Global Research

In retaliation for the Trump regime’s assassination of Iranian General Qassem Soleimani on January 3, the IRGC struck two Pentagon bases in Iraq days later.

Iranian missiles successfully penetrated US air defenses, striking targets with pinpoint accuracy — causing significant damage and injuries to US forces.

What Trump dismissively called “headaches and a couple of other things…not very serious…no Americans…harmed,” the Pentagon admitted otherwise in delayed after-action reports.

After initially saying nothing, then  reporting 11 US military personnel evacuated from Iraq with concussion-like symptoms, the Pentagon raised the number to 34, then 50 and now 64, perhaps a larger number to be revealed ahead.

They’re being treated in US military hospitals for traumatic brain injuries (TBI) — from powerful missile blasts.

According to the Mayo Clinic, TBI “usually results from a violent blow or jolt to the head or body.”

Mild TBI affects “brain cells temporarily.” More serious TBI can result in “long-term complications or death.”

Symptoms include:

• Loss of consciousness for seconds or minutes
• Being dazed, confused or disoriented
• Headaches
• Nausea or vomiting
• Fatigue or drowsiness
• Problems with speech, sleeping, or requiring more of it than usual
• Dizziness or loss of balance (vertigo)
• Blurred vision
• Tinnitus (ringing in the ears) or hearing loss
• Sensitivity to light or sound
• Memory and/or concentration problems
• Mood changes
• Feelings of depression, anxiety, irritability and/or anger
• Convulsions or seizures
• Dilation of the pupil of one or both eyes
• Fluid emissions from the nose or ears
• Weakness and/or numbness in fingers and/or toes
• Loss of coordination
• Epilepsy
• Loss of consciousness or coma in severe cases

Any or a combination of the above symptoms can be short-term or persist much longer — longterm injury called “persistent post-concussive symptoms.”

Athletes participating in football, basketball, and other contact sports are vulnerable to traumatic brain injuries — most always publicly called concussions, downplaying them.

Affected players and others experiencing TBI are at greater risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease or other forms of dementia later in life.

A 2013 Harvard University study showed the lifespan of former NFL players on average are nearly 20 years shorter than the US average for men overall.

“(P)rofessional football players in both the United States and Canada have life expectancies in the mid-to late-50s,’’ Harvard researchers explained.

Professional football, basketball and hockey are combat by other means, players smashing one another and getting smashed, risking significant brain damage.

TBI is potentially very serious, longterm effects taking time to show up.

According to the Mayo Clinic, individuals most vulnerable to TBI include young children, adolescents and young adults aged 15 – 24, adults aged 60 or older, and males of any age, adding:

“(C)omplications can occur immediately or soon after a traumatic brain injury. Severe injuries increase the risk of a greater number and more-severe complications.”

TBI can be mild or have serious longterm effects. It’s too soon to know the severity of injuries to dozens of hospitalized US military personnel, including those discharged and returned to duty.

The Pentagon called their injuries “mild,” what may or may not be true, what most likely won’t be reported otherwise if symptoms worsen ahead and persist for some of all US military personnel diagnosed with TBI.

Treatment in US military and VA hospitals is notoriously poor. The American College of Surgeons reported that procedures performed in 16 large military hospitals had higher rates of post-surgery complications than in civilian hospitals — including infections and improperly performed procedures.

According to military doctors and nurses, the problem stems from a culture of secrecy and failure to prioritize patient health and safety.

The poorly run system results in deaths and permanent harm to ill or injured US military personnel.

Annual suits by veterans result in millions of dollars paid by Washington to malpractice victims.

Active duty military personnel are prohibited from suing the government. According to a Congressional Budget Office estimate, if permitted to sue, the amount would be triple the annual payout to victims.

The difference in treatment between civilian and military hospitals is world’s apart.

As a US army veteran circa 1950s, I personally experienced poor outpatient VA treatment and learned about more of the same from conversations with Vietnam War vets — ill-treated by the government post-service.

Former US army surgeon general Dr. Mary Lopez called the patient-safety system “broken,” adding:

“It has no teeth. Reports are submitted, but patient-safety offices have no authority.”

“People rarely talk to each other. It’s ‘I have my territory, and nobody is going to encroach on my territory.’ ”

An earlier Pentagon patient safety “analysis” falsely said the “harm rate (is) unknown.”

Medical error is one of the leading causes of preventable deaths and injuries in the US medical system overall —especially in military hospitals for active duty personnel and vets.

Independent studies show military suicides way exceed war deaths, little publicly reported.

Victims are consumed by unbearable emotional pain — on active duty and after returning to civilian life, unable to adjust.

Often unheeded warning signs include depression, withdrawal, lethargy, loss of interest in usual activities, poor appetite, loss of weight, sleep and other behavioral changes, recurring suicidal thoughts, and feelings of hopelessness and despair.

Daily stress is bad enough. Combat theater deployments exacerbate it. It’s intolerable for many. The little known human cost of war raises disturbing questions. America consumes its own.

Epidemic post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) levels affect hundreds of thousands of combat forces and vets.

VA and DOD officials consistently understate problems. Independent reports reveal more. Some say nearly half of Afghan and Iraq vets have emotional and/or physical combat injuries.

Veterans of all US war theaters are vulnerable PTSD and physical injuries.

The toll of war on US military personnel is way underreported and largely concealed.

How many US military personnel deployed to combat theaters return home physically or emotionally scared?

How many stay that way longterm? How many are traumatized from war theater experience?

How many are ill-treated at home when no longer needed to serve US imperial interests?

Many war theater deaths are misreported, little said publicly about them. Many veteran suicides are covered up, slipping under the radar unnoticed.

How many countless thousands of troubled vets are untreated or ill-treated?

How many TBI service personnel from Iraq and other US war theaters will be affected longterm from what they experienced — largely forgotten and ignored when return to civilian life?

A Final Comment

According to the Arabic-language Kuwaiti broadsheet Al-Qabas, the Pentagon is downplaying the severity of injuries to US forces in Iraq from retaliatory Iranian missile strikes.

Aside from PTI injuries, the paper claimed at least 16 US military personnel were severely burned and/or sustained shrapnel wounds, taken to a Pentagon hospital in Kuwait for surgical treatment — currently in ICU for observation.

IRGC aerospace commander General Ali Hajizadeh was quoted saying:

Although Iran’s retaliatory missile strikes on US bases in Iraq tried to avoid casualties, “tens of US troops have likely been killed and wounded and were transferred to Israel and Jordan on 9 sorties of C-130 flights,” adding:

Had the IRGC intended to cause mass casualties, thousands of US military personnel could have been killed and injured.

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Award-winning author Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at [email protected]. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG)

His new book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.”

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

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

This new edition of David Edgerton’s book The Rise and Fall of the British Nation is timely and apposite given the unprecedented Conservative landslide in traditional Labour seats in the recent general election. Inevitably in the world of day-to-day, parliamentary politics, analyses of the defeat and prescriptions for Labour’s future have been short term and even superficial, but given the scale of the defeat which has taken place during a generational change in Britain’s relations with Europe, a deeper historical examination of the issues involved is needed. 

The verdict of received wisdom is that Labour’s “Red Wall” — its traditional heartland of support in the North and Midlands — fell in the December 2019 election, inflicting the worse defeat since 1935, because the party failed to speak the patriotic language of the working class.  Edgerton’s characterisation of Labour and Britain in the post-war period casts an interesting light on the assumptions underlying this reading of Labour’s electoral disaster.

The first point to be made is that considering Labour was rent with splits in 1935 it actually did rather well. This was when the foundations of the so-called Red Wall were laid. Labour’s heartlands do not as is often supposed go back to the dawn of the industrial revolution. They are a twentieth century creation and owe most to the nationally oriented policies of post-war Labour governments. If the language of the working class in these constituencies is patriotic it is the Labour Party that taught them to speak it.

As Edgerton points out “Labour presented itself in 1945 as the true national party. Its manifesto barely included the word ‘socialism’ (which appeared once), or ‘socialist’ (which appeared twice).”  Often taken to be an icon of socialist policy, the 1945 manifesto concentrated on a national programme of economic development. Welfare reform came a poor second.

The National Health Service, Edgerton admits, was a remarkable creation, unprecedented its universal character. Yet it had not been envisaged in any Labour manifesto and no new hospitals were built when it was created. Labour constructed “an austerity welfare state.” The increase in welfare spending had been greater after the First World War. British spending on social services and health remained low until the 1970s compared to other rich countries.

Where Labour was prepared to spend money was on the military. Britain’s military expenditure amounted to 10% of GDP during the 1950s, more than it had been in 1913 or 1938 and continued at more than 5% into the 1970s. Britain was, in Edgerton’s view more of a warfare state than a welfare state.

Labour was committed to maintaining Britain’s remaining colonial territories. It fought a savage war in Malaya, perpetuating conscription to do so. The Kenyan Uprising took place under a Conservative government but Labour had made no move to abolish the pass laws that were one of the main grievances. The RAF base at Khoramaksar in Yemen was expanded. Repression of the Greek Cypriots continued, ultimately leading to a bloody civil war.

Edgerton resists calls to define the post war period as one of British decline, except in a relative sense. Statistics, he argues, show that Britain was at its most industrialised in the 1950s and 1960s rather than the 1850s or during the industrial revolution.  Manufacturing workers peaked as a proportion of the total workforce in this period. “For the British working class the years from 1950 to at least the late 1960s were years of success.”

Many of the older working class voters who opted for Brexit in the referendum and Boris Johnson in the general election remember this period as one of relative prosperity. Their political consciousness was formed at a time when “Labour could be seen as a nationalist party after 1945, indeed as the nationalist party. It put nation before class, it invoked national victories from the past, and not class victories (or defeats). It is not accidental that Labour prime ministers invoked the national interest again and again, nor was it a mere cliché.”

Even as international competition intensified the Labour Party offered a solution in the form of a technocratic critique of British capitalism. British capitalists, Labour leader Harold Wilson argued, remained “Gentlemen in a world of Players”. We, Wilson told the Labour conference in 1963, “are re-stating our Socialism in terms of the scientific revolution”. Britain would be “reforged in the white heat of this revolution”

Edgerton makes it clear that there was no deficit of nationalism on the part of the Labour left. He admits that Aneurin Bevan objected to the level of military spending proposed by the Labour government. His principle reason for doing so, Edgerton argues, was that it risked damaging the national economy. He acknowledges that Bevan rebelled against the hydrogen bomb in 1955 but points out that he had come round to the idea by the 1957 Labour Party conference.

When he became Labour leader Michael Foot was pilloried by the tabloid press for his lack of patriotism but it was he who led calls in the House of Commons to send a naval task force to the Malvinas Islands. On economic policy too the left was above all national in outlook. The 1983 Labour Manifesto argued for national revival in terms not so very different from Wilson or Callaghan.  The Alternative Economic Strategy championed by Tony Benn was, Edgerton concludes a “modernizing, techno-nationalist, productionist, autarchic programme” comparable to that of 1945.

However useful it is in understanding the political character of Labour, Edgerton’s analysis has some contentious features. Firstly, he rejects any notion of an absolute, long term decline of British capitalism. Decline, in so far as Edgerton admits it, was only relative to other major powers. It is a view that can be challenged. Relative decline translates into lost deals, lost opportunities for expansion, lost investment and, for the nation state concerned, lost power and status. Old empires die hard and in the process can do a lot of damage.

The other contentious term is “nation”. Edgerton argues that the name “Britain” only became standard in political life and history books after 1945 when a British nation replaced the British Empire and the cosmopolitan economy of the pre-war period. Using the term “nation” in this way presents a number of problems. Can we really afford to ditch the concepts of nation and nationalism in the run up to the First World War or the Boer War?

As E. H.Carr warned, all historians have bees in their bonnets. Edgerton’s concepts of “nation” and “decline” might seem to be purely idiosyncratic bees in one historian’s bonnet, except that Edgerton’s bees seem to be buzzing in a particular direction. Writing in the New Statesman before the election Edgerton characterised Brexit as a sign of “a new politics with freshly invented pasts and futures” After the election, he was looking ahead to the break up of the United Kingdom under the impact of Brexit bringing an end to the “short-lived fantasy of the ‘British nation’.” Edgerton sees hope in the prospect of a new English nation emerging from the break up of the UK. Shorn of its pretensions to power, England would be “Less cocksure and more understanding of its real place in the world”.

The idea that we live in imagined realities and that nations are imagined communities is now well rehearsed. Edgerton’s kinder, warmer English nationalism, a nationalism with its imperialist claws clipped so to speak, belongs to that intellectual tradition, or perhaps to an Ealing comedy. Nationalisms are not imagined, they are forged by real economic interests and cannot be re-shaped at will.The concept of the imagined nation is a failure of moral and intellectual courage in the face of the horrors produced by nationalism. It is not so much a better form of nationalism that the left needs as internationalism

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At the start of the twentieth century, Vladimir Lenin was studying Hegel’s notes on science. [i] Stalin told him not to bother, that it was more important to unify the party. Lenin replied that by the end of the century, the nature of science would be the most urgent question: how to get truth?

What did Lenin foresee?

Every second year at this time, honoring the birth of José Martí (January 28, 1853),  a conference is held at the Palacio de los Convenciones in Havana: “For the balance of the world”.[ii] Balance is measurement but not of things. It is about parts, always in some sense relative to motion.

The conference draws activists and academics from across the world.

Adam Chávez was there last time. He is the older brother of Hugo Chávez who led the Bolivarian revolution and died in 2013. Adam pushed Hugo, who preferred baseball, into politics and then followed. He said Venezuela had received pledges from across the continent, to fight if the US intervened.  The US had not yet defeated Venezuela, Chávez said, because of Hugo’s legacy: People who have tasted dignity don’t turn back to erasure and humiliation.

He spoke softly. The room was packed. A woman from Honduras spoke from the floor, then another from Peru. More than the substance of the presentation, I remember the feel of the room.

I’ve felt it before. I’m used to conferences where every claim is pinned down. Every “t” is crossed, every “I” dotted. No distinction is undefended. Pieces fit together, like a tightfitting jigsaw puzzle. All is clear.

It’s not clear where it is going.

Adam Chávez’ talk was not like that. Distinctions went unnoted, remarks unexplained. What I felt in that room was resonance. What wasn’t said didn’t need to be, even shouldn’t be. In Toni Morrison’s Beloved, Sethe, an escaped slave, circles the story of why she murdered her children. A circle is all there is, she says, for anyone who must ask.

It can’t be pinned it down. There are truths that aren’t stateable. Philosophers call them “non-propositional”. They are not in sentences. Instead, they explain movement, ways of being.

They are presupposed. In Adam Chávez’ case, the movement is 500 years old. The way of being is human. In the Second Declaration of  Havana, it is the “march of humanity”. Martí said precisely that march can right the “unsteady equilibrium of the world”. That means it is also about knowledge.

It is for truth. The thing about balance is that it can’t be determined according to script. Like someone skilled at theatrical or musical improvisation, balance requires awareness of  relations and ability and willingness to respond, to create, to recreate. Lenin called it a “passage through dark waters”.

He wrote about dialectic and what it means in practise: for discovery.[iii] Che Guevara used the metaphor of a tuning fork. One prong affects the other and between the two, new sound emerges.

Something was known about truth in early 19^th century Cuba. Like Lenin, independistas thought the nature of truth mattered for politics. What they knew is: All individual thinking is “group think”. Every supposedly private thought involves naming. You name what you are thinking about. You think to yourself, “I am falling in love”. But why call it “love”? Names are socially dependent. They are shared.

This mattered for early independence leadersbecause the “group” in question  – imperialists  – denied their humanity. However, they knew a way out of group think: Feeling. Thinking involves naming. Feeling doesn’t.  Well, it sometimes does, as in the example of love, but it doesn’t have to.

It is why José de la Luz y Caballero stood before his students in 1862, before dying, and said he’d rather be struck dead than lose the feeling for justice. It was how he knew slavery was wrong. He couldn’t know from a theory of justice because it uses names, depending on society, which has no names for slaves: as people.

Fidel Castro knew it. In 1960, he invited an audience at the UN to imagine “that a person from outer space were to come to this assembly, …  If he were to ask how the world was divided up and he saw on a map that the wealth was divided among the monopolies of four or five countries, he would say, ‘The world has been badly divided up’”.

The point is not  that the world is divided badly. The intellectual truth of such a claim is obvious. Plenty of information shows it. But who believes it? Who thinks it matters?

That would take someone from outer space, not conditioned. In 1953, Cuban philosopher, Raúl Roa, said the world was passing through its gravest crisis ever.[iv] It was because the consolidation of US power was the consolidation of false ideas: about rationality, for instance. If you’re conditioned by such ideas – and it is hard not to be – you think the world is supposedto be divided badly.

And you don’t know you think that.

It’s who you are. Roa argued that the “world’s gravest crisis” was consolidation of an idea of thinking. It went with an idea of human beings, identifying selveswith minds. I am my thoughts. Condemned to group think. Martí said, in contrast, “To think is to serve”. It breaks up the puzzle.

There’s a chance for balance. A chance to discover false beliefs, not stated, but lived. Roa, like Lenin, questions an ideaof how we think. Perhaps, Lenin foresaw a future of jigsaw puzzles. The wrongness of slavery, in early nineteenth century Cuba  couldn’t be known by collecting information and fitting the pieces together.

The wrongness of imperialism is not known that way either.  But not all buy into the lies Roa identified.

It’s why I felt resonance in that room.

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Susan Babbitt is author of Humanism and Embodiment (Bloomsbury 2014). She is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Notes

[i] Lenin was writing Materialism and Empirio criticism (Volume 14, Collected Works)

[ii] http://www.porelequilibriodelmundocuba.com/es/general3

[iii] Volume 38, Collected Works

[iv] “Grandeza y servidumbre del humanismo”,  Viento Sur, 44-62 .

With the impeachment trial of U.S. President Donald Trump in full swing, a new defense was presented by Trump attorney Alan Dershowitz.

Dershowitz made an astounding defense, saying that as long as the president acted in what he thought was the best interest of the country – in this case, being re-elected – there was no impeachable crime.

Using that logic, Richard Nixon would have served out his second term. Certainly, he thought breaking into the Democratic National Committee headquarters would help his re-election chances, which he certainly thought was in the best interest of the country. Using Dershowitz’s logic, there is no crime for which a president can be removed from office if he commits it believing that it will help him be re-elected, which he firmly believes is in the nation’s best interest.

Dershowitz admitted that every politician believes that their re-election is in the country’s best interest, so it would seem, by extension, that anything any officeholder does to get re-elected – bribery, murdering opponents, etc. – would be fine. After all, it was done in the national interest.

Let us, for a moment, take this out of the lofty halls of Congress and bring it back to a more realistic example, using everyday life, where people generally recognize that crimes are crimes. If, for example, this writer supports a charity whose work he believes in deeply, and which he thinks provides an excellent service, if he wants to contribute additional money that he doesn’t have to that charity, well, he can rob a bank to get some more! Why not? It’s in the best interest of the people served by the charity, after all.

Trump’s attorneys were wise, in a twisted, clown-like way, to raise this defense. There is no realistic defense to the things Trump has done: withholding foreign aid that Congress has approved until the country that is supposed to receive it agrees to investigate a political rival is hardly something that the revered Founding Fathers (racists and misogynists though they were) would ever countenance. But they probably wouldn’t have agreed that corporations are people or everyone in the country should be running around with multiple guns, either.

If Trump gets away with this, which is likely, considering the spineless members of the Senate who are terrified of his wrath come re-election time, who knows what he will do for the next nine months until the election or, possibly, for the next five years (one cannot rely on the Democratic Party not to do something stupid, like nominate a rich, old, white establishment man who is so middle-of -the-road that he could be the yellow line down its center)? He can sell the U.S. to Russia in exchange for hacking all the voting machines to assure he is elected. Why not? After all, as long as he thinks it’s in the U.S.’s best interest, there’s nothing in the world wrong with it, at least according to Dershowitz and the craven Republicans in the Senate.

This, of course, takes the winds out of the John-Bolton sails. In Bolton’s new book, which is described as ‘explosive’, he says plainly that Trump told him to withhold the foreign aid until the Ukranian president anted up with the dirt on Biden, or at least agreed to announce he was looking for it. But if doing so isn’t a crime, Bolton’s revelations aren’t worth considering.

Trump has often led, and sometimes still leads, his lemmings-like groupies in chants of ‘lock her up’, referring to Hillary Clinton and her use of a private server for official emails. But if Clinton felt that doing so was in the national interest, why should she be ‘locked up’? According to Dershowitz, there is no crime committed in any attempt by an elected official to gain office, if he or she believes it is in the nation’s best interest, which Dershowitz concedes all candidates believe.

The possibilities for this defense are endless. Consider any crime, and there is often a good reason for it, at least according to the perpetrator. Murder a wife? She stood in the way of the happiness of another woman. Rob a bank? That’s discussed above, or at least one ‘honorable’ motive for doing so is. Assault a homeless person? Better a person’s rage be spent on an anonymous stranger than on one’s own wife or children.  Commit road rage after being cut off? Well, that careless drive will learn a lesson. Use racial slurs against a minority neighbor? Standing up to such things will make him or her stronger.

Oh, can’t one see the possibilities? A few short years ago, a lawyer used ‘Affluenza’ as a defense for a young man who’d killed multiple people while driving under the influence. It was argued that, because the young man grew up rich and with few limits, he was not really responsible for his behavior. The entire case was mocked across the country, even though the defense was successful. One wonders what creative defense strategies attorneys will invent now, with the precedent that is about to be set in the nation’s capital.

The U.S. was a grand experiment in democracy that failed miserably. It is not a nation governed for, by and of the people. Corporations contribute millions of dollars to the campaigns of officials who are then completely beholden not to the people in their districts, but to those corporations. Entering political life requires, under most circumstances, considerable financial resources, but if a person is fortunate enough to grab that gold ring, they have the potential to become far richer during and after their terms in office.

There was much talk of Russian influence in the 2016 presidential election, but no one ever talks about Israeli influence. In 2016, for example, one of Florida’s Republican senators, Marco Rubio, received nearly $500,000.00 from pro-Israel lobbies. Is it merely coincidental that he has a perfect voting record on all pro-Israel and anti-Palestine legislation? This writer only mentions him because in 2016, Rubio received more pro-Israel lobby money than any other senatorial candidate.

But now, none of that matters. If Rubio, and those many, many elected officials (this writer cannot refer to them as ‘representatives’) accept huge sums of money from pro-Israel lobbies, the NRA, ‘defense’ (read: offense) contractors, etc., it is all, we can be sure, because those officials are convinced that their election and re-election are what is best for the country.

This is what it has come to in the ‘land of the free and the home of the brave’. Free to violate laws, and brave enough, or perhaps brazen enough, to feel no shame in doing so.

The world has suffered for centuries due to U.S. disdain for international law and common decency. There is no end in sight.

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Featured image is from FAIR

“Fortune thus blinds the minds of men when she does not wish them to resist her power.” — Livy

It seems quite evident to many that the United States has been consumed by the same ambition and thus fate with that of the Roman Empire. That one of the most notorious periods in history for its extensive imperialism, corruption and barbaric slavery are the blueprint for what the founding fathers used in forming the moral constitution of the United States, and thus it has been rotten to its core from its very inception.

There is no doubt that the United States is acting in accordance with that of an empire presently.

However, from this alone, we cannot confirm whether it is in fact her founding constitution which is at fault or rather, her abandonment of her constitution which has led her to this monstrous outcome.

It is true that the founding fathers of the United States were very much influenced by Rome, but for those who have some knowledge on the history of that titan of an era, they would know that Roman history consists of three phases; that of the kingdom, the republic, and the empire. The period of empire was its most corrupt and malevolent, but what defined Rome’s characteristics before this? Was Rome actually something noble and honorable once? Which period were the founding fathers influenced and inspired by? Is the United States doomed to repeat the collapse of the Roman Empire? We will discuss all these questions here.

What Defined Rome before it Became an Empire?

Rome was founded in 753 BC as a kingdom, though much of the details around this partake in legend, it suffices for our purpose here that she was founded by Romulus who ruled until 717 BC. Numa Pompilius who would rule as king for the next 43 years, was a very wise king and founded the laws and governmental institutions that Rome would use for most of her existence. It should be noted that during this period, the kings were not chosen by bloodline but rather through a voting process by the senate, yes, there was already a senate formed during the period of kings.

Servius Tullius would become Rome’s 6^th king and would rule 43 years until the day that his own daughter, whom he had marry to one of Tarquinius’ sons (Superbus), conspired together to brutally murder Servius in his elder years in a terribly bloody public spectacle and usurp the throne. Servius’ body would then be run over by his daughter by horse carriage causing an even further grisly scene, and the street would be known afterwards as Vicus Sceleratus (street of shame, infamy). Superbus would earn his nickname, meaning ‘proud’ or ‘arrogant’ due to his refusal to bury the body of Servius. And Servius would be known as the last of the benevolent kings.

Tarquinius Superbus would rule for 26 years and would be the last of the kings. He, not surprisingly, was very unpopular with the Roman people and senate, ruling as a cruel despot. This hatred for Superbus would find its snapping point when one of Superbus’ sons, Sextus raped a nobleman’s wife, named Lucretia. Lucretia was so humiliated and felt so dishonored by this act that once she had relayed the message to a group of four high-ranking men she stabbed herself in the heart with a dagger. Junius Brutus was one of the men present during this scene, and Livy writes that as soon as Lucretia had committed suicide, Brutus rushed over to her, plucked the dagger out of her breast and raised it, swearing the end of the Tarquin kingship.

Junius Brutus was able to quickly organise a gathering within the city where he exhorted the Roman people to rise up against the tyrant king. The people would support this and vote for the deposition of Superbus and the banishment of him and his entire family. Junius Brutus then gathered the people of Rome to swear an oath that they would suffer no man to rule Rome ever again, and as per Livy, the Roman people desirous of liberty would vow from that point on no longer to be swayed by the entreaties or bribes of kings.

A Republic is Born

If Superbus had been a just king, the crime against Lucretia would have been presented to him to act as judge over and he would not have been punished for the crime of his son, but this was not done. It was not done because it was known that Superbus had no respect for a law benefitting the general welfare of the people but rather only knew his own personal law, and this is what the people could no longer suffer under.

The largest change which transformed Rome from a kingdom into a republic would be the replacement of the king with two consuls, who would be voted in by the Roman citizenry and would only have a one year term. This was done to dissuade anyone from desiring to rule indefinitely and from abusing their powers for personal gain and thus was to protect against the corrupting lust for unbounded power seen during the age of kings from their sons.

Junius Brutus would be one of the first consuls of two, in replacing the king of Rome. During his term, Brutus had to act as judge over his sons who had committed treason and sentenced them to death, for which he witnessed their executions, something that was expected of the consul. This is not to say that Brutus was a cold man, but rather that he treated his sons with no additional favour, and judged their punishment for their crimes as he would have done for anyone else. It was because of this reputation for upholding honor that Brutus became a hero in Roman history; that he not only overthrew a tyrant king and helped establish the republic, but that he embodied the noble qualities it was to represent and that nobody was above the law for the general welfare of its people.

The Roman Republic would exist from 510 BC to 27 BC, however, before we go further I would like to point out a few parallels from another time.

His Majesty Hath Cast Them Off

On June 12, 1630, after a voyage of 76 days, four ships with 800 passengers, under the command of John Winthrop, anchored in Massachusetts Bay. With more ships on the way, he was soon to preside over nearly 20, 000 colonists by 1650.

Why were so many Europeans willing to take the risk of such a long voyage to a land that they knew hardly anything about and with no assured prospects? A major factor was that Europe had been experiencing almost ongoing warfare since the hundred years war and was presently experiencing the thirty years war, thus poverty, famine and pestilence ran rampant and the death rate was horrifying. There was no future for most people in Europe, which had descended into such chaos that its continued existence was really not certain.

It was recognised that one of the core reasons for Europe’s descent into madness was the unreliability of its kings, being concerned more for their personal welfare than that of their people.

Faced with constant threats by King Charles I of England to remove the rights he had accorded the colonists under the Massachusetts Bay Charter to establish a town, Winthrop replied back that if such a thing were to occur, “the common people here will conceive that his Majesty hath cast them off, and that hereby they are freed from their allegiance and subjection [to the Crown], and thereupon will be ready to confederate themselves under a new government.”

The New England Confederation would be established in 1643 and John Winthrop was elected its president. Its Articles of Confederation served as the first step toward realizing a new nation under constitutional rule. Historian Graham Lowry recounts in How the Nation Was Won: America’s Untold Story (1630-1751) that Benjamin Franklin would later cite these articles to the French government during the American Revolution for their support.

The Massachusetts Bay colonists had made their stand against the British Monarchy and were ready to face the consequences, from this point on, they would be the shapers of their own destiny.

A Republic if You Can Keep It

For a little less than 300 years (5^th to 2^nd century BC), the Roman Republic had succeeded in upholding the oath that the people swore with Junius Brutus. And though it would be confronted with challenging times, additional heroes would follow after, such as Quinctius Cincinnatus, who became a legend not only in Roman but in American history as a representation of the ideal Roman virtue; as a man who had received absolute power in order to defend Rome at a time of crisis, and when his duty was complete and Rome was saved, returned the pre-existing political order and resumed a life as a citizen farmer.

Though Rome was in warfare for most of its existence, it should be noted that everyone was in warfare and to not be at war was not an option during these times. However, during this period, Rome treated for the most part its captured cities well and formed a sort of commonwealth to which their citizens, as Livy confirms, had pretty much equal rights to those in Rome, in fact they were called Roman citizens which was not a term taken lightly. Slavery also existed in Rome, however, slavery unfortunately was prevalent in every major civilization of the time, including within Sparta, Athens, and Egypt. The point being that Rome, unlike its counterparts, did offer its citizenship to foreigners rather than death or slavery.

It was only by around the 2^nd century BC that Rome started to develop core fundamental problems that would lead to extensive corruption and civil unrest. They would never fully recover from this and it would spell the end of the republic in 27 BC. One factor to this, were that militaries were led by their generals for longer periods of time as military campaigns became longer distances from Rome, and elite military groups started to form who held more allegiance to their General than to the Republic. This is what made the power of Caesar and the existence of the two triumvirates possible. In addition, slavery became much more prevalent, the treatment of their slaves much more barbaric, and thus the gladiator games became popular (which only started end of 3^rd century BC). The gladiator games would be a terrible corruption on the people, and Spartacus would lead a successful rebellion for two years in response to this inhumanity in 73-71 BC.

Despite this fall from grace, many Roman heroes fought against this trend of corruption, such as Cato the Elder, Scipio Africanus, Cato the Younger and Cicero. Marcus Brutus thought it was in his destiny to return Rome to a republic when Caesar had seized it and crowned himself a king, just as his ancestor Junius Brutus did. However, Marcus did not learn from Junius’ example. The death of Caesar did not return Rome to a republic but rather sealed its fate to be ruled again by the whim and folly of kings, and the age of empire was born.

The people of Rome had forgotten their liberty and thus foolishly forsook it. If they could have only foreseen the monstrous tyrants they would unleash on themselves, such as; Tiberius, Caligula, and Nero, they would have shuddered at the thought and done everything in their power to fight and return the republic to its original principles. Their folly would not only prove to be the doom of Rome but that of much of the world for centuries after.

Ben Franklin would state at the close of the Constitutional Convention in 1787 in response to a question as to what form of government had been formed, “A Republic, if you can keep it.” Franklin was entirely aware of the failure of Rome as a republic and it was never meant to be a literal model for the American Republic. However, that said the upholding of any republic would ultimately be subject to the moral condition of that society. The right of sovereignty meant the responsibility to uphold its integrity, the people would no longer have a king to blame but themselves if they were to squander this freedom.

Fortune favours the….

So what are we to take from all of this? Though Roman history is much too large to cover within this one paper, if you read either Livy or Machiavelli’s review of this history, it is undeniable that the Roman Republic did originate from an honorable and noble view of mankind, its execution was left wanting at times but it strove for most of its earlier existence for these ideals.

In addition, the Roman influences that inspired the founding fathers of the American Republic were based on these very evident principles to uphold liberty above all else. The Americans wished nothing more than to be free of the subjugation of monarchical rule and were willing to go to war with the most powerful empire in the world to win their liberty from it.

Though slavery was a mark that the United States had to battle with, it is important to acknowledge that this did not originate from within its self-conceptualisation but rather was a mark that was carried forth from Europe. A whole book could be written debating whether the founding fathers truly meant all men were born equal and free, suffice to say that when it came to a head during Lincoln’s time and a civil war erupted, there was a stand for the liberty of all.

For those who are uncertain whether the origin of the U.S. is indeed a noble and good one, I would bring forward that the Russians deemed it so. It would be stated by Czar Alexander II that if Britain and France would have intervened in America’s civil war for the side of the Confederates, that Russia would have considered this a casus belli and was willing to go to war with Britain and France over the matter. For the reason why, refer to my paper on this. It is thus undeniable that Russia deemed the continued existence of an intact United States rather important.

Though the U.S. would be in an internal conflict with itself as to which identity it would ultimately choose, it is important to recognise that there were indeed many engaged on the side for the emancipation of all people and access to a decent standard of living. Frederick Douglass, born a slave but amongst the most free as a man, understood that the preservation of the country during the civil war needed to occur before and not after equal rights and became opposed to the Abolitionists over this matter. He saw what the power of the machine tool industry in Massachusetts could accomplish in comparison to the brute slave labour of the south and understood that slavery would not be able to compete with the North’s offer and economic boom.

Lincoln had succeeded in preserving the country, however, he would not be allowed to continue into a second term and was assassinated in 1865. This was followed by a number of additional assassinations of American presidents: Garfield in 1881, McKinley in 1901, and Harding in 1923 (from a very suspect food poisoning). FDR would pass away in office in 1945, and after a questionable decision to replace his former VP Henry Wallace with cardboard cut-out Truman, the United States was set on a course that caused her to abandon what she had first set out to accomplish.

By 1961, President Eisenhower would warn of a lagoon creature that had been created in the post WWII world, the military industrial complex, as something that had gotten out of control and would threaten the liberty of Americans and the world. That the United States, who had before then a citizens army, had now elite full-time military units that were only growing in size, who only knew the life of a soldier opposed to a constant enemy.

The United States would suffer one more assassination of a president in 1963, and now here we find ourselves today, in perpetual war.

Is it too late to turn around?

Machiavelli said, that if a system is corrupt it depends on two things as to whether it will be doomed to collapse or not, firstly whether it was always corrupt or had become corrupted and secondly if the people were past a point of salvation. If the system was good at its origins, and the people had some imprint of that remaining, there would be hope that that system could still turn itself around. And therefore I say, there is still a chance. A chance not just for the continual existence of the U.S. as something good but that the rest of the world need not risk getting pulled down along with it in the case of a collapse.

There is a stirring amongst a number of people within the United States, they have had enough with war. There is growing disdain for the present corrupt structures of their system and a growing support for those who wish to enforce peace. Tulsi Gabbard is an inspiring response to this corrupt age, and she has been succeeding despite the sabotage and attacks she has undergone from mainstream media and her very own political party.

The predictable rise and fall of empires is not based off of a cyclical formula that we are condemned to repeat for the rest of our existence. We do have the capability, if we have the will, to break out of this shrinking room and enter a new paradigm, namely, the Eurasian Economic Union and the New Silk Road.

“For where men have but little wisdom and valor, Fortune more signally displays her power; and as she is variable, so the states and republics under her influence also fluctuate, and will continue to fluctuate until some ruler shall arise who is so great an admirer of antiquity as to be able to govern such states within a republic so that Fortune may not have occasion, with every revolution of the sun, to display her influence and power.” — Machiavelli’s Discourses on Livy

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Cynthia Chung is a lecturer, writer and co-founder and editor of the Rising Tide Foundation (Montreal, Canada).

Tom Clifford reporting from Beijing

The new coronavirus has been declared a global emergency by the World Health Organization.

“The main reason for this declaration is not what is happening in China but what is happening in other countries,” said WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. So, what measures have been taken in Beijing?

Workers returning to the capital next week after the Chinese new year break face quarantine, regardless of whether they went overseas or stayed in China. Those coming back are being told to stay at their places of residence for at least a week under self-quarantine. China’s State Council, the cabinet, announced on January 27 that the Lunar New Year / Spring Festival holiday will be extended to February 2 across the country; the holiday week was originally from January 24 to January 30. Some companies are telling their employees not to return to work until February 9, to factor in the quarantine period. This may again be extended.

Many shops, restaurants and bars in the capital have closed. Few people are taking public transport. Major supermarkets remain open but there have been isolated instances of panic buying with people stocking up on fruit, noodles, milk and vegetables.

Residential compounds have introduced a visitor list where people who are non-residents must give their name and telephone number to a security guard. Compounds usually have a number of entrance and exit points. Most have been closed, allowing just one closely guarded entrance/exit gate.

Workplaces in Beijing have instituted temperature checks for employees. An electronic thermometer, about the size of a toothbrush is placed next to a wrist and if it reads 36-37 C admission is granted. However, on many occasions the thermometer cannot immediately get an accurate reading. This can mean delays of 10 minutes or so. This has not been a major issue this past week as relatively few people are at work. However, next week when hundreds of thousands return there could be long queues and angry scenes as people are denied access to their workplaces.

Everyone in the capital, without exception, is wearing a face mask when outdoors. Some places will not admit anyone not wearing one.

The key figure is the fatality rate. It is currently estimated at around 2 percent, the WHO said.

This rate may change as a virus can mutate, according to epidemiologists but at current levels the death rate is far less than the figure for Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS 9.6 percent) or Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS 30 percent).

At least 213 people in the China have died from the coronavirus, mostly in Hubei, with almost 10,000 cases nationally. But within China, this figure varies. Once the province Hubei (where the epicenter Wuhan is situated) is removed from the calculation, the national mortality rate drops to 0.3 percent. Within Hubei province, the mortality rate is about 1 percent when excluding the city of Wuhan (5.5 percent). It is appreciably lower than SARS or MERS and far less fatal than the common flu virus.

The WHO said there had been 98 cases in 18 other countries, but no deaths.

Most international cases are in people who had been to Wuhan. However, there have been eight cases of human-to-human infection – in Germany, Japan, Vietnam and the United States.

The central province of Hubei, where nearly all deaths have occurred, is in a state of lockdown.

Wuhan, with a population of 11 million, has effectively been sealed off and China has put numerous transport restrictions in place to curb the spread of the virus.

The WHO declares a Public Health Emergency of International Concern when there is “an extraordinary event which is determined… to constitute a public health risk to other states through the international spread of disease”.

It has previously declared five global public health emergencies: Swine flu in 2009 saw the H1N1 virus spread across the world, killing more than 200,000 people. Polio, in 2014 even though it was closer than ever to eradication in 2012, saw numbers of those infected rise dramatically.

The WHO declared Zika a public health emergency in 2016 after the disease spread rapidly through the Americas. There were two outbreaks of Ebola in 2014 and 2019. The first emergency over the virus lasted from August 2014 to March 2016 as almost 30,000 people were infected and more than 11,000 died in West Africa. A second emergency was declared last year as an outbreak spread in DR Congo claiming more than 2,200 lives.

February will be crucial. The influx of workers returning to the major cities will severely test containment measures.

Mistakes have been made. At the beginning of the outbreak, the Chinese authorities said the virus was not spreading between people. We now know that is not the case.

Each infected person seems to be passing the virus on to between 1.4 and 2.5 people.

This figure is called the basic reproduction number. Anything higher than 1 means it’s self-sustaining.

It seems that this is not a virus that will burn out on its own and disappear and the decisions being made in China – including shutting down cities – are crucial to prevent it from spreading.

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“So the cold hard truth about Brexit is this. There is only one Brexit as Mervyn King says – a hard-Brexit… The government is going to the polls to extend its powers to the point of authoritarianism in order that it can bypass representative democracy and do as it pleases. Its legacy will be to force a deregulation festival upon Britain if it wins.” – True Publica (October 29, 2019) [1]

LISTEN TO THE SHOW

Click to download the audio (MP3 format)

A marriage of nearly half a century is coming to an end.

As of 23:00 GMT on January 31, 2020, the United Kingdom officially withdraws all of its personnel from all influential bodies within the European trading block, including the European Parliament, and begins negotiations with the European Union on a new trade and security relationship. [2]

The road to this divorce has been a chaotic one. Originating with a high stakes gamble by pro-EU Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron to contain the Eurosceptics in his own party, the island country voted to end its relationship with its continental neighbour by the slimmest of margins in the June 2016 referendum. Cameron’s successor Theresa May, unable to secure a deal to establish the terms of a Brexit, would resign as PM, making room for Leave campaigner Boris Johnson to take charge of the UK government and its Brexit process.

In the lead up to the December 12th election, Johnson was able to set the tone for the campaign with a clear pledge to ‘Get Brexit Done’ while the Labour Party would be dogged by their poor handling of the Brexit issue as well as smears directed toward leader Jeremy Corbyn. When the dust cleared, the Conservatives would command the largest majority of seats since Margaret Thatcher’s historic election in 1979, thereby establishing for himself a strong mandate to complete once and for all the UK’s departure from the EU.

A transition period will persist until the end of 2020 at which point, deal or no deal, the UK will no longer receive any of the advantages or handicaps associated with EU membership. [3]

The Brexit drama has unquestionably left an indelible mark on the political institutions of this once mighty imperial power, and will no doubt have consequences for its former partners, and the economies it will now be dealing with as a separate entity. This week’s Global Research News Hour radio program endeavours to explore these and other developments in the country within this exciting and timely one hour show.

For the bulk of the show, two guests, Winnipeg based Political Studies Professor Radhika Desai and Belgium-based journalist Youri Smouter discuss the foreseeable impact of Brexit, what happened during the December 2019 election, and the challenges within the Labour Party and how they may affect its policy stance, if or when that party should ever return to power. Toward the end of the show, we touch base with commentator Patrick Henningsen about the session of Parliament he attended which featured whistleblower testimony challenging the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) conclusions regarding alleged chemical weapons use by Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad.

Radhika Desai is Professor at the Department of Political Studies, and Director, Geopolitical Economy Research Group, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Canada. She co-edits the Geopolitical Economy book series with Manchester University Press and the Future of Capitalism book series with Pluto Press. She is the author of Geopolitical Economy: After US Hegemony, Globalization and Empire (2013) among other books, as well as numerous articles in Economic and Political Weekly, International Critical Thought, New Left Review, Third World Quarterly, World Review of Political Economy and other journals.

Youri Smouter is a journalist and host/producer of an upcoming online current affairs program. He had participated in the September 2019 Labour Party Conference as a press correspondent.

Patrick Henningsen is a journalist, geopolitical analyst and Founder/Editor of 21st Century Wire. He has been a regular host on UK Column and has appeared as an expert commentator on a number of international publications including Consortium News, UK Column, The Guardian, Global Research, New Dawn Magazine (Australia), and also on leading global networks like RT New International, Al Jazeera, ITN (UK), CGTN (China), Indus News (PK), Edge Media (SKY 200 UK) and US syndicated radio shows Fault Lines Radio, and Coast to Coast AM.

(Global Research News Hour Episode 285)

LISTEN TO THE SHOW

Click to download the audio (MP3 format)

The Global Research News Hour airs every Friday at 1pm CT on CKUW 95.9FM out of the University of Winnipeg. The programme is also podcast at globalresearch.ca .

The Global Research News Hour now airs Fridays at 6pm PST, 8pm CST and 9pm EST on Alternative Current Radio (alternativecurrentradio.com)

Community Radio Stations carrying the Global Research News Hour:

CHLY 101.7fm in Nanaimo, B.C – Thursdays at 1pm PT

Port Perry Radio in Port Perry, Ontario –1  Thursdays at 1pm ET

Burnaby Radio Station CJSF out of Simon Fraser University. 90.1FM to most of Greater Vancouver, from Langley to Point Grey and from the North Shore to the US Border.

It is also available on 93.9 FM cable in the communities of SFU, Burnaby, New Westminister, Coquitlam, Port Coquitlam, Port Moody, Surrey and Delta, in British Columbia, Canada. – Tune in  at its new time – Wednesdays at 4pm PT.

Radio station CFUV 101.9FM based at the University of Victoria airs the Global Research News Hour every Sunday from 7 to 8am PT.

CORTES COMMUNITY RADIO CKTZ  89.5 out of Manson’s Landing, B.C airs the show Tuesday mornings at 10am Pacific time.

Cowichan Valley Community Radio CICV 98.7 FM serving the Cowichan Lake area of Vancouver Island, BC airs the program Thursdays at 6am pacific time.

Campus and community radio CFMH 107.3fm in  Saint John, N.B. airs the Global Research News Hour Fridays at 10am.

Caper Radio CJBU 107.3FM in Sydney, Cape Breton, Nova Scotia airs the Global Research News Hour starting Wednesday Morning from 8:00 to 9:00am. Find more details at www.caperradio.ca

RIOT RADIO, the visual radio station based out of Durham College in Oshawa, Ontario has begun airing the Global Research News Hour on an occasional basis. Tune in at dcstudentsinc.ca/services/riot-radio/

Radio Fanshawe: Fanshawe’s 106.9 The X (CIXX-FM) out of London, Ontario airs the Global Research News Hour Sundays at 6am with an encore at 3pm.

Los Angeles, California based Thepowerofvoices.com airs the Global Research News Hour every Monday from 6-7pm Pacific time.

Notes:

1. https://www.globalresearch.ca/brexit-the-cold-hard-truth-emerges/5693360
2. Adam Bienkov, Thomas Colson and Adam Payne (January 31, 2020) ‘What will actually change after the UK leaves the EU on Brexit day?’, Business Insider; https://www.businessinsider.com/what-will-actually-change-after-the-uk-leaves-the-eu-on-brexit-day-2020-1
3. ibid

In the course of the last two weeks, the World Health Organization (WHO) had already pointed to a possible Global Public Health crisis in relation to China’s novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) categorized  as a viral pneumonia. The virus outbreak is centred in the city of Wuhan, a city in Eastern China with a population in excess of 11 million.

On 22 January, the members of the WHO Emergency Committee “expressed divergent views on whether this event constitutes a PHEIC or not”.

On January 30, The Committee reconvened  and declared the coronavirus epidemic as a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC).

(for details on the Committee meetings scroll down to ANNEX)

What justified this far-reaching decision by the WHO Director General?

About 9,600 corona virus (pneumonia) confirmed cases (Jan 30). And 213 deaths  recorded in China on Jan 30, which has a population of almost 1.4 billion.

No deaths have been reported out of Mainland China.

Out of 9600 confirmed cases, approximately 150 cases of infection have been recorded outside China. Moreover, (based on the above data, Jan 30), the 2019  nCoV has a low mortality rate  (2.1%) compared to the Seasonal flu.

CBS Screen scan, Jan 30, 2020

The above CBS quotation is misleading.

Based on January 30 data, what should be emphasized is the following

• No deaths occurred outside China,
• More than 9500 recorded cases in China,
• Approximately 150 cases recorded outside China, (see list below)

In contrast, in the US,  the Centers of Disease Control  estimate that so far for the 2019-20 season, at least 15 million flu virus illnesses, 140,000 hospitalizations and 8,200 deaths in the U.S, which has population of 330 million, about a quarter that of China.

And there was virtually no coverage or concern regarding the Seasonal Flu, which in 2017 resulted globally in 650,000 deaths.

Source CDC

The media has gone into hight gear: The Wuhan coronavirus is portrayed as a global threat.

The latter is not corroborated by the recorded cases of infection and death.

Only 150 cases outside of China Mainland (Jan 30).  No deaths recorded outside China.

Ironically, WHO director general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus in a press conference confirmed that:

“The main reason for this declaration is not because of what is happening in China, but because of what is happening in other countries. Our greatest concern is the potential for the virus to spread to countries with weaker health systems, and which are ill-prepared to deal with it.”

What was happening “in other countries” (aka approximately 150 cases of infection and no recorded deaths in 23 countries and 2 territories (Macau and Hong Kong) (Jan 30)) does not justify the launching of a WHO sponsored Worldwide Public Health Emergency. (See below for distribution by country).

Coronavirus cases of infection: by country

Source Al Jazeera quoting official sources, January 31, 2020

Fake Emergency? Can we Trust the WHO?

In turn, the corporate media serves as an instrument of disinformation. The public has been misled.

About 150 infections Worldwide (excluding China). The World population is 7.7 billion, China’s population is 1.4 billion.

A rash Committee decision adopted at WHO headquarters in Geneva.

Déjà Vu: Flashback to 2009. The H1N1 swine flu pandemic

There are precedents: In 2009, based on incomplete and scanty data, the WHO predicted (“with authority”) that the H1N1 swine flu virus would result in :

“…as many as 2 billion people could become infected over the next two years — nearly one-third of the world population.” (World Health Organization as reported by the Western media, July 2009).

It turned out to be a multibillion bonanza for Big Pharma supported by the WHO’s Director-General Margaret Chan. 

In June 2009, Margaret Chan made the following statement:

“On the basis of … expert assessments of the evidence, the scientific criteria for an influenza pandemic have been met. I have therefore decided to raise the level of influenza pandemic alert from Phase 5 to Phase 6.  The world is now at the start of the 2009 influenza pandemic. … Margaret Chan, Director-General, World Health Organization (WHO), Press Briefing  11 June 2009)

What “expert assessments”?

In a subsequent statement she confirmed that:

“Vaccine makers could produce 4.9 billion pandemic flu shots per year in the best-case scenario”,Margaret Chan, Director-General, World Health Organization (WHO), quoted by Reuters, 21 July 2009)

A financial windfall for Big Pharma Vaccine Producers including GlaxoSmithKline, Novartis, Merck & Co., Sanofi,  Pfizer. et al.

Swine Flu Fake News, Fake Statistics, Lies at the Highest Levels of Government

The media went into overdrive. (without a shred of evidence). Fear and Uncertainty. Public opinion was deliberately misled

“Swine flu could strike up to 40 percent of Americans over the next two years and as many as several hundred thousand could die if a vaccine campaign and other measures aren’t successful.” (Official Statement of Obama Administration, Associated Press, 24 July 2009).

“The U.S. expects to have 160 million doses of swine flu vaccine available sometime in October”, (Associated Press, 23 July 2009)

But the pandemic never happened.

There was no pandemic affecting 2 billion people…

Millions of doses of swine flu vaccine had been ordered by national governments from Big Pharma. In the meantime the H1N1 virus had mutated. Millions of doses were subsequently destroyed: a financial bonanza for Big Pharma, an expenditure crisis for national governments.

There was no investigation into who was behind this multibillion fraud. 

Several critics said that the H1N1 Pandemic was “Fake”.

Reported by Forbes:

The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), a human rights watchdog, is publicly investigating the WHO’s motives in declaring a pandemic. Indeed, the chairman of its influential health committee, epidemiologist Wolfgang Wodarg, has declared that the “false pandemic” is “one of the greatest medicine scandals of the century.” (Forbes, February 10, 2010, emphasis added)

For more details on the 2009 H1NI pandemic see:

Remember the 2009 H1N1 Swine Flu Pandemic: Manipulating the Data to Justify a Worldwide Public Health Emergency

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky, January 25, 2020

Important Lessons from the 2009 H1N1 Pandemic: 

Can we trust the Western media?

Can we trust the World Health Organization (WHO) and Western governments including the US Centers  for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), all of which are serving the interests of Big Pharma (at tax payers’ expense)?

What are the stakes, why the media propaganda?

---

ANNEX 

This annex provides details on the January 3oth WHO Decision to identify the Wuhan coronavirus epidemic as a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC).

Below are relevant excerpts 

Members and advisors of the Emergency Committee were convened by teleconference

The Director-General welcomed the Committee and thanked them for their support. He turned the meeting over to the Chair, Professor Didier Houssin.

….

Representatives of the Ministry of Health of the People’s Republic of China reported on the current situation and the public health measures being taken. There are now 7711 confirmed and 12167 suspected cases throughout the country. Of the confirmed cases, 1370 are severe and 170 people have died. 124 people have recovered and been discharged from hospital.

The WHO Secretariat provided an overview of the situation in other countries. There are now 83 cases in 18 countries. Of these, only 7 had no history of travel in China. There has been human-to-human transmission in 3 countries outside China. One of these cases is severe and there have been no deaths. 

At its first meeting, the Committee expressed divergent views on whether this event constitutes a PHEIC or not. At that time, the advice was that the event did not constitute a PHEIC, but the Committee members agreed on the urgency of the situation and suggested that the Committee should continue its meeting on the next day, when it reached the same conclusion.

This second meeting takes place in view of significant increases in numbers of cases and additional countries reporting confirmed cases.

…

The Committee welcomed the leadership and political commitment of the very highest levels of Chinese government, their commitment to transparency, and the efforts made to investigate and contain the current outbreak. China quickly identified the virus and shared its sequence, so that other countries could diagnose it quickly and protect themselves, which has resulted in the rapid development of diagnostic tools.

The very strong measures the country has taken include daily contact with WHO and comprehensive multi-sectoral approaches to prevent further spread. It has also taken public health measures in other cities and provinces; is conducting studies on the severity and transmissibility of the virus, and sharing data and biological material. The country has also agreed to work with other countries who need their support. The measures China has taken are good not only for that country but also for the rest of the world.

The Committee welcomed a forthcoming WHO multidisciplinary technical mission to China, ..

The Committee wished to re-emphasize the importance of studying the possible source, to rule out hidden transmission and to inform risk management measures

The Committee also emphasized the need for enhanced surveillance in regions outside Hubei, including pathogen genomic sequencing, to understand whether local cycles of transmission are occurring.

WHO should continue to use its networks of technical experts to assess how best this outbreak can be contained globally.

WHO should provide intensified support for preparation and response, especially in vulnerable countries and regions.

Measures to ensure rapid development and access to potential vaccines, diagnostics, antiviral medicines and other therapeutics for low- and middle-income countries should be developed.

WHO should continue to provide all necessary technical and operational support to respond to this outbreak, including with its extensive networks of partners and collaborating institutions, to implement a comprehensive risk communication strategy, and to allow for the advancement of research and scientific developments in relation to this novel coronavirus.

WHO should continue to explore the advisability of creating an intermediate level of alert between the binary possibilities of PHEIC or no PHEIC, in a way that does not require reopening negotiations on the text of the IHR (2005).

WHO should timely review the situation with transparency and update its evidence-based recommendations.

The Committee does not recommend any travel or trade restriction based on the current information available.

The Director-General declared that the outbreak of 2019-nCoV constitutes a PHEIC and accepted the Committee’s advice and issued this advice as Temporary Recommendations under the IHR.

…

The Emergency Committee will be reconvened within three months or earlier, at the discretion of the Director-General.

The Director-General thanked the Committee for its work.

Since 1945, the British government have made some catastrophic errors of judgement, which has led to the continuing decline of British prosperity. From the mismanagement and indecision over extricating itself from its empire to the Suez Canal crisis. In the space of barely a decade, the former led to collapsing local economies and generational resentment towards Britain – the latter resulted significantly towards Britain’s decline as a world power. These two events alone demonstrate that the government does not always know best.

Brexit, which won’t actually happen until the end of 2020 has already cost the economy £130billion and expected to cost another £70billion by the end of the year. It might not seem like much when the government can throw nearly £110billion at a (train set) vanity project that won’t achieve anything other than slicing 20 minutes off a journey that only takes 2 hours in the first place. HS2 is going to be a failure for all sorts of reasons – but hey – let’s just ramp up the national debt. Why not, it’s the kids who’ll have to pay for that one.

This government spent £46 million on a “Get ready for Brexit” advertising campaign which didn’t actually make the public any better prepared for Brexit. This is the view from the UK’s official spending watchdog, the National Audit Office.

The government budgeted a total of £100 million for a public billboard, newspaper, and social media campaign, promoting Britain’s then planned exit from the European Union on October 31 2019.

However, the NAO found that by the time the campaign was brought to an end, just 34% of the public were likely to seek out information about preparing for Britain’s exit, which was broadly unchanged from before the start of the campaign. What it really meant was that – the money was wasted. Every penny.

The plan was the most expensive of four options considered by the government, with the least expensive option being simply to do nothing – which, as it turned out, would have achieved the same.

It is also true to say that the NAO was being polite when it said – “that the effectiveness of the campaign may have been hindered by the public’s awareness that the October 31 Brexit deadline promoted by the campaign was unlikely to be kept.” 

Overall, the government has spent £8billion preparing for Brexit so far. Then there’s £11 million on 50p coins (plus two false starts). Oh and let’s not forget that Brexit has caused two additional general elections. The last one in 2017 cost £140million. So there’s another £280million (ish) up the wall.

Apparently, the government is due to spend £120million on the Brexit festival that 80 per cent of the public have stated they do not want to celebrate.

Forgetting for one moment that the economy will be down £200billion in eleven months time – ‘spaffing’ over £8.5billion on Brexit is what we can expect from our PM. He has form when it comes to wasting other peoples money.

Those who worked closely with Johnson as mayor of London, including fellow Conservatives, told the Guardian last July that he defied senior officials over a string of profligate projects and resisted being held to account for their ballooning costs. “The projects included going ahead with new Routemaster buses despite being told by his transport commissioner that they would be too expensive to run. He also purchased three secondhand water cannons against the advice of the lead police officer on riot control. And Johnson refused to publish the results of an 18-month study that he commissioned after it unequivocally warned against his idea of building an airport in the Thames estuary.”

Johnson championed eight high-profile projects that mostly ended in failure or wasn’t worth the trouble. Between them, they cost the taxpayer about a billion pounds. One million pounds takes the average worker on average full-time permanent pay, 41 years to earn. A stack of £20 notes needs to be 6 metres (20ft) high and weighs about 50kilos to reach a million quid. Johnson had a thousand of those piles and blew them to the wind to make him look good. Which they didn’t.

Johnson even spent £417,000 on a gala for a garden bridge he was advised against, no-one wanted and was then abandoned. There were other dramatic projects that ended in failure such as the Olympic Orbit Tower that no-one has heard of, which accrues debt interest of £700,000 a year due to its failure. Johnson allegedly commissioned the tower after bumping into the steel magnate Lakshmi Mittal at a cloakroom at the World Economic Forum at Davos. Mittal was also at the centre of the ‘cash-for-influence’ scandal in 2002, which almost brought the government down. At the time, the leader of the Opposition, David Cameron, described the scandal as “shocking” and demanded an inquiry.  The word ‘hypocrite’ simply doesn’t describe him or Johnson does it? Would it surprise you to know that Mittal poured last-minute cash into the leadership campaign of Boris Johnson a few months back? No – it didn’t surprise me either.

So it is perfectly logical and reasonable to expect that Brexit will continue to cost the country and its inhabitants billions, that vanity projects puffed up with propaganda campaigns against all the advice will continue. All this will come at significant cost to the public purse that is itself overly stretched because of the negative effects two events – the bank-led financial crisis, which is still not over and Brexit. It’s a cycle. And just like the Suez crisis that blew up in Tory PM Anthony Eden’s face in 1956 that led to his resignation a year later – the cost and losses were incalculable to Britain then as Brexit will be too.

If HS2 comes in at about £100billion (the latest estimate), that will cost each household in the United Kingdom in today’s money about £3,700. By this year-end, Brexit will have cost double that to each household. The difference between the two is that with HS2 there is a visible and tangible reminder of failure that we can blame – a bit like the failure of rail privatisation in general. Brexit, on the other hand, will be blamed on everyone else but those who brought it to us. And both will have to be paid for by a generation who can’t even afford to buy a place to live, and whose future employment prospects have just been reduced!

There’s a point when the realisation of what has happened becomes reality. The first real signs of Brexit’s ‘dividends’ will be seen in the economy. But it will take years to come to a real conclusion.

We should all remember that it took nearly fifty years before historians finally concluded that the Suez crisis “signified the end of Great Britain’s role as one of the world’s major powers.”

And it’s ironic isn’t it that just five years after Suez, the government then realised that the slow economic growth of the UK’s population compared to that of the European Economic Community was a point of real concern, so in 1961 they opened the first round of talks to join it. Applications were refused in 1963 and 1967 because  – “Britain harboured a deep-seated hostility to any pan-European project.” They were right then and they are right now. It took two decades for British businesses and EEC member states to lobby for Britain’s entry. The Foreign Office of the day finally produced a document that concluded (paragraph 26) that it was “advisable to put the considerations of influence and power before those of formal sovereignty” – exactly the reverse turned out to be the argument for leaving.

By the late 1960s exports from Britain to western Europe outstripped those to countries participating in ‘Imperial Preference’ and British investment in the EEC was much faster than that going to the Commonwealth. So if Britain has now left the EU and it abandoned investment in the Commonwealth years ago, we all are in for a rude awakening. If Britain joined the EU to keep up after our own home-made crisis then we are in trouble. If we are leaving because of sovereignty in place of influence and power – then we made a mistake either then or now. One way or the other – Britain has screwed this decision up as well. I wonder when the realisation stage really comes to being something because one thing is for sure – the EU won’t allow Britain back in after all this as it has proved exactly what they thought five decades ago.

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Since no-peace/peace plans first surfaced in the 1970s, the US and Israel supported Palestinian self-determination in name only.

Both countries opposed the idea since Israel seized Palestinian territory not stolen in 1948.

A two-state solution was theoretically possible years earlier, no longer with Israel controlling 70% or more of West Bank land and Jerusalem entirely — unwilling to relinquish any of it with US support.

Jimmy Carter is right saying the Trump regime’s scheme “undercuts prospects for a just peace between Israelis and Palestinians.”

He’s wrong claiming that its implementation “will doom the only viable solution to this long-running conflict, the two-state solution” — because no such solution ever existed in fact, just rhetorically.

Urging UN member states to reject the scheme, Carter correctly said it “breaches international law regarding self-determination, the acquisition of land by force, and annexation of occupied territories,” adding:

“By calling Israel ‘the nation-state of the Jewish people,’ the plan also encourages the denial of equal rights to the Palestinian citizens of Israel.”

At age-95, Carter is the longest-living former US president. Visiting Jerusalem in 2015, months after Israeli aggression against defenseless Gazans in summer 2014, he said the following:

“What we have seen and heard only strengthens our determination to work for peace. The situation in Gaza is intolerable.”

Warning of a “humanitarian catastrophe” at the time, events on the ground bore him out.

The Strip is unlivable for its two million residents under a medieval blockade, punctuated by cross-border Israeli ground and air attacks at its discretion.

At the time of his Jerusalem visit, Carter said “(a)s long as (Netanyahu) is in charge, there will be no two-state solution and therefore no Palestinian state.”

Since Israel’s preemptive 1967 Six Day War, Palestinian self-determination was opposed by all its ruling regimes to this day.

In response to Carter calling Israeli aggression on Gaza “illegitimate,” president Rivlin refused to meet with him. Israel’s foreign ministry boycotted his visit.

Carter earlier compared Israel’s occupation and settlement construction to  to South Africa’s apartheid, saying:

“When Israel does occupy this territory deep within the West Bank, and connects the 200-or-so settlements with each other, with a road, and then prohibits the Palestinians from using that road, or in many cases even crossing the road, this perpetrates even worse instances of apartness, or apartheid, than we witnessed even in South Africa.”

His book titled “Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid” aimed to stimulate debate on the issue, never occurring in the US, West or Israel.

Carter earlier and likely today believes that regional peace remains unattainable as long as Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory continues.

It’s only attainable if Israel “compl(ies) with international law,” he said — the same true about the US he left unexplained.

In discussing Carter’s book earlier, Norman Finkelstein noted harsh mainstream criticism of his “apartheid analogy” — what pro-Zionist Jewish groups call “dangerous and anti-Semitic,” how virtually all legitimate criticism of Israel is characterized.

Finkelstein: “After (over half a century) of Israeli occupation, the infrastructure and superstructure of apartheid have been put in place,” quoting former deputy mayor of Jerusalem Meron Benvenisti observing the following in his 1995 book titled “Intimate Enemies:”

“It goes without saying that ‘cooperation’ based on the current power relationship is no more than permanent Israeli domination in disguise, and that Palestinian self-rule is merely a euphemism for Bantustanization.”

B’Tselem earlier criticized Israel as follows, saying:

“Israel has created in the Occupied Territories a regime of separation based on discrimination, applying two separate systems of law in the same area and basing the rights of individuals on their nationality.”

“This regime is the only one of its kind in the world, and is reminiscent of distasteful regimes from the past, such as the apartheid regime in South Africa.”

In 2006, Haaretz said “the apartheid regime in the territories remains intact.”

“Millions of Palestinians are living without rights, freedom of movement or a livelihood, under the yoke of ongoing Israeli occupation.”

Activists, honest academics, independent jurists, and Nobel laureates condemn Israeli apartheid rule the same way.

Under international law, apartheid is considered a crime of war and against humanity — a gross perversion of governance of, by, and for everyone equitably, a notion rejected in the West and Israel.

In its unanimous 2004 ruling, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) called construction of Israel’s apartheid wall a violation of international law that must cease, be dismantled, Palestinian land returned, and compensation paid for property destroyed

The ICJ went further, adding:

“No territorial acquisition resulting from the threat or use of force shall be recognized as legal” by any UN member state, its ruling binding on the world community.

The Trump regime’s annexation scheme of the century can only succeed by brute force.

His so-called “vision” is nightmarish for long-suffering Palestinians, world’s apart from what he called a “win-win” deal.

Hardline Israeli war minister Naftali Bennett said “(w)e will not allow for Israel, under any circumstances, to recognize a Palestinian state,” adding: “Everything should be taken…now.

Militant pro-settler Yesha Council head David Elhayani said “(w)e  cannot agree to a plan that will include the formation of a Palestinian state which will pose a threat to the State of Israel and a great danger in the future.”

Other Israeli hardliners expressed similar views.

Trump’s scheme is polar opposite a “path of peace…a great step for peace.”

It’s a notion both right wings of the US war party and their Israeli counterparts categorically reject, along with Palestinian self-determination the way it should be, vastly different from the Trump regime’s proposed bantustan version.

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Award-winning author Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at [email protected]. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG)

His new book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.”

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

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

Featured image is from IMEMC

Less than a week after millions of Iraqis took to the streets demanding the U.S. military leave for good, the United States announced that is planning to build three new military bases in Iraq, according to military news service Breaking Defense. The three sites chosen – Erbin, Sulimania and Halabja – are all extremely close to Iran, with Halabja (the site of the 1988 chemical weapons attack) just eight miles from the border.

The news will come as a shock to the Iraqi parliament, who earlier this month voted overwhelmingly (with some abstentions) to expel American forces from the country. But the U.S. government has flatly refused to leave.

“At this time, any delegation sent to Iraq would be dedicated to discussing how to best recommit to our strategic partnership — not to discuss troop withdrawal, but our right, appropriate force posture in the Middle East,” said State Department spokesperson Morgan Ortagus, adding, “We strongly urge Iraqi leaders to reconsider the importance of the ongoing economic and security relationship between the two countries… We believe it is in the shared interests of the United States and Iraq to continue fighting ISIS together.”

Earlier this month the U.S. decided to send an extra 3,000 troops to the region.

President Trump responded by threatening sweeping mass punishments against the Iraqi people.

“We’re not leaving unless they pay us back for it…If they do ask us to leave, if we don’t do it in a very friendly basis, we will charge them sanctions like they’ve never seen before ever,” he said.

U.S.-led sanctions on Iraq in the 1990s are thought to have killed over one million people, including over half a million young children. Successive U.N. diplomats in charge of Iraq during the sanctions denounced them as genocide against its people. Trump said his sanctions would make the ones on Iran look tame by comparison.

“If there’s any hostility,” he said, “we are going to put sanctions on Iraq, very big sanctions.” Trump also threatened to commit genocide against the people of Iran, destroying their cultural heritage sites in a move condemned by many and compared to the Taliban’s destruction of the world-renowned Buddhas of Bamyan in Afghanistan.

Despite the president’s threats, enormous numbers of Iraqis heeded Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr’s call for a “million man march” in Baghdad last week. While Time magazine claimed there were only “hundreds” in attendance, drone footage told a very different story. Some estimates put the total at over 2.5 million. And despite Bloomberg Quick Take originally claiming that they were “anti-government demonstrations,” the huge banner on the main stage reading “GET OUT AMERICA” in uppercase English letters suggested otherwise.

Sadr asked for it. Today's the day. Baghdad now#Iraqmillionmanmarch #Iraq pic.twitter.com/9xPLS29U5q

— Logiko Iko (@IkoAfortiori) January 24, 2020

Hostilities between the United States and Iran threatened to spiral out of control after the January 3 assassination of Iranian General Qassem Soleimani. Soleimani had been invited to Baghdad by Iraqi Prime Minister Adil Abdul-Mahdi for regional peace talks. Abdul-Mahdi asked Trump for permission for Soleimani to enter Iraq. Trump accepted, then used the opportunity to kill the general with a drone strike, something the Iraqi parliament declared a violation of their national sovereignty. In retaliation, the Iranians fired ballistic missiles at U.S.-occupied bases in Iraq, causing pinpoint damage, but no fatalities, as the U.S. was warned of the impending response. The Pentagon has said that dozens of troops have suffered brain injuries as a result, but the president disagrees, claiming they amount to little more than headaches.

Source | Express

The plan to build new bases will be seen in Iran as an attempt to tighten the noose around it more tightly. There are already over 65,000 American military personnel in neighboring countries. The U.S. continues to occupy Iraq and Afghanistan since the invasions launched in the wake of the 2001 World Trade Center attacks.

Since 2003, an estimated 2.4 million people have been killed in the U.S. war on Iraq. One of the consequences of the wars in the Middle East was the rise of the Islamic State, which itself has led to further conflict. The U.S. military also operates from a network of bases in Bahrain, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and many other states in the region.

The move to establish three new U.S. military bases on Iran’s borders will not be a welcome move to those who wish to deescalate tensions, least of all by the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, who moved their Doomsday Clock to just 100 seconds to midnight, citing a possible regional nuclear catastrophe as a factor.

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Alan MacLeod is a Staff Writer for MintPress News. After completing his PhD in 2017 he published two books: Bad News From Venezuela: Twenty Years of Fake News and Misreporting and Propaganda in the Information Age: Still Manufacturing Consent. He has also contributed to Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, The Guardian, Salon, The Grayzone, Jacobin Magazine, Common Dreams the American Herald Tribune and The Canary.

Featured image: Protesters take to the streets of the Iraqi capital, Baghdad, for a million-man rally to call for an end to the military presence of the United States in their country. Photo | Mehr

China’s Virus Response Has Been ‘Breathtaking’

By Pepe Escobar, January 31, 2020

President Xi Jinping formally told WHO head Tedros Ghebreyesus, at their meeting in Beijing earlier this week, that the coronavirus epidemic “is a devil and we cannot allow the devil to hide.”

Ghebreyesus for his part could not but praise Beijing for its extremely swift, coordinated response strategy – which includes fast identification of the genome sequence. Chinese scientists have already handed over to Russian counterparts the virus genome, with snap tests able to identify it in a human body within two hours. A Russia-China vaccine is under development.

England Came and Went, Leaving Europe in a Mess. UK Leaves EU

By Diana Johnstone, January 31, 2020

Whew. Finally, at last, the United Kingdom is formally leaving the European Union on January 31.  Here in Paris, the champions of French withdrawal from the EU are celebrating. They see Brexit as the harbinger of a future “Frexit”, a French departure from undemocratic governance, and the beginning of the end of a failed project to unify Europe around the demands of neoliberal capitalism.

Endless War Is a Disastrous (but Profitable) Enterprise

By Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, January 31, 2020

Obama’s secretary of state, John Kerry, was sitting right beside the president as Obama spoke. I recall asking myself at the time if he were lecturing Kerry as well as lamenting his own decision, because Kerry had been rather outspoken at the time about heavier U.S. participation in yet another endless war then — and still — transpiring in Syria. Obama however, was apparently having none of that.

How the FBI Sabotaged Trump Foreign Policy

By Renee Parsons, January 30, 2020

It does not take a poli sci major to figure out that Flynn’s immediate removal from the Administration was essential to undermining Trump’s entire foreign policy initiatives including no new interventionist wars, peace with Russia and US withdrawal from Syria and Afghanistan.  In retrospect, the entire fraudulent Russiagate conspiracy makes sense when viewed from the perspective of an effort to rein in Trump’s foreign policy goals of which Flynn would have been a necessary, integral part.

The Torturers and the ‘Ticking Bomb’: How Torture Became Routine in the Global War on Terror

By Philip Giraldi, January 30, 2020

Acting as if it really cared about illegal activity, the White House back at that time found two malleable Justice Department lawyers John Yoo and Jay Busby who would be willing to come up with a defense of torture. They discovered somewhere in their law books that it was possible to do anything to a suspect as long as it did not bring about organ failure. That became the bottom line for interrogations, though in practice some prisoners died anyway, which might be considered the ultimate organ failure. The only one who was subsequently punished over the illegal torture program was former C.I.A. employee John Kiriakou, who blew the whistle on it.

Gaza Is Already Unliveable: Help the Freedom Flotilla Sail Against the Inhuman Blockade of Gaza

By Freedom Flotilla Coalition, January 31, 2020

In 2020, the Freedom Flotilla Coalition will sail again to break the illegal and inhuman blockade of Gaza. During this mission we will be focusing on children and youth struggling to survive in the wreckage of Gaza, their beloved home. Canada Boat to Gaza is reaching out to children and youth organizations, and to individuals like you, to help support our work and to bring an end to the suffering in Gaza.

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The World Health Organisation (WHO) yesterday decided to formally declare the outbreak of 2019-nCoV, the new coronavirus first identified in the Chinese city of Wuhan, as a “Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC).” The PHEIC classification was only established by WHO in 2005 following the 2002–2003 SARS pandemic. It has been declared on five occasions since, in response to the 2009 Swine Flu, the outbreaks in 2014 of Ebola and polio, the 2016 Zika virus and the 2019 resurgence of Ebola in central Africa.

Chinese authorities reported last night that the number of confirmed cases of 2019-nCoV has reached at least 8,100. The virus has spread from its source in Wuhan across mainland China and now around the world. At least 100 cases—predominantly people either from or who had visited Wuhan—have been diagnosed in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macao, Singapore, Nepal, India, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Australia, South Korea, Japan, the United Arab Emirates, Germany, France, Finland, the United States and Canada. Dozens of suspected cases are under investigation in other countries.

The number of deaths directly linked to 2019-nCoV infection, which can lead to severe pneumonia that cannot be treated with antibiotics or existing antiviral drugs, currently stands at 171. All of the fatalities were in China and, according to Chinese authorities, were mainly older people with existing medical conditions. The fatality rate, at around 2.7 percent, is low in comparison with other coronavirus outbreaks such as SARS and the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS). As with any virus, there is the possibility that as it spreads it could mutate into a far more deadly strain.

Like SARS and MERS, 2019-nCoV is an animal virus that has migrated to infect humans, most likely originating in either bats or snakes. At present, scientists postulate that it is being transmitted between people via respiratory “droplets” spread by coughing, so most likely can only be contracted if someone is in close and protracted proximity to an infected individual. By way of comparison, the common influenza virus, which spreads between people far more easily, has infected at least 15 million Americans and caused at least 8,200 deaths just in the 2019–2020 flu season.

In designating 2019-nCoV a global public health emergency, WHO officials took into account the evidence that the rate of human-to-human transmission outside China is increasing.

WHO director general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told a press conference last night:

“The main reason for this declaration is not because of what is happening in China, but because of what is happening in other countries. Our greatest concern is the potential for the virus to spread to countries with weaker health systems, and which are ill-prepared to deal with it.”

The media has generally interpreted this statement as a reference to so-called underdeveloped or “Third World” countries. In fact, the United States—where there is now one reported case of human-to-human transmission in Chicago—would be high on the list of concern. Tens of millions of people live in extreme poverty and lack any health insurance, while the public health system is drastically under-resourced. If several thousand patients sought treatment at the same time for severe respiratory illnesses in a major American city, it would completely overwhelm the medical system. A comparable situation exists in virtually all the so-called “advanced” capitalist countries.

The dangers are heightened by the likelihood that a vaccine for 2019-nCoV will not be developed for at least four months and would most likely not be available for roll-out to the general population for well over a year. One factor in the time length is the lack of collaboration between dozens of rival medical clinics internationally, which will be striving to patent a vaccine so their corporate owners can profit from its sale.

The international unpreparedness for serious pandemics—in terms of adequate medical facilities, dedicated quarantine wards and coordinated research teams—is reflected in the panicked responses to the coronavirus being announced around the world.

In China, health workers have reportedly had to deal with insufficient testing kits to diagnose the virus and shortages of protective suits to guarantee their own safety. In one Wuhan hospital, a nurse told CNN that at least 30 of the 500 staff are now infected. Hospitals have run out of beds and are telling people to go home unless they are displaying severe symptoms. Chinese authorities have rushed 1,800 additional doctors and specialists to Hubei province, while two temporary hospitals with a combined 2,300 beds are being rapidly built to cope with the number of patients.

Since January 22, the Chinese government has attempted to seal off Wuhan and other cities in Hubei province to try and stem the spread the virus. In total, some 50 million people are living under travel bans. As with all such blanket measures, however, those with wealth and power easily circumvent them. Moreover, 2019-nCoV was first identified in late December. By the time the quarantine was declared, as many as five million people had moved in and out of Wuhan, the largest city in central China, including thousands who travelled overseas. A factor in the spread of the virus was that people travelled elsewhere in China because they could not get treatment in the city.

Long after the virus has well and truly gone global, most airlines have now suspended or reduced their flights in and out of China. Airports internationally have erected elaborate screening measures to try and identify potential carriers of the virus, though infected people do not exhibit any symptoms for as long as seven to 10 days. Russia and North Korea have sealed their borders with China. In Italy, panicked authorities refused to allow thousands of people aboard a cruise ship to disembark due to suspicion that two passengers may have been infected. Test results came back negative.

A number of countries have organised flights to evacuate their citizens from the Wuhan region, but then placed them in quarantine in often substandard conditions. The Australian government stands out for its callousness. It is seeking to charge hundreds of Australian nationals $1,000 to be evacuated and intends to isolate them on the remote Christmas Island in the Indian Ocean and house them in the bleak facilities built to imprison so-called illegal refugees.

Amid the geostrategic and economic tensions between the United States and its allies with China, various demagogues are seizing the opportunity presented by the virus outbreak to stoke anti-Chinese xenophobia and sing nationalist praise of their own countries.

The Washington Post lambasted the Chinese government in the headline of an editorial yesterday for having “put everyone at risk” due to the lag between when the virus was identified and health warnings and drastic quarantine measures were announced. The Post implied that in the US, the “free press” would have ensured that information emerged more quickly. In fact, as has emerged time and again, the major American newspapers and networks collaborate just as intimately to censor information, on behalf of the government and the corporate ruling class, as their Chinese counterparts.

The Rupert Murdoch-owned Australian published today a particularly obscene piece by right-wing academic Salvatore Babones. He implied that the reason why coronaviruses have migrated from animals to humans in China and not in Australia was because Chinese—due to Confucianism and “communism”—relied on the state and did not “self-organise” to ensure sanitation and public health.

Babone wrote: “Australian civil society accomplishes what 100 million bureaucrats cannot—it ensures good public health by promoting safe practices broadly, across every niche of the economy, nearly all of the time.”

The utter stupidity of such nationalist assertions can be seen in the way that decades of Australian government indifference and inaction have left the population totally unprepared for the devastating impact of climate-change linked droughts, fires and floods. People have had to “self-organise” in fire-affected towns and regions over recent weeks because the emergency services and social support networks have been so deprived of resources that they are unable to provide the needed assistance.

The virus outbreak, like the climate change-linked natural disasters wreaking havoc on the lives of millions of people, starkly poses the necessity of international scientific planning and organisation and the investment of hundreds of billions of dollars into health and safety infrastructure, emergency services and preventative measures. The obstacle is the capitalist system, which subordinates economic and social life to the accumulation of private profit for a minority and maintains the division of the integrated and interdependent global economy into competing national states.

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Featured image is from EPA/STRINGER CHINA OUT

“Trump’s policy rollback is a step toward the past, like many of his other decisions, and sends exactly the wrong message to those working to rid the world of the scourge of landmines.”

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President Donald Trump is reportedly preparing to roll back established constraints on the U.S. military’s ability to use landmines overseas despite the weapons’ long history of killing and maiming civilians around the world.

CNN, citing multiple anonymous Defense Department officials, reported Thursday that the Trump administration is expected to loosen landmine restrictions in the coming days by rescinding a 2014 order by former President Barack Obama that limited U.S. landmine use to the Korean Peninsula.

“President Obama’s policy brought the U.S. policy closely in line with the obligations of the 1997 Mine Ban Treaty,” Jody Williams, an anti-war activist who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1997 for her work to ban landmines, told Common Dreams in an email. “Mr. Trump’s policy rollback is a step toward the past, like many of his other decisions, and sends exactly the wrong message to those working to rid the world of the scourge of landmines.”

More than 160 nations have ratified the Mine Ban Treaty, also known as the Ottawa Treaty, which prohibits the stockpiling, production, and use of landmines. The United States is one of just 32 U.N. member states that have not ratified the treaty.

“The beauty of the treaty is that it has established a new norm and even countries outside the treaty felt the stigma related to landmines and changed policies, even if they didn’t join the treaty,” said Williams. “Mr. Trump’s landmine move would be in line with all of his other moves to undercut arms control and disarmament in a world much in need of them. The landmine ban movement will do what it has always done with governments that still remain outside the Mine Ban Treaty—push back and continue the push to universalize the treaty—including the U.S.”

The Landmine and Cluster Munition Monitor, a non-governmental research initiative, estimated in a November 2019 report that 130,000 people were killed by landmines between 1999 and 2018. The majority of the deaths were civilians.

According to CNN, the Trump administration’s new policy will place the authority to use landmines in the hands of “commanders of the U.S. military’s combatant commands, usually a four-star general or admiral, such as the commanders of U.S. Africa Command and U.S. Central Command which oversee operations on the African continent and the Middle East respectively.”

“The new policy… is expected to permit the operational use of landmines only if they have a 30-day self-destruction or self-deactivation feature,” CNN reported. “The new policy would also allow for the development, production, and procurement of landmines only if they have these features.”

The decision to rescind the Obama administration’s 2014 policy was recommended following a Pentagon review launched in 2017 by then-Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis.

“So horrific that after decades of international efforts to rid the world of landmines, Trump is about to ‘make landmines great again’ by loosening restrictions on their use,” Medea Benjamin, co-founder of anti-war group CodePink, told Common Dreams.

Advocacy group Public Citizen echoed that reaction on Twitter.

“Is this what Make America Great Again means? Who in their right mind can justify this?” the group asked. “Landmines have a long history of killing and wounding civilians and are banned by more than 160 countries. Absolutely horrific.”

From Common Dreams: Our work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License. Feel free to republish and share widely.

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Featured image: Landmine survivor Mohammed Gulzar hold sa placard during a peace march in New Delhi on February 15, 2010. (Photo: Manpreet Romana/AFP via Getty Images)

President Xi Jinping formally told WHO head Tedros Ghebreyesus, at their meeting in Beijing earlier this week, that the coronavirus epidemic “is a devil and we cannot allow the devil to hide.”

Ghebreyesus for his part could not but praise Beijing for its extremely swift, coordinated response strategy – which includes fast identification of the genome sequence. Chinese scientists have already handed over to Russian counterparts the virus genome, with snap tests able to identify it in a human body within two hours. A Russia-China vaccine is under development.

The devil, of course, is always in the details. In a matter of a few days, at the peak of the most congested travel period of the year, China did manage to quarantine an urban environment of over 56 million people, including megalopolis Wuhan and three nearby cities. This is an absolute first in terms of public health, anytime in history.

Wuhan, with a GDP growth of 8.5% a year, is a significant business center for China. It lies at the strategic crossroads of the Yangtze and Han rivers and at a railway crossroads as well – between the north-south axis linking Guangzhou to Beijing and the east-west axis linking Shanghai to Chengdu.

As premier Li Keqiang was sent to Wuhan, President Xi visited the strategic southern province of Yunnan, where he extolled the immense government apparatus to boost control and sanitary prevention mechanisms to limit propagation of the virus.

Coronavirus catches China at an extremely sensitive juncture – after the (failed) Hybrid War tactics displayed in Hong Kong; an American pro-Taiwan offensive; the trade war far from solved by a mere “phase 1” deal while more sanctions are being plotted against Huawei; and even the assassination of Maj. Gen. Qasem Soleimani, which ultimately is about targeting the expansion of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) in Southwest Asia (Iran-Iraq-Syria).

The Big Picture spells out Total Information War and non-stop weaponization of the China “threat” – now even metastasized, with racist overtones, as a bio-threat. So how vulnerable is China?

A people’s war

For almost five years now a maximum-security biolab has been operating in Wuhan dedicated to the study of highly pathogenic micro-organisms – set up in partnership with France after the SARS epidemic. In 2017, Nature magazine was warning about the risks of dispersion of pathogenic agents out of this lab. Yet there’s no evidence this might have happened.

In crisis management terms, President Xi has lived up to the occasion – ensuring that China fights coronavirus with nearly total transparency (after all, the internet wall remains in place). Beijing has warned the whole government apparatus in no uncertain terms not to attempt any cover-ups. A real-time webpage, in English, here, is available to everyone. Whoever is not doing enough will face serious consequences. One can imagine what awaits the party chief in Hubei, Jiang Chaoliang.

A post that went viral all over the mainland this past Sunday states, “We in Wuhan have truly entered the stage of people’s war against the new viral pneumonia”; and many people, “mainly Communist Party members” have been confirmed as “volunteers and observers according to street units.”

Crucially, the government directed everyone to install a “Wuhan Neighbors” applet downloaded from WeChat. That determines “our home’s quarantine address through satellite positioning, and then lock on our affiliated community organization and volunteers. Thenceforth, our social activities and information announcements would be connected to the system.”

Theoretically, this means that “anyone who develops a fever will report their condition through the network as soon as possible. The system will immediately provide an online diagnosis, and locate and register your quarantine address. If you need to see a doctor, your community will arrange a car to send you to the hospital through volunteers. At the same time, the system will track your progress: hospitalization, treatment at home, discharge, death, etc.”

So here we have millions of Chinese citizens totally mobilized in what’s routinely described as a “people’s war” using “high technology to fight against illness.” Millions are also drawing their own conclusions when comparing it with the use of app software to fight against the police in Hong Kong.

The biogenetic puzzle

Apart from crisis management, the speed of the Chinese scientific response has been breathtaking – and obviously not fully appreciated in an environment of Total Information War. Compare the Chinese performance with the American CDC, arguably the top infectious disease research agency in the world, with an $11 billion annual budget and 11,000 employees.

During the Ebola epidemic in West Africa in 2014 – considered a maximum urgency, and facing a virus with a 90% fatality rate – the CDC took no less than two months from getting the first patient sample to identifying the complete genomic sequence. The Chinese did it in a few days.

During the swine flu in the US in 2009 – 55 million infected Americans, 11,000 killed – the CDC took over a month and a half to come up with identification kits.

The Chinese took only one week from the first patient sample to complete, vital identification and sequencing of coronavirus. Right away, they went for publication and deposit in the genomics library for immediate access by the whole planet. Based on this sequence, Chinese biotech companies produced validated essays within a week – also a first.

And we’re not even talking about the now notorious building of a brand new state of the art hospital in Wuhan in record time just to treat victims of coronavirus. No victims will pay for their treatment. Additionally, Healthy China 2030, the reform of the health/development system, will be boosted.

Coronavirus opens a true Pandora’s box on biogenetics. Serious questions remain about experiences in vivo in which the consent of “patients” will not be required – considering the collective psychosis initially developed by Western corporate media and even the WHO around coronavirus. Coronavirus could well become a pretext for genetic experiments via vaccines.

Meanwhile, it’s always enlightening to remember Great Helmsman Mao Zedong. For Mao, the top two political variables were “independence” and “development.” That implies full sovereignty. As Xi seems determined to prove a sovereign civilization-state is able to win a scientific “people’s war,” that does not exactly spell out “vulnerability.”

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This article was originally published on Asia Times.

Pepe Escobar is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

The unacceptable scheme is further proof of a geopolitical know-nothing US president — on top of his contempt for ordinary people everywhere, concerned only about power politics and self-enrichment.

Polls so far show no bump for Netanyahu after the scheme’s unveiling, his Likud party projected to win 33 or 34 of 120 Knesset seats in March 2 elections to 35 seats for Gantz-led Blue and White party — both leading parties deadlocked as in April and September last year, elections a few weeks away.

According to Channel 12 and 13 polls, around half of Israelis support the Trump scheme, about one-fourth opposed. Others are undecided or don’t know.

B’Tselem slammed the scheme, equating it to “Swiss cheese with the cheese being offered to the Israelis and the holes to the Palestinians,” adding:

The scheme “legitimizes, entrenches and even expands the scope of Israel’s human rights abuses, perpetuated” since seizing historic Palestinian land not stolen in 1948.

“Palestinians…will be relegated to small, enclosed, isolated enclaves, with no control over their lives as the plan eternalizes the fragmentation of Palestinian space into disconnected slivers of territory in a sea of Israeli control, not unlike the Bantustans of South Africa’s Apartheid regime.”

“With no territorial contiguity, Palestinians will not be able to exercise their right to self-determination and will continue to be completely dependent on Israel’s goodwill (sic) for their daily life, with no political rights and no way to influence their future.”

“They will continue to be at the mercy of Israel’s draconian permit regime and need its consent for any construction or development.”

“(N)ot only does the plan fail to improve their predicament in any way, but, in fact, it leaves them worse off as it perpetuates the situation and gives it recognition.”

It illegitimately legitimizes permanent subjugation under Israel’s repressive boot to be stomped on at its discretion.

A scathing Al Jazeera op-ed expressed an inability to discuss Trump’s scheme “with a straight face,” adding:

It’s an affront to what peace is all about to label it this way. “It is so much worse that a better term for it would be an ‘assault on peace.’ ”

“Everything about (it) is farcical…its author unfit…Kushner a fanatic Zionist supporter of illegal Israeli settlements…”

The scheme “punishes the victims and rewards the aggressors.”

Instead of opposing Israeli apartheid, Trump’s scheme endorses it.

Manipulated and out-of-touch with reality, he fails understand the potentially devastating consequences of his unacceptable sellout.

On Tuesday, Sergey Lavrov and Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov reserved official comment on Trump’s scheme until after reviewing its text.

Meeting with Palestinian factions in Moscow on Tuesday, Lavrov said Trump’s scheme does not include Palestinian statehood with East Jerusalem its capital, adding:

Russia “support(s) a diplomatic solution based on decisions of the international community” — failing to say it must be according to international law, what’s fundamental in resolving endless conflicts.

Separately, a PLO letter to foreign diplomats said the following:

“The attempts by the Trump (regime) at legitimizing Israeli crimes and violations as well as endorsing Israeli policies and narrative, including by illegally recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, defunding UNRWA, legitimizing settlements, cutting all humanitarian and development aid to the Palestinian people, closing the Palestinian mission in Washington as well as the US consulate in Jerusalem and dangerously justifying such policies using a religious narrative, have done nothing but to strengthen extremists in our region, further harming the prospects of security and stability for the Arab world and the rest of the world,” adding:

“The question of Palestine remains an unfulfilled test for the international community in regards to its commitment to international law.”

The letter called for “convening of an international peace conference based on international law and relevant UN resolutions.”

“Participation (in) this conference would include Israel and Palestine as well as all international stakeholders, including Arab countries.”

Similar earlier initiatives failed, another clearly to go the same way, US and Israeli manipulation to assure the outcome and what follows go their way.

The only solution is popular revolution, sustained resistance against illegal occupation. Nothing else can work.

Abbas and other key PA politicians long ago sold their souls to Israel.

Palestinians must go it on their own to have any hope for eventual liberation.

Their choice is either putting their bodies on the line for positive change or remaining subjugated by a brutal US-supported occupier.

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Award-winning author Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at [email protected]. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG)

His new book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.”

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

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu is coasting into his country’s third elections on March 2 with the success of two tremendous achievements over the past week that was interestingly made possible by both American and Russian Presidents. U.S. President Donald Trump unveiled the long-awaited “deal of the century” earlier this week, after which Netanyahu immediately traveled to Russia to meet with President Vladimir Putin to discuss it in detail and also return home with Naama Issachar, who was just pardoned by him for her drug conviction.

The first of Netanyahu’s victories was globally significant because the world has been eagerly waiting to see what Trump’s team envisaged for bringing peace to the Middle East. Although the deal itself has been widely criticized, there isn’t much that anyone can do to stop the U.S. and Israel’s unilateral moves in implementing it if the Palestinians continue to oppose this controversial plan. Netanyahu is assured of American support, which is all that matters in practical terms.

Concerning the second of his successes, the Israeli Prime Minister triumphantly returned to his homeland with the dual Israeli-American citizen who had previously been sentenced to 7.5 years in a penal colony after her arrest last April. The Russian authorities found over nine grams of cannabis in her luggage, as she was transiting through a Moscow airport from India back to Israel, and thus accused her of drug trafficking. President Putin’s pardon stated that he was guided by the principles of humanity, which Netanyahu sincerely thanked him for.

Altogether, these two achievements will predictably boost the Israeli incumbent’s chances of winning his country’s third elections in a year in early March. It doesn’t mean that he’s guaranteed to do so, but both the American and Russian leaders would be indirectly responsible if he did. To be clear, they made their decisions based on the calculation that they’d improve state-to-state relations, not necessarily because of their close personal relations with the Israeli premier.

Nevertheless, it’s intriguing to point out that these two geopolitical rivals share some common ground when it comes to Israel. The U.S. and Russia each cooperate with it on a very high strategic level, though in somewhat different domains. America is fully in support of everything that Israel does and therefore voluntarily decided to author a peace plan that entirely serves Israel’s political interests, while Russia cooperates real closely with it when it comes to Syrian affairs and thus advances the self-professed Jewish State’s security interests.

The key takeaway from this observation is that third countries could function as bridges for connecting an opposing pair of states exactly as Israel is currently doing vis-a-vis the U.S. and Russia. For example, Jerusalem hosted the first-ever trilateral National Security Advisor meeting between the Israeli, American, and Russian representatives last June, which showed the world how Washington and Moscow are willing to put aside their overall differences in the interests of jointly cooperating with Tel Aviv on pressing regional issues.

American-Israeli ties have always been strong since Israel’s establishment, but it’s been under Netanyahu’s premiership that Russian-Israeli ties really began to take off. Netanyahu’s visit to Russia immediately after unveiling the deal of the century in the U.S. speaks to just how much importance he and the State of Israel place in securing Russian support for this initiative. It also presented him with an excellent opportunity to pull off a soft power coup by returning to Israel with Issachar, who was coincidentally pardoned just the day before.

This was therefore arguably the best week ever in Netanyahu’s career since he was able to successfully portray himself as such a strong champion of Israeli interests that he even secured differing degrees of symbolic support from the U.S. and Russia despite their ongoing geopolitical rivalry. With the help of the American and Russian leaders, Israel’s international profile has continued to grow despite the heavy criticism that it’s historically come under, and especially since the recent unveiling of the contentious deal of the century.

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This article was originally published on CGTN.

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.

Featured image is from Another Day in the Empire

Whew. Finally, at last, the United Kingdom is formally leaving the European Union on January 31.  Here in Paris, the champions of French withdrawal from the EU are celebrating. They see Brexit as the harbinger of a future “Frexit”, a French departure from undemocratic governance, and the beginning of the end of a failed project to unify Europe around the demands of neoliberal capitalism.

But the paradox is that the champions of European unification might be celebrating even more – if it weren’t too late. Because years of British membership have already helped shatter the original dreams of a united European, whether the aspirations of the federalists for political unity or the project of a European confederation of independent States advocated by Charles De Gaulle some sixty years ago.

Way back then, when De Gaulle was meeting with the aged West German chancellor Konrad Adenauer to promote Franco-German reconciliation, the two old statesmen were thinking in terms of working gradually toward a partnership of core European states that would preserve their sovereignty within a confederation ensuring peace and cooperation.

From the start, the question of British membership appeared as a thorn in the side of European unity.  Initially, London was opposed to the Common Market.  In 1958, prime minister Harold MacMillan assailed it as “the Continental Blockade” (alluding to Napoleon’s 1806 European policy) and said England would not stand for it.  But as the project seemed to take shape, London sought accommodation.

De Gaulle warned from the start that Great Britain didn’t belong in a unified Europe, geographically, economically or above all psychologically.

The remark has become famous: in 1944, on the eve of the Normandy invasion, in a quarrelsome exchange, Churchill reportedly told De Gaulle that if Britain had to choose, it would always go for “the open sea” rather than the European continent.

Of course, Britain long ago lost both Churchill and its Empire. Nevertheless, the English remain psychologically wedded to their island status, the origin of their overwhelming maritime power that built the empire and has left traces of English-speaking nations and preferred trade relations all around the world.  Brits do not normally feel part of “the continent” and the traditional policy of their governments was always to keep the continent divided and weak.  This policy was passed on to London’s pupils in Washington, echoed in the description of NATO’s purpose: “to keep the Russians out, the Americans in and the Germans down” – the joke that tells the truth.

Sixty years ago, De Gaulle, who envisaged a European confederation as a way to achieve independence from the American liberators (who came to stay), saw very clearly that the UK would be America’s Trojan horse in the European community. That is called vision, the quality of a statesman – a breed that seems to have died out in the West.  He opposed British membership as long as he could, but the American influence was too great.  And curiously enough, the ardent European federalists joined in promoting British membership, seemingly unaware that such membership was totally incompatible with the political unity they desired.

British leaders, firmly attached to their parliament, their royalty, their class system, and their unique role in the world – now largely passed on to their heirs in Washington – never would consider genuine political unity with the continent.  But as a trading nation, they wanted to be part of a Europe that would favor free trade, period.

The United Kingdom first applied for membership in 1961, at a time when it comprised the central core made up of France, Germany, the Benelux countries and Italy. But as long as De Gaulle was President of France, this was not possible, despite U.S. support (the United States has always supported enlargement, notably Turkish membership, now considered out of the question).  The United Kingdom joined the European Economic Community only on January first, 1973, bringing with it both Ireland and Denmark, another advocate of free trade.

Bringing in Britain was the decisive step toward making unified Europe into a vast free market, a step toward globalization.  This was indeed the program of Jean Monnet, a totally Americanized French businessman who plotted the path to European unity through purely economic measures, indifferent to political issues. But it took British weight to pull Europe firmly in that direction, away from the original Common Market idea (removing trade barriers only between Member States) toward an open market, with minimum trade barriers, extending the benefits of its “free competition” doctrine to such giants as the United States and China.

In 1989, Margaret Thatcher appointed Leon Brittan to the post of European Commissioner for competition, where he stayed until 1999 in charge of trade and external affairs. In Brussels his was the most powerful influence in confirming the EU’s role as chief enforcer of neoliberal policies. At the same time, Thatcher demanded “her money back” and strengthened the UK’s own freedom from European institutional constraints.

The UK never agreed to the Schengen agreement on EU borders and declined to scrap the pound sterling for the euro – a wise move, no doubt. But also symptomatic of the essential incapacity of England to fully merge with the continent.

At the same time, the presence of London has certainly contributed to the total inability of the EU to develop a foreign policy which deviates from that of Washington. Britain supported the enlargement to the East which has made the EU more politically disunited than ever and has been the strongest supporter of the paranoid Russophobia of Poland and the Baltic States which pushes other European countries into a dangerous conflict with Russia that is contrary to their own interests.

Not that Britain is responsible for everything that is wrong with the European Union today.  A major mistake was made by French President François Mitterrand in the 1980s when he insisted on a “common European currency” under the illusion that this would help France contain Germany – when it turned out not only to do the contrary but to ruin Greece and cause ravages in Portugal, Spain and Italy.

And there are plenty of other mistakes that have been made, such as Angela Merkel’s invitation to come to Europe, ostensibly addressed to Syrian war refugees but understood by millions of unfortunates in the Middle East and Africa as meant for themselves.

And certainly, there were and are a minority of Englishmen and women who sincerely identify with Europe and want to feel part of it.  But they are a minority.  England has for too many centuries cherished and celebrated its uniqueness for that to be erased by complex impersonal institutions.

As England returns to the uncertainties of the open sea, it leaves behind a European Union that is bureaucratically governed to serve the interests of financial capital.  Member States, such as Macron’s France, are governed according to EU decrees against the will of their people.  British membership contributed to this denial of democracy, but paradoxically, the British people themselves are the first to reject it and demand a return to full national sovereignty.

Even the ardent fans of European unity increasingly insist that they want “a different Europe”, recognizing that the project has failed to produce the wonders that were promised. But changing this particular Europe would require unanimity between the 27 remaining, and increasingly quarrelsome, Member States.

That is why the idea is growing that it may be time to give up this failed European union and start all over, seeking political understanding issue by issue between sovereign democracies rather than a nonfunctional economic unity as decreed by transnational capitalist bureaucracy.

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Diana Johnstone’s latest book is Circle in the Darkness: Memoirs of a World Watcher (Clarity Press, 2020).

Featured image is from TruePublica

“The collapse of the Libyan state has had region-wide repercussions, with flows of people and weapons destabilizing other countries throughout North Africa.” This statement came from the Soufan Group’s recent Intelbrief, entitled “Fighting Over Access to Libya’s Energy Supplies” (24 January 2020). 

Are you listening, Barack Obama?

“There’s a bias in this town [Washington, DC] toward war,” President Obama said to me and several others assembled in the White House’s Roosevelt Room on September 10, 2015, almost seven years into his presidency. At the time, I thought he was thinking particularly of the tragic mistake he made by joining the intervention in Libya in 2011, ostensibly implementing United Nations Security Council Resolution 1973.

Obama’s secretary of state, John Kerry, was sitting right beside the president as Obama spoke. I recall asking myself at the time if he were lecturing Kerry as well as lamenting his own decision, because Kerry had been rather outspoken at the time about heavier U.S. participation in yet another endless war then — and still — transpiring in Syria. Obama however, was apparently having none of that.

The reason is that the Libya intervention not only lead to the grisly death of Libya’s leader, Muammar Qaddafi — and set in motion a brutal and continuing military conquest for the title of “who rules Libya,” invite outside powers from all over the Mediterranean to join the fray, and unleash a destabilizing refugee flow across that inner sea — it also put the weaponry from one of the world’s largest arms caches into the hands of such groups as ISIS, al-Qa’ida, Lashkar e-Taibi, and others. Additionally, many of those formerly Libyan weapons were being used in Syria at that very moment.

Before we offer faint praise for Obama having learned his lesson and thus not deciding to intervene in Syria in a more significant manner, we need to pose the question: Why do presidents make such disastrous decisions like Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Afghanistan and, tomorrow perhaps, Iran?

President Dwight Eisenhower answered this question, in large part, in 1961:

“We must never let the weight of this combination [the military-industrial complex] endanger our liberties or democratic processes. … Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals.”

Simply stated, today America is not composed of an alert and knowledgeable citizenry, and the Complex that Eisenhower so precisely described is in fact, and in ways not even Eisenhower could have imagined, endangering our liberties and democratic processes. The Complex creates the “bias” that President Obama described.  Moreover, today the U.S. Congress fuels the Complex — $738 billion this year plus an unprecedented slush fund of almost $72 billion more — to the extent that the Complex’s writ on war has become inexhaustible, ever-lasting, and, as Eisenhower also said, “is felt in every city, every state house, every office of the Federal government.”

With respect to the “alert and knowledgeable citizenry,” an outcome not only in the long-term attributable to proper education but in the short-to-medium term principally inculcated by a responsible and capable “Fourth Estate,” there is an abysmal failure as well. 

The Complex for most of its nefarious purposes owns the media that matters, from the nation’s newspaper of record, The New York Times, to its capital city’s modern organ, The Washington Post, to the financial community’s banner paper, The Wall Street Journal. All of these papers for the most part never met a decision for war they didn’t like. Only when the wars become “endless” do some of them find their other voices — and then it’s too late.

Not to be outdone by print journalism, the mainstream TV cable media features talking heads, some of them paid by members of the Complex or having spent their professional lives inside it, or both, to pontificate on the various wars. Again, they only find their critical voices when the wars become endless, are obviously being lost or stalemated, and are costing too much blood and treasure, and better ratings lie on the side of opposition to them.

Marine General Smedley Butler, a two-time Medal of Honor recipient, once confessed to having been “a criminal for capitalism.” An apt description for Butler’s times in the early days of the 20th century. Today, however, any military professional worth his salt as a citizen as well — like Eisenhower — would have to admit that they too are criminals for the Complex — a card-carrying member of the capitalist state, to be sure, but one whose sole purpose, outside of maximizing shareholder profits, is facilitating the death of others at the hands of the state. 

How else to describe accurately men — and now women — wearing multiple stars ceaselessly going before the people’s representatives in the Congress and asking for more and more taxpayer dollars? And the pure charade of the slush fund, known officially as the Overseas Contingency Operations (OCO) fund and supposed to be strictly for operations in theaters of war, makes a farce of the military budgeting process. Most members of Congress should hang their heads in shame at what they have allowed to happen annually with this slush fund.

And Secretary of Defense Mark Esper’s words at the Center for Strategic and International Studies this week, ostensibly spoken to illustrate “new thinking” at the Pentagon with regard to budgeting, suggest no indication of real change in the military’s budget, just a new focus — one that promises not to diminish cash outlays but to increase them. But rightfully so, Esper does indicate where some of the blame lies as he glibly accuses the Congress of adding to already bloated budget requests from the Pentagon: “I’ve been telling the Pentagon now for two and a half years that our budgets aren’t gonna get any better — they are where they are — and so we have to be much better stewards of the taxpayer’s dollar. … And, you know, Congress is fully behind that. But then there’s that moment in time when it hits their backyard, and you have to work your way through that.”

“[T]hat moment in time when it hits their backyard” is an only slightly veiled accusation that members of Congress often plus-up Pentagon budget requests in order to provide pork for their home districts (no one is better at this than the Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who in his many years in the Senate has provided millions of taxpayer dollars — including to Defense — for his home state of Kentucky to ensure his long-lived hold on power there. And he’s no piker either in receiving money from the defense sector into his campaign coffers. McConnell just might be different, however, from other members of Congress in the way he returns to Kentucky and openly brags about the huge amounts of pork he brings annually to his state in order to offset his increasingly bad poll ratings). 

But Esper continued in a far more telling manner:

“We’re at this moment in time. We have a new strategy. …We have a lot of support from Congress. … We have to bridge this gap now between what was Cold War-era systems and the counter-insurgency, low-intensity fight of the last ten years, and make this leap into great power competition with Russia and China — China principally.”

If the old Cold War brought sometimes record military budgets, we can expect the new cold war with China to outstrip those amounts by orders of magnitude. And who is it that decided that we needed a new cold war anyway?

Look no further than the Complex (from which Esper comes, not coincidentally, as one of the top lobbyists for Raytheon, a stellar member of the Complex). One of the Complex’s sine qua nons is what it learned from the almost half century of the cold war with the Soviet Union: nothing on earth pays out so handsomely and consistently than a prolonged struggle with a major power. Thus, there is no stronger, more powerful advocate for a new cold war with China — and throw Russia into the mix too for extra dollars — than the Complex. 

However, at the end of the day, the very idea that the U.S. must spend annually more money on its military than the next eight nations in the world combined, most of whom are U.S. allies, should demonstrate to an even unknowledgeable and not-so-alert citizenry that something is seriously wrong. Roll out a new cold war; something is still seriously wrong.

But apparently the power of the Complex is simply too great. War and more war is the future of America. As Eisenhower said, the “weight of this combination” is in fact endangering our liberties and democratic processes.

To understand this explicitly, we need only examine the futile attempts in the past few years to wrest back the power to make war from the executive branch, the branch that when equipped with the power to make war, as James Madison warned us, is most likely to bring tyranny.

Madison, the real “pen” in the process of writing the U.S. Constitution, made certain that it put the war power in the hands of the Congress. Nonetheless, from President Truman to Trump, almost every U.S. president has usurped it in one way or another.

The recent attempts by certain members of Congress to use this constitutional power simply to remove America from the brutal war in Yemen, have fallen to the Complex’s awesome power. It matters not that the bombs and missiles of the Complex fall on school buses, hospitals, funeral processions, and other harmless civilian activities in that war-torn country. The dollars pour in to the coffers of the Complex. That is what matters. That is all that matters.

There will come a day of reckoning; there always is in the relations of nations. The names of the world’s imperial hegemons are indelibly engraved in the history books. From Rome to Britain, they are recorded there. Nowhere, however, is it recorded that any of them are still with us today. They are all gone into the dustbin of history.

So shall we someday soon, led there by the Complex and its endless wars.

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Damage caused by aerial herbicide spraying conducted by Israel on three consecutive days (January 14-16) along Gaza’s perimeter fence has become visible on crops in the Strip. Individuals working with London-based research agency Forensic Architecture collected samples from fields located east of Jabalya, in northern Gaza, at distances of 100, 200, 400 and 600 meters from the fence. The damage to the crops is clearly visible on the samples they collected. According to local farmers, dunams more of parsley, peas, wheat, barley, spinach and other produce were destroyed entirely. The effect of the spraying appears several days after the spraying is conducted.

Riad Al Nisar, a farmer from Al Bureij Refugee Camp, who cultivates more than 20 dunams (about five acres) of parsley and zucchini crops about 300 meters away from the fence, reported that the effects of the spraying in the area on Wednesday and Thursday appeared on the crops clearly on Sunday. Al Nisar has suffered from significant financial losses caused by the spraying in previous years as well. In late 2018, he assessed that losses he had sustained amounted to at least 10,000-15,000 USD.

Another local farmer, Salah Al Najjar, has farmland located 300 to 600 meters from the fence in an area stretching east of Khan Yunis. His spinach fields were completely destroyed. He said his brother’s fava bean field, about a kilometer away from the fence, is also showing signs of damage. Al Najjar’s crops have been severely impacted as a result of previous spraying.

Image on the right: A sample collected after the recent round of spraying. Photo by Forensic Architecture

A video update by Forensic Architecture confirms the farmer’s assessmentthat the spraying was timed so that westward-blowing wind would carry the chemical agents used in the spraying into the Strip. Farmers were not given any notice, leaving them unable to take precautions to protect their crops or harvest them in advance to avoid further losses.

In response to Freedom of Information requests by Gisha, Israel admittedto having conducted aerial spraying over Israeli territory near the perimeter fence almost 30 times between 2014 and 2018. The army has stated that the spraying is conducted in order to expose the terrain “to enable optimal and continuous security operations.” No incidents of spraying were recorded in 2019. It is estimated that aerial herbicide spraying by Israel has affected a total area of 7,620 dunams of arable land in the Strip. In July 2019, Forensic Architecture published a multi-media investigation into the practice, based in large part on research and legal work by human rights organizations Gisha, Adalah, and Al Mezan. The report strengthened the organizations’ findings whereby aerial herbicide spraying by Israel has damaged lands deep inside Gaza.

Last Thursday, Gisha, Adalah and Al Mezan, sent a letter to Israel’s Minister of Defense, Military Advocate General, and Attorney General, arguing that such a disproportionate measure, with detrimental impact on livelihoods and the health of the civilian population, is unlawful under both Israeli and international law, and calling on Israeli authorities to stop the practice immediately.

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Featured image: Spinach in Gaza, after the spraying was conducted. Photo by Forensic Architecture

Relying on confidential industry research, the Environmental Protection Agency issued a final interim decision today to reapprove glyphosate, the active ingredient in Monsanto/Bayer’s Roundup and the world’s most heavily used pesticide.

The EPA’s assessment contradicts a 2015 World Health Organization analysis of published research that determined glyphosate is a probable carcinogen.

“The Trump EPA’s assertion that glyphosate poses no risks to human health disregards independent science findings in favor of confidential industry research and industry profits,” said Lori Ann Burd, the Center for Biological Diversity’s director of environmental health. “This administration’s troubling allegiance to Bayer/Monsanto and the pesticide industry doesn’t change the trove of peer-reviewed research, by leading scientists, that’s found troubling links between glyphosate and cancer.”

While today’s decision is called interim, the EPA’s practice is to issue interim, rather than final, decisions in its registration-review process for pesticides, which means this is akin to a final decision.

In addition to the World Health Organization’s conclusion, multiple U.S. federal agencies have acknowledged evidence of a link between glyphosate and cancer. This includes the EPA’s Office of Research and Development and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry.

Earlier this week the EPA’s Office of Inspector General announced it’s starting an audit to assess whether the EPA’s pesticide regulatory office adheres to pesticide registration risk assessment regulations, policies and procedures.

“The EPA’s pesticide office is clearly willing to bend over backwards, including disregarding its own guidelines for evaluating cancer risks, to give the industry what it wants,” said Burd. “This pesticide is heavily used on food crops, landscaping and even playgrounds, and the public deserves unbiased answers to the basic question of whether it’s safe.”

Emails obtained in litigation brought against Monsanto/Bayer by cancer victims and their families have uncovered a disturbingly cozy relationship between the EPA and the company on matters involving the glyphosate risk assessment.

In one example, when the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services announced it would be reviewing glyphosate’s safety, an EPA official assured Monsanto he would work to thwart the review, saying, “If I can kill this, I should get a medal.”

The Health and Human Services review was delayed for three years and only recently released.

Monsanto/Bayer also enjoys broad support from the Trump White House. A domestic policy advisor in the Trump administration stated, “We have Monsanto’s back on pesticides regulation.”

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Featured image is from Mike Mozart/Flickr/cc

Back in November 2015, a Turkish F-16 fighter jet shot down a Russian Sukhoi Su-24M near the Syria–Turkey border on the allegations that the Russian warplane had violated Turkish airspace for 17 seconds – an interesting casus belli considering that Turkey violates Greek airspace thousands of times a year, occupies large swathes of northern Syria in defiance of international law, and continues to rebel against United Nations resolutions by illegally occupying northern Cyprus. Russian President Vladimir Putin in December 2015 promised Turkey they “will regret” being responsible for the death of Russian pilots. Although rumors circulated of a first Russo-Turkish War since World War I, the only reaction Russia made against Turkey were sanctions.

But rather than a deterioration of relations, the exact opposite has happened with an acceleration of bilateral relations, so much so that Turkey even acquired the lucrative Russian-made S-400 missile defense system, in addition to the two countries opening the Turkstream pipeline earlier this month and cooperating on Syria through the Astana and Sochi formats. It appears that the “regret” Putin would inflict on Turkey has not even remotely come to fruition and rather Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has been rewarded for his insolence, especially as there has been at least 116 Russian military deaths, most of them killed by Turkish-backed terrorists groups in Syria.

Putin has caused havoc in NATO by giving Turkey the confidence to act in its own interests, despite Erdoğan’s own imperial ambitions. This sense of self-confidence in Turkey has allowed the country to pursue its Neo-Ottoman dreams that has antagonized all of its neighbors, the European Union, NATO and all regional states with the exception of Qatar, which unironically was one of the last countries to get independence from the Ottoman Empire. By instilling a self-confidence in Turkey, a confidence that pushes for an ambition it cannot meet, Putin turned Erdoğan into an ally and a friend. However, when we look at the long game that Putin has played, Russia has been using Turkey for its own interests.

Turkey’s Libya gambit has once again shown that it is isolated, finding no support from any interested party in the conflict. At a time when Turkey is becoming increasingly isolated but still confident in its relations with Russia, Moscow condemned Turkey’s decision to increase its military assistance to the Tripoli government.

Despite the increasing isolation and memories of the crippling Russian sanctions on Turkey in 2015, Erdoğan appears to be frustrated and lashed out against Moscow yesterday saying:

“Currently, Russia is not abiding by Astana or Sochi [peace formats on Syria]. If we are loyal partners with Russia on this, they have to put forth their stance… Our wish is that Russia immediately makes the necessary warnings to the [Syrian] regime which it sees as a friend. The Astana process has fallen into silence now. We need to look at what Turkey, Russia and Iran can do to revive the Astana process.”

It certainly cannot be denied that Erdoğan is frustrated and is now falsely claiming that Russia is not adhering to the deals made in Astana and Sochi. The deals allow for the Syrian government and its allies to conduct operations against terrorist organizations, such as the Al-Qaeda affiliated Al-Nusra Front and the Turkestan Islamic Party, with the former being the most dominant and powerful militant group in the Syrian province of Idlib.

Russia’s assistance in fighting Al-Qaeda in Idlib prompted Erdogan’s outburst, where he also said “Russia tells us they fight against terrorism. Who are terrorists? The people fighting to defend their own lands?” This once again shows Turkey’s complete defense and apology for terrorist organization operating in Syria, unsurprising since it was Russia who revealed and destroyed the lucrative ISIS-Turkey oil trade in 2015 with surgical airstrikes against convoys that were ignored by the U.S. air force. So not only has Turkey revealed its frustrations against Russia for its own failures in Libya and Syria, it is now reverting to lies and contradictions that it usually reserves for using against Greece, Cyprus, Syria and Armenia, by deceitfully claiming Russia is “not abiding by Astana or Sochi.”

With increasing of anti-Turkish sentiment in Washington, Europe and the wider region Turkey has become militarily, diplomatically and economically weaker, as well as completely isolated – effectively destroying all ambitions for a Neo-Ottoman Empire.

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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.

Paul Antonopoulos is a Research Fellow at the Center for Syncretic Studies.

Featured image is from RIA Novosti

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Idlib militants seem to be in disarray amid the developing advance of the Syrian Army. Since the liberation of Maarat al-Numan, government forces have achieved several important breakthroughs on the frontline in southeastern Idlib and southwestern Aleppo.

The army has liberated the villages of al-Qahira, al-Jaradah, Khan Assubul, Maarrat Dibsah and Ain Halbane‏, all located on the M5 highway north of Maartan al-Numan. Near Aleppo city, government forces have liberated Tell Maher, Tell Abiad, Tell al-Zaitoun, Tell al-Mahruqat, Jurf al-Sakhr, the Rashidin 5 neighborhood and one of the key militant strongpoints – Khan Tuman.

Most of these areas were liberated without significant resistance from Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (formerly the Syrian branch of al-Qaeda) or the Turkish-backed National Front for Liberation. Despite this, according to pro-opposition sources, up to 200 militants have been killed or wounded in clashes with the Syrian Army.

The setbacks of al-Qaeda-backed militants and their pro-Turkish allies has caused discontent in Turkey. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan claimed that Russia “hasn’t abided by either the Astana or the Sochi agreements.”

“We have waited until now, but from this point, we are going to take our own actions. This is not a threat but our expectation is that Russia will give the regime the necessary warning,” the President said.

The main point of contradictions between Turkey and the Syrian-Russian-Iranian alliance is the fighting of terrorism and the separation of opposition groups from terrorist  groups like Hayat Tahrir al-Sham. Ankara does not want or just cannot separate its proxies in Idlib from al-Qaeda. So, it sees anti-terrorism efforts by the Syrian-Russian-Iranian alliance as a threat to its own interests and influence.

On January 29, reports appeared that Syrian government forces had shelled a Turkish military convoy west of Aleppo city. According to photos which appeared online, the shelling destroyed at least one vehicle. However, it remains unclear if it belonged to the Turkish Army. Turkish military convoys moving through Idlib often include members and equipment of Turkish-backed militant groups. So, one of these vehicles may have become a target of the Syrian strike. This would explain the lack of reaction from the Turkish Defense Ministry.

Currently, the advance of government forces seems to be focused on the M5 highway area. The army and its allies exploit the internal contradictions among Idlib militant groups who have failed to cooperate properly to set up strong defenses deep inside the region. It is no secret that mighty Idlib fighters prefer taking selfies to digging trenches.

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We now know that, before Donald Trump’s inauguration on January 20, 2017, the FBI had the ouster of Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, the President’s National Security Adviser, in its sights. By February 13^th, Flynn was out the door.  

Think about it. Why was Flynn’s removal of the utmost importance to the FBI, more vital than removal of any other cabinet officer like the Pentagon or State Department.  So crucial was it that they created a specific strategy willing to embrace prosecutorial misconduct and agency malfeasance to take Flynn down. Prosecutorial misdeeds are nothing new to the FBI as they have a well founded history of corruption over the years with its warts now publicly displayed.

It does not take a poli sci major to figure out that Flynn’s immediate removal from the Administration was essential to undermining Trump’s entire foreign policy initiatives including no new interventionist wars, peace with Russia and US withdrawal from Syria and Afghanistan.  In retrospect, the entire fraudulent Russiagate conspiracy makes sense when viewed from the perspective of an effort to rein in Trump’s foreign policy goals of which Flynn would have been a necessary, integral part.

The question is where did the first glimmer of setting up Flynn originate?  Who had the most to gain by disrupting Trump’s foreign policy agenda?  A number of suspects come to mind including the evil Brennan/Clapper twins, a bureaucratically well placed neocon, an interested foreign entity like Israel or somewhere deep within the dark bowels of the FBI, all of which are in sync with the Democratic leadership and its corporate media minions.

At the time, the Washington Post, a favorite CIA organ, was reporting that Flynn had ‘hinted’ to Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak that Trump might be willing to ‘relax’ sanctions against Russia.  It was then claimed that Flynn had ‘misled’ VP Pence by denying that he had had a conversation regarding sanctions with Kislyak. None of it was true.

With Flynn removed, Trump never regained his footing on foreign policy  – which no doubt was exactly as intended; thereby opening the door for the likes of Jared Kushner to assume the role of ‘trusted adviser.”

Let’s examine how the FBI eliminated Flynn:

In August, 2016, an FBI ‘strategic intelligence briefing’ was conducted for  candidate Trump with Flynn as his national security adviser in attendance.  The briefing, which was not a traditional ‘defensive’ briefing in which a presidential candidate is alerted of a foreign government’s effort to intercede in their campaign, was led by an anonymous “experienced FBI counter intelligence agent.” According to the IG Report on FISA abuses, at that time Flynn was already a “subject in the ongoing Crossfire Hurricane investigation.”

The IG Report confirms that, after the election, top FBI officials discussed ‘interview strategies’ regarding how to set Flynn up in an ostensibly innocent conversation.  Former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe arranged the meeting with the goal to walk Flynn into a well laid trap without informing him that there was a criminal investigation underway or that he was a target.  Such a procedure is called ‘entrapment’ and considered illegal  See Clint Eastwood’s new film Richard Jewell for details on the FBI’s entrapment techniques.

Image on the right: Ambassador Sergey Kislyak (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

On January 24, 2017, four days after the Inaugural, Peter Strzok, former FBI Chief of counterespionage and the same unnamed SSA1 (Supervisory  Special Agent) who led the August briefing met with Flynn for a friendly chat, more popularly referred to as the Ambush Interview.  At that time, either one or both agents took handwritten notes while neither provided the usual heads-up about penalties for making a false statement – since that would have tipped their hand. Since Flynn believed this was an informal visit, he did not feel the need to have an attorney present or inquire why, if this was a friendly get-to-know chat, the need to take notes.  That conversation led to Flynn being charged with ‘lying to the FBI’ regarding his conversation with Kislyak.

After the interview, preparation of a 302 form is normal procedure.  A 302 is a summary of and a formalizing of those notes taken during the conversation.  It is those original 302 notes which are in dispute and which the FBI refuses to provide to either the Senate Judiciary Committee or to Flynn’s attorney, Sidney Powell.  What does that tell you?  Powell believes, based on sworn witness  testimony, that the final 302 is not an accurate reflection of the 302 notes or Flynn’s statements of January 24^th.

It is curious that an SSA1 whose identity remained cloaked in secrecy throughout the entire IG FISA Report continues to be mentioned as a significant participant in the Bureau’s Crossfire Hurricane while his name remains redacted on official documents.  Disguising his identity may simply be attributed to activities worth concealing.

In an unexpected turn, it was Sen. Chuck Grassley, Chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee who outed the SSA 1 as agent Joe Pientka in his May 11, 2018 letter to the Bureau.  Pientka remains a central figure in the FBI scam against Flynn as well as other clandestine activities identified within the Crossfire operation – and there’s more.

According to Strzok, Pientka was “primarily responsible” as the ‘note taker’ and prepared the 302 report of the interview on which Flynn’s prosecution is based.  Powell has challenged authorship since the final 302 version contains falsified statements never made in the original interview that are now being criminalized.

In a message to his paramour Lisa Page, Strzok thanked Page for her ‘edits’ on the 302 regarding the Flynn – Kislyak conversation on sanctions that never occurred while Strzok suggested that, at some future time, they discuss a ‘media leak strategy.’  

Soon after Flynn’s resignation, a skeptical Grassley requested unredacted transcripts of the Flynn – Kislyak conversation with the FBI repeatedly refusing to comply.  Grassley’s May 11^th letter confirms that Comey was aware that Flynn had not lied regarding the Kislyak conversation and further points out the stunning revelation that that Pientka was ‘on detail’  as staff on the Judiciary Committee, presumably with the Democrats.  For all his persistence, the FBI continues to rebuff Grassley’s assertions for a transcript of the Kislyak conversation as well as demanding  Pientka’s presence “for a transcribed interview with Committee staff.”

In response to an ‘insufficient’ FBI reply, Grassley then let loose with a June 6^th zinger detailing a compilation of FBI lies, failures and hypocrisies too numerous to be articulated (but worth reading) here.

While a review of the FBI’s entire prosecution of Flynn raises considerable legal and ethical questions, the Bureau’s consistent refusal to turnover evidentiary material is indicative of a deceitful agency protecting its own criminal behavior.

• Why is the FBI embedding an SSA1 with the Senate Committee that has legislative jurisdiction over its mission? Does this strike anyone else like the tactic of a totalitarian state?
• How does Flynn’s case move forward without the FBI providing the necessary exculpatory documents legally required for every defendant?
• How does a Congressional Committee provide effective oversight and accountability if they are continually stonewalled by the very agency within their legal authority?
• How can the FBI ever be rehabilitated if Congress, fearful of a constitutional crisis, has no political will to assert its proper authority and issue  a Contempt of Congress subpoena?
• With the FBI out of control, Is this any way to run a country?

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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 and may be reached at @reneedove31. She is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

With all the media excitement focused on the impeachment of President Donald Trump, it comes as no surprise that some recent additional insights into how the United States became a torture regime have been largely ignored. It has been known for years that the George W. Bush Administration carried out what most of the world considers to be torture.

Acting as if it really cared about illegal activity, the White House back at that time found two malleable Justice Department lawyers John Yoo and Jay Busby who would be willing to come up with a defense of torture. They discovered somewhere in their law books that it was possible to do anything to a suspect as long as it did not bring about organ failure. That became the bottom line for interrogations, though in practice some prisoners died anyway, which might be considered the ultimate organ failure. The only one who was subsequently punished over the illegal torture program was former C.I.A. employee John Kiriakou, who blew the whistle on it.

Last week there was a hearing at a Guantanamo Bay courtroom in which one of the psychologists who devised the Central Intelligence Agency torture regime testified under oath.

Psychologist James Mitchell was testifying in what was a preliminary hearing relating to the eventual trial of five alleged 9/11 conspirators He discussed how he and his business partner Dr. Bruce Jessup together developed the Agency’s torture program, which internal government documents described by employing the euphemism “enhanced interrogation techniques.” They were paid $81 million for their work and were able to produce a training manual that included waterboarding, stress positions and mock burials to physically and mentally destroy the target’s ability to resist. Both Mitchell and Jessup have asserted that their procedures were more designed to make a suspect uncomfortable rather than in pain and they blame interrogators who went too far for the physical and mental permanent damage that resulted.

To understand the depth of depravity that was part and parcel of “enhanced interrogation,” it is useful to consider Dr. Mitchell’s own testimony relating to the torture of prisoner Abu Zubaydah, a procedure that was implemented at one of the Agency’s secret prisons. The prison was likely the one located in Thailand, where current director of Central Intelligence Gina Haspel was in charge. Mitchell, who was also involved in the 183 waterboardings of alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, personally participated in the interrogation. Zubaydah reportedly cooperated with his interrogators but then ceased to do so when the torture began. He was waterboarded more than 80 times while also being subjected to other “coercive physical pressure” including being buried alive over concerns that he might be hiding something. He survived and since has been held at Guantanamo for more than 13 years. The United States government has never tried him and has never even charged him with any crime.

Waterboarding of Abu Zubaydah (Source: Wikimedia Commons)

Mitchell’s testimony states that he and the other interrogators had wanted the waterboarding to stop due to concerns that Zubaydah’s deteriorating mental processes were rendering any further interrogation unreliable. They sent a message to headquarters at Langley saying that “the intensity of the pressure applied to him thus far approaches the legal limit.” C.I.A. management ordered the interrogators to keep going as Zubaydah might be concealing details of an imminent terrorist attack along the lines of 9/11.

Americans have, of course, seen the use of “imminent” recently to explain away illegal actions that amount to war crimes. Another version exploiting a unknown imminent threat is the “ticking bomb scenario” which is based on the belief that a prisoner has knowledge of another terrorist act that is about to take place. It has frequently been employed by the Israelis to justify their wholesale torture of capture Palestinians. Israeli apologist Harvard lawyer Alan Dershowitz, among others, has cited the ticking bomb scenario to justify use of torture, but the problem is that there is no evidence to suggest that it has ever worked. No impending terrorist action has ever been prevented by torturing prisoners who have already been detained.

In the case of Zubaydah, C.I.A. even sent a senior officer to the torture room to make sure that no one was holding back on getting the job done properly. During the waterboarding Zubaydah was experiencing involuntary body spasms and was crying. Even the torturers and viewers were visibly upset. Mitchell’s testimony included “I thought it was unnecessary, and I felt sorry for him.”

Mitchell claims that he was pressured by C.I.A. management to always push harder during interrogations. At one point, Mitchell claims he sought to withdraw from the program but was told that “he’d lost his spine and it would be his fault if more people in the US died in a catastrophic attack.” Mitchell added “The implication was that if we weren’t willing to carry their water, they would send someone else who would do it, and they may be harsher than we were.”

Mitchell not unreasonably explained how post-9/11 there was a “climate of fear” over another imminent attack, possibly employing nuclear or biological weapons and he was unapologetic about his role in protecting his country. He said “I’d get up today and do it again… I thought my moral obligation to protect American lives outweighed the temporary discomfort of terrorists who had voluntarily taken up war against us. To me it just seemed like it would be dereliction of my moral responsibilities.”

Inter alia, Mitchell made clear that “C.I.A. was never interested in prosecutions. The C.I.A. was not going to let them set off another catastrophic attack in the United States. They were going to go right up to the line of what was legal, put their toes on it and lean forward.”

There are a number of things wrong with Mitchell and with the C.I.A. managers who first adopted his techniques and then repeatedly applied them in such a fashion as to insure both physical and mental damage. That is torture. Torture and abusive interrogation tactics are illegal under both US law and international law. Torture is prohibited under federal law, as are lesser forms of detainee abuse such as cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment. On 10 December 1948, the United Nations General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). Article 5 states, “No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.”

Being patriotic is not a mitigating factor when one is carrying out torture, no matter what Dr. Mitchell might think. The United States is also a party to the Convention against Torture, which was adopted by the General Assembly in 1984, as well as other treaties that ban the use of torture and other ill-treatment. The Convention against Torture requires countries to criminalize the use of torture within their own jurisdictions. Washington enacted such legislation in 1994, when Congress passed the federal anti-torture statute. The treaty also requires countries to conduct credible criminal investigations and prosecutions of those responsible for torture.

And then there is the “ticking bomb,” i.e. the American government’s claimed fear that another 9/11 was about to take place as a justification for its adoption of “enhanced interrogation techniques.” The problem with that thinking was that the C.I.A. had no evidence suggesting that that another major attack might be impending, but it nevertheless grabbed people off the streets in some cases to “render” them to secret prisons where they were tortured. Many of them turned out to be innocent and it could reasonably be suggested that torturing someone “just in case he or she might know something” is no defense at all.

Finally, the United States government is obligated to prosecute those responsible for torture. That plausibly includes Drs. Mitchell and Jessup, but it certainly includes those Agency officers who were in place from 2001 through 2003 and responsible for implementing the program. They would presumably include the Director of Central Intelligence, Deputy Executive Director, Deputy Director for Operations, and the two Directors of CIA’s Counter Terrorism Center. All of those former officers are now enjoying comfortable retirements to include various sinecures with universities as well as national defense and security contractors and none of them has ever been punished in any way for their involvement with torture.

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Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is [email protected]. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from Wikimedia Commons

The beautiful,  ancient and populous Iraqi city of Fallujah (the City of Mosques) in Iraq’s Anbar province suffered 13 years of US-enforced sanctions, and then 3 bloody sieges and 2 substantial demolitions or sackings at the hands of the genocidally racist, serial war criminal and child-killing American invaders.  This appalling atrocity cries out for justice and is documented in the must-read book “The Sacking Of Fallujah. A People’s History” by Ross Caputi, Richard Hil and Donna Mulhearn.

“The Sacking Of Fallujah. A People’s History” by Ross Caputi (a US Iraq War veteran and scholar), Dr Richard Hil (a British Australian sociologist and academic), and Donna Mulhearn (an Australian human rights activist and journalist) tells the tragic story of the successive, and substantial   demolitions  of the huge Iraqi city of Fallujah by the US Alliance, first in 2004 during the war criminal US Coalition’s Iraq War (2003-2011) and then again in 2014-2016 during the US Coalition’s ongoing War on ISIS  in Syria and Iraq (2012 onwards) [1].

A key aspect of the book is that it is written from the perspective of the ordinary people of Fallujah and thus exposes the horrendous realities behind the bland Western Mainstream media headlines over 15 years announcing the “besieging of Fallujah” and the “capture of Fallujah”. Every chapter is followed by the heart-wrenching testimony (People’s stories) of ordinary Iraqis, including children. This book is deeply upsetting and should be in every library as a cry for justice and a memo to a God-less, self-absorbed and serial war criminal  America: “Thou shalt  not kill children”.

Before reviewing “The Sacking Of Fallujah” in detail it is  useful to succinctly describe (a) the history and cultural significance of Fallujah before  the US invasions, and (b) the events associated with the successive sackings of this beautiful Iraqi  city by the war criminal US in the 21st century.

Prior  to the US invasion Fallujah had a population of 300,000-425,000 (page 1 [1]) and was known as the City of Mosques because of  about 200 mosques within the city and in surrounding villages. Fallujah is located on the Euphrates River about 70 kilometers from Baghdad in the substantially  Sunni Anbar province. Fallujah  dates back to Babylonian  times in the first millennium BCE and indeed was a major centre for Jewish scholarship dating from that period [2]. Fallujah was successively  part of the Greek Empire,  the Roman Empire and the Persian  Sassanian Empire before conversion to Islam in the 7th century CE. The region suffered periodic Bedouin attacks and was devastated by the Mongols in 1262.  In the 13th century Iraq became part of the Turkish Ottoman Empire, this lasting until  the British invasion in 1914.

Between WW1 and WW2 the British consolidated their rule of Iraq (Mesopotamia) using the nascent Royal Air Force (RAF)  for the first time to subjugate Kurds, with Winston Churchill suggesting use of poison gas [3]. In the Anglo-Iraqi War in 1941 the British  defeated an Iraqi army near Fallujah.

Post-WW2 formal  Iraqi independence under royalist regimes  saw greater  functional independence (with Iraq opposing  the Zionist-imposed  Palestinian Genocide in Palestine)  but Iraq became a member of the US-backed Baghdad Pact in 1955. In 1963 the Baathist secular socialists came to power with US-backed Saddam Hussein gaining power in 1968.

In the US-backed Iran-Iraq war the US supplied high technology weapons and poison gas – 1.5 million Iranians  and 200,000 Iraqis died [4]. In 1990 the US green-lighted the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait and used this as an excuse for massive intervention in Iraq through sanctions (1990-2003), US, UK and Apartheid Israeli bombing (1990 onwards), eventual invasion, occupation  and genocidal devastation (the Iraq War, 2003-2011), and then re-invasion by the US-led Coalition with substantial demolition of Fallujah and the huge city of Mosul (2014 onwards) [5].  Following the US assassination of Iranian General Qassem Soleimani and Shia Iraqi militia commander Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis at Baghdad International Airport in January 2020,  the Iraqi PM, the Iraqi Parliament demanded that the US Alliance forces leave Iraq. The US, UK, Australia, Canada and Germany have rejected the Iraqi Parliament’s Quit Iraq demand,  with the US threatening to instantly collapse  the Iraqi economy by a banking freeze if Iraq  insists on US Alliance withdrawal from its territory [20]. The active and passive killing of Iraqis by the US Alliance continues.

The human cost of this over 100 year  Western devastation of Iraq has been horrendous as set out by Iraqi and other scholars [5-16]. British interest in invading and conquering Iraq came from discovery of oil in adjacent Iran in 1908. Western violation of Iraq commenced with the British invasion a mere 6 years later, in 1914 during WW1.  The human cost since 1914 is set out below.

(a). Assuming excess mortality of Iraqis under British rule or hegemony (1914- 1948) was the same as for Indians under the British (interpolation from available data indicate Indian avoidable death rates in “deaths per 1,000 of population per year” of 37 (1757-1920), 35 (1920-1930), 30 (1930-1940) and 24 (1940-1950) [17], one can estimate from Iraqi population data [18] that Iraqi avoidable deaths from deprivation under British occupation and hegemony from 1914-1950 totalled about 4 million [5].

(b) Violent deaths and avoidable deaths from violently-imposed deprivation in the Gulf War (1990-1991) and Sanctions period (1990-2003) totalled  0.2 million and 1.7 million, respectively [5].

(c). US Just Foreign Policy organization estimates, based on the data of expert UK analysts and top US medical epidemiologists, 1.5 million violent deaths in the Iraq War (2003-2011) [6 -9] and UN data [19] indicate a further 1.2 million Iraqi avoidable deaths from war-imposed deprivation in this period [2, 15].

(d) Accordingly, Iraqi deaths from violence (1.7 million) or war-imposed deprivation (2.9 million) in the period 1990-2011 totalled  4.6 million [5].

(e ). The US ostensibly withdrew from devastated Iraq in 2011 but returned to the region with a vengeance in 2012 to help Syria, Iraq and Iran deal with ISIS  in Syria (2012 onward)  and  thence in Iraq (2014 onwards) that has been associated with about 0.1 million violent Iraqi deaths, most notably in devastated Mosul [12] and  twice US-demolished Fallujah [1]. One notes that the ruthless and barbarous ISIS subverted and took over the Sunni insurgency in Iraq against the corrupt, violent, US-installed Al Maliki Government, and similarly ISIS came to dominate the US Alliance-backed Sunni insurgency against the Assad Government in Syria [1, 20].   UN data indicate about 0.3 million avoidable Iraqi  deaths from deprivation in the period 2011-2020.

(f). Ignoring Iraqi deaths associated with the US-backed Iraq-Iran War, one can estimate about 9 million Iraqi deaths from UK or US violence or imposed deprivation in the century after the 1914 invasion of Iraq by Britain, this constituting an Iraqi Holocaust and an Iraqi Genocide [5]. One notes that  “Holocaust” means the death of a huge number of people. According to Article 2 of the UN Genocide Convention: “In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, as such: a) Killing members of the group; b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group” [21]. The ruler is responsible for the ruled.  The huge avoidable deaths of Iraqis under the British, Americans and the US Coalition is evidence of gross violation of Articles 55 and 56 of the Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War that state unequivocally that an Occupier must provide its conquered subjects with life-preserving food and medical requisites “to the fullest extent of the means available to it” [22]. These key injunctions of International Law have been grossly violated by the US and its degenerate and serial war criminal allies (notably the UK, Apartheid Israel, France and US lackey Australia) in the 2-decade US War on Terror.

What has driven the UK and thence the US to inflict  this horrendous, century-long and ongoing Iraqi Holocaust and Iraqi Genocide on the birthplace of civilization, the remote and ancient land of Mesopotamia?  The answer to the question is simple:  oil. Thus from the Right, Alan Greenspan (leading Republican economist,  chairman of the US Federal Reserve for almost two decades, and servant of  four US presidents): “I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil” [23]. And on the Left, Professor Noam Chomsky (eminent linguistics expert  and anti-racist Jewish American human rights activist at 101-Nobel-Laureate Massachusetts Institute  of Technology (MIT) (2009):

“There is basically no significant change in the fundamental traditional conception that if we can control Middle East energy resources, then we can control the world” [24].

And of course, the initial British invasion happened in 1914 a mere 6 years after the  discovery of oil in neighbouring Iran, noting the  considerable time required to reach a political decision in London and to assemble the invasion and occupation force involving British forces, Indian forces and indeed the nascent Australian Flying Corps (AFC, the precursor of the Royal Australian Air Force, the RAAF) of even more distant Australia. Indeed UK invasion of Iraq  prior to 1914 (e.g. immediately  after the discovery of oil in Iran in 1908) might well have precipitated war then with a Germany that was close to completing the Berlin to Baghdad railway and gaining land access to the Indian Ocean [27]. In relation to ruthless British speed to utter bastardry one notes that the UK Balfour Declaration (offering Palestine to the Zionists in an attempt to get Russian Zionists to keep Russia in the war with Germany) was issued on 2 November 1917, a mere 2 days after  the victorious 31 October 1917 charge of the Australian Light Horse at Beersheba that spelled the end of Ottoman rule in  Palestine.

With this background in mind, we can now consider “The Sacking of Fallujah” in detail as part of the ongoing Iraqi Holocaust and an Iraqi Genocide  In reviewing this important book I have followed the order of the chapter headings and subheadings of the authors in order to  ensure that the critical details of the humanitarian message get through. Each chapter is followed  by an essay or compilation giving the views of Fallujans (“People’s stories”), this being a very  powerful and compelling aspect of the book.

Introduction

The Introduction  ignores most of the pre-1914 background presented above, but states “Fallujah has more than once been the bane of foreign invaders. The city played a leading role in anti-colonial struggles against the British in the 1920s, earning itself a reputation throughout Iraq for its patriotism, bravery, and rebellious spirit. Perhaps, not surprisingly, when the U.S.-led occupation of Iraq began in 2003 the city reemerged as a key site of armed resistance, as it did a decade later when the Iraqi government vied with the Islamic State [IS, ISIS, Daesh] for control over Anbar province (pages 1-2 [1]. The Introduction usefully summarizes the coverage of the book chapters and makes a powerful point about Western propaganda hiding the truth about the last of the sackings of Fallujah, and how IS had subverted the secular Sunni resistance  against  abuses of a US-installed, Shia-dominated Iraqi Government. The Introduction concludes “The Sacking Of Fallujah. A People’s History casts a critical light on a tragic conflict founded on questionable, self-serving motives, which despite all the lofty rhetoric about “freedom” and “liberty”, has delivered anything but. The conflict  has lingered for  fifteen years, primarily because of a  lack of accountability and a failure to pay heed to the needs and aspirations of the Iraqi people. One of the intentions of this book is to establish exactly that – accountability, and to contribute to a lasting memory of what was done to Fallujah” (pages 11-12 [1]).

A criticism of the Introduction and the book is that while laudably dealing with the appalling double demolition of Fallujah, it fails to sufficiently  address the horrendous magnitude of the Iraqi Holocaust and Iraqi Genocide (9 million Iraqi deaths from violence or imposed deprivation since the initial British invasion for oil in 1914, 5.0 million such Iraqi deaths since 1990, and 3.1 million such Iraqi deaths since the invasion by the US, UK and Australia in 2003 [4-16]. Indeed the terms Iraqi Holocaust and Iraqi Genocide  are not used in the book except for a reference to the Geneva International Centre for Justice “arguing that the assault on Fallujah, and all of Anbar province, met the legal definition of genocide” (page 147 [1]) – many eminent scholars  would agree, most notably  Dennis Halliday UN Humanitarian Coordinator in Iraq  from September 1, 1997, until 1998 [5]. The mendacious Western Mainstream media hugely downplay Iraqi casualties e.g. the Australian taxpayer-funded ABC, the Australian equivalent of the mendacious UK BBC,   in 2011 described “a war that left tens of thousands of Iraqis and nearly 4,500 American soldiers dead” [28]. In contrast, in  1996  anti-racist  Jewish American journalist Lesley Stahl  asked US UN representative  Madeleine  Albright  about Iraqi children under deadly Sanctions: “We have heard that half a million children have died. I mean, that’s more children than died in Hiroshima. And, you know, is the price worth it?” and Albright replied “we think the price is worth it” [5] – the only US admission so far (albeit only in part) of its appalling, genocidal  crimes in Iraq.

And as for “accountability”, anti-racist Jewish British writer Harold Pinter in his 2005 Literature Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech stated (2005): “The invasion of Iraq was a bandit act, an act of blatant state terrorism, demonstrating absolute contempt for the concept of international law…  How many people do you have to kill before you qualify to be described as a mass murderer and a war criminal? One hundred thousand? More than enough, I would have thought. Therefore it is just that Bush and Blair be arraigned before the International Criminal Court of Justice” [71]. 9.0 million? 5.0 million? 3.1 million? More than enough, I would have thought.

Chapter 1. The road to Fallujah

This chapter deals with some major themes relating to genocidal American imperialism and  puts America’s  Iraq invasion atrocity in an overall historical  context: “Since the Declaration of Independence in 1776, America  has invaded over seventy countries [72 by my count], financed pro-American paramilitaries, toppled democratically-elected leaders, engaged in targeted assassinations, and imprisoned, and tortured its opponents without trial” (page 15 [1]). However serial war criminal America did not act alone in Iraq  and the serial war criminal UK has invaded 193 countries, serial war criminal and  US lackey Australia 85 and serial war criminal Apartheid Israel 12 – as compared to France 82, Germany 39, Japan 30, Russia 25, Canada 25,  Iraq 2, China 2, Korea arguable zero   and Iran zero since the Sassanian  Empire 1,300 years ago [4, 29-34].  Criticall,y the book identifies control of oil as the key imperialist imperative in Iraq: “The single most important strategic and economic factor in the region was oil” (page 15 [1]).  The book makes it clear that Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein was a US ally until the US greenlighted Iraqi invasion of Kuwait (page 17 [1]).

No numbers are given of avoidable deaths from sanctions- or war-imposed deprivation in US war zones from Libya to Pakistan but a qualitative acknowledgment is given: “The resulting death toll, given the number of civilians who have died from avoidable war-related harm, is staggering” (pages 18-19 [1]). It was  estimated (2015) that 32 million Muslims had died from violence, 5 million, or from imposed deprivation, 27 million, in 20 countries invaded by the US Alliance since the US Government’s 9-11 false flag atrocity that killed 3,000 people [35, 36]. While 9-11 is mentioned as an “excuse” for US actions in Iraq there is no disputation in the book of the blindly adopted “official US version of 9-11” that would surely have made the book unpublishable, notwithstanding the reality that numerous science, architecture, engineering, aviation, military and intelligence experts conclude that the US Government was responsible  for 9-11 with likely Apartheid Israeli and Saudi Arabian involvement [36].  Nevertheless subsections of Chapter 1 deal with American racism, theft and lying (“Civilizing the barbarians”), oil (“Operation Iraqi Liberation code named oil”), and massive US disinformation (“Information warfare”).

 “People’s stories” after the end of Chapter 1 were  collected by Dr Asmaa Khalaf Madlool of the University of Anbar, Fallujah, and bring home the shocking realities of war, noting that war is the penultimate in racism and genocide the ultimate racist atrocity. A shocking and deeply upsetting example is “Unlucky Bride”: “One day a very beautiful woman was hired by our school to teach English. Everyone was attracted to her appearance. She was a good woman, very religious, always wearing the Islamic veil…  She found great happiness in her marriage. Her new family, like mine, refused to leave Fallujah during the second battle with the Americans. Perhaps they made this decision due to the large size of their family… Thus as usual, without any warrant  the Americans shot the whole family. The teacher held her baby strongly to protect him, but the shooting was heavy. She and the child fell to the side of the road” (pages 35-36 [1]).

Chapter 2. Conflicting Narratives

Chapter 2 commences  with an event that provided a further “excuse” for mass murder by the Americans: “On March 31, 2004, four U.S. mercenaries with the Blackwater USA private military contracting company were ambushed and killed, their bodies burned, mutilated, dragged through the city, and hug from a bridge over the Euphrates River. The bodies were still hanging when news of the ambush began to spread around the world” (page 37 [1]). The mutilation incensed the Americans. A leading American journalist, Bill O’Reilly, exhorted  “Final solution… Let’s knock this place down”. Another American  figure, Jack Wheeler,   referenced  the Roman total destruction of Carthage and Cato the Elder’s “Carthago delenda est” (“Carthage must be destroyed”) in exhorting “Fallujah delenda est… Fallujah must be destroyed… Fallujah must be physically obliterated from the face of the earth” (page 38 [1]).   This hysteria indeed led to mass murder of Iraqis: “The American political leadership caved into public pressure and called for an operation to sweep and clear Fallujah of insurgents – the first siege of Fallujah, also known as Operation Vigilant Resolve or the First Battle of Fallujah. On April 5, General Kimmitt announced the initiation of operations in Fallujah” (page 39 [1]).

“People’s stories” after the end of Chapter 2 include that of a disabled man liked in the community, well known as “crazy Hazim” and  who is of course shot by the Americans; a girl who  unwisely unlocks a door for the Americans in a school in which her family is hiding,  so the Americans, hearing the noise of the key,  simply shoot her through the door; and similarly  2 old ladies hurry to open the door for the Americans who throw in a grenade that rips them apart (pages 51-52 [1]).

Chapter 3. The First Siege of Fallujah [April 2004]

Chapter 3 commences: “Four days after the killing and mutilation of the Blackwater mercenaries, Fallujah was surrounded and sealed off by Coalition checkpoints. On the evening of April 4, 2004, Operation Vigilant Resolve began” (page 53 [1]). The Americans invaded and for 6 days indulged in a war criminal  orgy of killing and destruction that provoked strong reactions  from both Sunni and Shia Iraqis and the world: “With uprisings across Iraq, allegations of war crimes from the international community, increasing criticism at home, and dissent within the Iraqi Governing Council and the Iraqi Army, the Coalition’s political project in Iraq was beginning to unravel. On April 9, the United States declared a  “unilateral suspension of offensive operations” in Fallujah… the eventual agreement was that Fallujah’s “security” would be handed over to the Fallujah Brigade, a newly formed unit composed of former Iraqi soldiers, Iraqi police, and mujahideen… On April 30, Coalition forces withdrew completely from Fallujah… human rights and solidarity groups have counted between 572 and 749 civilians killed, including at least 300 women and children”  (pages 63-64 [1] . However the cessation of American violence was only temporary: “Just as the first siege of Fallujah ended, another more determined operation was being planned to retake the city” (page 65 [1])..

“People’s stories” after the end of Chapter 3 are provided by an accounted entitled “Sami, Part I” and based on interviews by Kali Rubaii with an Iraqi boy, Sami, who was 7 years old when the First Siege of Fallujah began. The Americans ordered everyone to leave but for a variety of reasons many did not want to abandon their homes and families.  Sami describes the shooting deaths of his sister, his father and then of his  oldest brother; his second brother, Hameed,  was shot in the ankle by an American sniper. They survived the shooting and bombing  amid dead bodies and the pervasive smell of death. They heard from a mosque that the local hospital had been bombed and in the absence of medical care his brother died. He concludes; “My mother said it was time to go. We went out in the street. I felt there was always  a sight on my back, that any second I would fall like my oldest brother. I imagined the scenario a lot”.   They made their way out of the devastated city to relatives in a nearby town (pages 67-71 [1]).  What sort of evil, criminal degenerates inflict such horrors on children?

Chapter 4. The Intersiege Information Campaign

Chapter 4 describes how the Americans  had every intention of returning and destroying Fallujah but realized the prior necessity of  demonizing the enemy: “The information campaign unfolded gradually, first with a change in how it characterized the enemy from “former regime elements” to Al Qaeda militants led by the Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zaqawi. While this rhetorical shift was barely noticeable to the American public, it created a dangerous and misleading public discourse. Military spokespersons and media commentators were now using the labels like “jihadists”, “thugs”, “terrorists”, “insurgents”, and “Al Qaeda” interchangeably, conflating and demonising all Islamic militant groups, regardless of their political goals or choice of tactic” (page 75 [1]).The name given to the Second Siege of Fallujah was Operation Phantom Fury which commenced on 8 November and concluded with destruction  of most of the city.

Lying by the Bush Administration and the US military over Iraq was simply de rigeur for the American Establishment. Famed, anti-racist Jewish American  journalist  I.F. Stone declared: “Governments lie” [37, 38]. Great American writer and historian Gore Vidal was more specific: “Unlike most Americans who lie all the time, I hate lying. And here I am surrounded with these hills [in Hollywood] full of liars — some very talented” [39]. America has invaded 72 countries but always needed an “excuse” no matter how obviously fabricated.  Thus the American Revolution in 1776 was supposedly about “freedom”, “liberty” and “no taxation without representation” but was actually about being free to expand Westwards and exterminate the Indigenous inhabitants [4]. 9-11 was the US “excuse” for the US War on Terror in which 32 million Muslims have died from violence, 5 million, or from imposed deprivation 27 million, in 20 countries  invaded by the US Alliance since the US Government’s 9-11 false flag atrocity that killed 3,000 people [35, 36]. However no Iraqis or Afghans were among the 19 alleged  perpetrators  who were quickly identified as the culprits but were conveniently supposedly dead and thus not around to be put on trial [36]. Indeed the US Center for Public Integrity determined that the Bush Administration told 935 lies about Iraq between 9-11 and the war criminal invasion of Iraq in March 2003 [40].  There is massive lying by omission and lying by commission by Mainstream journalist, editor, politician, academic and commentariat presstitutes, noting that lying by omission is far, far worse than repugnant lying by commission because the latter can at least admit public refutation and public debate [41-43]. While the Americans have enshrined free speech (and thus the right to lie) in the First Amendment of the US Constitution, the British Establishment has draconian laws against free speech and opts for diffidence, obfuscation and lying by omission. Thus, for example, in 1942-1945 the British with Australian complicity deliberately starved 6-7 million Indians to death for strategic reasons in Bengal, Assam, Bihar and Orissa but this immense WW2 Bengali Holocaust atrocity has been almost completely  whitewashed from British history by successive generations of mendacious British historians [44, 45]. Presently the US and the UK are conspiring to imprison for life  the Australian truth-telling world hero, Julian Assange, for publishing details of American mendacity and war crimes, including US Coalition war crimes in Iraq  [46].

People’s stories after the end of Chapter 4 include these shocking accounts: “Faithful father” (a surgeon son has to save his  now legless father’s life in a corridor of a crowded hospital), “A cigarette” (a father asks his young son to go to the smashed shop across the road for cigarettes but the child is killed by an American sniper), “A dead visitor”(a dying boy knocks on the door and is taken in after the firing dies down; he dies,  they bury him and all they can give the mother is his belt), and “Forbidden Bombs” (that recounts “melted” flesh and high radioactivity in Fallujah possibly indicating American use of forbidden weapons like the Apartheid Israelis in the Gaza Concentration Camp; one notes eye-witness evidence that the Americans may have used a low yield “neutron bomb-like” device to rapidly secure Baghdad Airport in the 2003 invasion, instantly massacring the defenders  while minimizing damage to strategically vital infrastructure [15, 16]).

Chapter 5. The Second Siege of Fallujah [November 2004 –December 2004]

The Second Siege of Fallujah began with cowardly American bombing and the deliberate cutting of water and power to the city which was declared a “free-fire zone” . The authors: “By November 12, Coalition forces had successfully pushed from the northern edge of the city all the way to its southern limits…Muhammad Al-Darraji at the Study Centre for Human Rights and Democracy was prominent among those seeking to make plain exactly what had occurred in the wake of the second siege… Based on these figures, Al-Darraji estimates that the true number of civilian casualties during the second siege could be as high as 4,000 to 6,000” (pages 103-105 [1]). This chapter considers human rights and international law aspects of this atrocity, with the war criminal and genocidally racist Americans asserting that they followed the “rules of war”, and the world looking the other way. The chapter concludes as follows: “Living in a constant siege-like situation for years on end , Fallujah’s residents faced the daily reality of suffocating checkpoints, harassment, arrests, detention, and political discrimination. These abnormal and dehumanizing conditions led to the unraveling of the most fundamental aspects of everyday life, compounding the collective trauma of the 2004 attacks” (page 114 [1]).

People’s stories after the end of Chapter 5 include a personal  account by Iraq War veteran Ross Caputi entitled “War heroes and war criminals”. His account commences: “My unit returned home from Fallujah to a hero’s welcome.  The celebrations began as soon as our buses rolled onto base. There were crowds of family and friends waiting for us behind a banner that read, “Welcome Home 1st Battalion 8th  Marines”… For a short period we were America’s favorite heroes – veterans of the Second Battle of Fallujah” (page 115 [1]).  However slowly reality  began to kick in: “As we struggled to transition , our daily emotions volleyed from rage to despair, frustration, and joy. But one thing we never had to feel was shame… … On one random Saturday morning they gave a surprise drug test, when many of us were still under the influence from the night before. Of the roughly 120 in our company, about forty failed the drug test, and almost all of them were discharged. By a stroke of luck, I passed… After sixteen years of costly and fruitless war , we are struggling to identify moments to feel good about. The liberation of Fallujah as it was told on TV, is one of a few events in our collective memory of the Global War on Terror that is consonant with our national self-image. We want to feel proud, not ashamed. So we are resistant to facts, to the experiences of our victims, to change” (pages 116-117 [1]).

Patriotic Americans would generally be aware that 3,000 people were killed on 9-11,  and that about 8,500 US Alliance soldiers have died in the US War on Terror [47]. However hidden from them by mendacious Mainstream media are the following appalling post-9-11 realities: 31 million American preventable deaths from “lifestyle” or “political choice” reasons  [48-53],   7 million Occupied Afghan deaths from violence or deprivation [10, 54] , 4.6 million Iraqi deaths from violence or deprivation, 1990-2011 [5, 10 41, 43] ,  6.3 million World drug-related  deaths, 5.2 million World opiate drug-related deaths linked to US-protected Afghan opium production in US-occupied Afghanistan, 759,000 US drug-related deaths [54, 55], and 130,000 US veteran suicides [56, 57]. Americans  are utterly unware of  32 million Muslim deaths from violence, 5 million, or from deprivation, 27 million, in 20 countries invaded by the US Alliance since the US Government’s 9-11 false flag atrocity [35, 36] – the bigger the US-imposed atrocity the more assiduously is it white-washed away by mendacious, US Government-beholden Mainstream media. The long-term accrual cost to Americans of the War on Terror is about $6 trillion, a gross fiscal  perversion involving successive war criminal US Administrations committing $6 trillion to killing 30 million Muslims abroad rather than trying to keep 30 million Americans alive at home.

People’s stories continue after  Ross Caputi’s essay with a series of photographs and associated  text covering the period 2004-2014.Surely the world must be moved  by the words of 13-year old  Iraqi girl, Sarah, whose family were refugees to a Baghdad refugee camp from  the first US demolition of  Fallujah (2004): “What does America want from us? Why did they destroy our homes? This is not their home, this is our home. Why did they come here and force us to live like this? The bombing went all day and all night. They made us homeless, they made us wander from house to house to ask if anyone can help us. Why did they come here? I want them to go” (page 118 [1]). Like Greta Thunberg’s commentary  on the deadly and worsening Climate Emergency, Truth from the mouths of children, indeed.

Chapter 6. Aftermath

The authors make an initial critical observation: “The first siege of Fallujah helped unite various factions of the Iraqi insurgency, most notably the Mahdi Army led by the Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr with the Sunni militias. In response, the Coalition took measures to fracture this unity through a number of divide-and-conquer tactics that ultimately fostered [Shia versus Sunni] sectarian animosity. The sacking of Fallujah in November-December 2004 marked a turning point in the occupation, after which the Coalition gained the upper hand and was able to achieve several of its state-building goals, including holding elections [after killing off or otherwise neutralizing the people the US didn’t like] and drafting a new [US-imposed] constitution for [Occupied] Iraq” (page 119 [1]). This American consolidation of power with the support of Indigenous political and military elements is par for the course for numerous US invasions around the world  – subvert, apply sanctions, assassinate leaders, and ultimately invade to  kill off, exile or imprison  people and populations you don’t like, and then hold “democratic” elections in which people you do like get elected [4] (also see William Blum, “Rogue State”, 2000; Philip Agee, “Inside the Company: CIA Diary”, 1975; and John Perkins “Confessions of an Economic Hit Man”, 2004).

A key part of Chapter 6 is concerned with medical doctors reporting an increased incidence of cancer and birth defects among Fallujans that they attributed to toxic materials generated through explosion of US shells and bombs  and most notably depleted uranium (DU). However the US-installed authority, the US-installed Al Maliki Government, has an appalling record of understating horrendous medical statistics e.g.  absurdly claiming that Iraqi infant mortality declined as a consequence of sanctions, invasion and devastation (as reported to the UN [19]), and claiming that rates of spontaneous abortion, still births and congenital birth defects in devastated and toxin contaminated areas of post-invasion Iraq were normal, contrary to the shocking findings of expert researchers on the spot and outside the US-installed Iraqi Health Ministry [58]. The mendacious, child-killing and genocidally war criminal Americans appear to have inflicted a post-war child health disaster on Iraq (via toxic compounds from exploded shells, mortars and bombs) just as they did on Vietnam (via teratogenic dioxins in auxin herbicides  applied to destroy jungle vegetation). Dr Samira Alaani of the Fallujah Hospital: “As a consequence of the use of inhumane, indiscriminate, and toxic weapons, many people have been killed, and many are still suffering physical harm without any reparations” (page 128 [1]).

People’s stories after Chapter 6 are related in an essay by Donna Mulhearn entitled “The children of Fallujah”. She details the case of Azraq, the son of Hamid and Marwa al-Bakr, born with a serious heart defect. Marwa al-Bakr: “Fallujah has no future because of these things” (page 141 [1]).

Chapter 7. The Third Siege of Fallujah [January 2014- June 2016]

Frustration  with the American legacy of a corrupt, sectarian and US-installed al-Maliki Government led to a non-violent Arab Spring protest movement in 2013 that involved Sunnis and some Shias. The fundamentalist group ISIS became involved and grew to dominate Sunni resistance in Fallujah: “On January 2 [2014], the Iraqi Ministry of the Interior reported to the press that half of Fallujah had “fallen” to ISIS… In response to this, the United States increased its level of military support to Iraq” (page 145 [1]). US-backed Iraqi forces sealed off Fallujah and commenced the Third Siege of Fallujah with indiscriminate bombing and shelling of homes and hospitals: “Civilian structures in Fallujah and elsewhere were repeatedly shelled and bombed, including hospitals, with civilians wounded and killed on a daily basis. Over the following two years, more than 3,521 civilians would be killed in Fallujah (including 840 women and 1,013 children)… In February 2014, the UN estimated that 62,679 families had been displaced , or roughly 370,000 people from Anbar province” with European human rights groups  describing the assault as “genocidal”    (pages 147-149 [1]). In September  2014 serial war criminal US President Barack Obama launched  Operation Inherent Resolve “a joint operation conducted by an Iraqi-led coalition of nations against IS and the Sunni uprising (the latter being conflated with the former). History was being actively rewritten… [it] went on to “liberate” villages and major cities, including Tikrit and Ramadi, and to slowly roll back IS’s territorial gains over the next two years. However, every victory against IS was mired in accusations against the PMU’s [the Iranian-backed, mostly Shia Popular Mobilization Units] of war crimes and ethnic cleansing”  (page 152 [1]).

The UN estimated in mid-2016 that 87,000 people had fled the city. Chapter 7 concluded : “While the conditions in the refugee camps were appalling, Fallujah itself was destroyed yet again and left completely  uninhabitable. When the operation officially concluded on June 6 [2016], Iraqi officials stated that the city had been “laid to waste”. Preliminary reports claimed that Fallujah’s basic infrastructure was “almost completely destroyed” and that 400 educational facilities, 238 health centres, 44 residential compounds, 7,000 homes, and 6,000 shops were heavily damaged, many beyond repair” (page 158 [1]).

People’s stories after Chapter 7 are set out in “Sami, Part II” by Kali Rubaii. Sami fled the First  Siege of Fallujah with his surviving family to Saqlawiya in 2004. Sami: “What can I tell you? That I dropped out of school when I was only twelve? That I can’t read because the Americans took my education? That I will never marry because I cannot afford to feed even my own family? That I am responsible for my entire [surviving] kin, for feeding and clothing my siblings, my mother? That I am making man decisions at the age of a child? That I watched all the men die? That the only way out of this is to become like them? That I fear for my life every time I move? That I have no future?” (pages 159-160 [1]).

Conclusion

The authors state “The official story of Fallujah, as told by the mainstream media, recounts the heroic efforts of U.S. soldiers to vanquish an evil enemy and liberate helpless civilians. But as we have argued, this narrative was constructed as propaganda, largely to pacify Western – and particularly  U.S. – audiences so that Coalition forces could crush the resistance movement in Fallujah, unencumbered by the constraints of the Geneva Convention” (page 163 [1]). Indeed the authors further state: “According to British commentator Jonathan Holmes, the 2004 sieges of Fallujah contravened seventy individual articles of the Geneva Conventions and were in breach of nearly every major area of concern  identified by them” (page 170 [1]). The authors conclude “Central to the Coalition’s attempt to subdue the Iraqi people was a campaign to present a certain version of history that excluded ordinary people from the dominant narrative. This is a time-honored strategy used by Western powers, indeed of all those who seek to assert dominance over other nations” (page 172 [1]).

The authors commented on Coalition’s “liberation” of the city of Mosul (population 2 million): “The operation began on October 17 [2016], and on July 9, 2017, culminated in the Islamic State being forced out of its last stronghold in Iraq. Predictably, the victory came at a heavy price. Amnesty International estimated that 600,000 residents were displaced from Mosul. According to an investigation by the Associated Press, the total civilian death toll from the operation is estimated to be 9,000 and 11,000. The numbers are potentially much higher” (page 166 [1]). However leading UK Middle East journalist, Patrick Cockburn, reporting on the latest awful episode of the Iraqi Genocide in Mosul, stated (2017):“More than 40,000 civilians were killed in the devastating battle to retake Mosul from Isis [IS], according to intelligence reports revealed exclusively to The Independent – a death toll far higher than previous estimates” [12, 59].

For all that ISIS was evidently barbarous and fanatical with an extremist Islamic ideology, a peaceful alternative to more US Alliance-imposed Iraqi Genocide through the near-total destruction of the Iraqi cities of  Mosul, Ramadi and Fallujah on the basis of  IS occupation was always possible.  Thus, for example,  the fundamentalist  Muslim, Sharia Law-committed   Free Aceh Movement (Gerakan Aceh Merdeka or GAM) fought against Indonesian government forces in the Aceh insurgency in Sumatra from 1976 to 2005, during which over 15,000 people were killed. After the calamitous 2004 tsunami (170,000 Indonesians killed, mostly in Sumatra) there was a  peace agreement between Aceh and the Indonesian Government in 2005 involving cessation of violence and considerable Acinese autonomy. The killing stopped at the price of imposition of Sharia Law in Aceh – thus, for example, unmarried lovers, women with a penchant for “immodest dress”, homosexuals and apostates would have their human rights and civil rights grossly violated and they would  have to move from Aceh to elsewhere in Indonesia to avoid extreme  mediaeval punishment ranging from caning to execution, but at least the  war and killing stopped. Churchill’s “jaw, jaw instead of war, war” is always possible but faltered in Iraq in the face of American greed, mendacity, racism and exceptionalist violence  that exceeded in barbarity that of  repugnant ISIS. One notes that the US with Australian complicity backed Islamist rebels in the Indonesian provinces of Sumatra and Sulawesi in the 1950s and 1960s  (page 132, Brian Toohey “Secret”). Indeed the US has a long history of backing jihadi and other terrorist groups (from backing church-bombing gangs in Ecuador, Latin American deaths squads  and Gladio  terrorists in Europe to backing jihadis in  Afghanistan, Kosovo, Yemen, Libya and Syria. Jihadis in  Syria (eventually dominated by IS) were variously backed  by countries of the  US Alliance (the UK, US, France, Turkey, Apartheid Israel, and Saudi Arabia). Indeed jihadi non-state terrorists have been the greatest asset of resources-driven US imperialism, with any  jihadi atrocity providing an “excuse” for horrendously disproportionate  US violence.

Fallujans did not just die from violence during the 30 year, US-imposed Iraqi Holocaust and Iraqi Genocide – they also died in their tens of thousands  from sanctions- and war-imposed deprivation [4, 19]. Assuming the upper estimate  of the  pre-war Fallujah population of 425,000 (page 1 [1])  one can attempt to determine the number of avoidable deaths from deprivation in sanctions- and war-devastated Fallujah over the last 30 years. The US-installed al-Maliki Iraqi Government has egregiously lied about the health circumstances of Iraqis (e.g. claiming that the death rate decreased after the US invasion) so we need to look elsewhere for estimates of “annual avoidable deaths from deprivation per thousand of population”. In similarly war-ravaged and US Coalition-occupied Somalia the figure is 6.6 and applying this to Fallujah  yields 6.6 deaths per thousand of population per year x 425 thousand of population x 30 years = 84,000 Fallujan avoidable deaths from imposed deprivation over the last 30 years of  sanctions and thence invasion and occupation (applying the lying Iraqi Government’s figure of 1.7  the estimate is 22,000).

Afterward. Fallujah. My Lost Country

People’s stories: in an Afterward entitled “Fallujah. My Lost Country”, expatriate Iraqi journalist Feurat Alani (originally from Fallujah) writes about the tragedy imposed on his country by the rich, oil-hungry and serial war criminal America and its allies the degenerate UK and US lackey Australia.  He writes about the deadly sanctions imposed on Iraq: “Everyone was hungry. Everyone was angry. I was fifteen when I saw my cousins go to work at the market instead of attending school. Fifteen years old when I learned that Iraq didn’t have the right to import pencils. The country that had invented writing deprived of pencils – how ironic. I saw hospitals  without beds. Sick people without medicine. The Iraq I knew in 1989 [prior to the 1990-2003 Sanctions]  slipped further and further away from me” (page 174 [1]. From pre-al-Maliki regime UN Population Division data it is estimated that 1.7 million Iraqi died avoidably from imposed deprivation under Sanction [5]. Indeed Dennis Halliday, UN Humanitarian Coordinator in Iraq  from September 1, 1997 until 1998,  resigned after 34 years with the UN, including being UN assistant secretary-general, over the deadly Sanctions  imposed on Iraq, characterizing them as “genocide”[5].

Feurat Alani presents a shocking statistic “To this day, one child out of five in Fallujah is born with a deformity” and concludes  “This is a question of justice, of the oppressor and the oppressed, of the strong and the weak. Every honest and upstanding human being should be engaged in this fight. Whether in the case of, Palestine, or any other country where human rights are scorned and injustice reigns” (page 176 [1]). Careful analysis reveals that the sorely oppressed Occupied Palestinians are excluded by Apartheid Israel from all 30 Articles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights [60].

Following the US assassination of Iranian General Qassem Soleimani and Shia Iraqi militia commander Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis at Baghdad International Airport,  the Iraqi PM, the Iraqi Parliament Speaker and the Iraqi Parliament have demanded that US Alliance forces leave Iraq. The US, UK, Australia, Canada and Germany have rejected the Iraqi Parliament’s Quit Iraq demand,  with fervently pro-Zionist, pro-Apartheid Israel, pro-Apartheid, anti-Arab anti-Semitic and Islamophobic Trump America threatening to instantly collapse  the Iraqi economy by a banking freeze if mostly Arab and Muslim but unfortunately oil-rich Iraq  insists on US Alliance withdrawal from its territory [20]. The egregiously racist, serial war criminal and nuclear terrorist states of Apartheid Israel and Zionist-subverted America continue to bomb targets in Iraq with threats to destroy neighbouring, oil- and gas-rich   Iran in which some 70,000 people presently die avoidably from deprivation each year under deadly US sanctions [4, 19]. Since the 1979 Iranian Revolution that removed the US-installed Shah,  the US has conducted a War on Iran through outright violence (as in the US-backed Iran- Iraq War), through application of deadly sanctions, and through the deadly impact of opiate drugs from US-occupied Afghanistan.  Iranian deaths in the 4-decade US War on Iran have totalled 4 million, including 1 million from violence and 3 million avoidable deaths from war- and sanctions-imposed deprivation. Now the war criminal and nuclear terrorist UK, US and Apartheid Israel are itching for Trump’s adumbrated “obliteration” of Iran. [61] . The killing continues.

Final comments

The 3 sieges of Fallujah, the 2 demolitions of Fallujah, the ongoing Iraqi Holocaust and Iraqi Genocide, and the ongoing Muslim Holocaust and Muslim Genocide cry out for justice.  However, it is highly unlikely that America’s George Bush, the UK’s Tony Blair, and US lackey Australia’s John Howard, their associates and successors – notably serial war criminal Barack Obama and serial war criminal Donald Trump – will ever be arraigned before the racist, Iraqi  Genocide-ignoring and Iraqi Holocaust-ignoring International Criminal Court (ICC). What can decent people do? Decent, humane people around the world must (a) penetrate the Mainstream Media Wall of Silence and tell everyone they can about the ongoing, blood-for-oil  Iraqi Genocide, and (b)  urge and apply Boycotts, Divestment   and Sanctions (BDS) against all people, politicians, parties, companies, corporations and countries complicit in the ongoing Iraqi Genocide and the ongoing Muslim Genocide and Muslim Holocaust. Peace is the only way but silence kills and silence is complicity.

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This article was originally published on Countercurrents.

Dr Gideon Polya taught science students at a major Australian university for 4 decades. He published some 130 works in a 5 decade scientific career, most recently a huge pharmacological reference text “Biochemical Targets of Plant Bioactive Compounds” (CRC Press/Taylor & Francis, New York & London , 2003).

Notes

[1]. Ross Caputi, Richard Hil, and Donna Mulhearn, “The Sacking Of Fallujah. A People’s History”, University of Massachusetts Press, 2019.

[2]. “Fallujah”, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallujah .

[3]. “Alleged British use of chemical weapons in Mesopotamia in 1920”, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alleged_British_use_of_chemical_weapons_in_Mesopotamia_in_1920 .

[4]. Gideon Polya, “Body Count. Global avoidable mortality since 1950”, that includes a succinct history  of every country and is now available for free perusal on the web: http://globalbodycount.blogspot.com/ .

[5]. “Iraqi Holocaust, Iraqi Genocide”: https://sites.google.com/site/iraqiholocaustiraqigenocide/ .

[6]. “Just Foreign Policy”: http://www.justforeignpolicy.org/iraq .

[7]. ORB (Opinion Research Business), “January 2008 – Update on Iraqi Casualty Data”, January 2008: http://www.opinion.co.uk/Newsroom_details.aspx?NewsId=88 .

[8]. Les Roberts, “Les Roberts: Iraq’s death toll far worse than our leaders admit”, Uruqnet: 14 February 2007: http://www.uruknet.de/?s1=1&p=30670&s2=16 

[9]. G. Burnham, R. Lafta, S. Doocy and L. Roberts, “Mortality after the 2003 invasion of Iraq: a cross-sectional cluster sample survey”, The  Lancet 2006 Oct 21;368(9545):1421-8: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17055943 .

[10]. “Muslim Holocaust Muslim Genocide”: https://sites.google.com/site/muslimholocaustmuslimgenocide/ .

[11]. Gideon Polya, “12th Anniversary Of Illegal Iraq Invasion – 2.7 Million Iraqi Dead From Violence Or War-imposed Deprivation”, Countercurrents,  23 March, 2015: https://www.countercurrents.org/polya230315.htm

[12]. Gideon Polya, “Mosul Massacre latest in Iraqi Genocide”, Countercurrents, 24 July 2017: https://countercurrents.org/2017/07/mosul-massacre-latest-in-iraqi-genocide-us-alliance-war-crimes-demand-icc-bds

[13]. Abdul-Haq Al-Ani and  Tarik Al-Ani (foreword by Professor Joshua Castellino),  “Genocide in Iraq Volume I . The case against the UN Security Council and member states”,  Clarity Press, Atlanta, 2013.

[14]. Gideon Polya ““Genocide in Iraq, The Case Against UN Security Council And Member States”. Book review”,  Countercurrents, 8 February, 2013: http://www.countercurrents.org/polya080213.htm .

[15]. Abdul-Haq Al-Ani and Tariq Al-Ani, “Genocide in Iraq Volume II. The Obliteration of a Modern State”, Clarity Press, 2015.

[16]. Gideon Polya, “Review: “Genocide in Iraq Volume II. The obliteration of a modern state” By Abdul-Haq Al-Ani & Tariq Al-Ani”, Countercurrents, 15 March 2015: http://www.countercurrents.org/polya150315.htm .

[17]. Gideon Polya, “Economist Mahima Khanna wins Cambridge Prize”, MWC News, 20 November 2011: http://mwcnews.net/focus/analysis/14978-economist-mahima-khanna.html .

[18]. “Iraq Population”: http://www.populstat.info/Asia/iraqc.htm  .

[19].  “UN Population Division. World Population Prospects 2019”: https://population.un.org/wpp/DataQuery/ .

[20]. Gideon Polya, “US, UK,  Australia, Canada & Germany Reject Iraqi Parliament’s Quit Iraq Demand”, Countercurrents, 16 January 2020: https://countercurrents.org/2020/01/us-uk-australia-canada-germany-reject-iraqi-parliaments-quit-iraq-demand ).

[21]. UN Genocide Convention: http://www.edwebproject.org/sideshow/genocide/convention.html .

[22]. Geneva Convention Relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War: https://www.icrc.org/ihl/INTRO/380 .

[23]. Peter Beaumont and Joanna Walters, “Greenspan admits Iraq was about oil, as deaths put at 1.2m”, The Observer, 16 September 2007: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2007/sep/16/iraq.iraqtimeline .

[24]. Noam Chomsky quoted in Sherwood Ross, “Chomsky: Iraq invasion “major crime” designed to control Middle East oil”, The Public Record, 3 November 2009:  http://pubrecord.org/nation/5953/chomsky-invasion-major-crime/ .

[25]. “The discovery of oil in the Middle East”, The history of Western civilization II: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/suny-hccc-worldhistory2/chapter/the-discovery-of-oil-in-the-middle-east/ .

[26]. “Petroleum industry in Iran”, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petroleum_industry_in_Iran .

[27]. “History of the Royal Australian Air Force“, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Royal_Australian_Air_Force .

[28]. Ann Barker, “US military marks end of its Iraq war”, ABC News, 16 Decemebr 2011: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-12-15/us-military-marks-end-of-its-war-in-iraq/3733982 .

[29]. Gideon Polya, “The US Has Invaded 70 Nations Since 1776 – Make 4 July Independence From America Day”, Countercurrents, 5 July, 2013: http://www.countercurrents.org/polya050713.htm .

[30]. Gideon Polya, “British Have Invaded 193 Countries:  Make  26 January ( Australia Day, Invasion Day) British Invasion Day”, Countercurrents, 23 January, 2015: http://www.countercurrents.org/polya230115.htm .

[31]. Gideon Polya, “As UK Lackeys Or US Lackeys Australians Have Invaded 85 Countries (British 193, French 80, US 70)”, Countercurrents, 9 February, 2015: http://www.countercurrents.org/polya090215.htm .

[32].  Gideon Polya, “President Hollande And French Invasion Of Privacy Versus French Invasion Of 80 Countries Since 800 AD”, Countercurrents, 15 January, 2014: http://www.countercurrents.org/polya150114.htm  .

[33]. “Stop state terrorism” : https://sites.google.com/site/stopstateterrorism/  .

[34]. “State crime and non-state terrorism”: https://sites.google.com/site/statecrimeandnonstateterrorism/  .

[35]. Gideon Polya, “Paris atrocity context: 27 Million Muslim Avoidable  Deaths From Imposed Deprivation In 20 Countries Violated By US Alliance Since 9-11”, Countercurrents, 22 November, 2015: https://countercurrents.org/polya221115.htm .

[36]. “Experts: US did 9-11”: https://sites.google.com/site/expertsusdid911/ .

[37]. I.F. Stone, quoted in “Two words – governments lie. Iraqi oil, climate change and Tony Blair”, Media Lens, 22 January 2003: http://www.medialens.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=239:two-words-governments-lie-iraq-oil-climate-change-and-tony-blair&catid=17:alerts-2003&Itemid=42 .

[38]. I.F. Stone, quoted in Gideon Polya, “Iraqi Holocaust”, ConScience, Australasian Science, 2 June 2004: http://www.shiachat.com/forum/index.php?/topic/33427-iraqi-holocaust/ .

[39]. Gore Vidal interviewed by Melvyn Bragg on the South Bank Show”, 2008: http://warincontext.org/2012/08/01/remembering-gore-vidal-change-is-the-nature-of-life-and-its-hope/ .

[40]. “Study: Bush, aides made 935 false statements in run-up to war”, CNN, 2004: http://edition.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/01/23/bush.iraq/ .

[41].” Mainstream media lying”: https://sites.google.com/site/mainstreammedialying/home .

[42]. Mainstream media censorship”: https://sites.google.com/site/mainstreammediacensorship/home  .

[43]. Gideon Polya, “Mainstream media fake news through lying by omission”, MWC News, 1 April 2017: https://sites.google.com/site/mainstreammedialying/2017-04-01 .

[44].  Gideon Polya, “Australia And Britain Killed 6-7 Million Indians In WW2 Bengal Famine”, Countercurrents, 29 September, 2011: https://countercurrents.org/polya290911.htm .

[45]. “Bengali Holocaust (WW2 Bengal Famine) writings of Gideon Polya”: https://sites.google.com/site/drgideonpolya/bengali-holocaust .

[46]. Gideon Polya, “Craven US lackey Australia betrays Australian & World hero Julian Assange & free journalism”,   Countercurrents, 13 April 2019: https://countercurrents.org/2019/04/craven-us-lackey-australia-betrays-australian-world-hero-julian-assange-free-journalism .

[47]. “i-casualties”:  http://icasualties.org/ .

[48]. Gideon Polya, “14 million Americans will die preventably under a 2-term Trump Administration”, Countercurrents, 22 March 2017: https://countercurrents.org/2017/03/over-14-million-americans-will-die-preventably-under-a-2-term-trump-administration .

[49]. Gideon Polya, “Movie review: “Who to Invade Next” by Michael Moore – Hammer, chisel down for social humanism”, Countercurrents, 23 April 2016: https://countercurrents.org/polya230416.htm .

[50].  Gideon Polya, “One million Americans die  preventably  annually in USA ”, Countercurrents,  18 February 2012: http://www.countercurrents.org/polya180212.htm .

[51]. Gideon Polya, “American Holocaust, Millions Of Untimely American Deaths And $40 Trillion Cost Of Israel To Americans”, Countercurrents,  27 August, 2013: http://www.countercurrents.org/polya270813.htm .

[52]. Gideon Polya, “One Percenter Greed & War Means Over 1.5 Million Americans Die Preventably Each Year”,  Countercurrents, 19 September, 2014: http://www.countercurrents.org/polya190914.htm.

[53]. Gideon Polya, “West Ignores 11 Million Muslim War Deaths & 23 Million Preventable American Deaths Since US Government’s False-flag 9-11 Atrocity”, Countercurrents, 9 September, 2015: http://www.countercurrents.org/polya090915.htm .

[54]. “Afghan Holocaust Afghan Genocide”: https://sites.google.com/site/afghanholocaustafghangenocide/ .

[55]. Gideon Polya, “US-imposed Opiate Holocaust – US protection of Afghan opiates has killed 5.2 million people since 9-11”, Countercurrents, 10 August 2019: https://countercurrents.org/2019/08/us-imposed-opiate-holocaust-us-protection-of-afghan-opiates-has-killed-5-2-million-people-since-9-11 .

[56]. Gideon Polya, “ Australian state terrorism (4). Jingoistic, US Lackey Australia’s Deadly Betrayal Of Its Traumatized Veterans”, Stop state terrorism, 2018: https://sites.google.com/site/stopstateterrorism/australian-state-terrorism-4 .

[57]. Dr Janet Kemp and Dr Robert Bossarte, “Suicide data report, 2012”, Department of Veterans Affairs, Mental Health Services, Suicide Prevention Program, especially Figure 3: http://www.va.gov/opa/docs/Suicide-Data-Report-2012-final.pdf  .

[58]. Neel Mani (Director of the World Health Organisation’s Iraq programme between 2001-2003,  “Iraq: politics and science  in post-conflict health research”, Huffington Post, 15 October 2014: https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/neel-mani/iraq-politics-and-science_b_4098231.html.

[59]. Patrick Cockburn, “The massacre of Mosul: 40,000 feared dead in battle to take back city from Isis as scale of civilian casualties revealed ”, Independent, July, 2017: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/mosul-massacre-battle-isis-iraq-city-civilian-casualties-killed-deaths-fighting-forces-islamic-state-a7848781.html .

[60]. Gideon Polya, “Apartheid Israel Excludes Occupied Palestinians From All Provisions Of  The Universal Declaration Of Human Rights”,  Countercurrents, 20 May, 2012: https://countercurrents.org/polya200512.htm .

[61]. Gideon Polya, “Apartheid Israel bombing Syria & Iraq – hotting deadly 4-decade US War on Iran”, Countercurrents, 14 August 2019: https://countercurrents.org/2019/08/apartheid-israel-bombing-syria-iraq-hotting-up-deadly-4-decade-us-war-on-iran 

WHO Impressed by Chinese Response to Coronavirus Outbreak

By Padraig McGrath, January 30, 2020

The Chinese government’s response to the coronavirus outbreak might not quite match those Herculean feats of crisis-management, but the news of the past few days is nonetheless somewhat reminiscent of Kosygin’s achievements. In Geneva on January 29th, the World Health Organization team assembled to address the coronavirus outbreak gave a glowing assessment of the Chinese government’s response to the crisis.

Trump’s ‘Deal of the Century’ Won’t Bring Peace – That Was the Plan

By Jonathan Cook, January 30, 2020

On January 28, units of the Syrian Army, led by the 25th Special Mission Forces Division, liberated the town of Maarat al-Numan, the Wadi Al-Deif military base and nearby villages from Hayat Tahrir al-Sham and other al-Qaeda-linked groups.

Earlier on the same day, a Turkish military convoy consisting of at least 30 vehicles entered Syria through the Kafr Lusein crossing and moved to the south. This was mostly a tactical manoeuver designed to demonstrate to pro-Turkish militant groups that Ankara was not going to surrender its positions in Idlib. Nonetheless, the only thing that these Turkish forces are able to do is to establish another observation point in the region. Local sources say that this point will be set up south of Saraqib.

Another area where Hayat Tahrir al-Sham forces suffered setbacks is southwestern Aleppo, where government troops pushed militants away from the Khan Tuman farms and delivered a blow to militant formations deployed in the Rashidin 5 area.

On January 29, government forces continued their operations on both frontlines. The current priority of the Syrian Army in southeastern Idlib is to secure the chunk of the M5 highway between Khan Shaikhun and Maarat al-Numan. After this, the militant strong points in Kafr Nubl and Kafr Sajnah will likely become the next target of the army offensive. Their liberation is crucial if government troops want to create a proper defense against possible militant attacks from the Zawiyah Mountain area.

Saraqib, located on the crossroad of the M4 and M5 highways, is also a high priority target. Nonetheless, an advance in this direction is unlikely in the immediate future.

In Western Aleppo the Syrian Army seeks to liberate Khan Tuman, Rashidin 4 and Rashidin 5 in order to limit the number of mortar and rocket attacks on Aleppo city by militants.

The Syrian military, supported by the Russian air power and special forces, launched an offensive in Greater Idlib on December 19, 2019. Since then, pro-government forces have liberated over 50 settlements in the south and the east of the Idlib de-escalation zone. As long as al-Qaeda-linked factions remain the core of the so-called Idlib opposition and Turkish-backed groups cooperate with them, such military operations in the area will continue.

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Donald Trump‘s “Deal of the Century”, his “vision” of an Arab-Israeli peace settlement, is, as expected, a boon for Israel and a trap for the Palestinians. Everyone knew this would be the case. His deal could never have been otherwise. It was concocted by a team of hyper-Zionists under the management of his son-in-law Jared Kushner in whose bed his family friend Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu often slept.

During Tuesday’s launch, standing next to a smirking Netanyahu, Trump announced that, under his “plan”, Palestinians would, at long last, achieve their “state”. But, not for four years and on condition Palestinians give up “terrorism”, legitimate resistance to Israeli occupation, cease incitement against Israel, “negotiate”, and, according to Netanyahu, accept Israel as “the Jewish State” despite the fact that 20 per cent of its citizens are Muslim and Christian Palestinians.

Negotiate what? Trump’s “vision” gives Israel everything it wants on the issues meant to be negotiated with the Palestinians: Borders, Israeli colonies, Jerusalem and refugees. Under the 1993 Oslo accord, these issues were supposed to be negotiated by Palestinians and Israelis. Trump has unilaterally cancelled the land-for-peace formula, the 1993 Oslo Accord and the subsequent peace process. Trump is determined to dictate the outcome on these issues and to “legitimise” Israeli “acquisition of territory by force”, which is inadmissible under the UN Charter and international law, and illegal colonisation of occupied Palestinian land.

What sort of “state” will the Palestinian entity be? If Trump’s plan is implemented, this entity will be under Israeli security control, will host more than 600,000 Israeli colonists and will be totally surrounded by territory annexed by Israel, 30 per cent of the West Bank. This entity will be controlled by Israel from land, air and sea while Israel will have a recognised border with Jordan on the Jordan River.

Trump’s “vision” would compensate Palestinians with isolated enclaves in the Negev connected to Gaza. East Jerusalem, the Old City of Jerusalem and its suburbs occupied by Israel in 1967, will not be the Palestinian capital but will be recognised as part of Israel’s “undivided” capital. Palestinians will be able to establish their capital in the West Bank town of Abu Dis or overcrowded, impoverished Shuafat, on the edge of Jerusalem. Most Palestinian refugees will stay where they are, their right of repatriation revoked while some will receive compensation for losses inflicted when Israel was established. Israel’s only concession will be to freeze expansion of colonies beyond their security borders.

Trump’s “deal” was intentionally designed to be dismissed by the Palestinians who stand accused of repeatedly rejecting “peace plans” which were unacceptable. The Palestinians, however, accepted and planned to build upon the Oslo accords. Their aim was to achieve an independent state in only 22 per cent of Palestine. But Israel did not negotiate fruitfully on the basic issues or abide by Oslo’s terms and redoubled colonisation of the land Palestinians expected for their state in the West Bank and Gaza with East Jerusalem as its capital. Under Trump’s plan, Palestinians lose control of security in the 18 per cent ruled by the Palestinian Authority according to Oslo, although Israeli forces constantly enter this area in violation of Oslo.

The Trump “vision” has been ready for roll-out for more than a year. Why did this happen now? Determined to win a second term in office in November, Trump has been in campaign mode ever since he moved into the White House. However, he has been impeached by the US House of Representatives for using his position for political gain and is under trial in the Senate. Trump would like to divert attention from his trial and proclaim a win-win foreign policy that is certain to win him votes from white Evangelical Christians.

Under indictment for accepting bribes and breach of trust, Trump’s chum Netanyahu is fighting an election in early March. If his Likud loses, he could go to jail. Although he heads a caretaker government which should not take any major political initiatives, Netanyahu is expected to declare Israeli annexation of the Jordan Valley and of all or some of the West Bank colonies.

The launch of his deal also took place on the day after ceremonies for the liberation by Soviet forces of the Auschwitz death camp in Poland where the Nazis executed more than a million Jews, Gypsies and others. The timing was meant to remind the world that Israel’s security must be guaranteed whatever the cost to the Palestinians. This is, of course, a false claim as nuclear-bomb-armed Israel has become by far the strongest military power in the region. Criticism of Tump’s deal will also be met by accusations of anti-Semitism, i.e. the anti-Jewish feeling that caused the Holocaust.

Trump’s vision was also revealed at a time the Palestinians, who have rejected it, are in their weakest ever position. The Arabs have become weary of the “Palestine Cause”. Palestinians remain divided between the West Bank enclaves administered by the Fateh-dominated Palestinian Authority and Hamas ruled Gaza. Although President Mahmoud Abbas responded to Trump by calling for unity, it is unlikely that he can bring this about. He has refused unity since Hamas won the 2006 parliamentary election and in 2007 took over Gaza. Furthermore, elected in 2005 as a peacemaker, Abbas’ term in office has long since expired and his efforts at conducting meaningful negotiations have been rebuffed by Israel, which has blamed him for refusing to carry on. The Trump administration and Netanyahu may be waiting for Abbas, now 85, to die or leave office so they can press for him to be replaced by a leader who will agree to capitulate to Trump’s skewed vision.

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On July 1st 1941, the Soviet Politburo created the Council for Evacuations, an emergency governing body tasked with organizing the evacuation of people, food, farm-livestock, other goods and entire factory complexes to the Urals region before they could be captured or requisitioned by the advancing Wehrmacht. The deputy-chairman of this committee, a 37 year-old bureaucrat named Alexei Kosygin, was given special responsibility for the evacuation of factories, with a priority placed on industries connected to the Soviet military-industrial complex.

Between July and November 1941, he succeeded in expediting the evacuation of no fewer than 1,300 entire factory complexes, and their rapid reassembly and re-commencement of production. One such factory was #183 in Kramatorsk, which employed 60,000 workers for 24-hour tank-production. The factory was still operational in Kramatorsk in October 1941, was evacuated in November, and resumed full production in Chelyabinsk in December. Kosygin went on to have a long and illustrious Politburo career – minister for light industry, minister for finance, architect of the 1965 economic reforms package, chairman of GOSPLAN, and Chairman of the Council of Ministers (official Soviet head of state) for 15 years before his death in 1980.

The Chinese government’s response to the coronavirus outbreak might not quite match those Herculean feats of crisis-management, but the news of the past few days is nonetheless somewhat reminiscent of Kosygin’s achievements. In Geneva on January 29th, the World Health Organization team assembled to address the coronavirus outbreak gave a glowing assessment of the Chinese government’s response to the crisis.

Dr. Maria Van Der Kerkhove of the WHO stated that one of the reasons why the growth in coronavirus diagnoses has been so rapid is because the Chinese government had published a full genome-mapping of the new variant within days of the initial outbreak, making diagnosis easier. This is possible partially because China has been producing an academic golden generation of doctoral candidates in the biological sciences over the past 15-20 years. China has got an absolutely massive academic talent-pool in the life-sciences, especially in molecular biology, microbiology and biochemistry.

In other words, Dr. Van Der Kerkhove argued, the rapid increase in newly diagnosed cases should be interpreted as a positive rather than as a negative, insofar as it was an indicator of the proficiency of the Chinese response.

It is historically unprecedented that the entire genome-sequence of a new virus is published within days of the virus’ first appearance.

Dr. Michael Ryan, Executive Director of the WHO Health Emergencies Program, stated that

“China and Chinese scientists have performed probably the most rapid characterization of a novel pathogen in history, and that was shared immediately. Multiple sequences were shared immediately on global platforms.”

Previously Dr. Ryan had commented on his visit to China in the previous days, stating that

“China is doing the right things, and China is responding in a massive way….What I took away from that mission was the absolute, relentless and focused determination of the government of China to put the health of people in China ahead of anything else at this point, and to take what are significant economic and other hits in order to put the health of people first. The levels of meetings, the numbers of meetings and the attendance at those meetings was unprecedented in my memory in terms of a government’s commitment to do that….”

Answering concerns raised by a Bloomberg correspondent regarding the transparency of the Chinese government’s response, Dr. Ryan described the Wuhan regional government’s response and dissemination of information as “state of the art,” saying that the Wuhan government’s public website had declared a red alert extremely early, and that an extremely impressive quantity of new information contained in their daily updates had been published since December 31st/January 1st. Dr. Ryan said

“I was involved in 2002/2003 in SARS, and I can tell you from direct operational experience that there is no comparison between the behaviour of China then and the behaviour of China now.”

He described the responses of all countries which had been affected thus far, including China, as “remarkably transparent.”

So, a glib western journalist asks a cheap propagandist’s question, and promptly gets his head handed to him.

WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom said that he had been in almost daily contact with Chinese health minister Ma Xiaowei, and that during his meetings with Minister Ma, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi and Chinese President Xi Jinping, he had been “very encouraged and impressed by the president’s detailed knowledge of the outbreak and his personal involvement in the response. This was for me a very rare leadership.”

While reports of the Chinese government building 2 specialized hospitals for the treatment of coronavirus in only 48 hours have been somewhat exaggerated, the scale and rapidity of the Chinese government’s infrastructural response to the crisis is still staggering. We already know that in most reasonably well-governed countries, the defence ministry has a ready-made contingency-plan for almost every imaginable hypothetical national emergency situation. This makes rapid response and implementation of emergency-measures possible. Just take the plan off the shelf, and do it! If we are to take the last few days as evidence, it turns out that in China, the Health Ministry also has ready-made and well devised contingency-plans for almost every imaginable public health emergency.

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Padraig McGrath is a political analyst.

Featured image is from EPA/STRINGER CHINA OUT

In spite of the Russian Foreign Ministry’s best efforts, the JCPOA may very well be in the process of collapsing. On January 14th, British, French and German officials decided to trigger the agreement’s Dispute Resolution Mechanism in relation to alleged Iranian non-compliance with its obligations under the deal, a move which the Russian and Chinese governments’ view as unhelpful. For its own part, Iran has also criticized European signatories’ non-compliance with their own economic obligations under the JCPOA, regarding the un-freezing of Iranian assets, etc.

A Russian Foreign Ministry statement released on January 24th stated

“For our part, we would like to confirm the existence of substantial difficulties created by the E3’s decision. Their step creates additional problems and challenges in the implementation of the JCPOA. Besides, the above-mentioned mechanism cannot be put into effect due to the absence of the necessary procedures and the Joint Commission’s decisions.”

On January 28th, a Russian Foreign Ministry official stated that Russia was strongly opposed to any re-imposition of sanctions on Iran, and that Iran could count on Russia’s support in the matter. Since January 14th, British, French and German officials have urged the Russian and Chinese governments to participate in the Dispute Resolution Mechanism.

In alleging Iranian non-compliance, the JCPOA’s European signatories overlook the point that the Iranian government has clearly and repeatedly stated that it would implement a phased suspension of its commitments under the JCPOA until such a time as the deal’s other signatories came into full compliance. For example, on September 29th last year, the International Atomic Energy Agency confirmed that Iran has been enriching uranium to a purity of 4.35%, which marginally exceeds the limit of 3.67% stipulated under the terms of the JCPOA, and Iran has exceeded the limit of 300 kilograms of stockpiled nuclear fuel which is permitted under the terms of the deal. The Iranian explanation of its step back from these commitments has been clear and consistent – Iran cannot meet all of its obligations under the deal while the other signatories refuse to do so.

Admittedly, the decision by the United States to unilaterally withdraw from the JCPOA and re-impose sanctions on Iran in May 2018 has made it difficult for European signatories to come into full compliance, as the un-freezing of Iranian assets in European countries and the full enabling of trade with Iran would make European financial institutions themselves secondary targets for US sanctions. The crucial point is that all dollar-denominated transactions worldwide technically come under US legal jurisdiction. However, the Iranian government can hardly be held responsible for this lack of resolve and geo-political weakness on the part of the deal’s European signatories.

The tactical oscillation of the German government, in particular, has a destabilizing effect. During Chancellor Merkel’s meeting with President Putin in Moscow on January 11th, both leaders re-stated their commitment to saving the JCPOA at all costs. They also jointly confirmed that the Nord Stream 2 project would go ahead in spite of US sanctions.

3 days later, German, French and British diplomats trigger the Dispute Resolution Mechanism, throwing the entire future of the JCPOA into serious doubt.

Only 12 days after Merkel’s highly productive meeting with Putin, the largest NATO military exercises held in Europe for 25 years take place, highly concentrated on German territory but focusing on the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad.

What exactly is Merkel trying to achieve here?

One usually associates these kinds of cheap moves and this kind of obsessionally short-termist tactical oscillation with Erdogan.

What kind of advantage can Merkel hope might accrue to Germany through such a demonstration of bad faith? Maybe she just wanted to put Nord Stream 2 in her pocket before she left Moscow.

This kind of non-stop geo-political flip-flopping serves as a partial explanation as to why no western European nation-state, not even the EU hegemon, has any meaningful level of geo-political reach. Due to the infantilization of Europe’s political class, they are simply incapable of formulating or maintaining a consistent policy on external relations. Playing your suitors off against each other and sending new mixed signals every 5 minutes is not a policy. It’s a symptom of incoherence and strategic impotence.

For the first time on January 22nd, the Iranian side began to openly discuss outright withdrawal from the JCPOA rather than mere suspension of some of its commitments under the agreement. The Iranian Presidential Chief of Staff Mahmoud Vaezi raised this possibility as a for-instance. His preparedness to do so explicitly was a strong signal that Tehran has finally begun to lose patience with her western partners, and that the JCPOA may very well be in its death-spiral. This breakdown in trust simply may not be redeemable.

We should bear in mind that the central issue with regard to Iran’s nuclear program has never been the possibility of Iran developing nuclear weapons capability. The thing which has worried both the United States and the western European powers most is simply that Iran might build a more technologically modern and efficient economy. The Iranian government has consistently stated that its only motivation for pursuing its nuclear program is that gasoline is too valuable to be used for domestic electricity-production.

The western alliance fears Iran’s endeavours toward economic and technological self-strengthening. They see it as more desirable to keep Iran in a state of economic dependency, as an under-developed natural resource colony. Sanctions today serve precisely the same strategic purpose which the combination of tariffs-regimes and gunboat-diplomacy did during the 19th century, to maintain one-sided economic relationships. With that in mind, we have to ponder the question as to whether the JCPOA’s European signatories are simply demonstrating extreme weakness and lack of resolve in the face of American economic coercion, or if they simply never entered into the JCPOA in good faith in the first place.

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Padraig McGrath is a political analyst.

A persistent American lawyer has uncovered the undeniable fact that the FBI has been continuously lying, including giving false testimony in court, in response to Freedom of Information requests for its records on Seth Rich. The FBI has previously given affidavits that it has no records regarding Seth Rich.

A Freedom of Information request to the FBI which did not mention Seth Rich, but asked for all email correspondence between FBI Head of Counterterrorism Peter Strzok, who headed the investigation into the DNC leaks and Wikileaks, and FBI attorney Lisa Page, has revealed two pages of emails which do not merely mention Seth Rich but have “Seth Rich” as their heading. The emails were provided in, to say the least, heavily redacted form.

Before I analyse these particular emails, I should make plain that they are not the major point. The major point is that the FBI claimed it had no records mentioning Seth Rich, and these have come to light in response to a different FOIA request that was not about him. What other falsely denied documents does the FBI hold about Rich, that were not fortuitously picked up by a search for correspondence between two named individuals?

To look at the documents themselves, they have to be read from the bottom up, and they consist of a series of emails between members of the Washington Field Office of the FBI (WF in the telegrams) into which Strzok was copied in, and which he ultimately forwarded on to the lawyer Lisa Page.

The opening email, at the bottom, dated 10 August 2016 at 10.32am, precisely just one month after the murder of Seth Rich, is from the media handling department of the Washington Field Office. It references Wikileaks’ offer of a reward for information on the murder of Seth Rich, and that Assange seemed to imply Rich was the source of the DNC leaks. The media handlers are asking the operations side of the FBI field office for any information on the case. The unredacted part of the reply fits with the official narrative. The redacted individual officer is “not aware of any specific involvement” by the FBI in the Seth Rich case. But his next sentence is completely redacted. Why?

It appears that “adding” references a new person added in to the list. This appears to have not worked, and probably the same person (precisely same length of deleted name) then tries again, with “adding … for real” and blames the technology – “stupid Samsung”. The interesting point here is that the person added appears not to be in the FBI – a new redacted addressee does indeed appear, and unlike all the others does not have an FBI suffix after their deleted email address. So who are they?

(This section on “adding” was updated after commenters offered a better explanation than my original one. See first comments below).

The fourth email, at 1pm on Wednesday August 10, 2016, is much the most interesting. It is ostensibly also from the Washington Field Office, but it is from somebody using a different classified email system with a very different time and date format than the others. It is apparently from somebody more senior, as the reply to it is “will do”. And every single word of this instruction has been blanked. The final email, saying that “I squashed this with …..”, is from a new person again, with the shortest name. That phrase may only have meant I denied this to a journalist, or it may have been reporting an operational command given.

As the final act in this drama, Strzok then sent the whole thread on to the lawyer, which is why we now have it. Why?

It is perfectly possible to fill in the blanks with a conversation that completely fits the official narrative. The deletions could say this was a waste of time and the FBI was not looking at the Rich case. But in that case, the FBI would have been delighted to publish it unredacted. (The small numbers in the right hand margins supposedly detail the exception to the FOIA under which deletion was made. In almost every case they are one or other category of invasion of privacy).

And if it just all said “Assange is talking nonsense. Seth Rich is nothing to do with the FBI” then why would that have to be sent on by Strzok to the FBI lawyer?

It is of course fortunate that Strzok did forward this one email thread on to the lawyer, because that is the only reason we have seen it, as a result of an FOI(A) request for the correspondence between those two.

Finally, and perhaps this is the most important point, the FBI was at this time supposed to be in the early stages of an investigation into how the DNC emails were leaked to Wikileaks. The FBI here believed Wikileaks to be indicating the material had been leaked by Seth Rich who had then been murdered. Surely in any legitimate investigation, the investigators would have been absolutely compelled to check out the truth of this possibility, rather than treat it as a media issue?

We are asked to believe that not one of these emails says “well if the publisher of the emails says Seth Rich was the source, we had better check that out, especially as he was murdered with no sign of a suspect”. If the FBI really did not look at that, why on earth not? If the FBI genuinely, as they claim, did not even look at the murder of Seth Rich, that would surely be the most damning fact of all and reveal their “investigation” was entirely agenda driven from the start.

In June 2016 a vast cache of the DNC emails were leaked to Wikileaks. On 10 July 2016 an employee from the location of the leak was murdered without obvious motive, in an alleged street robbery in which nothing at all was stolen. Not to investigate the possibility of a link between the two incidents would be grossly negligent. It is worth adding that, contrary to a propaganda barrage, Bloomingdale where Rich was murdered is a very pleasant area of Washington DC and by no means a murder hotspot. It is also worth noting that not only is there no suspect in Seth Rich’s murder, there has never been any semblance of a serious effort to find the killer. Washington police appear perfectly happy simply to write this case off.

I anticipate two responses to this article in terms of irrelevant and illogical whataboutery:

Firstly, it is very often the case that family members are extremely resistant to the notion that the murder of a relative may have wider political implications. This is perfectly natural. The appalling grief of losing a loved one to murder is extraordinary; to reject the cognitive dissonance of having your political worldview shattered at the same time is very natural. In the case of David Kelly, of Seth Rich, and of Wille Macrae, we see families reacting with emotional hostility to the notion that the death raises wider questions. Occasionally the motive may be still more mixed, with the prior relationship between the family and the deceased subject to other strains (I am not referencing the Rich case here).

You do occasionally get particularly stout hearted family who take the opposite tack and are prepared to take on the authorities in the search for justice, of which Commander Robert Green, son of Hilda Murrell, is a worthy example.

(As an interesting aside, I just checked his name in the Wikipedia article on Hilda, which I discovered describes Tam Dalyell “hounding” Margaret Thatcher over the Belgrano and the fact that ship was steaming away from the Falklands when destroyed with massive loss of life as a “second conspiracy theory”, the first of course being the murder of Hilda Murrell. Wikipedia really has become a cesspool.)

We have powerful cultural taboos that reinforce the notion that if the family do not want the question of the death of their loved one disturbed, nobody else should bring it up. Seth Rich’s parents, David Kelly’s wife, Willie Macrae’s brother have all been deployed by the media and the powers behind them to this effect, among many other examples. This is an emotionally powerful but logically weak method of restricting enquiry.

Secondly, I do not know and I deliberately have not inquired what are the views on other subjects of either Mr Ty Clevenger, who brought his evidence and blog to my attention, or Judicial Watch, who made the FOIA request that revealed these documents. I am interested in the evidence presented both that the FBI lied, and in the documents themselves. Those who obtained the documents may, for all I know, be dedicated otter baiters or believe in stealing ice cream from children. I am referencing the evidence they have obtained in this particular case, not endorsing – or condemning – anything else in their lives or work. I really have had enough of illogical detraction by association as a way of avoiding logical argument by an absurd extension of ad hominem argument to third parties.

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Executive Summary

If there ever was a “kitchen sink” quarter, Boeing just had it.

Moments ago, the ailing US aerospace giant reported Q4 earnings which prompted traders to do a double take after revenues cratered by 37% Y/Y, down from $28.3BN a year ago, and nearly $4 billion below the Wall Street consensus of $21.7BN; Q4 EPS was a whopping loss of $2.33/share, compared to expectations of a $1.47 profit, and down from $5.48 a year ago, resulting in the worst quarter in over two decades.

As a result of the abysmal quarter, Boeing posted an annual loss for the first time since 1997, the last time the plane maker had to shut down production of its cash-cow 737 jetliner. Core loss per share was $3.47 in 2019, down from $16.01 a year ago, with operating cash flow tumbling to a $2.4BN cash burn.

Predictably, the biggest item here was the continued grounding of the 737 MAX or rather attempts to get it back in the air, and in Q4 the company laid out its latest estimated costs for the 737 Max grounding, which as Bloomberg put it, “is a doozy” at $18.6 billion:

• included $2.6B additional costs to produce aircraft in the 737 program accounting quantity in 4Q19; bringing the total for the full year to $6.3BN
• Booked an additional $2.6B pre-tax charge related to estimated potential concessions and other considerations to
  customers in 4Q19; bringing the total for the full year to $8.3BN
• Estimated an additional $4BN in “abnormal production costs” that it expects to book this year to cover extra expenses as it halts and then gradually resumes work in its 737 factory.

The full details of the 737MAX kitchen sinking can be found here:

The continued grounding of the 737 MAX means that Boeing’s commercial airplane inventory is now a record high, rising 26% from a year earlier as the company continues to produce planes that nobody wants to buy (as they can’t fly them).

But wait there’s more, because it’s not just 737MAX anymore: as had been leaked previously, Boeing also confirmed that it is cutting 787 Dreamliner output to 10/month in early 2021, a number which it expects to return back ti 12 planes/month in 2023 (but may not). One hopes this is not on the same ground as the, pardon the pun, 737 MAX grounding. Boeing also reported that the 787 deferred production cost in 4Q was $18.7 billion, that’s down from $19.8 billion in 3Q and $23.0 billion a year ago.

And so, with earnings in freefall, it is hardly a surprise that operating cash flow plunged from $15.3BN to cash burn of $2.4BN in Q4 which however was modestly better than the $3.9BN expected…

… and with the company keeping cash at roughly $10BN, this meant that total debt rose to a new record high of $27.3BN in total debt.

Don’t worry though, the company’s dividend is safe and sound: Boeing paid $1.2 billion of dividends in the quarter.

Commenting on the result, the company’s new CEO Calhoun regurgitated the same old trite pablum we have come to expect from the company:

“We are focused on returning the 737 MAX to service safely and restoring the long-standing trust that the Boeing brand represents with the flying public. We are committed to transparency and excellence in everything we do. Safety will underwrite every decision, every action and every step we take as we move forward. Fortunately, the strength of our overall Boeing portfolio of businesses provides the financial liquidity to follow a thorough and disciplined recovery process.”

And while the stock initially tumbled on the abysmal results, it then promptly rebounded…

… as the sellside quickly decided that it can’t possibly get any worse, or as Bloomberg put it, Calhoun has “really brought forth everything,” trying to put a “bottom” on the bad news at Boeing so the jet maker can start trying to “take the news flow positive from here.”

As a reminder, this is what the market thought about last quarter too, and everyone knows what happened next.

Incidentally, for Boeing the only question that matters is a simple one: if and when the 737 MAX is allowed to return to the sky again, will anyone ever want to fly on that airplane again?

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Russia’s permanent representative to the United Nations, Vasily Nebenzia, mentioned to the authors of the “Deal of the Century” that the occupied Golan Heights is Syrian territory.

“Yesterday, Washington’s vision of a settlement in the Middle East was published and we noticed the maps included in the plan that the Golan Heights were defined as Israeli territory, and in this regard, we would like to remind the authors of the geographical maps that we [Russia] and UN Security Council Resolution 497 do not recognize the sovereignty of Israel,” Nebenzia said.

The Permanent Representative of Russia told the U.N. that the “Golan Heights is Syrian land illegally occupied.”

On Tuesday, U.S. President Donald Trump announced his peace plan to settle the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, known medially as the “Deal of the Century”, in the presence of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the ambassadors of Oman, Bahrain and the UAE.

Trump’s peace plan has already been rejected by most of the countries in the Arab League, along with the Palestinian Authority.

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Featured image is from AMN

Due to the U.S. sanctions on Iran, Tehran is unable to use or transfer US$5 billion in revenues it has received from Iraq for supplying natural gas and electricity to its neighbor, an Iranian official told local media on Wednesday.

Even after the U.S. slapped sanctions on Iran’s energy exports, Iraq continues to import natural gas and electricity from Iran under a special waiver that the United States has regularly extended to Iraq.

Major Iraqi power plants are dependent on Iranian natural gas supply, and Iraq also imports electricity from Iran, as Baghdad’s power generation is not enough to ensure domestic supply.

Despite the U.S. waiver for energy trade between Iran and Iraq, Iran is unable to use the money Iraq has paid in Iraqi dinars for the energy it imports from Iran.

Up to $5 billion sits in an escrow account at the central bank of Iraq, but Iran cannot touch it because of the U.S. sanctions, Hamid Hosseini, a spokesman for Iranian Oil, Gas and Petrochemical Products Exporters’ Association (OPEX) told Iranian news outlet Press-TV on Wednesday. Iran has been cut off from the global SWIFT payment system, and because of this, it hasn’t found a way yet to have the money transferred, according to Press-TV.

The situation highlights how the U.S. sanctions are crippling Iranian revenues and how Iran cannot access money from its energy exports even if those exports are allowed under the U.S. sanctions.

Iraq, for its part, may have serious problems in securing its energy needs if the United States doesn’t extend a waiver for an Iraqi bank to process payments for Iraq’s imports of electricity and natural gas from Iran, the head of the Iraqi bank told AFP last week.

The waiver for the Iraqi bank handling the payments to Iran in Iraqi dinars expires next month. If the U.S. doesn’t extend the waiver, the bank—Trade Bank of Iraq (TBI)—will stop processing payments, the head of the bank Faisal al-Haimus told AFP last week.

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Tsvetana is a writer for Oilprice.com with over a decade of experience writing for news outlets such as iNVEZZ and SeeNews. 

Hard evidence collected by Israeli AG Mendleblit proves Netanyahu guilt of bribery, fraud and breach of trust, serious civil offenses — his high crimes of war, against humanity, and slow-motion genocide against long-suffering Palestinians ignored.

His day in the dock appears just a matter of time, likely after a new government is formed once elections settle the matter – in March or months later.

Ahead of a scheduled Knesset session he requested on whether to grant him immunity from prosecution, he cancelled it at the 11th hour, knowing a parliamentary majority opposed it.

He can no longer seek immunity from prosecution after AG Mendelblit indicted him on Tuesday in Jerusalem District Court.

He responded as expected, saying: What’s happening “is in line with the persecution campaign that the ‘Anything but Bibi’ camp has waged (sic),” adding:

“Instead of grasping the gravity of the hour, and rise above political considerations, they continue to engage in cheap politicking, harming a decisive moment in the history of the country” — referring to release of Trump’s no-peace/peace plan.

“We will take the time later to shatter all the disproportionate claims made by my detractors. But right now, I will not allow my political opponents to use this matter to interfere with the historic move I am leading (sic).”

Back in Israel after meeting with Trump on Monday, Gantz said

“Netanyahu will go to trial now, and we must move forward. Israelis have a clear choice…No one can run a state and at the same time manage three serious criminal cases for bribery, fraud and breach of trust.”

Whether Netanyahu or Gantz is prime minister, Palestinian rights will be denied like always.

What began with Arthur Balfour’s duplicitous 1917 declaration, continued during and after the Nakba — over a century of endless conflict, occupation, dispossession, repression, and Palestinian suffering, along with social and cultural fragmentation.

Historic Palestine was erased. Apartheid Israel replaced it. Run by fascist regimes, they’re supported by the US and West — sustained resistance the only hope for change.

The Trump/Netanyahu no-peace plan wants the Occupied Territories demilitarized for easier control.

It wants Palestinians consigned to isolated cantons on worthless scrubland, surrounded by hostile settlers and Israeli security forces.

Former Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak believes Netanyahu wants Trump’s scheme to fail, a way to blame others and begin the process of annexing settlements and the Jordan valley — with Trump’s support, he said, adding:

“Jordan should be the security border in the east. Netanyahu’s proposals to immediately annex the Jordan Valley reflect personal hysteria, like the behavior of an escaped convict, and a loss of judgment, not to say an irresponsible attitude toward security.”

Since the Nabka and 1967 Six Day War, Israel systematically stole Palestinian land dunam by dunam, a process continuing until accomplishing its aims entirely.

Whether or not settlements and the Jordan Valley are formally annexed, Israel exerts full control, Palestinians displaced from their land, once dispossessed not allowed back, what’s been going on since Balfour decreed the end of historic Palestine over 100 years ago.

Annexing the Jordan Valley straightaway after release of Trump’s scheme would destroy any chance of implementing it, Barak believes.

Jordanian king Abdullah’s son called annexation of valley land catastrophic for peace. None existed since Israel’s establishment.

Longstanding US/Israeli policy calls for continued regional conflict and instability.

Trump’s scheme has nothing to do with peace and respect for Palestinian rights, everything to do with one-sidedly serving US/Israeli interests.

Barak is right about one thing. Trump’s scheme is “the most favorable approach to Israel ever adopted by an American president regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.”

Palestinian rights and welfare don’t matter. They never did before, less than ever by Trump and Netanyahu, a sinister duo exceeding the worst of earlier regimes running both countries.

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Award-winning author Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at [email protected]. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG)

His new book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.”

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

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

La lancetta dell’«Orologio dell’apocalisse» – il segnatempo simbolico che sul Bollettino degli Scienziati atomici statunitensi indica a quanti minuti siamo dalla mezzanotte della guerra nucleare – è stata spostata in avanti a 100 secondi a mezzanotte.

E’ il livello più alto di allarme da quando l’«Orologio» fu creato nel 1947 (come termine di paragone, il massimo livello durante la guerra fredda fu di 2 minuti a mezzanotte).

La notizia è però passata in Italia quasi inosservata o segnalata come una sorta di curiosità, quasi fosse un videogioco. Si ignora il fatto che l’allarme è stato lanciato da un comitato scientifico di cui fanno parte 13 Premi Nobel.

Essi avvertono: «Siamo di fronte a una vera e propria emergenza, uno stato della situazione mondiale assolutamente inaccettabile che non permette alcun margine di errore né ulteriore ritardo».

La crisi mondiale, aggravata dal cambiamento climatico, rende «realmente possibile una guerra nucleare, iniziata in base a un piano oppure per errore o semplice fraintendimento, che metterebbe fine alla civiltà».

La possibilità di guerra nucleare – sottolineano – è stata accresciuta dal fatto che, l’anno scorso, sono stati cancellati o minati diversi importanti trattati e negoziati, creando un ambiente favorevole a una rinnovata corsa agli armamenti nucleari, alla loro proliferazione e all’abbassamento della soglia nucleare.

La situazione – aggiungono gli scienziati – è aggravata dalla «cyber-disinformazione», ossia dalla continua alterazione della sfera dell’informazione, da cui dipendono la democrazia e il processo decisionale, condotta attraverso campagne di disinformazione per seminare sfiducia tra le nazioni e minare gli sforzi interni e internazionali per favorire la pace e proteggere il pianeta.

Che cosa fa la politica italiana in tale situazione estremamente critica? La risposta è semplice: tace.

Domina il silenzio imposto dal vasto arco politico bipartisan responsabile del fatto che l’Italia, paese non-nucleare, ospiti e sia preparata a usare armi nucleari, violando il Trattato di non-proliferazione che ha ratificato.

Responsabilità resa ancora più grave dal fatto che l’Italia si rifiuta di aderire al Trattato sulla proibizione delle armi nucleari votato a grande maggioranza dall’Assemblea delle Nazioni Unite.

All’Articolo 4 il Trattato stabilisce: «Ciascuno Stato parte che abbia sul proprio territorio armi nucleari, possedute o controllate da un altro Stato, deve assicurare la rapida rimozione di tali armi». Per aderire al Trattato Onu, l’Italia dovrebbe quindi richiedere agli Stati uniti di rimuovere dal suo territorio le bombe nucleari B-61 (che già violano il Trattato di non-proliferazione) e di non installarvi le nuove B61-12 né altre armi nucleari.

Inoltre, poiché l’Italia fa parte dei paesi che (come dichiara la stessa Nato) «forniscono all’Alleanza aerei equipaggiati per trasportare bombe nucleari, su cui gli Stati uniti mantengono l’assoluto controllo, e personale addestrato a tale scopo», per aderire al Trattato Onu l’Italia dovrebbe chiedere di essere esentata da tale funzione.

Lo stesso avviene con il Trattato sulle forze nucleari intermedie affossato da Washington. Sia in sede Nato, Ue e Onu, l’Italia si è accodata alla decisione statunitense, dando in sostanza luce verde alla installazione di nuovi missili nucleari Usa sul proprio territorio.

Ciò conferma che l’Italia non ha – per responsabilità del vasto arco politico bipartisan – una politica estera sovrana, rispondente ai principi della propria Costituzione e ai reali interessi nazionali. Al timone che determina gli orientamenti fondamentali della nostra politica estera c’è la mano di Washington, o direttamente o tramite la Nato.

L’Italia, che nella propria Costituzione ripudia la guerra, fa così parte dell’ingranaggio che ci ha portato a 100 secondi dalla mezzanotte della guerra nucleare.

Nothing about the scheme surprised, an affront to millions of long-suffering Palestinians and international law — a document with no legitimacy.

One observer compared Trump’s unveiling to a wedding attended by the bride, not the groom.

Palestinians were excluded from drafting the scheme put together by the Trump and Netanyahu regimes — serving US/Israeli interests exclusively, ignoring fundamental Palestinian rights and the rule of law.

Their representatives were absent from Tuesday’s unveiling. No self-respecting Palestinians would touch a scheme that legitimizes permanent bondage of their people under Israel’s repressive boot.

The Trump/Netanyahu scheme recognizes illegal Israeli control over most of the Occupied Territories — including settlements, most Jordan Valley land, military bases, free-fire zones, commercial locations, tourist sites, nature reserves, no-go areas, Jews-only roads, checkpoints, the separation wall, and other exclusive Jewish areas — along with water, hydrocarbon reserves, and other resources rightfully belonging to Palestinians.

The scheme of the century recognizes Israeli land theft, dispossession of its indigenous occupants, loss of their possessions, and Jewish state control over historic Palestine’s borders and airspace.

It illegally legitimizes Israeli control over all valued parts of Judea and Samaria, including Jerusalem as an undivided Jewish state capital.

Palestine’s “capital” is to be located “east and north of the existing security barrier, including Kafr Aqab, the eastern part of Shuafat and Abu Dis, and could be named” whatever its officials wish — a capital in name only.

Democratically elected Hamas, Palestine’s legitimate government, is called “repressive.”

Illegal Israeli blockade of the Strip was unmentioned in the Trump/Netanyahu scheme, demanding it be demilitarized, defenseless against Israeli rapaciousness, and controlled by a Palestinian entity recognized by Israel.

Diaspora Palestinians are prohibited from returning to their homeland. No settlements will be uprooted. They’ll be mostly “incorporate(d) into contiguous Israeli territory (to) become part of the state of Israel” — in violation of international law, what the US and Israel disrespect and breach at their discretion.

A dubious Palestinian state in name only is conditional on its leadership’s subservience to Israeli demands.

They include renouncing the right of self-defense the US and Israel call terrorism, Jewish state aggression considered self-defense.

The scheme prevents regional peace and stability, making it more unattainable by adoption of what it stipulates — an unacceptable master/vassal arrangement, legitimizing Palestinian subjugation, offering the illusion of self-determination.

Israel is to retain control over everything related to security, assuring no change in the unacceptable status quo.

The Trump/Netanyahu scheme is a flagrant violation of international law, demanding world community rejection and condemnation.

Palestinian officials rejected it long before release. It has nothing to do with “peace to prosperity,” nothing “improv(ing) the lives of the Palestinian people,” just the opposite.

Palestinian authorities and activists vowed to fight against the scheme, one activist calling it a “new Balfour Declaration, (Trump) giving away what he does not own to people who have no right to it.”

Tuesday’s unveiling was a “historic” sellout day, exclusively serving US/Israeli interests at the expense of Palestinian rights.

The economic part of the scheme unveiled last June has nothing to do with aiding millions of long-suffering Palestinians.

It includes a global investment fund of $50 billion for 179 infrastructure and business projects — benefitting corporate interests exclusively in the West and Israel, neoliberal harshness for ordinary Palestinians.

The Trump regime wants wealthy Arab Gulf states to provide the money.

Around $28 billion is earmarked for the occupied West Bank and Gaza — intending greater exploitation of the Palestinian people, the way the US and other Western states exploit their own people, only worse in mind for Palestinians.

Jordan will receive a $7.5 billion bribe, Egypt $9 billion, and Lebanon $6 billion.

Around $15 billion is to come from grants, $25 billion from subsidized loans, and $11 billion from private capital.

Another $5 billion is for a transportation corridor to connect the West Bank and Gaza by a tunnel and/or high-speed rail link.

The economic part of the scheme has nothing to do with lifting Palestinians out of poverty, everything to do with continued exploitation under militarized control.

Trump’s scheme of the century is a categorical rejection of fundamental Palestinian rights while pretending to respect them — benefitting US/Israeli interests exclusively at their expense.

On Sunday, Israel’s Knesset will vote on annexing settlements, approval virtually certain.

According to Netanyahu, Knesset approval isn’t needed, just cabinet members signing off on it, a rubber-stamp procedure.

A Final Comment

Security Council resolutions are automatically international and US constitutional law under its Supremacy Clause (Article VI, Clause 2).

By illegally giving Israel control of Jerusalem, the scheme breaches unanimously adopted Security Council Res. 476.

It declared “all legislative and administrative measures and actions taken by Israel, the occupying Power, which purport to alter the character and status of the Holy City of Jerusalem have no legal validity and constitute a flagrant (Fourth Geneva) violation.”

The scheme ignored Fourth Geneva’s Article 49 stating:

“Individual or mass forcible transfers, as well as deportations of protected persons from occupied territory to the territory of the Occupying Power or to that of any other country, occupied or not, are prohibited, regardless of their motive.”

“The Occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies.”

Settlements are flagrantly illegal under international law.

The Trump/Netanyahu scheme breached Security Council Resolution 2334 (December 2016), stating the following:

Settlements have “no legal validity and constitute a flagrant violation under international law.”

The resolution demands “Israel immediately and completely cease all settlement activities in occupied Palestinian territory, including East Jerusalem.”

It recognizes no territorial changes “to the 4 June 1967 lines, including with regard to Jerusalem, other than those agreed by the parties through negotiations.”

It “(c)alls upon all States, to distinguish, in their relevant dealings, between the territory of the State of Israel and the territories occupied since 1967.”

It “(c)alls for immediate steps to prevent all acts of violence against civilians, including acts of terror, as well as all acts of provocation and destruction, calls for accountability in this regard…”

In nearly half a century of no-peace/peace plans, one-sidedly serving Israeli interests at the expense of Palestinian rights, Trump’s scheme exceeds the worst of earlier ones.

With no Palestinian or world community say about what’s in it, the Trump and Netanyahu regimes want the scheme’s demands force-fed on a long-suffering people — an act of war by other means.

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Award-winning author Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at [email protected]. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG)

His new book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.”

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

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

Featured image is from NDTV

Singapore, a small but well-armed island nation in Southeast Asia, with 72,000 troops in the army, was approved by the United States in early January 2020 to acquire 12 F-35Bs, along with necessary equipment such as spare engines, parts, electronics, equipment, and simulators, at a contract price of $2.75 billion. The Singaporean Air Force has 316 aircraft, 16 squadrons and 14,800 troops at four Air Force bases, with most of the offensive power being 40 F-15s and 60 F-16s. The Air Force is impressive but not so much compared to other regional and great powers. Singapore’s Defense Minister, Ng Eng Hen, emphasized that the American made war planes is intended to gradually replace the F-16 fighter that is now mostly used by the Singaporean Air Force – and this could be a gamechanger against Chinese interests in the region. 

With Singapore’s acquisition of these aircraft, it could drastically change the arms balance in the South China Sea region where China and the U.S. are competing, and even beyond. This small island nation has a close alliance with the United States and has also joined the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand and Malaysia – all Commonwealth countries – in a military agreement known as the Five Powers Defence Arrangements. Singapore is also providing full support to the U.S. by allowing them use of the Paya Lebar Air Force Base, and U.S. warships can call at Sembawang Naval Base. The visits by U.S. Presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump to the Paya Lebar base during their visit to the region also demonstrates Washington’s trust in Singapore and recognizes the critical geostrategic location of Singapore on international trades.

The Paya Lebar Air Base is home to 40 F-15s, and is also home to five aerial refuelling aircraft, the KC-130B. Changi East Air Base is equipped with 20 F-16s and four A330 MRTT aerial refuelling aircraft. The A330 MRTT’s are essentially a refuelling machine tied to a fighter. This greatly increases the radius of action. Not only can the F-35 be refuelled in the air, but it can also land on allied, especially American, aircraft carriers. For example, an American Wasp-class assault ship can support the F-35’s offensive actions.

Singapore is located on a junction of the Malacca Straits, a crucial sea lane in Southeast Asia that has about 50,000 mercantile ships pass through every year. The Malacca Straits, strategically and economically, is one of the most important sea lanes in the entire world, in equal importance to the Suez and Panama Canals. This is because the Malacca Straits is the main sea route connecting the Indian Ocean with the Pacific Ocean. The route runs along the southern shore of the island and Singapore controls the airspace above it, making it one of the most important sea lanes in the world, especially for international Chinese trade and the Belt and Road Initiative. It is for this reason that Singapore has become another flashpoint in the China-U.S. rivalry in the region as any blockage of this sea lane from Chinese ships will significantly impact China’s economy.

Although Singapore is more aligned with the U.S., its air force does not match its ambitions. However, the acquisition of the U.S.-made F-35’s aims to create the island country into a powerful Small Power in one of the most important geostrategic locations in the world. The F-35 creates many advantages in the Malacca Straits for the U.S. and Singapore. In the event of a war in the region the Straits could be closed to China, creating significant economic and logistical problems for China’s engagement with the rest of the world.

In this way, Singapore’s acquisition of modern aircraft means not only increased control of the Straits, which is critical for military and commercial navigation, but also the possibility for the U.S. and Singapore to quickly dispatching reinforcements to areas where potential combat in the South China Sea, Taiwan and the Korean Peninsula, could occur. With Singapore’s F-35B, the small island country can also appear in unexpected places all across the region to assist their American allies in anti-China operations.

It is likely that Washington is turning Singapore into an important U.S. hub in the region to enact and serve its interests and prevent the ever-increasing influence of China in Southeast Asia. With Singapore becoming a regional hub for the U.S. military, there is the possibility that the U.S. Air Force can reduce its reliance on air refuelling and facilitates in possible combat operations.  Therefore, there is little doubt that Singapore’s latest acquisition of these powerful warplanes is to further consolidate Singapore’s alliance with the U.S. and Commonwealth states who overwhelmingly represent the Old Order of the world system and are yet to accept the realities of the Multipolar System.

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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.

Paul Antonopoulos is a Research Fellow at the Center for Syncretic Studies.

The US Air Force reported Monday that it carried out more airstrikes in Afghanistan in 2019 than any year in the last decade. Manned and unmanned aircraft dropped 7,423 bombs, topping the previous decade high of 7,362 in 2018.

Nearly two decades into its criminal neocolonial occupation, the United States government is dropping an average of 20 bombs on the country per day. The rise in airstrikes has resulted in an increase of civilian casualties at the hands of the US military, with a UN report from December finding that American attacks from January to October had claimed the lives of 579 civilians and wounded 306, a third higher than in 2018.

Among the US massacres that made headlines last year was a drone strike at the end of November that killed an entire family, including three women, in Khost province. The attack came just one day after President Donald Trump made a Thanksgiving Day photo-op appearance at Bagram Air Base, flying in and out in the dark of night. In September, a drone strike in Nangarhar province, along the border with Pakistan, killed 30 farm workers and injured 40 others as they were sleeping after a day’s work picking and shelling pine nuts.

Highlighting the scope of ongoing US operations, one of the US Air Force’s electronic surveillance jets used for coordinating airstrikes and ground attacks crashed in central Afghanistan on Monday, killing the two-man crew. While the Taliban took credit for shooting down the aircraft, the Pentagon told CBS News that the cause was under investigation, but that there were “no indications the crash was caused by enemy fire.”

By conservative estimates, the 18-year-old US-led war and occupation of the country has directly resulted in the deaths of more than 157,000 people, including 43,000 Afghan civilians, with hundreds of thousands of others dying from the effects of the fighting. More than 3,500 US and other NATO soldiers have lost their lives in Afghanistan and thousands more have been wounded over the years. Seventeen American soldiers died in Afghanistan in 2019, the highest number since 2015.

Even as the number of US troops in the country has fallen to 12,000—down from a peak of 100,000 during Barack Obama’s surge in 2009—and 4,000 more are expected to leave the country soon, the Pentagon has pursued a dramatic increase in the pace of airstrikes as part of the Trump administration’s efforts to pressure the Taliban into agreeing to a settlement in the longest war in American history.

Trump threatened last year that he could quickly kill “10 million” Afghans and wipe the country of 35 million “off the face of the Earth,” while insisting that he hoped for a negotiated agreement. The Afghan-Pakistan border was the chosen site for the dropping of the largest nonnuclear weapon in the US arsenal, the Massive Ordnance Air Blast bomb, in April 2017, demonstrating that there were no restraints on what the US military would do in pursuit of American imperialist interests.

Talks that were abruptly called off by Trump via Twitter in September 2019, on the eve of a purported peace conference at Camp David, resumed in December, with the Taliban offering to scale back attacks on US and Afghan-puppet forces for a limited period of time. The Taliban now holds more territory than at any time since the US invasion began in 2001, with 67 percent of districts and 51 percent of the population under its control or actively contested, according to an estimate published by the FDD’s Long War Journal.

An online poll recently conducted by Pajhwok Afghan News found that 90 percent of Afghans want a peace deal with the Taliban and 68 percent desire a ceasefire ahead of possible intra-Afghan talks.

Trump met with Afghanistan President Ashraf Ghani at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland last week, telling the Afghan leader that only a “significant and lasting reduction” in attacks by the Taliban would facilitate negotiations. So far, the Taliban has refused to negotiate with the US-backed government, instead focusing on direct negotiations with US representatives in Doha. The Sunni fundamentalist movement, which controlled Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001, continues to insist that it will not share power with the Ghani regime, which is propped by US military support and funding.

Despite the expenditure of trillions of dollars and millions of lives, two decades of imperialist war in Afghanistan, across the Middle East and throughout Africa have done nothing to achieve the aim of securing control over strategic oil- and mineral-rich regions and geostrategic energy transit routes.

However, American imperialism is not backing down. A cease fire or peace deal and withdrawal of combat troops would not bring an end to US intervention in Afghanistan. As seen in Iraq and Syria, American imperialism will seek to maintain its military foothold with the use of special forces and drone assassinations, and the deployment of ground troops in violation of territorial sovereignty.

This was made clear in testimony Tuesday by John Sopko, the special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction, who told members of the House Oversight Committee that efforts would be necessary to safeguard “US taxpayers’ investments” in the country from risks that will follow the “day after” a peace deal is signed.

The Trump administration’s effort to negotiate a settlement with the Taliban has nothing to do with bringing an “end to endless wars,” as Trump has claimed. It is instead aimed at preparing the stage for even bigger conflicts. Two decades after the launching of the so-called “war on terror,” the stage has been set for open conflict against “great powers,” foremost China and Russia. US Defense Secretary Mark Esper told reporters in December that the drawdown of troops in Afghanistan would facilitate their redeployment throughout the Asia-Pacific to confront China.

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Donald J. Trump is the third president in American history to face an impeachment trial in the United States Senate. He stands accused by Democratic members in the House of Representatives of abusing power and obstructing Congress.

In reality, Trump is being impeached because he crossed an unspoken red line in American politics by deliberately sticking his thumb in the eye of the Washington establishment.  He did so by winning an election he was not supposed to win defeating two political dynasties along the way, the Bush’s and the Clinton’s.  He threatened to ‘drain the swamp’ and fight political corruption when he took up residence in the White House.  He promised to end unnecessary and costly wars in the Middle East.  Most egregiously, he pledged to seek peaceful relations with Russia once elected.  Finally, he said some nasty things about Mexicans, Muslims, the media and the ruling class that exposed several fault lines in American society that those in power would prefer remain hidden from view.  In short, Trump polarized the United States in ways that threaten the stability of the political order while simultaneously perpetuating the economic and social inequalities protected by the political establishment he attacked.

It is therefore necessary to examine the historical events that brought Trump to this ignominious moment in his presidency and to expose the real reasons for his impeachment.  It is also wise to assess the part played by Trump, his accusers and defenders in perpetuating a pattern of lawless behavior that contributes to a ubiquitous chronicle of American state criminality.

The 2016 political season was to be a time of harvesting for Hillary Clinton, a dogged politician who labored as First Lady in the shadow of her husband Bill Clinton during his two terms as president and who subsequently launched an independent political career, first as a junior Senator from New York and second as Secretary of State, a position she dutifully accepted as a consolation prize after having been defeated in her first bid to become the Democratic party nominee for president in 2008 by the charismatic upstart from Illinois, Barak Obama.  Secretary Clinton was widely favored to win the presidency in 2016 over the presumptive Republican party nominee, Jeb Bush.

Enter Donald Trump who, in the pursuit of ever growing fame and fortune, launched a presidential campaign designed primarily to advertise ‘Brand Trump’.  To his own surprise and that of his advisors, Trump gained enormous traction at political rallies by exploiting people’s hatreds, fears and prejudices, a skill once practiced to great effect by one of his mentors, Roy Cohen, who served as chief counsel for the infamous Senator from Wisconsin, Joseph McCarthy.

Trump realized very early on that significant sectors of the American population felt as though they were thrown overboard 35 years ago by the leaders of both political parties who continually promised to provide phantom jobs and trickle down prosperity.  What actually trickled down during the neo-liberal economic era ushered in by Ronald Reagan in 1981 and continued to a greater or lesser degree by his successors was unemployment, poverty and despair.

Large sectors of the working and middle classes watched helplessly as corporate America outsourced their jobs to China, Mexico, Indonesia and beyond, destroyed their unions and turned the American dream into an unending American nightmare, all the while proceeding to create social conditions south of the border that flooded the country with undocumented immigrants who were desperate to find jobs.  For their part, the migrants were fleeing the consequences of globalized free trade agreements, drug wars, coup’s and insidious reincarnations of political repression that turned their countries into living hells.  These foreign infernos were primarily ignited by the same American corporatocracy that was responsible for creating the economic and social devastation that ravaged the United States, all in the service of transnational capital accumulation.

Trump proceeded to manipulate the deep seated discontent of American workers by promising to “Make America Great Again.” He said he would return jobs to this country, rebuild its infrastructure and rid the homeland of illegal immigrants, gangs and drugs.  Trump’s right wing populist rhetoric was carefully scripted by the ultranationalist Steve Bannon.  Bannon’s demagogy worked to perfection against the hapless Clinton who, mired in scandal, attached those same American workers as “deplorables.”

Being an accomplished huckster, Trump never intended to make good on all of his rhetorical promises, but in his zeal to win, he violated the unspoken rules of political etiquette by airing America’s dirty laundry.  Psychologically, Trump functioned as the American id.

During a lengthy campaign and much to the horror of the political establishment, Trump had the temerity to tell Jeb Bush during a Republican presidential debate that his brother led the country into the Iraq war based upon lies.  He told Hillary Clinton during a nationally televised debate that if he were president she would be in prison for destroying 33,000 emails under subpoena by Congress.  He called the mainstream media an enemy of the people.  He stated openly that NATO was obsolete and America should get along with Russia.  And he told the American people that if elected, he would wrist their government back from the clutches a corrupt ruling class.  Trump had the audacity to say these things because he is independently wealthy, could finance his own campaign for the Republican nomination, and being a bona fide member of the owning class, had apparently become discontented with the politicians that serve as the hired help of his class and had decided, being a supreme narcissist, that if elected, he could do a better job of running the country himself.

The results of the election shocked the political establishment.  On November 8, 2016, Donald J. Trump was elected as the 45^th President of the United States.  Trump pulled off one of the most remarkable upsets in modern American political history because he tapped into an enormous sea of anger and hatred that exists within vast swaths of the American wasteland.

From the moment he became a serious candidate for president, a covert operation was set in motion by Clintonite loyalists within the national security autocracy, the democratic party and the corporate media to prevent him from winning the election.  Once that project failed, a second phase of the operation was launched.  Here, the operatives had two objectives.  Firstly, to depict Trump as an illegitimate president thereby securing his removal as the chief executive of the ruling class.  Secondly, to effectively block his peace initiative with Russia.  The first phase of the covert operation produced FISA-gate and the second phase produced Russia-gate, Ukraine-gate and impeachment.

The covert operation was reportedly organized by John Brennan at the CIA, James Comey at the FBI, James Clapper at the NSA and Hillary Clinton and her cronies in the Democratic Party.  Their fabrications were printed as truth by the New York Times and the Washington Post and broadcast uncritically by CNN, ABC, NBC and CBS.  It is crucial to remember the CIA’s Operation Mockingbird in this context.  A special counsel, Robert Mueller, was appointed to investigate ‘Russian interference’ in the 2016 election and possible ‘collusion’ with the Trump campaign.  When the investigation failed to prove collusion, a CIA ‘whistleblower’ was produced to level additional accusations of official misconduct involving Ukraine.  Chairmen Adam Schiff and Jerry Nadler, along with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi took up their posts in Congress to investigate Trump’s interaction with Ukrainian President Zelensky and quickly moved to orchestrate impeachment proceedings that have resulted in a Senate trial.

The litany of sensational revelations seemed unending.  Leaked conversations of Trump bragging to Billy Bush about grabbing the private parts of women; salacious stories emanating from the infamous Steele dossier about Trump having sex with urinating prostitutes in a Moscow hotel; illegally obtained FISA warrants used by the FBI to surveil the Trump campaign; charges that  Russia hacked computer servers in the DNC to obtain the Clinton emails, subsequently giving them to Wikileaks for publication; accusations that Trump collaborated with Julian Assange and Wikileaks in leaking the Clinton emails to discredit his opponent; the firing of FBI director Comey by Trump to obstruct justice; the withholding of foreign aid to pressure the president of Ukraine to investigate Joseph Biden, a political rival, thereby jeopardizing the integrity of American elections and national security.

The most serious allegations leveled against Trump are not supported by facts.  No empirical evidence has ever been presented to prove any of the numerous allegations involving Russian state interference in the 2016 presidential election.

Julian Assange maintains that the Clinton’s emails were leaked by a non-state actor, not hacked.  The emails revealed, among other things, that Clinton voiced a public policy for voters while advocating a private policy for Wall Street donors and that Clinton’s campaign staff frantically sought ways to discredit rival Bernie Sanders.  Clinton subsequently colluded with the DNC to subvert the candidacy of Sanders during the 2016 Democratic presidential primary.  The emails also revealed that her campaign staff worked vigorously to respond to criticisms that while Secretary of State, Hillary participated with husband Bill in a ‘pay for play’ influence peddling operation, more commonly known in legal circles as racketeering, that was set up through the Clinton Foundation.

Furthermore, the Steele dossier was exposed as a fraud and credible legal scholars have demonstrated  that Trump’s activities with Ukraine do not rise to the level of ‘high crimes and misdemeanors’ as required for impeachment by the U.S. Constitution.

What the American people are witnessing is an ongoing attempt to reverse the outcome of the 2016 presidential election by removing Trump from office through impeachment.  The probable results of this strategy do not bode well for the Democrats.  In all certainty, Trump will be acquitted in the Senate trial, thereby strengthened, not weakened in his bid for re-election.  The Democrats chose the path of impeachment because they have no genuine oppositional politics with which to defeat Trump.

Consequently, what is on display in Washington is the spectacle of one faction of the American political establishment using the constitution as a legal weapon against the other faction in a very public struggle for control of U.S. empire.

What remains largely unexamined during the impeachment saga are the real crimes, as opposed to the alleged crimes, that have been committed by Donald Trump in the service of that empire.  A central part of this drama is the complicity of both his accusers and defenders in the commission of those crimes.

Firstly, Donald Trump would never have had the opportunity to seek a criminal investigation of his presidential rival if not for the fact that former Vice President Joseph Biden had been involved in corrupt activities while serving as Barack Obama’s point man in Ukraine.  Biden’s activity entailed actually threatening Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko  with cancellation of $1 billion in U. S. loan guarantees if Poroshenko did not fire Ukrainian Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin who was investigating corrupt practices of the natural gas firm Barisma Holdings, a company on whose board of directors sat Biden’s son, Hunter, at a cost to the company of $166,000 a month.

Secondly, Joseph Biden would not have been involved in these activities had not the Obama administration engineered a coup d’état in the Ukraine in 2014 to oust the pro-Russian government of Victor Yanukovych who had refused to come under the domination of the EU and IMF.  U.S. involvement in the coup was revealed, in part, by leaked conversations of Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Victoria Nuland who, along with U.S. Ambassador Jeoffrey Pyatt, helped legitimate the post-coup government by selecting its Prime Minister. Nuland’s ‘guy’ was  Arseniy Yatsenyuk who imposed IMF austerity on Ukraine once Yanukovych was removed. Nuland also revealed that the United States had invested $5 billion in anti-government activities in Ukraine.

Nuland’s husband is Robert Kagan, a prominent neoconservative who was instrumental in creating the Project for the New American Century, a think tank whose members advocated preemptive and unilateral ‘war on terror’ as a pretext for global interventionism.  Kagan, along with several other neoconservatives, is also the author of a policy document that directly challenges Trump’s ‘America First’ military strategy with one of aggressive interventionism.  Kagan’s brother Fredrick, worked as a fellow in the American Enterprise Institute in 2007  where he wrote a policy paper that was instrumental bringing about a massive troop surge during the war in Iraq.  The neocons are consistent advocates of military interventionism and they dominate thinking in the foreign policy establishment of the United States.  It is in this context that the firing of National Security Advisor John Bolton can be understood. Bolton is a virulent neoconservative who consistently advocated war as the policy of first choice in Iran, North Korea, and Venezuela to annoyance of Trump who does not want to risk re-election by starting new wars of choice.  Bolton’s testimony is now sought by Senate Democrats in the impeachment trial as they attempt to discredit Trump on Ukraine.

The coup in Ukraine touched off a civil war in that country that the United States converted into a proxy war with Russia.  The Obama administration initially withheld lethal military aid to the Kiev government in 2014 but quickly reversed course in 2015 and signed off on a congressional aid package that approved $50 million in lethal military aid in 2015.  Between 2016 and 2019 that aid increased to $850 million.  To date, the United States has sent $1.5 billion to Ukraine in security assistance.  The Obama administration also falsely accused Russia of invading Ukraine when the latter annexed the Crimea and began arming separatist forces in the Donbass region in response to U.S. actions. Therein lies the centrality of sending military aid to Ukraine for the U.S. foreign policy establishment.  Trump stands accused by Congressional Democrats of endangering U.S. national security by temporarily withholding that aid. Trump eventually released $400 million of military aid to Ukraine yet the accusation underscores the need for impeachment in the eyes of Democrats.

Thirdly, Trump advocated détente with Russia.  For the neoconservatives and liberal interventions in the American foreign policy establishment, strategy in the Ukraine is part of a larger project that has been undertaken to subjugate Russia.  Part of the EU deal rejected by Yanukovych stipulated Ukrainian military coordination with NATO, a pact that would have further extended the military arm of the EU to the doorstep of the Russian Federation.  Militarily confronting Russia began with the expansion of NATO eastward under Bill Clinton in 1999; the withdrawal from the ABM treaty by Bush Jr. in 2001; the placement of anti-ballistic missile defense systems in Romania in 2016 and Poland in 2018 by Obama; and the imposition of economic sanctions, expulsion of diplomats and seizure of Russian diplomatic properties in the United States by Obama in 2018.  Collectively, these policies have contributed to a calculated new cold war.   Hence, the targeting of Trump who wanted peaceful relations with Russia.  Hence, Russia-gate and its spin off Ukraine-gate.  Hence, impeachment.

U.S. foreign policy has been structured to prevent the emergence of a global rival from the Eurasian land mass after the dissolution of the Soviet Union.  The architect of that policy was Zbigniew Brzezinski, President Carter’s National Security Advisor.  Brzezinski was also the mastermind of the Russian ‘bear trap’ that induced Soviet intervention into Afghanistan in 1980 by arming, training and deploying the ‘Islamic Mujahideen’, out of which sprang Al Qaeda.  Trump will not be allowed to deviate from aggressive anti-Russian policy.  This is particularly true in the Middle East.

In assessing policy in the Middle East, it is important to note that the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), is an offshoot of Al Qaeda that is presently being used as a justification for U.S. troop deployment in Iraq and Syria. Ostensibly the troops are deployed to fight ISIS, but in reality they are there to secure the region’s oil resources and protect the apartheid state of Israel.  As such, Trump’s regional policy directly conflicts with that of the Russian, Iranian, Syrian and Iraqi governments that actually fight ISIS.  Trump’s order to assassinate Iranian General Suleimani, who coordinated the fight against ISIS puts a lie to U.S. claims that it is fighting a ‘war on terror’ against the Islamic State.

Although Trump has indicated that he is against wars of regime change in this region, his policies are likely to provoke the very wars he claims to oppose, especially if he follows the advice of Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, yet another neoconservative warmonger.

Trump’s missile strikes in Syria and the illegal military occupation of Syrian oil fields; Trump’s green light for the Turkish invasion of Syria; Trump’s withdrawal from the Iranian nuclear agreement (JAPOC); Trump’s imposition of economic sanctions on Iran; Trump’s extrajudicial assassination of General Suleimani; Trump’s massive arms sales to Saudi Arabia; Trump’s decision to move the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem and recognize Israel’s annexation of Syria’s Golan Heights; Trump’s support for the dictatorship in Egypt; and Trump’s drone war in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Pakistan, and Somalia, constitute genuine war crimes and crimes against humanity for which he should be removed from office. But Trump is not being impeached for any of these crimes because they are crimes committed in furtherance of empire.

Furthermore, Trump has committed these crimes with the full support of Congress, the largely symbolic and non-binding War Powers Act Resolution of 2020 notwithstanding.

It was Congress, in a vote that included 188 Democrats, that approved Trump’s $738 billion military budget in 2020.

It was the Senate that ratified Trump’s $500 billion arms sale to Saudi Arabia in 2017.  The majority of those billions are used by the Saudi’s to buy weapons from Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, General Dynamics and Boeing so as to wage war in Yemen.  It should be noted that members of the House and Senate own an estimated $5.3 million worth of stock in the defense industry raising a visible conflict of interest.  Consequently, it is no surprise that the Senate confirmed former lobbyist for the defense contractor Raytheon, Mark Esper as Trump’s Secretary of Defense in 2019 without a hitch.

Additionally, the den of Congressional thieves continues funding for the war in Afghanistan at a cost of $45 billion per year, approved a $38 billion military aid package over 10 years for Israel in 2018 and overwhelmingly extended key provisions of the Patriot Act in 2019, with significant support coming from the Democratic party of lesser evilists, thus illustrating their support for the rampant militarism underlying American state criminality.

Unrestrained militarism is a crime against peace.  Aggressive preparation for war leads to actual war.  America’s Imperial President and its venal Congress are guilty of waging war on humanity, a monstrous reality that is hidden behind the charade of impeachment.

The battle over Trump’s impeachment is a power struggle that will decide who will lead the American empire.  It is not a fight involving the abuse of power as much as it is a fight involving the exercise of power.  The outcome of that fight will determine which faction of the American political establishment will employ Imperial state power to advance a vicious global empire that relentlessly elevates the rights of property over the rights of people to the detriment of all humanity.

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Donald Monaco is a political analyst who lives in Brooklyn, New York.  He received his Master’s Degree in Education from the State University of New York at Buffalo in 1979 and was radicalized by the Vietnam War.  He writes from an anti-imperialist, anti-capitalist perspective.  His recent book is titled, The Politics ofTerrorism, and is available at amazon.com

US President Donald Trump finally unveiled his ‘Middle East Peace Plan’ on Tuesday, 28 January 2020, during a media conference in Washington, as the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, stood by his side.

The entire document, called ‘Peace to Prosperity: A Vision to Improve the Lives of the Palestinian and Israeli People’ consists of 181 pages, including a political plan, ‘The Trump Economic Plan’ (that Washington had already introduced last July, during a conference in Bahrain) and sections on security, border crossings, water, refugees, and Gaza. The economic plan vowed to set up a $50 billion fund to help revive the Palestinian economy, with Jordan, Egypt, and Israel also receiving shares of the proposed financial aid. Trump hopes to raise this money from Arab states, but little funding has thus far been pledged to turn the Bahrain plan into action.

Trump’s Washington announcement is considered the political component of what he and his advisers had termed the ‘Deal of the Century’. The plan creates a fictitious Palestinian state, which should be demilitarised and have no control over its own security, borders, waters, and foreign policy, ceding most of these to Israel. Such a ‘state’ would, in effect, have less power and control than the bantustans created by apartheid South Africa in the 1970s. Certainly, Lucas Mangope or General Oupa Gqozo, leaders of the Bophutatswana and Ciskei bantustans respectively, had more power over the territories they ostensibly controlled than the ‘government’ of Trump’s envisaged Palestinian ‘state’ would have.

Yes to settlements

According to the long-delayed plan, the USA will officially recognise Israel’s Jewish settlements in the occupied territories. All the settlements, housing around 600 000 settlers, are illegal under international law. The document is also an encouragement to Israel to seize as much Palestinian land as it wants before the plan is operationalised.

According to the document, ‘[Israel] will not have to uproot any settlements, and will incorporate the vast majority of Israeli settlements into contiguous Israeli territory. Israeli enclaves located inside contiguous Palestinian territory will become part of the State of Israel and be connected to it through an effective transportation system.’

No to Palestinian State

Although Trump’s plan refers to a ‘Realistic Two-State Solution’ and the creation of a Palestinian state, it delineates that entity as a series of individual enclaves connected by tunnels and bridges, and comprising only around nine per cent of what was British Mandate Palestine in 1947. It also imposes ‘limitations of certain sovereign powers in the Palestinian areas’ which strips the new entity of the powers, rights and duties of a normal state. The ill-defined Palestinian ‘state’ is also conditioned on the Palestinian leadership meeting a number of conditions, including the rejection of ‘terror’.

‘The State of Israel, the State of Palestine and the Arab countries will work together to counter Hezbollah, ISIS, Hamas… and all other terrorist groups and organizations, as well as other extremist groups,’ the document says. Clearly, ‘other extremist groups’ does not refer to Netanyahu’s Likud party or the myriad armed, violent racist Jewish settler groups that daily attack Palestinians, their livestock, farms and other possessions.

The ‘state’ will not be allowed to have any military or paramilitary capabilities, and will ‘not have the right to forge military, intelligence or security arrangements with any state or organization that adversely affect the State of Israel’s security, as determined by the State of Israel.’ The document contains a list of security capabilities that the Palestinian ‘state’ will not be allowed to have, including mines, heavy machine guns, and military intelligence. And, in the event that the Palestinians violate any of these prohibitions, Israel ‘will maintain the right to dismantle and destroy any facility’. Israel will also have the right to undertake any measures to ‘ensure that the State of Palestine remains demilitarized and non-threatening’ to Israel.

Yes to Jerusalem as capital – for Israel

The plan refers to Israel as a ‘good custodian of Jerusalem’, ‘unlike many previous powers that had ruled Jerusalem, and had destroyed the holy sites of other faiths.’ It also commends Israel ‘for safeguarding the religious sites of all and maintaining a religious status quo’, completely ignoring the reality of Israel’s destruction of and ongoing attacks on Christian and Muslim religious sites for the past seven decades.

Jerusalem, according to the plan, is envisioned as the ‘undivided’ capital of Israel, as already declared by the Trump administration on 6 December 2017. The plan does, however, propose to give Palestinians limited sovereignty over a few neighbourhoods that are adjacent to the Israeli apartheid wall that is built illegally in occupied East Jerusalem. ‘The sovereign capital of the State of Palestine should be in the section of East Jerusalem located in all areas east and north of the existing security barrier, including Kafr Aqab, the eastern part of Shuafat and Abu Dis,’ the document says, making clear that the Palestinian ‘state’ will not have control over any part of Jerusalem itself, especially not the old city of Jerusalem or the important religious sites such as the Al-Aqsa Mosque or the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. In a seemingly-generous concession, it suggests that the neighbourhoods identified ‘could be named Al Quds or another name as determined by the State of Palestine’. Essentially, Palestinians can have their capital in Jerusalem, as long as their Jerusalem is not in Jerusalem.

Yes to Gaza as part of Palestinian state, if…

With not a single reference in its 181 pages to the fourteen-year-long brutal Israeli siege on Gaza, and the various Israeli military onslaughts on the territory in that period, the document asserts that the people of Gaza ‘have suffered for too long under the repressive rule of Hamas’. It is irrelevant that Hamas was democratically elected by Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza in 2006, but has been subjected, along with two million Palestinians, to the hermetic Israeli siege in the impoverished Gaza Strip.

Despite Palestinians in Gaza having ‘suffered for too long’, for Gaza to be included in any future ‘peace agreement’, it would have to be demilitarised and to fall under the control of the Palestinian Authority or any other party that Israel chooses to recognise.

No to refugees

As expected, the plan repeats Israel’s rejection of Palestinian refugees’ right, under international law, to return to their homes and their country. ‘There shall be no right of return by, or absorption of, any Palestinian refugee into the State of Israel,’ it stipulates. What is described as the ‘refugee problem’ should be solved by Palestine’s ‘Arab brothers’, who ‘have the moral responsibility to integrate them into their countries as the Jews were integrated into the State of Israel’. Even the possible ‘absorption’ of Palestinian refugees into ‘the State of Palestine’ is subject to limitations. The plan envisages a committee ‘of Israelis and Palestinians’ being formed to ensure that the ‘rights of Palestinian refugees to immigrate to the State of Palestine shall be limited in accordance with agreed security arrangements’.

The document calls for a ‘just, fair and realistic solution to the Palestinian refugee issue’, but then equates it with ‘the Jewish refugee issue’, referring to Jews who left Muslim countries to settle in Israel, calling also for a ‘just, fair and realistic solution for the issues relating to Jewish refugees’.

Yes to security – for Israel

Israel’s security is a key thread running through the document, with one subheading clearly stating ‘The Primacy of Security’. Israel will, in fact, have ‘overriding security responsibility over the State of Palestine’, and will be responsible for ‘security at all international crossings into the State of Palestine’, meaning the new state will have no control over any of its borders. Israel will also ‘continue to maintain control over the airspace and electromagnetic spectrum west of the Jordan river’.

Even aspects of foreign relations of the Palestinian ‘state’, according to the document, will be the responsibility of Israel. ‘The State of Palestine will not have the right to forge military, intelligence or security arrangements with any state or organization that adversely affect the State of Israel’s security, as determined by the State of Israel,’ it asserts.

Yes to more ethnic cleansing

Another worrying section of the plan concerns Palestinian communities within Israel who live in an area referred to as the ‘Triangle’. Regarding these communities – in Kafr Qara, Ar’ara, Baha al-Gharbiyye, Umm al-Fahm, Qalansawe, Tayibe, Kafr Qasim, Tira, Kafr Bara and Jaljulia, the document ‘contemplates the possibility… that the borders of Israel will be redrawn such that the Triangle Communities become part of the State of Palestine’. The goal, then, is to politically relocate these communities of around 350 000 people, stripping the individuals of their Israeli citizenship and dumping them into the Palestinian bantustan. The plan is effectively proposing yet another way of helping to ethnically cleanse Israel of its Palestinian population.

Conclusion

Palestinians, seemingly without exception, have rejected the Trump plan. A number of Palestinian political formations the day before the plan’s unveiling to express their united opposition to it. This is not surprising, considering the provisions of the document. The reality, however, is that, in many respects, Trump’s plan only attempts to legitimate the status quo. Much of what the document talks about as a future ‘Vision’ is already the Palestinian reality.

The question now is how Palestinian groups will actualise their opposition as a resistance project that confronts not only the Trump Plan, but also the Israeli occupation and annexation project as a whole.

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The following report by Middle East Monitor remains to be fully corroborated.

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Russian intelligence sources have claimed that Michael D’Andrea, head of CIA operations in Iran and who orchestrated the assassination of Iranian General Qassem Soleimani, was killed in a US spy plane downed yesterday in Ghazni, Afghanistan.

The plane with US Air Force markings reportedly served as the CIA’s mobile command for D’Andrea, who earnt several nicknames including: Ayatollah Mike, the Dark Prince, and the Undertaker. He is one of the most prominent CIA figures in the region, appointed head of the agency’s Iran Mission Centre in 2017. Under his leadership, the agency was perceived to take a more “aggressive stance toward Iran”.

The Taliban claimed to have shot down the plane but have yet to provide evidence, whilst the US has denied the claim but has acknowledged the loss of a Bombardier E-11A plane in central Afghanistan. Graphic images online have already circulated purportedly showing some of the charred remains of those on board.

#AlFath
Enemy intelligence aircraft crashed in Sado Khelo area of Deh Yak district #Ghazni noon hours today resulting in all crew & high-ranking CIA members killed.
Wreckage & dead bodies laying at crash site. https://t.co/DL7qwHpcRe

— Zabihullah (..ذبـــــیح الله م ) (@Zabehulah_M33) January 27, 2020

Unconfirmed reports that the CIA head of anti-Iran operations, Michael D’Andrea aka Ayatollah Mike, was on board the plane that crashed near Ghazni, Afghanistan this morning.

D’Andrea also masterminded the murder of Imad Mughniyeh, former Hezbollah Chief of Staff, back in 2008.

— Brasco_Aad (@Brasco_Aad) January 27, 2020

Afghan authorities initially claimed the plane was a state-owned airline, but this was denied by the company, Ariana. Helicopters have been brought down before by the Taliban, but they are not believed to have the capabilities required to bring down a high-flying aircraft.

It has been speculated that Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corp (IRGC) may also have a hand in the incident, especially as anti-aircraft support has previously been given to the Taliban. Additionally, the Afghan Shia Fatimyoun Brigades, who are trained by the IRGC, also have a presence in the country.

CIA Middle East chief, Soleimani Killer and Bin Laden Hunter, dead on Jet in Afghanistan. Tasnim and Mirror told after VT
by Fabio Giuseppe Carlo Carisio for VT iTaly

VERSIONE ORIGINALE IN ITALIANO
The news is so big that we have to write it running the risk of a denial, … pic.twitter.com/7Da2jmkHug

— VeteransToday (@veteranstoday) January 28, 2020

An exiled Iranian journalist who has written previously for the hard-line Javan daily newspaper suggested the IRGC was involved, tweeting: “The American Gulfstream plane was downed in Afghanistan by the Taliban. They say that intelligence officers were on board. This report has not yet been confirmed, but if it is, it is possible that the issue of Iran will also emerge in this case.”

Another Iranian journalist who writes for Mashregh newspaper, described as having close links to IRGC, tweeted not long after the news broke out: “We will attack them on the same level as they are attacking us.”

Soleimani’s successor as head of the IRGC’s Quds Force, Esmail Qaani, has established ties in Afghanistan going back to the 1980s. Additionally, the chief commander of the IRGC, General Hossein Salami, warned that no American military commanders will be safe if the US administration continues to threaten Iranian commanders.

D’Andrea, who is reportedly a convert to Islam, doing so in order to marry his Muslim wife, who is from a wealthy family from the Mauritius of Gujarati origins, having met on his first overseas assignment in East Africa, one of the senior directors of her family’s company Curumjee Group, has been speculated to provide cover for CIA operations.

He also oversaw hundreds of drone strikes, which according to The New York Times “killed thousands of Islamist militants and hundreds of civilians”. D’andrea is credited with being the mastermind behind the CIA’s notorious “signature strike” used to kill people based on their behaviour, not identity, subsequently used to determine someone’s guilt or likelihood of being a terrorist.

He was central to the post-9/11 interrogation programme and ran the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center. Assassinations and torture were central to his approach. He also oversaw the hunt for Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and was involved in the assassination of Hezbollah member Imad Mughniyah in Damascus, Syria.

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Featured image: US vs Iran, who’s going to win the war of influence – Cartoon [Sabaaneh/MiddleEastMonitor]

One day, long, long ago, a man was fishing on the reef, and he saw something out to sea. It appeared to be an island, but it moved. He ran to the beach shouting ‘’An island is coming here’’, and quickly the people gathered on the beach to watch a sailing ship approach and anchor off the reef. The inhabitants of this island came ashore, and our island-world ceased to be. The world exploded, and our island became a remote outpost …the last place in a country which has few centres and much remoteness – (Luana, 1969 : 15)

In the mid-1960s I spent 14 months in the Central Highlands of New Guinea studying the agricultural system of the Enga people, this in the context of my doctoral research in the Research School of Pacific Studies, as it was then called. For much of this time I lived among the Raiapu Enga, on the southern slopes of the Lai Valley, overlooking the patrol post, mission station and airstrip at Wapenamanda. The Aruni – their clan name – at Sabakamádá built a house for me on the edge of their ceremonial ground, welcomed me into their homes and gardens, and responded with surprising patience, and occasionally with real interest, to my interminable questioning. Their willingness to share their lives with me, their generosity and above all their pride and dignity left an indelible mark on me. Even today, over 50 years on, scarcely a week goes by without my thinking about the time I spent in what we call today Enga Province. In this respect I share without a shadow of a doubt the sentiments of Joël Bonnemaison, a fellow ethno-geographer and above all friend, who I first met in Canberra back in 1968 :

Local studies commenced in the 1960s and continue to be practised, differently. For those researchers who undertook them it is an extended immersion (…) in another society, a first confrontation between ideas and the reality of ‘fieldwork,’ and often a kind of initiation. We all return from it changed, respectful of those whom we have met. (Bonnemaison, 1993. My   translation and emphasis.)

The Golden Age

With the benefit of hindsight I now realise that I had experienced what another of my contemporaries, Bill Clarke, called theGolden Age in Papua New Guinea, that brief but magical period for both the observers and the observedthat was suspended between the end of tribal fighting and the onset of global capitalism. It was a time of discovery of other ways of inhabiting the earth. It was also a time without fear which nourished expectations of a more generous and caring world to come. The Highlanders welcomed us inquisitive strangers into their land. Our mutual concern was to get to know each other and, quite naturally, to collectively benefit from the ties we were in the process of establishing. In my particular case I was deeply impressed by the sophistication of the Enga agricultural system, in other words it’s absolute intelligence, this in a context of climatic marginality and demographic pressure. By the extraordinary order and beauty of the humanised landscape too. Indeed Joël created a vocabulary to describe a similar world in Tanna (Vanuatu) : magical gardens, enchanted territories, cultural plenitude…

In the 1960s the land belonged unequivocally to those who inhabited it. The colonial State ensured relative peace and freedom of movement, its primary concern being to establish a pax australiana,while the Corporation, with its insatiable thirst for resources to nourish the global economy, was yet to rear its head. Living temporarily on the edge of the sing-singground at Sabakamádá I was able to appreciate something of the quality of Raiapu Enga life; the easy mix of work and leisure and, with regard to the latter, the wealth of casual conversations, of social relations and of ceremonial activities. I felt inspired, both intellectually and emotionally. Certainly it wasn’t ‘paradise’ – but then does such a place exist?! There were inequalities in material wealth and hence in the exercise of power. So there was a big man and one or two rubbish men among the Aruni, but there was no abject poverty, no exclusion. Rather the big man took the rubbish maninto his household such that, in return for his labour, he was cared for. The big man, for his part, was called upon to defend the interests of the clan (community) as a whole. Further, with the exception of high infant mortality and some protein deficiency in the diet, the general health status and life expectancy of the population as a whole was surprisingly good.

There were inevitably moments of questioning on my part. I think particularly of the time when the young bachelors, following their return from the clan’s sadárú (initiation) ceremony in the hills, ran amok for 24 hours or so. It was a ritualised moment of individual frustration, largely symbolic violence and anger prior to settling into adult life as a formally delineated, and hence constrained, member of the group. The deceased Kanak leader Jean-Marie Tjibaou about whom I wrote several decades later (Waddell, 2008), offers a vivid description of the New Caledonian equivalent of this adult world the young Enga men were on the point of entering:

Landscape, village layout, society, the deceased and mythical beings constitue a whole that is not only indivisible but still practicially undifferentiated…. The space of the tribe appears in this way like the immense stage of a perpetual theatre where each person plays his role at an assigned place.(Tjibaou, 1976 : 284-285. My translation and emphasis.)

There was indeed little place for individual expression or non-conformity among the Enga such as were a feature of my own world, and I certainly reflected on this profound difference that characterised our respective lives. Yet it was never a source of concern or judgement on my part.

If my experience and my memories are of a place and a people of great beauty, I have nevertheless carried with me for over 50 years now the questioning of an old man who would often visit me in my house and who otherwise spent much of his time chatting with kin on the ceremonial ground just behind. His name was Komeyá and I cherish a photo of him. It is there, above my desk, and it nourishes my thoughts about the interconnected world in which we all now live, this even though my home on the shores of the Saint Lawrence River (Canada) is some 15 000 kilometres away from the Lai Valley. He was a lapun man who had known tribal warfare and the time before the irruption of Australian colonial administrators and foreign missionaries in his land. He was troubled by the totally unsolicited arrival of strangers in his land, strangers who showed no signs of leaving and who clearly sought to impose their will on his people. It was this concern which led him to ask me, time and again, the same question : « Why have you kone [red people] come here? What precisely do you want? » I was young and I could offer no satisfactory (to either of us) answer to his querying. I no doubt talked about learning and sharing, about ‘the family of man’, about a desire on the part of the world from which I came to ‘help’. And I probably expressed the wish to build a better future for us all. But it was all pretty vague and incoherent. Certainly I had a good idea why I personally was there but I don’t think I had much of a clue in a broader, civilisational sense. Also, I was fully conscious of the fact that I was only passing through his land.

Image 1: Komeyá, the lapun man from Sabakamádá

One extraneous event is inscribed in my memory of the late 1960s in Melanesia. It was the news of what I believe was a UNDP fact-finding mission to the Solomon Islands2, the objective of which was to identify needs and development priorities for the soon-to-be-independent colony. The UN body had been established in 1966 with the aim of engaging in a global ‘war on poverty.’ In the case of the SI mission, the team rapidly came to the conclusion that the quality of life there was satisfactory and that, apart from investing in improved health services, the country should basically be left alone! Needless to say their report was rapidly condemned to oblivion since their recommendations did not fit with interests and vision of the emerging new world order.

I only returned to Enga country briefly since my doctoral field research. It was in 1972-1973 and it involved two visits with a single purpose, to look at the impact of the 1972 frosts on the population and, more specifically, to identify their strategies for coping with such an extreme event. The nature of the crisis meant that I spent most of my time on the edge of the Marient Basin (near Kandep), where people were living at an altitude of around 2,400-2,500m and crop loss due to the succession of frosts was substantial. The Aruni, living at a significantly lower altitude – c.1,700-1,800m – and on the lower slopes of a relatively incised river valley, had for their part experienced no significant ground frosts and attendant damage to their crops. I nevertheless profited from the occasion to visit Sabakamádá. What a welcome I received! I recall walking in through the mounded sweet potato gardens, the joy of seeing old friends and neighbours, our spontaneously embracing each other, and asking for news, talking of births, deaths and other personal events that were of primary concern to us all as fellow human beings whose lives had been interwoven for a time and had been nourished by memory since my departure back in 1967. It was a moving experience and I thought once again about the family of man and of the bonds that unite us all.

Then I left, never to return to Sabakamádá.

Change

By virtue of my new research mandate I travelled reasonably widely among the high-altitude Enga and I became conscious of the groundswell of change that would inevitably transform the Highlands in the years to come: the development of the cash economy with, notably,  an increasing number of trade stores stocked with alcohol; the sense that old tribal grievances were re-surfacing; the emergence of ‘pay week’ and ‘rubbish week’ in adminstrative centres, with the attendant domestic violence; Toyota Landcruisers and pick-ups abandoned by the roadside. I sensed being witness to the slow emergence of a new kind of disorder and new forms of instability characterised by a situation where there would be few ‘winners’ and many ‘losers’, where the Enga as a whole would lose control of their destiny, and where, in other words, a new kind of chaos was emerging. The Golden Age appeared to be coming to an end and I too was experiencing a growing sentiment of loss. I was uneasy.

Largely unconsciously I think, PNG slipped slowly over the horizon as I moved on in life. I was partly drawn by my newly developed roots and dreams in French-speaking North America. However another part of me remained firmly grounded in the Pacific, a Pacific that had nourished me as a young man and had helped mould my values and world-view : the celebration of difference, learning from other peoples, recognising the crucial presence of the past in our lives – Epeli Hau’ofa would later describe this state of mind as ‘Pasts to remember’ – and the vital role of culture, hence of collective identity and the collective good as being the essential foundations for political action. I had, largely by a process of osmosis no doubt, learned a great deal about life in the course of my PhD research in the New Guinea Highlands and I was determined to re-enter Oceania in a different capacity.

In the 1980s and 1990s I spent extended periods teaching at the University of Hawai’i (Manoa), the University of the South Pacific (Fiji) and the Université de Nouvelle-Calédonie. This meant I now had Oceanians as colleagues and students, notably at USP. Both offered me a different perspective on the world of Pacific Studies and indeed the business of scholarly research in general. Islands and island peoples were no longer the object of my interest, to be viewed through the prism of scholarly debate and preoccupations in metropolitan countries. Rather they were fellow teachers, friends and students who invited me to read the world from their perspective and according to their firmly grounded and pressing preoccupations. I started listening to voices that were consciously positioning themselves outside the scholarly – particularly disciplinary – mainstream. In the case of USP I think particularly of Epeli Hau’ofa, a PNG-born Tongan who had studied and engaged in field research in anthropology, Epeli quickly realised that he had been formatted to deliver a clinical, disembodied and ultimately desperate view of his own people, be they in PNG, Tonga, Fiji or elsewhere in the Pacific Islands:

[A]fter decades of anthropological field research in Melanesia we have come up only with picture of people who fight, compete, trade, pay bride-prices, engage in rituals, invent cargo cults, copulate and sorcerise each other. There is hardly anything in our literature to indicate whether these people have any such sentiments as love, kindness, consideration, altruism and so on. We cannot tell from our ethnographic writings whether they have a sense of humour. We know little about their systems of morality, specifically about their ideas of the good and the bad, and their philosophies… (Hau’ofa, 1975 : 61)

They [anthropologists] do not know how we feel (ibid : 58)

Furthermore, in teaching anthropology at USP in the 1980s and early 1990s, he quickly came to appreciate that this perspective, dictated by foreign knowledge and transmitted according to the dictates of foreign scholarship, only served to belittle his students and render them powerless :

I began noticing the reactions of my students when I described and explained our situation of dependence. Their faces crumbled visibly, they asked for solutions. I could offer none. […] I was actively participating in our own belittlement, in propogating a view of hopelessness. I decided to do something about it. (Hau’ofa, 1993 : 5)

That ‘something’ was to abandon the cold, disciplinary confined intellectualism of the international academic community in favour of an approach to knowledge and understanding as embodied by the Pacific Island peoples of which ‘I [Epeli] am emotionally a part.’ By the mid-1990s he had come to the conclusion that approach would be centred on arts and culture, ‘a distinctly Oceanian way of transmitting knowledge’,3a way that was firmly grounded in the past. Such an approach would ensure that the architects of this creative world set their own rules rather than be subject to dictates imposed from outside.

Insofar as the political arena was concerned, it was the Kanak (New Caledonia) independance leader Jean-Marie Tjibaou who attracted my attention. It too was in the early 1990s, that is at the same time that I re-established close contact with Epeli. Jean-Marie, like Epeli, had spent the first decade of his life in the village, close to the land, immersed in the closely-woven fabric of social life and experiencing a Melanesian universe that was defined at least in part by the constant presence of the past. Like Epeli he also studied anthropology, in his case in France, although he didn’t complete his PhD. The path he chose in early adult life was the Church rather than the University, and as a priest in Nouméa he experienced the same shock as Epeli did as a professor in Suva:

During the year I was curate in Nouméa… what a lot of drunks I gathered up in the evening… to take home… And I often experienced that discourse, cries from the bottom of the dungeon… the tears that recall the lost land… and who proclaim… who get angry, who fight, who struggle… but who find comfort in alcohol. (Tjibaou, 1989 : 19)

Like Epeli, he chose to pursue studies overseas, first in the broad field of development studies and then in anthropology, with the intention of ‘looking for the analytical tools that would help better understand the situation here [in New Caledonia] (ibid : 17)’. The time he spent in France and his experience in social action once back home led him, as with Epeli, to become a severe critic of Western development models, centred on industrialisation, accumulation, uniformisation, individual gain, and on erasing the past. Hence his conviction, even as a politician in the 1980s, that it was necessary to return to one’s roots, one’s cultural identity in order to lay the foundations today of an authentically Melanesian destiny :

[T]he search for identity, the model, lies before us, never behind. It is being constantly   reformulated. And I will say that the challenge right now is to include the maximum number of elements belonging to our past, to our culture, in the model of mankind and society that we aspire to for the creation of the city. (Tjibaou, 1985 : 1601)

Not surprisingly perhaps, Jean-Marie would typically commence gatherings of the Kanak independence movement by thanking the ancestors for being present. It was yet another illustration of the fact that he, like Epeli, was deeply concerned with the future of the Pacific past. Both recognised the promotion of a dynamic and firmly grounded Oceanian culture and identity to be the only possible way forward.

It was about this time – the early to mid-1990s -, by virtue of the changes I had been witness to here in Canada and because of my increasing familiarisation with the writings and actions of the likes of Epeli and Jean-Marie back in Melanesia that I was finally able to formulate in my own mind the answer to the Enga lapunman’s question; ‘’Why have we Konecome to the land of the Enga? What precisely do we want?’’ That answer was simple, direct and troubling;

We want your primary resources – forest products, copper ore, gold, nickel, oil, natural gas, fish… – to help meet the demand of the rapidly expanding global economy. We want your labour, to produce coffee and palm oil in response to global consumer demand. And we demand your integration as consumers into that same economy. In other words, we are seeking new markets too. We want everything of value to us, at minimum cost and with maximum benefits to the investors.

All this means of course on terms where the vast majority of Enga/PNGns/Melanesians are condemned to the role of simple onlookers in an arena where our avowed aim is to transform their lives. I was mortified at the thought, and I still am today. Why wasn’t I aware of this back in 1966? What had happened? Was I in fact some kind of passive and unconscious agent in the process of mass and totally uncompromising externally directed change? The question is not an easy one and, in seeking to answer it, I can only really speak for myself, although I believe the likes of Joël Bonnemaison, Bill Clarke and Epeli Hau’ofa shared most of my sentiments. Unfortunately they are no longer with us to tell their version of the story.

The rise of corporate power

This is neither the time or place to provide a summary of post-war economic history. It is nevertheless vital to highlight the fact that a major change in direction in terms of North-South relations occurred around the 1980s. In the aftermath of the Second World War our principal preoccupation in what came to be termed the ‘developed world’ was one of human justice, poverty elimination, the end to war, rebuilding entire countries and continents, all this in the spirit of sharing in as generous a manner as possible. These were the values I certainly learned and then practised as an adolescent. I volunteered with the Service Civil International (SCI), going to work camps in France and Switzerland. We were Catholics and communists, pacificists, vegetarians, hippies before their time, school teachers… I recall a Swedish Jew and a German war-time Messerschmitt pilot in one of our camps. I worked a while for the abbé Pierre in Paris. We were all striving to build a better world for all. We endeavoured to speak each others language, we sang each others songs and we called each other camarade. We were fascinated by the diversity of the human experience and we believed ourselves to be citizens of the world, hence enthusiastic members of the family of man.

This is not the first time I use the expression. It refers specifically to an exhibition of 503 photographs of people from around the world that was first presented at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1955. Over the following decade it travelled around the world and was seen by over nine million visitors. It offered a fascinating portrait of mankind, highlighting both the diversity of the human experience and the sense of being part of a single community of global dimensions. My generation was deeply marked by this humanist vision of the world and it was, implicitly at least, this which in the early 1960s took me to PNG and on to the Enga, in search of my fellow men. I think it fair to say that the exhibition mirrored a post-War era where governments, and the international alliances and agencies they created, were concerned with human justice and dignity – to include self-government -the reduction of poverty, and the improvement of the health and nutritional status of entire populations. Wealth generation and profit were not yet primary preoccupations. There were obviously profound ideological divisions with regard to the way to proceed; the communist and capitalist blocs, the non-aligned movement. However, ideology apart, they could all be considered societal projects. This was the case with PNG in the mid/late 1960s. Australia was preparing the country for political independence. I felt it to be a reasonably generous and caring time and I had no sense of myself, the colonial administration or the Christian missions being agents of subversion of Melanesian society. Certainly we didn’t really doubt that they would quite spontaneously want to share some of the ‘benefits’ of Western civilisation. We perceived our actions to be an appropriate path to ‘improving’ the daily lives of the Enga but not one of radically transforming or destabilising them.

What we now term economic development, measured in terms of such quantitative parameters as growth, profitability, competitivity, gross domestic product, etc., has it roots in the USA and no doubt started to take form as a global initiative in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War. Its first major manifestation was the Marshall Plan for European reconstruction. While the plan set the foundations for the creation of multinational corporations, it was the state that was the major actor in development, both national and international, and interests were directed primarily to social and economic justice and the building of solid national institutions. As first an adolescent and then a young man, I was witness to and, as a SCI volunteer, a tiny actor in an initiative of global dimensions that I and those around me believed to be a noble and generous endeavour.  It was those concerns and those interests which drew me to PNG in the 1960s.

It was in the following decades, notably in the 1980s, that a shift occurred, with the progressive transfer of economic initiative from the state to the private sector. This shift was accompanied by a fundamental change in intentions. The corporate world expressed little interest in social welfare, or any form of integrated regional development. Its over-riding concern was with profit, ideally short-term, to be acquired through unlimited economic growth across a world increasingly free of barriers to the movement of goods, services and capital. Where states proposed a shared vision of the future and were accountable to their citizens, corporations have much narrower interests and are only accountable to their shareholders. The state is now largely at the service of these enterprises. Society has little meaning in the eyes of the corporation. Indeed wasn’t it Margaret Thatcher, that architect – along with Ronald Reagan – of the brave new world, who asserted ‘There’s no such thing as society!’? It was more of a premonition or, perhaps, a programmatic statement than a fact at the time. Certainly today however, with the withering of the state and the unleashing of the corporation and financial oligarchies, society has been transformed into a largely unstructured mass of consumers, an infinite number of individuals, throughout the world, Enga Province included.

I had no idea back in the 1960s that this would be the shape of the world to come. However I do now know that Komeyá, the old Enga man at Sabakamádá, had every reason to ask me a question for which I had no satisfactory answer at the time.  I also know that I do not believe in economic development and unlimited growth as practised today. It is a cruel and indeed absurd agenda in terms of the rapidly growing inequalities within communities and between peoples, and the accumulation of largely useless commodities it generates. And it is an absolute disaster for the biosphere. Confronted as we are with the pollution of soils, water and air, the decline in biodiversity, starvation and the massive dislocation of human populations, time is fast running out for us all. Another mass extinction may well occur, and this time it could conceivably be homo sapiens.

I think it is fair to say that all those who I have named in the preceding pages – Joël Bonnemaison, Bill Clarke, Epeli Hau’ofa and Jean-Marie Tjibaou – ceased to believe in development strategies as formulated in the metropolitan countries. Perhaps they ceased to believe in economic development at all. Certainly there came a time in their lives when they no longer espoused the litany of industrialisation, accumulation, growth and individualism. Jean-Marie Tjibaou dreamed that one day, in the not too distant future, the Kanak people would be invited to sit at the ‘banquet of civilisations’ in order to contribute to a shared discussion on the future of the world. Epeli Hau’ofa strove for cultural and intellectual independence for his Oceanian brothers and sisters, this through the independent development of arts and culture firmly grounded in their own past. This alone would allow them to design their own future. As for us visiting researchers from the West who, in the 1960s and 1970s, had the good fortune to be immersed in rural Melanesian society but who only came to appreciate the significance of the experience several decades later, allow me to share some of Joël’s thoughts, summarised in a paper I wrote in his memory :

On the island of Tanna he was witness to the encounter of two truths, one with and the other    without real roots. More important, he observed through their confrontation, ‘a conflict of ideas that was of global significance’ (Bonnemaison, 1997 : 521) and he came to the unavoidable conclusion that it is more important to live culturally than it is to survive materially. Otherwise       our very existence is without meaning. Finally, in order to realise this dream, which had unexpectedly become universal, he had the sentiment that it was necessary to ‘refer at one and the same time to the past and to the challenges of the present,’ both to ensure that all peoples can live decently and honour their ancestors, and to ‘recreate the unity of the world’ (idem: 514) (Waddell, 1999 : 182).

And for this new world to materialise he recognised that the West had to cease being the giver of lessons.

Looking back to the 1960s all this was perhaps unconsciously revealed to us at the time but there certainly wasn’t the sentiment of urgency to pass the message on to the world from which we came. So we only returned home transformed individually by the experience because, in reality, we had only left to observe, rarely to listen and discuss. What a conversation I might have had with my lapun man if he had been able to share his preoccupations with me for, in the final analysis, he was not perhaps asking me a question. Rather he was inviting me to engage in a conversation, a conversation between equals.

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Prof. Eric Waddell is a renowned author and ethno-geographer concerned with issues of culture and identity within the New World Order. He is Honorary Professor at  the School of Geosciences, Sydney University, Australia. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).

This article was first published in the 80th issue of The Development Bulletin, Australia National University (ANU) Since 1988 it has been the journal of the Development Studies Network, currently based at the Crawford School of Public Policy at the Australian National University.

This special publication celebrates the journal’s 80th issue. Its focus is the Pacific Islands and their specific trajectory from colonial states through independence to the present day. The editor commissioned these papers from Pacific Island, Australian, New Zealand and British academics, journalists, NGOs, government personnel and consultants who have lived and/or worked extensively in the Pacific over a number of years. The papers here are their reflections and perceptions of development, aid and change and their thoughts for the future.

Sources

Bonnemaison, Jöel 1993, ‘Gens de pirogue,’ Chroniques du Sud, 11 : 93-94.

Bonnemaison, Joël 1997, Les fondements géographiques d’une identité. L’archipel du Vanuatu. Essai de géographie culturelle. Book 2 : Les gens des lieux : Histoire et géosymboles d’une société enracinée : Tanna, Orstom, Paris.

Hau’ofa, Epeli1975,‘Anthropology and Pacific Islanders,’ Man in India, 55 (1) : 57-66.

Hau’ofa, Epeli1993,‘Our Sea of Islands,’ pp. 2-16 in Eric Waddell, Vijay Naidu & Epeli Hau’ofa (eds), A New Oceania. Rediscovering Our Sea of Islands, School of Social and Economic Development, University of the South Pacific, Suva, Fiji.

Hereniko, Vilsoni and Karen Stevenson (eds) 2012, Hidden Treasures, Contemporary Pacific Art from the Oceania Centre Collection, USP Press, Suva, Fiji.

Luana, Caspar 1969, ‘Buka! A retrospect’, New Guinea and Australia, the Pacific and South-East Asia, 1, 4, 15-20.

Tjibaou, Jean-Marie 1976, ‘Recherche d’identité mélanésienne et société traditionnelle’, Journal de la Société des Océanistes, 53, 32): 281-292.

Tjibaou, Jean-Marie 1985, ‘Entretien avec Jean-Marie Tjibaou,’ Les Temps Modernes, 464 : 1587-1601.

Tjibaou, Jean-Marie 1989, ‘Le message de Jean-Marie Tjibaou.’ Interview by Jacques Violette, Bwenando, 121-124.

Tjibaou, Jean-Marie  1985 ‘Entretien avec Jean-Marie Tjibaou,’ Les Temps Modernes, 464 : 1587-1601

Waddell, Eric1999, ‘Rootedness and travels : The Intellectual Journey of Joël Bonnemaison’, The Contemporary Pacific, 11 (1) : 176-185.

Waddell, Eric 2008, Jean-Marie Tjibaou, Kanak Witness to the World. An Intellectual Biography. Pacific Islands Monograph Series 23, University of Hawai’i Press, Honolulu.

Notes

1 Honorary Professor, School of Geosciences, University of Sydney.

2 Not having kept any record of the event in my files, I am not 100% sure it was a UNDP mission so I shall attribute the lack of recall to a time when, to borrow a poetic image of Epeli Hau’ofa, ‘the moon and red wine play tricks on my aging mind’!

3 Cited in Hereniko and Stevenson 2012 : 10. 

A funny thing happened on the way to the Trans Mountain Expansion Project (TMX)…or rather, several funny things. And they all have to do with Alberta Premier Jason Kenney’s fear of “foreign meddling” in Canada’s pipeline politics.

You may recall that at a stop in Vancouver on March 6, 2018, Kenney told CBC News,

“I think we have legitimate questions to ask about the ultimate source of some of the funds that are being spent in Canadian politics to bottleneck our resources,” he said. “In whose interest is it that Canadian oil and gas does not get to global markets? Well, obviously, it’s in the interest of Russia, with the fourth-largest reserves on earth.”

There has long been fierce opposition to the TMX project (owned at the time by Texas-based Kinder Morgan), which will nearly triple the pipeline’s capacity to bring Alberta diluted bitumen (dilbit) to the West Coast.  Kenney further stated,

“If the Russian government decided to deploy an organized social media campaign to attack U.S. energy, so there’s less American energy exports, it’s entirely reasonable to assume they might have tried to do the same thing in Canada. I have no evidence of that, but it’s a reasonable question.” [1]

Kenney’s Russian musings may have been prompted by a lengthy, March 2, 2018 article in the Financial Post by Claudia Cattaneo entitled “Russian meddling another worry for Canadian energy exports.” [2]

Russian Bots?

All of this prompted the B.C. NGO Dogwood Initiative to launch an impromptu selfie campaign, urging supporters to send photos to Kenney to reassure him that they aren’t Russian bots. “It’s time to fess up,” Dogwood’s Kai Nagata wrote. “Are you being paid by Vladimir Putin? Post a picture of yourself with the hashtag #NotARussianBot to show that you’re a real Canadian, expressing your opinions in a democracy.” [3]

Throughout March 2018, the Russia meddling theory got widespread coverage in Canadian media, and then suddenly the coverage stopped.

I suspect that an aide to Jason Kenney quietly took him aside and told him something like this: “Mr. Kenney, sir, do you realize that the pipe being provided for Kinder Morgan’s TMX is actually being manufactured by a Russian-owned company?”

In other words: Oops.

On May 2, 2017 (almost a year before Kenney’s Russia musings), Kinder Morgan had announced an agreement to purchase more than 75 per cent (nearly 300,000 tonnes) of the pipe needed for the TMX from a steelmaking factory in Regina owned by Evraz North America, subsidiary of Evraz Plc, Russia’s No.2 steelmaker. [4]

As Dogwood put it in a posting on March 22, 2018 while “everyday British Columbians have no ties to Vladimir Putin, Kinder Morgan does. If Kenney is fond of conspiracy theories, he should look at the Russian businessmen who have every interest in seeing this pipeline built.” [5]

Meanwhile, a more serious problem concerning those pipes was starting to get some attention, at least from pipeline opponents.

Condition 9

The National Energy Board (NEB) had determined 157 conditions to be met by Kinder Morgan for its TMX project. Condition 9 required the company to file, and get approval for, a Quality Management Plan (QMP) 4 months prior to the manufacturing of any pipe and major components for the project.

But in November 2017, DeSmog Canada (now The Narwhal) published an article revealing that Kinder Morgan had awarded pipeline manufacturing contracts (to Evraz North America) between May and July of 2017, and manufacturing of the pipe had begun in October, but without an approved QMP in place. [6]

As author Carol Linnit explained,

“The quality management plan requires Trans Mountain to supply documentation regarding the qualifications of pipeline contractors, vendors and suppliers, quality auditing of manufactured pipe and the preservation of pipe during shipping and storage.”

Given that Kinder Morgan had no such approved QMP before contracting the pipe manufacturing, Linnit noted that “Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain may be in violation of a condition [Condition 9] laid out by the National Energy Board, Canada’s federal pipeline regulator.” [7]

As Dogwood’s writer put it, this “corporate rule-breaking” is a “more concerning component of Kinder Morgan’s Russian pipe deal…It’s the kind of thing you might expect in a corrupt petrostate – like Russia.” [8]

New Angles

Jason Kenney then appeared to have moved on from his Russian meddling theory, to a surprising new angle. In a speech to oil executives at the Oil Sands Trade Show in Fort McMurray in September 2019, Kenney said that Alberta needs to take a hardline approach against environmentalists like autocratic regimes do against critics. He said,

“They know they couldn’t get away with this in Vladimir Putin’s Russia. In fact, Greenpeace did do a protest on an offshore rig in Russia and their crew was arrested and thrown in a Siberian jail for six months and funnily enough they’ve never been back – I’m not recommending that for Canada, but it’s instructive. It’s instructive.” [9]

(In reality, the Greenpeace crew was jailed in Saint Petersburg, released after a few months, and then won a lawsuit in which the Russian government had to pay them millions of dollars in compensation for the illegal seizure in international waters.) [10]

Not surprisingly, Canadian civil liberties groups reacted strongly to Kenney’s hardline approach. Amnesty International Canada warned Kenney that his anti-environmentalist initiatives undermine constitutional rights, and free speech. Kenney then accused Amnesty International of aligning with foes of Alberta’s oil patch and of protecting “foreign-funded billionaires”. [11]

But Kenney soon dropped that angle too. I suspect a dutiful aide again approached him and said something like this: “Mr. Kenney, sir, do you realize that Evraz North America, the company whose Canadian subsidiary manufactured the pipes for TMX, is actually owned in part by Roman Abramovich, a Russian citizen who also holds an Israeli passport and whose net worth is about $15 billion?”

Oops again.

“Pipe in the Ground”

By December 2019, the National Post was announcing that TMX construction was set to begin at a site near Edmonton, with “pipe in the ground before Christmas” and large stockpiles of pipe “massed at yards in the B.C. towns of Vavenby, Hope and Kamloops” and preparatory work ongoing in Valemount. [12]

That prompted me to try to determine what had happened with regard to that Kinder Morgan QMP and the lack of regulatory approval under Condition 9, which governs the actual pipes.

After all, a lot had happened since that November 2017 De Smog/ The Narwhal article had been published. A shortlist would include: the replacement of the National Energy Board by the Canada Energy Regulator (CER); the $4.5 billion purchase of TMX by the Canadian federal government; Jason Kenney’s launch of a “war room” (the Canadian Energy Centre, with Claudia Cattaneo on board) and a $2.5 million public inquiry into “anti-Alberta energy campaigns;” a Federal Court’s quashing of TMX approval due to lack of meaningful consultation with Indigenous groups; and a federal election.

As well, The Tyee writer Geoff Dembicki had thoroughly debunked Kenney’s Russian conspiracy theory, tracing its origins to a notorious U.S. PR firm. [13] (Equally interesting, in the U.S. The Nation magazine had thoroughly debunked widespread Russian meddling in the 2016 election.) [14]

But what about Condition 9 and those pipes, manufactured before any approved QMP and now stored at various locations across the pipeline route?

So in December 2019 I read through all the entries under Condition 9 on the NEB/CER website and could not find any mention at all of the actual pipes in these filings, which were made over many months and which ended as of mid-June 2018. In mid-December, I contacted the CER and asked: “Does this mean that full approval for Condition 9 compliance in the Quality Management Plan is still pending?”

In response to my question, the CER provided a letter sent by the NEB to Kinder Morgan, dated 22 June 2018. The letter stated that the NEB

“requires Trans Mountain to submit a letter signed by the Trans Mountain Accountable Officer confirming that the procurement, manufacture, transportation, and storage of all pipe and major components prior to 21 March 2018 was undertaken in conformance with Trans Mountain’s internal processes and procedures. The letter must also confirm that pipe and major components comply with all relevant internal specifications. The letter must be submitted to the Board no later than 29 June 2018.”

Kinder Morgan had duly responded with a letter (also provided to me by CER), dated 28 June 2018 and signed by Ian Anderson (President, Trans Mountain Pipeline ULC, Kinder Morgan Canada Inc.). It stated:

“As the accountable officer of Trans Mountain, I, to the best of my knowledge, as of the date of this confirmation and after due inquiry, confirm that the procurement, manufacture, transportation and storage of all pipe and major components prior to 21 March 2018 was undertaken in conformance with Trans Mountain’s internal processes and procedures. I also confirm that pipe and major components comply with all relevant internal technical specifications.”

Federal Regulation?  

I may be wrong, but it seems obvious to me that the NEB told Kinder Morgan exactly what to write in order to meet Condition 9 at that late date, and then Kinder Morgan wrote exactly that.

I then contacted Lynn Perrin, who has been following the pipeline regulatory approval process for years as a Director of Pro Information Pro Environment United People Network, otherwise known as Pipe Up.  I asked her: is it normal for the NEB/CER to accept a company letter confirming that all QMP guidelines and conditions for the pipes have been met, six months after the manufacturing had already begun?

Perrin’s answer by email was short and to the point: “Two Auditor General reports note that the NEB does not enforce Conditions the majority of the time!” The reports cover years of such lack of enforcement by the federal regulatory body. [15]

I guess this is how the politburo functions in a petro-state.

Nonetheless, opposition to TMX continues, regardless of “pipe in the ground” near Edmonton. Stay tuned for TMX Part 2: The Pipeline and The Supremes.

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Joyce Nelson is the author of seven books. She can be reached via www.joycenelson.ca

Notes

[1] Quoted in Justin McElroy, “Why Kinder Morgan and Russian interference in elections are more closely related than you think,” CBC News, March 6, 2018.

[2] Claudia Cattaneo, “Russian meddling another worry for Canadian energy exports,” Financial Post, March 2, 2018.

[3] Alexandra Bly, “Dogwood Snarks Back After Kenney Claims Pipeline Opponents Are Russian Agents,” The Energy Mix, March 9, 2018.

[4] Reuters Staff, “Russia’s Evraz to supply pips for Kinder Morgan’s pipeline expansion,” Reuters, May 2, 107.

[5] Sophie Harrison, “One Small problem with Jason Kenney’s ‘Russian bots’ theory,” Dogwood posting, March 22, 2018.

[6] Carol Linnit, “Kinder Morgan At Risk of Violating NEB Condition With Premature 300,000-Tonne Pipeline Order,” DeSmog/The Narwhal, November 3, 2017.

[7] Ibid.

[8] Harrison, op. cit.

[9] Quoted in “Jason Kenney: Vladimir Putin’s Jailing of Dissidents is ‘Instructive’ on How to Deal With Environmentalists,” Press Progress, September 11, 2019.

[10] Ibid.

[11] Ibid.

[12] Geoffrey Morgan, “Trans Mountain construction set to begin, with ‘pipe in the ground before Christmas’,” National Post, December 2, 2019.

[13] Geoff Dembicki, “Enviros Tools of Russians? The Weird Conspiracy Theory Firing up Kenney’s Inquiry,” The Tyee, November 22, 2019.

[14] Aaron Mate, “New Studies Show Pundits Are Wrong About Russian Social-Media Involvement in US Politics,” The Nation, December 28, 2018.

[15] The 2 Auditor General Reports can be found at: [https://foroilfreeshores.fils.wordpress.com/2016/05/auditor-general-2010-report-on-transportation-of-dangerous-goods.pdf] and [http://www.oag-bvg.gc.ca/internet/English/parl_cesd_201601_02_e_41021.html#hd3a]

Featured image: Premier Jason Kenney and Cabinet at Government House, in Edmonton on Tuesday, April 30, 2019.  (Photo by Chris Schwarz/Alberta Government)

‘Why are there forty million poor people in America?.. when you begin to ask that question, you are raising questions about the economic system, …you begin to question the capitalistic economy.“ – Martin Luther King

Introduction

Over the last ten years Greece has been a prime example of how a country and a people can be deprived of their liberty through clearly illegitimate debt. Since the 19^th century, from Latin America to China, Haiti, Greece, Tunisia, Egypt and the Ottoman Empire public debt has been used as a coercive force to impose domination and pillage (Toussaint, 2017). Visibly, it is the combination of debt and free trade that constitute the fundamental factors subordinating whole economies as from the 19^th century. Local elites allied themselves with big financial powers in order to subject their own countries and peoples permanently to methods of power that transfer wealth towards local and foreign creditors.

Contrary to commonplace ideas, it is generally not the indebted weaker countries that are the cause of sovereign debt crises. These crises break out first in the biggest capitalist countries or are the result of their unilateral decisions that produce effects of great magnitude in the indebted countries. It is not so-called “excessive” public spending that builds up unsustainable debt levels, but rather the conditions imposed by local and foreign creditors. Real interest rates are abusively high and so are bankers’ commissions. The indebted countries unable to keep up with repayments have to continually find new loans to repay old loans. In the past, when that became impossible, the great powers had licence to resort to military action to ensure they were repaid.

Debt crises and their outcomes are always directed by the big banks and the governments that support them.

Over the last two centuries, several countries have successfully repudiated debts by arguing that they were either illegitimate or odious. Mexico, the USA, Cuba, Russia, China and Costa Rica have all done this. Conflict involving debt non-payment has given birth to a judicial doctrine known as Odious Debt which is to this day pertinent.

Historical examples

Creditors, whether powerful states, multilateral organisations that serve them or banks, have become very adroit at imposing their will on debtors. From early in the 19^th century Haiti, the first independent black republic, was an early testing ground. The island gained freedom from the yoke of the French empire in 1804, but Paris did not abandon its claims on the country and obtained from Haiti payment of a royal indemnity granted to the former colonial slave owners. The 1825 agreements signed by the new Haitian leaders created a monumental debt of independence untenable from 1828 and which took a full century to pay off, thus preventing any real development.

Debt was also used to subjugate Tunisia under France in 1881 [1] and Egypt to the British in 1882. [2] The lending powers used unpaid debt to impose their will on countries that had so far been independent. Greece too, was born in the 1830s with a burden of debt that held it in the sway of Russia, France and the British, [3] Newfoundland, which had become the first autonomous dominion of the British Empire in 1855, well before Canada and Australia, had to renounce its independence in 1933 because of the grave economic crisis in order to face up to its debts and was finally incorporated into Canada in 1949. Canada agreed to take charge of 90% of Newfoundland’s debt (REINHARDT and ROGOFF, 2010).

Debt during the 1960s and 70s

The process was repeated after the Second World War, when the Latin American countries had need of capital to fund their development and first Asian, then African, colonies gained independence. The debt was the principal instrument used to impose neocolonialist relations. It became frowned upon to use force against a debtor country, and new means of coercion had to be found.

The massive loans granted as from the 1960s, to an increasing number of peripheral countries (not least those in which the Western powers had a strategic interest such as Mobutu’s Congo, Suharto’s Indonesia, the military regimes in Brazil, Yugoslavia and Mexico) oiled a powerful mechanism that took back the control of countries that had begun to adopt policies that were truly independent of their former colonial powers and Washington.

Three big players have incited these countries into debt by promising relatively low interest rates:

1. the big Western banks seeking to put massive amounts of liquidities to work;
2. the developed countries seeking to stimulate their economies after the1973 oil crisis;
3. the World Bank seeking to increase US influence and to fend off the increasing expansion of the private banks.

Local elites also encouraged higher debt and made gains, contrary to the populations, who derived no benefit.

The debt crisis of the 1980s

At the end of 1979 the US decided to increase its interest rates. This had an effect on the rates applied to indebted Southern countries whose borrowing rates were variable and had already been subject to sharp rises. Coupled with low export commodities prices (coffee, cacao, cotton, sugar, ores, etc.,) which caused reduced revenues for the countries, the trap was sprung.

In august 1982, Mexico, among other countries announced that they were unable to assure debt repayments. So, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) was asked, by the creditor banks, to lend the countries the necessary funds at high interest rates, on the double condition that they continue debt repayments and apply the policies decided by the IMF “experts”: abandon subventions on goods and services of primary necessity; reduce public spending; devalue the currency; introduce high interest rates in order to attract foreign capital; direct agricultural production towards exportable products; free access to interior markets for foreign investors; liberalise the economies, including the suppression of capital controls; introduce a taxation system that aggravates inequalities, including VAT increases; preserve capital gains and privatize profitable publicly owned industries; this list is not exhaustive.

These structural adjustment loans were aimed at the suppression of independent economic and financial policies in the peripheral countries and tying their independence to the World markets. Also, to ensure access by the industrialized economies to the raw materials and they needed. By gradually putting the developing countries into competition with each other the economic model based on exports and the extraction of raw materials for foreign markets is reinforced, which in turn reduces production costs and increases profits, favouring the developed economies.

So, a new form of colonialism sprang up. It was no longer necessary to maintain an administration and an army to put the local population to heel; the debt did the job of creaming off the wealth produced and directing it to the creditors. Of course the colonialists continued to interfere in local politics and economic policies whenever they considered that it suited them.

 Developments in the 2000s

As from 2003-04, in a context of strong world demand, commodity prices started to increase. Exporting countries improved their foreign exchange incomes. Some developing countries increased their social spending but most preferred to buy US treasury bonds and so put their increased means at the disposal of the principal economic powers. This increase in developing countries’ incomes whittled down the weight of the World Bank and the IMF.

Another factor was the Chinese economic expansion. China had become the world’s principal sweatshop and was accumulating important financial reserves and using them to significantly increase funding to developing countries in competition with the offers of funding from the industrialised countries and the multilateral institutions.

During the 2000s, the reduction of interest rates by the Central Banks in the industrialized countries in the North decreased the costs of the debt in the South. Because of the 2007-8 financial crisis in North America and Western Europe massive amounts of liquidities were injected into the financial system to save the big banks and corporations that were too heavily indebted themselves. A decrease in the costs of financing the debts of the developing countries followed naturally and the governments of developing countries gained a false sense of security.

The situation began to degrade in 2016-17 when the Fed started to raise its interest rates, from 0.25% in 2015 to 1.5% in October 2019 and tax breaks were granted by the Trump administration to big business to attract US foreign investment back to the US. What’s more, commodities prices slipped and exporter countries’ revenues slipped with them making debt repayments in strong.

General view of the debt in the South

These last years have have seen a significant increase in constant values of foreign debt; between 2000 and 2017 it has tripled. The greater part is in the private sector.

Table 1. foreign debt by regions ($ billions)

Source: http://datatopics.worldbank.org/debt/ids/region/lmy

Foreign public debt has also increased although less abruptly than in the private sector.

Table 2. foreign public debt by regions ($ billions)

Source: http://datatopics.worldbank.org/debt/ids/region/lmy

Debt in the Global South

Whatever the World Bank and the IMF may cheerfully repeat, the debt of developing countries is still a major obstacle to meeting their inhabitants’ basic needs and safeguarding human rights. Inequalities have sharply increased and progress in terms of human development has been very limited.

Africa

In sub-Saharan Africa, outgoing flow of capital via debt service and corporations garnering their profits are significant. In 2012, the profits repatriated from the poorest area on earth amounted to 5% of its GDP vs 1% in public aid to development. In this context, it is legitimate to raise the question: who is helping who?

If we take into account the plundering of Africa’s natural resources by private corporations, the brain drain of African intellectuals, embezzlement of goods by the African ruling class, manipulations of transfer prices by private corporations and other misappropriations, we cannot but be aware that Africa has been drained dry.

EU relations with Africa illustrate the continuation of neocolonial policies. These have developed beyond the framework of the ACP Cotonou Agreements. [5] Nowadays, the EU has enforced other frameworks that are more significant in its relation with Africa such as an EU partnership framework for migration (the Valletta Action Plan with the Khartoum and Rabat processes), to which we should add the bilateral frameworks and agreements that European countries have with African countries or regions. Not forgetting the CFA currency for 15 African countries, soon to become the Eco for eight of them, without significant change of policy.

Many European citizens have no idea of the extent to which conditions and clauses imposed under such agreements are setting the ground for a new debt crisis in the developing countries. Some basic facts that are not known by most people are that whereas the total volume of aid received annually by Africa from Europe stands at around $21 billion, African migrants in Europe remit around $30 billion to their families in their home countries, almost 50% more than the amount of the European aid; or funds currently available from the European Investment Fund for the whole African continent that stand at $3.3 billion, which is equivalent to the cost of one mid-sized infrastructure project like a port. Furthermore, the new EU proposed budget for 2021-2027 plans to allocate more than $34.9 billion to various mechanisms of migration control. [6] It will end up costing Europe more to patrol its borders than what is allocated to Africa as development aid or what Africa is suffering from trade losses with Europe. The impact of these agreements on trade results is also remarkable. From 2003 to 2014, Africa always had a trade surplus with Europe, whereas since 2015, the trend has reversed amounting to close to a $30 billion deficit.

Latin America and the Caribbean

Table 3. Debt and resources devoted to repayment (in billions USD): Latin America and the Caribbean  [7]

Sources:
Total external debt: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/DT.TDS.DECT.CD
Public external debt and guarantee: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/DT.TDS.DPPG.CD

Latin America has one of the highest negative external debt balances among developing continents for 1985-2017.

Table 4. Net transfers on external debt 1985 – 2017 (in billions of USD): Latin America and the Caribbean

Sources:
Public external debt and guarantee: https://donnees.banquemondiale.org/indicateur/DT.NTR.DPPG.CD [data no longer available]
External debt: https://donnees.banquemondiale.org/indicateur/DT.NTR.DECT.CD?end=2017&start=2000 [data no longer available]

Impact of debt payment on the way public resources are used

Table 5. Distribution of expenditure in national budgets (as % of GDP and as % of the budget) in Latin America in 2013  [8]

If we take into account the evolution of public expenditure of some fifty low-income countries from 2015 to 2017, we notice an increase of expenditure related to debt repayment, a decrease of health-related expenditure and a stagnation in terms of education (see chart 1).

Chart 1 – Public expenditure in low-income countries for public debt servicing, education and health care [9] (as % of the GDP)

Source: UNCTAD secretariat calculations based on World Bank World Development Indicators data and International Monetary Fund DSA LIC country reports published between 2015 and 2018.

From 2015 to 2017 we also notice an increase in public expenditure related to debt repayment in Africa, South Asia and in general for Least developed countries (LDCs) (see chart 2).

Chart 2 – Expenditure of public debt servicing in Least developed countries countries in large regions (as % of the GDP)

Source: UNCTAD secretariat calculations based on International Monetary Fund DSA LIC country reports published between 2015 and 2018.

According to Milan Rivié https://www.cadtm.org/New-debt-crisis-in-the-South, who uses IMF information, in July 2019, among low income countries, nine were over indebted and 24 were on the brink of being over indebted, i.e. 39% of them. [10] As evidence of the inability (and the lack of determination) of international financial institutions (IFIs) to find an adequate and sustainable response to over indebtedness, half of those countries had strictly applied the adjustment policies of the Heavily Indebted Poor Country (HIPC) initiative launched by the G7, the World Bank and the IMF in 1996. And according to a German NGO, 122 are actually in a critical debt situation. [11]

It is possible not to repay an illegitimate debt

It is quite possible to resist creditors, as evidenced by Mexico under Benito Juárez, who in 1867 refused to repay loans contracted by emperor Maximilian from the Société Générale de Paris two years earlier in order to finance the occupation of Mexico by the French army. [12] In 1914, at the height of the revolution, when Emiliano Zapata and Pancho Villa were victorious, Mexico completely suspended payment of its external debt, which was considered to be illegitimate; the Mexican government only repaid symbolic amounts from 1914 to 1942, just in order to pacify creditors. From 1934 to 1940, President Lázaro Cárdenas nationalized the railway and the oil industry without any compensation; he also expropriated over 18 million hectares of landed estates to give them over to indigenous communities. His tenacity paid: in 1942, creditors renounced about 90% of the debt value and said they were satisfied with limited compensations for the companies they had been evicted from. Mexico was able to undergo major social and economic development from the 1930s to the 1960s. Other countries such as Brazil, Bolivia and Ecuador successfully suspended debt repayment from 1931. In the case of Brazil, selective suspension of repayment lasted until 1943, when an agreement made it possible to reduce debt by 30%.

More recently, in July 2007, in Ecuador, President Rafael Correa set up a committee to audit public debt. After fourteen months of work, its findings gave evidence that a large part of the country’s public debt was illegitimate and illegal. In November 2008, the government decided to unilaterally suspend repayment of debt securities sold on international financial markets and maturing in 2012 and 2030. Finally, the government of this small country won its case opposing North-American bankers who held those securities. It bought for USD 900 million securities that had been worth USD 3.2 billion. Through this operation Ecuador’s public Treasury saved about USD 7 bn on the borrowed capital and the remaining interests. It could then free resources to finance new social spending (as shown in table 5). Ecuador has not been targeted by international reprisals. [13]

It is obvious that refusing to repay illegitimate debt is a necessary measure, but it is not enough to generate development. A consistent development programme must be implemented. Financial resources have to be generated through increasing the State’s resources through taxes that respect social and environmental justice (Millet and Toussaint, 2018).

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This article was originally published on CADTM.

Translated by Snake Arbusto, Mike Krolikowski and Christine Pagnoulle

Eric Toussaint is a historian and political scientist who completed his Ph.D. at the universities of Paris VIII and Liège, is the spokesperson of the CADTM International, and sits on the Scientific Council of ATTAC France.

Sources

• Howse, R. (2007). The Concept of Odious Debt in Public International Law. UNCTADDiscussion Papers No. 185. New York, USA: United Nations
• King, J. (2006). Odious Debt: The Terms of Debate, North Carolina Journal of International Law and Commercial Regulation, vol. 32 no. 4.
• King, J. (2016). The Doctrine of Odious Debt in International Law. A Restatement, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
• Lamarque, C., and Vivien, R. (2011). “Suspending public debt repayments by legal means” https://www.cadtm.org/Suspending-public-debt-repayments
• Lienau, O. (2014). Rethinking Sovereign Debt: Politics Reputation and Legitimacy in Modern Finance, Cambridge, USA: Harvard University Press.
• Ludington, S., Gulati, M., & Brophy, A. (2009). Applied Legal History: Demystifying the Doctrine of Odious Debt, Theoretical Inquiries in Law 11 (1)
• Michalowski, S. (2009). The Doctrine of Odious Debts in International Law in Mader, M., and Rothenbühler,A., (eds) How to Challenge Illegitimate Debt Theory and Legal Case Studies, Basel, Switzerland: Aktion Finanzplatz Schweiz.
• Millet Damien and Toussaint Eric, “Once upon a time there was a popular government that wanted to do away with the export-oriented extractivist model”, https://www.cadtm.org/once-upon-a-time-there-was-a-popular-government-that-wanted-to-do-away-with-the
• MILLIKAN, Max and ROSTOW, Walt Whitman. 1957. A Proposal: Keys to An Effective Foreign Policy, Harper, New York, p. 158.
• REINHARDT Carmen et ROGOFF Kenneth, This Time Is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly, Princeton, 2009.
• RIVIÉ, Milan, “New Debt Crisis in the South” https://www.cadtm.org/New-debt-crisis-in-the-South
• ROSENSTEIN-RODAN, Paul. (1961). ‘International Aid for Underdeveloped Countries’, Review of Economics and Statistics, Vol.43, p.107.
• Roos, J. (2016). Why Not Default? The Structural Power of Finance in Sovereign Debt Crises, Thesis Introduction, European University Institute, Florence
• SACK, A., N. (1927). Les Effets des Transformations des États sur leurs Dettes Publiques et Autres Obligations financières, Paris, France: Sirey.
• SAMUELSON, Paul. 1980. Economics, 11^th edition, McGraw Hill, New York, p. 617-618.
• TOUSSAINT, Éric (2017), The Debt System: A History of Sovereign Debts and their Repudiation, Haymarket, 2019

Notes

This was posted on Youtube in 2011.

This is the full length 90 min. version of Bill Moyer’s 1987 scathing critique of the criminal subterfuge carried out by the Executive Branch of the United States Government to carry out operations which are clearly contrary to the wishes and values of the American people.

The ability to exercise this power with impunity is facilitated by the National Security Act of 1947. The thrust of the exposé is the Iran-Contra arms and drug-running operations which flooded the streets of our nation with crack cocaine. The significance of the documentary is probably greater today in 2007 than it was when it was made.

We now have a situation in which these same forces have committed the most egregious terrorist attack on US soil and have declared a fraudulent so-called “War on Terror”. The ruling regime in the US who have conducted the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, are now banging the war drum against Iran.

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Taliano told Press TV in an interview on Saturday that if enriching the US billionaire class “entails stealing another country’s oil, then the billionaire class is fine with that.”

He said that the US did not need the oil from the Middle East; however, “preferential contracts” gave profits to the Americans.

Taliano said billionaire compound their profits by selling guns to perpetuated conflict zone of the Middle East.

“The billionaire class profits when the military builds more weapons and sells more weapons,” he said, adding, “The billionaire class profits when it occupies a country and forces regime change.”

Taliano insisted that Iraq, Syria and Iran were the only countries resisting the Americans sister plots.

He said these countries in the Middle East were “safeguarding their sovereignty and their territorial integrity as per international law.”

Taliano said the US billionaires, who seek to make money at the expense of others and have no respect for either human rights or international law, were running the United States.

“Those who claim to represent Washington have no regards for international law, for nation and state sovereignty, the right for countries to be democratic and self-governing,” he said.

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As the jumped-up, self-proclaimed, blonde new ruler of the world gives away half the Palestinian West Bank to the current Israeli military occupier, the world watches in amazement at the idea that this unbalanced popinjay – currently facing impeachment – could possibly be elected for a second term.

What on Earth happened to integrity and the rule of law?  What happened to the Geneva Conventions? What happened to the NPT? What has happened to America? How is it possible that the world has to succumb to the unlawful activities of the Gang of Three: Trump, Pence and Pompeo?

The idea that this dangerously out-of-control  triumvirate is allowed to continue to trample on international law by overturning hundreds of years of legal consensus around the world, is a frightening indication of corrupt government and leadership.

The activities of the Gang of Three becomes more bizarre every day as they configure both America and the world to their own personal advantage. It is reminiscent of the recent rape of South Africa by the Gupta family.

Who would have believed that after Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Reagan and Obama, the American people would then make the gigantic error of electing a hotel developer with no political experience to run the most powerful state in the world? A man who cannot read and write but is adept at tweeting and philandering.

This political aberration must be dealt with once and for all by the electorate.

Time is now of the essence as the nuclear clock is already now at two minutes to midnight.    These are very dangerous times. The clowns must go otherwise the United States will eventually mirror lame-duck South Africa – a country hugely rich in natural resources but now near to collapse, and that, for America, would be a complete tragedy for the entire world.

Annexation of the Palestinian West Bank is unlawful and a criminal act of the Israeli state in collusion with the Gang of Three in the White House. The international community must condemn and reject such acts of forced colonisation. This is 2020 not 1936.

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Hans Stehling (pen name) is an analyst based in the UK. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

United Nations has rejected US President Donald Trump’s ‘deal of the century’ and reiterated that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict should be solved based on UN resolutions and international law.

In a statement, a copy of which sent to MEMO, Stephane Dujarric, a spokesperson for the UN Secretary-General, said:

“The position of the United Nations on the two-State solution has been defined, throughout the years, by relevant Security Council and General Assembly resolutions by which the Secretariat is bound.”

He added:

“The United Nations remains committed to supporting Palestinians and Israelis in resolving the conflict on the basis of United Nations resolutions, international law, and bilateral agreements and realizing the vision of two States – Israel and Palestine – living side by side in peace and security within recognized borders, on the basis of the pre-1967 lines.”

It is worth noting that Trump has ignored the two-state solution adopted by the UN and the international community and proposed his own view of the two-state solution, which ignores the 1967 borders and has all of Jerusalem under full Israeli sovereignty.

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Featured image: Trump and Netanyahu’s love affair around Jerusalem and Palestine’s fate – Cartoon [Sabaaneh/MiddleEastMonitor]

Russia’s relations with “Israel” in recent years are much deeper and more strategic than its historic ones with Palestine so it’s unthinkable that Moscow won’t tacitly support the so-called “deal of the century” despite expectedly voicing mild reservations about it in public for the sake of retaining its regional soft power.

Done Deal: How the “Peace Process” Sold Out the Palestinians

By David Hearst, January 29, 2020

In November 2016, fresh off his electoral win, US President-elect Donald Trump boasted of his intention to end the Israel-Palestine conflict by striking what he called the “ultimate deal”.

Calling it “the war that never ends,” Trump told the Wall Street Journal: “As a deal maker, I’d like to do … the deal that can’t be made. And do it for humanity’s sake.”

The ‘Deal of the Century’ Is Apartheid

By Sheena Anne Arackal, January 29, 2020

Under President Trump’s newly unveiled peace plan, the Palestinians will be granted limited autonomy within a Palestinian homeland that consists of multiple non-contiguous enclaves scattered throughout the West Bank and Gaza. The government of Israel will retain security control over the Palestinian enclaves and will continue to control Palestinian borders, airspace, aquifers, maritime waters, and electromagnetic spectrum. Israel will be allowed to annex the Jordan Valley and Jewish communities in the West Bank. The Palestinians will be allowed to select the leaders of their new homeland but will have no political rights in Israel, the state that actually rules over them.

Macron’s Macro-hypocrisy on Palestine

By Dr. Vacy Vlazna, January 29, 2020

As a Frenchman, Macron is an expert on antisemitism, white feathers and collaboration. Under German occupation, the French government capitulated. Rather than fight the Nazis, it signed an armistice on 22 June 1940 with Germany that divided France into occupied and unoccupied zones- the latter referred to as Vichy France though the Vichy regime administered both.

Trump’s Farcical Mideast “Peace Deal” Ignores International Law. Green Light to Israeli Annexation of Palestine?

By CJPME, January 29, 2020

Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East (CJPME) is highly critical of the Mideast Peace Plan announced by US President Donald Trump today – one that CJPME considers preposterous. The plan was done without the participation of the Palestinians, and ignores both international law and international precedent on the conflict. The Plan further entrenches pro-Israel decrees that Trump has made in recent years, including that Jerusalem will be Israel’s “undivided” capital and that Israel will be able to annex major illegal Israeli colonies in the occupied West Bank. Given that the Plan virtually ignores Palestinian interests, CJPME considers it useless in terms of resolving decades of violent conflict.

Trump Regime’s Criminal “Deal of the Century”: Breaking Palestine, Endorsing “Greater Israel”?

By Stephen Lendman, January 29, 2020

Edward Said minced no words denouncing what he called “the fashion-show vulgarities of the White House ceremony, the degrading spectacle of Yasser Arafat thanking everyone for the suspension of most of his people’s rights, and the fatuous solemnity of Bill Clinton’s performance, like a 20th century Roman emperor shepherding two vassal kings through rituals of reconciliation and obeisance, (and) the truly astonishing proportions of the Palestinian capitulation.”

Palestinian Rejection: End of Oslo Peace Process and the Trump-Netanyahu Apartheid “Steal of the Century”

By Juan Cole, January 28, 2020

The Palestinian leadership has entirely rejected what is known of the Trump plan for Israel and Palestine, and warned that they see it as destroying the Oslo Peace accords. The Trump administration did not consult the Palestinians in drawing up the plan, which gives away East Jerusalem and 30% of the Palestinian West Bank to Israel. The Palestinians may as well, Palestine foreign minister Saeb Erekat said, just withdraw from the 1995 Interim Agreement on Oslo.

European Jewish Congress (EJC) Launches Campaign Against ‘Antisemitism’ (Aka Support for Palestinian Rights)

By Alison Weir, January 24, 2020

The European Jewish Congress (EJC) has announced the launch of a worldwide, star studded social media campaign against what it calls “antisemitism,” but which is often advocacy for Palestinian human rights and opposition to Israeli apartheid. EJC is the regional affiliate of the World Jewish Congress, one of whose main missions is to advocate for Israel.

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Die von Präsident Donald Trump autorisierte Ermordung des iranischen Generals Qassem Soleimani hat eine Kettenreaktion in Gang gesetzt, die sich über die Region des Nahen Ostens hinaus ausbreitet. Dies lag in der Absicht desjenigen, der die Entscheidung getroffen hat. Soleimani stand lange Zeit im Fadenkreuz der USA, aber die Präsidenten Bush und Obama haben seine Ermordung nie autorisiert. Warum traf Präsident Trump diese Entscheidung? Aus mehreren Gründen, unter anderem aus dem persönlichen Interesse des Präsidenten, seiner Not zu entgehen, indem er sich als glühender Verteidiger „Amerikas“ gegenüber einem gefährlichen Feind präsentiert. Der Hauptgrund für die Entscheidung zur Ermordung Soleimanis, die vom Deep State getroffen wurde, bevor sie vom Weißen Haus getroffen wurde, muss in einem Umstand gesucht werden, der erst in den letzten Jahren für die Interessen der USA kritisch geworden ist – die wachsende wirtschaftliche Präsenz Chinas im Iran.

Der Iran spielt eine wesentliche Rolle in der Neuen Seidenstraße, die Peking 2013 ins Leben gerufen hat und die derzeit in vollem Gange ist – sie besteht aus einem Straßen- und Schienennetz zwischen China und Europa durch Zentralasien, den Nahen Osten und Russland, kombiniert mit einem Seeweg über den Indischen Ozean, das Rote Meer und das Mittelmeer. Investitionen von mehr als 1.000 Milliarden Dollar sind für die gesamte Straßen-, Schienen- und Seeverkehrsinfrastruktur in mehr als 60 Ländern geplant. In diesem Rahmen investiert China etwa 400 Milliarden Dollar – 280 in die Öl-, Gas- und petrochemische Industrie und 120 in die Verkehrsinfrastruktur, einschließlich Öl- und Gaspipelines. Es ist geplant, dass diese Investitionen, die über einen Zeitraum von fünf Jahren genutzt werden sollen, später erneuert werden.

Im Energiesektor erhielt die China National Petroleum Corporation, ein staatliches Unternehmen, von der iranischen Regierung einen Auftrag für die Entwicklung von Offshore-Bohrungen im South Pars/North Dome Feld im Persischen Golf, der größten Erdgasreserve der Welt. Darüber hinaus ist der Iran mit einem anderen chinesischen Unternehmen, Sinopec (75% Staatseigentum), an der Entwicklung der Förderung der Ölfelder von West-Karoun beteiligt. Unter Missachtung des US-Embargos erhöht China die Einfuhr von iranischem Öl. Noch gravierender für die Vereinigten Staaten ist die Tatsache, dass in diesen – und anderen – Handelsabkommen zwischen China und dem Iran zunehmend chinesische Renminbi (Yuan) und andere Währungen verwendet werden sollen, wobei der Dollar zunehmend ausgeschlossen wird.

Im Verkehrssektor hat China einen Vertrag über die Elektrifizierung von 900 Kilometern iranischer Eisenbahnen im Rahmen eines Projekts unterzeichnet, das die Elektrifizierung des gesamten Eisenbahnnetzes bis 2025 vorsieht, und wird wahrscheinlich auch einen Vertrag über eine Hochgeschwindigkeitsstrecke von mehr als 400 Kilometern unterzeichnen. Die iranische Eisenbahn ist an die 2.300 Kilometer lange Strecke angebunden, die bereits China und den Iran verbindet, wodurch sich die Transportzeit für Waren auf 15 Tage statt 45 Tage im Seeverkehr verkürzt. Über Täbris, eine große Industriestadt im Nordwesten des Iran – dem Ausgangspunkt einer 2.500 Kilometer langen Gaspipeline, die im türkischen Ankara ankommt – könnten so die Transportinfrastrukturen der neuen Seidenstraße mit Europa verbunden werden.

Die Abkommen zwischen China und dem Iran sehen keine militärischen Komponenten vor, aber laut einer iranischen Quelle sind zur Bewachung der Standorte etwa 5.000 chinesische Wachen vorgesehen, die von den Baufirmen für den Sicherheitsdienst beschäftigt werden. Bezeichnend ist auch, dass Ende Dezember die erste Marineübung zwischen dem Iran, China und Russland im Golf von Oman und im Indischen Ozean stattgefunden haben wird.

Unter Berücksichtigung dieser Tatsachen ist es nicht schwer zu verstehen, warum die Ermordung Soleimanis in Washington beschlossen wurde – sie war geplant, um eine militärische Gegenreaktion Teherans zu provozieren, um den Würgegriff auf den Iran zu verstärken und einen Angriff zu rechtfertigen, und auch, um das chinesische Projekt der Neuen Seidenstraße zu treffen, bei dem die USA nicht die Mittel haben, diesem im wirtschaftlichen Bereich etwas entgegenzusetzen. Die durch die Ermordung von Soleimani ausgelöste Kettenreaktion wird auch China und Russland mit einbeziehen und eine immer gefährlicher werdende Situation schaffen.

Manlio Dinucci

La Cina, non solo l’Iran, sotto tiro Usa in Medioriente

il manifesto, 10.Januar 2020

Übersetzung: K.R.

In November 2016, fresh off his electoral win, US President-elect Donald Trump boasted of his intention to end the Israel-Palestine conflict by striking what he called the “ultimate deal”.

Calling it “the war that never ends,” Trump told the Wall Street Journal: “As a deal maker, I’d like to do … the deal that can’t be made. And do it for humanity’s sake.”

A billionaire property tycoon and reality TV star known for his wheeling and dealing in the New York City real estate market, this was not the first time that Trump had framed the cause of peacemaking and diplomacy in terms of a business transaction.

Asked in March 2016 during his election campaign what the best deal of his life had been, he said it had been the creation of 6,000 housing units on the West Side of Manhattan.

His interviewer then asked him what would be the best deal he could make as president.

“Peace all over the world would be the best deal. And I think I would know how to do it better than anybody else, but peace all over the world,” came the modest reply.

Once in office, Trump tasked another property speculator, his son-in-law Jared Kushner, with delivering that deal, by now widely dubbed the “deal of the century”.

‘Slap of the century’

It has since turned into the most controversial and scandal-plagued peace initiative in the long and sad history of Middle East peace initiatives.

In the process of attempts to get it off the ground, the Palestinian leadership has refused to even open the file, let alone get involved in negotiations, with PA President Mahmoud Abbas calling it the “slap of the century“.

Trump has meanwhile closed the Palestine Liberation Organisation’s mission in Washington; he has recognised Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, and the occupied Golan Heights as Israeli territory.

In addition, he has cut funds to the United Nations relief agency UNRWA, which runs schools and medical facilities for millions of Palestinian refugees across the region, as well as providing their main source of employment.

And he has unilaterally called for a change in the definition of a refugee, deciding that all but 500,000 of an estimated 5.5 million Palestinian refugees should be stripped of their status.

All this in an attempt to “break and remake” the Middle East.

The deal has divided analysts. Some believe it is designed to fail. Others believe it does not matter whether it is published or not – it is already being enacted on the ground, with the process of “peace-making” itself now only providing cover for the US administration’s one-sided support for Israel.

Middle East Eye examines this thesis in a series of articles originally published in June 2019 which we have grouped together under the heading “Done Deal” – recognition that whatever is proposed, the reality on the ground has already changed in fundamental ways and continues to do so regardless of what is said in the halls of power in Washington or elsewhere.

In the first of these, we look at how reality is changing to prepare for Israel’s permanent annexation of large parts of the West Bank.

In other articles, we consider how the status of refugees is changing; how access to the Old City in Jerusalem has been restricted; how the stranglehold over Gaza has been progressively tightened; and, finally, how financial incentives and threats, with large sums of money dangled to entice Palestinians into agreeing to an inequitable deal or the withdrawal of funds to compel them to do so, are nothing new.

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Featured image is from Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs/Flickr

With great fanfare, President Trump finally unveiled his long-anticipated Middle East peace proposal. The proposal was labeled ‘The Deal of the Century’ because it was supposed to offer an even-handed and just solution to one of the world’s most intractable conflicts. Instead it does something very different. The ‘Deal of the Century’ resurrects and restores grand apartheid, a racist political system that should have been left in the dustbins of history.

Under President Trump’s newly unveiled peace plan, the Palestinians will be granted limited autonomy within a Palestinian homeland that consists of multiple non-contiguous enclaves scattered throughout the West Bank and Gaza. The government of Israel will retain security control over the Palestinian enclaves and will continue to control Palestinian borders, airspace, aquifers, maritime waters, and electromagnetic spectrum. Israel will be allowed to annex the Jordan Valley and Jewish communities in the West Bank. The Palestinians will be allowed to select the leaders of their new homeland but will have no political rights in Israel, the state that actually rules over them.

President Trump’s plan for racial control and segregation should sound disturbingly familiar. Indeed it should immediately bring to mind the Bantu homelands which were the cornerstone of South Africa’s ‘grand apartheid’. While ‘petty apartheid’ was the term used to describe racial segregation on buses and public facilities, ‘grand apartheid’ referred to the many laws which enforced territorial and political separation between black and white South Africans.

Map of the future Israeli state in the Trump administration plan. (Source: Mondoweiss)

The Bantu homelands, which were key to the territorial and political separation of racial groups, had their origin in the Land Acts of 1913 and 1936 which created reserves for the native black population. Then in 1970 the Bantu Homelands Citizenship Act made the native population legal citizens of their Bantustans, denying black South Africans political rights in white South Africa. The South African government created Bantu homelands in order to claim that South Africa, a state with a majority black population, was actually a state with a majority white population. The Bantu homelands were political sleight of hand; a poorly veiled attempt to give racist ethnic rule the veneer of democratic respectability.

Like South Africa’s grand apartheid, the Trump plan physically and politically separates Palestinians by placing them within a non-contiguous homeland (Areas A and B and Gaza), and declaring them citizens of that homeland. Like South Africa’s grand apartheid, the Trump plan grants the Palestinian homeland autonomy over civil matters like education and healthcare, while critical areas such as trade, immigration, and security will remain under Israeli control. Like South Africa’s grand apartheid, the Trump plan is political sleight of hand: a thinly veiled attempt to claim that Israel, a state that rules over roughly the same number of Jews and Palestinians, is actually a Jewish-majority state. Also like apartheid South Africa, the Trump administration claims the homelands are a temporary solution. Once the indigenous population proves itself ready for self-governance they will one day be granted something that resembles a state.

Using a combination of financial sticks and carrots, some of which were unveiled last June at the economic summit in Bahrain, the Trump administration will try to force Palestinians to accept the ‘peace plan’ and declare independence within their homeland, just as the apartheid South African government once tried to force the native black population to declare independence within their Bantustans. While the crony leadership of some Bantustans did indeed declare independence, South Africa’s grand apartheid ultimately failed because local leaders, including the African National Congress and the legendary Nelson Mandela, waged a determined and powerful international campaign against apartheid.

President Trump’s peace plan was labeled the ‘Deal of the Century’ because it was supposed to bring peace and dignity to the people of the Middle East. Instead the ‘peace plan’ does the exact opposite and resurrects apartheid, a racist political system that should have been left in the dustbins of history.

The Trump peace plan cannot, and should not be implemented because it gives Israelis the illusion of security while in reality trapping them within an unstable regime based on racial oppression. The Trump peace plan cannot, and should not be implemented because it gravely violates the rights and dignity of the Palestinian people and very likely constitutes a crime against humanity under the Rome Statute (1998). The Trump peace plan cannot, and should not be implemented because once we look past all the streamers and confetti, it turns out ‘The Deal of the Century’ is nothing less than Apartheid.

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Sheena Anne Arackal holds a master’s degree from the Harris School of Public Policy at the University of Chicago, and a doctorate in political science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Now based in Houston, Texas, she specializes in the field of ethnic conflict.

Featured image: Map of a future Palestinian state in the Trump administration plan. (Source: Mondoweiss)