“Looking back, I can see that we have a situation which I compare with the Third Reich…Joseph Goebbels, he was the Minister of Propaganda, and he said “if you repeat a message long enough, loud enough, hard enough, at the end everybody believes it.” And I think the crux of the problem is in the media.” – Doctor quoted in this interview.
Provoked by daily reports by politicians, chief public health officers, and the mainstream media, people might be understandably terrified. On the other hand, there are rational voices singing from the hymn book of sober second thoughts.
These voices belong to people called doctors.
As we reported in our last show, Doctor Sucharit Bhakdi in his book, Corona, False Alarm, laid out how the evidence of the panic was unreliable, how the COVID 19 was in fact no worse than a typical flu virus, and how the lockdowns cause more difficulties than the disease itself.
There are many, many more doctors also raising their voices calling for their nations and the world to rethink their COVID strategy. They are particularly effective in Europe. These include a petition signed by 2662 doctors and medical practitioners in the Netherlands, a public conference made up of 400 doctors in Spain, a Corona Extra-Parliamentary Inquiry Committee made up of about 500 Doctors and scientists in Germany, and a public letter from Belgium signed by over 1500 people in the medical and scientific community.
Sadly, these people cannot get their voices in regular media.
This week, on the Global Research News Hour, we work to give these experts some space, and possibly assuage the out if control panic sweeping our society.
Our guests for the hour are two doctors with the group: Docs 4 Open Debate. For most of the program they speak about the unreliable test numbers, unreliable masks, the WHO’s role in this, and the determination to not just ignore but punish those in the profession who speak out.
Docs 4 Open Debate is a group in Belgium doctors and health professionals intent on demanding more critical analysis of the pandemic fight, relaxation of the extreme emergency measures, and freedom to express their positions on mainstream media. They crafted an open letter to this end which has so far been signed by 515 physicians and 1767 medically trained health professionals. Their site is docs4opendebate.be
As the pandemic continues to claim lives across the country, new information keeps coming out about how the Trump administration has made it harder for Americans to protect themselves.
We now know, for example, that early in the pandemic the U.S. Postal Service had planned to deliver five face masks to every U.S. household. It could have made mask-wearing a lot more common a lot earlier — and maybe saved a lot of lives. But the White House scrapped the idea.
Now we also know that the Trump administration took $1 billion in stimulus funds that were supposed to go towards making masks and other protective equipment for the pandemic — and gave most of it to weapons manufacturers.
Those funds were part of $10.6 billion in CARES Act money allocated to the Pentagon — a staggering sum, especially since the bloated military budget already claims 53 cents of every discretionary federal dollar available to Congress.
The $1 billion in question was granted under a special law that lets the Pentagon require companies to manufacture urgently needed goods in case of a national emergency. This time, it was to make sure companies producing Personal Protective Equipment (PPE), like N-95 masks, ventilators, and more, were making all they could.
But most of that money didn’t go to making PPE at all. Trump’s defense department gave it to corporations that make jet engines, drone flight controllers, and dress uniforms for the military. Two-thirds of it was distributed in big contracts worth more than $5 million each.
The military says that the “health” of the defense industry is crucial to national security. But the CARES Act money was specifically allocated to protect the health of the people of this country — not the companies that build weapons.
This comes at a moment when U.S. military spending is already near all-time highs — and when military contractors are doing better than lots of other companies.
“Major defense contractors such as Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics, and Northrop Grumman,” the Washington Post reports, “have remained financially healthy despite some pandemic-related disruption, and have continued to pay stock dividends to investors.”
Indeed, the CEOs of those companies rank among the highest paid corporate executives in the country. Last year General Dynamics’s CEO raked in $18 million, Northrup Grumman’s made $20 million, and Lockheed-Martin’s pulled in a whopping $31 million.
Still, many of those same military corporations paid out of the $1 billion Pentagon slush fund also applied for — and received — funds from the federal Paycheck Protection Program that Congress designated specifically to prevent COVID-related lay-offs. These extra Pentagon grants came on top of that, except without any requirements to protect jobs. Those companies could take the money and still fire as many employees as they want.
An additional $1 billion would have made a huge difference in the fight against COVID-19. My colleagues created a federal budget calculator. It shows that $1 billion could have funded nearly 28 million COVID-19 tests or purchased over 294 million N-95 respirator masks.
What makes us safer in the pandemic — access to more testing and a lot more face masks, or helping military corporations and their CEOs make a killing on our tax money?
Add that to the canceled Postal Service plan to distribute hundreds of millions more masks, and the record keeps getting more appalling. Make no mistake: The Trump administration’s heartlessness and militarism are costing lives.
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Phyllis Bennis directs the New Internationalism Project at the Institute for Policy Studies. This op-ed was distributed by OtherWords.org
On September 23, María Eugenia Russián, president of Fundalatin, Venezuela’s oldest human rights organization, testified to the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) and decried an attempt by a UNHRC fact-finding mission to erase people who were “lynched, burned alive, decapitated and murdered by extremist sectors of the Venezuelan opposition.” This fact-finding mission had published a report a week earlier that generated sensationalist headlines of “crimes against humanity” and painted a bleak picture of the situation in Venezuela.
However, the 400+ page report has been found to contain serious flaws and omissions, leading to charges that it politicizes human rights – a position backed by the Venezuelan government. But it’s not just Venezuela that has taken issue with the report: Argentina’s ambassador to the Organization of American States denounced it as “biased” and noted that “human rights are not an instrument for taking political positions.”
A parallel mission and attack on multilateralism
Moreover, even the formation of the fact-finding mission is suspect. Since 2017, Venezuela has been working with a different UN institution, the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), to strengthen its capacity to guarantee human rights. This cooperation has led to technical agreements and to visits by the OHCHR to Venezuela.
Yet despite – or perhaps because – of this cooperation, the Lima Group, an ad hoc group of nations dedicated to regime change in Venezuela, maneuvered in the UN Human Rights Council to establish a parallel mission outside of the purview of the OHCHR. In the September 2019 debate prior to the founding of this mission, Russián said that it “seeks to thwart the advances between the Office of the High Commissioner and the Venezuelan state, hindering and duplicating its efforts.” She also made a prescient comment: “[the mission] will generate major headlines but will not contribute to resolving the situation.”
Several Venezuelan human rights organizations, including the Venezuelan Association of Jurists (AVJ), denounced the formation of the mission and the subsequent report as an attack on multilateralism. The AVJ notes that according to UN General Assembly Resolution 60/251, “the promotion and protection of human rights should be based on the principles of cooperation and genuine dialogue and aimed at strengthening the capacity of Member States.”
Neither of these principles were adhered to in the report, which means that the fact-finding mission violated the United Nation’s own guidelines. This contrasts severely with the latest update on Venezuela from the OHCHR, which notes that technical cooperation between Venezuela and the UN has led to progress in investigating 93 alleged cases of extrajudicial killings or excessive use of force, as well as the pardoning of 110 prisoners.
Flawed methodology, biased sources and egregious omissions
The first thing to note about the report is that the authors are all from countries that support Guaidó. One of them, Francisco Cox, has close ties to the Chilean Foreign Minister (Chile is one of the Latin American countries leading the charge against Venezuela). In an interview with journalist Anya Parampil, Chilean analyst Esteban Silva noted that Cox “is part of an operation against the government of Venezuela.”
Venezuelan human rights organization Sures considers that the report “lacks academic rigor” as the mission did not step foot in Venezuela “and as such never had direct access to the sources it consulted, including the victims, government officials and official records.” Lending credence to the claim of a lack of rigor is the fact that more than 50% of the report’s sources were links to social and digital media, while just 5% were NGOs.
Misión Verdad, an independent group of Venezuelan investigative journalists and analysts, wrote an exposé of the sources used in the report and found that one of these NGOs, COFAVIC (Committee of Relatives of Victims of the Caracazo), receives USAID funds and has ties to Human Rights Watch, which supports regime change and the brutal US sanctions. None of the NGOs the fact-finding mission contacted even mentioned the case of Orlando Figuera, a young Black man burned alive by anti-government protestors, which has arguably been the most infamous violation of human rights in Venezuela in recent years.
If the report were interested in balance, it would have cited or contacted Venezuelan human rights groups that document right-wing violence at protests and the devastating effects of U.S. sanctions. Five such organizations were contacted for this article: Fundalatin, AJV, Sures, Género con Clase (Gender with Class), and the Committee of Victims of the Guarimba and Ongoing Coup (guarimba is the term used for violent opposition protests in 2013, 2014 and 2017). None of them ever heard from the “independent” mission.
While victims like Figuera are ignored, another detailed critique by Misión Verdad documents the repeated “whitewashing” of political actors linked to violence by presenting them as victims. As analyst Joe Emersberger notes, the report’s treatment of opposition figure Leopoldo López ignores the leading role he has played in destabilizing Venezuela since 2002. López’s regime change strategy in 2014, ‘La Salida’, sparked opposition violence that resulted in the decapitation of Elvis Durán; he was riding a motorcycle down a street booby trapped by protestors with barbed wire. López’s name appears 61 times in the report; Durán’s does not appear at all.
As tragic as it is that a UN mission would engage in the erasure of victims of human rights violations perpetrated by government opponents, these are not even the most glaring omissions in the report. There are two ongoing mass violations of the human rights of all Venezuelans: the violent destabilization of the country by foreign and domestic actors, and the brutal U.S. sanctions. For Gisela Jiménez of Género con Clase, an organization that focuses on the rights of women and sexual diversity, currently the biggest challenge to the rights of Venezuelans is “the threat to the right to live in peace.” Russián of Fundalatin dates the biggest violation of human rights to March 2015, when then-President Obama characterized Venezuela as an “unusual and extraordinary threat” to the United States. Since then, she notes, ”the Venezuelan people have been subjected to violations of their right to health and even the right to life, due to the embargo and the obstruction of imports of medicine, food and supplies.”
The report in the context of a hybrid war
Beyond the bias and politicization of the report, what perhaps damns it most is how it is being used. The omissions on the impact of coups and sanctions enable regime change operatives such as Elliott Abrams, U.S. special representative for Iran and Venezuela, to cite the report as evidence of crimes against humanity while, in the same breath, threatening to cut off Venezuela’s diesel supplies, which has drawn widespread condemnation from NGOs across the political spectrum for the devastating effect it would have on the Venezuelan people.
Furthermore, the timing of the report was also suspect, coming just a week before the 2020 UN General Assembly. Its purpose in this regard is clear: to add fuel to the fire in Venezuela and to shift the spotlight from U.S. allies with their own human rights issues. The timely release allowed Colombian president Duque and Chilean president Piñera to cite it and Venezuela in their general assembly speeches. In Colombia, 64 massacres have taken place this year alone, while the Piñera government in Chile was almost brought down by his government’s excessive use of force against peaceful protestors. Yet it was Venezuelan opposition figure Juan Guaidó who made the headlines, invoking the report while calling on the international community to exercise its “responsibility to protect” in a YouTube webinar on the sidelines of the General Assembly. The responsibility to protect is a doctrine used as the justification for military aggressions against Libya and Syria, among others.
The fact-finding mission has produced a document that is currently being employed in the furtherance of sanctions, electoral interference and threats of war. To put it another way, the UNHCR report on the human rights of Venezuelans will likely lead to even more suffering for Venezuelans. In the words of Fundalatin President Russián, the threat to the human rights of Venezuelans “becomes graver because of the behavior by powerful states, who in the name of human rights, seek a foreign military intervention in Venezuela.”
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Leonardo Flores is a Latin American policy analyst and campaigner with CODEPINK.
Featured image: Fundalatin President María Eugenia Russián outside of the United Nations
The Old Bailey has been the venue for a trial that should never have taken place. But during the course of these extradition proceedings against Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks founder accused by the US Department of Justice for violating the US Espionage Act (17 charges) and one under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, an impressive battalion of defence witnesses has been called upon. They have assisted Assange’s legal team to build a picture of obscene politicisation, imperial overreach and wanton callousness.
A picture of the detention facilities awaiting the publisher was painted with fine strokes: the alienating brutality of solitary confinement; likely special administrative measures restraining the detainee’s access to legal representation and family; inadequate health facilities both physical and mental for those at risk of self-harm. Then came the chilling realisation, made clear on the seventeenth day: that the US intelligence services, through the Spanish security firm UC Global SL, had conducted surveillance of the Ecuadorean Embassy in London, and proposed kidnapping or poisoning a political asylee.
Peirce and violations of attorney-client privilege
In the court on Thursday, attention turned to written submissions from human rights activist Gareth Peirce, Assange’s solicitor, who described brazen breaches of attorney-client privilege. Trial observers noted how “extraordinarily difficult” it had been to follow Peirce’s statements, largely because of Judge Vanessa Baraitser’s penchant for preventing a full reading in the court.
Despite such stints of constipation, the point of Peirce’s submissions was clear enough. Legally privileged documents were seized from the Ecuadorean Embassy in London. The Ecuadorean intelligence service was complicit. Two diplomatic pouches with USB sticks were placed in a diplomatic bag, sent to Ecuador, then onwards to the United States.
Peirce claimed that, between 2017 and 2018, three legally privileged meetings were subjected to surveillance without her knowledge. Assange’s Spanish lawyer Aitor Martínez was also the subject of such intrusion, his legal file photographed when absent in a meeting with his client. The legal team representing Assange had a nagging sense that their gatherings might be monitored. While not knowing the full extent of such intrusions, “an exceptionally high level of anxiety” was present during those meetings.
Martínez also furnished the court with an update on the criminal investigation against UC Global SL director David Morales, being conducted by Spain’s High Court, the Audiencia Nacional. Morales’s part in this sordid matter was much in evidence the day before, when his role in facilitating surveillance of Assange and his embassy meetings, at the behest of his “American friends”, was given a generous airing by former employees of his company. The outcome of that case may well shed light upon an already troubling bridge linking UC Global with the Central Intelligence Agency and Las Vegas Sands, owned by Trump supporter and Republican donor, Sheldon Adelson.
Tigar’s testimony and abuse of power
Testimony from Professor Michael Tigar of Duke Law School was read, drawing parallels between the abuses of power perpetrated by the Nixon administration in 1971 and those of the Trump administration vis-à-vis Assange.
The first case centred on the outcome of President Richard Nixon’s attempts to prosecute the Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg. After the publication of the papers, Nixon’s staffers formed a covert unit known as the “White House Plumbers,” a blunt outfit that proceeded to commit crimes with abandon for the unforgettable Committee for the Re-Election of the President (CREEP). Ellsberg’s psychiatrist’s office was burgled by the Plumbers in an effort to pilfer his medical files; Nixon ordered the illegal wiretapping of Ellsberg; the government then claimed to have mislaid those wiretaps when asked to produce them at trial. And just to spice things further, US District Court Judge William M. Byrne, Jr., presiding over Ellsberg’s trial, was also approached by Nixon and his assistant for domestic affairs, John D. Ehrlichman, about the possibility of becoming the FBI’s next director. Judge Byrne could only conclude that the government’s actions had “offended a sense of justice,” leading him to declare “a mistrial and grant the motion for dismissal.”
The US intelligence effort against Assange in the Ecuadorean Embassy in London, perpetrated through UC Global’s installation of surveillance facilities, threw up richly disturbing similarities. Confidential files had been accessed; privileged conversations with lawyers had been recorded; over eager proposals for kidnapping or poisoning Assange expressed. For Ellsberg, this was certainly damning. “That’s essentially the same information that ended my case and confronted Nixon with impeachment, leading to his resignation.”
Baraitser’s exclusions
Patience on the bench, and among the prosecution team, began to wear thin. The prosecution, led by James Lewis QC, argued that the defence had run out of time. Objections mounted, temperatures rose. Material was excluded. Judge Baraitser decided to exclude one of Peirce’s witness statements addressing the new allegations made in the second superseding indictment served in July. The statement, argued the defence, was only appropriate to address “fresh and different” allegations the prosecution only saw fit to include at a later date.
She also batted away the defence’s effort to submit a statement made by US Attorney General William Barr on September 15, outlining his belief that the executive branch had “virtually unchecked discretion” in deciding whether or not to initiate prosecutions. “The power to execute and enforce the law is an executive function altogether,” Barr stated. “That means discretion is invested in the executive to determine when to exercise prosecutorial power.”
Readying the ground
The ground, then, is being readied for closing arguments by the defence. Three areas promise to feature. The first is the heavy air of political motivation in the prosecution of Assange. Outlets that had published the unredacted cables prior to WikiLeaks doing so on September 2, 2011, and left unmolested by the DOJ and law enforcement, suggest distinct targeting. To this can be added the manoeuvrings in the Trump administration, noted in the testimony of Cassandra Fairbanks, about the decision to arrest Assange. A clear change of heart had manifested in the matter, given the loss of interest shown by the Obama administration in pursuing the publisher. Coupled with the theory of executive power endorsed by the Attorney General Barr – that such an officer should defer to the views of the presidential office in determining prosecutions – add to claims that this is a politically driven endeavour.
The second focuses on an abuse of power, sharply drawn in the testimony of two anonymous former employees of UC Global. The third: that Assange, should he be extradited, will face cruel and inhumane treatment. Frail health and appalling prison conditions at both the pre-trial Alexandria Detention Center, and the post-trial ADX Florence supermax in Colorado, promise to be a debilitating, even lethal mix.
With the evidence now in her possession, Baraitser will have much to get through. Unfortunately, we are none the wiser about what items of evidence her judicial mind will accept or reject. The jaw dropping accounts of embassy espionage, suggested poisoning and proposed kidnapping of Assange may be deemed, as the prosecutors insist, irrelevant to the charges at hand.
A date for judgment was also set. “Unless any further application for bail is made, and between now and the 4th of January, you will remain in custody for the same reasons as you have been before,” Baraister explained to Assange.
After the adjournment, Assange’s fiancée Stella Moris spoke of the highest of stakes, of this being not merely a fight for life but press freedom and truth. “This case is already chilling press freedom. It is a frontal assault on journalism, on the public’s right to know and our ability to hold governments, domestic and foreign, to account.”
Moris noted, with pertinence, the prosecution’s admission, under oath “that it has no evidence that a single person has ever come to any physical harm because of these publications. Let me repeat that: there is no evidence that a single person has ever come to any physical harm because of these publications.” Assange was in prison for informing “you of actual crimes and atrocities being committed by a foreign power. That foreign power has ripped away his freedom and torn our family apart.” It was a power determined “to put him in incommunicado detention in the deepest darkest hole of its prison system for the rest of his life.”
Assange will continue spending time at Belmarsh Prison, one of Britain’s most notorious facilities reserved for only the most hardened species of criminal. He will put in court appearances every 28 days via videolink. The defence will submit closing arguments on November 16; the prosecution will then make its final pitch to convince the court two weeks later. The legions of press members, writers and scribblers should now ruminate, along with Judge Baraitser, about the consequences of this entire process. Moris is clear about one of them. “The US administration won’t stop with him. The US says that it can put any journalist, anywhere in the world, on trial in the US if it doesn’t like what they are publishing.”
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Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research and Asia-Pacific Research. Email: [email protected]
I really do not know how to report Wednesday’s events. Stunning evidence, of extreme quality and interest, was banged out in precis by the lawyers as unnoticed as bags of frozen chips coming off a production line.
The court that had listened to Clair Dobbin spend four hours cross-examining Carey Shenkman on individual phrases of first instance court decisions in tangentially relevant cases, spent four minutes as Noam Chomsky’s brilliant exegesis of the political import of this extradition case was rapidly fired into the court record, without examination, question or placing into the context of the legal arguments about political extradition.
Twenty minutes sufficed for the reading of the “gist” of the astonishing testimony of two witnesses, their identity protected as their lives may be in danger, who stated that the CIA, operating through Sheldon Adelson, planned to kidnap or poison Assange, bugged not only him but his lawyers, and burgled the offices of his Spanish lawyers Baltazar Garzon. This evidence went unchallenged and untested.
The rich and detailed evidence of Patrick Cockburn on Iraq and of Andy Worthington on Afghanistan was, in each case, well worthy of a full day of exposition. I should love at least to have seen both of them in the witness box explaining what to them were the salient points, and adding their personal insights. Instead we got perhaps a sixth of their words read rapidly into the court record. There was much more.
I have noted before, and I hope you have marked my disapproval, that some of the evidence is being edited to remove elements which the US government wish to challenge, and then entered into the court record as uncontested, with just a “gist” read out in court. The witness then does not appear in person. This reduces the process from one of evidence testing in public view to something very different. Wednesday confirmed the acceptance that this “Hearing” is now devolved to an entirely paper exercise. It is in fact no longer a “hearing” at all. You cannot hear a judge reading. Perhaps in future it should be termed not a hearing but an “occasional rustling”, or a “keyboard tapping”. It is an acknowledged, indeed embraced, legal trend in the UK that courts are increasingly paper exercises, as noted by the Supreme Court.
In the past, the general practice was that all the argument and evidence was placed before the court orally, and documents were read out, Lady Hale said.
She added: “The modern practice is quite different. Much more of the argument and evidence is reduced into writing before the hearing takes place. Often, documents are not read out.
“It is difficult, if not impossible, in many cases, especially complicated civil cases, to know what is going on unless you have access to the written material.”
At least twice in the current case, Judge Baraitser has mentioned that the defence gave her three hundred pages of opening argument, and has done so in the context of doubting the need for all this evidence, or at least for lengthy closing arguments which take account of the evidence. She was highly resistant to any exposition by witnesses of their evidence before cross-examination, arguing that their evidence was already in their statements so they did not need to say it. She eventually agreed on a strict limit of just half an hour for witness “orientation”.
However much Lady Hale thinks she is helping by setting down a principle that the documentation must be available, having Patrick Cockburn’s statement online somewhere will never have the impact of him standing in the witness box and expounding on it. What happened on Wednesday was that the whole hearing was collapsed, with both defence and prosecution lawyers hurling hundreds of pages of witness statement at Baraitser’s head, saying: “You look at this. We can get finished tomorrow morning and all have a long weekend to prepare our next cases.”
I was so disappointed by the way the case petered out before my eyes, that the adrenaline which has carried me through must have dried up. Returning to my room at lunchtime for a brief doze, when I tried to get up for the afternoon session I was overcome with dizziness. I eventually managed to walk to the court, despite the world having decided to present itself at a variety of sharp and unusual angles, and everything appearing to be under glaring orange sodium light. The Old Bailey staff – who I should say have been really friendly and helpful to me throughout – very kindly took me up in a lift and through the advocate’s robing room to the public gallery.
I am happy to say that after court two pints of Guinness and a cheese and ham toastie had a substantial restorative effect. Those who have followed these reports will understand how frustrating it was to be deprived of James Lewis asking Noam Chomsky how he can venture an opinion on whether this extradition is politically motivated when he is only a Professor of Linguistics, or whether he has ever published any peer-reviewed articles. To attempt to encapsulate the wealth of information skipped through yesterday is not the work of an evening.
What I shall do for now is give you the eloquent and brief statement by Noam Chomsky on the political nature of Julian Assange’s actions:
I will also give you the breathtaking testimony of “Witness 2”:
A friend last night gave me the cold comfort that I should not worry about the hurried close of these proceedings reducing the public gaze on the evidence and the arguments (and I think there were altogether nine witness statements yesterday), because that public gaze had been extremely limited, as indeed I have been continually explaining. In other words, it makes no difference. I follow that argument, but it goes against some fundamental beliefs and motivations I have about bearing witness, which I shall need to develop further in my own mind.
In the next few days I will try to bring you a synthesis and analysis of all that passed on Wednesday. Now I need to go to court and see the last few dribbles of this case, and exchange last glances of friendship with Julian for some months.
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Boeing’s decades-long ties to Washington state could soon be numbered.
In a massive blow to Seattle, labor unions and the liberal run state of Washington, Boeing is moving its 787 Dreamliner production to South Carolina in an effort to cut costs, Bloomberg revealed on Thursday.
It is a move that is raising questions about how long Boeing may remain at its massive plant in Everett, where it has produced planes since the 1960s.
Dreamliner production is being consolidated as demand for Boeing’s planes has dropped amidst the 737 MAX controversy and the ongoing pandemic which has decimated the travel industry. The easiest way for Boeing to cut costs is to move to non-union labor in South Carolina and trim its operations.
It’s also the latest move in Boeing bolstering operations in Republican-governed South Carolina. Aerospace analyst Richard Aboulafi noted that 747 production would end by 2022 and that “the overhead costs will be increasingly borne by the surviving planes, the 767 and 777X, which don’t have a lot of pricing power right now.”
Washington Governor Jay Inslee stopped figuring out new ways to raise taxes and defund the police long enough to issue a statement critical of Boeing, stating that the state would need to take a “hard look” at Boeing’s tax treatment. He estimated 1,000 jobs could be at risk.
Meanwhile, Boeing has been in the midst of scrambling to shore up its financials after two fatal 737 MAX crashes and the subsequent grounding of its 737 MAX planes in the interim. Melius Research estimates Boeing could see $23.3 billion in cash burn this year as a result of those groundings, coupled with the Covid-19 pandemic.
Boeing CFO Greg Smith said in July: “The goal is to improve cash-flow profile, restore our balance-sheet strength as quickly as possible. And these actions will help get us there.”
Governor Inslee said: “We have asked the Boeing Company multiple times what it needs to keep 787 production in Washington”. Inslee also claimed the move would “signal an allegiance to short-term profits and Wall Street…”
Yeah, comrade. Also known as “capitalism”.
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October 2nd, 2020 by Center For Biological Diversity
A status conference on seismic litigation revealed today the industry will not pursue efforts to employ seismic blasting to search the Atlantic Ocean for offshore petroleum deposits this year, and possibly for several years.
The hearing marked a victory for dozens of organizations and thousands of coastal communities and businesses in a years-long legal and public battle challenging the government’s issuance of Incidental Harassment Authorizations, or IHAs. Those authorizations were needed because the airgun bombardment of the seafloor would have hurt ocean animals, including the critically endangered North Atlantic right whale.
Acknowledgment that seeking new permits would move the lengthy process back to square one;
A concession from lawyers representing the seismic industry that it is not feasible to launch boats this year.
“This is a huge victory not just for us but for every coastal community that loudly and persistently protested the possibility of seismic blasting,” said Catherine Wannamaker, a senior attorney at the Southern Environmental Law Center. “There will be no boats in the water this year, and because this resets the clock, there will be no boats in the water for a long time. And we’ll continue fighting to keep it that way.”
Quotes from participating organizations:
“Seismic blasting harms whales in the search for offshore oil that we should leave in the ground. We can’t allow the oil industry’s greed to threaten endangered North Atlantic right whales and other vulnerable species,” said Kristen Monsell, ocean legal director with the Center for Biological Diversity. “We’re happy these animals will have a reprieve from this unjustified acoustic attack on our oceans. We’ll keep fighting to ensure the oil industry stays out of the Atlantic.”
“We are at a crucial time for the last remaining 400 North Atlantic right whales on the planet,” said Alice M. Keyes, vice president of coastal conservation for One Hundred Miles. “Seismic blasting in the Atlantic would sound the death knell for this magnificent species. We are proud to stand alongside hundreds of thousands of Georgians and East Coast residents who have fought against seismic blasting for the protection of our marine mammals, fisheries and ocean-dependent economies.”
“The end of Atlantic seismic testing for the foreseeable future is a much-needed reprieve for marine life, including the critically-endangered North Atlantic right whale,” said Jane Davenport, senior attorney at Defenders of Wildlife. “However, until there is an outright ban on offshore oil and gas drilling along the East Coast, we will continue to fight against this disruptive and dangerous practice.”
“Seismic surveys are the precursor to offshore drilling, but these waters are far too important to sacrifice to Big Oil. There’s no need to risk irreplaceable marine wildlife just for potential information about oil deposits that should never be drilled in the first place,” said Earthjustice Managing Attorney Steve Mashuda. “We’re grateful there will be no airgun blasting in the near future and will keep up the fight to make sure it stays that way.”
“We are relieved that the threat of seismic testing and its damage to marine wildlife is at least temporarily lifted,” said Laura Cantral, executive director of the Coastal Conservation League. “It’s vital that we use this pause to secure a permanent ban on offshore energy exploration activities and drilling in South Carolina and adjoining waters, and finally put an end to the unacceptable risk it poses to our economy and environment.”
“There will be no seismic blasting this year, and none of the senseless harm that would bring to our whales and fish and coastal communities, but the administration has left the door open to new proposals from industry,” said Michael Jasny, director of the Marine Mammal Protection Project at NRDC. “The only way to end the threat is to prohibit offshore oil and gas exploration for good.”
“Communities can breathe a little easier knowing the Atlantic is now safe from seismic airgun blasting in 2020. Today’s much needed news is a bright spot and in line with the court of public opinion,” said Diane Hoskins, Oceana campaign director. “Over 90% of coastal municipalities in the proposed blast zone are opposed to opening our coast to offshore drilling and its dangerous precursor, seismic airgun blasting. The expiration of these unlawful permits will finally protect coastal communities and our marine life. Oceana has been campaigning for more than a decade to protect our coast from dirty and dangerous offshore-drilling activities. We are going to do everything in our power to permanently protect our coasts and ensure dynamite-like blasting never starts.”
Trailing Biden by an average of 6.8 points — according to Real Clear Politics as of late September — do Trump strategists intend an October surprise to improve his reelection prospects?
On Monday in response to phony US Middle East anti-terrorism operations, Iranian Foreign Minister Zarif said the following:
“You claim you eliminated Daesh. You killed Daesh’s number one enemy in a wretched act and with utmost bestiality.”
Zarif referred to the Pentagon’s murder of redoubtable terrorist fighter Iranian Quds Force commander General Qassem Soleimani in January.
Tehran-backed Popular Mobilization Units (PMU) commander Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis was killed at the same time — prompting retaliatory rocket attacks against the US presence in the country that continue.
On Sunday, two US convoys were attacked with explosive devices. Iraqis want their country back, Pentagon occupation ended.
In early September, US CENTCOM commander General Kenneth Mckenzie said Pentagon troop strength in Iraq would be reduced to about 3,000.
Is the Middle East the most likely location if an October surprise is coming? Will Iraq be targeted with Iran in mind?
Are more US preemptive hostilities in the region possible ahead of November elections?
Along with China and Russia, Iran is a key US target for regime change.
According to Bloomberg News, citing unnamed sources, the Trump regime intends new sanctions on over a dozen Iranian banks, along with remittance processors, and the informal hawala transfer system.
The action aims to try isolating the country’s financial sector from the world community and make it harder for Biden to rejoin the JCPOA if he’s elected president in November.
Despite everything thrown at Iran by the US for over 40 years, including all-out sanctions war, especially by the Trump regime, the Islamic Republic remains resilient.
Along with more sanctions that have no legal validity under international law, will Trump regime hardliners provoke confrontation with Iran in the coming weeks?
On the phony pretext of combatting ISIS the US created and supports, using its jihadists as proxy forces in Syria, Iraq and elsewhere, the Pentagon terror-bombed Iraq on September 23.
According to Bahrain-based Fifth Fleet spokeswoman Commander Rebecca Rebarich, two F/A-18F Super Hornets from the USS Nimitz conducted the strikes.
The US Navy tweeted:
“Locked and Loaded #NavyReadiness”
“#USSNimitz (CVN 68) conducts flight operations in support of #OperationInherentResolve.”
“Nimitz is deployed to the @US5thFleet to ensure maritime stability and security in the Central Region (sic).”
Ahead of the strike, a Fifth Fleet news release said CVW 17 will “provid(e) close air support and defensive counter-air missions to the coalition fight” against Daesh forces — the terror group supported by the US and its imperial partners left unexplained.
Separately according to US media reports on Sunday, the Trump regime threatened to close its Baghdad embassy and evacuate its staff unless Iraqi authorities act to end rocket attacks on the heavily-fortified Green Zone where it’s based.
According to the Wall Street Journal, Pompeo informed Iraqi President Barham Salih and Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi of a possible diplomatic pullout from the city — not from its Erbil consulate.
Iraqi MP head of parliament’s Security and Defense Committee Mohammad Reza believes the Trump regime is bluffing.
In his latest press conference, Trump “did not address this issue,” he said, adding:
“I do not expect that the US embassy will be closed.”
“It is used as a kind of pressure on the Iraqi government, (related to the upcoming November presidential) election that the US cares about…No more, no less.”
Whether or not the Trump regime follows through on its threat, will it escalate strikes on Iraqi Shia militias with close ties to Iran?
With US November elections drawing near, will Trump strategists provoke confrontation with Iran to try increasing support for DJT?
In an attempt to revive his lagging behind reelection campaign, will he initiate a false flag incident against Iran as a pretext for confrontation.
False flags are a longstanding US tradition since the mid-19th century.
Post-9/11, the mother of all US false flags, GW Bush’s approval rating rose from around 50 to 85% in a few days, peaking at 90% on September 21?
Do Trump strategists have a similar scheme in mind, hoping he’ll get an approval boost to defeat Biden and gain a second term?
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Award-winning author Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at [email protected]. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG)
His new book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.”
Hayat Tahir Sham (HTS), formerly known as Jibhat al Nusra, the Al Qaeda affiliate in Syria, began demanding the evacuation of civilians in Agrabat in the Idlib province recently, or they would be moved by force. HTS is supported by President Erdogan of Turkey and has come under increased pressure to remove civilians from areas of armed conflict under an agreement between Turkey and Russia. Idlib is the last terrorist occupied area in Syria. The Syrian government has regained about 70% of the nation’s territory and has allied with the Russian military in the fight against terrorism, which is an obligation of all UN members.
The skies over northwest Syria witnessed flights by Turkish and Russian warplanes amid the almost continuous mutual bombardment of southern Idlib. Civilians have said they fear a massive military operation is coming.
Turkish F16 aircraft flew along the border strip between Syria and Turkey, while Russian reconnaissance aircraft flew over Zawiya Mountain, and the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) shelled HTS in intense strikes on areas within Zawiya Mountain in Idlib, unleashing a heavy barrage on the terrorist positions.
The heaviest fighting in six months continues to intensify in Idlib between Harras al-din (HaD) and the Turkish backed HTS, and the SAA.
Idlib is in a de-escalation zone agreed upon between Turkey and Russia in March. Erdogan of Turkey has poured thousands of troops in an invasion of Idlib, later President Putin of Russia forged an agreement to defuse a military confrontation. Turkey has more than ten thousand troops stationed in dozens of bases in Idlib province, and Russian pressure and diplomacy have sought to contain them.
The recent upsurge in fighting has seen the SAA amassing troops on the front lines in a looming confrontation, with the SAA increasing attacks on the numerous Turkish occupation outposts and the Turkish countered by sending in 15 armored vehicles over the border from Turkey.
Hayat Tahir al-Sham
HTS is the Al Qaeda affiliate in Idlib and is the strongest of the Radical Islamic terrorist groups who occupy Idlib. Abu Mohammed Al-Jolani is the leader of HTS, which is loathed by the civilian population because of their extremism and fascist political ideology which keeps women in subjugation and servitude.
The civilians are not the original inhabitants of Idlib, who left years ago, but the thousands of militants and their families who left on the green buses from various areas around Syria under a voluntary relocation program.
Ansar Abu Bakr Brigade
Ansar Abu Bakr Brigade is a hardcore terrorist group that is opposed to Turkey, HTS, Russia, and SAA. They have warned of more attacks on Turkish soldiers stationed in Idlib province after they claimed an attack on a Turkish military base in western Idlib province last week, close to the M4 highway.
Recently, a pick-up truck packed with explosives targeted a Turkish base in western Idlib, injuring several Turkish troops and HTS terrorists guarding the outpost.
Hurras al-Din (HaD) is a hardcore Al-Qaeda group that broke away from HTS, and the Ansar Abu Bakr Brigade is formed from them, while all have a history of ideological and leadership ties to Al-Qaeda, and view Al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri as their “defining authority”. Almost all of the members are non-Syrian foreign terrorists who were initially brought to Idlib by the CIA program supported by Turkey which President Trump disavowed in 2017.
Russian-Turkey agreement and joint patrols
Russia and Turkey entered an agreement in September 2018 to demilitarize the Idlib province. On March 3 Turkey and Russia agreed on a ceasefire to establish security for the M4 highway connecting the Port of Latakia to the industrial city of Aleppo, with joint patrols to begin on March 15.
Turkish and Russian soldiers were trained to communicate in case of emergencies; however, the terrorists have launched attacks on both Turkish and Russian patrols at various times, which resulted in a break-down in the patrols due to security concerns. Russia has recently stepped up its attacks on the headquarters of HTS, HaD, and Ansar Abu Bakr Brigade.
Turkey has failed to implement its obligations under the agreements with Russia in Idlib, which was to separate the terrorists from the civilians. Turkey wants to maintain the chaos in Idlib, including the Al Qaeda linked groups who Turkey supports as their foot-soldiers in Syria.
M4 Highway
Turkish and Russian troops have come under attack from terrorist groups on the M4 highway, with roadside bombs and rockets frequently targeting the patrols which stopped at the end of March but resumed on July 22.
On August 18 the joint patrol was attacked, and again on August 25 when a Russian convoy was damaged and left two Russian servicemen injured.
Chemical attack in the planning stages
On February 1 about 15 ‘White Helmets’ members arrived and began working on a planned chemical attack, according to two residents who warned authorities of the plot in the border city of Sarmada, north of Idlib, after terrorists and a convoy of three trucks loaded with different chemical containers arrived.
“The provocation involving a crowd of about 200 people is planned to be staged in the settlement of Maaret al-Artik. These people, including children, are mostly family members of militants who were previously evacuated from southern governorates and have arrived in the Idlib de-escalation zone. About 400 liters of a chemical solution has been delivered by White Helmets activists in two pickup cars to the location from an underground storage facility,” the Russian Center for Reconciliation of the Opposing Parties said.
According to the Russian center, the group was led by HTS terrorist Mahi al-Din al-Am, who took part in filming the fake chemical attack in Idlib’s Khan Shaykhoun on April 4, 2017.
The video of the staged chemical attack would be posted on ‘White Helmets’ accounts in social networks and would be picked up by Western and Arab media.
The Russian center has called on Turkey to exert pressure to prevent the use of poisonous agents in Idlib; however, HTS is supported by Turkey, and the movement of the chemicals was facilitated by Turkish intelligence agents.
“The Russian Center for the Reconciliation of Opposing Sides received information about the preparation of a provocation using poisonous substances in the southern part of the Idlib de-escalation zone by the terrorist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham,” Russian Admiral Alexander Grinkevich recently said, to accuse the Syrian government forces of using chemical weapons against civilians.
HTS terrorists have two tons of toxic agents warehoused in a civilian inhabited area in Southwest Idlib according to local sources, who believes is the reason for the recent demands by HTS for civilians to leave the area, or be forced to leave.
Syria surrendered its stockpile of chemical weapons in 2014 to a joint mission led by the United States and the OPCW, which oversaw the destruction of the weaponry. However, on April 14, 2018, the US, Britain, and France carried out a string of airstrikes against Syria over a suspected chemical weapons attack on the city of Douma. Trump and his allies blamed Damascus for the Douma attack, even though Trump’s Secretary of Defense James Mattis stated that the US has no evidence that Syria has used chemicals on civilians.
Turkey uses the Syrian refugees and displaced persons
Turkey has been accused of using Syrian refugees and displaced persons to leverage EU support for its invasion and military action in Idlib.
“Refugees are not a bargaining chip to be played with at the whims of political leaders. Europeans cannot look away from what might become one of the worst humanitarian disasters the war in Syria has brought on its people. Respecting international humanitarian law as well as the human right to protection and refuge remains the sole possible answer in front of such indiscriminate violence,” said Wadih Al-Asmar, President of EuroMed Rights.
European leaders have been threatened by Erdogan that he may unleash a huge wave of refugees towards Europe if he is not allowed to remain in Syria.
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On March 11, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared COVID-19 a pandemic. When I think of this scary word it conjures up heartbreaking images of vast numbers of people suffering, precipitated into abysmal poverty. The WHO used to agree with me.
For years the WHO on its “Pandemic Preparedness” homepage defined a pandemic as “several simultaneous epidemics worldwide with enormous numbers of deaths and illness.” In 2009, however, the part about “enormous numbers of death and illness” was removed. Since 2010, the WHO’s “Emergencies preparedness, response” page now has the following definition: “A pandemic is the worldwide spread of a new disease.”
In a May 4, 2009 article, David Ozonoff, professor of environmental health at the Boston University School of Public Health told CNN: “The word pandemic refers to how widely dispersed a disease is, not to how severe the disease is…you can have a pandemic without a large number of deaths.” This is exactly what we have in the case of the flu.
“Influenza remains one of the world’s greatest public health challenges. Every year across the globe, there are an estimated 1 billion cases, of which 3 to 5 million are severe cases, resulting in 290,000 to 650,000 influenza-related respiratory deaths.”
In the case of COVID-19, officially, worldwide, there are 33,916,696 cases and 1,013,879 deaths. Out of a global population of 7,815,358,156, this amounts to a death count of almost 1/100th of one percent. In the U.S., the tally is 7,407,201 cases and 210,814 deaths out of a population of 334,742,314 which amounts to a death count of around 2/3 of 1/10th of 1 percent.
Since on average 56 million people worldwide die every year from all causes and on average 2,830,688 in the U.S., the number of deaths attributed to COVID-19 and the flu are small. Certainly no reason to lock down the global economy and force people to wear masks. However, there is one very important difference between COVID-19 and the flu. So, detach from the COVID-19 fear narrative, fasten your seat belts, and look at the hard facts.
All COVID-19 tests are faulty.
May 26 CNN article: “Antibody tests used to determine if people have been infected in the past with COVID-19 might be wrong up to half the time…” They got this from the CDC’s own website which also states that antibody tests are not accurate enough to determine who should go back to work. Yet, the EEOC (Equal Employment opportunity commission) is allowing employers to force employees to be tested for COVID-19.
May 22 Science Magazine article: “Coronavirus antigen tests: quick and cheap, but too often wrong?” reported:
“Antigen tests don’t amplify their protein signal, so they are inherently less sensitive. To make matters worse, that signal gets diluted when samples are mixed with the liquid needed to enable the material to flow across test strips. As a result, most antigen tests have a sensitivity of anywhere between 50% and 90%…Last month, Spanish health authorities returned thousands of SARS-CoV-2 antigen tests to the Chinese firm Shengzhen Bioeasy Biotechnology after finding the tests correctly identified infected people only 30% of the time…”
“Detection of viral RNA may not indicate the presence of infectious virus or that 2019-nCoV is the causative agent for clinical symptoms…The performance of this test has not been established for monitoring treatment of 2019-nCoV infection…This test cannot rule out diseases caused by other bacterial or viral pathogens.”
Bottom line: none of these tests can determine how much, if any, active infectious virus is in a person’s body because they don’t look for a virus. Instead, the virus is assumed to be present based on the detection of antibodies, antigens and fragments of nucleic acid. These tests aren’t discovering new COVID-19 cases—they are creating them.
COVID-19 case and death numbers are grossly inflated. There is no reason to believe any of the statistics provided by any government anywhere.
“During a COVID-19 briefing, the State Department of Health announced it will now count the number of positive virus tests instead of the number of people who test positive. That means if one person is tested three times, and all three tests come back positive, it counts as three instead of how the numbers were being counted before which would only have been one because it was a single patient…Other states, including North Carolina, have been reporting testing numbers that way for quite some time.”
Example: Texas, May 18, Collin County Government meeting, 15 min. 28 sec. mark – 1hr 5 min mark, a Health Department representative explains to the Council that a new definition of COVID-19 cases is being introduced whereby a single confirmed case (someone who tested positive) can be counted up to seventeen times by including members of their household (not tested with no symptoms) friends, neighbors, and coworkers with symptoms (not tested), and a coworker’s family with no symptoms (not tested). The charts used at the meeting are available here. At the 58 min. mark they admit that they always knew that the lockdowns and social distancing would never stop COVID-19 from spreading.The County Council Judge called the lockdowns “irresponsible” and “irrational.”
“Governor DeSantis says he’s concerned about the accuracy of COVID-19 test results…People have said they submitted their contact information at a COVID-19 testing site, but after seeing how long the line was, they decided not to wait an hour or more to get the test. Nevertheless, a few days later, they got an email or a phone call telling them that they tested positive.”
Example: on September 1, ABC7 News reported that 94% of all COVID-19 deaths in the U.S. had other chronic diseases according to a new CDC report (see Comorbidities): “For 6% of the deaths, COVID-19 was the only cause mentioned. For deaths with conditions or causes in addition to COVID-19, on average, there were 2.6 additional conditions or causes per death.”Among those additional conditions listed on the CDC website are: “Influenza and pneumonia,” “Respiratory failure,” “Hypertensive disease,” “Diabetes,” “Heart failure,” “Renal failure,” “Cardiac arrest,” “Obesity,” “Sepsis,” “Alzheimer disease,” “Intentional and unintentional injury, poisoning and other adverse events.”
Example: USA News, July 19, article: “Florida officials admit counting MOTORCYCLE death as COVID-19 fatality, remove it from list after media scrutiny.” It was Fox35, a subsidiary of Fox News, that initially broke the story. The article includes the following idiotic statement from Orange County Health Officer Dr Raul Pino: “But you could actually argue that it could have been COVID-19 that caused him to crash.”
Doesn’t this just fill you with confidence in public health authorities? So much for the Florida Health Department’s official policy that accidents don’t count as COVID-19 deaths. And this young guy in his 20s would have remained a COVID-19 fatality if Fox35 had not caught them. How many more cases like this are there?
It’s time to face the truth:
COVID-19 isn’t a disease just as sporting goods isn’t a hunting rifle. COVID-19 is a new category that a percentage of sick people, along with a percentage of healthy people, are herded into.
COVID-19 is a label, a classification, a designation, a figment of the imagination—a complete and utter fraud. There is no reason to wear a mask. There is no reason to do any kind of social distancing. There was never any reason to lock down the economy. There is no deadly virus—only inaccurate tests and corrupt politicians controlled by global elitists who want to rob and exploit us. Face it folks, you’ve been had, hoodwinked, bamboozled, lied to, conned, duped. The world is the same this year as it was last year and every year before. There is nothing to be afraid of.
Selling a Story
All of this COVID-19 propaganda that we are constantly being bombarded with is a sales pitch. I ought to know. I’ve been in sales for over 40 years. As a sales professional, I was taught to sell the sizzle, not the steak. I was taught that what we are really doing is selling a story. It doesn’t matter what the product or service is. The bosses give us a script to memorize and regurgitate. We don’t have to know what we’re talking about or even if it’s true. All we have to do is mouth the words and go through the motions. Don’t worry about truth—just follow the script, we were told, and you will make lots of money. Just follow the yellow brick road and it will lead to Emerald City in the merry old land of Oz. Just wear masks, constantly wash your hands, socially distance, stay home, and wait for the magic vaccine to arrive and you will be saved. Hallelujah! Praise Jesus! Enough already!
Want to get rid of COVID-19 and go back to a normal life? Then stop testing for it and it will go away. It’s that simple. And while you’re at it, stop thinking about it and stop worrying about it—pay it no mind.
Hold on a second. That’s stupid! Will pregnancy go away if we stop testing for it? Answer: of course not! That’s absurd because pregnancy is real. Pregnant women are real. You can deny reality, you can ignore it, but you can’t make it go away because reality is real. You can deny there is a brick wall in front of you, but try walking through it and reality will bash you in the face every time. But COVID-19 isn’t real so if you don’t test for it and ignore it, it will go away. Think of it as waking up from a bad dream. COVID-19 will go away when you wake up.
While dreaming, we get so caught up in an illusion that we don’t realize that what we are experiencing isn’t real so we play by the rules of the false reality. We might even be living a different life, think we know people we never met, and forget about our true life and who we really are.
With COVID-19, too many of us have accepted a false reality in the real world.
If this artificial existence goes on long enough we may never be able to face reality ever again.
Fear will keep us trapped: afraid of germs, afraid of human contact, afraid to take off the mask and breathe the air of the planet on which we were born. The late spiritual teacher Carlos Castaneda said that a sign of enlightenment, or being able to see clearly and truthfully, is to be able to realize you’re dreaming while you’re dreaming and to alter its reality. The only way to alter this COVID-19 nightmare is to wake up to what’s really going on.
The fact that all governments around the world with few exceptions adopted the same oppressive policies in response to COVID-19 at the same time clearly shows that their strings are being pulled by some outside cabal. This cabal consists of multinational pharmaceutical companies, and billionaire philanthropists along with their foundations. These entities have become an unelected shadow government that has corrupted medical science, public health institutions, and politicians. And their plans for us peons are devastating.
On April 21, 2020, the Rockefeller Foundation put out a report entitled: “National Covid-19 Testing Action Plan” “Pragmatic steps to reopen our workplaces and our communities” It talks about carrying out “the largest public health testing program in American history” and refers to treating it “as a wartime effort.” It calls for hiring 100,000 to 300,000 people nationwide to test 20 to 30 million people per day in order to allow just about everyone to return to work. This would result in not only testing and contact tracing in every community, but also a “public health workforce” that could sanitize public spaces, spray sanitizers on people’s hands, and enforce social distancing rules.
Feeling nauseous yet? Wait, it gets better.
On pages 17-18, the report decrees that “privacy concerns must be set aside” in order to access people’s “infection status.” It further sates: “The loss of privacy engendered by such a system would come at too high a price if the arrival of a vaccine early next year was a certainty. But vaccine development and manufacture could take years.”
In other words, this crap is never going to end. Now, pay attention because here it comes:
A depiction of our future vaccine I.D. card can be found on page 18 of the report. It will provide everyone with
“a unique patient identification number that would link to a patient’s viral antibody and eventual vaccine status under a system that could easily handshake with other systems to speed the return to normal societal functions.”
This could potentially stop unvacinated and supposedly infected people from getting a job, traveling, or from going to sports events, concerts, etc. The report even talks about installing tracking apps on our smart phones. Naturally, the public should be “nudged” into using these apps. But forcing people to use them isn’t out of the question.
The Rockefeller Foundation report states that they are working with the governments in Maryland and California to implement these diabolical medical gestapos that will eventually include the entire nation. We must oppose this brand of tyranny. We cannot allow state, federal, and local governments to take us down a path that will lead to economic devastation, despotism, shattered lives, despair, and death.
Shame on all of us if we stand by and do nothing.
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Michael J. Talmo has been a professional writer for over 40 years and is strongly committed to the protection of civil liberties. He can be reached at [email protected].
While browsing the History/Politics section of a local bookstore the number of works devoted to the many aspects of Donald Trump was quite amazing, but considering his impact on current events domestically and globally probably not truly surprising. Unable to decide which might provide the best overall view, the title Hatemonger by Jean Guerrero carried an obvious bias, not about Trump per se, but about one of the most influential characters in his coterie of admirers, Stephen Miller. While many have come and gone, Stephen Miller remains attached to the Trump cause, and Trump is equally attracted to his hate monger.
The prologue effectively outlines the relationship between Miller and Trump – the similarities in their thoughts and actions. Guerrero states clearly, “It is impossible to understand the Trump era, with its unparalleled polarization, without tracing Miller’s journey to the White House.” Reading even just the first line of each introductory paragraph before the details are delivered provides a good overview of the relationship:
“In a White House where people are frequently forced out, Miller has survived….He grasps Trump’s grudges and goals….The demonization of migrants is to Miller what the border wall is to Trump: a tool with which to mobilized the base,” the base being white male supremacists.
As for the title, Guerrero writes,
“Trump knew how to hatemonger before he met Miller….but when their paths collided, there was an alchemy. Trump’s riches, marketing instinct and emotional racism emerged with Miller’s fanatical ideology, work ethic and strategic thinking.”
After the prologue begins the Miller’s tale.
It tells of someone strongly racist, xenophobic, and someone ready and willing to manipulate in whatever manner was required for the success of their ideology. One of the facets was adopting Horowitz’s assertion that between hope and fear, “fear is a much stronger and more compelling emotion.” He knew that whatever ire they could raise would simply harvest the media attention and focus it entirely on Trump, “The more upset the media was at his boss – or pretended to be – the better. They’d fixate on him, elevate him.”
Inside the government, Miller applied himself, establishing himself as one of the principal movers of his and Trump’s agenda. From Guerrero’s descriptions, the agenda is mostly Miller’s playing with Trump’s ideas however ill conceived or considered. But it wasn’t just about Trump, “Miller observed early that to survive in Trump’s orbit, he would have to ally himself with Trump’s beloved daughter Ivanka and her husband Jared Kushner. It wasn’t hard.” Miller is Jewish and pro-Zionist. Very quickly “Miller was expanding his control across the government. He dispatched ideological allies to key positions within the bureaucracy.”
Miller’s tale makes interesting reading about how one person with the ability to focus and the drive to dominate can steer the course of history. Certainly there are other characters within the Trump pantheon, but Miller is a survivor, and wields much power with Trump. It becomes a bit thin towards the most recent events, but that is a problem all writers have with the pace of events and deadlines for publishing.
The underlying message, while not actually stated, could be summed up even as the polls indicate a Trump election defeat: do not count Trump out, his messaging may be racist, xenophobic, misogynist, narcissistic, and all the other negative adjectives one can find to describe him but, his base is solid, he is willing to deal with fear, and willing to pull out whatever tricks the Republicans can use in order to keep him – and them – in power.
Jean Guerroro’s Hatemonger is a timely publication before the election. It will lose its punch if Trump is defeated and goes, but will become even more important if Trump wins – a good look at the two personalities leading a declining nation.
Footnotes:
After watching the ‘Presidential’ debate last night, Trump’s manner/methodology is straight out of Miller’s playbook: be aggressive, change the subject, attack the person, continually harp on one main topic, lie, dissimulate, and deceive.
It will be interesting to see if Biden goes through with the second debate. If not, that might just reinforce Trump’s base, labelling him a loser. If yes, then he has to suffer through another hour and a half of the same style of argument while trying to stay focused and calm.
Biden will not change the course of the imperial trajectory, but at least we will not have to listen toTrump’s narcissistic xenophobic misogynist rambling comments.
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Jim Miles is a frequent contributor to Global Research.
Since brutally dragged from Ecuador’s London embassy in April last year, confined to maximum security imprisonment, and subjected to guilt by accusation extradition hearings, establishment media have been largely silent about his state-sponsored crucifixion for the “crime” of truth-telling journalism.
Britain in cahoots with Trump regime hardliners want his life force slowly extinguished as a message to other truth-telling journalists of a similar fate awaiting them if dare expose US high crimes of war and against humanity.
According to testimony by US defense attorney Yancey Ellis and prisoner advocate Joel Sickler at London’s Old Bailey, Assange faces a “worse than death” fate if extradited to America — what’s likely from kangaroo court proceedings, presided over by Judge Vanessa Baraitser.
In the US, unconstitutional solitary confinement awaits him — a flagrant breach of prohibited 8th Amendment cruel and unusual punishment.
Isolated US prisoners are confined for 23 hours or longer daily in cells around 7 x 7 feet.
Societies are best judged by how they treat children, the elderly, the infirm, their most disadvantaged and prisoners. The US fails on all counts.
Social psychologist Hans Toch coined the term “isolation panic” – describing symptoms including hysteria, rage, total loss of control, emotional breakdown, regressive behavior, and self-mutilation.
Alcatraz was the prototype US super-max prison until closed in 1963.
Isolation behind bars crushes the human spirit, mind and body.
Longterm it causes panic attacks, lethargy, insomnia, nightmares, dizziness, irrational anger, memory loss, delusions and hallucinations, profound despair, paranoia, and suicidal thoughts to relieve unbearable emotional pain.
Caged like animals is like being buried alive. Even the strongest-willed break under unbearable strain.
Isolated in London’s Belmarsh prison, Assange endured the worst solitary confinement.
Denied human contact, it’ll continue or worsen if extradited to the US — slow brutalizing torture by any standard.
Along with nearly 200 international lawyers, judges, professors of law, and lawyers’ associations, over 100 notable current and former politicians and diplomats from 27 countries — including present and past heads of state — called for Assange’s unconditional release from politicized extrajudicial imprisonment.
On trial in London’s Old Bailey are speech, media and academic freedoms.
Extraditing him to death by slow-torture in the US will be a body blow to these fundamental freedoms.
Commenting on Assange and press freedom, ACLU Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project director Ben Wizner earlier said the following:
“Any prosecution of Mr. Assange…would be unprecedented and unconstitutional, and would open the door to criminal investigations of other news organizations.”
“(P)rosecuting a foreign publisher for violating US secrecy laws would set an especially dangerous precedent for US journalists, who routinely violate foreign secrecy laws to deliver information vital to the public’s interest.”
Star Chamber-like proceedings against Assange exclude due process and judicial fairness — assuring guilt by accusation with no right of appeal — followed by extradition to the US.
Instead of rallying to his support in defense of truth-telling journalism the way it’s supposed to be, establishment media support his crucifixion by a conspiracy of near silence — ignoring show trial injustice.
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Award-winning author Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at [email protected]. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG)
His new book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.”
Randy Hillier, (Lanark-Frontenac-Kingston) questioned the Premier on concerns being raised all over the world about the reliability of PCR tests for COVID.
“We know high false positive rates are due to high CTs (cycle thresholds) and Canadian and world experts agree it should not be more than 25 cycles. Yet according to the Journal of Virology, Ontario labs are testing samples at 38-45 cycles. Is our testing creating both a false understanding of risk as well as false positives?” Hillier asked the Premier.
Responding for the Premier, Minister of Health Christine Elliott seemed to acknowledge the problem, and simply implied that faulty testing was better than no testing.
“Since May, The Public Health Agency of Canada as well as virologists and other doctors around the world have been warning of problems with PCR testing procedures,” Hillier explained.
Amplification cycles are used to amplify a sample to make it easier to find the RNA that identifies COVID in a person; the threshold, or maximum amplification cycle, known as ‘CT’, should not exceed 25, yet Ontario labs are testing at between 38 and 45 cycles. This causes false positives because of improper manipulation of the sample.
Minister Elliott would not say when the government became aware of this problem and why nothing has yet been done to address it. Instead of committing to fixing the problem with PCR testing procedures, the Health Minister instead deflected by talking about other testing possibilities, many of which are not yet approved by Health Canada, or not widely available yet.
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The Western European democratic revolutions of the late eighteenth century sought to establish more just societies through replacement of monarchies with republics and the elimination of hereditary class distinctions between nobles and commoners.
There are some people who believe a Biden presidency will usher in change. Has hell frozen over? He has a long record in government of ‘business as usual’, so looking for change from him and the Democratic Party is an exercise in futility.
One may want to add to this very sensible proposal that the very first to be vaccinated with his own Moderna human genome-altering vaccine, should imperatively be the czar of vaccines, Bill Gates.
The fox is guarding the henhouse and Washington is prosecuting a publisher for exposing its own war crimes. Alexander Mercouris diagnoses the incoherence of the U.S. case for extradition.
According to “The Social Dilemma”, we are fast reaching a kind of human “event horizon”, with our societies standing on the brink of collapse. We face what several interviewees term an “existential threat” from the way the internet, and particularly social media, are rapidly developing.
Biden raised the New York Times’ story released over the weekend in which Trump’s tax returns showed Trump paid only $750 in total federal income taxes over two years, 2016-2017. Trump of course denied it as ‘fake news’.
Hackers have penetrated the computer systems of the UK’s foreign ministry and taken hundreds of files detailing the country’s controversial propaganda programmes in war-torn Syria.
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After the first U.S. Presidential nominees’ debate, which occurred on September 29th, it is clear that America’s two mainstream political Parties failed disastrously to provide the nation’s voters with adequate options for the U.S. Presidency. Trump is a proven failure in every key respect, and Biden showed himself not even qualified for the office — maybe even less competent than his opponent is, and having no sense or awareness of how dire the nation’s condition has become (not only since January 20th of 2017, but ever since January 20th of 2001). We’re clearly in deep trouble, and the signs now are for even worse yet to come, regardless of whether the next President would be Biden, or Trump. If it will be Trump, he would likely be even more indebted to the far right than he has been. If it would be Biden, then he would be merely a face fronting for his biggest campaign donors, such as, perhaps, the top owners of Lockheed Martin.
While the option of making a public pledge [to serve only one term] remains available, Biden has for now settled on an alternative strategy: quietly indicating that he will almost certainly not run for a second term while declining to make a promise that he and his advisers fear could turn him into a lame duck and sap him of his political capital.
According to four people who regularly talk to Biden, all of whom asked for anonymity to discuss internal campaign matters, it is virtually inconceivable that he will run for reelection in 2024.
Apparently, Kamala Harris is now running for President — not only for Vice President — against the incumbent Trump; and her ‘boss’, Biden, isn’t discouraging her extraordinary behavior in this regard; he is instead assisting it. Here are some recent signs of this remarkable fact:
“A Harris Administration together with Joe Biden as the President of the United States, the Biden-Harris Administration, will have access, provide access, to one hundred billion dollars in loans and investments for minority business-owners.”
“A Harris-Biden administration is going to relaunch that effort and keep pushing further to make it easier for military spouses and veterans to find meaningful careers to ensure teachers know how to support military children in their classrooms and to improve support for caregivers and survivors so much more than we do now.”
The indications seem fairly clear that if Americans vote for Joe Biden to become the President, then not only will he not serve a second term, but he might not even serve much (or perhaps even any) of his first term. Why would this be so? Why is not Biden himself publicly disowning what Harris had said on September 12th, instead of himself saying essentially the same thing (as he immediately did)?
Furthermore: did his debate-performance on September 29th give him encouragement to be anything other than a stand-in for his choice of Kamala Harris to be the next U.S. President? As he looks at a video of that performance, what would he think of it? If he wouldn’t be extremely depressed to look at it, then would his mental powers be even worse than one might otherwise consider them to be — simply oblivious to reality? He didn’t do even as well as Trump (which was also poor).
The only contender in the Democratic Party Presidential primaries who was a serious possibility to win the nomination, other than Biden, was Bernie Sanders, who received campaign donations from zero billionaires, none of them at all, but was nonetheless able to become the leading candidate after the contests in Iowa, New Hampshire, and Nevada, until the South Carolina primary on 29 February 2020, and Biden’s subsequent sweeps of all of the Old Dixie states on Super Tuesday, 3 March 2020. Sanders quit on April 8th.
No third-party U.S. Presidential nominee stands any chance, at all, of getting even as much as 3% of the votes by Election Day; even Ralph Nader, in the year 2000, didn’t — he received only 2.74%, and came nowhere near to winning even a single state.
Sanders has the biggest U.S. national political following of any candidate who failed to win a major-Party’s Presidential nomination, and he is the only individual in the United States whose name is — in and of itself — a big enough political brand to stand a chance of winning the U.S. Presidency as a merely write-in candidate if a national movement will organize itself (even without any authorization from him) to encourage American voters to write his name in on a write-in line of their Presidential ballot.
If the numbers of voters, who write his name in, exceed the numbers of voters who vote for either of the two major-Party nominees, then, he could become the U.S. President. If not, then at least a message could be sent out, thereby, to the existing two Parties, making clear that, finally, a substantial proportion of the American electorate are rejecting them and believe that the U.S. has become so severely on the wrong track as to require now a very radical change of direction.
Ron Paul was another “movement” U.S. Presidential candidate who never received a major-Party Presidential nomination, but he never had scored in the pre-election polling as being a serious contender to win his Party’s nomination. Sanders did.
The DNC (Democratic National Committee) knew, even back in May 2016, that Sanders would actually be stronger than Hillary Clinton against Donald Trump, but they nonetheless rigged the results for Hillary against Sanders (and sometimes even blatantly) because their billionaires are more important to them than their voters are. And the same happened with Biden against Sanders in 2020. Sanders is now committed to endorsing Biden, probably as part of a deal which would make him a major cabinet secretary if Biden wins. But that is beside the point here. A write-in is a decision by the individual voter, not by anyone else.
Americans have now seen what the U.S. Presidential debates are, and will be like: a contest between two individuals, both of whom are disastrously incapable of serving the nation adequately in that office.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt ran for President as a cripple and became elected largely because the public didn’t know it. He is considered by most historians to have been the 2nd-greatest of all American Presidents. The problems are very different with regard to both Trump and Biden. Both men are manifestly incompetent to serve in that office. Would Kamala Harris be any better? The wrong man won the 2020 Democratic nomination, because the DNC is corrupt. Now is the time for each individual voter to make his or her own U.S. Presidential decision, on his or her own, and without any Party-guidance (because that’s so profoundly corrupt, in each of the two Parties).
I shall write-in the name “Bernie Sanders” on the Presidential line of my ballot, and I hereby invite as many American voters as possible to do the same thing — not only as a protest of conscience, but because I recognize — especially after the September 29th debate — that my country has gone so far off onto the wrong path as to require now only such drastic action by each individual U.S. voter, including me. I am no longer part of a Party — I am only an American, now.
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The Western European democratic revolutions of the late eighteenth century sought to establish more just societies through replacement of monarchies with republics and the elimination of hereditary class distinctions between nobles and commoners. This dynamic reflected the interests of the emerging merchant class as well as the popular classes of workers and peasants, in the context of an emerging capitalist world-economy.
The Jeffersonian-Jacksonian Revolution: An historically advanced expression
The American Republic was the expression of this phenomenon in North America. Its constitution reflected a compromise between the big merchants and landholders, on the one hand; and the farmers, artisans, and workers, on the other. The American ideology stressed individual liberty and equality of opportunity.
Material conditions favored the development of the American vision. In the first place, there was the lucrative trading relation of the New England and Mid-Atlantic farmers with the slaveholders in the West Indies. Secondly, there was territorial expansion of the nation through the conquest of the indigenous nations. And thirdly, there was the core-peripheral economic relation between emerging Northern manufacturers and Southern slaveholders, which provided raw materials and markets for Northern industry. These dynamics were the foundation of the spectacular economic ascent of the nation.
During the period 1789 to 1840, the American Republic remained politically divided between the Federalists and neo-Federalists, who successfully were creating a financial aristocracy; and the popular Jeffersonian-Jacksonian revolution, which maintained that liberty cannot truly exist for the people without a wide distribution of agricultural and manufacturing property, accompanied by popular control of the state and state control of the banking and credit system.
Social philosophy is formulated in the context of lived experiences. The Jeffersonian-Jacksonian popular revolution did not have the experiential basis for seeing the role of the unfolding European global conquest as the foundation of the nation’s spectacular ascent. They were aware of the importance of the territorial expansion of the nation, but in accordance with their ethnocentric notions of civilization and barbarity, they viewed the land as freely available. They recognized the contradiction between slavery and the ideal of liberty and opportunity for all, but they understood the importance of slavery to the economy of the nation, and they could fathom no strategy for its abolition without destroying the national economy, so they deferred its abolition. They took for granted the lucrative trading relation with the West Indies; they could not see its connection to an emerging system of global domination that contradicted their professed revolutionary values.
In spite of their limited understanding, the Jeffersonian-Jacksonian revolutionaries were a progressive force in the context of their time. Politically, they defended small farmers and workers against the pretentions of the financial aristocracy and the banks. Economically, their ideology contributed to an economic ascent that was raising the standard of living of the nation. They took concrete and practical steps toward the construction of a more just world, in the context of the world that they had inherited and of their lived experiences.
Following the age of Jackson, slavery became a central issue of public debate, as a consequence of the conflict of interests between the Northern industrial elite and the Southern slaveholding class. For many abolitionists, it was a moral debate, not well integrated into unfolding political processes. From the beginnings of the debate, the difficulties inherent in changing a structure of labor that was central to the nation’s economy led some to propose the gradual and compensated abolition of slavery. As the debate intensified, many of the Jeffersonian-Jacksonian revolutionaries seized the opportunity to propose the inclusion of blacks in their vision of liberty and opportunity, on the basis of the distribution of land or wage employment in manufacturing. The proposal, however, did not have the consistent support of the Northern industrial elite, who merely feigned service to the vision of liberty and opportunity even with respect to whites. The racial reconstruction project, lacking the necessary balance of political support, collapsed; the majority of freed slaves became impoverished tenant farmers and sharecroppers, lacking the most fundamental of human rights.
By 1890, the material context that provided the foundation for the spectacular U.S. economic ascent had come to an end. In the first place, territorial expansion was no longer possible, as the nation reached its geographical frontiers. The escape valve of Western opportunities for urban workers and the unemployed disappeared.
Secondly, industry, commerce, and banking became concentrated. Concentration was to some extent a natural phenomenon, as the more efficient companies arrived to dominate the market. But it also was driven by “unfair competition,” involving the use by the “Robber Barons” of illegal, unethical, and violent strategies to destroy competitors. Small entrepreneurs found opportunities limited, if not blocked.
In this context, there emerged in the last decades of the nineteenth century a popular movement to break-up or regulate the trusts. But this proposal was not going to be easy to implement. The big corporations were central to the nation’s economy. How does the government regulate or control them, without causing havoc to the economy? A complicated problem, even assuming the government is trying to defend the liberties of the people and not the interests of the corporations and the banks. During the presidencies of Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson, important antitrust legislation was enacted, designed to accomplish this delicate task. However, before it could be known in practice if Wilson’s project would be effective, the entire effort was cast aside by World War I.
In the battle between the people and the corporations, war functions to the advantage of the corporations. Inasmuch as the rapid production of arms and military equipment is needed for the war mobilization, the delicate balance between promoting the economic growth of the nation and protecting liberties of the people is upset. The corporations are given free hand.
As a result of this law of corporate rule through war, World War I and World War II not only drove further the spectacular economic ascent of the nation; they also facilitated the consolidation of the corporate dominance. By the 1950s, a “power elite” and a “military-industrial complex” had emerged, and the nation arrived to operate on the basis of a permanent war economy, with the political process controlled by the corporations. The standard of living rose, but the political power of the people diminished.
The incapacity of the people to stop the national turn to war during the course of the twentieth century is rooted in the ideological limitations of the Jeffersonian-Jacksonian revolution, particularly its incapacity to understand the factors driving U.S. ascent and to discern that these factors would soon reach their limit and the end of their time. The revolutionaries possessed a social philosophy that had been advanced for its time, heralding a new world of individual liberty and opportunity and reinforcing new productive capacities and a spectacular economic ascent. But they could not discern that the nation was on the road to empire, undermining the republic and its proclaimed democratic values. They therefore were unprepared to see the coming twentieth century un-proclaimed U.S. imperialism and to delegitimate its pretexts for wars; they were unprepared to stop imperialist wars, in order to defend themselves.
And so, the Jeffersonian-Jacksonian revolution came to an end, unable to reframe the meaning of individual liberty in a world of large corporations; and unable to see that the imperialist domination of other lands was the foundation of the powerlessness of the people of the United States. Its important legacy, in spite of its limitations, is all but erased from the memory of the people.
The Cuban Revolution: The people’s revolution reaches a more advanced stage
The American Revolution, however, would attain a more advanced expression, appropriate for twentieth century reality, in a nearby island nation, that of Cuba, where the experience of the people was of a different order. The Cuban Revolution was born in the nineteenth century in the context of Spanish colonialism, and as such, it has been an anti-colonial revolution, which learned early the political necessity of uniting the popular sectors of workers, peasants, and blacks in a struggle against colonial interests and their native allies, the Cuban landed estate bourgeoisie. Beginning with the U.S. intervention of 1898, Cuba passed to be a neocolonial Republic under U.S. tutelage. Defined by this neocolonial situation, the Revolution arrived to be an anti-imperialist revolution, uniting popular sectors of workers, students, peasants, blacks, and women; standing against U.S. control and against the Cuban figurehead bourgeoisie and political class that were totally subordinate U.S. interests. Unlike the American Revolution in the North, the Cuban Revolution not only discerned the role of imperialism in the shaping economic development and underdevelopment, but it also conceived itself as fundamentally an anti-imperialist revolution.
When the Cuban Revolution took political control in 1959, with the overwhelming support of the various popular sectors, it confronted the same problem that the U.S. popular revolution and antitrust movement had confronted in the progressive era in the United States, namely, the problem of how to change the structures of the economy in defense of popular liberties without undermining the productive capacity of the economy. The Cuban Revolution attacked the problem step-by-step, without a previous ideology beyond that of the right of the nation to sovereignty and the right of the people to social justice. First, it took possession of large agricultural estates, distributing the land to peasants in the form of cooperatives, state managed farms, and small-scale private property. Secondly, it nationalized U.S. companies in Cuba, with the intention of cooperating with the United States in the payment of compensation. Specifically, the Cuban Revolution proposed to establish a fund that would be fed by the USA-Cuba sugar trade in excess of the established sugar quota. In response to the absence of U.S. cooperation, Cuba proceeded to the nationalization of all foreign companies. Thirdly, the Revolution nationalized Cuban big industry, placing the companies under state management. Its initial hope was that Cuban industrialists would cooperate with the Revolution in the economic development of the nation, but the Cuban figurehead bourgeoisie not have sufficient economic and ideological independence from U.S. capital to participate in an autonomous nationalist project of economic development. The Cuban national bourgeoisie abandoned the country to participate in the U.S. directed Cuban counterrevolution.
The Cuban Revolution, therefore, proceeded on a model in which the state formulates a development plan, seeking to sever its peripheral role in the world-economy and its dependency on the U.S. economy; and taking ownership of private companies, foreign and domestic, not in response to a previously formulated plan, but in accordance with the practical demands of the situation. The Revolution accepted small-scale private ownership of economic enterprises, insofar as it was practical and necessary for supplying the needs of the people. With respect to the economy, Cuban socialism has been pragmatic.
The Cuban Revolution dealt with the universal problem of elite control of the political process by abolishing electoral parties and eliminating electoral campaigns. Candidates for delegates to municipal assemblies are nominated in neighborhood assemblies, and they are elected in small voting districts on the basis of publicly displayed one-page biographies, without the necessity of conducting electoral campaigns. The elected delegates of the municipal assemblies in turn elect the deputies of the national assembly, on the basis of suggestions submitted by the mass organizations. Thus constituted, the National Assembly of People’s Power is the highest authority in the nation, which elects the executive and judicial branches of government to five-year terms, and to which the executive and judicial branches must render accounts.
In the first decades of the American Republic, Federalists and conservatives sought to prevent control of the government by the majority, for fear that the interests of the large merchants and landholders and the financial aristocracy would be swept aside. In contrast, the Cuban Revolution developed a political structure designed to ensure that the interests of the people would be the highest priority of the government.
In the United States, the Federalists and neo-Federalists had feared democracy, which they considered to be systemic mob rule, shaped by unenlightened prejudices disseminated by demagogic politicians. Accordingly, they favored the establishment of a relatively permanent senate and/or judiciary, constituted by members of the hereditary aristocracy, which would have the authority to check the actions of the mob. The Cuban Revolution did not naively fail to recognize the possibilities for control of the political process by an unruly mass. But they dealt with the threat in a different way. Cuba’s systemic check on the people has been in the form of a vanguard political party, the Communist Party of Cuba. Unlike the Federalists’ senates and judiciaries, the Cuban vanguard party was not initially formed from a hereditary minority, but from a minority of revolutionaries, who had distinguished themselves as leaders in revolutionary struggle. Once established, this moral minority that has been self-perpetuating, itself selecting its new members. Such a minority, based on revolutionary merit rather than status at birth, speaks to the people with moral authority. Moreover, unlike the Federalists’ senates and judiciaries, the vanguard revolutionary party does not have political or legal authority or veto power. Its role is to educate the people, guiding them in the formation of revolutionary consciousness and in providing the foundation for seeing through the factual and ideological distortions of the global elite. The vanguard party leads but does not decide; the people decide, through its delegates and deputies.
The Cuban revolution was forged as an integrated project of students, peasants, workers, professionals, blacks, and women, just as the Jeffersonian-Jacksonian revolution of 1789 to 1840 was an integrated project of the middle class, farmers, and workers. In the United States, the marginality of issues of race, and the even greater marginality of gender, were a reflection of the political conditions and assumptions of the time. In contrast, the Cuban Revolution accomplished the integration of race and gender in the people’s struggle in a natural form. The integration of blacks in the struggle was defined by the 1890s, reflecting the political necessities of the anti-colonial revolution. During the neocolonial Republic, women assumed revolutionary tasks, and they were accepted because of the utility of their contributions. In the period of 1959 to 1962, the triumphant revolution consistently made explicit the full participation of blacks and women in the revolutionary project and in Cuban society.
Cuban revolutionary ideology has been shaped by the lived experiences of the Cuban people, responding to the neocolonial situation of rule by an imperialist power and its large corporations. As a result, it has been able to break new ground, to arrive to a more advanced understanding than that of the Jeffersonian-Jacksonian revolutionaries of the period 1763 to 1840. It has arrived to new insights and human experiences in regard to the control and regulation of the economy in defense of the interests of the people; and it has arrived to new structures for putting political power in the hands of the people and for popular political education, enabling the people to overcome confusion and division.
The absolute necessity of returning to Philadelphia
The people’s revolution now has to return to the United States. The Cuban Revolution has reached its limit, in that it has attained the maximum of what it can attain in the context of the capitalist world-economy. The capitalist world-economy itself has to be transformed, setting aside neocolonialism and imperialism, respecting the true sovereignty of nations, and facilitating cooperation among nations in mutually beneficial trade and in addressing the common problems that humanity confronts. Such a transformation can only occur through the coming to political power of the popular sectors in key nations, especially the United States, still the largest economy in the world, and the still world’s reigning imperialist power.
What is presently occurring in the United States is not revolution but rebellion. The current U.S. rebellions lacks an adequate intellectual base; it has a limited and distorted understanding of the popular revolution of the United States, and it is characterized by a profound ignorance of the Cuban Revolution and other anti-neocolonial revolutions and movements of the Third World. In the context of a capitalist world-economy that has reached and overextended its territorial limits, such ignorance has to be overcome. Intellectuals have to play an important role in this regard, appropriating insights that emerge from the experiences of popular struggles in other lands, adapting them to conditions in their particular nations. They should follow the examples of the American revolutionary leaders and intellectuals of the period 1763 to 1840, who wrote pamphlets that were designed to explain to the people. Their example shows that slogans, placards, and tweets alone will not get it done; sustained popular political education is the key, and the organization of the people developing its consciousness.
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Charles McKelvey is Professor Emeritus, Presbyterian College, Clinton, South Carolina. He has published three books: Beyond Ethnocentrism: A Reconstruction of Marx’s Concept of Science (Greenwood Press, 1991); The African-American Movement: From Pan-Africanism to the Rainbow Coalition (General Hall, 1994); and The Evolution and Significance of the Cuban Revolution: The Light in the Darkness (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018).
American democracy would best be served by focusing more on domestically relevant facts than rhetorical attacks against foreign countries like China.
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The first presidential debate between Trump and Biden saw China presented as the object of their mutual derision, which presented the People’s Republic as a scapegoat for distracting from each other’s controversial stances on key political issues. The incumbent started this topical attack against his opponent by claiming that Biden didn’t want him to “ban China”, referring to Trump’s contentious decision to ban flights from the country at the beginning of the year following the COVID-19 outbreak there.
Trump dramatically said that this move prevented the loss of 10 times as many lives as the US has already lost to the pandemic, which he predicted would have been two million instead of the current 200,000. Biden, for his part, later alleged that Trump didn’t ask President Xi to allow “the people we had on the ground in China…to go to Wuhan and determine for themselves how dangerous this was”, which the President refuted as “wrong”. Biden then mocked Trump for praising President Xi’s transparency during the pandemic.
Trump’s riposte was typical, and that was to repeat his mantra that COVID-19 is “China’s fault.” He then irresponsibly speculated that “you don’t know how many people died in China…they don’t exactly give you a straight count”. Later on in the debate, Trump uttered his infamous “China plague” catchphrase and doubled down on implying the completely unverified claim that China was responsible for the pandemic by stating that it “should never have happened from China.”
On the topic of trade, Biden hit Trump first by mocking his opponent’s “art of the deal” and saying that “China’s perfected the art of the steal.” Trump then interjected by saying that “China ate your lunch”, to which Biden simply repeated that claim right back at him. This prompted the President to reference reports that Biden’s son Hunter “[went] in and [took] billions of dollars” from China, which Biden denied. Trump repeated this allegation later on in the debate and Biden once again denied it as “not true”.
The last reference to China came when Trump accused it of “send[ing] up real dirt into the air” in order to make a point lambasting the so-called “Green New Deal” that Biden immediately distanced himself from. That’s a common response from the President whenever he’s pressured to do more to slow down or potentially reverse climate change. He likes to decontextualize the American contribution to this crisis by focusing only on China’s supposed role in it.
Altogether, both Trump and Biden exploited China as a scapegoat for distracting from their own controversial stances on key political issues. The candidates thought it fitting to attribute different levels of blame to China for COVID-19, Trump more so than Biden obviously, while they also saw the chance to malign its foreign trade practices in order to score points against their opponent. Trump’s bringing up of Hunter Biden’s business relations with China and the country’s role in climate change were irrelevant to electoral issues.
Another conclusion from these candidates’ first televised political confrontation with one another is that Trump might have been wrong about alleging that Biden is backed by Beijing. If he was, then he might not have implied a degree of Chinese complicity in the COVID-19 pandemic, nor mocked phase one of the more comprehensive trade deal that Trump is negotiating with the country. Biden’s behavior questions one of Trump’s arguments against him, namely that his opponent — not he himself — is the real foreign puppet.
All in all, regardless of how one felt about each candidate’s performance during the debate, everyone should realize that China was exploited by both of them as a scapegoat for scoring cheap political points against one another and distracting from their stance on key issues. American democracy would best be served by focusing more on domestically relevant facts than rhetorical attacks against foreign countries like China. Hopefully the next two debates won’t disappoint in this respect like the first one did.
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This article was originally published on OneWorld.
Andrew Korybko is an American Moscow-based political analyst specializing in the relationship between the US strategy in Afro-Eurasia, China’s One Belt One Road global vision of New Silk Road connectivity, and Hybrid Warfare. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.
The complete withdrawal of U.S. forces from Africa,
The demilitarization of the African continent,
The closure of U.S. bases throughout the world, and
The Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) oppose U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) and conduct hearings on AFRICOM’s impact on the African continent, with the full participation of members of U.S. and African civil society.
October 1, 2020 is the 12th anniversary of the launch of the U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM), a command structure with bases that are now in dozens of African nations. Yet, the existence of AFRICOM has escaped the awareness of not only the general public in the United States and the world. When four U.S. soldiers were killed in the small African nation of Niger, even members of the U.S. Congress were unaware of the U.S. military’s presence in the country and the extent of the U.S. military presence throughout Africa.
The International Day of Action on AFRICOM (October 1, 2020) aims to raise the public’s awareness about the U.S. military’s existence in Africa, and how the presence of U.S. forces exacerbates violence and instability throughout the continent.
The Black Alliance for Peace (BAP) has taken up the task of educating the public on AFRICOM and the extensive basing networks in Africa and throughout the world. Our campaign on AFRICOM is an integral element of our general opposition to U.S. global militarization, with its offensive command structures, approximately 800 to 1,000 overseas bases, and the United States’ status as the number one arms merchant on the planet.
We are calling on our friends and allies around the world to join us in calling for the United States to respect the wishes of African people to de-militarize the African continent, so Africa can begin to be a “zone of peace.”
We say the brutality, violence and systematic degradation of Black life in the colonized zones of the United States against Black people by the domestic police is replicated in Africa by the U.S. global police represented by the Pentagon and U.S. intelligence agencies.
Over $150 billion of the people’s resources are being spent on U.S. bases in Africa and around the world to police people on behalf of the U.S. corporate and financial elite.
The African peoples who find themselves on the receiving end of the violence—because of corrupted African leadership in alignment with the U.S.—are saying to the people in the United States to demand U.S. troops and U.S. money is withdrawn. It is clear the introduction of AFRICOM has resulted in less security, less democracy and diminished human rights for African peoples who are in conflict with their own neo-colonial governments.
BAP supports that call and adds the people’s resources that are being squandered to support imperialist adventures must be seized by the people and used to address the human rights needs of African/Black people and other oppressed and exploited peoples for housing, healthcare, education, food and clean water, instead of on war on behalf of the capitalist dictatorship.
We call our friends to endorse this day, as an individual or as an organization. Beyond that, we call on you to organize an educational event on October 1, 2020, for which we have provided materials on this page.
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Polish Author, Monika Wisniewska, suggests that “The vaccine should be tested on politicians first. If they survive, the vaccine is safe. If they don’t, then the country is safe”.
Sounds like a joke, but it isn’t. It is dead-serious. One may want to add to this very sensible proposal that the very first to be vaccinated with his own Moderna human genome-altering vaccine, should imperatively be the czar of vaccines, Bill Gates. But no special fabrication for Mr. Gates. The real thing. Controlled by independent honorable virologists, immunologists and DNA-specialized biologists.
If Mr. Gates “survives” with none of the devastating side effects (or premier effects), as suffered by the first 45 healthy volunteers for his vaccine (all had to be hospitalized with severe health damage), he may start testing it on a larger population (currently planned on 4,000 healthy volunteers) – and then only should the special DNA-modifying vaccine become subject of an objective information campaign, telling the populace at large and especially those, who are potentially interested in altering their DNA forever, what Covid-19 vaccination with the Moderna inoculation means and implies.
Then only should it become open for those who voluntarily want to alter their genome, in full knowledge that whatever later effect could result from it, CANNOT ever be corrected and the DNA changes might be passed on to the next and following generations.
Aside form that, there is high skepticism among the people all around the world about any Covid-19 vaccine. For several reasons. Perhaps first, because there is really no need for a vaccine. There are other well-known remedies that can heal and have proven effective in healing the novel coronavirus, especially hydroxychloroquine (known for at least 60 years and used successfully to fight malaria and recently was equally successfully used against Covid-19), and sodium chlorite (NaCIO), best administered according to a medical supervised formula. And there are others, like the Cuban developed Interferon beta-1a. China used hydroxychloroquine and Interferon beta-1a and combinations of them, as well as other non-vaccine drugs to successfully and rapidly combat and control the SARS-2-NoV (Covid-19).
Yet, both of these very efficient medications, hydroxychloroquine and NaCIO have been banned in the US and in most EU countries – prohibited under penalties to medical doctors who use them – in favor of not-yet known vaccines – vaccines which promise to become a multi-multi trillion-dollar business. Just imagine, what world have we become! No wonder people become suspicious.
According to an Axios-Ipsos poll, published by RT on 29 September 2020, based on 1,000-plus participating US-American adults, more than 50% of the respondents said they would NOT take a vaccine – any covid vaccine – even if paid US$ 100; 44% said they would accept the vaccine if offered an incentive of US$ 100. Reasons have to do with the mistrust in politicians, and in specific people who promote vaccination “über alles” – and have a vested interest.
Other reasons include the warp-speed by which CDC and especially Dr. Fauci from NIAID / NIH – the co-czar of vaccination – want to push the vaccine onto people. It doesn’t help either that CDC and NIAID / NIH have vested interests in vaccines, as they own hundreds of patents and make millions from vaccines. Covid has served to highly politicize inoculation, especially, but not exclusively, Covid-19 vaccinations – and to generate not only an enormous profit boost for pharmaceuticals and their shareholder, but to provide them with a “sustainable” bonanza for decades to come, as science knows and tells us, corona viruses do not go away – similarly to flu-viruses (also a type of corona virus) – and vaccinations have to be repeated annually.
That’s the state of affairs in the United States. In Europe, no such inquiries have been published yet, to my knowledge, but anti-covid vaccine skepticism is at least as high in Europe as it is in the US, if not higher. Most covid-vaccine resisters say they would refuse vaccination to the end, or if there was really no way out, they’d rather be vaccinated by a Russian, Chinese or Cuban anti-covid vaccine, than one from the west. That’s the level of trust treacherous western politicians have left.
What Monika Wisniewska proposes, politicians first and depending on the results, the people next. This might be an elegant way out – always, but always, provided that politicians get exactly the same vaccine injected into their arm as the population at large – and that the vaccines are clear of any nano-chip or similar digitizing technology. Since trust in western politicians is at its lowest, this would have to be monitored independently by honorable non-mainstream scientists.
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Peter Koenig is an economist and geopolitical analyst. He is also a water resources and environmental specialist. He worked for over 30 years with the World Bank and the World Health Organization around the world in the fields of environment and water. He lectures at universities in the US, Europe and South America. He writes regularly for online journals such as Global Research; ICH; New Eastern Outlook (NEO) and more. 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. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization.
The unique, dominating position of the United States in the post-1945 world is well-known. It maintains this position thanks to both a very large historical goodwill capital and former glory in the eyes of generations around the world – and thanks to rampant militarism and imperialism that has destroyed the good ‘America’ that it used to be.
The world’s major division the next few years will be this: Are you on the side of continued US global dominance or do you want to see a new multipolar world with more balance and the US in the role of a partner among equals?
In my view, the US no longer has the capacity to lead itself effectively and find solutions to its own multi-dimensional crisis be it the economy, democracy, climate change, warfare addiction, social polarization, racism and on top of it all the Covid-19 crisis.
Not being able to lead itself, no one should wish that the US should lead the world. Neither does it have any right to.
While its allies, friends and admirers are increasingly turning sceptical, others turn away and look for other partners be it China, Russia or Iran.
While the friends of the US should try to help it out of its addiction to its outdated self-image, the designated enemies, of course, cannot help the US as it simply would not listen. Strangely, these countries also need the US and have sought and still seek constructive cooperation but in vain.
The fact is that no one threatens the US (and certainly not Russia with less than 8 % of the military expenditures of NATO. The US has become its own worst enemy but blames others for its problems.
Sadly, it seems that there is not one ministry of foreign affairs among the EU /NATO countries that has even thought of developing a strategy for the post-US dominated West.
Countries such as China, other BRICS and many others are building a new world order. Will the West, therefore, loose completely, or will parts of it still be able to save what can be saved and transition into the future multipolar world order?
The chances of a “yes” to that question is diminishing by the day.
The list of twenty points below was written long before the Presidential candidate debate on September 29 (it would be an offence to children to say that they behaved like children). But that debate only confirmed these points – and the simple point that it doesn’t matter much whether the next president of the US will be Trump or Biden.
It’s the system, stupid! And it is rapidly coming to an end.
It’s a valid intellectual-theoretical point that one cannot apply characteristics from psychology – basically the science of the individual – to much larger aggregates such as people, nations or the global system. That’s the fallacy of levels.
That said, let’s anyhow try to just a bit of such “psychologizing” to make it more familiar to the reader.
All empires go down, sooner or later – the latest was the Soviet Union, and the US/West has not been able to cope since its beloved enemy disappeared. All empires emerge, grow, reach a peak point, climax – and then begins to lose it to move to relative decline (others coming up) and then fall. Rather much like the individual life.
Over-reachor you never get enough – there is no one and nothing you don’t want to try to influence, dominate or control.
Hubris – we can get away with everything, we are big and powerful. May be right for a time, then reality catches up.
Exceptionalism – we can do things nobody else can because we are those we are – and we can tell others not to do what we ourselves do. We are above the law that others must follow, we fight wars for good while others fight for evil and are evil. Because we are good and have God on our side.
The unbearable lightness of routine – it’s all gone so well for so long thanks to our pervasive mind- and lifestyle-shaping influence through the media, film, culture, arts – Hollywood and all that. For as long as the rest of the world sees you as an ideal to imitate, – Americanization – everything goes smoothly.
The Number One problem – meaning that if you are (or believe you are) Number One in a rank order, there is no one to look up to and learn from so you end up becoming a teacher, master, dictator, more or less arrogantly “downwards”. If you are No 37, there are 36 others to learn from – how did they do it better than we did? However, sooner or later, the “pupils” stop listening and obeying the Master – His Master’s Voice, so to speak.
Mission activity or ‘mission civilisatrice’ – you try ad absurdum to shape others in the image of yourself; they shall become like us. Our national thinking is universalizable. The world should adapt to us, not we to the world. Remember who was The First World – (the Second and the Third) earlier?
Legitimacy in the eyes of others slowly disappears – you may get away with some bad acts once or twice, but when it becomes a habit, others begin to think. As time goes by, your normative power is eroded, and you rely increasingly on naked force – the military. My country, right or wrong: Send the marines!
Overmilitarization – the system needs a war more or less regularly; that means you need images of enemies (invented or real) all the time. Like a drug addict needs a fix. The US surely cannot do without enemies. The problem is that that military colossus called the Military-Industrial Media Academic Complex (MIMAC) always wants more – also in times when the economy cannot carry that burden. (Like the Sovjet Union in the 1970s and 1980s couldn’t). And the Coronavirus weakens the economy even further.
Increasing autism, denial of the real world plus Group Think – “everything worked so fine in the past, it cannot be true that we cannot just continue what we used to do. (So, let’s start a new Cold War, this time against China). Group think means that a small group of people over time build a common worldview that repels any new thoughts from the outside and become convinced that it’s right and everybody else wrong. The problem is that they don’t know they sit in that restaurant on US Titanic, the music playing so well…
Socio-political metal fatique – something has been strong for a long time but suddenly there is a crack, and then comes another. The unthinkable, or at least unlikely and unforseen, suddenly happens repeatedly. And old tools can’t fix the problems.
Lack of vision and lack of the pioneering new dynamics – of the type that makes other want to follow you voluntarily. Little by little, everything signal you send out is negative or destructive.
The old positive life energy ebbs, and paranoia enters – like the increasingly old crumpy person who feels that the world turns its back and become unreasonable. Is there any important country in today’s world that the Trump US is not running some kind of conflict with, even friends and allies? Enters paranoia – “The whole world is against us… we see enemies all around – the world doesn’t understand us anymore. But we shall teach them a lesson…”
Stagnation and anti-intellectualism – you continue to do what worked before, such as solving every problem with the military and increasingly becoming unable to think. To the person who has only a hammer in the toolbox, every problem in the house is about hammering…So, don’t allow anything new, don’t tolerate diversity, and crack down on critical voices.
The normative and cultural power vanish – the perception by others of the Empire’s values as good and fair and as part of a vision crumbles. They embark on a future without the Empire’s diktat and/or protection and build a new world order (that the US will not hear about or let its subordinates participate in).
Over-extension through self-aggrandizement – you engage in conflicts and wars which you don’t stand a chance to win, increasingly losing a sense of reality and of your own strength vis-a-vis others.
Addiction& uni-dimensionality – since the only power scale in which you are “second to none” is the military, you use that where other means would be much more effective and cheaper as well as create respect worldwide. Diplomacy fades – lacking carrots, use the big stick.
Decadence, illusions and lies – the Secretary of State, Pompeo, is on record boasting that it is part of the American tradition to “cheat, steal and lie” – in other words, moral decay. Fake and omission, a struggle about what reality really is mounted.
Psychopaths and kakistocrats increasingly win influence = Pathocracy! Kakistocracy means government by the worst, least qualified, and/or most unscrupulous citizens. The tempo with which norms and expectations of normal behaviour is broken overwhelms the world. Leader senility may play its role too – remember Breznev? And then, somebody usually turns up in the chaotic developments and declares that s/he is the saviour.
Democracy and people’s participation in it crumbles – most citizens sense what happens but in disbelief. Mobilization of counterforces to save what can be saved, become more difficult by the day.
“And faster than you may expect”?
One should hesitate to appear too sure about predicting the final end. Sometimes terminally ill people live longer than medical expertise predicted. Taking the risk anyhow, I would say within the next presidential term 2021-2026 or at the latest by 2030.
When the cracks are frequent enough and big enough, the decline and breakdown accelerate exponentially. Remember the end of the Cold War in 1989 when border guards just opened the gates and people started moving feely.
In a Danish academic book from 1981 (1) I predicted the fall of the West thus:
“The Western world is on its way down and the present crisis is not just cyclical and also not just a crisis of capitalism (it is not exclusively economic) but a sort of civilizational crisis. The global system that has existed with Europe-US as its centre and developed over the last 400-500 years is going through convulsions of a deeper nature than is normally perceived.
Neither liberalism nor Marxism which are both Western thought systems and neither the US nor the Soviet Union appears as attractive models to the rest of the world. They are in deep crisis themselves – socially as well as economically – while Japan, China and a series of new growth centres and regional larger powers are rising, particularly in Asia.
The wealthy, overdeveloped countries are approaching certain ‘objective’ limitations in terms of nature, raw materials, exploitation of human beings, the sheer size of the systems as well as management problems, social pressures, etc.
Armament and the increasing militarization of various types of social structures everywhere is an (attempt at) “rejuvenation treatment” in the old- age phase of the West, a sort of compensation for diminishing power in other areas.”
Conclusion: Governments, businesses, academia and others who in these years hold on to the US Empire will become a periphery in the future world order.
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The fox is guarding the henhouse and Washington is prosecuting a publisher for exposing its own war crimes. Alexander Mercouris diagnoses the incoherence of the U.S. case for extradition.
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Following the Julian Assange case as it has progressed through its various stages, from the original Swedish allegations right up to and including the extradition hearing which is currently underway in the Central Criminal Court in London, has been a troubling and very strange experience.
The U.S. government has failed to present a coherent case.
Conscious that the British authorities should in theory refuse to extradite Assange if the case against him were shown to be politically motivated and/or related to Assange’s legitimate work as a journalist, the U.S. government has struggled to present a case against Assange which is not too obviously politically motivated or related to Assange’s legitimate work as a journalist.
This explains the strange succession of one original and two superseding indictments.
The U.S. government’s first indictment was based on what was a supposedly simple allegation of computer interference, supposedly coordinated in some sort of conspiracy between Assange and Chelsea Manning.
This was obviously done in an attempt to dispel the idea that the request for Assange’s extradition was politically motivated or was related to Assange’s legitimate work as a journalist.
However lawyers in the United States had no difficulty pointing out the “inchoate facts” of the alleged conspiracy between Assange and Manning, whilst both lawyers and journalists in the United States and elsewhere pointed out that the facts in the indictment in fact bore all the hallmarks of action by a journalist to protect a source.
The result was that the U.S. government replaced its indictment with a first superseding indictment, which this time was founded largely on the 1917 Espionage Act, and was therefore closer to the real reasons why the case against Assange was being brought.
However, that made the case look altogether too obviously politically motivated, so it has in turn been replaced by a second superseding indictment, presented to the court and the defence team virtually on the eve of the trial, which has sought to veer back towards strictly criminal allegations, this time of involvement in computer hacking.
More Problems for Another Indictment
The allegations in the second superseding indictment have however faced major difficulties, in that they do not seem to concern the United States and may not even be actual crimes. Also they rely heavily on the evidence of a known fraudster, whose “evidence” is inherently unreliable.
The U.S. government has failed to make clear whether the additional allegations in the second superseding indictment are intended to constitute a separate standalone case. Initially they appeared to deny that they did; then they hinted that they might do; now however they seem to be acting as if they don’t.
As if that were not confusing enough, the U.S. government and its British lawyers have floated confusing and contradictory theories about whether or not the British authorities can extradite Assange even if the case against him is politically motivated, and even if it is related to his journalistic activities.
Initially they seemed to be arguing that — contrary to all British precedent and the actual text of the extradition treaty between the U.S. and Britain — Britain can in fact extradite Assange to the U.S. on a politically motivated charge, because the enabling Act which the British Parliament passed, which made the extradition treaty between the U.S. and Britain a part of British law, is silent on whether or not individuals can be extradited to the U.S. on a politically motivated charge.
This argument of course came close to conceding that the case against Assange is politically motivated after all.
This threadbare argument, at least for the moment, seems to have been abandoned. At least nothing has been heard of it throughout the current hearing. Instead the U.S. government and its British lawyers have argued, in the face of the incredulity of a string of expert and factual witnesses, that the case is not politically motivated after all.
The same inconsistencies have beset the U.S. government’s arguments as to whether or not Assange is being charged under the Espionage Act for activities related to his work as a journalist.
Initially the U.S. government’s position was that he was not. This was based on some theory — never satisfactorily explained or articulated — that Assange in some way is not a journalist, even though he is charged with doing things that journalists do.
Faced by a barrage of expert witnesses who pointed out that the charges brought against Assange under the Espionage Act do in fact relate to work journalists do, the U.S. government midway through the hearing reversed course.
Now it says that the charges against Assange not only do relate to his work as a journalist, but that they can be brought against any journalist who does the things Assange is being charged with having done. The U.S. government has even argued that The New York Times would have been successfully prosecuted under the Espionage Act for publishing the Pentagon Papers, because that was an action essentially identical to the ones for which Assange is being charged.
The implications for journalists of this astonishing reversal are truly shocking. It is staggering that in the media it has attracted no attention.
Trouble with Witnesses
The U.S. government has shown the same lack of coherence in its response to the defence’s impressive lineup of expert witnesses.
The conventional way of responding to an expert is to call another expert to state a contrary view. On the critical issues of U.S. law, especially the protections provided to journalists by the First Amendment to the Constitution, as well as on the politics in the U.S. behind the Assange prosecution, the U.S. government has however done no such thing. Presumably it has found it difficult or impossible to find experts who can be relied upon credibly to state a contrary view.
Instead, armed only with affidavits from U.S. Justice Department officials, who are of course not impartial experts at all, but who are part of the U.S. government’s legal team, the U.S. government’s British lawyers have been left to argue that the defence’s experts are not really experts at all — an impossible argument to make convincingly in my opinion — and to debate with the experts points of U.S. politics and U.S. law — including difficult points of U.S. constitutional and case law — about which the experts are by definition far more knowledgeable than the British lawyers.
The result, inevitably, has been a series of humiliations, as the lawyers have been repeatedly caught out by the experts making basic errors of fact and interpretation about the points which they have sought to argue.
Unsurprisingly, the lawyers have attempted to make up for this by trying to intimidate and denigrate the experts, in a way that has only highlighted their own lack of expertise in the relevant areas by comparison with that of the experts.
Given the collapse into incoherence of the U.S. government’s case, it is unsurprising that the U.S. government’s British lawyers are now reportedly trying to persuade the Judge against hearing closing arguments.
Given the constant shifts and reversals in the U.S. government’s position, preparing and presenting a closing argument to the court which would be internally consistent and credible must be fast becoming a nightmare. If closing arguments do take place, as I still expect, it will be interesting to see which of the many conflicting arguments and theories they have made the U.S. government’s lawyers finally run with.
On its face the U.S. government’s case ought to be close to collapse. There was even a point in the hearing where one of the U.S. government’s British lawyers apparently admitted to the judge that the reason for the second superseding indictment was that the first superseding indictment was “failing.”
If so, then given that the charges being prosecuted against Assange are still basically those set out in the first superseding indictment, the case against Assange ought to be dismissed, and the U.S. government’s request for his extradition ought to be refused.
The Underlying Truth
It remains to be seen whether that is what actually happens. However, that brings me to the single most important fact, and the underlying truth, about this extraordinary case.
It is very easy when following the intricacies of such a complex legal process to lose sight of what this case is really about.
Ultimately the U.S. government is not pursuing Julian Assange because he helped Chelsea Manning take certain steps with a computer to conceal her identity, or because he had some historic contacts with hackers, or because he became involved in some activities in Iceland, which caused him to fall foul of a fraudster (and FBI informant).
Nor is it because Assange received and published classified material. In the U.S. the receipt and publication by the news media of classified material has grown to almost industrial levels.
It is because Assange, to a greater extent than any other journalist since the end of the war in Vietnam, has exposed the darkest and most terrible secrets of the U.S. government.
Outside the court where his son endures what the judge now admits is a political trial, Julian #Assange's father, John Shipton, describes the human carnage caused by America and utters an unforgettable truth: "Julian didn't do anything, they did." https://t.co/O4AbPg4IRU
The case against Assange has its origin in the calamitous “War on Terror” launched by the Bush administration in the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attacks.
That “war” provided the cover for a series of violent military aggressions, primarily in the Middle East, by the U.S. and its closest allies, first and foremost Britain but also including other countries such as Saudi Arabia and France.
The result has been a series of wars in a succession of Middle East countries — Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria and Yemen— fought by the U.S. and its allies and proxies, which have caused the devastation of whole societies, and the death and dispersal of millions.
In the process the U.S. has become drawn increasingly into practices which it once condemned, or at least said it condemned. These include the “extrajudicial killing” (i.e. murder) of people — who have included children and U.S. citizens — by drone strikes, a practice which has now become routine; the kidnapping of individuals and their detention without trial in places like Guantanamo, a practice which despite unconvincing protestations that “extraordinary rendition” no longer happens almost certainly continues; and the practice of torture, at one time referred to as “enhanced interrogation techniques,” which almost certainly still continues, and indeed appears to have become normalized.
All of this activity straightforwardly violates international (and domestic U.S.) law, including war crimes law and human rights law, and does so moreover in fundamental ways.
It also requires, in order to implement the policies that result in these unlawful acts, in the creation of a vast and ultimately unaccountable national security apparatus of a sort that is ultimately incompatible with a democratic society. Inevitably its activities, which have become routinely unlawful, are becoming unlawful within the territory of the United States, as well as outside it.
This manifests itself in all sorts of ways, for example through the vast, indiscriminate and illegal bulk-surveillance program exposed by the whistleblower Edward Snowden, and by the systemic FISA surveillance abuse exposed over the course of the Russiagate “scandal.”
The extent to which the very existence of the national security apparatus, required to implement various U.S. illegal activities and to achieve its foreign policy goals, has become incompatible with a democratic society, is shown by one of the most alarming of recent developments, both in Britain and in the United States.
This is the growing complicity of much of the media in concealing its illegal activities. Obviously without that complicity these activities would be impossible, as would the serial violations of international law, including war crimes law and human rights, which the United States and some of its allies now routinely engage in.
US post-war aggressive history of coups and invasions for geo-strategic & economic interests has been covered up by the establishment media, explained as 'spreading democracy', and Julian Assange, almost single-handedly, lifted that cover. Hence he is in the dock.
All this explains the extreme reaction to Julian Assange, and the determined attempts to destroy him, and to pulp his reputation.
Julian Assange and his organization WikiLeaks, have done those things which the U.S. government and its national security apparatus most fear, and have worked hardest to prevent, by exposing the terrible reality of much of what the U.S. government now routinely does, and is determined to conceal, and what much of the media is helping the U.S. government to conceal.
Thus in a series of astonishing revelations Julian Assange and WikiLeaks have exposed in the so-called embassy cables the extraordinarily manipulative conduct of U.S. foreign policy; in the Vault 7 disclosures the instruments the CIA uses in order to — as U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has said, “lie” and “cheat” — and, most disturbingly, in collaboration with Chelsea Manning, the rampant war crimes and egregious human rights abuses carried out by the U.S. military during the illegal war and occupation of Iraq.
This is an extraordinary record for a journalist, and for an organization, WikiLeaks, which was only set up in 2006.
Not surprisingly, the result has been that the pursuit of Assange by the U.S. government has been relentless, whilst the media, much of which has been complicit in covering up its crimes, has preferred to look the other way.
Hence, the Surreal Quality
It is this underlying reality which gives the whole case currently unfolding in London’s Central Criminal Court its surreal quality.
That the true purpose of the U.S. government’s relentless pursuit of Assange is to prevent him from exposing more of its crimes, and to punish him for exposing those of its crimes which he did expose, if only so as to deter others from doing the same thing, is perfectly obvious to any unbiased and realistic observer. However, the hearing in London is being conducted as if this were not the case.
Thus, the extraordinary zigzags in the U.S. government’s rationale for bringing the case, as it cannot admit the true reason why the case has been actually brought.
Thus, also the U.S. government’s strenuous efforts throughout the hearing to prevent evidence being produced of its crimes which Assange exposed.
The U.S. government has strenuously opposed all attempts to introduce as evidence the appalling “Collateral Murder” video, which shows the deliberate murder of civilians in Iraq by members of the U.S. military. It has also strenuously opposed the introduction of evidence from a defence witness about his own torture. This despite the fact that in both cases the fact of the U.S. crimes is scarcely disputed, and has in fact been all but admitted.
The result is the paradoxical and bizarre situation whereby the U.S. authorities try to cobble together a case against Assange based on a confusing medley of discordant and conflicting claims and facts, whilst failing to prosecute or hold to account those who were responsible for the very serious crimes which he has exposed.
In fact, as the U.S. government’s case has unraveled, the argument has become increasingly confined to the discrete issue of whether — by exposing the U.S. government’s crimes —Assange “irresponsibly” put the safety of various U.S. government informants at risk.
As it happens the evidence is clearly that he did not. Over the course of the hearing the court has heard of Assange’s many and serious attempts to conceal the identities of these informants, and of the reckless and even possibly malicious actions of certain others, who actually exposed them.
The court has also been told of the absence of any evidence that any one of these informants has in fact been harmed by any disclosure by WikiLeaks or Assange. Moreover, an expert witness has argued convincingly that the disclosure by a journalist of the identities of such informants would not under U.S. law be a crime anyway.
In response the U.S. government’s lawyers have relied heavily, not on the evidence of any actual witness, but on passages in a book by two Guardian journalists who are known to be hostile to Assange, and who — by publishing a password — seem to have done more to compromise the identities of the informants than Assange ever did.
Neither of these journalists has been called to give evidence on oath about the contents of their book. Doing so would, of course, have exposed them to cross-examination by the defence about the truth of the book’s contents. Given the weight the U.S. government is apparently placing on the book, I find it astonishing that they were not called.
The surreal quality of the U.S. government’s treatment of this issue is shown by the fact that when an actual witness — the German journalist John Goetz — did in fact come forward and offer to give evidence on oath about a specific allegation in the book — refuting an allegation in the book that Assange supposedly made comments at a dinner, which Goetz attended, that showed a reckless disregard for the safety of the informants — the U.S. government’s lawyers strenuously objected, and were able to get the judge to exclude this evidence.
However, it is the staggering disproportion between the scale of the crimes Assange has exposed, and the crimes of which he is accused — if they are even crimes, and of which he anyway appears to be innocent — which for me stands out.
Assange and WikiLeaks have exposed rampant war crimes and human rights abuses over the course of illegal wars waged by the U.S. government and its allies. The death toll from these wars runs at the very least into the tens of thousands, and more plausibly into the hundreds of thousands or even millions.
By contrast over the course of the entire hearing no evidence whatsoever has been produced that as a result of any of Assange’s actions anyone has come to any actual physical harm.
Yet it is Assange who is in the dock, facing demands for his extradition to the United States, where a 175-year sentence may await him, whilst the persons responsible for the colossal crimes he has exposed, not only walk free, but are amongst those who are trying to jail him.
The point was made forcefully during the hearing by one of the defence’s most powerful witnesses, Daniel Ellsberg.
It was also made forcefully to Consortium News by one of its readers, who has correctly pointed out that the crimes which Assange exposed were clearly defined as war crimes by the Nuremberg Tribunal, whose decisions are universally accepted as forming the bedrock of international war crimes law.
The Nuremberg Tribunal moreover made it clear that there is not only a positive duty to refuse to participate in such crimes, even when ordered to do so, but that no sanctions should ever been imposed for exposing such crimes when they occur.
Judges’ bench at international military tribunal at Nuremberg, 1946. (Wikimedia Commons)
In other words, it is Assange and his sources, first and foremost Chelsea Manning, who are the defenders of international law, including the Nuremberg Principles, and including in the case which is currently underway, whilst it is those who persecute them, including by bringing the current case against Assange, who are international law’s violators.
This is the single most important fact about this case, and it explains everything about it.
Assange and Manning have paid an enormous price for their defence of international law, and for the principles of basic human decency and humanity.
Manning was recently held in long spells of solitary detention, and has had her savings confiscated by the U.S. authorities, for no reason other than that she has refused to testify against Assange.
Assange has been subjected to what various UN agencies have characterized as long periods of arbitrary detention and psychological torture.
He continues to be denied bail, despite his known health problems, and is separated from his family.
He continues to have difficulties consulting privately with his lawyers, and has been exposed to the indignity — qualified in other cases by the European Court for Human Rights as a human rights violation — of being kept inside court rooms confined to a glass box or cage.
John Pilger has described vividly and in great detail, including to Consortium News, the inhuman conditions to which Assange is daily exposed to. That these amount to human rights violations ought not to require discussion or explanation.
International Conventions
That these human rights violations breach a host of international conventions to which Britain is a signatory, including against torture and arbitrary detention, in respect of the right to a fair trial, in respect of the right to privacy and dignity of the person, and of the right to a family life, also ought not to require discussion or explanation.
Recently there has been an outcry in Britain because legislation the British government is proposing, which would allow it to modify unilaterally the terms of the Withdrawal Agreement it agreed last year with the European Union, breaches international law.
Without in any way disputing the importance of this issue, which may have important consequences for peace in Ireland, I find the angry protestations of some British journalists and politicians, that Britain never violates international law, frankly unreal.
If they want examples of Britain violating international law they need look no further than the facts of Assange’s case. They might also benefit from looking at what has been said over the course of the ongoing hearing in the Central Criminal Court.
Despite all the difficulties, there is however no reason to give up hope.
London graffiti, March 2020. (duncan c, Flickr, CC BY-NC 2.0)
The extraordinary zigzags the U.S. government has been forced to make as it tries and fails to put a coherent and convincing case against Julian Assange together, show that the law, for all its many flaws, remains an important defence.
I am aware of the many criticisms which have been made of Vanessa Baraitser, the judge who is hearing Assange’s case. I don’t disagree with any of them.
However, I do get the impression that Baraitser’s patience has been sorely tried by the U.S. government’s repeated and dizzying changes of position. I also get the impression that she was particularly annoyed when the U.S. government, on the virtual eve of the hearing, presented to the court and the defence its second superseding indictment, which in effect made a nonsense of the first.
That may explain why the U.S. government’s British lawyers have largely conducted the case as if the second superseding indictment did not exist, basing their arguments mostly on what the first superseding indictment says, though perhaps unsurprisingly, and to the bafflement of the experts, they are now increasingly making arguments which have no basis in any indictment.
Moreover, and perhaps more importantly, Baraitser has rejected the U.S. government’s various attempts to exclude en masse the evidence of defence witnesses, even if she has imposed a 30-minute guillotine on their examination in chief (direct examination) by defence lawyers.
In summary, and in my opinion, there is still a chance, however small, that Baraitser will decide the case in Assange’s favour.
If she does not do so, then I would have thought, based on what has happened over the course of the hearing, that Assange will have good prospects on appeal.
More encouraging than what has been happening inside the court, where the outcome remains very much in doubt, and where the prospects must be considered problematic to say the least, is what has been happening outside.
My wife, who attended one of the hearings last week, saw placards held up by some of Assange’s supporters outside the court, which called on road users to honk their horns in support of Assange. To her delighted astonishment, despite the media blackout which surrounds the case, and despite the long campaign of character assassination to which Assange has been subjected, an extraordinarily high proportion of road users (more than a quarter) did so.
That reinforces my sense that the tide of opinion, at least in Britain, is shifting. The battle is far from over, and can still be won.
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Alexander Mercouris is a political commentator and editor of The Duran.
Featured image: Julian Assange’s father John Shipton outside the court where his son is on trial in London, September 2020. (Twitter)
If you’re wondering what the hell is going on right now – the “Why is the world turning to shit?” thought – you may find Netflix’s new documentary The Social Dilemma a good starting point for clarifying your thinking. I say “starting point” because, as we shall see, the film suffers from two major limitations: one in its analysis and the other in its conclusion. Nonetheless, the film is good at exploring the contours of the major social crises we currently face – epitomised both by our addiction to the mobile phone and by its ability to rewire our consciousness and our personalities.
The film makes a convincing case that this is not simply an example of old wine in new bottles. This isn’t the Generation Z equivalent of parents telling their children to stop watching so much TV and play outside. Social media is not simply a more sophisticated platform for Edward Bernays-inspired advertising. It is a new kind of assault on who we are, not just what we think.
According to The Social Dilemma, we are fast reaching a kind of human “event horizon”, with our societies standing on the brink of collapse. We face what several interviewees term an “existential threat” from the way the internet, and particularly social media, are rapidly developing.
I don’t think they are being alarmist. Or rather I think they are right to be alarmist, even if their alarm is not entirely for the right reasons. We will get to the limitations in their thinking in a moment.
Like many documentaries of this kind, The Social Dilemma is deeply tied to the shared perspective of its many participants. In most cases, they are richly disillusioned, former executives and senior software engineers from Silicon Valley. They understand that their once-cherished creations – Google, Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, Instagram, Snapchat (WhatsApp seems strangely under-represented in the roll call) – have turned into a gallery of Frankenstein’s monsters.
That is typified in the plaintive story of the guy who helped invent the “Like” button for Facebook. He thought his creation would flood the world with the warm glow of brother and sisterhood, spreading love like a Coca Cola advert. In fact, it ended up inflaming our insecurities and need for social approval, and dramatically pushed up rates of suicide among teenage girls.
If the number of watches of the documentary is any measure, disillusion with social media is spreading far beyond its inventors.
Children as guinea pigs
Although not flagged as such, The Social Dilemma divides into three chapters.
The first, dealing with the argument we are already most familiar with, is that social media is a global experiment in altering our psychology and social interactions, and our children are the main guinea pigs. Millennials (those who came of age in the 2000s) are the first generation that spent their formative years with Facebook and MySpace as best friends. Their successors, Generation Z, barely know a world without social media at its forefront.
The film makes a relatively easy case forcefully: that our children are not only addicted to their shiny phones and what lies inside the packaging, but that their minds are being aggressively rewired to hold their attention and then make them pliable for corporations to sell things.
Each child is not just locked in a solitary battle to stay in control of his or her mind against the skills of hundreds of the world’s greatest software engineers. The fight to change their perspective and ours – the sense of who we are – is now in the hands of algorithms that are refined every second of every day by AI, artificial intelligence. As one interviewee observes, social media is not going to become less expert at manipulating our thinking and emotions, it’s going to keep getting much, much better at doing it.
Jaron Lanier, one of the computing pioneers of virtual reality, explains what Google and the rest of these digital corporations are really selling: “It’s the gradual, slight, imperceptible change in your own behaviour and perception – that is the product.” That is also how these corporations make their money, by “changing what you do, what you think, who you are.”
They make profits, big profits, from the predictions business – predicting what you will think and how you will behave so that you are more easily persuaded to buy what their advertisers want to sell you. To have great predictions, these corporations have had to amass vast quantities of data on each of us – what is sometimes called “surveillance capitalism”.
And, though the film does not quite spell it out, there is another implication. The best formula for tech giants to maximise their predictions is this: as well as processing lots of data on us, they must gradually grind down our distinctiveness, our individuality, our eccentricities so that we become a series of archetypes. Then, our emotions – our fears, insecurities, desires, cravings – can be more easily gauged, exploited and plundered by advertisers.
These new corporations trade in human futures, just as other corporations have long traded in oil futures and pork-belly futures, notes Shoshana Zuboff, professor emeritus at Harvard business school. Those markets “have made the internet companies the richest companies in the history of humanity”.
Flat Earthers and Pizzagate
The second chapter explains that, as we get herded into our echo chambers of self-reinforcing information, we lose more and more sense of the real world and of each other. With it, our ability to empathise and compromise is eroded. We live in different information universes, chosen for us by algorithms whose only criterion is how to maximise our attention for advertisers’ products to generate greater profits for the internet giants.
Anyone who has spent any time on social media, especially a combative platform like Twitter, will sense that there is a truth to this claim. Social cohesion, empathy, fair play, morality are not in the algorithm. Our separate information universes mean we are increasingly prone to misunderstanding and confrontation.
And there is a further problem, as one interviewee states: “The truth is boring.” Simple or fanciful ideas are easier to grasp and more fun. People prefer to share what’s exciting, what’s novel, what’s unexpected, what’s shocking. “It’s a disinformation-for-profit model,” as another interviewee observes, stating that research shows false information is six times more likely to spread on social media platforms than true information.
And as governments and politicians work more closely with these tech companies – a well-documented fact the film entirely fails to explore – our rulers are better positioned than ever to manipulate our thinking and control what we do. They can dictate the political discourse more quickly, more comprehensively, more cheaply than ever before.
This section of the film, however, is the least successful. True, our societies are riven by increasing polarisation and conflict, and feel more tribal. But the film implies that all forms of social tension – from the paranoid paedophile conspiracy theory of Pizzagate to the Black Lives Matter protests – are the result of social media’s harmful influence.
And though it is easy to know that Flat Earthers are spreading misinformation, it is far harder to be sure what is true and what is false in many others areas of life. Recent history suggests our yardsticks cannot be simply what governments say is true – or Mark Zuckerberg, or even “experts”. It may be a while since doctors were telling us that cigarettes were safe, but millions of Americans were told only a few years ago that opiates would help them – until an opiate addiction crisis erupted across the US.
This section falls into making a category error of the kind set out by one of the interviewees early in the film. Despite all the drawbacks, the internet and social media have an undoubted upside when used simply as a tool, argues Tristan Harris, Google’s former design ethicist and the soul of the film. He gives the example of being able to hail a cab almost instantly at the press of a phone button. That, of course, highlights something about the materialist priorities of most of Silicon Valley’s leading lights.
But the tool box nestled in our phones, full of apps, does not just satisfy our craving for material comfort and security. It has also fuelled a craving to understand the world and our place in it, and offered tools to help us do that.
Phones have made it possible for ordinary people to film and share scenes once witnessed by only a handful of disbelieved passers-by. We can all see for ourselves a white police officer dispassionately kneeling on the neck of a black man for nine minutes, while the victim cries out he cannot breathe, until he expires. And we can then judge the values and priorities of our leaders when they decide to do as little as possible to prevent such incidents occurring again.
The internet has created a platform from which not only disillusioned former Silicon Valley execs can blow the whistle on what the Mark Zuckerbergs are up to, but so can a US army private like Chelsea Manning, by exposing war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan, and so can a national security tech insider like Edward Snowden, by revealing the way we are being secretly surveilled by our own governments.
Technological digital breakthroughs allowed someone like Julian Assange to set up a site, Wikileaks, that offered us a window on the real political world – a window through we could see our leaders behaving more like psychopaths than humanitarians. A window those same leaders are now fighting tooth and nail to close by putting him on trial.
A small window on reality
The Social Dilemma ignores all of this to focus on the dangers of so-called “fake news”. It dramatises a scene suggesting that only those sucked into information blackholes and conspiracy sites end up taking to the street to protest – and when they do, the film hints, it will not end well for them.
Apps allowing us to hail a taxi or navigate our way to a destination are undoubtedly useful tools. But being able to find out what our leaders are really doing – whether they are committing crimes against others or against us – is an even more useful tool. In fact, it is a vital one if we want to stop the kind of self-destructive behaviours The Social Dilemma is concerned about, not least our destruction of the planet’s life systems (an issue that, except for one interviewee’s final comment, the film leaves untouched).
Use of social media does not mean one necessarily loses touch with the real world. For a minority, social media has deepened their understanding of reality. For those tired of having the real world mediated for them by a bunch of billionaires and traditional media corporations, the chaotic social media platforms have provided an opportunity to gain insights into a reality that was obscured before.
The paradox, of course, is that these new social media corporations are no less billionaire-owned, no less power-hungry, no less manipulative than the old media corporations. The AI algorithms they are rapidly refining are being used – under the rubric of “fake news” – to drive out this new marketplace in whistleblowing, in citizen journalism, in dissident ideas.
Social media corporations are quickly getting better at distinguishing the baby from the bathwater, so they can throw out the baby. After all, like their forebears, the new media platforms are in the business of business, not of waking us up to the fact that they are embedded in a corporate world that has plundered the planet for profit.
Much of our current social polarisation and conflict is not, as The Social Dilemma suggests, between those influenced by social media’s “fake news” and those influenced by corporate media’s “real news”. It is between, on the one hand, those who have managed to find oases of critical thinking and transparency in the new media and, on the other, those trapped in the old media model or those who, unable to think critically after a lifetime of consuming corporate media, have been easily and profitably sucked into nihilistic, online conspiracies.
Our mental black boxes
The third chapter gets to the nub of the problem without indicating exactly what that nub is. That is because The Social Dilemma cannot properly draw from its already faulty premises the necessary conclusion to indict a system in which the Netflix corporation that funded the documentary and is televising it is so deeply embedded itself.
For all its heart-on-its-sleeve anxieties about the “existential threat” we face as a species, The Social Dilemma is strangely quiet about what needs to change – aside from limiting our kids’ exposure to Youtube and Facebook. It is a deflating ending to the rollercoaster ride that preceded it.
Here I want to backtrack a little. The film’s first chapter makes it sound as though social media’s rewiring of our brains to sell us advertising is something entirely new. The second chapter treats our society’s growing loss of empathy, and the rapid rise in an individualistic narcissism, as something entirely new. But very obviously neither proposition is true.
Advertisers have been playing with our brains in sophisticated ways for at least a century. And social atomisation – individualism, selfishness and consumerism – have been a feature of western life for at least as long. These aren’t new phenomena. It’s just that these long-term, negative aspects of western society are growing exponentially, at a seemingly unstoppable rate.
We’ve been heading towards dystopia for decades, as should be obvious to anyone who has been tracking the lack of political urgency to deal with climate change since the problem became obvious to scientists back in the 1970s.
The multiple ways in which we are damaging the planet – destroying forests and natural habitats, pushing species towards extinction, polluting the air and water, melting the ice-caps, generating a climate crisis – have been increasingly evident since our societies turned everything into a commodity that could be bought and sold in the marketplace. We began on the slippery slope towards the problems highlighted by The Social Dilemma the moment we collectively decided that nothing was sacred, that nothing was more sacrosanct than our desire to turn a quick buck.
It is true that social media is pushing us towards an event horizon. But then so is climate change, and so is our unsustainable global economy, premised on infinite growth on a finite planet. And, more importantly, these profound crises are all arising at the same time.
There is a conspiracy, but not of the Pizzagate variety. It is an ideological conspiracy, of at least two centuries’ duration, by a tiny and ever more fabulously wealth elite to further enrich themselves and to maintain their power, their dominance, at all costs.
There is a reason why, as Harvard business professor Shoshana Zuboff points out, social media corporations are the most fantastically wealthy in human history. And that reason is also why we are reaching the human “event horizon” these Silicon Valley luminaries all fear, one where our societies, our economies, the planet’s life-support systems are all on the brink of collapse together.
The cause of that full-spectrum, systemic crisis is not named, but it has a name. Its name is the ideology that has become a black box, a mental prison, in which we have become incapable of imagining any other way of organising our lives, any other future than the one we are destined for at the moment. That ideology’s name is capitalism.
Waking up from the matrix
Social media and the AI behind it are one of the multiple crises we can no longer ignore as capitalism reaches the end of a trajectory it has long been on. The seeds of neoliberalism’s current, all-too-obvious destructive nature were planted long ago, when the “civilised”, industrialised west decided its mission was to conquer and subdue the natural world, when it embraced an ideology that fetishised money and turned people into objects to be exploited.
A few of the participants in The Social Dilemma allude to this in the last moments of the final chapter. The difficulty they have in expressing the full significance of the conclusions they have drawn from two decades spent in the most predatory corporations the world has ever known could be because their minds are still black boxes, preventing them from standing outside the ideological system they, like us, were born into. Or it could be because coded language is the best one can manage if a corporate platform like Netflix is going to let a film like this one reach a mass audience.
Tristan Harris tries to articulate the difficulty by grasping for a movie allusion: “How do you wake up from the matrix when you don’t know you’re in the matrix?” Later, he observes: “What I see is a bunch of people who are trapped by a business model, an economic incentive, shareholder pressure that makes it almost impossible to do something else.”
Although still framed in Harris’s mind as a specific critique of social media corporations, this point is very obviously true of all corporations, and of the ideological system – capitalism – that empowers all these corporations.
Another interviewee notes: “I don’t think these guys [the tech giants] set out to be evil, it’s just the business model.”
He is right. But “evilness” – the psychopathic pursuit of profit above all other values – is the business model for all corporations, not just the digital ones.
The one interviewee who manages, or is allowed, to connect the dots is Justin Rosenstein, a former engineer for Twitter and Google. He eloquently observes:
“We live in a world in which a tree is worth more, financially, dead than alive. A world in which a whale is worth more dead than alive. For so long as our economy works in that way, and corporations go unregulated, they’re going to continue to destroy trees, to kill whales, to mine the earth, and to continue to pull oil out of the ground, even though we know it is destroying the planet and we know it is going to leave a worse world for future generations.
“This is short-term thinking based on this religion of profit at all costs. As if somehow, magically, each corporation acting in its selfish interest is going to produce the best result. … What’s frightening – and what hopefully is the last straw and will make us wake up as a civilisation as to how flawed this theory is in the first place – is to see that now we are the tree, we are the whale. Our attention can be mined. We are more profitable to a corporation if we’re spending time staring at a screen, staring at an ad, than if we’re spending our time living our life in a rich way.”
Here is the problem condensed. That unnamed “flawed theory” is capitalism. The interviewees in the film arrived at their alarming conclusion – that we are on the brink of social collapse, facing an “existential threat” – because they have worked inside the bellies of the biggest corporate beasts on the planet, like Google and Facebook.
These experiences have provided most of these Silicon Valley experts with deep, but only partial, insight. While most of us view Facebook and Youtube as little more than places to exchange news with friends or share a video, these insiders understand much more. They have seen up close the most powerful, most predatory, most all-devouring corporations in human history.
Nonetheless, most of them have mistakenly assumed that their experiences of their own corporate sector apply only to their corporate sector. They understand the “existential threat” posed by Facebook and Google without extrapolating to the identical existential threats posed by Amazon, Exxon, Lockheed Martin, Halliburton, Goldman Sachs and thousands more giant, soulless corporations.
The Social Dilemma offers us an opportunity to sense the ugly, psychopathic face shielding behind the mask of social media’s affability. But for those watching carefully the film offers more: a chance to grasp the pathology of the system itself that pushed these destructive social media giants into our lives.
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Jonathan Cook won the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. His books include “Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East” (Pluto Press) and “Disappearing Palestine: Israel’s Experiments in Human Despair” (Zed Books). His website is www.jonathan-cook.net. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.
Former NATO commander General Wesley Clark earlier explained that the US underwent a post-9/11 transformation. A “policy coup” occurred.
With no public debate or acknowledgement, hardliners in Washington usurped power.
Days after 9/11, Clark learned from Pentagon commanders that plans were made to “destroy the governments in seven countries.”
Besides Afghanistan, Yemen, and partnering with Israeli wars on Palestinians, they include Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Iran.
The plan follows the 1990s Paul Wolfowitz doctrine, stating the following:
“Our first objective is to prevent the re-emergence of a new rival, either on the territory of the former Soviet Union or elsewhere…”
“This is a dominant consideration underlying the new regional defense strategy and requires that we endeavor to prevent any hostile power from dominating a region whose resources would, under consolidated control, be sufficient to generate global power.”
Adopted by both right wings of the US war party, his doctrine is all about waging endless wars by hot and other means for unchallenged control over all other nations, their resources and populations — what the scourge of imperialism is all about.
The Obama regime’s preemptive war on nonbelligerent Syria over nine years ago was and remains part of Washington’s aim for controlling the Middle East and its vast hydrocarbon resources — in cahoots with junior partner Israel and key NATO countries.
Russia’s legitimate involvement from September 30, 2015 to the present day — at the request of Syria’s government — turned the tide of battle from defeat of its forces to liberation of most of the country.
Illegal occupation of northern Syria by US and Turkish forces, along with Pentagon troops in the country’s south, prevent conflict resolution.
On Tuesday, Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu explained the game-changing effectiveness of Moscow’s Syrian operations, saying the following:
“A total of 865 gang leaders and more than 133,000 militants, including 4,500 militants from the Russian Federation and the CIS countries (US supported jihadists) have been eliminated,” adding:
“The operation in Syria has demonstrated the fundamentally increased capabilities of the Russian Armed Forces, the ability to successfully defend national interests in any part of the world, as well as the readiness to provide military assistance to its allies and partners.”
“A total of 98% of military police units’ personnel, 90% of Russian pilots, and 60% of sailors gained real combat experience” in Syria.
The most active phase of Russia’s military operations in the country was from September 30, 2015 – December 11, 2017.
Over 44,000 sorties were conducted to the present day. Long-range cruise missiles were used against high-priority targets.
Surface and sub-service vessels carried out around 100 strategic strikes against ISIS and other US supported jihadists — dozens more by long-range bombers to destroy their infrastructure.
Shoigu believes that the threat posed by ISIS in Syria is neutralized.
By invitation from Damascus, Russia established two military bases in Syria.
Its Khmeimim airbase facilities are suitable for all its combat and support aircraft.
Its Tartus naval base can accommodate numerous ships. Its state-of-the-art facilities include vessel servicing, maintenance and repair capabilities.
Russian operations prevented the Syrian Arab Republic from becoming a US vassal state.
Its involvement also helps maintain a regional balance of power.
Despite important strategic accomplishments in the past five years, war in the country continues because of foreign occupation.
A potentially important development occurred on Tuesday.
According to Southfront, “Russian troops broke through a US blockade and entered eastern Syria, erecting a checkpoint along a road in Hasaka,” adding:
“The Russian military convoy, despite the opposition of the Americans, managed to break through into the eastern part of northern Syria.”
Russia’s new military checkpoint blocks movement of US troops, weapons and equipment from Iraq into Syria.
It also blocks transport of stolen Syrian oil by the US into Turkey.
Separately on Thursday, the Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA) reported the following:
“In cooperation and coordination with Turkish regime-backed terrorists, the Turkish Grain Board (TMO) started to loot the wheat and barley crops which are stolen from (Syrian) farmers” — citing local sources, adding:
The Erdogan regime “opened…storehouses for this purpose after forcing farmers…to hand over their crops to centers run by terrorists and Turkish brokers in Ras al-Ayn area in Hasaka northern countryside…”
They’re smuggling them cross-border into Turkey.
Its occupation forces and terrorist proxies threatened to burn Syrian crops if farmers don’t comply with Ankara’s demands.
Shoigu’s claim about the elimination of ISIS in Syria was somewhat exaggerated.
According to AMN News on Wednesday, Syrian and Russian warplanes struck Daesh positions in Raqqa and Homs provinces to “weaken…the terrorist group’s resolve and…eliminate their remaining sleeper cells.”
A Final Comment
US sanctions war on Syria is all about wanting its people starved into submission — notably by last June’s so-called Caesar Syria Civilian Protection legislation (Caesar Act) that has nothing to do with protecting its people.
The measure threatens sanctions on nations, entities and individuals that maintain legitimate economic, financial, military, and intelligence relations with Damascus — their legal right under international law.
On Wednesday, the Trump regime imposed new sanctions on Syria.
According to a Treasury Department statement, 13 Syrian entities and individuals were blacklisted.
Targeted individuals include Syrian Central Bank governor Hazem Younes Karfoul and General Intelligence Directorate head Husam Muhammad Louka.
Targeted entities include telecommunications, tourism, and technology firms.
US war by hot and other means on the Syrian Arab Republic aims to eliminate its sovereign independence.
Russia’s involvement in the country is a powerful counterforce against US imperial objectives.
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Award-winning author Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at [email protected]. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG)
His new book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.”
Meng Wanzhou, CFO of Huawei Technologies, daughter of its founder, and permanent Canadian resident, has been under house arrest in Vancouver for almost two years now and is the object of extradition proceedings against her by the Government of Canada at the request of the USA.
These judicial actions against Meng are unjust, politically motivated by the USA, and contrary to the national interests of Canada. Consequently, our Coalition demands that the Government of Canada drop the extradition proceedings against Meng and release her at once.
We know that Meng’s arrest was unjust because she committed no crime in Canada. Rather, her company stands accused by the USA of violating its unilateral, and therefore illegal, economic sanctions against Iran. As the whole world realizes, in 2018, it was the Trump Administration which abrogated the JCPOA (the Iran Nuclear Agreement), which was enshrined in 2016 as an international treaty in UN Security Council Resolution 2231. The US government then re-instated coercive economic measures against Iran (and even increased them during the pandemic). Under the Charter of the United Nations, the only body in the world which can approve economic sanctions against a member state, is the UN Security Council.
What the US is trying to do, through the extradition of Meng, is to apply the concept of extraterritoriality to its international relations, that is, trying to force other countries to abide by domestic US laws.
The US indictment against Meng was approved by a court in New York State on Aug 22, 2018, and the US tried unsuccessfully following that date to pressure literally dozens of countries, through which Meng travelled, to arrest her. Every single country refused until Meng arrived in Vancouver on December 1, 2018 and Trudeau slavishly acceded to the allegedly “urgent” US extradition request.
Further indications that the arrest of Meng was politically-motivated are the facts that President Trump declared he might release Meng if he secured a favourable trade deal with China and that he told John Bolton that Meng was “a bargaining chip” in his negotiations in his trade war with China.
In addition, there is the underhanded attempt by the Five Eyes, which links five English-speaking remnants of the British Empire, namely the UK, the USA, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, in a formal security and intelligence network, to exclude Huawei Technologies, which is the jewel in the crown of the Chinese technology industry, from participation in the deployment of 5G internet networks in all of the Five Eyes countries. This underhanded attempt was clearly demonstrated in the letter of October 11, 2018, (just six weeks before Meng’s arrest) of US Senators Rubio and Wagner of the Select Intelligence Committee, advising Prime Minister Trudeau to exclude Huwaei Technologies from the deployment of 5G technology in Canada. The senators alleged that involving Huawei in Canada’s 5G network would compromise the security of the network and undercut the profitability of domestic US and Canadian tech firms. No proof was furnished by the senators that Huawei technology would provide spyware for China and Huawei firmly denies that proposition. And, on the other hand, since at least 2018, the US government has been pressuring its high tech firms routinely to build back doors for US intelligence agencies to access to their encrypted devices. It’s important to note that Huawei Technologies Canada employs 1300 highly-paid workers in Canada and is very heavily invested in contributing its advanced, made-in Canada, R&D expertise to Canada’s 5G network.
The arrest and extradition proceeding against Meng Wanzhou have contributed to a major deterioration in Canada-China relations. At various times following Meng’s arrest, China, which is Canada’s second-largest trading partner after the USA, banned importation of Canadian canola, pork, and lobsters. Since the livelihoods of thousands of Canadian farmers and fishers depend on the export of these products to China, they were severely affected. 30% of Canadian exports go to China, but Canadian exports only account for less than 2% of China’s imports. So the potential of even more harm is possible. In addition, the promising Chinese-Canadian collaboration on a Covid-19 vaccine collapsed.
Canada and its people paid dearly so far and gained nothing from Trudeau’s slavish acceptance of Trump’s request to arrest and extradite Meng to the USA. In what should have been the straw that broke the camel’s back, Trudeau failed to release Meng after Trump levelled a new 10% tariff on Canadian aluminum on Aug. 6, 2020, despite the signing of the USMCA free trade deal this year. The tariff was removed a month later.
On June 23, 2020, 17 former Canadian politicians and diplomats penned an open letter to Trudeau noting that a leading Canadian lawyer had delivered an opinion that it was entirely within the rule of law for the minister of immigration unilaterally to end the extradition proceedings against Meng. They noted the harm being done to Canada by the continuing prosecution of Meng as well as the arrest of the Two Michaels, and called for Meng’s release. However, the Trudeau government did not accede to their recommendation.
Understanding that the Trump Administration is trying to draw the Trudeau government into its campaign to villify China, to disrupt international cooperation, free trade, and multilateralism, all of which is rapidly leading to a new cold war, and possibly to actual military hostilities,
And recognizing now that it’s entirely within the discretion of Immigration Minister Medicino and in accordance with the rule of law for him to end extradition proceedings against Meng, the Hamilton Coalition To Stop The War is commencing a comprehensive, grass-roots, public campaign to free Meng. We would like to see a positive reset of Canada-China relations.
Therefore, we demand that the Government of Canada:
1) cease extradition proceedings against Meng and release her immediately;
2) protect Canadian jobs by permitting Huawei Technologies Canada to participate in the Canadian deployment of a 5G internet network;
3) initiate a long-overdue foreign policy review to develop an independent foreign policy for Canada.
Our campaign will include a parliamentary petition, virtual public meetings, virtual visits to MP’s office, letters to editors and op-ed pieces, and hopefully a Cross-Canada Day of Action on December 1, 2020, the second anniversary of Meng’s arrest.
Please join with us.
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This wisdom is as valid today as it was 2,500 years ago. Wars go on and on. They are exactly the anti-dote of sustainability. Though, they may be the only “sustainability” modern mankind knows – endless destruction, killing, shameless exploitation of Mother Earth and its sentient beings, including humans.
Yes, we are hellbent towards “sustainably”, destroying our planet and all its living beings, with wars and conflicts and shameless exploitation of Mother Earth – and the people who have peacefully inhabited her lands for thousands of years.
All for greed, and more greed. Greed and destruction are certainly “unsustainable” features of our western “civilization”. Not to worry, in the grand scheme of things, Mother Earth will survive. She will cleanse herself by shaking and shedding off the destroyers, the annihilators – mankind. Only the brave will survive. Indigenous people, who have abstained from abject consumerism and instead worshipped Mother Earth and expressed their gratitude to her daily gifts. There are not many such societies left on our planet.
In the meantime, we lie about the sustainability we live in. We lie to ourselves and to the public at large around us. We make believe sustainability is our cause – and we use the term freely and constantly. Most of us don’t even know what it is supposed to mean. “Sustainability” and “sustainable” anything and everything have become slogans; or household words.
Such buzz-words, repeated over and over again, are made for promoting ideas, and for bending people’s minds to believe in something that isn’t.
We pretend and say that we work sustainably, we develop – just about anything we touch – sustainably, and we project the future in a most sustainable way. That’s what we are made to believe by those who coined this most fabulously clever, but untrue term. It is the 101 of a psycho-factory.
As Voltaire so pointedly said, “Those who can make you believe absurdities; can make you commit atrocities.”
Sustainability. What does it mean?
It has about as many interpretations as there are people who use the term – namely none specific. It sounds good. Because it has become – well, a household word, ever since the World Bank invented, or rather diverted the term for “sustainable development” in the 1990s, in connection, first, with Global Warming, then with Climate Change – and now back to both.
Imagine! – There was a time at the World Bank – and possibly other institutions, when every page of almost every report had to contain at least once the word “sustainable”, or “sustainability”. Yes, that’s the extent of insanity propagated then – and today, it follows on a global scale, more sophisticated – the corporate world, the mega-polluters make it their buzz-word – our business is sustainable, and we with our products promote sustainability – worldwide.
In fact, sustainable, sustainable growth, sustainable development, sustainable this and sustainable that – was originally coined by the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), also known as the Rio de Janeiro Earth Summit, the Rio Summit, the Rio Conference, and the Earth Summit – held in Rio de Janeiro from 3 to 14 June in 1992.
The summit is intimately linked to the subsequent drive on Global Warming and Climate Change. It exuded projections of sea level risings, of disappearing cities and land strips, like Florida and New York City, as well as parts of California and many coastal areas and towns in Africa and Asia. It painted endless disasters, droughts, floods and famine as their consequence, if we – mankind – didn’t act. This first of a series of UN environment / climate summits is also closely connected with the UN Agendas 2021 and 2030. The UN Agenda 2030 incorporates or uses as main vehicle – the 17 “Sustainable Development Goals (SDG)”.
In a special UN Conference in 2016, Bill Gates was able to introduce into the 16th SDG “Promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, provide access to justice for all and build effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels”, the 9th of the 12 sub-targets – “By 2030, provide legal identity for all, including birth registration.”This is precisely what Bill Gates needs to introduce digital IDs – most likely injected via vaccines, beginning with children from developing countries – i.e. the poor and defenseless are time and again used as guinea pigs.
They won’t know what happens to them. First trials are underway in one or several rural schools in Bangladesh – see this and this.
These 17 sustainable development goals, are all driving towards a Green Agenda, or as some prominent “left” US Democrat-political figures call it, the New Green Deal. It is nothing else but capitalism painted Green, at a horrendous cost for mankind and for the resources of the world. But it is sold under the label of creating a more sustainable world.
Never mind, the enormous amounts of hydrocarbons – the key polluter itself – that will be needed to convert our “black” economy into a Green economy. Simply because we have not developed effective and efficient alternative sources of energy. The main reasons for this are the strong and politically powerful hydrocarbon lobbies.
The energy cost (hydrocarbon-energy from oil and coal) of producing solar panels and windmills is astounding. So, today’s electric cars – Tesla and Co. – are still driven by hydrocarbon produced electricity – plus their batteries made from lithium destroy pristine landscapes, like huge natural salt flats in Bolivia, Argentina, China and elsewhere. The use of these sources of energy is everything but “sustainable”.
According to a study by the European Association for Battery Electric Vehicles commissioned by the European Commission (EC), “The ‘Well-to-Tank’ energy efficiency (from the primary energy source to the electrical plug), taking into account the energy consumed by the production and distribution of the electricity, is estimated at around 37%.“ See this. See also Michael Moore’s film “Planet of the Humans”.
Hydrogen power is promoted as the panacea of future energy resources. But is it really? Hydrocarbons or fossil fuels today amount to 80% of all energy used worldwide. This is non-renewable and highly polluting energy. Today to produce hydrogen is still mostly dependent on fossil fuels, similar to electricity.
As long as we have purely profit-fueled hydrocarbon lobbies that prevent governments collectively to invest in alternative energy research, like solar energy of the 2nd Generation, i.e. derived from photosynthesis (what plants do), hydrogen production uses more fossil fuels than using straight gas or petrol-derived fuels. Therefore hydrogen, say a hydrogen-driven car, maybe as much as 40% – 50% less efficient than would be a straight electric car. The burden on the environment can be considerably higher. Thus, not sustainable with today’s technology.
To enhance your belief in their slogans of “sustainability”, they put up some windmills or solar cells in the “backyard” of their land- and landscape devastating coal mines. They will be filmed for propaganda purposes along with their “sustainable” buzz-words.
The World Economic Forum (WEF) and the IMF are fully committed to the idea of the New Green Deal. For them it is not unfettered neoliberal capitalism – and extreme consumerism emanating from it, that is the cause for the world’s environmental and societal breakdown, but the use of polluting energies, like hydrocarbons. They seem to ignore the enormous fossil fuel use to convert to a green energy-driven economy. Or, are they really not aware? Capitalism is OK, we just have to paint it green (see this, and this.
Let’s look at what else is “sustainable”- or not.
Water use and privatization – Coca Cola tells us their addictive and potentially diabetes-causing soft drinks are produced “sustainably”. They tout sustainability as their sales promotion all over the world. “Our business is sustainable from A to Z. Coco Cola follows a business culture of sustainability.”
They use enormous amounts of pristine clean drinking water – and so does Nestlé to further promote its number One business branch, bottled water. Nestlé has overtaken Coca Cola as the world number One in bottled water. They both use primarily subterranean sources of drinking water – least costly and often rich in minerals. Both of them have made or are about to sign agreements with Brazil’s President to exploit the world’s largest freshwater aquifer, the Guarani, underlaying Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay. They both proclaim sustainability.
Both Coca Cola and Nestlé have horror stories in the Global South (i.e. India, Brazil, Mexico and others), as well as in the Global North. Nestlé is in a battle with the municipality of the tiny Osceola Township, in Michigan, where residents complain the Swiss company’s water extraction techniques are ruining the environment. Nestlé pays the State of Michigan US$ 200 to extract 130 million gallons of water per year (2018).
Through over-exploitation both in the Global South and the Global North, especially in the summer, the water table sinks to unattainable levels for the local populations – which are deprived of their water source. Protesting with their government or city officials is often in vain. Corruption is all overarching. – Nothing sustainable here.
These are just two examples of privatizing water for bottling purposes. Privatization of public water supply on a much larger scale is at the core of the issue, carried out mostly in developing countries (the Global South), mainly by French, British, Spanish and US water corporations.
Privatization of water is a socially most unsustainable feat, as it deprives the public, especially the poor, from access to their legitimate water resources. Water is a public good – and water is also a basic human right. On 28 July 2010, through Resolution 64/292, the United Nations General Assembly explicitly recognized the human right to water and sanitation and acknowledged that clean drinking water and sanitation are essential to the realization of all human rights.
The public water use of Nestlé and Coca Cola – and many others, mind you, doesn’t even take account of the trillions of used plastic bottles ending up as uncollected and non-recycled waste, in the sea, fields, forests and on the road sides. Worldwide less than 8% of plastic bottles are recycled. Therefore, nothing of what Nestlé and Coca Cola practice and profess is sustainable. It’s an outright lie.
Petrol industry – BP with its green business emblem, makes believe – visually, every time you pass a BP station – that they are green. PB proclaims that their oil exploration and exploitation is green and environmentally sustainable.
Let’s look at reality. The so far considered largest marine oil spill in the history of the petroleum industry, was the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. It was a giant industrial disaster that started on April 20, 2010 and lasted to 19 September 2010, in the Gulf of Mexico on the BP-operated Macondo Prospect, spilling about 780,000 cubic meter of raw petroleum over an area of up to 180,000 square kilometers. BP promised a full cleanup. By February 2015 they declared task completed. In reality, two thirds of the spilled oil still remains in the sea and as toxic tar junks along the sea shore and beaches; they have not been cleaned up – and may never be removed. – Where is the sustainability of their promise? Another outright lie.
BP and other oil corporations also have horrendous human rights records – just about everywhere they operate, mostly in Africa and the Middle East, but also in Asia. The abrogation of human rights is also an abrogation of sustainability.
In this essay BP is used as an example for the petrol industry. None of the petrol giants operate sustainably anywhere in the world, and least where water table-destructive fracking is practiced.
Sustainable mining – is another flagrant lie. But it sells well to the blinded people. And most of the civilized world is blinded. Unfortunately. They want to continue in their comfort zone which includes the use of copper, gold and other precious metals and stones, rare earths for ever more sophisticated electronic gear, gadgets and especially military electronically guided precision weaponry – as well as hydrocarbons in one way or another.
Sustainable mining of anything unrenewable is a Big Oxymoron. Anything you take from the earth that is non-renewable is by its nature not sustainable. It’s simply gone. Forever. In addition to the raw material not being renewable, the environmental damage caused by mining – especially gold and copper – is horrendous. Once a mine is exploited in a short 30- or 40-years’ concession, the mining company leaves mountains of contaminated waste, soil and water behind – that takes a thousand years or more to regenerate.
Yet, the industry’s palaver is “sustainability”, and the public buys it.
In fact, our civilization’s sustainability is zero. Aside from the pollution, poisoning and intoxication that we leave around us, our mostly western civilization has used natural resources at the rate of 3 to 4 times in excess of what Mother Earth so generally provides us with. We, the west, had passed the threshold of One in the mid-sixties. In Africa and most of Asia, the rate of depletion is still way below the factor of One, on average somewhere between 0.4 and 0.6.
“Sustainability” is a flash-word, has no meaning in our western civilization. It is pure deception – self-deception, so we may continue with our unsustainable ways of life. That’s what profit-bound capitalism does. It lives today with ever more consumerism, more luxury for the ever-fewer oligarchs – on the resources of tomorrow.
The sustainability of everything is not only a cheap slogan, it’s a ruinous self-deception. A Global Great Reset is indeed needed – but not according to the methods of the IMF and WEF. They would just shovel more resources and assets from the bottom 99.99% to the top few, painting the “new” capitalism a shiny bright green – and fooling the masses. We, The People, must take
The Reset in our own hands, with consciousness and responsibility.
So, We the People, forget sustainable but act responsibly.
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This article was originally published on New Eastern Outlook.
Peter Koenig is an economist and geopolitical analyst. He is also a water resources and environmental specialist. He worked for over 30 years with the World Bank and the World Health Organization around the world in the fields of environment and water. He lectures at universities in the US, Europe and South America. He writes regularly for online journals such as Global Research; ICH; New Eastern Outlook (NEO) and more. 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. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization.
A grand jury in Louisville, Kentucky has legally absolved of criminal responsibility the police officers, Jonathan Mattingly and Myles Cogrove, involved in the shooting death of 26-year old Breonna Taylor, who was gunned down in her home on March 13.
A Republican state attorney general, Daniel Cameron, called a press conference to inform the world that as of September 23 no one would be indicted for the death of Taylor.
The attorney general suggested that her friend in the apartment with Taylor, Kenneth Walker, was responsible for her death due to the fact that he fired in self-defense against the police. Only in relationship to a neighbor in the building at another unit, where no one was injured, was a charge of reckless discharge of a firearm leveled against another police officer, Brett Hankinson, who was already terminated from the Louisville Police Department (LPD).
This action by the authorities in Kentucky was met with immediate condemnation in Louisville and across the United States. The family of Taylor rejected immediately the grand jury decision and demanded the release of all deliberations of the panel in order to uncover the actual evidence presented.
Bianca Austin, an Aunt of Taylor, read a statement at a September 25 press conference in Louisville saying:
“Know this: I am an angry Black woman. Angry because our Black women keep dying at the hands of police officers … you robbed the world of a queen…. I never had faith in Daniel Cameron to begin with. I knew he was too inexperienced with a job of this caliber. I knew he chose to be at the wrong side of the law. My hope was that he knew he had the power to do the right thing. That he had the power to start the healing of this city, that he had the power to help mend over 400 years of oppression. What he helped me realize is that it will always be us against them. That we are never safe,” she said.” (See this)
Attorney General Cameron made the claim that the testimony from one witness asserting that the police had announced themselves prior to the raid on the apartment was compelling enough to discount that the raid was unannounced. Many other witnesses refuting the allegation saying there was no warning by police of an imminent breaking down of the apartment door.
Prior to this statement by Cameron, many reports indicated that the police entered the complex on the basis of a “no knock” warrant. Such police intrusions have been frequent for many decades particularly related to the so-called “war on drugs” waged against the African American communities nationally.
On September 28, a judge ordered that the proceeding of the grand jury be made public. The Attorney General’s office requested additional time to release the materials in order to cover over, known as redactions, of what they described as “personal information.”
One report on the order read in part as follows:
“Attorney General Daniel Cameron wants more time before releasing grand jury recordings to redact personal information. A judge ordered Monday (September 28) that Kentucky’s attorney general must release recordings of proceedings in the Breonna Taylor case, in which one officer was indicted, but not for her death. Cameron’s office said Monday that it would release recordings by Wednesday at noon, but newly obtained court documents show a motion for extension was filed sometime on Tuesday. In the motion, Cameron asks for another week in order to redact personal information. He says it will help protect private citizens and witnesses.”
Nationwide Response to the Grand Jury Whitewash
Demonstrations erupted almost immediately in Louisville and other cities after news of the grand jury decision reached the public. Many of these marches and rallies were led by African American women. Two days later on Saturday, September 26, the March for Black Women (M4BW) held rallies in many cities including Denver and Detroit.
In Louisville on September 23, the police declared an unlawful assembly after marchers wanted to demonstrate in the streets and not on the sidewalks. A curfew was imposed on the city while many people were beaten and arrested on false charges. Additional marches, civil disobedience and other actions were held from New York to California bringing thousands into the streets and highways.
Denver, Colorado and Buffalo, New York witnessed attacks on demonstrators by motorists plowing into the crowds just hours after the announcement of the grand jury decision. Over the last few weeks in the U.S., there have been mobilizations by right-wing supporters of President Donald Trump, some of these manifestations result in violence due to provocations by the neo-fascists groups suggesting they are present to defend the police and private property.
A television news story reported on the situation in upstate New York saying:
“Graphic video taken by ABC affiliate station WKBW-TV in Buffalo showed a maroon and white king-cab pickup truck drive directly into a group of demonstrators who pounded on the side of the truck and yelled for the driver to stop just before a protester on a bicycle was hit. The footage shows the truck speeding away as protesters on foot chased after it.” (See this)
Georgia state troopers and National Guard soldiers fired teargas at demonstrators in Atlanta as they expressed their anger at the failure of the Louisville authorities to indict the police in the Taylor execution. 11 people were taken into custody in Atlanta which has seen numerous incidents of police violence after the killing of George Floyd on May 25 and later the gunning down by a white patrolman of Rayshard Brooks at a Wendy’s restaurant on June 12. The Georgia Bureau of Investigation (GBI) announced that it has completed its investigation involving the case on September 29. Former office Garrett Rolfe has been charged with felony murder in the killing of Brooks.
State officials in Georgia are known for the deliberate disenfranchisement and disregard for the city of Atlanta and other municipalities highly populated by African Americans. Governor Brian Kemp, who came into office after a contested and controversial 2018 election against former state legislative Democratic leader Tracey Abrams, has nullified any mitigation efforts imposed by municipalities to stem the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic, which has had a devastating impact on the state.
For two days in the motor city, the Detroit Will Breathe (DWB) coalition called emergency demonstrations to denounce the vindication of police in the death of Breonna Taylor. On the evening of September 23, hundreds gathered outside Detroit police headquarters downtown for a rally and then march through the streets while chanting the name of Breonna Taylor and other anti-racist, Black Lives Matter and anti-police brutality slogans. There was another similar demonstration again on September 25.
Police Killings of African Americans Documented
A mapping website which chronicles the number of African Americans and others killed by police in the U.S. has revealed the stark reality facing at least 40 million Blacks along with millions more belonging to various races and nationalities. In most cases the police involved are never investigated let alone prosecuted.
Black Enterprise magazine noted in a September article that:
“For its analysis, CBS News used data from Mapping Police Violence, a comprehensive database of killings by police officers and The Washington Post. The data, featured in a slideshow, described the killings of 85 Black people this year between January and April. The data also showed that at least one Black person was killed by police every week from Jan. 1 through Aug. 31.” (See this)
Many more African Americans are joining gun clubs as their security becomes even more jeopardized by the racist social atmosphere in various regions of the U.S. Irrespective of the outcome of the national elections on November 3, undoubtedly these racial incidents will increase.
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Abayomi Azikiwe is the editor of Pan-African News Wire. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.
Today will be remembered as a grand expose. It was a direct, pointed accusation at the intentions of the US imperium which long for the scalp of the WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. For WikiLeaks, it was a smouldering triumph, showing that the entire mission against Assange, from the start, has been a political one. The Australian publisher faces the incalculably dangerous prospect of 17 charges under the US Espionage Act and one under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. Stripped to its elements, the indictment is merely violence kitted out in the vestment of sham legality. The rest is politics.
Witness statements were read from a veritable who’s who of courageous investigative journalism (Patrick Cockburn, Andy Worthington, Stefania Maurizi and Ian Cobain) and an assortment of legal freight from Guy Goodwin-Gill, professor of law at the University of New South Wales, Robert Boyle, well versed in the dark practices of grand juries and Jameel Jaffer of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University.
These statements, pointing to the value of the WikiLeaks publications, the care taken in releasing them, and the terrifying prospects for press freedom, deserve separate treatment. But Wednesday’s grand show was stolen by two anonymous witnesses, occasioned by a change of plans. Originally scheduled for Thursday, testimony of the witnesses from the Spanish security firm UC Global S.L. were moved a day forward. Both speak to the aims and ambitions of the company’ owner and director, David Morales, who passed information on Assange and his meetings with allies and associates to the US intelligence service while the Australian was resident in the Ecuadorean Embassy in London. Judge Vanessa Baraitser had relented on the issue of keeping their anonymity: to have not observed the convention would have been a mark of disrespect for the Spanish court.
Their material is part of a current investigation into Morales being conducted by a magistrate of the Audiencia Nacional court. That process was instigated at the behest of Assange’s legal team, whose filed criminal complaint alleges breaches of privacy and the violation of attorney-client privilege, amongst other charges.
Illegal agreements are born
Witness #1 informed the court of a man determined: Morales “showed at times a real obsession in relatio to monitoring and recording the lawyers who met with the ‘guest’ (Julian Assange) because ‘our American friends’ were requesting it.”
The first witness added stitching to the account linking the UC Global with US intelligence. In July 2016, with UC Global already contracted and providing security services to the Ecuadorean embassy, Morales “travelled to a security sector trade fair in Las Vegas, which I wished to accompany him”. This would not be. Morales “insisted he had to travel alone. On this trip, Mr Morales showcased the company UC Global in the Las Vegas security sector trade fair.”
What followed was UC Global obtaining “a flashy contract, personally managed by David Morales, with the company Las Vegas Sands, which was owned by the tycoon Sheldon Adelson, whose proximity to Donald Trump is public knowledge (at the time Trump was the presidential candidate).” Morales’s point of contact at Las Vegas Sands was its chief of security, Zohar Lahav. Lahav is also the subject of interest for the Audiencia Nacional, which has asked the US Department of Justice to seek a statement from him. The investigating judge, José de la Mata, is keen to examine details of the Morales-Lahav association and whether their meetings involved discussing information illegally obtained from Assange.
UC Global was hired to provide security services to Queen Miri, the luxury vessel owned by Adelson.
“The contract did not make sense,” claimed the witness. Morales seemed to be overegging the pudding. “The most striking thing about it was that he boat had its own security, which consisted of a sophisticated security detail, and that the contract consisted in adding an additional person, in this case David Morales, for a very short period of time, through which David Morales would receive an elevated sum.”
Thrilled at getting the contract, Morales was in celebratory mood, gathering employees in the Jerez company office to say that “we have moved up and from now on we will be playing in the big league”. What did “big league” mean? Morales, replying to the query from the first witness, claimed that “he had switched over to ‘the dark side’ referring to cooperating with US authorities, and as a result of that collaboration, ‘the Americans will get us contracts all over the world’.” In 2017, Morales asked for a secure phone and encrypted computer to communicate with his American contacts.
Along with news of the contract came an uncomfortable revelation: “that we had entered into illegal agreements with US authorities to supply them with sensitive information about Mr Assange and [Ecuadorean President] Rafael Correa, given that UC Global was responsible for the embassy security where Mr Assange was located.” As a result of this parallel agreement, “reports would also be sent to ‘the dark side’.” Morales made regular trips to the US to facilitate this, “principally to New York but also Chicago and Washington” where he would “talk with ‘our American friends’.” The first witness pressed Morales at points who these “‘American friends’ were”. “US intelligence,” came the reply.
When confronted by the first witness that UC Global should not be engaged in such activities, Morales huffed. He would open his shirt in defiance, and claim with brio that he was “a mercenary, through and through”.
The first witness also testified that Morales’s trips to see his “American friends” increased with frequency in 2017. Trump’s victory seemed to be the catalyst. By June or July 2017, “Morales began to develop a sophisticated information collection system outside the embassy.” He asked employees “physically inside the embassy to intensify and deepen their information collection.” The internal and external cameras of the embassy were to be changed. Morales, according to the first witness, had also “instructed a team to travel regularly to London to collect the camera recordings.”
Tasks forces and surveillance
Witness #2, an IT expert, told the Old Bailey how he was asked to “form a task force of workers at our headquarters in Jerez” between June and July 2017. “The purpose of this unit was to execute, from a technical perspective, the capture, systematization and processing of information collected at the embassy that David Morales requested.” Witness #2 was responsible for “executing David Morales’s orders, with technical means that existed in the embassy and additional measures that were installed by order of Morales, in addition to the information gathered in the embassy by the UC Global employees who were physically present in the diplomatic mission.”
The second witness sensed inconsistencies. Morales told the task force that the contract with Ecuador necessitated the replacement of the embassy’s cameras every three years. “This made no sense because the contract had been in force for longer than three years and the clause had not been fulfilled to date.” While he was unaware of the clause, the second witness considered that the circuit operating CCTV security cameras at the time “were sufficient to provide physical security against intrusion inside the building.”
But Morales was adamant. Security cameras with concealed audio recording capabilities were to be acquired and installed. “Because of this, and in accordance with the orders of David Morales, who claimed that all of this was necessary to fulfil the contract, I sought providers for these types of cameras, insisting in, to the extent possible, concealing audio-recording capabilities.”
The extent of Morales’s zeal alarmed the second witness. “Around June 2017, while I was sourcing providers for the new camera equipment, David Morales instructed that the cameras should allow streaming capabilities so that ‘our friends’ in the United States’, as Morales explicitly put it, would be able to gain access to the interior of the embassy in real time. This request alarmed me greatly, and in order to impede the request, I claimed that remote access via streaming via the camera circuit was not technically achievable.” The witness did not “want to collaborate in an illegal act of this magnitude.” He noted Morales’s wish to have the entire embassy bugged and suggested that the purpose of installing microphones had been “per the request of the United States” to target Assange’s defence team.
Stunned by its illegality, the second witness tried to dissuade Morales by suggesting that Assange would detect the recording facilities. But in early December 2017, the cameras, enabled with audio-recording means, were installed. When asked by Assange and the Political Counselor Maria Eugenia whether the new devices recorded sound, the second witness had his orders: to not “share information about the system and to deny that the cameras were recording audio.” Once in place, “the cameras began to record sound regularly so every meeting that the asylee held was captured.”
The second witness was also heavy on detail in various specific operations designed to frustrate Assange’s own countering efforts. He had been asked by Morales in January 2018 to place rigid stickers on the external embassy windows at the top left hand corner. It transpired that this seemingly idiosyncratic exercise had one express purpose: to neutralise the disruptions to recording conversations caused by Assange’s white noise machine, which “produced a vibration in the window that stopped the sound being extracted via the laser microphone, which US intelligence had installed outside.” The stickers served to eliminate the vibration, enabling the laser microphones to “extract conversations.”
Morales had also impressed upon the IT specialist that he install a microphone in the PVC folder of the fire extinguisher in the embassy meeting room used by Assange. The same was done for “the toilet at the end of the embassy” as it had become a venue of “strategic” importance: Assange “who suspected that he was the subject of espionage, maintained many of his meetings there in order to preserve confidentiality.”
While a whole range of targets were of interest, the Spanish former judge and member of Assange’s legal team, Balthasar Garzón, was particularly important. “The security guards at the embassy were requested to search for evidence of travels to Argentina and Russia in Garzón’s passport pages, which were photographed.”
Nappies, contemplated kidnappings and proposed poisonings
Such behaviour at the embassy conformed to a consistent pattern of instructions that verged on the comic and grotesque. On one occasion, recalled Witness #2, Morales had asked him to “steal a nappy of a baby which according to the company’s security personnel deployed at the embassy, regularly visited Mr Assange.” The pilfering of the nappy was for reasons of identifying whether the baby was, in fact “a child of the asylee.” It was “the Americans”, Morales claimed, “who wanted to establish paternity.”
Not content merely with establishing paternity, Morales’s “American friends” were also suffering from states of desperation, keen to bring Assange’s stay in the embassy to an end. According to the second witness, “the Americans were desperate [in December 2017] and that they had even suggested that more extreme measures should be employed against the ‘guest’ to put an end to the situation of Assange’s permanence in the embassy.” Suggestions were made to Morales by his US contacts: the door of the embassy would be left open; an “accident” could be claimed for covering an operation “which would allow persons to enter from outside the embassy and kidnap the asylee”. Another option was put on the table: “the possibility of poisoning Mr Assange”. Such suggestions, Witness #2 claimed, “shocked” the employees, who “commented amongst ourselves that the course that Morales had embarked on was beginning to become dangerous.”
The eviction and arrest of Assange followed. Witness #1 informed Assange’s legal team that Morales had “betrayed both the terms of the contract and the trust that had been given to him by the Government of Ecuador, by systematically handing over information to US intelligence agencies.” He came to realise that information on the security of the embassy and Rafael Correa had been sold to “the enemy, the United States, which is the reason I put an end to my professional relationship with him.”
These revelations excited Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg, having already etched his name into legal history at these proceedings with supporting testimony. In his optimistic view, such evidence of surveillance by the CIA of Assange’s conversations with his legal team “and everyone else” in the embassy, along with suggestions of poisoning and kidnapping, might mean him walking free. “That’s essentially the same information that ended my case and confronted [President Richard] Nixon with impeachment, leading to his resignation!” Convincing to Ellsberg it may be, but will it sway the icy temperament of Judge Vanessa Baraitser?
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Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research and Asia-Pacific Research. Email: [email protected]
Military personnel outnumber civilian scientists in the United States government’s Operation Warp Speed vaccine program. With the military so heavily involved in the distribution of this vaccine, is it any surprise that most Americans don’t want anything to do with it?
An organizational chart obtained by Stat shows, raising concerns about whether military officials are qualified to lead the massive public health campaign. The military is used for war. Rolling it out to distribute a rushed vaccine signals one thing to the public if you’re brave enough to admit it: this vaccine distribution is a war on the public perpetrated by the government. Wake up.
This vaccine won’t be voluntary by any sense of the word. You don’t have to take it, but if you don’t, you won’t be able to eat, buy food, pay rent, or leave your house that will be taken from you if you cannot pay the mortgage because you refuse the vaccine. That doesn’t sound like anyone will have much of a choice.
This vaccine could be ready before the election, however, it may not be. Political chaos surrounding the elections is all a part of this vaccine agenda. The goal is to have everyone tracked, traced, monitored, and under authoritarian control. The goal is the New World Order.
The Health and Human Service’s $300 million “pandemic-related” ad campaign (propaganda rollout) touched off an outcry, and rightfully so, after Politico reported leaked details. Among the concerns were its funding sources: Food and Drug Administration contributed $15 million for pre-campaign work, while most of the program’s $300 million budget was requisitioned from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention funds appropriated by Congress,Politico revealed.
Additionally, the Ohio national guard has been called upon to help provide “security” for the presidential debates. Around 300 members will be sent to the city to “ensure a safe and secure environment for those attending Tuesday’s presidential debate in Cleveland.”
The military will be increasingly used in the coming months and it’s rollout will be seen as a way to provide peace and safety. Please remain vigilant and prepared. Stay alert and know all the possibilities of what could be coming, as it’ll give you an idea of the additional preps that will be needed. As of right now, refuse to live in fear, and make sure you can defend yourself and your family, especially if you intend to deny the vaccine.
Changes are coming, so prepare and stay alert.
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Good news or bad, he dominates the headlines and front pages of newspapers, he leads tele-vision coverage, and populates the shelves of book shops. He doesn’t seem to mind what is said about him as long as he is in our faces and on our minds.
His latest intrusions involve news of his failure to pay US taxes for a decade, accusations of drug use he has levelled at Democratic presidential rival Joe Biden, charges that the Democrats are seeking to open US borders to migrants and claims that opponents of his Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett are motivated by anti-Catholic bias rather than her ultra-conservatism. Trump castigates scientists who contradict his untruthful claims about the corona virus and relishes unwelcome revelations and reports about him so he can reply on Twitter or elsewhere, keeping himself in the news.
He has continued to claim, falsely, that the results of the November 3rd election will be skewed because millions will have voted by mail. Trump has hammered home this line for more than a year because more Democrats than Republicans generally vote by mail. This time round 69 per cent of Biden supporters plan to vote by mail as compared to 19 per cent of Trump backers who intend to cast ballots at the polling stations despite risks posed by COVID-19. Trump does not care whether votes catch COVID. He even courts contagion by campaigning in halls where hundreds of fans gather without masks or social distancing. Of course, those nearest him wear masks.
Writing in the Guardian former US secretary of labour Robert Reich argues that the ongoing presidential election campaign does not feature differences over issues and divergent policies. Instead, he says, “The central fight is over Donald J. Trump”.
Reich divides the US public — and electorate — into Trump’s backers and opponents, “us and them”, Trump Nation and Anti-Trump Nation. Trump does not consider himself president of all US citizens only of his backers. In his view people who do not support him live in a “different country.”
While I agree with Reich in principle, I have my own take on the division. I prefer to classify the sides as the “Trump Cult” and the “Anti-Trump Camp.” Unfortunately for the US, they do live in the same country.
Adherents of the Trump cult are, like all cultists, devoted to an individual, blind to his failings, faults and flagrant misdeeds and are prepared to go to great lengths, including adopting violence, to see him reelected. Members of the Anti-Trump Camp are motivated to oust him due to his character, behaviour and policies. They operate as traditional political activists determined to rid the US and the world of Trump.
Trump cultists are overwhelmingly white working, lower middle class and middle class, although oligarchs finance Trump as well as vote for him. Many Trump cultists are religious and lack higher education. Few Blacks, Latinos and Asians vote for him. Anti-Trump campers come from all economic groupings, are more educated, less devout, and include large proportions of Blacks, Latinos and Asians.
The motivations of Trump cultists are largely defensive and negative. This is why they are attracted to Trump, who is defensive and delights in negativity. Cultists are defensive because they wish to maintain White, Christian rule in a country where non-Whites are growing in number and religious observance is in decline. In recent years, Blacks, in particular, have been demanding equality and power sharing. Trump cultists feel detached not only from Washington, the US capital, but also from lawmakers in their home states. They are fundamentally anti-government and wrongly believe Republicans intend to downsize government. They resent local, state, and national interference in their lives.
Trump cultists resent the influential elite, which has dominated US political, economic, social, educational and scientific life for many decades. Cultists empathise with Trump’s resentment of his predecessor Barack Obama who, although identifying as Black, belongs to the elite. Obama’s gentlemanly appearance, graceful manners, and Harvard law degree have gained him admission to the elite while crude and rude Trump can never hope to secure membership.
The fact that Black Obama has succeeded where White Trump has failed has deepened his resentment. An envious Trump is doing his best to erase Obama’s presidential legacy and is applauded by his “base” of supporters for doing so. They also back his drive to reverse liberal legislation regulating greenhouse gas emissions and guns because they argue such measures
Anti-Trump campers are both defensive and positive. They understand the federal government requires reform but must be protected. They are motivated by the need to rescue, protect, and maintain economic and social gains made by liberal and progressive legislation and policies in recent decades. These include health care for poorer sections of the population, the right to abortion, equal rights for all, controlling weaponry, and dealing with climate change.
The basic division of the country did not begin with Trump. It has existed since the US was founded. He has simply exploited it — loudly and persistently — to his advantage. Maps of red (Republican) and blue (Democratic) states show that Trump cultists are dominant in the south, parts of the midwest, and the north central states while the Anti-Trump camp is located in the northeast, west coast, Colorado and New Mexico. A few purple states have mixtures of the rival parties.
The cultist population of red states, the majority of states, largely inhabits rural areas and outer suburbs of major cities and towns while campers in the blue states are concentrated in urban areas and inner suburbs.
While Trump accuses Anti-Trump campers of being “radical leftists,”Trump cultists are, in fact, radical revanchists who seek to revert to a fictitious simpler society of decades ago when Whites enjoyed superiority without challenge and to “return” to “greatness” the US never attained.
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Featured image: President Trump at a July briefing at Southern Command Headquarters in Miami.
“Implementation of the current draconian measures that are so extremely restrict fundamental rights can only be justified if there is reason to fear that a truly, exceptionally dangerous virus is threatening us. Do any scientifically sound data exist to support this contention for COVID-19? I assert that the answer is simply, no.”
Schools started closing down. Most businesses outside a few exceptional cases were forced to shut down. All sports and entertainment events were also closed. Land borders were closed. [2]
This was in response to SARS-CoV-2, a nasty enemy so menacing that it has in less than a year infected over 32,000,000 people, and is on the verge of claiming one million lives! Medical practitioners everywhere scrambling to find solutions while regular citizens mull about at home, many terrified about where all this might lead. [3]
Meanwhile, there are dissident voices throughout America and Europe who see the course of the germ is not quite as dangerous as the World Health Organization (WHO), politicians and mainstream media are leading them to believe. Moreover, the radical measures taken to protect the public are not having an impact, and in some cases even having a detrimental effect.[4]
These voices are rarely heard in mainstream media, and have in fact been banished in Facebook and other social media. [5]
This week, on the Global Research News Hour we begin part one of an epic series exploring this virus, what it does, what measures are being taken to deal with it, and on the overall impact this “War on Covid” will have on our world.
The first guest is Sucharit Bhakdi. This renowned expert in microbiology along with Karina Reiss wrote a book – Corona: False Alarm? Facts and Figures. He breaks down how the facts he chronicles show how mightily deceived the public has been.
Our next guest is Mark Crispin Miller. A noted academic from New York, he took a particular interest in the mask question used to contain the spread of the virus. He analyzes the situation in an article that he is in the process of writing. He joins us to share his thoughts about masking, and the various methods used to further this remedy and other aspects of the COVID situation.
Sucharit Bhakdi, MD is a physician and a post-doctoral researcher. He was named chair of Medical Microbiology at the University of Mainz in 1990, where he remained until his retirement in 2012. He has published over three hundred articles in the fields of immunology, bacteriology, virology, and parasitology, for which he has received numerous awards and the Order of Merit of Rhineland-Palatinate. He is a specialist in microbiology and one of the most cited research scientists in German history. His book, co-authored by Karina Reiss, is Corona: False Alarm?Facts and Figures.
It is available now in the English language.
Mark Crispin Miller is a professor of media, culture and communication at New York University, and author of numerous articles on media censorship and election fraud. He is also authoring a major article which is focused on the widespread lies about the safety of the masks we put on to protect us from the threat of COVID 19.
The 1st Presidential debate of 2020 held last night, September 29, was a reflection of the growing systemic social crisis in the USA. This is what we saw:
1) a refusal of the representatives (Trump & Biden) of the two wings of the Corporate Party of America to propose any actual solutions to the multiple crises now all intensifying across the country—health, economic, racism, and climate.
2) identity politics run amuck, now writ large at the highest political levels—i.e. the Great Distraction in full force, crowding out and preventing solutions to the crises.
3) a harbinger of political chaos just around the corner—at both a street level and in the major political institutions of the country—and the collapse of Democracy before our eyes.
The commentary of the media following the chaotic exchange (none dare call it a debate) focused on the ‘form’ rather than the content of the exchange: Trump went wild interrupting Biden and stealing much of Biden’s time. The moderator, Fox News’ Chris Wallace, was either incompetent in his inability to stop him or else willing to let him continue and intervening only when Trump had succeeded in drowning out most of Biden’s talk. Biden too was unable to deal with Trump’s antics, at times taking Trump’s bait and falling into his trap.
But what’s so new about all that? That’s Trump, who came to give a speech to his 40% voter ‘red’ base—i.e. the third party at the debate! Nevertheless, the media was shocked that Trump would engage in such an egotistical, disrespectful disregard for the rules of the debate which he had pre-agreed to. To the talking media heads the ‘form’ of the debate was thus more important than any content that might have addressed today’s multiple real crises.
1) The Multiple Crises Ignored (Economic, Health, Race, Climate)
Biden raised the New York Times’ story released over the weekend in which Trump’s tax returns showed Trump paid only $750 in total federal income taxes over two years, 2016-2017. Trump of course denied it as ‘fake news’. And that was that. There was no follow up discussing the four decades long tax system rip off. Nor about why both parties (i.e. both wings of the one party) since 2001 have given investors, corporations, and the wealthiest US households more than $15 trillion in tax cuts. GW Bush $4.7T, Obama $6.1T, Trump $5T with both parties agreeing to another $650B just last March.
Nor was there any mention of the escalating income inequality on both Republican & Democrat watches that was enabled by the $15 trillion tax redistribution to corporations and the rich. Nothing was said why Trump’s tax rip off resulted in wealthy investors getting $3.4 trillion in stock buybacks and dividend payouts in just the last three years; or why under Obama they got more than $6 trillion in buybacks & dividends on his watch!
And nothing was said by either of them why there are still 40 million American workers jobless, or why tens of millions of those lost jobs will never return, or why a long line of big corporations are now announcing permanent layoffs by the tens of thousands.
Biden never bothered to raise the point why millions of small businesses have gone under and millions more are about to do so. He could have quoted the National Federation of Independent Businesses (NFIB), the trade association arm of small businesses in the US, and its recent forecast that 21% of the roughly 30 million small businesses have already, or soon will close, if no real fiscal stimulus and bailout is passed. Trump of course ignored that altogether. He no doubt would have called the NFIB survey ‘fake news’.
There was a brief exchange on US manufacturing by both candidates, but both were wrong on the facts. The business cycle in 2008-10 destroyed millions of manufacturing jobs, only some of which came back and then mostly as two tiered, temp, low paid, no benefits jobs. The current recession is now in repeat mode in manufacturing. Production is up but jobs aren’t being restored. Biden could have indicated manufacturing was in a recession for the six months prior to Covid but he didn’t. And neither candidate discussed why free trade deals, in addition to the recessions, have destroyed at least 4 million US manufacturing jobs. Biden clearly will not go there since they, like the Republicans, are champions of free trade deals. The Dems praised the recent phony NAFTA 2.0 agreement negotiated by Trump. Trump’s promise to bring back those jobs in 2016 has been all smoke and mirrors. But did Biden bother to cite the facts?
And what about trade? Trump claimed his trade wars have been a glowing success. Is that why he’s had to subsidize the farm sector with $49 billion in cash handouts since 2018 (with $17B more promised)! If his trade wars have been so successful, why has he had to funnel billions of dollars in hand outs to his agribusiness buddies? Why have more than 10,000 small farmers gone bankrupt in recent years every year? Biden said nothing of this subsidy to agribusiness still earning billions in profits or the bankruptcies of small family farms. For Biden the ‘trade problem’ is not the escalating subsidies to business or the destruction of jobs in the millions; it’s just a China deficit issue, the numbers of which he couldn’t even quote correctly.
So far as the health/Covid crisis is concerned, there was an exchange in last night’s ‘debate’. But it came down to Biden saying we should wear masks and Trump saying a vaccine was around the corner. That’s it. Biden noted correctly, of course, that Trump has grossly mismanaged the handling of the virus response. To which Trump simply retorted Biden would close down the entire economy again. Trump’s position is ‘Horror of horrors! We can’t save grandma and grandpa if the profits of our nail salons are the cost’! Biden’s position: Yes we can. Let’s all wear masks.
But where was the discussion that the US total reliance on private businesses and ‘markets’ has in large part been responsible for the magnitude of the Covid crisis in the US? The US had outsourced its production of PPE to China and elsewhere before the crisis. There was no mention of that, because both parties have agreed for decades to provide business tax incentives to move operations offshore. There was not a word about the responsibility of US businesses that conveniently offshored critical US goods like PPE and now testing agents to ensure greater profits for themselves. Now, with a second Covid wave imminent this winter, the US still lacks reagents and other pharmaceutical materials needed to do effective testing. Six months into the Covid crisis US business continues to offshore production of critical health supplies, despite US deaths are now predicted to exceed 400,000 by year’s end. That’s more US dead in less than a year than occurred during nearly four years of World War II. But still no war production plan is in place in the US. Neither Trump or Biden has proposed one. Trump, the great admirer of private business and stock markets, is still reluctant act like a ‘war president’ in the worst war confronting the US since 1941. Why? Because he knows that means stepping on the toes of his business buddies and election campaign contributors. For the same reason Biden won’t go there.
For Biden to propose putting the US on a war production footing would mean seizing the necessary production assets of private business, including big pharma companies, and returning it all to the US under a central war production plan. His wing of the Corporate Party of America is no more interested in doing that than Trump’s wing. Nor Trump or Biden explained how a vaccine might be fairly distributed to all Americans next year, or how a million tests a day would be produced and administered.
Biden not surprisingly defended Obamacare, the ACA, focusing on how it protected pre-existing conditions. Trump bragged about how he gutted it by ending the individual mandate.
But what did both say about the fact nearly 50 million workers and families are again uninsured? And at least another 30-40 million grossly under-insured? Biden’s answer was to add the ‘public option’ to Obamacare—which Obama himself pulled from the ACA in 2010. That way private employers can keep their tax write offs for continuing to provide their employees health insurance while the health insurers can continue to reap record profits from both private employer plans and the ACA. Biden specifically reject any notion of Medicare for All. Trump said he had an alternative plan to replace ACA—which he’s been saying for three years but not showing!
In short, both candidates provided no answer to how to manage the continuing Covid crisis, nor to the even worse general health crisis in the US. The USA remains in the ranks of 3rd world banana republics when it comes to the health security of all but the wealthiest of its citizens.
And what about the discussion of race relations and policing in America? Here a heated exchange did occur. Biden’s answer was to get local police departments, politicians and select community leaders together to ‘unite America’. Somehow that would end systemic racism and institutionalized police repression. Trump attacked that idea as well as race ‘sensitivity’ training programs in general, which he recently declared cancelled. According to Trump, the programs were demeaning to whites and suggested they were reverse racists. White folks don’t want to be reminded of that, he said. Even more, they don’t want to be forced to ‘role play’ as blacks. It’s demeaning. And that was that, i.e. the full extent of the discussion of systemic racism in America: let’s do more sensitivity training (Biden); let’s not because it’s reverse racism and might make his white folk political base uncomfortable. They don’t like being even role played as black (Trump).
And climate change? Biden’s answer was to rejoin the Paris Accords and maybe spend some more money on alternative energy infrastructure, as he went out of his way to reiterate his rejection of the notion of a ‘Green New Deal’. Trump’s answer to climate warming was it was too expensive for American business, even though they’re reaping historical maximum profits and getting trillions of dollars of tax cuts and subsidies every year. Trump then attacked Biden for California being consumed by forest fires, saying the Dems there have mismanaged the forest floor by not raking up enough leaves. Biden said nothing in return about the fact that 65% of California’s forests are federal land, and if anyone was responsible for not ‘raking the leaves’ it was Trump’s own Interior Department. But he did say there were larger storms in Iowa, whatever that meant. Neither candidate has a clue what to do about the climate crisis.
In summary, neither Trump or Biden addressed the real issues or proposed any credible solutions to the multiple crises afflicting America today— multiple crises now intensifying, converging, and exacerbating each other.
2) Identity Politics Run Amuck
What we also saw in the first presidential debate is a reflection—at the highest level of politics and within the US elite itself—of the country’s descent into the muck of identity politics.
US society is becoming mired in the plague of identity politics. At all levels, the focus is increasingly on extreme individualism—often at the expense of the public good. Rational discussion and solutions to collective crises are crowded out of public discourse. Replaced by fear-mongering appeals to identity among their political supporters by politicians and elites of both wings of the Corporate Party of America.
White European Americans are fearful their culture, jobs, and ‘way of life’ is about to give way to the ‘others’—i.e. all peoples of color whether Latin, Muslim, and other immigrants coming into the country; and to those of color already (African Americans) here but growing in number as well.
Like the Jews in Germany, large sections of white European Americans see black Americans as the ‘others’ living within our midst but not really one of us. Like the German Jews, they are the foreigners allowed to come here by past politicians. As in Germany, the ‘others’ become the ‘enemy within’ and symbol of all the causes of their economic and social fears, insecurity, and anxiety—as politicians and elites re-direct the cause of social decay from their policies to the ‘others’—i.e. immigrants, blacks, LGBTQ, etc. Immigrants, blacks, and gays are the cause of their declining standard of living, their culture, and their way of life—i.e. Trumpublicans and their media); white European ‘deplorables’ are preventing you people of color from achieving your rightful identity as equals to white European Americans—i.e. Democrats and their media.
It’s all part of the ‘Great Distraction’, designed to allow the elites of both wings to continue to pick all our pockets while we’re preoccupied with identity issues and politics. So long as we’re immersed in issues of identity there’s no need to divide and conquer so they can continue to pick our pockets. Identity means by definition we’ve divided ourselves from each other.
Technology of course plays a conscious role in enabling the descent into extreme individualism and dead end identity.
The youngest are mesmerized by their electronic gadgets that enable them to focus neurotically on themselves for hours upon hour every day, absorbing most of their waking lives. Young adults are immersed in social media sourced news and pseudo-facts. As they grow realize they are condemned to lives of indentured, low pay, part time and temp service employment, they desperately seek and embrace simplistic ideologies as an explanation for their plight. Middle age adult become increasingly insecure and fearful as the see their families’ futures dim and realize they are approaching older age and retirement without pensions and sufficient income to keep themselves from poverty. They look for a ‘strongman’ to save them in time.
They all become fodder for clever manipulation, fear mongering by media talking heads, and conspiracy theories multiplying daily on social media that substitute for the thinking and evaluating facts and opinions that is necessary for rational thought. The network does the thinking for them. People fearful and in crisis grab the nearest exit and short cut to explain their situation and propose a solution.
The capitalist media no longer consists of objective presenters of facts and events but subjective interpreters and spinners of facts and events. The subjective media is the new priest providing the congregation of the fearful and desperate the answers it wants them to absorb—except now it all occurs on a daily and by the minute basis instead of just on Sunday mornings. The result is predictable: when confronted with objective facts, such facts are rejected since they don’t conform to the rapidly expanding fantasy world of conspiracies and the messaging of media spin doctors.
Tell me what I already believe or I’ll listen to someone else who will! Don’t tell me what I don’t want to hear’. Tell me something so that I can cheer: ‘Hooray for our side’.
People are so concerned trying to understand who they are, that they are enable to see who they are becoming—at the hands of political elites who have found playing the identity card works well for keeping folks—white and non-white—from understanding the real source of their fears, their anxieties, their growing angst. That real source originates in the policies of both parties that are ever-enriching their wealthy elites at the expense of the rest of society.
Identity politics is the Heroin fix necessary to create the social stupor of the Great Distraction. And the flip side of the Great Distraction of identity politics is the Big Rip-off—where the same elites and politicians of both wings of the Corporate Party of America pick our pockets.
What we’ve just seen at the highest level in yesterday’s 1st presidential debate is the same focus on Identity politics, albeit now write large at the highest level. The same Great Distraction that has been intensifying in America for years. The same Big Rip Off in action! As the former intensifies, the latter grows in tandem.
In the first presidential debate both Biden and Trump immersed themselves in a personality food fight, like teenagers in a high school cafeteria: Trump attacked Biden as ‘sleepy Joe’ who Trump even suggested failed to graduate from the college. Adding to Trump’s pre-debate comments that Joe has early onset dementia and has to take performance drugs to stay awake and debate. Biden in turn declared Trump a clown. A neurotic egotist. Sick. Mentally unfit.
The disease of identity politics in America has thus bubbled up like foul smelling swamp gas from society at large, to the very top echelons of the American political elite. Every election cycle we say the quality of the candidates put up to represent can’t get worse; but it does.
Listening to the media commentators at CNN and other outlets after the ‘debate’, the talking head experts were perplexed and repeatedly asked each other why any voter would continue to support Trump after his childish performance in last night’s debate? Conversely, at Fox the spin was his performance was precisely why his base continues to support him. What the former don’t understand, and the latter won’t admit, is that Trump’s 40% base remains solid no matter what he says, how he says it, or what he does. And that’s for a fundamental reason that also has to do with Identity.
For white European Americans, Trump is the bulwark against the ‘others’. He stands unequivocally against the changing demographic where White Europeans will soon no longer constitute the majority. They fear should that happen, not only their jobs but their culture, their values, their religion, and ‘their America’ will be no more! That single, fundamental reason is why they overlook everything about Trump and still support him regardless of his racism, his misogyny, his proto-fascist inclinations, his disrespect for democratic practices and norms, his verbal slips about ‘suckers and losers’, and all the rest. Nothing matters except he hold back the wave of colored folks of varying hues that will take away their America.
And with more than 350 million guns in America (and more than 15 million assault rifles) many of them are prepared to go to violent extremes if need be. Many are just waiting for the ‘Big Dog Whistle’ from Trump.
3) A Political Crisis of Unimaginable Dimensions
In an essay entitled, ‘A Most Dire Warning’ a couple weeks ago this writer predicted the most likely scenario following the November 3 election. It included Trump taking legal action to stop the mail in ballot vote counting by turning to his now many Federal District and Appeals court recent ideological judge appointees. The scenario includes Trump declaring himself the winner on November 3-4, knowing that more Republicans will vote directly that day than will mail in ballots than Biden supporters will vote directly. CNN polls show 66% of Trump supporters will vote directly vs. only 22% Biden supporters. That means Trump will likely show an early lead, supported by exit polling. But he must stop the mail ballot counting or he may lose in the end. He will rely on his 6-3 US Supreme Court majority to support Appeals court decisions to stop the voting in select swing or blue states. There is a precedent for this already. It’s exactly what the Supreme Court did in 2000 to ‘select’ George W. Bush as president. It stopped the vote recount in Florida to give Bush the presidency. Only this time it will be multiple states and the original mail in ballot vote counting that may be halted. Protests that erupt will be met with physical police force. That too is being planned. Protestors will be identified as ‘Antifa’ and ‘BLM’ militants and repressed. The federal police force created in 2002 for the first time in US history—called the DHA—are the favored instruments. But Trump may call on his radical fascist street supporters to assist where necessary as well. The more the street level social chaos the more likely the Supreme Court will tend to try to settle the dispute to end the street chaos.
In yesterday’s debate, the moderator asked Trump if he would call on his street supporters to not get involved. To this he answered, “ the Proud Boys ( a widespread neo-fascist group in America today) Stand Back. Stand Down”. Immediately the radical right, hearing these words, began to mobilize and prepare for Trump’s ‘big dog whistle’ on November 4.
Trump will not accept the outcome should he lose on November 3. Nor in January 2021. He said “we might not know for months” the final vote count. That means well beyond January 2021. In the meantime, he further noted he’s “Counting on the Supreme Court to look at the ballots”. Will the SCOTUS review the tens of millions of mail in ballots directly! Trump concluded “This is not going to end well”.
For his part, Biden declared to the TV audience “He can’t stop you from the outcome of this election”. If we get the votes, he’s not going to stay in power”. But what Biden fails to understand is we may not get all the votes if the mail ballots end of not being counted—as happened in 2000 in Florida thanks to the same Supreme Court that is soon even more in Trump’s camp! Biden’s pre-debate statement that the US military will ‘escort him out of the White House’ was wishful thinking as well. The Pentagon generals the next day publicly stated the they would not get involved. So who will ‘escort’ Trump out? The Democrats have no executive arm; Trump does: the DHS swat teams and most of the police departments in the country that support his election.
And then there’s the Proud Boys who may just descend upon Washington D.C. and take up positions around the White House, armed with their AR-15s. Who’s going to try to escort Trump out in that scenario?
The foregoing exchange by Trump and Biden on the day of the election and after was undoubtedly the most important exchange of the entire 1st presidential debate. All the rest was irrelevant verbal bombast, appeal to identity politics, and personality clash. Viewers of the debate learned nothing about how America might extract itself from its intensifying multiple crises. What they learned is that a political crisis may be coming, the likes of which haven’t been seen in America since 1860.
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Trump Administration’s Corporate Bailouts Aided Failing Fossil Fuel Companies; Stands in Contrast to Lack of COVID-19 Assistance for Ailing American Families
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Oil and gas companies have issued nearly $100 billion in new bonds since the Trump administration’s COVID-19 corporate bailout began in March, a new report released today by Friends of the Earth, Public Citizen and BailoutWatch found.
The analysis found that at least $99.3 billion in new bonds have been issued since the Federal Reserve and the U.S. Treasury Department undertook a taxpayer-backed rescue of corporate debt markets. The oil and gas industry, which entered the crisis in dire shape, has responded to the Trump administration’s intervention with record new borrowing.
Report highlights include:
A total of 56 oil and gas companies have issued $99.3 billion of debt in U.S. markets since the Federal Reserve began its bailout of corporate debt markets in late March. Some said they might fail without the fresh financing.
The Fed has purchased debt from a total of 19 oil and gas companies. Those companies have sold debt investors more than $60 billion in new bonds since the Fed’s intervention began, representing about 60% of energy debt issuance in that period. Of those 19 companies, 12 have received downgrades of their short-term debt, long-term debt, credit or default ratings from major credit rating agencies since March.
Oil and gas companies incorporated in the U.S. have issued $129 billion in new bonds this year, according to Bloomberg data. This tally is a record for the year to date going back at least a decade. The first three quarters of 2020 represent the highest level of energy debt issuance for that period since at least 2010. This surge in borrowing was made possible by the Fed’s promise to purchase large quantities of corporate debt.
Of the 122 new bond issuances reviewed, 93 will be used at least in part to pay down or refinance a specifically named existing debt such as commercial paper, revolving credit lines or other bonds. At least 15 companies are issuing new bonds to replace existing bonds that had higher coupon rates.
“When consumers take on too much credit card debt, they can be forced into bankruptcy and face financial ruin. But when the oil and gas industry accumulates too much debt, it gets a bailout on the backs of taxpayers,” said co-author Alan Zibel, research director of Public Citizen’s Corporate Presidency Project. “This bailout is an unprecedented rescue of a dying industry. Instead of bailing out climate-destroying fossil fuel companies, we must assist small businesses, local governments and individuals facing dire financial straits.”
“Big Oil is exploiting COVID-19 to go on an unprecedented borrowing binge, and the Trump administration is to blame,” said co-author Lukas Ross, program manager with Friends of the Earth. “Polluters are getting a $100 billion lifeline, while most Americans are being left behind.”
“Fossil fuel companies are still headed for a financial cliff, but this bailout handed them a bit more road,” said co-author Dan Wagner, editor of BailoutWatch. “This is prolonging the life of the fossil fuel industry at a time when it needs to be phased out for communities and the climate.”
Read the full report here and access the full list of bond issuances here.
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Tra Stati Uniti e Cina è in corso una guerra fredda che si gioca sul piano politico, commerciale e del controllo delle risorse energetiche.
Mike Pompeo, il segretario di Stato degli Stati Uniti, è a Roma per incontrare il presidente del Consiglio Giuseppe Conte e far sentire la voce del governo americano di Donald Trump. Su Byoblu24, con una disamina del giornalista ed esperto di geopolitica Manlio Dinucci, cerchiamo di capire quali saranno stati i temi al centro della discussione.
Il progetto della via della seta, oggetto di un memorandum d’intesa firmato tra Cina e Italia nel marzo 2019, è particolarmente osteggiato dall’amministrazione degli Stati Uniti. Il timore è che dietro di esso si nascondano scopi militari di Pechino, che beneficerebbe di una via privilegiata per far arrivare mezzi armati in Europa. Per Manlio Dinucci, questa possibilità è da escludere e la via della seta darebbe all’Italia convenienti sbocchi commerciali nel continente euroasiatico.
A preoccupare Pompeo è anche il progetto di gasdotto denominato Nord Stream 2 voluto dalla Russia per portare il proprio gas in Germania. Secondo Dinucci il caso Navalny, l’oppositore del governo Putin, sarebbe da collegare proprio alla volontà di Pompeo di bloccare i progetti dei russi di far arrivare il loro gas in Europa.
Hackers have penetrated the computer systems of the UK’s foreign ministry and taken hundreds of files detailing the country’s controversial propaganda programmes in war-torn Syria.
In a security breach of enormous proportions, the hackers appear to have deliberately targeted files that set out the financial and operational relationships between the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) and a network of private-sector contractors that have been covertly running media platforms in Syria throughout the nine-year civil war.
Middle East Eye understands that between 200 and 300 highly sensitive documents are thought to have been acquired by the hackers.
Some of the documents have already been posted on the internet, and foreign office ministers and officials are bracing themselves for the possible appearance of more over the coming weeks.
While the hackers are not thought to have yet been identified, the sophistication of the cyber-attack has raised concerns at the FCDO that a state actor could have been responsible, with suspicion focusing on Russia.
In 2018, the UK foreign ministry said that Russian intelligence officers had attempted to hack into its computer systems.
The FCDO is refusing to comment on the hacking that led to the exposure of the Syrian propaganda material.
In a statement, the ministry said:
“The UK has been clear in our support for elements of the moderate opposition in Syria to stand up to both the tyranny of the Assad regime and the brutal ideology of Daesh.”
The FCDO became aware of the breach last week, after some documents had been posted by the hacking collective known as Anonymous. Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab was briefed at the weekend and other ministers were informed on Monday.
The documents shed further light on propaganda initiatives known in UK government circles as “strategic communications”, whose existence came to light four years ago, and which MEE detailed earlier this year.
The programme aimed to promote “attitudinal and behavioural change” among Syrian audiences by fostering secular values, building resilience among the civilian population and by promoting what the UK government described as the Moderate Armed Opposition.
They show that British government contractors established radio stations, published Arabic- and English-language magazines, newspapers, books and children’s comics, designed posters and stickers, and helped to run opposition groups’ media offices.
One contractor is said to have distributed more than 660,000 printed items across Syria in six months.
The hacked documents also show how the “strategic communications” programme has influenced the reporting of many major media organisations, with one contractor claiming to be in contact with 1,600 international journalists and other individuals able to help influence public opinion.
Citizen journalists
At the heart of the propaganda initiatives was a large network of Syrian citizen journalists, many of whom began reporting on the uprising against the government in 2011 and were then provided with training, equipment and encouragement by UK contractors – without the role of the British government being made explicit.
A number of citizen journalists were detained and murdered by the Islamic State group after it began capturing territory in the country in 2015.
IS frequently denounced its victims as western “spies”, and some Syrian citizen journalists were pursued across the border to Turkey and murdered.
The documents posted on the internet in recent days identify not only private-sector contractors working for the Foreign Office, but also a number of the individuals who are running those companies.
However, MEE understands that senior FCDO officials are less concerned about the contents of many of the documents – as the existence of the propaganda programme had already been made public – than they are about the apparent ease with which the department’s computer systems were broken into.
Similar programmes have been run in Syria by the UK’s Ministry of Defence, which does not appear to have been hacked.
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Ongoing protests in Thailand appearing very similar to those recently seen in Hong Kong are no coincidence.
They are part of an admitted “Pan-Asian Alliance” that – while claiming to be “pro-democracy” are in reality created by the US government and aimed directly at Beijing.
Thailand has tilted too close to Beijing for Washington’s liking and as a response, has scheduled Thailand for destabilization and if possible, regime change.
Thailand Tilting “Too Close” To China
China is Thailand’s largest and most important trading partner, its largest foreign direct investor, and its largest source of tourism with more Chinese tourists coming to Thailand each year than all Western nations combined.
Thailand is also hosting one of the key routes of China’s One Belt, One Road (OBOR) initiative with construction already ongoing for high-speed rail that will connect China, Laos, Thailand, Malaysia, and eventually Singapore.
Finally and perhaps most upsetting for the US is that Thailand has begun replacing its aging US military hardware through a series of major Thai-Chinese arms deals including the purchasing of main battle tanks, other armored vehicles, naval vessels including up to 3 submarines, and jointly-developed arms programs like the DTI-1 multiple rocket launcher system.
Thailand has also recently replaced some of its US-built Blackhawk helicopters with Russian Mi-17V-5’s.
To counter this, the US has mobilized opposition groups and NGOs it has funded in Thailand for years to now demand the current government step down and the nation’s constitution be rewritten, paving the way for US-backed billionaire-led opposition parties of Thaksin Shinawatra and Thanathorn Juangroongruangkit into power. These are opposition parties that have long served US interests in the past and have explicitly promised to roll back Thai-Chinese relations should they take power again.
US NED Was Behind Hong Kong’s Unrest, and Are Now Behind Thailand’s Unrest
The US was indisputably behind the protests in Hong Kong with the political opposition and protest leaders confirmed to be recipients of US government cash via notorious regime change arm, the National Endowment for Democracy (NED).
Many of the protest leaders literally flew to Washington DC or visited the US consulate in Hong Kong to receive aid, directives, and other forms of support.
In Thailand too, virtually every aspect of the protests are funded by the US government.
Worse still is that the US is attempting to stitch these various movements together to form a regional front against Beijing with Thai protest leaders regularly traveling to meet their US-funded counterparts in Hong Kong and Taiwan and vice versa while creating an online army with the help of US-based social media giants to stack public narratives in their favor.
It will be a front that if regime change in any or all of the nations currently targeted by Washington in Asia is successful, will transform the region from a rising global economic power to a dysfunctional warzone not entirely unlike the Middle East.
US Funds Thai Protest Leaders
The core leadership of Thailand’s protests includes Anon Nampa of the US NED-funded “Thai Lawyers for Human Rights” (TLHR). Anon Nampa leads every major rally, taking the stage and delivering the opposition’s demands to the current government including demands for regime change.
TLHR’s founder had in the past admitted that the organization “receives all its funding from international donors,” in an interview given to the English-language newspaper, Bangkok Post.
TLHR’s US government funding was openly displayed on the US National Endowment for Democracy (NED) website in 2014.
Its name has since been removed from NED’s website but continues to receive US funding through the NED via the “Union for Civil Liberty” (UCL) of which it is a member.
The UCL is still listed on NED’s current webpage for programs it funds in Thailand. TLHR is listed as a member of UCL on its official website next to other recipients of US NED funding including the Cross Cultural Foundation, the Human Rights Lawyers Association, and the Asian Network for Free Elections (ANFREL).
US Funds Orgs Trying to Rewrite Thailand’s Constitution
Another of Anon Nampa’s demands is the rewriting of the Thai constitution. These efforts have been spearheaded by an organization called “iLaw” – also funded by the US NED.
The Internet Law Reform Dialogue (iLaw), a human rights NGO, has launched a campaign seeking signatures from 50,000 voters to sponsor a motion for a Constitution rewrite.
The organization’s US government funding is not mentioned in the article, but can easily be found on NED’s official website under the name, “Internet Law Reform Dialogue” (iLaw).On iLaw’s own website under “About Us” it admits:
Between 2009 and 2014 iLaw has received funding support from the Open Society Foundation, the Heinrich Böll Foundation and a one-time support grant from Google.
Between 2015 to present iLaw receives funding from funders as listed below1. Open Society Foundation (OSF)2. Heinrich Böll Stiftung (HBF)3. National Endowment for Democracy (NED)4. Fund for Global Human Rights (FGHR)5. American Jewish World Servic (AJWS)6. One-time support donation from Google and other independent donors
Other groups working to rewrite Thailand’s constitution include “ConLab” or “Constitution Lab” (on Facebook) who do so in partnership with US government-funded iLaw and which recently held an event at the US Embassy’s “American Corner” at Chiang Mai University.
One can only wonder what the US response would be if Russian or Chinese-funded groups attempted to rewrite the US constitution.
US Even Funds Groups Padding out Rallies with “Poor People”
Filling up rallies is done not only through the billionaire-led opposition parties of Pheu Thai and Move Forward (previously Future Forward) but also through groups like the “Assembly of the Poor.”
Assembly of the Poor leader Baramee Chaiyarat has recently vowed to bring his supporters to any future mass rallies in Bangkok.
But just like the protest leaders and legal arms of the protests, Assembly of the Poor is also funded by the US government via the NED.
On the NED’s official website an organization called “Thai Poor Act” has been listed for years, receiving millions of Thai Baht in funding. Its funding falls under a section titled, “Supporting Grassroots Engagement in Promoting Democracy,” which is precisely what Assembly of the Poor claims to do.
Evidence proving that Thai Poor Act and Assembly of the Poor are actually the same group turned up on Thai Poor Act’s now disused Facebook page where it published a 2011 documented titled, “Incorporation Contract of Establishment of a Body of Individuals” listing Assembly of the Poor leader Baraemee Chaiyarat as “manager” of Thai Poor Act.
Thai Poor Act’s YouTube channel features only one video, but the video begins with a title stating clearly, “Assembly of the Poor presents…”
Clearly they are the same organization, led by the same individual – Baramee Chaiyarat – and funded by the US government to pad out protests.
US Funds Local Media to Promote Protests
There are various fake news fronts posing as “independent media” in Thailand also funded by the US government via NED and providing lopsidedly positive coverage for the protests and each of the above mentioned organizations and individuals – never once mentioning their collective US government funding.
This includes Prachatai which receives millions of Thai Baht a year from the US government to advance narratives that divide and destabilize Thailand and promote US interests within Thai borders. It is also an echo chamber for US State Department talking points including US policy regarding the Mekong River, the South China Sea, and other opposition fronts the US backs in the region.
It is listed on the US NED’s official website under the name “Foundation for Community Educational Media,” which also appears at the very bottom of Prachatai’s website.The media front’s “executive director” Chiranuch Premchaiporn is also a “fellow” of the National Endowment for Democracy.
Building a “Pan-Asian Alliance”
An editorial in the Taipei Times titled, “Young alliance taking on Beijing,” would claim:
A “Milk Tea Alliance” among netizens in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Thailand and the Philippines emerged this spring, trolling China’s increasingly jingoistic online army that lashes out and threatens celebrities, multinationals and anyone else who directly or indirectly challenges Beijing’s “one China” mantra.
Like the Sunflower movement and pro-democracy supporters over the past year or more in Hong Kong, the alliance is self-initiated and spontaneous, interested in greater democracy in their own countries and others, as well as countering Beijing’s cudgel diplomacy, military assertiveness and regional ambitions, even if their own leaders are hesitant to do so.
Whether it is countering the CCP’s historical claims, China’s aggressive dam-building program that threatens those along the lower reaches of the Mekong River or Beijing militarizing the South China Sea, the power of the #MilkTeaAlliance is growing.
It is clearly false to portray this “alliance” as “self-initiated and spontaneous” with the summation of its agenda lifted directly from the US State Department’s daily briefings and each respective opposition group that makes up the “alliance” having verified, documented ties directly to Washington.
The regionwide network of political interference and regime change the US is creating in Asia today is not unlike the network it created and used to carry out the “Arab Spring” in 2011.
Even the New York Times in its article, “U.S. Groups Helped Nurture Arab Uprisings,” would admit the role of organizations like NED in training, equipping, and funding protests that eventually led to regional death, despair, irreversible economic destruction, and enduring destabilization.
The NYT would admit:
A number of the groups and individuals directly involved in the revolts and reforms sweeping the region, including the April 6 Youth Movement in Egypt, the Bahrain Center for Human Rights and grass-roots activists like Entsar Qadhi, a youth leader in Yemen, received training and financing from groups like the International Republican Institute, the National Democratic Institute and Freedom House, a nonprofit human rights organization based in Washington, according to interviews in recent weeks and American diplomatic cables obtained by WikiLeaks.
It also noted:
The Republican and Democratic institutes are loosely affiliated with the Republican and Democratic Parties. They were created by Congress and are financed through the National Endowment for Democracy, which was set up in 1983 to channel grants for promoting democracy in developing nations. The National Endowment receives about $100 million annually from Congress. Freedom House also gets the bulk of its money from the American government, mainly from the State Department.
While the NYT claims this money was spent “promoting democracy” it clearly served as cover for what was in reality a violent campaign of US-backed regime change which culminated in multiple direct US military interventions, the destruction of Libya, and the near destruction of Syria. One thing that never materialized was “democracy.”
Also a product of the “Arab Spring” is US regime change efforts in Yemen and its military support for Saudi Arabia’s ongoing war against the country. It has led to what the UN itself has called “the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.”
Considering what US “democracy promotion” has done to North Africa and the Middle East – wider Asia should take serious the threat the US is openly creating and aiming at the region in the form of its “Pan-Asian Alliance” and all the US government-funded opposition fronts that make it up.Just as “democracy” was merely a slogan used to advance US primacy in North Africa and the Middle East during the “Arab Spring,” “democracy” is just a slogan now in Asia used to advance Washington’s real goal of encircling and containing China – thus preserving US primacy in Asia-Pacific.
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Tony Cartalucci is a Bangkok-based geopolitical researcher and writer, especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook” where this article was originally published. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.
The US political process is money controlled, Big Money running things.
According to the Center for Responsive Politics (CRP), over $6 billion was spent by US presidential and congressional candidates in 2016.
A record amount is expected this year to be known post-November 3 elections — including dark money.
CRP calls it “spending meant to influence political outcomes where the source of the money is not disclosed.”
It comes from:
“Politically active nonprofits such as 501(c)(4)s are generally under no legal obligation to disclose their donors even if they spend to influence elections.”
“When they choose not to reveal their sources of funding, they are considered dark money groups.”
“Opaque nonprofits and shell companies may give unlimited amounts of money to super PACs.”
“While super PACs are legally required to disclose their donors, some of these groups are effectively dark money outlets when the bulk of their funding cannot be traced back to the original donor.”
In Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission (2010), the Supreme Court ruled against government limits on corporate spending in elections, claiming a First Amendment right of “political speech.”
The ruling greatly exacerbated US money-controlled elections, mocking a free, fair, and open process, what democracy is supposed to be — absent in America from inception.
One party with two right wings runs things, each taking turns controlling the White House and Congress.
Duopoly power excludes independents. No one not on board for dirty business as usual continuity becomes president or holds key congressional posts.
Horse race journalism substitutes for a free, fair, and open 4th estate discussion of domestic and geopolitical issues mattering most.
Voter disenfranchisement is rife. Millions of Americans are shut out of the process because of past criminal records, including innocent people wrongfully imprisoned, others for political reasons or offenses too minor to matter.
Around half of eligible voters opt out most often because their rights and needs aren’t addressed or served by the US ruling class.
Corporate interests run elections with electronic ease.
This year the USPS is involved because of a likely record number of mailed in ballots.
The result perhaps will be delayed because of time needed to count them, especially if November 3 results are close.
So-called US presidential debates are pre-scripted, well-rehearsed, made for television theater.
They feature bombast over substance, slogans and one-liners over solutions, and promises made to be broken if elected.
Tuesday’s Trump v. Biden round one was a heated spitting match, slings and arrows substituting for give and take debating the way it should be — virtually never when US politicians face off with each other.
Last night’s matchup was near-no-holds-barred bare-knuckled rhetorical brawling.
Debating the way it should be is an ancient tradition.
As a junior high school student long ago in my mid-teens, I was involved in one on a topic I don’t recall — a civil give-and-take I do recall.
Socrates and Plato debated political, social, and other issues.
The Socratic method involves opposing sides asking and answering questions.
Ideas are freely aired. Beliefs are challenged. Truths are sought.
Critical thinking is stimulated, opinions formed.
Conclusions are reached through free and open dialogue and discussion.
Debates should let opposing sides air views and challenge those of others in a civil manner — ideally by the Socratic method.
Trump v. Biden round one — with likely more of the same coming twice more — was open warfare, back-and-forth mud-slinging ad hominem insults and shouting used as political weapons.
When post-“debate” polls come out, they’ll likely show that Tuesday night theatrics left the public mind on Trump v. Biden largely unchanged.
Neither figure rises to head of state stature the way it should be everywhere — notably at a time of economic collapse when responsible leadership is most needed.
No matter which wing of the US one-party state runs things, plutocrats, oligarchs, and kleptocrats are served exclusively at the expense of ordinary people everywhere.
Post-election next year, continuity is assured like virtually always throughout US history.
Rare short-term exceptions proved the rule — none since the Clinton co-presidency, notably not post-9/11.
Will Orwell’s dystopian vision unfold in the next four years, no matter whether Republicans or Dems control the White House and/or Congress?
Will harder than ever hard times worsen, forever wars rage with no resolution, and police state crackdowns on nonbelievers toughen?
What I remember as an adolescent and youth was replaced by a nation unsafe and unfit to live in — permanently at war on humanity, full-blown tyranny perhaps another major false flag away.
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Award-winning author Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at [email protected]. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG)
His new book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.”
More than 300 were killed and thousands imprisoned for “treason” in an MI6/CIA-backed coup that left the country condemned to a 25-year reign of terror under the dictatorship of U.S.-backed Shah, Mohmmad Reza Pahlevi.
In 2013, the CIA officially fessed up and admitted to (1) bribing high Iranian government officials, (2) spreading defamatory anti-government propaganda, (3) hiring Tehran’s most brutal criminal gangs to riot in the streets and ultimately (4) orchestrating the 1953 coup d’état in Iran as an act of U.S. foreign policy planned and approved by the highest levels of government.
But not a peep from Great Britain—which admitted nothing and concealed everything. The British government may even have arranged to conceal an interview with a talkative MI6 spy named Norman Darbyshire, who actually revealed his—and Britain’s—complicity in the Iranian coup during a 1985 BBC documentary called End of Empire. But his incriminating testimony was mysteriously edited out of the broadcast before it aired.
However, the transcript of agent Darbyshire’s lost interview has now resurfaced in numerous independent locations and has been reenacted, prominently, in this new documentary.[1]
The film’s director Taghi Amirani, an Iranian who traveled around the world seeking new details about the coup that devastated his homeland, stated:
Even though it has been an open secret for decades, the UK government has not officially admitted its fundamental role in the coup. Finding the Darbyshire transcript is like finding the smoking gun. It is a historic discovery.[2]
What Agent Darbyshire Reveals
Darbyshire served as head of the MI6’s Persian division based in Cyprus and worked in Iran from 1943 to 1947 and then again from 1949 until he was kicked out by Mossadegh in 1952. His motive for granting the interview to the BBC appears to have been to counter the boastful claims of CIA agent Kermit Roosevelt who wanted to take credit for the coup. In the all-important interview, Darbyshire stated his belief that Mossadegh was a weak character, an ardent nationalist and xenophobe who would have soon been overwhelmed by the communists if the British had not stepped in.
From the beginning of his time in the country, Darbyshire said he had been under orders from the British Foreign Secretary to remove Mossadegh secretly without telling the ambassador. He wanted to enact the coup earlier, but the head of the British Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), John Sinclair, knew “about as much of the Middle East as a ten year old and was far more interested in cricket anyways.”
Darbyshire went on to detail that he had carried biscuit tins with “damn great notes” to pay bribes and that the coup operation cost around 700,000 pounds, a total he would know because “[he] spent it.” The coup plot, he also said, “worked.”
Darbyshire said that he played an especially key role in enlisting the Shah’s Sister, Princess Ashraf, who was tracked down in Paris and paid to go to Tehran to convince her brother to go along with the coup.
Darbyshire and his associates further paid off organized criminal networks led by the Rashidian Brothers, whom he said were “intrigued by contact with the British and delighted to take our money for something they believed in themselves.”
As the documentary shows, the MI6, in collaboration with the CIA, (1) planted anti-Mossadegh propaganda in the media, (2) recruited mobs to riot and chant anti-Mossadegh slogans, (3) bribed members of Iran’s parliament, and (4) assassinated key figures who were loyal to Mossadegh, most notably the head of the national police, Mohammed Afshartous.
Darbyshire notes in his interview that MI6 did not intend to kill Afshartous, only to kidnap him. According to Darbyshire:
Something went wrong: [Afshartous] was kidnapped and held in a cave. Feelings ran very high and Afshartous was unwise enough to make derogatory comments about the Shah. He was under guard by a young army officer and the young officer pulled out a gun and shot him. That was never part of our program at all but that’s how it happened.
However, this does not explain the clear evidence of torture on the body, not to mention that the corps was dumped on the street for all to see—a technique that is often used to instill widespread fear.
The rogue, young army assassination story is thus suspect, especially given men like Darbyshire; they are experts in disinformation. Their job is to cover up their agencies’ crimes, smear their enemies and try to sanitize the historical record—even after their own passing, as Darbyshire died in 1993.
Mohammed Mossadegh on trial after the coup. [Source: batiraporu.com]
Devious Policies
While Darbyshire may be trying to hoodwink us one final time, Coup 53 is nonetheless a remarkable film because of the many interviews that it runs, not only with Darbyshire, but also with other CIA and British MI6 operatives who speak openly about the people they were dealing with and the devious policies they were enacting in Iran.
Sir Peter Ramsbotham, for example—a man who would later become Ambassador to Iran in the early 1970s—revealingly discusses how the men on her Majesty’s Middle Eastern desk would call Mossadegh “dotty” or crazy in the head because of his defiant policies and habit of conducting bedside conferences in his pajamas.
A strong parallel exists with Belgian secret service agents who branded Patrice Lumumba, Congo’s first post-independence leader, as “Satan” after he had condemned Belgian colonialism and aimed to assert national control over the Congo’s rich mineral wealth.[3]
In a CBC documentary made in the 1990s, Colonel Louis Marlière and former CIA Station Chief Lawrence Devlin cavalierly discuss the different methods they had adopted for trying to assassinate Lumumba, including the use of toothpaste poison, and how Lumumba’s body was disposed of in acid.
When asked about his reaction to Lumumba’s killing in January 1961, Colonel Marlière said “good riddance,” while Devlin stated that he had been very busy, and with Lumumba out of the way, a major problem had been solved.
Lumumba (center), prior to his murder by firing squad, had much in common with Mossadegh, both in terms of his domestic policy and in the way he was overthrown. [Source: trtworld.com]
Colonial Legacy
Coup 53 significantly showcases the colonial conditions that existed in Iran prior to the coup, which were similar to the Congo and other African countries.
The British expatriates lived in luxury while the locals were treated as second-class citizens or worse in their own country. An old Iranian gardener interviewed in the film describes commuting from his mud hut to the show-piece cottages with backyard swimming pools that were advertised in promotional videos by the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company trying to recruit new British employees.
The Iranians who worked for the Anglo-Iranian Company did not mix with the British who called them wogs. Further tensions developed when the British built a pipeline to Iraq, under the Koran River, as a means of siphoning off fuel for the British Royal Navy.
While the Anglo-Iranian oil company had rights to drill for oil in Iran, the agreement entailed paying Iran 16% of the revenues in return. When requests to see the company books were rejected, the Iranian government decided to nationalize the oil refineries.
Darbyshire himself acknowledged that the Iranians, “had the feeling they were being screwed the whole time and quite rightly too and from about 1920 onwards.”
After Mossadegh’s nationalization decree, the British tried to destabilize the government by sabotaging the major oil refinery at Abadan and prevent it from working.
U.S. President Harry S. Truman at the time enjoyed positive relations with Mossadegh who was named as Time Magazine’s Man of the Year in 1952, and rebuffed British overtures to back a coup.
However, when Truman was succeeded by Republican Dwight D. Eisenhower, and foreign policy was placed under the control of John Foster and Allen Dulles, who had worked for one of Wall Street’s biggest financial houses, Sullivan & Cromwell, Mossadegh’s political fate was sealed along with that of the Iranian people.
Final Moments of Coup Reenacted
The interviews in Coup 53 vividly recount the final moments of the coup and the heroism of those who tried to defend the sitting president. Mossadegh’s relatives, former bodyguards and aides testify about Mossadegh’s despondency after the coup, exacerbated by his solitary confinement and subsequent house arrest.
Mossadegh generally comes across sympathetically as an intelligent and dignified leader who had the best interests of his people in mind. By contrast, the coup plotters, like Colonel Marlière, come across as smug and arrogant, showing little remorse for their coordination of the sinister plot.
Anti-Mossadegh protestors on eve of the coup display a portrait of the Shah. [Source: theguardian.com]
The Iranian coup ultimately poisoned U.S. and Western relations with the Middle East and signified that the West, while favoring authoritarianism, would overthrow democratic regimes which sought to control and more equitably distribute their own economic resources.
One can indeed trace an important lineage between the 1953 coup in Iran and the 1954 coup in Guatemala right on up through to recent efforts by the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and other U.S. government agencies working in collaboration with the British to try to topple left-wing and nationalistic regimes that tried to enact similar policies to those in Iran led by Mossadegh.
Darbyshire tellingly returned to Iran in the early 1960s where he played a role in developing the Shah’s secret police, SAVAK, which was notorious for torturing and terrorizing the political opposition. His career and legacy remind us of the damaging consequences of covert operations and the need for transparency in government.
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Jeremy Kuzmarov is Managing Editor of Covert Action Magazine and author of four books on U.S. foreign policy, including Obama’s Unending Wars (Clarity Press, 2019) and The Russians Are Coming, Again, with John Marciano (Monthly Review Press, 2018).
[3] Lumumba’s adversary, the Belgian collaborator Moise Tshombe, was nicknamed “the Jew” because he governed the wealthy province of Katanga.
Featured image: As reenacted in the new documentary entitled “Coup 53,” British MI6 agent Norman Darbyshire reveals all the dirty details in suppressed interview. [Source: ft.com]
With a grand jury approach, the revealing of evidence herein shows that Dr. Anthony Fauci has deliberately ignored massive amounts of data showing that hydroxychloroquine is a safe, cheap and effective remedy for COVID-19. By ignoring his ethical responsibility as a physician to first do no harm, his behavior continues to cause preventable pain, suffering and death. Evidence also vindicates what President Trump said and did early on to inform Americans about the benefits of hydroxychloroquine.
1. The Case
Mounting COVID-19 cases and deaths result from limitations on physicians using a safe, effective and low-cost treatment medicine. This, despite many studies and data from other countries showing that HCQ really works to lower death rates and keep affected people from needing hospitalizations and expensive care.
Missing from discussions of hydroxychloroquine use is explicit acknowledgment that Anthony Fauci has used his considerable power and influence to block use of the drug and prevent physicians from using their best judgment. The media have failed to connect two death-causing actions: 1. Some state governors forcing nursing homes to accept virus-infected elderly people; and 2. Government preventing wide and early use of HCQ.
2. Reluctance to condemn Fauci
Nearly everyone seems afraid to openly condemn Fauci’s behavior and demand a reversal of his position on HCQ, which would also impact CDC and FDA.
He has made himself the king of virus medicine through constant media appearances far beyond what is normal for a medical researcher. He is part of is a research organization, not a public health or drug approval agency. As much a tyrant as a virus expert, Fauci has stubbornly refused to admit his mistake.
In this vein, an Australian government official has recently condemned the ban on using HCQ:
“Health bureaucrats have ‘violated the very first principle of the Hippocratic oath’ which is to ‘do no harm.’ … and they must lift their bans. Otherwise they are engaged in crimes against humanity, and they should be taken to the criminal court in The Hague.”
Some Americans blame President Trump for the high levels of cases, hospitalizations and deaths from COVID-19. But they have more reason to blame Fauci and his pandemic of lies about HCQ. At the end of this article is a “political” solution. It could make stockpiled HCQ broadly available.
3. The Evidence
As in a grand jury, this article cites many publications and detailed information demonstrating the proper and effective use of HCQ that has already saved millions of lives worldwide in this pandemic and could save millions more.
In sum, evidence shows that HCQ should be taken very early, either at home in the first few days after a positive test or after symptoms deemed signficant by a physician, or in the first days of hospitalization. Also, evidence shows that HCQ should be taken along with zinc and an antibiotic, such as doxycycline. Such a “cocktail” can stop the virus at its earliest stage before the very severe second stage.
The Economic Standard’s new white paper argues that “HCQ has met the appropriate burden of proof and urges members of the U.S. news media, public health community, and regulatory agencies to stop politicizing the use of this medicine. … opponents have deprived many tens of thousands of Americans of a potentially life-saving treatment.” But like other reports, the critical role of Fauci in blocking broad use of HCQ is missing.
A just released Italian study of 3,451 hospitalized patients found 30% less mortality, better than that reported for the very costly remdesivir in hospitals, touted by Fauci. An earlier, smaller Italian study found a 66% reduction in death in hospital patients. A Belgium study of 8,075 hospitalized patients found a 65% reduction. Likewise, a recent study from Saudi Arabia found 43% fewer hospitalizations and 45% fewer ICU admissions. For high-risk nursing home patients in Spain HCQ cut the risk of a bad outcome in half.
A large Henry Ford Hospital System study found a mortality rate for 2,541 patients of 13.5% for HCQ alone, 20.1% for HCQ plus azithromycin, and 26.4% for neither.
A new analysis by R. Clinton Ohlers is title, “Effectiveness of hydroxychloroquine was hiding in plain sight.” An early widely publicized study concluded that HCQ was not effective in New York patients. In truth: “Survival rates for hospitalized patients who received the drug approached 85%” and “with azithromycin the survival rate rose as high as 90%.” Without either drug, “survival fell to levels as low as 53%.” Conclusion: “a highly effective, inexpensive, and widely available treatment for COVID-19 is already in hand.”
Similarly, Dr. Watanabe from Brazil reanalyzed a Minnesota study that had a negative conclusion. For very early HCQ use, he found that “reduction in symptomatic outcomes is 72% after 0 days (first day of infection), 48.9% after 1 day and 29.3% after 2 days” – all compared to a placebo group. Conclusion: “Infected patients may have a large benefit if treated as early as possible.”
Clearly, many media-hyped studies saying HCQ has no benefits are not credible. Some medical journal papers were retracted.
An article by physician Norman Doidge is “Hydroxychloroquine: A Morality Tale – A startling investigation into how a cheap, well-known drug became a political football in the midst of a pandemic.” Conclusion: “Worldwide [HCQ] might save a million or more people before COVID is tamed.” Some studies were poorly designed. In one case “the patients were given the medication late – on average 16.6 days after the first symptoms.”
Another important study is: “Early treatment with hydroxychloroquine: a country-based analysis.” Critical conclusion: The death rate from the virus in a number of nations where HCQ has been made widely available (the treatment group) is about 74% less than in those nations, including the U.S., where it has not been made available (the control group).
Many physicians and experts on viruses have published strong pro-HCQ articles, notably Dr. Harvey Risch from Yale University. He has repeatedly argued for using HCQ as the standard outpatient therapy. This article is for a general audience. In a medical journal article, he warned against “sitting by and letting hundreds of thousands die because we did not have the courage to act according to our rational calculations.”
Experienced pro-HCQ front-line doctors have appeared on Fox News shows, including Dr. Stephen Smith, Dr, Marc Siegel (whose 96-year-old father was saved with HCQ), Dr. Janette Nesheiwat, Dr. Mehmet Oz and Dr. Risch who noted, “We’re basically fighting a propaganda war against the medical facts” and that “75,000 to 100,000 lives will be saved” if the national HCQ stockpile were used. Fox’s Sean Hannity had Dr. George Fareed, an early user of HCQ, on a recent radio show.
A new CDC publication reveals prescriptions for HCQ at retail stores (not mail order). In March through June this year there likely were 680,000 prescriptions for treating the virus. After the government clamp down, prescriptions in May and June averaged 80,000 a month. This limited use may help explain many reduced death rates.
And despite negative actions by some governments and the World Health Organization, the Sermo survey of physicians in 30 countries found for this September that HCQ is being used for 22% of patients outside hospitals, 21% inside them and even 14% in ICUs.
4. Problems with Fauci’s Positions
Dr. Fauci is only satisfied with randomized control trials (RCTs). This position has been sharply debunked, as has the assertion of negative health effects and that HCQ risks outweigh its benefits.
Thomas R. Frieden, former head of the CDC, concluded in 2017: “Despite their strengths, RCTs have substantial limitations.” He supported using many other kinds of data that now constitute the evidence for using HCQ.
Similarly, Norman Doidge observed: “RCT is best understood as standing not for Randomized Control Trials, but rather ‘Rigidly Constrained Thinking.’ in the current COVID-19 situation … we cannot simply, as so many are insisting [namely Fauci], rely only on the long-awaited RCTs to decide how to treat COVID-19.”
Importantly, hundreds of drugs have been approved without RCTs, including hydrocortisone, Lasix, tetanus vaccine, insulin, tetracycline, warfarin, heparin, prednisone, half of chemotherapy drugs used in cancer and uses of HCQ for many diseases, such as malaria and lupus.
Another false criticism has recently been debunked: “HCQ decreases cardiac events. HCQ should not be restricted in COVID-19 patients out of fear of cardiac mortality.” Another study concluded: “HCQ administration is safe for a short-term treatment for patients with COVID-19 … causing … no directly attributable arrhythmic deaths.” Dr. James Todaro concluded: “It is highly unlikely that fatal cardiac cases are from hydroxychloroquine use. It is far more likely that the disease itself is the cause of arrhythmias and cardiac injury during the hyperinflammation phase of severe cases of COVID-19.”
An article by Steven Hatfill, “Why Is The Media Suppressing Information About Hydroxychloroquine’s Effectiveness Against COVID?” noted, “There are now 53 studies that show positive results of hydroxychloroquine in COVID-19 infections.” It also highlights the early Fauci and FDA strategy that promoted use of HCQ for hospitalized patients (when it was mostly too late) rather than early outpatient use.
The Doidge article noted that for a major study that found a 66% reduction in hospital deaths from use of HCQ, Fauci “didn’t seem excited.” The key question: “Why should anyone facing a pandemic wish to discredit potentially lifesaving medications?” The answer: The billions of dollars to be made from selling medications and vaccines. Fauci has had a very close relationship with pharmaceutical companies and has patents for one of the leading vaccines being tested by Moderna.
In August three-front line physicians wrote a detailed open letter to Fauci making the medical case for unblocking widespread use of HCQ. “You are largely unchallenged in terms of your medical opinions. You are the de facto COVID-19 Czar. … Americans must not continue to die unnecessarily. Adults must resume employment and our youth return to school. Locking down America while awaiting an imperfect vaccine has done far more damage to Americans than the coronavirus.”
An important article by an epidemiologist rebutted the explanation by Fauci of why he rejects the incredible amount of evidence supporting use of HCQ. Conclusion: “I earnestly hope that Dr. Fauci reconsiders his opposition to HCQ and restores his hitherto considerable reputation.”
Schachtel noted, “Mad scientist: Fauci demands total U.S. shutdown until COVID vaccine arrives: There is no basis for Fauci’s claim that he can manipulate society into stopping the virus. He is either a victim of the illusion of control, or he has embraced total deception as part of his power drunk campaign to stay in the spotlight.”
Dr. Lee D. Merritt unraveled the question of why Fauci has been so negative about HCQ: “Why is he so strongly promoting the $3,600 remdesiver and almost totally ignoring the $20 HCQ regimen, other than to say the latter is of ‘unproven benefit’?” Are there conflicts of interest? She noted that Fauci is an integral part of a vaccine coalition, specifically the Global Vaccine Action Plan (GVAP), a collaboration of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and Fauci’s group. Fauci is also in the Leadership Council of the ‘Decade of Vaccines’ Council. Large sums of money flow from the Gates Foundation to and around Fauci’s projects.
5. Indictment justified
The continued use of crippling lockdowns advocated by Fauci is sheer lunacy when, in fact, we have an effective therapeutic. Early use of HCQ coupled with understanding the low impact of the virus on younger and healthy people would have blocked local and state lockdowns.
Waiting for large-scale use of a proven vaccine to justify restoring our society and economy is just plain stupid. If Fauci were a genuine public health official and not just a medical researcher, then he would have recognized the great many negative health impacts of lockdowns and waiting for a broadly used vaccine. He has not.
In sum: Every single day people are suffering and dying unnecessarily because Fauci refuses to accept HCQ facts. Instead, in endless media statements and appearances he pushes masks, lockdowns and vaccines.
Anthony Fauci benefits from incorrect views of HCQ in the mostly leftist press. From The Washington Post: “There is no solid scientific evidence hydroxychloroquine should be used to treat COVID-19.” Similarly, Twitter recently issued a warning “about the potential risks” of HCQ use. USA Today claimed science “has shown [HCQ] does not have a clinical benefit for COVID-19 patients and even has increased risks.”
6. Indictment specifics
For this grand jury proceeding, substantial evidence supports the indictment of Fauci on these counts:
A. Violating his physician oath to first do no harm.
B. Using his substantial influence to block widespread use of the proven safe, cheap and effective HCQ and, consequently, causing preventable pain, suffering and death for many thousands of Americans directly and through crippling lockdowns with their own negative health impacts.
C. Blocking traditional medical freedom and preventing physicians from using their best judgment in selecting for their patients the best treatment for COVID-19.
7. Solution
As a form of trial for the indicted Fauci, here is a practical way to defeat anti-HCQ efforts and the leftist, anti-Trump media and, more importantly, help Americans.
Immediately create a special work group under the White House Pandemic Task Force. Have it co-chaired by Dr. Scott Atlas, now a member of the Task Force, and the eminent Dr. Harvey Risch of Yale University. Have them select 10 additional members. Mandate them to deliver to the Task Force and President Trump within 30 days a recommendation to remove government restrictions on the use of HCQ or maintain the status quo. Let truth prevail.
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Dr. Joel Hirschhorn has a long history of working on health issues, including being a full professor at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, a senior official at the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment and the National Governors Association. He has authored a number of books and hundreds of articles and has served as an executive volunteer at a major hospital for more than 10 years.
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In the Eastern Mediterranean, where large natural gas offshore fields have been discovered, a bitter dispute is underway for the definition of exclusive economic zones, up to 200 miles from the coast, where each of the coastal countries has the rights to the field exploitation.
Vietnam won international praise for its response to COVID-19. But the country’s intensifying capitalist restructuring may leave its people sicker and more impoverished.
Red zones”, travel bans, quarantines, “red lists”. A “Second Wave” has been announced. The fear campaign has gone into overdrive. Drastic state measures are contemplated, including restrictions on social gatherings, marriages, funerals, the closing down of restaurants and bars, the outright paralysis of civil society.
The UN has just recently admitted that new cases of infantile paralysis or polio have resulted in Africa from an oral polio vaccine developed with strong support from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. It mirrors what happened in the USA in the 1950s. This is worth a closer look.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which has been tasked with helping to “secure” the elections and protect the nation against cyberattacks, is not exactly an agency known for its adherence to freedom principles.
With Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s neo-Ottoman desires at the forefront, Turkey is expanding its national borders, with what Erdogan seems to believe will resurrect the Ottoman Empire. From Iraq to Syria and Libya, Turkey has attempted to either gain territory or forcefully make a seat at the international table through military action.
Pro-Armenian forces captured the region in the early 90s triggering an armed conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan. Further development of the hostilities and the expected offensive by pro-Azerbajian forces were stopped by a Russian intervention in May of 1994.
The reality is, of course, that U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East has been all about Israel for a very long time, at least since the presidency of Bill Clinton, who has been sometimes dubbed the first Jewish president for his deference to Israeli interests.
Officially launched on October 1, 2008, AFRICOM (the U.S. Africa Command) is just one part of the U.S. global command that covers the planet—and as of 2019, the United States has colonized outer space, too, with the U.S. Space Force.
Cotton is the only genetically modified (GM) crop that has been officially approved in India and has been cultivated (illegally then legally) in the country for more than 20 years.
We remember with horror the stories of Nazis burning books in the 1930s – it’s one of the first signals that you’re living in a totalitarian regime, when education is targeted. Yet it was reported that last week, that Department of Education guidance for schools in England specifically defined anti-capitalism as an ‘extreme political stance’, equating it with anti-semitism, opposition to freedom of speech and endorsing criminality.
‘Schools should not under any circumstances use resources produced by organisations that take extreme political stances on matters…Examples include, but are not limited to:
A publicly stated desire to abolish or overthrow democracy, capitalism or to end free and fair elections’
It should be said that since an article was published in The Guardian on this issue, the government website appears to have been updated to remove any reference to capitalism. But there are other concerning words in the latest version.
An example of an extreme political stance is now described as ‘promoting divisive or victim narratives that are harmful to British society’. What constitutes as a divisive issue? Brexit? Scottish independence? It’s not clear how teachers will interpret this advice. But how could they properly discuss the subject of Brexit, for instance, without referring to materials from both sides of the EU referendum campaign?
Another point made in the updated version is ‘selecting and presenting information to make unsubstantiated claims against state institutions’. Does that mean that, for example, discussions about the future of the BBC would be outlawed? Surely this is curtailing any proper debate in the classroom? Any attempt to ban a subject from educational establishments should immediately raise eyebrows. If schools and universities are not places for free discussion and debate, then they are surely none other than propaganda institutes of the state.
There has been considerable backlash in response to the original guidelines issued by the Department for Education which effectively ban anti-capitalist literature. British journalist and author Owen Jones, branded the guidance as ‘McCarthyism’ (referring to the anti-Communist campaign led by US senator McCarthy in the 1950s.) Former Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell, speaking to The Guardian, said the measures would make it ‘illegal to refer to large tracts of British history and politics including the history of British socialism, the Labour Party and trade unionism, all of which have at different times advocated the abolition of capitalism.’ But more broadly, McDonnell believes the move is indicative of the drift towards ‘extreme Conservative authoritarianism” as freedom of speech is increasingly curtailed.
Former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis commented that the guidance demonstrated ‘how easy it is to lose a country, to slip surreptitiously into totalitarianism”. For this is not an isolated example of how freedom of speech is being restricted in Britain’s educational establishments. Previously there have been incidents at UK universities where scheduled speakers have been cancelled (due to complaints), course content has been changed after complaints of it being offensive, and there have even been reports of books being banned. A 2015 paper written by Anna Traianou also concludes that ‘from the 1980s onwards, UK governments have increasingly intervened in higher education, on the basis of the assumption that universities must serve the economy, seeking to maximize and measure the ‘returns’ on public investment.’ She argues that academic freedoms, as a consequence, have been greatly reduced.
Such government intervention in our educational institutions is a direct threat to our democracy. It is shutting down proper debate and freedom of thought. The motivation from the government’s position is clear – a more ignorant population is a more compliant one. But such thinking is futile – thanks to the internet, the youth of today is able to access a much broader range of sources than previous generations were. If the government thinks it can keep people in the dark – it can think again.
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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.
Johanna Ross is a journalist based in Edinburgh, Scotland.
In Germany, a major blow is being delivered against the United States in the trade war between Washington and Beijing. Despite pressures, Berlin is opting for cooperation with China on 5G technology, refusing to impose any sanctions against Huawei, ignoring American demands. Considering the prominent economic role played by Germany within the European Union, it is possible that the country’s decision will become a trend for other states on the continent, as suggested by several experts around the world.
The German government is currently working on a new bill to guarantee the national security interests in the use of 5G technology. At first, this project could exclude Huawei’s participation, if it were interpreted that the Chinese company does not meet formal security requirements. But this is an increasingly distant scenario. German Chancellor Angela Merkel in no way wants to exclude the Chinese giant Huawei from building the 5G network in Germany. The major position in the German parliament appears to be similar to that of Angela Merkel, who has repeatedly stated the complete impossibility of excluding Huawei.
The main American speech to support its global crusade to impose sanctions against China is that Beijing uses Huawei’s technology for espionage purposes, working to steal data and collect information useful to the Chinese government in the countries where the company’s antennas and platforms are based. This speech did not convince Germany, which currently elaborates its national security policy and makes it increasingly clear that it does not recognize China as a possible threat due to Huawei’s actions.
In fact, Merkel is keen to see how American and European interests tend to clash more and more, and as a result, she has made important and notable decisions that challenge the American agenda for Europe. Germany’s refusal to impose a ban or limitations on Huawei’s admission to its market is also a challenge to European policy towards the US, as Berlin currently holds the presidency on the EU Council. Germany’s approach to Huawei would be dictated not only by Germany’s interests, but also by the EU’s, making it inevitable that the German attitude will be shared by other European states.
In fact, at least in the field of 5G technology, Huawei has increasingly stood out in the German market, being especially attractive in terms of price-quality proportion. Currently, half of the antennas used by the telecommunications operators Deutsche Telekom and Vodafone to build 5G networks are manufactured by Huawei and cooperation tends to increase even more. If Germany had to reject the construction of its 5G platforms due to sanctions against China, billions of euros would be lost, and Berlin would risk becoming technologically obsolete in the face of a rapidly changing market. From all points of view, it would be disadvantageous to both China and Germany, but especially worse for Germany.
In fact, Washington has so far provided no evidence of its accusations against China about using 5G for espionage purposes. Obviously, all high technology is secretly used by the great powers for military and intelligence purposes, which makes American accusations even more vague and banal. When the topic involves not just billions of euros, but also the entire technological capacity of a nation – and a continent – it takes much more than mere accusations to affect a project. As long as Washington does not present concrete evidence of its allegations, it will only lose more and more allies to the growing Chinese market.
In general, Germany has increasingly distanced itself from the US in its geopolitical alignment in the last months. In addition to the 5G issue, cooperation with Russia on the Nord Stream 2 project, the decrease in American troops in Germany and the intention to reduce the number of nuclear weapons installed in German territory are examples of this distance. In all of these cases, Merkel has demonstrated her particular strategic ability to foresee situations of shock of interests between Americans and Europeans and has prioritized national and continental interests.
However, it is important to note that Merkel has her opponents and that she does not lead Germany alone. The bill tends to pass without any sanction against Huawei, but that is not a guarantee. There are still parliamentarians who advocate maintaining a Western alliance against China. In this sense, efforts to sanction Huawei could intensify and create several internal tensions within the German government and across European society. Above all, German politicians must take their country’s interests into account when drafting a national security law, ignoring what is necessary for the security of foreign powers.
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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.
Lucas Leiroz is a research fellow in international law at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro.
The tensions between Greece and Turkey that became a geopolitical crisis in the East Mediterranean appears to be finally subsiding after Ankara withdrew from Greece’s maritime space the Oruç Reis Turkish research vessel and the warships escorting it. Since Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan initiated the crisis at the beginning of August in search of oil and gas deposits in Greece’s maritime space, his administration, along with Turkish media that is 90% controlled by the government, continually makes the claim that Greece must “demilitarize” their East Aegean islands “as stipulated by the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne.” The Treaty of Lausanne set the borders of the modern Greek state, with the exception of the Italian-occupied Dodecanese islands that reunited with Greece in April 1947 after the signing of the Paris Peace Treaty between Italy and the World War II Allies. It also set the borders for the modern Turkish state.
Turkey’s withdrawal of the Oruç Reis and the warships escorting it opened up a new opportunity for Greece and Turkey to begin dialogue to resolve their differences in the East Mediterranean peacefully. However, it is likely that this plan for dialogue will end before it even begins as even discussion topics cannot be agreed upon. Athens insists that dialogue should only concentrate on the demarcation of maritime borders between Greece and Turkey, while Ankara says that any dialogue must also include discussions of Greece demilitarizing its East Aegean islands that lay directly opposite Turkey’s coastline – in many cases only a few minutes boat ride away.
The claim that Greece’s islands must be demilitarized, as continuously repeated by Turkey, is a manipulation of the Lausanne Treaty. For this reason, Athens will continually shut down any discussions of demilitarization. If we look at the case of the southeastern Aegean islands, collectively known as the Dodecanese, they are not held accountable to the Lausanne Treaty as Greece did not achieve sovereignty over the islands until more than two decades after the Treaty was signed. Instead, the Dodecanese are held accountable to the Paris Treaty, that Turkey is not a signatory of. Therefore, Turkey’s insistence on the demilitarization of the Dodecanese constitutes a “res inter alios acta.” According to Article 34 of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, a treaty does not create obligations or rights for third countries, meaning that Turkey cannot demand that the Dodecanese islands be demilitarized.
In the case of Lesvos, Chios, Samos and Ikaria, the Lausanne Treaty makes no mention of these islands having to be demilitarized, but rather there can be no naval bases and no army fortifications. In addition, there can be no professional military presence besides the National Guard, a volunteer corps, which Greece has adhered to.
With regards to Limnos and Samothrace, the demilitarization of these islands, along with the demilitarization of the Turkish-controlled Dardanelle and Bosporus Straits, as well as the Sea of Marmara and the Turkish-controlled Imvros (Gokceada), Tenedos (Bozcaada) and Rabbit Islands (Tavcan), the 1923 Lausanne Treaty on the Straits stipulated that these areas of both Greece and Turkey must be demilitarized. However, this was annulled by the 1936 Montreux Treaty, which, as it categorically states, replaces in its entirety the Lausanne Treaty regarding militarization. Greece’s right to militarize Limnos and Samothrace was recognized by Turkish Ambassador in Athens at the time, Roussen Esref, with a letter sent to Greek Prime Minister Ioannis Metaxas on May 6, 1936. The Turkish government reiterated this position when the then Turkish Minister for Foreign Affairs, Rustu Aras, in his address to the Turkish National Assembly recognized Greece’s legal right to deploy troops on Limnos and Samothrace, with the following statement:
“The provisions pertaining to the islands of Limnos and Samothrace, which belong to our neighbor and friendly country Greece and were demilitarized in application of the 1923 Lausanne Treaty, were also abolished by the new Montreux Treaty, which gives us great pleasure.”
In exchange, Turkey was able to militarize its islands, the Marmara Sea and the Straits, that they were not able to do due to the Lausanne Treaty.
Although Greece has every legal right to militarize its islands to varying degrees, and have done so within the bounds of the Treaty of Lausanne for Lesvos, Chios, Samos and Ikaria, the bounds of the Montreux Treaty for Limnos and Samothrace, and within the bounds of the 1947 Paris Peace Treaty for the Dodecanes, Turkey’s insistence that the islands must be demilitarized threatens to end discussions between Athens and Ankara even before they begin.
Greece has categorically stated that there is no chance that demilitarized status of the islands will be discussed. This will inevitably create a deadlock between the two countries, thus likely ending discussions before they begin. As Erdoğan is maintaining a policy of constant crises to distract the population from the rapidly declining Turkish economy and lira, there is every chance that when the Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh) conflict subsides, he will resume tensions in the East Mediterranean and blame Greece for this eventuality as it did not demilitarize its islands as he demands.
From the Greek perspective, the islands must remain militarized so long as Turkey’s Aegean Fourth Army exists. Turkey’s Aegean Army was created only one year after the 1974 Turkish invasion of northern Cyprus. The Aegean Army frequently conducts military exercises opposite the Greek islands. These exercises include training on how to storm beachfronts. With Greece not only having a legal right to militarize its islands to varying degrees, but also watching Turkish threats against the East Aegean islands, dialogue will be deadlocked as Erdoğan will not backdown from his demands that the islands be demilitarized.
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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.
Paul Antonopoulos is an independent geopolitical analyst.
In the Eastern Mediterranean, where large natural gas offshore fields have been discovered, a bitter dispute is underway for the definition of exclusive economic zones, up to 200 miles from the coast, where each of the coastal countries has the rights to the field exploitation. The countries directly involved are Greece, Turkey, Cyprus, Syria, Lebanon, Israel, Palestine (whose Gaza gas fields are in the hands of Israel), Egypt and Libya. The confrontation between Greece and Turkey, both members of NATO, is particularly tense. The stakes are not just economic. The real game being played in the Eastern Mediterranean is geopolitical and geostrategic, and involves the major world powers. The EastMed pipeline, bringing much of the gas from this area to the EU, fits into this framework.
Its realization was decided among Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, Greek Prime Minister Tsipras and Cypriot President Anastasiades, at the summit held in Jerusalem on March 20, 2019. Netanyahu stressed that “the pipeline will extend from Israel to Europe through Cyprus and Greece” and Israel will thus become an “energy power” (which will control the energy corridor to Europe), while Tsipras stressed that “cooperation between Israel, Greece and Cyprus has become strategic having reached their sixth summit.”This is confirmed by the military pact signed by the Tsipras government with Israel five years ago (il manifesto, 28 July 2015).
The US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo attended the Jerusalem summit (its acts were published by the US Embassy in Cyprus), underlining that the EastMed project launched by Israel, Greece and Cyprus, “fundamental partners of the US for security,” is “incredibly timely” as “Russia, China and Iran are trying to set foot in the East and the West.”
The US strategy is declared: to reduce and finally block Russian gas exports to Europe, replacing them with gas supplied or otherwise controlled by the US. In 2014 it blocked the SouthStream pipeline through the Black Sea, which would have brought Russian gas to Italy at competitive prices, and is attempting to do the same with TurkStream which, via the Black Sea, carries Russian gas to the European part of Turkey to get it to the EU.
At the same time, the US is trying to block the New Silk Road, the network of infrastructures designed to connect China to the Mediterranean and Europe. In the Middle East, by the war the US blocked the energy corridor which would have transported Iranian gas through Iraq and Syria, under a 2011 agreement, to the Mediterranean and into Europe.
This strategy is joined by Italy, where (in Puglia) EastMed will arrive to bring gas to other European countries.
Italian Economic Development Minister Patuanelli (M5S) called the EU approved gas pipeline one of the “European projects of common interest,” and Italian Economic Development Undersecretary Ms. Todde (M5S) led Italy to join the EastMed Gas Forum, headquarters of “dialogue and cooperation” on Eastern Mediterranean gas, in which Egypt and the Palestinian Authority kake part part – in addition to Israel, Greece and Cyprus. Jordan is also part of it, although has no offshore gas fields not overlooking the Mediterranean, but imports it from Israel.
On the other hand, Lebanon, Syria and Libya are excluded from the Forum, despite the fact that part of the gas in the Eastern Mediterranean belongs to them. The United States, France and the EU have announced their accession to the Forum. Turkey does not participate in it because of the dispute with Greece, which NATO however is committed to settling: “military delegations” from the two countries have already met six times at the NATO headquarters in Brussels. Meanwhile, in the eastern Mediterranean and in the neighboring Black Sea, a growing deployment of US naval forces in Europe is underway, with their headquarters in Naples Capodichino.Their “mission” is “to defend US and Allied interests, and discourage aggression.” The same “mission” for the US B-52 strategic bombers flying over the Eastern Mediterranean flanked by Greek and Italian fighters.
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This article was originally published in Italian on Il Manifesto.
Manlio Dinucci is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization.
Lewis Carroll‘s novel Alice in Wonderland (1865) sadly resonates so well today.
This writer in November of 2016 emphasized with Alice as she fell down that rabbit hole.
The unlikely co-conspirators in this 21st Century Amerikan novel were, as usual, the Democrats. All they had to do was nominate Donald Duck and they would have defeated Donald Trump… anyone but the wicked witch. Trump did not win that election… Hillary lost it!
She lost it because the Democrats, historically since FDR, join with the other party and side with the super rich who run this empire.
The only difference between them and the Republicans is that each side of that same dirty empire coin have their own group of super rich handlers. Yes, without a doubt the Republicans are the wolves who will eat us working stiffs alive if given the opportunity. Their ‘across the aisle’ adversaries (social friends in many instances) the Democrats, well they are the foxes. They ‘feel your pain’ and then allow the Man to stick the dagger in deeper. OK, they support abortion, gay rights and some (not many) calls for justice for the indigent, but not much more. When it comes to foreign policy and the War Economy they also ‘suck up’ to the Beast.
My concern, for this very urgent election cycle, is that many decent and rational citizens have truly fallen down that rabbit hole into Trumpland.
Just look at the latest news of Trump paying either NO federal income taxes or, in some years, paying LESS than what 95% of his working stiff supporters paid. Many will still continue to drink his phony populist Kool-Aid. In August of 2017 Trump laid his cards on the table, put his late father’s white sheets aside and emboldened the far right white supremacist movement. Not so soon after the violent confrontation (and murder of an Antifa demonstrator) he carefully announced that there were “Good folks on both sides” of the Antifa/white supremacist divide in Charlottesville, Virginia.
What this did was reject any semblance of condemnation that was urgently needed from the most powerful man in not only our nation but the entire world! Imagine the chagrin of all who saw vile Anti Semitic rhetoric and violence when viewing those white supremacists on Friday night and Saturday afternoon in August of ’17. What should any decent human being feel when seeing and hearing this: Marchers carrying torches as they filed around repeating over and over “Jews will not replace us” and “Blood and Soil”… all right out of 1920s-1930s Germany? When the president of the United States fails to condemn such behavior the door is opened for all the loonies and real ‘Domestic Terrorists’ to come out of the woodwork.
A little more than a year later, in October of 2018, 46 year old Robert Bowers walked into the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh, PA and blew away eleven worshippers, injuring nine others. Who is to say that he was NOT emboldened by his president’s failure to speak out after Charlottesville? As the Tom Cruise character in the fine film ‘A Few Good Men’ put it so succinctly when seeing his court case go down the tubes: “And the hits just keep on coming!” To add insult to injury (with two murders) Trump actually made reference to the 17 year old kid, Kyle Rittenhouse, who shot and killed two protestors in Kenosha Wisconsin. He said that Rittenhouse, illegally carrying a powerful rife across state lines as a vigilante, was ‘defending his life’ from protestors who were chasing after him. Alice, did you hear that one? The armed man murdering the unarmed… and ‘Up is down and black is white’!
There are so many recent instances of this president, and his lackey administration and partisans in Congress, allowing this white supremacist backlash to flourish.
It is NOT just those far right wing police officers who should have been vetted better before being hired. It is this phony so called ‘Law and Order’ BS that has infected the minds of so many of my friends and neighbors. They see the ‘Boogie Man’ in every black and brown face they do not know… Just like the Christian Germans and Poles who bought into the garbage about Jews being sub human etc. That infection, like the pandemic we now experience, was transmitted throughout the entire western world. In this new century we see the Middle Eastern refugees of the phony CIA wars, along with the brown faces fleeing from Latin American dead end economies, labeled as shall we say ‘Less than human’. Trump has the ear of the ‘White makes right’ Amerikans who still support him.
The other group who will never leave his side are the hard line evangelicals who ONLY care about abortion and gay marriage etc and really little else. My dear late friend and fellow Anti War activist Ed Dunphy put it to a group of bible class teachers and students while jogging on the campus on North Carolina University a few years ago. He asked to speak to them for a few minutes, and they agreed to hear him, not knowing of course what in the hell he was about to lay on them. “I too am Pro Life and against abortion, other than in life threatening emergencies to the mother. Yet, to me, the life of a fetus is as important as the life of newborn babe, or one inside the mother, when they are destroyed by the Collateral Damage of illegal and immoral bomb and missile attacks by our drones. Why won’t you all speak out about that?” They asked him to please leave….NOW!
I guess Ralph Kramden in the Honeymooners comedy show was correct: “If you want loyalty… get a dog!” Preferably a right wing one, hey Donald!
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Philip A Farruggio is a contributing editor for The Greanville Post. He is also frequently posted on Global Research, Nation of Change, Countercurrents.org, and Off Guardian sites. He is the son and grandson of Brooklyn NYC longshoremen and a graduate of Brooklyn College, class of 1974. Since the 2000 election debacle Philip has written over 400 columns on the Military Industrial Empire and other facets of life in an upside down America. He is also host of the ‘It’s the Empire… Stupid‘ radio show, co produced by Chuck Gregory. Philip can be reached at [email protected].
Tuesday has been another day on which the testimony focused on the extreme inhumane conditions in which Julian Assange would be kept imprisoned in the USA if extradited. The prosecution’s continued tactic of extraordinary aggression towards witnesses who are patently well informed played less well, and there were distinct signs that Judge Baraitser was becoming irritated by this approach. The totality of defence witnesses and the sheer extent of mutual corroboration they provided could not simply be dismissed by the prosecution attempting to characterise all of them as uninformed on a particular detail, still less as all acting in bad faith. To portray one witness as weak may appear justified if they can be shaken, but to attack a succession of patently well-qualified witnesses, on no basis but aggression and unreasoning hostility, becomes quickly unconvincing.
The other point which became glaringly anomalous, in fact quite contrary to natural justice, was the US government’s continued reliance on affidavits from US Assistant Attorney Gordon Kromberg and Board of Prisons psychiatrist Dr Alison Leukefeld. The cross-examinations by the US government of the last four defence witnesses have all relied on precisely the same passages from Kromberg and Leukefeld, and every single one of the defence witnesses has said Leukefeld and Kromberg are wrong as to fact. Yet under US/UK extradition agreements the US government witnesses may not be called and cross-examined. When the defence witnesses are attacked so strongly in cross-examination on the points of disagreement with Kromberg and Leukefeld, it becomes glaringly wrong that Kromberg and Leukefeld may not be similarly cross-examined by the defence on the same points.
Similarly as to process, the only point of any intellectual purchase which the US government’s lawyers have hit upon is the limited direct experience of the witnesses of the H unit of the ADX Supermax prison. This casts in a stark light last week’s objection to the defence introducing further witnesses who have precisely that experience, in response to the affidavits of Kromberg and Leukefeld on these specific points, which were submitted on 20 August and 2 September respectively. The prosecution objected to these witnesses as too late, whereas both were submitted within a month of the testimony to which they were responding. The US government and Baraitser having ruled out witnesses on this very specific new point, their then proceeding to attack the existing defence witnesses on their knowledge of precisely the point on which they refused to hear new evidence, leaves a very bad taste indeed.
The first witness of the day was Maureen Baird, former warden (governor in UK terms) of three US prisons including 2014–16 the Metropolitan Correction Centre (MCC) New York, which houses a major concentration of Special Administrative Measures (SAMs) prisoners pre-trial. She had also attended national courses and training programmes on SAMs and met and discussed with fellow warders and others responsible for them elsewhere, including Florence ADX.
Led through her evidence by Edward Fitzgerald QC, Baird confirmed that she anticipated Assange would be subject to SAMs pre-trial, based on the national security argument and on all the documentation submitted by the US Attorney, and post-trial. SAMs meant being confined to a cell 23–24 hours a day with no communication at all with other prisoners. In MCC the one hour a day outside your cell was spent simply in a different but identical empty cell known as the “recreation cell”. She had put in an exercise bike; otherwise it was unequipped. Recreation was always completely alone.
Prisoners were allowed one phone call a month of 30 minutes, or 2 of 15 minutes, to named and vetted family members. These were monitored by the FBI.
Fitzgerald asked about Kromberg’s assertion that mail was “free-flowing”. Baird said that all mail was screened. This delayed mail typically by two to three months, if it got through at all.
Baird said that the SAMs regime was centrally determined and was the same in all locations. It was decided by the attorney general. Neither the prison warden nor the Board of Prisons itself had the power to moderate the SAMs regime. Fitzgerald said the US government had claimed yesterday it could be varied, and some people under SAMs could even have a cellmate. Baird replied “No, that is not my experience at all”.
Fitzgerald quoted Kromberg as stating that a prisoner could appeal to the case manager and unit manager against the conditions of SAMs. Baird replied that those people “could do nothing”. SAMs was “way above their pay grade”. Kromberg’s description was unrealistic, as was his description of judicial review. All internal procedures would have to be exhausted first, which would take many years and go nowhere. She had never seen any case of SAMs being changed. Similarly, when Fitzgerald put to her that SAMs were imposed for only one year at a time and subject to annual review, Baird replied that she had never heard of any case of their not being renewed. They appeared simply to be rolled over by the Attorney General’s office.
Baird said that in addition to herself applying SAMs at the MCC, she went on national training courses on SAMs and met and discussed experiences with those applying SAMs at other locations, including the Florence, Colorado ADX. SAMs had strong and negative consequences on prisoners’ mental and physical health. These included severe depression, anxiety disorder and weight loss. Baird said she agreed with previous witness Sickler that if convicted Assange could very well face spending the rest of his life imprisoned under SAMs at the Florence ADX. She quoted a former warden of that prison describing it as “not built for humanity”.
Fitzgerald took Baird to Kromberg’s description of a multi-phased programme for release from SAMs. Baird said she recognised none of this in practice. SAMs prisoners could not participate in any group programmes or meet other prisoners in any circumstances. What Kromberg was describing was not a programme but a very limited list of potential small extra privileges, such as one extra phone call a month. Phase 3 involved mingling with other prisoners and Baird said she had never seen it and doubted it really applied: “I don’t know how that happens”.
Fitzgerald asked Baird about Dr Leukefeld’s claim that some prisoners enjoy Florence ADX so much they did not want to leave. Baird said this was a reflection of the extreme anxiety disorders that could affect prisoners. They became scared to leave their highly ordered world.
It was interesting to see how the prosecution would claim that Baird was unqualified. It was very difficult to counter the evidence of a prison warder about the inhumanity of the prison regime. The US government hit on a quite extraordinary attack. They claimed that the prison system was generally pleasant as described by Leukefeld and Kromberg, but that the prisons in which Baird had worked had indeed been bad, but only because Baird was a bad warden.
Here are brief extracts from the US Government’s cross-examination of Baird:
Clair Dobbin Are you independent? Maureen Baird I work for one attorney but also others. Dobbin You appear on a legal website as a consultant – Allan Ellis of San Francisco. Baird I do some consultancy, including with Allan but not exclusively. Dobbin You only work for defendants? Baird Yes. Dobbin It says that the firm handles appeals and post-conviction placing. Baird Yes, I tend to get involved in post-conviction or placing. Dobbin Do you have any experience in sentencing? Baird What kind of sentencing? Dobbin That is what I am asking. Baird I have testified on prison conditions pre-sentence.
This was a much briefer effort than usual to damage the credentials of the witness. After questions on Baird’s exact prison experience, Clair Dobbins moved on to:
Dobbin Do you know the criteria for SAMs? Baird Yes. Dobbin Why do you say it is likely Assange will get SAMs? Kromberg only says it is possible. Baird Kromberg talks about it a very great deal. It is very plainly on the table. Dobbin It is speculative. It can only be decided by the Attorney General as reasonably necessary to prevent the disclosure of national security information. Baird They have made plain they believe Assange to hold further such information. Dobbin You are not in any position to make any judgement. Baird It is my opinion he would be judged to meet that criterion, based on their past decisions. Dobbin How can you say the risk exists he would disclose national security information? Baird He is charged with espionage. They have said he is a continuing risk. Dobbin I am suggesting that is highly speculative and you cannot know. Baird I am judging by what the government have said and the fact they have so much emphasised SAMs. They very definitely fail to say in all this that SAMs will not be applied.
After further discussion on Kromberg’s claims versus Baird’s experience, the US government moved on to the question of the SAMs prisoners under Baird’s care in the MCC.
Dobbin You say they were in solitary confinement. The officers on the unit did not have human contact with the prisoners? Baird They did not speak to inmates. Dobbin Why not? Baird That is not what prison officers do. Dobbin Why not? You were in charge? Baird They just open the small viewing slot in the iron door every half hour and look through. Conversation just did not happen. Dobbin You could encourage that? Baird I could lead by example. But ordering conversation is not something a prison warden does. I did not have that authority. There are unions. If I instructed the prison officers to socialise with the prisoners, they would reply it is not in their job description. Dobbin Oh, come on! You could encourage. Baird On a normal basis, those officers do not talk to inmates. Dobbin Did you tell your staff to? Wouldn’t the first thing you do be to tell your staff to talk? Baird No. That’s not how it works. Dobbin Did you raise your concerns about SAMs with those above you? Baird No. Dobbin Did you raise your concerns with judges? (brief discussion of a specific case ensued) Baird No. Dobbin Did you raise concerns about the conditions of SAM inmates with judges? Baird No. They were a very small part of the prison population I was dealing with. Dobbin So you didn’t encourage staff or raise any concerns? Baird I tried to be fair and compassionate. I talked to the isolation prisoners myself. The fact that other staff did not engage is not uncommon. I do not recall making any complaints or recommendations. Dobbin So these conditions did not cause you any concerns at the time. It is only now? Baird It did cause me concerns. Dobbin What did you do about your concerns at the time? Baird I did not think I had any influence. It was way above me. SAMs are decided by the Attorney General and heads of the intelligence agencies. Dobbin You did not even try.
This was an audacious effort to distract from Baird’s obviously qualified and first-hand evidence of how dreadful and inhuman the regime is, but ultimately a complaint that Baird did not try to modify the terrible system does not really help the government case. In over two hours of cross-examination, Dobbin again and again tried to discredit Baird’s testimony by contrasting it with the evidence of Kromberg and Leukefeld, but this was entirely counter-productive for Dobbin. It served instead to illustrate how very far Kromberg’s and Leukefeld’s assurances were from the description of what really happens from an experienced prison warden.
Baird demolished Dobbin’s insistence on Kromberg’s description of a functioning three-stage programme for removal of SAMs. When it came to Dr Leukefeld’s account of SAMs prisoners being allowed to take part in psychiatric group therapy sessions, Baird involuntarily laughed. She suggested that from where Dr Leukefeld sat “in the central office”, Leukefeld possibly genuinely believed this happened.
The afternoon witness was an attorney, Lindsay Lewis, who represents Abu Hamza, who is held at ADX Florence. The videolink to Lewis had extremely poor sound and from the public gallery I was unable to hear much of her testimony. She said that Hamza, who has both forearms amputated, had been kept in solitary confinement under SAMs in the ADX for almost ten years. His conditions were absolutely inappropriate to his condition. He had no prosthesis sufficient to handle self-care and received no nursing care at all. His bed, toilet and sink were all unadapted and unsuitable to his disability. His other medical conditions including severe diabetes, hypertension and depression were not adequately treated.
Lewis said that the conditions of Hamza’s incarceration directly breached undertakings made by the US government to the UK magistrates’ court and High Court when they made the extradition request. The US had stated his medical needs would be fully assessed, his medical treatment would be adequate, and he was unlikely to be sent to the ADX. None of these had happened.
In cross-examination, Dobbin’s major point was to deny that the assurances given to the British authorities by the US Government at the time of Hamza’s extradition amounted to undertakings. She was also at great pains to emphasise Hamza’s convicted terrorist offences, as though these justified the conditions of his incarceration. But the one thing which struck me most was Lewis’s description of the incident that was used to justify the continued imposition of SAMs on Hamza.
Hamza is allowed to communicate only with two named family members, one of whom is one of his sons. In a letter, Hamza had asked this son to tell his one-year-old grandchild that he loved him. Hamza was charged with an illegal message to a third party (the grandson). This had resulted in extension of the SAMs regime on Hamza, which still continues. In cross-examination, Dobbin was at pains to suggest this “I love you” may have been a coded terrorist message.
The day concluded with a foretaste of excitement to come, as Judge Baraitser agreed to grant witness anonymity to the two UC Global whistleblowers who are to give evidence on UC Global’s spying on Assange in the Ecuadorean Embassy. In making application, Summers gave notice that among the topics to be discussed was the instruction from UC Global’s American clients to consider poisoning or kidnapping Assange. The hidden firearm with filed-off serial numbers discovered in the home of UC Global’s chief executive David Morales, and his relationship to the Head of Security at the Las Vegas Sands complex, were also briefly mooted.
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The United States has now sent more occupying forces into Syria in clear violation of international law. The Pentagon regime officials claim the deployment of additional occupying forces allegedly came due to a series of “incidents” between US occupying forces and Russian troops legally stationed in the country. The US troops will be operating in Syria on a 90-day deployment.
They say the additional soldiers and vehicles will serve as a “show of presence” to “discourage” Russia from entering the eastern areas of Syria where US forces and the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces illegally operate. US troops have had multiple encounters with the Syrian government and Russia inside Syria throughout the year. Some of the more serious confrontations occurred last month.
US commanders blame the encounters on Moscow and Damascus, but while the US maintains its presence in the country against the will of the Syrian government, confrontations are bound to happen. These new US occupying forces will only make the situation worse than it already is.
Indeed, the US is taking this route given the success of the Syrian and allied Russian campaign in general and in particular in light of souring US-Turkish relations, the possibility of the US losing access to the Turkish Incirlik base, and the dire situation of US-backed terrorist groups after their defeat by the Syrian government forces and its allies.
Mainstream media outlets present the additional US occupying forces as a “warning for Russia and Syria” or a “defensive threat”, but they have failed to distinguish the de facto meaning of this new development. Nor have they included that the US military’s official presence in Syria is in stark violation of international law, constituting an illegal occupation of parts of a sovereign country.
It has long been assessed that the reason behind US simultaneous backing of ISIS and the Kurdish forces is for the purpose of using ISIS as an excuse and threat to be defeated, only to then carve out a US occupation zone and set up military bases under the pretext of forming an independent Kurdish state.
Under international law, the US does not have the right to divide, separate, occupy, or carve out a section of Syria regardless of what the US occupying army claims to justify its presence and meddling. Moreover, under the present Syrian Constitution, Kurds are represented both in the government in Damascus and have a semi-autonomous status within the central Syrian state.
The brazen and illegal deployment of additional troops by the US poses the real possibility of creating a direct confrontation between Syrian and Russian forces on the one hand, and the US military and their Kurdish outfits on the other. This deliberate increase in troop numbers would deal a major blow to hopes for a diplomatic resolution to the Syrian crisis.
The new development marks a turning point in the Syrian conflict. If before there had been any ambiguity about the US intentions in Syria – a plan to divide Syria which had been publicly elaborated at the White House – then now the US has revealed its hand. This is a historic and dangerous development which only increases the chances of a new war, for which the US would be totally held responsible.
The US has invaded Syria and is occupying nearly 1/3 of its territory, has also announced plans for an indefinite occupation, and is plundering the country’s oil. The US has no authorization under international or even US law to invade and occupy Syria, much less attack Syrian forces, which it has done repeatedly. Nor has it a legal warrant to create new administrative and governance structures in the country to replace the Syrian government, a project it is undertaking through a parallel invasion of US diplomatic personnel.
These actions amount to a project of recolonization by an empire bent on extending its supremacy to the whole world, including the remaining outposts of resistance to foreign tyranny. Moreover, US actions represent an escalation of Washington’s long war on Syria, previously carried out through proxies, including ISIS and Al Qaeda, into a full-scale conventional war with direct US military involvement.
The enormity of the project, the escalation of the war, and the US occupation of Syria has largely flown under the radar of public awareness. It’s a wake-up call to the UN and the world community to stand up and take proper actions to make sure no one but the Syrian government and people are the ones that would determine their own fate.
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The Armenian-Azerbaijani war continues raging in the South Caucasus.
As of September 29, the Azerbaijani advance in the Nagorno-Karabakh region struck the Armenian defense and Azerbaijani forces were not able to achieve any military breakthroughs. Armenian troops withdrew from several positions in the Talish area and east of Fuzuli.
The Azerbaijani military has been successfully employing combat drones and artillery to destroy positions and military equipment of Armenia, but Azerbaijani mechanized infantry was unable to develop its momentum any further.
While both sides claim that they eliminated multiple enemy fighters and made notable gains, the real situation on the ground remains more or less stable with minor gains achieved by Azerbaijani troops. Armenian sources say that 370 Azerbaijani troops were killed and over 1,000 injured. The number of killed Armenian fighters, according to Azerbaijani sources, is over 1,000. Armenian sources also note the notable role of Turkey in the developing conflict.
Armenian President Armen Sarkissian said that Turkey has been assisting Azerbaijan in its war against the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic with advisers, mercenaries and even F-16 fighter jets. He added that the settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict is still possible through dialogue. However, the President emphasized that the Armenian nation cannot allow a return to the past.
“105 years ago, the Ottoman Empire carried out the genocide of the Armenians. In no case can we allow this genocide to be repeated,” Sarkissian said.
Armenia threatens to use Iskander short-range ballistic missile systems obtained from Russia against Azerbaijani targets if Turkish F-16 warplanes are employed on the battlefield.
Meanwhile, Armenian Ambassador to Russia Vardan Toganyan said that members of Turkish-backed Syrian militant groups have been already participating in the conflict. He said that recently about 4,000 Turkish-backed militants were deployed to Azerbaijan. In turn, the Ministry of Defense of Azerbaijan said that “people who have arrived from Syria and other countries of the Middle East” are fighting on the side of Armenia. Earlier, pro-Turkish sources claimed that Armenia was transporting fighters from the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) and the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) to the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region. Thus, the sides are not only claiming that they are gaining an upper hand in the war, but also accuse each other of using foreign mercenaries and terrorists.
On the evening of September 28, the Defense Ministry of the self-proclaimed Nagorno-Karabakh Republic confirmed that 84 of its troops were killed in the recent escalation. The Armenian side also claimed that its forces had shot down an Azerbaijani aircraft. However, this claim was denied by the Azerbaijani military. Baku continues insisting that all Armenian claims about the Azerbaijani casualties in the war are fake news.
On September 29, the Armenian side continued reporting about Azerbaijani helicopters being shot down, and declaring that they repelled Azerbaijani attacks. Nonetheless, the scale and intensity of the strikes by the Azerbaijani side did not demonstrate any decrease. On top of this, the Armenian Defense Ministry said that a Turkish Air Force F-16 fighter jet shot down an Armenian Su-25 warplane. The F-16 fighter jet allegedly took off from the Ganja Airbase in Azerbaijan and was providing air cover to combat UAVs, which were striking targets in Armenia’s Vardenis, Mec Marik and Sotk. Azerbaijan and Turkey denied Armenian claims that a Turkish F-16 shot down the Su-25.
So far, no side has achieved a strategic advantage in the ongoing conflict. However, the Azerbaijani military, which receives extensive support from Turkey, is expected to have better chances in the prolonged conflict with Armenia, if Erevan does not receive direct military support from Russia.
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Several reports indicate that Nigeria has reached critical level in its development as there are numerous problems including frequent ethnic and religious attacks, deep-seated corruption, ineffective federal system of governance despite been referred to as the Giant of Africa. Nigeria is endowed with huge natural resources. By population, it has the highest and that signifies the extent of its human capital in the country. As already known, Nigeria has three ethnic groups namely the Hausa-Fulani in the North, Yoruba in the West and the Igbos in East. Ethnic conflict pulls down the expected high development, contributes to insecurity and youth unemployment.
Celine Akigwe, former General Secretary of the Nimo Brotherhood Society (NBS) UK & Ireland and now the Founder & CEO of Afristoricals and Creator of UmojApp, has given an interview in which she talks about some aspects of the existing problems and the need to drastically change the status quo in Federal Republic of Nigeria (FRN). Here are the interview excerpts.
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Q: As an enterprising Nigerian woman, who previously served on the Executive Committee as General Secretary of the Nimo Brotherhood Society (NBS) UK & Ireland, what would you say are the main problems facing Nigeria?
A: During my tenure as General Secretary of NBS UK & Ireland, I observed many behavioral patterns that were reflective of the psychology of the people of Nigeria. Over the years, I have sat on many Executive Committees, including the Igbo Cultural & Social Network (ICSN), which is the most progressive Igbo meeting in Europe. ICSN continue to produce vibrant, positive thinking young adults who will shape the future of our homeland.
After observing the various issues facing Nigerians over the years, the main problem facing Nigerians is the country called Nigeria itself. Since my childhood, from over a period of 40 years, I have always known dysfunctionality and infrastructural chaos that dominate the daily lives of the majority of Nigerians.
Nigeria exposes the rich and poor divide in every aspect of society. There has never been good roads for the masses, but as soon as you turn the corner to Ikoyi or Abuja or Banana Republic you see good roads. These areas enjoy constant electricity supply and good telecommunications networks that are alien to the rest of the population. The masses continue to suffer more and more electricity outages than what is provided, yet they are still charged for a service that is not provided.
Access to clean drinking water is another example, where the masses suffer poor quality water. When you factor in the case that the average wage is N25,000 per month, you can see how Nigerian society can only suffer from numerous problems. These are just the basic services that is everyone’s human right, yet in Nigeria, lack of constant electricity, good roads, hospitals and schools have become the norm. Nigeria has become renowned as a place of corruption, criminality, dysfunctionality and infrastructural chaos.
The security situation all over Nigeria has reached critical level. The numerous killings are tantamount to genocide and ethnic cleansing, which has been going on for decades. We have not seen any outcry from neither the Western nations nor the Eastern nations. In response to the killings, kidnappings, rapes and mutilation of innocent people, we see no reaction or response from our leaders. Nigerian leaders show absolutely no apathy to the plight of their citizens and subsequently the rest of the World duly ignore the ongoing genocide.
There are too many problems facing Nigerians today that nothing short of a total rethink, revamp and reworking of every denomination of our civilization is required to change the status quo. This broken society must be dismantled and rebuilt.
From its very inception, the concept of Nigeria was doomed. The land that is referred to or called Nigeria was created by the British to make colonizing Africans easier for them administer. In doing so, the rulers of Nigeria tend to be favored individuals of the former colonial powers who are presented to the people as a choice to vote for. Immediately after being elected, every president of Nigeria has obediently made their trip to the U.K. and then to America to seemingly meet with the leaders of those countries and receive their modus operandi for their forthcoming term in office.
I always queried why this was necessary and can only conclude that they are merely going to visit their puppet masters to ensure the colonial grip on Africa never fades. Until this day, the British use their favorites to keep Nigeria alive, as do other European nations like France. We have never seen a European elected official leave their country to visit any African leader the same they are elected.
To add insult to injury, we learn the name Nigeria was invented by Dame Flora Louise Shaw or Lady Lugard as she was later known with her then lover Lord Frederick Lugard, the British High Commissioner in Nigeria (1900–06) and Governor-General (1912–19) whom she later married. The end result was inevitable. There can be no peace in a nation that was created like that – ever!
As we have seen… most ethnic groups within the created administrative tool called Nigeria want to leave and form real nations by the people for the people. I think Africans deserve that right. It has taken over 60 years for Nigerians to reach this point of agitation and I think Nigerians have suffered enough. It is time to leave the past behind and cease the administration of the colony – not former colony – called Nigeria.
Q: Do you also think that women are particularly affected by all these challenges and problems that have engulfed the country?
A: It is overwhelmingly yes, women have been disproportionately affected by the challenges in many ways, especially during this pandemic. We have seen violence against women increase and incomes fall, not just in Nigeria, but globally. For over 100 years, patriarchy was gradually imported into West African culture, first by the Fulani Moslems during the conquests of Othman Dan Fodio, and soon after by the British.
Traditional African society existed under a matriarchal system that recognized the African woman as the first to give birth to mankind and a return to matriarchal practices will go a long way to improving the condition of women in Nigeria. Discrimination against women does not occur in matriarchy, which in no way diminishes the man’s role in society, rather, it enhances and empowers men to raise their standards and mindset.
In governance, no single leader should have the power to dictate laws that affect the wellbeing and progress of women directly or indirectly. This would require more women in senior positions in government, however, it would not be a case of appointing women into positions of power simply because they are women. It would be a case of allotting 50% of the senior cabinet positions to women who qualified for these positions. We will see different results when there is equal balance between men and women in the halls of power – and not just from the backbenches.
Q: And what do you say about the youth generally?
A: The youth are the source of all changes. However, our elders have been trained to thwart the development of our youth and prevent them from thinking or even speaking. The youth are the lifeblood of civilization, but they have been let down by the government that has failed to provide the youth of Nigeria with adequate education that would give them a competitive advantage similar to what exist in the rest of the world.
Schools have been neglected, teachers are not paid on time and history had been dropped, which has resulted in what I call illiterate graduates. It is only those who are able to afford the high school fees, stand a chance of achieving something in their lives. The rise of horrible bribes including sex for results has rendered the Nigerian education system entirely dysfunctional and a playground for sexual predators.
We have seen an increase in suicide and rape in Nigeria and we can only commend the students of ASONIS in their campaign to raise awareness and eradicate suicide and rape from Nigeria. The lack of discipline from the top has filtered down to every spectrum of Nigerian society. The youth must rise up in unity by employing group psychology, which would lead to the return of the spirit of Ubuntu from the grassroots up.
Q: What are your expectations from Nigerian women on the Diaspora? What are your suggestions and recommendations for women in other countries?
A: The role of women has been underestimated. It is the woman who raises the child, whether the child is male or female. But at times, Nigerian women are not empowered within the household to make the final decision about a child’s education or hobby. At times, the man is better equipped to make the final decision. Nigerian women in the Diaspora have an advantage in that they enjoy some protection and so may feel empowered to speak or make decisions, although this still carries some risk for Nigerian women in the Diaspora.
We have seen how excellently our women organize religious and educational institutions that were brought in by colonization. On the other hand, when it comes to nation building many African women are unable to achieve this level of self-awareness and as a result raise children who are desperate to move away from their culture or who view their own people in a negatively way. Those children will not think twice about investing in Nigeria.
The end result of all this is that we see many Nigerians in the Diaspora working hard to assimilate and invest in their host country’s property, projects and schools. You have to have an acute love and desire to invest and build in Igboland over Abuja or Lagos for example. Without that investment in itself, there can be no sustainable development and the majority of people will continue to want to leave, as we have seen down the years. Once self-pride is established, the children cultivate love for the motherland and bless it with investment. This is, perhaps, one of the most important roles Nigerian women all over the world can play.
Q: Do all these you have discussed above offer a tangible basis for Nigerians on Diaspora, for instance, in the UK & Ireland, to consider playing significant roles in the development process in Nigeria?
A: The process for sustainable development in Nigeria has to begin with the desire to change society with our own hands and own feet. Consistently lobbying European institutions such as the Commonwealth to intervene and miraculously resolve all the problems facing Nigerians will not bring around the change that is required for Nigeria. To change this anomaly, Nigerians in the Diaspora can play a significant role in fostering change by following aggressive investment strategies that would involve various community and commercial infrastructure development projects in various sectors in Nigeria.
In order to understand this, for instance, I developed UmojApp and AfriZone shop to bridge the gap between Nigerian businesses and consumers in the Diaspora. UmojApp also educates people on the significant achievements and events from an African perspective, so the negative mindset of Africans, as a whole, view themselves as agents of change.
In practical situation, Nigerians in the Diaspora understand the high risks involved in undertaking development projects in Nigeria. It would be for those who have the strong stomach and correct vision that will drive a change through investment in Nigeria.
Q: As already known, Nigeria seems divided along ethnic and religious lines. What are your arguments about, say, integration or political autonomy for the Biafra State?
A: This really takes us full circle – back to my original answer. Nigeria is an administrative convenience to ease the complications for the British. If Africans are totally honest with themselves, all of the borders that were drawn as a result of the Scramble for Africa should be erased. Over a period of 38 years of war to claim African territory, one of the results was the country called Nigeria.
We must leave the past behind and draw our own map of Africa with our own boundaries to control our own future. Integration is to continue to live in a state of denial of the past. Independence is not a myth but a reality that will happen now or in the future. If this generation are not ready for true independence, then future generations will be, but only if we teach the children to love themselves and their African brothers and sisters.
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Kester Kenn Klomegah is a frequent contributor to Global Research.
Julian Assange’s defence team spent the day going over, reemphasising and sharpening the focus on what awaited their client should he, with the blessing of Her Majesty’s Government, make his way to the United States. Not only will he confront 17 charges under the US Espionage Act and one under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, he faces the prospect of imprisonment for the rest of his life in conditions that risk prematurely ending his life.
Warden Baird and SAMs
The opening expert witness was Maureen Baird, who knows a thing or two about US carceral fare, having presided over the Metropolitan Correctional Centre in New York as its warden. She was in little doubt that Assange will be subjected to Special Administrative Measures (SAMs) over and above those conditions he will already face. She thought the affidavit by US Assistant Attorney Gordon Kromberg gave a good clue of that intention: the government tends to only mention SAMs if they intend using them.
While the US Attorney General will be the one to make that determination, advice will be sought from relevant security agencies. “It could be the CIA, the FBI, border control, together with the US Attorney and the Attorney General,” came Baird’s reply to defence barrister Edward Fitzgerald QC. Were the CIA to be involved, they would be consulted “with the office of enforcement operations at the DOJ [Department of Justice].” With the CIA’s view carrying hefty weight, Fitzgerald tantalisingly floated a proposition to be revisited later in the day: that US intelligence was behind targeting Assange while he was a political asylee of the Ecuadorean Embassy in London.
Baird’s description of inmates placed under SAMs was grim and similar to the testimony of Yancey Ellis delivered the day before: “solitary confinement, technically, for 24-hours a day”. No communication with other inmates. “The only form of human interaction they encountered was when correctional officers opened the viewing slot during their inspection rounds of the unit, when institution staff walked through the unit during their required weekly rounds, or when meals were delivered through the secure meal slot in the door.”
Inmates were allowed 30 minutes on the phone per month (one call of 30 minutes duration, or two of 15 minutes), with all calls scheduled two weeks in advance and monitored by the FBI. Mail, heavily screened, could take months to be delivered. (In this, Baird rejected the optimistic description by Kromberg that the mail service was “free-flowing” in such facilities.)
As with other witnesses already called, including Joel Sickler of the Justice Advocacy Group, she agreed that SAMs were singularly “devastating,” “desolate and degrading”. Such measures could lead to “severe depression in isolation, anxiety, paranoia, weight loss detrimental to physical health and detrimental to mental health.” She thought them brutal and archaic, a relic of cruelty. “I am uncertain how the [US Bureau of Prisons] has been able to continue with these types of isolation units, given all the studies, reports and findings of the horrific physical and psychological effects they have on inmates.”
Challenging SAMs was also an adventurous, generally futile hope. “Mr Kromberg suggested that when an inmate has a twice a year review he can challenge SAMs with a case manager, but as a case manager myself,” Baird explained to the court, “I saw nothing is going to happen.” Case managers lacked “authority to make any changes to SAMs.” As was further explained, the Bureau of Prisons “exercises no control/jurisdiction over SAMs imposed by the Attorney General. Wardens are bound to abide by the SAMs imposed on an inmate.” During her time as Warden at MCC New York, Baird had “never seen an inmate have his SAMs removed, only extended.”
The former warden was also certain that Assange, if convicted, would be destined for the ADX Florence supermax facility in Colorado. If placed under SAMs, he would be kept in a segregating housing unit at the ADX. “As someone who spent the majority of her adult life working for the BOP and as a former Designator, who decided where inmates would serve their sentences, absent a medical requirement, or a protected Witness Security Case, I am not familiar with any alternative long-term options aside from the ADX, for offenders under SAMs.”
As for the sparkling portrayal of the ADX in Colorado given by Kromberg’s affidavits, including the presence of social and therapeutic activities for inmates, Baird could only express bemusement. “For anyone to suggest that an inmate assigned under SAMs would be able to participate in group counselling is baffling to me. The main premise of assigning SAMs is to restrict a person’s communication and the only way to accomplish this is through isolation.”
Medical treatment was also a scrappy, unreliable affair for SAMs prisoners. You would have to be at death’s door before being transferred to a medical facility. As for those at risk of self-harm, Baird accepted that the BOP had a robust suicide program, which was hardly a guarantee against the determined. “When you have suicidal ideation, the reliance on inmate self-reporting is pretty strong. When an inmate fails to report that, it is not noticed and the inmate commits suicide.”
In cross-examination, prosecutor Clair Dobbin played an unaccustomed role: the bleeding heart, concerned with prisoner welfare. Why had Baird not done more to ease the plight of SAMs prisoners during her time as warden? Baird replied that leading by example was her method, not that she could compel other staff to do the same. “It was not uncommon for staff not to engage with inmates.” While she had not taken the issue of treatment of SAMs prisoners up with a judge or the BOP, she rejected Dobbin’s assertions that she lacked concern for them. Baird’s reasoning was that of an instrument of state violence self-justified. “It did cause me concern, but I had to convince myself it was okay. I honestly did not believe I could do anything. It was [handled] at a higher level.”
Dobbin then suggested that SAMs inmates could alter their conditions by participating in a three phase program. They could meet in groups of four in an area outside their cell on reaching the third level. Baird refuted the suggestion: Phase one and two did give extra privileges to the prisoners, but they remained in isolation. It had nothing to do with the actual removal of SAMs. Permitting inmates to reach the third level would defeat “the whole purpose of SAMs.”
The prosecution then drew upon a statement from prosecution witness Alison Leukefeld, an employee of the US Bureau of Prisons claiming, in line with Kromberg’s affidavits, that SAMs prisoners would have chances to engage in group therapy. Baird was dismissive in reply: “I think she does not have much experience with SAMs inmates and is not out in the field.”
Lindsay Lewis, Abu Hamza and false assurances
The calling of US attorney Lindsay Lewis was important in her link to Abu Hamza al-Masri (Mostafa Kamel Mostafa), an Egyptian radical cleric and former imam of London’s Finsbury Park mosque extradited to the United States in 2012 after an eight-year legal battle. He was accused of a suit of offences ranging from attempting to establish a terrorist training camp in Bly, Oregon to supporting terrorists in Afghanistan and kidnapping 16 tourists in Yemen in 1998. Hamza also faced the SAMs regime, kept in solitary confinement for eight years and imprisoned at the ADX Florence since 2015. He has not been allowed family visits since 2012.
As Lewis outlined in her witness statement, SAMs have limited Hamza’s “contacts not just with the outside world, but also with his family, other inmates and even his attorneys.” With a Kafkaesque twist, such restrictions went so far as to hamper her own means of describing his true conditions to the court.
An example of the harsh absurdities of these administrative measures was also given: Hamza was said to have breached them when he “improperly tried to convey, in a letter to one of his sons, his love to his one year old grandson”. The grandson had not been on the list of approved contacts.
Hamza’s case is gruesomely remarkable for its false assumptions. According to Lewis, assurances were given to the United Kingdom by US authorities that future prison facilities would be tailored to his fragile medical state. Were he to spent time at ADX Florence, it would only be for a short time. District Judge Timothy Workman of the Westminster Magistrates’ Court, in ruling for Hamza’s extradition in 2007, noted that a lengthy, indefinite period of detention at ADX Florence would result in “inhuman degrading treatment” in violation of Article 3 of the Convention Against Torture. He also considered ADX Florence to have conditions “offensive to my sense of propriety of dealing with prisoners”.
Nothing of the sort, claimed prosecutor Dobbin in her cross-examination of Lewis, who read a declaration by a warden that Hamza would face a medical examination and go to a medical facility if he was incapable of managing his activities of daily living (ADL). Of unflagging faith in the virtues of those she represents and the US justice system, Dobbin claimed that, “There was no way they could have found he could have managed his activities of daily living either pre-trial or post-trial.”
Such credulity was impressive. The UK authorities had assumed that it was “impossible” for a double amputee, one functional eye and suffering diabetes to pass a medical exam on his fitness for detention at ADX Florence. “I am satisfied,” Judge Workman declared at the time, “that the defendant [Hamza] would not be detained in these conditions [at ADX] indefinitely, and his undoubted ill-health and physical disabilities would be considered, and at worst, he would only be accommodated in these conditions for a relatively short period of time.” Lewis observed that Hamza, having had both forearms amputated, was a fairly obvious qualification against being sent to the ADX. “I don’t believe the US government has followed through on him receiving a full medical examination.”
Dobbin, ever the believer, wondered if Lewis was simply too trusting of Hamza. “He is a double amputee,” came the reply. “He does not have daily nursing care four times a day as he had in the UK. He is placed in a handicapped cell that does not have proper shower and toilet facilities.”
In 2018, one of Hamza’s lawyers issued a statement asserting “that the conditions of his confinement violate the expectations of the European Convention on Human Rights and the promises that were made by the US government to the [British and European] courts as part of the extradition process.” By comparison, the conditions at Belmarsh, a facility Assange is well acquainted with, were notably better. Horror comes in degrees.
Anonymous witnesses, espionage and the CIA
In anticipation of Thursday’s proceedings, the court also considered whether it should grant anonymity to two witnesses from the UC Global S.L. security firm, the Spanish company charged with providing security at Ecuador’s London embassy. Their testimony, scheduled to be read that day, is intended to draw the political line between UC Global, their espionage activities targeting Assange in the London Ecuadorean Embassy, and the CIA. UC Global’s director David Morales, is alleged in reports to have travelled to Las Vegas in 2017, where he secured a contract with Las Vegas Sands of the casino mogul Sheldon Adelson, a notable financier of US President Donald Trump. It is claimed that Morales handed over audio and video recordings of meetings Assange had with his lawyers and associates while in the embassy.
Having already testified in a Spanish court case against Morales under protection, and fearing for their safety should their names be disclosed at the Old Bailey, Judge Vanessa Baraitser relented. We also await how the prosecution will deal with their potentially juicy testimony. James Lewis QC has yet to receive instructions from the DOJ on whether to mount a challenge, given the less than impervious “Chinese Wall” that supposedly exists between agencies such as the DOJ and the CIA. That comforting fiction is designed to prevent politicisation. It is one that this trial has already done a good deal to expose and scuttle.
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Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research and Asia-Pacific Research. Email: [email protected]
Early campaign hostile statements and divisions in Jubilee Coalition are sparking a storm of confusion and fear in Kenya’s politics. Some analysts argue that this environment should awake Kenyans, the region and international community to work hand in hand to avoid repeat of previous post-election violence. Others including myself see this situation of alliance, coalition formations and collapse of partnership as usual trend in Kenyan politics. Since 2002 when KANU (Kenya African National Union) lost presidency to NARC (National Rainbow Coalition), we have been watching such scenarios. And from 2007 post-election violence, legal mechanisms and safeguards have been put in place for a peaceful post-election management. For instance, it is under this framework that 2013 post-election crisis was very well handled. The present analysis wants to point out signs of split between President Uhuru Kenyatta and his Deputy President William Samoei Ruto who are key players in Jubilee Coalition.
Two events have changed dynamics in Jubilee Coalition. The first one is the unexpected handshake on the steps of Harambee House on 09th March 2018 between two rivals of 2013 and 2018 elections, President Uhuru Kenyatta and opposition leader Raila Amolo Odinga. Second one is the Building Bridges Initiative (BBI) report launched on 27th November 2019. A Controversial interpretation surrounding the two events is pushing the race to 2022 presidential succession bid to take a new twist through two conflicting camps: “hustler and dynast nations”. The hustler camp is led by Deputy President William Samoei Ruto via his Tanga-Tanga team and has been presenting doubts towards the handshake and reluctance to implement BBI report recommendations. Supporters of handshake and initiators of BBI, spearheaded by Uhuru Kenyatta and Raila Amolo Odinga are referred as dynasty camp because of their historical backgrounds in Kenyan politics. Uhuru Muigai Kenyatta is the son of Jomo Kenyatta, the first post-independence president of Kenya, whereas Raila Amolo Odinga is the son of Jaramogi Oginga Odinga, first Kenya’s Vice President in Jomo Kenyatta administration.
Coalition formations and collapse between Kenyan political leaders is something usual when targeting to win upcoming elections. In 2002 presidential elections, there was concern to get rid of KANU’s long-period of uninterrupted rule. In this process NARC was formed by key politicians including Raila Odinga and Mwai Kibaki. After defeating KANU and ascending into power, NARC didn’t survive long; it collapsed in 2005 over disagreement about constitutional referendum. The most contentious cause of division originated from the position of prime minister, which has been earmarked for Raila Odinga, perceived as threat by Kibaki and his close allies. Another disagreement emanated from failure to implement the 50-50 power-sharing arrangement between two factions of NARC as initially contemplated in MoU between LDP of Raila Odinga and NAK of Mwai Kibaki.
During 2007 presidential elections, and after collapse of NARC, Mwai Kibaki had to defend his seat on a newly formed party ticket, the PNU (Party of National Unity). On the other hand, Raila Odinga and his allies reached to gain ownership of ODM (Orange Democratic Movement) as their new party. Presidential elections became a two-horse race between Mwai Kibaki and Raila Odinga. Many people remember what happened after the ECK (Electoral Commission of Kenya) declared Mwai Kibaki winner. The announcement sparked violent demonstrations characterized by the destruction of properties and ethnically targeted killings.
Jubilee Coalition came as a surprise in 2013 general elections process. There is a saying that in politics, there is no permanent enemy no permanent friend, all is about interests. Initially, William Ruto was key ally of ODM leader Raila Odinga whereas Uhuru Kenyatta was on the side of Mwai Kibaki. Their reconciliation took origin from ICC (International Criminal Court) 2007 postelection violence investigations and pre-trial. After ICC released the names of six suspects, commonly known as “Ocampo Six”, thought to be most responsible for investigating of postelection violence, it was found that six key suspects were coming from conflicting camps: three among them including William Ruto were said to have ties with Raila Odinga. Other three including Uhuru Kenyatta were having ties with Mwai Kibaki.
Rapprochement between two political enemies was engineered by two factors. Firstly, divisions within ODM over ICC investigations and pre-trial resulted fall out between Raila Odinga and William Ruto. Then, the two ICC suspect co-perpetrators of 2007 violence were brought together to mobilize support from their two large communities in Kenya to challenge ICC process. The prayer meetings and mass rallies addressed by the two leaders convinced them that they could form a formidable coalition to contest the 2013 general elections. This put together newly created URP (United Republican Party) of William Samoei Ruto and TNA (The National Alliance) of Uhuru Kenyatta into Jubilee coalition which won 2013 and 2018 general elections.
The move by Uhuru Kenyatta and Raila Odinga from March 2018 to cease all hostilities, and find common ground in the interest of moving the country forward, through Handshake and BBI report implementation, has changed the status- quo within Jubilee coalition. William Ruto and his allies see handshake and BBI as political tool to lock him out of the 2022 Kenyatta succession matrix. In this regard, Jubilee Vice-Chairman and Uhuru Kenyatta close ally David Murathe states that there exists no Jubilee Party MoU to support Ruto’s 2022 presidential bid. The only deal they had is to support UhuRuto presidency for two terms which was achieved. Murathe continues in advising Ruto to retire alongside Uhuru come to 2022 because they have both served their two terms.
Considering the root motivations and ingredients of Jubilee coalition formation and the current divisions between its high ranked officials, the usual trend in Kenya party alliances and collapse will not spare messy divorce but not violent in Jubilee house.
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Justin Nyanshwa ([email protected]), is a researcher on Conflict-Resolution & Management in the Great Lakes Region of Africa.
This article was originally published on Asia Times.
Let’s cut to the chase: with or without a sanction juggernaut, China simply won’t be expelled from the global semiconductor market.
The real amount of chip supply Huawei has in stock for their smart phone business may remain an open question.
But the most important point is that in the next few years – remember Made in China 2025 remains in effect – the Chinese will be manufacturing the necessary equipment to produce 5 nm chips of equivalent or even better quality than what’s coming from Taiwan, South Korea and Japan.
Conversations with IT experts from Russia, ASEAN and Huawei reveal the basic contours of the road map ahead.
They explain that what could be described as a limitation of quantum physics is preventing a steady move from 5nm to 3nm chips. This means that the next breakthroughs may come from other semiconductor materials and techniques. So China, in this aspect, is practically at the same level of research as Taiwan, South Korea and Japan.
Additionally, there is no knowledge gap – or a communication problem – between Chinese and Taiwanese engineers. And the predominant modus operandi remains the revolving door.
China’s breakthroughs involve a crucial switch from silicon to carbon. Chinese research is totally invested in it, and is nearly ready to transpose their lab work into industrial production.
In parallel, the Chinese are updating the US-privileged photo-lithography procedure to get nanometer chips to a new, non-photo lithography procedure capable of producing smaller and cheaper chips.
As much as Chinese companies, moving forward, will be buying every possible stage of chip manufacturing business in sight, whatever the cost, this will proceed in parallel to top US semiconductor firms like Qualcomm going no holds barred to skirt sanctions and continue to supply chips to Huawei. That’s already the case with Intel and AMD.
Huawei’s game
Huawei for its part is investing deeply in a very close R&D relationship with Russia, recruiting some of their best tech talent, notoriously strong in math, physics and rigorous design work. An example is Huawei’s purchasing of Russian face recognition company Vocord in 2019.
Some of the best tech brainpower in South Korea happens to be Russian.
In the medium term, Huawei’s strategy for their top notch smart phones – which use 7nm chips – will be to hand over the business to other Chinese players such as Xiaomi, OPPO and VIVO, collect patent fees, and wait for the inevitable Chinese chip breakthrough while keeping production of 5G equipment, for which it has sufficient chips.
Huawei’s Harmony OS is considered by these IT experts to be a more efficient system than Android. And it runs on less demanding chips.
With the expansion of 5G, most of the work on smart phones can be handled by cloud servers. By the end of 2020, at least 300 cities across China will be covered by 5G.
Huawei will be concentrating on producing desktop computers and digital displays. These desktops will come with a Chinese processor, the Kunpeng 920, and run by a Chinese Unified Operating System (UOS).
UOS is a Linux system developed by China’s Union Tech and commissioned by Beijing to – here’s the clincher – replace Microsoft Windows. These desktops will not be sold to the general public: they will be equipping China’s provincial and national administrations.
It’s no wonder a steady rumor in IT circles is that the best bet ahead would be to put money in a Chinese Chip Investment Fund – expecting to collect big time when major tech breakthroughs happen before 2025.
The East Asian tech core
Whatever the trials and tribulations of the chip war, the inescapable trend ahead is China positioned as the indispensable tech core of East Asia – encompassing ASEAN, Northeast Asia, and Eastern Siberia linked to both Koreas.
This is the hard node of the incoming Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) – the biggest free trade deal in the world – which is bound to be signed by 2021.
India has opted for self-exclusion from RCEP – which in geoeconomic terms condemns it to a peripheral role as an economic power. Compare it to South Korea, which is boosting its integration with ASEAN and Northeast Asia.
East Asia’s tech core will be at the heart of a global production chain integrating the very best in science and technology conception and the very best production specialists scattered around all nodes of the global supply chain.
That’s a natural consequence, among other factors, of East Asia introducing patent applications at a multiple of 3.46 times the US.
And that brings to the very special Samsung case. Samsung is increasing its R&D drive to in fact bypass US-branded technologies as soon as possible.
When South Korea’s President Moon turbo-charges his appeal for the official end of the Korean War that should be seen in tandem with Samsung eventually reaching a wide-ranging tech cooperation deal with Huawei.
This pincer movement graphically spells out South Korean independence from the American bear hug.
It does not escape the Beijing leadership’s attention that the emergence of South Korea as a stronger and stronger geopolitical and geoeconomic actor in East Asia must be inextricably linked to access by China to the next generation of chips.
So a crucial geopolitical and geoeconomic process to watch in the next few years is how Beijing progressively attracts Seoul to its area of influence as a sort of high-tech tributary power while banking on the future of what would be a Korea Federation.
This is something that has been discussed every year, at the highest level, at the Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok.
Wang Huiyao of the Beijing-based Center for China and Globalization notes how China and South Korea already have a free trade agreement and “will start the second phase of negotiations to establish a new mechanism for China-South Korea economic cooperation, which is developing fast.”
The next – immensely difficult – step will be to set up a China-Japan free trade mechanism. And then a closer, interconnected China-Japan-South Korea mechanism. RCEP is just the first step. It will be a long sail all the way to 2049. But everyone knows which way the wind is blowin’.
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Pepe Escobar is a frequent contributor to Global Research.
Vietnam won international praise for its response to COVID-19. But the country’s intensifying capitalist restructuring may leave its people sicker and more impoverished.
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As of the first week of August, official records showed that 10 people had died of COVID-19 in Vietnam since the outbreak of the virus earlier this year. Up to then, the Communist Party-led country of 97 million had been the pandemic’s standout containment star, holding infections to just over 550 by July 31. While Vietnam’s achievement is good news, the successful containment was a tactical necessity for a country whose export-oriented economy, and the health system it helps fund, are increasingly dependent on a healthy if underpaid workforce.
Kamal Malhotra, the United Nations Resident Co-ordinator for Vietnam, says there are 10 key factors in Vietnam’s COVID-19 success:
“early action, excellent contact tracing, strategic and free testing, shutting down flights [from bordering China, and later the EU and U.S.]…, mandatory 14-day free testing, food- and lodging-based quarantine for passengers on arrival and for those asymptomatic and even for those twice removed from infected patients, [a] whole-of government and whole-of-society co-ordinated response with clear centralized decision-making authority, transparent real-time public communication, good enforcement of measures, compliance by [the] general public [and] an overall effective and largely free primary health care system for citizens for COVID-19 related medical care.”
Malhotra tells me that, despite “a recent COVID-19 new wave based in the city of Danang, which has now led to its first batch of deaths since the end of July,” he remains confident that Vietnam, “using the strategies enumerated above, will bring this new wave under control within a relatively short period of time.”
At approximately 1,000 to one, the ratio of COVID tests to infections in Vietnam is by far the highest in the world. While, this was in part a response to concerns the country’s health care system would not be able to handle a mass influx of patients, according to Malhotra there was never any ambivalence that the health of the people was most important, and that this would also then lead to a healthier economy in both the short and long run. The cumulative cost of Vietnam’s response in early July, at about 0.2% of GDP, is remarkable, and no new debt has been incurred.
The Vietnamese government’s socialistic response to the COVID-19 virus is unfortunately exceptional. In general, the country has succumbed to the far more virulent virus of capitalism for the past 25 years. Michel Chossudovsky, professor emeritus of economics at Ottawa University who has done field research in Vietnam, told me that a crucial factor in Vietnam’s transition to capitalism in the 1990s was the agreement it signed in 1993 with the Paris Club of western creditor nations at U.S. insistence to repay the debt owed by the puppet South Vietnam regime that the communist forces from both South and North Vietnam defeated in 1975. The debt of $145 million would be repaid to the U.S. which had set up the South Vietnam regime in 1955 and loaned it the money.
The U.S. invaded Vietnam in 1965 with half a million troops to support this proxy regime and prevent its fall to communist armies. In the course of its eight-year genocidal war, Washington killed three million Vietnamese (most of them civilians) and devastated the country with massive bombing and the spraying of toxic herbicides. Inspite of this incredible destruction, the U.S. lost the war. In 1993 then, in one of the cruelest ironies of history, the U.S. was demanding that Vietnam pay for its own destruction and the killing of its people by Washington.
“What is very important to understand” Chossudovsky emphasizes “is that Vietnam paid war reparations to the United States instead of the other way around.” This capitulation by the Vietnamese communist government was accompanied by its rush to implement economic reforms demanded by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), adds Chossudovsky including “deregulation of the grain market [in a largely agricultural rice-producing country], the expansion of rice exports and privatization of the health and education sectors.”
In exchange for this gutting of socialism and for Vietnam agreeing to pay reparations, the U.S. “normalized” relations with the country in 1995, lifting the damaging trade and investment embargo it had imposed on Hanoi and clearing the way for Vietnam to borrow money internationally. Referring to the agreement that Vietnam would pay the U.S. the $145 million, U.S. Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin said in April 1997, “This is a significant step in the normalization of relations between our countries and the integration of Vietnam into the international financial community.”
This integration has been a painful one for many Vietnamese people who have suffered rising levels of inequality, exploitation, landlessness, environmental damage and official and corporate corruption under the capitalist system. Hanoi’s economic strategy focuses on export-oriented industrialization, which consists of making Vietnam a cheap labour haven to attract foreign investment made up mainly of Singaporean, Chinese, South Korean, Japanese, Taiwanese and Thai factories in 18 Special Economic Zones (SEZs) in coastal areas. Vietnam’s main exports are electrical equipment, electronics, footwear, clothes, coffee, leather and fish.
A major component of Hanoi’s export-oriented economic model are 13 bilateral and multilateral free trade agreements including the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), which came into effect in December 2018 and comprises 11 countries (Canada, Japan, Chile, Australia and Mexico and others), and the European Union–Vietnam Free Trade Agreement (EVFTA), which took effect August 1. Vietnam became a member of the World Trade Organization in 2007 with support from the George W. Bush administration. As China-U.S. relations worsen under leadership of presidents Trump and Jinping, many Western firms with production in China are looking to move into Vietnam.
Angie Ngọc Trần, a professor of political economy at the California State University Monterey Bay who specializes in historical and contemporary labour movements in Vietnam, tells me workers “who toil in the export-oriented industries,” such as textiles, garments, shoes and electronics, have not fared well during this period of neoliberal restructuring. There is only one state-mandated labour federation in the country and Vietnam only last year ratified ILO Convention 98 on the right to organize and collective bargaining. Free speech is also curtailed in the country.
“Overall, wildcat strikes are still going on with complex reasons, increasingly with broader political and economic concerns,” says Trần. “Many strikes still occur in foreign-invested companies, which often fail to comply with terms of labour contracts, including [committing] wage thefts and shirking benefit contributions such as mandatory social insurance contributions. [The foreign companies] also fail to publicly announce wage rates and give no paid vacations.”
Trần calls Vietnam’s SEZs “Special Exploitation Zones” designed to entice foreign investment in manufacturing. Minimum wages in the country range from US$132 to US$190 per month, which Oxfam points out is far below the living wage for the region. The Vietnam General Confederation of Labour (VGCL), the official and only trade union central in the country, complained in April 2013 that wages only covered 50% of necessary spending for workers. Most urban workers “were destitute and physically wasted away,” said the VGCL. “They rent cheap, shabby rooms and cut daily expenses to a minimum [and] suffer serious malnutrition and other health risks.”
The SEZs have also increased poverty and inequality in the countryside. According to Nick Davies, a journalist for The Guardian (U.K.) who visited Vietnam in April 2015,
“Millions of farmers have been driven off their land to make way for factories or roads. In the early ‘90s, nearly all rural households (91.8%) owned land. By 2010, nearly a quarter of them (22.5%) were landless.”
A 2017 Oxfam report on Vietnam expressed alarm at how great the economic gap had become between richest and poorest. “The richest man in Vietnam earns more in a day than the poorest Vietnamese earns in 10 years and his wealth is so great that he could spend $1 million every day for six years before exhausting it,” said the report, which identified 210 superrich individuals with more than U$30 million each and a total fortune of about U$20 billion (12% of Vietnam’s GDP). Many of these nouveau riche got that way by “taking advantage of loopholes in the governance system,” wrote Hanoi-based journalist Tran Le Thuy in the NikkeiAsianReview in March 2019. Some are former bureaucrats appointed to lead privatized state services (a phenomenon Canadians will be familiar with from the Mulroney years).
In her article, Le Thuy quotes former Vietnamese president Truong Tan Sang, who wrote in the country’s People’sDaily newspaper that corruption is worse now than it has been in the Communist Party’s 70-year history.
“There is collaboration between those in power and rent-seekers to abuse state policies,” he wrote. “They arrange business deals that benefit some individuals and groups greatly, but cause immeasurable damage to the state budget and disrupt the economy.”
In addition to the maltreatment of workers, most of the SEZs are also characterized by “poor performance and mismanagement, accompanied by severe environmental degradation and land waste,” according to Nguyen Minh Quang, a geopolitics lecturer at Can Tho University in southern Vietnam. Protests have forced the government to suspend its plans to add more of these low-wage, low-regulation export processing zones. In June 2018, thousands of people demonstrated in large towns in six provinces against the government’s attempt to pass a draft law that would set up three new SEZs benefiting mainly Chinese companies. Workers also went on strike in two provinces.
The protesters were concerned about “losing national sovereignty to China,” says Trần, noting the 99-year leases proposed for companies in the draftlegislation. They also raised questions about further environmental damages for which foreign companies are already notorious in Vietnam. “If this law is passed, unchecked toxic industries and ambiguous union protection will endanger generations of Vietnamese workers and their families and the environment for everyone,” warned Trần in a July 2018 article. The government has backed off its intentions to introduce the draft law in the National Assembly for the time being.
A quarter-century of capitalism has landed Vietnam in a low-income, low-technology trap from which there appears no easy way out. As Trần puts it, in a 2015 article, “Vietnam’s position in the global supply chain has exposed firms to low value-added assembly operations and workers to non-livable wages, sub-standard working conditions and a vicious cycle of underdevelopment and poverty.”
Trần gives the example of electronics, the leading export industry in Vietnam. The foreign multinationals that dominate the sector could transfer technology and skills to local Vietnamese companies if they made the latter their suppliers. But U.S. and Asian electronics companies in Vietnam “are assembly plants that use imported raw materials and do not connect to the local economy.”
This situation is partly due to the fact that unlike in China and South Korea, the Vietnamese government has not implemented a national industrial policy geared toward knowledge and technology transfer so that Vietnam could move up the industrial development ladder. Add to this the massive negative impact of COVID-19 on world trade and Vietnam’s economic model could be facing a bleak future.
Vietnam’s second biggest export industry is clothing and its largest customer the United States, whose economy contracted by a record-breaking seasonally and inflation adjusted rate of 32.9% in the April-June quarter due to the COVID lockdown. Given the situation, the U.S. is unlikely to increase and may not maintain the level of clothing imports from Vietnam, which had increased 16% from 2019 to early 2020. If President Trump wins the U.S. election in November, he may choose to see the U$55.8 billion trade deficit with Vietnam (for 2019) as a problem.
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This is an expanded version of the article published in the September/October 2020 issue of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives Monitor here.
Asad Ismi is an award-winning writer and radio documentary-maker. He covers international politics for the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives Monitor (CCPA Monitor), Canada’s biggest leftist magazine (by circulation) where this article was originally published. Asad has written on the politics of 70 countries and is a regular contributer to Global Research. For his publications visit www.asadismi.info.
“Red zones”, travel bans, quarantines, “red lists”. A “Second Wave” has been announced. The fear campaign has gone into overdrive. Drastic state measures are contemplated, including restrictions on social gatherings, marriages, funerals, the closing down of restaurants and bars, the outright paralysis of civil society.
From the onset of the Covid crisis in January 2020, far-reaching decisions taken by the WHO and national governments have been justified by citing “estimates” of the Covid-19 disease as well “statistics” pointing to a Worldwide spread of a new deadly coronavirus originating in Wuhan, China.
Scientific analysis confirms that these estimates of “confirmed cases” are flawed. The tests do not detect or identify the virus. The figures are often manipulated to justify political decisions.
Millions of people are lining up for Covid-19 testing, which contributes to increasing the number of so-called “confirmed” Covid positive cases Worldwide.
What’s the Big Lie? What’s the Smoking Gun?
SARS-CoV-2 is NOT A “KILLER VIRUS”. The fear campaign has no scientific basis. The standard RT-PCR test used to “detect” the insidious Virus, “cannnot identify the Virus”.
The governments which claim “to be protecting us” are using meaningless and manipulated statistics to justify the imposition of Covid-19 “Code Red”.
VIDEO. Michel Chossudovsky, The Second Wave is Based on Fake Statistics
This weekend’s resumption of hostilities in Nagorno-Karabakh has led to an explosion of news narratives about the conflict. This objective of this article is to clarify a number of important issues.
Nagorno-Karabakh is back in the news after this weekend’s resumption of hostilities. The author wrote about the latest clashes in his piece about how “Azerbaijan’s Counteroffensive Is Legal But Might Inadvertently Spiral Out Of Control”, which also cites three recent analyses from over the summer that were published after the clashes during that time. All four articles are important to read in order to obtain a deeper understanding of this complex conflict’s background and contemporary context. The present piece, however, focuses solely on debunking the top five fake news narratives that have proliferated across the Alt-Media Community about this issue. Each one begins with a paraphrased summary of the false claim in question, which is then concisely debunked. Without further ado, here are the five most popular fake news claims about this conflict:
1. “Nagorno-Karabakh Is Armenian”
Most of the inhabitants of Azerbaijan’s former Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast are ethnic Armenians who aspired to separate from their country in order to join their nearby titular nation in the last days of the Old Cold War. The resultant conflict that this sparked led to the region’s occupation by the Armenian Armed Forces as well as the occupation of some of the surrounding environs that were never originally part of the former autonomous oblast in question. To this day, not a single country in the world — Armenia included — officially recognizes Nagorno-Karabakh as “independent”, though Armenian Prime Minister Pashinyan hinted on Sunday that he might consider doing so. Nevertheless, as it presently stands at the time of writing, there is unanimous acknowledgement in the international community of the fact that Nagorno-Karabakh is part of Azerbaijan despite being mostly inhabited by ethnic Armenians.
2. “Azerbaijan Started An Illegal War Of Aggression Against Armenia”
Four UNSC Resolutions (822, 853, 874, 884) have been passed demanding that Armenia withdraw its military forces from Azerbaijan, which it refuses to do to this day. Armenia is therefore the internationally recognized aggressor state in this conflict which continues to occupy its neighbor’s territory. Azerbaijan has the UN-enshrined legal right to defend itself and remove foreign military forces from its land. Although Armenia and Azerbaijan accuse one another of provoking the latest round of violence, it’s irrelevant who actually fired the first shot this time since there’s no question that Armenia is the occupying force on internationally recognized Azerbaijani territory. The truth is that Armenia is the one that started an illegal war of aggression against Azerbaijan decades ago, though its proponents portray it as a “humanitarian intervention”. Although everyone is entitled to their own opinion, the indisputable fact is that the UNSC doesn’t agree with Armenia’s version.
3. “Russia Will Defend The Armenian Forces In Nagorno-Karabakh”
Russia and Armenia are mutual defense allies through the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), but Moscow doesn’t recognize Nagorno-Karabakh as anything other than Azerbaijani territory. Its security guarantees are therefore limited only to protecting internationally recognized Armenian territory from foreign aggression, not intervening in Nagorno-Karabakh. It shouldn’t be forgotten that Russia is also a member of the same UNSC which voted four separate times to demand Armenia’s withdrawal from Azerbaijani territory. The CSTO is therefore only relevant insofar as serving as a deterrent to Turkish military intervention against Armenia in Azerbaijan’s support or the scenario of Azerbaijan attacking internationally recognized Armenian territory as part of its counteroffensive. Even then, however, Ankara and Baku can argue that they were taking preemptive action to stop Armenian aggression against their own territories, thus creating a legal dilemma for Moscow.
4. “Turkey Provoked The Latest Hostilities As Part Of Its Neo-Ottoman Strategy”
There’s no doubt that Turkey has become much more regionally assertive over the past decade through what many have described as its “Neo-Ottoman strategy”, but the country is already caught up in such a wide range of conflicts at the moment (Iraq, Syria, Cyprus, Greece, Libya) that it doesn’t have any interest in getting involved in another one. This is even more so the case when considering that Armenia is Russia’s CSTO ally and that the worst-case scenario involves an Armenian-Azerbaijani war becoming a CSTO-NATO proxy war or even a direct one. Turkey is also close strategic partners with Russia nowadays despite occasional differences of approach to some regional issues such as Syria and Libya. They cooperate real closely on military-technical issues such as the S-400s and energy ones like Turkish Stream. Jeopardizing this relationship and risking the worst-case scenario of a CSTO-NATO war just for the sake of regaining imperial-era glory is irrational.
5. “Azerbaijan Is An Israeli Ally So All Anti-Zionists Should Support Armenia”
Azerbaijan sells energy to “Israel” and also purchases military equipment from it, but Armenia is also on pretty good terms with the self-professed “Jewish State”. In fact, it can be argued (though importantly without endorsing it) that Azerbaijan has a more balanced relationship with “Israel” than Armenia does. After all, Armenia recently opened an embassy there despite previously promising not to ever do so unless “Israel” recognized the events that Armenia and a few dozen other countries across the world including Russia regard as the “Armenian Genocide”. Yerevan reversed its own prior policy in this respect even though it didn’t receive anything tangible in return, thus making Tel Aviv the indisputably dominant partner in that relationship. Armenia submitted to “Israel” so as to pave the way for their influential lobbyists partnering with one another as they assemble a united anti-Turkish front, but it comes off as desperate and definitely isn’t “anti-Zionist”.
Concluding Remarks
Although mostly ethnically Armenian, the region in question is legally Azerbaijani, and the UNSC has called on Armenia to withdraw from this territory and the occupied surrounding regions on four occasions. Russia doesn’t support the armed Armenian separatists there, and Turkey isn’t meddling in this matter either. Both want peace, not war. As for who anti-Zionists should support, neither Azerbaijan nor Armenia meet that ideological criteria as both are partnered with “Israel” to differing extents. In conclusion, everyone is entitled to their own views on this matter, but no one should spread false narratives about it.
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This article was originally published on OneWorld.
Andrew Korybko is an American Moscow-based political analyst specializing in the relationship between the US strategy in Afro-Eurasia, China’s One Belt One Road global vision of New Silk Road connectivity, and Hybrid Warfare. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.
Microsoft founder Bill Gates has made himself the global vaccine czar as his foundation spends billions on spreading new vaccines globally. While much attention has been given to the role of Gates behind the corrupt WHO in promoting radical untested coronavirus vaccines, the record of the Gates Foundation pushing an oral polio vaccine across Africa is a matter of concern.
The UN has just recently admitted that new cases of infantile paralysis or polio have resulted in Africa from an oral polio vaccine developed with strong support from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. It mirrors what happened in the USA in the 1950s. This is worth a closer look.
Vaccines that cause polio
The vaccine industry loves to cite development of vaccines in the 1950s as solely responsible for eradicating what was a severe paralytic illness that reached a peak in the USA after World War II and as well, in England, Germany and other European countries. Now, despite the fact that no new cases of “wild polio” virus have been detected in all Africa since 2016, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and their allies in the WHO proclaimed that Gates’ $4 billion ten-year African vaccination campaign using an oral polio vaccine had finally eliminated the dreaded polio. That was at the end of August.
One week later on September 2, WHO was forced to backtrack and admit that new polio outbreaks in Sudan were linked to an ongoing series of new polio cases in Chad and Cameroon. According to the WHO, further polio cases have been registered in more than a dozen African countries including Angola, Congo, Nigeria and Zambia. But the shocking thing is that the outbreaks are all reportedly caused by the Gates-backed oral polio vaccine.
In a revealing comment, a CDC virologist involved with WHO and the Gates Foundation in the Africa mass polio vaccination campaign, part of something called the Global Polio Eradication Initiative, admits the vaccine is creating significantly more cases of polio paralysis than the deceptively named “wild polio” disease. “We have now created more new emergences of the virus than we have stopped,” virologist Mark Pallansch of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention admitted. The Global Polio Eradication Initiative (GPEI) is a combined effort of the WHO, UNICEF, the U.S. CDC, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Rotary International.
Bill Gates was reportedly responsible for driving the campaign to develop the liquid oral polio vaccine and massively administer it to the populations of Africa and Asia despite the near absence of any cases of “wild polio.” According to one of the partners in the Gates polio initiative, from Rotary International,
“Gates personally drove the development of a new polio vaccine that is now in the final stages of testing. When the idea was put forward, about the time of the last case of polio to happen in India, many were thinking the vaccine would play no important role in eradication, but Gates insisted.”
When someone asked him, why polio, which had all but vanished worldwide, Gates replied, “Polio is a terrible disease.”
That reply seems curious, as there are far more pervasive deadly diseases out there including malaria or chronic diarrhoea due to unsafe water, and poor sanitation across Africa that causes death by dehydration, poor absorption of nutrients or infectious complications. I would argue that both those are also “terrible.”
In 2016 chronic diarrhoea was listed by the WHO as the second leading cause of death in children below five worldwide. In Africa it was cause of almost 653,000 deaths, yet Mr. Gates and friends seem to be interested in other things.
The insistence of Gates on pushing massive vaccination of a new oral polio vaccine his foundation backed at a time polio even in poor countries of Asia and Africa is virtually non-existent, should ring alarm bells loudly. If his goal is to help more African children lead healthy lives, simple water treatment projects would save far more lives. Or is there something in the polio vaccine we are not being told of? Is there aluminum as adjuvant that is documented to be a central nervous system paralytic? Or other toxins?
The Gates Foundation spent almost $ 4 billion to develop and administer the oral polio vaccine throughout the poorest countries in the world as of 2018. This despite that WHO stated that the cases of polio in Pakistan and Afghanistan went from about 350,000 per year to 33 in 2018. There hasn’t been a case in the Americas or Western Europe since before the Gates polio project was launched years ago.
Define it away?
Here it gets into some very suspicious linguistic games on the part of WHO, Gates and company. They are trying to cover their deeds by claiming that most of the polio cases are actually something they decided to call acute flaccid paralysis (AFP). That is a debilitating condition with a clinical picture virtually identical to polio. But it keeps the “polio” numbers down. According to the US CDC, there were over 31,500 documented cases of acute flaccid paralysis from just 18 countries in 2017. This is in addition to what they call vaccine-associated polio paralysis (VAPP). Yet from the point of clinical symptoms, vaccine-derived polio, wild polio and acute flaccid paralysis are identical, as is acute flaccid myelitis (AFM), a subtype of AFP. With this proliferation of serious medical-sounding names to describe what produces the same medical symptoms, we have huge ground for manipulation.
A paper written by Neetu Vashishi and Jacob Puliyel published in the Indian Journal of Medical Ethics in 2012 wrote about the Gates-CDC-WHO mass oral polio vaccine effort there: “… while India has been polio-free for a year, there has been a huge increase in non-polio acute flaccid paralysis (NPAFP). In 2011, there were an extra 47,500 new cases of NPAFP. Clinically indistinguishable from polio paralysis but twice as deadly, the incidence of NPAFP was directly proportional to doses of oral polio received. Though this data was collected within the polio surveillance system, it was not investigated…”
The 1950s
Defining away cases of poliomyelitis or Infantile Paralysis as it was called during the epidemic in the USA after World War II, went back to the 1950s, and to since-suppressed deadly scandals involving the first purported polio vaccine developed by Jonas Salk. Regarded today as a medical hero, the truth of Salk was anything but heroic.
The upsurge in cases of what were then labelled poliomyelitis or infantile paralysis in the United States began to literally explode around 1946. Relevant to note is that a highly dangerous cumulative toxin, a now-banned insecticide known as DDT, was being promoted by the US government as a “safe” control of mosquitoes and flies said to be the “carriers” of polio virus. What has since been all but erased from the government record is the precise match of the number of cases of children with symptoms of acute polio with the degree of acute DDT spraying, and the equally precise mirrored decline of human polio cases from the late 1940s into the 1950s, after a sharp decline in DDT use. In 1953, Connecticut physician, Morton S. Biskind argued in public that, “the most obvious explanation for the polio epidemic: central nervous system diseases… such as polio are actually the physiological and symptomatic manifestations of the ongoing government- and industry-sponsored inundation of the world’s populace with central nervous system poisons.”
The Salk polio vaccine was first deployed in 1955, that is two years after the dramatic decline in registered polio cases. That fact was conveniently forgotten as the narrative was promoted that the new vaccine alone was eradicating the feared polio.
Serious evidence was presented by doctors and others to the US Congress that there was a clear connection between the summer polio epidemics to summer-used heavy metal pesticides such as DDT. They were ignored. The promotion of DDT as a harmless insecticide was so pervasive that kids followed behind trucks spraying the streets and swimming pools were sprayed with DDT, believing it harmless.
Highly emotional advertising campaigns proclaimed that deadly polio was mysteriously transmitted by insects and that DDT would protect. Farmers were told to repeatedly spray their dairy cows with DDT to ward of the dangerous insects. DDT thus contaminated the milk supply. Use of DDT exploded by the end of the 1940s across the USA. As one person described it, “Concerned parents went further to protect their children. They feared the invisible virus as if it were hunting their children. They turned their homes into sterile zones by constantly spraying insecticides and washing down the walls with disinfectants.” That sounds familiar.
Salk and Rockefeller
The vaccine research of Jonas Salk as well as of his rival, Albert Sabin, was funded by the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis, later known as the March of Dimes. Salk convinced the US health authorities in 1954 that his polio vaccine contained only inactive virus (IPV), and was absolutely safe. He was able to convince the regulatory authorities that the “expensive and difficult procedures which had been suggested for the detection of possible residual live virus” in his vaccine should be dispensed with. Field trials of the Salk vaccine in 1954 were exposed by the Journal of the American Statistical Association: “…59 per cent of the trial was worthless because of the lack of adequate controls…” That report was ignored by the US Department of Health and the National Foundation proclaimed the Salk vaccine ready to mass distribute in spring of 1955.
Already in 1955 alarming results from the Salk vaccine had emerged. His vaccine, manufactured by Cutter Laboratories, was administered to over four hundred thousand people, mostly school children. Within days, reports of paralysis began surfacing. Within a month, the mass vaccination program against polio had to be suspended. In June of 1956, polio cases began to increase sharply in Chicago in children who had received the Salk vaccine. The National Foundation sent an urgent letter to its members urging them to, “give reassurance that the present Salk vaccine is safe and effective to patients, parents and others in your community who still needlessly doubt it…”
Salk’s vaccine had caused seventy thousand cases of muscle weakness, one hundred and sixty-four cases of severe paralysis and ten deaths. Three fourths of the victims remained permanently paralyzed. Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare stepped down and the director of the NIH, resigned. The Cutter incident was quickly downplayed by the Government and vaccinations resumed after 21 days pause, using vaccines from Wyeth Labs. Those too produced cases of paralysis.
Between 1923 and 1953, before the Salk vaccine’s introduction, the polio death rate in the US had declined on its own by 47 percent; England had observed a similar pattern. Following the use of Salk’s vaccine between 1955 and 1963, cases of polio in the US increased—by 50 percent from 1957 to 1958, and by 80 percent between 1958 and 1959. This was concealed by a US Government change in defining polio, much as the WHO and CDC do today in Africa. Diseases that had previously been grouped together under the umbrella of “polio” began to be reported as separate diseases. One of these was aseptic or viral meningitis, an infectious disease that is difficult to distinguish from poliovirus, or transverse myelitis—a rare spinal cord inflammation, or the Guillain-Barré syndrome. Were all these a result of widespread toxins used in the vaccine? The Government and vaccine industry was not interested in knowing or telling.
Finally in 1963 the US Government replaced Salk’s IPV vaccine with an attenuated oral polio vaccine (OPV) developed by Albert Sabin. As a live virus vaccine, it, too, was and is capable of giving its recipients polio or polio symptoms. Salk testified before a Senate subcommittee in 1977 that the Sabin oral polio vaccine had caused most of the polio cases in the US since the early 1960s.
Rockefeller eugenics?
The National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis, which funded both Salk and his rival Sabin in development of polio vaccines in the 1950’s, was run by two doctors from the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research– Dr. Henry Kumm who had spent 23 years with the Rockefeller Institute, and Dr. Thomas Rivers.
Henry Kumm went over to the National Foundation in 1951 at the peak of the polio epidemic. In May 1953, Kumm became Director of Polio Research at NFIP. Notably, during World War II Kumm had served as civilian consultant to the Surgeon General of the US Army in Italy, directing field studies for the use of DDT against malarial mosquitoes.
Thomas Rivers was from 1922 head of the infectious disease ward at the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research, becoming the institute’s director in 1937. As chairman of committees on research and vaccine advisory for the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis, he oversaw the clinical trials of Jonas Salk’s vaccine by Dr Kumm’s group. It could be said that the National Foundation was a mask for a massive Rockefeller polio vaccine project.
Polio researcher David Oshisky stated,
“In truth, polio was never the raging epidemic portrayed in the media, not even at its height in the 1940s and 1950s. Ten times as many children would die in accidents in those years, and three times as many would die of cancer. Polio’s special status was due, in large part, to the efforts of the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis, better known as the March of Dimes, which employed the latest techniques in advertising, fund raising and motivational research to turn a horrific but relatively uncommon disease in to the most feared affliction of its time. The genius of the National Polio Foundation lay in its ability to single out polio for special attention, making it seem more ominous than other diseases.”
That National Foundation was run by Rockefeller doctors. This is very much what the Gates Foundation is doing with its turbo-charged oral polio vaccine in Africa where polio had almost vanished before the mass vaccine campaign of WHO and Gates.
Here the bond of dedication to eugenics and to dangerous vaccines seems to unite both the Rockefellers and Bill Gates, who in many ways is merely the heir and continuation of the deadly eugenics work of the Rockefellers. All this should give pause before regarding the pronouncements of Bill Gates on coronavirus and his favored vaccines as the scientific good truth.
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F. William Engdahl is strategic risk consultant and lecturer, he holds a degree in politics from Princeton University and is a best-selling author on oil and geopolitics, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook” where this article was originally published. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization.
Featured image is from NEO
Seeds of Destruction: Hidden Agenda of Genetic Manipulation
Author Name: F. William Engdahl
ISBN Number: 978-0-937147-2-2
Year: 2007
Pages: 341 pages with complete index
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This skilfully researched book focuses on how a small socio-political American elite seeks to establish control over the very basis of human survival: the provision of our daily bread. “Control the food and you control the people.”
This is no ordinary book about the perils of GMO. Engdahl takes the reader inside the corridors of power, into the backrooms of the science labs, behind closed doors in the corporate boardrooms.
The author cogently reveals a diabolical world of profit-driven political intrigue, government corruption and coercion, where genetic manipulation and the patenting of life forms are used to gain worldwide control over food production. If the book often reads as a crime story, that should come as no surprise. For that is what it is.
There has been a lot of talk about a Russian-Iranian conflict of interest in Syria and the differences of priorities, goals, and about the deployment of the Iranian forces in different Syrian provinces, in particular in the south of Syria bordering the Israeli occupied Golan Heights. In reality, there are organised disagreements which the various players have accepted without this necessarily affecting their primary objectives. However, Iran seems to have decided to take more escalatory steps in Syria that are expected to cause concern in Israel. This step follows the normalisation of the Emirates and Bahrein relations with Israel, whose open relationship and collaboration with the Gulf countries now give Israel a presence directly on Iranian borders.
During the years of the Syrian war, Israel tried everything in its power to topple President Bashar al-Assad to allow ISIS and Al-Qaeda to win. The Israeli air force bombed hundreds of objectives over the entire Syrian map to no avail. Iran’s support for Syrian stability and unity and its victory over takfiri terrorists and their backers in the region and the international community earned a privileged presence for Iran’s forces and its allies in Syria.
Speculation has abounded about Russian efforts to push Iran back 40 kilometres away from the occupied Golan Heights. However, the reality – according to well-informed sources in Syria – is different. Iranian advisors and military experts are present with their allies along the borders and in the areas of Daraa and Quneitra in particular.The sources explain that “due to the recent developments (normalisation with Gulf countries) in the Middle East, Israel is now moving on the borders of Iran and has a security and military presence there.
Consequently, Tehran is preparing to show its existence and …
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Today was the worst day for the defence since the start of the trial, as their expert witnesses failed to cope with the sheer aggression of cross-examination by the US Government and found themselves backing away from maintaining propositions they knew to be true. It was uncomfortable viewing.
It was not that the prosecution had in any way changed their very systematic techniques of denigrating and browbeating; in fact the precise prosecution template was once again followed. It goes like this.
undermine academic credentials as not precisely relevant
humiliate by repeated memory test questions of precise phrasing of obscure regulations or definitions
denigrate relevance of practical experience
iterate official positions and challenge witness to say they are expressed by named officials in bad faith
humiliate by asking witness to repeat from memory regulations for expert testimony in UK courts
run though a list of qualifications and government positions relevant to the subject and make witness say one by one they have not held them
claim testimony is biased or worthless because it does not include government assertions at full length.
You will note that none of this has anything to do with the truth of the actual evidence, and to date almost all witnesses have easily, sometimes contemptuously, seen off this intellectually shallow method of attack. But today was another story. The irony was that, when it came to the real subject matter of the evidence, it was obvious to any reasonable person that the prosecution claims of the good conditions in the American Prison service for high profile national security prisoners are just nonsense. But it was a day when the divorce between truth and court process was still plainer than usual. Given the horrific reality this process was disguising, it was a hard day to sit through.
First to give evidence by videolink was Yancey Ellis. An attorney with a doctorate in law, Ellis has been practising for 15 years including five as a US Marine Judge Advocate. He currently practises in Alexandria, Virginia, where he is now private, having formally been a public defender. As such he is very familiar with the Alexandria Detention Centre where Assange would be held pre-trial. This includes visiting clients in the Administrative Segregation, (AdSeg or X block) where high profile and national security prisoners are held.
He testified that pre-trail detention could last many months or even years. Isolation from other prisoners is the purpose of the X block. Prisoners are in tiny cells of approximately 50 square feet, which is under 5 square metres. The bed is a shelf. On a daily basis only one to two hours are allowed outside the cell, into a small area outside at a time when nobody else is there. The second hour was generally available only in the middle of the night, so was not utilised.
Edward Fitzgerald, QC for the defence, asked Ellis whether prisoners in Administrative segregation could associate. Ellis replied “not really”. The purpose of AdSeg was to prevent it. You were never allowed out of your cell at the same time as another AdSeg prisoner. Contrary to the assertions of Gordon Kromberg, it was very difficult to talk through the thick steel doors. You would have to scream at the top of your voice to be heard at all. Ellis had tried it himself to consult with his clients. Communication was only possible if he could find a deputy to open a food flap for him. As prisoners in AdSeg were locked down, the unit was not usually staffed.
Ellis said that AdSeg was solitary confinement, on the definition of more than 22 hours a day alone with no human interaction. In practise, there was no appeal to the judicial authorities on prison conditions. “Courts will defer to the jail on how they house inmates” [which of course mirrors Baraitser’s answers to requests to ameliorate Assange’s periods in solitary confinement and other mistreatment in Belmarsh prison].
Fitzgerald pointed out that the AdSeg regime Ellis described was even without the addition of Special Administrative Measures, which bring additional restrictions. Ellis confirmed none of the clients he represented was subject to SAMs. He confirmed they did get phone access, but only to a service that allowed them to send “pre-recorded phone calls” to relatives. Fitzgerald then asked how this was affected by SAMs, but James Lewis QC objected on the grounds Ellis had said he had no direct knowledge and Baraitser upheld that.
Fitzgerald asked Lewis about provision of medical and psychiatric care. Ellis replied that the Alexandria Detention Centre does not employ a doctor. There were some social work and counselling services available in-house. Medical services were provided by a private firm. It could take several weeks to see a psychiatrist, even in a crisis. Asked about suicide risk, Ellis said prisoners could be made to wear a “special suit” [straitjacket?] and had shoelaces, belt etc. removed.
James Lewis QC then cross-examined for the US government and I think this is best conveyed as dialogue. Again this is slightly condensed and paraphrased. It is not a transcript (it would be illegal for me to take a transcript; no, I don’t know why either).
Lewis You have described US Assistant Attorney Gordon Kromberg’s testimony as “inaccurate or incomplete”. How many prisoners are there currently in Alexandria Detention Centre? Ellis Approximately 300. Lewis You say there are four or six cells in administrative segregation? Ellis Yes, in the H block. Lewis Your info comes from your visits and from prisoners? Ellis Yes. Lewis Have you interviewed the governor? Ellis No. Lewis Have you interviewed the custodial staff? Ellis No. Lewis Have you interviewed the psychiatrists or psychologists? Ellis No. Lewis You have given one side of the story. One side of the picture. Do you agree? Ellis Do I agree there are two sides to every story? Lewis US Marshalls annually inspect the jail. Do you disagree? Ellis I don’t know. Lewis Kromberg says it was inspected on August 5 2019 by US Marshalls and found fully compliant. What do you say? Ellis Alright. Lewis Also the Commonwealth of Virginia inspected July 23-5 2019. There have been no suicides during the current inspection period. Ellis They have a good track record when it comes to completed suicides. Lewis Have you read these reports? Do you know the findings of these reports? You don’t know how prisoners are assessed for different types of housing? Ellis I have frequently asked for assessment reports in individual cases. I have never been given them. Lewis You don’t know that Assange will be placed in Administrative Segregation? Ellis I would bet that he will. Lewis Kromberg has stated that AdSeg prisoners have access to prisoner programmes but you have testified otherwise. But you have never represented federal prisoners, have you? Ellis There is no difference in treatment inside the jail between state and federal prisoners. Lewis Were you asked by the defence to state that AdSeg is solitary confinement? Ellis No. Lewis There is unlimited access to your lawyers. That is not considered in your definition of solitary confinement. Ellis Not unlimited. Lewis AdSeg prisoners have library access? Ellis Rarely. They may be able to go there in their time outside the cell, but only if it can be empty at that time so they do not meet anybody. Lewis You say Assange will be housed in AdSeg on the ground floor. You cannot know that. Ellis National security prisoners are all on the ground floor. The higher floors are for general population. Lewis Your clients in AdSeg were a security risk. Do you know that Assange will be so deemed? Ellis No. Lewis How do you know Assange won’t be kept in the medical wing? Ellis High profile prisoners are not allowed to mix with the general population. Lewis But won’t Mr Assange benefit from a phalanx of lawyers questioning his conditions. Don’t you think his publicity and support will bring better treatment? Ellis I don’t know that will be the effect.
Edward Fitzgerald then re-examined for the defence.
Fitzgerald Your judgements are based on your personal observations? Ellis Yes, and the reports of my clients. Fitzgerald And why do you say Assange will be kept on the H block? Ellis It’s the design of the jail. Nowhere else a long term AdSeg prisoner could be held. Fitzgerald On prisoner programmes, you say they would not be possible if it involved meeting another prisoner? Ellis Yes, and there are no individual programmes.
For the first time in this trial, Baraitser herself now asked a question of the witness. She asked Ellis why he thought Assange would not be held in the general prison population, as he currently was at Belmarsh. Ellis said it was because he was a public figure in a high profile case. Baraitser suggested that in the UK, being a high profile figure did not mean different treatment. Ellis said he was simply recounting the actual practice of the Alexandria jail in such cases.
Baraitser’s intervention was extraordinary given she had heard irrefutable evidence from Dr Blackwood that Assange had been placed into isolation in the medical wing in Belmarsh after somebody took a brief snatch of video of him, to prevent “reputational damage” to the prison. Yes, now she was saying high profile prisoners in the UK are not removed from the general prison population. She seems to have an infallible mental filter for blocking inconvenient information.
Her less subconscious filter was next in evidence, as there was time for a quick procedural judgement before the next witness, on the question of the decision of the prison governor on Julian Assange in the razor blade in the cell case. The record of the hearing on this ran to a minimum of 19 paragraphs, the judgement itself being in paragraph 19. Baraitser had indicated she was minded only to take para 19 as evidence, although the defence said the whole document contained very useful information. I am told that paras 1 to 18 include information on the extraordinary decision to place Julian Assange in solitary confinement disguised as “healthcare”, including the fact Belmarsh chief medic Dr Daly had produced not one of the compulsory monthly medical reports in his five months on the medical wing.
In one of those accommodations I find inexplicable, the defence conceded, without forcing Baraitser to a judgement, that paragraphs 1 to 18 should be ignored and only para 19 accepted as evidence, on the understanding it did establish the existence of the razor blade and thus vindicate Prof Kopelman’s judgement, and showed the charge had merely been dismissed as not timeous.
Yancey Ellis’s cross-examination above reads very well, and he did provide good answers to the prosecution attack. But he sounded rattled and nervous, and the performance was less convincing than it reads. This was to get much worse for the defence.
The next witness was Joel Sickler. He has a Master’s degree in the administration of justice and has worked for forty years in sentencing and advocacy. He is head of an organisation called Justice in Alexandria, Virginia, an expert in prison conditions, and has visited over 50 prisons across the United States. His organisation makes representations to the court on which institutions are suitable for a prisoner. He testified that he had made dozens of visits to the Alexandria Detention Centre.
He testified that in line with policy Assange would be placed in AdSeg due to his involvement in national security issues and concerns he might pass secrets on to other prisoners. He might also be categorised as needing protection from other prisoners and from self-harm. He would have zero to very limited contact with other prisoners. Sickler characterised Kromberg’s claim that inmates could communicate with each other through the steel doors and thick plexiglass windows as “ridiculous”. If SAMs were applied on top, that involved statutory isolation.
Sickler said that his knowledge of post-incarceration conditions at ADX Florence in Colorado came largely from reading reports. He had one client in there who was not subject to SAMs but was still effectively in solitary confinement for twenty years, despite a clean conduct record. Fitzgerald asked about provision of medical and psychiatric care, and Sickler stated that across the federal system he had dozens of clients who had found a way to commit suicide. In ADX specifically, there was a possibility of being transferred to a Federal medical centre in extreme cases.
At the ADX, Assange would be kept in the SSU known as the H block. With or without SAMs, contact with other prisoners would be completely barred. Contact with the outside world would be extraordinarily limited. Any contact permitted with family would be monitored by the FBI. One 15-minute phone call was allowed per month. Post conviction, contact with lawyers was very limited.
Fitzgerald asked how you could appeal against SAMs or other prison conditions. Sickler replied that appealing even over minor administrative matters virtually never succeeds. SAMs can only be varied by the Attorney General. In the prison system generally, Sickler had filed many thousands of requests on prison conditions and perhaps a dozen had succeeded. With SAMs there was effectively no chance. Solitary confinement could be indefinite in ADX – there was no upper limit.
Fitzgerald asked about changes in the prison after the Cunningham Mitigation settlement. Sickler said changes had been nominal. Any real improvement had only affected lower security prisoners. On prison conditions in general “Official statements, public pronouncements are one thing, reality in prison is something else”. The affidavit by Dr Alison Leukefeld for the government looked great on paper but was not the practice. On the other hand, reports by organisations like the Marshall Project exactly matched with his practical experience. Official statistics, like only 3% of federal prisoners having mental health problems, “do not ring true to me”. There was a significant risk Assange would not receive adequate physical and mental healthcare.
Clair Dobbin then rose to cross-examine. Again, I will report this as dialogue.
Dobbin What do you actually do? Do you work for the defence in cases? Sickler Yes, I help identify the appropriate institution for imprisonment and help clients navigate the prison system. Dobbin So prisoner advocacy? Sickler Yes. Dobbin So you only go to prisons to visit those you represent? Sickler Yes. Dobbin So you are not a prison inspector? Sickler No, I am not. Dobbin So you are not an academic? Sickler No, I am not. Dobbin So you are not a psychiatrist? Sickler No, I am not. Dobbin So you are not a researcher? Sickler No, I am not. Dobbin So you are not a doctor? You don’t get to see medical records? Sickler No, I am not. But I retain a medical consultant. I look at medical reports and I initiate conduct reports on a daily basis. Dobbin But you don’t have across the board access? Only in respect of your clients? Sickler That is right. Dobbin But you are not a clinician. You do not have the authority to validate medical opinion? Sickler No, but I employ a medical consultant. Dobbin Is this consultant a clinical psychiatrist? Sickler No. Dobbin Have you represented anybody on SAMs? Sickler No. SAM-like procedures, but not SAMs which can only be ordered by the attorney general. Dobbin But you said clearly in your affidavit that you have SAM clients. Did you put that there because you want to give the impression you have more expertise than you do? Sickler Of course not. Dobbin You have never been to the AdSeg area of Alexandria Detention Centre. So what is your opinion based on? Sickler Information given to me by numerous third parties including my clients, other lawyers and the public defender. Dobbin But did you not think it was important to make plain in your statement this is hearsay? Sickler I didn’t see the distinction as important. Dobbin Did you see the rules governing expert evidence to this court? Sickler Yes. I did not think that was against the rules. Dobbin You have seen Kromberg’s statement. Do you accept there may be legitimate reasons for Assange to be in AdSeg? Sickler Absolutely. Dobbin Prisoners in protective custody receive all the same services and rights as other prisoners? Sickler Of course. Dobbin Do you agree that he would be able to attend programmes with other prisoners? Sickler Not if under SAMs. Dobbin Do you agree that those in protective custody can meet with other prisoners? Sickler Certainly. Dobbin Do you agree there are no restrictions on access to lawyers? Sickler Absolutely, there is a constitutional right. Dobbin Do you agree that SAMs can only be imposed by the Attorney General? Sickler Yes. Dobbin What is the procedure for that? Sickler It involves consulting the intelligence agencies. Dobbin It needs the certification of one of the heads of one of the security agencies that the prisoner is a threat to the United States? Sickler Yes. Dobbin You cannot know that Assange will get SAMs. And SAMs differ from person to person. Sickler Yes, correct. Dobbin In the case of convicted terrorist El-Haj, he was under SAMs but still allowed access to family members? Sickler Yes, his immediate family. Dobbin Provisions depend on the individual prisoner? Sickler Yes. Dobbin The judge who convicted [another prisoner not heard clearly] entered the MMC personally to check on prison conditions. Does that not show there is good judicial supervision? Sickler I have seen it, on rare occasions. Dobbin SAMS does not restrict access to lawyers. Sickler How do you access lawyers in Florida ADX? And pre-trial there are scheduling difficulties. If he is under SAMs his lawyer will himself be subject to surveillance. Dobbin What evidence do you have for that? Sickler The Lynne Stewart case. Lindsay Lewis. Dobbin Lynne Stewart was running a message for jihadists (she added much alleged detail). Her client was subject to SAMs to prevent him running a terrorist organisation. Sickler The case, and others, had a chilling effect on the willingness of lawyers to take on SAM cases involving national security. Dobbin The Alexandria Detention Centre is not overcrowded Sickler No, it’s below capacity. It is a well-run jail. The staff are very professional. Dobbin Kromberg sets out very substantial medical staffing levels. Sickler I understand those are mostly private contractors, not prison staff. In practice prisoner needs are not meaningfully met. It takes a few days to a few weeks to get treatment. Dobbin But they do get sufficient treatment? Sickler There is no real psychiatric intervention. This is not top tier. Usually prisoners are just medicated. Dobbin So they have access to medication? And someone to talk to? Sickler Correct. Dobbin Your evidence only refers to one suicide, at the Metropolitan Correctional Centre. Sickler That is just one example, one of my current cases. Dobbin But two prison officers have been charged for that. Sickler We are always swift to blame a little man. Dobbin It was not the protocols that were wrong, just two people did not do their job. [This is possibly the Epstein case.] The ADC has a good record on suicide. Sickler It is a very very arduous, almost torturous system of confinement in AdSeg. Assange has depression and is on the autism spectrum. It will be unbearable for him. Even with healthy clients of mine, there has been a terrifying deterioration in these conditions. Dobbin The evidence is they are successful in preventing suicide at the ADC. Sickler Yes, they have a stellar record. Dobbin In the Babar Ahmad case (2012), the European Court of Human Rights considered SAMs and ruled it was not an unacceptable regime. Has anything changed since 2012? Sickler Not significantly. Dobbin You initially said in your report Assange might not be sent to ADX. Now you change your mind. Sentencing is at the discretion of the judge. There is no basis for your report. Sickler I changed my mind in the intervening period. From the second superseding indictment, the charge is now espionage and the government alleges Assange is a continuing threat to the USA. Dobbin You were a consultant in the Reality Winner case. She only got 53 months. Sickler She was a qualitatively different kind of defendant. Dobbin She was an insider. They normally get harsher sentences. She is serving her sentence in a medical facility. Sickler Not on medical grounds. It is the closest federal incarceration facility to her family. Dobbin You say Assange would be in solitary confinement. But Kromberg states that most inmates in special housing are in double cells with a cell-mate. Sickler That can be worse. Many are violent and mentally unwell. Assaults by cellmates are frequent.
There followed an interchange where Dobbin tried to trip up Sickler over the procedures for committing someone to ADX Florida, but he proved knowledgeable in detail.
Dobbin The procedures say that prisoners with health conditions will not be sent to the ADX unless there are serious security concerns. Sickler Abu Hamza is there and he has no arms. Dobbin There are just 14 people in ADX in this category. You have not been there. How do you get your information? Sickler Reports including the Lowenstein Center and the Center for Constitutional Rights Dobbin Prisoners at ADX do get family visits. Sickler How often would Mr Assange get family visits? Why don’t you tell the court? Dobbin [name not heard] a convicted terrorist who attempted to blow up a plane is in ADX and gets family visits and phone calls. Sickler He is allowed communication with two named family members. But how often is he allowed to call or see them? Dobbin You have said solitary confinement at the ADX can be indefinite? Sickler That’s my impression. Dobbin What is your source of information? Sickler It’s from prisoners and lawyers. It’s anecdotal, I admit. But are you saying at some point the US government will decide that Assange won’t be likely to divulge classified information? Dobbin Do you understand that there are three levels in the H block that defendants can work themselves through to get out? Sickler No. Dobbin Did you know that even in SAMs, prisoners can mingle together for social periods? Sickler No, I did not. Dobbin (Quotes ECHR judgement endorsing the stepdown programme) Sickler You have to be within 2 years of release. If you are designated by the Attorney General for SAMs, you are not eligible for that programme. Conditions in the ADX are extraordinarily arduous. Dobbin Kromberg sets out the stages and says that stage 3 allows contact with other prisoners
Sickler It sounds awful. Even when you reach phase 3 with the extra privileges. If they do that in practice, well that’s wonderful. It still sounds awful to me. Dobbin There is a progression. Sickler I should like to know how long it takes. Dobbin Do you know the numbers who have come out of the ADX? Shouldn’t you know these facts? Sickler The place is torturous. That is not in dispute. Dobbin How inmates are treated will depend on how big a security risk they are. Sickler Precisely. Dobbin Medical care at the ADX is not affected by SAMs. Sickler OK. Dobbin Do you agree that as a result of the Cunningham Settlement there has been a substantial improvement? Sickler I cannot say. Dobbin Gordon Kromberg testifies that ADX Colorado has more mental health provision per inmate than any other federal prison. Sickler That is needed because of the extreme circumstances people are kept in. Dobbin Does that not indicate to you that the standard of care is good? Sickler Is there meaningful patient/clinician interaction? I don’t know. Dobbin The Cunningham Settlement led to over 100 people being removed from ADX. Sickler But how many had SAMs? Dobbin We have established that you don’t know anything about the movement out of people with SAMs. Sickler Yes, you have established that. Dobbin As a result of the Cunningham Mitigation two new mental institutions were established. Sickler Yes, for schizophrenia and psychoses. Dobbin A Department of Corrections report of 2014 shows that some inmates never want to leave ADX as they find the standard of care so good. They re-offend to get back in. Sickler They cherry-pick whom they speak to. Most prisoners are desperate to get out. Dobbin Every report gets an official response from the Board of Prisons and policies are constantly upgraded. Sickler Yes, but I just don’t see results in practice. I had one client recently, a prisoner, who rather than being treated was beaten up and thrown naked in the hole. It took months before a court got him out. Another was refused his diagnosed and prescribed medicines as not in the BoP formulary. Dobbin In the first case there was judicial review. So the system works. Sickler After six months.
There was more of this. The cross-examination lasted two and a half hours. Again, it seems much more convincing from Sickler written down than it did live, where he appeared shaken by the aggression. The answers he gave which sound like firm responses, sounded petulant and throwaway when he delivered them. He gave the impression that it was not worth his time to engage with the unreasonable Dobbin and, while I heartily sympathise, that was not the requirement of the moment.
Sickler very definitely gave the impression he was at times agreeing with the prosecutor just because that was the easier line of action. He often did so in a voice that suggested scepticism, sarcasm or mockery, but that was not plain in his words and will not be apparent in the transcript. In normal life, making short sarcastic responses like “Oh yes, it’s marvellous” in reply to ludicrous assertions by the prosecution about the provision of US supermax prisons, may work as a form of ridicule; in a court setting it does not work at all. In fairness to Mr Sickler, being at home rather than actually in a court session will partly account for it. But the court record will say Sickler says prisoner provision in US supermax prisons is marvellous. It doesn’t note sarcasm.
Dobbin is officious beyond the point of offensive; she comes over as properly obnoxious as a person.
The unpleasant irony in all this is that both Sickler and Ellis were mocked and scorned for their lack of personal knowledge of ADX Colorado, when prosecution and judge had combined just on Friday to bar two witnesses who the defence both wished to testify, who had expert personal experience of ADX Florence. That is yet another striking example of the fact that this process is divorced from any genuine attempt to find truth or justice.
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Secretary of State Michael Pompeo and Colombian President Iván Duque, meeting in Bogotá on Sept. 20, talked about “managing the COVID-19 response … narcotraffickers … and [President] Maduro’s illegitimate regime,” according to the State Department. A Cuban observer insists they explored “when to begin military actions and sabotage in Venezuela.” Elliott Abrams, the White House official responsible for Venezuelan affairs, dismissed the idea of U.S. military engagement as an “absurdity.”
As talks were taking place in Bogotá, joint naval and air force exercises were underway along Colombia’s Caribbean coast. Supposedly, they were preparing to fight an illicit drug trade attributed to Venezuela. That’s why the U.S. Navy has been monitoring Venezuela’s northern coast since April. Colombia itself, of course, supplies most of the illegal drugs entering the United States.
The specter looms of an “October Surprise,” that staple of U.S. presidential electioneering. It’s widely assumed that to win in Florida, candidates must show off their anti-revolutionary zeal to voters of Cuban or Venezuelan origin. Decisive action against Venezuela now might do the trick.
Colombia acts as the local U.S. enforcer as regards Venezuela. That role grew out of the U.S.’ “Plan Colombia,” which after 2000 had the United States building up Colombia’s military, harassing leftist insurgents, and establishing a base for regional military operations—all under the pretext of combating illegal drugs.
Before arriving in Bogotá, Pompeo had visited Venezuela’s other neighbors—Surinam, Brazil, and Guyana. In Boa Vista, located 141 miles from the Venezuelan border, he met with Brazil’s foreign minister and commiserated with Venezuelan refugees.
Pompeo backed Guyana’s resistance to a Venezuelan claim on the Essequibo region, where ExxonMobil is extracting oil. He authorized U.S. participation in military patrols along that disputed border. China, investing in Guyana and Surinam, has invited both to join its Belt and Road initiative.
On Aug. 18 in Bogotá, White House National Security advisor Robert O’Brien had already presented President Duque with a new version of Plan Colombia called “Colombia Grows.” By way of nurturing the alliance, it offers “rural development, infrastructure expansion, [and] new opportunities for investment.” The presence at the meeting of Admiral Craig Fuller, Chief of the U.S. Southern Command, and Mauricio Claver-Carone, head at the time of the National Security Council’s Western Hemisphere Division, suggests Venezuela was on the agenda.
Venezuela is in the spotlight now for good reason. National Assembly elections take place there on Dec. 6, and the right-wing opposition is fractured. Both the United States and Juan Guaidó, the former National Assembly president named as Venezuela’s president by the United States, want an election boycott. Other opposition groups and leaders, notably former presidential candidate Henrique Capriles, will be participating.
Signs of unity are cropping up—not good news in Washington. Says a government supporter:
“on December 6, many of us will vote for the government, others will vote for the opposition, but all of us … will be voting against the criminal blockade that has caused us so much damage.”
For the U.S. government, any hint of election normalcy would be a reverse. Sympathetic world leaders, counting on a new government in Venezuela but detecting signs of durability, might adjust their thinking. Maybe the present show of hostility—the meetings, naval maneuvers, and new sanctions on diesel fuel—would keep them in line.
U.S. strategists may be fretting also because regime change hasn’t happened, despite all the financial and logistical support that’s been delivered to Venezuelan dissidents and plotters during the presidencies of both Presidents Maduro and Chávez.
The list of recent attacks is impressive: street protests in 2014 and 2017, a drone attack against Venezuela’s top leaders in August 2018, humanitarian aid pushed across the Colombia-Venezuela border in January 2019 to incite a military uprising, a cyber-attack causing a nationwide electrical blackout in March 2019, a military officers’ coup attempt in April 2019 backed by Guaidó, and in May renegade Venezuelan troops led by former U.S. Green Berets invading from Colombia.
Plotters often plan and prepare in Colombia and find refuge there afterwards.
U.S. economic sanctions and U.S. plundering of Venezuela’s economic assets abroad have led to devastating shortages of credit, food, medicines, and supplies for oil production, which has collapsed. Oil exports have accounted for more than 95% of the country’s export income. There’s no other money available to pay for imported food and medicines or for social services. Even so, Venezuela’s government survives.
In Colombia presently, societal disruption and a newly energized protest movement may be deflecting the government’s attention from regime change in Venezuela.
Unemployment is 20.2 percent; 19 million Colombians live in poverty, eight million in extreme poverty; 6.5 percent of the people are food-deprived; 2 million Colombians are illiterate; the health care system is a disaster. According to one report, 992 social leaders and 229 former FARC insurgents have been killed since late 2016, when the government’s peace agreement with the FARC was signed.
A U.S. “Security Force Assistance Brigade” arrived in early June to prepare a “full spectrum offensive against Venezuela.” But Colombia’s Senate rejected its presence, a court decision validated the Senate’s action, and then Defense Minister Carlos Holmes Trujillo welcomed the U.S. troops anyway. A U.S. military presence in Colombia is not new, but now popular opposition to more U.S. troops is growing.
Police in Bogotá killed law student Javier Ordóñez on Sept. 9. He had joined many thousands who were protesting the killings of social leaders, a flawed response to the COVID-19 pandemic, and neoliberalism. Later that day, the police killed 11 young people. Broadening their demands, demonstrators called for Pompeo’s visit and the U.S.-Colombian military exercises to be canceled.
Former President Álvaro Uribe, meanwhile, is under house arrest. This recipient of the U.S. Medal of Freedom and collaborator with drug traffickers and murderous paramilitaries is accused of complicity in three paramilitary massacres, including the El Aro massacre of 1997. Former paramilitary chieftain Salvatore Mancuso, responsible for that massacre and recently released from a U.S. prison, is resisting repatriation to Colombia, where he might have to testify against Uribe. An obliging U.S. government may let him stay. Colombian critics of Uribe and his protégé Duque are outraged.
In both countries, ramifications of the pandemic, serious economic problems, and political divisions serve, if for nothing else, to lessen the urgency of other concerns. It’s a context in which, for many Colombians, plotting against Venezuela, especially in collaboration with the United States, may no longer be a priority. In Colombia, reports one observer, Duque has “all but lost legitimacy as president.”
If indeed direct military intervention is unlikely, the option of undercover war remains. In fact, paramilitary detachments have been operating in Venezuela for many years. The U.S. government itself recently showed what war in the shadows will look like.
Venezuelan authorities are prosecuting a CIA-connected former U.S. Marine who, well-armed and with explosives, was arrested on Sept. 14 with Venezuelan accomplices near a large oil-refinery complex in Falcón State. Matthew John Heath is accused of preparing “acts of sabotage.”
Question: How committed are anti-Venezuelan hawks in the United States to direct military intervention? Maybe they doubt the capabilities of their Colombian ally. Maybe a mess of the kind visited upon Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya would be too close to home. Maybe, in the end, harassing the Maduro government, destabilization, and bluster will be enough, at least for keeping their foreign and domestic friends in line.
Masses of working people in Venezuela are mobilized for better lives and for peace. They are anti-imperialist. They are why their government survives. It would survive easier with a kindred movement in Colombia. A U.S. version would be icing on the cake.
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W.T. Whitney Jr. grew up on a dairy farm in Vermont and now lives in rural Maine. He practiced and taught pediatrics for 35 years and long ago joined the Cuba solidarity movement, working with Let Cuba Live of Maine, Pastors for Peace, and the Venceremos Brigade. He writes on Latin America and health issues for the People’s World.
Featured image: Rally in rejection of the U.S. destabilizing plan against Venezuela, 2019. | Photo: Twitter/ @codepink
Can you 
Mark Crispin Miller is a professor of media, culture and communication at New York University, and author of numerous articles on media censorship and election fraud. He is also authoring a major article which is focused on the widespread lies about the safety of the masks we put on to protect us from the threat of COVID 19.
