The following report by Middle East Monitor remains to be fully corroborated.

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Russian intelligence sources have claimed that Michael D’Andrea, head of CIA operations in Iran and who orchestrated the assassination of Iranian General Qassem Soleimani, was killed in a US spy plane downed yesterday in Ghazni, Afghanistan.

The plane with US Air Force markings reportedly served as the CIA’s mobile command for D’Andrea, who earnt several nicknames including: Ayatollah Mike, the Dark Prince, and the Undertaker. He is one of the most prominent CIA figures in the region, appointed head of the agency’s Iran Mission Centre in 2017. Under his leadership, the agency was perceived to take a more “aggressive stance toward Iran”.

The Taliban claimed to have shot down the plane but have yet to provide evidence, whilst the US has denied the claim but has acknowledged the loss of a Bombardier E-11A plane in central Afghanistan. Graphic images online have already circulated purportedly showing some of the charred remains of those on board.

#AlFath
Enemy intelligence aircraft crashed in Sado Khelo area of Deh Yak district #Ghazni noon hours today resulting in all crew & high-ranking CIA members killed.
Wreckage & dead bodies laying at crash site. https://t.co/DL7qwHpcRe

— Zabihullah (..ذبـــــیح الله م ) (@Zabehulah_M33) January 27, 2020

Unconfirmed reports that the CIA head of anti-Iran operations, Michael D’Andrea aka Ayatollah Mike, was on board the plane that crashed near Ghazni, Afghanistan this morning.

D’Andrea also masterminded the murder of Imad Mughniyeh, former Hezbollah Chief of Staff, back in 2008.

— Brasco_Aad (@Brasco_Aad) January 27, 2020

Afghan authorities initially claimed the plane was a state-owned airline, but this was denied by the company, Ariana. Helicopters have been brought down before by the Taliban, but they are not believed to have the capabilities required to bring down a high-flying aircraft.

It has been speculated that Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corp (IRGC) may also have a hand in the incident, especially as anti-aircraft support has previously been given to the Taliban. Additionally, the Afghan Shia Fatimyoun Brigades, who are trained by the IRGC, also have a presence in the country.

CIA Middle East chief, Soleimani Killer and Bin Laden Hunter, dead on Jet in Afghanistan. Tasnim and Mirror told after VT
by Fabio Giuseppe Carlo Carisio for VT iTaly

VERSIONE ORIGINALE IN ITALIANO
The news is so big that we have to write it running the risk of a denial, … pic.twitter.com/7Da2jmkHug

— VeteransToday (@veteranstoday) January 28, 2020

An exiled Iranian journalist who has written previously for the hard-line Javan daily newspaper suggested the IRGC was involved, tweeting: “The American Gulfstream plane was downed in Afghanistan by the Taliban. They say that intelligence officers were on board. This report has not yet been confirmed, but if it is, it is possible that the issue of Iran will also emerge in this case.”

Another Iranian journalist who writes for Mashregh newspaper, described as having close links to IRGC, tweeted not long after the news broke out: “We will attack them on the same level as they are attacking us.”

Soleimani’s successor as head of the IRGC’s Quds Force, Esmail Qaani, has established ties in Afghanistan going back to the 1980s. Additionally, the chief commander of the IRGC, General Hossein Salami, warned that no American military commanders will be safe if the US administration continues to threaten Iranian commanders.

D’Andrea, who is reportedly a convert to Islam, doing so in order to marry his Muslim wife, who is from a wealthy family from the Mauritius of Gujarati origins, having met on his first overseas assignment in East Africa, one of the senior directors of her family’s company Curumjee Group, has been speculated to provide cover for CIA operations.

He also oversaw hundreds of drone strikes, which according to The New York Times “killed thousands of Islamist militants and hundreds of civilians”. D’andrea is credited with being the mastermind behind the CIA’s notorious “signature strike” used to kill people based on their behaviour, not identity, subsequently used to determine someone’s guilt or likelihood of being a terrorist.

He was central to the post-9/11 interrogation programme and ran the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center. Assassinations and torture were central to his approach. He also oversaw the hunt for Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and was involved in the assassination of Hezbollah member Imad Mughniyah in Damascus, Syria.

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Featured image: US vs Iran, who’s going to win the war of influence – Cartoon [Sabaaneh/MiddleEastMonitor]

One day, long, long ago, a man was fishing on the reef, and he saw something out to sea. It appeared to be an island, but it moved. He ran to the beach shouting ‘’An island is coming here’’, and quickly the people gathered on the beach to watch a sailing ship approach and anchor off the reef. The inhabitants of this island came ashore, and our island-world ceased to be. The world exploded, and our island became a remote outpost …the last place in a country which has few centres and much remoteness – (Luana, 1969 : 15)

In the mid-1960s I spent 14 months in the Central Highlands of New Guinea studying the agricultural system of the Enga people, this in the context of my doctoral research in the Research School of Pacific Studies, as it was then called. For much of this time I lived among the Raiapu Enga, on the southern slopes of the Lai Valley, overlooking the patrol post, mission station and airstrip at Wapenamanda. The Aruni – their clan name – at Sabakamádá built a house for me on the edge of their ceremonial ground, welcomed me into their homes and gardens, and responded with surprising patience, and occasionally with real interest, to my interminable questioning. Their willingness to share their lives with me, their generosity and above all their pride and dignity left an indelible mark on me. Even today, over 50 years on, scarcely a week goes by without my thinking about the time I spent in what we call today Enga Province. In this respect I share without a shadow of a doubt the sentiments of Joël Bonnemaison, a fellow ethno-geographer and above all friend, who I first met in Canberra back in 1968 :

Local studies commenced in the 1960s and continue to be practised, differently. For those researchers who undertook them it is an extended immersion (…) in another society, a first confrontation between ideas and the reality of ‘fieldwork,’ and often a kind of initiation. We all return from it changed, respectful of those whom we have met. (Bonnemaison, 1993. My   translation and emphasis.)

The Golden Age

With the benefit of hindsight I now realise that I had experienced what another of my contemporaries, Bill Clarke, called theGolden Age in Papua New Guinea, that brief but magical period for both the observers and the observedthat was suspended between the end of tribal fighting and the onset of global capitalism. It was a time of discovery of other ways of inhabiting the earth. It was also a time without fear which nourished expectations of a more generous and caring world to come. The Highlanders welcomed us inquisitive strangers into their land. Our mutual concern was to get to know each other and, quite naturally, to collectively benefit from the ties we were in the process of establishing. In my particular case I was deeply impressed by the sophistication of the Enga agricultural system, in other words it’s absolute intelligence, this in a context of climatic marginality and demographic pressure. By the extraordinary order and beauty of the humanised landscape too. Indeed Joël created a vocabulary to describe a similar world in Tanna (Vanuatu) : magical gardens, enchanted territories, cultural plenitude…

In the 1960s the land belonged unequivocally to those who inhabited it. The colonial State ensured relative peace and freedom of movement, its primary concern being to establish a pax australiana,while the Corporation, with its insatiable thirst for resources to nourish the global economy, was yet to rear its head. Living temporarily on the edge of the sing-singground at Sabakamádá I was able to appreciate something of the quality of Raiapu Enga life; the easy mix of work and leisure and, with regard to the latter, the wealth of casual conversations, of social relations and of ceremonial activities. I felt inspired, both intellectually and emotionally. Certainly it wasn’t ‘paradise’ – but then does such a place exist?! There were inequalities in material wealth and hence in the exercise of power. So there was a big man and one or two rubbish men among the Aruni, but there was no abject poverty, no exclusion. Rather the big man took the rubbish maninto his household such that, in return for his labour, he was cared for. The big man, for his part, was called upon to defend the interests of the clan (community) as a whole. Further, with the exception of high infant mortality and some protein deficiency in the diet, the general health status and life expectancy of the population as a whole was surprisingly good.

There were inevitably moments of questioning on my part. I think particularly of the time when the young bachelors, following their return from the clan’s sadárú (initiation) ceremony in the hills, ran amok for 24 hours or so. It was a ritualised moment of individual frustration, largely symbolic violence and anger prior to settling into adult life as a formally delineated, and hence constrained, member of the group. The deceased Kanak leader Jean-Marie Tjibaou about whom I wrote several decades later (Waddell, 2008), offers a vivid description of the New Caledonian equivalent of this adult world the young Enga men were on the point of entering:

Landscape, village layout, society, the deceased and mythical beings constitue a whole that is not only indivisible but still practicially undifferentiated…. The space of the tribe appears in this way like the immense stage of a perpetual theatre where each person plays his role at an assigned place.(Tjibaou, 1976 : 284-285. My translation and emphasis.)

There was indeed little place for individual expression or non-conformity among the Enga such as were a feature of my own world, and I certainly reflected on this profound difference that characterised our respective lives. Yet it was never a source of concern or judgement on my part.

If my experience and my memories are of a place and a people of great beauty, I have nevertheless carried with me for over 50 years now the questioning of an old man who would often visit me in my house and who otherwise spent much of his time chatting with kin on the ceremonial ground just behind. His name was Komeyá and I cherish a photo of him. It is there, above my desk, and it nourishes my thoughts about the interconnected world in which we all now live, this even though my home on the shores of the Saint Lawrence River (Canada) is some 15 000 kilometres away from the Lai Valley. He was a lapun man who had known tribal warfare and the time before the irruption of Australian colonial administrators and foreign missionaries in his land. He was troubled by the totally unsolicited arrival of strangers in his land, strangers who showed no signs of leaving and who clearly sought to impose their will on his people. It was this concern which led him to ask me, time and again, the same question : « Why have you kone [red people] come here? What precisely do you want? » I was young and I could offer no satisfactory (to either of us) answer to his querying. I no doubt talked about learning and sharing, about ‘the family of man’, about a desire on the part of the world from which I came to ‘help’. And I probably expressed the wish to build a better future for us all. But it was all pretty vague and incoherent. Certainly I had a good idea why I personally was there but I don’t think I had much of a clue in a broader, civilisational sense. Also, I was fully conscious of the fact that I was only passing through his land.

Image 1: Komeyá, the lapun man from Sabakamádá

One extraneous event is inscribed in my memory of the late 1960s in Melanesia. It was the news of what I believe was a UNDP fact-finding mission to the Solomon Islands2, the objective of which was to identify needs and development priorities for the soon-to-be-independent colony. The UN body had been established in 1966 with the aim of engaging in a global ‘war on poverty.’ In the case of the SI mission, the team rapidly came to the conclusion that the quality of life there was satisfactory and that, apart from investing in improved health services, the country should basically be left alone! Needless to say their report was rapidly condemned to oblivion since their recommendations did not fit with interests and vision of the emerging new world order.

I only returned to Enga country briefly since my doctoral field research. It was in 1972-1973 and it involved two visits with a single purpose, to look at the impact of the 1972 frosts on the population and, more specifically, to identify their strategies for coping with such an extreme event. The nature of the crisis meant that I spent most of my time on the edge of the Marient Basin (near Kandep), where people were living at an altitude of around 2,400-2,500m and crop loss due to the succession of frosts was substantial. The Aruni, living at a significantly lower altitude – c.1,700-1,800m – and on the lower slopes of a relatively incised river valley, had for their part experienced no significant ground frosts and attendant damage to their crops. I nevertheless profited from the occasion to visit Sabakamádá. What a welcome I received! I recall walking in through the mounded sweet potato gardens, the joy of seeing old friends and neighbours, our spontaneously embracing each other, and asking for news, talking of births, deaths and other personal events that were of primary concern to us all as fellow human beings whose lives had been interwoven for a time and had been nourished by memory since my departure back in 1967. It was a moving experience and I thought once again about the family of man and of the bonds that unite us all.

Then I left, never to return to Sabakamádá.

Change

By virtue of my new research mandate I travelled reasonably widely among the high-altitude Enga and I became conscious of the groundswell of change that would inevitably transform the Highlands in the years to come: the development of the cash economy with, notably,  an increasing number of trade stores stocked with alcohol; the sense that old tribal grievances were re-surfacing; the emergence of ‘pay week’ and ‘rubbish week’ in adminstrative centres, with the attendant domestic violence; Toyota Landcruisers and pick-ups abandoned by the roadside. I sensed being witness to the slow emergence of a new kind of disorder and new forms of instability characterised by a situation where there would be few ‘winners’ and many ‘losers’, where the Enga as a whole would lose control of their destiny, and where, in other words, a new kind of chaos was emerging. The Golden Age appeared to be coming to an end and I too was experiencing a growing sentiment of loss. I was uneasy.

Largely unconsciously I think, PNG slipped slowly over the horizon as I moved on in life. I was partly drawn by my newly developed roots and dreams in French-speaking North America. However another part of me remained firmly grounded in the Pacific, a Pacific that had nourished me as a young man and had helped mould my values and world-view : the celebration of difference, learning from other peoples, recognising the crucial presence of the past in our lives – Epeli Hau’ofa would later describe this state of mind as ‘Pasts to remember’ – and the vital role of culture, hence of collective identity and the collective good as being the essential foundations for political action. I had, largely by a process of osmosis no doubt, learned a great deal about life in the course of my PhD research in the New Guinea Highlands and I was determined to re-enter Oceania in a different capacity.

In the 1980s and 1990s I spent extended periods teaching at the University of Hawai’i (Manoa), the University of the South Pacific (Fiji) and the Université de Nouvelle-Calédonie. This meant I now had Oceanians as colleagues and students, notably at USP. Both offered me a different perspective on the world of Pacific Studies and indeed the business of scholarly research in general. Islands and island peoples were no longer the object of my interest, to be viewed through the prism of scholarly debate and preoccupations in metropolitan countries. Rather they were fellow teachers, friends and students who invited me to read the world from their perspective and according to their firmly grounded and pressing preoccupations. I started listening to voices that were consciously positioning themselves outside the scholarly – particularly disciplinary – mainstream. In the case of USP I think particularly of Epeli Hau’ofa, a PNG-born Tongan who had studied and engaged in field research in anthropology, Epeli quickly realised that he had been formatted to deliver a clinical, disembodied and ultimately desperate view of his own people, be they in PNG, Tonga, Fiji or elsewhere in the Pacific Islands:

[A]fter decades of anthropological field research in Melanesia we have come up only with picture of people who fight, compete, trade, pay bride-prices, engage in rituals, invent cargo cults, copulate and sorcerise each other. There is hardly anything in our literature to indicate whether these people have any such sentiments as love, kindness, consideration, altruism and so on. We cannot tell from our ethnographic writings whether they have a sense of humour. We know little about their systems of morality, specifically about their ideas of the good and the bad, and their philosophies… (Hau’ofa, 1975 : 61)

They [anthropologists] do not know how we feel (ibid : 58)

Furthermore, in teaching anthropology at USP in the 1980s and early 1990s, he quickly came to appreciate that this perspective, dictated by foreign knowledge and transmitted according to the dictates of foreign scholarship, only served to belittle his students and render them powerless :

I began noticing the reactions of my students when I described and explained our situation of dependence. Their faces crumbled visibly, they asked for solutions. I could offer none. […] I was actively participating in our own belittlement, in propogating a view of hopelessness. I decided to do something about it. (Hau’ofa, 1993 : 5)

That ‘something’ was to abandon the cold, disciplinary confined intellectualism of the international academic community in favour of an approach to knowledge and understanding as embodied by the Pacific Island peoples of which ‘I [Epeli] am emotionally a part.’ By the mid-1990s he had come to the conclusion that approach would be centred on arts and culture, ‘a distinctly Oceanian way of transmitting knowledge’,3a way that was firmly grounded in the past. Such an approach would ensure that the architects of this creative world set their own rules rather than be subject to dictates imposed from outside.

Insofar as the political arena was concerned, it was the Kanak (New Caledonia) independance leader Jean-Marie Tjibaou who attracted my attention. It too was in the early 1990s, that is at the same time that I re-established close contact with Epeli. Jean-Marie, like Epeli, had spent the first decade of his life in the village, close to the land, immersed in the closely-woven fabric of social life and experiencing a Melanesian universe that was defined at least in part by the constant presence of the past. Like Epeli he also studied anthropology, in his case in France, although he didn’t complete his PhD. The path he chose in early adult life was the Church rather than the University, and as a priest in Nouméa he experienced the same shock as Epeli did as a professor in Suva:

During the year I was curate in Nouméa… what a lot of drunks I gathered up in the evening… to take home… And I often experienced that discourse, cries from the bottom of the dungeon… the tears that recall the lost land… and who proclaim… who get angry, who fight, who struggle… but who find comfort in alcohol. (Tjibaou, 1989 : 19)

Like Epeli, he chose to pursue studies overseas, first in the broad field of development studies and then in anthropology, with the intention of ‘looking for the analytical tools that would help better understand the situation here [in New Caledonia] (ibid : 17)’. The time he spent in France and his experience in social action once back home led him, as with Epeli, to become a severe critic of Western development models, centred on industrialisation, accumulation, uniformisation, individual gain, and on erasing the past. Hence his conviction, even as a politician in the 1980s, that it was necessary to return to one’s roots, one’s cultural identity in order to lay the foundations today of an authentically Melanesian destiny :

[T]he search for identity, the model, lies before us, never behind. It is being constantly   reformulated. And I will say that the challenge right now is to include the maximum number of elements belonging to our past, to our culture, in the model of mankind and society that we aspire to for the creation of the city. (Tjibaou, 1985 : 1601)

Not surprisingly perhaps, Jean-Marie would typically commence gatherings of the Kanak independence movement by thanking the ancestors for being present. It was yet another illustration of the fact that he, like Epeli, was deeply concerned with the future of the Pacific past. Both recognised the promotion of a dynamic and firmly grounded Oceanian culture and identity to be the only possible way forward.

It was about this time – the early to mid-1990s -, by virtue of the changes I had been witness to here in Canada and because of my increasing familiarisation with the writings and actions of the likes of Epeli and Jean-Marie back in Melanesia that I was finally able to formulate in my own mind the answer to the Enga lapunman’s question; ‘’Why have we Konecome to the land of the Enga? What precisely do we want?’’ That answer was simple, direct and troubling;

We want your primary resources – forest products, copper ore, gold, nickel, oil, natural gas, fish… – to help meet the demand of the rapidly expanding global economy. We want your labour, to produce coffee and palm oil in response to global consumer demand. And we demand your integration as consumers into that same economy. In other words, we are seeking new markets too. We want everything of value to us, at minimum cost and with maximum benefits to the investors.

All this means of course on terms where the vast majority of Enga/PNGns/Melanesians are condemned to the role of simple onlookers in an arena where our avowed aim is to transform their lives. I was mortified at the thought, and I still am today. Why wasn’t I aware of this back in 1966? What had happened? Was I in fact some kind of passive and unconscious agent in the process of mass and totally uncompromising externally directed change? The question is not an easy one and, in seeking to answer it, I can only really speak for myself, although I believe the likes of Joël Bonnemaison, Bill Clarke and Epeli Hau’ofa shared most of my sentiments. Unfortunately they are no longer with us to tell their version of the story.

The rise of corporate power

This is neither the time or place to provide a summary of post-war economic history. It is nevertheless vital to highlight the fact that a major change in direction in terms of North-South relations occurred around the 1980s. In the aftermath of the Second World War our principal preoccupation in what came to be termed the ‘developed world’ was one of human justice, poverty elimination, the end to war, rebuilding entire countries and continents, all this in the spirit of sharing in as generous a manner as possible. These were the values I certainly learned and then practised as an adolescent. I volunteered with the Service Civil International (SCI), going to work camps in France and Switzerland. We were Catholics and communists, pacificists, vegetarians, hippies before their time, school teachers… I recall a Swedish Jew and a German war-time Messerschmitt pilot in one of our camps. I worked a while for the abbé Pierre in Paris. We were all striving to build a better world for all. We endeavoured to speak each others language, we sang each others songs and we called each other camarade. We were fascinated by the diversity of the human experience and we believed ourselves to be citizens of the world, hence enthusiastic members of the family of man.

This is not the first time I use the expression. It refers specifically to an exhibition of 503 photographs of people from around the world that was first presented at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1955. Over the following decade it travelled around the world and was seen by over nine million visitors. It offered a fascinating portrait of mankind, highlighting both the diversity of the human experience and the sense of being part of a single community of global dimensions. My generation was deeply marked by this humanist vision of the world and it was, implicitly at least, this which in the early 1960s took me to PNG and on to the Enga, in search of my fellow men. I think it fair to say that the exhibition mirrored a post-War era where governments, and the international alliances and agencies they created, were concerned with human justice and dignity – to include self-government -the reduction of poverty, and the improvement of the health and nutritional status of entire populations. Wealth generation and profit were not yet primary preoccupations. There were obviously profound ideological divisions with regard to the way to proceed; the communist and capitalist blocs, the non-aligned movement. However, ideology apart, they could all be considered societal projects. This was the case with PNG in the mid/late 1960s. Australia was preparing the country for political independence. I felt it to be a reasonably generous and caring time and I had no sense of myself, the colonial administration or the Christian missions being agents of subversion of Melanesian society. Certainly we didn’t really doubt that they would quite spontaneously want to share some of the ‘benefits’ of Western civilisation. We perceived our actions to be an appropriate path to ‘improving’ the daily lives of the Enga but not one of radically transforming or destabilising them.

What we now term economic development, measured in terms of such quantitative parameters as growth, profitability, competitivity, gross domestic product, etc., has it roots in the USA and no doubt started to take form as a global initiative in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War. Its first major manifestation was the Marshall Plan for European reconstruction. While the plan set the foundations for the creation of multinational corporations, it was the state that was the major actor in development, both national and international, and interests were directed primarily to social and economic justice and the building of solid national institutions. As first an adolescent and then a young man, I was witness to and, as a SCI volunteer, a tiny actor in an initiative of global dimensions that I and those around me believed to be a noble and generous endeavour.  It was those concerns and those interests which drew me to PNG in the 1960s.

It was in the following decades, notably in the 1980s, that a shift occurred, with the progressive transfer of economic initiative from the state to the private sector. This shift was accompanied by a fundamental change in intentions. The corporate world expressed little interest in social welfare, or any form of integrated regional development. Its over-riding concern was with profit, ideally short-term, to be acquired through unlimited economic growth across a world increasingly free of barriers to the movement of goods, services and capital. Where states proposed a shared vision of the future and were accountable to their citizens, corporations have much narrower interests and are only accountable to their shareholders. The state is now largely at the service of these enterprises. Society has little meaning in the eyes of the corporation. Indeed wasn’t it Margaret Thatcher, that architect – along with Ronald Reagan – of the brave new world, who asserted ‘There’s no such thing as society!’? It was more of a premonition or, perhaps, a programmatic statement than a fact at the time. Certainly today however, with the withering of the state and the unleashing of the corporation and financial oligarchies, society has been transformed into a largely unstructured mass of consumers, an infinite number of individuals, throughout the world, Enga Province included.

I had no idea back in the 1960s that this would be the shape of the world to come. However I do now know that Komeyá, the old Enga man at Sabakamádá, had every reason to ask me a question for which I had no satisfactory answer at the time.  I also know that I do not believe in economic development and unlimited growth as practised today. It is a cruel and indeed absurd agenda in terms of the rapidly growing inequalities within communities and between peoples, and the accumulation of largely useless commodities it generates. And it is an absolute disaster for the biosphere. Confronted as we are with the pollution of soils, water and air, the decline in biodiversity, starvation and the massive dislocation of human populations, time is fast running out for us all. Another mass extinction may well occur, and this time it could conceivably be homo sapiens.

I think it is fair to say that all those who I have named in the preceding pages – Joël Bonnemaison, Bill Clarke, Epeli Hau’ofa and Jean-Marie Tjibaou – ceased to believe in development strategies as formulated in the metropolitan countries. Perhaps they ceased to believe in economic development at all. Certainly there came a time in their lives when they no longer espoused the litany of industrialisation, accumulation, growth and individualism. Jean-Marie Tjibaou dreamed that one day, in the not too distant future, the Kanak people would be invited to sit at the ‘banquet of civilisations’ in order to contribute to a shared discussion on the future of the world. Epeli Hau’ofa strove for cultural and intellectual independence for his Oceanian brothers and sisters, this through the independent development of arts and culture firmly grounded in their own past. This alone would allow them to design their own future. As for us visiting researchers from the West who, in the 1960s and 1970s, had the good fortune to be immersed in rural Melanesian society but who only came to appreciate the significance of the experience several decades later, allow me to share some of Joël’s thoughts, summarised in a paper I wrote in his memory :

On the island of Tanna he was witness to the encounter of two truths, one with and the other    without real roots. More important, he observed through their confrontation, ‘a conflict of ideas that was of global significance’ (Bonnemaison, 1997 : 521) and he came to the unavoidable conclusion that it is more important to live culturally than it is to survive materially. Otherwise       our very existence is without meaning. Finally, in order to realise this dream, which had unexpectedly become universal, he had the sentiment that it was necessary to ‘refer at one and the same time to the past and to the challenges of the present,’ both to ensure that all peoples can live decently and honour their ancestors, and to ‘recreate the unity of the world’ (idem: 514) (Waddell, 1999 : 182).

And for this new world to materialise he recognised that the West had to cease being the giver of lessons.

Looking back to the 1960s all this was perhaps unconsciously revealed to us at the time but there certainly wasn’t the sentiment of urgency to pass the message on to the world from which we came. So we only returned home transformed individually by the experience because, in reality, we had only left to observe, rarely to listen and discuss. What a conversation I might have had with my lapun man if he had been able to share his preoccupations with me for, in the final analysis, he was not perhaps asking me a question. Rather he was inviting me to engage in a conversation, a conversation between equals.

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Prof. Eric Waddell is a renowned author and ethno-geographer concerned with issues of culture and identity within the New World Order. He is Honorary Professor at  the School of Geosciences, Sydney University, Australia. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).

This article was first published in the 80th issue of The Development Bulletin, Australia National University (ANU) Since 1988 it has been the journal of the Development Studies Network, currently based at the Crawford School of Public Policy at the Australian National University.

This special publication celebrates the journal’s 80th issue. Its focus is the Pacific Islands and their specific trajectory from colonial states through independence to the present day. The editor commissioned these papers from Pacific Island, Australian, New Zealand and British academics, journalists, NGOs, government personnel and consultants who have lived and/or worked extensively in the Pacific over a number of years. The papers here are their reflections and perceptions of development, aid and change and their thoughts for the future.

Sources

Bonnemaison, Jöel 1993, ‘Gens de pirogue,’ Chroniques du Sud, 11 : 93-94.

Bonnemaison, Joël 1997, Les fondements géographiques d’une identité. L’archipel du Vanuatu. Essai de géographie culturelle. Book 2 : Les gens des lieux : Histoire et géosymboles d’une société enracinée : Tanna, Orstom, Paris.

Hau’ofa, Epeli1975,‘Anthropology and Pacific Islanders,’ Man in India, 55 (1) : 57-66.

Hau’ofa, Epeli1993,‘Our Sea of Islands,’ pp. 2-16 in Eric Waddell, Vijay Naidu & Epeli Hau’ofa (eds), A New Oceania. Rediscovering Our Sea of Islands, School of Social and Economic Development, University of the South Pacific, Suva, Fiji.

Hereniko, Vilsoni and Karen Stevenson (eds) 2012, Hidden Treasures, Contemporary Pacific Art from the Oceania Centre Collection, USP Press, Suva, Fiji.

Luana, Caspar 1969, ‘Buka! A retrospect’, New Guinea and Australia, the Pacific and South-East Asia, 1, 4, 15-20.

Tjibaou, Jean-Marie 1976, ‘Recherche d’identité mélanésienne et société traditionnelle’, Journal de la Société des Océanistes, 53, 32): 281-292.

Tjibaou, Jean-Marie 1985, ‘Entretien avec Jean-Marie Tjibaou,’ Les Temps Modernes, 464 : 1587-1601.

Tjibaou, Jean-Marie 1989, ‘Le message de Jean-Marie Tjibaou.’ Interview by Jacques Violette, Bwenando, 121-124.

Tjibaou, Jean-Marie  1985 ‘Entretien avec Jean-Marie Tjibaou,’ Les Temps Modernes, 464 : 1587-1601

Waddell, Eric1999, ‘Rootedness and travels : The Intellectual Journey of Joël Bonnemaison’, The Contemporary Pacific, 11 (1) : 176-185.

Waddell, Eric 2008, Jean-Marie Tjibaou, Kanak Witness to the World. An Intellectual Biography. Pacific Islands Monograph Series 23, University of Hawai’i Press, Honolulu.

Notes

1 Honorary Professor, School of Geosciences, University of Sydney.

2 Not having kept any record of the event in my files, I am not 100% sure it was a UNDP mission so I shall attribute the lack of recall to a time when, to borrow a poetic image of Epeli Hau’ofa, ‘the moon and red wine play tricks on my aging mind’!

3 Cited in Hereniko and Stevenson 2012 : 10. 

A funny thing happened on the way to the Trans Mountain Expansion Project (TMX)…or rather, several funny things. And they all have to do with Alberta Premier Jason Kenney’s fear of “foreign meddling” in Canada’s pipeline politics.

You may recall that at a stop in Vancouver on March 6, 2018, Kenney told CBC News,

“I think we have legitimate questions to ask about the ultimate source of some of the funds that are being spent in Canadian politics to bottleneck our resources,” he said. “In whose interest is it that Canadian oil and gas does not get to global markets? Well, obviously, it’s in the interest of Russia, with the fourth-largest reserves on earth.”

There has long been fierce opposition to the TMX project (owned at the time by Texas-based Kinder Morgan), which will nearly triple the pipeline’s capacity to bring Alberta diluted bitumen (dilbit) to the West Coast.  Kenney further stated,

“If the Russian government decided to deploy an organized social media campaign to attack U.S. energy, so there’s less American energy exports, it’s entirely reasonable to assume they might have tried to do the same thing in Canada. I have no evidence of that, but it’s a reasonable question.” [1]

Kenney’s Russian musings may have been prompted by a lengthy, March 2, 2018 article in the Financial Post by Claudia Cattaneo entitled “Russian meddling another worry for Canadian energy exports.” [2]

Russian Bots?

All of this prompted the B.C. NGO Dogwood Initiative to launch an impromptu selfie campaign, urging supporters to send photos to Kenney to reassure him that they aren’t Russian bots. “It’s time to fess up,” Dogwood’s Kai Nagata wrote. “Are you being paid by Vladimir Putin? Post a picture of yourself with the hashtag #NotARussianBot to show that you’re a real Canadian, expressing your opinions in a democracy.” [3]

Throughout March 2018, the Russia meddling theory got widespread coverage in Canadian media, and then suddenly the coverage stopped.

I suspect that an aide to Jason Kenney quietly took him aside and told him something like this: “Mr. Kenney, sir, do you realize that the pipe being provided for Kinder Morgan’s TMX is actually being manufactured by a Russian-owned company?”

In other words: Oops.

On May 2, 2017 (almost a year before Kenney’s Russia musings), Kinder Morgan had announced an agreement to purchase more than 75 per cent (nearly 300,000 tonnes) of the pipe needed for the TMX from a steelmaking factory in Regina owned by Evraz North America, subsidiary of Evraz Plc, Russia’s No.2 steelmaker. [4]

As Dogwood put it in a posting on March 22, 2018 while “everyday British Columbians have no ties to Vladimir Putin, Kinder Morgan does. If Kenney is fond of conspiracy theories, he should look at the Russian businessmen who have every interest in seeing this pipeline built.” [5]

Meanwhile, a more serious problem concerning those pipes was starting to get some attention, at least from pipeline opponents.

Condition 9

The National Energy Board (NEB) had determined 157 conditions to be met by Kinder Morgan for its TMX project. Condition 9 required the company to file, and get approval for, a Quality Management Plan (QMP) 4 months prior to the manufacturing of any pipe and major components for the project.

But in November 2017, DeSmog Canada (now The Narwhal) published an article revealing that Kinder Morgan had awarded pipeline manufacturing contracts (to Evraz North America) between May and July of 2017, and manufacturing of the pipe had begun in October, but without an approved QMP in place. [6]

As author Carol Linnit explained,

“The quality management plan requires Trans Mountain to supply documentation regarding the qualifications of pipeline contractors, vendors and suppliers, quality auditing of manufactured pipe and the preservation of pipe during shipping and storage.”

Given that Kinder Morgan had no such approved QMP before contracting the pipe manufacturing, Linnit noted that “Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain may be in violation of a condition [Condition 9] laid out by the National Energy Board, Canada’s federal pipeline regulator.” [7]

As Dogwood’s writer put it, this “corporate rule-breaking” is a “more concerning component of Kinder Morgan’s Russian pipe deal…It’s the kind of thing you might expect in a corrupt petrostate – like Russia.” [8]

New Angles

Jason Kenney then appeared to have moved on from his Russian meddling theory, to a surprising new angle. In a speech to oil executives at the Oil Sands Trade Show in Fort McMurray in September 2019, Kenney said that Alberta needs to take a hardline approach against environmentalists like autocratic regimes do against critics. He said,

“They know they couldn’t get away with this in Vladimir Putin’s Russia. In fact, Greenpeace did do a protest on an offshore rig in Russia and their crew was arrested and thrown in a Siberian jail for six months and funnily enough they’ve never been back – I’m not recommending that for Canada, but it’s instructive. It’s instructive.” [9]

(In reality, the Greenpeace crew was jailed in Saint Petersburg, released after a few months, and then won a lawsuit in which the Russian government had to pay them millions of dollars in compensation for the illegal seizure in international waters.) [10]

Not surprisingly, Canadian civil liberties groups reacted strongly to Kenney’s hardline approach. Amnesty International Canada warned Kenney that his anti-environmentalist initiatives undermine constitutional rights, and free speech. Kenney then accused Amnesty International of aligning with foes of Alberta’s oil patch and of protecting “foreign-funded billionaires”. [11]

But Kenney soon dropped that angle too. I suspect a dutiful aide again approached him and said something like this: “Mr. Kenney, sir, do you realize that Evraz North America, the company whose Canadian subsidiary manufactured the pipes for TMX, is actually owned in part by Roman Abramovich, a Russian citizen who also holds an Israeli passport and whose net worth is about $15 billion?”

Oops again.

“Pipe in the Ground”

By December 2019, the National Post was announcing that TMX construction was set to begin at a site near Edmonton, with “pipe in the ground before Christmas” and large stockpiles of pipe “massed at yards in the B.C. towns of Vavenby, Hope and Kamloops” and preparatory work ongoing in Valemount. [12]

That prompted me to try to determine what had happened with regard to that Kinder Morgan QMP and the lack of regulatory approval under Condition 9, which governs the actual pipes.

After all, a lot had happened since that November 2017 De Smog/ The Narwhal article had been published. A shortlist would include: the replacement of the National Energy Board by the Canada Energy Regulator (CER); the $4.5 billion purchase of TMX by the Canadian federal government; Jason Kenney’s launch of a “war room” (the Canadian Energy Centre, with Claudia Cattaneo on board) and a $2.5 million public inquiry into “anti-Alberta energy campaigns;” a Federal Court’s quashing of TMX approval due to lack of meaningful consultation with Indigenous groups; and a federal election.

As well, The Tyee writer Geoff Dembicki had thoroughly debunked Kenney’s Russian conspiracy theory, tracing its origins to a notorious U.S. PR firm. [13] (Equally interesting, in the U.S. The Nation magazine had thoroughly debunked widespread Russian meddling in the 2016 election.) [14]

But what about Condition 9 and those pipes, manufactured before any approved QMP and now stored at various locations across the pipeline route?

So in December 2019 I read through all the entries under Condition 9 on the NEB/CER website and could not find any mention at all of the actual pipes in these filings, which were made over many months and which ended as of mid-June 2018. In mid-December, I contacted the CER and asked: “Does this mean that full approval for Condition 9 compliance in the Quality Management Plan is still pending?”

In response to my question, the CER provided a letter sent by the NEB to Kinder Morgan, dated 22 June 2018. The letter stated that the NEB

“requires Trans Mountain to submit a letter signed by the Trans Mountain Accountable Officer confirming that the procurement, manufacture, transportation, and storage of all pipe and major components prior to 21 March 2018 was undertaken in conformance with Trans Mountain’s internal processes and procedures. The letter must also confirm that pipe and major components comply with all relevant internal specifications. The letter must be submitted to the Board no later than 29 June 2018.”

Kinder Morgan had duly responded with a letter (also provided to me by CER), dated 28 June 2018 and signed by Ian Anderson (President, Trans Mountain Pipeline ULC, Kinder Morgan Canada Inc.). It stated:

“As the accountable officer of Trans Mountain, I, to the best of my knowledge, as of the date of this confirmation and after due inquiry, confirm that the procurement, manufacture, transportation and storage of all pipe and major components prior to 21 March 2018 was undertaken in conformance with Trans Mountain’s internal processes and procedures. I also confirm that pipe and major components comply with all relevant internal technical specifications.”

Federal Regulation?  

I may be wrong, but it seems obvious to me that the NEB told Kinder Morgan exactly what to write in order to meet Condition 9 at that late date, and then Kinder Morgan wrote exactly that.

I then contacted Lynn Perrin, who has been following the pipeline regulatory approval process for years as a Director of Pro Information Pro Environment United People Network, otherwise known as Pipe Up.  I asked her: is it normal for the NEB/CER to accept a company letter confirming that all QMP guidelines and conditions for the pipes have been met, six months after the manufacturing had already begun?

Perrin’s answer by email was short and to the point: “Two Auditor General reports note that the NEB does not enforce Conditions the majority of the time!” The reports cover years of such lack of enforcement by the federal regulatory body. [15]

I guess this is how the politburo functions in a petro-state.

Nonetheless, opposition to TMX continues, regardless of “pipe in the ground” near Edmonton. Stay tuned for TMX Part 2: The Pipeline and The Supremes.

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Joyce Nelson is the author of seven books. She can be reached via www.joycenelson.ca

Notes

[1] Quoted in Justin McElroy, “Why Kinder Morgan and Russian interference in elections are more closely related than you think,” CBC News, March 6, 2018.

[2] Claudia Cattaneo, “Russian meddling another worry for Canadian energy exports,” Financial Post, March 2, 2018.

[3] Alexandra Bly, “Dogwood Snarks Back After Kenney Claims Pipeline Opponents Are Russian Agents,” The Energy Mix, March 9, 2018.

[4] Reuters Staff, “Russia’s Evraz to supply pips for Kinder Morgan’s pipeline expansion,” Reuters, May 2, 107.

[5] Sophie Harrison, “One Small problem with Jason Kenney’s ‘Russian bots’ theory,” Dogwood posting, March 22, 2018.

[6] Carol Linnit, “Kinder Morgan At Risk of Violating NEB Condition With Premature 300,000-Tonne Pipeline Order,” DeSmog/The Narwhal, November 3, 2017.

[7] Ibid.

[8] Harrison, op. cit.

[9] Quoted in “Jason Kenney: Vladimir Putin’s Jailing of Dissidents is ‘Instructive’ on How to Deal With Environmentalists,” Press Progress, September 11, 2019.

[10] Ibid.

[11] Ibid.

[12] Geoffrey Morgan, “Trans Mountain construction set to begin, with ‘pipe in the ground before Christmas’,” National Post, December 2, 2019.

[13] Geoff Dembicki, “Enviros Tools of Russians? The Weird Conspiracy Theory Firing up Kenney’s Inquiry,” The Tyee, November 22, 2019.

[14] Aaron Mate, “New Studies Show Pundits Are Wrong About Russian Social-Media Involvement in US Politics,” The Nation, December 28, 2018.

[15] The 2 Auditor General Reports can be found at: [https://foroilfreeshores.fils.wordpress.com/2016/05/auditor-general-2010-report-on-transportation-of-dangerous-goods.pdf] and [http://www.oag-bvg.gc.ca/internet/English/parl_cesd_201601_02_e_41021.html#hd3a]

Featured image: Premier Jason Kenney and Cabinet at Government House, in Edmonton on Tuesday, April 30, 2019.  (Photo by Chris Schwarz/Alberta Government)

‘Why are there forty million poor people in America?.. when you begin to ask that question, you are raising questions about the economic system, …you begin to question the capitalistic economy.“ – Martin Luther King

Introduction

Over the last ten years Greece has been a prime example of how a country and a people can be deprived of their liberty through clearly illegitimate debt. Since the 19^th century, from Latin America to China, Haiti, Greece, Tunisia, Egypt and the Ottoman Empire public debt has been used as a coercive force to impose domination and pillage (Toussaint, 2017). Visibly, it is the combination of debt and free trade that constitute the fundamental factors subordinating whole economies as from the 19^th century. Local elites allied themselves with big financial powers in order to subject their own countries and peoples permanently to methods of power that transfer wealth towards local and foreign creditors.

Contrary to commonplace ideas, it is generally not the indebted weaker countries that are the cause of sovereign debt crises. These crises break out first in the biggest capitalist countries or are the result of their unilateral decisions that produce effects of great magnitude in the indebted countries. It is not so-called “excessive” public spending that builds up unsustainable debt levels, but rather the conditions imposed by local and foreign creditors. Real interest rates are abusively high and so are bankers’ commissions. The indebted countries unable to keep up with repayments have to continually find new loans to repay old loans. In the past, when that became impossible, the great powers had licence to resort to military action to ensure they were repaid.

Debt crises and their outcomes are always directed by the big banks and the governments that support them.

Over the last two centuries, several countries have successfully repudiated debts by arguing that they were either illegitimate or odious. Mexico, the USA, Cuba, Russia, China and Costa Rica have all done this. Conflict involving debt non-payment has given birth to a judicial doctrine known as Odious Debt which is to this day pertinent.

Historical examples

Creditors, whether powerful states, multilateral organisations that serve them or banks, have become very adroit at imposing their will on debtors. From early in the 19^th century Haiti, the first independent black republic, was an early testing ground. The island gained freedom from the yoke of the French empire in 1804, but Paris did not abandon its claims on the country and obtained from Haiti payment of a royal indemnity granted to the former colonial slave owners. The 1825 agreements signed by the new Haitian leaders created a monumental debt of independence untenable from 1828 and which took a full century to pay off, thus preventing any real development.

Debt was also used to subjugate Tunisia under France in 1881 [1] and Egypt to the British in 1882. [2] The lending powers used unpaid debt to impose their will on countries that had so far been independent. Greece too, was born in the 1830s with a burden of debt that held it in the sway of Russia, France and the British, [3] Newfoundland, which had become the first autonomous dominion of the British Empire in 1855, well before Canada and Australia, had to renounce its independence in 1933 because of the grave economic crisis in order to face up to its debts and was finally incorporated into Canada in 1949. Canada agreed to take charge of 90% of Newfoundland’s debt (REINHARDT and ROGOFF, 2010).

Debt during the 1960s and 70s

The process was repeated after the Second World War, when the Latin American countries had need of capital to fund their development and first Asian, then African, colonies gained independence. The debt was the principal instrument used to impose neocolonialist relations. It became frowned upon to use force against a debtor country, and new means of coercion had to be found.

The massive loans granted as from the 1960s, to an increasing number of peripheral countries (not least those in which the Western powers had a strategic interest such as Mobutu’s Congo, Suharto’s Indonesia, the military regimes in Brazil, Yugoslavia and Mexico) oiled a powerful mechanism that took back the control of countries that had begun to adopt policies that were truly independent of their former colonial powers and Washington.

Three big players have incited these countries into debt by promising relatively low interest rates:

1. the big Western banks seeking to put massive amounts of liquidities to work;
2. the developed countries seeking to stimulate their economies after the1973 oil crisis;
3. the World Bank seeking to increase US influence and to fend off the increasing expansion of the private banks.

Local elites also encouraged higher debt and made gains, contrary to the populations, who derived no benefit.

The debt crisis of the 1980s

At the end of 1979 the US decided to increase its interest rates. This had an effect on the rates applied to indebted Southern countries whose borrowing rates were variable and had already been subject to sharp rises. Coupled with low export commodities prices (coffee, cacao, cotton, sugar, ores, etc.,) which caused reduced revenues for the countries, the trap was sprung.

In august 1982, Mexico, among other countries announced that they were unable to assure debt repayments. So, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) was asked, by the creditor banks, to lend the countries the necessary funds at high interest rates, on the double condition that they continue debt repayments and apply the policies decided by the IMF “experts”: abandon subventions on goods and services of primary necessity; reduce public spending; devalue the currency; introduce high interest rates in order to attract foreign capital; direct agricultural production towards exportable products; free access to interior markets for foreign investors; liberalise the economies, including the suppression of capital controls; introduce a taxation system that aggravates inequalities, including VAT increases; preserve capital gains and privatize profitable publicly owned industries; this list is not exhaustive.

These structural adjustment loans were aimed at the suppression of independent economic and financial policies in the peripheral countries and tying their independence to the World markets. Also, to ensure access by the industrialized economies to the raw materials and they needed. By gradually putting the developing countries into competition with each other the economic model based on exports and the extraction of raw materials for foreign markets is reinforced, which in turn reduces production costs and increases profits, favouring the developed economies.

So, a new form of colonialism sprang up. It was no longer necessary to maintain an administration and an army to put the local population to heel; the debt did the job of creaming off the wealth produced and directing it to the creditors. Of course the colonialists continued to interfere in local politics and economic policies whenever they considered that it suited them.

 Developments in the 2000s

As from 2003-04, in a context of strong world demand, commodity prices started to increase. Exporting countries improved their foreign exchange incomes. Some developing countries increased their social spending but most preferred to buy US treasury bonds and so put their increased means at the disposal of the principal economic powers. This increase in developing countries’ incomes whittled down the weight of the World Bank and the IMF.

Another factor was the Chinese economic expansion. China had become the world’s principal sweatshop and was accumulating important financial reserves and using them to significantly increase funding to developing countries in competition with the offers of funding from the industrialised countries and the multilateral institutions.

During the 2000s, the reduction of interest rates by the Central Banks in the industrialized countries in the North decreased the costs of the debt in the South. Because of the 2007-8 financial crisis in North America and Western Europe massive amounts of liquidities were injected into the financial system to save the big banks and corporations that were too heavily indebted themselves. A decrease in the costs of financing the debts of the developing countries followed naturally and the governments of developing countries gained a false sense of security.

The situation began to degrade in 2016-17 when the Fed started to raise its interest rates, from 0.25% in 2015 to 1.5% in October 2019 and tax breaks were granted by the Trump administration to big business to attract US foreign investment back to the US. What’s more, commodities prices slipped and exporter countries’ revenues slipped with them making debt repayments in strong.

General view of the debt in the South

These last years have have seen a significant increase in constant values of foreign debt; between 2000 and 2017 it has tripled. The greater part is in the private sector.

Table 1. foreign debt by regions ($ billions)

Source: http://datatopics.worldbank.org/debt/ids/region/lmy

Foreign public debt has also increased although less abruptly than in the private sector.

Table 2. foreign public debt by regions ($ billions)

Source: http://datatopics.worldbank.org/debt/ids/region/lmy

Debt in the Global South

Whatever the World Bank and the IMF may cheerfully repeat, the debt of developing countries is still a major obstacle to meeting their inhabitants’ basic needs and safeguarding human rights. Inequalities have sharply increased and progress in terms of human development has been very limited.

Africa

In sub-Saharan Africa, outgoing flow of capital via debt service and corporations garnering their profits are significant. In 2012, the profits repatriated from the poorest area on earth amounted to 5% of its GDP vs 1% in public aid to development. In this context, it is legitimate to raise the question: who is helping who?

If we take into account the plundering of Africa’s natural resources by private corporations, the brain drain of African intellectuals, embezzlement of goods by the African ruling class, manipulations of transfer prices by private corporations and other misappropriations, we cannot but be aware that Africa has been drained dry.

EU relations with Africa illustrate the continuation of neocolonial policies. These have developed beyond the framework of the ACP Cotonou Agreements. [5] Nowadays, the EU has enforced other frameworks that are more significant in its relation with Africa such as an EU partnership framework for migration (the Valletta Action Plan with the Khartoum and Rabat processes), to which we should add the bilateral frameworks and agreements that European countries have with African countries or regions. Not forgetting the CFA currency for 15 African countries, soon to become the Eco for eight of them, without significant change of policy.

Many European citizens have no idea of the extent to which conditions and clauses imposed under such agreements are setting the ground for a new debt crisis in the developing countries. Some basic facts that are not known by most people are that whereas the total volume of aid received annually by Africa from Europe stands at around $21 billion, African migrants in Europe remit around $30 billion to their families in their home countries, almost 50% more than the amount of the European aid; or funds currently available from the European Investment Fund for the whole African continent that stand at $3.3 billion, which is equivalent to the cost of one mid-sized infrastructure project like a port. Furthermore, the new EU proposed budget for 2021-2027 plans to allocate more than $34.9 billion to various mechanisms of migration control. [6] It will end up costing Europe more to patrol its borders than what is allocated to Africa as development aid or what Africa is suffering from trade losses with Europe. The impact of these agreements on trade results is also remarkable. From 2003 to 2014, Africa always had a trade surplus with Europe, whereas since 2015, the trend has reversed amounting to close to a $30 billion deficit.

Latin America and the Caribbean

Table 3. Debt and resources devoted to repayment (in billions USD): Latin America and the Caribbean  [7]

Sources:
Total external debt: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/DT.TDS.DECT.CD
Public external debt and guarantee: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/DT.TDS.DPPG.CD

Latin America has one of the highest negative external debt balances among developing continents for 1985-2017.

Table 4. Net transfers on external debt 1985 – 2017 (in billions of USD): Latin America and the Caribbean

Sources:
Public external debt and guarantee: https://donnees.banquemondiale.org/indicateur/DT.NTR.DPPG.CD [data no longer available]
External debt: https://donnees.banquemondiale.org/indicateur/DT.NTR.DECT.CD?end=2017&start=2000 [data no longer available]

Impact of debt payment on the way public resources are used

Table 5. Distribution of expenditure in national budgets (as % of GDP and as % of the budget) in Latin America in 2013  [8]

If we take into account the evolution of public expenditure of some fifty low-income countries from 2015 to 2017, we notice an increase of expenditure related to debt repayment, a decrease of health-related expenditure and a stagnation in terms of education (see chart 1).

Chart 1 – Public expenditure in low-income countries for public debt servicing, education and health care [9] (as % of the GDP)

Source: UNCTAD secretariat calculations based on World Bank World Development Indicators data and International Monetary Fund DSA LIC country reports published between 2015 and 2018.

From 2015 to 2017 we also notice an increase in public expenditure related to debt repayment in Africa, South Asia and in general for Least developed countries (LDCs) (see chart 2).

Chart 2 – Expenditure of public debt servicing in Least developed countries countries in large regions (as % of the GDP)

Source: UNCTAD secretariat calculations based on International Monetary Fund DSA LIC country reports published between 2015 and 2018.

According to Milan Rivié https://www.cadtm.org/New-debt-crisis-in-the-South, who uses IMF information, in July 2019, among low income countries, nine were over indebted and 24 were on the brink of being over indebted, i.e. 39% of them. [10] As evidence of the inability (and the lack of determination) of international financial institutions (IFIs) to find an adequate and sustainable response to over indebtedness, half of those countries had strictly applied the adjustment policies of the Heavily Indebted Poor Country (HIPC) initiative launched by the G7, the World Bank and the IMF in 1996. And according to a German NGO, 122 are actually in a critical debt situation. [11]

It is possible not to repay an illegitimate debt

It is quite possible to resist creditors, as evidenced by Mexico under Benito Juárez, who in 1867 refused to repay loans contracted by emperor Maximilian from the Société Générale de Paris two years earlier in order to finance the occupation of Mexico by the French army. [12] In 1914, at the height of the revolution, when Emiliano Zapata and Pancho Villa were victorious, Mexico completely suspended payment of its external debt, which was considered to be illegitimate; the Mexican government only repaid symbolic amounts from 1914 to 1942, just in order to pacify creditors. From 1934 to 1940, President Lázaro Cárdenas nationalized the railway and the oil industry without any compensation; he also expropriated over 18 million hectares of landed estates to give them over to indigenous communities. His tenacity paid: in 1942, creditors renounced about 90% of the debt value and said they were satisfied with limited compensations for the companies they had been evicted from. Mexico was able to undergo major social and economic development from the 1930s to the 1960s. Other countries such as Brazil, Bolivia and Ecuador successfully suspended debt repayment from 1931. In the case of Brazil, selective suspension of repayment lasted until 1943, when an agreement made it possible to reduce debt by 30%.

More recently, in July 2007, in Ecuador, President Rafael Correa set up a committee to audit public debt. After fourteen months of work, its findings gave evidence that a large part of the country’s public debt was illegitimate and illegal. In November 2008, the government decided to unilaterally suspend repayment of debt securities sold on international financial markets and maturing in 2012 and 2030. Finally, the government of this small country won its case opposing North-American bankers who held those securities. It bought for USD 900 million securities that had been worth USD 3.2 billion. Through this operation Ecuador’s public Treasury saved about USD 7 bn on the borrowed capital and the remaining interests. It could then free resources to finance new social spending (as shown in table 5). Ecuador has not been targeted by international reprisals. [13]

It is obvious that refusing to repay illegitimate debt is a necessary measure, but it is not enough to generate development. A consistent development programme must be implemented. Financial resources have to be generated through increasing the State’s resources through taxes that respect social and environmental justice (Millet and Toussaint, 2018).

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This article was originally published on CADTM.

Translated by Snake Arbusto, Mike Krolikowski and Christine Pagnoulle

Eric Toussaint is a historian and political scientist who completed his Ph.D. at the universities of Paris VIII and Liège, is the spokesperson of the CADTM International, and sits on the Scientific Council of ATTAC France.

Sources

• Howse, R. (2007). The Concept of Odious Debt in Public International Law. UNCTADDiscussion Papers No. 185. New York, USA: United Nations
• King, J. (2006). Odious Debt: The Terms of Debate, North Carolina Journal of International Law and Commercial Regulation, vol. 32 no. 4.
• King, J. (2016). The Doctrine of Odious Debt in International Law. A Restatement, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
• Lamarque, C., and Vivien, R. (2011). “Suspending public debt repayments by legal means” https://www.cadtm.org/Suspending-public-debt-repayments
• Lienau, O. (2014). Rethinking Sovereign Debt: Politics Reputation and Legitimacy in Modern Finance, Cambridge, USA: Harvard University Press.
• Ludington, S., Gulati, M., & Brophy, A. (2009). Applied Legal History: Demystifying the Doctrine of Odious Debt, Theoretical Inquiries in Law 11 (1)
• Michalowski, S. (2009). The Doctrine of Odious Debts in International Law in Mader, M., and Rothenbühler,A., (eds) How to Challenge Illegitimate Debt Theory and Legal Case Studies, Basel, Switzerland: Aktion Finanzplatz Schweiz.
• Millet Damien and Toussaint Eric, “Once upon a time there was a popular government that wanted to do away with the export-oriented extractivist model”, https://www.cadtm.org/once-upon-a-time-there-was-a-popular-government-that-wanted-to-do-away-with-the
• MILLIKAN, Max and ROSTOW, Walt Whitman. 1957. A Proposal: Keys to An Effective Foreign Policy, Harper, New York, p. 158.
• REINHARDT Carmen et ROGOFF Kenneth, This Time Is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly, Princeton, 2009.
• RIVIÉ, Milan, “New Debt Crisis in the South” https://www.cadtm.org/New-debt-crisis-in-the-South
• ROSENSTEIN-RODAN, Paul. (1961). ‘International Aid for Underdeveloped Countries’, Review of Economics and Statistics, Vol.43, p.107.
• Roos, J. (2016). Why Not Default? The Structural Power of Finance in Sovereign Debt Crises, Thesis Introduction, European University Institute, Florence
• SACK, A., N. (1927). Les Effets des Transformations des États sur leurs Dettes Publiques et Autres Obligations financières, Paris, France: Sirey.
• SAMUELSON, Paul. 1980. Economics, 11^th edition, McGraw Hill, New York, p. 617-618.
• TOUSSAINT, Éric (2017), The Debt System: A History of Sovereign Debts and their Repudiation, Haymarket, 2019

Notes

This was posted on Youtube in 2011.

This is the full length 90 min. version of Bill Moyer’s 1987 scathing critique of the criminal subterfuge carried out by the Executive Branch of the United States Government to carry out operations which are clearly contrary to the wishes and values of the American people.

The ability to exercise this power with impunity is facilitated by the National Security Act of 1947. The thrust of the exposé is the Iran-Contra arms and drug-running operations which flooded the streets of our nation with crack cocaine. The significance of the documentary is probably greater today in 2007 than it was when it was made.

We now have a situation in which these same forces have committed the most egregious terrorist attack on US soil and have declared a fraudulent so-called “War on Terror”. The ruling regime in the US who have conducted the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, are now banging the war drum against Iran.

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Taliano told Press TV in an interview on Saturday that if enriching the US billionaire class “entails stealing another country’s oil, then the billionaire class is fine with that.”

He said that the US did not need the oil from the Middle East; however, “preferential contracts” gave profits to the Americans.

Taliano said billionaire compound their profits by selling guns to perpetuated conflict zone of the Middle East.

“The billionaire class profits when the military builds more weapons and sells more weapons,” he said, adding, “The billionaire class profits when it occupies a country and forces regime change.”

Taliano insisted that Iraq, Syria and Iran were the only countries resisting the Americans sister plots.

He said these countries in the Middle East were “safeguarding their sovereignty and their territorial integrity as per international law.”

Taliano said the US billionaires, who seek to make money at the expense of others and have no respect for either human rights or international law, were running the United States.

“Those who claim to represent Washington have no regards for international law, for nation and state sovereignty, the right for countries to be democratic and self-governing,” he said.

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As the jumped-up, self-proclaimed, blonde new ruler of the world gives away half the Palestinian West Bank to the current Israeli military occupier, the world watches in amazement at the idea that this unbalanced popinjay – currently facing impeachment – could possibly be elected for a second term.

What on Earth happened to integrity and the rule of law?  What happened to the Geneva Conventions? What happened to the NPT? What has happened to America? How is it possible that the world has to succumb to the unlawful activities of the Gang of Three: Trump, Pence and Pompeo?

The idea that this dangerously out-of-control  triumvirate is allowed to continue to trample on international law by overturning hundreds of years of legal consensus around the world, is a frightening indication of corrupt government and leadership.

The activities of the Gang of Three becomes more bizarre every day as they configure both America and the world to their own personal advantage. It is reminiscent of the recent rape of South Africa by the Gupta family.

Who would have believed that after Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Reagan and Obama, the American people would then make the gigantic error of electing a hotel developer with no political experience to run the most powerful state in the world? A man who cannot read and write but is adept at tweeting and philandering.

This political aberration must be dealt with once and for all by the electorate.

Time is now of the essence as the nuclear clock is already now at two minutes to midnight.    These are very dangerous times. The clowns must go otherwise the United States will eventually mirror lame-duck South Africa – a country hugely rich in natural resources but now near to collapse, and that, for America, would be a complete tragedy for the entire world.

Annexation of the Palestinian West Bank is unlawful and a criminal act of the Israeli state in collusion with the Gang of Three in the White House. The international community must condemn and reject such acts of forced colonisation. This is 2020 not 1936.

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

United Nations has rejected US President Donald Trump’s ‘deal of the century’ and reiterated that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict should be solved based on UN resolutions and international law.

In a statement, a copy of which sent to MEMO, Stephane Dujarric, a spokesperson for the UN Secretary-General, said:

“The position of the United Nations on the two-State solution has been defined, throughout the years, by relevant Security Council and General Assembly resolutions by which the Secretariat is bound.”

He added:

“The United Nations remains committed to supporting Palestinians and Israelis in resolving the conflict on the basis of United Nations resolutions, international law, and bilateral agreements and realizing the vision of two States – Israel and Palestine – living side by side in peace and security within recognized borders, on the basis of the pre-1967 lines.”

It is worth noting that Trump has ignored the two-state solution adopted by the UN and the international community and proposed his own view of the two-state solution, which ignores the 1967 borders and has all of Jerusalem under full Israeli sovereignty.

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Featured image: Trump and Netanyahu’s love affair around Jerusalem and Palestine’s fate – Cartoon [Sabaaneh/MiddleEastMonitor]

Russia’s relations with “Israel” in recent years are much deeper and more strategic than its historic ones with Palestine so it’s unthinkable that Moscow won’t tacitly support the so-called “deal of the century” despite expectedly voicing mild reservations about it in public for the sake of retaining its regional soft power.

Done Deal: How the “Peace Process” Sold Out the Palestinians

By David Hearst, January 29, 2020

In November 2016, fresh off his electoral win, US President-elect Donald Trump boasted of his intention to end the Israel-Palestine conflict by striking what he called the “ultimate deal”.

Calling it “the war that never ends,” Trump told the Wall Street Journal: “As a deal maker, I’d like to do … the deal that can’t be made. And do it for humanity’s sake.”

The ‘Deal of the Century’ Is Apartheid

By Sheena Anne Arackal, January 29, 2020

Under President Trump’s newly unveiled peace plan, the Palestinians will be granted limited autonomy within a Palestinian homeland that consists of multiple non-contiguous enclaves scattered throughout the West Bank and Gaza. The government of Israel will retain security control over the Palestinian enclaves and will continue to control Palestinian borders, airspace, aquifers, maritime waters, and electromagnetic spectrum. Israel will be allowed to annex the Jordan Valley and Jewish communities in the West Bank. The Palestinians will be allowed to select the leaders of their new homeland but will have no political rights in Israel, the state that actually rules over them.

Macron’s Macro-hypocrisy on Palestine

By Dr. Vacy Vlazna, January 29, 2020

As a Frenchman, Macron is an expert on antisemitism, white feathers and collaboration. Under German occupation, the French government capitulated. Rather than fight the Nazis, it signed an armistice on 22 June 1940 with Germany that divided France into occupied and unoccupied zones- the latter referred to as Vichy France though the Vichy regime administered both.

Trump’s Farcical Mideast “Peace Deal” Ignores International Law. Green Light to Israeli Annexation of Palestine?

By CJPME, January 29, 2020

Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East (CJPME) is highly critical of the Mideast Peace Plan announced by US President Donald Trump today – one that CJPME considers preposterous. The plan was done without the participation of the Palestinians, and ignores both international law and international precedent on the conflict. The Plan further entrenches pro-Israel decrees that Trump has made in recent years, including that Jerusalem will be Israel’s “undivided” capital and that Israel will be able to annex major illegal Israeli colonies in the occupied West Bank. Given that the Plan virtually ignores Palestinian interests, CJPME considers it useless in terms of resolving decades of violent conflict.

Trump Regime’s Criminal “Deal of the Century”: Breaking Palestine, Endorsing “Greater Israel”?

By Stephen Lendman, January 29, 2020

Edward Said minced no words denouncing what he called “the fashion-show vulgarities of the White House ceremony, the degrading spectacle of Yasser Arafat thanking everyone for the suspension of most of his people’s rights, and the fatuous solemnity of Bill Clinton’s performance, like a 20th century Roman emperor shepherding two vassal kings through rituals of reconciliation and obeisance, (and) the truly astonishing proportions of the Palestinian capitulation.”

Palestinian Rejection: End of Oslo Peace Process and the Trump-Netanyahu Apartheid “Steal of the Century”

By Juan Cole, January 28, 2020

The Palestinian leadership has entirely rejected what is known of the Trump plan for Israel and Palestine, and warned that they see it as destroying the Oslo Peace accords. The Trump administration did not consult the Palestinians in drawing up the plan, which gives away East Jerusalem and 30% of the Palestinian West Bank to Israel. The Palestinians may as well, Palestine foreign minister Saeb Erekat said, just withdraw from the 1995 Interim Agreement on Oslo.

European Jewish Congress (EJC) Launches Campaign Against ‘Antisemitism’ (Aka Support for Palestinian Rights)

By Alison Weir, January 24, 2020

The European Jewish Congress (EJC) has announced the launch of a worldwide, star studded social media campaign against what it calls “antisemitism,” but which is often advocacy for Palestinian human rights and opposition to Israeli apartheid. EJC is the regional affiliate of the World Jewish Congress, one of whose main missions is to advocate for Israel.

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Die von Präsident Donald Trump autorisierte Ermordung des iranischen Generals Qassem Soleimani hat eine Kettenreaktion in Gang gesetzt, die sich über die Region des Nahen Ostens hinaus ausbreitet. Dies lag in der Absicht desjenigen, der die Entscheidung getroffen hat. Soleimani stand lange Zeit im Fadenkreuz der USA, aber die Präsidenten Bush und Obama haben seine Ermordung nie autorisiert. Warum traf Präsident Trump diese Entscheidung? Aus mehreren Gründen, unter anderem aus dem persönlichen Interesse des Präsidenten, seiner Not zu entgehen, indem er sich als glühender Verteidiger „Amerikas“ gegenüber einem gefährlichen Feind präsentiert. Der Hauptgrund für die Entscheidung zur Ermordung Soleimanis, die vom Deep State getroffen wurde, bevor sie vom Weißen Haus getroffen wurde, muss in einem Umstand gesucht werden, der erst in den letzten Jahren für die Interessen der USA kritisch geworden ist – die wachsende wirtschaftliche Präsenz Chinas im Iran.

Der Iran spielt eine wesentliche Rolle in der Neuen Seidenstraße, die Peking 2013 ins Leben gerufen hat und die derzeit in vollem Gange ist – sie besteht aus einem Straßen- und Schienennetz zwischen China und Europa durch Zentralasien, den Nahen Osten und Russland, kombiniert mit einem Seeweg über den Indischen Ozean, das Rote Meer und das Mittelmeer. Investitionen von mehr als 1.000 Milliarden Dollar sind für die gesamte Straßen-, Schienen- und Seeverkehrsinfrastruktur in mehr als 60 Ländern geplant. In diesem Rahmen investiert China etwa 400 Milliarden Dollar – 280 in die Öl-, Gas- und petrochemische Industrie und 120 in die Verkehrsinfrastruktur, einschließlich Öl- und Gaspipelines. Es ist geplant, dass diese Investitionen, die über einen Zeitraum von fünf Jahren genutzt werden sollen, später erneuert werden.

Im Energiesektor erhielt die China National Petroleum Corporation, ein staatliches Unternehmen, von der iranischen Regierung einen Auftrag für die Entwicklung von Offshore-Bohrungen im South Pars/North Dome Feld im Persischen Golf, der größten Erdgasreserve der Welt. Darüber hinaus ist der Iran mit einem anderen chinesischen Unternehmen, Sinopec (75% Staatseigentum), an der Entwicklung der Förderung der Ölfelder von West-Karoun beteiligt. Unter Missachtung des US-Embargos erhöht China die Einfuhr von iranischem Öl. Noch gravierender für die Vereinigten Staaten ist die Tatsache, dass in diesen – und anderen – Handelsabkommen zwischen China und dem Iran zunehmend chinesische Renminbi (Yuan) und andere Währungen verwendet werden sollen, wobei der Dollar zunehmend ausgeschlossen wird.

Im Verkehrssektor hat China einen Vertrag über die Elektrifizierung von 900 Kilometern iranischer Eisenbahnen im Rahmen eines Projekts unterzeichnet, das die Elektrifizierung des gesamten Eisenbahnnetzes bis 2025 vorsieht, und wird wahrscheinlich auch einen Vertrag über eine Hochgeschwindigkeitsstrecke von mehr als 400 Kilometern unterzeichnen. Die iranische Eisenbahn ist an die 2.300 Kilometer lange Strecke angebunden, die bereits China und den Iran verbindet, wodurch sich die Transportzeit für Waren auf 15 Tage statt 45 Tage im Seeverkehr verkürzt. Über Täbris, eine große Industriestadt im Nordwesten des Iran – dem Ausgangspunkt einer 2.500 Kilometer langen Gaspipeline, die im türkischen Ankara ankommt – könnten so die Transportinfrastrukturen der neuen Seidenstraße mit Europa verbunden werden.

Die Abkommen zwischen China und dem Iran sehen keine militärischen Komponenten vor, aber laut einer iranischen Quelle sind zur Bewachung der Standorte etwa 5.000 chinesische Wachen vorgesehen, die von den Baufirmen für den Sicherheitsdienst beschäftigt werden. Bezeichnend ist auch, dass Ende Dezember die erste Marineübung zwischen dem Iran, China und Russland im Golf von Oman und im Indischen Ozean stattgefunden haben wird.

Unter Berücksichtigung dieser Tatsachen ist es nicht schwer zu verstehen, warum die Ermordung Soleimanis in Washington beschlossen wurde – sie war geplant, um eine militärische Gegenreaktion Teherans zu provozieren, um den Würgegriff auf den Iran zu verstärken und einen Angriff zu rechtfertigen, und auch, um das chinesische Projekt der Neuen Seidenstraße zu treffen, bei dem die USA nicht die Mittel haben, diesem im wirtschaftlichen Bereich etwas entgegenzusetzen. Die durch die Ermordung von Soleimani ausgelöste Kettenreaktion wird auch China und Russland mit einbeziehen und eine immer gefährlicher werdende Situation schaffen.

Manlio Dinucci

La Cina, non solo l’Iran, sotto tiro Usa in Medioriente

il manifesto, 10.Januar 2020

Übersetzung: K.R.

In November 2016, fresh off his electoral win, US President-elect Donald Trump boasted of his intention to end the Israel-Palestine conflict by striking what he called the “ultimate deal”.

Calling it “the war that never ends,” Trump told the Wall Street Journal: “As a deal maker, I’d like to do … the deal that can’t be made. And do it for humanity’s sake.”

A billionaire property tycoon and reality TV star known for his wheeling and dealing in the New York City real estate market, this was not the first time that Trump had framed the cause of peacemaking and diplomacy in terms of a business transaction.

Asked in March 2016 during his election campaign what the best deal of his life had been, he said it had been the creation of 6,000 housing units on the West Side of Manhattan.

His interviewer then asked him what would be the best deal he could make as president.

“Peace all over the world would be the best deal. And I think I would know how to do it better than anybody else, but peace all over the world,” came the modest reply.

Once in office, Trump tasked another property speculator, his son-in-law Jared Kushner, with delivering that deal, by now widely dubbed the “deal of the century”.

‘Slap of the century’

It has since turned into the most controversial and scandal-plagued peace initiative in the long and sad history of Middle East peace initiatives.

In the process of attempts to get it off the ground, the Palestinian leadership has refused to even open the file, let alone get involved in negotiations, with PA President Mahmoud Abbas calling it the “slap of the century“.

Trump has meanwhile closed the Palestine Liberation Organisation’s mission in Washington; he has recognised Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, and the occupied Golan Heights as Israeli territory.

In addition, he has cut funds to the United Nations relief agency UNRWA, which runs schools and medical facilities for millions of Palestinian refugees across the region, as well as providing their main source of employment.

And he has unilaterally called for a change in the definition of a refugee, deciding that all but 500,000 of an estimated 5.5 million Palestinian refugees should be stripped of their status.

All this in an attempt to “break and remake” the Middle East.

The deal has divided analysts. Some believe it is designed to fail. Others believe it does not matter whether it is published or not – it is already being enacted on the ground, with the process of “peace-making” itself now only providing cover for the US administration’s one-sided support for Israel.

Middle East Eye examines this thesis in a series of articles originally published in June 2019 which we have grouped together under the heading “Done Deal” – recognition that whatever is proposed, the reality on the ground has already changed in fundamental ways and continues to do so regardless of what is said in the halls of power in Washington or elsewhere.

In the first of these, we look at how reality is changing to prepare for Israel’s permanent annexation of large parts of the West Bank.

In other articles, we consider how the status of refugees is changing; how access to the Old City in Jerusalem has been restricted; how the stranglehold over Gaza has been progressively tightened; and, finally, how financial incentives and threats, with large sums of money dangled to entice Palestinians into agreeing to an inequitable deal or the withdrawal of funds to compel them to do so, are nothing new.

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Featured image is from Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs/Flickr

With great fanfare, President Trump finally unveiled his long-anticipated Middle East peace proposal. The proposal was labeled ‘The Deal of the Century’ because it was supposed to offer an even-handed and just solution to one of the world’s most intractable conflicts. Instead it does something very different. The ‘Deal of the Century’ resurrects and restores grand apartheid, a racist political system that should have been left in the dustbins of history.

Under President Trump’s newly unveiled peace plan, the Palestinians will be granted limited autonomy within a Palestinian homeland that consists of multiple non-contiguous enclaves scattered throughout the West Bank and Gaza. The government of Israel will retain security control over the Palestinian enclaves and will continue to control Palestinian borders, airspace, aquifers, maritime waters, and electromagnetic spectrum. Israel will be allowed to annex the Jordan Valley and Jewish communities in the West Bank. The Palestinians will be allowed to select the leaders of their new homeland but will have no political rights in Israel, the state that actually rules over them.

President Trump’s plan for racial control and segregation should sound disturbingly familiar. Indeed it should immediately bring to mind the Bantu homelands which were the cornerstone of South Africa’s ‘grand apartheid’. While ‘petty apartheid’ was the term used to describe racial segregation on buses and public facilities, ‘grand apartheid’ referred to the many laws which enforced territorial and political separation between black and white South Africans.

Map of the future Israeli state in the Trump administration plan. (Source: Mondoweiss)

The Bantu homelands, which were key to the territorial and political separation of racial groups, had their origin in the Land Acts of 1913 and 1936 which created reserves for the native black population. Then in 1970 the Bantu Homelands Citizenship Act made the native population legal citizens of their Bantustans, denying black South Africans political rights in white South Africa. The South African government created Bantu homelands in order to claim that South Africa, a state with a majority black population, was actually a state with a majority white population. The Bantu homelands were political sleight of hand; a poorly veiled attempt to give racist ethnic rule the veneer of democratic respectability.

Like South Africa’s grand apartheid, the Trump plan physically and politically separates Palestinians by placing them within a non-contiguous homeland (Areas A and B and Gaza), and declaring them citizens of that homeland. Like South Africa’s grand apartheid, the Trump plan grants the Palestinian homeland autonomy over civil matters like education and healthcare, while critical areas such as trade, immigration, and security will remain under Israeli control. Like South Africa’s grand apartheid, the Trump plan is political sleight of hand: a thinly veiled attempt to claim that Israel, a state that rules over roughly the same number of Jews and Palestinians, is actually a Jewish-majority state. Also like apartheid South Africa, the Trump administration claims the homelands are a temporary solution. Once the indigenous population proves itself ready for self-governance they will one day be granted something that resembles a state.

Using a combination of financial sticks and carrots, some of which were unveiled last June at the economic summit in Bahrain, the Trump administration will try to force Palestinians to accept the ‘peace plan’ and declare independence within their homeland, just as the apartheid South African government once tried to force the native black population to declare independence within their Bantustans. While the crony leadership of some Bantustans did indeed declare independence, South Africa’s grand apartheid ultimately failed because local leaders, including the African National Congress and the legendary Nelson Mandela, waged a determined and powerful international campaign against apartheid.

President Trump’s peace plan was labeled the ‘Deal of the Century’ because it was supposed to bring peace and dignity to the people of the Middle East. Instead the ‘peace plan’ does the exact opposite and resurrects apartheid, a racist political system that should have been left in the dustbins of history.

The Trump peace plan cannot, and should not be implemented because it gives Israelis the illusion of security while in reality trapping them within an unstable regime based on racial oppression. The Trump peace plan cannot, and should not be implemented because it gravely violates the rights and dignity of the Palestinian people and very likely constitutes a crime against humanity under the Rome Statute (1998). The Trump peace plan cannot, and should not be implemented because once we look past all the streamers and confetti, it turns out ‘The Deal of the Century’ is nothing less than Apartheid.

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Sheena Anne Arackal holds a master’s degree from the Harris School of Public Policy at the University of Chicago, and a doctorate in political science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Now based in Houston, Texas, she specializes in the field of ethnic conflict.

Featured image: Map of a future Palestinian state in the Trump administration plan. (Source: Mondoweiss)

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.

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

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

Community Radio Stations carrying the Global Research News Hour:

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

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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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