For the first time since Juan Guaidó’s auto-proclamation as so-called interim president of Venezuela in January 2019, a meeting of the Lima group (with its numerous political statements) has failed to even mention his name. All previous meetings of this spurious organization served as pledges to bring Guaidó to power and seemed to constitute virtual swearing-in ceremonies.
However, he has never been sworn in, nor even come close, except by himself.
On February 20, 2020, despite the extremely cold weather (even by Canadian standards), people demonstrated across Canada, including in front of the Lima group venue in Gatineau, Québec. At the same time, a statement in English, French and Spanish was widely distributed to the public and the media from coast to coast. The message and demonstration slogans focused on the Trudeau government’s role as a U.S. proxy in the Trump-led aggression against the legitimately elected president of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro.
This constitutes an important lesson for Canadians who are increasingly saying that they must continue not to give an inch to the international or national pressure to convert the anti-imperialist sentiment of millions of Canadians into a pathetic apologist for the Justin Trudeau government’s actions.
On the contrary, following the relatively defensive Lima group position in Gatineau (the omission of Guaidó), Canadians who understand the situation must seize the opportunity to inform the public and demand that Canada withdraw from the Lima Group. In addition, as also highlighted in the message being sent by demonstrators, there is a desire to step up criticism of the Trudeau government for its domestic policies, such as those being implemented against First Nations peoples, which are in flagrant contradiction with the Lima group’s self-serving, distorted and highfaluting principals of “democracy,” “human rights,” etc., by which they want to judge Venezuela.
The Gatineau meeting was the first Lima group meeting since the recent four-month anniversary of the uprising in Chile, ongoing demonstrations in Haiti, massive demonstrations in Colombia, all met with thousands of arrests, with protesters wounded and murdered, and the appalling aftermath of the coup d’état against Evo Morales. Yet, the representatives of Chile, Haiti, Colombia and Bolivia, presided over by Trump’s main ally, Trudeau, were all there in Gatineau yesterday, judging Venezuela.
The Lima Group meeting in Gatineau also once again insists on interfering in Venezuela and destabilizing it to provide pretexts for more sanctions from U.S. and Canada. In its declaration it says:
“While the Venezuelan Constitution calls for parliamentary elections in 2020, democracy will be fully restored in Venezuela only through free, fair and credible presidential elections. This process must include an independent National Electoral Council, an un-biased Supreme Court, international support and observation, full press freedom and political participation of all Venezuelans.”
This arrogant interventionist statement amounts to preparing the conditions for calling the elections a “fraud,” as no self-respecting country in the world would allow its electoral process to be decided upon in Canada, the U.S. or any other country. To illustrate once again the self-serving nature of this statement, on the very day the declaration was issued, the U.S.-backed Bolivian government, installed by a coup d’état, ruled against Evo Morales running for the Senate in the upcoming elections!
Trudeau was rewarded by the Lima group members with a special made-to-measure clause for him to “lead” on Venezuela, as part of his global search for a seat on the UN Security Council. The clause reads as follows:
“In the coming days and weeks, representatives of the Lima Group will engage in an intensive period of outreach and consultation with all countries that have an interest in the restoration of democracy in Venezuela.”
Thus, Trudeau is being mandated once again to do Trump’s dirty work, opportunistically using his advantage over the other Lima group members thanks to his ability to speak English and French, and thus able to directly reach out to Europe, the Caribbean and elsewhere, hoping to steal the international spotlight and gain votes at the UN for the Security Council seat Canada covets.
Yet, Canada does not deserve a seat on the Security Council. No country that is a faithful ally of the U.S. on all international issues, and that has been severely criticized by UN bodies for its genocidal treatment of its First Nations peoples, should get a seat at that table. Of the countries running in competition with Canada, Norway and Ireland, either would be preferable to Canada.
The peoples of the world must not forget the Trudeau government’s role in Latin America and the Caribbean, the main thrust of which lately, being the attempt to destroy the Bolivarian Revolution by supporting the coup d’état against Bolivia’s elected president, thus enabling that country to join the Lima group which of course under Evo Morales, was impossible.
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“The system in this country cannot produce freedom for an Afro-American. It is impossible for this system, this economic system, this political system, this social system, this system, period. It’s impossible for this system as it stands to produce freedom right now for the Black man in this country. “Malcolm X
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I designed this poster originally for KPFT Radio (90.1 FM) in Houston in 2004.
Five years ago on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the assassination of Malcolm X, I posted this political poster on my facebook page.
In light of today’s political situation, for the youth in America, it is imperative to know Malcolm X. Knowing Malcolm X is realizing that there is a lack of revolutionary leadership in the Black communities.
The endorsement of Mr. Bloomberg by many so-called Black leaders (Democrats) proves that Malcolm X was right and what he said is still true:
“We won’t organize any black man to be a Democrat or a Republican because both of them have sold us out.”
Below are excerpts of Malcolm X’s speech in New York, March 29, 1964 (emphasis added)
Massoud Nayeri, Global Research, February 23, 2020
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Malcolm X: this system can’t produce freedom
Below are excerpts of a speech given by Malcolm X at the Militant Labor Forum in New York on March 29, 1964, upon his return from his first trip to Africa and the Middle East. It was published in the pamphlet Two Speeches by Malcolm X, one of Pathfinder’s Books of the Month for February 2003.
Malcolm spoke as part of a symposium on the then-current effort by the New York cops and press to promote a racist scare-campaign about an alleged gang of young Black “Blood Brothers” sworn to kill whites.
The Militant, February 2004
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I visited the Casbah in Casablanca and I visited the one in Algiers, with some of the brothers–blood brothers. They took me all down into it and showed me the suffering, showed me the conditions that they had to live under while they were being occupied by the French…
They showed me the conditions that they lived under while they were colonized by these people from Europe. And they also showed me what they had to do to get those people off their back.
The first thing they had to realize was that all of them were brothers; oppression made them brothers; exploitation made them brothers; degradation made them brothers; discrimination made them brothers; segregation made them brothers; humiliation made them brothers.
And once all of them realized that they were blood brothers, they also realized what they had to do, to get that man off their back. They lived in a police state, Algeria was a police state. Any occupied territory is a police state, and this is what Harlem is. Harlem is a police state. The police in Harlem–their presence is like occupation forces, like an occupying army. They’re not in Harlem to protect us; they’re not in Harlem to look out for our welfare; they’re in Harlem to protect the interests of the businessmen who don’t even live there.
The same conditions that prevailed in Algeria that forced the people, the noble people of Algeria, to resort eventually to the [so-called] “terrorist-type” tactics that were necessary to get the monkey off their backs, those same conditions prevail today in America in every Negro community.
And I would be other than a man to stand up and tell you that the Afro-American, the Black people who live in these communities and in these conditions are ready and willing to continue to sit around nonviolently and patiently and peacefully looking for some good will to change the conditions that exist. No!…
Conditions creating resistance
You will find that there is a growing tendency among our people, among us, to do whatever is necessary to bring this to a halt. You have a man like Police Commissioner Murphy–and I’m not against the law; I’m not against law enforcement. You need laws to survive and you need law enforcement to have an intelligent, peaceful society; but we have to live in these places and suffer the type of conditions that exist from officers who lack understanding, who lack any human feeling, and lack any feeling for their fellow human being….
I’m not here to apologize for the existence of any blood brothers. I’m not here to minimize the factors that hint toward their existence. I’m here to say that if they don’t exist it’s a miracle….
If those of you who are white have the good of the Black people in this country at heart, my suggestion is that you have to realize now that the day of nonviolent resistance is over; that the day of passive resistance is over….
The next thing you’ll see here in America–and please don’t blame it on me when you see it–you will see the same things that have taken place among other people on this earth whose position was parallel to the 22 million Afro-Americans in this country.
The people of China grew tired of their oppressors and the people rose up against their oppressors. They didn’t rise up nonviolently. It was easy to say that the odds were against them but eleven of them started out and today those eleven control 800 million. They would have been told back then that the odds were against them. As the oppressor always points out to the oppressed, “the odds are against you.”
When Castro was up in the mountains of Cuba they told him the odds were against him. Today he’s sitting in Havana and all the power this country has can’t remove him.
They told the Algerians the same thing–what do you have to fight with? Today they have to bow down to Ben Bella. He came out of the jail that they put him in and today they have to negotiate with him because he knew that the one thing he had on his side was truth and time. Time is on the side of the oppressed today. It’s against the oppressor. Truth is on the side of the oppressed today, it’s against the oppressor. You don’t need anything else.
I would just like to say this in my conclusion. You’ll see terrorism that will terrify you, and if you don’t think you’ll see it, you’re trying to blind yourself to the historic development of everything that’s taking place on this earth today. You’ll see other things.
Why will you see them? Because as soon as people realize that it’s impossible for a chicken to produce a duck egg even though they both belong to the same family of fowl–a chicken just doesn’t have within its system to produce a duck egg. It can’t do it. It can only produce according to what that particular system was constructed to produce. The system in this country cannot produce freedom for an Afro-American. It is impossible for this system, this economic system, this political system, this social system, this system, period. It’s impossible for this system as it stands to produce freedom right now for the Black man in this country.
And if ever a chicken did produce a duck egg, I’m certain you would say it was certainly a revolutionary chicken!
Source: the Militant
Copyright 1965, 1990 by Betty Shabazz and Pathfinder Press.
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Massoud Nayeri is a graphic designer and an independent peace activist based in the United States. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.
As Canadians, we are paying for our own indoctrination and our own impoverishment. CBC and all mainstream media consistently provide cover for the Canadian government’s foreign policy criminality. In so doing, these media outlets are part of the war propaganda apparatus that fabricates public consent for Canada’s international criminality, its “America First” foreign policy (1), and its status as an international rogue state.
Mainstream media fabricates and manages perceptions that Canada is humanitarian and law abiding in its foreign policy endeavours, but real evidence, not fabricated narratives, shouts the opposite.
The Canadian supported LIMA group, for example, described by Raul Burbano of Common Frontiers, as “an ad hoc group of governments that want to achieve outside of the Organization of American States (OAS) what it failed to achieve within the OAS” is part of a criminal conspiracy to impose Regime Change on Venezuela, and to support Juan Guaido, an imposter, who was never elected as President of Venezuela.
In the following interview, Ken Stone of the Hamilton Coalition To Stop The War amplifies these and other points.
If Canadians were aware of the truth, they might be humiliated by their government’s decisions, and its misuse of Canadian tax dollars.
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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.
Andrew Fowler, an award-winning investigative journalist and long-time defender of Julian Assange, recently spoke with the World Socialist Web Site about the imprisonment and persecution of the WikiLeaks publisher and its implications for genuine investigative journalism, press freedom and basic democratic rights. The following is an edited version of the discussion.
Fowler, who began his journalistic career in the UK, was chief of staff and acting foreign editor for the Australian newspaper, and a senior reporter and investigative television journalist for the Special Broadcasting Services’ “Dateline” program and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s “Four Corners” and “Foreign Correspondent.”
He is also the author of The Most Dangerous Man in the World: The inside story of WikiLeaks (2011) and Shooting the Messenger: Criminalising Journalism (2018), which details how post-911 governments have used the “war on terrorism” to carry out a wide-ranging unprecedented assault on democratic rights.
Fowler interviewed Assange three times between 2010 and 2012 and reported Sex, Lies and Julian Assange, a detailed “Four Corners” exposé of the bogus sexual misconduct allegations in Sweden against the WikiLeaks founder. The 2012 documentary, which won the New York Festival Gold Medal, was one of the few honest reports about the false and politically-motivated character of the allegations made against Assange in Sweden and circulated by the corporate media and “liberal” and pseudo-left publications around the world.
Last June, after Australian Federal Police raids on the ABC, Fowler penned a powerful comment for the Sydney Morning Herald warning that the raids were “a wake-up call to journalists who left Assange swinging” and calling on them to speak out in defence of the WikiLeaks founder. Fowler also initiated an open letter from ABC Alumni—an organisation of former ABC staff—demanding that the Australian government oppose the US extradition of Assange and repatriate him to Australia.
We began our discussion by asking about the media silence over “Speak up for Assange,” a petition signed late last year by hundreds of journalists and asked him to comment.
Andrew Fowler: It’s curious why it didn’t received any coverage, especially given the fact that it was signed by [Kerry] O’Brien, [Daniel] Ellsberg and many other notable journalists.
My judgment of what is news these days is completely different from the people currently running the show. Most of the media has gone down the lightweight entertainment route—anything that’s deemed to be too disturbing to people tends to get pushed to one side. It’s the infotainment argument.
There’s a whole bunch of reasons why the media is silent on this, which I’ll be exploring in the update I’m currently writing to my previous book The Most Dangerous Man in the World. The question that has to be answered is why is the Australian government silent on all of this? It’s an outrage.
WSWS: Your Sex, Liesand Julian Assange exposure of the so-called sexual assault allegations against Assange was also largely ignored at the time, and the media slander against Assange continued.
AF: Yes, that’s right. Getting that story up was difficult and we put a lot of work into it. If you watch it again though you’ll see that analytically and factually it’s extremely strong and stands the test of time. But it seems to have been buried and neither “Four Corners,” nor any other program went back to it and used the facts that we uncovered.
But then AFP raids on the ABC and Annika Smethurst happened which made it pretty clear demonstrating the warnings Assange had been making. Suddenly journalists were made aware of just how vulnerable they were to the changes going on in this country—the warnings Kerry O’Brien made in his Walkley Awards’ speech about Australia heading towards authoritarianism and even down the road, he suggested, towards fascism.
What intrigued me about the reaction to the AFP raids was the way the ABC, and other media, separated Assange from all this.
Long before the raids, Hillary Clinton had been allowed to appear on the network and openly accuse Assange of doing the bidding of Putin just because Assange dared to publish emails showing she was getting preferential treatment over Bernie Sanders. No ABC journalist challenged her over this.
How can anyone and journalists in particular separate out Assange, who revealed one of the great stories of our time about Hillary Clinton—that she was getting preferential treatment over Bernie Sanders—and yet abandon the person that published this? How do you square that circle? The answer is related to the bigger picture of how a lot of journalists now see their role in society.
Journalists should always stand apart from power and not be part of it—to stand against authority and authoritarianism and not just be public relations officers. Instead, what we’ve seen in the last 20 or 30 years is mainstream media journalists coming to see themselves as part of the powerful elite, and so they mix with the politicians and administrators, and have come to see their role as upholders of the status quo. Some become stenographers for whichever government is in power.
You’ve only got to listen to Michael Pezzullo, head of [Home Affairs minister] Peter Dutton’s department, to get some idea of this. Pezzullo talks about “trusted journalists.” Obviously journalists should be trusted by the public but to be considered a “trusted journalist” by politicians, that’s something else altogether. Pezzullo is not talking about real journalists but “trustees” which is an extremely unhealthy development; it’s the road towards authoritarianism.
WSWS: How would you assess the relationship between what WikiLeaks exposed in Australia—the US protected sources in the Labor Party and elsewhere—and Australia’s military alliance with the US?
AF: WikiLeaks revealed the truth about all the political parties in Australia and consequently, it was party politically friendless. I know from my own experience that none of the mainstream political parties will take up the cudgels for you if you’ve just revealed what they’re all doing behind the scenes.
Julian Assange is now in a prison for terrorists, in virtual solitary confinement and charged with espionage because he revealed evidence of war crimes committed by another country—things that serious and honest journalists are supposed to do.
And such is the relationship between the United States and Britain that its judicial system is going to allow him to be extradited to the very country that he has exposed committing these crimes.
For the British government, Assange has become a tradable commodity and something they can use to ensure its access to the American intelligence and information gathering systems.
WSWS: The same relationship with Australia?
AF: Absolutely. Australian governments are terrified of the United States in case they’re cut out of intelligence-sharing. That’s what Australian involvement in the Iraq War was about. If Assange was brought back to Australia from the UK there’d be a new US extradition attempt here.
WSWS: You saw firsthand, the impact of the sex allegations against Assange on his support base and how it was used.
AF: Yes, it produced a very dramatic shift politically speaking. The problem was that the allegations were very, very flimsy and could not be tested until he was charged but the Swedish didn’t charge him. The Swedish prosecutor could have easily gone to London and actually gone through the process but she didn’t.
The role of Sweden in that process is extremely murky but there’s a very interesting email uncovered by Stefania Maurizi, an Italian journalist, who has done a lot of work on this. The email was from the British Crown Prosecution Service to the Swedes urging them not to get cold feet and call off the investigation. The British were more concerned about Assange getting away than the Swedes were.
WSWS: Could you comment on Nils Melzer’s report into the treatment of Assange.
AF: It isn’t so much what I think of Melzer’s report but the response of the Australian media. It was a shocking indictment of the treatment and torture of an Australian citizen and was, as he said, the biggest gang up of so-called democratic countries against an individual he’d ever seen. It was sickening to read it but it was barely reported here. It should’ve have been on the front-page of every newspaper in Australia and lead radio and television stories.
There used to be healthy debates in news rooms about what should be lead stories and that sort of thing.
WSWS: From the outset the WSWS has stressed that the persecution of Assange is inseparable from Washington’s preparation for war.
AF: America is always preparing for war—in the Middle East, against China—all over the place. The persecution of Assange is an attack on anybody who speaks out against the power and authority of the United States. It’s a warning to every journalist: “Pull your head in. Shut up. Don’t question. Just report what we say.”
These sorts of threats, however, should be a motivating force to serious journalists to actually stand up and ask questions and challenge authority.
The defence of Assange and WikiLeaks is extremely relevant to preventing another war. If people can’t reveal the truth from inside intelligence organizations. If [former Office of National Assessments intelligence analyst] Andrew Wilkie did now what he did and said about the Iraq War in 2003 both he and [Australian journalist] Laurie Oakes could have been charged.
WSWS: And subjected to secret trials.
AF: That’s right. We’re living through a very significant moment in history. The question is how to make people aware of just how much danger they face and why the defence of Assange is important.
The Australian public does not realise the full extent of anti-democratic laws that have been imposed in this country. As Daniel Ellsberg has explained, the more you expose what governments are really doing behind the scene, the tighter and more restrictive it’ll get. All sorts of draconian laws have been either imposed on us by being a member of the Five Eyes group but we have none of the protections of the First Amendment or European human rights laws.
WSWS: There’s tremendous popular support for Assange across Australia and internationally. The media silence on these issues highlight the vast gulf between the mainstream media and ordinary people. Millions of young people have no confidence in the established parliamentary parties—Labor or conservative.
AF: Yes, and that’s a very good point. There’s a shift underway. In December, in the midst of the bushfires and smoke engulfing the city we had a demonstration quickly called on climate change and 20,000 people turned up to protest in the centre of Sydney.
The other thing that’s quite interesting from my experience—I grew up during the Watergate period—is the kids today have no fear about socialism. They see no bogeyman in socialism, whereas for over 30 years, though, it was “Reds under the bed” and all the rest of that.
WSWS: How should the campaign to free Assange develop and what role should journalists play?
AF: The personality nonsense about Assange has to be taken out of it. The argument has to be about what has and will happen to journalism and the media. If you’re going to start looking at journalists and judging them according to how they live their lives well you’re not going to stand up for too many people. Assange has done what every journalist should do and told the truth about a powerful country, the most powerful country in the world, and the crimes that it has committed.
It should be incumbent on all journalists in this country to report on every single thing that happens to Julian Assange. Not as just Julian Assange, but as the editor-in-chief of WikiLeaks. These stories should be in news bulletins every night with live crosses from the courts.
This is a fundamental issue and if we don’t win this battle then it’s not over but it’s very nearly over. Journalists have to put these arguments clearly to the public and raise its awareness about what’s at stake.
Some journalists might argue that this is political. Well yes, of course it’s political—we don’t live in an apolitical world—and it’s a political battle that we have to win.
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Back in the summer of 2018, when the IMF handed Argentina an unprecedented $56 billion bailout loan, the largest in IMF history, some warned that this is a case of deja vu similar to the 2001/2002 precedent when Argentina eventually defaulted on its foreign creditors, while humiliating the IMF which had signed off on Argentina’s economic policies that ended up in bankruptcy court. The IMF, however, was confident that this time would be different, and rushed – under now-ECB head Christine Lagarde – to hand to Argentina the greatest amount of money the IMF had ever disbursed to a struggling nation.
It turned out that this time wasn’t different, and after completing a week of meetings in Argentine, the IMF – which so generously handed out other people’s money to prop up the crumbling, corrupt Latin American nation less than two years aqo – finally threw in the towel and admitted that Argentina’s debt load is unsustainable, paving the way for the government to ask private bondholders to take on losses as it prepares to renegotiate its obligations.
The last time IMF officials commented on Argentina’s debt was in the fourth review of the credit line in July 2019, when they called it “sustainable, but not with a high probability.”
Oops. But it gets better.
A “meaningful contribution” will be necessary from private bondholders to restore the country’s debt sustainability, the IMF wrote in a statement Wednesday following talks with Argentine officials during its first technical mission in Buenos Aires under Alberto Fernandez’s presidency.
“The primary surplus that would be needed to reduce public debt and gross financing needs to levels consistent with manageable rollover risk and satisfactory potential growth is not economically nor politically feasible,” the Fund said, in what may be the most embarrassing moment in the Fund’s history.
Why embarrassing? Because as Hector Torres, a former executive director at the Fund who represented South American countries, said last summer, “The IMF has put a lot in — not just money, but prestige,” to avoid a default. “The fact that the arrangement is not performing well right now is an embarrassment,” he said. Little did he know just how embarrassing it would get.
As discussed previously, Fernandez is seeking to renegotiate billions of dollars in debt with private creditors, including the infamous $56 billion loan with the Washington-based organization.
Argentina’s record IMF loan has been on hold since August after Fernandez pulled off a shock upset of incumbent Mauricio Macri in a presidential primary vote, sending markets reeling.
“IMF staff emphasized the importance of continuing a collaborative process of engagement with private creditors to maximize their participation in the debt operation,” according to the statement. Meanwhile, Argentina’s economy has collapsed, the currency has plunged, bonds prices have been in freefall and debt rose to nearly 90% of GDP at the end of 2019, the Fund said.
But the biggest pain now await bondholders, some of whom were so dumb to actually buy 100 year bonds from Argentina. Guzman warned investors (or at least their replacement since those who made the original investment were surely summarily fired) last week they’ll probably be frustrated with negotiations, which he intends to wrap up by the end of March. South America’s second-largest nation owes over $38.7 billion to bondholders just this year, and payments peak in May. There is no way it can make those payments without magic.
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China’s Foreign Ministry spokesman, Geng Shuang, announced that China will not interrupt its relations with Nicolás Maduro‘s Venezuela, despite the US government’s sanctions on the South American country. The announcement is not surprising, given the undeniable efforts of the Asian country in terms of international cooperation, but, amid the increased aggressiveness with which American hegemony operates, it represents a true gesture of courage.
This means that, regardless of unilateral sanctions by the United States, China will continue to import Venezuelan oil. White House Special Envoy, Mr. Elliott Abrams, announced that Washington is taking the necessary steps to convince China to renounce its decision to continue cooperating with Nicolas Maduro’s regime. The American diplomat also announced his country is acting to prevent, not only China, but also India to stop buying Venezuelan oil.
On the other hand, Beijing’s official communiqués show unrestricted support for Venezuelan sovereignty and for the legitimacy of Nicolas Maduro’s government. The spokesman of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of China stated
“Let the US become aware of the facts, stop abusing sanctions and other coercive measures, work with all parties to find a political solution to the Venezuelan problem […] Cooperation between China and Venezuela will continue to develop, even with the ‘changes’ “.
The Chinese government’s actions are not limited to benefiting only Venezuela, but are expanding to a list of other countries. For instance, this is China’s position in relation to the case of Russian oil company Rosneft and its subsidiary, Rosneft Trading, which also suffered sanctions from the United States. Chinese Chancellery spokesman said that “We are opposed to any interference in the internal affairs of other countries, as well as we are against unilateral sanctions and extraterritorial jurisdiction”.
Geng emphasized that the principles that guide China in its international relations in case of conflict of interests between States are the same as those set out in the United Nations Charter, which favor negotiation in accordance with basic norms of coexistence. Regarding the specific case of Venezuela, Geng affirmed the need to prioritize a peaceful and rational dialogue with the government of Nicolás Maduro, not admitting arbitrary sanctions imposed in an unfounded way just to guarantee the interests of the world powers that impose them.
The American custom of violently imposing its interests against any state has been hegemonized in United Nations policies for decades. What Washington has done – and continues to do – against Havana and Pyongyang clearly demonstrates how far the promotion of boycotts and isolation can go. In fact, the White House’s plans include doing the same with Caracas, boycotting the world trade of Venezuelan oil, with the aim of cutting off the country’s main economic tool and aggravating its crisis, throwing millions of citizens into poverty and destabilizing the legitimate and sovereign government of Nicolas Maduro.
In contrast, China demonstrates an interesting and legally correct way of maintaining relations and asserting its interests on the international scenario, maintaining peaceful relations with States, negotiating through safe and dialogical ways and avoiding involvement in coercive measures anywhere in the world. Cooperation with Venezuela, disregard for unfounded punishments against the Russian oil company, fair loans and debt relief in African countries, in addition to a number of other factors, clearly show China’s role in building a new legal global civilization, based on good relations between peoples, security and peace between States. And the result will be the growth of China’s economic power and political influence.
However, until tensions in Venezuela subside, many conflicts will be witnessed. Worsening the situation, the trade war between the United States and China may be even more distant from a truce.
What remains for the other BRICS countries and for any Nation State that wants to maintain its sovereignty in the globalized world is to follow the Chinese example. There is no reason to comply with American sanctions against Venezuela when the country has a legitimate government, which, just because it wants to preserve its sovereignty, is humiliated by Washington.
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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.
When will the Trump administration stop bullying Iraq? The latest examples of bullying involve delays in cash deliveries from an Iraqi account in the US Federal Reserve Bank of New York, and reducing the length of sanctions waivers allowing Iraq to continue buying Iranian natural gas, oil and electricity.
Every month Iraq’s central bank flies $1-2 billion in cash to Baghdad from the New York bank where Iraq’s oil revenues are deposited. The cash is used to finance domestic operations and salaries. The last shipment, due in mid-January, was a week late following threats from Washington that the flow of money could be disrupted. Senior Iraqi sources told Al Monitor that there were “political reasons” for the delay. This month’s shipment came on time.
The delay of urgently needed funds for Iraq contrasts sharply with Donald Trump‘s withholding for four months US military aid for Ukraine until it launched an investigation of a Democratic rival for the presidency. Iraq’s cash belongs to Iraq while the sum allocated to Ukraine was US money destined to bolster Ukraine’s battle with Russia.
By withholding cash deliveries to Baghdad, the Trump administration has exerted pressure on Iraq to permit US troops to remain in that country and to use their presence to counter Iran’s influence. This effort violates the agreement for the return of US forces to Iraq. Those making policy on behalf of Trump should understand that Baghdad simply cannot cut ties to Tehran.
Last week, Al Monitor reported that a waiver was granted for only 45 days rather than the usual 90 or 120 days. If Iraq is barred from receiving Iranian gas, power cuts could last 20 hours a day. Washington is playing with waivers not only to pressure Iraq over the US troop presence and also to compel Iraq to make deals with US companies, notably General Electric and Exxon Mobil.
In an interview with the French press agency, quoted by Al Monitor, Iraqi Electricity Minister Luay Al Khattib said Washington must not try to “corner Iraq” by weaponising waivers. This would seriously impact public services and be counter-productive by exacerbating popular anger with the government and the US.
Anti-Iran Trump administration hawks, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Defence Secretary Mark Esper have ignored three hard facts. The US, 11,651 kilometres from Iran, is a resented interloper in this region. Iran is Iraq’s neighbour and after its conquest of Iraq in 2003 the US installed Iran-allied Shiite fundamentalists in power in Baghdad.
There had been some hope that Esper, who is of Lebanese descent on his father’s side, would act at a brake on an impulsive, inconsistent Trump. Esper is a former lieutenant colonel in the army who served during the 1991 US war on Iraq and as army secretary before working for an armaments manufacturer.
However, Esper was Pompeo’s classmate at the US military academy at West Point and owes his appointment to Pompeo. This is a risky duo.
Following the December 27 killing of a US contractor in a missile strike on an Iraqi military base near Kirkuk, Pompeo and Esper lobbied Trump to slay Iranian Quds Force Commander Qassem Soleimani. They lied by claiming the attack was carried out by a Shiite militia, Kataib Hizbollah, which held links to Soleimani.
The truth of the matter was that the Daesh terror group was almost certainly guilty as its paramilitaries abound and mount attacks in this area. The duo also lied when they told Trump Soleimani was planning imminent attacks on US interests in the region.
Weeks after his assassination, the White House dropped this false allegation. He was, in fact, on his way to Baghdad with a message from Tehran for ex-Iraqi prime minister Adel Abdel Mahdi who was trying to open dialogue between Iran and Saudi Arabia.
Iranian Foreign Minister Muhammad Javad Zarif has revealed that the US assassination of Soleimani, who was highly popular in Iran, risked full-scale war with Iran. Zarif told NBC news: “It’s unfortunate that the United States, based on misinformation, based on ignorance and arrogance, combined on a course that has brought the region very close to the brink. We were very close to a war.”
This risk might have sobered Pompeo and Esper. According to David Hearst writing in Middle East Eye, the US military has told Baghdad that it is ready to reduce the number of troops in the capital and pull out from bases in or near Shiite-majority areas, including Balad Air Base, which hosts US trainers and contractors. However, the US refuses to withdraw from Ain Al Asad, the largest air base in the entire region. This is located in the western Sunni majority province, Iraq’s biggest, and extends the US military footprint into Syria and Jordan.
Al Asad was the base struck by Iranian missiles last month in retaliation for the assassination of Soleimani. More than 100 US soldiers suffered concussions and head trauma from the explosions of the missiles but there were no fatalities.
Under the 2014 arrangement between Baghdad and Washington, the US was meant to confine its operations to training the Iraqi army and providing logistical support and air cover in the campaign against Daesh.
Since the eradication of Daesh’s territorial “caliphate” in both Iraq and Syria, the US has breached this agreement by mounting attacks on Kataib Hizbollah, one of the Iran-supported Shiite militias in the Popular Mobilisation Units (PMU), which have, formally, been absorbed by the Iraqi armed forces. The US also slew the PMU deputy head, Abu Mahdi Al Muhandis along with Soleimani, enraging Iraqis who regarded him as a victor in the struggle against Daesh.
The US military presence in Iraq is now seen by many Iraqis as re-occupation. Iraqis are highly sensitive to external dictation and the presence of foreign military forces on their soil. They have suffered grievously since the bungled 2003-11 US occupation and the installation of the Shiite sectarian regime which is both inept and corrupt.
Since October 1, hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, the vast majority Shiites, have been protesting against this regime, sectarian rule, Iranian influence in Iraq’s domestic affairs and the malign US military presence.
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On Friday, Iranians turned out in large numbers to select members of parliament, its Majlis, and seven members of its 88-member Assembly of Experts.
Responsible for selecting Iran’s Supreme Leader, its members serve 8-year terms. Meeting twice annually, it’s comprised of a leadership council and six committees.
Held every four years, at stake are 290 seats in parliament, candidates aged-30 to 75 eligible to run.
Around 58 million Iranians are eligible to vote, citizens aged-18 or older.
Candidates from 208 constituencies ran for office, Tehran the largest.
Iranian elections are open, free and fair, shaming the US money-controlled duopoly system — one-party rule with two right wings.
The Guardian Council vets political aspirants to protect and preserve Iran’s Islamic character and national sovereignty from hostile imperial efforts to change things.
According to Iran’s Interior Minister Abdol-Reza Rahmani-Fazli, over 91% of political aspirants were approved by the Guardian Council to run for parliament on Friday — 7,148 candidates for 290 seats.
In Tehran, 1,453 candidates contested for 30 seats. No limitation exists on how often incumbents and former incumbents can seek reelection.
Around 85% of voting is electronic. Principalists (conservatives) vied with Reformists for parliamentary seats.
Various parties represented them, along with other independent parties. Elements tied to US imperial interests, wanting pro-Western (tyrannical) Pahlavi-style rule restored operate in exile.
When last held, Reformists gained control of parliament with moderate candidates by a 137 – 120-seat majority over Principalists.
Due to large numbers turning out Friday to vote, 54,611 polling stations scheduled to close at 6PM stayed open to 10PM, as late as midnight where needed to accommodate voters.
On Tuesday, Ayatollah Khamenei called Iranian elections “a source of strengthening the country,” adding:
“Look at how US propaganda seeks to separate the people from the Islamic system. They create think tanks to plot this.”
“They seek to distance the Iranian youth from the Islamic system, but they won’t succeed.”
“Enemies and friends are watching. Enemies want to see the result of these economic problems, the Westerners’ deceit in their promises to us, and the US pressures on the people.”
“Our friends watch worriedly, but we always tell them not to worry. The Iranian nation knows what it’s doing.”
“Taking part in the elections nullifies many of the vicious plots of the US and the Zionist regime against Iran.”
“These elections repel the schemes and ploys of the enemies of Iran.”
“Iran should become stronger. This frustrates the enemy. One manifestation of strength is having a strong Majlis.”
“The more participation there is in the election, the stronger the Majlis will be. This is one factor for strengthening the Majlis.”
Iranian First Vice-President Eshaq Jahangiri called Friday’s large turnout a testimony to Iranian rejection of hostile US propaganda.
Tabulating Friday’s ballots continues, results expected to be announced Sunday.
According to Press TV, partial results show Principalists ahead, including a clear lead in Tehran.
Interior Ministry spokesman Esmail Mousavin said most constituency results will be announced on Saturday, adding:
“In certain constituencies, however, releasing results will take until Sunday due to the number of candidates.”
Winning a minimum of 20% of votes cast in each constituency is required to gain a seat in parliament.
A follow-up election is held for undecided constituencies.
Based on what’s known so far, Principalists appear heading for a parliamentary majority.
A Final Comment
Timed to be announced on election day, the Trump regime imposed illegal sanctions on “five senior” Iranian officials.
According to DJT’s envoy for regime change in Iran Brian Hook, targeted individuals “denied the Iranian people free and fair parliamentary elections” — how the US political system operates, not the Islamic Republic’s.
Friday’s action was symbolic, part of US war on Iran by other means.
Ongoing for over 40 years, it’s part of what US imperialism is all about, a scourge threatening everyone everywhere.
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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.”
Image: Senator Prescott Sheldon Bush and his son George H.W. Bush
Is it Coincidental? The Bush family had close links with Nazi Germany, the bin Laden family and the Mexican Drug cartel.
Two members of the Bush dynasty acceded to the White House.
Had the US public been fully informed by the media, who in America would have voted for George W. Bush?
Bush Family Links to Nazi Germany
Grandpa Prescott Sheldon Bush “was a director and shareholder of companies that profited from their involvement with the financial backers of Nazi Germany.” (The Guardian, September 2004)
The American public was not aware of the links of the Bush family to Nazi Germany because the historical record had been carefully withheld.
Prescott S. Bush’s assets were seized in 1942 by the Roosevelt Administration under the Trading with the Enemy Act, “[He was] a partner and director of Brown Brothers Harriman holding company and a director of one of its key financial components, the Union Banking Corporation (UBC)”(Bill van Auken, WSWS.org, 2003)
An investigation carried out in 1945 revealed that the bank run by Prescott Bush was linked to the German Steel Trust run by Thyssen and Flick, one of the defendants at Nuremberg.(Ibid)
Thyssen was central to the development of the weapons industry and the Nazi war machine, including the exploitation of slave labor at Auschwitz.
…New documents, many of which were only declassified [in 2003], show that even after America had entered the [second world] war and when there was already significant information about the Nazis’ plans and policies, he [Prescott S. Bush] worked for and profited from companies closely involved with the very German businesses that financed Hitler’s rise to power. It has also been suggested that the money he made from these dealings helped to establish the Bush family fortune and set up its political dynasty.
Remarkably, little of Bush’s dealings with Germany has received public scrutiny… But now the multibillion dollar legal action for damages by two Holocaust survivors against the Bush family… are threatening to make Prescott Bush’s business history an uncomfortable issue for his grandson, George W, ….(The Guardian, September 25, 2004)
The Ascendancy of George Herbert Walker Bush
“Poppy”, George Herbert Walker Bush (Prescott’s son, and GWB’s dad) became CIA director in January 1976 (2 months before the onslaught of the “Dirty War” in Argentina), and then Vice President under Reagan before becoming President of the US (1989-1993).
The Bush family were friends with the Bin Ladens going back to the 1970s. They were business partners with the wealthy Bin Laden family which was connected to the Saudi Royal family.
Salem bin Laden, half brother of Osama bin Laden, was the founder of the Saudi Binladin Group, a multibillion construction conglomerate.
The bin Laden – Bush relationship started in 1978 when George W. Bush and Salem bin Laden established the Arbusto Energy Company in Texas.
Meanwhile Osama bin Laden (brother of GWB’s partner Salem bin Laden) was on the CIA payroll. He contributed to running Maktab al-Khidamat (MAK) also called the Afghan Services Bureau. founded in 1984 “which funneled money, arms and fighters” into Afghanistan. (See NBC). MAK was a CIA initiative overseen and coordinated by Pakistan’s Inter-Service Intelligence (ISI), which was in permanent liaison with the CIA. MAK later laid the groundwork for the launching of Al Qaeda (The Base) in 1988.
In the course of the Reagan administration (1980-1988), Vice President George Herbert W. Bush (and former CIA director) played a key role in the creation of MAK and Al Qaeda. Osama bin Laden belonged to the wealthy bin Laden family which had a longstanding relation to the Bush family. The recruitment of the Mujahideen as well as the purchase of weapons was in part funded by the drug trade out of Afghanistan as well as by the House of Saud.
Enemy Number One
Osama served as “A Freedom Fighter” in the Soviet-Afghan War before becoming the (alleged) “Enemy Number One” and “Terror Mastermind” of the 9/11 attacks.
“He changed sides, he went against us” (paraphrase). It’s called the “blowback” when an “intelligence asset” is said to “have gone against their sponsors”; “what we’ve created blows back in our face.”(UPI, 15 September 2001).
In a twisted logic, the US government and the CIA were portrayed as the ill-fated victims:
The sophisticated methods taught to the Mujahideen, and the thousands of tons of arms supplied to them by the US – and Britain – are now tormenting the West in the phenomenon known as `blowback’, whereby a policy strategy rebounds on its own devisers. (The Guardian, 15 September 2001)
The 9/11 Attacks
Coincidence?
On September 11, 2001, former president George H. W. Bush (“Poppy”) met Shafiq bin Laden, brother of Osama at the Ritz Carlton Hotel in Washington. Nothing wrong. It was a business meeting. Shafiq was “a guest of honour at the Carlyle Group’s Washington conference”. He was mingling with “fellow investors” including former secretary of defense Frank Carlucci and former secretary of state James Baker III.
Since 1979, both the Bin Laden family and The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia have provided financial aid to Al Qaeda which was sponsored by the CIA. Visibly, Shafiq and the Bin Ladens were not invited to attend Bush’s September 20 address which “officially” consisted in launching the “Global War on Terrorism”(GWOT)
“We will make no distinction between the terrorists who committed these acts and those who harbor them”.
But there is always an “Exception that Proves the Rule” and that is George W. Bush himself.
screenshot of Economist report
screenshot Washington Post, March 16, 2003
Shafiq Bin Laden and George H. Walker Bush, date unknown (source Michael Moore)
GWB’s brother Jeb Bush, former governor of the Sunshine State was a buddy of Raul Salinas de Gortari who had ties to Mexico’s Drug-lord Juan Garcia Abrego.
And “Poppy” Bush was a friend of Raul’s dad Raul Salinas Lozano, who was a leading figure in narcotics dealings.
George H. W. Bush, the dad of Bush Junior had developed close personal ties with Carlos Salinas de Gortari (former president of Mexico) and his dad Raul Salinas Lozano who, according to the Dallas Morning News (February 27, 1997)was “a leading figure in narcotics dealings that also involved his son, Raul Salinas de Gortari… And Raul was an intimo amigo of Jeb Bush, (former Governor of Florida) and the brother of George W, Bush.
“There has also been a great deal of speculation in Mexico about the exact nature of Raul Salinas’ close friendship with former President George Bush’s son, Jeb. It is well known here that for many years the two families spent vacations together — the Salinases at Jeb Bush’s home in Miami, the Bushes at Raul’s ranch, Las Mendocinas, under the volcano in Puebla. There are many in Mexico who believe that the relationship became a back channel for delicate and crucial negotiations between the two governments, leading up to President Bush’s sponsorship of NAFTA.” (Houston Chronicle, 9 March 1995)
“witnesses say former Mexican president Carlos Salinas de Gortiari, his imprisoned brother Raul and other members of the country’s ruling elite met with drug lord Juan Garcia Abrego at a Salinas family ranch; Jeb Bush admits he met with Raul Salinas several times but has never done any business with him” Andres Openheimer, (Miami Herald, February 17 1997)
The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA)
When George H. Walker Bush was president he signed the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) with President Carlos Salinas de Gortari, son of drug lord Salinas Lozana together with Canada’s Prime Minister Brian Mulroney.
One of the signatories of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) was directly linked to organized crime. President Salinas de Gortari’s links to the Mexican Drug Cartel was withheld until after the signing of NAFTA agreement.
George H. W. Bush Senior was fully aware of the links of the Salinas presidency to the drug lords. Public opinion in the US and Canada was never informed so as not to jeopardize the signing of NAFTA. The US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) was instructed “not to spill the beans”:
“Other former officials say they were pressured to keep mum because Washington was obsessed with approving NAFTA”.
“The intelligence on corruption, especially by drug traffickers, has always been there,” said Phil Jordan, who headed DEA’s Dallas office from 1984 to 1994. But “we were under instructions not to say anything negative about Mexico. It was a no-no since NAFTA was a hot political football.” (Dallas Morning News, 26 February 1997, emphasis added)
Ask yourself, is NAFTA a “legal agreement” when one of the signatories is linked to a criminal syndicate? Not to mention the fact that Carlos Salinas de Gortari was an “intimo amigo” of George H. W. Bush (who was complicit in the coverup).
Had this been known, the NAFTA agreement would not have seen the light of day.
President Carlos Salinas de Gortari, President George H. W. Bush, Canada’s Prime Minister Brian Mulroney
That’s summarizes the Bush family history.
The Nazis, the Bin Ladens and the Mexican Drug Lords …
Two Presidents, One Vice President, A CIA Director, a Member of Congress, A Senator and a Governor. Not to mention key positions in Wall Street and the Texas Oil Industry.
Without the falsification of American history sustained by extensive media disinformation, the Bushes would never have acceded to high office.
Baron Nathan Mayer de Rothschild once said “I care not what puppet is placed on the throne of England to rule the British Empire on which the sun never sets. The man that controls Britain’s money supply controls the British Empire, and I control the British money supply.”
Unfortunately that system of control is evident in today’s society. Special interests have been behind every US president including Trump.
Trump is following his marching orders to big oil interests including his authorized theft of Syrian oil.
Trump has given more support to Israel than any of his predecessors, which to the Pentagon is another important agenda. Israel is an important US ally in the Middle East besides Saudi Arabia.
Trump first trip as President was to Saudi Arabia to sell more weapons, which is business as usual for the arms industry.
There is a power structure that sets the rules of the game in Washington. The Military-Industrial Complex (MIC) has an agenda and that is war. A US led war in the Middle East with Iran is increasingly coming close to reality. It would affect Syria, Lebanon and the Palestinians. At some point, the war will reach Latin America targeting Venezuela because of its oil reserves since Trump likes the “oil”. As of now, Bolivia, Chile and Ecuador are in chaos due to new US-backed fascistic governments that re-established neoliberal economic policies which will lead to the impoverishment of the masses.
The U.S. military has over 800 bases ranging from torture sites to drone hubs in over 70 countries. US tensions are more intense that in any period of time with Iran, Syria and Hezbollah as Trump signed off on a new defense budget worth $738 billion including funds for his new Space Force. Despite the fact that the Democrats are still angry over their election defeat to Trump and are still pushing the Russia collusion hoax and now the farcical impeachment scandal, but when it comes to foreign policy, both Democrats and Republicans are unified with the same war agenda. The Trump administration continues its regime change operations despite the fact that Trump said no more regime change wars when he was a candidate in 2016. “We will stop racing to topple foreign regimes that we know nothing about, that we shouldn’t be involved with”
Fast-forward to 2019, Trump’s CIA and others from his administration such as Eliot Abrams, a Reagan-era neocon was given the green-light to conduct another regime change operation with a nobody named Juan Guaido leading the Venezuelan opposition against the Maduro government which failed. Bolivia on the other hand was a success for Washington which was planned the day Evo Morales was elected President of Bolivia and was allied with Washington’s adversaries in Latin America including Venezuela, Ecuador, Nicaragua and Brazil (before Balsonaro of course). Trump continued the pentagon’s agenda when he praised the new fascist Bolivian regime who forced Morales from power with Washington’s approval of course. Trump even threatened Nicaragua and Venezuela with new attempts of regime change when he said that “these events send a strong signal to the illegitimate regimes in Venezuela and Nicaragua that democracy and the will of the people will always prevail.” In other words, Trump is not in charge.
US Presidents do have some room to make decisions concerning domestic issues such as taxes or healthcare, but when it comes to foreign policy, its a different story. It’s not a conspiracy theory.
Many people in power has told the world who is really in charge from politicians, Wall Street bankers to military generals. In a 1935 speech by a Marine General Smedley titled ‘War is a Racket.’
A veteran in the Spanish-American War who rose through the ranks during the course of his career. From 1898 until his retirement in 1931 he was part of numerous interventions all around the world. Butler was also the most decorated Marine ever with two Medals of Honor added to his resume. He said the following:
“I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902–1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested. Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents”
He was correct. General Butler could have given notorious gangsters such as Al Capone a few lessons in how to run a business empire. Then in 1961, President Dwight D. Eisenhower made it clear who had the real power inside Washington in a farewell address he gave to the American public. Eisenhower issued a stark warning on the dangers of the MIC posed to humanity.
Here is a part of the speech:
“This conjunction, of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry, is new in the American experience. The total influence – economic, political, even spiritual – is felt in every city, every state house, every office of the federal government. We recognise the imperative need for this development, yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications… In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists, and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes.”
Eisenhower seemed like he was not in agreement with the deep state’s decision to drop the atomic bombs during World War II, perhaps he was cornered by the growing power of the deep state. A comparison between the Roman Empire and America today is uncanny. In Rome for example, choosing an emperor was made difficult by the ruling elite, political debates dominated how new emperors were selected by old emperors, the senate, those who were influential and the Praetorian Guard which is today’s version of the Military-Industrial Complex. The political and industrial heavyweights and its intelligence agencies select the best two candidates from the only two political parties who are bought and paid for by corporate and political interests make the important decisions. The Praetorian Guard (who was the emperor’s private army by default is similar to Presidents relationship with the Military-Industrial Complex) had dominated the election process for the next century or so resulting in targeted assassinations of several emperors they did not want in power before Rome’s collapse. They were assassinations and attempted assassinations on US presidents resulting in four deaths, the most notable assassination in the 20th century was President John F. Kennedy who wanted to “smash the CIA into a thousand pieces” gave a speech on April 27th, 1961 at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York City, many believe, including myself, that it was the speech that eventually got him killed:
“For we are opposed around the world by a monolithic and ruthless conspiracy that relies primarily on covert means for expanding its sphere of influence–on infiltration instead of invasion, on subversion instead of elections, on intimidation instead of free choice, on guerrillas by night instead of armies by day. It is a system which has conscripted vast human and material resources into the building of a tightly knit, highly efficient machine that combines military, diplomatic, intelligence, economic, scientific and political operations.
Its preparations are concealed, not published. Its mistakes are buried, not headlined. Its dissenters are silenced, not praised. No expenditure is questioned, no rumor is printed, no secret is revealed. It conducts the Cold War, in short, with a war-time discipline no democracy would ever hope or wish to match.”
The ” tightly knit, highly efficient machine “ Kennedy spoke about directs U.S. presidents to authorize wars or a covert operations to topple foreign governments. Kennedy exposed that fact and followed that same fate as those emperors in Rome. Even in Domestic politics, the U.S. government deep state apparatus is in control as the former Governor of Minnesota Jesse Ventura, who is also a former Navy Seal, actor and professional wrestler who now has his own show on RT news called ‘The World According to Jesse’ admitted on TruTV’s ‘Conspiracy Theory with Jesse Ventura’ on how the CIA interrogated him shortly after he became governor:
“About a month after I was elected governor, I was requested into the basement of the capital to be interviewed by 23 members of the Central Intelligence Agency, the CIA, they were very formal, there was governor, sir and all that, but they put me in a chair and they were in a big half-moon around me, and I said to them, look before I answer any of your questions, I want to know what are you doing here? because in the CIA mission statement, it says that they are not operational inside the United States of America. Well, they wouldn’t really give me an answer on that and then I said I want to go around the room and I want each one of you to tell me your name and what you do, half of them wouldn’t. Now isn’t that bizarre, I’m the governor and these guys wouldn’t answer questions from me. Then they started questioning me and it was all about how I got elected. You know what was the most bizarre thing about it was? There was every array of person you could imagine, young people, old people, all nationalities and that’s what really got to me. These were people you would see every day. They look like your neighbors.”
The US president including all elected congress members are all bought and paid for by the arms industry, major corporations, bankers, Big Pharma, Big Oil, the media and a handful of lobbyists with the Israel lobby being the most powerful. Trump is no exception. He will follow the road given to him by those who are in charge and he will continue the path to a world war, an agenda that been long in the making. One of America’s favorite enemies, Russian President Vladimir Putin was interviewed by Megan Kelly of NBC news in 2017 and was asked about the so-called Russian collusion conspiracy theory and he said the following:
Presidents come and go, and even the parties in power change, but the main political direction does not change, That’s why, in the grand scheme of things, we don’t care who’s the head of the United States, we know more or less what’s going to happen. And so, in this regard, even if we wanted to, it wouldn’t make sense for us to interfere
Whether Trump wants war or even peace, it won’t matter, he will do the right thing, for the deep state that is.
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Timothy Alexander Guzman writes on his blog, Silent Crow News, where this article was originally published. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.
The following article by professor Eric Waddell was first published more than 16 years ago by Global Research in December 2003 in the immediate wake of the invasion and occupation of Iraq by US and British forces, with a postscript added in 2007.
The article provides an incisive historical perspective on America’s “long war” against humanity, which is being carried out under a fake humanitarian mandate.
Let us be under no illusions as to the intent of the US and its allies.
We are dealing with World Conquest under the disguise of a “Global War on Terrorism”.
Michel Chossudovsky, January 2020
World Conquest: The United States’ Global Military Crusade (1945-)
by Prof. Eric Waddell
The United States has attacked, directly or indirectly, some 44 countries throughout the world since August 1945, a number of them many times. The avowed objective of these military interventions has been to effect “regime change”. The cloaks of “human rights” and of “democracy” were invariably evoked to justify what were unilateral and illegal acts.
The aim of the United States is to protect and reinforce national interests rather than to create a better world for all humankind. It is an “imperial grand strategy” of global dimensions designed to ensure unlimited and uninhibited access, notably to strategic resources, notably energy, and to markets. Rather than to establish a direct colonial presence, the preferred strategy is to create satellite states, and this requires constant, and often repeated, military interventions in countries around the world, irrespective of their political regime.
Democratically elected governments are as much at risk as dictatorships. In recent years, the tendency has been for such direct interference to increase since less of these countries are prepared to act as willing allies. Indeed, events of 2003 would suggest that the number of unconditional and powerful U.S. allies is now reduced to three: Great Britain, Australia and Israel. The US strategy is characterised, wherever possible, by invasion and the setting up of friendly (puppet) governments. Attention is focussed, by preference, on relatively small and weak countries, the aim being to achieve rapid victory.
Historically, this process of US domination of the World has been characterized by:
(i) direct military intervention with nuclear or conventional bombs and missiles,
(ii) direct military intervention with naval or ground forces,
(iii) indirect military intervention through command operations and
(iv) the threat of recourse to nuclear weapons.
Broadly speaking, three historical phases can be identified:
– 1945-49: The U.S.-Soviet struggle for European domination, terminating with the stabilisation of the frontier between the two blocs and the creation of NATO;
– 1950-89: The Cold War proper and, in the context of it, the emergence of the non-aligned group of nations;
– 1990 on: The post-Cold War
The first period was characterized by a significant degree of US military intervention in Europe, the second by a concern to confine the Communist bloc within its frontiers and to prevent the emergence of pro-communist regimes elsewhere in the world, and the third, focused on gaining control over the former Soviet republics and in the oil-rich Middle East. The Middle East, Southeast Asia and the Caribbean/Central America reveal themselves to be Regional Theaters of concern throughout the post-2nd World War period.
click image to enlarge
The non-negotiable defense and promotion of “the American way of life” through global military interventions took form in the closing months of the 2nd World War and it came at great cost to much of the rest of the World’s population. Although Germany capitulated in May 1945 and the United Nations was created in the following month, the U.S. nevertheless chose to use nuclear weapons to bring Japan to its feet.
The dropping of two atomic bombs, respectively on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August of that year resulted in some 150,000 immediate deaths and tens of thousands of wounded. Such nuclear terrorism was quickly denounced by the international scientific community and no other nation has resorted to the use of such weapons of mass destruction. However the U.S.A. regularly brandishes the threat of recourse to them, while under Bush they have been reinstated as an integral part of national discourse. But the story does not end with nuclear weapons, for the U.S.A. has also, over the past half century, used chemical and biological weapons in its quest for global domination with, for example, recourse to Agent Orange in Viet Nam and blue mold, cane smut, African swine fever, etc. in Cuba. All such weapons of mass destruction are an integral part of the country’s arsenal.
In this context, the map of U.S. Military Interventions since 1945 only tells a part of the story. While the country’s global reach is apparent, the scale of military violence is not fully revealed. Up to 1,000,000 people were killed in the CIA command operation in Indonesia in1967, in what was, according to the New York Times, “one of the most savage mass slayings of modern political history”. Another 100,000 were killed in Guatemala, in the CIA-organized coup. And the map makes no mention of military interventions where the U.S. played a support (e.g. Rwanda and the Congo in the 1990s) as distinct from a lead role, or where U.S. arms were used by national military forces, as in East Timor where, in the hands of the Indonesian military, they were responsible for the death of some 200,000 people from 1967 on.
Interestingly, with regards to the international arms trade, it was President Reagan who announced, in 1981, that “The U.S. views the transfer of conventional weapons… as an essential element of its global defence posture and an indispensable component of its foreign policy.”
The U.S. Empire knows no limits. Its aim is political and military domination of the world. Under the US system of global capitalism, the demand for energy and other vital resources is unlimited.
America’s “Road Map to Empire” was not formulated by the Bush administration as some critics are suggesting. In fact, there is little that is “new” about the “Project for a New American Century”. It is just that the post-war rhetoric of human rights and social and economic development has diminished, to be replaced by the primary concern with global supremacy through military force. The imperial project was outlined in the immediate wake of the 2nd World War. It was part of the “Truman Doctrine” formulated in 1948 by George Kennan, Director of Policy and Planning at the U.S. State Department:
“We have 50 percent of the world’s wealth but only 6.3 percent of its population…. In this situation we cannot fail to be the object of envy and resentment. Our real task in the coming period is to devise a pattern of relationships which will allow us to maintain this position of disparity. We should cease to talk about the raising of living standards, human rights and democratization. The day is not far off when we are going to have to deal in straight power concepts. The less we are then hampered by idealistic slogans, the better.”
Postscript 2007
In one sense little has changed since 2003. The next target for military intervention has already been clearly identified. It is Iran which so happens, according to the most recent US Government official energy statistics, to rank third among the world’s oil-rich nations, and to be the one with the largest increase in proven oil reserve estimates over the period 2005-2006.
In another sense however a new portrait is beginning to emerge, where a war-weary and increasingly vulnerable United States is moving to the creation of a Fortress North America which embraces its northern neighbour. Once again the logic is clear. Canada now ranks second, ahead of Iran and Iraq but behind Saudi Arabia, in terms of world oil reserves, thanks notably to the tar sands of Alberta. A minority government in Ottawa, dominated by Albertan interests, is consciously taking Canada into both the US energy and the military and strategic fold. In so doing, the country is joining the ranks of the United Kingdom and Australia as an unflinching US ally.
If global reach is becoming a too costly and hazardous endeavour then fortress North America becomes an increasingly attractive alternative, particularly when the minor partner is consenting and docile.
Eric Waddell is a distinguished author and professor of Geography based in Quebec City
The NYT falsely warned of Russian meddling to re-elect Trump that hasn’t occurred.
Nor does any evidence suggest it’s coming ahead. Earlier accusations of Moscow electoral interference to help Trump defeat Hillary in 2016 were bald-faced Big Lies.
Not a shred of evidence suggests Russian election meddling occurred in the US or anywhere else — a longstanding CIA/NED specialty in dozens of countries worldwide throughout the post-WW II period.
Carnegie Mellon University’s Institute for Politics and Strategy researcher Dov Levin earlier documented 81 times Washington meddled in foreign elections from 1946 – 2000 – since then in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Ukraine, Honduras, Paraguay, Brazil, and elsewhere, unsuccessfully in Venezuela, Iran and Russia.
In his book titled “Demonstration Elections,” the late Edward Herman documented US involvement in orchestrating sham Dominican Republic, El Salvador and Vietnam elections, wanting regimes installed that serve US interests.
The same thing goes on in countless other countries, electoral coups masquerading as democracy in action, an abhorrent notion Washington tolerates nowhere, especially not domestically.
According to a Times report with no credibility, US intelligence officials “warned (that) Russia was interfering in the 2020 campaign to try to get President Trump re-elected…”
No evidence was cited because none exists. The anti-Trump Times, still furious over his defeat of media darling Hillary, loves to resurface the Big Lie that won’t die.
Reportedly House Intelligence Committee members were briefed by US intelligence officials on February 13.
According to the Times, lawmakers were told earlier of Russian US election meddling — no evidence presented suggesting it. Without it, accusations are groundless.
So-called “new information” that doesn’t exist about Moscow intending to interfere in primaries and the general election this year indicates lots more of this rubbish to come in the run-up to November.
Last April, Robert Mueller’s witch hunt report exposed the Russiagate hoax by revealing no damning evidence because there was none to find.
Cooked up by Obama’s Russophobic CIA director John Brennan, it was one of the most shameful chapters in US political history.
Mueller’s 19-lawyer team, 40 FBI special agents, intelligence analysts, forensic accountants, and other professional staff spent around $25 million.
They issued 2,800 subpoenas, 500 search warrants, almost 50 orders authorizing use of pen registers, 13 requests to foreign governments for evidence, over 230 orders for communication records, interviewed about 500 individuals, and made 34 politicized indictments on dubious charges unconnected to his mandate.
When all was said and done, Mueller’s team discovered nothing connected to phony allegations of possible Trump team/Russia collusion to triumph over Hillary, no collusion, no obstruction of justice, no evidence of Russian US election meddling.
Why would Russia or any other country interfere in America’s political process when outcomes are always the same!
Dirty business as usual always wins, how duopoly rule works under a one-party system with two extremist right wings.
Earlier claims by the DNI and CIA that Putin personally ordered a campaign of US election meddling to favor Trump over Hillary in 2016 were rubbish.
Yet the Big Lie reared its ugly head in this year’s race for the White House — once again, no evidence backing phony accusations because none exists.
The Russophobic Times is front and center promoting what has no credibility — its own long ago lost.
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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.”
The inept course of what passes for United States Foreign Policy continues, with the Trump Administration now going after the nation’s second oldest friend, Great Britain. With Trump having serially insulted America’s oldest ally France last year, it should only have been expected that the Brits would be next on the list, joining the other key European ally Germany, which is being threatened with sanctions over buying gas from Russia.
In the latest episode of international misunderstanding, the British media has aggressively latched on to a traffic death involving the wife of an American government technical employee at a top-secret communications facility in England. The story has been prominent in the U.K. papers since last August, when the incident occurred, with much of the editorializing in England blaming the White House and State Department for a grave miscarriage of justice. The woman, Anne Sacoolas, was reportedly driving on the wrong side of the road near the RAF Croughton airbase in Northamptonshire, which hosts the communications facility, when she had a head on collision with motorcyclist Harry Dunn, killing him instantly.
Sacoolas was questioned by the police and then released with the understanding that the authorities would follow up with more questions if warranted but the U.S. Embassy put her and her husband Jonathan and three children on a plane and flew them back to Washington, claiming diplomatic immunity in the accidental death.
The British did not buy into that argument and demanded that Anne Sacoolas be extradited to the U.K. to take responsibility for what she had done, denying that she had diplomatic immunity because she had fled the country without making any such claim.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo rejected the British demands, arguing that
“If the United States were to grant the UK’s extradition request, it would render the invocation of diplomatic immunity a practical nullity and would set an extraordinarily troubling precedent.”
In simpler language Pompeo was declaring that he would never under any circumstances recognize that the killing of a foreigner might justify allowing an American government official to stand trial, even in a Western European country where the accused would have rights and be treated fairly.
In October Sacoolas was interviewed by British police officers in the U.S. and in December the U.K. government charged Sacoolas with “causing death by dangerous driving” and made clear that it was demanding cooperation from Washington. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson also warned that he would go directly to President Trump over the issue. However, the State Department refused to budge and Sacoolas was last seen pumping gas in Falls Church Virginia.
There is, of course, more to the story. The Daily Mailhas published a piece asserting that the husband and wife are actually Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) employees, though she was “not active” in their posting in Britain. The article also states that Anne Sacoolas outranks her husband.
The Mail article relies on unnamed sources and the manner in which it is framed suggests that the United States government is refusing to extradite Anne Sacoolas because she is an intelligence officer, active or otherwise. The implication would seem to be that Washington is fearful lest Sacoolas be questioned by the British police and wittingly or unwittingly reveal details of classified secret CIA operations.
A simpler explanation for the State Department’s unwillingness to compel Sacoolas to return to England would be that it would compromise the cover arrangements at Croughton base. And the claim that she and her husband are both CIA should also be taken with somewhat more than a grain of salt. The media in Europe and much of the rest of the world routinely labels any U.S. intelligence link as CIA. As Croughton is presumably a major communications and “listening post” intercept center for the U.S. government it would include elements of all the alphabet soup that makes up the intelligence community, to include the National Security Agency (NSA) as well as representatives from all the armed services and the State Department.
The argument over returning Sacoolas to Britain centers around the use or abuse of diplomatic immunity. Diplomatic and Consular immunity are defined by the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, which was codified in 1961, but the protections provided are not the same for all employees of embassies overseas. In principle, diplomatic immunity became an established practice to prevent a local government from using the law to maliciously harass the emissary of a foreign country. This has inevitably produced some bizarre cases where the privilege has been abused. Back in 2010, a Qatari diplomat Mohammed al-Madadi was in the news when he was caught by an air Marshal for smoking in the bathroom of a Washington to Denver flight. He joked that he was actually lighting a bomb in his shoes before claiming diplomatic immunity and being released by the police.
In reality, ambassadors and deputy chiefs of mission plus their families have full immunity and can commit any crime, though the host country has the option of demanding that such individuals go home as personae non gratae (PNG). Diplomats with something like full immunity are normally accepted by the Foreign Ministry of the host country and they are then entered on the diplomatic list. Other embassy employees, to include those at Consular posts, have what is regarded as “functional immunity,” which means that they are protected as long as they are performing work that is related to their jobs at the foreign mission. Other embassy administrative employees who have no diplomatic related duties have no immunity at all.
It is by no means clear how Jonathan Sacoolsa, identified both as a “technical” officer and “intelligence officer” by various sources had diplomatic immunity in the first place, as he clearly did not function as a diplomat and was working at a communications site. It is possible that there was some special arrangement made with the British government to cover intelligence officers who were declared to the British security services.
With the Sacoolsa case still roiling the international waters, one would think that the Trump Administration just might talk nice to America’s closest ally to undo some of the damage. But no, Donald Trump does not do nice and is angry with Boris Johnson because British government has contracted with Chinese tech giant Huawei to build part of Britain’s next generation 5G cellular phone network. According to the Financial TimesTrump vented “apoplectic” fury at Boris Johnson in a tense phone call before slamming down the receiver. Boris has, as a consequence, canceled an upcoming trip to Washington.
The president, claiming that using Chinese technology is “very dangerous,” a “security issue,” threatened that there would be consequences arising from the British decision, including some limits on the Five Eyes intelligence sharing as well as less willingness on the part of Washington to enter into bilateral trade talks. Johnson, taken aback by the verbal onslaught, argued that there was no commercially available alternative to the Chinese technology to no avail. Trump has also been angered by Britain’s continued adherence to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) intended to monitor Iran’s nuclear program and prohibit development of a weapon. Officials who have been engaged in the management of the bilateral “special relationship” between the U.S. and Britain believe that the rift between the two countries, fueled solely by Trump’s taking personal affront whenever anyone disagrees with him, is wide and growing. If Trump is reelected it is quite likely that by 2024 the United States will have no friends left in Europe.
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Tensions between the United States and Russia are growing in northeastern Syria. On February 19, a video appeared online showing how an armored vehicle of the U.S. military was pushing a vehicle of the Russian Military Police off a road. The US move endangered a civilian standing near the road. If he had not run away in time, he would have been killed by the vehicle. The incident reportedly took place to the east of the city of al-Qamishli in the northern al-Hasakah countryside.
Russian air defense forces repelled a drone and missile attack on the Hmeimim airbase in the province of Latakia. Pro-government sources reported that the attack was carried out from the southern part of the Idlib de-escalation zone, where militants are still present.
On February 19, Turkish Sultan-in-Chief Recep Tayyip Erdogan declared that the Turkish military has finished preparations for an operation against the Syrian Army in Greater Idlib, and its start is inevitable because Syrian troops are not planning to withdraw from the recently liberated areas. On the same day, Turkey continued deployment of additional troops and equipment to the region, as well as directly to the frontline. The frontline areas where the Turkish military presence is especially strong is the eastern countryside of Idlib city and the town of Atarib. Turkish media outlets are enthusiastically drawing maps of a possible Turkish aggression.
Pro-Turkish sources claim that the operation in Idlib will not only help to rescue supposed civilians from the regime offensive, but to separate the so-called moderate opposition from terrorists. According to these claims, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, the Turkistan Islamic Party and other al-Qaeda-linked groups, which make up over 80% of Idlib militants, will be disbanded. It would be interesting to see how Ankara would go about disbanding and disarming the forces that it has been supplying with weapons and supporting so much. Do Turkish media outlets really expect their audience to believe that from one moment to the next tens of thousands of battle-hardened al-Qaeda members are going to abandon their ideology and become florists or Instagram bloggers?
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My name is Derrick Broze. For the past 8 years I have worked as an independent freelance investigative journalist in Houston, Texas. Since 2012 I have covered a wide range of topics, from indigenous resistance at Standing Rock, exposing government and corporate surveillance, and reporting from important trials like Chelsea Manning’s sentencing, and the Silk Road trial. Throughout this time, I have noticed that choosing to investigate certain topics, often results in being labeled a conspiracy theorist, or, at the very least, a proponent of less-than-credible journalism. One of these “forbidden” topics relates to potential harms caused by the use of cell phones and related digital technology.
Over the years I have seen articles discussing research on the dangers of radio frequency radiation and electromagnetic fields. Again, I noticed these studies never made mainstream newspapers, or headlines on the 24 hour cable news cycle. Even if the news had reported on this information, would it have made a difference?
I – like millions of people around the world – never gave a second thought to the possibility that cell phones or laptops could be causing harm to human health. We assume that the government agencies responsible for these fields have tested everything for safety. I started to wonder Has this blind faith in authority been a huge mistake?
My ignorance of these topics came to an end in September 2018 when I learned that the City of Houston had recently partnered with companies like Microsoft and Verizon to turn Houston into a “Smart City”. This Smart City would use emerging 5g technology to power the so-called “Internet of Things”, which In turn will allow for autonomous vehicles, robot assistant’s, artificial intelligence, sensors in the street to moderate street lights and environmental warning systems, and many other futuristic technologies we have been promised.
At this time, I had little understanding of what exactly 5g was, but my preliminary research had shown me that there was an increasing amount of people raising questions about the potential health and privacy concerns. I also learned that there were lawsuits taking place across Texas and around the world, as the opposition pushed back against the federal government and the wireless industry seizing power from towns, cities, and states.
On October 1st, 2018 Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner held a press event with officials from Verizon wireless. The Mayor and Verizon CEO Hans Vestberg were on location at a Houston couples home as they installed 5G equipment and helped the young couple become “the world’s first 5g customer”.
DB:Mayor Turner, as far as moving forward with innovation and wanting to be the first, has anybody stopped to look at any studies related to potential health effects of increasing the amount of small cells in the city, as well as privacy concerns that the American Civil Liberties Union and others have put out concerns regarding the push towards smart cities?
Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner: you know, I haven’t seen any recent studies on it. I mean the reality is that, umm, if you want to move things quicker, if you want to innovate, you’ve got an installation that, I mean, the infrastructure is critically important”
DB: is there any concern about the health effects of the increase in small cells?
Hans Vestberg, CEO Verizon Wireless:The studies that have been done over years, has not shown any effects or health effects on the radio signals and there’s no difference. There are safety rules on all of it that is regulated by the regulators, how much power you can use.
I was not satisfied with their answers. I did more research and the following week I attended Houston City Council to share what I had found with the Mayor and Council. (video) This visit to council was followed by another, and another, and another. These videos gained more than 900,000 thousand views via Youtube alone, leading dozens of activists from around the world to reach out and encourage me to keep going.
I was also featured on local news discussing the concerns around the 5g roll out. I confronted the Mayor of Houston for his close ties to the Wireless Industry and ignoring the concerns about 5g. The Mayor ran away from my questions at City Council and on 3 different occasions in public (1,2, and 3). In fact, due to the response from the Mayor and the City, I ran a campaign for Mayor of Houston, calling for a moratorium on the installation of 5g towers until further studies.
Over the last year my research has involved interviewing health and privacy experts, and uncovering the truth about the Race to 5g. What I have learned is that the industry known as Big Wireless is colluding with the Federal Communications Commission to create a false demand for 5g technology, in total disregard to health and privacy concerns, all the while using the 5g rollout to strip away local power. I offer the conclusions of my research, in the hopes that it will encourage the public to question and oppose the promises of …. The 5g Trojan Horse.
Chapter 1: Understanding the Electromagnetic Spectrum
To have a discussion on 5g we first have to talk about Electromagnetic frequencies or EMFs. An emf is a measure of how many times the peak of a wave passes a particular point per second. It is measured in Hertz. This range of potential frequencies makes up what we call the electromagnetic spectrum.
The electromagnetic spectrum is divided into separate bands, and the electromagnetic waves within each frequency band are called by different names, including radio waves, microwaves, infrared, visible light, ultraviolet, X-rays, and gamma rays at the high-frequency (short wavelength) end.
Within those bands, gamma rays, X-rays, and high ultraviolet are classified as ionizing radiation, meaning they have sufficient energy to ionize atoms, causing chemical reactions. Exposure to these rays can be a health hazard, causing radiation sickness, DNA damage and cancer. Radiation from visible light and lower wavelength are called nonionizing radiation because they apparently cannot cause these effects. We will revisit the science around ionizing and non-ionizing radiation in a moment.
What is 5g?
Devices like Cellphones, Wifi, and Bluetooth all operate on the microwaves band of the spectrum. When it comes to cellphones, a new generation of cellular standards has appeared approximately every ten years since 1G systems were introduced in 1979 and the early to mid-1980s. Each generation is characterized by new frequency bands, higher data rates and non–backward compatible transmission technology.
The 2nd Generation, or 2g, featured cell phones with texting and pictures. The 3rd generation came about around 2000, with the introduction of phones with some internet, video, and images. The 4th Generation came around 2009 with the introduction of smart phones with instant streaming of video, as well as the use of apps.
As we move into 2020, the shift to the 5th generation, or 5g, has begun. In addition to being promoted as the solution to 4k movie downloads, the new technology is expected to herald the beginning of Smart Cities, where driverless cars, traffic lights, pollution sensors, smart phones and countless other smart devices interact in what is known as “The Internet of Things.” The IoT is a fancy way to say that we will be surrounded by hundreds of thousands of interconnected devices and sensors which are gathering mass amounts of data that will be used to show you advertising and monitor your habits, and other uses that we can’t even predict yet.
The switch from 4g to 5g is a change unlike those of previous generations. One notable difference is that 5G technology uses much higher frequencies, ranging from 10-300 GHZ. 5g is using millimeter waves which do not travel far and are easily blocked by trees, buildings, and walls. The 5 G rollout means the installation of hundreds of thousands of new cell sites, towers, and additions to existing infrastructure. Cities like Houston, Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Denver, San Diego, New York City, and Washington D.C. are already deploying 5g for residential and commercial uses.
Let’s examine some of the concerns surrounding 5g and electromagnetic fields in general.
Chapter 2: The Concerns Around EMF’s and 5g
As I mentioned earlier, over the years I have come across articles claiming that cell phones were giving people cancer or making people sick. I did not pay too much attention at first, but when I finally decided to investigate the topic I realized there was ample evidence that the technology we are so hurriedly surrounding ourselves with might be putting our lives at risk in more ways than one.
I started by trying to understand the concerns around EMFs in general. I went through hundreds of studies, including those from official government sources and others funded independently. I found studies like “International and National Expert Group Evaluations: Biological/Health Effects of Radiofrequency Fields“, which examined six decades worth of research into the effects of in vitro and in vivo exposures of animals and humans or their cells to RF fields.
“Data reported in peer-reviewed scientific publications were contradictory: some indicated effects while others did not,”the researchers write. Still, in the end, the expert groups suggested a “reduction in exposure levels, precautionary approach, and further research.” So I continued digging.
I came across studies discussing extremely low frequency electromagnetic fields and their effect on DNA. The researchers concluded that cells exposed to ELFs “presented an increase of the number of cells with high damaged DNA as compared with non-exposed cells.” I found studies examining a potential association between nocturnal mobile phone use and mental health, suicidal feelings, and self-injury in adolescents. I also found an interesting one discussing the excitability of the brain being induced by radiofrequencies. The study stated that “These results suggest that low-intensity RF fields can modulate the excitability of hippocampal tissue in vitro in the absence of gross thermal effects. The changes in excitability may be consistent with reported behavioural effects of RF fields.”
A 2004 study found “an increased risk of acoustic neuroma [tumors] associated with mobile phone use of at least 10 years’ duration.”
I also found studies that were inconclusive, which found “No conclusive evidence of an association between use of mobile and cordless phones and a meningioma brain tumor”. The study discovered “An indication of increased risk” but was not “supported by statistically significant increasing risk“, ultimately calling for further studies.
A study by Kaiser Permanente examined rates of miscarriages for women near cell towers. The study of hundreds of pregnant women in the San Francisco Area found that those who were more exposed to the type of radiation produced by cell phones, wireless networks and power lines — radiation that grows more common everyday — were nearly three times as likely to miscarry. The Kaiser Permanente study did not show definitively what was causing the higher rate of pregnancy loss, nor did it isolate the potential impact of cell phones or other producers of EMFs. However, the authors said the results underscore the need for more research into the potential dangers.
During my investigation I came across the name of Dr. Martin Pall, a Professor Emeritus of Biochemistry and Basic Medical Sciences at Washington State University. Pall is a published and widely cited scientist on the biological effects of electromagnetic fields, an expert in how wireless radiation impacts the electrical systems in our bodies.
He has published 7 studies showing sensitivity to electromagnetic fields exists in what is known as the voltage sensor, in each cell of the body. A study by Pall published in the journal of Environmental Health found this sensitivity in human cells in response to wi-fi exposure. He calls this effect an important threat to human health. According to Dr. Pall, there are at least 15 different ways EMFs harm humans, including :
1. changes in brain structure and function, changes in various types of psychological responses and changes in behavior.
2) At least eight different endocrine (hormonal) effects.
3) Cardiac effects influencing the electrical control of the heart
4) Chromosome breaks and other changes in chromosome structure.
5) Histological changes in the testes.
6) Cell death
7) Lowered male fertility including lowered sperm quality and function and also lowered female fertility (less studied).
810) Cellular DNA damage including single strand breaks and double strand breaks in cellular DNA
9) Cancer which is likely to involve these DNA changes but also increased rates of tumor promotion-like events.
10) Cataract formation
11) Breakdown of the blood-brain barrier.
12) Melatonin depletion and sleep disruption.
“18 more recent epidemiological studies, provide substantial evidence that microwave EMFs from cell/mobile phone base stations, excessive cell/mobile phone usage and from wireless smart meters can each produce similar patterns of neuropsychiatric effects. Lesser evidence from 6 additional studies suggests that short wave, radio station, occupational and digital TV antenna exposures may produce similar neuropsychiatric effects. Among the more commonly reported changes are sleep disturbance/insomnia, headache, depression/depressive symptoms, fatigue/tiredness, dysesthesia, concentration/attention dysfunction, memory changes, dizziness, irritability, loss of appetite/body weight, restlessness/anxiety, nausea, skin burning/tingling/dermographism and EEG changes.”
He concludes that “extensive epidemiological studies performed over the past 50 years” “all collectively show that various non-thermal microwave EMF exposures produce diverse neuropsychiatric effects”. Pall also notes that the effects of EMF’s were documented 49 years ago in the U.S. Office of Naval Medical Research report, published in 1971.
Despite the breadth of his work, Dr. Pall has largely been pushed to the fringes of society. To be fair, his work has been criticized by other scientists who have accused him of bias and cherry picking studies to support his claims. In 2018, I asked Dr. Martin Pall why his research has been ignored or pushed out of the mainstream conversation.
Dr. Martin Pall:We quit funding, we quit funding the studies of this sort back between 1986 and 1999. We’ve done almost nothing since then. So basically the US government’s been pushing these technologies, at the same time doing absolutely nothing, well almost absolutely nothing, to protect us.
The debate around the safety of cellphones and other devices that emit EMFs grew a little more heated in early November 2018 when the National Toxicology Program released data concluding there is clear evidence radio-frequency radiation (RFR) can cause brain and heart tumors in male lab rats. The $30 million study took more than ten years to complete as researchers examined the effects of prolonged exposure to high levels of RFR, specifically the type of radiation emitted via 2G and 3G cellular networks.
The researchers write:
“There was also some evidence of tumors in the brain and adrenal gland of exposed male rats. For female rats, and male and female mice, the evidence was equivocal as to whether cancers observed were associated with exposure to RFR.”
The NTP caution that the results should not be applied to humans and the FDA and other government agencies also said that they do not support the conclusions and they do not apply to 5g. [John Bucher, Ph.D.,] A senior scientist with the NTP said, “The exposures used in the studies cannot be compared directly to the exposure that humans experience when using a cell phone. In our studies, rats and mice received radio frequency radiation across their whole bodies.” The NTP stated that, “The lowest exposure level used in the studies was equal to the maximum local tissue exposure currently allowed for cell phone users.”
The NTP seems to suggest the only way to avoid the health concerns is to avoid using a cell phone. In a health advisory, the NTP recommends those concerned about the potential health risks from RFR should, “Use speaker mode or a headset to place more distance between your head and the cell phone,” or “reduce the amount of time spent using your cell phone.”
Ronald Melnick PhD, a researcher and scientist [Former senior toxicologist, US Environmental Toxicology Program] who designed the exposure systems used in the study, disagrees with the FDA and the FCC.
Melnick notes that, “Dr. Shuren neglects to note that the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), a part of the World Health Organization, classified radio-frequency radiation from wireless devices as a “possible human carcinogen”based largely on findings of increased risks of gliomas and Schwann cell tumors in the brain near the ear in humans after long term use of cellphones.” The IARC designation of cell phones as a possible carcinogen has been highly controversial since it was first issued in 2011.
[In an opinion piece published by The Hill,] Melnick also stated that, “Simply claiming that conclusions about human risk cannot be drawn from animal studies runs counter to standard practices of evaluating human cancer risks by public health agencies including the U.S. EPA, NTP, IARC and even the FDA. Every chemical known to cause cancer in humans is also carcinogenic in animals when adequately tested.”
In an interview with Josh Del Sol of Take Back Your Power, Melnick elaborated on the problems he sees with the U.S. regulatory agencies.
Josh Del Sol, Take Back Your Power: Approximately 30 million dollars was invested to see if cell phones cause cancer at levels at or below the allowable levels right and in rats and the answer is that there was a significant increase in schwannomas of the heart and gliomas in the brain and then they dropped it, they just dropped it. So I guess I want to ask the question, like why do you think, now we’re getting into speculation here, and we know that Harvard Ethics Department has written about the FCC’s being controlled by industry but the FDA? We’ve heard in other conversations various things about them but like what’s actually going on and how significant of a thing is this. The study was done, it showed cancer, and then they just dropped it. Help us to frame this here.
Dr. Ronald Melnick:Well, I can’t tell you why they decided as such all I can say is that they decided at this point, or as far as I know, not to do anything about this. This information was actually available in 2016 when the NTP released some of the partial findings because of the potential impact of these findings on the general population. The tumors in the heart and tumors in the brain were known in 2016. If you know, it could be that, they don’t want people to think that their cell phones pose a cancer hazard, maybe they have other reasons and I can’t say whether or not the industry is having an influence that is certainly a possibility but seems to me that from a public health perspective what you want to do is understand the risk, quantify it, and do something about it, promote precautionary principles.
Even more recently, an August 2019 investigation by the Chicago Tribune found that currently available models of cell phones are already exceeding the safety limits set by the FCC. This means that the cell phones being used by millions of Americans are exposing them to dangerous levels of radiation.
There is clearly sufficient evidence to warrant a mass warning to consumer of electronic devices, yet we are met with silence from health professionals and mainstream corporate media. Regarding the dangers of 5g, Dr. Melnick suggests caution.
“5G is an emerging technology that hasn’t really been defined yet. From what we currently understand, it likely differs dramatically from what we studied. Consequently, I believe that new wireless technologies, including 5G, should be adequately tested before their implementation leads to unacceptable levels of human exposures and increased health risks.”
Additionally, hundreds of scientists from around the world have signed the “5g Appeal”, a statement calling on a moratorium on 5g.
“We the undersigned, scientists and doctors, recommend a moratorium on the roll-out of the fifth generation, 5G, for telecommunication until potential hazards for human health and the environment have been fully investigated by scientists independent from industry. 5G will substantially increase exposure to radiofrequency electromagnetic fields (RF-EMF) on top of the 2G, 3G, 4G, Wi-Fi, etc. for telecommunications already in place. RF-EMF has been proven to be harmful for humans and the environment.“
At a May 2018 United Nations hearing, Claire Edwards, [a United Nations Editor and Trainer in Intercultural Writing from 1999 to 2017,] warns the UN Secretary-General António Guterres about the dangers of 5G. Edwards is a co-organizer of a second appeal to Stop 5G, called the International Appeal to Stop 5G on Earth and in Space (www.5gspaceappeal.org), which as of December 2019, had 186,352 signatories from 208 nations and territories. At the hearing she told Guterres that recently installed wifi equipment could cause harm to UN employees.
Claire Edwards: “Since December 2015, the staff here at the Vienna International Centre have been exposed to off-the-scale electromagnetic radiation from WiFi and mobile phone boosters installed on very low ceilings throughout the buildings. Current public exposure levels are at least one quintillion times (that’s 18 zeros) above natural background radiation according to Professor Olle Johansson of the Karolinska Institute in Sweden.
The highly dangerous biological effects of EMFs have been documented by thousands of studies since 1932 indicating that we may be facing a global health catastrophe orders of magnitude worse than those caused by tobacco and asbestos.
Mr. Secretary-General, on the basis of the Precautionary Principle, I urge you to have these EMF-emitting devices removed immediately and to call a halt to any rollout of 5G at UN duty stations, because 5g is designed to deliver concentrated and focused electromagnetic radiation in excess of 100 times current levels, in the same way as do directed energy weapons”.
Guterres claimed he was ignorant to the dangers of the technology.
Groups like Physicians for Safe Technology have also called for caution and common sense on 5g. Doctors have begun speaking out about the concerns of surrounding ourselves with hundreds of thousands of new cell towers and small cells in the interest of 5g. [In October 2018, Sharon Goldberg, a medical practitioner for 21 years, testified in front of the Michigan House Energy Policy Committee (:13 to 1:58, )]
In April 2019, New York Congressman Thomas Suozzi sent a letter to the FCC seeking answers about the technology.
“Small cell towers are being installed in residential neighborhoods in close proximity to houses throughout my district. I have heard instances of these antennas being installed on light poles directly outside the window of a young child’s bedroom. Rightly so, my constituents are worried that should this technology be proven hazardous in the future, the health of their families and value of their properties would be at serious risk.”
New Jersey Congressman Andy Kim also sent a letter, noting that:
“Current regulations governing radiofrequency (RF) safety were put in place in 1996 and have not yet been reassessed for newer generation technologies. Despite the close proximity to sensitive areas where these high-band cells will be installed, little research has been conducted to examine 5G safety.”
Most damning of all, Senator Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut exposed that Big Wireless and the FCC have failed to do adequate independent studies into the effects of emerging 5g technology. At a Senate Commerce committee hearing, Blumenthal questioned industry reps about the absence of this research. (2:38-3:44, 4:35-4:44)
Richard Blumenthal: “If you go to the FDA website, there basically is a cursory and superficial citation to existing scientific data saying ‘’he FDA has urged the cell phone industry to take a number of steps, including support additional research on possible biological effects of radio frequency fields for the type of signals emitted by cell phones.’
So my question for you: How much money has the industry committed to supporting additional independent research—I stress independent—research? Is that independent research ongoing? Has any been completed? Where can consumers look for it? And we’re talking about research on the biological effects of this new technology.”
Brad Gillen, Executive Director of the CTIA: “There are no industry backed studies to my knowledge right now.”
At the end of the exchange, Blumenthal concluded, “So there really is no research ongoing. We’re kind of flying blind here, as far as health and safety is concerned.”
As more health professionals, politicians, and scientists speak out against the dangers of 5g and EMFs, the cellular industry and some in the mainstream media have begun pushing back. In March 2019, William Broad of the New York Times wrote a piece promoting the idea that those who are concerned about the health effects of 5g are simply falling prey to Russian propaganda designed to make America lose the “race to 5g”. His article, “Your 5G Phone Won’t Hurt You. But Russia Wants You to Think Otherwise.”, sought to place the blame for concern around 5g on the shoulders of America’s favorite boogeyman – The Russians.
Dr. Devra Davis, PhD, President of the Environmental Health Trust, responded to Broad’s claim by noting that “by relegating concerns about 5G to a Russian ploy, he misses altogether the fact that the purportedly independent international authorities on which he relies that declare 5G to be safe are an exclusive club of industry-loyal scientists.China,Russia, Poland, Italy and several other European countries allow up to hundreds of times less wireless radiation into the environment from microwave antennas than does the U.S..”
Davis went even further, comparing the treatment of those who raise awareness about the public impact of radio frequency microwave radiation to that of those scientists in the 1950s and 60s who attempted to ring alarm bells about the dangers of tobacco.
“Scientists who showed the harmful impacts of tobacco found themselves struggling for serious attention and financial support,” [Davis wrote].
Dr. Devra Davis: “For health impacts from wireless radiation, a similar pattern is emerging. Each time a U.S. government agency produced positive findings, research on health impacts was defunded. The Office of Naval Research, the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health, the Department of Health, Education and Welfare, and the Environmental Protection Agency all once had vibrant research programs documenting dangers of wireless radiation. All found their programs scrapped, reflecting pressure from those who sought to suppress this work.”
Ironically, one of the sources for an extensive amount of research on the health effects of EMFs comes from Russia and Ukraine. In fact, a review paper of Russian and Ukrainian science discusses research on the effect of EMFs in the former Soviet Union during the 1950’s, 60’s, and 70’s.
[ The report states that,] “In epidemiological studies of the population of Ukraine, a connection was established between leukemia in children and cancer in adults, and exposure to EMF at industrial frequencies. Specific injuries under radiowave exposure are development of cataracts, instability in leukocyte make-up of peripheral blood, and vegeto-vascular disorder.”
Additionally, on March 3, 2011 the Russia radiation watchdog committee [members of the Russian National Committee on Non-Ionizing Radiation Protection (RNCNIRP)] approved a resolution on the effects of non-ionizing radiation emitted by cell phones. According to U.S. government agencies, cell phones and EMFs are non-ionizing, meaning they do not have the power to alter atoms in the human body. Because of this, and the assumption that heat alone cannot cause health problems, the public is told that non-ionizing means safe. The resolution by the committee says otherwise.
[The committee states that] “urgent measures must be taken because of the inability of children to recognize the harm from the mobile phone use and that a mobile phone itself can be considered as an uncontrolled source of harmful exposure.”
The Russian committee called for requiring health information regarding exposure to EMFs on the phone itself, as well as setting limits for children and teens using cell phones and laptops. As of 2019, no U.S. regulatory body has adopted similar measures.
Regarding this debate around ionizing and non-ionizing radiation, I asked Dr. Martin Pall why some researchers claim non-ionizing radiation is safe, and others warn of harm.
Dr. Martin Pall (18:25-19:54): When thinking about radiation you’re talking about the individual photons that make it up and the fact is that the individual photons that make up non-ionizing radiation, particularly you know in the microwave and lower frequency ranges, don’t have enough energy to influence the chemistry of our bodies. That’s true. They don’t, but we’re not talking about the individual photons. It’s the fields as a whole and those fields as a whole put forces on a structure called the voltage sensor that controls these voltage-gated calcium channels and that structure is extraordinarily sensitive to these fields and that’s why you get activation of the voltage-gated calcium channels, and why you get excessive calcium in the cell. So, we know why the system works and we know why it’s so extraordinarily sensitive. And the industry has been claiming that these fields are not strong enough to do anything but the reason the industry is wrong is because this structure is extraordinarily sensitive to the forces of the EMF’s. So this comes straight out of the physics and this is where this is where the physics background that I have has been very valuable, in addition an understanding of biology.
By studying the evidence, it becomes abundantly clear that – despite the attacks from mainstream news and promises from Big Wireless – there are a great deal of reasons to be concerned about health issues related to cell phones, laptops, smart devices, and 5g. To be fair, there are, of course, scientists and researchers who say that the claims of health problems associated with EMFs are exaggerated and unfounded.
The proponents of EMFs claim the opposition is cherry-picking evidence to make their case. However, even if one takes only a cursory look at the information we have just presented to you, it should be easy enough to see that rolling out a new untested technology is not smart science. At the very least, we must encourage public officials to exercise the precautionary principle and do further testing before rolling out 5g.
Smart City or Surveillance City?
Cancer and other health issues are not the only concerns being raised by critics of 5g and The Internet of Things. There are a growing number of professionals, government agencies, civil rights attorneys, and activists asking important questions about the digital future.
In April 2018, the American Civil Liberties Union released a guide detailing important questions that should be asked by city officials seeking to join the “Smart City evolution. [The guide, “How to Prevent Smart Cities from Turning to Surveillance Cities”, was written by Matt Cagle, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California.] In the course of my research I spoke with the author about his biggest concerns associated with 5g.
Matt Cagle, ACLU: (1:50-3:12): When we talk about smart city technology or the Internet of Things in thegovernment context, that what we’rereally talking about is you knowelectronics that are maybe small andcheap that can be placed around the city and that essentially can be designed to collect information, whether it’s visual information or audio information or information about say whether a parking space is occupied. But before any smart city technology is acquired or deployed, it’s really important that a city working with its community determine whether that technology is actually smart for the city to do.
Why do we ask why do we say that? Well, that’s because you know smart city technology can be a wolf in sheep’s clothing. It can be another way for the government to amass information that it may not have wanted to collect for law enforcement purposes but that might be vulnerable to that sort of use later or that they may not have wanted to collect for immigration purposes but that could potentially be vulnerable to that later. And again, this technology is often going to be collected by companies that have developed it. So it’s really important for the city and the community to be on the same page about who’s going to own this data as we go forward with this project, who’s going to be able to sell this data, and at the end of the day are communities in control of these technologies.
There already exist a few examples of what a Smart City will resemble. In places like San Diego, activists are already fighting against privacy invasions via environmentally friendly smart streetlights that are always listening. In South Korea the Smart City vision is advancing quite quickly. (Video 1:27-2:18)
Let’s look at another example of a smart city.
Quayside is a planned smart city that has been in the works since 2016. Located on 12 acres of waterfront property southeast of downtown Toronto, Canada, Quayside represents a joint effort by the Canadian government agency, Waterfront Toronto, and Sidewalk Labs, which is owned by Google’s parent company Alphabet. Sidewalk Labs claims Quayside will solve traffic congestion, rising home prices and environmental pollution. There are even plans for housing developments and a school within the smart city.
Unfortunately, residents of Quayside will be using a centralized identity management system through which they access public services such as library cards and health care. This means their data will be highly centralized, leaving it open to access by hackers and law enforcement. In fact, Quayside has consistently faced pushback due to a failure to build-in the necessary privacy protections.
At least two officials involved in the project have resigned. Saadia Muzaffar resigned from Waterfront Toronto in protest after the board showed “apathy and a lack of leadership regarding shaky public trust.”
In October 2018, Ann Cavoukian, one of Canada’s leading privacy experts and Ontario’s former privacy commissioner, became the latest person to resign from the project. Cavoukian was brought on by Sidewalk Toronto as a consultant to help install a “privacy by design” framework. She was initially told that all data collected from residents would be deleted and rendered unidentifiable. She later learned that third parties would have access to identifiable information gathered at Quayside.
“I imagined us creating a Smart City of Privacy, as opposed to a Smart City of Surveillance,” she wrote in her resignation letter. “I have to resign because you committed to embedding privacy by design into every aspect of your operation.”
The fears around Quayside grew in late October 2019, when The Globe and Mail reported that previously unseen documents from Sidewalk Labs detailed how people living in a Sidewalk community would interact with and have access to the space around them. This experience in the proposed smart cities largely depends on how much data you’re willing to share, which could be used to reward or punish people for their behavior.
Although the document, known internally as the “yellow book,” was designed as a pitch book for the company, and predates Sidewalk’s formal agreements with the City of Toronto, it does provide a vision of what the Google sister company would like to do.
Specifically, the document details how Sidewalk will require tax and financing authority to finance and provide services, including the ability to impose, capture and reinvest property taxes.” The company would also create and control its public services, including charter schools, special transit systems and a private road infrastructure.
The document also describes reputation-based tools that sound disturbingly similar to the social credit system we have seen in tv shows like Black Mirror and those unfolding in modern China. These tools would lead to a “new currency for community co-operation,” effectively establishing a social credit system. Sidewalk could use these tools to “hold people or businesses accountable” while rewarding good behavior with easier access to loans and public services.
In response to the document leaks, Sidewalk spokesperson Keerthana Rang said, “The ideas contained in this 2016 internal paper represent the result of a wide-ranging brainstorming process very early in the company’s history.”
Perhaps due in part to the push back against privacy invasions, in November 2019 Sidewalk Labs released a 482-page Digital Innovation Appendix stating that none of Quayside’s systems will incorporate facial recognition, and that Sidewalk Labs won’t sell personal information or use it for advertising. Sidewalk Labs says it will require explicit consent to share personal information with third parties.
For the moment, future residents of Quayside will have their data protected, but these types of systems are already being put into place in China. Under the expansion of China’s Sesame Credit System, more than a million people were denied the right to fly. Chinese citizens already live under constant surveillance with CCTV’s and facial recognition a part of daily life.
The U.S. is not far behind China. The U.S. government is also expanding their facial recognition capabilities, with the FBI maintaining a massive secret database of “face prints”. The 5g roll out, the growth of Artificial Intelligence, and the push towards a Smart City future will only increase the potential for abuses of privacy. As we move ever closer to the Smart City future, privacy – and the liberty that comes with privacy – are under extreme threat.
A Threat to Local Control
In September 2018, the FCC passed a new rule putting the federal government in complete control of the 5G rollout. Although the original 1996 Telecommunications Act was the first power grab by the federal government, the September 2018 rule made it so that cities and towns had little ability to regulate or avoid the installation of so-called “Small Cells”.. Under the new rule, phone companies can be charged no more than $270 to install each small-cell antenna. Additionally, local authorities would have 60 days to review the proposed wireless infrastructure.
Localities are already limited in deciding where the equipment can be located. The new rule also continued the tradition of forbidding localities from opposing the equipment on health grounds. The only acceptable claim is based on aesthetics. Basically, if you think the tower looks ugly, they will turn into a palm tree for you.
The Republicans on the FCC stated that limiting the fees that cities can charge localities will free up capital for them to invest in local infrastructure. Democrat Jessica Rosenworcel was the lone dissenter, calling the rule “extraordinary federal overreach”.
“I do not believe the law permits Washington to run roughshod over state and local authority like this and I worry the litigation that follows will only slow our 5G future,” Jessica Rosenworcel, FCC Commissioner stated.
Rosenworcel was correct about litigation to follow. In fact, in the weeks after the October 2018 rule, two dozen cities and counties filed lawsuits against the Federal Communications Commission. The governments argued that the rule hinders their ability to manage how phone companies use public property.
The mayors of Los Angeles and Philadelphia opposed the rule and accused the FCC of overriding local authority to regulate the new technology. Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti sent a letter to the FCC stating that the rules would override previous agreements established by local authorities and Verizon and AT&T.
Sascha Meinrath, the Palmer Chair in Telecommunications for Pennsylvania State University, stated that he believed preventing local government from collecting fees is “Anti-competitive” and simply a part of Telecom history “that happens again and again and again.”
The matter was only made worse when, in April 2019, President Trump issued an executive order stating that local and state bodies must now approve new 5G infrastructure within 90 days. The Trump administration also initiated a cap on the fees local governments can charge telecom companies wanting to install 5G technology. (video 4:17-5:12)
The push back against the usurpation of local power by the federal government and the telecom lobby can be seen clearly in the town of Danville, California. Back in March 2019, the Danville Town Council voted four to one to block a permit for a 5g small cell wireless installation by Verizon. During the meeting, Danville Mayor Robert Storer stated that the vote was an effort to stand up to the federal government and telecom companies, like Verizon. The Danville Town Council’s decision to deny the land use-permit for the small cell opens the town to possible lawsuits from Verizon.
“We’ve lost local control, and this says: ‘You know what? We are sick of this and we’re not going to just sit here and be bulled over.’ We say no; we play our cards out. We’ve been in lawsuits before,” Mayor Robert Storer said during the council meeting.
Danville city attorney Robert Ewing reiterated that cities cannot fight the small cells or 5g rollout based on health concerns, stating that, “While potential health concerns are a huge concern, if that was the basis on which you were making a decision I would be fairly confident to tell you that you would lose, because that’s about as clear as the law can get.”
Similar resolutions are passing in towns across the world, either outright banning 5g or requiring more testing before implementation. Between the FCC rules, and the Presidential Executive Order, the U.S. federal government is working with the Big Wireless Lobby to force 5g down the throats of cities and states around the country. Together, in an incestuous corporate-state relationship, they are slowly taking away choice and consent from local bodies. Most worrisome is the thought that the 5g rollout and the subsequent theft of local power, might be setting a precedent for a future where cities and towns have no say in what happens in their own communities, and instead are forced to go along with the agenda of the federal government and their corporate buddies.
A Danger to the Environment
As we examine the impact of 5g, EMFs, and radio frequency radiation on human health, we must also take a moment to consider the impacts on the environment. One of the more recent concerns is how the rolling out of 5g might negatively impact our ability to forecast the weather and accurately predict storms.
In the spring of 2019, NASA and the NOAA said 5G antennas using similar frequencies used by satellites to gather critical water vapor data, could compromise forecasts and science. The FCC and Big Telecom companies are seeking to expand cellular service into frequency bands such as 24 GHz, which falls near the frequency used for weather forecasting, at about 23.8 GHz. The Federal Communications Commission, which licenses the wireless spectrum for 5G in the United States, says the fears are exaggerated.
In March 2019, Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross, who oversees NOAA, and NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine sent a letter asking the FCC to postpone the auction of the 5g frequency bands. Instead, the FCC went ahead with the auction, selling frequency to both T-Mobile and AT&T. In May 2019, Neil Jacobs, NOAA’s acting administrator, testified to Congress that an internal study had found 5G-related interference could cost NOAA 77% of the water vapor data it collects at 23.8 GHz, and could degrade weather forecasts by up to 30%, essentially back to 1980 levels. Due to these concerns, NASA and NOAA were seeking a sizable buffer zone between the frequency bands used for weather and those used for 5g. This buffer is measured in units of decibel watts.
Unfortunately, in late November 2019, at a meeting of the International Telecommunication Union, international regulators agreed to a buffer of 33 decibel watts until 1 September 2027, and a 39 decibel watts limit after that. The goal was to allow 5G companies to start building networks now, and to add more protection for weather forecasting once the companies have established their networks. Eric Allaix, a meteorologist and head of World Meteorological Organization (WMO), called the idea of having eight years of lax regulation “of grave concern” to weather forecasters.
Once again, regulators chose policies that benefit Big Wireless and fail to protect the planet and the people.
The 5g expansion not only poses a threat to human health, privacy, and weather forecasting, but an increasing amount of research indicates that surrounding ourselves with an unprecedented amount of digital devices is creating a new form of pollution, known as a digital or “electrosmog”.
n the report, Bees, Birds, and Mankind, German researchers discuss the effects of this electric smog. “The consequences of this development have also been predicted by the critics for many decades and can now no longer be ignored. Bees and other insects disappear, birds avoid certain areas and are disoriented in other locations,” the researchers write.
In September 2008, a co-author of the report [Dr. Ulrich Warnke, one of the authors of that report, also presented his findings to the Radiation Research Trust at the Royal Society in London. He] stated that, “an unprecedented dense mesh of artificial magnetic, electrical and electromagnetic fields are disrupting nature on a massive scale, causing birds and bees to lose their bearings, fail to reproduce and die.”
A review of studies from around the world show that concerns around the electrosmog are rising. One study Electromagnetic pollution from phone masts. Effects on wildlife reviewed the impact of radiofrequency radiation from wireless telecommunications on wildlife. The researchers note that phone towers located in the living areas of some species are continuously irradiatiating wildlife, causing a reduction of their natural defenses, deterioration of their health, and problems in reproduction. The researchers conclude that “microwave and radiofrequency pollution constitutes a potential cause for the decline of animal populations and deterioration of health of plants living near phone masts. To measure these effects urgent specific studies are necessary.”
attempted to verify whether there is a connection between unusual tree damage and radiofrequency exposure. The researchers conducted a long-term field monitoring study in two German cities. They observed and took photos of unusual or inexplicable tree damage, along with measurements of electromagnetic radiation. A statistical analysis showed that electromagnetic radiation from cell phone towers is harmful for trees. The researchers note that, “These results are consistent with the fact that damage afflicted on trees by mobile phone towers usually start on one side, extending to the whole tree over time.”
A 2010 study looked at the decline in Aspen trees in Colorado since 2004. This study suggested that the RF exposure may have strong adverse effects on growth rate, and may be an underlying factor in aspen decline. Additionally, there are concerns that thousands of trees will be cut down or trimmed to ensure the 5g frequencies operate efficiently.
Another area of growing concern relates to the fear that the massive increase in exposure to RFR could be one of the causes for bee colony collapse disorder, which has wreaked havoc on the global honeybee population.
In a 2017 study,[ Disturbing Honeybees’ Behavior with Electromagnetic Waves: a Methodology,] researcher Daniel Favre of Switzerland claims that his article describes an experiment on bees, which clearly shows the adverse effects of electromagnetic fields on their behavior. [Favre states that,] “The experiment should be reproduced by other researchers so that the danger of manmade electromagnetism (for bees, nature and thus humans) ultimately appears evident to anyone.”
In a study on tadpoles [Mobile Phone Mast Effects on Common Frog Tadpoles,] researchers exposed eggs and tadpoles to electromagnetic radiation from cell phone antennas for two months, from the egg phase until an advanced phase of tadpole and found low coordination of movements, an inconsistent growth pattern, and a high mortality rate. The authors conclude, “these results indicate that radiation emitted by phone masts in a real situation may affect the development and may cause an increase in mortality of exposed tadpoles. This research may have huge implications for the natural world, which is now exposed to high microwave radiation levels from a multitude of phone masts.”
These concerns are not being promoted on the corporate media nightly news or 24 hour news cycles, but to those willing to do the homework, it becomes clear. There is ample evidence of negative impacts as a result of RFR associated with cell phones wifi, and likely, 5g. In fact, in 2018 the European Commission[‘s Scientific Committee on Health, Environmental and Emerging Risks] released a statement on emerging health and environmental issues which clearly outlined the need for more independent research.
Under section 4.4 Potential effects on wildlife of increases in electromagnetic radiation, the report states that “How exposure to electromagnetic fields could affect humans remains a controversial area, and studies have not yielded clear evidence of the impact on mammals, birds or insects. The lack of clear evidence to inform the development of exposure guidelines to 5G technology leaves open the possibility of unintended biological consequences. “
These unintended consequences have the potential to affect human life, as well as insects, birds, plants, and trees.
Chapter 3: The Big Wireless-5g Takeover
As I continued my research and began presenting it to the Houston City Council and fellow Houstonians, I noticed there was often a reluctance to believe what I was claiming. Several times I was asked something along the lines of, “How could something so dangerous be allowed on the market? Doesn’t the government regulate this technology?”
Once again, the trust of the authorities made people feel like they were safe from harm. Unfortunately, the research shows otherwise. But how could this happen? How can the U.S. government allow potentially hazardous products to be sold and used by millions of people?
To understand this, we need to go back to 1996. That year the Telecommunications Act was passed as an effort to update the law around communications technology as the internet was beginning to come into mass public use. The Act was also seen as a way to limit the growing AT&T monopoly. Unfortunately, it was the beginning of further consolidation of telecommunications companies and a huge step towards eroding local power.
The 1996 act prohibits local jurisdictions from considering perceived health effects when taking an action on a proposed facility, such as towers or small cells. Instead, cities and towns could only regulate cell sites based on the aesthetics and location of the devices. [Section 332(c)(7)(B)(iv) of] The Telecommunications Act of 1996 states:
“No State or local government or instrumentality thereof may regulate the placement, construction, and modification of personal wireless service facilities on the basis of the environmental effects of radio frequency emissions to the extent that such facilities comply with the Commission’s regulations concerning such emissions.”
Essentially, as long as the facilities comply with the standards set by the FCC, they cannot be subjected to environmental or health regulations. But what happens if those federal standards set by the FCC in 1996 are not adequate? As we will get into shortly, there are studies which show health effects even at the levels allowed by the 1996 Telecommunications Act, not to mention the fact that the standards are over two decades old and based on outdated technology.
Not only was the Telecom Act designed to protect the profits of the Big Wireless companies, but somewhere along the way the FCC and the Telecoms developed an incestuous relationship that has overtaken the voices and concerns of the American people.
A 2015 expose [, the Harvard Edmund J. Safra Center for Ethics published an expose ] by investigative journalist Norm Alster shows the financial ties between the US Federal communications Commission (FCC) and the telecoms industry and how, as a result, the wireless industry bought unfettered access to—and power over—a major US regulatory agency.
The report [ “Captured Agency: How the Federal Communications Commission is Dominated by the Industries it Presumably Regulates”, ] details how the FCC, an independent government agency created in 1934 to regulate interstate communications by radio, television, wire, satellite and cable, has become a captured agency with Big Wireless leaders filling the government seats in a revolving door fashion similar to other federal agencies.
Regarding the passing of the 1996 Telecom Act, Alster writes that “late lobbying won the wireless industry enormous concessions from lawmakers, many of them major recipients of industry hard and soft dollar contributions. Congressional staffers who helped lobbyists write the new law did not go unrewarded. Thirteen of fifteen staffers later became lobbyists themselves.”
Alster states that direct lobbying by industry is “just one of many worms in a rotting apple”. The report says the FCC is involved in a network of powerful moneyed interests with limitless access and a variety of ways to shape policy. Alster believes the worst part is that the wireless industry has been allowed to grow unchecked and virtually unregulated, with fundamental questions on public health routinely ignored.
Unfortunately, the situation goes beyond corrupted government agencies and into defaming those who speak out against potential harms caused by wireless technology.
During the 1990’s, Biochemist Jerry Phillips was hired by cellphone giant Motorola to study the effects of the RF Radiation emitted by cell phones. Phillips and his colleagues looked at the effects of different RF signals on rats, and on cells in a dish. Phillips say the relationship between him, and his employer was initially cordial, but soured once he submitted research data to Motorola which found harmful effects to the DNA structure as a result of exposure to radio-frequency radiation. The negative results were not to Motorola’s liking, and they began putting pressure on him.
In another example of industry attempting to influence research, we have Dr. Henry Lai, the University of Washington, and fellow researcher, Narendra Singh. The researchers were looking at the effects of nonionizing radiation—the same type of radiation emitted by cell phones—on the DNA of rats. They used a level of radiation considered safe by FCC standards and found that the DNA in the brain cells of the rats was damaged—or broken—by exposure to radiation.
After publishing the research in 1995, Dr. Lai would later learn of a full-scale effort to discredit the experiments. Lai and Singh caused controversy when they publicly complained about restrictions placed on their research by their funders, the Wireless Technology Research (WTR) program. In response to this public action, the head of the Wireless Technology Research sent a memo asking then-university president Richard McCormick to fire Lai and Singh. McCormick refused, but the message was clear. Get rid of anyone who makes our products look bad. In a leaked internal Motorola memo executives claimed to have succeed in “War-Gaming ” the Lai-Singh experiments.
“This shocked me,” [Lai says, ] “the letter trying to discredit me, the ‘war games’ memo. As a scientist doing research, I was not expecting to be involved in a political situation. It opened my eyes on how games are played in the world of business. You don’t bite the hand that feeds you. The pressure is very impressive.”
Think about that. An international corporation trying to exert pressure on scientists who are drawing conclusions which prove their product could cause harm to public health. Even further, Dr. Lai’s experiments showed negative health consequences at levels considered “safe” by the FCC.
The Captured Agency report makes it clear that this type of corruption takes place because of “the free flow of executive leadership between the FCC and the industries it presumably oversees”. For example, at the time of the report’s release, the Chairman of the FCC was Tom Wheeler, a man with deep ties to the Big Wireless industry. In 2013, Wheeler was nominated as FCC chairman by former President Obama after raising more than $700,000 for his presidential campaigns. Wheeler lead the two most powerful industry lobbying groups: The National Cable & Telecommunications Association (NCTA) and the Cellular Telecommunications & Internet Association, or, the CTIA.
The current chairman of the FCC could also be seen as another example of a “captured agency” in action. Ajit Pai, a lawyer and current chairman of the FCC, served as Associate General Counsel at Verizon Communications Inc. between 2001 and 2003, where he handled competition and regulatory matters. Pai was appointed to the FCC by Barack Obama in 2012 and then made FCC Chairman by Donald Trump in January 2017.
FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr is another example of a government official working closely with industry and maintaining relationships which clearly present conflicts of interest. Carr is credited with accelerating the 5G build out. Prior to joining the FCC, Carr worked as an attorney at Wiley Rein where his clients were Verizon, AT&T, Centurylink, CTIA, the wireless association and the USTA, the telecom lobby. The Wiley Rein law firm is a hot bed of activity for former government officials and industry regulars. One of the founders of the law firm is Richard Wiley, himself a Former FCC Chairman.
On September 30, 2019, Commissioner Carr and other officials were in Houston to discuss the future of 5g. I asked Commissioner Carr about the concerns regarding his connections with the wireless industry. I also asked him about the Captured Agency report released by Harvard’s School of Ethics. Unfortunately, Mr Carr had no interest in addressing these questions. (video 1:49-3:08)
The following day I was able to question Commissioner Carr for a second time and once again he avoided my questions. (video :38-2:07)
Much of this revolving door relationship between industry and government can be traced to the CTIA, the Cellular Telecommunications & Internet Association.
Established in 1984, the CTIA claims to represent the U.S. wireless communications industry, from carriers and equipment manufacturers. The CTIA “advocates for legislative and regulatory policies at federal, state, and local levels that foster the continued innovation, investment and increasing economic impact of America’s wireless industry. CTIA is active on a wide range of issues including spectrum policy, wireless infrastructure, and the Internet of Things, among others.” They also host events on topics ranging from cybersecurity to 5G.
The CTIA’s Board of Directors includes the presidents, CEOs and other senior officials of Verizon, Sprint, T Mobile, Nokia, Erricson, Intel, General Motors, Tracfone, EZ Texting and others.
Brad Gillen, the current Executive Vice President of the CTIA, was formerly a Legal Advisor to a former FCC Commissioner and served in other senior policy roles at the FCC and with DISH Network. Mr. Gillen was also a partner at Wilkinson Barker Knauer, LLP, a law firm stacked with former employees of the FCC, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and other state government positions
The CTIA’s current President and CEO is Meredith Attwell Baker. Baker has spent the last two decades bouncing between lobbying for Big Wireless and working for the government. From 1998 to 2000, Baker worked as Director of Congressional Affairs at the CTIA. Afterwards, she worked for the U.S. government as an FCC Commissionner between July 2009 to June 2011. She then went back to the CTIA where she is now President and CEO, in charge of promoting the so-called Race to 5g.
So, what exactly is the race to 5g?
If you have paid attention to any media or visited a cell phone store recently, you have likely heard the buzz about 5g, and more specifically, the Race to 5g.
Geopolitically speaking, the Race to 5g describes the ongoing rift between the U.S. and China, a kind of digital Cold War where the two superpowers race to implement the next generation of cellular technology because of its potential for massive profit and massive data collection. The American media and President Trump have stated that Chinese company Huawei could use their 5g infrastructure to spy on Americans. Trump has called on federal officials and American companies to abandon Huawei equipment. This fear of Chinese spying using 5g equipment completely ignores the reality that the U.S. government has the same exact opportunity to pressure American companies to spy on the private data of Americans.
The Race to 5g could also be described as a clever marketing concept designed to sell consumers an upgrade they did not know they wanted or needed. (Not to mention, an upgrade that has sparked lawsuits, and has many health and privacy concerns.) As part of the ongoing Race to 5G, telecom companies are promoting 5g as the solution for faster downloads and high-definition movie streaming. It’s not immediately clear if the public is demanding faster downloads, but the Telecoms, global governments, and the tech industry are pushing the shift towards 5g. While it is true that 5g has the potential to spur on innovation in the fields of medicine, manufacturing, entertainment, and other industries – there has not been a truly organic call for this emerging technology.
It seems much of the hype around the 5g roll out is coming from the CTIA itself. Yes, the Cellular Telecommunications & Internet Association, the organization created to lobby explicitly for the Wireless Industry. The CTIA is Big Wireless.
(video “April 19, 2018 The CTIA Race to 5G Summit”)
One of the ways the CTIA has spread enthusiasm for the Race to 5g is by working with city officials. The CTIA has been honoring City Mayors who have worked to erode local authority regarding the 5g roll out. The 5G Wireless Champion Awards “honor the state and local officials” who “bring next-generation 5G networks” into communities and “remove barriers to the deployment of next-generation wireless infrastructure”. In 2018, the CTIA gave out 3 “5g Wireless Champion Awards” to mayors across the United States, including Houston’s Mayor Sylvester Turner.
As I mentioned earlier, it was the Mayors response to my questions about 5g which encouraged me to look deeper. I found out that in July 2018, Mayor Turner stood side by side with Verizon Wireless officials to announce plans to roll out 5g technology in Houston. The Mayor said 5G will turn Houston into a “smart city”, with better control of traffic flow, money-saving smart street lights, and driverless cars. By September 2018 , Turner was awarded the “5g Wireless Champion Award” by the CTIA. The CTIA stated that, “Under Mayor Turner’s leadership, Houston has streamlined the permitting process by not requiring a license or attachment agreement for new poles or small cells, and completes review ahead of deadlines. “
Despite my efforts at emailing the Mayor and City Council about the concerns, and visiting city council many times, I continued to be met with silence. When I decided to run for Mayor, making 5g a central part of my campaign, I finally had the opportunity to call out the Mayor to his face, in front of the people of Houston.
Sylvester Turner and Mayor’s like him are a problem, but they are a symptom of a bigger battle. The CTIA uses the 5g Wireless Champion Awards and other local programs to convince Mayors and local officials to support the 5g agenda. This allows the agenda adopted by the federal government and Big Wireless to be filtered down to the state and local level.
Despite a number of lawsuits from cities and states; objections from scientists and health professionals; concerns from citizens, politicians, and journalists – the CTIA, the FCC, and Donald Trump continue to push the 5g agenda forward. As I discovered in my research, there are health and privacy concerns around cell phones, bluetooth, WiFi, laptops, and other digital devices. The research shows we should limit our exposure to these devices and find ways to protect our privacy.
We should also recognize that the major difference between the 5g Smart Grid and the current technology, is that once 5g rolls out you will not be able to avoid it. You can choose not to use a cell phone, or not install wifi in your home, but once the 5g network is complete, you will be surrounded by hundreds of thousands of sensors, small cells, and other infrastructure. Once I understood this, I realized I had to know what I can do to protect myself, my family, and friends.
Chapter 4: Solutions
The reality is that we are already living in the electro, digital smog. The public has excitedly purchased the latest upgrades to their digital technology of choice. From smart phones, to laptops, doorbell cameras, public wi-fi networks, home assistants, smart houses, and the early stages of 5g – we are inundated with digital technology which emit various levels of radiofrequency radiation. Bit by bit, device by device, we are being exposed to an increasing level of radiation, and this cumulative effect has the potential to cause a great amount of harm to the public.
Collectively, each of these devices form a digital panopticon where private companies, law enforcement, governments, and hackers can literally trace your movements from the moment you wake up and interact with your phone, throughout your entire day as you move through public spaces and visit your work, family, and friends. If the public doesn’t wake up to these dangers and quickly organize a massive, global effort to push back against 5g, the Smart City future seems inevitable.
So, what would this push back look like and what can we do as individuals?
First, the opposition would need to involve ending the relationship between Big Wireless execs and government officials, as well as an honest discussion about the established dangers posed by our digital world. Organizing political opposition should take place at all levels, but I highly encourage everyone to start getting involved in their local communities and asking about the dangers presented in this documentary. You can join a group that might be talking about 5g, privacy, health or the environment, and let them know about these concerns. If there isn’t a group already, you can start one. Pass out flyers at community festivals, farmers markets, concerts, and political events. You can host educational events at community centers and show this documentary. If your neighborhood has a Homeowners Association or similar group you can attempt to fight against the installation of new small cells in your neighborhood. Some activists and concerned homeowners have even filed lawsuits in an attempt to stop the 5g rollout.
When it comes to solutions for protecting yourself in the meantime, remember that the National Toxicology Program’s ten-year study recommends those concerned about the potential health risks from RFR should, “Use speaker mode or a headset to place more distance between your head and the cell phone,” or “reduce the amount of time spent using your cell phone.”
Simply put, limiting your use of and exposure to these devices is the best solution available. I would recommend turning your phone on airplane mode when not using it, or simply turn it off when not in use. I know, it is a scary thought, but we will survive. I would also stop using bluetooth headphones and stop using bluetooth while driving in your vehicle. There are also companies producing products which are supposed to be able to block or absorb the EMF’s emitted by our devices. Do your research and see what works for you.
Probably one of the most important steps to take is to stop falling asleep with your phone or next to your laptop. I also started unplugging my wi-fi at night to protect myself from unnecessary exposure while I am sleeping. The exposure to these devices and the RFR they emit has the potential to disturb your sleep and create stress. This can cause an overall decline in the body’s ability to heal and repair at night.
When it comes to your home or office I recommend rewiring as much as possible using ethernet cables for your desktop or laptop. This will allow you to remove wi-fi if you choose and drastically decrease your exposure. There are even options available to use ethernet connections on your cellphone. When I interviewed Dr. Martin Pall he mentioned the possibility of using graphite paint in your home as an option to block or absorb EMFs. There are also similar concerns regarding the smart meters which have been rolled out around the U.S. Do some research and find out if you can opt out of a smart meter in favor of an analog meter.
Remember what I said about the difference between 5g and previous technologies?
Once it’s rolled out, you will not be able to avoid it while in public. No matter what you do in your house, your car, or with your own phone, if 5g is everywhere there will be no way to opt-out. I have seen researchers working on devices that could protect you in public by either repelling or absorbing the EMFs, and others have suggested clothing that can defend you, but for the moment none of these seem adequate to protect you from the coming 5g Smart Grid.
As we have shown, there are numerous valid reasons to oppose the 5g roll out. Whether it’s concerns about health, privacy, local power, or the environment, the government and the wireless industry need to answer our questions. Another thing, where has the media been during all of this? If I could dig up this information and gather these sources with my limited skills and time, why didn’t the corporate media identify and report on the concerns about 5g? Why did The New York Times and other compliant media outlets insinuate that opponents of 5g are simply victims of Russian disinformation? Instead of listening to the researchers speaking up and the people pushing back, the media stood silent.
So all this begs the question: would consumers be so quick to embrace cell phones, Wi-Fi, and 5g, if the wireless industry and their partners in government hadn’t silenced critics and corrupted the science? If the public knew this information, would that change their minds? Does it change yours?
The cold hard truth is that we have willingly accepted this technology. Yes, we have been lied to by people we believed we could trust, but at the end of the day, the power lies in our hands. We decide if we still choose to surround ourselves with devices that threaten our privacy and health. We must take responsibility for our actions and remember to be skeptical of promises of convenience and utopia. As the saying goes, if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.
Thanks for watching.
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Assange’s legal advisor Renata Avila joins Gray Zone investigative reporter Max Blumenthal, Black Agenda Report founder Glen Ford, and Green Party presidential candidate Howie Hawkins in Randy Credico’s acclaimed radio series, “Assange: Countdown to Freedom” – hosted by CovertAction Magazine with breaking news updates from Courage Foundation Director Nathan Fuller. Click here to listen or play the button below.
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This is the seventh and latest episode in Credico’s ongoing radio exploration of the prosecution and persecution of the imprisoned WikiLeaks founder. Keep listening for late-breaking updates on the approaching extradition trial of Julian Assange in London.
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Turkey will take the Idlib matter into its own hands and the military operation in northwestern Syria is simply a “matter of time”, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan declared on February 19. Erdogan said that Turkey is not satisfied with talks on the matter with Russia, and it will not leave the region to “the Assad regime and its backers.”
He recalled that only a few days left until the end of February, the deadline given by Ankara to Syrian forces to stop operations against Idlib armed groups. If the Syrians do not withdraw, Turkey promised to attack and push the Syrian Army back from the areas cleared from militants. Erdogan’s “last warning” came as Turkish media outlets were broadcasting news showing how columns of Turkish troops and vehicle were moving towards the border with Syria. However, did Turkey really deployed enough forces to deliver a devastating blow to the Syrian military and do not pay a heavy price?
In the framework of the Astana agreements, Turkey established 12 observation posts. As the Syrian Army was advancing into Idlib, Ankara created a plethora of additional military positions in a failed attempt to stop the collapse of militants’ defense. These efforts binged the total number of Turkish military installations in the region up to 27.
Judging from various footage, there are between one dozen and two dozen soldiers, as well as 4-6 military vehicles at every post located within the areas currently controlled by the Syrian government. The recently created posts are much stronger and can be described as real military positions with battle tanks, howitzers, mortars and fortified structures.
The estimated total number of military equipment deployed by the Turkish Armed Forces in Idlib stands at 3,000. Since February 2nd, Turkey deployed 2,315 trucks and military vehicles, as well as 7,000 soldiers. Meanwhile, Turkey has positioned approximately 30,000 troops along the Syrian border in case of an escalation.
The equipment and weapons that are being delivered include armored trucks, MRAPs, armored personnel carriers, battle tanks, ATGMs, various artillery pieces and rocket launchers. Army troops are reinforced with a notable number of special forces.
According to pro-opposition sources, there are over 100,000 members of various groups, predominantly Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham in Idlib. These groups are already actively taking part in the fight against the Syrian Arab Army. However, the real mobilization potential demonstrated by these factions during the recent battles does not exceed 10,000-20,000.
In comparison, during Operation Euphrates Shield, in which Turkey struggled greatly, it deployed approximately 8,000 soldiers, in addition to approximately 11,000 Syrian “opposition” fighters, against 7,000 ISIS militants. This operation became widely known for large casualties among Turkish soldiers and proxies, as well as a large number of military equipment, including Leopard 2A4 battle tanks, lost during the battle of al-Bab.
Another example is operation Olive Branch that involve around 6,000 Turkish troops, and 20,000 Turkish-backed fighters, against approximately 20,000 Syrian Democratic Forces and allied fighters. However, Kurdish armed groups did not engage Turkish-led forces in an intense open or urban fighting and opted to retreat from the region after weeks of artillery and air bombardment. Since then, Ankara has been trying to consolidate control over the area and put an end to constant attacks on its forces from the remaining YPG cells.
Finally, Operation Peace Spring, which began in late 2019, reportedly involved 15,000 Turkish troops and 14,000 members of proxy groups. It also went without a significant open resistance from Kurdish groups and was frozen with the Syrian Army and the Russian Military Police deployed in the area.
It also would be useful to note that both ISIS and Kurdish formations targeted by Turkey were outnumbered in the area of operations, suffered from a lack of modern weapons, heavy military equipment and artillery, and had no means and measures to combat the Turkish Air Force. No intense fighting took place in large urban areas. Despite this, the aforementioned operations became a real challenge for Turkey and its proxy groups.
Therefore, it is unlikely that the Turkish forces currently deployed in Idlib and northwestern Syria will be enough to turn into reality Erdogan’s threats and promises. So, Turkey should hurry up and increase its military group in the area by several times, or Erdogan supporters should start preparing for March 1, the day when the dreams about the swift and powerful Turkish victory over ‘Assad forces’ will be broken by the reality.
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Biology has done what malicious US foreign policy aimed at China has failed to do for years; complicate China’s relations along its peripheries (and the rest of the world for that matter), particularly in Southeast Asia.
In Thailand, contrary to popular belief, Chinese tourists make up the vast majority of those visiting the Kingdom. Approximately ten times more Chinese tourists arrive in Thailand each year than tourists from all other Western nations combined. With China’s government putting travel bans in place to curb the spread of the recent coronavirus outbreak, Thai resort areas have seen a marked decrease in business.
The Bangkok Post in an article, “Chinese tourists desert Phuket as virus spreads,” would note the impact on the southern resort island of Phuket, with locals describing about a 70% decrease in business and the Tourism and Sports Ministry estimating “50 billion baht of lost tourism revenue.”
With the first Thai victim of the virus being a taxi driver who likely contracted it from picking up a Chinese tourist, many taxi drivers are now attempting to avoid Chinese fares; which may have a negative impact on Chinese-Thai tourism in the near and intermediate future.
A Weakpoint
While this disruption is likely to be temporary with tourism, business, and other Chinese-Thai relations bouncing back – the coronavirus outbreak illustrates a weakpoint in China’s rise and one that most likely will be exploited by China’s adversaries; particularly the United States.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying Friday criticized certain US officials’ words and actions amid the ongoing novel coronavirus outbreak, noting that their behavior is certainly not a gesture of goodwill as they are neither factual nor appropriate.
US State Department Thursday announced a highest-level warning not to travel to China due to the recent coronavirus outbreak. On the same day, US Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said the spreading coronavirus will accelerate the return of jobs from China to the US.
Thus, the US is cynically using the outbreak to enhance its anti-China policies at a time when other nations are extending aid to the Chinese government and the Chinese people.
While the outbreak is most likely an accident prompted by China’s breakneck development, industrial-scale agriculture, immense population and the millions of Chinese people who travel within and beyond China’s borders, the fact that certain US policy circles have contemplated the use of biological weapons to achieve exactly the same results the coronavirus outbreak is having should be a stark reminder to China and all other nations about the importance of being able to quickly and effectively combat such outbreaks.
Even without the US being behind the outbreak, the US is openly taking advantage of it; yet another illustration of how important it is to first prevent such outbreaks, as well quickly react to them should they happen.
The outbreak will continue into the near future, but in the intermediate future it will subside just like previous outbreaks of similar respiratory viruses (SARS, MERS). Once the outbreak subsides, China and its partners must carefully consider how to avoid a repeat of this event.
China will also have to consider future measures to protect itself from nations like the United States who seek to exploit China at a moment of weakness such as now.
Outbreaks are a part of modern civilization, resulting from overcrowding and the ease of travel allowing an infected person to carry a disease from one part of the world to another in just hours. Past outbreaks of have proven that nations can adapt and overcome them and then bounce back. Improving prevention and refining responses after this recent outbreak will define China and its international relations into the foreseeable future.
Complacency will only invite future accidents and even tempt malicious state actors to spur such accidents when all other methods of confounding their adversaries fail. China has already demonstrated significant resolve, but only time will tell how this most recent outbreak will play out in its entirety, both in terms of a human health crisis and in terms of short and long-term geopolitics.
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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”.
US forever war in Syria shows no signs of ending because restoration of peace and stability to the country would be a major strategic blow to Washington’s aim for controlling the Middle East — NATO and Israel serving as junior partners in its project.
Turkey’s Erdogan is a significant obstacle to resolving years of war in Syria because of his revanchist aims — what his support for ISIS, al-Nusra, and likeminded jihadists is all about, using them as proxies (earlier and now) in northern Syria.
His aims and Russia’s in the country are world’s apart. Negotiations between his regime and Moscow on the conflict are uneasy at best.
Multiple recent rounds failed to resolve differences, further talks planned, including a possible summit involving Putin, Iranian President Rouhani and Erdogan.
On Thursday, Russia’s Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova slammed his support for jihadists in Syria, saying:
“We are expressing significant concerns over such support for (these elements) from the Turkish armed forces.”
It “violat(es) the Russian-Turkish agreements on separating armed opposition from terrorists, and creating a demilitarized area, and it may provoke a further escalation in the conflict in this part of the Syrian national territory,” adding:
“On February 20, the Russian center for reconciliation of the conflicting sides in Syria reported several mass attacks with the use of a large amount of armored vehicles at the positions of the Syrian army in the Idlib de-escalation zone carried out by terrorist units.”
“At the same time, the actions of (jihadists) were supported by artillery fire by the Turkish forces, which allowed terrorists to breach Syrian army’s defenses” before being repelled with Russian aerial support, a statement by its military saying:
“In order to prevent terrorist groups from advancing deep into Syrian territory, Su-24 aircraft of Russia’s Aerospace Force delivered a strike at the request of the Syrian command against the terrorists’ armed formations that had penetrated the area. This helped the Syrian troops to repel all the attacks successfully.”
A Russian reconnaissance drone filmed Turkish artillery providing support for al-Nusra terrorists near Nayrab village in southern Idlib province.
AMN News reported that Russia’s aerial response was “devastating,” repelling Turkish-supported jihadists, destroying or damaging their equipment, causing a number of casualties, including Turkish soldiers killed or wounded.
Tass reported that jihadists “sustain(ed) heavy losses” of fighters, weapons, and military equipment.
Days earlier, Sergey Lavrov accused Ankara of breaching its agreed on Astana obligations by escalating conflict instead of pursuing efforts to resolve it, adding:
“It is only natural that the Syrian armed forces, reaffirming their commitment to the original agreements on Idlib, including an agreement on a ceasefire, respond to such inadmissible provocations. We support them in this.”
“The Syrian army’s actions are a response to a flagrant violation of the agreements on Idlib.”
“Contrary to some estimates, let me emphasize that the Syrian troops are not pushing militants and terrorists back on a foreign territory but on their own soil, thereby reestablishing the legitimate Syrian government’s control over its territories.”
“Judging by hysterical comments by some Western representatives, one (gets) impression that…Russia and Turkey agreed to put the issue on the back burner, leave terrorists alone and let them do whatever they want.”
“This is not true. No one has ever promised to leave terrorists unscathed in the Idlib de-escalation zone” or anywhere else in Syria.
On Thursday, a Kremlin statement said Putin discussed Syria with Germany’s Angela Merkel and France’s Macron by phone.
“Special attention was paid to issues of settling the Syrian crisis in the context of rapidly escalating situation in Idlib as a result of aggressive actions by (Turkish supported) extremist units against Syrian government forces and civilians.”
“The importance was underscored of preventing humanitarian consequences for civilians.”
“Vladimir Putin stressed the importance of taking effective measures on neutralizing a terrorist threat while observing the principles of sovereignty and territorial integrity of the Syrian Arab Republic.”
Merkel, Macron, and other key NATO leaders are allied with US imperial aims — Erdogan involved in Syria in pursuit of his own objectives.
According to Turkey’s Daily Sabah, Erdogan regime war minister Hulusi Akar suggested that US Patriot air defense missiles could be installed in northern Idlib territory controlled by Turkey, adding:
Ankara and Moscow are discussing use of Idlib’s airspace controlled by Russia’s military. Neither country wants belligerent confrontation with the other.
Would Erdogan use long-range Russian S-400 air defense missile’s against its aircraft in Idlib airspace?
What’s highly unlikely is possible. In 2015, Turkish warplanes downed a Russia Su-24 fighter jet in Syrian airspace, an incident Putin denounced at the time as a “stab in the back.”
Bilateral relations improved significantly since that time. How far Erdogan may push his revanchist agenda in Idlib remains unknown.
According to the Middle East Eye (MEE), citing an unnamed Turkish official, Ankara “asked the US to conduct aerial patrols in its airspace bordering…Idlib to show support for (its) ongoing military operations against forces loyal to Damascus,” adding:
Erdogan and Trump spoke by phone on the situation in Idlib. DJT “promised that he would sanction (Syrian) officials, or anyone involved in attacks against the civilians.”
“(H)e would issue strong-worded statements. But he didn’t commit himself to anything involving the military, yet.”
No large-scale confrontation occurred between Syrian and Turkish forces so far.
Both countries want it avoided. So does Russia, going all-out to prevent it.
Moscow has a significant investment in Syria since intervening against jihadists in September 2015 at the request of Damascus.
Putin supports Syria’s liberating struggle while trying to maintain good relations with Turkey and prevent clashes between Russian and US forces.
It’s a delicate balance not easily maintained, especially when dealing with US and Turkish belligerent regimes.
In mid-March, war enters its 10th year with no prospect for resolution in sight.
As in all wars, civilians in harm’s way suffer most.
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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.”
The fast rise of China as a major power over the past few decades has led many to argue that world war between the US and China is a real possibility. Already, we have seen a trade war erupt between the two countries, with tariffs imposed in both directions. Although there was a positive development last month which potentially signals a move towards a form of détente, as the two countries signed ‘phase one’ of a trade agreement, this agreement is by no means comprehensive, leaving many unresolved issues that could potentially serve as points of conflict in the future.
The Thucydides Trap
The major concern that world war could erupt between the two powerhouses stems from the fact that their relationship contains a historical dynamic which often leads to war: known as the Thucydides trap. This trap refers to the ancient Greek historian, Thucydides, who wrote that one of the main causes of the Peloponnesian war, which was fought between two alliances, one led by Athens and the other by Sparta, was that the “rise of Athens and fear that this installed in Sparta made war inevitable” (Allison 2018: xiv). The dangerous situation Thucydides outlined thousands of years ago has been used to refer to the explosive dynamic when a rising power threatens a ruling power (Allison 2018: xv). The Harvard Professor, Graham Allison, has used the Thucydides trap in the context of the Sino-US relationship, as a rising China is now challenging the position of the US in many respects.
The Thucydides’ Trap Project at Harvard has analysed the last 500 years of history, and found sixteen cases when a rising power has challenged a ruling power, with war ensuing in 12 instances (Allison 2018: 41). Some notable examples of the cases that resulted in war include the rise of Napoleonic France that challenged ruling British power in the late 18th, early 19th century, and the rise of Germany in the run-up to WWI, which led to war with the ruling power Britain and its allies (Allison 2018: 42).
In relation to the potential outcome of the relationship between the US and China, some parallels and deeper insights may be found if we look closer at one of the four instances where war did not erupt over the last five centuries: namely, when a rising America challenged and surpassed the power of the British Empire in the late 19th, early 20th century (Allison 2018: 42). Although there were periods where tensions were high between the two countries, with one instance being the Venezuelan dispute of 1895, the British gradually accepted and in some respects supported the rise of US power, with this often referred to as the Great Rapprochement. This rapprochement ultimately led to Britain and America fighting on the same, victorious side during WWI.
Furthermore, numerous connections existed and were developed between the two countries during the peaceful transition of power, both before and after WWI. Some prominent and well-connected figures in Britain were even actively supportive of the ascent of America. The English journalist and newspaper editor, William Stead, was one for instance. In his 1901 book, The Americanization of the World; The Trend of the Twentieth Century, he urges Britons to “rejoice” in the power of the US and not “resent” its rise (Stead 1901: 1-2). In the immediate aftermath of WWI, more formal, institutional connections were formed between the two nations, with the influential networks Stead belonged to playing a prominent role.
After discussions between the American and British delegations at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919, two parallel organizations were formed, one in London, at the heart of the British empire, and the other in New York, a major center of the new great power. The first organization was the British Institute of International Affairs, which later become the Royal Institute of International Affairs after the Institute was given a Royal Charter by King George V in 1926, with the Institute holding its inaugural meeting in 1920 (Quigley 1981: 182-183). A year later, the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) was formed as the American branch of the Institute. The CFR grew out of the think tank called ‘The Inquiry’ that prepared President Woodrow Wilson for the Paris Peace Conference, with the CFR having close ties to the banking powerhouse, J.P. Morgan and Company (Quigley 1981: 190-191).
The fact that the Royal Institute of International Affairs, also referred to as Chatham House, managed to set up a parallel organization in the country that was already well on its way to dwarfing British power, is highly pertinent, given the power Chatham House represented. Many of the most powerful networks at the heart of the British Empire were responsible for the Institutes creation, either directly, or through precursor organizations that then merged to form Chatham House. Some of the influential figures that belonged to these networks included Cecil Rhodes, the diamond magnate and ardent imperialist; Reginald Balliol Brett, the trusted adviser to Queen Victoria and King George V; Alfred Milner, an influential statesmen and banker, in addition to Stead himself (Quigley 1981: 3). In the years after its founding, Chatham House went on to attract many more prominent people, including the British Prime Ministers, Arthur Balfour and Ramsey MacDonald, with members of Chatham House also being key architects and supporters of the League of Nations and the United Nations (UN). Additionally, Chatham House received financial support from notable American businessmen and corporations, including the oil magnate, John D. Rockefeller, and the Ford Motor Company (Quigley 1981: 190).
It is critical to highlight that Britain and America were highly connected when the power center of the world shifted to the US, with Britain even setting up a parallel organization in the heart of the new center of power. The connections between the two countries and Britain’s acceptance of the rise of America, with some Britons even being supportive of the Americanization of the world, are arguably key reasons why war never broke out between the two powers. Therefore, in relation to whether a hot war between the US and China is inevitable, a key question emerges: how connected was America to the rise of China?
America and the Ascent of China
The answer, quite simply, is that America was deeply connected to the China’s rise. In fact, the US in many ways facilitated China’s rise on the world stage, as the US government under Richard Nixon made the decision to bring China in from isolation, and help integrate it into an international order dominated by US power, with this power sitting within an overarching global system. Nixon made his stance on China clear even before he became US President in 1969. In a 1967 article for Foreign Affairs, the publication of the CFR, Nixon argued that it should be the long-term strategy of the US to bring China out of isolation and incorporate it into the evolving international system (Nixon 1967: 121).
Four years later, in 1971, Henry Kissinger, who was serving as Nixon’s National Security Adviser, secretly visited China in order to stimulate relations with the Chinese. Kissinger’s meeting laid the foundations for Nixon to visit China the following year, in a historic meeting for the US President. Then, in 1973, the American billionaire and banker, David Rockefeller, visited China and had a private meeting with Zhou Enlai, the then Premier, or Prime Minister, of China. In fact, the Rockefeller family had many connections to China stretching back over a century, from selling kerosene in the country in 1863 to establishing medical institutions through the Rockefeller Foundation. David Rockefeller also brought a small team from his Chase bank on a 10-day trip of China in 1973, penning an article for the New York Times where he praised the country and the social experiment under Mao Zedong. After the trip, Chase bank, where David Rockefeller was Chairman and CEO, became the first US bank to establish a relationship with the Bank of China since the Chinese revolution in the 1940s.
Without Nixon, Kissinger and Rockefeller bringing China in from the cold, it is highly improbable that China would be anywhere near as powerful as it is today, as these moves paved the way for China’s growth to explode in the subsequent decades. Furthermore, the US also aided the rise of China through the transfer of technology. In 1999 for instance, the Clinton administration transferred missile technology to China so that a communications satellite could be launched using a Chinese rocket. The technology transfer pertained to satellite fuel and explosive bolts, with these technologies potentially going to help the development of China’s ballistic missile program.
Today, there are numerous connections between the US and China. In addition to the Rockefeller Foundation, many US-based foundations have major footprints in China, with the Ford Foundation working in China since opening an office there in 1988, and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace operating a global center in Beijing. The connections between the US and China extend to having shared membership in a plethora of global organizations, including the UN, the World Health Organization (WHO), the World Trade Organization (WTO), the G20, and the global central bank of central banks, the Bank for International Settlements (BIS).
Given the vast amount of connections between America and the rise of China, it seems reasonable to conclude that world war is not inevitable between the two powerhouses. No doubt there will be skirmishes between the two countries in the future, particularly in hot spots such as the South China Sea and potentially Africa going forward, as the two countries adapt to a new way of interacting with each other. Conflict in the cyber, psychological and economic spheres of warfare is also highly likely in the near future, as the nature of warfare itself changes. Yet the probability that a world, nuclear war will erupt is less likely than the way it is often presented, not only because nuclear weapons themselves serve as MAD deterrents, but because America and the networks of power in America were heavily involved in the rise of China, and are still deeply invested in the Asian powerhouse today.
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Sources
Allison, G. (2018) Destined for War: Can America and China Escape the Thucydides Trap? (London: Scribe).
Associated Press, South China Morning Post (21 March 2017) Statesman banker David Rockefeller, guardian of legendary fortune, dies at 101 https://bit.ly/2SKUqV1
United States officials have expressed concern over the so-called Iranian intervention in Afghanistan in recent days, claiming that Tehran is trying to challenge Washington’s interests in Afghanistan through groups that it supports like the Taliban. General Kenneth Mckenzie, the U.S. Central Commander, came to Kabul after rising threats and concerns over Iran’s supposed interference in the Afghan war. He stayed in Kabul for three days, analyzing the situation and restraining Iran’s possible actions while meeting with American forces occupying the country. Iran’s warnings and threats against the U.S. military in Afghanistan is the main agenda of this high-profile military trip to Kabul according to sources. At the same time, Iranian diplomat Ebrahim Taherian who specializes in Afghan affairs came to Kabul and voiced his country’s concerns about recent U.S. actions during a meeting with Afghan leaders.
Following Taherian’s trip to Kabul, Tadamichi Yamamoto, the UN special envoy to Kabul, went to Tehran to urge Iranian officials not to involve Afghanistan in their complications with the U.S. The flow of Iranian and U.S. diplomats and troops to Kabul shows that the conflict between the U.S and Iran has certainly spread to Afghanistan, an inevitable outcome since Afghanistan is on Iran’s eastern border and hosts thousands of American soldiers. The U.S. and Iran have been involved in proxy wars for many years in countries in the Middle East, including Iraq, Syria and Lebanon, but surprisingly to a very low level in Afghanistan.
Iran was actually among the countries that supported the abolition of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. During the Taliban’s rule in Kabul, the fundamentalist organization was a major threat to Iran. In 1998, the Taliban set fire to the Iranian consulate in Mazar-i-Sharif and killed at least 10 Iranian diplomats. However, the Islamic Republic’s cooperation with the U.S. in Afghanistan led to opposition and hostility. Iran then sought to secure relations with the Taliban and became a refuge for family members of a number of senior Taliban officials. More recently, Iranian officials have confirmed their relationship with the Taliban, but they said they were not seeking military and/or arms cooperation with the Taliban and were committed to the principle of government-to-government relations. But local officials in southwestern Afghanistan have repeatedly spoken of Iran’s military and arms cooperation with the Taliban.
Effectively, Iran has many leverages that are challenging and pressuring the U.S. The presence of at least 3.5 million Afghan refugees in Iran has provided Tehran with a good opportunity to use them to achieve its goal of challenging the U.S everywhere across the region, including Afghanistan.
As Iran neighbors Afghanistan, it is unsurprising that it is one of the largest economic and trade partners of the war-torn country. Economic ties between the two countries have reached $4 billion. Iran has widespread cultural, historical and social influence in Afghanistan. Nearly 25% of Afghanistan’s population are also Shi’ite who have much attachment to Iran. However, Tehran’s contacts in Afghanistan were not limited to Shi’ites as demonstrated by Iran’s attempts to have relations with all political authorities and social groups in the country. Iran’s deep relations with the Afghan political community became clear after the U.S. assassination of Qassim Soleimani, the commander of Iran’s famed Revolutionary Guards’ Quds Force.
Wide and broad partnerships between the two countries provide Tehran with a favorable platform to pursue its goals and programs with open arms in Afghanistan. When U.S.-Iranian relations reached the level of potential military conflict, Kabul declared that it would not allow its territory to be used against any another country, an indirect reference that Afghanistan will not be used to attack Iran. The U.S. has several important military bases on the Iranian border with Afghanistan such as Shindand that could be utilized in any conflict with Iran.
During the period of national unity, Afghanistan’s policy of neutrality towards the countries of the region, especially Iran, changed. The disruption of the balance in foreign policy has prompted the countries of the region to reconsider their support for the Afghan central government. The end of neutrality in foreign policy was a great opportunity for the Taliban. They were able to expand their relations with the countries of the region.
This of course does not overlook that Kabul and Tehran are involved in some issues, such as the long running water dispute, drug production and trafficking, and Iran’s relations with the Taliban. However, with the U.S. seeking an agreement with the Taliban and withdrawing from Afghanistan, the escalation of the conflict with the Islamic Republic will certainly have an impact on Washington’s goals in the region and in Afghanistan. The U.S. ensured that Iran was the only neighbor ignored in the peace talks – meaning that no true peace can be found in Afghanistan as Iran has thousands of years of relations with Afghanistan. As a strategic partner of Kabul and Afghanistan’s influential neighbour, Iran is affecting the current volatile situation. Only a balanced and impartial policy can reduce the country’s vulnerability, but non-the-less, the U.S. cannot ignore Iran’s role in finding peace in Afghanistan.
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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.
Paul Antonopoulos is a Research Fellow at the Center for Syncretic Studies.
“I think that now it is time that the government I am a part of needs to be standing up and saying to both the UK and the US: ‘enough is enough, leave our bloke alone and let him come home.’” – George Christensen, Australian conservative MP, Sydney Morning Herald, Feb 19, 2020
An odd crew and perhaps the sort Julian Assange would have liked. Australian parliamentarian and government backbencher George Christensen, conservative to the point of parody. Andrew Wilkie, MP from Tasmania, a man fitfully dedicated to fight poker machines and gambling, formerly of the Office of National Assessments. Both united by a distinct liking for the cause of Julian Assange and a dislike for his treatment, showing the astonishing cross appeal of the WikiLeaks publisher, a point missed by his detractors and even his own followers.
Visiting Assange in London’s Belmarsh Prison, Wilkie found “a man under great pressure, holding up OK” but showing “glimpses” of a “broken man”. For his part, Christensen, did not “want to talk too pejoratively about the state that we saw him in but it was the kind of state that you’d expect from a man who’s been absolutely and utterly isolated and who just does not know what is going on.” Assange had been “depersonalised” and “dehumanised” in confinement.
Their calls chime with those of over 117 doctors and psychologists from 18 nations, whose letter published in the medical journal The Lancet condemned “the torture of Assange”, “the denial of his fundamental right to appropriate health care”, “the climate of fear surrounding the provision of health care to him” and “the violations of his right to doctor-patient confidentiality.”
Both parliamentarians insist, with good reason, on the nagging matter of having a British court deliberate over whether an Australian citizen should be extradited to the United States or not. “There’s a lot of Australians who think Julian Assange is a rat bag,” observed Christensen. “But he’s our rat bag – he should be brought home.” Wilkie, on leaving Belmarsh, was “in absolutely no doubt that [Assange] has become a political prisoner in this country and that the US is determined to extradite him to get even.” Unblemished, Assange could not be accused of hacking or espionage, but merely for “doing the right thing and publishing important information in the public interest”.
Christensen, an avowed fan of British prime minister Boris Johnson, was keen to impress him on Assange’s treatment. “It is highly political what’s going on – it involves values that Boris Johnson as a former journalist holds dear – press freedom.”
The delegation is receiving various mixed messages, some of them heartening. British Labour’s Jeremy Corbyn, soundly beaten at the December elections, is confident he has found a changing mood towards the Australian publisher. Johnson, he claimed, had given some hope in comments made on the UK-US Extradition Treaty, a document heavily slanted in favour of the United States. “He accepted that it is an unbalanced treaty and it is not a fair one, therefore I think this is a big change by the British government.”
In of itself, this says little. Johnson, it is true, did concede to Corbyn in the House of Commons that “there are elements of that relationship that are unbalanced and I certainly think it is worth looking at.” The point has been admitted as much by various UK politicians over the years. The report of the Home Affairs Committee from 2012 expressed “serious misgivings about some aspects of the current arrangements” despite favouring an extradition arrangement with the US. An “imbalance in the wording of the Treaty, which sets a test for extradition from the US but not from the UK, has created the widespread impression of unfairness within the public consciousness and, at a more practical level, gives US citizens the right to a hearing to establish ‘probable cause’ that is denied to UK citizens.”
The treaty is the subject of much conversation of late. Washington’s curt rejection of an extradition request by the UK of an American citizen accused of causing the death of Harry Dunn, a teenage motorcyclist, has muddied diplomatic waters. The claim by British police was that Anne Sacoolas, wife of an intelligence officer, was driving on the wrong side of the road. On returning to the US, she duly shielded herself behind diplomatic immunity.
Sacoolas, through her attorney, claimed that the charges against her carried a disproportionate sentence of 14-years. She would “not return voluntarily to the United Kingdom to face a potential jail sentence for what was a terrible but unintentional accident.” The US State Department was irate at the very idea that extradition would be sought in such instances. “The use of an extradition treaty to attempt to return the spouse of a former diplomat by force,” claimed a spokesman, “would establish an extraordinarily troubling precedent. We do not believe that the UK’s charging decision is a helpful development.”
A review into the immunity arrangements for US personnel conducted by the Foreign Office subsequently found, in the words of Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab, an “anomaly”, namely, that family members had “greater protection from UK criminal jurisdiction than the officers themselves”.
In January, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo scotched the extradition request via an email to the UK government. To have granted it, he claimed offhandedly, would have rendered “the invocation of diplomatic immunity a practical nullity”. The decision, according to the Dunn’s family spokesman Radd Seiger, filled Raab with incandescent rage. That rage, it seemed, had cooled by the time Raab met his US counterpart at an event chaired by the centre-right think tank, Policy Exchange. “We’re going to work on every aspect of that [regarding the Dunn case] and want to see this get resolved.”
Whether Assange’s case sparks appropriate concern in Downing Street might be another matter. For one thing, it will provide a test case regarding extraditions for non-British citizens to the United States. For his part, Johnson is a curious fish, often adjusting his course in infuriatingly erratic, and amoral ways. While he might well adopt a Bold Britannia line regarding the Australian’s possible extradition, the chances remain slim. Should the request be granted, it will establish an extraordinarily troubling precedent, to use the US State Department’s own words, a blatant misuse of the treaty for political purposes.
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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]
Many Iranians question the benefits of arming and financing Iran’s many allies in the Middle East while Iran is suffering the harshest ever US “maximum pressure”. Iran’s allies are spread over Afghanistan, Yemen, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Palestine. Is Iranian support for these allies the main cause of the US’s aggressive attitude towards the Iranian people and their state, or are there other factors? What makes Iran finance these allies and strengthen them with the most advanced warfare equipment, and be ready to fight and die on their territory?
Since Iran’s “Islamic Revolution” prevailed in 1979 under the leadership of Imam Khomeini, the country has been heavily sanctioned, sanctions increasing with the advent of almost every new US President. In 1979, Iran had no allies but was surrounded by enemies. Its regional neighbours joined western countries in supporting Saddam Hussein’s war (1980-1988) on the “Islamic Republic”. The US war on Iran has its origin in the fall of its proxy the Pahlavi Shah. It was disclosed how the CIA brought Pahlavi to power in an organised Coup d’état against the democratically elected Prime Minister Mohamad Musaddeq in 1953 in order to keep Iranian oil under US-UK control. Democracy has never been the real issue: western-provoked wars can be understood as motivated by self-interest and the quest for dominance. But attempts to overthrow regimes are always publicly justified by the West in the name of freedom and democracy.
In 1979, the US set a trap to drag the Soviets into invading Afghanistan by supporting the mujahedeen from whom al-Qaeda was born. This catastrophic result and similar destructive phenomena are habitually described as “unintended consequences” in order to rationalise the devastating costs of these savage interventions into other people’s lives and in world affairs. However, in 2001 the US fell back into exactly the same type of quagmire and invaded Afghanistan with tens of thousands of US troops. The US plan was to block the path of a possible return by Russia to Eurasia; to weaken the Russians and to encircle Iran with a chain of hostile elements; to bully all countries concerned into submission, particularly the oil-rich states, thus preventing any possible alliance with Russia and China. This is still the US objective in the Middle East. History has never been a good guide to powerful leaders and their administrations because they apparently consider themselves not subject to its lessons.
Iran found itself deprived of allies. With the consent of the Gulf states, notably Saudi Arabia, Israel invaded Lebanon in 1982 to remove and subdue the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO) led by Yasser Arafat, who had rejected King Fahd’s peace initiative. However, the “unintended consequences” of the invasion and the occupation of the first Arab capital by Israel (Beirut) offered Iran an excellent opportunity to respond to the demands of a group of Lebanese asking for help to stand against the Israeli aggressor. Imam Khomeini replied to his Lebanese visitors (who described the horror and the killing committed by the Israeli war machine): “al-kheir fima waqaa”, meaning “What has happened is a blessing”. His visitors did not understand the meaning of Khomeini’s words until many years later.
Iran found in the Lebanese Shia fertile ground to plant seeds for its ideology. The ground was already prepared in 1978. Lebanese Islamist followers of Sayyed Mohamad Baqer al-Sadr were already receiving training in various Palestinian camps, including the Zabadani training boot camp (Syria), and had embraced the Palestinian cause. When Imam Khomeini took power in Iran, Sayyed Mohammad Baqer al-Sadr asked his followers in Iraq and Lebanon to declare loyalty to Imam Khomeini and “melt into him as he has melted into Islam” (which means “adopt Imam Khomeini as your Imam and Marja’ al-Taqleed”). Iran established great ideological compatibility with the Lebanese Shia, who had historically been considered second-class citizens in Lebanon. Their territories in the south of Lebanon were considered disposable and were put on offer to Israel by Lebanese leaders (Maronite President Emile Eddé suggested to detach South of Lebanon and offer it to Israel to reduce the number of Muslim Shia) , elites and governments.
The Iranian constitution (articles 2 and 3) stipulates that the Iranian government will support any group or country suffering from an oppressor. Its outlook fit perfectly with the oppressed Lebanese Shia.
The Iranian IRGC (Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps) travelled to Lebanon and shipped their weapons via Syria to strengthen the Islamic Resistance in Lebanon, known later as Hezbollah, and defend their country from the occupier. It was, therefore, necessary to establish a strategic relationship with the Syrian President because most shipments arrived via Syria.
The Iranian-Syrian relationship went through various ups and downs. It had reached its high point in the last years of President Hafez al-Assad’s rule when his son Bashar was responsible for the relationship with Lebanon and Hezbollah in particular.
The destinies of Lebanon, Syria and Iran became linked. President Bashar al-Assad was struggling to keep his country out of the conflict when the US-occupied Iraq in 2003. The circle around Iran became tighter, and US forces occupied neighbouring Iraq. Even though getting rid of Saddam Hussein was a blessing for the Iranian regime, Saddam was so weak that he did not represent any real danger to Iran. The US embargo had weakened him, and he had no friends in the Gulf countries after his invasion of Kuwait and his bombing of Saudi Arabia.
The US prevented Iran from moving forward to support the Iraqi resistance to overthrow Saddam Hussein, instead of establishing its own control over Baghdad. The next US objective was Syria and Lebanon. Secretary of State Colin Powell warned President Assad that he was next on the list of presidents to be taken down if he continued offering support to Hamas and Hezbollah. The US declared itself an occupying power, and the Iraqi right to defend their country was acknowledged by the United Nations resolutions. Assad, like Iran and Saudi Arabia, supported the insurgency against the US occupation forces in Iraq. The Saudis rejected Shia-dominated governance over Iraq. The Iranians were next on the US list. So, Iran chose to fight the US on Iraqi ground, which was much less costly than fighting on Iranian ground. Strengthening Iraqi allies was, therefore, an essential component of Iranian national security and an important line of defence.
In 2006, the Bush administration pushed an unprepared Israeli Prime Minister Olmert to agree to destroy Hezbollah and was expecting the war to be expanded to Syria. This was an opportunity to conquer Syria and cut the supply of Iranian arms. The US and its allies were aiming to close the circle around Iran by eliminating its strong ally in Lebanon. Hezbollah was an impediment to the US-Israeli project of bringing all the Arabs to the negotiating table, eliminating the Palestinian cause and its defenders, and weakening Iran as a prelude to overthrowing its government.
When Israel bombed and invaded Lebanon in 2006 with the goal of defeating Hezbollah, President Assad opened his warehouses and offered dozens of game-changing anti-tank missiles and anything Hezbollah needed to fight back, regardless of Israeli air force superiority. Assad became an essential partner in the successful defeat of Israel in Lebanon. The fall of Hezbollah would have had devastating consequences for Syria and Iran. Joining the destinies and alliances of the Lebanese-Syrian-Iraqi-Iranian front was necessary for the survival of each.
In 2011, the world declared war on Syria. It took President Assad two years before he realised the plot was both regional and international, aiming to create chaos in the Levant and to produce a failed state dominated by jihadists. The same ideological jihadists first planted in Afghanistan were expanding and offered a perfect tool for the US to destroy Iran and its allies. The regional and world intelligence services infiltrated the jihadists, and well understood their strengths and weaknesses. They were well suited to fighting the Iranian ideology and Iran’s ally. Wahhabi jihadism was perfect cancer to destroy Iran on many fronts.
Jihadists were growing in Iraq and expanding in Syria under the eyes of the US, as US intelligence sources themselves revealed. The Levant was the perfect and most desirable ancient place for jihadists to mushroom and expand. This was when President Assad asked his allies for support. Iran’s IRGC forces came to Damascus and the journey to liberate Syria started. Syria, like Iraq, offered a vital defence line to Iran. It was another platform to fight – on non-Iranian soil – an enemy that was about to migrate to Iran (had Syrian been defeated). An opportunity that Iran could not miss because of Syria’s strategic importance.
It took Russia until September 2015 to wake up and intervene in the Middle Eastern arena, in Syria in particular. All these years, the US was planning to leave no place for Russia to create alliances, preparing to vanquish Iran and its allies, the “Axis of the Resistance” standing against US hegemony in the Middle East. All Gulf countries succumbed to US power, and today they are hosting the largest US military bases in the region. The US had deployed tens of thousands of troops to these bases and through them enjoyed superior firepower to any country in the world. Still, Iran and the Levant (Syria and Lebanon) remained impervious to the US attempt at complete dominance.
Without Iran’s allies, all US military efforts would have been concentrated on Iran alone. The US would have moved from sanctions to military attack with little fear of the dire consequences. Today, the US needs to consider the now unquestioned fact that if Iran is attacked, its allies in Palestine, Lebanon, Syria and Iraq will open hell for the US and its allies in the Middle East. Forty years of Iranian support for its allies have created a wall of protection around it and a bond whereby the allies join their fate to that of Iran. There are no allies in the world any country could count on to sacrifice their men more readily and stand for a common ideological motivation and shared objectives. Iran is not only investing in its partners, but it is also investing in its own security and well-being. Iran is prepared to offer the same sacrifices provided by its allies to support them when needed.
Many Lebanese and Iraqis fought in the Iraq-Iran war. Thousands of Iranian, Iraqi and Lebanese Hezbollah (and other allies) lost their lives in Syria protecting the well-being of the Syrian ally and preventing the country from falling into the jihadists’ hands.
Many Iranians and Lebanese were killed in Iraq to support the Iraqis against the terror of ISIS. Iranians and Lebanese Hezbollah are today in Yemen, supporting it against the Saudi-led genocidal massacres. Iran and the Lebanese Hezbollah took the risk of supporting the Palestinians and their cause to free their land, to have their own state and the right to return home. No US allies anywhere in the world are ready to offer comparable solidarity to the US. Iran has created deep alliances whereas the US has failed to do so.
Iran openly attacked the US Ayn al-Assad military base following the unlawful assassination of Major General Qassem Soleimani. No other country in the world has dared to attack the US face-to-face and inflict over a hundred casualties on US service members while continuing to challenge US hegemony. There was no need for Iran to ask its allies to act on its behalf. Iran and its partners on the battlefield are united against their enemies. The US wants Iran without missiles, without armed drones, and without access to intelligence warfare. These vital programs have proved crucial to protecting the country and preventing it from becoming vulnerable. If Iran did not have the allies it has today and the missiles it has manufactured, the US would already have retaliated without hesitation.
The war is far from over. Iran and its allies are still in the heart of the struggle, and the US and Israel are not sitting idly by. Solidarity between Iran and its allies is needed more than ever. The question of how much of its annual budget Iran is spending on its partners is less than relevant, though ordinary Iranians may complain and even challenge its benefits. The spirit of sacrifice that unites allies in mutual protection cannot be limited to monetary considerations. It is priceless.
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The British government covertly established a network of citizen journalists across Syria during the early years of the country’s civil war in an attempt to shape perceptions of the conflict, frequently recruiting people who were unaware that they were being directed from London.
A number of leaked documents seen by Middle East Eye show how the propaganda initiative began in 2012 and gathered pace the following year, shortly after the UK parliament refused to authorise British military action in Syria.
Drawing upon British, American and Canadian funding, UK government contractors set up offices in Istanbul and Amman, where they hired members of the Syrian diaspora, who in turn recruited citizen journalists inside Syria.
These journalists, many of them young, were commissioned to produce TV footage, radio programmes, social media, posters, magazines and even children’s comics.
While many Syrians turned spontaneously to media activism from the start of the war, the documents describe the way in which the British government sought to guide some of their output, seeing citizen journalism as a way of covertly influencing Syrian audiences.
The papers also make clear that those people who were recruited were often unaware that they were part of a British propaganda initiative.
Some of those who were recruited have defended their involvement, however, saying that they were reliant on western support in their efforts to counter pro-government reporting in Syrian state media, and in Iranian and Russian-backed media.
At a time when the last opposition-held enclave in Idlib province is under assault by pro-government forces, they questioned whether western countries could have contributed more material support to moderate rebels.
Some Syrian journalists complained that western support for their work was decreasing even as it was most needed, after Russia’s entry into the war in 2015 tipped the balance in favour of President Bashar al-Assad.
The documents were drawn up as blueprints for the initiative by an anthropologist working in counter-terrorism at the foreign office in London. They were issued in late 2014 to a small number of communications companies that were invited to bid for three contracts to deliver the work.
One says: “The objective of the project is contribute [sic] towards positive attitudinal and behavioural change.”
This was further defined as: “Reinforcement of popular rejection of the Assad regime and extremist alternatives; promotion of the moderate values of the revolution; promotion of Syrian national identity.”
The documents show that the over-arching aim of the citizen journalism project – and a series of interlinked British propaganda initiatives – was to promote the UK’s strategic interests in Syria and the Middle East.
These are defined in the leaked papers as “a more stable and democratic Syria that better meets the needs and aspirations of its people”, support for a political solution to the conflict, the alleviation of humanitarian suffering, and enhanced UK security.
As well as developing grassroots journalism aligned with British government values, the UK and other western governments were at the same time attempting to build civil society in areas controlled by some of Assad’s opponents, financing and training police forces and civil defence teams.
The anthropologist’s blueprint makes clear that this was being done not just to help maintain law and order and provide humanitarian assistance, but “to build confidence in a future Syria free from extremist rule”.
However, the documents acknowledge the risks to the young journalists who had unwittingly been co-opted by the British government.
“Media coverage of the project will be distinctly unwelcome due to the risks to Syrian employees and to project effectiveness that it would generate,” says one.
“The implementer is not permitted to speak publicly (to the media or at academic conferences) about their work without the explicit permission of HMG [Her Majesty’s Government]. This will be enforced by a Non Disclosure Agreement.”
A number of young Syrian citizen journalists were detained and murdered by the Islamic State (IS) group after it began capturing territory in the country in 2015.
The group frequently denounced its victims as western “spies”, and some Syrian citizen journalists were pursued across the border to Turkey and killed.
Whilst many of the victims were not thought to be involved in British-sponsored projects, MEE is aware of two who were.
Three-pronged campaign
The British government’s citizen journalism project was part of a three-pronged propaganda initiative that was developed in London and was, according to the documents, intended to “have a synergistic effect”.
The first strand, named Syrian Identity, sought to “unite Syrians through positive affirmation of common cultures and practices and to restore trust between neighbours, while illustrating Syrians’ strength in numbers,” according to the blueprint.
The documents explain that the second strand, called Free Syria, “seeks to build confidence in a future Syria free from extremist rule”.
It “amplifies the work of the ‘free’ police, civil defence teams and wider public service provision and broader developments in civil society and seeks to unite the moderate opposition (civil and armed) to work for a common future”.
The third, known as Undermine, “seeks to degrade the effectiveness of VE [violent extremist] networks in Syria by undermining the credibility of VE narratives and actors and isolating VE organisations from the populace.”
The document goes on, using a different acronym for IS: “ISIL is an explicit and named focus, Al Nusra Front (due to its current popularity within Syria) is addressed indirectly through its behaviour.
“The purpose of the project to directly ‘Undermine’ (degrading the effectiveness of) VE networks in Syria through the delivery of media product, the emboldening and empowering of moderate voices, and supporting community coalescence around a vision of a tolerant, pluralist Syria. Ultimately, active Syrian rejection of VE is the requirement.”
The documents add that the research underpinning the initiative “will need to be able to draw upon open source material, jihadist discourse and, in particular, a network of assets inside Syria”.
Military intelligence officers
Individuals familiar with the project say that around nine companies were invited to bid for the contracts. They included a number of firms established by former British diplomats, intelligence officers and army officers.
Although the contracts were awarded by the UK’s foreign office, they were managed by the country’s Ministry of Defence, and sometimes by military intelligence officers.
These companies set up offices in Amman, Istanbul and, for a period, at Reyhanli in southeast Turkey. From here they would employ Syrians who would in turn recruit citizen journalists inside Syria, who were under the impression that they were working for the media offices of Syrian opposition groups.
“It was a shady, shady business,” says one person involved in the work, adding that frequently the individual journalist would believe they were working for an opposition group, and have no idea that a British communications company was running their media office, under contract to the UK government.
A second person involved with the initiative added that if you hired Syrians “to pump out propaganda, inside Syria and outside”, attributing their work in any way to the British government would have undermined its effectiveness.
Many of these citizen journalists would be using equipment that they believed was being supplied by opposition groups but which had in fact been bought using funds supplied by the UK government as part of the contract.
Some would be paid a retainer of between $250-$500 a month, while others were paid for individual pieces of media – around $50 for each picture or $200 for a short piece of video.
These would then be distributed to Arabic language media organisations, through what purported to be the press offices of Syrian opposition groups.
Favoured video clips might be film of fighters from the moderate opposition handing out food, or using sophisticated weaponry to good effect.
“Then that would go to Sky News Arabia, BBC Arabic, Al Jazeera, Al Arabiya, those sort of outlets,” said one person involved.
Whenever British government officials wished to discuss the work, meetings would be held away from the newly established offices, to avoid contact with the locally hired Syrians.
British staff running the offices would also be expected to prepare reports on their meetings with Syrians, which would be passed back to the foreign office.
Opposition social media accounts
Meanwhile, other leaked documents seen by MEE show that the British government had awarded contracts to communications companies, which selected and trained opposition spokespeople, ran press offices that operated 24 hours a day, and developed opposition social media accounts.
British staff running these offices were told that their Syrian employees were permitted to talk to British journalists – as spokespeople for the Syrian opposition – but only after receiving clearance from officials at the British consulate in Istanbul.
One of the responsibilities of the press offices set up covertly by the British government under the terms of these contracts was to “maintain an effective network of correspondents/stringers inside Syria to report on MAO [moderate armed opposition] activity”.
In this way, the British government was able to exert behind-the-scenes influence over conversations that the UK media was having with individuals who presented themselves as Syrian opposition representatives.
People involved with the operation say that some prominent British journalists visiting Istanbul would be introduced to Syrians acting as opposition spokespeople, who had been prepared for the encounter by British handlers.
They say they would brief the Syrians before the meeting, and avoid any face-to-face contact with the visiting journalists themselves.
The propaganda initiative was primarily aimed at Syrians, living both inside and outside Syria. The blueprint explains that “radicalised UK citizens are not an explicit focus (target audience) for this work,” adding: “Those efforts are the responsibility of another government department.”
It adds: “Nevertheless, it is accepted that some C-VE [countering violent extremist] material may reach the UK information space.”
Furthermore, UK audiences could on occasion be “a specified target” of some media being produced as part of the initiative, with the permission of British officials in Istanbul.
The different strands of the propaganda programme were evaluated by a scientist from the UK’s Ministry of Defence, looking for evidence of “behavioural and attitudinal change”.
The companies bidding for the contracts were told: “Behavioural changes linked… to campaign activity will be especially highly valued.”
During 2015, Free Syria, Syrian Identity and Undermine were funded in both British pounds and Canadian dollars, with the equivalent of around £410,000 ($540,000) being spent each month.
Some Syrians who became involved in the programme say that the money they received was the only means by which they could hope to support their families. “I have a wife and family,” said one. “We need support in order to be able to live. Is there an independent media outlet in this world?”
The British government appears to have regarded its propaganda initiative as being in part a way to maintain a presence in Syria until it was able to become militarily engaged, with the blueprint saying that it should have “the capability to expand back into the strategic as and when the opportunity arises, to help build an effective opposition political-military interface”.
Around the same time that the initiative was being developed, the British government “loaned” a number of its pilots to the US, French and Canadian air forces, enabling them to take part in combat missions against Syrian targets, despite the county’s parliament having voted against such action.
British government enthusiasm for much of the work appears to have begun to wane as it became increasingly clear that the Assad government and its Russian and Iranian allies were winning the civil war, and funding for contracts began to dry up.
Early in 2019, the Free Syrian Police, a British-backed organisation, finally ceased operations following a militant takeover of Idlib province, much to the dismay of civilians and civil society activists.
The Turkish government is also said to have become less tolerant of the propaganda initiatives being co-ordinated from its territory.
One British contractor is understood to have been expelled after the Turkish authorities discovered she had entered the country on a tourist visa.
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In early February, the RCMP, Canada’s colonial police force, raided the land defender camps of the Wet’suwet’en people in British Columbia, in order to clear the way for pipeline construction. Clearly, none of the political decision makers responsible for this repressive action ever imagined that it would spark a powerful wave of solidarity actions across Canada. There have been ongoing protests and rallies but the focus has been on the tactic of economic disruption, most notably by blockading the railway network. If the attack on the Wet’suwet’en was driven by the profit needs of extractive capitalism, the resistance that has emerged has targeted the flow of goods and services as the most effective form of counter-attack.
In October of 2018, the provincial government of British Columbia approved the building of a 670 km pipeline to bring liquified natural gas from northern BC to a $40-billion export plant, to be constructed in Kitimat. In BC, the New Democratic Party (NDP) is in power, so it was shameful that Canada’s social democratic party would join with the federal Liberals to provide “a bouquet of government subsidies for BC’s largest carbon polluter.”
From the outset, it was clear that there would be a major problem with driving this environmentally destructive project through Indigenous territory. Unlike the rest of Canada, BC has been built up on disputed or ‘unceded’ land over which no treaties between the Crown and the Indigenous nations were ever drawn up. This is because the process of colonization in BC was especially ruthless and lethal. In 1862, when a smallpox epidemic broke out in Victoria, infected Indigenous people were driven back into the interior of the province, spreading the disease. At least 30,000 died as a result, which was about 60% of the Indigenous population at the time. Following this successful genocide, treaties seemed unnecessary to the colonizers. “The Indians have really no rights to the lands they claim,” concluded land commissioner, Joseph Trutch, in 1864.
Trutch and his friends would doubtless be chagrined to learn that, in the 21st Century, an unintended legacy of their handiwork has emerged. The Wet’suwet’en Nation lays claim to a 22,000 square kilometre unceded territory through which the Coastal GasLink project must pass. Moreover, almost twenty five years ago, in the Delgamuukw ruling, the Supreme Court of Canada held that there is, indeed, Aboriginal title over such land. Coastal GasLink and its apologists make much of the fact that they were able to coerce and cajole twenty Indigenous band councils into signing agreements with them. However, these bands only have authority, under the Indian Act, over the reserves they operate. They have no jurisdiction over Wet’suwet’en land as a whole, whereas the hereditary chiefs of the Nation have a claim that predates Canada and that various court rulings have acknowledged is still highly relevant.
The hereditary chiefs remain implacably opposed to the pipeline project and neither the Trudeau Liberals in Ottawa, the BC government or the pipeline company have the “free, prior and informed consent” that is required under the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples that Canada has signed onto.
Resistance and Solidarity
The brutal arrogance with which the RCMP were unleashed on the land defenders was so shocking and appalling that it blew up in the faces of those responsible. After a previous assault on the Wet’suwet’en, in January of last year, it was discovered that RCMP planners were ready to shoot to kill. The notes of their meeting included an observation that “lethal overwatch is req’d.,” a reference to the deployment of snipers. After this last raid, a video emerged of a cop training his telescopic sights on the unarmed defenders. The footage and accounts of the militarized police action against people trying to protect their own ancient land was as heartbreaking as it was enraging.
“This is Wet’suwet’en territory. We are unarmed. We are peaceful. You are invaders,” yelled Eve Saint, the daughter of one of the hereditary chiefs. She later told the media that, “I held my feather up and cried because I was getting ripped off my territory and there was nothing I could do about it. That’s the type of violence our people face. It’s embedded in my DNA and hit me in the heart. This is what my people have been going through since contact (with colonizers).”
This ugly use of state power was made all the more vile and disgusting by Justin Trudeau’s hypocrisy. He is fully implicated in the attempt to crush Indigenous rights yet he postures as a champion of ‘reconciliation.’ The response was remarkable and powerful and created a political crisis, as hard-hitting actions took place across the country. BC’s NDP Premier, John Horgan, has been left ‘despondent’ by a solidarity action that disrupted his government’s throne speech. A day of action targeted BC government offices across the province. The Port of Vancouver has been blockaded. On the other side of the country, in Halifax, the Ceres container terminal was blocked by protesters chanting, “Where are we? Mi’kmaqi! Respect Indigenous sovereignty!” as well as, “Shut down Canada!”
It is, however, the rail blockades that have had such a huge economic impact and that have taken things to the level of political crisis. Action taken by residents of the Tyendinaga Mohawk Territory in eastern Ontario has prevented the movement of train traffic along a vital corridor connecting Toronto with Ottawa and Montreal for almost two weeks now and has had a national impact. The Mohawks have refused to obey a court injunction ordering them to leave on the grounds that Canadian courts have no right to tell them what to do on their land and they have made clear that they are going nowhere until the just demands of the Wet’suwet’en have been met. The economic impact of their action, along with a series of other rail blockades across Canada, has been enormous and it is growing. It is reported that “wood, pulp and paper producers have lost tens of millions of dollars so far.” At least 66 cargo ships have been unable to unload in BC and the president of the province’s Chamber of Shipping says, “those line-ups are only going to increase, of course ships are continuing to arrive. Eventually, there will be no space and they’ll be waiting off the coast of Canada, which is a situation we’d like to avoid.”
The federal Indigenous Services Minister, Marc Miller, has now been to Tyendinaga to meet with members of the community. His account of the hours long meeting doesn’t suggest much was resolved at all. Clearly, the Trudeau government is in a very difficult situation. They have seen the response to the RCMP raid on the Wet’suwet’en and they desperately fear the consequences of moving on the rail blockades. Yet the driving of pipelines through Indigenous territory is vital to their strategic priority of exporting dirty oil and gas to the Pacific market. The Coastal GasLink project is the harbinger of much more to come and the resistance of Indigenous people and their allies poses a threat to all their plans.
The considerable ability of the Liberal Party to serve the interests of the capitalists while containing social resistance is being tested to the limit. The vulnerability to disruption of the global supply chain that has been created during the neoliberal era, with its wide ranging sources of raw materials and component parts and its systems of ‘just in time’ inventory, makes the blockades and the economic disruption even more of a threat than they would have been at an earlier time.
The political crisis that has been unleashed by this wave of action in solidarity with the Wet’suwet’en is already very serious but if state power is unleashed to remove the blockades, at Tyendinaga or at other locations, especially if a serious confrontation ensues, the mood across the country is such that disruptive actions could intensify dramatically. In that eventuality, the choice for Trudeau and his provincial allies would be between a dangerous escalation or a retreat on so fundamental an objective as the pursuit of environmentally disastrous extractive capitalism. Sparked by the magnificent defiance of the Wet’suwet’en, a struggle is unfolding with the most important implications for the building of resistance in Canada to the colonial project that Indigenous people face. At the same time, however, it is also creating a precious model for the global struggle against the deadly consequences of corporate climate vandalism.
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Russia unexpectedly banned all Chinese except those with diplomatic, business, humanitarian, and transit visas from entering the country, but this unprecedented move was made as a preventive reaction against the spread of the coronavirus and not for racist purposes, though it’s understandable that China might be alarmed by Moscow’s decision since it could lead to other countries following suit for nefarious reasons related to their desire to wage psychological warfare on the Chinese people.
Russia’s Unprecedented Reaction
Russia took the unprecedented step of banning all Chinese except those with diplomatic, business, humanitarian, and transit visas from entering the country as a preventive reaction against the spread of the coronavirus. RT reported this breaking news late Tuesday night, quoting the decree issued by new Prime Minister Mishustin which read that
“From 00:00 local time on February 20, 2020, the passage of citizens of the People’s Republic of China across the state border of the Russian Federation entering the territory of the Russian Federation for labor purposes, for private, educational and tourist purposes, is temporarily suspended.”
Such a move wasn’t made lightly considering Russia’s strategic partnership with China and the increasing convergence of their economies following President Putin’s proposal last year to pair the Moscow-led Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) with Beijing’s Belt & Road Initiative (BRI), which makes it all the more unexpected and raises some serious questions.
Perfectly Legal…
The Russian government didn’t elaborate on the reasons behind its decision, but it can be credibly assumed that this drastic course of action was undertaken because of Moscow’s unstated belief that the coronavirus epidemic isn’t going to abate anytime soon. Sharing such a large border with the People’s Republic and recently becoming one of its people’s prime tourist destinations after several million of them visited the country last year, Russia could potentially be at risk of a serious coronavirus outbreak if it doesn’t take proper precautions. Infected individuals can reportedlyspread the coronavirus even without showing symptoms of the illness, so it makes sense that Russia would prefer to be “safe than sorry” by prohibiting the entry of all Chinese citizens except those with diplomatic, business, humanitarian, and transit visas. All countries, after all, have the right to ensure the security of their people from any type of threat however they see fit, so there’s nothing legally wrong with the measures that Moscow has decided to implement in response to this growing health emergency.
…But Still Controversial
That said, Chinese officials have previously criticized the US for causing panic and spreading fear because of its own preventive reaction to the coronavirus, though America’s response to this epidemic is comparatively milder than the much more drastic decision that Russia just made. It would therefore follow that China’s criticisms against the US would be just as — if not more — applicable against Russia as they are against America, though Beijing might refrain from directly criticizing Moscow due to the spirit of friendship that unites these strategic partners. China understands that the Russian state harbors no racist attitudes towards the Chinese people but is just being extremely (if not “overly”) cautious, unlike some Western countries which have exploited this situation for self-interested political purposes intended to portray the Chinese people in a very negative way that disturbingly borders on — and sometimes outright embodies — racist stereotypes.
Copycats
Nevertheless, it’s completely understandable if China feels alarmed by Russia’s move, though not necessarily because of the reason behind why it was made but due to how this decision might be abused by those same Western actors that Beijing had earlier accused of taking advantage of the coronavirus outbreak for advancing their own hostile interests against the People’s Republic. Those same countries might feel emboldened by Russia’s decision and thus follow suit with copycat measures even if they don’t stand as much of a risk from the epidemic as neighboring Russia does, arguing that it isn’t “racist” to do so if even China’s own strategic partner is taking such steps without being criticized by Beijing in the same way. It’s therefore important that Russian media responsibly articulates the reasons behind their country’s decision and how their specific situation differs from others’, emphasizing facts and figures in order to make their case and rebuff any accusations of racism.
“Hoping” For “Hong Kong 2.0”?
Even so, that might not stop other governments from doing the same thing for the same publicly proclaimed reasons, though their intentions might be more nefarious since they could be doing so in order to send a subtle message of hostility against the Chinese people. The psychological warfare motivation behind their moves would be to make the country’s citizens feel “isolated” from the rest of the world, which stands in strong contrast to their hitherto presumption that they were rapidly becoming the center of it as a result of China’s global expansion of economic influence through BRI. Upon imposing their copycat entry restrictions on all Chinese without diplomatic, business, humanitarian, and transit visas, those countries might then prioritize shifting their supply chains outside of China on the basis of long-term “health-economic-strategic security” planning, kicking the country while it’s down in order to exacerbate its domestic challenges so as to “hopefully” incite Hong Kong-like anti-government chaos all across the mainland in the coming future.
Concluding Thoughts
Russia’s decision to ban the entry of all Chinese without diplomatic, business, humanitarian, and transit visas — including those that live outside of China and haven’t been there for over the past three months since before the coronavirus outbreak even began — is certainly controversial and will undoubtedly cause many strong reactions on all sides, but the state’s intentions are not to cause panic and spread fear even if its actions inadvertently result in this outcome. Nor, for that matter, does the Russian government harbor any racist attitudes towards the Chinese people, unlike some of its Western counterparts who have gleefully exploited this epidemic for psychological warfare purposes and are likely to take advantage of Moscow’s move in order to intensify their campaign of pressure against the People’s Republic. On a closing note, the author is personally concerned about the situation and hopes that these temporary restrictions don’t harm the hard-earned friendship between the Russian and Chinese people.
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This article was originally published on OneWorld.
Andrew Korybko is an American Moscow-based political analyst specializing in the relationship between the US strategy in Afro-Eurasia, China’s One Belt One Road global vision of New Silk Road connectivity, and Hybrid Warfare. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.
Many baby boomers like this writer seem to have better ‘long term memory’ than what just transpired recently. I can remember, almost vividly, when we held our student government elections over 50 years ago. Current NY Senator Chuck Schumer, running for school president at 14 years of age and wearing an Abe Lincoln style beard and stove pipe hat, rests clearly in my memory bank. Interesting how the state of politics today is very much similar to those SGO races. It wasn’t so much about issues, rather about personalities or personality flaws that opponents hammered out against one another. Things could even get rather nasty to say the least. So it is in this Junior High School Amerika.
The 90+ minutes of last evening’s Democratic debate hardly touched upon dissecting issues and ideas for real change in this empire. Instead, it was ‘dog eat dog’ to make the most talking points for the media to tally as to ‘Who won’ and ‘Who lost’. We had the usual media suspects, this time from NBC, who were leading the candidates down this rabbit hole. Interesting how the ‘Lead moderator’, good ole Lester Holt, was once again ordained to be such an authority on this ****. Remember Lester? I do.
Go back into your memory bank to a bit shy of 17 years ago, to March of 2003, when the Bush/Cheney gang did their heinous act of the illegal and immoral attack and invasion of Iraq. Good ole Lester was one of the newscasters who did MSNBC’s cheerleading of the infamous Shock and Awe carpet bombing of Baghdad. Lester was the good soldier, along with NBC’s little Miss Katie Couric, she of the famous phrase “Marines Rock”, that celebrated an act that still negatively resonates within that Middle East region. One would think that ALL the hacks who whored themselves for this empire would have been castigated and ripped of their careers a bit. No sir! Ole Lester became NBC’s anchor and moderator for presidential election debates. Little Katie continued to do well with her career too. Why not? You serve the man well and he pays well. Ask Rachel Maddow, the brilliant scholar turned news journalist and empire lover, who earns, I believe at last look, 8 million dollars a year!
While the Dems were doing their ‘slash and burn’ show last night, the other Junior High School politician, our president, was at it in Phoenix. He was conducting another of his ‘Tent show rallies’ to a crowd of loyal minions. I say ‘minions’ because it seems that no matter how many times he and his ‘Billionaire run’ administration do things to screw working stiffs nationwide, the suckers… oh sorry, the voters, ask for more. His base, many of whom are working stiffs like you and me, keep thinking that Trump is ‘on their side’ against the evil government and the Deep State, the very Deep state that he serves.
How many cuts in funding for their needs and survival until they realize that he is NOT on their side? His cronies, people like Steve Mnuchin, Wilbur Ross, Steve Schwarzman and his son in law Jared Kushner made mega millions on the Sub Prime Scam and its aftereffects. They made sure that millions of homeowners were foreclosed into becoming renters from these predators… who are now our ‘Public Servants’. Factor in Trump’s buddy, Fox’s Sean Hannity, who owns thousands of rental units, many in low income areas. One wonders how many of Trump’s base have been subjected to the terror of these guys, or had friends and relatives so tortured. As long as this carnival barker tells them about ‘Building the wall’ or spending their tax money on more military at the expense of domestic needs, they drink the ‘War on Terror’ Kool Aid. Sad.
This Two Party/ One Party system that serves our empire so well will never allow dialogue on how to end this mess. Never! Sanders comes close, in the little he is able to transmit, on how we need systematic changes to things. If you watched the (so called) Junior High School debate last night, you saw how the NBC and DNC masters of deception operate.
They did their best to marginalize Sanders, and now Bloomberg (who deserves such treatment), for getting the public energized. Bloomberg does it by spending mega millions of TV ads for his recognition. The empire’s handlers realize that the suckers.. sorry, the voters, just won’t finally buy his approach when and if they go into that voting booth. Thus, he is not safe… even for a corrupt empire as ours. As to Sanders, well their agenda is obvious. He is too dangerous to their Status Quo. Big Pharma, Big Insurance and of course Big Oil & Gas , along with Wall Street, have too much to lose. Even if as the nominee he would lose the election, his use of the bully pulpit, like the one he has now, is something they just don’t want the suckers.. sorry, the voters to have to be exposed to.
Yes, the empire loves our Junior High School brand of politics… always has and always will.
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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].
On Wednesday Wikileaks editor Julian Assange appeared at a Westminster court for his final case management hearing before his extradition hearing which begins on 24 February.
The U.S. government will present its case arguing for Assange’s extradition to face 17 charges under the Espionage Act and one charge of computer crime which could carry a sentence, if convicted, of 175 years.
At the extradition hearing Assange’s London lawyer, Jennifer Robinson, will argue that the United States ‘breached due process’ due its surveillance operation of the Wikileaks editor while sheltering in the Ecuadorian embassy. This secret surveillance operation was carried out by a Spanish company that sent the footage to U.S. intelligence services,. It filmed Assange talking to his lawyers, family and friends in the embassy and is the subject of an investigation in Spain.
Joseph Farrell, a spokesman for Wikileaks, stated that this breach of due process raises huge doubts as to whether Julian Assange will receive a fair trial next week:
“You had a security company working for the Ecuadorian Embassy that was recording all of his meetings, including his meetings with his doctors and his lawyers, including strategic legal discussions, so that completely destroys any element of client/attorney privilege.”
International support from Julian Assange mounts
Assange’s case has received support from 2 Australian MPs who visited the Wikileaks publisher at Belmarsh maximum security prison on Tuesday. They called on the UK government to block his extradition to the U.S.
“In London we met with UN Special Rapporteur on Torture to discuss Julian Assange. Nils left us in no doubt that Assange is showing the effects of psychophysical torture and feels betrayed by the justice system in the UK, the USA & Aus.’’
Further pressure is being brought to bear by the publication on 17 February of a letter in the Lancet representing 117 doctors from 18 countries.
They note that their first 2 letters to the UK government on the treatment of Assange had been ignored. The letter declares:
“We condemn the torture of Assange. We condemn the denial of his fundamental right to appropriate health care. We condemn the climate of fear surrounding the provision of health care to him. We condemn the violations of his right to doctor–patient confidentiality. Politics cannot be allowed to interfere with the right to health and the practice of medicine.’’
The 117 doctors conclude their letter with a warning to the UK government and a call for solidarity and support for Julian Assange:
“Should Assange die in a UK prison, as the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture has warned, he will effectively have been tortured to death. Much of that torture will have taken place in a prison medical ward, on doctors’ watch. The medical profession cannot afford to stand silently by, on the wrong side of torture and the wrong side of history, while such a travesty unfolds.
In the interests of defending medical ethics, medical authority, and the human right to health, and taking a stand against torture, together we can challenge and raise awareness of the abuses detailed in our letters. Our appeals are simple: we are calling upon governments to end the torture of Assange and ensure his access to the best available health care before it is too late. Our request to others is this: please join us.’’
Further pressure has been brought to bear on the UK government on Thursday by theunprecedentedintervention of Dunja Mijatović, who is the Council of Europe’s Human Rights Commissioner. She released a statement opposing Assange’s extradition to the United States due to the, “potential impact on press freedom and concerns about ill-treatment.’’
The Human Rights Commissioner declared that:
“Julian Assange’s potential extradition has human rights implications that reach far beyond his individual case. The indictment raises important questions about the protection of those that publish classified information in the public interest, including those that expose human rights violations. The broad and vague nature of the allegations against Julian Assange, and of the offences listed in the indictment, are troubling as many of them concern activities at the core of investigative journalism in Europe and beyond. Consequently, allowing Julian Assange’s extradition on this basis would have a chilling effect on media freedom, and could ultimately hamper the press in performing its task as purveyor of information and public watchdog in democratic societies.’’
She went on to acknowledge the danger that Assange may suffer torture at the hands of U.S. authorities:
“Furthermore, any extradition to a situation in which the person involved would be at real risk of torture or inhuman or degrading treatment would be contrary to Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights. The UN Special Rapporteur on Torture and other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment has made clear that he considers that both the detention conditions in the United States and the sentence likely to be imposed on Julian Assange present such a real risk.
She concludes with the damning conclusion, remember this is coming from the EU a close American ally, that Assange should not be extradited to the United States:
“In view of both the press freedom implications and the serious concerns over the treatment Julian Assange would be subjected to in the United States, my assessment as Commissioner for Human Rights is that he should not be extradited.’’
UK Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell visits Julian Assange and calls for his release
On a day of dramatic interventions the Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell visited Julian Assange at Belmarsh maximum security prison. He has battled for several weeks to be allowed to visit the Wikileaks publisher. McDonnell has recently spoken at public rallies calling for Assange’s release.
After visiting Julian Assange the Shadow Chancellor said:
“We are hoping that in court he is able to defeat the extradition bid. We don’t believe that extradition should be used for political purposes, and all the evidence – even the recent revelations with regard to Trump engagement – demonstrates that this is a political trial and we are hoping that the courts will see it that way.’’
“If this extradition takes place it will damage the democratic standing of our own country as well as America. We have a long standing tradition in this country of standing up for whistle blowers, journalists … if this extradition takes place I think it will damage our reputation.”
Despite the obstacles facing the Wikileaks editor John McDonnell remained optimistic that Assange’s extradition may not go ahead:
“I am hoping that combination of cross-party support, what has happened in the media, the exposes that have taken place in recent weeks, will ensure that we have a climate of opinion in this country that prevents this extradition taking place.”
The UK historian/journalist Mark Curtis, who has been a consistent critic of US and UK foreign policy in the Middle East, has noted the conspiracy of silence by the UK media over the British government’s ‘criminal’ handling of Assange’s case:
“It’s a big deal when a UN special rapporteur [Professor Nils Melzer] says UK officials should be investigated for possible “criminal conduct’’ over torture of Julian Assange. Proof of its importance that it hasn’t been mentioned in any UK mainstream media report, as far as I can see.’’
The 2003 extradition treaty between the UK and US forbids extradition on the grounds of political offences. Yet this award winning journalist is being extradited, for exposing American war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan and government corruption around the world.
Take solidarity action to stop the extradition of Julian Assange.
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Clear indications have been made that there is a project for a Greater Albania and it is progressing ahead, especially as the world’s attention is focussed on and distracted by the coronavirus, Libya and Syria’s Idlib province. The ultimate goal of Albania was to absorb Kosovo and the Preševo Valley in Serbia, southern Montenegro, Epirus in Greece and western North Macedonia into a single Greater Albania state.
Although this may not be official policy of the Albanian Republic, it is ingrained into the Albanian mythos. However, this has now changed with the Kosovo-born Albanian Minister-in-office for Europe and Foreign Affairs Gent Cakaj and the Foreign Minister of Kosovo Glauk Konjufcameeting yesterday to discuss 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 which so far only exists in the Australian capital of Canberra.
Cakaj said on Twitter about “the need to deepen cooperation between [Albania and Kosovo] and strongly support the coalition of Albanian political parties in [Serbia’s] Preshevo [Preševo] Valley” to the east of Kosovo. Although the tweet just emphasizes deeper cooperation between Albania, Kosovo and the Preševo valley, it was his comments to Turkey’s Anadolu Agency that gives the biggest suggestion of a Greater Albania project being put into action. Cakaj said to the agency that
“the borders between the Republic of Kosovo and the Republic of Albania should not exist at all, they should be removed immediately and our countries should enjoy unrestricted freedom of movement and unhindered ability to deepen economic cooperation.”
Although it may seem like that Albania and Kosovo are making strong efforts for the Greater Albania project, it rather demonstrates their desperation as Kosovo continues to lose legitimacy and countries withdraw their recognition of the quasi-independent state that illegally broke off from Serbia in 2008. A total of 14 countries since 2017 have withdrawn their recognition of Kosovo, meaning only 51% of United Nations members now recognize it. The usual norm in statehood recognition is that more and more countries overtime recognize the state, not withdraw recognition. If we look at the Israeli situation, since its founding in 1948, only five states have withdrawn recognition and 162 of the 193 United Nations member states recognize it. It is inevitable that with incentives from China and Russia more states will withdraw their recognition of Kosovo.
This brings a new question then. Has the failings of Kosovo actually accelerated the Greater Albania project?
The proposal by Finnish Nobel “Peace” Prize winning Marti Ahtisaari to establish an independent Kosovo and Kosovan identity has been an abject failure. Rather, Kosovo has taken on the Albanian identity openly with KosovoPrime Minister Albin Kurti, who is currently serving as the fourth Prime Minister of Kosovo since February 3 2020, not differentiating between nation and ethnicity as he sees Kosovo as an extension of Albania, despite the nation and the state not being the same. Kurti also does not recognize the flag and anthem of Kosovo, as well as the Kosovar identity.
As Kosovo continues to lose legitimacy, meaning the breakaway province could return back to Serbian administration, it is attempting to avoid this situation by merging Kosovo into Albania. It is for this reason that Cakaj says the borders between Albania and Kosovo should not exist at all and that they should both share embassies. As Serbia’s position has strengthened, Albania’s official support for Kosovo is an attempt to parry it and jointly formulate a strategy to achieve some success.
The broader goals of merging Albania and Kosovo are multiple – to confirm Kosovo’s independence from Serbia; to propagate the Greater Albania project; and to put pressure on Serbia as well as international states to challenge Belgrade’s foreign policy successes. The campaign cooperation between Albania and Kosovo demonstrates the attempts to raise the issue to a higher level and the desire to establish new mechanisms and measures, with the incumbent government in Pristina to implement a practical policy because all tactics so far have not yielded results and giving up is not an option.
Therefore, there is no reason why Serbia should give up its current policy of pushing states to withdraw their Kosovo independence recognition. Belgrade must maintain that Kosovo is an integral and historical part of Serbia. Belgrade’s efforts have produced results and the Serbian public demand results. Serbia should not accept any blackmail and demands from Kosovo or Albania, especially as it continues its project of reintegrating Kosovo. Only days ago, it was announced that rail links between Belgrade and Pristina will be constructed, something that does not even exist between Kosovo and Albania. Although Kosovo’s failings continue, it has also accelerated the Greater Albania project in an effort to prevent the reintegration of the breakaway province back into Serbia.
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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.
Paul Antonopoulos is a Research Fellow at the Center for Syncretic Studies.
As the emerging Quantum World continues to shake reality as we once knew it, it is no coincidence that the ultra-secret FISA Court has been unwittingly thrust into the public spotlight of the FBI Russiagate scandal – exactly where it needed to be. The Shift is deliberately focused on those forms, structures and institutions of no service to humanity. Besides the collapse of the Democratic Party, the FBI and Donald Trump, one benign example is Prince Harry and Meaghan abandoning the royal family for a ‘normal’ life.
On March 15th, the Patriot Act will expire unless it is reauthorized by Congress. As if it had been patiently waiting in the wings, the Patriot Act was adopted in October 2, 2001, 21 days after the 911 attacks, revealing a curious foreknowledge of what occurred three weeks earlier,
The Act set the stage for the next two decades of unfettered, expanded surveillance of the American people – under the guise of ‘national security.’
After 2001, the Act was amended to include the FISA (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act) Court (FISC) which authorized the gathering of foreign ‘intelligence’ with the Court approving ‘warrant’ applications for the unrestricted collection of information.
It should not have taken the 2016 Russiagate/FBI disgrace to confirm that after decades of government surveillance, warrantless or not, that 24-7 secret spying on Americans is unconstitutional and incompatible within a free and democratic society, nor is it necessary.
After the 911 attacks, the FISA Court prospered with an increased bureaucracy to handle the expanded caseload. As the American Empire spread fear and paranoia with a belligerent foreign policy, the US portrayed itself in constant jeopardy from external forces and that, at all costs, the ‘homeland’ must be protected from evil doers. If in fact the US govrnment wanted to shut down the ‘terrorist threat’, they could do so in short order. There is no terrorist organization stronger than the US military.
We now know that there are evildoers within our own borders and within our own government who have no interest in protecting the jewels that were once valued American ideals: freedom and justice for all.
FISA Court
In 1978, the Court began with seven US District Court Judges from diverse geographic areas to serve seven year terms. Today, there are eleven Judges who serve on a weekly rotation with each conducting at least four annual one-week stints. Nominated by President Barack Obama and then individually selected by Chief Justice John Roberts, their appointments are subject to no public oversight or scrutiny. As of 2020 each District Judge receives a salary of $216,000 with an added bonus for their FISA service.
Referred to by CNN as the “most powerful Court you have never heard of”, it is housed in a SCIF-like bunker at an undisclosed location between the WH and the Capitol. The list of FISA Judges is public but details of their interactions remain obscure and closely guarded. Yet thanks to the FBI Russiagate scandal, the focus on the Court has intensified with revelations that do not inspire confidence in an independent judicial experience.
Since the workings of the Court are ultra-secret, a Judicial Watch FOIA discovered that no hearings were held on all four of the FBI warrant requests on the Russiagate investigation, all of which were proven to be factually flawed, In other words, the Court does not verify the alleged facts on any application which questions whether the Court ever holds hearings on any warrant application or whether the Court routinely acquiesces to the FBI and is literally a rubber-stamp.
As renewal of the Court comes before a moribund Congress, the question arises whether the Court serves any useful purpose with a history of carte blanche approvals of almost every application for surveillance that has ever been submitted. The statistics do not support the pretense that there is a democratic entity performing a patriotic public service protecting the American population. Note the examples of 2016 and 2017 with increased rejections:
The most obvious reason for FISA renewal is to hoodwink the American public into ‘feeling’ safe while allowing intel agency tentacles to deepen its creep into American society.
FISA Court Judges
Let’s begin with then presiding Chief Judge Rosemary Collyer. Ten days after publications of the IG Report, Collyer issued a rare Order that belatedly ‘rebuked’ the FBI for providing ‘unsupported or contradicted’ information to the Court while withholding exculpatory information detrimental to the FBI’s case. While the Order citing FBI ‘misconduct’ was little more than a bureaucratic put down, the Order went no further than requiring the FBI to provide assurance of how it will improve its processes in the future. Three days later, Collyer resigned as Presiding Judge as she chose to remain a Judge on the Court until her term expires in March.
It is noteworthy that Collyer should have found none of the abuses outlined in the IG Reportstartling since Rep. Devin Nunes, then Chair of the House Intel Committee, alerted her to potential FBI/DOJ abuses in a February 7 2018 classifiedmemo to the Court.
In a follow up June 13th memo, Nunes reiterated his earlier memo including a classified summary of specifics that the IG Report would repeat almost two years later. Given Nunes’ oversight function as Committee Chair with jurisdiction over the FISA Court, he requested that Collyer initiate a ‘thorough investigation’ into his allegations. Collyer’s response was a stonewall of condescension and dismissal as if Nunes had no legal authority to provide oversight on the Court’s conduct.
The four page memo was ultimately approved for public release by the White House and Committee majority despite Democratic protests. Meanwhile, the Senate Intel Committee, chaired by Sen. Richard Burr (R-NC) has ceded committee authority to Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va) as the silence has been deafening.
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With minimum information available about the Court’s inner workings, the presence of US District Court Judge Rudolph Contreras has drawn attention to his relationship with former FBI counterespionage chief Peter Strzok. In a July 25, 2016 email with FBI lawyer Lisa Page including discussion about setting up a cocktail party:
Page: “Rudy in on the FISC. Did you know that? Just appointed two months ago.“ Strzok: “I did. We talked about it before and after. I need to get together with him.”
In addition, it has come to light that Contreras, acting in his capacity as US District Court Judge for the District of Columbia was assigned to the criminal case of Gen. Michael Flynn. On December 1, 2018 Contreras accepted Flynn’s original guilty plea per an agreement with the Mueller investigation. With Flynn expecting to be sentenced on December 7th, instead the US District Court announced that Contreras “has been recused” from the case offering no explanation. Former US Attorney Joe diGenova speculates, with his ear to the ground, that Contreras may have also signed the legallydefective FBI warrantsthus creating a mammoth conflict of interest in light of his relationship with Strzok.
There is no dispute that the Flynn prosecution was the result of an ‘ambush interview’ created by Strzok, deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe and others.
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U.S. District Judge Royce C. Lamberth, who served as FISA’sChief Judge from 1995 through 2002 lamented that he “..struggled with the perception for years that we did whatever the government wanted and were rubber stamps,” A review of the Court’s 33 year history shows that during Judge Lamberth’s time as Chief Judge only one FISA application denial.
The aforementioned examples of judicial malfeasance or simply crass indifference are unacceptable on the part of FISA judges responsible for Constitutional decisions affecting the lives, liberty and freedom of all American citizens. The fact is that the FISA Court’s secrecy encourages a climate of cutting corners, inferior work quality and contempt for public exposure.
In addition, the Court’s existence is irrelevant since the “terrorist threat” is little more than a paper tiger. If the US cut off the flow of weapons, the ‘terrorists’ would be out of business but it is to the Government’s advantage to maintain its surveillance grip on the gullible American population.
To be continued….
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Renee Parsons has been a member of the ACLU’s Florida State Board of Directors and President of the ACLU Treasure Coast Chapter. She has been an elected public official in Colorado, an environmental lobbyist with Friends of the Earth and staff member in the US House of Representatives in Washington, DC. Renee is also a student of the Quantum Field. She can be reached at #reneedove31. She is a frequent contributor to Global Research.
A revelation in Westminster Magistrate’s Court on Wednesday sent shockwaves through the mainstream media. It is being widely publicised that in 2017 US President Donald Trump offered Julian Assange a pardon if he was to declare that Russia had not been the source of the DNC hack, which had exposed emails discrediting then presidential candidate, Hillary Clinton. A lawyer representing Mr Assange, the former Wikileaks editor who faces extradition to the United States, put forward evidence that former US congressman Dana Rohrabacher had visited him in the Ecuadorian embassy in 2017, in the early days of Robert Mueller’s investigation into alleged Russian interference in the US election.
Edward Fitzgerald QC said that the statement from Assange’s lawyer described: “Mr Rohrabacher going to see Mr Assange and saying, on instructions from the president, he was offering a pardon or some other way out, if Mr Assange … said Russia had nothing to do with the DNC leaks”. The deal was allegedly offered a year after Assange published the DNC troves, which provided insight into the inner workings of the Clinton campaign, and proved highly embarrassing and damaging to the presidential nominee. Clinton allies accused both Wikileaks and Russia at the time of working in cahoots with the Trump campaign.
Although Julian Assange was always reluctant to declare outright that the source was in fact not Russia, due to Wikileaks’ policy of not naming its sources, a visitor to the Edinburgh office of Sputnik news, back in November 2016, did just that. Friend of Assange, Craig Murray, the former British ambassador to Uzbekistan, told journalists that he had recently been to see Assange, who had assured him that the source of the DNC hack was in fact from within Washington. He went further to say that he had met the person responsible for the leak, and that it was someone from within the DNC. The story was then picked up by other news outlets, which spread doubts regarding the Democrats’ claims of Russia being involved in the hack.
Several former US intelligence analysts, including former NSA officer Bill Binney, have also come out publicly and said that the DNC could not have been hacked by Russia, but most likely came from within the DNC itself. A piece published by Patrick Lawrence titled “A New Report Raises Big Questions about Last Year’s DNC Hack,” also claimed that for technical reasons, the data that was allegedly downloaded to a hacker could not have been done so in the way suggested because it was downloaded at a much faster rate than would have been possible given the technology available to such a hacker at the time. Indeed it has been said that the data could only have been retrieved internally and loaded onto a device such as a thumb drive.
As for Dana Rohrabacher, he denies offering a ‘quid pro quo’ to Assange on behalf of Trump. He states on his website: ‘I was not directed by Trump or anyone else connected with him to meet with Julian Assange. I was on my own fact finding mission at personal expense…However when speaking with Julian Assange, I told him that if he could provide information and evidence about who actually gave him the DNC emails, I would then call on President Trump to pardon him.’ Rohrabacher then says that on his return to the US he called General Kelly to say Assange would be prepared to provide information about the DNC emails in exchange for a pardon. He vouches that he had no further discussions on the matter with anyone from the administration, including President Trump. The White House, for its part, also strongly denies any such offer was made on behalf of Trump. Press Secretary Stephanie Grisham said: ‘The President barely knows Dana Rohrabacher other than he’s an ex-congressman. He’s never spoken to him on this subject or almost any subject…It is a complete fabrication and a total lie.’ Whether or not Rohrabacher was indeed acting on behalf of Trump, the emergence of this story can only be of further detriment to both Trump and the bid to extradite Assange.
Julian Assange, who is currently being held in Belmarsh Prison in the UK, is facing 18 charges in the US, none of which are in connection to the DNC hack, but instead concern WikiLeaks’s publication of diplomatic cables and files detailing illegal atrocities carried out by the US military in Afghanistan and Iraq and which were provided to Wikileaks by former US army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning. His extradition hearing is due to start on at Woolwich Crown Court on Monday. There are grave concerns however about the state of Assange’s health, with 117 doctors signing an open letter in the medical journal The Lancet this week, calling for an end to what they describe as his ‘psychological torture and medical neglect’. They state: ‘Should Assange die in a UK prison, as the UN special rapporteur on torture has warned, he will have effectively been tortured to death…The medical profession cannot afford to stand silently by, on the wrong side of torture and the wrong side of history, while such a travesty unfolds.’ Recently UK opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn also shared concerns about Assange’s plight and called on his extradition to be halted and the European Commissioner for Human Rights on Thursday announced her opposition to any extradition, citing the ‘chilling effect’ it would have on media freedom and human rights.
It remains to be seen whether such pleas will fall on deaf ears. But with new questions now being raised as to whether Donald Trump did indeed offer Julian Assange a pardon, the timing of these court revelations is significant. It isn’t too much a stretch of the imagination to think that they could impact negatively on the US’ extradition case. Boris Johnson will now have to decide whether the UK-US ‘special relationship’ is indeed worth jeopardising Britain’s record on press freedom and human rights.
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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.
Johanna Ross is a journalist based in Edinburgh, Scotland.
‘Scientists are wrong’, the Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano said with a warm smile on his face. ‘Human beings are not made of atoms; they are made of stories’. It is why we want to sing and draw, tell each other about our lives and our hopes, talk about the wonders in our lives and the wonders that we dream about. These dreams – this art – are what make us get up each day, smile, and go forward into the world. It is so common for human beings, even in the most wretched situation, to find a way to lift the spirit through our own forms of art, as is clear in Brazil’s Jongo traditions and in the ovi songs of agricultural workers in India, whose singers push aside the drudgery of their work in the fields and factories with songs of their lives and of nature – songs of the hot summer, teasing songs from older women about how their young son cannot tolerate the heat,
And then comes the turbulence.
If you walk through the streets of Santiago (Chile) or Baghdad (Iraq) or Delhi (India), you will find that the walls and streets have become an art gallery, that the protest sites have become a music hall, that libraries have appeared on the streets, that pamphlets and leaflets are being clutched in the hands of the people as they brave the whirlwind. You will find that language cascades out of its strict proportions, that new phrases are coined, that the limits of grammar and of meter are discarded.
If you sit for a minute at Shaheen Bagh in Delhi, the translucence of the new culture will grip you and move you and force you to reconsider the stresses and strains of your life. You will sing the poems, to shout out aloud, but not by yourself; that is the majesty of the protest – you will sing in a chorus of strangers who become comrades even if the notes are discordant and the lyrics are unfamiliar. Some of the songs will be older ones, Víctor Jara’s 1971 anthem for Vietnam, El derecho de vivir en paz (‘The Right to Live in Peace’); others will be new songs, chants that become songs. You will welcome the poets, who will come shyly to the stage with their notebooks in their hands and their powerful words tumbling through the hastily erected speakers. These poets will try out their work in public, and then be taken by videographers and editors to clean up their performance, the new videos viral on social media.
Not far from where Aamir Aziz conjured up this poem is Shaheen Bagh, one of the epicentres of the Indian uprising. Here, young artists painted a mural of the women who have been the sentinels of this protest; they are joyous and free, carrying a picture of Dr. B. R. Ambedkar – who comes from an oppressed community and wrote India’s 1950 Constitution – and a line from the Pakistani Communist poet Faiz Ahmed Faiz: ‘We will see. Certainly, we too shall see’.
Aamir Aziz’s Everything Will Be Remembered comes out of this unending protest in India against the citizenship act and against a government that is insensitive to the call from the street.
Kill us, we will become ghosts and write
of your killings, with all the evidence.
You write jokes in court;
We will write ‘justice’ on the walls.
We will speak so loudly that even the deaf will hear.
We will write so clearly that even the blind will read.
You write ‘black lotus’;
We will write ‘red rose’.
You write ‘injustice’ on the earth;
We will write ‘revolution’ in the sky.
Everything will be remembered;
Everything recorded
So curses may be sent to you;
So your faces may be smeared;
Your names and your faces will be remembered;
Everything will be remembered;
Everything recorded.
This outpouring of the human spirit is taking place in a time of revolt, when the fetters of propriety are set aside.
This outburst of expression and emotion is far more dramatic in the immediate aftermath of a revolution when the old order is defeated and a new one struggles to be born. It is hard to capture the immensity of feeling in the new Soviet Republic as 1917 slipped into 1918, and as poets and actors, as writers and painters, as designers and philosophers swept aside the old clichés and tried to produce – out of the muck of ages – a new sense of the world. It was as if the clouds had parted and the sun was shining, as if the shoulders that had slumped in the depression of wartime and factory-time could now lift up. The Soviet Republic, in December 1917, passed a decree on popular education to end illiteracy and ignorance in the country. Free education was obligatory, said the decree. The point was not simply to learn to read and write; it was to make art. Every school and college developed, for instance, a photography club and a painting club. Students went to see the great art of the past in museums, and they saw the work of the Soviet artists in galleries. Vladimir Tatlin, the painter and stage designer, dismissed the entire debate that made art stand aside from politics; ‘to accept or not to accept the October Revolution? There was no such question for me. I organically merged into active, creative, social, and pedagogical life’.
Between 28 January and 2 February 2020, our Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research team and the International People’s Assembly held a Meeting on Art and Culture in People’s Struggles in Cuernavaca, México. Thirty-two people came from fifteen countries, most of them militant artists who discussed a range of issues, from broad questions of art and politics to the narrower focus on street theatre in India and graphic arts since the Cuban revolution.
This meeting builds on both the tradition of the art of national liberation and on the urgency of making art out of the popular struggles that now enfold the world. Cuernavaca is in Morelos, the land that produced Emiliano Zapata, who led the Mexican Revolution of 1911 and then – having gained Mexico City – went back to his rural life. This is the land of the ancient pyramids of Tepoztlán; the land of a once vibrant cultural centre that welcomed exiled Latin American and Mexican artists alike, such the communist muralist David Alfaro Siqueiros (1896-1974). His energy manifested itself into the desire amongst those who came to the meeting to build an international network of artists and designers. For more about this network, please be in touch with our lead designer, Tings Chak at gro.latnenitnocirteht@sgnit.
David Alfaro Siqueiros, Del Porfirismo a la Revolución (1957-1966)
On 21 February, thousands of people around the world will gather in public places for Red Books Day, which emerged from three urgencies:
To stand up against the attack on Left writers, Left publishers, and Left bookstores.
To defend the Marxist outlook against obscurantism and irrationality.
To build a network of Left publishers across the world.
At these gatherings, from Japan to Chile, people will read the Communist Manifesto in their own languages. It was on 21 February 1848 that Marx and Engels first published this remarkable text, now available in most of the world’s languages.
Ten thousand people across Tamil Nadu in India will read the text in a new Tamil translation, while thousands of people will read it across South America in Portuguese and Spanish. In Johannesburg, at The Commune, the Manifesto will be read in Zulu and Sotho; in Delhi, at May Day, it will be read in Assamese, Bengali, German, Hindi, Marathi, Malayalam, Odiya, Punjabi, Telugu, and Urdu.This is an act of audacity, a stroll into the public space to demand – in these cadaverous times – the right to write revolution in the skies.
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Vijay Prashad is an Indian historian and journalist. Prashad is the author of twenty-five books, including The Darker Nations: A People’s History of the Third World and The Poorer Nations: A Possible History of the Global South. Read other articles by Vijay, or visit Vijay’s website.
Cash from secretive Tory groups and anonymous donors played a critical role in demolishing Labour’s ‘red wall’ of northern seats, the key strategy that won the election for Boris Johnson.
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According to new research by openDemocracy, almost half a million pounds of highly targeted donations from secretive Tory funding clubs bankrolled the Conservatives’ historic gains in Labour-held constituencies in the Midlands and northern England.
Although this ‘dark money’ funding is technically legal under UK law, transparency campaigners and opposition parties have demanded a review of British election laws and called on the Conservatives to end the secrecy and publish the names of all those who bankrolled the party’s victory.
Dozens of victorious Conservative candidates in so-called ‘red wall’ seats received significant cash injections from secretive Tory funding clubs, much of it without any need to identify the donors.
Many of the same winning ‘red wall’ candidates also received cash from individual billionaires and obscure companies based in London, far from the constituencies where the money was spent.
The Conservative Party has frequently emphasised its local fundraising, telling openDemocracy that “small-scale, grassroots support” is “the bedrock of the Party”.
But the newly released Register of Members’ Financial Interests for the House of Commons reveals the extent to which winning Tory candidates were reliant on donations from super-rich party backers and ‘dark money’ from secretive funding clubs.
Companies involved in the Midlands Industrial Council – a mysterious group of Conservative business interests formed in the late 1940s to oppose Clement Attlee – donated almost £230,000 to Tory candidates, mostly in key ‘red wall’ target seats.
Another Conservative funding club, the United and Cecil, doled out £113,500 to 36 successful candidates. The political committee of London’s prestigious Carlton Club – whose honorary members include Michael Gove, Theresa May and Liam Fox – handed £48,500 to Tory candidates in at least seventeen seats. Again almost all this money went to candidates in ‘red wall’ seats.
These Conservative clubs are what is known in British law as ‘unincorporated associations’. Although they must register with the Electoral Commission when they make political contributions of more than £25,000 in a calendar year, they do not have to register donations made to candidates in elections.
Labour shadow cabinet secretary Jon Trickett told openDemocracy that the law needs urgent change: “The simple fact is that our electoral law is riddled with loopholes and simply not fit to contain the explosion of dark and unaccountable money that has contaminated politics.”
The Scottish National Party’s Deidre Brock said that there had been “a coordinated movement of large amounts of cash from concealed donors to frontline Conservative political campaigns” and called on the Electoral Commission to investigate “to see what laws have been broken and the true original sources of this cash should be published”.
Steve Goodrich, head of research at Transparency International, said: “The law should be changed to provide much greater clarity over the source of political donations made by unincorporated associations.”
Electoral regulations set a tight spending limit of around £15,000 in total per seat, so these donations of £2,000 to £7,000 per seat, from multiple sources, would have been enough make all the difference.
Few Tory funding clubs gave any money to candidates in the safe Tory seats where most are based. The Association of Conservative Clubs – a limited company, but representing Tory unincorporated associations up and down the country – sent £45,000 to at least fourteen candidates. The obscure Midlands-based Leamington Fund gave £31,000 to seven candidates.
And even relatively small Conservative clubs in the prosperous south-east sent money up north. The Tandridge Club in Surrey, for one, split £12,750 in donations between the Tory victors in Colne Valley, Delyn and the former coal-mining district of Ashfield.
Tory clubs were not the only ones bankrolling the Tories’ demolition of the ‘red wall’. Billionaires in the Conservatives’ elite Leader’s Group dining club also supported many of the same candidates in the Midlands and northern England.
Return of the MIC
Boris Johnson chose a symbolic location for his first post-election speech: Sedgefield in north-east England. On 14 December, a few days after winning a “stonking” majority, the prime minister promised voters in Tony Blair’s former constituency that he would deliver a “people’s government” and thanked former Labour supporters who had “lent” their vote to the Conservatives.
In the general election, Sedgefield returned its first Conservative MP in 84 years when local councillor Paul Howell overcame a Labour majority of more than 6,000. A £2,500 donation from the Association of Conservative Clubs helped the unexpected victory.
Ten miles east, in Bishop Auckland, successful Conservative candidate Dehenna Davison received almost £25,000 in recordable donations, all from Tory funding clubs and major party donors.
The 26-year-old Davison, seen as a rising Conservative star, received £5,000 from J.C. Bamford Excavators Ltd, better known as JCB. The donation from the mechanical digger firm – headed by the billionaire Tory peer Lord Bamford – was listed as coming “via the Midlands Industrial Council”.
The Midlands Industrial Council is one of the longest running, and most secretive, Conservative funders. Initially set up in 1946 to oppose Labour leader Clement Attlee’s nationalisation programme, this unincorporated association has long shunned publicity: for decades it refused to print a members’ list, until a 2006 leak of 22 names.
Since new disclosure rules took effect in 2001, donations from the Midlands Industrial Council seem to have dwindled. The Electoral Commission lists only one donation from it since 2008 – a relatively modest £10,000 to Torbay Conservative MP Kevin Foster, in 2015.
However, openDemocracy’s research found that the Midland Industrial Council was involved in a string of donations in 2019 – all sums received from other organisations, but given via the council to Tory candidates overwhelmingly in ‘red wall’ seats.
These named companies linked to the council include the former Tory peer Lord Edmiston’s IM Group Ltd, J.C. Bamford Excavators Ltd and developer Nicholas Cooper’s NFC Homes (East) Ltd. Cumulatively, these firms gave £229,500 to Conservative candidates.
Lord Bamford’s brother Mark personally donated £45,000 to five Tory MPs, while the JCB scion’s son Jo gave £10,000 to two successful Tory candidates.
Alongside the Bamfords, the billionaire Cayzer family of financiers donated over £60,000 to six successful candidates, mainly via the Cayzer Trust Company Ltd, but also as individuals such as Elizabeth Gilmour (née Cayzer) and Charles Cayzer. Again these candidates were predominantly contesting traditional Labour seats in northern England.
Long-standing Tory donor Stalbury Trustees gave £116,000 to 26 successful candidates.
Stalbury Trustees is a private unlimited company, registered in a Mayfair solicitor’s office since 1979. Its four directors are the seventh Marquess of Salisbury (a former Tory Leader in the Lords), his younger brother, the seventh Earl of Verulam, and stockbroker David Barnett, who lists his occupation as “gentleman”.
Elsewhere, former Conservative treasurer, Leader’s Group member and multi-millionaire Lord Harris of Peckham continued to donate generously to target seats, giving £48,500 to thirteen successful candidates.
One major new donor also gave similar amounts: racing tycoon Lawrence Neil Tomlinson, worth a reported half a billion pounds, who donated £40,500 split across thirteen Tory candidates.
One of the most mysterious features of the new donor data is the prominence of a little-known company, D Contracts Ltd, which gave £26,500 to eight successful Tory candidates. D Contracts has never given registerable donations before, shares a registered address in Trafford with over 250 other companies and describes itself as a “business support services” company.
D Contracts has one director, Cristinel Drug, a Knightsbridge-based Romanian citizen who has no obvious record of previous political activity in the UK. Drug owns construction company Tecton-DHC Ltd, a client redeveloping a major Knightsbridge site around the corner from Harrods.
Well-funded seats
As well as sending money to key Labour-held seats, many of the same Tory funding clubs and major donors also diverted money to shore up key Conservative-Labour battleground seats including Corby, Crewe and Nantwich, Derby North, Dewsbury, High Peak, Ipswich, Keighley, Lincoln, Peterborough, Stroud, Vale of Clwyd, Warrington South and Wolverhampton South West.
Other well-funded seats were gains from the 2017 general election, which needed defending, such as Banff and Buchan, Mansfield, Moray, North East Derbyshire, Stoke-on-Trent South, and Walsall North.
In Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland, the 2017 Conservative gain saw an eye-watering £64,600 donated to the local party in the year running up to December’s election campaign. A variety of donors gave the money, including private equity tycoon Jeremy Hosking (a major donor to the Brexit Party only a few months earlier), Kilfrost Chemicals CEO Gary Lydiate and Ukrainian-born energy mogul Alexander Temerko (via his company, Aquind Ltd). Stalbury Trustees and the United and Cecil Club, mentioned above, also gave to this local party.
The donations seem to have paid off. While the Conservative vote across the UK only rose by 1.2%, the Tory vote in Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland jumped 9.2%, with the majority increasing from 1,020 to 11,626.
The four Conservative gains from the Liberal Democrats at the last election – Brecon and Radnorshire, Carshalton and Wallington, Eastbourne, and North Norfolk – all saw significant funding from Tory funding clubs and billionaire donors, too.
Intriguingly, a few ‘red wall’ seats which fell to the Tories, such as Blyth Valley, Burnley, Durham North West, Leigh, Redcar, and Rother Valley, received no declarable donations. It is unclear whether this was because they enjoyed central party funding instead, or is merely a sign of unexpected electoral success.
There were a few significant donations in safe Conservative seats too. While Lord Harris of Peckham typically donated around £2,000-£3,000 to candidates in marginal seats he also gave £10,000 to Michael Gove who was defending ultra-safe Surrey Heath.
Transparency campaigners have previously raised concerns about unincorporated associations’ role in political funding. If they are registered, these groups are supposed to report all gifts they receive over £7,500. But the last time a donation to an unincorporated association was registered was in November 2014.
Reacting to openDemocracy’s research, MPs and campaigners called for action to prevent unincorporated associations funnelling dark money into British politics.
Labour’s Jon Trickett said: “For years incredibly wealthy donors have used shell companies and unincorporated associations to funnel anonymous donations into our political process, undermining transparency and democracy, often to benefit the Conservative Party.
“In the 2019 general election I announced a series of policies to combat this head on, and these are more necessary now than ever.”
Steve Goodrich, head of research at Transparency International, said: “Unincorporated associations make it far too easy for those shy of publicity to withhold their names from public view.
“Whilst this may be within the current rules, it also shows the rules aren’t achieving their aim: providing transparency and probity over the origins of money in politics. Having this information out in the open is crucial to understanding potential access, influence and power in our democracy.”
The SNP’s Deidre Brock said that the Conservative donations were “clearly run at a UK level and it should follow the same reporting rules that the rest of us follow in reporting donations during election campaigns.
“From the hidden cash of the DUP’s Brexit campaign to the fortunes clearly sloshing around Tory candidates, dark money is leaving a stain on UK politics that will be difficult to wash away.”
openDemocracy asked the Conservatives for comment. At the time of publication no comment had been received.
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On Wednesday, Turkey’s Erdogan threatened escalated cross-border aggression against Syria.
He ignored his regime’s illegal occupation of northern Syrian territory, support for anti-government jihadists, and his revanchist aims, wanting Syrian territory bordering Turkey annexed.
That’s what his phony “safe zone” scheme is all about, unrelated to helping Syrian refugees he doesn’t give a hoot about.
An earlier Business and Human Rights Resource Center (B&HRRC) report accused his regime of exploiting Syrian refugees in Turkey as near-chattel workers, including young children, profiting from their misery, paying them sub-poverty starvation wages and no benefits.
Even pro-Western Human Rights Watch earlier accused Turkey of “rampant” child labor exploitation at a time before Ankara’s relations with Washington soured.
State-permitted or sponsored sweatshops exist worldwide, Turkey a notorious example, a police state run by thuggish wannabe sultan Erdogan, ruling with an iron fist, threatening Syria’s sovereignty.
On Wednesday, Netanyahu regime war minister Naftali Bennett threatened “escalated” aggression against Syria — on the phony pretext of confronting an Iranian threat that doesn’t exist.
Zionist zealot Bennett is more extremist than Netanyahu, espousing neo-Kahanist notions, including contempt for human rights, the rule of law, while supporting might over right.
Time and again, Bennett threatens Iran and Syria. Despite an uneasy relationship with Netanyahu, the prime minister appointed him war minister to buy his loyalty that’s not for sale.
At the time, Haaretz said Netanyahu and Bennett struck “a cynical bargain” even for Israel’s extreme politics, a move the PM hoped would aid his political survival.
Bennett represents settler interests. The son of US immigrants, he’s one of Israel’s super-rich class.
Earlier he led the Jewish state’s hardline Yesha Council umbrella group, representing settler interests. It replaced Gush Emunim (Block of the Faithful).
GE adherents believed all Judea, Samaria, and Gaza land belongs exclusively to Jews, the view shared by Yesha Council hardliners.
Expanding settlements and displacing their longtime Palestinian residents reflects core Israeli policy.
Bennett encourages settlers to shoot Palestinians, earlier bragging about “kill(ing) lots of Arabs in my life” during military service.
On Tuesday, he claimed the Netanyahu regime “identif(ied) signs of loosening and recalculation by Iran regarding its plans in Syria (sic),” adding:
“We just started and we will increase. We will go from a defensive concept to an offensive concept – weakening, tiring and erasing (Iran’s) head by weakening its tentacles.”
“For us, Syria is not only a threat but also an opportunity. They send forces there and try to exhaust us, but we can turn the downside into an advantage.”
“We have intelligence and operational superiority, and we are telling Iran clearly: ‘Get out of Syria. You have nothing to look for there.’ ”
Iran has political, economic and military ties to Syria, the latter by military advisors, aiding government forces combat the scourge of US/NATO/Turkish/Israeli/Saudi-supported terrorism.
In full compliance with UN Charter principles and other international law, Iran supports Syrian’s liberating struggle against foreign supported jihadists.
According to Bennett, the Netanyahu regime and IDF are “rais(ing) the stakes for Iran…to prevent an Iranian presence on our northern border” — despite no threat its diplomats and military advisors pose to Israel.
A new IDF Iran Command was formed to deal with the nonexistent threat, its tactics perhaps to intensify hostile Israeli actions against Tehran, including cyberwar.
At a Wednesday Security Council Session on Syria, Trump regime UN envoy Kelly Craft said the following:
The US “will not spare any effort, including working with allies, to isolate (Damascus) diplomatically and economically…”
Syria is Obama’s war escalated by Trump. Ongoing for nine years, there’s no prospect for resolution because bipartisan US hardliners reject restoration of peace and stability to the war-torn country.
At Wednesday’s Security Council session, Russian UN envoy Vassily Nebenzia explained the key role Moscow is playing in resolving years of conflict.
He stressed the following:
“(I)t is necessary to stop protecting (jidadists), including those from UNSC-listed organizations such as” al-Nusra under whatever other names it calls itself.
Russian and Syrian forces captured Western, Turkish, and Israeli weapons and munitions in liberated areas.
Many were found “in schools and hospitals converted into combat positions.”
As long as the West, Turkey, Israel and the Saudis support jihadists, conflict will continue endlessly.
Time and again during Security Council sessions on Syria, nations opposed to its sovereignty and territorial integrity play “the card of civilian suffering and longterm truce every time when the terrorists (they) cherish are in danger,” said Nebenzia.
“(Y)ou stubbornly keep speaking about deliberate bombings of schools, hospitals and refugee camps” — phony accusations that ignore reality on the ground, turning a blind eye to efforts by Syrian and Russian forces to protect civilians who are attacked by US/Turkish supported jihadists.
In the past 24 hours alone, Russia’s reconciliation center in Syria recorded 29 shelling attacks by terrorists against government forces and civilians — ignored by the West and establishment media.
Russia and Syria alone established humanitarian corridors for civilians to reach safe areas free from captivity by jihadists as human shields.
Nebenzia also stressed the importance of beginning post-conflict reconstruction in liberated areas, including hospitals, schools and other infrastructure.
Yet the Trump regime and its imperial partners imposed sanctions on Syrian companies involved in reconstruction, an attempt to undermine their efforts.
Russia continues going all-out to restore peace and stability to Syria — what the US and its imperial partners want prevented.
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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.”
Comments Off on The War On Syria is Not Over: SAA Forces and Russia Confront US Sponsored “Jihadists”, Turkey’s Phony “Safe Zone”, Israel Threatens “Escalated Aggression”
On the surface it appeared that the Director-General of the UN World Health Organization (WHO) has acted swiftly and seriously about the spreading coronavirus health emergency spreading across China. He has gone to meet with Chinese leaders to discuss the situation and on January 30, after his talks in Beijing and meetings with the WHO advisory body, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus declared the coronavirus a “Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC).” What the WHO has really done and especially the remarks of the Director-General, give cause for concern that he is motivated by something other than world health.
There are still many open questions surrounding the outbreak of what is being called 2019 Novel Coronavirus (2019 nCov) that was first noted sometime in December in Wuhan city in central China. By about January 20 severe cases of respiratory disease were spreading at such a rate that Beijing took drastic measures including canceling major social events of the Chinese New Year celebrations and imposing a cordon sanitaire around Wuhan, a city of 11 million on January 23 in a desperate bid to contain whatever was spreading. The quarantine however was imposed after some 5 million residents had reportedly already left to visit relatives outside in the largest holiday in China.
On January 28 Tedros was in Beijing meeting with President Xi Jinping to discuss the situation.
By the time of Tedros’ January 30 declaration that the coronavirus situation in China warranted proclaiming a “Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC),” a full week had passed since the Wuhan lockdown was declared. Such a public health lockdown had never in modern times been attempted. Indeed, on the day Wuhan was sealed off by the authorities, Gauden Galea, WHO China representative, told Reuters, “The lockdown of 11 million people is unprecedented in public health history, so it is certainly not a recommendation the WHO has made.”
By the time WHO head Tedros arrived however, the Director-General had nothing but praise for the extraordinary measures being taken by Beijing to contain and deal with the situation. Back in WHO Geneva headquarters Tedros announced that China is “setting a new standard” for outbreak response, he said. “It’s actually doing more than China is required to do,” he added. But then he made the inexplicable statement that other countries were not warranted to ban air travel to China as precaution. He declared,” It’s not a time for judgment… This is a time for solidarity, not stigma,” refusing to recommend any international restrictions on travel or trade with China.
What that should mean is not at all clear, only that he clearly was trying to dampen world response at a critical time. As the leading international health authority, the UN WHO carries considerable influence over national responses to any such health danger. This makes Tedros’ condemnation of airline travel bans more noteworthy. It raises the question whether the WHO head has an undisclosed agenda.
Who is WHO’s Tedros?
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus was voted WHO Director-General in 2017 replacing the controversial Dr Margaret Chan of Hong Kong. He is the first African to head the health agency and the first one not a medical doctor. He has a BA degree in biology at the University of Asmara in Eritrea. He then served in a junior position, at the Ministry of Health under the Marxist dictatorship of Mengistu. After the fall of Mengistu in 1991 Tedros went to the UK and took a Doctorate of Philosophy (PhD) in Community Health from the University of Nottingham in 2000, with a doctoral dissertation on “The effects of dams on malaria transmission in Tigray Region, northern Ethiopia.”
He then went on to become Minister of Health from 2005 to 2012 under Prime Minister Meles Zenawi. There he met former President Bill Clinton and began a close collaboration with Clinton and the Clinton Foundation and its Clinton HIV/AIDS Initiative (CHAI). He also developed a close relation with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. As health minister, Tedros would also chair the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria that was co-founded by the Gates Foundation. The Global Fund has been riddled with fraud and corruption scandals.
Today the largest donors to the WHO are the Gates Foundation and its associated GAVI Alliance for vaccination. With backers like Gates and Clinton it was no surprise that Tedros went on, after a stint as Ethiopian Foreign Minister, to win the post of WHO Director-General, this despite being the first non-physician to hold the position. During Tedros’ three year campaign to win the WHO post he was charged with having covered up three major epidemics of cholera while health minister in Ethiopia, mislabeling the cases as “acute watery diarrhea” (AWD)—a symptom of cholera—in an attempt to play down the significance of the epidemics, charges he denied.
“Don’t stigmatize…”
As reports of the spread of confirmed and suspected cases of the novel coronavirus in other countries grew in the past several weeks, numerous airlines took the precaution to temporarily cancel their flights to and from China. Tedros, while officially declaring the Wuhan novel coronavirus as a “Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC),” (in 2009 the WHO called it a Level 6 Global Pandemic), sharply and repeatedly criticized other countries for allowing air travel to China to be cut. On February 7 the China Peoples’ Daily reported Tedros stating, his disapproval of imposing travel bans on China, stressing that “such restrictions can have the effect of increasing fear and stigma, with little public health benefit.”
Important in containing any epidemic is taking action very early in the detection of the disease.
Ethiopian Airlines
There is one country where the national air carrier has not cut flights to China to this date—Tedros’ own Ethiopia. Ethiopian Airlines continues to fly daily into Ethiopia from major Chinese cities. At the Addis Ababa airport the passengers are only given a minimal temperature test, something for a disease with a 14 day incubation period is hardly sufficient to limit the spread of the pathogen to Africa. While 59 other air carriers from 44 different countries have all grounded their flights to China, Ethiopian Airlines insists that it will follow directives from the World Health Organization and continue its daily China flights.
The entry point for air travel between China and Africa is Ethiopia. The Chinese have built a new airport in Addis Ababa and it is the “gateway” for travel between many African countries like Zambia and China. Ethiopia’s Bole International airport sees on average 1500 passengers per day arriving from China. There are an estimated one million Chinese working in Africa from Zambia to Nigeria, and Tedros’ Ethiopia is their place to enter. The problem is that Ethiopia is an extremely poor country and it, like most of Africa is ill-prepared to handle any outbreak of coronavirus. Despite the fact that Ethiopian citizens have protested at the continuing China air travel risk, the government continues to use WHO and Tedros’ statements to keep business flowing. In an alarm signal, the first reported case of coronavirus in Botswana was of an African student who came from China on an Ethiopian Airlines plane.
With the daily traffic through Ethiopia’s Bole International Airport of some 1,500 China passengers the health system of the country is ill-prepared to take adequate precautions. It is one of the poorest countries in Africa after decades of civil war. The largest investor by far is China which sees Ethiopia as a centerpiece of its African investment strategy for the Belt and Road.
Is it because he does not want to jeopardize that economic relation that WHO head Tedros does not pressure his own state airline to take short-term precautions by declaring a moratorium on its China flights? At the time he was elected to WHO Tedros was a member of the politburo of the minority Tigray People’s Liberation Front, which had ruled Ethiopia since 1991 with an iron fist. Is he today more concerned with the financial health of Ethiopian Airways and the future of China investments in his country for his party allies than with the precautionary principles of public health in a growing international crisis that shows little sign of being under control? Indeed, now in the past days Tedros has shown signs of growing alarm, noting that the WHO has seen “concerning incidents” of onward spreading among people with no history of travel to China, noting it “could be the spark that becomes a bigger fire.” We must watch closely to see if that translates into a changed WHO policy towards not only the China flights of Ethiopian Airlines.
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F. William Engdahl is strategic risk consultant and lecturer, he holds a degree in politics from Princeton University and is a best-selling author on oil and geopolitics, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook” where this article was originally published. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).
Featured image is from NEO
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Author Name: F. William Engdahl
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Year: 2007
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This skilfully researched book focuses on how a small socio-political American elite seeks to establish control over the very basis of human survival: the provision of our daily bread. “Control the food and you control the people.”
This is no ordinary book about the perils of GMO. Engdahl takes the reader inside the corridors of power, into the backrooms of the science labs, behind closed doors in the corporate boardrooms.
The author cogently reveals a diabolical world of profit-driven political intrigue, government corruption and coercion, where genetic manipulation and the patenting of life forms are used to gain worldwide control over food production. If the book often reads as a crime story, that should come as no surprise. For that is what it is.
“Experience shows us that every man invested with power is apt to abuse it, and to carry his authority as far as it will go”. —Montesquieu (1689-1755), 1748.
“Where you have a concentration of power in a few hands —all too frequently —men with the mentality of gangsters get control.” —Lord Acton (1834-1902), 1866.
“The totalitarian mass leaders based their propaganda on the correct psychological assumption that, under such conditions, one could make people believe the most fantastic statements one day, and trust if the next day they were given irrefutable proof of their falsehood, they would take refuge in cynicism; instead of deserting the leaders who had lied to them, they would protest that they had known all along the statement was a lie and would admire the leaders for their superior tactical cleverness.“ —Hannah Arendt (1906-1975), (in ‘The Origins of Totalitarianism’, 1951, Part 3, Ch. 2, p. 80).
“If this [U.S.] government ever became a tyrant, if a dictator ever took charge in this country, the technological capacity that the intelligence community has given the government could enable it to impose total tyranny, and there would be no way to fight back because the most careful effort to combine together in resistance to the government, no matter how privately it was done, is within the reach of the government to know.“ —Frank Church (1924-1984), American lawyer and U.S. Senator, chairman of the Church Senate Committee, (in an interview with TV program ‘Meet The Press’, Aug. 17, 1975)
“When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying the cross.” —Sinclair Lewis (1885-1951), American author (in ‘It Can’t Happen Here’, 1935, a novel about the election of a fascist to the American presidency).
Introduction
Wednesday, February 5, 2020 will come to be remembered as a date of historic significance for the United States.Indeed, this is the date when a Senate majority of 52 Republican Senators (with the notable exception of Sen. Mitt Romney), voted against convicting President Donald Trump for abuse of power and obstruction of justice, in the impeachment trialof the latter. That is also the date when Donald Trump interpreted such exoneration as a blank check to move towards a fully autocratic presidency.
Thus, in open defiance of the American Constitution and of America’s checks-and-balances system, Trump’s Republican enablers have placed the American people before a fait accompli and the only question now is to see if this dangerous drifttoward autocracy will be condoned or reversed in the next presidential election of November 3rd.
How far will Donald Trump push the United States towards autocracy?
According to the well-known duck test, “If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it probably is a duck“!
President Donald Trump is a most excessiveperson in anything he does or says. For example, he likes to take the so-called authoritarian “Mussolini pose”. He also likes to embark on totalitarian style “purges” of persons working for the United States government who do not heel to his commands, —persons he considers his “enemies”.
He surrounds himself with hard-core sycophants, lackeys and puppets, who are expected to give him a loyalty pledge, not a pledge to the U.S. Constitution or to the American people. Consequently, it is said that the U.S. under Trump is turning into a “banana republic”!
Donald Trump, the law and the privatization of the U.S. government
Mr. Donald Trump has often used the courts to his personal advantage. He has arbitrarily and unprecedentedly attacked the courtsand about everybodyelse who stands in his way. He has second-guessed prosecutors and contested judges’ decisions, and he has expected favors to help his felon“friends” receive reduced sentences. This is showing an elevated level of disrespect and contempt for the rule of law, and it is undermining the American legal systemin a big way.
Mr. Trump has also declared that the Secretary of the Department of Justice should de facto work as his own personal attorney, and not be the independent chief lawyer of the federal government of the United States. This could have the effect of destroying the integrity and independence of the Justice Department and its reputation.
Indeed, it is to be feared that the DOJunder William Barr is going to be Mr. Trump’s weapon of choice against his so-called “enemies”. What Trump is doing is privatizing the U.S. Department of Justice for his own personal benefits. Fearing the worst, more than 1,100 former U.S. federal prosecutors and officials have pressed Mr. Barr to resign.
Donald Trump is also showing a profound lack of judgment when he does not hesitate to tweetabout pending criminal cases before the courts. Donald Trump seems to really believe that because he is president, he is above the law. Do Americans accept that? They did not accept it when Richard Nixon said, “if the President does it, it’s legal”! Would they do it now?
The current American president constantly attacks the freedom of the press, which is protected by the U.S. Constitution, calling journalists “enemies of the people” —an expression used in Nazi Germany. Donald Trump also shamelessly befriends other countries’ dictatorsand autocrats, while making fun of democratic leaders. And, to top it all, Trump has used in public the hubristic Nazi sloganof “God is on our side”, (‘Gott mit uns’), … etc.
—Well. One gets the picture, if one is not totally blind by partisanship or embroiled in his emotional cult of personality. Ever since he took the oath of office, with his inappropriate daily tweets and reprehensible pronouncements, Donald Trump has been a daily scandal in American politics, and his behavior is going from bad to worse.
As an authoritarian, Donald Trump is going further and further toward turning the USA into a one-man government, with himself as an intolerant, ultra nationalist tin pot dictator-in-the-making, who openly yearns for unchecked, and if possible, absolute power. His plan, notwithstanding the U.S. constitution and its founding principles, is to transform the USA into a militaristic and neo-fascist state, with all the trappings, under his control, and with as few constraints as possible.
He is, by far, the most unprincipled and the most dangerous occupant of the White House that the United States ever had. He has no qualms in bulldozing American institutions if he feels such institutions are an impediment to him exercising full powers.
In this post-impeachment era, Mr. Trump feels unleashed and he thinks that he can do whatever he wants, including meddling in the functioning of the justice system of the United States.
Conclusion
As the duck test above wisely teaches, “if a politician thinks, talks and acts like an autocrat, that is probably because he is an autocrat”!
Such a politician can be expected to undermine the very democratic institutions (Congress, the courts, the press, etc.) that stand in his way. Maine Republican senator Susan Collins has been much chastised for claiming, after the Senate impeachment trial, that Donald Trump“has learned from this case … a pretty big lesson … I believe that he will be much more cautious in the future.” She should have known better, i.e. that after a personal setback, Donald Trump always doubles down and that, in fact, he would get much worse as time goes by.
Therefore, it is time for Americans to hear a wake up call before it is too late.
When constitutional democracy is dying under one’s very eyes, the least a concerned citizen can do is to stand up and denounce the forces whose aim is to destroy democracy and replace it with an authoritarian regime. Please keep in mind that the Second World War(1939-1945) was fought at very high costs to defend the principles of democracy and liberty. How could one accept that these principles could be undermined from within?
If one is comfortable with corruption, abuse of power and amorality in politics, if one accepts that the U.S. Congress could be by-stepped and the courts compromised, and if one does not mind if an autocratic politician wants to be a one-man government and if he shows disrespect for the constitution and its core principle of division of power, he or she may be tempted to vote for such an autocraticcandidate.
Yes, I know. The stock market is up and unemployment is low. As an economist, let me tell you something. First, one should not get obsessed with the stock market. The current stock market bubbleis largely the artificial result of huge tax cuts to corporations. The latter are buying back their shares with public money, while the government is going deep into debt. Add to that artificially low, sometimes negative, interest rates pushed down by central banks in a panic over debt levels, and you have the result that you see.
Secondly, the current low unemployment rates are mainly the demographic resultof baby-boomer workers going into retirement in droves, thus creating a shortfall in the supply of labor in many professions and trades. —Don’t be fooled by these mirages and slight of hand.
Yes, I know also how clumsy and amateurish the retrenched Democratic establishmentis. One has only to see the complex rules, based on proportional representation, chosen to select a Democratic presidential candidate in 2020. Such rules seem to have been designed to divide the democratic electorate and weaken the Democratic presidential candidate to the utmost.
Nevertheless, if a citizen values democracy, liberty and freedom, for the present as well as for the future, he or she should think twice before giving Mr. Trump a second chance. Otherwise, this would be like playing dangerously with fire.
Indeed, as Hannah Arendt wrote, “If someone cannot be mobilized when freedom is threatened, it is because nothing can mobilize him.”
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The shifting sands of the Syrian conflict have left many wondering what might happen next between the Kurds, the US, and Russia inside Syria. I reached out to, Professor Tim Anderson, an Australian political economist, and author of “The Dirty War on Syria: Washington, Regime Change and Resistance”, “Countering War Propaganda of the Dirty War on Syria”, “Axis of Resistance: towards an independent Middle East” for some answers. Despite Dr. Anderson’s busy schedule, he replied to my interview questions.
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Steven Sahiounie: What is the possible future of the Syrian Kurds, given the fact they invited the US military to invade Syria?
Tim Anderson: Before assuming that all Syrian Kurds are separatists and collaborators, we should first observe their historical character. Before the 2011 conflict, Jordi Tejel classified Syrian Kurdish identities as comprising Arab nationalist, communist, and Kurdish nationalist, with Syrian Kurd leaders Husni Za’im and Adib al-Shishakli campaigning for a non-sectarian ‘Greater Syria’. Turkish Kurd influence began early in the 20th century, as Kurdish culture was repressed by the post-Ottoman Turkish state. Turkish Kurds took refuge in Syria after their failed rebellion in 1925, and the idea of a Syrian Kurdish party first came in 1956 from the Turkish refugee Osman Sabri. Another Turkish refugee Nûredîn Zaza became president of that party. Let’s remember also that two great heroes, Salah ad-Din and Sheikh Ramadan al Bouti, both Syrian Kurds, are buried on the grounds of the Ummayad Mosque.
Even today the Kurdish separatist movement in Syria is still run by the Turkish Kurds. For all his madness and delusions, Turkish leader Erdogan is right about this: the idea of ‘Rojava’ in northern Syrian would have been simply a stepping stone for the Kurdistan project in Turkey. However, advances by the SAA, backed by Russia and Iran, have removed any possibility of a ‘Rojava’ excision from Syrian territory. Historically the project was doomed because (one) the Kurdish groups in the north never had an exclusive claim to those lands (there are several others groups, often outnumbering the Kurds), (two) the separatist movement in Syria has been overdetermined by the politics of and migration from Turkey, and (three) intervention by the US has only raised separatist expectations while damaging Kurdish relations with other Syrian groups.
In the current circumstances, SAA advances and retreats by the USA have driven a northern group of Kurdish separatists back to the SAA and the Russians, while the other group in the east maintains its collaboration with US occupying forces. That will disintegrate when the Syrian people and the SAA take back more territory, when Iraqi-Syrian integration strengthens, and when US troops are forced out.
In the end, there may be some political accommodation of Kurdish culture and language and some level of local administration, in the revised Syrian constitution; but this will not likely be at the expense of other groups, like the Arabs, Armenians, Assyrians, Circassians, and others.
SS: Will the situation in the east of Syria escalate between the Syrian Arab Army and the US military?
TA: US occupation forces are meeting regular low-level confrontations with the NDF, the Russians and local residents. There has been some violence but so far this has not escalated drastically. Both sides have backed down. The Russians remain honest brokers in this situation. Since the US is under pressure and is gradually retreating in both Syria and Iraq, I expect the patience and management of the situation to continue. We saw Trump back down after Iran’s strike on their airbase in Iraq, they have made a partial withdrawal from Syria and they are speaking of a partial withdrawal from Iraq. If they stall they will face continued local pressures, such as in Syria’s east and Baghdad’s green zone.
SS: Tension between Damascus and Ankara is at the highest level. Will the Russians stabilize the situation, or we will see a war between the two sides?
TA: The moves by Erdogan are difficult to understand. The al Qaeda gangs he backs are rapidly losing ground in Aleppo and Idlib, and he has made no new advances elsewhere in northern Syria. Yet he persists with his failed caliphate project, perhaps to prolong the conflict damage the minds of those (especially young people) in Syria’s north.
Erdogan has no legitimacy in Syria, other than that given by Russia in its peacekeeping agreement, which Erdogan has trashed. The Russian military admits that Erdogan is the main obstacle in Idlib.
Despite this madness, I believe Russia will discipline Erdogan, hold him at bay while his gangs are destroyed. Much the same happened with the US and Israeli backed gangs in the south. In the end, the US allowed them to be smashed by the SAA. Erdogan will sacrifice the takfiri gangs, who these days are moved around by money. Both Kurdish militia and SAA told me late last year that there was “no difference” in any respect between the Free Army, Nusra and DAESH. They are directed and redirected by money. However, the foreign component does decrease, as money decreases; this happened with the SDF in Syria’s north.
SS: What is the role of the US in the tension between Damascus and Ankara?
TA: Washington is losing in Syria and knows it is losing but, as a senior Syrian General told me late last year, they want to prolong the game and make the Syrian people suffer. They want the world to see the price of resistance. Yet they are retreating, as they maintain bold words.
For all his madness, Erdogan will remain alive to signals from Washington. He has had US permission to continue with this game, so far.
But the region is shifting. Iran, Syria and the Resistance in Lebanon have held firm. The Resistance in Iraq gained tremendous cohesion with the murder of Muhandis and Soleimani. All the gains the US had made in Iraq – with street protests, blaming Iran, etc – that all went down the drain when they murdered those heroes. Then Iran hit the US airbase directly and, by the discipline of the strike, contained US retaliation. The region now openly speaks of expelling the enemy from the entire region. Things are changing. So I believe that, as Erdogan is forced to retreat in northern Syria and as Washington is forced to retreat from the region, the Resistance Axis will steadily impose its own terms.
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Dr. Tim Anderson is Director of the Sydney-based Centre for Counter Hegemonic Studies. He has worked at Australian universities for more than 30 years, teaching, researching and publishing on development, human rights and self-determination in the Asia-Pacific, Latin America and the Middle East. In 2014 he was awarded Cuba’s medal of friendship. He is Australia and Pacific representative for the Latin America based Network in Defence of Humanity. His most recent books are: Land and Livelihoods in Papua New Guinea (2015), The Dirty War on Syria (2016), Global Research, 2015, now published in ten languages; Countering War Propaganda of the Dirty War on Syria (2017) and Axis of Resistance: towards an independent Middle East (2019).
Winston Churchill said that Russia was “a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma.”Having read two contrasting news reports of attitudes in Russia, I understand what Churchill meant.
General Valery Gerasimov, chairman of the Russian General Staff, has concluded from Washington’s many NATO intensified drills on Russia’s border that Washington and its NATO puppet states are preparing for a major conflict.In a briefing to foreign military attaches in Moscow, Gerasimov said that the increased number and scale of military exercises conducted by NATO members indicates that the alliance “is purposefully training its troops to be engaged in a major military conflict.” See this.
The Kremlim’s spokesperson said that the Russian government trusts the opinion of General Gerasimov.
To be clear, based on analyzed evidence the Russian military sees Washington and its vassals preparing for war with Russia. The Russian government states that it trusts the opinion of the Russian military leadership.
Yet, a contemporaneous poll published by the Levada Center, an independent Russian pollster, reports that 80% of Russians see Washington and its NATO vassals as “friends.” See this.
“Only 3% of Russian respondents said they see the West as Russia’s enemy, Levada said. Another 16% said they view the West as a rival.
“Two-thirds of Levada’s respondents (67%) said Russia should treat the West as a “partner,” while 11% said Russia should treat the West as a “friend,” according to the Kommersant business daily’s breakdown of the data.”
The extraordinary difference between the view of the Russian general staff and ordinary Russians is hard to explain. Who is communicating with the Russian people?Their leaders? Or the Western funded NGOs and media that feed Western propaganda to the Russian people?Are the Russian people still listening to the Voice of America?
If these contrasting news reports are correct, then Russia is faced with the fact that the awareness of the government that Washington and its European vassals are an enemy intent on war is not shared by the Russian population. This implies a total failure of communication between the Russian government committed to Russian national sovereignty and the Russian people who apparently see no risk of being colonized by their friends in the West.
How can the Russian people, humiliated by American sanctions and endless denunciations of their elected president, who led them out of American captivity, and threatened by Washington’s nuclear missiles on their border, possiblly believe in friendship and partnership with Washington?
If the polls are correct, and the Russian people do not understand Washington’s hegemonic impulse, Russian sovereignty is not a sure thing.
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Dr. Paul Craig Roberts writes on his blog, PCR Institute for Political Economy, where this article was originally published.
Like Julian Assange, Chelsea Manning is a victim of police state injustice.
She’s been imprisoned since last spring and fined $1,000 daily for invoking her constitutional right to remain silent — refusing to give grand jury testimony against Assange that could be self-incriminating.
The right to remain silent is constitutionally guaranteed. It’s affirmed by the European Convention on Human Rights. Legal systems of other nations affirm it.
It’s what Miranda rights are all about in the US. Police detainees can invoke the right to refuse answering questions asked.
Its purpose is to avoid self-incrimination, along with the right to be represented by counsel for guidance when interrogated.
The US grand jury system is flagrantly unconstitutional, what the Supreme Court should have ruled against long ago for violating the First, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, Eighth, and Fourteenth Amendments.
The system lets prosecutors manipulate proceedings to get indictments. Their career advancement depends on them.
Americans can be prosecuted for claimed association with “undesirable group(s).”
They’re subjected to unreasonable searches and seizures by unchecked surveillance powers of the state, their privacy compromised.
Due process, habeas rights, and equal justice under law greatly eroded. All of the above are hallmarks of police state rule.
Manning’s First, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, and Eight Amendment rights were violated. The same goes for Julian Assange, UK actions against him based on Trump regime orders.
Subjecting Manning to unreasonable searches and seizures violated her Fourth Amendment rights.
Her Fifth Amendment rights of due process, protection from self-incrimination, and possible double jeopardy were violated.
So was her Sixth Amendment right of a public trial represented by counsel, an impartial jury, and nature of charges against her. Silence is not a crime.
Subjecting her to cruel and unusual punishments violated her Eight Amendment rights.
Demanding she testify before a grand jury in secret without counsel violated her Fifth and Sixth Amendment rights.
In a February 19 motion to the US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, the same one to try Assange if he’s extradited to the US, Manning’s attorney Moira Meltzer-Cohen petitioned the court for her release from punitive incarceration, a procedure called a Grumbles motion, saying:
“A witness who refuses to cooperate with a grand jury subpoena may be held in contempt of court, and fined or incarcerated.”
“The only permissible purpose for sanctions under the civil contempt statute is to coerce a witness to comply with the subpoena.”
“If compliance is impossible, either because the grand jury is no longer in existence, or because the witness is incoercible, then confinement has been transformed from a coercive into a punitive sanction, and thus is in violation of the law.”
“Over the last decade, Chelsea Manning has shown unwavering resolve in the face of censure, punishment, and even threats of violence.”
“As Ms Manning’s resolve not to testify has been unwavering, and as her moral conviction has become only more developed since her confinement, her incarceration is not serving its only permissible purpose.”
“The key issue before Judge (Anthony) Trenga is whether continued incarceration could persuade Chelsea to testify.”
“Should (he) agree that Chelsea will never agree to testify, he will be compelled by the law to order her release.”
“She reiterated her refusal to cooperate with the grand jury process before this court, and has now reiterated that refusal every day for more than 11 months.”
“There is no reason to believe she will at this late date experience a change of heart; there is a profusion of evidence that she will not.”
Detaining her indefinitely for remaining silent constitutes “cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.”
A statement by Manning said she refuses to give grand jury testimony because of her “longstanding belief that (they they’re) used by federal prosecutors to harass and disrupt political opponents and activists through secrecy, coercion, and jailing without trial,” adding:
“No matter how much you punish me, I will remain confident in my decision.”
“I have been separated from my loved ones, deprived of sunlight, and could not even attend my mother’s funeral.”
“It is easier to endure these hardships now than to cooperate to win back some comfort, and live the rest of my life knowing that I acted out of self-interest and not principle.”
Manning proved she’s incoercible. She can’t be pressured, harassed or punished into doing what she believes violates her moral and ethical code of conduct.
Last November, UN Rapporteur on Torture Nils Melzer called for her immediate release in a letter to the Trump regime.
Calling her imprisonment unjustifiable, he said disproportionate fines against her should be cancelled, the amount exceeding $235,000, the figure increasing by $1,000 daily.
After a personality assessment of Manning by clinical/forensic psychologist Sara Boyd, she said the following that’s included in Meltzer-Cohen petition for her release, saying:
“Manning exhibits longstanding personality features that relate to her scrupulousness, her persistence and dedication, and her willingness to endure social disapproval as well as formal punishments.”
She cannot be coerced into doing what she believes is fundamentally wrong.
She’s willing to endure constitutionally prohibited punishment and possible financial ruin rather than compromise her core beliefs.
For the past decade, she proved that no matter how harshly she’s punished, she remains undaunted and steadfast to her principles.
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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.”
We have known for a long time that naval sonar has devastating effects on marine life but just exactly how it leads to sickness and death was a mystery till now.
In new research published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B, they discovered that the sound emitted by sonar is so intense that marine mammals will swim hundreds of miles, dive deep into the abyss or even beach themselves to flee from the sounds that are literally unbearable to them.
In particular, beaked whales are one of the marine mammals that are often found beached due to sonar testing. Prior to the 1960s, beaked whale strandings were extremely rare. But once the 60s rolled around, the Navy started to use mid-frequency active sonar (MFAS) to detect submarines.
And from the 60s onwards, whales washing up on beachings became a very common occurrence. The paper recently published is a summary of what was discussed at a 2017 meeting of beaked whale experts in the Canary Islands and revealed that sonar distresses beaked whales so often that the marine mammals ends up with nitrogen bubbles in their blood very similar to what divers would call decompression sickness or the bends. The nitrogen can cause hemorrhaging and damage to whales vital organs.
The big question that was brought up was how an animal that lives in the ocean and is adapted to perform deep water dives for hours at a time can obtain decompression sickness? Well simply, the sonar is so powerful, the animals dive deep too quickly causing the sickness.
“In the presence of sonar they are stressed and swim vigorously away from the sound source, changing their diving pattern,” lead author Yara Bernaldo de Quiros told AFP.
“The stress response, in other words, overrides the diving response, which makes the animals accumulate nitrogen. It’s like an adrenalin shot.”
The conclusions are drawn from autopsies of dead whales, although a handful of animals were killed by other threats inflicted by humans, such as collisions with ships or entanglement in fishing nets, as well as disease.
The authors note that to mitigate the impacts of sonar on beaked whales, we must ban its use in areas where they’re found. A moratorium on the use of MFAS around the Canary Islands in 2004 shows just how well this works – no atypical strandings have been seen since. The researchers urge other countries where sonar is deployed, such as the US, Greece, Italy, and Japan, to follow suit.
This is not the first time nor the last sonar has been called into question. The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) has successfully challenged the government failure to protect marine wildlife from sonar three times with the most recent time coming in 2016.
The case was brought forward by the NRDC to the court system claiming that the National Marine fisheries Service (NMFS) had illegally approved a permit authorizing the Navy to use its high-intensity long-range sonar, called low-frequency active sonar (or LFA), in more than 70 percent of the world’s oceans.
In its decision, the three-judge panel found that the Fisheries Service had unlawfully ignored reasonable safeguards recommended by the government’s own scientists to reduce or prevent harm from the sonar system, resulting in a “systematic underprotection of marine mammals” throughout “most of the oceans of the world.”
Experts had recommended that the Fisheries Service protect the Galapagos Islands off the coast of Ecuador, the Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument off of Hawaii, Challenger Bank off of Bermuda, and other areas around the world important to whales, dolphins, seals, and other marine mammals. But the Fisheries Service went ahead and gave the Navy the greenlight to operate its intense sonar in the vast majority of these areas.
Among other things, the court also found that:
Protecting marine mammal habitat from Navy sonar is “of paramount importance” under the law.
The Fisheries Service has an independent responsibility to ensure the “least practicable impact on marine mammals” (i.e., the lowest possible level of harm)before giving the Navy – or anyone else – permission to harm these protected species; and that the Fisheries Service must err on the side of overprotection rather than underprotection.
The Fisheries Service had given “mere lip service” to the requirement to minimize impacts during Navy sonar training.
The law requires the Fisheries Service to mitigate harm to individual marine mammals and their habitat, rather than ignore its statutory responsibility until species as a whole are threatened.
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So after four years, we finally get sight of it. The great points-based system, designed to replace free movement. No-one coming in under £25,600, unless there’s a special shortage. No-one without good English. No-one who’s self-employed. No-one without a job offer, unless they’re very highly skilled.
No more bright young people, arriving in London with dreams of making it and seeing what they can do. No more musicians getting their big break and heading out the next morning. No more care workers looking after ageing Brits. No more construction workers from Poland, out in all weather, getting the job done. No more freedom. Just the relentless, black-and-white, ham-fisted drudgery of bureaucratic requirements.
This is what it’s all been about, ultimately. We forget now. They barely bother mentioning it. But free movement was everything in the referendum. This was why the Brexit campaign skyrocketed. It is why it won.
It’s why we’re leaving the EU.
It’s why we’re leaving the single market.
It’s why we divided the country against itself.
It’s why we’re detonating our trading networks.
It’s why we’ve rubbished our international reputation.
All so we could do this. What is happening today is the single accomplishment of the Brexit era.
And it’s a disaster. No matter which sector you talk to – from video games to abattoirs, broadcasters to supermarket delivery, financial services to care – they all say the same thing: We need access to people.
It’s nearly always the second thing industry bodies say in connection with Brexit. There’s typically one item which is their main regulatory problem. And then immigration is number two. For pretty much everyone. But those views don’t matter anymore. They are the people who understand their sector, so they are considered experts and can be safely dismissed in favour of the great galaxy brains in Downing Street.
The anti-immigrant lobby insists this is because British employers have become hooked on cheap labour as a way to avoid investing in Brits.
They’ve never been able to provide decent evidence for this. There’s a couple of reports which suggest a very small impact on the bottom ten per cent of workers in certain sectors. One showed a 1.88% reduction in pay rises over ten years for those in the sectors with a ten percentage point increase in migrant labour, for instance. But even in these rare cases, the impact of migration pay reduction is vastly overshadowed by the impact of the financial crash. Immigration was not the cause of low wages. The 2008 recession was. Immigrants were just a useful group to blame.
Most studies show negligible or zero wage decline, at any level, in any region. Immigrants don’t just take jobs – they create them, boosting demand and pushing firms towards taking on more workers. Immigrant workers are often more entrepreneurial, more likely to increase productivity, more likely to start up a business, more likely to contribute to innovation and boost long-run UK competitiveness, more likely to open up new customer bases or overseas trade links for a company.
European immigrants are disproportionately young and highly educated. Almost twice as many of them have some form of higher education and only 15% left school at 16. Britain gains from that two times over. It doesn’t pay for the education, but it does gain from tax money they pay as workers. EU immigrants are net contributors to the public finances, unlike British citizens who are not. The Office for Budget Responsibility estimates that the lower the immigration level, the higher the national debt will be. The higher immigration is, the lower the debt becomes.
It’s as simple as that. Fewer immigrants means worse public services and more austerity. The government, not satisfied with slicing up our trading networks, is now breaking up the internal economic performance of the UK. And all this with no plan whatsoever for how it is going to improve things – no plans for improving productivity, no plans for retraining, no plans for communities outside of the south-east and London except for a railway line in a few decades’ times which half the government anyway doesn’t want to build.
The Migration Advisory Committee estimates that 70% of Europeans who arrived since 2004 would be ineligible under this system. That’s what the Home Office is aiming for. A 70% reduction in Europeans coming to Britain. And let’s not pretend they’re so keen to replace that flow with people elsewhere. All that talk of how Boris Johnson would be a secretly liberal prime is abject nonsense. The plan is consciously and explicitly to reduce immigration. To make this country more ‘British’, whatever the hell that means. To imagine that Brits will now do the jobs they refused to do before. The entire country is being reformatted to make Nigel Farage more comfortable about hearing foreign languages on a train.
What we are losing is about so much more than money. It is about being open. It is about being a place that is confident enough to take in new arrivals. Being a place new arrivals might wish to come to. We’ve lost that confidence. We’ve lost the sense that difference is beautiful, both for what it accomplishes and in its own right. And we’re replacing it with nationalism. That’s what it is. Don’t beat around the bush, or pretend it’s anything other than it is. It is nationalism. The grimy pit representing all that’s worst in political thought, the worship of uniformity, the desire to replace warm welcomes with borders and inspections.
We imagine we are restricting others, but in reality we are imprisoning ourselves. And not just because we are sabotaging our own economy. We are losing one of the greatest freedoms achieved in the history of humankind: the freedom to move. The freedom to decide that we will live somewhere else, without any bureaucrat or state official to get in our way. The freedom of the individual in space – one of the greatest accomplishments of the European project – is now barred for those of us on this island.
The loss is beyond comprehension. It is the loss of our future, the loss of our rights, and the loss of the highest aspirations of human self-development.
And all so we can fix a problem which does not exist with a solution which will make us poorer. It is a bitterly stupid and small-hearted thing to do. And we have done it to ourselves.
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Ian Dunt is editor of Politics.co.uk. His new book, How To Be A Liberal, is out in spring 2020.
With airline after airline pushing back their ‘return-to-service’ dates based on Boeing’s total lack of clarity on the path forward for the 737 MAX, the troubled aircraft maker (and the troubled aircraft) now faces more problems.
According to an internal memo, seen by Reuters, Boeing found debris that could pose potential safety risks in the fuel tanks of several 737 MAX aircraft that are in storage and waiting to be delivered to airlines.
To be clear about what ‘debris’ means, Reuters details that:
“an industrial term for rags, tools, metal shavings and other materials left behind by workers during the production process.”
And notes that this ‘debris’ problem has been a quality control issue for various Boeing aircraft, such as its KC-46 tankers.
Foreign-object debris (FOD) “is absolutely unacceptable. One escape is one too many,” Mark Jenks, a Boeing vice president and general manager of the 737 program, said in a message to employees that was viewed by Reuters.
“With your help and focus, we will eliminate FOD from our production system,”
The FOD problem on the MAX was first reported Tuesday on Scott Hamilton’s Leeham.net aviation site:
“There’s a systemic issue with Boeing’s quality control that hasn’t been corralled yet,” said Hamilton in an interview.
“This is not related to the MAX crashes or exclusively a MAX issue. Boeing has these FOD issues on other airplane programs.”
A Boeing spokesman confirmed the memo’s authenticity; and Boeing now having to inspect more than 400 stored 737 Max jets, but Bernard Choi said “it’s still undecided if we will inspect the rest” of the MAX fleet – another 385 aircraft that were delivered to customers but have been grounded for almost a year and are parked at airfields around the world.
“Obviously, we’ll do what’s right for safety,” Choi added.
Boeing spokesman Chaz Bickers was, however, careful to claim that the company does not see the debris as contributing to delays in the jet’s return to service. (The inspections will take two to three days per aircraft. Fuel must be drained from the wings before a mechanic can go in and do a thorough check.).
The Federal Aviation Administration said it was aware that Boeing “is conducting a voluntary” inspection for debris in the undelivered aircraft “as part of the company’s ongoing efforts to ensure manufacturing quality.”
It may delay the airlines’ decision to accept delivery of the jets though (as its not exactly reassuring to crew members and passengers of the company’s commitment to manufacturing quality and safety!)
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An explosive situation is developing in Idlib province where the Syrian army is conducting a major offensive that has triggered a harsh response from Turkey. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is threatening to attack Syrian forces anywhere in the country if the Syrian government does not stop all military operations in the so-called Idlib “de-escalation zone.” Aside from the fact that Turkey has no legal right to occupy Syrian territory, Erdogan’s threat pits Turkey against Russia in a showdown that could quickly escalate into a full-blown conflagration.
“I announce that we will strike the Syrian regime forces everywhere starting from today without being bound to Idlib or by the Sochi Memorandum, if our soldiers at the lookout posts or elsewhere suffer any harm,” said Erdogan addressing a meeting of his party’s members.
Legally, Turkey does not have a leg to stand on. According to the Sochi agreement that was signed by both Turkey and Russia in 2018, Turkey agreed that:
All radical terrorist groups will be withdrawn from the demilitarized zone by October 15, 2018
All tanks, artillery, MLRS and mortars of the conflicting parties will be withdrawn from the demilitarized zone by October 10, 2018.
In the interests of ensuring free movement of local residents and goods, as well as restoring trade and economic ties, transit traffic along the routes M4 (Aleppo-Latakia) and M5 (Aleppo-Hama) will be restored before the end of 2018
Erdogan has not made good on any of these commitments.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergie Lavrov explained what’s actually going on in a recent press conference where he said:
“As you know… A truce agreement was signed with the reservation that the terrorist groups blacklisted by the UN Security Council would not and may not be covered by the truce..
all those identified by the UN Security Council as terrorist groups herded together into the remaining de-escalation zone of Idlib…. President of Russia Vladimir Putin and his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan reached special agreements on this zone. This issue was reviewed twice – in September 2018 and October 2019. In both cases Russia and Turkey adopted specific documents that included their commitments to oversee Idlib, primarily in terms of civilian security and the distribution of humanitarian relief.
Regrettably, so far, Turkey has failed to fulfill a couple of its key commitments that were designed to resolve the core of the Idlib problem.” (“Lavrov explains the Idlib agreement”)
Simply put, Turkey has not kept up its end of the bargain and cleared the area of al Qaida elements who still operate openly in Idlib and who still receive support from the Turkish state. After multiple warnings and delays, Syria and its ally Russia decided that they’d have to put an end to Erdogan’s subterfuge and take action themselves which is clearly permitted under international law. Since the operation began some two weeks ago, the Syrian Army has liberated a number of strategic cities in the area as well as the primary transport corridor, the M-4 and M-5 highways.
In response, Turkey has “joined al-Qaeda-linked militants in their attack on positions of the Syrian Army (in) Idlib. During the past few days, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham and other radical groups recently received a large number of military equipment and weapons from Turkey. On February 10, they launched an attack on the Syrian Army using weapons and equipment that they had received.” (“Turkish Troops Join Al-Qaeda-linked Militants In Their Attack On Saraqib, South Front)
Hours after the jihadist attack, the Syrian Army retaliated and (allegedly) killed 8 or more Turkish soldiers located in the vicinity of a Turkish observation post on Syrian territory. The unexpected escalation brought a swift response from Ankara where the Turkish defense minister warned that, “If the Syrian forces are not withdrawn by the end of February, we will take action.”
Turkey’s determination to annex large parts of Syria’s northern territory has not wavered since 2015 when the government first announced its support for a plan to impose “safe zones” (35 km deep) along the 911 km Syrian-Turkish border. The plan succeeded east of the Euphrates River when Turkish troops invaded earlier in the year claiming that the Kurdish militia, YPG, posed a threat to Turkey’s national security. The attempt to seize more Syrian land west of the Euphrates, invoking the threat of “humanitarian disaster”, suggests that Turkey will use any bogus pretext to achieve its strategic objectives. Fortunately, Putin has not been hoodwinked by Erdogan’s shifting justifications for the seizure of Syrian territory. The Russian-Syrian forces continue to move deeper into the province routing or killing the remaining pockets of armed militants in their path.
According to Iran’s Press TV: “The Russian Foreign Ministry said in a recent statement that Idlib-based militants had staged “more than 1,000 attacks in the last two weeks of January” from a Turkish-controlled de-escalation zone in the flashpoint province. It stressed that most of the attacks had been conducted by the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham militant group.
Syria has been gripped by foreign-backed militancy since March 2011. The Syrian government says the Israeli regime and its Western and regional allies are aiding Takfiri terrorist groups had been wreaking havoc in the Arab country.” (“Turkey warns of ‘Plan B’ amid Syria’s anti-terror operation in Idlib”, Press TV)
Putin is looking for ways to diffuse the situation and strike a deal with Erdogan, but it’s not going to be easy. Putin has already taken a minimalist approach to Syrian conflict, that is, he is committed to liberating areas that are vital to the preservation of the state, but he’s not going to go out on a limb and undermine Russia’s interests by launching attacks on US bases in east Syria or starting a war with Erdogan in the west. By the same token, Putin cannot allow himself to be manipulated by a scheming opportunist like Erdogan who wants to shrug off his agreements because they no longer serve his regional ambitions. Putin would like to meet the Turkish president halfway and allow him to maintain troops in a safe zone further north, but he won’t cave in and give Erdogan everything he wants. Putin is reasonable, but he’s no pushover as Erdogan is likely to find out.
Here’s more background from a piece at the pro-government Daily Sabah:
“Idlib, as the opposition forces’ last stronghold, also has a symbolic meaning in peace talks in Geneva: Whoever controls Idlib will obviously have a big influence on the last word on the future of Syria. Idlib is of great importance for the Assad regime, as well, as it would strengthen his hand at the Geneva talks at a time when the regime is taking on the insane risk of confronting Turkish forces in open warfare on the ground for the first time since the beginning of the civil war. Obviously, this would be fatal for the Sochi agreement.
Strictly speaking, the outcome of the Syrian regime attacks in Idlib is a matter of life or death for the opposition’s role at the Geneva talks. The opposition will fight to the end to try to avoid weakening its position during its last chance at talks on Idlib.” (“Turkey and Russia must find a path to a new agreement”, Daily Sabah)
“A matter of life or death for the opposition”? “The opposition (jihadists) will fight to the end”?
The possibility is quite real especially in the present hyper-incendiary environment. Syrian president Bashar al Assad needs Idlib to reunite the country and to connect Latakia and Aleppo to Damascus. Putin needs Idlib to end his commitment in Syria and to provide a model for preserving threatened nation-states from destabilizing regime change operations. And Erdogan needs Idlib to extend Turkey’s power to territories it once controlled but lost following the post-WW1 imperialist carve up. Add to this toxic clash of interests the recent announcements by Washington and NATO that they support Erdogan’s efforts in Idlib, and the prospects for disaster increase exponentially. Here’s what neocon Mike Pompeo said yesterday on Twitter:
“My condolences to the families of the soldiers killed in yesterday’s attack in Idlib. The ongoing assaults by the Assad regime and Russia must stop. I’ve sent (special US envoy to Syria) Jim Jeffrey to Ankara to coordinate steps to respond to this destabilizing attack. We stand by our NATO Ally #Turkey.
Pompeo’s comments were followed by reports that US bombers had carried out air-strikes on Syrian troops in Al-Qamishli. Hours later, Israel launched a missile attack on Damascus. Clearly, the western powers are eager to take advantage of the emerging crisis and stir up as much trouble as possible.
As for Turkey, an outspoken columnist for the Daily Sabah was honest enough to articulate the government policy without making any attempt to conceal Ankara’s real motives. Here’s what he said:
“Turkey, however, is determined to stop the regime offensive… Although the primary objective is to secure Turkey’s observation posts, it is obvious that the current deployment serves a broader agenda. Going forward, Ankara needs to establish a safe zone with lasting borders. In other words, Turkey has to conduct a comprehensive operation to combat terrorism, among other things. The aim of the operation must be to ensure the safe zone’s sustainability.” (“Regime violence must be stopped now”, Daily Sabah)
As the author makes clear, Turkey’s real objective is to annex Syrian territory in the north and expand its own borders to the south, a clear case of territorial aggression. We don’t think Putin is going to put up with this.
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This article was originally published on The Unz Review.
Mike Whitney is a frequent contributor to Global Research.
In December 2016, the Syrian Arab Army, Russia and allies liberated the northern Syrian city of Aleppo of the al-Qaeda and equally-heinous terrorists who had occupied and terrorized civilians in the city since 2012.
In subsequent years, Aleppo to a large degree returned to peace, with rebuilding occurring in the hard-hit Old City, with displaced Syrians returning (contrary to the lies of UK Channel 4, among other war propagandizing media).
Yet, civilians since that Aleppo’s liberation continued to be terrorized by the presence of terrorists in the countryside of Aleppo.
Last year (January 2019), visiting Aleppo, I returned to the Lairamoun industrial district in the city’s west. I had been there in November 2016, had seen the nightmarish underground prison of the Free Syrian Army, used to hold Syrian soldiers and civilians alike, a true dungeon replete with suffocating solitary confinement cells.
In January 2019, I went to a factory 500 metres from al-Qaeda snipers. Aleppo MP Fares Shehabi explained to me how the factory owner and workers defied the existence of terrorists at close proximity and re-opened the textile factory. As he spoke, he took me to a door which, when opening, exposed us to potential sniper fire–the sniper fire the courageous factory workers were exposed to.
Al-Qaeda stronghold near Lairamoun, Aleppo, 400 to 500 metres from textile factory
Shehabi’s powerful words include:
“This factory is on a front line in the war against terror. 400 to 500 metres away, the Tajik Brigades of the Islamic Turkistan Army, a branch of al-Qaeda in Syria.
This factory was rubble two years ago. We rehabilitated it. We are doing this as a message of defiance against all who conspired against the people of Aleppo, against the economy of Syria. The enemy was sniping at us , launching mortars, when we were fixing this factory to work again.
Show me one place in the world with a production situation like this, a factory being rehabilitated under these circumstances.
This is why they out us under sanctions, this is why they consider us enemies.
How can I be an enemy of freedom and democracy if I want our people to work, to make money, my country to have a production economy, and I don’t yield to al-Qaeda gangs in close proximity to me.
…imagine the difficult situation in which these heroes, the factory workers and owners, had to go through in order to defy al-Nusra and defy Turkey, and rise up again from the ashes. This is a real example of how you rise up, undefeated.”
In November 2016 I wrote of the terrorism Aleppo civilians experienced that month and in prior months:
My article on the November 3 terrorist attacks noted:
On the afternoon of Nov. 3, after meeting with Dr. Mohammed Batikh, director of Al-Razi Hospital, the victims of terror attacks which had begun a few hours prior began to arrive one after another, maimed and critically injured. The vehicle bombings and bombardment of Grad missiles, among other attacks, left 18 people dead and more than 200 injured, according to Dr. Zaher Hajo, the head of forensic medicine at Al-Razi Hospital.
The corridors and emergency ward at Al-Razi Hospital, one of two state-run hospitals in Aleppo, quickly became clogged with the injured and grieving family members. In one crowded interior corridor, one of the wounded screamed out in pain: “Ya, Allah! Ya, Allah!”
In another corridor, a 15-year-old boy with a cast on one leg and bandages on his head, said the mortar attack which injured him had killed his 4-year-old cousin and left his 6-year-old cousin with critical injuries.
In a front room, a mother wailed for her son who had suffered severe injuries. She screamed and pleaded for someone to save him, her only son. Not long after, though, the news came in: the 26-year-old had died. Her son, a doctor, was not the first medical professional to die in terrorists’ routine bombings of Aleppo neighborhoods.
Dr. Nabil Antaki, a gastroenterologist from Aleppo, with whom I met on my trips to Aleppo in July and August, messaged me in October about his friend and colleague, Dr. Omar, who was injured on Oct. 6 when terrorist factions unleashed an attack on Jamiliye Street, killing 10 people. Just a few days after the attack, Dr. Omar, too, died.
At the morgue behind Al-Razi Hospital on Nov. 3, inconsolable family members leaned against the wall or sat on the pavement, coming to grips with the deaths of loved ones.
One 14-year-old boy had been there on Nov. 2, when his father was killed. On Nov. 3, he returned when his mother was killed. Both of this boy’s parents are dead, both killed in terrorist attacks on the city’s New Aleppo district.
A man spoke of a 10-year-old nephew who was shot in the head by a terrorist sniper while the boy was on his roof.
A woman and her children leaned against an iron rail next to the door to the morgue, weeping over the death of her husband, their father, who was killed while parking a car. When the man’s mother arrived, she collapsed, shrieking in grief.
And in the midst of all of this, all these women and children, a car arrived at the morgue with the body of yet another victim of the day’s terror attacks, Mohammed Majd Darwish, 74. His upper body was so bloody that it was unclear whether he had been decapitated.
Near the morgue, Bashir Shehadeh, a man in his forties, said his family had been displaced already from Jisr al-Shughour, a city in Idlib. His mother, some of his friends, and his cousin have been killed by terrorist factions’ shellings. He said enough was enough, and called on the SAA to eliminate the terrorist threat.
Al-Razi’s Dr. Batikh said a private hospital, Al-Rajaa, was hit by a mortar attack. “They cannot do operations now, the operating room is out of service.”
One of the most notable attacks on hospitals was the December 2013 double truck bombing of Al-Kindi Hospital, the largest and best cancer treatment hospital in the Middle East. I have previously reported on other attacks on hospitals in Aleppo, including the May 3 rocket attack which gutted Al-Dabeet, a maternity hospital, killing three women. On Sept. 10, Dr. Antaki messaged me:
YESTERDAY, A ROCKET, SENT BY THE TERRORISTS, HIT A MATERNITY HOSPITAL IN ALEPPO IN MUHAFAZAT STREET. TWO PERSONS WORKING IN THE HOSPITAL WERE INJURED. NO DEATH. BUT THE POINT IS THAT IT IS A HOSPITAL AND IT WAS HIT BY A ROCKET.”
Dr. Batikh and Dr. Mazen Rahmoun, deputy director of Al-Razi, said the hospital once had 68 ambulances, but now there are only six. The rest, they said, were either stolen by terrorist factions or destroyed.
Aleppo’s doctors continue to treat the daily influx of injured and ill patients in spite of the dearth of ambulances and effects of Western sanctions which mean a lack of medical equipment, replacement parts, and medicine for critical illnesses like cancer.
According to the hospital’s head forensic medicine, Dr. Hajo, in the last five years, 10,750 civilians have been killed in Aleppo, 40 percent of whom were women and children. In the past year alone, 328 children have been killed by terrorist shelling in Aleppo, and 45 children were killed by terrorist snipers.
Humanitarian Crossings: Shelling of Castello Road
On Nov. 4, prior to our 9:30 a.m. arrival at the Bustan al-Qasr crossing and until our departure an hour later, no one had been able to cross from the area just beyond crossing, which is occupied by Jaysh al-Fatah militants.
Two weeks prior to our arrival, journalists had reported that terrorist factions heavily shelled the crossing and areas around it starting in the early morning.
A Syrian general at the crossing confirmed that shelling had taken place on Oct. 20, adding that three police officers had been wounded. A journalist in the delegation asked the general what he would say to Syrian civilians like Bashir Shehadeh, who demanded that the SAA eliminate the terrorist factions.
“We need to be patient, because the civilians there are not able to leave, they are not guilty,” the general replied. “We don’t work the way that the terrorists work.”
Regarding the amnesty decree issued by President Bashar Assad in late July, the general explained that terrorists who want to be granted amnesty could lay down their arms. Those who choose to go on to Idlib would be granted safe passage by the Syrian government and army, in coordination with the Red Cross and Red Crescent.
According to the general, when two militants arrived at the Bustan al-Qasr crossing about two months ago, they surrendered their arms and proceeded under amnesty.
Five months ago, he said, 12 civilians crossed there, were treated in Aleppo’s hospitals, and returned to their homes in terrorist-held eastern Aleppo.
At the Castello Road humanitarian crossing, the large green buses which were said to be evacuating militants from areas of eastern Aleppo in recent weeks were there again, waiting to ferry away more. Ten ambulances, three buses, and 14 minivans were lined up in anticipation of any civilians or militants trying to leave terrorist-occupied areas, whether for safe passage elsewhere or to settle in government-secured areas of Aleppo.
George Sire, 25, an anesthesiologist at Salloum Hospital in Aleppo, was one of the volunteers who arrived at the crossing with five of the private hospital’s ambulances, at the request of the Syrian government.
When speaking with a Syrian commander about permitting men who had used arms against Syrian civilians and soldiers to lay down their arms and reconcile, he said they are sons of the country and urged them to reconcile.
At around 1:30 p.m. the first shell struck, hitting near Castello Road. About 10 minutes later, while I was being interviewed, a second hit, this time considerably closer, within 100 meters — close enough, in fact, to create a cloud of dark smoke over the road. It prompted security to usher me away from the road and move our delegation away from the crossing.
I later learned that another five shells targeted the crossing, injuring a Syrian journalist and two Russian soldiers.
No one passed through this or any of the other seven humanitarian corridors that day.
And:
“Last Friday, I visited one of Aleppo’s main public parks, a once-beautiful park where fountains danced to the songs of Arab greats like Oum Kalthoum, and simple cafes were full.
Now the fountains are dry, the main one littered with rubble from one of many terrorist shellings of the park, and one of the main cafes out of commission after being hit by a terrorist shell roughly a year and a half ago.
While people do continue to frequent the park, the risk of being killed by a mortar or rocket remains, as pretty much everywhere in greater Aleppo.
I had read about the July 22, 2016, terrorist rocket on the park which killed civilians while they were in the park on a summer Friday.
SANA news reported on that day that: “Eleven civilians were killed, among them a child and two women, while 44 others were injured in terrorist attacks with rocket shells and sniper bullets on neighborhoods and the public facilities in Aleppo city on Friday.
…eight civilians were killed and 34 others injured in a rocket shell fired by terrorist groups on the public park.”
In November, a local took me to the area where the murdered woman was sitting when the rocket’s shrapnel killed she, another woman, a child, and injured nearby civilians.
The park was busy this Friday, not as busy as a hot summer day would have seen it, but still had people sitting on such benches or on the plastic chairs of the cafe behind where the murdered women had been sitting.
Walking around the large park, we saw evidence of shelling…on the pavement and in the small plots of grass. Some were like the small holes in the pavement that I’m used to seeing in the Old City of Damascus, ravaged by terrorists’ mortars. Others were mini-craters in the grass, including one near a cafe which was hit apparently about a year and a half ago.
Speaking with local security there, they estimated that between 40-50 shells have hit the park in the past few years. The number could be greater, or less, but the fact is the park has been targeted, as have public places around the city of over 1.5 million people, who on a daily basis face this mortar/rocket/Grad missile/explosive bullet/gas canister terrorism.
This park in summer would have not only been a spot to try to briefly escape the hell of 6 years of foreign war on Syria, but would also have had many displaced Syrians who have fled terrorist-occupied areas to government-secured areas, many of whom during the day sought refuge in the shade from blistering heat.
Without electricity for years, thanks to the terrorist factions who control the area where the power plant is, Aleppo residents who can afford it buy power by the ampere. Many can only afford the basics–some light bulbs and power for their fridge.
From a photo essay I published in mid-2016, after my second Aleppo visit:
THE POWER PLANT LIES IN AREAS CONTROLLED BY TERRORIST FACTIONS. FOR YEARS, ALEPPO RESIDENTS HAVE SUFFERED FROM A LACK OF POWER, AND COMPENSATE BY PURCHASING GENERATOR-SUPPLIED ELECTRICITY. NOT CHEAP, SOME OPT TO BUY JUST 1 AMPERE WORTH, WHICH ACCORDING TO ALEPPO RESIDENT NABIL ANTAKI COSTS AROUND 4000 SYRIAN POUNDS A MONTH (ROUGHLY US$8) . TWO AMPERES WILL RUN A SMALL TELEVISION. FOUR AMPERES, A FRIDGE, SMALL TELEVISION AND A FEW BULBS.
Many others can’t afford that, period. I remember the suffocating heat even on an August visit to Aleppo, staying in a friend’s place without electricity or water…the desire to be out in an open place where one could breathe, sweat less, was strong…
In the canal running through the park, a boy around 14 years old stripped to his underwear and dove in, swept down river by the quick current, scrambling out and up the wall to dive in anew. When we passed the river a little later, a girl had joined in. I asked whether this would be frowned upon and my friend laughed at me, “We are not al-Qaeda here.” (I remembered the words of a man who I’d spoken with the night before, who spoke of al-Nusra in occupied eastern areas forcing women and girls to cover even their wrists and hands. This girl would have no freedom in areas occupied by the West’s “rebels”.)
Scenes like these, of seeming normalcy, can be shattered in an instant, with the fall of a mortar or shell fired by terrorists which the West deems as “moderates” and whose crimes Western leaders continue to ignore.
Small public park in Aziziya. People who are displaced frequent such parks, to get out of the small apartments or government-supplied shelters they live in.
From Aziziya district, on July 4, half a kilometer away, the explosion of a terrorist-fired bomb. Around 5 pm, this is a busy time when streets are packed with cars and pedestrians; terrorists know they can kill and maim more civilians when attacking at these busy hours. Minutes later, an anti-aircraft explosive bullet landed roughly 15 metres away from my Aziziya venue. Had it landed on one of the parked cars, there would have been many casualties. A day later, such an explosive bullet killed the mother of an Aleppo friend, at her home. Photo: Eva Bartlett
In that 2016 photo essay, I wrote also about the villages of Nubl and Zahra’a, north of Aleppo:
HELL CANNON-FIRED GAS CANISTER BOMBS LITTER THE COUNTRYSIDE AROUND ALEPPO AND ON THE ROUTE TO NUBL AND ZAHRA’A. THESE, AND LARGER VARIATIONS, ARE WHAT WESTERN-BACKED TERRORISTS HAVE RAINED DOWN ON THE CITY OF ALEPPO, AS WELL AS BESIEGED FOUA AND KAFARYA IN IDLIB GOVERNORATE. MANUFACTURED LOCALLY, FIRED UPON CIVILIANS DAILY, GAS CANISTER BOMBS GET VIRTUALLY NO MENTION IN CORPORATE MEDIA, ALTHOUGH THEIR IMPACT IS DEADLY.
The roughly 65,000 people of Nubl and Zahra’a villages, under siege from terrorist factions of the so-called FSA, al-Nusra, and affiliated factions for three and a half years, were on February 3, 2016, liberated from the choke-hold which strangled them. Zeinab Sharbo, 25, and Mounthaher Khatib, 26, each have young children who suffered for want of food and basic elements of life, and who were traumatized by the terrorists’ bombing of the villages. Although corporate media, when deigning to mention the villages, usually focused on their predominately Shia composition, Sunnis also live in the villages. According to Zeinab, “Sectarianism wasn’t a problem before, we were brothers and sisters, we intermarried with neighbouring villages.”
Abdul Karim Assad, 7, has painful face disfiguration from a terrorist-fired mortar which burned his face. Under siege at the time, the boy was only treated with basic medical care in a barebones hospital in Zahra’a. The boy is not originally from Nubl, but from Idlib, from which his grandfather fled when terrorists invaded. He is another poster child for the terrorism inflicted upon Syria.
Aleppo’s over 1.5 million residents are depending on trucks from outside of the city to bring in the basics of life. Unable to use the main highway, and now unable to use the paved Ramouseh road, trucks travel an extended distance over many rough dirt roads to enter Aleppo from its north.
The Dabeet maternity hospital, the inside destroyed and outside badly damaged on May 3, 2016, by terrorist rocket fire, is one of numerous hospitals targeted by terrorists in Syria. The May 3 attack killed three women. A week later, the hospital was hit by terrorist mortar fire. Aleppo’s Kindi hospital, destroyed by terrorists, was one of the largest cancer hospitals in the region.
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Back to the present.
The Press Office of President Assad on February 17, 2020 published his latest speech, addressing this restoration of peace to Aleppo and the need to do so in Idlib. Syriana Analysis has subtitled this speech:
Partial transcript of recent speech by President Assad:
“When Aleppo city was liberated at the end of 2016, I said that what was before the liberation of Aleppo city will not be the same as what will be after that, and I based that on my knowledge of where the members of our Armed Forces are aiming with their hearts and minds. I based that on my conviction that the patriotism of the people of Aleppo and their fealty to their homeland and the homeland’s army will overturn the calculations of the enemies.
“This is what happened, but Aleppo had to pay a great price equal to the greatness of its people and the patriotism of its position; years of violent and barbaric shelling that affected most neighborhoods, tens of thousands of martyrs, injured people, orphans, people who lost children, and widows. Years of siege without water or electricity or other life necessities, all for Aleppo to kneel and for her people to surrender.
“With every treacherous shell that had fallen, the enemies’ hopes would grow that Aleppo would become another Aleppo, one that never existed throughout history, an Aleppo that does not constitute with its twin Damascus the wings by which the homeland soars; rather an Aleppo whose people would stand with traitors in front of masters, kneeling and prostrating themselves before them, beginning for a few dollars and much disgrace.
“That was in their dreams; but in our real world, with every shell that fell, fear fell and the will to challenge grew. With every martyr, nationalist spirit grew and faith in the homeland became stronger. In our real world, it remained the real Aleppo, the Aleppo of history, nobility, and authenticity. And because it is so, its people did not settle for steadfastness just in the sense of bearing of pain and suffering and acceptance of the status quo; but rather in the sense of work and production that persisted throughout the years of the siege despite the conditions that contradict any economic sense.
“Despite that, this city kept contributing – even if at a bare minimum – to national economy, and I am confident that this type of steadfastness which reflects a concrete will and a deep-rooted sense of belonging is what will raise Aleppo from the ashes of war and restore its natural and leading position in Syria’s economy,” President al-Assad said.
President al-Assad added “It is true that liberating the city in 2016 did not achieve the desired safety for the city at the time, and it remained under the threat of treacherous and cowardly shells, and it is also true today that victory in one battle does not mean victory in the war, but that is by the abstract military logic which is based on endings and results; however, by national logic, victory begins with the beginning of steadfastness even if it was at day one, and by that logic, Aleppo is victorious, and Syria is victorious. We are all victorious over the fear they had tried to instill in our hearts, victorious over the delusions they tried to instill in our minds, victorious over fragmentation, hatred, betrayal, and all those who represent or bear or practice these qualities.
“However, we are fully aware that this liberation does not mean the end of the war, or the failure of schemes, or the disappearance of terrorism, or the surrender of enemies, but it certainly means rubbing their noses in the dirt as a prelude for complete defeat, sooner or later,” the President affirmed.
“It also means that we must not relax; rather we must prepare for the coming battles. Therefore, the battle to liberate the countryside of Aleppo and Idleb will continue regardless of some empty sound bubbles coming from the north, and the battle for liberating all Syrian soil, crushing terrorism, and achieving stability will also continue.”
His Excellency went on to say “Our Syrian Arab Army will never hesitate to carry out its national duties, and it will be as it always has been: an army from the people and for the people. Throughout history, no army has emerged victorious unless the people are united with it in its battle, and when it is united with the people in their vision and cause, and this is what we have witnessed in Aleppo and other Syrian cities, where you embraced the army it protected you, defended you, and made sacrifices for you.
“While we are experiencing times of joy, we must remember that these moments have been made possible by years of pain, heartache, and sadness, for the loss of a dear one that gave their life for the lives and happiness of others. As we bow in honor of the greatness of our martyrs and injured people, it is also our duty to stand in honor of the greatness of their mighty families. If victory is to be dedicated, then it is dedicated to them, and if anyone should receive credit for it, then they deserve the credit. I salute them for the children their raised, and salute their children for their sacrifices. I salute every one of the heroes of our great army and the allied forces begin them. I salute the strength of their bodies in the cold and frost as we bask in warmth and safety.”
President al-Assad went on to salute “our brothers, friends, and allies who stood shoulder to shoulder with the army on the ground and were guardian eagles in the sky, their blood intermingling with the blood of our army that was spilled in Aleppo, Aleppo the faithful to its homeland and history, which will never forget the blood of those who made sacrifices for it, and which will return as it was and stronger.
“Our beloved people in Aleppo, I congratulate you on the victory of your will, the will by which we will wage the greater battle: the battle to build Aleppo. By the will of all the Syrian people we will build Syria, and we will continue liberation, God willing.”
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All images in this article are from Eva Bartlett unless otherwise stated
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.
On February 20, the Trudeau government will host another meeting of the anti-Venezuelan “Lima Group” at the Canadian Museum of Civilization, 100 Laurier St, Gatineau, Quebec K1A 0M8. A protest will commence at its main entrance at 1 pm.
The organizations calling for the protest invite the public to join them there and at other locations and times across Canada. (Please see the list at end of this text.)
The Lima Group meeting in Gatineau comes on the heels of the Ottawa visit of Juan Guaidó, self-declared ‘interim president’ of Venezuela, where he was warmly received by PM Justin Trudeau and Foreign Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne.
The “Lima Group’ is a rump collection of right-wing and pro-fascist states in Latin America, including the Bolsonaro government in Brazil, the coup leaders in Bolivia and the ultra-right Iván Duque regime in Colombia, among others. The Lima Group has been coordinating the regime-change strategy against the duly-elected government of Venezuela, under the tutelage of their masters in Washington.
The political, economic, media and military war on Venezuela and its people has included: (1) the imposition of punitive sanctions – effectively a blockade – against Venezuela in an attempt to cripple the domestic economy, and causing untold suffering and deaths among the civilian population; (2) the campaign to isolate Venezuela internationally, seizing its foreign assets, embassies and consulates abroad; (3) organizing and funding Guaidó and the so-called ‘opposition’ inside the country, including their attempted (and failed) coup on April 30, 2019; and (4) making thinly-veiled threats of direct military aggression against the sovereign state of Venezuela. All of these actions are in clear violation of international law and the UN and OAS Charters.
Canada’s active interventionist role as an ally of the U.S. in this criminal campaign against the sovereignty of Venezuela is outrageous and unacceptable. The same ruling circles in Canada which are carrying out this imperialist agenda are also responsible for anti-democratic assaults at home, imposing colonial oppression against the Wet’suwet’en protests and on indigenous peoples’ rights elsewhere across Canada, attacking teachers in Ontario and trade union rights in general, and continuing its pro-corporate, austerity offensive against the living conditions and social programs of the people in general. With this record – at home and abroad – Canada does not deserve a seat on the UN Security Council which the Trudeau government is seeking.
For these reasons, we urge all peace and solidarity groups and committees, as well as labour, progressive and democratic organizations, to join the protests across the country on February 20 to condemn the Lima Group summit, and to demand that Canada withdraw its unilaterally and illegal sanctions against Venezuela, end its support for regime-change, and get out of the Lima Group NOW!
Lima Group – Out of Canada! Canada – Out of the Lima Group! End the Sanctions on Venezuela NOW! Restore full Diplomatic Relations! No to Canadian Complicity in Washington’s ‘regime-change’ campaign! Hands off Venezuela!
Organizations co-sponsoring this call-out: Canadian Cuban Friendship Association-Vancouver, Canadian Peace Congress, Hamilton Coalition to Stop the War (HCSW), Vancouver Frente para la Defensa de los Pueblos – Hugo Chavez, Venezuela Solidarity
Canadian actions so far
Hamilton, Ontario:
Organized by the Hamilton Coalition To Stop The War
Picket the constituency office of Trudeau’s Minister of Labour, Filomena Tassi, 1686 Main Street West, Hamilton
Thursday, Feb. 20, 12 to 1 pm. Dress warmly!
https://www.facebook.com/events/194702315107211/
Toronto, Ontario:
Picket the constituency office of Trudeau’s Deputy-Prime Minister, Chrystia Freeland, 344 Bloor Street West,
Thursday, Feb 20, 4 pm, organized by Venezuela Solidarity
https://www.facebook.com/events/622256935272137/
Ottawa, Ontario:
Demonstrate at the site of the press conference following the Lima Group meeting!
Canadian Museum of Civilization, 100 Laurier Street, Gatineau, front entrance
Thursday, Feb 20, 1 to 3 pm, organized by the Canadian Peace Congress and Alba Movements Canada
https://www.facebook.com/events/1076148646111100/
Waterloo, Ontario:
Demonstrate at the constituency office of Liberal MP Bardish Chagger
100 Regina Street South, Waterloo, ON, N2J 4 P9
Thursday, Feb. 20, 2020, 12 to 1 pm
Organized by Canadian Voice of Women for Peace
https://www.facebook.com/events/121194792662460/
Montreal, Quebec:
ORGANIZED BY Mouvement Québécois pour la Paix/ Quebec Movement for Peace
Demonstrate at the Montreal Council on Foreign Relations, at which Global Affairs Minister FP Champagne will speak on Venezuela, 900 Rue de la Gauchetière Ouest, Montréal, QC H5A 1E4
11:30 am to 1 pm, FRIDAY, FEB 21, 2020
https://www.facebook.com/events/540738259866690/
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On February 5th, the Senate voted to acquit President Donald J. Trump of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. In other words, Trump’s pre-election boast that he “could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody” and not “lose any voters” proved something more than high-flown hyperbole. (To be fair, he did lose one Republican “voter” in the Senate — Mitt Romney — but it wasn’t enough to matter.)
The Senate’s failure to convict the president will only confirm his conception of his office as a seat of absolute power (which, as we’ve been told, “corrupts absolutely”). This is the man, after all, who told a convention of student activists, “I have an Article II, where I have the right to do whatever I want as president. But I don’t even talk about that.” Except, of course, he does.
The day after the Senate vote, a decidedly unchastened Trump spoke at a National Prayer Breakfast, brandishing a copy of USA Today whose banner headline contained a single word: “Acquitted.” After disagreeing with the prayerful suggestion offered by Arthur Brooks, former head of the conservative American Enterprise Institute (and a couple of millennia earlier by one Jesus of Nazareth), that we should love our enemies, the president promptly accused both Mitt Romney and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of inadequate prayerfulness. He lumped Romney in with people “who use their faith as justification for doing what they know is wrong” and accused Pelosi, not for the first time, of lying when she says she prays for him.
Trump’s endless boasting about his invulnerability can certainly be blamed on the dismal swamp of his own psyche, but there’s another at least partial explanation for it — and it lies in the country’s collective failure to hold anyone responsible for crimes committed since 2001 in the “war on terror.” If one administration can get away with confining detainees in coffinlike boxes and torturing them in myriad other ways, why shouldn’t a later one go unpunished for, to take but one example, putting migrant children in cages?
Forward, Not Backwards
In 2009, Barack Obama prepared to enter the Oval Office promising to end the worst excesses of the previous administration’s war on terror. Although he did close the CIA’s detention centers and prohibit torture, he also quickly signaled that no one would be held accountable for the already well-documented practice of torture promoted by the administration of George W. Bush and his vice president, Dick Cheney. A week or so before Obama’s inauguration, the president-elect was already assuring ABC News’s George Stephanopoulos that, although there would be prosecutions if “somebody has blatantly broken the law,” on the whole he believed “that we need to look forward as opposed to looking backwards.”
In particular, Obama was concerned that government operatives should not be hampered in the future by fear of prosecution for past acts sanctioned by top officials:
“And part of my job is to make sure that, for example, at the CIA, you’ve got extraordinarily talented people who are working very hard to keep Americans safe. I don’t want them to suddenly feel like they’ve got to spend all their time looking over their shoulders.”
As it turned out, they need not have worried. On April 17, 2009, as Carrie Johnson and Julie Tate reported in the Washington Post, “President Obama and Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. reassured CIA employees anew yesterday that interrogators would not face criminal prosecution so long as they followed legal advice.” As Holder put it, “It would be unfair to prosecute dedicated men and women working to protect America for conduct that was sanctioned in advance by the Justice Department.”
The legal advice in question had been contained in a series of infamous memos written by that department’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) between 2002 and 2005. In them, the legal definition of torture was “clarified” for a nervous attorney general, Alberto Gonzalez, and the CIA. One memo, drafted by Deputy Assistant Attorney General John Yoo and signed by Assistant Attorney General for the OLC Jay Bybee, explained that to “constitute torture” under the law, physical pain “must be equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death.” To meet the legal definition of psychological torture, mental suffering “must result in significant psychological harm of significant duration, e.g., lasting for months or even years.”
Not surprisingly, despite the previous administration’s stamp of approval on what were euphemistically called “enhanced interrogation techniques,” a three-year investigation by the Obama Justice Department into CIA interrogation practices came to a whimpering end in August 2012, when Holder announced that the only two remaining torture cases, both of which involved deaths in U.S. custody, would be dropped.
A year earlier, as Glenn Greenwald reported in the Guardian, Holder had decided not to prosecute anyone in 99 other cases of “severe detainee abuse.” The two remaining cases concerned the death by torture and hypothermia of Gul Rahman in the CIA’s notorious Salt Pit prison in Afghanistan in 2002 and that of “Manadel al-Jamadi, who died in CIA custody after he was beaten, stripped, had cold water poured on him, and then [was] shackled to the wall” at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.
Among those Holder presumably chose not to charge were the men responsible for designing and implementing the protocols that led to Rahman’s death, along with tortures like waterboarding and “walling” (the slamming of the back of a prisoner’s head repeatedly into a wall). Thus ended any hope of holding torturers legally accountable in the United States of America, early proof of the kind of impunity that has, in the Trump years, spread elsewhere.
Torturer Redux
Shortly before Donald Trump’s recent triumph in the Senate, one of those “extraordinarily talented people” hailed by President Obama resurfaced in a courtroom not as a defendant, but as a hostile witness. James Mitchell was called to the stand by the defense at pre-trial hearings at the Guantánamo detention facility in Cuba, the offshore prison for detainees in the war on terror set up by the Bush administration in 2002. In the dock almost 18 years later are five men, long held there, who have been accused of involvement in the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The most notorious is Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, often described as 9/11’s “mastermind.”
Mitchell is one of the two psychologists — the other being John “Bruce” Jessen — who designed the CIA’s main torture program. He has the honor of being considered the inventor of waterboarding, a series of techniques aimed at producing water-induced suffering that have formed part of the armamentarium of torturers for centuries. (Perhaps “reinventor” would be the more accurate term.) Mitchell was, in fact, the first person to perform waterboarding in the war on terror, as well as being the architect of walling, of confining victims in tiny boxes, and of a variety of other grim “enhanced interrogation techniques” first employed at CIA “black sites” set up around the world in those years.
Called by defense attorneys to describe the torture their clients endured, a “defiant” Mitchell told the courtroom, “I’d get up today and do it again.”
As New York Times reporter Carol Rosenberg explained, Mitchell was not actually talking about what he did to any of the five defendants in the dock at Guantánamo, although he did torture some of them. He was referring to the first prisoner to be waterboarded under the CIA torture program, Saudi national Abu Zubaydah who was waterboarded a total of 83 times over the course of a single month. President George W. Bush’s secretary of defense, Donald Rumsfeld, claimed (falsely, as it turned out) that he was “if not the number two, very close to the number-two person in” al-Qaeda and that he had run an al-Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan.
In fact, as the Obama administration acknowledged in 2010, Abu Zubaydah was never even a member of that group, let alone one of its key lieutenants. Captured in a joint CIA-FBI operation in Pakistan in 2002, he would be shuffled between CIA black sites for the next four-and-a-half years, including the Agency’s secret “Strawberry Fields” site at Guantánamo. In part because of what the CIA did to him, Abu Zubaydah remains imprisoned there to this day. According to CIA recommendations, he is never to be “placed in a situation where he has any significant contact with others and/or has the opportunity to be released.”
Nevertheless, Mitchell oversaw the 83 times Abu Zubaydah was waterboarded in a single month at a CIA black site in Thailand, during which he came close to death by drowning. On one of those occasions, as the Senate Intelligence Committee’s 2014 report on CIA torture revealed, he was observed to be “completely unresponsive, with bubbles rising through his open, full mouth.”
Not unlike our president, Mitchell seems to be deeply hurt by what he perceives as unfair criticism. “You folks have been saying untrue and malicious things about me and Dr. Jessen for years,” he complained to defense attorneys at the Guantánamo hearing. People may have said mean things about him, but in reality, far from being held accountable for torture, James Mitchell has luxuriated in his impunity, earning royalties from his book Enhanced Interrogation: Inside the Minds and Motives of the Islamic Terrorists Trying To Destroy America and giving speeches arranged through the Worldwide Speakers Group (which advertises him as “psychologist, CIA interrogator, author”) at $15,000 to $25,000 a pop.
Nor did Mitchell fare poorly while employed by the CIA. In fact, the Agency paid the company Mitchell and Jessen formed $81 million for their work. In addition, their contract included language guaranteeing that the U.S. government would cover any legal costs they incurred as a result of that work through the year 2021. This would turn out to come in handy when, in 2015, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) sued the two of them on behalf of three of their victims: Suleiman Abdullah Salim, Mohamed Ahmed ben Soud, and the family of Gul Rahman, the detainee who had died of exposure to cold at the Salt Pit. Mitchell and Jessen settled the case in 2017 for an undisclosed sum, also paid by the U.S. government.
It Never Gets Easier
You’d think it would get easier over time. For almost two decades, I’ve been writing about torture. By now, you might imagine that I’d be at least somewhat desensitized to details about and descriptions of it. Instead, each time I dive into that cesspool, it appears even more disgusting and frightening.
If it’s hard for me, someone who has never been tortured and has spoken face-to-face with only a few torture survivors, imagine what it must be like for those who have survived the Bush-era torture programs, which went on for an unknown number of years. Actually, you don’t have to do too much imagining, since their testimony about how such abuse affected some of them and how lasting those effects were is available. In 2016, New York Timesreporters Matt Apuzzo, Sheri Fink, and James Risen published a series of articles under the title “How U.S. Torture Left a Legacy of Damaged Minds.”
One of those profiled was Suleiman Abdullah Salim, a plaintiff in the ACLU suit against Mitchell and Jessen. A Tanzanian native, Salim was picked up in Mogadishu, Somalia, and turned over to U.S. operatives for reasons that remain murky. It’s most likely he was a victim of mistaken identity (and he wouldn’t have been the only such prisoner in the war on terror). We know, at least, that the Americans who bundled him onto a plane were expecting a Yemeni Arab and someone with much lighter skin. He ended up in Afghanistan at a black site he recalls as “the Darkness,” which was, in fact, the Salt Pit. There he was beaten, walled, shackled in complete darkness, exposed to relentless loud music, confined in a coffinlike box, repeatedly hung by the wrists — once for 48 hours straight — and drenched at times with ice water until he feared he was drowning.
Eventually, the CIA moved Salim to a prison at Bagram Airbase outside the Afghan capital, Kabul. In 2008, he was turned loose in Afghanistan with only the clothes he was wearing. The International Red Cross arranged a flight home to Zanzibar, Tanzania, where he still lives, haunted by the Darkness.
In 2010, the Times‘ Risen wrote, “Dr. Sondra Crosby of the Boston University School of Medicine, a physician, a Navy reservist and an expert on torture, was asked by Physicians for Human Rights, a New York-based group, to evaluate Mr. Salim.” She found that he was emaciated “like a skeleton” and “plagued by profound distress, inability to eat, and inability to sleep.” Risen’s report continues:
“‘He describes himself as a ghost walking around the town,’ she added. She noted other symptoms: flashbacks, short- and long-term memory loss, distress at seeing anyone in a military uniform, hopelessness about the future and a strong avoidance of noise. ‘He reports that his head feels empty — like an empty box,’ she said.”
The Times series also chronicled the suffering of another plaintiff in the case against Mitchell and Jessen: Mohamed ben Soud. He, too, was held at the Salt Pit, where his ordeal involved many of the same torture methods Salim had endured. Today, he has full-blown post-traumatic stress disorder. “He is racked with self-doubt and struggles to make simple decisions. His moods swing dramatically,” reported the Times.
First, Do No Harm?
The pre-trial hearings at Guantánamo have also revealed the rarely discussed role of doctors and other medical workers in the U.S. torture program. Apparently the reason we know that Abu Zubaydah was waterboarded 83 times and Khalid Shaikh Mohammed 183 times is that, as James Mitchell testified in January, a doctor was indeed present inside the torture chamber and used a little metal click-counter to keep track. According to the Times’s Rosenberg, however, doctors
“did more than count waterboarding sessions. Government investigations and evidence in the pretrial hearings of the men… show doctors conducted ‘rectal rehydration,’ carried out rectal cavity searches, and examined swollen feet and legs of captives who were sleep deprived for days by being shackled in painful positions.”
There is undoubtedly more to be uncovered about the role of medical personnel at the CIA’s global black sites. Indeed, there is more to be uncovered about all the ways in which detainees were stripped not only of their human rights but, at least in the minds of their tormentors, of their very humanity. At one point in his testimony, for instance, Mitchell turned to the attorney for Ammar al-Baluchi, one of the five 9/11 defendants. Speaking of Charlie Wise, the CIA interrogation chief and the rest of his crew, Mitchell said, “Looks like they used your client as a training prop.” According to the Guardian’s Julian Borger, in fact, under Wise’s leadership, “trainees had to use each of their techniques on Baluchi and other inmates in order to earn certification.”
And Mitchell himself used Abu Zubaydah as a demonstration prop, so bigwigs at the CIA would be implicated in what he was doing. Borger reports that “he waterboarded Abu Zubaydah even though he was quite sure the detainee had no actionable intelligence to surrender. It was done purely as a demonstration for the agency VIPs.”
The Price of Impunity
Thanks to the cowardice of the Obama administration, no CIA officer or any higher official in the administration of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, no psychologist, no doctor, no one at all has yet been held accountable for the years of torture practiced on a global scale in the war on terror. Donald Trump himself, of course, got elected while publicly proclaiming about waterboarding that “I like it a lot” and he reportedly considered Gina Haspel’s black-site torture experiences a positive part of her résumé when considering her for CIA director. Mitchell, of course, continues to make speeches and collect his royalties. George W. Bush has been rehabilitated as a kindly portrait painter.
Is it really so surprising, then, that we now have a man in the Oval Office who believes he has “the right to do whatever I want as president”? The history of the twenty-first-century war on terror suggests that, if he doesn’t have the right, he certainly appears to have the power.
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Assange’s crucifixion is all about waging war on dissent, truth-telling on major issues, and journalism the way it’s supposed to be.
It’s about creeping totalitarian rule in the US, UK, and West — equity, justice, and respect for the rule of law in these countries long ago abandoned, their deplorable state supported by establishment media, operating as mouthpieces for their hostile agendas.
An open letter by 60 doctors, representing the views of dozens of likeminded physicians and psychologists from 18 nations, accused the Boris Johnson regime of inflicting serious harm on Assange by “prolonged psychological torture.”
They requested that he be transferred from brutalizing prison confinement to a university teaching hospital for evaluation and treatment.
Stonewalled by the Johnson regime, they wrote a follow-up letter to Australian authorities, requesting they intervene on behalf of their citizen — no reply forthcoming.
The Scott Morrison regime is in cahoots with the US and Britain, wanting Assange eliminated by slow torture.
Dozens of doctors from the US, UK, Australia, Austria, Germany, Italy, Norway, Poland, Sri Lanka, Sweden, and other countries signed their appeal for Assange to Britain and Australia.
Their letter concluded saying:
“It is our opinion that Mr. Assange requires urgent expert medical assessment of both his physical and psychological state of health.”
“Any medical treatment indicated should be administered in a properly equipped and expertly staffed university teaching hospital (tertiary care).”
“Were such urgent assessment and treatment not to take place, we have real concerns, on the evidence currently available, that Mr. Assange could die in prison.”
“The medical situation is thereby urgent. There is no time to lose.”
Last May after visiting Assange in London’s high-security Belmarsh prison, UN special rapporteur on torture Nils Melzer said the following:
“Mr. Assange showed all symptoms typical for prolonged exposure to psychological torture, including extreme stress, chronic anxiety and intense psychological trauma.”
Last November he warned that “Assange’s continued exposure to arbitrariness and abuse may soon end up costing his life,” adding:
“In 20 years of work with victims of war, violence and political persecution I have never seen a group of (so-called) democratic states (sic) ganging up to deliberately isolate, demonize and abuse a single individual for such a long time and with so little regard for human dignity and the rule of law.”
Melzer warned that if Assange dies in prison, he’ll have been tortured to death.
Last November, I said the following:
In cahoots with the Trump regime, Britain is killing Assange slowly for the “crime” of truth-telling journalism the way it’s supposed to be.
Isolated in maximum security solitary confinement, denied vitally needed medical and dental treatment, and reportedly given 3-quinuclidinyl benzilate (BZ), a hallucinogenic chemical warfare agent, are crimes against humanity by intentionally causing great suffering and/or serious mental and physical injury.
Longterm isolation behind bars is torture by any standard, a flagrant US Eight Amendment violation, prohibiting “cruel and unusual punishments.”
The UN Convention Against Torture defines the practice as any state action “causing severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental…intentionally inflicted on a person” for information, punishment, intimidation, or intentional discrimination.
Prisoners isolated for extended periods experience panic attacks, lethargy, insomnia, nightmares, dizziness, social withdrawal, memory and appetite loss, delusions and hallucinations, profound despair and hopelessness, suicidal thoughts, and paranoia.
Longterm isolation is like being buried alive, at times causing irreversible trauma, prisoners becoming dysfunctional and zombie-like.
We’re all Julian Assange. His fate is ours. Proceedings against him are all about targeting speech, press and academic freedoms, wanting them and their practitioners eliminated.
If not done away with in London’s Belmarsh prison, Assange’s father John Shipton fears his extradition to the US, calling it “a death sentence” if occurs.
At a Tuesday press conference in London, WikiLeaks editor-in-Chief Kristinn Hrafnsson, Assange attorney Jennifer Robinson, and Australian MPs Andrew Wilkie and George Christensen addressed his condition and status.
Hrafnsson explained that in 2011, Assange received Australia’s Walkley award, its Pulitzer prize equivalent — now considered espionage by the US and UK regimes, adding:
The case against Assange is “highly politicized…There is an overwhelming argument for dismissal.”
There’s a greater argument against wrongful charges with no legal standing, against his unlawful imprisonment, against his police state crucifixion, against a flagrant breach of international law.
Like Chelsea Manning, Assange is a prisoner of conscience, a political prisoner, guilty of no wrongdoing — his torture and abuse by rogue state Britain in cahoots with rogue state USA is a high crime against humanity.
A Final Comment
At Tuesday’s press conference in London, Australian MP, co-chair of the Bring Julian Assange Home parliamentary group Andrew Wilkie said the following:
His imprisonment, torture and abuse on dubious charges “establish(es) a precedent that if you are a journalist who does anything that offends any government in the world then you face the very real prospect of being extradited to that country” for prosecution, adding:
“This is a political case and what is at stake is not just the life of Julian Assange.”
“It is about the future of journalism” and individuals practicing it with honor and dedication to truth-telling on issues mattering most.
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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.”
In so-called cases 1000 and 2000, he’s charged with fraud and breach of trust — as well as bribery and breach of trust in Case 4000.
Evidence against him is damning, Israeli attorney general Mendelblit earlier saying:
Netanyahu “damaged the image of the public service and public trust in it (by abusing his office, knowingly) taking a bribe as a public servant in exchange for actions related to (his) position.”
He was caught red-handed on tape, negotiating a quid pro quo with Yedioth Ahronoth publisher Arnon Mozes for more favorable broadsheet coverage in return for legislation prohibiting distribution of the free daily Israel Hayom, YA’s main competitor, owned by Netanyahu supporter Sheldon Adelson — what case 2000 is all about.
Case 4000 alleges that police suspect, Walla news owner/controlling shareholder of Bezeq telecommunications company, Shaul Elovitch ordered favorable coverage of Netanyahu on his news site in return for benefits arranged for Bezeq.
Case 1000 involves lavish gifts Netanyahu received from Israeli billionaire Arnon Milchan in return for political favors.
Mendelblit said he was duty-bound to indict Netanyahu. Calling it “an obligation” on him as attorney general, he added that no one “is above the law” — except on matters relating to Palestinians and neighboring states, of course.
If convicted, Netanyahu faces up to 10 years imprisonment for bribery, a maximum of three years for fraud and breach of trust.
Last December, an Israeli Channel 12 poll showed 52% of respondents saying Netanyahu should resign following indictment, 38% against it, 10% undecided.
The latest polls suggest continued impasse following March 2 elections, results projected to be similar to last April and September.
Eight parties are projected to win Knesset seats, none with anywhere near enough to form a government alone.
Coalitions run Israel, how it’s been throughout its history, a 61-seat majority needed to rule.
As of mid-February polls, Gantz’s Blue and White party is projected to win 36 seats to 33 for Netanyahu’s Likud.
Neither leading party was able to cobble together enough support following elections last year. It’s unclear if momentum for one over the other will change in March — Netanyahu’s trial to begin two weeks after elections.
He’ll be tried in Jerusalem District Court before a three-judge panel — at stake is his political life and personal freedom.
Israel’s Supreme Court may have final say on his case if he’s convicted by the lower court and appeals.
In response to the announced trial date, Blue and White party leader Benny Gantz said “Netanyahu will lose his mandate and his trial will begin,” adding:
He “will deal only with himself. He cannot take care of the citizens of Israel. Do you want a prime minister who goes on trial?”
After shunning public debates with Gantz and other political opponents since 1999 with Yitzhak Mordechai on national television when Ehud Barak defeated him, Netanyahu said “(l)et’s do a few televised debates…without teleprompters.”
In 2015, he appeared with main rival Isaac Herzog by video feed from home, not face-to-face.
In response to his request, a source representing Gantz said “(f)or 10 years, Bibi avoided all debates.”
“Suddenly, he wakes up on the day that his court date is assigned. We don’t have to cooperate with every lame trick of his. Why doesn’t he go debate the prosecutor?”
Separately days earlier, Gantz said he’s while he’s “ready for any debate…the next big (one) Netanyahu will have is with the prosecution’s witness(es) in his trial.”
A Final Comment
Mendelblit strongly denounced Netanyahu’s wrongdoing when indicting him.
Accusing him and his wife of “an improper relationship” with individuals from whom they “received (special) favors,” the AG called his actions 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.”
His time in the dock next month will decide his fate.
On issues affecting Palestinians, Syria, Lebanon’s Hezbollah, and US/Israeli relations, Gantz is no different from Netanyahu.
The former IDF commander is unaccountable for high crimes of war and against humanity throughout his military service from 1977 – 2015.
His only redeeming feature is he’s not the current prime minister, the lesser of two deplorable figures, neither worthy of high or other public office.
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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.”
Syrians are in a desperate race to outrun the offensive of the brutal Assad regime. The ruthless government forces are aggressively destroying helpless mines and car bombs, treacherously restoring roads, schools and residential houses, cruelly launching road patrols, and (oh, the horror!) oppressing moderate oppositionists from al-Qaeda.
On February 18, the brutality of the regime reached a new peak with the reopening of Aleppo International Airport after the nine years of closure. According to reports, upcoming destinations for Aleppo will include Beirut, Dubai, Cairo, Moscow, and Erevan. The airlines that will be doing business with Aleppo Airport will be Syrian Arab Airways, Cham Wings, Iran Air, and the Russian national carrier, Aeroflot. Syria blatantly violated all fair-trade acts by excluding Turkish airlines from the project. In contrast to Aleppo operators, the Turkish companies had already proven themselves as safe and comfortable carriers of Idlib rebels that move to make money in Libya by fighting on behalf of Turkish-backed factions.
In northeastern Syria, regime forces once again blocked a US military patrol forcing it to turn back and thus undermining Mr. Trump’s democratic efforts to ‘secure’ Syrian oil for US companies and military contractors.
However, the wildest crimes are taken place in Greater Idlib, where the Syrians reject Turkish demands to withdraw from areas cowardly captured from al-Qaeda groups. The second round of the Turkish-Russian talks on the situation in Idlib ended on February 18 without any final statement. On the same day, the Syrian Air Force continued striking positions of Turkish protegees. Fortunately, a spokesman for the Turkish ruling party declared that Ankara had informed Moscow that it would attack Assad forces if it does not leave in peace al-Qaeda and withdraw from the captured areas. During the past weeks, Turkey concentrated thousands of troops and military equipment pieces in the area. So, there is at least one strong pillar of democracy in the Idlib question.
The US President already announced that he and Mr. Erdogan were “working together” on the Idlib plan to prevent a tragedy. “He doesn’t want people to be killed by the thousands, and hundreds of thousands,” Mr. Trump told media. Earlier, Mark Lowcock, the UN’s humanitarian affairs chief, said on Monday that “indiscriminate” violence in the region reached “a horrifying new level”. Idlib rebels can feel secure about the interests of their foreign backers. They are planning to sell Idlib groups at some useful price.
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Few postmodern political pantomimes have been more revealing than the hundreds of so-called “international decision-makers,” mostly Western, waxing lyrical, disgusted or nostalgic over “Westlessness” at the Munich Security Conference.
“Westlessness” sounds like one of those constipated concepts issued from a post-party bad hangover at the Rive Gauche during the 1970s. In theory (but not French Theory) Westlessness in the age of Whatsapp should mean a deficit of multiparty action to address the most pressing threats to the “international order” – or (dis)order – as nationalism, derided as a narrow-minded populist wave, prevails.
Yet what Munich actually unveiled was some deep – Western – longing for those effervescent days of humanitarian imperialism, with nationalism in all its strands being cast as the villain impeding the relentless advance of profitable, neocolonial Forever Wars.
As much as the MSC organizers – a hefty Atlanticist bunch – tried to spin the discussions as emphasizing the need for multilateralism, a basket case of ills ranging from uncontrolled migration to “brain dead” NATO got billed as a direct consequence of “the rise of an illiberal and nationalist camp within the Western world.” As if this were a rampage perpetrated by an all-powerful Hydra featuring Bannon-Bolsonaro-Orban heads.
Far from those West-is-More heads in Munich is the courage to admit that assorted nationalist counter-coups also qualify as blowback for the relentless Western plunder of the Global South via wars – hot, cold, financial, corporate-exploitative.
For what it is worth, here’s the MSC report. Only two sentences would be enough to give away the MSC game: “In the post-Cold War era, Western-led coalitions were free to intervene almost anywhere. Most of the time, there was support in the UN Security Council, and whenever a military intervention was launched, the West enjoyed almost uncontested freedom of military movement.”
There you go. Those were the days when NATO, with full impunity, could bomb Serbia, miserably lose a war on Afghanistan, turn Libya into a militia hell and plot myriad interventions across the Global South. And of course none of that had any connection whatsoever with the bombed and the invaded being forced into becoming refugees in Europe.
West is more
In Munich, South Korean Foreign Minister Kang Kyung-wha got closer to the point when she said she found “Westlessness” quite insular as a theme. She made sure to stress that multilateralism is very much an Asian feature, expanding on the theme of ASEAN centrality.
Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi makes a speech at the 56th Munich Security Conference at on Feb 15, 2020. Photo: Abdulhamid Hosbas / Anadolu / AFP
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, with his customary finesse, was sharper, noting how “the structure of the Cold War rivalry is being recreated” in Europe. Lavrov was a prodigy of euphemism when he noted how “escalating tensions, NATO’s military infrastructure advancing to the East, exercises of unprecedented scope near the Russian borders, the pumping of defense budgets beyond measure – all this generates unpredictability.”
Yet it was Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi who really got to the heart of the matter. While stressing that “strengthening global governance and international coordination is urgent right now,” Wang said, “We need to get rid of the division of the East and the West and go beyond the difference between the South and the North, in a bid to build a community with a shared future for mankind.”
“Community with a shared future” may be standard Beijing terminology, but it does carry a profound meaning as it embodies the Chinese concept of multilateralism as meaning no single state has priority and all nations share the same rights.
Wang went farther: The West – with or without Westlessness– should get rid of its subconscious mentality of civilization supremacy; give up its bias against China; and “accept and welcome the development and revitalization of a nation from the East with a system different from that of the West.” Wang is a sophisticated enough diplomat to know this is not going to happen.
Wang also could not fail to raise the Westlessness crowd’s eyebrows to alarming heights when he stressed, once again, that the Russia-China strategic partnership will be deepened – alongside exploring “ways of peaceful coexistence” with the US and deeper cooperation with Europe.
What to expect from the so-called “system leader” in Munich was quite predictable. And it was delivered, true to script, by current Pentagon head Mark Esper, yet another Washington revolving door practitioner.
21st Century threat
All Pentagon talking points were on display. China is nothing but a rising threat to the world order – as in “order” dictated by Washington. China steals Western know-how; intimidates all its smaller and weaker neighbors; seeks an “advantage by any means and at any cost.”
As if any reminder to this well-informed audience was needed, China was once again placed at the top of the Pentagon’s “threats,” followed by Russia, “rogue states” Iran and North Korea, and “extremist groups.” No one asked whether al-Qaeda in Syria is part of the list.
The “Communist Party and its associated organs, including the People’s Liberation Army,” were accused of “increasingly operating in theaters outside China’s borders, including in Europe.” Everyone knows only one “indispensable nation” is self-authorized to operate “in theaters outside its borders” to bomb others into democracy.
No wonder Wang was forced to qualify all of the above as “lies”: “The root cause of all these problems and issues is that the US does not want to see the rapid development and rejuvenation of China, and still less would they want to accept the success of a socialist country.”
So in the end Munich did disintegrate into the catfight that will dominate the rest of the century. With Europe de facto irrelevant and the EU subordinated to NATO’s designs, Westlessness is indeed just an empty, constipated concept: all reality is conditioned by the toxic dynamics of China ascension and US decline.
The irrepressible Maria Zakharova once again nailed it: “They spoke about that country [China] as a threat to entire humankind. They said that China’s policy is the threat of the 21st century. I have a feeling that we are witnessing, through the speeches delivered at the Munich conference in particular, the revival of new colonial approaches, as though the West no longer thinks it shameful to reincarnate the spirit of colonialism by means of dividing people, nations and countries.”
An absolute highlight of the MSC was when diplomat Fu Ying, the chairperson on foreign affairs for the National People’s Congress, reduced US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to dust with a simple question: “Do you really think the democratic system is so fragile” that it can be threatened by Huawei?
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This article was originally published on Asia Times.
Pepe Escobar is a frequent contributor to Global Research.
On February 1, 1960, four African American students from North Carolina Agricultural & Technical University sat down at a racially segregated lunch counter in the F.W. Woolworth Department store in downtown Greensboro to demand service.
This act of civil disobedience was organized by Joseph McNeil, Franklin McCain, William Smith, Clarence Henderson and Ezell Blair, Jr. (later Jibreel Khazan). They, of course, were refused accommodation by the wait staff which called the police.
Surprisingly these students were not arrested and eventually reached an agreement with the Mayor of Greensboro to abolish the racially segregated policies at several lunch counters in the city. Remarkably this form of protest spread throughout the South and several areas of the North.
By the end of February, thousands of students and their supporters had sat-in at various establishments throughout the country. Many were arrested and brutalized by the police.
Nearly two weeks after the Greensboro protest, African American students in Nashville, Tennessee, a center for Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), set out to overturn segregation in the city. The youth were given a political orientation by Vanderbilt University graduate student and clergyman Rev. James Lawson who trained them in nonviolent resistance techniques beginning in the fall of 1959 as they gathered under the banners of the Nashville Student Movement (NSM) and the Nashville Christian Leadership Conference (NCLC).
Lawson was later expelled from Vanderbilt, a prestigious white university, due to his activism and influence among the African American students at other institutions. Yet the movement in Nashville would produce some of the most militant and consistent fighters for Civil Rights in the U.S. such as Diane Nash, John Lewis and John Hardy.
The struggle to desegregate Nashville lasted for several months. Students from Fisk University, Tennessee State Agricultural and Industrial College, Meharry Medical College and the American Baptist Theological Seminary played a leading role in what became the first organized movement aimed at ending all Jim Crow regulations in a major municipality in the South during the 1960s.
White mobs in response to the student demonstrations gathered inside lunch counters and on the downtown streets of Nashville to taunt and physically assault protesters. Activists such as John Lewis and Diane Nash spent time in jail for their actions.
Nashville mass demonstration in April 1960 led by Diane Nash and John Lewis
The courageous efforts by the students in Nashville had a monumental impact on youth around the country. Eventually the city administration relented on a number of the demands put forward by the youth illustrating that direct action could win results in the campaign to abolish segregation.
Diane Nash at the time was a student at Fisk University. She travelled to Nashville from Chicago where she had grown up. Along with Bernard Lafayette, James Bevel, John Lewis and others, they constituted the core organizers of the student movement in the city.
Nash was quoted in the Atlanta Journal Constitution in regard to her burgeoning activism saying that:
“I started feeling very confined and really resented it. Every time I obeyed a segregation rule, I felt like I was somehow agreeing I was too inferior to go through the front door or to use the facility that the ordinary public would use.” (See this)
Lafayette, who was a 20-year-old student at the American Baptist Theological Seminary, noted the central role of Nash in the early phase of the movement in Nashville. In the same above-mentioned article Lafayette told the newspaper:
“She was always very calm, clear and articulate. She didn’t try to dominate anything. But she really impressed us with her leadership abilities. One of the things that she was very good at was managing conflict within the group.”
As the struggle expanded to mobilize thousands of students, Nash became the media spokesperson for the movement. She confronted Nashville Mayor Ben West amid a march of 4,000 people which descended on City Hall in the aftermath of the bombing of the home of African American Attorney Z. Alexander Looby on April 19, asking him directly did he think maintaining legalized segregation was morally correct. West said he was a staunch believer in segregation.
Looby, who escaped the bombing uninjured, along with other lawyers, worked tirelessly to win the release of some 150 students who were arrested between February 13 and May 10 when a settlement was reached with the West administration. Although the May 1960 agreement did outlaw segregation in six establishments in Nashville, demonstrations continued against other segregated businesses until the passage of the Civil Rights Act of July 1964.
The Formation of SNCC
While the student movement led by African Americans grew rapidly, a conference was called by Ms. Ella Baker, the-then executive director of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) in Raleigh, North Carolina in April of the same year. Baker encouraged the students to form their own independent organization which resulted in the founding of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC).
SNCC played a pivotal role in the mass movement for Civil Rights from that period throughout the 1960s. The following year in 1961, the Congress on Racial Equality (CORE) began the “Freedom Rides” throughout the South to eliminate racial segregation in interstate travel.
There were malicious attacks on Freedom Riders in Montgomery and Birmingham, Alabama where many were severely beaten by white mobs while police and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agents looked on doing nothing. A Greyhound bus was bombed on Mother’s Day in Anniston, Alabama by the Ku Klux Klan. The inhabitant barely escaped leaving many injured with no fatalities.
CORE was forced to abandon leadership of the Freedom Rides which was soon taken up by SNCC. Several of their activists were arrested in Jackson, Mississippi at the end of a journey during the protests and sentenced to weeks and even months in the notoriously brutal Parchman State Penitentiary.
Many of those arrested and sentenced including John Lewis and Stokely Carmichael would later serve as chairpersons of SNCC. Their role in the broader Civil Rights and later Black Power movements during the 1960s and 1970s changed the course of African American history.
Linking the Student Movement to the Plight of Black Farmers and the African Liberation Struggle
The student movement led by SNCC and other organizations would have been historically significant on its own since it challenged the racist notions of African American apathy, complacency and cowardice. Yet its impact was much broader since SNCC and other youth groupings worked closely with sharecroppers, tenant farmers and independent Black landowners in the South.
In Fayette and Hayward Counties in Southwest Tennessee, hundreds of families were evicted from farms where they worked for white landowners when they sought to register to vote in order to participate in the 1960 presidential elections. Local organizers in Tennessee requested assistance from around the U.S. and received food, water, makeshift housing supplies and healthcare workers to prevent the evicted tenant farmers from starving. This activity represented the first “Tent City” of the Civil Rights Movement in the winter of 1960.
SNCC sent organizers to Fayette County to provide assistance. The Tent City encampments coincided with protest efforts in nearby Jackson, Tennessee where students from Lane College, a HBCU, waged a campaign to desegregate buses and other public facilities.
The student movement was inspired by the African independence movement of the 1950s and 1960s. In 1960 alone, numerous African colonies gained their liberation while others continued to wage protracted struggles for freedom under majority rule. It was also on March 21, 1960 that the Sharpeville massacre occurred in South Africa leaving 69 Africans dead at the hands of the security forces for merely protesting nonviolently against the racist pass laws.
As the movements in the U.S., Africa and internationally escalated, other tactics and strategies would emerge. By the mid-1960s, as a result of the direct experience of organizers in the Civil Rights Movement, many of whom were influenced by the African Liberation struggles, the Vietnamese Revolution, the Cuban Revolution, etc., some activists concluded that the fight for freedom could not be won solely through nonviolent direct action and passive resistance.
The examples set by developments in Vietnam, Cuba, Angola, Mozambique, Algeria, Guinea-Bissau and other geo-political regions of the world, led many within SNCC to work towards the building of independent political parties such as the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP) in 1964-65 and the Lowndes County Freedom Organization (LCFO), which was the original Black Panther Party in Alabama during 1965-1966.
After 1963, urban rebellions would erupt in cities throughout the U.S. The assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in April 1968 would radicalize even more youth.
These developments involving the student movement and its links with the plight of urban dwellers, farmers and the world liberation struggles should be reexamined by the emerging youth activists at the beginning of the third decade of the 21stcentury. Racism, national oppression and economic exploitation remain intact in the U.S. necessitating the imperatives of organizing and mobilizing the masses of people for genuine equality and liberation.
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Abayomi Azikiwe is the editor of Pan-African News Wire. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.
Featured image: Greensboro sit-in during February 1960 ignited the student movement during the 1960s.
The central pillar to Democratic paranoia and vengefulness regarding the loss of Hillary Clinton in 2016 was the link between Russian hacking, the servers of the Democratic National Committee and the release of emails via WikiLeaks. Over time, that account has become a matter of hagiography, an article of faith, with grave conclusions: WikiLeaks and Russia elected Donald Trump.
The Russia-DNC angle received another prod in pre-extradition hearings being conducted against Assange in the Westminster Magistrates Court, with his legal team disclosing details of the visit paid to the WikiLeaks publisher by former California Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (image below) in 2017. The visit in question was not entirely a matter of surprise. The Wall Street Journalreported in September that year that Rohrabacher had contacted the White House in an attempt to broker a deal with Assange designed to alleviate his legal troubles. A conversation was said to have taken place between the Congressman and White House Chief of Staff John Kelly, canvassing the possibility of ending the impasse in exchange for evidence that Russia was not behind the hacked emails.
Assange’s legal team, through Edward Fitzgerald, disclosed that President Trump had instructed Rohrabacher to discuss the possibility of a pardon for Assange provided he agreed to deny any Russian connection in the DNC hack. A statement produced by Assange’s personal lawyer, Jennifer Robison, included the following description:
“Mr Rohrabacher going to see Mr Assange and saying, on instructions from the president, he was offering a pardon or some other way out, if Mr Assange … said Russia had nothing to do with the DNC leaks.”
For his part, former Congressman Rohrabacher is dissembling, claiming he had not discussed Assange with Trump prior to his “fact finding mission” to London. “At no time did I offer Julian Assange anything from the President because I had not spoken with the President about this issue at all.” Rohrabacher admitted to speaking with Kelly in a brief conversation after his trip to the Ecuadorean embassy in London. “No one followed up with me including Gen. Kelly and that was the last discussion I had on this subject with anyone representing Trump or his Administration.”
In 2018, Rohrabacher, in an interview with The Intercept, claimed that Kelly blocked him from briefing Trump about his London meeting with Assange. Both the congressman and his travel companion Charles Johnson had been shown “definitive proof [by Assange] that Russia was not the source of the Democratic Party communications that WikiLeaks published during the 2016 campaign.” The reason for Kelly’s obstruction lay with concerns that the special prosecutor might take an interest in Rohrabacher’s discussions about Russia, and how “that would appear to out-of-control prosecutors that that is where the collusion is.”
To keep matters interesting and mendacious, Trump now claims to “barely” know Rohrabacher while White House Press Secretary Stephanie Grisham insists that the allegations are “absolutely and completely false”, “a complete fabrication and a total lie. This is probably another never ending hoax and total lie from the DNC.”
“Chronology matters: The meeting and the offer were made ten months after Julian Assange had already independently stated Russia was not the source of the DNC publication. The witness statement is one of the many bombshells from the defence to come.”
The latest instalment in the case that keeps giving is a reminder of how trenchantly the Democrats have been seeking to link the DNC hack to Russia, WikiLeaks and their defeat. What Trump and Assange share, on some level, is the same tarnishing administered by the same brush.
In August 2017, Patrick Lawrence, writing in The Nation, suggested that the download of the relevant data from the DNC servers was most probably an internal job rather than an externally conducted operation. Reliance was made upon the Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity memorandum to Trump claiming that, “Forensic studies of ‘Russian hacking’ into Democratic National Committee computers last year reveal that on July 5, 2016, data was leaked (not hacked) by a person with physical access to DNC computer.” An “insider” had “copied DNC data onto an external storage device.”
A storm ensued: the article had laid some considerable explosive material under the traditional DNC account, leading to editor Katrina vanden Heuvel to conduct a “post publication review”. In a modest mea culpa, the editorial board suggested that they “should have made certain that several of the article’s conclusions were presented as possibilities, not as certainties.”
Since then, the Mueller Report has sought to ensconce the Russia hack-DNC narrative, dismissing Assange’s inside job thesis with almost withering disdain. “As reports attributing the DNC and DCCC hacks to the Russian government emerged, WikiLeaks and Assange made several public statements apparently designed to obscure the source of the material that WikiLeaks was releasing. The file-transfer evidence … and other information uncovered during the investigation discredit WikiLeaks’s claims about the source of material that it posted.”
District Judge Vanessa Baraitser has yielded to Assange’s team on the material produced at the pre-extradition hearing, potentially linking WikiLeaks to the highest deliberations in the White House. The addition, along with the vast picture of surveillance targeting Assange, has the makings of a very compromising picture, indeed.
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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]
After three weeks of arguments, the jury awarded the peach-farmer plaintiff $15 million in damages and $250 million in punitive damages against the chemical companies.
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A federal jury determined that German agribusiness giants Bayer and BASF will have to pay $250 million in punitive damages to Bader Farms, the largest peach farm in Missouri, for damage caused by their dicamba-related products.
The verdict comes at the end of a three-week trial of a case where Bader Farms alleges it is going out of business because of damage incurred by the companies’ dicamba herbicides moving off of neighboring fields and harming their 1,000 acres of peach orchards.
On Friday, the jury ruled that both Monsanto, which was acquired by Bayer in 2018, and BASF acted negligently and Bader Farms should receive $15 million in actual damages for future losses incurred because of the loss of their orchard.
Bader Farms will receive a total of $265 million. BASF and Bayer will have to sort out what portion of the damages each company pays.
Bader Farms is among thousands of farms, comprising millions of acres of crops, that have alleged dicamba damage since 2015.
“It sends a strong message,” said Bev Randles, an attorney for Bader Farms. “The Baders’ were doing this, not just because of themselves or for themselves, but they felt like it was necessary because of what it means to farmers everywhere. This was just wrong.”
The lawsuit is the first of hundreds filed by farmers to go to trial. Bader’s lawsuit was independent of the outcome of a pending class-action lawsuit.
Bayer said in a statement that they are disappointed with the verdict, and Bader’s losses were not their fault. Bayer said it will appeal the decision.
“Despite the verdict, Bayer stands behind Xtend seed and XtendiMax herbicide products, which enjoy a 95 percent weed-control satisfaction rate from the farmers who use them,” said spokeswoman Susan Luke in an email. “We want our customers to know that, as this legal matter continues, we remain steadfast in our commitment to delivering them the effective and sustainable tools they need in the field.”
Luke added:
“According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, these tools do not pose any unreasonable risk when used according to their EPA-approved label. Monsanto took numerous steps to mitigate, and warn about, potential risks associated with its products. XtendiMax continues to be a valuable tool for growers who need effective options to increase yields and combat resistant weeds.”
BASF also said it was “disappointed” and “will be looking at our post-trial options,” said Odessa Patricia Hines, a company spokeswoman.
“Dicamba based herbicides, like Engenia herbicide, are critically important tools for growers battling resistant weeds in their soybean and cotton fields. The evidence revealed that we formulated our dicamba product to significantly reduce off-target movement and conducted extensive testing before receiving EPA approval to market Engenia herbicide in 2017,” Hines said.
Hines added that BASF will continue to provide training and work with “academics, NGOs, and state and federal agencies to address any concerns they may have regarding off target movement.”
Over the three-week trial, lawyers for Bader Farms presented more than 180 internal company documents to the jury. Those documents included projections that thousands of farmers would complain about the system, internal emails that showed Monsanto denied academics the ability to test their products and a presentation that showed BASF’s sales of dicamba spiked in 2016.
Documents also included sales projections and strategies from both BASF and Monsanto that said farmers would buy dicamba-resistant seeds in order to protect themselves.
Billy Randles, an attorney for Bader Farms, requested $200 million in damages, 2.5 percent of the company’s net worth.
“The only way to make them care is to make them pay,” Randles said.
Bader Farms’ harvest dropped from an average of 162,000 bushels in the early 2000s to as low as 12,000 bushels in 2018. The company, which says it will inevitably go out of business, sued for $20.9 million.
BASF and Bayer deny the allegations, blaming the crop damage on farmers making illegal applications, weather events, disease and other issues. They also deny that they engaged in a joint venture or conspiracy to release the products.
With an increasing number of weeds developing resistance to glyphosate, Monsanto developed genetically engineered soybean and cotton seeds that could withstand being sprayed by dicamba, a volatile weed killer traditionally used on corn and prior to the growing season. Both Monsanto and BASF also developed new versions of dicamba, touted to be less volatile than older versions.
Monsanto released the cotton seeds in 2015 and the soybean seeds in 2016, without the accompanying herbicides. Many farmers allegedly illegally sprayed dicamba in those years, harming Bader and other farmers.
The damage complaints increased in 2017, when the companies released their new herbicides. At least 3.6 million acres were damaged, according to an estimate by Kevin Bradley, a professor at the University of Missouri. The complaints increased in both 2018 and 2019 in some states, including Illinois, the largest soybean producing state.
The jury found that Monsanto was negligent in releasing the dicamba-tolerant seeds without the herbicide. The jury also found Monsanto and BASF were negligent in releasing new versions of dicamba that were touted to be less likely to move off-target that moved off-target and damaged Bader Farms’ peach trees.
The decision also found that Monsanto and BASF engaged in a “conspiracy to create an ecological disaster to increase profits” and engaged in a joint venture in releasing the dicamba-tolerant season.
Monsanto assessed its net worth at $6.5 billion in 2017 and $7.8 billion in 2018.
The punitive damages were only assessed for Monsanto releasing its dicamba-tolerant seeds onto the market in 2015 and 2016 without an accompanying herbicide. However, since the jury determined BASF and Monsanto engaged in a joint venture, both parties are responsible.
In an argument on Saturday morning, Jan Miller, an attorney for Monsanto, apologized to the Bader family and said the message the jury sent is “already resonating within the company.” Monsanto did not have a monetary request.
Miller pointed out that the company took steps to address drift issues prior to the their versions of dicamba being released, including putting a stipulation on the label that applicators should never spray when a sensitive crop is downwind and also helped create DriftWatch, a specialty crop registry, to protect those crops.
“At the end of the day, Monsanto is only successful if they help farmers,” Miller said. “There was no intention to go out there and harm anybody.”
Randles, in a rebuttal, dismissed that idea, and asked for a high damages total. He equated Monsanto to a criminal running out the door with money in their hand and not stopping just because they dropped a few bills along the way.
“Do you think Monsanto changed overnight?” Randles said. “Do you really think tomorrow they’re gonna stop destroying farms for their own profit? Do you really think they’re gonna change their whole business model?”
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Featured image: Bill Bader, owner of Bader Farms, and his wife Denise. (Photo by Johnathan Hettinger/Midwest Center for Investigative Reporting)
The hopes of India’s over 1.3 billion people were shattered after their country objectively failed to become the “superpower” that many of their leading “influencers” (read: propagandists) predicted it would be by 2020, with this finally being acknowledged by the popular Hindu nationalist Shiv Sena party last week after it did an about-face by pleading for Trump to reclassify their country as a “developing” one because it “is miles away from the status of developed countries on parameters like education, health, employment, cleanliness and poverty alleviation” and thus supposedly deserves to retain tariff-free access to the American market.
“Superpower 2020”?
Indians entered the current decade with bated breath, having been indoctrinated since shortly before the turn of the century with the completely false expectation that their country would finally become a “superpower” by 2020. They didn’t know exactly what this would mean in practice, but it sounded prestigious enough and was a welcome distraction from the abject poverty that marks many of their lives. After all, Prime Minister Modi told them last March that they were now a “space superpower” after successfully conducting an anti-satellite missile test. He then declared less than a month later ahead of the parliamentary elections in May of that year that only he could fulfill India’s “superpower” dreams. Then-BJP President Amit Shah seconded this statement shortly thereafter prior to it being reiterated by Modi’s Minister of State in September when he promised his people that India is on the “verge of being a superpower”. Once again, nobody ever really explained what being a “superpower” entailed, but the hyper-nationalist population wanted so desperately for the rest of the world to recognize them as one anyhow.
An Epic Disappointment Decades In The Making
That was why it was a disappointment of epic proportions for them that India entered 2020 without becoming the envy of the world like they falsely expected. The popular Indian online news site Scroll.in published a powerful piece at the time titled “India Superpower 2020: Tracing the brief history of a spectacularly incorrect prediction“, which touched upon the 1998 origin of the “superpower 2020” prediction and then explained its viral evolution across the proceeding years to the point where it basically became the country’s unofficial slogan over the last decade. Those who had earlier expressed their reservations about this unrealistic expectation were viciously attacked for being so-called “anti-nationals”, and if they weren’t Indian, then they were usually accused of “Hinduphobia”, but those defamatory abuses are no longer relevant after the influential Shiv Sena Hindu nationalist party publicly acknowledged that India isn’t even a “developed nation”, let alone anywhere near becoming a “superpower”.
The US Calls India’s “Superpower” Bluff
This was very important development because the organization contributes to framing the national narrative, meaning that Indians might never talk about being a “superpower” again, as if what Scroll.in described in their article as the nation’s “collective delusion” over the past two decades never happened at all. Shiv Sena didn’t suddenly switch their narrative from one of impending “superpower” status to that of India simply being yet another “super poor” “Global South” country no different from dozens of others just for sake of factual accuracy but because the nation stands to lose several billion dollars a year if it sticks to that debunked script. The US recently reclassified India as a “developed economy” ahead of Trump’s visit to the country later this month where he’s expected to sign major military and trade deals with America’s new strategic partner. Asia Times reported that this decision was made for technical reasons since India’s share of world trade was above the 0.5% threshold qualifying it for “developing economy” status, hence why nearly 2000 of its products are no longer eligible for the Generalized System of Preferences (GSP) regime that had previously given $5.7 billion in imports to the US duty-free status in 2017, thus making it the largest beneficiary of this program.
$5 Billion In Economic Restrictions Got Shiv Sena To Switch Their Narrative
Shiv Sena, forgetting all about everything that it had said in the previous years about India’s supposedly imminent “superpower” status, furiously lashed out at the US last week by describing its move as “a big blow to our economy…a big crisis for India.”
Walking back its entire narrative of India’s “miraculous growth” which had hitherto won it millions of devoted followers all across the country, the Hindu nationalist party repeated the same observations that the nation’s critics at home and abroad have been saying for years already, namely that “India is miles away from the status of developed countries on parameters like education, health, employment, cleanliness and poverty alleviation.” Evidently, speaking incessantly about India’s supposedly impending “superpower” status is useful for winning votes but becomes economically counterproductive the moment that the US acts like it believes that false narrative and then makes moves to eliminate the country’s preferential market access as a result. With $5.7 billion on the line, Shiv Sena had no choice but to tacitly admit that it and everyone else who had been celebrating India’s rise as a “superpower” were simply lying this whole time.
It’s No Longer “Hinduphobic” To Share Facts About India
There are some crucial lessons that other countries can learn from India’s humiliating experience, the most obvious of which is for political leaders to be more responsible when talking to the public about their country’s future status. Giving the largely impoverished masses unrealistically high expectations of global prestige using a never-defined slogan such as “superpower” is deceptive to the extreme and strongly suggests that they were deliberately manipulating their people for political purposes, likely to distract them from their dire economic situation with delusions of international grandeur. It’s all fun and games until the deadline for “superpower status” finally passed with a whimper and then the US took India at its word by restricting duty-free market access for $5.7 billion worth of its exports, thus dealing a heavy blow to some of its companies which were dependent on that regime in order to remain competitive. Shiv Sena is right, “India is miles away from the status of developed countries on parameters like education, health, employment, cleanliness and poverty alleviation”, but they were wrong for lying about that all this time, though at least those who repeat the party’s new rhetoric can finally speak freely without fear of being attacked as “anti-national” or “Hinduphobic”.
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This article was originally published on OneWorld.
Andrew Korybko is an American Moscow-based political analyst specializing in the relationship between the US strategy in Afro-Eurasia, China’s One Belt One Road global vision of New Silk Road connectivity, and Hybrid Warfare. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.
The Trump administration is seeking extradition of WikiLeaks founderJulian Assange to the United States for trial on charges carrying 175 years in prison. On February 24, a court in the U.K. will hold a hearing to determine whether to grant Trump’s request. The treaty between the U.S. and the U.K. prohibits extradition for a “political offense.” Assange was indicted for exposing U.S. war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan. That is a classic political offense. Moreover, Assange’s extradition would violate the legal prohibition against sending a person to a country where he is in danger of being tortured.
When we speak about dictatorships, we call this brainwashing: the conquest of minds. It is a truth we rarely apply to our own societies, regardless of the trail of blood that leads back to us and which never dries.
WikiLeaks has exposed this. That is why Assange is in a maximum security prison in London facing concocted political charges in America, and why he has shamed so many of those paid to keep the record straight. Watch these journalists now look for cover as it dawns on them that the American fascists who have come for Assange may come for them, not least those on the Guardian who collaborated with WikiLeaks and won prizes and secured lucrative book and Hollywood deals based on his work, before turning on him.
On Nov 22, 2019, we, a group of more than 60 medical doctors, wrote to the UK Home Secretary to express our serious concerns about the physical and mental health of Julian Assange.1 In our letter,1 we documented a history of denial of access to health care and prolonged psychological torture. It requested that Assange be transferred from Belmarsh prison to a university teaching hospital for medical assessment and treatment. Faced with evidence of untreated and ongoing torture, we also raised the question as to Assange’s fitness to participate in US extradition proceedings.
The problem for the propaganda system targeting Assange is that Melzer is not just someone blogging on the internet; he is the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture. In addition, he is a professor of international law at the University of Glasgow and holds the Human Rights Chair at the Geneva Academy of International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights in Switzerland, where he has been teaching since 2009, including as the Swiss Chair of International Humanitarian Law (2011–2013). Melzer even speaks fluent Swedish. In other words, it is hard to imagine anyone better qualified to comment on the Assange case.
A made-up rape allegation and fabricated evidence in Sweden, pressure from the UK not to drop the case, a biased judge, detention in a maximum security prison, psychological torture – and soon extradition to the U.S., where he could face up to 175 years in prison for exposing war crimes. For the first time, the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, Nils Melzer, speaks in detail about the explosive findings of his investigation into the case of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange.
Truth has broken through for those confused about how a publisher ended up in a maximum security prison in London with a one-way extradition ticket to court in the U.S. and the rest of his life behind bars.
One of the main German TV channels (ZDF) ran two prime-time segments on Wednesday night exposing authorities in Sweden for having “made up” the story about Julian Assange being a rapist.
Just to recap, Julian Assange, the former Wikileaks editor, was arrested last year after spending years incarcerated in the Ecuadorian embassy, where he sought asylum for fear of being deported to the US to face charges relating to his publication of leaked documents. It was back in 2010 that Wikileaks published damning evidence of torture and unlawful killings carried out by the US army, provided for by Chelsea Manning. He subsequently was wanted by Sweden on charges of rape, charges which have since been dropped, and which it has been suggested were part of a set-up to engineer Assange’s deportation to the US. Ecuador finally gave him up to the UK authorities last April, by inviting them into the embassy to extract Assange, after seven years of interment within the embassy walls.
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“The West is winning!” U.S. leaders proclaimed at the high-level Annual Security Conference held in Munich last weekend.
Not everybody was quite so sure.
There was a lot of insecurity displayed at a conference billed as “the West’s family meeting” – enlarged to 70 participating nations, including U.S. -designated “losers”.
Trump’s crude Secretary of State Mike Pompeo made nobody feel particular secure by treating the world as a huge video game which “we are winning”. Thanks to our “values”, he proclaimed, the West is winning against the other players that Washington has forced into its zero-sum game: Russia and China, whose alleged desires for “empire” are being thwarted.
The Munich Security Conference (MSC) is a private gathering founded in 1963 by Ewald-Heinrich von Kleist-Schmenzin, a member of the aristocratic Wehrmacht officer class who plotted to get rid of Hitler when their estates in Eastern Germany were already being lost to the Red Army (to become part of Poland). The conference was evidently conceived as a means to enable Germans to get a word into strategic discussions from which they had been excluded by defeat in World War II.
The Munich conference knew its greatest hour of glory in February 2007, when Russian president Vladimir Putin shocked the assemblage by declaring his opposition to a “unipolar world” as “not only unacceptable but also impossible in today’s world.” Putin declared that NATO expansion up to Russian borders had nothing to do with ensuring security in Europe. Russia, he said then, “would like to interact with responsible and independent partners with whom we could work together in constructing a fair and democratic world order that would ensure security and prosperity not only for a select few, but for all.”
This speech was taken as a major challenge, redefining capitalist Russia as the new enemy of the West and its “values”.
What Is “the West”?
The term “the West” could mean a number of things. The conference organizers define it by “values” that are supposed to be essentially Western: democracy, human rights, a market-based economy and “international cooperation in international institutions”. In fact, what is meant is a particular interpretation of all those “values”, an interpretation based on Anglo-American history. And indeed, in historic terms, this particular “West” is essentially the heir and continuation of the British empire, centered in Washington after London was obliged to abdicate after World War II, while retaining its role as imperial tutor and closest partner. It implies the worldwide hegemony of the English language and English ideas of “liberalism” and is “multicultural” as empires always are. While the United States is the power center, many of the most ardent subjects of this empire are not American but European, starting with the Norwegian secretary general of NATO. Its imperial power is expressed by military bases all around the world offering “protection” to its subjects.
As for protection, the United States is currently shipping 20,000 military personnel to reinvade Germany on their way to unprecedented military manoeuvers next month in ten countries right up to Russia’s borders. Some 40,000 troops will take part in this exercise, on the totally imaginary pretext of a “Russian threat” to invade neighboring countries. This delights Washington’s enthusiastic vassals in Poland and the Baltic States but is making many people nervous in Germany itself and other core European Union countries, wondering where this provocation of Russia may lead. But they hardly dare say so in violation of “western solidarity”. The only complaint allowed is that the United States might not defend us enough, when the greater danger comes from being defended too much.
Opening this year’s conference, the President of the German Federal Republic Frank-Walter Steinmeier, expressed Germany’s strategic frustration more openly than usual. Steinmeier accused Washington, Beijing and Moscow of “great power competition” leading to more mistrust, more armament, more insecurity, leading “all the way to a new nuclear arms race.” He didn’t specify who started all that.
Overwhelming establishment distaste for Trump has provided a novel opportunity for leaders of U.S.-occupied countries to criticize Washington, or at least the White House. Steinmeier dared say that “our closest ally, the United States of America, under the present administration, rejects the idea of an international community.” But he made up for this by accusing Russia of “making military violence and the violent change of borders on the European continent a political tool once again” by annexing Crimea – forgetting the NATO violent detachment of Kosovo from Serbia and ignoring the referendum in which an overwhelming majority of Crimeans voted to return to Russia, without a shot fired.
French President Emmanuel Macron also expressed frustration at Europe’s dependence on Washington. He would like the European Union to develop its own military defense and security policy. “We cannot be the United States’ junior partner,” he said, although that is certainly what Europe is. While repeating the usual NATO line about the Russian threat, he noted that the policy of threats and sanctions against Russia had accomplished nothing and called for a “closer dialogue” to resolve problems. In that, he was surely echoing the consensus of the French elite which sees absolutely no French interest in the ongoing U.S.-inspired feud with Moscow.
Macron openly aspires to building a more independent EU military defense. The first obstacle lies in EU Treaties, which tie the Union to NATO. With the UK out of the EU, France is its strongest military power and its sole possessor of nuclear arms. There are indications that some German leaders might like to absorb France’s nuclear arsenal into a joint European force – which would surely arouse a “nationalist” uproar in France.
Playing the Game
Aside from providing protection, the Empire calls on everybody to play the game of international trade – so long as they consent to lose.
On Saturday in Munich, both Nancy Pelosi and Defense Secretary Mark Esper lit into China for daring to emerge as a trade giant and technological center. “China is seeking to export its digital autocracy through its telecommunication giant Huawei”, Pelosi warned.
Huawei has overtaken Russian natural gas as the export Washington condemns most vigorously as nefarious interference in the internal affairs of importers.
Esper gave a long speech damning Beijing’s “bad behavior”, “malign activity”, authoritarianism and, of course, Huawei. The Pentagon chief concluded his diatribe against America’s number one economic rival by a moralizing sermon on “our values, sense of fairness, and culture of opportunity,” which “unleash the very best of human intellect, spirit, and innovation.”
“Maybe, just maybe, we can get them on the right path,” Esper suggested benevolently. “Again, make no mistake, we do not seek conflict with China.”
In general, said Esper, “we simply ask of Beijing what we ask of every nation: to play by the rules, abide by international norms, and respect the rights and sovereignty of others.”
(He could say, what we ask of every nation except our own.)
The Department of Defense, he said, is doing its share: “focused on deterring bad behavior, reassuring our friends and allies, and defending the global commons.” We want China to “behave like a normal country” but, said Esper, if it “will not change its ways”, then we must make “greater investments in our common defense; by making the hard economic and commercial choices needed to prioritize our shared security … prepared to deter any threat, defend any Ally, and defeat any foe.”
In short, China’s economic progress provides another excuse to increase the Pentagon budget and pressure European allies into more military spending. This could only please such major sponsors of this conference as Raytheon and Lockheed Martin (and probably did not displease Goldman Sachs and all the other major Western industries backing this get-together).
Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi replied to Esper’s harangue with some lessons of his own for the West, concerning “multilateralism”.
“It is not multilateralism if only the Western countries prosper while the non-Western countries lag behind forever. It would not achieve the common progress of mankind,” said Wang. “China’s modernization is the necessity of history.” China’s history and culture meant that it could not copy the Western pattern nor seek hegemony as major powers in the past.
Wang said the West should discard its subconscious mentality of civilization supremacy, give up its bias and anxiety over China, and accept and welcome the development and revitalization of a country from the East with a system different from that of the West.
The West at Munich did not appear particularly ready to follow this advice. Nor that of Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov who was also allowed his few minutes to address deaf ears. Lavrov lamented that “the structure of the Cold War rivalry is being recreated” as NATO continues to advance eastward, carrying on military exercises of unprecedented scope near the Russian borders, and inflating arms budgets. Lavrov invited the West to stop promoting the phantom of the Russian or any other “threat” and remember “what unites us all” before it’s too late.
But the self-appointed representatives of “the West” hadn’t come to hear that. They were much more ready to listen respectfully to representatives of such friendly arms purchasers as Qatar and Saudi Arabia whose acceptance of “Western values” was not called into question.
“Westlessness”
It had evidently been decided who belongs to “the West” and who is threatening it: China and Russia. “China’s rapid ascent has stirred much debate over the primacy of the United States and the West in the 21st century,” Esper remarked. Indeed, the “Munich Security Report” published for the conference was devoted to the odd theme of “Westlessness”, lamenting a new “decline of the West” (in echo of Oswald Spengler’s famous Der Untergang des Abendlandesof a century ago). The world was becoming less Western – and even worse, so was the West itself.
This complaint had two sides, material and ideological. In material terms, the West feels challenged by foreign economic and technological development, especially in China. It is notable that, while Western powers vigorously promoted international trade-based economies, they seem unable to react to the results except in terms of power rivalry and ideological conflict. As long as Western dominance was ensured, international trade was celebrated as the necessary basis for a peaceful world. But the moment a non-Western trader is doing too well, its exports are ominously denounced as means to exert malign influence over its customers. The prime example was Russian natural gas. Chinese technology is the next. Both are decried, especially by U.S. spokespeople, as treacherous means to make other countries “dependent”.
Of course, trade does imply mutual dependence, and with it, a certain degree of political influence. Certainly, the overwhelming U.S. dominance of the entertainment industry (movies, TV series, popular music) exercises an enormous ideological influence on much of the world. The U.S. influence via Internet is also considerable.
But the avoidance of such nefarious foreign influence would call for precisely an “inward-looking” nationalism that the MSC denounced as destructive of our Western values.
The Western strategists see themselves threatened by too much globalization abroad, in the terms of China rising, and not enough enthusiasm for globalization at home. Enthusiasm is waning for foreign military expeditions to impose “values” – an essential aspect of Western identity.
The Report deplored the rise of “inward-looking” nationalism in Europe, which could be called patriotism, since it has none of the aggressive tendencies associated with nationalism. In fact, some of these European “nationalists” actually favor less intervention in the Middle East and would like to promote peaceful relations with Russia.
When the alleged threat to the West was “godless communism”, Western values were relatively conservative. Today, the liberal West is threatened by conservatism, by people who more or less want to preserve their traditional lifestyle.
Finally, the MSC acknowledged that “the defenders of an open, liberal West, … so far seem unable to find an adequate answer to the illiberal-nationalist challenge…”. Part of the reason “may be found in the long almost unshakable conviction that all obstacles to liberalization were only minor setbacks, as liberalism’s eventual triumph was seen as inevitable.” Politicians have presented their policies as without alternative. As a result, there is growing “resistance against a system allegedly run by liberal experts and international institutions, which in the eyes of some amounts to a ‘new authoritarianism’…”
Isn’t “liberal authoritarianism” an oxymoron? But what do you call it when Macron’s police enjoy impunity when they shoot out the eyes of Gilets Jaunes citizens peacefully protesting against massively unpopular social policies, when the UK holds Julian Assange in a dungeon despite denunciation of his cruel treatment by the U.N. Special Rapporteur on Torture? When the United States holds a record number of people in prison, including Chelsea Manning, simply to force her to testify against her will, and with no end in sight?
The day may come when it is accepted that the world is round, and “West” is only a relative geographic term, depending on where you are.
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Diana Johnstone lives in Paris, France. Her latest book is Circle in the Darkness: Memoirs of a World Watcher (Clarity Press, 2020).
The Trump administration is seeking extradition of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange to the United States for trial on charges carrying 175 years in prison. On February 24, a court in the U.K. will hold a hearing to determine whether to grant Trump’s request. The treaty between the U.S. and the U.K. prohibits extradition for a “political offense.” Assange was indicted for exposing U.S. war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan. That is a classic political offense. Moreover, Assange’s extradition would violate the legal prohibition against sending a person to a country where he is in danger of being tortured.
WikiLeaks Exposed Evidence of U.S. War Crimes
In 2010 and 2011, WikiLeaks published classified documents provided by U.S. Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning. They contained 90,000 reports about the war in Afghanistan, including the Afghan War Logs, which documented more civilian casualties by coalition forces than the U.S. military had previously reported.
WikiLeaks also published nearly 400,000 field reports about the Iraq War, which contained evidence of U.S. war crimes, over 15,000 previously unreported deaths of Iraqi civilians, and the systematic murder, torture, rape and abuse by the Iraqi army and authorities that were ignored by U.S. forces.
In addition, WikiLeaks published the Guantánamo Files, 779 secret reports that revealed the U.S. government’s systematic violation of the Geneva Conventions and the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, by abusing nearly 800 men and boys, ages 14 to 89.
One of the most notorious releases by WikiLeaks was the 2007 “Collateral Murder” video, which showed a U.S. Army Apache helicopter target and fire on unarmed civilians in Baghdad. More than 12 civilians were killed, including two Reuters reporters and a man who came to rescue the wounded. Two children were injured. Then a U.S. Army tank drove over one of the bodies, severing it in half. Those acts constitute three separate war crimes prohibited by the Geneva Conventions and the U.S. Army Field Manual.
Manning was arrested in 2010 and held in solitary confinement for 23 hours a day for 11 months. She was forced to stand nude during daily inspections. The former United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture said her treatment was cruel, inhuman and degrading, and possibly constituted torture. Manning was sentenced to 35 years in prison, and after she had served seven years, Barack Obama commuted her sentence as he left office.
Two years later, in May 2019, Manning was jailed for refusing to answer questions before a grand jury about Assange and WikiLeaks. She remains in custody.
On December 31, 2019, Nils Melzer, UN Special Rapporteur on Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, released a letter he had sent to the U.S. government expressing “serious concern at the reported use of coercive measures against Ms. Manning, particularly given the history of her previous conviction and ill-treatment in detention.” He said her incarceration amounted to torture and urged that she be released without delay.
“My long-standing objection to the immoral practice of throwing people in jail without charge or trial, for the sole purpose of forcing them to testify before a secret, government-run investigative panel, remains strong.”
Assange Faces 175 Years in Prison If Extradited to the U.S.
Meanwhile, Sweden issued an arrest warrant in 2010 for Assange on alleged rape and sexual molestation charges. Assange was questioned by Swedish prosecutors and then left for the U.K., where he was arrested and later released on house arrest. After Sweden’s request for extradition of Assange was granted by the U.K. Supreme Court in 2012, he was given asylum in the Ecuadorian embassy in London, where he lived for seven years. A new Ecuadorian government revoked Assange’s asylum in April 2019 and allowed U.K. authorities to enter the embassy and arrest him.
In 2017, Sweden dropped its investigation of Assange. On May 1, 2019, he was sentenced to 50 weeks in jail by the U.K. court for jumping bail and now faces extradition to the United States. Assange stands charged by the Trump administration with 17 counts of violating the Espionage Act and conspiracy with Manning to crack a password on a Defense Department computer. He could be sentenced to 175 years in prison.
Assange’s health has severely deteriorated. On May 31, 2019, UN Special Rapporteur Nils Melzer declared that Assange exhibited signs of prolonged exposure to psychological torture. During his years of isolation in the Ecuadorian embassy, the U.K. government denied him permission to go to a hospital for treatment, resulting in seriously worsening medical conditions.
“In 20 years of work with victims of war, violence and political persecution I have never seen a group of democratic States ganging up to deliberately isolate, demonise and abuse a single individual for such a long time and with so little regard for human dignity and the rule of law,” Melzer said.
The U.S.-U.K. Treaty Forbids Extradition for Political Offenses
The 2003 extradition treaty between the U.S. and the U.K. states, “Extradition shall not be granted if the offense for which extradition is requested is a political offense.” It is the Requested State (in this case, the U.K.) that “determines that the request [by the U.S.] was politically motivated.”
Although there is no clear definition of “political offense,” it routinely includes treason, sedition and espionage, and offenses directed against state power. Assange published “true information obtained from a whistleblower, making the charges against him political in nature, rather than criminal,” Robert Mackey wrote at The Intercept.
The Obama administration did not indict Assange because it didn’t want to establish “a precedent that could chill investigative reporting about national security matters by treating it as a crime,” according to Charlie Savage of The NewYork Times. Obama could not distinguish between what WikiLeaks did and what news media organizations like the Times “do in soliciting and publishing information they obtain that the government wants to keep secret,” Savage noted. Indeed, many of the documents WikiLeaks released were published in collaboration with the Times, The Guardian, Le Monde, El País and Der Spiegel. The outlets published articles based on documents WikiLeaks had released, including “logs of significant combat events in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.”
Assange is being targeted for “political offenses” because WikiLeaks published evidence of U.S. war crimes. He cannot be extradited to the United States under the terms of the U.S.-U.K. extradition treaty.
The Convention Against Torture Bars Assange’s Transfer to the U.S.
The Convention against Torture has a provision called non-refoulementthat forbids extradition to a country where there are substantial grounds to believe a person would be in danger of being tortured. Since Manning was tortured by being held in solitary confinement for 11 months, it is likely Assange would face a similar fate if he were extradited to the United States.
Moreover, a country has a duty to refuse extradition when it would violate fundamental rights, such as the right to be free from torture and cruel treatment.
The Johannesburg Principles of national security, freedom of expression and access to information, which were adopted by a group of experts in 1995, have been widely cited by judges, lawyers, journalists, academics and civil society. They provide, “No person may be punished on national security grounds for disclosure of information if the public interest in knowing the information outweighs the harm from the disclosure.”
Significantly, WikiLeaks’ publication of the Iraq War documents, including evidence of Iraqi torture centers the U.S. had established, actually saved lives. After the Iraqi government refused to grant civil and criminal immunity to U.S. soldiers, Obama was compelled to withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq.
Deny Extradition of Assange to the U.S.
Assange’s extradition hearing will begin on February 24 in Judge Vanessa Baraitser’s London courtroom. More than 70 lawyers and legal academics, as well as at least 12 former heads of state, have signed a letter that will be sent to the U.K. Home Secretary, stating, “The fact that the charges are brought under the Espionage Act further reveals that this is a matter of a pure political offence [citation omitted]. There is broad international consensus that such offences should not be subject to extradition [citation omitted].”
Veterans for Peace and the National Lawyers Guild have endorsed a petition urging the judge to deny extradition because Assange is charged with a political offense. It reads, “The essence of Assange’s ‘crime’ is that he published documents and videos which revealed the reality of US military and political actions.”
Assange has been awardedConsortium News’s Gary Webb Freedom of the Press Award for “practicing the highest order of journalism – revealing crimes of the state.”
The Trump administration singled out Assange to send a clear message to journalists that they publish material critical of U.S. policy at their peril. “The extradition of Assange would mean the end of journalistic investigations into the inner workings of power,” Chris Hedges wrote at Truthdig.
By the very terms of the U.S.-U.K. extradition treaty, and consistent with the Torture Convention’s non-refoulement provision, Judge Baraister must deny Trump’s request for the Assange’s extradition to the United States.
Click here for information about how to oppose Assange’s extradition.
To sign the lawyers/academics letter to the U.K. Home Secretary, send an email to [email protected] and you will receive a copy of the letter.
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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. She is a frequent contributor to Global Research.
On Saturday, there will be a march from Australia House in London to Parliament Square, the centre of British democracy. People will carry pictures of the Australian publisher and journalist Julian Assange who, on 24 February, faces a court that will decide whether or not he is to be extradited to the United States and a living death.
I know Australia House well. As an Australian myself, I used to go there in my early days in London to read the newspapers from home. Opened by King George V over a century ago, its vastness of marble and stone, chandeliers and solemn portraits, imported from Australia when Australian soldiers were dying in the slaughter of the First World War, have ensured its landmark as an imperial pile of monumental servility.
As one of the oldest “diplomatic missions” in the United Kingdom, this relic of empire provides a pleasurable sinecure for Antipodean politicians: a “mate” rewarded or a troublemaker exiled.
Known as High Commissioner, the equivalent of an ambassador, the current beneficiary is George Brandis, who as Attorney General tried to water down Australia’s Race Discrimination Act and approved raids on whistleblowers who had revealed the truth about Australia’s illegal spying on East Timor during negotiations for the carve-up of that impoverished country’s oil and gas.
This led to the prosecution of whistleblowers Bernard Collaery and “Witness K”, on bogus charges. Like Julian Assange, they are to be silenced in a Kafkaesque trial and put away.
Australia House is the ideal starting point for Saturday’s march.
“I confess,” wrote Lord Curzon, Viceroy of India, in 1898, “that countries are pieces on a chessboard upon which is being played out a great game for the domination of the world.””
We Australians have been in the service of the Great Game for a very long time. Having devastated our Indigenous people in an invasion and a war of attrition that continues to this day, we have spilt blood for our imperial masters in China, Africa, Russia, the Middle East, Europe and Asia. No imperial adventure against those with whom we have no quarrel has escaped our dedication.
Deception has been a feature. When Prime Minister Robert Menzies sent Australian soldiers to Vietnam in the 1960s, he described them as a training team, requested by a beleaguered government in Saigon. It was a lie. A senior official of the Department of External Affairs wrote secretly that “although we have stressed the fact publicly that our assistance was given in response to an invitation by the government of South Vietnam”, the order came from Washington.
Two versions. The lie for us, the truth for them. As many as four million people died in the Vietnam war.
When Indonesia invaded East Timor in 1975, the Australian Ambassador, Richard Woolcott, secretly urged the government in Canberra to “act in a way which would be designed to minimise the public impact in Australia and show private understanding to Indonesia.” In other words, to lie. He alluded to the beckoning spoils of oil and gas in the Timor Sea which, boasted Foreign Minister Gareth Evans, were worth “zillions”.
In the genocide that followed, at least 200,000 East Timorese died. Australia recognised, almost alone, the legitimacy of the occupation.
When Prime Minister John Howard sent Australian special forces to invade Iraq with America and Britain in 2003, he – like George W. Bush and Tony Blair – lied that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. More than a million people died in Iraq.
WikiLeaks was not the first to call out the pattern of criminal lying in democracies that remain every bit as rapacious as in Lord Curzon’s day. The achievement of the remarkable publishing organisation founded by Julian Assange has been to provide the proof.
WikiLeaks has informed us how illegal wars are fabricated, how governments are overthrown and violence is used in our name, how we are spied upon through our phones and screens. The true lies of presidents, ambassadors, political candidates, generals, proxies, political fraudsters have been exposed. One by one, these would-be emperors have realised they have no clothes.
It has been an unprecedented public service; above all, it is authentic journalism, whose value can be judged by the degree of apoplexy of the corrupt and their apologists.
For example, in 2016, WikiLeaks published the leaked emails of Hillary Clinton’s campaign manager John Podesta, which revealed a direct connection between Clinton, the foundation she shares with her husband and the funding of organised jihadism in the Middle East – terrorism.
One email disclosed that Islamic State (ISIS) was bankrolled by the governments of Saudi Arabia and Qatar, from which Clinton accepted huge “donations”. Moreover, as US Secretary of State, she approved the world’s biggest ever arms sale to her Saudi benefactors, worth more than $80 billion. Thanks to her, US arms sales to the world – for use in stricken countries like Yemen – doubled.
Revealed by WikiLeaks and published in The New York Times, the Podesta emails triggered a vituperative campaign against editor-in-chief Julian Assange, bereft of evidence. He was an “agent of Russia working to elect Trump”; the nonsensical “Russiagate” followed. That WikiLeaks had also published more than 800,000 frequently damning documents from Russia was ignored.
On an Australian Broadcasting Corporation programme, Four Corners, in 2017, Clinton was interviewed by Sarah Ferguson, who began: “No one could fail to be moved by the pain on your face at [the moment of Donald Trump’s inauguration] … Do you remember how visceral it was for you?”
Having established Clinton’s visceral suffering, the fawning Ferguson described “Russia’s role” and the “damage done personally to you” by Julian Assange.
Clinton replied, “He [Assange] is very clearly a tool of Russian intelligence. And he has done their bidding.”
Ferguson said to Clinton, “Lots of people, including in Australia, think that Assange is a martyr of free speech and freedom of information. How would you describe him?”
Again, Clinton was allowed to defame Assange – a “nihilist” in the service of “dictators” – while Ferguson assured her interviewee she was “the icon of your generation”.
There was no mention of a leaked document, revealed by WikiLeaks, called Libya Tick Tock, prepared for Hillary Clinton, which described her as the central figure driving the destruction of the Libyan state in 2011. This resulted in 40,000 deaths, the arrival of ISIS in North Africa and the European refugee and migrant crisis.
For me, this episode of Clinton’s interview – and there are many others – vividly illustrates the division between false and true journalism. On 24 February, when Julian Assange steps into Woolwich Crown Court, true journalism will be the only crime on trial.
I am sometimes asked why I have championed Assange. For one thing, I like and I admire him. He is a friend with astonishing courage; and he has a finely honed, wicked sense of humour. He is the diametric opposite of the character invented then assassinated by his enemies.
As a reporter in places of upheaval all over the world, I have learned to compare the evidence I have witnessed with the words and actions of those with power. In this way, it is possible to get a sense of how our world is controlled and divided and manipulated, how language and debate are distorted to produce the propaganda of false consciousness.
When we speak about dictatorships, we call this brainwashing: the conquest of minds. It is a truth we rarely apply to our own societies, regardless of the trail of blood that leads back to us and which never dries.
WikiLeaks has exposed this. That is why Assange is in a maximum security prison in London facing concocted political charges in America, and why he has shamed so many of those paid to keep the record straight. Watch these journalists now look for cover as it dawns on them that the American fascists who have come for Assange may come for them, not least those on the Guardian who collaborated with WikiLeaks and won prizes and secured lucrative book and Hollywood deals based on his work, before turning on him.
In 2011, David Leigh, the Guardian’s “investigations editor”, told journalism students at City University in London that Assange was “quite deranged”. When a puzzled student asked why, Leigh replied, “Because he doesn’t understand the parameters of conventional journalism”.
But it’s precisely because he did understand that the “parameters” of the media often shielded vested and political interests and had nothing to do with transparency that the idea of WikiLeaks was so appealing to many people, especially the young, rightly cynical about the so-called “mainstream”.
Leigh mocked the very idea that, once extradited, Assange would end up “wearing an orange jumpsuit”. These were things, he said, “that he and his lawyer are saying in order to feed his paranoia”.
The current US charges against Assange centre on the Afghan Logs and Iraq Logs, which the Guardian published and Leigh worked on, and on the Collateral Murder video showing an American helicopter crew gunning down civilians and celebrating the crime. For this journalism, Assange faces 17 charges of “espionage” which carry prison sentences totalling 175 years.
Whether or not his prison uniform will be an “orange jumpsuit”, US court files seen by Assange’s lawyers reveal that, once extradited, Assange will be subject to Special Administrative Measures, known as SAMS. A 2017 report by Yale University Law School and the Center for Constitutional Rights described SAMS as “the darkest corner of the US federal prison system” combining “the brutality and isolation of maximum security units with additional restrictions that deny individuals almost any connection to the human world … The net effect is to shield this form of torture from any real public scrutiny.”
That Assange has been right all along, and getting him to Sweden was a fraud to cover an American plan to “render” him, is finally becoming clear to many who swallowed the incessant scuttlebutt of character assassination. “I speak fluent Swedish and was able to read all the original documents,” Nils Melzer, the United Nations Rapporteur on Torture, said recently, “I could hardly believe my eyes. According to the testimony of the woman in question, a rape had never taken place at all. And not only that: the woman’s testimony was later changed by the Stockholm Police without her involvement in order to somehow make it sound like a possible rape. I have all the documents in my possession, the emails, the text messages.”
Keir Starmer is currently running for election as leader of the Labour Party in Britain. Between 2008 and 2013, he was Director of Public Prosecutions and responsible for the Crown Prosecution Service. According to Freedom of Information searches by the Italian journalist Stefania Maurizi, Sweden tried to drop the Assange case in 2011, but a CPS official in London told the Swedish prosecutor not to treat it as “just another extradition”.
In 2012, she received an email from the CPS: “Don’t you dare get cold feet!!!” Other CPS emails were either deleted or redacted. Why? Keir Starmer needs to say why.
At the forefront of Saturday’s march will be John Shipton, Julian’s father, whose indefatigable support for his son is the antithesis of the collusion and cruelty of the governments of Australia, our homeland.
The roll call of shame begins with Julia Gillard, the Australian Labor prime minister who, in 2010, wanted to criminalise WikiLeaks, arrest Assange and cancel his passport – until the Australian Federal Police pointed out that no law allowed this and that Assange had committed no crime.
While falsely claiming to give him consular assistance in London, it was the Gillard government’s shocking abandonment of its citizen that led to Ecuador granting political asylum to Assange in its London embassy.
In a subsequent speech before the US Congress, Gillard, a favourite of the US embassy in Canberra, broke records for sycophancy (according to the website Honest History) as she declared, over and again, the fidelity of America’s “mates Down Under”.
Today, while Assange waits in his cell, Gillard travels the world, promoting herself as a feminist concerned about “human rights”, often in tandem with that other right-on feminist Hillary Clinton.
The truth is that Australia could have rescued Julian Assange and can still rescue him.
In 2010, I arranged to meet a prominent Liberal (Conservative) Member of Parliament, Malcolm Turnbull. As a young barrister in the 1980s, Turnbull had successfully fought the British Government’s attempts to prevent the publication of the book, Spycatcher, whose author Peter Wright, a spy, had exposed Britain’s “deep state”.
We talked about his famous victory for free speech and publishing and I described the miscarriage of justice awaiting Assange – the fraud of his arrest in Sweden and its connection with an American indictment that tore up the US Constitution and the rule of international law.
Turnbull appeared to show genuine interest and an aide took extensive notes. I asked him to deliver a letter to the Australian government from Gareth Peirce, the renowned British human rights lawyer who represents Assange.
In the letter, Peirce wrote, “Given the extent of the public discussion, frequently on the basis of entirely false assumptions… it is very hard to attempt to preserve for [Julian Assange] any presumption of innocence. Mr. Assange has now hanging over him not one but two Damocles swords, of potential extradition to two different jurisdictions in turn for two different alleged crimes, neither of which are crimes in his own country, and that his personal safety has become at risk in circumstances that are highly politically charged.”
Turnbull promised to deliver the letter, follow it through and let me know. I subsequently wrote to him several times, waited and heard nothing.
In 2018, John Shipton wrote a deeply moving letter to the then prime minister of Australia asking him to exercise the diplomatic power at his government’s disposal and bring Julian home. He wrote that he feared that if Julian was not rescued, there would be a tragedy and his son would die in prison. He received no reply. The prime minister was Malcolm Turnbull.
Last year, when the current prime minister, Scott Morrison, a former public relations man, was asked about Assange, he replied in his customary way, “He should face the music!”
When Saturday’s march reaches the Houses of Parliament, said to be “the Mother of Parliaments”, Morrison and Gillard and Turnbull and all those who have betrayed Julian Assange should be called out; history and decency will not forget them or those who remain silent now.
And if there is any sense of justice left in the land of Magna Carta, the travesty that is the case against this heroic Australian must be thrown out. Or beware, all of us.
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It was always foolish to expect a balanced political compromise from the current American administration.
Since he was elected four years ago, US President Donald Trump has entrusted the Israel/Palestine portfolio to his inexperienced, Zionist son-in-law, Jared Kushner, aided by two equally unqualified individuals: Ambassador David Friedman and envoy Jason Greenblatt.
Beyond this, Trump did little to hide his unseemly deference to billionaire Sheldon Adelson, who bankrolled the former reality TV star’s campaign and lends unqualified support to Israel’s hard right.
For this administration, there was no need even to pretend to be balanced or to strike a political compromise, supposedly resting on a two-state solution. Trump went further than any past pro-Israel White House, recognising Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, giving his blessing to illegal Israeli settlements, green-lighting Israel’s annexation of the Syrian Golan Heights, and cutting funding for Palestinian humanitarian aid.
Political surrender
Trump showed no concern for promoting peace. It is thus no surprise that the “deal of the century” outlines a plan for political surrender by Palestinians, sugarcoated with economic inducements provided they give up all their rights and grievances under international law.
What is nonetheless shocking is that the Trump deal institutionalises apartheid, even asking its Palestinian victims to give their formal consent to this oppressive arrangement. Even the leaders of the South African apartheid regime never dared go this far.
The regime envisioned for Palestine also contains elaborate security arrangements that effectively authorise Israel to impose unlimited collective punishment against Palestinians, in defiance of international law. To hide the downgrading of Palestinian expectations, the plan embraces a perverse variant of “realism”, which can be translated as “the validation of coercion and lawlessness” at the expense of those victimised.
In presenting the plan, Kushner had the audacity to say: “I’m not looking at the world as it existed in 1967. I’m looking at the world as it exists in 2020.” This means that Israel’s demands for land and security will be satisfied, while Palestinian grievances, lacking the force of arms, can safely be put aside, in favour of some supposedly face-saving words and arrangements.
Thus, without scruple, Palestinians are being offered “self-determination” in a plan rejected by the vast majority – at best, a deformed statelet inaccurately called a “state”.
Celebration and humiliation
Perhaps to ensure a negative response from the Palestinian leadership, it was insulted throughout the plan and its presentation. Kushner summarised the Trump attitude bluntly: “You have five million Palestinians who are really trapped because of bad leadership.”
Hamas is never mentioned without the reader being reminded that it is a “terrorist” group – not the framing to be used if there was any interest in enticing the Gaza leadership to sit at a negotiating table. The Palestinian Authority does not fare much better, identified as corrupt and content with the status quo because it benefits its leaders materially. This underscores that Trump did not envision negotiations, but rather a victory celebration for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Israel and humiliation for Palestinians.
In South Africa, in a final desperate effort to stabilise the regime, small ethnic enclaves were established across the country with a semblance of home rule, but completely subordinated to the apartheid structures of hierarchy and cruel exploitation of the majority population. The map outlined in Trump’s plan clearly resembles the South African Bantustans – non-contiguous enclaves of subjugated people, confined behind walls in their own homeland.
The offer of a Palestinian statelet, consisting mainly of urban communities in the West Bank thrown together without contiguous borders, also functions as a curtain intended to hide – or at least minimise – further Israeli land grabs. Instead of withdrawing from the West Bank as prescribed by UN Security Council Resolution 242, Israel would take control of more than 80 percent of occupied Palestine, a reality further disguised by giving Palestinians some desert area in the uninhabitable Negev.
Cycle of violence
In 2005, Israel ostensibly took a step towards achieving peace with Palestinians through its “disengagement” from Gaza. Israeli forces were withdrawn and settlements housing thousands of Israelis were dismantled. But it soon turned out that this was not an end of occupation, but a new mode of control, seemingly even more devastating to the civilian population of the Gaza Strip.
Israel continued to control entry and exit from Gaza and retained sovereign control of its airspace and territorial waters. Interference with Gaza’s economic life caused severe hardships, accentuated by the punitive measures adopted after Hamas gained control of the territory’s governance.
These developments stimulated resistance in Gaza, with major Israeli military incursions coming in response to rockets fired from the enclave – a cycle of violence directed at the vulnerable civilian population.
What the Trump deal offers, if anything, is a worse version of post-disengagement Gaza. It confers border control exclusively on Israel, requires complete demilitarisation of the Palestinian statelet, and makes Palestinian communities completely vulnerable to Israeli military action.
If this is the “deal of the century”, it will be a dismal century for us all. Perhaps there can arise from the extremity of the unjust US proposals some helpful responses, including a unified Palestinian leadership, an insistence on a neutral intermediary to replace the US, increased global solidarity with the Palestinian struggle, and the beginning of an international effort to hold Israel accountable for its crimes against humanity.
The Trump plan was designed to add a formal stamp of approval to what was already taking place on the ground, including the emergence of an Israeli apartheid state and the continuous undermining of Palestinian rights. Any genuine diplomatic initiative for peace must be premised on the dissolution of the Israeli apartheid regime. Any other approach can only achieve, at best, a temporary ceasefire.
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Richard Falk is an international law and international relations scholar who taught at Princeton University for forty years. In 2008 he was also appointed by the UN to serve a six-year term as the Special Rapporteur on Palestinian human rights.
Featured image: Razan al-Najjar, the 21 year old Gaza medic killed by an Israeli sniper on June 1, treating an injured man, undated photo from Palestine Live on twitter.
In December, a wave of support for the recognition of a Palestinian state swept over Europe, culminating in the European Parliament’s (EP) vote on a motion that expressed support for an independent Palestinian state based on the 1967 borders and a continuation of stalled Israeli-Palestinian peace talks.
The motion, largely symbolic, passed with 498 EU parliamentarians voting in favour, 88 voting against, and 111 abstaining.
While it does not require any concrete action on the part of any European Union (EU) member state, certain EU member states, such as Sweden and Ireland, have taken steps towards formal recognition of Palestine.
Ireland in particular has been a vocal supporter of the Palestinian cause. The origins of this solidarity come down to both the similarities and differences between the Irish and Palestinian national struggles.
‘Colonised people’
“The Irish people, as a colonised people living for centuries under British occupation, have instinctively identified with freedom struggles across the globe,” Gerry Adams, Irish republican and president of Sinn Féin, the largest Irish nationalist party in both the Republic of Ireland and the six counties of Northern Ireland that still belong to the United Kingdom (UK), told Middle East Eye.
The entangled history of the UK and Ireland began in the 12th century, when Norman invaders reached the island. In 1541, the English parliament formally declared that English King Henry VIII was also the king of Ireland.
That was the beginning of several centuries of English and Scottish Protestants migrating to the majority Catholic island and taking power from the indigenous population. This set the stage for sectarian conflict that would flare up over the course of the following years.
In the second half of the 19th century, nationalist movements began picking up steam and by 1922, the Green Island was split into 26 counties that were to be ruled from Dublin as part of an independent Ireland, and six that would be ruled from Belfast, still part of the UK.
In the late 1960s, the conflict known as “The Troubles” began, with militants seeking the reunification of Ireland attacking military and civilian targets, and the British army and Protestant militants responding in kind. Adams himself recounted his own memories of political activism and protest for the reunification of Ireland, and against apartheid South Africa, in the 1960s.
Speaking critically of the current Israeli government, he said their “strategies and actions are aimed at imposing an apartheid system on Arab-Israeli citizens; extending the occupation through the building of settlements in the occupied territories, as well as the separation wall; and physically and politically dividing Palestinians on the West Bank and in Gaza and the refugee camps in other states.”
The current state of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process also troubles him, he said. In December, Israel denied Adams entry to the besieged Gaza Strip, and upon his return to Ireland, he was “deeply worried”.
“I am particularly concerned at the approach of the international community,” he told MEE, “which fails to hold the Israeli government to account for its actions and its breaches of international law.”
The role of prisoners
In Ireland, prisoners jailed by the British played “an important role”, according to Adams, and Palestinian prisoners play an important role, too.
But Gavan Kelley, the advocacy unit coordinator of Ramallah-based Addameer, a non-governmental human rights group that focuses on political and civil rights issues in the occupied Palestinian territory, especially those of prisoners, thinks that those imprisoned in Israeli jails can play an even greater role.
“Overall [Addameer] is in a very difficult situation. We want to get to a stage where prisoners are playing a role in ending the conflict,” he told MEE. “That’s the exact opposite of what’s happening now.”
As of October 2014, there were approximately 6,500 Palestinian prisoners, including roughly 500 administrative detainees—those who are held in Israeli prisons without charge. Their six-month sentences can be renewed indefinitely by judges on the basis of “secret” evidence.
Other than prominent Palestinian leaders, such as Ahmad Saadat of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine or Fatah’s Marwan Barghouti, most prisoners serve their sentences in silence.
Kelley says that prisoners “are being completely excluded and used as political bargaining chips” in negotiations between Israel and Hamas, as well as the Palestinian Authority.
The human rights of prisoners in Israeli jails are routinely violated, Kelley said, much like those of Irish prisoners during the conflict with the UK. “You have daily rights violations of the prisoners. Medical negligence, malnourishment, nightly raids by the Israeli forces,” he said.
Kelley echoed Sinn Féin’s leader in saying that prisoners were instrumental in ending the conflict.
“If you look at Ireland and South Africa,” Kelley said, “prisoners played a central role in ending those conflicts.”
But looking at the current situation in the Holy Land,
“the political conditions that brought an end to the conflicts in Ireland and South Africa are nowhere near existing here in Palestine,” Kelley concluded.
United Efforts
Meanwhile, many Palestinians are grateful for international solidarity, which some view as instrumental in their own struggle.
“International solidarity is vital for more than one reason,” Najwan Berekdar, a Palestinian citizen of Israel and activist, told MEE.
“Not only that gives hope for the Palestinians to continue their struggle knowing they have support, but it also brings our struggles closer together, as we have been learning new tactics which were used by colonised people everywhere.”
The popular techniques used by the Irish and South Africans serve to envigorate Palestinian efforts to resist Israeli occupation, have led to innovative and interesting protests, some of which, such as the “Love in the Time of Apartheid” campaign, Berekdar organised.
“This is what will affect the public opinion. And this is what will pressure Israel and its supporting governments to change their policies.”
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The Ascendancy of George Herbert Walker Bush
Can you 
