessions before the full-scale illegal invasion forcibly prevented the completion of their work. Much angst was displayed for the humanitarian catastrophe about to unfold, with none mentioning that the lawless usurpation of U.N. process by the blitkrieg invasion of a suffering poor country would cause the mass terror. The long genocide was diplomatically sanitised by abstractions. In the case of the U.S., Britain and Spain, Saddam Hussein was held solely responsible.

Repeated ritual mantras of concern for international peace and security, alleged Iraq government violations not substantiated by the inspectors, official regrets, collective self- blaming, and much talk of rebuilding the society about to be destroyed were limned in a sleepwalk of official euphemisms. The theme that bound them all was the silence on the U.S. planned war-criminal attack in violation of the will and the legal process of the U.N. Security Council itself. Kofi Annan almost spoke out when he advised that a belligerent country is responsible under law for the costs of occupation. But the U.N. and Canada were soon ready to pay for picking up the pieces of another mass destruction of a poor society by U.S.-led forces.

I remembered all the history and accounts I had read of the Third Reich and the cowardice of official appeasement that enabled every step. The appeasement now was on the level of the mind itself. No-one dared to say what was happening. Threats and bribes by the U.S. had for months saturated the proceedings of the Council’s judgement, but there were to their great credit few takers of the blood money. The Security Council had repudiated the U.S.-led war by an overwhelming rejection of any motion for it. For the U.S. now to still lead an invasion was self-evidently against the Security Council’s will and decision, and thus wholly illegal. Yet there was a strange refusal to name the crime, the supreme international crime of a war of aggression against another state. One listened in vain for one explicit reference to the violation of the U.N. Charter, of the Nuremberg Charter, of international criminal law, of the Secretary-General’s own previous statement that a U.S. attack without Security Council support would be illegal, and of the usurpation of the will and process of the U.N. Security Council itself.

On the contrary, Iraq was being held accountable to obey the Council’s every demand to strip its meagre defences as huge U.S. and British armed forces formed on its borders. Ever louder U.S. threats of armed invasion outside the law and against Security Council vote was left to proceed as if it was a natural event. Everywhere in the media, the inevitable war was bowed before as an ordinance of destiny. It was only now a question of viewers watching U.S. forces destroy a society at will and with impunity, an ideal mass market site for the entertainment of lawless power. No-one thought to notice from within the Security Council Chamber and official global culture that every step of the mass terror against an essentially defenceless people was planned, chosen and executed in defiance of all international law by a sitting member state.

The monstrous construction had no author. Responsibility fell only on the victim. The U.S. became another onlooker at the inevitable war. Once it invaded, it became magnanimous in assigning the costs to others to pay for its mass destruction. It was now ready to co-operate with its international partners in the rebuilding of the country that it destroyed. No-one inside official society outside thought to hold the U.S. accountable for what it did. There is “no alternative” took another meaning. Now the no-alternative world the U.S. rules means criminal war invasion as an act of God.

The New Fundamentalism: America is God

As you observe the criminal war invasion of Iraq, the round-the-clock commentary and pictures, and the aftermath, watch for a silent general fact. There will no end of detailed discussion of the military operations of attack and occupation of a country rendered defenceless by Security Council demands, with much admiration and vicarious self- congratulation at the new weapons and strategic moves of the American Superpower. There will be no end of experts and commentators communicating adoringly to audiences about the high-tech assault instruments which are being tested on a third-world people to see how they work. Its a little like a high-school science experiment, advised the Pentagon Joint Chief of Staff to the militarily embedded CNN medium of public news.

The fact at the centre of the whole conflict and long in dispute will, however, soon be put down the memory hole with no one noticing. No one in the media or government will point out that the biological and chemical weapons that Iraq was declared to be hiding are not used, and did not in fact exist. No one will think to notice that this, the main justification of the war, the weapons of mass destruction in the hands of Saddam, was from start to finish a vast and criminal big lie. No one will wonder at their own cowardly complicity in the long train of destructive deceit and war crime even as the invading armies sweep across the country and the 3000 sorties of bombs fall with no hint of a chemical or biological weapon or nuclear device. Least of all will servelings of the ruling group-mind connect back to the Third Reich’s prototype of aggressive war. It is the Formula. Blame terrorists as the cause of the country’s police state measures. Accuse every country attacked of being an imminent threat to it to justify the invasion. Denounce all resistance as unpatriotic. Attack and occupy the weak country with total weaponry. The formula repeats as long as it is not called out.

The group-mind cannot compute what does not fit its fixed presuppositions. So predictable outcomes follow as if prescribed by the laws of nature. The inevitable war occurs like el Nino. Only the terrible infliction of damages are thought worth perceiving or talking about. The moral debate is silenced, left to the world’s peoples in the streets where only passing painted signs can speak. The co-ordinates of international law and the rogue war party in control of the White House are blocked of every discussion as if they did not exist. There will, in particular, be no discussion of this administration’s illegal presidency, its ever more ruinous failure to govern effectively at any level of the U.S. economy, the environmental meltdown which it leads, or the unprecedentedly pervasive corruption of its lead corporate gang-from all of which the latest orchestrated war is the ongoing system of violent diversion. The distraction and attack rhythm of one war after another will, if it is not seen through, continue to succeed with the Formula until the world is subjugated across its civilisations. As long as the self-evident can be denied, there is nothing to stop it. Discharges of condemnation of Saddam Hussein can occupy the mind instead, until the next Enemy is wheeled into the war theatre to extend the U.S. war states rule.

In Canada, the CBC and its retinue of U.S. explainers and apologists will report the world to us so we cannot see the meaning of what is happening. The local academy will occasionally provide the choral affirmation on cue. Thus Janice Stein of the University of Toronto’s Munk Centre will reassure us on CBC News coverage on March 20, the day that the U.S. crime against peace began, that We are targeting Iraq’s leadership and not its civilians. All are one in Americas view of the world as itself. What cannot be discussed is the U.S. war crime itself, even to deny it. It is unspeakable – so long as the ruling group-mind remains the invisible prison of our collective life.

The moral syntax of the American group-mind is the inner logic of the problem. In this era, the group-mind is American. All its principles are presupposed as the way that God is presupposed by the religious fundamentalist – an all-powerful, all-knowing and jealous ruler of the world, which none may doubt without social opprobrium and attack. U.S. witch-hunts of those who oppose the religion of America is the creed’s fanatical mode. But the creed is not confined to expression within America’s church of self-adoration. It is on a crusade across the world’s continents, with ruinous destabilization or armed attack of those who do not submit to its will for freedom.

The God of America is primitive. It worships itself. But there are a set of silently regulating principles at work through all the phenomena of its rule which together constitute the ruling group-mind which has imprisoned global culture within its premises since 9-11 .

Presupposition 1 of this ruling group-mind is that the U.S. national security state is America.

This assertion is never directly stated because that would reveal the absurdity of the equation. But the assumption nevertheless underlies every statement that has proceeded from U.S. government offices since 9-11. This preconscious equation explains, for example, why even the U.S. government’s official opposition, the Democratic Party, has abdicated from political responsibility in its fear of appearing to oppose unjustified wars against essentially defenceless third-world societies in Afghanistan and Iraq. They are incarcerated within the ruling structure of mind, more paralysed than 1930 Germans in their dread of being named as unpatriotic. This is a fear that can only be explained by the equation of the state military command and its apparatus with America. Beneath the surface phenomena of party politics rules the instituted group-mind in terms of which perception itself is constructed.

Thus the equation of America to its armed state apparatus is never publicly challenged in the official culture of the West because the equation is assumed a priori across the official leaderships of American allies. No-one who houses the false equation can tell them apart. They cannot see the demonstrable falsehoods of the war state, the overthrow of the Republic’s democratic traditions, and least of all the safety of millions of innocent civilians in other countries: because they assume America and its national security apparatus are one and the same. Since they love America, and America is it, they cannot distinguish their beloved country from the criminal gang institutions of the National Security Council, the Pentagon and the CIA. As these rogue secret societies rule across the world by the force of armed terror, mass disinformation, secret narco-links and political bribery and coercion at every level, lovers of America are obliged to defend this criminal global domination as America. This absurd equation obliges them to be, in short, blind dupes. It then further misleads them into supposing that anyone who opposes a gangster state rule of the world is anti-American. One absurdity builds onto another. The disorder ends as a paranoid mass cult characterised as patriotism, just as in the 1930’s with the worlds most powerful industrial state. It is in this false equation at the baseline of the group-mind that we find the kernel of the worlds problem – America’s self- definition as absolutist armed force unbound by fact or international law.

Presupposition 2 is that America is the ultimate source and moving line of the world’s freedom and goodness, God’s material embodiment on earth.

This assumption too is presupposed as true by definition, the prime article of faith of a fanatic religion. Full-spectrum dominance and pre-emptive attack of threats before they appear are not merely clinically paranoid delusions of power and persecution. They follow from the underlying and increasingly absolute assumption that America is God, the source of all Freedom and Goodness on the planet. The expressions of this deranged presupposition are evident in every speech of the former alcohol and cocaine addict occupying the White House, and there is no evident opposition from the parishioners of U.S. official culture.

Any indirect questioning or challenge of this first moral premise of the group-mind is attacked as a betrayal of the country and what it holds dear. American freedom comes to mean, then, only what establishes and maximizes the absolute right of the U.S. to command the world – specifically, to command as inevitable that all societies adopt an American-style market, American values and culture, and American military dominance in all areas of the globe as its vital interests. How do we test the rule of this fanatic basis of thought? It is expressed in Bush Doctrine policy documents throughout. But we can more easily discover its ruling principle at work by asking whether there is any limit placed anywhere on what the U.S. and vassal corporate states have the right to demand of other peoples and societies – including unconditional support of full-scale war against destitute societies over ten thousand miles from American borders.

Anything may go in the way of attack-dog journalism, but one hint of question of this ruling assumption that America is the moving line of the world’s freedom is heresy. The assumption is thus internalised prior to censorship. Self-censorship is this regime’s centre of gravity, and holds the group-mind in its prison. Those who oppose it hate freedom. Loyalty to this ultimate premise of social and political thought is what regulates the mind at a preconscious level prior to statement. It is the identity structure of the mob-mind across the world.

Principle 3 follows as a logical consequent from Principle 2. America is always and necessarily right in all conflicts with other nations or peoples or social forces.

This is not a truth which facts can disprove, because it is true by definition in the ruling group-mind. Disproving facts are irrelevant or of no consequence, even if by some chance they make it through the gates of the corporate media. This third regulating assumption explains why even the hardest facts soon disappear from sight if they throw doubt on America’s infallible moral superiority in cases of international conflict – for example the conviction of the U.S. by the International Court for its war criminal actions against Nicaragua, along with the $13.2 billion damages which were never paid.

Beneath the selection and exclusion of facts and perspectives which regulate editorial offices and policies, this third principle of the ruling group-mind too regulates perception and conversation beneath direct control. Before an exposing word is spoken, it is ruled out from within. It is an intersubjective operation, like the thought-field of playing a game. Any fact or argument which calls into question America’s moral superiority to any adversary is known to be hostile to freedom and the good in advance of consideration.

Principles 4 and 5 follow suit as ultimate moral imperatives for all Americans and their allies.

Any people or nation or social force which does not side with or opposes the U.S. government is evil (Principle 4), and so must, as an Enemy of world freedom and justice, be attacked by all means available-including pre-emptive armed force before the Enemy presents a threat (Principle 5).

Principles 4 and 5 have sharpened into patriotic absolutes with the Bush Jr. regime. Not even fabricated evidence – like the Gulf of Tonkin attack off Vietnam or the electricity cut-off of infant incubators in Iraq in 1991 – are thought any longer essential necessary to justify a military attack on another people’s territory and society. As George Bush Jr. said to a West Point audience this year: “If we wait for threats to materialise, we will have waited too long.” There is, therefore, no need for the threat to be real. Threats only need to be declared. That is is why the attack on Iraq by U.S. and British armed forces did not require anyone else to confirm that there was, in fact, a threat from Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction being used by terrorists against America. The evil is known, as with witchcraft, by the accusation itself. Once accused, the Enemy becomes such by definition – because materialisation by fact is too late. Those who question the designation side with the Enemy. You are with us, or for the terrorists. Bush’s rage against French opposition to the war of aggression against Iraq thus follows necessarily. The logic of the ruling group- mind prescribes reality prior to its construction.

A self-evident baseline of entitlement is thus instituted for the rest of the world which is not spoken. America can go to war against accused enemies as it chooses on the basis of the self-propelling operations of its ruling group-mind alone. All one has to do is trigger the known stimuli which activate its value-set and its attendant emotions of rage. Since 9- 11, majority opinion support for Americas New War in any form follows from this lockstep of the group-mind. It is predictable so long as it remains unexposed to view.

Politico (7/23/15) finds the “capital of American jihad” based on two examples–or maybe one.

Roughly 10 hours after another white, apparently racist Christian senselessly opened fire in a public place in the American South, Politico (7/23/15) published what has to be one of the worst pieces of Islamophobic pseudo-journalism this side of Pam Geller.

In his piece “Tennessee Is the Capital of American Jihad,” author and “War on Terror” think-tanker James Kitfield sets out to draw a connection between the the recent Chattanooga shooter Mohammad Youssef Abdulazeez and the case of Carlos Bledsoe, who shot up a recruiting station in Arkansas in 2009. The fact that both attacked recruiting stations, both lived in Tennessee and both were Muslim is apparently enough to make Tennessee the “Capital of American Jihad.”

Yes. There is no other evidence provided. That is all.

Three of the worst things in modern journalism–the bogus trend piece, pointlessly sprawling “writerly” #longread pretense and anti-Islamic fear-mongering–have combined forces to create an absurd, albeit literate, piece of War on Terror propaganda.

First problem is the rather glaring fact that the FBI still doesn’t know the Chattanooga’s shooter’s motive. The latest word from the FBI, despite anonymous leaks suggesting an ideological bent, is that the motives of the shooter are unknown. This isn’t to say it couldn’t be “jihad,” but as of now the author is making an assumption that’s at odds with the official government position. If Kitfield has access to some privileged information about Abdulazeez’s motive, by all means he should let us, and presumably the FBI, know.

Alas, the only evidence he can produce to this effect is recent anonymous claims Abdulazeez “followed” Anwar al-Awlaki. in 2013. But as it stands now, Kitfield has the dubious honor of being the only journalist to write a trend piece based on one example. And it’s one from six years ago.

The actual piece is heavy on substance; the problem is that none of the substance supports its thesis. It’s a fairly involved recapping of Bledsoe’s 2000s journey into jihad, but its tenuous contemporary hook of the recent Chattanooga shootings gives the distinct impression the author dusted off a previously written long-form piece on the radicalization of someone from 2009 and jammed it into a newsy context.

via distance-cities.com

Indeed, in an effort to shoehorn in the Chattanooga shooting, the author gets a fairly material fact wrong right out of the gate by saying the Chattanooga shooter, Abdulazeez, is “another America-born-and-raised young man.” There’s only one problem: Abdulazeez was born in Kuwait to Jordanian citizenship, and came to the US when he was five or six.

And note that while Chattanooga and Memphis, where Bledsoe was from, are in the same state, they’re not at all close to each other: They’re 268 miles apart, about the same distance as between Boston and Philadelphia.

But never mind: The Politico piece has an ideologically convenient “trend” to sell and fears to stoke. It’s filled with pro-surveillance propaganda and Cheneyesque pre-crime logic. After lamenting that Bledsoe couldn’t be stopped before he attacked the recruiting center in Little Rock, Kitfield writes, “Again the FBI had a problem: It couldn’t arrest anyone before an actual plot was detected.” Yes, the FBI’s “problem,” from Kitfield’s perspective, is that it can’t arrest people who aren’t committing crimes.

Can you imagine Politico running a headline like this one?

The fear-mongering graphic accompanying the piece is really the low point, however. As we’ve previously reportedat FAIR, 60 percent of Americans don’t read past the headline. As such, sensationalistic, bigoted headlines like this actually matter a great deal. Roughly 60 percent of the people who pass by this article are going to come away thinking there’s an orgy of Islamic extremists lurking in the shadows of Tennessee waiting to strike.

And considering just two weeks ago–three days before the Chattanooga shooting–a Chattanooga man plead guilty to plotting to kill Muslims, this type of paranoia does play into dangerous Islamophobic fears. Fears, it turns out, that are so wildly disproportionate to the actual threat that Kitfield has to assume motives for the most recent attack and reach back to the first year of the Obama administration to populate his “terror capital” of two.

Adam Johnson is an associate editor at AlterNet and writes frequently for FAIR.org. You can follow him on Twitter at @adamjohnsonnyc.

By our Turkish correspondent:

Over the past two days, Turkey’s government has executed a sharp shift in its foreign policy, aligning itself more closely with Washington’s military strategy in the region and effectively becoming an active part of the US-led “coalition” waging war in Iraq and Syria.

For a long time, Ankara had refrained from supporting the US-led war, ostensibly aimed against the Islamic State in Syria (ISIS), insisting on a policy aimed at toppling the government of President Bashar al-Assad and covertly supporting ISIS, both against the Syrian regime and against Kurdish nationalists.

On Wednesday, however, US President Barack Obama and Turkish President Tayyip Erdoğan agreed in a phone call to work together to secure the Turkish-Syrian border and fight against ISIS.

On Thursday, US officials announced an agreement allowing the US to carry out aerial attacks on IS positions from Turkish air bases at İncirlik and Diyarbakir. The Turkish government also agreed on the arming of the US Predator drones being launched from the İncirlik air base.

According to the Turkish newspaper Hurriyet Daily News, the deal, treated by the Turkish side as a “secret cabinet decree,” also includes plans for a “buffer zone” in northern Syria, something Ankara has long demanded as a means of escalating the war for regime change in Syria.

Gen. John Allen, Obama’s special envoy to the so-called coalition against ISIS, denied this during an appearance at the Aspen Security Forum in Colorado Thursday, saying that it “was not part of the discussion.”

State Department spokesman Mark Toner, however, cast doubt on this denial, stating in Washington that, while the Obama administration has concerns “about some of the logistical challenges inherent in a buffer zone…we obviously take threats to Turkey’s border seriously… So, we’re looking at options,” he said.

If this “option” is included in the deal, Turkey’s entry into the anti-ISIS campaign is being joined with a qualitative escalation of the US intervention in Syria.

A senior US official described the agreement as a “game changer.” The Turkish air bases are much closer to the Syrian border than those in Iraq, Kuwait, Jordan and the Persian Gulf, from which US warplanes have operated until now. This will allow American combat aircraft and drones to respond much faster to intelligence information and attack more frequently. Spy aircraft can stay longer in the air.

Also on Thursday, the Turkish military directly joined the war against ISIS. Tanks and artillery shelled militants across the border. Early on Friday, for the first time ever, Turkish fighter jets attacked ISIS bases in Syria. They hit two headquarters and one “assembly point” of the group, according to the Turkish government. It stated that the decision for the attack was taken at a security meeting on Thursday. Government officials also claimed that no Turkish troops or warplanes crossed the Syrian border during these operations.

While joining the US war against ISIS, Ankara is simultaneously stepping up its offensive against Kurdish nationalist groups, which are openly or tacitly aligned with Washington in the fight against ISIS, and against the social and political opposition inside Turkey.

The Turkish ruling class fears the consolidation of a Kurdish-controlled area in northern Syria by the PYD/YPG, an offset of the PKK, a Kurdish separatist guerrilla group in Turkey. It is combining the fight against ISIS with an ever-growing pressure on the PYG-YPG and the PKK. The so-called “peace process” with the PKK and its imprisoned leader Abdullah Öcalan is considered as good as dead. The government is also attacking the People’s Democratic Party (HDP), the legal Kurdish party that won 13 percent of the vote in the last election, depriving the ruling AKP of its majority.

On Thursday, when the Turkish army joined the war against ISIS, some 5,000 Turkish police officers, backed by helicopters and armored cars, launched raids on suspected ISIS and PKK members in Istanbul and in 13 provinces across Turkey. At least 250 people were arrested and one woman, a member of a leftist organization, was shot.

Prime Minister Davutoğlu said that the government was determined to fight all “terrorist“ groups “without distinction.” He also sharply attacked the HDP, declaring that it is an offshoot of a terrorist organization. Government critics, however, have charged that the majority of those arrested were not members or supporters of ISIS, but rather Kurdish activists, leftists and Turkish political opponents of the government.

The immediate reason given for the shift in Turkish policy is Monday’s terrorist attack in the town of Suruç, where an ISIS suicide bomber killed 32 people and wounded some 100, followed by an ISIS attack on Turkish soldiers at the Syrian border. ISIS militants opened fire, killing a soldier and wounding four, when Turkish authorities did not permit a wounded ISIS member to cross the border for medical treatment, according to the Turkish media.

But the shift in foreign policy was clearly prepared long before. The US-led wars in the Middle East have destabilized the entire region and undermined the neo-Ottoman ambitions of Erdoğan’s AKP to make Turkey a leading regional power.

Early this month, a large delegation from the Pentagon led by General Allen, the US special presidential envoy, and US Undersecretary of Defense Christine Wormuth arrived in Ankara to meet Turkish officials.

Originally Ankara, Washington and its Arab allies worked closely together in undermining the Syrian regime and arming Islamist groups opposed to Damascus. But when ISIS expanded into Iraq and endangered the regime in Baghdad, Washington made a political turn. It bombed ISIS and, much to the dismay of Ankara, aligned itself with Iraqi Kurdish groups. The recent agreement between Iran and the USA further undermines the rapidly declining influence of Ankara.

By joining the war against ISIS and simultaneously escalating the confrontation with the Kurdish nationalist groups, Ankara is trying to win back some influence on the course of events. By doing so, it is escalating the ethnic and sectarian tensions in Syria, Turkey and the entire region, posing a deadly danger for the working class.

A second, no less important, reason for Ankara’s warmongering is the escalating social and political tensions at home. The massacre in Suruç has triggered a wave of terrorist attacks for revenge, in which the PKK killed three police officers and a soldier and two alleged ISIS members. A member of the HDP was killed by an “unidentified murderer.” The Turkish Prime Minister’s Office stated that the government would take “any necessary measures to protect public order and national security.”

Having lost its working majority in parliament in last May’s election, and unable to form a coalition holding more than half the seats, the ruling AKP is likely to be forced to call another snap election. It fears even greater losses, with anger over the Suruç government fueling opposition to the government as well as support for the new pro-Kurdish HDP.

Outrage over the Suruç atrocity has led to a number of demonstrations denouncing ISIS as well as what is widely seen as the Turkish government’s complicity with the Islamist group, all of which have been met with state violence.

On Friday, Turkish police in Istanbul using tear gas and rubber bullets broke up a demonstration of several hundred people. The protesters had raised slogans denouncing the ISIS terrorist bombing in Suruç as well as the government for allowing the Islamist group to operate on Turkish soil. A much larger “march for peace” has been called for Sunday by the main Kurdish parties.

Barack Obama landed in Kenya’s capital of Nairobi on Friday for discussions with President Uhuru Kenyatta, as part of a four-day tour of East Africa that will also see the US president travel to the African Union headquarters in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Discussions will focus on US-Kenyan cooperation on a range of economic and military issues, according to media reports.

After landing in Nairobi, Obama was greeted by the largest mobilization of security forces in the African country’s history, with some 10,000 Kenya security forces deployed throughout the city. The US president rode around the city in a heavily armored, explosion-proof limousine known among Kenyan government officials as the “Beast.”

The president’s militarized reception stood in stark contrast to the sentimental accounts of the US media, which celebrated the event as a return to “Obama’s ancestral homeland.” In reality, the US president arrived in Kenya with a mercenary agenda aimed at shoring up US domination over the strategic East African nation.

To the extent that Obama’s visit will accomplish a “strengthening and deepening of the US relationship to Africa,” as National Security Advisor Susan Rice said on Wednesday, it will mean the deepening of US imperialism’s efforts to militarize the entire continent.

Hailing Obama’s visit as “a milestone in deepening Kenya-US bilateral relations,” Kenyan scholars affiliated with the Democratic Party-tied Brookings Institution think tank called Wednesday for greater US involvement in “counterterrorism” operations in the region.

“Kenya is a strategic partner of the US in the counterterrorism initiatives in East Africa and the Horn of Africa—hence the need to develop more innovative means of counteracting the emerging security threats,”

Paul Odhiambo and Manaseh Otieno wrote.

“Security cooperation between Nairobi and Washington has included sharing intelligence information, training Kenyan security personnel in the US, receiving equipment from the US, and other logistical support,”

the authors note.

Nairobi will seek greater US financial support for its security agencies and will negotiate the terms for Kenya’s integration into a US-backed regional security bloc, the Security Governance Initiative (SGI), a framework for US imperialism to deepen its “engagement” with military and police forces in Kenya, Mali, Nigeria, Niger and Tunisia established by last year’s US-Africa Leadership Summit.

For its part, Kenyatta’s government appears enthusiastic about the prospect of “closer relations” with US imperialism, and has vigorously advertised its adherence to the US “Global War on Terrorism” since ascending to power.

Kenyatta has pursued an escalating security crackdown since his election in 2013, imposing a slew of new authoritarian measures in the name of fighting the Somali Islamist militant group “al-Shabaab.”

The new government has “clamped down using very broad media, civil society and counter-terror laws to shut down any real political dissent,” according to Center for Strategic and International Studies Africa director Jennifer Cooke.

Kenyatta, the son of Jomo Kenyatta, the wealthy bourgeois nationalist leader who ruled Kenya between 1964 and 1978, appears ready to deepen the long tradition of collaboration by Kenyan governments with Western imperialism.

Kenya has proven a loyal partner in Washington’s drive to maintain its strategic grip over the Horn of Africa, which has seen the US launch an endless series of interventions, drones and proxy wars inside of Somalia in the years immediately following the dissolution of the Soviet Union, beginning with the direct occupation of areas outside Mogadishu by US ground forces in 1992.

In 2011, US-backed Kenyan ground forces invaded Somalia as part of “Operation Linda Nchi.” The mission, which has seen thousands of Kenyan ground forces dispatched to Somalia in defense of the US-backed rump government in Mogadishu, marked the first ever foreign intervention by Kenya’s military.

Washington has also tasked Kenya with managing the collateral damage produced by its military machinations in the Horn of Africa. Nairobi now administers what has become the largest refugee camp in the world, at Dadaab, where nearly 500,000 Somalis have been forced to take up residence after fleeing the civil war which continues to rage across the border.

During an interview the day before his trip this week, Obama acknowledged that “there are significant human rights violations taking place,” in Kenya, but added that Washington nonetheless desires to “have a conversation and point them in a better direction.”

Far from being concerned about the brutality of the Kenyatta government, Obama travels to East Africa as the political representative of US financial capital. His aim is to facilitate deals between Nairobi and US economic and security interests in the region, under conditions in which growing Chinese investment in resource extraction, infrastructure, and manufacturing in East and Central Africa is threatening to undermine Washington’s position.

Obama’s visit is part of Washington’s efforts to counter the growth of Chinese commercial relationships in Africa, which are now valued at over $220 billion, a sum three times larger than that of the US.

Obama implied as much on Wednesday when he accused China of “funneling an awful lot of money into Africa, basically in exchange for raw materials.”

The Obama administration’s “pivot to Asia,” which aims to encircle China and collapse its government through military pressure and commercial strangulation, requires that Washington increasingly confront Beijing’s economic presence in Africa.

In particular, the US is concerned about the implications of Chinese involvement in economic development centered around the Lamu Port Southern Sudan-Ethiopia Transport Corridor (LAPSSET) project.

Beijing is financing the construction of a railway and transportation corridor aimed at linking up Nairobi with Uganda, Burundi, Rwanda and South Sudan, as part of comprehensive plans for Chinese-led commercial development in the region. The transport network will enable Chinese firms to ship resources extracted from the interior across the Indian Ocean via Kenya’s port cities of Mombasa and Lamu.

Together with Chinese-funded commercial infrastructure development in Pakistan, the emergence of East Africa as a major supplier of oil and other key natural resources to the Chinese economy threatens to undermine Washington’s plans for an anti-China naval blockade focused on the South China Sea.

As with every US intervention in Africa, Obama’s latest visit is geared to advance the global hegemonic agenda of the US ruling class, which aims to dominate the entire continent as a stepping stone to control over the Eurasian landmass and the entire globe.

In May 2011, Mexican investigators uncovered another mass clandestine grave with dozens of mutilated corpses; bringing the total number of victims to 40,000 killed since 2006 when the Calderon regime announced its “war on drug traffickers”. Backed by advisers, agents and arms, the White House has been the principal promotor of a ‘war’ that has totally decimated Mexico ’s society and economy.

If Washington has been the driving force for the regime’s war, Wall Street banks have been the main instruments ensuring the profits of the drug cartels. Every major US bank has been deeply involved in laundering hundreds of billions of dollars in drug profits, for the better part of the past decade.

Mexico ’s descent into this inferno has been engineered by the leading US financial and political institutions, each supporting ‘one side or the other’ in the bloody “total war” which spares no one, no place and no moment in time. While the Pentagon arms the Mexican government and the US Drug Enforcement Agency enforces the “military solution”, the biggest US banks receive, launder and transfer hundreds of billions of dollars to the drug lords’ accounts, who then buy modern arms, pay private armies of assassins and corrupt untold numbers of political and law enforcement officials on both sides of the border.

Mexico’s Descent in the Inferno

Everyday scores, if not hundreds, of corpses – appear in streets and or are found in unmarked graves; dozens are murdered in their homes, cars, public transport, offices and even hospitals; known and unknown victims in the hundreds are kidnapped and disappear; school children, parents, teachers, doctors and businesspeople are seized in broad daylight and held for ransom or murdered in retaliation. Thousands of migrant workers are kidnapped, robbed, ransomed, murdered and evidence is emerging that some are sold into the illegal ‘organ trade’. The police are barricaded in their commissaries; the military, if and when it arrives, takes out its frustration on entire cities, shooting more civilians than cartel soldiers. Everyday life revolves around surviving the daily death toll; threats are everywhere, the armed gangs and military patrols fire and kill with virtual impunity. People live in fear and anger.

The Free Trade Agreement: The Sparks that lit the Inferno

In the late 1980’s, Mexico was in crisis, but the people chose a legal way out: they elected a President, Cuahtemoc Cardenas, on the basis of his national program to promote the economic revitalization of agriculture and industry. The Mexican elite, led by Carlos Salinas of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) chose otherwise and subverted the election: The electorate was denied its victory; the peaceful mass protests were ignored. Salinas and subsequent Mexican presidents vigorously pursued a free trade agreement (NAFTA) with the US and Canada , which rapidly drove millions of Mexican farmers, ranchers and small business people into bankruptcy. Devastation led to the flight of millions of immigrant workers. Rural movements of debtors flourished and ebbed, were co-opted or repressed. The misery of the legal economy contrasted with the burgeoning wealth of the traffickers of drugs and people, which generated a growing demand for well-paid armed auxiliaries as soldiers for the cartels. The regional drug syndicates emerged out of the local affluence.

In the new millennium, popular movements and a new electoral hope arose: Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO). By 2006 a vast peaceful electoral movement promised substantial social and economic reforms to ‘integrate millions of disaffected youth’. In the parallel economy, the drug cartels were expanding and benefiting from the misery of millions of workers and peasants marginalized by the Mexican elite, who had plundered the public treasury, speculated in real estate, robbed the oil industry and created enormous privatized monopolies in the communication and banking sectors.

In 2006, millions of Mexican voters were once again denied their electoral victory: The last best hope for a peaceful transformation was dashed. Backed by the US Administration, Felipe Calderon stole the election and proceeded to launch the “War on Drug Traffickers” strategy dictated by Washington .

The War Strategy Escalates the Drug War: The Banking Crises Deepens the Ties with Drug Traffickers

The massive escalation of homicides and violence in Mexico began with the declaration of a war on the drug cartels by the fraudulently elected President Calderon, a policy pushed initially by the Bush Administration and subsequently strongly backed by the Obama – Clinton regime. Over 40,000 Mexican soldiers filled the streets, towns and barrios – violently assaulting citizens – especially young people. The cartels retaliated by escalating their armed assaults on police. The war spread to all the major cities and along the major highways and rural roads; murders multiplied and Mexico descended further into a Dantesque inferno. Meanwhile, the Obama regime ‘reaffirmed’ its support for a militarist solution on both sides of the border: Over 500,000 Mexican immigrants were seized and expelled from the US ; heavily armed border patrols multiplied. Cross border gun sales grew exponentially .The US “market” for Mexican manufactured goods and agricultural products shrank, further widening the pool for cartel recruits while the supply of high powered weapons increased. White House gun and drug policies strengthened both sides in this maniacal murderous cycle: The US government armed the Calderon regime and the American gun manufacturers sold guns to the cartels through both legal and underground arms sales. Steady or increasing demand for drugs in the US – and the grotesque profits derived from trafficking and sales— remained the primary driving force behind the tidal wave of violence and societal disintegration in Mexico .

Drug profits, in the most basic sense, are secured through the ability of the cartels to launder and transfer billions of dollars through the US banking system. The scale and scope of the US banking-drug cartel alliance surpasses any other economic activity of the US private banking system. According to US Justice Department records, one bank alone, Wachovia Bank (now owned by Wells Fargo), laundered $378.3 billion dollars between May 1, 2004 and May 31, 2007 (The Guardian, May 11, 2011). Every major bank in the US has served as an active financial partner of the murderous drug cartels – including Bank of America, Citibank, and JP Morgan, as well as overseas banks operating out of New York , Miami and Los Angeles , as well as London .

While the White House pays the Mexican state and army to kill Mexicans suspected of drug trafficking, the US Justice Department belatedly slaps a relatively small fine on the major US financial accomplice to the murderous drug trade, Wachovia Bank, spares its bank officials from any jail time and allows major cases to lapse into dismissal.

The major agency of the US Treasury involved in investigating money laundering, the Undersecretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence, deliberately ignored the blatant collaboration of US banks with drug terrorists, concentrating almost their entire staff and resources on enforcing sanctions against Iran . For seven years, Treasury Undersecretary Stuart Levey used his power as head of the Department for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence to pursue Israel ’s phony “war on terrorism” against Iran , rather than shut down Wachovia’s money-laundering operations with the Mexican drug terrorists. In this period of time an estimated 40,000 Mexican civilian have been killed by the cartels and the army.

Without US arms and financial services supporting both the illegitimate Mexican regimes and the drug cartels – there could be no “drug war”, no mass killings and no state terror. The simple acts of stopping the flood of cheap subsidized US agriculture products into Mexico and de-criminalizing the use and purchase of cocaine in the US would dry up the pool of ‘cartel soldiers’ from the bankrupted Mexican peasantry and the cut back the profits and demand for illegal drugs in the US market.

The Drug Traffickers, the Banks and the White House

If the major US banks are the financial engines which allow the billion dollar drug empires to operate, the White House, the US Congress and the law enforcement agencies are the basic protectors of these banks. Despite the deep and pervasive involvement of the major banks in laundering hundreds of billions of dollars in illicit funds, the “court settlements” pursued by US prosecutors have led to no jail time for the bankers. One court’s settlement amounted to a fine of $50 million dollars, less than 0.5% of one of the banks (the Wachovia/Wells Fargo bank) $12.3 billion profits for 2009 (The Guardian, May 11, 2011). Despite the death of tens of thousands of Mexican civilians, US executive branch directed the DEA, the federal prosecutors and judges to impose such a laughable ‘punishment’ on Wachovia for its illegal services to the drug cartels. The most prominent economic officials of the Bush and Obama regimes, including Summers, Paulson, Geithner, Greenspan, Bernacke et al, are all long term associates, advisers and members of the leading financial houses and banks implicated in laundering the billions of drug profits.

Laundering drug money is one of the most lucrative sources of profit for Wall Street; the banks charge hefty commissions on the transfer of drug profits, which they then lend to borrowing institutions at interest rates far above what – if any – they pay to drug trafficker depositors. Awash in sanitized drug profits, these US titans of the finance world can easily buy their own elected officials to perpetuate the system.

Even more important and less obvious is the role of drug money in the recent financial meltdown, especially during its most critical first few weeks.

According to the head of United Nation’s Office on Drugs and Crime, Antonio Maria Costa, “In many instances, drug money (was)… currently the only liquid investment capital…. In the second half of 2008, liquidity was the banking system’s main problem and hence liquid capital became an important factor…interbank loans were funded by money that originated from drug trade and other illegal activities… (there were) signs that some banks were rescued in that way.” (Reuters, January 25,2009. US edition). Capital flows from the drug billionaires were key to floating Wachovia and other leading banks. In a word: the drug billionaires saved the capitalist financial system from collapse!

Conclusion

By the end of the first decade of the 21st century, it has become clear that capital accumulation, at least in North America, is intimately linked to generalized violence and drug trafficking. Because capital accumulation is dependent on financial capital, and the latter is dependent on the industry profits from the multi-hundred-billion dollar drug trade, the entire ensemble is embedded in the ‘total war’ over drug profits. In times of deep crises the very survival of the US financial system – and through it, the world banking system – is linked to the liquidity of the drug “industry”.

At the most superficial level the destruction of Mexican and Central American societies – encompassing over 100 million people – is a result of a conflict between drug cartels and the political regimes of the region. At a deeper level there is a multiplier or “ripple effect” related to their collaboration: the cartels draw on the support of the US banks to realize their profits; they spend hundreds of millions on the US arms industry and others to secure their supplies, transport and markets; they employ tens of thousands of recruits for their vast private armies and civilian networks and they purchase the compliance of political and military officials on both sides of the borders

For its part, the Mexican government acts as a conduit for US Pentagon/Federal police, Homeland Security, drug enforcement and political apparatuses prosecuting the ‘war’, which has put Mexican lives, property and security at risk. The White House stands at the strategic center of operations – the Mexican regime serves as the front-line executioners.

On one side of the “war on drugs” are the major Wall Street banks; on the other side, the White House and its imperial military strategists and in the ‘middle’ are 90 million Mexicans and 40,000 murder victims and counting.

Relying on political fraud to impose economic deregulation in the 1990’s (neo-liberalism), the US policies led directly to the social disintegration, criminalization and militarization of the current decade. The sophisticated narco-finance economy has now become the most advanced stage of neo-liberalism. When the respectable become criminals, the criminals become respectable.

The issue of genocide in Mexico has been determined by the empire and its “knowing” bankers and cynical rulers.

Every 28 hours on average, a Black man, woman or child is murdered  by killer cops in America. Sandra Black is one of their victims – a high-profile one, unlike countless nameless, faceless, unreported victims of US police brutality, at times resulting in unaccountable murders routinely whitewashed when investigations are conducted.

Police traffic stops, even violent ones, followed by wrongful short-term detentions, aren’t reasons for suicides – unless perhaps victims are so mentally ill and unstable their behavior is unpredictable.

Bland was a young Black civil rights activist – a vocal Black Lives Matter movement exponent, outspoken against police brutality in America.

Was she targeted for this reason? Was she violently assaulted by a cop on assignment to get her arrested on false charges – then murdered in custody to silence her?

She was eagerly looking forward to her new job at Prairie View A&M, her alma mater. She had every reason to live, not die. Media reports on her case are scandalous – ignoring the most important issues needing exploring and explaining.

Instead, largely regurgitating official accounts about her death. The New York Times, America’s leading broadsheet, is typical – On July 23 headlining “Autopsy of Sandra Bland Finds Injuries Consistent With Suicide, Prosecutor Says.”

A proper headline should read: Coverup in Texas: County Autopsy Findings Whitewash Sandra Bland’s Likely Murder.

Instead of questioning dubious autopsy findings (conducted by local authorities, not an independent forensic pathologist), The Times regurgitated the official conclusion saying “her injuries were consistent with suicide, not homicide, a finding that underscored growing doubts that the jail did enough to monitor her.”

No independently verifiable evidence suggests Bland was unstable or suicidal. Saying she was depressed over losing her baby is how virtually every woman would feel.

The Times repeated the official lie suggesting she should have been placed on suicide watch. It quoted Texas Waller County first assistant district attorney Warren Diepraam reciting pre-scripted (unchallenged) claims about no signs of violent struggle and neck markings consistent with suicide.

“I have not seen any evidence that this is a homicide,” he said. Did he look for any, the Times should have asked – as well as explaining an activist woman against police brutality with every reason to live, not die.

On July 9, Bland drove from Chicago to Texas, was interviewed for a job at her alma mater Prairie View A&M, was ecstatic on learning she got it – then “committed suicide,” according to official reports.

No legitimate Hollywood producer would accept a script with this storyline. Who would believe something this implausible?

Bland’s friends suspect foul play. Some angrily reject official suicide claims for good reason. Bland’s mother quoted her daughter’s recent comments saying:

“Mom, now I know what my purpose is. My purpose is to go back to Texas. My purpose is to stop all social injustice.” It’s to live, not die.

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 UN’s 54-nation Economic and Social Council adopted a resolution on Monday that names the world’s only – only – violator of economic and social rights in the world, UN Watch reports. Which country did a majority of 42 states including all EU members condemn? If you guessed Iran, Syria, Russia, Saudi Arabia, or any other likely candidate, then you haven’t been paying attention to world affairs or the United Nations since the establishment of the nation of Israel. 

That’s right, Israel.

Only Australia and the U.S. opposed the resolution. Honduras and Panama abstained, and eight other countries were absent.

The resolution charges Israel with such crimes as “destruction of homes and properties, economic institutions and agricultural lands and orchards in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, as well as in the occupied Syrian Golan”; of the “exploitation of natural resources”; and of “the dumping of all kinds of waste materials in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and in the occupied Syrian Golan, which gravely threaten their natural resources.”

Hamas is mentioned a whopping 0 times. Zero.

Syria was mentioned 13 times, UN Watch reports, “but only to condemn Israel for alleged violations against ‘the Syrian citizens of the occupied Syrian Golan’ whose family members reside in ‘their mother homeland, the Syrian Arab Republic.’ The murderous regime of Bashar al-Assad is not condemned or even mentioned once.” Zilch.

UN Watch goes on:

After the introduction of the resolution by South Africa, the Syrian Ambassador took the floor and accused Israel of facilitating terrorist attacks against Syrian cities and civilians. Assad’s envoy condemned the Jewish state for “destroying the soil of the Golan, exploiting its resources, burning its products and other racist policies.”

No other country in the world but Israel was singled out for condemnation at this year’s ECOSOC’s annual session.

Good to know that the United Nations has its priorities straight.

Much writing has been spent on the wonders of how the supposedly progressive side of politics has bedded down all too intimately with the conservative, Right side of the aisle. The conservatives – or let us call them reactionary Tories – have been insinuating themselves into the party manifestoes of the left for years.

It was Britain’s Tony Blair who demonstrated how Margaret Thatcher’s hemlock had become his blood. Under the slogan of “modernisation” and various workshopped banalities, New Labour moved into the highest form of technocracy imaginable. The technocrat, by definition, prides pragmatic resolution over principle. Any process will do as long as it has the reassuring falseness of working.

Labour parties, more generally, have become technocratic constellations. Principles have become subordinate to focus groups and party polling concerned about reactionary shifts in the electorate. The emphasis here is not to dictate the agenda, but to have it dictated to you. Party strategists break out into a hot sweat when the latest poll registers drop. Sentiment can be calculated and pitched to.

The Australian conservatives have had less trouble than their Labor counterparts in formulating brutal policies indifferent to international law. Theirs is an insular world, where patriotic insensibility comes first. There is even a question to ask whether Australian conservatism genuinely exists, being, as it were, an extremist collective of contradictory free marketeers, climate change deniers and border purists. The one thing that can be said about them: They are convinced by what they are doing.

It all began on September 3, 2001, when the conservative Howard government introduced a policy of “turning back boats” with Operation Relex, involving the interception and boarding of Suspected Illegal Entry Vessels (SIEVs). In bureaucrat-land, such speak entails boats carrying people without a visa (Kaldor Centre, Aug 4).[1]

The navy was directed to expel such vessels to the edge of Indonesian territorial waters, a wonderfully perverse state of affairs that should put pay to the nonsense that such a measure saves lives. It simply relocates the problem, literally expelling it from the scope of Australian responsibility. The Abbott government’s version of this, called “Operation Sovereign Borders” re-applies the Howard formula with the additional context of “where it is safe to do so”.

Genteel legalists have wondered whether such conduct flies in the face of international law. It is hard to see how it does not. The focus here is not rescue, strongly emphasised by the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, not to mention the Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea and the International Convention on Maritime Search and Rescue. Placing refugees on life boats and towing them back into international waters engenders, rather than minimises, risk.

Bill Shorten’s Australian Labor Party lacks the foaming, mad dog conviction of his opponent. Having taken a strong stance against the “turn back the boats” policy in 2013, Shorten has, just like those boats laden with asylum seekers, altered course. The teeth of those in the left wing of the party is chattering – with fear.

Richard Marles, the individual assigned the oxymoronic task of “modernising” the immigration platform, has given the impression that the new ALP recipe will not only embed the LNP boat policy, but do so in a manner that is humanitarian. Shorten’s own description at the ALP Party conference was that Marles, “will deliver immigration policies that are safe and humane.” The delegates duly booed.

The display by Shorten and Marles has been an advance admission of defeat and a morbid exploitation of dead asylum seekers to trigger consciences in the Australian electorate. Shorten has swallowed the Coalition mantra of salvation: “Labor wants to defeat the people smugglers and we want to prevent drownings at sea” (7.30 Report, Jul 22). This has also entailed an admission that Labor stumbled when in office. “Despite best intentions,” wrote Marles in the Herald Sun, “a terrible loss of life took place under Labor’s watch.” The ALP suicide note is being penned as this goes to press.

Shorten’s 2013 leadership rival and member of the left faction, Anthony Albanese, was seething. The party technocrats had done it again, guileless in aping the conservative agenda on refugees.  “I think that it is absolutely critical, critical that we always remember our need for compassion an not to appeal to the darker side.”[2] But even those on the progressive wing have decided to fall for the humanitarian canard of boat repulsions, ignoring the obvious fact that an intercepted vessel should be brought back to Australian waters.The Coalition front benchers were pleased as punch. Voters were being sold a cheap imitation with Shorten singing Abbott’s scratchy, coarse tune. The barely credible Immigration Minister, Peter Dutton, trotted out his limited array of weasel words though he did have a point: “If I thought it was genuine, I would welcome it” (Today Show, Jul 23).Former Immigration Minister, Scott Morrison, took a similar line, suggesting that Labor disunity was a boon for people smuggling enthusiasts. The Coalition, on the other hand, were the true captains of the border protection industry. “The people smuggler’s know it.”[3] And how.

Central to the entire farce has been the looming role of “people smugglers”. Both major parties have argued till the return of the proverbial cow that their “business model” needs to be broken. The traffickers are the retained bogeymen in the debate, the handy straw men of the immigration argument. Never mind that there seems to be willingness on the part of government officials to actually pay them to take their human cargo elsewhere. This, of course, is not encouragement of that very same reviled model at all.

The refusal to adopt a policy that aligns with safe processing of asylum seeker and immigrants who undertake the naval route has corrupted the Australian political process. Nor is there genuine will to negotiate and establish a regional program of processing claims and protecting asylum seekers. The police-state secrecy that attends the entire discussion about vessel interceptions, the darkly hilarious press conferences where ministers and officials refuse to disclose “on sea” operations, speak of the camel whose nose is fast coming into the tent of democracy. In good time, the tent may well collapse.

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

Notes

[1] http://www.kaldorcentre.unsw.edu.au/publication/%E2%80%98turning-back-boats%E2%80%99

[2] http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/labor-national-conference-bill-shortens-opening-speech-marred-by-booing-20150724-gijkhv.html

[3] http://www.skynews.com.au/news/top-stories/2015/07/23/shorten-wwill-fight-for-boats-policy.html

Much writing has been spent on the wonders of how the supposedly progressive side of politics has bedded down all too intimately with the conservative, Right side of the aisle. The conservatives – or let us call them reactionary Tories – have been insinuating themselves into the party manifestoes of the left for years.

It was Britain’s Tony Blair who demonstrated how Margaret Thatcher’s hemlock had become his blood. Under the slogan of “modernisation” and various workshopped banalities, New Labour moved into the highest form of technocracy imaginable. The technocrat, by definition, prides pragmatic resolution over principle. Any process will do as long as it has the reassuring falseness of working.

Labour parties, more generally, have become technocratic constellations. Principles have become subordinate to focus groups and party polling concerned about reactionary shifts in the electorate. The emphasis here is not to dictate the agenda, but to have it dictated to you. Party strategists break out into a hot sweat when the latest poll registers drop. Sentiment can be calculated and pitched to.

The Australian conservatives have had less trouble than their Labor counterparts in formulating brutal policies indifferent to international law. Theirs is an insular world, where patriotic insensibility comes first. There is even a question to ask whether Australian conservatism genuinely exists, being, as it were, an extremist collective of contradictory free marketeers, climate change deniers and border purists. The one thing that can be said about them: They are convinced by what they are doing.

It all began on September 3, 2001, when the conservative Howard government introduced a policy of “turning back boats” with Operation Relex, involving the interception and boarding of Suspected Illegal Entry Vessels (SIEVs). In bureaucrat-land, such speak entails boats carrying people without a visa (Kaldor Centre, Aug 4).[1]

The navy was directed to expel such vessels to the edge of Indonesian territorial waters, a wonderfully perverse state of affairs that should put pay to the nonsense that such a measure saves lives. It simply relocates the problem, literally expelling it from the scope of Australian responsibility. The Abbott government’s version of this, called “Operation Sovereign Borders” re-applies the Howard formula with the additional context of “where it is safe to do so”.

Genteel legalists have wondered whether such conduct flies in the face of international law. It is hard to see how it does not. The focus here is not rescue, strongly emphasised by the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, not to mention the Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea and the International Convention on Maritime Search and Rescue. Placing refugees on life boats and towing them back into international waters engenders, rather than minimises, risk.

Bill Shorten’s Australian Labor Party lacks the foaming, mad dog conviction of his opponent. Having taken a strong stance against the “turn back the boats” policy in 2013, Shorten has, just like those boats laden with asylum seekers, altered course. The teeth of those in the left wing of the party is chattering – with fear.

Richard Marles, the individual assigned the oxymoronic task of “modernising” the immigration platform, has given the impression that the new ALP recipe will not only embed the LNP boat policy, but do so in a manner that is humanitarian. Shorten’s own description at the ALP Party conference was that Marles, “will deliver immigration policies that are safe and humane.” The delegates duly booed.

The display by Shorten and Marles has been an advance admission of defeat and a morbid exploitation of dead asylum seekers to trigger consciences in the Australian electorate. Shorten has swallowed the Coalition mantra of salvation: “Labor wants to defeat the people smugglers and we want to prevent drownings at sea” (7.30 Report, Jul 22). This has also entailed an admission that Labor stumbled when in office. “Despite best intentions,” wrote Marles in the Herald Sun, “a terrible loss of life took place under Labor’s watch.” The ALP suicide note is being penned as this goes to press.

Shorten’s 2013 leadership rival and member of the left faction, Anthony Albanese, was seething. The party technocrats had done it again, guileless in aping the conservative agenda on refugees.  “I think that it is absolutely critical, critical that we always remember our need for compassion an not to appeal to the darker side.”[2] But even those on the progressive wing have decided to fall for the humanitarian canard of boat repulsions, ignoring the obvious fact that an intercepted vessel should be brought back to Australian waters.The Coalition front benchers were pleased as punch. Voters were being sold a cheap imitation with Shorten singing Abbott’s scratchy, coarse tune. The barely credible Immigration Minister, Peter Dutton, trotted out his limited array of weasel words though he did have a point: “If I thought it was genuine, I would welcome it” (Today Show, Jul 23).Former Immigration Minister, Scott Morrison, took a similar line, suggesting that Labor disunity was a boon for people smuggling enthusiasts. The Coalition, on the other hand, were the true captains of the border protection industry. “The people smuggler’s know it.”[3] And how.

Central to the entire farce has been the looming role of “people smugglers”. Both major parties have argued till the return of the proverbial cow that their “business model” needs to be broken. The traffickers are the retained bogeymen in the debate, the handy straw men of the immigration argument. Never mind that there seems to be willingness on the part of government officials to actually pay them to take their human cargo elsewhere. This, of course, is not encouragement of that very same reviled model at all.

The refusal to adopt a policy that aligns with safe processing of asylum seeker and immigrants who undertake the naval route has corrupted the Australian political process. Nor is there genuine will to negotiate and establish a regional program of processing claims and protecting asylum seekers. The police-state secrecy that attends the entire discussion about vessel interceptions, the darkly hilarious press conferences where ministers and officials refuse to disclose “on sea” operations, speak of the camel whose nose is fast coming into the tent of democracy. In good time, the tent may well collapse.

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

Notes

[1] http://www.kaldorcentre.unsw.edu.au/publication/%E2%80%98turning-back-boats%E2%80%99

[2] http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/labor-national-conference-bill-shortens-opening-speech-marred-by-booing-20150724-gijkhv.html

[3] http://www.skynews.com.au/news/top-stories/2015/07/23/shorten-wwill-fight-for-boats-policy.html

Officially called a “Free Associated State or Commonwealth,” Puerto Rico has been exploited as a US colony since 1898. Its elected governor is powerless – little more than a potted plant ruled by Congress with America’s president its head of state.  

Washington never granted islanders control of their lives, welfare and destiny. They have no say over foreign relations, commerce and trade, their air space, land and offshore waters, immigration and emigration, nationality and citizenship, currency, maritime laws, military service, US bases on its territory, constitutionality of its laws, jurisdictions and legal procedures, treaties, radio and television, communications, agriculture, its natural resources and more.

Independence supporters aren’t tolerated – men like Oscar Lopez Rivera, a decorated Vietnam War veteran, wrongfully imprisoned for wanting Puerto Ricans to live free, behind bars for over three decades.

Washington wants to continue exploiting its Caribbean colony for profit – raping and pillaging it at the public’s expense, much like what’s happening to Greece.

Athens is trapped in the euro straightjacket – Puerto Rico in America’s claws. Nominally, islanders handle their own local affairs, much like how Washington DC residents have home rule under full federal control.

The Constitution grants Congress exclusive jurisdiction over the District in “all cases whatsoever.” Its elected government exists at its pleasure. Local laws can be overturned.

District residents have no voting representation in Congress. They’re disenfranchised in federal elections. They’re colonial subjects like Puerto Ricans.

The Caribbean island is bankrupt – but can’t declare it under US law, making it harder to gain concessions from creditors. It’s debt entrapped, forced to pay bankers and other large creditors at the expense of providing vital social services. Its $73 billion debt is impossible to repay.

In late June, Governor Alejandro Garcia Padilla said it needs restructuring. It’s approaching 100% of its GDP – its current fiscal year $4.5 billion servicing obligation is too great a burden to bear.

It’s a wasteland of high unemployment, poverty and deprivation. Force-fed austerity exacerbates dire economic conditions. Islanders are US citizens without enfranchisement on the mainland. They pay federal taxes. They get back pathetically little in return.

In June, the UN Committee of 24 (Special Committee on Decolonization) heard testimonies from 30 island petitioners. Puerto Rico is locked in a destructive cycle of poverty, unemployment, brain drain and economic decline because of US imperial control, they explained.

Petitioners urged UN intervention to initiate a decolonization process – to “stand on the right side of history” helping Puerto Ricans regain their sovereign rights.

Washington calls activist islanders “domestic terrorists.” Oscar Lopez Rivera is one of thousands wrongfully imprisoned for their political beliefs since 1898.

Puerto Rico’s 3.5 million people live in an open-air prison – exploited under imperial rule, heading toward hardening by greater forced austerity, hitting its majority impoverished population hardest.

Puerto Ricans suffer from internal government mismanagement, political greed and dereliction of duty, widespread corruption, deplorable social services, rich and powerful monied interests exploiting ordinary islanders, and police brutality like US citizens and residents face.

One local observer describes two Puerto Rico cultures. On the one hand, its “language, music, art, history and affection.” On the other, its “crime, corruption, deceit and entitlement.”

The latter is killing the former. It’s “dying a slow, painful death.” Puerto Rico is on a downward cycle to oblivion – ordinary people devastated by an uncaring US Congress, its own corrupt government and monied interests demanding tribute, a lethal economic combination.

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.  

China has recently taken an important step in more tightly regulating foreign non-governmental organizations (NGOs) inside the country. Despite condemnation from so called human rights groups in the West, China’s move should be understood as a critical decision to assert sovereignty over its own political space. Naturally, the shrill cries of “repression” and “hostility toward civil society” from western NGOs have done little to shake the resolve of Beijing as the government has recognized the critical importance of cutting off all avenues for political and social destabilization.

The predictable argument, once again being made against China’s Overseas NGO Management Law, is that it is a restriction on freedom of association and expression, and a means of stifling the burgeoning civil society sector in China. The NGO advocates portray this proposed legislation as another example of the violation of human rights in China, and further evidence of Beijing’s lack of commitment to them. They posit that China is moving to further entrench an authoritarian government by closing off the democratic space which has emerged in recent years.

However, amid all the hand-wringing about human rights and democracy, what is conveniently left out of the narrative is the simple fact that foreign NGOs, and domestic ones funded by foreign money, are, to a large extent, agents of foreign interests, and are quite used as soft power weapons for destabilization. And this is no mere conspiracy theory as the documented record of the role of NGOs in recent political unrest in China is voluminous. It would not be a stretch to say that Beijing has finally recognized, just as Russia has before it, that in order to maintain political stability and true sovereignty, it must be able to control the civil society space otherwise manipulated by the US and its allies.

‘Soft Power’ and the Destabilization of China

Joseph Nye famously defined ‘soft power’ as the ability of a country to persuade others and/or manipulate events without force or coercion in order to achieve politically desirable outcomes. And one of the main tools of modern soft power is civil society and the NGOs that dominate it. With financial backing from some of the most powerful individuals and institutions in the world, these NGOs use the cover of “democracy promotion” and human rights to further the agenda of their patrons. And China has been particularly victimized by precisely this sort of strategy.

Human Rights Watch, and the NGO complex at large, has condemned China’s Overseas NGO Management Law because they quite rightly believe that it will severely hamper their efforts to act independently of Beijing. However, contrary to the irreproachable expression of innocence that such organizations masquerade behind, the reality is that they act as a de facto arm of western intelligence agencies and governments, and they have played a central role in the destabilization of China in recent years.

Undoubtedly the most highly publicized example of just such political meddling took place in 2014 with the much hyped “Occupy Central” movement in Hong Kong, also known as the Umbrella Movement. The Western media fed uninformed news consumers story after story about a “pro-democracy” movement seeking to give voice to, as White House spokesman Josh Earnest cynically articulated, “…the aspirations of the Hong Kong people.” But such vacuous rhetoric was only part of the story.

What the corporate media in the West failed to mention were the deeply rooted connections between the Occupy Central movement and key organs of US soft power. The oft touted leader of Occupy Central was a pro-Western academic named Benny Tai, a law professor at the University of Hong Kong. Though he presented himself as the leader of a grassroots mass movement, Mr. Tai has for years been partnered with the National Democratic Institute (NDI), a nominal NGO which is actually directly funded by the US State Department via the National Endowment for Democracy (NED). In fact, the NDI has been one of the leading advocates (and financial backers presumably) of the Center for Comparative and Public Law at the University of Hong Kong, a program with which Benny Tai has been intimately connected, including as a board member since 2006. So, far from being merely an emerging leader, Tai was a carefully selected point person for a US-sponsored color revolution-style movement.

Two other high profile figures involved with Occupy Central were Audrey Eu, founder of the Civic Party in Hong Kong, and Martin Lee, founding chairman of the Democrat Party of Hong Kong. Both Eu and Lee have long-standing ties to the US government through the NED and NDI, with Eu having been a frequent contributor to NDI sponsored panels and programs, and Lee having the glorious distinction of having both been a recipient of awards from NED and NDI, as well as meeting with US Vice President Joe Biden in 2014 along with anti-Beijing advocate Anson Chan.

It does not take exceptional powers of deduction to see that, to varying degrees, Tai, Eu, Lee, and Chan each act as the public face of a US Government-sponsored initiative to destabilize the political situation in Hong Kong, one of China’s most economically and politically important regions. Through the intermediary of the NGO, Washington is able to promote an anti-Beijing line under the auspices of “democracy promotion,” just as it has done everywhere from Ukraine to Venezuela. Luckily for China, the movement was not supported by either the bulk of the working class in Hong Kong and China, or even by many of the middle class who saw it as little more than an inconvenience at best. However, it required swift government action to contain the public relations and media fiasco that could have resulted from the movement, a fact of which Beijing, no doubt, took note.

As a spokesperson for the National People’s Congress explained in April, the NGO law is necessary for “safeguarding national security and maintaining social stability.” Indeed, in late 2014, in the wake of the Occupy Central protests, Chinese President Xi Jinping traveled to Macau and spoke of the need to ensure that Macau walked on the “right path.” In a thinly veiled reference to Hong Kong, Xi praised Macau for continuing to follow the “one country, two systems” policy under which the special administrative regions of Macau and Hong Kong have greater autonomy but are still subject to Chinese law. Essentially, Xi made it quite clear that, despite the foreign NGO-manufactured movement in Hong Kong, Beijing remained firmly in control. And this is precisely the issue: control.

NGOs, Soft Power, and Terror in Xinjiang

The NGO ‘soft power’ weapon is not relegated solely to Hong Kong however. In fact, the western Chinese province of Xinjiang, one of the most volatile regions in the country, has seen active destabilization and subversion by soft power elements consistently over recent years. Home to the majority Muslim Uighur ethnic group, Xinjiang has been repeatedly attacked both with terrorism and vile propaganda that has sought to paint to China as the oppressor and enemy of Uighurs, and Muslims generally.

Xinjiang has been victim to a number of deadly terrorist attacks in recent years, including the heinous drive-by bombings that killed dozens and injured over 100 people in May 2014, the mass stabbings and bombings of November 2014, and the deadlyattack by Uighur terrorists on a traffic checkpoint just last month which left 18 people dead. Were such attacks, which claimed the lives of scores of innocent Chinese citizens, to have been carried out against, say, Americans, the western media would be all but declaring holy jihad against the entire world. However, since they’ve happened in China, these are merely isolated incidents that are due to the “marginalization” and “oppression” of the Uighur people by the big bad Chinese authorities.

Such a sickeningly biased narrative is in no small part due to the NGO penetration of the Uighur community and a vast public relations network funded directly by the US Government. The same National Endowment for Democracy (NED) which has disbursed funds to the NDI and other organizations involved in the Hong Kong destabilization of “Occupy Central,” has been a primary funder of the Uighur NGO complex.

The following organizations have each received significant financial support from the NED through the years: World Uighur Congress, Uighur American Association, International Uighur Human rights and Democracy Foundation, and the International Uighur PEN Club, among others. These NGOs are quite often the sources cited by western media for comments on anything related to Xinjiang and are almost always quick to demonize Beijing for all problems in the region, including terrorism.

Perhaps the best example of just such propaganda and dishonesty came in the last few weeks as western media was flooded with stories making the spurious allegation that China had banned the observance of Ramadan in Xinjiang. Indeed, there were literally hundreds of articles condemning China for this “restriction of religious freedom,” portraying the Chinese government as repressive and a violator of human rights. Interestingly, the primary source for the claim was none other than the NED-fundedWorld Uighur Congress.

Moreover, in mid July, on the day of Eid al-Fitr (the final day of Ramadan), the Wall Street Journal ran a story covering the media pushback from China which has sought in recent weeks to publicize the fact that Xinjiang, and all of China, has celebrated openly for Ramadan. And, as one should come to expect, the anti-China source cited is, as usual, a representative of the World Uighur Congress. It seems that this organization, far from being merely a human rights advocate, is in fact a mouthpiece for US propaganda against China. And when the propaganda is challenged and discredited by China, well that just invites new and more blistering propaganda.

The Geopolitical Footprints

All of this demonization has taken on a clear geopolitical and strategic significance as Turkey has stepped into the fray condemning China for its alleged “persecution” of Uighur Muslims, whom Ankara sees as Turks from its neo-Ottoman revanchist perspective. The Turkish Foreign ministry said in a statement that “Our people have been saddened over the news that Uighur Turks have been banned from fasting or carrying out other religious duties in the Xinjiang region…Our deep concern over these reports have been conveyed to China’s ambassador in Ankara.”

China responded to what it deemed to be inappropriate comments from Turkey’s Foreign Ministry, especially in light of Turkey’s absurd characterization of the Uighurs (who are Chinese citizens) as “Turks.” China’s Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Hua Chunying stated, “China has already demanded that Turkey clarify these reports and we have expressed concern about the statement from the Turkish foreign ministry…You should know that all the people of Xinjiang enjoy the freedom of religious belief accorded to them by the Chinese constitution.”

While the Chinese government, as it almost always does, used decidedly muted language to express its displeasure, the implications of the statement were not lost on keen political observers with some understanding of the China-Turkey relationship. Although the two countries have many aligned interests, as evidenced by Turkey’s repeatedly expressed desire to join the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), the little known fact is that Turkey is one of the major facilitators of terrorism in China.

Though it received almost no fanfare from international media, in January 2015 Chinese authorities arrested at least ten Turkish suspects alleged to have organized and facilitated the illegal border crossings of a number of Uighur extremists. It has further been revealed that these extremists were planning to travel to Syria, Afghanistan, and Pakistan to train and fight with fellow jihadis.

The story is still further evidence of a well-funded, well-organized international terror network operated and/or facilitated by Turkish intelligence. According to the Turkish Foreign Ministry, the ten Turkish citizens were arrested in Shanghai on November 17, 2014 for facilitating illegal immigration. While the formal charges against them range from forging documents to actually aiding illegal migration, it is the larger question of international terrorism that lurks beneath the surface. Because of course, as the evidence seems to indicate, these Uighur immigrants were not merely traveling to see loved ones in another country. On the contrary, they were likely part of a previously documented trend of Uighur extremists traveling to the Middle East to train and fight with the Islamic State or other terror groups.

It is these same extremist networks that carried out the aforementioned deadly bombing in Urumqi, capital of Xinjiang. In fact, precisely this trend was exposed two months earlier in September 2014 when Reuters reported that Beijing formally accused militant Uighurs from Xinjiang of having traveled to Islamic State-controlled territory to receive training. Further corroborating these accusations, the Jakarta Post of Indonesia reported that four Chinese Uighur jihadists had been arrested in Indonesia after having travelled from Xinjiang through Malaysia. Other, similar reports have also surfaced in recent months, painting a picture of a concerted campaign to help Uighur extremists travel throughout Asia, communicating and collaborating with transnational terror groups such as the Islamic State.

So, Uighur terrorists with forged documents provided by sources inside Turkey are implicated as being part of the same terror networks that carried out a series of deadly attacks on Chinese citizens and police. No wonder China is not exactly bending over backwards to dry Erdogan’s and the Turkish government’s crocodile tears. And yet, despite the terror war, the US-funded Uighur NGOs continue to portray China as responsible for the terrorism.

The destabilization of China takes many forms. From a manufactured protest movement in Hong Kong sponsored by NGOs connected to the US government, to a fabricated propaganda war peddled by other NGOs sponsored by the US government, to a terror war fomented by a NATO member, China is a nation under assault by soft and hard power. That Beijing is finally taking steps to curb the pernicious influence of such NGOs, and the forces they represent, is not only a positive step, it’s an absolutely necessary one. The national security and national sovereignty of the People’s Republic of China requires nothing less.

Eric Draitser is an independent geopolitical analyst based in New York City, he is the founder of StopImperialism.org and OP-ed columnist for RT, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

China has recently taken an important step in more tightly regulating foreign non-governmental organizations (NGOs) inside the country. Despite condemnation from so called human rights groups in the West, China’s move should be understood as a critical decision to assert sovereignty over its own political space. Naturally, the shrill cries of “repression” and “hostility toward civil society” from western NGOs have done little to shake the resolve of Beijing as the government has recognized the critical importance of cutting off all avenues for political and social destabilization.

The predictable argument, once again being made against China’s Overseas NGO Management Law, is that it is a restriction on freedom of association and expression, and a means of stifling the burgeoning civil society sector in China. The NGO advocates portray this proposed legislation as another example of the violation of human rights in China, and further evidence of Beijing’s lack of commitment to them. They posit that China is moving to further entrench an authoritarian government by closing off the democratic space which has emerged in recent years.

However, amid all the hand-wringing about human rights and democracy, what is conveniently left out of the narrative is the simple fact that foreign NGOs, and domestic ones funded by foreign money, are, to a large extent, agents of foreign interests, and are quite used as soft power weapons for destabilization. And this is no mere conspiracy theory as the documented record of the role of NGOs in recent political unrest in China is voluminous. It would not be a stretch to say that Beijing has finally recognized, just as Russia has before it, that in order to maintain political stability and true sovereignty, it must be able to control the civil society space otherwise manipulated by the US and its allies.

‘Soft Power’ and the Destabilization of China

Joseph Nye famously defined ‘soft power’ as the ability of a country to persuade others and/or manipulate events without force or coercion in order to achieve politically desirable outcomes. And one of the main tools of modern soft power is civil society and the NGOs that dominate it. With financial backing from some of the most powerful individuals and institutions in the world, these NGOs use the cover of “democracy promotion” and human rights to further the agenda of their patrons. And China has been particularly victimized by precisely this sort of strategy.

Human Rights Watch, and the NGO complex at large, has condemned China’s Overseas NGO Management Law because they quite rightly believe that it will severely hamper their efforts to act independently of Beijing. However, contrary to the irreproachable expression of innocence that such organizations masquerade behind, the reality is that they act as a de facto arm of western intelligence agencies and governments, and they have played a central role in the destabilization of China in recent years.

Undoubtedly the most highly publicized example of just such political meddling took place in 2014 with the much hyped “Occupy Central” movement in Hong Kong, also known as the Umbrella Movement. The Western media fed uninformed news consumers story after story about a “pro-democracy” movement seeking to give voice to, as White House spokesman Josh Earnest cynically articulated, “…the aspirations of the Hong Kong people.” But such vacuous rhetoric was only part of the story.

What the corporate media in the West failed to mention were the deeply rooted connections between the Occupy Central movement and key organs of US soft power. The oft touted leader of Occupy Central was a pro-Western academic named Benny Tai, a law professor at the University of Hong Kong. Though he presented himself as the leader of a grassroots mass movement, Mr. Tai has for years been partnered with the National Democratic Institute (NDI), a nominal NGO which is actually directly funded by the US State Department via the National Endowment for Democracy (NED). In fact, the NDI has been one of the leading advocates (and financial backers presumably) of the Center for Comparative and Public Law at the University of Hong Kong, a program with which Benny Tai has been intimately connected, including as a board member since 2006. So, far from being merely an emerging leader, Tai was a carefully selected point person for a US-sponsored color revolution-style movement.

Two other high profile figures involved with Occupy Central were Audrey Eu, founder of the Civic Party in Hong Kong, and Martin Lee, founding chairman of the Democrat Party of Hong Kong. Both Eu and Lee have long-standing ties to the US government through the NED and NDI, with Eu having been a frequent contributor to NDI sponsored panels and programs, and Lee having the glorious distinction of having both been a recipient of awards from NED and NDI, as well as meeting with US Vice President Joe Biden in 2014 along with anti-Beijing advocate Anson Chan.

It does not take exceptional powers of deduction to see that, to varying degrees, Tai, Eu, Lee, and Chan each act as the public face of a US Government-sponsored initiative to destabilize the political situation in Hong Kong, one of China’s most economically and politically important regions. Through the intermediary of the NGO, Washington is able to promote an anti-Beijing line under the auspices of “democracy promotion,” just as it has done everywhere from Ukraine to Venezuela. Luckily for China, the movement was not supported by either the bulk of the working class in Hong Kong and China, or even by many of the middle class who saw it as little more than an inconvenience at best. However, it required swift government action to contain the public relations and media fiasco that could have resulted from the movement, a fact of which Beijing, no doubt, took note.

As a spokesperson for the National People’s Congress explained in April, the NGO law is necessary for “safeguarding national security and maintaining social stability.” Indeed, in late 2014, in the wake of the Occupy Central protests, Chinese President Xi Jinping traveled to Macau and spoke of the need to ensure that Macau walked on the “right path.” In a thinly veiled reference to Hong Kong, Xi praised Macau for continuing to follow the “one country, two systems” policy under which the special administrative regions of Macau and Hong Kong have greater autonomy but are still subject to Chinese law. Essentially, Xi made it quite clear that, despite the foreign NGO-manufactured movement in Hong Kong, Beijing remained firmly in control. And this is precisely the issue: control.

NGOs, Soft Power, and Terror in Xinjiang

The NGO ‘soft power’ weapon is not relegated solely to Hong Kong however. In fact, the western Chinese province of Xinjiang, one of the most volatile regions in the country, has seen active destabilization and subversion by soft power elements consistently over recent years. Home to the majority Muslim Uighur ethnic group, Xinjiang has been repeatedly attacked both with terrorism and vile propaganda that has sought to paint to China as the oppressor and enemy of Uighurs, and Muslims generally.

Xinjiang has been victim to a number of deadly terrorist attacks in recent years, including the heinous drive-by bombings that killed dozens and injured over 100 people in May 2014, the mass stabbings and bombings of November 2014, and the deadlyattack by Uighur terrorists on a traffic checkpoint just last month which left 18 people dead. Were such attacks, which claimed the lives of scores of innocent Chinese citizens, to have been carried out against, say, Americans, the western media would be all but declaring holy jihad against the entire world. However, since they’ve happened in China, these are merely isolated incidents that are due to the “marginalization” and “oppression” of the Uighur people by the big bad Chinese authorities.

Such a sickeningly biased narrative is in no small part due to the NGO penetration of the Uighur community and a vast public relations network funded directly by the US Government. The same National Endowment for Democracy (NED) which has disbursed funds to the NDI and other organizations involved in the Hong Kong destabilization of “Occupy Central,” has been a primary funder of the Uighur NGO complex.

The following organizations have each received significant financial support from the NED through the years: World Uighur Congress, Uighur American Association, International Uighur Human rights and Democracy Foundation, and the International Uighur PEN Club, among others. These NGOs are quite often the sources cited by western media for comments on anything related to Xinjiang and are almost always quick to demonize Beijing for all problems in the region, including terrorism.

Perhaps the best example of just such propaganda and dishonesty came in the last few weeks as western media was flooded with stories making the spurious allegation that China had banned the observance of Ramadan in Xinjiang. Indeed, there were literally hundreds of articles condemning China for this “restriction of religious freedom,” portraying the Chinese government as repressive and a violator of human rights. Interestingly, the primary source for the claim was none other than the NED-fundedWorld Uighur Congress.

Moreover, in mid July, on the day of Eid al-Fitr (the final day of Ramadan), the Wall Street Journal ran a story covering the media pushback from China which has sought in recent weeks to publicize the fact that Xinjiang, and all of China, has celebrated openly for Ramadan. And, as one should come to expect, the anti-China source cited is, as usual, a representative of the World Uighur Congress. It seems that this organization, far from being merely a human rights advocate, is in fact a mouthpiece for US propaganda against China. And when the propaganda is challenged and discredited by China, well that just invites new and more blistering propaganda.

The Geopolitical Footprints

All of this demonization has taken on a clear geopolitical and strategic significance as Turkey has stepped into the fray condemning China for its alleged “persecution” of Uighur Muslims, whom Ankara sees as Turks from its neo-Ottoman revanchist perspective. The Turkish Foreign ministry said in a statement that “Our people have been saddened over the news that Uighur Turks have been banned from fasting or carrying out other religious duties in the Xinjiang region…Our deep concern over these reports have been conveyed to China’s ambassador in Ankara.”

China responded to what it deemed to be inappropriate comments from Turkey’s Foreign Ministry, especially in light of Turkey’s absurd characterization of the Uighurs (who are Chinese citizens) as “Turks.” China’s Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Hua Chunying stated, “China has already demanded that Turkey clarify these reports and we have expressed concern about the statement from the Turkish foreign ministry…You should know that all the people of Xinjiang enjoy the freedom of religious belief accorded to them by the Chinese constitution.”

While the Chinese government, as it almost always does, used decidedly muted language to express its displeasure, the implications of the statement were not lost on keen political observers with some understanding of the China-Turkey relationship. Although the two countries have many aligned interests, as evidenced by Turkey’s repeatedly expressed desire to join the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), the little known fact is that Turkey is one of the major facilitators of terrorism in China.

Though it received almost no fanfare from international media, in January 2015 Chinese authorities arrested at least ten Turkish suspects alleged to have organized and facilitated the illegal border crossings of a number of Uighur extremists. It has further been revealed that these extremists were planning to travel to Syria, Afghanistan, and Pakistan to train and fight with fellow jihadis.

The story is still further evidence of a well-funded, well-organized international terror network operated and/or facilitated by Turkish intelligence. According to the Turkish Foreign Ministry, the ten Turkish citizens were arrested in Shanghai on November 17, 2014 for facilitating illegal immigration. While the formal charges against them range from forging documents to actually aiding illegal migration, it is the larger question of international terrorism that lurks beneath the surface. Because of course, as the evidence seems to indicate, these Uighur immigrants were not merely traveling to see loved ones in another country. On the contrary, they were likely part of a previously documented trend of Uighur extremists traveling to the Middle East to train and fight with the Islamic State or other terror groups.

It is these same extremist networks that carried out the aforementioned deadly bombing in Urumqi, capital of Xinjiang. In fact, precisely this trend was exposed two months earlier in September 2014 when Reuters reported that Beijing formally accused militant Uighurs from Xinjiang of having traveled to Islamic State-controlled territory to receive training. Further corroborating these accusations, the Jakarta Post of Indonesia reported that four Chinese Uighur jihadists had been arrested in Indonesia after having travelled from Xinjiang through Malaysia. Other, similar reports have also surfaced in recent months, painting a picture of a concerted campaign to help Uighur extremists travel throughout Asia, communicating and collaborating with transnational terror groups such as the Islamic State.

So, Uighur terrorists with forged documents provided by sources inside Turkey are implicated as being part of the same terror networks that carried out a series of deadly attacks on Chinese citizens and police. No wonder China is not exactly bending over backwards to dry Erdogan’s and the Turkish government’s crocodile tears. And yet, despite the terror war, the US-funded Uighur NGOs continue to portray China as responsible for the terrorism.

The destabilization of China takes many forms. From a manufactured protest movement in Hong Kong sponsored by NGOs connected to the US government, to a fabricated propaganda war peddled by other NGOs sponsored by the US government, to a terror war fomented by a NATO member, China is a nation under assault by soft and hard power. That Beijing is finally taking steps to curb the pernicious influence of such NGOs, and the forces they represent, is not only a positive step, it’s an absolutely necessary one. The national security and national sovereignty of the People’s Republic of China requires nothing less.

Eric Draitser is an independent geopolitical analyst based in New York City, he is the founder of StopImperialism.org and OP-ed columnist for RT, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

It’s Hard to Find Non-GMO Food

We knew that a lot of American crops were genetically modified. For example, we noted last year:

• Monsanto reports that – between 2008 and 2009 – 95% of all sugarbeets planted were genetically engineered to be able to tolerate high doses of the pesticide Roundup

• The USDA reports that 93% of all soy and 85% of all corn grown in the U.S. is an herbicide-resistant GE variety

• Similarly, around 93% of all cottonseed oil and more than 90% of all canola oil produced in the U.S. is herbicide-resistant GE

But we didn’t realize how widespread GMO foods have really become …

On Tuesday, the chair of the Subcommittee on Conservation, Energy, and Forestry of the House Committee on Agriculture – Glenn Thompson of Pennsylvania – said in Congressional testimony :

Nearly 80 percent of the food produced in the United States contains some kind of GM product …

Bottom line: It’s difficult to find non-GMO American food … especially since the feds are doing everything they can to keep us in the dark.

The US is intensifying its efforts to replace Russia as one of the EU’s largest energy suppliers, hoping to provide gas from the US itself to Europe, in addition to exploring regional players as possible suppliers. As Sputnik reported in an article titled: US will be Able to Supply Gas to Ukraine in Two Years:

“Senator John McCain said at a press conference in Kiev that the US will be able to provide Ukraine and the rest of Europe with gas in the next two years… According to him, Europe’s dependence on Russian gas supplies is a major obstacle that makes Europe unable to strengthen further sanctions against Russia.”

Since relations between the West and Russia have deteriorated so rapidly following the US coup in Ukraine, Western strategists have been working relentlessly to find a replacement to Russian energy supplies to the EU. In the immediate term, this is impossible, a reality that unnerves many in Washington and Brussels. But in the medium to long term, an assortment of countries could combine to replace Russian energy, or at least dramatically reduce Europe’s energy dependence on Moscow.

This issue was the subject of a recent article by the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR), a think-tank whose members include the former President of the European Central Bank, Jean-Claude Trichet; former Secretary General of NATO, Javier Solana; and the former UK Foreign Secretary, David Miliband. The puppet master of the US-controlled government in Ukraine, George Soros, is also a member.

In the ECFR article titled: Europe’s alternatives to Russian gas, the authors detail how the EU’s new Energy Union is partly designed to “diversify the EU’s gas supplies away from Russia”:

Part of the aim of the Energy Union is to diversify the EU’s gas supplies away from Russia, which has already proved to be an unreliable partner. Russia is the main supplier of crude oil and natural gas to the EU, and although diversifying away from Russian gas is not unrealistic in the medium term, several technical and political obstacles must be overcome.

The author’s then analyse the potential of different players to supply Europe with energy and weigh up the pros and cons of each country. Some of the potential countries listed – Iraq and Libya for instance – are so unstable (due to Western foreign policy of course) it is hard to see them being viable options. The article notes that Israel could be a potential energy supplier, a subject I have previously written about, although Tel Aviv may focus more on domestic ventures and a few regional projects.

Iran is also mentioned as a possible player, a country that is home to vast oil and gas reserves. Speculation has grown in recent months that Tehran and Brussels could strike an energy deal in the near future that would see Iran supplying gas and oil to the EU. With recent news that the negotiations between Iran and the P5+1 states have concluded successfully, and a deal has been reached which is expected to see sanctions gradually lifted, this is becoming more likely. As Petr Lvov wrote in a recent article for New Eastern Outlook titled: Iran is Heading West Now:

[The] oil and gas sectors of the Iranian economy will be sponsored by the West which will enable Tehran to increase the output of hydrocarbons. And in little time it will be capable of supplying the EU with gas through newly built pipelines. This step would cast a serious blow to the positions of Gazprom in Southern Europe.

There are still many obstacles to Iran being a supplier however. Even though a deal has been reached on Iran’s nuclear programme, many individuals in Iran will correctly view some of the P5+1 states as perfidious partners considering the history of these countries meddling in Iranian affairs. This was exemplified by Iranian army commander General Ahmad Raza Pourdastanwhen he stated: “The US might arrive at some agreements with us within the framework of the Group 5+1, but we should never hold a positive view over the enemy”.

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani also stated last year that Iran lags behind in gas extraction and is far from being able to replace Russia as a supplier. Although with the potential assistance of Western energy giants in the coming years following the nuclear deal, Iran could develop its energy sector swiftly.

In the coming years though, the US and EU may pursue far more subservient states than Iran to replace Russian energy, as the relationship between Iran and the US will still remain a delicate one in the near future. There is no question that many of the neocons in Washington will be irate at the recent deal and will still push for regime change in Tehran. This enmity could potentially restrict an energy deal between Iran and the EU in the ensuing years, although this may be overcome.

The author’s of the ECFR article finally conclude that “Azerbaijan is the supplier best placed to respond to the EU’s strategy of diversifying gas supply away from Russia.” Construction is already under way on numerous pipeline projects that will bring gas from the Caspian Sea to the Turkish and European market, supplementing the already constructed South Caucasus Pipeline.

The Trans-Anatolian Natural Gas Pipeline (TANAP) will run from Azerbaijan through Georgia into Turkey, and is expected to connect with the Trans Adriatic Pipeline (TAP) at the Greek-Turkish border – which will run through Greece, Albania and across the Adriatic Sea into Italy. TAP’s is expected to be operational by early 2020 and it will have an initial capacity of 10 billion cubic metres (bcm) of gas per year, with the prospect of that more than doubling in the future.

It will be important for the West to ensure that Azerbaijan continues to play a cooperative role with Western energy corporations in the future, as some voices in Washington have asserted that “U.S.-Azerbaijan relations are clearly now in serious crisis”.

Norway will continue to play a pivotal role in supplying gas to Europe in the future.  Norway overtook Russia as the largest gas supplier to Western Europe in the first quarter of 2015, and the Norwegian Foreign Minister stated in May that “we can step up [gas supplies] further in the years to come.”

Whilst the West seeks to replace Russian energy in Europe, the Russian government has been busy forging closer ties with many countries around the world. China has already started constructing their section of the Power of Siberia pipeline that will deliver up to38 billion cubic meters of Russian gas annually. The two nations also plan to build the Altai pipeline, a Western route that will run from Western Siberia to North-Western China.

Adding to the growing economic relations between Moscow and Beijing, Russia and Argentina signed energy deals in April in addition to Russia and Saudi Arabia signing a nuclear energy agreement last month.

Steven MacMillan is an independent writer, researcher, geopolitical analyst and editor of  The Analyst Report, especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

Tired of the oppressive financial hardship, wrought largely by the imperialist economic war against Iran, the Iranian people elected Hassan Rouhani president (June 2013) as he promised economic revival. He premised his pledge of economic recovery mainly on his alleged ability to bring the brutal sanctions against Iran to an end and integrate the Iranian economy into the world capitalist system. His promise of removing or alleviating sanctions, however, seems to have been based on an optimistic perception that a combination of the so-called charm offensive and far-reaching compromises over Iran’s nuclear technology would suffice to alter the Western powers’ sanctions policy against Iran.

More than a year later, while Iran’s peaceful nuclear technology is reduced from a fairly advanced to a relatively primitive level (from 20% to below 5% uranium enrichment), critical sanctions remain in place and economic recovery remains a dream.

To mitigate the oppressive burden of the so-called stagflation, a combination of stagnation and inflation, the president and his economic team recently crafted an economic package, “Proposed Package to Turn Stagnation to Expansion,” which turns out to be disappointingly devoid of any specific guideline or clear policy for economic recovery. Slightly more than 40% of the package is devoted to a withering criticism of economic policies of the previous (Ahmadinejad’s) administration, which is not only full of factual falsehoods and distortions but is also dubious on theoretical grounds. The rest of the package consists of a series of vague statements and general descriptions that fall way short of a meaningful economic plan or program.

Reading through the package feels like reading through lecture notes of an academic economist on neoclassical/neoliberal macroeconomic theory, not a policy prescription or an economic agenda. Accordingly, the sentences and, indeed, the entire text of the package make use of an exclusively passive voice (which is characteristic of a theoretical narrative, or a self-protective language designed to avoid responsibility for action) instead of an active voice characteristic of a policy agenda to be acted upon. Implicit in the use of the passive voice in the composition of the text of the package is that the subject/agent, or do-er, is market mechanism, not public policy [1].

The purpose of this essay is not to show the emptiness of Mr. Rouhani’s economic package, as this is amply established by many other critics of the package [2]. It is rather to show why it is empty, and why this should not come as a surprise to anyone familiar with his economic outlook or philosophy, as reflected, for example, in his book, National Security and Economic System of Iran (2010).

Neoliberal Economic Outlook

President Rouhani’s economic policy package is devoid of specific development plans or industrialization projects because the president and most of his economic advisors subscribe to an economic doctrine that frowns upon government intervention in economic affairs—unless such interventions help “pave the way” for unfettered market operations. According to this doctrine, called supply-side or neoliberal economics, solutions to economic stagnation, poverty and under-development lie in unhindered market mechanism and unreserved integration into world capitalist system. Recessions, joblessness and economic hardship in many less-developed countries are not so much due to economic mismanagement or the nature of global capitalism as they are because of government intervention and/or exclusion from world capitalist markets.

Neoliberal prescriptions that are portrayed as enabling the less-developed countries to harness “benevolent dynamics” of capitalism include: tax breaks for the wealthy and/or big business; privatization of public sector assets, enterprises and services; undermining labor unions and minimizing workers’ wages and benefits; eliminating or diluting environmental and workplace safety standards; deregulating markets; opening of the domestic market to unrestricted foreign investment/trade; and the like.

The claim that President Rouhani is a proponent of neoliberal economics is no speculation; it follows from his many speeches and statements, from his recently proposed “economic package” to fight stagflation and, as mentioned earlier, from his book, National Security and Economic System of Iran [امنیت ملّی و نظام اقتصادی ایران]. It is also evident from his policy prescriptions.

The president’s book deplores Iran’s “very oppressive” labor laws. It argues that the minimum wage must be slashed and restrictions on the laying off of workers eliminated if Iran’s “owners of capital” are to have the “freedom” to create prosperity. “One of the main challenges that employers and our factories face,” Rouhani writes, “is the existence of labor unions. Workers should be more pliant toward the demands of job-creators” [3].

Mr. Rouhani’s book also sheds important light on the link between his administration’s turn toward Washington and its plans to restructure the Iranian economy after the model of neoliberalism:

“There is a close correlation between economic development and political stability, which means maintaining dialogue and friendly relations with the outside world. As stable international relations paves the grounds for economic development, economic development, in turn, makes a country more secure or stable as it makes the country less vulnerable to external threats. Thus, there is a positive correlation, akin to a virtuous cycle, between the goal of economic development and the policy of establishing or maintaining friendly relations with the outside world” [4].

This passage (among many similar statements the president has made on numerous occasions) explains why Mr. Rouhani has made the solution to Iran’s economic problems contingent upon political détente or friendly relations with the United States and its allies. In general, there is of course nothing wrong with the desire to establish friendly relations with the U.S., or any other country for that matter; it could, indeed, be of mutual benefits if it is based on mutual respect for national sovereignty of countries involved. The problem with the Rouhani administration’s pursuit of an amicable relationship with the U.S., however, is that it has tied the urgently needed solutions to Iran’s economic difficulties to that unpredictable and unreliable relationship.

The administration’s misguided perception that the mere establishment of relations with the U.S. would serve as a panacea to Iran’s economic woes has basically made the fate of Iran’s economy hostage to the unforeseeable outcome of its negotiations with the United State and, therefore, hostage to the endless, and increasingly futile, nuclear negotiations with the group of the so-called 5+1 countries, dominated by the United States.

This explains Mr. Rouhani’s dilemma: he has essentially trapped himself into an illusion, the illusion that a combination of charm offensives, smiley faces and diplomatic niceties (in place of Ahmadinejad’s undiplomatic demeanor) would suffice to change imperialist policies toward Iran. In reality, however, the U.S. policy toward Iran (or any other country, for that matter) is based on an agenda, an imperialistic agenda that consists of a series of demands and expectations, not on diplomatic decorum, or the type of language its leaders use.

President Rouhani’s neoliberal economic views are abundantly evident from his occasional statements and speeches on economic policy. For example, in a 16 August 2014 (25 Mordad 1393, Iranian calendar) speech in Tehran, designed to explain his administration’s policies to fight economic stagnation, the president fervently maintained that state intervention in economic affairs is often more detrimental than beneficial, arguing that.> – needs to be paraphrased)ledent ionns inistration’ions wiht is that itmic developmment de world. As economic development can “the state must stay out of economic activities, and place those activities at the disposal of the private sector . . . . The private sector understands the economy much better, and it knows where to invest” [5]. (Incidentally, this statement is uncannily similar to what President Ronald Reagan famously said about the economic role of the government: “The government can help the economy by staying out of it.”)

The neoliberal policies of the Rouhani administration are, however, best reflected in the actual economic measures the administration has adopted. One such measure has been drastic reductions in a number of import duties, or tariffs, including reduction of tariffs on imports that have competitive domestic substitutes. For example, Mr. Mahmoud Sedaqat, vice president of the Association of UPVC Window & Door Profiles Manufacturers, recently complained (during a news briefing in Tehran) that while domestic production capacity of this petrochemical is more than twice as much as domestic needs, the government reduced import tariffs for this product from 30% to 15%. Mr. Sedaqat further pointed out that government’s careless trade policy and a lack of protection for domestic producers has led to an atmosphere of confusion and uncertainty among domestic producers, which is contributing to further aggravation of the ongoing economic stagnation [6].

Another example of the neoliberal policies of the Rouhani administration is its policy of fighting inflation. According to the president and his economic advisors, government spending and/or excessive money supply are the major cause for the hyperinflation in Iran. This view of inflation is based on the notorious IMF diagnosis for the plague of inflation not only in Iran but almost everywhere in the world. The essence of this approach to inflation, which is part of the IMF’s so-called “Structural Adjustment Program,” can be summarized as follows: (1) excessive government spending contributes to the growth of money supply; (2) growth of money supply automatically leads to inflation; and (3) to control inflation, therefore, requires rolling back government spending, or implementing austerity measures.

Real economic world is of course very different from this purely academic, nearly mechanical, correlation. An often-cited case in this context is the German experience of the immediate post-WW II period. Evidence shows that while the volume of cash and demand deposits rose 2.4 times and the volume of bank loans, both short and long term, rose more than ten-fold in the 1948-54 period, this significant rise in liquidity not only did not lead to a rise in the level of prices but it was, in fact, accompanied by a decline in the general level of prices—the consumer price index declined from 112 to 110 during that period. Why? Because the increase in liquidity was accompanied by an even bigger increase in output. While anecdotal, this experience nonetheless shows that, if or when used productively, a large money supply does not automatically lead to high inflation.

While it is true that, under certain circumstances, excess liquidity can be inflationary, I also strongly suspect that the inflationary role of liquidity is often exaggerated in order to justify and implement the anti-welfare, neoliberal policies of economic austerity. To the extent that curtailment of social spending may lead to curtailment of inflation, it also leads to curtailment of employment, purchasing power, demand and, therefore, economic growth, i.e. to stagnation—a side effect which is much worse than the plague of inflation. This explains, at least in part, the failure of the Rouhani administration’s neoliberal fight against inflation: not only has it not curtailed inflation, it has also aggravated stagnation by cutting social spending and undermining demand.

Like their neoliberal counterparts elsewhere, Iranian neoliberals view government spending as a cost that must be minimized. In reality, however, judicious government spending (whether on soft/social infrastructure such as education, health and nutrition or on physical infrastructure such as transportation and communication projects) is an investment in the long-term development of a society, not a cost. It is not surprising, then, that the IMF-sponsored curtailment of government spending in pursuit of lowering inflation has often led to economic stagnation and underdevelopment.

One of the first victims of the neoliberal economic policies of the Rouhani administration was the government-sponsored housing project that was put in place by the previous administration in order to make home-ownership affordable to working and low-income classes. Called Maskan-e Mehr (Goodwill Housing), not only did it allow 4.4 million low-income families to become homeowners, it also significantly contributed to economic growth and employment. Despite its success, the Rouhani administration has decided to discontinue the project.

Class Interests as Economic Theory

Neoliberalism is essentially an ideology or doctrine that is designed to promote and/or justify policies of economic austerity, thereby serving the interests of the plutocratic 1% at the expense of the overwhelming majority of citizens. This is accomplished through an ad-hoc, utilitarian economic theory that postulates that unhindered market mechanism and unrestricted pursuit of self-interest lead to economic expansion and prosperity for all, that state-sponsored social safety-net programs are “burdens” or “costly trade-offs” in terms of lost productivity and that, therefore, government intervention in economic affairs must be avoided.

This neoliberal ideology is promoted and propagated so effectively that it has evolved, more or less, as a religion, market religion—or as Alex Andrews of The Guardian newspaper puts it, “the market a god and economics a form of theology.” Indeed, the faith in market mechanism is more akin to blind cultism than rational belief of intelligent people in otherworldly religion. Viewing market mechanism as almost infallible and blaming capitalism’s systemic failures on the “irrational behavior of market players” is tantamount to some simplistic interpretations of religion that attribute humans’ misfortunes or miseries to their deviations from God’s ways; that is, in the same way that humans’ “sinful” deeds are said to condemn them to a wretched Otherworld, economic agents’ deviations from market rules are believed to lead to economic crises that would doom them to financial misery in this world.

Cleverly, this theory is called supply-side economics, implying that economic policy makers should not or need not concern themselves with the demand-side of the economy, that is, with the purchasing power or the ability of the people to buy or demand. Instead, if policy makers only focused on the production side of the economy and created conditions favorable to expanded growth or a bigger supply, the resulting “trickle-down” effects would automatically benefit the demand-side of the economy. And what are those favorable conditions? They include market deregulations, lax labor and environmental standards, supply-side tax breaks, minimizing wages and benefits, removal of restrictions on international capital flows, long hours and subjection of labor to strict management discipline, denial of trade union rights and suppression of workers’ political actions, and the like.

The division or dichotomy between supply-side and demand-side of an economy is, however, a scam: an artificial, utilitarian and arbitrary division that is crafted largely on abstract theoretical grounds, and for ideological reasons. A real world economy is a totality where supply and demand are two sides of the same coin, meaning that the two sides need to be dealt with simultaneously. For example, the need for health care coverage, the critical necessity of public education, or social safety need programs such as provision of subsistence nutrition for the needy cannot be neglected or put on the backburner in the hope of some illusory effects of “trickle-down” economics. Supply side is a façade, a misleading or obfuscationist theory that is designed to camouflage the neoliberal philosophy of social Darwinism.

The experience of the IMF-sponsored “structural adjustment programs” in many “developing” countries around the world shows that curtailing critical social spending in the name of boosting the supply-side of the economy is a counterproductive policy that tends to undermine long-term growth and development by cutting vital investment in both social and physical infrastructures. This can also be seen, even more clearly, in the context of the crisis-ridden core capitalist countries since the 2008 financial collapse, where extensive neoliberal austerity cuts have resulted in widespread misery and escalating inequality without reviving the stagnant economies of these countries.

While the supply-side doctrine has a long history (going back all the way to the classical economist Jean-Baptiste Say, 1767-1832, who famously expressed the doctrine as: “supply creates its own demand”), its latest revival started in the late 1970s and early 1980s in the U.S. and U.K., which brought forth two of its most effective propagandists: Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher. It has since been systematically entrenched not only in the core capitalist countries but also in many less-developed countries, including Iran.

In Iran, the turn to neoliberal economics started under the presidency of Hashemi Rafsanjani. It was somewhat contained under the presidency of Mahmud Ahmadinejad (although he too had his share of extensive privatizations); but with the election of President Rouhani it is once again gathering speed—Rouhani is basically picking up where Rafsanjani left off.

To point out that President Rouhani and most of his economic advisors are advocates of neoliberal economics is not to say that they lack compassion, or that they do not care about the lot of the working and needy classes. It is rather to point out that their policy prescription to remedy the financial distress that plagues the overwhelming majority of the Iranian people is misguided. It rests upon the idea of capitalism as a benign sphere of human activity where innovating entrepreneurs generate wealth to such an extent that some of it is bound to “trickle-down” to the population at large.

It is necessary to point out here that trickle-down theory may have had some validity in the earlier (industrial or manufacturing) stages of capitalism where the rise in the wealth of nations also meant expanded (real) production and the rise in employment. However, in the era of heavily financialized economies, where the dominant form of capitalist wealth comes not so much from real production of goods and services as it does from asset price inflations, that is, from financial bubbles, trickle-down theory has lost whatever minimal validity it may have had at earlier phases of capitalism.

Illusion and Misconceptions

President Rouhani and his economic advisors’ perceptions that the solution to Iran’s economic problems lies in an unrestrained integration into world capitalism and a wholesale privatization of the Iranian economy is overly optimistic. Abundant and irrefutable evidence shows that, during the past several decades, neoliberalism’s dismantlement of socialist, social-democratic and other welfare state economies across the world has invariably led to drastic declines in employment, wages and living standards of the overwhelming majority of the people, thereby further aggravating poverty and inequality on a global level. In many “developing” countries that are integrated into globalized neoliberal capitalism, the living conditions of the majority of their citizens have, in fact, deteriorated. To the extent that workers can find employment, they are often paid poverty wages; and they are increasingly forced to hold several jobs, often detrimental to their health and family life. As Ben Selwyn (among many others) has pointed out:

“The contemporary world has unprecedented wealth, and mass poverty. Total global wealth was $241 trillion in 2013 and is expected to rise to $334 trillion by 2018. Yet the majority of people live in poverty. The World Bank and its defenders argue that global poverty has declined under neoliberalism. They can only make these arguments because the World Bank defines the poverty line as $1.25 a day, below which it is impossible to lead a dignified life. . . . Lant Pritchett, a critical World Bank economist, suggests a more humane $10 a day poverty line; according to his calculations, 88% of the world population lives in poverty [7].

Summarizing his study of the relationship between globalization of neoliberalism and its impact on the living conditions of the worldwide masses of citizens, Selwyn concludes: “Far from a ladder of opportunity, workers in globalized production networks are incorporated into economic systems that reproduce their poverty to sustain corporation profits” [8].

Contrary to claims of neoliberalism, major economic developments, critical infrastructural projects and significant industrialization achievements under capitalism have been made possible either directly by the public sector or by the state support for the private sector. For example, in the aftermath of the Great Depression and WW II, most European countries embarked on extensive state-sponsored industrialization and/or development projects under social-democratic, labor or socialist governments, not so much to bring about “genuine” socialism as it was to rebuild the war-torn European economies by mobilizing and pulling together national resources and funneling them toward development projects. Similar policies were successfully carried out in other major capitalist countries such as the U.S., Canada, Japan, Australia and South Korea.

In Iran too most industrialization projects and infrastructural developments since the 1979 revolution have taken place under direct or supervisory role of the state—when the country relied on its domestic talents, resources, and capabilities in pursuit of self-reliance in the face of hostile imperialist powers and their cruel economic sanctions. Such developments were brought about even under the highly inauspicious conditions of the war, the 8-year war with Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, and brutal economic sanctions. By contrast, extensive privatizations and systematic spread of neoliberal capitalism of recent years, especially since the election of President Rouhani, has basically meant stagnation of the real sector and development of speculative, parasitic or financial sector of the economy.

Evidence shows that, at the early or formative stages of their development, all the presently industrialized countries vigorously carried out policies of export promotion and import substitution; that is, policies that protected their “infant industries” against the more competitive foreign exporters while promoting their own exports abroad. For example, Britain’s adoption of mercantilist and/or protectionist policies of economic development in the early stages of its industrialization, which erected prohibitive tariffs against the then more competitive Dutch exporters, played a significant role in nurturing the country’s manufacturers to excel in global markets.

Likewise, the United States pursued vigorous policies of protecting its “infant industries” against the more productive European exporters until the early to mid-twentieth century, when its producers became competitive in global markets. Similar protectionist policies were followed by Japan, South Korea and other core capitalist countries in the formative phases of their industrialization and development [9].

Thus, the neoliberal outlook of President Rouhani (and most of his economic advisors) that ties solutions to Iran’s economic difficulties to integration of the country’s economy into global capitalism and further curtailment of the economic role of the government is far from warranted; it is, indeed, contradicted by development experiences of most countries around the world.

Ismael Hossein-zadeh is Professor Emeritus of Economics (Drake University). He is the author of Beyond Mainstream Explanations of the Financial Crisis (Routledge 2014), The Political Economy of U.S. Militarism (Palgrave–Macmillan 2007), and the Soviet Non-capitalist Development: The Case of Nasser’s Egypt (Praeger Publishers 1989). He is also a contributor to Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion (AK Press 2012).

References

[1] The Farsi title of the proposed package is: “بسته پیشنهادی دولت برای شکستن رکود و رونق اقتصادی,” and it is available online at: < http://mehrnews.com/detail/news/2331200>.  

[2] For a sample of critical reviews of the Rouhani administration’s proposed economic package see (1) Ahmad Tavakoli and Elias Naderan, “مدل بسته خروج از رکود نسخه شکست خورده صندوق بین‌اللملی پول است,” in: < http://www.siasatrooz.ir/vdcefe8v.jh8vvi9bbj.html>; (2) Farshad Moumeni, “نقدهای هشدار آمیز فرشاد مومنی به بسته خروج از رکود دولت,” in <http://www.rajanews.com/detail.asp?id=207214>; (3) Raja News, “رویکرد نادرست دولت در گره زدن معیشت مردم با رفع تحریم‌ها,” in: http://www.rajanews.com/detail.asp?id=194863; (4) Hossein Shamsyan, “بسته پوسیده,” in: <http://kayhan.ir/fa/news/20766/%D8%A8%D8%B3%D8%AA%D9%87-%D9%BE%D9%88%D8%B3%DB%8C%D8%AF%D9%87-%DB%8C%D8%A7%D8%AF%D8%AF%D8%A7%D8%B4%D8%AA-%D8%B1%D9%88%D8%B2>.

[3] As excerpted by Keith Jones, “Iranian president declares country ‘open for business’,” in <http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2014/01/27/iran-j27.html>.

[4] (Paraphrased) translation by the author from the abstract/introduction to the first edition of President Rouhani’s book, National Security and Economic System of Iran [امنیت ملّی و نظام اقتصادی ایران] (2010).

[5] “Rouhani Explains Anti-Stagnation Economic Policies,” available at: <http://www.farsnews.com/newstext.php?nn=13930519000461>. 

[6] Mahmood Sedaqat, “کاهش تعرفه پروفیل «یوپی‌وی‌سی» ضربه دولت به تولید داخلی است,” Kayhan, Mordad 25, 1393 (August 16, 2014).

[7] Ben Selwyn, “Global Poverty and Neoliberalism: Development by the Elites, For the Elites,” <http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/03/07/development-by-the-elites-for-the-elites/>.

[8] Ibid.

[9] For an illuminating discussion of the impact of trade on development see Professor Michael Hudson’s Trade, Development and Foreign Debt, Pluto Press 1993.  

Turkey attacked the positions of the Kurdistan Workers Party members in Iraq with airstrikes. 

The Turkish Air Force carried out airstrikes on positions of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party in northern Iraq, the Turkish government said in a statement on Saturday.

The Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), a political group listed as a terrorist organization by Ankara, was founded at the end of the 1970’s to fight for self-determination of Kurds, comprising some 25 percent of Turkey’s population.

“Effective airstrikes against targets of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party in northern Iraq were carried out. Militants’ cantonments and armament depots were destroyed,” the statement said.

The government added that Islamic State jihadist group positions in the north of Syria were attacked as well.

The United Nations and NATO were notified about the airstrikes, according to the statement.

It comes a day after the Turkish police conducted an anti-terrorist operation in 13 of the country’s provinces, detaining 251 people suspected of involvement with various terrorist organizations, including ISIL and PKK.On Monday, a Turkish citizen, allegedly associated with ISIL, carried out a terrorist attack in the Turkish city of Suruc close to the Syrian border in front of a cultural center for Turkish Kurds, killing 32 people and injuring over 100.

On Wednesday, the PKK claimed responsibility for killing two Turkish police officers in the nearby city of Ceylanpinar, claiming the policemen had backed ISIL.

FDU – National Movement

I N K U B I R I

Uburinganire . Ubwisanzure . Amajyambere

Equal Rights . Freedom . Social Progress

Egalité . Liberté . Progrès Social

ONLY AN INDICTMENT WOULD PREVENT PRESIDENT KAGAME TO USURP AN UNCONSTITUTIONAL THIRD TERM.

As far as President Paul Kagame believes he is above the Rwandan laws and institutions, as far as he is ready to make his people pay the ultimate human cost, namely death, with unknown impact in time and figures, for no form of peaceful internal political pressure would drive him away of his plans to establish a totalitarian state in Rwanda.

As a matter of fact President Paul Kagame knows that international economic sanctions do more harm to the ordinary people than to the ruling elite and because the world’s Powers that impose such sanctions ultimately end up removing them mostly owing to their own interests, he flouts such an option.

For this man, who nonetheless is accused of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide on his people, continued to benefit for more than twenty years from a total blind eye of the international community and the world’s Powers who helped him climb to power and establish his totalitarian rule, Paul Kagame has come to believe that he may get away with anything.

Finally, because President Paul Kagame is finding out that countries such as the United States of America and the United Kingdom which have protected him until now have begun to question themselves openly, to document his crimes, especially by current hearings by the US Congress, to cooperate with justice such as the recent arrest of the head of his intelligence apparatus by the UK Metropolitan Police pending judicial extradition to Spain, the General President knows that he has no other options but to forcefully get a life term in office so that he may get shielded by the diplomatic immunity that would be conferred to him by the function of a Head of State.

The ongoing gesticulations aiming at arranging millions of signatures from the population for an unconstitutional third term and the subsequent 14 July 2015 decision by the Rwandan Parliament in favor of a referendum for a constitutional usurpation in this respect are just the ultimate exploitation of the popular vote for Kagame’s lifetime presidency , the only potion with impunity for his crimes.

Even though the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) has done an important work by holding accountable the leaders that were primary responsible within the Habyarimana regime, for crimes against humanity and genocide, it however significantly failed to live up to its mission by refraining itself from trying those leaders with similar ranks within the former rebellion, who were responsible for crimes against humanity and genocide and are currently in power in Kigali. Such a failure of the ICTR could therefore be interpreted as a blank check that was given to President Kagame so that he may deepen his dictatorship and export his war into the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). It is important to note that this war has destabilized the Great Lakes Region and has been an unprecedented major tragedy since the Second World War. It took away indeed the lives of more than 6 million Congolese and was the scene of new crimes against humanity according to the UN Mapping Report of October 2010 and of the “genocide” on Rwandan Hutu refugees.

Since the publication of the UN Mapping Report, several Rwandan and Congolese organizations either political or of the civil society, human rights NGOs, and experts from the Great Lakes region, have unsuccessfully proposed the establishment of an ad hoc International Criminal Tribunal for the Congo. In particular, in August 2013, 52 major international women leaders appealed for the creation of an international criminal tribunal for the DRC. Such a tribunal was presented as “an essential solution for peace and justice in the Great Lakes region.” In February 2014, The United States Ambassador-at-Large for War Crimes Issues, Mr. Stephen Rapp, who also happens to be the former prosecutor of the Special Court for Sierra Leone which prosecuted and convicted President Charles Taylor of Liberia, called for the establishment of such a tribunal. All of these organizations and individuals believe that it is appropriate to end impunity throughout the region and work towards peaceful political transitions. It is time for the international community, the members of the UN Security Council in particular, to listen to all of these requests and to establish such a tribunal to try the individuals who are responsible for war crimes, crimes against humanity and acts of genocide, which were perpetrated on the Congolese territory.

The establishment of the International Tribunal on the Congo, at which the Head of State immunity cannot be invoked, would mark an end to impunity.

Likewise, according to the National Movement Inkubiri, the establishment of such a tribunal would allow the Great Lakes region to end the fueling of destabilizing proxy rebellions that are remotely controlled from Rwanda and to be able to project into a peaceful future. Finally, the indictment of President Kagame, stripped of his immunity, would take away his maneuvers aimed at usurping the Constitution for his re-election to the presidency of the Republic in 2017.

The National Movement Inkubiri believes that, instead of the current concert of bells and whistles calling upon President Kagame to give up the third term, the most effective way to stop the adventures of a man who is determined to establish a lifetime authoritarian rule and to destabilize the Great Lakes region and beyond is an international justice indictment. The ad hoc International Criminal Tribunal for the Congo would constitute such an opportunity.

Done in Lyon (France) on July 21, 2015

Eugene NDAHAYO

National Movement Inkubiri

Chairman

To the great dismay of much of the world, the Greek Parliament approved today – 23 July 2015 – the second or the third (depending who is counting) troika “bail out” of € 86 billion. This would increase the Greek debt according to my counting – mind you there are many different debt theories floating around – to about € 446 billion, or about 210% of GDP. 

It’s getting worse by the day. Not one euro of that money would flow into the Greek treasury, to revive its economy, to rebuild the social and medical programs of the country that were totally dismantled and looted by international banksters. In fact, this insane amount of money serves only to restructure Greece’s debt according to modalities and a time frame still to be worked out (“negotiated”) between the criminal troika thugs and Greece until about 20 August. The new € 86 billion – like the hundreds of billions before are transferred from the European Central Bank (sic) to too-big-to-fail commercial banks and are being reshuffled between them – all creating monster profits for the banks from usurious interest rates. Even though interest rates are kept secret, they must be hovering in the areas of 5% – 7%, for sheer fiat money created by a mouse-click that costs nothing to anybody. That interest is compounded increasing the debt exponentially.

In fact, the entire Greek debt could also be eclipsed by another mouse-click. And nobody would be hurt. To the contrary – Greece could suddenly breathe again and start afresh revamping her economy and social safety net. It would even help clean up the banksters’ dirty balance sheets. Of course, the banks don’t care about that. They only care about the insane interest they receive from fiat money. – Maybe that is why the IMF is suddenly advocating debt release for Greece?

Greece could even stay in the EU, putting Washington’s concern about NATO on the back-burner – for a while. Though having gone through this horrific experience, there would be not much trust left by Greece in the EU and its institutions. Grexit would still be the preferred solution; starting on a new slate without the eye and mandate of the ECB-watchdog.

As it stands today, at least 30% of Greek citizens are not covered by health care. They cannot afford insurance, nor can they afford to pay out of their pockets for what’s left of privatized medical services. Child mortality is sky-rocketing. Nobody talks about it. The mainstream media don’t touch the subject.

Adding insult to injury, to sanitize Greece’s local banks, the new EU law of “haircuts” may apply as of 1 August, meaning that banks will steal the money from depositors and shareholders to rehabilitate themselves. This goes by the euphemism of ‘bail-in’. Now the poor Greek, who still can only withdraw 60 euros per day (€ 420/week) are confronted with their meager savings being officially stolen. The Greek oligarch have long ago, way before entering of the Syriza Government, transferred their fortunes abroad, similar to what the Cypriot oligarchs did before the March 2012 “haircut”. – Where and when does this inhuman farce stop?

Greece is the second largest recipient and host (after Italy) of trans-Mediterranean refugees to whom the northern ultra-neoliberal fascist European countries attempt to close their borders. Greece and possibly soon also Italy and Spain, is strangled blue by the fascist embrace endorsed by the mainstay of Europe, the vassals of Washington, the Zionist-run Wall Street and the FED. Yet, Greece has abstained from sending these refugees from war torn countries in Africa and the Middle East back to their miseries. Despite their own misery, a sense of solidarity prevails – a sense of humanity, the rest of the western world has lost.

Mind you and always remember, because nobody will tell you – these wars and conflicts producing the flood of migrants, were and are created and sustained by Washington and its European vassals for control of resources and hegemony – and not least for the maintenance of the hugely profitable global war industrial complex, of which 60% is dominated by the US. The abject and perpetual misery that creates the refugee crisis is the direct product of those who refuse to receive and accommodate them. EU solidarity never existed – but today western greed and egocentricity has eradicated even the shred of notion of what solidarity might be.

Back to today’s Greek parliament vote of deception – it is totally illegal, as well pointed out by Prof Michel Chossudovsky, http://www.globalresearch.ca/greeces-parliament-cannot-override-the-no-vote-the-agreement-with-the-creditors-is-illegal/5463594 .

The Greek Parliament cannot override the people’s decision. That is unconstitutional.

In addition, there is a little known caveat in contract law applicable to international as well as locally concluded agreements.

“Contracts formed under duress, or fraud by one party, or where one party was clearly unequal in bargaining power can be set aside;” says renowned international criminal lawyer and specialist in Human Rights, Christopher Black.

He adds that each side has to give consideration … for the other to form a contract. In circumstances where one side has gained a disproportionate advantage through deceit or through other illegal means, i.e. bribery, a contract would not be considered valid. These conditions apply to any kind of contracts, such as mineral and hydrocarbon concessions, telecommunications – as well as banking. In other words, the initial ‘bail-outs’ contracted by previous governments with the troika were imposed under proven foul play and therefore would be illegal.

Furthermore, Chris Black says,

“There is also the issue of force majeure. That is when circumstances change beyond the parties control so much that the contract cannot be fulfilled or should not be fulfilled; then the contract is null and void.”

Usually such ‘force majeure’ clauses are part of every contract. If they are not in the case of Greek debt, their omission was deliberate and would not hold up in a court of law.

“In Greece, the argument can be made that the original loans made to [the Government] by the various banks and IMF were obtained under duress, by bribery of government officials (or by Goldman Sachs ‘cooked’ balance sheets – observation by the author) are invalid because of fraud; and, ultimately, if circumstances have changed so much that one party simply can’t through no fault of their own, fulfill their part [of the contract]. No court would hold that party bound to that contract.”

Chris Black concludes that a

“court would also have to consider whether the contract was ever valid in the first place; that is – did both sides get real consideration for their part in the bargain….It is clear that the moneys lent did not actually flow into the Greek economy but were nominal loans to the Greek nation, but actually went from one lenders bank to another and back again, so that it was really a scam to steal the wealth of the Greek people…. The Greek could legally argue their way out of all these contracts and loans, but of course behind the contracts sits the German army and behind them the US army – and so it not (so much) a legal matter but a political one. Argentina and Iceland made a political decision and repudiated these contracts. Greece can do the same.”

Is it perhaps for that reason that the IMF has come out lately calling for restructuring the Greek debt or canceling it altogether? – Is it that the IMF is fully aware of these contract clauses of fraudulent debt and ‘force majeure’ and that they – the clauses – would be respected in an international court even if they were not spelled out in the specific loan contracts?

The IMF probably prefers to be the initiator of debt-forgiveness rather than being caught red-handed as debt perpetrator. The IMF has in full memory the Ecuador carrying out an independent debt audit, concluding that two thirds of it has been contracted fraudulently.

Greece has the right to present their case to an international court. Considering the circumstances described above, chances are high that they may stand tall. So, there is hope for a rescue without debt!

Peter Koenig is an economist and geopolitical analyst. He is also a former World Bank staff and worked extensively around the world in the fields of environment and water resources. He writes regularly for Global Research, ICH, RT, Sputnik News, the Voice of Russia / Ria Novosti, TeleSur, The Vineyard of The Saker Blog, and other internet sites. He is the author of Implosion – An Economic Thriller about War, Environmental Destruction and Corporate Greed – fiction based on facts and on 30 years of World Bank experience around the globe. He is also a co-author of The World Order and Revolution – Essays from the Resistance.

The below admission from the BBC that its substitution of Syria footage between two 2014 broadcasts breaches its own Editorial Guidelines on accuracy is a modest victory in the battle to attract scrutiny to the wider charges that one of the reports in question (at least) was largely, if not entirely, fabricated.  

For almost two years I have pursued the question of whether scenes of the aftermath of an alleged incendiary attack on an Aleppo school – filmed by BBC staff and first broadcast as UK legislators voted on military intervention in Syria – were staged for the purposes of propaganda.   

Many compelling evidence points have arisen: the widely contradictory accounts of precisely when the alleged attack occurred – including disagreement between the BBC reporter and cameraman concerned; the testimony of a former Free Syrian Army commander stationed in the vicinity denying that an attack occurred; a fortuitously-grabbed screencap of one of the alleged teenage victims grinning broadly into the camera; “victims” sharing the same “costume”, and, most astonishing of all, the self-identification of a “victim” seen in footage from the day (in reality a 52 year old Netherlands resident) who contacted me on Facebook, anxious that she may be recognised.

The backgrounds of the two doctors featured in the BBC’s report are of considerable interest: Dr Saleyha Ahsan, a former British army captain, has a personal connection with a military officer who runs large-scale medical simulation exercises, employing professional casualty make-up artists; Dr Ahsan’s colleague, Dr Rola Hallam, is the daughter of Dr Mousa al-Kurdi, who is “involved politically with the Syrian National Council”. The co-founder of Hand in Hand for Syria, the “humanitarian” charity for which the doctors are filmed volunteering, has expressed bloodthirsty promises to bring Assad to justice “NO MATTER WHAT LIVES IT TAKES, NO MATTER HOW MUCH CATASTROPHE IT MAKES”.  A Hand in Hand for Syria nurse seen working alongside Drs Ahsan and Hallam is pictured elsewhere tending to the wounds of a child opposition fighter.

Very many other discrepancies are noted on my blog. It is hard to escape the conclusion, voiced by former UK ambassador Craig Murray, that the BBC’s ‘Saving Syria’s Children’ “documentary” represents the fruit of a collaboration between BBC personnel and UK state security services and marks a unique and historic breach of trust between the corporation, its UK licence fee-payer funders and its millions of viewers and listeners worldwide.

Robert Stuart

https://bbcpanoramasavingsyriaschildren.wordpress.com/

*      *     *

Ref: CT/1500344

Dear Mr Steel

Thank you for your provisional finding of 20 July (reproduced below) informing me that you propose to uphold my complaint regarding the substitution of Syria footage in respect of accuracy.

The finding does not address the points I have raised regarding the journalistic ethics of substituting images without acknowledgement or of the disturbingly vague and seemingly arbitrary categories of “taste of decency”. As your colleague Mr Tregear patricianly put it:

You have been given an explanation as to why the footage was changed; there is no reason why the audience should be made aware that any such editing has taken place; and BBC News is under no obligation to tell you the source of the substituted images which were broadcast.

and:

In response to your comment about the paragraph in my email which you found “astonishing”, I can only say the point I was making was that there is no formal policy which obliges BBC News to inform viewers that footage has been changed or to confirm when asked the source of material used.  It is a matter for BBC News to decide whether to provide that information.

I shall wish to pursue these matters following receipt of your final report.

Yours sincerely,

Robert Stuart

https://bbcpanoramasavingsyriaschildren.wordpress.com

________________________________________________________________________________________

British Broadcasting Corporation White City, 201 Wood Lane, London, W12 7TQ

Telephone: 020 8743 8000 Email: [email protected]

Editorial Complaints Unit

Mr R Stuart

Email:

Ref: CT/1500344

20 July 2015

Dear Mr Stuart

Syria Vote: One Year On, BBC News Channel, 30 August 2014

I’m writing to let you know the provisional outcome of the Editorial Complaints Unit’s investigation into your complaint about a report broadcast on the BBC News Channel at 4.30am BST on 30 August 2015 [sic]. I’m sorry this has taken longer than we initially led you to expect.

We’re now in a position to add to the account you were given in the email of 17 May from the BBC Complaints Team. As explained in that email, the report was re-edited in order to replace the footage of the Aleppo attack of August 2013 with less graphic images (of an attack in Saraqeb, Northern Syria, on 29 April 2013) for a different audience. We’ve now established that the editing was carried out by the Newsnight team after the programme came off the air – at about midnight, in fact, and after Laura Kuenssberg had left the studio. I’m told that they didn’t check the sound-track, and the fact that the replacement of the pictures rendered the accompanying script line inaccurate simply didn’t register with them –and of course the News Channel team would have no reason to suppose there was anything amiss with the report as it reached them. I agree with the view that the change of pictures didn’t change the journalistic integrity of the piece, in the sense that it wouldn’t have affected viewers’ understanding of the matters under discussion. Nevertheless, it would have given them the impression that they were seeing footage of an attack which took place just before MPs voted when the footage actually dated from four months earlier – an impression which could have been avoided if the script had been appropriately edited or if less graphic images from the Aleppo attack had been used. I’m therefore proposing to uphold your complaint in respect of accuracy, though I hope the explanation I’ve given will reassure you that there was no intention to mislead.

As my colleague, Colin Tregear, explained in his letter of 18 June, this is a provisional finding and so I’ll be happy to consider any comments you may wish to make provided that you let me have them by 3 August. Alternatively, if you are content with the finding as it stands, let me know and I’ll finalise it without further ado.

Mr Tregear also said he would ask the relevant BBC manager to respond to your concerns about the time it took tom [sic] address your complaint at Stage 1 of the process. This is their response:

We have reviewed the delays in replying after Mr Stuart’s return complaint was received in November and do apologise again for these on behalf of the BBC Executive. There was already a backlog of complaints being investigated in BBC News which caused some initial delay when Mr Stuart escalated his complaint in November 2014. This was a consequence of large volumes of complaints following the conflict in the Middle East during the summer and then the Scottish Referendum in September. Although the relevant editor was asked on a number of occasions for a response over many weeks, he had not provided one by March when he moved on to a new role. A response from his successor was consequently delayed and provided over a month later. We apologise for these delays, which do not reflect the level of service we strive for and are normally able to provide.

Yours sincerely

Fraser Steel 

Head of Editorial Complaints

The truth is out there and is plain enough for anyone with an open mind to see: The mainstream media and the “progressive Left” are vaccine advocates, and will do whatever they can, including lying and forcing their views on others by law, to push their pro-vaccine agenda.

The latest example of this comes from none other than PBS host Gwen Ifill, who completely fabricated a statistic recently regarding the “death toll” from last fall’s measles outbreak at Disneyland – an incident which prompted state lawmakers to usurp parental choice by passing the most restrictive vaccination law in the country.

“State lawmakers in California moved today to impose one of the nation’s strictest vaccination laws,” Ifill reported during a recent newscast. “The state assembly voted to require that nearly all public schoolchildren get their shots, or be homeschooled. The bill gained momentum after a measles outbreak that started at Disneyland and killed more than 100 people.”

Pure fiction reported as fact

As noted by the Vaccine Fact Check web site:

Ifill’s figure of 100 is off — by 100. Not a single person died as a result of the Disneyland scare, although she can be forgiven for not knowing any better, given the hype that the mainstream media heaped on the public for weeks on end over a story that had not a single casualty. This non-story became the single-biggest domestic story in the United States.

And, as we reported, it led to passage of the most restrictive vaccine law in the land – a law that some progressive Democrats in Congress want to emulate nationwide. More on that in a moment.

As anyone who follows politics and political reporting knows, Ifill is a veteran journalist; she wasn’t reading the evening news as some fill-in or by accident. She is the co-anchor of PBS‘ NewsHour, and she is also the managing editor and moderator of “Washington Week.” And yet, she read those lines as if they were well-established fact, which is “an indication that she has been unquestioningly swallowing the media hype over vaccines as much as any incredulous viewer,” Vaccine Fact Check noted.

“Worse, that script also appears on the PBS NewsHour website, indicating that her staff is as ignorant as she is about the seriousness — or lack thereof — of the Disneyland story,” the site reported.

In fact, as Natural News editor Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, reported July 6, the most recent measles-related death involved a woman from Washington state who had been vaccinated against the disease:

Not only was she already vaccinated against the measles, it was other Big Pharma medications that ultimately killed her! As the Daily Mail reports, “Dr. Jeanette Stehr-Green, the Clallam County health officer, told KOMO-TV the woman had been vaccinated as a child, but because she had other health problems and was taking medications that interfered with her response to an infection ‘she was not protected.'”

In other words, the woman’s immune system was compromised by pharmaceuticals, and the so-called “immunization” of a measles vaccine failed to work. But the vaccine-pushing U.S. media twisted the story around, withholding from the public the fact that this woman was already vaccinated and that her immune system was compromised by FDA-approved medications.

New push to widen California law

As for making the California law universal around the country, U.S. Rep. Frederica S. Wilson, D-Fla, has just introduced legislation, House Resolution 2232, that, if passed and signed into law, would mandate that all states require all students enrolled in public schools to be vaccinated with all vaccines recommended by the Advisory Committee on Immunization Policy, a federal entity comprised chiefly of vaccine industry representatives (Big Pharma).

Her bill calls for children to be vaccinated specifically against HPV, hepatitis A, hepatitis B, Paul Offit’s rotavirus vaccine, annual flu shots and dozens of others.

The push has begun to spread vaccine mandates to every corner of the United States, and the progressive Left will do anything it can to ensure that happens.

Sources:

http://vaccinefactcheck.org

http://www.stitcher.com

http://www.naturalnews.com

http://capwiz.com

US Secretary of State John Kerry and Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif conclude the nuclear agreement on July 14, 2015.

This was a particularly busy week for the United States news media, with headlines featuring the announcement of a completed multi-lateral nuclear agreement between the Islamic Republic of Iran and the P5+1 bloc of nations, as well as a historic resumption of formal diplomatic ties marked by the reopening of United States and Cuban embassies in Havana and DC. The parallel coverage of the Iranian and Cuban diplomatic achievements offered a distinct, real-time display of the dramatic shift in US media villain-making over the last two decades and its concurrent silencing of oppositional voices.

Corporate media in the United States have a long history of neglecting the viewpoints of those who are often most profoundly affected by US foreign policy, especially when such voices cast a negative light on policies that members of the US government and media elite are invested in promoting. Media outlets have recently come under fire for failing to provide sufficient—if any—coverage of the victims of the ongoing US-backed air campaign in Yemen waged by Saudi Arabia (Intercept, 6/6/15), despite over 1,500 civilian deaths that have occurred there (UN News Centre, 7/7/15). FAIR (7/19/15) and Just Foreign Policy opened a petition to urge the New York Times andWashington Post to reverse this troublesome trend.

To comment on the Iranian nuclear deal, PBS NewsHour featured(from right to left) a Bush administration State Department official (Dennis Ross), a former National Security Adviser (Sandy Berger) and two former CIA directors (James Woolsey and Michael Hayden).

Such overt exclusion was again on full display as media outlets in America digested the announcement of a nuclear deal with Iran. Of the 24 guests who spoke about the Iran deal on the major networks’ Sunday talkshows following the announcement, eight were US government officials, while the only two non-Americans were British Prime Minister David Cameron and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (AP, 7/18/15).

Not a single Iranian or Iranian official was presented to offer his or her opinion of the historic deal. Netanyahu—who compared the nuclear negotiations toHBO’s popular fantasy series Game of Thrones, and referred to Iran as a “genocidal enemy” in his speech to the US Congress in March—was a guest on two of the programs, and regularly appears on all of them (Congressional Record, 3/3/15).

Compare this with the coverage of the opening ceremony at Cuba’s embassy in Washington, DC. In light of the platform granted to Cuban officials by the US government for this event, it would have been difficult for media outlets to altogether omit the comments of Bruno Rodríguez, Cuba’s foreign minister, despite the fact that he used the occasion to criticize US policies that are still in place, including the trade embargo, the blockade and the notorious US military detention facility at Guantánamo Bay.

Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla, Cuban minister of foreign affairs, was given more airtime during coverage of the lifting of the US embargo on Cuba than his Iranian counterparts during coverage of the nuclear agreement.

Nevertheless, the New York Times, which devoted the vast majority of its article (7/15/15) following the Iran deal to quoting US officials, described Rodríguez’s remarks extensively and followed them with yet more commentary from individuals sympathetic to Cuba’s standpoint, including former Cuban diplomat Carlos Treto and James Williams, the president of Engage Cuba (7/21/15).

Of course, coverage of Cuba was rarely as balanced in the years preceding the recent rapprochement between the two countries. FAIR ran an article in the May/June 1991 issue of Extra! (5-6/91) cataloging ridiculous comparisons between Fidel Castro and Hitler aired in the US media as lingering Cold War sentiment in America turned its sights once again on the socialist government and its own supposed ballistic nuclear program. Yet this decades-long period of American hostility and subversion culminated in Tuesday’s embassy reopening, which was widely seen as a victory for the Castro administration and the Cuban people against an adversary that politically, militarily and economically outmatched them.

The new air of legitimacy granted to Cuban interests in US media reflects a generational shift of focus away from the spread of socialism and its ideological hostility toward the United States to certain Muslim nations in the Middle East and their objections to US intervention. Once the site of American military cooperation in proxy fights against the Soviet Union, since 9/11 the Middle East has become the primary target of US militarism, and thus corporate media follow suit by silencing external critics of US policy in the region lest their legitimate grievances reach an audience.

As such, while Cuban officials are granted airtime as they forcefully denounce American policies at a walking distance from the US Capitol building, similarly reasonable positions on the part of Iran—the desire to pursue nuclear medical research and civilian power, or a healthy dose of skepticism toward US weapons inspectors, for example—are treated as outrageous demands by American panelists on major network talk shows, which fail to provide any voices that are not explicitly promoting the US government’s agenda (FAIR Blog, 7/20/15). Socialism is simply no longer the threat du jour.

International diplomacy is predicated on the principal of mutual respect and a desire to find common ground, or, as Rodríguez put it on Tuesday, to “cooperate and coexist in a civilized way, based on the respect for these differences and the development of a constructive dialogue oriented to the well-being of our countries and peoples” (State Department,  7/20/15).

When the media fails to provide a hearing to those who may have legitimate—albeit oppositional—opinions toward US foreign policy, guests like Netanyahu, whose contempt for US negotiations with Iran is perennially fierce and unwavering, fill that gap. A poll published by Pew Research on Tuesday found that 73 percent of Americans support the reestablishment of diplomatic ties with Cuba after 54 years of animosity between the two countries (Pew Research Center, 7/21/15). In contrast, a considerably smaller majority of Americans—56 percent—support the recent deal with Iran (Washington Post, 7/16-9/15).

US relations with Cuba have had a significant time to relax, and clearly there is a still a long way to go with Iran, which George W. Bush famously included as a member of the “axis of evil” in his 2002 State of the Union address (White House Archives, 1/29/02). One might wonder, however, were the US media to grant the same kind of legitimacy to Iranian perspectives as it now does to Cuba’s, whether that latter number might tick up.

John C. O’Day is a graduate philosophy student at Texas A&M.

It’s good that Arthur Conan Doyle didn’t substitute The New York Times’ editorial board for Sherlock Holmes in his stories because, if he had, none of the mysteries would have gotten solved or the wrong men would have gone to the gallows.

Thursday’s editorial on last year’s shoot-down of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 reveals that the Times’ editors apparently find nothing suspicious about the dog-not-barking question of why the U.S. government has been silent for a full year about what its intelligence information shows.

This reticence of U.S. intelligence is especially suspicious given the fact that five days after the July 17, 2014 tragedy which killed 298 people, the U.S. Director of National Intelligence rushed out a “government assessment” citing “social media” and pointing the finger of blame at ethnic Russian rebels in eastern Ukraine and the Russian government.

But once U.S. intelligence analysts had time to evaluate the satellite photos, electronic intercepts and other data, the U.S. government went silent. The pertinent question is why, although that apparently is of no interest to the Times which aimed its editorial against Russia for seeking a more inclusive investigation, which the Times does find suspicious.

“On the face of it, that looks like an accommodating gesture from the government that is backing the Ukrainian separatists believed to have fired the fatal missile on July 17, 2014, and that probably supplied it to them. It’s not.

“The real goal of the draft resolution Russia proposed on Monday at the Security Council is to thwart a Dutch-led criminal investigation of what happened and a Western call for a United Nations-backed tribunal.”

So, the Times castigates the Russians for seeking to involve the United Nations Security Council and the International Civil Aviation Organization in the slow-moving Dutch-led inquiry, which includes the Ukrainian government, one of the possible suspects in the crime as one of the investigators. But the Times takes no notice of the curious silence of U.S. intelligence.

Appeal to Obama

If the Times really wanted to get at the truth about the MH-17 case, its editorial could have cited a public memo to President Barack Obama from an organization of former U.S. intelligence officials who urged the President on Wednesday to release the U.S.-held evidence.

“As the relationship with Moscow is of critical importance, if only because Russia has the military might to destroy the U.S., careful calibration of the relationship is essential,” wrote the Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, a group first created to challenge the bogus intelligence used to justify President George W. Bush’s Iraq invasion in 2003.

The memo signed by 17 former officials, including Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg, continued:

“If the United States signs on to a conclusion that implicates Russia without any solid intelligence to support that contention it will further damage an already fractious bilateral relationship, almost certainly unnecessarily. It is our opinion that a proper investigation of the downing would involve exploring every possibility to determine how the evidence holds up. …

“What is needed is an Interagency Intelligence Assessment – the mechanism used in the past to present significant findings. We are hearing indirectly from some of our former colleagues that the draft Dutch report contradicts some of the real intelligence that has been collected. …

“Mr. President, we believe you need to seek out honest intelligence analysts now and hear them out, particularly if they are challenging or even opposing the prevailing group-think narrative. They might well convince you to take steps to deal more forthrightly with the shoot-down of MH-17 and minimize the risk that relations with Russia might degenerate into a replay of the Cold War with the threat of escalation into thermonuclear conflict. In all candor, we suspect that at least some of your advisers fail to appreciate the enormity of that danger.”

Along the same lines, I was told by one source who was briefed by some current analysts that the reason for the year-long U.S. silence was that the evidence went off in an inconvenient direction, toward a rogue element of the Ukrainian government, rather than reaffirming the rush-to-judgment by Secretary of State John Kerry and DNI James Clapper implicating the ethnic Russian rebels in the days after the shoot-down.

According to Der Spiegel, the German intelligence agency, the BND, had a somewhat different take but also concluded that the Russian government did not supply the Buk anti-aircraft missile suspected of shooting down the passenger jet. Der Spiegel reported that the BND believed the rebels used a missile battery captured from Ukrainian forces.

Yet, whatever the truth about those intelligence tidbits, it is clear that the U.S. intelligence community has a much greater awareness of what happened to MH-17 – and who was responsible – than it did on July 22, 2014, when the DNI issued the sketchy report. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “MH-17 Case Slips into Propaganda Fog.”]

No Update for You

When I asked a DNI spokeswoman on July 17, the first anniversary of the shoot-down, if I could get an update on the U.S. intelligence analysis, she refused, claiming that the U.S. government didn’t want to prejudice the Dutch-led investigation. But, I pointed out, the DNI had already done that with the July 22, 2014 report.

I also argued that historically investigations into airline disasters have been transparent, not opaque like this one, and that the American public had an overarching right to know what the U.S. intelligence community knew about the MH-17 case given the existential threat of a possible nuclear showdown with Russia. But the DNI’s office held firm in its refusal to provide an update.

The New York Times’ editorial board could have lent its voice to this need for openness. Instead, the Times used the prime opinion-leading real estate of its editorial page to demand obeisance to Official Washington’s prevailing group think on the Ukraine crisis, that everything is the fault of Russian President Vladimir Putin. The editorial stated:

“Throughout it all, President Vladimir Putin … has blamed Ukrainian ‘fascists’ manipulated by the United States and its allies for all the troubles in Ukraine. Nobody outside Russia believes this, and the Russians themselves make little effort to conceal their extensive military support for the separatists. …

“The relatives of the people who died on the Malaysian airliner, most of whom were Dutch, deserve answers and justice. There is little question that Russia will block any tribunal. But the Security Council should not be fooled into believing that the Russian counterproposals are an honorable alternative, any more than anyone should be fooled by any of Mr. Putin’s lies about Russia’s military interference in Ukraine.”

The Times’ strident editorial bordered on the hysterical as if the newspaper was frightened that it was losing control of the permissible narrative derived from its profoundly biased coverage of the Ukraine crisis from its beginning in February 2014 when a U.S.-backed coup overthrew the democratically elected President Viktor Yanukovych.

The Times also put the word “fascists” in quotes – presumably to suggest that Ukrainian brown shirts are just one of Putin’s delusions. The Times insisted that “nobody outside Russia believes this” suggesting that if you take note of the key role played by Ukraine’s neo-Nazis, you belong in Russia since “nobody outside Russia” would believe such a thing.

Yet, even the Times’ own correspondents have on occasion had no choice but to describe a central reality of the Ukraine crisis – that neo-Nazi and other ultranationalist militias provided the muscle for the February 2014 coup and have served as the point of the spear against ethnic Russians in the east who have resisted the U.S.-backed coup regime.

Just this month, Times correspondent Andrew E. Kramer reported on the front-line fighting in which the Kiev government has pitted the neo-Nazi Azov battalion and Islamic militants (some of whom have been described as “brothers” of the Islamic State) against the ethnic Russian rebels. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “Ukraine Merges Nazis and Islamists.”]

The neo-Nazis and ultranationalists also have squared off against Ukrainian police and politicians, including firefights and protest marches demanding President Petro Poroshenko’s removal, as reported by the BBC. [Also see Consortiumnews.com’s “The Mess that Nuland Made.”]

But deviation from the “it’s all Putin’s fault” group think infuriates the Times’ editors into chanting something like the “go back to Russia” insult directed at Americans in the 1960s and 1970s who criticized the Vietnam War. It is just that sort of anti-intellectual conformity that now dominates the debate over Ukraine.

And, unlike Sherlock Holmes who had the astuteness to unlock the mystery of the “Silver Blaze” by noting the dog not barking, the Times editors ignore the curious reticence of the U.S. government in refusing to update its “assessment” of the MH-17 crash. If the editors really wanted to know the truth and achieve some real accountability, the Times would have joined in demanding that the Obama administration end its suspicious silence.

Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his latest book, America’s Stolen Narrative, either in print here or as an e-book (from Amazon and barnesandnoble.com). You also can order Robert Parry’s trilogy on the Bush Family and its connections to various right-wing operatives for only $34. The trilogy includes America’s Stolen Narrative. For details on this offer, click here.

Not a week goes past it seems, without a ‘Lone Wolf’ shooting event takes place in America. This latest seemingly random shooting in Chattanooga, Tennessee has taken the phenomenon to a whole new level…

In our latest installment of theatre terror, another ‘assembly line’ shooting saw the manufactured media profile of the new threat is no longer the basement dwelling Adam Lanza “loner” character, but rather the happy, fairly well-adjusted teenager who is not even “on the terror radar” (whatever that means).

Last week’s Chattanooga tragedy took place on July 17, 2015, an incident which reportedly left 4 Marines and one Navy man dead, seems to have been conveniently overlaid on to a script that we have seen for years now – the ‘Islamic extremist’, working with, or “inspired by” cut-out organizations like Al Qaeda, or the new marketing image known as “ISIS”  – carries out another unlikely and seemingly ‘senseless’ act of violence.

Pictured: “All American” Mohammad Youssuf Abdulazeez.

As shootings go, his event certainly raised the bar. Instead of civilian targets, we are told that this alleged lone gunman, a 24 year-old engineering graduate named Mohammad Youssuf Abdulazeez, had trained his sights on active duty US servicemen. During the his shooting rampage, we’re told that the shooter fired on a US Marine Corps recruiting office in a strip mall, before travelling to a nearby facility, a Navy Operational Support Center, where he claimed the lives of 5 victims, before being shot and killed by police.

We’re told that five victims were killed a result of Thursday’s shoot-out (pictured above) – Navy Petty Officer Randall Smith, Marine Sgt. David Wyatt, Marine Sgt. Thomas Sullivan, Lance Corp. Squire “Skip” Wells,  and Marine Sgt. Carson Holmquist.

According to officials, Petty Officer Smith died on Saturday as a result of wounds sustained on Thursday.

The tragedy was followed by an avalanche of media coverage which immediately classified the incident as “terrorist attack”, with most major US media outlets rushing to try and connect the shooter to ISIS in the Middle East.

It’s a template that has become somewhat routine in America now. After the national media ‘ISIS-linking’ exercise came the tweets and hashtags, led by #ChattanoogaStrong.

“Tonight, love and forgiveness and belief in one another was the theme, because that’s what ‘Chattanooga Strong’ means,” Mayor Andy Berke told local affiliate WDEF.

EVENT MAP: Chattanooga Shooter journey.

After leaving his vehicle and entering a building on the base and opening fire on its occupants. As US servicemen fled out the back door to safety, the Shooter, armed with semiautomatic assault rifle, reported to be an AK-47, and a handgun (according to the FBI), pursued them into the building’s back yard in the ‘motor pool area’ where he reportedly killed 4 men. Shortly thereafter, Chattanooga Police arrived on the scene and are said to have shot and killed the shooter. The fifth serviceman, Petty Officer Wells, died later on Saturday from wounds sustained during the incident.

Note: Initially on July 17th, the FBI said that the shooter was armed with two long guns and a handgun.

The FBI are also saying that they recovered two other weapons from the scene which they say belonged to military police, only one of which was discharged, according to Reinhold.

Key Questions

According to a Maj. General, the Marines had just returned from a training mission, and had ‘braved gunfire to save their comrades during the attack.’

“The legacy that day is one of valor,” said Maj. Gen. Paul Brier, commander of the 4th Marine Division. “I can tell you that our Marines reacted the way you would expect. Some willingly ran back into the fight.”

IMAGE: CNN’s coverage of the incident featured this image, displayed on constant rotation, of a soldier appearing to stand guard in front of the strip mall Marine Recruitment shop in Chattanooga.

It is important here, not to rule out the possibility that “friendly fire” may have claimed the lives of at least one US Serviceman, as multiple shooters exchanged gunfire in what appears to be a very fast-moving and chaotic scene. This could be confirmed once the autopsies and ballistics reports have been completed on the shooter and all five the victims, as well as a ballistic report on Chattanooga police officer Dennis Pedigo, who was said to be wounded by Abdulazziz during the exchange.

Abdulazeez was also not wearing any body armor or bullet-proof vest – which indicates that he doesn’t appear to be concerned about being shot himself. Some may assume that his was an intended ‘suicide mission’ and therefore the shooter was not concerned with his own safety.

Had Abdulazzeez been to the Reserve Training facility on Amnicola Highway before? Authorities insist that he hadn’t, yet the shooter’s deliberate actions on the day indicates familiarity with the venue.

Following on to this point, however, is the question of whether or not Abdulazzeez had taken out full damage insurance coverage on his rented silver Ford Mustang convertible. Far from a trivial detail, this might indicate what Abdulazeez believed he was doing on the day. Was it a drill, or a shooting rampage? A similar point was brought up regarding the notorious London 7/7 Bombings, where the bombers had purchased return train tickets – not one way – a detail which supports the thesis that the men believed they were taking part in an inter-agency terrorism drill which we now know ended up going live on the day.

Media Misdirection

Interestingly, all of the blanket media coverage from the day of the shooting was focused completely on the Marine Recruitment Office located at the strip Mall. This gave viewers the distinctly false impression that the victims were shot at the Mall – in a public space. It wasn’t until 48 hours later that we began to hear that the victims were actually shot and killed inside of a secure Navy Reserve Training facility located  some 7 miles away. Was this to keep the media and public focused on the Shopping Mall, and not Navy Reserve Training facility?

The incident at the Mall seems almost pointless. No one was actually shot at the Mall, and there is still no CCTV footage to prove that the same shooter who sprayed the recruitment office with bullets also shot the 5 servicemen at the Naval base 7 miles away. One woman, who we’re told worked at a Mall restaurant next to the Marine recruiting office, told CNN:

“I looked out of our window and I seen the guy in his car, a silver Mustang, drop top, a white guy and he had a high-powered rifle and was just firing shots into the Air Force, Navy and Marines office,” Gina Mule told CNN. “I don’t even know how many shots he fired, but it was a lot. (…) After he got done opening fire, he pulled out really quick.”

The only evidence presented so far is an eyewitness testimony from apparent bystanders – all of whom maintain that the shooter did not even leave his vehicle – which in itself makes it impossiblefor any of the said witnesses to ID the actual shooter as Mohammad Youssuf Abdulazeez.

This central point has been all but glossed over in the fog of mass media misdirection.

‘Home-Grown Extremist’

According to the FBI, as of this week, investigators are still classifying Abdulazzeez as a “home-grown violent extremist”.

From the onset, numerous attempts have been made by the media to attach Abdulazzeez to any number of countries, groups, and medical conditions. Pundits ran the gambit of possibilities: Syria, al Qaeda, Yemen, al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, ISIS, along with rumors that he was a “manic depressive” as well as “suicidal.” It’s important to note that all of these speculative narratives were churned out on heavy rotation in the first 48 hours after the incident, leaving American audiences with the certain impression that this was yet another chapter in the ‘War on Terror – US Edition.’

The day of the shooting, on Thursday July 17th, heavily armed police officers raided the home of Abdulazzeez’s family members in Chattanooga, Tennessee and detained two women – who led away in handcuffs and treated as terrorist suspects. Watch:

According to his friends (on record), however, Abdulazzeez did not appear to support the concept ISIS. According to CNN reporters, Abdulazeez told friend James Petty that ISIS was “doing wrong” and “it was a stupid group and it was completely against Islam.” Petty also told CNN reporters that Abdulazzeez “had a drug problem” and used marijuana heavily.

High School classmate Ryan Smith told the Times Free Press,“He was an unbelievable nice person,” and added,“He was honestly one of the funniest guys I’ve ever met.”

Off record however, we see the usual media charade where unnamed “sources” appear to be leaking other contradictory details to the media which may, or may not, be true at all. “Sources” told CNN on Monday that, “The writings also include other anti-U.S. sentiments and are consistent with someone who is having suicidal thoughts.” US media outlets like CNN regularly quote such “sources” but almost never held accountable for the accuracy or validity of these unknown leaks after the fact. In the end, media outlets like CNN are simply functioning as disinformation outlets in the immediate aftermath of these perennial ‘active shooter’ events.

CNN then inserted additional vague information from “sources familiar he family’s interviews with investigators” claiming that the 24-year-old had been “abusing drugs for some time”, using “party drugs” and marijuana. Again, this could be more strategic leaking between CNN and the government. This could be viewed as part of a government-media effort to destroy the shooter’s character and influence public opinion in advance of an actual investigation.

Certainly, if Abdulazzeez was the “heavy drug user” being characterized by his ‘friend’ Petty and CNN, then this could easily be visible in the coroner’s toxicology report. Will it be released? Unfortunately not, as the case has now been classified, with all information being released on a “need to know basis” – controlled tightly by both the FBI and the Department of Justice (DOJ).

As expected, a number of politicians were quick to take advantage of the incident in order to bolster their national security street credentials. Chairman of the House Committee on Homeland Security, Rep. Mike McCaul (R-Texas), wasted no time in claiming that the case is an “open terrorism investigation,” and believes, based on his experience (exactly what experience that is remains unclear), that Abdulazzeez was definitely “inspired by ISIS.”

Terrorist ‘All-American’

Adding to the ridiculous demonizing details, we’re told that Mohammad Youssuf Abdulazeez’s MMA (mixed martial arts) coach was dramatically distraught – claiming he was just an “All-American Kid.”

This is interesting to note, as the alleged Boston Bomber, Tamerlan Tsarnaev (photo, left), was also a highly trained amateur fighter – a golden gloves boxing champion no less.

Additionally, another high-profile FBI ‘terror sting’ involved 20 year old Ohio resident, Christopher Lee Cornell, who himself was a high school wrestling champ.

Even Good Morning America chimed in on Abdulazzeez as the “good American kid” appellation, adding to the evident media spin of the narrative, where the new threat is being crafted to give the impression both mass shooters and terrorists are quite literally lurking everywhere.

All-American boys. Are we simply meant to believe that “terror networks” are spreading like a virus through all leisure activities? More specifically, news consumers must observe the newly updated ‘Everyman’ Terrorist Narrative: Leisure activities, or sports like boxing, fighting, wrestling, breed neophyte terrorist juniors. Perhaps all leisure activities have a Homeland Security representative as a liaison, maybe? If you are a male Muslim-American, even integrating with North American culture will not save you from being viewed with suspicion now.

Naturally, this mythology has been around since 9/11, yet it is becoming more precise – now the “All-American” appellation has been tacked on to the updated “profile.”

Indeed, they could be lurking among us, like Cylons. According to this new media mindset, anyone (theoretically) could be a potential ISIS recruit.

Everyman: Mohammad Youssuf Abdulazzeez poses for picture against backyard garden foliage.

Informants and Patsies

Was he really “off the radar”, or was he very much on the radar? Or was Abulazzeez, as Tamerlan Tsarnaev had been in Boston, being actively recruited, or even pressured, by the FBI or US intelligence agencies – to accept the role of an undercover informant within the Islamic community? At the very least, we can say that Tamerlan’s name was visible on a ‘classified terror watch list’ long before the actual Boston Bombing took place.

Certainly, recent history shows that this is a common occurrence, especially in the US with cases including Chris Lee Cornell and the Garland, Texas “ISIS attacker” Elton Simpson, the 2010 “Christmas Tree Bomber” Mohamed Osman Mohamud, the Detroit ‘Underwear Bomber’ Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, and also with foreign student Quazi Mohammad Nafis. In Britain, this is also a common practice, as evidenced by the cases of Woolwich slasher Michael Adebolajo, and London care worker and state torture victim, Mahdi Hashi.

In fact, even the New York Times admitted in a 2012 report how the fictitious nature of our ever-present terror theater can be seen in most terror “plots” – plots that are actually hatched by the FBI in the cauldron of entrapment:

“The United States has been narrowly saved from lethal terrorist plots in recent years — or so it has seemed. A would-be suicide bomber was intercepted on his way to the Capitol; a scheme to bomb synagogues and shoot Stinger missiles at military aircraft was developed by men in Newburgh, N.Y.; and a fanciful idea to fly explosive-laden model planes into the Pentagon and the Capitol was hatched in Massachusetts.

But all these dramas were facilitated by the F.B.I., whose undercover agents and informers posed as terrorists offering a dummy missile, fake C-4 explosives, a disarmed suicide vest and rudimentary training. Suspects naïvely played their parts until they were arrested.”

For Abdulazeez, even deeper clandestine questions arise due to his father’s associations and history, having been long on the radar of the FBI for terror associations and accorded a special role in the local police department. Concerning Abdulazeez’s father we also read:

“A U.S. official told the Associated Press that Abdulazeez had not been on the radar of federal law enforcement before Thursday’s shooting. His father had been investigated several years ago for “possible ties to a foreign terrorist organization” and added to the U.S. terrorist watch list, according to a report in the NY Times, but that probe did not surface information about Abdulazeez, the paper said.”

Regadring his recent work experience, we’re told that, “Abdulazeez received an engineering degree from the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga in 2012 and worked as an intern a few years ago at the Tennessee Valley Authority, the federally owned utility that operates power plants and dams across the South.”

According to other reports, he also had internships at firms Mohawk Industries and a rather curious company called Global Trade Express based in Falls Church, Virginia (in the heart of the US intelligence establishment).

It is also worth mentioning that East Tennessee and the Kentucky-Ohio area are a hub for the nuclear, deep state arm of the military industrial complex, as the TVA Abdulazeez had briefly worked for (see below) was formerly the power source for the Manhattan Project and now functions as an axis that links both the NSA at Oak Ridge, TN, where supercomputers are built, as well as the nuclear energy sector, still connected to the TVA and its water power.

‘The Middle East Connection’

We’re also told that the shooter had traveled to Jordan. According to CNN’s ‘sources’: “Abdulazeez’s family sent him to Jordan last year to get him away from Chattanooga friends who they said were bad influences on him, the relatives told investigators. According to a family representative who asked for his name not to be used, Abdulazeez’s parents sent him to Jordan to stay with a family, with the hope of getting Abdulazeez away from his life of depression and drug use in Tennessee.”

CNN added that, “Some relatives and friends told investigators they detected changes in his behavior after he returned from Jordan last year.”

FOX News reports that Abdulazeez recently traveled to Jordan for seven months or Yemen where his “radicalization” might have occurred, yet predictably no mention is made of western intelligence support for ISIS and Wahhabist terror, though even mainstream media has admitted this fact.

Just as his family in Chatanooga have been arrested on suspicion of a terrorist conspiracy and taken into custody, Asaad Ibrahim Asaad Haj Ali, the Jordanian uncle of Abdulazzeez, has since been taken into custody by Jordanian security services (at the request of the US). 

The reported seven month stay in the Middle East nation of Jordan is an interesting tidbit relatively ignored in the media reports, as Jordan is one of the few Arab League nations functioning as US outpost for weapons and arms aiding of terror networks. The Guardian reported back in 2013:

“Western training of Syrian rebels is under way in Jordan in an effort to strengthen secular elements in the opposition as a bulwark against Islamic extremism, and to begin building security forces to maintain order in the event of Bashar al-Assad’s fall.

Jordanian security sources say the training effort is led by the US, but involves British and French instructors.

The UK Ministry of Defence denied any British soldiers were providing direct military training to the rebels, though a small number of personnel, including special forces teams, have been in the country training the Jordanian military.”

GHOST: References to US double agent Anwar al-Awlaki continues, as the terror avatar is recycled through media narratives.

Putting aside CNN’s colorful anonymous illustrations, we can confirm that the Abdulazzeez had visited the Middle East last year. From the onset, the US media was working very hard to try and conjure a ‘Yemen connection’. Claims have been made about a past trip by Abdulazzeez’s to Yemen, with US media hoping to connect him with the terror cut-out group/brand, al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). As part of this media effort, another story was leaked on Tuesday July 21st, claiming that Abdulazzeez had, at some point in the past, had “watched a video” of US terror mascot and alleged former head of AQAP, Anwar al-Awlaki. The NY Times reported:

“The authorities who were examining Mr. Abdulazeez’s computer found that he had viewed material connected to Anwar al-Awlaki, the radical American-born cleric who was killed in Yemen by an American drone strike in 2011, according to a person with knowledge of the investigation.”

Few, if any, US outlets ever bother to mention that Anwar al-Awlaki was a triple agent working with the FBI and CIA, and was even invited to dinner at the Pentagon after 9/11.

Could he have been an informant gone rogue? Was he trained to use heavy automatic weapons like the AK-47 by US military trainers in Jordan alongside ‘Syrian Rebels’ and other jihadist fighters being prepped and sent into combat in Syria? Could it be due to the U.S. support for “rebel” training?

Could the Shooter’s apparent rampage part of an inter-agency (military and civilian law enforcement) ‘fusion’ drill gone live?

All these are perfectly plausible questions to ask after you consider the existence of so many other FBI informants and Muslim patsies who have been fashioned into terror poster children in recent years.

Social Media Panopticon

Mainstream media has aided in crafting the post hoc guilt verdict of the accused, prior to a trial, with circumstantial or non sequitur accusations based on an individual’s “web history” that may have “radicalized” the suspect.  In effect, the mainstream media’s function as an establishment propaganda arm results in the bypassing of any trial by jury, as the accused have already been implicitly or explicitly declared guilty by association or something as nebulous as “web history.”

IMAGE: One of the many faked ‘green screen’ ISIS beheading videos, featuring Japanese hostages, and promoted as “authentic” by the S.I.T.E. Intelligence Group.

Israeli Intelligence Connection

Initially, media pundits appeared frustrated that shooter Abdulazzeez “did not have an extensive online footprint.” This did not stop US/Israeli intelligence PR dispensaries from touting Abdulazzeez as someone with links to ‘Islamic terrorism’.

In the past, 21WIRE has presented a number of detailed analyses of the highly dubious terror media emporium known as the S.I.T.E. Intelligence Group run by a woman linked to Israeli Intelligence, Rita Katz, and based in Bethesda, Maryland. Amazingly, S.I.T.E. managed to gain exclusive scoops of nearly every major terrorist video and story. In addition, Katz also employs a small army of cyber sleuths who manage to produce “radical tweets” said to posted by “known ISIS Twitter accounts” which appear to validate many supposed ISIS or al Qaeda terrorist events.

Naturally, S.I.T.E. was also there to break the Chattanooga Shooter story and help to direct the mainstream narrative. Professor James Tracy reports:

“On July 16 SITE was the first to report “Details of Chattanooga Shooter Muhammad Youssef Abdulazeez,” and major news media have once again unquestioningly passed along the information. “Just days before Thursday’s attacks,” the New York Times reports, “Abdulazeez began a blog where he posted about Islam, according to the SITE Intelligence Group, which tracks international terrorist groups. He compared life to a prison, calling it ‘short and bitter.’”

S.I.T.E. was also very quick to draw attention to Adbulazeez’s two alleged blog posts, inferring that his writings were somehow ‘jihadist’ in nature, pointing to the phrase, “life is a test of faith.”

Predictably, and lapped-up by the US media, since the incident several alleged “ISIS-affiliated” Twitter accounts have been busy tweeted about the mass-shooting, and praised Abdulazeez for his jihad.

One such “ISIS-related” account tweeted: “O American dogs soon YOU will see the wonders,” and used #Chattanooga.

(Source: @K_H_O7777777777/Twitter)

It also turns out that the alleged religious extremist Abdulazzeez wasn’t very pious in terms of Islamic orthodoxy – another all too familiar theme in the bizarre world of synthetic terror plots. Professor Tracy adds here, “Much like Charleston Church shooter Dylan Roof, Abdulazeez may have been “radicalized” through use of the internet. Yet as with the “God is Great” hijackers of September 11, 2001, Abdulazeez’s religious-inspired fanaticism didn’t get in the way of his debauchery. On April 20, 2015 the would be Islamic extremist was arrested in Chattanooga, charged with driving while intoxicated, and released on a $2,000 bond.”

‘The Lanza Effect’

Once inside the Navy Training Base, Abdulazeez’s target acquisition seemed impressive, considering all of his victims had extensive combat, live-fire and self-defense experience.

That said, the shooter’s chief weapon, an AK-47, would have required some special training, which brings into question the mainstream media’s ignoring of, what a rational person would assume, are crucial details.  It’s reported that Aabdulazeez used an”AK47-style assault rifle with a 30 round magazine,” which is not the typical shooting range weapon which, not surprisingly, CNN associates with Sandy Hook’s Adam Lanza.

Lanza, it should be added, was amazingly able to handle this weapon, as well as two others, along with multiple reloads, acquiring all of his targets in an unbelievable record time. If Lanza was indeed the gunman, where did this untrained individual obtain his training in these weapons?

Do not expect any real answers to be forthcoming. In both cases – Lanza and Abdulazzeez – the details will be enveloped in a hermetically sealed loop, since the FBI has declared the attack under the purview of “national security.”

‘The Manifesto’

One key requirement for a media post-mortem of any mass shooting is the existence of either ‘radical tweets’ on Twitter, or an online Manifesto as was the case recently with ‘random’ Charleston shooter Dylan Storm Roof and also with Norway’s Anders Breivik. Conveniently, Abdulazzeez had post a brand new blog just days before the actual shooting on which, we’re told, expressed passages with cryptic meanings and “Islamic views”.

This is normally followed by the circular rhetoric about how security is too relaxed in “the Homeland”, and how, “we need to do more at home to help confront Islamic terror and the ideology of radical Islam.”

Still no real proof of an ISIS, or an al Qaeda connection – yet the media, the military and politicians cannot stop referring to Chattanooga as an “act of war.”

‘Battlefield USA’

The Chattanooga Shooting upped the ante, so to speak, on this normal cycle of talking points, because this time the ‘Homeland victims’ were not just lowly civilians or innocent bystanders. No, now the victims were US servicemen, Marines no less. The victims, referred to by CNN’s Pentagon Correspondent Barbara Starr as “The Fallen”, have been cast as war heroes who gave their lives for FLAG & COUNTRY. Welcome to Battlefield USA.

Navy Rear Admiral Mary Jackson (pictured above) reinforced this new concept in her speech in Chattanooga on Wednesday July 22nd, stating, “Throughout our nation’s history, Sailors and Marines have served overseas, in harm’s way, and have experienced the deep and lasting pain ofcombat loss. Today, here at home, we feel that pain.”

She went on the round-out what was clearly a war-time speech, “I can assure you, without a doubt, that we are honored and humbled to serve our nation, both at home and overseas. What Chattanooga has done to rally during this difficult time is the epitome of why we serve. God Bless America.”

The US media then spent the following week vexed about how the state may better protect what they now refer to as “soft targets” (all unarmed domestically stationed US service personnel).The Hegelian Dialectic continues…

According to this new mainstream media narrative, the Chattanooga Shooter has already been classified as an ‘enemy combatant’ – which infers that ISIS has now brought the war to The Homeland, and therefore, the federal government is on high alert in order to counter this new internal “extremist threat”.

This new paradigm is an incredibly emotive and manipulative one. In this new atmosphere of fear, anyone who dares challenge the official narrative here risks being called unpatriotic, or even a traitor. Government set pieces embedded within the US mainstream media have taken full advantage of this haze by launching an aggressive campaign demanding that US Servicemen within ‘The Homeland’ be required to carry firearms at all times – in order to “defend themselves against hostiles”. Of course, when they say ‘hostiles’ they are referring to potentially anyone within the US population – so practically speaking, this means the entire US population is potentially hostile, then theoretically, all uniformed US troops must be arms in public to defend themselves.

‘Fusion’

With most mass shooting, or gun-related events in the US, more emphasis is placed on the post-event press conference than anything else. It’s a scene that Americans have become used to in recent years – the Sheriff or Mayor taking the podium at a curbside ‘snap’ press conference – complete with all of the various set-pieces (persons) arranged behind him for the camera. Make no mistake – these events are staged for the cameras. Art directors are always careful make sure that the scene paints the correct picture, and sends the right message, and includes the right mix of male, female, white, latino, black, Asian, civilian and military. It’s almost patronizing to the viewer, but demonstrates just how the state carefully choreographs these scenes.

Chattanooga Police Chief Fred Fletcher, leading the staged photo op which Americans have become used to in recent years – reinforcing the image to the public of local police are ‘working together with the military.’

Another theme immediately present in all mass media coverage was the fusion of local municipal law enforcement and the military. This was presented symbolically in images, but also spoken of over and over by pundits and public officials alike.

‘Classified’: A Closed Information Loop

Within hours of the event, we were told that Federal investigators had taken over the investigation.

It’s important to recognize, from a public perspective, that the entire dissemination of the Chattanooga Shooting is a completely state-controlled, closed information loop. In other words, the media coverage you are viewing as a member of the public is completely dependent on ‘information’ which has been drip-fed to selected mainstream media outlets. No local law enforcement managing the crime scene and evidence, and absolutely independent press or persons, are allowed a look in.

From the outside looking in, we see a crime scene located on a secure military base, with the investigation being managed by the FBI, and with all information – in and out – being managed by the US Department of Justice. The case then falls under the label of “Classified”.

Will the public be allowed to inspect the evidence, the ballistic reports, the autopsies? Not for 50 or more years, and even then the public can expect a heavily redacted file. This seems to be the norm now with most mass shooting events in the US.

As with Sandy Hook and the Boston Bombing – the main body of evidence from the Chattanooga Shooting shall remain ‘Classified’, aside from any sanitized reports which may drift into the public domain.

Side-Stepping Posse Comitatus

Already, a number of state governors have enacted new “security measures” for their National Guard personnel and military facilities. Yesterday, while said to fearing a repeat of Chattanooga, Arizona Governor Doug Ducey ordered more than 200 members of the Arizona National Guard – and potentially thousands others – to be armed while on duty. Similar moves by state Governors are also underway in Florida, Texas and Oklahoma, to name only a few.

Much has been made by the FOX and Right-wing Talk Radio crowd about how US Military personnel are forbidden to carry firearms on bases and other outposts (like recruiting offices). The same crowd continues to blame this apparent outrage on former President Bill Clinton. Although Clinton is responsible for numerous pieces of audacious legislation during his tenure this was not one of them. Right-wingers will have to blame one of their own instead, these “gun-free zones” were actually the work of President George H.W. Bush whose deputy secretary of defense Donald J. Atwood signed the Department of Defense (DoD) Directive 5210.56 back in February 1992.

This issue falls under a much larger Constitutional issue, however, which is those military activities prohibited under the Posse Comitatus Act of 1879. The idea here is that armed soldiers in public constitutes an occupying military force. There have always been those Americans, including many fascist-leaning individuals within the US government, Congressmen and Senators included, who would love to see armed soldier on US streets. For this very reason, Posse Comitatus exists. But the specter of Islamic Terror in the Homeland is being used to justify a brand new, direct challenge to Posse Comitatus. Watching the major US networks this week, you’d think that Posse MUST be repealed immediately for ‘national security reasons’. That is how hard the media are pushing the issue

Legally, Posse Comitatus defines the US Army as the main functionary, but does not specifically mention naval services, eg. US Navy and Marine Corps. Legally, this gives room to interpret the naval services as exempt from Posse.

Do not be surprised if private security contractors like Blackwater/Academi insert themselves into this situation in order to exploit a potential loophole in Posse Comitatus, whereby mercenaries can be armed on domestic shores – where US soldiers cannot. The potential for additional billions in profit for private mercenary firms here is massive.

At the very least, we will see most state National Guard personnel armed from now on, as well as a new multi-billion dollar ‘security upgrade’ program at all US military facilities, including vehicle-resistant retractable barrier systems, and possibly bullet-proof windows at exterior guard kiosks.

Major Arcana: The Control System

Looking at the resulting policies and state measure which have already so rapidly emerged from the Chattanooga shooting – the control system’s strong suit is there for everyone to see. In the US, this kind of public incident typically sees media talking points funneled into three primary areas:

1. Firstly, to increase powers of the armed police state.
2. Secondly, to restrict firearm ownership of private citizens.
3. Increase surveillance powers in the Homeland

The Chattanooga Shooting saw an added bonus point:

    4. Confront ISIS militarily in the Middle East (deploy troops, allocate major assets)
Both of these outcomes empower the State. The first is almost a given, while the second is more difficult to achieve because of the existence of the Second Amendment.

While talking points 1-3 are on going issues in the US and remain as hotly debated topics, point number 4, which essentially says, “we need to do more to confront ISIS in the Middle East” – is an agenda item which has been aggressively pursued by militarists in US media and politics ever since ISIS brand was officially launched to US audiences last summer in 2014. Militarists believe that with each passing shooting, or ‘terror plot’ in the US – that Americans would become increasingly scared, and angry, and so it should (in theory, anyway) be increasingly easy to make the case for a redeployment of US troops into the Middle East once again.

One militarist pundit and ‘security expert’ who is a regular on US networks,Mike Baker (photo, left), said to be an “ex-CIA covert agent”, founder of private security and intelligence firm, Diligence LLC. Not long after the Chattanooga shooting, Baker could be seen ranting on CNN, calling for Washington to do more to “confront ISIS overseas” and talked about increasing US infantry presence in the Middle East, even though no actual link had yet been made with the shooter and an overseas terror group. Although companies like Dilligence are likely privatized arms of the western state intelligence apparatus, having their CEO on a national broadcaster promoting military adventurism in a region which his business is already active should speak volumes about the chronic conflict of interest which seems to plague networks like CNN and FOX News.

Retired US General Wesley Clarke has used to the Chattanooga Shooting to call for rounding up “radicalized” individuals who are “disloyal to the US” and treat them as prisoners of war. “It’s our right and our obligation to segregate them from the ‘normal’ community for the duration of the conflict.”

Clarke went on to advocate that US allies Great Britain and France do the same. Clarke’s edict should not be taken likely, as globalist spokesperson Clarke has been used on past occasions to publicize other real globalist agendas.

Nazi comparisons aside, the fascist idea of rounding-up hundreds of thousands of marginalized Americans and locking them up in internment camps has happened before in the US, when during World War II the US federal government locked up most of the Japanese-American populationunder the paranoid pretext that each of them were potential foreign agents of Tokyo, including women and children.

America’s New “Reformist” Movement

If you are paying close attention to each of these so-called “terrorist” incidents, it’s becoming more obvious how media coverage contains the same identical talking points, outlining a repetitiveHegelian Dialectic of problem, reaction, solution.

Beyond the increased militaristic rhetoric and the increasing police state power-grabs, there is another deep state agenda emerging amid this series of apparent “domestic extremist” and “radical Islamist” attacks in the US and Europe.

A very well-funded, albeit, artificial social movement is now emerging. It is a new Islamic ‘Reformation’ Movement focused primarily in the US, but which potentially be co-opted in Western Europe.

‘Reformist’ Dr. Zudhi Jasser (Image Source: Okran News)

With every passing shooting, FBI foiled terror plot and terror scare, it is being gradually nudged along. This is especially evident in the CNN and FOX’s carousel of hand-picked mainstream media ‘Islamic experts’ like Dr. Zudhi Jasser, founder and President of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy (AIFD). Jasser a regular contributor on both CNN and FOX, and is a favorite call-out in the aftermath of any so-called violent‘Islamic’ incident covered by US media. Jasser prescribes a new “reformist”, more muted version of Islam for the US and beyond.

On the surface, Jasser’s commentary, advocating separation of mosque and state and a more “peaceful Islam” sounds very reasonable and attractive. After all, who wants radical ideologies festering in America? But when you explore with a bit more depth, Jasser’s politics are that of a dedicated neoconservative.

Far from being an independent voice or advocate, Jasser is the public face of an extremely well-funded 501c tax exempt empire of institutions and foundations, and his US media appearances are carefully managed. Following the Chattanooga Shooting, Jasser came with his usual talking points on FOX News at the time of the shooting, saying, “The is a war,” and that, “he (the shooter) hated America and he wanted to establish the Islamic State”.

Watch Jasser on FOX News in the wake of Chattanooga tragedy:

It’s difficult to pinpoint exactly who is directing this new “reformist” effort in the US, but it’s clear by watching the identical fashion in which all of these events are executed, and covered in the media – that this is highly coordinated and is not a short term campaign, rather, it’s planned to nudge its way ahead over the next decade or more. One way to find some answers here is to follow the money.

Closely linked to Jasser’s AIFD, is the American Islamic Congress (AIC) of which Jasser is also a board member. Behind the AIC can be found a long trail of neoconservative and pro-Israel money, prompting many critics to label this and similar ‘Muslim-American’ organizations as classic foundation-funded “controlled opposition”. Founded in 2001 by an Iraqi-American opposition ‘activist’ Zainab Al-Suwaij, the AIC was effectively launched by the Bush administration, which injected $542,123 to the organization in 2004. The AIC also received major financial support pro-Israeli billionaires Sheldon Adelson and Seth Klarman who is also the backer of The Israel Project. The money doesn’t stop there. According to a report by investigative journalist Max Blumenthal, the Islamophobia Network/Industry is also being funded in part by the US taxpayer. An exposé by AmericanMuslim.org explains:

“In 2009, the AIC received more than $433,000 from the State Department to conduct conflict resolution programs in Iraq, claiming to have “diffused 60 conflicts” in the country. Two years later, it reaped $1.28 million in government funding for Iraqi conflict resolution and to train “social entrepreneurs” in Tunisia; over $170,000 of the government money was earmarked for democracy promotion. Today, the AIC maintains offices in Tunis and Cairo, both apparently supported by State Department grants.”

The investigation further explains how, “funding for AIC comes from some very troublesome sources.  Some of these are Donors Capital Fund (identified in the Center for American Progress’s 2011 report Fear Inc. as “the lifeblood of the Islamophobia network in America.”), the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, Sheldon Adelson’s Adelson Family Foundation, the Klarman Family Foundation (which funds the Israel Project).”

Blumenthal also notes that:

The AIC is not the only putatively Muslim group funded by Klarman. In 2011, Klarman made his first donation to the American Islamic Forum for Democracy AIFD, the shell organization that serves as the personal platform for Zuhdi Jasser. The previously unknown Jasser, a physician from Arizona with no academic or theological credentials, is one of the country’s most outspoken Muslim proponents of law enforcement surveillance of Muslim communities.  Two years earlier, Jasser was welcomed onto AIC’s board of directors, joining a host of like-minded neoconservatives.

A Syrian-American, it’s no surprise then that Jasser is also a major advocate for regime change in Syria, and seems to endorse the US, European and GCC financing and arming of multiple ‘rebel’ paramilitary factions (which automatically included terrorist fighters as well) inside Syria. Regime change at any cost, even if it’s a brutal, protracted proxy war. In perfect alignment with US State Department and Israeli Foreign Policy objectives.

Engineering The ‘Self-Hating’ Muslim

Noticeably absent from any of Jasser and other similar pundits’ post-terrorist attack monologues is any reference to the western covert, or clandestine agency involvement in any these supposed “terrorist” events. If any government agent plays a role in creating the conditions for the incident, or worse – is a moving part in the scenario itself – then the entire ‘Islamic Terror’ conversation should immediately become null and void. If transparency and objectivity were the focus of their inquiry, then the behind-the-scenes FBI involvement in almost ever high-profile ‘domestic terror’ incident should be the center of the discussion, but instead it remains obscured.

Again, the Hegelian Dialectic at play here is an obvious one. One could argue that by pumping up the specter of Islamic extremist at home and abroad, it will be much easier to brow-beat the western Muslim community into submission by inducing a wave of collective guilt. Enter the self-hating Muslim.

Reformist architects see the taming of Islam as not only necessary, but also as a historic juncture in the religion’s history – as significant as European protestant movements were 600 years ago. A crucial question here could be: would the reformist architects carry out synthetic terrorist events in order to ensure that their agenda moves its way along the timeline at a more urgent and faster pace?

Regardless, the clandestine realities remain. While foundation-funded ‘Islam experts’ continue to promote the illusion that we live a world devoid any government clandestine activity, billions of taxpayer dollars per year continue to go towards covert operations both at home and overseas utilizing thousands of agents, informants and patsies – and so long as this is the case, then we should expect to see ever more these so-called ‘terrorist’ events.

Nothing about Chattanooga made sense, and as long as these events remain sealed underclassified layers of federal bureaucracy, it’s unlikely we’ll ever know what really happened.

But don’t fret, there’s always next week’s shooting.

The alternative press has noted for months that Israel is supporting jihadis in Syria.  But Israel has consistently denied these allegations … until now.

The Times of Israel reported 3 weeks ago:

Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon said Monday that Israel has been providing aid to Syrian rebels, thus keeping the Druze in Syria out of immediate danger. Israeli officials have previously balked at confirming on the record that the country has been helping forces that are fighting to overthrow Syrian President Bashar Assad.

***

“We’ve assisted them under two conditions,” Ya’alon said of the Israeli medical aid to the Syrian rebels, some of whom are presumably fighting with al-Qaeda affiliate al-Nusra Front to topple Syrian President Bashar Assad. “That they don’t get too close to the border, and that they don’t touch the Druze.”

Al Nusra is Al Qaeda, and closely affiliated with ISIS.  And remember, there have NEVER been any “moderate Syrian rebels” … only Islamic Sunni jihadis.

As Vice President Joseph Biden admitted:

The fact of the matter is . . . there was no moderate middle. . . . [O]ur allies in the region were our largest problem in Syria. . . . They poured hundreds of millions of dollars and . . . thousands of tons of weapons into anyone who would fight against Assad except that the people who were being supplied were Al Nusra and al-Qaeda and the extremist elements of jihadis.

(Leaked NSA documents also show that Israeli special forces assassinated a top Syrian government official.)

Not all Israelis support this effort.  For example, Jacky Hugi  – an Arab affairs analyst for Israeli army radio – recently wrote:

Israel should back Assad

***

Anyone who wonders why is invited to look at neighboring Iraq or distant Libya. What’s happening there is likely to happen in Syria after President Bashar al-Assad.

***

In choosing between one bad thing and another, the balance tips toward the regime. The Israeli security establishment should gradually abandon its emerging alliance with the Syrian rebels …

***

The survival of the Damascus regime guarantees stability on Israel’s northern border, and it’s a keystone to its national security.

***

It is a dangerous, irresponsible gamble to choose Assad’s enemies and encourage his collapse — it would be playing with fire. The prominent elements among Israel’s potential future neighbors are mainly Jabhat al-Nusra, al-Qaeda’s branch in Syria, or the Islamic State ….

I have always liked this country of red earth, mighty rivers and rough cobblestone streets. I have liked its bougainvillea, its long silent nights, and its endless open spaces.

But almost everything that could went wrong for the Paraguayan people, or at least for its indigenous majority.

Before Evo Morales became the President, Bolivia had been the most destitute country in South America. Paraguay was slightly “above it” – the second poorest nation. Now, most likely, it is the most deprived.

***

It is pitch dark outside, and the road is flooded. As in other extreme right wing countries worldwide, from Indonesia to Kenya, the drainage system is far from being a priority of the rulers.

I am inside an impressive art museum, the Museo de Barra, a hangout of local intellectuals, most of them from the Left. Across the table from me sits Ms Lia Colombino, a curator and one of the museum directors. One floor below, a huge exhibition depicts the horrific massacre of indigenous people that took place at Curuguaty, in 2012. Powerful artwork is everywhere: photographs raw footage, and paintings.

Ms. Lia is clearly depressed about the state of her country:

“This does not look or feel like South America, does it? It is more like Central America…”

I know exactly what she means.

To me it still feels like South America, but long before the great wave of revolutions changed everything to the core. But I understand what she means. Paraguay does feels like Central America, like Honduras or Guatemala, where the indigenous people are treated with absolute spite, as “un-people”, where the owner of some plantation would not hesitate to blow out the brains of a ‘peon’, just because he is in foul mood or in need to flirt with a trigger. 2 percent of people in Paraguay own more than 75 percent of all the land. That says a lot.

“Paraguay could also be in Africa”, I was told by a Paraguayan doctor, on board of an airplane, en route from Buenos Aires to Asuncion: “My country reminds me of some depressing, plundered sub-Saharan nation, still controlled by the West’s interests. I know what I am talking about; I spent several years in Africa. There I witnessed the same disrespect for human life as I am witnessing here.”

Next to my hotel, there is a huge Porsche showroom, and just a few minutes away, a luxury mall. “Shopping del Sol” is boasting its sleek modern design and luxury brands. But in both of its bookstores, not one single book by Eduardo Galeano or Elena Poniatowska could be found.

Right across the street from my hotel, there is a luxury steakhouse, but there is no way to cross the street, no zebras for pedestrians. Crossing is humiliating. Cars accelerate. If you don’t drive, you are treated like sub-human.

Modern skyscrapers are growing all around, but in between them, like in Indonesia there are broken houses and shacks, dirty alleys and streets without sidewalks.

All over the country, the descendants of European Nazis are still living in comfort, enjoying impunity and even respect. British and US intelligence facilitated the escape of thousands of notorious European Nazis to South America, often with the loot of golden teeth from the concentration camps, after they helped to break the left-wing political parties prior to post-war elections. It is believed that the notorious Hotel del Lago in San Bernardino (40 kilometers from Asuncion) offered shelter to several prominent Nazis, including Joseph Mengele, the Angel of the Death, a German SS officer and physician in the Nazi concentration camp Auschwitz-Birkenau.

But San Bernardino on Lake Ypacarai is now also notorious for shameless land grabs. There is hardly any public access to the lake, the shore being gradually ‘privatized’ by the country’s ‘elites’ and their ‘nautical clubs’.

The social situation in Paraguay is so bad that tens of thousands of its citizens are regularly crossing the border to much wealthier and to certain extend socialist Argentina, where they are provided with free medical care and free education for their children.

Hundreds of kilometers away from the capital, in the countryside, the mainly indigenous people are still living in the most horrific conditions.

Slammed in the middle of South America, Paraguay is a staunch ally of the West, surrounded by a rapidly changing, increasingly socialist part of the world.

“Paraguay was the most violent and vicious dictatorship and the place of origin of Operation Condor in which many people from throughout the continent were tortured and killed. Paraguay is a vital and strategic location that sits over the largest fresh water aquifer in the world with very fertile lands. The population lives as sharecroppers in the countryside, similar to conditions found in the U.S. after the Civil War or worse”, commented Joseph J. García, Visiting Assistant Professor at the University of New Mexico.

***

The most vicious dictatorship… Perhaps it was, although in South America there had been many contestants to that sad prize.

On the ground floor of the Palace of Justice, Ms. Rosa M. Palau, coordinator of the “Center of Documentation and the Archive for Defense of Human Rights”, is bringing out one shocking historic document after another.

“Here, these are police archives… all that you see here, passed through the military intelligence. You can read here about all that dirty work done by the police… “Operation Condor”… There is some correspondence between the US and the regional governments. In these papers you can read about the ‘education’ that the US provided to the local police, as well as about the centers of torture in Asuncion.”

I am in the middle of what is called “Archives of Terror”, an enormous quantity of documents, and part of The Memory of the World Programme of the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). According to the UNESCO:

The Archives of Terror are official documents of police repression during the thirty-five years of Alfredo Stroessner’s dictatorship. They also contain supporting evidence of Operation Condor activities as a part of a campaign of political repressions involving assassination and intelligence operations which was officially implemented in 1975 by the right-wing dictators of the Southern Cone of South America.

The Archives describe the fates of countless Latin Americans who had been secretly kidnapped, tortured, and killed by the security services, military and police of Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay, and Uruguay, mostly on behalf of the US foreign policy. This is the barbaric and coordinated action of terror known as Operation Condor.

According to the archives, 50,000 people were murdered, 30,000 people disappeared and 400,000 were imprisoned. Many of those imprisoned were tortured and raped.

Sitting here, surrounded by files and papers, I kept recalling those days, some two decades ago, when the archives were made public, for the first time, in the suburb of Asuncion called Lambare. All of us, who came to investigate, from different parts of Latin America and the world, were overwhelmed, emotionally and professionally. What we had always suspected was suddenly in front of us, black on white, proof after proof, showing that the United States, together with the local elites who were backed by ‘security’ services, had been systematically liquidating people guilty of harboring desires to live in just, egalitarian and socialist fatherlands.

We were all taking notes, photographing, going page after page through the horrifying evidence. Some people sat on the floor, squeezing their heads between palms of their hands. Others were crying.

One day, a lawyer, a friend of mine, approached me in a neighborhood cafeteria. He sat next to me, and slowly declared:

Do you think that anything changed in Paraguay? They, those responsible for the horrors, are looking at you going through those documents, and they are laughing at you, because they know that nothing will ever change in this country. They are laughing at me, too. I was tortured savagely. They pulled my nails out and they broke my balls. And now, when I go to watch a football match at a stadium, I see them, my torturers, and there is nothing that I can do. We greet each other, politely. We pretend that everything is fine; that nothing really happened… And then, at night, I scream.

As if reading my thoughts, Ms. Rosa M. Palau suddenly breaks the silence. She can hardly contain her emotions:

This was a terrible chapter of our history! Later, so many things happened, during the transition period. But now it is becoming obvious that we did not learn much about democracy. We learned almost nothing!

***

Two successive coups – those in Honduras and Paraguay – are often quoted as proof that the United States never really ‘closed its eyes’ and let go of its perpetual victim – Latin America.

On 3 July 2012, Bill Van Auken published his analyses of the Paraguay coup at The World Socialist Web Site:

There is every reason to believe that the hurried impeachment of Lugo—forced through both houses of the Paraguayan parliament in barely 30 hours after he was charged by the two traditional parties of the country’s ruling oligarchy—was carried out with the indispensable complicity of US imperialism.

A former Catholic cleric and proponent of Liberation Theology, Lugo was elected in 2008, promising to combat corruption and promote “socially responsible capitalism.”

Committed to the defense of private property and with all the real levers of power remaining in the hands of the Liberals and Stroessner’s Colorados, who ruled the country for six decades before the 2008 election, Lugo was able to carry out little in the way of reforms, while he adapted himself continuously to Paraguayan reaction.

Nonetheless, the ruling oligarchy as well as the transnational agricultural interests found his presidency intolerable, fearing that it was generating false expectations among the masses of Paraguayan workers and oppressed. In particular there was concern that masses of landless peasants, receiving nothing in the way of genuine agrarian reform from the government, would take matters into their own hands…

The principal pretext for the impeachment was a massacre unleashed by Paraguayan security forces as they attempted to evict some 100 peasant farmers occupying the land of a wealthy former Stroessner-era Colorado politician. Eleven peasants and six policemen were killed, while scores more were wounded and arrested. The right-wing parties in the Paraguayan Congress blamed Lugo not for gunning down peasants, but for failing to carry out more thorough repression.

Ms. Clyde Soto, a social researcher at “Centro de Documentacion y Estudios” (CDE) in Asuncion, spoke to me about the events of 2012 that began with the massacre at Curuguaty:

The massacre of 15 June 2012 was well planned. It was performed in order to expel the farmers who decided to occupy the lands, demanding the agrarian reform. Farmers knew that these were the lands unjustifiably seized by Blas N. Riquelme and his company Campos Morombi, with long and entangled legal process behind the case; the systematic strategy of seizure of land and territories still belonging to farmers and indigenous people. This plan was identical in substance to what was taking place throughout the history of post-colonial state of Paraguay (where definition of “post-colonial” is highly questionable). The second objective of the massacre was to create “space” for a “soft coup”, which removed Fernando Lugo from power, through a political trial full of irregularities. What happened in Curuguaty was clearly serving the interests of the powerful and of the business, both legal and illegal.

Then she added:

On Saturday, June 27, early in the morning, a group of farmers from Curuguaty once again occupied lands of Marina Kue, where the massacre took place in 2012. They are demanding both clarification of what happened 3 years ago, and the land titles.

It appears that Paraguay is, once again, reaching the boiling state. People are now ready to fight, to risk their lives. Political and economic elites lost their trust, fully. And so the land is being taken over by farmers, at several locations.

One evening Mr. Fernando Rojas gave me a lift. He and his comrades from “Decidamos” (citizen’s campaign “We will decide”) were heading north, to yet another area where farmers dared to take a decisive action and occupy the land that used to belong to them.

“We have to monitor what is going on in the provinces”, explained Fernando. “To make sure that what happened in Curuguaty will never happen again.”

The same night, at the Museo de Barro in Asuncion, a film about the massacre at Curuguaty is screened. It is called “Fuera de campo”, directed by Hugo Gimenez, who is actually present at the screening.

Fuera de campo is a minimalistic, honest, experimental piece of art. On the screen, people are speaking slowly, decisively. Farmers are still protesting, still dreaming about better fatherland… a mother remembering her son, his love for this land: “We have to resist… If they kill us, then let them do it!” There are shots of injured police, being taken away by the ambulances… while injured farmers are being executed, point blank.

***

“Two weeks ago, the military was marching here, during the anniversary of the Military Academy of Paraguay. They were marching shoulder to shoulder with the US military personnel that is operating in this country”, recalls Ms. Rosa M. Palau.

There could be no doubts that the United States is trying to solidify its military and economic presence in this region, antagonizing progressive neighboring nations like Bolivia, Brazil and Argentina.

The US presence in Paraguay consists of the military and air force bases, and of surveillance bases used for spying on the countries of the region.

As clearly shown in the “Archives of Terror”, the US has, historically, great links with both Paraguayan elites and its military; links that have been used for torturing, assassinating and imprisoning tens of thousands of South American patriots.

The US is regularly conducting secretive operations, particularly in the areas near Bolivian border, and also in the space where Paraguay, Brazil and Argentina meet.

There is already a huge US military air force base in Mariscal Estigarribia, Paraguay, which is located just 200 kilometers from the border with Bolivia and may be utilized by the US military in case that there is a US-backed coup against the socialist government of Evo Morales in Bolivia. That base is capable of housing over 16.000 troops. Near Mariscal Estigarribia are Bolivia’s natural gas reserves, the second largest in Latin America. The area has also huge significance, as the Guarani Aquifer is one of the world’s largest reserves of water.

Two years ago, Nikolas Kozloff wrote for Al-Jazeera:

Recently, a host of individuals and organizations throughout Latin America called attention to the tumultuous state of politics in Paraguay, where democratically elected President Fernando Lugo was impeached by the country’s Congress under somewhat dubious circumstances. In a letter of protest, the signatories sketched out a rather inflammatory theory. They claim, for example, that the US Southern Command wanted Lugo gone as the Paraguayan leader who had opposed US militarization in his country.

We already know who overthrew Fernando Lugo and why,” they added. “El Chaco … cannot be allowed to belong to [Paraguay]… nor its people; [the region has] been bound for occupation and extraction by multinationals through megaprojects and terror financed with public resources. The coup in Paraguay, like similar ones throughout Latin America, was carried out by and for multinationals and their partners among the local elites.

Fernando Lugo was not really a socialist. He was never in the same league with Chavez, Morales or Correa. He is a liberation theology priest, a former bishop. After he was deposed, he did not leave the country, eventually becoming a senator. But even his center-left government became intolerable for the US interests and for the Paraguayan ‘elites’.

Ms. Lilian Soto, former Presidential Candidate, and foremost Paraguayan socialist politician and feminist described to me unsettling political situation in her country:

These days, in Paraguay, political leaders are defending interests of big businesses and their owners; consequently, they are ruling our country in a way that serves these interests and not the interests of Paraguayan people. These leaders are pushing for extreme consumerism, promoting deals that are serving interests of big multinational corporations, putting at risk our national sovereignty, allowing foreign military interventions, unleashing so-called ‘war against drugs,’ which turns itself into the excuse for the presence of the American armed forces in Paraguay. This radically reverses the relationship between the USA and Latin America, back to the point of direct military interventions, similar to what used to happen to Paraguay during the Cold War in the 70’s, when Paraguay used to be a pillar of the US aggression in the region.

***

In the 1990’s, as a young journalist, I had witnessed several joint operations of the Paraguayan military and the agents of the US Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA). Twice I flew on board military helicopters to the border with Brazil, where several plants of marijuana were burned just for the lenses of us – foreign correspondents.

It was all a charade, but it was well orchestrated. “War on drugs” was always one of the main ‘justifications’ and covers for the US military presence in Paraguay.

Now “War on terror” is added to the list. In the tri-border region (Paraguay, Argentina and Brazil), around Ciudad del Este, several thousands of citizens of Syrian and Lebanese origin are accused of collecting funds for Hezbollah in Lebanon, an organization loved in Lebanon but hated in the West, consequently appearing on the US terrorist list. The US ‘feels obliged’ to monitor the situation.

In reality, what is at stake is the very independence of Latin America and its revolutions. The US is attempting to destabilize countries like Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, Brazil and Argentina, through cooperation with local ‘elites’, but also through its military bases in Colombia, Guyana and Paraguay.

In the process, millions of poor, mainly indigenous people, are being sacrificed.

Ms. Rosa M. Palau is lamenting:

Here, again, poor people who are mostly indigenous are fully exposed, unprotected. We all know that the US is involved. On this rapidly changing continent, Paraguay is becoming an isolated country.

 Welcome to Asuncion.

Archives of Horror – Chile section.

Hotel del Lago where Mengele used to live.

Lic. Rosa M. Palau, coordinator, archives of horror.

Remembering the massacre of indigenous people.

Similar to Jakarta – sidewalks of Asuncion.

Slums of Asuncion.

US military marching in Asuncion.