Global Research

On Tuesday, Bloomberg News reported the following:

“Michael Bloomberg plans to stay in the presidential race until after the results of Super Tuesday primaries are counted, his campaign manager said, rejecting calls from (Dem) officials (that he) drop out and make way for Joe Biden,” adding:

He “dismissed suggestions that he drop out,” stressing that “no one will secure the nomination before the (July) convention.”

Money can’t buy everything — no matter how much is spent trying.

Bloomberg did poorly the first time he appeared on the ballot in 14 Super Tuesday states, winning only the American Samoa caucus, despite a spending blitzkrieg — over $500 million of his own money to try buying the White House, more on advertising than all other Dem aspirants combined.

While winning small numbers of delegates on Tuesday, he finished no better than third in all mainland contests.

Asked if he would reassess things late Tuesday, his campaign manager Kevin Sheekey said while taking stock of where things stand “after every election” goes on, Bloomberg looks forward to competing in upcoming primaries.

Citing an unnamed aide, Bloomberg News reported that his “campaign would look at the results but that the intent is to continue competing,” adding:

“Bloomberg himself brushed off questions earlier Tuesday about whether he would drop out of the race.”

When asked, he said “I’m in it to win it.” A day later, he dropped out, saying the following:

“I’ve always believed that defeating Donald Trump starts with uniting behind the candidate with the best shot to do it.”

“After yesterday’s vote, it is clear that candidate is my friend and a great American (sic), Joe Biden.

“I’ve known Joe for a very long time. I know his decency, his honesty, and his commitment to the issues that are so important to our country – including gun safety, health care, climate change, and good jobs (sic).”

He ignored Biden’s longstanding support for dirty business as usual — pro-war, pro-business, anti-populist, anti-social justice, anti-governance serving all Americans equitably positions throughout his public life for nearly half a century.

No political candidate in US history ever spent more for less results than Bloomberg in his presidential bid.

Instead of spending over $500 million on self-aggrandizement, likely tens of millions more to come for an elaborate infrastructure remaining in place.

It includes numerous staff members he pledged to pay through the November elections to support the Dem nominee.

Imagine the good his spending could have accomplished if used for this purpose.

How much healthcare for needy households and higher education for students to avoid debt bondage could he have bought with money thrown away on self-promotion?

How many homeless could he have funded shelter for? How many food insecure families could he have aided?

He could have funded a significant pro-peace, equity and justice campaign, the power of his wealth perhaps able to make a difference.

He entered the race to become Dem standard bearer, believing Biden was weak and beatable.

He bet wrong. Dem party bosses support the former vice president. Super Tuesday results proved it.

He believed money could buy the Dem nomination and White House by spending enough.

Yet he dropped out early in the race badly beaten. His record as New York City mayor left him vulnerable, including his racist stop-and-risk policy.

Black and Latino males were disproportionately targeted. In 2002 when he became mayor, the NYPD made about 97,000 annual stop and frisk searches.

At the end of his tenure in 2013, it was over 700,000, a policy Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas denounced in Terry v. Ohio (1968), a dissenting view, saying:

Absent probable cause, “(w)e  hold today that the police have greater authority to make a ‘seizure’ and conduct a ‘search’ than a judge has to authorize such action. We have said precisely the opposite over and over again.”

“To give the police greater power than a magistrate is to take a long step down the totalitarian path.”

“Perhaps such a step is desirable to cope with modern forms of lawlessness.”

“But if it is taken, it should be the deliberate choice of the people through a constitutional amendment.”

Throughout the US, Blacks and Latinos are racially profiled and otherwise abused by law enforcement.

The New York State’s ACLU earlier denounced NYPD stop-and-frisk practices, saying:

“The Department’s own reports on its stop-and-frisk activity confirm what many people in communities of color across the city have long known: The police are stopping hundreds of thousands of law abiding New Yorkers every year, and the vast majority are black and Latino.”

Multi-billionaire Bloomberg long ago lost touch with ordinary people who struggle daily to get by.

Dozens of women sued him for sexual harassment and discriminatory practices. He boasted about his womanizing exploits, including in an autobiography.

Now out of the race for the White House, he’s helping Joe Biden become Dem standard bearer and will aid his campaign against Trump if nominated.

Based on Super Tuesday results, the 2020 race for Dems looks like a repeat of 2016 — assuring Hillary’s nomination then, Biden the apparent choice of Dem party bosses to face Trump in November.

A Final Comment

Is Warren next to drop out? According to the Hill and other media, she’ll meet with staff to assess her position in the race after doing poorly so far, winning no states.

Through Super Tuesday, she won an estimated 50 delegates, noticeably finishing behind Biden and Sanders in Massachusetts, her home state.

Following her Feb. 29 loss in South Carolina, her campaign manager Roger Lau said the following:

“Our internal projections continue to show Elizabeth winning delegates in nearly every state in play on Super Tuesday, and in a strong position to earn a sizable delegate haul coming out of the night.”

After things didn’t turn out as expected, Lau said the team is “obviously disappointed. (Warren is) going to take time right now to think through the right way to continue this fight.”

An internal campaign memo quoted by the Boston Herald was wrong, saying she was “poised to finish in the top two in over half of Super Tuesday states (eight of 14), in the top three in all of them, and is on pace to pick up at-large statewide delegates in all but one.”

She finished third or fourth in Super Tuesday contests, meeting the 15% threshold to win delegates in only 5 of 14 states — doing no better in earlier races.

Is it just a matter of days before she bows out, leaving Biden and Sanders in the race to be Dem standard bearer against Trump in November?

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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.”

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

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

Featured image is from Flickr

When US elections are held for high office and key congressional posts, party bosses in cahoots with monied interests decide things, not voters.

It works the same way every time, Super Tuesday results in 14 states the latest example.

According to pre-election polls, Sanders was heavily favored to trounce Biden in most states, especially delegate-rich California and Texas.

Tuesday results turned out otherwise. In three presidential campaigns (1988, 2008, and currently) longtime establishment figure Biden never won a primary election until South Carolina last Saturday.

It came after poor showings in Iowa, New Hampshire and Nevada, his campaign close to collapsing.

How was it possible to dramatically turn things around overnight, turning near-defeat to frontrunner status in a few days?

The post-Super Tuesday delegate count has him with 566 to Sanders’ 501, Warren virtually out of contention with 61, and Tulsi Gabbard with one.

The rest of the Dem starting field dropped out, Bloomberg the latest. Is Warren next?

A Wednesday NewsOne report said the following:

“Elizabeth Warren has reportedly decided to suspend her campaign to be president. It wasn’t a question if, but when and how…”

“After such a poor showing during this early primary season, the decision to call it quits was likely not much of a surprise to anyone who’s been paying attention to politics.”

“What may have been a surprise…was the additional report that Warren’s team was colluding with Bernie Sanders to make a dual announcement of ending her campaign along with endorsing his.”

On the same day, the Washington Post reported the following:

“Top surrogates and allies of Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders are discussing ways for their two camps to unite and push a common liberal agenda, with the expectation that Warren is likely to leave the presidential campaign soon, according to two people familiar with the talks.”

“Warren associates and the camp of former vice president Joe Biden also had talks about a potential endorsement if she drops out, according to two people familiar with the conversations,” adding:

“(C)onverations…are in an early phase,” nothing official so far. Warren’s “associates…say she is now looking for the best way to step aside…no certainty she will endorse Sanders or anyone else.”

He and Warren reportedly spoke by phone Wednesday, Sanders saying:

“She has not made any decisions as of this point. It is important for all of us, certainly me…to respect the time and the space she needs to make a decision.”

Given how poorly she’s done so far, polls for upcoming primaries largely showing no improvement, it’s likely just a matter of when she drops out and whether she’ll endorse Sanders, Biden, or neither aspirant.

Most polls conducted in February through early March showed Sanders leading Biden, other candidates way behind, according to Real Clear Politics.

It suggests that election meddling turned things around for the former vice president, a figure considered “safe,” Sanders not “safe” enough — despite going along to get along most often, his rhetoric and voting record world’s apart.

How else could he have been elected and reelected to the House and Senate since 1990?

True blue anti-war/progressive Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney overcame huge obstacles to serve six terms as Georgia’s 4th district representative (12 years) — before defeated by the power of Big Money, notably from the Israel lobby for her support of long-suffering Palestinians, her opposition to Israeli apartheid.

Rarely ever does someone of her stature serve in Congress, almost never for the duration of her tenure.

What could transform the US into a model society if figures like her got elected in large numbers is prevented by manipulating the process to block it.

That’s the American way — hypocrisy, autocracy, and plutocracy from inception, not democracy.

No rule of the people ever existed – governance of, by, and for the privileged few alone at the expense of most others under one-party rule with two right, sharing power by taking turns.

American exceptionalism, moral superiority, and the indispensable state are pure fantasy.

The nation’s founders empowered its privilege class to rule – democracy the way it should be an anathema notion throughout US history, at home and abroad, wanting it eliminated wherever it exists.

Each US electoral cycle, names and faces change. Dirty business as usual remains in place, dark forces retaining power — their interests alone served, never the public welfare.

Managed news misinformation and disinformation created a truth emergency gone unaddressed – voters unable to make informed choices from major media coverage.

Democracy in America is for the privileged few alone at the expense of most others, billions of dollars spent each election cycle insuring it.

Digital age technology makes outcomes easier to control. Easily manipulated corporate controlled electronic machines vote, not citizens.

It’s why losers can become winners. Was Super Tuesday the latest example? Results diverging from pre-election polls suggest it.

Fantasy democracy over the real thing is why around half the US electorate abstains most often in presidential year voting, larger numbers in midterm elections.

Voter disenfranchisement is rife, independent candidates shut out of the system, unable to compete on a level playing field.

If elections transformed swords into plowshares and changed things to serve all Americans equitably, they’d be banned.

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Note to readers: please click the share buttons below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

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.”

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

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

It’s true that the Trump administration signed a “peace deal” with the Taliban — something that eluded both George W. Bush and Barack Obama — but a closer look at the agreement reveals it to be riddled with conditions that are fraught with obstacles.

The terms of the deal suggest that Trump is more interested in boasting that he’s fulfilling his campaign promise to bring the troops home than he is committed to achieving real peace in Afghanistan. This fact has also been noted by Trump’s former national security aides, some of whom have said that the president “is far less interested in an actual Afghan peace” than in claiming he is making good on his vow to withdraw the U.S. troops.

The agreement announced on February 29 should not rightly be called a “peace deal,” Rep. Barbara Lee (D-California) said in a statement. Although the agreement “is a step forward,” Lee noted, “It leaves thousands of troops in Afghanistan and lacks the critical investments in peacebuilding, human-centered development, or governance reform needed to rebuild Afghan society.”

Afghan women activists Mary Akrami, Sahar Halaimzai and Rahela Sidiqi criticized the agreement and the process leading to it in USA Today: “Afghan women and representatives from civil society and other minority groups should have been at the table for the U.S.-Taliban talks that led to this agreement, but we were not.”

Trump’s “Agreement for Bringing Peace to Afghanistan” sets forth a plan for withdrawing all foreign forces from Afghanistan, a mutual release of prisoners, Taliban prevention of attacks against U.S. and allied forces from Afghan soil, and negotiations between the Taliban and the Afghan government. Although it claims to be “a comprehensive peace agreement,” as Lee points out, “this so-called ‘peace deal’ is anything but.”

Withdrawal Timeline for All Foreign Forces

The agreement establishes a timeline for the withdrawal of all foreign forces from Afghanistan. It says the “United States is committed to withdraw from Afghanistan all military forces of the United States, its allies and Coalition partners, including all non-diplomatic civilian personnel, private security contractors, trainers, advisors, and supporting service personnel” no later than 14 months after the agreement is announced.

Within the first 135 days, the U.S., allies and the Coalition will reduce the number of forces to 8,600 and withdraw all forces from five military bases. The remaining 8,600 forces (the same number that remained when Obama left office) is “the minimum number of Special Operations forces, intelligence officers and support and security personnel that the Pentagon and C.I.A. believe are necessary to hold the capital, Kabul” and fight the Islamic State, David Sanger wrote in The New York Times.

Apparently, the U.S. wants “to keep intelligence operatives on the ground fighting Isis and al-Qaida,” The Guardian reports. While the CIA won’t increase its presence in Afghanistan, it will remove its personnel “more slowly than the military,” according to sourcesquoted by the The New York Times.

The U.S., allies and Coalition will withdraw “all remaining forces from Afghanistan” by the end of the remaining nine and a half months.

But, Sanger cites reports of “a series of not-so-secret annexes to the agreement that allow both Special Operations forces and the C.I.A. to retain a presence in the country.”

Negotiations Between Taliban and Afghan Government

The Taliban will begin “intra-Afghan negotiations with Afghan sides on March 10, 2020.”

But since the contested election between Afghan President Ashraf Ghani and Abdullah Abdullah, it is unclear with whom the Taliban will be negotiating. On February 18, the Independent Election Commission declared Ghani the winner. Abdullah disagrees and is threatening to form a parallel government.

The agreement, which was announced after a seven-day “reduction in violence,” requires “dialogue and negotiations” about “a permanent and comprehensive ceasefire.”

Meanwhile, the carnage continues.

Mutual Prisoner Release

The U.S. commits to work on a plan to “expeditiously release combat and political prisoners” by March 10. The Afghan government would release up to 5,000 Taliban prisoners and the Taliban would release up to 1,000 prisoners they are holding. The goal of “the relevant sides,” facilitated by the United States, is to release “all the remaining prisoners” within the ensuing three months.

But since the Afghan government was not part of the pre-agreement negotiations, it did not agree to the release. In fact, Ghani said on March 1 that he does not intend to release 5,000 Taliban prisoners by the March 31 date for initiation of negotiations with the Taliban.

The Taliban won’t come to the negotiating table unless the prisoners in Afghan custody are released.

Taliban Agrees to Prevent Attacks Against U.S. From Afghan Soil

According to the agreement, the “Taliban will not allow any of its members, other individuals or groups, including al-Qa’ida,” to use Afghan soil “to threaten the security of the United States and its allies.” The Taliban will also instruct members of the Taliban “not to cooperate with groups of individuals threatening the security of the United States and its allies.”

Furthermore, the Taliban “will prevent any group or individual in Afghanistan” from threatening U.S. and allies’ security and will block them from training, recruiting and fundraising.

The Taliban also commits that the prisoners it releases won’t pose a threat to the security of the U.S. and its allies. In addition, the Taliban commits to complying with international migration law so that people who are granted asylum don’t pose a threat to the security of the U.S. and its allies. And the Taliban won’t issue passports, visas, travel permits or other legal documents for entry to Afghanistan to anyone who poses a threat to the security of the U.S. and its allies.

But it is unclear whether the Taliban is capable of preventing terrorist groups from launching attacks from Afghan territory. “We will not allow our land to be used against any country including the U.S.,” Suhail Shaheen, spokesman for the Taliban’s Qatar office, told The Washington Post, “but I am talking about the area where we have control.”

Indeed, as Douglas London, Georgetown University adjunct professor and former senior CIA officer, wrote in The New York Times, the Taliban is “diverse, decentralized and factionalized,” which leaves enforcement of the agreement in doubt. The Taliban “has historically been controlled by regional warlords with no enduring loyalty to any particular ideology, leader or cause,” London noted. Moreover, members of the Taliban’s negotiating team are “largely disconnected from and disrespected by the Taliban’s senior leadership.”

U.S. Review of Sanctions Against Taliban

The United States will conduct a review of its sanctions against the Taliban “with the goal of removing these sanctions by August 27, 2020.” These include a freeze on financial assets and an arms embargo against the Taliban.

When negotiations between the Taliban and the Afghan government commence, the U.S. “will start diplomatic engagement” with other Security Council members and Afghanistan to remove the Taliban from the sanctions list.

U.S. Commits to Refrain From Threat or Use of Force Against Afghanistan

In a provision confirming their obligations under the United Nations Charter, the U.S. and its allies “will refrain from the threat or the use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of Afghanistan or intervening in its domestic affairs.”

The U.S. will “seek economic cooperation for reconstruction” from the new Afghan government during their negotiations and “will not intervene in [Afghanistan’s] internal affairs.”

Finally, the United States will ask the Security Council to endorse this agreement.

After 18 Years and Loss of Blood and Treasure, U.S. Hands Afghanistan Back to Taliban

Bush illegally launched “Operation Enduring Freedom” in October 2001, in retaliation for the September 11 terrorist attacks. After 18 years, tens of thousands killed and more than $2 trillion spent, the U.S. government is returning Afghanistan to the Taliban.

“United States went to war against the Taliban, and then almost two decades later, handed Afghanistan back to the Taliban,” Vijay Prashad, foreign policy expert and director of the Tricontinental Institute for Social Research, noted ironically.

More than 100,000 Afghan civilians and over 58,000 Afghan security forces have been killed. About 2,400 U.S. servicemembers have been killed and 20,000 wounded in the United States’s longest war.

After a 10-year preliminary examination, International Criminal Court (ICC) Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda found a “reasonable basis” to believe that U.S. military and CIA forces committed war crimes and crimes against humanity, including torture, in Afghanistan.

The ICC Pre-Trial Chamber agreed with Bensouda but refused to open a formal investigation, citing doubt about whether it could secure “meaningful cooperation from relevant authorities” which limited the “prospects for a successful investigation.” Bensouda appealed the ruling.

On March 5, the ICC Appeals Chamber will issue a judgment affirming or reversing the Pre-Trial Chamber’s refusal to initiate an investigation.

Meanwhile, the Taliban control or claim to control almost half of Afghanistan’s districts, “more territory . . . than at any point since 2001,” according to the Pentagon.

Robert Malley, president of the International Crisis Group, told The Intercept’s Mehdi Hasan that the reason the Taliban “got so much out of the deal” is that “after two decades, the U.S. has failed to win an unwinnable war.”

Nevertheless, The Washington Post’s explosive report titled “The Afghanistan Papers” reveals that the Bush, Obama and Trump administrations all lied routinely about U.S. success in the war.

In his op-ed in The Times, London opines that Trump’s special envoy for Afghanistan, Zalmay Khalilzad, who negotiated the so-called peace deal for the United States, only wants the agreement to survive until the fall election. London wrote that Khalilzad has his sights set on being appointed secretary of state in a second Trump administration.

If the deal falls apart, Trump has threatened to “go back with a force that no one’s ever seen.”

In the meantime, Trump, whose overwhelming motive is to be reelected, can claim bragging rights about securing a “peace deal” with the Taliban.

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Marjorie Cohn is professor emerita at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, former president of the National Lawyers Guild, deputy secretary general of the International Association of Democratic Lawyers and a member of the advisory board of Veterans for Peace. Her most recent book is Drones and Targeted Killing: Legal, Moral, and Geopolitical Issues.

This writer has watched countless boxing matches over the years, and has seen how in many instances ‘The Fix is in’. The powers that be want a certain prospect to move up the ranks, they ‘Fix’ it. With boxing all you needed was two judges and maybe the referee, and wallah, your guy wins. It was on  March 13th 1963, when heavyweight prospect Cassius Clay fought journeyman fighter Doug Jones at Madison Square Garden. My dad and I watched it on I believe video tape (not sure of that) and we both felt that Jones won the fight. Clay (soon to be Muhammad Ali) got the decision and went on to fight Sonny Liston for the championship. Well, what just transpired in politics these past 48 hours was right up there with any good old FIX.

Go back to the South Carolina Democratic Presidential debate. Bloomberg calls Bernie Sanders a ‘Communist’ and rails how Sanders will never defeat Trump. Meanwhile, the (so called) moderates, Mayor Pete and Amy Klobuchar, are going after ‘Mr. Supreme Moderate’, Lunchbox Joe Biden, for not being as moderate as them. So what happens? The powerful National Democratic Neo Con Party powerbrokers make sure that the black elected officials and pastors in South Carolina (and elsewhere- the Dems have lots of Afro American politicians and pastors in their pocket)  push their constituents to get behind Biden.

The LIE  they tell is that ‘Sanders cannot defeat Trump’, and Lunchbox Joe can. After all, wasn’t he VP under their hero Obama? I mean, look at all Obama did for black folks. He did virtually nothing as white cops were shooting to kill unarmed blacks. He made a few speeches but did not get the full power of this government to come down hard on police forces that turned a blind eye to it all. Ditto for Obama, and thus VP Biden, for not using their power to stop union busting nationwide. Oh yes, even though too few Amerikans, black or white or yellow and brown, even care enough about this crazy militarism on steroids, it was under Obama (and VP Biden) that we had the highest military spending ever!! Check it out.

So, Biden, scarred by increasingly lower poll numbers, wins big in South Carolina (those politicos and pastors did a great job with their fear card of Sanders VS. Trump). Now here is where the ‘Fix’ shows itself to be exposed under any sort of ‘Light of Truth’. One day before the Big Tuesday primaries Buttigieg and Klobuchar decide to drop out of the race and throw their support for Biden. ‘Amy for Amerika’ even flies out to Texas to attend a Biden rally… The day before Big Tuesday! And last night he did win Texas by a small margin. Think of that for a minute. If Buttigieg and Klobuchar waited until Big Tuesday was over, where they both were on the ballots in all those states, anyone with even ‘half a brain’ knows that many of the votes Biden secured last night would have instead gone to the two of them! Translated: Biden would NOT have won in Texas, Minnesota, Mass. and probably elsewhere. In California, with the largest by far delegate prize, as I write this Sanders is ahead but not by the larger margin expected. Why, well once again, all those so called moderate Democrats who maybe favored Buttigieg or Klobuchar, voted for their ‘Third option’ Biden. Starting to get it folks? Fighter Doug Jones, who passed away in 2017, is probably laughing up in heaven… maybe Muhammad Ali is up there doing the same.

Let’s face it, Trump and his cabal are THE Worst group of predatory capitalists ever in office. This writer, who walked away from the Democrats decades ago, lives in what they like to call a ‘Major Swing State’, Florida. Seeing how the rise of a Neo Fascist white supremacist mindset has been sheltered and even nurtured by this current regime running our nation, I changed my political affiliation from Green Party to Democrat so as to vote for Sanders in our upcoming primary here. I, against my own political understanding as a true Socialist (which Bernie is unfortunately NOT), will honor my vow and vote Democrat (for the LAST TIME I assure you) in November to thwart this craziness a bit. Having a Biden as the choice is so tough for me, but… the ‘Evil of two lessers’ is the one currently in the White House. Biden as president will be but a band-aid on this major wound of our Military Industrial Empire. Yet, if you study history correctly you would know what transpired in Germany, circa 1930-33. The Nazi Party could have been stopped from obtaining power if the Social Democrats and the Communist Party would have formed a coalition. Together, they had the number of votes to thwart Hitler. In this Amerikan Empire of 2020 the same rings true for me.

Remember what happened in 2004? Well, Howard Dean was the absolute frontrunner for the Democratic nomination. He wasn’t as ‘Left Wing’ as Sanders but, in that political climate Dean was much more, as they like to label things, progressive than the others running. John Kerry was flopping in the polls and in the debates.

The empire’s mainstream media even labeled him as such. Kerry was, like Biden less than a week ago, toast. So, Dean does well in the Iowa caucuses and gives a stirring ‘Rah Rah’ speech at a rally that evening. The media picks up on it as if Dean was a madman! They play the bit over and over and before you know it Howard Dean is labeled as a nutcase! Kerry survives and loses to Bush Jr in a highly suspicious election. So much so, just for the meat of this column, that on election eve, I watched pundit Dick Morris as an analyst on one of the networks. Morris was known as a ‘King of Polling’ and helped Bill Clinton win the presidency. He had, by 2004, turned into a bit of a Neo Con ideologue. Either way, he sat there and said early on that the ‘ Exit polls’ in Ohio were showing that Kerry was way ahead. “The exit polls are highly accurate” Morris stated. When, a few hours later it showed that Bush would win Ohio, Morris said “Something smells!” He knew what we all know happens, as it did in 2000 in Florida, that ‘The fix is in’.

Here is my conspiracy theory: The empire that controls both political parties did not want Sanders to be the nominee. Perhaps he would have lost to Trump (as Biden surely will), but more importantly to this Military Industrial Empire, his mere presence on that stage would be detrimental to them.

Why? Well, think of all those working stiffs out there who are getting ****** by both parties for generations. To repeatedly hear the options of how this republic could choose to level this outrageous playing field is not what they want heard. On top of that, and most important, is the influence that Sanders, an old style FDR Democrat, is having on the ‘under 30 year olds’ of this nation. Even in defeat Sanders would galvanize that mindset of  those great young folks for future battles with empire, as Martin Luther King Jr. laid out through peaceful and aggressive non cooperation. The masters who run the Democratic Party will get their ‘Paper Tiger’ in Biden. Or, they will, through a brokered convention, with their 500 Super Delegates, choose someone like Elizabeth Warren… or maybe, as the great essayist Edward Curtin has said since last October, the return of a rejuvenated Hillary Clinton. No kidding.

Finally, what will happen if and when (sadly) they push Sanders out, regardless of what ‘Loyal Soldier’ Bernie will do to help this corrupt party? I will predict this: Many of his young supporters, and millions of those who never choose to vote, seeing through this continual scam, will stay away again in November. Of course, with all the skeletons in Biden’s closet, it will be easy for the carnival barker Trump to defeat him anyway. In defense of his own sabotaged  candidacy here is what the Sanders’ campaign should be doing from now until the convention:

• In ads for Bernie show the tape of how in 1991 Senator Joe Biden attacked Anita Hill, a black woman of conscience, during the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings for the Supreme Court. That should resonate with ALL those Afro American women who voted for Biden yesterday.
• Play the tape of ranking member of the Judiciary Committee Senator Joe Biden questioning Alberto Gonzales in January of 2005 at his confirmation hearing for Attorney General. Gonzales, at that time, was already outed by journalist Sy Hersh as having ‘ signed off’ on the Protocols for torture that circumvented the Geneva Accords, which were written by Jay Bybee and John Yoo (interesting how Bybee later on became a federal judge, and Yoo a professor at of all places, U of Cal at Berkeley). In his encounter with Gonzales, Biden actually said ” I like ya, and I’m probably going to vote for ya… ” which of course he did, caring NOT for what our government was doing to those detainees at Gitmo and Baghram.

Oh what tangled web we weave when we first practice to deceive!

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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, World News Trust 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 300 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]

Global stock markets have experienced roller-coaster levels of volatility over the last two weeks due to fears that the coronavirus is going to seriously impact the global economy.

On Tuesday the US Federal Reserve panicked and introduced a 0.5% cut in interest rates. The last time it carried out such an emergency measure was in late 2007 which failed to avert the stock market crash of 2008.

This panic measure failed to reassure financial markets with the major Wall Street indexes from the Dow Jones to the S&P recording major falls.

Financial analyst Wolf Richter has observed:

“By the stock market’s reaction today to the Fed’s shock-and-awe surprise 50-basis point rate cut – it should have caused stocks to soar, but caused them to plunge nearly 3% instead – it would seem that another such shock-and-awe event signals even more panic inside the Fed, and who knows how the stock market might react when it sees the Fed panicking.’’

Over the last 10 days over $4 trillion in value has been wiped from US stock markets.

On the same day as the emergency rate cut the US Federal Reserve injected a record $120 billion into the short term debt market (repo).

Economist Steve St Angelo of the S RS Roco report has commented on the significance of these developments:

“Clearly, there is something SERIOUSLY WRONG in the Financial markets for the Fed to being injected $120 billion, the most since it started its Rep operations last September.

I believe investors and the market have no idea just how bad this Global Contagion will be like over the next 2-4 weeks… and longer. As I stated, don’t be surprised to see the Dow Jones Index lose 40-50% from its peak over the next month. Traders and Wall Street are going to get destroyed, and there is little they can do about it.’’

Over the next few weeks we can expect further emergency measures from the US Federal Reserve and Congress. Media reports suggest that the US Congress is preparing a $9 billion spending package to help offset the impact of the coronavirus on the American economy.

All of these measures smacked of panic. We shouldn’t forget that Jerome Powell, the chair of the US Federal reserve bank, keeps insisting that the fundamentals of America’s economy are sound and strong. Yet the measures he has introduced remind one strongly of the measures carried out by the Fed late 2007 on the verge of the great financial crisis.

We could add to this tale of woe regarding the world’s largest economy.

The latest IHS Markit flash for the U.S. revealed that output had contracted across the American economy during February.

Key findings from the PMI (Purchasing Managers Index) figures reveal that there was a contraction in business activity driven by notable declines in the service sector. New orders for private sector businesses fell for the first time since records were first collected in 2009.

• Flash U.S. Composite Output Index at 49.6 (53.3 in January) which is a 76-month low.
• Flash U.S. Services Business Activity Index at 49.4 (53.4 in January) which is a 76-month low.
• Flash U.S. Manufacturing PMI at 50.8 (51.9 in January) which is a 6-month low.
• Flash U.S. Manufacturing Output Index at 50.6 (52.4 in January) which is a 7-month low.

Commenting on the significance of the flash PMI data, Chris Williamson, Chief Business Economist at IHS Markit, said:

“With the exception of the government-shutdown of 2013, US business activity contracted for the first time since the global financial crisis in February. Weakness was primarily seen in the service sector, where the first drop in activity for four years was reported, but manufacturing production also ground almost to a halt due to a near-stalling of orders.

“Total new orders fell for the first time in over a decade. The deterioration in was in part linked to the coronavirus outbreak, manifesting itself in weakened demand across sectors such as travel and tourism, as well as via falling exports and supply chain disruptions. However, companies also reported increased caution in respect to spending due to worries about a wider economic slowdown and uncertainty ahead of the presidential election later this year.

“The survey data are consistent with GDP growth slowing from just above 2% in January to a crawl of just 0.6% in February.’’

As Steve St. Angelo has noted the global contagion and its impact are only just beginning. Over the next few weeks and months expect a flurry of emergency measures by central banks and governments across the world as economic data goes from bad to worse.

In 2008 the global economy was saved from a deep depression by the massive stimulus measures carried out by the world’s two most powerful nations i.e. the US Federal Reserve spending trillions to bail out banks across the world and the Chinese government spending over $500 billion on a gigantic infrastructure programme that stimulated the global economy.

The combined measures of global central banks since the great recession of 2008 have served to drive global debt to over $250 trillion. This unprecedented level of debt, which can never be repaid, will only be added to by global central banks and governments over the next period.

Creating yet more debt is not going to solve problems of the global economy, which is afflicted by historic levels of wealth inequality, and has seen a gigantic wealth transfer from the 90% to the top 10% of the world’s population.

The growing problems of the world’s largest economy indicate the current business cycle, which is the longest on record, is rotten ripe for an economic contraction. The next recession is likely to be on a scale that is much worse than that seen during the 2008 crisis. It is likely to drive the American Empire into even more aggressive actions towards its rivals and competitors on the economic and geopolitical stage.

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The latest installment of the interminable Syria tragedy could be interpreted as Greece barely blocking a European “invasion” by Syrian refugees. The invasion was threatened by President Erdogan even as he refused the EU’s puny “offer you can refuse” bribe of only one billion euros.

Well, it’s more complicated than that. What Erdogan is in fact weaponizing is mostly economic migrants – from Afghanistan to the Sahel – and not Syrian refugees.

Informed observers in Brussels know that interlocking mafias – Iraqi, Afghan, Egyptian, Tunisian, Moroccan – have been active for quite a long time smuggling everyone and his neighbor from the Sahel via Turkey, as the Greek route towards the EU Holy Grail is much safer than the Central Mediterranean.

The EU sending a last-minute emissary to Ankara will yield no new facts on the ground – even as some in Brussels, in bad faith, continue to carp that the one million “refugees” trying to leave Idlib could double and that, if Turkey does not open its borders with Syria, there will be a “massacre.”

Those in Brussels spinning the “Turkey as victim” scenario list three conditions for a possible solution. The first is a ceasefire – which in fact already exists, via the Sochi agreement, and was not respected by Ankara. The second is a “political process” – which, once again, does exist: the Astana process involving Russia, Turkey and Iran. And the third is “humanitarian aid” – a euphemism that means, in fact, a NATO intervention of the Libya “humanitarian imperialism” kind.

As it stands, two facts are inescapable. Number one: the Greek military don’t have what it takes to resist, in practice, Ankara’s weaponizing of the so-called “refugees.”

Number two is the kind of stuff that makes NATO fanatics recoil in horror: Since the Ottoman siege of Vienna, this is the first time in four centuries that a “Muslim invasion” of Europe is being prevented by, who else, Russia.

Fed up with sultan

This past Sunday, Ankara launched yet another Pentagon-style military adventure, baptized as Spring Shield. All decisions are centralized by a triumvirate: Erdogan, Defense Minister Hulusi Akar and the head of MIT (Turkish intel) Hakan Fidan. John Helmer has memorably called them the SUV (Sultan and the Ugly Viziers).

Behlul Ozkan, from the University of Marmara, a respected Kemalist scholar, frames the whole tragedy as having been played since the 1980s, now back on the stage on a much larger scale since the start of the so-called Syrian chapter of the Arab Spring in 2011.

Ozkan charges Erdogan with creating “conquering troops out of five unlikely fundamentalist groups” and “naming the armed groups after Ottoman sultans,” claiming they are a sort of national salvation army. But this time, argues Ozkan, the results are much worse – from millions of refugees to the terrible destruction in Syria, and “the emergence of our political and military structures affecting national security in a dangerous way.”

To say that the Russian General Staff are absolutely fed up with the SUV’s shenanigans is the ultimate understatement. That’s the background for the meeting this Thursday in Moscow between Putin and Erdogan. Methodically, the Russians are disrupting Turk operations to an unsustainable level – ranging from renewed air cover to the Syrian Arab Army to electronic countermeasures totally smashing all Turkish drones.

Russian diplomatic sources confirm that no one in Moscow believes any word, promise or cajoling emanating from Erdogan anymore. So it’s useless to ask him to respect the Sochi agreement. Imagine a Sun Tzu-style meeting with the Russian side displaying the very picture of self-restraint while scrutinizing Erdogan on how much he is willing to suffer before desisting from his Idlib adventure.

Those non-nonsense proto-Mongols

What ghosts from the past evolve in Erdogan’s unconscious? Let history be our guide – and let’s go for a ride among the empires of the steppes.

In the 5^th century, the Juan Juan people, proto-Mongols as much as their cousins the White Huns (who lived in today’s Afghanistan), were the first to give their princes the title of khan – afterwards used by the Turks as well as the Mongols.

A vast Eurasian Turco-Mongol linguistic spectrum – studied in detail by crack French experts such as J.P. Roux – evolved via conquering migrations, more or less ephemeral imperial states, and aggregating diverse ethnic groups around rival Turkish or Mongol dynasties. We can talk about an Eurasian Turk space from Central Asia to the Mediterranean for no less than a millennium and a half – but only, crucially, for 900 years in Asia Minor (today’s Anatolia).

These were highly hierarchical and militarized societies, unstable, but still capable, given the right conditions, such as the emergence of a charismatic personality, to engage in a strong collective project of building political constructions. So the charismatic Erdogan Khan mindset is not much different from what happened centuries ago.

The first form of this socio-cultural tradition appeared even before the conversion to Islam – which happened after the battle of Talas in 751, won by the Arabs against the Chinese.  But most of all it all crystallized around Central Asia from the 10^th and 11^thcenturies onwards.

Unlike Greece in the Aegean, unlike India or Han China, there was never a central focus in terms of a cultural berth or supreme identity organizing this process. Today this role in Turkey is played by Anatolia – but that’s a 20^th century phenomenon.

What history has shown is an east-west Eurasian axis across the steppes, from Central Asia to Anatolia, through which nomad tribes, Turk and Turkmen, then the Ottoman Turks, migrated and progressed, as conquerors, between the 7^th and the 17^th centuries: a whole millennium building an array of sultanates, emirates and empires. No wonder the Turkish president pictures himself as Erdogan Khan or Sultan Erdogan.

“Idlib is mine”

So there is a link between the turcophone tribes of Central Asia from the 5^th and 6^thcenturies and the current Turkish nation. From the 6^th to the 11^th centuries they were set up as a confederation of big tribes. Then, going southwest, they founded states. Chinese sources document the first turkut (Turkish empires) as eastern Turks in Mongolia and western Turks in Turkestan.

They were followed by more or less ephemeral empires of the steppes such as the Uighurs in the 8th century (who, by the way, were originally Buddhists). It’s interesting that this original past of the Turks in Central Asia, before Islam, was somewhat elevated to mythic status by the Kemalists.

This universe was always enriched by outside elements – such as Arab-Persian Islam and its institutions inherited from the Sassanids,  as well as the Byzantine empire, whose structural elements were adapted by the Ottomans. The end of the Ottoman empire and multiple convulsions (the Balkan wars, WWI, the Greek-Turkish war) ended up with a Turkish nation-state whose sanctuary is Asia Minor (or Anatolia) and eastern Thrace, conformed into a national territory that’s exclusively Turk and denies every minority presence that is non-Sunni and non-turcophone.

Evidently that’s not enough for Erdogan Khan.

Even Hatay province, which joined Turkey in 1939, is not enough. Home to the historic Antioch and Alexandretta, Hatay was then re-baptized as Antakya and Iskenderun.

Under the Treaty of Lausanne, Hatay was included in the French mandate of Syria and Lebanon. The Turkish version is that Hatay declared its independence in 1938 – when Ataturk was still alive – and then decided to join Turkey. The Syrian version is that Hatay was acquired via a rigged referendum ordered by France to bypass the Treaty of Lausanne.

Erdogan Khan has proclaimed, “Idlib is mine.” Syria and Russia are responding, “No, it’s not.” Those were the days, when turcophone empires of the steppes could just advance and capture their prey.

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This article was originally published on Asia Times.

Pepe Escobar is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Erdogan’s forces continue their bloody battle for peace and prosperity for al-Qaeda groups in the Syrian region of Greater Idlib.

On March 3, Turkey shot down an L-39 warplane of the Syrian Air Force in eastern Idlib. The warplane, which was carrying out strikes on al-Qaeda militants, crashed near the town of Maarat al-Numan. One of the ejected pilots landed in the militant-held area and was killed. On the same day, Turkish media released videos showing drone strikes on the Syrian Army convoy supposedly moving near Maarat al-Numan and the destruction of an alleged Pantsir air defense system of the Syrian Air Defense Forces near Saraqib.

Additionally, a large Turkish military column consisting of M113 and ACV-15 armoured vehicles, Leopard 2A4 battle tanks and ALTIGNAN air defense systems entered Batbu village in the northern part of Idlib. Pro-Turkish sources also claimed that the Turkish military will soon deploy Hisar air defense systems to the region in order to put an end to the constant aggression of the Syrian and Russian air power against peaceful al-Qaeda members and their Turkish supporters. Thus far, al-Qaeda members and the Turkish Army are on a ‘tactical retreat’.

In eastern Idlib, Erdogan’s forces lost the villages of Jawbas, Tarnaba, Dadikh and Kafr Battikh west of Saraqib. Units of the Syrian Army also advanced on the town of Afirs aiming to fully secure the M4-M5 crossroad area. In southern Idlib, the Syrians cleared the villages Kafr Mus, Kawkabah, Amqiyah and Fulayfil of Turkish-led forces. On top of this, the Syrian military shot down 3 Turkish combat UAVs. One of them, the Bayraktar TB2 crashed near Saraqib. According to pro-government sources over 150 militants were killed or injured in recent clashes with the Syrian Army. Taking into account the scale of the ground clashes, this number is likely overestimated.

However, such claims are a weak shadow of the statements of the Turkish Defense Ministry which is ‘neutralizing’ thousands of Syrian soldiers and hundreds of pieces of military equipment in its statements on a regular basis.

On the morning of March 3, the Turkish military claimed that that during the past 24 hours Turkish-led forces had destroyed a warplane, a UAV, 6 battle tanks, 5 howitzers and artillery pieces, 2 air defense systems, 3 armored combat vehicles, 5 armed pickups, 6 military vehicles and an ammunition depot belonging to Syrian forces. The defense ministry also claimed that 327 Syrian soldiers were “neutralized” during the same period.

On the evening of the same day, when Erdogan’s forces withdrew from another batch of positions, a Turkish soldier was killed and 9 others were injured, so the defense ministry made another Twitter offensive to compensate the setbacks. It said that 299 Syrian soldiers were ‘neutralized’, and 9 battle tanks, 8 artillery pieces and rocket systems and 2 military vehicles were recently destroyed. Thus, the Turkish-claimed number of “neutralized” Syrian soldiers since the start of Operation Piece Spring just reached 3,183.  It doesn’t matter if the Turkish military announces that its forces have destroyed a Syrian carrier strike group ‘Al-Assad’ near Tartus or shot down a dozen Russian-supplied Su-50 fighter jets or even neutralized a detachment of Iranian Rembos, the result will be same –the invincible Turkish forces make no gains on the ground.

Meanwhile, Moscow once again announced that Russia is not planning to cease anti-terrorist efforts in the Idlib region and called Turkish claims about ‘millions’ of refugees fleeing the Syrian anti-terrorist operation in Idlib fake.

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Breaking news from Russian Ministry of Defense: A 15-member terrorist group tried to explode ammunition containing chemical substances in vicinity of Saraqib in Idlib countryside.

Yesterday, Syria News wrote that “The possibility of another chemical hoax continues to loom.”

UK Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab visited Turkey to voice support of  Erdogan’s war crimes against Syria; Ambassador Kelly Craft again breached the UN Charter in her support of these same anti-Syria war crimes.

Details to follow.

UPDATE from SANA:

“Russian Defense Ministry said Wednesday that Turkish regime-backed terrorist groups tried to detonate ammunition contain chemical materials near Saraqeb city in Idleb countryside in an attempt to hinder the advance of the Syrian Arab army and to accuse it later of using the chemical weapons.

“The Russian Coordination Center said in a statement that a 15-member terrorist group tried in March /2/ to explode explosive devices near containers that filled with chemical substances with the aim at hindering the advance of the Syrian Arab Army in the western neighborhoods of Saraqeb city and to accuse later the Syrian Army of using chemical weapons.

“The statement pointed out that terrorists failed to tighten the closure of one of the containers which caused the leakage of chemical materials and they have been exposed to severe chemical poisoning and they failed to explode the explosive devices and to carry out their provocative operation.

“It affirmed that the Ministry possesses “irrefutable evidence” that prove the reality that this chemical accident took place, asserting that the Ministry intends to publish those evidence soon.

“The Russian Defense Ministry has stressed repeatedly the existence of laboratories to prepare chemical substances for Turkish regime-backed terrorist organizations in Idleb, asserting that those labs were managed by specialists who received training in Europe and those weapons will be used to carry out fabricated chemical attacks against the civilians to accuse the Syrian State.”

The timing of the planned chemical atrocity conveniently coincided with the American ‘diplomats’ breaching the UN Charter.

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Featured image is from Syria News

US State Department-funded front “Radio Free Asia” (RFA) recently complained about plans to proceed with joint Chinese-Cambodian military exercises despite the ongoing coronavirus outbreak.

According to Khmer Times, this year’s joint exercises will include up to 200 Chinese personnel and over 2,000 personnel from Cambodia. According to the article the exercises will also include “the use of tanks, armoured personnel carriers, artillery, mortar and helicopter gun ships.”

Cambodia has dismissed concerns over holding the exercises amid the outbreak noting the relatively small impact the virus’ spread has had on the nation. Additionally, it is unlikely China will not exercise extreme caution when selecting and screening military personnel sent to participate in the exercises later this year.

The citing of the virus is merely the US taking a political shot at both China and Cambodia and by doing so reminding both nations of the importance of establishing significant and enduring alternatives to the current but waning US-led “international order.”

US Complains About Growing Chinese-Cambodian Ties 

In an RFA article titled, “Joint Cambodia-China ‘Golden Dragon’ Military Drills to Proceed, Despite Threat of Coronavirus,” the US front complained:

Cambodia and China have no plans to cancel their fourth annual joint “Golden Dragon” military exercise later this month, despite the threat of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19), Cambodia’s Minister of Defense Tea Banh said Monday.

The article also openly complained about declining Western-Cambodian ties and how they reflected China’s growing influence in the region. RFA would claim:

This year’s exercises mark an expansion over those in 2019, when 250 Chinese and 2,500 Cambodian military personnel took part in drills over 15 days at the Chum Kiri Military Shooting Range Training Field in Chum Kiri district.

They were the third and largest joint Cambodia-China military drills to be held on Cambodian soil since Cambodia’s Defense Ministry abruptly suspended annual “Angkor Sentinel” joint exercises with the U.S. military and abandoned counter-terrorism training exercises with the Australian military in 2017.

Joint exercises with Western nations were never reestablished after 2017, a sign of Washington’s terminal decline in the region.

Washington’s More of the Same Didn’t and Won’t Work 

Rather than addressing Cambodia’s concerns over overreaching Western influence, meddling and subversion within Cambodia’s internal political affairs, the West (and the US in particular) has instead doubled down on meddling.

This too was mentioned in the RFA article, which claimed:

Meanwhile, Western influence in Cambodia is on the decline amid criticism of Hun Sen and the CPP over restrictions on democracy in the lead up to and aftermath of the ballot.

The U.S. has since announced visa bans on individuals seen as limiting democracy in the country, as part of a series of measures aimed at pressuring Cambodia to reverse course, and the European Union in mid-February announced plans to suspend tariff-free access to its market under the “Everything But Arms” (EBA) scheme for around one-fifth of Cambodia’s exports, citing rollbacks on human rights. 

In reality, there has been no “rollback on human rights” in Cambodia, but merely a crackdown on openly Western-backed and funded sedition in the form of political opposition parties, many of which are literally run out of Washington D.C. and led by political figures hiding abroad from criminal charges and jail sentences.

It is a pattern repeated all across Southeast Asia and beyond, where the US and its European partners use a combination of economic and political coercion to manipulate and control developing nations, but a pattern that has worn thin among the nations targeted.

Targeted nations have increasingly taken advantage of emerging multipolarism and the ability to build alternative ties with nations like China and Russia who not only provide an alternative to Western ties and access to markets, but are increasingly providing better opportunities than the West can, even under the most ideal conditions.

While the West’s brand of meddling will continue to have an impact on Cambodia, Cambodia and other nations in the region are increasingly establishing permanent alternatives in a process that will ultimately and likewise permanently render Western tactics impotent and the shareholders wielding them increasingly isolated.

Growing political, economic and military ties between China and Cambodia are permanently replacing US primacy over the region. Unless the US finds a more constructive and honest way of engaging with the region, this process will continue, and amid this process, contributing to a much wider, global decline of US power and influence.

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Joseph Thomas is chief editor of Thailand-based geopolitical journal, The New Atlas and contributor to the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

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The onslaught of misinformation from the corporatist wings of both political parties and media biases against universal healthcare are obviously confusing the electorate. This is seemingly evident in this week’s Super Tuesday with Joe Biden winning the majority of the states.  This confusion leaves citizens bewildered about how they will pay their bills unless a fundamental overhaul of medical insurance is undertaken. More important, what will happen when you are diagnosed with a serious illness and are not fully covered? What are your chances of joining the ranks of the 530,000 families that file bankruptcy annually for medical reasons? 

According to a study published last year by the American Journal of Public Health, 66.5% of bankruptcies are medically-related. In the past, it was rare for people to go bankrupt because they did not have accessible medical care. There was a time in the US when medicine carried a higher standard of ethics. The Hippocratic Oath was respected and no one was denied medical care because they could not afford it.  But that was in the past. Obama’s Affordable Care Act, which Biden continues to believe is a successful piece of legislation, has done little to mitigate the increasing financial burden on individuals and families. In fact, quality of healthcare has steadily declined.

Now with the threats of a coronavirus pandemic, we are learning that we may need to pay for diagnostic testing and very likely treatments. If you are returning to the country from overseas, you may be forced to pay for the time in quarantine even if you test negative for the virus.  And it is certain that the pharmaceutical industry will attempt to capitalize on this pending disaster.

The Democrat Party’s full throttle assault to undermine the legitimacy of Bernie Sanders’ campaign is being orchestrated by the insurance and medical industrial complex, which has bought unbridled biased coverage across the media waves. The goal is to effectively sustain Obama’s failed healthcare efforts. After listening to dozens of commentators on CNN, MSNBC, Fox, and the pseudo-health journalists at the New York Times, one would think that Bernie is only offering free stuff to everyone and at enormous cost to tax payers.  Therefore to remove Medicare for All from the national dialogue before the November presidential election, the neoliberal forces are uniting behind Biden.

No one truly knows how much a national universal program would cost. Forecasts for a 10-year period range roughly between $13 trillion and $48 trillion. One thing is certain. The math is simple. It would be extremely expensive and for it to succeed dramatic infrastructural changes would need to be made throughout the entire system.  That conversation is long overdue.

However, perhaps this is the wrong argument because it is based upon the Democratic Party’s deep seated cognitive dissonance to protect the vested interests of Wall Street’s financial community, Biden’s allegiance to the credit industry, the military industrial complex, and the pharmaceutical and agro-chemical industries. In effect, the entirety of corporate America and the deep state, its lobbyists and oligarchic billionaires, and their sounding board in the mainstream media, are on one side of the scale while the urgent humanitarian medical needs of average citizens are on the other.  All that weighs on the side of Bernie are the educated adults, unionists, working people, and those who understand climate change and the need for a comprehensive and equitable healthcare system. And after Super Tuesday’s disturbing results, it might not look good for the revolution that must take place across the nation.

In part, it may be Sanders’ campaign’s miscasting the argument that has failed to win over moderate Democrats. Therefore what do we need?

First, Medicare for All is doable and affordable. In fact, it can potentially save $1.7 trillion a year by removing from the equation unnecessary and unconscionable profit to private insurance providers and the large mega-hospital networks.  There is no reason for having so many levels of bureaucracy between direct medical care and the patient. Every industry directly involved in providing treatment and care would continue to profit. But it would be a reasonable profit. Instead we have a medical industry that is excessively greedy and eager to take advantage of loopholes in order to milk the system for whatever it is worth.

The problem is that we can have Medicare for All only after we seriously look at what it costs to treat a patient and make efforts to reduce the exorbitant waste that has been programmed into our current system. How is it that a hospital can charge $787 for an adult and $393 for a child for a one dollar bag of intravenous saline solution, plus an additional $127 to administer it? Americans spend more on prescription medications than any other developed nation, as drug prices can soar ten times the rate of inflation.  Daraprim, for example, which is prescribed to fight one of the world’s most common parasitical infections that causes toxoplasmosis, can cost $45,000 per month, or $750 for a single pill that costs $13.50 to manufacture.

Based upon earlier figures between 2012-2015, about $2.6 trillion can be saved by removing bureaucratic waste. This includes $275 billion on private insurance paperwork, $55.6 billion on liability, $471 billion for insurance billing, $140 billion for medical fraud (2016), $210 billion for unnecessary medical testing, and $190 billion for wasteful administrative services.  Back in 2016, the British Medical Journal reported that medical error is the third leading cause of death in the US.  As a result over $1 trillion is spent on avoidable medical errors.

Universal healthcare will not break the economy. What is breaking the economy is our current broken medical system.  Universal, quality care is easily within reach but only after the health of the population is given preference over the healthcare system’s vulture capitalism. Then Americans will no longer have to worry about bankruptcy, which further contributes to the stresses associated with ill health, because they cannot afford the treatments or medications without putting themselves and their family into perpetual debt.

Second, providing universal healthcare does not guarantee that patients will receive quality care. If we are truly honest with ourselves and ask whether the US has the best medical care available, the answer should be a resounding no.  American emergency medicine is exemplary. However, chronic care for treating heart disease, cancer, diabetes, pain management and neurological conditions has been a dismal failure. More physicians need to be brought into the system without the anxiety of paying off enormous school debt and being forced to work to exhaustion.  Bernie would be wise to make medical education free in return for young doctors committing themselves to charging reasonable fees if they wish to remain within the system. If a doctor prefers to gouge patients, that is their right to do outside of the national system.

Finally, the US lags far behind in a implementing a national preventative program. Very little is being done to prevent diseases shown to be directly related to life-style, diet and toxic conditions in our environment.  A viable prevention program would begin by supporting and mandating holistic health programs in our schools beginning with grade school. Why does offering school courses in “How to be Healthy” seem absurd when it has been shown repeatedly in the scientific literature and efforts in other advanced nations to avoid preventable illnesses and further reduce avoidable medical costs? But in order to launch a comprehensive preventative program at a national scale, only respected educated health consumers should be in charge. Entities representing private corporate interests should be prohibited since they are responsible for the medical disasters that now demand for universal healthcare.  If Obamacare and the current corporate medical establishment were truly effective, there would be no discussion about Medicare for All.

Yes, universal healthcare will be expensive and cost trillions. But how many trillions will it save when all else is considered for how many lives will be saved and how healthier the nation would be if comprehensive measures were taken to prevent disease in the first place.

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Richard Gale is the Executive Producer of the Progressive Radio Network and a former Senior Research Analyst in the biotechnology and genomic industries.

Dr. Gary Null is the host of the nation’s longest running public radio program on alternative and nutritional health and a multi-award-winning documentary film director, including The War on Health, Poverty Inc and Plant Codes.

Western media hype: Fear and panic, disruption of the global economy. That makes the headlines.

But not a word is mentioned that the COVID-19 pandemic in China is under control: people are being treated in hospitals and they are recovering. 

On February 28, China reported 36,157 out of a total of 78,961 reported cases as having recovered.

China has reported (March 1st) a 52.1 percent recovery rate, which signifies that more than half of the patients (confirmed cases) have been discharged from the hospitals. And the Chinese hospitals (which are very strict) will not release them if they are still infected or could transmit the COVID-19 coronavirus.

What this means is that the number of “reported infected cases” in China (out of total of 80 304 cases) (WHO data, March 3, 2020) has fallen to less than 40,000. But that does not make the headlines. 

If this trend continues in the following weeks, the COVID-19 pandemic in China will be resolved.

When the WHO declared a Global Pandemic on January 30th: THERE WERE ONLY 150 Confirmed Cases outside China (6,4 billion population)

UDPATE  (March 5, 2020). According to  Mi Feng, a spokesperson for the National Health Commission (NHC), (press conference on March 4 (Beijing time).  

The cure rate, i.e. proportion of patients who have recovered from COVID-19  is as follows:

1. The city of Wuhan:  50.2%
2. Other places in Hubei Province: 76.8%
3.  Chinese provinces (excluding Hubei): 87.3 %

By Tuesday, March 3, a total of 49,856 patients have recovered from COVID-19 and were discharged from hospitals in China.

What this means that the total number of  “confirmed infected cases” in China is 30,448.

Namely 80,304 minus 49856 = 30,448  (80 304 is the total number on confirmed cases in China (WHO data, March 3, 2020)

The 10,566 confirmed cases outside China (WHO data, see below) also include the cases of patients who have recovered and who have been released from hospital. But we do no have data on recoveries. And the Western media has not taken the trouble to  differentiate between the total number of “confirmed cases” (which includes people who have recovered and have been released from the hospital) and “confirmed cases with infection”.

With regard to China, according to Xinhua (March 1)

The recovery rate of COVID-19 patients in Chinese mainland continues to rise as the favorable effects of the prevention and control measures and medical treatment become obvious, said Chinese authorities.

The proportion of Chinese patients who recovered from the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) and were discharged from hospitals continued to rise in the past week to reach 52.1 percent, a health official said on Sunday (March 1)

The following data on COVID-19 was confirmed on March 3 by the WHO

WHO, data for March 3, 2020 released on March 4

Total coronavirus confirmed cases tops 94,000. Breakdown by country excluding Mainland China (John Hopkins, March 4, 2020)

The largest number of cases outside China is South Korea.

South Korea: 5,621

Italy: 2,502
Iran: 2,922
Others: 706
Japan: 304
Germany: 244
Spain: 193
Singapore: 110
France: 212
Hong Kong: 102
U.S.: 128

Every day of your life there is an informational war going on. You are not really aware of it – that’s the point. Its purpose is to distort the narrative and swing the political direction of a country to favour those who can afford to fund it. Here is just one small story that demonstrates the scale of aggression being waged against democracy. It very often starts in America and ends up on your mobile phone, laptop, newspaper, TV and so on.

You may have read recently that a major Republican donor has purchased a stake in Twitter and is reportedly seeking to oust its chief executive, Jack Dorsey. It was Bloomberg News that first reported that Elliott Management has taken a “sizable stake” and “and plans to push for changes at the social media company, including replacing Dorsey”.

Paul Singer, the billionaire founder of Elliott Management, is a Republican mega-donor who originally opposed Donald Trump during the real-estate magnate’s run for the presidential nomination but has since come onside.

Recently, Twitter made headlines last October when it announced a ban on political advertising. Its use and potential manipulation by politicians of all stripes, from Trump to Democratic candidate Mike Bloomberg, remains a source of fierce contention.

News of the Elliott stake saw Twitter’s share price rise on Friday, during general market slides in the midst of the coronavirus outbreak.

Elliott Management is an activist investor, which means it regularly pushes for change in companies in which it buys shares.

Singer has even taken on whole countries: in 2016, after a relentless campaign, he secured a partial repayment of debts by Argentina, arising from its financial collapse in the early 2000s.

Meanwhile…

President Trump intends to nominate a former top chemical industry executive, who at the Environmental Protection Agency has led the rollback of important chemical safety regulations, to lead the Consumer Product Safety Commission, according to an announcement issued last night by the White House.

EWG once dubbed Nancy Beck “the scariest Trump appointee you’ve never heard of.” Beck is currently the principal deputy administrator of EPA’s Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention.

Before joining the administration, Beck was an executive at the American Chemistry Council, the powerful lobby group for the chemical industry. The National Academy of Sciences once called her proposed approach to chemical safety “fundamentally flawed.”

As senior director for regulatory science for the chemical lobby, Beck consistently fought for weaker chemical safety laws. Since her appointment, she has significantly weakened proposed rules to assess chemical safety in favor of the chemical industry and has fundamentally changed the way the EPA approves new chemicals before they come on the market to favor the interests of the industry she once worked for.

“Nancy Beck is just about the last person who should be in charge of safeguarding the American people from dangerous consumer products,” said EWG President Ken Cook. “Her track record, both in and out of government, is riddled with disregard for the risks that toxic chemicals in consumer goods pose to human health. Once again, we see the president appointing someone who will work to subvert the mission of the agency she would head.”

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The continued effort to overthrow President Maduro does not seem to produce the intended results for the perpetrators, but rather sends signals of desperation. The regime change plotters may be wishing to achieve what they did in Bolivia. But that is not likely to happen anytime soon. That must cause some political frustration in Washington and of course more resistance in Caracas.

We can summarise the main tenets of US foreign policy for regime change as to reject any progressive sovereign and independent government that challenges the capitalist and imperialist ideology of the US, by simply labelling it as a threat to its national security, in order to secure, gain control and exploit the rich natural resources of that country on behalf of US corporations no matter where they are.

The US has failed in Venezuela at least since the unsuccessful coup against Hugo Chavez in 2002. And even more dramatically since January last year when Washington zeroed in on the previously unknown Juan Guaidó as their candidate for the virtual government of their choice.

Washington miserable failure is not due to lack of trying.

Venezuelan Minister of Foreign Affairs Jorge Arreaza (image on the right) on February 25 reported at the 43rd session of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva – of which Venezuela is a member for the third time – that “since 2014, more than 300 unilateral measures have been taken by the United States to affect the functioning of the economy and undermine the human rights of the Venezuelan people.” He also referred to other research that establishes the death toll by US sanctions at 40,000 Venezuelans.

The unilateral coercive measures not only impact Venezuelan assets and people, but they also exert a full economic and financial blockade that prevents Venezuela to access financial and trade markets for essential imports like medicine and food. Perhaps more critically they have an extra territorial component by threatening or forcing other countries to comply with US coercive measures. This is when the term “coercive measures” becomes more descriptive to Venezuelans as opposed to “sanctions” that by definition are “provisions of a law enacting a penalty for disobedience or a reward for obedience” where “law” is a foreign law.

The consistent US drive in its aggression since the beginning of 2019 is to entirely crush Venezuela’s oil sector, the main source of revenues for the country. Just last February 18 the US Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) targeted Russia by blocking “all property and interests in property of [Russian subsidiary] Rosneft Trading S.A. and [its chairman] Didier Casimiro that are in the United States or in the possession or control of U.S. persons”. Rosneft is associated with the Venezuelan oil company PDVSA and is the largest receiver of Venezuelan oil.

According to Reuters, US Special Representative for Venezuela Elliott Abrams declared that Washington will “push harder on the Venezuelan oil sector.” The US Treasury Department first levied financial sanctions against PDVSA in August 2017. Abrams went further suggesting the international policing role of the US watching possible ship-to-ship or company-to-company transfers of Venezuelan oil, “We are going to follow up with the companies that are engaged in this and we are going to sanction them.” He made it clear that the second largest receiver of Venezuelan oil, the China National Petroleum Corp, will not be ignored.

Caracas, Moscow as well as Beijing consistently continue to reject US unilateral coercive measures. The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs has also being reported to express his opposition to the US “sanctions” against Russian state oil company Rosneft for trading with Venezuela: “We oppose any interference in the internal affairs of other countries, just as we are against unilateral sanctions and extraterritorial jurisdiction.”

However, despite last October visit to India by Venezuela’s Vice President Delcy Rodriguez to enhance bilateral cooperation, India has made a different choice. Two Indian oil companies have announced that they will comply with US threats of “sanctions” declared by President Trump in a press conference during his visit to India in late February. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government’s pro-Trump pivot may well be a political move that may reveal Modi’s pathetic attempt to please Trump. Modi’s ultimate intentions may well be to distract the international opinion from his abysmal Hindu supremacist policy by preventing the #US from using that against him if he did not comply to US demands.

More significantly, countering India’s about face, is the failure of the “Lima Group” meeting in Ottawa last February 20. The meeting of an undeclared number of foreign ministers was met by protests of Canadians, and this author addressed an open letter to Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau with relevant political questions about Canada’s intervention in Venezuelan affairs.

The “Lima Group” only managed to produce a bland statement where the strongest threat was “In the coming days and weeks, representatives of the Lima Group will participate in an intensive period of international efforts and consultation with all countries interested in the restoration of democracy in Venezuela.” That they have being doing now for two and half years and is expected to continue with no predictable successful outcome. By far what stood out in the statement is the absence of any reference to the unelected “interim president” Juan Guaidó.

The urgency to overthrow Maduro is not founded on re-establishing “democracy” and the “rule of law” in Venezuela but rather on the “danger” of “normalising the situation”, as Peruvian Minister of Foreign Affairs Gustavo Meza Cuadra, who participated in the “Lima Group” meeting, stated in a press conference in Lima. This is urgency masking desperation.

The sheer power of the US coercive measures is obviously having a quantifiable stunning impact on the growth of the economy and on the well-being of the general population, but that is not sufficient to deter resolved Venezuelans to preserve their sovereignty and what they have achieved in more than twenty years of establishing a fully autonomous State. To what appears to be a step up of US threats against Venezuela the Venezuelan government has also stepped up its resistance.

In contrast to the desperate actions for regime change by the US and its accomplices, Venezuela acts with the strength of principled conviction and optimism.

To the threats of a US military invasion and a naval blockade, and in the face of crippling “sanctions” as an act of war, Venezuela responds with military exercises in a display of unique civic-military coordination.

Maduro declared recently, “We have to consider that we have constantly lived in a war economy.” In fact, we can add that this is a Hybrid War that relies on disinformation, on smear campaigns, and on a virtual army of financiers and the might of the US dollar. As a response to this challenge Maduro is aiming to increase oil production and to this end he has appointed a “commission to overhaul the country’s oil industry”. More broadly, Venezuela is also reviving an additional “army” called “Productive Army Workers” as an “unconventional army for an unconventional war”. This group of about 2,300 workers have the objective of helping reactivate the national productive apparatus by refurbishing factories, machinery and equipment in a recovery process across the country so that they may start producing again.

Perhaps the most visible action at the international level has been the filing of a lawsuit at the International Criminal Court in The Hague, Holland, by the Venezuelan government to investigate the actions of the US government over the use of “sanctions”. A 60-page supporting document describes unilateral coercive measures as a “crime against humanity” and equates them to “weapons of mass destruction.” They are considered by many to be illegal under UN, OAS and US Law. Although the US is no longer a member of the ICC, the lawsuit will make a clear statement internationally.

With the kind of background described above that includes a domestic environment akin to a country under siege only seen in war situations, Venezuela prepares for yet another election. Legislative elections are scheduled to take place in December of this year with the participation of various opposition parties. Only Guaidó has taken the position of the US government and the “Lima Group” of not participating unless a transition government is formed leading to presidential elections…like in Bolivia. But we need to ask, do foreign governments decide about elections in Venezuela?

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Nino Pagliccia is an activist and freelance writer based in Vancouver. He is a retired researcher from the University of British Columbia, Canada. He is a Venezuelan-Canadian who follows and writes about international relations with a focus on the Americas. He is the editor of the book “Cuba Solidarity in Canada – Five Decades of People-to-People Foreign Relations” (2014). He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

When the Commander of NATO says he is a fan of flexible first strike at the same time that NATO is flexing its military muscle on Russia’s border, the risk of inadvertent nuclear war is real.

US Air Force Gen. Tod D Wolters told the Senate this week he “is a fan of flexible first strike” regarding NATO’s nuclear weapons, thereby exposing the fatal fallacy of the alliance’s embrace of American nuclear deterrence policy.

It was one of the most remarkable yet underreported exchanges in recent Senate history. Earlier this week, during the testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee of General Tod Wolters, the commander of US European Command and, concurrently, as the Supreme Allied Commander in Europe (SACEUR) also the military head of all NATO armed forces, General Wolters engaged in a short yet informative exchange with Senator Deb Fischer, a Republican from the state of Nebraska. 

Following some initial questions and answers focused on the alignment of NATO’s military strategy with the 2018 National Defense Strategy of the US, which codified what Wolters called “the malign influence on behalf of Russia” toward European security, Senator Fischer asked about the growing recognition on the part of NATO of the important role of US nuclear deterrence in keeping the peace. “We all understand that our deterrent, the TRIAD, is the bedrock of the security of this country,” Fischer noted. “Can you tell us about what you are hearing…from our NATO partners about this deterrent?”

Wolters responded by linking the deterrence provided to Europe by the US nuclear TRIAD with the peace enjoyed on the European continent over the past seven decades. Fischer asked if the US nuclear umbrella was “vital in the freedom of NATO members”; Wolters agreed. Remarkably, Wolters linked the role of nuclear deterrence with the NATO missions in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere outside the European continent. NATO’s mission, he said, was to “proliferate deterrence to the max extent practical to achieve greater peace.”

Then came the piece de resistance of the hearing. “What are your views, Sir,” Senator Fischer asked, “of adopting a so-called no-first-use policy. Do you believe that that would strengthen deterrence?”

General Wolters’ response was straight to the point. “Senator, I’m a fan of flexible first use policy.”

Under any circumstance, the public embrace of a “flexible first strike” policy regarding nuclear weapons employment by the Supreme Allied Commander in Europe should generate widespread attention. When seen in the context of the recent deployment by the US of a low-yield nuclear warhead on submarine-launched ballistic missiles carried onboard a Trident submarine, however, Wolters’ statement is downright explosive. Add to the mix the fact the US recently carried out a wargame where the US Secretary of Defense practiced the procedures for launching this very same “low yield” weapon against a Russian target during simulated combat between Russia and NATO in Europe, and the reaction should be off the charts. And yet there has been deafening silence from both the European and US press on this topic.

There is, however, one party that paid attention to what General Wolters had to say–Russia. In a statement to the press on February 25–the same date as General Wolters’ testimony, Sergey Lavrov, the Russian Foreign Minister stated that “We note with concern that Washington’s new doctrinal guidelines considerably lower the threshold of nuclear weapons use.” Lavrov added that this doctrine had to be viewed in the light “of the persistent deployment of US nuclear weapons on the territory of some NATO allies and the continued practice of the so-called joint nuclear missions.”

Rather than embracing a policy of “flexible first strike”, Lavrov suggested that the US work with Russia to re-confirm “the Gorbachev-Reagan formula, which says that there can be no winners in a nuclear war and it should never be unleashed.” This proposal was made 18 months ago, Lavrov noted, and yet the US has failed to respond.

Complicating matters further are the ‘Defender 2020’ NATO military exercises underway in Europe, involving tens of thousands of US troops in one of the largest training operations since the end of the Cold War. The fact that these exercises are taking place at a time when the issue of US nuclear weapons and NATO’s doctrine regarding their employment against Russia is being actively tracked by senior Russian authorities only highlights the danger posed.

On February 6, General Valery Gerasimov, the Russian Chief of Staff, met with General Wolters to discuss ‘Defender 2020’ and concurrent Russian military exercises to be held nearby to deconflict their respective operations and avoid any unforeseen incidents. This meeting, however, was held prior to the reports about a US/NATO nuclear wargame targeting Russian forces going public, and prior to General Wolters’ statement about “flexible first use” of NATO nuclear weapons.

In light of these events, General Gerasimov met with French General Fançois Lecointre, the Chief of the Defense Staff, to express Russia’s concerns over NATO’s military moves near the Russian border, especially the Defender 2020 exercise which was, General Gerasimov noted, “held on the basis of anti-Russian scenarios and envisage training for offensive operations.”

General Gerasimov’s concerns cannot be viewed in isolation, but rather must be considered in the overall historical context of NATO-Russian relations. Back in 1983, the then-Soviet Union was extremely concerned about a series of realistic NATO exercises, known as ‘Able Archer ‘83,’ which in many ways mimicked the modern-day Defender 2020 in both scope and scale. Like Defender 2020, Able Archer ‘83 saw the deployment of tens of thousands of US forces into Europe, where they assumed an offensive posture, before transitioning into a command post exercise involving the employment of NATO nuclear weapons against a Soviet target.

So concerned was Moscow about these exercises, and the possibility that NATO might use them as a cover for an attack against Soviet forces in East Germany, that the Soviet nuclear forces were placed on high alert. Historians have since observed that the threat of nuclear war between the US and the USSR was at that time the highest it had been since the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962.

US and NATO officials would do well to recall the danger to European and world security posed by the “Able Archer ‘83” exercise and the potential for Soviet miscalculations when assessing the concerns expressed by General Gerasimov today. The unprecedented concentration of offensive NATO military power on Russia’s border, coupled with the cavalier public embrace by General Wolters of a “flexible first strike” nuclear posture by NATO, has more than replicated the threat model presented by Able Archer ’83. In this context, it would not be a stretch to conclude that the threat of nuclear war between the US and Russia is the highest it has been since Able Archer ’83.

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Scott Ritter is a former US Marine Corps intelligence officer. He served in the Soviet Union as an inspector implementing the INF Treaty, in General Schwarzkopf’s staff during the Gulf War, and from 1991-1998 as a UN weapons inspector. Follow him on Twitter @RealScottRitter

“Towards a World War III Scenario: The Dangers of Nuclear War” 

by Michel Chossudovsky

Available to order from Global Research! 

ISBN Number: 978-0-9737147-5-3
Year: 2012
Pages: 102
Print Edition: $10.25 (+ shipping and handling)
PDF Edition:  $6.50 (sent directly to your email account!)

Michel Chossudovsky is Professor of Economics at the University of Ottawa and Director of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG), which hosts the critically acclaimed website www.globalresearch.ca . He is a contributor to the Encyclopedia Britannica. His writings have been translated into more than 20 languages.

Reviews

“This book is a ‘must’ resource – a richly documented and systematic diagnosis of the supremely pathological geo-strategic planning of US wars since ‘9-11’ against non-nuclear countries to seize their oil fields and resources under cover of ‘freedom and democracy’.”
–John McMurtry, Professor of Philosophy, Guelph University

“In a world where engineered, pre-emptive, or more fashionably “humanitarian” wars of aggression have become the norm, this challenging book may be our final wake-up call.”
-Denis Halliday, Former Assistant Secretary General of the United Nations

Michel Chossudovsky exposes the insanity of our privatized war machine. Iran is being targeted with nuclear weapons as part of a war agenda built on distortions and lies for the purpose of private profit. The real aims are oil, financial hegemony and global control. The price could be nuclear holocaust. When weapons become the hottest export of the world’s only superpower, and diplomats work as salesmen for the defense industry, the whole world is recklessly endangered. If we must have a military, it belongs entirely in the public sector. No one should profit from mass death and destruction.
–Ellen Brown, author of ‘Web of Debt’ and president of the Public Banking Institute   

A future without independent media leaves us with an upside down reality where according to the corporate media “NATO deserves a Nobel Peace Prize”, and where “nuclear weapons and wars make us safer”

If, like us, this is a future you wish to avoid, please help sustain Global Research’s activities by making a donation or taking out a membership now!

Click to donate or click here to become a member of Global Research.

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Video: Syrian Armed Forces Teach ‘2nd Strongest NATO Army’ Painful Lesson in Idlib

By South Front, March 04, 2020

Units of the Russian Military Police entered the town of Saraqib in eastern Idlib following the second liberation of the town from al-Qaeda terrorists and Turkish forces. According to the Russian military, the deployment took place at 5:00pm local time on March 2 and was intended to provide security and allow traffic through the M4 and M5 highways. In fact, the Russians came to put an end to Turkish attempts to capture the town and cut off the M5 highway in this area.

From Monroe to Trump. US Sponsored Military Coups in Latin America

By Elson Concepción Pérez, March 04, 2020

The latest threat to Venezuela of a possible military intervention, the recent coup in Bolivia under the auspices of the Organization of American States (OAS), the tightening of the blockade of Cuba, destabilization in Nicaragua, and open interference in the internal affairs of countries in the region, where democratic governments have set the standards for development and sovereignty, do not come as a surprise.

The US-Taliban ‘Peace Deal’? Imperial State Criminality and Terrorism, Dr. Aafia Siddiqui and “Restorative Justice”

By Junaid S. Ahmad, March 03, 2020

The US/NATO war and occupation of Afghanistan offers a glaring case of what US Senator Fulbright (yes, the one who started the Fulbright program of scholarships and exchanges) called the ‘arrogance of power’ (of his country), his book being of the same title. The wealthiest and most powerful nation in the history of the world, with a war machine on steroids, invading and occupying for nearly two decades one of the poorest countries on the planet – and one which had already undergone two decades of uninterrupted internecine war in the prior two decades.

Keep It Simple and Question: Propaganda, Technology, and Coronavirus COVID-19

By Edward Curtin, March 03, 2020

Two of the major problems the world faces – world destruction with nuclear weapons and the poisoning of the earth’s ecology and atmosphere – are the result of the marriage of science and technique that has given birth to the technological “babies” (Little Boy and Fat Man) that were used by the U.S. to massacre hundreds of thousands of Japanese and now threaten to incinerate everyone, and the chemical and toxic inventions that have despoiled the earth, air, and water and continue to kill people worldwide through America’s endless war-making and industrial applications.

Turkey in Syria: Down a Blind Alley in an Unwinnable War?

By Tony Cartalucci, March 03, 2020

Turkey had been making some promising steps in the right direction since Washington’s disastrous proxy regime-change war in Syria began unraveling – yet it still maintains a problematic position inside Syrian territory, backing what are unequivocally terrorists and obstructing Syria’s sovereign right to recover and restore order within its own borders.

The latest and most dangerous manifestation of this untenable policy is the increasingly frequent and fierce clashes between Turkish forces occupying Syrian territory and Syrian forces themselves moving deeper into the northern Syrian governorate of Idlib.

Neoliberal Globalization Is Pushing Humanity “Towards the Edge”

By Shane Quinn, March 03, 2020

There have been a number of harmful consequences as a result of the neoliberal era, which emerged in the late 1970s, taking off during the tenures of Ronald Reagan (US president, 1981-1989) and Margaret Thatcher (British prime minister, 1979-1990). There has been an explosion of private power, splintering of societies, destabilization of the financial system, and so on.

Neoliberal globalization has been an important factor too in political parties shifting further to the right, and succumbing to the power of increasingly dominant multinational corporations. This is most notable in America where the Republican Party (or organization) has moved so far off the spectrum that traditional republicans from previous decades would hardly recognize it today.

Why Are Stocks Crashing?

By Mike Whitney, March 03, 2020

Uncertainty. It’s impossible for investors to gauge the economic impact of the rapidly-spreading coronavirus or its effect on stock prices. Investors buy stocks with the expectation that their investment will grow over time. In periods of crisis, when the environment becomes unfamiliar and opaque, expectations are crushed under the weigh of uncertainty. When expectations dampen, investors sell.

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There are many influential supporters of nuclear war, and some of these contend that the use of ‘low-yield’ and/or short-range weapons is practicable without the possibility of escalation to all-out Armageddon. In a way their argument is comparable to that of the band of starry-eyed optimists who thought, apparently seriously, that there could be such a beast as a ‘moderate rebel’.

In October 2013 the Washington Post reported that “The CIA is expanding a clandestine effort to train opposition fighters in Syria amid concern that moderate, US-backed militias are rapidly losing ground in the country’s civil war,” and the US Congress gave approval to then President Barack Obama’s plan for training and arming moderate Syrian rebels to fight against Islamic State extremists. The belief that there could be any grouping of insurgents that could be described as “moderate rebels” is bizarre and it would be fascinating to know how Washington’s planners classify such people. It obviously didn’t dawn on them that any person who uses weapons illegally in a rebellion could not be defined as being moderate. And how moderate is moderate? Perhaps a moderate rebel could be equipped with US weapons that kill only extremists? Or are they allowed to kill only five children a month? The entire notion was absurd, and predictably the scheme collapsed, after expenditure of vast amounts of US taxpayers’ money.

And even vaster amounts of money are being spent on developing and producing what might be classed as moderate nuclear weapons, in that they don’t have the zillion-bang punch of most of its existing 4,000 plus warheads. It is apparently widely believed in Washington that if a nuclear weapon is (comparatively) small, then it’s less dangerous than a big nuclear weapon.

In January 2019 the Guardian reported that

“the Trump administration has argued the development of a low-yield weapon would make nuclear war less likely, by giving the US a more flexible deterrent. It would counter any enemy (particularly Russian) perception that the US would balk at using its own fearsome arsenal in response to a limited nuclear attack because its missiles were all in the hundreds of kilotons range and ‘too big to use’, because they would cause untold civilian casualties.”

In fact, the nuclear war envisaged in that scenario would be a global catastrophe — as would all nuclear wars, because there’s no way, no means whatever, of limiting escalation. Once a nuclear weapon has exploded and killed people, the nuclear-armed nation to which these people belonged is going to take massive action. There is no alternative, because no government is just going to sit there and try to start talking with an enemy that has taken the ultimate leap in warfare.

It is widely imagined — by many nuclear planners in the sub-continent, for example — that use of a tactical, a battlefield-deployed, nuclear weapon will in some fashion persuade the opponent (India or Pakistan) that there is no need to employ higher-capability weapons, or, in other words, longer range missiles delivering massive warheads. These people think that the other side will evaluate the situation calmly and dispassionately and come to the conclusion that at most it should itself reply with a similar weapon. But such a scenario supposes that there is good intelligence about the effects of the weapon that has exploded, most probably within the opponent’s sovereign territory. This is verging on the impossible.

War is confusing in the extreme, and tactical planning can be extremely complex. But there is no precedent for nuclear war, and nobody — nobody — knows for certain what reactions will be to such a situation in or near any nation. The US 2018 Nuclear Posture Review stated that low-yield weapons “help ensure that potential adversaries perceive no possible advantage in limited nuclear escalation, making nuclear employment less likely”. But do the possible opponents of the United States agree with that? How could they do so?

The reaction by any nuclear-armed state to what is confirmed as a nuclear attack will have to be swift. It cannot be guaranteed, for example, that the first attack will not represent a series. It will, by definition, be decisive, because the world will then be a tiny step from doomsday. The US nuclear review is optimistic that “flexibility” will by some means limit a nuclear exchange, or even persuade the nuked-nation that there should be no riposte, which is an intriguing hypothesis.

As pointed out by Lawfare, “the review calls for modification to ‘a small number of existing submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM) warheads’ to provide a low-yield option.

It also calls for further exploration of low-yield options, arguing that expanding these options will ‘help ensure that potential adversaries perceive no possible advantage in limited nuclear escalation, making nuclear employment less likely.’ This is intended to address the argument that adversaries might think the United States, out of concern for collateral damage, would hesitate to employ a high-yield nuclear weapon in response to a ‘lower level’ conflict, in which an adversary used a low-yield nuclear device. The review argues that expanding low-yield options is ‘important for the preservation of credible deterrence,’ especially when it comes to smaller-scale regional conflicts.”

“Credible deterrence” is a favourite catch-phrase of the believers in limited nuclear war, but its credibility is suspect. Former US defence secretary William Perry said last year that he wasn’t so much worried about the vast number of warheads in the world as he was by open proposals that these weapons are “usable”. It’s right back to the Cold War and he emphasises that “The belief that there might be tactical advantage using nuclear weapons – which I haven’t heard being openly discussed in the United States or in Russia for a good many years – is happening now in those countries which I think is extremely distressing.” But the perturbing thing is that while it is certainly being discussed in Moscow, it’s verging on doctrine in Washington.

In late February US Defence Secretary Esper was reported as having taken part in a “classified military drill in which Russia and the United States traded nuclear strikes.” The Pentagon stated that “The scenario included a European contingency where you’re conducting a war with Russia and Russia decides to use a low-yield, limited nuclear weapon against a site on NATO territory.” The US response was to fire back with what was called a “limited response.”

First of all, the notion that Russia would take the first step to nuclear war is completely baseless, and there is no evidence that this could ever be contemplated. But ever if it were to be so, it cannot be imagined for an instant that Washington would indulge in moderate nuclear warfare in riposte. These self-justifying wargames are dangerous. And they bring Armageddon ever closer.

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Brian Cloughley is a British and Australian armies’ veteran, former deputy head of the UN military mission in Kashmir and Australian defense attaché in Pakistan.

Against the backdrop of the spreading fear about a global coronavirus pandemic, an event has slipped largely under the radar at a spot so removed from the rest of the world that most are unaware of its existence. The Svalbard “Doomsday” Seed Vault on Spitsbergen Island north of the Arctic Circle just received an additional major shipment of plant variety seeds for its special storage. What makes this entire seed bank enterprise suspicious at the very least is the list of financial sponsors behind the global project.

On February 25 more than 60,000 new seed varieties were placed in the Svalbard vault, the largest deposit of seeds since it opened. This brings the total of seed types to over one million since the vault was first opened for deposits in early 2008.

The latest seed deposits include onions from Brazil, guar beans from central Asia, corn seeds sacred to the Cherokee nation and wildflowers from a meadow at Prince Charles’s home in the UK (sic). The Svalbard vault is on the island that is legally part of Norway since a 1925 treaty.

The Norwegian government put up much of the money for the construction of the facility whose backers declared it was able to withstand a nuclear bomb blast. The only problem was planners did not make the structure, built into a mountain side, waterproof and the entrance flooded amid heavy rains in 2016, necessitating a major € 20 million of repairs and upgrade which were just completed, some four years later. Notably, as Norwegian Prime Minister Erna Solberg pointed out during the recent seed-greeting ceremony, the year 2020 is slated as the year by which countries should have safeguarded genetic diversity of crops to meet the UN goal of “eliminating hunger by 2030.” The year 2030 is when the UN IPCC predicts catastrophic climate change barring a radical action from the world, as well as the key benchmark year for the UN’s Malthusian Agenda2030.

The publicly-stated argument for the major seed bank project is supposedly as a safe backup for the numerous national seed bank collections in event they are destroyed in war as in Syria or Iraq, or by natural disaster or other calamity. The Svalbard vault has been called the “Noah’s ark of seeds,” there should a “global catastrophe” occur, to allow a theoretical restart to world agriculture. OK. Interesting. Who would decide how to distribute those seeds in event of such a catastrophe is not addressed.

What is notable is the list of those backing this highly unusual public-private partnership.

Crop Trust?

The seed bank and acquisition of the seeds is managed by an entity known as the Crop Trust, officially known as the Global Crop Diversity Trust, now based in Bonn, Germany. On its website Crop Trust makes the modest claim that their “sole mission is to ensure humanity conserves and makes available the world’s crop diversity for future food security.”

It has an impressive list of financial sponsors which it calls the Donors’ Council. Among the most eye-catching they name Bayer Crop Science, which now incorporates Monsanto; DuPont Pioneer Hi-Bred; Syngenta AG, now owned by ChemChina. These are the world’s largest purveyors of GMO patented seeds and the paired agrichemicals such as Roundup with glyphosate. China’s now state-owned Syngenta is the world’s largest supplier of crop chemicals.

In addition, Crop Trust Donors include the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the major donor to initiate the Trust in 2004 with the FAO, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization and CGIAR, acting through Bioversity International.

Gates Foundation is joined at Crop Trust by the Rockefeller Foundation, the ones who first financed the creation of GMO biotechnology beginning in the 1970’s at their International Rice Research Institute, where they spent millions trying to develop the colossal failure called Vitamin A-enhanced Golden Rice. CGIAR, set up in 1972 by the Rockefeller Foundation and Ford Foundation to spread their Green Revolution agribusiness model, controls most of the private seed banks from the Philippines to Syria to Kenya. In all, these present seed banks hold more than six and a half million seed varieties, almost two million of which are ‘distinct.’ Svalbard’s Doomsday Vault has a capacity to house four and a half million different seeds.

At the time the Svalbard Doomsday Seed Vault opened in 2008 the chairman of the Crop Trust was Canadian Margaret Catley-Carlson. Catley-Carlson was also president until 1999 of the New York-based Population Council, John D. Rockefeller III ’s population reduction organization, set up in 1952 to advance the Rockefeller family’s eugenics program under the cover of promoting “family planning,” birth control devices, sterilization and “population control” in developing countries. Catley-Carlson also sat on the board of the Syngenta Foundation.

De-Population Council

Being President of the Rockefeller-founded Population Council is no minor deal. In the 1990’s the UN’s World Health Organization launched a campaign to vaccinate millions of women in Nicaragua, Mexico and the Philippines between the ages of 15 and 45, allegedly against Tetanus, a sickness arising from such things as stepping on a rusty nail. The vaccine was not given to men or boys, despite the fact they are presumably equally as liable to step on rusty nails as women.

Because of that curious anomaly, Comité Pro Vida de Mexico, a Roman Catholic lay organization, became suspicious and had vaccine samples tested. The tests revealed that the Tetanus vaccine being spread by the WHO– only to women of child-bearing age– contained human Chorionic Gonadotrophin or hCG, a natural hormone which when combined with a tetanus toxoid carrier stimulated antibodies rendering a woman incapable of maintaining a pregnancy. None of the women vaccinated were told.

It later came out that the Rockefeller Foundation along with the Rockefeller’s Population Council, the World Bank (home to CGIAR), and the United States’ National Institutes of Health had been involved in a 20-year-long project begun in 1972 to develop the concealed abortion vaccine with a tetanus carrier for WHO. In addition, the Government of Norway, the host to the Svalbard Doomsday Seed Vault, donated $41 million to develop the special abortive Tetanus vaccine.

Is it just coincidence that the same Gates Foundation is backing the organization responsible for maintaining the Svalbard “Doomsday” Seed Vault at the same time Gates is emerging as a major authority on the danger of the Wuhan coronavirus epidemic? In an article he wrote for the New England Journal of Medicine, Gates stated that the designated COVID19, “has started behaving a lot like the once-in-a-century pathogen we’ve been worried about.”

A virtually inaccessible seed vault under the control of some of the world’s foremost advocates of eugenics and population reduction is definitely remarkable. With more than a million of the irreplaceable seed heritage of the world locked inside the Svalbard Seed Vault, could this be a way for GMO agribusiness giants like Bayer-Monsanto or Syngenta to illegally gain access to those seeds in a time of global crisis? It sounds very far-fetched, yet there are far-fetched goings on in our world. We could say, “He who controls the world’s crop seeds, controls the world.”

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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 frequent contributor to Global Research.

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

List Price: $25.95

Special Price: $18.00

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.

How is it possible for a Dem presidential aspirant ahead in most Super Tuesday states (according to polls), including California and Texas, to lose overall to a challenger?

The latest pre-Super Tuesday polls showed Sanders leading Biden by wide margins in California and Texas with 416 and 228 pledged delegates respectively — according to Real Clear Politics from an average of polls.

They showed Sanders ahead in Virginia, Massachusetts, Maine, Colorado, Utah, and Vermont, his home state.

Sanders was projected to win eight of 14 Super Tuesday states. He won four — California, Vermont, Colorado and Utah, losing Texas to Biden despite a near-9 point lead, according to polls.

Results so far show Biden winning nine states — Virginia, North Carolina, Alabama, Tennessee, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Minnesota, Massachusetts (where he trailed Sanders and Warren in polls), and Texas.

A total of 1,357 Dem delegates were up for grabs in Super Tuesday states, 34% of total elected ones — nearly half the Tuesday total from California and Texas.

After teetering on the edge of elimination from poor showings in Iowa, New Hampshire and Nevada, Biden emerged from Super Tuesday as the Dem frontrunner.

He has 453 elected delegates. Sanders trails with 382, followed by Warren with 50 and Bloomberg with 44.

The only candidate worthy of popular support, Tulsi Gabbard, an anti-war/progressive champion, is virtually eliminated from the race with one delegate.

In her home state Massachusetts, Warren finished third behind Biden and Sanders.

Despite her poor Super Tuesday showing, she vowed not to quit, saying: “I am in this fight.”

Virtually too far behind in the delegate count to catch up, polls in upcoming primaries showing her trailing badly, is she in it for Biden over Sanders in return for favors promised her?

Earlier calling herself “capitalist to the bone,” she’s part of the dirty system, not against it, shown by her voting record, most often along party lines, including for what benefits corporate America and the US imperial agenda.

Time and again she defends the indefensible. Like other undemocratic Dems and Republicans, she considers naked aggression humanitarian intervention and democracy building.

During Israel’s preemptive 2014 Gaza war, she supported what demanded condemnation, falsely blaming Hamas for Netanyahu regime high crimes.

She’s militantly hostile toward Russia, China, Iran, Syria, Venezuela, and other nations on the US target list for regime change.

She falsely accused Russia of “belligeren(ce),” falsely claimed China “weaponized its economy.” She supports illegal US sanctions (economic terrorism) on Iran, Venezuela, North Korea and other targeted nations.

She’s an Obama clone with a gender difference, never a people’s champion.

If she favored progressive politics over dirty business as usual, she’d drop out of the race and endorse Sanders over Biden and Bloomberg — because she’s too far behind in the delegate count to catch up.

Vowing not to quit suggests she supports continuity over peace, equity, justice and the rule of law.

Did Dem party bosses manipulate things for Biden to win big on Super Tuesday?

Did they urge Warren to stay in the race to draw support from voters likely to back Sanders if she drops out?

Will key upcoming primaries be rigged for Biden, a figure assuring continuity — even though Sanders as Dem standard bearer would be more likely to defeat Trump in November?

Do Dem party bosses prefer DJT over Sanders — even though the Vermont senator votes along party lines most often?

US electoral dirty tricks are longstanding. Super Tuesday results suggests they were in play to elevate Biden in the delegate count over Sanders.

Is more of the same likely in upcoming primary contests?

Americans get the best “democracy” monied interests can buy — democracy for privileged few alone, governance of, by and for everyone equitably ruled out throughout US history.

That’s the disturbing reality in the current race for the White House — aspirants considered “safe” alone allowed to win.

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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.”

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

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

La campagna pubblicitaria e di disinformazione sulla diffusione del nuovo coronavirus COVID-19 ha creato un clima di paura e incertezza in tutto il mondo da quando l’OMS l’ha dichiarata un’emergenza medica della sanità pubblica internazionale il 30 gennaio.

La campagna della paura è in corso, creando panico e incertezza. I governi nazionali e l’OMS stanno ingannando il pubblico.

” Circa 84.000 persone in almeno 56 paesi sono state contagiate e circa 2.900 sono morte ” , ha dichiarato il New York Times. Quello che il giornale non menziona è che il 98% delle infezioni si trova nella Cina continentale. Ci sono meno di 5.000 casi confermati al di fuori della Cina (OMS, 28 febbraio 2020).

Al momento, non esiste una vera pandemia al di fuori della Cina continentale. I numeri parlano da soli.

Al momento in cui scrivo, il numero di “casi confermati” negli Stati Uniti è di 64 .
Il numero è minimo, ma i media stanno diffondendo il panico.
Vi sono tuttavia 15 milioni di casi di influenza negli Stati Uniti .

L’ultimo rapporto di sorveglianza FluView del Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) degli Stati Uniti indica che il 18 gennaio 2020 ci sono stati 15 milioni di casi di influenza, 140.000 ricoveri e 8.200 morti in questa stagione influenzale negli Stati Uniti (enfasi aggiunta ).

Dati pandemici COVID-19

Il 28 febbraio 2020, l’Organizzazione mondiale della sanità (OMS) ha riportato 83.652 casi confermati di COVID-19, inclusi 78.961 nella Cina continentale. Fuori dalla Cina c’erano 4.691 (OMS, 28 febbraio 2020, ).

L’OMS ha anche riportato 2.791 morti, di cui solo 67 al di fuori della Cina continentale .

Queste cifre confermano che la pandemia è principalmente limitata alla Cina continentale.

Inoltre, i dati recenti tendono a dimostrare che l’epidemia in Cina è sotto controllo. Il 21 febbraio 2020, la National Health Commission della Repubblica popolare cinese ha riferito che 36.157 pazienti sono stati dichiarati guariti e dimessi dall’ospedale (vedere la tabella sotto).

Rapporti cinesi confermano che le persone hanno ricevuto un trattamento e si stanno riprendendo dall’infezione virale. Anche il numero di pazienti infetti sta diminuendo.

Secondo la National Pharmaceutical Administration of China, gli ospedali usano il farmaco antivirale Favilavir ” per curare il coronavirus con effetti collaterali minimi “.

Diamo un’occhiata ai numeri:

La popolazione mondiale è di circa 7,8 miliardi di personeLa popolazione cinese è di circa 1,4 miliardi di persone.

La popolazione mondiale meno la Cina è di circa 6,4 miliardi di persone.4.691 casi confermati e 67 decessi segnalati (al di fuori della Cina) su una popolazione di 6,4 miliardi non costituiscono una pandemia. 4.691 / 6.400.000.000 = 0,00000073 = 0.000073%

Negli Stati Uniti, 64 casi su una popolazione di circa 330 milioni non costituiscono una pandemia. (dati del 28 febbraio): 64 / 330.000.000.

Perché propaganda Razzismo contro persone di origine cinese

È stata lanciata una campagna deliberata contro la Cina ed è in atto un’ondata di sentimento razzista nei confronti di persone di origine cinese, in gran parte promossa dai media occidentali, ma anche da agenzie governative (vedi sotto).

Guerra economica contro la Cina

La strategia degli Stati Uniti è quella di utilizzare COVID-19 per isolare la Cina, nonostante il fatto che l’economia statunitense si basi fortemente sulle importazioni cinesi.

La disorganizzazione a breve termine dell’economia cinese è in gran parte dovuta alla chiusura (temporanea) dei circuiti commerciali e di trasporto.

L’emergenza per la salute pubblica dichiarata dall’OMS si unisce alla disinformazione dei media e al divieto di voli in Cina.

Panico a Wall Street

La disinformazione dei media ha assunto un’altra dimensione causando il panico sui mercati azionari.
La paura del coronavirus ha portato a una caduta dei mercati finanziari in tutto il mondo.

Epidemia di coronavirus: l’OMS dichiara un’emergenza globale “falsa” per la salute pubblica

Secondo i rapporti, il valore dei mercati azionari mondiali è crollato di circa $ 6 trilioni. Questo calo è stato finora dell’ordine del “15% o più”.Ciò provoca ingenti perdite nei risparmi personali (cioè nella media americani), oltre a fallimenti personali e fallimenti aziendali.

È anche un vantaggio per gli speculatori istituzionali, in particolare per gli hedge fund aziendali. La debacle finanziaria ha portato a grandi trasferimenti di ricchezza monetaria nelle tasche di una manciata di istituzioni finanziarie.

Il fatto più ironico è che gli analisti collegano casualmente il crollo dei mercati alla diffusione del virus, quando negli Stati Uniti ci sono solo 64 casi confermati.

” Non sorprende che i mercati stiano calando … il virus è cresciuto così tanto …”

Potremmo “prevedere” il crollo finanziario di febbraio?
Sarebbe ingenuo credere che la crisi finanziaria fosse dovuta solo alle forze di mercato che hanno reagito spontaneamente alla diffusione di COVID-19. Il mercato è già stato attentamente manipolato da potenti attori che utilizzano strumenti speculativi nei mercati dei derivati, compresa la “vendita allo scoperto”.

L’obiettivo non detto è la concentrazione della ricchezza. Fu un vero vantaggio finanziario per gli “addetti ai lavori” che sapevano in anticipo cosa avrebbe portato alla decisione dell’OMS di dichiarare un’emergenza di sanità pubblica di interesse internazionale il 30 gennaio.

La pandemia COVID-19 (nCoV-2019) era nota in anticipo? Quali sono le probabili ripercussioni?
Il 18 ottobre 2019, il Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security di Baltimora ha intrapreso un esercizio di simulazione accuratamente realizzato di un’epidemia di coronavirus chiamata nCoV-2019.

Nell’esercizio chiamato Event 201 Simulation of a Coronavirus Pandemic , abbiamo “simulato” un calo del mercato azionario del 15%. Non è stato “pianificato” secondo gli organizzatori e gli sponsor dell’evento, la Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation e il World Economic Forum.

Una esercitazione pandemica globale

Schermata, 201 Un esercizio pandemico globale

La simulazione effettuata in ottobre chiamata nCoV-2019 è avvenuta appena due mesi prima della comparsa di COVID-19.

La simulazione della pandemia di John Hopkins ha simulato un calo del mercato azionario del “15% o più” (video, sezione 0.0 – 1’2 “), che corrisponde in gran parte al calo che ha avuto luogo alla fine di febbraio 2020.

Molti aspetti di questo “esercizio di simulazione” corrispondono effettivamente a ciò che è realmente accaduto quando il Direttore Generale dell’OMS ha dichiarato un’emergenza di sanità pubblica di interesse internazionale il 30 gennaio 2020.
Quello che deve essere compreso è che coloro che hanno sponsorizzato il “esercizio di simulazione” del John Hopkins Center sono potenti e competenti nelle aree della “salute globale” (B. e M. Gates Foundation) e “L’economia mondiale” (GEF).

Va anche notato che l’OMS ha inizialmente adottato un acronimo simile (per indicare il coronavirus) a quello del John Hopkins Center Pandemic Simulation Exercise (nCoV-2019) prima di cambiarlo in COVID-19 .

Corruzione e ruolo dell’OMS

Che motivato il direttore generale dell’OMS, Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus , a dichiarare che la Ncov-2019 è una “emergenza sanitaria pubblica di rilevanza internazionale” il 30 gennaio, quando l’epidemia era in gran parte confinato alla Cina continentale?

Tutto suggerisce che il direttore generale dell’OMS Tedros abbia servito gli interessi di potenti partner delle grandi corporations.

Secondo F. William Engdahl , Tedros ha legami di vecchia data con la Clinton e la Clinton Foundation. È anche strettamente legato alla Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Insieme al World Economic Forum di Davos, la Gates Foundation ha sponsorizzato il “esercizio di simulazione” di John Hopkins nCoV-2019.

Come ministro della sanità, Tedros ha anche presieduto il Fondo globale per la lotta contro l’AIDS, la tubercolosi e la malaria, di cui la Fondazione Gates è stata cofondatrice. Il Fondo globale è stato rovinato da scandali di frode e corruzione.

” Durante la campagna triennale di Tedros per ottenere il suo posto presso l’OMS, è stato accusato di nascondere tre grandi epidemie di colera mentre era il Ministro della Salute dell’Etiopia, falsificando i casi “acuta diarrea acquosa” (un sintomo di colera), per ridurre al miniUna massiccia campagna di sviluppo del vaccino è stata ordinata dal direttore generale dell’OMS Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. Molte aziende farmaceutiche ci stanno già lavorando.

A questo proposito, è importante ricordare la frode dell’OMS durante il mandato del suo predecessore, la dott.ssa Margaret Chan , che ha detto questo sulla pandemia di influenza suina H1N1 nel 2009:

” I produttori di vaccini possono produrre nella migliore delle ipotesi 4,9 miliardi di vaccini contro l’influenza all’anno. ( Margaret Chan, direttore esecutivo dell’Organizzazione mondiale della sanità , citato da Reuters il 21 luglio 2009, sottolinea che è stato aggiunto).

Non vi è stata alcuna pandemia di H1N1 nel 2009. È stato una frode fare soldi, come rivelato dal Parlamento europeo.

Le multinazionali del farmaco si preparano al grande business dei vaccini per il Covid-19

Qual è il prossimo passo nella pandemia di COVID-19? È una falsa o una vera pandemia?

• La propaganda contro la Cina non è finita.
• Né la “paura della pandemia” è al di fuori della Cina, nonostante il numero veramente basso di “casi confermati”.
• La crisi finanziaria continua, supportata dalla disinformazione dei media e dalle interferenze finanziarie.
• Se non vengono ripristinati i normali rapporti commerciali (e di trasporto) tra Stati Uniti e Cina, la consegna dei beni di consumo “Made in China” esportati negli Stati Uniti verrà messa a repentaglio.
• Questa situazione potrebbe innescare una grave crisi nel commercio al dettaglio negli Stati Uniti, dove i beni “Made in China” costituiscono una parte significativa del consumo mensile delle famiglie.
• Dal punto di vista della salute pubblica, le prospettive di eliminare COVID-19 in Cina sono favorevoli. I progressi sono già stati segnalati.
• Nel resto del mondo (dove ci sono stati circa 3.000 casi confermati il ​​28 febbraio 2020), la pandemia di COVID-19 continua, insieme alla propaganda per un programma di vaccinazione globale.
• Senza una campagna di paura combinata con notizie false, COVID-19 non avrebbe fatto notizia.
• Da un punto di vista medico, è indicata la vaccinazione globale?
• 43,3% dei “casi confermati” in Cina è ora considerato “recuperato” (vedi grafico sopra). I rapporti occidentali non fanno distinzione tra “casi confermati” e “casi confermati infetti”. Sono gli ultimi casi che sono rilevanti. La tendenza è verso una ripresa e una diminuzione dei “casi infetti confermati”.

La massiccia campagna di vaccinazione dell’OMS (menzionata sopra) è stata debitamente confermata dal suo direttore generale, il dott. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus , il 28 febbraio:

” … Più di 20 vaccini sono in fase di sviluppo in tutto il mondo e numerosi prodotti terapeutici sono in fase di sperimentazione clinica, i cui primi risultati sono attesi in” poche settimane “. (enfasi aggiunta)

Va da sé che questa decisione dell’OMS costituisce un’altra manna per i cinque principali produttori di vaccini: Glaxo SmithKline, Novartis, Merck & Co., Sanofi e Pfizer, che controllano l’85% del mercato dei vaccini. Secondo CNBC: (enfasi aggiunta)

Queste aziende sono entrate nella corsa per combattere il coronavirus mortale e stanno lavorando a programmi per creare vaccini o farmaci … Sanofi sta collaborando con il governo degli Stati Uniti per sviluppare un vaccino contro il nuovo virus , sperando che il suo lavoro sul l’epidemia di SARS del 2003 accelererà il processo. Nel 2019, Merck ha guadagnato $ 8,4 miliardi di entrate dal mercato dei vaccini, un segmento in crescita a un tasso annuo del 9% dal 2010, secondo Bernstein .

Glaxo SmithKline ha annunciato questo mese la sua partnership con la Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations [CEPI] per un programma di vaccinazione … CEPI è stato lanciato al World Economic Forum 2017.

È interessante notare che il CEPI, lanciato a Davos nel 2017, è supportato dalla Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, dal Wellcome Trust (una fondazione umanitaria britannica multimiliardaria) e dal World Economic Forum. I governi di Norvegia e India sono membri e il loro ruolo è principalmente quello di finanziare CEPI.

Cronologia

18 ottobre 2019 : la B. e M. Gates Foundation e il World Economic Forum sono partner della pandemia “simulazione di esercitazione” a nCoV-2019 condotta dal John Hopkins Center for Health Security nell’ottobre 2019.

31 dicembre 2019 : la Cina avvisa l’OMS della scoperta di numerosi casi di “polmonite insolita” a Wuhan, nella provincia di Hubei.

7 gennaio 2020 : funzionari cinesi affermano di aver identificato un nuovo virus. L’OMS nomina il nuovo virus 2019-nCoV ( esattamente lo stesso nome del virus che era l’oggetto dell’esercizio di simulazione del John Hopkins Center, tranne il posizionamento della data).

24-25 gennaio 2020 : Vertice di Davos sotto l’egida del CEPI, che è anche il frutto di una partnership tra il World Economic Forum e la Gates Foundation, durante la quale viene annunciato lo sviluppo di un vaccino contro il nCoV 2019 (2 settimane dopo l’annuncio del 7 gennaio 2020 e appena una settimana prima della dichiarazione di emergenza sanitaria pubblica di portata internazionale da parte dell’OMS).

30 gennaio 2020 : il direttore dell’OMS dichiara una “emergenza sanitaria pubblica di rilevanza internazionale”.

Ora è stata lanciata una campagna di vaccinazione per fermare COVID-19 sotto l’egida di CEPI in collaborazione con GlaxoSmithKline .

Conclusione

COVID-19 (alias nCoV-2019) rappresenta un tesoro del valore di miliardi di dollari per le grandi aziende farmaceutiche. Ma contribuisce anche a far precipitare l’umanità in un pericoloso processo di destabilizzazione economica, sociale e geopolitica.

Michel Chossudovsky 

fonte inglese :

COVID-19 Coronavirus: A Fake Pandemic? Who’s Behind It? Global Economic, Social and Geopolitical Destabilization

fonte francese :

Coronavirus COVID-19: Une fausse pandémie? Qui est derrière cela? Déstabilisation économique, sociale et géopolitique mondiale

Tradotto da Daniel per Mondialisation.ca

Tradotto in Italiano da Luciano Lago per Controinformazione.info

As the voting this evening, March 3, comes in from the fourteen states conducting Democrat Party primaries already the ‘takeaways’ are evident.

The first is that the last minute dropping out of the primary race by Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar—and their immediate endorsement of Joe Biden—has had its obvious strategic effect. Their votes clearly went to Biden. That was perhaps most evident in Klobuchar’s state, Minnesota, where Sanders was expected to win.

The Buttigieg-Klobuchar Maneuver

Both Buttigieg and Klobuchar entered the race, one might argue in retrospect, to test how far they could drag potential voters from Sanders. Buttigieg the youth and the gay vote. Klobuchar the female vote. Neither were able to chip away much, if any, of Sanders’ support. So when it was clear they had little chance of doing so, they quickly dropped out right before the Super Tuesday primaries and threw their endorsement, organizational support (and their financial backers’ funding?) to Biden.

If anyone believes their decisions were isolated and unrelated individual acts that had nothing to do with encouragement by the Democratic Party leadership, including Obama, Pelosi, Shumer and their own moneybag financiers, then they are deluding themselves. The timing, coordinated exits, and endorsements of Biden were not merely coincidental. Having done their ‘party duty’, they now will no doubt now be nicely rewarded in their future careers by the party’s organization and campaign contributors.

But you didn’t hear much of this kind of analysis if you listened to MSNBC, CNN, or the other media mouthpieces of the establishment, centrist leadership of the party. Why anyone continues to refer to the Democratic Party as ‘liberal’ or even as an independent party, is amazing. More accurately, it should be understood as the ‘globalist wing of the Corporate Party of America’. The other wing of the Corporate Party of America is the Republican. Correct that, today better called the ‘Trumpublican’ party. The policies of either wing of the Corporate Party of America for the past 40 years have been very similar and no less pro-business.

Warren Loses Massachusetts & Her Days Are Numbered

A second obvious takeaway from today’s Super Tuesday event is that Elizabeth Warren failed to win even her home state, Massachusetts, which went to Biden. Warren’s so-called progressive votes would have gone almost totally to Sanders, had she too dropped out. That would have easily given Sanders Massachusetts over Biden. Warren clearly has taken votes away from Sanders, not only in Massachusetts but everywhere on Super Tuesday.

To sum up in part then: Buttigieg-Klobuchar drop out and shift their centrist endorsements, support and votes to Biden; Warren stays in and diverts progressive votes from Sanders. Does anyone think this is all coincidental?

My prediction is that Warren will eventually drop out, but not before the Sanders-Biden contest concludes in the key swing states of Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin and a couple potential others. The dilution of Sanders’ progressive support full potential will have been achieved.

Biden Sweeps the South: So What!

A third takeaway is that Biden swept the southern states on Super Tuesday. No doubt about it. As in South Carolina, once again his vote margin was delivered by the over-35 black vote. The Democratic Party is so weak in the southern states that black voters comprise the largest plurality of their voting population in most of the states of the South. Older black voters went for Biden, while younger often went for Sanders. But the youth black vote was only a small percentage compared to the older black vote, typically around only 15% of the total black vote. Older black voters in the South tend to vote based on recommendations of their churches, community organizations, and black political leaders. In contrast, younger blacks are increasingly independent. But there weren’t as many of their numbers to offset, let alone overtake, the older black votes going to Biden. The youth black vote is there. But the Sanders organization still has much to do to organize, register, and turnout black youth to vote, and especially in the South.

Biden’s sweep of the South is largely irrelevant, however. These are states that Trump and the Republicans have solidly wrapped up. Decades of gerrymandering, voter suppression, and control of state legislatures and governorships in these states means no Democrat candidate, Sanders or Biden, is going to swing any of the ‘red states’ into the Democrat camp in the November 2020 election.

Thus Biden’s victories in the primaries in these states signifies nothing of import for the general election in November. But the party’s media wing make it sound like some great achievement that show Joe will sweep the South in the November election against Trump. Dream on.

The liberal, establishment media all night Tuesday have been hyping the story that Biden won in Virginia, in Tennessee, Arkansas and didn’t even show up to campaign there or spend money on TV ads. Doesn’t that show how strong a candidate Joe is, they echoed as if reading from the same tv monitor? No, it shows the Democrats are so weak in those states that the party organization’s recommendations mostly determine the outcomes.

Bloomberg’s New Choice: Fortune vs. Ego

What about Bloomberg? After spending more than $500 million of his own money (more than $70 million in California alone), he managed to gain voter support only in the mid-teens. Typically around 15% or so. Reportedly his own campaign manager has now urged him to drop out. Whether he does so will depend on whether he values more his ego or his dwindling fortune. He’s looks now more like the addicted gambler, chasing his money at the crap table or racetrack. IF one were to guess, however, it would be in favor of his ego. He could still accumulate enough votes of delegates to be a broker at the party’s convention.

The Party’s Geographical-Generational Class Divide

Another takeaway is the Super Tuesday, 14-state contest shows the Democrat Party is divided geographically, as well as generationally and along class lines.

Sanders wins big in the west and northern New England. Biden in the South. But the most important geographically area—the area that will determine the electoral college outcome and thus the election—is yet to be contested. That’s the ‘swing states’ regional arc from Pennsylvania to Michigan to Wisconsin (and maybe a few ‘outliers’ like Arizona). As in 2016, that’s where the general presidential election will be determined. My guess is that Warren will stay in to continue to split the progressive vote there, to Sanders’ disadvantage, and drop out after. Bloomberg, on the other hand, may be convinced to drop out just before those primaries. Should he do so his votes will largely go to Biden. That will all but ensure Biden wins most of the delegates there, although that’s not foreordained either.

Sanders’ won big in the west, where the ‘older black voter’ factor and the Warren ‘split the progressive vote’ factor have not been significant. An interesting contest was the Texas vote. Sanders was slated to win by a small margin. However, the party establishment threw everything into Texas, including the political kitchen sink, as they say. They even got that once thought of left liberal, Beto O’Rourke, to endorse and stump for Biden. Like Buttigieg and Klobuchar, he too will no doubt be nicely rewarded by the party apparatus down the road for his next career political move. The lesson: beware of progressive sounding young political careerists on the make.

Movement vs. Party Apparatchiki

Sanders has rallied the youth vote, the Latino vote (youth and older), young black and other minorities, women and local unions to his banner. It’s a movement that’s growing. It hasn’t yet peaked. The question is will it peak sooner, or perhaps after the 2020 election cycle? In the west, the older crowd of voters still went for Biden. But unlike in the South, the youth vote-minority vote turnout in the west swamped the older voters. The movement there has arrived! Sanders’ movement more than offset Biden’s party apparatus. And the west, unlike the South, must be won by the Democratic Party in order to offset the electoral vote advantage of Trump and Republicans in their ‘red state’ bastions. It is futile strategy to try to retake the ‘red state’ South out from under Trump. Too late. Past Democratic Party timidity and meekness confronting voter suppression and gerrymandering has all but rendered that extremely unlikely. Better solidify the West, New England, maybe Atlantic States and win the swing states. But the latter will also take a movement. And without Sanders, the Democrats have none.

So Sanders wins the west, New England, and the youth-Latino vote. Biden wins the South-older black vote. But the most important regional contest is yet to come: the swing states voting. That is determinative. And that will take more than Democrat leaders’ tired old strategies. And even tired old, same-o, same-o nominees.

When to Release the ‘Kraken’?

Sanders might have a fighting chance if the party’s nomination were determined by winning a simple majority of 1,991 delegates by means of winning caucuses and primaries. But it isn’t. The Democratic party leaders and financiers have made sure that their ‘ace in the hole’, should they need it, is their control over the 500+ so-called special delegates at their July nominating convention. The majority of these are Democrat members of Congress—representatives and Senators. And they will vote as the party recommends, with few exceptions. So even if Sanders wins in a sweep of the ‘swing states’ primaries coming up, even if he is far and away the holder of the largest plurality of delegates from the primaries, he will still be deprived of the party’s nomination in July at the convention, I predict, when the party leaders ‘release the Kraken’ (an ancient Norse sea-monster) of the 500 special delegates to vote for the party leaders’ favorite boy. And guess who that’ll be?

Why Biden Can’t Beat Trump

A final takeaway from Super Tuesday primaries is this: Biden’s win of the South is irrelevant, as was said. He can’t deliver those states’ electoral votes in the general election. Obama and the Democrats already lost that race back in 2010, when Obama’s failed economic recovery of Main St. resulted in an historic sweep by Republicans of the House & Senate, state governorships and state legislatures in dozens of ‘red states’ in 2010 and 2012-14. Gerrymandering and escalating voter suppression followed Republican capture of the red states. That now ensure that these states stay ‘red’. Second point: if Biden gets the nomination, Sanders movement supporters will not vote for him. They will stay home. The Democrats could lose several western states in that case, as well as the South. It then won’t matter if they win one or more northern ‘swing states’. Party leaders think all they have to do is hold the party together, convince everyone there’s no other choice but to vote for Biden (or Bloomberg). And just ‘turn’ the 70 electoral votes in the swing states that determined the electoral college win in 2016 for Trump. One must also add the strong likelihood that Trump will eat Biden’s lunch, as they say, in the TV debates before the general November election. Finally, one cannot discount Trump and Republican last minute dirty tricks. At the top of that list will be an ‘October Surprise’ in the week before the November election, in which something dramatic associated with Biden’s connection to the Ukraine—whether true or not—will be revealed by ‘Trumpublican’ dirty tricksters. The Democrat Party establishment will not be able to respond in time to negate the effect of the revelation.

The Party’s Coming Irrevocable Split

In short, a badly split Democrat Party, should Sanders be cheated out of the nomination (again), will undermine it during the last stage of the general election in November; Biden will almost certainly come off badly in the TV debates; and the ‘Trumpublican’ practice of winning by any means necessary, even if it means destroying what’s left of American Democracy, will together result in another failed strategy and attempt by the Democratic Party leadership to defeat Donald Trump.

Biden is not ‘more electable’ than Sanders (who by the way leads Trump in scores of independent polls). Biden’s electability is a gross myth peddled by the Democrat establishment’s media mouthpieces. Biden is maybe the least electable. Even Bloomberg would stand a better chance. (But then, there’s really little difference between Bloomberg and Trump, except for the latter’s foul mouth, bad manners, nasty tweets, and predilection to run roughshod over the US Constitution. Otherwise they’re both billionaires who in the end support billionaires).

So it seems the Democratic Party is at a real crossroads: Its corporate friendly leadership is doing all they can to maneuver on multiple fronts to deny Sanders the party’s nomination. Not just primary campaign maneuvers, convention delegate maneuvers, pushing fake messages like Sanders isn’t electable, or would lose ‘down ballot’ seats in Congress, and red-baiting Sanders’ FDR-like reforms (it’s not a revolution folks), labeling Sanders a radical ‘socialist’ (i.e. a Republican theme by the way), and raising trial balloons by some of the party’s major fundraisers who are declaring they would vote for Trump if Sanders were the nominee. (What they really mean is they would vote to keep the big investor tax cuts Trump gave them rather than let Sanders take their tax cut largesse away!).

The party’s leaders and strategists are so intent on denying Sanders the nomination that they would risk splitting the party and driving youth of all kind out of the party. If so, it could very well mean the beginning of the end of the Democratic party come November, a process by the way that would accelerate if Biden then loses the election.

Biden would be a replicant of Obama in terms of policy, albeit a tired and uninspiring version of the latter. But the outcome would be the same as under Obama for millennials, GenXers, and now GenZers. No solutions to their crises in employment, low pay, crunching student debt, unaffordable health care and cost of education, lack of decent housing, racial discrimination, indignation of the growing obscenity of super wealth accumulation by the few as they struggle for basics, and fear of a climate crisis out of control for them and their children. For the apparent generational divide within the Democratic Party is one and the same an economic divide—i.e. a matter of class.

It is unfortunate that Democrat leaders are so myopic they only see the coming general election with blinders on. Deny Sanders and they split the party, not just in November but after; allow Sanders as nominee and they give up their corporate-funded control of the party, its programs, and its policies they’ve had since 1992 with Bill Clinton. So they are talking themselves into the fiction that, even if they deny the nomination to Sanders, his supporters and movement will have ‘no where else to go’ but to fall in line behind Biden. But they do have somewhere to go: they’ll sit home. And then they’ll perhaps go out and organize a party independent of today’s Democratic Party.

Joe Biden’s nomination will not only mean failure to defeat Trump, but may mean an irrevocable split in the party itself.

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This article was originally published on the author’s blog site, Jack Rasmus.

Dr. Rasmus is author of the recently published book, ‘The Scourge of Neoliberalism: US Economic Policy from Reagan to Trump’, Clarity Press, January, 2020. He blogs at jackrasmus.com. His website is http://kyklosproductions.comand twitter handle, @drjackrasmus, He hosts the weekly radio show, Alternative Visions, on the Progressive Radio Network out of New York. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

What is the Syria war about?

Contrary to the depiction in Western media, the Syria war is not a civil war. This is because the initiators, financiers and a large part of the anti-government fighters come from abroad.

Nor is the Syria war a religious war, for Syria was and still is one of the most secular countries in the region, and the Syrian army – like its direct opponents – is itself mainly composed of Sunnis.

But the Syria war is also not a pipeline war, as some critics suspected, because the allegedly competing gas pipeline projects never existed to begin with, as even the Syrian president confirmed.

Instead, the Syria war is a war of conquest and regime change, which developed into a geopolitical proxy war between NATO states on one side – especially the US, Great Britain and France – and Russia, Iran, and China on the other side.

In fact, already since the 1940s the US has repeatedly attempted to install a pro-Western government in Syria, such as in 1949, 1956, 1957, after 1980 and after 2003, but without success so far. This makes Syria – since the fall of Libya – the last Mediterranean country independent of NATO.

Thus, in the course of the „Arab Spring“ of 2011, NATO and its allies, especially Israel and the Gulf States, decided to try again. To this end, politically and economically motivated protests in Syria were used and were quickly escalated into an armed conflict.

NATO’s original strategy of 2011 was based on the Afghanistan war of the 1980s and aimed at conquering Syria mainly through positively portrayed Islamist militias (so-called „rebels“). This did not succeed, however, because the militias lacked an air force and anti-aircraft missiles.

Hence from 2013 onwards, various poison gas attacks were staged in order to be able to deploy the NATO air force as part of a „humanitarian intervention“ similar to the earlier wars against Libya and Yugoslavia. But this did not succeed either, mainly because Russia and China blocked a UN mandate.

As of 2014, therefore, additional but negatively portrayed Islamist militias („terrorists“) were covertly established in Syria and Iraq via NATO partners Turkey and Jordan, secretly supplied with weapons and vehicles and indirectly financed by oil exports via the Turkish Ceyhan terminal.

ISIS: Supply and export routes through NATO partners Turkey and Jordan (ISW / Atlantic, 2015)

Media-effective atrocity propaganda and mysterious „terrorist attacks“ in Europe and the US then offered the opportunity to intervene in Syria using the NATO air force even without a UN mandate – ostensibly to fight the „terrorists“, but in reality still to conquer Syria and topple its government.

This plan failed again, however, as Russia also used the presence of the „terrorists“ in autumn 2015 as a justification for direct military intervention and was now able to attack both the „terrorists“ andparts of NATO’s „rebels“ while simultaneously securing the Syrian airspace to a large extent.

By the end of 2016, the Syrian army thus succeeded in recapturing the city of Aleppo.

From 2016 onwards, NATO therefore switched back to positively portrayed but now Kurdish-led militias  (the SDF) in order to still have unassailable ground forces available and to conquer the Syrian territory held by the previously established „terrorists“ before Syria and Russia could do so themselves.

This led to a kind of „race“ to conquer cities such as Raqqa and Deir ez-Zor in 2017 and to a temporary division of Syria along the Euphrates river into a (largely) Syrian-controlled West and a Kurdish (or rather American) controlled East (see map below).

This move, however, brought NATO into conflict with its key member Turkey, because Turkey did not accept a Kurdish-controlled territory on its southern border. As a result, the NATO alliance became increasingly divided from 2018 onwards.

Turkey now fought the Kurds in northern Syria and at the same time supported the remaining Islamists in the north-western province of Idlib against the Syrian army, while the Americans eventually withdrew to the eastern Syrian oil fields in order to retain a political bargaining chip.

While Turkey supported Islamists in northern Syria, Israel more or less covertly supplied Islamists in southern Syria and at the same time fought Iranian and Lebanese (Hezbollah) units with air strikes, though without lasting success: the militias in southern Syria had to surrender in 2018.

Ultimately, some NATO members tried to use a confrontation between the Turkish and Syrian armies in the province of Idlib as a last option to escalate the war. In addition to the situation in Idlib, the issues of the occupied territories in the north and east of Syria remain to be resolved, too.

Russia, for its part, has tried to draw Turkey out of the NATO alliance and onto its own side as far as possible. Modern Turkey, however, is pursuing a rather far-reaching geopolitical strategy of its own, which is also increasingly clashing with Russian interests in the Middle East and Central Asia.

As part of this geopolitical strategy, Turkey in 2015 and 2020 even used the so-called »weapon of mass migration«, which may serve to destabilize both Syria (so-called strategic depopulation) and Europe, as well as to extort financial, political or military support from the European Union.

Syria: The situation in February 2020

What role did the Western media play in this war?

The task of NATO-compliant media was to portray the war against Syria as a „civil war“, the Islamist „rebels“ positively, the Islamist „terrorists“ and the Syrian government negatively, the alleged „poison gas attacks“ credibly and the NATO intervention consequently as legitimate.

An important tool for this media strategy were the numerous Western-sponsored „media centres“, „activist groups“, „Twitter girls“, „human rights observatories“ and the like, which provided Western news agencies and media with the desired images and information.

Since 2019, NATO-compliant media moreover had to conceal or discredit various leaks and whistleblowers that began to prove the covert Western arms deliveries to the Islamist „rebels“ and „terrorists“ as well as the staged „poison gas attacks“.

But if even the „terrorists“ in Syria were demonstrably established and equipped by NATO states, what role then did the mysterious „caliph of terror“ Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi play? He possibly played a similar role as his direct predecessor, Omar al-Baghdadi – who was a phantom.

Thanks to new communication technologies and on-site sources, the Syria war was also the first war about which independent media could report almost in real-time and thus for the first time significantly influenced the public perception of events – a potentially historic change.

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Order Mark Taliano’s Book “Voices from Syria” directly from Global Research.

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At some point, it seemed like a slow burner, gathering attention with each press release from the World Health Organisation.  When talking about a threat, language is everything.  With more cases of COVID-19 being identified, the panic that comes from paranoia, suspicion and good old distrust is beginning to thrive. 

The signs of this vary in nuance: full blown siren calls regarding health warnings to a conspicuous absence of certain food items in stores.  Then come the gentle prods, such as that of Ian Goldin of Oxford University. “The spread of coronavirus around the world is alarming, but not surprising,” he observes from the pulpit of the Financial Times.  “Globalisation creates systemic risks.  As trade, finance, travel, cyber and other networks grow in scale and interact, they become more complex and unstable.”

Goldin reminds us of chaos theory, and its father, Edward Lorenz, who postulated that a butterfly flapping its miniscule wings over Brazil might incite the violence of a tornado in Texas.  Globalised diseases and epidemics are similarly instances of “a butterfly effect”, leaving authorities woefully unprepared.

Less gentle are the screams and howls of social media networks.  In 2013, New Zealand sociologist Robert Bartholomew likened the role of information sharing through social media networks as akin to the frightful gossip that led to the hanging of 19 people in the Salem Witch trials of 1692 and 1693.  Bartholomew was focusing on a case at Danvers, where two dozen teenagers at the Essex Agricultural College claimed to be having “mysterious” vocal tics and hiccups. The result?  Mass psychogenic illness (MPI), a form of conversion disorder that itself becomes a contagion.  

In all of this, warned Bartholomew, social media had played and would continue to play a role, agitating the spread.  There was a “potential for a far greater or global episode, unless we quickly understand how social media is, for the first time, acting as the primary vector or agent of spread for conversion disorder.”  His warnings were valid enough: epidemics might spread, but social media would fan the contagion, making it “just a matter of time before we see outbreaks that are not just confined to a single school or factor or even region, but covering a disperse geographical area and causing real social and economic harm.”  The medium would itself become the means of transmission.

Political and medical announcements, acting upon by media discussions and analysis, have also done their bit go give COVID-19 a rapid spread.  The news site for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation persists in running a red banner like a gory tickertape, updating readers on the next identified case: “Breaking News: A 10^th person has tested positive for coronavirus, according to the state’s Health Minister.”

The Australian Attorney-General Christian Porter is sufficiently alarmed to contemplate bringing in the heaviest of responses, activating biosecurity laws that will serve as nasty measures of population control.  The contagion, it seems, is spreading to the national security state itself.  On March 3, Australia’s chief health officers met to consider “social distancing” restrictions, while Porter chewed over laws introduced in 2015 that would give the minister power to prevent people from attending mass gatherings, forcibly detain and decontaminate targeted individuals.    

The Attorney-General could not help but sound slightly sinister in addressing questions posed to him on RN Breakfast.  “It’s very likely Australians will encounter practices and instructions and circumstances that they have not had to encounter before.”  With a totalitarian sensibility, Porter suggested that some of these measures “will be, in some instances, strange and foreign to many Australians.  But they will become very important, I suspect, over the next couple of months.” 

Other suggestions, tips and responses have reached the level of the absurd.  New South Wales Health Minister Brad Hazzard (a name that could only be deemed unfortunate in these circumstances) has warned against shaking hands.  “At a time when we have a virus that appears to be reasonably active in its endeavours to get into our community … it will be sensible not to be handshaking.”  Not that Australians could not kiss, “but certainly you would be exercising a degree of care and caution whom you choose to kiss.”  Good for Hazzard to be discriminating in the matter.

Such disease chat has had its rushing effect.  Australians have engaged in a spree of panic buying, emptying supermarket shelves of toilet paper and other essentials. Infectious disease specialist Professor Peter Collignon is bemused by it all.  By all means, have that supply of critical medicines and a decent stash of over-the-counter products.  “You don’t need boxes and boxes of the stuff.”  As for food, Australia remained a net exporter of food.  “You’re not going to run out of food, you might not have same choice of foods but you won’t be left without.”

Such talk seems eminently sensible, and is bound to end up in the bin of pointy-headed expertise.  Consumers and citizens have succumbed to that other great and near incurable contagion: a loss of trust in information.  Can the figures identifying the virus be trusted?  Are the authorities engaged in their own sordid cover-up?  Panic and anxiety, helped to giddying proportions by rumour, have done their best to destroy any reassurance.

Even efforts to sound calm and measured risk upending apple carts.  The President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, gave an update on the spread of coronavirus in the European Union that did as much to disturb as inform.  “The ECDC (European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control) announced today that the risk level has risen from moderate to high for people in the European Union.  In other words, the virus continues to spread.”

The degree of concern has risen as much due to speed as the number of cases.  On Sunday, Italy registered a jump of some 50 percent of coronavirus cases.  Across the EU, there are 2,100 confirmed cases across 18 member states.

European Commissioner for Health and Food Safety Stella Kyriakides notes the difficulties in responding to COVID-19 but suggests that all states work collectively to resolve it. “Now is not the time for panic or misinformation, which fuels anxiety. We need to remain calm, focused and united.”  With each call for calm, anxiety is showing itself in different colours across the globe, becoming louder with each official statement.  The butterfly’s wings continue to flap, and the tornadoes continue to come.

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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]

Units of the Russian Military Police entered the town of Saraqib in eastern Idlib following the second liberation of the town from al-Qaeda terrorists and Turkish forces. According to the Russian military, the deployment took place at 5:00pm local time on March 2 and was intended to provide security and allow traffic through the M4 and M5 highways. In fact, the Russians came to put an end to Turkish attempts to capture the town and cut off the M5 highway in this area.

At the same time, the Syrian Army repelled attempts of al-Qaeda and Turkish forces to capture the town of Kafr Nubl in southern Idlib and recaptured several nearby villages, including Hazarin and Dar al-Kabirah. According to pro-government sources, at least 15 units of military equipment belonging to Turkish proxies were destroyed in the recent operations. The Turkish side responded to the developments on the ground with a new batch of victorious statements.

According to the March 2 remarks by Defense Minister Hulusi Akar, the number of ‘neutralized’ Syrian troops since the start of Operation Spring Shield reached 2,557. This is approximately 350 Syrian soldiers higher than was claimed on March 1. The main question is: “Does the Turkish defense minister really believe in the numbers that he provides?” It probably would be useful to not make such claims personally. Thus, he would be able to avoid blushing with shame. If the Syrian Army really suffers such casualties in only a few days, Turkish-led forces would easily achieve their declared goal of expelling Syrian troops of southern and eastern Idlib.

In reality, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is going to Moscow on March 5 in order to negotiate a ceasefire. “My only wish is to end this struggle with victory and prevent further bloodshed, with a permanent cease-fire. For this, we are using all our diplomatic channels, along with our struggle in the field,” Erdogan told a gathering of ruling Justice and Development Party officials.

So, just a few days ago supporters of the Turkish operation were claiming that the mighty Turkish forces had already defeated the Assad regime and would soon enter the cities of Damascus and Aleppo. Now, the same sources are admiring the clever and forward-looking policy of the Turkish leader not to escalate the situation any further.

It would appear that things are not going the Turkish way in Idlib. When Erdogan and Putin reach another ceasefire, which will formally put an end to Ankara’s goal to push the Syrian Army out of the recently cleared areas, the same sources will likely declare this a Turkish victory. The 2nd strongest army in NATO appeared to be not capable of defeating Syrian forces, which are exhausted by a nearly 10-year long conflict, without suffering unacceptable losses.

The balance of power in Greater Idlib has once again changed. If the Turkish Army does not achieve some unexpected breakthrough, for example the capture of Maarat al-Numan, immediately, the main efforts of Turkish diplomacy will likely be focused on reaching an agreement that would prevent a Syrian advance on Idlib. This city is the main stronghold of al-Qaeda and the last really large urban center in the hands of militant groups in the region. The fall of Idlib into the hands of the Syrian Army would destroy all Turkish hopes to solidify its own influence in this part of Syria.

However, even a Russian-Turkish deal on Idlib city will likely not put an end to the anti-terrorism efforts of the Syrian Army and its allies. The town of Jisr al-Shughur, located near the M4 highway, is among possible targets of the upcoming operations. The town is currently controlled by the Turkistan Islamic Party, an al-Qaeda-linked group consisting of foreigners. So, mainstream media outlets can start preparing to defend another group of ‘moderate rebels’ that would be oppressed by the brutal Assad regime.

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The current U.S. President again threatens military action against Venezuela and continues sanctioning governments and companies with ties to the Bolivarian Republic and Cuba

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More than 200 years have passed since James Monroe became the fifth president of the United States. Unlike Donald Trump, he had been a soldier, lawyer, senator, governor and even Secretary of State. Trump, the country’s 45th President, a multimillionaire inexperienced in politics, has done nothing more than repeat what was said and done by the inventor of the “America for Americans” doctrine.

What is common in what happened in 1823 and what is happening today is that Monroe’s philosophy is being dusted off by Trump, to making a reality of the notion that the nations of Latin America are Washington’s backyard.

The latest threat to Venezuela of a possible military intervention, the recent coup in Bolivia under the auspices of the Organization of American States (OAS), the tightening of the blockade of Cuba, destabilization in Nicaragua, and open interference in the internal affairs of countries in the region, where democratic governments have set the standards for development and sovereignty, do not come as a surprise.

“Here in the Western Hemisphere we are committed to maintaining our independence from the intrusion of expansionist foreign powers,” Trump stated at the United Nations General Assembly in New York in 2018. “It has been the formal policy of our country, since President James Monroe, that we reject interference by foreign nations in this hemisphere and in our own affairs,” he added cynically.

In February 2018, then-Secretary of State for the Trump administration, Rex Tillerson, said,

“the Monroe Doctrine is as relevant today as it was on the day it was written.”

On that same date, another member of the President’s group of hawks, John Bolton, said in an article in The Hill, that Russian interference in Latin America could inspire Trump to reaffirm the Monroe Doctrine.

This is how this first term of office is going, for a President who intends to be re-elected next November.

This is a state in which, in 1904, President Theodore Roosevelt established that if a European country threatened the rights or property of U.S. citizens or companies in a Latin American nation, the government was obliged to intervene in the affairs of that country to remedy the situation.

In these cases, we must consider what leaders of the U.S. empire have understood and understand today, regarding the rights or properties of U.S. citizens or companies.” The Helms-Burton Act made their pretensions law.

Let us not forget the long list of U.S. interventions in Latin American nations, to make sure their colonial status was not threatened, including invasions, coups and blockades, and other hostile actions. While, at the time, Washington denied its role in overthrowing governments, documents declassified years later by their own institutions reveal the truth.

The U.S. website Bloomberg recently noted that the United States continues to consider the military option to overthrow Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.

In the February 21 article, an official of the Trump administration was quoted as saying,

“President Donald Trump is frustrated that pressure is building too slowly on Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and is still considering military options in the country, including a naval blockade.”

Invoking Monroe and his “doctrine,” Trump issued threatening warnings to companies that continue to do business with Venezuela, including India Reliance Industries; Repsol of Spain; the U.S. oil company Chevron; and several Greek shipping companies.

The article continues citing the unnamed official, “The administration continues to pursue what he called the Trump doctrine to foster democratic governments throughout the Western Hemisphere, akin to the Monroe Doctrine, which warned against European colonization efforts in the Americas two centuries ago,” adding that “Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua remain impediments” to this plan. Not much has changed in 197 years.

U.S.-backed coups in Latin America and the Caribbean over the last 70 years. Photo: RT

In Context

US-backed Coups in Latin America and the Caribbean 1948-2019

Venezuela 1948 and 2002

• November 24, 1948, President Rómulo Gallegos was deposed
• Coup against President Hugo Chavez fails on April 11, 2002

Paraguay 1954

• In May, General Alfredo Stroessner led a coup against President Federico Chaves and installed a bloody dictatorship

Guatemala 1954

• In June, coup against Guatemalan President Jacobo Arbenz

Dominican Republic 1963

• In September, President John Bosch overthrown

Brazil 1964

• On March 31, a coup against President João Goulart, followed by 21 years of dictatorship

Argentina 1966 and 1976

• In June of 1966, President Arturo Illia overthrown by a coup
• In 1976 another coup took place, this time against President María Estela Martínez de Perón

Bolivia 1971 and 2019

• On August 21, 1971, Hugo Banzer Suárez led a coup
• Coup against re-elected President Evo Morales on November 10, 2019

Uruguay 1973

• Juan Maria Bordaberry, with the support of the CIA, established a de facto government

Chile 1973

• Military coup against Salvador Allende, led by Augusto Pinochet with full support of the CIA

El Salvador 1979

• October 15, President Carlos Humberto Romero overthrown, causing a civil war that lasted 12 years and left at least 70,000 dead and thousands more missing.

Panama 1989

• December 20, direct intervention by more than 20,000 U.S. soldiers to overthrow the President and massacre the civilian population

Peru 1992

• On April 5, President Alberto Fujimori carried out a “self-coup” in his country, with the support of the Armed Forces

Haiti 2004

• On February 29, President Jean-Bertrand Aristide forced to leave the country

Honduras 2009

• In June, coup staged against President Manuel Zelaya

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Source: RT News

Britain is circling the plughole. So many things are wrong on so many levels it’s difficult to know where to start. After the banks crashed the economy, austerity followed. One £trillion was added to the national debt. Half was thrown down the drain to appease banks that were threatening financial armageddon if they were not bailed out. The other half was thrown at the economy to stop an economic disaster that would have resulted in riots across the country. Ten years later, an austerity ravaged country is almost on its knees. And now this.

There is now a crisis everywhere you look. The NHS, housing and homelessness, policing, disabled, the vulnerable – it goes on and on.

Austerity inflicted deep cuts to local authorities who, in turn, were forced to cut social care. The yawning gap between demand and supply gets wider each year.  And the social care crisis starkly demonstrates that Britain is unable to look after its elderly.

At the other end of the struggle of daily life is another section of our society that is now in free-fall.

The UK has been accused of employing “inadequate” provision for children’s rights protection after it fell dramatically in global rankings for child rights.  Within two years, Britain’s world-class ranking has collapsed from 11th to 170th. Yes, you read that right – from 11th to 170th out of 181 countries. Last year, the plunge was to 156th and the plunge continues. The usual suspects for top slots are – Iceland, Portugal, Finland, Switzerland and Germany.

The UK now ranks among the bottom 10 global performers in the arena of improving rights of the child, after it achieved the lowest-possible score across all six available indicators in the domain of Child Rights Environment (CRE), according to the KidsRights Index. Afghanistan, a decades-long war-torn territory, now just handed back to the Taliban ranks just 11 places behind the UK.

The index is an annual ranking that measures to what extent children’s rights are respected worldwide, and especially which efforts these 181 ranked countries are enacting to improve the rights of children. Data is collated from Unicef and the United Nations Committee.

Serious concerns have been raised about structural discrimination in the UK, including Muslim children facing increased discrimination following recent anti-terrorism measures, and a rise in discrimination against refugee children in recent years.

In light of the findings, Lord Philip Hunt, shadow deputy leader of the House of Lords and shadow health spokesperson, accused the Government of “inactivity” and “inadequate service provision”, urging it to do more to protect the rights of the child.

Marc Dullaert, founder and chairman of the KidsRights Foundation, meanwhile urged the UK to treat non-discrimination as a policy priority and to speed up the process of aligning its child protection laws with the Convention on the Rights of the Child at both the national and devolved levels.

“Discrimination against vulnerable groups of children and youths is severely hampering opportunities for future generations to reach their full potential,” Mr Dullaert said.

Since the Brexit vote in 2016, racism has been rapidly rising. Nearly three quarters from ethic minorities now report that they are facing discrimination. A nationwide study ten months ago showed that – “Ethnic minorities in Britain are facing rising and increasingly overt racism, with levels of discrimination and abuse continuing to grow in the wake of the Brexit referendum.”

Divisive rhetoric in public, encouraged by politicians has made matters dramatically worse with racial discrimination jumping almost 50 per cent in just three years. Both the Conservatives and Labour have been tainted by allegations of Islamophobia and antisemitism respectively and this only encourages racists in public.

This report from KidsRightsIndex simply feeds into the narrative that even if you’re a young vulnerable child, a refugee with legally protected status, it means nothing in modern-day Britain. This is the “hostile environment” in action that the government instigated, propagated and expanded that now persecutes even the most innocent.

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My father, a well-educated lawyer with a very sophisticated mind, used to advise me to “keep it simple.” By simple he didn’t mean simplistic.  He meant fundamentally logical and to the point. So I will do that here and stick to some simple realities, now that understanding what is going on in the world has become an idiot’s game played by the corporate mass media to confuse people.

I have been writing about the dangers of technology for many years. Not all technology, of course, for the pencil I am writing this with is a technology, and an amazing and underappreciated one. I am referring to the techno-scientific, digital, high-tech sort, the world of computers, cell phones, genetic engineering, biological weapons development, etc.  You know, all the stuff that has made our lives easier.

Two of the major problems the world faces – world destruction with nuclear weapons and the poisoning of the earth’s ecology and atmosphere – are the result of the marriage of science and technique that has given birth to the technological “babies” (Little Boy and Fat Man) that were used by the U.S. to massacre hundreds of thousands of Japanese and now threaten to incinerate everyone, and the chemical and toxic inventions that have despoiled the earth, air, and water and continue to kill people worldwide through America’s endless war-making and industrial applications.

Technology and technique, the technical way of thinking that undergirds it, are what we should fear most, not the will-o’-the-wisps marched out daily by the corporate mass media to create fear and panic. Those are ghost fears that should only frighten children.  But as I have written before, most Americans are children, living inside a doll’s house of illusions and delusions while government and intelligence forces and their mass media accomplices play with them through technological propaganda.

For every problem caused by technology, a technological “solution” is always offered that creates further technological problems ad infinitum.  But since people have been taught to love technology, they embrace the alleged technological “solutions” that are necessitated by the problems caused by the original technology.  It’s a circle game.

In our technopoly, logical thinking has become illogical; cause and effect, means and ends have been inverted.  The causes of our problems are touted as the means to end them. These “solutions” are always offered with a straight face, as if they made perfect sense.  This is how societies operate when in the grip of myths.  In this case, the myths of science, progress, and history.  Such myths render the obvious invisible as they create a hopeless inevitability in people who can imagine no alternative and have been convinced that science is the secret to salvation and the means to the things they have learned to desire, including longevity and perhaps “immortality.” And these things have become the means to additional means in an endless loop from which, by definition, ends are absent.  As a result, the search for truth, celebrated as a goal of science, is slyly eliminated.  Keeping it simple becomes harder and harder.

The important point is that the entire system of propaganda works on fear that is promulgated via the electronic media: television, cell phones, and computers. It is pumped out non-stop.

The fear is the fear of death, the fundamental human fear that the powerful know how to manipulate to control people.

Death that can come at the hands of fabricated enemies, disease, or state forces that will get you if you step too far out of line. Russia, China, Iran, corona virus, Julian Assange, and Chelsey Manning being a few prominent recent examples of what to fear and what will become of you if you resist the fear-mongering and lies, and are brave.

Since today’s news is dominated by the fear of coronavirus, here is a partial list of other diseases that since 2003 we were told loudly and repeatedly would become pandemics and decimate the human race. Diseases to be very afraid of since they were coming for you if you weren’t very vigilant and forgot to wash your hands.

• 2003 SARS
• 2005 Avian Flu
• 2009 Swine Flu
• 2012 West Nile Virus
• 2014 Ebola
• 2016 Zika

Well, they didn’t, very far from it; they were like scam telephone calls that scare the gullible into believing the message that they will be immediately arrested if they don’t send $1,000 to Mr. X somewhere. But just like the color-coded terrorism warnings under George W. Bush, the pandemic alerts regularly pressed the panic button and kept fear in the air, until the panic balloon later burst under careful scrutiny, but at a point when most people had ingested the false fear of the earlier headlines and were not about to follow-up.

Now we have Coronavirus (COVID-19).  So beware.  Let us show you how to wash your hands and protect yourself.

Ten minutes viewing of any of the major television networks news shows is like entering a house of horrors at an amusement park.  After viewing one, you want to wear your football helmet and mask, go to bed, and never get up.  They ooze fear, as is their intent.

The game is both obvious and subtle.  Even while COVID-19 is hyped, here and there the media throw in exaggerated figures on the regular flu, as if to say: we are fair and objective; both are bad, even if the coronavirus might soon become a pandemic.

It’s akin to their saying Trump is really scary, but look how scary the socialist Sanders is.  You don’t want either.  You want the one we will tell you to want who will protect you.  Listen to us, for we are here to advise, so you will consent.

The news reports about the regular seasonal flu are most interesting.  If you peruse the media across all platforms, including alternative sources, you will see people repeating as fact the numbers of flu deaths in the U.S.A. so far this flu season (October 1, 2019 until today).

The numbers range from 12,000 to 18, 000 and higher, from CNN, CBS, NBC, etc.  Try it. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates the “flu deaths” for this season will be 18,000 to 46,000.  However, if you dig down into the CDC figures and look at its table, which few do, you will see that the actual number of flu deaths claimed by the CDC for this season so far is 2,946. They also claim the number of cases is decreasing and this season doesn’t look particularly bad. (Go here, scroll down, and click on “View Data Chart”).

Isn’t that strange?  A bit of a simple discrepancy, wouldn’t you say?  Why would the CDC do that, and why would the media repeat it?

The CDC claims there will be 18,000-46,000 deaths this season but only 2,946 have so far died of the flu and the peak months for flu have ended.  Where are those 15,000-46,000 additional deaths going to come from?

What kind of game is going on here?

To repeat: the essential fear that the powerful use to manipulate and control people is the fear of death.  Death in many guises: physical, social, psychological, etc. But the fear of death must be used in a way that is very confusing and scrambles people’s thinking while it frightens them.

If we keep it simple and examine what there really is to fear, it is the growth of the sophisticated modern technology in the hands of governments and corporations that has destroyed privacy, poisoned people and the earth, created digital dementia on a vast scale, allowed propaganda to flourish as never before, and is poised to blow the world to smithereens with nuclear weapons.

Then, of course there is the biologic disease warfare research and development that the U.S.A. has been involved in since it brought the German scientists here after WW II (Operation Paperclip) to continue the work they did for Hitler.  Genetic research and the creation of virulent forms of viruses and bacteria became twisted into a system of science and medicine funded by the government to serve duel purposes that have become hard to distinguish.

So instead of panicking, perhaps it is better to ask some simple questions and seek simple answers.  Maybe start by checking the CDC data and then asking what those anthrax attacks following the attacks of September 11, 2001 were all about, and why the U.S.A. refused in the summer of 2001 to sign the Protocol to the 1975 Biological Weapons Convention (BWC) that would have added verification procedures to the BWC.  Maybe read Graeme Mac Queen’s eye-opening book, The 2001 Anthrax Deception.

Maybe see that the mass media reports about the coronavirus conceal more than they reveal.

Keep it simple and question.      

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Distinguished author and sociologist Edward Curtin is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization. Visit the author’s website here.

Featured image is from SHTFplan.com

March 2nd, was the birthday of Dr. Aafia Siddiqui. People may be forgiven (should they be?) for forgetting about Aafia since these seventeen birthdays of hers have gone by with her incarcerated, humiliated, tortured, and God knows what in one American gulag to another. But these seem to be ‘minor’ details right now.

In the brouhaha surrounding the US-Taliban ‘Peace Deal,’ the usual self-congratulatory political theatrics have been on full display. The post-9/11 Afghan theatre of the war OF terror has been the longest external war waged by the US in its entire history, putting aside the even longer internal genocidal war against indigenous Native Americans. The imperial war has lasted longer than both world wars combined.

Screenshot Urdu Point

The US/NATO war and occupation of Afghanistan offers a glaring case of what US Senator Fulbright (yes, the one who started the Fulbright program of scholarships and exchanges) called the ‘arrogance of power’ (of his country), his book being of the same title. The wealthiest and most powerful nation in the history of the world, with a war machine on steroids, invading and occupying for nearly two decades one of the poorest countries on the planet – and one which had already undergone two decades of uninterrupted internecine war in the prior two decades.

Applying the term arrogance here would be a gross understatement. Imperial state criminality and terror against just another ‘shithole’ (to quote the current ‘genius’ American president) nation would be more appropriate.

For those who suffer from historical amnesia and Western propaganda and lies – the both go hand in hand – some quick refreshing of our memory may be useful. There were no Afghans among the terrorists of 9/11. The Taliban government in Afghanistan both denounced the attack and was willing to cooperate with the Bush administration, according to all the rules of customary international law, if provided evidence by the US of involvement of terrorists located inside Afghanistan.

Image on the right: FBI composite image of Siddiqui for the FBI wanted poster. (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

But the Taliban and Afghan society as a whole had to learn the hard way what dozens upon dozens of ‘shithole’ countries of the Global South have experienced throughout the 20th and 21st century. That is, Uncle Sam requires no evidence, no compelling or even not-so-compelling rationale, and no permission or authorization from the UN or anyone, to effectively implement America’s third great holocaust in its short history – that being the war against the Third World. The first two holocausts, of course, being that against the indigenous population followed by that against black African bodies captured, brutalized, and enslaved.

But to be fair, there were some post facto – after the war had already begun on the Afghan people – justifications offered for why the US/NATO invasion was indispensable at this moment.

Three of the central reasons concocted were: 1) to get rid of the worst regime ever (the Taliban) with whom we will never negotiate; 2) to ‘liberate’ Afghan women from under the Taliban tyranny they live; and 3) to end the opium production completely because it ostensibly is so odious to ‘civilized’ American sensibilities.

Many liberals and much of the international community bought into this ‘savior complex’ syndrome in which the US takes such pride. The anti-war movement knew better. On all three fronts, the fraud and lies have been so nakedly exposed that Washington no longer even tries to articulate any type of justification for its fiasco in the land called the ‘graveyard of Empires.’

Those who the US said it will annihilate and never talk to are precisely the ones who Uncle Sam was humiliatingly forced to negotiate with now.

The plight of Afghan women, particularly outside of Kabul, is as bad if not worse than it was before the American invasion and occupation. Not to mention that Afghan women (and men, and children) don’t really get ‘liberated’ when bombs are dropping on their heads.

And perhaps the biggest scandal of all is that, at around the time of the US invasion, the UN had openly declared that the Taliban had dramatically reduced opium production because of their official policy of banning the production altogether.

Indeed, the most insidious deception that the Americans have played on this front is that the CIA, like in many of its other operations over the course of the past century, has benefitted enormously from the opium profits to fills its coffers for its rat lines that lead to its subversive and regime change clandestine activities all across the region. This is well-documented by now.

The American ‘war of revenge’ on Afghanistan was meant to be merely the first quick step to greater prizes in the heart of West Asia, including Iraq, Syria, and the Empire’s ‘golden calf,’ Iran. 9/11, as Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice disgustingly stated, presented an ‘opportunity.’ The world found out very quickly what she meant by this term. It was an ‘opportunity’ to maintain and deepen American imperial hegemony over the last remaining few ‘stubborn’ nations that don’t behave as ‘good Muslims’ like the House of Saud or the Sisi regime of Egypt. When the American empire asks these ‘good’ and ‘moderate’ Muslim regimes to jump, their enthusiastic and uniform response is: how high, master? Sadly, some like the Iranians don’t play that game and therefore imperial disciplining is necessitated for them and their ilk in the region.

The prolonged US presence in a war that has killed hundreds of thousands of Afghans and Pakistanis has been a power play to project waning American power against the growing multipolarity and strategic partnerships building in this crucial region. The central mission of the American imperial presence, with its satrap New Dehli, in Afghanistan became to sabotage and subvert the grand Eurasian integration plans by China, Russia, and Iran – the three crucial players in China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). And one can add Pakistan and Turkey to that list as well. The American political establishment is only interested in militarism, wars, weapons, bases, etc., and cannot fathom regional and global projects that are not interested in this ludicrous madness. Countries of the Global South, and particularly those who are directly connected to the initiative of Eurasian integration, desire prosperity for their nations, not death and destruction – the latter which seems to the name of the game for the American empire.

Of course, now we have a US-Taliban ‘deal’ that will allow Trump and the Pentagon to conceal the fact of the most powerful military machine in human history being defeated by an ethnic Pashtun resistance that was steadfast in its resolve to evict the occupiers. How long the truce called for in the ‘deal’ will last is anyone’s guess, but the imperial ‘wounded tiger’ surely must be getting tired of reckless defeats and fiascos everywhere it touches these days. On the other hand, addiction to hegemony and war don’t go away easily.

Nevertheless, the concern of Afghans and Pakistanis who have been killed and whose societies have been devastated by this ‘Af-Pak’ theatre of the war OF terror, should centrally be: restorative justice. Justice for all the drone victims, families and communities bombed during weddings and funerals, humiliating night raids into people’s homes in villages and towns. Justice for those who have had to endure one of the most corrupt puppet regimes for two decades that doled out billions of dollars to its favored warlords and family/clan members, while the people were left hungry, without even semi-decent education and health care. Justice for those who have been displaced and killed in the hundreds of thousands in Northwest Pakistan because Uncle Sam needed Islamabad to conduct military operations against its own people. And justice most of all for those who have had to endure the torture chambers and gulags of American empire, from Bagram to solitary confinement in supermax prisons in the US.

One of the clauses of the ‘deal’ is a significant prisoner exchange. Roughly five thousand POWs are to be returned to the Taliban. There is one Pakistani woman who has shamefully been caught in the venality of this entire American project. This piece started by mentioning her birthday yesterday. Dr. Aafia Siddiqui should be at the very top of that list of brutalized prisoners for whom justice and dignity must immediately be restored by their release.

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Dr. Junaid S. Ahmad is professor of religion and world politics in Lahore, Pakistan.

British government propaganda unit ran covert campaigns across the Middle East for several years at the height of the Cold War, distributing Islamic messages in a bid to counter the appeal of communism.

Recently declassified official papers show that the Information Research Department (IRD), a then-secret division of the UK Foreign Office, commissioned a series of sermons that were reproduced and distributed throughout the Arabic-speaking world.

The papers show that the unit also arranged for articles to be inserted in magazines published by Al-Azhar University in Cairo, “to ensure that every student leaves the University a resolute opponent of Communism”.

In an attempt to reach as wide an audience as possible, the IRD also published and distributed across the region a series of Arabic-language romantic and detective novels, within which anti-communist messages were embedded.

These stressed that Soviet communism was essentially atheistic in philosophy and practice, and claimed that Moscow aimed to sow political disorder and economic chaos in the Middle East.

The papers also shed new light on the way in which the British government covertly controlled or influenced many of the radio stations and news agencies in the Middle East from the 1940s to the late 1960s. Some details of these operations became public after the IRD was shut down in 1977.

However, the latest tranche of declassified papers appear to show the IRD to have been particularly sensitive about what its officials termed “religious operations”, in which they attempted to utilise Islam as a bulwark against communism.

Marked Secret or Top Secret, many of the papers are being declassified after 50 or 60 years; nevertheless, some passages were blacked out by government censors before they were made public at the UK National Archives.

Subterfuge, bribery and sermons

The IRD was set up in 1948 in order to continue the work of a wartime body called the Political Warfare Executive. For the next 29 years it ran a number of newspapers, magazines, news agencies, radio stations and publishing houses, in order to spread unattributed anti-communist propaganda across much of the world.

Its favoured method, however, was to place stories in established newspapers and to covertly brief opinion formers. This was achieved on occasion by subterfuge or bribery, although early on, a senior IRD official, John Peck, warned that bribery might not always work.

“I have serious doubts about the value of bribery as a means of getting anti-communist articles in the press,” he wrote.

“I am told that except in Jordan and possibly in Syria the circulation of those Middle East newspapers which are open to bribery is small and their individual influence negligible.”

In the same memorandum, he summed up the reason for IRD material being distributed without attribution:

“However valid our arguments may be, the fact that they are our arguments makes them suspect to the Arabs. We can only overcome this difficulty by presenting the same arguments through an Arab intermediary.”

Despite Peck’s wariness, bribery continued to be used as a means of distributing propaganda material across the region.

Although financed through the same unpublished budget as Britain’s intelligence services, the newly-released papers show that the IRD also received funding from the oil industry.

“It is true that in the last year we have been receiving clandestine financial assistance from oil companies,” a memo to IRD director Ralph Murray, marked Top Secret, noted in 1954.

But the Middle East was seeing “the emergence of a state of total ideological warfare”, the author claimed. “And while such help is appreciated, the amount is completely inadequate to our vital needs.”

The newly declassified papers contain a number of references to “religious operations”. Frequently these references are concerned with the financing of such propaganda campaigns, rather than the means of delivery. “You will note that we are including new budgetary provision for £1,000 to cover ‘Religious Operations’” is one typical entry.

Some details of the campaigns do emerge, however. In February 1950, for example, two years after the IRD was set up, its representative at the British embassy in Cairo informed London: “The Friday sermon has always been recognised as one of the most important way [sic] of spreading propaganda in the Moslem world.”

“We have now devised a scheme for ensuring that anti-Communist themes are adequately dealt with. A series of sermons has been written here.”

This was still happening 10 years later, as a top-secret memo from Beirut from August 1960 makes clear: “We hope to produce two short pamphlets or sermons a month on religious subjects. They will be written by Sheikh Saad al Din Trabulsi, formerly of the Beirut Moslem Tribunal (sharia) and now of Zahle Moslem Tribunal, who is well-known as a pious Moslem.”

“Two thousand copies of each would be distributed unattributably … throughout the Arabic-speaking world (less Iraq). Recipients will be Sheikhs, other leading Moslem personalities, Mosques and Muslim education establishments.”

The intermediary between the IRD and Trabulsi is named in the files as a man called Rivera, although this is possibly a codename.

Another intermediary between the IRD and individuals described as “religious operators” is named in the files as Talaat Dajani, a Palestinian refugee living in Beirut. Dajani later moved to London, where he received a medal of honour from the Queen in 1979, and died in 1992.

The whole Trabulsi operation, the IRD representative explained to London, would cost around 8,800 Lebanese pounds, or around £1,000 sterling, a year.

Although Iraq was excluded from that campaign, the country was on occasion the subject of IRD religious operations. In 1953, for example, IRD headquarters wrote to its man in Baghdad, saying: “We would like to know more about your ‘pilot’ scheme for the covert dissemination of propaganda in the Shia holy places since it may suggest ideas which could be used outside Iraq.

“Is the scheme connected with the working party’s proposal to make Friday sermons prepared in Beirut available to certain Shia divines?”

IRD officials saw another chance to make use of “religious operations” in Iraq following the attempted assassination of the country’s prime minister, Abd al-Karim Qasim, as he was being driven through Baghdad in October 1959.

There had been a “remarkable religious revival” following the attempt, the unit noted. “Workmen engaged in demolition work near the site of the attempted assassination had discovered the tomb of a Moslem holy man; this story had been widely publicized and had given substance to the popular belief that the Premier had been miraculously preserved. It was agreed that there would be an advantage in giving wider circulation to the story.

“Religious stickers have been appearing in Baghdad and the possibility of augmenting them is to be considered.”

Disruption and influence operations

The following April, a conference of Middle East-based IRD officers was held in Beirut. The minutes of what was described as a “restricted session on covert propaganda” show that Ralph Murray “listed the targets at which we should aim to disrupt or influence”.

Those to be disrupted included communist parties and hostile propaganda agencies. This was at a time when printing presses inside Soviet embassies were thought to be producing 10,000 copies of a newspaper entitled Akhbar every day.

Those to be influenced, on the other hand, included young people, women, trades unions, teachers’ organisations, the armed forces and religious leaders.

The representative from the British embassy in Baghdad explained that Iraq “was now an important target for religious material”, at which point, the minutes say, IRD officers based in Amman and Khartoum “also pressed strongly for supplies of sermons and religious articles, which they said they could easily place”.

The files make clear that several governments in the region connived with the IRD and would assist in the distribution of sermons and the placement of newspaper and magazine articles.

The IRD’s man in Baghdad also “emphasised that the Iraqi army was an important target” and suggested that arrangements might be made for selected officers to visit the UK, with the trip appearing to be arranged by bodies with no clear connection to the British government.

He also noted that in Basra, the same press was being used to print both communist and non-communist newspapers, and said that “the judicious use of some financial inducement would probably make it possible to put the Communist paper out of business if that were thought to be desirable”.

Delegates were briefed on the propaganda efforts of other members of the Baghdad Pact: the Cold War alliance of Iran, Iraq, Turkey, Pakistan and the UK that was dissolved in 1979. The IRD enjoyed extensive contacts with Baghdad Pact governments, offering both propaganda materials and technical support.

“In practice,” the delegates were told, “only the Turks are really active, having achieved the publication in the Turkish press of 25-30 articles a month prepared by a writers’ panel.”

Finally, the secret conference was informed that HMG [Her Majesty’s Government] was running two newspapers published in Bahrain: al Khalij and its English-language sister paper, the Gulf Times.

One paragraph in the minutes of the session notes that delegates were told that these newspapers were “exceptional”, in that IRD “preferred to work through staff of established newspapers”.

These minutes are among the papers that have been declassified and handed to the UK National Archives. But, 60 years after the conference, the subsequent paragraph remains blacked out.

Nasser and the Suez crisis

From the end of the Second World War to the late 1960s, successive British governments appear to have used intelligence and propaganda in an attempt to preserve strategic and economic interests in the Middle East at a time when they were struggling to retain influence.

Earlier disclosures about the IRD’s activities have shown that while some senior British diplomats in the region were highly enthusiastic, others were sceptical, fearing that exposure would exacerbate anti-British sentiment.

This is exactly what did happen, at a time and place where the British were about to take their last fling of the imperial dice: in 1956, in Egypt.

The IRD had been highly active in Egypt from the organisation’s inception. As an IRD paper written in Cairo in 1950 noted: “Conditions in Egypt are such as to make it eminently suitable breeding ground for Communism.”

The author went on to highlight “acute maldistribution between rich and poor” and the concentration of land in the hands of a small proportion of the population.

Nevertheless, he wrote:

“This paper deals with the use of British-inspired propaganda. It does not deal with the more important problem of positive action to remedy the social and economic conditions likely to assist the spread of Communism.”

Instead, the author explained, the IRD was targeting the students at Al-Azhar University on the grounds that “from among them come the Imams who preach the Friday sermon in every Egyptian Mosque; the teachers of Arabic in the secondary schools and all teachers in the village schools; and the lawyers specializing in Moslem law”.

The organisation was also arranging for “the production in drafts in English of short love or detective novels, or thrillers, embodying anti-Communist propaganda but following their local counterparts as closely as possible in presentation etc.

“The Information Department, Cairo, would arrange for the drafts to be rewritten in Arabic by local hacks, and for them to be published locally.”

The unit would also “investigate the feasibility of producing short love or thriller magazine stories (of about 2,000 words) with an anti-Communist twist”.

The jewel in the IRD’s crown in Cairo was the Arab News Agency (ANA), one of several media organisations that British intelligence had set up during the Second World War.

Like other news agencies and radio stations that had been established in Beirut, Tripoli, Sharjah, Bahrain and Aden, ANA came under the control of the IRD after that organisation was founded in 1948.

To those on the outside, ANA appeared to be part of Hulton Press, a large company owned by Edward Hulton, a Fleet Street media baron. In fact, Hulton had allowed his company to give cover to the IRD and Britain’s overseas intelligence agency, MI6.

As well as distributing genuine news stories, gathered by Egyptian and British journalists, the agency disseminated propaganda produced by IRD, and became a base for MI6 officers masquerading as journalists.

In March 1956, with relations between the UK and Egypt deteriorating sharply, the UK Foreign Office instructed the IRD to switch its focus away from communism and towards the government led by Gamal Abdel Nasser – who had been engaged in propaganda operations against the British for some years.

The following July, after Nasser nationalised the Suez Canal Company – taking control of the waterway that the British considered to be the jugular vein of their empire – the UK’s propaganda and espionage efforts under the cover of ANA rapidly picked up pace.

Anthony Eden, the British prime minister, had long been convinced that Nasser was under the influence of the Kremlin – although the British ambassador in Cairo, Humphrey Trevelyan, disagreed – and MI6 began considering whether the Egyptian president could be assassinated.

Poison gas was one favoured option; an exploding electric razor was another.

Instead, as the Suez Crisis began to unfold, Eden vetoed the murder plot and the British decided to engage in several months of psychological warfare in Cairo, followed by military intervention.

A powerful new radio transmitter was erected in Iraq, broadcasting programmes from Arabic stations around the region that were covertly under British control, an operation that was for a while given the codename Transmission X.

As the British, French and Israelis plotted to invade Egypt and occupy the area around the canal, a steady stream of IRD and MI6 propaganda specialists began to appear at the ANA’s offices in Cairo.

This had not gone unnoticed by the Egyptian government, however, and in August, just weeks before the invasions, all of the agency’s operations – news reporting, spreading propaganda and gathering intelligence – were brought to an abrupt halt.

Egyptian secret police raided its offices and the homes of several of its staff. Eleven Egyptians were accused of being spies working for MI6 officers based at the agency; one, Sayed Amin Mahmoud, a teacher, was executed, and his son, a naval officer, was jailed for life.

Two MI6 agents who helped to manage the agency were subjected to lengthy interrogation and jailed. Others were tried in their absence, and two British diplomats and four journalists were expelled.

However, the British head of the agency – who was also a correspondent for the Economist and the London-based Times newspapers, escaped arrest: it appears that the Egyptian government may have been feeding him disinformation, and wished to continue.

In the event, IRD simply set up a new Arab News Agency, from offices in Beirut, with staff in London, Cairo, Amman and Damascus.

By 1960, according to one of the recently-declassified files, few people working at the agency’s Beirut headquarters were aware that it was controlled by the British government; IRD staff were warned “therefore to be cautious in their dealings” with them.

In March that year the senior IRD officer at the British embassy in Beirut wrote to London to say: “Of our secret information operations, I … attach the greatest importance to the Arab News Agency. There is no doubt they are doing the most useful work throughout the area and they run a good office here.”

Reuters and the BBC

The recently declassified documents also shed new light on the way in which in the 1960s the British government persuaded Reuters, the international news agency, to take over the operations run by two IRD fronts, Regional News Service (Middle East) and Regional News Service (Latin America). The relationship between Reuters and the IRD was first exposed in the 1980s.

The government funded these Reuters operations through the BBC. It began paying the BBC enhanced fees for its World Service operations, and the BBC in turn paid Reuters extra sums for receiving its news feed.

While the IRD accepted that it could not exercise editorial control over Reuters, the declassified papers show it did believe that it would gain “a measure of political influence”.

Some of the IRD’s Cold War activities in the Middle East and North Africa remain secret, however, with many of its old files remaining classified on national security grounds.

Not all of the papers on Reuters and the Arab News Agency have been transferred to the UK National Archive, for example. One dating from 1960, with the catalogue description “renegotiation of contract between Reuters and the Arab News Agency”, is among the IRD files that remain classified.

Another that has been withheld by the UK Foreign Office is known to contain papers from 1960 and is entitled “Information Research Department: Jordanian television”.

Other withheld files concern efforts to distribute IRD material through the Maghreb Arab Press news agency after it was set up in 1959, or have titles like “Information Research Department: Arab trade unions”.

Many of the titles of the classified IRD files are themselves classified: the UK National Archives catalogue simply lists them as “Title withheld”.

Reputational damage?

The United States was also an enthusiastic purveyor of propaganda in the Middle East throughout the Cold War. Material created and distributed by the US Information Service tended to promote the idea of common western and Islamic values rather than attack Communism.

The recently declassified files are all concerned with British campaigns, however.

With the IRD being shut down in 1977 – in part, because too many people had become aware of its existence and activities – two questions remain.

The first is: did their campaigns have an impact on people’s attitudes and behaviour?

Throughout the Cold War, many British diplomats in the Middle East were sceptical about the IRD’s efforts. Some argued repeatedly that communism had only limited appeal in the region, and that Arab nationalism posed a greater threat to the UK’s interests than Moscow.

Even in Iraq – which the IRD appears to have believed to be more susceptible to communist influence than Egypt – some of Britain’s envoys had their doubts.

One diplomat wrote from Baghdad to the IRD in 1955 to explain: “The Arabs have no means of checking the accuracy of our allegations about the iniquities of the Communist system … but they have the means, as they believe, of checking Russian propaganda about French and British wickedness in the Persian Gulf and North Africa.

“In our experience, it is barely possible to interest the politically conscious Iraqi in the Communist system at all.”

Looking back, a number of historians remain equally sceptical.

Vyvyan Kinross, author of Information Warriors, a forthcoming book about the battles for hearts and minds in the Middle East, believes that Eden’s attempts to demonise Nasser in 1956 left him looking hopelessly out of touch, and propelled Britain into disastrous military action.

The failed propaganda war contributed to “a general collapse of Britain’s reputation for honesty and fair dealing in the region”, Kinross says.

James Vaughan, lecturer in international history at Aberystwyth University in Wales, who has extensively studied western Cold War propaganda in the Middle East, concludes: “The history of British propaganda in Egypt demonstrates how the decline of British influence was a well-advanced phenomenon, several years before Nasser’s decision to nationalise the Suez Canal Company.”

The second question is: what happened after the IRD was closed in 1977?

An intriguing answer to this question was provided by Adnan Abu-Odeh, who served as information minister in the government of King Hussein of Jordan.

Abu-Odeh would have been on MI6’s radar at the time. He was Palestinian who had risen through the ranks of the Jordanian secret police and been handpicked for the job by the king.

At the time the kingdom was going through a major crisis, which became known as Black September, when the Jordanian Armed Forces attacked and expelled the PLO under the leadership of Yasser Arafat from the refugee camps in Jordan.

The crisis was resolved when Palestinian fighters known as the fedayeen were escorted to Syria.

In an interview with Middle East Eye in 2018, Abu-Odeh explained how he was sent to England in the early 1970s, to be trained by the IRD.

While working as an intelligence officer, Abu-Odeh said, he was approached by the country’s newly-appointed director of intelligence. “He said to me: ‘His Majesty wants you to go on a course in London at the IRD.’

“I said to him: ‘What is the IRD? I didn’t know.”

Later, he was sent back to England to study psychological warfare at a military academy.

“The king was preparing me to become minister of information, on the advice of MI6. The IRD taught me their tactics and methods.

“When I became minister of information, I trained one or two people how to do it.”

Although there is no confirmation in the recently declassified IRD files, it seems entirely possible that before it was disbanded, the organisation trained other government officials across the region.

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Washington-led NATO and their allies support all of the terrorists in Syria, hence, the terrorists are appropriately named NATO terrorists. NATO has command and control (1) of all of the terrorists. Turkey, currently in the limelight for its supreme criminality, is a member of NATO.

The Caliphate Project (2) is appropriately named a “CIA Caliphate” again, since Washington is responsible for these terrorist gangs and their mission in Syria.

A significant part of the terrorist mission is “destabilization”. “Destabilization” means “to destroy”. The terrorists, in concert with the West, destroy everything.

One example would be civilian infrastructure. The terrorists have been committing war crimes for years now by destroying power and water plants, and the repair of these plants is further hindered because the criminal economic blockade that the West imposes on Syria impedes rehabilitation and rebuilding of said plants. Additionally, NATO terrorists have for years targeted and murdered workers who work on repairing NATO-destroyed infrastructure.

The Syrian Solidarity Movement reported in 2019 that,

“over 12,000 fellow union members were either killed or injured by terror groups in the last 8 years, and the fate of over 3000 kidnapped members is still unknown. Yet none of this is ever reported or relayed in western media.   Many of the workers were subjected to draconian and barbaric torture by the terror groups before they were killed, like the mutilation that happened to Issa Mahmood Hassan in Homs. Issa was a gas storage facility manager who was ambushed on his way to work and killed by armed militants belonging the so called “moderate rebels”. After severing his head from his body, they used his mobile phone to call his wife and describe in detail what they did to her husband. Other examples include the killing of railway workers while they were trying to repair the railway tracks between Aleppo and Hama in September 2011; the killing of electricians who were trying to repair electrical cables in Deir Ez-Zour and Homs and the atrocity committed in August 2012 by the so called “moderate rebels” in Al-Baba, in the North of Aleppo Province, where the rebels threw post office workers off the roof of their work building.” (3)

In the following interview, conducted by Vanessa Beeley in #Mhardeh Syria, Syrian Ali Haifa describes the hardships that all Syrians face as they confront the full spectrum terrorist warfare that NATO and its allies are inflicting on Syria.

The financial costs of restoring terrorist-destroyed electrical infrastructure alone is not insignificant:

The war on Syria is a war on every single Syrian citizen. It is a war in which the West and its allies are directly responsible for every death and all of the destruction.

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Mark Taliano is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG) and the author of Voices from Syria, Global Research Publishers, 2017. Visit the author’s website at https://www.marktaliano.net where this article was originally published.

Notes

(1) Manlio Dinucci, “Michel Chossudovsky: ‘with NATO from welfare al warfare’ ” International Press Agency, 23 April, 2019. (https://www.pressenza.com/2019/04/michel-chossudovsky-with-nato-from-welfare-al-warfare/) Accessed 1 March, 2019.

(2) Prof. Michel Chossudovsky, “The Islamic State (ISIS), the Pentagon’s ‘Caliphate Project’ and the ‘Global War on Terrorism.’ ” Global Research, 20 February, 2018. (https://www.globalresearch.ca/the-islamic-state-caliphate-project-and-the-global-war-on-terrorism/5389530) Accessed 1 March, 2020.

(3) Syria Solidarity Movement, “Open Letter to trade unionists in support of brother Donald Lafleur, Executive Vice President, Canadian Labour Congress/ Syria Solidarity Movement.” 25 September, 2019. ( https://www.marktaliano.net/open-letter-to-trade-unionists-in-support-of-brother-donald-lafleur-executive-vice-president-canadian-labour-congress-syria-solidarity-movement/) Accessed 1 March, 2019.

Order Mark Taliano’s Book “Voices from Syria” directly from Global Research.

Mark Taliano combines years of research with on-the-ground observations to present an informed and well-documented analysis that refutes  the mainstream media narratives on Syria. 

Voices from Syria 

ISBN: 978-0-9879389-1-6

Author: Mark Taliano

Year: 2017

Pages: 128 (Expanded edition: 1 new chapter)

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Fighting in northern Syria has escalated as Syrian forces retake the last remaining bastions of foreign-funded militants and encircle, cut-off, and in some cases catch in the crossfire their Turkish backers.

Turkey had been making some promising steps in the right direction since Washington’s disastrous proxy regime-change war in Syria began unraveling – yet it still maintains a problematic position inside Syrian territory, backing what are unequivocally terrorists and obstructing Syria’s sovereign right to recover and restore order within its own borders.

The latest and most dangerous manifestation of this untenable policy is the increasingly frequent and fierce clashes between Turkish forces occupying Syrian territory and Syrian forces themselves moving deeper into the northern Syrian governorate of Idlib.

The BBC in its article, “Syria war: Turkey will not let Syrian army advance in Idlib, says Erdogan,” would summarize the Turkish position amid recent hostilities, reporting:

Turkey will not let Syria’s government gain more ground in the opposition stronghold of Idlib province, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan says.

Mr Erdogan told reporters that Russian-backed pro-government forces were “driving innocent and grieving people in Idlib towards our borders”.

More than half a million civilians have fled their homes since the government launched an offensive in December.

Mr Erdogan’s warning came after eight Turkish military personnel were killed.

Indeed – hostilities in Idlib will undoubtedly drive fleeing militants and their families toward the Syrian-Turkish border and inevitably compound Turkey’s already large refugee problem. Yet this is not Syria’s doing, nor that of Syria’s Russian and Iranian allies. It is the doing of malign US foreign policy that Turkey had initially played a key role in facilitating – and at times still appears to be eagerly abetting.

The refugee crisis in Turkey itself was cynically used several times in the past by Ankara and its Western allies at the time for political leverage in demonizing Damascus and to justify more direct Western intervention against Syria.

But pursuing genuine peace was and still is the obvious solution to the refugee crisis – a solution Turkey has so far refused to fully commit to. Along with Turkey’s most recent attempt to cite the refugee crisis to justify its military presence in Syria is the Western media which is attempting to reuse years of propaganda to vilify Damascus and its allies, hoping to hinder security operations and drag out hostilities further.

Ironically and unfortunately – such attempts to hide behind humanitarian concern, protracting hostilities – will lead only to more loss of life.

Holding up the refugee crisis as an excuse to continue occupying Syrian territory and expand what is now becoming direct Turkish hostilities against Syrian forces will do little to justify Turkey’s current policy regarding Syria. It will also do little to improve the prospects of what are essentially unachievable objectives for the Turkish government and military – including maintaining its occupation of Syrian territory and its backing of militants operating there.

Turkish Forces Will Leave Syria – One Way or Another 

Turkish troops will not be able to remain indefinitely in Syria. Their proxies will eventually be liquidated and the positions of Turkish forces surrounded by Syrian forces. In many areas of Idlib this is already the case. Additional Turkish troops and supplies fed into losing battles and what is ultimately a lost war will only delay the inevitable undoing of Turkish interests in Syria.

Ankara could – on the other hand – begin aligning its policies with the reality of what is happening in Idlib and expand its cooperation with Russia and Iran regarding the Syrian conflict – incrementally withdrawing support from militant groups, encouraging them to disarm and surrender, and gradually handing over Turkish positions within Syria to the actual military, government, and people of Syria.

It is likely that Ankara realizes its position in Syria is untenable and is instead using the prospect of a painful and drawn-out conflict resulting from its refusal to withdraw as a bargaining chip to extract concessions from Damascus and its allies. Recent hostilities might also be an attempt to bluff Damascus in a bid to prevent further Turkish positions from being absorbed by Syria’s moving front line in Idlib.

Finding Turkey’s Place Amid Emerging Multipolarism  

Ultimately – Turkey’s decisions in the days, weeks, and months ahead – will further define the nation as it is perceived globally as its decades-long ties and subordinate role to the West fades and it forges a new position upon the global stage.

The malicious use of its lingering presence in northern Syria – a leftover of its complicity in the US-engineered proxy war that created the current conflict in the first place – would be unfortunate and would reflect poorly on Ankara and negatively impact its future international relations. It will impact not only its ties with the principal actors in the current Syrian conflict – but also its ties around the globe as nations seek to diversify away from aging and ill-intentioned hegemonies and toward nations of good faith.

Turkey faces a juncture where it must decide if it will move forward into the future with its increasing independence from the United States and NATO – but maintain the same style of malign statecraft as its Western allies – or find a constructive role to play among an emerging multipolar world.

Shelling and bombing Syrian forces inside Syrian territory is a poor start. It sets Turkey down another blind alley in terms of regional policy – making it more difficult for Syria and its allies to accommodate Turkey in any sort of constructive manner in a post-war regional architecture that will certainly favor Damascus and its allies. It will also complicate trust in the future should Turkey eventually accept this emerging architecture and seek to benefit from or contribute toward it.

Ankara has already come a long way from its initial support for US regime-change since the beginning of the Syrian conflict in 2011 to helping – even if sometimes reluctantly – end the deadly, protracted fighting in recent years. Only time will tell if Ankara will continue in this positive direction – meaning this recent confrontation in Syria is merely a temporary setback – or if Ankara is determined to cling to its increasingly untenable position in Syria at the cost of a risky conflict it will ultimately lose.

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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.

Turkey and Syria are in a state of undeclared war. Ankara shied away to declare the war officially and the scale of its operations is much lower than in the event of a full-scale open conflict. However, Turkish forces, including troops, battle tanks and artillery, illegally entered Greater Idlib, provided local al-Qaeda-linked groups with weapons and equipment, and together with them attacked the Syrian Army.

Turkish Defense Minister Hulusi Akar had the audacity to describe these actions as self-defense efforts. He claimed that Operation Spring Shield, as Ankara calls its action in Idlib, was launched in response to the February 27 attack on Turkish troops and the operation is in his words “successfully” ongoing. Akar forgot to mention that the killed Turkish personnel were embedded with al-Qaeda members and already involved in attacks on forces of the Syrian government. This kind of hypocrisy is not surprising. Earlier, Turkish President Recept Tayip Erdogan claimed that the Turkish military had entered Syria under a request from the “Syrian people”; apparently he wanted to say al-Qaeda but forgot how to pronounce the names of the multiple Syrian affiliates of the group properly.

Therefore, official Turkish propaganda claims that the military action in Idlib started after February 27, while in reality clashes between Turkish-led forces and the Syrian Army have been ongoing since February 24. In the period from February 24 to March 1, the Turkish Army and radical militants captured Nayrab, Saraqib, and stopped the Syrian Army advance near Kafr Nabul recapturing several small villages near it. However, they were not able to achieve any military breakthrough on the ground.

The Turkish military tries to avoid sending its troops into an open fight. Rather, it employs waves of al-Qaeda members, including suicide bombers, supported by massive artillery and drone strikes as the main tool of warfare against the Syrians. According to the March 1 remarks by Defense Minister Akar, Turkish forces had destroyed a drone, 8 helicopters, 103 tanks, 19 armored personnel carriers, 72 artillery pieces and rocket launchers, three air-defense systems, 15 anti-tank weapons and mortars, 56 armored vehicles, nine ammunition depots, and neutralized 2,200 Syrian soldiers in the aforementioned period. Later on the same day, the Turkish Defense Ministry claimed that Turkey had shot down two Su-24 warplanes (later confirmed by the Syrian military) and destroyed 3 air defense systems operated by the Syrian government. The Turkish side even claimed that the Su-24 attack aircraft (which are designed for a close air support) were downed in response to an attempted attack on Turkish aircraft.

This remarkable nonsense highlights the scale and type of Turkish propaganda efforts regarding the conflict. Fully in the framework of this approach, the Turkish state blocked social media on February 27 in an attempt to hide Turkish casualties in Idlib. Tried to force Twitter and Facebook to remove photos of destroyed Turkish military equipment and ordered security raids in the Turkish branch of the Russian news agency Sputnik over its ‘wrong coverage’ of Idlib developments. Videos and photos showing Turkish soldiers and Turkish-backed militants involved in torturing and abusing captured Syrian soldiers come unnoticed by mainstream media or were described by Turkish sources as fake.

In a separate development, Turkish state media announced that Turkish artillery and drones had targeted the Al-Nayrab military airport, on the outskirts of Aleppo city.

In response to these actions, the Syrian military declared that it will shoot down hostile aircraft in Greater Idlib. The Syrian Air Defense Forces immediately turned this promise into reality engaging Turkish unmanned combat and reconnaissance aerial vehicles. According to Russian media, at least 6 Turkish drones were shot down. However, the visual evidence allows to confirm only one Anka combat drone downed in the area. When the video of the drone’s remnants first appeared online, Turkish-backed groups even claimed responsibility for the downing of aircraft claiming that it was a Syrian warplane. Later, they were forced to change the story.

On March 1, the Syrian Army and Hezbollah, that had recently suffered casualties in eastern Idlib, launched an attack on Turkish-led forces in the area of Nayrab. By the evening of that day, they have regained Kafr Battikh, Dadikh, San and Jawbas. They have also forced Turkish-backed militants to retreat from the eastern part of Saraqib. According to pro-government sources, at least 300 militants were killed or injured in the recent clashes in this area only. This number, as well as, those provided by Turkey is overestimated.

On March 2, units of the 25th Special Mission Forces Division (formerly the Tiger Forces) regained full control of Saraqib after the mighty Turkish Army and its al-Qaeda friends had fled the area.

The recent developments demonstrate that if Turkey continues avoiding employing its own troops in direct fighting, its forces appear to be not able to deliver a swift, devastating blow to the Syrian Army and achieve the goal declared by its top leadership: to force Syrian troops to retreat from all the areas liberated from al-Qaeda since October 2018.

It is likely that Turkey is trying to deliver as much damage as possible to strengthen its negotiating position before March 5, when Erdogan is set to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin to discuss the situation in the region.

At the same time, Turkey is trying to get support from the EU by sending migrants to Europe and blackmailing the bloc with a new migration crisis.

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A dispute between the traditional hereditary chiefs of the Wet’suewet’en First Nation of Northern British Columbia and Government of Canada recently erupted over the construction of a TC Energy Coastal Gas pipeline through their unceded territories. This controversy is akin to countless unresolved disputes that have occurred in the New World since the days of first contact between First Nation peoples and “The White Man”, as the European colonizers from the Old World have been called by them ever since.

At the heart of the controversy is who has ultimate sovereignty over the ancestral lands of the original peoples and whose rules of law take precedence when it comes to the infringement of the inherent rights of humans and use and development of the earth’s finite natural resources. The original peoples have mostly long since been pushed off of their traditional lands and placed on Indian Act Band Council System ‘reserves’ or ‘reservations’ that some traditional native peoples liken to New World ‘concentration camps’ because of the severe deprivations they’ve suffered as a result.

Another critically-important issue embedded within this dispute regards the question of the Climate Crisis in both the New & Old World’s and whose rules of laws chiefly are responsible – traditional peoples or the colonizers – for addressing the basic issues of wise land use and management or mismanagement of its finite natural resources that either will lessen or contribute to the climate crisis in the future. The problem is that when constant exponential growth and profit is the main objective of governments and corporations, and expansion their constant goal, it’s not basically in their DNA, and never will be, to ever lessen the crisis.

So the question of how to solve the climate crisis, which may not ever be achievable given the perpetual growth model that mercilessly drives forward the modern world, continues to be a highly contentious one. Some government’s, like the United States and Australia, have set a bad example for other nations to follow by continuing to play the denial game that climate crisis doesn’t exist so they too can continue their corporate ‘business as usual’ way of life and continue to rape and pillage the earth’s finite resources and natural world. But it’s not only the on-going rape of Mother Earth that is in question here but the age-old male power game and sexism of men over women that also is at the heart of the issue. When any human culture so readily accepts the raping of their mother earth for her coveted hidden resources buried deep inside her it doesn’t represent a huge leap in consciousness for that culture to also readily accept the widespread act of raping its own women for their own imagined hidden treasures.

So it’s no great surprise that Men basically run most of the energy-mining-resource development corporations, joined by their counterparts in the political realm who every day continue to give a green light to not only continue the raping of Mother Earth but, tacitly, accepts the wholesale rape of women as part and parcel of conducting business as usual. The raping of Mother Earth and Women simply a dominant male way of looking at and seeing the world that they have dominated since the beginning of time.

One salient example of this dominant male attitude in the world was manifested during the Wet’suewet’en dispute by one Doug Sparrow, the General Manager and President of X-Site Energy Services, Ltd, of Alberta who created a ‘Rape Culture’ logo for his company’s hard hats that depicts the rape of the 17 year-old minor Greta Thunberg who has become the world-renowned symbol of the Climate Crisis protest movement. Doug Sparrow’s stated defense for arrogantly creating the logo is that it’s not a crime, using the rationale, “She’s Not a Child! She’s 17!” This type of cynicism is but one example of yet even more horrific blowback still to come against all those traditional First Nations activists and non-indigenous climate crisis protestors in world-wide movements like ‘Fridays For Future International’ and ‘Extinction Rebellion’ who dare to defy what all is happening?

The world’s mining and energy corporations in Canada already are attempting to put some distance between themselves and the gross actions of Sparrow by declaring “X-Site Energy Services Does Not Represent Alberta” But the message sent and the spin conveyed is clear. The White Man’s corporate world is scared. The spin of vicious corporate blowback already is in high-gear around the world against the actions taken by the Wet’suewet’en First Nations, their Mohawk Nation allies and non-indigenous climate crisis protesters like Greta Thunberg.

So the pre-eminent question that faces Canada and the rest of the world is how to define who will have ultimate sovereignty over the land and its resources, whose rules of law must take precedence in 2020 and beyond, and how the human race once and for all will finally face up to its responsibilities to address and resolve the grossly-imbalanced power relationships that exist between the consciousness of men and women in regard to the protection and preservation of both the earth and women’s precious resources?

Canada now is Ground Zero. Every nation must take its lead in one direction or the other. Whichever way this dispute plays out it’s a watershed moment for the human race and the earth. The bottom line for humanity to heal the earth and itself and make them both whole, perhaps for the first time in the modern era, the corporate world obviously must change its basic relationships with indigenous people, women, and the massive, painful changes that will have to be made and mutually accepted by every human being on earth. Yet, as things now stand, most colonizers resolutely continue to avoid discussing anything to do with ‘climate change’, women’s ‘equal rights’ or the same inherent equal rights for ‘Mother Earth herself’.

The White Man’s Corporate World Avoids the Reality of What It Is or Isn’t Doing

Constant closer attention now must be paid to the many absurd hypocritical actions constantly being created in the mainstream world by those who pay lip service to wanting to do something progressive to positively address all these issues but then do just the opposite. In the case of climate change and the inherent rights of the Wet’suewet’en Hereditary Chiefs righteously put forward, heated debates, both pro and con, about the need for more or less oil and gas pipelines nevertheless rage on.

Meanwhile, one can simultaneously see on every television set around the world, every minute of every day and nighttime too, during every sports cast, sports match, sit-com, major cultural event, and in every movie theatre around the globe during every pre-show entertainment, while moviegoers are held as captive audiences, the masses are constantly force-feed slick, sophisticated commercials that woo, cajole and brainwash them to buy every larger, more expensive, more resource development-driven flashy SUV’s, P/U trucks and slews of  unnecessary products that need still more and more oil and gas to produce and run. So it raises the big question, “How many more endless oil and gas pipelines will the world need in the future and how many more will have to trespass through the traditional lands of indigenous peoples?

It’s a somewhat sad yet cynical note to realize that the oil and gas that is making the modern  world possible is the collective residue of all the life forms – prehistoric tropical plant life, dinosaur’s and the like, that represent the ancient very primitive consciousness of earth’s pre-human world yet is now playing a key central role in the evolution of the modern human civilization that, since its discovery, has literally killed billions of innocent lives, destroyed countless countries, nations and peoples just to gain hegemony over this slimy prehistoric residue that, at the same time, is destroying the climate that may end up killing us all…And that will be the end of that!

In the meantime, as the We’suewet’en and their allies continue to press their case before the legal courts and larger court of world opinion far too many citizens in the general populace instead only continue to moan and groan about the unacceptable inconveniences now being caused to their daily lives by what those like the Wet’suewwt’en First Nation, their Mohawk allies and those in the Climate Rebellion Movement are seeking to do. They miss the essential point why so many other traditional peoples also are protesting so vociferously all around the world, who a naysayer corporate press otherwise constantly dismisses as zealots and radicals, yet are serving as critical point men and women showing us all the way forward, if, indeed, the Survival & Well-Being of All of Life is what is to be the operative directive of the future.

Resistance and hostility to their efforts represents the clearest example of the inflexibility of “The White Man’s” alien, rapacious way of life and its inability to see what its way of life or ‘way of death’ perpetually perpetrates.

The critically important dialectic that has begun in Canada between traditional and non-traditional people underscores the fact that if the bottom line and ultimate goal is a healthier more balanced planet earth and more livable way of life in the 21^st century the human race is going to have to be prepared to yet suffer and endure still many more personal, cultural and economic privations and inconveniences than the few road and rail blockades, shipping backlogs, traffic snarls and upsets to tourism industry timetables then those that thus far have been caused by the dispute between the hereditary chiefs of the We’tsuewet’en Nation, Canadian Government and Corporate-Business world.

Someone who has the ear of the world’s political and corporate leaders has to talk some sense into them like a Dutch Uncleand get them to realize what we all must begin joining together to do in the world beyond demanding that the We’tsuewet’en and their allies simply stop and desist from their rail blockades.

If Shakespeare were alive today, this whole business would simply be more ‘grist for the mill’ to create yet some new pithy human drama that speaks truth to power and the human condition.

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Jerome Irwin is a Canadian-American activist-writer who, for decades, has sought to call world attention to problems of environmental degradation and unsustainability caused by excessive mega-development and the host of related environmental-ecological-spiritual issues that exist between the conflicting philosophies of indigenous and non-indigenous peoples. Irwin is the author of the book, “The Wild Gentle Ones; A Turtle Island Odyssey”, a spiritual sojurn among the native peoples of North America, and has produced numereous articles pertaining to: Ireland’s Fenian Movement; native peoples Dakota Access Pipeline Resistance Movement; AIPAC, Israel & U.S. Congress anti-BDS Movement; the historic Battle for Palestine & Siege of Gaza, as well as; innumerable accounts of the violations constantly waged by industrial-corporate-military-propaganda interests against the World’s Collective Soul.

Featured image is from Twitter/Krystalline Kraus

Reviled strongmen of one era are often the celebrated ones of others.  Citizens otherwise tormented find that replacements are poor, in some cases even crueller, than the original artefact.  Such strongmen also serve as ideal alibis for rehabilitation: Look at who we have come to bury! 

Fittingly, Egypt’s late Hosni Mubarak was given that most traditional of rehabilitative occasions, a military funeral that served to sanitise and restore.  Unremarkably, the procession was led by the current President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, accompanied by Mubarak’s two sons, Alaa and Gamal. 

Mubarak, on coming to power in 1981 in the aftermath of his predecessor’s assassination, intended to die in office, a legacy of durable presidents that had marked the Arab world’s dynastic families.  During a three-decade rule, he survived various assassination attempts, contended, often brutally, with Islamic fundamentalism, and oversaw a vast imperium of cronyism.  The legal conditions were maintained by an emergency law passed in the aftermath of Anwar el-Sadat’s killing, permitting enormous latitude to the security services to arrest and detain individuals without charge and restrict the right to assembly.  Along the way, killings, torture and disappearances took place, with the Muslim Brotherhood proving to be a favourite target. 

His projection as a man of stability and order was sold to Western powers, which supported him with weapons and assistance; his abiding by the peace plan signed with Israel by his slain predecessor, helped.  But he was hardly a leader wedded to big picture visions for his country.  “We are waiting,” surmised the journalist Mohamed Hassanein Heikal in 1986, “for the unknown.” 

There was, for a time, some sense that Egypt might escape the orbit of military rule that had been the mainstay of the country since the Free Officers coup of 1952.  This was to come in the form of the “Arab Spring”.  The protests in Tahrir Square from January 25, 2011 seeking to oust Mubarak seemed to promise much.  Mubarak felt he could weather the bad mood and reject the demands that he and his family be investigated for corruption. “Egypt and I shall not be parted until I am buried in her soil,” he countered.  No fleeing was contemplated, no ignominious exit. 

More than 800 protesters lost their lives in ensuing violence, leading to Mubarak’s arrest on charges of murder and corruption.  He was subsequently tried and convicted, receiving a life sentence.  An appeals court overturned the verdict, leading to a retrial which saw his acquittal.  Thus began an effort to confect an image of a figure unjustifiably sinned against but restrained in retirement.  “I preferred to give up my post as a president, placing the interest of the nation and its people over any other interest and I chose to keep away from the political life, wishing all the best and progress for Egypt and its people within the period ahead.”

It was the easy, and frequently lazy assessment about the effects of the Arab Spring, often by a western media that needed to identify a revolution in the first place.  “Egypt was indispensable to the idea of an ‘Arab spring’,” Hugh Roberts would subsequently note, “and so it had to have had a revolution too.”

Arab Spring comparisons tend to be inevitable and often strained, but between, say, Tunisia and Egypt, key differences are evident. It can well be said that Tunisia had something of a genuine revolution, with its military cautious and resisting any broader blood lust.  But the military remained significant in Egypt for never being neutral, giving some appearance of backing the protesters. 

In 2013, the military’s influence was again evident with its termination of the discombobulated, fledging democracy and the suspension of the 2012 constitution.  Cunningly and devilishly, military officials gave the impression that they were merely aiding the protesters against the Morsi government, partners in democratic change against sectarianism. 

This proved short lived.  Officials from the Mubarak regime were returned; mass death sentences were passed and some 34,000 people jailed.  A brief hiatus followed in Egyptian-Western relations.  The US imposed a ban on the transfer of weapons and aid but el-Sisi proved charming enough to convince Obama administration to restore the $1.3 billion a year package.

El-Sisi is now seen to be a more violent and heavy-handed version of Mubarak, exemplified by such campaigns as those of Karim Hussein, whose “I’m Sorry, Mr President” Facebook page gathered millions of followers.  Last year, he was detained for 15 days on accusations of spreading false news and the misuse of social media.  The same follower had also described Mubarak as “a first-rate military man.  He was a commander during the 6 October War.  He should be treated like a commander before being a president.” 

Mubarak did achieve his goal of being buried in Egypt’s soil.  The officer legacy remains, as does the firm grip of military rule.  His tenure saw consolidation and centralisation to such an extent that genuine change was bound to be a herculean feat.  That feat never materialised, furnishing the historical record with the hiccup of Mohamed Morsi.  And the briefest of hiccups that proved to be. 

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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]

While fretting over refugee children in freezing tents along Turkey’s border, or Nargis Fazili’s family fleeing Afghanistan across (see this), or lone migrant children caged in U.S. detention centers, we may barely register what happens to American children like Kaia Rolle; she’s a 6-year-old student at a not unusual neighborhood school in Florida.

I suppose we should feel grateful for the body cameras which most American police are now required to wear to document their on-the-job encounters. Some police videos are made available to the public; some are lost. One recently released records an incident last September—the handcuffing of Kaia Rolle by policemen at her school. The manacled child was led to a squad car and, unaccompanied by any school official or relative, and taken to a detention center to be finger-printed and photographed. The video was likely edited to hide the child’s face, probably in compliance with a ‘civil-rights’ law that protects minors—thank you. But it illustrates enough for us to witness an all-too-common injustice.

It’s not the pleas of the weeping child that I find most disturbing; it’s the school staff’s passive witness to the child’s torture. None of the three women in the camera’s scope makes any attempt to protest, or to question the decision by we-don’t-known-whom, to subject the child to this unconscionable treatment.

To further emphasize the egregious behavior by the police, we hear one man –likely the school resource officer –chatting with the staff members without any hint of regret or hesitation about how he regularly arrests children. Arrests are a source of pride for him, it seems. “Six thousand arrests over 28 years”, he boasts, “the youngest, 7-years-old.” When informed that the latest victim is six, he quips: “She’s six; now that’s a record.” Dennis Turner is a policeman who, like many in his position, are hired after retirement as “school resource officers”.

These resource officers constitute a new class of law enforcement personnel employed by schools across America— they’re in my New York neighborhood schools too– our solution to school shootings, a nationwide policy to protect our children from gun wielding maniacs. While they wait for anything that threatens the school from outside, these officers are engaged in student discipline inside. Parents and school administrators, out of fear of armed assailants, are empowering these unsupervised, armed retirees and veterans of foreign conflict –men accustomed to manhandling mostly adult male suspects– to discipline troublesome children.

(In addition to their school salary, a wage often higher than teachers’, many of them enjoy a generous pension from their police or military service. What a boon for the profession of law enforcement!)

Attorney John Whitehead of the Rutherford Institute’s warnings about our expanding police presence is so alarming that we are either too disturbed to register the details or we think he’s exaggerating. He is not.

Viewing this single video of an on-duty school guardian entrusted to protect children, one has to question how much more goes on that we are not privy to? And this in inside U.S.A. with its celebrated freedoms! (I cannot bear to imagine the experience of countless Iraqi and Afghan families subject to abuse by American military personnel.)

We are told Kaia was released and isn’t facing any charges. This doesn’t mollify me; nor am I gratified by the firing of that officer.)

The video of the child’s arrest is revealing about how the child is handled too. A school staff member calmly tells Kaia to “Go with them, baby girl.” As Kaia is handcuffed, we hear one officer gently say: “Come over here honey”, then “It’s not going to hurt”.

Later news clips of Kaia with her grandmother report that she is doing fine. That’s today. What about in the coming years?

This experience may embolden little Kaia to become an attorney or a civic leader, perhaps a policewoman to protect others from the cruelty she would never forget. Can we fault her, though, if she chooses violence as a way to defend herself when gentle people nearby fail her, or if they’re better informed about child victims of foreign aggression?

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Barbara Nimri Aziz is a New York based anthropologist and journalist. In addition to books on Tibet and Nepal, she is author of “Swimming Up the Tigris: Real Life Encounters with Iraq” based on her work in Iraq and the Arab Homelands. For many years a producer at Pacifica-WBAI Radio in NY, her productions and current articles can be found at www.RadioTahrir.org  

There have been a number of harmful consequences as a result of the neoliberal era, which emerged in the late 1970s, taking off during the tenures of Ronald Reagan (US president, 1981-1989) and Margaret Thatcher (British prime minister, 1979-1990). There has been an explosion of private power, splintering of societies, destabilization of the financial system, and so on.

Neoliberal globalization has been an important factor too in political parties shifting further to the right, and succumbing to the power of increasingly dominant multinational corporations. This is most notable in America where the Republican Party (or organization) has moved so far off the spectrum that traditional republicans from previous decades would hardly recognize it today.

The US Democratic Party has also drifted noticeably to the right since the 1970s, and now holds roughly the same political position as the republicans of half a century ago. Such has been the rightward lurch in the political landscape that Bernie Sanders, who is somewhat to the left of today’s democrats, is considered a radical and almost extreme figure. Sanders’ policies, which are those of a New Deal democrat, resemble some of the ideals expressed by president Franklin D. Roosevelt. Sanders’ political stance would not have perturbed former republican leaders like Dwight D. Eisenhower.

Regarding the prevailing neoliberal ideology, it is in fact proving so malevolent that it has become an existential threat to mankind, though hardly reported. In early June 2017 Noam Chomsky, the renowned American scholar and scientist, said that neoliberalism is directly behind humanity’s failure to deal with its two greatest challenges: that of either dismantling the threat of nuclear war or addressing climate change, both of which are becoming more ominous.

Chomsky outlined that,

“it’s not just inequality, stagnation. It’s terminal disaster. We have constructed a perfect storm. That should be the screaming headlines every day. Since the Second World War, we have created two means of destruction. Since the neoliberal era, we have dismantled the way of handling them. That’s our pincers. That’s what we face, and if that problem isn’t solved, we’re done with”. (1)

The modern neoliberal era was formulated in America a little over 40 years ago, the world’s strongest economic and military power. The term itself, neoliberalism, is misleading as this ideology is neither based upon anything new or
liberal.

Neoliberalism was originally developed in Europe during the interwar period (1919-1938), among the many repercussions of the First World War (2). Thereafter, the more extreme version of neoliberalism that we see presently, was formed by American business communities and its elites; before inevitably spreading across the world as a result of Washington’s vast economic influence, courtesy of US-based financial institutions like the IMF and World Bank.

This assault unfolded principally in order to defeat popular activism that sprang up in the mid-1960s – with the American public, some entering political circles for the first time, railing against the crimes committed by US forces during the war in Vietnam, along with protests against domestic problems such as poverty and racism. This was viewed with deep concern by those occupying positions of power in Washington and New York. A swift response ensued by the establishment to put the people back in its place, so to speak, mainly through wide-scale use of propaganda techniques.

The population’s declining influence is having potentially deadly ramifications. Chomsky affirms that,

“The one barrier to the threat of destruction is an engaged public, an informed, engaged public acting together to develop means to confront the threat and respond to it. That’s been systematically weakened, consciously”; and he further recognizes, “So there’s the two existential threats that we’ve created, which might in the case of nuclear war maybe wipe us out; in the case of environmental catastrophe, create a severe impact, and then some”. (3)

The continued attacks on populations have worked extremely well for a small percentage, in both hemispheres. Wealth has accumulated in the top 1% of societies, and more broadly the top 10%. In the most powerful country, real wages for American workers are just slightly higher by comparison to mid-1960s levels.

The US, thanks to its government, military and scientific apparatus, was also behind the unwarranted creation in 1945 of nuclear bombs, the globe’s silent grim reaper. Moreover, America has constituted easily the largest producer of carbon dioxide emissions in history. This century, since 2006, has America been surpassed in its carbon production levels by China. Yet on per capita terms the Americans remain well clear at the top, having less than a quarter of China’s populace.

Neoliberalism is centred on greatly favoring the private sphere over that of the public, with the role of government curtailed and restricted. Social programs benefiting the masses are cut, finance is deregulated, trade unions are attacked and austerity measures applied, which are intentionally harmful and unnecessary as even IMF economists admit.

The mainstream press performs a central role in promoting neoliberal ideology (4). The media, influenced by corporate advertising, carefully reduce the scope of what is discussed, so as to further push their neoliberal beliefs.

Cardiff University’s Joanna Redden, an expert in assessing media content, wrote that “mainstream news coverage narrows and limits the way poverty is talked about in a way that reinforces the dominance of neoliberalism and market-based approaches to the issue”.

An in-depth study of the mass media for example in Ireland, the word’s largest corporate tax haven and a prominent neoliberal state, has revealed that major newspapers there all have a history of endorsing neoliberalism. This includes the most widely read dailies like the Irish Times and Irish Independent (5). Very rarely, however, is the word neoliberalism to be found in newspaper articles. It is obscured and left unclear.

Due to the particularly strong neoliberal influence in Ireland, it is no surprise that this small country produces very high emission levels, and has proven incapable of addressing it. Irish media support for neoliberalism is a trend seen in standard press coverage in other “free market states”.

The media are very often a reflection of a nation’s structure, mirroring the flaws of that system of which it is a central component. As part of the neoliberal agenda, the press have effectively been supporting our blind march to the precipice – with coverage of nuclear weapons at a minimum, and focus on climate change, though increasing in recent times, often diluted and put into a political context. (6)

Silly stories have been emanating for years about how Moscow supposedly swayed the US elections. These claims have done nothing to harm president Donald Trump’s increasingly secure position; his approval ratings are at a personal best 49%, and he is a strong favorite to be re-elected in November. The American public, rather than paying much attention to assertions of Kremlin interference, are far more worried about real crises like insufficient healthcare, unaffordable education, and poverty (7). Trump’s most dangerous policies, his attacks upon the environment and abandonment of nuclear weapons treaties, have received far less attention and criticism.

From the immediate years following World War II, humans have been under threat of destruction from nuclear weapons. The Danish-born scientist Hans M. Kristensen, a nuclear weapons analyst, revealed that during the Cold War,

“Every day, nuclear-armed warships of the US and Soviet navies were rubbing up against each other on the high seas in gung-ho displays of national determination. Some saw it as necessary for nuclear deterrence; others as dangerous nuclear brinkmanship. Many of those who were on the ships and submarines still get goosebumps when they talk about it, and wonder how we survived the Cold War”. (8)

When examining the level of incidents between American and Soviet nuclear-armed instruments of war, it is hard to fathom that it did not eventually result in disaster for the world. Some of these accidents date to the 1960s, and were just as potentially lethal as the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.

Pertaining to climate change, the attempts so far by world governments to tackle the crisis have been wholly inadequate, with global carbon emissions now at an all time high. Neoliberalism has indeed been at heart of this impotence. Even a 1.5 Celsius rise will have troubling reverberations for extensive sections of the globe. Today, out of almost 200 countries worldwide, only two are on course to meet their climate obligations, by applying policies which can meet the goals in limiting global warming to 1.5 Celsius above pre-industrial age temperatures.

The two countries in question are in Africa: Morocco and The Gambia, both of which are situated in the continent’s north-west, and are firmly on a path towards dependence upon renewable energy, along with other strategies like large-scale reforestation. Morocco and The Gambia are anything but what can be considered affluent nations. This makes it all the more damning that the world’s rich countries, with ample resources at their disposal, have proven incapable of upholding their climate commitments.

The top 10 carbon producing states account for almost 70% of world greenhouse emissions (9). By themselves the globe’s two biggest emitters, China and the US, generate 43% of all known greenhouse gases. China, largely abandoning communist ideology since Mao Zedong’s death in 1976, is recording emission levels which are rising again. They rose by 2.6% in 2019, on top of a 2.5% increase for 2018. Still, with increasing focus on renewable sources in China, there are accounts that their emissions will peak by 2022 before falling off.

Dominating the neoliberal sphere are the hugely powerful, unaccountable corporations which control much of the international economy, dictating government policy formation in the United States, Britain, Ireland and elsewhere. An institutionalized requirement of big business is short-term wealth creation, something which corporate executives can go to desperate lengths in pursuing.

One can witness the spectacle of major automobile manufacturers, like Volkswagen and Nissan, deliberately falsifying emission levels in their vehicles (10); mostly due to the fact that low emission cars, less reliant on raw material consumption, are simply not as profitable to the fossil fuel industry.

There are about 1.5 billion vehicles in operation globally, which in total produce 20% of world carbon emissions. Of this, just six million consist of electric cars. Prospects of electric vehicles are discouraged by fossil fuel corporations like Shell and ExxonMobil, because they are not run on oil-based substances, therefore yielding less
profits.

ExxonMobil chief executive Darren Woods even stated last September that he did not understand why electric cars were needed at all. ExxonMobil, headquartered in Texas, are one of the world’s biggest carbon emitting companies. They create more emissions than the vast majority of countries on their own.

Neoliberalism has been a driving cause too in the degradation of ecosystems, with an alarming drop in animal species recorded since the 1970s alone. Perhaps the first government leader to highlight our planet’s environmental decline was Cuba’s president, Fidel Castro, someone seldom quoted outside of Cuba, and who said during a visit to South Africa in the autumn of 1998 that,

“Neoliberal globalization is rapidly destroying nature, poisoning the air and the waters, killing the forests, causing soil desertification and erosion, depleting and wasting the natural resources, changing the climate”. (11)

Castro was reiterating what he said six years before at the 1992 UN Earth Summit in Brazil, where among the presence of over 100 heads of state, he spoke in splendid isolation of the unfolding ecological catastrophe. Castro was addressing above an audience in the city of Durban, South Africa, a country at the time led by Nelson Mandela, a close ally of his Cuban counterpart.

Mandela was nevertheless a firm advocate of neoliberal policies which he implemented during his presidency, as the South African leader acknowledged in an interview with the experienced journalist John Pilger, who grilled him on the subject (12). Two decades following Mandela’s departure from office in June 1999, South Africa has today the highest level of inequality in the world, though he cannot be blamed for all of this.

In more recent times, by late 2018 a “60% decline” in animal species was widely reported by the media, who misread the facts, as the National Geographic magazine demonstrated (13). Yet there can be no doubt that animal numbers have been steadily declining overall, a symptom of the Anthropocene epoch in which humans are having a severe impact on planetary ecosystems.

Meanwhile, a ray of sunshine is breaking out on a dark horizon. There have been indications for some years that neoliberalism is in trouble. Growing protests against its ravages have been taking place around the globe, in Latin America, in Europe, in the Middle East. The public, as can be recalled, possesses a great deal of power, borne out by the hard-fought achievements gained in the past as a result of sustained activism.

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Shane Quinn obtained an honors journalism degree. He is interested in writing primarily on foreign affairs, having been inspired by authors like Noam Chomsky. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Notes

1 Christopher Lydon, Noam Chomsky, “Noam Chomsky: Neoliberalism Is Destroying Our Democracy”, The Nation, 2 June 2017, http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:3DK5wNPu3jMJ:https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/noam-chomsky-neoliberalism-destroying-democracy/&hl=en&gl=ie&strip=1&vwsrc=0

2 Daniel Stedman Jones, “The American Roots of Neoliberalism”, History News Network, 18 March 2013, https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/151023

3 Christopher Lydon, Noam Chomsky, “Noam Chomsky: Neoliberalism Is Destroying Our Democracy”, The Nation, 2 June 2017, http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:3DK5wNPu3jMJ:https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/noam-chomsky-neoliberalism-destroying-democracy/&hl=en&gl=ie&strip=1&vwsrc=0
4 T. J. Coles, “How Fake News Perpetuates Neoliberalism”, Renegade Inc., 22 December 2018, https://renegadeinc.com/fake-news-perpetuates-neoliberalism/

5 Sean Phelan, “Irish neoliberalism, media, and the politics of discourse”, Academia, 2009, https://www.academia.edu/2019948/Irish_neoliberalism_media_and_the_politics_of_discourse

6 Seán McCárthaigh, “Irish newspaper coverage of climate change low by European standards and ‘predominantly political’”, TheJournal.ie, 28 November 2019, Irish newspaper coverage of climate change low by European standards and ‘predominantly political’

7 Kristen Bialik, “State of the Union 2019: How Americans see major national issues”, Pew Research Center, 4 February 2019, https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/02/04/state-of-the-union-2019-how-americans-see-major-national-issues/

8 Hans M. Kristensen, “Declassified: US Nuclear Weapons At Sea”, Federation of American Scientists, 3 February 2016, https://fas.org/blogs/security/2016/02/nuclear-weapons-at-sea/

9 Robert Rapier, “The World’s Top 10 Carbon Dioxide Emitters”, Forbes, 4 December 2019, https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:TAIHMX31K8YJ:https://www.forbes.com/sites/rrapier/2019/12/04/the-worlds-top-10-carbon-dioxide-emitters/+&cd=3&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=ie

10 Press Association, “‘Decisive court battle’ over Volkswagen emissions scandal set to begin”, BreakingNews.ie, 2 December 2019, https://www.breakingnews.ie/business/decisive-court-battle-over-volkswagen-emissions-scandal-set-to-begin-967835.html

11 Fidel Castro, “Address by Commander-In-Chief, Fidel Castro, To The 12th Summit Of The Non-Aligned Movement”, Fidel Soldado de las Ideas, 2 September 1998, http://www.fidelcastro.cu/en/citas-sobre/GLOBALIZATION

12 John Pilger, Freedom Next Time, (Black Swan; New Ed Edition, 4 Jun. 2007) p. 346
13 Elizabeth Anne Brown, “Widely misinterpreted report still shows catastrophic animal decline”, National Geographic, 1 November 2018, https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/2018/11/animal-decline-living-planet-report-conservation-news/

There are three main reasons why stocks are falling hard.

1– Uncertainty. It’s impossible for investors to gauge the economic impact of the rapidly-spreading coronavirus or its effect on stock prices. Investors buy stocks with the expectation that their investment will grow over time. In periods of crisis, when the environment becomes unfamiliar and opaque, expectations are crushed under the weigh of uncertainty. When expectations dampen, investors sell.

2– The Fed. Although investors have not faced a challenge like the coronavirus before, confidence in the Fed has remained surprisingly high. For the last 10 years, investors have seen multiple interventions by the Fed that were aimed at keeping Wall Street happy and stock prices high. Only recently have investors begun to doubt the Fed’s ability to stop the market slide by slashing rates or increasing liquidity. As more investors realize that the Fed does not have the tools to address a supply shock, the selloff is likely to accelerate.

3–Stock buybacks. In the last few years, stock prices have not been driven higher by institutional buyers or Mom and Pop investors. The rise is almost entirely attributable to share repurchases or stock buybacks as they are called. According to the Harvard Business Review, “In 2018 alone, with corporate profits bolstered by the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017, companies in the S&P 500 Index did a combined $806 billion in buybacks, about $200 billion more than the previous record set in 2007.” Coronavirus is dramatically impacting corporate earnings projections and many analysts are predicting recession. Shrinking revenues and profits will put a damper on the jet-fuel that had been pushing stocks higher.

The Ball is in the Fed’s Court

The pressure is building on the Fed to respond to the relentless 6-day stock market slide. In a Thursday article in the Wall Street Journal, former Fed governor Kevin Warsh appealed to the Fed to launch a coordinated response to the crisis with other central banks around the world. Here’s an excerpt from the article:

“A central bank’s primary job is to offset major disturbances to the economy. Today, the novel coronavirus is a material risk to the economy. It represents an unexpected shock, and the Federal Reserve should lead the world’s central banks in taking immediate action.

In a coordinated move alongside the People’s Bank of China, the European Central Bank, the Bank of England, the Bank of Japan and others so willing, the Fed should announce a 0.25-percentage-point interest-rate cut and make clear it’s open-minded about further action. The Fed should also encourage other central banks to take appropriate simultaneous action to loosen monetary policy in their jurisdictions. Global action would help make the most of scarce policy ammunition.

More than a decade ago, then-Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke and his colleagues chose to act decisively. When confronted with a major economic shock, the Fed took extraordinary monetary-policy actions, often in coordination with other leading central banks. Acting sooner would have been better, but Mr. Bernanke’s leadership at the Fed was exemplary. Less appreciated but no less important, the Fed benefited from a rich inheritance: a strong, highly credible institution replete with a large reservoir of interest rates to cut and a modest balance sheet with space to grow.” (“The Fed Can’t Wait to Respond to the Coronavirus”, Wall Street Journal)

We think Kevin Warsh is being disingenuous. We think his plea is aimed at saving Wall Street not Main Street. Warsh is worried that the downdraft in stocks will trigger defaults by deeply-indebted financial institutions that will domino through the financial system severely impairing critical counterparties and precipitating another financial crisis. This is why is wants the Fed to act immediately even though he knows that interest rate cuts will have no material effect on a supply shock.

So what is a supply shock?

When the Fed slashes rates, it lowers the cost of money making it cheaper to borrow. When people or businesses borrow, they increase their spending which generates economic growth. This is how the Fed boosts demand by cutting rates. But rate cuts are not a panacea. They can’t, for example, resolve supply-chain disruptions in China that have been brought on by the coronavirus outbreak. Many market participants have not yet grasped this fact. Simply put: The Fed does not have the tools to fix this problem. Therefore, confidence in the Fed– to reverse the current selloff by cutting rates or adding liquidity– is misplaced. It’s misplaced because the approach will not work. If you are trying to fix your computer and the only tool you have is a sledgehammer, you are not going to have much success. This is the predicament the Fed is in.

Earlier this week, market analyst Mohamed El-Erian said, “Coronavirus cannot be countered by central bank policies”. This is the critical fact that investors must realize before settling on a strategy. Financial Times journalist Katie Martin expanded on El-Erian’s comments saying, “The expectation alone of monetary assistance may already be softening the blow…But anyone who can clearly articulate how easier policy can fix an economic pullback based on deaths, grounded flights, closed factories and ghost cities is very welcome to get in touch.”

Good point, in other words, cheap money and boundless liquidity is not a cure-all. A can of 30-weight oil might keep your ’98 Corolla running smoothly, but it’s not going to help your head cold. It’s simply not the right antidote. The Fed needs a remedy for supply disruptions, but doesn’t have one. Here’s more from an article at Marketwatch:

“It’s that threat of a supply shock — an unexpected change in the supply of a product or commodity — that is particularly unnerving for investors. They are more used to dealing with the occasional threat of negative demand shocks — an unexpected hit to demand for goods and services….

Big, negative supply shocks are rare, Nielsen noted, with the oil shocks of the early and late 1970s offering perhaps the most well-known examples.... The problem is that there’s little that looser monetary policy or additional fiscal stimulus can do to offset the impact because those stimulus measures work by boosting demand….

While demand has so far held up outside of China, the disruption to global supply chains running through China, Korea and, potentially, Japan is likely to take a toll on production, wrote Nuveen’s Nick. If Asian production stoppages worsen or continue well into the second quarter, a global supply crunch could hit the already weakening manufacturing sector, he said, with implications for jobs and the wider global economy.

Moreover, it comes in an environment where valuations for U.S. stocks and credit markets were “’priced to perfection’ or something close to it following the three Fed interest rate cuts last year and the resolution of various trade deals,” he said.” (“Stocks keep getting slammed because investors fear a ‘supply shock’ that central bankers can’t fix” , Marketwatch)

Until this Monday, investors had been brushing aside the negative news on the coronavirus confident that the Fed would save market as it had done so many times before. Now more people are beginning to see that the so called “Fed Put” will not work this time, that the Fed will not be able to put a floor beneath stock prices because it doesn’t have the power to do so. The realization of the Fed’s limitations is going to weigh heavily on stocks which had been “priced to perfection” but are presently retracing their steps downward until prices are more consistent with fundamentals and the rapidly-deteriorating economic data.

Here’s a quote from an article by Caroline Baum at Marketwatch which helps to underscore the Fed’s impotence in dealing with a supply shock:

“The Fed can’t produce parts for automobile manufacturers across the globe that are dependent on intermediate-goods imports from China. It can’t reopen factories in Hubei Province, the epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak. It can’t provide needed factory workers for plants in locked-down areas of China. And it can’t create alternate supply chains as a substitute for China’s role as manufacturer to the world.…

A Fed rate cut is not the prescribed antidote for a negative supply shock. In fact, “the only reason you would cut rates now is if you’re the central bank of the S&P 500,” said Jim Bianco, president of Bianco Research, using a moniker the Fed abhors.” (“Why the Fed can’t defend the economy against the coronavirus outbreak”, Marketwatch)

There’s no doubt that the Fed will cut rates and perhaps even take more extreme measures like monthly purchases of individual stocks and ETFs. But the chance of stocks roaring back into record territory like they did in the heady pre-coronavirus days, are infinitesimally small. The contagion has not even spread to the United States yet, and look at the mayhem it has created. The virus has exposed the essential fragility of a market system that depends on the endless meddling of outside actors whose only objective is to transfer trillions of dollars in wealth to their voracious constituents on Wall Street.

So where is the bottom for stocks that have been grossly inflated for more than 7 years due to extreme monetary easing, below market rates, and regular infusions liquidity?

We don’t know, but we suspect there’s still a long way to go. As economist Nouriel Roubini said in a recent article in the Financial Times, “Investors are deluding themselves about how severe the coronavirus outbreak will be. Despite this week’s big sell-off in equity markets, the worst is yet to come.”

NOTE: Thursday’s 1,190 point rout was the Dow Jones’ biggest one day loss in history. Benchmark 10-year Treasury yields tumbled to an all-time low of 1.26%.

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Pre-election polls showed a likely dead heat between Netanyahu’s Likud party and lead challenger Benny Gantz’s Blue and White party.

Both parties were projected to win 33 of 120 Knesset seats. A 61-seat majority coalition is required to form a government.

Vote counting continues on Tuesday. Exit polls projected Likud to win 36 or 37 seats to Blue and White’s 34.

With coalition partners, Netanyahu’s Likud is expected to have 59 Knesset seats — two short of a ruling majority, based on early vote counting. See an update below.

Ahead of efforts by him and Gantz to try cobbling together enough support to form a new government, impasse continues following Israel’s third general election since last April.

It’s unclear whether either leading candidate can break it.

An update with over 90% of votes counted gives a Likud-led coalition a 59 – 54 seat margin, still two seats short of a ruling majority — Likud winning 36 seats, Blue and White 32.

Joint List is projected to win 15 seats, an historic high for an Arab party. Yet in apartheid Israel, it’s powerless.

Privileged Jews run things for their own self-interest, how things work in the West and most other countries.

In Israel, ordinary Jews and Arab citizens have no say over how the country is governed. Dirty business as usual wins every time elections are held.

As vote counting continues, further updates will follow later on Tuesday. It’s too early to know if either leading candidate can form a ruling majority, but based on exit polls and vote counting so far, Netanyahu is ahead.

Despite facing bribery, fraud and breach of trust charges, his trial beginning on March 17, conviction likely meaning prison time, more Israelis supported him over alternative candidates.

What does that say about the Israeli electorate? Do enough of its members favor continuity over the rule of law?

Do they support Netanyahu’s leadership they know over a former IDF chief of staff with no political experience?

Post-election analysis will provide insight into how a prime minister facing serious criminal charges outdid his rivals.

According to Haaretz editor-in-chief Aluf Benn, victory for a Likud-led “bloc will permanently cripple the rule of law in Israel, under the guise of ‘judicial reform’ and ‘reining in the High Court of Justice.”

In a separate editorial, Haaretz warned of the danger if a new government is formed under “power-hungry (Netanyahu) who has lost all restraint and who seems determined to keep his seat forever,” adding:

Above all, he seeks so-called “judicial reforms…to save him from facing justice, from the humiliation of appearing in court and perhaps even from imprisonment.”

If he manages to remain prime minister, he’ll “destroy” what remains of “the rule of law” in Israel.

“(A) wave of persecution against civil servants and politicians, prosecutors and judges, who will be labeled enemies of the state and be forced have to prove their loyalty to the ruler (who’s) above the law.”

Indicting him on bribery, fraud and breach of trust, major civil charges, attorney general Mendelblit denounced him strongly, saying:

He and his wife engaged in “an improper relationship” with individuals from whom they “received (special) favors” — actions amounting to a “serious and ongoing conflict of interest,” adding:

He “took advantage of the bribe offered him…us(ing) his power as prime minister to receive personal favors, while fundamentally harming the integrity of the public service and trust.”

His “conduct deeply and profoundly harm(ed) the rule of law, moral integrity and public trust.”

If he remains prime minister and avoids accountability, he’ll likely be unrestrained to do what he pleases because who’ll stop him.

Civil charges against him pale in comparison to his high crimes of war, against humanity, and slow-motion genocide against long-suffering Palestinians.

Nor does he face accountability for years of undeclared war on Syria and Lebanon’s Hezbollah, as well as partnering with US wars — the world community largely turning a blind eye to his Nuremberg-level high crimes.

A Final Comment

The Jerusalem Post reported that absentee ballots from soldiers and others will be counted Tuesday night local time, adding:

“Legally, the final results do not need to be published until next Monday.”

Here’s where things stand with over 90% of votes counted:

“Likud: 1,210,939 voters – 36 seats predicted

• Blue and White: 1,085,932 voters  –  32 seats predicted
• The Joint List: 536,028 voters  –  15 seats predicted
• Shas: 320,999 voters  –  10 seats predicted
• UTJ: 255,159 voters  –  7 seats predicted
• Yisrael Beytenu: 242,218 voters  – 7  seats predicted
• Labor-Gesher-Meretz: 235,934 voters  – 7  seats predicted
• Yamina: 208,638 voters  – 6 seats predicted
• The Right-religious bloc has 59 seats
• The Center-Left bloc has 39
• The Joint List has 15
• Yisrael Beytenu has 7”

Turnout was 71% of registered voters.

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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.”

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

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

Featured image is from The Jerusalem Post

Whereas:

On January 9, 2020, Radio Canada’s flagship newscast “Enquête” reported on the “Ottawa Initiative on Haiti” held at the Meech Lake Government Complex on January 31 and February 1, 2003;

No Haitian officials were reportedly invited to the private meeting. Officials from the United States, France, Canada, and the Organization of American States in attendance reportedly discussed the replacement of Haiti’s elected government, the UN intervention, and the re-creation of the Haitian military, consistent with events that occurred 13 months later;

Investigation suggests that the “Ottawa Initiative on Haiti” gave rise to the “Core Group”, an alliance of foreign ambassadors in Port-au-Prince that many Haitians believe to be the real power behind President Jovenel Moïse;

Ten years after the earthquake, there is a demand for accountability for alleged misuse of relief funds during the same period when Haiti is said to be effectively under the rule of the so-called “Core Group” that is said to have brought to power the governments of Martelly and Moïse, who are accused of corruption and repression.

We, the undersigned, citizens and residents of Quebec and Canada, ask the House of Commons: 

1. To publish all documents related to the “Ottawa Initiative on Haiti”;

2. To hold a hearing of the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development to determine the precise ins and outs of the “Ottawa Initiative on Haiti”, including the link with the “Core Group”.

Click here to sign the petition.

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The US and the Taliban signed an historic peace deal on Saturday in the Qatari capital of Doha which sets the timeline and conditions for the full withdrawal of foreign forces from Afghanistan, with this landmark agreement giving credible reasons for observers to be cautiously optimistic about its prospects of success but also containing within it several key loopholes that deserve to be analyzed more in depth so as to obtain a more comprehensive understanding of the possible pitfalls that could capsize this pivotal accord.

Intravenous vitamin C is already being employed in China against COVID-19 coronavirus. I am receiving regular updates because I am part of the Medical and Scientific Advisory Board to the International Intravenous Vitamin C China Epidemic Medical Support Team. Its director is Richard Z. Cheng, MD, PhD; associate director is Hong Zhang, PhD.

Among other team members are Qi Chen, PhD (Associate Professor, Kansas University Medical School); Jeanne Drisko, MD (Professor, University of Kansas Medical School);

Thomas E. Levy, MD, JD; and Atsuo Yanagisawa, MD, PhD. (Professor, Kyorin University, Tokyo). To read the treatment protocol information in English: click this (Protocol in Chinese is here).

Direct report from China

OMNS Chinese edition editor Dr. Richard Cheng is reporting from China about the first approved study of 12,000 to 24,000 mg/day of vitamin C by IV. The doctor also specifically calls for immediate use of vitamin C for prevention of coronavirus (COVID-19). See this.

A second clinical trial of intravenous vitamin C was announced in China on Feb. 13th. In this second study, says Dr. Cheng,

“They plan to give 6,000 mg/day and 12,000 mg/day per day for moderate and severe cases. We are also communicating with other hospitals about starting more intravenous vitamin C clinical studies. We would like to see oral vitamin C included in these studies, as the oral forms can be applied to more patients and at home.” Additional information here.

And on Feb 21, 2020, announcement has been made of a third research trial now approved for intravenous vitamin C for COVID-19.

Dr. Cheng, who is a US board-certified specialist in anti-aging medicine, adds:

“Vitamin C is very promising for prevention, and especially important to treat dying patients when there is no better treatment. Over 2,000 people have died of the COIV-19 outbreak and yet I have not seen or heard large dose intravenous vitamin C being used in any of the cases. The current sole focus on vaccine and specific antiviral drugs for epidemics is misplaced.”

He adds that:

“Early and sufficiently large doses of intravenous vitamin C are critical. Vitamin C is not only a prototypical antioxidant, but also involved in virus killing and prevention of viral replication. The significance of large dose intravenous vitamin C is not just at antiviral level. It is acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) that kills most people from coronaviral pandemics (SARS, MERS and now NCP). ARDS is a common final pathway leading to death.

“We therefore call for a worldwide discussion and debate on this topic.”

News of vitamin C research for COVID-19 is being actively suppressed

Anyone saying that vitamin therapy can stop coronavirus is already being labeled as “promoting false information” and promulgating “fake news.” Even the sharing of verifiable news, and direct quotes from credentialed medical professionals, is being restricted or blocked on social media. You can see sequential examples of this phenomenon at my Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/themegavitaminman .

Indeed, the World Health Organization (WHO) has, literally, met with Google and Facebook and other media giants to stop the spread of what they declare to be wrong information. See this.

Physician-directed, hospital-based administration of intravenous vitamin C has been marginalized or discredited. Scientific debate over COVID-19 appears not to be allowed.

Ironically, Facebook, blocking any significant users’ sharing of the news of approved vitamin therapy research, is itself blocked in China by the Chinese government. As for the internet, yes, China has it. And yes, it is censored. But, significantly, the Chinese government has not blocked this real news on how intravenous vitamin C will save lives in the COVID-19 epidemic. Here is the protocol as published in Chinese.

Medical orthodoxy obsessively focuses on searching for a vaccine and/or drug for coronavirus COVID-19). While they are looking for what would be fabulously profitable approaches, we have with vitamin C an existing, plausible, clinically demonstrated method to treat what coronavirus patients die from: severe acute respiratory syndrome, or pneumonia.

And it is available right now.

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The IMF’s actions has a direct impact on the fate of hundreds of thousands of women like Hiruni in Sri Lanka.

For years, the IMF has been pushing for an end to customs barriers protecting local producers, whether farmers, fishermen, artisans or others. This is one of the reasons why Hiruni and others like her can no longer make a living out of what they produce. The IMF, together with the World Bank and other international institutions, also promotes the deregulation of the banking sector and micro-credit. It supports the right of credit companies to set the rates they want, in the name of “freedom” of prices and the market.

This is why Hiruni and so many others have to pay exorbitant interest rates. The IMF, in collaboration with other international institutions, put pressure on governments to privatize or close down public credit banks which were providing loans at reasonable, usually subsidized rates (i.e. without making profits), which the IMF and the World Bank abhor.

This is another reason why Hiruni and others cannot find credit from government sources.

To complete this negative picture, one must add several conditionalities imposed by the IMF’s credit policy handed out to Sri Lanka like so many other countries.

The IMF wants the government to reduce the public deficit by cutting social spending and reducing government staff. As a result, Hiruni and millions of people in Sri Lanka witnessed the free education and health care drastically eroded.

Indeed, Sri Lanka is one of the few countries where health and education are still free in principle, but the austerity measures imposed by the government in complicity with the IMF mean that the real cost of education (including primary education) and basic health is constantly rising, as school books and medicines have to be paid for, and parents are also being pushed into private education and health care to escape the falling public service. Therefore, poor families have to go into debt with micro-credit agencies to meet school and health expenses. And it is women who are most directly affected since they are primary responsible for ensuring education and health for their children.

The list of neo-liberal measures recommended by the IMF, having a disastrous impact on the daily lives of millions of people in Sri Lanka and hundreds of millions worldwide is enormous.

And this will only change if the people get rid of the IMF by electing such political forces in the government that have the will to bring radical solutions that ensure respect for social justice, the enjoyment of human rights and respect for nature.

Current IMF policy in Sri Lanka

In 2016, the neo-liberal government of Sri Lanka appealed to the IMF, which in return pledged $1,600 million in credit on the condition that it would follow the IMF’s recommendations. This programme is still being implemented and the balance sheet is entirely negative.

On 7 February 2020, an IMF visit to Sri Lanka was concluded. The press release of the Washington-based institution is highly significant

(https://www.imf.org/en/News/Articles/2020/02/07/pr2042-sri-lanka-imf-staff-concludes-visit-to-sri-lanka ).

The IMF states that the government’s decision to set a maximum interest rate of 35% on micro-credit loans can only be temporary because the distortion (sic!) of the functioning of the financial market must be avoided. It should be noted that the government set such a ceiling as it was under pressure from the streets.

Thousands of women, victims of micro-credit and its abusive rates, had mobilized in the North of the country to demand that interest rates should not exceed 25% (which remains an extremely high rate since the inflation rate is only 4%). Setting the maximum interest rate at 35% is a limited concession made by the government in view of the scale of the social drama and the risk of extending the mobilizations. It should also be noted that in a very clear report, the United Nations independent expert on debt and human rights sounded the alarm about the dramatic situation experienced by the very many victims of micro-credit in Sri Lanka. His report, written after completing a field mission, was damning for the government, financial institutions and other foreign donors. He called on the governments to act

(https://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=23482&LangID=E).

(https://lk.one.un.org/news/end-of-mission-statement-un-independent-expert-on-the-effects-of-foreign-debt-and-human-rights/).

The government had tried to justify itself by claiming that it was pursuing a policy of poverty reduction

(https://www.mfa.gov.lk/sri-lankas-statement-on-the-report-of-the-independent-expert-on-foreign-debt-and-human-rights/ and

https://www.mfa.gov.lk/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/Statement.pdf ).

It should also be noted that the independent expert followed with keen interest, the proceedings of the 7^th South Asia CADTM workshop held in Colombo in April 2018

(https://www.cadtm.org/Colombo-Declaration-on ;

https://www.cadtm.org/South-Asia-New-creditors-and-new-forms-of-debt-peonage ; https://www.cadtm.org/Damning-testimonies-of-microcredit)

The Sri Lankan social movements had submitted to him a public document at the time of his visit in August 2018

(https://www.cadtm.org/Submission-to-the-Independent-Expert-on-foreign-debt-and-human-rights-By-Civil).

As a result of various forms of pressure exerted on it, the government set a maximum rate of 35%. Although this rate is still completely exaggerated and must be characterized as usurious, the IMF has the audacity to state in its press release of 7 February 2020 that it is necessary to soon restore the right to freely set rates!

The IMF also calls on the government to end as soon as possible the moratorium on the payment of debts of small and medium-sized enterprises. It must be said that following the terror attacks of April 2019, tourists have deserted Sri Lanka for months, which has damaged the economy and in particular small and medium enterprises. In order to prevent an increase of bankruptcies, the government has decreed a suspension of payment of their debts and it is this measure that the IMF is also asking to be cancelled soon.

In addition, the IMF calls on the government to continue austerity measures and the underhand and gradual privatization of state-owned enterprises. This applies in particular to SriLankan Airlines, the oil company and the electricity company

(see https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/CR/Issues/2019/11/04/Sri-Lanka-Sixth-Review-Under-the-Extended-Arrangement-Under-the-Extended-Fund-Facility-and-48787).

The IMF calls on the government to deepen international trade liberalisation and measures to attract foreign investment. The negative consequences of this policy are well known.

The volume of Sri Lanka’s public debt has risen sharply over the past three years and now exceeds 90% of GDP. It should be recalled that the current IMF arrangement dates back to 2016.

However, between 2016 and the end of 2018, public debt increased by 30%. This means that IMF action has actively contributed to the increase in Sri Lanka’s debt, increasing the country’s dependence on foreign and domestic lenders. Although a small part, debt in the form of sovereign securities issued in foreign financial markets has doubled in volume. In percentage terms, it has increased by 50 per cent.

The IMF is banging its fist on the table to call on the government to implement a firmer policy of austerity in public spending.

Hiruni, like the overwhelming majority of Sri Lanka’s population, has no fair expectations from the IMF.

The CADTM, which held its 8^th South Asia Regional Workshop in Colombo in February 2020, supported the struggle of victims of government and IMF policies. The UN Independent Expert on Debt and Human Rights sent a message to the CADTM workshop participants that addresses the substantive issues

(https://www.cadtm.org/Message-from-Juan-Pablo-Bohoslavski-the-UN-expert-on-Debt-and-Human-Rights-to).

It should be noted that, in addition to the fatal agreements with the IMF, the deadly action of the Trump Administration also plays a significant role in the deterioration of the living conditions of a large majority of the Sri Lankan population. One of the channels of Washington’s intervention is a federal agency created in 2004, called the Millennium Challenge Corporation, which has been active in Sri Lanka since April 2019.

(see https://www.mcc.gov/where-we-work/country/sri-lanka).

It assigns good or bad ratings to the countries in which it operates (see https://www.mcc.gov/who-we-fund/scorecard/fy-2019/LK). Its deleterious action is combined with that of USAID, the other federal agency that strongly encourages further job insecurity in Sri Lanka (so that the IMF does not deal with it directly).

The European Union is not to be outdone. Its investment bank, the EIB, actively supports micro-credit enterprises that exploit and despoil hundreds of thousands of women in Sri Lanka. It should also be noted that the so-called ethical European private bank Triodos also invests in the microcredit business in the country

(https://www.lankabusinessonline.com/tripartite-finance/).

Of course, we must not forget China, for which Sri Lanka occupies a geo-strategic position in terms of trade routes. China is building a number of ports without taking into account the preservation of the environment, and it is doing so while putting Sri Lanka into debt. China is not giving a gift either.

CADTM joins Hiruni and all those who, like her, have finally decided to resist. For after having been a passive victim, Hiruni joined the action of active resistance like many other women who demonstrated in Colombo on 27 February 2020 to request that the government respond to their demands.

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This article was originally published on CADTM.

Eric Toussaint is a historian and political scientist who completed his Ph.D. at the universities of Paris VIII and Liège, is the spokesperson of the CADTM International, and sits on the Scientific Council of ATTAC France. He is the author of Debt System (Haymarket books, Chicago, 2019), Bankocracy (2015); The Life and Crimes of an Exemplary Man (2014); Glance in the Rear View Mirror. Neoliberal Ideology From its Origins to the Present, Haymarket books, Chicago, 2012 (see here), etc.

All images in this article are from CADTM

In unexpected news today, the small West African country of Sierra Leone has withdrawn recognition of the so-called independence of Kosovo. This now means that of the 193 UN member states, only 92 countries recognize the self-proclaimed independence of Kosovo, putting the illegitimate country into a minority of recognition. The head of Serbian diplomacy also explained that 96 countries do not recognize Kosovo, while five countries are in a fluid stance, i.e. mostly recognize Kosovo, but no longer have much support for Kosovo.

The news was revealed by Serbian Foreign Minister Ivica Dačić, who is on an official visit today to the African country that is located on the Atlantic Coast. Sierra Leone is now the 18th state to withdraw recognition of Kosovo as an independent state since 2017.

“It is with great pleasure that I can show a note from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs stating that Sierra Leone is withdrawing recognition of Kosovo as an independent state and will respect the results of the dialogue, with the mediation of the EU and the UN,” Dačić said. “This means Kosovo no longer has a majority in the UN.”

He continued to explain that this “recognition” of Kosovo’s independence was of particular importance for Belgrade. This deals a powerful blow to Kosovo, not so much that Sierra Leone holds great diplomatic influence, but rather for the first that the African country was among one of the first countries to recognize Kosovo’s independence in 2008. Dačić said he had successful talks with Sierra Leonese President Julius Maada Bio in the country’s capital of Freetown and that it was agreed that bilateral relations, which had been stalled for years, will be improved. Bio is expected to visit Serbia in June.

Prior to Sierra Leone, Kosovo independence recognition was withdrawn by Suriname, Togo, Ghana, Nauru, the Comoros, São Tomé and Príncipe, Guinea-Bissau, Burundi, Liberia, Lesotho, Grenada, Madagascar, the Commonwealth of Dominica, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Palau and Central African Republic. Only last night Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić told reporters that after meeting with U.S. National Security Advisor Robert O’Brien, he expected new withdrawals of recognition of the self-proclaimed Kosovo in the near future.

Vučić and President of Kosovo Hashim Thaçi met on Monday at the White House. According to a statement by Vučić, two presidents had “the usual talks” that resolved and progressed nothing. However, with Freetown withdrawing their recognition of Kosovo, it appears that Vučić knew this was going to occur and is alluding that there are more states ready to withdraw their recognitions.

The Greater Albanian project is accelerating as Kosovo’s statehood is in question. Kosovo-born Albanian Minister-in-office for Europe and Foreign Affairs Gent Cakaj and the Foreign Minister of Kosovo Glauk Konjufca in a meeting last month discussed the establishment of common economic space for free movement of people, goods and capital between Albania and Kosovo, as well as sharing embassies around the world. Although this is yet to occur, it is likely that because Kosovo now has minority recognition according to Dačić, Albania and Kosovo are likely to speed up this process of integration. With a minority recognition of Kosovo’s independence and Vučić alluding that there will be more recognition withdrawals, the legitimacy of Kosovo’s independence from Serbia is becoming increasingly tedious and will legitimize the reincorporation of the breakaway province, which is considered Serbia’s heartland.

The U.S. historically has been indifferent to a Greater Albania project that incorporates further areas of Serbia, as well as Greece, Montenegro and North Macedonia. The U.S. has had no need to support such a project as Greece, Montenegro and North Macedonia are subservient states to Washington. Serbia on the other hand serves as a bulwark to U.S. hegemony in the Balkans and is the most Russian-friendly state in the region, meaning Washington fully backs Kosovo’s illegal declaration of independence. Kosovo’s return under Serbian sovereignty challenges U.S. control of the Balkans, suggesting that Washington may not oppose the incorporation of Kosovo into the Albanian state.

For this reason, Serbia should not give up its current policy of pushing states to withdraw their recognition of Kosovo’s independence and Belgrade must maintain that Kosovo is an integral and historical part of their country. Serbia must continue its diplomatic campaigning to have more states withdraw their recognition of an independent Kosovo. With this achieved, Belgrade will have secured legitimacy to pursue all options necessary, including military, to prevent Kosovo from ever incorporating itself into Albania instead of Serbia.

Today marks a historic day when one of the first states to recognize Kosovo’s independence has now withdrawn it. However, this also spells a dangerous time for Serbia as Kosovo can start behaving in more irrational ways to maintain their illegal independence and resort back to terrorism as it had in the 1990’s and 2000 under the banner of the so-called Kosovo Liberation Army. We can expect Belgrade to secure more withdrawals of recognition, meaning that it is only a matter of time until Kosovo is finally reincorporated into Serbia, striking a massive blow to the U.S. as it will lose a region that has been extremely loyal to it.

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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.

Paul Antonopoulos is a Research Fellow at the Center for Syncretic Studies.

In National Security Cinema: The Shocking New Evidence of Government Control in Hollywood (2017), Dr. Matthew Alford and Tom Secker offer convincing proof that the US Department of Defense, CIA and FBI have for decades used various means to manipulate content and even deny production of certain Hollywood projects, often using “national security” as a pretext to censor film and television. The real aim of these operations, according to the authors, is to advance “violent, American-centric solutions to international problems based on twisted readings of history.”

Alford is a Teaching Fellow at the University of Bath in England. He is also the author of Reel Power: Hollywood Cinema and American Supremacy (2010). Secker is a private researcher who runs spyculture.com—an online archive about government involvement in the entertainment industry.

Their book argues that the US military has had an influential relationship with Hollywood products since its earliest days. Alford and Secker point out that the Home Guard (reserve forces outside the National Guard) provided tanks for “the infamous feature film [D.W. Griffith’s] Birth of a Nation (1915), in which black slaves revolt against their masters, before the Ku Klux Klan ride in on horseback to save the day.”

Using the Freedom of Information Act, the authors gained access to files that exposed the extent of government censorship in films between 1911 and 2017. The DOD (Department of Defense, or Pentagon) provided military equipment and “advice,” and even allowed members of the military to make appearances, in exchange for some degree of control over the content of 814 films.

The authors continue, “If we include the 1,133 TV titles in our count, the number of screen entertainment products supported by the DOD leaps to 1,947. If we are to include the individual episodes for each title on long-running shows like 24, Homeland, and NCIS, as well as the influence of other major organisations like the FBI, CIA and White House then it becomes clear that the national security state has supported thousands of products.”

Alford and Secker offer the Transformer movie franchise (2007-2018 so far, most of it directed by Michael Bay) as an example of how the DOD reinforces its “national security” interests by using different “under the table” methods of influencing the making of what was (and still is) considered to be pure entertainment.

Normally, filmmakers have to send drafts of the script to the DOD along with their request for material support. Not so with the makers of Transformers. The DOD paid the filmmakers to gain “very early influence over the scripts” by giving them the most military assistance in filmmaking history, e.g., “twelve types of Air Force aircraft and troops from four different bases.” The second Transformers film was provided with $150m F-22 fighters.

Peter Cullen in Transformers (2007)

The authors rightly conclude that the Transformers franchise is anything but “apolitical,” and is, in fact, an example of what’s come to be known as “war pornography.” The unstated but intentional message to the audience is to “trust in officialdom” to “bring ’em home” from foreign wars and invasions, no matter the number of human beings, American or otherwise, soldier or civilian, who are killed in the process.

When the authors turn to investigating the CIA’s influences on movies, they work from available facts and information in regard to three different eras: 1943-1965, 1966-1986 and 1986 to the present. While the CIA has censored or interfered with far fewer movies, its repressive methods and means, fittingly, are even more insidious.

During the immediate postwar period, officials of the newly formed CIA worked, according to Alford and Secker, “to ensure that Hollywood films did not depict them in any form.” Meanwhile, the agency, from its establishment, was busy “recruiting assets within the highest levels of the film industry and using them to spy on Hollywood and to add and remove material from movie scripts.”

Image on the right: Jan Sterling in Nineteen Eighty-Four (1956)

The film versions of George Orwell’s Animal Farm (1954, John Halas and Joy Batchelor) and Nineteen Eighty-Four (1956, Michael Anderson) exemplify the kind of movies that the CIA would be expected to censor. Indeed, film scholars, our authors point out, have long been aware that both adaptations “were directly affected by the CIA.” In the case of Animal Farm, the changes to the film’s ending were designed to encourage revolts against “communist dictatorships,” i.e., the various Stalinist regimes in the USSR and Eastern Europe, “ironically just as, in the real world,” Alford and Secker point out, “the CIA was overthrowing the democratically elected governments in Iran and Guatemala and launching operations against Sukarno’s independence government in Indonesia.”

The CIA discovered the effectiveness of working through agents—or Hollywood figures who would act as agents—during the Cold War period. As an example, the authors reveal that Luigi Luraschi, the head of censorship at Paramount Studios, regularly contacted “an anonymous individual” at the CIA to inform him of Paramount’s ability and willingness to alter films to conform to US government interests.

Among the many Paramount movies from which scenes were added or deleted—intended to improve the image of American society—include the apparently innocuous Sangaree (Edward Ludwig), The Caddy (Norman Taurog) and Houdini (George Marshall), all released in 1953, and Strategic Air Command(Anthony Mann), from 1955. The latter was changed to ensure that America did not appear as “a lot of trigger-happy warmongering people.”

Sean Connery and Rik Van Nutter in Thunderball (1965)

In 1961 the CIA suffered its “first high profile failure” during the attempted invasion of Cuba at the Bay of Pigs, an operation aimed at overthrowing the Castro government. One of the CIA’s responses to the debacle was to turn to movies to improve its image. Nowhere was this more apparent than in Thunderball (Terence Young, 1965), the James Bond film based on the novel by Ian Fleming (a friend of CIA director Allen Dulles), featuring a number of positive references to the agency, and the first movie with a likable CIA character, Felix Leiter (Rik Van Nutter).

1966-1986: Richard Helms, who began working in intelligence in 1943 and who served as CIA director from 1966-1973, presided over what appeared to be a less intrusive relationship with Hollywood. Alford and Secker ask, “But was all as it seemed?”

Two films from this period—Topaz (Alfred Hitchcock, 1969) and Three Days of the Condor (Sydney Pollack, 1975)—portrayed the CIA as a ruthless intelligence agency that sent “murderous villains,” i.e., CIA agents, out into the public. The authors hypothesize that the agency may have welcomed the “more menacing” image that these and other films presented. They write that if there really was “tacit CIA approval for the Condor script, it would suggest that the CIA was actually at ease with being represented in such threatening terms. The final scene of the film rationalises the CIA’s criminal activity, as ultimately it is only the Agency that appears able to protect the flow of oil that is vital to the nation’s survival.”

Robert Redford in Three Days of the Condor (1975)

Alford and Secker point out that Helms, who was dismissed as CIA chief by President Richard Nixon in early 1973 (due in part to Helms’s refusal to help cover up the developing Watergate scandal), spoke with star Robert Redford “for hours” on the set of Condor in 1975.

The authors’ notion that the CIA was deliberately cultivating a “tough-guy” image is probably correct, but providing at least a brief history of Nixon’s firing of Helms and the surrounding developments, including the state of “the flow of oil,” would have strengthened their arguments and enlightened the reader.

1986-present: Top Gun (Tony Scott, 1986) proved to be a successful promotional film for the US Navy—in the year following the movie’s release, “Navy recruitment figures saw a spike of 16,000, and enlistment for naval aviators jumped 500 percent.” This success, according to Alford and Secker, caused the CIA to change its means of manipulating Hollywood. In fact, the CIA was taking advantage of a reactionary political and cultural atmosphere, one of whose central events was the collapse of the Eastern European Stalinist regimes and the dissolution of the Soviet Union between 1989 and 1991.

After building a relationship with author espionage-thriller writer Tom Clancy, the CIA allowed adaptations of two Clancy products, Patriot Games (1992) and Mission Impossible (1996), to be the first movies filmed at the CIA’s Langley headquarters in two decades.

Other celebrity links quickly followed, giving the CIA control over the development of a number of films. In his capacity as CIA’s Entertainment Liaison Officer (ELO), Chase Brandon, a 25-year veteran of CIA operations and cousin of Hollywood star Tommy Lee Jones, helped give the spy agency influence over the production of a number of films, such as The Bourne Identity(Doug Liman, 2002) , The Sum of All Fears (Phil Alden Robinson, 2002—also based on a Clancy Cold War potboiler) and The Recruit (Roger Donaldson, 2003). Brandon’s role as ghostwriter of the last film has been verified. The Recruit, as the authors note, is intended to counter political concerns, such as the CIA’s apparent failure to predict the 9/11 attacks, and to promote the Agency’s “number one priority, terrorism.”

Perhaps the most surprising and disgraceful of the authors’ findings is the number of Hollywood performers who have, in one way or another, shilled for the CIA and the US military. Robert De Niro (who had left-wing parents and should know better), Tom Cruise, Dan Aykroyd, Dean Cain, Will Smith, Claire Danes, Kevin Bacon, Patrick Stewart and Mike Myers are among those who have publicly visited Langley headquarters. “George Clooney and Angelina Jolie have worked on films with the CIA.” Ben Affleck, a friend of Rwandan dictator Paul Kagame, and star in the aforementioned CIA and DOD-assisted The Sum of All Fears, told an interviewer that “Hollywood is probably full of CIA agents.”

A “Case Studies” section allows the authors to scrutinize more closely the influence of the military-intelligence apparatus on 14 contemporary films in different genres, including James Cameron’s Avatar (2009); Mike Nichols’s Charlie Wilson’s War (2007); Robert Zemeckis’s Contact (1997); Terry George’s Hotel Rwanda (2004); Seth Rogen-Evan Goldberg’s The Interview(2014); The Kingdom (2007) and Lone Survivor (2013), both directed by Peter Berg; William Friedkin’s Rules of Engagement (2000); and Paul Greengrass’s United 93 (2006).

(The WSWS, without of course knowing the specific role of the military and CIA in every case, sharply criticized each of the films on this list that we reviewed.)

A detailed examination of these films brings to light the fact that most of them promote a common underlying ideology, that “American military supremacy is fundamentally benevolent.”

Tom Hanks and Philip Seymour Hoffman in Charlie Wilson’s War (2007)

In the case of Charlie Wilson’s War, the CIA advanced this ideology by deleting scenes from the script that portrayed Soviet goodwill during their occupation of Afghanistan, e.g., in one of several scenes removed from the script, a “maverick CIA operative” described Russian soldiers gathering Afghan refugees together in a semi-circle and teaching them how to read and write. Iron Man (2008) follows a familiar Hollywood plot line to prove the benevolence of American domination. Initially, Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) is a stereotypically rich playboy, but his capture and imprisonment change him almost instantaneously into a heroic figure who, as Iron Man, uses sophisticated equipment to kill “generic Muslim terrorists,” just as the Pentagon was doing. The US Air Force rewarded the filmmakers by providing aircraft and airmen as extras, along with script and technical advice. Alford and Secker observe that “Air Force Captain Christian Hodge, the Defense Department’s project officer for the production, commented that the ‘Air Force is going to come off looking like rock stars.’” The Case Studies section concludes with a consideration of the relationship between various government departments and agencies, especially the CIA, and the work of Clancy and directors Oliver Stone and Paul Verhoeven.

While the authors note that Clancy is hardly a “laudable figure politically,” the Hollywood versions of his novels removed whatever anti-establishment elements they contained, and shifted them in the direction of misleading “people about real events and political dynamics while portraying the security state as the only answer to a dangerous and hostile world.”

Alford and Secker rather generously refer to Verhoeven’s “politically subversive trio of movies”—the sci-fi trilogy of Robocop, Total Recall, and Starship Troopers. The latter film, according to Verhoeven, got past the censors “because nobody [at Sony Pictures] ever saw it,” due to the fact that Sony was turning over management “every three or four months.”

Veteran filmmaker Oliver Stone had no such luck. After the release of Snowden, about whistleblower Edward Snowden, Stone spoke of his inability to find American financing for the movie, according to the authors, his “first major political movie in 21 years.” Stone commented, “It’s a very strange thing to do [a story about] an American man, and not be able to finance this movie in America.”

Stone faced censorship from multiple US government departments and agencies as well as a dry well when looking for American financing of any movie that was not sympathetic to US imperialist policies.

At times, the authors fail to bring enough historical background to their statements and assertions, although a valuable Endnotes concludes the book. The critical subject matter, about which the American public knows next to nothing, deserves an even larger study.

Overall, National Security Cinema: The Shocking New Evidence of Government Control in Hollywood offers a clearly written presentation of a Hollywood industry and government departments and agencies that are, indeed, intent on delivering more and more “war propaganda.” Until they are stopped, “we will,” to quote the authors, “continue to live and die in a military-industrial nightmare.”

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The hugely corrupted US political process is too debauched to fix, ordinary Americans with no say over how they’re governed.

Elections when held are political theater. Back-room deal-making decides things, not voters.

Going to the polls is a waste of time when so-called elections always turn out the same way under one-party rule with two right wings.

In 2016, Hillary’s Dem party takeover robbed Sanders of the nomination as standard bearer he  likely would have won if things were fair.

The process was like holding a world series or super bowl with only one team represented.

Sanders never had a chance and knew it. Are things now manipulated the same way in the race to be Dem standard bearer in November?

Based on his voting record, along party lines most often, Sanders assures continuity if elected to the nation’s highest office.

Yet he’s likely seen not safe enough by Dem party bosses and monied interests backing them.

Despite holding a sizable lead over other Dem aspirants and Trump in an average of national polls, showing him more popular than rivals for the nation’s highest office, things are being manipulated against him to benefit Biden.

Notably ahead of Super Tuesday, Buttigieg and Klobuchar dropped out of the race, their announcements timed to boost Biden’s chances in Tuesday voting — one of many ways the US political system is rigged.

Reportedly Obama and other Dem insiders pushed Buttigieg and Klobuchar to drop out and endorse Biden.

On Monday, they appeared separately with the former vice president to back him — timed ahead of Tuesday primaries in 14 states, including California and Texas, with 1,357 of 3,979 delegates at stake.

Their sellout to party bosses, likely in return for special favors offered, likely boosts Biden’s Super Tuesday chances at Sanders’ expense.

Key is whether Warren will drop out, endorse him, help his campaign, and make it a three-candidate race.

Late entrant/super-rich Bloomberg will likely stay the course as long as he sees a chance to buy the Dem nomination.

A billion here, a billion there thrown at the race is pocket change for a figure worth about $55 billion, according to Forbes magazine.

Dem party bosses likely see him as an alternate choice against Sanders if popular support for Biden fades in upcoming primaries.

For now, establishment Dems are publicly endorsing the former vice president — not Obama so far, remaining publicly neutral despite clearly favoring Biden over Sanders.

According to NBC News, “(p)eople close to Obama said the former president has been keeping close tabs on the race.”

“They said the signal has been sent in the past 36 hours that he sees Biden as the candidate to back, and they don’t need Obama to say it publicly or privately.”

Separately, NBC News said sources close to Bloomberg explained that he’s “test(ing) the theory” that Biden won’t be nominated.

So he’s not bowing out of the race at this time even though aware of long odds against him. Based on polls so far, he may not win a single state.

Longstanding establishment figure Biden as US senator and vice president since 1973 reflects virtually everything disturbing about dirty business as usual in Washington.

He never met a US war of aggression against a nonthreatening nation he didn’t wholeheartedly endorse.

Hostile to people of color and the nation’s poor, he’s militantly pro-Wall Street, pro-the military, industrial, security complex, pro Big Oil and Big Pharma.

He supports the humanly destructive war on drugs and US gulag prison system, operating domestically and abroad.

The 1994 Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act he championed led to the imprisonment of millions of Black and Latino Americans — largely for illicit drug possession and other nonviolent offenses.

He once argued that Roe v. Wade (a woman’s right to choose, to maintain sovereignty over her own body) “went too far,” adding:

“I don’t think that a woman has the sole right to say what should happen to her body.”

He backed the notorious Hyde amendment, prohibiting federal funding for abortions.

He supported the anti-consumer 2005 Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act.

It notably made federal and private student loan indebtedness non-dischargeable, debt bondage relief through bankruptcy unattainable.

He backed the 1999 Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, repealing Glass-Steagall. The 1930s law separated commercial from investment banks and insurers, among other provisions, curbing speculation — unleashed by this deplorable legislation.

He also backed the 2000 Commodities Futures Modernization Act — preventing regulatory oversight of derivatives and leveraging. It made Wall Street more of a casino, operating on only the house wins rules.

He supported all post-9/11 police state laws — while opposing Net Neutrality.

He never met a tax cut for corporate America and high net-worth households he didn’t endorse.

He’s militantly hostile to all sovereign independent states on the US target list for regime change.

He supports monied interests exclusively over the public welfare he disdains.

Based on his deplorable political record, he’s the worst of all Dem aspirants — a warmaker, not a peacemaker, an anti-progressive, not a man of the people, a shill for powerful interests exclusively, a Hillary clone with a gender difference.

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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.”

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

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

A MV Stellar Banner ship with almost 300 thousand tons of iron ore is stuck on the Brazilian coast, just over 10 kilometers from the coast. There is a great risk of sinking, as its hull is on the verge of breaking. In addition to ore, there is an immense fuel load, with 3,500 tons of residual oil and 140 tons of distilled oil. It can be one of the greatest environmental disasters in Brazilian history. 

The case would be tragic in isolation; however, environmental disasters in Brazil have been practically unceasing in recent years. The ship, interestingly, serves the Vale Company, the same company that was responsible for the disasters in Mariana (2015) and Brumadinho (2018), both in the interior of the state of Minas Gerais and which resulted in the death of almost 300 people. In both cases, tailings dams broke in the areas explored by mining, destroying two historic cities of Brazil, which have not yet been restored. The victims’ families remain homeless and without compensation – Vale has never been legally held responsible for the tragedies.

To fully understand these cases and the whole controversy surrounding the company Vale, we have to analyze a little of Brazilian political history. “Vale” was the name adopted by the company after its privatization. Before, it was called “Vale do Rio Doce” and was a state-owned mining company, founded in the 1940s by former president Getúlio Vargas, who saw it as an important stage in Brazilian national development. The decades had passed and the political rivalry between the nationalist defenders of Getúlio Vargas and the liberals has been intensified. The getulists wanted to preserve the public companies created by the ex-president to develop the country; liberals wanted to privatize them and subordinate the country economically to international economic elites. In 2007, the privatization of the Vale do Rio Doce was finally concluded, and the company came to be called “Vale”, being now a publicly traded company, operating worldwide and with shares traded on the world’s main Stock Exchanges.

It is precisely from the moment of its privatization, that Vale begins to drop the quality of its services, ceasing to be a central point of the Brazilian economy to become a truly murderous and mercenary company. In 2012, Vale was elected by the “Public Eye People’s” as the worst company in the world in regard to human rights and the environment.

Three years later, there was the incident in Mariana, considered until today the biggest environmental disaster in the Brazilian history, which, in addition to deaths and general destruction, caused the extinction of a large and important river in the region. Three more years passed and the company repeated its actions in the city of Brumadinho, killing an even greater number of people. In 2019, in another episode involving the company, approximately 500 people had to be forcibly removed from their homes due to a warning about possible breakdown of new dams. The collective evacuation in the city of Barão dos Cocais, also in the state of Minas Gerais, caused a huge disturbance to the population that remains homeless and prevented from returning to their residence, while more than a year has passed and nothing has been done to remedy the problem, with the homeless population and the environment waiting for yet another disaster.

Now, we have a new chapter happening involving the company and its environmental and social neglect. The ship belongs to the South Korean company “Polaris Shipping”, which was contracted by Vale to transport iron ore from Brazil to China. The ship is stranded and almost sinking in the coast of the state of Maranhão, in northeastern Brazil. Images captured by the Brazilian Navy detected a series of oil stains in the regions around the stranding. According to Brazilian authorities, there is no defined containment plan yet.

Why is Vale still involved with impunity in so many scandals and environmental disasters? How does a company “internationally awarded” with the “Oscar of environmental shame” continue to operate freely in Brazil, being involved in at least three tragedies in five years? Why has Vale never been punished? What prevents Brazilian authorities from restricting the activities of a company that has already killed hundreds of Brazilians?

The answer lies in other data: Vale is one of the main controllers of the Brazilian National Congress. Its political influence is immense, with several parliamentarians at its disposal. After the incidents of Mariana and Brumadinho, a survey organized by the Brazilian newspaper “Estadão” revealed that the company had already donated around US $ 19 million to Brazilian deputies, senators, governors and candidates for the Presidency of the Republic. Such donations were a key point in a major institutional corruption scheme in which politicians were bribed for failing to pass strict environmental laws, which to some extent “hurt” Vale.

Now, we see the results of the environmental neglect of neoliberalism: yet another environmental tragedy is approaching in Brazil. There will be more victims and the social and environmental impact will be even greater than that of previous crises. And this will not be the last tragedy, as Vale will probably go unpunished again.

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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.

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Os Estados Unidos subiram o alerta do Coronavírus para a Itália, do nível 3 (“evitar viagens não essenciais”), elevando-o para 4, para a Lombardia e Veneto (“não viajar”), o mesmo que para a China. A American Airlines e a Delta Air Lines suspenderam todos os voos entre Nova York e Milão. Os cidadãos USA que vão à Alemanha, Polónia e outros países europeus, no nível de alerta 2, devem “adoptar precauções acrescidas”.

Há, no entanto, uma categoria de cidadãos USA isentos dessas normas: os 20.000 soldados que começam a chegar dos Estados Unidos aos portos e aeroportos europeus para o exercício Defender Europe 20 (Defensor da Europa 20), o maior destacamento de tropas USA, na Europa, nos últimos 25 anos. Compreendendo os que já estão presentes, participarão em Abril e Maio, cerca de 30.000 soldados USA, apoiados por 7.000 dos 17 países membros e parceiros da NATO, entre os quais, a Itália.

A primeira unidade blindada chegou do porto de Savannah, nos EUA, ao de Bremerhaven, na Alemanha. Em resumo, chegam dos USA a 6 portos europeus (na Bélgica, Holanda, Alemanha, Letónia, Estónia) 20.000 peças de equipamentos militares. Outras 13.000 peças são fornecidas pelos depósitos pré-posicionados pelo US Army Europe (Exército dos EUA, na Europa), principalmente na Alemanha, Holanda e Bélgica. Tais operações, informa o US Army Europe, “requerem a participação de dezenas de milhares de militares e civis de muitas nações”.

Chega, ao mesmo tempo, dos USA a 7 aeroportos europeus, o grosso do contingente dos 20.000 soldados. Entre estes, 6.000 da Guarda Nacional, provenientes de 15 Estados: Arizona, Flórida, Montana, Nova York, Virgínia e outros. No início do exercício, em Abril – comunica o US Army Europe  – os 30.000 soldados USA “espalhar-se-ão por toda a região europeia” para “proteger a Europa de qualquer ameaça potencial”, com clara referência à “ameaça russa”.

O General Tod Wolters – que comanda as forças USA, na Europa e, ao mesmo tempo, as forças da NATO como Comandante Supremo Aliado na Europa – assegura que “a União Europeia, a NATO e o Comando Europeu dos Estados Unidos trabalharam em conjunto para melhorar as infraestruturas”. Isto permitirá que os comboios militares se movam rapidamente, ao longo de 4.000 km de rotas de trânsito. Dezenas de milhares de soldados atravessarão as fronteiras para realizar exercícios em dez países. Na Polónia chegarão a 12 áreas de treino, 16.000 soldados USA com cerca de 2.500 veículos. Os pára-quedistas USA da 173ª Brigada, estacionados em Veneto e os italianos da Brigada Folgore, estacionados na Toscana, irão à Letónia para um exercício conjunto de lançamento de bombas.

O Defender Europe 20 está a ser efectuado para “aumentar a capacidade de instalar rapidamente uma grande força de combate dos Estados Unidos na Europa”. Portanto, desenvolvem-se com horários e procedimentos que tornam praticamente impossível sujeitar dezenas de milhares de soldados às regras de saúde do Coronavírus e impedir que, durante os períodos de descanso, entrem em contacto com os habitantes. Além do mais, o US Army Europe Rock Band realizará uma série de concertos gratuitos na Alemanha, Polónia e Lituânia, que atrairão um grande público. As 30.000 tropas USA que “se espalharão pela região europeia” estão, de facto, isentas das normas preventivas sobre o Coronavírus que se aplicam aos civis. Basta a garantia dada pelo US Army Europe de que “estamos a monitorar o Coronavírus” e que as “nossas forças estão de boa saúde”.

Ao mesmo tempo, é ignorado o impacto ambiental de um exercício militar de tal envergadura. Participarão tanques USA Abrams, pesando 70 toneladas e com armadura de urânio empobrecido, que consumem 400 litros de combustível por 100 km, produzindo forte inquinamento para obter a potência máxima.

Em tal situação, o que fazem as autoridades nacionais e as da União Europeia, o que faz a Organização Mundial da Saúde? Além de tapar a boca e o nariz, colocam a máscara sobre os olhos.

Manlio Dinucci

Artigo original em italiano :

30 mila soldati dagli Usa in Europa senza mascherina

Tradutora: Maria Luísa de Vasconcellos 

Gli Stati uniti hanno alzato l’allerta Coronavirus per l’Italia a livello 3 («evitare viaggi non essenziali»), portandolo a 4 per Lombardia e Veneto («non viaggiare»), lo stesso che per la Cina. Le American Airlines e le Delta Air Lines hanno sospeso tutti i voli tra New York e Milano. I cittadini Usa che vanno in Germania, Polonia e altri paesi europei, a livello 2 di allerta, devono «adottare accresciute precauzioni».

C’è però una categoria di cittadini Usa esentata da tali norme:  i 20.000 soldati che cominciano ad arrivare dagli Stati uniti in porti e aeroporti europei per l’esercitazione Defender Europe 20 (Difensore dell’Europa 2020), il più grande spiegamento di truppe Usa in Europa degli ultimi 25 anni. Compresi quelli già presenti, vi parteciperanno in aprile e maggio  circa 30.000 soldati Usa, affiancati da 7.000 di 17 paesi membri e partner della Nato, tra cui l’Italia.

La prima unità corazzata è arrivata dal porto di Savannah negli Usa a quello di Bremerhaven in Germania. Complessivamente arrivano dagli Usa in 6 porti europei (in Belgio, Olanda, Germania, Lettonia, Estonia) 20.000 pezzi di equipaggiamento militare. Altri 13.000 pezzi sono forniti dai depositi preposizionati dallo US Army Europe (Esercito Usa in Europa), principalmente in Germania, Olanda e Belgio. Tali operazioni, informa lo US Army Europe, «richiedono la partecipazione  di decine di migliaia di militari e civili di molte nazioni».

Arriva allo stesso tempo dagli Usa in 7 aeroporti europei il grosso del contingente dei 20.000 soldati. Tra questi 6.000 della Guardia Nazionale provenienti da 15 Stati: Arizona, Florida, Montana, New York, Virginia e altri. All’inizio dell’esercitazione in aprile – comunica lo US Army Europe  – i 30.000 soldati Usa «si spargeranno attraverso la regione europea» per  «proteggere l’Europa da qualsiasi potenziale minaccia», con chiaro riferimento alla «minaccia russa».

Il generale Tod Wolters – che comanda le forze Usa in Europa e allo stesso tempo quelle Nato quale Comandante Supremo Alleato in Europa – assicura che «l’Unione europea, la Nato e il Comando europeo degli Stati uniti hanno lavorato insieme per migliorare le infrastrutture». Ciò permetterà ai convogli militari di spostarsi rapidamente lungo 4.000 km di vie di transito. Decine di migliaia di soldati attraverseranno le frontiere per effettuare esercitazioni in dieci paesi.In Polonia arriveranno, in 12 aree di addestramento, 16.000 soldati Usa con circa 2.500 veicoli. Paracadutisti Usa della 173a Brigata di stanza in Veneto e italiani delle Brigata Folgore di stanza in Toscana andranno in Lettonia per una esercitazione congiunta di lancio.

La Defender Europe 20 viene effettuata per «accrescere la capacità di dispiegare rapidamente una grande forza di combattimento dagli Stati uniti in Europa». Si svolge quindi con tempi e procedure che rendono praticamente impossibile sottoporre decine di migliaia di soldati alle norme sanitarie sul Coronavirus e impedire che, nei turni di riposo, entrino in contatto con gli abitanti. Per di più la US Army Europe Rock Band terrà in Germania, Polonia e Lituania una serie di concerti a ingresso libero che attireranno un grande pubblico. I 30.000 soldati Usa, che «si spargeranno attraverso la regione europea», sono di fatto esentati dalle norme preventive sul Coronavirus che invece valgono per i civili. Basta l’assicurazione data dallo US Army Europe che «stiamo monitorando il Coronavirus» e che «le nostre forze sono in buona salute».

Viene allo stesso tempo ignorato l’impatto ambientale di una esercitazione militare di tale portata. Vi parteciperanno carrarmati Usa Abrams, pesanti 70 tonnellate con corazze di uranio impoverito, che consumano 400 litri di carburante per 100 km producendo forte inquinamento per erogare la massima potenza.

In tale situazione, che cosa fanno le autorità Ue e nazionali, che cosa fa l’Organizzazione mondiale della Sanità? Si mettono la mascherina, oltre che su bocca e naso, sugli occhi.

Manlio Dinucci

Trump’s “Peace to Prosperity” Plan, was officially unveiled, on 28 January, 2020, at the White House, by both American President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The Plan, also known as “Deal of the Century”, dealt with a number of important issues but concentrated on three aspects: political, security and economic affairs. Out of its 181 pages, 54 pages were dedicated to the plan’s economic component, while the rest dealt with the other issues.[1]

It should be pointed out that the Plan was authored by a team headed by two American attorneys: Trump’s son in law Jared Kushner, and Trump’s former real estate lawyer Jason D. Greenblatt, two pro-Trump White House assistants.

The following article aims at providing critical analysis of parts of the “Peace to Prosperity” Plan. Consequently, it will concentrate only on three aspects: (a) Colonial Verbiage (b) International Law and Sovereignty and (c) The Proposed Palestinian “State”.

(a) Colonial Verbiage

Trump’s Plan should not be judged only by what ideas it contains, but also by both its terminology and by what it tried to conceal. The purposeful omissions by the authors of a number of realities inside the Colonized Palestinian Territories (CPT) revealed how, through the use of colonial verbiage, the authors attempted to twist realities and advance hazy assumptions.

Analysis of the style of language the authors used in this Plan reveals the following. The word ‘Vision’ was repeated 96 times while the term ‘security’ was repeated 165 times. Israeli 53-years old belligerent occupation of the Palestinian territories was described by the authors as a “security footprint”, while Israeli colonial settlers in the West Bank were called “Israeli residents”. The 12-years old tight Israeli military siege on the Gaza Strip, and the Israeli occupation, two familiar and internationally accepted terms, were never used by the authors.

Apparently, this American plan was focused on the Israeli version of “security”, an issue that will be dealt with later. It should be pointed out that Israeli settlers inside the West Bank call themselves Jewish settlers, so does the Israeli media which reports their shooting of Palestinian civilians, their plunder of Palestinian-owned land and their daily burning and cutting of Palestinian olive trees. Even Israeli politicians call them Jewish settlers or pioneer settlers. The Plan leaves us in the dark and the authors do not inform us how Israeli settlers were converted into Israeli residents?

Furthermore, the Plan and its authors are completely tilted to Zionist colonial interests. One indicator for this bias is a statement given by the so-called Special Representative for International Negotiations Jason Greenblatt. He has frequently criticized Palestinian leaders for their policies and rejection of the Trump administration’s efforts. When asked why he does not voice similar criticism of Netanyahu’s government policies, he responded by saying: I did not find “anything to criticize.”[2]

(b) International Law and Sovereignty

In the course of their ‘prolonged occupation’, the Zionist authorities annexed the occupied territories of both the Syrian Golan Heights and East Jerusalem. The present Israeli government expressed its intention to annex additional territories of the West Bank, namely the Jordan valley and all the illegal colonial settlements that were created in the West Bank in the period 1967-2020. Consequently, one should ask: can the Israeli authorities legally carry out this political measure and acquire a sovereign title over these occupied territories?

According to Michael Lynk[3], a well-known Canadian expert in International Law, they definitely cannot. Lynk elaborated his expert opinion in a research entitled “Prolonged Occupation or Illegal Occupant”, in which he argued that,

In the modern world, an occupying power cannot, under any circumstances, acquire the right to conquer, annex or gain sovereign title over any part of the territory under its occupation…This prohibition has been made clear by both the 1907 Hague Regulations, and the 1949 Fourth Geneva Convention.[4]

This same prohibition was formerly stated by the United Nations Security Council which, in November 1967, has endorsed the principle of “the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory” by war or by force, a position that was repeatedly adopted by the UNSC on at least nine occasions, most recently in December 2016.[5]

To begin with, International Law constitutes the only reliable and internationally accepted measure for issues of belligerent occupation and sovereignty. It is important to emphasize that when a foreign army occupies a foreign territory; sovereignty is suspended but never annulled. Lynk pointed out that any territorial annexation by the occupant cannot become valid and legal and should be measured by the principal instruments of international humanitarian law, namely the 1907 Hague Regulations, the 1949 Fourth Geneva Convention and the 1977 Additional Protocol to the Geneva Conventions.[6]

Initially, the authors of the “Peace to Prosperity” Plan dealt with the issue of sovereignty in a peculiar and bizarre way. They argued that:

Sovereignty is an amorphous concept that has evolved over time. … The notion that sovereignty is a static and consistently defined term has been an unnecessary stumbling block in past negotiations. Pragmatic and operational concerns that effect security and prosperity are what is most important.[7]

In accordance with this twisted and strange legal opinion, the authors of the Plan decided that Israeli sovereignty can be freely granted to the Israeli occupant on any part of the occupied Palestinian territories. Therefore, they endorsed Israeli annexation of two Palestinian territories: East Jerusalem and all the Zionist colonial settlements inside the West Bank.

From the very beginning, the authors who emphasized that their Plan “is security-focused”[8] contemplated that “The Jordan Valley, which is critical for Israel’s national security, will be under Israeli sovereignty…”[9] Even, after the establishment of the proposed Palestinian “state” and according to the Plan, Israel will still have “security responsibility”[10] inside the territory of this “state”.

When it comes to the issue of “security”, it should be emphasized that the Israeli army is one of the strongest armies in the world. According to the Military Strength Ranking index of Global Firepower, “Israel comes behind the standard military powerhouses of the United States, Russia, China, India and European powers Germany, the UK and France…”[11]

Historically speaking, Zionist justifications for conquests, plunder, violence and repression have been repeatedly projected by Zionist leaders as “historical rights”, “security needs”, and fight against Palestinian “terrorism”. These euphemisms constituted Zionist attempts to camouflage the colonial relationship that developed inside historical Palestine.

Consequently, the term “security”, is a classical Zionist euphemism that has been in use by Zionist politicians and military analysts, throughout the colonization period. It has frequently been used as a blanket phrase, designed to cover up and justify a number of Zionist settler colonial acts, policies and activities such as: colonial settlements, territorial annexations, expropriations of Palestinian-owned land and water resources, Gaza Strip siege, torture of Palestinian prisoners, targeted killings of Palestinian leaders, the so-called “security barrier” (Separation Wall), the arrest of Palestinian small children, and the shoot to kill policy.

Actually, all these Israeli measures and many other war crimes were all carried out by the Zionists for dubious “security reasons”. They were implemented, by successive Zionist governments, inside the Colonized Palestinian Territories and were justified by false security pretensions. Several UN and International resolutions have repeatedly condemned these violations.

Therefore, Zionist Israel has no “vital security needs” inside the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. In reality, it has colonialist interests cloaked as “vital security needs”.

In short, President Donald Trump who trampled on previous UN resolutions, declarations, treaties and principles, has appointed himself as an international bogus real state arbiter.  He granted what he does not legally own, namely the colonized Golan Heights and parts of the colonized West Bank, to the Zionist settler colonialists who neither legally own these territories.

In order to justify this grand land robbery that lacks any lawful title to ownership, the Plan authors call “sovereignty an amorphous concept” and completely devastate the existence of the internationally accepted International Law.

Accordingly, we should ask:  Who decides what is a valid legal claim of a belligerent occupant on an occupied territory? The only concrete and legally correct answer is International Law. Therefore, the authors’ worthless claims are null and void.

According to Michael Lynk, the Canadian International Law expert,

In the modern world, an occupying power cannot, under any circumstances, acquire the right to conquer, annex or gain sovereign title over any part of the territory under its occupation. This is one of the most well-established principles of modern international law and enjoys universal endorsement.[12]

Moreover, this principle has been confirmed by the UNSC resolution 242 in November 1967, which has endorsed the principle of “the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory” by war or by force on at least nine occasions, most recently in December 2016.[13]

Furthermore, the authors of “Peace to Prosperity” plan mentioned that,

“Since 1946, there have been close to 700 United Nations General Assembly resolutions and over 100 United Nations Security Council resolutions in connection with this conflict. …These resolutions have not brought about peace…”[14]

The authors did not mention that the 100 resolutions adopted by the United Nations Security Council were not implemented because of the numerous American vetoes that were casted by the American representative at the UNSC in favor of Israel, and because of the American backing of Israeli colonial policies pursued by Israel’s various governments inside the CPT.

(c) The Proposed Palestinian “State”

The so-called Palestinian “state”, envisioned by the Trump’s Plan, looks very much like a bizarre collection of disjointed land enclaves. The attached map reveals the proposed “state” as composed of countless number of land pieces, spread out inside both of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip and lacks any territorial contiguity. As stated by the Plan, these enclaves will be connected together by “… an innovative network of roads, bridges and tunnels that enables freedom of movement for the Palestinians”[15]. Moreover, these pieces of land happened to be the densely populated territories of cities, towns and villages, that are not colonizeable, therefore, are not desired by the Israeli colonial annexationists.

In addition, the proposed “state” lacks genuine sovereignty and is surrounded by clusters of Israeli colonial settlements. It will have no borders with Jordan or Egypt and its airspace, sea shore and exits will be under permanent Israeli military control. Furthermore, it will be fully demilitarized with no army but a local police force.[16]

Moreover, the proposed “state” will include imposed limitations that give it a fictitious sovereignty. The Plan:

“… necessarily entails the limitations of certain sovereign powers in the Palestinian areas (henceforth referred to as the “Palestinian State”) such as maintenance of Israeli security responsibility and Israeli control of the airspace west of the Jordan River…”[17]

Other related future tasks of the Zionist authorities inside the proposed Palestinian “state” were described in the document as “security responsibility” and “security challenges”.

As anticipated by the Plan, the proposed “Palestinian State” will have security forces that encompass the following tasks.

“…The mission of the State of Palestine’s security forces will be public order, law enforcement, counterterrorism … border security, protection of government officials and foreign dignitaries, and disaster response…”[18]

As it appears by the Plan, American support for the establishment of a “Palestinian state” would be conditional and comes after Palestinian leaders embrace “peace” under the following Zionist conditions:[19]

• Recognition of Israel as a Jewish state,
• Rejecting terrorism in all its forms,
• Carrying out special arrangements that address Israel’s vital security needs,
• Building effective institutions,
• Choosing pragmatic solutions.

In short, after renouncing the Palestinian legitimate national rights, Palestinian leaders must adopt the Zionist political agenda which is based on meeting Israel’s colonialist interests, hidden by the so-called Israeli “security needs”. In return for this total national capitulation, the Palestinians will receive “…more than $50 billion in new investment over ten years…”[20] and in return for their cooperation, the Jordanian, Lebanese and Egyptian governments will get a total of $22,857 billion[21], in grants and loans[22], but mostly subsidized loans, paid in the course of a ten years period. 

The South African Bantustans and the Israeli Zionistan

It should be pointed out that the politico-military and economic relationship that was developed by Israel, in the last 53 years, inside the CPT is described by the authors as a “security footprint”. One wanders, what kind of audacity the authors assumed when they summarized 53 years of Israeli brutal settler colonial rule by calling it “security footprint”? Perhaps they thought that they can easily succeed in covering up an ugly reality that has been numerously condemned by UN resolutions, the overwhelming majority of states in the world and by International Law experts?

The Palestinian-ruled areas inside the WBGS were described by various terms as “self-rule areas”, “autonomous areas”, “Palestinian Cantons”, “internal colonial regime” and Palestinian “Bantustans”.

Actually, these terms are misnomers that are inadequate and reveal a lack of a concise term to describe precisely these entities. These entities can best be described as “Zionistans”. Consequently, a Zionistan[23]could be defined as: a territory set aside by Israel for the indigenous Palestinians and given municipal independence while ensuring their political and economic subordination to Israel. These Zionistans were gradually established in the period 1993-2020, as racially segregated entities in the West Bank and previously in the Gaza Strip. Later on and in 2005, Israeli Prime Minister Erik Sharon decided to dismantle Israeli colonial settlements from the Gaza Strip.

When compared, these entities are similar to the system of Apartheid that was applied in South Africa until it collapsed in 1994.

The Proposed “State” of Palestine

Source: White House Staff, “Peace to Prosperity”, https://www.whitehouse.gov, retrieved on 10 February 2020, p.46

It is imperative to recall that the description of Apartheid was given to these Zionistans by two Israeli Prime Ministers, Ehud Olmert[24] and Ehud Barak[25], and by an American Secretary of State John Kerry[26]. US President Jimmy Carter was bold enough to use it for the tile of his 2006 book “Palestine: Peace or Apartheid”.[27]

Apparently, these Israeli and American politicians were able to foresee the destiny of Zionist colonial realities on the ground and knew for sure the close similarities between the Israeli Zionistan project and the South African Bantustan project. The parallel they drew was meant to pose a warning to the Zionist colonialists that once they start implementing their colonialist scheme, they will unleash an accelerated process of its inevitable destruction.

The following map shows the locations of the 10 Bantustans along the borders of South Africa. When compared to Trump’s map, one can easily notice the close similarities between the two maps. Both, the Zionistan entity and the Bantustan entity, are composed of disjoined enclaves, lack territorial contiguity, reveal racial segregation, and show a bizarre creature that can never survive.

Source: “Black homelands (“bantustans”) in apartheid South Africa, 1986”, http://upload.wikimedia.org, retrieved on 13 February, 2020.

This colonial solution was tried by Apartheid South Africa. It lasted for fifteen years but South Africa could not market, anymore to the world, its Bantustans as African independent entities. On 27 April 1994 this Apartheid regime collapsed. As a result, these Bantustans were re-encorporated into the new nine provinces of a democratic South Africa.[28]

Concluding Remarks

US arrogant president Donald Trump appointed himself as an international real estate arbiter, granting what remained of the Palestinian homeland to Zionist colonization and justifying Israeli illegal annexation of the colonized territories of both East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights.

Judged by its declared aspirations, timing and content, the Trump’s “Peace to Prosperity” Plan cannot be a peace plan because it proposes a detailed colonialist set of assumptions that were tailored by its authors to fit the exact measures of the Israeli ongoing Zionistan project. In actuality it looks more like an archaic Roman diktat that aims at the liquidation of the option for the two-state solution to the Palestinian-Zionist Conflict.

Moreover, Trump’s “Progress to Prosperity” Plan has used the impact of colonial settlements, in order to impose a colonial solution to a colonial problem. The authors of the “Progress to Prosperity” should be reminded that Israel is using a solution that has totally failed in Apartheid South Africa and it can never succeed in Palestine, because a colonial solution cannot be permanent nor stable since it contains the internal potential for its own demise.

I have received dozens of emails from people in several countries who report an increase in, or initial onset of, electrical sensitivity symptoms when high-speed fiber optic internet is installed in their neighborhood. How could this be? Isn’t wired fiber optic internet, which uses light to transmit large amounts of data at incredibly high speeds, supposed to be safer and healthier for everyone?

The issue is that fiber optic internet service does not only use light to transmit data. The high-speed fiber optic data must be converted to electrical signals before the data can be transmitted to the home on the existing copper cable or phone line DSL. Those electrical signals, which carry our internet data, are not inherently problematic because they are in a very narrow frequency range and don’t typically radiate from the cable or phone lines.

However, there can be a significant problem with the high-speed fiber optic converters out at the street (or in the home with some newer fiber systems) that create these electrical data signals. This is because the converters are not designed with low-EMI emissions in mind. Thus, their power supplies and operation can generate high amounts of wide-spectrum EMI (electromagnetic interference). This inadvertent EMI then piggybacks on the copper cable and phone lines into our homes where it can radiate from every copper wire. This EMI from the fiber optic infrastructure is a primary reason why electrical sensitivity is increasing when high-speed internet is installed in our communities.

Fortunately, there are solutions to this issue. Here are a few:

1.)  If electrical sensitivity symptoms increase all of a sudden with a new internet provider (for example, switching from Comcast Xfinity to AT&T), go back to your original provider right away. There is likely an EMI issue with their fiber optic converters that is impacting your home. I have seen several people get better by switching back to their original internet providers (this is with all wireless disabled).

2.)  Continue internet service with a non-fiber optic provider as long as possible. Many communities have multiple internet service companies to choose from. Consider this EMI issue when choosing your service.

3.)  Select the lowest bandwidth internet package available. This may reduce the EMI transmitted into your home and reduce the EMI created from the modem/router within your home. In most areas, even the most basic package is much faster than you will need to stream movies on Netflix or Amazon. Choose a package at or below 100 Mbps and stay away from 1 or 10 Gbps packages, which will likely add more EMI to your home.

4.)  Disconnect the existing cable and telephone lines in your home from the cable provider. This will prevent EMI from the fiber optic infrastructure from conducting along the cable and telephone lines in your walls. You could still have a data connection brought to your residence, but have it in just one area of your home. You will be able to control the EMF exposures in your home more easily if every copper wire is not radiating EMI.

5.)  Consider filtering the EMI before it comes into your home. Genisco Filters is a company that specializes in this issue. Send me a message for more information on EMI filtering options.

6.)  Use your own low-bandwidth cable modem. The two primary sources of EMI from high-speed internet service are the fiber optic converters at the street and the cable modem within your home. The cable modem can also add EMI to the electrical wiring of your home, so you want this to be clean as possible. Unfortunately, the modem provided by your internet provider will often produce high amounts of EMI, along with WiFi. The non-WiFi modems that seem to work best for electrically sensitive families include the Arris models TM822R, SB6141 and SB6183.

7.)  If you experience increased electrical sensitivity at your computer after high-speed fiber optics are installed in your neighborhood, consider installing your own fiber optic system between your cable modem and computer. This idea may seem counterintuitive, but it will create an EMI barrier between your computer and your internet provider’s system. I will outline how you can easily do this in my next article.

8.)  Consider that the high-speed fiber optic networks being installed in our communities will be used as the backbone for 5G wireless installations. Every cellular antenna on a light or utility pole needs a fiber connection to operate. As award-winning science journalist B. Blake Levitt points out in this article, fiber optic systems can be used as a Trojan horse for 5G installations in our communities. Thus, living in an area without fiber infrastructure can both reduce the EMI coming into your home and prevent you from having a cellular antenna like these installed directly outside your home. I will discuss this aspect of 5G further in an article to be published in October.

While microwave radiation from wireless technology and magnetic & electric fields from electrical wiring are critically important, EMI is equally problematic for human biology. It’s a part of the EMF spectrum that gets very little attention. However, it is a major contributor to electrical sensitivity and poor health. Hopefully this article will help you understand and reduce an important source of EMI in your home – the fiber optic internet infrastructure that is becoming common throughout our communities.

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During the late 1960s and the 1970s, the University of Dar es Salaam in the East African state of Tanzania was a center of Marxist thought on the continent.

After the overthrow of Convention People’s Party (CPP) of Ghana on February 24, 1966 which was founded and led by Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, the ideological thrust of the African Revolution shifted to other geo-political regions. Nkrumah’s emphasis on African unification and socialism had drawn the ire of United States imperialism and its allies.

The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) was able to coordinate and facilitate a military and police led coup against the CPP installing a pro-western regime which brought Ghana back into the sphere of world capitalist system both ideologically as well as politically. During that same year, Dr. Walter Rodney, having completed a Ph.D. in historical studies at London University, took a teaching position at University of Dar es Salaam where he researched and wrote his most famous work, “How Europe Underdeveloped Africa”, published in Tanzania in 1972.

With so much interest in Socialism and Pan-Africanism, the origins of the world movements against capitalism and imperialism would be an important topic pursued by young scholars and their students. Consequently, a coterie of intellectuals and students in Tanzania debated fiercely the character of the struggle for socialism during this period and the character of the Ujamaa system inside the country itself.

President Julius Nyerere was given the Kiswahili name of “Mwalimu” meaning teacher. This had been his occupation prior to leading the independence movement in Tanzania to independence in 1961.

Nyerere realized that it was not enough to just become an independent state that the society had to be liberated from the economic and political legacies of colonialism. In 1967, the Arusha Declaration was issued by the ruling Tanzania African National Union (TANU) which outlined the need to build socialism in the largely agricultural country. (See this)

Julius Nyerere and Kwame Nkrumah leaders of the Tanzanian and Ghanaian Revolutions in Africa

The Arusha Declaration was widely read and analyzed in this era. Its very existence was bolstered by the presence of organizing and educational structures established in Tanzania by the leading national liberation movements on the continent such as the Mozambique Liberation Front (FRELIMO), the Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU), Southwest Africa People’s Organization (SWAPO), African National Congress (ANC), among others.

Rodney, who was born in the South American nation of Guyana in 1942, had grown up in a progressive working class family which was committed to educational achievement. He would attend the University of the West Indies and later travel to London to research and write his dissertation on the impact of the Atlantic Slave Trade in West Africa’s Guinea coast.

Lectures Series Addressed Broad Scope of Russian Revolutionary Historical Questions

The existence of these lectures had been spoken of by former students and instructors at the University of Dar es Salaam for many years. Those who lived through the early 1970s when the lectures were delivered awaited their official publication by the Walter Rodney Foundation in 2018.

Rodney’s daughter, Asha, writes in an introductory statement to the book that:

“Most dedications are written by the author to someone or something that was important to the book’s creation. Who or what Walter Rodney would have written here was taken from us when his life was violently snatched from us at the age of thirty-eight. It has taken us the sum of his lifetime, another thirty-eight years, to publish this book. So, given this task, I dedicate this book to Walter Rodney, who brilliantly penned these lectures; and to his immeasurable mind and thirst for knowledge that made this work possible.”

These lectures are divided into nine categories with the first being “The Two World Views of the Russian Revolution” where the author examines the historical approaches to the Bolshevik Party which are either sympathetic and supportive or condemnatory. He raises the question as to why should African people be hostile to the revolutionary tradition when objectively they have faced similar problems which engulfed Russia at the turn of the 19^thand 20^thcenturies.

Rodney states in this introductory lecture:

“As it is, we know for a fact how prejudiced and distorted Europe’s view of Africa has been. We know that European capitalism and imperialism continue to have our exploitation as their main objective. There is, therefore, every reason to be suspicious of the Western European (and American) view of the Soviet Revolution, and there is every reason to seek an African view.” (p.3)

Later in parts two and three, he reviews “The Russian Regime and the Soviet Revolution” along with “Marx, Marxism and the Russian Left.” Marxism as a revolutionary body of intellectual work and political practice had existed since the mid-to-late 1840s when Karl Marx and Frederick Engels joined forces during a period where industrial capitalism was emerging as the dominant mode of economic production.

Citing Marx and Engels in their writings on Western Europe and Russia, Rodney concludes that the bourgeois historical critique which argues that what became Soviet society was not conducive to the building of scientific socialism is refuted by the actual writings of the two activist-scholars. Simply because the proletariat and capitalist classes did not constitute the majority in Russia in 1917 and in subsequent years during the early phases of the revolution does not mean that the general principles of historical and dialectical materialism are not applicable.

An entire chapter of the book of lectures examines Leon Trotsky as an historian of the Russian Revolution. Later Rodney discusses the concepts of democracy and its application to the Bolshevik revolutionary seizure of power in late 1917.

These chapters serve as a means for chronicling the intellectual and political attacks on the Bolsheviks after the October Revolution. A comparative analysis is put forward on the views of V.I. Lenin, the main architect and organizer of the revolutionary seizure of state power in Russia, Karl Kautsky, the German theoretician and literary executor of Marx and Engels, along with Rosa Luxemburg, the Polish and German left social democrat and later communist who debated with Lenin for years over the right of nations to self-determination, land redistribution to the peasantry and issues related to revolutionary democracy such as the dissolution of the Constituent Assembly  by the Bolsheviks.

Kautsky of course, received a scathing attack by Lenin when the German writer charged the Bolsheviks with undemocratic practice and extended his support to the Mensheviks. Rodney’s views on these important historical questions indicate a position quite sympathetic to Lenin and the developing Soviet state.

The final three chapters are of extreme importance in relationship to the lessons of the Russian Revolution and their significance to developments in Africa during the later decades of the 20^thcentury when many of the national liberation movements and post-colonial states adopted Marxism-Leninism as methodology and ideology which could provide guidance in both defeating colonialism, settler-colonialism and imperialism as well as constructing a socialist society.

These final lectures are entitled: “Building the Socialist State”, “The Transformation of Empire” and “The Critique of Stalinism.” Rodney explains in his evaluation of the historical treatment of the peasantry in the Soviet Union under leader Joseph Stalin by western oriented capitalist scholars, noting:

“Underlying bourgeois historical writings on this issue is the assumption that the capitalist system is infinitely superior. Indeed, at most points of the evaluation, there is the implied comparison, especially since the whole object of the Cold War propaganda was to set up the capitalist system as a superior one. It is therefore very relevant to inquire how capitalism treated peasants. The answer is quite revealing. In Eastern Europe, the peasant was bounded off his land….. Outside of Europe, wherever Europeans established capitalist farming, they did so by expropriating the land of the indigenous peoples and often they virtually committed genocide. The latter applies with most force to the United States, while examples of crude treatment of the indigenous landowners are also to be found in South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, Kenya and Algeria.” (p. 123)

Relevance of the Russian Revolution Today

It has been over a century since the advent of the Bolshevik Revolution. The Russian and Soviet Revolutions were instrumental in providing political models and material assistance for other popular upheavals and socialist transformations in Korea, China, Vietnam, Cuba, Ghana, Algeria, Angola, Mozambique, Tanzania, Namibia, South Africa, among other geo-political regions.

Since the collapse of the socialist states in Europe and the Soviet Union during the late 1980s until 1991, bourgeois scholars and political figures have utilized this phenomena to attack the theoretical underpinning of Marxism-Leninism as being inherently undemocratic, impractical and even contrary to human nature. Socialism in China, Cuba, Vietnam, Venezuela, Bolivia and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) are often castigated for the purported lack of individual freedom and prosperity.

Yet capitalist societies have become more unequal in the 21^stcentury with the broadening gap between the wealthy and the working class. Imperialist wars throughout Asia, Africa and Latin America have created enormous social dislocation while creating the conditions for unprecedented environmental degradation which endangers the very existence of the planet and humanity. The advances made in Cuba, Venezuela, China, the DPRK and Vietnam is routinely overlooked while the ideological Cold War propaganda against these societies continues unabated.

The publication of these lectures so many years later makes a profound contribution to the historical evaluation of the Russian Revolution and its importance in the modern period.

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Abayomi Azikiwe is the editor of Pan-African News Wire. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

The US came to Afghanistan to stay, the same is true for all its war theaters by occupation and/or installed puppet regimes serving its interests.

Afghanistan’s troubled history goes back centuries. John Pilger explained that “no country has been abused and suffered more, and none has been helped less than Afghanistan.”

If hell on earth exists, it’s headquartered in Afghanistan — with many global affiliate locations in the modern era, largely because of endless US wars by hot and other means.

For centuries, Afghans endured what few can imagine. Marauding armies besieged cities, slaughtered thousands, and caused vast destruction.

In the 19th century, Afghans were victimized by “great game” struggles between imperial Britain and czarist Russia — a time of endless war, destruction, occupation and human misery, continuing from then to now, notably post-9/11.

Wherever the US shows up, endless wars and mass destruction follow, the human toll of no consequence.

According to Gideon Polya,

“the horrendous carnage of the (post-9/11) US War on Terror (launched in Afghanistan caused) the deaths of 32 million Muslims abroad (by violence or imposed deprivation) and the preventable deaths of 27 million Americans at home inescapably linked to the fiscal perversion of committing to a $7 trillion long-term accrual cost of killing millions of Muslims abroad.”

The true cost is likely three-fold or more higher because of unaccounted for multi-trillions of dollars by the Pentagon since the 1990s.

“Bush, Obama and Trump are indeed American-killing US presidents,” Polya stressed, adding:

“(S)erial war criminal (Trump warned) that “no place is beyond the reach of American might.”

“The US-imposed, 4-decade Afghan Holocaust and Afghan Genocide is to continue under more draconian rules of engagement.”

Since the 1990s, Polya estimated six million preventable Afghan deaths, millions more refugees, an entire population emmiserated, largely post-9/11.

Since US aggression against North Korea in 1950, he estimates around 40 million preventable deaths and tens of millions of refugees.

Since WW II, the US invaded or otherwise attacked “52 countries.”

“American exceptionalism means that the US is disproportionately  involved in…existential threats (to) humanity” — notably possible nuclear war that could destroy all life forms on earth.

The notion of first strike with these weapons that’s stated in US National Security Strategies from Bush/Cheney to Obama to Trump should terrify everyone everywhere.

What’s unthinkable is possible because of US rage to control planet earth, its resources and populations.

The so-called Trump regime/Taliban peace agreement isn’t worth the paper it’s written on.

Time and again throughout US history, it breached treaties, conventions, and agreements — clear proof that its ruling regimes can never be trusted.

The notion of the US agreeing to peace and an end to its occupation of Afghanistan is pure illusion.

The deal calls for reducing numbers of US and allied forces in the country in the coming months, withdrawing entirely in 14 months, including abandonment of Pentagon bases that cost billions of dollars to build and maintain.

Earlier drawdowns of US forces in the country were followed by increased deployments — troops in a so-called advisory and counterterrorism capacity.

Pentagon terror-bombing continued throughout the war.

In mid-2017, with around 8,400 US forces in Afghanistan, Trump OK’d increasing their numbers, then-US war secretary Mattis saying:

“This assures (that the Pentagon) can facilitate our missions and nimbly align our commitment to the situation on the ground (sic),” adding:

“Our overall mission in Afghanistan remains the same, to train, advise and assist the Afghan forces so they can safeguard the Afghan people and terrorists can find no haven in Afghanistan for attacking us or others (sic).”

The Trump regime’s Afghan strategy put no limit on the number of US forces in the country.

US policy under Bush/Cheney, Obama and Trump has nothing to do with safeguarding the Afghan people or denying terrorists a safe haven — elements the US created and supports in all its war theaters and elsewhere.

Trump’s claim about “working to finally end America’s longest war and bring our troops back home” awaits its moment of truth in the coming weeks and months — the illusion of ending over 18 years of war in Afghanistan likely to be dispelled.

Whether Pentagon and allied troops stay or leave, the CIA maintains a private army of paramilitaries in the country that serve US interests.

They’re staying, not leaving, including ISIS, al-Qaeda, and likeminded jihadists to be deployed to the country at the discretion of Langley and the Pentagon.

Afghanistan’s strategic value to the US includes its vast resources and its geographical location near Russia and China.

The US wants both countries encircled with Pentagon bases. It wants oil and gas pipelines constructed across Afghanistan.

It wants opium production continued for heroin manufacture and distribution to world markets — a key revenue source for Western banks and the CIA.

It wants control over the country continued under pro-Western puppet rule.

It wants endless war waged in multiple theaters, serving its imperial agenda, feeding its military, industrial, security, media complex.

Restoration of peace and stability in its war theaters defeats its interests, why new millennium wars rage — threats invented to continue them endlessly.

Restoration of peace and stability to Afghanistan is likely to last no longer than an invented US pretext to breach what was agreed on.

All US wars are based on Big Lies and deception. The possibility for either of its war party wings turning a page for world peace and stability is virtually nil.

Longstanding US history shows it’s a warrior nation — how its been from inception against its native people to today against humanity at home and abroad.

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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.”

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

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

The word ‘corruption’ cannot fully embrace how this insulting megalomaniac is tearing apart our country, our democratic practices, and our moral norms. Who will put a stop to this president’s corrupt rampage against the American people?

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Delusionary, dictatorial Donald Trump is drunk on power. Trump’s monarchical and lawless actions are a clear and present subversion of our Republic and its Constitution. As soon as the impeachment trial ended and Trump was acquitted by the Senate’s supine Republican courtiers (except for Senator Mitt Romney), vengeance flooded Trump’s fevered mind.

Ignoring warnings from his advisors, Trump is lashing out in all directions, unleashing torrents of foul-mouthed tweets. Note with alarm how this American Fuhrer is consolidating control and using his presidential power to smash all opposition. Remember that last July Trump declared “I have an Article II, where I have the right to do whatever I want as President.” He wasn’t kidding, America.

Trump is shocking his current appointees—in addition to those who have quit or been fired in purges.  Without evidence, he is accusing the intelligence agencies and the FBI of conspiring against him! Trump has attacked both the Justice Department and Attorney General William Barr because of the sentencing recommendations by four DOJ prosecutors for convicted criminal and Trump advisor Roger Stone. Barr, a Trump toady, was shaken. Barr said it would be impossible for him to do his job if Trump kept interfering.

As Mark Green and I depicted in our new book—Fake President: Decoding Trump’s Gaslighting, Corruption, and General Bullsh*t— loser Trump always retaliates against opponents by charging fraud, fakery, and crookery. Trump’s intimidation of others is amplified by the media that gives no right of reply to Trump’s targets.

What is most troubling are the silences of the countervailing forces that Americans have a right to rely on to fight Trump the tyrant.

Post acquittal, Trump has doubled down on his numerous impeachable offenses (see the Congressional Record from December 18, 2019, page H 12197). But Democrats, who control the House, are not doubling down on their impeachment investigations. Instead, they are following orders from Speaker Pelosi and standing down.

Trump regularly attacks the judges who rule against him or dare to challenge his illegal acts. Yet there is only silence by the many judge’s associations and the many bar associations. The American Bar Association, which has over 194,000 members, remains asleep. All of its members, so-called “officers of the court,” are attorneys and should understand their responsibilities to uphold the rule of law.

Trump’s Party has a long history of vicious voter suppression (chronicled in the new documentary, Suppressed: The Fight to Vote, by Robert Greenwald). These anti-democratic actions should be considered serious crimes. However, the members of the National Association of Secretaries of State (NASS) are largely unprepared to protect voter rights and accurate counting of votes. Some Secretaries of State are aiding and abetting these electoral crimes. Current Georgia Governor Brian Kemp used his power as Georgia’s Secretary of State to suppress black voters, cheating his way to the Governor’s mansion in 2018.

Trump is now doing what all dictators do when they take power: he is purging the civil service of any critical voices of those who simply want to do their jobs. These civil servants made the “mistake” of enforcing health and safety laws that the supreme leader wanted to go unenforced to benefit the President’s big corporate buddies and donors. The government employee unions are not doing enough to fight back and explain what Trump the tyrant is doing to harm people—Trump voters and anti-Trump voters alike. Trump and his cronies are making America more dangerous again by scuttling protections that reduce deaths, injuries, and illnesses.

Whether it is the air you breathe, the water you drink, the vehicles you ride in, or the toxins in your workplace, Trump’s corporatist wrecking crew is running federal agencies into the ground. While corporate outlaws fill Trump’s coffers and hotels with riches, he gives them huge tax escapes and starves infrastructure. The word “corruption” cannot fully embrace how this insulting megalomaniac is tearing apart our country, our democratic practices, and our moral norms. Protections for children, the elderly, veterans and workers are all on Trump’s chopping block.

Who will stand up to this horrible bully who is intent on rolling back America’s gains and the anti-monarchy purpose of the American Revolution itself? Some in the media will sound the alarm. Sensing this threat, Trump interfered with government procurement to tilt a large contract away from Amazon because Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post, which has run many articles about Trump’s rampage. Trump’s Republican campaign committee just filed a loser suit against The New York Times. Whether Trump wins or loses, the intimidation of the media is his goal.

These tactics are working on Chairman Jerome Powell and the Federal Reserve, according to former Fed insiders. As a result, the Federal Reserve has stayed committed to lowering interest rates to the detriment of savers. Intimidation is also working on the House of Representatives Democrats, who abhor the lives ruined by the savage sexual predator. Sadly, these lawmakers are not demanding a House Judiciary investigation of Trump’s treatment of women. Credible tort lawsuits are being delayed by Trump’s lawyers.

The cowardly silence of Barack Obama is the most stunning. In his extraordinary new book, The Triumph of Doubt, that names names, former head of Occupational Health and Safety Agency (OSHA), Dr. David Michaels, documents “President Trump’s desire to reverse anything the Obama administration did—if Obama supported it, Trump would do the opposite no matter what the consequences.”

The results are more mercury and diesel particulates in your lungs, more deadly methane accelerating climate disruption, and more coal ash for your children to breathe. Trump’s administration is even failing to adequately invest in medical science, which could save you. Until the coronavirus came along, Trump demanded serious funding cuts for the Centers for Disease Control; these funding cuts were thwarted by Congress. Even more damning, the Trump administration fired the U.S. pandemic response team to save money! The CDC’s annual budget is equal to a mere three days spending by the Pentagon, whose budget Trump bloats.

So where is Obama? Critiquing music, making movies, attending NBA all-star festivities, and readying for March Madness. Obama is thoroughly enjoying himself. What about also using his high political poll ratings and his massive Twitter following (which is far larger than Trump’s) to combat Trump’s actions? If not for the wellbeing of the American people, Obama should at least want to protect his legacy.

If Obama remains so carefree in the critical months before November, he will need a sign beside the exhibits to be displayed at his forthcoming presidential library: REPEALED BY TRUMP.

From Common Dreams: Our work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License. Feel free to republish and share widely.

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Ralph Nader is a consumer advocate, lawyer, and author. His latest books include: To the Ramparts: How Bush and Obama Paved the Way for the Trump Presidency, and Why It Isn’t Too Late to Reverse Course, How the Rats Re-Formed the Congress, Breaking Through Power: It’s easier than we think, and Animal Envy: A Fable

Featured image is from Gage Skidmore

A New Milestone

President Trump’s unprecedented decision to retain his business interests while serving in the White House set the stage for a deluge of conflicts of interests between the government and the Trump Organization. From the beginning of President Trump’s administration, CREW has endeavored to track these conflicts, which pit President Trump’s personal and financial interests against those of the nation as a whole, and this week, President Trump reached a new, disgraceful milestone: He has racked up 3,000 conflicts of interest during his time in office.

Throughout his three years as president, Trump has used his office to praise and promote his resorts and golf courses. Foreign governments have granted long sought-after trademarks to his businesses, opening up new avenues of profit for his company. And by showing up at lavish fundraisers and political events, President Trump has also granted unparalleled access to his administration for wealthy political donors and special interest groups that spend hundreds of thousands of dollars a year to hold events at his properties. These examples, and many others, are all included in Trump’s growing tally of conflicts.

In contrast to his promise that a strict separation would be enforced, President Trump has established his private businesses as an extension of his White House⁠—by visiting them and rewarding their customers with access to, and sometimes jobs within, his administration. Meanwhile, the Trump Organization has embraced the image, and as a result, patronizing the president’s businesses has become an unregulated and unaccountable tool of influence for special interests and foreign governments seeking to influence the White House.

CREW defines a conflict as any interaction between the Trump Organization and the government and between the Trump Organization and those trying to influence the Trump administration. Additional information about our methodology is available here.

Political Allies Frequent Trump Properties

In recent months, Republican officials have stepped up their support for Trump in the way he likes best: by flocking to his eponymous properties, often for lavish events that boost the president’s businesses. Through frequent visits and relentless promotion, Trump has made it very clear that the best way to curry favor with him is by visiting one of the many properties that he still owns and profits from as president.

Even during President Trump’s impeachment, when members of Congress were supposed to be acting as impartial investigators and jurors in his trial, visits to Trump’s properties actually spiked compared to prior months.  Fifty-five members of Congress visited Trump properties 78 times in between House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s opening of the impeachment inquiry on September 24th and Trump’s acquittal by Senate Republicans on February 5th.

Overall, since President Trump took office, Lindsey Graham has been Trump’s most loyal patron in Congress with 21 visits, followed by Kevin McCarthy and Rand Paul at 16, Mark Meadows at 13, and Jim Jordan and Matt Gaetz with 10 each.

Many visits from members of Congress occurred during political fundraising events. Three significant political events took place in the midst of the impeachment debates: the Take Back the House 2020 fundraiser, attended by 15 Representatives (including a couple of members from House committees involved in impeachment), Senate Leadership Fund’s private dinner event, and the National Republican Senatorial Committee’s Save the Senate retreat, attended by nine Senators.

In addition to making visits, some members of Congress have taken to social media to express support for Trump and compliment his properties. Representatives Jody Hice and Paul Gosar fawned over Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club with a series of tweets where they called the club “amazing” and “off the hook.” Representative Thomas Massie has similarly gushed over the president’s D.C. hotel.

It’s no secret that the Trump hotel in D.C. is a sanctuary for conservative politicians and professionals who have or who seek ties to the administration. On the night that Senate Republicans acquitted Trump of charges of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress, his supporters converged at the hotel to celebrate. CREW tracked 15 members of Congress and administration officials present that night.

White House and executive branch officials are also frequent visitors. Several have even hosted personal events at the D.C. hotel. Most recently, the wedding of White House officials Stephen Miller and  Katie Waldman brought 22 other Trump administration officials—including the President and Vice President Mike Pence—to the Trump hotel. Together, the newlyweds were the fifth and sixth Trump officials who are known to have gotten married there since 2017.

Departing administration officials Tony Sayegh and Sarah Huckabee Sanders both had their going away parties at the hotel last year. Sanders’ party in particular brought a whopping 38 officials to the President’s prized property. In August, the Washington Post reported that Attorney General Bill Barr booked the hotel for his annual holiday party, though he was forced to reschedule due to negative press coverage. While it is unclear whether the party actually occurred, Barr put down a $10,000 deposit to book the venue—putting money right into his boss’s pocket.

Of course, the most frequent visitor is Trump himself. During his campaign for office he criticized Obama for making golf outings and told the press that if elected, he would “rarely leave the White House because there’s so much work to be done.” In December of 2015, Trump blasted President Obama for reports suggesting he had played 250 rounds of golf during nearly seven years in office, but since his inauguration just three years ago, President Trump has made 267 visits to the golf courses that he owns and profits from.

Trump has made it clear that while traveling he prefers to stay at his own properties, regardless of his destination. On his recent trip out to the west coast, the president insisted on staying at his Las Vegas hotel each night of his trip, despite having speaking engagements in California, Colorado, and Arizona. This is not the first time that Trump has derailed his travel plans to stop at one of his properties. Trump made a pit stop at his Hawaii resort in 2017 before traveling to Asia, and in 2019 he stayed at his Doonbeg golf course, hundreds of miles out of the way of meetings in the U.K. and France.

Special Interests and Political Groups Pay Trump for Lavish Events

Political groups and special interests have held 78 and 117 events, respectively, at Trump properties since the president took office. These often afford the hosts and attendees something that other venues don’t have: Access to top Trump administration officials, and even the President. Trump himself has attended 30 events at his own properties.

While the Trump hotel in Washington is far and away the most frequently booked venue out of all of Trump’s businesses, political groups and special interests have held events at 12 different Trump properties. In the last four months alone, Trump Victory, a political group that raises money for the RNC and the Trump campaign, has held political events at four different Trump properties, and the RNC held one at a fifth. Over the same period, political groups linked to Republican House and Senate leadership gathered members of Congress for events at the Trump hotel in Washington.

Two April 2018 recordings released last month by the lawyer representing an indicted Giuliani associate provided a rare look behind the scenes of these events. In one recording from a dinner held by a pro-Trump super PAC called America First Action at the Trump D.C. hotel, donors representing natural gas, steel, and other interests are heard lobbying Trump directly for their personal business interests during a dinner at the Trump hotel in Washington. That same super PAC held its seventh event at a Trump property this month. Naturally, President Trump stopped by.

President Trump’s visit to the hotel was a stroke of luck for another group there that night. The Texas Trucking Association was in Washington for a lobbying event, and staying at the president’s hotel. The group posted a video of Trump passing through the lobby and shaking hands with hotel customers on Twitter, adding that the encounter “made our members day” as well as an open invitation to the president to “talk trucking.”

In addition to President Trump himself, no private event venue in Washington can offer access to Trump administration officials like the Trump hotel can. Cabinet members have visited the hotel to attend events with special interests or wealthy political donors no fewer than 28 times—in essence, giving special interests and major donors access to powerful people in the president’s orbit, while the president himself personally profits from the event.

The federal government and government-linked groups have hosted events at the Trump hotel in Washington, bolstering the appearance that the president’s properties are an extension of his administration. The Commerce Department held a holiday party at the Trump hotel in 2017, and an Army Battalion gathered there for an event last year. According to documents obtained by CREW, government funds were used to pay a deposit to the hotel for that event, although they were reimbursed through ticket sales and private fundraisers.

In November, The 45 Alliance, a pro-Trump dark money nonprofit, hosted a reception for Trump officials “to connect with fellow President Trump appointees and celebrate your continued dedication and service.” Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson is reported to have addressed attendees—from behind a Trump Hotel podium no less.

Trump Customers Get Special Treatment From His Administration

What do Trump customers get from all of their patronage? Nominations to federal positions and promotions to higher ones, the chance to “shadow rule” a federal agency, and opportunities to weigh in to President Trump on myriad official questions by just hanging around. An anonymous former White House official told the Washington Post that “anyone who can get within eyesight changes the game” at Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s private club that costs $200,000 to join. Even club guests out of Trump’s sight are given “listening time” from White House aides, per President Trump’s orders. In spite of their access to the president and his administration, the White House has insisted that the names of club members should be kept secret.

Members of President Trump’s clubs have also been given sneak previews of upcoming administration action. In December, he hinted to guests at Mar-a-Lago that he would be taking a “big” action involving Iran “soon.” Days later, his administration announced that Iranian military official Qassem Soleimani had been killed. Last year, Mar-a-Lago patrons overheard President Trump grumbling about his then-national security advisor John Bolton, a few months before his ouster from the White House.

Prospective Trump officials have also appealed to President Trump through his businesses. Earlier this year, the Wall Street Journal reported that President Trump’s nominee to lead the Export-Import Bank, Kimberly Reed, saw the president at his Trump National Golf Club near Washington, D.C. and approached him about not having been confirmed yet. She was confirmed soon after. As Judy Shelton sought Trump’s nomination to the Federal Reserve board, she conducted a series of high-profile interviews from the lobby of his D.C. hotel and even booked an expensive suite there. On multiple occasions, she has expressed being open to having an international conference at Mar-a-Lago.

Taxpayer Money Flows to the President’s Properties

In August, President Trump used his platform at the G-7 conference in France to announce that his administration would likely hold the next year’s summit at his own Trump Doral resort near Miami. In October, the administration made the announcement official. The Trump Organization released a statement saying that it would be “honored” to host the meeting. Days later, President Trump caved to pressure from the public, lawmakers, and watchdog groups who objected to the conflict of interest and announced the G-7 would take place elsewhere.

While originally floating the idea of hosting the G-7 at his own property, President Trump claimed that the choice was based largely on other members of the government, including the Secret Service, expressing a preference for his Doral resort. Records obtained by CREW contradicted that claim, showing that the Trump resort was added for consideration at the last minute and the Secret Service expressed hesitation about “challenges” the location would present.

During an interview after the President first teased having the G-7 at his own resort, Eric Trump objected to conflicts of interest concerns by claiming having it there would be less expensive for taxpayers than any other venue. “We’d be doing it for nothing,” he told Yahoo News. That’s consistent with other statements he’s made about how the Trump Organization bills the government where he’s claimed that the Trump Organization doesn’t make any money from government business.

Contrary to Eric Trump’s claims that the Trump Organization bills the government “at cost,” documents obtained by the Washington Post show the Trump Organization charging the Secret Service far more. The documents show the Trump Organization has billed the government up to $650 per night to stay at Mar-a-Lago, and that the government paid Trump’s private businesses nearly half a million dollars between January 2017 and April 2018.

No Border Walls For Trump Conflicts

Trump’s presidency has not stopped the Trump Organization from continuing to do business in foreign countries. Those ties call into question whose interests—the American people’s interests or Trump’s personal financial interests—drive the Trump administration’s foreign policy.

Late last year, CREW discovered that one of Trump’s companies applied for two trademarks in Argentina for “real estate affairs” and building construction, suggesting that plans for a Trump Tower Buenos Aires might be moving forward. These were the first trademarks that Trump has applied for in the country since his election.

A closer look showed that the timing of the applications closely coincided with Trump administration action on tariffs in Argentina. After the trademark opposition period ended, Trump lifted tariffs on steel and aluminum from Argentina and a few other Latin American countries. Soon after the application was granted Trump reinstated the tariffs, defending his actions on Twitter by claiming that Argentina had manipulated their currency.

Trump’s international conflicts of interest span the globe to Indonesia, where the daughter of one of his business partners has assumed a high ranking role in the Indonesian government, thus directly linking Trump’s business to a foreign government. Angela Tanoesoedibjo was appointed in October to a position which gives her power over tourism in the country. Tanoesoedibjo’s father owns and operates one of Indonesia’s largest real estate conglomerates, MNC Group, which is building two Trump-branded developments in the country. In one meeting between government officials and her father’s Trump-connected company, an official brought up a property MNC Group is developing that will have Trump-branded aspects.

Conclusion

President Trump’s time in office has been an ethical disaster. While previous administrations have taken every precaution to avoid the appearance that the president’s official actions could be tainted by their private business interests, President Trump has instead done the exact opposite, blatantly and regularly using his office for his own financial gain. Three-thousand conflicts of interest later, President Trump has sent a clear message to special interests, foreign governments, and others trying to influence the federal government that his presidency is effectively for sale.

Instead of providing oversight or enforcing a higher standard, members of his administration and Republicans in Congress have condoned President Trump’s ethical abuses by taking their business to his properties and rewarding special interests who do the same with official access. Some have gone so far as to use their official platforms to give Trump businesses free advertising. Their abdication of responsibility has served to embolden President Trump, whose presidency is devolving into a cash grab that erodes ethical norms every time he visits his properties, promotes the Trump Organization, or bills the Secret Service top-dollar to stay at his foundering resorts.

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In the race to become Dem party standard bearer in November, Bernie Sanders leads rival aspirants — despite Biden now close behind in delegate count after his Saturday South Carolina primary win.

Do Dem party bosses consider Sanders not safe enough to assure dirty business as usual?

Israel clearly prefers Trump over any Dem rival for his unprecedented Jewish state support, dismissive of Palestinian rights, his agenda leaving no doubt about where he stands.

Israel’s Ambassador to the UN Danny Danon  in his AIPAC conference address, ripped Sanders for calling Netanyahu a “reactionary racist,” saying:

“We don’t want (him) at AIPAC. We don’t want him in Israel. Anyone who calls our prime minister a ‘racist’ is either a liar, an ignorant fool or both.”

According to critics, Danon’s extremism makes hardline Netanyahu look almost moderate by comparison.

Hours later, Sanders responded to Danon saying:

“I am not anti-Israel…but what we need in this country is a foreign policy that not only protects Israel but deals with the suffering of the Palestinian people as well.”

A Netanyahu source said Danon’s AIPAC remarks “were not coordinated with the prime minister.”

Former Israeli diplomat/expert on Jewish state relations with the US Nadav Tamir slammed Danon, saying:

His remarks are “a clear and frustrating example (of) the difference between a diplomat and a politician.”

“Whoever is willing to deepen the rift between Israel and the vast majority of the (Dem) party, to weaken the bipartisan basis of Israel’s special relationship with the US and to alienate the vast majority of US Jewry in order to gain popularity within his party, should not be allowed to serve as a diplomat.”

Over the weekend, AIPAC head Howard Kohr also denounced Sanders, saying:

“Any leader who energizes their political movement by demonizing Israel is not a friend of Israel.”

Sanders declined to address the AIPAC conference, days earlier saying:

“I remain concerned about the platform AIPAC provides for leaders who express bigotry and oppose basic Palestinian rights.”

“For that reason I will not attend their conference. As president, I will support the rights of both Israelis and Palestinians and do everything possible to bring peace and security to the region.”

Bloomberg is the only Dem aspirant addressing the conference in person. Biden and Klobuchar delivered video messages.

Ahead of March 3 Super Tuesday primaries in 14 states, including California and Texas, with 1,357 of 3,979 delegates at stake (excluding 771 unelected superdelegate that could decide the race), Pete Buttigieg suspended his candidacy — despite appearing to have legs following his Iowa caucuses showing.

Was his withdrawal based on doing poorly in South Carolina, finishing a distant 4th with singe-digit support?

Or knowing he lacks enough support to be Dem nominee, did he time his announcement ahead of Super Tuesday with 34% of elected delegates at stake — aimed at helping Biden at the expense of Sanders?

According to Real Clear Politics, an average of polls conducted from February 22 – 29 shows Sanders way ahead of Biden in California by a 33.7% – 15.3% margin — followed by Warren with 14.7% support, Bloomberg with 13.3%, and Buttigieg trailing way behind with 7.7% backing.

In Texas, Sanders has an 8.9% lead over Biden in second place. He’s ahead in Virginia, Massachusetts, Maine, Colorado, Utah, and Vermont, his home state.

He trails Biden narrowly in North Carolina, trails Klobuchar in Minnesota by six points, her home state.

Biden is ahead in Oklahoma by one point over Bloomberg, Sanders 8 points behind.

In Arkansas, Bloomberg leads Biden by one point, Sanders by 4 points.

Will Biden’s South Carolina win and Buttigieg dropping out Sunday gain support for the former vice president on Super Tuesday?

Or is support for Sanders in most Super Tuesday states likely to hold one day before voters go to the polls?

An average of national polls conducted from February 19 – 27 shows Sanders leading Biden by 10.8 points, Bloomberg by 13 points, other Dem aspirants way behind — according to Real Clear Politics.

Sanders has strong support among young and working-class voters as well as Latinos, why he’s way ahead in California and Texas polls — Biden an establishment favorite.

If he stays close to Sanders in upcoming primaries over the next few months, superdelegates could assure his nomination as Dem standard bearer — even though Sanders may have a better chance to defeat Trump in November.

With Buttigieg out of the race, Dem party bosses are lining up behind Biden’s candidacy, aiming to boost him over Sanders ahead of Super Tuesday and what follows.

If the Vermont senator makes a strong showing Tuesday as polls indicate, he’ll regain momentum lost over the weekend with many more primaries to go before the July nominating convention.

One of more candidates doing poorly on Tuesday could drop out the race.

If Warren bows out, her supporters could shift to Sanders. Support for Bloomberg and Klobuchar could swing to Biden if they drop out ahead.

It’s still early in the race. Much can happen between now and the July nominating convention.

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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.”

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

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

Turkey and Israel continue their aggression against Syria in an increasingly overt and direct manner – and at the cost of what little if anything remained of either nation’s regional or international credibility.

Now there is news of violence erupting in southern Syria in Daraa along the Syrian-Jordanian border in a replay of the initial US-engineered proxy war initiated against Damascus in 2011 and confirms that the US – the common denominator linking Turkish, Israeli, and Jordanian aggression – is still hard at work attempting to perpetuate the Syrian conflict and reverse its flagging fortunes amid it.

Dividing Syrian Forces

The violence in southern Syria will likely be augmented by flashpoints elsewhere in a bid to divide and distract Syrian forces from their ongoing operations and successes in northern Idlib.

This helps expose that the ongoing confrontation between Turkey and Syria isn’t ultimately being engineered in Ankara or on behalf of Turkish interests – but instead in Washington and on behalf of US interests.

This may explain why Turkey’s otherwise dead-end foreign policy has not been altered to reflect the interests of Turkey both immediately or in the intermediate to long-term future – and instead appears to be a last-ditch and desperate attempt to win Washington’s all-but-lost proxy war against Damascus.

Renewed Propaganda Blitzkrieg 

The violence in Syria’s south is independent of Turkey’s operations in the north – but is clearly being coordinated to aid Turkey’s aggression.

Likewise – a renewed propaganda blitz has been organized across the Western media to help enhance the political impact of continued aggression against Damascus.

There are still columns published across the Western media by writers representing organizations funded by Western governments calling for regime change in Syria and the obstruction of reconstruction until this happens.

There are also attempts to use the West’s protraction of this conflict and the resulting humanitarian impact to further demonize and pressure the Syrian government. Turkey – in addition to its continued aggression within Syrian territory – has once again leveraged refugees – releasing them into Europe to fan the flames of public fear in the West.

This is not to gain Western support for Turkey’s military operations in Syria – as Turkey’s operations are carried out on behalf of the West’s own machinations. Instead – another manufactured and exploited refugee crisis is meant to garner public support from the Western public so that Western governments can more aggressively involve themselves alongside their Turkish, Israeli, and other terrorist proxies.

Futility 

Ultimately this is a replay of all the same tricks used since 2011. The difference now is US and its proxies hold less territory in Syria – fewer cards politically upon the global stage – and face an entrenched Russia and Iran who have grown adept at countering US-fuelled violence and political ploys within and beyond Syria.

This recent renewal of aggression against Syria is more likely a last-ditch effort to extract concessions before the final and inevitable conclusion of the conflict – with all but total war being capable of overthrowing the Syrian government and removing Russia and Iran from their growing positions of influence within Syrian territory.

Complacency is the biggest enemy. Until every square inch of Syrian territory is liberated and its borders fully secured – the war will continue and the threat it poses to the Syrian state and its people will endure – however unlikely the nation’s complete ruination may be.

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This article was originally published on the author’s blog site, Land Destroyer Report.

The spokesperson for the Islamist party of Turkey’s President Tayyip Erdogan has called upon all of NATO to go to war against Syria for Syria’s having killed dozens of Turkey’s troops in order for Syria to defeat Turkey’s invasion and military occupation of Syria’s Idlib Province, which borders on Turkey. Going to war against Syria would mean going to war also against Russia, which is in Syria to protect Syria’s sovereignty over its own territory.

If the United States accepts that Turkish proposal, this could lead to World War III.

Darius Shahtahmasebi reported for Russia’s RT News on the morning of February 28th,

Turkey is calling for NATO’s protection after 33 of its soldiers were killed in an apparent Syrian airstrike in Idlib, allegedly while fighting in terrorist ranks. In the regional chaos that ensues, only one player stands to gain.

Speculation over what’s to come next has seen #article 5 trending on Twitter in the hours following the attacks, after Omer Celik, spokesman for Turkey’s ruling AKP party, indicated to reporters in Ankara that he was looking at requesting formal NATO protection against Damascus and, by proxy, the Russian air force.

“We call on NATO to [start] consultations. This is not [an attack] on Turkey only, it is an attack on the international community. A common reaction is needed. The attack was also against NATO,” Celik told Turkish media.

Article 5 of the NATO treaty says an attack on one member is an attack on them all.

The US State Department also condemned the attack, stating that it stands by its “NATO ally Turkey.” It further stated that it continues to “call for an immediate end to this despicable offensive by the Assad regime, Russia and Iranian-backed forces.” Never one to let us down, the US envoy to NATO Kay Bailey Hutchinson also told journalists that “everything is on the table.”

This is the opportunity for U.S. President Donald Trump to join his opposition, Democratic Party’s, and even his own Party’s, hate-Russia campaign, “by unleashing World War III, if he wants to”. (For example, it was a unified Congress, both Parties, that forced him, on 17 July 2018, to reverse himself and say that Russia had assisted in his having become the U.S. President. He needed to be forced in order to say he agreed with that statement.)

Internally, within Islamist-ruled Turkey, the official Anadolu Press Agency sub-headlined one English-language news report, “Crisis in Idlib has crossed all limits, says presidential spokesman after regime attack martyrs 33 Turkish troops” and opened,

“Turkey’s presidential spokesman on Friday called on the international community to take measures to de-escalate tensions in Syria after dozens of Turkish soldiers were martyred in a late night attack by the regime forces.”

No mention was made, about those ‘martyrs’, that this had occurred in Syrian territory, where Turkish forces were invaders and military occupiers, and that the ‘regime’ they referred to is Syria’s committedly and ideologically secular, non-sectarian, Government, which is the only internationally recognized Government that Syria has (but from which Islamist Turkey is now trying to seize Syria’s Idlib Province and to include it within Turkey’s own territory).

By 7PM Turkish time on Friday the 28th, Firat Kozok of Bloomberg News headlined “Turkey Says It Has No Choice But to ‘Loosen’ Stance on Refugees” and reported that

Turkey is pressed by developments in Syria’s Idlib and has no choice but to “loosen” its policy of preventing refugees from travelling on to Europe, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s communications director Fahrettin Altun told reporters in Ankara.

“If Idlib falls, then millions of Syrian refugees will try to escape to Turkey and Europe. Turkey no longer has the possibility to provide resources for and help these people,” Altun said.

This is applying pressure upon the European member-nations in NATO to either join Turkey’s now very hot war against both Syria and Russia, or else to become faced with Turkey’s release of the tens of thousands of ‘rebels’ (mainly jihadists) whom Turkish forces in Syria’s Idlib Province have been protecting against military fire from Syria’s Army and from Russia’s Air Force. 

For further details see: “Turkey Now Claims Syria’s Idlib Province as Turkish Territory”  by Eric Zuesse, Global Research, February 28, 2020

UPDATE:

On February 28th, the German Government news-agency Deutsche Welle (DW) bannered “Idlib: ‘I’d rather suffer bombs than Assad’” and provided an extensive interview by telephone with someone in Idlib who says that she supports democracy and tolerance of all religions and is determined to overthrow the present Government of Syria. If her pro-democracy, anti-jihadist, allegations are honest, then she is an extraordinary exception for Idlib, as has been documented by the periodic polls that the British polling firm Orb International took throughout Syria and reported during 2014, 2015, 2016, and 2018. For examples:

In the 2014 report (page 12) only 4% of the people sampled in Idlib said that they supported “The Assad Government.” This was far lower than the percentages in any other Syrian province. 52% supported either “armed opposition” or “Violent religious extremist groups.” This was far higher than in any other province except ISIS-controlled Raqqah, where it was 59%.

In the 2015 report (page 7), 35% of the people sampled in Idlib said that al-Nusra (al-Qaeda in Syria) was a “Completely positive influence”; an additional 35% said it was a “Somewhat positive influence.” That 70% support for al-Qaeda was by far the highest found in any of Syria’s provinces.

If the person who was at the other end of that DW phone-call was authentic, then she was anything but representative of the people in Idlib. 

At around 10 AM Eastern time in the U.S. on the 28th, Turkey’s Daily Sabah newspaper headlined “Erdoğan and Putin may meet next week, Kremlin says”, and reported that “Erdoğan and Putin spoke over the phone Friday to try to defuse tensions that rose significantly in northwestern Syria after 33 Turkish troops were killed in a Syrian regime airstrike.” Either Erdogan is trying to find a face-saving way out of his huge gamble, or Putin is trying to prevent WW III, or both. An hour later, that newspaper bannered “Turkey determined to remove Assad regime from Syria’s Idlib, Erdoğan tells Trump.” Why is it that a country can proudly proclaim in a headline that it will commit international aggression in blatant violation of international law and yet not be roundly damned by the publics in all countries for doing such a vile thing?

At around noon, U.S. Eastern time, on the 28th, Turkey’s TRT World bannered “NATO and the West’s dereliction of duty in Syria and Turkey” and opened: “If the West and NATO continue on the path they have chosen, it will allow Vladimir Putin to reshape the post-Soviet world order in his image.” After trying to scare Europe’s leaders by threatening to overwhelm them with maybe hundreds of thousands of released jihadists who have been basically penned-up in Idlib, Erdogan was trying to appeal to those leaders’ obligations to NATO, America’s anti-Russian military alliance.  

At around 1:30 PM U.S. Eastern time on the 28th, Britain’s Guardian headlined “Nato expresses ‘full solidarity’ with Turkey over Syria airstrikes”but NATO chief “Stoltenberg offered no immediate promise of assistance to Turkey,” and the article went on to report that the UK and five of its allies would bring the matter to the U.N. Security Council on Friday night (where Turkey’s demands would even more certainly go nowhere). The reality of Stoltenberg’s statement (which had been issued at 12:33 Eastern time) was a total humiliation to Erdogan’s fantasies that because of his country’s NATO membership he could get the U.S. to invade Russia. Stoltenberg gave the standard NATO hate-talk against Russia and its allies, however, saying that “Allies condemn the continued indiscriminate air strikes by the Syrian regime and its backer Russia in Idlib province.” Even when a NATO member engages in clear-cut foreign aggression in violation of the U.N. Charter’s prohibiton against that, and explicitly violating the International Criminal Court’s “Crime of Aggression”, NATO will spew its standard hate-propaganda against the countries that were and are victims of that blatantly illegal aggression by the NATO member-country. Notwithstanding NATO’s sometimes diplomatic language, it is — after Russia ended its side of the Cold War in 1991 — basically an extremely dangerous militarized hate-organization, of which every one of its member-nations should be profoundly embarrassed to belong.

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