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Hasakah: The Syrian Arab Army continues its swift deployment in the northeastern province along the borders with NATO member state Turkey to protect the Syrians living there from the aggression by the Turkish Army, the Muslim Brotherhood and the Wahhabi terrorists loyal to Recep Tayib Erdogan.

The following video report by the Lebanese Al-Mayadeen news channel details further about the SAA deployment.

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Transcript of the English translation of the above video report

Marijat, Al Bustan, Swedieh West, Shamsiyah, Hob Al-Hawa and Ain Dewar, six new locations where the Syrian army has deployed to complete the deployment on the northern border strip of Hasakah, from the northeastern countryside of Ras al-Ain to Ain-Dewar with a 200-kilometer stretch.

The deployment of the army in these areas aims to link the Syrian-Iraqi border with the Syrian-Turkish border at the Ain Dewar site. It is the first deployment in seven years in cities and towns that are a reservoir of oil and gas resources, this allows the Syrian government to invest later in the event of an agreement with the Kurdish self-administration.

The deployment on the Syrian-Turkish border is one task to secure the area from Turkish infiltration and attack on the territory of the Syrian Arab Republic.

This is the first time in seven years that we have reached this region, and, God willing, we will raise the flag of the Syrian Arab Army and remain high and protect our country, our families and our people.

The deployment of the army means full implementation of the terms of the Sochi Agreement signed between the Russian and Turkish presidents; it protects an important border area of tens of thousands of civilians who have been threatened with displacement under the weight of continued Turkish incursions into northern Syria.

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Soon enough the Trump mercenary forces he sent to ‘secure the oil’ from its owners will be encircled and he would need to call on the Russians to negotiate with Syria how to rescue them.

Meanwhile and on the Idlib front, northwest of Syria, the Syrian Arab Army units cleaned towns from NATO’s Nusra Front terrorists.

The Syrian Army recaptured the western village of Weibdeh and Tal Khazna in the southeastern countryside of Idlib, Army units carried out artillery and rocket launches on Jabhat al-Nusra fortifications in the area, followed by fierce clashes against armed groups deployed there. Meanwhile, army units carried out operations focused on militant gatherings in the village of Musheirqa in the southeastern countryside of the city.

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Featured image is from Syria News

Beginning in 2011, the Kingdom of Thailand began replacing aging US helicopters not with newer US-built models, but with Russian and Italian systems instead.

This includes Russian Mi-17 medium twin-turbine transport helicopters and several AgustaWestland AW149’s and AW139’s (for transporting VIPs).

According to a January 2019 article in Jane’s 360:

The RTA [Royal Thai Army] already operates five Mi-17V-5 platforms. In March 2008 the service ordered the first three such rotorcraft from Russia, which were delivered in March 2011, followed by the remaining two in November 2015 under a contract signed in July 2014. 

The article also noted that 2 more have recently arrived in Thailand, bringing the total number up to 7:

The Royal Thai Army (RTA) has received two more Russian-made Mil Mi-17V-5 ‘Hip-H’ medium transport helicopters, an RTA source told Jane’s on 8 January.

Russia’s embassy in Bangkok would note during the delivery of several Mi-17’s in 2015 that:

This model of the famous Russian MI-17 helicopter can be used not only for transportation purposes but also in combat circumstances as well as for civil needs, in particular for rescue operations and forest fire extinguishing.

Indeed, far from just new toys resulting from a military spending spree as US-backed opposition figures in Thailand claim, Russian-built Mi-17s have already been seen in action, most notably during the spectacular cave rescue incident last year where 12 children and their football coach made it out of flooded caves alive.

Mi-17’s could be seen bringing in heavy equipment and other supplies to aid in search and rescue operations, just as Russian representatives had promised they could. The rescued children were also in fact flown to safety on Thailand’s Mi-17’s.

While these initial 7 Mi-17’s sound insignificant, it should be noted that Thailand operates only 12 US-built UH-60 Blackhawk helicopters. While it has a much larger number of much older US-built UH-1 and UH-212 Huey helicopters (78 and 51 respectively) only 20 UH-1’s are being modernised along with 48 UH-212’s.

Interestingly enough, the resources needed to upgrade Thailand’s aging US helicopter fleet was so extensive it prompted Thai policymakers to look into and eventually decide to begin transitioning over to Russia’s Mi-17, using funds from the upgrade programme to do so.

Defense Industry Daily would report in its January 2019 article, “Thais Go Russian, Buy Mi-17 Helicopters – Now to Pay with Rubber,” that (my emphasis):

The Bangkok Post reports that Russia had offered to sell Mi-17s to Thailand at 168 million baht each in 2006, but the price has gone up. The first 3 helicopters will now cost 950 million baht, with another 50 million baht for pilot training and ground equipment (1 billion baht currently = $29.1 million). The other 3 helicopters will reportedly be paid for by funds diverted from the Huey upgrade program.

The article would also quote Thai representatives regarding cost and performance considerations over buying more US helicopters versus new Russian alternatives:

“We are buying three Mi-17 helicopters for the price of one Black Hawk. The Mi-17 can also carry more than 30 troops, while the Black Hawk could carry only 13 soldiers. These were the key factors behind the decision.”

This should hardly come as a surprise and is about more than just shifting geopolitics.

Even the US Agrees: Russian Helicopters are Better 

The US itself in the midst of its now 2 decade-long occupation of Afghanistan even at one point began buying Russian Mi-17’s to equip the Afghan military to save money both in initial purchases and maintenance as well as in terms of training mechanics and pilots.

The Washington Post in a 2013 article titled, “Congress fuming over U.S. purchase of Russian helicopters for Afghanistan,” would claim:

By the end of 2016, Afghanistan’s air force is due to have 86 Russian-made Mi-17 helicopters. Most of them will have been purchased by the United States from Rosoboronexport, the same state weapons exporter that continues to arm the Syrian government of Bashar al-Assad.

The article also admits:

The Pentagon says that there is no better, cheaper helicopter than the Mi-17 to operate in Afghanistan’s desert expanses and high altitudes, and that it is the aircraft the Afghans know best.

Later, a purely politically-motivated transition toward US-built UH-60 Blackhawks precipitated predictable problems, as Defense News would report in its 2018 article, “Afghans are switching from Russian to US helicopters, but senators are concerned over the approach,” noting:

As the Afghans transition from the Mi-17 to the UH-60, several operational challenges have cropped up regarding the Black Hawk’s capability related to the Mi-17. 

The IG report said that the Black Hawk does not have the lift capacity comparable to Mi-17s and is unable to take on some of the larger cargo an Mi-17 carries, which requires two UH-60s to carry the load of one Mi-17. 

Additionally, the Black Hawks can’t fly at the same high elevations as an Mi-17. As a result, the former cannot operate in remote areas of the country.

UH-60 Blackhawks cost 2-3 times as much as Mi-17’s, with less lift and a much smaller passenger and cargo capacity while being unable to perform across the same extensive environments as Mi-17’s.

For any policymaker, cost and performance considerations alone are enough to make a case for “going Russian.”

While political considerations in Washington have directed policy toward wasting money on inferior technology, in capitals elsewhere around the globe chaffing under US interference in their internal affairs and the US’ disruptive foreign policy in general, bolstering Russian industry (or China’s for that matter) at Washington’s expense can only help tip the balance of global power further in favour of a more equitable multipolar world.

Considering the success of Russia’s Mi-17, with even Washington itself having at one point bought them in great quantities, it should be no surprise that nations particularly in Asia are receptive to greater collaboration with Russian helicopter manufacturers.

Early in 2019, Russian Helicopters carried out a demonstration in Thailand and other Southeast Asian states to showcase their rotary-wing aircraft for civilian uses. The Bangkok Post in its article, “Russian Helicopters begins Asian offensive,” would note:

The demonstration is part of Russian Helicopter’s business strategy to break into the civil aviation market in Southeast Asia and China. The company already has many military contracts in the region, but would like to expand into civilian uses like medical emergencies, policing and VIP transport.

The article also notes that the company is already in the process of delivering several Ka-32A11BC helicopters (used for search and rescue) to Thailand.

Also earlier this year, it was reported that Russian Helicopters was interested in building a factory in Thailand. The Bangkok Post in its article, “Russian Helicopters keen on setting up Thai plant,” would report:

Russian Helicopters is seeking to form a joint venture with a Thai company to enter the country’s flagship Eastern Economic Corridor (EEC), aiming to establish production of helicopter parts for aviation companies.

All of this is just one part of Russia’s wider interest in investing in and partnering with Thailand and other nations in the region.

Not Just Selling Helicopters, But Building Enduring Relations 

It should be noted that the purchase of complex systems like aircraft or naval vessels entails more than just the transfer of money and equipment.

It also requires closer ties between the two nations involved, with Russia now committed to training Thai pilots and mechanics in how to operate and maintain their growing collection of Russian aircraft. With such collaboration comes closer ties in general and helps further reduce Thailand’s dependence on and vulnerability to US interests, influence and interference. It also aids in doing so, however incrementally, for the rest of Southeast Asia.

A similar process is taking place between Thailand and China where Thailand is replacing the vast majority of its aging US armoured vehicles with modern Chinese alternatives as well as the purchase of several significant naval vessels including the Kingdom’s first modern submarine.

Because Russia and China create superior technology at a fraction of the cost of US alternatives, nations are faced with an easy, commonsense decision to make. While US pressure in the past was often able to coerce nations into making decisions contra to their best interests, this is no longer the case. Thus we are witnessing the tipping off of irreversible momentum against Washington’s favour.

It is not as if American engineers are incapable of creating comparable technology at competitive costs, it is a concentrated collection of special interests who monopolise the required physical and political resource, preventing them from doing so, all in pursuit of unrealistic ambitions of global hegemony. The desire to rule over the world’s nations rather than fairly do business among them appears to be costing America the ability to do either.

Until this part of the equation is solved in the United States, Russian helicopters and likely a wider range of technology and services across other industries, hold a bright future across Eurasia, including Southeast Asia and particularly in Thailand.

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Joseph Thomas is chief editor of Thailand-based geopolitical journal, The New Atlas and contributor to the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

Like Túpac Katari, indigenous Aymara leader more than 200 years ago, confronting the Spaniards, Evo Morales was betrayed and ‘dismembered’ by his own people, recruited and paid by the agents of the most destructive, nefarious and murderous dark elite that governs and has governed for over two hundred years our planet, the United States of America. With their worthless fiat-Ponzi-pyramid money, the made-out-of-thin-air US dollar, they create poverty throughout the globe, then buy off the weak and poor to plot against the very leaders that have worked for years to improve their social conditions.

It’s become a classic. It’s being called a Color Revolution, and it’s been taking place on all Continents. The list of victim-countries includes, but is not exhaustive – Colombia, Honduras, Argentina, Paraguay, Ecuador, Chile, Brazil, in some ways also Uruguay (the current left-leaning government is powerless and has to remain so, otherwise it will be “changed”… that’s the name of the game) – and now also Bolivia. – Then there are Georgia, Ukraine, Iraq, South Sudan, Libya, Afghanistan, Indonesia; and the lawless rulers of the universe are attempting to “regime change” North Korea, Syria, Iran, Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua – and on a larger scale China and Russia (I just returned from China – where the Government and people are fully aware what Washington’s intentions are behind every move they make).

In Africa, Africom, the US military Africa Command, buys off almost every corrupt African leader put in place by Africa’s former and new European colonialists, so they may continue sucking the riches out of Africa. These African leaders backed by Africom keep the African population in check, so they will not stand up. In case they won’t quite manage, “they” created the fear-squad called, Boko Haram, an off-spring of ISIS / IS – the Islamic State, created by the same creator, the CIA, Pentagon and NATO. The latter represents the European US-puppet allies; they keep raping Africa and reaping the benefits of her plentiful natural resources, and foremost, make sure that Africans stay subdued and quiet. Those who don’t may easily be “disappeared”. It’s Arica. But, have “they” noticed, Africa is moving, is gradually waking up?

And yes, not to forget, the “developed” and industrialized Europe, where sophisticated “regime change” over the years has subdued a largely well-off population, numbed and made apathetic by endless pro-capitalist propaganda and consumerism – Germany, UK, Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, France, Italy, Spain – look what they have done to Greece! – Greece has become a red-flag warning for every EU nation that may dare to step out of US-dictated lockstep, of what might happen to them.

The list goes on with Eastern European EU countries, mostly former Soviet republics or Soviet satellites. They are EU members thanks to the UK, Washington’s mole in the EU, or as I like to call it – the European non-union – no Constitution, no solidarity, no common vision. They are all fiercely anti-Russia and most are also anti-Europe, but are made to – and love to eat and drink from the bowl of the EU-handouts, compliments of EU taxpayers. That’s about the state of the affairs we are in. There is, of course, much more coercion going on, but you get the picture. US interference is endless, merciless, reckless, without scruples and deadly.

Bolivia is just the latest victim. The process of Color Revolution is always more or less the same – a long preparation period. The coup d’état against Evo has been under preparation for years. It began already before Evo was first elected, when Washington realized that after the Bolivian people’s purging of two of Washington’s imposed “stooges” Presidents, in 2003 and 2005, Bolivia needed a respite. But the empire never gives up. That is a golden rule written in their unofficial Constitution, the PNAC (Plan for a New American Century), the writing of which has begun just after WWII, is regularly adjusted and updated, even name-changed (from Pax Americana to PNAC), but is still very much alive and ticking.

The coup against Evo Morales’ Government is not only because Washington does not tolerate any socialist government, and least in its “backyard”, but also – and maybe foremost – because of Bolivia’s riches in natural resources, gas, oil, a long list of minerals and metals – and lithium, the use of which is expected to triple over the next ten years, as it is used in electric cars and batteries. And as we know from the rapidly growing Green Movement, the future is out of hydrocarbon-driven into electric cars. No matter how the electricity is produced and how much environmental damage is done in producing the new flag, but still individual ‘mobility’. As neoliberal economists would say, “that’s just an externality”.

The first of the two US-imposed Presidents at the turn of the century, was Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada, also called “Goni”, who privatized Bolivia’s rich hydrocarbon resources to foreign, mostly US, petro-corporations for a pittance. He was “elected” in 2002 against the indigenous, Aymara candidate, Evo Morales. When Goni was disposed of in a bloody people’s coup (about 60 dead) in 2003, he was replaced by his Vice-President, Carlos Mesa, the very key opponent of Evo’s, in the 20 October 2019 elections – who, following the same line of Goni’s privatization policies, was also overthrown by the Bolivian people in 2005. This led to a new election late in 2005 – and that’s when Evo finally won by a landslide and started his Presidency in January 2006.

What he has achieved in his almost 14 years of Presidency is just remarkable – more than significant reductions of poverty, unemployment, analphabetism, increase in health indicators, in national reserves, in minimum wages, pension benefits, affordable housing – in general wellbeing, or as Evo calls it, “living well”.

That’s when Washington decided to step back for a while – and regroup, to hit again in an appropriate moment. This moment was the election three weeks ago. Preparation for the coup intensified a few months before, when Bolivia’s Vice-President, Álvaro Marcelo García Linera, told the media that every day there were reports that US Embassy agents were interfering in the country’s internal and local affairs.

The manipulated election in 2002 is recorded in an outstanding film, “Our Brand is Crisis”, a 2005 American documentary by Rachel Boynton on American political campaign marketing tactics in Bolivia by Greenberg Carville Shrum (GCS) – James Carville was previously President Clinton’s personal assistant – the documentary.

Then, like today, the coup was orchestrated by the CIA via the “legitimate” body of the Organization of American States (OAS). The US Ambassador to the OAS openly boasts paying 60% of OAS’ budget – “so, better don’t mess with us”.

Less than a week before the October 20 election, Carlos Mesa was trailing Evo Morales with 22 against 38 points. Under normal circumstances it’s is virtually impossible that in a few days a candidate picks up that much of a difference. The election result was Mesa 37% and Morales 47% which would give Morales a first-round win, as the winning candidate needs a margin of ten points. However, already before the final tally was in, the OAS, the US and the usual puppets, the European Union, complained about election ‘irregularities’ – when the only irregularities were manufactured in the first place, namely the drastic increase in Mesa’s percentage from 22 to 37 points.

Evo declared himself the winner on 20 October, followed immediately by violent anti-Evo riots throughout the country, but mostly in the oil-rich Santa Cruz area – home of Bolivia’s oligarchs and elite. The protests lasted for about three weeks during which at least three people died, when last Sunday, November 10, Evo was “suggested” by the military brass, supported by the OAS (US) to step down with his entire entourage, or else. He resigned, because he wanted the riots to stop and his countrymen to continue living in peace. But violence hasn’t stopped, to the contrary, the opposition has become fiercer in their racist attacks on indigenous people, targeting them with live ammunition. The dead toll as of today has reached at least 20.

President Morales asked for, and was granted political asylum in Mexico. The Vice-President, Alvaro Linera, and most of Morales’ cabinet members followed him to Mexico. The President of the Senate, Ms. Adriana Salvatierra, also of the MAS party, according to the Constitution, would have been the legitimate interim-President. But she was also forced to resign, and so were Victor Borda, the leader of the Chamber, and Rubén Medinaceli, First Vice President of the Senate. They all had to resign. In total some 20 high-ranking officials of Evo’s Government took refuge in the Mexican Embassy in La Paz, before they flew to Mexico.

Evo has since said he wants to return to Bolivia, to be there for the millions of his supporters. Yes, still a sizable majority of Bolivians support Evo and his Movement towards Socialism (MAS). There is a mass of peaceful unarmed Evo supporting demonstrators, growing every day. They are being brutally beaten by US trained and “bought” police and military forces. Indeed, the commander of Bolivia’s armed forces, Williams Kaliman, served in earlier days as a military attaché at the Bolivian Embassy in Washington. During that time he was secretly ‘recruited’ to be trained by what then was called the School of the Americas, and which is now the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, located at Fort Benning near Columbus, Georgia. Apparently Kaliman was not the only one of high-ranking Bolivian military and police officers having been subjected to this torturer and coup plotter training.

On Tuesday, 12 November, an extraordinary session of both chambers (Deputies and Senate) of the Plurinational Legislative Assembly (Parliament) was convened, to officially accept President Morales’ resignation, but the representatives of the Movement to Socialism (MAS), which are the majority in both chambers, did not attend because they were told by the opposition that their safety and that of their families could not be guaranteed. As a consequence, Parliament had suspended its session due to the lack of quorum.

Nevertheless, Jeanine Añez, an opposition senator, declared herself interim-President, and even though her nomination is illegal and unconstitutional, the Constitutional Court confirmed the legality of the transfer of power. But who could blame the judges of the Constitutional Court? They want to be on the right side of the fence, now that the Americans are soon expected to rule the country. Ms. Añez is from the right-wing Social Democrat Movement (not to confuse with MAS = movement towards socialism), and she is known to be fiercely anti-Morales. If her coronation looks and sounds like the one of Juan Guaidó in Venezuela, it is because her self-nomination is like Juan Guido’s, a US-supported farce. Washington has immediately recognized Ms. Jeanine Añez as (interim) President of Bolivia. She, as well as Carlos Mesa, have been groomed to become the next Bolivian leaders, when new elections are held – probably sometime in January 2020. Especially, Carlos Mesa is well known as a US-supporter from his earlier failed stint at the Bolivian Presidency (2003 – 2005).

Earlier, Jeanine Añez, tweeted, “I dream of a Bolivia free of satanic indigenous rites, the city is not for the Indians who should stay in the highlands or the Chaco”. That says it all, where Bolivia is headed, unless – unless another people’s revolution will stop this nefarious course. Ms. Añez apparently has since removed the tweet.

One of the internal drivers of the ‘golpe’ is Luis Fernando Camacho, a far-right multi-millionaire, from the Santa Cruz region, where the US have supported and encouraged separatism. Camacho, a religious bible fanatic, received support from Colombia, Brazil and the Venezuelan opposition – and, of course, he is the US henchman to lead the ‘coup’ internally.

As Max Blumenthal from “The Grayzone” reports,

“When Luis Fernando Camacho stormed into Bolivia’s abandoned presidential palace in the hours after President Evo Morales’s sudden November 10 resignation, he revealed to the world a side of the country that stood at stark odds with the plurinational spirit its deposed socialist and Indigenous leader had put forward. – With a Bible in one hand and a national flag in the other, Camacho bowed his head in prayer above the presidential seal, fulfilling his vow to purge his country’s Native heritage from government and “return God to the burned palace.” Camacho added “Pachamama will never return to the palace,” referring to the Andean Mother Earth spirit. “Bolivia belongs to Christ.”

Still, there is hope. Bolivians are known to be sturdy and staunch defenders of their rights. They have proven that best in the overthrow of two foreign-imposed successive Presidents in 2003 and 2005, “Goni” and Carlos Mesa respectively. They brought their Aymaran Evo Morales to power in 2006, by an internationally observed, fully democratic election.

There are other signs in Latin America that things are no longer the way they used to be for decades. Latin Americans are sick and tired of their status of US backyard citizens. There is movement in Brazil, where Lula was just released from Prison, against the will of Brazil’s fascist also foreign, i.e. US-imposed, Jair Bolsonaro. Granted, Lula’s release from prison is temporary, but with the massive people’s support he musters, it will be difficult for Bolsonaro to put him back in prison – and preserve his Presidency.

Social upheavals in Chile for justice and equality, against a racist Pinochet era Constitution, violently oppressed by President Piñera’s police and military forces, have lasted for weeks and will not stop before a new Constitution is drafted, in which the protesters demands are largely integrated. That too is a sign for an awakening of the people. And the enduring resistance against North America’s aggression by Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua, are all positive vibes for Bolivia – not to be trampled over.

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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 Massoud Nayeri

Operation Northwoods was a proposed false flag operation against the Cuban government that originated within the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) and the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) of the United States government in 1962. The proposals called for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) or other U.S. government operatives to commit acts of terrorism against American civilians and military targets, blaming them on the Cuban government, and using it to justify a war against Cuba.

The possibilities detailed in the document included the possible assassination of Cuban émigrés, sinking boats of Cuban refugees on the high seas, hijacking planes, blowing up a U.S. ship, and orchestrating violent terrorism in U.S. cities.

Operation Northwoods

Fidel Castro taking power in Cuba in 1959, aroused the concern of the U.S. military due to the Cold War. The Operation Northwoods proposed creating public support for a war against Cuba by blaming it for terrorist acts that would actually be perpetrated by the U.S. Government. To this end, Operation Northwoods proposals recommended hijackings and bombings followed by the introduction of phony evidence that would implicate the Cuban government. It stated:

Several other proposals were included within Operation Northwoods, including real or simulated actions against various U.S. military and civilian targets. The operation recommended developing a “Communist Cuban terror campaign in the Miami area, in other Florida cities and even in Washington”. The plan was drafted by the Joint Chiefs of Staff, signed by Chairman Lyman Lemnitzer and sent to the Secretary of Defense.

Top Secret Cuba Project

The main proposal for Operation Northwoods was presented in a document titled “Justification for U.S. Military Intervention in Cuba (TS),” a top secret collection of draft memoranda written by the Department of Defense (DoD) and the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS). The document was presented by the Joint Chiefs of Staff to Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara on 13 March 1962 as a preliminary submission for planning purposes. The Joint Chiefs of Staff recommended that both the covert and overt aspects of any such operation be assigned to them.

Image on the right: Lyman L. Lemnitzer, who was in charge as the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff who signed Operation Northwoods

The previously secret document was originally made public on 18 November 1997, by the John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Review Board, a U.S. federal agency overseeing the release of government records related to John F. Kennedy’s assassination. A total of 1,521 pages of once-secret military records covering 1962 to 1964 were concomitantly declassified by said Review Board.

The Plan

In response to a request for pretexts for military intervention by the Chief of Operations of the Cuba Project, Brig. Gen. Edward Lansdale, the document listed methods, and outlined plans, that the authors believed would garner public and international support for U.S. military intervention in Cuba. According to the documents, the plan called for the following:

1. 1. Since it would seem desirable to use legitimate provocation as the basis for U.S. military intervention in Cuba, a cover and deception plan, to include requisite preliminary actions such as had been developed in response to Task 33 c, could be executed as an initial effort to provoke Cuban reactions. Harassment plus deceptive actions to convince the Cubans of imminent invasion would be emphasized. Our military posture throughout execution of the plan will allow a rapid change from exercise to intervention if Cuban response justifies.
   2. A series of well coordinated incidents will be planned to take place in and around Guantanamo to give genuine appearance of being done by hostile Cuban forces.
   3. United States would respond by executing offensive operations to secure water and power supplies, destroying artillery and mortar emplacements which threaten the base.
   4. Commence large scale United States military operations.

Although part of the U.S. government’s anti-communist Cuban Project, Operation Northwoods was never officially accepted; it was authorized by the Joint Chiefs of Staff, but then rejected by President John F. Kennedy. According to currently released documentation, none of the operations became active under the auspices of the Operation Northwoods proposals.

A similar project was initiated in Syria for the overthrow of the Assad regime.

Operation Timber Sycamore

Operation Timber Sycamore is the codename of a covert operation officially authorized by Obama in June 2013 to train and equip the anti-Assad rebellion, but which actually started in October 2011, when the CIA was operating via Britain’s MI6 to avoid having to notify Congress that it was arming the rebels in Syria. Originally, the CIA and MI6 (the British foreign intelligence service) set up a rebel arms supply network in Syria from Libya — a plan that involved intelligence agencies of 15 countries.

Intervention in India

The Pentagon project Operation Timber Sycamore that spawned ISIS was the brainchild of former CIA Director General David Petraeus. It is now coordinated by the investment fund KKR, established by Henry Kravis and whose military activities are led by Petraeus.

Role of Gen David Petraeus

KKR where Petraeus sits as Chairman belongs to the equity partners who owns 80% stake in NXP Semiconductors who supplied chips for the Electronic Voting Machines in India – the integrity of which is being investigated by Indian agencies. Gen Petraus is also credited to have trained former United States National Security Advisor Herbert Raymond McMaster who is responsible for pulling India into the Anglo-American orbit as a “major defense partner” implemented through ‘Washington’s Man in New Delhi’.

Gen Petraeus is also the key in the ongoing plot for an Anglo-American base in #Kashmir under the trusteeship of the United Nations. The original policy drafted by Mountbatten himself. Read more here 》 Kashmir Conflict – An Anglo American Operation https://t.co/4wg0oUEKXF

— GreatGameIndia (@GreatGameIndia) September 12, 2019

Gen Petraeus is also the key player in the ongoing plot for an Anglo-American Airbase in Kashmir under the trusteeship of the United Nations – a policy drafted by Mountbatten himself. When asked about US intervention in Kashmir, then US Central Command Chief Gen Petraeus disclosed in a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on Kashmir: “Together with my great diplomatic wingman Ambassador Richard Holbrooke, this effort actually has started”.

As per intel with GreatGameIndia, Petraeus is the pointman for Deep State in India. In 2018, Foreign Secretary S Jaishankar and former CIA Director David Petraeus together formed strategies for the “dramatic transition of India in the New World Order” at a six-day Raisina Dialogue also attended by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Recently, a high-level conference was organized in London to chart our the strategies for this transition. Needless to say the key speaker for this UK-India Summit 2019 was Petraeus. The event is well known in intelligence circles to be organized by British intelligence.

It has been suggested that KKR had a role to play in Cafe Coffee Day founder V G Siddhartha's death. But what is KKR? Who owns it? What has KKR to do with the CIA?

Here we chart a brief overview of the various covert operations of KKR in India.https://t.co/N9DYF436V8

— GreatGameIndia (@GreatGameIndia) September 14, 2019

It were such meeting, albeit secret that took place in London in the late 90s where the blueprint for the return of East India Company was drafted. Called Vision 2020 the scheme was a brainchild of an American consultancy firm born out of US military, McKinsey and the Big Four. Fortunately the project was met with a lot of opposition and as a result was stopped in its tracks. Since then they have their eyes set on Kashmir now.

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Featured image is from the author

Turkey and Russia began joint patrols in the northeast conflict zone in Syria beginning November 1.  The Russian military police, formed in 2012, is tasked with convoy protection, area security, restoring law and order, and resettlement operations. Russia recently sent about 300 more military police and more than 20 armored vehicles to Syria. Russia landed attack helicopters and troops at a sprawling air base at Qamisli in northeast Syria, recently vacated by US forces.

Armed Russian military police flew into the Syrian airbase in northern Aleppo province near the border with Turkey and fanned out to secure the area.  The facility is used as a distribution center for humanitarian aid for local residents.

“We entered the base and took the inner and external perimeter under control,” said a senior Russian military police inspector. “Now sappers are looking and going through every building to make sure there aren’t some kind of explosive substances left behind or some kind of surprises here for us,” he said.

Russia has two permanent military bases in Syria, an airbase in Latakia province, and the decades’ old naval facility at Tartus. On October 24, a column of Russian military police patrolled the Syrian-Turkish border. The patrol route was from the city of Qamishli to the settlement of Abouda. The Russian military police, from the southern Russian region of Chechnya, also helped to remove some of the Kurdish militias and their weapons 30 km away from the Syrian-Turkish border.

“The deployment of our forces and hardware, as well as the forces and hardware of the Syrian border guards, is currently taking place in the delineated zones,” the Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.

Under the terms of the deal, Russian and Turkish forces will start to patrol a narrower, 10-km strip of land on the Syrian side of the border where US troops had been deployed for years alongside their former Kurdish allies.  The arrival of the Russian police marks a shift in the regional balance of power just weeks after Trump began pulling US forces out of northeast Syria. Major General Yuri Borenkov, head of the Russian Defence Ministry’s Reconciliation Centre in Syria, said the Russian military police will continue to patrol communities in the northeast of Syria.

The deal between Russia and Turkey

Russia has emerged as a major power who maintains loyalty to its allies, and who has served as an honest broker between opposite sides in a conflict.  On October 22, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan signed a deal concerning northeast Syria. According to the deal, Russian military police and Syrian border guards started to monitor the withdrawal of Kurdish military formations to the depth of 30 km from the border.

On Oct. 9, Turkey launched Operation Peace Spring, in which Erdogan will clear the border zone of the northeast of Syria of Kurdish militias, such as SDF, YPG/PKK, which Turkey views as terrorists.   Previously, Ankara halted its assault under a US-brokered ceasefire, and the Putin-Erdogan deal built on that agreement, while highlighting a growing security relationship between Russia, an ally of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, and NATO member Turkey.

The role of the Syrian Arab Army

On October 13, SANA reported that Damascus had struck a deal with Kurds and sent troops to northern Syria to protect civilians from the Turkish army. In the next few days, the Syrian army took control over some cities and towns in Kurdish regions without any fighting, including Al-Tabqah, Manbij, Raqqa, and Kobani. On October 17, Syrian army units reached the Turkish border.

The Syrian Arab Army and Russian forces have entered two border cities, Manbij and Kobani, which lie within Turkey’s planned ‘safe-zone’ but are west of recent Turkish military invasion. The Syrian Arab Army’s frontlines are several kilometers from Qirat village on the Sajur River. Once the US forces left the northeast region, the Syrian Arab Army dispersed in all directions, taking up positions across a very large region.

President Putin’s statements

“When it comes to Russia’s own interests, they lay first and foremost in preventing many trained and prepared militants with combat experience from infiltrating Russian territory. In this sense, we cannot say that we resolved 100% of tasks, but in general we did. We have fulfilled the task that we had set for ourselves in Syria,” Putin said on November 14 from Brazil.  Putin stressed that after Russia started supporting the legitimate government in Damascus, 90% of the country’s territory was liberated from terrorists. “Not only liberated, but also returned under the control of the legitimate government. We have achieved what we had set out to do,” he noted.

The Russian leader has called on other countries to join efforts in the fight against terrorism.

“There is a threat of infiltration for all countries, a threat that militants will leave Syria and go to other places,” Putin said. “Everyone is in danger, that’s why we need to join efforts. I hope we will work together in a constructive manner,” he added.

The Nobel Peace prize

The 1988 Nobel Peace prize was awarded to the UN peacekeepers, who had served as observers and soldiers from 1948 to 1988, including over 500,000 persons, of which 733 had died.  Their task wasto report on the situation in crisis areas, set up buffer zones, keep up contacts between conflicting parties, monitor armistice agreements, maintain calm and good order, and give humanitarian aid.

The Russian military police in Syria are doing a similar job, which began in late 2016 in East Aleppo when a battalion was deployed and their mission was not to engage in frontline fighting, but rather to restore law and order and win the trust and confidence of a civilian population.  The Russian military police performed well and soon had earned a reputation of being fair administrators in the many cease-fire agreements brokered through the political process.  They have policed buffer zones between warring sides, escorted convoys of terrorists and their families to a safe-zone, guarded humanitarian corridors for civilians to flee a conflict area, providing temporary shelter, food and medical care to civilians fleeing to safety, and they provided security for OPCW inspectors.

The Russian military police are deserving of recognition as humanitarian peacekeepers, and were part of a multifaceted effort by Russian leaders and diplomats, as they sought to end a conflict that could have engulfed not only the entire Middle East but the world.

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This article was originally published on Mideast Discourse.

Steven Sahiounie is a political commentator.

Featured image is from Mideast Discourse

Evo Morales is Bolivia’s democratically elected and three-times reelected Bolivian president.

In cahoots with Bolivian fascists, military and police, along with US imperial tool Organization of American States (OAS), CIA forces toppled Morales for not subordinating the country’s sovereign rights to US interests.

Morales’ majority Movement for Socialism (MAS) legislators were intimidated and threatened not to interfere with the coup.

In response to the OAS’ Big Lie about electoral fraud, none occurring, Pompeo congratulated the organization for serving US interests over the rights and welfare of Bolivia and its people.

Separately, he thanked self-declared, unelected, illegitimate usurper president Jeanine Anez for “lead(ing) her nation through this democratic transition (sic)” the Trump regime went all-out to eliminate, CIA-installed fascist tyranny replacing it.

An unnamed senior state department official called transition to despotism in Bolivia “a significant moment for…democracy in our hemisphere” — a notion both extremist right wings of the US one-party state abhor, especially at home.

Anti-Morales Bolivians in the streets post-election, “standing up for (the) legitimacy of their electoral process,” were CIA-recruited thugs.

Key Bolivian military and police officials were enlisted to support the coup. At first, majority pro-Morales legislators couldn’t enter parliament because security forces refused to guarantee their safety.

Days later, they formed a legislative quorum, swearing in MP Monico Eva Copa as Senate president and Sergio Choque as lower house Chamber of Deputies president.

Pro-Morales supporters control of Bolivia’s Legislative Assembly for now, tenuous at best without military and police support.

Anez illegally self-declared herself president, breaching the constitutional requirement for a parliamentary quorum to be in session for approval.

She breached articles 161, 169 and 410 of the Constitution.

Article 161 lists the Legislative Assembly’s functions, a quorum required for them to be performed. They include “accept(ing) or reject(ing) the resignation of the president (and) vice president.”

Article 169 states the following:

“In the event of an impediment or definitive absence of the President, he or she shall be replaced by the Vice President and, in the absence of the latter, by the President of the Senate, and in his or her absence by the President of the Chamber of Deputies. In this last case, new elections shall be called within a maximum period of ninety days.”

“In case of temporary absence, the Vice President shall assume the Presidency for a term not to exceed ninety days.”

Article 410 states:

“Every person, natural and legal, as well as public organs, public functions and institutions, are subject to the present Constitution.”

“The Constitution is the supreme norm of Bolivian law and enjoys supremacy before any other normative disposition.”

Anez is a US-anointed hard-right political nobody, elected to Bolivia’s Senate in 2014 with 91,895 votes – 1.7% of 5,171,428 ballots cast.

Until the CIA coup, most Bolivians knew little or nothing about her. Telesur noted that “Latin America recorded a new ‘self-swearing’ in coup script that, without a doubt, seems familiar,” adding:

“Violence in the country continues by radical opposition groups that have burned indigenous population symbols.”

“Meanwhile in La Paz, (the country’s political capital) thousands of supporters of Evo Morales are being mobilized in rejection of the coup d’etat and its discriminatory and racist acts.”

“Over 4,500 Twitter accounts (were) created to legitimize (the illegitimate) coup (with) almost no followers,” Telesur reported, citing Menta Communication’s Luciano Galup, adding:

“These action have scant effect on domestic politics…But worldwide they can function as (pro-coup) propaganda” — a way for dictatorships and their sponsors to legitimize what’s illegitimate.

Calling Twitter’s action “a scandal,” Galup noted that 3,612 accounts have “between zero and one follower,” adding:

“(T)he most scandalous thing is there are 4,492 accounts that were created between yesterday and today to participate in the (coup). They created 4,492 accounts in two days.”

Images released support it. On Friday, illegitimate coup d’etat regime communications minister Roxana Lizarraga threatened independent journalists reporting accurately on what’s going with “sedition,” saying:

“Law will be fully enforced against those journalists or pseudo-journalists who are seditious, whether they are nationals or foreigners (sic),” warning:

The (illegitimate) interior ministry is compiling a list of journalists opposed to the coup d’etat regime.

Arrests were made, more likely to follow. The coup d’etat regime cut diplomatic ties to Venezuela, ordered its embassy staff to leave the country — one day after Anez usurped power, likely acting on orders from Washington.

Separately, she warned that if Morales returns to Bolivia, his legal right, he’ll face charges, falsely saying:

“He knows he has to answer to justice (sic). There is an electoral crime (sic). Nobody has thrown him out, but yes, there’s a need for him to respond regarding electoral fraud (sic), in addition to many allegations of corruption (sic).”

Earlier she said her (illegitimate) foreign ministry will file an official complaint with Mexico’s Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador’s government for granting Morales asylum.

Coup d’etat regime foreign minister Karen Longaric announced Bolivia’s withdrawal from the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA).

Established in 2004 by Venezuela and Cuba, other regional nations joining the alliance. The international organization is all about cooperative social, political and economic integration of Latin American and Caribbean nations.

Large-scale pro-Morales protests continue in La Paz and elsewhere — demanding Anez resign, calling for reinstatement of Morales as Bolivia’s legitimate president.

CIA-installed usurpers control things. Resistance continues. The US got another imperial trophy if its dark forces can keep it — no guarantee given Bolivia’s long history of resisting tyranny.

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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 OneWorld

Protesters recently threw a Molotov cocktail and burnt tires in front of the Canadian Embassy in Port-au-Prince. At another rally demonstrators hurled rocks at Canada’s diplomatic representation in Haiti and a protester was filmed holding a sign saying: “Fuck USA. Merde la France. Fuck Canada.”

While jarring for most Canadians, these acts reflect the anger of an impoverished people fed up with foreign governments dictating their affairs.

For more than a year Haitians have been engaged in a remarkable popular uprising against a corrupt and repressive foreign-backed president. Since September schools and businesses in Port-au-Prince have largely been shuttered in protests challenging the president, racism and economic inequality. But, Haitians are also rejecting Canadian foreign policy.

Jovenel Moïse remains president because he has the backing of Ottawa, France, Washington and other members of the so-called “Core Group”. Canada provides the unpopular president with important  financial, policing and diplomatic support.

During the past decade and a half Haitians have increasingly identified Canada with the country’s historic influencers. On January 31, 2003, Ottawa hosted a secret meeting – revealed by prominent Québec journalist Michel Vastel – to discuss Haiti’s future. No Haitian representative was invited to the summit where high level US, Canadian, French and Organization of American States officials discussed overthrowing elected president Jean-Bertrand Aristide, putting the country under international trusteeship and resurrecting Haiti’s dreaded military.

13 months after that meeting the US, France and Canada ousted Aristide. For the next two years they imposed a government responsible for thousands of deaths. The coup also ushered in a UN military force whose reckless sewage disposal caused a cholera epidemic that took 10,000 lives.

After the country was struck by a deadly earthquake in 2010, Canadian officials continued their inhumane and antidemocratic course. According to internal government documents the Canadian Press examined a year after the disaster, officials in Ottawa feared a post-earthquake power vacuum could lead to a “popular uprising.” One briefing note marked “secret” explained:

“Political fragility has increased the risks of a popular uprising, and has fed the rumour that ex-president Jean-Bertrand Aristide, currently in exile in South Africa, wants to organize a return to power.”

The documents also explained the importance of strengthening the Haitian authorities’ ability “to contain the risks of a popular uprising.” To police Haiti’s traumatized and suffering population 2,050 Canadian troops were deployed alongside 12,000 US soldiers and 1,500 UN troops (8,000 UN soldiers were already there).

A year after the earthquake the US and Canada forced third place presidential candidate, Michel Martelly, into the runoff of an election that barred Aristide’s party. The central figure in the multi-billion dollar corruption scandal that has spurred recent protests, Martelly is Moïse’s mentor.

It’s no wonder Haitian are angry with the Canadian government. But, an alternative Canadian position is also being put forward. On October 31 Québec’s National Assembly unanimously endorsed a motion declaring “our unreserved solidarity with the Haitian people and their desire to find a stable and secure society.” It urges “support for any peaceful and democratic exit from the crisis coming from Haitian civil society actors.”A week earlier the Concertation pour Haïti, a collection of Québec NGOs and unions, called for “Canada to make the right choice and use its influence in the international community to support” a presidential transition. Last week David Suzuki, Amir Khadir, Roger Waters, Maude Barlow, Yann Martel and more than 100 other writers, musicians, activists and professors signed an open letter calling on “the Canadian government to stop backing a corrupt, repressive and illegitimate Haitian president.”

It is time for a change to Canadian policy in Haiti.

On November 17 Solidarité Québec-Haiti is holding a demonstration in solidarity with the popular uprising in Haiti.

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Marie Dimanche is founder of Solidarité Québec-Haiti #Petrochallenge 2019.

Frantz André is with Comité d’action des personnes sans statut and Solidarité Québec-Haiti.

Yves Engler is a member of Solidarité Québec-Haiti and author of 10 books.

The Second De-Colonialization

To an extent, this is a déjà –vu all over again. As the British and French colonial empires, crippled by the two world wars which not only bankrupted them but also plainly demonstrated “colored” soldiers could fight as well as “white” ones, collapsed, the two superpowers promptly filled the void. While in some cases the United States swiftly moved in as the French and the British were departing, leaving behind the elites their trained, those countries which experienced genuine national liberation movements nearly without exception opted for an alliance with the USSR.

Contrary to Western Cold War-era propaganda, the USSR was an attractive partner for international cooperation for several reasons, which included the demonstrated ability at defeating Western powers at war (a major consideration for developing post-colonial states), the economic development model which succeeded in industrializing the country in the space of only one decade, and the absence of legalized racial discrimination which, until the late 1960s, was the norm in the United States.

The ability to choose between two demonstrably different models of development offered by the two rival superpowers had both benefits and dangers for the developing countries of Africa, Asia, and even Latin America. The benefits lay in the fear of  a “domino effect”, which forced the “First World” to offer considerably better terms to the “Third World” than they would have had the “Second World” not existed. The danger lay in the form of superpower “proxy wars” fought to prevent countries from drifting toward the USSR or to subvert the economic and political systems of those countries which did join the East Bloc.

The murder of Patrice Lumumba, the war in Vietnam, the military coups in various Latin American countries, the economic blockade of Cuba, and many other such campaigns were all part of the US effort to eliminate Soviet influence from the developing world.

The end of the Cold War meant a shift toward global unipolarity where there would be no competing economic models. Economic neoliberalism was now “the only game in town” on a global scale, and the politics of TINA (“there is no alternative”) ruled the roost.

But the shift toward a multipolar world that became evident in the 2010s means both opportunities and dangers for the developing countries similar to those experienced during the Cold War, though the greater number of global power centers means the game is considerably more complex than it was during the era of bipolarity.

Watch the video here.

Multipolarity in Action

While on the face of it might look as if the world is moving toward bipolarity once again, in practice there are four major actors: United States, European Union, China, and of course Russia. While US and EU collectively form “the West”, they also are perfectly capable of undercutting one another in order to protect own spheres of influence, be it Monroe Doctrine, the British Commonwealth, or Francophone Africa. Russia and China so far are not showing coordination in their respective efforts in Africa, though the absence of visible clashes of interests thus far suggests the existence of an informal division of responsibilities.

Russia’s renewed interest in Africa was prompted by the West’s efforts to isolate it politically and economically. Prior to 2014, previous provocations notwithstanding, Russia appeared to be steady on its course toward economic and political integration with the West and had that course not been rudely interrupted by NATO expansion, regime change in Ukraine, and the general campaign of demonization, Russia probably would not have felt compelled to lean into what the West viewed as its rightful sphere of influence if its own security interests along own borders were respected.

What does Russia have to offer?

It would appear, many things. If the Russia-Africa Economic Forum held in Sochi on October 23-24, 2019, where over 500 agreements estimated at $12 billion were signed and which were attended by leaders from 50 African states and eight African international organizations is any indication, economic development and mutually favorable business ventures rank high on the list of contributions to Africa’s prosperity and political stability.

In a similar vein, Bloomberg network reported that Russian Railways were in negotiations over a contract potentially worth $500 million to modernize the railroad network of the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Rosatom is negotiating with Ethiopia to construct a nuclear power plant.  Russia’s forgiveness of $20 billion of debts owed by various African states is likewise expected to result in new economic cooperation projects. Even though these impressive numbers still pale in comparison with the Chinese investments in the region, they do suggest African countries are not averse to having more than one non-Western partner in the realm of economic development.

Where Russia does outpace China is in the realm of security cooperation with African states, and here there may indeed exist a tacit agreement with China over the delineation of responsibilities. The preference shown for Russia in the area of security cooperation is driven by several considerations. They include relationships established during the Cold War, the proven reliability and durability of Russian weapons on African battlefields, but also Russia’s recently re-established prowess at waging a variety of types of warfare, combined with its ability to face down Western military threats. That latter quality is of interest to developing countries which fear finding themselves on the receiving end of some 21^st century version of White Man’s Burden.

While China’s recent military developments are impressive, the country has not shown itself either willing or able to demonstrate an ability to defend distant allies through military force.  Should Chinese investments and assets in Africa be exposed to military or paramilitary threats emanating from the West, it does not appear likely Chinese military forces would be there to protect them. At the moment it’s rather more likely China would rely on Russia for that protection. For that reason Russia and China can potentially form an extremely effective tandem that would be difficult for Western powers to counter.

The security dimension of Russia’s involvement in Africa appears to be attractive to a number of African states concerned about US designs on the region, particularly in the wake of the failed US-sponsored “color revolutions” in the Middle East. Some African states, including Sudan and Central African Republic (the latter clearly in the French sphere of influence) have already openly expressed interest in hosting a Russian military base. Russia’s long reach was furthermore demonstrated by the visit of two Tu-160 strategic bombers to the Republic of South Africa that received considerable positive attention in that country’s social media. Combined with the growing presence of the Russian Navy in the world ocean made possible by the newly built modern guided-missile frigates, Africa is beginning to recognize the presence of Russia as an exporter of political stability.

The Dangers

The biggest danger of course is that the United States is unlikely to simply accept any challenge to its influence on the continent, after having accustomed to the idea of unipolarity. Sometimes that rejection of reality takes comic dimensions, for example, when Facebook bans pages allegedly “meddling” in African politics, a measure which speaks volumes about the US assumption of “ownership” of that entire continent.

But US policies are unlikely to stop at Facebook temper tantrums. We are once again likely to see death squads, paramilitaries, CIA-linked jihadists, and even US support for genocidal rulers who will serve as local proxies intended to roll back Russian and Chinese influence. The most frightening aspect of contemporary US policies is the willingness to despoil a country and plunge it into a civil war if it looks like it might slip out of the Western orbit and into Russian and Chinese one.

It is yet difficult to predict how the future proxy wars will play out. However, the US track record in other regions suggests that not only are its covert action instruments ineffective at achieving US foreign policy goals, US reputation as a trustworthy international actor is so badly tarnished that it is likely to operate at a significant disadvantage when attempting to recruit proxy actors on the African continent. The alternative would be, as in the case of Syria, to directly deploy US forces into combat in order to stave off a political defeat, but it remains to be seen whether such a measure would find political support in Washington or among the US public.

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They pledged to do it, and they did – Bolivian feudal lords, mass media magnates and other treasonous “elites” – they overthrew the government, broke hope and interrupted an extremely successful socialist process in what was once one of the poorest countries in South America.

One day, they will be cursed by their own nation. One day they will stand trial for sedition. One day, they will have to reveal who trained them, who employed them, who turned them into spineless beasts. One day! Hopefully soon.

But now, Evo Morales, legitimate President of Bolivia, elected again and again by his people, is leaving his beloved country. He is crossing the Andes, flying far, to fraternal Mexico, which extended her beautiful hand, and offered him political asylum.

This is now. The striking streets of La Paz are covered by smoke, full of soldiers, stained with blood. People are disappearing. They are being detained, beaten, and tortured. Photos of indigenous men and women, kneeling, facing walls, hands tied behind their backs, are beginning to circulate on social media.

El Alto, until recently a place of hope, with its playgrounds for children and elegant cable cars connecting the once dirt-poor communities, is now beginning to lose its native sons and daughters. Battles are raging. People are charging against the oppressors, carrying flags, dying.

A civil war, or more precisely, a war for the survival of socialism, a war against imperialism, for social justice, for indigenous people. A war against racism. A war for Bolivia, for its tremendous pre-colonial culture, for life; life as it is being perceived in the Andes, or deep in the South American rainforest, not as it is seen in Paris, Washington or Madrid.

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The legacy of Evo Morales is tangible, and simple to understand.

During almost 14 years in power, all the social indicators of Bolivia went sky-high. Millions were pulled out of poverty. Millions have been benefiting from free medical care, free education, subsidized housing, improved infrastructure, a relatively high minimum wage, but also, from pride that was given back to the indigenous population, which forms the majority in this historically feudal country governed by corrupt, ruthless ‘elites’ – descendants of Spanish conquistadors and European ‘gold-diggers’.

Evo Morales made the Aymara and Quechua languages official, on par with Spanish. He made people who communicate in these languages, equal to those who use the tongue of the conquerors. He elevated the great indigenous culture high, to where it belongs – making it the symbol of Bolivia, and of the entire region.

Gone was the Christian cross-kissing (look at the crosses reappearing again, all around the oh so European-looking Jeanine Añez who has grabbed power, ‘temporarily’ but still thoroughly illegally). Instead, Evo used to travel, at least once a year, to Tiwanaku, “the capital of the powerful pre-Hispanic empire that dominated a large area of the southern Andes and beyond, reached its apogee between 500 and 900 AD”, according to UNESCO. That is where he used to search for spiritual peace. That is where his identity came from.

Gone was the veneration of the Western colonialist and imperialist culture, of savage capitalism.

This was a new world, with ancient, deep roots. This is where South America has been regrouping. Here, and in Correa’s Ecuador, before Correa and his beliefs were purged and ousted by the treacherous Moreno.

And what is more: before the coup, Bolivia was not suffering from economic downfall; it was doing well, extremely well. It was growing, stable, reliable, confident.

Even the owners of big Bolivian companies, if they were to care one bit for Bolivia and its people, had countless reasons to rejoice.

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But the Bolivian business community, as in so many other Latin American countries, is obsessed with the one and only ‘indicator’: “how much higher, how much above the average citizens it can get”. This is the old mentality of the colonialists; a feudal, fascist mentality.

Years ago, I was invited, in La Paz, for dinner by an old family of senators and mass media owners. With no shame, no fear, openly, they spoke, despite knowing who I was:

“We will get rid of this Indigenous bastard. Who does he think he is? If we lose millions of dollars in the process, as we did in 1973 Chile and now in Venezuela, we will still do it. Restoring our order is the priority.”

There is absolutely no way to reason with these people. They cannot be appeased, only crushed; defeated. In Venezuela, Brazil, Chile, Ecuador or in Bolivia. They are like rats, like disease, proverbial symbols of fascism as in the novel The Plague, written by Albert Camus. They can hide, but they never fully disappear. They are always ready to invade, with zero notice, some happy city.

They are always ready to join forces with the West, because their roots are in the West. They think precisely like the European conquerors, like North American imperialists. They have double nationalities and homes scattered all over the world. Latin America for them is just a place to live, and to plunder natural resources, exploit labor. They rob here, and spend money elsewhere; educate their children elsewhere, get their surgeries done (plastic and real) elsewhere. They go to opera houses in Paris but never mingle with indigenous people at home. Even if, by some miracle, they join the Left, it is the Western, anarcho-syndicalist Left of North America and Europe, never the real, anti-imperialist, revolutionary Left of non-European countries.

They don’t need the success of the nation. They don’t want a great, prosperous Bolivia; Bolivia for all of its citizens.

They only want prosperous corporations. They want money, profit; for themselves, for their families and clans, for their bandit group of people. They want to be revered, considered ‘exceptional’, superior. They cannot live without that gap – the great gap between them and those ‘dirty Indians’, as they call the indigenous people, when no one hears them!

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And that is why, Bolivia should fight, defend itself, as it is beginning to do so right now.

If this, what is happening to Evo and his government, is “the end”, then Bolivia will be set back by decades. Entire generations will again rot alive, in desperation, in rural shacks made of clay, without water and electricity, and without hope.

The ‘elites’ are now talking about ‘peace’, peace for whom? For them! Peace, as it was before Evo; ‘peace’ so the rich can play golf and fly for shopping to their beloved Miami and Madrid, while 90% of the population was getting kicked, humiliated, insulted. I remember that ‘peace’. The Bolivian people remember it even better.

I covered the civil war in neighboring Peru, for several years, in the 90’s, and I often crossed over into Bolivia. I wrote an entire novel about it – “Point of No Return”. It was an absolute horror. I could not even take my local photographers to a concert or for a cup of coffee in a decent place, because they were cholos, indigenous. Nobodies in their own countries. It was apartheid. And if socialism does not return, it will be apartheid once again.

Last time I went to Bolivia, few months ago, it was totally different country. Free, confident. Stunning.

Remembering what I saw in Bolivia and Peru, quarter of a century ago, I declare, clearly and decisively: “To hell with such ‘peace’, proposed by elites’”!

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None of this is, of course, mentioned in Western mass media outlets. I am monitoring them, from the New York Times to Reuters. In the US, UK, even France. Their eyes are shining. They cannot hide their excitement; euphoria.

The same NYT celebrated the massacres during the 1965-66 US-orchestrated military coup in Indonesia, or on 9-11-1973 in Chile.

Now Bolivia, predictably. Big smiles all over the West. Again, and again, ‘the findings’ of the OAS (Organization of American States) are being quoted as if they were facts; ‘the findings’ of an organization which is fully subservient to Western interests, particularly those of Washington.

It is as if by saying: “We have proof that a coup did not take place, because those who had organized the coup say that it actually did not happen.”

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In Paris, on the 10^thNovember, in the middle of the Place de la Republique, a huge crowd of treasonous Bolivians gathered, demanding the resignation of Evo. I filmed and photographed these people. I wanted to have this footage in my possession, for posterity.

They live in France, and their allegiances are towards the West. Some are even of European stock, although others are indigenous.

There are millions of Cubans, Venezuelans, Brazilians, living in the US and Europe, working tirelessly for the destruction of their former motherlands. They do it in order to please their new masters, to make profit, as well as various other reasons.

It is not peace. This is terrible, brutal war, which has already taken millions of lives, in Latin America alone.

This continent has the most unequally distributed wealth on earth. Hundreds of millions are living in misery. While others, sons and daughters or Bolivian feudal scum, are attending Sorbonne and Cambridge, to get intellectually conditioned, in order to serve the West.

Each time, and I repeat each time, a decent, honest government is voted in, democratically, by the people, each time there is someone who has invented a brilliant solution and solid plan to improve this dire situation, the clock begins ticking. The years, (sometimes even months) of the leader are numbered. He or she will either be killed, or ousted, or humiliated and forced out of power.

The country then goes back to, literally, shit, as has happened just recently to Ecuador (under Moreno), Argentina (under Macri) and Brazil (under Bolsonaro). The brutal status quois preserved. The lives of tens of millions are ruined. “Peace” returns. For the Western regime and its lackeys.

Then, as a raped country screams in pain, countless international NGO’s, UN agencies and funding organizations, descend  upon it, suddenly determined to ‘help refugees’, to keep children in classrooms, to ‘empower women’, or to fight malnutrition and hunger.

None of this would be needed, if the elected governments which are serving their people were to be left alone; left in real peace!

All this sick, pathetic hypocrisy is never discussed, publicly, by the mass media. All this Western terrorism unleashed against progressive Latin American countries (and dozens of other countries, all over the world), is hushed up.

Enough is enough!

Latin America is, once again, waking up. The people are outraged. The coup in Bolivia will be resisted. Macri’s regime has fallen. Mexico is marching in a cautiously socialist direction. Chile wants its socialist country back; a country which was crushed by military boots in 1973.

In the name of the people, in the name of the great indigenous culture, and in the name of the entire continent, Bolivian citizens are now resisting, struggling, confronting the fascist, pro-Western forces.

Revolutionary language is once again being used. It may be out of fashion in Paris or London, but not in South America. And that is what matters – here!

Evo did not lose. He won. His country has won. Under his leadership, it became a wonderful country; a country full of hope, a country that offered great prospects to hundreds of millions all over La Patria Grande. Everyone south of the Rio Grande knows it. Marvelous Mexico, which has given him asylum, knows it, too.

Evo has won. And then, he was forced out by the treasonous military, by treasonous business thugs, feudal land owners, and by Washington. Evo and his family and comrades have been brutalized by that extreme right-wing paramilitary leader – Luis Fernando Camacho – who is calling himself a Christian; brutalized by him and by his men and women.

Bolivia will fight. It will bring back its legitimate President where he belongs; to the Presidential Palace.

The plane which is taking Evo to Mexico, north, is actually taking him home, back to Bolivia. It is a big, big detour. Thousands of kilometers, and months, perhaps even years… But from the moment the airplane took off, the tremendous, epic journey back to La Paz began.

The people of Bolivia will never abandon their President. And Evo is, forever, tied to his People. And Long Live Bolivia, Damn It!

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

Featured image is from the author

The Port Of Discord

Georgian banker Mamuka Khazaradze, the co-founder of the country’s largest universal bank and the man behind the Anaklia Port project, recently had a falling out with the government after being charged with money laundering and thus decided to form his own political party called “Lelo” in an attempt to unseat his opponents during next year’s parliamentary elections as revenge. This in and of itself wouldn’t be an event worthy of international attention had it not been for the fact that the US Embassy in Georgia signaled its support for him after the charges were made and reiterated that it also continues to support his Anaklia Port project as well. About that investment, it’s planned to be the country’s largest one in history and envisages the creation of a deep-water port for facilitating Chinese-European trade. It’s an interesting idea in principle that was formerly supported by the government, but the authorities balked at demands from potential international creditors that they underwrite the hundreds of millions of dollars in loans that would be required for its completion.

The Argument Against Anaklia

That’s a sensible enough stand for the state to take, however, considering just how risky of a venture the Anaklia Port is. On the one hand, the argument can be made that there’s definitely a demand for trans-Black Sea shipping along China’s many New Silk Roads, but on the other, the case can also be put forth that the costs far exceed the predicted revenue when considering that the People’s Republic also plans to use the Arctic Silk Road maritime road, the Eurasian Land Bridge, the Middle Corridor, and traditional Pacific-Afro-Asian (“Indian”) Ocean-Mediterranean maritime routes as it is so it’s unlikely to come to depend on Anaklia enough to the point to justify this massive project. It’s true that its Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) is one of the financiers, but that’s more out of financial interest than anything too strategic. China’s modus operandi is to always have access to as many trade corridors as possible in order to avoid dependence on any given one, so it’s unsurprising that would make its capital available for financing yet another one of them for that purpose.

The issue, however, is that the US is also interested in Anaklia Port and potentially intends to make it an alternative to both the Eurasian Land Bridge and the Middle Corridor, the first of which runs through Kazakhstan-Russia-Belarus while the latter connects Central Asia with the Caucasus via the Caspian and then Turkey en route to the EU. From a logistics standpoint, it’s already a possible bottleneck loading and unloading cargo at the Caspian ports, so it’s not that efficient to repeat this process once more at Anaklia when goods transiting through Azerbaijan can just continue along the newly launched Baku-Tbilisi-Kars railway on the way to the EU. Ditto that logic when it comes to the comparatively more cost- and time-effective unimodal Eurasian Land Bridge that Russia is facilitating through its ongoing work on the Meridian Highway that will reduce travel time across the country. As such, it’s completely understandable why the state doesn’t want to underwrite this risky project, though it’s that disagreement between the ruling party and Khazaradze that the US is exploiting.

American Infowar Narratives

The American-influenced innuendo being bandied about right now is that the founder of the ruling Georgian Dream party and the country’s current de-facto leader Bidzina Ivanishvili is much too pragmatic towards Moscow, with the government’s refusal to underwrite the Anaklia Port project’s international loans being held as purported “proof” that he’s “doing Russia’s bidding” by “sabotaging” a project that could supposedly compete with its nearby Novorossiysk port and also cut it out of China’s trans-continental Silk Road  connectivity. These nascent information warfare narratives are entirely misleading because they distract from the fact that the Anaklia Port is of questionable economic viability at best and is likely nothing more than a “patriotic” means for Khazaradze to get even richer with a wink and nod from his US partners at the general population’s expense. If the government gave him what he wanted, then it would probably end up being the case that taxpayers would have to pay for the project if it didn’t pan out as expected.

From “Strategic” Port To Color Revolution Debt Trap

That scenario would ultimately necessitate a reduction in social spending to compensate for its international financial commitments and possibly even requesting loans from the World Bank and other US-backed institutions if it couldn’t afford it, further compounding the looming economic crisis that America could later exploit with ease through a Color Revolution for regime change purposes. There is no realistic scenario under which the Anaklia Port replaces Russia’s Eurasian Land Bridge or Turkey’s Middle Corridor, let alone one in which this project proves profitable enough for the Georgian people to justify their government underwriting the loans that Khazardze is seeking, but Washington wants Tbilisi to commit to it because of its supposedly anti-Russian and -Turkish optics, as well as the US’ intent to see Georgia entrapped in debt so as to facilitate the forthcoming regime change scenario through “electoral” means or a Color Revolution failing the success of the former. Returning to the present day, it can therefore be concluded that the Anaklia Port project is a domestic economic dispute that’s since been externally exploited by the US for political and strategic purposes.

Khazardze’s new political party comes into play because it could function as both the most radical faction of the hyper-nationalist opposition (possibly leading anti-Russian riots in the future just like the ones that broke out this summer) and the wedge for dividing the two main political forces in the country and thus creating an opportunity to become the post-election kingmaker on which the ruling party might be forced to depend and thus make concessions towards if it doesn’t win next year’s parliamentary polls with a convincing majority. The US is so firmly against Ivanishvili because it regards him as being “too friendly” towards Russia, which incenses the neoconservatives in the American “deep state” who have a pathological hatred towards their Old Cold War-era rivalry and are convinced of the Russiagate conspiracy theory that President Putin supposedly controls Trump to this day. It’s worthwhile noting that the parliamentary elections have to be held by October 2020, but regardless of what time they occur, they’ll still happen in a pivotal election year for the US and could thus create a “deep state”-manufactured international crisis for further pressuring Trump to take a harder line towards Russia in an attempt to secure his own re-election later that November.

Concluding Thoughts

Georgia is a little-thought-about country with an outsized strategic significance for Russia, China, Turkey, and the US. The first-mentioned has an interest in retaining pragmatic relations with the state whom it fought a defensive war against in 2008 after its then-leadership killed Russian peacekeepers and civilians in an unprovoked late-night attack against its two autonomous regions at the time, while the other two multipolar states regard the Caucasian one as a crucial transit state for facilitating their Silk Road trade. The US, however, realizes that it could throw Georgia into chaos comparatively easily in order to harm all three of its aforementioned rivals’ interests by jeopardizing Russia’s physical security through a crisis on its southern borderland and the possible emergence of a hyper-nationalist government there along the model of Ukraine’s post-Maidan one, while also throwing a spanner right in the middle of China’s Middle Corridor by potentially disrupting trade across the Caucasus. Altogether, this means that the outcome of Georgia’s latent US-provoked political crisis could have a disproportionate impact on Eurasian stability, which is why observers should continue to closely follow events there as they develop across the next year ahead of the upcoming elections.

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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.

Newly released pesticide usage statistics for 2018 confirm that the British people are being used as lab rats. That’s the message environmentalist Dr Rosemary Mason has sent to Dave Bench, senior scientist at the UK Chemicals, Health and Safety Executive and director of the agency’s EU exit plan. In her open letter to Bench, Mason warns that things could get much worse.

In 2016, the UK farming minister said that the nation could develop a more flexible approach to environmental protection free of “spirit-crushing” Brussels directives if it votes to leave the EU. George Eustice, the minister in question, said that the EU’s precautionary principle needed to be reformed in favour of a US-style ‘risk-based’ system that would allow for faster approvals.  

There is little doubt that Eustice had GM crops in mind: the Department of Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) says that the most promising crops suitable for introducing to England would be Roundup Ready GA21 glyphosate-tolerant crops as they synergise well with herbicides already widely used in the UK.

Similarly, Boris Johnson said in his first speech as prime minister in July 2019:

“Let’s start now to liberate the UK’s extraordinary bioscience sector from anti-genetic modification rules and let’s develop the blight-resistant crops that will feed the world.”

However, the ‘GM will feed the world mantra’ is pure industry spin. The technology has a questionable record and, anyhow, there is already enough food being produced to feed the global population, yet around 830 million are classed as hungry and two billion experience micronutrient deficiency. If Johnson wants to ‘feed the world’, he would do better by looking of the inbuilt injustices of the global food regime which is driven by the very corporations he seems to be in bed with.

Conservative politicians’ positive spin about GM is little more than an attempt to justify a post-Brexit trade deal with Washington that will effectively incorporate the UK into the US’s regulatory food regime. The type of ‘liberation’ Johnson really means is the UK adopting unassessed GM crops, using more glyphosate (or similar agrochemicals) and a gutting of food safety and environmental standards. It is no secret that various Conservative-led administrations have wanted to ditch the EU regulatory framework on GM for some time.

Unregulated chemical cocktail

Mason asks Bench why Defra and the Chemicals Regulation Division refuse to ban glyphosate-based herbicides in Swansea between 2014-2017 when she told them that it was poisoning her nature reserve:

“Analysis of local tap water in August 2014 revealed a 10-fold increase since August 2013: from 30 ppt to 300 ppt.  I told them that these were of the order of concentrations found in a laboratory study in 2013 that showed that breast cancer cell proliferation is accelerated by glyphosate in extremely low concentrations. We had several neighbours who have recently developed breast cancer. Now, in 2019, with many scientific papers reporting apocalyptic insect declines around the world, we are facing a global Armageddon; yet the public has no idea, because the press has concealed it from them.”

Bench is also asked:

“Have you seen the pesticides usage statistics for 2018? They confirm what a European NGO said in 2013, that the British citizens are being used as lab rats!”

Mason continues:

“Dave Bench, you presented a paper at the Soil Association meeting on 20 November 2017… [it] showed that pesticide active ingredients applied to three British crops had increased between 6-18 fold between 1974 and 2016, rather than halved as farmers and industry had claimed!! As well as hearing this new evidence of increased pesticide use in the UK, the conference heard new scientific evidence from around the world showing that very low doses of pesticides, well below official ‘safety’ levels, pose a significant risk to public health via our food supply.

“Were you shocked? Presumably you weren’t because you described the regulatory system for pesticides as robust and as balancing the risks of pesticides against the benefits to society. That statement is rubbish. It is for the benefit of the agrochemical industry. The industry (for it is the industry that does the testing, on behalf of regulators) only tests one pesticide at a time, whereas farmers spray a cocktail of pesticides, including over children and babies, without warning.”

Ian Boyd, the former Chief Scientific Adviser to Defra, says pesticides, once they have been authorised, are never reviewed.

Mason adds there is consistent denial by the National Farmers Union (NFU), Defra and the agrochemical industry about the massive amounts of pesticides used on farmland and herbicides used in towns and cities on weeds; and there is silence from the UK corporate media.

She informs Bench that although glyphosate was relicensed in Europe by a “corrupt” group of individuals, it is distributed to every organ of the body and has multiple actions: it is an herbicide, an antibiotic, a fungicide, an antiprotozoal, an organic phosphonate, a growth regulator, a toxicant, a virulence enhancer and is persistent in the soil. It chelates (captures) and washes out the following minerals: boron, calcium, cobalt, copper, iron, potassium, magnesium, manganese, nickel and zinc.

In her previous reports, as in her letter to Bench, Mason has documented the consequences of this for human health.

Just as concerning is the UN Global Chemicals Outlook II report that indicates large quantities of hazardous chemicals and pollutants continue to leak into the environment, contaminating food chains and accumulating in our bodies, where they do serious damage. Estimates by the European Environment Agency suggest that 62 per cent of the volume of chemicals consumed in Europe are hazardous to health. The World Health Organization estimates the burden of disease from selected chemicals at 1.6 million lives. The lives of many more are negatively impacted.

Business as usual: public health crisis

Mason goes on to highlight numerous disturbing aspects of the revolving door between the pesticide industry and public bodies/government in the UK. She also notes that David Cameron appointed Michael Pragnell, founder of Syngenta, to Cancer Research UK’s (CRUK) board and awarded him a CBE in 2017 for services to cancer research.

Mason explains that the British government’s UK life sciences strategy is dependent on funding from the pharmaceutical sector which has links with the pesticide industry. In 2011, CRUK started donating money (£450 million/year) to the government’s ‘Strategy for UK Life Sciences’ while AstraZeneca (Syngenta’s parent company) was providing 22 compounds to academic research to develop medicines in the UK. She argues that Syngenta’s products cause diseases, while its parent company tries to cure them with synthetic chemicals. And CRUK is a willing enabler.

In 2014, the NFU, the Crop Protection Association (CPA) and Agricultural Industries Confederation (AIC) launched ‘Healthy Harvest’ to safeguard the crop protection pesticide toolbox. The NFU and the agrochemical companies have continually defended the use of pesticides for economic reasons and complain about any attempt to restrict the 320-odd at their disposal. CPA, AIC and the NFU commissioned Andersons to write a report: ‘The effect of the loss of plant protection products on UK Agriculture and Horticulture’. Conveniently for the report’s commissioners, Andersons predicted dire economic effects on UK farming if pesticides were to be restricted.

And it is not that these powerful interests do not have the government’s full attention. Between May 2010 and the end of 2013, the Department of Health alone had 130 meetings with representatives of industry. According to Mason, it is business as usual and patently clear that the pesticides industry is being protected.

While continuing to ignore and side-line important scientific research findings which highlight inconvenient truths for government and the pesticide industry, prominent public officials and scientists as well as the media attempt to explain away all the diseases now affecting the UK as a result of individual behaviour: bad lifestyle choices.

In her various reports, Mason has discussed the importance of the gut microbiome and the deleterious effects of glyphosate which result in various health issues, such as obesity and depression. By 2018, CRUK was claiming that obesity caused 13 different cancers, but Mason argues that contamination by residues from 123 different pesticides on the fruit and vegetables supplied to schools by the Department of Health is the real reason for childhood obesity – not biscuits or poor choices.

Each year, there are steady increases in the numbers of new cancers in the UK and increases in deaths from the same cancers with no treatments making any difference to the numbers. While certain prestigious research centres are lavished with funding, Mason argues their work merely serves to strengthen the pesticide and pharmaceutical industries and implies the entire process is little more than a profitable racket at the expense of public health.

In finishing, let us remind ourselves of what the UN special rapporteur on the right to food, Hilal Elver, said in 2017:

“The power of the corporations over governments and over the scientific community is extremely important. If you want to deal with pesticides, you have to deal with the companies…”

Baskut Tuncak, the UN’s special rapporteur on toxics, added:

“While scientific research confirms the adverse effects of pesticides, proving a definitive link between exposure and human diseases or conditions or harm to the ecosystem presents a considerable challenge. This challenge has been exacerbated by a systematic denial, fuelled by the pesticide and agro-industry, of the magnitude of the damage inflicted by these chemicals, and aggressive, unethical marketing tactics.”

There is a lot more valuable information in Rosemary Mason’s 10,000-word open letter to David Bench, including many references and citations in support of her claims. Readers are urged to access ‘Pesticides usage statistics for 2018 prove that the British people are being used as lab rats’ via the academia.edu website.

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Colin Todhunter is a frequent contributor to Global Research and Asia-Pacific Research.

Important article by John Whitehead first published by the Rutherford Institute and Global Research on April 24, 2019

“Children are being targeted and sold for sex in America every day.”—John Ryan, National Center for Missing & Exploited Children

Children, young girls—some as young as 9 years old—are being bought and sold for sex in America. The average age for a young woman being sold for sex is now 13 years old.

This is America’s dirty little secret.

Sex trafficking—especially when it comes to the buying and selling of young girls—has become big business in America, the fastest growing business in organized crime and the second most-lucrative commodity traded illegally after drugs and guns.

As investigative journalist Amy Fine Collins notes,

“It’s become more lucrative and much safer to sell malleable teens than drugs or guns. A pound of heroin or an AK-47 can be retailed once, but a young girl can be sold 10 to 15 times a day—and a ‘righteous’ pimp confiscates 100 percent of her earnings.”

Consider this: every two minutes, a child is exploited in the sex industry.

According to USA Today, adults purchase children for sex at least 2.5 million times a year in the United States.

Who buys a child for sex? Otherwise ordinary men from all walks of life.

“They could be your co-worker, doctor, pastor or spouse,” writes journalist Tim Swarens, who spent more than a year investigating the sex trade in America.

In Georgia alone, it is estimated that 7,200 men (half of them in their 30s) seek to purchase sex with adolescent girls each month, averaging roughly 300 a day.

On average, a child might be raped by 6,000 men during a five-year period of servitude.

It is estimated that at least 100,000 children—girls and boys—are bought and sold for sex in the U.S. every year, with as many as 300,000 children in danger of being trafficked each year. Some of these children are forcefully abducted, others are runaways, and still others are sold into the system by relatives and acquaintances.

“Human trafficking—the commercial sexual exploitation of American children and women, via the Internet, strip clubs, escort services, or street prostitution—is on its way to becoming one of the worst crimes in the U.S.,” said prosecutor Krishna Patel.

This is an industry that revolves around cheap sex on the fly, with young girls and women who are sold to 50 men each day for $25 apiece, while their handlers make $150,000 to $200,000 per child each year.

This is not a problem found only in big cities.

It’s happening everywhere, right under our noses, in suburbs, cities and towns across the nation.

As Ernie Allen of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children points out,

“The only way not to find this in any American city is simply not to look for it.”

Don’t fool yourselves into believing that this is merely a concern for lower income communities or immigrants.

It’s not.

It is estimated that there are 100,000 to 150,000 under-aged child sex workers in the U.S. These girls aren’t volunteering to be sex slaves. They’re being lured—forced—trafficked into it. In most cases, they have no choice.

In order to avoid detection (in some cases aided and abetted by the police) and cater to male buyers’ demand for sex with different women, pimps and the gangs and crime syndicates they work for have turned sex trafficking into a highly mobile enterprise, with trafficked girls, boys and women constantly being moved from city to city, state to state, and country to country.

For instance, the Baltimore-Washington area, referred to as The Circuit, with its I-95 corridor dotted with rest stops, bus stations and truck stops, is a hub for the sex trade.

No doubt about it: this is a highly profitable, highly organized and highly sophisticated sex trafficking business that operates in towns large and small, raking in upwards of $9.5 billion a year in the U.S. alone by abducting and selling young girls for sex.

Every year, the girls being bought and sold gets younger and younger.

The average age of those being trafficked is 13. Yet as the head of a group that combats trafficking pointed out,

“Let’s think about what average means. That means there are children younger than 13. That means 8-, 9-, 10-year-olds.“

“For every 10 women rescued, there are 50 to 100 more women who are brought in by the traffickers. Unfortunately, they’re not 18- or 20-year-olds anymore,” noted a 25-year-old victim of trafficking. “They’re minors as young as 13 who are being trafficked. They’re little girls.”

Where did this appetite for young girls come from?

Look around you.

Young girls have been sexualized for years now in music videos, on billboards, in television ads, and in clothing stores. Marketers have created a demand for young flesh and a ready supply of over-sexualized children.

“All it takes is one look at MySpace photos of teens to see examples—if they aren’t imitating porn they’ve actually seen, they’re imitating the porn-inspired images and poses they’ve absorbed elsewhere,” writes Jessica Bennett for Newsweek. “Latex, corsets and stripper heels, once the fashion of porn stars, have made their way into middle and high school.”

This is what Bennett refers to as the “pornification of a generation.”

“In a market that sells high heels for babies and thongs for tweens, it doesn’t take a genius to see that sex, if not porn, has invaded our lives,” concludes Bennett. “Whether we welcome it or not, television brings it into our living rooms and the Web brings it into our bedrooms. According to a 2007 study from the University of Alberta, as many as 90 percent of boys and 70 percent of girls aged 13 to 14 have accessed sexually explicit content at least once.”

In other words, the culture is grooming these young people to be preyed upon by sexual predators. And then we wonder why our young women are being preyed on, trafficked and abused?

Social media makes it all too easy. As one news center reported,

“Finding girls is easy for pimps. They look on MySpace, Facebook, and other social networks. They and their assistants cruise malls, high schools and middle schools. They pick them up at bus stops. On the trolley. Girl-to-girl recruitment sometimes happens.”

Foster homes and youth shelters have also become prime targets for traffickers.

Rarely do these girls enter into prostitution voluntarily. Many start out as runaways or throwaways, only to be snatched up by pimps or larger sex rings. Others, persuaded to meet up with a stranger after interacting online through one of the many social networking sites, find themselves quickly initiated into their new lives as sex slaves.

Debbie, a straight-A student who belonged to a close-knit Air Force family living in Phoenix, Ariz., is an example of this trading of flesh. Debbie was 15 when she was snatched from her driveway by an acquaintance-friend. Forced into a car, Debbie was bound and taken to an unknown location, held at gunpoint and raped by multiple men. She was then crammed into a small dog kennel and forced to eat dog biscuits. Debbie’s captors advertised her services on Craigslist. Those who responded were often married with children, and the money that Debbie “earned” for sex was given to her kidnappers. The gang raping continued. After searching the apartment where Debbie was held captive, police finally found Debbie stuffed in a drawer under a bed. Her harrowing ordeal lasted for 40 days.

While Debbie was fortunate enough to be rescued, others are not so lucky. According to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, nearly 800,000 children go missing every year (roughly 2,185 children a day).

With a growing demand for sexual slavery and an endless supply of girls and women who can be targeted for abduction, this is not a problem that’s going away anytime soon.

For those trafficked, it’s a nightmare from beginning to end.

Those being sold for sex have an average life expectancy of seven years, and those years are a living nightmare of endless rape, forced drugging, humiliation, degradation, threats, disease, pregnancies, abortions, miscarriages, torture, pain, and always the constant fear of being killed or, worse, having those you love hurt or killed.

Peter Landesman paints the full horrors of life for those victims of the sex trade in his New York Times article “The Girls Next Door”:

Andrea told me that she and the other children she was held with were frequently beaten to keep them off-balance and obedient. Sometimes they were videotaped while being forced to have sex with adults or one another. Often, she said, she was asked to play roles: the therapist patient or the obedient daughter. Her cell of sex traffickers offered three age ranges of sex partners–toddler to age 4, 5 to 12 and teens–as well as what she called a “damage group.” “In the damage group, they can hit you or do anything they want to,” she explained. “Though sex always hurts when you are little, so it’s always violent, everything was much more painful once you were placed in the damage group.”

What Andrea described next shows just how depraved some portions of American society have become.

“They’d get you hungry then to train you” to have oral sex. “They put honey on a man. For the littlest kids, you had to learn not to gag. And they would push things in you so you would open up better. We learned responses. Like if they wanted us to be sultry or sexy or scared. Most of them wanted you scared. When I got older, I’d teach the younger kids how to float away so things didn’t hurt.”

Immigration and customs enforcement agents at the Cyber Crimes Center in Fairfax, Va., report that when it comes to sex, the appetites of many Americans have now changed. What was once considered abnormal is now the norm. These agents are tracking a clear spike in the demand for harder-core pornography on the Internet. As one agent noted,

“We’ve become desensitized by the soft stuff; now we need a harder and harder hit.”

This trend is reflected by the treatment many of the girls receive at the hands of the drug traffickers and the men who purchase them. Peter Landesman interviewed Rosario, a Mexican woman who had been trafficked to New York and held captive for a number of years. She said:

“In America, we had ‘special jobs.’ Oral sex, anal sex, often with many men. Sex is now more adventurous, harder.”

A common thread woven through most survivors’ experiences is being forced to go without sleep or food until they have met their sex quota of at least 40 men. One woman recounts how her trafficker made her lie face down on the floor when she was pregnant and then literally jumped on her back, forcing her to miscarry.

Holly Austin Smith (image on the right) was abducted when she was 14 years old, raped, and then forced to prostitute herself. Her pimp, when brought to trial, was only made to serve a year in prison.

Barbara Amaya was repeatedly sold between traffickers, abused, shot, stabbed, raped, kidnapped, trafficked, beaten, and jailed all before she was 18 years old.

“I had a quota that I was supposed to fill every night. And if I didn’t have that amount of money, I would get beat, thrown down the stairs. He beat me once with wire coat hangers, the kind you hang up clothes, he straightened it out and my whole back was bleeding.”

As David McSwane recounts in a chilling piece for the Herald-Tribune:

“In Oakland Park, an industrial Fort Lauderdale suburb, federal agents in 2011 encountered a brothel operated by a married couple. Inside ‘The Boom Boom Room,’ as it was known, customers paid a fee and were given a condom and a timer and left alone with one of the brothel’s eight teenagers, children as young as 13. A 16-year-old foster child testified that he acted as security, while a 17-year-old girl told a federal judge she was forced to have sex with as many as 20 men a night.”

One particular sex trafficking ring catered specifically to migrant workers employed seasonally on farms throughout the southeastern states, especially the Carolinas and Georgia, although it’s a flourishing business in every state in the country. Traffickers transport the women from farm to farm, where migrant workers would line up outside shacks, as many as 30 at a time, to have sex with them before they were transported to yet another farm where the process would begin all over again.

This growing evil is, for all intents and purposes, out in the open.

Trafficked women and children are advertised on the internet, transported on the interstate, and bought and sold in swanky hotels.

Indeed, as I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, the government’s war on sex trafficking—much like the government’s war on terrorism, drugs and crime—has become a perfect excuse for inflicting more police state tactics (police check points, searches, surveillance, and heightened security) on a vulnerable public, while doing little to make our communities safer.

So what can you do?

Educate yourselves and your children about this growing menace in our communities.

Stop feeding the monster: Sex trafficking is part of a larger continuum in America that runs the gamut from homelessness, poverty, and self-esteem issues to sexualized television, the glorification of a pimp/ho culture—what is often referred to as the pornification of America—and a billion dollar sex industry built on the back of pornography, music, entertainment, etc.

This epidemic is largely one of our own making, especially in a corporate age where the value placed on human life takes a backseat to profit. It is estimated that the porn industry brings in more money than Amazon, Microsoft, Google, Apple, and Yahoo.

Call on your city councils, elected officials and police departments to make the battle against sex trafficking a top priority, more so even than the so-called war on terror and drugs and the militarization of law enforcement.

Stop prosecuting adults for victimless “crimes” such as growing lettuce in their front yard and focus on putting away the pimps and buyers who victimize these young women.

Finally, the police need to do a better job of training, identifying and responding to these issues; communities and social services need to do a better job of protecting runaways, who are the primary targets of traffickers; legislators need to pass legislation aimed at prosecuting traffickers and “johns,” the buyers who drive the demand for sex slaves; and hotels need to stop enabling these traffickers, by providing them with rooms and cover for their dirty deeds.

That so many women and children continue to be victimized, brutalized and treated like human cargo is due to three things: one, a consumer demand that is increasingly lucrative for everyone involved—except the victims; two, a level of corruption so invasive on both a local and international scale that there is little hope of working through established channels for change; and three, an eerie silence from individuals who fail to speak out against such atrocities.

But the truth is that we are all guilty of contributing to this human suffering. The traffickers are guilty. The consumers are guilty. The corrupt law enforcement officials are guilty. The women’s groups who do nothing are guilty. The foreign peacekeepers and aid workers who contribute to the demand for sex slaves are guilty. Most of all, every individual who does not raise a hue and cry over the atrocities being committed against women and children in almost every nation around the globe—including the United States—is guilty.

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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  (SelectBooks, 2015) is available online at www.amazon.com. Whitehead can be contacted at [email protected].

On November 14, the Syrian Army backed up by the Russian Aerospace Forces launched a limited offensive on positions of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham and its Turkish-backed allies in southern Idlib. Government forces liberated the town of Luwaybidah and the nearby Khaznah hill after a series of clashes with militants. Then, army troops supported by artillery and air strikes advanced on the town of Misherfah.

Clashes are now ongoing in the area.

HTS and its allies have been violating Greater Idlib ceasefire on a daily basis for months. The new ground operation is aimed at deterring these attacks or even expanding a buffer zone in order to push militants’ back from the government-controlled area and further.

On November 13, Syrian and Russian warplanes reportedly carried out over 50 strikes on positions of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham and other radical groups in southern and western Idlib. In particular, militant positions were hit in Shnan, al-Najeya, Furaykah, al-Mshairfeh, Kafr Nabl, Rakaya Sijneh, Fatterah, Sutuh al-Din, Tramla, Kafar Sijnah, Ma’aret Hurmah, Jbala, Hizareen and Karsaa.

Watch the video here.

Clashes between the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) and Turkish-backed militants are ongoing in northern al-Hasakah. On November 13, the SDF advanced on positions of pro-Turkish forces in the villages of al-Qasimiyah and al-Rihaniyah. At least 6 Turkish-backed militants were reportedly killed in the SDF advance.

The Russian military has deployed Mi-8 and Mi-35 helicopters and Pantsir-S air-defense systems air defense systems at the al-Qamishly airbase in northeastern Syria, the Russian Defense Ministry’s Zvezda TV reported on November 14. Mi-8 and Mi-35 helicopters are currently involved in the patrols along the Turkish border. The patrols are ongoing in the framework of the Turkish-Russian safe-zone agreement.

Earlier reports appeared, that Russia may have been planning to establish a constant military presence, or even a military base in al-Qamishly. The recent developments demonstrate that even if these particular reports were wrong, the Russians are already using the airport for military purposes.

On the same day, Russian troops took control of the abandoned US military facility in Sarrin in eastern Aleppo. At least 5 Russian armoured vehicles entered the facility and a Mi-35 helicopter was spotted flying in the area.

Following the US troop withdrawal from the north, the Russians took control of their garrisons. Most widely covered such cases happened in Manbij and Ain Issa.

The US military is expanding its presence in the towns of al-Qahtaniyah and Heemo near Qamishly. Recently a US military convoy of approximately 20 trucks loaded with military equipment and several armored vehicles entered northeastern Syria from Iraq. These forces will likely be deployed near Qamishly in order to secure the US control of the oil-rich area east of it.

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The UK economy has seen a spike in corporate insolvencies, particularly in the retail, manufacturing and travel sectors since the EU referendum, and the heavy debt burden imposed by private equity has often been a factor. Vulture funds are now circling in search of freshly weakened targets, soon there will be plenty to choose from.

Vulture funds work a bit like this. A vulture fund is a hedge fund, private equity fund or distressed debt fund, that invests in debt considered to be very weak or in default, known as distressed securities.

They profit by buying up troubled firms, pile on substantial new debt, fiddle with the balance sheets, then restructure and sell the relaunched entity as if it’s in good health. Private equity firms regularly benefit from tax breaks and are often based offshore – and it’s this bit that is important. They contribute next to nothing to economies, very often seeing the result of collapses falling into the laps of government. If not, many employees are left without work and end up on welfare.

Thomas Cook is a good example. It was in trouble 10 years ago, but successive financial restructures by ‘intermediaries’ such as private equity firms, has seen a debt spike being handled like some sort of overly stuffed pass-the-parcel. After several acquisitions and loading of debt – the company was weighed down with £3.1 billion around its neck. In its last 12 months, the company needed to sell three million holidays a year just to cover interest payments (not the capital).

And another 900 million pound restructuring plan wasn’t enough to save the 178-year-old travel industry icon from bankruptcy. At the last minute, the firm’s bankers demanded an extra 200 million pounds in funding to pre-pay for next year’s package holidays.

Wash, rinse, repeat

The same happened to another of Britain’s best-known high street brands, Debenhams. It announced in April the largest loss in its 206-year history, a pre-tax loss of 491 million pounds. From there it entered a Corporate Voluntary Arrangement (CVA) which allows firms to continue trading while restructuring and now has well over £1 billion in restructured debt. Profits are sucked into debt interest payments, very often requiring more loans to pay for the shortfall.

Fellow department store House of Fraser entered a CVA in May 2018 after struggling to rid itself of a debt pile worth 1 billion pounds which had built up since a private equity purchase in 2006.

Music and film retailer HMV went into administration for the second time in six years. Again, private equity firms were implicated in the downfall of the 98-year-old brand.

Another excellent example is luxury British carmaker Aston Martin, which confirmed it will pay 12% interest on an extra £120m of borrowings. If orders for its new DBX model don’t hit targets in 2020, the firm’s interest rate could spike to 15% as part of its financial restructuring package. The intermediaries make the money and walk – the company is left to the risk.

Don’t forget, these companies can take advantage of record long-term low-interest rates.

How bad is it overall? According to the Luxembourg-based Link Asset Services, total corporate debt in the UK climbed to record levels in 2019, hitting £638.3 billion, following eight consecutive years of rises.

Nest of vultures

Over to Ireland and focusing on a nest of just 15 Irish subsidiaries of global vulture funds where it was found that they pay just €250 a year in tax. This is despite the companies having in their control €10.3 billion worth of loans and debt located in Ireland, where in total, the 15 companies have paid just €8,000 in tax between them in a year. It is estimated that the loss to the Irish Exchequer is up to €500 million in just two years.

The analysis comes from the UCD School of Social Policy two years ago.

In another study at the same time, 24 Irish subsidiaries of so-called vulture funds had paid less than €20,000 in corporation tax over the previous two years.

This is despite the companies controlling almost €20 billion in distressed assets.

That analysis found that the 24 companies, as well as their Irish subsidiaries, will be able to make profits of 33% to 50% on their initial investment.

Circling

From Jonathan Compton – Money Week: “Since Brexit, UK economic growth has been sub-par, moving from being nearly the best among the larger economies to becoming one of the worst.” Compton reminds us why the vultures are circling. Britain was badly affected by the global financial crisis but was still suffering when Brexit came along. It continues to suffers from:

• growth in wages outside the top 20% of earners is weak – real take-home pay for these workers remains below the 2009 level
• a steady slowdown in car sales, new mortgage approvals and big-ticket items (items not affected by internet sales)
• growth in consumer credit has waned noticeably since 2016
• personal savings are near their lowest level since 1968
• capital expenditure and business confidence are flatlining.
• profit margins are being squeezed

“Until 2015 the UK ranked third in the world both in terms of the total stock and of net FDI investment inflows. The gross stock, at over $2trn, is enormous and, relative to GDP, far higher than the two global leaders, the EU and US. In terms of inflows, net annual FDI has also been gigantic, beaten only by the world’s two economic superpowers, China and the US. This foreign appetite for British assets has been the key factor in allowing us to live a lifestyle that we could not otherwise afford. Until 1995, FDI was relatively minor at 1%-2% of GDP. Since then it has soared, often to 4%-8% of GDP. The UK is a world favourite for well-known reasons: an impartial legal system, good contractual laws and property rights, and relatively mild bureaucracy. You may not like Russian hoods buying top properties or Kraft taking over a “national jewel” in Cadbury Schweppes, but foreign investors have been the economic paymasters for nearly a generation. Yet since 2016, these flows have abated dramatically – hence the feeble growth numbers. In the UK equity markets, the outflows have continued – hence the relative underperformance.”

The more savvy foreign investors clearly sense opportunity in our under-performing market, currency and government, and are moving fast. Approaches, bids or break-up threats have been made recently to well-known (listed) index giants. The trend is rising. The Vultures are circling looking for weakened companies to pick off. After Christmas this year, there will be a feast waiting for them for two reasons. Many struggling companies die after the December spending spree and then we have this December’s election. If Boris Johnson is elected with a workable majority – the currency will plummet and confidence will drain as he pushed his version of Brexit. If Corbyn is elected – it’s another year of uncertainty, even if the outcome is better. Either way, government debt will soar – from there, its anyone’s guess – but the vultures will still be flying in from Ireland looking for easy prey.

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Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency proposed today to weaken protections for 23 pyrethroids, a class of insecticides linked to autism, Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases and known to be highly toxic to bees and fish.

These reduced safeguards were requested by a consortium of sticide companies called the Pyrethroid Working Group. The neurotoxins are widely used on fruits and vegetables and in bug sprays and pet shampoos.

The EPA had initially considered a 66-foot-wide buffer of permanent vegetation between fields sprayed with the pesticides and any water body, as well as a 10 mph wind-speed cutoff for spraying. But the new proposal includes only a 10- to 25-foot-wide buffer and a wind-speed cutoff of 15 mph.

Today’s proposal follows the EPA’s August announcement that it would grant a pesticide industry request to end long-running safeguards meant to protect small children from pyrethroids, which have been shown to cause learning deficiencies.

“There’s no floor on how low this administration will stoop to appease the pesticide industry,” said Nathan Donley, a senior scientist at the Center for Biological Diversity. “Ignoring independent science in favor of whatever pesticide companies want is par for the Trump course. In their relentless push to cripple pesticide protections, EPA officials are shrugging off huge threats to children’s health and the survival of bees and other environmentally crucial creatures.”

Today’s announcement included the proposed reapproval of five of the 23 pyrethroids.

Proposals regarding the approval of the other 18 are pending.

A compelling body of independent research has documented the many harms posed by pyrethroids.

A 2016 EPA scientific analysis found that continued pyrethroid use will likely cause a “reduction in survival, growth and reproduction to non-target aquatic animals” and a potential risk to pollinators. The EPA also estimated that some pyrethroids would exceed water concentrations known to harm aquatic insects for up to 89 percent of the year.

The EPA’s August announcement that it plans to increase threefold the amount of pyrethroid exposure considered safe for children relied almost exclusively on confidential pesticide-industry studies and a model developed by an entity called CAPHRA, which is a working group of pesticide companies that sell pyrethroids. The agency ignored contradictory evidence from peer-reviewed studies and advice from two separate scientific advisory panels.

Independent research has shown that repeated exposure to pyrethroid insecticides can cause learning deficiencies and neurodegenerative effects associated with Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases, among others.

Epidemiological data has also revealed higher incidences of autism spectrum disorders and developmental delay among children whose mothers were living within about 1 mile of sites of pyrethroid applications during the third trimester of pregnancy.

“Small children and the environment are sacrificial pawns in the profit schemes of this disgustingly anti-science administration,” said Donley. “We should be following the research and increasing protections from harmful pesticides, not ditching them at the request of a morally bankrupt industry.”

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In late October 2019, House Democrats adopted a resolution regarding the rules and procedures “for the public phase  of an impeachment inquiry into President Trump”. H. Res. 660 focusses on “how the impeachment inquiry will move forward against President Donald Trump”.

An impeachment motion against President Donald John Trump was introduced on July 12, 2017 in the US House of Representatives by Rep Brad Sherman (D-CA) and  Rep Al Green (D-TX).

The Article of Impeachment (H. Res. 438) against President Donald J. Trump points to “High Crimes and Misdemeanors”. 

According to Rep. Brad Sherman, “the Article is based on Article 1, dealing with “Obstruction of Justice,” which was passed by the Judiciary Committee on a bipartisan vote on July 27, 1974, regarding Richard M. Nixon.”

Sherman accuses Trump of “obstructing investigations into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election”.

Article H RES. 438 calls for the removal of President Trump from office.

According to reports: “The effort is likely to stall in the Republican-controlled congress…” (Al Jazeera).

There is no indication at this stage that Republicans would support an Impeachment procedure.

Read Sherman’s statement below, he refers to a resolution which will put Mike Pence into the White House.

“I served with Mike Pence in Congress for twelve years and I disagree with him on just about everything. I never dreamed I would author a measure that would put him in the White House” 

The “Russia Probe” is central to the Impeachment procedure: one does not go without the other.

Moreover, reference to the Donald Trump Jr. encounter with a Russian lawyer (which borders on ridicule) is being used as a justification. According to Rep.Sherman: “Recent disclosures by Donald Trump Jr. indicate that Trump’s campaign was eager to receive assistance from Russia.” The NYT candidly states without a shred of evidence that the Russian lawyer is “connected the Russian government” intimating that she is a stooge of the Kremlin.

Below is the statement of  Rep. Brad Sherman

“I am pleased that Congressman Al Green (D-TX) has joined me in filing Articles of Impeachment against Donald J. Trump. We now begin the effort to force the House Judiciary Committee to hold hearings on Obstruction of Justice and Russian interference in our election.

Recent disclosures by Donald Trump Jr. indicate that Trump’s campaign was eager to receive assistance from Russia. It now seems likely that the President had something to hide when he tried to curtail the investigation of National Security Advisor Michael Flynn and the wider Russian probe. I believe his conversations with, and subsequent firing of, FBI Director James Comey constitute Obstruction of Justice.

Every day Democrats, Republicans, and the entire world are shocked by the latest example of America’s amateur President. Ignorance accompanied by a refusal to learn. Lack of impulse control, accompanied by a refusal to have his staff control his impulses. We’re no longer surprised by any action, no matter how far below the dignity of the office—and no matter how dangerous to the country.

But the Constitution does not provide for the removal of a President for impulsive, ignorant incompetence. It does provide for the removal of a President for High Crimes and Misdemeanors.

As the investigations move forward, additional evidence supporting additional Articles of Impeachment may emerge. However, as to Obstruction of Justice, as defined in 18 U.S.C. § 1512 (b)(3), the evidence we have is sufficient to move forward now. And the national interest requires that we do so.

Introducing Articles of Impeachment will have two possible outcomes. First, I have slight hope it will inspire an ‘intervention’ in the White House. If Impeachment is real, if they actually see Articles, perhaps we will see incompetency replaced by care. Perhaps uncontrollable impulses will be controlled. And perhaps the danger our nation faces will be ameliorated.

Second, and more likely, filing Articles of Impeachment is the first step on a very long road. But if the impulsive incompetency continues, then eventually—many, many months from now—Republicans will join the impeachment effort.

I author Articles of Impeachment not to change our national policy. I served with Mike Pence in Congress for twelve years and I disagree with him on just about everything. I never dreamed I would author a measure that would put him in the White House. I am introducing Articles of Impeachment to begin a long process to protect our country from abuse of power, obstruction of justice, and impulsive, ignorant incompetence.”​ Brad Sherman (emphasis added)

The Article (H. R. 438) concludes with the following statement:

Full text of  Article of Impeachment (H. Res. 438)

For further details click Rep. Brad Sherman’s Congressional website

For a generation, American political reformers have been obsessed with the idea of ‘money in politics.’ According to reformers, political organizations that bundle money and donate it to campaigns are corrupting politicians. So, the theories go, campaign finance reform would ‘get the money’ out of politics so politicians wouldn’t be bound to special interest groups and be free to vote their conscience. In this case, politicians voting their conscience coincides with the wish list of campaign finance reformers who are almost universally on the political left.

For all the talk of campaign finance reform, perhaps the biggest flaw in American politics today is the primary system by which the two parties select their candidates. The party primary campaigns unofficially begin after the midterm elections, more than a year before the New Hampshire Primary and Iowa Caucus. The system is easily manipulated by a candidate with money and organization. Such a candidate can portray themselves as the frontrunner and the inevitable nominee. George W. Bush, the GOP establishment’s pick in 2000, did this.

Hillary Clinton did so as well, though Obama beat her anyway in 2008 and Sanders would have won the nomination if the Democratic National Committee hadn’t rigged the system in Clinton’s favor.

But this year, after nearly a year of campaigning, there is no obvious Democrat frontrunner. According to the latest Morning Consult Poll, taken the first week of November, former Vice President Joe Biden leads the race at 31%. Composed of African American voters and what moderates remain among the Democrat party base, Biden’s support is broad but not deep. Trailing Biden are Socialist Bernie Sanders (20%), Senator Elizabeth Warren (18%), Mayor Pete Buttigieg (8%), and Senator Kamala Harris (6%). None of these candidates has appeal wide enough to lock up the Democrat Party nomination. Were they operating in the Westminster system, the Democrats would have a hung parliament.

Which brings us to Hillary Clinton. Since her husband announced his candidacy in 1991, Hillary has plotted her own path to the White House. Hillary took her first step in 2000 with her successful senate bid. She easily won reelection in 2006.  In 2008, Hillary was the Democrat frontrunner. No one could stop her, except for the junior senator from Illinois, Barrack Obama. Hillary had no answer for Obama’s youth, charisma, and biography, and she lost the close and bitterly contested nomination. At least Hillary was able to pad her resume by serving as Obama’s Secretary of State. In 2016, no serious potential candidate dared enter the race, the field was cleared and the process rigged by DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz. Even so, insurgent candidate Bernie Sanders almost beat Hillary. Then came Donald Trump and Hillary went home at the end of another bruising campaign.

Usually when losing an election, the nominee returns to his old political job, like Senator John Kerry in 2004 or John McCain in 2008, or retire from politics altogether, as Jimmy Carter did after 1980 and Walter Mondale after 1984. Not Hillary. Since 2016, Hillary Clinton has remained very much in the public eye. She published What Happened, her self-serving and whiney account of the 2016 campaign in which she blames everyone for her loss but herself. Hillary’s long list of grievances includes the press, the FBI, even the Russians. She has since toured the United States and the west slamming President Trump and repeating her conspiracy theories about Russian collusion, refusing to move on or let go.

In fact, even at this late date, Hillary refuses to rule out a third presidential run. In an interview with the BBC this week, Clinton claimed that ‘a lot of people are pushing hard’ for her to run again. She also said, “I, as I say never, never, never say never. I will certainly tell you. I’m under enormous pressure from many, many, many people to think about it.’ Given her two failed presidential bids, this is unlikely. But, it is very likely that Hillary wants to run for president a third time.

And why not? Hillary won the popular vote in 2016. In the eyes of the Democrat party faithful Trump is an illegitimate president and Hillary should sit in the Oval Office. Besides, the Democrat Party field is weak. Elizabeth Warren is a product of the elite, a college professor with a lot of ideas that appeal to affluent, coastal liberals. Bernie Sanders is an elderly socialist. Joe Biden is a relic. None of these candidates appeal to Midwestern working class voters that voted for Trump and gave him the election.

Hillary has been part of American political life longer than Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

Everything she’s touched from the beginning of her political career to the end she has mess up, Arkansas land development, healthcare reform, Benghazi and Libya.

Yet still she refuses to retire quietly and enjoy her fortune. We’ll never be rid of her.

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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.

William Stroock is an author of military fiction.

Former British military officer James Le Mesurier suspected of ties to MI6 and the co-founder of the so-called “White Helmets” front was found dead this month in Turkey from an apparent fall from his residence.

The Western media wasted no time linking it to claims Russia had recently made that he was an intelligence asset involved in sowing instability worldwide – attempting to portray Russia as somehow likely responsible for Le Mesurier’s death.

Not a Rescue Org 

In actuality, the “White Helmets” were an extension of Western armed and funded terrorist organizations operating in Syria with the “White Helmets” specifically serving the purpose of war propagandists thinly disguised as “rescue workers” or local “civil defense.”

They found themselves repeatedly at the center of alleged chemical attacks the US accused the Syrian government of – indicating their likely involvement in carrying out false flag operations – many of which may have actually killed real people.

The deceptive manner in which the “White Helmets” operated has already been extensively exposed and their credibility rendered moot – not least because the terrorist organizations they augment are nearing extinction – surrounded in Syria’s northern governorate of Idlib.

Cui Bono? 

Le Mesurier’s continued existence as the co-founder of a now irrelevant propaganda arm to a defeated proxy army makes no difference to Syria and its Russian allies.

Le Mesurier’s continued existence – however – did pose the perpetual threat of the knowledge he had of covert US operations in Syria including the use of the “White Helmets” in staging chemical attacks and other atrocities and their role in manipulating international organizations like the OPCW eventually becoming public.

It is obvious that his death – whatever the cause – benefited the US and UK which backed him and his faux humanitarian relief organization – meaning that whatever secrets he harbored are now taken to the grave with him.

Work for Horrible People, Meet a Horrible End

Finally, let Le Mesurier’s end serve as a warning for those serving the agenda of global aggressors particularly in the targeting and destruction of a sovereign nation like Syria.

Even upon death, the establishment that bank rolled him and propped him up used his corpse as a prop in their public relations campaigns. The truth of his death may never emerge. With the possibility that he was terminated by his own employers – pause for thought will hopefully reverberate across the peripheral operations created to prop up and promote the “White Helmets.”

Anyone who finds themselves in possession of facts and willfully distorts them for profit in the employ of nations willing to lie to promote death and destruction on a global scale cannot possibly believe they are ever safe or will perpetually be more useful alive than dead.

Regardless of the actual cause of Le Mesurier’s death, he was  certainly useful to the system that created him and whom he served. We must also acknowledge that he had accumulated 8 years of top secrets which were liable to spill out.

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Tony Cartalucci is a Bangkok-based geopolitical researcher and writer. He writes on his blog site, Land Destroyer Report, where this article was originally published. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Time and again, Russia stressed that it supports the sovereign independence and territorial integrity of other countries.

On Monday, its Foreign Ministry denounced the toppling of Bolivia’s Evo Morales, a statement saying:

“We are alarmed by the dramatic developments in Bolivia, where a wave of violence, unleashed by the opposition, has prevented President Evo Morales from completing his tenure of office,” adding:

“We are deeply concerned that the government’s readiness to search for constructive dialogue-based solutions, voiced during the domestic political crisis in the country, was wiped out by developments typical of a well-orchestrated coup d’etat.”

Russia clearly knows it was made in the USA, Trump regime hardliners OKing it, CIA dirty hands all over events leading up to Bolivia’s October presidential election and its violent aftermath, toppling democratically elected Evo Morales, forcing him to resign and seek refuge in Mexico to avoid assassination.

Russia’s Foreign Ministry said it supports “guaranteeing the rights of all (Bolivian) citizens and ensuring the socioeconomic development of that country.”

Time and again, Moscow voiced strong opposition to interference in the internal affairs of sovereign states by foreign powers — clearly what happened in Bolivia.

CIA dirty hands orchestrated the coup, co-opting key military and police officials to abandon support for Morales, conspiring with Bolivian fascists to force democratically reelected Evo Morales from office, replacing him with a self-declared, unelected, political nobody, coup d’etat president.

Bolivia’s usurpation regime has no legitimacy, unconstitutionally installed by brute force.

There was no constitutionally required legislative quorum in session when Jeanine Anez swore herself into power — illegally usurping it.

She got scant support in Bolivian legislative elections. Most people in the country knew nothing about her. Morales’ Movement for Socialism MPs were warned not to show up for the parliamentary usurpation, unconstitutionally anointing her president.

Her power grab with support from the US, Bolivia’s military, and fascist politicians is what despotism is all about.

Despite calling what happened in the country a coup d’etat, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov said the following on Thursday:

“(I)t is clear that (Anez) will be perceived as the head of Bolivia until a new president is elected, and this is the internal affair of Bolivia.”

Moscow has commercial interests in the country. In March 2016, it signed an agreement with Morales’ government to build a $300 million nuclear center in El Alto, a city near La Paz, Bolivia’s political capital.

Reportedly it’ll include a research reactor, a cyclotron for radio-pharmaceuticals, and a multi-purpose gamma irradiation plant, along with facilities for research in energy, medicine, and agriculture.

At the time, Morales said

“(o)ur brother President Vladimir Putin has promised me the transfer of Russian know-how and technology.”

Russian energy giant Gazprom invested around $500 million in Bolivian oil and gas projects.

In February, Bolivian firm YLB signed a lithium industrialization agreement with China’s Xinjiang Tbea Group, a joint “financing and implementation venture.”

Uyuni, Bolivia salt flats reportedly have one of the world’s largest lithium reserves, an estimated nine millions tons.

According to mining.com, Bolivia has “around 25% of the known (lithium) reserves, but so far it has done nothing with it.” Other estimates indicate a greater percentage of world reserves in the country, an invaluable resource if developed.

The mineral has numerous industrial applications (including batteries), along with its use in producing a mood-stabilizing drug in treating bipolar disorders.

The coup toppling Morales came days after he cancelled a lithium joint agreement with Germany’s ACI Systems Alemania (ACISA)  to develop electric batteries — reportedly because of unfairly low royalities.

At the time, his government said it “invested huge amounts to ensure that lithium is processed within the country to export it only in value-added form, such as in batteries.”

With Trump regime-supported anti-Morales hardliners in charge, Bolivian agreements with Russia and China could be scrapped in favor of US business interests.

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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.

Commanders of Bolivia’s military and police helped plot the coup and guaranteed its success. They were previously educated for insurrection in the US government’s notorious School of the Americas and FBI training programs.

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The United States played a key role in the military coup in Bolivia, and in a direct way that has scarcely been acknowledged in accounts of the events that forced the country’s elected president, Evo Morales, to resign on November 10.

Just prior to Morales’ resignation, the commander of Bolivia’s armed forces Williams Kaliman “suggested” that the president step down. A day earlier, sectors of the country’s police force had rebelled.

Though Kaliman appears to have feigned loyalty to Morales over the years, his true colors showed as soon as the moment of opportunity arrived. He was not only an actor in the coup, he had his own history in Washington, where he had briefly served as the military attaché of Bolivia’s embassy in the US capital.

Kaliman sat at the top of a military and police command structure that has been substantially cultivated by the US through WHINSEC, the military training school in Fort Benning, Georgia known in the past as the School of the Americas. Kaliman himself attended a course called “Comando y Estado Mayor” at the SOA in 2003.

At least six of the key coup plotters are alumni of the infamous School of the Americas, while Kaliman and another figure served in the past as Bolivia’s military and police attachés in Washington.

Within the Bolivian police, top commanders who helped launch the coup have passed through the APALA police exchange program. Working out of Washington DC, APALA functions to build relations between U.S. authorities and police officials from Latin American states. Despite its influence, or perhaps because of it, the program maintains little public presence. Its staff was impossible for this researcher to reach by phone.

It is common for governments to assign a small number of individuals to work at their country’s embassies abroad as military or police attachés. The late Philip Agee, a one-time CIA case officer who became the agency’s first whistleblower, explained in his 1975 tell-all book how US intelligence traditionally relied on the recruitment of foreign military and police officers, including embassy attachés, as critical assets in regime change and counter-insurgency operations.

As I found from the more than 11,000 FOIA documents I obtained while writing my book on the paramilitary campaign waged in the lead up to the February 2004 ouster of Haiti’s elected government and the post-coup repression, U.S. officials worked for years to ingratiate themselves and establish connections with Haitian police, army, and ex-army officials. These connections as well as the recruitment and information gathering efforts eventually paid off.

In Bolivia, too, the role of military and police officials trained by the US was pivotal in forcing regime change. U.S. government agencies such as USAID have openly financed anti-Morales groups in the country for many years. But the way that the country’s security forces were used as a Trojan Horse by US intelligence services is less understood. With Morales’s forced departure, however, it became impossible to deny how critical a factor this was.

As this investigation will establish, the coup plot could not have succeeded without the enthusiastic approval of the country’s military and police commanders. And their consent was influenced heavily by the US, where so many were groomed and educated for insurrection.

Leaked audio exposes School of the Americas grads plotting a coup

Leaked audio reported on Bolivian news website La Época, and by elperiodicocr.com and a range of national media outlets, reveals that covert coordination took place between current and former Bolivian police, military, and opposition leaders in bringing about the coup.

Los audios de la conspiración del #GolpeDeEstadoEnBolivia. Por @elperiodicocr https://t.co/lw2qjpqsmm pic.twitter.com/P4M4dbIw2W

— Rompeviento TV (@RompevientoTV) November 10, 2019

The leaked audio recordings show that former Cochabamba mayor and former presidential candidate Manfred Reyes Villa played a central role in the plot. Reyes happens to be an alumnusof WHINSEC (formerly known as the School of the Americas), who currently resides in the United States.

The other four who are introduced or introduce themselves by name in the leaked audio are General Remberto Siles Vasquez (audio 12); Colonel Julio César Maldonado Leoni (audio 8 and 9); Colonel Oscar Pacello Aguirre (audio 14), and Colonel Teobaldo Cardozo Guevara (audio 10). All four of these ex-military officials attended the SOA.

Cardozo Guevara, in particular, boasts about his connections amongst active officers.

The identities of these individuals are confirmed by cross-checking the data of the School of Americas Watch lists of alumni with Facebook and local Bolivian news articles and the leaked audio recordings.

The School of the Americas is a notorious site of education for Latin American coup plotters dating back to the height of the Cold War. Brutal regime change and reprisal operations from Haiti to Honduras have been carried out by SOA graduates, and some of the most bloodstained juntas in the region’s history have been run by the school’s alumni.

For many years, anti-war protesters have staged a protest vigil outside the SOA’s headquarters at the Fort Benning military base near Columbus, Georgia.

A protest vigil outside the School of the Americas at Fort Benning

The leader of those protests, Father Roy Bourgeois, has described the SOA as “a combat school. ” He continued:

“Most of the courses revolve around what they call counter insurgency warfare. Who are the insurgents? We have to ask that question. They are the poor. They are the people in Latin America who call for reform. They are the landless peasants who are hungry. They are health care workers, human rights advocates, labor organizers, they become the insurgents, they’re seen as ‘el enemigo’ — the enemy. And they are those who become the targets of those who learn their lessons at the School of the Americas.”

Bourgeois was deported from Bolivia in 1977 when he spoke out against the human rights abuses of Gen. Hugo Banzer, a right-wing dictator who rose to power through a US-backed coup that toppled a leftist government. History repeats itself today as Banzer’s ideological heirs drive another socialist leader from power through time-tested destabilization tactics.

In the recently leaked audio recordings, coup plotters discuss plans to set ablaze government buildings, get pro-business unions in the country to carry out strikes, as well as other tactics – all straight out of the CIA playbook.

Also alluded to in the leaked audio is that the coup attempt would be supported by various evangelical groups as well as by Colombian President Iván Duque, ex-Colombian President Álvaro Uribe, and most notably Brazil’s neo-fascist President Jair Bolsonaro.

The plotters also mention the strong support of ultra-right U.S. senators Ted Cruz, Bob Menéndez, and Marco Rubio, who is said to have the ear of President Donald Trump when it comes to U.S. foreign policy in the Western Hemisphere.

Military and Police Attachées in DC: A breeding ground for U.S. intelligence networking

As tensions built over recent weeks, it was the commanding general of the Bolivian Police, Vladimir Yuri Calderón Mariscal, who broke the stalemate by leading large parts of the police force to revolt on November 9th, just a day prior to the resignation of Morales.

Then-Col. Vladimir Yuri Calderón Mariscal (third on the left) with other APALA officials in 2018.

In 2018 Calderón Mariscal served as President of Police Attachés of Latin America in the United States of America (APALA), which is based in Washington, DC.

APALA has been described as a “multidimensional security” program that works to build relations and connections between U.S. authorities and police officials from many of the Organization of American States members.

At APALA’s founding in 2012, then-OAS Secretary General José Miguel Insulza (center in photo below) met with the group’s leadership.

Today APALA hosts police attachés from 10 countries: Brazil, Bolivia, Colombia, Chile, Ecuador, El Salvador, Panama, Peru, Mexico and the Dominican Republic.

According to its Facebook page, the group “was created, with the objective of generating, promoting, and strengthening ties of solidarity, friendship, cooperation and support between the members of the group and their families through social, cultural activities, which allow to generate integral development.”

It claims to be facilitating the “integration and exchange of the police institutions that comprise it, in addition to promoting the exchange of successful experiences developed by the different police forces of Latin America.”

Photo of Calderón Mariscal (center-right) at the FBI training academy that is 36 miles outside of Washington, DC

A mysterious organization, APALA has shut down its website ApalaUSA.com and does not answer phone calls. It functions in some capacity as an arm of U.S. federal agencies as its social media platform and now defunct website showcase numerous meetings and photos of APALA officials and participants alongside FBI, DEA, ICE, and other U.S. officials.

As Philip Agee explained in his book Inside the Company, the CIA often uses other U.S. government agencies such as the FBI and USAID, as well as various front-organizations, to carry out its clandestine activities without leaving fingerprints.

Below: APALA participants at the FBI headquarters in Washington DC

Visita de trabajo de @apalausa a @FBI En las instalaciones del J. Edgar Hoover, en Washington, D.C. pic.twitter.com/gaDZrjHaHB

— APALA (@apalausa) November 16, 2017

One of APALA’s key local members is Alex Zunca, a police officer in Baltimore who is the director of international affairs for the Hispanic National Law Enforcement Association, which is based in Washington, DC.

APALA’s street address listed on its now defunct website is the same address as the embassy of Mexico in Washington, DC. The group was apparently run out of the Mexican Embassy, at least between 2017 and 2018 when its website was active during the administration of the US friendly former Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto.

Interestingly, a colleague of Calderón Mariscal’s and also a former President of APALA is an associate minister of the Federal Police of Mexico named Nicolás González Perrin.

Below, he can be seen seated beside a Mexican national flag and an FBI hat.

In a 2017 interview with the Washington Hispanic, a DC-based Spanish language newspaper, González Perrin declared

“that APALA holds meetings, permanently, with the most significant federal agencies in the United States, ‘from INTERPOL to DEA, ICE and the FBI, who work with us, based on mutual needs.’”

Another important APALA participant is Hector Ivan Mejia Velasquez, the former General Commissioner of Honduras’s National Police, who has led brutal operations against protesters in his own country, and regularly posts anti-leftist screeds on social media.

En la @EmbamexEUA primera reunión anual de @apalausa contamos con la presencia de @FBI @ICEgov @CustomsBorder @DEAHQ @ATFHQ. Juntos construimos un mundo más seguro 👍👮🏻‍♂️🌍. pic.twitter.com/S3CZCMnJXt

— APALA (@apalausa) January 12, 2018

Calls to APALA’s public contact, whose name appears to be Alvaro Andrade, went unanswered. My calls to his number, which is listed as being located in Rockville, Maryland, went straight to a voicemail stating that it was restricted. The webmaster of APALA’s former website is Mario Ruiz Madrigal, a system’s engineer in Mexico.

APALA, whose Facebook page Andrade appears to operate, has worked with other Bolivian police officials as well, such as Bolivian police attaché Heroldina Henao.

#apala Reconocimiento a la Agregada Policial Bolivia Heroldina Henao por parte del Presidente NICOLÁS G. PERRIN. pic.twitter.com/DvUbRNTtA1

— APALA (@apalausa) November 30, 2016

The other key official that helped to bring about the November 10th coup is General Williams Kaliman (image below), the current head of Bolivia’s military. He served as a military attaché for his country’s embassy in Washington, D.C. in 2013. A decade prior, he had taken part in training at the SOA.  Little is known about his time in the United States.

At different times both Kaliman and Calderón Mariscal appear to have either been loyal to or feigned loyalty to the constitutional government, but ultimately split from it or were convinced over time to carry out a military putsch.

For his part, deposed President Morales has claimed that a member of his own security team was offered $50,000 to betray him.

The November 10 coup d’état did not materialize out of thin air. Events that have transpired inside Bolivia are intimately connected to U.S. efforts to influence military and police forces abroad through programs like SOA and APALA.

While U.S. President Donald Trump cheers on a “a significant moment for democracy in the Western Hemisphere,” Bolivians are suddenly under the control of a de facto military regime.

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Jeb Sprague is a Research Associate at the University of California, Riverside and previously taught at UVA and UCSB. He is the author of “Globalizing the Caribbean: Political economy, social change, and the transnational capitalist class” (Temple University Press, 2019), “Paramilitarism and the assault on democracy in Haiti” (Monthly Review Press, 2012), and is the editor of “Globalization and transnational capitalism in Asia and Oceania”(Routledge, 2016). He is a co-founder of the Network for the Critical Studies of Global Capitalism. Visit his blog at: http://jebsprague.blogspot.com

All images in this article are from The Grayzone unless otherwise stated

Bolivia’s legitimate President, Evo Morales now in exile in Mexico said that the “The OAS is in the service of the North American empire” and that he “could not understand” how his military leaders betrayed Bolivia. “That confirms that my great crime is to be indigenous. It’s a class problem” rt.com reported.

Regardless, Morales still has the support of the majority of the Bolivian people. Morales’ made history as Bolivia’s first indigenous president who was a poor farmer and without a college education.

“The exiled president said that after freeing itself from the International Monetary Fund, the Bolivian economy was doing better” the report said.

Historically speaking, many Bolivian presidents before Morales were aligned with Washington’s interests and were oppressive against the poor and indigenous peoples. They had murdered workers who were on strike and they even sold off Bolivia’s mineral wealth to U.S. and European corporations. The Bolivian people remained poor for decades under right-wing dictatorships who joined forces with the U.S. and even militarized coca producing regions where Morales experienced firsthand tyranny according to an Al Jazeera story from 2014 on Evo Morales’s rise to power titled ‘Bolivia: Has Evo Morales Proven His Critics Wrong? “One event vividly stuck out for Morales after moving to the coca-growing region: In Chipiriri, a cocalero (coca farmer) was killed by the military for refusing to plead guilty to trafficking drugs.

“Without any contemplation, [the military] covered his body in gasoline and, in front of many people, burned him alive” Morales said.

However, the story also mentioned Morales’s success

“The GDP has steadily grown from 2009 to 2013, and the UN reports that Bolivia has the highest rate of poverty reduction in Latin America, with a 32.2 percent drop from 2000 to 2012. Employment rates and wages have also gone up, with a notable 20 percent minimum wage raise last year.” Morales’s economic plan turned out to be successful as stated by Al Jazeera “Morales approach of putting various industries under state control, from mines to telecommunications companies, has generated enormous funds for the government, which it is using for infrastructure – only 10 percent of the country’s roads are paved – and social programmes to lift children, mothers and the elderly out of poverty. Thanks to a successful literacy programme, UNESCO has declared the country free of illiteracy.”

When Morales was declared the winner in the October 20th elections, violent right-wing protests soon followed. The leaders of the opposition led by mostly fascist elements of Bolivian society including Luis Fernando Camacho who Max Blumenthal and Ben Norton of The Grayzone described him as “a powerful multi-millionaire named in the Panama Papers, and an ultra-conservative Christian fundamentalist groomed by a fascist paramilitary notorious for its racist violence, with a base in Bolivia’s wealthy separatist region of Santa Cruz.”

No surprise that Camacho has the support of the right-wing governments of Colombia and Brazil along with the Venezuelan opposition leaders who are still trying to overthrow Nicolas Maduro after their recent failures to do so. The violent protests that has erupted against the Morales government has led to extreme violence resulting in deaths, beatings of politicians which forced the resignation of Morales and his vice president García Lineran and others in his administration on the advice of army officials and police chiefs who were bought and paid for by Washington.

The Morales government called it a coup by U.S. backed opposition forces. Morales did propose dialogue with the opposition parties, but was flatly rejected. It was reported that Morales even accepted Washington’s lackey, the ‘Organization of American States’(OAS) advice to set up new elections, but was ignored.

The violent protests were directed at leaders of the Movement To Socialism (MAS) which is Morales’s political party and journalists who were beaten by right-wing mobs.

The BBC reported that the mayor of a small town in Bolivia was dragged from her home and then they covered her in red paint and cut her hair.

“Patricia Arce of the governing Mas party was handed over to police in Vinto after several hours. It is the latest in a series of violent clashes between government supporters and opponents in the wake of controversial presidential elections” the report said. In wake of the chaos, Evo Morales and others in his administration decided to resign to end further bloodshed. On Friday Morales said that “I would like to tell you, brothers and sisters, as well as entire Bolivia and the whole world. I will not give up (the presidency). We have been elected by the people, and we respect the constitution.”

Trump Claims That Latin America Is On Its Way to Democracy, Prosperity and Freedom 

On Monday, President Trump praised the coup as a “significant moment for democracy.” Trump said that

“after nearly 14 years and his recent attempt to override the Bolivian constitution and the will of the people, Morales’s departure preserves democracy and paves the way for the Bolivian people to have their voices heard.”

Trump also threatened Venezuela and Nicaragua because it will “send a strong signal to the illegitimate regimes in Venezuela and Nicaragua that democracy and the will of the people will always prevail. We are now one step closer to a completely democratic, prosperous, and free Western Hemisphere.” Washington supports its current right-wing puppets in Ecuador with Lenin Moreno and Chile’s own billionaire President, Sebastián Piñera. Perhaps, Trump should ask the Ecuadorian and Chilean people about democracy and economic prosperity under those two fascist governments. Do you remember what Trump said when he was a presidential candidate and then, president-elect in December 2016? He said that

“We will stop racing to topple foreign regimes that we know nothing about, that we shouldn’t be involved with.”

Trump’s attitude was obviously going to change given the fact that the Pentagon and Washington’s deep state insiders are in charge of Trump’s foreign policy. Recently, The Trump regime tried to topple Nicolas Maduro of Venezuela, but failed. Now Trump is on board with the deep state and the right-wing opposition in Latin America to re-establish U.S. dominance by carrying out the same strategy of regime change in Venezuela, Nicaragua and others despite the rising pink tide with Lula Da Silva of Brazil who was just released from prison. Lula was sent to prison after a July 2017 conviction for allegedly accepting $1.2 million bribe from a Brazilian construction company called OAS for helping them obtain lucrative government contracts. Lula Da Silva has always denied the false allegations. However, Washington’s influence along the wealthy right-wing oligarchs played a role in Lula’s imprisonment. One of Lula’s attorneys at the time, Valeska Texeira Zanin Martin said that

“This politically motivated judgement attacks Brazil’s rule of law, democracy and Lula’s basic human rights. It is of immense concern to the Brazilian people and to the international community.”

Lula along with leaders from Argentina, Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela have condemned the coup in support of Morales.

Why Washington Wanted Evo Morales Out of Power

Morales was targeted for a number of reasons. Back in 2013, Morales kicked out one of Washington’s main tool for regime change operations ‘USAID’. on May 1st, 2013 Reuters’ reported that

“Morales said he was kicking out the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) as a “protest” after U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry recently referred to Latin America as Washington’s “backyard.” Morales had said that “today we’re only going to nationalize … the dignity of the Bolivian people,” Morales said. “USAID is leaving Bolivia.”

That was a blow to Washington’s agenda in its “backyard.” However, the CIA influenced National Endowment for Democracy (NED) which it has funded Right-wing causes with millions of dollars of grants since Morales was elected.

Morales is also a critic of U.S. foreign policy in general no matter who is the President of the United States. Although Washington and its military-industrial complex including the CIA had planned to remove Morales from power before Trump was in office, however, Trump was criticized at the U.N. security meeting in 2018 when Morales said that

“I would like to say to you, frankly and openly here, that in no way is the United States interested in upholding democracy’’ and that the U.S. under the Trump regime “could not care less about human rights or justice.” Morales added that “If this were the case, it would have signed the international conventions and treaties that have protected human rights,” he said. “It would not have threatened the investigation mechanism of the International Criminal Court, nor would it promote the use of torture, nor would it have walked away from the Human Rights Council. And nor would it have separated migrant children from their families, nor put them in cages.’’

Sensitive Trump did not like that, his alter-ego was crushed at the U.N. security council meeting and that’s why he praised the coup.

As For Bolivia’s Natural Resources, The American Establishment Wants It All

It’s well known that Bolivia has the largest reserves of lithium in the world. As reported by Bloomberg News last year in ‘Bolivia’s Almost Impossible Lithium Dream’ based on Bolivia’s lithium reserves:

Demand for lithium is expected to more than double in 2025. The soft, light mineral is mined mainly in Austria, Chile and Argentina. Bolivia has plenty-9 million tons that have never been mined commercially, the second-largest amount in the world-but until now, there’s no practical way to mine and sell it

One major economic development for the Bolivian government is when they chose Xinjiang TBEA Group Co Ltd,  a Chinese consortium for its lithium production projects which is also a threat to U.S. economic interests and its waning dominance in Latin America. As reported by Reuters earlier this year “China’s Xinjiang TBEA Group Co Ltd will hold a 49 percent stake in a planned joint venture with Bolivia’s state lithium company YLB, the Bolivian firm said.” As for China and Bolivia working together to produce lithium in America’s Backyard? Both Democrats and the Republicans including the neocons who are in both parties in Washington will not tolerate such a joint venture especially when China is involved.  The report said that

“Bolivia estimates that development of the projects will cost at least $2.3 billion. The Chinese firm will provide initial investment and YLB will pay its share with future lithium production, YLB’s executive manager Juan Carlos Montenegro said by phone.” Morales was quoted as saying “Why China? he continued “There’s a guaranteed market in China for battery production,” Bolivian President Evo Morales said in broadcast comments at a signing ceremony in the highland city of Oruro. China, the biggest global consumer of lithium, will need 800,000 tonnes of the metal per year by 2025 to support its booming electric car industry, China’s Ambassador to Bolivia Liang Yu said at the same event, hailing the deal as “historic.” Lithium is a key component in batteries that will power the next generation of new electric cars.

From the time that Evo Morales was elected, Washington had plans to oust him especially when Morales joined forces with the late Hugo Chavez of Venezuela and other anti-US left-wing governments that were rising throughout Latin America. The Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported that Morales had tweeted “It pains me to leave the country for political reasons, but I will always be watching. I will be back soon with more strength and energy.” With Lula coming back to politics and with Venezuela, Mexico, Nicaragua, Cuba and now Argentina with the President-elect Alberto Fernández who was the Chief of the Cabinet of Ministers during Néstor Kirchner’s presidency and for a short time for Cristina Fernández de Kirchner’s presidency. It’s starting to look like the fight for Latin America to free itself from the claws of the American Empire, has just begun.

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The Bolivian tragedy teaches us various lessons that our people and the peoples social and political forces must learn from and record in our consciences forever. Here is a brief list, jotted down quickly, and as a prelude to a more detailed analysis in the future.

First: despite the exemplary economic administration of the Government of Evo which guaranteed growth, redistribution, flow of investments and improvements in the macro and micro economic indicators, the right-wing and imperialist forces will never accept a government that does not lend itself to the services of its interests.

Second: it is necessary to study the manuals published by diverse agencies of the US and it’s spokespersons disguised as academics and journalists in order to perceive, in time, the warning signs of the offensive.

These texts invariably highlight the necessity of destroying the reputation of the popular leader, what in specialized slang they call “character assassination”, classifying him as a thief, corrupt, dictator and ignorant.

This is the task entrusted to social communicators, self-proclaimed “independent journalists,” that in favor of their almost monopoly control of the media, hammer this defamation into the mind of the population, accompanied by, in the case we are dealing with, messages of hate directed against the Indigenous people and the poor in general.

Third: once the prior is completed, the time comes for the political leadership and the economic elite to demand “a change,” to put an end to “the dictatorship” of Evo that, as the disgraceful Vargas Llosa wrote a few days ago is “a demagogue that wants to eternalize his power”.

I bet he was toasting and drinking champagne in Madrid when he saw the images of the hoards of fascists looting, burning, chaining up journalists to a post, shaving the head of a female mayor and painting her red, and destroying the ballots of the last election, to carry out the mandate of Don Mario and to liberate Bolivia of an evil demagogue.

I mention him as an example because it is the immoral flag bearer of this vile attack, of this limitless felony that crucifies people’s leaders, destroys democracy and installs a reign of terror led by bands of hit men hired to punish a dignified people that had the audacity of wanting to be free.

Fourth: the “security forces” enter the scene. In this case we are talking about the institutions controlled by numerous agencies, military and civic, of the government of the United States.

They train them, arm them, do joint exercises and they educate them politically. I had the opportunity to witness this when, at the invitation of Evo, I inaugurated a course “Anti-imperialism” for officers of the three armed forces.

In this opportunity I was astonished by the degree of penetration of the most reactionary North American slogans inherited from the era of the Cold War and due to the undisguised irritation caused by the fact that an indigenous person would be president of the country.

What these “security forces” did was withdraw themselves from the scene and give free range for the uncontrolled actions of the fascist hoards -as they acted in Ukraine, in Libya, in Iraq, in Syria to overthrow, or try to do so in this last case, leaders that bother the empire- and as such intimidate the population, the militant sectors, and the figures of the government themselves.

So it’s a new socio-political concept: military coups “by omission”, allowing the reactionary groups, recruited and financed by the right, to impose their law. Once terror reigns and with the defenselessness of the government, the outcome was inevitable.

Fifth: The security and public order should never have been entrusted in Bolivia to institutions like the police and the army, colonized by imperialism and it’s lackeys of the local right-wing.

When the offensive was launched against Evo, he opted for a policy of appeasement and of not responding to the fascist provocations.

This served to embolden them and allow them to increase their bets: first, demand a second round run-off election; then, fraud and new elections; shortly after, elections but without Evo (like in Brazil without Lula).

Then, they demanded the resignation of Evo; finally, due to his reluctance to accept blackmail, they instilled terror with the complicity of police and military and to force Evo to resign. Straight from the manual, everything. Will we learn from these lessons?

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This article was first published in Spanish at Atilio Boron.com.ar.

South Korea has historically paid an unusually large percentage of the cost of keeping US forces there, and under pressure from President Trump, agreed earlier this year to a substantial increase, with South Korea agreeing to pay $924 million annually.

Since then, Trump had suggested a few times that he wanted more, and that South Korea could easily afford it. His new demand, however, shocked everyone on both sides as he is demanding over five times what South Korea is paying, $4.7 billion annually.

This is raising a lot of questions in South Korea about the viability of keeping the US around, but the bigger task is for US officials, who are trying to somehow justify a $4.7 billion price tag that seemingly came out of nowhere.

South Korea, after all, was paying a lot of the cost of US forces already, then agreed to pay more. It is going to take massive amounts of creative math to even argue that the US presence costs what Trump is now demanding. Early indications are that officials will try to argue that South Korea’s relative economic prosperity is because of the US presence and that the US deserves to take a cut.

But some officials are also worrying that this isn’t an isolated matter, and that what Trump is doing now in South Korea could be a bellwether for upcoming demands in Germany and Japan, other nations Trump has long been keen to get more money out of.

Though Trump seems to believe these nations have no choice but to pay up, they may ultimately decide the US troop presence simply isn’t affordable, and that other arrangements make more sense.

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Jason Ditz is news editor of Antiwar.com.

Featured image is from Antiwar.com

Evo Morales’ fourth term was over before it began. After winning the latest presidential election by over 600,000 votes, a flurry of violence on the part of the U.S.-backed opposition in Bolivia pressured Evo to step down. Evo’s home was vandalized and several party members of the Movement Toward Socialism (MAS) threatened with violence. The coup in Bolivia, which was solidified by recommendation from the military, is the latest of dozens of military coups spearheaded by the United States over the last century and a half. U.S. imperialism has viewed Latin America as its backyard since 1823 when it declared the “right to protect” the region in the Monroe Doctrine. It was at this time that the American Empire replaced the Spanish Empire as the foreign power responsible for keeping Latin America in a state of oppression, dependency, and poverty.

After over a century of U.S. imperial aggression, Evo Morales arose as one of the most revolutionary leaders of the movement for socialism in the 21^st century in Latin America—a movement that gained significant traction after the election of former Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez in 1998. MAS has been in power since 2006. The MAS has acted as a vehicle for workers and peasants to assert their dignity and self-determination. Trade union, indigenous, and women’s organizations have all played a major role in the implementation of social policy under Evo’s leadership. Economic growth in Bolivia has increased by an average of five percent per year, with many of the gains distributed to the indigenous populations formally dispossessed by centuries of colonial and neocolonial rule. Extreme poverty has been cut in half over the same period.

U.S. imperialism sought to dispose of Evo Morales and his indigenous-led movement even before it came to power. A FOIA request found that in 2002, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) had earmarked 97 million dollars to assist “regional autonomy” projects and right-wing opposition political parties in Bolivia. These funds helped develop a U.S.-aligned political infrastructure in Bolivia responsible for the coup. The USAID has acted as the political arm of the IMF, World Bank, CIA, and the Bolivian elites who do their bidding. One of the “protest leaders” of the right-wing opposition, Luis Fernando Camacho, is the son of the founder of Sergas, a gas corporation which owes over two million USD to the Bolivian state for tax evasion and fraud. Under U.S. leadership, petty capitalists such as the Camacho family have used NGOs funded by USAID to overthrow Evo and his nationalization decree that placed petroleum, electricity, telecommunications, and mining sectors under the direction of the state.

The coup being waged by the right-wing opposition has been labeled a “protest movement” by the U.S. corporate media. Coup plotters such as oligarch and former Bolivian President Carlos Mesa have alleged that their protests have come in response to election fraud. According to the Center for Economic and Policy Research, no evidence of irregularities or fraudulent activities were found in the election results. The baseless claim was used by the imperialist corporate media to provide cover for the violent military coup. MAS politicians have been forced to flee their homes, government buildings have been burned, and the Bolivian economy has been ground to a halt. The oligarchy in Bolivia is out for blood and it has the police and military on its side.

This is not the first time that the American Empire has waged a violent coup in Bolivia. The CIA provided military and technical support to right-wing military dictator René Barrientos. Barrientos took power by way of military coup in 1964. His brutal suppression of the peasant uprising to his rule led to the assassination of Che Guevara. In 1971, the U.S. backed right-wing general Hugo Bánzer Suárez with the help of the U.S. Air Force. Hundreds of leftists and political activists would be murdered by his regime.

The coup of Evo Morales comes as the left in Latin America was making a resurgence amid countless attempts by the American empire to destroy their social democratic project. In late October, Argentina elected Alberto Fernandez and Cristina Fernández de Kirchner as president and vice president, effectively ending the right-wing and neoliberal rule of Mauricio Macri. Tens of thousands took to the streets in Ecuador and forced Lenin Moreno to back away from an IMF deal which would have imposed harsh austerity measures on workers, students, and peasants. Lula Da Silva was released from prison to begin November. Lula’s freedom represented a concrete victory for a Brazilian left currently facing enormous challenges under the rule of former officer of the fascist military dictatorship, Jair Bolsonaro.

The American Empire has struck back against the left in Latin America with a devastating blow in Bolivia. There are many lessons to learn from the U.S.-backed coup. For one, too few in the belly of the U.S. empire are prepared to come to the defense of the peoples’ struggle in Latin America or anywhere else. The corporate media has placed a national blinder on the host of coups staged by the American empire in the last ten years alone, whether we are talking about the Clinton-Obama coup in Honduras in 2009 or the ouster of Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff in 2016.  Awash in white supremacist ideology and confined to the most unrestrained form of capitalism on the planet, workers and poor people in the U.S. have few avenues from which to express concrete solidarity with the Bolivian masses.

Another lesson of the U.S.-backed coup in Bolivia is that the so-called “end of history” proclaimed by the American empire after the fall of the Soviet Union was a complete and utter lie. The American empire is “capitalist to the bones” and its rulers believed the world would remain under its thumb indefinitely. Evo Morales and the rest of the socialist left in Latin America, while unable to completely expropriate the property and power of the oligarchs, were able to lead a mass movement toward the dignity and self-determination of the oppressed. This path required that the seeds of socialism were sewn into the fabric of governance throughout Latin America. Whether it’s called “Chavismo,” “21^st century socialism,” or the “pink tide,” this movement has empowered workers and peasants to unify across borders to alleviate poverty, underdevelopment, and imperial dependency.

Evo Morales was at the forefront of Latin America’s burgeoning internationalism. He was a huge supporter of Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA).  Furthermore, Evo challenged the American empire on the military front by advocating for the development of a continental military united in defending the sovereignty of Latin America. The so-called “end of history” was thus nothing more than an arrogant display of American imperial hubris that only clouded its true interests abroad. Socialism has remained the American empire’s public enemy number one even after the end of the so-called Cold War. The American Empire does not respect democracy or elections, just the profits of the few. Evo’s Bolivia is paying the price for placing the needs of poor Bolivians ahead of the riches of the elite.

Perhaps the most important lesson from the coup in Bolivia is that the struggle for socialism and self-determination is far from over. The oligarchs seeking to wrestle control of Bolivia and the entire continent back from the workers and peasants will stop at nothing to lynch Evo Morales. A warrant is out for his arrest even though he has committed no crime. The oligarchs want to bring the working class back into a state of total misery. While the ouster of Evo Morales is indeed a significant defeat, the socialist movement in Latin America will no doubt fight back. The people of Bolivia will fight back. Cuba, Nicaragua, Venezuela, and other allied nations will do everything they can to support the MAS through a difficult transition. It is important that the left living in the belly of the American empire find a way to do the same.

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Danny Haiphong is the co-author of the book American Exceptionalism and American Innocence: A People’s History of Fake News-From the Revolutionary War to the War on Terror.

Featured image is from RT/Youtube

¡Chile despertó!
¡Piñera, renuncia!
¡Piñera ya fue!
¡Que se vayan los milicos! 

Chile Has Woken Up!
Piñera Resign!
Piñera Has Gone!
Let the “Milicos” leave! (“Milicos” is a derogatory word for police and military personnel)

These are some the powerful chants that have echoed throughout the streets of cities small and large in Chile during mass protests that began in October 2019. Poor, working and oppressed people and students have united to demand dignity and human rights – in one word, an end to neo-liberalism in Chile.

This movement began following the October 6 announcement by the government of Chile that there would be a 30-peso transit system fare hike. This increase, which amounts to about $0.04 USD, was enough added pressure to an already tight household budget for many Chileans to bring millions of people out into the streets.

“It’s not about the 30 pesos. It’s about 30 years” 

For the first two weeks, protests were organized by high school students who called on people to refuse to pay transit fares. By October 18 the President of Chile, Sebastián Piñera had not responded to the students’ demands – and instead declared a State of Emergency and deployed the military and riot police to attack the students.

Despite the extreme repression and curfew, people in Chile continued to demonstrate. Then, on October 21, President Piñera, extended the State of Emergency, declaring,

“We are at war against a powerful enemy, who is willing to use violence without any limits.”

With these words, Piñera displayed outright contempt for the people of Chile, and his true colours as an ally of the U.S. and staunch supporter of neo-liberalism in Chile at the same time. By then, protests which had largely been contained to the capital city of Santiago, spread to other cities. At least 10,500 police and soldiers had been deployed by October 21 (BBC).

Protests against the government and neoliberalism have continued to grow and spread throughout the country and into the most oppressed sectors of society. The Indigenous Mapuche people of Chile, who make up about 10% of the population, have also organized and led protests demanding their self-determination and land rights.

Despite the severe repression, on October 25, 2019, 1.2 million people marched in Santiago, representing diverse sectors of Chilean society including social movements, Indigenous people, women, retired people, unions, students and more. The protests have continued since then, and the repression and cruelty of the Piñera government and his military and police goons has reached a severity not seen in Chile since the bloody Pinochet dictatorship ended over 30 years ago.

As reported by the National Institute of Human Rights (Instituto Nacional de Derechos Humanos – INDH), a nongovernmental organization in Chile, at least 177 people have faced severe eye injuries or lost their vision after being deliberately hit in the face by tear-gas canisters and rubber bullets. The same organization has also investigated possible torture sites, and documented cases of un-uniformed police or military throwing people into car trunks and vans. As of October 30, 2019, at least 19 people have been killed and over 1,200 people have been wounded. INDH has also filed 18 cases of sexual violence, including rape, and 92 cases of torture, against police and soldiers.

Why are People in Chile Protesting?

So, how is it that in the face of so much violence, people in Chile have continued their mass protests? What started with a transit fare increase has led to a revolt against Chile’s neoliberal government and institutions – and even demands to change the constitution. As Alan Vicencio, a 25-year-old call-center worker told Time Magazine, “The whole constitution makes me angry, the constitution allowed the privatization of every aspect of our lives and it’s being doing it for more than 30 years.”

Often hailed as “business friendly” and the prime example of the “success” of a free market system, Chile is the most unequal of the 36 countries in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). In 2017, the United Nations released a report “Unequal. Origins, changes and challenges in Chile’s social divide,” which explained how the richest 0.1% of the people in Chile control 19.5% of the wealth.

Privatization runs rampant in Chile through all sectors of life including water, roads, energy, healthcare and the pension system. Although some education is public, there is a great divide between the public and private school systems.

The minimum wage in Chile is not enough for a dignified life – especially as everything is privatized, making everyday life in Chile very expensive. For example, if someone in Chile made minimum wage the cost of transit to and from work would eat up 21% of their paycheque (NACLA.org).

Protestors in Chile are fighting for their dignity. They are fighting against inequality. They are fighting against police and military brutality. These are all symptoms of neoliberalism, which is the economic policy expression of the agenda of imperialism around the world.

One only must look towards to the United States’ relationship with the government of Chile to understand just how Chile has become such a good ally to the U.S. With regard to the violence against protestors, the White House stated that,

”The United States stands with Chile, an important ally, as it works to peacefully restore national order,” and “President Trump denounced foreign efforts to undermine Chilean institutions, democracy, or society.”

More broadly, as President Trump put it in a press conference a year ago,

“There are so many issues that we have to discuss because Chile and the United States are likeminded countries. We share the most important things, which are values — democracy, human rights, freedom. But Chile is really something special. If you look at what they’ve done, how far they’ve come. You look at how well run the country is.”

This is what is sounds like when a government in Latin America is following the orders of the U.S. government and their financial institutions.

Clearly, behind the repression in Chile is the support of the United States, but also the support of many of their imperialist allies, including the government of Canada. In fact, Prime Minister Trudeau had a phone call with Piñera in the midst of severe police and military repression and didn’t say one word to him – as reported by CTV News,

“A summary from the Prime Minister’s Office of Trudeau’s phone call with Pinera made no direct mention of the ongoing turmoil in Chile, a thriving country with which Canada has negotiated a free trade agreement.”

This is no surprise given that, as reported by the government of Canada, 14% of Canada’s mining assets are in Chile including copper, gold and silver mines. This includes Barrick Gold, which had to shut down a $429 million gold mine earlier this year due to severe human rights and environmental violations.

Both the governments of the U.S. and Canada also want to hold up the repressive Piñera government because having a neo-liberal “success story” and a staunch ally in Chile serves them well in their drive to re-establish imperialist hegemony in Latin America. Having a U.S.-supported government in Chile puts imperialists in a better position for their continued attacks against the sovereign and independent countries of Cuba and Venezuela.

Chile – Target of Imperialist Aggression and Exploitation 

The modern history of Chile is a history of colonization, imperialist domination and exploitation. Although Chile won independence from Spain in 1818, it wasn’t until 150 years later that the people of Chile had the opportunity to be truly independent from colonial and imperialist rule. In 1970, the people of Chile chose to reverse their history of colonization and exploitation, and elected Salvador Allende, who had a progressive and popular agenda to improve the life and oppose imperialist exploitation of Chile.

However, only three years after his election, in 1973, the United States and their imperialist allies orchestrated a bloody coup d’état, murdering Allende and installing a bloody military dictatorship. In just the first 5 years of his brutal rule, the U.S-backed dictatorship of General Agosto Pinochet imprisoned and tortured at least 30,000 people and disappeared 3,000 people. A constitution written under the dictatorship, which is the same one that enshrines privatization, is still in place in Chile today.

Reviewing the modern history of Chile also helps to explain the continued determination of the people of Chile to continuing protesting in mass in the streets until their demands are met. Despite some concessions that Piñera has been forced to give, such as the increases to monthly pensions or the minimum wage, a cabinet shuffle, or agreeing not to raise the transit fare, people are not leaving the streets.

As, Vilma Alvarez, a leader of the Jumbo Union (Jumbo is a chain of grocery stores in Chile) explained in an interview with the Argentinian news agency Pagina 12, the concessions that Pinera has offered to the protesters are not enough. They are, “another way to continue transferring money to the financial sectors and not giving any relief to the population,” and “The demand is for Piñera to resign and for a Constituent Assembly to be held.” The people of Chile have had enough.

Building Solidarity with the People of Chile 

Why should working and oppressed people in Canada support the struggle of people in Chile? For one, the people of Chile are facing a criminal and violent repression of their basic human rights. They are being arrested, tortured, raped and killed because they have taken to the streets in the millions to oppose inequality and austerity and to struggle for their basic dignity.

As Isabel Sanchez stated to Aljazeera news on October 26,

“We are of the generation that began our lives in the dictatorship, and we had no youth. We lost friends; we saw people slaughtered. We lived with fear, but now the young people have blossomed, they have lost that fear.”

It is time also for us, as poor, working and oppressed people in Canada and the United States to recognize the courage and struggle of the people of Chile, stand with them, and echo their voices.

Also, as people living in the United States and Canada, we have the added responsibility to stand in solidarity with the people of Chile because the governments of Canada and the U.S. are supporting the brutality and repression of the Piñera government.

Chile Diaspora Supports the Struggle

In the U.S. and Canada, members of the Chilean community and their allies have also taken to the streets to call for human rights for people in Chile and denounce the indiscriminate violence waged against protestors by the Piñera government. There have been solidarity protests organized in major cities across the United States, and in Canada, including in Montreal, Toronto, Calgary, Edmonton, Winnipeg, Vancouver and Victoria. These solidarity actions have not only brought together people from a wide variety of backgrounds and experiences, but also many generations of Chileans – from those that fled during the Pinochet dictatorship, to young people from Chile who are in the Canada and the U.S. to study.

In Vancouver, the Chilean diaspora has come together with others living in Canada in a new group named Van4Chile. Van4Chile has organized protests and public demonstrations in solidarity with the people of Chile, including an energetic protest in front of the CBC in downtown Vancouver on November 2, 2019. At this action, more than 200 people, from all walks of life, came together to demand that the CBC cover the protests in Chile. They also called out the government of Canada’s complicity in the repression of people’s human and democratic rights in Chile. To get involved and follow the work of Van4Chile find them on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter @Van4Chile.

Don’t Boycott Chile

It is also important to say that within the movement in solidarity with the people of Chile, there has been calls for a boycott against Chilean wine or other products produced in Chile. While this call for boycott may have been made with good intentions, the most important action that we, as peace-loving people in Canada and the U.S. can take for the courageous people of Chile is not to boycott them, but to support them. Perhaps, we must think more critically about what boycotting Chilean wine will do for people in Chile.

Today in Chile the working class and oppressed people are under brutal attack, economically, politically and socially, by the Sebastian Piñera government and imperialist exploitation. So, it is possible that a boycott that targets Chile’s economy has the potential to damage their movement and to reinforce the austerity which they are already living under. Any damage to the economy of Chile will surely be passed on from Chile’s richest families and capitalist class (they have billion dollars to survive) to poor and working people in Chile, increasing the austerity, pressure and inequality that they face. And Chile is not only a wine producer! Do we want also to boycott the mining, metal, mineral companies whose products amount to 60%, or $40 billion, of all of Chile’s exports, making up 20 percent of Chile’s GDP? The wine industry exports only $2 billion of the $70-77 billion of total exports from Chile.

That being said, do we really want the wine industry in Chile go bankrupt? Who is benefiting from that? Working people? Of course not. Do we want workers and people who work in wine industry to lose their jobs, or do we want to help the capitalist class to find excuses to lay-off workers and impose downsizing and overtime? Aren’t these the very policies of neoliberalism that Chilean people, and we, are opposing? Isn’t this shooting ourselves in the foot?

Furthermore, it is also important to consider the alternative – if people around the world are asked to boycott Chilean wine because the government of Chile is reactionary – is drinking wine from the U.S., Canada, France, Spain, England, Australia, Italy, or Germany, who are responsible for the slaughter of tens of millions of people around the world (including Chile’s coup September 11,1973), really any better? The difference is that Chile is an oppressed country, a third-world country. Chile is not an imperialist country with vast finances and industrial resources. Chile as a country struggles within the world market which is overwhelmingly dominated by imperialist countries and their corporations (including wine companies).

Applying any given tactic to any struggle could be very damaging to the struggle itself if it is not well thought out. In the history of the struggle for a better world, a boycott movement has never been the most effective way to build solidarity. The only effective boycott movement was one that was demanded by the people within the country being boycotted, and this was the successful boycott movement against apartheid South Africa.

If we can take all the energy that could go into a boycott, and instead use it to raise sympathy and solidarity with Chilean people in Canada and the U.S. through street actions, petitioning, educational events, and more, our impact will be much greater.

As poor, working and oppressed people in Canada/U.S., and around the world we must raise the question of human rights, torture, rape, execution, repression and yes, neoliberalism and austerity measures in Chile. We need to expose the atrocities of Piñera, and the complicity of governments like the U.S. and Canada in this brutality.

Sebastian Piñera must go!

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This article was originally published as Volume 13, Issue 11 of Fire This Time newspaper.

Alison Bodine is a social justice activist, author and researcher in Vancouver, Canada. She is the Chair of Vancouver’s antiwar coalition, Mobilization Against War and Occupation (MAWO). Alison is also on the Editorial Board of the Fire This Time and is the author of “Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Venezuela” (Battle of Ideas Press, 2018). @alisoncolette

A Canadian political commentator and author of “Voices from Syria” said if a new constitution is approved by the Syrian Constitutional Committee, the foreign-backed “unelected” opposition cannot guarantee to adhere to it.

“Unelected opposing parties cannot guarantee anything,” Mark Taliano said in an interview with Tasnim.

“Their (opposing parties’) masters are not Syrian,” he said, adding, “Ultimately they will have no say in substantive matters.”

The following is the full text of the interview.

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Tasnim: The United Nation’s envoy for Syria said recently that first talks in the Swiss city of Geneva on the country’s constitution involving Syrian opposition, government and civil society representatives have “gone much better” than many would have expected. Geir Pedersen said the two co-chairs of the constitutional committee from President Bashar al-Assad’s government and the leading opposition have agreed to meet again on November 25, and that delegations would in coming weeks “hopefully come up with a work plan”. Representatives of both sides met to discuss a future constitution, part of plans for a political settlement to end eight and a half years of war. Expectations for the talks have been low, with Damascus and its allies having made gains on the battlefield that left them few reasons to grant concessions. What do you think about the developments? How possible is it for the Constitutional Committee to reach an agreement given the deep differences and lack of trust between its members?

Taliano: “Opposition” members may become more pliant as time passes and Syrian victories become more entrenched. “Opposition” members will likely be given an opportunity to “save face”. In substantive matters, the Syrian state will remain ascendant as the spectacle continues.

Tasnim: The Syrian Constitutional Committee was established with the aim of paving the way for a political settlement in Syria. If a new constitution is approved by the committee, how practical will it be?  How can the opposing parties guarantee to adhere to the new constitution?

Taliano: Unelected opposing parties cannot guarantee anything. Their masters are not Syrian. Ultimately they will have no say in substantive matters.

Tasnim: Given Turkey’s military operation against Kurds in northern Syria and the presence of Ankara-backed extremist groups in the area, what do you think about the negative impacts of foreign intervention on the political settlement of the Syrian crisis?

Taliano: Turkey and its NATO (terrorists) will be reined in, but on-going imperial war crimes and occupations will slow negotiations and continue to be enemies to Peace. Terrorism will be a challenge for as long as Empire illegally occupies Syrian territory.  The head of the Opposition’s “Syrian Negotiation Commission (SNC)”, Nasr al-Hariri, will find that on-going terrorism will hinder rather than advance his foreign-influenced agenda.

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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.

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 

ISBN: 978-0-9879389-1-6

Author: Mark Taliano

Year: 2017

Pages: 128 (Expanded edition: 1 new chapter)

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As the military coup continues to entrench itself in Bolivia, the first goal of the perpetrators is to appear to be following the constitutional process. But the façade is not enough to hide the real disaster of yet another self-proclaimed president in Latin America. When you thought that the Juan Guaido experiment in Venezuela was a total failure in every respect, Bolivia repeats the same pathetic tragedy.

The main character is Jeanine Añez, the second vice-president of the Bolivian Senate who proclaimed herself to be the “president” of Bolivia supposedly according to the constitution. She declared, “I immediately take the presidency of the State.” She is a senator for the rightwing party Democratic Unity and has been an adamant opponent of Evo Morales who was forced into exile in Mexico by the Bolivian armed forces top brass, who now have enthusiastically recognised the new “president”.

A couple of farcical moments maybe first, when Añez stood in the middle of an almost empty Senate hall. At least Juan Guaido had a small crowd when he self-proclaimed in January 23. The second moment may have been when she walked into the presidential palace barely able to carry up high an oversized bible and declaring,

“The bible returns to the [presidential] palace”. Later she added, “our power is God, the power is God.”

Her religiosity is apparently very prominent.

But more seriously, what makes this a tragedy is that she appointed herself  “president” in an almost empty Senate because the majority of senators are members of the government party, Movimiento Al Socialismo (MAS), and they were not present. Consequently there was no required quorum for the “vote” to take place. Prior to that, she quickly had to appoint herself president of the Senate because the MAS president and first vice-president were not present. So she skipped quite a few steps of the hierarchy breaking the constitution in order to appear to be entitled to the presidency…according to the constitution.

Evo Morales from Mexico twitted:

“This self-proclamation is against articles 161, 169 and 410 of the State Political Constitution [Constitución Política del Estado– CPE] that determine the approval or rejection of a presidential resignation, the constitutional succession from the Senate or Deputy [Assembly] presidents and the higher authority of the CPE. Bolivia suffers an assault to the power of the people.”

In fact, Article 161 has two functions relevant in this case, one is “accept or deny the resignation of the President and of the Vice President of the State.” This has not been done. And secondly, “receive the oath of the President and the Vice President of the State.” We have not heard if the new “president” has done so, but regardless, all has to take place when “The [Senate and Deputy] Chambers will meet in Plurinational Legislative Assembly.” As we know, no such assembly is functioning.

Article 169 is crucial: “In case of impediment or definitive absence of the President of the State, the Vice President will replace him/her, and in case of his/her absence [in turn] the President of the Senate will replace him/her, and in case of his/her absence, the President of the Chamber of Deputies will replace him/her. In the latter case, new elections will be called within the maximum deadline of ninety days.” We have just indicated that this process has not been followed because the presidents of the two Chambers were not even present.

Article 410 states who will have to abide by the constitution. “All people, natural and legal, as well as public bodies, public functionaries and institutions, are all subject to this Constitution.” This clearly applies to all the coup perpetrators without exception. But they have not.

To invalidate even more this absurd unconstitutional scenario is that when the legitimate president of the Senate, Adriana Salvatierra, representing the MAS government Party, attempted to enter into the Senate to claim to be elected president of Bolivia according to the constitution she was not even allowed to enter. Admittedly she had resigned but her resignation was never formally accepted.

To conclude, we have to note that constitutions are written to lay down basic fundamental rights, guarantees and rules of the State. Everything else, including clarifications of any constitutional matter, is the attribution, in the case of Bolivia, of the Plurinational Constitutional Court. But this court in turn is composed of elected members who are now literally dysfunctional or disbanded, or nor legitimate.

But what is really important to note is that constitutions are written assuming normal circumstances in the country and that those normal circumstances will continue indefinitely. The reality is that there is nothing normal following a coup. All standard basic definitions and notions of democracy, independence, sovereignty and foreign intervention break down creating a vacuum that is immediately filled with ideology and interests. What really makes the whole event in Bolivia tragic is that it is triggered by a foreign induced Hybrid War not for the benefit of Bolivians.

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This article was originally published on OneWorld.

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

Featured image: Deputy Senate speaker Jeanine Anez speaks from the balcony of the government Quemado Palace in La Paz after proclaiming herself the country’s interim president (Source: AFP / Aizar RALDES)

The fake “whistleblower’s name— Eric Ciamerella—has been known for a long time, but not officially. Now it is official. Senator Rand Paul has officially released his name. Funny, isn’t it, that only the Republicans want Ciamerella to testify. The Democrats won’t hear of it. See this.

If the American people are paying attention, the Democrats are in trouble. When Russiagate fizzled out on them, Adam Schiff (D,CA) orchestrated a fake “whistleblower” whom the Democrats cannot risk putting on the stand to testify. The Democrats’ focus shifted to sleazy State Department types who could offer nothing but second or third hand hearsay followed by a hearsay second telephone call that cannot be confirmed.

Why are the Democrats out on a limb like this? They can rely on the presstitutes to cover up for them in every respect and to continue to repeat endlessly without any verification their charges against Trump, but after going through the hoax of Russiagate are the American people stupid enough to fall for the replacement hoax?

Some analysts believe that the House Democrats are using the so-called impeachment not to produce any evidence, as they have none, but to gin up hatred of Trump especially among the youth who are known to want to be included in whatever is cool. The Democrats’ project is to make hating Trump cool and to convince young people to base their vote on being cool and hating Trump.

I recently asked where are Attorney General Barr’s indictments of Obama regime officials for the attempted Russiagate coup against Trump. Some Republicans explained that Barr is waiting until closer to the election in order to get maximum impact on the voting public. If so, this is a mistake. The longer Barr waits, the longer the presstitutes and Democrats have to discredit the indictments in advance as Trump’s effort to produce a countervailing news story. The longer Barr waits, the more of Trump’s presidency is given up to the impeachment circus. The longer Barr waits, the longer Republicans have to become demoralized by the complete absence of integrity among the American media and House Democrats. It is really very disgusting for anyone not caught up in the emotion of hating Trump at all costs. Honest people with integrity don’t want to be associated with such dirty business.

There actually are a lot of Americans who have been conditioned to hate Trump so completely that they would accept his removal by a coup.

They are so emotional that they are unable to think about the consequences for democracy of a coup. This is the slippery slope the Romans went down. Once an emperor was removed by a coup, every emperor could be, and often was, removed by a coup. The subsequent internal disorder contributed greatly to the fall of Rome.

There are many issues on which Democrats could legitimately challenge Trump in the forthcoming presidential election that would resonate with many honest Americans.

Democrats could challenge Trump for the coup against Bolivian President Morales.

They could challenge Trump for dismantaling environmental protections and for permitting mining and energy companies to loot national monuments and wildlife refuges.

They could challenge Trump for persecuting Julian Assange for practicing traditional journalism.

They could challenge Trump for serving Israeli instead of American foreign policy interests.

These and other issues would make a real campaign, one worthy of a democracy. Instead, we get hoax scandals.

What this tells us is that there is not enough integrity in the Democratic Party and American media for democracy to survive. When the political process consists of nothing but lies and hatred, democracy is not possible. Why are the House Democrats and the American media destroying democracy?

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Dr. Paul Craig Roberts writes on his blog, Paul Craig Roberts Institute for Political Economy, where this article was originally published. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from Shutterstock/cunaplus

On October 20, celebrations in honor of the 192nd anniversary of the Battle of Navarino (1827) (against the Ottoman Empire) with the participation of President P. Pavlopoulos were held in Greece. The President, in particular, addressed his speech on the importance of unity in protecting international law to the EU and Turkey. In addition, during the celebrations, he met with the Russian Ambassador to Greece Andrey Maslov.

It is worth noting that Russia, not being an EU member, has the greatest opportunities to influence Turkey’s policy towards Greece and Cyprus while the negotiations on Turkey’s accession to the Union were frozen on February 20, 2019.

As it is known, the first independent Greek state in modern history – the Septinsular Republic, was established with the participation of the Russian Admiral Fyodor Ushakov (image below), later venerated as a saint in the Russian Orthodox Church.

The trust that existed between the Russians and the Greeks at that time is evidenced, for example, by the long-term friendship of Admiral Ushakov and the Greek captains Sarandinakis and Alexianos who were the best in his squadron. Thanks to his skill, captain Stamatis Sarandinakis (“Yevstafiy Pavlovich”, as he was called by the Russians), a son of an archon from Monemvasia who died for the freedom of Greece, took charge of Ushakov’s flagship, and aboard this ship he bravely fought against Turkey and France. At the same time, their relationship was not limited to service and joint combat operations: Ushakov’s respect and trust in his Greek friend was so great that he entrusted him with the education of his nephew Ivan, whom Stamatis personally taught the art of navigation. In 1803, the hero of the Greek Liberation War, captain Sarandinakis retired and settled in the Crimea: he grew grapes, headed the provincial court of conscience (which used to perform the same functions as ombudsmen and human rights activists nowadays), but he certainly did not forget his homeland – he bequeathed most of his fortune to charity in Greece.

It is not surprising that later it was Ushakov’s figure, his role in the liberation of the Ionian Islands and the openness of the Russians to the co-religionist Greek people, as seen in the example of Stamatios Sarandinakis, that led Ioannis Kapodistrias, the future Secretary of State of the Republic, to the conviction that without reliance on Russia as the only Orthodox Empire, Greece would not be able to gain real independence from the Ottomans.

Russia definitely wanted to liberate the Orthodox Greeks from the Ottoman rule by creating an independent state. For some time Russia had neither opportunities nor resources to directly support the heroic efforts of the Pontic Greek Alexander Ypsilantis, but sympathized with him and made every effort to stop the violence against the Greek people. Thus, when the Ottoman Porte restricted the vital freedom of navigation for the Greeks and began cruel repressions, the Russian Ambassador Grigory Stroganov, with the consent of the Tsar, repeatedly met with the Grand Vizier, issued an ultimatum against the violent treatment of Orthodox Christians, and then left the country in protest and in sign of the rupture of relations.

The Russian Emperor Nicholas I, who succeeded Alexander I, was aware of the various opinions of the advisers inherited from his predecessor, and generally held the same position. Taking into account its then military capabilities, he considered impossible Russia’s unilateral participation in the war with the Ottoman Empire, because it would have to fight both with the Turkish and Egyptian fleets. And the Greek people, in view of the fierce and uncompromising reaction of the Porte to the rising liberation movement, needed only victory.

To stop the atrocities against the Greek population by the Porte, in the spring of 1826, Russia and Great Britain signed the Protocol of St. Petersburg on joint actions for the settlement of the Greek War of Independence. According to this document, it was supposed to work together to the autonomy of Greece under the supreme authority of the Ottoman Empire.

In 1827, taking the St. Petersburg Protocol as a basis, representatives of Russia, Great Britain, and France concluded the Treaty of London to assist Greece and to outline its future structure. As it is known, Britain and France sought to weaken the influence of the Ottoman Empire in Europe. Therefore, assuming Russia had the same goals, they also feared that Russian influence will increase as a result of the country’s participation in the war on the side of Greece. However, Russia was so willing to help the co-religionist Greece that in order to attract the necessary allies, it defiantly refused commercial benefits, which was recorded in the Treaty.

In the end, the capitulation of the Porte and the subsequent establishment of a completely independent Greek state (not autonomy) were the result of the Russo-Turkish war of 1828-1829: in September, 1829, the Russian army stood 40 km from the Sultan’s Palace.

Meanwhile, in the fight between the different parties (“Russian”, subsequently “National” and constitutionalist “English” or “French” parties supported by the Phanariots) in the years of liberation war, the only respected figure who could lead the young state was Ioannis Kapodistrias, a former Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs, brilliant diplomat and humanist, one of the genius creators of the Swiss Constitution, honorary citizen of Lausanne, and a close friend of the greatest Russian poet Alexander Pushkin.

Ioannis Kapodistrias did not fear for his position and was perhaps the only one who truly cared for the welfare of the nation, while his opponents were only capable of imprisoning the heroes of the Greek Revolution. It was Kapodistrias who insisted, though unsuccessfully, that the Greek people should choose their own king at people’s assemblies. He fought international corruption that had infiltrated Greece along with the influence of other European powers. He refused his salary and gave his estate to the needs of the young Greek state. To him the British Admiral Edward Codrington, who had also taken part in the Battle of Navarino, said that England intended to look after its own interests only in Greece; but Ioannis continued to defend what mattered to the Greek people.

The case of the Ioannis Kapodistrias’ murder is still classified in the British Foreign Office. However, it is clear that when the Western liberating powers sought to force their influence upon the young independent Greece, such a faithful son as he could hardly expect any other future than to give his life for his Homeland.

No wonder the German diplomats said that Kapodistrias could not be bribed, and that elimination of him was the only way to stop him. Today, anyone can come to the place where he was murdered – the Church of Agios Spyridon in Nafplio– and make sure of it. At the same time, it’s a chance to think whether nowadays we have got politicians about whom we could say the same. And can we, looking at the figures of Kapodistrias and Ushakov, doubt the sincere love and sympathy for Greece from the Russian people?

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Christos Athanasiou is currently pursuing his Bachelor’s degree in History and Politics at the University of York. His main area of interest is Regionalism In World Politics.

On July 17, 2014, a Malaysian Boeing 777-200ER aircraft was conducting a scheduled passenger flight (MH17) from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur. During a transit flight over the territory of Ukraine, the Ukrainian air traffic control charted the plane directly over the conflict zone between government forces and units of the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics.

At 13:20 UTC, the aircraft was shot down as a result of a fire damage from unidentified forces.

The Ukrainian side, with Western support, immediately blamed Russia for the incident. In turn, Malaysia, expresses deep concerns over the accusations against Russia and the course of the investigation.

On June 27, 2019, Ukrainian special services detained the ex-commander of one of the air defense units of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic Vladimir Tsemakh in Snejnoe, on the territory of the Donetsk People’s Republic. Ukraine’s State Security Service claimed that he was involved in the MH17 incident. Later, his status was changed to the “witness”. On September 7, 2019, Tsemakh was transferred to the Russian side as a part of the 35 for 35 exchange of the detained persons.

We present to your attention an exclusive interview with Vladimir Tsemakh (original in Russian) (English Transcript below) that reveals many interesting details.

Watch the video here.

***

Kirill Vyshinsky: Greetings. This is the second interview in the People of Donbass series. This man is not used to speaking on camera. He‘s giving the first interview in his life. In 2014, Vladimir Tsemakh was defending his home in Snejnoe in the region of Donbass. After 3 years, he returned to a peaceful life. In the summer of this year, he appeared in Kiev under strange circumstances, where he was arrested under even stranger circumstances. In September, thanks to the exchange of detained persons, Vladimir Tsemakh returned home.

Kirill Vyshinsky (KV): Vladimir Borisovich, good day!

Vladimir Tsemach (VT): Good day.

KV: We flew in the same plane in September, I saw you very briefly. We didn’t have time to say a word, but you were one of the most famous passengers and I really wanted to know your story, because you were made almost the main witness in the case of the downed Boeing.

KV: But this is not the beginning. Let’s start with your background. Tell us a few words about yourself.

VT: I was born in 1961. In 1978, I entered the Poltava Higher Anti-Aircraft Missile Command Red Banner College named after Army General Nikolai Fedorovich Vatutin. In 1982 I graduated. After that, I got to serve in the 40th Army, meaning in Afghanistan. I was there for three and a half months, after which I was sent to the Far East under an experience share (program), where I served until 1992 and went into reserve in 1992 on Victory Day.

KV: And after?

VT: After that, I returned to my hometown. Until 2019, I lived safely, with the exception of 2014, of course.  I had quite a few different jobs. I didn’t sit in any one place very long.

KV: But nothing related to the army?

VT: No, absolutely not.

KV: You were made almost the main witness in the Boeing case only because you had headed Snezhnoy’s air defense since 2014. Tell us how you got there, what it was; what the weaponry was.

VT: I asked the city commandant, ”Am I needed?“ “Yes.” he said, “The anti-aircraft guns are gathering dust.

KV: When did this take place?

VT: It was June 26th, 2014. When I realized that this circus in Kramatorsk and Slavyansk would not easily end. Semenovka… I realized that they would not calm down.

KV: The authorities?

VT: The Ukrainian authorities didn’t want to talk with the people. They decided to talk from a position of strength. If you think that my grandchildren will not think in my language, that they could be forced to think in Ukrainian, this is wrong, I think. So, I had to go to the militia and after Ukrainian aviation attacked the city center, I got people together immediately. On that same day, I had a lot of people there. The armaments we had consisted of two anti-aircraft guns and two man-portable air defense systems.

KV: Tell me. What did you know then -about this downed Boeing?

VT: I knew as much as the general population knew. I found out either in the evening or the next morning about what happened.

KV: And tell me. In 2019, were you still serving in the army, in the People’s Militia?

VT: No. I finished my service in 2017. I had a compression fracture of the spine. So, my health didn’t allow me to serve.

KV: You were detained on June 27^th. Right?

VT: Yes.

KV: On the 28th you were in Kiev. That’s actually the next day. You were detained in Snezhnoye which is around 60 kilometers from the separation line. Right?

VT: It’s further away by road. Turns out the city is only 78 kilometers to Donetsk.

KV: They detained you on the 27^th. On the 28th you were already in Kiev, and on the 29th you were in court, where a preventive measure of restraint was chosen. How, under what circumstances, did you end up on the territory of Ukraine in such a short time?

VT: They took me straight away to the separation line. There he constantly kept in touch with the other side.

KV: He? Who’s “he”?

VT: The driver. He participated in the abduction. There were two people. Mortars were fired from the other side. They said they would shell five times for cover fire. They started pushing the wheelchair, and then a sixth shell was fired. I said, “Hey! If you want me dead, why don’t you just get on with it and bury me right here? Why drag this on?” That sixth shell almost hit us. I was even covered with dirt. It seems that it was before the shelling. Was it our people responding so quickly? You can understand the condition I was in. Under tranquilizers, I couldn’t perceive what was happening around me very well. We sat around and waited for the shelling to end, then they put a bag over my head. They kept me in a basement for about 20 minutes.

KV: Did this happen on the other side or here?

VT: On the other side, literally across the Creek. Their position was just 20 meters away -not far away it turns out. With a bag on my head, we ran for about half a kilometer to a minivan. They measured my blood pressure as 190 to 110. They said, “Ok,” the insect is healthy, normal. My head was bandaged and I was immediately sent in a minivan to Kiev.

KV: Were you transported through the separation line in a wheelchair?

KV: So, you were in such a condition that you couldn’t walk?

VT: My legs buckled. Even when I was put in the wheelchair, I couldn’t put my feet on the step.

KV: But why?

VT: I couldn’t. They had to lift my legs, no more than 5 centimeters.

KV: Why did you feel like that? What happened?

VT: They injected two tranquilizers in me at home and a third, in front of Donetsk.

KV: What condition were you in when they brought you to Kiev?

VT: I began feeling normal about a week later. I’m not used to drugs like that.

KV: Was it something strong?

VT: Well, yes. I feel most rested when I sleep 7-8 hours. But I usually only sleep 6 or 7. When I was detained, I was always woken up at 6 AM; then I kept dozing off until around 10 AM.

KV: You said they took every document you had in your house and on your person?

VT: Yes.

KV: They attached them to the case file. Were they classified as secret?

VT: Yes.

KV: They fell under the stamp of secrecy with the consequence, in theory, of improving the case.

VT: That’s what happened.

KV: Nevertheless, in mid-July, your military ID appeared on some kind of investigative web site, it seems, Bellingcat. How can you explain this?

VT: It turns out the Security Service of Ukraine provided this information.

KV: Did it turn out to be a “classified” investigation?

VT: There was no secret. Collaboration was happening as if it was normal. There were no secrets.

KV: Where were you detained in Kiev, in what conditions? What was it like?

VT: At Askold’s detention center. The cell was two by five meters, with two bunks. I was alone there, literally. Just before being freed, a man was put in the cell with me. So, I was constantly alone. For the first two weeks I didn’t even have a bar of soap. I asked, “Give me at least a little piece of soap.“ But, “No”. They didn’t give me anything. For such a serious structure, you would think they could spend some money, at least for a bar of soap. It didn’t happen. As far as nutrition goes -you’ll live. You won’t die of hunger. For hours, it was lights out at 10 PM and rise at 6 AM.

KV: Were the lights turned off?

VT: No. The lights were on all the time. It was dim, but one light was always on. I was allowed to walk in the courtyard between 2 PM and 5 PM, always alone.

KV: Were you always under surveillance?

VT: Yes. The toilet was in the cell.

KV: How were the interrogations?

VT: If the Australians and the Dutch came, then this took place on the premises of the pre-trial detention center and if the SBU investigators conducted it, then I was brought to them.

KV: Were you subjected to polygraph testing?

VT: No. There weren’t any. The representative of the Prosecutor General’s office for some reason really “loved” me -constantly threatened me with a life sentence. But then, it was interesting. When the second interrogation was taking place, with alleged Australian or Dutch representatives, it was very obvious that they were brought up in Slavic families. The representative of Holland Ara Khataryan (I don’t remember the last name. It was like Armenian.) But she spoke the language exclusively. She spoke without an accent. She knew the language perfectly.

With the representative from Australia, Sergey, it was apparent that he was either an immigrant or that he was brought up in a Slavic family. He also spoke Russian well. But at that time, before the second interrogation, Ara was the only one present. The representative of the Prosecutor General’s Office told me, “Look. You’re not being exchanged. You’re going to get a life sentence, but a lot will depend on what answers you give to these comrades.” The camera is immediately turned on. Standard procedure. They asked, “Were there any threats?“ I answered, “If life imprisonment is not a threat, then everything is fine, good.“

KV: Do you treat this in a humorous light? Although, naturally, there was no way to have fun at that moment.

VT: I am a military man, after all.

KV: Can you tell us, in more detail, about these people, these foreigners?

VT: Representatives of the Australian police and the Netherlands police.

KV: Just them? Were there any Americans, or British, somebody else?

VT: No. No. Constantly, if the English-speaking comrade is sitting on the Dutch side, then the Russian-speaking one is Australian. And during the last interrogation -Ara and Sergey were both Russian speakers.

KV: Did they coerce you?

VT: They offered me to go into witness protection. They offered citizenship and a home in the Netherlands. I wondered why there and not in Australia, but I didn’t try to bargain. laughs

KV: Maybe you could have lived in the Netherlands?

VT: No. I’m used to living where I was born. If I came back to Khabarovsk I would still be closer to my native places. Nevertheless, they didn’t offer native places. In 2014, I was told that, for my Afghanistan service, a Moscow communal apartment is paid for and that I should live in it. How could I be cruel by leaving the elderly and the kids behind? Running away is always easy.

KV: Was there any “physical means of interrogation”?

VT: When they put me on the minivan, they struck my kidneys “a little bit.”

KV: Why did you talk to them at all, and not refer to the 63rd article of the Constitution, which allows you to not testify against yourself and relatives? This is a standard procedure. By the way, they should have introduced you to it.

VT: I know of the article. But why should I be afraid? I don’t consider myself a terrorist. I protected my home. Who am I afraid of? I believe that these comrades and I don’t deserve judgments. This is how I feel on the inside.

KV: The case against you, as I understand correctly, is the 258th, second part. Meaning the creation of a terrorist organization or group. Has the case not been closed yet?

14:04 VT: Yes. It turns out I’ve been released on bail.

KV: What do you think awaits you in Ukraine?

VT: Nothing good is waiting for me, especially if such comrades are in the Prosecutor General’s office. They start slobbering -probably over the thought of putting me away for life.

KV: Are you ready to talk in court about what happened to you, about the abduction, tranquilizers, forced detention, and interrogations? Are you going to appeal to international courts?

VT: I’m considering such a possibility.

KV: What’s your assessment of everything that has happened to you?

VT: I consider it an act of terrorism against me on the part of the Ukrainian state -trying to hang me. Well, I was the head of air defense. I explained to them that, for the most part, I did scare off their aircraft. Once the planes flew over and then didn’t fly any more in the area of Snezhnoye, I told my people, “Guys, bring me empty pipes.“ We filled them with sand, made triggers out of tin, painted them, and I had eight groups of “actors” which showed that we really did have MANPADS -and a lot of them too. Although we actually only had two Zu-23 guns and two MANPADS. And with just that we held the defense of such a territory! It’s just a title I had, “the head of air defense”. You could hardly even call it a platoon -by any stretch.

KV: Do you consider yourself a victim of terrorism?

VT: Of course. But this is a bigger mess because they really have nothing on me now or in the future. Maybe, because I didn’t like the events, he was trying to use me, the bigger man, for some sort of scape-goat absolution. It will be interesting to see how they try to hold their ridiculous stories together.

KV: Obviously, your attitude towards Ukraine has changed after what happened to you.

VT: For me it’s still my homeland. It’s bitter and insulting to look at everything happening there. For some reason, people religiously believe in help from the West. But I say it‘s probably necessary to read Taras Bulba. Everything is clearly explained there.

KV: Lyakhi (Poles/Polish) did not help?

VT: Right. They didn’t help. Such ideas are somehow new to this faith. It’s time to live, listening to your own head.

KV: Tell me, please, what is the nature of Donetsk character?

VT: During service in the Soviet army, if people from Donetsk came to serve, some of the gentlemen officers would clutch their heads. It’s a separate caste of people. We have a multinational side. More than two hundred nationalities live in the Donbass. The whole world built it in due time. So there you find friendship and camaraderie and cuisine -something like a special symbiosis.

KV: Did this help in 2014?

VT: Of course, it helped. There was no time to mobilize any forces. People were taught how to fight in literally three to four days. As subsequent events show, some can’t even learn this in two years -let alone three to four days.

KV: Thank you very much.

*

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The Strategic Battle for Lithium. Huge Reserves in Bolivia, Argentina, Chile

By Enzo Pellegrin, November 14, 2019

On March 15, 2018, Maurizio Stefanini, reporter of an italian right think-tank, complained that the huge reserve of Lithium present in Bolivia was in the hands of the State“” and of the bad example“” of Evo Morales. (1) In the same article it was pointed out that, on the contrary, Chile and Argentina, the other two Saudi Arabian”of Lithium, had generated a real race for lithium”, as in romantic Yukon era.

In Chile, according to 2016 data, 68,874 metric tons ™ of lithium carbonate equivalent (cle) were extracted by private companies Albemarle and Sociedad Química de Minerales de Chile (SGM). The latter is owned 29 percent by billionaire Julio Ponce Lerou, who ranked 422 on the Forbes chart of the rich planetary planets, thanks to the Lithium boom. At that time, Chile had a 33% share of the Lithium world market.

The Boom in US Shale Oil? The US is the Largest Oil Producer in the World

By Nick Cunningham, November 14, 2019

Forecasts from the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), along with those from its Paris-based counterpart, the International Energy Agency (IEA), are often cited as the gold standard for energy outlooks. Businesses and governments often refer to these forecasts for long-term investments and policy planning.

In that context, it is important to know if the figures are accurate, to the extent that anyone can accurately forecast precise figures decades into the future. A new report from the Post Carbon Institute asserts that the EIA’s reference case for production forecasts through 2050 “are extremely optimistic for the most part, and therefore highly unlikely to be realized.”

The Rights of Undocumented Immigrants: DACA Arguments in US Supreme Court Leave Outcome in Doubt

By Prof. Marjorie Cohn, November 14, 2019

After the arguments before the Supreme Court in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) case, it is difficult to predict the outcome. Justices often play devil’s advocate when questioning the lawyers, so reading the tea leaves about how a case will ultimately be decided can be a dicey proposition. But the justices’ questions appeared to indicate that right-wing Justices Alito, Gorsuch and Kavanaugh favor affirming Donald Trump’s termination of DACA, and liberal Justices Kagan, Ginsburg and Sotomayor want to uphold DACA. Justice Thomas, who almost never asks a question during arguments, invariably sides with the right-wingers. Chief Justice Roberts, who generally takes the conservative position, and Justice Breyer, who more often votes with the liberals, were harder to read. Roberts, who appeared to lean toward the government’s position, will likely cast the deciding vote.

Western Terrorists Are Coming Home to Roost

By Steven Sahiounie, November 14, 2019

Turkey has criticized Western countries for refusing to take back their citizens who were members of ISIS, also known as Daesh, and stripping them of their citizenship, although the 1961 New York Convention made it illegal to leave people stateless. Since 2010, the UK has stripped more than 100 people of British citizenship. One of the first deported terrorists was an American, unnamed, who was deported to the USA via Greece.  However, he refused to go into Greece, and returned to Turkey, upon which the Turks refused him re-entry and pushed him back to Greece.  Finally, when he asked to enter Greece, they refused which has left him in ‘limbo’ in a buffer space between Turkey and Greece.  The US State Department acknowledges they are aware of the situation but offer no further details about the man who has been photographed and was shown on Turkish TV.

The Costs of Post 9/11 Wars: $6.4 Trillion

By Prof. Neta C. Crawford, November 14, 2019

One of the major purposes of the Costs of War Project has been to clarify the types of budgetary costs of the US post -9/11 wars, how that spending is funded, and the long-term implications of past and current spending. This estimate of the US budgetary costs of the post-9/11 wars is a comprehensive accounting intended to provide a sense of the consequences of the wars for the federal budget. Since the 9/11 attacks, the Department of Defense appropriations related to the Global War on Terror have been treated as emergency appropriations, now called Overseas Contingency Operations (OCO).[3] When accounting for total war costs, the Department of Defense and other entities often present only Overseas Contingency Operation appropriations.

Can the EU’s New Sanctions Against Turkey Force the Cyprus Issue to Finally be Resolved?

By Paul Antonopoulos, November 14, 2019

The Eastern Mediterranean remains a strategic point for trade due to its proximity to the Suez Canal, transportation and more recently, natural resources. It is this very drive for exploiting the natural resources that in January, the Eastern Mediterranean Gas Forum was convened as a means for Cyprus, Egypt, Greece, Jordan, Israel, Italy and the Palestinian Authority to develop a regional natural gas market. Notably, Turkey was missing from this Forum, which would have agitated Ankara as only a month later ExxonMobil announced a new gas discovery in offshore Cyprus that has more than doubled Cyprus’s estimated offshore resources. This is why Turkey has been in a desperate rush to exploit oil belonging to another internationally recognized sovereign country.

‘They Choked Me. They Threw Me Down.’: CodePink’s Medea Benjamin Assaulted by Right-Wing Venezuelan Opposition and Threatened with Arrest

By Jake Johnson, November 14, 2019

Benjamin and other members of CodePink protested the event while backers of the effort to overthrow Venezuela’s elected President Nicolás Maduro rallied in support of the new pro-regime change caucus, which was launched by Reps. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.), Mario Díaz-Balart (R-Fla.), and other lawmakers.

During the press conference, Benjamin shouted for an end to punishing U.S. sanctions in Venezuela and held a sign that read “No Coups in Venezuela or Bolivia.”

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Medea Benjamin, co-founder of CODEPINK for Peace, is the author of “Inside Iran: The Real History and Politics of the Islamic Republic of Iran” and  “Kingdom of the Unjust: Behind the U.S.-Saudi Connection.” 

Nicolas J. S. Davies is a freelance writer, a researcher for CODEPINK and the author of “Blood on Our Hands: The American Invasion and Destruction of Iraq.”

Featured image is from The Bullet

What does an Israeli peace activist do when the rockets are flying and the bombs are falling?

I have been going to demonstrations since I was 12 years old – that was 51 years ago. I can easily say that I have participated in hundreds of demonstrations. But I hate demonstrations. They frustrate me. I think in all of these years, there was only one demonstration that I recall that left me feeling empowered – that was after the Sabra and Shatilla massacres in 1982.

I have demonstrated for peace and human rights. I have demonstrated against war and military adventurism. I have demonstrated for social justice and I have demonstrated for a better environment. At demonstrations, I meet a lot of people that I know and it is often nice to catch up with old friends and colleagues, but when it is over, I usually feel that nothing has changed and the demonstration had no impact. More often than not, I go because if it is an important cause, then it is essential that the number of demonstrators be significant. But to feel empowered and to have political and social efficacy, I need to do something more concrete.

During recent years, in the absence of any peace process and any chance of helping to create a peace process, I have focused on building successful, cross-boundary Israeli-Palestinian partnerships. That, too, has become increasingly difficult with the passing of time and the constant deterioration in the state of affairs between the two peoples. Nonetheless, I push on and do what I believe in.

I suppose I live in a kind of schizophrenic reality. Just yesterday I met one of my Palestinian partners in Halhoul, just north of Hebron. I parked my car in front of the Halhoul city hall and joined him in his car. The streets were filled with young kids getting out of school early after ceremonies were held in the schools to commemorate their founding father Yasser Arafat. Many of the kids had the famous black and white keffiyeh draped around their shoulders.

We continued from there to the new industrial area in the city of Tarkumiya where we visited eight large factories to spark their interest in integrating solar energy into their enterprises. Most of these factories spend a fortune on electricity. They pay the Tarkumiya municipality, which buys the electricity from the Israel Electricity Company. We can sell them clean energy that will save them a lot of money, helping the Palestinian economy and increasing Palestinian independence. This work is built on partnership, trust and improving the lives of real people.

From Tarkumiya, after about five hours of visiting the factories, we went for a late lunch in Hebron. On the way from Hebron back to Halhoul, I bought some freshly made flat bread. My car was waiting for me in the now empty Halhoul city hall parking lot. We stopped at a bicycle shop on the way out of Halhoul that I visited last week, because my youngest son is shopping for a new mountain bike and the shop owner said that he expected to have some new models by the end of this week. He didn’t get them yet.

THIS IS ALL so normal – except that nothing about it here is normal. Israelis don’t go wandering about Hebron and Halhoul, or eating lunch in a new shwarma place in the middle of the Hebron business district, or visiting factories in Tarkumiya. The abnormality of it all was driven home while driving home to Jerusalem. As I passed the Al Aroub refugee camp, I saw the deployment of a large number of Israeli soldiers gearing up to enter the camp. Before I reached Jerusalem, I heard that the soldiers killed a young, unarmed Palestinian man in the camp. I saw the video footage later and heard both sides of the story of what happened, and how the young Palestinian man was killed. Tragedy in a tragic reality.

This morning, I drove to Givat Haviva in the North, where I was invited to lecture to a group of high schools students at the Givat Haviva International School. This school is made up of 11th and 12th graders – 25% from Israel, 25% from Palestine and 50% from about 20 other countries. Truly a remarkable group of young people. This week, they are engaging in a several day intensive seminar about the Israeli Palestinian conflict. Today’s panel, in which I participated, was organized by an Israeli and a Palestinian student together. The panel included four Israeli experts – two from the Right and two from the Left (you can guess which side I was on).

On my way to Givat Haviva, as soon as I got in my car leaving Jerusalem, I heard the news of the Israeli assassination of the Islamic Jihad commander and his wife in Gaza, the attempted assassination of the Islamic Jihad commander in Damascus (not succeeding in killing the target, but killing his son) and the barrage of rockets from Islamic Jihad once again falling on Israel. I heard about all of the schools and places of work in Israel from Tel Aviv southward being closed as a precautionary measure taken by the Israeli army and government. And I had to go to speak to high school students about peace.

A COUPLE of nights before, I spoke at the annual Rabin memorial event at the Beit Yisrael pre-army academy in Gilo, Jerusalem, composed of a large group of pre-army religious and secular Jews. There I spoke on a panel with the head of the academy, an Orthodox rabbi who served as a combat officer in the army for decades, and a well-known right-wing political activist who has lived his whole life in the settlement of Kiryat Arba next to the Palestinian city, Hebron. It was a very challenging task to speak about peace with our Palestinian neighbors in that context with that group of young Israelis.

This evening, I concluded by speaking to a group of American Jews from Vermont on an Israel Experience trip with their synagogue. Tonight was their last night after a 10-day intensive trip all around the country. Today, they were supposed to visit the communities around Gaza, but that was canceled because of the “security situation.” As I am writing this column, the Red Alert keeps flashing on my phone as rockets are being shot at Israel from Gaza, and I see on my Facebook and Twitter feed that my friends in Gaza are being bombed by Israel.

A close friend in Gaza just chatted with me that she is scared – she lives on the eighth floor of a 10-story building in Gaza City. The noise of the exploding Israeli bombs is frightening and she said that she doesn’t know what she will do if she has to run – there is no safe place to run to in Gaza. Without any ability to allay her fears, I said that I wished she could stay with me in Jerusalem where she would be safe. She replied “some day!” I said “inshallah.”

This is the definition of insanity. Someone from the Vermont group asked me as the final question to give a one-sentence line – the most important thing they should take back with them from my talk. I thought for a moment and said – we are all not going anywhere. Millions of Israelis and millions of Palestinians are not picking up and leaving. We will also continue to live here, and eventually we will get back to the table and talk. When we do that, I hope that we will have learned the lessons from all of the mistakes we have all made that got us to this situation. Until then, I will continue to work to build partnerships across these conflict lines in the interests of all of us – on both sides of the lines.

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Gershon Baskin is a political and social entrepreneur who has dedicated his life to the State of Israel and to peace between Israel and her neighbors. His latest book In Pursuit of Peace in Israel and Palestine was published by Vanderbilt University Press and is now available in Israel and Palestine.

Featured image is from Mondoweiss

A 2018 Pew Survey found that 89% of Greeks found their culture to be superior to others, by far the highest amount of people in Europe where it reached as low as 26% in Sweden, 23% in Estonia and Belgium, and 20% in Spain. The Greeks are by far the oldest civilization on the European continent, giving them the moniker as the founders of Western civilization, and a slight arrogance at times over other Europeans.

However, it was this very ancient civilizational pride that Chinese President Xi Jinping capitalized on during his extremely productive visit to Greece this week where 16 agreements were made that firmly puts the Mediterranean country into the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).

Xi’s final day in Greece on Tuesday was spent at the Acropolis Museum where the Greek President Prokopis Pavlopoulos asked whether Greece can rely on China to help pressure the British Museum in London to return the Parthenon Marbles they hold. Not only did Xi enthusiastically pledge that China would help Greece’s position against the United Kingdom, but he also empathized that China too has many of its ancient treasures outside of its borders against its will.

As Greece occupies a strategic space in the Eastern Mediterranean and has one of the largest merchant navies in the world, it was always going to be in the interests of Beijing to maintain close ties with Athens, even with issues over ancient artefacts. Over two thousand years of contact between the Greeks and Chinese, and the famous Silk Road connecting Xi’an with Constantinople, has ensured there are long and deep connections between the two countries today.

During the visit, 16 agreements were signed. Many of these are not so significant, but there were certainly some important ones.

The Port of Pireus

Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis told Xi on Monday during their visit to Piraeus Port that Greece has come to a deep understanding on the meaning of “friends” through the cooperation with China at the port. China Ocean Shipping Company (COSCO) acquired a majority stake in the port in 2016, creating direct and indirect employment for over 10,000 locals, and making it the largest port in the Mediterranean region and one of the fastest growing container terminals in the world.

This port has been a keynote feature for the BRI in Europe and Xi’s visit to Athens ensures Greece’s goal of turning Piraeus Port into the biggest commercial harbor in Europe can become a reality. Piraeus Port is strategically located in the Eastern Mediterranean, putting it at the crossroads of Europe, Asia and Africa, which will be of significant interest to China as it continues to channel goods to the region.  Effectively, the upgraded port helps Chinese products enter European markets more easily and at cheaper prices

“We want to strengthen Piraeus’ transhipment role and further boost the throughput capacity of China’s fast sea-land link with Europe,” Xi said after meeting Mitsotakis, recognizing that access in the Mediterranean is best done through Greece because of its thousands of years of seafaring history, its strategic location and its large mercantile navy.

Chinese investment banks to open in Greece

Directly connected to the investment of Piraeus Port, lenders’ Bank of China and the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC) will open branches in Athens to not only develop the maritime industry further, but also at a time when Chinese investors have become increasingly interested in Greek real estate.

The Chinese banks will not only create business opportunities in Greece and help develop the maritime industry, but it will also help finance renewable energy projects. This comes as for the past 10 years Western countries have done little to alleviate Greece’s economic crisis. It is expected that the Bank of China, the world’s fourth largest lender, and ICBC will invest in renewable energy to help develop Greece’s clean energy infrastructure and bring cheaper energy prices to Greeks.

Energy

Although Greece opened its domestic projects, such as wind farms, to Chinese investors, China has expressed no immediate interest in Greece’s heavily indebted Public Power Corporation despite speculation that the Asian country is interested in investing in Greece’s electricity distribution networks.

However, the State Grid Corporation of China, the world’s biggest utility, agreed to invest in a new electricity interconnector between mainland Greece and the island of Crete. It is hoped that Crete can become an even bigger solar energy hub as Greece aims to stop using coal energy by 2028.

Conclusion

By taking a soft power approach with Athens and not embroiling itself in regional issues, China has every advantage to deepen the BRI in the Balkans, Middle East, North Africa and Mediterranean Europe via Greece. There is little doubt that China sees Greece, specifically through the 2,500-year-old Piraeus Port, as a hub for its BRI expansion in the region.

The agreements between Greece and China come at a time when only in September the Mediterranean country allowed the U.S. to open three new military bases and Greek Foreign Minister Nikos Dendias met with his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov in Moscow last week where “a new chapter” in Greek-Russian relations was announced. It is beginning to appear that perhaps Athens is not so much the U.S.-puppet as first suspected, but perhaps is masterfully balancing its relations with Washington, Moscow and Beijing in the Age of Multipolarity as its highly successful recent meetings with the Great Powers demonstrates.

At the minimum, whether Greece successfully balances its relations with the Great Powers or not, the Great Powers have certainly identified the importance of the Aegean country in the 21st Century and are all aiming to gain a foothold in it. It remains to be seen where Greece will show allegiance when push comes to shove, but it is likely to be a balance on its economic reliance on China against its military reliance on the U.S. With China having a strong foothold in the Eastern Mediterranean, it remains to be seen whether the Asian country will want to expand its military presence into the region too.

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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.

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

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On March 15, 2018, Maurizio Stefanini, reporter of an italian right think-tank, complained that the huge reserve of Lithium present in Bolivia was in the hands of the State“” and of the bad example“” of Evo Morales. (1) In the same article it was pointed out that, on the contrary, Chile and Argentina, the other two Saudi Arabian”of Lithium, had generated a real race for lithium”, as in romantic Yukon era.

In Chile, according to 2016 data, 68,874 metric tons ™ of lithium carbonate equivalent (cle) were extracted by private companies Albemarle and Sociedad Química de Minerales de Chile (SGM). The latter is owned 29 percent by billionaire Julio Ponce Lerou, who ranked 422 on the Forbes chart of the rich planetary planets, thanks to the Lithium boom. At that time, Chile had a 33% share of the Lithium world market.

In 2016, the Argentinean companies FMC Corporation and Orocobre produced 30,340 tm of cle, reaching a 16 percent share of the world market.

The article reported the opinion of an alleged expert in the field, named Joe Lowry, nicknamed in the branch as “Mr. lithium”. According to Lowry, the mineral mining industry would require large and adequate investments to achieve discrete extractive values.

The subordinate position of the Argentinean companies was precisely due to the absence of investment, due to the “conflicts with the Kirchner”, contrasts which would evidently have ceased with the establishment of the neoliberal government of Macri.

The global capital wants to put its hands on lithium, a strategic element for the production of batteries, not only for the mobile phone market, but especially for the new business of electric car industry.

Price indexes of Lithium Carbonate, Lithium Oxide and Cobalt (Source: Pricepedia)

In recent years, the “lithium rush” has generated a significant increase in prices of mineral, and, consequently, in the profits of mining companies. The price of lithium, in the form of carbonate, in 2015 was around 5 euro/kg, while in 2018 it reached 12 euro/kg (+140%). Lithium oxide increased from 7.5 to 12 euro/kg (+61%).  “Currently the Li-Ion accumulators are the most used and according to a report of the Chilean Chemical and Mining Society (SQM), one of the largest lithium producers in the world, The demand for key components for the production of this type of accumulator will also increase significantly in the coming years (2).

The important question we should ask ourselves is this: has this Lithium Rush brought wealth to popular classes of Argentina and Chile, as well as to the pockets of speculators?

The answer is obviously negative. This is demonstrated by the history of recent events in Chile and Argentina.

In the first of the two countries, a great popular riot has broken out against the neoliberal Pinera government, which has given rise to a bloody repression of demonstrators, on which there has been the complete disregard of the Western world.

Likewise in Argentina, a large popular opposition has decreed the end of the neoliberal government and the election of a government once again close to Kirchnerian popular politics.

Underlying both popular protests are extreme poverty, the indecent level of wages, privatisations, the high cost of living and services – largely owned by private companies – the subtraction of the nation’s wealth by monopolistic enterprises, in comparison with the high salaries of police soldiers and all government officials and bureaucrats who help to maintain the order of neoliberal autocracy.

In short, the money of the Lithium Rush has filled the pockets of monopolists.

From these pockets – now absolutely hermetic – despite neoliberal fables, no wealth poured in favour of popular classes.

Otherwise, what happened in Bolivia?

The government of Evo Morales had placed its attention on Lithium. In the Salar of Uyumni, the country boasts the most important reserve of lithium in the world. In 2018, its production amounted to around 120 tons of cle per year: a small share for the interests of speculators. The government of Evo Morales recalled that projects developed in Bolivia have tried to take account of environment. More importantly, the government had chosen a social route for the development of this mining industry. The aim of the projects was not only to export, but to manufacture the finished product (batteries) in Bolivia, reserving the monopoly of extraction and subsequent production to industries wholly owned by the State, such as the mining industry, entrusted exclusively to the Yacimientos de Litio Bolivia.

Evo Morales applied the recipe of reserving to community the means of production, in order to decide what, how, where to produce, in accordance with the conservation needs of the environment.

The goals achieved in recent years by the Bolivian State, the elections always won by its President, including the last, show that there has been a fair distribution of wealth in favor of the popular classes of the country.

Against this socialist path, in recent years almost all mainstream and all think-thanks of neoliberalism have been hurled.

The production sector of electric cars is also at the heart of great financial manoeuvres that are taking place in the green economy sector. There has been an undoubted massive investment of resources in the promotion of cultural hegemony within the Western mainstream, towards the need for massive investments in“technologies considered green”, even if these are not so “green” such as the production of battery-powered cars, which become impacting hazardous waste after a few years of operation.

These great manoeuvres were well explained by F. William Engdahl, in an article recently appeared in Global Research (3).

Engdahl notes that the mega-corporations and mega-billionaires behind the globalisation of world economy, whose pursuit for shareholder value and cost reduction has caused so much damage to our environment both in the industrial world and in the underdeveloped economies of Africa, Asia and Latin America, are the main supporters of the decarbonisation movement.

Engdahl also affirms:

“In 2013 after years of careful preparation, a Swedish real estate company, Vasakronan, issued the first corporate “Green Bond.” They were followed by others including Apple, SNCF and the major French bank Credit Agricole. In November 2013 Elon Musk’s problem-riddled Tesla Energy issued the first solar asset-backed security. Today according to something called the Climate Bonds Initiative, more than $500 billion in such Green Bonds are outstanding. The creators of the bond idea state their aim is to win over a major share of the $45 trillion of assets under management globally which have made nominal commitment to invest in “climate friendly” projects.” […] “In 2016 the TCFD along with the City of London Corporation and the UK Government initiated the Green Finance Initiative, aiming to channel trillions of dollars to “green” investments. The central bankers of the FSB nominated 31 people to form the TCFD. Chaired by billionaire Michael Bloomberg of the financial wire, it includes key people from JP MorganChase; from BlackRock–one of the world’s biggest asset managers with almost $7 trillion; Barclays Bank; HSBC, the London-Hong Kong bank repeatedly fined for laundering drug and other black funds; Swiss Re, the world’s second largest reinsurance; China’s ICBC bank; Tata Steel, ENI oil, Dow Chemical, mining giant BHP Billington and David Blood of Al Gore’s Generation Investment LLC. In effect it seems the foxes are writing the rules for the new Green Hen House.

Bank of England’s Carney was also a key actor in efforts to make the City of London into the financial center of global Green Finance. The outgoing UK Chancellor of the Exchequer, Philip Hammond, in July 2019 released a White Paper, “Green Finance Strategy: Transforming Finance for a Greener Future.” The paper states, “One of the most influential initiatives to emerge is the Financial Stability Board’s private sector Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD), supported by Mark Carney and chaired by Michael Bloomberg. This has been endorsed by institutions representing $118 trillion of assets globally.” There seems to be a plan here. The plan is the financialization of the entire world economy using fear of an end of world scenario to reach arbitrary aims such as “net-zero greenhouse gas emissions.” (3).

This important concentration of financial forces, as also demonstrated by Cory Morningstar, author and environmental activist, have strongly supported that investment in cultural hegemony represented by the apparitions of Greta Thunberg and the Fridays for Climate. Both this phenomena has been reproduced and amplified by the mainstream media, just as the size of these economic interests is great.

Follow the money trail, people say in USA about politics and media.

This economic path is now quite clear: the crisis of over-production needs new financial outlets: raising money from funds to invest in prospects that become credible and also necessitated, such as the decrease of CO2 in the atmosphere, presented as the last opportunity before the Apocalypse.

To give a concrete dimension to these investments, however, they also need neoliberal domination of raw materials needed: lithium is among them.

From the neo-liberal point of view, their management must be taken away from the bad examples of “nationalization”. Thinking about extracting and producing lithium for the needs of the people and in respect for the environment, outside of speculative ambitions, is an attack at heart of globalized capitalist economy.

This is the reason why a freely elected President who enjoys the granite consensus of the popular masses of Bolivia should be ousted and forced to resign and flee the Country.

It becomes also clear which is the main enemy of the self-determination of peoples: in Bolivia there is not a song much different from the one played by the United States, NATO and the European Union in Syria, trying to break up an oil-producing country in order to throw it into easy hands to run.

Italian main press agency, ANSA, reported a few days ago that an order of capture was allegedly issued against Evo Morales. The source were statements of Mr. Camacho, who is none other than the leader of that opposition which challenged without substantiated reason the President’s legitimate election. No official charge was held by Mr Camacho at the time of that statement.

This says a lot about how West Governments and European Union are aligned with the NATO imperialistic agenda, and with the interests of finance and globalized industry.

The enemy is naked, we have just to refuse to cover him up and start fighting.

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Notes

(1) M. Stefanini, Chi ha il litio non ha i denti, Il Foglio, 15.3.2018

(2) C. Ranocchia, I prezzi del litio su livelli da record, Pricepedia, 29.5.2019

(3) F William Engdahl, Climate and The Money Trail, Globalresearch, 25.9.2019

The prevailing wisdom that sees explosive and long-term potential for U.S. shale may rest on some faulty and overly-optimistic assumptions, according to a new report.

Forecasts from the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), along with those from its Paris-based counterpart, the International Energy Agency (IEA), are often cited as the gold standard for energy outlooks. Businesses and governments often refer to these forecasts for long-term investments and policy planning.

In that context, it is important to know if the figures are accurate, to the extent that anyone can accurately forecast precise figures decades into the future. A new report from the Post Carbon Institute asserts that the EIA’s reference case for production forecasts through 2050 “are extremely optimistic for the most part, and therefore highly unlikely to be realized.”

The U.S. has more than doubled oil production over the past decade, and at roughly 12.5 million barrels per day (mb/d), the U.S is the largest producer in the world. That is largely the result of a massive scaling-up of output in places like the Bakken, the Permian and the Eagle Ford. Conventional wisdom suggests the output will steadily rise for years to come.

It is worth reiterating that after an initial burst of production, shale wells decline rapidly, often 75 to 90 percent within just a few years. Growing output requires constant drilling. Also, the quality of shale reserves vary widely, with the “sweet spots” typically comprising only 20 percent or less of an overall shale play, J. David Hughes writes in the Post Carbon Institute report.

After oil prices collapsed in 2014, shale companies rushed to take advantage of the sweet spots. That allowed the industry to focus on the most profitable wells first, cut costs and scale up production. But it also pushed off a problem for another day. “Sweet spots will inevitably become saturated with wells, and drilling outside of sweet spots will require higher rates of drilling and capital investment to maintain production, along with higher commodity prices to justify them,” Hughes says in his PCI report.

In addition, this form of “high-grading” does allow for rapid extraction, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that more oil is ultimately going to be recovered when all is said and done.

The same might be true for all of the highly-touted productivity gains, Hughes says. The industry has boosted productivity by drilling longer laterals, intensifying the use of water and frac sand, as well as increasing the number of fracking stages. These productivity improvements are “undeniable,” Hughes writes.

However, the “limits of technology and exploiting sweet spots are becoming evident, however, as in some plays new wells are exhibiting lower productivities,” Hughes says. “More aggressive technology, coupled with longer horizontal laterals, allows each well to drain more reservoir area, but reduces the number of drilling locations and therefore does not necessarily increase the total recovery from a play—it just allows the resource to be recovered more quickly.”

Already, some shale plays have seen production plateau while others are in decline.

In short, Hughes says that of the 13 major shale plays analyzed in the PCI report, the EIA has “extremely optimistic” outlooks for nine of them. Of the remaining four, three of them are “highly optimistic,” and only one – the Woodford Play in Oklahoma – is ranked as “moderately optimistic.”

He notes that in some instances, the EIA’s forecasts are so optimistic that the production volumes exceed the agency’s own estimates for proven reserves plus unproven reserves. The EIA also assumes that every last drop of proven reserves is produced, along with a high percentage of unproven reserves by 2050.

“Although the ‘shale revolution’ has provided a reprieve from what just 15 years ago was thought to be a terminal decline in oil and gas production in the U.S.,” Hughes writes, “this reprieve is temporary, and the U.S. would be well advised to plan for much-reduced shale oil and gas production in the long term.”

Regardless of the geology, climate policy and waning investor interest will likely result in a lot of oil being left in the ground. Hughes says that the EIA’s figures are optimistic, even without considering any mandates to cut greenhouse gas emissions. “If U.S. energy policy actually reflected the need to mitigate climate change…the EIA’s forecasts for tight oil and shale gas production through 2050 make even less sense.”

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Nick Cunningham is an independent journalist, covering oil and gas, energy and environmental policy, and international politics. He is based in Portland, Oregon. 

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After the arguments before the Supreme Court in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) case, it is difficult to predict the outcome. Justices often play devil’s advocate when questioning the lawyers, so reading the tea leaves about how a case will ultimately be decided can be a dicey proposition. But the justices’ questions appeared to indicate that right-wing Justices Alito, Gorsuch and Kavanaugh favor affirming Donald Trump’s termination of DACA, and liberal Justices Kagan, Ginsburg and Sotomayor want to uphold DACA. Justice Thomas, who almost never asks a question during arguments, invariably sides with the right-wingers. Chief Justice Roberts, who generally takes the conservative position, and Justice Breyer, who more often votes with the liberals, were harder to read. Roberts, who appeared to lean toward the government’s position, will likely cast the deciding vote.

On November 12, the justices heard arguments in Department of Homeland Security v. Regents of the University of California, a case that is testing whether Trump’s rescission of DACA was lawful.

DACA was created by Barack Obama in 2012 to encourage undocumented people who arrived in the U.S. as children to come out of the shadows and register for temporary protection from deportation. They are called “Dreamers,” inspired by the Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act, which Congress has failed to pass. Nearly 800,000 Dreamers have work permits and other benefits. Many are lawyers, doctors, engineers and military officers. According to one study, over 90 percent of them are employed and 45 percent are enrolled in school.

To qualify for DACA, a person must be a current student, a high school graduate, have a GED or an honorable discharge from the military. Applicants cannot have prior convictions of serious crimes or be considered a national security threat. The program provides a renewable two-year period of deferred immigration action for people who came to the U.S. as children and continuously lived in the U.S. for at least five years before June 15, 2012.

In September 2017, then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced that the Trump administration would rescind DACA, saying, “Such an open-ended circumvention of immigration laws was an unconstitutional exercise of authority by the Executive Branch.”

Several states, DACA recipients and organizations challenged the termination of DACA in the federal courts, successfully arguing it was unlawful. The repeal of DACA was put on hold pending the Supreme Court’s decision.

The two issues facing the Supreme Court are: (1) whether the courts have jurisdiction to review the decision to end DACA; and (2) whether the rescission of DACA was legal.

Do Courts Have Authority to Review Legality of DACA Rescission?

The government is arguing that the decision of whether to enforce the immigration laws is solely within agency discretion of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and not subject to judicial review. Ginsburg pointed out the contradiction in that position: On the one hand, the government says the decision is not subject to judicial review because DHS has sole discretion to end DACA, but on the other hand, it claims that DHS had no discretion because it was illegally established.

Kagan cited another contradiction in the government’s argument, in which it “suggest[s] that the original DACA is reviewable, but the rescission of DACA is not.” She called that “an asymmetry in what’s reviewable.”

Gorsuch said, “I hear a lot of facts, sympathetic facts,” and “they speak to all of us,” but like Alito, he did not seem to think the case was reviewable.

Breyer appeared to be on the fence. “I’m saying honestly I am struggling,” he said. But Breyer also challenged the government’s argument that it has prosecutorial discretion to decide whether to enforce the immigration laws. Breyer distinguished a prosecutor’s decision whether to charge an individual from the policies of an agency.

Is Trump’s Rescission of DACA Lawful?

If the Supreme Court finds it has authority to review the government’s decision to rescind DACA, it must then decide whether the rescission was lawful.

Those challenging the DACA rescission argued that DHS did not sufficiently consider the Dreamers’ reliance interests when it decided to terminate DACA. People outed themselves as undocumented to apply for DACA in reliance on its promise of protection from deportation. Theodore Olson, the lawyer for the individual challengers, said, “Those reliance interests were engendered by the decision of the government that caused people to come forward.”

Breyer cited a Justice Scalia opinion saying that when an agency’s “prior policy has engendered serious reliance interests, it must be taken into account.” Breyer added, “That’s this case, I think.” He mentioned 66 health care organizations, three labor unions, 210 educational institutions, six military organizations, three home builders, five states, 108 municipalities and cities, 129 religious organizations and 145 businesses, most of which, Breyer said, listed reliance interests. In other words, these groups are relying on the Dreamers whose study and work they depend upon.

There was also discussion of the Dreamers’ reliance on Trump’s statements that they would be protected. Trump praised the Dreamers in February 2017, calling most of them “absolutely incredible kids.” He promised, “We are gonna deal with DACA with heart.”

Last fall, Trump tweeted, “Does anybody really want to throw out good, educated and accomplished young people who have jobs, some serving in the military? Really!”

When Sessions announced that DACA would be repealed, Trump delayed enforcement for six months, giving Congress time to act to protect the Dreamers. But immigration reform has eluded Congress for years.

“There’s a whole lot of reliance interests that weren’t looked at, including … the current president telling DACA-eligible people that they were safe under him and that he would find a way to keep them here,” Sotomayor noted. But the administration’s position is tantamount to “I’ll give you six months to destroy your lives,” Sotomayor said.

Roberts told Olson, however,

“the whole thing was about work authorization and these other benefits. Both administrations have said they’re not going to deport the people. So, the deferred prosecution or deferred deportation, that’s not what the focus of the policy was.”

When questioning Michael Mongan, an attorney for the state challengers, Roberts mentioned the 2016 case in which he voted with right-wing justices to block another Obama order, Deferred Action for Parents of Americans (DAPA). Since Scalia had just died, the case deadlocked 4 to 4, leaving in place a Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals decision ending DAPA.

“Look,” Roberts said, “I’ve got a decision from the Fifth Circuit that tells me this is illegal, it’s been affirmed by the Supreme Court by an equally divided vote.”

In 2017, Elaine Duke, acting director of the DHS, issued a cursory memo announcing the end of DACA. It included no policy reasons. The following year, Kirstjen Nielsen, the new DHS director, issued another memo affirming the Duke memo and stating policy reasons.

Breyer cited “a foundational principle of administrative law that a court may uphold agency action only on the grounds that the agency invoked when it took the action,” concluding therefore that the court should only consider the Duke memo. By contrast, Kavanaugh invoked the Nielsen memo, which he said contains “sound reasons of enforcement policy to rescind the DACA policy.”

Ginsburg called the Nielsen memo “infected” by the view that the program was illegal, arguing that Nielsen would not necessarily have come to the same conclusion if there had been “a clear recognition that there was nothing illegal about DACA.”

Roberts Will Likely Be the Swing Vote

Roberts, who cast conflicting votes in two recent immigration cases, is the wild card here. Together with the four other right-wing justices, he provided the fifth vote to uphold Trump’s Muslim Ban. But he sided with the four liberals to halt Trump’s use of the citizenship question on the 2020 census, writing for the majority that the government’s stated reason for including it was “contrived.”

Roberts wrote, “Altogether, the evidence tells a story that does not match the explanation the [Commerce] Secretary gave for his decision.” He could adopt the same reasoning in the DACA case and agree with Olson and Mongan that the case should be sent back to DHS to determine the actual cost of ending DACA and provide a reasoned legal analysis.

The chief justice must be mindful of the legacy of his court, which would include stripping DACA protection from nearly a million members of society if he votes with the right-wing justices.

The Supreme Court will announce its decision by the end of June 2020.

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Turkey is deporting terrorists to their country of origin. President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said Tuesday,

“Some countries have started panicking after we began the repatriation process of foreign Daesh terrorists. Turkey has been worrying about this issue for years, let others worry now,” He added, “The American Daesh terrorists stranded in the buffer zone on Greece border is none of Turkey’s concern, deportations will continue regardless.”

The Turkish Interior Minister, Süleyman Soylu, said last week that Ankara would start sending ISIS terrorists back to their country of origin even if they had been stripped of their citizenship, adding that Turkey was not a ‘hotel’ for foreign jihadists.

“There is no need to try to escape from it; we will send them back to you. Deal with them how you want,” said Soylu.

Turkey has criticized Western countries for refusing to take back their citizens who were members of ISIS, also known as Daesh, and stripping them of their citizenship, although the 1961 New York Convention made it illegal to leave people stateless. Since 2010, the UK has stripped more than 100 people of British citizenship. One of the first deported terrorists was an American, unnamed, who was deported to the USA via Greece.  However, he refused to go into Greece, and returned to Turkey, upon which the Turks refused him re-entry and pushed him back to Greece.  Finally, when he asked to enter Greece, they refused which has left him in ‘limbo’ in a buffer space between Turkey and Greece.  The US State Department acknowledges they are aware of the situation but offer no further details about the man who has been photographed and was shown on Turkish TV.

Plans to deport eleven French citizens and seven Germans, along with three from Denmark and two from Ireland, were forming, according to Turkish Interior Ministry spokesman Ismail Catakli. A spokesman for the German Foreign Ministry, Christofer Burger, announced in Berlin that ten people were to be deported to Germany suspected of ISIS involvement, including women and children.  The Germans were due to be flown home on November 14^th.

Turkey has deported 7,500 ISIS members, with another 1,149 ISIS terrorists in Turkish prisons. Turkish state media reported Turkey planned to repatriate about 2,500 militants, most going home to European Union nations.

Erdogan will meet with Trump today at the White House.  Erdogan will present documentation that Ferhat Abdi Sahin, who is known to the US military as ‘General’ Mazloum Kobani, is a PKK terrorist.  Recently, Trump spoke with Mazloum, who is the military leader of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), and spoke highly of Mazloum and had invited him to the White House.  Trump ordered the withdrawal of US troops from northeastern Turkey, which paved the road for Erdogan to order an invasion on October 9^th, to remove the SDF. The US military partnered with the SDF in the fight to defeat ISIS in Syria.  However, the fight was over and Trump had promised his citizens to ‘bring the troops home’.  Many felt this was a betrayal of the SDF, who had fought and died in the fight to stop ISIS, alongside US troops.  However, Erdogan views the SDF, and Mazloum, as part of the internationally recognized terrorist group, PKK, who has waged a terror campaign against Turkey for more than 30 years, resulting in the deaths of nearly 40,000 people, including women, children, and infants.

Not every terrorist is being deported from Turkey, only the ones they don’t want.  The mercenary militia Free Syrian Army (FSA) is on the Turkish government payroll and fighting inside Syria today on behalf of Erdogan.

The ground troops used in ‘Operation Spring Peace’ are Syrian terrorists who are now mercenary soldiers employed by Turkey.  We first heard of the FSA in 2011 when Obama and Sen. John McCain called them ‘freedom fighters’ and funded them through covert CIA programs, as well as through Congressional funding, lobbied by McCain and others.  McCain made a personal trip to meet with the FSA near Idlib and the photos his office posted online were controversial. The FSA ended up a failure in Syria, while their ‘brother’s in arms’, Al Qaeda, arrived and were successful, with the FSA either switching uniforms to Al Qaeda or their ‘brother’ ISIS.  Erdogan continued to support them as the remnants of the FSA re-grouped in Turkey, and he rebranded them as the “Syrian National Army”; however, the new name never stuck and they are still called FSA.

Since the FSA have invaded northeast Syria, about 200,000 people have been displaced, according to the UN. Families are scattered across the area, and it is the FSA who are blamed for beatings, rapes, looting, kidnappings, and executions.

The FSA invokes the name of God in every action they take.  If they kill innocent civilians or armed SDF soldiers, they do so by invoking the name of God.  Their shouts of “Allahu Akbar” are remembered from their first appearance in 2011 in Homs, when the carried banners which read, “Christians to Beirut, Alowis to the grave.”  They were followers of the Muslim Brotherhood ideology which gave them the Islamic authority to slaughter in the name of God and to judge who is a ‘heathen’ or not.

“Those people are filled with hatred and a lust for blood,” said Fateh, a barber from Ras al-Ayn.  “They do not distinguish between Arab and Kurdish, Muslim and non-Muslim. They contacted me before the offensive and said that as an Arab Muslim, it is my duty to rise up against the Kurds and help Turkey invade my city.”

He refused and left the area.

“Someone called me and simply said ‘we want your head’ as if stealing my home and driving me out of my city merely for being Kurdish was not enough.” said Mohammad Aref, a radiologist from Tal Abyad.

He said he was reminded of how ISIS acted when they invaded his town in 2013.  The FSA terrorists “destroyed a lion stonework at the entrance of our building, thinking it was idolatry”, he said. “They took our carpets and threw them on the street to prostrate themselves on them during public prayers that they were holding.”

“Let’s be clear, Tal Abyad is not under the control of Turkey. It’s under the control of Turkey’s mercenaries.  They have taken over the houses of us Kurds and made them their own.  Each one of those mercenaries acts as if he was in charge of the town.  They walk into houses and proclaim them theirs. They kidnap and execute people for being ‘atheists’ or ‘blasphemers’. And they are looting people’s properties in broad daylight.” said Mikael Mohammad, the Kurdish owner of a clothing shop in Tal Abyad.

The FSA terrorists “believe that taking your life is doing God’s work and that stealing your property is their reward for it,” said a Kurdish aid worker from Ras al-Ayn, now displaced in Qamishli.

Graphic videos uploaded by the FSA showed them executing captives along a highway near Tal Abyad.  On October 12^th the Syrian Kurdish politician, Hevrin Khalaf, was tortured, murdered and dismembered after the FSA ambushed her car.  The videos of her body and the mutilations of the corpse went viral online.  Her mother said after receiving the body for burial, the only thing she could recognize was a portion of her chin.

Speaking to journalists recently, Erdogan defended his Syrian allies, saying they were not “terrorists” but Islamic holy warriors who were “defending their land there, hand in hand, arm in arm, shoulder to shoulder with my soldiers”.

In 2012, Daniel Wagner, the author of “Virtual Terror”, wrote about the FSA, at a time when the Obama administration and the US media were supporting the FSA regardless of the war crimes and atrocities they were committing. He wrote, “The West should not be surprised if an Islamic state results from an FSA victory.”  That was written seven years ago, while Turkey today, a US ally and NATO member, is using the same terrorists to murder in northeast Syria, and there is no international outcry, as they had all supported them before. Interestingly, the only international outcry is that their terrorists are coming home to roost.

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This article was originally published on Mideast Discourse.

Steven Sahiounie is a political commentator. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from Mideast Discourse

BDS SA, COSATU, SACP, SSN, FOCUS-SA and others join South Africa’s ruling party, the ANC, in pledging solidarity with the Nelson Mandela of Latin America, President Evo Morales of Bolivia.

Over the weekend, in a shock to all peace loving people, Morales was removed from his position following a coup supported by the local oligarchy with ties in US-interest. This sentiment has been expressed by several Latin American leaders including the president and presidents-elect of Mexico, Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Argentina and several others from across the globe.

We welcome the protection provided to Morales by the Government of Mexico and concur with their Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard who has explained that “Military coups never bring anything positive and that is why we are worried.”

We as South Africans are concerned by the interference by the USA and their allies as well as related structures in Latin America and other parts of the world.

We fondly recall Morales’ visit to our country in 2006 where he met our former President Thabo Mbeki, his successor President Kgalema Mothlante, our current President Cyril Ramaphosa as well as other senior South Africa leaders including the leadership of the ANC, SACP and COSATU.

Morales was one of the first indiengous people to be elected as President in Bolivia (where the indigenous people account for over 63% of the population. Having been born into a poor Aymarayan family from the township of El Alto (one of seven children, only three of whom survived beyond the age of one) Morales never betrayed his roots, having actively insured that racial discrimination against indigenous people and other injustices were confronted head on.

The leadership of Morales also saw greater economic prosperity for all people of Bolivia. According to the Washington Post:

“it’s indisputable that Bolivians are healthier, wealthier, better educated, living longer and more equal than at any time in this South American nation’s history…under Morales, data shows, Bolivia’s economy is closing the gap with the rest of the continent, growing faster than most neighbors over the past 13 years.”

An internationalist, Morales has also come under pressure from the USA for his support of the Palestinian struggle against Israeli Apartheid. In 2008 Evo Morales recalled Bolivia’s ambassador from Israel stating that “what is happening in Palestine is genocide”. In 2014 Morales, together with the late Cuban President Fidel Castro and others issued a statement in support of BDS. They wrote:

“We encourage you to join the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign against the terrorist state of Israel, as it is time for active and creative solidarity that goes beyond statements of condemnation.”

We will urgently be consulting with our partner organizations involved in international solidarity efforts to arrange urgent protests and others actions against the US-backed coup in Bolivia and to support the Bolivian people’s democratically elected president, Comrade Evo Morales. We call for an end to the hybrid wars waged on progressive states in Latin America which are undermining democracy and the will of the people.

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“You must know a great fighter, he is a personality in his country” – the French worker of North African origin who introduced him to me told me. It was rigorously true. For many years Mamadou Mansaré has embodied the voice of the Guinean workers’ movement in the National Confederation of Guinean Workers (CNTG). We are at an obligatory stop in French trade unionism: a mansion in the middle of a natural habitat given to the Nazi occupants to be used as a brothel, and that the first resisters who entered Paris with their rifles took away from their former owners, and then converted it into a training centre for class struggle.

Because internationalism is acts and not words, Mansaré was being gratuitously hosted by the CGT, “the union whose comrades were by my side in my country, during the gun battles”. He was undergoing medical treatment. His pleasant voice did not allow us to guess that long trajectory in the front line of battle. Despite his fragile state of health, we agreed to an interview that finally lasted more than two hours. We barely noticed.

Mansaré had recently returned to Guinea. And only a few days ago he left us, on October 6. He was 64 years old and fought until the last moment for the humble of that plundered continent. His return is a message for the new generations: a whole life dedicated to social combat is worth living. Chapeau bas, monsieur !

We leave you with this interview published as a tribute. In it, Mansaré breaks into a thousand pieces the story of national history based on the work of a few individuals, restores the true history of African Independence and points out without cover those responsible for this deadly capitalist machinery.

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Alex Anfruns: How did Guinea’s independence come about?

Mamadou Mansaré: Guinea gained its independence on 2 October 1958. It was the first country of the French colonial empire to say “No” and to obtain independence in a referendum. That “No” of September 28 was perceived by De Gaulle and the whole West as a snub. My country had to pay a high price for having made this choice, for having said that “we prefer freedom in poverty to opulence in slavery”.

AA: How important is Guinea in the region?

MM: Guinea is the third largest bauxite producer after Australia, but it is the largest reserve in the world. And they are also quality reserves. We have the best iron, with extraordinary deposits. We have uranium, gold, diamonds, large expanses of arable land, our waters are abundant with fish… It is said that Guinea is the “Water Tower” of Africa, because all the great rivers of West Africa have their origin in Guinea. We have the Senegal River, the Niger River and the Gambia River, which originate in Guinea. It is as if we were talking about the importance of the Nile for Egypt.

AA: Guinea was on the right path to development. What happened then?

MM: What happened is that France withdrew all its teachers, destroyed all the documentation of the colonial administration, including our birth certificates that were burned. They left us nothing. Those who came to replace them to teach us in Guinea were Russian, Bulgarian, Haitian and Dahomey teachers – at that time already called Beninese. So I was educated by Russian professors throughout my cycle, until I graduated from university. Our first president, Sékou Touré, came from the union that made the country independent. He was also a deep Pan-Africanist.

AA: In the context of the “wave of independence”, what were the relations between the different liberation movements in West Africa?

MM: The company in which I worked, the SBK (Société de Bauxite de Kindia), was created especially to reimburse the Russians for the weapons that the Russians and other Soviet bloc countries sent to us for use in the various national liberation movements.

Our first contribution was to the FLN in Algeria. The weapons that arrived in Guinea passed through Bamako and then through the desert to finally deliver them to Boumédienne.

Then there was the liberation movement of the Portuguese-speaking countries, with Guinea Bissau very close to us. It was our own troops who fought there.

AA: What kind of cooperation was there?

MM: It was Guinea that provided the aid to Guinea Bissau. The weapons were bought from the Soviet bloc, landed in the port of Conakry, and then transported by road. The PAIGC, which had been formed by Amilcar Cabral, was based in Guinea. PAIGC combatants were trained in Guinea by the Guinean army and Cuban teachers, because in the 1960s there was military and health cooperation between Guinea and Cuba. The first combined intervention of both was in the Congo, where Guinean and Cuban troops were found. Che Guevara had gone to the Congo to help the Lumumbista movement in April 1965. But it was too late. That failure still explains today the current destabilization of the Congo.

PAIGC fighters were not only trained in Conakry, they were also given accommodation. Amilcar Cabral, Nino Vieira and the entire staff were there. And our troops also disguised themselves as PAIGC fighters to fight alongside them.

AA: In that unequal balance of power with the colonial powers, Pan-African unity was necessary…

MM: Yes, the Portuguese first attacked Guinea and then assassinated Cabral on January 20, 1973. On November 22, 1970, ships arrived in Guinea that landed mercenaries to carry out a coup d’état, but it failed. All the people participated in its defeat because everyone was obliged to have a militia formation. By the time we graduated from university, we had all completed a year of military training. We joined the company, but in case we were needed, if a war was declared we had to be prepared.

Fortunately, the war never happened. There were attacks, such as the incursion of mercenaries from Sierra Leone who came to attack us in 2000. But it only took us a month, we threw them out!

Then we had Angola. The first Angolan president was Agustinho Neto. He was very popular, he did his military training in Guinea. Weapons were also transported in the same way from Guinea to Angola.

AA: How do you explain this important welcome to Pan-African leaders in Guinea?

MM: Let us remember the coup d’état against the President of Ghana, Kwame Nkrumah. When that coup took place, we welcomed Nkrumah to Guinea. He was even appointed co-president of Guinea! Since independence, Guinea has been a country that has really wanted this unity. First we started by bringing together Guinea, Mali and Ghana. But it didn’t work in Mali, because of the coup against Modibo Keita. Then unity was also impeded by the dismissal of Nkrumah. In fact, Guinea is the only one of the three countries that was able to take on the Pan-African task.

The South African leader of the African National Congress (ANC) Thabo Mbeki, as well as President Nelson Mandela, completed their training in our country. Mandela’s first passport was Guinean! It was thanks to his Guinean diplomatic passports that all these leaders mentioned were able to travel, whether from Angola, Zambia, Zimbabwe as Robert Mugabe or Mozambique as their first president Samora Machel from 1975 to 1986. Machel led his country to independence after a war of liberation against the Portuguese. After his death, his wife Graça Machel became the First Lady of South Africa at the second marriage to Nelson Mandela in 1998.

All these countries received aid from the Guinean Government through bauxite mining companies. We sent our bauxite via Russian ships to Ukraine. There was a factory that was built especially for our bauxite. The Nikolaev company was the base on which today’s Russal group was founded. It is a large mining group, but during the period of the Soviet empire, Nikolaev belonged to the state. Nikolaev was built especially to transform bauxite into alumina and pay off the debt to the Soviet bloc: the weapons, the teachers, the doctors who sent us, as well as the infrastructure we were building.

AA: Those efforts of pan-African unity were subjected to containment by the colonial powers. It is hard to imagine that Guinea, the heart of the resistance, could be saved from the storm. How did they proceed?

MM: As I said, Guinea has made a significant contribution to the liberation of the other West African countries. That is why it has been the victim of many coups d’état. In some writings, we can read that Sékou Touré was a dictator, a bloodthirsty man, who killed this and that… As always, it is very easy to distort reality by those who have the power of communication.

Let’s see how Françafrique was under De Gaulle, with the businesses of the Foccart network. They themselves have recognized all the coups d’état they organized in Guinea. They admitted to being behind so many coup attempts… but they did not succeed. Never. Until the natural death of President Sékou Touré, no coup d’état succeeded… because his people were with him!

AA: How did you get involved in the union?

MM: At that time everyone was organized. When a young man finished his studies, he didn’t have to look for three feet for the cat, but simply started to work. Automatically and whatever his level was. You could choose between three companies. When I graduated from college, I chose SBK. I said to myself, “Well, if this company is paying our debt, I’d rather work there than at CBG, which serves the American imperialists of Alcan (Alcoa and Rio Tinto). I made my own decision.

The union played a very important role, at least for me, in raising awareness among the black African population. It was the first to begin to explain the injustices we were suffering. The West has never acknowledged the black genocide! One can hardly imagine what the triangular traffic between Africa and Europe is like. America alone, the “slave trade”, represents more than 200 million deaths. In Nantes there is a memorial with all the names of the captains of the ships that took part in that “slave trade”. Blacks used to be put on ships in Africa… And from then on, they were distributed and sold like wild animals. Women were separated…

Under that system alone, 200 million people died. Isn’t that genocide, not to mention the blacks who died in America! Not to mention those who died in the raids! And how many Africans died just because of the rubber harvest, Michelin companies…? Isn’t it colonization, isn’t it genocide?

If Europe has developed, it is thanks to the richness of Africa. Today we are told that we are immigrants. The colonialists came and imposed their law on us. They have taken the wealth of our continent. They don’t need a visa, they continue to loot us!

AA: You say that companies from imperialist countries were also present to exploit Guinea’s resources. Can you go deeper into that?

MM: Yes, at the time of Sékou Touré there was the CBG, the Compagnie de Bauxite de Guinée, of which 45% belonged to the Guinean state and 55% to the Alcan group. There was Pechiney, a French group in Fria. It is the first alumina plant in Africa, built by the French. After the death of Sékou Touré at the time of Lassana Conté, it was sold to the Americans. Today, this factory belongs to the Russal group.

Let’s compare the price of bauxite, for example, with the price of aluminum, which is the final element of bauxite…It’s with aluminum that we make cans, flasks, etc. When you compare the price of a ton of aluminum and a ton of bauxite, it’s the difference between a stream and an ocean! The maximum they’ll give you is maybe $28 or $30 for a ton of bauxite. While aluminum reaches up to $2,000 or $3,000 per ton.

AA: In the 1960s, groups of countries in the South came together to defend their economic rights, their sovereignty over the price of raw materials…

MM: Yes, the case of bauxite in Guinea is an example of this. At the time of the First Republic, it was a Guinean who held that position. But everything stopped after the death of the President. They wanted to follow the example of OPEC (Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries), do the same to regulate the price of bauxite. But the mining multinationals are very powerful and it was not possible. Today, those multinationals are Alcan (Alcoa and Rio Tinto), Vale, Russal, the Chinese… They come and take control of the concessions. There is no difference between them, but they copy each other.

AA: How does concessions work?

MM: To attract multinationals to your country, a country is forced to make many concessions. For example, let’s say that a country offers a concession of 20,000 dollars and the multinational answers “it’s too much, I can’t pay more than 10,000”. Then the government says: “Do you want me to exempt you from port taxes for ten years? You will not pay income taxes. Your expatriates will not contribute to social security”… Well, that’s a lot of taxes! In the meantime, the multinational uses the roads, the rivers, it pollutes with its various products! People and communities are deprived of the lands they occupied since their ancestors. And as compensation, they are not given any other working tool.

Let’s say that two countries have the same mineral, for example. Well, one country considers that it should give all those facilities to attract a multinational, because the neighboring country would also like it to come. Everyone wants him to come. So the multinational decides according to who has the best ore and the best advantages they offer. So Africa is fighting itself!

AA: How can one escape this vicious circle?

MM: Former South African President Thabo Mbeki’s report on illicit financial flows shows that the exemptions that countries granted multinational mining companies from various taxes were 10 times greater than the bilateral aid provided by Western countries.

Instead of providing us with this “aid”, our different countries could agree on a single, identical mining code, imposing the same requirements on the multinationals. In that case, there would no longer be competition between African countries.

AA: Today countries like the United States or France are very present in Africa. For example, with cooperation programmes in the “fight against corruption”. Are these their real objectives?

MM: Ridiculesness doesn’t kill! Instead of sending NGOs… may they help us recover our funds through mining tax havens! New Jersey is a mining tax haven. Toronto, in Canada, is a hub! The stock exchanges in England and Singapore are also centres of operations!

In Europe they have brought out a whole arsenal to fight against these tax havens from the financial point of view. But they never talk about mining tax havens. What are mining companies doing? They are all recovering their money in the places I have just mentioned. Even Chinese companies are trading in New Jersey. Everything they steal, they take there to launder, to make it clean money. We don’t even know how much real tonnage of ore is mined in our countries!

If you look at the map of Guinea, you can find Boké, next to the port and Guinea Bissau. The border near Boké was precisely where the main battlefields were located during the fight against the Portuguese army… The whole area of Boké is very rich in bauxite. Today, there are more than fifty multinationals of all nationalities in that small area of Boké-Boffa. Whether they are Chinese, Australian, Russian or American multinationals… Imagine the pressure that exists in my country! And if you look at the population, it’s very poor! So when I hear about NGOs… Why don’t they investigate where wealth goes?

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Without establishment media support, US planned aggression, color revolutions, old-fashioned coups, and other hostile to peace, equity and justice actions wouldn’t get out of the starting gate.

Propaganda support is crucial, manipulating the public mind. Media operate as gatekeepers, proliferating the official narrative, suppressing vital hard truths essential for everyone to know.

Orwell called it “reality control,” substituting managed news misinformation and disinformation for truth-telling.

Discussing the coup in Bolivia, Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) said the following:

Bolivian “(a)rmy generals appearing on television to demand the resignation and arrest of an elected civilian head of state seems like a textbook example of a coup,” adding:

“And yet that is certainly not how corporate media are presenting the weekend’s events in Bolivia. No establishment outlet framed the action as a coup,” concealing reality, exclusively reporting state-approved propaganda, saying the following:

NYT: An “infuriated population” was angry about “election fraud” — ignoring Bolivia’s free, fair and open process, Evo Morales elected and reelected four times.

Fox News falsely called his government a “full-blown dictatorship” — ignoring Bolivian democratic rule under his leadership.

When establishment media refer to a “coup,” Morales and his government are falsely accused of the made-in-the-USA plot to topple him.

FAIR: “The New York Times did not hide its approval at events, presenting Morales as a power-hungry despot who had finally ‘lost his grip on power,’ ” adding:

Removing him from office marked “the end of tyranny.”

CNN highlighted the Big Lie of “election fraud,” proving again why it’s the most distrusted name in so-called television news.

Across the board, establishment media suppressed how Morales was “forced (from office) at gunpoint by the military,” FAIR stressed.

CBS News falsely said Morales resigned over “election fraud and protests.”

FAIR: “Delegitimizing foreign elections where the ‘wrong’ person wins, of course, is a favorite pastime of corporate media.”

FAIR: “No mainstream outlet warned its readers (or viewers) that the OAS is a Cold War organization, explicitly set up to halt the spread of leftist governments.”

USAID earlier said the organization “promotes US interests in the Western hemisphere, countering the influence of” sovereign independent governments in Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua, and Bolivia under Morales.

The same script followed the US 2016 presidential election, establishment media furious about Trump’s triumph over Hillary.

Russiagate and Ukrainegate scams are all about wanting him delegitimized and weakened for winning an election he was supposed to lose.

Over-entertained, uninformed Americans are so out of touch with reality they’re easy to fool no matter how many times they were duped before.

Famed imperial state critic Gore Vidal once said:

“We are the United States of Amnesia, which is encouraged by a media that has no desire to tell us the truth about anything, serving their corporate masters who have other plans to dominate us.”

Noted oral historian Studs Terkel responded to Vidal, saying:

“Gore, it’s not the United States of Amnesia. It’s the United States of Alzheimer’s.”

Information passes through the public mind like water through a sieve — understanding something today, erased from memory when new or dissimilar information replaces it.

Vidal railed against establishment media, calling them “bandits,” adding “(t)he infantilizing of the republic is one of the triumphs of American television.”

“Everybody with an IQ above room temperature is onto the con act of our media. They are obeying bigger, richer interests than informing the public—which is the last thing that corporate America has ever been interested in doing.”

Commenting on the nation’s ruling class, Vidal said he was “around (its members) all (his) life,” stressing his awareness of “their total contempt for the people of the country” — serving their own interests exclusively, supported by dominant media.

In its latest edition, the NYT falsely claimed self-declared, unelected, coup d’etat president in Bolivia Anez aims “to reconstruct democracy.”

Like other establishment media, it failed to explain that toppling Morales was all about eliminating democratic rule under his leadership, wanting pro-Western puppet rule replacing him.

The Times and likeminded media support what demands denunciation. No election “fraud” occurred as falsely reported.

General Carlos Orellana Centellas replaced Williams Kaliman as Bolivian military chief, both officials and other key ones in their chain of command trained at the infamous School of the Americas at Fort Benning, GA.

According to Bolivia’s Ombudsman’s Office, street violence since October 20 resulted in eight deaths, over 500 injuries, and hundreds arrested.

On Wednesday, Telesur reported that “legitimate” Senate President Adriana Salvatierra “was violently assaulted by the police as she was trying to enter the Senate on Wednesday in order to comply with the constitutional rule that automatically proclaims the head of the upper chamber the Interim President when the President steps down, after Evo Morales was forced to resign on Sunday.”

During a Wednesday press conference, she said that she’s ready to convene parliament and assume the presidency as constitutionally mandated, adding:

“After the attack, we can observe that we have no guarantee for us to fulfill our legislative mandate.” Separately, she tweeted:

“#Bolivia | Senate President Adriana Salvatierra was assaulted and her entrance to the senate was blocked by police officials and coup supporters.”

Telesur tweeted:

“After a violent attack by coup supporters and police, Bolivian President of the Senate suffered minor injuries, but she was not able to go back to work and fulfill her mission at congress.”

On Wednesday, Pompeo issued a statement, expressing support for Bolivia’s coup d’etat president Anez, saying:

The Trump regime “applauds (her) for stepping up…to lead her nation through this democratic transition” — what the CIA orchestrated coup went all out to eliminate.

In response to events in Bolivia, the anti-imperial Black Alliance for Peace expressed solidarity with its population, urging that “people of conscience in the West join us to defeat the US/EU/NATO Axis of domination for the good of humanity,” adding:

“People of Bolivia, you are not alone.”

Note: On November 16, anti-imperial demonstrations are planned in Washington, New York, and other US cities against the CIA orchestrated coup in Bolivia — in coordination with similar actions abroad.

They’re all about wanting legitimate Bolivian President Evo Morales restored to the office he democratically won.

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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 OneWorld

Since late 2001, the United States has appropriated and is obligated to spend an estimated $6.4 Trillion through Fiscal Year 2020 in budgetary costs related to and caused by the post-9/11 wars—an estimated $5.4 Trillion in appropriations in current dollars and an additional minimum of $1 Trillion for US obligations to care for the veterans of these wars through the next several decades.[2]

The mission of the post-9/11 wars, as originally defined, was to defend the United States against future terrorist threats from al Qaeda and affiliated organizations. Since 2001, the wars have expanded from the fighting in Afghanistan, to wars and smaller operations elsewhere, in more than 80 countries — becoming a truly “global war on terror.” Further, the Department of Homeland Security was created in part to coordinate the defense of the homeland against terrorist attacks.

These wars, and the domestic counterterror mobilization, have entailed significant expenses, paid for by deficit spending. Thus, even if the United States withdraws completely from the major war zones by the end of FY2020 and halts its other Global War on Terror operations, in the Philippines and Africa for example, the total budgetary burden of the post- 9/11 wars will continue to rise as the US pays the on -going costs of veterans’ care and for interest on borrowing to pay for the wars. Moreover, the increases in the Pentagon base budget associated with the wars are likely to remain, inflating the military budget over the long run.

Overview

One of the major purposes of the Costs of War Project has been to clarify the types of budgetary costs of the US post -9/11 wars, how that spending is funded, and the long-term implications of past and current spending. This estimate of the US budgetary costs of the post-9/11 wars is a comprehensive accounting intended to provide a sense of the consequences of the wars for the federal budget. Since the 9/11 attacks, the Department of Defense appropriations related to the Global War on Terror have been treated as emergency appropriations, now called Overseas Contingency Operations (OCO).[3] When accounting for total war costs, the Department of Defense and other entities often present only Overseas Contingency Operation appropriations.

The Costs of War Project takes a broader view of war expenses because budgetary costs of the post -9/11 wars are not confined to military spending. Table 1 summarizes post-9/11 war-related costs and the categories of spending. Numbers and occasionally categories are revised in the Costs of War estimates when better information becomes available. For example, this year’s report uses newer interest rate data in calculating the estimated interest on borrowing for OCO spending. Additionally, this report revises the estimate of increases to the Pentagon base budget given new information, described below, on patterns of military spending and the relations between the OCO budget and base military spending. Further, the Department of Defense budget for FY2020 included new categories, denoting OCO spending intended for the base military budget, reflected in a separate line in Table 1.

Table 1. Summary of War Related Spending, in Billions of Current Dollars, FY2001–FY2020 Rounded to the nearest $billion.

Full Report: Click here to read the carefully documented report by Professor Neta C. Crawford of Boston University.

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Every year, on the anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, references are made with the Cypriot capital of Nicosia, the last divided capital city of Europe. In Berlin, the wall fell under the weight of a political cosmogony and pressure from citizens, who dismantled the wall with their hands, hammers and other tools until Berlin was once again united.

However, the partition of Germany and the division of Cyprus did not have the same starting point. Germany was divided between a communist east and a capitalist west after the Nazis were defeated by Soviet forces after the Battle of Berlin, while Cyprus was occupied in 1974 after Turkey invaded the northern portion of the island, established a de facto state only recognized by Ankara, and displaced the entirety of the native Greek population while replacing them with colonizers from Turkey.

Regarding the handling of the occupation, the status quo in Cyprus is controlled. Unfortunately, adapting to Turkish aspirations also goes through the deterioration of Ankara’s actions. The choice is between accepting the perpetrators or preventing them from overturn.

Ankara has relentlessly advanced into waters controlled by the Republic of Cyprus, the internationally recognized country.

Why? Oil and gas of course. Billions and billions of dollars’ worth.

The Eastern Mediterranean remains a strategic point for trade due to its proximity to the Suez Canal, transportation and more recently, natural resources. It is this very drive for exploiting the natural resources that in January, the Eastern Mediterranean Gas Forum was convened as a means for Cyprus, Egypt, Greece, Jordan, Israel, Italy and the Palestinian Authority to develop a regional natural gas market. Notably, Turkey was missing from this Forum, which would have agitated Ankara as only a month later ExxonMobil announced a new gas discovery in offshore Cyprus that has more than doubled Cyprus’s estimated offshore resources. This is why Turkey has been in a desperate rush to exploit oil belonging to another internationally recognized sovereign country.

It is for this reason that on Monday, on Nicosia’s request last month, the EU Council of Foreign Affairs adopted sanctions, including travel bans and freezing assets of individuals and entities involved in Turkey’s illegal drilling Cypriot natural resources.  The sanctions also prohibit persons and entities from the European Union from making funds available to those on the list of sanctions.

The sanctions come as last week, Turkish Energy Minister Fatih Dönmez boldly announced that his country had started illegal oil-drilling with Yavuz ship off Cyprus, noting that the Fatih vessel was also preparing for a new drilling.

In response to the sanctions, the Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu claimed that

“We will not give up our rights under international law, despite European steps,” adding that the EU “cannot grasp the reality and make the right decisions based on international law and justice.”

This is a strange position for Turkey to adopt when considering there is absolutely no international law that validates its illegal drilling of oil and gas that belongs to Cyprus. In actual international law, the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea stipulates that a state’s territorial waters can only extend 12 nautical miles out to sea. However, Cyprus has its own internationally recognized Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ), meaning Nicosia can claim fishing, mining, and drilling rights a further 200 miles unless the distance between two countries is less than 424 miles, they must determine an agreed dividing line between their EEZ’s.

Source: InfoBrics

Although Turkey claims it is upholding international law, without citing which international law exactly, it is unsurprising that Turkey is one of only 15 UN members, out of 193, that has not signed up to the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, demonstrating it has no interest in international law.

Simon Henderson, an energy specialist at the Washington Institute, explains that “Turkey has not signed up to the convention because the document grants significant rights to island territories” and that “Ankara instead claims rights based on its continental shelf, a perspective that severely limits Cypriot rights.”

However, what Turkey wants, and what Turkey gets are two different things.

Although Ankara continues to send colonizers to Northern Cyprus, the rest of the world recognises Cyprus as one country, with the government in Nicosia having sovereignty. The refusal of international states, including traditional allies like Albania and Azerbaijan, to recognize the illegal “Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus” infuriates Ankara. Only last month, EU Member States had reiterated their full support for Cyprus, demanding that the European Commission submit proposals for restrictive measures against Turkey.

The sanctions will be a major blow to Turkey as it does not have the technology or knowhow to exploit the significant gas and oil deposits in the EEZ, and it is highly unlikely that multinationals will be willing to extract Cyprus’ natural resources on behalf of Turkey and risk sanctions and punishment.

Although Çavuşoğlu continually insists that Turkey operates under the tenants of international law, this strange ‘adherence’ to international law sees Turkey violating Greek air space on a daily basis, continues to violate Cypriot territory on a near daily basis outside of the areas they already occupy, threats to invade the rest of Cyprus, and illegally invade northern Syria and Iraq. Turkey on a daily basis illegally operates in Greece, Cyprus, Syria and Iraq without permission or jurisdiction, yet continually claims it wants peace and operates under international law.

Therefore, Turkey certainly does not appear ready to participate in a five-day meeting on the Cyprus Issue in December. The initial goal was to pursue an informal five-day meeting with the UN Secretary-General following an informal three-day meeting, in search of unifying the island again.

At the same time UN Special Envoy Jane Hol Lut is expected to arrive in Cyprus for preparations for the informal trialogue meeting in Berlin on November 25 and Cypriot President Anastasiadis will also meet with Lut on November 16. However, President Anastasiadis goes to Paris on Monday to participate in the international Forum on Peace organized by the French Presidency. Before Berlin, President Anastasiadis will also travel to Zagreb to attend a conference of the European People’s Party hosted in the Croatian capital on November 20 and 21.

It certainly appears that Cyprus is making every diplomatic effort to force the issue of the divided island to be resolved. Although Turkey continues to act in a defiant manner, it is yet to realize that its efforts to become the regional hegemon has only weakened its position. It’s reversal of its responsible “Policy of Zero Problems with our Neighbors,” that was completed destroyed with Turkey’s support of jihadists against Syria in 2011 despite Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan once describing his Syrian counterpart Bashar al-Assad as “his brother”, has only seen the country experience more problems with increased terrorist attacks, the re-emergence of the PKK in Syria and a destroyed economy.

And now in Cyprus, with its continued efforts to ‘legitimize’ the invasion of the rest of the country or illegally extract its natural resources, Turkey will now be put in an even weaker position as it risks its economy further. With the U.S. already applying pressures and sanctions on Turkey for acquiring the Russian S-400 and invading northern Syria, the EU will now likely go on the offensive against Ankara as it continues to occupy a part of an EU member.

Although the EU has taken a more-or-less balanced and patient approach to resolving Cyprus, it appears it is now becoming increasingly impatient with Turkey’s aggression towards neighboring EU members. With the EU and Nicosia attempting to push ahead negotiations in resolving the Cyprus issue but Turkey illegally extracting natural resources, occupying a part of an EU member and indirectly threatening to invade the rest of the island along with Greece’s eastern Aegean islands, the EU is beginning to realize that time is being wasted in negotiations and patience and that a more aggressive approaches like sanctions needs to be taken.

Severe sanctions against Turkey would be devastating to its already fragile economy. Will this be enough to force Turkey to the negotiating table remains to be seen, but it is highly unlikely as Erdoğan has already demonstrated he is willing to sacrifice the wellbeing of his people and the economy by prioritizing military operations in Syria and Iraq, and pressuring the Greek and Cypriot militaries on a daily basis with the constant war games, costing the Turkish economy billions upon billions of dollars.

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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.

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

“This intimidation shows how the U.S. security forces work hand-in-glove with the right-wing forces in Latin America who are trying to stop progressive movements that empower the poor.”

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Medea Benjamin, co-founder of anti-war group CodePink, said she was assaulted Wednesday by supporters of the right-wing Venezuelan opposition during a Capitol Hill press conference announcing the creation of the bipartisan Congressional Venezuela Democracy Caucus.

Medea Benjamin is a frequent contributor to Global Research

Benjamin and other members of CodePink protested the event while backers of the effort to overthrow Venezuela’s elected President Nicolás Maduro rallied in support of the new pro-regime change caucus, which was launched by Reps. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.), Mario Díaz-Balart (R-Fla.), and other lawmakers.

During the press conference, Benjamin shouted for an end to punishing U.S. sanctions in Venezuela and held a sign that read “No Coups in Venezuela or Bolivia.”

At one point, Benjamin was standing just outside the circle of lawmakers when she was grabbed and choked from behind by an unidentified individual CodePink said was a supporter of the Venezuelan opposition.

“When Debbie Wasserman Schultz was speaking, I was standing right next to her, and every once in a while I would say something like, ‘Lift the Sanctions!’ ‘This is all about the votes, Debbie, isn’t it? In Florida!’,” Benjamin told journalist Ford Fischer following the event.

“I was pulled by people behind me,” she added. “They grabbed me. They choked me. They threw me down, and I was very upset and shaken.”

CodePink posted a clip of part of the incident on Twitter:

We managed to get a clip of the altercation between @MedeaBenjamin and the supporters of the Venezuelan opposition.

Decide for yourself who assaulted who. pic.twitter.com/oai4m33O7p

— CODEPINK (@codepink) November 14, 2019

Hours after the event, Capitol police—with five vehicles—arrived at Benjamin’s home and threatened to arrest her on accusations of assaulting Wasserman Schultz, which Benjamin adamantly denied.

In one clip, it appears that Benjamin grabbed the Florida congresswoman in an effort to maintain balance as she was pulled from behind.

“Debbie Wasserman Schultz was there. I was standing by the side of her, and the right-wing Venezuelans were dragging me down,” Benjamin told a Capitol police officer outside of her home. “I grabbed on to whatever I could find, and now they’re saying that I assaulted a congresswoman. I didn’t assault anybody.”

At :30, watch a member of Juan Guaido’s US-funded DC mafia choke @medeabenjamin for protesting a press conference of fake ambassador Carlos Vecchio & his tool, DWS.

Medea was then falsely accused of assault, visited by cops and almost arrested. pic.twitter.com/ncf9GSINep

— Max Blumenthal (@MaxBlumenthal) November 14, 2019

Shortly after Benjamin demanded that the Capitol police produce a warrant for her arrest, the officers told her she was “free to go” following a review of the video footage.

“Apparently, the Capitol Police had an allegation, did not know if they could substantiate the allegation, but because it involved a congresswoman, it did not matter,” reported ShadowProof‘s Kevin Gosztola. “They sought to quickly coerce a political activist into submitting to their authority, even if there was no basis for that activist to do so before the allegation was corroborated by police.”

In a statement following the incident, Benjamin said “this intimidation shows how the U.S. security forces work hand-in-glove with the right-wing forces in Latin America who are trying to stop progressive movements that empower the poor.”

CodePink Latin America coordinator Leonardo Flores, who attended the press conference with Benjamin, said the event “was almost like a microcosm of U.S. policy towards Venezuela.”

“We saw U.S. government representatives, flanked by Venezuelan elites, deciding on policy for Venezuela as police silenced the voices of people  speaking out about the coup and sanctions,” said Flores. “I saw Medea Benjamin get assaulted and shoved to the ground, while I was threatened with physical violence.”

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

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Featured image: “I saw Medea Benjamin get assaulted and shoved to the ground, while I was threatened with physical violence,” said CodePink Latin America coordinator Leonardo Flores. (Photo: Screengrab via Common Dreams)

The successful regime change operation that was just carried out in Bolivia throughout the course of the country’s ongoing US-backed Hybrid War could have some game-changing geostrategic consequences if the coup “authorities” renege on the previous agreements that President Morales signed with Russia and China, especially in the lithium industry, as well as if they enable their new American patron to use their centrally positioned state in the continental heartland as a platform for spreading its divide-and-rule influence all throughout the rest of South America.

Boris Johnson has declared that Britain can have a “super Canada-plus” free trade agreement with the EU and achieve that by the end of 2020 and that “there is no need” for political alignment. That’s wrong – it’s not realistically possible.

Not too many hurdles to achieve this are there eh? Leaving aside winning an election – and winning it with a good majority first, and having done so, throw in a bit of parliamentary scrutiny (and that’s gone well so far), Boris would need to convince everyone he has the ability to bend time itself.

Negotiations with countries outside of the EU are not supposed to be started until Britain has formally left the EU. And only then, can negotiations formally start. It should be noted that it took the Canadians seven years of intense meetings to get their deal done – and importantly, it is emphatically worse than the deal we currently have under the umbrella of the EU.

So, if Canada is the benchmark deal to be looked up to, which Boris says it should be – it’s only a small inconvenience to know that it is worse than our current arrangement – by a long, long way. To make it sound a bit better a few months ago, the swashbuckling Brexiteers took it from the ‘Canada deal’ to – ‘Canada Plus’ but that idea was trashed by economic experts and so now its called ‘Super Canada Plus.’ In a few months, Boris will be referring to it as the Super-Duper-Spiffngly-Excellent-Canada-Plus-Plus’ deal – but the reality is that this is little more than an economic cul-de-sac going towards the dead-end of nowhere in particular.

Let’s take a small point. The current Canada deal with the EU has almost no provision for the financial and services industries – the largest industry Britain has to offer. Another small problem – there are the customs checks Boris keeps promising will never happen – but will.

There is another issue that the arch Brexiteers keep brushing under the carpet. Regulatory alignment. It’s all boring and complicated I know but it is important to understand that if Britain is to do a deal with the EU it must adhere to their regulations – not the other way around. The only way to agree a deal with Canada and the EU is to restrict the goods we currently send to the EU as our own standards will have fallen to meet that of Canada’s or America’s and so on.

The political declaration defines the type of future relationship with the EU and is designed to make it unambiguous. It says:

Given the Union and the United Kingdom’s geographic proximity and economic interdependence, the future relationship must ensure open and fair competition, encompassing robust commitments to ensure a level playing field. The precise nature of commitments should be commensurate with the scope and depth of the future relationship and the economic connectedness of the Parties. These commitments should prevent distortions of trade and unfair competitive advantages. (Paragraph 77).

What this means, in essence, is that Britain needs to toe-the-line with the EU on regulatory alignment – and if Boris doesn’t then the only free trade agreement he can get will be disadvantageous to Britain. Of course.

And here is another important small detail. Boris Johnson knows all of this because he is laying claim to the fact that the current deal that has been negotiated has his signature on it. He owns it. And yet, he is saying something different to the deal that has been done. Either he’s lying (again) or doesn’t understand the deal he’s done – in which case, he should be in charge of it.

This is the problem with Brexit. It’s not just a dichotomy – it’s a political Catch22. We can’t win. Throw the dice as many times as you like – the numbers don’t fall in Britain’s favour.

Look at the words highlighted in that paragraph again. He can’t get the same deal that Canada has – because of what was built into the deal, the “geographic proximity and economic interdependence”. In other words, we’re next door, not 4,000 miles away and we have ties to each other that if broken would cause immense economic damage.

Talking of Canada – these are the opening words of Boris Johnson’s new stable mate Nigel Farage in a document published January 2016 on the EU –  “Leaving the EU will have significant geopolitical and economic consequences. But we believe it is unrealistic to expect a clean break, immediately unravelling forty years of integration in a single step.” At the time, Farage was promoting a separation project from the EU taking two decades and then a second referendum to approve his recommendation of a Norway plus deal. How the wind blows!

It was Thomas, Duke of Norfolk, in 1538 who wrote to Thomas Cromwell, and coined the term “a man can not have his cake and eat his cake.” Ironically, Cromwell was an English lawyer and statesman who served as chief minister an advisor to King Henry VIII of England from 1532 to 1540. It was he who advised on new powers for the king, referred to today as “Henry VIII Powers’. These are the same executive powers Boris Johnson has given himself in the current Withdrawal Agreement Bill.

As a side note and not particularly relevant right now – the advisor was beheaded.

Britain cannot simultaneously have the benefits of the EU cake as it does right now and eat it without being one of its bakers. If that were possible, what would be the point of the EU as a union of trading countries? There is no such thing as a ‘super Canada Plus’ deal because it’s not super, nor will it ever be. It’s a bit like producing a packet of crisps and telling everyone it’s as nutritious as a tuna, avocado and quinoa salad. It just isn’t.

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Featured image is from the author

First posted on July 21, 2016

So far, lithium has been the hottest metal of 2016, beating out gold, with exponential demand expected over the coming years. Although the price trajectory of the metal has been subdued in recent months, the fundamentals behind the long-term trajectory suggest strong potential for long-term growth. Price doubling from 2014/2015 was first seen in China and is now being felt worldwide, with lithium hydroxide prices from $16-20 and carbonate prices from $12-14 thousand USD per ton. 

[Both Bolivia and Afghanistan have very large deposits of lithium which in the current context constitutes a strategic mineral. M. Ch. GR Editor]

The previously unknown deposits — including huge veins of iron, copper, cobalt, gold and critical industrial metals like lithium — are so big and include so many minerals that are essential to modern industry that Afghanistan could eventually be transformed into one of the most important mining centers in the world, the United States officials believe.

Automotive Thrust

There is no doubt as to the push that Tesla has given the current automotive transition to electric vehicles (EVs). As the company’s mission statement outlines, it hopes “to accelerate the advent of sustainable transport by bringing compelling mass market electric cars to market as soon as possible.”

However, since 2014, when Tesla first announced the Gigafactory with Panasonic, other manufacturers have begun to take notice and take action. Volkswagen AG announced last week that it was considering LG Chem Ltd. or Panasonic Corp. as partners for several US$2-billion factories, according toBloomberg, with confirmation expected later in the year.

Previous announcements of billion-dollar investments in battery factories by Volkswagen were largely brushed off by investors as deflections from their ‘Dieselgate’ scandal. But with LG and Panasonic in the picture, concrete plans appear to be crystalizing.

Combined with Daimler putting US$550 million into tripling its battery production capacity in Germany, Nissan’s planned investments in the UK for its third generation Leaf, and GM’s joint venture with LG Chem to produce batteries in Holland, Michigan, for its Volt and Bolt, it is clear that auto manufactures are beginning to shift to electric—and in a very big way.

Serbian Scientist Nicolas Tesla

Given this new investment, plug-in electric vehicle (PEV) sales are expected to experience 62 Percent Year-over-Year Growth in 2016, 60% in 2017, and likely 100% in 2018. This translates into over 600,000 in PEV sales expected in 2018, creating a new level of demand for which the market will need two new lithium mines in operation to even begin to satiate.

“Looking at the full picture here, the future demand for lithium is truly staggering,” says Michael Kobler, CEO and director ofAmerican Lithium Corp., one of the ambitious new explorers shaking up the lithium mining scene in Nevada.

Electrical Grid Connections

While future demand from the automotive industry is significant, the real game changer for the lithium industry may be electrical grid storage. Grid storage is designed on a variety of scales, each with a different price point. Already price-competitive with diesel fuel for stand-alone renewables and remote locations, home storage applications with devices like Tesla’s powerwall, and grid frequency modulation applications are now making major inroads in the grid storage market.

In some locations, grid-scale peaking applications have already been implemented, often in old coal power plants, re-using the building and grid connections.

Grid-scale storage battery demand can easily eclipse the need for automotive batteries. Battery experts note that although different battery chemistries exist, the energy density of lithium is far superior to other chemistries.

No new battery chemistry will supplant lithium in battery cathodes for decades, and lithium cathodes are the centerpiece of several leading chemistries which are already available.

IMG URL: http://cdn.oilprice.com/images/tinymce/2016/Copy%20of%20Amlit1807A.gif

Lithium mines are divided into two main types, with most resources currently coming from lithium brines.

Although commercial production of lithium from brine started after mineral production, it has proved to be more important economically; brine contribution to world production is twice that of minerals.

The concentration of lithium in most brines range 200 to 700 ppm. To compete with brines, mineral deposits have had many advanced technologies applied to reduce costs. However, brines can also benefit from technologies such as electro-dialysis, adsorption, and reverse osmosis to enrich or extract lithium in less time. Although lithium brine is often cheaper to develop than hard rock deposits, with the application of new technologies, brine processing can be sped up, and costs can be further reduced.

Demand Response: A Wild Ride

IMG URL: http://cdn.oilprice.com/images/tinymce/2016/Copy%20of%20Amlit1807B.png

Up until two years ago, the so-called “big three – Albermarle (NYSE:ALB) in Chile and Nevada; SQM (NYSE:SQM) in Chile; FMC (NYSE:FMC) in Argentina – controlled 89% of the world’s lithium production. This group of lithium players has recently evolved into the “big five,” as Sichuan Tianqi and Ganfeng in China have become significant players.

At the start of this year, the de facto big five was still a reality, with FMC repeatedly stating that supply and demand are in line–an assessment akin to sticking its head in the sand, as lithium prices rise exponentially.

This also ignores fundamental production challenges within the “big five” itself.

Albermarle has had significant difficulties with its brine expansion that will most likely contribute to decreased production in 2016. In fact, SQM is the only “big 3” producer with a clear strategy for future growth, with partnerships such as its recent 50% acquisition of an Argentinian Lithium Americas Corporation property (TSX:LAC), which could prove to be successful years for down the road.

New Entrants: Where It Gets Really Interesting

In January 2016, the big five controlled 90% of the market, with no significant producers outside these sources. However, 2016 can be considered the year the lithium oligopoly came to an end.

Orocobre Limited is commissioning their Olaroz project in Argentina, and is currently at 68% of its 17,500 TPA full capacity. It aims to be at capacity in September. Though it has been shipping slightly sub-bar product, demand is so high that it has nonetheless been highly successful. General Mining and Galaxy Resources announced the commencement of production from the Mt Cattlin mine and processing operations and Galaxy are targeting nameplate production rates of 15,000 TPA of lithium carbonate by the end of 2016.

Apart from these two mines, no new developments are expected in 2016, though 2017 may bring further new entrants. A previously defunct mine, Quebec Lithium, has recently seen interest from a Chinese operator. Although uneconomical at 2014 prices, the current price doubling has made this an interesting property to be further developed. Another mine in Quebec, Nemaska Lithium (TSX:NMX), is being developed, though only 500 TPA are expected next year.

Where it gets the most interesting is with the new explorers, and this is where the lithium tide will turn.

The timing of the Orocobre and Galaxy developments have eased the price increases in the near term. This combined with the old adage “sell in May and walk away” for prospective companies have sent many juniors sideways or downwards since May. With the consistent long-term demand trajectory, two mines coming into operation provide a significant buying opportunity for those looking to enter the lithium market.

Lithium Explorers in the Spotlight

Although markets have been satiated by Orocobre and Galaxy for the summer, investors will be looking again in the early fall and now is the perfect time to enter before the next wave.

“Battery demand is rising at the rate of 1-2 new lithium mines per year, growing to 2-3 mines per year by 2020, and current demand will not only absorb all new mine developments in the pipeline, but will require fresh high quality deposits to be investigated for development,” says American Lithium’s Kobler. American Lithium raised capital in early May 2016 and bought prospective brine land in Nevada USA on a previously operating Boron mine in late May 2016.

Juniors such as American Lithium (TSXV:LI), Pure Energy Minerals (TSXV:PE), Nevada Sunrise Gold (TSXV:NEV), Alix Resources (TSXV:AIX), Nevada Energy Metals (TSXV:BFF), Lithium X (TSXV:LIX), Ashburton Ventures (TSXV:ABR), Cypress Development (TSXV:CYP), Sienna Resources (TSXV:SIE), Noka Resources (TSXV:NX), Matica Enterprises (CSE:MMJ) all have claims in the Clayton valley. Other companies that have projects in the state are Dajin Resources (TSXV:DJI), Eureka Resources (TSXV:EUK), and Ultra Lithium (TSXV:ULI).

Since the start of the year, the lithium industry has gained access to over $330 million in funding, whether from private placements, government grants, stock options, or other investment vehicles. The summer drilling season is upon us, and any lithium junior that doesn’t have a drilling program in place by this time is simply not worth looking at. Buying land in highly prospective areas is easy; completing a successful drill program with results takes more expertise.

The best strategy for exploration stage companies coming into this field is to:

– Raise capital for land purchases and drilling. The key for sustained growth during a capital raise is to limit share dilution.
– Seek out land that is highly prospective, either adjacent to operating mines, on previously operating mines, or in land that is analogous to existing development land.
– Prove to the markets that the management team is worthwhile through flawless execution of good land acquisitions, execution of drilling campaigns, with strategic drilling done to move forward into economic assessments

IMG URL: http://cdn.oilprice.com/images/tinymce/2016/Copy%20of%20Amlit1807C.gif

Nevada at the Epicentre of New Lithium Development

With Albermarle’s new mine in Nevada and Tesla’s forecast 2018 demand of between 25,000 and 35,000 TPA, the U.S. Southwest is becoming a new hotbed for the lithium industry.

Hoping to capitalize on the new lithium rush, juniors in Nevada alone have raised over US$60 million for exploration and delineation in 2016.

With two mines recently coming online and investors leaving the markets for the summer, a slight cooling off has been seen in the lithium realm. However, a keen investor will note that prices will start to move again with demand constantly increasing, and investors looking to enter the markets again in the fall.

Our thanks to James Stafford for this incisive article

Link to original article: http://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/Why-Lithium-Will-See-Another-Price-Spike-This-Fall.html

Several South American nations have been rocked by the sudden explosion of intense street protests over the past month aimed at removing their internationally recognized governments from power, and while these developments are split between being genuine people-driven protests and externally supported Color Revolutions, the question on everyone’s mind is whether they’ll eventually spread to Brazil and pose a threat to Bolsonaro’s rule.

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Lula Free, Bolsonaro in Rage

By Danica Jorden, November 13, 2019

Last Friday, November 8, 2019, former President of Brazil Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva walked out of a prison in Curitiba and was greeted by throngs of supporters, many of whom had camped out since he was sent to jail more than a year and a half ago. The next day, hoarse from the ordeal and past throat cancer surgery, Lula spoke for 45 minutes before thousands gathered in São Bernardo do Campo, São Paulo, Brazil’s automotive capital and the heart of labor activity in the country. It was a sea of red, as many wore the crimson t-shirts of the Metal Workers Union, whose offices provided the backdrop to the speech.

Demands from the Workers of Chile

By Trade Union Block of Social Unit, November 13, 2019

The uprisings that continue in Chile began as a student protest against a proposed fare increase for public transport. It quickly evolved into a general wave of protest against the government of Sebastián Piñeraand all the mounting grievances of neoliberalism – horrible working conditions, social inequalities, privatizations, a negligible welfare state, and more. The government declared a state of emergency and curfew, deployed the military and unleashed a wave of fierce violence against the protests, killing many and detaining thousands. The Chilean national trade union movement, Central Unitaria de Trabajadores de Chile (CUT-Chile), has been part of broad fronts of groups aligned against the government. Its so-called Union Bloc has produced the following set of demands. For further information see “The Awakening of Chile” and on Facebook and Twitter.

Cuba Was Never a Threat to “National Security”

By Jacob G. Hornberger, November 13, 2019

Of all the ludicrous aspects of the Cold War, among the most ridiculous was the notion that Cuba posed a threat to U.S. “national security.” For some 30 years, the U.S. deep state (i.e., the Pentagon, CIA, and NSA) maintained that Cuba was a communist “dagger” pointed at America’s neck and, therefore, was a grave threat to “national security.”

Through it all, hardly anyone ever asked a very simple but important question: What did they mean when they said that Cuba was a threat to “national security”?

Bolivia Coup Led by Christian Fascist Paramilitary Leader and Millionaire – with Foreign Support

By Max Blumenthal and Ben Norton, November 13, 2019

When Luis Fernando Camacho stormed into Bolivia’s abandoned presidential palace in the hours afterPresident Evo Morales’s sudden November 10 resignation, he revealed to the world a side of the country that stood at stark odds with the plurinational spirit its deposed socialist and Indigenous leader had put forward.

With a Bible in one hand and a national flag in the other, Camacho bowed his head in prayer above the presidential seal, fulfilling his vow to purge his country’s Native heritage from government and “return God to the burned palace.”

Bolivia: The OAS and US Help Overthrow Another Latin American Government

By Leonardo Flores, November 13, 2019

The United States and the Organization of American States can add another coup to their scorecards, even if U.S. media refuses to recognize it as such. This time it was in Bolivia, where President Evo Morales was forced to step down on November 10, following weeks of pressure and extremist violence. Morales resigned under duress in order to avoid bloodshed, and emphasized that his “responsibility as an indigenous president of all Bolivians is to prevent the coup-mongers from persecuting my trade unionist brothers and sisters, abusing and kidnapping their families, burning the homes of governors, of legislators, of city councilors… to prevent them from continuing to harass and persecute my indigenous brothers and sisters and the leaders and authorities” of the MAS (Movement towards Socialism, Morales’ political party).

Lula’s Release Will Only Reinvigorate the Pink Tide Against U.S. Hegemony in Latin America

By Paul Antonopoulos, November 12, 2019

The Workers Party (PT) ruled Brazil, mostly under the leadership of the charismatic Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, or simply known as Lula, from 2003 until his successor’s impeachment in 2016. This period saw Brazil undergo major changes and advancements with an emphasis on educating the poor, providing access to healthcare for all Brazilians, poverty reduction and Latin American integration. Although the PT did not challenge the capitalist system entirely, there was an emphasis on reducing the neoliberal model that has exploited South America since Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet allowed his country to be economically ruled by this U.S.-endorsed system since the 1970’s.

Released Lula in for Greatest Fight of His Life

By Pepe Escobar, November 12, 2019

Only two days after his release from a federal prison in Curitiba, southern Brazil, following a narrow 6×5 decision by the Supreme Court, former President Luis Inacio Lula da Silva delivered a fiery, 45-minute long speech in front of the Metal Workers Union in Sao Bernardo, outside of Sao Paulo, and drawing on his unparalleled political capital, called all Brazilians to stage nothing short of a social revolution.

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James Le Mesurier, the founder of the Al-Qaeda affiliated White Helmets, known as an “aid organization” in the West but known everywhere else for fabricating chemical weapon provocations in Syria, was found dead in Istanbul on Monday under dubious and confusing circumstances, and many question marks are being raised about his own death. 

Journalist Ramazan Bursa claims that the suspicious death clearly demonstrates the White Helmet’s connection with intelligence organizations, particularly Britain’s MI6.

The connection between the M16 and the White Helmets is often overlooked by the Western media, but on Friday, the Russian Foreign Ministry made a startling revelation. Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova revealed that

“The White Helmets co-founder, James Le Mesurier, is a former agent of Britain’s MI6, who has been spotted all around the world, including in the Balkans and the Middle East. His connections to terrorist groups were reported back during his mission in Kosovo.”

A few days later he was found dead…

Of course, Karen Pierce, the UK Permanent Representative to the UN, denied the Russian allegation, claiming that they were “categorically untrue. He was a British soldier,” before describing the mercenary as a “true hero.” The claim he is a “true hero” is a curious choice of words considering he has a long history of working alongside terrorists, as Zakharova correctly highlighted.

He served in the NATO war against Serbia to defend the ethnic-Albanian terrorist Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) in 2000, who have now turned Kosovo into a heroin ‘smugglers paradise,’ and a hub for human trafficking, organ harvesting and arms trafficking in the attempt to create an anti-Russian “Greater Albania.” However, it was not in Kosovo where he achieved his fame, but rather his dubious work in Syria.

Not only did he establish and develop the White Helmets, but he secured significant funding from the UK, U.S., Turkish, German, Qatari, Dutch, Danish and Japanese governments, and helped raise money on Indiegogo. His deep connections to the British military and his expansive experience as a mercenary serving Gulf dictatorships made him the perfect figure to establish a “rescue group” aimed at legitimizing terrorists operating in Syria and to push for a regime-change intervention.

Along with the White Helmet’s ties to terrorist organizations and faking chemical weapon incidences, the group also has a role in the execution of civilians and using children in their propaganda campaigns. Mesurier was without a doubt a man with deep connections and deep pockets, with every resource available to him from international intelligence agencies and significant experience in supporting terrorists in conflict zones.

The argument that the White Helmets are not a civil defense team, especially as they never operated in government-held areas despite claiming to be neutral in the war, can easily be made. Despite the constant colonial media claims that the White Helmets are a true civilian rescue organization without terrorist links, Syrian film producer Kareem Abeed was not allowed to attend the Academy Awards to support his movie about the White Helmets, “Last Men in Aleppo,” as his visa application was officially denied by the U.S. government as he was “found ineligible for a visa under Section 212(f) of the Immigration and Nationality Act.” The very fact that the U.S. found White Helmets members nominated for the Academy Awards to be a risk in the country shows that the White Helmets are just another classic example of Washington weaponizing terrorists to advance their own agendas, just as the KLA were used against Serbia or the mujahideen that morphed into Al-Qaeda were used against the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan.

Although the White Helmets played a pivotal role in the propaganda campaign against Syria from 2013 onwards, they now have nothing to defend or any purpose to serve as they only operate in areas that are undeniably controlled by Al-Qaeda affiliated groups and other radical elements, in a very, very small area of Syria. They can no longer portray themselves as an innocent organization that only helps civilians, as there is now endless evidence of their ties to terrorism, foreign intelligence agencies and doctoring of footage.

If we consider that the founder of the White Helmets and the deceased in Istanbul is a former British Intelligence officer, we can clearly see that it is a network of civil defense organizations, in which British Intelligence is involved, and supported by other intelligence agencies. The dubious death of a former British intelligence member living in Istanbul with his family is thought provoking and must raise serious questions.

It is also thought-provoking that this person is based in Istanbul. The death of Mesurier could have been reported as the death of a British citizen or the death of a former member of the British intelligence, however, Turkish media reported it as the death of the founder of the White Helmets. In other words, the Turkish media seems to have tacitly admitted that White Helmets are not an innocent non-governmental organization. Of course, after Turkey’s invasion of northern Syria, there were some changes in the Damascus-Ankara relationship. The West’s approach to the Turkish invasion of northern Syria may have also played a role in changing the attitude towards the White Helmets.

A security source claimed that Mesurier had fallen from the balcony of his home office with his death being treated as a suspected suicide, with a third person – a diplomat – claiming the circumstances around his death were unclear, according to The Sun. This also comes as BBC journalist Mark Urban said in a series of now-deleted tweets that it would not “have been possible” to fall from Le Mesurier’s balcony, with him also Tweeting that “there’s a good deal of suspicion it may be murder by a state actor, but others suggest he may have taken his own life.”

Essentially, no one knows just yet whether it was murder, suicide or an accident. This has not stopped the British media from alluding that there may be a connection to the “Russian smear campaign” made on Friday and his death on Monday. However, when we look at the way the incident took place, there is every suggestion that this incident was murder, given that there were cuts on his face, fractures on his feet and that he was found dead on the street, according to Turkish media. The probability of murder becomes stronger.

The question then shifts to who might have done? It is too early to say who did it, and anything forth said can only be considered speculation, but the West does have a rich history of making their assets disappear when they are no longer needed.

The White Helmets no longer have a purpose to serve in Syria with the inevitable victory of government forces over the Western-backed terrorists. Rather, the danger the White Helmets pose is a full-scale revelation on how deep their ties with Western and Gulf intelligence agencies and terrorist organizations go. Although revelations are slowly beginning to emerge, Mesurier no doubt had a wealth of knowledge on many dirty secrets related to Syria and the imperialist war against it.

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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.

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

Featured image is from AP

On Tuesday, right-wing extremist senator Jeanine Anez Chavez illegitimately self-declared herself Bolivia’s leader, saying:

“I assume the presidency immediately and will do everything necessary to pacify the country” — by brute force, she failed to explain.

Leadership is earned, not seized. Evo Morales is Bolivia’s four-time democratically elected and reelected president.

He stepped down to avoid blood in the streets and possible assassination after the country’s military and police sold their souls to US imperial interests for whatever financial and/or other benefits gotten from the CIA.

He denounced Anez’s usurpation as illegitimate, saying she acted “without legislative quorum, surrounded by a group of accomplices and supported by the armed forces and the police, which repress the people.”

She’s Bolivia’s US-designated puppet/usurper, similar to Venezuela’s Guaido, figures contemptuous of democracy, the rule of law, equity and justice, pseudo-leaders with no legitimacy, traitors to their nations.

Under Bolivia’s constitutional line of succession, lower parliamentary house president Victor Borda, upper house president Adriana Salvatierra, and her deputy Ruben Medinaceli were in line to succeed Morales.

They stepped down, likely forced out by internal and external dark forces to avoid assassination, clearing the way for political nobody Anez to seize power — announced before a legislative assembly session boycotted by pro-Morales lawmakers.

A senator since 2010, she’s allied with hard-right Bolivian fascist elements. She’s notoriously pro-business, anti-populist, anti-Morales, shamefully calling him a “tyrant.”

She, her co-conspirators, and the OAS falsely claimed Morales’ reelection was marred by vote-rigging.

Independent analysis proved the process was open, free and fair, Morales defeating lead challenger Carlos Mesa by a double-digit margin.

Bolivia’s supreme court backed her usurpation as the highest ranking politician in the line of succession left standing.

No one supporting the coup resulting in his resignation has legitimacy, the popular will sabotaged by what happened.

Anez is unlikely to calm Morales’ supporters. After her usurpation, members of Morales’ Movement for Socialism (MAS) said they intend convening legislatively on Wednesday to nullify her illegitimate self-designation as president.

Following his forced resignation and departure for Mexico, thousands of his supporters took to the streets of the political capital La Paz and other Bolivian cities.

Reportedly they confronted military and police/pro-coup security forces, blocked highways, erected barricades, and set police stations ablaze — even though attacked by live fire and other hostile actions.

Ahead of Morales’ resignation, CIA rent-a-mobs took to Bolivian streets against democratic rule, committing violence and vandalism, notably against Morales supporters, including MAS politicians and indigenous people.

On Tuesday, he urged supporters to challenge Anez’s illegitimate usurpation of power.

Bolivia remains in turmoil. The struggle against the CIA-orchestrated fascist power grab continues.

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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.

Chile faces the deepest social and political crisis since the return to democracy. All who celebrated the end of the Dictatorship in the streets, celebrated not only the exit of the dictator, but the hope of moving toward a full democracy with more rights and social justice. However, after more than 30 years of waiting for this process, they have ended up transforming hope into rage, with the obvious distance that has gone generating between the so-called ‘citizenship’ and the ‘politicians’, with electoral processes less and less participatory and with massive mobilizations that have not implied changes in the lives of Chileans.

The demonstrations lived in 2006 (Penguin Revolution) and 2011 for the right to education, managed to mobilize millions; mobilizations that were replicated, years later, in the massive marches for the end of the AFPs (Administradoras de Fondos de Pensiones). However, today we continue to fight to ensure the right to free and quality education, and is being discussed in Parliament a bill that, instead of ending the current pension system, deepens and strengthens it. In addition to this is discontent in the face of abuse, corruption and inequalities, not only of income, but also of privileges and of treatment millions of workers live every day.

The crisis in Chile is not about ‘public order’, it is a crisis of social fracture, expectations and unkept promises. It is a crisis before a deeply unequal economic system. The State’s response cannot only be social control and security, there are required political responses that defeat the logic of Neoliberalism and commodification in order to recover trust.

The trade union organizations, grouped in Social Unit, urge political parties and parliamentarians to gather approaches of the social movement and face in an effective way the social and political crisis in progress.

Chile is not at war, Chile wants peace, but a true and lasting peace can only be with social justice and defending the democracy that cost us so much to recover.

We also call on the National Congress not to continue with the processing of the Law projects promoted by the Government. You cannot say that there is a will to dialogue and force parliament to legislate, without debate, the bills that have been permanently rejected by trade union and social organizations, included therein, our call not to ratify by the Senate the TPP 11.

Today is the minute for the opposition, which has a majority in parliament, to act accordingly to the institutional crisis we are facing.

Before authorities that do not measure the serious crisis we face, as a union bloc of social unity we summon them to pronounce them over a fundamental rights agenda that really represent the people of Chile. This is not about asking apologies for years of deafness, nor for assuming payment of fair wages. Years of abuse and collusion, are not resolved only with good intentions. It is about advancing in effective social justice.

1. Immediate discussion of a national minimum wage of $500,000 liquid funds for public and private workers.

For years we have demanded the designing of a Salary Policy for Chile that effectively allow each family to live on their salary. In addition to setting a cap to high incomes and to end the wage gaps between men and women.

This is a complementary mechanism to advance in the reduction of inequality of income for our country, but cannot replace the full and effective right to negotiate by branch, which is the mechanism par excellence to contain and overcome the economic inequality. Regarding the public sector, this demand does not replace the negotiation of the public sector table that year after year negotiates with the authority.

The minimum wage must be enough to get workers and their families out of poverty. According to Casen 2017, poorest households in the country are characterized by families where one person works and lives on average 6 people, in the first decile and 4 people in the second decile. If we want to get this population out of poverty through work, it is appropriate to use 5 lines of poverty, which is equivalent to $510,000 liquid funds.

2. Full Recognition of Freedom of Association: Collective Bargaining by branch and Respect for the Right to Strike as a fundamental right.

If we assume as the great conflict in Chile the social fracture, product of the contribution that we make the workers to the development of Chile versus the remuneration to this contribution in terms of salaries and social protection, it is clear that we are very far. We do not intend for everything to be resolved by the State. Therefore, to advance in mechanisms of effective redistribution of wealth, we must strengthen the Collective Bargaining at all levels, being the counterparts of the world of work the ones called to build effective social dialogue. End of all limitations to the effective exercise of the right to strike (strategic companies, minimum services and necessary adjustments).

Terminate outsourcing as a form of precarious employment.

3. Minimum pension equivalent to the minimum wage we propose

The decent pension debate cannot be limited only to the increase in Basic Pension Solidarity (financed by the State). The true Security System that is required today is represented in the proposal of the Coordinator No + AFP, which immediately ensures – through a bill – a minimum pension that is not less than the minimum wage of $500,000 we propose.

4. Basket of protected basic services (water, electricity, gas, telephone, cable, internet)

Facing inequalities and abuses does not only mean paying off the debt you have with workers in income matters. It is necessary to set a cap for tariffs of essential services. This must assure that no expenses in paying services, must be greater than 15% of the minimum wage. Whereas companies are the main water consumers (95%), the cost of that consumption must be higher in order to finance, with that difference, part of domestic consumption. This, as an immediate measure, while discussing a new constitution that resolves whether essential services such as those mentioned in this basic basket can continue in private hands or must be controlled by the State.

5. Transportation

We need a unique transportation system, which considers all means: roads, highways, buses, subway and trains. We are near the end of the concession contracts of highways and roads, with the possibility that your administration returns to the State and, therefore, the social benefit is imposed over profits. In addition, we need an integrated transport system, which ensures quality, reliability, mobility and tariff to all Chileans.

Public transport must be considered a right, within the framework of territorially unequal cities. In front of the millionaire subsidies that the State gives, it is necessary that these resources have an impact on the reduction of the transport rate.

• Fair Social Rate that allows users easy access to public transport.
• Free tickets for seniors.
• Gratuity in the TNE and in student passage.
• Elimination of the TAG, return of the roads to the hands of the State.

6. Reduction of the Working Day

In relation to working hours, we believe that Chile is in a position to reduce the working day to 40 hours or less, because the social and labour effects are widely beneficial for our country.

International experience and widely known studies support the fact that the working hours are too long in our country and that developed countries tend to work 36 hours.

However, the reduction of the working day cannot be a way for flexible labour (precariousness) proposed by the Government, so the National Congress should approve such reduction without any element of flexibility.

7. Health, Education, Housing: Social rights

The full right and access to health, education and housing for the entire population must be the first priority of the State. This must be done through the prioritization of public systems with adequate financing and allowing free access. Immediately, you must end the profit and business with these social rights and must establish real spaces for participation in their management. A similar logic must be established for all fundamental social rights.

8. Human Rights

Permanent demilitarization of the national territory. Investigation, trial and punishment of human rights violations that have been exercised during the so-called ‘State of exception’, a state of emergency widely transgressed at the time with the twenty deaths that we have reported, the more than 3,000 arrests, and the more than one hundred compatriots and migrants with eye injuries and loss of vision, from the excessive use of force. Chile can no longer afford to transform the violation of human rights into the mechanism to inhibit the difference and impose policies, as occurred in the dictatorship.

9. Fiscal Budget 2020

The year 2020 is foreseen as one of the most difficult years since the great crisis of 2008; the commercial war unleashed internationally will lower world growth expectations by 1 per cent and that of Chile by 0.5 per cent, but we must also add to this the nation’s budget that does little and nothing to revive the economy. Thus, we call for the 2020 public budget to be discussed with an eye on the protection of social rights of Chileans. We need a budget with social and economic priorities, to reduce the country’s inequality.

The budget presented this year has the least growth since 2003, it is necessary to at least double the growth to 6 per cent, and concentrate this increase, in public investment with high impact on the creation of employment and public goods.

10. New Political Constitution via Constituent Assembly

Chile’s debt to the workers is not just a debt over rights, it is also of minimum democratic guarantees. We are invited to participate in the electoral processes such as the great space to exercise our voice and sovereignty, but over the most relevant projects for the future of our lives – such as education, health, housing, pensions, salaries – we have no direct participatory space. Today it is necessary to deepen democracy with more rights, but also with mechanisms of effective participation, that enhances citizenship with politics.

To build a New Social Pact, it is not enough to achieve ‘agreements’. Discussing a New Social Pact is to build a new Constitution among all, considering the most wide participation. And the only mechanism that allows us to open the doors to all feeling called and challenged is through a Constituent Assembly.

We are aware that no actor, social or political, can and should not attribute the representativeness or spokesperson of the mobilized social majorities, but with that same clarity we point out that we will not allow agreements between four walls to be imposed, shielded in which there are no clear ‘proposals’ after social mobilization.

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The original Spanish version “Pliego delos Trabajadores y Trabajadores de Chile.”

Featured image is from The Bullet

A federal judge blocked the 2,000-acre expansion of a coal mine in the wildlands of Colorado’s Gunnison National Forest today, ordering the Trump administration to consider limiting methane emissions and address potential harm to water and fish.

In today’s ruling U.S. District Judge R. Brooke Jackson said the Interior Department violated federal law by failing to consider an alternative that would require flaring methane, a potent greenhouse gas, and by ignoring new information about the potential effects to perennial streams in the project area. The mining plan approved 8.4 miles of new roads and 43 new methane venting wells, anticipated to release almost 12 million tons of methane into the atmosphere.

“Only a remedy that prevents new mining in the expansion area will avoid subjecting conservation groups’ valid objections to the ‘bureaucratic steamroller,’ ” Jackson wrote.

In July five conservation groups sued the Trump administration and asked the court to block approval of Arch Coal’s West Elk mine expansion, which would invade roadless areas of western Colorado’s Gunnison National Forest.

“This ruling is a major victory for Colorado’s climate, clean energy, and public lands, said Jeremy Nichols, climate and energy program director at WildEarth Guardians. “More importantly, it’s a resounding rebuke of the Trump administration’s attempts to sidestep our environmental laws to appease the coal industry.”

The previous environmental analysis for the coal leases said flaring would be considered at a later stage and, the judge said, lacked rigorous evaluation of the alternative and was rather a “mere kicking the can down the road,” requiring the Interior Department to undertake this analysis at the mine-planning stage.

“Today’s decision validates over a decade’s worth of advocacy on behalf of the Sunset Roadless Area’s irreplaceable wildlife and habitat,” said Matt Reed, public lands director at High Country Conservation Advocates. “It also validates the decision to challenge climate change pollution head-on. As the largest source of industrial methane pollution in Colorado, the West Elk coal mine has long treated our public lands and air with impunity. The court’s decision halts the mine expansion, including further road-building and well-drilling in pristine roadless forest in Gunnison County, and High Country Conservation Advocates will continue to battle this expansion every step of the way.”

Located in the iconic West Elk Mountains just east of the town of Paonia, the West Elk mine is one of the largest coal mines in Colorado. It covers more than 20 square miles of the Gunnison National Forest next to the West Elk Wilderness Area.

“Methane pollution is a climate-killer, and we hope this decision will spell the end of unlimited emissions from this coal mine,” said Allison Melton, an attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity. “The West Elk expansion threatens to derail Colorado’s transition to clean, renewable energy. We’ll continue to fight the Trump administration’s destructive policies and projects.”

The West Elk mine is the single-largest industrial source of methane pollution in Colorado. In 2017 it released more than 440,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide, equal to the annual emissions from more than 98,000 cars.

“It is ridiculous for agencies to rubber stamp this damaging fossil fuel development in a spectacular roadless area, especially without considering impacts to streams or alternative plans that would reduce climate pollution,” said Peter Hart at Wilderness Workshop. “The case highlights how damaging our fossil fuel addiction is to public lands and to our shared climate. The court was right to demand that the agency take a harder look at protecting such important public resources.”

In March the Interior Department approved the 2,000-acre expansion, allowing Arch Coal to mine nearly 18 million tons of new coal over three years in the Sunset Roadless Area, an undeveloped tract of the Gunnison National Forest.

“Today’s decision to protect our public lands is a victory for all Colorado communities who are struggling with the harmful impacts of a changing climate,” said Jim Alexeee, director of the Colorado Sierra Club. “Our lands belong to all of us — not billionaire coal executives. Sierra Club will continue to fight for our lands and our climate, and to keep fossil fuels where they belong: in the ground.”

“We’re pleased that the federal government’s practice of rubber-stamping new coal development regardless of its impacts on special places like the Sunset Roadless area has been stopped in its tracks,” said Daniel Timmons, WildEarth Guardians’ staff attorney who represented Guardians in the case. “This decision is a victory for everyone who values public lands and a healthy climate.”

The conservation groups are also challenging the federal coal leases before the U.S. Court of Appeals.

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Featured image is from CBD

It has stood in this spot near Bethlehem longer than Christianity and Islam, since before the time of the prophets of the Holy Land.

Circling slowly round this ancient olive tree, Salah Abu Ali carefully inspects every inch of it, before settling back on his chair in its shade.

Beside him, balanced on a log, is a plate of fruit he has freshly picked from his farm. Also within arms reach is a large bottle of water and the pot of hot coffee he prepares every day to offer visitors to the spot that has become his sanctuary.

Every morning at 6.30am, the 46-year-old walks to the site where the tree is located on his family’s plot of land. For the past ten years, he has been tasked with a grave responsibility: guarding the oldest and largest olive tree in Palestine.

The tree, which belongs to the Abu Ali family, lies in the Wadi Jwaiza neighbourhood of Al-Walaja village in Bethlehem, southwest of occupied Jerusalem.

Despite spending most of his time by the olive tree, Abu Ali says he is still awed by it.

“The beauty and size of this tree are really special, it captivates the mind – it is the most beautiful tree in Palestine,” he tells Middle East Eye.

‘The beauty and size of this tree are really special, it captivates the mind – it is the most beautiful tree in Palestine,’ Abu Ali says (MEE/Abdulrahman Yunis)

According to the Palestinian Ministry of Agriculture, the tree is estimated to be around 5,000 years old. It extends over 250 sq m, stretches to around 13 metres in height, and its roots extend some 25 meters into the earth.

Over the years, the tree has been given a variety of nicknames; Abu Ali calls it “the fortress,” though it has also been dubbed “the old woman,” “the mother of olives,” and “Palestine’s bride.”

From their experience of farming, Palestinians know that the older the tree, the better the quality and taste of the olives – and the olive oil they produce. The head of the governmental Palestinian Olive Oil Council, Fayyad Fayyad, tells MEE that, while the olives of the oldest tree are no different to those of other trees, research shows that the larger and older the tree, the richer the olive oil.

“The age of the tree factors greatly into the taste and quality. The Al-Walaja tree produces very high-quality oil,” he says, adding that an investigation is ongoing into whether it could in fact be the oldest olive tree in the world.

The tree used to produce half a tonne of olives each year, out of which 600 kilograms of olive oil could be made (MEE/Abdulrahman Yunis)

According to Abu Ali, droughts over the years and climate variability as a whole have had a negative impact on the tree, leading to a reduction in its produce, which has become more volatile. “In the past, about 10 to 15 years ago, the tree would produce half a tonne of olives, from which we would extract some 600 kilograms of olive oil.

“Last year, however, the olives only came up to 250 kilograms of oil. There have even been times when the tree did not produce anything.”

Another problem, Abu Ali says, is water:

“The tree is thirsty. It is in need of large amounts of water due to its size, but these amounts are not available. The water spring is insufficient.”

He has taken it upon himself to quench the tree’s thirst by extending a hose from the water spring nearby. But the supply there is dependent on rainfall and is particularly dry in summer. Over the past few years, he says the water has been decreasing.

“I try to sustain it by adding manure to the ground and tending to its surroundings. It hurts me to see it like this.”

Israeli expansionist policies

The tree stands just 20 meters from the Israeli separation and annexation wall, which was built over several phases starting from 2007.

Al-Walaja village is historically part of Jerusalem, and residents would regularly travel back and forth for their shopping, and for work. When Israel occupied east Jerusalem and the West Bank in 1967, it annexed large parts of Al-Walaja’s fields and lands.

A view of Israel’s separation wall which was built just 20 metres from the olive tree, sparking protests (MEE/Abdulrahman Yunis)

In 2010, the village became the site of weekly protests against the construction of the Israeli separation and annexation wall that was to run through it.

“[When the wall was erected], the Israeli occupation forces used a large number of explosives, without caution to the tree. We were very afraid that it would be effected, but it persisted, as it has for thousands of years – an occupation that has been around for tens of years will not uproot it,” says Abu Ali.

In October , the Israeli army’s wing responsible for civilian life in the occupied West Bank posted a message on Facebook about the tree, calling it the “oldest olive tree in Judea and Samaria”. The post angered activists, who saw it as an attempt to appropriate Palestinian history and heritage.

Fayyad says that the Israeli authorities, including both civil and military personnel, have visited the tree in the past, and that they took samples and measurements, which stirred fear among the families of Al-Walaja. The families then requested the PA’s agricultural ministry to intervene by securing someone to guard the tree at all times.

While Abu Ali was already spending much of his week guarding it, the PA now pays him a monthly salary of around $410 to guard the tree every day.

‘Part of our identity’

Olive trees have long been at the forefront of Israel’s expansionist policies through its military occupation and settler-colonial project. The Al-Walaja olive tree is one of around 11 million olive trees in Palestine, according to the PA’s official information website.

The trees face a double threat to their existence, with the Israeli army systematically cutting down trees and Jewish settlers regularly carrying out acts of violence, including vandalism, against Palestinian towns and fields.

In the first six months of 2019, the UN recorded the uprooting, burning or vandalising of more than 4,100 trees by Israeli settlers (MEE/Abdulrahman Yunis)

In the first six months of 2019, the UN recorded the uprooting, burning or vandalising of more than 4,100 trees by Israeli settlers – a marked 126 percent increase on a monthly average compared with 2018.

Such attacks increase during the olive harvest season between the months of October and November. In June 2019, the UN documented the cutting down of close to 400 Palestinian-owned trees in the same area during one incident of property demolition by the Israeli army.

“The occupation and Israel’s policies are built on fear,” says Abu Ali, explaining that such acts by Israel and its settlers are intended to drive Palestinians from their lands in fear of attacks. “We either defend our lands or we give up. This tree is a trust.”

Inheriting love for the tree

The families of al-Walajah call it the “al-Badawi tree” – a reference to the Egyptian Sufi spiritual guide, Sheikh Ahmad al-Badawi, who was said to have visited the tree and to have tended to it for some years.

Abu Ali too considers the tree to hold spiritual significance. “If we do not preserve this tree,” he says, “we will be held accountable. This tree is no less important than the al-Aqsa or Ibrahimi mosques.”

The residents of Al-Walaja also consider the tree to be a source of good luck and blessings. According to Abu Ali, women would collect its fallen leaves to protect them from the evil eye. Every year, families sacrifice their sheep during the Muslim festival of Eid al-Adha in the shade of the tree.

Abu Ali is paid $410 a month by the PA to guard the tree, which has been visited by Israeli officials in recent years (MEE/Abdulrahman Yunis)

“I wish I could turn this tree and the area surrounding it into a flourishing heaven,” Abu Ali says. “But the economic situation here is difficult – I’m doing what I can, but it’s not enough.”

And despite the fact that he says his salary is barely enough to make ends meet, Abu Ali insists on guarding the tree, which he regards as symbolic of Palestinian perseverance.

“If this tree remains, then we will remain. This tree is part of our identity, and part of the conflict over which we fight the [Israeli] occupation.”

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Featured image: The ancient tree belongs to Salah Abu Ali’s family, and lies in Al-Walaja village in Bethlehem, southwest of occupied Jerusalem (MEE/Abdulrahman Yunis)

A ruling by the Constitutional Court provisionally released Lula. An important part of the Brazilian people welcomed the news with joy and hope. But Bolsonaro reacted with rage and called him “guilty scum”.

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Last Friday, November 8, 2019, former President of Brazil Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva walked out of a prison in Curitiba and was greeted by throngs of supporters, many of whom had camped out since he was sent to jail more than a year and a half ago. The next day, hoarse from the ordeal and past throat cancer surgery, Lula spoke for 45 minutes before thousands gathered in São Bernardo do Campo, São Paulo, Brazil’s automotive capital and the heart of labor activity in the country. It was a sea of red, as many wore the crimson t-shirts of the Metal Workers Union, whose offices provided the backdrop to the speech.

The Supreme Court of Brazil was finally compelled to admit that Lula had been wrongly imprisoned before his appeal had been heard, in conflict with the country’s constitution. The former president had been accused of accepting a beachfront penthouse apartment as a bribe, just as he announced his candidacy for a return to the presidency. He was swiftly convicted and sentenced to twelve years for corruption, with ultra-conservative Jair Bolsonaro becoming president.

But the penthouse had not even been built and Lula had bought a simpler apartment in a building behind it, away from the beach. Nevertheless, Judge Sérgio Moro found Lula guilty. Moro was subsequently appointed Justice Minister by President Bolsonaro. In June 2019, Glenn Greenwald and David Miranda of Intercept Brasil released“an enormous trove of secret documents” showing “improper and unethical plotting” between chief prosecutor Deltan Dallagnol and Moro.

Lula said that he felt energized about continuing to fight. On Friday night, he said on social media,

“I am free to help liberate Brazil from the insanity that is happening in this country.”

On Saturday, he displayed the congeniality that endears him to his supporters and also, he said, helped him “make friends” in prison and “spiritually prepare” himself for his return.

Switching between two failing microphones with a hand that lost a finger in a work accident, he described his humble roots in Brazil’s impoverished Northeast and the opportunities the union and worker solidarity afforded him.

“I was born in the city of Garanhuns. I left there and came to Sao Paulo when I was seven years old. I was raised by a mother and father who were born and died illiterate. I have always said, since 1979, that my political evolution was the product of the political evolution of the working men and women of this country…. I owe everything to my mother, who died illiterate, and to this union,” pointing to the Metalworkers Union headquarters, where he was offered courses in political science and economics.

“For 580 days in solitary confinement, I prepared myself spiritually” to free himself from hate and the need for vengeance. “I doubt that Moro can sleep with as clear a conscience as I do. I doubt that Bolsonaro can sleep with as clear a conscience as I do. I doubt that the minister in charge of demolishing dreams, destroying jobs and destroyer of the Brazilian people’s corporations, whose name is Guedes, can sleep with as clear a conscience as I do. And I want to tell them that I’m back!”

University of Chicago-educated Minister of the Economy Paulo Guedes has been under investigation for fraud since 2018 concerning his investment and loss of hundreds of millions of dollars in state pension funds.

Lula also called for a proper investigation into the assassination of Rio councillor Marielle Franco and clarified that

“Bolsonaro needs to understand that he was elected to govern for the Brazilian people, not for the military men in Rio de Janeiro. We must not allow these military men to wreck our country.”

Current President Bolsonaro reminded his supporters that Lula has yet to be exonerated, admonishing them to not “give ammunition to this momentarily free but still guilty scum.”

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Featured image is from teleSUR

Of all the ludicrous aspects of the Cold War, among the most ridiculous was the notion that Cuba posed a threat to U.S. “national security.” For some 30 years, the U.S. deep state (i.e., the Pentagon, CIA, and NSA) maintained that Cuba was a communist “dagger” pointed at America’s neck and, therefore, was a grave threat to “national security.”

Through it all, hardly anyone ever asked a very simple but important question: What did they mean when they said that Cuba was a threat to “national security”?

Did they mean that the Cuban army was about to invade Florida, conquer the state, move up the Eastern Seaboard, and end up forcibly taking over the reins of the federal government, thereby enabling it to control the IRS and HUD?

If so, that’s absolutely ridiculous. Cuba has always been an impoverished Third World country, one with a very small military force. Even if it could have scrounged up a few transport boats to get a few dozen troops to Miami, they would have been quickly smashed by well-armed private American citizens. Anyone who really thinks that Cuba could have invaded and conquered the United States needs a serious dose of reality.

So, then what did they mean when they repeatedly told us that Cuba was a threat to “national security”?

Maybe they meant that Cuban leader Fidel Castro would export socialist ideas to the United States, where they would then infect the minds of the American people.

If so, that’s ridiculous because socialism was already taking over the minds of the American people, and long before Fidel Castro took power in Cuba. That’s what President Franklin Roosevelt’s Social Security scheme was all about — bringing socialism to America. That was some 25 years before Castro came to power!

Let’s not forget, after all, that Social Security did not originate with James Madison or Patrick Henry. It originated among German socialists near the end of the 1800s and then came to the United States in the 1930s. That’s why the Social Security administration has a bust of Otto von Bismarck, the Iron Chancellor of Germany, prominently displayed on its website. Bismarck introduced Social Security to Germany. He got the idea from German socialists.

When President Lyndon Johnson enacted Medicare and Medicaid into law in the 1960s, it would be safe to say that he hadn’t gotten the idea from Fidel Castro. Socialism was gripping the minds of Americans independently of what was happening in Cuba. The fact is that the entire world was moving toward socialism. 

What about the Cuban Missile Crisis, when Castro invited the Soviet Union to install nuclear missiles in Cuba aimed at the United States? They were defensive in nature. The Pentagon and the CIA were pressuring President Kennedy to wage a war of aggression against Cuba, with the aim of installing another pro-U.S. dictator into power, such as Fulgencio Batista, the brutal and corrupt Cuban dictator who preceded Castro. A prime example was Operation Northwoods, the false and fraudulent scheme that the Joint Chiefs of Staff unanimously presented to Kennedy after the CIA’s Bay of Pigs disaster, with the aim of securing regime change in Cuba. (To Kennedy’s everlasting credit, he rejected it.)

To deter another U.S. attack or to defend against such an attack, Castro sought assistance from the Soviets. If the Pentagon and the CIA had not been pressuring Kennedy to attack Cuba, Castro would never have invited the Soviets to install those missiles. This was confirmed by the fact that once Kennedy promised that he would not permit the deep state to attack Cuba again, the Soviets took their missiles home.

Today, 30 years after the end of the Cold War, the U.S. deep state steadfastly maintains that Cuba continues to pose a threat to U.S. “national security.” That’s what the decades-old economic embargo that targets the Cuban populace with impoverishment and death is all about. 

But the fact is that Cuba has never posed a threat to U.S. “national security,” whatever definition one puts on that nebulous, meaningless term. The truth is that it has always been the U.S. government that has posed a threat to Cuban “national security,” as manifested by such illegal and wrongful actions as the CIA invasion at the Bay of Pigs, the decades-long cruel and brutal economic embargo against the Cuban people, the false and fraudulent Operation Northwoods, state-sponsored assassinations attempts against Castro, and acts of terrorism and sabotage within Cuba.

The truth is that the entire decades-long anti-Cuba campaign has always been nothing more than a fear-mongering racket by the U.S. deep state, one designed to assure ever-increasing budgets and power for the Pentagon, the CIA, and the NSA.

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Jacob G. Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation. He was born and raised in Laredo, Texas, and received his B.A. in economics from Virginia Military Institute and his law degree from the University of Texas. He was a trial attorney for twelve years in Texas. He also was an adjunct professor at the University of Dallas, where he taught law and economics. In 1987, Mr. Hornberger left the practice of law to become director of programs at the Foundation for Economic Education. He has advanced freedom and free markets on talk-radio stations all across the country as well as on Fox News’ Neil Cavuto and Greta van Susteren shows and he appeared as a regular commentator on Judge Andrew Napolitano’s show Freedom Watch.

Theresa May decided against allowing the UK to crash out of the EU without a deal after being warned about the potential for terrorism in Northern Ireland, her de facto deputy has said.

Former Cabinet minister Sir David Lidington, who is standing down as an MP, revealed that the ex-prime minister effectively ruled out a no-deal Brexit after a meeting with police chiefs and community groups in Belfast in February.

He told the Sunday Times:

“What really struck her was how the prospect of no-deal was driving them towards actively supporting a united Ireland, rather than being content to let sleeping dogs lie.”

“Anything on the border itself – even cameras – was certain to produce an increase in tension. I sat in meetings in Londonderry and in Newry and County Fermanagh, and I was told that in no uncertain terms.”

Britain was due to leave the EU on March 29, but Mrs May twice requested an extension to Article 50 – resulting in her being offered a “flexible extension” to Brexit until October 31.

Last August – the assistant chief constable Barbara Gray, who heads up the counter-terrorism response unit for the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI), warned Brexit could become a motivating factor for extremists in the event of a disorderly exit. “We will be prepared and we will be very ready for any potential upsurge in violence that may happen after Brexit,” she told the PA news agency. “We predict that a six- to 12-month period, if there’s a no-deal Brexit, that there could be an upsurge in violence.”

Two months later – appearing in front of the House of Commons’ exiting the European Union committee, Chief Constable of Police Service Northern Ireland Greg Clarke said the agency would “go back into suboptimal” operations if the U.K. loses access to the European Arrest Warrant and is unable to share criminal data with the EU in a crashout exit scenario.

“There is a potential for opportunities to exist for them to carry terrorist crimes and activities, depending on what [border checks] infrastructure, for example, would look like,” Clarke told MPs.

“It is really important for us to emphasize that we are currently operating within a severe threat.”

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Bolivian coup leader Luis Fernando Camacho is a far-right multi-millionaire who arose from fascist movements in the Santa Cruz region, where the US has encouraged separatism. He has courted support from Colombia, Brazil, and the Venezuelan opposition.

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When Luis Fernando Camacho stormed into Bolivia’s abandoned presidential palace in the hours after President Evo Morales’s sudden November 10 resignation, he revealed to the world a side of the country that stood at stark odds with the plurinational spirit its deposed socialist and Indigenous leader had put forward.

With a Bible in one hand and a national flag in the other, Camacho bowed his head in prayer above the presidential seal, fulfilling his vow to purge his country’s Native heritage from government and “return God to the burned palace.”

“Pachamama will never return to the palace,” he said, referring to the Andean Mother Earth spirit. “Bolivia belongs to Christ.”

Far-right Bolivian opposition leader Luis Fernando Camacho in Bolivia’s presidential palace with a Bible, after the coup

Bolivia’s extreme right-wing opposition had overthrown leftist President Evo Morales that day, following demands by the country’s military leadership that he step down.

Virtually unknown outside his country, where he had never won a democratic election, Camacho stepped into the void. He is a powerful multi-millionaire named in the Panama Papers, and an ultra-conservative Christian fundamentalist groomed by a fascist paramilitary notorious for its racist violence, with a base in Bolivia’s wealthy separatist region of Santa Cruz.

Camacho hails from a family of corporate elites who have long profited from Bolivia’s plentiful natural gas reserves. And his family lost part of its wealth when Morales nationalized the country’s resources, in order to fund his vast social programs — which cut poverty by 42 percent and extreme poverty by 60 percent.

In the lead-up to the coup, Camacho met with leaders from right-wing governments in the region to discuss their plans to destabilize Morales. Two months before the putsch, he tweeted gratitude: “Thank you Colombia! Thank you Venezuela!” he exclaimed, tipping his hat to Juan Guaido’s coup operation. He also recognized the far-right government of Jair Bolsonaro, declaring, “Thank you Brazil!”

Camacho had spent years leading an overtly fascist separatist organization called the Unión Juvenil Cruceñista. The Grayzone edited the following clips from a promotional historical documentary that the group posted on its own social media accounts:

The rich oligarch leader of Bolivia's right-wing coup, Luis Fernando Camacho, was the leader of an explicitly fascist paramilitary group.

Here are some clips from a promotional historical documentary it published:https://t.co/gFMyfjsi2p pic.twitter.com/XXNQfhD7ii

— The Grayzone (@GrayzoneProject) November 12, 2019

While Camacho and his far-right forces served as the muscle behind the coup, their political allies waited to reap the benefits.

The presidential candidate Bolivia’s opposition had fielded in the October election, Carlos Mesa, is a “pro-business” privatizer with extensive ties to Washington. US government cables published by WikiLeaks reveal that he regularly corresponded with American officials in their efforts to destabilize Morales.

Mesa is currently listed as an expert at the Inter-American Dialogue, a DC-based think tank funded by the US government’s soft-power arm USAID, various oil giants, and a host of multi-national corporations active in Latin America.

Evo Morales, a former farmer who rose to prominence in social movements before becoming the leader of the powerful grassroots political party Movement Toward Socialism (MAS), was Bolivia’s first Indigenous leader. Wildly popular in the country’s substantial Native and peasant communities, he won numerous elections and democratic referenda over a 13-year period, often in landslides.

On October 20, Morales won re-election by more than 600,000 votes, giving him just above the 10 percent margin needed to defeat opposition presidential candidate Mesa in the first round.

Experts who did a statistical analysis of Bolivia’s publicly available voting data found no evidence of irregularities or fraud. But the opposition claimed otherwise, and took to the streets in weeks of protests and riots.

The events that precipitated the resignation of Morales were indisputably violent. Right-wing opposition gangs attacked numerous elected politicians from the ruling leftist MAS party. They then ransacked the home of President Morales, while burning down the houses of several other top officials. The family members of some politicians were kidnapped and held hostage until they resigned. A female socialist mayor was publicly tortured by a mob.

The squalid US-backed fanatics of the Bolivian right ransack the house of the country’s elected president, Evo Morales. And the havoc is just beginning. Let no one call them “pro-democracy.” pic.twitter.com/rwwvOSAEaA

— Max Blumenthal (@MaxBlumenthal) November 11, 2019

Following the forced departure of Morales, coup leaders arrested the president and vice president of the government’s electoral body, and forced the organization’s other officials to resign. Camacho’s followers proceeded to burn Wiphala flags that symbolized the country’s Indigenous population and the plurinational vision of Morales.

The Organization of American States, a pro-US organization founded by Washington during the Cold War as an alliance of right-wing anti-communist countries in Latin America, helped rubber stamp the Bolivian coup. It called for new elections, claiming there were numerous irregularities in the October 20 vote, without citing any evidence. Then the OAS remained silent as Morales was overthrown by his military and his party’s officials were attacked and violently forced to resign.

The day after, the Donald Trump White House enthusiastically praised the coup, trumpeting it as a “significant moment for democracy,” and a “strong signal to the illegitimate regimes in Venezuela and Nicaragua.”

Emerging from the shadows to lead a violent far-right putsch

While Carlos Mesa timidly condemned the opposition’s violence, Camacho egged it on, ignoring calls for an international audit of the election and emphasizing his maximalist demand to purge all supporters of Morales from government. He was the true face of the opposition, concealed for months behind the moderate figure of Mesa.

A 40-year-old multi-millionaire businessman from the separatist stronghold of Santa Cruz, Camacho has never run for office. Like Venezuelan coup leader Juan Guaidó, whom more than 80 percent of Venezuelans had never heard of until the US government anointed him as supposed “president,” Camacho was an obscure figure until the coup attempt in Bolivia hit its stride.

He first created his Twitter account on May 27, 2019. For months, his tweets went ignored, generating no more than three or four retweets and likes. Before the election, Camacho did not have a Wikipedia article, and there were few media profiles on him in Spanish- or English-language media.

Camacho issued a call for a strike on July 9, posting videos on Twitter that got just over 20 views. The goal of the strike was to try to force the resignation of Bolivian government’s electoral organ the Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE). In other words, Camacho was pressuring the government’s electoral authorities to step down more than three months before the presidential election.

It was not until after the election that Camacho was thrust into the limelight and transformed into a celebrity by corporate media conglomerates like the local right-wing network Unitel,Telemundo, and CNN en Español.

All of a sudden, Camacho’s tweets calling for Morales to resign were lighting up with thousands of retweets. The coup machinery had been activated.

Mainstream outlets like the New York Times and Reuters followed by anointing the unelected Camacho as the “leader” of Bolivia’s opposition. But even as he lapped up international attention, key portions of the far-right activist’s background were omitted.

Left unmentioned were Camacho’s deep and well-established connections to Christian extremist paramilitaries notorious for racist violence and local business cartels, as well as the right-wing governments across the region.

It was in the fascist paramilitaries and separatist atmosphere of Santa Cruz where Camacho’s politics were formed, and where the ideological contours of the coup had been defined.

Cadres from the Unión Juvenil Cruceñista (UJC), the Bolivian fascist youth group that Luis Fernando Camacho got his start in

Cadre of a Francoist-style fascist paramilitary

Luis Fernando Camacho was groomed by the Unión Juvenil Cruceñista, or Santa Cruz Youth Union (UJC), a fascist paramilitary organization that has been linked to assassination plots against Morales. The group is notorious for assaulting leftists, Indigenous peasants, and journalists, all while espousing a deeply racist, homophobic ideology.

Since Morales entered office in 2006, the UJC has campaigned to separate from a country its members believed had been overtaken by a Satanic Indigenous mass.

The UJC is the Bolivian equivalent of Spain’s Falange, India’s Hindu supremacist RSS, and Ukraine’s neo-Nazi Azov battalion. Its symbol is a green cross that bears strong similarities to logos of fascist movements across the West.

And its members are known to launch into Nazi-style sieg heil salutes.

Here is another video posted by Bolivia's fascist opposition Santa Cruz Youth Union.

Coup leader Luis Fernando Camacho @LuisFerCamachoV previously helped lead this sieg-heiling group.

These are the people who overthrew elected President Evo Morales. https://t.co/gFMyfjsi2p pic.twitter.com/GvvMfL21UZ

— The Grayzone (@GrayzoneProject) November 12, 2019

Even the US embassy in Bolivia has described UJC members as “racist” and “militant,” noting that they “have frequently attacked pro-MAS/government people and installations.”

After journalist Benjamin Dangl visited with UJC members in 2007, he described them as the “brass knuckles” of the Santa Cruz separatist movement. “The Unión Juvenil has been known to beat and whip campesinos marching for gas nationalization, throw rocks at students organizing against autonomy, toss molotov cocktails at the state television station, and brutally assault members of the landless movement struggling against land monopolies,” Dangl wrote.

“When we have to defend our culture by force, we will,” a UJC leader told Dangl. “The defense of liberty is more important than life.”

Armed members of the Unión Juvenil Cruceñista

Camacho was elected as vice president of the UJC in 2002, when he was just 23 years old. He left the organization two years later to build his family’s business empire and rise through the ranks of the Pro-Santa Cruz Committee. It was in that organization that he was taken under the wing of one of the separatist movement’s most powerful figures, a Bolivian-Croatian oligarch named Branko Marinkovic.

In August, Camacho tweeted a photo with his “great friend,” Marinkovic. This friendship was crucial to establishing the rightist activist’s credentials and forging the basis of the coup that would take form three months later.

Hoy cumple años un gran líder cruceño y expresidente del Comité pro Santa Cruz pero todo un gran amigo, Branko Marinkovic, quien entregó todo, su libertad y su vida, por su pueblo. pic.twitter.com/uVzNrgH2pI

— Luis Fernando Camacho (@LuisFerCamachoV) August 21, 2019

Camacho’s Croatian godfather and separatist powerbroker

Branko Marinkovic is a major landowner who ramped up his support for the right-wing opposition after some of his land was nationalized by the Evo Morales government. As chairman of the Pro-Santa Cruz Committee, he oversaw the operations of the main engine of separatism in Bolivia.

In a 2008 letter to Marinkovic, the International Federation for Human Rights denounced the committee as an “actor and promoter of racism and violence in Bolivia.”

The human rights group added that it “condemn[ed] the attitude and secessionist, unionist and racist discourses as well as the calls for military disobedience of which the Pro-Santa Cruz Civic Committee for is one of the main promoters.”

In 2013, journalist Matt Kennard reported that the US government was working closely with the Pro-Santa Cruz Committee to encourage the balkanization of Bolivia and to undermine Morales. “What they [the US] put across was how they could strengthen channels of communication,” the vice president of the committee told Kennard. “The embassy said that they would help us in our communication work and they have a series of publications where they were putting forward their ideas.”

In a 2008 profile on Marinkovic, the New York Timesacknowledged the extremist undercurrents of the Santa Cruz separatist movement the oligarch presided over. It described the area as “a bastion of openly xenophobic groups like the Bolivian Socialist Falange, whose hand-in-air salute draws inspiration from the fascist Falange of the former Spanish dictator Franco.”

The Bolivian Socialist Falange was a fascist group that provided safe haven to Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie during the Cold War. A former Gestapo torture expert, Barbie was repurposed by the CIA through its Operation Condor program to help exterminate communism across the continent. (Despite its antiquated name, like the German National Socialists, this far-right extremist group was violently anti-leftist, committed to killing socialists.)

The Bolivian Falange came into power in 1971 when its leader, Gen. Hugo Banzer Suarez, ousted the leftist government of Gen. Juan Jose Torres Gonzales. The government of Gonzales had infuriated business leaders by nationalizing industries and antagonized Washington by ousting the Peace Corps, which it viewed as an instrument of CIA penetration. The Nixon administration immediately welcomed Banzer with open arms and courted him as a key bulwark against the spread of socialism in the region. (An especially ironic 1973 dispatch appears on Wikileaks showing Secretary of State Henry Kissinger thanking Banzer for congratulating him on his Nobel Peace Prize).

The movement’s putschist legacy persevered during the Morales era through organizations like the UJC and figures such as Marinkovic and Camacho.

The Times noted that Marinkovic also supported the activities of the UJC, describing the fascist group as “a quasi-independent arm of the committee led by Mr. Marinkovic.” A member of the UJC board told the US newspaper of record in an interview, “We will protect Branko with our own lives.”

Marinkovic has espoused the kind of Christian nationalist rhetoric familiar to the far-right organizations of Santa Cruz, calling, for instance, for a “crusade for the truth” and insisting that God is on his side.

The oligarch’s family hails from Croatia, where he has dual citizenship. Marinkovic has long been dogged by rumors that his family members were involved in the country’s powerful fascist Ustashe movement.

The Ustashe collaborated openly with Nazi German occupiers during World War Two. Their successors returned to power after Croatia declared independence from the former Yugoslavia – a former socialist country that was intentionally balkanized in a NATO war, much in the same way that Marinkovic hoped Bolivia would be.

German Fuhrer Adolph Hitler meets Ustashe founder Ante Pavelić in 1941

Marinkovic denies that his family was part of the Ustashe. He claimed in an interview with the New York Times that his father fought against the Nazis.

But even some of his sympathizers are skeptical. A Balkan analyst from the private intelligence firm Stratfor, which works closely with the US government and is popularly known as the “shadow CIA,” produced a rough background profile on Marinkovic, speculating, “Still don’t know his full story, but I would bet a lot of $$$ that this dude’s parents are 1st gen (his name is too Slavic) and that they were Ustashe (read: Nazi) sympathizers fleeing Tito’s Communists after WWI.”

The Stratfor analyst excerpted a 2006 article by journalist Christian Parenti, who had visited Marinkovic at his ranch in Santa Cruz. Evo Morales’ “land reform could lead to civil war,” Marinkovic warned Parenti in the Texas-accented English he picked up while studying at the University of Texas.

Today, Marinkovic is an ardent supporter of Brazil’s far-right leader Jair Bolsonaro, whose only complaint about Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet was that he “didn’t kill enough.”

Marinkovic is also a public admirer of Venezuela’s far-right opposition. “Todos somos Leopoldo” — “we are all Leopoldo,” he tweeted in support of Leopoldo López, who has been involved in numerous coup attempts against Venezuela’s elected leftist government.

While Marinkovic denied any role in armed militant activity in his interview with Parenti, he was accused in 2008 of playing a central role in an attempt to assassinate Morales and his Movement Toward Socialism party allies.

He told the New York Times less than two years before the plot developed, “If there is no legitimate international mediation in our crisis, there is going to be confrontation. And unfortunately, it is going to be bloody and painful for all Bolivians.”

An assassination plot links Bolivia’s right to international fascists

In April 2009, a special unit of the Bolivian security services barged into a luxury hotel room and cut down three men who were said to be involved in a plot to kill Evo Morales. Two others remained on the loose. Four of the alleged conspirators had Hungarian or Croatian roots and ties to rightist politics in eastern Europe, while another was a right-wing Irishman, Michael Dwyer, who had only arrived in Santa Cruz six months before.

Image on the right: Alleged assassination plotter Michael Dwyer with his weapons

The ringleader of the group was said to be a former leftist journalist named Eduardo Rosza-Flores who had turned to fascism and belonged to Opus Dei, the traditionalist Catholic cult that emerged under the dictatorship of Spain’s Francisco Franco. In fact, the codename Rosza-Flores assumed in the assassination plot was “Franco,” after the late Generalissimo.

During the 1990s, Rosza fought on behalf of the Croatian First International Platoon, or the PIV, in the war to separate from Yugoslavia. A Croatian journalist told Time that the “PIV was a notorious group: 95% of them had criminal histories, many were part of Nazi and fascist groups, from Germany to Ireland.”

By 2009, Rosza returned home to Bolivia to crusade on behalf of another separatist movement in Santa Cruz. And it was there that he was killed in a luxury hotel with no apparent source of income and a massive stockpile of guns.

The government later released photos of Rosza and a co-conspirator posing with their weapons. Publication of emails between the ringleader and Istvan Belovai, a former Hungarian military intelligence officer who served as a double agent for the CIA, cemented the perception that Washington had a hand in the operation.

Marinkovic was subsequently charged with providing $200,000 to the plotters. The Bolivian-Croatian oligarch initially fled to the United States, where he was given asylum, then relocated to Brazil, where he lives today. He denied any involvement in the plan to kill Morales.

Image below: Rosza and Dwyer with their arms cache in Bolivia

As journalist Matt Kennard reported, there was another thread that tied the plot to the US: the alleged participation of an NGO leader named Hugo Achá Melgar.

“Rozsa didn’t come here by himself, they brought him,” the Bolivian government’s lead investigator told Kennard. “Hugo Achá Melgar brought him.”

The Human Rights Foundation destabilizes Bolivia

Achá was not just the head of any run-of-the-mill NGO. He had founded the Bolivian subsidiary of the Human Rights Foundation (HRF), an international right-wing outfit that is known for hosting a “school for revolution” for activists seeking regime change in states targeted by the US government.

HRF is run by Thor Halvorssen Jr., the son of the late Venezuelan oligarch and CIA asset Thor Halvorssen Hellum. The first cousin of the veteran Venezuelan coup plotter Leopoldo Lopez, Halvorssen was a former college Republican activist who crusaded against political correctness and other familiar right-wing hobgoblins.

After a brief career as a firebrand right-wing film producer, in which he oversaw a scandalous “anti-environmentalist” documentary financed by a mining corporation, Halvorssen rebranded as a promoter of liberalism and the enemy of global authoritarianism. He launched the HRF with grants from right-wing billionaires like Peter Thiel, conservative foundations, and NGOs including Amnesty International. The group has since been at the forefront of training activists for insurrectionary activity from Hong Kong to the Middle East to Latin America.

Though Achá was granted asylum in the US, the HRF has continued pushing regime change in Bolivia. As Wyatt Reed reported for The Grayzone, HRF “freedom fellow” Jhanisse Vaca Daza helped trigger the initial stage of the coup by blaming Morales for the Amazon fires that consumed parts of Bolivia in August, mobilizing international protests against him.

At the time, Daza posed as an “environmental activist” and student of non-violence who articulated her concerns in moderate-seeming calls for more international aid to Bolivia. Through her NGO, Rios de Pie, she helped launch the #SOSBolivia hashtag, which signaled the imminent foreign-backed regime-change operation.

Courting the regional right, prepping the coup 

While HRF’s Daza rallied protests outside Bolivian embassies in Europe and the US, Fernando Camacho remained behind the scenes, lobbying right-wing governments in the region to bless the coming coup.

In May, Camacho met with Colombia’s far-right President Ivan Duque. Camacho was helping to spearhead regional efforts at undermining the legitimacy of Evo Morales’ presidency at the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, seeking to block his candidacy in the October election.

Camacho with Colombian President Ivan Duque in May

That same month, the rightist Bolivian agitator also met with Ernesto Araújo, the chancellor of Jair Bolsonaro’s ultra-conservative administration in Brazil. Through the meeting, Camacho successfully secured Bolsonaro’s backing for regime change in Bolivia.

This November 10, Araújo enthusiastically endorsed the ouster of Morales, declaring that “Brazil will support the democratic and constitutional transition” in the country.

Then in August, two months before Bolivia’s presidential election, Camacho held court with officials from Venezuela’s US-appointed coup regime. These included Gustavo Tarre, Guaido’s faux Venezuelan OAS ambassador, who formerly worked at the right-wing Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) think tank in Washington.

After the meeting, Camacho tweeted gratitude to the Venezuelan coup-mongers, as well as to Colombia and Brazil.

No vamos a parar hasta tener una democracia real! Seguimos avanzando!

Vamos sumando apoyo… ahora lo hace Venezuela…Gracias a Dios.. hay esperanza!

Gracias Colombia!
Gracias Venezuela!
Gracias Brasil! pic.twitter.com/v9TQ2Fi2Sa

— Luis Fernando Camacho (@LuisFerCamachoV) August 27, 2019

Mesa and Camacho: a marriage of capitalist convenience

Back in Bolivia, Carlos Mesa occupied the spotlight as the opposition’s presidential candidate.

His erudite image and centrist policy proposals put him in a seemingly alternate political universe from fire-breathing rightists like Camacho and Marinkovic. For them, he was a convenient front man and acceptable candidate who promised to defend their economic interests.

“It might be that he is not my favorite, but I’m going to vote for him, because I don’t want Evo,” Marinkovic told a right-wing Argentine newspaper five days before the election.

Indeed, it was Camacho’s practical financial interests that appeared to have necessitated his support for Mesa.

The Camacho family has formed a natural gas cartel in Santa Cruz. As the Bolivian outlet Primera Linea reported, Luis Fernando Camacho’s father, Jose Luis, was the owner of a company called Sergas that distributed gas in the city; his uncle, Enrique, controlled Socre, the company that ran the local gas production facilities; and his cousin, Cristian, controls another local gas distributor called Controgas.

According to Primera Linea, the Camacho family was using the Pro-Santa Cruz Committee as a political weapon to install Carlos Mesa into power and ensure the restoration of their business empire.

Mesa has a well-documented history of advancing the goals of transnational companies at the expense of his own country’s population. The neoliberal politician and media personality served as vice president when the US-backed President Gonzalo “Goni” Sanchez de Lozada provoked mass protests with his 2003 plan to allow a consortium of multinational corporations to export the country’s natural gas to the US through a Chilean port.

Bolivia’s US-trained security forces met the ferocious protests with brutal repression. After presiding over the killing of 70 unarmed protesters, Sanchez de Lozada fled to Miami and was succeeded by Mesa.

By 2005, Mesa was also ousted by huge demonstrations spurred by his protection of privatized natural gas companies. With his demise, the election of Morales and the rise of the socialist and rural Indigenous movements behind him were just beyond the horizon.

US government cables released by WikiLeaks show that, after his ouster, Mesa continued regular correspondence with American officials. A 2008 memo from the US embassy in Bolivia revealed that Washington was conspiring with opposition politicians in the lead-up to the 2009 presidential election, hoping to undermine and ultimately unseat Morales.

The memo noted that Mesa had met with the chargé d’affaires of the US embassy, and had privately told them he planned to run for president. The cable recalled: “Mesa told us his party will be ideologically similar to a social democratic party and that he hoped to strengthen ties with the Democratic party. ‘We have nothing against the Republican party, and have in fact gotten support from IRI (International Republican Institute) in the past, but we think we share more ideology with the Democrats,’ he added.”

Today, Mesa serves as an in-house “expert” at the Inter-American Dialogue, a neoliberal Washington-based think tank focused on Latin America. One of the Dialogue’s top donors is the US Agency for International Development (USAID), the State Department subsidiary that was exposed in classified diplomatic cables published on Wikileaks for strategically directing millions of dollars to opposition groups including those “opposed to Evo Morales’ vision for indigenous communities.”

Other top funders of the Dialogue include oil titans like Chevron and ExxonMobil; Bechtel, which inspired the initial protests against the administration in which Mesa served; the Inter-American Development Bank, which has forcefully opposed Morales’ socialist-oriented policies; and the Organization of American States (OAS), which helped delegitimize the Morales’s re-election victory with dubious claims of irregular vote counts.

Finishing the job

When Carlos Mesa touched off nationwide protests in October by accusing the Evo Morales government of committing electoral fraud, the right-wing firebrand hailed by his followers as “Macho Camacho” emerged from the shadows. Behind him was the hardcore separatist shock force that he led in Santa Cruz.

Mesa faded into the distance as Camacho emerged as the authentic face of the coup, rallying his forces with the uncompromising rhetoric and fascist symbology that defined the Unión Juvenil Cruceñista paramilitary.

As he declared victory over Morales, Camacho exhorted his followers to “finish the job, let’s get the elections going, let’s start judging the government criminals, let’s put them in jail.”

Back in Washington, meanwhile, the Trump administration released an official statement celebrating Bolivia’s coup, declaring that “Morales’s departure preserves democracy.”

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Max Blumenthal is an award-winning journalist and author, and the founder and editor of The Grayzone.

Ben Norton is a journalist, writer, and filmmaker, and the assistant editor of The Grayzone.

All images in this article are from The Grayzone