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)

Expats living in Wuhan are enraged by foreign media coverage of the 19-nCoV outbreak. Better placed and likely more informed than any journalist in a faraway land, most are full of praise for the authorities’ handling of the situation.

Media the world over are publishing stories about the virus’ outbreak in Wuhan, much of them blaming the authorities in any way they can. They report containment of the virus to be the toughest challenge ever faced by the Chinese government.

Last week, they would not have been able to tell you that Wuhan is a city, let alone in which country it is.

The expats in Wuhan are taking an altogether different view. In a word, they are more pragmatic.

In the Facebook group, Wuhan Expats, Chris Carr said:

“Wuhan has 11 million people, which is around three times my country’s population. Odds of being involved in a road accident in Asia have always been much higher”.

Many of the group’s members believe the authorities have been doing all they can. Afzaal Ahmed said,

“One of my friend had fever he was afraid of getting virus; the blood tests were done without any cost and he was free to go because the reports were negative.

“Even free masks were available in hospital. They were checking temperature in subway and in some streets to make sure that this should be controlled and in my university we were provided free food like bread, milk packs and water.”

Western Media Seek Out Foreigners in Wuhan

Many journalists have been posting in the group looking for people to comment. One from the UK’s Evening Standard got just that. It read, “How about doing articles on road accidents in Asia and ensuring the entire Asian media see them?”

Daniel Pekárek sized up the opinion of many a Wuhan expat today.

“Seeing the reactions from outside world, especially in western media, racist, political comments and so on is so disgusting, people should stop this.”

Other requests from journalists have come from Australia, Italy, France, Canada, Ireland and the Philippines. Carr also asked whether there is any way to ban journalists from the group.

In further efforts to attract readers, much foreign media has been drawing comparisons between this outbreak and that of SARS.

Back in 2002 when the SARS virus hit, there was virtually no Internet in China. People replied on traditional media for their news, which was often slow, cumbersome and inaccurate.

Today, all media is online and there is also WeChat, Weibo and Douyin. Plus lots more. While censorship by the authorities is a reality, these platforms mostly comprise User Generated Content, meaning Chinese people are more informed and able to make up their own minds.

As to the Chinese media itself, with the government as owner, so there is less competition between publications for readers. It all ads up to more responsible reporting all round. At times like this, that’s something of which we would all like to see a little more. One thing is for sure; sensationalism doesn’t help.

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Featured image: A sanitation worker disinfects a rubbish bin in quarantined Wuhan. (Source: via Facebook courtesy of Afzaal Ahmed)

Israel’s Tag Meir organisation revealed on Monday that extremist Jewish settlers have carried out arson attacks on 46 mosques and 12 churches in the occupied West Bank and Israel over the past decade, Al Sabeel has reported.

Tag Meir, which was established 15 years ago to counter settlers’ hate crimes and racism in Israel and the West Bank, said that the perpetrators of these crimes generally went unpunished. It pointed out that most of these arson attacks were committed by an extremist settler group called Price Tag, and that the criminals spray graffiti such as “Death to Arabs” and other hate messages on the walls of the buildings they burn down.

The last of these attacks was the on a mosque in the Beir Safafa neighbourhood of occupied Jerusalem. The fire started by the illegal settlers caused severe damage to the building.

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Featured image: Settlers set fire to the Sharafat village mosque, south of occupied Jerusalem [Twitter]

“President Emmanuel Macron made a scene in occupied East Jerusalem on Wednesday when he angrily told Israeli security officers to get out of the Church of Saint Anne, which is traditionally under France’s control:

“Everybody knows the rules. I don’t like what you did in front of me,” Macron ordered. “Go out – outside!”  Abunimah

Ah the Hypocrisy! Macron telling Israeli authorities to leave property under French control while supporting Israeli occupation of the land of Palestine which, according to the British Mandate, should have been under Palestinian control since 1947..

“The mandate document was based on Article 22 of the Covenant of the League of Nations of 28 June 1919 and the Supreme Council of the Principal Allied Powers’ San Remo Resolution of 25 April 1920. The objective of the mandates over former territories of Ottoman Empire was to provide “administrative advice and assistance… until such time as they are able to stand alone”. 

Neither the United Nations nor Lord Balfour had a legal mandate to hand over a foreign land to European immigrants.

Moreover, identical to Australian First Nations, Palestinians never ceded their sovereignty over historic Palestine.

Macron’s hypocrisy lies in the certitude that everybody does know the rules – under international law: 

that Israel’s occupation is against the rules, that the Israeli settlements are against the rules, that Israeli apartheid is against the rules, that Israel’s extrajudicial executions, massacres, incarcerations of Palestinian political prisoners are against the rules, that the Israeli blockade of Gaza has been against the rules for 13 years.

On the other hand there is no hypocrisy on Manu Macron’s part if one considers that he is referring to the brutal rules of colonial expansionism which France followed repressively to the letter in West, East, Equatorial, North Africa, Indo-China, in Oceania. Take Algeria for instance.

The barbaric rules that the French regime perpetrated against Algerians are –

whole scale massacres and napalm bombing  in Setif, Kherrata, North Constantinos, the massacre of thousands of men in the Skikda stadium, collective punishment, humiliations, lynchings, impalings, collective rape, annihilation of villages and their occupants, mass arrests, disappearances, concentration camps, tens of thousands of summary executions, bombings of trade unions, terrible tortures in prisons and in homes in front of the family, curfews, checkpoints, rampant raids, looting, psychological warfare, blowing up homes, the relentless incitement fear and terror, military courts replaced civil courts, decapitation by guillotine, the Paris massacre of 300 Algerian protestors  

All were executed with merciless French arrogance and indifference to the  humanity of the ‘natives’. An arrogance that masks the moral inferiority of the colonist.

French colonial sadism exists to this day thus explaining why since 1947, Presidents from Auriol to Macron (with the exception of  Pompidou and d’Estaing) have enthusiastically supported the savage colonialism of their Israeli frères d’armes:

Auriol: approved Partition Plan, voted for the Israel’s membership to the UN.

Coty:  France and Israel cooperated  “in research and production of nuclear weapons,” and build Israel’s Dimona nuclear reactor.

de Gaulle: “I raise my glass to Israel, our friend and our ally.”

(Pompidou and  d’Estaing)

Mitterrand: “Indeed, the French nation is a friend to the nation of Israel.”

Chirac: “France is determined to strengthen Israel and I say that it is important that the process move forward towards full development and assure full security for the people of Israel.”

Sarkozy: “On behalf of France, we would like to declare our love for Israel – we love you!”

Hollande:  “I will always remain a friend of Israel”

Macron – “French law prohibits … boycotting [Israel]. There is no question of changing that law and no question of acting indulgently on this. For me, these [BDS protests] are anti-Zionist moves, thus profoundly anti-Semitic … I condemn this approach both legally and politically.” and  recently Macron says anti-Zionism and denying ‘Israel’s right to exist’ are antisemitic

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. 

In 2017, despite denouncing France’s participation in the holocaust, Macron with Neo-Vichy fervour collaborates with Israel’s war crimes against Palestinians by trading arms with Israel in breach of the rules of the Arms Trade Treaty, by granting impunity for Israel’s war crimes by, on 3rd December 2019, signing onto the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism which includes anti-zionism and criticism of Israel.

And now Macron, on a hypocrisy roll, pledged to Netanyahu that “France was determined Iran would never gain a nuclear weapon” despite France’s primary role during the 1950s in setting up Israel’s  not-so-secret nuclear program and maintains the farce that it doesn’t exist; no formal IAEA inspection of Israel’s arsenal of nuclear warheads has been carried out. 

Ironically, hypocritically, consistently, Macron made the pledge while attending, in Jerusalem, the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz where he stated “no one has the right to invoke (those killed by the Nazis) to justify division or contemporary hatred’ while dependably overlooking Netanyahu’s opportunistic turning of the Holocaust anniversary into an anti-Iran-hate-fest.

40 other heads of state also obsequiously stood by as Netanyahu ran roughshod with his Iran bandwagon over the memory of the holocaust Dead and the daily brutal violations under his watch of ‘Never Again’ against Palestinian families.

Protest to French UN Embassy https://onu.delegfrance.org/Contact-us.

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Dr. Vacy Vlazna is Coordinator of Justice for Palestine Matters and editor of a volume of Palestinian poetry, I remember my name.  She was Human Rights Advisor to the GAM team in the second round of the Acheh peace talks, Helsinki, February 2005 then withdrew on principle. Vacy was convenor of  Australia East Timor Association and coordinator of the East Timor Justice Lobby as well as serving in East Timor with UNAMET and UNTAET from 1999-2001.

Sixteen years after the U.S. invasion of Iraq, most Americans understand that it was an illegal war based on lies about non-existent “weapons of mass destruction.” But our government is now threatening to drag us into a war on Iran with a nearly identical “big lie” about a non-existent nuclear weapons program, based on politicized intelligence from the same CIA teams that wove a web of lies to justify the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003.

In 2002-3, U.S. officials and corporate media pundits repeated again and again that Iraq had an arsenal of weapons of mass destruction that posed a dire threat to the world. The CIA produced reams of false intelligence to support the march to war, and cherry-picked the most deceptively persuasive narratives for Secretary of State Colin Powell to present to the UN Security Council on February 5th 2003. In December 2002, Alan Foley, the head of the CIA’s Weapons Intelligence, Nonproliferation and Arms Control Center (WINPAC), told his staff,

“If the president wants to go to war, our job is to find the intelligence to allow him to do so.”

Paul Pillar, a CIA officer who was the National Intelligence Officer for the Near East and South Asia, helped to prepare a 25-page document that was passed off to Members of Congress as a “summary” of a National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iraq. But the document was written months before the NIE it claimed to summarize and contained fantastic claims that were nowhere to be found in the NIE, such as that the CIA knew of 550 specific sites in Iraq where chemical and biological weapons were stored. Most Members read only this fake summary, not the real NIE, and blindly voted for war. As Pillar later confessed to PBS’s Frontline,

“The purpose was to strengthen the case for going to war with the American public. Is it proper for the intelligence community to publish papers for that purpose? I don’t think so, and I regret having had a role in it.”

WINPAC was set up in 2001 to replace the CIA’s Nonproliferation Center or NPC (1991-2001), where a staff of 100 CIA analysts collected possible evidence of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons development to support U.S. information warfare, sanctions and ultimately regime change policies against Iraq, Iran, North Korea, Libya and other U.S. enemies.

WINPAC uses the U.S.’s satellite, electronic surveillance and international spy networks to generate material to feed to UN agencies like UNSCOM, UNMOVIC, the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), who are charged with overseeing the non-proliferation of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons. The CIA’s material has kept these agencies’ inspectors and analysts busy with an endless stream of documents, satellite imagery and claims by exiles for almost 30 years. But since Iraq destroyed all its banned weapons in 1991, they have found no confirming evidence that either Iraq or Iran has taken steps to acquire nuclear, chemical or biological weapons.

UNMOVIC and the IAEA told the UN Security Council in 2002-3 they could find no evidence to support U.S. allegations of illegal weapons development in Iraq. IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei exposed the CIA’s Niger yellowcake document as a forgery in a matter of hours. ElBaradei’s commitment to the independence and impartiality of his agency won the respect of the world, and he and his agency were jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2005.

Apart from outright forgeries and deliberately fabricated evidence from exile groups like Ahmad Chalabi’s Iraqi National Congress (INC) and the Iranian Mojahedin-e Khalq (MEK), most of the material the CIA and its allies have provided to UN agencies has involved dual-use technology, which could be used in banned weapons programs but also has alternative legitimate uses. A great deal of the IAEA’s work in Iran has been to verify that each of these items has in fact been used for peaceful purposes or conventional weapons development rather than in a nuclear weapons program. But as in Iraq, the accumulation of inconclusive, unsubstantiated evidence of a possible nuclear weapons program has served as a valuable political weapon to convince the media and the public that there must be something solid behind all the smoke and mirrors.

For instance, in 1990, the CIA began intercepting Telex messages from Sharif University in Tehran and Iran’s Physics Research Centre about orders for ring magnets, fluoride and fluoride-handling equipment, a balancing machine, a mass spectrometer and vacuum equipment, all of which can be used in uranium enrichment. For the next 17 years, the CIA’s NPC and WINPAC regarded these Telexes as some of their strongest evidence of a secret nuclear weapons program in Iran, and they were cited as such by senior U.S. officials. It was not until 2007-8 that the Iranian government finally tracked down all these items at Sharif University, and the IAEA inspectors were able to visit the university and confirm that they were being used for academic research and teaching, as Iran had told them.

After the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, the IAEA’s work in Iran continued, but every lead provided by the CIA and its allies proved to be either fabricated, innocent or inconclusive. In 2007, U.S. intelligence agencies published a new National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iran in which they acknowledged that Iran had no active nuclear weapons program. The publication of the 2007 NIE was an importantstep in averting a U.S. war on Iran. As George W Bush wrote in his memoirs, “…after the NIE, how could I possibly explain using the military to destroy the nuclear facilities of a country the intelligence community said had no active nuclear weapons program?”

But despite the lack of confirming evidence, the CIA refused to alter the “assessment” from its 2001 and 2005 NIEs that Iran probably did have a nuclear weapons program prior to 2003. This left the door open for the continued use of WMD allegations, inspections and sanctions as potent political weapons in the U.S.’s regime change policy toward Iran.

In 2007, UNMOVIC published a Compendium or final report on the lessons learned from the debacle in Iraq. One key lesson was that, “Complete independence is a prerequisite for a UN inspection agency,” so that the inspection process would not be used, “either to support other agendas or to keep the inspected party in a permanent state of weakness.” Another key lesson was that, “Proving the negative is a recipe for enduring difficulties and unending inspections.”

The 2005 Robb-Silberman Commission on the U.S. intelligence failure in Iraq reached very similar conclusions, such as that, “…analysts effectively shifted the burden of proof, requiring proof that Iraq did not have active WMD programs rather than requiring affirmative proof of their existence. While the U.S. policy position was that Iraq bore the responsibility to prove that it did not have banned weapons programs, the Intelligence Community’s burden of proof should have been more objective… By raising the evidentiary burden so high, analysts artificially skewed the analytical process toward confirmation of their original hypothesis – that Iraq had active WMD programs.”

In its work on Iran, the CIA has carried on the flawed analysis and processes identified by the UNMOVIC Compendium and the Robb-Silberman report on Iraq. The pressure to produce politicized intelligence that supports U.S. policy positions persists because that is the corrupt role that U.S. intelligence agencies play in U.S. policy, spying on other governments, staging coups, destabilizing countries and producing politicized and fabricated intelligence to create pretexts for war.

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.

“The Plan announced today has nothing to do with the Palestinians,” announced Thomas Woodley, president of CJPME. “The Plan is a bogus ‘deal’ between the US and Israel, and makes no serious effort to accommodate any of the legitimate grievances of the Palestinians.”

CJPME points out, for example, that Israel’s colonies (a.k.a. “settlements”) have been repeatedly denounced by the international community as being illegal. The 2004 International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruling on the conflict concluded that Israel’s colonies violate the Fourth Geneva Convention. By allowing Israel to annex these colonies with no penalty or swap simply rewards Israel for its decades violating international law. With this new Plan, Israel has no incentive to discontinue its practice colonizing the Palestinian land that it occupies militarily.

This latest Plan cements CJPME’s belief that the US can no longer masquerade as an “honest broker” between Israel and the Palestinians. CJPME points out that the Trump administration has sought to undermine the Palestinian negotiating position for years. In September, 2018, Trump closed the Palestinian embassy in Washington. That same month, the Trump administration announced it would end all humanitarian funding the Palestinian refugees. In November, Trump’s Secretary of State Pompeo announced that Washington no longer regarded Israeli settlements on occupied West Bank land as inconsistent with international law. That Trump and Netanyahu would dare to announce a “Peace Plan” absent negotiations with the Palestinians is a farce.

CJPME calls other bodies or players to assert a role for themselves in the negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians. “If we allow Trump to continue with this sham, it sends a message to other rogue leaders and countries that international law is meaningless, and that ‘friendship’ with the US is the only bargaining chip of value,” concluded Woodley. CJPME does not consider Canada eligible to be a broker between Israel and the Palestinians, as Canada has largely aped the US’ pro-Israel Mideast policy in recent years. CJPME could envision the UN, the European Union, or other groups of countries (including perhaps China and/or Russia) asserting themselves into the negotiations process.

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On January 24, the Syrian military resumed its offensive against Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (formerly the Syrian branch of al-Qaeda) and its Turkish-backed allies.

Warplanes of the Syrian Air Force and the Russian Aerospace Forces carried out over 3 dozens of airstrikes on militants’ positions across Greater Idlib. Pro-government forces, led by the 25th Special Mission Forces Division (also known as the Tiger Forces) started a ground operation in southeastern Idlib. They liberated Deir Gharbi, Ma’ar Shimmareen, Abu Jurif, Kursiyan and a few other villages. According to reports, over 30 militants were killed or injured. Four vehicles belonging to Hayat Tahrir al-Sham were destroyed.

On January 25, government forces liberated Ma’ar Shamshah, Talmenes and deployed in the vicinity of Maarat al-Numan. The town, located on the M5 highway, is the key militant stronghold and the largest urban enter in Idlib province.

On the same day, army units, led by the 4^th Armoured Division, attacked positions of militants near Aleppo city. They liberated the al-Sahafyeen residential complex and the Ghabat al-Assad hilltop, and destroyed a large weapon depot of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham. An OTR-21 Tochka tactical ballistic missile reportedly hit a militant HQ near Bawabiya. Nonetheless, government troops appeared to be unable to achieve more gains there.

On January 26, southeastern Idlib remained the main area of clashes, while the army offensive near Aleppo city fizzled. Syrian soldiers took control of Ghadqah, and repelled a counter-attack by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham southeast of Maarat al-Numan.

Currently, the army is working to cut off the M5 highway south and north of Maarat al-Numan. When the city is fully isolated, government forces will storm it. The fall of Maarat al-Numan will sign the total collapse of Idlib militants’ defense and open a road to liberate al-Barah, Kafranbel and the entire area along the M5 highway south of them.

The Russian military deployed an advanced Tu-214R reconnaissance aircraft amid the Syrian Army advance on Maarat al-Numan. Pro-government sources speculate that this move is linked with the military escalation in Idlib.

US forces are working to limit the freedom of movement of the Russian Military Police in northeastern Syria. According to reports, US troops blocked at least three Russian patrols in the province of al-Hasakah. Local sources link the soft Russian reaction to these actions with the ongoing diplomatic effort of Moscow to normalize relations with Washington.

Late on January 25, a car bomb exploded in the Turkish-occupied city of Azaz in northern Aleppo. At least 8 civilians were killed and at least 20 others were injured in the attack. Turkish sources as always accused Kurdish rebels of the attack. However, no evidence was provided. During the last few months, a series of IED and car bomb attack hit villages and towns controlled by Turkish proxies. The main reason of the Turkish inability provide a popper security in these areas is that its proxy groups, with their criminal and radical behavior, are among the key sources of instability.

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US/Israeli policy is hardwired against regional peace and stability.

From what’s known about Trump’s deal of the century ahead of its reported Tuesday unveiling at the White House, it fulfills an Israeli wish list at the expense of fundamental Palestinian rights and peace.

Israeli media reported that the scheme includes Israeli annexation of (illegal) settlements and the Jordan Valley, a map to reveal details visually.

Palestinian self-determination, independence, autonomy, and/or other terminology used will be long on illusion, way short of reality.

When the Oslo Accords and Declaration of Principles were unveiled on September 13, 1993 at the White House, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat were together with Bill Clinton for the dubious signing ceremony.

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.”

Oslo was unilateral surrender, a Palestinian Versailles, affirming a vaguely defined negotiating process to come with no fixed timeline or outcome.

Israel refused to make concessions, delaying and obstructing the process to continue stealing Palestinian land.

Palestinian leadership got nothing for renouncing armed struggle, recognizing Israel’s right to exist, and agreeing to leave major unresolved issues for later final status talks.

Over a generation later, they’re still waiting for self-determination free from occupation, and the right of diaspora Palestinians to return to their homeland as affirmed under international law.

There’s been no resolution on illegal settlements, borders, water and other resource rights, East Jerusalem as Palestinian capital, and an end to longstanding conflict.

The Trump regime’s January 28 White House deal of the century ceremony excludes a Palestinian presence.

The “fashion show vulgarities” and “degrading spectacle” has nothing to do with peace, nothing to do with respect for Palestinian rights and welfare, everything to do with serving US/Israeli interests exclusively at the expense of regional peace and stability ruling regimes of both countries reject.

Trump mocked reality claiming his no-peace/peace plan is “very good for them…(T)hey’re going to want it (sic).”

According to former Palestinian negotiator Ghaith al-Omari, Palestinians intend to show Trump’s deal is “a US/Israeli position” excluding their rights under international law.

They aim to prevent the world community from endorsing it, rendering it illegitimate and dead.

It remains to be seen how the Arab world responds. Jordan’s King Abdullah II opposes the scheme, on Sunday stressing:

“Our position is very well known…This is clear to everyone…We are opposed to it.”

Israeli Channel 13 reported that the Trump regime invited Arab envoys in Washington to take part in Tuesday’s ceremony, getting no response, adding:

The only regional response is from outraged Palestinians, on Sunday PA spokesman Nabil Abu Rudeineh, saying:

“The leadership will hold a series of meetings on all levels — including the factions and organizations — to announce its total rejection of conceding Al Quds (Jerusalem)” and other unacceptable parts of the Trump regime’s scheme of the century.

PA official Saeb Erekat said the scheme will turn “temporary occupation into a permanent occupation.”

PA prime minister Riyad al-Malki said Palestinians are discussing “practical steps with the Arab brothers” on how to respond to the Trump regime’s scheme.

A Palestinian foreign ministry statement said “Trump’s plan is the plot of the century to liquidate the Palestinian cause.”

On Monday, Trump met separately with Netanyahu and his main political opponent at the White House, Israeli media saying it gave Benny Gantz an opportunity to look prime ministerial.

He praised the no-peace/peace plan, while indicating it’s going nowhere until after Israeli elections and at least part of the Arab world is on board.

At the same time, he slammed Netanyahu, saying:

“A prime minister under indictment cannot run a peace negotiation. “Netanyahu cannot lead a country and a trial.”

Republicans support the scheme, Dems expressing opposition for political reasons, notably while Trump’s Senate impeachment trial remains ongoing.

With rare exceptions, Congress one-sidedly supports Israel, its members dismissive of Palestinian rights — pre-and-post Oslo to the present day.

Trump’s no-peace/deal of the century peace plan was dead before arrival.

His regime is more one-sided for Israel than anything his predecessors proposed.

He cut off vitally needed humanitarian aid for Palestinian refugees, suspended other US aid to the PA other than for security to serve as Israel’s enforcer, and closed the PLO mission in Washington.

He illegally recognized Jerusalem (a UN-established international city) as Israel’s exclusive capital, moved the US embassy there, abandoned a legitimate two-state solution, recognized Israel’s unlawful Golan annexation, and no longer considers illegal settlements occupied territory.

His so-called $50 billion investment fund for Palestinians and neighboring Arab states that’s part of his no-peace/peace plan is all about enriching Western and Israeli monied interests, unrelated to aiding long-suffering Palestinians.

He, hardliners surrounding him, and most congressional members are indifferent to the rights and welfare of ordinary people at home and abroad — including the most disadvantaged and long-suffering Palestinians.

Trump’s deal of the century is all about supporting Israeli control of historic Palestine, its people consigned to isolated cantons on worthless scrubland — statehood in name only without rights, resources or security.

*

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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.

It is often thought that the Third Reich’s final major offensive of World War II comprised the Battle of the Bulge, which was launched in mid-December 1944 against the western Allies through Belgium, France and Luxembourg, with much of the fighting occurring along the Ardennes Forest.

This attack, known on the German side as the Ardennes Offensive, was formulated entirely within the mind of Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler; it began with swift and decisive German advances, news that was forwarded immediately to Hitler at his Adlerhorst (Eagle’s Eyrie) mountain headquarters located not far from the city of Frankfurt, in western Germany. Yet with the fog lifting after a few days and skies clearing, the superiority in numbers of Allied aircraft and tanks beat the Germans back by the Christmas of 1944.

However, Hitler countered with another sizable attack from 31 December 1944, called Operation Nordwind (Unternehmen Nordwind). This was in fact the final major German offensive of the war on the Western front, and not the Battle of the Bulge.

Addressing his commanders at the Adlerhorst compound on 28 December 1944, Hitler issued an order of annihilation to be directed against American and Free French soldiers during Operation Nordwind, when he said that it “has a very clear objective, namely the destruction of the enemy forces. There is not a matter of prestige involved here. The point is to gain space. It is a matter of destroying and exterminating the enemy forces wherever we find them”. (1)

Among those very likely present to hear the above was SS Reichsführer Heinrich Himmler, who would command Army Group Upper Rhine in Operation Nordwind, after his appointment to a military leadership role by Hitler on 10 December 1944.

The ensuing failure of these latest offensives constituted further setbacks for the Wehrmacht, but Hitler was not primarily concerned with enemy positions in the West, mainly due to his utter contempt for the fighting abilities of British and American troops. Winston Churchill also noted in his memoirs that German soldiers were indeed of appreciably superior quality to Allied troops. (2)

Schematic of Germany’s planned offensiv operation in Hungary in March 1945, based on descriptions by Christían Hungváry (Publisher: Karl-Heinz Frieser) in “Das Deutsche Reich und der Zweite Wk., Bnd. 8” and Josef Puntigam in “Vom Plattensee bis zur Mur” (CC BY-SA 3.0)

As 1945 approached over the horizon – perhaps the most fateful year in history that heralded too the development of nuclear weapons – the Nazi hierarchy looked out upon a world that was literally closing in on them.

Hitler nevertheless prepared yet another large-scale offensive, switching focus to the east against his prime nemesis the USSR, with a planned assault through Hungary, the Balkans, and it was hoped beyond that further eastwards. It was the fifth year in succession that German and Soviet troops would be fighting brutally against each other. Plans for a fresh attack were hastened by news, on 12 January 1945, that the Soviets had commenced their winter offensive more than a week earlier than expected, firstly targeting the German front in southern Poland.

Hitler departed his Adlerhorst complex for the final time on 15 January 1945 and, the following day, he relocated to the Führerbunker amid the ruins of Berlin. The Führerbunker, positioned beside the Reich Chancellery, was initially intended as a safe house for Hitler from early British air raids; it was to prove the final calling card of Nazi Germany.

Now in the late winter of 1945, preparations for a new military engagement on the Eastern front had been titled, Operation Spring Awakening (Unternehmen Frühlingserwachen).

Albert Speer, German war minister from February 1942, and one of the most powerful figures in the Reich, was repeatedly present at discussions with Hitler at the Führerbunker from mid-January 1945 onwards.

Clear in Speer’s memory was Hitler’s thinking behind Operation Spring Awakening. From a bleak cell in Spandau Prison, Speer wrote in his secret diary, on 8 November 1946, recalling vividly the offensive’s planning and how “Hitler boldly traced its course at his big map table, to advance through Hungary to the south-east”.

Speer’s recollections of the remarks made by Hitler on this last attack have, over the elapsing near 75 years, hardly ever been relayed in print before. Historians have almost universally shied away from quoting Hitler at length, presumably due to his particularly notorious legacy. Infamous as his reputation no doubt remains, Hitler was one of the major figures in 20th century history, and his views should be recounted, especially relating to offensives he had himself devised.

With a semi-circle gathering of German officers present in the Führerbunker conference room, Speer recalls that Hitler said of Operation Spring Awakening,

“There is every likelihood that the population of these areas will rise as one man, and with their help we will go roaring through the entire Balkans in a life-and-death battle. For I am still determined, gentlemen, to wage the fight in the East offensively. The defensive strategy of our generals helps only the Bolshevists! But I have never in my life been a man for the defensive. Now we shall go over from the defence to the attack once more”. (3)

Hitler’s ambition to forge ahead with the offensive went firmly against the wishes of nearly all of his remaining generals, who preferred a strategy based upon defence, embedding oneself in the earth and in bombed out buildings. This plan of containment was simply a case of delaying the inevitable, and Hitler was most likely correct to gamble. It is surely better to engineer a forward-thinking manoeuvre with victory in mind, no matter how unlikely, rather than a stay-put policy of restraint which can only result in certain defeat in the end.

Soviet counterattack (Source: Greenx aka Gerald Kainberger / CC BY-SA 3.0)

Furthermore, an attack-minded plan imbued Hitler and his few remaining loyalists with some semblance of hope that the war could yet be turned around. As late as the 21st of April 1945, Hitler attempted to organise a pincer movement to wipe out Soviet forces that had encircled Berlin two days before, placing his hopes mainly on units commanded by Waffen-SS General Felix Steiner. When Hitler was told that Steiner could not implement the attack, he fell into a bitter and tearful rage, realising that the war was undoubtedly lost.

Speer affirmed of Hitler that,

“It was as if he had always known that he had only the choice between the offensive and defeat, as if the loss of the initiative in itself was virtually equivalent to his downfall”.

Speer, who had become particularly close to Hitler as his prized architect, attests that the dictator’s actions dating to the time of his “struggle” from the early 1920s, consisted of one aggressive move after another. These provocative, sometimes criminal policies, continued following his rise to power in January 1933, as he eradicated potential rivals, reclaimed former territories, stepped up his persecution of Germany’s Jewish population, and ran roughshod over appeasement-seeking French or British politicians.

Speer writes that,

“The unleashing of war itself had been an example of offensive policy, and he [Hitler] had waged the military conflict in an offensive spirit as long as he was able. Even after the turning point of the war, the capitulation of Stalingrad, he had organised the offensive operation at Kursk, code-named Citadel”. (4)

The Battle of Kursk has also sometimes erroneously been dubbed “the last major German offensive on the Eastern front”, when it was not the case at all. (5)

Further German assaults were launched in the east during the summer of 1944, ending in disaster as the Soviets made huge advances westward with Operation Bagration. Spring Awakening itself, the following year, would consist of 10 Panzer divisions and five infantry divisions, altogether 400,000 men, considerably larger in manpower than the US-led invasion force which descended on Iraq in 2003. (6)

Meanwhile, Hitler’s argument to push ahead with Spring Awakening was bolstered when the Germans enjoyed an unlikely victory against Soviet forces in late February 1945, called Operation Southwind (Unternehmen Südwind).

It was an attack directed through the heart of Europe, into northern Hungary, and that went fully according to plan (7). By 24 February 1945 the Soviet bridgehead over the River Garam, 150 miles east of Vienna, was decimated by General Hans Kreysing’s 8th army, and in doing so they had removed the Soviet threat in this area, for now.

Hitler was reassured and said,

“Those who are down today can be on top tomorrow. In any case, we shall go on fighting. It is wonderful to see the fanaticism with which the youngest age groups throw themselves into the fighting. They know that there are only two possibilities left: Either we will solve this problem, or we will all be destroyed”. (8)

Often claimed is that the aim of Spring Awakening, led by Sepp Dietrich’s 6th SS Panzer Army, was to ensure control over the oil wells near Lake Balaton, in western Hungary, pivotal to Nazi Germany’s lasting war effort; and to drive on north-eastwards so as to retake the Hungarian capital, Budapest. Hitler had actually envisaged this 1945 attack as a turning point in the war, a Stalingrad-type victory but this time in the Germans’ favour – that would eventually drive the Red Army divisions back towards their own frontiers.

An animated Hitler, hammering away at his military entourage, continued that,

“The Russians have almost been bled to death by now. After the retreats of the past few months, we have the priceless advantage of no longer having to defend those enormous spaces. And we know from our own experience how exhausted the Russians must be after their headlong advance. Remember the Caucasus! This means a turning point is now possible for us, as it was for the Russians. In fact, it is absolutely probable. Consider! The Russians have had tremendous losses in materiel and men.

Their stocks of equipment are exhausted. By our estimates they have lost 15 million men. That is enormous! They cannot survive the next blow. They will not survive it”. (9)

Such was Hitler’s powers of persuasion that Speer remembers how his diatribes “distorted so many men’s grasp of reality”. Dispirited officers once convinced that defeat was a matter of time, following discussions with Hitler went away thinking that victory was achievable after all.

Nazi intelligence calculations regarding the Red Army death toll were not far off. By early 1945 comfortably more than 10 million Soviet troops were dead, and around the same number of Soviet civilians had also been liquidated by the invaders (10). This horrendous loss of life outweighs the Holocaust, but the latter genocide is unprecedented in that it was pre-planned by the Nazi regime, organised and systematic.

Around the time that Hitler was laying out his designs for Spring Awakening, the Auschwitz extermination camp was liberated at 3pm on 27 January 1945, firstly by soldiers from the Red Army’s 322nd Rifle Division. These troops, long used to fighting against fanatical German soldiers, were shocked at the horrors that lay within.

Over a million people had been killed at Auschwitz alone. For the vast majority the victims consisted of Jewish populaces from central and eastern Europe, 960,000 in total; among the dead too were minority groups like Sinti, Roma and others. (11)

*

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Shane Quinn obtained an honors journalism degree. He is interested in writing primarily on foreign affairs, having been inspired by authors like Noam Chomsky. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Notes

1 US Lieutenant-Colonel J.C. Lambert, Armored Cavalry Journal, Roster of Armored Cavalry Officers on Active Duty, Armored Rescue, p. 37

2 Winston Churchill, The Gathering Storm, 1948, (RosettaBooks, June 30, 2010), p. 582

3 Albert Speer, Spandau: The Secret Diaries, (Fontana, London, 1977) p. 28

4 Speer, Spandau: The Secret Diaries, p. 28

5 Ruslan Budnik, “Last Gasp of the Wehrmacht – Battle of Kursk”, War History Online, 21 August 2018, https://www.warhistoryonline.com/instant-articles/last-gasp-of-wehrmacht.html

6 Peter McCarthy and Mike Syron, Panzerkrieg: The Rise and Fall of Hitler’s Tank Divisions, (Robinson; New Ed edition, 2003-09-12)

7 Major Christopher W. Wilbeck, Swinging the Sledgehammer: The Combat Effectiveness of German Heavy Tank Battalions in World War II, (Lucknow Books, August 15, 2014)

8 Speer, Spandau: The Secret Diaries, p. 29

9 Speer, Spandau: The Secret Diaries, p. 29

10 Oleg Yegorov, “How many Soviet citizens died in World War II”, Russian Beyond, 8 July 2019, https://www.rbth.com/history/330625-soviet-citizens-died-world-war-statistics

11 John Daniszewski, “Plaques changed at Auschwitz-Birchenau”, Associated Press, 18 July 1990, https://apnews.com/4de24d2430cd2e900602ecf14b1db341

Featured image: Germans during the Operation Spring Awakening (Source: Bundesarchiv, Bild 146-1989-105-13A / Woscidlo, Wilfried / CC-BY-SA 3.0)

We are posting  the Open Letter to the Green Party for 2020, followed by a response by Jack Rasmus.

The purpose is to encourage a useful and constructive debate as well as dialogue.

**

An Open Letter to the Green Party for 2020

by

Noam Chomsky, Barbara Ehrenreich, Bill Fletcher, Leslie Cagan, Ron Daniels, Kathy Kelly, Norman Solomon, Cynthia Peters and Michael Albert

.

Truthdig, January 24, 2019

As the 2020 presidential election approaches the Green Party faces the challenge of settling on a platform, choosing a candidate for president, and deciding its campaign strategy. In that context, Howie Hawkins, a contender for Green Party presidential candidate, recently published a clear and cogent essay titled “The Green Party Is Not the Democrats’ Problem.” It represents a precedent Green Party stance which may guide Green campaign policy. We agree with much, but find some ideas very troubling.

The stance offered in Hawkins’ article says “the assertion that the Green Party spoiled the 2000 and 2016 elections is a shallow explanation for the Democrats’ losses;” that in 2000, “the Supreme Court…stopped the Florida recount;” that many factors “elected Trump in 2016…including black voter suppression, Comey publicly reopening the Clinton email case a week before the election, $6 billion of free publicity for Trump from the commercial media, and a Clinton campaign that failed to get enough of its Democratic base out;” that the Electoral College “gave the presidency to the loser of the popular vote;” that most Greens are “furious” at a Democratic party “that joins with Republicans to support domestic austerity and a bloated military budget and endless wars;” “that the Green Party’s Green New Deal science-based timeline, would put the country on a World War II scale emergency footing to transform the economy to zero greenhouse gas emissions and 100% clean energy by 2030;” and that “the Green Party want(s) to eliminate poverty and radically reduce inequality“ including a job guarantee, a guaranteed income above poverty, affordable housing, improved Medicare for all, lifelong public education from pre-K through college, and a secure retirement;” and finally that the Green Party strategy “is to build the party from the bottom up by electing thousands to municipal and county offices, state legislatures, and soon the House as we go into the 2020s.”

We agree that many factors led to Democratic Party losses and that the Supreme Court was a big one as was the Electoral College, and we too are furious at Democrats joining Republicans in so many violations of justice and peace. Likewise, we admire the Greens’ Green New Deal and economic justice commitments, and also support a grassroots, local office approach to winning electoral gains.

So with all that agreement, why are we sending a critical open letter?

The stance the article presents, which may guide the Green campaign for president, says, “To hold all other factors (contributing to recent Presidential victories) constant and focus on the Green Party as the deciding factor is a hypothetical that is a logical fallacy because it assumes away a factual reality: the Green Party is here to stay.” However, our finding Green policy a factor in Republican victories in no way suggests that the Green Party should disappear. And our focus on factors within our reach to easily correct (for example, the Green Party role in contested states) is in fact sensible.

The stance also says “the Green Party is not why the Democrats lost to Bush and Trump,” but even if true, that wouldn’t demonstrate it won’t be why this time. In any case, let’s take Trump and Clinton, and see how Green Party policy mattered.

If Clinton got Jill Stein’s Green votes in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan, Clinton would have won the election. Thus, the Green Party’s decision to run in those states, saying even that there was little or no difference between Trump and Clinton, seems to us to be a factor worthy of being removed from contested state dynamics, just like the Electoral College is a factor worthy of being removed across all states.

We realize many and perhaps most Greens will respond that if those who voted for Stein in contested states in 2016 hadn’t done so, they would have abstained. We don’t know how anyone could know that, but for the sake of argument we will suppose it is correct.

Still, if these voters who preferred Stein did indeed erroneously believe that there was no difference between Trump and Clinton, surely to some degree that was a result of Stein refusing to acknowledge the special danger of Trump, and insisting that while it would be bad if Trump won it would also be bad if Clinton won, and refusing to state any preference.

Similarly, if these Stein voters did indeed erroneously believe that no harm could come from casting a vote for Stein in a close state in a close election, that also to some degree was surely a result of Green campaigning insisting that Green voters bore no responsibility for the 2000 election result.

And finally, if these voters did indeed erroneously believe that it was immoral to contaminate themselves by voting for Clinton or for a Democrat, surely in part that too was encouraged by Green campaigning that treated voting as a feel-good activity (“vote your hopes, not your fears”) as if fear of climate disaster, for example, shouldn’t be a motivator for political action.

The stance says, “The Green Party is not going back to the ‘safe states strategy’ that a faction of it attempted in 2004.” This means they will not forgo running in contested states where Green votes could swing the outcome as happened in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan in 2016, and they will not run in only 40 safe states where the outcome will be a foregone conclusion.

But why reject a safe states strategy?

Like Stein in 2016, some might claim doing so can’t help Trump win again or, in any case, that Trump’s re-election would not matter all that much. “He isn’t that much worse.”

We write in hopes that no one in 2020 will rationalize campaign actions by making such irresponsible and patently false claims.

And, indeed, in his recent essay, Hawkins instead claimed a safe states strategy “couldn’t even be carried out. It alienated Greens in swing states who were working so hard to overcome onerous petitioning requirements to get the party on the ballot. Keeping the party on the ballot for the next election cycle for their local candidates depended on the Green presidential vote in many states. It became clear that safe states was dispiriting and demoralizing because the party didn’t take itself seriously enough to justify its existence independent of the Democrats. Few people, even in the safe states, wanted to waste their vote for a Green ticket that was more concerned with electing the Democratic ticket than advancing its own demands.”

This claims there is a price the Green Party has to pay for a safe states strategy. Okay, let’s take that as gospel. Where is an argument that this price is so great that avoiding it outweighs the price everyone, including Greens, will pay for re-electing Trump?

We have no way to assess the claim that Greens would find it dispiriting to remove themselves as a factor that might abet global catastrophe via a Trump re-election. But wouldn’t Trump out of office much less Sanders or Warren in office not only benefit all humanity and a good part of the biosphere to boot, but also the Green Party? For that matter, weren’t more potential Green Party members and voters driven off by the party’s dismissal of the dangers of Trump than were inspired by it? Which grew more in the last four years, DSA or the Greens?

And weren’t the Greens in the late ’80s and early ’90s winning elections to city councils and other local offices across the country, consistent with a grass roots strategy, though for much of the past 20 years, they’ve largely abandoned local and state contests, devoting nearly all their attention to increasingly harmful races for president? Hawkins’ own exemplary races for Senate and Governor in New York state, and especially the Greens’ successful mayoral races in politically important places like Richmond, CA, as well as less visible ones like New Paltz, NY, were exceptions, but how many Greens have used their hard-won ballot access to run for Congress or state legislature? Might the massive focus on presidential elections mark a decline in prospects for the localist strategy, not an advance for it?

We are told, “Greens want to get Trump out as much as anybody” but how can that be if Greens would vote for a Green candidate, and not for Sanders, Warren, or any Democrat in a contested state knowing that doing so could mean Trump’s victory?

If during the 2020 election campaign, the Green candidate campaigns in contested states knowing that he or she might be winning votes that would otherwise have gone to Sanders or to Warren or whoever, causing Trump to win the state and win the electoral college, how could that possibly evidence wanting Trump to lose as much as anyone?

Indeed, if a Green candidate weren’t telling everyone who was a potential Green voter to vote for Trump’s opponent in contested states, how could that evidence that Greens want Trump to lose as much as anyone?

Let us put our question another way. It is election night 2020. The vote tallies are in. Which way would the 2020 Green candidate feel better? Trump wins and the Green candidate gets 250,000 votes across the contested states, more than enough for Sanders, Warren, or whoever to have won? Or, Trump loses and the Green candidate gets no votes in the contested states, but a bunch extra in other states as a result of having more time for campaigning there?

Greens tell Democrats “to stop worrying about the Green Party and focus on getting your own base out.” We agree on the importance of Democrats getting their base out, starting with nominating Sanders, or, at worst, Warren. But how does that warrant the Green Party risking contributing to Trump winning?

The stance asks, “So why are we running a presidential ticket in 2020 if our strategy is to build the party from the bottom up?” The stance answers, “Because Greens need ballot lines to run local candidates. Securing ballot lines for the next election cycle is affected by the petition signatures and/or votes for our presidential ticket in 40 of the states.”

Greens will pay a price for not running in contested states. Our advice to Greens would be to notice the infinitely bigger price that millions and even billions of people will pay for Trump winning.

The stance says “Greens don’t spoil elections. We improve them. We advance solutions that otherwise won’t get raised. We are running out of time on the climate crisis, inequality, and nuclear weapons. Greens will be damned if we wait for the Democrats. Real solutions can’t wait.”

But real solutions require Trump out of office. Real solutions will become far more probable with Sanders or Warren in office. Real solutions will become somewhat more probable even with the likes of Biden in office.

To conclude, is a Green candidate running for President after the summer really going to argue we shouldn’t vote for Sanders in contested states not just to end Trumpism but also to enact all kinds of important changes including urging and facilitating grass roots activism and thereby advancing Green program?

We offer this open letter in hopes of prodding discussion of the issues raised.

Response by Jack Rasmus

You Can Trust ‘Left Liberals’ to be Liberals First (and Left Last): A Reply to Chomsky & Friends’ Open Letter

by  

Jack Rasmus

January 28, 2020

This past weekend a group best identified as ‘left liberal’ intellectuals posted an ‘Open Letter’ to the Green Party charging that party with being responsible for Hillary Clinton’s loss in 2016. They then declared that the Green Party’s 2020 presidential candidate, Howie Hawkins, should not run in 2020, lest the Greens become responsible for getting Trump re-elected again. Everything should be done to ensure that a Democrat Party candidate, whomever that might be, should win in 2020. That includes even Joe Biden, they say. Left liberals like themselves should simply ‘hold their noses’ and vote for Biden, if necessary, if he gets the nomination.

For someone like yours truly who has been around and seen the same strategy of ‘lesser evilism’ repeated for a half century now–with devastating consequences even when the lesser evil (aka Democrats) won the presidency–it is not surprising to read and hear the ‘left liberals’ lament once again!

The coterie signatories of the ‘open letter’ include: Noam Chomsky, Barbara Ehrenreich, Bill Fletcher, Leslie Cagan, Ron Daniels, Kathy Kelly, Norman Solomon, Cynthia Peters and Michael Albert.

Their main argument, calling for Hawkins and the Greens to retreat from the 2020 electoral field (and for the record I am not a Green party member or a member of any other party), is that Hillary lost the swing states of Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, etc. to Trump in 2016 but would have won them–and thus the electoral college vote–if only those who voted for the Greens presidential candidate, Jill Stein, in the swing states had not done so but voted instead for Hillary.

It’s really a logically weak argument that one would think such ‘power intellectuals on the left’ would be hesitant to pen their name to it out of concern they would have insulted themselves to their audience. But they have.

The argument fails not only on the facts but on the amateur assumptions on which it also rests.

First, logically it is juvenile in that it assumes that those who voted for the Greens in 2016 in these swing states would have voted for Hillary, had there not been a Green candidate on the ballot. Its hidden assumption is that all of those Green votes would have voted Hillary had Jill Stein not run. That these assumptions are nonsense is self evident.

Clearly those who voted Green did so because they couldn’t stand Hillary, or knew of her record, or understood that a vote for Hillary would have meant a vote for war as well as more of the same failed economic policies of the Bill Clinton-Obama era that created the real conditions that gave rise to Trump.

The Green vote in the swing states would not have gone to Hillary. Those who voted Green would have instead stayed home and not voted or would have written in some other candidate. Most Greens are Green because they’ve come to understand what the Democrats in the era of Neoliberalism really stand for, both in domestic and foreign policy: escalating income inequality, precarious jobs, stagnant wages, unaffordable healthcare, poverty in retirement, rising rents, continuous wars, incessant tax cuts for the rich and their corporations, indenture to student debt, etc. That’s the legacy of both Republican and Democrat regimes since the 1970s–i.e. the past 50 years now.

Apart from weak logic and absurd (not so hidden) assumptions of the Open Letter, there’s the voting evidence as well as Hillary’s own self-destructive arrogance that explain the Democrats loss of the swing states in 2016 and thus the rise of Trump.

First, the Left Liberal authors of the Open Letter in question fail to explain that in the swing states Libertarian and other independent voters cast three and four times the votes for Trump than the Green party cast for its candidate, Dr. Jill Stein, in 2016. SO was it the Greens’ fault? The Libertarians? Other third parties?

No, none of the above. Hillary herself lost the swing states and handed Trump the presidency when she refused to even bother to campaign in states like Michigan, Wisconsin, and barely showed up until the very end when it was already too late. Hillary thought she had the ‘blue collar’ vote in those states wrapped up and arrogantly ignored campaigning there. She ignored them. Took them for granted. And no one votes for someone who arrogantly ignores them and takes them for granted. Even if no Greens voted at all, Hillary would have lost the swing states. But the Open Letter would have us believe it was someone else’s fault, not Hillary’s.

If the Democrat leadership wants to win back swing state votes, it needs someone ‘not Hillary’. But Joe Biden is just another corporate moneybag wing Hillary clone. Not for nothing is he known as ‘bankers friend Joe’ from Delaware (where many big banks have their headquarters and politically own the state). Ditto for the corporate Dems backup candidate, Mike Bloomberg, a lifelong Republican billionaire only recently joined the corporate wing of the Dems.

The fundamental argument of the Left Liberals’ in their Open Letter is not just stop Trump by any means but, their argument behind the argument that there’s a fundamental difference in voting for a Democrat. (Or at least the corollary argument that the Democrat won’t screw us as badly as will the Republican).

But what does the historical evidence show? Have the Corporate Democrats been really any better over the past half century?

American voters, especially today’s Millenials, and now the GenZers, in polls are saying ‘a plague on both houses’ of Democrats and Republicans. They have lost hope of either party making a difference in their lives. They see both as contributing to their deteriorating conditions and near hopeless future, consisting of a lifetime of precarious, part time/temp jobs, with no benefits, working two and sometimes even three jobs to make ends meet, without affordable rents, and no chance of owning a home, living a life of indentured labor paying $1.6 trillion in student loans to the US government (at 6.8% interest, by the way, while bankers pay 1.6%), without affordable health insurance (including the soaring deductibles under Obamacare), unable to afford to even start a family. It’s a bleak prospect, created by both parties over recent decades.

It’s not coincidental that polls show, by well more than 50%, even as high as 70%, that the more than 50 million Millenials and GenZers prefer something called ‘socialism’ (although they’re probably not sure what that means except ‘none of the present’).

If the DLC-Corporate-moneybag wing of the Democrat leadership puts up a Biden or a Bloomberg–(i.e. latter their fallback at the Democrat party convention after no one gets the nomination on the first vote)–even more youth will not vote Democrat. And not just in the swing states. And if the Democrat leaders continue to scuttle the Sanders nomination–which they did in 2016 and show signs now of doing again in 2020–the Dems themselves, not a Green party candidacy, will once again have put Trump in office. It won’t be the Greens.

Of course Republican ‘red state’ control of electoral college votes is being ensured by voter suppression and gerrymandering. That will play a role as well. But here the Democrats’ loss of state legislatures and governorships under Obama, due to his ineffective economic policies in 2010 and after, have enabled that suppression and gerrymandering largely to happen as well. It made possible the Republican capture of two thirds of state legislatures, many of which have been pushing the voter suppression and gerrymandering.

It’s not for nothing that Obama is sometimes referred to by youth as ‘president Jello’–meaning he appears to move left and right but really is stuck in one place.

The Left Liberals’ Open Letter buys the Democrat moneybag wing’s argument that a Joe Biden (or Mike Bloomberg) argument that Corporate Democrat programs and policies are fundamentally better for average voters than would be Trump’s.

They think that the typical working class voter in the swing states, that abandoned Hillary in 2016 (or actually vice-versa), can’t figure out the game. Or that youth voters today can’t either. But they’re wrong.

Voters remember it was Bill Clinton had enabled NAFTA and sent millions of heartland American jobs offshore. It was Clinton that allowed hundreds of thousands of skilled tech workers into the US every year under H1-B/L-1 visas. It was Clinton that gave China preferred trading rights and allowed the shift of US manufacturing supply chains (and millions more good paying jobs) to China. It was Clinton that allowed corporations to ‘check the box’ on their tax forms and thereby not pay taxes on foreign profits. It was Clinton that permitted companies to divert funds from pension plans to pay for their corporations’ share of escalating health care costs. It was Clinton that allowed the deregulation of financial institutions that paved the way for subprime mortgages and the crash of 2008-09. The list is longer still.

And what about the corporate Democrats’ last minute hand picked candidate in 2008, Barack Obama? It was Obama that gave corporations $6 trillion in tax cuts from 2009-16, almost twice that even George W. Bush gave them. It was Obama who agreed to $1.5 trillion in social program spending cuts in 2011-13, thus taking back more than twice his 2009 recovery package of $878 billion. It was Obama who extended Bush’s tax cuts two years, 2010-12, and then made them permanent after 2013, amounting to another $5 trillion tax cuts for business and investors. It was Obama who continued Free Trade deals despite their obvious effects on jobs and wages, and then tried to push through the TPP trade deal. It was Obama who had the Federal Reserve bail out the banks and investors with the tune of at least $4.5 trillion, while he gave a mere $25 billion to bail out just a few of the 14 million who lost their homes. It was Obama who let Hillary start wars in Honduras to save the big landowners there, and then gave Hillary the green light in Libya to start another, creating that failed state there (as her hubby Bill did in Somalia). It was Obama that authorized and set the precedent for assassinations by drones (over 500 times on his watch). It was Obama who supported the US central bank, the Federal Reserve, to continue loaning banks free money, at an interest rate of 0.15% for seven years, long after the banks were bailed out, while charging millions of US students interest of 6.8% on their student loans to the government.

This is the decades long record that the Left Liberals want the US working class, students, and others to vote for again. Their argument is ‘anything but Trump’ will be better. But was it? Will it? Trump might give us war with Iran. But Democrats might with Russia. Both would give us invading Venezuela and continuing to rape South America.

I’m not talking here about Sanders, who the corporate wing will never allow as the Democrat party candidate in 2020. In fact, now that Sanders is rising in the polls and primaries, the corporate wing of the Democrats attack on him has intensified. Not just from Hillary, but from Warren, from the New York Times, and, as we’ll soon see, from all quarters of the Liberal Elite and their media and their grass roots operatives. Observing how Trump captured the Republican party, two years ago the Democrats’ leaders changed the rules of the game on how the party will run its convention this summer. They are prepared to scuttle Sanders by any means necessary.

But our Left Liberal intellectuals say we should vote for their candidate, Joe, if it comes down to that, just to beat Trump. But Trump will eat ‘ole Joe’ alive in a one on one competition, sad to say. They keep saying they want a candidate that can beat Trump. Then push one who cannot. And the Left Liberals want us to vote for Joe and not for a Green or anyone else. That’s the only way to win! It may be the sure way to lose!

Vote for Joe and hold your nose, they say. The Left Liberal intellectuals, who are mostly well ensconced in secure and decent paying academic jobs, won’t be impacted much by Joe’s or Mike’s or Pelosi’s or Shumer’s policies. But the rest who need a change will be.

The Open Letter represents just another form of ‘Liberal’ telling us to vote for another Liberal. Where has that gotten us?

It’s the old ‘shell game’: Republicans make their capitalists filthy rich and ruin the economy in the process. Corporate Democrats come in and make the same even richer while failing to solve the crisis. Their failure allows the Republicans to point to their failed recovery, again to lie to us, and get back in. The process starts all over. It’s been that way for at least 50 years.

And the Left Liberal intellectuals want us to buy into it for another 50?

I’d support Sanders, but he’ll never get the Democrat nomination. Even if he wins the primaries. For this isn’t the Democrat party of FDR any more, as much as Bernie would like it to be. It’s a corporate wing run party since Bill Clinton. And the Left Liberal intellectuals have bought into the corporate wing’s lie yet again, as they always have in a crisis.

One wonders if they’ll vote for Sanders, should he run as an independent after the Democrat leadership denies him the nomination at their convention this summer. But I bet they’d still vote for Joe. (Correct that: Mike).

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It is strikingly bullying and bullish.  US officials have been less than reserved in their threats about what Britain’s proposed dealings with Huawei over admitting it to its 5G network might entail.  Three Republican Senators – Tom Cotton of Arkansas, John Cornyn of Texas and Marco Rubio of Florida – have taken it upon themselves in the circus of the impeachment trial of President Donald Trump to send a letter to the UK’s National Security Council, not to mention cool notes to a whole swathe of UK ministers, including the Attorney General, the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Secretary of State for Defence. 

The language is terse and unequivocal.  “The company’s actions show a clear record of predatory and problematic behaviour.”  For the sake of the “US-UK special relationship and the health and wellbeing of a well-functioning market”, it was “in the best interest of the United Kingdom” to exclude Huawei. 

The letter is also noteworthy for doing the opposite of what it claims to.  “We do not want to feed post-Brexit anxieties by threatening a potential US-UK free trade agreement when it comes to Congress for approval.  Nor do we want to have to review US-UK intelligence sharing.”  Except that they do. 

Within the Trump administration, officials are also keen to sound the note of warning, flavoured with threat, though the voice is a touch discordant.  US Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin is a regular on the critical circuit warning that admitting Huawei to the fold is much like admitting thieves to the party.  But were Huawei to be scrubbed from contention of applying its 5G technology to Britain, the US would “dedicate a lot of resources” of getting a trade deal done and dusted with it.

Those in London know that a hypocrisy is in the making.  Despite the righteous stand being maintained in Congress and some in the Trump administration, opponents against a full freezing out of Huawei can be found.  They have sanctuary in the Departments of Defense and Treasury.  The concern here, as the Wall Street Journal notes, is that not allowing US firms to ship to Huawei will squeeze revenue in a competitive market.  For one thing, it will chill progress in research in the field that might enable money and research to be spent on developing better alternatives.  According to Defense Secretary Mark Esper, speaking at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, “We have to be conscious of sustaining those [technology] companies’ supply chains and those innovators.  That’s the balance we have to strike.”   

Keeping up their letter writing obsession on Huawei, Rubio and Cotton, this time with Senator Ben Sasse of Nebraska to keep them company, badgered Esper for an explanation.  “Huawei is an arm of the Chinese Communist Party and should be treated as such.”   

The British have been rather surly on this; the suggestion that the US have priority in being listened to over a balanced deal that might be struck with a dominant Chinese company, albeit heavily subsided by an authoritarian regime, is grating.  Besides, no UK official would willingly compromise the digital channels of communications with Washington by letting in a potential digital burglar.  The approach of Prime Minister Boris Johnson, as with much else, is to puzzle and dare. 

On Tuesday, Johnson approved the limited use of Huawei equipment in the country’s fifth-generation mobile phone networks, albeit designating it a “high risk vendor”.  (The designation suggests that Britain’s ministers are concerned enough to regard the company as subject to Beijing’s direction.)  The UK National Security Council signed off on the arrangement, but only to a market share of 35 percent within the 5G infrastructure. 

Sensitive core functions will also remain out of reach for the Chinese giant, including networks in the Critical National Infrastructure and “sensitive geographic locations, such as nuclear sites and military bases”.  According to a government press release, UK ministers “determined that UK operators should put in place additional safeguards to exclude high risk vendors from parts of the telecoms network that are critical to security.”  Guidance on the matter will be sought from the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC).

Some concession has been made by means of a promise on the part of the UK that its ministers liaise with fellow “five eyes” alliance members – US, Australia, Canada and New Zealand – on developing alternatives in future.

The true victor here is Huawei, even if the victory seems clipped.  It is being treated as the innovator-in-chief in a technology market that has become addictive and hyper-competitive. To ban Huawei is to spit in the face of speedy progress.  To ban Huawei, goes this line of reasoning, is to prevent the development of 5G and cognate broadband technologies by anywhere up to two or three years.

We are also left with some speculation as to how the technology developments will unfold.  As ITV’s political editor Robert Peston maintains with relevant acuity, “The problem is that for 5G, important data processing – such as for a new generation of driverless cars – may well migrate outside of the core network to the periphery.” 

The gamble being made here, as Peston reiterates, is that Huawei’s market share falls over time, something that can only happen if the UK brings in other providers (Samsung and NEC) and make all equipment interoperable.  Given Britain’s fabulously bad record in dealing with such infrastructure decisions, marked by bungles and poor choices, this is anybody’s bet.

The sense of British pride, mighty as it is, is evident.  While they remain dupes of international relations politics when it comes to backing Washington on various fronts, the Huawei threat was one step too far.  Perhaps it said as much about Washington’s fears than it does about Britain’s own confidence: that it can strike a balance with Huawei better than others can.  As the Johnson government boasts, the NCSC had “carried a technical and security analysis” that offered “the most detailed assessment in the world of what is needed to protect the UK’s digital infrastructure.”  Huawei may well burst that bubbly presumption in time.

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Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge.  He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne.  He is a frequent contributor to Global Research and Asia-Pacific Research. Email: [email protected]

Featured image is from CGTN

 

Two of the most persistent offensives of the Reagan presidency have been the war against communism in Central America and the war on drugs here at home.

But investigations of America’s secret war in Nicaragua have revealed mounting evidence that the Central Intelligence Agency has been fighting the Contra war with the help of international drug traffickers. It is not a new story.

From the 1980s Archive, we bring the attention of our reader the FRONTLINE investigation traces the CIA’s involvement with drug lords back to the agency’s birth following World War II.

It is a long history that asks this question: “In the war on drugs, which side is the CIA on?”

Our program was produced by Leslie and Andrew Cockburn.

It is called Guns, Drugs, and the CIA and is reported by Leslie Cockburn.

Watch the video below.

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Featured image is from TruePublica

A French publisher has apologised after a history textbook that appeared in bookshops in recent weeks suggested the 11 September 2001 attacks were probably “orchestrated by the CIA”.

The debunked conspiracy theory was apparently highlighted on social media initially by a group of schoolteachers.

The book History of the 20th Century in Flash Cards is aimed at undergraduate students.

On its website, the publisher said the phrase should never have appeared.

“This phrase which echoes conspiracy theories devoid of any factual basis should never have been used in this work. It doesn’t reflect the editorial position either of Ellipses publications or the author,” it said (in French).

The textbook is described as a complete course on the last century in French, European and world history. It was written by Jean-Pierre Rocher, a teacher of history and geography and a graduate of the Sciences Po university in Paris, and aimed at Sciences Po undergraduates as well as students preparing for France’s elite “grandes écoles”.

Although the book came out in November, it was not until the daughter of one of the secondary school teachers bought a copy that one of them spotted the reference to the CIA.

 

Click here to read full article.

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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.

Trump appears to have decided to unveil the Israel-Palestine plan on Tuesday to take the pressure off from his Senate impeachment trial and to shore up his support from the Jewish and evangelical communities. A majority of Americans in polls say they want Trump impeached and removed from office.

Trump’s plan may also bolster beleaguered Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu, who has been indicted for corruption and is fighting for his political life as Israel’s third election in a year approaches. Rushing the details of an important policy like Israel and Palestine for the sake of politics, however, could backfire big time.

Erekat also warned that the plan virtually assures that Israel will ultimately have to absorb the Palestinians, and give them the vote inside Israel. Mr. Erekat may, however, be overly optimistic, since it is much more likely that the Palestinians will be kept in a Warsaw Ghetto type of situation and simply denied a meaningful vote entirely.

Al-Quds al-`Arabi reports that Donald Trump attempted to call Palestine president Mahmoud Abbas during the past few days and that Mr. Abbas refused to take the call.

The plan, according to details leaked to the Israeli press, will propose a Palestinian statelet on 70% of the West Bank, to be established in four years. The hope is apparently that Mahmoud Abbas will no longer be president of Palestine in four years, and his successor will be more pliable.

This so-called state, however, will be demilitarized and will lack control over borders and airspace, and will be denied the authority to make treaties with other states. In other words, it will be a Bantustan of the sort the racist, Apartheid South African government created to denaturalize its Black African citizens.

Netanyahu has pledged that there will be no Palestinian state as long as he is prime minister.

Palestinians are under Israeli military rule and are being deprived of basic human rights, including the right to have citizenship in a state. They do not have passports but only laissez-passer certificates that are rejected for travel purposes by most states. Israeli squatters continually steal their land and property and water, and Palestinians have no recourse, being without a state to protect them.

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Juan Cole is the founder and chief editor of Informed Comment. He is Richard P. Mitchell Professor of History at the University of Michigan and an adjunct professor, Gulf Studies Center, Qatar University. He is author of, among many other books, Muhammad: Prophet of Peace amid the Clash of Empires. Follow him on Twitter at @jricole or the Informed Comment Facebook Page

Russian-Pakistani relations have remarkably improved in recent years as a result of their diplomatic coordination in Afghanistan and the launch of annual joint anti-terrorist drills in 2016, with both of these trust-based developments setting the stage for finally strengthening their trade ties over the past few months, which could be greatly advanced through a simple five-phase strategy that’s realistically attainable in full by the middle of this decade.

On January 27 evening, units of the Syrian Army continued their operation in southeastern Idlib. Government troops liberated Hamidiya, Bseida, Maasaran, Tal Al-Shih, Maziyan and several other villages. By this advance, the army fully besieged Maarat al-Numan from the northern, southern and eastern directions.

According to pro-government sources, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham militants are not planning to defend the encircled city for a long time. They are actively planting mines and IEDs in the area. Therefore, even if militants withdraw from Maarat al-Numan via the remaining corridor, government troops will not be able to secure the city immediately.

On January 28, government sources claimed that the Syrian Army had already entered Maarat al-Numan. However, government forces still have to remove IEDs and fortify their new positions.

The Syrian Army offensive in southeastern Idlib is ongoing under the nose of the Turkish observation post near Maarat al-Hat. In the event of further advances by the army, the observation post will likely be encircled by Syrian forces. This will be the third Turkish observation post that faced this fate. The previous two are located near Surman and Morek.

Pro-opposition sources blame Turkey for the recent setbacks of al-Qaeda-linked groups. According to them, Ankara conspired with Moscow in order to undermine the so-called Syrian revolution. They also claim that the redeployment of members of Turkish-backed militant groups from Syria to Libya undermined the defense of Idlib. On January 26, the Libyan National Army, a rival of the pro-Turkish Libyan Government of National Accord, claims the number of Turkish-backed fighters that were prepared to be deployed to Libya was over 8,000. Earlier, reports appeared that at least 2,400 Turkish proxy fighters had been already sent to Libya.

Another hot point of the battle for Greater Idlib is western Aleppo, where the 4^th Armoured Division is engaged in an intense fighting with militants. Local sources say that the Aleppo advance is a diversionary strike designed to drew attention of the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham leadership from Maarat al-Numan and contain reinforcements that it can send to southeastern Idlib.

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Enquanto a atenção político-mediática estava concentrada na campanha eleitoral, em Itália, o ponteiro do “Relógio do Apocalipse” – o relógio simbólico que no Boletim de Cientistas Atómicos dos EUA indica a quantos minutos estamos da meia-noite da guerra nuclear – foi movido para a frente, para 100 segundos para a meia-noite. É o nível de alarme mais alto desde que o “Relógio” foi criado, em 1947 (como comparação, o nível máximo durante a Guerra Fria foi de 2 minutos para a meia-noite).

No entanto, em Itália, a notícia passou quase ignorada ou assinalada como uma espécie de curiosidade, quase como se fosse um jogo de vídeo (videogame).

Ignora-se o facto de que o alarme foi lançado por uma comissão científica da qual fazem parte 13 Prémios Nobel.

Eles advertem: “Estamos perante uma emergência real, um estado absolutamente inaceitável da situação mundial que não permite nenhuma margem de erro nem atraso imediato”. A crise mundial, agravada pela mudança climática, “torna realmente possível uma guerra nuclear, iniciada com base num plano ou por engano ou por simples mal entendido, a qual poria fim à civilização”.

A possibilidade de guerra nuclear – sublinham – foi acrescida pelo facto de, no ano passado, vários tratados e negociações importantes terem sido cancelados ou destruídos, criando um ambiente propício a uma corrida renovada aos armamentos nucleares, à proliferação e à redução do limiar nuclear.

A situação – acrescentam os cientistas – é agravada pela “ciber-desinformação”, ou seja, pela contínua alteração da esfera de informação, da qual dependem a democracia e a tomada de decisões, conduzida através de campanhas de desinformação para semear a desconfiança entre as nações e destruir os esforços internos e internacionais para promover a paz e proteger o planeta.

O que é que faz a política italiana nessa situação extremamente crítica?

A resposta é simples: cala-se. Domina o silêncio imposto pelo vasto arco político bipartidário, responsável pelo facto de que a Itália, país não nuclear, albergar e estar preparada para usar armas nucleares, violando o Tratado de Não Proliferação, que ratificou. Responsabilidade que se torna ainda mais grave pelo facto da Itália se recusar a aderir ao Tratado sobre a Proibição de Armas Nucleares (Tratado ONU),votado pela grande maioria da Assembleia das Nações Unidas.

No Artigo 4, o Tratado estabelece:

“Qualquer Estado parte que possua armas nucleares no seu território, possuídas ou controladas por outro Estado, deve assegurar a remoção rápida dessas mesmas armas”.

Portanto, para aderir ao Tratado ONU, a Itália deve solicitar aos Estados Unidos para removerem do seu território, as bombas nucleares B-61 (que já violam o Tratado de Não Proliferação) e de não instalar as novas bombas B61-12, nem outras armas nucleares.

Além do mais, como a Itália faz parte dos países (como declara a própria NATO) que “fornecem à Aliança, aviões equipados para transportar bombas nucleares – sobre os quais os Estados Unidos mantêm controlo absoluto – e pessoal treinado para esse fim”, para aderir ao Tratado da ONU, a Itália deveria pedir para ser isenta dessa função. O mesmo aplica-se ao Tratado sobre Forças Nucleares Intermédias (Tratado INF), destruído por Washington.

Tanto na sede da NATO, da União Europeia e da ONU, a Itália seguiu a decisão dos EUA, dando, essencialmente, luz verde à instalação de novos mísseis nucleares dos EUA no seu território. Isso confirma que a Itália não tem – por responsabilidade do vasto arco político bipartidário – tem uma política externa soberana, que responde aos princípios da sua Constituição e aos reais interesses nacionais. No comando que determina as orientações fundamentais da nossa política externa, está a mão de Washington, directamente ou através da NATO.

A Itália que, de acordo com o texto da sua própria Constituição repudia a guerra, faz parte da engrenagem que nos levou a 100 segundos para a meia-noite, da guerra nuclear.

Manlio Dinucci

 

Artigo original en italien :

La politica 100 secondi a Mezzanotte

ilmanifesto.it

Tradutora : Maria Luísa de Vasconcellos

No group in the United States has labored so hard as the friends of Israel to destroy the First Amendment to the Constitution, which commits the government to prohibit any “abridging the freedom of speech…or the right of the people peaceably to assemble.” Ironically, of course, Congressmen and government officials who have taken an oath to uphold the Constitution against all enemies domestic and foreign have themselves been cheerleaders as the Israel Lobby carries out its devastation of the fundamental rights of every American. Many in government at all levels repeatedly boast about their undying love for the Jewish state, which is a foreign nation and no ally, even as they enthusiastically sign on to legislation that criminalizes criticism of Israel or requires recipients of government funding to sign a no-boycott pledge.

Hubristic due to their great political power, wealth and arrogance, what the Israel firsters tend to forget is the old homespun warning that “what is good for the goose is good for the gander.” Change the rules for what people can say or do and it will sooner or later come back to haunt you when you want to speak or associate freely.

In the past, Jewish groups like the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) traditionally fought for free speech and association to advance their own tribal interest as they frequently promoted unpopular left-wing causes that most of the population opposed. Most American communists were Jews, for example. Now that that particular battle has been won they have switched gears in their war against what they perceive as anti-Semitism and have become leaders in the promotion of hate crime legislation, censorship of criticism of Jews and Israel on the internet, and legislation that would criminalize or otherwise punish supporters of an anti-Israel boycott.

Twenty-eight states currently have legislation penalizing those who support the non-violent Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement and there are several bills pending in Congress that would do the same on the federal level, including one piece of legislation, The Israel Anti-Boycott Act, that includes criminal financial penalties and prison time for those convicted. The original version of the bill included draconian punishment: “Anyone guilty of violating the prohibitions will face a minimum civil penalty of $250,000 and a maximum criminal penalty of $1 million and 20 years in prison.”

And the White House is equally engaged in the hot war against any and all aspects of anti-Semitism. President Donald Trump has recently signed an executive order that defines being Jewish as both a nationality and religion under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, making it easier for the Department of Education to cut the funding for institutions that allow speakers, organizations and events that the White House regards as “anti-Semitic.” BDS is one such organization and has been particularly targeted.

There have recently been two stories that illustrate what might happen when one wants to limit what people can say. The first involves highly respected international journalist Abby Martin.

Martin is a former teleSUR presenter and is best known as the creator of The Empire Files. She earlier in her career worked at Russia Today as an interviewer and investigative journalist. She is politically progressive and a critic of Israel’s apartheid government. Abby Martin was recently barred from speaking at a planned late February International Critical Media Literacy Conference that was going to be held at Georgia Southern University. Her crime consisted of refusing to “sign a contractual pledge to not boycott Israel,” which had nothing to do with the conference itself. In Georgia, as well as in a number of other states, anyone receiving money, or using state facilities has to confirm in writing that he or she will be in compliance with the state’s anti-BDS law.

Martin, who has also been subjected to censorship on YouTube, tweeted subsequently,

“After I was scheduled to give a keynote speech at an upcoming Georgia Southern conference, organizers said I must comply with Georgia’s anti-BDS law. I refused and my talk was canceled. The event fell apart after colleagues supported me.”

In a separate message she added

“This censorship of my talk based on forced compliance to anti-BDS laws in Georgia is just one level of a nationwide campaign to protect Israel from grassroots pressure. We must stand firmly opposed to these efforts and not cower in fear to these blatant violations of free speech.”

The second story, which appeared in the Miami Herald and the Jerusalem Post, describes how a veteran police officer with thirty-eight years on the force in the southern Florida town of Bay Harbor Islands was suspended because his wife posted comments describing Palestinian Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib as a “Hamas-loving anti-Semite.” He “Liked” her comments, which resulted in the action taken against him.

The officer, identified as one Corporal Pablo Lima, is currently on administrative leave and will have to submit to an internal affairs investigation. The town’s manager J.C. Jimenez issued a statement that “The content of the social media posts that were brought to our attention are not consistent with our Town’s values and policies.” The town’s police department explicitly prohibits any expressions by employees that “ridicules, maligns, disparages, or otherwise expresses bias against any gender, race, religion, or any protected class of individuals.”

Corporal Lima’s wife, Haifa-born Israeli Anabelle Lima-Taub, is no stranger to controversy involving her country of birth. She is the city commissioner for nearby Hallandale Beach, where she was censured at a January 23^rd special meeting over Facebook posts that also related to Tlaib, repeating the claim that the Congresswoman was a “Hamas-loving anti-Semite,” and also adding that Tlaib might be considering making herself and others “martyr[s] and blow up Capitol Hill.” The Hallandale Beach board vote against Lima-Taub passed by 3 to 2, but it was also reported that dozens of Jewish supporters had attended the meeting at city hall, waving Israeli flags and holding signs supporting her statements.

Lima-Taub responded to the rebuke by repeating her claims in later social network posts. She complained in one post that “I am offended by anyone who is NOT OFFENDED by Rashida Tlaib’s hateful rhetoric and pro BDS and other radical dangerous views calling for the obliteration of Israel, literally off the face of the map. I remain unapologetic for my views that she is a danger to the peace process and demand an apology of her for relabeling Israel as Palestine on a map hanging on her wall in her congressional office.”

And it did not end there Lima-Taub gave an interview to the Miami Herald in which she explained that she opposes the congresswoman’s support of the “anti-Israeli” BDS movement, which she considers to be equivalent to supporting Hamas and Hezbollah. Lima-Taub’s posts on the subject attracted some vitriol directed at Tlaib from her supporters, including that Tlaib “took her [congressional] oath on the Koran,” “openly hates Jews” and “supports the people who flew planes into our [New York] twin towers and killed over 5,000 people.”

Anabelle Lima-Taub has blamed her husband’s troubles on “corruption” and an unnamed lobbyist, but she might well exercise a bit of introspection and realize that her inability to criticize Muslims without consequences to her and her husband is part and parcel of the same mentality that seeks to criminalize whatever one chooses to call “hate speech,” which includes expressions of “anti-Semitism.” Free speech is free speech, no matter how loathsome or misguided. Government officials should be allowed to express private opinions outside the parameters of their public responsibilities, just as students at a university should be able to invite speakers to controversial conferences or seminars without requiring those invited to sign a paper pledging that they will not criticize a certain country. Once you let the genie out of the bottle and allow rules-makers to take away fundamental rights it is very hard to induce that genie to go back in.

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This article was originally published on The Unz Review.

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 The Unz Review

In a positive appeal to the Chinese people, last Saturday, President Xi Jinping has called on the nation’s courage to defeat the deadly epidemic which has already claimed more than 80 lives and more than 2,000 infected worldwide, the vast majority in China. These figures are changing fast, as the spread of the epidemic is accelerating. President Xi warned that the situation was serious, but not unsurmountable.

“As long as we have steadfast confidence, work together, [rely on] scientific prevention and cures, and precise policies, we will definitely be able to win the battle,” President Xi told a politburo meeting, according to Xinhua.

It is thought that the deadly coronavirus, 2019-nCoV has originated from wild animals, such as bats, but science is still out to confirm the details.

In short, the Government of China deserves high-flying congratulations for the efficient, rapid sanitary measures it has taken to avoid further infection – putting about 50 million people in a state of quarantine, blocking potentially dangerous travel routes and checking travelers for possible symptoms.

The timing of the outbreak has an additional dimension of pain and suffering, as it affects and hinders people’s celebration of the New Chinese Lunar Year’s joy of visiting families and of togetherness. And on a tertiary plan, it also affects the retail economy.

Chinese doctors and nurses have already healed several dozen cases. Chinese scientists in collaboration with Russian scientists are accelerating their research into developing a vaccine against the virus. Indeed, there is no country in the world that has ever achieved with such ardor, efficiency and love for the people, progress towards isolation of a potentially highly infectable and deadly disease, preventing millions from infection and providing them with protective as well as curative measures, and by setting up a countrywide impenetrable health surveillance mechanism.

There could not be a clearer sign, that the Government of China is making every effort for the betterment and the well-being of its population. This is also reflected in the high esteem and credibility the Chinese people entrust in their government. – Something not heard of in the west – not by far.

Rather to the contrary: in the west disease means foremost business and that (business) model of health care is steadily increasing, treating sick people like a “market” – and those not yet sick, as a potential market. The medical industry, is one of the most ferocious money-making apparatuses, next to the war industry.

It’s more, the big western bought and manipulative media have immediately put the blame on China. They are demonizing and slandering China, for insufficient hygiene, for medical negligence – it is one more accusation of the “yellow peril” causing worldwide danger.  A horror of western attitude and injustice.

Aside from such lies and false propaganda, let’s look at the context. In the USA alone, the regular influenza causes every year several thousand deaths, and that despite country-wide carpet vaccination, and in some states forced vaccination.  The 2019/20 flu-season has already claimed more than 7000 reported deaths and uncounted cases of serious flu infections; and that only in the United States. We are talking about a country of some 350 million people. – The statistics of this flu-epidemic could be expanded proportionally throughout Europe and the rest of the western world – and the order of magnitude would be even more overwhelming.

Yet, China, with a population of some 1.4 billion people, an outbreak, where up to this writing less than 3000 people have been infected with the new 2019-nCoV virus, and the death toll stands at below 100, the country is being badgered non-stop for being at the origin of this new disease.

Let me be clear, China does not need or want to compare herself to the west, nor does she want to measure her degree of efficiency in mastering the disease and dealing with the disease’s consequences against the west. Not at all. It’s not part of the Chinese philosophy. – However, WHO immediately calls the outbreak a potential pandemic, thereby frightening the public at large with yet another danger coming from the east, from China.

The Chinese Government and the Chinese scientists work for the people, to contain the outbreak to the extent possible. And they will ‘win’; their determination like with most everything China engages in overcomes almost all obstacles. What China has already achieved in stopping the disease from seriously spreading within China and to other countries is simply remarkable. It is what no other country in the world would have achieved in this short period.

China does all this quietly, no bragging. It is simply an endless flow of creation for the well-being of her population and for harmony – and eventually for a peaceful, trustful cohabitation of the people with their government. People willingly participate in this mammoth effort to contain and cure the disease, willingly, despite their suffering of many for not being able to visit their families during that highly revered Chinese New Year, the New Lunar Year celebration which in magnitude and importance would be western equivalent of Christmas.

Having said this, it should also be noted that this case of 2019-nCoV is curiously similar to other CoronoVirus diseases, like the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome – MERS,  first found in Saudi Arabia (2012) and then it spread to other Middle Easter and Sub-Saharan African countries; and the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), first discovered in China in 2002, spread around the world but was quickly contained and caused no know infections after 2004. Both are coronaviruses, suspected having been laboratory-made, with animal trials, and the viruses transfer to humans was only possible with human assistance. Then the viruses mutated to make human-to-human infection possible. Bothe SARS and the new 2019-nCoV virus also have the particularity of affecting primarily people of the Chinese race.

There are some 100-plus CIA / Pentagon sponsored clandestine and semi-known laboratories spread throughout the world – laboratories to fabricate and test agents for biological warfare. A few years ago, one such laboratory was discovered and reported on in Ukraine. They were working on a virus affecting the “Russian Race”. Since there is no homogenous Russian Race – their initial trials supposedly failed. Since the empire never gives up in its evil attempts to dominate the world, we can assume that research on race directed bio-agents continues.

This western, especially American (CIA, Pentagon, NATO) project to develop bio-chemical weapons to kill people by disease rather than bullets and bombs – it is much cheaper! And less obvious – does exist. You may draw your own conclusion on whether SARS and the new 2019-nCoV fits that pattern. The timing of the appearance was especially curious. It was first reported on 31 December 2019 in Wuhan – and then expanded into a proportion, so that it interfered with China’s most important Holiday, the Lunar New Year. It could, of course, be just coincidence.

One of Washington’s “low-grade” warfare models is destabilizing China (and Russia for that matter) with any means. With the objective of destabilization, China is constantly being harassed and aggressed – see Hong Kong, Taiwan, the Uyghurs in Xinjiang, Tibet, the tariff wars – and why not with a contagious virus, a trial for a potential pandemic?

What can be observed and even the west must notice to their chagrin and frustration – is China’s extreme resilience and capacity to adapt and resist – to resist with powerful minds and ingenuity that saves her people. And that without counter-aggression, without even an accusation and never a threat. This is China’s way forward: a steady flow of endless creation, avoiding conflict, no dominance, but seeking harmony by building bridges between people and among countries and cultures – creating understanding and wellbeing, towards a multi-polar world. A model for mankind? – If only the west would open its eyes and wake up.

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This article was originally published on New Eastern Outlook.

Peter Koenig is an economist and geopolitical analyst. He is also a water resources and environmental specialist. He worked for over 30 years with the World Bank and the World Health Organization around the world in the fields of environment and water. He lectures at universities in the US, Europe and South America. He writes regularly for Global Research; ICH; RT; Sputnik; PressTV; The 21st Century; Greanville Post; Defend Democracy Press, TeleSUR; The Saker Blog, the New Eastern Outlook (NEO); and other internet sites. He is the author of Implosion – An Economic Thriller about War, Environmental Destruction and Corporate Greed – fiction based on facts and on 30 years of World Bank experience around the globe. He is also a co-author of The World Order and Revolution! – Essays from the resistance. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization.

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

 

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A Million Iraqis Asked Us to Leave. We Should Listen.

By Rep. Ron Paul, January 28, 2020

You wouldn’t know it from US mainstream media reporting, but on Friday an estimated million Iraqis took to the streets to protest the continued US military presence in their country. What little mainstream media coverage the protest received all reported the number of protesters as far less than actually turned out. The Beltway elites are determined that Americans not know or understand just how much our presence in Iraq is not wanted.

The US Dropped More Munitions on Afghanistan Last Year Than Any Other Time in the Last Decade

By Jared Keller, January 28, 2020

The U.S. military dropped more munitions on targets across Afghanistan in 2019 than during any other year stretching back to at least 2009, according to Air Force data.

According to Air Forces Central Command’s airpower statistics, U.S. aircraft dropped 7,423 munitions across 2,434 sorties as part of Operation Freedom’s Sentinel and NATO’s Resolute Support mission, and increase over the 7,362 weapons released across 966 sorties in 2018.

Iraq to Neocons: Get the Hell Out of Our Country

By Kurt Nimmo, January 28, 2020

The Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) units in Iraq are integrated into the Iraqi government by a decree issued on behalf of Prime Minister Adil Abdul-Mahdi. it has played a decisive role in defeating the Islamic State, the terror organization supposedly established by Jordanian Salafi jihadist (in other words, Saudi Wahhabi) Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Never mentioned is the fact al-Zarqawi was elevated to superhuman status under a Pentagon psychological operation. The Zarqawi myth was required to demonize the Iraqi resistance to USG occupation its and ongoing terror operations, for instance the destruction of Fallujah.

Follow the “Real Money” Behind the “New Green Agenda”

By F. William Engdahl, January 28, 2020

It was no accident that Davos, the promoter of globalization, is so strongly behind the Climate Change agenda. Davos WEF has a board of appointed trustees. Among them is the early backer of Greta Thunberg, climate multi-millionaire, Al Gore, chairman of the Climate Reality Project. WEF Trustees also include former IMF head, now European Central Bank head Christine Lagarde whose first words as ECB chief were that central banks had to make climate change a priority. Another Davos trustee is outgoing Bank of England head Mark Carney, who was just named Boris Johnson’s climate change advisor and who warns that pension funds that ignore climate change risk bankruptcy (sic). The board also includes the influential founder of Carlyle Group, David M. Rubenstein. It includes Feike Sybesma of the agribusiness giant, Unilever, who is also Chair of the High Level Leadership Forum on Competitiveness and Carbon Pricing of the World Bank Group. And perhaps the most interesting in terms of pushing the new green agenda is Larry Fink, founder and CEO of the investment group BlackRock.

The Struggle to End Imperialist Militarism in the 21st Century

By Abayomi Azikiwe, January 28, 2020

In Tunisia and Egypt, it was only the military and security apparatuses which proved capable of seizing state power and ushering in a transitional process. Tunisia seems to have been the most pliable in regard to stabilizing a bourgeois democratic system. However, Egypt after the election of the Freedom and Justice Party (FJP), which was dominated by the Muslim Brotherhood, was the scene of continued unrest and the eventual well-planned takeover in July 2013 by the military.

US to Grant $35 Million to Promote Its “Fake News Bubble” in Syria and Control Local Media

By Eva Bartlett, January 27, 2020

The description goes on to claim these goals include the defeat of ISIS—although the illegal US-led coalition has attacked Syrian army positions on numerous occasions, ensuring the advance (not defeat) of ISIS in those areas. One of the most glaring instances being the September 2016 repeated attacks on the Syrian army in Deir ez-Zor province, which saw ISIS take over the region.

You wouldn’t know it from US mainstream media reporting, but on Friday an estimated million Iraqis took to the streets to protest the continued US military presence in their country. What little mainstream media coverage the protest received all reported the number of protesters as far less than actually turned out. The Beltway elites are determined that Americans not know or understand just how much our presence in Iraq is not wanted.

The protesters were largely supporters of nationalist Shi’ite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, who opposes both US and Iranian presence in Iraq. Protesters held signs demanding that the US military leave Iraq and protest leaders warned of consequences unless the US listen to the Iraqi people.

After President Trump’s illegal and foolish assassination of Iranian general Soleimani on Iraqi soil early this month, the Iraqi parliament voted unanimously to cancel the agreement under which the US military remains in Iraq. But when the Iraqi prime minister called up Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to request a timetable for a US withdrawal, Pompeo laughed in his face.

The US government answered the Iraqi parliament’s vote with a statement that the US military is a “force for good” in the Middle East and that because of the continuing fight against ISIS US troops will remain, even where they are not wanted.

How many billions of dollars have we sent to Iraq to help them build their democracy? Yet as soon as a decision of Iraq’s elected parliament goes against Washington’s wishes, the US government is no longer so interested in democracy. Do they think the Iraqis don’t notice this double-dealing?

The pressure for the US to leave Iraq has been building within the country, but the US government and mainstream media is completely – and dangerously – ignoring this sentiment. It’s one thing to push the neocon propaganda that Iraqis and Iranians would be celebrating in the streets after last month’s US assassination of Iranian general Soleimani, who was the chief strategist for the anti-ISIS operation over the past five years. It’s a completely different thing to believe the propaganda, especially as more than a million Iranians mourned the popular military leader.

The Friday protesters demanded that all US bases in Iraq be closed, all security agreements with the US and with US security companies be ended, and a schedule for the exit of all US forces be announced. Sadr announced that the resistance to the US troop presence in Iraq will halt temporarily if an orderly departure is announced and implemented. Otherwise, he said, the resistance to US troops would be activated.

A million Iraqi protesters chanted “no, no to occupation.” The Iraqi parliament voted for us to leave. The Iraqi prime minister asked us to leave. Maj. Gen. Alex Grynkewich, the US deputy commander in Iraq and Syria, said last week that US troops in Iraq are more threatened by Shi’ite militias than ISIS.

So, before more US troops die for nothing in Iraq, why don’t we listen to the Iraqi people and just come home? Let the people of the Middle East solve their own problems and let’s solve our problems at home.

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The UK security council met on Tuesday to discuss whether or not to exclude Huawei from providing Britain’s 5G networks, which are to be rolled out gradually by 2022. The outcome? A compromise: Huawei is to have a limited role, allowed to account for 35% of the equipment in a network’s periphery, which includes radio masts. In addition it will be banned from sensitive areas such as military bases and nuclear sites.

It was Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s most significant decision since he won the December election, and as usual, he has dividing public opinion. However it is not only the public, but Britain’s security experts who have been split over the Huawei issue, with the UK’s Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) warning for years of the security risks of depending on Chinese technology.

Suspicion over Huawei technology is not so much based on factual evidence of how it can be used maliciously for spying etc, but more fuelled by US foreign policy. Since Trump came to power, China has always been more foe than friend, and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has made his views on China clear, denouncing it as an ‘Orwellian’ state, ‘truly hostile’ to Western values. For the Trump administration China is seen only as a threat, with any cooperation deemed hugely risky and Donald Trump has declared that Huawei is not a company it will work with. Considerable pressure has been put on the UK government of late to follow suit in rejecting business with the Chinese firm, even to the extent of the US threatening to pull the plug on the post-Brexit trade deal with the UK if it failed to toe the line. Mike Pompeo gave a gentle reminder to Johnson’s government in a tweet on Sunday, quoting MP Tom Tugendhat who had said ‘only nations able to protect their data will be sovereign’.

The reality is however, that much of the fear surrounding Huawei is not based in fact, but steeped in paranoia.  And even in the unlikely event the Chinese state were to engage in some cyber attack on the UK via Huawei technology (Huawei strongly denies the Chinese state could interfere in this way and we’d probably have to be in a state of war for this to happen), the UK has been preparing for such a scenario for years. Back in 2010, when reports emerged that Huawei infrastructure was ‘behaving unusually’, GCHQ set up its own centre – ‘The Cell’ – to analyse every single Huawei device destined for the UK market.

Indeed the Chinese company has been involved in British communications infrastructure since 2005, when the UK telecoms giant BT contracted it to supply routers and other transmission equipment. Three out of four of the UK’s major mobile phone providers (EE, Vodafone and Three) already use Huawei equipment in their networks.  The real risk in fact, cyber security experts say, is not from deliberately malicious behaviour by the Chinese, but from sub-standard engineering, which leaves gaping holes in their products which can be open to manipulation. This is something, however, which British security analysts are aware of, as a report published in 2018 by GCHQ revealed.

In fact, with the immense scrutiny Huawei continues to face, the chance of it being able to pose any real national security threat diminishes. As John Suffolk, head of Huawei’s cyber security operations said last year “We are probably the most audited, inspected, reviewed, poked and prodded company in the world”. Ironically, with all eyes on Huawei, the security risk from other technology providers may not be given warranted attention.

It’s not surprising that Boris Johnson has given Huawei the green light. Firstly, he knew there would be “substantial” repercussions, as Beijing warned, to other trade and investment projects had the company been banned altogether. More importantly however, Johnson knows that for post-Brexit Britain, being a front runner technologically will be a priority, as will cooperation with states outwith the EU. The relationship with America will always be of importance, but Britain will have to tread carefully in future, strengthening ties with other global powers, including China and the rest of the BRICS nations. The decision by Johnson not to ban Huawei outright is a signal to the US, that while it is willing to listen to the partners on the other side of the Atlantic, post-Brexit Britain will have to forge its own, independent, pragmatic path.

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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.

Johanna Ross is a journalist based in Edinburgh, Scotland.

The U.S. military dropped more munitions on targets across Afghanistan in 2019 than during any other year stretching back to at least 2009, according to Air Force data.

According to Air Forces Central Command’s airpower statistics, U.S. aircraft dropped 7,423 munitions across 2,434 sorties as part of Operation Freedom’s Sentinel and NATO’s Resolute Support mission, and increase over the 7,362 weapons released across 966 sorties in 2018.

Those weapons releases eclipse the 5,100 and 5,411 munitions released across 2,517 and 2,678 sorties in 2010 and 2011, respectively, the height of the U.S. troop surge in Afghanistan that occurred under the President Barack Obama.

The AFCENT data does not detail whether the munitions releases targeted Taliban or ISIS militants, the latter of which number on the hundreds in Afghanistan’s Nangarhar Province.

Munitions releases have dramatically increased since President Donald Trump took office, rising from 947 and 1,337 in 2015 and 2016, a sign that the commander-in-chief’s campaign trail promise to “bomb the shit” out of ISIS extends to the Taliban as well.

As Military Times notes, the Pentagon recently detailed that U.S. Forces-Afghanistan had in the fall of 2018 “adjusted its campaign plan” in order to “intensify pressure” on the Taliban and drive the militant group to participate in negotiations to end the 18-year-old war there.

Both Trump and Defense Secretary Mark Esper both stated last year that the U.S. military would continued to escalate strikes against the Taliban following the breakdown of peace talks in early September in response to ongoing attacks against U.S. and Afghan personnel.

“We did pick up the pace considerably,” Esper told reporters on Oct. 4. “The president did want us to pick up response. You had the heinous attacks that the Taliban and others conducted throughout Afghanistan.”

The following December, the Taliban denied that the group had agreed to a temporary cease-fire with the U.S.-led coalition there despite reports to the contrary.

“The reality of the situation is that the Islamic Emirate has no intention of declaring a ceasefire,” the Taliban said in a statement. “The United States has asked for a reduction in the scale and intensity of violence and discussions being held by the Islamic Emirate are revolving solely around this specific issue.”

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Re: Your announcement of January 26, 2020 “Interim President of Venezuela Juan Guaidó to visit Canada”

Dear Mr. Justin Trudeau:

I have read with great disappointment your office’s announcement that you are meeting with what many Venezuelans and Canadians alike consider the real impostor, Juan Guaidó, in the political crisis that your government is part of.

Your support for such an individual is wrong at many political levels that are based on your government defence of Canadian corporations’ interests in Venezuela. Guaidó represents the gate to fulfilling Canada’s greedy business goal at the cost of disenfranchising the majority of Venezuelans who want to protect their resources for a more just management and use.

In the larger picture of Canadian foreign policy the twisted principle involved is not different from Canada selling weapons to Saudi Arabia to be used to violate the human rights of the Saudi people. Business trumping justice.

If I were in a light mood I would make a joke about the use of the word “trumping” in my sentence, but I am sure you understand my reference to your government’s cozying attitude with our neighbour to the South. However, this is a very serious matter that I encourage you to reflect on, not based on numbers and dollars, but rather on values and most of all on justice if you really want to speak on behalf of all Canadians.

Truthful statements seem to escape your handlers when they attribute to you the false “quick fact”, “On January 23, 2019, Juan Guaidó was declared Interim President of Venezuela.”

“Was declared”?!? By whom? By which process? We all saw on live TV in dismay when Mr. Guaidó appointed himself “interim president” in front of a crowd on a street of Caracas. There were no elections. There were no public representatives of any formal institutions present ratifying that action. It was the modern version of Napoleon crowning himself king! In unison the US government and your government immediately accepted that gross usurping of authority in Venezuela.

Finally, you and your government may disagree with the politics in Venezuela, but you have no right interfering in the internal affairs of that country. And you do when you attempt to change the course of events in Venezuela. Only Venezuelans have that right.

And here I address you now as a Venezuelan-Canadian. I use my privilege and right to vote in Canadian elections. I do so because I believe in a democratic process that may not be perfect but that we help in perfecting as responsible citizens.

Likewise I have the privilege and the right to vote in Venezuelan elections for the same reason.

I accuse your government of having prevented me from exerting my right to vote in the Venezuelan elections that took place on May 20, 2018. I could have voted at the Venezuelan consulate, as granted by the Venezuelan electoral law, but your government, with Chrystia Freeland as the former Minister of Foreign Relations, did not allow the election to take place in Canada. In your government’s “wisdom” the election was declared “fraudulent” even before it took place. Many Venezuelans in this country could not vote.

I ask you, what part of “the importance of democracy and the need to respect the Venezuelan Constitution”, as you state, will you discuss with Guaidó?

I ask you, what part of “Venezuelan-led transition toward free and fair elections” are you referring to? When this is clearly a Canadian-led interference in elections that you have embarked on contrary to the will of the majority of Venezuelans in Venezuela?

I ask you, which article of the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations gives your government the right to interfere with an election taking place in the jurisdiction of a Venezuelan consulate?

I ask you, which article of the OAS Charter did you use in interfering in sovereign Venezuela?

I ask you, which article of the UN Charter did you use to issue sanctions on Venezuela? Only the UNSC can issue sanctions on another UN State.

I ask you, which article of any international law did you use to blatantly “create” an interim president in another State? That seems to be more the attitude of a colonialist government

Your government’s position and statements are contrary to all the principles I am aware of. And I speak with the authority of my personal experience.

As a Canadian a reject any notion of US-style Canadian exceptionalism.

By the time this letter is published you will have met with your protégé that I will continue to consider an impostor until he decides to abide by the Venezuelan constitution and accepts to participate in the established democratic process in Venezuela. He will have all the rights that the Venezuelan people decide to grant him democratically and not those that foreign governments like your government choose to give him on a political whim.

Finally, I ask you to stop interfering in the domestic affairs of Venezuela, or any other country for that matter. Canada must abide by accepted standards of international relations with sovereign countries

Respectfully,

Nino Pagliccia

Vancouver, Canada

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

The carob tree has been appreciated for its various features throughout the ages. Nowadays, people are starting to rediscover this amazing plant. It is both a wild growing forest tree, and an easy to cultivate fruit tree. Because of this combination, the carob tree lends itself to a wide range of uses, thus making it the perfect tree to solve many of Morocco’s pressing economic and environmental issues.

But what is it that makes this plant so unique? To answer this question, we ought to take a look at the usage of carob across time and space.

Carob is native and widely spread in the arid and semi-arid Mediterranean regions. The fruit is known as locust bean or St. John’s Bread. This term goes back to St. John the Baptist and the notion that the “locusts and wild honey,” described in the Bible, upon which he subsisted while preaching in the desert, were wild carobs.

In ancient Rome, carob seeds were used as a form of measurement due to their stable weight, which led to a standardized method of determining the purity of metals such as gold. This is the reason why we still use the word “carat,” which evolved from the Greek word for carob, “kerátion.” Since one gold coin had the same weight as 24 carob seeds, 24 carats meant that an object was 100% pure gold.

Today, carob is utilized in a variety of food and technical products. It is available, for example, in the form of powder, chips, syrup, extract, or dietary pills. Another product is Locust Bean Gum (LBG), a binder or thickener in numerous food and non-food products. You can find carob in health stores or organic supermarkets as a dietary supplement or as a substitute for chocolate. By using carob instead of chocolate, calories and fat can be reduced significantly. Additionally, carob contains a large amount of calcium – about three times as much as milk. This makes it a great chocolate alternative for vegans, offering them the calcium intake needed for a healthy diet.

Yet another advantage is its high fiber content. Fiber helps us stay full longer after eating, deterring us from eating too much. It helps control blood sugar and has positive effects on cholesterol levels, making it particularly valuable for diabetics. For medicinal purposes, carob powder was used as a diarrhea remedy for generations. People who add it to their diet also report benefits such as weight loss and decreased stomach issues.

For centuries, carob held great importance as a natural and affordable source of sugar. Because of its high levels of calcium, fiber, and sugar as well as affordable price and availability, it was an important source of nutrition during times of war and famine. In countries like Cyprus, Malta, and Spain, countless people owed their lives to the nutritious carob pod during the Spanish Civil War, World War I, and World War II.

In Morocco’s future, too, carob can play an important role. The trees are perfectly suited for its climate and environmental conditions: relatively undemanding in care, they require little cultivation, tolerate poor soils, and are long-lived. Further, the trees grow even in difficult positions, such as sheer hillsides and sandy or arid soils. These features make them crucial in reforestation efforts of degraded areas.

National authorities seem to have recognized this potential. For example, the High Commission of Waters and Forests and the Fight against Desertification focuses increasingly on planting carob trees. As a forest tree, carob can be planted on Waters and Forests’ land, something which is not possible for other fruit tree species. If Moroccan authorities work hand-in-hand with communities and local NGOs, this opportunity has the potential to help the landless, who are the most vulnerable among the rural poor.

Morocco has continuously expanded its plantations in the past few years. In 2018, the country was ranked the world’s sixth-largest carob exporter – trading mostly raw fruits and seeds due to the country’s limited domestic processing capabilities. There is, thus, great potential here, but it must be used to maintain or improve the current market position.

Investing in carob appears to be the perfect opportunity for the Moroccan economy and environment. What makes the tree so attractive is not only its resistance against droughts, but also its ability to prevent erosion, soil degradation, and desertification, issues that are already present and for which finding a solution will only become more urgent in the future.

Carob can help alleviate poverty in rural areas by increasing revenue for farmers and future generations, while simultaneously fighting environmental degradation. In this sense, it is incredibly well suited for the needs of a changing Moroccan society in its pursuit of sustainable development.

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Nora Martetschläger ([email protected]) is a Master student of International Social Work at the University of Applied Science in Erfurt, Germany. Currently, she is interning at the High Atlas Foundation in Marrakech, Morocco.

Featured image is from Pixabay

This January, President Trump claimed credit for new figures from the American Cancer Society showing “the sharpest one-year drop in cancer death rate ever recorded” between 2016 and 2017.

The society politely pointed out that the Trump administration had nothing to do with this encouraging decline. The new numbers, chief Gary Reedy explained, “reflect prevention, early detection, and treatment advances that occurred in prior years.”

Media outlets rushed to relate this latest Trump Twitter flap. But this story doesn’t deserve to end there. Something is shaking on the cancer front that needs our full attention.

The Trump administration, investigative journalist Sharon Lerner detailed a few days later, “is executing an old tobacco industry scheme to dismantle the federal government’s ability to protect the public from cancer.”

The Trump White House has packed the Environmental Protection Agency’s top echelons with free-market fundamentalists who’ve set about “freeing” chemical companies from regulations designed to limit the presence of cancer-causing chemicals in our nation’s air, water, and soil.

These appointees, Lerner’s reporting documents, are working hand in glove with chemical manufacturers, which have spent $1.4 billion on lobbying over the past dozen years.

Those lobbying dollars paid off. Chemical companies now have their pals running the regulatory show — and more Americans, as a result, will find themselves fighting cancer.

Americans like Angela Ramirez, a mother in Illinois who traces her personal cancer to a carcinogen known as ethylene oxide. Two years ago, EPA scientists tagged ethylene oxide a clear and present danger and, writes Lerner, proposed a new safety threshold “30 times more sensitive than previous estimates.”

Dow Chemical — a huge ethylene oxide producer — pushed back. Now, the Trump EPA’s political appointees are abandoning the standards their own scientists are seeking.

This is “only one of the changes made under the Trump administration,” notes Lerner, “that promise to weaken protections for Americans’ health, many of which were intended specifically to stave off cancers.”

Any hands-off approach to fighting carcinogens, Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) notes, will particularly devastate the poor communities that already face “disproportionately high rates of air and water pollution.”

“If you really want to see what doing nothing truly looks like, come to my district,” adds Tlaib. “Rows and rows and rows of homes have these little white crosses in front of them, representing cancer, survivors of cancer.”

Meanwhile, chemical executives are raking it in.

In 2017, the industry’s two biggest companies, Dow and Dupont, merged in a deal that nearly tripled the compensation of CEO Andrew Liveris to $65.7 million. In 2018, Stephen Angel — CEO of Linde PLC, the nation’s fourth-largest chemical company — pulled down $66.1 million.

The enrichment of these executives — at the same time their companies are battling attempts to regulate their toxic products — represents a far greater scandal than any vain and empty boasting out of the White House. Yet the deregulatory collusion between the chemical industry and the Trump administration continues to go largely unnoticed.

Also largely unnoticed: a counter trend, the emerging efforts to limit the mammoth CEO pay rewards that give top executives — in the chemical industry and beyond — an ongoing incentive to play fast and loose with America’s health.

One of those efforts just took a significant stride forward in California, where state senators moved a step closer to hiking the tax rate on corporations that pay their CEOs over 50 times what they pay their most typical workers.

Last May, the United Steelworkers union noted that the newly merged DowDupont was paying its CEO 249 times more than the company’s median worker.

Average Americans pay a deadly price for the excessive corporate pay packages that incentivize profit-making by any means necessary. If the California legislation becomes law, America’s corporations may finally begin paying a price for continuing that excess.

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Sam Pizzigati co-edits Inequality.org for the Institute for Policy Studies. His recent books include The Case for a Maximum Wage and The Rich Don’t Always Win. Follow him at @Too_Much_Online. This op-ed was adapted from Inequality.org and distributed by OtherWords.org.

Featured image is from Shutterstock

In late December, the World Health Organization (WHO) noted cases of a new virus strain unseen before.

Days later, Chinese authorities confirmed a new coronavirus outbreak in Wuhan City, a contagious respiratory illness.

On Tuesday, a WHO alert cited a “very high (risk of contagion) in China, high at the regional level and high at the global level” — despite few cases of the disease so far outside its epicenter in Wuhan.

At this stage, no coronavirus epidemic or pandemic exists.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) confirmed five cases in the US, linked to travelers returning from Wuhan. Dozens of others potentially ill from the coronavirus haven’t been confirmed.

On Monday, Global Research.ca explained that five million cases of common flu occur annually worldwide, resulting in 650,000 deaths, according to the WHO, adding:

The CDC “estimates that so far this season, there have been at least 15 million flu illnesses for the 2019-2020 season, 140,000 hospitalizations and 8,200 deaths in the US.”

“The CDC reports there have been 54 reported flu-related pediatric deaths this season from Influenza B viruses.”

On Saturday, the WHO called the coronavirus global risk “moderate,” stopping short of declaring a public health emergency of international concern.

According to WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesu, there’s an “emergency in China but it has not yet become a global health emergency. It may yet become one,” adding:

“WHO’s risk assessment is that the outbreak is a very high risk in China, and a high risk regionally and globally.”

So far, the above assessment is speculation, not fact.

On Tuesday, the South China Morning Post (SCMP) headlined “Debunking the myths around China’s deadly coronavirus outbreak,” saying:

The virus is contagious, what’s true about many diseases. Experts “are still trying to determine how easily the (coronavirus) can be spread between humans, and if airborne transmission is feasible,” adding:

The disease is spreading, to what extent beyond its epicenter unclear. No cure exists so far.

Most deaths have been elderly and middle-aged individuals. Doctors in China are “us(ing) HIV retroviral drugs as part of its treatment plan for the coronavirus infection.”

The US National Institutes of Health is working on developing a vaccine, human trials to begin later this year.

Surgical masks are only partially effective. They don’t provide an airtight seal to prevent the virus from entering the nose or throat, and it can enter the body through exposed eyeballs.

Public health officials recommend preventative measures, including frequent hand-washing, covering the mouth when coughing or sneezing, and avoiding consumption of raw or undercooked animal products.

China’s National Health Commission said dozens of samples from Huanan seafood tested positive for coronavirus, mostly from vendors selling wild animals.

Two Chinese studies suggested the virus originated in bats. A Friday Lancet report said 13 of the first 41 hospitalized coronavirus patients were unconnected to seafood consumption.

Much more research into the virus’ origin and how to contain and treat it remains to be done.

Separately on Tuesday, SCMP cited Chinese authorities saying the coronavirus death toll exceeds 100, more than 4,500 others affected.

On Monday, Natural News reported an estimated 44,000 infected with the virus, citing University of Hong Kong academics, including individuals “in the incubation stage of the virus,” adding:

“Lead researcher and dean of HKU’s faculty of medicine Gabriel Leung said his team estimated there were 25,630 patients showing symptoms in Wuhan and that the number would double in 6.2 days, according to mathematical modeling based on infection figures worldwide as of Saturday.”

Confirmed cases outside the Wuhan epicenter of the outbreak are few, less than 100 worldwide so far.

At the same time, the virus may continue to spread in the coming weeks and months, every carrier able to contaminate others.

Natural News quoted Chinese researcher Gabriel Leung, saying his teams research “showed self-sustaining human-to-human transmission was already happening in all major mainland cities and warned” of a potentially much more widespread outbreak, “peaking in late April or early May.”

He called for “draconian measures” to contain things. Confirmed cases in the US are individuals returning from China.

According to the Lancet, over 80% of those exposed to the coronavirus will become infected — the incubation period from 2 – 14 days.

Over a decade ago during a Swine flu H1N1 outbreak, the WHO falsely predicted a global pandemic affecting “as many as two billion people over the next two years.”

At the time, evidence suggested that the H1N1 strain was bioengineered in a US laboratory, vaccines produced for it extremely hazardous and potentially lethal.

The  Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) issued a phony “determination that a Public Health Emergency exist(ed)…as a consequence of confirmed cases of H1N1 Influenza in four US states.”

No national or global emergency existed. Claiming it at the time was a scheme to convince people to take experimental, untested, toxic and extremely dangerous vaccines that damage the human immune system and cause health problems ranging from annoying to life-threatening.

Coronavirus cases emerged a month ago, the risk of how greatly it may spread pure speculation.

Though potentially a serious public health issue, it may be containable ahead, outbreaks in China so far the only ones of concern — mainly in the Wuhan epicenter.

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

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

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

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

The Trump coterie of neocons is spinning the Iraq embassy attack to fit their agenda, namely that Iran is responsible for the rocket attack when it is obvious the people of Iraq are fed-up with the US occupation, designed to last indefinitely, and are now targeting the massive US embassy in Baghdad.

Today, Jan. 26, 2020
The terrorist group called hashad alshabi in Iraq under the supprt of Islamic Terrorist Regime in Iran, attacked US Embassy in Baghdad with 5 misseles. What would be the next.? pic.twitter.com/0ntgXgyMQw

— Dr. Hatam (@pishgamaan) January 27, 2020

It’s apparent where this guy’s sentiment lies. He’s one of those exiled Iranians, a distinct minority, that pine for the old days under the Shah and his sadistic secret political police, SAVAK. 

But maybe I’m wrong. Maybe he’s one of those MEK zombies. There is a number of exiled Iranians lined up, hopeful they will take over after the neocons and Israel bomb the hell out of Iran and hang the mullahs like they did Saddam Hussein, through a proxy, of course. That’s the plan, essentially. It’s relatively easy to figure out what these Israel-firsters will do if you understand their criminal history.

The Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) units in Iraq are integrated into the Iraqi government by a decree issued on behalf of Prime Minister Adil Abdul-Mahdi. it has played a decisive role in defeating the Islamic State, the terror organization supposedly established by Jordanian Salafi jihadist (in other words, Saudi Wahhabi) Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Never mentioned is the fact al-Zarqawi was elevated to superhuman status under a Pentagon psychological operation. The Zarqawi myth was required to demonize the Iraqi resistance to USG occupation its and ongoing terror operations, for instance the destruction of Fallujah.

Like Hezbollah in Lebanon, the PMF is a Shia militia that was incorporated into the Iraqi military structure and government.  Kata’ib Hezbollah is an integral part of this coalition—at the forefront of resisting USG occupation. Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, the group’s commander, paid for this effort with his life when the USG assassinated him with a Hellfire missile along with Iranian Major General Qasem Soleimani. 

PMF commander Hashd al-Shaabi is at the front of the renewed effort to get the USG out of the country. He may be the next one to be blown to smithereens by a USG missile. 

In a sane, non-neocon influenced world, the US would heed the demands of the Iraqis and begin the process of leaving the country, as Trump promised (never believe the promises of a narcissist). Unfortunately, we don’t live in a sane and rational world. We live a world dominated by psychopaths, sadists, pedophiles, and control freaks.

Trump said recently the USG will not leave Iraq until it pays for the Balad military base, formerly the Al-Bakr Air Base. The largest airbase in Iraq, it was stolen during Bush’s illegal invasion. It was expanded by the USG and now has a movie theater, and a number of corporate operations, including Subway, Popeyes, Pizza Hut, Taco Bell, Burger King, Green Beans Coffee, a Turkish Cafe, and an Iraqi Bazaar. Balad has multiple gyms, dance lessons, an Olympic size swimming pool, and an indoor swimming pool. Balad also was where celebrities touched down when they entertained the occupiers. Charlie Daniels, Wayne Newton, Gary Sinise, Carrie Underwood, and others entertained USG troops in their off-time from the task of destroying Iraq and turning it into an airstrip for further operations in the Middle East. 

The Iraqi parliament voted to expel USG troops but the Pentagon said it’s not going anywhere, thus the response was predictable—rockets aimed at the USG embassy and striking the facility’s cafeteria, reportedly injuring a single person. Of course, like the Iranian ballistic missile attack on the Ayn al-Asad airbase in al-Anbar Governorate in Western Iraq, and an airbase in Erbil, located in Iraqi Kurdistan, we can expect the USG to lie about causalities. 

Breaking News: 34 American troops suffered traumatic brain injuries after Iran's strikes on a U.S. base in Iraq this month, the Pentagon said. President Trump had dismissed them as “headaches.” https://t.co/rIophms6jh

— The New York Times (@nytimes) January 24, 2020

Iraqis have all the right in the world to attack foreign soldiers illegally occupying their country. No matter how hard the corporate war propaganda media spins the attack on the USG embassy, the conclusion is obvious—this is the beginning of a concerted effort to get the USG out of the country. It is, to say the least, a pernicious influence and the “exceptional nation” is responsible for the death of well over a million Iraqis, for which it has yet to be held to account. The war propaganda media may characterize this attack as Iranian hostility but in fact it is a justified response on the part of Iraqis. If the Iraqis invaded and occupied St. Louis, would we expect the response to be any different?

The USG was tipped off by the Iraqi government the attack on its illegal military bases was coming and I suspect the Trump neocons knew beforehand the embassy would be attacked. Instead of throwing up red flags and evacuating the embassy, they let it happen for the simple reason it would further demonize Iran. The idea here is to blame Iran for any attempt by the Iraqis to evict the USG. 

Just how accurate were the Iranian missiles that hit the part of the Iraqi airbase where U.S. troops were stationed? It turns they scored 6 direct hits. Iran was clearly demonstrating capabilities that completely change the nature of a US war with Iran. https://t.co/9aYlaDrLl0

— Gareth Porter (@GarethPorter) January 21, 2020

As for the embassy attack, which Kata’ib Hezbollah denies it is responsible for, is it too far out in left field to speculate this could have been  covertly carried out by the USG to distract from mass demonstrations demanding USG departure. It also may be used to increase the presence of USG and “coalition “ troops now that the Iraqi people are mobilized—and paying with their lives, as the Iraqi government has no aversion to opening fire with live ammo on their own people when they protest against what is obviously meant to be a permanent stationing of troops.

#NATO members are aiming to boost the number of training and military advisory personnel at the mission in #Iraq in response to President Trump’s call for the alliance to do more in the Middle East https://t.co/oiQEB35ehN via @WSJ

— Thomas Sorlie – JPC (@Thomas_Sorlie) January 27, 2020

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Kurt Nimmo writes on his blog, Another Day in the Empire, where this article was originally published. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from Al-Masdar News

Within little more than a year everyone imaginable seems to have jumped on the bandwagon of the new green agenda of radical measures to “stop” climate change. Now the bastion of corporate economic globalization, the Swiss Davos World Economic Forum, has made its main theme this year, “Stakeholders for a Cohesive and Sustainable World,” with major focus on such notions as “How to Save the Planet.” Of course, featured speaker was the young Swedish activist Greta Thunberg. What few realize is how carefully all this is being orchestrated to prepare a massive shift in global capital flows where a handful of financial giants stand to gain.

From Greta to Bonnie Prince Charles, the themes at Davos 2020 were dominated for the first time by the climate change agenda. What comes through the interstices of the meeting of some 3,000 of the world’s corporate giants, is that a major global campaign is being orchestrated and it includes the world’s largest capital investment fund heads and the world’s major central bankers.

Davos trustees

It was no accident that Davos, the promoter of globalization, is so strongly behind the Climate Change agenda. Davos WEF has a board of appointed trustees. Among them is the early backer of Greta Thunberg, climate multi-millionaire, Al Gore, chairman of the Climate Reality Project. WEF Trustees also include former IMF head, now European Central Bank head Christine Lagarde whose first words as ECB chief were that central banks had to make climate change a priority. Another Davos trustee is outgoing Bank of England head Mark Carney, who was just named Boris Johnson’s climate change advisor and who warns that pension funds that ignore climate change risk bankruptcy (sic). The board also includes the influential founder of Carlyle Group, David M. Rubenstein. It includes Feike Sybesma of the agribusiness giant, Unilever, who is also Chair of the High Level Leadership Forum on Competitiveness and Carbon Pricing of the World Bank Group. And perhaps the most interesting in terms of pushing the new green agenda is Larry Fink, founder and CEO of the investment group BlackRock.

The Fink Letter

BlackRock is no ordinary investment fund. Based in New York, BlackRock is the world’s largest asset manager with some $7 trillion, yes, trillion, under management invested in over 100 countries. That’s more than the combined GDP of Germany and France. They dominate the stock ownership of every major exchange in the world, top shareholders of the major oil companies and world largest coal companies. Aspiring German CDU politician Frederick Merz has been chairman of the BlackRock Germany since 2016.

On January 14, 2020 just days before the Davos meeting featuring climate change, Fink published an unusual annual newsletter to corporate CEOs. BlackRock founder and CEO Larry Fink has jumped aboard the climate investing train big time.

He wrote in a closely read letter that guides numerous corporations seeking investment from some of BlackRock’s $7 trillions, “Climate change has become a defining factor in companies’ long-term prospects.” Citing recent climate protests, Fink states, “awareness is rapidly changing, and I believe we are on the edge of a fundamental reshaping of finance. The evidence on climate risk is compelling investors to reassess core assumptions about modern finance.”

Declaring that, “climate risk is investment risk,” Fink then asks an impossibly difficult question of how climate risks will impact entire economies. He has the answer, we learn. Referring to what he calls “a profound reassessment of risk and asset values” Fink tells us, “because capital markets pull future risk forward, we will see changes in capital allocation more quickly than we see changes to the climate itself. In the near future – and sooner than most anticipate – there will be a significant reallocation of capital.” And a handful of the world’s largest money groups will steer that reallocation of capital we learn. This alone should give pause for reflection. Is there another agenda here?

How will Fink and friends shift their investment flows, investment, by the way, of other peoples’ money, the savings of millions of us? BlackRock plans to demand that companies it invests its $7 trillion into show proof that they are green compliant by, “making sustainability integral to portfolio construction and risk management; exiting investments that present a high sustainability-related risk, such as thermal coal producers; launching new investment products that screen fossil fuels; and strengthening our commitment to sustainability and transparency in our investment stewardship activities.” Translated, if you don’t follow the demands of the UN IPCC and related groups including McKinsey & Co., you lose big money.

TCFD and SASB Look Closely…

As part of his claim to virtue on the new green investing, Fink states that BlackRock was a founding member of the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD). He claims, “For evaluating and reporting climate-related risks, as well as the related governance issues that are essential to managing them, the TCFD provides a valuable framework.”

TCFD was created in 2015 by the Bank for International Settlements, chaired by fellow Davos board member and Bank of England head Mark Carney. In 2016 the TCFD along with the City of London Corporation and the UK Government created the Green Finance Initiative, aiming to channel trillions of dollars to “green” investments. The central bankers of the FSB nominated 31 people to form the TCFD. Chaired by billionaire Michael Bloomberg, it includes in addition to BlackRock, JP MorganChase; Barclays Bank; HSBC; Swiss Re, the world’s second largest reinsurance; China’s ICBC bank; Tata Steel, ENI oil, Dow Chemical, mining giant BHP and David Blood of Al Gore’s Generation Investment LLC. Note the crucial role of the central banks here.

And to further insure BlackRock and friends in the world of trillion dollar funds choose the right investment in the right companies, Fink states, “BlackRock believes that the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB) provides a clear set of standards for reporting sustainability information across a wide range of issues… “ This is reassuring until we look at who makes up the members of the SASB that will give the Climate-friendly Imprimatur. Members include, in addition of course to BlackRock, there is Vanguard Funds, Fidelity Investments, Goldman Sachs, State Street Global, Carlyle Group, Rockefeller Capital Management, and numerous major banks such as Bank of America-ML and UBS. What is this framework group doing? According to their website, “Since 2011, we have has been working towards an ambitious goal of developing and maintaining sustainability accounting standards for 77 industries.” So the very financial groups who today steer global capital flows to major mining and coal and oil projects since decades will now become the arbiters of what companies qualify to be blessed with money and which not for some future “green bond” investment.

Add Central Bankers…

In recent months the world’s leading central bankers have come out declaring climate change, surprisingly, as a key part of the central bank “core responsibilities,” forgetting issues like inflation or currency stability. No one bothers to explain quite how that should work, which is even more disconcerting.

In November 2019 the Federal Reserve held a conference titled, Economics of Climate Change. Lael Brainard, Chair of the Fed’s Committee on Financial Stability, says Climate Change Matters for Monetary Policy and Financial Stability. And in recent comments the head of the Bank of Japan, Haruhiko Kuroda, told a Japanese newspaper “Climate-related risk differs from other risks in that its relatively long-term impact means the effects will last longer than other financial risks, and the impact is far less predictable,” he said. “It is therefore necessary to thoroughly investigate and analyze the impact of climate-related risk.” And in her first comments as head of the European Central bank; former IMF head Christine Lagarde declared that she wants a key role for climate change in ECB policy Review which drew criticism from the German member of the ECB, Jens Weidmann.

Perhaps the most outspoken and active central banker on climate change is outgoing Bank of England head Mike Carney and Davos trustee with Larry Fink. Carney, who will serve as global warming adviser to Boris Johnson, told BBC recently, citing unnamed pension fund analysis, “that if you add up the policies of all of companies out there, they are consistent with warming of 3.7-3.8C.” He went on to claim that scientists say the risks associated with an increase of 4C include “a nine meter rise in sea levels – affecting up to 760 million people – searing heatwaves and droughts, and serious food supply problems.” Scary stuff indeed.

As noted above, already back in 2015, Davos Board member Carney, as chairman of the Bank for International Settlements’ Financial Stability Board (FSB), created the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosure (TCFD), to advise “investors, lenders and insurance about climate related risks.”

What is becoming clearer is that the latest global push for dramatic climate action is more about justifying a major reorganization of the global economy, that to a far less efficient energy mode, implying a drastic lowering of global living standards. In 2010 the head of Working Group 3 of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Dr Otmar Edenhofer, told an interviewer, “…one must say clearly that we redistribute de facto the world’s wealth by climate policy. One has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy. This has almost nothing to do with environmental policy anymore…” What better way to do it than to start with the world’s largest money controllers like BlackRock?

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F. William Engdahl is strategic risk consultant and lecturer, he holds a degree in politics from Princeton University and is a best-selling author on oil and geopolitics, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook” where this article was originally published. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from NEO

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Seeds of Destruction: Hidden Agenda of Genetic Manipulation

Author Name: F. William Engdahl

ISBN Number: 978-0-937147-2-2

Year: 2007

Pages: 341 pages with complete index

List Price: $25.95

Special Price: $18.00

 

This skilfully researched book focuses on how a small socio-political American elite seeks to establish control over the very basis of human survival: the provision of our daily bread. “Control the food and you control the people.”

This is no ordinary book about the perils of GMO. Engdahl takes the reader inside the corridors of power, into the backrooms of the science labs, behind closed doors in the corporate boardrooms.

The author cogently reveals a diabolical world of profit-driven political intrigue, government corruption and coercion, where genetic manipulation and the patenting of life forms are used to gain worldwide control over food production. If the book often reads as a crime story, that should come as no surprise. For that is what it is.

As we enter the third decade of the present century, it is important for anti-imperialists to take stock of events over the previous ten years.

Since 2010, the role of United States imperialist militarism has been just as disruptive, destabilizing and deadly as in previous eras.

Of course there was some initial hope when uprisings erupted in Tunisia and Egypt during late 2010 and early 2011. Nonetheless, neither of these popular rebellions against the neo-colonial dominated regimes in Tunis and Cairo developed into a revolutionary transformation of society.

In Tunisia and Egypt, it was only the military and security apparatuses which proved capable of seizing state power and ushering in a transitional process. Tunisia seems to have been the most pliable in regard to stabilizing a bourgeois democratic system. However, Egypt after the election of the Freedom and Justice Party (FJP), which was dominated by the Muslim Brotherhood, was the scene of continued unrest and the eventual well-planned takeover in July 2013 by the military.

Former Field Marshall Abdel-Fattah el-Sisi, soon stepped down from the military and won two successive terms as president. At present, Egypt is the Chairman of the continental 55-member African Union (AU).

The situation in neighboring Libya clearly exposed the dangers of fomenting unrest absent of a revolutionary character. In fact developments in Libya since February 2011 represent a counter-revolution against not only the people of that oil-rich North African state nonetheless also influencing the impact of the constantly deteriorating situation on other regional nations and the international community in general.

At present a conference in Germany on January 19 discussed the future of what was Africa’s most prosperous country under the Jamahiriya led by Col. Muammar Gaddafi. Turkey has sent troops into Libya in an effort to bolster the Government of National Accord (GNA) headed by Prime Minister Fayez al-Sarraj which was imposed by the United Nations Security Council four years ago amid internecine conflict and dislocation.

The only announcement to emerge from the Berlin Summit was a vague commitment to honor an arms embargo on Libya. Yet, the initial arms embargo was imposed by the UN Security Council through two resolutions (1970 and 1973) passed during March 2011. Those resolutions were utilized by the imperialists to provide politico-legal cover for the massive bombings and ground operations carried out by the Pentagon and NATO along with its allies in the region which destroyed the country.

Neither the GNU nor the Libya National Army (LNA) of renegade General and longtime Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) operative, Khalifa Hafter, embodies the capacity to rally the people of Libya around a program of unification and national development. Libya, under Gaddafi, had played a leading role in the campaigns to reform the AU and to build structures of continental integration on the military, economic, cultural and political levels.

Today just the opposite reality in Libya and North Africa is in existence. The Pan-African foreign policy of the Jamahiriya has been replaced with a defensive posture of attempting to ensure the recognition of the GNU. Nevertheless, the imperialists had placed their estimations with the ability of the LNA to tear down the defenses of the militias providing security to the UN-recognized administration in Tripoli. Since April of 2019 this has not been the case. The GNU and its supporters have maintained control of the capital and with the Turkish political and military intervention the city will become even more fortified.

Oil has become a weapon unsurprisingly for those in the East backing Hafter and the often unheard Southern communities. Libya has the largest known petroleum reserves in Africa therefore its economic and political trajectory is of profound interests to the Western capitalist countries. The rise in oil prices over the last few weeks in response to the targeted assassinations of Islamic Republic of Iran Lt. Gen. Qassem Suleimani and Iraq Popular Mobilization Units (PMUs) Deputy Commander Abu Mahdi Muhandis by the Pentagon, illustrates clearly the significant role of oil production inside the country.

An article published by Middle East Eye on January 25 says of the oil situation in Libya that:

“Libya’s oil production has plunged by about three-quarters since forces loyal to eastern military leader Khalifa Haftar began a blockade a week ago, the National Oil Corporation said on Saturday (Jan. 25). The decline, from 1.2 million barrels per day to just over 320,000, has caused losses of about $256m since the closure of major oil fields and ports in the east and south of the country, the NOC said in a statement cited by AFP. Haftar, who controls the east and large swathes of the south, began an offensive in April last year to seize the capital Tripoli from the UN-recognized Government of National Accord. Pro-Haftar forces blockaded the main oil terminals in eastern Libya the day before a summit in Berlin on 19 January that called for the end of foreign interference in the conflict and a resumption of the peace process. The move to cripple the country’s main income source was a protest against Turkey’s decision to send troops to shore up Haftar’s rivals.”

According to Oilprice.com, the U.S. responded immediately to the oil flow blockages by emphasizing:

“The U.S. Embassy in Libya said on Tuesday (Jan. 21) that the country’s National Oil Corporation (NOC) should be allowed to immediately resume oil operations that were suspended over the weekend after groups loyal to General Khalifa Haftar blocked virtually all oil production and exports from the African oil producer…. On Sunday, 800,000 bpd—more than half of Libya’s oil production of around 1.4 million bpd—was taken offline after forces loyal to Haftar blocked the oil ports in eastern Libya which are under the control of Haftar’s Libyan National Army (LNA). The move came ahead of an international conference in Berlin between Haftar and the Government of National Accord (GNA), which is backed by the UN.”

The question of energy resources is paramount within imperialism. The western capitalist states want to maintain control over the flow and prices of petroleum and other important energy commodities.

All of these developments in North Africa and the role of Turkey and other NATO countries, portend much for U.S.-Iran relations. The focus on Iran is about oil as well as strategic positioning in regard to international trade. The Straits of Hormuz are significant in the shipping of strategic resources including military dynamics.

Iran and its growing alliance with Syria, Russia, China, among other states, is important in analyzing the current hostility emanating from Washington. Trump is using the Iranian situation to bolster his status among the Republican base and to deflect attention away from current impeachment proceedings in Congress.

Iran and the Revolutionary Struggle in West Asia

It has been 41 years since the triumph of the Iranian Revolution of 1979. The previous monarchy of the Shah was installed and supported wholeheartedly by the U.S. and other imperialists governments from 1953-1979.

Since 1979, Iran has made tremendous strides in providing educational, social and political rights to the majority of the population. Iran has also been active in the field of international relations seeking out relationships with countries throughout Asia, Africa, Latin America, Europe and North America.

Efforts to normalize diplomatic relations with Washington have proved futile. Successive U.S. administrations continue to maintain this hostile attitude towards Tehran.

The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) represented a milestone in a negotiated process designed to normalize diplomacy and to lift the draconian sanctions against the Iranian people. Besides the U.S., France, Britain, Germany, Russia and China were party to the landmark agreement signed on July 14, 2015. However, the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump literally tore up the JCPOA and imposed further sanctions.

Then during early January, a targeted assassination of two prominent leaders of Iran and neighboring Iraq prompted the outrage of progressive forces internationally.  Demonstrations were held in capitals throughout the world where the actions of the Trump administration were routinely denounced.

Pentagon bases struck by the IRGC in Iraq (Photo from WREG).

Since the martyrdom of Suleimani and Muhandis, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) has shelled a U.S. military base in Iraq. During the same period, a Ukrainian airline was brought down inadvertently by the IRGC killing over 100 people. Now this incident is the subject of an internal and international investigation.

Many are encouraged that full-scale military conflict between Washington and Tehran has not erupted. However, these two incidents, the martyrdom of Suleimani and Muhandis  and the subsequent retaliatory measures by Iran, represents only the beginning of an ongoing military engagement which could result in the deployment of far more troops by Washington to the Persian Gulf.

The Role of Anti-Imperialism in North America

Those inside the U.S. and Canada who oppose further imperialist engagement in West Asia must remain committed in the struggle to end Pentagon intervention in Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Palestine, along with other states within the region. Our activities must be consistently aimed at building solidarity with the Iranian Revolution and other progressive movements throughout the region.

Even though now the focus in the U.S. appears to be centered on the Senate impeachment trial, the State Department, Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the Pentagon, are moving ahead in carrying out its aggressive policy towards Tehran and other states. The presidential and Congressional elections of 2020 should be utilized as a forum to raise these important issues before the workers, youth and nationally oppressed. We utilized this approach in July and August during the Democratic Party debates held at the Fox Theater in downtown.

We were there with banners, placards, broadsheets and cadres in order to point out that racism, national oppression, capitalism and imperialism are not just the prerogatives of the Republican Party. The working class in actuality needs its own party which can speak in the fundamental interests of the masses of workers, youth, farmers and oppressed nations.

Literature can be developed which clearly articulates the history and contemporary political exigencies involving Iran and U.S. foreign policy in the Persian Gulf, West Asia and North Africa so that people will not be goaded into lending political support to another failed military intervention in West Asia. Through our antiwar actions we can emphasize our maximum solidarity with the people of Iran and the entire region of West Asia.

It is essential that whichever candidate for the Democratic Party is selected to face off in the November elections, we should make it clear that a violation of the independence and sovereignty of the Islamic Republic of Iran will evoke the raft of the peace movement in North America. Such a principled position will guarantee that our organizing work links the struggles of the U.S., West Asia and the international community as a whole.

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This address was prepared and delivered at a Communist Workers League (CWL) class on United States Imperialism and the War against Iran which was held on Saturday January 25, 2020 in Detroit. The event featured Randi Nord, the editor of Geo-politics Alert website which covers events related to international affairs with a special focus on West Asia, Latin America, U.S. foreign policy and developments in Europe. Also addressing the class was Yusuf Mshahwar, an observer of West Asian affairs and a student at Wayne State University. Abayomi Azikiwe, PANW Editor and writer for various publications, discussed the relationship between imperialist interventions in North Africa and related occurrences in West Asia and other geo-political regions within the international community.

 

Abayomi Azikiwe is the editor of Pan-African News Wire. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from OilPrice.com

Mentre l’attenzione politico-mediatica era concentrata in Italia sulla campagna elettorale, 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 100secondi 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.

Manlio Dinucci

Übersetzung mit Genehmigung aus dem Englischen Original.

Freunde, dieses Jahr feiert der WEF sein 50-jähriges Jubiläum. Neununundvierzig (49) der wahnsinnig aufgeblasenen – und das jedes Jahr mehr – WEF-Veranstaltungen fanden in Davos, Schweiz, statt. Nur eine davon wurde 2002, nach dem 11. September, nach New York City verlegt, paradoxerweise aus “Sicherheitsgründen”, wie sie sagten – die Logik eines solchen Umzugs war ebenso lächerlich wie das WEF selbst.

Freunde, Sie sollten zum WEF, dem berüchtigten Weltwirtschaftsforum in Davos (21.-24. Januar) gehen, wo ein 12 Quadratmeter großes Hotelzimmer 10.000 US-Dollar pro Nacht kostet (wenn Sie es nicht glauben, schauen Sie im Internet nach), und wo es völlig normal ist, dass sich bei Minusgraden überall Scharfschützen auf den Dächern befinden, natürlich zum Schutz der rund 3000 der oberen Ränge – und dass ein riesiger Teil des Zürcher Flughafens für die Privatflugzeuge der “umweltbewussten Elite” abgesperrt wurde – und wo Trump Dienstag Morgen, den 21. Januar, ankam; und wo die “Flugzeugbeobachter” mit ihren hochentwickelten Ferngläsern und Teleskopen praktisch auf dem Flughafengelände campieren – um beim Öffnen der Flughafentore die Ersten zu sein, die die Flughafenterrassen betreten, um die ankommenden VIP-/CEO-/Prominenz-Privatflugzeuge zu “entdecken” (Sie haben das Bild verstanden, es ist eine Art Schwarzer Freitag, mit den Campern vor den Toren des Walmart). Hunderte von Privatjets werden erwartet – die Normalität der erbärmlichen Nutzlosigkeit und Dekadenz der Reichen – und ihre Akzeptanz und sogar Verherrlichung durch die Bevölkerung, ist viel mehr, als George Orwell sich jemals vorstellen konnte, als er 1948 sein Buch 1984 schrieb.

In diesem Jahr werden etwa 130 hochrangige Gäste erwartet, die unter dem Schutz des Völkerrechts stehen – wer auch immer sie sein mögen – außerdem werden 5 Adelige, 22 Präsidenten und 23 Premierminister erwartet. Sie werden von insgesamt etwa 5000 Schweizer Polizisten und dem Militär abgeschirmt. Präsident Trump wird zusätzlich zu seinem eigenen Sicherheitskontingent etwa 300 spezielle Schweizer Sicherheitspolizisten sowie einen privaten Helikopter erhalten, der als militärische Fracht aus den USA herbeigeschafft wird. Seine zwei Tage in der Schweiz werden den US-Steuerzahler mehr als 3,4 Millionen US-Dollar kosten, Sicherheitspersonal nicht eingeschlossen; Kleinkram im Vergleich zum gesamten Aufwand für etwa 3.000 “hochrangige” VIPs und Prominente oder einfach die “Ich-will-gesehen-werden”, welche sich mit den “wirklich wichtigen” Leuten die Ellbogen wund reiben wollen. Was für eine Farce!

Der Zürcher Polizeichef sagte einem Reporter, dass die Polizei gute Beziehungen zu Trumps Sicherheitsabteilung haben, “wir sehen uns auf Augenhöhe, sie betrachten uns als kompetent und gleichwertig”. Was soll ich dazu sagen? Es sieht so aus, als hänge das Selbstwertgefühl dieses hochrangigen Schweizer Polizisten von der Akzeptanz der Geheimdienstpolizei von Trump ab. Wie traurig!

Wenn Präsident Trump die “Air Force One” Maschine verlässt, begibt er sich sofort unter höchster Sicherheitvorkehrungen, einschließlich der wachsamen Augen von unzähligen Scharfschützen, in seinem Hubschrauber (speziell in einem militärischen Frachtflugzeug aus den USA eingeflogen), um wie ein König nach Davos gebracht zu werden.

Die meisten seiner Unterstützungstruppen werden in abgedunkelten Geländewagen und Limousinen auf den verstopften Autobahnen des WEF nach Davos fahren müssen. Trumpf wird in bester Gesellschaft sein – Greta Thunberg wird ebenfalls in Davos erwartet, wenn auch mit einem Tag Verspätung, wegen eines plötzlich auftretenden hohen Fiebers. Sie versprach jedoch, dass sie dort sein wird.

Der Schutz dieses unglaublich lächerlichen Ereignisses ist gigantisch und kostet Millionen. Es ist eine Orgie der Macht und des Geldes, der Männer und Frauen, die über unsere westliche Welt das Sagen haben – oder das ist es, was sie glauben möchten, und mögen, wenn nicht Leute wie sie aufwachen und die Zügel in Ihre eigenen Hände, die Hände des Volkes, legen, denn es geht um das Lenkrad des Volkes – nicht um den Kommandohebel der Superreichen.

Sie sagen, dass das Sicherheitsrisiko von Präsident Trump heute sogar noch höher ist als 2018, als er zum ersten Mal in Davos war, wegen der ständigen Bedrohungen für den Iran und vor allem wegen seiner rücksichtslosen, gesetzwidrigen Ermordung von Irans Spitzengeneral Qassem Suleimani. Deshalb muss sein Sicherheitsdetail noch größer sein, als es sonst der Fall wäre. – Nun, Sie mögen fragen, seit wann verdient ein Mörder Schutz? Es sei denn, er ist ein Selbstmordrisiko, was Trump, der Inbegriff der Egozentrik, mit Sicherheit nicht ist.

Sie, diese WEFers, werden Sie einfach weiter ausrauben, wie sie es zumindest in den letzten 200 Jahren getan haben, und sie haben es so geschickt geschafft, dass große Mengen von uns ‘Leuten’ kommen sie zu bewundern, um in Ehrfurcht zu beobachten, wie sie in ihren Privatjets anreisen und in ihren Privatjets abheben… so tief sind wir gesunken. Aber Leute, es ist nie zu spät um aufzuwachen und diesen Unsinn zu ignorieren zu verwerfen. Sie haben kein bisschen ihrer Aufmerksamkeit verdient.

Ihre Agenda ist gespickt mit Lügen und Täuschungen. Dies ist die offizielle Agenda – sie wird als Agenda für “Akteure für eine kohärente und nachhaltige Welt” bezeichnet:

1. Wie man die dringenden Klima- und Umweltprobleme angeht, die unserer Ökologie und Ökonomie schaden.
2. Wie man Industrien transformiert, um nachhaltigere und integrative Geschäftsmodelle zu erreichen, da neue politische, wirtschaftliche und gesellschaftliche Prioritäten Handels- und Verbrauchsmuster verändern.
3. Wie können die Technologien, die die vierte industrielle Revolution vorantreiben, so gesteuert werden, dass sie der Wirtschaft und der Gesellschaft zugute kommen und gleichzeitig ihre Risiken für sie minimiert werden?
4. Wie man sich an die demographischen, sozialen und technologischen Trends anpasst, die Bildung, Beschäftigung und Unternehmertum umgestalten.

Das ist es, was die Außenwelt zu sehen und zu hören bekommt, die einfachen Leute wie Sie und ich und die Tausende von “Klimawandel”-Protestierenden, die zehntausende Kilometer durch Schnee und Kälte gelaufen sind, um Davos zu erreichen und den Großen ihre Botschaft zu hinterlassen – “Übernehmen Sie Verantwortung, unser Planet brennt”. Diese Menschen werden vielleicht einige der offiziellen Debatten über den (vom Menschen verursachten – CO2-bezogenen) Klimawandel und Versprechungen darüber hören, was sie – die Großen – dagegen tun werden.

Wenn hinter den Kulissen, hinter verschlossenen Türen – in Hörweite der “gemeinen Leute” – eine weitere Erzählung diskutiert wird, wird höchstwahrscheinlich in Kombination mit “Klima” diskutiert. Wie man das Klima und die falsche Klimapropaganda nutzen kann, kombiniert mit schädlicher, potenziell tödlicher G5- und bald auch G6-Strahlungstechnologie, die 4. industrielle Revolution und die Gen- und “Biotechnologie – GVOs, und zum Kern der Sache gehört CRISPR (ausgesprochen “crisper” – Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats), ein Genom-Editierwerkzeug, das die menschliche (und die anderer Lebewesen) DNA selektiv verändern kann.

Diese Kräfte der Befehlsgewalt kombiniert und vereint – und natürlich ewige Kriege – können den Lauf der Welt verändern. Eines der Hauptziele der Elite ist die Verringerung der Weltbevölkerung, damit die Elite weiterhin in Opulenz leben kann, ohne die großzügigen, aber begrenzten Ressourcen von Mutter Erde mit 7,7 Milliarden Menschen teilen zu müssen, und einige von ihnen, die Bedauernswerten, als unterdrückte Sklaven zu nutzen und den Rest loszuwerden.

Das klingt harsch. Aber das sind nicht meine Worte. Bereits in den 1960er Jahren sagte Henry Kissinger, der weltweit begehrteste noch lebende Kriegsverbrecher, ein Rockefeller-‘Gelehrter’ und Mitarbeiter und standhafter Verwalter der Bilderberg-Gesellschaft, dass ein Hauptziel der Bilderberger die Reduzierung der Bevölkerung sei. Im Jahr 1974, neu belohnt von der Nixon-Administration als Staatssekretär für den faschistischen Putsch “9/11/73”, den er in Chile anführte, hatte er diesen Rat:

“Die Entvölkerung sollte die höchste Priorität der Außenpolitik gegenüber der Dritten Welt sein, da die US-Wirtschaft große und wachsende Mengen an Mineralien aus dem Ausland, insbesondere aus weniger entwickelten Ländern, benötigen wird.

Da haben Sie es. Die dunkle luziferische Elite des WEF spricht vielleicht von Eugenik. Wir wissen es nicht. Aber angesichts der Vormachtstellung des Westens und des bedauerlichen Schicksals der bedauernswerten Menschen, wer weiß? Es sieht nicht allzu weit hergeholt aus bei allem, was wir wissen, was im Okkulten vor sich geht. Angesichts der Fähigkeit Washingtons, des Pentagons und der NATO, außergerichtlich jeden per Drohne zu töten, der als ein Risiko für die “nationale Sicherheit” der USA angesehen werden könnte oder vielmehr als ein Risiko, die globale Elite daran zu hindern, ihr Ziel der vollen Spektrums-Dominanz zu erreichen, nähern wir uns immer mehr einem alles vernichtenden dritten Weltkrieg an, nur dass genau diese Elite weiß, dass es bei einem nuklearen Holocaust keine Sieger gibt, dass sie selbst ausgelöscht werden kann – wie aber sich dann an den gestohlenen Reichtümern erfreuen? Sie können sich also für eine “weiche” Version der Bevölkerungsreduzierung – Eugenik – und für kontinuierliche, ewige und hochprofitable regionale Konflikte und Kriege entscheiden.

Die Sache ist die: Wecken Sie die Menschen auf, glauben Sie nicht den Lügen der Unternehmens-Finanz-Elite, egal wie gut sie hergestellt, verpackt und präsentiert werden, fallen Sie nicht auf ihre trügerische Propaganda herein.

Es ist nie zu spät, denn wir, Leute, sind 99,99% gegen 0,01%. Fallen Sie nicht in ihre Falle. Sie – die Elite, die WEF-Schwachköpfe – wollen alle, dass Sie gegen Ihre eigenen Interessen handeln. Machen Sie Ihre eigenen Recherchen, rechnen Sie selbst – und hören Sie auf, die Mainstream-Medien zu beobachten, sie alle sprechen sich mit den gleichen Lügen ab, deshalb werden sie von den kleinen, tief sitzenden, dunklen Interessengruppen mit Milliarden bezahlt.

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Peter König ist Wirtschaftswissenschaftler und geopolitischer Analyst. Er ist auch ein Spezialist für Wasserressourcen und Umwelt. Er arbeitete über 30 Jahre lang mit der Weltbank und der Weltgesundheitsorganisation auf der ganzen Welt in den Bereichen Umwelt und Wasser. Er hält Vorlesungen an Universitäten in den USA, Europa und Südamerika. Er schreibt regelmäßig für Global Research, ICH, RT, Sputnik, PressTV, The 21st Century, Greanville Post, Defend Democracy Press, TeleSUR, The Saker Blog, New Eastern Outlook (NEO) und andere Internetseiten. Er ist der Autor von Implosion – Ein Wirtschaftsthriller über Krieg, Umweltzerstörung und Unternehmensgier – eine Fiktion, die auf Fakten und auf 30 Jahren Erfahrung der Weltbank rund um den Globus basiert. Er ist auch Mitautor von Die Weltordnung und die Revolution! – Essays aus dem Widerstand. Er ist wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter des Zentrums für Globalisierungsforschung.

Die Originalquelle dieses Artikels ist Global Research.

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All polymer foams produced from isocyanate chemicals are fire-accelerants that will not only spread any fire within seconds of ignition but will also emit lethal hydrogen cyanide gas that can cause death within a few minutes.

Hydrogen cyanide gas (HCN), also known as prussic acid, is the same chemical that was used by the Nazis in their infamous gas chambers at Auschwitz and is a colorless, rapidly acting, highly poisonous gas or liquid. HCN is a systemic poison; toxicity is due to inhibition of cytochrome oxidase, which prevents cellular utilization of oxygen. Inhibition of the terminal step of electron transport in cells of the brain results in loss of consciousness, respiratory arrest, and ultimately, death.

These dangerously lethal qualities of polymer foams have been known for many decades which is why they are banned from use in buildings in many countries worldwide. There is no question but that those who produce these foams; those who supplied these foam-insert, cladding panels; those architects who specified them and those surveyors and building inspectors who approved them, would all have been well aware of the terrible risk in using such dangerous materials on any residential building and certainly not to externally clad any structure with it.

It is now two and a half years since 72 people died horribly as a result of the Grenfell Tower fire in London and, to date, there has not been one prosecution for criminal negligence, manslaughter or anything else in connection with the atrocity despite one public inquiry having been completed months ago. Furthermore, apparently the government has not even bothered to bring out new or revised Building Regulations to ensure compliance with safety codes.

As a result of the catastrophic failure of government to adequately regulate and inspect building codes, there are now still existing about 400 buildings with such dangerous cladding still in situ thereby ensuring that tens of thousands of residents are at daily risk of a repeat of Grenfell.  It would appear to be an abdication of government whose first responsibility is to protect the safety of the people who elected it.

It appears to be one of the worst cover-ups of corporate and official negligence ever recorded in Britain as the government now start a second inquiry, next week, presumably to last another two years – with no prosecutions in sight.

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Hans Stehling (pen name) is an analyst based in the UK. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Although Western media has a shoddy track record of lying on Syria (and Libya, Iraq…), the US State Department will pump $35 million more into future war propaganda on Syria, under the guise of promoting honest reporting.

Last week NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg explained why the U.S. are strengthening their military presence in Europe. The reason is unsurprisingly to pressurize and intimidate Russia, but also against China and the so-called fight against terrorism. Stoltenberg explained that there are now more U.S. soldiers in EU Member States, more than ever since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. In the coming months, the Defender-Europe 2020 exercises, the largest of its kind in the last 25 years, will begin. And with this exercise, U.S. troop numbers will only increase in Europe with another 20,000 troops and officers arriving.  

Germany will be the logistics center for the Defender-Europe 2020 exercise in March and by the end of January, thousands of U.S. soldiers will not only arrive in Germany, but also in Belgium, France and the Netherlands. The military drill will take place in Germany, Poland, Georgia and the Baltic States with the participation of 18 NATO countries, cover 4,000 kilometers of convoy routes and rely on 10 European countries to host exercise activities. The U.S. will send a total of 37,000 soldiers and officers to the exercise with the total number of troops to exceed 40,000 people.

There are also discussions about the resumption of the annual REFORGER exercises that were held in Europe from 1969 to 1993. The REFORGER exercises was to have constant training for a rapid deployment in West Germany in any potential conflict with the Soviet-led Warsaw Pact countries. Lieutenant General Chris Cavoli, the U.S. Army Europe commander, explained in an interview with Defense News that the Defender-Europe 2020 exercises has been compared to REFORGER, but that this is “not a completely apt comparison” because REFORGER exercises were about getting a force into one country — Germany — “to defend a very-known location against a force that we all understood very well.” He recalled hearing about REFORGER exercises as a little boy when his father was an Army officer serving in Europe but that “the only thing we didn’t know was what time it was going to happen.”

There can be little doubt that Russia is the main target of these exercises with the drills occurring directly on their doorstep in Poland and the Baltic states, particularly focussed against Russia’s Kalingrad enclave. As Russia continues working towards a balanced multipolar international system based on sovereignty, U.S.-led Atlanticist powers have maintained pressure against the Eurasian Giant. NATO spy and scout planes flew over Kalingrad over 800 times in 2019 alone. NATO are keeping close tabs on the enclave as it is a well-fortified region wedged between Poland the Baltics, a so-called security threat for the Atlanticist Alliance.

In response to the increasing military pressure by Russia against Kalingrad, the Russian Foreign Ministry said in December that

“Western media are trying to spread their ideas about the ‘Russian aggressor’ in their own way. Some media cite statements by the U.S. Air Force Commander in Europe, General Jeffrey Harrigian, that the Pentagon has a plan to break through the multilayered air defense of the Kaliningrad region in the event of Russia’s invasion of the Baltic. It conceals the fact that the improvement of military capabilities in the enclave is dictated solely by the reasons of maintaining the balance of power.”

NATO are constantly reinforcing their military presence near Russia’s borders and are increasing the readiness to transfer forces to their eastern flank. The intensity of the exercises is also significantly increasing in a way as if Europe is preparing for a major military conflict against Russia. The planned development of the European segment of the U.S. and NATO air defense system also continues to move closer to Russia’s borders. It is for this reason that Russia has had to turn Kaliningrad into a fortress with operationally tactical complexes like the Iskander, in conjunction with the S-400 missile defense system and anti-ship coastal complexes. Despite these systems, experts still maintain that if NATO attacks Kaliningrad, the enclave is likely to fall, providing Russia does not resort to the use tactical nuclear weapons.

Whether these experts are correct or not can only be known in a real war situation, a situation that Russia is attempting to avoid. However, exercises suggest that NATO is making every plan for an invasion of Kalingrad if such a war ever occurs. However, with Europe, led by French President Emmanuel Macron becoming increasingly critical of NATO and Washington’s policies, it remains to be seen if EU countries are willing to go to war with Russia because of U.S. escalations despite their participation in such aggressive exercises aimed towards the Eurasian country.

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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 InfoBrics

“The people from the insurance industry, they all said that for them it was not the question of whether this was dangerous or not, they knew it was dangerous. The only question for them was who is going to pay for the party in the future, and they will not do it.”

– Professor Olle Johansson (from this week’s interview).

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LISTEN TO THE SHOW

Click to download the audio (MP3 format)

In spite of health regulators’ and telecom industry professionals’ assurances that the looming 5G roll-out is safe, the general public has started viewing these technological marvels with some suspicion. [1][2][3][4]

Cities around the world, from Brussels, to Portland to Florence, to Geneva and even whole countries, including Australia, France, and the Netherlands are putting the brakes on the installation of the new generation of wireless networks citing the potential harm caused to human health by the radiation this new infrastructure would entail. [5]

Thanks to the internet, independent news sites like this one, and hard-working activists around the globe, word of the harmful effects of electromagnetic field (EMF) radiation has begun to trickle out and inform more and more people. Citizens are coming together, forming discussion groups, sharing information and are engaging in grass-roots lobbying efforts. Public events, including a ‘Global day of Action’ on January 25th are becoming impossible to dismiss.

Consequently, a number of authoritative-looking articles began popping up in major publications throughout 2019 appearing to make light of the concerns. [6][7][8] Satellites are being launched with the intention of integrating them into the 5G infrastructure. Furious lobbying – over $1.2 billion on the U.S. Congress alone – has been mustered in the name of faster downloads, self-driving cars, and an Internet of Things.

This week’s Global Research News Hour radio program returns to the topic of wireless technology and the 5G roll-out and attempts to ascertain which interests are really being served by this Brave New World order we are being dragged into.

Our first interview, Professor Olle Johansson, has researched EMF radiation and its effects since the 1970s and can speak with authority as to its harmful impacts not only on humans but on all biological systems. Professor Johansson also touches on the insurance industry’s response and to the failures of regulators and other official bodies to address the science indicating harm. In our second half hour, Claire Edwards, a former UN staffer turned campaigner against wireless and 5G talks about anecdotal evidence of casualties among UN staff from its wireless infrastructure, systemic obstacles to responding to the health threat, the role of satellites in expanding the 5G infrastructure, and the concerns about the technology beyond the health ramifications.

Olle Johansson, PhD is a past associate professor at the Karolinska Institute, Department of Neuroscience, and head of The Experimental Dermatology Unit as well as a guest and adjunct professor in basic and clinical neuroscience at the Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm. He has published more than 600 original articles, reviews, book chapters and conference reports within the fields of basic and applied neuroscience, dermatology, epidemiology, and biophysiology. He is a global authority in the field of EMF radiation and health effects. 

Claire Edwards, BA Hons, MA worked for the United Nations as Editor and Trainer in Intercultural Writing from 1999 to 2017. Claire warned the Secretary-General about the dangers of 5G during a meeting with UN staff in May 2018, calling for a halt to its rollout at UN duty stations. Her own health had been compromised by the installation of public access points for WiFi and cell phone access in December 2015. She part-authored, designed, administered the 30 language versions, and edited the entirety of the International Appeal to Stop 5G on Earth and in Space (www.5gspaceappeal.org) and vigorously campaigned to promote it throughout 2019.  She has since severed her connection with the Appeal and its administrator Arthur Firstenberg, but continues to campaign against 5G and existing wireless technology. She is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

(Global Research News Hour episode 284)

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Notes:

1. https://www.arpansa.gov.au/news/misinformation-about-australias-5g-network
2. https://www.5gcc.ca/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/CWTA_5G-Wireless-and-RF-Safety_EN_2019.08.07.pdf
3. https://www.cnet.com/news/fcc-deems-5g-safe/
4. https://www.wirelesshealthfacts.com/faq/
5. https://www.globalresearch.ca/telcos-losing-battle-impose-5g/5691065
6. William J. Broad (July 16, 2019) ‘The 5G Health Hazard That Isn’t’, The New York times; https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/16/science/5g-cellphones-wireless-cancer.html
7. https://www.wired.com/story/worried-5g-health-effects-dont-be/
8. https://www.forbes.com/sites/startswithabang/2019/11/01/the-science-of-why-5g-is-almost-certainly-safe-for-humans/#4fa6014570e3

 

The 2016 Iowa Democratic Presidential Caucuses were held on 1 February 2016 and produced 49.84% for Hillary Clinton and 49.59% for Bernie Sanders.

On 12 January 2016, Politico headlined “Sanders bests Clinton in new early state polls” and reported that “The intensifying rivalry between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders spiked a few degrees on Tuesday with two new polls showing the Vermont senator catching fire in not only his regional stomping ground of New Hampshire but also in Iowa, where Clinton enjoyed a double-digit lead as late as mid-December.”

The 2020 Iowa Democratic Presidential Caucuses are to be held on 3 February 2020. On 26 January 2020, Political Wire headlined “Tight Race in Iowa” and reported that “A new CBS News poll in Iowa shows Bernie Sanders is leading the Democratic presidential race with 26%, followed by Joe Biden at 25%, Pete Buttigieg at 22%, Elizabeth Warren at 15% and Amy Klobuchar at 7%.”

That CBS News poll in Iowa showed also that whereas only 33% of the likely voters thought that Sanders would beat Trump if the nominee, 45% thought that Biden would beat Trump if the nominee. Biden also scored far higher than Sanders on “Prepared to be Commander in Chief”: 84% on that, compared to Sanders’s 68%. Also on other factors, the findings were remarkably similar for Biden as compared to what the polls at around this same time had been showing for Clinton. Also, the pre-primary polls in 2016 were showing almost identical demographics for Clinton’s voters as the 2020 pre-primary polls are showing now for Biden voters — such as an overwhelming majority of Blacks supporting Clinton then and Biden now, but also on almost all other demographic factors. And, likewise, Sanders’s voters in 2020 seem to be the same demographics as Sanders voters in 2016 were.

Clinton, of course, received the Democratic Party nomination and was widely expected to beat Trump but she lost to him (though she won California by 4,269,978 in the popular vote, and so beat Trump by 2,864,974 in the nationwide popular vote, while she lost all other states by 1,405,002 votes, and so she would have been California’s President if she had won, but the rest of the nation wouldn’t have been happy). 

Among the top reasons why Democrats in primaries and caucuses voted for Clinton was that they thought she would have a higher likelihood of beating the Republican nominee than Sanders did. However, by the time when Election Day rolled around, the passion that Republicans felt for their nominee, Trump, was much stronger than was the passion that Democrats felt for their nominee, Clinton. During the Democratic primaries, polls were showing that the Democrats who were voting for Sanders to become their Party’s nominee were far more passionate in their support of him than was the case regarding the Democrats who were voting for Clinton to become the Democratic nominee. And nobody questions that Trump was the passion-candidate in the Republican Party’s primaries and caucuses.

On 1 May 2017, McClatchy newspapers headlined “Democrats say they now know exactly why Clinton lost” and reported that, 

A select group of top Democratic Party strategists have used new data about last year’s presidential election to reach a startling conclusion about why Hillary Clinton lost. Now they just need to persuade the rest of the party they’re right.

Many Democrats have a shorthand explanation for Clinton’s defeat: Her base didn’t turn out, Donald Trump’s did and the difference was too much to overcome.

But new information shows that Clinton had a much bigger problem with voters who had supported President Barack Obama in 2012 but backed Trump four years later.

Those Obama-Trump voters, in fact, effectively accounted for more than two-thirds of the reason Clinton lost, according to Matt Canter, a senior vice president of the Democratic political firm Global Strategy Group. In his group’s analysis, about 70 percent of Clinton’s failure to reach Obama’s vote total in 2012 was because she lost these voters. …

Although Clinton has blamed her loss on Putin, and on Sanders — and perhaps if Biden wins the nomination he will likewise blame Putin and Sanders if he subsequently loses to Trump — the passion factor is actually much stronger an influence on whom the winner of an electoral contest will be than losing candidates wish to admit or publicly acknowledge; and it could turn out to be the case in 2020, just the same as it did in 2016.

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Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of  They’re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010, and of  CHRIST’S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity.

On November 22nd of last year, the US government announced it would impose sanctions on Iran’s information minister for his alleged role in limiting domestic Internet access while protests raged in that country over increases in gas prices.

At the time, US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin condemned the Iranian government for censuring information that Iranian citizens could view online, stating that, “Iran’s leaders know that a free and open internet exposes their illegitimacy, so they seek to censor internet access to quell anti-regime protests.”

The Iranians were evil, said the US government official in charge of economic sanctions, because it restricted what its citizens could read in the international press.

Our government would never do that…right?

Wrong. Yesterday, the US government knocked Iran’s state news agency, FARS, off of the Internet entirely, citing US sanctions against the country.

What that means is the Iranian news service is being censored by the United States government and that Americans will therefore no longer be able to see anything from this foreign media outlet.

Exactly what Mnuchin accused Iran of doing back in November.

Zerohedge writes, “as Iran’s PressTV describes further“:

The news agency said that it had received an email from the server company, which explicitly said that the blockage is due to an order by the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) and its inclusion in the list of Specially Designated Nationals (SDN).

The agency attached to its post a screenshot of its website with the message “www.farsnews.com’s server IP address could not be found.”

This latest US censorship of Iranian media is nothing new. Iran’s PressTV has been removed from YouTube and other US social media with “US sanctions on Iran” being given as the reason.

Americans are not allowed to see the Iranian perspective on the Middle East because the Beltway bombardiers and their bosses in the military-industrial complex depend on successfully demonizing all Persians so that Americans will accept their annihilation in another neocon war. If Americans are allowed to see the Iranian perspective they might not be so supportive of the slaughter the neocons are cooking up.

The bottom line is this: the US Administration cites Iran’s restricting of outside media as evidence of the evil nature of the Iranian government, all the while scrambling to restrict American citizens’ access to Iranian media outlets.

Pot. Kettle. Black. Hypocrisy.

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Featured image is from The Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity

It’s really interesting how many of us equate how the love of God should be expressed. Many religions dictate that we who care should restrict ourselves to doing good deeds and NOT becoming too rebellious towards the ‘things of the world’. Hogwash! Just look at the person who hundreds of millions worship as The Son of God. You go into any number of churches or cathedrals throughout this planet and see his picture adorning the altars and walls. Jesus always has this peaceful and caring look to him; otherwise we see him nailed to a cross and suffering as a mortal man. That ‘crown of thorns’ across his brow seems to be almost a calling card for Christianity. I guess the movers and shakers of that enterprise seem to forget what their own bible had written about this truly special soul:

Jesus Drives Money Changers from the Temple

 Then they came to Jerusalem. And He entered the temple and began to drive out those who were buying and selling in the temple, and overturned the tables of the money changers and the seats of those who were selling ^[a]doves;¹⁶ and He would not permit anyone to carry ^[b]merchandise through the temple. ¹⁷ And He began to teach and say to them, “Is it not written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations’? But you have made it a robbers’ ^[c]den.”

This is how the world should understand Jesus and his teachings. He took the initiative and acted like the role model he was ordained to be. This is how those of us who see through the machinations of this corrupt and yes… evil empire should be behaving. Jesus did not commit any violent act inside that temple, or anywhere else he travelled and taught. Rather, he showed ‘strength of character and principle’ as he overturned those expressions of profit making and unnecessary violence against God’s creatures. Perhaps if the powers that be were, shall we say, able to prevent such actions by keeping Jesus and his followers out of the temple, maybe he would have called for a boycott of the place! Maybe he and others who agreed with him would have found a new place to meet up and pray together.

This nation is teetering on a thin thread that holds whatever sense of a democratic republic we have left. The empire has taken full control of whatever levers of power our Constitution wanted for We the People. Our government is now like that temple from the New Testament story. America has become Amerika… one big mart of corruption and predatory corporate Capitalism. One imagines that even Adam Smith would turn over in his grave to see how convoluted his ideas have become. Folks, this is NOT even Capitalism in whatever semi pure form it could have been. No, this is one big shark tank and we, the working stiffs who keep the waters filled for those sharks, are their next meal! This is not a call for the violent overthrow of it all. One knows that some from what is known as ‘ The Left’ would love to see this occur. Alas, call me a flaming peace advocate, or call me a chickenshit, or call me whatever you wish to label me. The bare and sad truth is that if… even if there were to be such a radical movement tinged with violent rhetoric and force, it would be a right wing led fascist one.

Jesus was in reality a Socialist, who taught how people should share good fortune. He said it all when a rich man wanted to be a follower of his. Jesus knew that the man was very wealthy. So, he told him to give all his wealth to the poor and follow him. The man walked away. Jesus then uttered the words that should resound throughout humanity: “Easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than a rich man to get into heaven.” How dare the super rich billionaires that run our empire and its political system pretend to be God loving! The homeless man with but two dollars to his name who gives half of his money to another in need… is more righteous than any of those super rich so called philanthropists who give away not even 10% of their fortunes and then strut around like peacocks. Our nation needs us,  the working stiffs, the hundreds of millions of us, to stand up to empire. The Buddhists have a great saying as to interactions: “Be Friendly and Assertive”. Like the mother who loves her child but chides it and pushes it away from danger each time, we working stiffs need to do that with this empire. Finally, the great Afro American scholar and leader, Frederick Douglass, said it best: “Power concedes nothing without demand. It never has. It never will.”

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Philip A Farruggio is a contributing editor for The Greanville Post. He is also frequently posted on Global Research, Nation of Change, World News Trust and Off Guardian sites. He is the son and grandson of Brooklyn NYC longshoremen and a graduate of Brooklyn College, class of 1974. Since the 2000 election debacle Philip has written over 300 columns on the Military Industrial Empire and other facets of life in an upside down America. He is also host of the ‘It’s the Empire… Stupid‘ radio show, co produced by Chuck Gregory. Philip can be reached at [email protected].

Featured image is from Rise Up Times

The 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz is a somber event marked by deep reflection across Europe about the evils of its genocidal past, which makes it an appropriate time to remind everyone about Jasenovac, the Croatian-operated death camp that few are aware of and even fewer dare to talk about.

There are obviously some serious linguistic issues and disagreements between the West and the rest of the world. Essential terms like “freedom”, “democracy”, “liberation”, even “terrorism”, are all mixed up and confused; they mean something absolutely different in New York, London, Berlin, and in the rest of the world.

Before we begin analyzing, let us recall that countries such as the United Kingdom, France, Germany and the United States, as well as other Western nations, have been spreading colonialist terror to basically all corners of the world. And in the process, they developed effective terminology and propaganda, which has been justifying, even glorifying acts such as looting, torture, rape and genocides. Basically, first Europe, and later North America literally “got away with everything, including mass murder”. The native people of Americas, Africa and Asia have been massacred, their voices silenced. Slaves were imported from Africa. Great Asian nations, such as China, what is now “India” and Indonesia, got occupied, divided and thoroughly plundered.

And all was done in the name of spreading religion, “liberating” people from themselves, as well as “civilizing them”.

Nothing has really changed.

To date, people of great nations with thousands of years of culture, are treated like infants; humiliated, and as if they were still in kindergarten, told how to behave, and how to think.

Sometimes if they “misbehave”, they get slapped. Periodically they get slapped so hard, that it takes them decades, even centuries, to get back to their feet. It took China decades to recover from the period of “humiliation”. India and Indonesia are presently trying to recuperate, from the colonial barbarity, and from, in the case of Indonesia, the 1965 U.S.-administered fascist coup.

But if you go back to the archives in London, Brussels or Berlin, all the monstrous acts of colonialism, are justified by lofty terms. Western powers are always “fighting for justice”; they are “enlightening” and “liberating”. No regrets, no shame and no second thoughts. They are always correct!

Like now; precisely as it is these days.

Presently, the West is trying to overthrow governments in several independent countries, on different continents. From Bolivia (the country has been already destroyed) to Venezuela, from Iraq to Iran, to China and Russia. The more successful these countries get, the better they serve their people, the more vicious the attacks from abroad are, the tougher the embargos and sanctions imposed on them are. The happier the citizens are, the more grotesque the propaganda disseminated from the West gets.

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In Hong Kong, some young people, out of financial interest, or out of ignorance, keep shouting: “President Trump, Please Liberate Us!” Or similar, but equally treasonous slogans. They are waving U.S., U.K. and German flags. They beat up people who try to argue with them, including their own Police Force.

So, let us see, how the United States really “liberates” countries, in various pockets of the world.

Let us visit Iran, a country which (you’d never guess it if consuming only Western mass media) is, despite the vicious embargos and sanctions, on the verge of the “highest human development index bracket” (UNDP). How is it possible? Simple. Because Iran is a socialist country (socialism with the Iranian characteristics). It is also an internationalist nation which is fighting against Western imperialism. It helps many occupied and attacked states on our planet, including Venezuela, Cuba, Bolivia (before), Syria, Yemen, Palestine, Lebanon, Afghanistan and Iraq, to name just a few.

So, what is the West doing? It is trying to ruin it, by all means; ruin all good will and progress. It is starving Iran through sanctions, it finances and encourages its “opposition”, as it does in China, Russia and Latin America. It is trying to destroy it.

Then, it just bombs their convoy in neighboring Iraq, killing its brave commander, General Soleimani. And, as if it was not horrid enough, it turns the tables around, and starts threatening Teheran with more sanctions, more attacks, and even with the destruction of its cultural sites.

Iran, under attack, confused, shot down, by mistake, a Ukrainian passenger jet. It immediately apologized, in horror, offering compensation. The U.S. straightway began digging into the wound. It started to provoke (like in Hong Kong) young people. The British ambassador, too, got involved!

As if Iran and the rest of the world should suddenly forget that during its attack on Iraq, more than 3 decades ago, Washington actually shot down an Iranian wide-body passenger plane (Iran Air flight 655, an Airbus-300), on a routine flight from Bandar Abbas to Dubai. In an “accident”, 290 people, among them 66 children, lost their lives. That was considered “war collateral”.

Iranian leaders then did not demand “regime change” in Washington. They were not paying for riots in New York or Chicago.

As China is not doing anything of that nature, now.

The “Liberation” of Iraq (in fact, brutal sanctions, bombing, invasion and occupation) took more than a million Iraqi lives, most of them, those of women and children. Presently, Iraq has been plundered, broken into pieces, and on its knees.

Is this the kind of “liberation” that some of the Hong Kong youngsters really want?

No? But if not, is there any other performed by the West, in modern history?

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Washington is getting more and more aggressive, in all parts of the world.

It also pays more and more for collaboration.

And it is not shy to inject terrorist tactics into allied troops, organizations and non-governmental organizations. Hong Kong is no exception.

Iran, Iraq, Syria, Russia, China, Venezuela, but also many other countries, should be carefully watching and analyzing each and every move made by the United States. The West is perfecting tactics on how to liquidate all opposition to its dictates.

It is not called a “war”, yet. But it is. People are dying. The lives of millions are being ruined.

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This article was originally published on China Daily.

Andre Vltchek is a philosopher, novelist, filmmaker and investigative journalist. He has covered wars and conflicts in dozens of countries. Five of his latest books are “China Belt and Road Initiative: Connecting Countries, Saving Millions of Lives”, “China and Ecological Cavillation”with John B. Cobb, Jr., Revolutionary Optimism, Western Nihilism, a revolutionary novel “Aurora” and a bestselling work of political non-fiction: “Exposing Lies Of The Empire”. View his other books here. Watch Rwanda Gambit, his groundbreaking documentary about Rwanda and DRCongo and his film/dialogue with Noam Chomsky “On Western Terrorism”. Vltchek presently resides in East Asia and the Middle East, and continues to work around the world. He can be reached through his website and his Twitter. His Patreon. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

On Tuesday, January 14, 2020, Israeli crop-duster planes flew along the perimeter fence separating Gaza and Israel, spraying chemicals assumed to be herbicides into the Strip. Israel continued to conduct aerial herbicide spraying along additional sections of the perimeter fence on Wednesday, January 15, as well on the morning of January 16. Each morning, the spraying was conducted sporadically for about four hours, with the sprayed chemicals reaching Palestinian farmlands inside Gaza.

Palestinian farmers who were working the land west of the perimeter fence on Tuesday morning told Al Mezan that at about 7:20 am, they saw plumes of black smoke emanating from Israel’s side of the fence, a practice used in the past as a means to discern wind direction. A few minutes later, crop-duster planes flew along the perimeter fence spraying chemicals believed to be herbicides, carried by westward-blowing winds into the Strip. Over the course of the three days, aerial spraying was conducted in areas adjacent to the fence stretching from Beit Hanoun in the north of the Strip and all the way south to the section of the fence to the east of Khan Yunis. Samples from affected fields have been sent for lab testing, and the results are expected next week.

On Thursday, January 16, human rights organizations Gisha, Adalah and Al Mezan sent a letter (Hebrew) to Israel’s Minister of Defense Naftali Bennett, Military Advocate General Sharon Afek, and Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit with an urgent demand to refrain from conducting further aerial spraying of herbicides inside and near the Gaza Strip, due to the severe damage to crops and the health risks to Gaza residents.

The last time Israel conducted aerial herbicide spraying was in December 2018. No incidents of spraying were recorded in 2019, which was the first year without spraying since Israel first implemented the hazardous practice in 2014. In a clip produced by human rights organizations Gisha, Adalah and Al Mezan over the summer, farmers and shepherds whose livelihoods depend on access to the lands closest to the fence with Israel described the damage caused by spraying over the years and emphasized the potential of a season without spraying.

In response to Freedom of Information requests submitted by Gisha over the years, Israel has admitted to conducting aerial spraying over Israeli territory near the perimeter fence almost 30 times between 2014 and 2018. 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, the London-based research agency Forensic Architecture published a multi-media investigation into the practice, based in large part on research and legal work by Gisha, Adalah, and Al Mezan. The report strengthened the organizations’ findings whereby aerial herbicide spraying by Israel has damaged lands deep inside the Strip.

In their letter, Gisha, Adalah and Al Mezan stressed that such disproportionate action, with detrimental impact on livelihoods and the health of the civilian population, is unlawful under both Israeli and international law. The organizations call on Israeli authorities to put an immediate stop to all aerial spraying activities in and near the Strip in order to allow Gaza’s farming sector to develop and prosper.

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Featured image: Aerial spraying to the east of Khan Yunis on January 16, 2020. Photo by Salah Al Najjar

As Iran puts the final nail in its nuclear agreement with the West, hyperbolic headlines have warned that the Islamic Republic could have a nuclear weapon “within months.” Politicians have said it, pundits have repeated it, and hawkish national security experts proclaim it with barely disguised excitement.

Don’t believe it for a second. The entire formulation of Iran’s “breakout period” after which they would present their first and only nuclear bomb is based on an artificial construct—great for talking points and fear mongering from podiums, but in no sense a scientific reality.

“As long as I am President of the United States, Iran will never be allowed to have a nuclear weapon.” Those words, delivered in a speech by President Donald Trump about escalating military tension between the U.S. and Iran, underscore the reality that it is Iran’s nuclear program that drives U.S. policy regarding the use of military force.

The fear of an Iranian nuclear weapon has been at the top of a list of so-called malign activities undertaken by the Iranian government that the Trump administration alleges threaten regional security and by extension U.S. national interests. While the issues on this list are not new (having defined U.S.-Iranian relations for the better part of two decades), the stakes involved have never been higher. The framework of agreements that have held the Iranian nuclear program in check during this time have deteriorated to the point of collapse, and the ramifications promise to be dire.

At the heart of the crisis with Iran is a nuclear enrichment program that has been subjected to an unprecedented degree of international scrutiny, and about which there is virtually nothing that is unknown in terms of its present composition and functioning. As a signatory to the nonproliferation treaty (Iran signed the NPT in 1968 and ratified it in 1970), Iran’s nuclear activities are subjected to safeguards inspections carried out under the auspices of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

The history of Iran’s nuclear program is a long and complex one, unfolding over the course of four decades. During this time, Iran rose to the forefront of nuclear development under the Shah, only to collapse into ruin and stasis under the Islamic Republic that replaced the Shah in 1979.

When the Iranian government decided in the early 1990s to revive its nuclear power program, it turned to the black market to acquire the technology needed to build a viable nuclear fuel cycle, inclusive of uranium enrichment. This put Iran in contact with the father of the Pakistani atomic bomb, A.Q. Khan, forever tainting Iran’s program with the specter of military intent.

The concern that Iran was pursuing a covert nuclear weapons program was heightened considerably when, in 2002, its secret uranium enrichment plant at Natanz was revealed to the world by Iranian opposition leaders. This set off a 13-year crisis between Tehran and the international community over whether Iran would be allowed to master the nuclear fuel cycle needed to indigenously produce fuel for nuclear power reactors.

The Iran nuclear crisis was finally resolved in 2015 after years of diplomatic confrontation and negotiation culminating with the so-called Iranian nuclear agreement, officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Program of Action (JCPOA). The JCPOA was structured around a purely hypothetical construct postulated by the U.S. known as the “one year breakout window”—simply put, the combination of enrichment capability measured in terms of operational centrifuges of a specific type (in this case, the IR-1 centrifuge) and on-hand stocks of low-enriched uranium necessary for Iran to produce a single nuclear device over the course of one year.

The U.S. had attached considerable importance to this one-year “window”: so long as IAEA inspectors, implementing a program of enhanced safeguards inspections, were able to verify that Iran was in compliance with the restrictions set forth in the JCPOA, then the world could rest easy knowing that there would be at least a year’s notice before Iran could build a nuclear weapon. During that time, a coalition could be formed and a range of options put forward designed to deter Iran from going forward.

The JCPOA entered into force in 2016, and for the next two-plus years, functioned well—Iran was repeatedly found to be in full compliance with its obligations.

But the JCPOA had a fatal flaw in its construct: by embracing the notion of a one-year breakout window, the framers of the JCPOA by extension perpetuated the myth of an Iranian nuclear bomb. The JCPOA was not intended as a permanent check on Iran’s nuclear program, but rather a confidence-building mechanism that would see its restrictions gradually expire via so-called “sunset clauses.” Once these “sunset clauses” ran out, Iran would have been permitted to install and operate as many advanced centrifuges as it desired and enrich and store as much low-level uranium as needed.

In short, the “breakout window” would collapse to a figure of a few months or less. The hope of the JCPOA was that by the time the “sunset clauses” expired, relations with Iran would have improved to the point that the world no longer feared the possibility of an Iranian “breakout” toward a nuclear weapons capability.

Iran was never given a chance to build this bond of trust with the world. From the perspective of the Trump administration, the JCPOA was not a ratified treaty carrying the weight of law, but rather an executive agreement that could be reversed at the whim of a succeeding presidential administration. In 2016, then-candidate Donald Trump campaigned on the premise that Iran represented a threat to the U.S. and its allies, and that the JCPOA, through its “sunset clauses,” only served to fast-track Iran’s nuclear ambitions under the protection of the international community.

Following his election, Trump precipitously withdrew from the JCPOA, re-imposing economic sanctions as part of a so-called “maximum pressure” campaign designed to compel Iran into negotiating a new agreement that banned all nuclear enrichment activities.

In response, Iran has, over time, ended the restrictions imposed by the JCPOA, citing relevant language allowing for such action in the event of non-performance by a party or parties to the agreement. Iran now holds that the European Union and the governments of France, Germany, and the UK (all parties to the JCPOA) have failed to hold up their end by restricting economic interaction with Iran out of fear of secondary U.S. sanctions, which would be imposed on any company doing business with Iran. The final straw came earlier this month, when Iran terminated all restrictions on its enrichment effort and, in doing so, made moot the one-year breakout window that had underpinned the JCPOA.

While Iran maintains that all of its actions are reversible if all parties to the JCPOA come into compliance with their respective obligations (meaning that the EU live up to its obligations regarding trade), the reality is that, using the “breakout” formulation, Iran will be within two to three months of a nuclear weapons capability by the end of 2020.

But this this figure is a totally artificial construct that ignores the reality and complexities associated with nuclear weapons development above and beyond the act of uranium enrichment, all of which are virtually impossible to hide from international scrutiny. But perception creates its own reality, and so long as Iran is assessed to have a breakout window of two to three months, the threat of an Iranian bomb becomes a political, if not technological, fact.

The major constraint for any Iranian nuclear “breakout” is the presence of IAEA inspectors, whose mission is enshrined by the NPT, not the JCPOA. So long as these inspectors remain, any effort by Iran to divert nuclear material for use in a weapon would be readily detected.

But there is a hitch—the governments of Germany, France, and the UK, under pressure by the U.S., have initiated a dispute resolution mechanism, charging Iran with non-performance under the JCPOA because of its actions in ending JCPOA-mandated restrictions. If no resolution can be reached, then the matter will be turned over to the UN Security Council, where the resumption of UN-backed economic sanctions terminated under the JCPOA is all but assured.

Iran has made it clear that if its nuclear program is referred to the Security Council, it will withdraw from the NPT. Under the terms of the NPT, Iran would have to provide three month’s advance notice, after which time its safeguards agreement would terminate and IAEA inspectors would depart. Under the terms of the JCPOA, a decision regarding referral to the Security Council could take place as soon as 35 days; the Security Council would have up to 30 days to resolve the matter, or else sanctions automatically resume. If Iran followed through on its threat to pull out of the NPT, inspectors could be out of Iran as soon as June 2020. Void of any inspection process in place in Iran, speculation about Iranian intent and capabilities would run wild, stoking fears that would inevitably lead to a U.S.-led war designed to destroy Iran’s nuclear infrastructure and, by extension, the Iranian regime.

While the issue of Iran had seized the headlines with the one-two combination of the Suleimani assassination and Iranian retaliation strikes, the news cycle has since shifted to the impeachment trial of President Trump. While it is unlikely that President Trump will be removed from office, his impeachment and trial will live on during the silly season of American presidential politics as his Democratic rivals for the presidency vie for the right of facing off against him come November.

By that time, however, the U.S. will have sleepwalked into a war with Iran that was as inevitable as it was avoidable.

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Scott Ritter is a former Marine Corps intelligence officer who served in the former Soviet Union implementing arms control treaties, in the Persian Gulf during Operation Desert Storm, and in Iraq overseeing the disarmament of WMD. He is the author of several books, most recently, Deal of the Century: How Iran Blocked the West’s Road to War (2018).

Iraq is occupied US territory. 

The vast majority of Iraqis and its ruling authorities want Pentagon and allied forces expelled from the country.

It’s the only way for the nation to regain its sovereignty, lost to US aggression and occupation, a hostile force in numerous countries, making world peace, stability and security unattainable.

Numerous times earlier, rockets and mortar fire struck the heavily fortified 10-sq-km Green Zone in central Baghdad, site of the US embassy, at times causing casualties — attacks occurring earlier in January and on Sunday.

Reportedly three rockets struck the US embassy directly, damaging the facility, injuring one or more staff members.

Citing unnamed sources, Reuters reported three injuries from direct strikes on the US embassy.

Iraqi Al Sumaria television issued a similar report, indicating that helicopters were evacuating some embassy personnel.

Since US occupation followed Bush/Cheney’s 2003 aggression, violence, instability, chaos, and deprivation defined conditions in the war-ravaged country — raped and destroyed by US rage for control of Iraq and the region.

Anti-US rage erupted following the Trump regime’s January 3 assassination of Iranian Quds Force commander General Soleimani and Iraqi de facto PMU head Muhandis.

Last Friday, hundreds of thousands rallied in Baghdad against US occupation of the country, demanding expulsion of its forces.

According to the State Department, over 14 attacks against US personnel occurred in Iraq since last September alone.

Sunday’s incident suggests more of the same ahead. According to one report, yesterday’s attack damaged the embassy’s dining area.

Iraqi MP Hoshyar Zebari said the embassy “restaurant or canteen was damaged and burned.”

The incident came six days after three rockets struck near the embassy, two others landing in the Green Zone on January 9.

As of Monday, the State Department’s website had no information on Sunday’s incident.

Separately, its spokesperson “call(ed) on the government of Iraq to fulfill its obligations to protect our diplomatic facilities (in response to) rockets landing in the” Green Zone, saying nothing about striking the US embassy.

US personnel in the country are reviled and unwanted.

Their presence is all about colonizing Iraq, permanently occupying its territory, controlling its hydrocarbon and other resources, along with using Pentagon bases in the country as platforms for endless regional wars against invented enemies.

On Friday, an Iraqi PMU statement demanded US forces leave the country or be forced out.

Trump threatened tough sanctions on Iraq if US troops are expelled, saying:

“We have a very extraordinarily expensive air base that’s there. It cost billions of dollars to build. We’re not leaving unless they pay us back for it,” adding:

He’ll impose “sanctions (on Iraq) like they’ve never seen before ever.”

He’s mostly following Senate impeachment trial proceedings, over the weekend posting a blizzard of tweets about it — affairs of state largely awaiting its outcome even though the result is virtually certain in the coming days.

Instead of impeaching Trump for legitimate high crimes, Dems chose politicized ones — unrelated to removing him from office, hoping to weaken him ahead of November presidential and congressional elections.

The latest Gallup January 15 tracking poll on Trump’s job approval showed it virtually unchanged from months earlier — 44% expressing approval, 53% disapproving of his performance as president.

Findings of a new Washington Post/ABC News poll were almost identical.

A new Fox News polls showed 50% of respondents in favor of removing Trump from office by impeachment, 44% against — most registered Dems for it, most Republicans against.

Independents support Trump’s removal by a 53 – 34% margin.

Only around one-fourth of respondents believe his Iran agenda made the US safer, around half of those polled believing it’s less safe.

Almost half of respondents think the nation is weaker under his leadership.

Polls on Trump’s job approval ask nothing about his endless wars on humanity at home and abroad.

Both right wings of the US war party share guilt.

Nearly all current and former US officials remain unaccountable for the highest of high impeachable offenses.

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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: Iraqi army soldiers are deployed in front of the U.S. embassy, in Baghdad, Iraq, Wednesday, Jan. 1, 2020.Nasser Nasser/AP

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Genetically Modified Seeds: Bayer Builds Latin America’s Largest Seed Factory in Chile

By GMWatch, January 27, 2020

Following is an English translation of an article from the German newspaper Deutsche Welle (DW), translated by  from the Spanish version circulated by Network for a Latin America Free of Transgenics (RALLT).

“Bayer-Monsanto: Get Out of Chile”, was the slogan on banners in Santiago on May 19 during the “March against Monsanto” protest, which took place in 30 cities around the world for an agriculture without pesticides and against the use of genetically modified seeds.

Auschwitz: IG Farben and the History of the “Business with Disease”

By Dr. Rath Health Foundation, January 27, 2020

The most powerful German economic corporate emporium in the first half of this century was the Interessengemeinschaft Farben or IG Farben, for short. Interessengemeinschaft stands for “Association of Common Interests” and was nothing more than a powerful cartel of BASF, Bayer, Hoechst, and other German chemical and pharmaceutical companies. IG Farben was the single largest donor to the election campaign of Adolph Hitler. One year before Hitler seized power, IG Farben donated 400,000 marks to Hitler and his Nazi party. Accordingly, after Hitler’s seizure of power, IG Farben was the single largest profiteer of the German conquest of the world, the Second World War.

Only One Lab in China Can Safely Handle the New Coronavirus

By Nicoletta Lanese, January 26, 2020

The lab happens to sit in the center of Wuhan, the city where the newly identified coronavirus first appeared, according to the Hindustan Times, an Indian news outlet. The facility, known as the Wuhan National Biosafety Laboratory, is housed within the Chinese Academy of Sciences and was specifically designed to help Chinese scientists “prepare for and respond to future infectious disease outbreaks,” according to a 2019 report published by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

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

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky, January 25, 2020

A Worldwide public health emergency is unfolding on an unprecedented scale. 4.9 billion doses of H1N1 swine flu vaccine are envisaged by the World Health Organization (WHO).

A report by President Obama’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology  “considers the H1N1 pandemic ‘a serious health threat; to the U.S. — not as serious as the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic but worse than the swine flu outbreak of 1976.”

China’s New Coronavirus: An Examination of the Facts

By Larry Romanoff, January 25, 2020

The Western mass media have discussed the new corona virus that began in the city of Wuhan in Central China but, apart from repetitive small details and the inevitable China-bashing, not much light has been shed on the circumstances. My initial commentary here is composed from a medley of nearly 100 Western news reports, primarily ABC, CBS, CNN, AFP, and from some Chinese media. Officially called the novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV), the contagion is a respiratory illness, a new type of viral pneumonia, in the same family of infections as SARS and MERS.

Bush Grandpa’s Ties to Nazis Clearer on 75th Auschwitz Memorial

By Ralph Lopez, January 25, 2020

The ties between Hitler’s Nazis and American businessmen such as Henry Ford, Averell Harriman, and Senator Prescott Bush, the father of George H. W Bush, have long been cited in lawsuits filed by Holocaust survivors seeking compensation for their suffering. The late Senator Prescott Bush’s German assets were seized in 1942 by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt under the Trading with the Enemy Act, which also carried prison penalties which Bush escaped. Historical scholarship over the last decade shows that Bush was deeply enmeshed in business which was vital to the rise of Nazi Germany, and almost certainly knew that his profits were driven by slave labor.

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While it is true that rogue states – most notably the USA – have always posed a threat to the rule of international law, I see no serious room to dispute that the development of the corpus of international law, and of the institutions to implement it, was one of the great achievements of the twentieth century, and did a huge amount to reduce global conflict.

The International Court of Justice, the Law of the Sea Tribunal, the European Court of Justice, the World Trade Organisation, these are just some of the institutions which have played an extremely positive role, helping resolve hundreds of disputes during their existence and, still more importantly, helping establish rules that prevented thousands more disputes from arising. Regional Organisations, dozens of them including the EU, the African Union and the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, have also flourished.

The judgement of the ICJ in the 160 cases it has heard has almost always been respected by the parties to the case. That has applied even when the dispute is radical, inflammatory and had already led to fighting and deaths, such as the settlement of the Nigeria/Cameroon border. The ICJ has been a massive success story.

The foundation of the International Criminal Court in 2002 was the high water mark in establishing the rule of law as the guiding principle of international affairs. As with all the major worldwide institutions of international law, the UK had played a leading role in the establishment of the ICC. I was in the FCO at the time, and I remember the quiet confidence that eventually the USA would join up, just as they had with the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea after decades of havering. In fact, the ICC has been a major disappointment, of which more later. I refer to 2002 as the high water mark for the rule of international law, because subsequently the tide has turned decisively against it.

When Blair and Bush invaded Iraq, not only without the sanction of the UN Security Council but in the certain knowledge the Security Council was against it, and in Blair’s case against the unanimous opinion of the FCO’s entire cadre of Legal Advisers who stated that the war was illegal, they not only precipitated a crisis that has resulted in millions of deaths, they dealt a killing blow to the entire fabric of international law.

The results are now becoming every day more visible. We have just survived for now, thanks to Iran’s remarkable sense and restraint, a dangerous crisis in the Middle East following the illegal assassination of General Soleimani, who was travelling on a diplomatic mission at the time. The use on a massive scale of execution by drone – including execution of UK and US nationals – by the British and American governments, often without the permission of the government in whose territory the execution takes place, is an appalling breach of international law for which there appears to be no effective remedy.

The FCO Legal Advisers refused to advise that the killing of Soleimani was legal in international law. However the UK government no longer cares if something is legal in international law or not. The government line was originally that there was an “arguable case” that the assassination was legal, then after objections from legal advisers the line changed to “it is not for the UK to determine whether the drone strike is legal”.

The United Kingdom used to be a pillar, arguably the most important pillar, of international law. Thanks to a series of neo-con politicians, including Blair, Straw, Cameron, May and Johnson, the UK scarcely makes a pretence any more abut giving a fig about international law. It simply ignores the instruction of the United Nations and the International Court of Justice to decolonise the Chagos Islands. It refuses to implement the binding international arbitration on debt owed to Iran. It mocks the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention. It refuses to allow the UN Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women into asylum detention centres. I could go on. A direct consequence of this is sharply diminished UK influence in the world, and in particular for the first time in 71 years it does not have a seaton the International Court of Justice. As the UK has effectively spurned the authority of the ICJ, this is scarcely surprising.

It was the UK’s reputation as an upholder of international law that moderated outrage at the UN at the UK’s anachronistic permanent membership of the UN Security Council. That international respect no longer exists, and the British Government are deluded if they think that the UK’s privileged UN status will last forever, especially as it can no longer be represented as a proxy for EU foreign policy.

The UN itself is of course suffering a sustained threat to its authority. It is simply ignored on the dreadful Saudi led disaster in Yemen. By refusing the Iranian foreign minister a visa to attend a Security Council meeting on Soleimani, the USA struck at the very purpose of the UN. If the institution is to be held the hostage of its geographical host, what is its purpose? Ultimately, to regain relevance the UN would have both democratically to reform and to relocate, perhaps to South Africa. I do not see that happening in the near future.

As for the International Criminal Court, that has been a severe disappointment which in many ways symbolises the collapse of international law. Its failure to prosecute Bush and Blair for the war on Iraq set its direction from the beginning. Waging aggressive war is in itself a war crime and was indelibly established as such by the Nuremburg Tribunal. That it was not specifically mentioned in the Rome Statute was a flimsy pretext from judges not willing to take on power. The same judges have bottled out of investigation of US crimes in Afghanistan and appear to be in the same process over war crimes in Gaza, where astonishingly there has been no backing from states for the ICC against Netanyahu’s threat to institute sanctions against ICC staff if investigations continue. I used to defend the ICC robustly over accusations that it was simply a tool of neo-con policy. I now find it very hard to do so.

The UK is not the only country ignoring international law. Spain’s repudiation of the European Court of Justice decision that Junqueras must be released to take his seat in the European Parliament is a huge blow to the prestige and authority of that organisation. Spain’s vicious persecution of Catalonia is itself the most comprehensive challenge that “western values” have faced for decades in the European heartland, by a large measure worse than anything which Orban has done. Spain completely ignores its Council of Europe obligations.

The structure of international law is looking very shoogly indeed. It does matter, a very great deal. The world is becoming a significantly more dangerous place as a result.

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Featured image is from edgarwinkler / Pixabay

The world is saying no to war with Iran and US out of the Middle East. Hundreds of protests were held in the United States and around the world on Saturday with a unified voice of “No War.” These protests are in solidarity with massive protests in Iraq calling for the US to get out where it is now an occupying force as the government has asked it to leave.

These protests and the uprising over the US remaining in Iraq are not being covered in the US corporate media. Millions of people participated in the memorials for General Soleimani and Abu Mahdi al-Muhandes after the US assassinated them. Now, millions have protested the refusal of the US to leave Iraq. The Pentagon knows the reality is that US troops in Iraq are at increasing risk every day the US stays in that sovereign nation.

The warnings have been sent. i24 News reports that up to five missiles struck near the US Embassy in Baghdad today. “Sunday’s attack was the second night in a row that the Green Zone was hit and the 15th time over the last two months that US installations have been targeted.”

The Pentagon will need to tell President Trump that he has two choices to protect US troops. The first choice is to abide by the law and the demands of the Iraqi government by leaving Iraq. The second choice is to escalate and bring in tens of thousands of more troops as well as anti-missile systems. Iran showed the US that even when they warned them they would be attacking a base with several hours’ notice so personnel could leave, the US military was unable to stop the Iranian missiles. Iran has also shown that it can shoot down US drones over the Strait of Hormuz.

The US needs to leave Iraq and the Middle East and stop threatening Iran or it risks spending hundreds of billions of dollars and risking the lives of US troops. All this for oil that President Trump says the US does not need. In this era when the fossil fuel economy must come to an end, it is time for the US to get out of the Middle East.

Massive Protests in Iraq Demand the US Leave

Telesur reports, “According to estimates of the Iraqi police commander Jaafar Al-Batat, over 1 million people Thursday demanded the departure of U.S. troops from Iraq with a march in Baghdad, which was convened by cleric Muqtada Al-Sadr three weeks after the murder of Iran’s General Qasem Soleimani.”

The message of the protest was very clear from the signs and actions of the protesters.  Banners included “No, No to the U.S. and Yes to Iraqi sovereignty,” “The willingness of free nations is stronger than the U.S. aggression,” and “Global terrorism is made in the U.S.” Another sign sent a very clear message “To the Families of American soldiers Insist on the Withdrawal of Your Sons from Our Country, or Prepare their Coffins.” [Emphasis in Original] Protesters carried burned images of Donald Trump, others raised photos of the US president’s face crossed out with a red “X”. On the speaker’s stage, a large sign read, “Get Out America.”

Shia Cleric, Muqtada al-Sadr, who helped organize the protest said, regarding the demand of the government that the US leave Iraq, “If the U.S. meets these demands, then it is not an aggressor country” but the US will become a “hostile country” if it fails to do so. Ayatollah Ali Al-Sistani, the highest Shiite religious authority in Iraq said, “the need to respect the sovereignty of Iraq, the independence of its political decision, and its territorial unity.”

The Prime Minister and the Parliament called for US troops to leave Iraq. In a telephone call, Prime Minister Abdel Mahdi told Secretary of State Mike Pompeoto prepare to leave Iraq. Article 24 of the agreement between the US and Iraq regarding troops states that the “US recognizes the sovereign right of the government of Iraq to request the departure of the US forces from Iraq any time.”  Pompeo gave a foolish answer, turning the US into an occupying force by saying, “The US shall not withdraw from Iraq” but inconsistently said it “respects its sovereignty and decisions.” President Trump threatened Iraq saying he would impose “sanctions like they’ve never seen before” and “its Central Bank account held at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York with $35 billion could be shut down.” US Ambassador to Iraq Mathew Tueller delivered to Iraqi officials a copy of all the possible US sanctions Iraq could face.

These responses led to mass protests. The threat to US troops is very real. Sources in Prime Minister Mahdi’s office said the US is “bringing war upon itself and transforming Iraq into a battlefield” if it fails to leave. He warns, “The US will be faced with strong and legitimate popular armed resistance.”

The current conflict needs to be viewed in the context of Iraq being devasted by US actions. The Clinton administration sanctions killed 500,000 children, and the US invasion and occupation, which followed in 2003, resulted in the deaths of over one million Iraqis. More recently, the US tried to extort Iraq by demanding half its oil profits in exchange for damages the US war caused. When the Prime Minister turned to China for assistance instead, Trump threatened Iraq. The Iraqi people have had enough of US intervention. It is time for the United States to leave.

No War With Iran, January 25, from East Bay DSA Twitter

The World Joins Opposition To War With Iran, Calls For US Out of The Middle East

On January 25, a Global Day of Protest was called in solidarity with the people of Iraq and Iran. There were protests in more than 210 cities in 22 countries. The protest was organized by numerous antiwar organizations including the United National Antiwar Coalition (UNAC), the ANSWER Coalition, CODE PINK, Black Alliance for Peace, the International Action Center, Popular Resistance and many more.

UNAC pointed out that Iran has been a victim of US aggression since the 1953 coup against the democratically-elected president Mohammed Mossadegh. This was followed by the brutal rule of the US-supported Shah of Iran until the 1979 Iranian Revolution. Sanctions were immediately imposed on Iran and from 1980-1988 the US fueled the Iran-Iraq war, which killed more than one million people. In 1988, the US shot down an Iranian civilian passenger plane, killing more than 290 Iranian civilians, for which the US has still not apologized for or explained. The US has imposed escalating crippling sanctions that have devastated Iran’s economy and the lives of its citizens. Trump’s unilateral withdrawal from the nuclear agreement has led to even more sanctions. Donald Trump’s order to assassinate General Soleimani was the culmination of his campaign of “maximum pressure” against the Islamic Republic of Iran supported by both Democrats and Republicans.

CODEPINK sent an open letter to the people of Iran expressing that the people of the United States are “horrified by the actions of our government to provoke a war…” and apologizing for the reckless actions of President Trump. They expressed opposition to the withdrawal of the United States from the nuclear agreement, the maximum-pressure campaign and the assassination of General Soleimani writing, “Poll after poll reveals that the American people do not want a war with Iran. We want to end the Middle East wars that the U.S. has engaged in for far too long.”

This weekend’s massive protests were the second protests since the US reignited the risk of war in Iraq and war against Iran. One day after the January 3 assassination of Qassem Soleimani, the renewed antiwar movement called for protests and thousands of protesters rallied in more than 82 cities in 38 states involving tens of thousands of people.

The world saying, “US out of the Middle East and no war on Iran”, and governments are also siding with Iran to end US hegemony. There are many countries coming to the side of Iran, perhaps most important are the Chinese-Iranian economic agreements, which have undermined US sanctions and integrated Iran into a Chinese-led Eurasian Belt and Road Initiative. The US deems this an imminent threat. In 2016, Iranian President Hassan Rohani announced during a visit from China’s President Xi Jinping that Iran and China had created a $600 billion dollar, 25-year political and trade alliance.

The military alliance developing between China, Russia, and Iran is another major threat to US domination. Iran, China, and Russia held joint naval drills in the Gulf of Oman, a “normal military exchange” that reflected the nations’ “will and capabilities to jointly maintain world peace and maritime security,” just days before the murder of Soleimani.

China and Russia have been critical to multiple countries under economic attack and military threats by the United States. This includes Iran, Iraq, Syria, Libya, North Korea, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Bolivia, and many others. A new balance of power is developing. The US peace movement needs to understand these realities and join a global movement against US imperialism.

Getting Out of the US War Quagmires in the Middle East

The United States needs to reverse course after decades of mistakes, destruction, chaos and death in the Middle East. The US is not welcome in the region and will face increasing costs if it stays.

Foreign Minister Javad Zarif sent a biting tweet to Donald Trump where he urged him to act on facts, not FOX news headlines and linked to an interview with Der Spiegel highting a small portion:

DER SPIEGEL: Do you rule out the possibility of negotiations with the U.S. following Soleimani’s murder?

Zarif: No, I never rule out the possibility that people will change their approach and recognize the realities. For us, it doesn’t matter who is sitting in the White House. What matters is how they behave. The Trump administration can correct its past, lift the sanctions and come back to the negotiating table. We’re still at the negotiating table. They’re the ones who left. The U.S. has inflicted great harm on the Iranian people. The day will come when they will have to compensate for that. We have a lot of patience.

Conflict resolution expert Diane Perlman sees hope in the potential for ratcheting down conflicts between the US and Iran and Iraq. The proportional response by Iran for the assassination of General Soleimani, and the non-escalation by President Trump to that response are positive signs. Donald Trump has said the Middle East wars have cost trillions of dollars for no useful purpose. Iran does not want war. Iraq does not want its nation used as a battlefield. The US public and peace movement want our troops out. The nations of the world do not want another protracted Middle East war. She points out that de-escalation could “address different fundamental needs for each party.” The US leaving Iraq is a “potentially elegant solution” especially when the “unthinkable alternative” is escalation and more war.

We must continue to demand that the US follow the rule of law, respect the sovereignty of other nations, end the illegal coercive economic measures and get our bases and troops out of other countries. We urge you to participate in the upcoming events such as the day of action against sanctions and the conferences in New York and Cyprus.

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Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers co-direct Popular Resistance where this article was originally published.

Featured image is from Popular Resistance

NATO al Qaeda ground operatives in Syria continue their recent acceleration of terrorist atrocities against Syria. Rocket bombs have again been fired into civilian neighborhoods of Aleppo. Armed human garbage continue to prevent civilians to be escorted to safe areas via humanitarian corridors from Idlib and Aleppo countrysides. Syrian air defense has shot down several drones near Lattakia.

Civilian Mohamad Hesso was murdered Sunday, 19 January, when NATO’s al Qaeda terrorists fired several rockets into the 3000 Apartments Project in the Halab al Jadida neighborhood of Aleppo city. Housing, businesses, and vehicles were destroyed, mostly courtesy of the US taxpayer (how many times has Trump complained that other NATO countries are not paying their “fair share”? These deadly weapons do not fall like manna from the heavens; they NATO weapons, and they are delivered to the savages in Syria.).

Over the past days, 11 civilians were martyred, more than 24 others were injured, and material damages were caused to the homes and properties of the people as a result of terrorist rocket shells attacks on safe neighborhoods in Aleppo city. — SANA

Also on Sunday, NATO’s al Qaeda terrorists fired a series of weaponized drones toward Hmeimim Airport, in Lattakia countryside. Syria’s air defense system neutralized these bombs, fired from that al Qaeda haven known as Idlib, that terrorist oasis supported by NATO countries.

19 January, Aleppo/Idleb, SANA – Terrorist organizations in Idleb countryside and Aleppo southern countryside continued on Sunday to prevent civilians from exiting to safe areas through humanitarian corridors in Abu al-Duhour, al-Habbit, and al-Hader.

In news not related to immediate atrocities by NATO terrorists, the Electricity Ministry has begun rehabilitation of the 5th Group of the Aleppo Generation Plant, despite unilateral economic terrorism by NATO countries against the Syrian Arab Republic.

 

On 18 January, President Bashar al Assad issued Decrees which prohibit the use of non-Syria pound currency, increase the penalties for black marketeering of currency exchange, and make illegal the publication of fake news within the Republic.

Arrests of amoral black marketeers amenable to enriching themselves by helping to destroy their country’s financial system, have already begun.

Shall we anticipate that NATO media will soon be calling these criminals, “activists” — as has already been done with convicted felons and drug addicts such as Raed Fares — singing their praises, and that the P3 mobsters running the UN will demand their release?

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Featured image: Mohamad Hesso was murdered when NATO terrorists fired rockets into his neighborhood in Aleppo. (Source: Syria News)

The International Court of Justice’s (ICJ) Order to the Government of the Republic of Myanmar to adopt various provisional measures to protect the Rohingya community from “physical destruction” and to prevent the commission of all acts within the scope of Article 11 of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide including killing members of the group and imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group” is a decision of tremendous significance. The Order also urges the Myanmar military as well as any regular armed units which may be directed or supported by (the military) and any organisation or person which may be subject to its control, direction or influence not to commit genocide or be complicit in acts of genocide. The Government of Myanmar is also required in the Order to submit a report to the ICJ on all measures intended to give effect to the Order within four months as from the date of the Order and thereafter every six months until a final decision on the case is rendered by the Court.

Needless to say, the Government of Myanmar has rejected the ICJ’s Order. It denies that there has been any genocide against the Rohingyas. However, reports from independent human rights observers and from Rohingyas themselves — many of them refugees living in other countries — tell a different story. It is this evidence adduced by the government of the Gambia especially its Justice Minister, Abubacarr Tambadou, which convinced the ICJ panel that the allegations of genocide against the Myanmar Government had a basis.

The world should now use the ICJ’s stand to mount a massive global campaign on behalf of the oppressed and discriminated Rohingya. It should in fact go beyond the ICJ’s Order and address the root cause of the suffering of the Rohingya people. Stripping them of their Myanmar citizenship in 1982 is what is largely responsible for their oppression and marginalisation.  This is why the world in endorsing the ICJ’s decision should also plead with the Myanmar government to restore the citizenship of all Rohingyas who qualify for citizenship.

The media both old and new have a critical role to play. It is disappointing that even in their coverage of the ICJ decision most of the media have been somewhat lukewarm. There has been very little support by way of follow-up articles and the like. And yet the ICJ is a mainstream institution with a high degree of credibility.

One hopes the UN General Assembly will also be persuaded to endorse the ICJ decision, reinforced by a call to grant citizenship to the Rohingya people.  Perhaps the government of the Gambia should take the lead. It is said that in bringing the Rohingya case to the ICJ, the Gambia was motivated largely by its conscience, specifically the pain and anguish leaders like Tambadou felt when the carnage in Rwanda occurred in the mid nineteen nineties.

As demonstrated by the government of the Gambia, the nine ASEAN governments who share a regional platform with Myanmar should also for once act on the basis of their conscience. They should set aside concerns such as trade and investments, big power politics and geopolitical pressures and focus solely upon the ordeal of a people facing extermination, and act accordingly.

It is not just ASEAN that should respond to the ICJ. What about China? China for geopolitical and geo-economic reasons has become particularly close to the Myanmar government. Can the Chinese leadership rise above these considerations and instead emphasise the vital importance of our common humanity and our human dignity? One can ask the same question of India and of Japan in their relations with the Myanmar government.

Of course, the Myanmar government’s treatment of the Rohingya minority will only change for the better if the majority of the Myanmar people express strongly their disapproval of present policies. They should urge their government to heed the ICJ’s Order. This is not likely to happen in the foreseeable future. It appears that the majority of the populace are attached to a Burman-Buddhist identity that does not really accommodate the non-Burman, non- Buddhist minorities — a notion of identity which the ruling elite with the military at its core espouses. Antagonism towards the Rohingya is part of this notion of identity.

What this means is that if a substantial segment of Myanmar society is going to persuade their government to adhere to the ICJ’s Order, it will be because of external pressure. Hence the importance of accelerating pressure through ASEAN, the big Powers, the UN General Assembly and global public opinion.

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Dr Chandra Muzaffar is the President of the International Movement for a Just World (JUST). Malaysia.

Following is an English translation of an article from the German newspaper Deutsche Welle (DW), translated by  from the Spanish version circulated by Network for a Latin America Free of Transgenics (RALLT).

“Bayer-Monsanto: Get Out of Chile”, was the slogan on banners in Santiago on May 19 during the “March against Monsanto” protest, which took place in 30 cities around the world for an agriculture without pesticides and against the use of genetically modified seeds.

Just a few days earlier, the Bayer pharmaceutical consortium had been ordered to pay more than $2 billion to a couple in the United States who claimed to have had cancer due to the use of Roundup, a herbicide developed by Bayer’s subsidiary, Monsanto.

Critical voices grow in Chile

About 50 kilometers south of Santiago are two of the largest seed production plants in Chile. In September 2018, after the purchase of Monsanto, Bayer CropScience announced the modernization of the Viluco plant, the only factory that produces vegetable seeds in South America and one of the company’s three largest factories worldwide.

“We want to modernize the technology and processes, so that the factory reaches the standards of the factories in the Netherlands and the United States,” said Yuri Charme of Bayer CropScience. The project, called “Satisfaction of demand”, aims to increase seed production by 20% so that Chile can meet 70% of demand in the region in the near future.

Chile is the largest seed exporter in the southern hemisphere. According to figures from the Federation of Seed Producers (ChileBio), the country exported seeds worth $338.5 million in 2016/2017, a fifth of which were GM. One of the advantages of having a seed business in Chile is that when it is winter in Europe, there it is summer.

GM plant pollen contaminates local seeds

The vegetable seed that is processed at the factory in Viluco represents, so far, a small part of the seed exports. Far more important are corn, soybeans and rapeseed. These are processed in another factory, a few kilometers south of Viluco, in the rural community of Paine. There, the majority of the population subsists from agriculture. Already in 2016, before the merger with Bayer, Monsanto had announced the expansion of the factory, which led a group of citizens to found the Paine Defence Committee.

“The largest seed processing plant in Latin America is being built here. There are no studies on its environmental impact. Politicians approved the project without consulting people’s opinions,” says Camila Olavarría, spokesman for the committee.

The inhabitants of Paine fear the contamination of local seeds by cross-pollination when pollen from modified plant fields is transported by wind to neighboring fields. This is particularly easy with rapeseed, because its pollen flies up to three kilometers.

“Most of the seeds here have been genetically modified”

In EU countries, the cultivation of genetically modified rapeseed is prohibited. In Chile, however, cultivation is allowed for research and export purposes. The only way to avoid cross-pollination would be a sufficient distance between crops. This prevention measure is not implemented in Chile.

Olavarría believes that the seeds in Paine are already contaminated:

“Most of the seeds here have been genetically modified. Bayer-Monsanto gives local farmers seeds that they sow on their land. They then have to return some seeds that are then processed in Paine and Viluco and exported,” he explains. And he adds that “farmers receive the seeds along with a package of pesticide products like Roundup”.

“There are more and more cancer diagnoses”

Roundup, the brand name of glyphosate, is the best selling herbicide in Chile. In March 2015, the International Agency for Research on Cancer classified glyphosate as a “probable carcinogen”. Camila Navarro, also a member of the Paine Defense Committee, points out that in her community “the number of people with cancer is growing, not only among farmers, but also among seasonal farmworkers and people close to the fields.”

He points out that the children of seasonal farmworkers frequently suffer from speech defects and cognitive disorders. He adds that there are also reports about pregnant women who work in the fields, and who suffer miscarriages or whose babies are born with fatal malformations. There are no official studies on the relationship between pesticides and these diseases.

Action network calls for ban on glyphosate in Chile

Cancer is the second most common cause of death in Chile. Each year, there are 45,000 new cases, according to the Chilean Ministry of Health earlier this year. A network for action against pesticides calls for a ban on glyphosate in Chile. Lucia Sepúlveda, one of its members, told DW that “Bayer and Monsanto are not welcome in Chile,” and concludes that the cultivation of genetically modified plants and pesticides “damages the environment and the health of the population.”

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Featured image: March Against Monsanto, Chile, 2013, by Mapuexpress Informativo Mapuche/Marcha nacional No a la Ley Monsanto, via Wiki Commons. Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license. 

ISIS and likeminded terrorist groups were made in the USA — recruited, armed, funded, trained and directed by Pentagon special forces and CIA operatives — on US bases in Syria, Iraq and elsewhere.

Jihadists are used by the US as proxy fighters in Iraq, Syria, and other designated war theaters — supported by Pentagon terror-bombing.

What establishment media don’t report is what’s most important for everyone to know, including a question never asked or answered in the mainstream.

Where do heavy and other weapons used by ISIS and other jihadists come from? They don’t materialize out of thin air.

They include tanks, large-caliber mortars, HIMARS multiple launch rocket systems, artillery, surface-to-air-missiles, man-portable Manpads able to down low-flying aircraft and helicopters, TOW-guided anti-tank missiles, and other weapons.

They’re made in the USA, other Western countries, Israel, Turkey and elsewhere — supplied to jihadists by the ruling regimes of these countries, along with training in their use.

Throughout years of war in Syria and Iraq, their militaries seized large amounts of weapons and munitions supplied to jihadists from abroad.

Instead of combatting terrorists, the US and its so-called “coalition” partners actively aid these elements — one of many dirty secrets about US aggression in multiple theaters.

Syrian and Iraqi forces also witnessed airdrops of weapons, munitions, related military equipment, food and other supplies to jihadists — by US and allied aircraft.

They also monitored redeployment of jihadists from various locations to others, the Pentagon airlifting or otherwise redeploying them to areas where its commanders want them used.

Last week according to the Arabic-language al-Ma’aloumeh news website, senior Iraqi MP Karin al-Aliwi said the following:

The Trump regime is “reactivating the remnants and sleeping cells of the ISIL in 5 Iraqi provinces to escalate crisis and chaos in Iraq to decrease power of Hashd al-Shaabi and other (PMU) security forces.”

Thousands of ISIS fighters are being redeployed from Syria to Iraq as a pretext to unjustifiably justify continued US occupation — strongly opposed by the vast majority of Iraqis.

According to Iraqi PMU Kata’eb Seyed al-Shohada senior commander Kazzem al-Fartousi, “security forces are…guarding  the Iraqi-Syrian borders, but the airspace of these regions are fully open to the US planes and helicopters, including Chinook cargo helicopters.”

Pentagon heliborne operations are shifting ISIS jihadists cross-border from Syria to multiple locations in Iraq.

Al Anbar province Badr Organization head Qusai al-Anbari said Pentagon troops “prevented Iraqi forces from approaching Wadi Houran and the western desert of al-Anbar,” adding:

US forces “facilitated the trafficking of the ISIL terrorists and their transfer to Wadi Houran and the western desert by reopening a number of roads and heliborne operations.”

Anbari called what’s going on the first phase of reviving the presence of large numbers of ISIS jihadists in Iraq — to foment violence, instability and chaos in the country again.

Longstanding US/Israeli policy calls for partitioning Middle East countries along ethnic and sectarian lines for easier control.

Last week, the Middle East Eye reported that the Trump regime “stepped up efforts to partition Iraq.”

The scheme is likely all about wanting it divided into Shia, Sunni and Kurdish areas.

Achieving this strategic aim would weaken the country, prevent creation of a land bridge from Iran to Lebanon, Palestine, and Mediterranean waters through Syria, along with enabling the Pentagon to permanently occupy parts of the country where its forces are welcome in return for large-scale bribes to ruling authorities of these areas.

Reintroducing ISIS jihadists in parts of Iraq would be used as a pretext for permanent US occupation.

Over a million Iraqis protesting in Baghdad last Friday against US occupation bore testimony to mass outrage against its troops in the country, wanting them out, Iraqi sovereign independence regained.

The US came to Iraq to stay, permanent occupation planned. Clearly its presence is reviled and unwanted.

It’ll likely take sustained national upheaval to expel its forces. Friday was a good start.

Peace and stability will remain unattainable as long as US and allied forces occupy regional countries.

They’re reviled by Iranians, Iraqis, Syrians, Lebanese, and most others in the Arab world, a scourge vital to eliminate in this war-torn part of the world.

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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 American Free Press

Under the cascading roar of the 24/7 news cycle cum Twitter eruptions, it’s easy for most of the West, especially the US, to forget the basics about the interaction of Eurasia with its western peninsula, Europe.

Asia and Europe have been trading goods and ideas since at least 3,500 BC. Historically, the flux may have suffered some occasional bumps – for instance, with the irruption of 5th-century nomad horsemen in the Eurasian plains. But it was essentially steady up to the end of the 15^th century. We can essentially describe it as a millennium-old axis – from Greece to Persia, from the Roman empire to China.

A land route with myriad ramifications, through Central Asia, Afghanistan, Iran and Turkey, linking India and China to the Eastern Mediterranean and the Black Sea, ended up coalescing into what we came to know as the Ancient Silk Roads.

By the 7^th century, land routes and sea trade routes were in direct competition. And the Iranian plateau always played a key role in this process.

The Iranian plateau historically includes Afghanistan and parts of Central Asia linking it to Xinjiang to the east, and to the west all the way to Anatolia. The Persian empire was all about land trade – the key node between India and China and the Eastern Mediterranean.

The Persians engaged the Phoenicians in the Syrian coastline as their partners to manage sea trade in the Mediterranean. Enterprising people in Tyre established Carthage as a node between the Eastern and Western Mediterranean. Because of the partnership with the Phoenicians, the Persians would inevitably be antagonized by the Greeks – a sea trading power.

When the Chinese, promoting the New Silk Roads, emphasize “people to people exchange” as one of its main traits, they mean the millenary Euro-Asia dialogue. History may even have aborted two massive, direct encounters.

The first was after Alexander The Great defeated Darius III of Persia. But then Alexander’s Seleucid successors had to fight the rising power in Central Asia: the Parthians – who ended up taking over Persia and Mesopotamia and made the Euphrates the limes between them and the Seleucids.

The second encounter was when emperor Trajan, in 116 AD, after defeating the Parthians, reached the Persian Gulf. But Hadrian backed off – so history did not register what would have been a direct encounter between Rome, via Persia, with India and China, or the Mediterranean meeting with the Pacific.

Mongol globalization

The last western stretch of the Ancient Silk Roads was, in fact, a Maritime Silk Road. From the Black Sea to the Nile delta, we had a string of pearls in the form of Italian city/emporia, a mix of end journey for caravans and naval bases, which then moved Asian products to Italian ports.

Commercial centers between Constantinople and Crimea configured another Silk Road branch through Russia all the way to Novgorod, which was very close culturally to the Byzantine world. From Novgorod, merchants from Hamburg and other cities of the Hanseatic League distributed Asian products to markets in the Baltics, northern Europe and all the way to England – in parallel to the southern routes followed by the maritime Italian republics.

Between the Mediterranean and China, the Ancient Silk Roads were of course mostly overland. But there were a few maritime routes as well. The major civilization poles involved were peasant and artisanal, not maritime. Up to the 15^th century, no one was really thinking about turbulent, interminable oceanic navigation.

The main players were China and India in Asia, and Italy and Germany in Europe. Germany was the prime consumer of goods imported by the Italians. That explains, in a nutshell, the structural marriage of the Holy Roman Empire.

At the geographic heart of the Ancient Silk Roads, we had deserts and the vast steppes, trespassed by sparse tribes of shepherds and nomad hunters. All across those vast lands north of the Himalayas, the Silk Road network served mostly the four main players. One can imagine how the emergence of a huge political power uniting all those nomads would be in fact the main beneficiary of Silk Road trade.

Well, that actually happened. Things started to change when the nomad shepherds of Central-South Asia started to have their tribes regimented as horseback archers by politico-military leaders such as Genghis Khan.

Welcome to the Mongol globalization. That was actually the fourth globalization in history, after the Syrian, the Persian and the Arab.    Under the Mongolian Ilkhanate, the Iranian plateau – once again playing a major role – linked China to the Armenian kingdom of Cilicia in the Mediterranean.

The Mongols didn’t go for a Silk Road monopoly. On the contrary: during Kublai Khan – and Marco Polo’s travels – the Silk Road was free and open. The Mongols only wanted caravans to pay a toll.

With the Turks, it was a completely different story. They consolidated Turkestan, from Central Asia to northwest China. The only reason Tamerlan did not annex India is that he died beforehand. But even the Turks did not want to shut down the Silk Road. They wanted to control it.

Venice lost its last direct Silk Road access in 1461, with the fall of Trebizond, which was still clinging to the Byzantine empire. With the Silk Road closed to the Europeans, the Turks – with an empire ranging from Central-South Asia to the Mediterranean – were convinced they now controlled trade between Europe and Asia.

Not so fast. Because that was when European kingdoms facing the Atlantic came up with the ultimate Plan B: a new maritime road to India.

And the rest – North Atlantic hegemony – is history.

Enlightened arrogance

The Enlightenment could not possibly box Asia inside its own rigid geometries. Europe ceased to understand Asia, proclaimed it was some sort of proteiform historical detritus and turned its undivided attention to “virgin,” or “promised” lands elsewhere on the planet.

We all know how England, from the 18^th century onwards, took control of the entire trans-oceanic routes and turned North Atlantic supremacy into a lone superpower game – till the mantle was usurped by the US.

Yet all the time there has been counter-pressure from the Eurasian Heartland powers. That’s the stuff of international relations for the past two centuries – peaking in the young 21^st century into what could be simplified as The Revenge of the Heartland against Sea Power. But still, that does not tell the whole story.

Rationalist hegemony in Europe progressively led to an incapacity to understand diversity – or The Other, as in Asia. Real Euro-Asia dialogue – the de facto true engine of history – had been dwindling for most of the past two centuries.

Europe owes its DNA not only to much-hailed Athens and Rome – but to Byzantium as well. But for too long not only the East but also the European East, heir to Byzantium, became incomprehensible, quasi incommunicado with Western Europe, or submerged by pathetic clichés.

The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), as in the Chinese-led New Silk Roads, are a historical game-changer in infinite ways. Slowly and surely, we are evolving towards the configuration of an economically interlinked group of top Eurasian land powers, from Shanghai to the Ruhr valley, profiting in a coordinated manner from the huge technological know-how of Germany and China and the enormous energy resources of Russia.

The Raging 2020s may signify the historical juncture when this bloc surpasses the current, hegemonic Atlanticist bloc.

Now compare it with the prime US strategic objective at all times, for decades: to establish, via myriad forms of divide and rule, that relations between Germany, Russia and China must be the worst possible.

No wonder strategic fear was glaringly visible at the NATO summit in London last month, which called for ratcheting up pressure on Russia-China. Call it the late Zbigniew “Grand Chessboard” Brzezinski’s ultimate, recurrent nightmare.

Germany soon will have a larger than life decision to make. It’s like this was a renewal – in way more dramatic terms – of the Atlanticist vs Ostpolitik debate. German business knows that the only way for a sovereign Germany to consolidate its role as a global export powerhouse is to become a close business partner of Eurasia.

In parallel, Moscow and Beijing have come to the conclusion that the  US trans-oceanic strategic ring can only be broken through the actions of a concerted block: BRI, Eurasia Economic Union (EAEU), Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), BRICS+ and the BRICS’ New Development Bank (NDB), the Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB).

Middle East pacifier

The Ancient Silk Road was not a single camel caravan route but an inter-communicating maze. Since the mid-1990s I’ve had the privilege to travel almost every important stretch – and then, one day, you see the complete puzzle. The New Silk Roads, if they fulfill their potential, pledge to do the same.

Maritime trade may be eventually imposed – or controlled – by a global naval superpower. But overland trade can only prosper in peace. Thus the New Silk Roads potential as The Great Pacifier in Southwest Asia – what the Western-centric view calls the Middle East.

The Middle East (remember Palmyra) was always a key hub of the Ancient Silk Roads, the great overland axis of Euro-Asia trade going all the way to the Mediterranean.

For centuries, a quartet of regional powers – Egypt, Syria, Mesopotamia (now Iraq) and Persia (now Iran) – have been fighting for hegemony over the whole area from the Nile delta to the Persian Gulf. More recently, it has been a case of external hegemony: Ottoman Turk, British and American.

So delicate, so fragile, so immensely rich in culture, no other region in the world has been, continually, since the dawn of history, an absolutely key zone. Of course, the Middle East was also a crisis zone even before oil was found (the Babylonians, by the way, already knew about it).

The Middle East is a key stop in the 21^st century, trans-oceanic supply chain routes – thus its geopolitical importance for the current superpower, among other geoeconomic, energy-related reasons. But its best and brightest know the Middle East does not need to remain a center of war, or intimations of war, which, incidentally, affect three of those historical, regional powers of the quartet (Syria, Iraq and Iran).

What the New Silk Roads are proposing is wide-ranging, economic, interlinked integration from East Asia, through Central Asia, to Iran, Iraq and Syria all the way to the Eastern Mediterranean. Just like the Ancient Silk Roads. No wonder vested War Party interests are so uncomfortable with this real peace “threat.”

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This article was originally published on Asia Times.

Featured image: Modern day traders on the ancient Silk Road track in Central Asia. Photo: Facebook

January 27, 2020 marks the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz by Soviet troops (27 January 1945).  Rarely mentioned by the media, the I. G Auschwitz concentration camp was a private undertaking owned by  I. G. Farben – Bayer. 

International Holocaust Remembrance Day. In Commemoration of the Liberation of Auschwitz, January 27, 2020

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The most powerful German economic corporate emporium in the first half of this century was the Interessengemeinschaft Farben or IG Farben, for short. Interessengemeinschaft stands for “Association of Common Interests” and was nothing more than a powerful cartel of BASF, Bayer, Hoechst, and other German chemical and pharmaceutical companies. IG Farben was the single largest donor to the election campaign of Adolph Hitler. One year before Hitler seized power, IG Farben donated 400,000 marks to Hitler and his Nazi party. Accordingly, after Hitler’s seizure of power, IG Farben was the single largest profiteer of the German conquest of the world, the Second World War.

One hundred percent of all explosives and of all synthetic gasoline came from the factories of IG Farben. Whenever the German Wehrmacht conquered another country, IG Farben followed, systematically taking over the industries of those countries. Through this close collaboration with Hitler’s Wehrmacht, IG Farben participated in the plunder of Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Norway, Holland, Belgium, France and all other countries conquered by the Nazis.

The U.S. government’s investigation of all the factors leading to the Second World War in 1946 came to the conclusion that without IG Farben the Second World War would simply not have been possible. We have to come to grips with the fact that it was not the psychopath, Adolph Hitler, or bad genes of the German people that brought about the Second World War. Economic greed by companies like Bayer, BASF and Hoechst was the key factor in bringing about the Holocaust.

No one who saw Steven Spielberg’s film “Schindler’s List” will forget the scenes in the Auschwitz concentration camp.

The Birth of IG Farben and the Support for Hitler (from the book “Sword And Swastika” by Telford Taylor)

After the First World War, all the major chemical concerns were merged into a single gigantic trust in 1926 – the I.G. Farbenindustrie A.G. – under the leadership of Carl Duisberg and Carl Bosch. Dyestuffs, pharmaceuticals, photographic supplies, explosives, and a myriad of other products poured forth in ever-growing volume and variety.

Soon after the election of July, 1932, in which the Nazis had doubled their vote, Heinrich Buetefisch [chief of the I.G. Farben – Leuna plant] and Heinrich Gattineau [a Farben official who was also an SA officer and personally known to both Rudolf Hess and Ernst Roehm]. waited upon the Fuehrer-to-be to learn whether Farben could count on governmental support for its synthetic gasoline program in the event the Nazis should attain power. Hitler readily agreed that Farben should be given the necessary support to warrant expansion of the Leuna plant.

After the seizure of power, Farben lost no time following up this auspicious introduction. Significantly, Farben’s chosen channel was not the ‘Heeresleitung’ but Hermann Goering’s new Air Ministry. In a long letter to Goering’s deputy Erhard Milch, Carl Krauch of Farben outlined a “four-year plan” for the expansion of synthetic fuel output. Thereupon, Milch called in Generalleutnant von Vollard Bockelberg, Chief of the Army Ordnance Office, and it was agreed that the Army and the Air Ministry would together sponsor the Krauch project. A few months later Farben received a formal Reich contract calling for the enlargement of Leuna so that production would reach three hundred thousand tons per year by 1937, with Farben’s sales guaranteed for ten years – until June 30, 1944 – on a cost-plus basis.

1941: I.G. Farben’s “friendship” with the SS helps to increase the speed of construction of Auschwitz-Buna against the resistance “of some little bureaucrats”. A letter from Dr. Otto Ambros to the Director of I.G. Farben Frankfurt, Fritz ter Meer

I.G. Farben and the Auschwitz Concentration Camp

Auschwitz was the largest mass extermination factory in human history, but the concentration camp was only an appendix.

The main project was IG Auschwitz, a 100% subsidiary of IG Farben, the largest industrial complex of the world for manufacturing synthetic gasoline and rubber for the conquest of Europe.

On April 14, 1941 , in Ludwigshafen , Otto Armbrust, the IG Farben board member responsible for the Auschwitz project, stated to his IG Farben board colleagues, “our new friendship with the SS is a blessing. We have determined all measures integrating the concentration camps to benefit our company.”

The pharmaceutical departments of the IG Farben cartel used the victims of the concentration camps in their own way: thousands of them died during human experiments such as the testing of new and unknown vaccines.

There was no retirement plan for the prisoners of IG Auschwitz. Those who were too weak or too sick to work were selected at the main gate of the IG Auschwitz factory and sent to the gas chambers. Even the chemical gas Zyklon-B used for the annihilation of millions of people was derived from the drawing boards and factories of IG Farben.

 

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In the last year or so, a debate about the merits of free transit (or more accurately, fare-free transit) is making its way into public discourse in Canada. While fare-free transit is a model that has served international cities (many based in Europe or South America) for years, its a model that has only recently started to gain substantive consideration in North America.

Increasingly, community groups advocating for fair fares, fare-free transit, and even organized fare-evasion are growing in number and visibility. But those in opposition to fare-free transit are also voicing their concerns about the practicalities and costs of implementing free transit, especially when many transit systems face huge repair backlogs (cough cough *Toronto*) or embarrassing failures of new infrastructure (cough cough *Ottawa*).

And cities are not the only jurisdictions that have entered into this conversation. In the last Canadian election, the federal NDP ran on a platform of supporting municipalities in transitioning to fare-free models of public transit. In Ontario, a provincial Liberal leadership candidate is also campaigning on this platform. Clearly, this is a policy choice that some politicians are willing to explore.

People who support fare-free transit often analogize it to other public services: we don’t pay for police officers and firefighters out of pocket, or pay an entrance fee to visit a community park or at the entrance to a public school. These services are funded collectively by tax-payers and collectively we reap the benefits.

Perhaps another way to conceptualize free transit is comparing it to another form of mobility: elevators. As the authors of Free Public Transit: And why we don’t pay to ride elevators state, “the very notion of paying to use an elevator to get to the upper floors of a tall building is preposterous. Public transit services a similar function (but instead of horizontal movement, its lateral).”

Fare free transit exists either fully or partially in hundreds of cities around the world. Some cities offer partially abolished fares for certain riders (such as young people, students, and elderly riders), while others cities offer free routes within a transit network, and other cities provide free transit during certain times of the day, week, or year.

The City of Edmonton offered fare free transit during a recent cold weather alert

Why do people like free public transit?

“The universal feature of free public transport is the fact that… Everywhere that it has been implement, people like it.”

Taavi Aas (Mayor of Tallinn, in Estonia, “Free Transit Capital of the World”)

Immediately and obviously, the greatest benefit to eliminating fares is that riders no longer have to pay to use the service. Transit affordability is one of the clearest determinants of a city’s livability, and of the ability for low-income people to access the job market.

Indeed, supporters of free transit suggest that eliminating fares has the potential to make “cities better for their citizens, more socially, ecologically, and globally just, more democratic, and more prepared for the future.” Achieving fare-free transit is not a goal in and of itself, but rather a means to reducing carbon emissions, increase accessibility and mobility for residents, and address gender and racial equality.

And because of this, fare-free transit is not a stand-alone policy– it exists within a larger framework of social policies that support social equity, such as the Green New Deal, anti-criminalization, anti-poverty, and climate justice movements.

Folks who support fare-free transit also point to the lowered costs not just for the individual but for society overall. Speaking about the cost of congestion in cities, to public health, and to the environment, CUPE Local 2 President Gaetano Franco said: “We can’t not make transit free… Its too costly.”

Why do people dislike free public transit?

In a recent letter to the editor for their local paper, a concerned resident wrote:  “To the people who keep pushing for free transit, nothing is free. Transit needs to increase fares and find savings to stop its out of control spending. Homeowners and car owners shouldn’t have to pay for someone else’s transportation needs. Seem like the ones who want everything for nothing don’t have any skin in the game.”

Indeed, one of the reasons people may resist the idea of free public transit is that the cost is shared by all residents, whether or not they use public transit. This is true of many services, not least the way that we highly subsidize private car use through road and highway infrastructure at a much higher rate (more than six times!) than transit, therefore incentivizing personal vehicle use over public transit.

But, putting aside the new sources of revenue required to operate and maintain a system if fares are eliminated, studies suggest that “if public transport became free tomorrow, the ridership would immediately increase by at least 50%, immediately throwing the system in lockjaw.” In other words, cities must be prepared to reinvest massively in this infrastructure and this will require enormous sums of money.

Lastly, some people may dislike free public transit because it requires the willingness of the population to change how we view public transit: “free public transportation implies many changes, a completely new way to look at the city, both in terms of how we move and how we tax, but also how we live, where we live, how we relate to each other as a society, and our broader relationship to the urban, regional, and global ecosystem.”

Clearly, the impact on riders and cities would be significant, but what does fare-free transit mean for transit workers?

We’ll soon know with more certainty how fare-free transit impacts transit workers. Announced in late 2019, Kansas City, Missouri, is the first major metropolis in the USA to offer no-cost transit service, operated and maintained by ATU members. This creates an exciting opportunity to gauge the impact of fare-free transit on workers.

Fare-free transit may support a safer workplace. Because most assaults on operators arise because of fare disputes, eliminating fares may make the job safer for transit operators.

Transit workers may experience less violence and assault if fares are eliminated, as most operator assaults happen during fare disputes

On the flip side, members who presently work in fare collection and revenue work will require reassignment to other transit duties– in this scenario, ATU advocates for the importance of re-training members facing job redundancies.

Free Public Transit in Canada?

In sum, successful examples of fare free transit around the world demonstrate that this model of public transit service may not be radical or utopian. However, there are real concerns implementation of fare free transit.

ATU Canada advocates for fares to be affordable for all, and advocates for progress toward creating a fare-free transit. Incremental pricing actions (such as fare-freezes and reductions) are realistic in lieu of immediate fare-free transit subsidized by government. In our advocacy, we prioritize efforts to eliminate cost barriers to accessing jobs, education, health care, and other services, through the implementation of low-income passes. A gradual approach to fare reduction is sorely needed in many municipalities across Canada, with the ultimate goal of ensuring that transit is safe, reliable, and affordable for all.

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“If Ghaani follows the same path of killing Americans then he will meet the same fate,” U.S. envoy Brian Hook told the Arabic-language daily Asharq al-Awsat.

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The U.S. envoy to Iran Brian Hook has threatened Iran’s Quds Force commander Esmail Ghaani with the same fate as his predecessor, Qassem Soleimani, if he followed the latter’s path.

AccordIng to the Asharq Al-Awsat newspaper, Hook and the rest of the Trump administration will not tolerate Soleimani’s approach any further. The U.S. representative said the Trump administration will take similar action against Ghaani if seeks to replicate Soleimani’s approach.

“If Ghaani follows the same path of killing Americans then he will meet the same fate,” U.S. envoy Brian Hook told the Arabic-language daily Asharq al-Awsat.

He said in the interview in Davos, Switzerland that Trump had long made it clear “that any attack on Americans or American interests would be met with a decisive response.

The U.S. military assassinated Qassem Soleimani using a drone near the Baghdad Airport on January 3rd. Soleimani’s death was said to be in response to his plans to allegedly attack the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad.

In retaliation for the Soleimani assassination, the Iranian Revolutionary Guards fired 22 missiles at the U.S. forces in Iraq on January 8th. The U.S. initially denied any casualties; however, a report leaked shortly after claiming as many as 11 U.S. soldiers were wounded.

Following the death of Soleimani, General Esmail Ghaani was named the commander of Iran’s elite Quds Force. He was considered Soleimani’s number two and a close confidant of the late Quds Force commander.

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Featured image is from Wikimedia Commons

Any reader of these columns is familiar with the landscape – an intergalactic Star Wars struggle between three blocks of regional powers, as the US retreats in disarray.

The struggle for power is played out in one sandbox after another – first Yemen, to Libya, to Syria – with little thought for the Yemenis, Libyans or Syrians who live there.

Native populations are held in disdain, treated as agents of a higher will, to be bought, sold and betrayed at will.

Democracy, sovereignty and self-determination are meaningless concepts to be trotted out to western audiences only. It is force that matters, and power that prevails.

The same characters, forces, and destructive power are at play in each country – like a blockbuster movie with endless sequels. In each, the crown prince of Abu Dhabi, Mohammed bin Zayed, paces around his Death Star with his squadrons of hackers, mercenaries and assassins, plotting his next strike.

No one should be surprised to learn that yet another proxy war is being waged. This is proving to be bigger than Yemen, Libya and Syria. If the plans I am about to describe succeed, Bush and Blair’s invasion in 2003 would pale in comparison.

The great game has moved to Iraq and a once proud and powerful state is facing great peril.

The following is taken from three senior Iraqi sources who are familiar with the intelligence acting Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi has received, the actions he took and the conversations that took place.

The plot

Nine months ago, a group of Iraqi politicians and businessmen from Anbar, Salah al-Din and Nineveh provinces were invited to the private residence of the Saudi ambassador to Jordan in Amman.

Their host was the Saudi minister for Gulf affairs, Thamer bin Sabhan al-Sabhan, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s point man for the region.

It is not known whether Mohammed al-Halbousi, the speaker of parliament with ties to both Iran and Saudi Arabia, attended the secret Amman conference, but it is said that he was informed of the details.

On the agenda was a plan to push for a Sunni autonomous region, akin to Iraqi Kurdistan.

The plan is not new. But now an idea which has long been toyed with by the US, as it battles to keep Iraq within its sphere of influence, has found a new lease of life as Saudi Arabia and Iran compete for influence and dominance.

Anbar comprises 31 percent of the Iraqi state’s landmass. It has significant untapped oil, gas and mineral reserves. It borders Syria.

If US troops were indeed to be forced by the next Iraqi government to quit the country, they would have to leave the oil fields of northern Syria as well because it is from Anbar that this operation is supplied. Anbar has four US military bases.

Under pressure, Washington has stepped up efforts to partition Iraq to counter Iranian influence.

The western province is largely desert, with a population of just over two million. As an autonomous region, it would need a workforce. This, the meeting was told, could come from Palestinian refugees and thus neatly fit into Donald Trump’s so-called “Deal of the Century” plans to rid Israel of its Palestinian refugee problem.

Anbar is almost wholly Sunni, but Salah al-Din and Nineveh aren’t. If the idea worked in Anbar, other Sunni-dominated provinces would be next.

The meeting ended in vigorous agreement. However, the Iraqi and Saudi participants were not the only ones listening.

Jordan’s mukhabarat, its powerful secret police, an organisation big enough to be considered a parallel government, were less than pleased with what they were hearing.

They were upset with Sabhan for using the embassy in their country as a base for plotting moves in Iraq. Jordan enjoys warm relations with Baghdad, particularly after Abdul Mahdi began giving the kingdom much-needed supplies of oil.

One way or another, details of the meeting were leaked to the Iraqi premier.

Relations between Abdul Mahdi and the Saudi kingdom were good at that time. Mohammed bin Salman had opened the Kaaba in Mecca for the visiting dignitary and chose him as their intermediary with Iran.

The prime minister was privately upset, but he did not know at the time how serious this project was and whether indeed it had the crown prince’s backing. Soon afterwards, Abdul Mahdi raised the issue of the Amman meeting with the crown prince in Riyadh.

Under his premiership, sectarian tensions had declined. He had withdrawn the mainly Shia Hashd al-Shaabi paramilitary from the centres of Sunni towns and had prided himself on making sure that Sunnis were not arrested illegally by government forces.

Once again, a scheme was being hatched behind his back which would stoke sectarian tensions, and in the long run, lead to the breakup of his country.

When confronted, Mohammed bin Salman lied, as he always does. He told Abdul Mahdi the plan was “nonsense” and he would order his people to stop.

The meetings, however, continued. Some weeks later, a bigger meeting was held in Amman. This time, according to my sources, a US and Israeli representative were present.

The US representative was not overtly supportive and only stayed for part of the meeting, an hour in all, but told his Saudi counterpart: “If you can do it, it’s welcome.” Recent tensions have changed that equation, and now Washington is fully behind the plan.

More significantly, an envoy from the United Arab Emirates was present at the second meeting in Amman. This was a way of showing the Iraqi MPs present that the file of the Anbar project had been passed from the Saudis to their Emirati allies.

It also allowed the Saudi crown prince to claim he had nothing to do with the scheme.

The second meeting in Amman agreed to give full support to Halbousi, the speaker of parliament, in his efforts to weaken the government and to continuously raise the issue of Sunnis who disappeared at government checkpoints, which is the subject to an inquiry by Iraq’s Supreme Judiciary Council.

They discussed ways of “remobilising” Sunni public opinion against the Baghdad government.

The second meeting was again leaked to the government in Baghdad, which this time dispatched a top security envoy to meet the Saudis.

The behind-the-scenes confrontation happened in Paris.

“The Iraqi government only then realised the Saudis were serious and that they were not listening,” an Iraqi governmental source said.

“We said to them: “How would you like it if we received political activists from your Shia Eastern Province in Baghdad and discussed with them ways of declaring themselves independent from Riyadh?”

Iraqi objections proved in vain.

A third meeting was held in Dubai. A list of people who attended was widely publicised. This time Halbousi was present, along with Iraqi Sunni members of parliament, a TV mogul and party leader.

Though Halbousi has publicly denied that plans to create a Sunni region were discussed or agreed upon, others in the group itself have begun to break cover.

One of the most vocal of this group, deputy for Anbar province Faisal al-Issawi, said that “practical steps” had started towards forming an autonomous province on the lines of Iraqi Kurdistan in the north of the county.

Speaking to the Rodao website, Issawi said the idea of an autonomous Sunni region was inspired by the success achieved by Kurdistan.

“Regions are a constitutional development and most countries of the world depend on them to distribute power and reduce the burden on the centre,” he said.

An official in Abdul Mahdi’s office neither confirmed nor denied the account of talks.

Halbousi, meanwhile, has publicly denied that plans for Iraqi partition have been discussed or agreed upon.

The consequences

Though this scheme has gathered steam in recent weeks, it predates the assassination of Qassem Soleimani and the missile crisis with Iran. But Tehran has reacted vigorously to it recently nonetheless.

As soon as Tehran learned that the Emiratis had taken over the file of promoting an autonomous Sunni enclave in western and northern Iraq, it made clear in the days after Soleimani’s killing that US bases on Emirati territory would be regarded as legitimate targets.

What I have reported does not downplay or minimise the strong internal forces at play in Iraq and the manoeuvrings over the choice of the next Iraqi government and prime minister.

Political forces in Iraq should never be described as pawns on its neighbours’ chess boards, as Tehran knows to its cost.

The two secret meetings in Amman and the publicly acknowledged meeting in Dubai do, however, attest to a determination by one Saudi crown prince to rule and dominate the region whatever the consequences.

As we have already seen in Yemen, the breakup of a state is not necessarily an unforeseen consequence of a military campaign gone wrong. It could be one of the objectives.

This future king will rule, whatever the cost and amid ruins, if necessary. If he gets his way in Anbar, Iraq will only be another one of his ruined states.

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David Hearst is the editor in chief of Middle East Eye. He left The Guardian as its chief foreign leader writer. In a career spanning 29 years, he covered the Brighton bomb, the miner’s strike, the loyalist backlash in the wake of the Anglo-Irish Agreement in Northern Ireland, the first conflicts in the breakup of the former Yugoslavia in Slovenia and Croatia, the end of the Soviet Union, Chechnya, and the bushfire wars that accompanied it.

With the Environmental Protection Agency’s own data showing that nearly half of our rivers and streams and a third of our wetlands are in “poor biological condition,” and with millions of Americans exposed to unsafe chemicals in water systems, this is a bad time to make a mockery of the Clean Water Act. But that is precisely what the Trump administration did this week when it issued its Navigable Waters Protection rule and completed its rollback of the Obama administration’s 2015 Waters of the United States rule.

Clear navigation for polluters

Fitting of the Trump administration, the “protection” in the rule’s name doesn’t really have anything to do with water. Not when it will reportedly remove half of the nation’s wetlands and nearly 20 percent of streams from protection. It cannot be about water when the administration excludes from regulation other potential aquatic transporters of toxic chemicals, such as groundwater, rivers that run only during rainfall (a huge feature of the arid West), waste treatment systems, ditches, and ponds and depressions related to mining and construction.

No, the Trump rule is designed to allow oil and gas producers, chemical makers, agricultural interests, and developers to navigate a federal water regulatory world cleared of permits and penalties for pollution, a world not seen since the 1960s. It flies in the face of a 2018 study by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley and Iowa State University that found that the 1972 Clean Water Act “has driven significant improvements” in water quality. The study reminded readers, “These investments have large costs but could have larger benefits. In the early 20th century, water-related mortality like cholera and typhoid killed tens of thousands of people every year. At the same time, regular fires occurred on many US rivers.”

That past was not on the mind of EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler when he unveiled the rule to several rounds of applause at the National Home Builders Association show in Las Vegas. In a press release, Wheeler said the new rule assured “regulatory certainty and predictability for American farmers, landowners and businesses to support the economy and accelerate critical infrastructure projects.”

Wheeler offered no such certainty or predictability for the welfare of mothers and children drawing a drink from the faucet, nor for cities that need wetlands as a buffer against storms, not to mention the threat of floods, dangers to wildlife, or the outdoor recreation, fishing and hunting industries. Instead, he boasted that EPA rollbacks of regulations under Trump, which are among the nearly 100 environmental rollbacks being tallied by the New York Times, have saved American businesses $6.5 billion.

But as I have previously pointed out such claims of saving businesses from regulatory costs are nothing compared with the benefits of clean water. For instance, there is the $400 billion annual national outdoor recreation economy and the $9.5 billion annual economic output provided by jobs in clean water mitigation. Wildlife recreation alone, according to the Trump administration, involves more than 103 million Americans and pumps $157 billion into the economy in fishing, hunting, birdwatching, and photography.

Against all scientific sense

Wheeler, a former coal lobbyist, not only went against dollars and cents in pleasing his fellow polluters, he went against all scientific sense. In 2015, the EPA, in a review of 1,200 publications in peer-reviewed scientific literature, determined that:

• “Streams, regardless of their size or frequency of flow, are connected to downstream waters and strongly influence their function.”
• Wetlands, even when they do not seem connected on the surface, “provide physical, chemical, and biological functions that could affect the integrity of downstream waters.”
• “Incremental contributions of individual streams and wetlands are cumulative across entire watersheds.”

Last week, the Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) and 44 former scientists and administrators of government environmental and conservation agencies wrote the EPA Acting Inspector General Charles Sheehan to say that the Trump EPA has violated scientific integrity policies by ignoring the “Herculean” 2015 review of 1,200 studies. PEER, which has cited internal EPA documents indicating that the new rules might exclude at least 1.35 million miles of streams and more than 40 million acres of wetlands from protection said in the letter:

“The final Rule contradicts the overwhelming scientific consensus on the connectivity of wetlands and waters, and the impacts ephemeral streams and so-called “geographically isolated” wetlands have on downstream waters.” The letter also said that the EPA did not consult with regional experts, did not allow those experts to formally register dissenting opinions, and “failed to disclose the potentially adverse impacts the final Rule will have on human health and the environment.”

Scientists have long tried to impress these points upon the current administration. At the very beginning of the rollback of the Waters of the United States rule, a coalition of expert groups including the Society of Wetland Scientists, the American Fisheries Society, the American Institute of Biological Sciences, the Ecological Society of America, the Phycological Society of America, the Society for Ecological Restoration, and the Society for Freshwater Science wrote:

“Wetlands provide many services that promote human well-being including economic and non-economic benefits. Foremost, they keep our streams, lakes, and groundwater cleaner by ‘treating’ urban and agricultural runoff; this treatment includes reducing the negative effects of pollutants, transforming harmful nitrates into harmless nitrogen gas, trapping sediment, and removing pathogens.

They store water, and thus are a source of water during times of drought.  Many wetlands soak up runoff and floodwaters, which reduces peak flood-flows and avoids costly flood damage.  Lastly, wetlands sustain essential habitat for wildlife, fish, and waterbirds to feed, nest, breed, spawn, and rear their young in ‘productive nurseries.’. . .Like diamonds, they can be small, but extremely valuable.”

Last but not least, the EPA’s own Science Advisory Board recently slammed Wheeler’s process—to his face.

In a draft letter the board said the EPA ignored:

• The 2015 review of 1,200 studies that “emphasizes that 20 functional connectivity is more than a matter of surface geography”
• That “chemical or biological contamination of ground water may lead to contamination of functionally connected surface water”
• That irrigation canals from vegetable farms can carry E. coli and canals from confined feeding operations can be contaminated with chemicals such as steroids

The board said in summary that it was “disappointed” that Wheeler’s rule “is not fully consistent with established EPA recognized science,” and may not be consistent with objective of the Clean Water Act to “restore and maintain the chemical, physical and biological integrity of the Nation’s waters.”

If the Trump administration’s own scientific advisory board, a host of biological societies, and scores of former government agency officials are disappointed, the rest of America should be fearful and angry.

Muhammad Ali once said, “Rivers, lakes, ponds, streams, oceans all have different names, but they all contain water.” He was referring to many religions believing in a god. The Trump administration may claim that rivers, lakes, ponds, streams and oceans have different levels of protection, but the end result is obvious: all of them will contain more pollutants.

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We live in an era of protests. Everyone feels they have to fight to change things. Unless they are comfortable in their work routine, are wealthy and indifferent, or cannot risk getting fired.

There is manipulation and mobilization of protests by given political actors to achieve political goals.

There is genuine resentment and anger.

There are people who protest for a variety of reasons.

But what we cannot accept is a simplistic narrative that distorts reality, no matter where it comes from.

As a graduate of “fine western universities”, I gradually learned (and am still learning) to avoid simplistic, black-and-white arguments. Academics think in more complex ways, make more nuanced arguments. One of the greatest contributions of the western academic world to the third world was, arguably, the introduction of complexities. The educated mind (receiver of an education paid for in money), and a mind that was not in fear, could make nuanced arguments, offer thoughtful analysis, not fall into the trap of black-and-white thinking.

As one who grew up in a fundamentalist environment, whose thinking was rigid and conditioned by violence and tension, the western university landscape opened my horizons. In a US academic environment single-pointed arguments that lacked depth could appear somewhat uneducated, (and who wants to appear uneducated unless he uses it as a tactic to deceive his enemy?).

But now I am discovering that the west has embraced fanaticism and one-sided arguments. It has embraced the backward unthinking mentality that cannot tolerate dissent or doubts. This is the same mentality adopted by fanatics and extremists the world over.

Masses of Iraqis took to the streets yesterday in a massive display of defiance of the US occupation forces that brought untold suffering and misery to their country. They took to the streets demanding an end to the illegal and immoral US occupation.

But, for the New York Times [1], this was no good. First, the protests were “anti-American” (I suppose Iraqis have to lick the boot that steps on them, if to borrow Eric Hoffer’s idiom). That is of course the one thing that protests cannot be and still receive western legitimacy. No matter the fact that the US went to war in Iraq based on deliberate lies and killed millions in the country, first by sanctions, then by bombing.

How many actually participated in the protest?

The New York Times claims there were hundreds of thousands while Press TV claims [2] that they were millions. I don’t know who to believe, but judging from the pictures of Press TV and even while considering the fact that when protesters fill physical spaces they may appear more numerous than they actually are due to the optical illusion that can be formed, still, the truth seems to be closer to the numbers offered by Press TV.

Then the New York Times takes issues with the fact that people came from all across the bleeding country to Baghdad, the capital. The paper notes that “people were brought in from other cities to participate rather than holding smaller simultaneous demonstrations across the country.”

Here is a wise anti-American ploy. First, the protesters were “brought-in” as if the protesters are not independent actors with their own agency (a term favored by western post-modern academics). Second, the protesters tried to deceive the western readers by getting together and making their numbers larger, while across the country their numbers would appear smaller. Third, the fact that the protesters were “brought in” by organizers delegitimize the protest itself.

The protesters did not engage in violence and vandalism. Scenes of destruction, as the ones that have become a daily occurrence in Hong Kong for instance, were absent. That is all the more reason to be suspicious of the protesters. If they are not violent, then they do not receive sympathy. But if they are violent, then they must be Shiites.

The New York Times aptly notes that

The vast majority of the participants are Shiite Muslims, who are the main constituency of the cleric Mr. al-Sadr and the armed groups close to Iran.

So, even if the claim of a majority Shiite representation is correct, the religious convictions of a given group of protesters cannot negate the political demands or arguments of the protesters themselves, that must be judged on their distinct basis. I mean, does the New York Times write about pro-Israel parades in the United States that“the vast majority of participants are Jews, who are the main supporters of the State of Israel”?

But a double standard between the legitimate protesters and illegitimate protesters is seen as appropriate when dealing with the Shiites. The New York Times, in a display of subtle racism, reminds its readers that it’s those damn Shiites who are protesting, so it is to be expected that we must not be worried that perhaps we are not that liked in Iraq. A simple equation is offered: The Shiites like Iran and hate America. Case closed.

The New York Times did not engage in the propaganda style typical of historical Communist governments in which the uncomfortable truths are simply blanked out. It did note that

[The protest] also reflected a genuine desire shared by Iraqis to have a government and economy that serves the Iraqi people and not outside interests, many participants said.

Delivering on that may prove to be virtually impossible. But the United States’recent actions in Iraq drew the wrath of many and distaste even among some Iraqis who support the United States presence.

But it ended the article with a post-modern argument. Criticism of the protest, besides the stigmatization of protesters and spinning of events, came not from the writer itself but from the oppressed, those individuals Iraqis who were skeptical of the protest.

First, even if the Americans leave, protesters won’t get more jobs, as an elder man noted resignedly. (Of course, that is correct, but how about inserting a little bit of positive American optimism, and on what can happen if we pursue our dreams?) Second, Iran and its militias may take over if the US leaves, the article end by reminding, while quoting another participant. But, if Iran and its militas take over, that is no business of the United States. The United States has no right to be in Iraq, period. It’s not a matter of the lesser of two evils.

The suffering people of Iraq who saw the death of 500,000 Iraqi children due to US sanctions, which Secretary of State Madeleine Albrightbelieves were “worth it”[3], have risen up to support a parliament vote in favor of US forces withdrawing, another act of democracy. But this democratic protest is not greeted positively by the New York Times. It was too organized, even if the Americans leave the jobs may not come, Iran may take over, and the protesters were Shiite. (By the way, are the majority of parliamentarians in Iraq’s parliament who voted for the Americans to leave also Shiite?) And did the neo-Conservatives time and time again not advocate for a majority Sunni rule in Syria [4], regardless of the consequences (namely a victory of Daesh)?

American soldiers died, supposedly, for Iraqi democracy. The democratic right to loot museums (of course, even the return of the objects looted from the National Museum of Iraq is attributed to a single US soldier by The Independent, while overlooking the invasion itself as the enabler of the massive theft [5]). Is the fact that the vote of the Iraqi parliament being ignored by the White House not an issue for the New York Times?

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Joshua Tartakovsky is an independent journalist.

Notes

1. (https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/24/world/middleeast/protests-iraq-baghdad.html)

2. (https://www.presstv.com/Detail/2020/01/24/616968/Iraq-Protest-US)

3. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_dYTO9voeBM)

4. (https://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/25/opinion/john-bolton-to-defeat-isis-create-a-sunni-state.html)

5. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/revealed-the-real-story-behind-the-great-iraq-museum-thefts-515067.html

Featured image is from Project Syndicate