Global Research

The capabilities of Russia’s S-400 air defense system is unmatched by anything in the West.

China was Russia’s first foreign buyer, its military saying it “saw that the S-400 system by its capabilities today is unparalleled in the world in its armament class” — including its ability to overcome heavy enemy fire and electronic countermeasures at altitudes up to 23 miles, its range up to 250 miles.

A dozen or more other countries expressed interest in or already contracted to buy S-400s — notably India, the Saudis, Iraq, Qatar, Algeria, Morocco, Egypt, and Vietnam.

India paid Russia $5.2 billion for five S-400 systems to be delivered early next year.

Following Turkish President Erdogan’s mid-November White House meeting with Trump, he said the following:

“We agreed to seek solutions to the S-400 issue. I explained to Trump once again how we came to the point of buying S-400s.”

“I told him that we could not give up on the S-400s and that Turkey will not turn back.”

“We regard the proposal to completely remove the S-400s as meddling in our sovereign rights.”

“There can be no question of us leaving the S-400s and turning toward the Patriots.”

“If the current uncompromising stance on the F-35s persists, we told him (Trump) that Turkey would seek alternatives to meet its medium-term needs” — notably by buying Russian state-of-the-art Su-57 stealth warplanes, he may buy anyway.

According to Russian arms exporter Rosoboronexport head Alexander Mikheev, a deal with Turkey for more S-400s may be agreed on next year, saying:

“We hope that in the first half of 2020 we will sign the contract documents. But I want to stress that military technical cooperation with Turkey is not limited to the supply of the S-400s. We have big plans ahead,” adding:

“You can see how confident India, China, Turkey and other countries are on the international stage.”

“Many are openly outraged by US sanctions policy, which is trying to prevent them from developing their own armed forces and technical military cooperation with Russia.”

Following delivery of S-400s to Turkey last summer, the Trump regime threatened sanctions on the country — so far not imposed.

Last week, a senior State Department official unacceptably demanded that Ankara return purchased S-400s to Russia.

Hardline Senator Chris Van Hollen urged Trump to impose sanctions on Turkey. He accused Erdogan of “thumbing his nose at Trump, the US and NATO.”

Days earlier, the Turkish Defense Industry Directorate said the systems were bought to be used, not put aside.

Turkey’s Foreign Minister Melvet Cavusoglu said

“(w)e told (the Americans) that we didn’t buy these systems as a prop.”

Turkey’s Defense Minister Hulusi Akar said the S-400s “will be in ‘stand alone’ mode. They will operate independently” of NATO systems.

Turkey’s military began testing its S-400s by flying warplanes over Ankara on Monday. Further tests will be conducted at high and low altitudes.

Head of Russia’s Federal Service for Military-Technical Cooperation (FSVTS) Dmitry Shugayev said:

“We will finish training the Turkish personnel by the end of this year. The system will be placed on combat duty by spring.”

It won’t be stored, kept inoperative, or returned to Russia. S-400s were bought to be installed and used if necessary. There’s no turning back.

A Final Comment

Bloomberg News reported that Senate members vowed to sanction Turkey for its S-400 purchase.

Pompeo earlier warned of Trump regime sanctions if Ankara makes them operational.

On Tuesday, he equivocated, saying

“(w)e’re still talking to the Turks. We are still trying to figure out our way through this thing,” adding:

“I don’t want to get ahead of what the president may or may not do, but we have made clear to the Turkish government our desire to see them move away from putting into full operationalization the S-400 weapon system.”

Congressional and/or White House sanctions on Turkey for its legitimate purchase, with more S-400s likely to be bought in the new year, perhaps Russian Su-35 and Su-57 warplanes as well, will further strain already greatly strained relations.

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

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

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

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

A global campaign encouraging individuals, organisations and institutional investors to sell off investments in fossil fuel companies is gathering pace. According to 350.org, US$11 trillion has already been divested worldwide.

But, while it may seem a logical strategy, divestment will not lower demand for fossil fuels, which is the key to reducing greenhouse gas emissions. In fact, it may even cause emissions to rise.

At first sight, the argument for divestment seems straightforward. Fossil fuel companies are the main contributors to the majority of CO₂ emissions causing global warming. Twenty fossil fuel companies alone have contributed 35% of all energy-related carbon dioxide and methane emissions since 1965.

The argument goes that squeezing the flow of investment into fossil fuel companies will either bring their demise, or force them to drastically transform their business models. It makes sense for investors, too, as they avoid the risk of holding “stranded assets” – fossil fuel reserves that will become worthless as they can no longer be exploited.

For companies heavily invested in coal – the most polluting fossil fuel – this rings true. Although new coal plants are still being constructed in countries such as China, India and Indonesia, predictions by major energy agencies and industry alike indicate a steep decline in its contribution to the global energy supply. With cleaner alternatives readily available, coal is no longer considered a safe long-term investment – and widespread divestment will only add to this sentiment.

When it comes to oil and natural gas, however, the picture looks quite different. Oil is used for a much wider range of products and processes than is coal, while the cleaner reputation of natural gas gives it significant appeal as a “bridge fuel” to a zero carbon economy, whether rightly or not. As a result, the push for oil and gas divestment is likely to have unintended consequences.

Divestment troubles

The primary targets of the divestment movement are international oil companies (IOCs) – private corporations that are headquartered in Western countries and listed on public stock exchanges. ExxonMobil, Chevron, Royal Dutch Shell, BP, and Total are among the private oil “supermajors”. [In a bitter irony, the Climate Action campaign is in part funded by the Oil companies GR Editor]

Recent research suggests that divestment can reduce the flow of investment into these companies. But even if the divestment movement were successful in reducing the economic power of these companies, IOCs currently only produce about 10% of the world’s oil.

The rest is mostly produced by national oil companies (NOCs) – state-owned behemoths such as Saudi Aramco, National Iranian Oil Company, China National Petroleum Corporation and Petroleos de Venezuela, located mostly in low and middle income countries.

Given that NOCs are less transparent about their operations than are IOCs, and that many of them are also headquartered in authoritarian countries, they are less exposed to pressure from civil society. As a result, they are “dangerously under-scrutinised”, according to the Natural Resource Governance Institute.

As they are state-owned, they are also not directly exposed to pressure from shareholders. Even the imminent public listing of Saudi Aramco will only offer 1.5% of the company, and this will mainly come from domestic and emerging markets, which tend to impose much less pressure to value environmental issues. Environmental groups have urged Western multinational banks not to invest in the Saudi company.

This means that while global demand for natural gas and oil is still rising, and investments are insufficient to meet future demand, divestment pressures are unlikely to impact the business plans of NOCs. As a result, instead of reducing global fossil fuel production, the divestment movement will simply force IOCs to cede market share to NOCs.

If anything, this would cause CO₂ emissions to rise. The carbon footprints of NOCs per unit of fuel produced are on average bigger than those of IOCs.

IOCs are also generally better placed and more willing than are NOCs to reduce the carbon intensity of their products and support the transition to renewable energy. They have, for example, led the way among oil companies in research into capturing and storing carbon, even if results have so far proven elusive.

Many universities have been targeted by the fossil fuel divestment movement. Jonathan Brady/PA

In a nutshell, the divestment movement will not reduce demand for oil and gas. It will transfer the supply of fossil fuel to companies that are more polluting, less transparent, less sensitive to societal pressures, and less committed to addressing the climate crisis.

Missing the mark

The divestment movement is understandably enjoying widespread appeal in a time of climate emergency. But by targeting the low-hanging fruit that are IOCs, the movement misses the more complex question of how to actually reduce the global demand for fossil fuels.

To achieve that goal, we’d be better off creating a regulatory environment that forces both IOCs and NOCs to redirect their energies. For example, eliminating fossil fuel subsidies and putting a price on carbon would make heavily investing in renewables – already cheaper to produce than fossil fuels – more attractive for all energy companies.

Such changes could also generate nearly US$3 trillion by 2030for governments worldwide. These funds could be used to massively scale up renewables, prioritise the development of energy storage to address the intermittent nature of such power, and improve energy efficiency in industry, transport and housing – which will make fossil fuels increasingly redundant.

While IOCs now produce much less fossil fuel than they used to, they still have a huge amount of expertise that could be applied to the energy transition. In my view, rather than transferring power to less environmentally conscious NOCs, we should make use of them.

As for those with shares in fossil fuel companies: exercise your powers as a shareholder to pressure them to support the energy transition as constructively and ethically as possible. Your influence matters.

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Stefan Andreasson is a Senior Lecturer in Comparative Politics, Queen’s University Belfast.

Britain’s ruling Conservative party has vowed to ban UK public bodies from participating in boycott and divestment campaigns of any foreign country in its manifesto.

The Conservative Party’s proposals could mean new legislation will bar local government bodies and universities from endorsing the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israeli human rights violations.

“We will ban public bodies from imposing their own direct or indirect boycotts, divestment or sanctions campaigns against foreign countries,” stated the Conservative Party’s manifesto, which was published on Sunday.

This proposal comes days after the UK-based Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) launched an appeal to the Supreme Court over the government’s ban on local government divesting pension schemes from companies connected to a foreign country.

Commenting on the Conservative Party pledge, PSC director Ben Jamal condemned proposals to ban public bodies from participating in boycotts.

“The Israeli government, with the support of the [US President Donald] Trump administration, is running roughshod over international law and ramping up its human rights violations against Palestinians,” Jamal told Middle East Eye.

“In this context, the Conservative Party should be committing the UK to implement its responsibilities to hold Israel to account, rather than seeking to prevent public bodies from making ethical decisions not to invest their money in supporting Israeli apartheid.”

Last year, the UK Court of Appeal ruled in the government’s favour, declaring lawful a ban on local government pension schemes divesting from companies involved in Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestinian territories.

The 2018 ruling overturned a June 2017 judgement from the UK High Court, which had stated that the government acted unlawfully in stopping local councils from divesting from companies involved in the occupation.

Ryvka Barnard, a senior campaigner for War on Want, condemned the manifesto pledge as undermining a tactic long used by human rights activists in Britain.

“Boycott, divestment and sanctions campaigns have long been used to protest injustice,” Barnard told MEE. “From the Bristol bus boycotts in the 1960s over refusal to employ Black or Asian bus crews, to sanctions campaigns to pressure the South African apartheid regime, to today’s divestment campaigns to end institutional complicity with the destructive fossil fuel industry.

“Where our own government has failed to act in accordance with its own policies and international law, ordinary people have stepped up…In the UK, existing policies like the Trade Union Act, the Lobbying Act, and the repressive Prevent agenda already undermine the rights of people to protest,” she added. “This latest proposal will further weaken those rights.”

Earlier this month, the European Court of Justice ruled in favour of clearly labelling products made in Israeli settlements as having been produced in the occupied West Bank.

Founded in 2005, the BDS campaign was created as a coalition of Palestinian civil society groups with the aim of using non-violent methods to pressure Israel to end its illegal occupation of the West Bank and end its siege on the Gaza Strip.

The Israeli government has since set up a department called the Ministry of Strategic Affairs in a bid to counter the BDS movement. Since its establishment, laws have been introduced in several countries, including in the United States and France, with the stated aim of criminalising BDS.

On Monday, Israeli authorities deported Human Rights Watch (HRW) director for Israel and the Palestinian territories Omar Shakir after accusing him of supporting the BDS movement – an accusation he denied. HRW denounced his expulsion as an attempt to silence critics of the Israeli government.

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Palestinians are calling for people internationally to take action against the companies complicit in Israel’s systematic demolition of Palestinian homes. This article focuses on British university partnerships with JCB, Caterpillar, HSBC and Volvo – four companies which are complicit in the home demolition policy. We also focus on six British universities:

• Sheffield Hallam University’s partnerships with JCB, Caterpillar and Volvo
• Warwick University’s partnership with JCB
• NMITE Hereford’s link to JCB
• Cambridge University’s links to Caterpillar
• Loughborough University’s partnerships with Caterpillar
• University College London Centre for Ethics and Law’s sponsorship from HSBC

In addition 27 UK universities hold investments in HSBC (either directly or indirectly), five invest in Caterpillar and four invest in Volvo.

Some of the information in this article is based on a database prepared by the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, which details UK university investments and partnerships.

This article is written in support of the Palestinian movement for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against Israeli militarism, colonialism and apartheid. In particular, we hope this will serve as information for action for students taking part in the #ApartheidOffCampus day of action in the UK on November 27^th.

Israel’s Home demolition policy

The Israel state carries out hundreds of demolitions of Palestinian homes and property every year.ⁱ Home demolitions are an integral part of the Israeli state’s continuing colonisation of Palestinian land.461 demolitions were carried out in 2018 in the West Bank alone.ⁱⁱ

The pretexts given for home demolitions are varied, for example:

• The land which the homes is on has been declared ’state land’
• The homes are deemed too close to one of Israel’s expanding colonial settlements
• The state is carrying out collective punishment against the families of those suspected of being involved in resistance
• The owners of the homes are deemed not to have proper planning permission (planning permission is almost never granted to Palestinians. Since 2000 only 226 out of 5,475 applications by Palestinians for planning permission in the West Bank have been granted)
• The land that the homes are on has been deemed ‘agricultural land’, a national park, a site of archaeological interest, a military area or a ‘firing zone’ⁱⁱⁱ

But, whatever the reason given by the Israeli state for demolitions, the overriding motivation is always the same: To push Palestinian communities off the land, and to facilitate the growth of Israeli colonies.

Demolitions within Israel

Home demolitions are ongoing within Israel’s borders too. During 2018, the state demolished the entire village of Al Araqib in the Naqab desert in the south of Israel 13 times.^iv On each occasion they were met with steadfast resistance from the residents, and many of the demolished structures have since been rebuilt. In April 2018 the southern village of Um Al Hiran was ethnically cleansed and its structures demolished. It is to be replaced by a new Jewish-only community.^v

Call for international solidarity

In September 2018 thousands of Palestinians, along with Israeli and international supporters, were resisting the daily attempts to destroy the entire village of Khan Al Ahmar, a bedouin village close to the expanding settlement of Ma’ale Adumim. The Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions National Committee (BNC) issued this call to action against the international companies taking part in the demolition:

“The Palestinian BDS National Committee calls for a global civil society effort for preventing the imminent destruction of Khan al-Ahmar. When campaigning for Khan Ahmar and other Palestinian communities at risk of destruction and forcible displacement, we urge everyone to… organize divestment and exclusion-from-tender campaigns against these companies in your trade union, church, university — or include these companies in existing campaigns — to raise the price of their complicity in egregious human rights violations.”

In July 2019, the Israeli state carried out demolitions on a massive scale in East Jerusalem, reportedly its largest act of ethnic cleansing since the military occupation of 1967.

The BNC wrote at the time:

“On Monday, Israel committed its biggest crime of ethnic cleansing since 1967, against the Palestinian neighborhood of Wadi Hummus in occupied East Jerusalem. In a military raid that began at dawn, Israeli soldiers destroyed, in just a few hours, the homes of hundreds of Palestinian families. This attack came almost immediately after an Israeli military court had authorized the demolitions. Another 116 homes are under imminent threat of demolition in Wadi Hummus.

The magnitude of the crime is not only its sheer scale.

If Israel’s aggressive home demolitions are not stopped now, other Palestinian communities will be next. In Jerusalem alone, at least one third of all Palestinian homes are at risk of demolition. This would mean the forcible displacement of some 100,000 Palestinians…

Israel’s ability to ethnically cleanse the indigenous Palestinian population of Jerusalem and to force Palestinians into Bantustans carved out by its illegal wall and settlements can be hampered by the mobilisation of people power.”

The BNC has specifically called for action against JCB, Volvo and Caterpillar.

The BDS movement is also calling for action against HSBC, as the company has substantial investments in Caterpillar.

Bedouin homes are demolished in Abu Nuwar in July 2018 (Photo by Corporate Occupation)

JCB

British company JCB manufactures civilian and military bulldozers which are used in Israel’s demolitions of Palestinian homes.^vi During 2018, Shoal Collective found that JCB machines were used in demolitions of 130 structures, including 2 schools. At least 163 people were made homeless including 31 children.^vii

JCB machines were also used in the Israeli demolitions which made thousands of people homeless in Wadi Hummus in July 2019.

Sheffield Hallam University’s partnerships with JCB

Sheffield Hallam University’s (SHU) website refers to JCB as a ‘partner’. The university advertises that it offers vocational apprenticeship programmes in collaboration with JCB. These apprenticeships have been ongoing since 2015. According to the SHU website “[JCB] have developed a number of successful higher and degree apprenticeships with us, delivering a number of benefits to their business”. The website gives a number of examples of student apprentices who have gone on to work at JCB.

These student apprenticeships are a way of JCB increasing its skills base, and are highly beneficial for the company. According to Nigel Ward, a manager for JCB “The advantage it brings to JCB is that we’re slightly ahead of the game in growing our own talent. We get a full spectrum of capabilities coming from an apprenticeship…”

The SHU website even boasts that its apprentices will have a say in “Designing the future of JCB”

SHU also advertises engineering courses which have been designed “in consultation” with JCB. This shows that JCB are able to shape SHU’s courses according to the company’s requirements.

Earlier this year, students at SHU made the following statement about SHU’s relationship with JCB and with other companies complicit in the occupation:

“Sheffield Hallam turns a blind eye any to an ethical framework when it comes to having ties with JCB, BAE Systems, Hewlett Packard, Rolls Royce, Volvo Trucks and Caterpillar. That’s why, following from the successful pass of a Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions policy at our Student Union in January 2019, we are on a mission to move beyond words into concrete actions to ensure students’ demands are heard, and their tuition fees are not used in forging such unethical collaborations and fueling more crimes against oppressed communities.”^viii

By running this apprenticeship programme in partnership with JCB, SHU is helping JCB with it’s recruitment of skilled workers. In continuing this programme, even when the complicity of JCB in Israel’s home demolitions has been pointed out to the university, SHU is showing complete disregard for the Palestinian communities which are being wrecked by the Israeli state’s home demolitions.

Warwick University’s joint projects with JCB

In 2017 Warwick University collaborated on a research project with JCB. A JCB engineer is quoted on an industry news website, boasting that the project helped JCB to develop their vehicles.

In collaborating with JCB on the project, Warwick University is ignoring the calls from Palestine to “raise the price” of JCB’s complicity in home demolitions.

NMITE Hereford

Britain’s newest university, the ‘New Model in Technology & Engineering’ (NMITE) Hereford has an ‘advisor’ from JCB.

Caterpillar

A soldier uses a Caterpillar military bulldozer to terrorise protesters in Kafr Qaddum.Photo by Mohamad Torokman.

US multinational company Caterpillar has become infamous for its support of the occupation. The company supplies D9 and D10 armoured military bulldozers, which are used in all of the Israeli military’s demolitions in the Gaza Strip.^ix

Caterpillar machines are also used in the Israeli state’s punitive home demolitions, where the military destroys the homes and property of the families of Palestinians suspected of involvement in resistance against the occupation.^x During 2018 Shoal Collective found that Caterpillar bulldozers were used in 7 punitive demolitions, and 86 invasions of the Gaza Strip.^xi Caterpillar machines were also used in at least three of the demolitions of the entire village of Al Araqib.^xii

Caterpillar bulldozers were used in the mass demolitions in Wadi Hummus in July 2019.

According to Shoal Collective:

“The D9 bulldozer is the Israeli military’s weapon of choice when carrying out its punitive demolitions, in contravention of international law. These demolitions are acts of collective punishment, aimed at wreaking vengeance on the families of Palestinians who are suspected of resistance.

Caterpillar’s non-military bulldozers are regularly used in Israel’s home demolitions in the West Bank, in settlement building and in working on Israel’s apartheid wall. They are also used to build roadblocks and checkpoints.”^xiii

Caterpillar and Sheffield Hallam University

Sheffield Hallam University (SHU) offers year long work placements with Caterpillar on some of its Automotive Engineering, Logistics&Supply Chain Management and Electrical&Electronic engineering courses. The university boasts that many of its graduates have gone on to work for the company.

Cambridge University

Cambridge University has partnered with Caterpillar through the Cambridge University Service Alliance (CUSA). The Alliance gives companies the ability to “influence and commission” research, as well as promote their brand.

While preparations were underway to destroy the entire village of Khan al Ahmar last Spring, CUSA were promoting Caterpillar’s participation in a trade conference in Dubai. As Caterpillar machines prepared the ground for the demolitions in August 2018, CUSA published an article about the unveiling of new research at Caterpillar’s premises in the UK.

Arms dealer BAE, which has sold weapons to Israel, and Cemex, which owns the company that provided cement for Israel’s apartheid wall have also been a part of Cambridge University Service Alliance.

Last year, 40 Cambridge University student groups signed a call for Cambridge to end its partnerships with BAE and Caterpillar. The statement reads:

“We, the undersigned, call on the University of Cambridge to immediately terminate its partnership with Caterpillar Inc. and BAE Systems, as part of the Cambridge Service Alliance. By maintaining this relationship, the University has made itself, and us, shamefully complicit in war crimes…

As highlighted by Human Rights Watch, Caterpillar Inc. supplies the militarized D9 bulldozers used by Israel in the Occupied Palestinian Territories to demolish thousands of Palestinian homes, making way for Jewish-only settlements.”

Loughborough University

The partnership between Loughborough University and Caterpillar has been ongoing since the 1990s. Loughborough University has been given “UK Partnership status” by the company and a high percentage of Caterpillar’s new graduate employees have historically been from Loughborough University.

According to research by Palestine Solidarity Campaign,

“Loughborough University and Caterpillar UK Ltd have signed a partnership agreeing to collaborate on research to investigate new technologies for future Caterpillar products. The Caterpillar Innovation and Research Centre, part of Loughborough’s School of Aeronautical and Automotive Engineering, works closely with Caterpillar to develop new engineering processes and components.”^xiv

This close collaboration with Caterpillar makes Loughborough University deeply complicit in the war crimes being carried out with Caterpillar equipment in Palestine. There has been a high profile global campaign against Caterpillar’s role in the occupation since 2003, so the management of Loughborough University cannot claim not to know what their partner is up to. To continue the partnership shows complete disregard for the Palestinian people experiencing Israel’s racist home demolition policy.

The following UK universities hold investments in Caterpillar (either directly or through an investment fund):

• University of Manchester
• London School of Economics
• Royal Academy of Music
• University of Aberdeen
• University of Glasgowⁱ

Protest outside the HSBC AGM. Photo from bdsmovement.net

HSBC

HSBC is a major investor in Caterpillar. A coalition of UK based Palestine Solidarity groups is calling for HSBC to drop its investments in Caterpillar. According to the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, HSBC has “£100million worth of shares in Caterpillar, [whose] equipment is used to bulldoze Palestinian homes and build illegal settlements.”

University College London (UCL)

HSBC is a sponsor of the Centre for Ethics and Law at UCL. The centre claims that it “promotes and enhances collaboration between corporates, practitioners, civil servants, academics and others around the broad themes of professional ethics and the ethics of risk”

Arms dealer BAE Systems is also a sponsor of the Centre.

The following UK universities hold investments in HSBC (either directly or through an investment fund):

• Glasgow Caledonian University
• University of Strathclyde
• University of Leeds
• University of Manchester
• University of Reading
• University of Sheffield
• University of Stirling
• Plymouth Marjon University
• University College London
• Royal Holloway University of London
• Royal Academy of Music
• University of York
• University of Glasgow
• Lancaster University
• London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine
• University of Dundee
• Newcastle University
• University of Surrey
• University of Central Lancashire
• University of Birmingham
• Coventry University
• University of Aberdeen
• Aberystwyth University
• University of Leicester
• The Institute of Cancer Research
• University of Derby
• London School of Economicsⁱ

A Volvo bulldozer demolishes a home in the South Hebron Hills in 2018

VOLVO

According to Shoal Collective, Volvo machines were used in the demolition of at least 102 structure in the West Bank during 2018, including two schools. Volvo equipment was used by the Israeli state to destroy the entire village of Al Araqib eight times.^xv

Sheffield Hallam University (SHU)

Volvo Trucks is an industry partner of SHU, and several of its courses advertise that graduates have gone on to work for Volvo.

Volvo Trucks is part of Volvo Group (AB Volvo), which controls the manufacture of the bulldozers used in Israel’s home demolitions.^xvi

The following UK universities hold investments in Volvo (either directly or through an investment fund):

• London School of Economics
• University of Aberdeen
• University of Leicester
• The University of Glasgow ⁱ

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Tom Anderson is part of Shoal Collective, and co-edits the Corporate Occupation website.

Notes

Featured image is of Palestinians protesting demolitions in Khan al Ahmar in 2018, picture by Active Stills

From the moment that the U.S. re-imposed sanctions in earnest on Iran late last year, Pakistan has been looking at ways to resuscitate a deal that had been agreed in principle before the U.S. unilaterally withdrew from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) last May. This deal involved moving as much gas as Pakistan needs from Iran’s Asalouyeh into Pakistan’s Gwadar and then on to Nawabshah for further transit if required. At the same time, China has been in long-running discussions with Pakistan over the specific projects that Beijing wanted to place in Pakistan as part of its ‘One Belt, One Road’ (OBOR) programme. All the while, the U.S. has been trying to stymie any such arrangement but OilPrice.com understands that the Iran-China-Pakistan deal is now back on, and with a vengeance.

China’s covert strategic deals are virtually always buried in interminably long anodyne statements that belie the true laser-focused intentions of Beijing and this time is no different. Joint statements just over a week ago from both Pakistan and China sides laid out four projects that are part of a ‘broader co-operation’ between China and Pakistan. They all sound relatively run-of-the-mill affairs, although still major undertakings, and are: the upgrading of the Pakistan Refinery Karachi, the building out of a coal to liquid engineering plant based on Thar coal at Thar Sindh, the utilisation of Thar Block VI for coal gasification and fertiliser projects, and the finalisation of the feasibility study on South-North Gas Pipeline Project that traverses Pakistan.

The fact that they are much more significant to the global geopolitical balance was evidenced by the U.S.’s furious warnings to Pakistan, based on the fact that all of these projects are in reality a key part of Beijing’s planned China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), which, in turn, is a cornerstone of the OBOR initiative. Even as it was, U.S. South Asia diplomat, Alice Wells, warned that CPEC – which, vitally, includes heavy financing from Beijing and, therefore, a massive debt obligation to China by the host country over time – will only profit Beijing. As it stands, the cost of just the first round of CPEC projects has risen from an initial costing of US$48 billion to at least US$62 billion right now.

“It’s clear, or it needs to be clear, that CPEC is not about aid,” said Wells. “[The CPEC] corridor is going to take a growing toll on the Pakistan economy, especially when the bulk of payments start to come due in the next four to six years,” she added. “Even if loan payments are deferred, they are going to continue to hang over Pakistan’s economic development potential, hamstringing Prime Minister [Imran] Khan’s reform agenda,” she underlined.

The U.S.’s fury would have been much worse if it knew that, in fact, the ‘finalisation of the feasibility study on South-North Gas Pipeline Project’ whilst true, is just proverbially the tip of the iceberg.

“The actual plan is to resuscitate the Iran-Pakistan oil and gas pipelines over time, beginning with the gas pipeline, moving unlimited amounts of Iranian gas to Pakistan, and then into China and the rest of Asia should it be needed,” a senior source who works closely with Iran’s Petroleum Ministry told OilPrice.com last week. “It is being done in conjunction with Russia, with the twin aims of firstly ensuring that China’s ‘One Belt, one Road’ initiative continues to run smoothly from the East through Pakistan and then Westwards into Iran and onwards into Europe,” he said. “And, secondly, to ensure for Russia that Iran’s gas does not start flowing freely into Europe as and when the U.S. sanctions are lifted, as this would undermine Russia’s power over Europe, which is founded on supplying over a third of Europe’s gas,” he  added.

For China, the new pipeline – integral to its plan of making Iran and Pakistan its client states over time – has the added benefit of putting the U.S. on the backfoot in the ongoing trade war. For Iran, the incentives of closer ties with China and Russia are principally financial but also relate to China being just one of five Permanent Members on the U.N. Security Council (the others being Russia, the U.S., the U.K., and France). For Pakistan as well there is the added incentive that it is tired of being lambasted by the U.S. for its duplicity in dealing with international terrorism. Not that long ago, the U.S. accused Pakistan of supporting the Taliban (correct but it was catalysed by the U.S.’s key Middle Eastern ‘ally’, Saudi Arabia), Al Qaeda (correct but catalysed, funded and logistically supported by the Saudis), the Haqqani network (correct but also funded and logistically supported by the Saudis), and Islamic State (sort of correct but that was also mainly, of course, the Saudis) against U.S. forces, despite taking hundreds of billions of dollars in aid payments.

Islamabad has also been an outspoken critic of renewed U.S. sanctions against Iran. Just after the first wave of the new sanctions were rolled out on 7 August last year, Pakistan’s Foreign Office spokesman Muhammad Faisal said that:

“We are examining the implications of the U.S.’s re-imposed sanctions on Iran, however, Pakistan, being a sovereign state, reserves the right to pursue legitimate economic and commercial interests while respecting the international legal regime.”

Later, in his inaugural speech as Pakistan’s then-new Prime Minister, Imran Khan, called for improving ties with the country’s immediate neighbours, including Iran, from whose President, Hassan Rouhani, he also accepted an invitation for an early state visit to Tehran. Bubbling back at that time to the top of the list of practical initiatives that could be advanced quickly was the Iran-Pakistan gas pipeline (IPP), which, according to the Iran source: “[Imran] Khan personally backs and has made a priority project.”

In practical terms, Pakistan certainly needs all the sustainable energy sources it can get. As it stands, the country has seen domestic natural gas production stagnate at around 4 billion cubic feet per day (Bcf/d) against demand of more than 6 Bcf/d, which has led to repeated load shedding in many major cities of up to 15 hours a day. Moreover, the supply and demand disparity is set to become even worse very soon, as industry estimates project that Pakistan’s domestic gas production is set to fall to nearer 2 Bcf/d by 2020, due to aging infrastructure, whilst demand will rise to around 8 Bcf/d by the same time, driven by rising demand from the power, industry, and domestic sectors as the economy continues to grow by around 5% per year. According to Pakistan’s Ministry of Energy (MoE), the planned 0.75 Bcf/d of gas (for five years, in the first instance) that would flow from Iran’s supergiant South Pars natural gas field would add around 4,000 megawatts (MW) of electricity into the Pakistan grid, via a direct Iran-Pakistan pipeline.

The original agreement for the IPP, signed between Iran and Pakistan in 1995, was predicated on the pipeline running from Iran’s supergiant South Pars non-associated natural gas field into Karachi but the most recent iteration of the route involves the gas running from Iran’s Asalouyeh and into Pakistan’s Gwadar and then on to Nawabshah. The latest projection of the cost of the pipeline is around US$3.5 billion, according to industry sources, although US$2.5 billion of this has already been invested in the 900 kilometre stretch on Iran’s side that has already been completed. Pakistan’s 780 kilometre stretch has yet to be started.

Given the geopolitical importance of both Iran and Pakistan to Russia and China, though, as analysed in greater depth in my new book on the global oil markets, finding the money for the remainder of the project will not be a problem at all For China, there is a threefold motivation. First, its plans to integrate the IPP into the CPEC project means that Gwadar is earmarked to be a key logistical node in China’s ‘One Belt, One Road’ initiative. Second, it wants to keep Iran as one of its key suppliers of oil and gas in the future. And third, it regards supporting those who the U.S. opposes as being a central plank of its foreign policy, even over and above the short-term tactic of wrong-footing the U.S. in the ongoing trade war.

“One immediate reaction [of China to the burgeoning trade war with the US], will be to seek to expand and broaden economic links by offering improved market access to non-U.S. companies, by strengthening supply chain links and by replacing American commodities with imports from emerging market nations,” according to Jonathan Fenby, China research chairman at TS Lombard, in London.

“There is a tectonic shift going on that goes well beyond the tariff war, as China seeks to assert itself regionally and tries to establish a wider global role for itself while the U.S. moves from the ‘constructive engagement’ of the Clinton, Bush and Obama administrations to regarding China as a ‘strategic competitor’,” he added.

The U.S. clearly sees it the same way, not just based on the latest comments by Wells but also on the fact that as long ago as January 2010, the U.S. formally requested that Pakistan abandon the project in return for which it would receive assistance from Washington for the construction of a liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminal and for the importing of electricity from Tajikistan through Afghanistan’s Wakhan Corridor.

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Simon Watkins is a former senior FX trader and salesman, financial journalist, and best-selling author.

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Reporting from Joubar, a suburb of Damascus, Dr. Ayssar Midani shines a light on realities of the NATO war against Syria, and against civilization itself.

She takes us to places from which terrorists fired their missiles onto children, men, and women in Damascus, murdering and handicapping thousands. She shows us the location where terrorists tortured their victims.

We explore tunnels, dug by terrorists and their captive slaves, used to to store weapons and ammunition and to prosecute their Western commanded and controlled terror campaigns.

We hear testimony from Sameer Mjalli. Terrorists kidnapped his two brothers in 2012, and their whereabouts remain unknown. Mjalli is a refugee first from the Israeli occupation of Gaza, and second form NATO terrorism in Ghouta.

Video: Interview with renowned Belgian author Michel Collon

We learn how the West supports and grows the Wahhabi ideology, and continues to do so. We see how terrorists attack public service employees and indeed all secular institutions.

All of Dr. Midani’s observations have been corroborated by previous on-the-ground independent researchers. For example, in 2017 Prof. Anderson noted that,

“the hostages provide several key benefits for the gangs. First they are an important slave labour force in tunnel digging, second they are used as human shields, to deter air attacks; and finally they have been sacrificed at times as victims of ‘regime’ attacks, in ‘false flag’ incidents. No-one has any real idea of the numbers of hostages; but many civilians and soldiers are still missing.” (1)

In 2018, Eva Bartlett recorded this testimony from Khaled, a civilian who had endured life under terrorist occupation:

”‘They stopped me at night, I was on my way to get something. They suspected that I was working for the regime, helping the army. They took me to al-Taoubah prison, where they tortured me. They would tie me to a chair and shock my hands or the top of my toes. They would tie two wires to my toes then plug the other end to the inverter and shock me. They would keep doing that until you confess to something. I didn’t confess, because I had nothing to confess to. They tortured me for two days. What they did caused me to have a severe myopia, it felt like electricity came out of my eyes.’

Khaled spoke of an execution he witnessed in Douma. ‘They came in a truck with a 23mm (anti-aircraft) machine gun and blew off his head. Then, they accused the Syrian Army of killing him.’ A photo on his mobile phone showed a headless man sitting in a chair, no remnants of shelling.

Jaysh al-Islam blew his head off for selling food cheaply, because they wanted to keep prices high, so that people stay impoverished and would have to work for them in tunneling or join them in fighting.” (2)

Evidence-based documentation of what has happened in Syria and what is happening in Syria has always been the antithesis to the war propaganda spun by colonial media and Western “establishment” sources.

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

Notes

(1) Tim Anderson, “SYRIA: The Long East Ghouta War – Tim Anderson in Damascus.” 21st Century Wire, 14 October, 2017.
(https://21stcenturywire.com/2017/10/14/syria-long-east-ghouta-war-tim-anderson-damascus/?fbclid=IwAR3gYLcDaAwrQWTna4SWPX92uVZ6reWphc-ejTSh9wdRkDjDx9RH3XHh5kU ) Accessed 27 November, 2019.

(2) Eva Bartlett, “Torture, starvation, executions: Eastern Ghouta civilians talk of life under terrorist rule.” RT, 10 June, 2018.
(https://www.rt.com/op-ed/429349-syrians-tell-terrorists-white-helmets/?fbclid=IwAR29ewYvJySErhNvyDRPnsZmg8QLk8-xi8cUNXrvMSSw-WLFQKmlJw5NADQ) . Accessed 27 November, 2019.

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

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

Voices from Syria 

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Author: Mark Taliano

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It has been interesting to watch the slow-moving arc of justice, or some semblance of it, at play in Israel and the United States. The trajectories of both nations has been somewhat astounding.

In the United States, the past several decades, at least since the administration of Ronald Reagan, have seen the country move to a position of less tolerance for minorities, less care for the poor, more governmental policies to benefit the rich, and an ever-increasing reliance by politicians on corporate donations.

Let this writer hasten to explain that the U.S. was never a place of tolerance and care for the poor, but things have only gotten worse, not better, in the past several decades.

This has come to mean that those running for the highest offices in the land are beholden, not to the people or the Constitution that they purport to hold sacred, but to those industries who donate so generously to their campaigns. This resulted, in 2016, with both major parties nominating loathsome candidates for president. While former First Lady, senator and Secretary of State, the corrupt Hillary Clinton, won the popular vote that year, the incompetent, clown-like narcissist, former reality-TV star Donald Trump became president due to the U.S.’s bizarre electoral college.

Three long and torturous years into the administration of Donald Trump, he now faces impeachment. Articles of impeachment are expected to be handed down by the Democrat-controlled House of Representatives within the next several days. It will then be up to the Republican-controlled Senate to decide whether or not to remove him from office. Despite the compelling evidence that he abused his power for personal gain, there is little chance of his removal.

Let us move for a moment to the situation in Israel. That nation is the poster child for one that has never cared about human rights or international law. The brutal oppression of the Palestinians, dating back over 70 years, is the most obvious evidence of that. The current Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has expressed utter disdain for Arabs, and under his corrupt administration, the ‘Nation State’ law was passed, decreeing that Israel is the homeland of Jews and no one else. So much for the approximately 25% of people living in the Zionist entity who are not Jews.

But now, Israel’s longest-serving (is ‘serving’ the appropriate word, when genocide, racism and personal gain are the goals?) Prime Minister, who has continued and expanded the brutal, racist policies of all his predecessors, appears to be reaching the end of his tenure with the proverbial bang. He has been indicted on a series of charges including bribery, and may be removed from office. However, like the situation in the U.S., he and his sycophant admirers are fighting tooth and nail to keep him in power.

Also, like Trump, Netanyahu is ‘serving’ without a mandate. Following the April elections, he was unable to form a coalition government, so for the first time in its ugly and bloody history, Israel had two elections in one year. He came in second, but was still selected to form a government. Alas, he was unable to do so, resulting in the opportunity being given to his nearest competitor, the equally odious and racist Benny Gantz, whose party, the Blue and White, actually won more seats that Netanyahu’s Likud party. But with Netanyahu blocking any proposal that didn’t maintain him as prime minister, thus putting him in a position to prevent the indictments against him that have since been issued, Gantz was also unsuccessful in cobbling together a coalition government. Now the opportunity is wide open for any member of parliament: good luck with that. All this paves the way for another election in March, thus making three elections within a 12-month period.

Is it odd that two nations, both built on genocide, whose leaders are contemptuous of international law and human rights, whose policies bring out the absolute worst in people, are now engulfed in chaos? Netanyahu can’t form a government and is under indictment. His racist policies have become so blatant that even U.S. politicians are criticizing him and them, something that was absolutely unheard of a few years ago.

Trump has alienated the military with his interference in military justice cases (in the U.S., the term ‘military justice’ is a total oxymoron, but that’s a topic for another essay), his disdain for their foreign-policy advice (e.g. the U.S. abandonment of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action), and his general chaotic style of governing. Any semi-reasonable advisers he ever had have long since departed. In true Orwellian style, truth is seen as falsehood, imagined and completely debunked conspiracy theories are trotted out as if they were proven facts, and the poor, immigrants, Muslims, Mexicans and many others are seen as enemies to the U.S.’s ‘national security’.

The reader will forgive this writer for seeing much good potentially resulting from these two situations. Trump’s domestic problems, while solidifying his base, are certainly alienating many of the ‘undecided’ voters, those who, for some inexplicable reason, are still considering voting for him. Not that whoever the Democrats nominate will be a savior, rescuing the U.S. from its brutal, imperial ways, but such things as Supreme Court appointments and aid to Israel may be far more reasonable.

If Netanyahu is stripped of his role as Prime Minister, a major obstacle to a new coalition government will be removed. Yet the various parties are still very fractured, so Gantz will have to jump through many hoops, including some held by the Arab League, in order to form a government. Again, this will not mean democracy for apartheid Israel, but it could be a step towards alleviating some of the pain and suffering of the Palestinians. One does not wish to be too optimistic, however. Gantz has talked of annexing the West Bank.

A strong caution is necessary. A world power in decline is always extremely dangerous, so what either ‘leader’ may do to either ensure his re-election, or go down in spectacular flames, possibly engulfing much of the world, rather than slinking away quietly, as they should, remains to be seen. It is hoped that someone in U.S. governance will be in a position to prevent it, should Trump be removed from office or is defeated in 2020. And in Israel, which relies on the U.S. to finance and support its many war crimes, an incoming coalition government, assuming one can be formed, may be able to restrain Netanyahu. But in both scenarios, there is very little hope to cling to.

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Recently The New York Times featured two op-eds by resident hacks Bret Stephens and Tom Friedman as well as a featured editorial, all on the subject of Syria and how the Trump administration has betrayed the American people. The pieces were published back-to-back over the course of three days, clearly an attempt on the part of the editorial page staff to establish the paper’s “message” on what the war in Syria was and is all about. All the pieces were riddled with inaccuracies and out-and-out fabrications to support the false assertion that the U.S. intervention in Syria was somehow based on a desire to “spread democracy” and freedom while also serving some vaguely defined American national security interests.

The New York Times is not unique in its defense of a hawkish and interventionist foreign policy, but it self-describes as the “newspaper of record” based on its long existence and its location in the media capital of the United States. That means that it reaches a larger audience than most other media and also that it is regarded generally as credible. Therein lies the danger, as Times reporting and opinion pages will definitely have a major impact on how the public and even policymakers will regard certain issues.

The Stephens op-ed and the Times editorial are worth examining, but the tone was set by the first piece to appear, by Friedman, entitled “Trump’s Syria Trifecta: A Win for Putin, a Loss for the Kurds, and Lots of Uncertainty for Our Allies: It’s pure genius!” Even bearing in mind that the Times’s reluctance to ever feature an article favorable to Donald Trump, the title of the piece is particularly scathing.

Friedman began,

“On the eve of the Iraq war, in 2003, Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain addressed a joint session of Congress about America’s foreign policy mission: ‘In some small corner of this vast country, out in Nevada or Idaho or these places I’ve never been to but always wanted to go,’ said Blair, ‘there’s a guy getting on with his life, perfectly happy, minding his own business, saying to you, the political leaders of this country, “Why me, and why us, and why America?” And the only answer is, ‘Because destiny put you in this place in history, in this moment in time, and the task is yours to do.’ Blair is still right about the role that destiny has placed on America’s shoulders, but years later it is also clear that many Americans are exhausted with that role.”

Friedman goes on to claim that

“the job of the president, though, is to balance the understandable desire of Americans to no longer bear every burden and oppose any foe to ensure the survival of freedom with the fact that U.S. interests and values still require us to remain engaged around the world in a sustainable way.” With that mission in mind, he then accuses the White House of having failed to “make fine distinctions, leverage allies, and amplify islands of decency.”

What does Friedman mean? First, that Washington’s use of military force against ISIS, a legitimate and possibly even necessary objective, failed to comprehend the fact that in Syria “ISIS was the enemy of multi-sectarian democracy, and so were Russia, Shiite Iran, Shiite Hezbollah, and the Shiite-Alawite Bashar al-Assad regime. And they and ISIS all deserved one another.” Per Friedman, defeating ISIS was actually counterintuitive, as it would “reduce the pressure on Assad, Iran, Russia, and Hezbollah and enable them to devote all their resources to crushing the last moderate rebels in Idlib, not sharing power with them. . . . I feel terrible for the Kurds, but at least America might get the last laugh on Putin. Trump let Putin win Syria—and the indefinite task of propping up al-Assad’s genocidal regime and managing Iran’s attempts to use Syria as a platform to attack Israel.”

The Times commentator also asserts, as do many in Congress, that removing the Syrian government was good policy because doing otherwise “sen[ds] a message to every U.S. ally: ‘You’d better start making plans to take care of yourselves, because if Russia, China, or Iran decides to come after you or bully you, America does not have your back—unless you’ve paid cash in advance.’ ” He also quotes a self-described and inevitably “expert” Michael Mandelbaum who makes the same point in his book The Rise and Fall of Peace on Earth: “When we suddenly withdraw our support for an ally in one place—with no warning—we call into question our credibility everywhere.” Mandelbaum, it should be noted, is a fixture at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, an institution that one might describe as a breeding ground of neoconservatives.

Friedman fancies himself an expert on the Middle East and, to be sure, he has carved a lucrative career out of that conceit. But his principal argument—that Russia and Iran are enemies of the U.S. that must be opposed wherever they pop up while American troops should also stay engaged worldwide for reasons of credibility—doesn’t really stack up. And he also falls for the “moderate rebels” and Assad as “genocidal” lines, which have been repeatedly debunked.

Friedman does not understand that the United States would be far more respected—and credible—if it were to deal with the rest of the world fairly and honorably rather than blundering around using repeated threats of military intervention. In reality, neither Moscow nor Tehran actually threaten the United States, while it was Washington that was the destabilizing force in Syria by directly and indirectly supporting actual terrorist groups in a bid to overthrow Assad, an effort assisted by Israel, Saudi Arabia, and the Gulf States, which also were supporting the terrorist groups in a bid to maintain chaos. Iran and Russia were only brought in by the legitimate government in Damascus to help defeat ISIS and also al-Qaeda-linked groups like al-Nusra. In spite of Trump’s boasts that the United States defeated ISIS, it was really the hard and bloody work of the Syrian army and its allies who won the day.

Friedman’s belief that the United States must remain engaged worldwide because it is a force for all that is good “to sustain freedom” is, of course, palpable nonsense as the U.S. moves seemingly inexorably towards becoming a police state at home. Afghanistan has not been stabilized after 18 years of occupation, Iraq is experiencing demonstrations and rioting linked to the corruption that the U.S. introduced to the country, and a stable and non-threatening Libya was turned into a dysfunctional haven for terrorists and criminals through Barack Obama’s regime change for that country. And, all of the above taken together as part of the “global war on terror” have killed as many as four million civilians and unleashed a wave of millions more as refugees that the world is currently trying to cope with.

But perhaps the most laughable line in the Friedman piece is his citation of the need to prevent Iran’s using Syria to stage attacks on Israel. The fact is that Israel, which is not at war with Syria, has bombed that country scores of times in the past two years alone while Syria, and its ally Iran, have not even once attacked the Jewish state. To suggest that Friedman entertains a blind spot in a certain direction would be an understatement.

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This article was originally published on American Free Press.

Philip Giraldi is a former CIA counter-terrorism specialist and military intelligence officer and a columnist and television commentator. He is also the executive director of the Council for the National Interest. His other articles appear on the website of “The Unz Review.” He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

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The coup-imposed “Interior Minister” of Bolivia demanded that (“former”) President Morales be jailed for life because of his supposedly “terrorist” activities, which amounts to the weaponization of fear-mongering labels for purely political reasons intended to intimidate his majority-indigenous supporters into stopping their resistance activities against the US-backed regime change.

Arturo Murillo, the coup-imposed “Interior Minister” of Bolivia, said in an exclusive interview with The Guardian over the weekend that (“former”) President Morales should be jailed for life because of his supposedly “terrorist” activities following claims that a recording has surfaced of him allegedly urging his majority-indigenous supporters to set up roadblocks all across the country as a form of resistance against the US-backed regime change. This threatening language amounts to the weaponization of fear-mongering labels for purely political reasons intended to intimidate President Morales’ domestic base into stopping their revolt. The very word “terrorist” is heavily loaded with innuendo and implies someone who is planning to carry out physical violence, something that President Morales and his supporters have no interest in doing unless it’s to defend themselves.

Still, calling him a “terrorist” is also meant to attract international attention, particularly the US’, and get others to pressure Mexico over its recent granting of political asylum to him since the coup “authorities” claim that he’s violating that status by supposedly engaging in political activities. It’s not even so much the alleged recording that they claim has surfaced, but the very fact that he’s been extremely outspoken (especially on Twitter) about the latest developments in his homeland, which they realize is having a tangible impact on the situation there by inspiring his supporters to keep up their resistance. The coup plotters assumed that the immediate imposition of their military dictatorship would be enough to scare the indigenous population into submitting to them, but that was a totally mistaken forecast that failed to take into account their motivations.

There are credible fears that “Bolivia Faces Croatian-Style Ethnic Cleansing & South African-Like Apartheid“, and after 13 years of finally living as equal citizens in their country as a result of President Morales’ unprecedented socio-economic and political reforms, the majority-indigenous population is willing to fight for their rights instead of surrendering to a future of second-class citizenship or worse. Even if President Morales remained silent (which isn’t his nature to do whenever he’s aware of oppression going on anywhere in the world), his supporters would probably have still erected roadblocks and organized mass protests because they literally have everything to do lose unless the regime change is (ideally, peacefully) reversed. Implying that they support a “terrorist” who should “spend the rest of their life in prison” might only incense them more.

It’s well known from the American precedent that peaceful people are sometimes labeled as “terrorists” in order to “justify” the state using forceful means against them, up to and including outright murder, so the coup “authorities” are only further contributing to the threat perception that the majority-indigenous population has of them. That probably won’t succeed in curtailing their protests and might even backfire against them, especially if some of the participants become “radicalized” by this rhetoric and commit to using force against the state before the latter uses it against them personally. That scenario could see the situation rapidly escalating to the point of triggering a more intensified period of civil war than the country is already in, with enormous geostrategic consequences for regional stability and especially the nascent “South American Spring“.

The weaponization of fear-mongering labels such as “terrorist” can therefore be a double-edged sword since it’s obviously intended to be an aggressive infowar attack against the target meant to convey the urgent message of impending violence against them but could also trigger the aforesaid target into using violent means against them first out of self-defense if they’re truly innocent of the “terrorist” charges and feel that they must strike first in order to stand the best chance of survival. Bolivia’s coup “authorities” are playing with fire by deviously labeling President Morales as a “terrorist” and thus implying that his supporters are too since no self-respecting person could accept the “legitimacy” of a state that falsely implies that their support of its democratically elected and legitimate president who was overthrown in a military coup is tantamount to supporting “terrorism”.

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This article was originally published on OneWorld.

Andrew Korybko is an American Moscow-based political analyst specializing in the relationship between the US strategy in Afro-Eurasia, China’s One Belt One Road global vision of New Silk Road connectivity, and Hybrid Warfare. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

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The response to the increasing awareness of the threat of continuing a fossil-fuel driven growth and consumption economic model is a ruthless effort to block out serious reporting on climate change in the media and to downplay is seriousness in education and in the policy debate.

It is inspiring to see youth take leadership roles in the struggle to address climate change, but we have not even started to transform our economy, let alone our civilization.

Sadly, even the most committed climate activists, even those willing to risk prison time, or bodily injury, still find themselves washing with warm water heated by coal or natural gas, eating vegetables that were shipped on diesel-powered cargo ships, transported on trucks powered by diesel fuel, and wrapped in plastics derived from petroleum.

The components in the computers and cell phones that activists use to coordinate their protests, or to write articles about climate change, were produced using coal and other noxious chemicals at factories in India, China or Thailand. The electricity that powers the internet connecting them with fellow activists is equally unclean.

For that matter, the academics who conduct research on the climate change’s impact on our future have their retirement funds tied up in the stocks of companies with direct, or indirect, ties to fossil fuel profits (links that are often not disclosed).

We face the contradiction, of using disposable felt pens made of plastic in factories powered by coal in Malaysia, and transported by petroleum-fueled trucks and airplanes, to write protest signs condemning the fossil fuel industry.

Protest draw attention to hidden truths, but when the marches are over, we return home to a nightmare world that offers no escape from the fossil fuels. We have the choice to eat meat, or not, but there is no option to reject this industrial economy run in accord with the bankrupt ideology of consumption and growth.

But if there were a choice, even if the scale was small at the beginning, the nature of the protest could be expanded so that all our actions, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, became a part of it.

If citizens of the Earth had the opportunity to be a member of an economic system that had absolutely no ties to fossil fuels, or to the money generated by them, then every single action of ethical citizens, from brushing their teeth in the morning to turning out the light in bed at night, would be a form of protest.

Such communities would open the gate to an alternative economy, as opposed to a bit of greenery in the middle of an extractive and predatory economic order.

The next step of our protest must be the creation of local communities, linked together as part of global networks, whose economies are in word and deed 100% fossil-fuel free (FFF). Creating such economic, social and political units at the local level, even if they can only support 100 people, or 500 people at first, will offer the public a viable alternative. Those fossil-fuel free FFF communities will make it possible for those with a deep ethical sense to fully commit to a fossil fuel free Earth in word and in deed—not just “recycling” plastic at the supermarket, but never touching plastic again.

Moreover, the first steps towards FFF (fossil fuel free) communities can be taken immediately. There is no need to wait for some cynical politician to implement a carbon-neutral economy twenty or thirty years in the future.

Creating FFF Communities

Creating FFF (fossil fuel free) communities will require considerable bravery and sacrifice at first, and the number willing to commit will be limited. But we have that critical mass already. Remember, because 100% FFF (fossil-fuel free) communities will not be dependent for food, for energy or for finance on corporations, or banks tied to fossil fuels in any way, they will be able to speak freely in a manner that communities cannot today. Their power will be far greater than their initial scale would suggest.

Such will be a model for other communities around the world, and they will produce journalism and educational systems that others cannot because their dependency on funding linked to fossil fuels compromises their efforts from the start.

It will not be long before small-scale FFF communities will become powerful economic and political players capable of taking on multinational investment banks and oil companies and can offer a vision for an immediate and unconditional end to the use of fossil fuels-rather of a vague and open-ended plan to phase out fossil fuels in a manner that does not impact profits.

Scientific data shows that the date given in reports of governments and corporations of 2050 for the creation of a carbon-neutral economy is laughably late. Many experts write that we have only a matter of years, or months, to avoid a scenario in which billions of humans (and other species) will die, whether from floods and storms, from rising seas, spreading deserts, from starvation, and unbearable heat, or from hybrid wars waged for control of remaining scarce resources.

Although the main-stream media covers protests and declarations by governments of a climate emergency, there has been zero change for the majority. You may see a solar panel go up on an occasional house, but there are few laws even being considered (let alone being enforced) that require all food be locally and organically produced, all buildings be fully insulated and equipped with solar and wind power, and all transportation to powered by 100% renewable energy.

We must gather together a small group of people who will pledge to support the community, and each other, for the long term, and to rely for their needs exclusively on the FFF products produced by the community at the local level (until 100% FFF transportation systems are established). If we have activists who are willing to be arrested, we can find among them those who are willing to make a commitment to a FFF community.

Such a commitment must be a serious one. There must be a binding contract that commits new members to the community and commits the community to those members. FFF communities cannot operate in accord with the superficial culture of consumption, distraction and short-term thinking that got us in this trouble in the first place.

Perhaps new members of the community will commit their assets to the FFF community in return for a commitment from the community to care for them for a lifetime. Or some other form of deep social and ethical commitment is possible.

The fossil-fuel free community will provide a model, first on a small scale, for what human society could be if we embrace a consistently sustainable approach. We have few models now—and that is no accident.

The core of the economy of the FFF community will be organic farms that produce 100% organic food and transport it without the use of fossil fuels. At the beginning, citizens of the communities will encounter a significant drop in the diversity of their diet, but through their efforts and sacrifices, they will lay the foundations for a truly fossil fuel free economy. The food will be grown at home, on roofs and in empty lots in the neighborhood, or be brought in from local farms.

A revolution in thinking is essential: we must recognize that working together with neighbors to create a society free of fossil fuels is at least as important as writing articles for newspapers, lobbying the rich and powerful or giving (fossil-fuel tainted) money to environmental NGOs. The struggle to create a community free of fossil fuels in the full sense (no plastics, no products produced using fossil fuels, no products transported using fossil fuels) can be the defining effort for those who are involved.

Food should be sold (or exchanged through barter) in communal markets that encourage collaboration between farmer and citizen (rather than a transaction between a corporation and consumer). Those markets can serve as the foundation for new patterns of economic exchange entirely detached from fossil fuels and they can be expanded across the region, and then around the world. There is nothing radical about such organic farming communities. They are how humans managed to survive for thousands of years without destroying the climate.

We can find models in the communities of the Amish and the Mennonites. Although we grew up considering these groups who far, without machinery or artificial fertilizers as odd, they alone have pursued a sustainable economy while the rest of the United States embraced an insane system of industrialized agricultural production tied to global trade.

Organic farming for the immediate community will provide youth real jobs in agriculture and distribution that will be both paid and morally dignified. The ability to create food which is not contributing to the destruction of our Earth is a moral action that can inspire many to join in the effort.

The creation of fossil-fuel free (FFF) transportation for food and other goods is the other critical condition for such communities. Our citizens must understand that vowing to use only FFF transportation offered, even if it is profoundly limited at first, must not be viewed as unpleasant inconvenience, but rather as a pledge of moral bravery. We cannot wait for politicians to provide such “clean” energy (as politicians are easily persuaded to consider natural gas, electricity and even nuclear power to be clean).

Another critical part of the FFF community will be manufacturing. We must completely rethink manufacturing: the production of, and the use of, the necessary items for life. We must ask first how we will produce all the items we use without ever employing fossil fuels or plastic. At the same time, we must definitively end the promotion of, and consumption of, frivolous and status-related products.

Manufacturing for the FFF community should start out 100% local (until we have 100% FFF transportation we can use to link communities in the region, and across the world).

Eliminating fossil fuels means that we must cut back on how we use daily and we must manufacture items that will last for a long time. We need desks and chairs, bookshelves and chopping boards, shirts and sweaters, cups and pots that will last for 20-50 years, or longer. That shift in our economy means both an end to a commercial, consumption-driven culture and a focus on well-made products that are built to last, and that are valued for what they are, not what images they are associated with. No IKEA or GAP will be found in FFF communities.

The production and the distribution of 100% fossil fuel free products will create long-term jobs for our children and for our neighbors’ children. Manufacturing must be local and the return of crafts that produce durable goods will contribute much to our environment. We must move away from the dangerous concepts of competitiveness, free trade and industrialization. The misguided concept of growth must go also.

Changing culture, concepts, and attitudes

Fossil-Fuel Free Communities must be free of fossil fuel propaganda and the ideological assumptions planted by corporations that we cannot live meaningful lives without consuming large amounts of energy, seen or unseen. The response to climate change starts with an attitudinal revolution, not with progressive innovations in technology and governance. The FFF community must be a space wherein such a cultural transformation can take place without commercials that promote automobiles and the thoughtless consumption of food.

Not only must all citizens comprehend that climate change is an immediate and overwhelming threat in the community, we must create a culture wherein the practices required to respond, whether shoveling mulch, recycling glass and scrap metal, collecting human feces for use as fertilizer transporting food by cart, or generating electricity on an exercise bike (which is also good exercise) are perceived as an ethical imperative, as the valuable contribution to society. The cult of the self and immediate gratification promoted by a commercialized economy must be replaced by a culture based on moral philosophy, frugality, humility and the simple virtue of participation in society.

This shift is not entirely “progressive.” In a sense it is also a return to conservative values like modesty, frugality, and the importance of intellectual and spiritual engagement. The larger these communities become the more powerful will be this alternative to the commercial culture that dominates globally. We must unmask the false assumptions promoted by the insidious ideology of modernity that the human condition is improved by electrification, consumption, a vast increase in possessions, urbanization and transportation via private automobiles and airplanes. Unless we challenge the larger ideological framework, we cannot bring about the fundamental shift we require for survival.

Going green must not be limited to cosmetic changes in an economy that is based on the consumption of goods and services and that is rooted in the production and distribution of those fossil fuels.

We must make visible the hidden hierarchy behind the myth of modernity, one that is hammered home for all citizens in the movies (and in the commercials that come before and after them) and in news reports that we watch. The insidious assumption is that those who employ I Phones and who work multinational corporations, those who are shuttled around from capital to capital around the world in expensive automobiles, or luxurious planes, those who live in spacious homes and eat fine meals, are somehow doing more important work than those who transport goods, who clean our public spaces, who grow our food and cook our meals.

The criminal waste of resources, the pollution of our environment by fossil fuels and the concentration of wealth in a tiny handful of people is presented in the commercial media as a moral good.

The FFF community also must undertake a complete reform of the misleading concepts of real estate, private property and ownership that have done so much damage. Our society is controlled by contract law and corporate law which citizens are made completely ignorant of by the media. But we have no binding contracts between members of our community to help each other, or to preserve the ecosystem. The FFF community will be the complete opposite.

A pledge of loyalty by those joining the FFF community to end their ties to fossil fuels should be central to membership. We need the equivalent of a village contract, once central to agricultural communities in Europe, Asia, the Americas before the promulgation of the concept of real estate and the concentration of capital in the hands of the few. Such a village contract should spell out in a binding, rather than symbolic, the manner the responsibilities that each individual has to contribute to the production of food, tools, furniture, transportation and governance, and the commitment of the community to provide for the members of the community for a lifetime.

Reviving the Constitution of the Iroquois Nations, which made the relationship of human settlements with the environment central to governance, can be help us to overcome the legal distortions born of a focus on finance, property rights and real estate.

Currently, it is perfectly acceptable for progressives to participate in protests about climate change while investing their assets in companies making profits related to fossil fuels. We must demand zero tolerance and make sure all investment is tied of the community’s activities and tied to the creation of a FFF economy.

Membership in a fossil-fuel free community must be open to everyone and not segregated in accord with assets, level of education or cultural sensitivities. We must abandon the delusion that somehow a green economy focused on the upper middle class, those who can afford Teslas or big layouts for solar panels, will save humanity. Everyone should have access to information about the climate crisis as part of their education and of the media which surrounds them.

It is as critical that we explain the climate crisis to the poor and to the working class in terms that they can understand and to make a commitment to help them obtain quality educations, and economic opportunities, in return for their participation in the response. Addressing climate change by gala dinners, handouts from billionaires, and other stunts cannot effect a transformation of our society.

The establishment of our own FFF currency can be immensely helpful in this process. Our currency will represent the contribution of the individual to society and be backed by agricultural products, and other manufactured goods, produced in the community. That currency, even if extremely limited in its use at first, will have tremendous value for us in that it will not be linked to fossil fuels at any level. That means that as that FFF currency expands its use across the local economy, and eventually extends to the global economy, it can serve as currency without any links to fossil fuels, and the core of a similarly independent financial system.

The greatest travesty of our age is the silence about the link between global trade and climate change. Shipping goods across the Earth in the search of financial advantages for investment banks does tremendous damage to the environment because of pointless carbon emissions and the destruction of forests and jungles to produce factory farms and just plain factories in the eternal search for profit at the expense of nature. The inhuman mass production of foodstuffs (especially of meat) that is pushed in global trade does long-term damage to soil, forests and rivers and oceans. Moreover, the industrial approach to production and distribution of food and products has destroyed local economies and encouraged an unprecedented concentration of wealth. Fossil-fuel free communities offer the citizen a way to opt out of this destructive nightmare for the first time.

Conclusion

We witness a battle in the media, and in discussion groups, between those who argue that we must focus on changing our habits and our thinking first as a means of saving our Earth and those who hold that because most emissions can be traced back to a handful of multinational corporations we must first deal with them first, rather than allowing us to naively assume that because our own lives have less of a carbon footprint we are saving the world.

Although there is a danger that we can be distracted from the deep contradictions in our economy if we become overly myopic in our pursuit of personal sustainability that should not lead us to underestimate the importance of changing how we act daily. As the number of people out there increase who will not compromise on certain principles, we will start to shift the global culture and that culture will radiate up even to the most protected elites deeply imbedded in the fossil fuel economy.

That said, the best route is to combine the two strategies: to make personal choices into community choices and to make that community into an economic unit which will serve as the building block for an alternative economy from the ground up.

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Idlib liberated villages in the province’s eastern countryside are being rehabilitated by state’s workshops which helped the return of the majority of the IDPs to their homes.

Over the past 1.5 years since cleaning these villages form NATO terrorists, and despite the hardship due to the sanctions and continuous terror threats by al-Qaeda and their chief Turkish Erdogan, the public workshops are working on restoring the living conditions to the state it was prior to the US-waged War of Terror against the country.

The infrastructure was completed destroyed with Erdogan stealing power plants, and his al-Qaeda FSA terrorists destroying the roads, clinics, schools, utilities, and even the fresh drinking water networks.

Now, thanks to these state’s efforts, 70% of the displaced Syrian families have returned and returning at an average of 100 – 200 families a day to their homes in the terror-free villages in Idlib.

The following report by Saer Salim of the Lebanese al-Mayadeen news channel adds some info:

The transcript of the English translation of the above report

The countryside liberated from the Idlib governorate in Syria is witnessing several government projects to restore life to liberated areas.

About 70% of the people of the liberated villages in the eastern countryside of Idlib have returned to it during the past two years. Since then, service workshops have continued through the rehabilitation and rehabilitation of infrastructure.

The technical study was prepared for this project and we have been granted this subsidy of 110 million Syrian pounds for reconstruction with government support and with the support of the ministry and the maintenance of this project.

As part of the Government’s reconstruction plan in the liberated area of Sinjar, we have 3 projects, two projects have been implemented and the third is being executed.

Service workshops of various government sectors carry out their work in paving roads, extending water networks and lighting public utilities with alternative energy in the liberated villages, It also works to install doors and windows for damaged houses in these villages to ease the financial burden on the people and encourage the rest to return to their homes and help them to rehabilitate them.

When citizens returned a year and a half ago, there was no infrastructure that existed as a result of terrorist acts. thanks to God after 1.5 years the roads paving projects are being concluded.

Hawa’s municipality projects have served more than 8,000 people and the return of residents to safe areas is increasing daily by 100 to 200 families.

The Syrian government is working on new service projects such as installing the electrical network, activating health clinics and providing living necessities for citizens returning to their homes.

Rehabilitation and opening of courts, agricultural departments, petrol stations, and bakeries have contributed to the revitalization of the movement in the liberated villages east of Idlib which was the main reason for the return of the population to their homes.

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Meanwhile, the USA and its European stooges and regional cronies continue to impose and tighten their illegal draconian sanctions against the Syrian state with Trump forces turning into mercenaries and bandits looting Syria’s much-needed oil to help rebuild the country.

Not only they sponsored the terror that caused all the mayhem in Syria, but NATO and stooges also block the country’s trade, invade it from all sides, sponsor al-Qaeda and Israeli IDF terrorists bombingits cities, and steal its resources. If there’s anything the uncivilized West will be remembered for is their Ottoman-style ongoing genocide of the Syrian people, but we will prevail, just like how Syrians have seen throughout their history all the other empires rise and when those empires harmed Syria they were doomed.

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According to a PressTV Report of 24 November, 2019, Iran and China are working on a trade or barter deal that would circumvent US sanctions. It would bypass US-dollar denominated transactions, exchanging Iranian oil for Chinese goods and services and investments. The head of the Tehran Chamber of Commerce, Industries, Mines and Agriculture (TCCIMA), Masoud Khansari told Teheran’s Tasnim news agency, on 19 November 2019 that “The mechanism, aiming to increase economic exchanges between Iran and China, is in the process of being finalized and implemented.” He meant indeed, a barter deal between the two countries, avoiding a monetary exchange, is being worked out.

This is nothing new. Already in July 2011, the Financial Times reported that du to US sanctions against Iran, China, Iran’s largest hydrocarbon client was unable to pay Iran in cash, as monetary transactions were blocked. China had at that time accumulated at leas US$ 30 billion in unpaid bills, which deprived Iran from necessary hard currency to purchase goods, and mainly medication and medical equipment from countries that were either daring to go against the US sanctions, or clandestinely on the black market.

The case was similar with India which, together with China purchased then almost 50% of Iran’s oil – Iran’s lifeblood. While India exports almost nothing to Iran, China is a key exporter of a myriad of goods and services to Iran, including building infrastructure and investing in expansion of Iran’s oil sector. That’s when the two countries started making barter arrangements.

In the meantime, agreement was reached in July 2015 on Iran’s Nuclear Deal, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) which for a short time lifted all sanctions, until on 8 May 2018 President Trump canceled Washington’s engagement in the deal – most likely on the behest of Israel – and new deadly US sanctions were imposed, stronger and more brutal as before – “the strongest ever sanctions imposed on any nation” – Trump boasted. And with these sanctions came the threat of punishment for every country that would do business with Iran, including the European Union members who were part of signing the Nuclear Deal, Germany, UK, France.

While at the outset the Europeans did not want to appear as Washington vassals – and more – their corporations had already signed new business deals with Iran and were not keen on canceling them, The EU had attempted to design an international payment system outside of the dollar-dominated SWIFT transfer system, the Instrument in Support of Trade Exchanges (INSTEX). Designed in January 2019, it is a special European transfer system, serving only European purposes to trade with Iran outside of US-dollar controlled sanctions. However, to this date not one single transaction has been carried out under INSTEX, mostly because of European’s are captive of an unexplainable puppetry dependence on Washington. The leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei called Instex “a bitter joke”.

In comes China – again, establishing a barter deal with Iran. A TCCIMA delegation recently visited Beijing and concluded a barter trade agreement that would be carried out both through mainland China and through Hong Kong. Among other potential deals for Iran petrol and gas deliveries, are investments in Iran’s power sector, by Chinese companies in, for example, energy and infrastructure projects. Rejecting US objections, Beijing says, dealing with Iran was legitimate under any international law. Iran is an integral link in the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).

Earlier this year, Chinese President Xi Jinping said Beijing was seeking to develop a “comprehensive strategic partnership” with Tehran; and that “No matter how the international and regional situation changes, China’s resolve to develop a comprehensive strategic partnership with Iran will remain unchanged.” President Xi emphasized that the two sides should work together, “accelerate the building of a new type of international order and a community with a shared future for mankind,” – A Community with a shared future for mankind is indeed China’s long-term objective for decades to come. It converges with those of the BRI. An objective towards a multi-polar world and a peaceful coexistence among nations.

Barter deals do not provide Iran with the necessary cash to purchase needed imports. There are other avenues than barter, for a rapprochement outside the dollar-domain in trade between Beijing and Tehran, or Moscow and Tehran, for that matter. It should be relatively simple to open swap accounts between the Chinese and the Iranian central banks and to use the Chinese Interbank Payment System (CIPS) for monetary transfers. Such a solution should also leave Iran with sufficient revenues to pay for her imports. The reason such options may not be pursued with more vigor is perhaps that Iran is still very much divided between those Euro-US-centered Atlantists and those Iranians who follow the Ayatollah’s vision – towards a future in the East. A strong Fifth Column in Iran is also omni-present and rears its ugly neck when ever an opportunity arises, like the recent 50% hike in gasoline prices.

Its is a mystery for most observers why the gasoline price increase was not announced and explained by President Rouhani or Iranian Authorities prior to being implemented. It may have prevented much of the violence that is as of this day lingering on, causing bloodshed and mayhem. Most anywhere in the world, people would take to the streets if they would be hit with an unexplained price hike of a major commodity. It is as if the price for bread would double over night – an uproar foretold. That the opportunity would be taken advantage of by foreign-instigated violent elements was also foreseeable. And in this case, I dare say, preventable.

Demonstrations began peacefully and then suddenly on day two turned violent. It does not require rocket science to figure out that the violent was planted by outside forces trained and paid for by such notorious organizations like the NED (National Endowment for Democracy), the extended arm of CIA, funded with hundreds of millions from the US State Department. Those are the same people who are funding the unrests in Hong Kong. Their brand is chaos, crisis and destabilization – that’s what they do all over the world where ‘regime change’ is on Washington’s agenda. These forces are a clear impediment for Iran to go full-fledged their way to the East, associating wholeheartedly with the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) and de-coupling from the western economy.

In the face of a deeply divided Iran, barter deals with China, and why not with Russia, may be a first step towards a more serious move to de-dollarize, to decouple from the west. Iranian people deserve to live well, deserve to get out from under the misery-imposing boots of Washington. Even the Euro-centered and Washingtonites must recognize the US-western hypocrisy and realize that the US will never let go until she has a total grasp on Iran’s resources – that a resolute move to the east will give them relief from shortages of food, medicine – and western oppression and colonization.

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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 21^st 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.

Featured image is from Zero Hedge

Of relevance to the ongoing debate on the health impacts of cell phones. First published on July 10, 2019

A landmark Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the City of Berkeley’s cell phone right to know ordinance rejecting industries argument that the ordinance violates the first amendment.  The Berkeley ordinance requires retailers to inform consumers that cell phones emit radiation and that “if you carry or use your phone in a pants or shirt pocket or tucked into a bra when the phone is ON and connected to a wireless network, you may exceed the federal guidelines for exposure to RF radiation.” In upholding this decision, the panel concluded that the public health issues at hand were “substantial” and that the “text of the Berkeley notice was literally true,” and “uncontroversial.”

Further, the panel determined that the Berkeley ordinance did not constitute preemption.

“Far from conflicting with federal law and policy, the Berkeley ordinance complemented and enforced it.”

The panel held that Berkeley’s required disclosure simply alerted consumers to the safety disclosures that the Federal Communications Commission required, and directed consumers to federally compelled instructions in their user manuals providing specific information about how to avoid excessive exposure.

Industry is expected to appeal for a full court en banc review, but this reviewing “panel concluded that CTIA had little likelihood of success based on conflict preemption.”

In response to this court ruling CTIA-v-Berkeley-9th-Circuit-opinion-7-2-2019 Devra Davis, PhD, MPH, President of Environmental Health Trust (EHT)  issued the following statement:

“Congratulations to the hard-working indomitable Town Council and Citizens of Berkeley, California for upholding The Right to Know.  More than a decade in the making this decision assures the right to know that cell phones emit radiation and that when the phone is touching the body levels can be exceeded.

Democracy rests on an informed public that freely consents to be governed.  Reliable information is key to the functioning of our system. The right to know is essential to all citizens. And the duty to warn about potential hazards is an obligation of any company. Wherever the right to know and the duty to warn are not followed democracy itself is imperiled. 

Thanks to the Berkeley ordinance billions more will learn that cell phones are two-way microwave radios and our bodies absorb this microwave radiation. New scientific studies, the work of the Phonegate Association and investigations from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation confirm that cellphones can exceed the US FCC limits up to eleven times when held next to the body.

We at the Environmental Health Trust want to extend a great big thank you to Professor Lawrence Lessig of Harvard Law. And to all the many individuals who have dedicated their time to this important work including Joel Moskowitz PhD, Ellie Marks, Llyod Morgan, and many more.” 

The Berkeley Cell Phone Right To Know Ordinance has been in effect since  March 21, 2016 and requires retailers post a notice with the following text.

“The City of Berkeley requires that you be provided the following notice: 

“To assure safety, the Federal Government requires that cell phones meet radiofrequency (RF) exposure guidelines. If you carry or use your phone in a pants or shirt pocket or tucked into a bra when the phone is ON and connected to a wireless network, you may exceed the federal guidelines for exposure to RF radiation. Refer to the instructions in your phone or user manual for information about how to use your phone safely.”

Dr. Davis, Visiting Professor of Medicine, The Hebrew University, and the author of more than 220 scientific publications, is also the author of Disconnect–the truth about cellphone radiation.  Prof. Davis testified on this issue before the Berkeley City Council in 2011 and 2015  alongside Joel Moskowitz, PhD, the Director of the Center for Family and Community Health at the University of California, Berkeley and Lawrence Lessig of Harvard Law who has represented Berkeley pro bono. In addition, Davis also testified in the 2009 Congressional Hearings on cell phone radiation regarding the fine print warnings on cell phone radiation buried in cell phones, urging public access to that information.

Wells’ snide remarks were obviously driven by double standards whereby the US diplomat is making it clear that only Western loans to developing countries are allowed, not Chinese ones.

As the concentration of atmospheric CO₂ has risen to 408 ppm and the total greenhouse gas level, including methane and nitrous oxide, combine to near 500 parts per million CO2-equivalent, the stability threshold of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, currently melting at an accelerated rate, has been exceeded. The consequent expansion of tropics and the shift of climate zones toward the shrinking poles lead to increasingly warm and dry conditions under which fire storms, currently engulfing large parts of South America (Fig. 1), California, Alaska, Siberia, Sweden, Spain, Portugal, Greece, Angola, Australia and elsewhere have become a dominant factor in the destruction of terrestrial habitats.

Fig. 1. Sensors on NASA satellites Terra and Aqua captured a record of thousands of points of fire in Brazil in late August. Credit: NASA Earth Observatory

Since the 18^th century, combustion of fossil fuels has led to the release of more than 910 billion tons of carbon dioxide (GtCO₂) by human activity, raising CO₂ to about 408.5 ppm (Fig. 2), as compared to the 280-300 ppm range prior to the onset of the industrial age. By the early-21^st century the current CO₂ rise rate has reached of 2 to 3 ppm/year.

Fig. 2.  Global temperature and carbon dioxide. Climate Central.

Allowing for the transient albedo enhancing effects of sulphur dioxide and other aerosols, mean global temperature has potentially reached ~2.0 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial temperatures. Current greenhouse gas forcing and global mean temperatures are approaching Miocene-like (5.3-23 million years-ago) composition.

The current carbon dioxide rise rate exceeds the fastest rates estimated for the K-T asteroid impact (66.4 million years-ago) and the PETM (Paleocene-Eocene Temperature Maximum) hyperthermal event (55.9 million years ago) by an order of magnitude (Fig. 3). The current growth rate of atmospheric greenhouse gases, in particular over the last 70 years or so, may appear gradual in our lifetime but it  constitutes an extreme event in the recorded history of Earth.

Fig. 3. Cenozoic CO₂ and temperature rise rates. Current rise rates of CO₂ (2.86 ppm CO₂/year) and temperature (0.15-0.20°C per decade since 1975) associated with extreme weather events raise doubt regarding gradual linear climate projections. Instead, chaotic climate conditions may arise from the clash between northward-shifting warm air masses which intersect the weakened undulating Arctic jet stream boundary and freezing polar air fronts penetrating Siberia, North America and Europe.

The definition of a “tipping point” in the climate system is a threshold which, once exceeded, can lead to large changes in the state of the system, or where the confluence of individual factors combines into a single stream. The term “tipping element” describes subcontinental-scale subsystems of the Earth system that are susceptible to being forced into a new irreversible state by small perturbations. In so far as a tipping point can be identified in current developments of the climate system, the weakening of the Arctic boundary, indicated by slowing down and increased disturbance of the jet stream heralds a likely tipping point, an example being the recent ‘Beast from the East” freeze in northern Europe and North America (Fig. 4).

A report by the National Academy Press 2011 states:

“As the planet continues to warm, it may be approaching a critical climate threshold beyond which rapid (decadal-scale) and potentially catastrophic changes may occur that are not anticipated.”

Direct evidence for changing climate patterns is provided by the expansion of the tropics and migration of climate zones toward the poles, estimated at a rate of approximately 56-111 km per decade. As the dry subtropical zones shift toward the poles, droughts worsen and overall less rain falls in temperate regions. Poleward shifts in the average tracks of tropical and extratropical cyclones are already happening. This is likely to continue as the tropics expand further. As extratropical cyclones move, they shift rain away from temperate regions that historically rely on winter rainfalls for their agriculture and water supply. Australia is highly vulnerable to expanding tropics as about 60 percent of the continent lies north of 30°S.

Low-lying land areas, including coral islands, delta and low coastal and river valleys would be flooded due to sea level rise to Miocene-like (5.3-23 million years ago) sea levels of approximately 40±15 meters above pre-industrial levels. Accelerated flow of ice melt water flow from ice sheets into the oceans is reducing temperatures over tracts in the North Atlantic and circum-Antarctic oceans. Strong temperature contrasts between cold polar-derived fronts and warm tropical-derived air masses lead to extreme weather events, retarding habitats, in particular over coastal regions. As partial melting of the large ice sheets proceeds the Earth’s climate zones continue to shift polar-ward (Environmental Migration Portal, 2015). This results in an expansion of tropical regions such as existed in the Miocene, reducing the size of polar ice sheets and temperate climate zones.

Fig. 4. The cold fronts penetrating Europe from Siberia and the North Atlantic and North America from the Arctic, 2018. UK Met Office.

According to Berger and Loutre (2002) the effect of high atmospheric greenhouse gas levels would delay the next ice age by tens of thousands of years, during which chaotic tropical to hyper-tropical conditions including extreme weather events would persist over much of the Earth, until atmospheric CO₂ and insolation subside. Humans are likely to survive in relatively favorable parts of Earth, such as sub-polar regions and sheltered mountain valleys, where cooler conditions would allow flora and fauna to persist.

To try and avoid a global calamity abrupt reduction in carbon emissions is essential, but since the high level of CO₂-equivalent is activating amplifying feedbacks from land and ocean, global attempts to down-draw about of 50 to 100 ppm of CO₂ from the atmosphere, using every effective negative emissions, is essential. Such efforts would  include streaming air through basalt and serpentine, biochar cultivation, sea weed sequestration, reforestation, sodium hydroxide pipe systems and other methods.

But while $trillions continue to be poured into preparation of future wars, currently no government is involved in any serious attempt at the defense of life on Earth.

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Dr Andrew Glikson, Earth and climate scientist, ANU Planetary Science Institute, ANU Climate Change Institute. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

For most people nowadays, their smartphone is within arm’s reach 24 hours a day. It’s in their pocket while they’re at work, it’s in their hand on the train ride home and it’s on their bedside table as they go to sleep. With this level of proximity and usage, many can’t quite shake the niggling feeling that they might be risking damage to themselves in the long run.

While conclusive longitudinal research on the effects of cell phone radiation is still hard to come by, for those looking to hedge their bets, Statista’s Martin Armstrong shows in the infographics below, the phones that emit the most (and least) radiation when held to the ear while calling.

The German Federal Office for Radiation Protection (Bundesamt für Strahlenschutz) has a comprehensive database of smartphones – new and old – and the level of radiation they emit.

Following the criteria set for this chart (see footnotes), the smartphones creating the lowest level of radiation are the Samsung Galaxy Note8 and the ZTE Axon Elite – with a specific absorption rate of 0.17 watts per kilogram.

You will find more infographics at Statista

In fact, alongside Nokia, Samsung handsets feature prominently, with eight of the smartphones on this ranking coming from the South Korean company.

This contrasts starkly with their major rival Apple. Two iPhones occupy a place in the list of phones which emit the most radiation, compared to none from Samsung, but, as Statista’s Martin Armstrong notes, the current smartphone creating the highest level of radiation is the Mi A1 from Chinese vendor Xiaomi.

You will find more infographics at Statista

Another Xiaomi phone is in second place – the Mi Max 3. In fact, Chinese companies are represented heavily in this list, accounting for 7 of the top 15 handsets. Premium Apple phones such as the iPhone 7 and the iPhone 8 are also here to be seen, though, as are the latest Pixel handsets from Google.

While there is no universal guideline for a ‘safe’ level of phone radiation, the German certification for environmental friendliness ‘Der Blaue Engel’ (Blue Angel) only certifies phones which have a specific absorption rate of less than 0.60 watts per kilogram.

All of the phones shown in the second chart above come in at more than double this benchmark.

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The Syrian Army is developing its advance on positions of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham and other radical groups in Greater Idlib.

Following the liberation of Misherfah in southern Idlib, the army pushed militants back from the villages of Um Khalakhil, Dahret Zarzour as well as al-Sayeer and al-Musheirfeh farms. Government forces also advanced on al-Farjah, where clashes are now ongoing.

Pro-militant sources claim that intense airstrikes by the Syrian Air Force and the Russian Aerospace Forces were the main reason of the army success. Pro-government sources argue that the participation of the 25th Special Mission Forces (formerly the Tiger Forces) is the corner stone of the operation.

The Russian military has deployed a special unit of military medics to northeastern Syria in order to provide assistance to locals, the Defense Ministry’s Zvezda TV reported on November 25. The unit with all needed supplies and meds was deployed by a Mi-8 helicopter. According to the report, the medical point established near Kobani allow to provide medical assistance to about 100 people per day.

At the same time,.  along the agreed safe-zone area. The recent patrols came without any notable provocations by Kurdish radicals. Their leadership likely realized that they put themselves on the edge of the start of a new Turkish military operation by their own actions.

The Turkish National Defense Ministry announced that its forces had found 683 rocket launchers and 93 cases of handmade explosives were seized in Ras al-Ayn, which was captured as a part of Operation Peace Spring. The Turkish side did not comment on recent attempts of pro-Turkish armed groups to advance towards Ayn Issa.

The situation in northeastern Syria remains tense.

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The Problem with Israeli Settlements Is Not that They Are Illegal. It’s that They Are Immoral.

By Prof. Peter Beinart, November 26, 2019

Yesterday the Trump administration said Israeli settlements in the West Bank don’t violate international law. That’s absurd. Among international lawyers, the consensus that settlements are illegal rivals the consensus among international scientists that humans contribute to climate change. As UCLA’s Dov Waxman has pointed out, the legal advisor to Israel’s own foreign ministry admitted that “civilian settlement in the administered territories contravenes explicit provisions of the Fourth Geneva Convention” after Israel conquered the West Bank in 1967.

Eroding Free Expression in Israel Updated

By Stephen Lendman, November 26, 2019

Like the US and other Western societies, democracy in Israel is pure fantasy, the notion abhorred by its ruling authorities.

Ordinary Jews are exploited to benefit privileged ones. Separate and unequal is official policy.

Arab citizens are considered 5th column threats, Arab Knesset members treated like potted plants, Occupied Palestinians reviled as enemies of the state, Gazans harmed most of all — suffocating under a politicized medieval siege.

Speech, press, and academic freedoms in Israel are gravely endangered.

Is Netanyahu Ready to Inflame War to Escape His Legal Troubles?

By Jonathan Cook, November 26, 2019

The decision to indict Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on three separate criminal counts pushes the country’s already unprecedented electoral stalemate into the entirely uncharted territory of a constitutional crisis.

There is no legal precedent for a sitting prime minister facing a trial – in Netanyahu’s case, for bribery, fraud and breach of trust. Former Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert was charged with corruption in 2009 but only after he had resigned from office.

Pompeo Gives Away the Palestinian West Bank

By Philip Giraldi, November 26, 2019

Mike Pompeo’s latest concession to the war criminals in charge of Israel, clearly intended to boost the electoral chances of Benjamin Netanyahu, is only the most recent dose of the Secretary of State’s falsehood piled on fiction. It is generally assumed that the move to help Bibi by interfering in Israeli politics has been made in an effort to have Tel Aviv reciprocate by putting pressure on its many American fellow travelers in the media and congress to go easier on Trump in the impeachment saga. And Trump would also expect additional reciprocity when he runs again in 2020. Even though Netanyahu, who has been indicted over bribery and fraud, will not be able to shift many liberal Jewish votes, he will be able to get allies like mega billionaire Sheldon Adelson to pony up tens of millions of dollars to support the GOP campaign.

Netanyahu’s Real Crimes

By James J. Zogby, November 26, 2019

After years of investigation and months of delay, Israel’s Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit formally indicted Benjamin Netanyahufor crimes ranging from his violation of public trust to bribery and fraud. Israel’s apologists will argue that the fact that a sitting Prime Minister has been charged with crimes against the state and people presents compelling evidence of the country’s democracy and commitment to the rule of law. This is the very point that Mandelblit made in announcing the indictments – “The public interest requires that we live in a country where no one is above the law.” However, this is only partially true since it appears that in Israel the principles of democracy or the rule of law only apply to Israeli Jews or the interests of the state, itself. In fact, Netanyahu’s entire sordid career is evidence of the selectiveness of Israelis’ sense of justice.

Attacking Palestine’s Future. “Omnipresent are the Prison Guard Towers, the Barbed Wire, the Israeli Soldiers”

By Greg Shupak, November 25, 2019

The night before my talk at Birzeit University near Ramallah, a group of undercover Israeli forces broke into its campus and kidnapped three Palestinian students.

Persecuting students in this manner is part of a larger pattern as is Israel’s routine killing and maiming of Palestinian children, 44 of whom it shot on 25 October in Gaza.

The implications of these abductions and shooting sprees go beyond the direct physical and psychological harm to victims themselves and the agony and fear Israel inflicts on Palestinian families and communities.

International Law Is Clear on One Point: Israel’s Settlements Are Illegal

By Richard Falk, November 25, 2019

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo made headlines around the world this week in announcing that the US had shifted its position, and no longer viewed Israeli settlements as a violation of international law.

In one of the stupider public statements of our time, Pompeo explained that “arguments about who is right and wrong as a matter of international law will not bring peace”. It is stupid, first, because there is no genuine argument about the unlawfulness of the settlements; until the US spoke out of turn, Israel was alone in defending their legality.

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Featured image is from Another Day in the Empire

Aterrou na base USA/NATO, em Sigonella, na Sicília, depois de um voo de 22 horas a partir da base aérea de Palmdale, na Califórnia, o primeiro drone do sistema AGS (Alliance Ground Surveillance) da NATO, uma versão aperfeiçoada do drone Global Hawk dos EUA (Falcão Global). De Sigonella, principal base operacional, este e mais quatro aviões do mesmo tipo com pilotagem remota, apoiada por diferentes estações terrestres móveis, permitirão “vigiar”, ou seja, espiar vastas áreas terrestres e marítimas do Mediterrâneo e de África, do Médio Oriente e do Mar Negro.

Os drones NATO teleguiados de Sigonella, capazes de voar durante 16.000 km a uma altitude 18.000 m, irão transmitir para a base os dados recolhidos. Estes, depois de serem analisados pelos operadores de mais de 20 estações, serão inseridos na rede criptografada, chefiada pelo Supremo Comandante Aliado na Europa, sempre um general USA, nomeado pelo Presidente dos Estados Unidos.

O sistema AGS, que se tornará operacional na primeira metade de 2020, será integrado no Hub de Direcção Estratégica para o Sul: o centro de Serviços Secretos/Inteligência que, no quartel general  da NATO, em Lago Patria (Nápoles), sob comando USA, tem a tarefa de recolher e analisar informações funcionais para operações militares, sobretudo, em África e no Médio Oriente.

A principal base para o lançamento dessas operações, efectuadas, principalmente, em segredo, com drones de ataque e forças especiais, é a de Sigonella, onde estão localizados os drones US Reaper, armados com mísseis e bombas guiadas por laser e satélite. Os drones de ataque e forças especiais, enquanto em acção, estão ligados, através da estação MUOS, de Niscemi (Caltanissetta), ao sistema militar de comunicações por satélite de alta frequência que permite ao Pentágono controlar, através da sua rede de comando e comunicações, drones e caça-bombardeiros, submarinos e navios de guerra, veículos militares e divisões terrestres, enquanto estão em movimento, em qualquer parte do mundo.

No mesmo âmbito, operam os 15 drones Predator e Reaper e os outros da Força Aérea Italiana, teleguiados pela base de Amendola, em Puglia. Os Reaper italianos também podem ser armados com mísseis e bombas guiadas a laser, para missões de ataque.

O sistema AGS, que potencia o papel da Itália na “guerra dos drones”, é realizado com “contribuições significativas” de 15 Aliados: Estados Unidos, Itália, Alemanha, Noruega, Dinamarca, Luxemburgo, Polónia, Roménia, Bulgária, República Checa, Estónia, Letónia, Lituânia, Eslováquia, Eslovénia. A principal entidade contratada, que fabrica este sistema é a firma norte americana, Northrop Grumman. A empresa italiana Leonardo, fornece duas estações terrestres transportáveis.

A “contribuição” italiana para o sistema AGS consiste, além de nela estar incluída a disposição da principal base operacional, em comparticipar nas despesas, inicialmente, acima de 210 milhões de euros. Outros 240 milhões de euros foram despendidos na aquisição dos drones Predator e Reaper. Incluindo os outros já adquiridos e os que se espera que sejam comprados, a despesa italiana com os drones militares aumenta para cerca de um bilião e meio de euros, à qual se juntam os custos operacionais. Pago com dinheiro público, no contexto de uma despesa militar que está prestes a passar da média actual de cerca de 70 milhões de euros por dia, para cerca de 87 milhões de euros por dia.

Os investimentos italianos sucessivos em drones militares acarretam consequências que vão mais além das económicas. O uso de drones de guerra para operações secretas sob o comando USA/NATO, retira ainda mais ao Parlamento, qualquer poder real de tomada de decisão sobre a política militar e, consequentemente, sobre a política externa. A destruição recente de um Reaper italiano (que custou 20 milhões de euros), ao sobrevoar a Líbia, confirma que a Itália está envolvida em operações militares secretas, violando o Artigo 11 da nossa Constituição.

Manlio Dinucci

Artigo original em italiano :

Atterra a Sigonella il primo drone Nato. L’Italia in prima linea nella «guerra dei droni»

ilmanifesto.it

Tradutora: Maria Luísa de Vasconcellos

Video em italiano (PandoraTV) :

È atterrato nella base Usa/Nato di Sigonella in Sicilia, dopo 22 ore di volo dalla base aerea di Palmdale in California, il primo drone del sistema Ags (Alliance Ground Surveillance) della Nato, versione potenziata del drone Usa Global Hawk (Falco Globale). Da Sigonella, principale base operativa,  questo e altri quattro aerei dello stesso tipo a pilotaggio remoto, supportati da diverse stazioni terrestri mobili, permetteranno di «sorvegliare», ossia spiare, vaste aree terrestri e marittime dal Mediterraneo all’Africa, dal Medioriente al Mar Nero.

I droni Nato teleguidati da Sigonella, in grado di volare per 16.000 km a 18.000 m di altezza, trasmetteranno alla base i dati raccolti. Questi, dopo essere stati analizzati dagli operatori di oltre 20 postazioni, verranno immessi nella rete criptata  che fa capo al Comandante Supremo Alleato in Europa, sempre un generale Usa nominato dal presidente degli Stati uniti.

Il sistema Ags, che diverrà operativo nella prima metà del 2020, sarà integrato con l’Hub di Direzione Strategica per il Sud: il centro di intelligence che, nel quartier generale Nato di Lago Patria (Napoli) sotto comando Usa, ha il compito di raccogliere e analizzare informazioni funzionali alle operazioni militari soprattutto in Africa e Medioriente.

Principale base di lancio di tali operazioni, effettuate per la maggior parte segretamente con droni da attacco e forze speciali, è quella di Sigonella, dove sono dislocati droni Usa Reaper armati di missili e bombe a guida laser e satellitare. I droni da attacco e le forze speciali, mentre sono in azione, sono collegati, attraverso la stazione Muos di Niscemi (Caltanissetta), al sistema di comunicazioni satellitari militari ad altissima frequenza  che permette al Pentagono di controllare, attraverso la sua rete di comando e comunicazioni, droni e cacciabombardieri, sottomarini e navi da guerra, veicoli militari e reparti terrestri, mentre sono in movimento in qualsiasi parte del mondo si trovino.

Nello stesso quadro operano i 15 Predator e Reaper e gli altri droni dell’Aeronautica italiana, teleguidati dalla base di Amendola in Puglia. Anche i Reaper italiani possono essere armati di missili e bombe a guida laser per missioni di attacco.

Il sistema Ags, che potenzia il ruolo dell’Italia nella «guerra dei droni», viene realizzato con «significativi contributi» di 15 Alleati: Stati uniti, Italia, Germania, Norvegia, Danimarca, Lussemburgo, Polonia, Romania, Bulgaria, Repubblica Ceca, Estonia, Lettonia, Lituania, Slovacchia, Slovenia. Principale contrattista del sistema è la statunitense Northrop Grumman. L’italiana Leonardo fornisce due stazioni terrestri trasportabili.

Il «contributo» italiano al sistema Ags consiste, oltre che nella messa a disposizione della principale base operativa, nella compartecipazione alle spese inizialmente con oltre 210 milioni di euro. Altri 240 milioni di euro sono stati spesi per l’acquisto dei droni Predator e Reaper. Compresi gli altri già acquistati e quelli di cui si prevede l’acquisto, la spesa italiana per i droni militari sale a circa un miliardo e mezzo di euro, cui si aggiungono i costi operativi. Pagati con denaro pubblico, nel quadro di una spesa militare che sta per passare dalla media attuale di circa 70 milioni di euro al giorno a una di circa 87 milioni di euro al giorno.

I crescenti investimenti italiani nei droni militari comportano conseguenze che vanno al di là di quelle economiche. L’uso dei droni da guerra per operazioni segrete sotto comando Usa/Nato svuota ancor più il parlamento di qualsiasi reale potere decisionale sulla politica militare e di riflesso sulla politica estera. Il recente abbattimento di un Reaper italiano (costato 20 milioni di euro), in volo sulla Libia, conferma  che l’Italia è impegnata in operazioni belliche segrete in violazione dell’Art.11 della nostra Costituzione.

Manlio Dinucci

Vidéo (PandoraTV) :

Yesterday the Trump administration said Israeli settlements in the West Bank don’t violate international law. That’s absurd. Among international lawyers, the consensus that settlements are illegal rivals the consensus among international scientists that humans contribute to climate change. As UCLA’s Dov Waxman has pointed out, the legal advisor to Israel’s own foreign ministry admitted that “civilian settlement in the administered territories contravenes explicit provisions of the Fourth Geneva Convention” after Israel conquered the West Bank in 1967.

But critics who condemn the Trump administration for disregarding international law are missing the deeper point. So are critics who condemn it for undermining the two-state solution.

Fundamentally, the problem with settlements is neither legal nor geopolitical. It is moral. Israeli settlements in the West Bank are institutionalized expressions of bigotry. The American and Israeli politicians who legitimize them are the moral equivalent of those politicians who legitimized Jim Crow. It’s time they be treated as such.

Settlements only exist because Jews and Palestinians in the West Bank live under a different law. Jews are Israeli citizens: They can vote for the government that controls every square inch of the West Bank. Palestinians are Israeli subjects: Permanently barred because of their ethnicity and religion from citizenship in the country in which they live. (Yes, Palestinians have at times voted for the Palestinian Authority. But the PA is not a government; it is Israel’s subcontractor. PA officials — like all West Bank Palestinians — need Israeli permission to travel from one part of the West Bank to another).

Because the Israeli government controls the West Bank, and because it is accountable to the Jews — but not the Palestinians — who live there, it has spent the last half-century seizing land on which Palestinians live and giving it to Jews. Employing an 1858 Ottoman law, it has declared much of the West Bank “state land” and then transferred that supposedly ownerless territory to Jewish settlements. According to data from Israel’s own civil administration, almost 40% of the land on which settlements reside was once owned by individual Palestinians.

Big deal, some settlement defenders argue: Lots of people live on stolen land. If a community built on land seized by force is morally illegitimate, then the New Yorkers who live on territory once owned by Native Americans have no more right to be there than the Jewish settlers in Beit El.

But there’s a difference: New York is now open to people of any religion or race. Native Amerians, as citizens of the United States, can live there. Palestinians can’t live in Beit El. Jewish settlements are Jewish-only settlements. The West Bank isn’t like New York in 2019. It’s like Mississippi in 1959. It is a territory segregated by law, separate and hideously unequal.

That’s what Benjamin Netanyahu obscures when he tweets that the Trump administration’s new settlements policy “reflects an historical truth – that the Jewish people are not foreign colonialists in Judea and Samaria.”

This policy reflects an historical truth – that the Jewish people are not foreign colonialists in Judea and Samaria. In fact, we are called Jews because we are the people of Judea.

— PM of Israel (@IsraeliPM) November 18, 2019

Of course, Jews are not foreign to the West Bank. Much of the Book of Genesis takes place there; there were Jewish communities in the West Bank before Israel’s creation. But morally, the issue is not whether Jews have the right to live in the West Bank. It’s whether Jews have the right to live there under a different law than their Palestinian neighbors.

Do they have the right to bar Palestinians from their communities? Do they have the right to expand those communities onto land the Israeli government keeps expropriating from Palestinian owners? Do they have the right to operate swimming pools and complex irrigation systems while their Palestinian neighbors suffer from what the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem has called “a constant shortage of water.”

The injustices are not incidental to the settlement project. Without them, settlements as currently constituted could not exist. So when Netanyahu defends settlements, he’s not defending Jews’ right to live in the West Bank. He’s defending our right to live there as masters.

Spend even a few hours on the ground with Palestinians in the West Bank and all this becomes obvious. But it rarely comes through in the American media, which often describes settlements in the bloodless language of geopolitics and international law.

In its report on the Trump administration’s decision, the New York Times emphasized that previous American governments considered settlements “inconsistent with international law.” The Washington noted that they’re often deemed “a major obstacle to settling the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.”

But the core problem with Jim Crow was not that it violated international legal norms, nor that it posed an obstacle to settling conflicts between whites and blacks. The core problem was that it violated the principle of human equality.

“If giving some people liberty while denying it to others because of their race, ethnicity or religion was wrong in the segregated South, why isn’t it wrong in the West Bank?” No American television network should interview Benjamin Netanyahu, Ron Dermer, David Friedman or Mike Pompeo without asking some version of that question.

Every American politician who defends settlements should be required to explain why he isn’t a modern-day George Wallace. The word that’s missing from most mainstream American discussion of settlements is “bigotry.” People who care about freedom must make it impossible to avoid.

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Peter Beinart is a Forward columnist and professor of journalism and political science at the City University of New York. He is also a contributor to The Atlantic and a CNN commentator. Follow him on Twitter @PeterBeinart.

Featured image: Israel has occupied the West Bank since 1967 [Nurphoto]

One country, two systems defines how Hong Kong and Macau are governed since becoming Chinese regions in 1997 and 1999 respectively.

After reunification with China, both cities were granted a high degree of autonomy for 50 years as special administrative regions (SARs).

They’re responsible for their domestic affairs alone, including executive, legislative, and judicial independence from the mainland while being Chinese territory.

Hong Kong Basic Law stipulates that Beijing is responsible for foreign affairs and defense. The city’s future belongs to China, transitioning until 2047 when its autonomy ends.

Last week, China’s official People’s daily broadsheet said the following:

“Hong Kong belongs to China and its affairs are China’s internal affairs. China does not allow any foreign interference in Hong Kong affairs. This is the unshakable position of the country,” adding:

“While addressing the 11th BRICS Summit in (Brazil), Chinese President Xi Jinping said the Chinese government has unswerving determination to oppose any external force in interfering in Hong Kong’s affairs.”

On Sunday, district council elections were held in the city. China’s Global Times reported that pro-democrats “scored a landslide victory, winning (347 of) the 452 seats open to elections,” taking 17 of 18 districts, adding:

Hong Kong’s district council differs from its legislative one. The DC serves “the community, express(es) public appeal regarding livelihood, such as transportation, environment, and living conditions.”

The South China Morning Post (SCMP) said months of “anti-establishment reverberations” led to a high 71% turnout v. 47% in 2015 and much different results.

“(D)isaffection among voters was clear across the board, as pan-democrats rode the wave to win big…Before Sunday, all councils (were) pro-establishment since the 2015 elections.”

The largest pro-Beijing Democratic Alliance for the Betterment and Progress of Hong Kong (DAB) won only 21 seats — down from its pre-election 119.

The pro-democracy bloc will have significant representation on the election committee that’s charged with selecting Hong Kong’s chief executive.

Over the weekend, relative calm replaced months of US-orchestrated violence, vandalism and chaos. It remains to be seen if it holds given the rage by bipartisan hardliners in Washington to destabilize China.

Clearly, the vast majority of city residents opposed what’s gone on. They want calm and normality restored.

On Monday, China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi said (external or internal) attempts to destabilize and undermine Hong Kong are doomed to fail, stressing that the city is a special administrative region of China.

Last week, he called the US “the biggest source of instability in the world,” adding: “US politicians are smearing China globally without providing evidence.”

“The United States is broadly engaged in unilateralism and protectionism and is damaging multilateralism and the multilateral trading system.”

“There is no way out for the zero-sum games of the United States. Only win-win cooperation between China and the United States is the right path.”

Clearly it’s not how the US operates, seeking dominance over other nations, rejecting mutual cooperation in pursuit of its hegemonic aims.

Reporting on Sunday’s election results, Xinhua said the following:

“The district council election (was) the first poll held in the HKSAR (Hong Kong Special Administrative Region) after the now-withdrawn ordinance amendments concerning fugitives’ transfers sparked unrest in” the city.

“In the past more than five months, rioters, in concert with external (US) forces, have continuously committed and escalated violence, resulting in social and political confrontation, rift in social sentiment and setbacks in economy and people’s livelihood.”

“Months of social unrest has seriously disrupted the electoral process. On the election day, some rioters harassed patriotic candidates.”

“The most pressing task for Hong Kong at present is still to bring the violence and chaos to an end and restore order.”

Xinhua failed to report the election results. Nor did the People’s Daily, saying little more than turnout was high, ballot counting completed, and 100 councilors’ offices were vandalized.

China Daily reported that if the opposition claims victory, “they should realize what kinds of shameless measures were taken to help them achieve” it — true enough. City residents were held hostage for months to CIA-orchestrated violence, vandalism and chaos.

Relative calm restored, if sustained, may be just a pause before new US interference in China’s internal affairs occurs again.

It’s what the scourge of US imperialism is all about. Its dark forces won’t quit until brought down by their hubris, arrogance, and unwillingness to change.

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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.

Like the US and other Western societies, democracy in Israel is pure fantasy, the notion abhorred by its ruling authorities.

Ordinary Jews are exploited to benefit privileged ones. Separate and unequal is official policy. 

Arab citizens are considered 5th column threats, Arab Knesset members treated like potted plants, Occupied Palestinians reviled as enemies of the state, Gazans harmed most of all — suffocating under a politicized medieval siege.

Speech, press, and academic freedoms in Israel are gravely endangered.

The 2012 Nakba Law violates Arab history, culture, heritage, and the right to express, teach, or disseminate it freely. It compromises the ability of Palestinians to publicly denounce Israeli high crimes against them.

Israel’s Anti-Boycott Law (2011) “prohibits the public promotion of academic, economic or cultural boycott by Israeli citizens and organizations against Israeli institutions or illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank,” the Adalah Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel explained, adding:

The measure “enables the filing of civil lawsuits against anyone who calls for boycott.”

“It creates a new ‘civil wrong’ or tort. It also prohibits a person who calls for boycott from participating in any public tender.”

It “severely restricts freedom of expression and targets non-violent political opposition to the (illegal) Occupation.”

It also bans entry into Israel of foreign nationals who support the movement, or their deportation if in the country.

Last April, Israel’s Jerusalem district court ruled against Human Rights Watch’s Israeli office director Omar Shakir, a US citizen, ordering him deported for supporting the global BDS movement, his lawful free expression right.

HRW appealed the ruling, petitioning Israel’s Supreme Court to overturn the injustice. It got an injunction to let Shakir stay in the country until the high court heard his case.

On November 5, the court ruled against him, approving his deportation. In response, 23 Israeli civil society group denounced the decision, the Hamoked Center for the Defense of the Individual, saying:

Israel’s “Supreme Court not only approved the deportation of Omar Shakir, but severely harmed us all Israeli and Palestinian human rights activists who oppose the occupation,” adding:

“The Supreme Court continues to legitimize the Israeli government’s policy to silence criticism of its human rights violations in the (Occupied Territories).”

“Israel is trying to hide the occupation from view, but we will continue, together with Omar Shakir, to support peace activists and human rights activists who strive to expose the injustices of the occupation and bring it to an end.”

The following organizations denounced the high court’s ruling:

The Association for Civil Rights in Israel; Adalah; Akevot Institute for Israeli-Palestinian Conflict Research; Amnesty International – Israel; B’Tselem; Bimkom; Breaking the Silence; Coalition of Women for Peace; Combatants for Peace; Emek Shave; Gisha; HaMoked; Haqel; Human Rights Defenders Fund; Ir Amim; New Israel Fund; Peace Now; Physicians for Human Rights Israel; Public Committee Against Torture in Israel; Rabbis for Human Rights; Torat Tzedek; Yesh Din; Zazim – Community Action.

Israel targets dissent, notably by Arab citizens, Occupied Palestinians, human rights workers, independent journalists, and anti-apartheid foreign nationals.

The Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) earlier called its efforts to silence free expression criticism chilling.

Shakir earlier was a Bertha Fellow at the New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights, the group focusing on issues relating to civil liberties, human rights, and activism.

He was involved in providing legal representation for Guantanamo political prisoners, the vast majority there uncharged, untried, and guilty of nothing.

He was given 20 days to leave Israel. Deported on Monday, he said: “I’ll be back when the day comes that we have succeeded in dismantling the system of discrimination impacting Israelis and Palestinians” — separately tweeting:

“At Ben Gurion airport for my deportation flanked by leading Israeli rights groups.”

“It has been an honor of a lifetime working with you & our Palestinian partners who couldn’t be there due to discriminatory Israeli restrictions. We wont stop. You can’t hide rights abuse #WhoIsNext”

On Sunday, Shakir said “(w)e’re  talking about a half-century-long occupation defined by systematic repression and institutional discrimination.”

“That requires important, urgent work, and it’s unfortunate that I won’t be able to do it on the ground, but we won’t stop doing it.”

PLO executive committee member Hanan Ashrawi slammed his deportation, saying:

“It is an alarming wake-up call to all those who seek peace and justice for both sides that Israel will resort to extreme measures to hide the truth.”

The global boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement  is the single most effective campaign against Israeli apartheid ruthlessness.

It’s why dark forces in the US, other Western nations, and the Jewish state want the movement undermined and eliminated, even criminalized.

There’s nothing anti-Semitic about anti-Zionism, anti-Israel, or promoting boycotts, divestments and sanctions of the Jewish state.

It’s over its fantasy democracy, its apartheid rule, its oppression of the Palestinian people, its institutionalized racism, occupation harshness, state terror, preemptive wars, economic strangulation, land theft, ethnic cleansing, mass arrests, gulag imprisonments, torture, targeted killings, suffocating Gazans by slow-motion genocide, and a whole lot of other high crimes — accountability never forthcoming.

Peaceful advocacy of any views is what speech, press, and academic freedoms are all about.

Israel wants groups and individuals supporting BDS punished.

The movement was inspired by South African anti-apartheid activism, the US civil rights campaign under Martin Luther King, Malcolm X and others, along with India’s movement for independence from UK colonial rule.

Israel wants its high crimes suppressed, anyone exposing them punished.

BDS, other grassroots activism, and speech, media, and academic freedoms are the most effective ways to counter its colonization, occupation, apartheid, and other high crimes against peace.

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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.

Bruce Fein, a former senior official in the Department of Justice and a constitutional scholar, has identified 12 impeachable offenses committed by Donald Trump. But, as he notes, many of these constitutional violations are not unique to the Trump administration. They have been normalized by Democratic and Republican administrations. These long-standing violations are, for this reason, ignored by Democratic Party leaders seeking to impeach the president. They have chosen to focus exclusively on Trump’s attempt to get the Ukrainian president to open an investigation of Joe Biden and his son, Hunter, in exchange for $400 million in U.S. military aid and a visit by the Ukrainian leader to the White House. Ignoring these institutionalized violations during the impeachment inquiry, Fein fears, would legitimate them and lead to the death of democracy.

In a letter on Friday to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, also signed by Ralph Nader and Louis Fisher, Fein warns that Trump is “shattering our entire constitutional order.” He lists as the president’s most serious constitutional violations the “defiance of congressional subpoenas and oversight; spending billions of dollars on a southern border wall not appropriated for that purpose; continuing or expanding presidential wars not declared by Congress; exercising line-item veto power; flouting the Emoluments Clause; and, playing prosecutor, judge, jury, and executioner to kill any person on the planet based on secret, unsubstantiated information.” But he also notes that many of these violations are not unique to Trump and were also carried out by Barack Obama and George W. Bush.

“Many of the Democrats in the past have been complicit in these violations,” Fein said when I reached him by phone in Washington, D.C. “They have unclean hands. They have acquiesced in illegal surveillance, as revealed by Edward Snowden. The most serious constitutional violations are the ones that are institutional usurpations. These usurpations [by both parties] have permanently weakened, if not eviscerated, the power of the legislature versus the executive.”

“We have a Congress whose members, by and large, do not want the responsibilities the Constitution entrusts them with,” Fein continued. “They like to give away everything to the president and then clamor if something goes bad. The most worrisome constitutional violations are, unfortunately, ones many members of Congress rejoice in. It enables them to escape making hard choices that might compromise their ability to win reelection. But you can’t rely on a past dereliction to justify its perpetuation indefinitely.”

“If we take a narrow approach to impeachment, that will mean that all the more egregious violations will be viewed as having been endorsed and not rebuked and successive presidents will feel they have a green light to emulate Trump on everything except a Ukrainian shakedown,” Fein said. “This is dangerous for the country. This could boomerang, even if we get rid of Trump, by endorsing these usurpations forever. This would be a return to a one-branch government like the monarchy we overthrew in 1776. The unwitting result is to further the [power of the] executive rather than diminish it, which is what should be happening.”

Bush and Obama bequeathed to us nine illegal wars, if we include Yemen. None were declared by Congress, as is demanded by the Constitution. Bush placed the entire U.S. public under government surveillance in direct violation of the Fourth Amendment and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which makes it a crime for the government to surveil any American citizen without authorization by statute. Under the Executive Order 10333 the president spies on Americans as if they were foreigners, although this surveillance has not been authorized by statute. Bush embarked on a global program of kidnapping and torture, including of foreign nationals, which Obama continued. Bush and Obama carried out targeted assassinations, usually by militarized drones, across the globe. And Obama, reinterpreting the 2002 Authorization for Use of Military Force Act, gave the executive branch the authority to assassinate U.S. citizens. The killings began with drone strikes on the radical cleric Anwar al-Awlaki and, two weeks later, his 16-year-old son. Such a violation denies U.S. citizens due process. By signing into law Section 1021 of the National Defense Authorization Act, Obama—whose record on civil liberties is even more appalling than Bush’s gutted the 1878 Posse Comitatus Act, which prohibits the use of the military as a domestic police force.

These two presidents, like Trump, violated treaty clauses that required Senate ratification. Obama did this when he signed the Iran nuclear deal and Trump did this when he walked away from the deal. Bush and Obama, like Trump, violated the appointments clause of the Constitution by appointing people who were never confirmed by the Senate as required. The three presidents, to override Congress, all routinely abused their right to use executive orders.

At the same time the courts, a wholly owned subsidiary of corporate power, have transformed the electoral system into legalized bribery through the Citizens United ruling, handed down by the Supreme Court in 2010. Corporations pouring unlimited money into elections was interpreted by the court as the right to petition the government and a form of free speech, essentially overturning the people’s rights by judicial fiat. Also, the courts have steadfastly refused to restore basic constitutional rights including our right to privacy and due process. “The constitutional rot is in all three branches,” Fein said.

The 12 impeachable offenses committed by Trump and singled out by Fein are:

1. Contempt of Congress

Trump made clear his contempt of Congress when he boasted, “… I have Article II, where I have the right to do whatever I want as president.”

“President Trump has repeatedly and unconstitutionally systematically undermined the congressional oversight power, including the ongoing congressional impeachment inquiry of the President himself, by instructing numerous current and former White House staff and members of the executive branch to defy congressional subpoenas on an unprecedented scale far beyond any previous President,” Fein wrote to Pelosi. “Without congressional authority, he has secretly deployed special forces abroad and employed secret guidelines for targeted killings, including American citizens, based on secret unsubstantiated information. He has unconstitutionally endeavored to block private persons or entities from responding to congressional requests or subpoenas for information, e.g., Deutsche Bank. He has refused to provide Congress information about nepotistic or other security clearances he granted in opposition to his own FBI security experts. He has refused to disclose his tax returns to the Chairman of the Ways and Means Committee contrary to a 1924 law, 26 U.S.C. 6103 (f).”

2. Abuse of the Powers of the President and Abuse of Public Trust

“Unlike prior presidents, he has made presidential lies as routine as the rising and setting of the sun, confounding civil discourse, truth and public trust,” the memo to Pelosi reads. “He has disrespected, belittled, and serially preyed upon women, mocked the disabled, incited violence against the mainstream media and critics, and encouraged and displayed bigotry towards minorities and minority Members of Congress, including intercession with Israel in serious violation of the Speech or Debate Clause, Article I, section 6, clause 1, to deny two Members visitor visas.”

3. Appropriations Clause, Revenue Clause

“Congress has consistently voted much less money than President Trump requested to build an extensive, multi-billion-dollar wall with Mexico,” the memo reads. “In violation of the Clause and the criminal prohibition of the Anti-Deficiency Act, President Trump has committed to spending billions of dollars far in excess of what Congress has appropriated for the wall. The congressional power of the purse is a cornerstone of the Constitution’s separation of powers.”

Article I, Section 7, Clause 1 of the Constitution requires all revenue measures to originate in the House of Representatives.

“In violation of the Clause, President Trump has raised tens of billions of dollars by unilaterally imposing tariffs with limitless discretion under section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962,” the memo reads. “He has become a Foreign Trade Czar in imposing tariffs or quotas or granting exemptions from his trade restrictions in his unbridled discretion to assist political friends and punish political enemies. Literally trillions of dollars in international trade have been affected. Riches are made, and livelihoods destroyed overnight with the capricious stroke of President Trump’s pen.”

4. Emoluments Clause

“Article I, section 9, clause 8 prohibits the President (and other federal officers), without the consent of Congress, from accepting any ‘present, emolument, office, or title, of any kind whatsoever, from any King, Prince, or foreign state.’

“President Trump has notoriously refused to place his assets in a blind trust,” the memo reads. “Instead, he continues to profit from opulent hotels heavily patronized by foreign governments. He has permitted his family to commercialize the White House. He has compromised the national interest to enrich family wealth on a scale unprecedented in the history of the presidency.”

5. Treaty Clause

Article II, Section 2, Clause 2 requires Senate ratification of treaties by two-thirds majorities. The text is silent as to whether treaty termination requires Senate ratification, and the Supreme Court held the issue was a non-justiciable political question in Goldwater v. Carter, 444 U.S. 996 (1979).

“President Trump flouted the Treaty Clause in terminating the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF) with Russia unilaterally,” the memo reads. “The treaty assigned the termination decision to the ‘United States.’ The President alone is not the United States under the Treaty Clause.”

6. Declare War Clause

Article I, Section 8, Clause 11 empowers Congress alone to take the nation from a state of peace to a state of war. That power cannot be delegated.

“In violation of the Declare War Clause, President Trump has continued to wage or has initiated presidential wars in Libya, Somalia, Yemen, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, and has used special forces offensively in several African nations,” the memo reads. “President Trump has claimed authority to initiate war against any nation or non-state actor in the world—not in self-defense—on his say-so alone, including war against North Korea, Iran, or Venezuela.”

7. Take Care Clause; Presentment Clause

Article II, Section 3 obligates the president to “take care that the laws be faithfully executed.”

“In violation of that trust, President Donald J. Trump deliberately attempted to frustrate special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of collaboration between the Trump 2016 campaign and Russia to influence the presidential election,” Fein points out. “Among other things, the President refused to answer specific questions relating to his presidential conduct; endeavored to fire the special counsel; dangled pardons for non-cooperating witnesses; and, urged Attorney General Jeff Sessions to reverse his recusal decision to better protect his presidency. In all these respects, the President was attempting to obstruct justice.”

“President Trump has also systematically declined to enforce statutory mandates of Congress by arbitrarily and capriciously revoking scores of agency rules ranging from immigration to the Consumer Financial Protection Board to the Environmental Protection Agency in violation of the Administrative Procedure Act or otherwise,” the memo reads. “He has routinely legislated by executive order in lieu of following constitutionally prescribed processes for legislation.”

“In violation of his constitutional duty to take care that the laws be faithfully executed, Mr. Trump has dismantled and disabled scores of preventive measures to save lives, avoid injuries or disease, help families, consumers, and workers, and detect, deter, and punish tens of billions of dollars of corporate fraud,” the memo continues. “He has disputed climate disruption as a ‘Chinese hoax,’ compounded the climate crisis by overt actions that expand greenhouse gas emissions and pollution, and excluded or marginalized the influence of civil service scientists.”

8. Due Process Clause

The Fifth Amendment provides that no person shall “be deprived of life … without due process of law.”

“In violation of due process, President Trump claims power, like his immediate two predecessors, to act as prosecutor, judge, jury, and executioner to kill American citizens or non-citizens alike, on or off a battlefield, whether or not engaged in hostilities, whether or not accused of crime, and whether or not posing an imminent threat of harm that would trigger a right of preemptive self-defense,” the memo reads.

9. Appointments Clause

“President Trump has repeatedly appointed principal officers of the United States, including the National Security Advisor and Cabinet officials, who have not been confirmed by the Senate in violation of the Appointments Clause, Article II, section 2, clause 2,” the memo reads. “On a scale never practiced by prior presidents, Mr. Trump has filled as many as half of Cabinet posts with ‘Acting Secretaries’ who have never been confirmed by the Senate.”

10. Soliciting a Foreign Contribution for the 2020 Presidential Campaign and Bribery

“President Trump has endeavored to corrupt the 2020 presidential campaign by soliciting the President of Ukraine to contribute something of value to diminish the popularity of potential rival Joe Biden, i.e., a Ukrainian investigation of Mr. Biden and his son Hunter relating to potential corrupt practices of Burisma, which compensated Hunter handsomely ($50,000 per month). In so doing, Mr. Trump violated the criminal campaign finance prohibition set forth in 52 U.S.C. 30121,” Fein’s memo reads.

“President Trump solicited a bribe for himself in violation of 18 U.S.C. 201 in seeking something of personal value, i.e., discrediting Joe Biden’s 2020 presidential campaign with the help of the President of Ukraine to influence Mr. Trump’s official decision to release approximately $400 million in military and related assistance,” it adds.

11. Violating Citizen Privacy

“Government spying on Americans ordinarily requires a warrant issued by a neutral magistrate based on probable cause to believe crime is afoot,” the memo reads. “President Trump, however, routinely violates the Fourth Amendment with suspicionless surveillance of Americans for non-criminal, foreign intelligence purposes under Executive Order 12333 and aggressive interpretations of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.”

12. Suppression of Free Speech

“President Trump is violating the First Amendment in stretching the Espionage Act to prosecute publication of leaked classified information that are instrumental to exposing government lies and deterring government wrongdoing or misadventures, including the outstanding indictment against Julian Assange for publishing information which was republished by the New York Times and The Washington Post with impunity,” the memo reads.

“The Republic is at an inflection point,” the letter to Speaker Pelosi reads. “Either the Constitution is saved by impeaching and removing its arsonist in the White House, or it is reduced to ashes by continued congressional endorsement, whether by omission or commission, of limitless executive power and the undoing of checks and balances.”

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Chris Hedges is a Truthdig columnist, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, a New York Times best-selling author, a professor in the college degree program offered to New Jersey state prisoners by Rutgers University, and an ordained Presbyterian minister.

Featured image is from Truthdig/Mr. Fish

The most shocking thing about the House impeachment hearings to this point is not a “smoking gun” witness providing irrefutable evidence of quid pro quo. It’s not that President Trump may or may not have asked the Ukrainians to look into business deals between then-Vice President Biden’s son and a Ukrainian oligarch.

The most shocking thing to come out of the hearings thus far is confirmation that no matter who is elected President of the United States, the permanent government will not allow a change in our aggressive interventionist foreign policy, particularly when it comes to Russia.

Even more shocking is that neither Republicans nor Democrats are bothered in the slightest!

Take Lt. Colonel Vindman, who earned high praise in the mainstream media. He did not come forth with first-hand evidence that President Trump had committed any “high crimes” or “misdemeanors.” He brought a complaint against the President because he was worried that Trump was shifting US policy away from providing offensive weapons to the Ukrainian government!

He didn’t think the US president had the right to suspend aid to Ukraine because he supported providing aid to Ukraine.

According to his testimony, Vindman’s was concerned over “influencers promoting a false narrative of Ukraine inconsistent with the consensus views of the interagency.”

“Consensus views of the interagency” is another word for “deep state.”

Vindman continued,

“While my interagency colleagues and I were becoming increasingly optimistic on Ukraine’s prospects, this alternative narrative undermined US government efforts to expand cooperation with Ukraine.”

Let that sink in for a moment: Vindman did not witness any crimes, he just didn’t think the elected President of the United States had any right to change US policy toward Ukraine or Russia!

Likewise, his boss on the National Security Council Staff, Fiona Hill, sounded more like she had just stepped out of the 1950s with her heated Cold War rhetoric. Citing the controversial 2017 “Intelligence Community Assessment” put together by then-CIA director John Brennan’s “hand-picked” analysts, she asserted that, “President Putin and the Russian security services aim to counter US foreign policy objectives in Europe, including in Ukraine.”

And who gets to decide US foreign policy objectives in Europe? Not the US President, according to government bureaucrat Fiona Hill. In fact, Hill told Congress that, “If the President, or anyone else, impedes or subverts the national security of the United States in order to further domestic political or personal interests, that is more than worthy of your attention.”

Who was Fiona Hill’s boss? Former National Security Advisor John Bolton, who no doubt agreed that the president has no right to change US foreign policy. Bolton’s the one who “explained” that when Trump said US troops would come home it actually meant troops would stay put.

One by one, the parade of “witnesses” before House Intelligence Committee Chairman Schiff sang from the same songbook. As US Ambassador to the EU, Gordon Sondland put it, “in July and August 2019, we learned that the White House had also suspended security aid to Ukraine. I was adamantly opposed to any suspension of aid, as the Ukrainians needed those funds to fight against Russian aggression.”

Meanwhile, both Democrats and Republicans in large majority voted to continue spying on the rest of us by extending the unpatriotic Patriot Act. Authoritarianism is the real bipartisan philosophy in Washington.

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The decision to indict Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on three separate criminal counts pushes the country’s already unprecedented electoral stalemate into the entirely uncharted territory of a constitutional crisis.

There is no legal precedent for a sitting prime minister facing a trial – in Netanyahu’s case, for bribery, fraud and breach of trust. Former Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert was charged with corruption in 2009 but only after he had resigned from office.

Israeli commentators are already warning of the possibility of civil war if, as seems likely, Netanyahu decides to whip up his far-right supporters into a frenzy of outrage. After a decade in power, he has developed an almost cult-like status among sections of the public.

He called for mass protests in Tel Aviv by supporters on Tuesday night under the banner “Stop the coup”.

The honorable thing would be for Netanyahu to step down quickly, given that the two elections he fought this year ended in deadlock. Both were seen primarily as plebiscites on his continuing rule.

He is now the country’s caretaker prime minister, in place until either a new government can be formed or an unprecedented third election is held.

His departure would end months of governmental near-paralysis. The path would then be clear for a successor from his Likud party to negotiate a deal on a right-wing unity government with rival Benny Gantz, a former army general.

Gantz’s Blue and White party has made it a point of principle not to forge an alliance with Netanyahu.

Previous experience, however, suggests that Netanyahu might prefer to tear the house down rather than go quietly. If he is allowed to press ahead with another election in March, he is likely to stoke new levels of incitement against his supposed enemies.

Until now, the main target of his venom has been a predictable one.

During the April and September campaigns, he railed relentlessly against the fifth of Israel’s citizenry who are Palestinian as well as their elected representatives in the Joint List, the third largest faction in the Knesset.

Shortly before last Thursday’s indictment was announced, Netanyahu was at it again, holding an “emergency conference”. He told supporters that a minority government led by Gantz and propped up from outside by the Joint List would be a “historic national attack on Israel”. The Palestinian minority’s MPs, he said, “want to destroy the country”.

Such a government, he added, would be an outcome “they will celebrate in Tehran, in Ramallah and in Gaza, as they do after every terror attack”.

This repeated scaremongering had an obvious goal: rallying the Jewish public to vote for his far-right, now overtly anti-Arab coalition. The hope was that he would win an outright majority and could then force through legislation conferring on him immunity from prosecution.

Now he appears to have run out of time. After three years of investigations and much foot-dragging, the attorney general, Avichai Mandelblit, has finally charged him.

According to the Israeli media, Netanyahu turned down opportunities for a plea bargain that would have seen him resign in return for avoiding jail time.

According to the most serious allegation, he is accused of granting media tycoon Shaul Elovich benefits worth $500 million in exchange for favourable coverage.

Weighed against the crimes he and other Israeli leaders have perpetrated over many decades against the Palestinians in the occupied territories, the offences he is indicted for seem relatively minor.

Nonetheless, if found guilty, Netanyahu faces a substantial prison sentence of up to 10 years. That makes the stakes high.

All the signs now are that he will switch his main target from Israel’s Palestinian minority to the legal authorities pursuing him.

His first response to the indictment was to accuse the police and state prosecutors of an “attempted coup”, claiming they had fabricated the evidence to “frame” him. “The time has come to investigate the investigators,” he urged.

As one Blue and White official told the veteran Israeli reporter Ben Caspit:

“Netanyahu will not hesitate to sic [unleash] his supporters on those institutions of government that represent the rule of law. He has no inhibitions.”

Technically the law allows a prime minister to continue serving while under indictment and before a trial, which is still many months away. Assuming Netanyahu refuses to resign, the courts will have to rule on whether this privilege extends to a caretaker leader unable to form a new government.

Netanyahu is therefore likely to focus his attention on intimidating the supreme court, already cowed by a decade of tongue-lashing from the Israeli right. Critics unfairly accuse the court of being a bastion of liberalism.

But bigger dangers may lie ahead. Netanyahu needs to keep his own Likud party in line. If its members sense he is finished, there could be a rapid collapse of support and moves towards an attempt to overthrow him.

The first hints of trouble emerged on Saturday when Gideon Saar, Netanyahu’s most likely challenger in Likud, accused him of “creating an atmosphere of chaos” by denigrating the legal authorities. On Tuesday he went further calling on Netanyahu to quit.

After the failure by both Gantz and Netanyahu to put together a coalition, the task was passed last week to parliament. Its members have just over a fortnight left to see whether one of their number can rally a majority of MPs.

This brief window could provide an opportunity for Saar to move against Netanyahu. On Sunday he submitted an official request for the Likud party to hold a snap leadership race.

Observers fear that to allay this danger, Netanyahu might consider not only inflaming his base but also setting the region alight with a conflict to rally the rest of the public to his side and make his removal impossible.

In fact, the Israeli media reported that shortly before September’s election, he had tried to pull precisely such a stunt, preparing a war on Gaza to justify postponing the ballot.

He was stopped at the last minute by Mandelblit, who realised that the cabinet had been misled into approving military action. Netanyahu had reportedly concealed from them the fact that the military command was opposed.

In recent weeks, Netanyahu has stoked severe tensions with Gaza by assassinating Palestinian Islamic Jihad leader Baha Abu Al Atta. Last week he launched airstrikes on Iranian positions in Syria.

When Olmert was being investigated for corruption in 2008, Netanyahu sagely warned of the dangerous confusion of interests that might result. “He will make decisions based on his own interests of political survivability rather than the national interest,” he said.

And that is precisely the reason why many in Israel are keen to see the back of Netanyahu – in case his instinct for political survival trumps the interests of stability in the region.

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A version of this article first appeared in the National, Abu Dhabi.

Jonathan Cook won the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. His books include “Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East” (Pluto Press) and “Disappearing Palestine: Israel’s Experiments in Human Despair” (Zed Books). His website is www.jonathan-cook.net.

A story has been circulating suggesting that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo will soon be resigning because he needs to focus on planning for his campaign to become a Senator from Kansas in 2020. This is good news for the United States, as Senator Lindsey Graham has had no one he is able to talk to about exporting democracy by blowing up the planet since Joe Lieberman retired and John McCain died. And the tale even has a bit of palace intrigue built into it, with an interesting back story as Pompeo is apparently considering his move because he fears that staying in harness with Donald Trump for too long might damage his reputation. There are also reports that he has been traveling to Kansas frequently on the State Department’s dime to test the waters, a violation of the Hatch Act which prohibits most government officials from engaging in self-promotional political activities unrelated to their actual jobs.

If one is seeking evidence to suggest that Pompeo, a man who lies with a fluency that takes one’s breath away, is delusional, it would certainly have to include his self-assessment that he has a reputation to protect. It is possible to cite many instances in which Pompeo has asserted something that is absolutely contrary to the truth, though one might also have to concede that he could often be saying what his factually challenged boss wants to hear. When Pompeo was Director of the CIA he even joked openly about how “We lied, we cheated, we stole.”

Mike Pompeo’s latest concession to the war criminals in charge of Israel, clearly intended to boost the electoral chances of Benjamin Netanyahu, is only the most recent dose of the Secretary of State’s falsehood piled on fiction. It is generally assumed that the move to help Bibi by interfering in Israeli politics has been made in an effort to have Tel Aviv reciprocate by putting pressure on its many American fellow travelers in the media and congress to go easier on Trump in the impeachment saga. And Trump would also expect additional reciprocity when he runs again in 2020. Even though Netanyahu, who has been indicted over bribery and fraud, will not be able to shift many liberal Jewish votes, he will be able to get allies like mega billionaire Sheldon Adelson to pony up tens of millions of dollars to support the GOP campaign.

The Trump Administration’s gifts to Israel are unprecedented, including moving the capital to Jerusalem and acknowledging the annexation of the Syrian Golan Heights. Pompeo, driven by his Christian Zionist beliefs, has been the point man on many of those moves, ably assisted by a U.S. Ambassador David Friedman, ex-bankruptcy lawyer, who has served as a consistent advocate and apologist for Israel with little or no concern for actual American interests. One might also observe that if Pompeo is truly interested in running for the Senate a little help and cash from Israel and its many friends might be very welcome.

The Pompeo gift to Bibi was announced early last week. He said that the Trump Administration is now rejecting the 1978 State Department Hansell Memorandum legal opinion that the creation of civilian settlements in occupied territories is indeed “inconsistent with international law.” In a sense, he was giving something away to Israel that neither he nor the Israelis legally possess. He said that he was “accepting realities on the ground” and elaborated on his view that the White House believes legal questions about settlements should be dealt with in Israeli courts, meaning that the hapless Palestinians would have no voice in developments that would deprive them of their homes.

Per Pompeo,

“Calling the establishment of civilian settlements inconsistent with international law has not advanced the cause of peace. The hard truth is that there will never be a judicial resolution to the conflict, and arguments about who is right and who is wrong as a matter of international law will not bring peace.”

Pompeo’s latest statement, consistent with many of his earlier ones, is completely contrary to the Fourth Geneva Convention framework of international law governing behavior by occupying military powers that was established after the Second World War. It ignores the fact that the status quo of expanding settlements has only taken place because of Washington’s refusal to do anything about it. The State Department’s new interpretation completely embraces arguments being made by hard-line politicians in Israel and opens the door to endorsement by the White House of a total de facto or even de jure annexation of the West Bank by the Jewish state.

Pompeo was talking about the nearly 700,000 illegal exclusively Jewish settlers currently on the West Bank and in East Jerusalem. Palestinians, in many areas under a brutal regime of martial law enforced by the Jewish state’s army and police, have virtually no rights and are subject to increasing violent attacks by the settlers. Not surprisingly, Pompeo’s statement was rejected by everyone but the Israelis and the usual crowd in the U.S. Congress and media, but even some leading Democratic candidates, including Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, found the decision troubling. The 28 member European Union declared that

“All settlement activity is illegal under international law and it erodes the viability of the two-state solution and the prospects for a lasting peace. The E.U. calls on Israel to end all settlement activity, in line with its obligations as an occupying power.”

And, of course, there are potential consequences when a government does something stupid. Shortly after Pompeo’s announcement, the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem put out a security advisory warning Americans traveling in the West Bank, Jerusalem and Gaza, stating, “Individuals and groups opposed to [the Pompeo] announcement may target U.S. government facilities, U.S. private interests, and U.S. citizens.” It suggested that visitors ought “to maintain a high level of vigilance and take appropriate steps to increase their security awareness in light of the current environment.”

There is inevitably considerable discussion in some circles regarding what the new situation on the West Bank actually means. To be sure, the number and size of settlements will increase, but some knowledgeable critics like Gilad Atzmon suggest that the move will backfire on the Israelis, who, by taking control of the land, will eventually have to accept some kind of one state solution, giving the Palestinians considerable rights in a not-completely-denominational state. He observes how “…inadvertently, Trump has finally committed the U.S.A. to the One State Solution. It is hard to deny that the area between the ‘River and the Sea’ is a single piece of land. It shares one electric grid, one pre-dial code (+972) and one sewage system. At present, the land is ruled over by a racist, tribal and discriminatory ideology through an apparatus that calls itself ‘The Jewish State’ and declares itself home for every Jew around the world; yet, is abusive, lethal and some would say genocidal toward the indigenous people of the land… Pompeo’s declaration provides an explicit and necessary message to the Palestinians in general and in the West Bank in particular. The conflict is not progressing toward a peaceful resolution. Those amongst the Palestinians who advocated the ‘Two States Solution’ will have to hide now. Pompeo has affirmed that there is one Holy Land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. From now on the battle over this disputed land is whether it will be subject to the racist discriminatory ideology implied by the notion of ‘The Jewish State’ and its ‘National Bill,’ or if it will transform itself into a ‘State of its Citizens’ as is inherent in the notion of One Palestine.”

Tom Suarez posits similarly at Mondoweiss, observing that any form of annexation of the West Bank without giving Palestinians equal rights would basically make Israeli apartheid so visible and unacceptable to world opinion that the Jewish state would become a complete pariah internationally and would be forced to adopt some kind of one state formula.

Nevertheless, even if a one state solution with equal citizenship status for everyone would appear to be both desirable and compliant with modern notions of human rights, it is not necessarily inevitable. The chosen-by-God Israeli state is quite capable of ethnic cleansing or even genocide on a massive scale, as it did originally in 1947-8 when it was founded and also later after it occupied the West Bank and Gaza in 1967. The Jewish state’s leaders have repeatedly asserted that there is no such thing as a Palestinian, that Jordan is actually Palestine. They have become skilled at making the lives of Palestinians so miserable by destroying their farms, other livelihood and even their homes while also controlling their infrastructure, killing them if they resist, that they emigrate. Christians in Palestine, the original followers of Jesus Christ, constituted close to 8 percent of the population in 1946 but now number less than 2 percent. Most have chosen to leave rather than submit to Israel.

There is no reason to doubt that the Israelis could continue their creeping annexation of the West Bank for ten more years or so while also deliberately driving the remaining Arabs out. I have little doubt that that is precisely what they will do and they will be empowered to do so by the United States, which will never develop either the integrity or the courage to push back against “America’s closest ally and best friend in the entire world.”

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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].

Featured image is from The Unz Review

I’d like to note two articles by Professor Michel Chossudovsky published this November in Global Research: they help explain the current denigration of the Convention on Genocide. When we grow accustomed to our system’s atrocities we lessen our humanity.

In an article of November 13th⁽¹⁾ Chossudovsky outlines the history of George H.W. Bush’s father, Prescott Bush, supplying the Axis with oil through Standard Oil Company during WWII. This was allowed by the U.S. government. It is “news” in 2019 because this mechanism of cooperating with the enemy was hidden from the U.S. people. About 25 years ago Webster Tarpley and Anton Chaitkin⁽²⁾ wrote of Prescott Bush’s service to and partnership with the Harrimans’ Union Banking Corporation which in turn served Fritz Thyssen, a financer of Adolph Hitler. Under the Trading with the Enemy Act this Bush-Harriman Nazi front was impounded by the U.S. government in 1942.

What is remarkable about Prof. Chossudovsky’s article isn’t so much the financial involvement of the Bush family with Nazi interests, but the logic of motivation and why the U.S. would allow oil resources under its control to be shipped to the enemy during a war. Answer: it was hoped Nazi Germany would stop the Soviet state – ie. ‘to stop Communism.’ Over twenty million Russians died. Prescott Bush went on to become a wealthy Republican Senator from Connecticut. With the Third Reich’s defeat the war against communism became the Cold War.

This should interest genocide scholars because it reveals a genocidal intent in U.S. policy. Article II of the U.N. Convention on Genocide includes in its definition of genocide, … acts committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group as such…. The Soviet Union was a national group. It committed no aggression against the United States.

In the article of November 13th and a subsequent article of November 22nd⁽³⁾ Prof. Chossudovsky relies on declassified material which reveals that the U.S. was prepared to bomb the Soviet Union with nuclear weapons wiping out 66 major cities, both during the war itself and following Truman’s bombing of Hiroshima.

The U.S.S.R. didn’t have nuclear weapons until 1948 so the plans were predicated on a nuclear first strike. The absolute destruction of a national group whose people had chosen to live under Communism (nuclear production gradually grew to include cities of other Communist national groups) would have constituted genocide. The military policy under consideration was in direct opposition to human decency, the Geneva Conventions, the U.S.-British-U.S.S.R. military alliance of WWII, the Nuremberg Trials of 1945-6, and the Convention on Genocide signed by the U.S. in 1948 which became effective in 1951. While the early plans to bomb 66 Soviet cities weren’t put into action the manufacture of nuclear weapons increased to fulfill the goal of enough bombs to obliterate all of the Soviet Union’s cities.

It may be for this reason that genocide prevention organizations of the U.S. and Canada, if not throughout NATO, were and are strongly controlled if not regulated, and are often directly funded by the government. Despite the Convention, the basis of U.S. and NATO policy was genocide and the total eradication of the Soviet Union by nuclear weapons would be a crime with no statute of limitations. The military edge of anti-Communism came to mean the possible obliteration of entire peoples. A military mindset allowing national obliteration helps explain U.S. lack of restraint in conventional bombing of Iraq’s civilian infrastructure during the First Gulf War.

By 2019 the plans to obliterate Russia, no longer a Communist state, have possibly been transferred or expanded to include the People’s Republic of China. In either case extermination of a national group, an entire country, an entire people, is a violation of the Genocide Convention and would require presentation of the bombing as an act of self defense, while the ethic of the Convention would have to be ignored or bent by the West’s media so that rulers permitting a genocide could continue to rule.

I think it’s for this reason that the Convention on Genocide was out of print at the United Nations in 1989 when our kitchen table press published it⁽⁴⁾. Kurt Waldheim, a former Nazi officer under Germany’s Third Reich was Secretary General at the U.N.; the U.S. had with relative silence ratified the Convention on Genocide after a forty year hiatus in 1988, yet the Convention was out of print at the U.N. and not easily available to the public. Was there something the people weren’t supposed to know? The U.S. had added at its ratification of the Convention treaty, qualifications, caveats which would allow it not be bound by the Convention while giving the appearance of commitment. Also, the United States and NATO forces Coalition were about to bomb Iraq “into the stone age,” invade and take over its resources. I included in the edition⁽⁵⁾ the U.S. “Reservations and Declarations” added at the U.S. 1988 ratification of the Convention. We sent free copies (publication expenses came out of our food budget) to the U.S. Congress. In my “Foreword” to the Canadian edition in 1996, I could point out that the U.S. qualifications of its commitment to genocide prevention were telegraphing an intention to apply the tactic of genocide in instances it considered necessary, directly contravening the Convention. The U.S. alone of all nations, claims the right to judge for itself whether or not it has committed an act of genocide. This awareness isn’t shared by North America’s corporate, academic, highly funded and government-allied organizations intended to prevent genocides.

Accountability for the crime of genocide remains within the domain of the powerful. Apparently the powerful are concerned that if the ongoing mechanisms of genocide are overturned in one region they may be overturned in another and the entire fabric of profit and controls will unravel. Signatory major powers have not brought Israel before International Court on charges of Israel’s alleged genocide of Palestinians. The U.S. and Coalition destruction of Iraq was not permitted testing as the crime of genocide at any court with the power to apply the law, domestically or internationally⁽⁶⁾. The tragedy of genocide against Myanmar’s Rohingya should have been addressed in 2012⁽⁷⁾.

The genocide trials of Guatemala should have been supported by the nations who signed the Genocide Convention⁽⁸⁾. There are examples in every country subservient to foreign powers of a blindness to what the takeover of a peoples and their cultures means. Current policies against native peoples by Canada, the U.S. or fascist governments in the Americas, remain unaddressed. The effect of this is that genocide becomes a non-issue. This encourages impunity. France,⁽⁹⁾Italy,⁽¹⁰⁾ Hungary⁽¹¹⁾ in particular openly commenced an ethnic cleansing of Roma people domestically, and throughout the European Union the Roma continue to be persecuted as if they are not intended to survive as a racial or ethnic group.

Accustomed to the crime of genocide the first world bathes in comparative luxury while its rulers inch closer and closer to the first strikes or threat of first strike, to rid the world of opposing ideologies and the people who support them. Poor people will either be drawn to ideologies which oppose their oppressors, or enslaved. Publishers and news media do not represent markets for liberation. It becomes difficult to write about the crime of genocide, or note warnings except those warnings comfortable with government policy. From inception the crimes are perception-managed so that the victims may be aware but the general populations of the aggressor countries are not. These crimes and their lack of prosecution enforce a mind control that moves the crime of genocide toward being awful but… acceptable. It is not acceptable. We are living amid monstrous crimes which we know are crimes, yet our governments and media are accepting these as normal. This “normal” will not let humanity survive.

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This article was originally published on Gerald and Maas Night’s Lantern

Notes

1. “Sleeping With The Third Reich: America’s Unspoken “Alliance” with Nazi Germany against the Soviet Union,” Prof. Michel Chossudovsky, Nov. 13, 2019, Global Research.

2. Webster Griffin Tarpley and Anton Chaitkin. George Bush: the Unauthorized Biography, Executive Intelligence Review, 1992.

3. “Wipe the Soviet Union Off the Map”, 204 Atomic Bombs against 66 Major Cities, US Nuclear Attack against USSR Planned During World War II,” Prof. Michel Chossudovsky, Nov. 22, 2019, Global Research.

4. The Crime of Genocide & Bill of Human Rights, U.N. Texts, Moody Maine: J.B.Gerald & J. Maas, 1989

5. “Foreword,” Common Rights & Expectations: United Nations Texts of Primary Treaties Concerning Rights of People, ed. J.B.Gerald, Ottawa: Gerald & Maas, 1996

6. The legal case presented for consideration by the Spanish National Court: “Narration of Facts by the Ad Hoc Committee for Justice for Iraq,” Ad Hoc Committee for Justice for Iraq, Oct. 6, 2009, http://usgenocide.org/the-legal-case/. [At Night’s Lantern: http://www.nightslantern.ca/narrationfacts.htm]

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After years of investigation and months of delay, Israel’s Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit formally indicted Benjamin Netanyahu for crimes ranging from his violation of public trust to bribery and fraud. Israel’s apologists will argue that the fact that a sitting Prime Minister has been charged with crimes against the state and people presents compelling evidence of the country’s democracy and commitment to the rule of law. This is the very point that Mandelblit made in announcing the indictments – “The public interest requires that we live in a country where no one is above the law.” However, this is only partially true since it appears that in Israel the principles of democracy or the rule of law only apply to Israeli Jews or the interests of the state, itself. In fact, Netanyahu’s entire sordid career is evidence of the selectiveness of Israelis’ sense of justice.

In the past the Netanyahu household has been charged with some of the pettiest forms of corruption imaginable. For example, his wife was found guilty of taking the empty bottles from beverages consumed at official state functions and keeping the money she received for turning them for recycling. The Netanyahus were also known to bring three weeks of dirty laundry on two-day official state trips and sending them to the hotel in which they were staying for a night so that the cleaning bill would be charged to the state’s budget. This is the sort of past petty thievery for which the Netanyahus were famous.

Looking at the recent indictments, it is clear that the Prime Minister has graduated to bigger and better forms of fraud and corruption. What’s striking, however, is that all of the crimes with which he is charged were focused on feeding his ego or his appetites. In some instances, they were favors done for a businessman in exchange for hundreds of thousands of dollars in gifts, in others they were the corrupt deals he made with various media tycoons in which he promised them benefits in exchange for their guaranteeing him positive coverage in their news outlets.

There is no doubt, that in all of these cases, Netanyahu’s behavior has been clearly criminal and reprehensible, and, as described by the Attorney General, a breach of the public’s trust. But what I find so striking and disturbing, is that these crimes pale in significance when compared to what Netanyahu has done to the Palestinian people and the prospect for Israeli-Palestinian peace – crimes for which he will not be called to account.

After Oslo, Netanyahu organized a back-door lobby to mobilize US Congressional opposition to the peace accords. This was the first time an Israeli lobby worked in the US to oppose their own government. He should have been charged with treason.

Back in Israel, during the same period, he organized with Ariel Sharon and a few others a smear campaign of incitement against Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. The campaign was so virulent and threatening that many Israelis, including Rabin’s wife, held Netanyahu responsible for Rabin’s assassination. Netanyahu should have been charged with incitement.

In 1996, he was elected Prime Minister on a platform dedicated to ending the peace process and he did everything he could to slow down, distort, and ultimately sabotage the Oslo Peace Process. Even the agreement he signed with the Palestinians at Wye so encumbered the process that by the end of his first term in office, peace was on life support.  He should have been charged with destroying the prospects for peace and putting at risk the lives of millions.

During his last three terms in office, he incited violence and hatred against Palestinians, both those who are citizens of Israel and those living under occupation. This has fueled extremist settler movements that have engaged in daily acts of violence, destruction of property, and murder. He also encouraged soldiers in the Israeli army to murder defenseless Palestinians and supported them when they were charged with crimes. In addition, as he did with Rabin, he has falsely accused his Israeli opponents of being too close to the Arabs and accused the Palestinian citizens of Israel of being enemies of the state. He should have been charged with hate crimes.

During his time in office he has: expanded settlements on stolen Palestinian land and the demolition of Palestinian property; overseen a number of devastating assaults on Gaza resulting in the indiscriminate massacre of thousands of innocent civilians and the destruction of Gaza’s infrastructure; instituted and maintained a cruel blockade of Gaza’s population, as an act of collective punishment, in which, for long periods of time, food, medicine, and other essential items were restricted or severely regulated – resulting in death, disease, and impoverishment of millions of innocents. He should have been charged with war crimes.

The list could go on, but this should suffice.

The bottom line is that, to be sure, Netanyahu is a criminal. But in today’s Israel he can’t be found guilty of his most serious crimes – treason, incitement, destroying peace, hate crimes, and war crimes. Instead, he will be asked only to answer for his narcissistic appetites and corruption.

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Introduction

On the eve of the seventieth anniversary of the outbreak of the Korean War, the armistice of 1953 has still not led to a peace treaty, to U.S.-DPRK diplomatic relations, or to an end to the U.S. embargo on DPRK trade. Military affairs analyst Taoka Shunji makes a case for the withdrawal of U.S. forces from South Korea based on an analysis of South Korea’s military superiority over the North and the ability to call on U.S. naval and air support if necessary. While high level negotiations and Presidential summits involving Kim Jong-un and Donald Trump hold out the possibility of an accord, tensions remain high and there has been no basic agreement.

Taoka Shunji’s proposals in this article share much in common with measures advocated by a number of American civilian and military leaders since the mid-1970s. As a candidate for president in early 1975, Jimmy Carter proposed removing U.S. forces from South Korea. Of Carter’s meeting that year with researchers at the Brookings Institution, Senior Fellow Barry M. Blechman recalled, “I told Carter we should take out the nukes (nuclear weapons) right off and phase out the ground troops over four or five years. I said the most important reason was to avoid getting the U.S. involved with ground forces almost automatically in a new war which is, of course, why the South Koreans want them there.” However, Major General John K. Singlaub, U.S. Forces Korea Chief of Staff at the time, publicly criticized Carter’s proposed withdrawal and CIA Director Stansfield Turner privately expressed misgivings.¹ It was never implemented.

Retired Admiral Gene R. Laroque, Director of the Center for Defense Information, also favored U.S. troop withdrawal from South Korea. He also advocated closing U.S. bases in Okinawa as strategically unnecessary and fiscally wasteful.² Chalmers Johnson, a former CIA consultant and later Director of the Japan Policy Research Institute, has written that South Korea “is twice as populous [as North Korea], infinitely richer, and fully capable of defending itself.”³ Johnson also explained why “defending Korea” and “defending Japan” are false rationales for perpetuating the oppressive burden of U.S. bases in Okinawa, documenting the many atrocities committed by U.S. forces there, even after its reversion from U.S. military occupation to Japanese administration in 1972.⁴ Moreover, the leaders of North and South Korea have recently proposed far-reaching measures to reduce tensions on the peninsula. In short, leaders and experts on both sides of the Pacific have warned that current U.S. military policies in East Asia are anachronistic, seemingly perpetuated by inertia. Yet their recommendations are ignored and new policy initiatives thwarted.

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Responding to the South Korean government’s August 23 announcement that it was ending the intelligence-sharing General Security of Military Information Agreement (GSOMIA) with Japan, the U.S. Department of Defense issued a statement expressing “deep concern and disappointment” that “repeated requests for reinstatement have been ignored.”

In Japan there is an assumption that if U.S. forces withdraw from South Korea, the peninsula will unify under North Korea putting Japan on the front lines in any confrontation. Such anxiety results from the impression that the U.S. military remains today the main force defending South Korea. In reality, however, the American presence there is very small compared to the South Korean military.

In September, 2018, the U.S. Defense Department reported troop strength at 17,200 Army and 8,100 Air Force for a total of 25,800. This compares to a total of 625,000 South Korean forces as reported in the 2019 issue of Military Balance published annually by the U.K.’s International Institute for Strategic Studies. They include 490,000 Army, 65,000 Air Force and 70, 000 Navy. Thus, the South Korean Army outnumbers the entire U.S. Army worldwide of 476,200. The 17,200 U.S. Army troops in South Korea are one twenty-ninth the size of the South Korean Army.

Headquarters of U.S. Forces Korea at Pyeongtaek, sixty kilometers south of Seoul. Previously located twenty kilometers north of Seoul at Uijeongbu, the U.S. division is no longer positioned to block a North Korean invasion, but, with a nearby port and airbase, Pyeongtaek is convenient for deploying forces to other locations worldwide. (Asahi Shimbun-sha)

The South Korean Army has approximately 2,500 tanks, 2,800 armored vehicles, and 590 helicopters. It is technologically inferior to the U.S. Army, but at least as strong materially as the armies of other Western countries, which were sharply reduced after the end of the Cold War.

The U.S. sent 440,000 troops to the Korean War (1950-53) withdrawing most of them after the truce. When the Cold War ended in 1989, they numbered 43,200 of which 31,600 were Army.

The U.S. military in South Korea used to be one component of America’s containment policy toward the Soviet Union until the U.S.S.R. collapsed in 1991. During the 1970s the U.S. was in a quasi-alliance with China, even closely cooperating to develop China’s F-8 II fighter aircraft. As a result, the U.S. concluded at the time that antagonism between North and South Korea was an internal matter on the peninsula, which led to proposals to withdraw U.S. forces from South Korea.

With prolongation of the Iraq War, which had begun in 2003, the U.S. military shifted one brigade of the Second Infantry Division in South Korea to Iraq in 2004. Even after the Iraq War wound down, that brigade did not move back to South Korea, but returned to the U.S. The Second Infantry Division, in which the brigade of 4,700 had been its nucleus, then became a division in name only with troops who were not permanently stationed, but rotated in and out from the U.S.

The division headquarters was located at Uijeongbu, twenty kilometers north of Seoul blocking the main route the North Korean Army would take in an invasion; but, in July of 2017, it moved sixty kilometers south of Seoul to Pyeongtaek. The headquarters of U.S. Forces Korea also moved there in June, 2018. At Pyeongtaek the Americans could avoid North Korean rocket and long-range artillery attacks, and use its port along with nearby Osan Airbase, making it a convenient place to deploy forces to other areas of the world. Readiness for deployment elsewhere is the same rationale that is being used for stationing Marines in Okinawa.

U.S. Air Force headquarters in South Korea is now located at Osan Airbase, about fifty kilometers south of Seoul. The number of fighter and attack aircraft there and at Gunsan Airbase, about 170 kilometers south of Seoul, total only 84.

The main force of the South Korean Air Force, with its strategic headquarters also at Osan, is comprised of 59 F-15K fighter-bombers and 163 F-16 fighters. Along with fifty domestically produced fighter-attack planes, it also has 174 F-5 light fighters, and 60 older model F4E fighters, a total of 522 fighter-attack aircraft. Forty F-35A stealth fighters are scheduled to replace the F4E fighters. In addition, four A330 refueling planes are on order from Airbus. Already in service are four high-speed early-warning planes remodeled from Boeing 737 passenger jets. Thus, South Korean aircraft far outnumber U.S. planes with continuing modernization of the force.

Almost all the aircraft in the North Korean Air Force are vintage models from the 1970’s, the newest being eighteen Soviet-made MiG 29’s. In the 29 years since the Soviet Union established diplomatic relations with South Korea in 1990, it has been extremely difficult to purchase spare parts for these planes, very few of which are still airworthy. This lessens the need for the South Korean Air Force to put assets into air defense so it can concentrate on offensive capability. Dependence on the U.S. Air Force is also sharply reduced.

The size of the North Korean Army is estimated at 1,100,000, but their equipment is woefully outdated, so if the soldiers were to leave their underground fortifications, they would likely be annihilated in air attacks. The North Korean Navy has two old-model frigates and twenty Chinese-made submarines. These are copies of the Soviet R-model submarines from the 1950s, and are not battle worthy. Some of the smaller ones are probably operable for underwater intrusion. The South Korean Navy has overwhelming superiority with one 19,000-ton amphibious helicopter carrier, sixteen submarines (1300-1900 tons), a total of twenty-two surface combatant (cruisers, destroyers, and frigates) and eighteen 1200-ton patrol ships.

Considering South Korea’s overwhelming military superiority over the North, some South Korean officers have expressed dissatisfaction that the U.S. military still holds the right of command over all forces in South Korea in the event of war. In 1994 the U.S. transferred peacetime command to the South Korean military, and in 2006 President Roh Moo-hyun requested the transfer of wartime command. In the midst of the Iraq War, the Pentagon’s budget was depleted and the U.S. wanted to reduce troop levels in South Korea. On October 6, 2006, the two defense secretaries met and agreed to transfer the wartime command.

However, facing budgetary pressures and North Korea’s development of nuclear weapons and missiles, President Lee Myung-bak agreed at an October 6, 2007 summit meeting with President George W. Bush to postpone the transfer until December, 2015. The next South Korean President Park Geun-hye postponed it again until the middle of the 2020’s decade.

Current President Moon Jae-in intends to transfer wartime command by the end of his term in May of 2022. At a June 3^rd 2019 meeting of defense secretaries it was decided that, after command is transferred, a South Korean general will be appointed commander of joint U.S.-South Korean Forces. The joint-command headquarters now at Yongsan in Seoul is scheduled for relocation to Pyeongtaek where construction of the base is expected to be completed in early 2022.

Until now the U.S. military has not been commanded by another nation’s officers except for temporary cases of small units. Perhaps the reason the U.S. agreed to transfer the right of joint command to a South Korean general was a plan to withdraw American combat units.

What could happen, then, if U.S. combat units withdraw? Should North Korea launch suicidal attacks firing nuclear missiles, U.S. ballistic missile submarines stationed off Alaska would retaliate with nuclear missiles. The conflict would likely be decided in a few days so any efforts at “emergency support” would be too late.

In a war with conventional weapons, the South Korean military on its own can repulse North Korean forces. However, in a war involving nuclear weapons, missile defenses, spy satellites or cyber attacks, South Korea would have to depend on the United States. If a South Korean general assumes command of joint U.S.-South Korean forces, consulting regularly with and taking advice from an American deputy commander, actual conditions would be little changed from what they are today, only this would allow the South Korean military to heighten their superficial status.

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This is a translation of “Zaikan beigun no tettai wa mohaya kitei rosen Taoka Shunji ga chosen hanto no gunji baransu wo bunseki,” AERA.dot., September 11, 2019. 

Translated with permission no. 19-4270.

Reprinting and reposting of this article without Asahi Shimbun’s permission is strictly prohibited.

Taoka Shunji is a former defense writer of the Asahi Shinbun (1968-2004), Senior Fellow of CSIS (1974-75), Guest Fellow of Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (1986-87), and Co-author of Superpowers at Sea (1988, Oxford Univ. Press). He is presently a TV commentator.

Steve Rabson is Professor Emeritus of East Asian Studies, Brown University.

Notes

¹ Don Oberdorfer, “Carter’s Decision on Korea Traced Back to January, 1975,” Washington Post, December 6, 1977.

² Michael Johns, “The Admiral Who Jumped Ship: Inside the Center for Defense Information,” Policy Review, 1988.

³ Chalmers Johnson, Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire, Metropolitan Books, 2000, p. 58.

⁴ Ibid., pp. 40-51.

Featured image is from VOA News

Update 2: Dobinsky, the MP, says there is a “signed suspicion” at 1:19 in the video below. This has been described in Ukrainian media as an investigative step which documents allegations against an individual or individuals, similar to a criminal referral. While Donibsky says during the press conference that “Zlochevsky was charged,” we have updated our headline and report accordingly. 

A transcription of key portions of the press conference can found here, via Tanya Tay Posobiec.

Update: Reuters sheds additional light on the press conference, noting that the document from the Prosecutor General’s office was leaked and not officially released.

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A Ukrainian MP says a document leaked from the Ukraine’s Office of the Prosecutor General contains claims against Burisma owner Nikolai Zlochevsky, as well as Hunter Biden and his partners – who allegedly received $16.5 million for their ‘services’ – according to Alexander Dubinsky of the ruling Servant of the People Party.

Dubinsky made the claim in a Wednesday press conference, citing materials from an investigation into Zlochevsky and Burisma.

“Zlochevsky was charged with this new accusation by the Office of the Prosecutor General but the press ignored it,” said the MP. “It was issued on November 14.”

“The son of Vice-President Joe Biden was receiving payment for his services, with money raised through criminal means and money laundering,” he then said, adding “Biden received money that did not come from the company’s successful operation but rather from money stolen from citizens.”

According to Dubinsky, Hunter Biden’s income from Burisma is a “link that reveals how money is siphoned [from Ukraine],” and how Biden is just one link in the chain of Zlochevsky’s money laundering operation which included politicians from the previous Yanukovich administration who continued their schemes under his successor, President Pyotr Poroshenko.

“We will reveal the information about the financial pyramid scheme that was created in Ukraine and developed by everyone beginning with Yanukovich and later by Poroshenko. This system is still working under the guidance of the current managerial board of the National Bank, ensuring that money flows in the interest of people who stole millions of dollars, took it offshore and bought Ukrainian public bonds turning them into the Ukrainian sovereign debt,” said Dubinsky, adding that “in both cases of Yanukovich and Poroshenko, Ms. Gontareva and companies she controls were investing the stolen funds.”

Franklin Templeton named

According to Interfax-Ukraine, MP Andriy Derkach announced at the same press conference that deputies have received new materials from investigative journalists alleging that the ‘family’ of ex-President Yanukovych funneled $7.4 billion through American investment firm Franklin Templeton Investments, which they claim have connections to the US Democratic party.”

“Last week, November 14, the Prosecutor General’s Office (PGO), unnoticed by the media, announced a new suspicion to the notorious owner of Burisma, ex-Ecology Minister Zlochevsky. According to the suspicion, the Yanukovych family is suspected, in particular, with legalizing (laundering) of criminally obtained income through Franklin Templeton Investments, an investment fund carrying out purchases of external government loan bonds totaling $7.4 billion,” said Derkach, adding that the money was criminally obtained and invested in the purchase of Ukrainian debt in 2013 – 2014.

“The son of Templeton’s founder, John Templeton Jr., was one of President Obama’s major campaign donors. Another fund-related character is Thomas Donilon. Managing Director of BlackRock Investment Institute, shareholder Franklin Templeton Investments, which has the largest share in the fund. It is noteworthy that he previously was Obama’s national security advisor,” Derkach added.

Derkach then demanded “President Zelensky must pick up the phone, dial Trump, ask for help and cooperation in the fight against corruption and fly to Washington. The issue of combating international corruption in Ukraine with the participation of citizens, businessmen and U.S. officials should become a key during the meeting of the two presidents.”

Ukraine is corrupt pass it onhttps://t.co/uUJxHT4F9F

— Jack Posobiec 🇺🇸 (@JackPosobiec) November 20, 2019

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On November 6^th, early in the morning at 7:50 AM local time, the Interior Ministry of the Republic of Tajikistan published a statement about an attack on a Tajik border outpost in “Ishqobod” along the border with Uzbekistan. The first statement informed that 15 of the assailants and 2 members of the state forces have died.  On the same day, in the second statement -that of the State Committee on National Security (SCNS)- claimed that the invaders were members of ISIS and entered the country from Afghanistan. After 2 days, on November 8^th, ISIS officially took the responsibility of the attack by publishing a statement on its Amaq news agency.

Due to the contradictions, there were also ambiguities about the claims of both ISIS and Tajik state. Edward Lemon, a Central Asian researcher and assistant professor at Daniel Morgan Graduate School tweeted the same day:

“This needs to be treated with caution and could just be opportunism on the part of ISIS”.

At the same time, different scenarios of organizing the attack by the role of “Internal” and even “external” players rose up.

However, the scenario that was never addressed, even in rumors, was the possible role the United States played in intercepting the attackers.  Tajikistan claims that the fighters entered its southern district of Qabodiyon from Qalay-I-Zalin Afghanistan. This is while the US had constructed a border outpost in this area.

In the first week of this month, a border outpost in Okultun constructed with US funding was inaugurated. The outpost constructed on the Tajikistan-Afghanistan border, aims to increase the capacity to monitor and patrol the border in the Shahritus region of Khatlon province. It seems to significantly increase the Tajikistan Border Forces’ ability to monitor and interdict illegal border crossings across a 15-20 kilometer range, and counter transnational threats such as marco-traffickers, smugglers, and violent extremists.

If one looks at the map and studies the topography, it seems likely that the fighters might not have crossed over the mountains east of Shahrituz and instead passed over the western part named Teshiktosh. As such, given its locations on the way from Qala-Zal to Qabodiyon and the difficult topography of the region, if one passes through other routes, it is likely that this outpost observed some activity. This intel might have led to the Tajikistan forces intercepting and neutralizing the ISIS terrorists. In other words, the US funded outpost might have helped the Tajik forces in intercepting the ISIS assailants.

The position of Qala-Zal, Shahrtuz and Qabodiyon and the Topography of Region

Some commentators have questioned the version of the Tajik state and some reports have claimed that Tajikistan is trying to play down its casualty figures.

Kunduz Provincial Police told the authors that there are some reports of foreign fighters there. Recently somewere arrested, including Pakistanis, but they denied saying they crossed over to Uzbekistan. Attempts to reach the Afghan Ministry of Interior for comments went unanswered. It is worth noting , here, that ISIS threats from Afghanistan are downplayed by both Afghanistan and the US Resolute Support mission in Afghanistan & hyped up by Tajikistan and Russia. Here something altogether different happened.

The Russians behavior and reaction is also interesting. Just half an hour before the Tajikistan  Interior ministry released its statement, Sputnik published a report claimed that the number of ISIS members in north Afghanistan has increased and they cooperate with the Taliban. And more interestingly, a week before the incident on October 30^th, the chairman of Russian Security Council, Nikolai Patrushev visited Tajikistan and met President Rahmon. A key issue discussed was the necessity of collective measures toward the threats from Afghanistan. This is while Tajikistan is a member of Russian led Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) and hosting the biggest Russian military base abroad. It seems that Patrushev’s emphasis on “collective measures” could have other meanings.

After the attack, everyone expected a supportive position from Russia on Tajikistan’s claim of an ISIS attack and calling for the necessity of more security integration with Russia. But the well-known Russian newspaper Kommersant, which is considered close to the government, published a report in which an expert named Arkadia Dubnova, claimed the attack is a dummy and assailants might be prisoners brought and killed there by the government. Some other Russian opinions have such pessimism inside. It might be due to a US intervention on Russian “Near Abroad”.

On the other hand, as Muqtedar Khan believes,

“the Trump administration’s National Security Strategy document views Central Asia as an adjunct to South Asia. The United States is still looking at the region through two security-related lenses. One lens is that of counterterrorism and the stabilization of Afghanistan; the other is the global competition with China. But counterterrorism remains the dominant interest. As the threat and reach of ISIS, al Qaeda and the Taliban diminish, so will American influence in Central Asia if Washington doesn’t broaden its view of the region”.

So, the possible involvement can make sense, especially when Rahmon needs new powerful allies for balancing Russia and China before shifting power to his elder son, Rustam.

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Omid Rahimi is a Fellow at the Institute for Central Asia and Afghanistan Studies in Mashhad, Iran. Follow him at @0midRahimi. 

Aveek Sen is an independent journalist working on cybersecurity and the geopolitics of India’s neighborhood, focusing on Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran, and Bangladesh.. Follow him at@aveeksen.

Just in time to shine a light on what’s behind the latest sanctions from Washington, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif in a speech at the annual Astana Club meeting in Nur-Sultan, Kazakhstan delivered a searing account of Iran-US relations to a select audience of high-ranking diplomats, former Presidents and analysts.

Zarif was the main speaker in a panel titled “The New Concept of Nuclear Disarmament.” Keeping to a frantic schedule, he rushed in and out of the round table to squeeze in a private conversation with Kazakh First President Nursultan Nazarbayev.

During the panel, moderator Jonathan Granoff, President of the Global Security Institute, managed to keep a Pentagon analyst’s questioning of Zafir from turning into a shouting match.

Previously, I had extensively discussed with Syed Rasoul Mousavi, minister for West Asia at the Iran Foreign Ministry, myriad details on Iran’s stance everywhere from the Persian Gulf to Afghanistan. I was at the James Bond-ish round table of the Astana Club, as I moderated two other panels, one on multipolar Eurasia and the post-INF environment and another on Central Asia (the subject of further columns).

Zarif’s intervention was extremely forceful. He stressed how Iran “complied with every agreement and it got nothing;” how “our people believe we have not gained from being part of” the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action; how inflation is out of control; how the value of the rial dropped 70% “because of ‘coercive measures’ – not sanctions because they are illegal.”

He spoke without notes, exhibiting absolute mastery of the inextricable swamp that is US-Iran relations. It turned out, in the end, to be a bombshell. Here are highlights.

Zarif’s story began back during 1968 negotiations of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty,  with the stance of the “Non-Aligned Movement to accept its provisions only if at a later date” – which happened to be 2020 – “there would be nuclear disarmament.” Out of 180 non-aligned countries, “90 countries co-sponsored the indefinite extension of the NPT.”

Moving to the state of play now, he mentioned how the United States and France are “relying on nuclear weapons as a means of deterrence, which is disastrous for the entire world.” Iran on the other hand “is a country that believes nuclear weapons should never be owned by any country,” due to “strategic calculations based on our religious beliefs.”

Zarif stressed how “from 2003 to 2012 Iran was under the most severe UN sanctions that have ever be imposed on any country that did not have nuclear weapons. The sanctions that were imposed on Iran from 2009 to 2012 were greater than the sanctions that were imposed on North Korea, which had nuclear weapons.”

Discussing the negotiations for the JCPOA that started in 2012, Zarif noted that Iran had started from the premise that “we should be able to develop as much nuclear energy as we wanted” while the US had started under the premise that Iran should never have any centrifuges.” That was the “zero-enrichment” option.

Zarif, in public, always comes back to the point that “in every zero-sum game everybody loses.” He admits the JCPOA is “a difficult agreement. It’s not a perfect agreement. It has elements I don’t like and it has elements the United Stares does not like.” In the end, “we reached the semblance of a balance.”

Zarif offered a quite enlightening parallel between the NPT and the JCPOA:

“The NPT was based on three pillars: non-proliferation, disarmament and access to nuclear technology for peaceful purposes. Basically the disarmament part of NPT is all but dead, non-proliferation is barely surviving and peaceful use of nuclear energy is under serious threat,” he observed.

Meanwhile,

“JCPOA was based on two pillars: economic normalization of Iran, which is reflected in Security Council resolution 2231, and – at the same time – Iran observing certain limits on nuclear development.”

Crucially, Zarif stressed there is nothing “sunset” about these limits, as Washington argues: “We will be committed to not producing nuclear weapons forever.”

All about distrust

Then came Trump’s fateful May 2018 decision:

“When President Trump decided to withdraw from the JCPOA, we triggered the dispute resolution mechanism.”

Referring to a common narrative that describes him and John Kerry as obsessed with sacrificing everything to get a deal, Zarif said:

“We negotiated this deal based on distrust. That’s why you have a mechanism for disputes.”

Still, “the commitments of the EU and the commitments of the United States are independent. Unfortunately the EU believed they could procrastinate. Now we are at a situation where Iran is receiving no benefit, nobody is implementing their part of the bargain, only Russia and China are fulfilling partially their commitments, because the United States even prevents them from fully fulfilling their commitments. France proposed last year to provide $15 billion to Iran for the oil we could sell from August to December. The United States prevented the European Union even from addressing this.”

The bottom line, then, is that “other members of the JCPOA are in fact not implementing their commitments.” The solution “is very easy. Go back to the non-zero sum. Go back to implementing your commitments. Iran agreed that it would negotiate from Day One.”

Zarif made the prediction that

“if the Europeans still believe that they can take us to the Security Council and snap back resolutions they’re dead wrong. Because that is a remedy if there was a violation of the JCPOA. There was no violation of the JCPOA. We took these actions in response to European and American non-compliance. This is one of the few diplomatic achievements of the last many decades. We simply need to make sure that the two pillars exist: that there is a semblance of balance.”

This led him to a possible ray of light among so much doom and gloom:

“If what was promised to Iran in terms of economic normalization is delivered, even partially, we are prepared to show good faith and come back to the implementation of the JCPOA. If it’s not, then unfortunately we will continue this path, which is a path of zero-sum, a path leading to a loss for everybody, but a path that we have no other choice but to follow.”

Time for HOPE

Zarif identifies three major problems in our current geopolitical madness: a “zero-sum mentality on international relations that doesn’t work anymore;” winning by excluding others (“We need to establish dialogue, we need to establish cooperation”); and “the belief that the more arms we purchase, the more security we can bring to our people.”

He was adamant that there’s a possibility of implementing “a new paradigm of cooperation in our region,” referring to Nazarbayev’s efforts: a real Eurasian model of security. But that, Zarif explained, “requires a neighborhood policy. We need to look at our neighbors as our friends, as our partners, as people without whom we cannot have security. We cannot have security in Iran if Afghanistan is in turmoil. We cannot have security in Iran if Iraq is in turmoil. We cannot have security in Iran if Syria is in turmoil. You cannot have security in Kazakhstan if the Persian Gulf region is in turmoil.”

He noted that, based on just such thinking, “resident Rouhani this year, in the UN General Assembly, offered a new approach to security in the Persian Gulf region, called HOPE, which is the acronym for Hormuz Peace Initiative – or Hormuz Peace Endeavor so we can have the HOPE abbreviation.”

HOPE, explained Zarif, “is based on international law, respect of territorial integrity; based on accepting a series of principles and a series of confidence building measures; and we can build on it as you [addressing Nazarbayev] built on it in Eurasia and Central Asia. We are proud to be a part of the Eurasia Economic Union, we are neighbors in the Caspian, we have concluded last year, with your leadership, the legal convention of the Caspian Sea, these are important development that happened on the northern part of Iran. We need to repeat them in the southern part of Iran, with the same mentality that we can’t exclude our neighbors. We are either doomed or privileged to live together for the rest of our lives. We are bound by geography. We are bound by tradition, culture, religion and history.” To succeed, “we need to change our mindset.”

Age of hegemony gone

It all comes down to the main reason US foreign policy just can’t get enough of Iran demonization. Zarif has no doubts:

“There is still an arms embargo against Iran on the way. But we are capable of shooting down a US drone spying in our territory. We are trying simply to be independent. We never said we will annihilate Israel. Somebody said Israel will be annihilated. We never said we will do it.”

It was, Zarif said, Benjamin Netanyahu who took ownership of that threat, saying,

“I was the only one against the JCPOA.” Netanyahu “managed to destroy the JCPOA. What is the problem? The problem is we decided not to fold. That is our only crime. We had a revolution against a government that was supported by the United States, imposed on our country by the United States, [that] tortured our people with the help of the United States, and never received a single human rights condemnation, and now people are worried why they say ‘Death to America’? We say death to these policies, because they have brought nothing but this farce. What did they bring to us? If somebody came to the United States, removed your president, imposed a dictator who killed your people, wouldn’t you say death to that country?”

Zarif inevitably had to evoke Mike Pompeo:

“Today the Secretary of State of the United States says publicly: ‘If Iran wants to eat, it has to obey the United States.’ This is a war crime. Starvation is a crime against humanity. It’s a newspeak headline. If Iran wants its people to eat, it has to follow what he said. He says, ‘Death to the entire Iranian people.’”

By then the atmosphere across the huge round table was electric. One could hear a pin drop – or, rather, the mini sonic booms coming from high up in the shallow dome via the system devised by star architect Norman Foster, heating the high-performance glass to melt the snow.

Zarif went all in:

“What did we do the United States? What did we do to Israel? Did we make their people starve? Who is making our people starve? Just tell me. Who is violating the nuclear agreement? Because they did not like Obama? Is that a reason to destroy the world, just because you don’t like a president?”

Iran’s only crime, he said, “is that we decided to be our own boss. And that crime – we are proud of it. And we will continue to be. Because we have seven millennia of civilization. We had an empire that ruled the world, and the life of that empire was probably seven times the entire life of the United States. So – with all due respect to the United States empire; I owe my education to the United States – we don’t believe that the United States is an empire that will last. The age of empires is long gone. The age of hegemony is long gone. We now have to live in a world without hegemony. – regional hegemony or global hegemony.”

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This article was originally published on Asia Times.

Pepe Escobar is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image: Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, at the annual Astana Club meeting in Nur-Sultan, Kazakhstan last week. Photo: Asia Times / Pepe Escobar

“As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words, but to live by them.”—John F. Kennedy

Once again, it’s been a hard, heart-wrenching, stomach-churning kind of year.

It’s been a year of hotheads and blowhards and killing sprees and bloodshed and takedowns.

It’s been a year in which tyranny took a few more steps forward and freedom got knocked down a few more notches.

It’s been a year with an abundance of bad news and a shortage of good news.

It’s been a year of too much hate and too little kindness.

It’s been a year in which politics and profit margins took precedence over decency, compassion and human-kindness.

And now we find ourselves at this present moment, understandably overwhelmed by all that is wrong in the world and struggling to reflect and give thanks for what is good.

It’s not easy, and it’s getting harder by the day.

After all, how do you give thanks for freedoms that are constantly being eroded? How do you express gratitude for one’s safety when the perils posed by the American police state grow more treacherous by the day? How do you come together as a nation in thanksgiving when the powers-that-be continue to polarize and divide us into warring factions?

With every passing day, the U.S. government more closely resembles an evil empire, governed by laws that are rash, unjust and unconstitutional; policed by government agents who are corrupt, hypocritical and abusive; a menace to its own people; and the antithesis of everything the founders hoped the government would be—a blessing to all the people.

We’re not just dealing with misguided government officials run amok.

This is evil disguised as bureaucracy.

This is what Hannah Arendt referred to as the banality of evil.

Evil has a broad spectrum, but still… evil is evil.

Evil is what happens when government bureaucrats unquestioningly carry out orders that are immoral and inhumane; obey immoral instructions unthinkingly; march in lockstep with tyrants; mindlessly perpetuate acts of terror and inhumanity; and justify it all as just “doing one’s job.”

To that list, let me add one more: a populace that remains silent in the face of wrongdoing.

This is how evil prevails: when good men and women do nothing.

By doing nothing, by remaining silent, by being bystanders to injustice, hate and wrongdoing, good people become as guilty as the perpetrator.

There’s a term for this phenomenon where people stand by, watch and do nothing—even when there is no risk to their safety—while some horrific act takes place (someone is mugged or raped or bullied or left to die): it’s called the bystander effect.

It works the same whether you’re talking about kids watching bullies torment a fellow student on a playground, bystanders watching someone dying on a sidewalk, or citizens remaining silent in the face of government atrocities.

We need to stop being silent bystanders.

So what can you do about this bystander effect?

Be a hero, suggests psychologist Philip Zimbardo.

“Each of us has an inner hero we can draw upon in an emergency,” Zimbardo concluded. “If you think there is even a possibility that someone needs help, act on it. You may save a life. You are the modern version of the Good Samaritan that makes the world a better place for all of us.”

Zimbardo is the psychologist who carried out the Stanford Prison Experiment which studied the impact of perceived power and authority on middleclass students who were assigned to act as prisoners and prison guards. The experiment revealed that power does indeed corrupt (the appointed guards became increasingly abusive), and those who were relegated to being prisoners acted increasingly “submissive and depersonalized, taking the abuse and saying little in protest.”

What is the antidote to group think and the bystander effect?

Be an individual. Listen to your inner voice. Take responsibility.

“If you find yourself in an ambiguous situation, resist the urge to look to others and go with your gut instinct,” advises Melissa Burkley in Psychology Today. “If you think there is even a possibility that someone is in need, act on it. At worst, you will embarrass yourself for a few minutes, but at best, you will save a life.”

“Even if people recognize that they are witnessing a crime, they may still fail to intervene if they do not take personal responsibility for helping the victim,” writes Burkley. “The problem is that the more bystanders there are, the less responsible each individual feels.”

In other words, recognize injustice.

Don’t turn away from suffering.

Refuse to remain silent. Take a stand. Speak up. Speak out.

This is what Zimbardo refers to as “the power of one.”

All it takes is one person breaking away from the fold to change the dynamics of a situation.

“Once any one helps, then in seconds others will join in because a new social norm emerges,” notes Zimbardo. “Do Something Helpful.”

The Good Samaritans of this world don’t always get recognized, but they’re doing their part to push back against the darkness.

For instance, a few years ago in Florida, a family of six—four adults and two young boys—were swept out to sea by a powerful rip current in Panama City Beach. There was no lifeguard on duty. The police were standing by, waiting for a rescue boat. And the few people who had tried to help ended up stranded, as well.

Those on shore grouped together and formed a human chain. What started with five volunteers grew to 15, then 80 people, some of whom couldn’t swim.

Screenshot: Beachgoers banded together Saturday to rescue a family from drowning. Source: pressfrom.info

One by one, they linked hands and stretched as far as their chain would go. The strongest of the volunteers swam out beyond the chain and began passing the stranded victims of the rip current down the chain.

One by one, they rescued those in trouble and pulled each other in.

There’s a moral here for what needs to happen in this country if we only can band together and prevail against the riptides that threaten to overwhelm us.

So here’s what I suggest.

Instead of just giving thanks this holiday season with words that are too soon forgotten, why not put your gratitude into action with deeds that spread a little kindness, lighten someone’s burden, and brighten some dark corner?

Pay your blessings forward in whatever way makes sense to you.

This is something that everyone can do no matter how tight our budgets or how crowded our schedules.

Engage in acts of kindness. Smile more. Fight less. Build bridges. Refuse to toxic politics define your relationships. Focus on the things that unite instead of that which divides. Be a hero, whether or not anyone ever notices.

Do your part to push back against the meanness of our culture with conscious compassion and humanity. Moods are contagious, the good and the bad. They can be passed from person to person. So can the actions associated with those moods, the good and the bad.

Even holding the door for someone or giving up your seat on a crowded train are acts of benevolence that, magnified by other such acts, can spark a movement.

Volunteer at a soup kitchen or donate to a charity that does good work. Take part in local food drives. Take a meal to a needy family. “Adopt” an elderly person at a nursing home. Advocate for the creation of local homeless shelters in your community. Urge your churches, synagogues and mosques to act as rotating thermal shelters for the homeless during the cold winter months. Support groups like The Rutherford Institute that are tirelessly working to advance the cause of freedom.

In other words, help those in need.

I know that fixing what’s wrong with this country is not going to happen overnight.

There may not be much we can do to avoid the dismal reality of the police state in the long term—not so long as the powers-that-be continue to call the shots and allow profit margins to take precedence over the needs of people—but in the short term, there are things we can all do right now to make this world (or at least our small corners of it) a little bit kinder, a lot less hostile and more just.

On a larger scale, we need to stop being silent bystanders to our nation’s downfall.

Historically, this bystander syndrome in which people remain silent and disengaged—mere onlookers—in the face of abject horrors and injustice has resulted in whole populations being conditioned to tolerate unspoken cruelty toward their fellow human beings: the crucifixion and slaughter of innocents by the Romans, the torture of the Inquisition, the atrocities of the Nazis, the butchery of the Fascists, the bloodshed by the Communists, and the cold-blooded war machines run by the military industrial complex.

“I swore never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation,” stated Holocaust Elie Wiesel in his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech in 1986. “We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. Sometimes we must interfere. When human lives are endangered, when human dignity is in jeopardy, national borders and sensitivities become irrelevant. Wherever men or women are persecuted because of their race, religion, or political views, that place must – at that moment – become the center of the universe.”

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, it’s never too late to start making things right in the world.

So this year, don’t just give thanks. Pay your blessings forward.

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This article was originally published on The Rutherford Institute.

Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead is founder and president of The Rutherford Institute. His new book Battlefield America: The War on the American People  is available at www.amazon.com. Whitehead can be contacted at [email protected]. John W. Whitehead is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Tensions are heating up around the militant-held parts of Idlib and Aleppo provinces.

On November 22, the Syrian Army conducted a wide-scale missile strike on militants’ positions in western Aleppo. According to pro-militant sources, at least 15 improvised rocket-assisted munitions were employed. 2 large weapon depots belonging to radicals were targeted. The strike came in response to the November 21 incident, when militant shelling killed or injured at least 37 people in the city of Aleppo.

On November 23, the army eliminated several militants with anti-tank guided missiles and artillery strikes around Rakaya Sijneh and the al-Nar hilltop. On the same day, a Russian airstrike destroyed a headquarters of Jayish al-Izaa, mostly known for its ties with al-Qaeda, near Kafr Nabl.

On November 24, the army resumed its ground operation against Hayat Tahrir al-Sham and other radical groups in southern Idlib. Backed up by air and artillery strikes, army troops liberated the town of Misherfah and secured several positions around it. Militants carried out two counter-attacks to recapture Misherfah, but they were repelled. According to pro-government sources, up to 9 militants were eliminated.

Earlier in November, government forces liberated Luwaybidah and the Khaznah Hill in the same area. It’s expected that the army and its allies will continue their counter-terrorism efforts and further steadily cleaning southern Idlib.

On November 23, a coalition of Turkish-backed militant groups, known as the Syrian National army, launched a wide-scale attack on positions of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) and the Syrian Army near Ayn Issa in northern Raqqa. By November 24, they had captured the villages of Saida, Mu’laq and al-Wasta, and reached the vicinity of Ayn Issa itself.

Then, united forces of the SDF and the Syrian Army pushed Turkish-backed militants back recapturing Saida, Mu’laq and al-Wasta, and once again securing the area. Despite this, artillery duels along the contact line north of Ayn Issa continued.

Over the past weeks, the Turkish Army established several fortified positions near the M4 highway in northern Raqqa and eastern al-Hasakah. Taking into account that Turkish proxies cannot carry out any large-scale offensive actions without Ankara’s approval, the Turkish leadership is likely aiming to use the instability in northeastern Syria to occupy more area. The M4 highway, which is the main transportation line in this part of the country, is an apparent target.

Central Command chief General Kenneth McKenzie revealed on November 23 that around 500 US troops remain deployed on the eastern bank of the Euphrates and in al-Hasakah. These troops will soon resume their anti-terrorist activities, General McKenzie added.

The US withdrawal from northern Syria allowed it to avoid the involvement in the ongoing  standoff over the so-called Kurdish question. Washington used the gained time to fortify its positions in oil-rich areas of eastern Syria.

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The Astana Club is one of the most crucial annual meetings in Eurasia, alongside the Boao forum in China and the Valdai discussions in Russia. China, Russia and Kazakhstan are all at the forefront of Eurasia integration. No wonder, then, that the 5^th meeting of the Astana Club had to focus on Greater Eurasia – synonymous, it may be hoped, with a “new architecture of global cooperation.”

Astana Club congregates a fascinating mix of Eurasia-wide notables with Europeans and Americans. Virtually all relevant shades of the geopolitical spectrum are represented. Panels are very well structured (I moderated two of them). Discussions are frank and non-denial denials are heavily discouraged. Here is just a taste of what was discussed in Nur-Sultan, under the spectacular shallow dome designed by Norman Foster.

Great stabilizer

Vladimir Yakunin, chairman of the Dialogue of Civilizations Research Institute in Moscow, bets that China is “ready to prepare Eurasia for the future” even while there’s “no hint it will be treated by the West in a positive way.” Yakunin sees the New Silk Roads, or Belt and Road Initiative, as a “civilizational dialogue basis for China” even as Russia continues to assert itself again as a global power.

Wang Huiyao, from the Center for China and Globalization and a counselor of China’s State Council, sees China as “the biggest stabilizer” in international relations and trade as “the biggest mechanism for prosperity,” as demonstrated once again at the latest Shanghai Expo.

Senior Pakistani diplomat Iftekhar Chowdury, now at the Institute of South Asian Studies at the National University of Singapore, argues that the “liberal world order is not universal”; now it all comes down to “liberal capitalism against China.” Huiyao, for his part, is not fazed: he stresses that China already sees a “Eurasia 3D” as a new negotiation platform.

Huiyao points out how the “wrong methodology” is being applied as a “stabilizer of the world economy.” He emphasizes the role of the Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank  and especially Belt & Road as “a new impetus for developing the world in the next decades,” drawing on “Chinese culture, tradition, values” – plus a hybrid economy not only featuring state-owned enterprises. Belt & Road, he insists, is a “real international development plan.” In contrast, the great danger is “unilateralism”: “Do we have only one form of history?”

Jacob Frenkel, Chairman of JP Morgan International, clear-headed and didactic unlike many bankers, actually quotes from a Chinese proverb: “The honey is sweet, but the bee stings.” He emphasizes that “words matter. When you use ‘war’ in commerce, there are consequences” – especially when there are “millions of boats” navigating “the same ocean.”

Wang lends backing to Frenkel when he underlines the unintended consequences for third countries from the US-China trade war. Frenkel sees tariffs as “the wrong instruments” and stresses that businessmen “don’t believe in IMF models.” Boris Tadic, former President of Serbia, concentrates on how “arrogant big powers are ignoring smaller countries.”

The redoubtable Li Wei, President of the Development Research Center of the State Council Chair and a sterling negotiator, stresses that under serious “anti-globalist tendencies,” the need is for “new principles of coexistence.” China and the US should “stop exchanging punches; there have been 13 meetings to discuss the trade war.” What’s needed, says Li, in a new first stage of discussion, is for Xi and Trump to sign a memorandum of understanding.

Reacting to the possibility of China and the US signing protocols, Yakunin has to come back to his main point: “The US is not willing to see China transform itself into a great power.”

Li, unfazed, has to mention that Xi Jinping actually launched Belt & Road in Kazakhstan – at the nearby Nazarbayev University, in 2013. He’s convinced that the initiative is capable of “fully answering all challenges of the present historical moment.”

From MAD to SAD

Terje Todd-Larsen, former Under Secretary General of the UN and President of the International Peace Institute, laments that with the multilateral system weakened, and no multilateral organization encompassing the Middle East and Northern Africa, there is no table capable anywhere of congregating Arabs, Iran, Israel and Turkey. The best hope lies with Kazakhstan – and there are precedents already, with Nur-Sultan hosting the Astana process for Syria.

On the nuclear weapons front, Yakunin notes how nations that subscribe to the Non Proliferation Treaty actually now expect a “formal affirmation they won’t be threatened.” He sees “lack of trust” as the greatest threat to the NPT: “The P5 members of the NPT did not live up to their promises.”

The legendary Mohamed El Baradei, former Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency and 2005 Nobel Peace Prize laureate, lays down the choice in stark terms: It’s either “maximum pressure, regime change and sanctions” or “dialogue, equity, cooperation, respect.” He stresses that “International institutions can’t deal with the world today – it’s way beyond them.” And the elephant in the room is, of course, nuclear weapons: “We seem frozen in place.”

El Baradei refutes the notion of the nuclear club as a model: “What is the logic and moral justification? This is an unsustainable regime.” On nuclear disarmament, it’s the nuclear states that have to start a new era. For the moment, what’s left is “to salvage the remains of nuclear arms control. We’ve gone from MAD to SAD – self-assured destruction.”

Back on the ground level, Dan Smith, director of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute introduces lethal autonomous weapons systems – as in robots with a very high degree of autonomy – into the conversation. Not that these entities would prevent, for instance, cyber-attacks, which “can be counter-productive and self-destructive, because there will be a counter-strike.”

Global alliance

The undisputed star of the show at the Astana Club is really Kazakh First President Nazarbayev. There’s a feeling among seasoned diplomats and analysts that when the history of Greater Eurasia is written, Nazarbayev will be on the front page. Global turmoil may not favor it too much at the moment, but as the Russians stress, the Eurasian Economic Union, for instance, is bound to survive sanctions and the trade war, and 2025 offers a tantalizing glimpse of the future via open market for gas and transportation. The EU and the EAEU have complementary economics, and Russia can play a major role.

Nazarbayev quotes from washed up theorist Francis Fukuyama to stress that “only three decades later,” his “anticipation did not come true.” He is keen to “critically reassess” the Eurasian model of security, now combining Europe and Asia, as most experts who prepared a detailed report on the Top Ten risks for Eurasia in 2020 agree.

Nazarbayev does have a road map for peace in the 21^st century, via a manifesto he presented at the UN. That would be constituted as a global alliance of leaders for a nuclear-free world – complete with global summits dedicated to nuclear security. He can speak like that with the “moral right” of having closed one of the world’s major nuclear arsenals – Kazakhstan’s.

What’s key as much for Nazarbayev as for Xi and Putin is that Belt & Road, the Eurasian Economic Union, the European Union, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, the Association of Southeast Asian Nation – all these initiatives and institutions – should be on overdrive, together, creating multiple negotiation tracks, all geared towards Greater Eurasia. And what better platform to advance it, conceptually, than the Astana Club?

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This article was originally published on Asia Times.

Pepe Escobar is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is Asia Times

While the EU and United States have all but abandoned nuclear energy as a future power source, with almost no new reactors being built and existing ones being decommissioned, Russia has quietly emerged as the world’s leading builder of peaceful civilian nuclear power plants. Now the Russian state nuclear company, Rosatom, has completed the first commercial floating nuclear plant and has successfully towed it to its ultimate location in the Russian Far East where access to power is difficult. It could transform the energy demands of much of the developing world, in addition to Russia. An added plus is that nuclear plants emit zero carbon emissions so that political opposition based on CO2 does not apply.

The floating power plant, named Akademik Lomonosov, houses two 35-megawatt reactors, based on the design of the nuclear plants aboard the successful fleet of Russian nuclear-powered icebreakers and capable of providing 70 MW electric power to city of 100,000. By comparison a typical on-land nuclear station in the USA or Europe is 1,000 MW in size making them suitable only for densely populated industrialized areas.

The smaller reactors are far cheaper to build once they go into multiple-unit production and are far more flexible for locations in developing regions of Asia or Africa where lack of reliable electricity is a major constraint to economic development. The construction and installation cost for the Lomonosov is reportedly $480 million, or about $6.90 per watt, slightly more than an average conventional plant.

It is designed to last 40 years before being towed away to a special location in Russia for decommissioning, similar to the process for nuclear-powered ships. The special vessel is some 140 meters long and 30 meters wide. The design features well-proven Russian-built nuclear reactors used reliably for some five decades to power its nuclear icebreaker fleet, the world’s largest. The vessel itself has been designed to be capable of withstanding a tsunami or even a collision with land or a ship. It is designed to be stationed at a specially fixed site on sea and connected to land via underwater cables.The floating units can act as cogeneration facilities capable of feeding the grid and for desalinating large quantities of seawater making them attractive to the Middle East and other countries with water problems.

In September the Akademik Lomonosov reached its destination at Pevek, in the remote northern autonomous district of Chukotka, where it will be connected from a fixed site offshore to the grid by year end. It is the only operating floating nuclear reactor power plant in existence today, a significant accomplishment given the massive Western economic sanctions on Russia since 2014. The offshore Lomonosov will more than replace the existing small nuclear plant at Bilibino, currently the smallest and the northernmost operating nuclear power plant in the world, which is being decommissioned as well as a small conventional plant.

Why Floating?

The idea to build a nuclear power reactor on a special barge or floating platform has major advantages. First because the reactor units are far smaller and designed for floating offshore sites, they can be modular or produced in a factory, giving major economic savings over conventional nuclear plants. Typically, conventional nuclear reactors must be entirely custom made on site making them enormously expensive and years in the construction, as much as 18 years in some cases. The small floating reactors could be scaled up to support areas with limited energy resources. And finding  large land space for siting is not a problem.

The Akademik Lomonosov was built at the state-owned Baltiysky Zavod (Baltic Shipyard)a special shipyard at St. Petersburg building nuclear icebreakers. It was then towed over a period of weeks from Murmansk to its destination at Pevek. Pevek is a key port in Russia’s Northern Sea Route. The company Rosenergoatom stated, “As the floating plant is going to be located in Pevek, it will boost the social and economic development of the Chaun municipal district specifically and Chukotka in general. In addition, it will become one of the key infrastructure elements within the Northern Sea Route development program.” Recently Russia has been developing the Northern Sea Route to Asia in the Arctic waters to transport Russian liquified natural gas to China and other Asian markets. Several more floating nuclear power plants are planned along the route as the trade expands.

Russia has the world’s largest fleet of nuclear-powered icebreakers, a well-developed experience base to build their floating reactors which use the same basic reactor. The Baltiysky shipyard, one of Russia’s largest,contains all necessary supporting industries: engineering department, woodwork production, marine machine building, power engineering, metallurgical production, research and development department and the shipyard itself. The completion of the Lomonosov is a major feat given that the parent company, United Shipbuilding Corporation,was sanctioned in 2014 by the US Treasury over Ukraine and Crimea.

Initially the offshore nuclear plants will be built for remote areas of Russia difficult to power, especially in the mineral and oil rich, but remote, far north. As well, future reactors will be used to power offshore oil and gas platforms in the remote regions. After successful operation of the Lomonosov reactor, plans are to build a fleet of the floating platforms to give cities and towns across Russia electricity including for heating homes and businesses, opening major new possibilities of economic development.Another possible use for floating nuclear plants like Lomonosov is to power desalination plants, where the makers say it is capable of providing 240,000 cubic meters of fresh water daily.

Another advantage of the Russian floating power plants is the fact that they are being built in a major shipyard using tested manufacturing methods rather than on site. This will ultimately bring cost of production quite significantly down as new units are built, making them feasible and affordable for smaller developing countries. Further,nuclear power has critical advantages in that it isn’t intermittent like solar or wind. The reactor fuel for the Akademik Lomonosov lasts 12 years before it must be changed.

Emerging Markets

At the recent ASEAN meeting of Southeast Asian nations, Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev held discussions he termed “very promising” about sales of the Russian floating reactors. Medvedev told The Bangkok Post that Russia’s state-owned Rosatom, was open to do deals with Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) states. “Talks are underway with some ASEAN countries on the construction of new centers for nuclear science and technology,” he said.

The October 2019  first Russia-Africa summit in Sochi at which Russia declared $20 billion Soviet-era debts of the various African countries to be forgiven, potentially opens another possible new area where Russian nuclear technology, particularly the smaller low-cost Floating Nuclear Power Plants based on success of the Lomonosov, could provide major new energy prospects to develop Africa. To date Russia has been engaged designing a large on-land nuclear power complex in Egypt for four larger units at the El Dabaa NPP site where Russia also granted major low-interest loans.When complete in 2026 it is expected to provide up to 50% of Egypt’s power needs. Russia is also in a nuclear energy discussion with Ethiopia. The fact that Russia today is the most active civilian nuclear contractor in the world is also a major advantage in marketing.

With its floating nuclear plant design Russia is currently in a unique position. The only other country actively developing a floating nuclear plant design, China, is far behind Russia, as its own prototype is still reported in the design phase.  Safety, size and flexibility argue that with the new development, Russia can make a major contribution to the global economy. And for those who believe CO2 is a problem, the technology is emission free.

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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 Research Associate of the the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG)

Featured image is from NEO

Seeds of Destruction: Hidden Agenda of Genetic Manipulation

Author Name: F. William Engdahl

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

Year: 2007

Pages: 341 pages with complete index

List Price: $25.95

Special Price: $18.00

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

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

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

The State Department’s (SD below) so-called “fact sheet” on Israel mixes facts with fiction.

SD: “The United States was the first country to recognize Israel as a state in 1948, and the first to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel in 2017.” 

Fact: On May 15, 1945, minutes after midnight, Harry Truman became the first world leader to recognize the new Israeli state – created by mass slaughtering and forcibly displacing hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their homeland.

Former US General George Marshall/then-Secretary of State strongly opposed Truman’s action.

Secretly he wrote at the time by internal memo:

“If the president were to follow (this wrongheaded) advice and if in the elections I were to vote, I would vote against the president.”

In March 1948, Truman met secretly with future Israeli president Chaim Weizmann. The late Israel Shahak said Jewish groups bribed Truman with $2 million for his 1948 presidential campaign. Jack Kennedy later told Gore Vidal:

“That’s why our recognition was rushed through so fast.”

In November 1948, Harry Truman said

“I have to answer to hundreds of thousands who are anxious for the success of Zionism. I do not have hundreds of thousands of Arabs among my constituents.”

None of the above information is in the State Department “fact sheet.”

Fact: The US Government Accountability Office (GAO) once accused Israel of “conduct(ing) the most aggressive espionage operation against the United States of any US ally.”

Fact: The Pentagon earlier accused Israel of “actively engag(ing) in military and industrial espionage in the United States.”

Fact: Despite knowledge of extensive Israeli spying in the US, the Justice Department, US intelligence community, Congress, and the executive branch maintain normal relations with the Jewish state — considered both ally and counterintelligence threat.

SD: “Israel has long been, and remains, America’s most reliable partner in the Middle East.”

Fact: Israel is run by Zionist ideologues, fascist extremists and religious fundamentalists.

Fact: The US and Israel partner in each other’s wars of aggression against nations threatening no one.

Fact: Illegal occupation, colonialism, institutionalized racism, and apartheid ruthlessness define Israeli policies — all of the above in flagrant breach of international laws.

SD: “Israel’s (1948) founding was preceded by more than 50 years of efforts (sic) to establish a sovereign state as a homeland for the Jewish people.”

Fact: Arthur Balfour’s 1917 call for establishing a Jewish state on stolen Palestinian land was a high crime against humanity.

Fact: Endless conflict, occupation, dispossession, and repression, along with social and cultural fragmentation define conditions for beleaguered Palestinians – over 100 years of suffering, no end of it in prospect, the world community dismissive of their fundamental rights.

SD: “The United States is committed to supporting the parties in efforts to reach a lasting, comprehensive peace agreement that offers a brighter future to both Israel and the Palestinians.”

Fact: The US and Israel are committed to endless conflicts and instability — ruling regimes of both countries hostile to Palestinian rights.

Fact: Along with the US global war OF terror, not on it, the no-peace/peace process is the greatest hoax in modern times — rejected by ruling authorities in Washington and Tel Aviv.

SD: “The US-Israel bilateral relationship is strong, anchored by over $3 billion in Foreign Military Financing annually.”

Fact: The US gives Israel around $4 billion or more annually in largely military aid — for persecuting Palestinians and cross-border aggression.

Fact: The US 1961 Foreign Assistance Act prohibits aiding governments engaged “in a consistent pattern of gross violations of internationally recognized human rights, including torture or cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment, prolonged detention without charges, causing the disappearance of persons by the abduction and clandestine detention of those persons, or other flagrant denial of the right to life, liberty, and the security of person, unless such assistance will directly benefit the needy people in such country.”

Fact: The Leahy Law provision of the 2001 Foreign Operations Appropriations Act (FOAA) (Sec. 8092 of PL 106-259) states:

“None of the funds made available by this Act may be used to support any training program involving a unit of the security forces of a foreign country if the Secretary of Defense has received credible information from the Department of State that a member of such unit has committed a gross violation of human rights, unless all necessary corrective steps have been taken.”

FOAA prohibits funding foreign security forces involved in gross human rights violations. It’s proscribed unless “effective measures (are taken) to bring the responsible members of the security forces unit to justice.”

Fact: Israel’s only enemies are invented. No real ones exist. So how do Republicans and undemocratic Dems justify what’s unjustifiable? Why is Israel given $11 million dollars or more of US taxpayer money DAILY.

Fact: US relations with Israel, the Saudis, Egypt, Colombia, and other flagrant human rights abusers override observance of international, constitutional, and US statute laws.

Fact: Both countries operate by their own rules exclusively. They long ago abandoned the rule of law. They’re fantasy democracies, never the real thing from inception.

SD: Trump “recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel on December 6, 2017, and the U.S. Embassy to Israel moved from Tel Aviv to an interim facility in Jerusalem on May 14, 2018.”

Fact: Jerusalem is a UN designated international city, the legal capital of none.

Fact: Security Council Res. 476 (June 1980) states: “(A)ll  legislative and administrative measures and actions taken by Israel, the occupying Power, which purport to alter the character and status of the Holy City of Jerusalem have no legal validity and constitute a flagrant (Fourth Geneva) violation.”

Israel claiming the city, “complete and united, as (its) capital” has no legal standing. East Jerusalem is illegally occupied territory.

Fact: Security Council resolutions are binding international and US constitutional law under its Supremacy Clause (Article VI, Clause 2).

Fact: Unanimously adopted Security Council Res. 2234 (Dec. 2016) said settlements have “no legal validity and constitute a flagrant violation under international law.”

It demanded “Israel immediately and completely cease all settlement activities in occupied Palestinian territory, including East Jerusalem.”

Fact: The US and Israel ignore Security Council resolutions and other international laws unaccountably.

What’s most important to explain about US/Israeli relations, the State Department’s “fact sheet” omits.

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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.

Never before has it been so important to have independent, honest voices and sources of information. We are – as a society – inundated with a flood of biased information. The mainstream media, concentrated in the hands of a few and owned by large multinational corporations, is filled with inherent bias and constant manipulation. That is why independent media is of critical importance now more than ever.

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The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) might declare Russia’s national counterpart “non-compliant” with the international body’s regulations early next month in a shameful move that could potentially make the country unable to compete in next year’s Tokyo Olympics, thus continuing the Hybrid War on Russia by delivering another blow to its people’s dignity.

James Le Mesurier, the co-founder of the White Helmets, was found dead on November 11, 2019, in Istanbul. It is noteworthy that his body was discovered near one of the headquarters of the organization. This incident brought us once again to the deeds of the volunteers.

The White Helmets have an extremely questionable reputation. In the West, they are considered to be human rights activists. They are invited to participate in various conferences on Syria, and even their documentaries became film festival winners. But, not everyone finds it normal.

A number of journalists claim that the White Helmets supported different terrorist groups. For example, in 2017, the Australian academic Tim Anderson analyzed the posts and photos of the so-called human rights activists in social networks and proved that they were really involved in the crimes of radical armed groups.

The videos of the White Helmets where they show their rescue operations have been also repeatedly criticized. In 2017, a number of Arabic mass media cited a Syrian journalist Abbas Juma who published several remarkable screenshots. It turned out that the same children were rescued by the White Helmets several times in the same places. The only possible explanation is that the videos were staged.

White Helmets in Han-Sheihoun

The Syrians themselves have repeatedly spoken about distrust for the organization. Recently, the Syrian president Bashar al-Assad marked the White Helmets as a part of the al-Nusra Front. He emphasized that the activists are involved in executions of civilians, abuse of prisoners and other crimes against humanity. That is why the majority of Syrians do not trust them.

Initially, the White Helmets arose as a project funded by Western countries to promote the positive image of radical jihadists groups. The British journalist Vanessa Bailey investigated the scheme for creating the organization back in 2015. She found out that besides various private funds, the British Foreign Office as well as the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) are among the beneficiaries of the organization.

The list of WH sponsors

Several additional non-profit organizations that actually receive Western funding are operating in Syria today. For example, Hand in Hand for Syria or the Syrian American Medical Society (SAMS). These two organizations work in the health sector in Idlib and provide highly qualified medical assistance to the militants of different terrorist groups including al-Nusra.

Their cooperation is confirmed by the video report of the French journalist Pierre Le Corf who filmed the hospital called “M10” in the eastern part of Aleppo. It was used by terrorists during the battle of Aleppo. The video shows the emblems of the aforementioned medical organizations on the walls of the hospital, which confirms the conclusions about their joint work with the militants.

Flags of Western medical care organizations in M10 Hospital, Aleppo

To sum up, we see concrete evidence in the United States, as well as its allies, are involved in the financing of terrorism in Syria. It is obvious, that the militants are not able to counter the Syrian army without the support from the outside. Therefore, the Western countries and their special services are not less responsible for the chaos and lawlessness that was instigated by various terrorist groups in Syria.

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Abdallah Samir is a Syrian freelancer who writes about current events in Syria and the Middle East.

All images in this article are from the author

“They weren’t like us and for that reason deserved to be ruled” – Edward Said

The parallels with the Zionist state are impossible not to notice. This should be no surprise considering the close collaboration between Israel and India in virtually all domains of ‘security,’ i.e. containing the ‘Muslim threat.’ The completion of the fascist Hindutiva project of completely annexing the entirety of Indian-occupied Kashmir, utterly unlawful considered the territory’s internationally-recognized status as disputed territory, comes straight from the Israeli playbook. Classic Zionist cliches of ‘transfer’ (i.e., ethnic cleansing) and settler-colonialism based on the absurd mantra of “a land without a people for a people without a land” has become New Dehli’s modus operandi toward Kashmiris.

As Said notes, “they weren’t like us.” In India today, there are entire populations designated by the Hindu right government of the BJP, with its fascist ‘brownshirts’ in the form of the RSS and Shiv Sena, as not like ‘us.’ These include Dalits, tribal peoples resisting ‘development’ that further impoverishes and marginalizes their existence, the Naxalites demanding their own autonomy, refugees of many generations and others in Assam all of a sudden denied citizenship, and of course the most venal form of state terrorism, the more than 700,000 troops that militarily occupy, kill, injure, blind, rape, and detain indefinitely the Kashmiri people who refuse, decade after decade, to submit to a state of subjugation to such immense cruelty.

The 20th century fascist Hindutva project for a ‘Hindu Raj,’ it must be noted, is a a modernist fundamentalist movement that actually despises and is embarassed by the majority of Hindus themselves. It is an upper caste movement that despised ‘weak Hindus’ that refused the sociopathic psychology of violence and toxic masculinity that the ‘strong Hindus’ (and their twisted mindset) desired. Hence, their assassination of Ghandhi.

The current repugnant predicament that the Indian state has imposed on Kashmiris is unbearable. The participants in this major international conference clearly recognized this, and were well-intentioned in attempting to develop strategies of assistance and resistance.

However, there was a noticeable absence of voices of Kashmiris themselves, and this has been a perennial problem. One of the lessons learned from the latest Indian assault on Kashmir is that mistakes of the past must be avoided at all costs. Kashmiri voices and Kashmiri lives must be centered, not those of Pakistanis and certainly not those of Indians. One of the other critical points raised was the sheer bankruptcy of much of the Indian liberal-left intelligentsia, both within India and abroad, to openly criticize and condemn New Dehli’s actions, and to stand in solidarity with Kashmiris. Indian academics and the diaspora in general have been abysmal when it comes to the question of Kashmiris and their right to self-determination.

While it is undoubtedly the case that we have witnessed commentary in mainstream Western media like the New York Times and The Washington Post that, perhaps after virtually thirty years, have openly criticized India’s butchery in Kashmir, it still very much seems that the economics of a market of over a billion people will trump the blood and lives of eight million Kashmiris. The so-called international community, with murmurs here and there about how unfortunate this situation is, once again proves itself to be utterly useless in upholding international law and applying any pressure to the Subcontinent’s hegemonic power.

Nevertheless, all is not lost and the seeds of hope, of ongoing formidable Kashmiri resistance for liberation, were underscored. There were some who raised the usual canard of where is the ‘peaceful’ Mandela in struggles like Kashmir and Palestine. Some of us respectfully reminded them that Mandela did not go to jail for being ‘peaceful’: he was jailed for founding the MK, the armed wing of the African National Congress. And he could have been released at least ten years earlier from jail, but he refused to renounce the armed struggle against the oppressive minority white Apartheid regime. Armed struggle against colonial occupation has always been an internationally guaranteed right for all colonized peoples. It’s just that we live in such Islamophobic times that ‘anti-colonial/occupation’ struggles are only seen through the prism of ‘Islamic terrorism’ when it involves just Muslim resistance to oppression.

One controversial issue was that of the language used to describe the current scenario in Kashmir. Just like in the Zionist Occupied Territories, if the Palestinians had F-16s, tanks, cutting edge missiles, and defense systems, then you can call it what most of the mainstream media call it: the Israeli-Palestinian ‘conflict.’ Calling it a conflict is a farcical ploy to conceal the routine Zionist festivals of slaughter against Palestinians, shooting at them like pigeons. And the exact same problematique of semantics applies to the similar plight of Kashmiris living under the most militarized occupation in the world.

Finally, it would be unfair to say that there is public activism on Kashmir at the moment unlike we’ve seen for a long time. Just in the US alone, the ‘Stand Up for Kashmir’ movement of academics, activists, and ordinary concerned citizens has taken off like wildfire. In particular, Kashmiri women have powerfully conveyed their sordid narratives under Indian occupation to Western civil society utterly clueless about the situation.

Prime Minister Imran Kan unquestionably made a remarkably powerful plea to the world at the UN to not ignore the degradation to which Kashmiris are subject. However, Imran Khan, just like leaders before him like Martin Luther King, would be nothing if there not a budding mass movement to put pressure on civil society, academic institutions, companies, and governments to adopt the Palestian strategy toward India: Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions.

The Kashmiris are waiting for us to be in solidarity with them in confronting the terrorist behemoth that wants to completely subdue them, but never will.

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Junaid S. Ahmad is the Director of the Center for Global Studies, UMT, Lahore, Pakistan.

In cahoots with the Trump regime, Britain is killing Assange slowly for the “crime” of truth-telling journalism the way it’s supposed to be.

Isolated in maximum security solitary confinement, denied vitally needed medical and dental treatment, and reportedly given 3-quinuclidinyl benzilate (BZ) are crime against humanity by “intentionally causing great suffering or serious injury to body or to mental or physical health” — according to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.

Longterm isolation by behind bars is torture by any standard, a flagrant US Eight Amendment violation, prohibiting “cruel and unusual punishments.”

The UN Convention Against Torture defines the practice as any state action, “causing severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental…intentionally inflicted on a person” for information, punishment, intimidation, or intentional discrimination.

Prisoners isolated for extended periods experience panic attacks, lethargy, insomnia, nightmares, dizziness, social withdrawal, memory and appetite loss, delusions and hallucinations, profound despair and hopelessness, suicidal thoughts, and paranoia.

Longterm isolation is like being buried alive, at times causing irreversible trauma, prisoners becoming dysfunctional and zombie-like.

BZ is a powerful, mind-altering drug. According to the Handbook of Toxicology of Chemical Warfare Agents, it’s “used as a hallucinogenic and incapacitating CWA (chemical weapon agent).”

Its toxic properties can harm or incapacitate anyone exposed to it even in small doses. BZ affects the central and peripheral nervous systems.

When exposed to the drug, symptoms include disorientation, agitation, tremor, ataxia (loss of control of bodily movements), stupor, coma, seizures, nausea and vomiting.

Fabricated US charges against Assange, his imprisonment, and horrific mistreatment are all about wanting truth-telling of government wrongdoing silenced.

It’s about warning independent journalists against exposing high crimes of state. It’s open warfare on digital democracy, the last frontier of free and open expression, the only reliable independent space for real news, information and analysis – enabling anyone to freely express or have access to views on any topics.

Following Assange’s indictment last May on multiple phony Espionage Act of 1917 violations, the Electronic Freedom Foundation (EFF) denounced it as a “clear and present danger to journalism, the freedom of the press, and freedom of speech.”

In Bartnicki et al v. Vopper, aka Williams, et al (December 2000), the US Supreme Court ruled that everyone has a constitutional right to disseminate truthful information on matters of public interest — no matter how obtained.

Indictment, imprisonment, and mistreatment of Assange, Chelsea Manning, as well as other truth-telling journalists and whistleblowers is an assault on speech, press, and academic freedoms — a flagrant First Amendment breach in the US.

When lost, all other fundamental rights are jeopardized.

In New York Times Co. v. the United States (June 1971), pertaining to a government attempt to prevent publication of the Pentagon Papers, exposing hard truths about US aggression in Southeast Asia, the Supreme Court ruled for the Times, Justice Hugo Black saying the following:

“In the First Amendment, the Founding Fathers gave the free press the protection it must have to fulfill its essential role…”

“The press was to serve the governed, not the governors. The Government’s power to censor the press was abolished so that the press would remain forever free to censure the Government.”

“The press was protected so that it could bare the secrets of government and inform the people.”

“Only a free and unrestrained press can effectively expose deception in government.”

“And paramount among the responsibilities of a free press is the duty to prevent any part of the government from deceiving the people and sending them off to distant lands to die of foreign fevers and foreign shot and shell.”

Despite this and other Supreme Court rulings on speech and press freedoms, three wrongful DOJ charges against Assange focus on the no-crime/crime of publishing information everyone has a right to know.

They include the Afghan and Iraq war logs, exposing Pentagon crimes of war and against humanity, and leaked DNC emails, not hacked as falsely claimed.

By open letter, dozens of doctors petitioned UK home secretary Priti Patel to move Assange from brutalizing high security conditions in London’s Belmarsh prison to a university teaching hospital for vitally needed treatment.

Citing his deteriorating mental and physical health, they warned that he may die if continues to be imprisoned under cruel and unreasonable conditions.

Their assessment is based on  “harrowing eyewitness accounts” of his October 21 court appearance in London and a November 1 report by UN special rapporteur on torture Nils Melzer, warning:

Assange’s “life (is) now at risk.” He shows “all the symptoms typical for prolonged exposure to psychological torture.”

“(W)hat we have seen from the UK Government is outright contempt for Mr. Assange’s rights and integrity.”

“Despite the medical urgency of my appeal, and the seriousness of the alleged violations, the UK has not undertaken any measures of investigation, prevention and redress required under international law.”

Its actions are a flagrant UN Convention against Torture violation. Assange “continues to be detained under oppressive conditions of isolation and surveillance, not justified by his detention status.”

“Despite the complexity of the proceedings against him led by the world’s most powerful Government, Mr. Assange’s access to legal counsel and documents has been severely obstructed, thus effectively undermining his most fundamental right to prepare his defense.”

“The blatant and sustained arbitrariness shown by both the judiciary and the Government in this case suggests an alarming departure from the UK’s commitment to human rights and the rule of law.”

“This is setting a worrying example, which is further reinforced by the Government’s recent refusal to conduct the long-awaited judicial inquiry into British involvement in the CIA torture and rendition program.”

“In my view, this case has never been about Mr. Assange’s guilt or innocence, but about making him pay the price for exposing serious governmental misconduct, including alleged war crimes and corruption.”

“Unless the UK urgently changes course and alleviates his inhumane situation, Mr. Assange’s continued exposure to arbitrariness and abuse may soon end up costing his life.”

The open letter by dozens of medical professionals to Britain’s home secretary stressed their  “serious concerns about (Assange’s) physical and mental health,” adding:

An earlier UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention concluded that his confinement to Ecuador’s London embassy (from August 2012 until forcefully dragged out last May) constitute(d) torture.”

Conditions in Belmarsh prison are infinitely harsher. He’s denied vital to life and welfare medical treatment, a crime against humanity.

After seeing him in court last month, former UK ambassador Craig Murray said he “exhibit(s) exactly the symptoms of a torture victim.”

John Pilger made similar comments after seeing him. Innocent of all bogus charges against him, he’s being slow-tortured to death.

“We wish to put on record, as medical doctors, our collective serious concerns and to draw the attention of the public and the world to this grave situation” — the petition to Britain’s home secretary said, adding:

“From a medical point of view, on the evidence currently available, we have serious concerns about Mr Assange’s fitness to stand trial in February 2020.”

“Most importantly, it is our opinion that Mr Assange requires urgent expert medical assessment of both his physical and psychological state of health.”

“Any medical treatment indicated should be administered in a properly equipped and expertly staffed university teaching hospital (tertiary care).”

“Were such urgent assessment and treatment not to take place, we have real concerns, on the evidence currently available, that Mr Assange could die in prison. The medical situation is thereby urgent. There is no time to lose.”

WikiLeaks is a publisher, Assange an investigative journalist. Their work is what journalism the way it’s supposed to be is all about — warranting high praise, not imprisonment under brutalizing conditions amounting to torture.

Wanting him and other truth-telling journalists silenced is the hallmark of totalitarian rule, wanting the message controlled, endangering the right of free expression —  the slippery slope where the US, UK, and other Western societies are heading.

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

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

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

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

Featured image is from Thierry Ehrmann | CC BY 2.0

Traveling across Palestine, as I did to give lectures earlier this year, means following a perpetually fresh trail of repression.

Omnipresent are the prison guard towers, the barbed wire, the Israeli soldiers with their massive guns and the separation wall.

The day before an event at which I was speaking in Beit Sahour, a small town adjacent to Bethlehem, residents held a funeral for Sajid Mizher, a 17-year-old volunteer medic Israeli soldiers had just shot dead in Dheisheh refugee camp despite his wearing an identifying vest.

The night before my talk at Birzeit University near Ramallah, a group of undercover Israeli forces broke into its campus and kidnapped three Palestinian students.

Persecuting students in this manner is part of a larger pattern as is Israel’s routine killing and maiming of Palestinian children, 44 of whom it shot on 25 October in Gaza.

The implications of these abductions and shooting sprees go beyond the direct physical and psychological harm to victims themselves and the agony and fear Israel inflicts on Palestinian families and communities.

As UNICEF points out, violence against Palestinians poses “daily challenges and threats to the fulfillment of children’s rights. Violence against children in all its forms is of serious concern, as it compromises children’s learning and future potential.”

Targeting the future

This gets to the core of the logic of settler colonialism, which ultimately rests on the colonizer undermining the colonized’s capacity to develop independently.

A key component of this is keeping colonized youth from having the best possible education, thereby hampering their ability to contribute to their society’s future economic, cultural and scientific flourishing.

Israel’s treatment of Palestinians, which involves undercutting their right to education in manifold ways, is a case in point.

The most brutal way to stop children from being educated is of course to murder them. From the beginning of 2008 to late October 2019, Israelis have killed 1,234 Palestinian children.

But Israel’s expansive carceral regime also keeps Palestinian kids in jails and courts rather than classrooms.

Each year roughly 500-700 children are detained and prosecuted in Israel’s military court system. Of 205 children in Israeli military detention in 2019, 24 are in solitary confinement.

Actual education options, meanwhile, are tailored to location.

Palestinians citizens of Israel do not enjoy the same caliber of education as their Israeli counterparts.

Pupils at the largest Palestinian high school in the Tel Aviv-Jaffa area, for instance, teach and study in conditions of extreme overcrowding.

Nof HaGalil, formerly Nazareth Ilit, is home to some 2,600 Palestinian students but no Arabic-language state school. Students are instead forced to travel to other towns or villages, while their Jewish neighbors study almost exclusively in state educational facilities in the city.

The former mayor of Nazareth Illit, Shimon Gapso, has said that he refused to establish a Palestinian school in order not to harm the “Jewish character” of the city.

Palestinians applying for higher education are also at a disadvantage under the Benefits for Discharged Soldiers Law, which allows schools to consider military service when determining applicants’ eligibility for financial assistance. Since Palestinians do not serve in Israel’s army, this law allows discrimination against Palestinian students seeking financial aid.

Israel’s repression of the political rights of Palestinian citizens of Israel also functions as suppression of their right to education. The Nakba Law, for instance, strips state funding from any public institution that commemorates the 1948 ethnic cleansing of Palestine, including schools.

This means that Palestinians’ have to choose between maximizing the resources available to them to educate their young or teaching their next generation about the enormity of the crimes committed against their people in 1947-48 that have been a constitutive element of Palestinian life ever since.

Education under occupation

Israel’s routine denial of the right of Palestinians to free movement in the occupied West Bank also impinges on their right to education.

When the International Court of Justice issued its 2005 advisory opinion on the illegality of Israel’s separation wall, it noted that the wall “illegally impedes the exercise of Palestinians’ right to education by cutting off teachers and students from their schools in East Jerusalem.”

In building the wall, Israel also took at least 200 dunums of land from the Palestine Technical University – Kadoorie, in Tulkarm in the northern West Bank.

The UN has pointed out that safe access to education in the West Bank is limited by “threats of [housing] demolition, clashes on the way to school between students and security forces, teachers stopped at checkpoints and violent actions of Israeli forces and settlers on some occasions.”

During 2018 alone, the education of more than 19,000 children in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, was interfered within these ways.

School demolitions are worth highlighting too.

In 2018, Israel demolished or seized five schools in the West Bank and 50 more are facing threats of demolition.

The Israeli military also confiscated 23 dunams of land from the technical university in Tulkarm even though it lies in Area A of the West Bank and should fall under full Palestinian jurisdiction as per the Oslo accords [a dunam is 1,000 square meters].

The military uses this area for training, which means that Palestinians who study and work at the school must do so amid shows of force by their oppressors.

Impoverish, isolate and terrorize

Israel makes it exceedingly difficult to secure permits to build new schools or colleges.

In Area C of the West Bank, which comprises more than 60 percent of the territory and is under full Israeli security and civil control, building restrictions have thus created a shortage of physical infrastructure for schooling.

Israel’s illegal settlement building also has widespread ramifications for Palestinian education.

The settlement of Beit El, for instance, near Ramallah, has dramatically impacted life for some 2,000 students at two UN-run schools in the nearby Jalazone refugee camp, because the Israeli military has imposed several arbitrary restrictions.

Because of the settlement near the camp, Israel established a permanent military presence in the area.

The Israeli military refused to allow the addition of a third floor to the boys’ school, leaving it with too few classrooms.

Israel made UNRWA, the agency that looks after Palestinian refugees including their education needs, put settlement-facing windows in both schools flush with the ceilings and of restricted width. The consequence was insufficient light and airflow in classrooms.

During the frequent conflicts between the Israeli occupiers and Jalazone residents, the Israeli military uses tear gas, rubber-coated metal bullets and sometimes live fire.

On top of the casualties and fatalities, these Israeli actions cause, tear gas is a health hazard, especially for minors, so schools often have to close.

Isolating scholars and students from their colleagues around the world puts the quality of education at West Bank post-secondary institutions at risk and potentially jeopardizes Birzeit University’s ranking as among the world’s top 3 percent of universities.

Israel also frequently terrorizes Palestinian university students, professors and staff, by carrying out violent raids on campuses.

The raid that took place the night prior to my Birzeit engagement was hardly an isolated incident.

In 2015, for instance, Israel used tear gas and ammunition in raids on Al-Quds University in Abu Dis and the Palestine Technical University-Kadoorie in Tulkarm. In early 2016, approximately 100 members of the Israeli military attacked Birzeit, seizing and damaging property.

When Donald Trump recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel in December 2017 and announced plans to move the US embassy there, students at Palestine Technical University protested and fought with Israeli forces. Subsequently, Israeli soldiers entered the campus and dispersed the protesters with stun grenades, tear gas and rubber-coated metal bullets.

The Israeli military deployed the same weapons on two occasions in the months that followed, patrolling the main entrance all day every day and routinely harassing students, arresting 12 of them and shutting down the school for two days.

Furthermore, according to Birzeit, 14 of its students were detained in July and August this year.

Completing a university education is challenging under even the most hospitable conditions. Imagine how much more difficult it is if one is at risk of being attacked on campus or whisked away in the middle of the night and then held indefinitely without charge or trial.

Or how difficult it is to teach under these circumstances. In September, Israeli forces raided the home of Widad Barghouti, a professor of media studies. She remains in detention without charge.

Israel’s refusal to grant visas for international scholars to work at West Bank universities and its unwillingness to renew visas for foreign academics already there, moreover, have deprived students opportunities to learn from experts in their fields.

It has kept Palestinian scholars from collaborating with their peers.

Extraordinary deprivation

The extraordinary deprivation and violence to which Israel subjects Gaza necessarily entails denying Palestinians there the best possible education, or indeed almost any.

During the Great March of Return demonstrations that began on 30 March 2018, Israel has killed 46 and wounded more than 4,600 children, 2,000 of them with live fire.

Such an enormous number of casualties, noted the UN, “strongly affect the emotional and psychosocial wellbeing of students, teachers and their communities.”

Between 2008 and July 2019, Israeli attacks on Gaza have displaced more than 190,000 children.

Israel’s 2014 attack on Gaza alone killed 60 teachers and injured 108 more while damaging 1,175 education facilities, totally destroying 29 of them.

Unsurprisingly, students who have been driven from their homes, who are under constant direct or indirect threat of violence or whose teachers have been murdered are not ideally situated for learning.

The devastating humanitarian crisis that Israel’s siege creates for Palestinians in Gaza also affects education. The blockade deprives Palestinians of access to water and sanitation, which makes it difficult to run schools properly.

The effects of poverty and fuel restrictions, directly attributable to the blockade, severely impede students’ ability to reach school or concentrate on studying. Sweeping restrictions on people’s movement prevent students from traveling abroad for education.

The Palestinian capacity as teachers and learners are unlikely to be fully realized when they work in discriminatory, run-down conditions, and under the omnipresent threat and actuality of violence from Israeli forces.

Indeed, that’s the point. Settler-colonial projects, like Israel’s, hamstring the colonized’s education in order to try to make them weak and dependent.

That, in turn, weakens the ability to resist and undermines aspirations for national self-determination.

The academic world – along with everyone else – should understand this and act accordingly.

When my colleagues or I from around the world visit Palestine to discuss our research with our Palestinian peers and with Palestinian students, the extraordinarily bright people with whom we speak should be able to carry out intellectual inquiry as freely as anyone else.

That can only happen in the context of their liberation from colonialism. It’s incumbent on scholars and students living outside to support that.

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Greg Shupak writes fiction and political analysis and teaches media studies and English at the University of Guelph-Humber. He is the author of The Wrong Story: Palestine, Israel, and the Media

Featured image is from The Bullet

In the late 1990’s I bought an early model Ericsson mobile phone. Travelling around the UK countryside visiting farmers, it seemed quite useful, in spite of the very intermittent signal availability of that time. However, I found the masts which transmitted the signals to be extremely ugly and completely unfitting to the rolling beauty of much of the English countryside. 

After a while I started feeling the side of my head to which I held the phone, heating-up. It was an unpleasant sensation and it concerned me that using this device involved putting-up with such physical discomfort. So one fine day I dumped it – kissing goodbye to the supposed ‘need’ for this wireless gismo and being thankful for the experience of being once again free to muse on the deeper nature of things without being interrupted by a plethora of incoming communications that, more often than not, contained little of value and could have been made via a landline.

It wasn’t until about ten years later that I started realising that others were completely addicted to this form of communication, and that the wireless cell phone’s way of working meant that the signals from the masts penetrated the human body and affected internal organs, especially the frontal cortex and hippocampus areas of the brain.

I remembered the x ray machines which, when I was a young boy, I used to stand in in the shoe shop and see the bones of my feet outlined clearly in a rather spooky pale green light. It made me realise that something similar was happening here – with the cell phone held against the sacred temple of the human head.

Soon I heard of people suffering headaches, nausea and giddiness after extensive time spent talking on their mobiles. I learned that the reason for this is that the transmission signals are actually microwaves – and I already knew that microwave ovens cook from the inside out – destroying the nutrients of foods cooked in the normal way, from the outside in. The UK organic food standards, which I contributed to as an early organic farmer, banned the use of microwave ovens in restaurants serving organic food, for this reason.

In the early years of the new millenium, Jadwiga Lopata and I set off on our epic campaign to prevent GMO getting into the Polish countryside – and indeed into Poland – which involved a lot of travel and a lot of meetings with a lot of people! We ultimately succeeded in fulfilling our task of getting every Polish Province to declare itself a GMO Free Zone, and soon after, achieving a national ban on the import and planting of GMO enacted by the Polish government. All this without the use of a mobile phone, Jadwiga having also rejected this technology for pretty much the same reasons as me.

This is surely a lesson for all those who throw up their hands in horror when presented with the evidence as to why they should ditch electromagnetic microwave radiation technologies that are now known to be destroying human health – and the health of the natural environment as well. 

In the past decade a huge volume of evidence has been collated by doctors and scientists outlining exactly what EMF transmissions do to us all – and just how devastating are the consequences of becoming addicted to these pocket sized radiation bombs. Even when passively sitting in one’s pocket or next to one’s bed, scientists have shown how microwaves continue to actively pass through the cell phone’s internal mechanism and on to the human user. Toxic and carcinogenic pulsed radiation – which is the antithesis of nature’s benign vibratory wave signals – are picked-up by the cells and neurons of our body and brain.

In a period of just thirty years, our planetary and atmospheric environment has been turned into an electromagnetic soup of highly charged non ionising radiation, emitted by WiFi transmitters placed in virtually all hotels, restaurants, public transport systems and town centres of the Western World and beyond. In addition, literally millions of mobile phone base station transmitters are operating from houses, schools, hospitals and street furniture across a great swathe of Europe and North America and even extending into national parks and sanctuaries, where once one could escape their pervasive influence. 

In the sky too, pulsed radiation transmissions are beamed down from satellites that guide the satellite navigation systems in cars and trucks, passing directly on to passengers most of whom have no idea that they are the recipients of these debilitating transmissions. 

Probably the most worrying thing, as regards human, animal, plant and insect life, is that scientists have revealed the dangers to be ‘cumulative’ – that is – building-up incrementally over time, so that it may not be until twenty or thirty years of use that those involved are struck-down with varying types of cancers or neurological, physiological and psychological diseases. When it comes to outcomes for the health and well-being of both children and adults, we are playing with fire – and there can be no denying this fact.

This is a mass produced communications technology ‘untested’ for its health and welfare implications – and now vested in the hands of telecommunications and social media giants pulling in unprecedented financial profits that are placing them in an earning bracket greater than Big Pharma and Big Oil combined. 

So ask yourself this: do you want to support the giant corporations rolling-out their latest weapons of mass destruction under the banner of 5G? Do you want to be an accomplice to the non ionising irradiation which is denaturing the very DNA of our irreplaceable planetary gene pool? Did you revolt against GMO? Do you see how your mobile phone is GMO in a new guise? Just another tool for the genetic modification of humanity. 

Are you going to remain passively indifferent to the fate of birds, bees, insects, plants and trees which have never before lived amongst the electro magnetic pulsed signals that are now interrupting their essential biological sensitivities and survival mechanisms? 

Wake up, my friends, the hour is late. Very late. I can promise you this, you will be hugely relieved to discover that dumping your mobile phone brings with it a renewed and refreshing sense of individual freedom. The sense that one can, after all, take control of one’s destiny without the aid of a convenience accessory that is draining the life out of life itself.

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Julian Rose is author of  ‘Overcoming the Robotic Mind – Why Humanity Must Come Through,   now available from Amazon and Dixi Books. See www.julianrose.info for more information. Julian is an international activist, writer, broadcaster, organic farming pioneer and actor.  In 1987 and 1998, he led a campaign that saved unpasteurised milk from being banned in the UK; and, with Jadwiga Lopata, a ‘Say No to GMO’ campaign in Poland which led to a national ban of GM seeds and plants in that country in 2006. Julian is currently campaigning to ‘Stop 5G’ WiFi.

Five years ago on July 17, 2014, Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 was blown out of the sky while flying over Eastern Ukraine. It was on its way from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. All 283 passengers (mainly Dutch) and 15 crew members on board were killed. It was immediately claimed that Russia was responsible, something that Russia vehemently denies. Much has been written and argued, but now the team of Bonanza Media made some independent research that resulted in the documentary; Call For Justice MH17 , which was shown on the 26th October 2019 in The Hague, the Netherlands. The JIT (Joint Investigation Team) of the Netherlands, says it has four suspects and they ought to be tried at a court in the Netherlands, five years after the crash. They didn’t  consider the investigative documentary Call For Justice MH17 to be part of the evidence, in fact they didn’t bother to look at  it or send at least a member of the JIT team when the documentary was presented in the Hague, also the regular Dutch MSM was absent at the presentation.

A lot of questions remain, especially the non-professional inquiry of the Dutch Government, conducted by the so-called JIT team. On November 21 2019, the Dutch police issued a warrant, the so-called “  MH17 Witness Appeal November 2019 , “ to be read on the website of  the Dutch Police. It claims the team had deciphered telephone talks between the Donbass – East Ukrainian leaders, the Russian Minister of Defense Sergey Shoygu and Putin’s aide Vladislav Surkov. But why now, 5 years after the crash? Where is the logic here?

In June 2015 the JIT already released the Trial information according to which four suspects, Igor GIRKIN, Sergey DUBINSKIY, Oleg PULATOV and Leonid KHARCHENKO, will be prosecuted for their alleged involvement in the downing of flight MH17. The criminal proceedings will take place before the district court in The Hague, to be held in the Schiphol Judicial Complex. The first court session will be held on March 9, 2020, from 10:00 AM (Central European Time). And the Dutch Government is well aware that the suspects will most likely not attend the trial.

In 2014 and 2015 the Dutch Government in cooperation with the JIT team and the Dutch police released some intercepted so-called phone calls allegedly between the 53rd Anti Aircraft Missile Brigade (AAMB) from Kursk in the Russian Federation, the suspect Kharchenko and a certain suspect caled “Ryazan”.  Based on this information the JIT claims;  The JIT does have evidence from other sources (which they don’t reveal) that at that time, Russian soldiers of the 53rd Brigade from Kursk were present near the border with Eastern Ukraine.

Presented as evidence, was a chat from a soldier, he served at the 53rd AAMB located in Kursk, his chat  with Anastasia, presumably his girlfriend, is seen by the JIT as evidence, meager evidence. Also, they retrieved some photographs of the 53rd AAMB where soldiers are to be seen. But they were not in Ukraine, they were at the border in the Russian Federation, this evidence is pure “speculation” and most likely not fit for evidence in a trial.

Also, their so-called evidence on Vladislav Surkov, a high official at the Russian Government and Putin’s aide is a sham. The only evidence they have is a newspaper article where the Prime Minister Aleksander Borodai of the Republic of Donetsk mentioned that Vladislav Surkov, a high official at the Russian Government, “is of great support to the Donetsk People’s Republic” and “truly our man in the Kremlin”. Based on this and the above mentioned evidence they speculate that the leaders of Donetsk shot down Malaysian Flight 17, with help of the Russian Federation!

Furthermore, the Dutch JIT team calls the Russian Minister of Defence Sergey Shoygu an important  suspect. According to the regular Dutch MSM and the JIT team (it shows that the regular MSM in the Netherlands is not doing any investigation and their journalism is a scam) Minister Shoygu gave direct orders to shot down the MH17. They make many mistakes in their regular MSM quoting the Audio evidence where Borodai allegedly speaks to “someone” saying that Surkov is “truly”our man”, but no word in the audio is mentioned about Sergey Shoygu. He gave the orders they claim, which is totally baseless and why would the Russian Government want to shoot down a passenger plain on purpose?

They also claim that the BUK TELAR 53, was sent by the AAMB from Kursk to Ukraine and this BUK TELAR 53 was used to shot down the MH17, the above mentioned suspects by the JIT were, according to the JIT, all involved in one way or another in the MH17 downing.  Pure speculation, I would call it.  Stories in the regular Dutch MSM, especially “De Telegraaf” were based on merely  “non-investigating ” evidence and inadequate information. I would like to state that none of the so-called regular newspapers went to Ukraine to do some independent investigation on the ground, only the JIT team was present, no Russians, no Malaysians. That fact brings you to the conclusion that it is and was a one-sided investigation, resulted in most likely “fake” propaganda news from the regular MSM and the Dutch Government. The only investigation, on the ground, comes from the documentary makers of BONANZA.

Conclusion

The investigation and the trial can be called a “sham”. Their evidence is meager and most likely no court would prosecute based on their founding. The latest developments show that it is has not been taken seriously: witnesses to the shooting of flight MH17 could be offered a new life in Australia to protect them from reprisals if they come forward with information, or be promised relocation, witness protection in return for information. Also, it is well-known that after the collapse of the former Soviet Union (USSR), where Ukraine was a part of, BUK’s and other military equipment were left in Ukraine. I remember well when there were many scandals about left behind “plutonium and depleted uranium”.

As I stated in my previous article, the Dutch National Navigation Authority (a governmental institution) should have never allowed a civil commercial airplane to fly above a war-zone and therefore, to my opinion, this should be investigated as well, why they failed to give a warning? Also, the investigitions should focus on Malaysian Airlines, and the reason why they decided to fly over a war-zone. These questions were never raised by the Dutch Government and the JIT team.

So remains the questions why now? Five years after the tragic accident. A new President in Ukraine, perhaps?

After  the tragic accident, the Dutch together with the UK played a big role in the new “Hybrid” war (to be comparable with the “Cold-war”) towards Russia, they indoctrinated their citizens about the “evil” Putin and Russia. But things are changing in the big “outside” world and the current Dutch Government led by Mark Rutte, is not trustworthy anymore. A former Minister of Foreign Affairs, Halbe Zijlstra, lied  about his visit to the Dacha of President Putin and the lies he told the Dutch people were out of proportion. If the Government lies about this, we can conclude that the investigation of the JIT team and the Dutch Government into the MH17 is perhaps based on fiction and lies, to calm down the Dutch people. After all, they called out for justice on MH17 and Russia is an easy “scapegoat”.

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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.

Sonja van den Ende is an independent journalist.

It will be instructive for our conversation to understand exactly how the U. S. government’s Vaccination Injury Compensation Program (VICP) works. This is what the government website tells us:

The National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program is a no-fault alternative to the traditional legal system for resolving vaccine injury petitions.

It was created in the 1980s, after lawsuits against vaccine companies and health care providers threatened to cause vaccine shortages and reduce U.S. vaccination rates, which would have caused a resurgence of vaccine preventable diseases.

Any individual, of any age, who received a covered vaccine and believes he or she was injured as a result, can file a petition. Parents, legal guardians and legal representatives can file on behalf of children, disabled adults, and individuals who are deceased.

A cursory glance at this may lead one to believe that this program is a reasonable under the circumstances. A more thoughtful analysis, however, can lead to the conclusion that this program may be the greatest coup in the history of the world in favor of business interests over human well-being.

Think about it. The pharmaceutical industry makes a product called vaccines which contain chemicals of questionable origin and effect that are injected directly into human beings, sometimes by forced mandate. The pharmaceutical industry claims that vaccines are very safe and effective, but just in case a vaccine is proven to cause harm or death, the pharmaceutical industry is not held accountable, and never has to admit what has actually been validated by science in court, that their vaccines had caused harm or death!  

Furthermore, A 2010 HHS pilot study by the Federal Agency for Health Care Research (AHCR) found that 1 in every 39 vaccines causes injury, a shocking comparison to the claims from the CDC of 1 in every million. Only percent of vaccine injuries are even reported, yet the National Childhood Vaccine Injury has still paid billions to families of vaccine injured children. You can read more about that here.

Instead, the cause of death on the death certificate often remains the amorphous ‘Sudden Infant Death Syndrome’ (SIDS) or, as told below by the mother of a 6-week old child who died from vaccination, ‘Sudden Unexplained Death in Infancy’ (SUDI). How can these counter-scientific ‘conditions’ or ‘syndromes’ be anything more than fancy made-up names to prevent further and wider investigation into the cause of death of an infant?

Wikipedia says that ‘Sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) is the sudden unexplained death of a child of less than one year of age. Diagnosis requires that the death remains unexplained even after a thorough autopsy and detailed death scene investigation…The exact cause of SIDS is unknown.’ In other words, SIDS = ‘We don’t yet know why this baby died’! It would not be unreasonable to deduce that this fancy acronym has been in effect for years to try to force closure on grieving parents, in order to prevent them from investigating further.

It is from the painstaking truth-seeking efforts of brave and relentless mothers like Cati Clobes and Kara Krause below, that the picture of what is actually going on comes into focus for all of us now. And hopefully, as we read these testimonies, our collective will to prevent these needless deaths and countless injuries from vaccines is unified and grows ever stronger.

The Testimony Of Kara Krause

Exactly a year ago, Kara Krause made a Facebook post detailing her experiences with the Vaccination Injury Compensation Program after her 6-week old child died soon after being vaccinated. She makes a number of important points, and one to pay particular attention to is the fact that, even though it was proven in court that the cause of her daughter’s death was the vaccines, this fact does not show up in official government statistics regarding the safety of vaccines!

I lost my daughter Peyton at 6 weeks old appropriately 12 hours after receiving her “2 month” vaccinations, 9 total. Her death being classified as SUDI (Sudden Unexplained Death in Infancy) Almost 2 years after her death I was told about the VICP (Vaccination Injury Compensation Program) (this is a “non fault” government run program funded by the pharmaceutical companies. It acts as an insurance policy to protect them from being sued for vaccination related deaths and injuries. Their cases go trial as any other court cases, but they are overseen by a master, not a jury. The master hears both the victim and governments arguments. If and only if, proven scientific data or testimony (not a casual link or circumstance) is presented by the plaintiffs, the master then decides on the amount of compensation to be awarded to the victim or their family.

I was told by the lawyers who accepted Peytons case, (apparently VICP lawyers take very few of the cases submitted to them) that in order to be able to pursue a wrongful death or civil case I had to go through the VICP process first. This was a complete lie.

(I blame myself for not doing more research on the program.)

The VICP process took approximately 2 1/2 years, in that time all my questions were answered, the medical experts found the evidence that proved that the Dtap was in fact the cause of her death, I thought this was a great thing. I now had scientific proof, expert testimony and a sum of money to be able pursue other suits, to bring awareness that vaccines actually do cause deaths.

What I didnt know, was filing with the VICP did not extend the statute limitations (as I thought) in essence making it legally impossible to file for a wrongful death, medical malpractice or any civil suit.

But at least I had the medical evidence to educate others, Right?? Instead what I’ve found is no one listens. Every pro-vaxxer spouts out statistical data and research trends to argue their case. Here in lies the problem; we arent capable of doing the same.

Victims of vaccination related death that go through the VICP are NEVER accounted for. Their “non fault” clause covers up the data that would reveal the truth behind these deaths.

My daughters death certificate will ALWAYS read, Sudden Unexplained Death in Infancy. Her death will NEVER be part of any statistical data that would show the truth behind vaccines. Her death (and many others) arent accounted for in any material Pro-vaxxers or doctors use to attempt to convince us on how safe and effective vaccines are.

Could you imagine the uproar if the government allowed the actual cause of my daughters death to be printed on her death certificate?? Could you imagine the billions of dollars that would be lost if Pro-vaxxers could read the words “Dtap, cause of death”

I’ve shared my daughters story many times, and in the hundreds of parents, family, friends, acquaintances, I’ve spoke to, only 1 has chosen not to vaccinate anymore (she was bullied by her infants pediatrician into giving her daughter the first round)

I’ve rambled enough. So my response to your question on how to answer; explain to him why you arent able to provide accurate percentages or annual findings. You now personally know of one infant death that will never be accounted for.

They will use the VAIRS response, VAIRS is reported information, not factual.

Her unrelenting effort to find the truth reminds us that for every Kara Krause and Caty Clobes, there must be hundreds of other women who have not agreed with the diagnosis of SIDS or SUDI but have lost their case or have not even filed petitions based on a lack of knowledge about it or a lack of means to do so. And these are the ones who went against their doctors. What about those that accept the doctor and cororoner’s word that their child had died from SIDS or SUDI? Overall, In 2017, there were 3,600 sudden unexpected infant deaths (SUID) in the United States (source). How many of those deaths would have been found to be due to vaccines, if our medical establishment really wanted to reveal the truth rather than hide it?

Why is it that we never hear about vaccine injury or deaths? According to a MedAlerts search of the FDA Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) database, as of 2/5/19, the cumulative raw count of adverse events from measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine alone was: 93,929 adverse events, 1,810 disabilities, 6,902 hospitalizations, and 463 deaths.

The Takeaway

It has been said that our personal evolution throughout history has gone the ‘way of the cross,’ meaning we have grown and evolved as individuals through our suffering. It is now crucial that we allow the suffering of others to drive our personal and our collective will to reach higher and do better for each other. The increase in vaccine mandates seems to be the issue of our times, the one we can truly galvanize around. While we have profound sympathy for those who have suffered, it is important now to build a collective resolve to end the source of that suffering. We should not stoop to violent condemnation but we can no longer settle for meek resignation. Hopefully we will look back at this time in our history as a watershed moment in which humanity took control of its destiny and began to create a world in which the sanctity of human life is respected above all else.

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Global Research, like many independent voices all over the globe, is feeling the effects of online measures set up to curtail access to our website, and by consequence, hinder our finances. We sail on despite the unpredictable currents and unfavourable forecasts. We can’t steer this ship alone however, we need your help!

We would be greatly indebted to you for any donation large or small. Can you contribute to help us meet our monthly running costs? Make no mistake, we intend to be here for years to come, but for the time being we ask for your help to stay afloat as we ride the storm out. Here’s how you can help:

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Iran Social Unrest: Protests and Carefully Planned Provocations

By Soraya Sepahpour-Ulrich, November 25, 2019

On Thursday, November 21^st, friends took me to a very charming Iranian restaurant in the heart of the city. During our lunch, they talked about there being a price hike in gasoline. After lunch, we walked around the charming downtown area of Tehran, visited shops and exhausted climbed into a cab. We asked the cab driver if he had heard anything about prices going up. He told us that this was just a rumor. As such, the increase in the price of gasoline took Iranians by surprise. Regrettably, the government of President Rohani had not explained the rationale behind the price increase PRIOR to the increase itself. In several parts of Iran, protests erupted. Perhaps justified; and they were peaceful. One could argue they were disruptive in that cars blocked roads making it difficult for others, causing traffic jams, but there was no vandalism on the first day – not to my knowledge.

Militarizing America’s Police: The Whole Damn System Is “Guilty as Hell”: Taking Control of Police

By Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers, November 25, 2019

The power relationship between police and the community is out of balance. Militarized policing of black and brown communities resembles an occupying force. While many police departments use the slogan “protect and serve,” in too many communities, people do not feel protected or served. They feel threatened, harassed and abused by police.

The relationship between police and the people needs to change. While there have been some positive reforms like police body cameras, special units to investigate police and increased prosecutions of police, these are insufficient. The most promising transformational change is to put in place community control of police through a democratically-elected police accountability board.

China Is Building a Community with a Shared Future for Mankind

By Peter Koenig, November 25, 2019

“China’s 70-Years Development and the Construction of a Community with a Shared Future for Mankind”. This is the title of an International Conference, organized by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) which I was privileged to attend from 5-7 November 2019 in Shanghai. It is a reflection on China’s Anniversary of 70 years Revolution, her most remarkable achievements, with a joint look into the future – the future of China, linking up with the rest of the world. The “link” was clearly presented and seen as the New Silk Road, President Xi Jinping’s “bridge-building” Belt and Road Initiative. Representatives from over 140 countries and international organizations presented their vision on how they might cooperate with China for a shared future. The result is a rich palette of ideas and potential opportunities for cooperation.

Evidence Talks: US Government Propelled Coup in Bolivia

By W.T. Whitney Jr., November 25, 2019

Evidence of the U.S. crime appears below.  It’s about money, U.S. influence within the Bolivian military, and U.S. control of the Organization of American States (OAS):

1. For many years the Santa Cruz Civic Committee and its proto-fascist Youth Union received funding from the U.S. National Endowment for Democracy. According to analyst Eva Golinger some years ago, the USAID provided $84 million to Bolivian opposition groups.

5G Wireless Technology Is War against Humanity

By Claire Edwards, November 25, 2019

This phoney war is also silent, but this time shots are being fired – in the form of laser-like beams of electromagnetic radiation (EMR) from banks of thousands of tiny antennas^[1] – and almost no one in the firing line knows that they are being silently, seriously and irreparably injured.

In the first instance, 5G is likely to make people electro-hypersensitive (EHS).^[2] Perhaps it was sitting in front of two big computer screens for many of the 18 years I worked at the UN that made me EHS. When the UN Office at Vienna installed powerful WiFi and cellphone access points – designed to serve large, public areas – in narrow, metal-walled corridors throughout the Vienna International Centre in December 2015, I was ill continuously for seven months.

November 4: See Naples and Die. NATO-US Command Headquarters Settle in Naples

By Manlio Dinucci, November 24, 2019

It was Naples, not Rome, which was the centre of National Unity and Armed Forces Day on 4 November [1], when five battalions paraded along the Caracciolo Sea Front.

But the most important point of the event was the area reserved for the inter-forces exhibition, which for five days welcomed mostly young people and children on the Piazza del Plebiscito. Visitors were allowed to climb aboard a fighter-bomber, fly a helicopter with a flight simulator, admire a Predator drone, climb into a tank, follow a course of training with military instructors, and then go to the port to visit an amphibious assault ship and two frigates (FREMM). It was a huge “War Fair”, put together for one specific reason – recruitment.

Hunger Games: Food Abundance and Twisted Truths

By Colin Todhunter, November 24, 2019

The world already produces enough food to feed 10 million people but over two billion are experiencing micronutrient deficiencies (of which 821 million were classed as chronically undernourished in 2018). However, supporters of genetic engineering (GE) crops continually push the narrative that GE technology is required if we are to feed the world and properly support farmers. 

First of all, it must be stressed that there is already sufficient evidence to question the efficacy of GE crops; however, despite this, conventional options and innovations that outperform GE crops are in danger of being sidelined in a rush by powerful, publicly unaccountable private interests like the Gates Foundation to facilitate the introduction of GE into global agriculture; crops whose main ‘added value’ is the financial rewards accrued by the corporations behind them.

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US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo made headlines around the world this week in announcing that the US had shifted its position, and no longer viewed Israeli settlements as a violation of international law. 

In one of the stupider public statements of our time, Pompeo explained that “arguments about who is right and wrong as a matter of international law will not bring peace”. It is stupid, first, because there is no genuine argument about the unlawfulness of the settlements; until the US spoke out of turn, Israel was alone in defending their legality.

More definitively, the role of international law is to regulate the proper behaviour of sovereign states – not to make peace by negating the law’s relevance, which truly seems a cheer for the law of the jungle.

‘Reality on the ground’

Pompeo removed any doubt about this when he justified the shift by admitting that the US “recognised the reality on the ground”. In plainer language, lawless behaviour can become lawful if sustained long enough by force – a logic that not only defies international law, but is contrary to the core legal commitments of the UN Charter.

Particularly in the area of peace and security, international law can be somewhat ambiguous. Opposing positions can be reasonably maintained, resolved by either an authorised tribunal or by practice sustained over time.

The establishment of settlements on occupied Palestinian territory, however, is an example of an issue upon which it is not possible to make a responsible argument in support of legality.

The unlawfulness of the settler encroachment has been pointed out repeatedly by informed observers as the biggest single obstacle to peace, and the most vivid and unabashed Israeli defiance of international law.

So, has Washington given Israel its blessing to do whatever it wants in the future regarding settlements – and for that matter, in the entirety of the occupied West Bank? After all, if the White House now endorses Israeli annexation of the Golan Heights in Syrian sovereign territory, the West Bank may be thought of as small potatoes.

The clarity of international law on the issue of Israeli settlements arises in part from the unusual fact that they have been formally declared illegal by the most authoritative sources of international guidance. Several key examples illustrate this international consensus.

Consensus of illegality

Firstly, Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention states that an occupying power “shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies”. This important provision of international humanitarian law is universally understood as prohibiting the establishment of Israeli settlements on any part of the occupied Palestinian territories.

If Israel was complying with international law, it should have ceased settlement activity and dismantled what had been built in the years after the 1967 war. Instead, Israel continued building, at an accelerated pace, advancing the lame rationale that Israelis should be able to live wherever they wish in Palestine.

Israel does not even view the areas of Jerusalem and the West Bank where settlements exist as being “occupied” in a legal sense, viewing this as part of the “promised land”.

Secondly, the International Court of Justice in 2004 strongly reaffirmed the unlawfulness of Israel’s settlement construction in occupied territory – and with a 14-1 ruling, the court showed a highly unusual degree of unity. T

he court pointed out that the separation wall was built so as to put on the Israeli side 80 percent of the settler population, noting in passing that the settlements were established in violation of applicable law. Israel refused to comply with this conclusive judgment, emphasising its “advisory” character.

Thirdly, in December 2016, the UN Security Council adopted Resolution 2334, deeming by a vote of 14-0 that the settlements had no legal validity. The US abstained from the vote. The resolution noted that the settlements constituted “a flagrant violation under international law and a major obstacle to the achievement of the two-state solution and a just, lasting and comprehensive peace”. It stressed exactly the opposite point to the one made by Pompeo.

Geopolitical significance

No country can, by its decree, influence the legal status of Israeli settlement activity. What Pompeo declared was a shift in the political position of the US government. It is legally insignificant, but geopolitically significant.

The Trump spin room sought to minimise the shift by recalling that Ronald Reagan, while president, once indicated off-the-cuff that he didn’t think the settlements were illegal – but as is not so often noted, he went on to suggest that settlement expansion was “unnecessarily provocative”.

More relevant was the exchange of letters by former US President George W Bush and former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in 2004, in which they agreed that any viable peace deal with the Palestinians would allow the settlement blocs along the border to be incorporated into Israel.

Again, such a side agreement was without legal legs, representing nothing more than a geopolitical pat on Israel’s back – but it was a good indicator of what Israel and the US would demand in future peace negotiations.

What makes the Pompeo statement different is its positioning in relation to other controversial Trump moves and its whitewashing language, which gives Israel an incentive to move ahead with annexation. This is another instance of US overreach.

Final nail in the coffin

Palestinian resistance remains strong, as the Great March of Return along the Gaza-Israel fence illustrates, and global solidarity initiatives are gathering strength – a reality that Israel seems to acknowledge, by defaming its nonviolent opponents as antisemites.

The new settlements rhetoric continues the pattern established by the Trump administration: repudiating the international consensus on key issues bearing on the rights and duties of states.

The highlights of this pattern in the Palestinian context have included moving the US embassy to Jerusalem, endorsing Israeli annexation of the Golan Heights, and now, sidelining as irrelevant the illegality of Israel’s settlements.

This step has been condemned in diplomatic circles as a final nail in the coffin of the two-state solution. It moves the political compass towards a one-state outcome, with the likelihood being Jewish dominance and Palestinian subjugation in a state structure that increasingly looks and behaves like an apartheid regime.

Is this, then, the endgame of the Palestinian struggle? I think not. Palestinian resistance and the global solidarity movement will be telling the world a different story.

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Richard Falk is an international law and international relations scholar who taught at Princeton University for forty years. In 2008 he was also appointed by the UN to serve a six-year term as the Special Rapporteur on Palestinian human rights.

For almost three decades, John Barnett was a quality manager at Boeing.

For 28 of those years, he was with Boeing in Everett, Washington.

Barnett loved Boeing. He loved Boeing planes. He loved his work.

Then, in 2010, Barnett was transferred to Boeing’s new plant in Charleston, South Carolina. That’s where Boeing builds the 787 Dreamliner.

And things started going downhill.

“The new leadership didn’t understand processes,” Barnett told Corporate Crime Reporter in an interview last week. “They brought them in from other areas of the company. The new leadership team – from my director down – they all came from St. Louis, Missouri. They said they were all buddies there.”

“That entire team came down. They were from the military side. My impression was their mindset was – we are going to do it the way we want to do it. Their motto at the time was – we are in Charleston and we can do anything we want.”

“They started pressuring us to not document defects, to work outside the procedures, to allow defective material to be installed without being corrected. They started bypassing procedures and not maintaining configurement control of airplanes, not maintaining control of non conforming parts –  they just wanted to get the planes pushed out the door and make the cash register ring.”

What were some of the more egregious examples of that?

“Back in 2011 and 2012, it was more of paperwork administrative issues – they didn’t want us documenting defects, they didn’t want us to complete paperwork correctly. They wanted us to just close jobs that weren’t done just to get the jobs closed out. It was more administrative.”

“As time went on over the next several years they started ignoring safety issues and the defective parts. They wanted to just close those jobs out and not research them – that type of thing. Over the years, it just got worse and worse.”

“Finally, we ended up with three pretty significant safety issues. I reported them inside the company. I pursued every avenue within the company to try and get them addressed. I filed an ethics complaint and they came back and substantiated my complaint, but they did nothing to correct it.”

“Over time it got worse and worse. Not only were they ignoring the administrative procedures, but they were also getting into ignoring safety of flight conditions and aircraft safety issues.”

What were the three significant safety issues?

“When the floor boards are installed on an airplane, they are installed with titanium fasteners. When they are installed, the nut peels off the titanium threads. And they were leaving up to three inch long razor sharp titanium slivers that fall on the surfaces below the floor board. That surface below the floor board is where all of your flight control wires are, that’s where all of your electronic equipment is. It controls systems on the airplane, it controls the power of the airplane. All of your electronic equipment is down where all of these metal slivers are falling.”

“After I filed my complaint, the FAA came in and did a spot audit. They audited five airplanes in Everett and five airplanes in Charleston. And they found the metal slivers in all ten airplanes they inspected.”

“The second issue was – my team and I found out that the emergency oxygen equipment – when the mask falls – we discovered that 25 percent of the oxygen systems don’t work properly. In the event of a decompression event when those oxygen masks fall, 25 percent of them are not going to work. They are not going to supply oxygen.”

“The third issue was the lost defective parts. Many of them that were lost were shown to have been installed on the airplane without being repaired. We didn’t know where a lot of them went. Some of them were significant structural components. I know there were several aft pressure bulkheads that were delivered with pretty significant defects. And they were installed without being corrected.”

“The defective parts was the third major issue I brought up. After I filed my complaint, the FAA went in and did an audit and substantiated my complaint that they weren’t tracking non conforming parts properly.”

When did you file your internal complaint with Boeing?

“I actually filed several within Boeing. Within the Boeing process, it is kind of a hierarchy. If you don’t agree with your leadership, you talk with them. If they don’t respond appropriately, you take it to human resources. Then you take it to ethics. I filed complaints with all of those people. My first complaint was filed in 2014.”

Obviously, your managers knew you had filed it. How did your managers respond?

“Prior to filing my complaint, I was working on what we call the production floor. In final assembly, each time the airplane moves to a different position, you have a quality manager who oversees that position with a team of inspectors to inspect that airplane. And all of the quality managers that work on a production floor meet every morning. They are a team. They bounce ideas off each other. They discuss issues.”

“After I filed my complaint, I was reassigned to Material Review Segregation Area (MRSA). That’s a stand alone area. It’s isolated. They isolated me from the other quality managers. I was basically by myself. There were pressures to buy off the lost non conforming parts. My leadership was pressing me to close them out and buy them off without looking for the parts and figuring out where they go. I strongly objected to it and refused to do it.”

“They were constantly denigrating me. I was in a hostile work environment. Nothing I could do was right. Anytime I brought up procedures, I was told to work in the grey areas of the procedures and find a way to keep production moving. “

You said the ethics office came back and confirmed your complaint but didn’t do anything about it. What was your next step?

“They sent me an email and said they had substantiated my original complaint and that they had opened a second investigation against my boss for the hostile work environment. They started a second investigation. That went away. I never got a follow up. They took no action to correct anything. It just went into a black hole somewhere.”

When did you decide to go outside the company?

“I went through the process inside the company. I filed the ethics complaints. I went to leadership. I wrote an email to the vice president of Boeing ethics in Washington, D.C. I sent her an email and said – I need help. I’m being harassed and blacklisted. And she wrote back and said – we will look into your complaint. In that email, I specifically asked that my complaints be investigated by people outside of Charleston. The people in Charleston all seemed to be working together and sharing information and covering things up. I specifically asked that my complaints be investigated by somebody outside of Charleston. They assured me it would.”

“Within a couple of days, it was turned over to the human resources rep that should have been under investigation. And they gave it to her to investigate. Not surprisingly, she closed it out very quickly saying she couldn’t substantiate my complaint.”

“At the same time, I was going through health issues and having anxiety attacks. At that time, I decided I had to go outside the company. I felt like I had reached as far as I could reach within the company. I had to go outside.”

How did you do that?

“I followed an AIR21 complaint. It goes to OSHA for them to investigate. Within that complaint, I listed safety items I had identified, the hostility and denigration and being black listed and blackballed from other jobs. I know of at least two jobs that I was supposed to get a job offer for and my leadership said that I wasn’t going anywhere.”

You filed that in January 2017. What is that status of that complaint?

“OSHA is still investigating. And they have not made any type of determination at this point.”

Do you have a sense as to when OSHA will decide?

“I do not. The FAA also has the information. They investigated immediately. They substantiated my complaint about the titanium slivers, they substantiated my complaint about lost non conforming parts. And as far as the oxygen systems, they said that Boeing was aware and that there was a large investigation going on.”

What did the FAA do about it?

“For the titanium slivers, they wrote a DAI – a designated airworthiness inspection requirement. That DAI is for Boeing only. They told Boeing – you are not allowed to deliver any more planes with these metal slivers. And during that process, Boeing came back and determined that the slivers were not a safety of flight issue, so they did not notify the customers of the planes that had already been delivered that those slivers were on the plane. And at the time, I think we were up around 800 airplanes that had been delivered. Every 787 out there has these slivers out there.”

They are not going to be recalled?

“From what I understand, they are not going to notify the customers.”

Are you convinced that these slivers could result in a catastrophic event?

“Absolutely. And it’s not just my opinion. We have examples of incidents where it has created fires. We have had several fires at the Charleston plant where metal FOD (foreign object debris) got into one of the tower panels and caught it on fire. We had to replace the whole power panel. We had other instances where metal FOD got into electrical areas and caused shorts and fires. Yes, I’m convinced it’s a safety of flight issue.”

“I don’t understand how Boeing could determine it is not a safety of flight issue.”

How big are the shavings?

“They are up to three inches long. They are razor sharp titanium slivers. When the fasteners are installed to hold down the floorboards, the threads are getting peeled off the fasteners. And those threads are falling down on top of the wire bundles and electronic equipment. Over time, as the vibrations of the airplane work the slivers into the wire bundles and into the connectors, they are going to short something out eventually. I don’t see how it is possible that they don’t.”

What is your own personal practice on flying Boeing aircraft now?

“When I worked on the 747, the 767, the 777 in Everett, those are beautiful planes. And the people there fully understood what it took to build a safe and airworthy aircraft. I hate to throw the entire label over the whole product line. But as far as the 787, I would change flights before I would fly a 787. I’ve told my family — please don’t fly a 787. Fly something else. Try to get a different ticket. I want the people to know what they are riding on.”

Other than the OSHA case, is there civil litigation – you against Boeing?

“Not right now. My goal right now is to get these safety issues addressed and make sure these airplanes are safe and airworthy. I have issues with the way I was treated, but I will fight that battle later.”

“Safety, quality and integrity are at the core of Boeing’s values,” Boeing said in a statement provided to Corporate Crime Reporter.  “Speaking up is a cornerstone of that safety culture and we look into all issues that are raised. Boeing offers its employees a number of channels for raising concerns and complaints and has rigorous processes in place, both to ensure that such complaints receive thorough consideration and to protect the confidentiality of employees who make them. Accordingly, Boeing does not comment on the substance or existence of such internal complaints.”

“Boeing and the FAA implement a rigorous inspection process to ensure that all our airplanes are safe and built with the highest levels of safety and quality. FAA inspectors are located at all Boeing final assembly facilities and as part of their normal regulatory oversight process, and have complete access to the factory and flight line. All our planes go through multiple safety and test flights, as well as extensive Boeing, FAA, and airline inspections before they leave our factory and before the traveling public boards those planes for the first time. We encourage and expect our employees to raise concerns and when they do, we thoroughly investigate and fully resolve them, in cooperation with the FAA, where appropriate.”

“Further, in 2017, foreign object debris (FOD) associated with the e-nuts was discovered in South Carolina and Everett production airplanes. In response, the FAA issued a Delegated Airworthiness Inspection (DAI) requiring 100% inspection of 787 production planes to ensure no metal shaving FOD issues prior to delivery, and Boeing continues to comply with the DAI. Boeing’s flight safety board analyzed the issue and determined it does not present a safety of flight issue. Boeing is currently working with its e-nut supplier to improve the e-nut design and production process to eliminate the potential for FOD. Boeing also engaged a third-party to inspect the e-nuts at the supplier as they are produced. The existing Airplane Maintenance Manual already instructs in-service operators to check for FOD when removing and reinstalling floor panels.”

The potential exit of the United Kingdom from the European Union (EU) — aka “Brexit” — may portend greater pesticide use and exposures, according to a report from the Soil Association and the Pesticide Action Network UK. As covered by The Guardian, the report’s prediction points to uncertainty, despite reassurances from the United Kingdom (UK) government, about what regulatory standards will actually be in effect if and when Brexit occurs. The report also highlights the under-regulated issue identified in the report’s title — The Cocktail Effect — synergistic impacts of exposures to multiple synthetic pesticide compounds. Beyond cessation of pesticide use, Beyond Pesticides advocates for more rigorous review of synergistic effects of pesticides in the U.S.

In the UK, environmental and health advocates are voicing worries that the government’s reassurances that existing standards will be maintained after a Brexit is unconvincing. UK Environment Secretary Michael Gove insists that environmental standards would be enhanced following a UK exit from the EU. But advocates are concerned about potential loopholes that could allow farmers to use more pesticides on crops than the EU regulations permit, and could greenlight the import of foodstuffs with greater amounts of pesticide residue than current EU regulations allow.

Advocates also point to a report from the multi-partisan Environmental Audit Committee (of Members of Parliament, or MPs) that warns that a draft Environment Bill proposed for the post-Brexit period is alarmingly lacking in purported “protections.” That report says, “The environmental principles which guide and inform EU legislation and policy have been severely downgraded by the proposals in the bill. They are [also] subject to a number of exclusions and to the veto of the secretary of state.”

Further, advocates note the marked increase in pesticide use in the UK during the past 30 years or so. The Cocktail Effect provides a “status report” on pesticide use in the UK. It asserts that treated acreage (calculated as treated area multiplied by number of applications) has increased by nearly two-thirds in that period. This has been true especially of herbicide and fungicide application. In addition, frequency of use has risen: whereas 1990 saw 30% of grain crops and 21% of oilseed rape treated more than four times in a growing season, by 2016 those metrics rose to 55% of grains and 80% of rape; potatoes, e.g., are subject to three times the number of applications they underwent in 1990. Further, the report contends that the toxicity of currently deployed pesticides is higher than that of previous generations of compounds. It cites the examples of deltamethrin, used in many crops, as 360 times more toxic than the infamous DDT, and some neonicotinoids as 10,000 times more toxic than DDT.

The Cocktail Effect drills down on the issues related to exposures to multiple pesticide compounds — pesticide “cocktails.” It cites various metrics, including:
• more than 1/3 of all the fruit and vegetables tested by the UK government in 2017 and 2018 contained residues of more than one pesticide

• 87.5% of the pears tested in 2017 contained pesticide cocktails, with 4% containing residues of nine or more different chemicals
• a single sample of raspberries contained a known carcinogen, a probable carcinogen, 2 possible carcinogens, 2 endocrine disruptors, a developmental toxin, and a neurotoxin
• multiple residues were found in more than 3/4 of grapes tested in 2018
• in 2017 and 2018, 1/4 of all food items tested by the government contained multiple pesticide residues

The report notes that there is currently no governmental monitoring of exposures to such cocktails in the environment, despite a finding, in a soil study across 11 European countries, that the UK samples yielded the second-highest variety of residues. Approximately 67% of the UK samples had multiple residues, 25% had more than six, and 4% harbored traces of more than 10 pesticides. A cited study of UK waters (rivers, lakes, ponds, et al.) demonstrated, for example, that 66% of samples taken from seven riverine habitats contained residues of more than 10 pesticides.

As Beyond Pesticides has done many times, The Cocktail Effect identifies the growing evidence that exposure to multiple pesticide compounds can result in synergistic effects. Yet the UK government continues to assess the safety of one chemical at a time. This approach not only ignores the potential risks to human health from consumption of a single food (e.g., berries with multiple pesticide residues), but also, the risks related to the variety of foods consumed in the course of a day or week or month. In addition, it fails to recognize the increased use of multi-pesticide products, a “doubling down” approach adopted by industry in the face of failing efficacy of single-active-ingredient pesticides as organisms (weeds or animal pests) develop resistance to the compounds. Last, the report maintains that the UK regulatory system is poorly equipped to protect the natural environment from pesticide cocktails; it “ignores the cocktail effect, and fails to assess, monitor or limit the sum total of pesticide residues to which the environment and wildlife are exposed.”

Among the report’s key recommendations are:

• ensure that there is no weakening of UK pesticide regulations or standards if and when Brexit occurs
• undertake initiatives to support UK farmers in the transition to “whole farm agroecological systems” — such as organic and agroforestry
• establish quantitative targets for significant reduction of the overall use of pesticides in agriculture
• enact robust monitoring of pesticide impacts on environmental and human health
• undertake government-funded research into the effects of pesticide cocktails on the natural environment, wildlife, and human health
• ban public entities from applying pesticides near schools, playgrounds, and residential areas, and phase out all non-agricultural uses of pesticides

The Cocktail Effect summarizes: “Until the government takes action, farmers will struggle to get off the ‘pesticide treadmill,’ and UK citizens and our natural environment will continue to be exposed to potential harm. It is time to bring this damaging, decades-long experiment — in which we are blindly exposed to pesticide cocktails without any sense of the true consequences — to an end.”

“Green” advocacy groups in the UK are exhorting government ministers to use Brexit as an opportunity to “create the world’s most transparent regulatory system for pesticides . . . building public trust that decisions are the result of an unbiased process.” The head of campaigns and policy at Pesticide Action Network UK, Josie Cohen, said, “The UK will either need to create new institutions and bodies that can fill the governance gap after Brexit, or at least ensure that there are systems and staff in place to fulfil the functions previously carried out by EU bodies. The government urgently needs to invest in ensuring that, post-transition period, the UK system is fit for purpose. Otherwise, it risks a major weakening of UK pesticides standards, which would enable a greater variety of hazardous pesticides to be used in larger quantities.” The Guardianarticle notes advocates’ claim that trade discussions, negotiations, or deals with the U.S. would result in pressure on the UK to lower its pesticides standard to comport more closely with those in the U.S. — on whose inadequacy Beyond Pesticides has worked for decades.

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Sources

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/oct/21/brexit-may-expose-britons-to-more-pesticides-report and

https://www.soilassociation.org/media/19535/the-pesticide-cocktail-effect.pdf

Featured image is from TruePublica

When protests in Hong Kong, Iraq, and Lebanon erupted, I was fully anticipating protests in Iran to follow. In 2018 alone, the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) had spent millions of dollars in these countries (and elsewhere) to promote America’s agenda. However, I did not expect unrest in Iran to take place while I was visiting the country. In retrospect, I am glad that I was here to be witness to these latest events.

On Thursday, November 21^st, friends took me to a very charming Iranian restaurant in the heart of the city. During our lunch, they talked about there being a price hike in gasoline. After lunch, we walked around the charming downtown area of Tehran, visited shops and exhausted climbed into a cab. We asked the cab driver if he had heard anything about prices going up. He told us that this was just a rumor. As such, the increase in the price of gasoline took Iranians by surprise. Regrettably, the government of President Rohani had not explained the rationale behind the price increase PRIOR to the increase itself. In several parts of Iran, protests erupted. Perhaps justified; and they were peaceful. One could argue they were disruptive in that cars blocked roads making it difficult for others, causing traffic jams, but there was no vandalism on the first day – not to my knowledge.

But calm soon gave way to violence. A friend who lives in the suburbs of Tehran, in Karaj, told me that on a single street in that sleepy suburb, protestors had set 4 banks on fire. Elsewhere, police stations were attacked, banks and gas stations set on fire. Businesses were set on fire and destroyed. People were sending text messages to each other giving locations of alleged protests in the hopes of gathering people in one spot or another.

This did not surprise me. I was certain that “swarming” tactic was being implemented (as I believe it was elsewhere mentioned above). First developed by RAND as a military and tactical tool, RAND’s publication “Swarming & The future of Conflict” states:

In Athena’s Camp, we speculated that swarming is already emerging as an appropriate doctrine for networked forces to wage information-age conflict. This nascent doctrine derives from the fact that robust connectivity allows for the creation of a multitude of small units of maneuver, networked in such a fashion that, although they might be widely distributed, they can still come together, at will and repeatedly, to deal resounding blows to their adversaries. This study builds on these earlier findings by inquiring at length into why and how swarming might be emerging as a preferred mode of conflict for small, dispersed, internetted units. In our view, swarming will likely be the future of conflict.”

“Social conflict also features pack-like organizations, as exemplified by modern-day “soccer hooligans.” They generally operate in a loosely dispersed fashion, then swarm against targets of opportunity who are “cut out” from a larger group of people. The use of modern information technologies—from the Internet to cell phones—has facilitated plans and operations by such gangs (see Sullivan, 1997)”.

Swarming depends on robust information flow and is a necessary condition for successful swarming. In other words, by controlling communication and sending texts to ‘protestors’, random groups are mobilized together in one or various spots.   Chaos ensues which naturally draws reaction. One is never aware of the origin of the messages. In one of her talks, Suzanne Maloney of  Brookings seemed to know the exact number of cell phones in use in Iran. These messages increased in number, as did the vandalism and reaction to the destructive behavior. This was not the first time that this tactic had been used in Iran. But it was the first time that Iran’s adversaries were surprised, shocked even, to see that Iran was capable of shutting down the internet so quickly in order to put a stop to the spread of violence and restore calm.

I drove around in Tehran from end to end, either with friends or in a cab and took note of the streets. I watched both Iranian tv news and foreign media such as BBC Persian, VOA, Radio Farda, Saudi funded Iran International broadcasted into Iran through satellite (at times jammed) to encourage people to get out on the streets and to protest. Iran was covered under a blanket of snow. With freezing temperatures, I was amused to see BBC Persian show pictures of ‘demonstrators’ in T-shirts. I was angry to see Reza Pahlavi, the deposed Shah of Iran appear on Iran International encouraging people to get out onto streets. I felt insulted on behalf of every Iranian when Secretary Pompeo retweeted an old tweet and then tweeted again that ‘he was with the Iranian people’ – not to eat, not to receive medicinal goods, not to address their desire for peace and security, but to endure all kinds of hardship and to be subjected to American terrorism (sanctions) and go out on the streets to protest  in order to promote America’s agenda.

The hostile foreign media even showed pictures of a ‘protestor’ handing out flowers to security personnel – a symbol first used against the Pentagon in 1967 by a woman protesting the war in Vietnam (and later in the 2014 US backed coup in Ukraine). Except I could not tell if the picture I saw streaming through the foreign media’s  satellite television was Iran or not. The viewer was told it was. The symbol was powerful, but I doubt very much that it was an indigenous one.

With the internet disconnected, foreign media propaganda then had its viewers believe people were calling from inside Iran; eyewitnesses reporting events. A voice telling BBC, or Iran International, or …… what was going on. Just a voice which would not doubt then be picked up as eyewitness testimony and shared in all media outlets. The ease with which individuals in various target countries always manage to get directly through to a television stations has always fascinated me. No automated answer – just straight to the newsroom.

In all this, I can’t help but ask why it was that none of the banks and gas stations set on fire, buildings burnt and businesses ruined, were not located in the pro-West parts of Tehran. Their life continued without a hitch – homes safe, business safe. After all, the main reason for the gasoline price increase was to help the less affluent and the poor. Perhaps as Daniel McAdams of the Ron Paul Institute said of the CIA’s role behind the uprisings, Michael D’Andrea, aka “Ayatollah Mike” wanted them safe. Regardless of the reason, CIA/NED spent millions and failed – again.

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Soraya Sepahpour-Ulrich is an independent researcher and writer with a focus on US foreign policy. She is a frequent contributor to Global Research

The entire system of policing in the United States is in crisis. Police murdering civilians has become a too common nightmare across the United States. The police murders of Michael Brown in Ferguson, MO, Eric Garner in New York City, Walter Scott in Charleston, SC, Tamar Rice in Cleveland OH, Freddie Gray in Baltimore, MD, Laquan McDonald in Chicago, IL and so many more have spurred a movement to transform policing.

The power relationship between police and the community is out of balance. Militarized policing of black and brown communities resembles an occupying force. While many police departments use the slogan “protect and serve,” in too many communities, people do not feel protected or served. They feel threatened, harassed and abused by police.

The relationship between police and the people needs to change. While there have been some positive reforms like police body cameras, special units to investigate police and increased prosecutions of police, these are insufficient. The most promising transformational change is to put in place community control of police through a democratically-elected police accountability board.

Screenshots showing the police conflict and killing of Eric Garner.

The Crisis

The constant police killings and shootings often caught on video and shared on social media have created a movement to transform policing. Associated Press described it, writing: “The videos — and the outrage that followed — helped ignite the most powerful civil rights movement since the 1960s.” The widespread police violence has become a national racial justice issue.

Police violence has been a reality in the United States from the start. The poster to the right could be carried today, but it is more than 50 years old. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., said in the I Have A Dream Speech, “We can never be satisfied as long as the Negro is the victim of the unspeakable horrors of police brutality.” Police violence has been part of centuries of oppression of Black people in the United States since they were first brought to the continent as slaves.

Slavery and racism are intertwined with policing, as Gary Potter Ph.D. wrote in The History of Policing in the United States:

“The genesis of the modern police organization in the South is the “Slave Patrol” (Platt 1982). The first formal slave patrol was created in the Carolina colonies in 1704 (Reichel 1992). Slave patrols had three primary functions: (1) to chase down, apprehend, and return to their owners, runaway slaves; (2) to provide a form of organized terror to deter slave revolts; and, (3) to maintain a form of discipline for slave-workers who were subject to summary justice, outside of the law, if they violated any plantation rules. Following the Civil War, these vigilante-style organizations evolved in modern Southern police departments primarily as a means of controlling freed slaves who were now laborers working in an agricultural caste system, and enforcing “Jim Crow” segregation laws, designed to deny freed slaves equal rights and access to the political system.”

The 1929 Illinois Crime Survey found that although blacks made up just five percent of the population, they constituted 30 percent of the victims of police killings. Police violence has been the spark for uprisings in black communities. Newark had one of the deadliest riots when in 1967 police officers beat a black cab driver leading to an insurrection where 26 people died over four days of unrest. The National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders investigated the causes of major uprisings concluding: “police actions were ‘final’ incidents before the outbreak of violence in 12 of the 24 surveyed disorders.”

The 1991 video of the bloody beating of cab driver Rodney King showed police brutality on television. Police hit King more than 50 times with their batons. When they were acquitted, the verdict led to an uprising that lasted six days, killing 63 people and injuring 2,373. The National Guard, US Army, and Marines were deployed in the community.

Today, the widespread acts of violence cannot be claimed to be isolated incidents of one bad apple. This violence is documented by the media like The Guardian and non-profit organizations like The Marshall Project. More than 1,100 people per year are killed by the police — more than four times the number of people lynched or executed by capital punishment in the worst of years —  about one person every eight hours.

Police departments have become a violent occupying force in communities of color and against people exercising their political rights at protests. Police departments with military-grade equipment have become the norm in US cities. Images of police officers in helmets and body armor riding through neighborhoods in tanks accompany stories of protests, including when people protest against police violence.

Putting People in Control of the Police

In 2012, about 100 people met in Chicago to develop a plan for community control of the police. Now, 60,000 people have signed petitions and there are 19 members of the Chicago City Council, 40 percent of the council, who support it. This weekend, 1,000 people attended the re-founding of the National Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression where the centerpiece of discussion was democratic control of the police.

We interviewed Frank Chapman, who has been involved in the work in Chicago to create a Civilian Police Accountability Council (CPAC) from the beginning, on our radio show.  Chapman puts the issue into context describing how for a brief period after the Civil War, communities controlled their police. But the reversal of Reconstruction ended that. He says that communities getting control of police should be recognized as central to black liberation.

Chapman explains how they have organized to build support for the issue with grassroots activism, holding community meetings, going door-to-door and tabling, gathering signatures and electing people to the city council.

The centerpiece of the Chicago bill is democratic community control. The bill for a Civilian Police Accountability Council gives broad powers to the elected council. These powers include complete control of the police:

1. Appoint a Superintendent of Police;
2. Adopt rules and regulations for the governance of the Department of Police of the city;
3. Serve as a board to hear disciplinary actions for which a suspension for more than the 30 days expressly reserved to the Superintendent is recommended, or for removal or discharge involving officers and employees of the Police Department in the classified civil service of the city;
4. Promulgate rules, regulations, and procedures for the conduct of the CPAC’s investigations consistent with the requirements of collective bargaining agreements, due process of law and equal protection under the law;
5. In those instances where CPAC’s investigation indicates that a member of the Department of Police has committed a crime, petition the Chief Judge of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois to convene a Grand Jury if one is not already convened, and present CPAC’s findings of criminal activity to the Grand Jury to get an indictment for Deprivation of Rights Under Color of Law pursuant to 18 U.S. Code § 242;
6. Review, approve and submit to the City of Chicago the annual budget of the Department of Police;
7. Provide required educational opportunities for CPAC members to become familiar with citizens’ United States and Illinois constitutional rights, learn law enforcement oversight techniques, and undergo victims’ assistance, sexual assault and domestic violence certification training;
8. Establish officers, committees, and subcommittees for the effective conduct of CPAC business;
9. Protect the rights guaranteed to the citizens of Chicago by the United States and Illinois Constitutions;
10. Review and sign off on all complaint investigations;
11. Review and sign off on all new Department of Police policies and special orders;
12. Disallow the use of the Department of Police by outside law enforcement agencies to commit crimes;
13. Negotiate and approve contracts with the police unions.
14. Remap the City of Chicago police districts as needed as determined by the CPAC.

When asked what the difference is between the elected council and the increasingly common Civilian Police Review Boards, Chapman responds: “Accountability.” By being democratically elected, the Chicago model holds the council and the police accountable. Review boards chosen by the government too often include people who are friends or allies of the police.

Democratic control is essential

This November 4, the city of Rochester, NY passed a referendum creating a Police Accountability Board with 75 percent of voters supporting it. Between 2001 and 2016, citizens filed 923 allegations of excessive force. The Chief of Police sustained 16 of these allegations, only 13 led to discipline.

The board will be able to independently investigate civilian complaints, subpoena information for its investigations, and determine whether individual officers have committed misconduct. It will also create disciplinary guidelines, with an opportunity for input from the Chief of Police and the police union. If the board finds, after a hearing, that an officer has committed misconduct, the Chief of Police is required to impose discipline consistent with disciplinary guidelines. The board will also recommend changes to the Police Department’s policies, practices, and training. The police union is expected to file suit to stop this board from taking effect.

The board will be composed of nine unpaid Rochester residents: one appointed by the Mayor and eight appointed by the City Council; four of the Council’s appointees will be nominated by a coalition of community organizations, the Police Accountability Board Alliance. The potential Achilles Heel of this new law is the lack of democratic control by the people.

As a result of a November 2001 referendum supported by over 76 percent of the electorate, Miami created the Civilian Investigative Panel (“CIP”). Voters sought oversight because of a series of suspicious police shootings, throwdown guns and officers lying to grand juries. The CIP only makes recommendations to the police and has weak powers granted to its 13 members. They have lost their fight to be able to subpoena police officers due to the state’s Law Enforcement Bill of Rights. This approach has been judged as a failure. Sixteen states have a Law Enforcement Bill of Rights, which gives extra protection to police under investigation and makes it impossible for police to be judged by anyone but other police officers.

Lessons from the experience with police oversight include the importance of the democratic selection of oversight boards, not boards appointed by elected officials, clear powers that are not merely advisory for the board and, in states where relevant, confronting the Law Enforcement Bill of Rights.

Cities are spending large shares of their budgets on police at the expense of social services, health care, infrastructure, and other needs. Oakland spent 41 percent of the city’s general fund on policing in 2017. Chicago spent nearly 39 percent, Minneapolis, almost 36 percent, and Houston 35 percent. A recent study documents how a living wage, access to holistic health services and treatment, educational opportunity, and stable housing are far more successful in reducing crime than police or prisons.

Democratic community control of the police transforms the power dynamic between police and citizens. Black communities policing the police in their neighborhoods to confront the long term racist roots of policing in the United States. Community control of police needs to become the unified goal of movements seeking to end police violence, create police who serve the community and liberate black communities.

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

All images in this article are from Popular Resistance except the featured image

The focus of a “Shared Future for Mankind” Forum was, of course President Xi Jinping’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), potentially the bridge that spans the world. The BRI has become essentially China’s Foreign Policy guiding vehicle. And rightly so. Because it could indeed propel the world towards more harmony, more peaceful cooperation – cooperation with socioeconomic benefits for all. BRI has currently some 160 members-countries and international organizations and is steadily growing, including in what might well be considered ‘adversary’ countries, like many in Europe.

While for some strange reasons, Europe, the EU, still seems to be obliged to follow Washington’s dictate, there is an increasing awakening, namely that the most logical and most beneficial way for all to do business is across the huge transcontinental area of Eurasia – which also includes the Middle East, where BRI, through joint ventures, could become an instrument for conflict resolution. After all, hundreds of years before the British Empire moved across the Atlantic to North America, gigantic Eurasia was the normal trading ground for adjacent as well as more distant countries. Russia and the Far East were linked up with Western Europe. Today, going back to this principle, would be a giant step forward – away from ever-belligerent and coercive relations with an aggressive and destructive Anglo-American empire. We may eventually get there.

Indeed, in the context of BRI, economic growth was also on the table. China’s rapid decline from years of 11% and 12% growth to now 5% to 7% was a concern. Is China’s economy going into a slump, is it failing – what happens? – Was a worrying question, if not spoken then inferred by innuendo. The response is rather simple. China’s rapid and enormous growth was mostly accumulating along the eastern, highly urbanized shores, creating a development gap with the Chinese eastern countryside.

A planned reduction of growth allows for a more even distribution, a more horizontal than vertical growth, meaning addressing more social and locally focused development, something China can do, because her public banking system works for the benefit of the people not for some far-away shareholders – and it is less bound to the use of natural resources. Mind you, a 5% or even 4% growth is still a multiple of the west’s average. Besides, growth is a linear western capitalist indicator, focused on ever-more capital accumulations for ever-fewer people and corporations.

China today is the world’s second largest economy in absolute GDP terms (US$ 14.3 trillion, 2019 est.), projected to bypass the US (US$ 21.3 trillion, 2019 est.) by 2025, or earlier. But measured by Purchasing Power Parity (PPP), China is already today the world’s number one economy. Indeed, PPP is the only meaningful indicator. What counts in the end is how much can you buy in your country with your economic output. Everything else is (almost) irrelevant.

In addition, China is practicing a stable and secure monetary policy. Unlike western currencies, the Yuan is backed by a solid economy and by gold. In 2017 the Yuan was officially admitted into the basket of the IMF’s SDR (Special Drawing Right) which contains the US-dollar (41.73%), Euro (30.93%), Chinese Yuan (10.92%), Japanese Yen (8.33%) and the British pound (8.09%). By having been admitted into the SDR basket, China has become officially a reserve currency and is actually rapidly replacing the dollar as a world reserve currency. The world increasingly recognizes that the dollar is, like its younger cousin, the euro, is but fiat money, meaning based on nothing, other than debt, because it is indiscriminately printed or computer generated as needed, amounting to a colossal pyramid or Ponzi scheme.

The current US debt to GDP ratio is about 105%. However, what the US General Accounting Office calls “unmet obligations” amounts to more than 700% of GDP (net present value of total outstanding obligations discounted to today’s value). According to former Federal Reserve Chairman, Alan Greenspan, responding to a journalist’s question, “we will never pay back our debt; we will just print new money”.

The gigantic amount of US-dollars flooding the world, estimated at more than 50% of total convertible money, compares to less than 3% of the Chinese Yuan. No matter, treasurers around the globe increasingly realize that a Yuan-based reserve is worth more than one based on fiat US-dollar nominated assets.

In conclusion, this first of its kind CASS-organized Conference provided for an excellent stock-taking and for a vision ahead. It presented many ideas and offered myriad opportunities for networking among think-alikes and potential partners. What is, however, key to success is that this effort does not stand alone, that there will be a follow-up to monitor and register what may have emerged of the ideas and proposals put forward at the Forum and how new initiatives may be solidified.

The Vatican comes with its ills, contradictions and blatant hypocrisies in the field of moral theology and human existence, but on the issue of atomic and nuclear weapons, the position has been fairly consistent, if marked by gradual evolution.  On February 8, 1948, Pope Pius XII held an audience with members of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences.  “What misfortunes,” he asked, “should humanity expect from a future conflict, if it should prove impossible to arrest or curb the use of ever newer and more surprising scientific inventions?”

The Second Vatican Council through its 1965 document Gaudium et spes deemed the arms race “one of the greatest curses on humanity and the harm it inflicts on the poor is more than can be endured”.  Using nuclear weapons exceeded “the limits of legitimate self-defence”, and would constitute a “crime against God and against humanity itself.  It merits unequivocal and unhesitating condemnation.”  Pope Paul VI would subsequently give his approval to the Nuclear Arms Non-Proliferation Treaty, making nuclear disarmament a matter of highest moral urgency.

But attitudes to nuclear weapons were always chained to the Cold War orbit and the old dilemmas of self-defence.  In November 1980, with the election of US President Ronald Reagan, Auxiliary Bishop Thomas Gumbleton of Detroit expressed genuine terror at the prospect of a pro-bomb enthusiast in the White House.

“We’ve just elected a President who has stated his conviction that we can have superiority in nuclear weapons, an utter impossibility.  We have a Vice-President who has clearly stated that one side could win a nuclear war and that we must be prepared to fight one and to win it.”

But the concern on the part of US bishops, expressed through The Challenge of Peace: God’s Promise and Our Response, was influenced by an admixture of interference and moderation on the part of The Vatican.

Pope John Paul II was keen to keep things cordial with Reagan, preferring revisions to be made to the original drafts of the pastoral.  While the pontiff kept up public relations appearances by visiting Hiroshima and meeting with the Hikabusha, the mutilated and maimed survivors of the world’s first atomic blast, he was also mindful of the big power game and Reagan’s initial hard line against the Soviet Union.

The Catholic Church was also at odds in how best to reconcile dealing with nuclear weapons, given the Cold War language of evil so heartily promoted by Reagan, with its multi-barbed opposition to godless communism.  The US-Soviet struggle, moralised Reagan at the Annual Convention of the National Association of Evangelicals in Orlando, Florida was nothing less than a fight “between right and wrong and good and evil.”  The final text of The Challenge of Peace affirmed the Catholic view that a sovereign state might well engage in self-defence, but that could only ever happen in accordance with the limits of just-war theory.

The current pontiff Pope Francis has layered his comments in line with a growing body of thought suggesting that the use of nuclear weapons in any circumstances, including their possession, would be illegal.  Nuclear boffins see him as “unusually active compared to his predecessors in nuclear diplomacy.”

To use such weapons, he reasoned in his November 2017 address to the symposium “Prospects for a World Free of Nuclear Weapons and for Integral Disarmament” would result in “catastrophic humanitarian and environmental effects”.  Having such weapons encouraged a fallacious, dangerous logic.  They were tactically futile, wasteful and could be used by mistake.

Pope Francis also noted the moves by the United Nations to draft a binding instrument that would prohibit the use of nuclear weapons, resulting in the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.  Through a conference in 2017, the General Assembly voted to adopt the Treaty by a vote of 122, with one abstention, and one against.  (A truly “historic” vote, claimed the pontiff, one that “filled a significant judicial lacuna”.)

The text considers “that any use of nuclear weapons would be contrary to the rules of international law applicable in armed conflict, in particular the principles and rules of international humanitarian law.”  Outlined prohibitions include undertakings never to, “Develop, test, produce, manufacture, otherwise acquire, possess or stockpile nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices”.

Such views align with the long held view of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), though not those of the International Court of Justice, which maintains the position that the use of nuclear weapons may be permissible in “extreme circumstances of self-defence.”  In the aftermath of the group being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, ICAN Executive Director Beatrice Finn reiterated the position that,

“Nuclear weapons are illegal.  Threatening to use nuclear weapons is illegal.  Having nuclear weapons, possessing nuclear weapons, developing nuclear weapons is illegal, and they need to stop.”

As with John Paul II, Pope Francis made a trip to Japan to reiterate his position.  In Nagasaki’s Atomic Bomb Hypocentre Park, he dismissed nuclear deterrence as viable, claiming that peace was inconsistent with the “fear of mutual destruction or the threat of total annihilation.”  Nuclear weapon stockpiles were symbols of squandered wealth even as “millions of children and families live in inhumane conditions”.  Before a gathering at Hiroshima’s Peace Memorial Park, he spoke of the annihilation of “so many men and women, so many dreams and hopes” in the aftermath of the “incandescent burst of lightning and fire”.

Whatever reservations critics and observers might have of The Vatican and its foreign policy, the current pontiff’s concerns should be filed along those of other states agog before what looks like a spike of interest in military experimentation.  The Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty has been canned by the Trump administration; the Russian response, after initial indignation, has been one of resigned adaptation.  The stalled denuclearisation issue over the Korean Peninsula is likewise something setting regional powers on edge.  But the efforts to deem the very possession of such weapons of indiscriminate mass murder illegal continue their momentum.

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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]

A coup on November 10 removed the socialist government of Bolivian President Evo Morales. The U.S. government made preparations and orchestrated the final stages of the coup. It was in charge. In power for almost 14 years, Morales and Vice President Álvaro García Linera had won elections taking place on October 20. The two leaders would each have been serving a fourth term in office.

Evidence of the U.S. crime appears below.  It’s about money, U.S. influence within the Bolivian military, and U.S. control of the Organization of American States (OAS):

1. For many years the Santa Cruz Civic Committee and its proto-fascist Youth Union received funding from the U.S. National Endowment for Democracy. According to analyst Eva Golinger some years ago, the USAID provided $84 million to Bolivian opposition groups.

U.S. Embassy officials conspired with and paid the “civic committees” of Bolivia’s four eastern departments. Representing the European- descended elite of Bolivia’s wealthiest region, these groups promoted racist assaults. They concocted a separatist movement and tried to assassinate Morales. In response, the Bolivian government expelled the U.S. ambassador, Drug Enforcement Agency, and U. S. Agency for International Development.

2. Bolivian armed forces commander in chief Williams Kaliman Romero on November 10 “suggested” that Morales resign. That was the coup de grace. Within three days, Kaliman himself resigned and moved to the United States. Sullkata M. Quilla of the Latin American Center for Strategic Analysis explains that Kaliman and other military chiefs each had received $1 million and that top police officers received $500,000 apiece. U.S. Chargee d’affaires Bruce Williamson allegedly arranged for monetary transactions that took place in Argentina’s Jujuy Province under the auspices of Governor Geraldo Morales. The story first appeared on the website www.Tvmundus.com.ar.

3. Money flowed freely prior to Morales’s departure. Bolivian ambassador to the United Nations Sacha Llorenti – a Morales supporter – reported that, “loyal members of [Morales’s] security team showed him messages in which people were offering them $50,000 if they would hand him over.”

4. According to the respected Argentinean journalist Stella Calloni, Ivanka Trump arrived in Jujuy on September 4-5 ostensibly to honor a small group of women entrepreneurs. Some “2,500 federal agents” and Deputy Secretary of State John Sullivan accompanied her. At the same time, Governor Gerardo Morales was informed that the United States would be delivering $400 million supposedly to pay for improvements to a big highway in Argentina. Cattaloni suggests that a freight train running through Jujuy en route to Santa Cruz, the center of anti- Morales plotting in Bolivia, was transporting military equipment to opposition groups.

There’s media speculation as to how Governor Morales may have facilitated the transfer of U.S. money to Luis Camacho, leader of the coup and head of the Santa Cruz Civic Committee. He may have done so in Santa Cruz, where he visited on September 4, or in Jujuy Province where Camacho may have showed up later that day or the next.

5. According to analyst Jeb Sprague:

“At least six of the key coup plotters are alumni of the infamous School of the Americas, while [General] Kaliman and another figure served in the past as Bolivia’s military and police attachés in Washington.”

For decades, Latin American military personnel have received training and indoctrination at that U.S. Army school now called the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation.

Sprague notes also that the top commanders of police that mutinied had received training at the Washington-based Latin American police exchange program known by its initials in Spanish as APALA.

6. The OAS played a crucial role in the coup. Votes were being tallied on October 20 when the OAS, having audited preliminary results, announced that they showed irregularities. The U.S. government echoed the findings and street protests intensified. On October 24 the Supreme Electoral Tribunal declared first-round victories for Morales and García Linare. Protests mounted. The government, under stress, requested another OAS audit.

The OAS made its conclusions public on November 10, earlier than expected:

The OAS couldn’t “validate the results of this election [and called for] “another electoral process [and] new electoral authorities.”

This was the tipping point. Morales convoked another election but shortly thereafter General Kaliman forced him to resign.

The OAS findings were false. Walter Mebane and colleagues at the University of Michigan, having examined voting statistics, indicated that fraudulent votes in the election were not decisive for the result. The Washington-based Center for Economic and Policy Research performed its own detailed study and reached the same conclusion.

The OAS served as U.S. handmaiden. Headquartered in Washington, the organization took shape under U.S. auspices in 1948 with the assigned task of protecting Latin America and the Caribbean from Communism. More recently the OAS, under Secretary General Luis Almagro’s guidance, has spearheaded U.S. efforts to expel President Nicolas Maduro’s progressive Venezuelan government.

Paradoxically, Almagro in May 2019 gave Morales the go-ahead for a fourth presidential term. That was despite a referendum having been defeated that would have allowed the extra term. Almago’s intention may have been to lull Morales into cooperating with OAS overview of the election results.

7. Other signs of U.S. coup preparations are these:

• Prior to the October 20 elections President Morales charged that U.S. Embassy officials bribed rural residents to reject him at the polls. They traveled, for example, to the Yungas region on October 16 with pay-offs to disaffected coca farmers.
• According to Bolpress.com, the National Military Coordinator (Coordinadora Nacional Militar), an organization of reserve military officers, received and distributed money sent from the United States to create social crisis prior to October 20. The United States also used embassies in Bolivia and the evangelical church as facades to hide its activities. Mariane Scott and Rolf A. Olson, U.S. Embassy officials in La Paz, met with counterparts in the embassies of Brazil, Paraguay, and Argentina to coordinate destabilization efforts and to deliver U.S. financing to opposition forces inside Bolivia.
• Weapons shipments from the United States arrived at the Chilean port of Iquique on their way to the National Military Coordinator group inside Bolivia.
• The State Department allocated $100,000 to enable a company called “CLS Strategies” to mount a disinformation campaign through social media.
• The CIA station in La Paz assumed control of Bolivia’s Whatsapp network in order to leak false information. More than 68,000 fake anti-Morales tweets were released.
• In mid-October “political consultant” George Eli Birnbaun arrived in Santa Cruz from Washington with a team of military and civilian personnel. Their job was to support the U.S. – preferred presidential candidacy of Oscar Ortiz and to destabilize the country politically after the elections. They provided support for Santa Cruz Civic Committee’s youth organization – specialists in violence – and supervised the U.S. – financed “Standing Rivers” NGO, engaged in spreading disinformation.
• Sixteen audio recordings of the plotters’ pre-election conversations were leaked and showed up on the internet. Several of the voices mentioned contacts with the U.S. Embassy and with U.S. Senators Ted Cruz, Robert Menendez, and Marco Rubio. Sprague reports that four of the ex-military plotters on the calls had attended the School of the Americas.

This presentation focuses entirely on the evidence. In a criminal investigation, evidence is central to determining guilt or innocence. Considerations of motive and context are of lesser importance, and we don’t deal with them here. But when and where they are attended to, they would logically fall into categories that include the following:

1. A socialist experiment was showing signs of success and capitalists of the world were facing the threat of a good example.

2. A people once held hostage by colonial powers was able to claim sovereign independence and in that regard had endeavored to retain much of the wealth provided through natural resources, lithium in particular.

3. Throughout its existence the Morales government, headed by an indigenous president, was up against anti-indigenous prejudice, racist in origin, and social-class divisions.

4. All the while, that government was the target of hostility, plotting, and episodic violence at the hands of the entitled classes.

So the evidence is clear. It points to a controlling U.S. hand in this coup d’état. The U.S. government bears heavy responsibility. There were Bolivian instigators, of course, but the U.S. plotters fall within the range of our own political processes. That’s why our accusing finger points at them.

In this instance, the U.S. government, as is its custom, disregarded international law, morality, respect for human life, and common decency. To stifle popular resistance the U.S. government evidently will stop at nothing, other than force in the hands of the people. What kind of force remains to be seen.

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W.T. Whitney Jr. is a political journalist with a focus on Latin America and health care issues. He is a Cuba solidarity activist who formerly worked as a pediatrician.

Featured image is from Peoples Dispatch

Facing increased resistance to its rule, the new “coup” gov’t in Bolivia is purging any potential threats to its authority, including teleSUR and other alternative media.

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Facing increased resistance to its rule, the new “transition” government of Jeanine Añez in Bolivia has begun to purge and censor potential threats to its authority, including in the media. TeleSUR, an international media network that began as a collaboration between left-wing Latin American nations, including deposed President Evo Morales’ Bolivia and Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez, and which espouses an openly leftist and anti-imperialist outlook, received confirmation that it would be taken off the airwaves as part of what the government calls a “reorganization” of the airwaves. TeleSUR openly opposed the U.S.-backed military coup d’état that installed Añez as head of state earlier this month.

New Communications Minister Roxana Lizárraga announced that this was part of the “dismantling of the propaganda apparatus of the dictatorial regime of Evo Morales,” claiming that Morales’ “militants who misused the state media system” are being “withdrawn.”

TeleSUR was originally conceived as a counterweight to Western-dominated media system and attempted to bring the voices of working-class Latin Americans to the fore. It also offers an alternative to local mainstream media, overwhelmingly owned and controlled by Latin American elites who have been particularly hostile to progressive governments such as Morales.’

New Bolivian government taking TeleSUR off the air in a process of "reorganizing" the media. pic.twitter.com/4taJ69xBOm

— Alan MacLeod (@AlanRMacLeod) November 22, 2019

This is the latest episode in a general assault on the media, as the Añez administration attempts to gain control over Bolivia’s means of communication. Multiple journalists have been shot, while Al-Jazeera correspondent Teresa Bo was tear-gassed in the face live on air at point-blank range by riot police as she stood alone, away from the protests, talking to the camera. Last week Lizárraga appeared on television announcing she would persecute any journalists involved in what she called “sedition,” noting that she already had a list of “troublesome” individuals and outlets. Bolivia TV was also taken off the air earlier this week.

In its efforts to neutralize dissent, the Añez administration has found a keen and enthusiastic ally in the local mainstream press.  In a shocking moment captured on film, local media harassed an independent journalist, detaining him and handing him over to the armed forces. The local press has largely endorsed the events and celebrated Morales’ demise, presenting the situation as a democratic transition rather than as a coup.

Wow.
The whole time I've been in Bolivia I've heard about the "prensa vendida," aka the sellout press. Watch here as they harass an independent journalist, keep him from doing the job they *should* be doing, then hand deliver him to the army!
Anyone who shows this gets shut down. pic.twitter.com/wY5dwgu4lS

— Wyatt Reed (@wyattreed13) November 22, 2019

The crackdown extends beyond media, as the new government has effectively declared the deposed Movement to Socialism (MAS) party illegal, arresting MAS officials and forcing others into hiding or exile in what new government minister Arturo Murillo called a “hunting” down of political opponents. “They’re drowning the Bolivian people in blood,” declared deposed Vice-President Álvaro García Linera from Mexico, where he was granted asylum.

Añez has granted security forces immunity from all crimes committed during the “re-establishment of order.” Those same forces reportedly carried out massacres in the city of Cochabamba and the town of Senkata, just south of the country’s capital, La Paz.

Tens of thousands of demonstrators, many carrying the Wiphala flag, a symbol of indigenous identity, marched to La Paz alongside the coffins carrying the victims of the Senkata massacre, demanding the resignation of Añez and an end to the bloodshed. The march stretched out for miles. MintPress News cameras captured the events.

Bolivia: Tens of thousands march to the La Paz with coffins carrying the bodies of the Senkata massacre. @camilapress https://t.co/KMvMqwHVjw

— MintPress News (@MintPressNews) November 21, 2019

Once the march came into contact with security forces in the capital, it was met with a barrage of tear gas, and downtown La Paz was engulfed in smoke as tens of thousands of Bolivians were gassed during rush hour. Mourners were forced to abandon the coffins of their loved ones in the street as fumes overcame them.

“La Paz, 5:30 pm. They’re gassing commuters and protesters alike. Can only imagine how many people will wander into the path of the police & military with the Bolivian media’s under-reporting. I saw mothers with infants gassed, they were not part of the procession,” reported one TeleSUR journalist on the scene.

From exile in Mexico, former President Morales denounced the attack on the funeral procession. “The de facto government of Añez does not respect the dead in their coffins, nor forgive their relatives, women and children marching peacefully in support of life and democracy”, he said. “We condemn the violence against our brothers and sisters.”

El gobierno de facto de Añez no respeta a los muertos en sus ataúdes, ni perdona a sus familiares, mujeres y niños que marchaban pacíficamente por el respeto a la vida y a la democracia. Condenamos la violencia que se ejerce contra nuestros hermanos y hermanas #ParenLaMasacre pic.twitter.com/61fjwRfWze

— Evo Morales Ayma (@evoespueblo) November 21, 2019

Morales won an unprecedented third term in office on October 20, gaining 47% of the vote in the presidential elections. However, opposition parties cried foul, claiming that there were election irregularities, an accusation repeated by the Organization of American States and the U.S. government. On November 10, military generals appeared on television and demanded Morales resign. As he fled to Mexico, the military selected Jeanine Añez – whose right-wing Democrat Social Movement Party received 4% of the vote – as President. Añez, a strongly conservative Christian, declared that Bolivia’s indigenous majority was “satanic” and promised to bring Christianity back to the government. The White House strongly supported the events, “applauding” what it saw as a significant and positive moment for democracy. On the other hand, Democratic Presidential candidates such as Bernie Sanders and Tulsi Gabbard have condemned it.

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Alan MacLeod is a MintPress Staff Writer as well as an academic and writer for Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting. His book, Bad News From Venezuela: Twenty Years of Fake News and Misreporting was published in April.

Featured image is from OneWorld

Despite confirmation this week that the deforestation rate in the Amazon rainforest is at its highest in more than a decade, far-right Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro refuses to take the problem seriously.

When confronted with findings from Brazil‘s National Institute for Space Research (INPE) that deforestation between August 2018 and July 2019 was at its highest rate since 2008, Bolsonaro wrote them off as inevitable.

“Deforestation and fires will never end,” Bolsonaro told reporters in Brasilia Wednesday, according to The Washington Post. “It’s cultural.”

No, it's not The Onion, it's a threat. A threat to indigenous peoples, to the Amazon, to all of us:@washingtonpost: "Brazil’s Bolsonaro calls Amazon deforestation ‘cultural,’ says it ‘will never end’" https://t.co/GwwRJk9Fda#StopBolsonaro #SaveTheAmazon #DefendEarthDefenders

— AMAZON WATCH (@AmazonWatch) November 21, 2019

It is time for the peoples of Latin America and the Caribbean to stand together and say NO to coups and their sponsors in the Organization of American States (OAS).

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An organization created to protect the interests of the United States, funded and supported by its sponsor in Washington, it has shown its claws in the planning, organizing, and carrying out the coup in Bolivia. This is the OAS.

The organization has not said a word following President Evo Morales’s ousting. Condemning what happened would be too much to ask. Calling for dialogue would have been the appropriate step, but they never did it. Taking action to ensure the respect for human life, and the lives of the President, Vice President and other officials, was never on their agenda. Even worse, Secretary General Luis Almagro, and members of the OAS’s illegal appendage known as the Lima Group, have kept a conspiratorial silence, perhaps waiting for a sign from the U.S. State Department.

As difficult as it may be to understand, there are still some governments in Latin America, such as those in the Lima Group, who not only belong to this harmful organization but lend themselves to these malicious plans to overthrow governments and end social projects that benefit millions of poor citizens in our countries.

I must admit that I mistakenly thought I would come across a statement by the OAS on the internet condemning the events in Bolivia – if only for appearances – but to my frustration, I found nothing.

While the honorable and sympathetic government of Mexico, aware of the need to take a position in defense of peace in Bolivia, has called for an urgent meeting of the organization, on the other hand, the government of Peru only called for new elections in the neighboring nation and for the OAS to accompany the entire process.

I think the time has come – perhaps it should have been a long time ago – for Latin American peoples to all stand up and denounce the OAS, assert dignity, ethics and the desires of our nations, and condemn the maneuvers of an organization which serves its U.S. masters, disregarding the interests of the peoples it is supposed to represent.

I repeat: it is time to, one and for all, get rid of this obstacle that has caused so much damage to the independence and development of our peoples. It is time to unmask before the world characters such as OAS Secretary General Luis Almagro, who organizes conspiracies to carry out coups, like the in Bolivia against a constitutional President, democratically elected, beloved by his people, a role model of work and dignity.

Moreover, this organization should be condemned for leaking information on its audit of the Bolivian elections, which should have gone public on November 12 and, suspiciously, appeared during the dawn hours of the 9th.

What was the purpose of this leak? Clearly to create uncertainty, and trigger chaos and violence.

These actions deserve punishment, if there are laws to judge such miserable people in this world.

Plus, the leaked information was written in ambiguous and unconvincing language.

I imagine that Evo, always honorable and dignified, soon realized what it meant for his country, Latin America, and the world to have trusted a discredited OAS to, first, observe the elections, and secondly, conduct the audit.

It is not too late though. Now is the time for the peoples of Latin America and the Caribbean to stand together and say NO to coups and their sponsors in the OAS.

Let us not wait any longer to act. Those who have been beaten in Bolivia, those who have lost their eyes in Chile, indigenous peoples, former combatants and other people killed every day in Colombia; those who are murdered or wounded in the favelas of Brazil for the crime of demanding employment and food, and the millions driven to poverty and extreme poverty in the Argentine led by Macri, all of these people are calling for action and the only way to do so is together, with dignity and courage. These are key elements. And the OAS lacks all of them.

Fidel Castro on the OAS

“What do the Yankees want? Do they want to say that we defy the OAS? If they want to say it, wonderful, let them say what we say: that they have the OAS as an instrument to prevent revolutions in America.”- Speech by Fidel Castro in the closing session of the First Latin American Youth Congress, 6 August 1960.

“The Organization of American States completely lacks the moral authority and the right to judge and sanction Cuba.” – Speech by Fidel Castro on the 11th Anniversary of the Moncada assault, July 26, 1964.

“Our position is that this organization has been an instrument for imperialist penetration and dominion over Latin American.

Our position is that someday, we, the Latin American peoples, should stand united to become a human community worthy of respect in the world, to bring our forces together so we are no longer what we are today, the victims of aggression. Is it a sewer or not? Is it a cesspit or not? Is it the Ministry for Yankee colonies or not? Historically, this organization embodies the imperialist oppression of our peoples and when they are free, this organization will disappear. We won’t need an OAS when there is a community of Latin American peoples.” – Fidel Castro in a press interview, December 4, 1971

“Is there really a human rights commission within that rotten institution? Yes, there is, I answer myself.  And just what is its mission?  To evaluate the human rights situation in OAS member countries?  Is the U.S. a member of this institution?  Yes, it is one of the most honorable members. Has the government of the United States ever been condemned?  No, never.

Not even the crimes of genocide that Bush committed, taking the lives of millions of people?  No!  Never!  How could this injustice be committed?  Not even the tortures at the Guantánamo Base?  As far as we know, not a single word.” – Reflection by Fidel Castro, “Once again, the Rotten OAS,” May 8, 2009.

Raul Castro on the OAS

“We will never forget that the OAS – the Organization of American States – founded by the United States during the second half of the last century, at the beginning of the Cold War, has only served interests which contradict those of Our America.

This organization, rightly described as the “Ministry of colonies” of the United States by the Foreign Minister of Dignity, compañero Raúl Roa García, sanctioned Cuba, and was ready to offer support and recognition to a puppet government, if the mercenary invasion at Playa Girón had been successful. The list of actions it took against the nascent Cuban Revolution, and other revolutionary and progressive governments, is interminable.

Despite the fact that we have never encouraged other countries to abandon this organization, I must reiterate what was expressed in Brazil, some years ago now, paraphrasing José Martí, that before Cuba returns to the OAS, ‘the ocean of the North will join the ocean of the South, and a serpent will be born from the egg of an eagle.’” Central Report to the Seventh Congress of the Communist Party of Cuba, presented by the First Secretary of the Central Committee, Army General Raul Castro Ruz. Havana, April 16, 2016.

Diaz-Canel on the OAS

“The inter-American system has reactivated mechanisms of such odious memory for the region as the Reciprocal Assistance Treaty (TIAR) and the demoralized OAS, which has been consolidated as an instrument of political pressure for the United States and oligarchies that defend neoliberalism (…) Yes, the OAS is a very ugly thing. And very cynical.

Their “concerns” do not touch the depths of anger felt by the people rising up against neoliberalism, faced with pellet guns, gases, and lead bullets for protesting peacefully.” – Speech by President of the Republic of Cuba Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez, in the closing session of the Anti-imperialist Meeting of Solidarity, for Democracy and Against Neoliberalism at the Havana Convention Center, November 3, 2019.

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Featured image: The people of Bolivia take to the streets to demand respect for their right to sovereignty. Photo: El País

The Following text is Section 1  of

The 70 Years of NATO: From War to War,

by the Italian Committee No War No NATO

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First published by Global Research in April 2019

Documentation presented at the International Conference on the 70th Anniversary of NATO, Florence, April 7, 2019

In the course of the next two weeks, Global Research will publish the 16 sections of this important document, which will also be available as an E-book.

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Contents 

1. NATO is born from the Bomb
2. In the post-Cold War, NATO is renewed
3. NATO demolishes the Yugoslav state
4. NATO expands eastward to Russia
5. US and NATO attack Afghanistan and Iraq
6. NATO demolishes the Libyan state
7. The US/NATO war to demolish Syria
8. Israel and the Emirates in NATO
9. The US/NATO orchestration of the coup in Ukraine
10. US/NATO escalation in Europe
11.  Italy, the aircraft carrier on the war front
12. US and NATO reject the UN treaty and deploy new nuclear weapons in Europe
13. US and NATO sink the INF Treaty
14. The Western American Empire plays the war card
15. The US/NATO planetary war system
16. Exiting the war system of NATO

***

1. The events that gave birth to NATO begin when the United States dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945, not to defeat Japan, now at the end, but to come out of the Second World War with the greatest possible advantage, especially over the Soviet Union. This was made possible by the fact that, at that time, the United States was the only country that possessed nuclear weapons.

2. Just a month after the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, in September 1945, the Pentagon calculated that it would take about 200 nuclear bombs to defeat an enemy the size of the USSR.

On March 5, 1946, Winston Churchill’s speech about the “Iron Curtain” officially started the Cold War. Soon after, in July 1946, the USA carried out the first nuclear tests in the atoll of Bikini (Marshall Islands, Pacific Ocean) to confirm nuclear bombs’ effectiveness on the disarmament of a group of ships and thousands of guinea pigs. More than 40,000 US military and civilians participated in the operation that included over 250 ships, 150 aircraft and 25,000 radiation detectors.

3. In 1949, the US nuclear arsenal rose to about 170 nuclear bombs. At this point the United States surely had enough bombs to attack the Soviet Union within a short period of time. That same year, however, the United States’ plan to preserve its monopoly on nuclear weapons failed.

On August 29, 1949, the Soviet Union carried out its first experimental nuclear explosion. A few months earlier, on April 4, 1949, when Washington knew that the Soviet Union was about to have the nuclear bombs and was about to start the nuclear arms race, the United States created NATO. During the Cold War, the Alliance under US command included 16 countries: United States, Canada, Belgium, Denmark, France, German Federal Republic, Great Britain, Greece, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, Norway, Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Turkey. Through this alliance, the United States maintained its dominance over European allies, using Europe as the front line against the Soviet Union.

4. Six years after the formation of NATO, on May 14, 1955, the Warsaw Pact was born, which included the Soviet Union, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Poland, the German Democratic Republic, Romania, Hungary and Albania. (The Warsaw Pact continued from 1955 to 1968.)

5. As the nuclear confrontation between the US and the USSR began, Britain and France, both members of NATO, moved to also equip themselves with nuclear weapons. The first to succeed was Great Britain, which in 1952 carried out an experimental explosion in Australia. NATO’s advantage increased further when, on November 1st of the same year, the US detonated its first H (hydrogen) bomb. In February 1960, NATO countries with nuclear weapons rose to three when France detonated its first nuclear bomb in the Sahara.

6. While the nuclear arms race was in full swing, the missile crisis in Cuba exploded in October 1962. After the armed invasion of the island by CIA-backed exiles in April 1961 failed, the USSR decided to provide Cuba with medium and intermediate range ballistic missiles. The United States carried out the naval blockade of the island and put their nuclear forces on alert. Over 130 intercontinental ballistic missiles were ready for launch, and 54 bombers with onboard nuclear weapons were added to the 12 bombers that the Strategic Air Command always kept in flight 24 hours a day, ready for nuclear attack. At the time, the United States had more than 25,500 nuclear weapons, to which about 210 were added, while the USSR had about 3,350. The crisis, which took the world to the threshold of nuclear war, was defused by the Soviet decision not to install the missiles in exchange for a US commitment to lift the blockade and respect the independence of Cuba.

7. At the same time, China moves towards the acquisition of nuclear weapons and, in October 1964, explodes its first uranium bomb and, in less than three years, its first H-bomb.

8. Hand in hand with the growth of its arsenal, the Pentagon developed detailed nuclear war operational plans against the USSR and China. An 800-page dossier – made public in 2015 by the US National Archives – contains a list (until then classified) of thousands of targets in the USSR, Eastern Europe and China that the US was preparing to destroy with nuclear weapons during the Cold War. In 1959, the year to which the “target list” refers, the US had more than 12,000 nuclear warheads and the British had 80, while the USSR had about a thousand, and China had none up to that point. Due to having superior transportation (bombers and missiles), the Pentagon considered a nuclear attack to be feasible.

9. Paul Johnstone, a Pentagon nuclear war planner and analyst for two decades (1949~1969), has revealed that at the time of the Cold War, there was the conviction among US strategists that the United States would suffer serious damage and have millions of deaths, but it would continue to exist as an organized and viable nation, and it would prevail, while the Soviet Union would not be able to do so.

10. Between the late 60s and early 70s, the US had about 9,000 nuclear weapons deployed outside its territory: about 7,000 in European NATO countries and 2,000 in Asian countries (South Korea, Philippines, Japan). Besides these, they have 3,000 weapons aboard submarines and other naval units, which can be launched at any time from advanced positions against the Soviet Union and other countries. The USSR, which has no advanced bases outside its territory near the United States (to which it can approach, however, using nuclear submarines), tried to prove that, if attacked, it could launch a devastating retaliation. To confirm this fact, in a test conducted on October 20, 1961, the most powerful hydrogen bomb ever experienced, the 58-megaton “Zar”, equivalent to almost 4,500 Hiroshima bombs, was detonated. At the same time, the Soviet Union prepared a space weapon: a missile that, if put in orbit around the Earth, could strike the United States at any moment with a nuclear warhead.

11. At this point the United States, facing a difficult position, proposed to the Soviet Union a treaty on the peaceful use of space. Thus, in January 1967, the Treaty on outer space was signed, which forbids the placing of nuclear weapons in the Earth’s orbit, on the Moon or on other celestial bodies, or, in any case, to place them in extra-atmospheric space.

12. Immediately afterwards, in July 1968, the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) was signed. The United States, Great Britain and the Soviet Union promote it, worried by the fact that other countries want to enter the circle of nuclear powers. Article 1 states:

“Each of the military nuclear States undertakes not to transfer nuclear weapons to anyone”.

Article 2 states:

“Each of the militarily non-nuclear States, which is a Party to the Treaty, undertakes not to receive from anyone nuclear weapons or other explosive nuclear devices, nor control over such weapons and explosive devices, directly or indirectly”.

The nuclear powers undertook to pursue negotiations on a Treaty establishing general disarmament under international control (Article 6). Italy signed the NPT in 1969 and ratified it in 1975.

13. While the United States, Great Britain and the Soviet Union try to prevent other countries from entering the nuclear club with the non-proliferation Treaty, of which five members belong in 1968, a sixth country infiltrates the circle of nuclear powers, succeeding not only in enter it but, once inside, become officially invisible: the stone guest is Israel. At the same time that the Non-Proliferation Treaty was opened for signature in 1968, Israel is already secretly deploying its first nuclear weapons. In the 1970s and 1980s, South Africa, India and Pakistan also began to build nuclear weapons. In 1986 the world arsenal rose to its highest level: around 65,000 nuclear weapons.

14. It is at this stage that Europe was being turned into the front line of nuclear confrontation between the two superpowers. Between 1976 and 1980 the USSR deployed ballistic missiles of intermediate range on its territory. Based on the fact that from the Soviet territory they could hit Western Europe, starting in 1983, NATO decided to deploy US mid-range nuclear missiles in Europe: 108 Pershing II ballistic missiles in Germany and 464 cruise missiles that could be launched from the ground, distributed between Great Britain, Italy, West Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands.

15. In less than 10 minutes from a launch, the US Pershing 2 deployed in Germany could hit Soviet bases and cities, including Moscow, with their nuclear warheads. At the same time, the US cruise missiles deployed in Comiso and other European bases, flying at subsonic speeds at a distance from the ground of a few tens of meters along the contour of the terrain, could escape radar and hit the Soviet cities. In turn, the SS-20 deployed in Soviet territory could hit the bases and cities of Western Europe in less than 10 minutes from launch.

16. In Italy, in the mid-1980s, in addition to 112 nuclear warheads on cruise missiles deployed in Comiso, there were other US nuclear weapons for a total estimated number of about 700. They were made up mostly of atomic demolition mines, nuclear projectiles artillery and short-range nuclear missiles, intended for use in Italy. This indicates that Italy is considered by the Pentagon to be a simple pawn to be sacrificed, a nuclear battlefield to be turned into a radioactive desert.

17. During the Cold War, from 1945 to 1991, a nuclear arsenal accumulated in the world, which in 1980s probably reached 15,000 megatons – the equivalent of more than a million atomic bombs that were dropped on Hiroshima. It is as if every inhabitant of the planet were sitting upon 3 tons of TNT. The power of the nuclear arsenal exceeds 5,000 times that of all the explosive devices used in the Second World War. For the first time in history, a destructive force was created that could erase from the face of the Earth, not once but repeatedly, the human species and almost every other form of life.

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Sections 2-16 of the 70 Years of NATO, From War to War, forthcoming on Global Research

This text was translated from the Italian document which was distributed to participants at the April 7 Conference. It does not include sources and references.

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