The European Union today confirmed it will ban the use of the pesticide chlorpyrifos on food crops early next year, citing the risk of brain damage to children – evidence the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency ignored in scuttling a proposed ban on the chemical.
In August, the European Food Safety Authority, or EFSA, said there is “no safe level” of exposure to the insecticide, which drove today’s decision. The EFSA also cited possible damage to DNA. Chlorpyrifos will no longer be allowed for sale in the 28 member countries of the EU after the end of January.
The EPA was poised to ban chlorpyrifos early in 2017. But after the 2016 election, Dow launched an aggressive campaign to block that decision.
Dow, the pesticide’s main manufacturer, donated $1 million to President Trump’s inauguration festivities, and its CEO met privately with then-EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt. Soon after, Pruitt ignored his agency’s own scientists and aborted the scheduled ban.
Pruitt resigned in disgrace in July 2018 after a scandal-ridden 18-month tenure, but Andrew Wheeler, who took over as administrator of the agency, fought in federal court to keep chlorpyrifos legal. California has banned the use of chlorpyrifos on food crops after February.
“American children and farmworkers would not be exposed to this dangerous pesticide today if the Trump EPA had not ignored the advice of its scientists and kowtowed to the chemical agricultural industry,” said EWG President Ken Cook. “Why should kids in France, Germany and Italy be protected from a brain-damaging chemical while , ?”
A robust body of scientific evidence shows that even small doses of chlorpyrifos can damage parts of the brain that control language, memory, behavior and emotion. Multiple independent studies have found that exposure to chlorpyrifos impairs children’s IQs.
EPA scientists assessed those studies and concluded that the levels of the pesticide currently found on food and in drinking water are unsafe. The scientists estimate that typical exposures for babies are five times greater than the agency’s proposed “safe” intake, and 11 to 15 times higher for toddlers and older children. A typical exposure for a pregnant woman is five times higher than it ought to be to protect her developing fetus.
The most recent data from the U.S. Geological Survey show an estimated 5 million pounds of the weedkiller were sprayed on U.S. cropland in 2016.
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Macron ha parlato di «morte cerebrale» della Nato, altri la definiscono «moribonda». Siamo dunque di fronte a una Alleanza che, senza più una testa pensante, si sta sgretolando per effetto delle fratture interne? I litigi al Summit di Londra sembrano confermare tale scenario. Occorre però guardare alla sostanza, ai reali interessi su cui si fondano i rapporti tra gli alleati.
Mentre a Londra Trump e Macron polemizzano sotto gli occhi delle telecamere, in Niger senza tanta pubblicità lo US Army Africa (Esercito Usa per l’Africa) trasporta con i suoi aerei cargo migliaia di soldati francesi e i loro armamenti in diversi avamposti in Africa Occidentale e Centrale per l’Operazione Barkhane, in cui Parigi impegna 4.500 militari, soprattutto delle forze speciali, con il sostegno di forze speciali Usa anche in azioni di combattimento. Contemporaneamente i droni armati Reaper, forniti dagli Usa alla Francia,operano dalla Base aerea 101 a Niamey (Niger). Dalla stessa base decollano iReaper della US Air Force Africa (Forza aerea Usa per l’Africa), che vengono ora ridislocati nella nuovabase 201 di Agadez nel nord del paese, continuando a operare di concerto con quelli francesi.
Il caso è emblematico. Stati uniti, Francia e altre potenze europee, i cui gruppi multinazionali rivaleggiano per accaparrarsi mercati e materie prime, si compattano quando sono in gioco i loro interessi comuni. Ad esempio quelli che hanno nel Sahel ricchissimo di materie prime: petrolio, oro, coltan, diamanti, uranio. Ora però i loro interessi in questa regione, dove gli indici di povertà sono tra i più alti, vengono messi in pericolo dalle sollevazioni popolari e dalla presenza economica cinese. Da qui la Barkhane che, presentata come operazione anti-terrorismo, impegna gli alleati in una guerra di lunga durata con droni e forze speciali
Il più forte collante che tiene unita la Nato è costituito dai comuni interessi del complesso militare industriale sulle due sponde dell’Atlantico. Esso esce rafforzato dal Summit di Londra. La Dichiarazione finale fornisce la principale motivazione per un ulteriore aumento della spesa militare: «Le azioni aggressive della Russia costituiscono una minaccia per la sicurezza Euro-Atlantica». Gli Alleati si impegnano non solo a portare la loro spesa militare almeno al 2% del Pil, ma a destinare almeno il 20% di questa all’acquisto di armamenti. Obiettivogià raggiunto da 16 paesi su 29, tra cui l’Italia. Gli Usa investono a tale scopo oltre 200 miliardi di dollari nel 2019. I risultati si vedono. Il giorno stesso in cui si apriva il Summit Nato, la General Dynamics firmava con la US Navy un contratto da 22,2 miliardi di dollari, estendibili a 24, per la fornitura di 8 sottomarini della classe Virginia per operazioni speciali e missioni di attacco con missili Tomahawk anche a testata nucleare (40 per sottomarino).
Accusando la Russia (senza alcuna prova) di aver schierato missili nucleari a raggio intermedio e aver così affossato il Trattato Inf, il Summit decide «l’ulteriore rafforzamento della nostra capacità di difenderci con un appropriato mix di capacità nucleari, convenzionali e anti-missilistiche, che continueremo ad adattare: finché esisteranno armi nucleari, la Nato resterà una alleanza nucleare». In tale quadro si inserisce il riconoscimento dello spazio quale quinto campo operativo, in altre parole si annuncia un costosissimoprogramma militare spaziale della Alleanza. È una cambiale in bianco data all’unanimità dagli Alleati al complesso militare industriale.
Per la prima volta, con la Dichiarazione del Summit, la Nato parla della «sfida» proveniente dalla crescente influenza e dalla politica internazionale della Cina, sottolineando «la necessità di affrontarla insieme come Alleanza». Il messaggio è chiaro: la Nato è più che mai necessaria a un Occidente la cui supremazia viene oggi messa in discussione da Cina e Russia. Risultato immediato: il Governo giapponese ha annunciato di aver comprato per 146 milioni di dollari l’isola disabitata di Mageshima, a 30 km dalle sue coste, per adibirla a sito di addestramento dei cacciabombardieri Usa schierati contro la Cina.
Most Canadians would be surprised to learn that the sun never sets on the military their taxes pay for.
This country is not formally at war yet more than 2,100 Canadian troops are sprinkled across the globe. According to the Armed Forces, these soldiers are involved in 28 international missions.
There are 850 Canadian troops in Iraq and its environs. Two hundred highly skilled special forces have provided training and combat support to Kurdish forces often accused of ethnic cleansing areas of Iraq they captured. A tactical helicopter detachment, intelligence officers and a combat hospital, as well as 200 Canadians at a base in Kuwait, support the special forces in Iraq.
Alongside the special forces mission, Canada commands the NATO mission in Iraq. Canadian Brigadier General Jennifer Carrigan commands nearly 600 NATO troops, including 250 Canadians.
A comparable number of troops are stationed on Russia’s borders. About 600 Canadians are part of a Canadian-led NATO mission in Latvia while 200 troops are part of a training effort in the Ukraine. Seventy-five Canadian Air Force personnel are currently in Romania.
Some of the smaller operations are also highly political. Through Operation Proteus a dozen troops contribute to the Office of the United States Security Coordinator, which is supporting a security apparatus to protect the Palestinian Authority from popular disgust over its compliance in the face of ongoing Israeli settlement building.
Through Operation Foundation 15 troops are contributing to a US counter-terrorism effort in the Middle East, North Africa and Southwest Asia. As part of Operation Foundation General A. R. DAY, for instance, Directsthe Combined Aerospace Operations Center at the US military’s Al Udeid base in Qatar.
The 2,100 number offered up by the military doesn’t count the hundreds, maybe a thousand, naval personnelpatrolling hotspots across the globe. Recently one or two Canadian naval vessels — with about 200 personnel each — has patrolled in East Asia. The ships are helping the US-led campaign to isolate North Korea and enforce UN sanctions. These Canadian vessels have also been involved in belligerent “freedom of navigation” exercises through international waters that Beijing claims in the South China Sea, Strait of Taiwan and East China Sea.
A Canadian vessel is also patrolling in the Persian Gulf/Arabian Sea. Recently Canadian vessels have also entered the Black Sea, which borders Russia. And Canadian vessels regularly deploy to the Caribbean.
Nor does the 2,100 number count thecolonels supported by sergeants and sometimes a second officerwho are defence attachés based in 30 diplomatic posts around the world (with cross-accreditation to neighbouring countries). Another 150 Canadian military personnel are stationed at the North American Aerospace Defense Command headquarters in Colorado and a smaller number at NORAD’s hub near Tampa Bay, Florida. These bases assist US airstrikes in a number of places.
Dozens of Canadian soldiers are also stationed at NATO headquarters in Brussels. They assist that organization in its international deployments.
There may be other deployments not listed here. Dozens of Canadian soldiers are on exchange programs with the US and other militaries and some of them may be part of deployments abroad.Additionally, Canadian Special forces can be deployed without public announcement, which has taken place on numerous occasions.
The scope of the military’s international footprint is hard to square with the idea of a force defending Canada. That’s why military types promote the importance of “forward defence”. The government’s 2017 “Strong, Secure, Engaged: Canada’s Defence Policy” claims Canada has to “actively address threats abroad for stability at home” and that “defending Canada and Canadian interests … requires active engagement abroad.”
That logic, of course, can be used to justify participating in endless US-led military endeavors. That is the real reason the sun never sets on the Canadian military.
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He’s been termed a ‘national security risk’ and an ‘enemy of the state’ by the mainstream media. On Sky News recently former Conservative and Times columnist Matthew Parris referred to his ‘mad’ conspiracy theories as he discussed with other journalists the danger of him being elected to power. One might think they were discussing a terrorist or criminal, but instead it was none other than Jeremy Corbyn, leader of the opposition, whose only crime has been to speak out against the harmful aspects of Britain’s foreign policy in recent years. Against regime change wars, against arms sales to Saudi Arabia and a supporter of Palestine – Corbyn has openly contradicted the establishment position for decades. Why? Because, like most conscious individuals, he deemed it to be immoral.
You see the problem with Jeremy Corbyn is that he tells the truth. Lord Finkelstein, writing in The Times on Wednesday, wrote a piece designed to send shivers down the spine of Britain’s most ardent capitalists. ‘How Lenin inspired Corbyn’s world view’ it was entitled, as he tried to persuade the public that the Labour leader threatens everything the UK establishment stands for. He quotes from a 2011 foreword written by Corbyn to the book Imperialism, in which he wrote,
“Since World War Two, the big imperial force has been the United States on behalf of global capitalism and the biggest, mostly US-based corporations. The propaganda for this has presented itself as a voice for ‘freedom’ and carefully and consciously conflated it with market economics.”
He goes further to suggest that Soviet expansionism was different from that of the US:
“The influence of the Soviet Union around the world was huge, but tempered by an inadequate industrial base in comparison to the United States and the ruinously expensive arms race that hastened its decline, and eventual collapse in 1990. But the Soviet influence was always different, and its allies often acted quite independently.”
These ‘dangerous’ opinions are of course opposed by the establishment, whose very existence depends on a flourishing capitalist order.
The reason this subject has resurfaced of late is, of course, because of the 70th anniversary of NATO. This military alliance, consistently portrayed in the West as a force only for good in the world, has been criticised by Corbyn in the past for its ‘obsession with Cold War politics’ and for provoking Russia through its expansion into Eastern Europe. Describing it as a ‘US tool’ for shaping policy in Europe, in his 2014 Corbyn article entitled ‘NATO belligerence endangers us all’ has dared to venture into territory that no other UK politician would dare go into. Suggesting that there were ‘huge questions surrounding the West’s intentions in Ukraine’, that NATO has been wrongly allowed ‘to act outside its own area since the Afghan war’ and that ‘it’s time we talked with Russia’ are statements strong enough to raise more than a few eyebrows in Westminster. Dismissed as crackpot conspiracy theories, there are very few mainstream journalists and commentators willing to tolerate such views for a second, let alone work out what they might mean.
Thankfully there are some who have been able to see past the propaganda that Corbyn is some kind of ‘Soviet sleeper’ and terrorist sympathiser intent on undermining national security and destroying Britain’s ‘special relationship’ with the US, and as such he has got to the position he is in. For the reality is that Corbyn’s mantra is essentially based on one basic principle: promote peace not war. And that is something which unfortunately is a huge threat to weapons manufacturers, from which the UK made £14bn last year, making it the world’s second largest arms exporter.
Therefore the ‘deep state’, will do everything it can to persuade the British public that Jeremy Corbyn is our enemy. Former MI6 head, Sir Richard Dearlove, writing in the Mail on Sunday last month warned ‘do not even think about taking the risk of handing this politician the keys of No.10’ as he boasted that neither Corbyn nor many of his close allies would have passed security vetting in order to join the agency. He asserted that Corbyn and his strategist, Seamus Milne, were ‘compromised by their past’ as they had ‘embraced the interests’ of Britain’s enemies. Dearlove, whose resilience has survived the criticism he faced over his role in the Iraq war, is still be listened to it seems. Indeed, his anti-Corbyn articles have featured regular in the mainstream press in recent years, along with several television interviews. And he is not the only former intelligence officer to have spoken out against Corbyn, despite the fact that the security services are supposed to remain neutral.
A recent article by Mark Kennard illustrates the extent to which this principle is being flouted. He writes “The stories — which quote former or current members of the army, navy and special forces, as well as MI5, MI6 and an ex-senior civil servant — have averaged one every six weeks since Jeremy Corbyn was elected leader of the Labour Party in September 2015. There have, however, been significant spikes in frequency during the 2017 and 2019 general election campaigns.” Kennard goes on suggest that intelligence officers have in fact provided journalists in the mainstream media with secret documents as part of what he terms a ‘campaign’. It’s not hard to agree that this is a strong possibility. In 2018 the government’s Integrity Initiative scheme – an intelligence operation involving journalists and academics, designed to counter ‘Russian propaganda’ – was exposed, and it was found to be openly tweeting against Corbyn. This was one of the first indications that the media campaign against Corbyn could be orchestrated. In a previous interview with Professor David Miller at the University of Bristol, he also told me of the ‘unconstitional animus’ towards the Labour leader which he said was operating in the same way as the Zinoviev case in 1924.
So the threat Corbyn poses is, in fact nothing new – we’ve been here before with previous potential socialist governments. With baited breath one awaits the result of next week’s election; for if indeed Jeremy Corbyn does gain the keys to No.10 Downing Street we can only imagine what turmoil the establishment will be in…
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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.
Johanna Ross is a journalist based in Edinburgh, Scotland.
In early 2014 Washington staged a blatant coup d’etat in Ukraine breaking the historic relationship with Russia and setting the stage for the subsequent NATO demonization of Russia. The one in charge for the Obama Administration of the Ukraine coup was then-Vice President Joe Biden. Today a bizarre Democrat impeachment attempt aimed at President Donald Trump has curiously enough put the spotlight on the dubious role that Joe Biden played in Ukraine affairs in 2014 and after. That Biden-steered coup had the unintended effect of causing a 180 degree geopolitical pivot of Moscow from West to East. The opening of a massive new gas pipeline now is only one of those unintended consequences.
On December 2, Russian President Vladimir Putin participated in the official opening of the Power of Siberia natural gas pipeline to Asia, servicing the growing China gas market. It met the planned deadline punctually, to the month. This marked the first Russian pipeline gas deliveries to China. In a videolink with China President Xi Jinping, Putin remarked,
“This step is bringing Russian-Chinese strategic cooperation in energy to a whole new level.” Xi called it “a milestone project for the bilateral energy cooperation.”
The opening, a huge engineering feat, completes a pipeline through Russia’s Eastern Siberia north of Mongolia to the border with China, running more than 2,200 kilometers across Russia’s east territories. It is the largest gas pipeline project in the world to date.
The pipeline is designed to deal with temperatures as low as 62 C minus, and withstand earthquakes along its route. It begins in the Chayanda gas field in Yakutia and completes the Russian section at Blagoveshchensk on the Russia–China border. There, via two underwater pipelines under the Amur River, it connects with a Chinese gas line going south to Shanghai, the 3,371-kilometer-long Heihe–Shanghai pipeline in China. The world’s largest market demand increase for gas fuel in recent years has been China.
In May 2014, Gazprom and China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) signed a $400 billion 30-year agreement for gas to be supplied via the Power of Siberia gas pipeline. The Russian gas deliveries to China will be 38 billion cubic meters per year when it reaches peak in 2025. In 2018 China natural gas consumption was 280 bcm, so the Siberian contribution is significant. It will eventually supply some 10% of China’s total gas needs for electricity and heating, to China’s underdeveloped northeast regions and south as far as Shanghai. But the project is about much more than gas to China.
AMUR GPP
Completion of the major Power of Siberia pipeline to China involves more than a pipeline running through 2,200 kilometers of remote Russia. It is also being used as a catalyst to develop major industry in the economically underdeveloped Russian Far East as well, a priority of the Russian government in recent years.
A little discussed parallel development tied to the construction of the Power of Siberia pipeline is Gazprom’s decision to build Russia’s largest gas-processing chemical facility, the Amur Gas Processing Plant, or the Amur GPP. The Amur GPP is the largest construction project in Russia’s Far East, a $14 billion complex near Svobodny on the Zeya River in Amur Oblast, some 170 kilometers from the gas pipeline’s China connection point. The Amur GPP scale is enormous, the size of 1,100 football fields.
The complex will use a portion of the huge gas reserves of the Power of Siberia fields in East Siberia to produce a mix of petrochemicals that will include ethane, propane, butane, pentane-hexane fraction and 60 million cubic meters of helium annually. These are all industrial chemical components in strong demand. Most important is the large production of helium, a byproduct of natural gas used in space industry, metallurgy, medicine and other areas. Amur GPP will be the largest helium production plant in the world. Ethane, propane, butane, pentane-hexane will be used to produce polymers, plastics, lubricants and other things including motor fuel.
Regional Development
The Amur GPP project when complete in 2025 will be the largest gas processing plant complex in Russia and second largest in the world, bringing major new economic activity to the underdeveloped Far East region, a priority of the Russian government. In August 2017 Russian President Putin was present for the first pouring of the concrete foundation for the complex. In his remarks he noted that,
“In the past 50 years, our country has not seen anything similar. Neither the Soviet Union nor Russia have implemented projects of this scale. This plant’s capacity will be 42 billion, which is a breakthrough not only for the industry but also in the overall development of the Russian Far East.”
Putin added,
“During peak periods, the construction will require several thousand people, or almost 25,000 workers, to be more precise. Once the plant is complete, it will employ 2,500 to 3,000 people, which will allow us not only to move forward in gas production but also to create conditions for building another giant plant in the country and one of the largest in the world.”
The production from the Amur plant complex will be marketed for export to the Asian market as well as expanding the gas supply network for Yakutia and the Amur Region where until now commercial gas is almost non-existent.
The strategic partner of Gazprom responsible for the processing equipment and other engineering technology is the German company, Linde, a world leader in such specialized technology.
The Amur GPP complex will bring a major boost to Svobodny which like many towns in the remote Far East has been losing population following the collapse of the Soviet Union. The construction phase as noted is employing some 25,000 engineers and construction workers, most drawn from the region, adding a major economic boost. In addition Gazprom is building 42 new apartment buildings and 36 townhouses for some 5,000 people in Svobodny who will be permanently employed at the facility. There will also be a new school and kindergarten with a swimming pool, clinic, sports and cultural institutions. As well, Gazprom is cooperating with Amur State University and the Far Eastern Federal University, with new courses to train future specialists in chemical technology. The municipal government is already benefiting from tax payments from the presence of the project.
Pivot east
Ironically, we can title this the ‘Biden Memorial Pipeline.’ Had the Obama Administration not launched their coup d’etat in 2013 at Maidan Square in Kiev, with the subsequent ouster of the elected president in February 2014 in favor of literal neo-nazi parties and corrupt oligarchs under a US puppet regime, the completion of the Power of Siberia pipeline to China would likely not exist today. Negotiations with Beijing for the pipeline had been dragging on for more than ten years when the Ukraine coup took place. After that coup a final agreement was secured by Moscow with Beijing in a matter of weeks as Putin engineered a geopolitical pivot to the East away from NATO.
Vice President Joe Biden was named by Obama to oversee the Ukraine coup and its aftermath, which apparently included some corrupt sweetheart deals for Hunter Biden and possibly Joe Biden with Ukraine gas company Burisma.
The coup, carried out by then CIA head John Brennan, using sniper mercenaries from neighboring Georgia, together with neocon US State Department official Victoria “F**k the EU” Nuland, was one of the more foolish geopolitical blunders of Washington in recent decades. The pro-NATO coup was initiated when Viktor Yanukovich’s government had decided to accept generous Russian terms to join her Eurasian Economic Union rather than a vague promise of possible EU membership candidate status. Today Ukraine is treated with outcast status by the EU, and its economy is a shambles as a result of the break with Russia. In May, 2014, just weeks after the CIA toppled the duly elected government of Viktor Yanukovich in what Stratfor founder George Friedman called, “…the most blatant coup in (US) history,” Moscow signed the agreement with Beijing for the Gas Pipeline Deal of the Century, the Power of Siberia.
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F. William Engdahl is strategic risk consultant and lecturer, he holds a degree in politics from Princeton University and is a best-selling author on oil and geopolitics, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook” where this article was originally published.
F. William Engdahl is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG)
Depois de terminar o meu trabalho no Médio Oriente, pelos menos por agora, estava à espera do meu voo para Santiago do Chile. Em Paris. Podia contar com alguns dias “livres”, a processar o que ouvi e testemunhei em Beirute. Dia após dia, durante longas horas, sentei-me num lounge, a teclar e a teclar; a reflectir e a teclar.
Enquanto trabalhava, por cima de mim estava sintonizado o canal noticioso France 24, a emitir de um ecrã plano.
As pessoas em meu redor iam e vinham: as elites da África Ocidental nos seus frenéticos frenesins de compras, a berrar sem qualquer cerimónia para os seus telemóveis. Coreanos e japoneses a visitar Paris. Rudes alemães e norte-americanos do tipo encorpado, a discutir negócios, a rir vulgarmente, a ignorar os “inferiores”, na realidade todos os que se encontravam nas suas imediações.
Acontecesse o que acontecesse no meu hotel, a France 24 estava sempre, sempre e sempre ligada. Sim, precisamente; as 24 horas do dia, reciclando durante dias e noites as mesmas histórias, de quando em vez actualizando as notícias, com um ar de superioridade ligeiramente arrogante. Aqui, a França julgava o mundo; ensinando a Ásia, o Médio Oriente, África e América Latina sobre si mesmas.
Perante os meus olhos, acima de mim, naquele ecrã, o mundo estava a mudar. Durante muitos meses cobri o pesadelo dos motins dos traiçoeiros e violentos ninjas de Hong Kong. Estava a acontecer em todo o Médio Oriente, principalmente no Líbano, e agora estava a caminho do meu segundo lar, a América Latina, onde o socialismo continuava a ganhar eleições, mas estava a ser agredido, mesmo aterrorizado, pelo corrupto e malicioso Império ocidental.
Tudo o que a France 24 estava a mostrar, testemunhei regularmente com os meus próprios olhos. E mais, muito mais, de muitos ângulos diferentes. Filmei-o, escrevi acerca disso, analisei-o.
Em muitos países, mundo fora, as pessoas tinham partilhado as suas histórias comigo. Estive nas barricadas, fotografei e filmei corpos feridos, bem como o tremendo entusiasmo e ânimo revolucionário. Também testemunhei traições, deslealdades e cobardia.
Mas no lounge, à frente do aparelho de televisão, tudo parecia bastante na moda, com muita classe, e reconfortante. O sangue parecia uma paleta bem misturada, as barricadas um palco do musical mais recente da Broadway.
As pessoas estavam a morrer de um modo sublime, os seus gritos emudecidos, teatrais. A elegante apresentadora no seu vestido de estilista surgia benevolente, sempre que as pessoas no ecrã se atreviam a mostrar alguma emoção mais forte, ou torciam o rosto com dor. Era ela quem mandava, e estava acima de tudo isto. Em Paris, Londres e Nova Iorque, as emoções fortes, os compromissos políticos e os grandes gestos ideológicos estavam fora de moda, há já muito tempo.
Durante os poucos dias que passei em Paris, mudaram muitas coisas, em todos os continentes.
Os amotinados de Hong Kong estavam a evoluir; a começar a incendiar os seus compatriotas só por se atreverem a manifestar a sua fidelidade a Pequim. Mulheres eram agredidas sem cerimónia, com barras de metal, até ficarem com os rostos cobertos de sangue. No Líbano, o enorme punho cerrado do Otpor favorável a uma mudança de regime pró-ocidental estava subitamente no seio das manifestações antigovernamentais. A economia do país colapsava. Mas as “elites” libanesas estavam a torrar dinheiro, à minha volta, à volta de Paris e à volta do mundo. Os pobres miseráveis libaneses, bem como a classe média empobrecida, exigiam justiça social. Mas os ricos do Líbano gozavam com eles, exibindo-se. Tinham tudo pensado: tinham roubado o seu próprio país, depois abandonaram-no, e agora estavam a fazer um enorme baile aqui, na “cidade das luzes”.
Mas criticá-los no Ocidente tem sido tabu; proibido. O politicamente correcto, a todo-poderosa arma ocidental utilizada para manter o status quo, tornou-os intocáveis. Pois são libaneses; do Médio Oriente. Um belo acordo, certo? Roubam os seus conterrâneos médio-orientais, mas em Paris ou em Londres é tabu expor a sua “cultura” do deboche.
No Iraque, os sentimentos anti-xiitas, e como tal anti-iranianos, foram fortemente e claramente disseminados do estrangeiro. O segundo grande episódio da dita Primavera Árabe.
Os chilenos têm estado a lutar e a morrer, a tentar depor um sistema neoliberal, que lhes fora enfiado garganta abaixo desde 1973 pelos Chicago Boys.
O movimento socialista boliviano, bem-sucedido, democrático e racialmente inclusivo, foi derrubado, por Washington e pelos traiçoeiros quadros da elite boliviana. As pessoas também têm estado a morrer aqui, nas ruas de El Alto, La Paz e Cochabamba.
E lá está Israel outra vez, em Gaza. Em plena força.
Damasco foi bombardeada.
Fui filmar os argelinos, os libaneses e os bolivianos; pessoas que estavam a defender os seus programas na Place de la République.
Antecipei os horrores que esperavam por mim, brevemente; no Chile, na Bolívia e em Hong Kong.
Escrevia, febrilmente.
Enquanto murmurava o aparelho televisivo.
As pessoas entravam e saiam do lounge, encontravam-se e separavam-se, a rir, a gritar, a chorar e a fazer as pazes.
Nada a ver com o mundo.
Os rasgos de gargalhadas indecentes irrompiam periodicamente, mesmo enquanto as bombas explodiam no ecrã, mesmo enquanto as pessoas carregavam contra a polícia e os militares.
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Então, um dia, percebi que toda a gente se estava nas tintas. Assim; tão simples.
Testemunhamos o que acontece, em todo o mundo; documentamo-lo. Arriscamos a nossa vida. Envolvemo-nos. Somos feridos. Por vezes ficamos perto, extremamente perto, da morte.
Não vemos televisão. Nunca, ou quase nunca. Aparecemos na televisão, isso sim; providenciamos histórias e imagens. Mas nunca testemunhamos os resultados; que emoções o nosso trabalho, palavras e imagens realmente evocam. Ou não evocarão sequer quaisquer emoções? Só trabalhamos para os órgãos de comunicação social anti-imperialistas, nunca para os da corrente dominante. Mas para quem quer que trabalhemos, nunca fazemos ideia das expressões faciais que os nossos relatos das zonas de guerra despertam. Ou as emoções que os relatos de qualquer zona de guerra agitam.
E depois, estamos em Paris, temos algum tempo para observar os nossos leitores, e subitamente compreendemos.
Compreendemos: porque tão poucos escrevem, apoiam a tua luta, ou se batem até pelos países que estão a ser destruídos, dizimados pelo Império.
Quando olhamos em volta, a observar as pessoas que estão sentadas no lounge de um hotel, percebemos claramente: não sentem nada. Não querem ver nada. Não compreendem nada. A France 24 está ligada, mas não é um canal de notícias como era suposto ser, há muitos anos. É entretenimento, o qual é suposto produzir um sofisticado ruído de fundo. E faz. Precisamente isso.
Tal como a BBC, a CNN, a Fox e o Deutsche Welle.
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Enquanto o presidente legitimamente eleito da Bolívia era forçado ao exílio, de lágrimas nos olhos, peguei no comando e mudei de canal para um qualquer bizarro e primitivo canal de desenhos animados.
Nada mudou. As expressões nos rostos das cerca de vinte pessoas em meu redor não sofreram qualquer alteração.
Se no ecrã tivesse explodido uma bomba nuclear, algures no subcontinente, ninguém ia prestar qualquer atenção.
Algumas pessoas estavam a tirar selfies. Enquanto eu descrevia o colapso da cultura ocidental no meu MacBook. Estávamos todos ocupados, à nossa maneira.
Caxemira, Papua Ocidental, Iraque, Líbano, Hong Kong, Palestina, Bolívia e Chile estão a arder.
E depois?
A dez metros de distância, um empresário americano berrava ao telemóvel:
“Vão convidar-me a voltar a Paris em Dezembro? Sim? Temos que tratar dos pormenores. Quanto é que vou receber por dia?”
Golpes, insurreições, motins, no mundo todo.
E aquele sorriso profissional, plástico, da senhora, a apresentadora, no seu vestido retro azul e branco de estilista; tão confiante, tão francesa, e tão infindavelmente falsa.
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Ultimamente, não deixo de indagar se os habitantes da Europa e da América do Norte terão algum direito moral a controlar o mundo.
A minha conclusão é: definitivamente não!
Eles não sabem, e não querem saber. Aqueles que detêm o poder é que têm a obrigação de saber.
Em Paris, Berlim, Londres, Nova Iorque, os indivíduos estão demasiado ocupados a admirarem-se, ou a “sofrer” com os seus problemas pequenos e egoístas.
Estão demasiado ocupados a tirar selfies e com a sua orientação sexual. E, claro está, com os seus “assuntos”.
É por isso que prefiro escrever para a comunicação social russa e chinesa, para me dirigir a pessoas que estão assustadas tal como eu, ansiosas quanto ao futuro do mundo.
Os editores desta revista, na distante Moscovo, na mesma medida sentem ansiedade e dedicação. Sei que sentem. Eu, e os meus relatos, para eles não somos mero “negócio”. As pessoas cujas cidades são esmagadas, arruinadas, não constituem qualquer tipo de entretenimento na redacção da NEO.
Em muitos países ocidentais, as pessoas perderam a sua capacidade de sentir, de se envolver, e de se bater por um mundo melhor.
Devido a esta perca, deviam ser obrigadas a abdicar do poder que possuem sobre o mundo.
O nosso mundo está estragado, cicatrizado, mas é extremamente belo e precioso.
Trabalhar para que se aperfeiçoe e sobreviva não é um negócio.
Só podemos confiar nos grandes sonhadores, poetas e pensadores para que o defendam, o façam avançar.
Existem muitos poetas e sonhadores entre os meus leitores? Ou assemelham-se, e comportam-se, como os hóspedes naquele lounge de hotel em Paris, perante o ecrã que emitia a France 24?
Just as the world’s scientists warn us in the strongest language yet that nations must ratchet up commitments under the Paris Climate Agreement to reduce fossil fuel emissions, the climate-denying Trump administration rolls out yet more plans to make things even worse. The latest proposal: plunder Alaska’s National Petroleum Reserve.
A complete disregard for science, conservation, and climate change
Originally created in 1923 to provide a source of emergency oil to the Navy, the 22.8-million-acre reserve is a critical preserve for a multitude of wildlife species. When Congress transferred the land to the Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management in 1976, it decreed that any gas and oil exploration must assure “maximum protection” to recreational, fish, or wildlife areas. Taking that directive to heart, the Obama administration in 2013 limited oil and gas leasing to 11.8 million acres, setting aside nearly half the reserve for wildlife habit.
But now, the Trump administration, in a complete disregard for science, conservation, and climate change, proposes to roll back that directive with a draft plan that includes options to allow oil and gas operations on between 17 to 18.3 million acres, or up to 80 percent of the reserve.
Republican Representative Don Young said this would reverse Obama’s “overly-restrictive disaster.” But the real disaster, of course, is the one already befalling the Arctic as melting ice from global fossil fuel burning forces local wildlife far from traditional areas and feeds sea level rise on a planetary scale.
Pillaging Alaska’s natural treasures
In what amounts to a cruel mocking of this reality, the Trump administration’s draft plan says with a straight face that it is considering two other scenarios as well. One would leave the reserve as the Obama administration drew it up, to “protect crucial areas for sensitive bird populations and for the roughly 315,000 caribou” in two major herds. The other would actually slightly cut land for oil and gas leasing and increase protections for wildlife, “to prevent additional development in (caribou) habitat and molting goose habitat.”
After going through the motions of considering multiple scenarios offering far more environmental protection, the administration chose the most rapacious plan, with the least protection for subsurface exploitation and surface infrastructure development. With no shame, the administration admitted in its plan that climate change combined oil development “may result in extinction” of many bird species, with 69 of the 157 species found on the coastal plain already of significant concern.
The administration also wants to open up the Tongass National Forest to full-scale logging. The Clinton administration banned logging roads in 9.2 million of the forest’s 16.7 million acres to protect the world’s most intact temperate rain forest. The administration wants to slice up the forest even as it admits in its draft plan that the Tongass contains “wildlife habitats, ecosystems, and visual characteristics, such as coastal islands facing the open Pacific, extensive beaches on inland saltwater, old-growth temperate rain forests, ice fields, and glaciers that exist nowhere else in the National Forest System.”
In the National Petroleum Reserve, the proposal for drilling presents a grave threat to wildlife in one of the world’s premier wilderness areas. To understand what might be lost, a good place to start is the assessments that led to the 2013 regulations, drawn up under Interior Secretary Ken Salazar. Among the major reasons given to prevent oil and gas exploration on nearly half the reserve were to:
Protect special habitat for nesting, breeding, molting, staging and migration for waterfowl and shorebirds and calving grounds for caribou in and around Teshekpuk Lake, the largest inland body of water on the reserve, and close to the ecologically sensitive North Slope
Protect breeding grounds for caribou in the Utukok River Uplands in the western part of the reserve
Protect haul-out areas and habitat for seals, walrus and polar bears
Protect habitat for peregrine falcons and other raptors;
Protect the “free flow, water quality, and outstandingly remarkable values” of several rivers essential to wildlife.
The Trump administration’s proposal would shrink the protected area around Teshekpuk Lake and potentially open the area to exploitation. This is despite a 2011 study finding that the lake had such a density of breeding birds that it should “be considered for permanent protection.”
A 2012 study led by researchers from the US Fish and Wildlife Service found that the density of shorebirds such as sandpipers and plovers was among the highest in the international Arctic. Combined with research on caribou and geese, their study concluded that permanent protection for the lake region “is certainly warranted.”
More specifically, Audubon Alaska says the Teshekpuk Lake wetlands complex provides breeding grounds for 600,000 shorebirds, has the highest-known nesting concentrations of near-threatened yellow-billed loons, a denning area for polar bears and hosts all four of the world’s species of eider sea ducks. It provides molting and post-nesting resting areas for up to 100,000 greater white-fronted geese, brant, cackling geese and snow geese. “There are no other known areas that support such large numbers of four species of molting geese across the Arctic,” Audubon says.
Of particular concern to conservationists is the fact that the number of caribou calling Teshekpuk Lake home fell from 69,000 in 2008 to 39,000 in 2014. The cause of the drop is uncertain, but some scientists say climate change is adversely affecting food sources. They predict that oil and gas development is likely to make things worse as there is evidence that industrial operations scare herds away from their most preferred areas.
A needless environmental disaster
It is not difficult to anticipate the overall effects of the Trump administration’s willful degradation of the Arctic. A 2003 study by a National Research Council committee unanimously agreed that expanding oil and gas operations was ill advised, “certain to exacerbate some existing effects and to generate new ones— possibly calling for regulatory revisions.”
This does not even begin to discuss the likely human costs in the area. The Obama administration concluded that opening up the entire National Petroleum Reserve to oil and gas development would reduce wildlife herds for subsistence hunting. The emissions, dust, and noise of operations and erosion of traditional diets and culture with development “will lead to worsened public health outcomes.”
In 2013, the Obama administration took that into consideration when it tried to strike a balance between the original purpose of the National Petroleum Reserve Alaska and the realization that there is much more than oil to preserve. Now, as the need to wean ourselves off fossil fuels is more urgent than ever, the arguments for protecting these already-threatened wildlife populations are stronger than ever.
In the thrall of the fossil fuel industry, the Trump administration pretends there is an Arctic in which no birds, seals, or caribou exist. If they are allowed to continue their needless and reckless environmental policies, that world may yet come to pass.
If the reserve is opened to mass plunder, wildlife will be sitting ducks for devastation. There are still opportunities for the public to raise its voice against this. The public comment period for opening up the Tongass is open until December 16; you can submit your comments here. The public comment period on the National Petroleum Reserve is open until January 21; submit your comment here.
There is time to act before Alaska’s goose, figuratively and literally, is cooked.
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Derrick Z. Jackson is a UCS Fellow in climate and energy and the Center for Science and Democracy. He is an award-winning journalist and co-author and photographer of Project Puffin: The Improbable Quest to Bring a Beloved Seabird Back to Egg Rock, published by Yale University Press (2015).
As stated in a previous article in this series of five pieces on the impact of Evo-Bolivia in Canada: “No power anywhere in the world can make the people turn their anti-imperialist movement into an appendage of the Trudeau government’s foreign policy in Latin America and the Caribbean.”
That’s as true as ever.
The National Assembly is the legislative body of the province of Québec, in Canada. Québec is the only one of Canada’s provinces that possesses a national assembly as the legislature recognized by the Government of Canada.
The Québec Solidaire (QS) party was founded on February 4, 2006 in Montreal as the result of a merger of left and anti-globalization forces. Among other characteristics, such as its policies on women’s rights and the environment, QS defines itself as a party of the left and a supporter of Québec sovereignty.
On December 8, 2008, Québec Solidaire won its first seat in the National Assembly with the election of Amir Khadir to represent the Montreal riding of Mercier.
After two more elections, in 2018, the party won a major victory by adding 7 new seats for a total of 10, relegating the Parti Québecois— the old-line neoliberal sovereigntist party that formed three governments in its heyday — to non-official party status.
As a result of these developments, Québec Solidaire now has second opposition party status, behind the Liberal Party but ahead of the Parti Québecois.
At its congress on November 17, Québec Solidaire adopted the following “Urgent Resolution on Bolivia”:
“No punches can be pulled: what happened in Bolivia last week is a coup harkening back to the darkest hours in Latin American history.
“In the early 1970s, the great Uruguayan author Eduardo Galeano wrote:
“‘[Latin America] still works as a menial. It continues to exist at the service of others’ needs, as a source and reserve of oil and iron, of copper and meat, of fruit and coffee, the raw materials and foods destined for rich countries which profit more from consuming them than Latin America does from producing them.…[And so, this book] … present[s] in close proximity the caravelled conquistadors and the jet-propelled technocrats.’
“Unfortunately, those words remain as true as ever in 2019. The coup in Bolivia was planned by the Bolivian economic elite with the connivance of the Organization of American States (OAS). It should be remembered that the OAS is headquartered in Washington and that 44% of its funding comes from the United States. Simply put, the OAS is the diplomatic arm of U.S. imperialism.
“By calling into question the results of an election from which incumbent president Evo Morales emerged as the clear winner, the OAS has facilitated the taking of power by an illegitimate, deeply regressive government. Since the forced resignation of Evo Morales, the Wiphala, the seven-colored flag of the Indigenous peoples and the second official flag of Bolivia, has been removed from the presidential palace and burned in an act of brazen racism.
“With a view to denouncing this dramatic setback for democracy and human rights, Andrés Fontecilla, the member for Laurier-Dorion, and Zachary Williams, a delegate from the Verdun riding association, tabled the following urgent motion at the party congress of Québec Solidaire:
“‘Whereas:
Bolivian president Evo Morales obtained an electoral majority in the Bolivian presidential election;
President Morales consented to a second round of balloting, even though this was not required under Bolivian electoral law due to his majority win;
the coup brought to power an illegitimate government in Bolivia that has fomented violence against Bolivian progressive activists and Indigenous peoples;
Be it resolved that:
Québec Solidaire formally denounces the coup d’état in Bolivia and the foreign interference wielded through the Organization of American States (OAS);
Québec Solidaire denounces the far-right violence against President Evo Morales, the progressive and people’s movements, and the Indigenous communities of Bolivia.’”
But there is more. The leader of another major Canadian trade, Unifor, visited Evo in Mexico. His conclusion? It led to a powerful statement that will be dealt with in the fourth in this series of articles.
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Originally published in the Cuban trade union central (CTC) newspaper Trabajadores in Spanish.
I figured out why Republicans have become Democrats and are allowing the State Department to still be run by the Obama administration. To spite the Russians. For all the hate that each party has for each other, they hate the Russians more. Spite drives Washington D.C.
The ultimate goal of US foreign policy is to increase US imperialism (while ignoring the world decrying it) and, as icing on the cake, anger the “big, bad Russians.”
The latest ploy (and Macedonia is the toy) is to get Macedonia into NATO. Why not get a country that doesn’t need it and can’t afford it into an obsolete organization that should’ve died alongside the Soviet Union, yet only exists to fulfill the goals mentioned above?
The brutal side effect in this case (and there always is one when it comes to American foreign policy) is that Macedonia is being forced to change its name, identity, language, ethnicity and history in order to appease Greece, so that Greece lifts its veto and “allows” Macedonia to get NATO membership.
The Republic of Macedonia’s new…everything, would be “North Macedonia” and “Northern Macedonian” and this changes the very definition of “Macedonian”. Of course, eradicating an ethnic group’s name and identity constitutes genocide and violates international law and human rights conventions, but this won’t stop the United States – the self-proclaimed and brutally ironic “greatest democracy in the world”.
And we are not just talking about the Republic of Macedonia being wiped out. The West, in its infinite racism, partitioned all of Macedonia in 1913 and handed pieces to Serbia/Yugoslavia (now the independent Republic of Macedonia), Bulgaria, Greece and later, Albania. The redefining of an age-old nationality plays right into the handbook of all of our oppressors – to eradicate our existence. Macedonians everywhere, with international support, who have been fighting Greek, Bulgarian, Albanian and Serbian oppression are now by being hung out to dry (with our ethnicity to die) all because the United States values NATO over human decency and democracy.
And let’s not forget – what the United States wants, the United States gets. Despite resistance, if any, from the international community.
Of course, a simple solution to satisfy the United States’ obsession with NATO enlargement while actually RESPECTING an entire people’s right to exist is to remove the one-country veto rule in NATO, something that even George Bush suggested. Donald Trump, are you going to allow George Bush to be your voice of reason?
Now, if changing NATO rules requires too much effort for this incompetent US administration, the US could easily direct (order) Greece to refrain from using its veto power as it would if say, Montenegro, were to threaten to veto a potential NATO member.
If only Donald Trump would notice – anything, he would put an immediate end to this debacle, even if it were only to save his best friend/boss Vladimir Putin from watching NATO gain another member-state.
God forbid (and remember that God apparently watches over Republicans) that Trump acts like a real president and institutes his own foreign policy as I called for after Trump took office in this op-ed in The Hill. The reasons range from common sense, respect for human rights and international law, the saving of millions of US-taxpayer dollars by ending the implementation of a Soros-run government in Macedonia, and spite – something that Trump should have eaten up like yet another Big Mac.
But since Trump is incapable and unwilling to act, can the Republicans who claim to be Trump’s “voice of reason” (or better yet, the anonymous New York Times Republican who claims to have Trump on a leash), implement their OWN foreign policy and save a country as a side effect? As opposed to typical US foreign policy which destroys countries as a main objective.
I wondered when Democrats became Republicans in this Hill op-ed when I blasted their foreign-interventionist policy that is destroying Macedonia. But it is now, ironically, the Republican-like Democratic foreign policy that the Republicans are enabling and executing. If that didn’t make you dizzy…
And this is the vicious cycle that drives US foreign policy. Macedonia is stuck right in the middle of it and going around and around like a carnival ride. But instead of waiting for Trump or any US politician to gain a conscience and act, the vicious cycle ends if the object in it stops moving. Macedonia – STOP. Stop allowing yourself to be a pawn in the United States’ twisted foreign policy game of Risk. But in this case, and as I explained in The Game of Macedonia, Macedonia owns this game and can choose to stop playing at any time.
So, Macedonian politicians, will you finally defend Macedonia, human rights and common sense and end this name change catastrophe? Defend yourselves and the world will defend you, instead of being yet another American doormat and a living example of the Seinfeld episode where the angry Ukrainian yells at Kramer and Newman: “You think Ukraine is weak?! Ukraine is game to you?!” Substitute “Ukraine” with “Macedonia” and Seinfeld would’ve hit the nail on the head.
And finally. With one last homage to Seinfeld (he should’ve been President). Will the Republican Party do what it’s best at and, based purely out of spite, return the US State Department’s policy to one that is not anti-Macedonian?
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Israel is nuclear-armed and dangerous, developing these weapons since the mid-1950s, its well-known open secret the official narrative conceals.
Its ruling authorities refused to sign the NPT or abide by its provisions. Nor do they permit IAEA inspections of their nuclear facilities.
According to the Federation of American Scientists and other experts, its nuke warheads can be launched by air, ground, sea, or sub-surface — able to strike targets in the Middle East and elsewhere.
It’s believed the Jewish state also has 100 or more laser-guided mini-nuke bunker-buster bombs — able to penetrate and destroy underground targets.
According to the establishment front organization Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), “US inspections of Israeli nuclear sites in the 1960s proved largely fruitless because of restrictions placed on the inspectors.”
The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace’s Joseph Circincione earlier said (e)veryone knows about Israel’s bombs in the closet.”
Yet the West fails to contest their threat to regional peace and security.
Iran’s nuclear program has no military component and never did, its ruling authorities wanting these weapons eliminated everywhere.
Unlike the US and Israel, permitting no inspections of their nuclear weapons sites, Iran’s legitimate nuclear facilities are the world’s most heavily monitored, its ruling authorities fully cooperating with IAEA inspectors.
Iran’s ballistic, cruise, and other missiles are solely for self-defense, its program fully complying with its obligations under Security Council Res. 2231, unanimously affirming the JCPOA nuclear deal.
No Iranian ballistic or other missiles are designed to carry nuclear warheads, conventional ones alone. No evidence suggests otherwise.
Neither SC 2231 or any other SC resolutions prohibit Tehran’s legitimate ballistic missile development, testing and production.
The right to self-defense is inviolable under international law, UN Charter Article 51 stating:
“Nothing in the present Charter shall impair the inherent right of individual or collective self-defense if an armed attack occurs against a Member of the United Nations, until the Security Council has taken measures necessary to maintain international peace and security.”
The right of self-defense pertains solely to deterring armed attacks, preventing future ones after initial assaults, or reversing the consequences of enemy aggression.
At the same time, force must conform to the principles of necessity, distinction, and proportionality — what US-dominated NATO and Israel ignore when waging preemptive wars.
Necessity permits only attacking military targets. Distinction pertains to distinguishing between civilian and military ones.
A fourth consideration requires prevention of unnecessary suffering, especially affecting noncombatants.
Anticipatory self-defense is permitted when compelling evidence shows likely imminent threats or further attacks after initial ones.
Iran hasn’t attacked another country in centuries — what US-dominated NATO and Israel do repeatedly.
According to Israeli media Friday, the IDF conducted a missile test, launched from a military base in central Israel, a statement saying:
“The defense establishment (sic) conducted a launch test a few minutes ago of a rocket propulsion system from (its Palmachim airbase south of Tel Aviv). The test was scheduled in advance and was carried out as planned.”
The Times of Israel reported the following:
“Israel does not publicly acknowledge having ballistic missiles in its arsenals, though according to foreign reports, the Jewish state possesses a nuclear-capable variety known as the Jericho that has a multi-stage engine, a 5,000-kilometer range and is capable of carrying a 1,000-kilogram warhead.”
According to Haaretz, Friday’s test came “amid increasing tension between Israel and Iran and was intended to send a clear message.”
Iranian Foreign Minister Zarif slammed Israel’s test, saying the following:
“Israel today tested a nuke-missile, aimed at Iran. E3 (UK, France, and Germany) and US never complain about the only nuclear arsenal in West Asia – armed with missiles actually DESIGNED to be capable of carrying nukes.”
The West has “fits of apoplexy over our conventional and defensive” missiles, capable of carrying conventional warheads alone.
In response to Britain, France, and Germany falsely accusing Iran of breaching SC Res. 2231 by developing “nuclear-capable ballistic missiles” by letter to UN Secretary General Guterres, Zarif responded sharply, tweeting:
“Latest E3 (Britain, France and Germany) letter to UNSG on missiles is a desperate falsehood to cover up their miserable incompetence in fulfilling bare minimum of their own #JCPOA obligations.”
“If E3 want a modicum of global credibility, they can begin by exerting sovereignty rather than bowing to US bullying.”
On Monday, he tweeted:
“@SecPompeo once again admits that US #Economic Terrorism on Iran is designed to starve, and in the case of medical supplies, kill our innocent citizens.”
Earlier to the E3 and EU, he tweeted:
“To my EU/E3 Colleagues
“Fully upheld commitments under JCPOA…YOU? Really?
Just show ONE that you’ve upheld in the last 18 months”
On Wednesday, US under secretary of war for policy John Rood falsely accused Iran of building up a “hidden arsenal of short-range ballistic missiles in Iraq,” adding:
“We also continue to see indications, and for obvious reasons I won’t go into the details, that potential Iranian aggression could occur.”
A Wednesday NYT report, reading like a Pentagon press release, said:
“Iran has used the continuing chaos in Iraq to build up a hidden arsenal of short-range ballistic missiles in Iraq (sic), part of a widening effort to try to intimidate the Middle East and assert its power (sic)” — citing unnamed US military and intelligence officials, adding:
Iran “pose(s) a threat to American allies and partners in the region, including Israel and Saudi Arabia, and could endanger American troops (sic).”
Phony claims about any Iranian nuclear and regional threat posed by the nation were debunked time and again.
Tehran has military advisors in Syria and Iraq at the behest of their ruling authorities. They’re involved in combatting US-supported ISIS and likeminded jihadists.
The Islamic Republic threatens no other nations. US-dominated NATO and Israel threaten humanity.
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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.”
Anglo-Zionists and UK religious leaders in cahoots with Israeli hardliners are going all-out to prevent Jeremy Corbyn from becoming UK prime minister in December 12 elections — because of his anti-war, progressive agenda.
He advocates a peace and stability foreign policy, increased National Health Service spending, free higher education, free broadband for all UK residents, free childcare and early education, aid for disabled children and the homeless, higher public sector pay, and other social justice policies — polar opposite how Britain is governed under Tories and Labor Blairites.
He opposes austerity, wants public welfare cuts reversed, backs nuclear disarmament, supports greater spending for social justice, and stands for peace, equity and justice.
He’s smeared as anti-Semitic over his justifiable criticism of Israeli apartheid abuses and support for long-suffering Palestinians.
Anti-Zionism isn’t anti-Semitism. The long ago discredited canard still surfaces against Israeli critics, notably prominent figures like Corbyn.
At a 2018 Labor conference, Corbyn said the following to Britain’s Jewish community:
“This party, this movement, will always be implacable campaigners against antisemitism and racism in all its forms,” adding:
“We are your ally. And the next Labor government will guarantee whatever support necessary to ensure the security of Jewish community centers and places of worship, as we will for any other community experiencing hateful behavior and physical attacks.”
“We will work with Jewish communities to eradicate anti-Semitism, both from our party and wider society. And with your help I will fight for that with every breath I possess.”
“And let me next say a few words about the ongoing denial of justice and rights to the Palestinian people.”
“Our Party is united in condemning the shooting of hundreds of unarmed demonstrators in Gaza by Israeli forces and the passing of Israel’s discriminatory Nation-State Law.”
“The continuing occupation, the expansion of illegal settlements and the imprisonment of Palestinian children are an outrage.”
“We support a two-state solution to the conflict with a secure Israel and a viable and secure Palestinian state.”
Years ago, two states were possible, no longer. Israel controls over two-thirds of the West Bank and East Jerusalem, more land stolen daily.
The US and Israel won’t tolerate Palestinian self-determination, their deceptive rhetoric fooling no one aware of their aims.
According to the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD):
“The fiscal crisis in Palestine is very deep and very dangerous. (It’s) exclusively owed to the conditions created by the occupation, and if it continues, the very existence of the Palestinian Authority is at risk (because of) fiscal leakage.”
“Under the occupation, the economic self-sufficiency of Palestine is impossible.”
“(S)elective implementation of the (1994 Israeli/PLO Protocol on Economic Relations) makes matters worse because it subjects Palestine’s fiscal and monetary policies to (control by) the occupying power.”
PA revenues collected by Israel include taxes on imports, cross-border levies, property and income taxes on Palestinian individuals and enterprises.
According to UNCTAD, “the cumulative fiscal costs during the 18 years under consideration, without interest, are estimated at $19.5bn. Adding the interest increases the losses by $28.2bn, bringing the total valuation to $47.7bn.”
The amount is more than threefold Palestine’s 2017 economic output, UNCTAD calling these numbers conservative, the correct amount lost to Israeli withholding of revenues likely much greater.
The 1994 Protocol should have greatly improved the economy of the Occupied Territories. Israeli control over Palestinian revenues ruined it, the PA kept weak, Gaza isolated by blockade, and Palestinians divided for easier Jewish state control.
Zionism harms Jews and non-Jews alike. The late academic Joel Kovel explained how it fosters “imperialist expansion and militarism (with) signs of the fascist malignancy,” adding:
The ideology turned Israel “into a machine for the manufacture of human rights abuses.” It’s extremist, undemocratic, belligerent and hateful.
Days earlier, Corbyn launched Labor’s “race and faith manifesto, saying: “A Labour government will build a society and world free from all forms of racism, including anti-Semitism and Islamophobia.”
On November 25, Britain’s chief rabbi Ephraim Mirvis attacked him in a London Times op-ed headlined: “What will become of Jews in Britain if Labor forms the next government?”
Calling on Brits “to vote with their conscience (on) December 12” was an anti-Corbyn call to arms.
“Be in no doubt, the very soul of our nation is at stake,” he roared, citing a nonexistent “anti-Jewish racis(t)” threat to Britain.
“The Jewish community has watched with incredulity as supporters of the Labor leadership have hounded parliamentarians, members and even staff out of the party for challenging anti-Jewish racism,” he falsely claimed.
On the same day, Archbishop of Canterbury/Church of England head Justin Welby falsely tweeted that there’s a “deep sense of insecurity and fear felt by many British Jews.”
Mike Pompeo vowed to push back against Corbyn’s election as prime minister, saying:
“We will do our level best…It’s too risky and too important and too hard once it’s already happened.”
Corbyn is no anti-Semite. Nor does the notion pervade Labor under his leadership.
A London-based Institute for Jewish Policy Research report on “Antisemitism in contemporary Great Britain: A study of attitudes towards Jews and Israel (September 2017)” found the following:
“(O)nly a small proportion of British adults can be categorized as ‘hard-core’ antisemites – approximately 2%,” one of the lowest levels anywhere.
Corbyn threatens dirty business as usual, why he pilloried with false accusations. Polls show Labor trails Tories in the run-up to December 12 elections.
An Ipsos MORI poll released Friday showed Labor gaining support but still 12 points behind Tories, Brexit the biggest issue for voters. A PA Media poll has Labor trailing by 10 points.
On the same day, Corbyn attacked Boris Johnson. Calling his pledges fraudulent, he said his notion of Brexit will launch years of “painful negotiations and broken promises.”
He cited a leaked Tory document, showing what Johnson agreed to with Brussels contradicts his public rhetoric. The impact would be higher prices and that Northern Irish exporters will face higher costs.
“There will be other secret reports like this one in every government department that reveal the disastrous impact of Johnson’s damaging deal,” Corbyn stressed.
The choice for Brits is clear — continued dirty business as usual under Johnson or a chance for progressive change if Labor triumphs next week.
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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.”
Clearing the FOG hosts Margaret Flowers and Kevin Zeese interviewed William Camacaro, a Venezuelan activist living in New York City who is active with the Solidarity Committee with Venezuela NYC and organizes food sovereignty tours to Venezuela, on the eve of the December 3 Inter-American Treaty of Reciprocal Assistance (TIAR) meeting in Colombia. This meeting is the next step in the escalation of aggression towards Venezuela by the United States and its lackey governments in South America. Camacaro explains why this step is being taken, how it relates to current events in Latin America and what people in the United States need to be doing. You can listen to the entire program on Clearing the FOG.
Update: At the TIAR meeting in Bogota, fifteen countries decided to restrict the travel of top members of the democratically-elected government of Venezuela, including President Nicolas Maduro, Vice President Delcy Rodriguez, Foreign Minister Jorge Arreaza and National Constituent Assembly President Diasdado Cabello.
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Interview
Clearing the FOG (CtF): William, this week, you put out an alert urging people in the United States to take action on Venezuela. Can you describe what you called for and why you took that action?
William Camacaro (WC): Colombia has convened a summit for the activation of the Inter-American Treaty of Reciprocal Assistance, the TIAR, against the neighboring country Venezuela. This call constitutes a new danger to peace, democracy and the value of self-determination of the Venezuelan people.
Through this treaty, they can take military aggression against Venezuela, which will only benefit the regional planning of the ruling oligarchies and the so-called countries from the Lima group, countries that in the last two months, for example, Colombia, Chile, Ecuador, Panama and Peru, have been facing a very terrible situation thanks to the neoliberal measures that they have implemented and the repressive measures that have been taken to hundreds of people that have been in the streets protesting against neoliberalism.
On the other hand, Venezuela has been punished first by the Obama Administration, the first one to impose sanctions to Venezuela saying that Venezuela is an unusual and extraordinary threat to the security of the United States, and then the Trump Administration has imposed a series of sanctions against Venezuela. Venezuela has been under attack for 20 years from different USA administrations.
This treaty, called by the Colombian government, one of the strongest allies of the Trump administration in the region, is trying to basically intervene militarily in the country because they have already been intervening for two decades in different ways economically. They have been organizing coups against Venezuela, sabotaging the economy, but the last resource they have is the military. That’s why the Trump administration and everybody in his cabinet, from Trump, Pence, a big number of members of the Republican party, have been mentioning that the military option is on the table.
This January, the so-called self-proclaimed Venezuelan president Juan Guaido, the president of the National Assembly, is ending his time in that position. So it’s going to be very embarrassing for the United States to support someone as the Venezuelan president that has not been elected by anyone. And now, the ‘president’ they appointed in Venezuela is not going to be even the president of the National Assembly. That’s one of the reasons we will start to see a lot of pressure in the coming days against the Venezuelan government.
CtF: Juan Guaido, who proclaimed himself president of Venezuela this past January, was handpicked by the United States. He went to George Washington University in Washington, DC and was trained by the United States. He wasn’t actually even up to be the president of the National Assembly. Let’s talk a little bit about what the TIAR is. It’s also called the Rio treaty because it was formed in Rio de Janeiro in 1947, a post-world War II Treaty. Has it ever been used?
WC: Literally, it has never been used. The only time there have been several countries willing to use it was when the United Kingdom attacked Argentina. The United States supported the UK in the war against the Argentinian people. After that, the treaty has not been used at all. No one even wanted to call for the TIAR treaty because it was obvious the United States was never willing to use it, especially to defend anyone in South America from another superpower.
CtF: The TIAR is kind of like a junior NATO treaty, essentially a reciprocal defense agreement. There was an article in Venezuelanalysis about a leaked conversation involving the Colombian ambassador to the United States that mentioned the State Department supported the use of the Rio Treaty, the TIAR, and the White House didn’t. Do you have any insights into why there would be that kind divide in the Trump Administration?
WC: They can militarily intervene in Venezuela but they have to pay the price and they don’t want to pay the big price they’d have to pay to intervene militarily. That’s why the United States has been calling for other countries to intervene and to be in the front line in a war against Venezuela.
John Bolton, Mike Pence, Marco Rubio, even Donald Trump, have been calling the Venezuelan Army and asking them to “do the right thing” and the entire world will be happy and appreciate their work if they overthrow Maduro. They don’t want a military confrontation. Over the last month, the United States has been trying to fly over the Venezuelan air space more than a hundred fifty times and all the airplanes have been stopped. For the first time, the United States is confronting a country that they cannot fly over the airspace of that country.
They know that Venezuela has all these missiles from Russia and also from China, all this technology that’s coming from those countries, even from Iran, and they don’t want to pay the price. They want others to do the dirty work because it will be completely ridiculous for the entire planet to see the country that is spending more than 700 billion dollars on the military budget that it’s basically waging a war against a very small country in a very pathetic way.
CtF: Venezuela, in addition to its military and police and the assistance it’s gotten from other countries, also has a very strong civilian militia. Now President Maduro recently announced that he was putting his military on high alert at the Colombian border. Why is that happening?
WC: This is happening because Colombia is calling for this military treaty to be used against Venezuela. Also playing into the situation is that since the coup d’etat in Bolivia. Maduro has been basically putting weapons in the militias and they are already using the militias in several places in the country, something that has not happened before. Now it’s something that is getting to be normal.
We are getting into another level of aggression because we know this coming January is going to be tough. The United States really wants Juan Guaido to continue to be the president of the National Assembly but Juan Guaido has so many problems with his own people. His credibility among his own people is very low and no one wants him. By law, that position is rotated every year. They have been putting a lot of money in the hands of Juan Guaido to try to buy votes this coming January to change the rule in the National Assembly.
CtF: There is tremendous unrest in Colombia, massive anti-neoliberal protests against President Duque. His popularity is going way down. A wing of FARC guerillas has activated again. At the UN, Colombia claimed Venezuela was allowing paramilitary groups to organize inside Venezuela to attack Columbia, and that was shown to be a lie. There’s also a report of paramilitaries being ready to invade Venezuela from Colombia. In fact, the IDF, the Israeli Defense Force, reportedly had a hundred troops ready to participate in that. There is a lot going on at the Venezuelan-Colombian border. What is the potential for military conflict at the border?
WC: There is a very high possibility of conflict in that area. It’s not only paramilitaries from Colombia, but there is also a strong presence by regular groups from the United States, from Israel, that are operating along the border with Venezuela with permission from the Colombian government.
All these groups are trying to create a situation to justify USA intervention in Venezuela, and they are trying to create a similar situation like in Syria when you had a terror group financed by the United States getting into the country, taking over some of the resources of that country and selling it on the international market or trying to divide the country. Colombia doesn’t have enough oil, only for maybe five or six years. They have been selling their own reserves to the United States and they hope they can get that oil back or some resources back when Maduro is overthrown.
That’s basically what they are waiting for and they are getting desperate. In the United States’ economic warfare against Venezuela, the first thing the United States tried to do was to go to other countries like Colombia, Ecuador and ask them to sell them more oil. In that way, they didn’t have to get oil from Venezuela. Now those countries, like Colombia, don’t have enough oil. They are very worried because in the next coming years if Maduro is not overthrown, they will be facing a very big problem.
All these huge protests in Colombia against the economic system are occurring because they have not been able to use the war against the FARC, the guerrillas movement, as the excuse anymore. They need to face the real economic problems they have caused by the neoliberal measures that they implemented for all these years.
We need to understand that we are living in another period of time when we see the Chilean protests in the streets that have been taking place for almost two months. We see that neoliberalism has completely failed, that it’s a disaster. And Chile was an entire country that the Empire was showing to say that neoliberalism is working, at least in one place. Now we know that it’s not working anywhere. That’s why there are all these demonstrations and not only in Colombia, but also in Ecuador and Chile and Peru. The entire continent is completely chaotic because thousands and thousands of people are getting into the streets to demonstrate against the economic measures being imposed by the international bank, the International Monetary Fund and by the United States.
CtF: This is exactly what the United States has been trying to prevent for all of these years, ever since Hugo Chavez was elected in Venezuela and put in place the Bolivarian Process using the Venezuelan resources to help the people. The United States has been targeting Venezuela. And the US’ recent support for the coup in Bolivia is also a measure to counter what’s happening, this fight against neoliberalism in South America. How has the success of the coup in Bolivia impacted what the US is doing in Latin America?
WC: A lot of people have been mentioning that the coup has something to do with the lithium, with all the natural resources that Bolivia has. I don’t doubt it, but the coup d’etat against Evo Morales is because the Kirchners, Cristina Fernandez and Alberto Fernandez, won the elections in Argentina and the United States was looking at the possibility of the creation of a new leftist bloc in the region. They needed to intervene to make sure that we don’t have Argentina, Bolivia, Venezuela, and Mexico imposing an agenda for the entire region.
I think this is a horrible setback for the movement and the continent. It is something that we need to overcome as soon as possible. The dictatorship implemented in Bolivia is one of the most fundamentalist and fascist and it is connected with the richest people in Bolivia. Not only rich people but people that have been in Bolivia maybe two generations. They came from Germany, Croatia, South Africa, the rich people who were connected to the Neo-Nazi movement in their countries, with apartheid in South Africa.
These people are very racist. They hate the majority of the people in Bolivia that are indigenous, that are Aymaran, Quechuan, the Guaranis. Also, they are taking over the entire economy. This new figure, Luis Fernando Camacho, had a meeting with Duque, the president of Colombia, just two months ago in Bogota. The presence of paramilitary groups could be explained as Colombia supporting its partner in Bolivia.
Luis Fernando Camacho is a businessman. He is already running five different ministries in Bolivia. He is already in charge of three different state-owned enterprises like for example the airline of Bolivia that now is run by his company called Amaszonas. The director of Amaszonas airlines is now running Boliviana de Aviacion.
Basically these people are going to privatize the state-owned companies and they are giving them to all these right-wing people. It’s horrible what is taking place right now in Bolivia, not only the hate, not only that it’s racist, and not only that it is a plutocracy, but they are also attempting again the integration of the Latin American people and USA corporate interests in the region. So, it is a big setback for the movement in South America.
CtF: They certainly are behaving like fascists. The violence is intense and the racism against the majority indigenous people, 70 percent or so of the population, is just so outlandish and so overt. It’s really interesting that Camacho of Bolivia met with the president of Colombia when Colombia and Bolivia are blaming Venezuela and Cuba for the unrest of the coup. It’s such an upside-down Alice in Wonderland kind of reality. What are your thoughts on these claims by the Bolivian right-wing that Maduro is behind the protests against the coup?
WC: It’s completely laughable. You remember Lenin Moreno in Ecuador was also blaming Venezuela for what was happening in Ecuador. The same thing happened at the beginning of the protests in Chile and also some key figures from the State Department have been blaming Venezuela for all the disasters that have been taking place in the entire continent.
The reality is that all the neoliberal measures they have been putting in place for more than 30 years in the entire continent are causing this mobilization of people. People are more conscious about what neoliberalism is and how it’s affecting them in their life.
So, they really have been trying to stigmatize Venezuela and that’s what they tried with all these accusations against the Venezuelan government. It’s completely ridiculous. If we look a little bit at what happened before the coup d’etat against Evo Morales, we know that Ivanka Trump was visiting Jujuy. That is an area in the north of Argentina very close to the border of Bolivia. Just a month before the coup d’etat against Evo Morales, Ivanka Trump was in Jujuy in the company of the Vice Secretary of State John Sullivan and they delivered more than four hundred million dollars to build some roads in the north of Argentina. But the reality is that part of the money went to the hands of right-wing people in Bolivia to finance the coup d’etat.
They were able to mobilize thousands of people from Santa Cruz to La Paz to do all the disasters they organized in Bolivia. There are images of these people flying on airplanes and celebrating how successful they were in La Paz. It’s so incredible to see Camacho on one of those airplanes celebrating with all these people that they took from Santa Cruz to La Paz to go to Evo Morales’ house to destroy his house. to terrorize several people from the MAS Party, from the Movimiento al Socialismo, to terrorize key people from the government.
It’s important to know that when Evo Morales resigned, he resigned because his brother was beaten by the military and he was naked on the street and he was completely doused in gasoline. They said if you don’t resign, your brother will be killed.
CtF: They also set Evo Morales’ sister’s house on fire and were threatening members of the cabinet. And that mayor who was in the street with her hair cut and the red paint poured on her. They were really fascist in their approach. We reported last week on this show that US Southern Command was in Argentina prior to the coup and there were plans to have troops on the border between Argentina and Bolivia ready to go into Bolivia if necessary to support the coup effort. The United States is clearly involved in this coup. Evo Morales has been such a vocal and clear critic of US domination of Latin America of capitalism, it’s amazing that he didn’t have control of his military. It was a shocking reality. He had kicked NED out, kicked USAID out. Evo had done all that but his military…
WC: Yeah, it’s something that really surprised me because it’s completely naive to run a country and have a confrontation with the United States and not even have a group of people to protect yourself. Evo Morales didn’t have any military group to protect his house or to protect his life. It was a big, big mistake.
CtF: It’s so different from Venezuela where Chavez came from the military. They trained the military on US imperialism. They built the civilian militia. That was a major, major difference between Venezuela and Bolivia. So, William, you put out this urgent alert. What do you want people in the United States to be doing?
WC: It is very important for people in the United States to call their congresspeople in the Senate and House of Representatives. Tell them that they know the United States is looking for military intervention in Venezuela and that people completely disagree with the possibility of any military conflict with Venezuela. It’s very important to mention that people also completely disagree with the sanctions that have been causing a lot of damage to the economy of Venezuela and killing people in Venezuela.
That’s the real humanitarian crisis. The humanitarian crisis that Venezuela is living is caused by the United States government, by the State Department and by all the economic sanctions that have been imposed against the Venezuelan people just because the Venezuelan people decided to be free and decided to have their own country back.
CtF: The humanitarian crisis that the US is causing, the US then blames on Maduro’s policies. Maduro is fighting against an economic war and people in the United States are confused by that. They blame Maduro when the reality is the economic war against Venezuela is the real problem. Now, you’ve also done work on food sovereignty in Venezuela. Can you talk about those trips?
WC: We have been organizing delegations around sovereignty because that’s one of the targets of the USA sanctions against the Venezuelan people. The Trump Administration has been targeting all the social programs that the government has been implementing to help people have enough food on their plates. They have been attacking the program called CLAP. That is a program that provides assistance and cheap food to people in the entire country. And it’s also attacking other programs that are coming from the state that are related to food.
It’s important for us to see what the Venezuelan government is doing in terms of food sovereignty in the middle of this economic warfare on the country and to see what alternatives people are creating. I think that it’s very important also to be very close to the common Venezuelan and to see what they really think about what’s going on in the country.
CtF: As people who have visited Venezuela, we can say that what we hear and see in the United States corporate media is really the complete opposite of the reality on the ground in Venezuela. There is overwhelming support there for the Bolivarian Process and rejection of these US coup attempts. When you’re contacting your members of Congress, not only is it critical to say that we shouldn’t be intervening militarily in a sovereign nation of Venezuela – we have no justification for that – but we should not be imposing unilateral coercive economic measures on them. They violate international law. Also, if the US were to intervene militarily, this would become a regional conflict in South America and it would also have the potential to escalate into a global conflict because Russia has a relationship with Venezuela as does China and those are two targets of our national security strategy.
WC: That it is a very dangerous conflict because the United States went to Iraq looking for some weapons of mass destruction that never appeared and they destroyed the country. And they did the same thing in Libya and Syria. Most of the investments that were in Iraq, most of the money that was in Libya and Syria was coming from Russia, was coming from China and those countries lost billions of dollars in those wars that were organized by the United States. Basically, the same thing is happening in Venezuela.
I really believe that Russia and China are taking a strong stand and deciding that this time we’re not going to do the same thing. It’s a conflict that could really expand to a big level because what the United States is fighting right now is for control of the hemisphere. The United States has been losing power in the last years but especially in this administration because this administration has been confronting not only enemies, like political-economic enemies, Russia, China, but also their friends, allies, like Europeans, Germany, the French, UK, also India, that have been creating a lot of problems for the United States and a potential for international conflict.
CtF: Venezuela is a lynchpin for so many issues in Latin America that the US feels it’s losing control over and they’re acting in ways that are desperate and dangerous. Do you have any final thoughts for our readers?
WC: Basically, we deserve to have a planet without any conflict, not only people in South America but also people in the United States. And we deserve to have another kind of relationship especially when we are looking at all the threats that human beings are facing right now, climate change. We have a food crisis on the entire planet. We have a big threat that is weapons of mass destruction all over the planet. These are issues that we can resolve if we have the political will. If we are fighting among us, we will not be able to resolve any of those problems.
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Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers co-direct Popular Resistance where this article was originally published.
Summit anniversaries are not usually this abysmally interesting. While those paying visits to Watford, England on the occasion of the seventieth anniversary of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation are supposedly signatories to the same agreement, a casual glance would have suggested otherwise. This was a show of some bickering.
France, never the most comfortable member, suggested that NATO was “experiencing… brain death”. While this observation by French President Emmanuel Macron last month would have carried little weight in another age, it struck a chord, not least because it signalled a role reversal of sorts. The US, he warned, was retreating in its international role. A vacuum had been created, and it was desperately in need of filling. Such language, and affront, is usually the preserve of the current US president, Donald Trump. In 2018, he suggested that the organisation was nothing less than “obsolete”, a relic. Now it was left to France to assume the role of chief heckler.
NATO has been a body in search of a role for some time. In the triumphant aftermath of the Cold War, it became the most visible reminder of US power and overstretch, a blunt instrument of deployment in such theatres as Afghanistan. But the traditional sense that it remains a grouping marshalled against Russia and now, an emerging China, was not something Macron was having much truck with. Beijing should not “be the object of our collective defence… in strictly military terms”.
In company with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, Macron told assembled members of the press that identifying enemies was not within the purview of the alliance. “Is our enemy today Russia? Or China? Is it the goal of NATO to designate them enemies? I don’t believe so.” The more standard, if stale problem, was that of “terrorism, which has hit each of our countries.”
This has been seen as a form of ratting. Trump, during the course of a 52-minute meeting on Tuesday morning with Stoltenberg, found the remarks “very insulting” and a “very, very nasty statement essentially to 28 countries.” He instead pushed for drumming up the China threat. Be careful, warned the US president, about the technology giant Huawei. “I spoke to Italy and they look like they are not going to go forward with [Huawei].” But just to make matters interesting, Britain has refused to play along, with Prime Minister Boris Johnson not wanting Britain “to be unnecessarily hostile to investment from overseas”.
Another NATO member was also proving problematic, having not played by the rules of the club. Turkey is only a half-hearted subscriber to the Russian demonology, preferring to ink agreements for the purchase of such Moscow sponsored hardware as the antiaircraft missile system, the S-400. President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan was keen to leave his mark at this anniversary meeting, threatening a veto of NATO’s efforts to boost defences within the Baltic States and Poland should members not designate Kurdish fighters in Syria terrorists.
For Macron, Turkey’s stance was a sore in the relationship, a point assisted by Trump’s withdrawal of troops from northern Syria. The gesture was sufficient to encourage the movement of Turkish units into territory once won by Kurdish-led forces in their fight against the zealots of Islamic State. “When I look at Turkey, they are fighting against those who fight with us,” lamented Macron. “Who is the enemy today?” Regarding the issue of designating Kurdish fighters terrorists, there could be no “possible consensus”.
Trump was less troubled. “The border and the safe zone is working out very well… and I gave a lot of credit to Turkey for that. The ceasefire is holding very much so, and I think people are surprised, and maybe some day they’ll give me credit, but probably not.”
The US president kept to his usual 2 percent formula, namely, that member states needed to spend the equivalent of two percent of gross domestic product on defence to pass muster. Germany remains stubbornly low in expenditure, though Canada has promised a spike. But sandpit politics was just around the corner, and Canada’s Justin Trudeau proved the target of Trump’s barbs at a news conference alongside German Chancellor Angela Merkel. “I find him to be a very nice guy but you know the truth is that I called him out over the fact that he’s not paying 2 percent and I can see he’s not very happy about it.”
The comments were sparked by a recorded conversation between Trudeau, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, Macron, Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte and Queen Elizabeth’s daughter Anne. Not that there was much to go by. Some of the dignitaries had been running late. Johnson duly inquired. “It was like a 40-minute press conference,” answered the Canadian leader. “Yeah, yeah, yeah! Forty minutes.” Inaudible chatter followed. “I just watched his team’s jaws drop to the floor,” come Trudeau’s words. And so did the prime minister earned the ire of Freedom’s Land’s commander-in-chief. “He’s two-faced,” stated Trump, almost pouting in indignation.
Stoltenberg was left to do the secretarial work and hammer out a position of sorts. He suggested that China offered “both opportunities but also challenges.” Being vague was the order of the day, and when asked about the squabbles, assumed the role of stern diplomat. The Economist was troubled enough to suggest that there were reasons to celebrate. In Trump’s company, Stoltenberg called NATO “the most successful alliance in history because we have been able to change when the world is changing.” This was Macron’s point, though not necessarily one that has found a soft landing. In Beijing and Moscow, it has probably caused pause for amusement.
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Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research and Asia-Pacific Research. Email: [email protected]
The Israeli Air Force has carried out a new round of strikes on Iranian-linked targets near the Syrian-Iraqi border. The airstrikes reportedly hit at the al-Hamadan airport north of the town of al-Bukamal.
Pro-Israeli sources claimed that the strike destroyed a HQ of Iranian-backed militias, as well as ammunition and weapon depots. The U News agency, which is known for its close ties with Lebanon’s Hezbollah and Iranian forces in Syria, also shared reports on Israeli airstrikes, but did not confirm them.
Since the start of 2019, the Israel Air Force had conducted over a dozen of strikes on supposed Iranian targets near al-Bukamal. Despite this, the town and facilities around it remain a stronghold of Iranian-backed forces in the border area.
On December 5 morning, a large convoy of the Russian Military Police arrived in the Qamishli airport in northeast Syria. The convoy consisted of several armored vehicles and dozens of trucks loaded with different supplies and military equipment. It was escorted by attack helicopters.
In October, Russia already deployed Mi-8 and Mi-35 helicopters, and Pantsir-S air defense systems there. Pro-government sources speculate that the airport is being turned into a Russian military base.
Turkish-backed militants will withdraw from the town of al-Mabrukah and Syrian Army troops will be deployed there under a new deal reached by Moscow and Ankara, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights claimed on December 5. Russia’s state-run news agency Sputnik supported the claim by saying that army troops and Russian military police officers are now preparing to enter the town.
Al-Mabrukah is located south of the border town of Ras al-Ayn and hosts an electrical substation that was damaged during the recent Turkish-led attack on the region. The Damascus government will likely work to restore it.
Hayat Tahrir al-Sham repelled a Syrian Army attack on the village of Umm Jalal in southern Idlib, the terrorist group’s news agency reported on December 5. According to the report, up to 12 army troops were killed. Nonetheless, no photos or videos to confirm this claim was provided.
On December 4, militants attacked army positions south of the nearby town of Umm al-Tinah. The attack was repelled following several hours of heavy clashes.
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We call upon Global Research readers to support South Front in its endeavors.
On the Global Research News Hour we do our best to cover a wide spectrum of topics from the environmental crisis to economic and geopolitical analysis to debunking war pre-text narratives.
“A coup is underway, carried out by the right-wing with foreign support…what are the methods of this coup attempt?” – Evo Morales (October 23, 2019) [1]
On Sunday November 10th, following 20 days of street protests and attacks on fellow party members, President Evo Morales, on the advice of the head of the armed forces and the air force, resigned from his position as Head of State of the Plurinational State of Bolivia.[2]
For 20 days, street protests, escalating in their violence and intimidation of members of Morales’s political party, MAS (Movement Toward Socialism) had ravaged the Andean republic. These demonstrations were sparked by accusations that election authorities had rigged the vote count in favour of a first round victory for Morales. [3][4][5]
The civil unrest that had gripped the country did not end with his departure. When a senator from an opposition party, Jeanine Añez, declared herself president during a contested session, Morales supporters began their own protests including blockades which blocked the delivery of fuel, food and other supplies to major population centres.[6]
Repression by this interim government, Añez is supposedly only acting as president until new elections can be held, has resulted in human rights abuses. A delegation of human rights observers from Argentina reported at a November 30th press conference that based on testimonies carried out in the city of El Alto:
“the repressive system set up by the de facto government has caused dozens of deaths, hundreds of arbitrary detentions, thousands of wounded, innumerable cases of apprehensions, torture, rape and other crimes against the physical, psychological and sexual integrity of the victims, who are men, women, children, elderly and members of groups.”[7]
There are differing points of view with regard to whether the events leading up to the November 10th departure of Morales constitute a coup d’etat and to what extent the U.S. and other outside agencies might have played a role. Some activists within Bolivia, however, such as Maria Galindo of the group Mujeres Creando, warn of the dangers of framing the crisis as a conflict between popular forces, personified by Evo Morales, and right wing forces currying favour with domestic and foreign elites. Decisions made and tactics employed by the ousted president had encountered popular opposition across the board and is at least partly to blame for the current crisis. Consequently, the role and agency of critical progressive movements in the country are being glossed over by international commentators both on the left and the right.
If that analysis is sound, and if foreign actors are mobilizing to undermine Bolivian democracy, then no clear resolution to the country’s troubles is likely to be realized as a result of a new election alone.
This week’s Global Research News Hour radio program endeavours to probe several of the factors and several of the players influencing the turn of events in Bolivia. Four guests, two from inside Bolivia, two from the U.S. will share their perspectives on the political upheaval rocking the landlocked South American country.
W.T. Whitney Jr. is a political journalist with a focus on Latin America and health care issues. He is a Cuba solidarity activist who formerly worked as a pediatrician. He is the author of the November 25th article: Evidence Talks: US Government Propelled Coup in Bolivia.
La Paz based Sara Jaurequi has been active as an anti-racism activist and is a former student. She outlines her disappointment with Evo Morales and her understanding of the dynamics shaping the political situation in her country, and shares some of her own experiences in the midst of these historic events.
Cochabamba -born María Galindo is a Bolivian anarcha-feminist and founder of Mujeres Creando (Women Creating). She has also worked as a radio and television presenter and has authored three books. She recently wrote the article Kristallnacht in Bolivia, which is a reference to the events of November 10th as the release of racist, colonialist and fascist elements in Bolivian society.
It is also available on 93.9 FM cable in the communities of SFU, Burnaby, New Westminister, Coquitlam, Port Coquitlam, Port Moody, Surrey and Delta, in British Columbia, Canada. – Tune in at its new time – Wednesdays at 4pm PT.
Radio station CFUV 101.9FM based at the University of Victoria airs the Global Research News Hour every Sunday from 7 to 8am PT.
Campus and community radio CFMH 107.3fm in Saint John, N.B. airs the Global Research News Hour Fridays at 10am.
Caper Radio CJBU 107.3FM in Sydney, Cape Breton, Nova Scotia airs the Global Research News Hour starting Wednesday Morning from 8:00 to 9:00am. Find more details at www.caperradio.ca
Mat Youkee (Oct. 22, 2019) ‘Bolivia braces for fresh protests as officials say Evo Morales close to victory’, The Guardian; https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/oct/21/bolivia-confusion-over-election-results-sparks-fear-and-protests
The two-day London NATO conference just ended – and calling it a NATO “crisis” is an understatement. The crisis is such that President Trump canceled the Press Conference at the end of the summit, officially saying that there was enough press briefing during the conference, but rather more honestly hinting at the all-pervading conflict-loaded ambiance between and among the NATO partners, that their disagreements should not be further exposed through a media event.
To start with, French President Emmanuel Macron at the onset of the Conference declared NATO unequivocally as “brain dead”. For once he is absolutely right. Trump chastised Macron as ‘unrespectful’. These remarks were not only inappropriate but they were outright insolent, he said. Trump was more critique at Macron and all those who expressed any kind of doubt about NATOs justification for further existence. Trump left the summit before the end. Some say that his early leaving had to do with ‘his’ audacious, agenda, to ask European NATO members to increase their military budget to at least 2% of GDP – for which he didn’t get much applause. It would be additional wasted defense money that most countries could rather use for much needed social programs.
The clear loser of this event was Trump, and NATO – and of course, Trump’s NATO-puppet, Jens Stoltenberg, the longest serving NATO chief in recent history (since 2014 – and ongoing). One wonders, Stoltenberg, a Norwegian career politician, must have some brains on his own – why does he fight for a lost cause? He, Stoltenberg, knows that Russia and China are not enemies of the west, that they are Washington-invented enemies, because the empire always needs an enemy to continue instigating and fighting wars and conflicts – for the service of its billion-profit-making Armament-Military Industrial complex.
Yes, friends, in our neoliberal, bending towards neo-fascist world, killing is good for business – in fact killing is the biggest single business in the western world.
Can you imagine? NATO has institutionalized killing as the new normal. Have you ever thought about it? – And in order to maintain this ‘eternal war on terror’ that sustains the US economy, we need ever-so-often a ‘fake’ terror attack – to keep the fear alive, to keep the arms flowing, the arms production running, to keep police and military abuse, brutality and repression increasing until we are under total military control, so much so that no ‘state of siege’ needs to be declared. It happens automatically. In fact, people, for fear of continuous false flags, ask for it. The condemned asks for the hangman to watch over them. That’s where we have ended up.
Take the latest London Bridge knife killer — well, like most other “random” terrorist killers around the globe, he was apparently known to the police, was released early for good behavior – and , despite the fact that he was subdued by passers-by on the bridge, made motionless on the pavement, hence no danger anymore to anyone, as photos show, he was killed, shot death by the police. Why? So, he won’t be able to talk?
That happens with almost all ‘random’ terrorist killers. They are silenced. Seems like nobody ever wonders why? – Why are they not taken into custody and questioned – and tried as they should be in a ‘state of law’, what we pretend to be in the west.
A knife-terrorist hitting The Hague simultaneously, escaped, for good order – the contrary would have been too suspicious. Problem is, people still buy these lies and overarching explanations by such liars as Boris Johnson. What is alive and well and may possibly be used when vulnerable detainees are released ‘early’, is MKUltra, CIA’s mind control program. It emerged from WWII intelligence and was further developed in the 1960s, but is still very much alive today – just more sophisticated today than yesterday. Surprisingly – Big Wonder – so far, to my knowledge, none of these “random knife or gun-swinging” terrorists have been traced to Russia.
Question: Are those who keep propagating and defending NATO “brainless”, leading to a “brain dead” NATO?
Not necessarily, because the NATO propagators and defenders have a clear agenda – or several agendas. The Washington based and directed, but Europe financed NATO serves none of the purposes it makes believe and lies about, being a defense force against the dangers of Russia invading Europe – and newly, because this argument has gradually served out its purpose and been discarded by most of the European NATO members, NATO is also a defense engine against the rapidly advancing belligerent China. – Now its China, that helps justify the nonsensical NATO. China is the most peaceful nation, seeking cooperation with the west, not war, nor conflict.
Maybe even European leaders start now thinking – yes, let them revive their sleeping brains. Let them wake up. The reality is that both China and Russia are offering Europe friendly, un-coerced trading and business relations – and the New Silk Road, alias, Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is ultimately attractive – though still openly criticized to please the despots of Washington – Europe realized that participating in BRI is a long-term win-win proposition. As the Chinese with good reason say, “We are attempting to build a community with a common future for mankind.” By contrast, there is almost nothing that comes out of Washington that is not imposed or coerced on countries, under threat of sanctions. Relations with Russia and China are 180 degrees different; they are pacific, not bellicose.
Of course, intimidating Europe with the “Eastern Threat” is so weak and un-cool, that it looks like the last desperate move of the empire’s leaders, or rather those who pull the strings behind their designated leaders – of whom Trump is a master example. You may guess, who the “string-pullers” are, also often called the ‘deep state’. They are not as far away from your everyday life as you may think. They are omni-present among us.
A second item of the not-so brainless NATO commanders’ agenda is the reason behind the topping up to 2% (of GDP) of the European members’ defense budget. It is of course understood that all the armament related to the 2% must be bought from the US of A – not Russia, not China, beware! Otherwise you may have other NATO countries being in violation of the US-rules, like Turkey, buying Russian S-400 air-defense systems, rather the much inferior US Patriot systems.
The additional money spent on defense is supposedly spent in the US – further increasing the military complex’s profit – and at the same time weakening Europe, already oscillating at the margin of recession. A weak Europe is of lesser competition to the US, is better controllable, as we know – and can better be manipulated. European leaders should know so much by now. Every major FED-Wall Street banking-induced recession has hit Europe the most. Just look at the most recent one 2008/9 and ongoing. It’s not an accident.
Another full swing recession is in the making. Extra unnecessary military spending would make it worse. Maybe Europeans will think of spending this ‘extra’ money on opening new relations, new avenues, with the east, Russia, China, Central Asia, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) – an association of countries which will most certainly help prevent Europe from falling into yet another recessionary abyss. China’s Belt and Road may build bridges that will prevent a European recession.
And third, once Europe would be armed to the teeth on behalf of NATO, any talk about a proposed European defense system – Macron’s idea, supported openly or covertly by most EU members – would bite the dust. At least in the foreseeable future. And – having so many weapons and defense mechanisms – means Europe needs an enemy to justify her armament. In this case, Washington thinks, more pressure on Moscow and Beijing would be more palatable by Europe, bringing her again closer into Washington’s orbit.
On the other hand, if democracy would be democracy, and the people of Europe would be asked about their allegiance to NATO, the overwhelming majority, an average close to 70% would say they want OUT of NATO.
In some countries, like Italy, this percentage is possibly in excess of 80%. It is clear, NATO is doomed, there is no need, no justification for NATO, as there are no real enemies for Europe, all enemies are invented to justify war – killing – production of weapons – for destruction. Washington is the only clear and present danger, not only for Europe, but for the entire globe. Washington’s creation of enemies leads to economic output based on destruction and killing. What a world we are living! – Isn’t it time we wake up and kill NATO?
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This article was originally published on New Eastern Outlook.
Peter Koenig is an economist and geopolitical analyst. He is also a water resources and environmental specialist. He worked for over 30 years with the World Bank and the World Health Organization around the world in the fields of environment and water. He lectures at universities in the US, Europe and South America. He writes regularly for Global Research; ICH; RT; Sputnik; PressTV; The 21st Century; Greanville Post; Defend Democracy Press, TeleSUR; The Saker Blog, the New Eastern Outlook (NEO); and other internet sites. He is the author of Implosion – An Economic Thriller about War, Environmental Destruction and Corporate Greed – fiction based on facts and on 30 years of World Bank experience around the globe. He is also a co-author of The World Order and Revolution! – Essays from the Resistance. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization.
Recent developments confirm that NATO is in crisis.
Turkey is a NATO heavyweight which is allied with Iran and Russia.
The Pentagon’s policy of “encirclement” of Iran formulated in the wake of the 2003 Iraq War is defunct. Iran has good relations with neighbouring countries including Turkey, Iraq and Pakistan. All three countries have refused to collaborate with Washington.
Needless to say the North Atlantic Treaty Organization is in crisis. America can no no longer rely on its staunchest allies.
But this is just the tip of the iceberg.
What will be the outcome?
Towards a movement to Exit-NATO leaving the Pentagon to “pick up the pieces?
(Michel Chossudovsky, December 7, 2019). First published in March 2019
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Reminiscent of World War I, shifting alliances and the structure of military coalitions are crucial determinants of history.
Today’s military alliances, including “cross-cutting coalitions” between “Great Powers” are equally dangerous, markedly different and exceedingly more complex than those pertaining to World War I. (i.e the confrontation between “The Triple Entente” and “the Triple Alliance”).
Contemporary developments point to a historical shift in the structure of military alliances which could contribute to weakening US hegemony in the Middle Eastas well as creating conditions which could lead to a breakup of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).
NATO constitutes a formidable military force composed of 29 member states, which is largely controlled by the Pentagon. It is a military coalition and an instrument of modern warfare. It constitutes a threat to global security and World peace.
Divisions within the Atlantic Alliance could take the form of one or more member states deciding to “Exit NATO”. Inevitably an NATO-Exit movement would weaken the unfolding consensus imposed by our governments which at the this juncture in our history consists in threatening to wage a pre-emptive war against the Russian Federation.
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In this article, we will largely be addressing a concrete case of a NATO member state’s intent to exit the Atlantic Alliance NATO, namely Turkey’s “NATO-Exit” and its evolving rapprochement with Russia as well as with Iran and China.
Turkey is contemplating a “NATO-Exit”, the implications of which are far-reaching. Military alliances are being redefined.
In turn, Turkey in Northern Syria is fighting against America’s proxy Kurdish forces, i.e. one NATO member state is fighting another NATO member state.
Russia’s stance in relation to Turkey’s military actions in Northern Syria is ambiguous. Russia is an ally of Syria, whose country has been invaded by Turkey, an ally of Russia.
From a broader military standpoint, Turkey is actively cooperating with Russia, which has recently pledged to ensure Turkey’s security. “Moscow underscores that Turkey can calmly withdraw from NATO, and after doing so Ankara will have guarantees that it will not face any threat [from US-NATO] in terms of ensuring its own security,” (According to statement of Turkish Air Force Major-general Beyazit Karatas (ret))
Moreover, Ankara will be acquiring in 2020 Russia’s state of the art S-400 air defense system while de facto opting out from the integrated US-NATO-Israel air defense system. The S-400 deal is said to have caused “concern” “because Turkey is a member of NATO and the [S-400] system cannot be integrated into NATO’s military architecture”.
Russia’s S-400 Triumf (NATO reporting name: SA-21 Growler) is the latest long-range antiaircraft missile system that went into service in 2007. It is designed to destroy aircraft, cruise and ballistic missiles, including medium-range missiles, and surface targets. The S-400 can engage targets at a distance of 400 kilometers and at an altitude of up to 30 kilometers. (Tass, December 29, 2017)
What does this mean?
Has NATO’s “heavyweight” (in terms of its conventional forces) namely Turkey chosen to exit the Atlantic Alliance? Or is Turkey involved in an alliance of convenience with Russia while sustaining its links with NATO and the Pentagon?
The Atlantic Alliance is potentially in shatters. Will this lead to a NATO Exit movement with other NATO member states following suit?
Moscow’s intent in this regard, through diplomatic channels is to build upon bilateral relations with selected EU-NATO member states. The objective is to contribute to NATO “military deescalation” on Russia’s Western frontier.
Apart from Turkey, several EU countries including Germany, Italy, Greece (which has established defense ties with Russia) as well as Bulgaria could contemplate a NATO-Exit.
Turkey’s “Rapprochement” with Russia is strategic. While playing a key role in the Middle East, Turkey also controls naval access to the Black Sea through the Dardanelles and the Bosphorus. (see image right)
In other words, Turkey’s withdrawal from NATO would have an immediate impact on NATO’s land and naval deployments in the Black Sea basin, which in turn would affect NATO military capabilities on Russia’s doorstep in Eastern Europe, The Baltic States and the Balkans.
Needless to say, the Moscow-Ankara alliance facilitates the movement of Russian and Chinese naval forces to and from the Black Sea to the Mediterranean via the Bosphorus.
Turkey’s realignment is not limited to Russia it also includes Iran as well as Pakistan, which is in the process of severing its military ties with the US, while extending its trade and investment relations with China. Pakistan as well as India are full members of the Shanghai Cooperation Agreement (SCO).
The broader structure of military as well trade/ investment alliances must also be addressed, including maritime routes and pipeline corridors.
US Influence and Hegemony in the Broader Middle East
These geopolitical shifts have served to weaken U.S. influence in the Middle East, Central Asia and South Asia.
Turkey has an alliance of convenience with Iran. And Iran in turn is now supported by a powerful China-Russia block, which includes military cooperation, strategic pipelines as well extensive trade and investment agreements.
In turn, the unity of Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States is now in jeopardy, with Qatar, Oman and Kuwait building an alliance with Iran (as well as Turkey), to the detriment of Saudi Arabia and the UAE.
Saudi Arabia’s economic blockade directed against Qatar has created a rift in geopolitical alliances which has served to weaken the US in the Persian Gulf.
The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) is profoundly divided, with the UAE and Bahrain siding with Saudi Arabia against Qatar. In turn Qatar has the support of Oman and Kuwait. Needless to say, the GCC which until recently was America’s staunchest Middle East ally against Iran is in total disarray.
U.S. Central Command Military Base in Qatar
While Turkey is deploying troops in Qatar, it has also established the Tariq bin Ziyad military base in Qatar (in cooperation with the Qatari Ministry of Defense) under an agreement signed in 2014.
The Qatar based Al Udeid US military facility is the largest in the Middle East. Under USCentCom with headquarters in Tampa, Florida, Al Udeid hosts CentCom’s “forward headquarters” of all US military operations in the entire Middle East-Central Asian region.
Al Udeid –which houses some 10,000 US military personnel–, has played a strategic role in the ongoing conduct of US air operations against Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria.
There is however a fundamental contradiction: America’s largest military base in the Middle East which hosts USCentCom is at present locatedin a country which is firmly aligned with Iran (i.e. an enemy of America). Moreover, Qatar’s main partners in the oil and gas industry including pipelines are Iran and Turkey. In turn, both Russia and China are actively involved in the Qatari oil and gas industry.
In response to Qatar’s rapprochement with Iran, the Pentagon has already envisaged moving its Central Command forward headquarters at the Al Udeid Air Force base (image left) to the Prince Sultan Air Force base in central Saudi Arabia, 80 km south of Riyadh.
The structure of military alliances pertaining to Qatar are in this regard strategic.
Why? Because Qatar is a Geopolitical Hot Spot, largely attributable to its extensive maritime reserves in natural gas which it shares with Iran.
Iran and Qatar cooperate actively in the extraction of maritime natural gas under a joint Qatar-Iran ownership structure. These maritime gas fields are strategic, they constitute the World’s largest maritime gas reserves located in the Persian Gulf. (For further details, see Michel Chossudovsky, Middle East and Asia Geopolitical Alliances, Global Research, September 17, 2017)
In March 2018, Washington demanded that Qatar’s Al Jazeera News agency register in the U.S. as a “Foreign Agent” intimating that Doha has an “alliance” with enemies of America, including Iran and Russia.
Is this not a prelude to “Qatar-Gate” under the helm of Trump’s newly instated “war cabinet” (with Pompeo taking over from Tillerson at the State Department)?
In November 2017, Qatar’s Foreign Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani intimated during a visit to Washington that “Qatar does not rule out the possibility of a Saudi-led military operation against it”. While this option is unlikely, a “regime change” in Doha sponsored by the US and its Saudi ally is a distinct possibility.
The Incirlik Air Force Base in Southern Turkey
Meanwhile, the Pentagon is envisaging moving US Air Force facilities and personnel out of the Incirlik base in southern Turkey:
Earlier in March, Johnny Michael, the spokesperson for the US European Command (EUCOM), denied “speculative” reports that the US military reduced its operations at Incirlik base, adding that all military activities continued normally.
A day before Michael’s remarks, a Wall Street Journal report suggested that the US “sharply reduced” combat operations at the airbase and was considering permanent cutbacks there. (Al Jazeera, March 26, 2018)
Concluding Remarks: With NATO in shambles, America’s “war hawks” do not have a leg to stand on.
The alliance between Washington and Ankara is in crisis. NATO is in crisis. In turn, a Turkey NATO-Exit could potentially destabilize NATO.
We are at a dangerous crossroads. The US-NATO military agenda threatens the future of humanity.
How to reverse the tide of war? What concrete actions should be taken?
“NATO-Exit” could become a rallying call, a movement which could spread across the European landscape.
Both the European and North American anti-war movements should concretely focus their grassroots campaign on country-based “NATO-Exit” with a view to breaking the structure of military alliances required by Washington to sustain its global military agenda.
No easy task. This movement will not emanate from the governments. Most of the heads of State and heads of government of NATO member countries have been coopted.
Moreover, many of the West’s civil society organizations and NGOs (financed by corporate foundations) are tacitly supportive of US-NATO “humanitarian wars”.
What this means is that the anti-war movement has to be rebuilt.
After a recent anti-NATO conference in Florence, we spoke with Michel Chossudovsky about the alliance’s problems. ‘NATO’s unspoken aim has been to implement a de facto “military occupation” of Western Europe, in all but name.’
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On April 7, the Anti-NATO International Conference on the 70th Anniversary of NATO was held in Florence, with more than 600 participants from Italy and Europe. The keynote speaker was Prof. Michel Chossudovsky, the director of Global Research, a Canadian research center on globalization, which co-sponsored the conference along with the No War No NATO Committee and other Italian NGOs.
Chossudovsky is one of the leading international experts in economics and geopolitics, a contributor to the Encyclopedia Britannica and the author of 11 books, his writings have been published in over 20 languages.
Manlio Dinucci: What has been achieved at the Florence conference?
Michel Chossudovsky: It was a very successful event, with the participation of highly qualified speakers from the US, Europe and Russia. There were presentations on NATO’s history. Its crimes against humanity were highlighted and carefully documented. At the end of the conference, we published the Florence Declaration, which calls for an exit from the war system.
Manlio Dinucci: In your introductory address, you said that the North Atlantic Alliance was not an alliance at all.
Michel Chossudovsky: Under the guise of a multinational military alliance, the Pentagon is dominating NATO’s decision-making mechanism. The US controls NATO’s command structures, which are integrated into those of the US. The Supreme Allied Commander in Europe (SACEUR) is always an American general named by Washington. The NATO Secretary-General, currently Jens Stoltenberg, is essentially a bureaucrat who deals with public relations. He has no decision-making role.
Manlio Dinucci: Another issue you have raised is that of the US military bases in Italy and other European countries, including Eastern Europe, despite the Warsaw Pact having collapsed in 1991 and despite the promise made to Gorbachev that there would be no NATO enlargement towards the East. Why are they there?
Michel Chossudovsky: NATO’s unspoken aim—a prominent topic of our debate in Florence—has been to implement a de facto “military occupation” of Western Europe, in all but name. Not only does the United States continue to “occupy” the former “Axis countries” of the Second World War (Italy and Germany), but under the guise of the NATO flag, it has installed military bases in all of Western Europe, and, later on, in Eastern Europe as well, in the wake of the Cold War, and in the Balkans, in the wake of the NATO war against Yugoslavia (Serbia-Montenegro).
Manlio Dinucci: What has changed when it comes to a possible use of nuclear weapons?
Michel Chossudovsky: Immediately after the Cold War, a new nuclear doctrine was formulated, focused on the preemptive use of nuclear weapons, meaning a nuclear first strike as a means of self-defense. As part of the US-NATO interventions, framed as peacekeeping actions, a new generation of “low yield” and “more usable” nuclear weapons has been developed, which have been mischaracterized as “harmless to civilians.” US policy makers consider these to be “pacifying bombs.” The agreements of the Cold War, which put up certain restrictions against such weapons, have been abandoned. When it comes to the use of nuclear weapons, the concept of “Mutual Assured Destruction” has been abandoned in favor of the doctrine of preemptive nuclear war.
Manlio Dinucci: Earlier in Trump’s presidency, he had called NATO ”obsolete”—now, however, it has been embraced again by the White House. What is the relationship between the arms race and the economic crisis?
Michel Chossudovsky: War and globalization go hand in hand. The process of militarization calls for the imposition of macro-economic restructuring in the target countries. It demands military spending to sustain the war economy, to the detriment of the civilian economy. This leads to economic destabilization and a loss of power for national institutions.
As an example: recently, President Trump has proposed large cuts in health, education and social infrastructure spending, while calling for a large increase in the Pentagon’s budget. Early in his administration, President Trump approved an increase in spending for the military nuclear program—an initiative launched by Obama—from $1 trillion to $1.2 trillion, under the pretext that it would help keep the world safe.
Throughout the European Union, the increase in military spending, coupled with austerity measures, is leading towards the end of the “welfare state” as we have known it. Now, under US pressure, NATO is committed to increasing its military spending, and Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg recently said that this is the right thing to do in order to “keep [our] population safe.” Military interventions come together with concomitant acts of economic sabotage and financial manipulation.
The final aim is the taking over of resources, human and material, and of political institutions. The acts of war are taking place to support a process of complete economic conquest. The US’s hegemonic project is that of transforming sovereign countries and independent international institutions into structures that are receptive towards infiltration. One of the tools for achieving this is the imposition of highly restrictive constraints on indebted countries. That, together with the imposition of deadly macroeconomic reforms, is leading to the impoverishment of a large proportion of the global population.
Manlio Dinucci: What is the role of the media in all this—and what should it be doing instead?
Michel Chossudovsky: Without media disinformation and propaganda, the US-NATO military agenda would collapse like a house of cards. However, the impending dangers of a new war using the most modern weaponry and the danger of the use of nuclear weapons are not being treated as front page news. Outright war is depicted as a peace-making initiative.
War criminals are portrayed as peacemakers. War becomes peace. The lie becomes the truth, The truth is twisted into its opposite. When the lie becomes the truth, there is no turning backwards.
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This article was originally published on Il Manifesto. Translated by Pete Kimberley.
Manlio Dinucci is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization.
Torture is a longstanding US policy, notably by the CIA and its henchmen.
The policy continues at secret global black sites under its new director Gina Haspel — earlier involved in running an offshore black site, notorious for torture during interrogations.
CIA human experiments began in the early 1950s, including sensory-deprivation ones – developing unlawful interrogation methods amounting to torture.
In his book titled “A Question of Torture: CIA Interrogation from the Cold War to the War on Terror,” Alfred McCoy discussed a half-century of Langley efforts to develop torture techniques – no matter how heinous, immoral, illegal, or ineffective.
It’s well known that victims in severe pain say whatever interrogators want to hear to stop it.
The UN Convention against Torture is clear and unequivocal — banning the practice at all times, under all conditions, with no allowed exceptions.
The US Constitution’s 8th Amendment bans “cruel and unusual punishments” — clearly what torture is all about.
Seton Hall University School of Law’s Center for Policy and Research’s report on “How America Tortures” documents the lawless practice by the US — prepared under the direction of Law Professor Mark Denbeaux.
He’s “one of Seton Hall’s most senior faculty members…the Director of the Seton Hall Law School Center for Policy and Research…best known for its dissemination of the internationally recognized series of reports on (US torture and abuse at) the Guantanamo Bay” torture prison, still operating with no intention of closing it.
Information was provided by US victims, including Abu Zubaydah, a falsely accused al-Qaeda member, an individual with no involvement in or pre-knowledge of 9/11 events — the mother of all US false flags, wrongfully blamed on bin Laden and “crazed Arabs.”
Abducted in March 2002, unlawfully held at Guantanamo to this day uncharged and untried, Zubaydah and others endured sleep deprivation, waterboarding, painful stress positions, prolonged isolation, sensory deprivation and/or overload, severe beatings, electric shocks, induced hypothermia, and other measures that can cause irreversible physical and psychological harm, including psychoses.
He was confined in a box “so small (that) he had to double up his limbs in the fetal position” and stay that way, according to the ICRC.
He was also shackled naked by his wrists over his head so his toes barely touched the floor. Hooded and painfully handcuffed, his head was smashed against a wall — torture methods used against him depicted in drawings.
According to Seton Hall’s report, “virtually no attention has been paid to the specific details of the techniques that were used in America’s name and too little investigation has gone into the specific uses that the CIA made of these techniques,” adding:
“This report presents the specific details of what the torture memos permitted and most importantly, how the techniques were implemented and applied.”
In an accompanying press release, Denbaugh said the following:
“In many ways…illustrations of Abu Zubaydah are a testament to the triumph of the human will.”
“He was subjected to treatment so egregious that the CIA sought and received official governmental assurances that their prisoner would ‘remain in isolation and incommunicado for the remainder of his life.’ ”
“The CIA even arranged for his cremation in the event he died, assuring what they hoped would be his silence even beyond the grave. But with this report, he is silent no more.”
According to Seton Hall Law Center for Policy & Research Fellow Niki Waters, one of the report’s co-authors:
“What was officially approved was bad enough, but what we found was worse,” adding:
“The lack of clarity and seemingly purposeful ambiguity in defining what was allowed and what was not allowed during interrogations led to gross abuse.”
“The government failed to account for persistent and unapproved techniques alongside those that were approved. But willful blindness isn’t really much of a defense, is it?”
A Final Comment
Most Americans no longer believe the 9/11 whitewash commission’s official account of what happened.
A week after 9/11, congressional Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) declared open-ended war on invented enemies – on the phony pretext of combating forces “responsible for the recent attacks launched against the United States” — legitimizing illegal naked aggression, smashing one nonbelligerent nation after another.
Bush/Cheney’s Military Order Number 1 let the regime usurp authority to capture, kidnap or otherwise arrest and indefinitely hold non-citizens (later citizens as well) at home or abroad, uncharged and untried, if accused of involvement in international terrorism – denying them due process and judicial fairness.
Obama further institutionalized indefinite detentions and military commission injustice, violating America’s Fifth Amendment protections.
Trump continues what his predecessors began, waging endless wars of aggression and by other means, along with other hostile actions at home and abroad.
State-sponsored 9/11 and its aftermath made the US and other Western societies unsafe and unfit to live in. Full-blown tyranny may be another major false flag away.
US rage for unchallenged dominance makes nuclear war against manufactured enemies by accident of design an ominous possibility.
Both right wings of the US war party threaten everyone everywhere.
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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.”
Last week’s Africa Envoys’ Conference in Islamabad saw Pakistani diplomats brainstorming the best ways for their country to pivot to the eponymous continent, with the key takeaways being to prioritize military diplomacy and entrepreneurial engagement along what could prospectively be described as S-CPEC+.
Pakistan’s “Pivot To Africa”
Pakistan is getting ready to expand its influence in Africa following last week’s Africa Envoys Conference in Islamabad. According to PakTribune, Prime Minister Imran Khan (PMIK) told his country’s dignitaries that the “promotion of relations with countries in Africa would be the new focus of Pakistan’s foreign policy operations”, with the outlet adding that he “regretted that ties with African countries did not get priority in Pakistan’s external relations in the past because of lack of innovation and creativity in running the foreign policy.” PMIK emphasized the need for “robust engagement with Africa”, citing his country’s Chinese and Turkish partners as examples to learn from. Pakistan Observer reported on the insight shared by one of the conference’s participants, Pakistani Ambassador to Morocco Hamid Asghar Khan, who said that Pakistan should concentrate on improving political, socio-cultural, economic, and military relations with African countries. Ambassador Hamid also made some proposals for bringing this about, such as opening up new diplomatic missions, tasking them with promoting Pakistan’s soft image and products, holding topical conferences, and engaging in military diplomacy.
The author published a piece back in May of this year in The Nation, one of Pakistan’s leading newspapers, urging the same as soon as possible, arguing that “CPEC Is The Perfect Opportunity For Pakistan To Pivot To Africa“. The article explained how CPEC, the flagship project of China’s Belt & Road Initiative (BRI), will improve Chinese-African trade and thus facilitate the expansion of Pakistan’s ties with the continent’s many countries if Islamabad has the political will and vision needed to seize the initiative, which is finally the case after last week’s conference. It was preceded by one of the author’s related pieces published by CGTN just days prior about how “CPEC+ Is The Key To Achieving Regional Integration Goals“, which proposed the expansion of CPEC along several geographic vectors, including the southern one directed towards Africa that was described as S-CPEC+. This vision strategically frames the future of Pakistani-African relations and thus provides decision makers with a better understanding of their many opportunities. The country should take advantage of the Chinese-African trade traversing CPEC and traveling across the Afro-Asian (“Indian”) Ocean in order to explore new markets for its own exports, and this could be aided through the creative practice of military diplomacy.
“Democratic Security”
To elaborate, most African governments require some degree of external security assistance, whether through training, arms exports, or the direct deployment of foreign military personnel (be they advisors, special forces, or otherwise). While eschewing the last-mentioned need, which is unnecessarily risky unless carried out under the aegis of a UN peacekeeping mission and oftentimes abused by countries like the US and France to infringe on their “partners'” sovereignty, Pakistan can work on selling more weapons there and very easily share its world-class experience in “Democratic Security” with any interested African countries. This concept refers to the effective efforts undertaken by the Pakistan Armed Forces over the years to counter Color Revolution and Unconventional Warfare (mostly terrorism in this case) threats, which collectively form the two pillars of modern-day HybridWar. Pakistan could institutionalize its “Democratic Security” knowledge-sharing services by including them as required courses for the foreign military students who attend its National Defence University (NDU), to say nothing of establishing a new department or even a think tank focused exclusively on this cutting-edge science which could then position Pakistan as a world leader in this respect.
From Military Ties To Economic Deals
This isn’t just for reasons of simple prestige either, but has an extremely practical use since it could imbue the African and other foreign students with a deeper understanding of Hybrid War dynamics which in turn would enable them to better thwart these threats through the more confident employment of “Democratic Security” strategies customized for their specific situations (which could also be included in the proposed coursework). Those countries’ military representatives need to ensure basic security like all others (though usually with comparatively less capabilities), as well as combat separatist and terrorist threats (sometimes one and the same) on top of protecting BRI projects, so they certainly have their work cut out for them and therefore urgently need as much high-quality experience-sharing as they can get. This would in principle satisfy the security requirements of S-CPEC+, which could also in turn build the trust needed between Pakistan and its state-level partners to have them actively support Islamabad’s efforts to improve trade ties between them as a step towards eventually reaching a strategic partnership that would also dovetail perfectly with China’s vision of forging what it regularly describes as a “community of shared destiny” (made possible in this case by CPEC).
The “Gwadar Gathering”
Entrepreneurial engagement can occur even without being preceded by military diplomacy or running in parallel with it, but it’s the strategic military ties fostered through the proposed “Democratic Security” training to Pakistan’s African partners that could encourage those states to actively get involved in this process by organizing trade and investment fairs, as well as assisting Pakistani businessmen in all respects so as to improve their ease of doing business there. On the other side of the coin, Pakistan should definitely host its own trade-related functions that include Africa, such as the yearly “Gwadar Gathering” that the author proposed in his January 2017 analysis about “CPEC And The 21st-Century Convergence Of Civilizations” and later shared with NDU during an event that he was invited to a few months later to share his thoughts on “Pakistan In The 21st-Century — Perception Management“. As PMIK spoke about last week, Pakistan can learn a lot from the experiences of its Chinese and Turkish partners in this respect, and it’s not unforeseeable that they might also participate in these proposed events in a leading capacity. Without growing economic engagement, Pakistan’s security ties with Africa will never lead to the creation of strategic partnerships with its many countries.
Towards The Official Promulgation Of S-CPEC+
Pakistan has already acquired the hard-earned experience that can easily enable to to more than effectively practice military diplomacy with Africa, especially if it institutionalizes what it’s learned over the years about “Democratic Security” and creates customized courses for NDU’s African students (and others) to enroll in as part of their studies. On the economic front, PMIK’s advisor on finance, Mr. Abdul Hafeez Shaikh, spoke last month about how Pakistan is impressively opening up its economy to foreign investors, which coincides with global credit ratings agency Moody’s recently upgrading the country’s outlook and placing it above neighboring India, which was downgraded despite its vigorous attempts over the past few years to position itself as the leading destination for foreign investment in the region. Therefore, all that’s needed in order to take Pakistan’s “Pivot to Africa” to the next level is to conceptualize it in a catchy way that encapsulates its vision of engagement, ergo the author’s proposal for referring to it as S-CPEC+. Considering that Mr. Shaikh officially spoke about CPEC+ late last month in what the author believes might have been the government’s first use of this term, it’s sensible then to build upon this vision by framing Pakistan’s African strategy as S-CPEC+.
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This article was originally published on OneWorld.
Andrew Korybko is an American Moscow-based political analyst specializing in the relationship between the US strategy in Afro-Eurasia, China’s One Belt One Road global vision of New Silk Road connectivity, and Hybrid Warfare. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.
Following House Intelligence Committee sham hearings, Judiciary Committee Dems began their own on Wednesday, the witch-hunt to continue days longer in the run-up to the yearend holiday break.
Wednesday’s hearing featured four law professors — three supporting the Ukrainegate scam, one opposed.
Witch-hunt supporters included Harvard Law School’s Noah Feldman, Stanford Law School’s Pamela Karlan, and University of North Carolina Law School’s Michael Gerhardt.
Testimony by George Washington University Law School’s Jonathan Turley stuck to the rule of law with plenty of hard facts backing his judgment.
The others, enlisted by undemocratic Dems, falsely claimed charges against Trump rise to the level of impeachable offenses.
Karlan said the US must keep (Obama’s installed coup d’etat regime in Ukraine with a new leader strong) “so they fight the Russians there and we don’t have to fight them here” — her remark sounding like a Pentagon press release about a Russian threat that doesn’t exist.
According to Gerhadt’s disinformation:
“If what we’re talking about is not impeachable, then nothing is impeachable (sic). This is precisely the misconduct that the framers created the Constitution, including impeachment, to protect against (sic).”
Feldman falsely claimed Trump’s dealings with Ukrainian President Zelensky “constitute high crimes and misdemeanors impeachable under the Constitution.”
Ignored were Zelensky’s remarks, saying:
“I never talked to (Trump) from the position of a quid pro quo. That’s not my thing. I don’t want us to look like beggars.”
He denied that he and Trump ever discussed withholding US aid to Ukraine for political favors.
The unredacted transcript of Trump’s conversation with Zelensky revealed no blackmail threat, no quid pro quo, no conspiracy.
Trump should be held accountable for real offenses, not politicized invented ones because of an election he won that he was supposed to lose.
“I have spent decades writing about impeachment and presidential powers as an academic and as a legal commentator.”
“I am not a supporter of President Trump. I voted against him in 2016, and I have previously voted for Presidents Clinton and Obama…I have been highly critical of President Trump, his policies, and his rhetoric…”
“Today, my only concern is the integrity and coherence of the constitutional standard and process of impeachment.”
“I am concerned about lowering impeachment standards to fit a paucity of evidence and an abundance of anger.”
“If the House proceeds solely on the Ukrainian allegations, this impeachment would stand out among modern impeachments as the shortest proceeding, with the thinnest evidentiary record, and the narrowest grounds ever used to impeach a president.”
“I previously wrote that the current incomplete record is insufficient to sustain an impeachment case…”
“The problem is not simply that the record does not contain direct evidence of the president stating a quid pro quo, as chairman Schiff has suggested.”
“The problem is that the House has not bothered to subpoena the key witnesses who would have such direct knowledge. This alone sets a dangerous precedent.”
“This misuse of impeachment has been plain during the Trump administration.”
“Despite my disagreement with many of President Trump’s policies and statements, impeachment was never intended to be used as a mid-term corrective option for a divisive or unpopular leader.”
The Dems’ case against Trump lacks “clear criminal act and would be the first such case in history if the House proceeds without further evidence.”
Accusing Trump of bribery “is undermined by the fact that (he) released the aid (to Ukraine) without the alleged pre-conditions.”
No evidence “establishes a plausible case of criminal obstruction (of justice) or a viable impeachable offense.”
“There is no evidence that President Trump acted with the corrupt intent required for obstruction of justice on the record created by the House Intelligence Committee.”
“If the House moves forward with this impeachment basis, it would be repeating the very same abusive tactics used against President Andrew Johnson.”
“(T)he House literally manufactured a crime upon which to impeach Johnson in the Tenure in Office Act. This was a clearly unconstitutional act…”
“The obstruction allegation is also undermined by the fact that many officials opted to testify, despite the orders from the president that they should decline.”
“(W)e have never impeached a president solely or even largely on the basis of a non-criminal abuse of power allegation.”
“Abuses of power tend to be even less defined and more debatable as a basis for impeachment than some of the crimes already mentioned.”
“(T)here needs to be clear and unequivocal proof of a quid pro quo. That is why I have been critical of how this impeachment has unfolded.”
“The current record does not establish a quid pro quo…Presidents often put pressure on other countries” to serve US interests.
By that standard, virtually all Trump’s predecessors should have been impeached and removed from office.
“Trump (can) point to three direct conversations on the record. His call with President Zelensky does not state a quid pro quo.”
Censure is an option in lieu of impeachment, Turley explained, adding:
“I have been a long critic of censure as a part of impeachment inquiries…Censure has no constitutional foundation or significance.”
Turley concluded saying: “(B)efore we cut down the trees so carefully planted by the framers, I hope you consider what you will do when the wind blows again…perhaps for a (Dem) president.”
“Where will you stand then ‘the laws all being flat?’ ”
Turley’s testimony was exhaustive and scholarly, with numerous historical references, his printed text exceeding 50 pages.
He opposes impeaching Trump based on charges claimed by Dems with no credible evidence backing them.
A Final Comment
On Thursday, House Speaker Pelosi instructed the Judiciary Committee to draft articles of impeachment against Trump.
Falsely claiming the “facts are uncontested,” she accused him of “abus(ing) his power for his own personal political benefit at the expense of our national security” — an untrue statement based on his dealings with Ukrainian President Zelinsky.
Claiming “(o)ur democracy is what is at stake” is false. Only the illusion of democracy in America exists, the real thing absent throughout the country’s history.
In her remarks, Pelosi omitted a timetable. Nor did she indicate what she wants Trump charged with.
What’s going on is a politicized scam, a shameful spectacle, Dems hoping to gain a political advantage in November 2020 elections.
The gamble could backfire given plenty of ammunition Republicans can use if a Senate trial is held.
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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.”
Just over a decade ago, the prototype of an unmanned aircraft that would become the Bayraktar TB2 took off for its maiden flight at Sinop Airport on the Black Sea. There were few signs then that the mid-sized, twin-boom aircraft would become Turkey’s first indigenously produced armed drone and the backbone of its unmanned air force. At the time, domestic drone manufacturers struggled against technical difficulties and foreign competition. Ten years on, however, the situation is radically different: Ankara’s drone program has morphed into a successful industry that’s already exporting products. It’s also a potent military force that’s further straining the NATO alliance.
Turkey is wielding its new arsenal in a military campaign against Kurdish fighters in Syria, part of a long-standing conflict that has taken on new significance since US President Donald Trump announced a controversial decision to withdraw troops from northern Syria this fall, opening up allied Syrian Kurds to Turkish attacks. The president of France, another NATO ally of Turkey’s, recently accused Turkey of “fighting against those who fight with us.” Turkey’s drones have enabled a conflict in an already volatile region; more worrisome, Ankara’s successful drone program is an example that several other countries hope to emulate.
Drones have proliferated to militaries around the world at a dramatic rate. According to TheDroneDatabook, a study of military drone capabilities I published with the Center for the Study of the Drone in September, at least 95 countries have a military drone program. These programs are growing in size and complexity. Nearly 60 countries have activated at least 267 units to operate drones. Like many other countries, Turkey has prioritized the development of a domestic industry in order to reduce its dependency on systems made by the United States and Israel, the traditional drone-production powerhouses.
Building a domestic drone program. Ten years ago, Turkey still relied heavily on foreign-made drones. The military operated a handful of aging US General Atomics Gnat 750s it purchased in 1995, as well as several Israeli-made IAI Herons, which were introduced in 2010. But, in an early sign of Turkey’s keen interest in bolstering its own production capabilities, the country introduced the domestically-produced Bayraktar Mini, a handheld reconnaissance drone, in 2007.
Some of Turkey’s early efforts to develop domestic drones did not go smoothly. Ankara awarded Turkish Aerospace Industries a contract in 2004 to develop the Anka, a medium-altitude long-endurance drone. The Anka made its first flight in 2010, but reportedly crashed within 15 minutes. As Turkey was working on its domestic program, the country was also finding it harder to acquire foreign-made aircraft. Ankara’s efforts to import US-made Predators and, later, Reapers eventually stalled out amid congressional opposition.
In the past two years, Turkey’s drone program has ballooned. From the end of 2017 to today, the military’s inventory of Bayraktar TB2s more than doubled from around 38 to 94, about half of which are believed to be armed. Turkey’s fleet of Ankas, which have become another of the country’s mainstays, has grown to around 30. The two aircraft models are now in service with at least six military and security organizations: the Army, Air Force, Navy, Gendarmerie (national military police), the National Intelligence Organization, and the General Directorate of Security (national civilian police).
Turkish drone developers have achieved important technical milestones in recent years. In August 2018, the Anka carried out Turkey’s first satellite-controlled airstrike and in December, an Anka completed its first flight with a domestically-produced engine, a critical step towards creating a sustainable domestic manufacturing base. In 2019, both the Bayraktar TB2 and the Anka have broken their previous endurance records, with each flying longer than 24 hours. Two large drone producers, Baykar Makina and Turkish Aerospace Industries, have both unveiled new large unmanned aircraft, the Akinci and the Aksungur, respectively. Given the recent progress of Turkey’s drone program, it’s not surprising that President Recep Tayyip Erdogan recently committed $105.5 million in funding to support the continued development of the Bayraktar TB2.
To accommodate Turkey’s growing unmanned fleet, Ankara has been rapidly building out a network of drone outposts at airports in the southeast of the country, along the Syrian border, as well as on the Aegean and Mediterranean coastline. Since 2018, Turkey appears to have constructed drone facilities—aircraft hangars and shelters, aircraft aprons and taxiways, and communication towers—at seven airports, bringing the total number of drone bases to at least nine. These facilities are essential because the majority of Turkish Bayraktar TB2s and Ankas have an operational range limited to about 100 miles. (Only the Anka-S, a satellite-enabled variant of the Anka, is currently capable of flying beyond line of sight.)
Turkey worked to develop military drones like the Anka during a time when the country faced difficulties acquiring US-made aircraft like Predator drones. Credit: N13s013 (cropped). (Creative Commons)
Turkish drones on the battlefield. One key factor behind Turkey’s efforts to develop drones and related infrastructure is Ankara’s ongoing fight against Kurdish organizations such as the Kurdistan Workers’ Party. As of June, Turkey’s Bayraktar TB2s have accumulated more than 100,000 operational flight hours in a little under four years, an indication of how important drones are to Turkish military officials. According to media reports, Turkish drones have participated in airstrikes against Kurdish organizations in at least 11 provinces in southeast Turkey. They’ve also been used in at least five cross-border operations into Syria and Iraq, targeting members of Kurdish organizations since 2016, including in Turkey’s recent military incursion into Syria dubbed Operation Peace Spring.
And these drones may not be targeting only fighters, as Turkey claims. Turkey’s Human Rights Association has documented several drone strikes in which it says that civilians have been killed. Amid Turkey’s ongoing invasion of northern Syria, the head of a Syrian Kurdish organization said that Turkish drones have continued to strike Kurdish military and civilian targets, despite a ceasefire. Kurdish fighters in Syria have been working alongside the United States in a campaign against the Islamic State.
Turkey’s other main drone operations are in the east, along its Aegean and Mediterranean coasts. These operations have also caused friction. Greek officials have reported that Turkish drones have repeatedly flown over Greek islands in the Aegean. In 2018, Greek F-16 fighters intercepted a Turkish drone over Rhodes. This year, Turkish Navy drones have accompanied Turkish gas drilling ships into territorial waters claimed by Cyprus. Cypriot officials said in September that Turkish drones had interfered with commercial aircraft landing at Paphos Airport.
Armed drones for sale. As Turkey’s drone program matures, Ankara has been eyeing opportunities to gain a foothold in the competitive global market for military drones; it has exported the Bayraktar TB2 to Qatar and Ukraine and is reportedly courting sales to Indonesia and Tunisia. In Libya, Turkish Bayraktar TB2 drones have reportedly been used by the UN-recognized Government of National Accord against the forces of Libyan National Army leader General Khalifa Haftar, who has his own supply of Chinese-made drones.
Turkey is not alone in its efforts to develop, acquire, and deploy unmanned aircraft. According to the Databook, the number of countries with military drones has increased by an estimated 58 percent between 2009 and 2019. Today, at least 31 countries operate heavy-class drones like the Bayraktar TB2 and Anka, up from 16 in 2009.
Ten years on from that first flight of the Bayraktar TB2 at Sinop Airport, Turkey has come to exemplify the significant trends in and consequences of military drone proliferation. It has a growing and increasingly diverse inventory of systems and has integrated these aircraft into the operations of multiple military and security organizations. Turkey’s drones are proving capable weapons on domestic and foreign battlefields alike, and the country has invested deeply in developing new drones, partly, at least, with a view to exporting them.
This example will likely be replicated by other countries in the next decade.
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Dan Gettinger founded the Center for the Study of the Drone at Bard College. He is the author of The Drone Databook, a comprehensive survey of military drone activities around the world.
Featured image: Turkey’s military drone program has ballooned in the past few years. It has a fleet of about 94 Bayraktar TB2 drones. Credit: Bayhaluk (cropped). (Creative Commons)
When U.S. President Donald Trump cancels a NATO press conference because the other NATO leaders are mocking him, you know that something is wrong. At the historic NATO Summit to commemorate 70 years of NATO earlier this week, the Alliance remembers how “brain dead”, as described by French President Emmanuel Macron, that the organization has become. This disastrous summit will be remembered in history as the beginning of the end for NATO as there was plenty of hostilities and controversies that were not even close to being resolved.
Theoretically the great loser of the summit was Turkey, with its magnificent and failed bluff. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan‘s threat to block the Alliance’s decision to “protect” the Baltic states and Poland “from possible Russian aggression” if NATO did not recognize the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) in Syria as a terrorist organization had resulted to nothing. The fact that NATO members have even refused to discuss the YPG, with the exception of British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, as they carry out their provocative action to send forces to the Baltic is tantamount to a massive personal disappointment for Erdoğan.
But those who hastened to talk about Turkey’s international isolation have not noticed a slight laughter from the American president that changed everything. During a stormy joint press conference with his French counterpart, Trump appeared to offer an impressive friendly gesture to Erdogan, even though the Turkish leader bought the Russian S-400 missiles that received the scorn of Trump. In a complete reversal of roles, Macron wondered how a NATO member state could supply Russian missile defense systems while Trump just laughed it off. Trump has claimed incorrectly that he is not solely responsible for the Turkish purchase of the S-400 as his predecessor Barack Obama refused to sell the Patriot systems to Turkey.
Trump’s friendly attitude towards Erdoğan seems to once again disprove analysts who have predicted a complete split in U.S.-Turkish relations. It is now clear that the temporary withdrawal of U.S. forces from North Syria, which gave the “green light” for the Turkish invasion, is expressing a new page in Trump’s relations with the Turkish President.
However, one of the most interesting clashes between NATO leaders has provided material to journalists who covered the Summit, as there are clear and unprecedented gaps between Europe and the U.S. In a joint statement, NATO leaders appeared to agree that Russia’s supposed offensive actions pose a threat to Euro-Atlantic security and that China’s growing influence supposedly poses new challenges for the Alliance. However, both of these issues actually had dividing opinions, rather than united.
“The greatest danger,” said Emmanuel Macron, “is not a Russian invasion of the Baltic states, but terrorism, that is, the danger we face from the South and to which NATO has no answer,” adding “Is it the purpose of the Atlantic Alliance to identify one or the other [Russia or China] as our enemies?”
He had recently stated that he did not see China as a major threat to member countries of the Alliance. The French president may have seemed like a lonely knight within NATO, but in reality, he was still expressing the ideas of several European countries that were reacting silently to Washington’s attempt to drag Europe into an open confrontation with Moscow and Beijing. Countries such as Italy and Greece, which have opened their doors to Chinese investment in infrastructure such as 5G mobile networks and port developments, have no desire to see NATO become an opposition force to the Beijing.
But that is exactly what the Secretary General of the Alliance, Jens Stoltenberg, wants to do on behalf of Washington. In recent statements, he made clear that not only Beijing’s increased defense spending is a concern, but even China’s foremost in economic and technological development.
Stoltenberg showed concern and in his own words said China is a leader in the development of new technologies, from 5G networks to facial recognition technology and from quantum computers to large data processing.
Stoltenberg said the alliance needed to start taking “into account that China is coming closer to us.”
“We see them in the Arctic, we see them in Africa, we see them investing heavily in European infrastructure and of course investing in cyberspace,” Stoltenberg said of China, adding that this was not “about moving NATO into the South China Sea.”
If the NATO Anniversary Summit reveals anything, it is that Washington wants to turn the Alliance into a weapon against Beijing.
“A challenge from China could be just the thing to pull NATO together” said a CNN analyst. Europe, however, is unlikely to fall into U.S. fearmongering about Russia and China. And if it does not, then this just leads to the question about what the purpose of NATO is.
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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.
Paul Antonopoulos is a Research Fellow at the Center for Syncretic Studies.
On Thursday, hundreds of thousands of French workers, youths and others protested over former Rothschild banker/French President Macron’s pension reform scheme that’s all about further eroding social justice by slashing vital benefits.
Most rail, other public transportation, and many flights shut down on day one of the largest French mass action against neoliberal harshness in the last generation — what’s going on to continue for days, perhaps much longer over anti-Macron public anger.
Scores of demonstrations nationwide by students, teachers, firefighters, industrial, transportation, healthcare, energy, public sector, and other workers largely ground France to a halt.
Schools shut down. Police unions warned of symbolically closing certain stations in support of the strike action.
Macron wants a socially unjust/one size fits all uniform pension system, replacing individual ones that provide equitable benefits for retired workers.
He wants the legal retirement age raised from 62 to 64. He wants social justice in France more greatly eroded than already, part of a longterm plan in the country and West to eliminate it altogether.
His scheme is the most extremist change to France’s cherished pension system since its post-WW II creation. It’s all about greatly cutting benefits, leaving retirees far worse off than today.
France’s official single-digit poverty rate is the lowest in the West, far below other Western countries. Retirement reform is Macron’s latest scheme to erode social justice.
Earlier he slashed unemployment benefits and made it easier for companies to lay off or fire workers, while largely keeping wages for public workers stagnant and eroding universal healthcare benefits.
Nationwide strike action began before Macron released details of his scheme — to be debated in parliament and voted on next year.
A November Viavoice for Liberation poll found 89% of respondents believe France is experiencing a “social crisis.”
According to sociologist Steward Chau,
“we’re in a climate of real social tension today, which goes beyond pensions…(S)ocial crisis…hang(s) over this strike action.”
Mass protests begun Wednesday escalated anti-austerity Yellow Vest demonstrations begun over a year ago.
Actions yesterday blocked major thoroughfares, along with shutting down most public transportation and fuel depots.
At least one opinion poll showed around 70% support for the mass action, its strongest backing among individuals aged 18 – 34.
In 1995, large-scale nationwide protests shut down public transport for three weeks, forcing a government neoliberal policy reversal at the time.
What began Thursday goes beyond opposition to Macron’s pension reform scheme. It’s against years of forced-fed austerity, wealth and power interests benefitting by eroding social justice — the same thing going on throughout the West and elsewhere.
Public anger over repression, social inequality, and related issues a fueled other mass protests in Chile, Ecuador, Colombia, Haiti, Honduras, Iraq, Algeria, Albania, Gaza, and elsewhere.
So far, they’re absent in the US where people power is badly needed.
Daily events should scare everyone. Peace in our time no longer exists, social justice in the country heading for the dustbin of history if things aren’t reversed by mass actions.
Ordinary people have power when they use it. Change requires longterm struggle.
Abolitionists ended slavery. Civil and labor rights were won. They’re lost because energy waned.
Former Supreme Court Justice William Douglas (1898 – 1980) once said:
“Power concedes nothing without a demand.”
Academic Frances Fox Piven earlier stressed that “(o)rdinary people have power when they rise up in anger and hope, defy the rules…disrupt (state) institutions (and) propel new issues to the center of political debate.”
When governments fail their people, the way things are today in the West and elsewhere globally, they forfeit their right to rule.
Civil disobedience becomes an essential tool for change, popular revolution the only solution.
Martin Luther King said “non-cooperation with evil is as much a moral obligation as is cooperation with good.” He championed “creative protest,” believing passivity is no option in the face of injustice.
Henry David Thoreau argued that no one is obligated to surrender their conscience to injustice. What’s fundamentally wrong should be challenged for change.
It’s the only thing that works. Entrenched power yields nothing unless pushed.
Long ago labor organizing in the US, taking to the streets, sustaining strikes, boycotts, and other work stoppages, battling monied interests, putting rank-and-file lives on the line for equitable treatment won important worker rights.
When energy waned and union bosses sold out to management, virtually everything gained was lost, organized labor today a shadow of its long ago peak strength.
Sustaining mass actions against social injustice in France is the only way for positive change.
If things wane in the coming days or weeks, all will be lost, the way things turned out in the West many times before.
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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.”
The current hearing will examine allegations that US troops and intelligence operatives tortured, raped and abused Afghan prisoners between 2003 and 2004.
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The International Criminal Court (ICC)opened a three-day hearing in the The Hague, Netherlands on Wednesday at which prosecutors and Afghan torture victims are attempting to convince the court to overturn a previous decision to refuse to investigate war crimes committed by Taliban, Afghan government and US forces.
(Un)Folding Under Pressure
In April, the ICC Pre-Trial Chamber II announced it would not grant a request by ICC Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda to open an investigation of alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity, including deliberate attacks on civilians and child soldier conscription by Taliban militants, torture and sexual violence by members of Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF) and torture of prisoners held in US military and secret Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) prisons in Afghanistan, Poland, Romania and Lithuania. The decision was condemned by human rights advocates, many of whom accused the ICC of bowing to intense pressure from the Donald Trump administration after it barred Bensouda, a Gambian national, from entering the United States. The administration threatened further retaliation, including travel bans and economic sanctions, against the ICC.
President Donald Trump hailed the ICC’s April decision as “a major international victory,” while asserting that “the United States holds American citizens to the highest legal and ethical standards.” Critics countered by noting the president’s repeated pardoning of US war criminals, as well as America’s overall general impunity from war crimes accountability, as proof of the need for more robust international war crimes investigations and prosecution.
However, the United States is not a member of the ICC, despite having signed the Rome Statute establishing the court. Jay Sekulow, a member of Trump’s personal legal team, argued Wednesday at the ICC that this means court prosecutors had no legal basis upon which to build a case against US personnel. Sekulow also argued that under the “complementarity principle,” the ICC’s jurisdiction is limited to scenarios in which nations are unwilling or unable to prosecute war crimes.
“We have a very comprehensive system of military justice,” Sekulow insisted, even in the face of Trump’s recent war crimes pardons.
Tortured to Death
The current hearing will examine allegations that US troops and intelligence operatives tortured, raped and abused Afghan prisoners between 2003 and 2004. In December 2014 the US Senate released a 480-page summary of a previously classified 6,000-page report detailing how dozens of innocent individuals were wrongfully detained by the military and CIA due to mistaken identity and faulty intelligence, how these and other detainees were subjected to horrific and even deadly torture and abuse, and how the brutality and scope of the program were hidden from the Justice Department and even high-ranking members of the Bush administration, including President George W. Bush.
By 2006, at least 100 prisoners had died in US custody in Afghanistan and Iraq, most of them violently, according to government data. The most well-publicized detainee death happened at the notorious “Salt Pit,” a CIA black site, or secret prison, in Afghanistan, where Gul Rahman died of hypothermia after being severely beaten, stripped naked and chained to a wall in near-freezing temperatures. Abuse of prisoners, who were often kidnapped from third countries in a practice known as extraordinary rendition, was rampant at black sites around the world, including Detention Center Green in Thailand, which current CIA Director Gina Haspel ran in late 2002. Black site prisoners were hung by chains from ceilings for days on end, stuffed into boxes, deprived of sleep, shackled naked in near-freezing temperatures and subjected to mock executions. Prior to Haspel’s arrival, CIA torturers at Detention Center Green subjected cooperative prisoner Abu Zubaydah to the interrupted drowning torture known as waterboarding 83 times in a month. Haspel also played a key role in the destruction of videotaped CIA torture sessions.
Scores of friendly nations as well as some of the world’s most notorious dictators, including Bashar al-Assad in Syria, the late Muammar Gaddafi in Libya and the mullahs of Iran, cooperated with the CIA’s rendition program. The US also outsourced torture by sending abductees to these and other countries for interrogation knowing they would be abused, as well as by allowing agents from some of the world’s worst human rights violators, including China, Uzbekistan, Saudi Arabia and Libya, to interrogate and even abuse detainees inside Guantánamo.
No Accountability
Despite numerous campaign promises to investigate Bush-era abuses and early executive orders banning torture and (unsuccessfully) closing GITMO, former president Barack Obama attempted to undermine publication of the Senate torture report. More importantly, not only did he fail to prosecute any of the Bush torturers, his administration actively shielded them from any accountability for their crimes. Furthermore, the administration prosecuted and jailed former CIA agent John Kiriakou for blowing the whistle on torture.
In December 2017 United Nations special rapporteur on torture Nils Melzer warned that the US continued to torture detainees—some of them imprisoned for the better part of two decades without any charge or trial — in its military prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. However, the Trump administration, led by a president who campaigned on a promise to “bring back a hell of a lot worse than waterboarding,” has been a staunch apologist for torture and the war criminals who practice it. Trump has also followed through on promises to commit other war crimes, including one to “bomb this shit”out of Islamic State militants and “take out their families.” Civilian casualties from US bombing, drone strikes and ground raids subsequently soared in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Somalia.
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Brett Wilkins is a San Francisco-based freelance author and editor-at-large for US news at Digital Journal. His work, which focuses on issues of war and peace and human rights, is archived at www.brettwilkins.com.
Featured image: By 2006, at least 100 prisoners had died in US custody in Afghanistan and Iraq, most of them violently, according to government data. (Photo: US torture Image by Witness Against Torture)
In the UK, we have a simple take on the US healthcare system as a for-profit, private system that fleeces its customers and fails the poor.
But here’s the secret: the US has its own ‘mini NHS’. Smaller than the UK’s system, but still a government funded, (mostly) publicly-run system that serves people according to their need. It’s called the Veterans Health Administration (VHA).
Optum and UnitedHealth are familiar names to anyone who has been following the silent takeover of the NHS by private healthcare firms in recent years, though aspects of their involvement are fully exposed here for the first time.
Health privatisation, US-style – sounds familiar?
But first, it’s worth a closer look at what’s been happening to the US’s own ‘mini-NHS’ – because there are some remarkable parallels with what’s happening on this side of the Atlantic.
The Veterans Administration has a budget of $70billion with which it provides healthcare for some nine million US military veterans. It has experienced serious capacity issues in the past, but a study last year found the quality of care it provides is the same, or significantly better than the private sector.
Donald Trump pictured with US healthcare executives in 2017, including (second from right) the then CEO of UnitedHealth Group | Twitter
Regardless, Trump passed a law last year that allows extensive latitude for a significant proportion of this care to be outsourced to private healthcare corporations.
The President’s plan is backed by a small cabal of right-wing politicians and lobby groups on a crusade to talk down the care the Veterans Health Administration provides – and then to ‘fix’ it, through pushing veteran patients towards private providers. Trump began by replacing senior Veterans Administration officials that stood in the way and reportedly allowed his close political associates and donors to influence the reforms. All the while running a PR campaign, led by officials and their Koch-backed advisors, denying that funnelling billions of taxpayer dollars to private healthcare providers amounts to privatisation. On being appointed, Trump’s new VA secretary told senators: “I will oppose efforts to privatize the VA.”
Democrat Congresswoman, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortezsays the real beneficiaries of Trump’s reforms are “pharmaceutical companies, insurance corporations and, ultimately… a for-profit health-care industry that does not put people or veterans first.” If he really wanted to “fix the VA so badly,” she added at a packed rally earlier this year, “let’s start hiring, and fill up some of those 49,000 [staff] vacancies.”
All of this will sound eerily familiar to campaigners defending the National Health Service against privatisation: from chronic understaffing to legislative reform in the face of massive opposition, and all the while strenuously denying that the changes amount to privatisation at all.
We’re told one thing about NHS privatisation – health firm investors are told another
“There is no privatisation of the NHS on my watch,” Matt Hancockassured MPs earlier this year. Boris Johnson has since echoed his words: “We are absolutely resolved. There will be no sale of the NHS, no privatisation.”
Look at the message US private healthcare firms are giving their investors, however, and a different story emerges.
“We’ve been planting seeds and I would say that we’re strong with the NHS,” US healthcare executive, Larry Renfrotold investors in 2016. Renfro was then chief executive of Optum – the very same US company that’s recently been awarded huge contracts to take over the US’s ‘mini NHS’.
“We’re strong with [the regulator] NHS improvement. We are getting stronger with the Minister of Health, as well as the Secretary of Health,” Renfro said.
His colleague and Optum’s Executive Vice President, Jeffrey Berkowitz, spoke of the years Optum had spent building a “very strong foundation of work on the ground with the Department of Health”.
Investors and financial analysts were told this, but not the British public.
Official records show only that Health Secretary, Jeremy Hunt,held an ‘introductory’ meeting with Optum in March 2017 and that health minister Philip Dunne visited Optum in Boston and again, a couple of weeks later in London.
It is only because Renfro told investors that a health minister is “as we sit here today, with us… on tour”, that we know that Lord Prior, now chair of NHS England, also visited Optum at its headquarters in Minneapolis in October 2016.
Donald Trump, the private healthcare execs, and NHS senior officials
This was one of many visits in recent years made by politicians and senior health officials to Optum’s various US offices. This includes officials from NHS Digital – guardians of NHS patient data – whose head of data was given a tour of Optum’s capabilities at its Washington office in January 2018. As an Optum lobbyist said in 2014, the trips, some of which it paid for, are part of its efforts to “develop and mature” its relationship with the NHS.
It is also only through documents released under Freedom of Information law that we know that Ed Smith, the chair of the NHS’s powerful regulator NHS Improvement, held a series of ‘working dinners’ with UnitedHealth Group CEO, Stephen Hemsley – first in September 2016 and again in January the following year. Another ‘working dinner’ took place with Renfro in March 2017. The documents don’t reveal what these men discussed.
In February of that year, Hemsley visited the White House to meet Donald Trump [photos from the meeting: second right and slightly hidden here; leaning forward hands on table behind Mike Pence here]. The President tweeted:
“Great meeting with CEOs of leading U.S. health insurance companies who provide great healthcare to the American people.”
Once declared the highest paid CEO in the US, Stephen Hemsley is now executive chair of UnitedHealth Group. He earned a reported $65m last year. Fortune described him as the “corporate chief who’s arguably created more wealth for shareholders… than any sitting CEO”.
The secrecy of these trans-Atlantic meetings matters. It has allowed the UK government to tell one story to the public, while quietly inviting a giant, for-profit US corporation, bent on overseas expansion, to embed itself in our NHS.
Optum’s parent company, UnitedHealth Group, which reported earnings in 2018 of over $220 billion, is opposed to efforts in the US to introduce a universal, public health system like the NHS. Its current CEO said Medicare for All, as the proposals are known, would “destabilize” the American healthcare system. It goes without saying, they would also eliminate its industry.
Healthcare markets – why are we looking to US firms to help shape our healthcare?
Optum specialises in using data and algorithms to predict and make decisions about who gets what care, something it has honed in America’s private health insurance system, where the more insurers cut costs and ration care, the more money they make. Optum’s algorithm was also recently found to show dramatic biases against black patients.
“Nationally, there are various things going on with data and information and digital that we are actually working with them [the UK] very, very closely right now,” Renfro told investors in April 2017. The health secretary and a “subset of the NHS board” were due to visit, he added: “So things seem to be breaking a lose [sic] right now.”
All of which adds up to quite a different picture to the one used by the Conservatives to sell the reforms to the public in 2010. Health secretary Andrew Lansley’s pitch back then was that his changes were about handing GPs control of the NHS budget to spend locally as they saw fit.
Optum had been involved in discussions from the start in 2010, as revealed in Lansley’s diary (which was released only after a court ruling). Four years later and documents released under FOI showed Optum in prime position to pick up some of the first wave of contracts. In April 2017 – by which time the NHS had been divided into 44 regional areas, each with a plan for reforming its region – Renfo updated investors on “what we’re doing in the UK” and Optum’s UK “44 market strategy”.
“So in February, we won our first business…. with one of those [regions]…. that’s where you’re going to manage with an ACO process. And so we’re tying in everything we do in the States into that win that we just received.” According to Renfro, it was “very, very close” to picking up another two regions and the firm had moved people over to the UK to manage the projects.
Since then, it has been hired by NHS England to “accelerate” these reforms across the country. In the West Midlands, for example, Optum has advised the region’s GPs, hospitals and local councils on their plans. With its partner, PwC, it provided a 12 week programme of training for senior health officials across Birmingham, Solihull, Coventry, Warwickshire, Herefordshire and Worcestershire. It has also gone into partnership with GP “super-practice”, Modality.
Yeovil Hospital, which has led the reforms in Somerset, said:
“The ACO model born in the US market is new to the UK, and as such we have partnered with globally experienced Optum who are guiding our journey into this new world.”
At the same time, Optum has been on a hiring spree across the country of former NHS staff to undertake the work, led by former NHS England directors who have also passed through the revolving door. Ultimately, though, the man steering these reforms is Simon Stevens, CEO of NHS England. He previously, spent a decade at the top of UnitedHealth Group as Executive Vice President and president of its expanding global health businesses.
The health secretary will still deny that privatisation is occurring on his watch. And Boris Johnson will continue to insist that the NHS is not for sale. Meanwhile, the seeds that Optum has been planting for a decade under the Tories are beginning to bear fruit.
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Ukrainian fascists who previously fought in a US-backed neo-Nazi militia joined the anti-China protests in Hong Kong, sharing their tactics and showing off their tattoos.
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Neo-Nazis from Ukraine have flown to Hong Kong to participate in the anti-Chinese insurgency, which has been widely praised by Western corporate media and portrayed as a peaceful pro-democracy movement.
Numerous delegations of far-right groups from across the world have traveled to Hong Kong to join the violent insurgency against Beijing, in which secessionists have attacked police with bowsand arrows, shot gasoline bombs out of catapults, and burned numerous people alive.
With their flamboyant waving of US and British colonial flags and tendency to belt out the American national anthem on megaphones, anti-China separatists in Hong Kong have made themselves a magnet for the US far-right. Staff of the website InfoWars, right-wing social media personality Paul Joseph Watson, and the ultra-conservative group Patriot Prayer are among those who have made pilgrimages to the protests.
The latest collection of extreme-right activists to reinforce the ranks of the Hong Kong separatists are from Ukraine. They call themselves Gonor and have tattoos on their upper torsos with undeniable symbols of white supremacy and neo-Nazism.
These extremists previously fought in a notoriously brutal neo-Nazi militia called the Azov Battalion, in Ukraine’s war against pro-Russian militants.
The Azov Battalion is an explicitly fascist paramilitary group that organizes around neo-Nazi ideology. After a Western-backed 2014 coup against Ukraine’s democratically elected government, Azov was incorporated into the Ukrainian national guard. It has received support from the US government, which has armed and advised the neo-Nazis in their fight against Moscow.
While Western governments and corporate media outlets portray China as an authoritarian regime that treats Hong Kong like a colony, these violent Ukrainian fascists took advantage of the region’s autonomy to gain entry through its borders. It is unlikely they would have been admitted to mainland China, or to the Western European countries that routinely refuse visas to political extremists.
The presence of Ukrainian regime-change activists in the Hong Kong protests is further evidence of the alliances that anti-Chinese activists in Hong Kong are building with other right-wing, US-backed movements around the world, sharing tactics to weaken and destabilize countries targeted by NATO.
Ukrainian fascists join Hong Kong insurgency
On December 1, the far-right activist Serhii Filimonov posted photos on Facebook showing himself and three Ukrainian friends upon their arrival in Hong Kong. The images were accompanied by the anti-Beijing’s unofficial slogan: “Fight for Freedom. Stand with Hong Kong!!”
Stand With Hong Kong is also the name of a Western-backed organization that has been lobbying the governments of the US, Britain, Germany, Canada, and Australia to impose sanctions and take punitive action against China.
In a video they posted on social media, the Ukrainian white supremacists revealed that they had obtained a press pass, misleadingly portraying themselves as journalists.
Joining Filimonov on the trip to Hong Kong was a notorious extreme-right Ukrainian activist who goes by the name Maliar. Maliar is popular on Instagram, under the name xgadzillax, where he has more than 23,000 followers. (Maliar has a distinctive scaron the left side of the neck, which makes him easy to recognize in photos.)
Besides the swastikas inked into his skull, Maliar had the Nazi symbols tattooed on his right leg, next to an algiz rune, another common white supremacist emblem.
Several photos show that at least two of the Ukrainian fascists in Hong Kong have tattoos reading “Victory or Valhalla,” the title of a compilation of writings by the notorious American white supremacist David Lane, whose neo-fascist terrorist group The Order murdered a liberal Jewish radio host and planned more assassinations of left-wing Jews.
Lane, who was convicted to 190 years in a US prison for numerous crimes, created the most famous white supremacist slogan, known as the 14 Words — which inspired the name of another Ukrainian neo-Nazi group called C14.
Filimonov, who also has a large following on Instagram, where he uses the name Sunperuna, published a photo showing the phrase “Victory or Valahalla” emblazoned on his chest.
The book “Victory or Valhalla” is dedicated to “Aryankind.” In its pages, its author says he is committed to preventing the “imminent extinction facing the White Race” and the “Judeo-American/Judeo-Christian murder of the White race.” The screed is replete with homages to Nazis, and the back cover shows a photo of Lane’s body in his coffin, wrapped in a Confederate flag.
These Ukrainian fascists were such fans of the book that they permanently tattooed its title on their bodies.
Maliar, the other member of Gonor who joined the Hong Kong protests, has “Victory or Valhalla” inscribed conspicuously on his neck.
Journalist Morgan Artyukhina identified another member of the far-right Ukrainian contingent in Hong Kong as Serhii Sternenko. Artyukhina noted that Sternenko is a former leader of the Ukrainian fascist group Right Sector, which burned down a trade union building in Odessa during the 2014 coup, killing 42 people.
Neo-Nazis take campus
On December 2, the Ukrainian fascist visitors posted photos of themselves on the campus of Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU), a site of violent protests.
PolyU has been a crucial base of operation for the separatist uprising. A total of 3,989 petrol bombs, 1,339 pieces of explosives, and 601 bottles of corrosive liquid were recovered at the school, as of December 2, according to reports.
Serhii Filimonov (the first on the left in the photo above) has faced legal troubles in the past, appearing in court for allegedly brawling with police.
The photos Filimonov posts on social media make two things abundantly clear: He is a Nazi and wants as many people as possible to see him shirtless while bearing heavyweapons.
Other members of Gonor have published photos on Instagram holding guns.
A video posted on Instagram in 2015 shows Maliar and a friend in a “White Rebel” Confederate flag t-shirt surrounded by guns and tasers.
Gonor’s symbol draws on many of the same far-right ultra-nationalist themes, with three white knives centered on a black flag.
Gonor’s Telegram channel offers members a front row seat to an orgy of violence. It has published dozens of videos of Hong Kong insurgents, heroizing them for shooting arrows and carrying out brutal attacks on state security forces.
Both Filimonov and Maliar previously fought in the US-backed neo-Nazi Azov Battalion. Maliar has posted photos on Instagram showing the two armed and in military uniform, wearing Azov patches.
Ukrainian regime-changers build networks with Hong Kong secessionists
Despite all of this publicly available evidence demonstrating the open fascism of the Ukrainian hooligans in Hong Kong, the Kiev-based Free Hong Kong Center published a statement on Facebook defending and whitewashing Gonor.
The organization confirmed that the extremists did indeed fight with Azov “during the first period of the war” against pro-Russian separatists, but claimed that they have been unaffiliated since 2015.
The Free Hong Kong Center described the neo-fascists as “activists of the Revolution of Dignity and as well as veterans of the defending war with Russia.” Absurdly, the center declared that they “assured us they are really against nazism and another kind of alt-right ideology.”
“A lot of people were disappointed by the tattoos of these guys,” the Free Hong Kong Center conceded. But they insisted “that all symbols are from Slavic paganism.”
The Free Hong Kong Center is a project of an NGO called the Liberal Democratic League of Ukraine. In addition to building links with anti-Beijing forces in Hong Kong, the project says its mission is to “counter Chinese threats to Ukraine.”
The main coordinator of the Free Hong Kong Center is a Ukrainian activist named Arthur Kharytonov, who is also the president of the Liberal Democratic League of Ukraine. Kharytonov was deeply involved in the Euromaidan protests in Ukraine, which led to the 2014 US-backed coup. He then set up the league in 2015.
Kharytonov and his organization have been frequently amplified in US government-funded Ukrainian media outlets such as Hromadske. In these softball interviews with a highly sympathetic press, Kharytonov likens the anti-Russia protests in Ukraine to the anti-China protests in Hong Kong, and calls for closer bonds between them.
On 6th year anniversary of #Euromaidan revolution, Ukrainians showed solidarity with protesters in Hong Kong. We invited main coordinator of Kyiv-based Free Hong Kong Center, Arthur Kharytonov to draw parallels between the events in #Ukraine & #HongKong.https://t.co/MMJkPLmeQC
Kharytonov and these Western government-backed organizations are part of a growing network of Ukrainian regime-change activists who are organizing with secessionists in Hong Kong, holding and sharing insurgency tactics.
As the US and NATO-led unipolar hegemonic order that has dominated the world since the end of the Cold War begins to crumble, and as a rising China and Russia seek to restore a multipolar global system, Washington and European nations are constructing a latticework of movements to undermine their adversaries on their frontiers.
This global network is marketed as the advance guard of global liberalism, but as events from Ukraine to Hong Kong have revealed, fascism is festering at its base.
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Ben Norton is a journalist, writer, and filmmaker. He is the assistant editor of The Grayzone, and the producer of the Moderate Rebels podcast, which he co-hosts with editor Max Blumenthal. His website is BenNorton.com and he tweets at @BenjaminNorton.
Thoreau got it right: ‘Every generation laughs at the old fashions, but follows religiously the new.’ (Thoreau, ‘Walden’, Penguin, 1983, p.68)
The same is certainly true of propaganda. We can laugh now at McCarthyite paranoia warning of Soviet tentacles threatening every aspect of Western life during the Cold War. In the 1940s and 1950s, Hollywood produced dozens of anti-communist films with titles like ‘I Married A Communist’ and ‘I Was A Communist For The FBI’. Large-circulation magazines were titled, ‘Communists Are After Your Child.’ Even children’s comics declared:
‘Beware, commies, spies, traitors, and foreign agents! Captain America, with all loyal, free men behind him, is looking for you.’ (Quoted, Howard Zinn, ‘A People’s History of the United States,’ Harper Colophon, 1990, p.428)
We can guess how future generations will view the current propaganda blitz depicting Jeremy Corbyn as a threat to Britain’s Jews. Not since 2002-2003, when sanctions-stricken Iraq, willing to allow months of no-notice UN weapons inspections, was said to be a ‘clear and present danger’ to the nuclear-packing US-UK, has the truth been so completely and shamefully distorted.
The level of madness is breathtaking, even by ‘mainstream’ standards. In July, the Sunday Telegraph columnist Simon Heffer claimed on LBC radio that Corbyn ‘wants to reopen Auschwitz’. When the interviewer responded that it was completely unacceptable to suggest that Corbyn was capable of such a thing, Heffer replied:
‘I’m sure, in 1933, they had similar conversations in Germany: “the Fuehrer’s never going to do that”.’
Jeremy Hunt, then Foreign Secretary, commented in July:
‘When I went to Auschwitz I rather complacently said to myself, “thank goodness we don’t have to worry about that kind of thing happening in the UK” and now I find myself faced with the leader of the Labour Party who has opened the door to antisemitism in a way that is truly frightening.’
Noam Chomsky summed up the shameful nature of these remarks:
‘The way charges of anti-Semitism are being used in Britain to undermine the Corbyn-led Labour Party is not only a disgrace, but also – to put it simply – an insult to the memory of the victims of the Holocaust…’.
In the i newspaper, former Independent editor Simon Kelner focused on the way Corbyn had ‘mispronounced’ the name of the sexual criminal Jeffrey Epstein, Prince Andrew’s former friend, in a TV debate: ‘He called him “Ep–Schtine”,’ Kelner noted.
Along with ITV political editor Robert Peston (see below), Kelner did not only dispense with the usual affectation of journalistic impartiality, he emphasised his subjectivity in lending weight to an attack on Corbyn:
‘My reaction was a visceral one: it’s not something I can explain easily, or even rationally, but a Jewish person does know when there is something that sounds wrong, or perjorative [sic], or even threatening. It was as if he was saying: “Are you aware this man is Jewish?”’
The idea, then, is that Corbyn – who has been subjected to relentless, highly damaging attacks on this issue for years, and who has done everything he can to distance himself from anti-semitism, taking a very tough line on the suspension of allies like Ken Livingstone and Chris Williamson from the Labour Party – was emphasising Epstein’s Jewishness in a deliberate – or, worse – unconscious effort to smear Jews. Of course, only a truly crazed racist would be unable to resist such a patently self-destructive impulse on national TV. And yet, the outgoing Speaker of the House of Commons, former Conservative MP, John Bercow, who is Jewish, said during an interview with British GQ magazine last month:
‘I myself have never experienced anti-semitism from a member of the Labour Party, point one. And point two, though there is a big issue and it has to be addressed, I do not myself believe Jeremy Corbyn is anti-semitic.
‘I’ve known him for the 22 years I’ve been in Parliament. Even, actually, when I was a right-winger we got on pretty well… I’ve never detected so much as a whiff of anti-semitism [from him].’
Our search of the ProQuest media database found no mention of Bercow’s comment in any UK national newspaper.
Remarkably, in July 2018, The Jewish Chronicle, Jewish News and Jewish Telegraph produced similar front pages and a joint editorial warning against ‘the existential threat to Jewish life in this country that would be posed by a Jeremy Corbyn-led government’.
Gideon Levy, an Israeli journalist and author who writes a weekly column for Israel’s Haaretz newspaper, commented on the smears last week:
‘The Jewish establishment in Britain and the Israeli propaganda machine have taken out a contract on the leader of the British Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn. The contract was taken out a long time ago, and it was clear that the closer Corbyn came to being elected prime minister, the harsher the conflict would get.’
This echoed the view of Professor Norman Finkelstein, whose mother survived the Warsaw Ghetto and the Majdanek concentration camp, and whose father was a survivor of both the Warsaw Ghetto and the Auschwitz concentration camp. Finkelstein said:
‘If Corbyn loses, a lot of people in the Labour Party are going to blame it on those Jews who fabricated this whole anti-semitism witch-hunt hysteria. And that will be a problem, which… you know what the bigger problem there is? It’s true! Jews were the spearhead of this campaign to stop Corbyn. And so, there’s going to be a lot of anger within the Labour Party – that’s not anti-semitism, that’s factually based.’
Finkelstein added:
‘The British elites could not have gotten away with calling Corbyn an anti-semite unless they had the support, the visible support, of all the leading Jewish organisations. You have to remember that during the summer, all three major British publications, for the first time in British Jewish history, they all took out a common editorial denouncing Corbyn as an anti-semite and saying that we’re now standing on the verge of another Holocaust. They are the enablers of this concerted conspiracy by the whole of British elite society to destroy Jeremy Corbyn.’
As Levy observed, the campaign reached its climax in an article last week in The Times by Britain’s chief rabbi, Ephraim Mirvis. Mirvis suggested that Corbyn should be ‘considered unfit for office’, adding:
‘I ask every person to vote with their conscience. Be in no doubt, the very soul of our nation is at stake.’
‘The Chief Rabbi’s intervention in the general election is without precedent. I find it heartbreaking, as a Jew, that the rabbi who by convention is seen as the figurehead of the Jewish community, feels compelled to write this about Labour and its leader. I am not… making any kind of political statement here.’
‘What kind of journalistic neutrality is it for ITV’s political editor to use the fact that he is Jewish to support as sincere and even “heartbreaking” a bitterly disputed claim attacking the Labour Party in this way? In what universe is this impartial, objective journalism?’
The BBC’s political editor Laura Kuenssberg tweeted on the chief rabbi’s criticism an astonishing 23 times in 24 hours. Kuenssberg retweeted the following comment (screenshot here) from chat show host Piers Morgan in response to Labour shadow international development secretary Barry Gardiner’s refusal to field further questions on anti-semitism:
‘Wow. The breathtaking arrogance of this chump telling journalists what questions to ask. They should all ignore him & pummel Corbyn about anti-Semitism.’
Small glimpses of sanity were occasionally visible on social media. Glen Oglaza, former senior reporter at ITN and ex-political correspondent for Sky News, commented:
‘Don’t want to get involved in the #Labour #anti-semitism row, but worth pointing out that the #ChiefRabbi is a lifelong Conservative supporter and, in his own words, a “lifelong friend of Boris Johnson” Nuff said’
It was indeed ‘nuff said’. But, in fact, it was almost never said by corporate journalists.
Glenn Greenwald of The Intercept was typically forthright in responding to Mirvis:
‘This is utter bullshit.
‘The British Conservative Party is rife with anti-semitism, while there’s no evidence Corbyn is.
‘If you want the Tories to win, just say so. It’s incredibly dangerous to keep exploiting anti-semitism for naked political and ideological ends like this’
In 2014, during ‘Operation Protective Edge’ – the Israeli attack on Gaza in which 2,251 Palestinians were killed, including 299 women and 551 children – Mirvis wrote:
‘There is no “cycle of violence” in Gaza. There is Hamas trying to annihilate Israel, and Israel trying to defend itself…’
With hundreds of civilians lying dead, he added:
‘Israel has no desire to kill or injure civilians in Gaza. They are potential partners in peace whose death only serves the interests of Hamas’s PR war.’
And:
‘To measure the morality of war by the military might of each party, the number of deaths or the amount of suffering on each side is not merely misguided; it plays into the hands of a ruthless and calculating aggressor.’
‘As opposed to the horrid Corbyn, Mirvis sees nothing wrong with the continued occupation; he does not identify with the struggle for Palestinian freedom, and he doesn’t sense the similarity between the South Africa of his childhood, Har Etzion of his youth and Israel of 2019. That is the real reason that he rejects Corbyn. The Jews of Britain also want a prime minister who supports Israel – that is, supports the occupation. A prime minister who is critical of Israel is to them an exemplar of the new anti-Semitism.’
In contrast to the blanket coverage of the chief rabbi’s comments – it was the lead story on the BBC News website for half a day – there was only token notice given to the Muslim Council of Britain’s warning of ‘denial, dismissal and deceit’ of ‘endemic, institutional’ Islamophobia within the Conservative Party.
There was also virtual BBC silence in response to the blistering attack on Boris Johnson’s racial slurs by Stormzy, the British rap artist who was a huge success at this year’s Glastonbury Festival. In an Instagram post that has been ‘liked’ almost 300,000 times, Stormzy noted:
‘I think Boris Johnson is a sinister man with a long record of lying and policies that have absolutely no regard for the people that our government should be committed to helping and empowering. I also believe it is criminally dangerous to give the most powerful role in the country to a man who has said that the sight of a “bunch of black kids” makes him “turn a hair”, compared women in burqas to letterboxes and referred to blacks [sic] people as “picaninnies” with “watermelon smiles”. I think it’s extremely dangerous to have a man with those views as the sole leader of our country.’
He added:
‘I will be voting for Jeremy Corbyn… for me, he is the first man in a position of power who is committed to giving the power back to the people and helping those who need a helping hand from the government the most.’
A commenter said (forwarded to us via email, 27 November 2019):
‘I’m not a conspiracy theorist, but the BBC are seriously compromised in this election.
‘Yesterday, arguably *the* most influential black person in the UK, Stormzy, launched a blistering attack on Johnson, calling him “sinister” and deploring his history of racism. This has been shared tens of thousands of times on social media. In the same post, he applauded Jeremy Corbyn as a figure of trust.
‘The BBC have not covered this at all.’
In a letter to the Guardian, Professor Des Freedman of Goldsmiths, University of London, commented:
‘Rigorous academic research shows that, in the first three weeks of the election campaign, coverage of Labour in the press has been overwhelmingly negative, with the Conservatives receiving consistently positive coverage… The most powerful sections of the UK media are simply not prepared to let citizens freely make up their own minds on Labour policies, nor to scrutinise Conservative claims systematically.’
The Evidence – The Real Threat To Human Life
Our ProQuest database search of newspaper articles for ‘Corbyn’ and ‘anti-semitism’ shows how intensively the issue has been used to attack Corbyn prior to the looming election on December 12:
September = 337 hits
October = 222 hits
November = 1,620 hits
While opinions in effect declaring Corbyn a Nazi are widely reported, opinions defending Corbyn by the likes of John Bercow, Gideon Levy, Norman Finkelstein, Glenn Greenwald, Noam Chomsky, Jonathan Cook, Michael Rosen and others reach a comparatively small audience on social media but are simply ignored by the establishment press reaching millions.
Exactly mirroring the fake claims justifying the 2003 Iraq war – also universally presented as serious and fact-based – it turns out that claims of an epidemic of anti-semitism within the Labour Party are completely bogus. Israel-based former Guardian journalist Jonathan Cook summarised a recent survey published in The Economist:
‘It showed that those identifying as “very left-wing” – the section of the public that supports Corbyn – were among the least likely to express antisemitic attitudes. Those identifying as “very right-wing”, on the other hand – those likely to support Boris “piccaninnies” Johnson – were three and a half times more likely to express hostile attitudes towards Jews. Other surveys show even worse racism among Conservatives towards more obviously non-white minorities, such as Muslims and black people. That, after all, is the very reason Boris “letterbox-looking Muslim women” Johnson now heads the Tory party.’
Other surveys have strongly supported these conclusions, including an October 2016 reportby the Commons home affairs committee and a September 2017 report by the Institute for Jewish Policy Research and a Labour Party report discussed here in February 2019.
In 2002-2003, credible evidence from former UN weapons inspectors arguing that Iraq had been ‘fundamentally disarmed’ of 90-95% of its weapons of mass destruction by December 1998 was almost completely ignored by the corporate press – it just didn’t fit the establishment narrative. The same is true of the above highly credible and consistent reports – they are simply not part of the discussion.
If we are serious about offering a moral calculus, then we should, of course, include the fact that Johnson would certainly support Trump in any future racist wars against Iran, Venezuela, or North Korea, whereas Corbyn would not. Does it matter to journalists, to the public, that we might elect a leader who would make it more difficult for the US to kill, injure and displace hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of people? How does that concern rank alongside Brexit, the fact that Johnson is a jovial fellow, or the fake claims of anti-semitism? We need only glance at Johnson’s track-record for evidence of the threat.
Since November 1, ProQuest finds 24 newspaper mentions containing the words ‘Boris Johnson’ and ‘Yemen’. Only one of them, in the Independent, focused on Johnson’s destructive role in the conflict:
‘The government has signed off nearly £2bn worth of arms sales to repressive regimes in the two years since the 2017 election, official figures show.’
These regimes include Saudi Arabia, ‘which has been widely condemned by the international community for its offensive in Yemen’ and ‘benefited from £719m in UK licences for bombs, missiles, fighter jets, sniper rifles, ammunition’.
Andrew Smith of Campaign Against Arms Trade said:
‘As foreign secretary, Boris Johnson played a central role in supporting the terrible Saudi-led bombardment of Yemen, which has created the worst humanitarian crisis in the world. Tens of thousands of people have been killed, but the arms companies only see it as a business opportunity.’
In 2017, defending the US-UK destruction of Libya in 2011, Johnson crassly commented that the Libyan city Sirte could be the new Dubai, adding, ‘all they have to do is clear the dead bodies away’. Johnson also voted for the devastating 2003 Iraq war.
‘Labour is pledging to put human rights and international law at the heart of foreign policy, in keeping with one of Jeremy Corbyn’s longest held passions. As well as attacking “failed military interventions”, the manifesto promises a War Powers Act to give parliament a legal veto on military action.’
And:
‘Arms sales to Saudi Arabia would be suspended immediately after criticism of the country’s role in the civil war in Yemen.’
But even these horrors are trivial – we don’t use the word lightly – compared to Johnson’s Trump-like stance on climate collapse. Johnson, a notorious climate denier, has ‘Almost always voted against measures to prevent climate change.’ In 2015, Johnson wrote an article in the Telegraph titled: ‘I can’t stand this December heat, but it has nothing to do with global warming’. Johnson endorsed the completely discredited view that ‘it is all about sun spots’.
The reality is very different. Professor Tim Lenton at the University of Exeter, lead author of a recent article in Nature warning of ‘existential threat to civilisation’, said last week:
‘We might already have crossed the threshold for a cascade of interrelated tipping points. The simple version is the schoolkids [striking for climate action] are right: we are seeing potentially irreversible changes in the climate system under way, or very close.’
Phil Williamson at the University of East Anglia, concurred:
‘The prognosis by Tim Lenton and colleagues is, unfortunately, fully plausible: that we might have already lost control of the Earth’s climate.’
Most recently, Johnson refused even to participate in a Channel 4 leaders’ debate on climate change, instead sending his father and MP Michael Gove, who were turned away. BBC political editor Laura Kuenssberg tweeted a defence and a humorous discussion on this no-show, but no criticism. We can only wonder at her response, and that of the rest of the establishment press, if Corbyn had refused to participate in a debate on a key area of vulnerability, instead sending his dad.
If we can see beyond the propaganda, it is quite obvious that it is Johnson who offers, and who has already offered, a very serious threat to human life, not Corbyn. Voting for Johnson will likely have deadly consequences, not just for the traditional victims of US-UK firepower, but for all of us as the last hopes of averting climate collapse rapidly slip away.
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Israeli occupation has denied permission for British lawmaker, Philippa Whitford, who is a doctor, from entering Gaza to offer help for patients of breast cancer.
Over the past two and half years[1], I have been working with Medical Aid for Palestine (MAP) to improve the provision of services and treatment for breast cancer patients in Palestine.
Last year, I travelled out with the specific aim of setting up a project to enable experienced professionals in breast cancer care to provide teaching and training to local Palestinian clinicians working with breast cancer patients.
Since my last visit, I have managed to recruit a team of specialists from all over Scotland to join the project, which will help improve breast cancer care – prevention, diagnosis and treatment – for women in Gaza and the West Bank.
Tragically, many Palestinian women are denied permits to travel from Gaza to Jerusalem to access radiotherapy so it is important to be able to access as much treatment as possible near their home.
The plan this year was to travel out with the whole team in September but, frustratingly, I was denied a visa. Moreover, two others did not receive their visas in time.
However, I travelled, but I had to completely change my schedule and work the entire time from a base in Jerusalem.
Nonetheless, I am still able to see significant improvements since my visit last year, which is fantastic given that local clinicians are working under very difficult circumstances, particularly in Gaza. Hopefully, things will continue to progress.
In October, I raised the issue of my visa being denied in Parliament with the Foreign Office Minister. To see my question click here
Following this, Commonspace asked to interview me about how this affected my trip, my past work in Gaza, my thoughts on the current situation and what needs to be done to resolve it, and what our project hopes to achieve.
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The UN General Assembly yesterday officially asked Israel to leave the occupied Syrian Golan Heights.
The request was made after the resolution was adopted after 91 UN member states voted in favour, nine rejected and 65 abstained.
The resolution stipulates that Israel leaves all the Syrian Golan Heights occupied in June 1967, stating this is an implementation of the UN Security Council’s resolution.
Regarding the Israeli decision to annex the Golan Heights made on 4 December 1981, the UN said this was “null and void”.
On 15 November 2018, the UN General Assembly adopted a resolution asking Israel to stop exploiting the natural resources in the Palestinian territories, including the occupied East Jerusalem and Syrian Golan Heights.
In March the US announced that it was time to back Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights.
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Featured image: Israel’s Merkava Tank in the Golan Heights. (By ChameleonsEye /Shutterstock)
The vilification of the leader of the UK Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn, as an antisemite has intensified in the run up to the December 12 election in Britain. What makes this especially troubling, not to say bizarre, is that since he first became a member of parliament in 1983 Corbyn has been the most consistent campaigner against all forms of racism.
In fact, while still a local councillor in London in 1977 Corbyn had already organized a defense of the Jewish population of Wood Green from a neo-Nazi march. A recent compilation of the number of early day motions he advanced in Parliament to defend Jewish people, alongside other public stances he took to tackle antisemitism – to denounce Holocaust deniers, to commemorate Jewish resistance to fascism, to pressure the police to do more to protect synagogues against vandalism – came to well over 50. And he did all this not only in support of Jewish communities in the UK but also in Iran, Turkey, France, Russia and Eastern Europe. Indeed, the recently retired Speaker of the House of Commons, John Bercow, himself Jewish, unreservedly expressed his belief that Corbyn was in no way antisemitic, having in their 22 years in Parliament together “never detected so much as a whiff of anti-semitism” about him.
Smear Campaign
Indeed, there is no way that the antisemitic charge can be made any sense of except as a means of deflecting Corbyn’s support of Palestinian rights against actions by Israeli governments. The smear campaign has mainly involved pointing to intemperate language of others who spoke beside Corbyn at meetings about this over the decades. Scraping the barrel for anything he said himself, one comment Corbyn made about pro-Israeli government hecklers at one meeting not getting his “English irony” has been highlighted.
Given the weak reed this provides for the personal attack on Corbyn, attention has been focused on his allegedly not having done enough to weed out “institutionalized” antisemitism in his party, even though a parliamentary committee report on Antisemitism in the UK found “no reliable, empirical evidence to support the notion that there is a higher prevalence of antisemitic attitudes within the Labour Party than any other political party.”
To be sure, there are instances of antisemitic tropes (mainly on the ‘rich Jews’ theme) in some Labour-related social media circles, but much less than in parties of the right. In any case, Corbyn has done more to address this than any previous leader of any party.
Under his leadership, Labour grew to over 500,000 members; yet of some 1100 complaints of antisemitism the party received between April 2018 and January 2019 almost half were found to have nothing to do with the party, while another quarter were lacking in any basic evidence.
In Corbyn’s Own Words
In his leaders’ speech to the 2018 Labour conference, Corbyn spoke directly
“to all in the Jewish community: This party, this movement, will always be implacable campaigners against antisemitism and racism in all its forms. We are your ally. And the next Labour government will guarantee whatever support necessary to ensure the security of Jewish community centres and places of worship, as we will for any other community experiencing hateful behaviour and physical attacks. We will work with Jewish communities to eradicate antisemitism, both from our party and wider society. And with your help I will fight for that with every breath I possess.”
Later in the speech, when dealing with Labour’s foreign policy, he added:
“And let me next say a few words about the ongoing denial of justice and rights to the Palestinian people. Our Party is united in condemning the shooting of hundreds of unarmed demonstrators in Gaza by Israeli forces and the passing of Israel’s discriminatory Nation-State Law. The continuing occupation, the expansion of illegal settlements and the imprisonment of Palestinian children are an outrage. We support a two-state solution to the conflict with a secure Israel and a viable and secure Palestinian state.”
Rather than being traduced, Corbyn deserves to be praised for making it so clear that principled support for Palestinian rights does not preclude principled opposition to antisemitism.
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December 6th, 2019 by Center For Biological Diversity
The Trump administration today announced it will reauthorize use of sodium cyanide in wildlife-killing devices called M-44s. These “cyanide bombs” received approval from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency despite inhumanely and indiscriminately killing thousands of animals every year. They have also injured people.
“This appalling decision leaves cyanide traps lurking in the wild to threaten people, pets and imperiled animals,” said Collette Adkins, carnivore conservation director at the Center for Biological Diversity. “The EPA imposed a few minor restrictions, but these deadly devices have just wreaked too much havoc to remain in use. To truly protect humans and wildlife from these poisonous contraptions, we need a nationwide ban.”
The EPA allows use of the devices by Wildlife Services, the animal-killing program of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The EPA also authorizes M-44 use by state agencies in South Dakota, Montana, Wyoming, New Mexico and Texas.
A federal court recently approved a ban on M-44 use by Wildlife Services across more than 10 million acres of public land in Wyoming. The Wyoming ban is as part of an agreement resulting from a lawsuit brought by the Center and other wildlife advocacy groups.
In August the EPA issued an interim decision renewing sodium cyanide registration. Then a week later, it withdrew that interim decision for more discussions with Wildlife Services. Today’s announcement reauthorizes use of the devices.
More than 99.9 percent of people commenting on the proposal asked the EPA to ban M-44s, according to analysis from the Center for Biological Diversity and Western Environmental Law Center.
In response to concerns raised by wildlife-advocacy groups and others, EPA added some modest restrictions. For example, the devices cannot be placed within 300 feet of a public road or pathway, increased from 100 feet. Two elevated warning signs must be placed within 15 feet of each device, decreased from 25 feet. And no devices can be placed within 600 feet of a residence unless the landowner gives permission.
None of the restrictions will prevent killing of nontarget wildlife, however.
“While it is encouraging that the EPA is taking at least some minimal action to protect the public from deadly M-44s, updating a few use restrictions –– nearly impossible to enforce and commonly ignored –– fails to meaningfully address the problem,” said Kelly Nokes, Shared Earth wildlife attorney with the Western Environmental Law Center. “EPA is blatantly ignoring its fundamental duty to protect the public, our pets and native wildlife from the cruel, lethal impacts of cyanide bombs lurking on our public lands. We will continue to hold our federal government accountable to the law, and will continue our fight for a ban on M-44s once and for all.”
“Tightening up use restrictions is turning a blind eye to the reality of M-44s,” said Brooks Fahy, executive director of Predator Defense. “In my 25 years working with M-44 victims I’ve learned that Wildlife Services’ agents frequently do not follow the use restrictions. And warning signs will not prevent more dogs, wild animals and potentially children from being killed. They cannot read them. M-44s are a safety menace and must be banned.”
“USDA’s rampant, well-documented noncompliance with existing use restrictions has made clear that additional restrictions will not adequately protect the public, pets and wildlife from these deadly cyanide bombs,” said Carson Barylak, campaigns manager at the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW).
According to Wildlife Services’ own data, M-44s killed 6,579 animals, mostly coyotes and foxes, in 2018, down from 13,232 animals in 2017. Of these, more than 200 deaths were nontarget animals, including a bear, foxes, opossums, raccoons and skunks. These numbers are likely a significant undercount of the true death toll, as Wildlife Services is notorious for poor data collection and an entrenched “shoot, shovel, shut up” mentality.
Background
M-44 devices spray deadly sodium cyanide into the mouths of unsuspecting coyotes, foxes and other carnivores lured by smelly bait. Anything or anyone that pulls on the baited device can be killed or severely injured by the deadly spray.
In response to a 2017 lawsuit brought by the Center and its allies, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service agreed to analyze impacts of M-44s on endangered wildlife by the end of 2021. Another 2017 lawsuit by the wildlife advocates prompted Wildlife Services in Colorado to temporarily halt the use of M-44s while it completes a new environmental analysis on its wildlife-killing program.
Last year the EPA denied a 2017 petition authored by the Center for Biological Diversity and WildEarth Guardians that asked for a nationwide ban on M-44s.
M-44s temporarily blinded a child and killed three family dogs in two incidents in Idaho and Wyoming in 2017. A wolf was also accidentally killed by an M-44 set in Oregon that year. In response, Idaho instituted an ongoing moratorium on M-44 use on public lands, and Oregon this year passed legislation banning them in the state.
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Featured image: Dead wolf or coyote near POISON sign in New Mexico in 2016. Image available for media use. This image was gathered through a FOIA request by the Center for Biological Diversity and is public domain. Image is available for media use.
The nations of Southeast Asia have united in efforts to prevent a US-backed coup aimed at fellow-Southeast Asian state Cambodia.
Through a combination of travel bans and detentions across the region in late October and early November, Southeast Asia may have thwarted attempts by Washington-backed opposition front, the Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP), from “returning” from its US and European exile to Cambodia where it sought to stir up unrest and sow instability.
The US seeks to disrupt, divide and even destroy the growing list of nations in Asia building ties with Beijing at the expense of Washington’s fading primacy over the Asia-Pacific region.
With multiple US wars raging across the globe, Washington’s ongoing trade war with China and Russophobic hysteria paralysing America’s domestic political landscape, the rarely-mentioned nation of Cambodia and its political affairs couldn’t be further from the global public’s attention.
Using this obscurity as cover, the US began low-key preparations ahead of what the US had hoped would end in much more widely reported protests, instability and, if other nations suffering US regime change efforts is anything to go by, extensive violence.
While these preparations were promoted by Western media organisations operating in Southeast Asia, they collectively omitted mention of US involvement or the much wider implications of the US organising what was essentially a coup attempt in Cambodia.
Preparations included moving CNRP members from their US and European homes-in-exile to neighbouring Southeast Asian states. There, Western media organisations and US-European funded fronts posing as rights organisations conducted conferences and published articles promoting their planned “return” to Cambodia.
Had the US succeeded in triggering chaos in Cambodia, it would have fed synergistically into ongoing US-fomented instability in Hong Kong, China as well as opened the door to other US-funded groups across Southeast Asia eager to engage in political unrest.
Thai political opposition party “Future Forward,” for example, appears to have been planning unrest timed to coincide with CNRP’s return to Cambodia.
Asia Unites Against US Coup Attempt
However, these preparations appear to have been in vain.
In late October Thailand had denied CNRP deputy leader Mu Sochua entry into their territory where she had sought to then travel onward into Cambodia.
The deputy leader of Cambodia’s opposition party has been denied entry to Thailand, casting doubt on party leader Sam Rainsy’s pledge to return from exile in Paris in early November. Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP) Vice-President Mu Sochua was denied entry in Bangkok on October 20 and sent back to Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia. From there, she headed to the United States, where she is also a citizen.
The article also notes that:
CNRP President Kem Sokha was arrested for treason in September 2017, and Sochua fled the country the following month. By November the party was dissolved entirely, allowing long-time Prime Minister Hun Sen to claim all 125 parliament seats in last year’s election.
Souchua would eventually be detained in Malaysia as she attempted to proceed onward to Cambodia.
Thailand would next bar CNRP leader Sam Rainsy from his attempted return to Cambodia via Thai territory. Both Thailand and Malaysia cited the principles of non-interference and an unwillingness to abet the political destabilisation of a fellow ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) member state.
Thailand would not allow entry to Cambodian opposition founder Sam Rainsy, Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha said on Wednesday, after the self-exiled dissident said he planned to return to Cambodia via Bangkok.
The article would also claim:
Hun Sen has accused the opposition of fomenting a coup, and his government has arrested at least 48 activists with Sam Rainsy’s banned opposition party this year. The party’s last leader remains under house arrest on treason charges.
Missing from Al Jazeera, AP and Reuters’ reports and that of every other report from the Western media regarding Cambodia’s opposition CNRP is the fact that “the party’s last leader,” Kem Sokha, himself had openly admitted that he was conspiring with the US government to overthrow the current Cambodian government making him an obvious traitor by any and every definition of the word.
Cambodia’s Opposition Serves Washington’s War on China
“…the USA that has assisted me, they asked me to take the model from Yugoslavia, Serbia, where they can changed the dictator Slobodan Milosevic,” he continues, referring to the former Serbian and Yugoslavian leader who resigned amid popular protests following disputed elections, and died while on trial for war crimes.
“You know Milosevic had a huge numbers of tanks. But they changed things by using this strategy, and they take this experience for me to implement in Cambodia. But no one knew about this.”
“However, since we are now reaching at this stage, today I must tell you about this strategy. We will have more to continue and we will succeed.”
Kem Sokha would elaborate further, claiming:
“I do not do anything at my own will. Their experts, professors at universities in Washington, DC, Montreal, Canada, hired by the Americans in order to advise me on the strategy to change the dictator leader in Cambodia.”
As previously reported, Kem Sokha’s daughter, Kem Monovithya, has also openly worked with the US for years seeking the overthrow of the Cambodian government.
When Cambodia began its crackdown on both CNRP and the US-funded organisations supporting it, the US threatened sanctions and other punitive measures. Kem Monovithya would play a central role in promoting these punitive measures in Washington.
…in Washington, a panel of “witnesses” convened by the House Foreign Affairs Committee – including Kem Sokha’s daughter, Kem Monovithya – called for additional action in response to the political crackdown. In a statement, Monovithya urged targeted financial sanctions against government officials responsible for undermining democracy. She also called on the US to suspend “any and all assistance for the central Cambodian Government”, while “continuing democracy assistance programs for civil society, particularly those engaged in election-related matters”.
Kem Sokha, a former Cambodian senator and official, heads the Cambodian Center for Human Rights, which is supported by U.S. government funds. The center has held public forums to hear complaints about conditions in Cambodia.
Regarding Kem Monovithya herself, the Washington Post would note:
Monovitha Kem, a business school graduate and aspiring lawyer, said she would lobby U.S. and international institutions to fight Hun Sen’s decision.
“I would like to see the charges dropped not just for my father, but for all other activists,” she said in an interview Monday. “I hope they will amend the defamation law.”
Monovitha Kem has met with officials at the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs, the International Republican Institute, the U.S. Agency for International Development and major human rights groups.
The National Democratic Institute (NDI) and International Republican Institute (IRI) are both subsidiaries of the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) which, together with the US government itself, have supported myriad organisations engaged in subversive activities within Cambodia for years.
This includes Licadho, which is funded by both the UK government and the US via USAID. It also includes Radio Free Asia and Voice of America, both of which are funded by the US government and overseen by the Broadcasting Board of Governors chaired by US Secretary of State Michael Pompeo himself.
There is also the Cambodian Center for Independent Media, funded by NED subsidiaries Freedom House and IRI as well as the British Embassy and convicted financial criminal George Soros’ Open Society Foundation.
Decades of US Meddling Coming to an End?
Decades of US meddling in Cambodia’s politics, including the creation of Sam Rainsy and Kem Sokha’s opposition CNRP and organisations created and funded by the US government to support it, along with plans to overthrow the current Cambodian government to install CNRP into power, represents in reality political meddling many times worse than even the most imaginative accusations made against Russia or China in regards to their supposed meddling in US and European politics.
However, with Southeast Asia’s recent and united stand against US designs against Cambodia, we may be witnessing the beginning of the end of US meddling in Southeast Asia all together. But US meddling worldwide, including across Asia, is so extensive, embedded in local media, academia and politics, that it will take years more to fully uproot it from the region.
While the malign influence of Wall Street, Washington, London and Brussels persists well beyond its borders continuing a legacy of colonialism that exploited and suppressed Southeast Asia for centuries, the foiling of an attempted US-backed coup in Cambodia owed to a united stand by regional nations offers promising hope that this malign influence is now finally in terminal decline.
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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”.
It continues to be very difficult for we US Americans to acknowledge that our political system and its capitalist economy is deeply corrupt and fixed, that we find it easier to always distract ourselves by demonizing others.
In some ways, it is irrelevant whether the Clinton and Podesta emails were leaked or hacked, as the Democrats created the hoax of Russiagate to avoid severe self-examination of their own corruption and deceptive practices.
The Democrats have ignored working people’s needs for at least 40 years as it became corporate. And the large amount of disenfranchisement among US voters due to Jim Crow revitalization, and excluding many felons for life, eliminate many citizens from voting.
Then to understand that our entire political system is one big financial scheme preserving an oligarchy of plutocrats, how can we even call ourselves a republic. We have never been a democracy. We are addicted to materialism. It is our stubborn belief in our validity as a nation, certainly as compared to others, that I believe preempts our capacity for the kind of popular revolt we need to be a nation with integrity and a true commitment to justice. This requires a nonviolent revolution that we have yet experienced, though the radical changes in the late 1960s threatened the system as never before with a break out of real democracy.
But how can we possibly ever believe what the US or its agencies say?
The basic principle is lying.
Since WWII, the US has militarily intervened in dozens of countries nearly 400 times, covertly thousands of times. It has attempted to overthrow more than 50 governments, attempted to assassinate more than 50 foreign leaders, attempted to suppress popular movements in 20 countries, dropped bombs on at least 30 countries, and has grossly interfered in democratic elections in at least 30 countries and, according to a political science professor at Carnegie Mellon Univ, has attempted influence other country presidential elections 81 times between 1946 and 2000. Would the US ever willingly admit these interventionist deeds? And we have no real, genuine free, investigative press, just a corporate one spewing the capitalist, US exceptional rhetoric. What is it we are believing in here in the USA?
Our official policy is Full Spectrum Dominance, to be militarily superior in all sea spaces, air spaces, and ground spaces, as well as outer space, cyber space, and mental space between our ears. Currently the US has special ops forces in 150 countries, and is dropping bombs and missiles on at least 7 countries. We preserve a capitalist, class society with now the largest disparity between rich and poor in the industrial world, and one of the worst disparities among all countries. Our capitalist neoliberal interests now cover every corner of the globe such that there is no safe place in the world from US intervention, often conniving, spewing deceit, and acting diabolically beyond most of our comprehension. And it is not possible now for US policy to possess any concern for human beings elsewhere, though we attempt to fool the public by manipulating scenarios with staged photos, while uttering the most ridiculous, self-serving, non-factual rhetoric to justify “humanitarian intervention.” We want control of everything.
Now we want a new cold war, threatening hot war with Russia, led by the Democrats. It is all about demonizing others “out there” to avoid honestly addressing the demons in our own history, our own oligarchic structures, and imperial policies. I just don’t understand how we can be so concerned about Putin, or Nicaragua, or Syria, etc., when our system is so globally destructive and undemocratic and unfair at home. Will we support an international movement to intervene into the affairs of the US because our policies are totally endangering all life on the planet. We seem not yet to able to organize a popular nonviolent revolution at home to arrest our own criminally corrupt system and the dangerous policies it imposes, while enriching a small few as war making is now the most lucrative path to obscene profits. Will we wake up? Or just continue to point fingers elsewhere and become extinct with no dignity whatsoever?
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This article was originally published on the author’s blog site, S. Brian Willson.
S. Brian Willson, Vietnam war veteran, renowned peace activist, human rights lawyer and award winning author, Managua, Nicaragua, Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization.
We are fascinated by space. Rockets and space shuttles are the stuff of our dreams. But the dream is rapidly turning to nightmare and we may justifiably wonder where it is taking us. Strangely, questioning the merits of space activities seems shocking, excruciating, outrageous. How can that be so if the spark of human genius is to be found uniquely in space activities? Perhaps we need to move beyond or debunk the myth of space. Without engaging in nihilism or provoking bitter controversy, we need to conjure another relationship with the idea of space.
Although far removed from the fairly abstract concerns of cosmology or astrophysics, the issue of borders has arisen with the conquest of space. Not in the sense that borders have been pushed back, for that is not the case, but rather in terms of their having finally disappeared from the Earth’s surface. It is quite striking that many astronauts have commented on how artifical our state borders seemed when they looked at the Earth from space, which makes them sound almost naïve given how obvious that is. It was strange to hear how astonished they were by the idea of national borders being invisible from space.
Rockets have not made the universe accessible to us. After all, the distance between the International Space Station and the Earth is comparable to that between the peel of an orange and its flesh. As for the the distance between the Earth and the Moon, compared to our galaxy it amounts to only a tenth of the thickness of a hair compared to the Earth … And our galaxy itself is nothing but a tiny “molecule” in the cosmic fluid. It would be quite ludicrous to take our limited forays into space as representing real access to the deep universe.
The frontier that has disappeared is not the one that separates us from interstellar space, for that indisputably remains. Rather it is the arbitrary boundaries of our countries, our states, our nations, the physical non-existence of which paradoxically astonished the various astronauts who have had the opportunity to observe the Earth from space. We seem to have so deeply internalised the idea of these fictional walls that their absence from the real landscape is seriously disturbing. We had forgotten the superficiality and obsolescence of this drab grid imposed on reality. The fact that highly-trained, ‑educated and ‑qualified men can be astounded by the continuity of land is deeply significant.
Especially since almost no one is affected by borders. Of course, they can be lethal. Refugees die at closed borders, as we are all too tragically reminded in the news. This brutal violence is all too real. But for most living creatures borders do not exist. Billions upon billions of them belonging to millions of species cross borders every day without any idea of their existence or the slightest pause for thought. None are aware of borders, not birds or bees, earthworms, mice, trees (which move from generation to generation) or microbes. Our partitioning of the world seems almost ridiculous in its arrogant stupidity, although we once believed it to be justified and virtually immutable.
But beyond just the simple issue of borders, space poses an eminently symbolic question. The human and financial resources expended on space activities exceed their meagre scientific interest. The endeavour is almost exclusively symbolic, but what does it symbolise?
Apollo 11 (Source: nasa.gov)
The Apollo missions held a certain fascination for people. A genuine spirit of adventure infused the pioneers of space. The first spacewalks were greeted with deference, even reverence. The encounter with the otherworldliness of the lunar surface was imbued with solemnity. Despite the fierce patriotism that inspired the process, which was aimed at catching up with the Russians, when the astronauts returned to Earth they were celebrated not so much as American heroes but as true ambassadors of humanity. Something powerfully moving was taking place, something that resonated with people.
The symbolism was soon eroded, however, as later Apollo missions revealed a significant shift in attitudes. The astronauts behaved like cowboys, made jokes that verged on bad taste, played tricks on the mechanics, and relaxed in macho style. Some of the magic was already gone.
Today, an American company boasts about its feat of putting an automobile into orbit, while Donald Trump seems to wish to restart a frenetic lunar programme simply to challenge the Chinese … What sense is there in launching a lunar programme when life on Earth is dying? Not to mention that a few billionaires – themselves largely responsible for devastating our planet – are beginning to consider migrating to space when the Earth becomes unlivable. Of course they will not succeed, but the picture is not just ugly, it is intolerable, especially since those planning to flee are those most responsible for the shipwreck.
The possibility of building a space hotel for the super-rich was recently floated. Tens of thousands of satellites are set to be deployed – severely damaging the prospects for any astronomy worthy of the name – in pursuit of facilitating access to the Internet from the remotest corners of the globe. All this is taking place under the aegis of a man who wants to play Rambo and boasts of marketing a flamethrower and who is right now unveiling a semi-armoured, futuristic-looking pickup to entertain Californians in need of 2-ton gadgets (it also touts the wonders of a laser window-cleaning technology that is bringing tears to the eyes of Silicon Valley).
Rightly or wrongly, space flight has been associated with the notion of free-market heroism. The symbolism seems to me to have changed radically. To my mind, it has become a semiotics of arrogance. It has become a game of sterile domination and a factory churning out fictional heroes devoid of any scientific, ethical or aesthetic aim, devoid of any epistemic elegance.
As we are being threatened by a major ecological crisis that requires us to rapidly recover a sense of moderation for our very survival, how can it make any sense to rush mindlessly into a satellite constellation operated by a private company, which will exponentially increase the use of energy-devouring digital technologies?
Animal populations are collapsing, wilderness areas are disappearing before our very eyes, temperatures are skyrocketing, pollution is poisoning the air, water and soils … the Earth is ailing and needs our care and love. It is under major attack: a massive extinction that is tantamount to deliberate extermination. How incredibly cynical of us to want to “conquer” space when we are right now devastating our own world before we have ever really understood it. We know virtually nothing about the wonders that surround us, including the complex symbiotic relationships among trees, subtle insect behaviours and the emotions of small mammals. Are we destined to destroy every last bit of this fragile magnificence emanating from billions of years of uninterrupted evolution and instead set our sights on the drab and lifeless ochres of the surface of Mars?
Of course, the quest for knowledge must go on. There is no question of environmental awareness calling a halt to the adventure of human knowledge. Quite the contrary. We must acknowledge that some satellites help us understand climate change or answer astrophysical questions. But the conquest of space as it stands – especially manned flights – has little to do with the gentle and patient humility involved in real discovery of the world around us. The quest to conquer space now seems more like the cravings of an insatiable demiurge.
Like a final nihilistic erection, the immense phallic structures of the rockets signal the bankruptcy of humanity become blind and arrogant, bereft of awareness of the here and now as we lust after a never-neverland elsewhere. Humanity‘s craving for desacralization monstrously defiles a quest that might once have been noble.
The Western world’s inability to reflect on its own values is staggering when, in addition to wreaking neocolonial havoc, they lead to its own extermination.
For me, the heroes of the world of today are the Indians who fight for the survival of the forests, the refugees who fight for the survival of their families, the animals that fight for the survival of their packs or herds in a devastated world. The astronaut has lost his glamour – he has unwittingly become a stereotyped, prefabricated and sanitized representation of the deadly hubris of our warped society. The planet that we need to learn to explore – and not conquer – is our own. Time is running out and the revolution we need is far more root and branch than just another mundane invention of a new technology or a superpowered engine: we need to rediscover what it is to love.
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This article was originally published in French, translated into English by Claire Edwards.
Trump regime economic terrorism on Venezuela includes multiple rounds of illegal sanctions and an embargo — war by other means.
Nations and media supporting hostile US actions against the Bolivarian Republic and other countries are complicit in its crimes against humanity.
These actions have nothing to do with promoting democracy the US deplores, nothing to do with protecting national security, everything to do with seeking control over other nations, their resources and populations — Venezuela a prime target because of its world’s largest oil reserves.
US war on the Bolivarian Republic by other means aims to install pro-Western puppet rule, replacing its model social democracy, the threat of a good example since established in 1999.
Nations engaging in legitimate political, economic, financial, and trade relations with Venezuela and other countries it wants isolated face harsh US recrimination.
Blacklisting 29 Venezuelan officials by the Trump regime was the latest shoe to drop.
Abandoning the rule of law in deference to US imperial interests, 15 so-called Inter-American Treaty of Reciprocal Assistance (TIAR) countries banned President Nicolas Maduro, Foreign Minister Jorge Arreaza, Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino, and others in his government from traveling within their borders.
Along with the US, anti-democratic TIAR countries include Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, the Dominican Republic, and Trinidad and Tobago.
They falsely designated regional peace, equity and justice champion Bolivarian officials “a threat to the preservation of peace and security on the continent.”
The Washington-based/US-controlled Organization of American States (OAS) overseas TIAR.
Like NATO’s collective defense Article 5, TIAR states that “an armed attack by any State against an American State will be considered an attack against all American States.”
Venezuelan Defense Minister Padrino earlier called the treaty “an instrument of domination and interventionism that goes against the independence and sovereignty of the people, a product of the already obsolete imperialist doctrines that have done so much damage to Latin America.”
Months earlier, Venezuelan Law Professor Pablo Aure tweeted: TIAR “will be the instrument that allows the entry of a foreign military coalition” against the Bolivarian Republic.
In September, Venezuelan Foreign Minister Arreaza said
“(w)e are ready to protect ourselves. We are ready to react. We will let no one trample sacred Venezuelan soil. We will respond and hope that never happens.”
Only 16 of TIAR’s original 35 member states remain part of the treaty. In 2014, Latin American and Caribbean countries proclaimed their region a zone of peace — not as long as they surrender their sovereign interests to a higher power in Washington.
Since social democracy replaced fascist rule in Venezuela, the Clintons, Bush/Cheney, Obama and Trump targeted the country for regime change, wanting control over its world’s largest oil reserves under pro-Western puppet rule.
For over 20 years, establishment media cheerled the imperial aim, waging all-out propaganda war on Venezuela, notably the NYT — currently blaming Nicolas Maduro for Trump regime economic terrorism on the country.
Its latest hit piece ignored US war on the country by other means, its illegal sanctions and other forms of state terror, its rage to gain another imperial trophy and plunder its resources.
It blamed US high crimes against humanity, greatly escalated by Trump regime hardliners, on “misrule (sic),” falsely adding:
“Years of corrupt, incompetent and autocratic rule have left Venezuelans hungry and children dying for want of basic medical care (sic).”
Blaming victims of imperial crimes is longstanding US policy. Supportive establishment media operate the same way, notably the Times.
It never met a sovereign independent government unwilling to sell its soul to Washington it didn’t want forcefully toppled and transformed into US client state status.
Trump regime viciousness bears full responsibility for hard times in Venezuela, what the scourge of imperialism is all about — supported by the Times instead of denouncing it.
The record of the self-styled newspaper of record mocks what journalism the way it should be is all about — comforting the afflicted, touching the right nerves, featuring the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, especially when ugly.
A Final Comment
A new Meganalisis poll showed US-designated Guaido’s support is less than 10%. Only 11% “trust and support” the opposition-controlled National Assembly.
On December 3, Reuters reported that crowds turning out to hear Guaido are a small fraction of earlier in the year numbers, adding:
“(S)ome of his (National Assembly supporters are) jostling for…new leadership…Maduro’s grip on power seems to be strengthening.” Guaido “missed his moment.”
According to Caracas-based political analyst Dimitris Pantoulas, “(t)he political reality we have had in Venezuela for the last 10 months has finished.”
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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.”
Shortly after several social-democratic opposition members of the Parliament of Canada, a number of national and local unions, and members of the left-wing Quebec Solidaire party in Quebec’s National Assembly, took a position against the coup in Bolivia, another Canadian union issued a press release.
The release by the Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW), representing 54,000 workers, is dated November 20 and titled: “CUPW condemns Bolivian coup.”
“CUPW [the Canadian Union of Postal Workers] is appalled to see international actors including Canada, the UK and the U.S.A. condoning a coup d’état in Bolivia, enacted by a group of military, police and right-wing politicians.
“Socialist Evo Morales was Bolivia’s first indigenous president. His social policies pulled many people out of poverty and leave a legacy of indigenous empowerment and improvements for the Bolivian working class. Bolivia adopted a new secular constitution in 2009 under his administration.
“Right-wing forces and the military refused to acknowledge Morales’ October 2019 re-election – by a resounding majority on the first-round ballot – and forced his resignation. He has been in exile [in Mexico] since.
“Though election ‘irregularities’ were alleged, there’s been no evidence of election fraud put forward.”
After mentioning the racist and classist nature of the violence resulting from the coup, the CUPW goes on to express its solidarity with Bolivian trade unions and social movements. It concludes:
“CUPW holds very dear the right to peoples’ self-determination and will never accept an undemocratic, violent coup against the clear and overwhelming democratic will of the people.”
While opposition to the coup grows in Canada, neither the Canadian government nor the capitalist media, which always support the so-called “opposition” (i.e., whoever the U.S. favors), as they have done in Venezuela, apparently have nothing to say.
Yet the workers and peoples of Canada are determined. No power anywhere in the world can make the people turn their anti-imperialist movement into an appendage of the Trudeau government’s foreign policy in Latin America and the Caribbean.
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This article was originally published in Spanish in Trabajadores, Newspaper of the Cuban Trade Union Central.
Africa now contains 1.3 billion inhabitants, almost twice that of Europe’s population, and the number of African people continues expanding rapidly in what comprises the world’s second biggest continent.
Following five centuries of pillage and exploitation by Western imperial powers, Africa is today riddled with poverty and social injustice. Africa remains a sought after land mass for the world’s strongest states. One of the reasons for this is that two African nations, Libya in the north and Nigeria further south, contain the world’s 9th and 10th largest oil reserves respectively.
Among the motives behind the March 2011 United States-NATO military assault on Libya, was to reinstate control over that country’s oil sources, which under Muammar Gaddafi was becoming increasingly uncertain. Seven months later, on 20 October 2011, Gaddafi was viciously murdered by NATO-backed forces. His son Mutassim Gaddafi, the former National Security Advisor of Libya, was also killed that same day in a premeditated and cold-blooded fashion.
The 69-year-old Gaddafi’s unseemly death was generally applauded in the West. Norway’s then prime minister Jens Stoltenberg, and the current NATO Secretary General, described Gaddafi’s liquidation as “a turning point for Libya”. Indeed, it was a turning point, as Libya was splintered apart into warring factions, with the nation since descending into chaos and ruin. Britain’s prime minister at the time, David Cameron, said upon hearing of Gaddafi’s death that Libya would have “an even greater chance, after this news, of building themselves a strong and democratic future”.
On the international scene condemnation of Gaddafi’s murder was a rare thing, and came from those such as Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez – with the Cuban leader noting that his killing was something “which violates the most elementary principles of Islamic rules” while Chavez denounced it as “another outrage”.
NATO chiefs were satisfied, however, as it removed an obstacle to US control over Libya’s oil sources, a country which also has an extensive coastline along the Mediterranean Sea. One of the primary tasks of NATO is to safeguard access to raw materials and strategic localities. In June 2007 NATO’s then Secretary General, Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, said to a gathering of members in Brussels that “NATO troops have to guard pipelines that transport oil and gas that is directed to the West”. Another of NATO’s functions is “to protect sea routes used by tankers and other ‘crucial infrastructure’ of the energy system”.
A separate reason behind the US-led attack on Libya was to stem the tide of Arab Spring revolts, which first broke out in Tunisia during December 2010. Tunisia borders Libya to the west, with protests in the following weeks spreading to other nearby states like Egypt. Contrary to misrepresentations in Western media, the Arab Spring was looked upon with much concern by First World leaders.
As has been known for decades along the corridors of power in Washington and London, nationalist movements or popular uprisings – and not communism or terrorism – has constituted the biggest threat to Western hegemony and control over foreign resources. The purported spectre of communism was used as a smokescreen by leaders to frighten the public and keep them in line. It has seldom ever been desirable for imperial states to promote real democratic ideals abroad, which is incompatible with their core interests regarding oil and gas, along with control over other mineral reserves.
George Kennan, the famous American planner and historian, outlined in a top secret document dated 24 February 1948 that, “We need not deceive ourselves that we can afford today the luxury of altruism and world benefaction” including “unreal objectives such as human rights, the raising of the living standards, and democratization”. Two years later, in 1950, Kennan recognised that the imperative need was for the “protection of our raw materials”. These views remain relevant right up to today.
Following the intervention against Libya, US predominance over this north African country has largely been restored. In June 2019 Ahmed Maiteeq, the Libyan deputy prime minister, called the US “our main ally”, while Libya is in the midst of a destructive civil war ongoing for over five years.
The African continent contains about 30% of the world’s remaining mineral resources, ranging from diamonds and copper to gold and silver. Parts of Africa are also rich in lithium, a natural element which has become increasingly sought after. For example, lithium is an essential material used to power batteries for electric cars, and there are great levels of this substance in countries like Mali, Zimbabwe and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DR Congo).
Mainly because of vested interests embedded in fossil fuel production, the electric car industry has been painfully slow to emerge. Petrol and diesel-fuelled vehicles account for almost 20% of world carbon emissions. With growing pressure upon governments to tackle climate change, the number of electric cars globally will surely multiply in the years to come, thereby increasing the demand for lithium.
Since 2009, Africa’s largest trading partner has been none other than China, which overtook the US that year. At the start of this century, Beijing’s trade levels with Africa stood at just $10 billion. By 2014 it had risen to $220 billion, before declining somewhat to $170 billion in 2017.
Beijing’s financial dealings with Africa are indeed a recent phenomenon, and trade exchanges provide China with only limited sway on the African continent. As a consequence, reports of China “taking over Africa” are very likely overstated and unrealistic.
China possesses just one army base overseas, which was opened in August 2017 and is located in the east African country of Djibouti. While China seeks influence abroad mainly through its financial and industrial initiatives, Washington focuses primarily on means of force. The Pentagon today controls 36 military bases in Africa, most of which are located along the continent’s strategically vital regions, in central and eastern Africa.
There are now about 7,000 US troops stationed on African soil, as part of US Africa Command (AFRICOM) – something which is barely known among the American public. US congressmen, like Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, have expressed surprise on learning the true extent of US militarism in little known African countries like Niger. In 2008, the year that AFRICOM began its operations, Washington had only 2,600 soldiers in Africa. This year alone, two new US bases have opened for business, one in landlocked Niger and the other in Somalia, the latter situated in the Horn of Africa.
The Horn of Africa, on the continent’s far east, is one of the most prized territories in Africa. It juts out into the Indian Ocean and Arabian Sea, providing a field of air and naval operations in important regions. Furthermore, situated just a few hundred miles north-eastwards of the Horn of Africa lies oil rich Saudi Arabia, which can be reached by crossing the Red Sea.
Unsurprisingly, Washington has implemented an enlarging military presence in Horn of Africa countries like Somalia, where 500 American soldiers are today based, compared to just 50 US soldiers present in Somalia three years ago.
Moving upwards past Somalia, the Americans can deploy aircraft or utilise their navy to reach the Strait of Hormuz and Persian Gulf waters. These rich seas are linked together in one way or another, and guarantee Washington power over resources.
Since president Donald Trump assumed office nearly three years ago, the US military has conducted dozens of air strikes in Somalia against “extremists”; inevitably, civilians are killed in these attacks, which are sometimes carried out indiscriminately or based on faulty intelligence reports.
The US footprint in Somalia is still a fraction compared to its status in neighbouring Djibouti, also in the Horn of Africa – where 4,000 American military personnel reside in Djibouti City, at Camp Lemonnier, the “crown in the jewel” of US bases in Africa. The Pentagon pays more than $60 million annually for its military’s use of the Camp Lemonnier base, and has a contract to continue leasing it until 2034.
Washington’s interest in Djibouti is at least partly due to the strategic significance of this tiny east African nation. Directly off Djibouti’s northern coast lies the Bab el-Mandeb Strait. In 2018, 6.2 million barrels of crude oil and refined petroleum were each day shipped through the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, and the numbers have been steadily increasing. This Strait now accounts for almost 10% of total seaborne oil shipped globally.
Powerful concerns are at stake here, as a sizable amount of these resources are sent to America, along with Europe and Asia. The Strait is a link between the Horn of Africa and Middle East, which furthermore connects the Gulf of Aden to the Red Sea.
Meanwhile, a growing proportion of US operations in Africa relates to drone attacks, in which an unmanned combat aerial vehicle (UCAV) targets below persons, buildings, installations, etc. Drones are armed with weapons like Hellfire missiles, which have been modified over the years.
Since 2011, the Pentagon has carried out around 600 drone strikes in Libya, and rising levels of these attacks have been witnessed in Somalia too. Drone warfare has proven to be a particularly harmful military action and, as has been documented, each drone assault can produce more extremists than will conceivably be killed. US drone attacks have terrorised civilian inhabitants around Africa and the Middle East, playing a role in radicalising communities and imbuing them with hostile attitudes towards America.
The Pentagon also has drones in flight above other African nations like Chad, Cameroon and Niger. Washington boasts a considerable foothold in Niger, where at least 800 US troops are stationed. It has been reported that American soldiers are active in Niger to help train local armies in the fight against Boko Haram, a terrorist organisation which in March 2015 pledged allegiance to Islamic State (ISIS). However, in one way or another, Washington’s foreign policies over the past 40 years have been a pivotal factor in the disturbing rise of terrorist groups in the Eastern hemisphere.
Niger and its American squadrons are positioned in an important area too: to the south lies neighbour and US ally Nigeria, rich in oil and gas and Africa’s most populous country. Boko Haram’s headquarters are located in north-eastern Nigeria, and this Jihadist group are also active in nearby states such as Chad and Cameroon.
The Trump administration’s supposed bid to wipe out Boko Haram by force of arms has been dismissed by Washington-based think tanks, like the Center for International Policy (CIP). William Hartung, a director at CIP and an experienced American military analyst, recently rebuked the Pentagon for its “overly militarized approach” in Africa, which he feels “has been a dismal failure”.
Hartung says that attempts “to eradicate terrorism by force may be exacerbating the problem, provoking a terrorist backlash and serving as a recruiting tool for extremist groups”.
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Shane Quinn obtained an honors journalism degree. He is interested in writing primarily on foreign affairs, having been inspired by authors like Noam Chomsky. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.
It is supremely ironic that Pentagon officials take an oath to support and defend the Constitution because they intentionally destroyed the Fifth and Sixth Amendments to the Constitution when they set up their “judicial” system at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. In fact, the very reason the Pentagon established its system in Cuba, rather than the United States, was to circumvent and avoid the provisions of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.
Prior to the 9/11 attacks, whenever someone was charged with terrorism or any other criminal offense, U.S. officials would secure a grand-jury indictment and then prosecute him in a U.S. District Court. The accused in the federal court system is guaranteed certain procedural protections, many of which were carved out during centuries of resistance by British citizens to the tyranny of their own government. Our American ancestors demanded that many of those procedural protections be expressly enshrined in the Bill of Rights so that everyone would know that federal officials would have to abide by them whenever they charged people with federal crimes.
Examples of procedural guarantees include no cruel and unusual punishments, the right to confront adverse witnesses, the right to counsel, the right to due process of law, the right of trial by jury, the right to be presumed innocent, the right to remain silent, the right of speedy trial, the right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures, the right to be free of coerced confessions, and the right to counsel.
After 9/11, the Pentagon established its own “judicial” system at Gitmo to try terrorism cases, as an alternative to the federal judicial system in the United States. Yet, one searches in vain for any authority in the Constitution for the Pentagon to do that. When one reads the Constitution, the intent of the Framers is clear: one judicial system — the federal system — for trying all cases involving the commission of federal offenses.
Contrary to what some people maintain, terrorism is not an act of war. It is a federal criminal offense. That’s why it’s listed in the U.S. Code, which enumerates federal criminal offenses. It’s also why terrorism cases have long been tried in federal district court. It’s also why the Pentagon is prosecuting terrorism defendants in its “judicial” system in Cuba.
The establishment of the Pentagon’s system now enables federal officials the option of sending people who are accused of terrorism into two different systems — one run by the federal courts and the other run by the Pentagon. Thus, if two different people are charged with participating in the same terrorism offense, one can be sent into the federal court system and the other can be sent into the Pentagon’s system.
The choice makes all the difference in the world to people who are accused of terrorism because the two systems are total opposites. The Pentagon’s system has destroyed the procedural guarantees that the federal court system still protects. There is no trial by jury in the Pentagon’s system; trial is by military tribunal. Torture and other cruel and unusual punishments are meted out in the Pentagon’s system, oftentimes before conviction. Confessions can be coerced and are admissible into evidence. Hearsay evidence is admissible, which nullifies the right to confront adverse witnesses. Defendants are presumed guilty and treated accordingly. There is no right of speedy trial; some people have languished in the Pentagon’s system for more than a decade without trial. In the beginning, the Pentagon wasn’t even going to allow its prisoners have lawyers, but the Supreme Court put the quietus to that plan by ordering otherwise. Even then, the Pentagon has secretly monitored communications between attorney and client, a severe violation of the attorney-client privilege that is sacred in the federal court system.
Again, this was all by design. The U.S. military has long been a conservative organization, and conservatives have long poo-pooed the procedural protections in the Bill of Rights as nothing more than ludicrous constitutional “technicalities” intended to let guilty people go free. After 9/11, the Pentagon decided that it was going to show how an ideal “judicial” system would operate, one in which such constitutional “technicalities” could be ignored.
In the process, America ended up adopting a “judicial” system that is very similar to those in totalitarian regimes. After more than 200 years of Bill of Rights protection, the fear generated by the 9/11 attacks enabled the Pentagon to figure how a way to successfully circumvent those protections. In the name of keeping us “safe” from “the terrorists,” the result has been a destruction of critically important parts of the Bill of Rights.
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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. View these interviews atLewRockwell.com and from Full Context. Send him email.
The US House of Representatives marked a milestone today as it decided to report out articles of impeachment on Trump. But there’s a bigger picture to consider. The impeachment represents a new stage in the political ‘food fight’ between the two wings of the political-economic elite in the USA. It also represents a further escalation in the crisis and decline of American Democracy–a decline that’s been going on since at least the early 1990s, when Newt Gingrich and the radical right took over the House and declared publicly their strategy was to create a dysfunctional US government. In retrospect, Gingrich has certainly succeeded.
But it’s not just since Newt. US Democracy has been in decline on a number of fronts since the 1970s, which corresponds with the rise of Neoliberal economic policies. Late stage Neoliberalism today is in crisis. Since the 2008 crash political elites and policy makers have been attempting to restore it to its pre-2008 momentum but have failed. Obama failed. Trump’s regime should be viewed as an attempt to restore it in a new, virulent aggressive Neoliberalism 2.0 form. Trump has been only partially successful to date as well, and will likely fail as well regardless of the 2020 election outcome.
A new crisis is around the corner in 2020, driven by accelerating fundamental changes in the nature of capitalism itself. At least three forces will further exacerbate the internal contradictions within the neoliberal policy regime. They include the deepening of Artificial Intelligence technologies that will further devastate and already rapidly changing labor market, eliminating or reducing tens of millions of simple decision making jobs. It will radically transform as well product markets and distribution systems of 21st century capitalism. It will change the nature of money itself. All these trends are already underway and will continue to intensify in the years immediately ahead. Neoliberal capitalism will also not be able to resolve the climate crisis, also accelerating. Third, it has already generated a level of unsustainable corporate, financial, household and government debt which inevitably must lead to financial markets imploding the next decade.
As these basic material forces generate a long term crisis, contradictions within the neoliberal policy regime continue to intensify as well. The four elements of Neoliberal policy–or Neoliberalism in practice–are Fiscal, Monetary, Industrial and External (trade, money capital flows, currency exchange rates, and the twin deficits). What’s been happening since 2008 is that the advancement of neoliberal policy in one or more of these four elements negates the restoration or advancement in one or more of the other three. The contradictions within Neoliberalism are intensifying, in other words, just as more fundamental technological and capitalist system changes are developing as well. The outcome next decade will likely be a major global economic crisis, the dimensions of which will make the 2008-09 event pale in comparison.
In order to advance, deepen, and expand Neoliberalism has had to limit and eliminate elements of Democracy. Neoliberalism and Democracy, even in the limited American form of Democracy, are essentially incompatible. The historical record since the 1980s confirms this. On a number of levels, as Neoliberal policies have advanced, Democracy has atrophied. This is not by accident nor a mere correlation.
Moreover, the decline of Democracy has accelerated since the 1990s, and especially so after 2000. It is evident in the collapse of any semblance of campaign finance reform, in the transformation of the two political parties into vehicles increasingly of corporate and investor wealth subsidization, in the assertion of the Supreme Court to interfere with electoral processes and to legally enable corporate-investor political influence, in the spread of voter suppression by various means (i.e. a new Jim Crow also endorsed by the Supreme Court), widespread gerrymandering, a greater role played by the electoral college to prevent popular sovereignty, passage of special courts in free trade treaties that negate popular sovereignty, attacks on civil liberties (patriot act, NDAA spying and surveillance, etc.) and guarantees of the Bill of Rights, a transformation of the so-called ‘fourth estate’ of media-press into vehicles of ideology, a transformation of the two political parties into institutions more tightly controlled by money interests–the list is long and growing (and deepening). With the crisis of 2008-09 the process of Democracy decline in America has been accelerating.
And that process has reached a new milestone with the articles of impeachment of Trump forthcoming. For the behavior of Trump has clearly violated numerous provisions of the US constitution. What we have under Trump is an assault on Representative government and the formal institutions of Democracy, as limited as they may already be.
Make no mistake, however. This development reflected in Trump’s regime is not an isolated, individual event. Trump’s attack on Democracy is just the latest stage of the assault on Democracy that has been gaining momentum under Neoliberalism since the 1980s, accelerating after 2000 under George W. Bush, and intensifying in the post-2008 period even further.
And it’s going to get worse in 2020 in the run up to the 2020 November election. It is not alarmist to project that the 2020 election will be close. Trump probably has an electoral college advantage, even if he loses the popular vote by even more than he did in 2016. Behind him is a sycophant Republican party and a base of at least 30% of the population that would vote for him regardless of any crime he might commit. He has his ideological bullhorn in Fox News, Breitbart, and Twitter and he will use it, increasingly aggressively. Should he lose the election, chances are more than even he will refuse to acknowledge that loss. Should he win it narrowly, he will likely turn vindictively against those who opposed him. He is a ‘down and dirty’ street fighter, weaned on the corrupt and questionable practices of New York commercial property speculators. In short, there will likely be a constitutional crisis circa the November 2020 election, the likes of which are comparable only to the 1850s American political debacle. (Trump himself has said if not elected there will be a ‘civil war’ again in the USA).
American Democracy and the US system is about to enter a period of instability it has not witnessed since the early 1930s. Hold onto your seats, folks, the real show hasn’t even yet begun!
The following passages summarize my views on the deepening contradictions of Neoliberalism and its fundamental incompatibility with Democracy in the era of Trump. It is an excerpt from the concluding chapter, ‘Neoliberalism v. Democracy’ in my recently published book, The Scourge of Neoliberalism: US Economic Policy From Reagan to Trump, Clarity press, January 2020). It illustrates how Trump’s regime reflects an intensifying assault on Democracy in America, the latest stage of that incompatibility of a new aggressive, virulent form of Trump Neoliberalism with Democracy in America as we’ve known it.
Trump’s Assault on Democratic Government, Chapter 10, The Scourge of Neoliberalism, by Dr. Jack Rasmus
As Neoliberalism has become more aggressive under Trump, so too have the attacks on democracy and democratic government.
After three years in power, and with the House of Representatives and much of the mainstream media challenging him after the November 2018 elections, the President is clearly drifting toward usurping the authority and, in some cases, even the functions allocated by the US Constitution to Congress—specifically to the US House of Representatives—toward a view he is above the law and unimpeachable. Toward a view that his presidency is more than a ‘co-equal’ branch of government. Toward a view he can and should govern when necessary by bypassing Congress. Toward a view the Constitution means he can force states to abandon their rights to govern. And toward a view the president can publicly attack, vilify, insult, coerce, and threaten opponents, critics, and whomever he chooses.
That drift includes the expansion of Executive branch rule-making at the expense of Congress and the legislative branch; the broadening use of ‘national security’ declarations by the president to bypass Congressional authority; and the refusal to recognize US House authority as it exercises its Constitutional responsibility to undertake investigations of corruption in the executive branch.
Usurpation of Legislative Authority
Presidential rule making by Executive Order has been long embedded in the US political system. In the past, however, Executive Orders by presidents have been issued where the president clearly has authority to issue such, or else in cases where Congress has not passed specific legislation—such as Obama’s EOs enabling children born in or brought to the US by non-citizen immigrant parents to have deferment from deportation . EOs have not been typically issued, however, that directly change the intent or the funding authorization of legislation passed by Congress. Not so in the case of Trump.
Passing laws requires their accompanying funding authorization. The monies allocated to a program by Congress are required to be spent on that specific program. However, under the cover of invoking a national emergency, Trump recently unilaterally transferred money allocated by Congress and authorized by the US House for defense spending to fund his border wall. This creates a dangerous precedent. Might Trump now divert authorized spending by Congress to other programs? This is clearly a constitutional issue now. Trump is in effect governing by ‘national security decree’ in direct challenge to Congressional legislative authority. The much heralded ‘separation of powers’ in US government has been undermined to a degree.
Drift Toward Tyranny
In addition to expanding Executive rule-making at the expense of Congress and the legislative branch, and his refusal to cooperate with Congressional subpoena and investigation rights under the Constitution, worrisome signs keep arising that indicate Trump also considers himself personally ‘above the law’.
The US political system has always given the President authority to pardon individuals, which is usually undertaken at the end of their term in office. It’s a curious and decidedly un-democratic practice that has been increasingly institutionalized in recent decades under Neoliberalism, by both Republican and Democrat presidents and governors. A hallmark of American political ideology proclaims to the public that ‘no one is above the law’. Yet, some are, as executive pardons have become increasingly commonplace. But these are presidential (and governor) executive pardons of others. No president to date has publicly suggested that he himself might be above the law or has the right to ‘self pardon’. But Trump has.
The process of usurping legislative authority, to fund his preferred programs at the expense of Congress, may have just begun, but the drift by Trump toward an imperial presidency in domestic legislation may well expand as his confrontation with Congress grows. Second, his suggestion of the right to assume power of self-pardon smacks of Tyranny. These trends—toward usurpation and tyranny—represent decided undemocratic principles that the president feels comfortable with.
Although in early form, the trends suggest a view by Trump that the presidency is an institution ‘more equal’ than the other branches of government. It has long been obvious that, in foreign affairs, the presidency since the 1960s—and even before—has been becoming more ‘imperial’. Presidents go to war without obtaining a war declaration by Congress, as was clearly intended by the US Constitution—token limits by the 1970s era ‘war powers act’ notwithstanding. The Trump presidency may reflect an extension of this imperial attitude to domestic US politics, i.e the emergence of what might be called the imperial presidency in domestic affairs.
Redefining Separation of Powers
The Trump presidency’s disregard for Constitutional norms in its relationship with Congress, and in particular the US House of Representatives, has recently become evident as well in Trump’s outright refusal to allow executive branch employees to testify to Congress, subpoenas notwithstanding. This stonewalling is but another example of the Trump presidency’s view that the Executive and Legislative branches are perhaps not ‘co-equal’ under the Constitution. Constitutional authority clearly provides the US House with investigative powers. Trump’s refusal to cooperate with that Congressional authority represents yet another reinterpretation of Constitutional separation of powers.
Reinterpreting the Supremacy Clause
Trump’s offensive against California’s auto emissions rule exemplifies his reinterpretation of the Constitution’s ‘supremacy clause’ and states’ rights. It has long been accepted that state laws cannot provide less than a similar federal law. For example, states cannot pass a minimum wage lower than the federal minimum wage. But they can pass legislation providing more than the federal minimum wage. Trump’s attack on California emissions in effect means the state cannot pass tougher emission standards than the federal standards, which are far less stringent. If that becomes a legal precedent, states logically could not pass legislation that is either less than or greater than the federal requirements. It’s a violation of the federalism principle in the Constitution.
Assuming the Power of the Purse
Trump’s trade wars represent yet another example of Executive powers expansion. The trade wars have generated tens of billions in additional tariff revenues for the executive branch. These funds have been used in part by the president to issue direct subsidies to US farm interests in the amount of $28 billion over the past year. A constitutional argument can be made that payment of subsidies in such amount should be authorized only by legislation raised and authorized by the US House. The Constitution’s intent gave the US House the authority of ‘power of the purse’ to raise and authorize spending of revenues—and not the Executive.
Disregarding Democratic Norms & Practices
Other disturbing examples abound of the Trump presidency disregard for accepted democratic norms and practices.
Never before has a president so blatantly attacked the press and media that criticized him. Or vilified political opponents as ‘traitors’ and ‘criminals’; or publicly demanded candidates be ‘arrested and locked up’; or incited popular mobilizations against protestors and his critics; or launched purges within his own bureaucracy (in particular the intelligence agencies) and political party; or declared if Congress were to try to impeach him it would mean a new civil war in the country. These are not just the verbal railings of an aberrant personality who by chance attained the highest office of US government.
These are actions that reflect a calculated and fundamental disregard for even the limited form of democracy that still prevails in US government institutions today. They are views that reflect a belief that Executive powers of the president should and must be expanded—even if at the expense of the authority of legislative branch of government (Congress or states); even if it at the expense of the legitimacy of the press and ‘fourth estate’; even if it deepens the polarization of US society and incites citizen to citizen violence. Trump believes it is all necessary in order to implement his policies and programs—and this is what we must keep foremost in mind—it’s a Neoliberal program.
The key question for assessing the future of Neoliberalism is whether Trump is a product of the evolution of Neoliberalism and its impact on political institutions and practices—or whether the Trump presidency is an aberration outside that evolution? Trump: Inevitable or Aberration
Is a Trump-like political figure the inevitable consequence of the need to introduce post 2008-09 a more aggressive, virulent form of Neoliberalism? Would an alternative president have to have moved in the same anti-democracy direction to get his/her agenda passed in the era of deepening domestic and global opposition to Neoliberalism? Perhaps that alternative president might have been less crude, less brash, less apt to ‘shoot from the hip’ on policy and political initiative—less likely to engage in early morning social media excesses; and indeed therefore have been even more clever and effective.
But one should make no mistake. Trump is not a lone wolf who slipped into the US presidency by accident or ineptitude of his opponents. Neoliberalism required a more aggressive restored form following the crisis it faced in the wake of the 2008-09 crash. Certain moneyed interests were in 2016, and are still, behind Trump. And if it wasn’t him, it would have been another chosen to shake up the old political establishment that was beginning to lose control over growing discontent at home and growing capitalist competition abroad.
The problem with Trump in the end has been his style, which has made it impossible for him to unite US business interests, and the traditional political elites, behind him in an effort to jointly restore the Neoliberal policy regime. Instead, he has precipitated an internecine political fight within the ruling class in America—i.e. a classic post-crisis political ‘food fight’ between two wings of the American economic and political elite.
A similar post-crisis split and internecine ruling class conflict has been occurring globally elsewhere as well—not just in Trump’s America. In the UK (Brexit), in France (the National Front), Germany (the rise of Afd), in several eastern European countries (Hungary, Austria, Poland), in various countries in Latin America (Argentina, Brazil, Ecuador), and in Asia in India and Philippines. All are trying to come to terms with slowing economies and an emerging global recession, as Neoliberal policies failed globally after 2008-09, giving rise to right wing autocrats and anti-democratic politicians. And in virtually all cases, including the US, in attempting to re-establish Neoliberalism on firmer ground, democracy, democratic norms, and institutions have been the victims.
The Trump era represents only the deepening of anti-democracy trends in the US that have been evolving since the introduction of Neoliberal policies circa 1980. In the Neoliberal era the two mainstream political parties became more oligarchic in their programs and representation. Money deepened its hold on government and politics steadily over the decades. Electoral processes became more the purview of the rich and powerful. Gerrymandering and voter suppression became more the norm than the exception. Popular sovereignty and representative government for all, more a fiction than fact. Public wants and needs that can only be fulfilled by government have been increasingly ignored, in favor of interests and requests of tens of thousands of paid lobbyists. And citizens’ civil liberties and rights have been increasingly limited, circumscribed, and surveilled.
The correlation between the rise and expansion of Neoliberalism and the decline of democracy in the US is irrefutable. Whether the correlation also represents a direct causation depends on whether each milestone event associated with the expansion of Neoliberalism occurs in tandem with, or in consequence of, an event marking a further deterioration of democracy.
And here the evidence and examples abound: the transformation of the political parties in the 1980s and early 1990s and rise Neoliberal tax and monetary policy. The radical right takeover of the US House in 1994 and advent of free trade. Gore v. Bush, the selection of the president by the judiciary in 2000 and still more tax cuts, war spending, the end of campaign finance reform, the Patriot and NDAA Acts and the attacks on civil liberties and democratic rights, and free trade treaties with their capitalist courts and negation of representative government. Thereafter, Obama followed by the Supreme Court’s Citizens United and related decisions, widespread gerrymandering, intensifying voter suppression, more war spending, more business tax cuts, more deficits, more free money to investors and bankers, more attacks on unions, more wage compression. And now Trump.
It’s more than just a ‘smoking gun’. It’s certainly not just coincidental that democracy in America has been in decline—and on so many fronts—during the era of Neoliberalism. Nor is it coincidental that under Trump the decline of democracy in America has intensified, and has begun to assume an attack on the prevailing constitutional form of government itself.
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Jack Rasmus is author of the just published book, ‘The Scourge of Neoliberalism: US Economic Policy from Reagan to Trump’, Clarity press, January 2020. (The book is available at discount from his blog, jackrasmus.com, and his website, http://kyklosproductions.com, where reviews of the book are also available.
Featured image: Trump reinstate sanctions against Iran (White House photo by Shealah Craighead)
Is a deal in the works for Netanyahu to step down as prime minister in return for a presidential pardon — with the aim of avoiding a third election next year? More on this below.
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Netanyahu faces prosecution for bribery, fraud and breach of trust.
Israeli attorney general Avichai Mendelblit said he “damaged the image of the public service and public trust in it (by abusing his office), knowingly “taking a bribe as a public servant in exchange for actions related to (his) position.”
Charges against him are over arranging favorable news site coverage and accepting lavish gifts in return for political favors.
He remains prime minister because his Likud party and Benny Gantz’s Blue and White party failed to cobble together a majority 61-seat ruling coalition after elections in April and September.
An unprecedented third one looms next year without deadlock resolution. Netanyahu vowed to stay in office despite charges against him. Israeli law only requires a sitting prime minister to step down if convicted.
Israeli President Reuven Rivlin accused political leaders of preferring “to go crazy” rather than agree on coalition rule.
If impasse is unresolved by December 11, a third election will be called for next year, late February the earliest possible date, according to a Knesset legal official.
On Tuesday, Netanyahu’s latest meeting with challenger Benny Gantz failed to resolve differences, Gantz reportedly saying he distrusts the prime minister more than ever.
Israel’s Channel 13 said Netanyahu seeks a deal to let him remain prime minister for another three to six months in return for Gantz’s Blue and White party getting key ministries.
Gantz reportedly rejected the offer and earlier ones because Netanyahu can’t be trusted to fulfill promises made. Reportedly he said: “I believe him less today.”
On Wednesday, Netanyahu said he’s “ready for (new) elections,” adding: “They’re not moving one millimeter. One nano-meter, they’re not moving.”
“We made all kinds of proposals, with all kinds of ways to make sure that this unity government will be stable, but they are simply refusing.”
Gantz responded saying: Netanyahu “has been digging in his heels and has not been offering anything new,” adding:
“That is not how you conduct negotiations. He needs to look me — and Israeli citizens — in the eye and say what he thinks and wants instead of shirking responsibility.”
According to the Jerusalem Post (JP), Israeli President Rivlin “will consider pardoning Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in exchange for the PM retiring from political life and confessing to the crimes of which he is accused, Channel 12 reported Wednesday night.”
Earlier he rejected a plea bargain or pardon. So far, he hasn’t responded to the latest offer. According to the JP, his former lawyer Jacob Weinroth failed to convince him to take a similar deal earlier.
In June 2018, the JP said Mendelblit supports the above deal. No formal offers have been reported so far.
At the same time, Rivlin has been exerting heavy pressure on Netanyahu and Gantz to avoid a third election — the outcome likely to be similar to April and September results if held, leaving impasse unresolved.
As things now stand, the best chance, maybe the only one, to resolve things and be able to form a new government is for Netanyahu to resign.
It remains to be seen if he’ll accept Rivlin’s reported offer — stepping down, admitting guilt, and accepting public humiliation in return for avoiding prosecution, likely conviction and imprisonment.
Charges against him omit his highest of high crimes of war, against humanity, and slow-motion genocide against long-suffering Palestinians.
For over a decade, Gazans have been harmed most of all under suffocating medieval siege, an entire population held hostage for political reasons.
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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.”
The Mainstream Media is pushing forth the weaponized narrative that the Iranian government is carrying out a cover-up of mass killings that supposedly occurred during its recent unrest, though this is nothing more than an infowar conspiracy designed to make the majority of the non-violent citizens that participated in the large-scale protests suspicious of the state as well as further discredit the country’s international reputation.
Amnesty International scandalously cited unpublished and vaguely described “credible reports” to claim that over 200 people were killed during Iran’s recent unrest, adding that “the real figure is likely to be higher”. This accusation is part and parcel of the renewed Hybrid War on Iran that’s seeking to capitalize on the failed Color Revolution attempt from last month when tens of thousands of people took to the streets to protest the government’s decision to decrease fuel subsidies in order to fund a cash payment plan to the country’s most needy families. It should be said that the majority of the people who participated in these large-scale protests didn’t engage in acts of violence, but their presence at these events inadvertently served as cover for a select cadre of professional provocateurs and foreign intelligence agents to carry out attacks against law enforcement officers and public property by exploiting those people as human shields behind which to hide.
As the author wrote at the time, “Iran’s Protests Are Grassroots, Not Foreign-Driven, And That’s The Real Problem“, while also later warning in an exclusive interview with Iran’s “Young Journalists Club” that Iran is being victimized by a US HybridWar. These two analyses might initially seem mutually exclusive but they aren’t. Legitimate grievances served to spontaneously bring a critical mass of protesters into the streets, during which time the vast majority of the participants were unwittingly turned into human shields by Hybrid War “sleeper cells” that were waiting for an opportunistic moment to carry out anti-state terrorist activities such as the ones that were previously described. The Iranian authorities ultimately prevailed in restoring law and order, though it’s presumed that some of the most radical provocateurs might have been injured or even killed throughout the course of these security operations, which could naturally occur in any country facing similar unrest.
The US and its regional allies who support the forces responsible for the recent violence desperately wanted to film, selectively edit, and then propagate decontextualized footage of those individuals clashing with the state so that they could then present this as so-called “evidence” that Iran is “killing unarmed protesters”, hoping that this infowar conspiracy would make the majority of the non-violent citizens that participated in the protests suspicious of the state as well as further discredit the country’s international reputation. That plan failed, so now the back-up one is to still make this claim regardless of any fabricated “evidence” and strongly hint that the reason that there isn’t any is because Iran cut off the internet during its “crackdown”. While criticized by some at the time, it was actually a very wise move for the state to do so in order to offset the exact same scenario that was just described, though it unwittingly fed into the US’ back-up infowar narrative.
Even so, that doesn’t mean that it was the wrong thing to do since the benefits of preventing further provocations during that very sensitive time far outweigh the “costs” of having Iran’s adversaries conspiratorially claim without any fabricated “evidence” that the security forces “killed hundreds of innocent protesters”. In terms of the bigger picture, it’s much better to decisively nip the Color Revolution unrest in the bud and deal with unsubstantiated claims from self-interested international forces than to be too afraid of being criticized for cutting off the internet and then having to face the consequences of those same actors fabricating “evidence” to back up their preplanned provocative claims that “hundreds of innocent protesters were killed”. Considering all of this, there isn’t any credence to the West’s accusations that Iran is carrying out a cover-up of mass killings during its recent unrest as these claims are nothing more than an infowar conspiracy.
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This article was originally published on OneWorld.
Andrew Korybko is an American Moscow-based political analyst specializing in the relationship between the US strategy in Afro-Eurasia, China’s One Belt One Road global vision of New Silk Road connectivity, and Hybrid Warfare. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.
After eight years of work, the World Health Organization (WHO) is reopening its review of the health effects of RF radiation for a summary report intended to serve as a benchmark for its more than 150 member countries. The report will be used as a guide to respond to widespread concerns over the new world of 5G.
The WHO issued a public call in October for detailed literature reviews on ten types of RF–health impacts from cancer to fertility to electrohypersensitivity. Some see the move as a sign that the health agency is interested in opinions beyond those of its long-time partner, the International Commission on Non-Ionizing Radiation Protection (ICNIRP). They hope that the WHO is finally ready to recognize evidence of low-level effects, in particular the link between cell phones and cancer. Others are far from convinced.
The skeptics see the new reviews as little more than a ruse. They fear that the WHO is only going through the motions and will in the end stick with ICNIRP’s long-held position that there are no RF effects other than those caused by heating.
Tight Schedule for the Systematic Reviews
The RF report, formally known as an Environmental Health Criteria (EHC) monograph, was last updated in 1993, more than 25 years ago. The WHO Radiation Program, based in Geneva, started working on a revision in 2012 with a target completion date of 2016. Eleven chapters of the draft report were released for review in 2014, and work on a second draft got under way soon after public comments were received. After that the process stalled, and the RF EHC was stuck in limbo.
Then, in early October —after a long public silence— the WHO issued the call for those ten “systematic reviews.” Systematic review is a term of art —you can read about it in a WHO handbook that presents a step-by-step formula on how to develop a health guideline, such as an EHC. The short version is that a systematic review takes a lot of work. As someone who has completed a number of them put it, “It’s not a trivial matter.” Even responding to a call for a systematic review is not easy, he said.
Each team must include at least two individuals, and “geographical diversity” is encouraged. Teams for systematic reviews can have up to six members, sometimes more, according to the WHO handbook.
The WHO set a very tight schedule. Responses to the call for all ten reviews are due today, November 4. Applicants had less than a month to complete the paperwork —that is, if they heard about it right away. The call was not published anywhere or posted on the Internet. Rather, Emilie van Deventer, the team leader of the WHO radiation program, sent a notice to her mailing list. Though the call is dated September, no one I spoke to received it before October 8. Many heard about it second hand, as did I.
Van Deventer left out some of those best-placed to raise awareness of the call. Dariusz Leszczynski, a now-retired professor in Helsinki who was a member of the IARC RF–cancer assessment in 2011 and who runs a blog for the EMF/RF community, wasn’t on her list. “I learned of it by coincidence, surfing the Internet,” he told me. Leszczynski posted the WHO announcement on October 9 and was one of the first to publicize it. (He is not responding to the call.)
Also ignored was Joel Moskowitz, a researcher at the University of California, Berkeley, who writes another widely followed blog, Electromagnetic Radiation Safety. He, like Leszczynski, has been critical of ICNIRP’s thermal-only outlook.
“It’s very surprising that they set such a short deadline; it would discourage good, very busy people from participating,” said one long-time researcher, who may submit a proposal. “You can’t put an international team together overnight.”
(A ground rule: With a few exceptions, those interviewed about the WHO call asked for anonymity so that they could speak frankly without jeopardizing their chances of being selected.)
A Fast Pace, But No Money
The pace does not ease up after the November 4 deadline. WHO officials have less than a month to evaluate the applications and make their selections. Work on the ten reviews must begin no later than December 2, and completed manuscripts submitted to an open-access, peer-reviewed journal within twelve months.
One more thing: There’s practically no money for the reviewers. WHO states that “only a small contribution towards the operating costs” will be available. In an e-mail exchange, van Deventer would not disclose the budget, saying only that there would likely not be enough money “to cover the total amount needed for a systematic review.”
According to the WHO handbook, members of a systematic review team “should have no financial or non-financial conflict of interest.” All applicants must submit a detailed declaration of interests, including income from employment, grants, consulting and investments.
The call states that each declaration “will be assessed for conflict of interests.” No one, apparently, will be automatically disqualified based on apparent conflicts, as was the case for IARC’s RF review in 2011 (more here; IARC is an agency of the WHO).
Who Picks? Why the Rush?
Most everyone I contacted was wondering, who will select the “winners”? When I posed the question to van Deventer, she replied the “WHO Secretariat,” adding that “rigorous internal processes” would be followed.
Even after they are picked, the identity of the winners will not be immediately revealed. Van Deventer said that she is not planning to announce the selections when the decisions are made. At the latest, we may not know who is preparing the reviews until they appear in print.
The other question on peoples’ minds was, “Why the big rush?” After all, work on the RF EHC began back in 2012; another month or two to give applicants more time would hardly make a difference.
In fact, EMF managers at the WHO knew years ago that systematic reviews would be required. That was part of new procedures for writing such documents, as set out in the WHO handbook. All van Deventer had to do was issue the call. She laid out what had to be done at an EMF Project advisory committee meeting in Geneva in late June 2017. She estimated that 15 reviews would be needed at a cost of $10-15,000 each. And, crucially, they “must be commissioned externally.” Even then, however, she did not have any money to pay for the reviews.
Over the last year, van Deventer has regularly briefed the International Telecommunications Union on the RF EHC. The ITU, which is also part of the UN, is a public-private partnership with many government and corporate members. In each talk, van Deventer said that the WHO would go ahead to “review, revise and update the 2014 draft.” In May of this year, she told the ITU that she would commission eight systematic reviews (see slide[1] below); the list was later expanded to ten.
Slide No.25, E. van Deventer presentation to the ITU, most likely on May 20, 2019[1]
A few days earlier at the same ITU meeting, the Mobile and Wireless Forum, a trade association formerly known as the Mobile Manufacturers Forum, was invited to give a presentation on “Preparing for 5G: Research Relating to RF Exposure.”
E-mail traffic, shared with Microwave News, shows that van Deventer’s briefings were well circulated among ITU’s corporate members who follow the health question.
If van Deventer knew years ago that systematic reviews were needed, why did she wait until now to issue the call and then allow less than a month for replies? I asked her but she did not answer. I also asked the WHO press office to explain the rush. No one there replied or even acknowledged the request.
Also, why were telecom managers better briefed on the pending reviews than those in the health sciences who would be doing them?
Is the Call Rigged To Favor ICNIRP?
The lack of advance notice and the fast deadline have led some to question whether the WHO engineered the schedule to help ICNIRP stay in control.
“I suspect that at least some have already been pre-selected to do the reviews,” said one European observer. “Even though it might seem to be an open and balanced approach,” commented another seasoned veteran, “I’m not convinced that in the end they won’t choose ICNIRP and Co.”
ICNIRP members would be well prepared to respond to the calls. They have recently finished their own literature reviews to update ICNIRP’s exposure guidelines, issued in 1998.
“The RF guidelines are now in press and publication is expected before the end of the year,” Eric van Rongen, the chairman of ICNIRP, told me in an e-mail exchange. In a presentation last April in Paris, van Rongen revealed that the exposure guidelines would continue to be based exclusively on thermal effects. There is “no evidence that RF EMF causes such diseases as cancer,” he said. Van Rongen is with the Health Council of the Netherlands.
Two important reviews by ICNIRP members have recently been published: one on epidemiological studies and the other on the NTP and Ramazzini animal studies. As von Rongen reaffirmed, neither indicates any movement towards accepting even the possibility of a RF–cancer risk.
WHO and ICNIRP’s Long, Intimate Association
From the very beginning, the WHO EMF Project and ICNIRP have been intertwined. This is not surprising since Michael Repacholi, an Australian biophysicist turned bureaucrat, was instrumental in setting up both organizations, ICNIRP in 1992 and the EMF Project four years later. (His bio is here, there’s a lot more below.)
From the very beginning, the EMF Project relied on ICNIRP for its scientific expertise, or in UN-speak, to serve as its scientific secretariat. In 2005, seven years before work on revising the RF EHC began, the WHO commissioned ICNIRP to do a review of the RF health literature, and Repacholi announced that the review would “serve as an input” for the RF EHC. It was completed in 2008.
Rick Saunders and van Rongen, then an ICNIRP member and advisor, respectively, were asked to help the WHO guide the EHC “to its completion.”
Work on the RF EHC formally began at a meeting in Geneva in January 2012. The EHC would be based in part on ICNIRP’s literature review, according to the EMF Project’s 2012-2013 annual report. A “core group” was established to help develop the EHC. Five of its six members[2] had close ties to ICNIRP. Van Rongen, who by then had joined the Commission, was in the core group. (He became the chairman of ICNIRP in May 2016.)
That core group, with the help of a couple dozen advisers, drafted the 11 chapters that were released for public comment in 2014.
A Contentious Meeting in Geneva
The draft got a stormy reception. There were 686 comments in all, and a good many criticized the WHO for discounting low-level, non-thermal effects. The WHO has not released the comments, preventing a count of pros and cons.
Later, in a widely circulated letter sent to Maria Neira, the WHO executive in charge, Oleg Grigoriev, the chairman of the Russian national non-ionizing radiation committee, complained that the core group that drafted the report was “not balanced and [did] not represent the point of view of [a] majority [of the] scientific community studying [the] effects of RF.” He and others were disappointed that the WHO had failed to go beyond the heat-only dogma embraced by ICNIRP.
On March 3, 2017, at about the same time that Grigoriev’s letter landed on Neira’s desk in Geneva, she and van Deventer hosted a five-member delegation from the European Cancer and Environment Research Institute. They were there to deliver the same message: The RF EHC should include low-level effects.
The meeting did not go well. Neira rebuffed their overture and rejected any type of collaboration. She went on to tell them that they should not expect any future meetings, according to a brief account by Sweden’s Lennart Hardell, a member of the ECERI delegation.[3]
Neira did not respond to a request for comment.
The five researchers went home and laid out their case in a paper that was published in the journal Environmental Pollution last year. This is their bottom line:
“It is urgent that national and international bodies, particularly the WHO, take this significant public health hazard seriously and make appropriate recommendations for protective measures to reduce exposures.”
After that, little more was said about the RF EHC document —at least in public— as van Deventer and others looked for a way to comply with the new WHO rules that required systematic reviews, compounded by an added protocol for working with non-government organizations (NGOs, for instance, ICNIRP). WHO’s Engagement with Non-State Actors, better known as FENSA, was issued in 2016.
These changes were raised at that same EMF Project advisory committee meeting held in June 2017, close to four months after Neira met with the non-thermalists. Van Deventer explained to the group that, “FENSA potentially makes co-publication of the [RF EHC monograph] with ICNIRP problematic.” She went on to explain:
″A[nother] question concerned cooperation with ICNIRP in the development of the EHC. The WHO Guideline Development process would permit this provided the required processes were followed. However, it is not clear whether this is possible with the introduction of the new FENSA.”
The minutes of the meeting show that an attendee, who is not named, warned: “There may be dangers in aligning WHO with ICNIRP and cooperating with them will not make the guidelines better.”
With van Deventer no longer responding to my e-mails, I turned to van Rongen. He told me that there had been discussion of the constraints of the new WHO rules for developing guidelines and working with NGOs, and then he added,
“[There] was concern on the personal involvement of several members of the Core Group who are also members of the Main Commission of ICNIRP (myself, Maria Feychting, Gunnhild Oftedal) and several other experts who are assisting the Core Group and who are either Commission members or members of the Scientific Expert Group of ICNIRP.”
Investigate Europe on WHO & ICNIRP
Last March, the WHO was pressured from a different direction: An international team of journalists, working under the banner “Investigate Europe,” published a series of articles in newspapers across the continent on the national and multinational groups that set EMF/RF policy. They focused on the WHO EMF Project and ICNIRP.
Investigate Europe put together an interactive graphic showing six key organizations (in green, with WHO and ICNIRP at the center, below) and their links to important players and sources of industry funding. Some of the journalists referred to ICNIRP as a “cartel.”
In an overview article, titled “How Much Is Safe?,” the team described how allegations of one-sidedness had “ravaged” the core group of ICNIRP insiders who drafted the chapters of the EHC report that were released in 2014.
When the journalists turned to the WHO for comment last December, a spokesperson “assured” them that the agency would put together a larger panel to “evaluate” the work of the original core group. The new participants would include “a broad spectrum of opinions and expertise,” according to the WHO.
The press office was referring to a Task Group that would take the draft chapters and complete the RF EHC. Despite years of being on the brink of appointing members, van Deventer has yet to assemble the group. Van Rongen told me that she has recently identified someone to chair it but he was not at liberty to reveal who it is.
WHO, ICNIRP & Michael Repacholi
Much of the suspicion over WHO’s handling of the RF EHC can be traced back to Michael Repacholi and his legacy of cronyism and favoritism to industry.
Repacholi, the former head of both the EMF Project and ICNIRP, was a leading player in the writing of WHO EHC reports on EMFs, at both high and low frequencies, for close to 30 years.
Back in 1981, while working for Health and Welfare Canada, he was on the committee that issued the first RF EHC (#16). An update (#137) came out in 1993 with Repacholi, who by then was back home in Australia, serving as the chairman of the panel. Three years later, he was in Geneva to open and run the EMF Project, where he stayed until he retired in 2007. Before he left, Repacholi shepherded an EHC report (#238) on ELF (power frequency) EMFs through the WHO bureaucracy.
Financial disclosure was never a priority for Repacholi, and details of the WHO Project’s budget and funding were closely held. Even when the cell phone industry admitted that it was making annual, six-figure contributions to the WHO EMF project, Repacholi kept it all very hazy.
ICNIRP’s finances are no more transparent.
Repacholi retired from the WHO in 2006 and immediately became an industry consultant. On his first outing he was accused of misrepresenting the as-yet unreleased ELF EHC report for the benefit of his corporate clients. (See our story, his response and our reply.)
Later, stating that he wanted to “set the record straight,” Repacholi revealed that half of the WHO EMF Project funding had come from industry.
Taking money from Motorola and industry trade associations, among others, violated WHO rules. Repacholi found a work-around by passing —laundering— the money through the Royal Adelaide Hospital in Australia, where he had been chief scientist from 1983 to 1991. The WHO turned a blind eye and cashed the checks. Industry was rewarded with a seat at the WHO table.
One of the ironies of Repacholi’s career is that, in the mid-1990s, he led one of the first animal studies to link cell phone radiation to cancer. In stunning disregard for public health, Repacholi kept the results secret for two years, telling only Telstra, the Australian telecom giant that paid for the study. (Our write-up is here.) There have been two attempts to repeat the experiment, but both were botched, and his finding stands.
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Notes
1. Van Deventer’s May 20, 2019, presentation is no longer publicly accessible. Note that it is dated September 17, 2018, on the title slide. This was most likely an error; one of her other slides (No.44) is from a news report published in mid-April 2019. Her slides from an October 10, 2018, presentation to the ITU are here.
2. The members of the core group: Maria Feychting (Sweden), Simon Mann (U.K.), Gunnhild Oftedal (Norway), Maria Rosaria Scarfi (Italy), Eric van Rongen (The Netherlands) and Denis Zmirou (France). See slide No.12, in Emilie van Deventer’s presentation at an ICNIRP Workshop in Cape Town, South Africa, May 2016. Van Deventer was also part of the group.
3. The other four members of the delegation: Dominique Belpomme (France), Igor Belyaev (Slovak Republic), Ernesto Burgio (Italy) and David Carpenter (U.S.).
Celebration of Memorial Day in the US, originally Decoration Day, commenced shortly after the conclusion of the Civil War. This is a national holiday to remember the people who died while serving in the armed forces. The day traditionally includes decorating graves of the fallen with flowers.
As a Viet Nam veteran, I know the kinds of pain and suffering incurred by over three million US soldiers, marines, sailors, and airmen, 58,313 of whom paid the ultimate price whose names are on The Vietnam Wall in Washington, DC. The Oregon Vietnam Memorial Wall alone, located here in Portland, contains 803 names on its walls.
The function of a memorial is to preserve memory. On this US Memorial Day, May 30, 2016, I want to preserve the memory of all aspects of the US war waged against the Southeast Asian people in Viet Nam, Laos, and Cambodia – what we call the Viet Nam War – as well as the tragic impacts it had on our own people and culture. My own healing and recovery requires me to honestly describe the war and understand how it has impacted me psychically, spiritually, and politically.
Likewise, the same remembrance needs to be practiced for both our soldiers and the victims in all the other countries affected by US wars and aggression. For example, the US incurred nearly 7,000 soldier deaths while causing as many as one million in Afghanistan and Iraq alone, a ratio of 1:143.
It is important to identify very concretely the pain and suffering we caused the Vietnamese – a people who only wanted to be independent from foreign occupiers, whether Chinese, France, Japan, or the United States of America. As honorably, and in some cases heroically, our military served and fought in Southeast Asia, we were nonetheless serving as cannon fodder, in effect mercenaries for reasons other than what we were told. When I came to understand the true nature of the war, I felt betrayed by my government, by my religion, by my cultural conditioning into “American Exceptionalism,” which did a terrible disservice to my own humanity, my own life’s journey. Thus, telling the truth as I uncover it is necessary for recovering my own dignity.
I am staggered by the amount of firepower the US used, and the incredible death and destruction it caused on an innocent people. Here are some statistics:
Seventy-five percent of South Viet Nam was considered a free-fire zone (i.e., genocidal zones)
Over 6 million Southeast Asians killed
Over 64,000 US and Allied soldiers killed
Over 1,600 US soldiers, and 300,000 Vietnamese soldiers remain missing
Thousands of amputees, paraplegics, blind, deaf, and other maimings created
13,000 of 21,000 of Vietnamese villages, or 62 percent, severely damaged or destroyed, mostly by bombing
Nearly 950 churches and pagodas destroyed by bombing
350 hospitals and 1,500 maternity wards destroyed by bombing
Nearly 3,000 high schools and universities destroyed by bombing
Over 15,000 bridges destroyed by bombing
10 million cubic meters of dikes destroyed by bombing
Over 3,700 US fixed-wing aircraft lost
36,125,000 US helicopter sorties during the war; over 10,000 helicopters were lost or severely damaged
26 million bomb craters created, the majority from B-52s (a B-52 bomb crater could be 20 feet deep, and 40 feet across)
39 million acres of land in Indochina (or 91 percent of the land area of South Viet Nam) were littered with fragments of bombs and shells, equivalent to 244,000 (160 acre) farms, or an area the size of all New England except Connecticut
21 million gallons (80 million liters) of extremely poisonous chemicals (herbicides) were applied in 20,000 chemical spraying missions between 1961 and 1970 in the most intensive use of chemical warfare in human history, with as many as 4.8 million Vietnamese living in nearly 3,200 villages directly sprayed by the chemicals
24 percent, or 16,100 square miles, of South Viet Nam was sprayed, an area larger than the states of Connecticut, Vermont, and Rhode Island combined, killing tropical forest, food crops, and inland forests
Over 500,000 Vietnamese have died from chronic conditions related to chemical spraying with an estimated 650,000 still suffering from such conditions; 500,000 children have been born with Agent Orange-induced birth defects, now including third generation offspring
Nearly 375,000 tons of fireballing napalm was dropped on villages
Huge Rome Plows (made in Rome, Georgia), 20-ton earthmoving D7E Caterpillar tractors, fitted with a nearly 2.5-ton curved 11-foot wide attached blade protected by 14 additional tons of armor plate, scraped clean between 700,000 and 750,000 acres (1,200 square miles), an area equivalent to Rhode Island, leaving bare earth, rocks, and smashed trees
As many as 36,000,000 total tons of ordance expended from aerial and naval bombing, artillery, and ground combat firepower. On an average day US artillery expended 10,000 rounds costing $1 million per day; 150,000-300,000 tons of UXO remain scattered around Southeast Asia: 40,000 have been killed in Viet Nam since the end of the war in 1975, and nearly 70,000 injured; 20,000 Laotians have been killed or injured since the end of the war
13.7 billion gallons of fuel were consumed by US forces during the war
If there was space for all 6,000,000 names of Southeast Asian dead on the Vietnam Wall in Washington, DC, it would be over 9 sobering miles long, or nearly 100 times its current 493 foot length
I am not able to memorialize our sacrificed US soldiers without also remembering the death and destroyed civilian infrastructure we caused in our illegal invasion and occupation of Viet Nam, Laos and Cambodia. It has been 47 years since I carried out my duties in Viet Nam. My “service” included being an eyewitness to the aftermath of bombings from the air of undefended fishing villages where virtually all the inhabitants were massacred, the vast majority being small children. In that experience, I felt complicit in a diabolical crime against humanity. This experience led me to deeply grasping that I am not worth more than any other human being, and they are not worth less than me.
Recently I spent more than three weeks in Viet Nam, my first trip back since involuntarily being sent there in 1969. I was struck by the multitudes of children suffering from birth defects, most caused presumably by the US chemical spraying some 50 years ago. I experienced deep angst knowing that the US is directly responsible for this genetic damage now being passed on from one generation to the next. I am ashamed that the US government has never acknowledged responsibility or paid reparations. I found myself apologizing to the people for the crimes of my country.
When we only memorialize US soldiers while ignoring the victims of our aggression, we in effect are memorializing war. I cannot do that. War is insane, and our country continues to perpetuate its insanity on others, having been constantly at war since at least 1991. We fail our duties as citizens if we remain silent rather than calling our US wars for what they are – criminal and deceitful aggressions violating international and US law to assure control of geostrategic resources, deemed necessary to further our insatiable American Way Of Life (AWOL).
Memorial Day for me requires remembering ALL of the deaths and devastation of our wars, and it should remind all of us of the need to end the madness. If we want to end war, we must begin to directly address our out-of-control capitalist political economy that knows no limits to profits for a few at the expense of the many, including our soldiers.
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This article was originally published on the author’s blog site, S. Brian Willson.
S. Brian Willson, as a 1st lieutenant, served as commander of a US Air Force combat security police unit in Viet Nam’s Mekong Delta in 1969. He is a trained lawyer who has been an anti-war, peace and justice activist for more than forty years. His psychohistorical memoir, “Blood On The Tracks: The Life and Times of S. Brian Willson” was published in 2011 by PM Press. His book “Don’t Thank Me For My Service: My Viet Nam Awakening to the Long History of US Lies” was published in 2018 by Clarity Press. A documentary was produced in 2016, “Paying the Price For Peace: The Story of S. Brian Willson (and Others in the Peace Movement) by Bo Boudart Productions. A long time member of Veterans For Peace, he currently resides in Nicaragua.
In July 2019 (updated in September 2019), the French Public Health Agency “Santé Publique France“, together with the Francim cancer registries, the Hospices Civils de Lyon and the Institut National du Cancer, published national estimates of cancer incidence and mortality in metropolitan France between 1990 and 2018. These are based on the modeling of observed incidence data (new cases) until 2015 by cancer registries, supplemented by projections until 2018.
Volume 1 of the report is devoted to solid tumors (27 tumors and 22 subtypes). Between 1990 and 2018, the overall incidence rate of solid tumors remained relatively stable in men and continued to increase in women. At the same time, the annual number of new cases of glioblastoma with histological confirmation (one of the most aggressive types of brain cancer) has increased fourfold and more for both sexes.
In 30 years, the number of glioblastomas multiplied by 4, affecting all ages
Santé Publique France estimates that there will be 3,481 new cases of these glioblastomas in metropolitan France in 2018, 58% of them in men. There were only 823 in 1990.
Age trends show an increase in incidence regardless of age and gender between 1990 and 2018.
According to Santé Publique France, similar observations are observed in the United States where an increase in the incidence of glioblastoma was also observed in the years 1980-1990 in connection with diagnostic progress. In addition, an Australian study reports an increasing incidence of histological confirmed glioblastoma over the period 2000-2008.
Exposure to waves is one of the possible factors
In conclusion of its analysis, Santé Publique France considers that the extrinsic factors that may play a role in increasing the incidence of glioblastoma could be:
“brain radiation therapy and possibly intense and prolonged exposure to pesticides (farmers)[14]. The latest epidemiological studies and animal experiments would support the carcinogenic role of exposure to electromagnetic fields[15]”
Absolute duty to protect children and young people
For Dr Annie Sasco, cancer epidemiologist, former Director of Research Unit at IARC-WHO:
“The evolution of incidence and mortality rates of central nervous system tumors as a whole and especially glioblastoma over the past 30 years is of particular concern. Of course, diagnostic behaviours have evolved and play a role, especially for older people. Nevertheless, there is a real increase, even among the youngest, for whom it is likely that diagnostic modalities have changed less than among the elderly and which may therefore be linked to environmental factors and primarily to the use of mobile or wireless phones. Informing the public should make it possible not to continue on this upward trajectory, especially among young people, with an absolute duty to protect children by not allowing them to use a cellular phone and in general by protecting them from exposure to electromagnetic fields“.
Urgency for public authorities to act in the face of tens of thousands of deaths
For Dr. Marc Arazi, President of Phonegate Alert:
“Over the last 2 decades, nearly 50,000 people have been affected in France by this extremely aggressive brain tumor, which has a very high mortality rate. It was also during this period that mobile telephony exploded and industrialists knowingly overexposed us to the waves of our mobile phones. This industrial and health scandal has a name, the “Phonegate”! Public authorities can no longer deny the evidence and must urgently protect the health of tens of millions of users.
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Right-wing groups like the Heritage Foundation have previously recommended revoking the mineral withdrawal area, which would again allow dangerous uranium mining around Grand Canyon National Park. Meanwhile, the White House Nuclear Fuel Working Group — a working group reviewing how to support the uranium and nuclear energy industry — missed another deadline for delivering its recommendations to the administration, prolonging a decision on whether the Trump administration will revoke the Grand Canyon Mining Withdrawal Area.
“Should the Trump administration opt to side with the extreme measures recommended by an industry-funded think tank like the Heritage Foundation, the future of one of America’s most cherished national parks will be at risk,” said Jayson O’Neill, Deputy Director of Western Values Project. “Our public lands, waterways and national parks are far too important to allow industry-backed groups to dictate policy, but that has been the hallmark of the Trump presidency.”
The Heritage Foundation’s recommendations include the so-called restoration of the 1984 Arizona Wilderness Act. This would repeal a 2012 Obama-era decision that halted mineral mining on over 1 million acres of wilderness and public lands around the Grand Canyon National Park. Repealing the mineral mining withdrawal area would grossly over-benefit uranium mining corporations by allowing access to uranium deposits on formally federally-protected public lands.
Heritage’s recommends also go as far as suggesting the administration repeal the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) — a 50-year-old environmental law that ensures federal agencies consider the potential environmental consequences of any large-scale project they take on. The Trump administration has a history of repealing conservation and environmental protections, with presently 85 rules being challenged or rolled back.
It would be unsurprising if the Trump administration and Interior Secretary Bernhardt opted to follow Heritage’s recommendations in siding with uranium mining corporations. The Trump administration is stacked with former Heritage alumni and at least four current appointees with connections to the group work at the Interior Department.
Additionally, allowing further access to mineral mining corporations around the Grand Canyon would potentially benefit one of Bernhardt’s former lobbying clients: Ur-Energy USA Inc. The mining corporation, along with Energy Fuels Inc., petitioned the Trump administration in January 2018, to impose import quotas on uranium by filing a ‘Section 232’ probe.
Background
The Trump administration inexplicably included uranium on the ‘critical minerals’ list even though it failed to meet the criteria of the original executive order. This move signaled a threat to the 20-year moratorium on new uranium and other hard-rock mining claims in the Grand Canyon’s watershed.
Previously, Sec. Bernhardt has shown a pattern of siding with mining corporations, already proposing a dangerous rule that would allow the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) to rent public lands to non-energy mineral extractive corporations at a cheaper price and cut royalty rates on public lands — a boon for the former mega-lobbyist’s clients. The proposed rule raised questions, once again, about the Secretary’s ties to industrial mining corporations and his allegiances to his former clients.
Bernhardt provided ‘legal services’ for Ur-Energy USA Inc. from 2009 to 2012. Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency Andrew Wheeler, another ex-lobbyist, previously represented Energy Fuels Inc. where he successfully lobbied the Trump administration to illegally reduce the size of the Bears Ears National Monument in Utah because of its proximity to the corporation’s uranium mine and processing facility.
The Trump administration’s Forest Service recommended that the Grand Canyon Withdrawal Area be lifted “as part of the Trump administration’s broader effort to sweep away regulations impeding development.” The Department of Commerce also released sweeping recommendations on ‘critical minerals’ that call for the deregulation of mining and an expedited permitting process for industrial-scale development on federal public lands.
The Koch Brothers have funded both the Heritage Foundation and other industry front groups that opposed a ban on uranium mining in the Grand Canyon. Acting Interior Solicitor Daniel Jorjani was a former ‘key Koch employee’ and became one of their ‘highest paid employees.’
The Charles Koch Foundation gave $300,000 to the Heritage Foundation in 2013. “Other major contributions during 2013 went to free market-oriented think tanks, research groups and educational organizations. Among them are the American Enterprise Institute ($910,000); Liberty Source, known now as Strata ($653,000); the Bill of Rights Institute ($350,000) and the Heritage Foundation($300,000).” [The Center For Public Integrity, 10/30/15]
Koch-Funded Donors Trust also gives money to the Heritage Foundation. “Donors Trust is not the source of the money it hands out. Some 200 right-of-center funders who’ve given at least $10,000 fill the group’s coffers. Charities bankrolled by Charles and David Koch, the DeVoses, and the Bradleys, among other conservative benefactors, have given to Donors Trust.” [Mother Jones, 02/13/13]
Donors Trust has given to the Heritage Foundation, among other conservative organizations. “And other recipients of Donors Trust money include the Heritage Foundation, Grover Norquist’s Americans for Tax Reform, the NRA’s Freedom Action Foundation, the Cato Institute, the American Enterprise Institute, the Federalist Society, and the Americans for Prosperity Foundation, chaired (PDF) by none other than David Koch.” [Mother Jones, 02/13/13]
Charles And David Koch funded the Arizona-based Prosper Inc. and Prosper Foundation Inc. “A dark money group backed by Charles and David Koch is behind a well-funded effort to undermine protections at the Grand Canyon and overturn the Antiquities Act, the law President Teddy Roosevelt used to permanently protect the area in 1908. If successful, the campaign could stop a permanent ban on uranium mining near the canyon’s rim, despite support for such a ban by a vast majority of Arizonans. […] The Koch brothers’ anti-park effort is being run through the Arizona-based Prosper Inc. and its sister organization the Prosper Foundation Inc., which share a physical address, a logo, a staff, and a founder — Kirk Adams. Adams served as Speaker of the Arizona House of Representatives from 2009 to 2011, ran a failed attempt for the U.S. House of Representatives in 2012, and is currently the Chief of Staff to Arizona Governor Doug Ducey.” [ThinkProgress, 03/02/16]
Prosper co-authored a report with The Arizona Chamber Of Commerce Foundation calling protecting the lands around the Grand Canyon a “monumental mistake.” Earlier this year, Prosper co-authored a report with the Arizona Chamber of Commerce Foundation, which declared that protecting the public lands around the Grand Canyon National Park as a national monument would be a ’monumental mistake’ that represents ‘unwarranted and unwanted federal overreach’ and would ‘undermine’ the state of Arizona.” [ThinkProgress, 03/02/16]
The report is part of an “organized campaign” to allow uranium mining in the lands around the Grand Canyon. “The joint Prosper/Arizona Chamber of Commerce effort is part of an organized campaign to enable uranium mining on public lands next to the Grand Canyon. The campaign opposes the creation of the Greater Grand Canyon Heritage National Monument, which would permanently ban uranium mining in the area. A broad-based coalition, which includes Arizona’s Native American tribes, small businesses, and conservation groups, have asked President Obama to use the Antiquities Act to protect the 1.7 million-acre gateway to the Grand Canyon and permanently prohibit new uranium mines on the canyon’s rim.” [ThinkProgress, 03/02/16]
Prosper Inc.’s website only touted two major issues, one of which included defeating the Grand Canyon Monument. “Adams’ group and its sister organization, Prosper Inc., are touted as ‘social welfare that supports and defends free-market principles,’ but according to Prosper Inc.’s website, it only has two big issues: Defeating the Grand Canyon Monument and drumming up support for Proposition 123, Ducey’s proposal to raise money for public education by dipping into the state’s land trust fund.” [Phoenix New Times, 04/18/16]
Prosper received more than 80% of its total budget from an organization led by a consultant with “deep ties” to the Koch Brothers. “Interested in learning more about the Prosper Foundation, [Greg] Zimmerman [of the Center for Western Priorities looked through its 990 tax forms, which not-for-profit groups must file with the Internal Revenue Service. He found that between 2013 and 2014, the foundation received more than $1.5m – or 83% of its total budget – from a political-advocacy organization called American Encore.” [The Guardian, 04/21/16]
American Encore is led by Sean Noble, “A political consultant who has deep ties to the Koch Brothers.” “Sean Noble, a political consultant who has deep ties to the Koch brothers, leads American Encore. The organization is formerly known as the Center to Protect Patient Rights. It changed its name in 2014.” [The Guardian, 04/21/16]
Money was being funneled to the Prosper Foundation so it could continue opposing the Grand Canyon National Monument Plan. “Zimmerman discovered that a donor from the Koch brothers’ funding network was funneling money into the Prosper Foundation, so the group could continue its on-the-ground campaign to block the Grand Canyon national monument plan.” [The Guardian, 04/21/16]
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In the past six months, the US has been playing up the idea of threats posed by Iran, and has been steadily announcing new deployments into the Middle East, mostly to Saudi Arabia and the vicinity, and very publicly aimed at Iran.
Deployments raising the threat level seems to be very much the point, as recent comments from generals have repeatedly indicated that they don’t believe the many deployments have acted as any sort of deterrent, and they don’t appear to be presenting these new deployments that way either. Instead of deterring, the deployments are said to “counter” Iranian capabilities, seemingly on the assumption that the war is only a matter of time.
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The “globalization of war” is a hegemonic project. Major military and covert intelligence operations are being undertaken simultaneously in the Middle East, Eastern Europe, sub-Saharan Africa, Central Asia and the Far East. The U.S. military agenda combines both major theater operations as well as covert actions geared towards destabilizing sovereign states.
In the following interview, Valentine reflects on a variety of issues including the Phoenix Program, plausible deniability, paramilitary wars, drug trafficking, sabotage, blackmail, propaganda, Operation GLADIO, class interests of the CIA establishment, Trump, the Mueller Report and the Bidens.
Heidi Boghosian: In 1947, Congress passed the National Security Act, which led to the formation of the National Security Council and, under its direction, the CIA. Its original mandate was to collect and analyze strategic information for use in war. Though shrouded in secrecy, many CIA activities such as covert military and cybersecurity operations have drawn considerable public scrutiny and criticism. In 1948, the Security Council approved a secret directive NSC 10.2, authorizing the CIA to carry out an array of covert operations. This essentially allowed the CIA to become a paramilitary organization.
Before he died, George F. Kennan, the diplomat and Cold War strategist who sponsored the directive, said that, “in light of latter history, it was the greatest mistake I ever made.” Since NSC 10.2 authorized violation of international law, it also established an official policy of lying to cover up the law breaking.
We speak today with Douglas Valentine, author of The CIA as Organized Crime: How Illegal Operations Corrupt America and the World. Mr. Valentine’s rare access to CIA officials has resulted in portions of his research materials being archived at the National Security Archive, Texas Tech University’s Vietnam Center and John Jay College. He has written three books on CIA operations, including the Phoenix Program:America’s Use of Terror in Vietnam, which documented the CIA’s elaborate system of population surveillance, control, entrapment, imprisonment, torture, and assassination in Vietnam. His new book describes how many of these practices remain operational today. Doug Valentine, welcome to Law and Disorder.
Douglas Valentine: Thank you very much for having me.
Heidi Boghosian: Doug, how did you come to get such unparalleled access to top level CIA agents, including director Bill Colby?
Douglas Valentine: Well, I’m not really sure of the answer. I was a nobody. I hadn’t gone to the Columbia Journalism School. In fact, I was a college dropout. I had written a book about my father and his experiences in World War II and I wanted to write a book about the Vietnam war. And so, I sent this book that I wrote about my father called the Hotel Tacloban: The Explosive True Story of One American’s Journey to Hell in a Japanese POW Camp to Colby. And he read it! And based on him reading this book I wrote about my father, he agreed to do an interview with me about the CIA’s Phoenix program.
But I really just stumbled into it. And I think that the reasons that Colby talked to me and then introduced me to a lot of other CIA officers are complex, and I think a lot of it has to do with the psychology of the country at the time. That was in 1984, and what was known as the generation gap. I’m not exactly sure why, but I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that I just had the audacity to approach Colby and ask him to help me write a book about the Phoenix program, which nobody else had done at that time.
Michael Steven Smith: Doug, the book that you wrote, the Phoenix Program: America’s Use of Terror in Vietnam, is considered by many the definitive study of the CIA’s secretive counterinsurgency program during the war in Vietnam. One CIA officer named Lucien Conein called it “the greatest blackmail scheme ever invented.” What do you think he meant by that?
Douglas Valentine: Well, it meant that the Phoenix program was targeted against civilians, the civilians who managed the insurgency in South Vietnam, not soldiers, not even guerrillas or terrorists. But these were civilians who were working undercover in political positions, generally speaking. We managed the insurgency in South Vietnam and their names could be put on blacklists. And once their name was on a list—once somebody had been informed about them, and once they were a member of a list a that was called the Vietcong infrastructure, the insurgency—the CIA and its forces could go out and kidnap them, put them in interrogation centers, kill them along with their families, and do anything they wanted to try and suppress them. And the problem was that lots of innocent civilians got their names put on these blacklists. In fact, one of the ways that the CIA and its forces, the South Vietnamese Special Police and its mercenary army, one of the ways that they got people to inform on the members of the Vietcong insurgency was by threatening to put their names on blacklists. So therefore, it became a blackmail scheme.
So, if you were just an average citizen and you did not support the government of South Vietnam, you could find your name on a blacklist and your whole family could be wiped out. So, it became a way of not just attacking the members of this Vietcong infrastructure, but a way of population control, a way of terrorizing everybody in South Vietnam and bringing them all into line following government policies. And the minute you stepped out of line, you could find your name on a blacklist.
Michael Steven Smith: A common theme is the CIA’s ability to deceive and propagandize the American public through its impenetrable government-sanctioned shield of official secrecy and plausible deniability. Can you give us some examples of this please, Doug?
Douglas Valentine: Plausible deniability? Well, first of all, one of the CIA officers that William Colby referred me to directly was a man named Tom Donahue, a veteran CIA officer. He had run the CIA’s covert action branch in South Vietnam from 1964 to 1966 and later went on to join what was called the Vietnam Task Force. He was a very senior officer. Colby arranged for me to have an interview with him, and in that interview, Donahue told me that the CIA never launched a covert action program unless it met two criteria. The first was that it had to have some intelligence potential; it had to have some value to the CIA. And the second thing—it had to be deniable. The CIA does not launch any kind of program at all unless it’s deniable. And it does this in a thousand different ways.
[T]he most common way of the CIA launching a covert action program that is deniable is by attributing it to another agency.
I spent hours talking to Donahue about all the different ways that they do it. But the most common way of the CIA launching a covert action program that is deniable is by attributing it to another agency; they say, the State Department is doing this; or they say the military is doing this; or they say a nongovernmental organization like Amnesty International is doing this; or they say another country is doing it. For example, they might say that the secret services of the government of Ukraine are conducting a particular operation when, actually, it’s the CIA that’s conducting the operation and controlling the Ukraine’s security forces and paying their salaries and directing them where to go.
[T]he most important things that are happening and shaping our democracy are the CIA’s covert actions, which are all deniable and never reported on.
So, there’s just a million different ways that the CIA creates multiple deniability for it. And of course, every step of the way they have the help of the American media, which is in a partnership with the CIA, the major newspapers and TV organizations, every report about the CIA. And you know, we’re supposed to live in a democracy, and the media—especially investigative reporters—are supposed to be out there looking out for our interests and telling us what’s really happening. But of course, they don’t do that. And what’s really happening, the most important things that are happening and shaping our democracy are the CIA’s covert actions, which are all deniable and never reported on. So, mere civilians in the United States really never know what’s going on.
Heidi Boghosian: Doug, in your book, The CIA as Organized Crime:How Illegal Operations Corrupt America and the World, you lay out some of the most egregious acts of the agency. What do you think are one or two of the worst?
Douglas Valentine: Oh, you know, that’s so hard to say, but it’s certainly conducting paramilitary wars in foreign countries. For example, in Laos, the CIA organized an entire army of mountain tribes. They were mistakenly called the Meo by the Americans [pronounced Mayo] (which was equivalent to saying the N-word), when they were actually the Hmong [pronounced Mung].
Laos was supposed to be a country that was neutral, but the CIA organized an entire secret army of just this tribe of Hmong natives. Most of the soldiers were children, young boys, 14, 15, 16 years old. And they sent thousands and thousands of these young boys to their deaths trying to stop the Vietcong from coming down the Ho Chi Minh Trail through Laos. They just used this mountain tribe as expendable cannon fodder. And they do this sort of thing all over the world all the time. They’ve done it in Iraq, they’ve done it in Afghanistan, they do it in numerous countries throughout Africa, where they just organize militias and secret armies.
And nobody ever reports how tens of thousands of these people [are sent] to their deaths. There’s never a price to pay for it. So, for me—of all of the many, many things they do, including torture as blackmail, even infiltrating various agencies—you have the U.S. government using them for its own purposes, conducting secret wars and sacrificing young foreign citizens. That really strikes me as the worst.
Heidi Boghosian: How does the CIA dominate branches of the U.S. government, like the Drug Enforcement Administration and the State Department?
Douglas Valentine: Under what’s called national security—that little security law, you know—there is a clause that was included in the National Security Directive of December 19, 1947, which gives the CIA the right—for the president to direct the CIA to do whatever is necessary in the interests of national security. Therefore, they can infiltrate any agency of the government and assign office positions in that agency—for example, the Drug Enforcement Administration—to CIA officers so that CIA officers could make sure that the foreign operations that the DEA is conducting, or the foreign operations that U.S. Customs or even the FBI, certainly the military, are conducting, are not infiltrated by foreign agents—or in case of the DEA—that actual drug traffickers that are working for the CIA aren’t arrested, and allows the CIA to control the drug business around the world, which is really important for the United States, and has been since before the CIA was created, when the United States was supporting the nationalist Chinese in China in the 1930s, the way the nationalist Chinese supported themselves was through opium revenues.
President Harry S. Truman signs the National Security Act of 1947, which created the Central Intelligence Agency.
Truman later wrote: “I never would have agreed to the formulation of the Central Intelligence Agency back in forty-seven, if I had known it would become the American Gestapo.” [Credit: Wikimedia.com]
And so, the United States government allowed Chiang Kai-shek and his Kuomintang government to traffic narcotics so they could support themselves. And you know, the United States government does that with various governments around the world even today, such as in Afghanistan, where the people who support the United States and its operations against the Taliban are often drug trafficking warlords—who again, in exchange for lucrative contracts, contracting contracts, the right to build airports or construction contracts, ante up young soldiers and, in return, you know, are sent to their deaths by the scores, by the hundreds, by the thousands. In exchange, these warlords are allowed to traffic narcotics. That’s basically how the CIA does business around the world. And it’s not just through the DEA, but through nearly every United States agency that operates overseas. They all are subservient to the CIA—the CIA has what’s called cognizance over their operations and, basically, complete control.
Michael Steven Smith: Doug, what influence has the CIA’s activities had on social and political movements abroad and in the United States?
Basically, the essence of [the CIA’s] mandate is to—through sabotage and propaganda—control political and social movements in foreign countries…It’s been standard practice and…the driving principle since after World War II.
Douglas Valentine: Sure. This is one of the primary covert operations of the CIA. Basically, the essence of its mandate is to—through sabotage and propaganda—control political and social movements in foreign countries. And they do this set up for a variety of ways. It’s been standard practice and sort of the driving principle since after World War II.
If I can just give a little background. After World War II, the communists had really formed the underground forces of resistance against the Nazis in France and Italy and in a couple of other European nations. And so immediately after World War II, communist parties became politically influential—and I’ll just focus on France and Italy—and they, all of a sudden, were in control of the governments. But the CIA could not fight wars against France and Italy. So, they developed a program called “courting the compatible left.” In order to get France and Italy away from communism, they supported the Social Democrats, people who weren’t hardcore communists, but people who were willing to work with capitalism, accept American aid and work with the Americans. And so, the CIA resorted to very subtle ways of luring hardcore communists away from communism into its social democratic movement. And this began to bloom and blossom all across the world as a standard operating procedure. When the communists were intractable, then they would do such things as hire Corsican gangsters, which they did in Marseille right after World War II to break up communist strikes.
Sicilian Mafia leaders [Credit: pininterest.ca]
But, generally speaking, they tried to do this through subtle forms of propaganda, blackmail, bribery, sabotage and methods like that. There’s a pretty good book about that…[The Cultural Cold War: The CIA and the World of Arts and Letters by Frances Stonor Saunders]…It’s about how the CIA waged cultural war in the 1950s and 1960s that a lot of Americans played, people like Gloria Steinem and other intellectuals in the United States, who actually helped the CIA in this effort to lure people out of the Communist Party into a social democratic movement.
Heidi Boghosian: Doug, let’s talk about the class origins of the CIA. Who does it really represent in the United States of America? Is it the establishment?
Douglas Valentine: Well, certainly the CIA is not a social services organization. Its mandate does not state that it should help poor people in the United States. It’s mandated to protect the national security of the United States. And by definition, that means the people who actually own the industrial infrastructure, the banking system…the individuals who own the United States, the millionaires and billionaires. The people who through big corporations employ many thousands of Americans. That’s what’s meant by national security: supporting those corporations and the people that actually are the Wall Street investment bankers, that faction of the United States. And when the Office of Strategic Services (OSS)—the predecessor of the CIA—was formed in 1942 by President Roosevelt, the person he went to was a man named William Donovan, who had been a World War I veteran and was a U.S. attorney in Buffalo and elsewhere.
And Donovan went to all the elite people from the Ivy League colleges, from industry, and those individuals were all given the management positions in the OSS. And when the CIA was created, all those people from the upper crust—the OSS was often called the Oh So Social—it was the Foxtrot crowd from Georgetown. All those people went in and took over all the management positions. That does not mean that the CIA does not hire people from all ethnicities…[they hired] translators who speak unusual languages…somebody from Jacksonville, Florida, who plays football or some guy from Texas who’s a football player…[that does not mean they] can’t get into the CIA and into its paramilitary division.
What it means is that all the important decisions that all the management in the executive positions are filled by people from the upper class and they know perfectly well that the job is to protect the interests of the major corporations and banking institutions. And like I said, the people who actually own America, that’s what national security is.
Heidi Boghosian: And what is the CIA’s relationship with Trump? Is it independent from him?
Douglas Valentine: Well, I don’t exactly know. It’s been theorized that when Trump was in financial trouble, and that he needed an influx of capital, he went to Deutsche Bank and massive loans were forthcoming to him. The CIA may have had some hand in that; that the money that was coming to him was from Russian oligarchs who were basically mafia characters in the Soviet Union, that had just collapsed. And the CIA wanted to, again, control political and social movements. Like, in Russia, [the CIA] gravitated towards the wealthiest people and it tried to establish wealthy people in Russia who were beholden to it. The CIA and United States government may have arranged for some of these Russian oligarchs to launder their ill-gotten money to Donald Trump through Deutsche Bank. Trump being a greedy guy, who never thinks beyond the minute, may have been unwitting as to the source of where this money was coming from.
Somebody might’ve said to him, “Donald, why don’t you go to Deutsche Bank? I think you can get a deal there,” and just being a greedy guy who lives in the moment, he did it and the money was forthcoming and so he could have been an unwitting recipient of dirty money. That’s a theory that’s floating around. And if it’s true, then the Mueller investigation or any other kind of investigation that was ever launched in the United States would never reveal it because no investigation is ever allowed to reveal the CIA’s hand.
[S]ecrecy dominates our society; secrecy dominates our culture. It dominates the world and especially it dominates us through the secret of how we’re dominated and none of that is ever revealed. And if it was to be revealed, and we were all to understand how the CIA operates and how it actually controls the information that we receive, then there would be a total upheaval in American society.
So, in a sense, Trump would be a protected person forever. If anybody read the Mueller report, you’ll see that the CIA is never mentioned. There’s a reason for that. You know, these things come to us. People say that, you know, Attorney General William Barr scripted it or somebody else scripted it, but you just never read about it. You don’t read about the CIA in the New York Times either. I mean you just don’t read about it. And it’s because secrecy dominates our society; secrecy dominates our culture. It dominates the world and especially it dominates us through the secret of how we’re dominated and none of that is ever revealed. And if it was to be revealed, and we were all to understand how the CIA operates and how it actually controls the information that we receive, then there would be a total upheaval in American society. It just never happens.
Michael Steven Smith: Okay. We’re coming to the end of our allotted time, Doug Valentine. But before we let you go, there is a story breaking now that Heidi and I have been discussing about Joe Biden and his son, Hunter Biden, and Trump trying to get Hunter Biden investigated for his position on an energy corporation in the Ukraine. And that’s led to a call for impeachment and investigation. What’s your take on this story as it’s unfolding?
Douglas Valentine: Well, I actually mentioned Hunter in a passage in my book The CIA as Organized Crime: How Illegal Operations Corrupt America and the World. And you know, Hunter Biden was certainly not the only American to prosper as a result of 20 years of CIA covert operations to pull Ukraine away from the Russian orbit. And once that happened, hundreds of American business people just poured into Ukraine and assumed positions in many corporations. [U.S.-born Natalie] Jaresko….the day that she obtained Ukraine citizenship, she became head of the Ukraine Treasury Department. No, I mean, and this is not America! So, if you started investigating Hunter Biden, then you’ve got to investigate a hundred or a thousand other American business people and political figures who are what I call in my books super-predators who basically operate the way the Mafia does.
You know, they take over governments by twenty years of CIA subversion; blackmailing people and countries, setting them up, overloading them with loans from the IMF or something like that. And then when they can’t pay off their loans, they swoop in like vultures and take over their country and they take over their corporations. And so, what Hunter Biden did, and what I stress in my book: This is just business as usual. The only value it has is, in this war of words that’s being waged between the Republicans and the Democrats, nothing of the CIA’s involvement in setting up these kinds of takeovers in foreign countries is ever, ever going to be revealed.
[W]e’re subjected to the spectacle of Republicans and Democrats smearing each other, [with] the investigative reporters never getting to the root cause…that America is an imperial nation that is subverting and overtaking foreign governments on a daily basis around the world.
We have this sort of stasis, between the Republicans and the Democrats, where we’re subjected to the spectacle of Republicans and Democrats smearing each other, [with] the investigative reporters never getting to the root cause of all this: namely, the fact that America is an imperial nation that is subverting and overtaking foreign governments on a daily basis around the world. And so, we are subjected to this spectacle and that’s all we ever see. And the powers that be are perfectly happy for us to be enthralled by this, what I call the anvil chorus: one side hammering the other with smear tactics, ad infinitum. And in the meantime, nobody ever really knows what’s going on because everything that’s really important is secret and covered up.
Heidi Boghosian: Doug. Unfortunately, we have come to the end of our time. How can listeners read more about what you’ve done and your body of work on the CIA is really magnificent? Do you have a website?
Douglas Valentine: Yes, I do. You can go to douglasvalentine.com which lists all my books. Plus, if you go to Google and you punch in my name, I am usually the first Doug Valentine that comes up. Google has all my books listed and at this point there’s like seven or eight of them—I can’t remember anymore.
Heidi Boghosian: Thank you so much for being on with us today and we hope to stay in touch as future political developments unravel.
Douglas Valentine: Thank you very much. I appreciate the opportunity.
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Douglas Valentine is an investigator and author with a rare and tenacious approach toward research. His writing results in uniquely incisive and revealing books on the dark side of U.S. intelligence activities and the National Security State. His latest book, The CIA as Organized Crime: How Illegal Operations Corrupt America and the World, draws parallels between CIA operations in Vietnam—as exposed in his well-known 1990 book, The Phoenix Program: America’s Use of Terror in Vietnam—and recent/current operations in Afghanistan, El Salvador, Iraq, Syria, Yemen and elsewhere.
Heidi Boghosian, a lawyer, is the executive director of the A.J. Muste Memorial Institute. Previously she was the executive director of the National Lawyers Guild, a progressive bar association established in 1937, where she oversaw the legal defense of people targeted by government. She co-hosts the weekly civil liberties radio show Law and Disorder with Michael Steven Smith, that airs on Pacifica Radio’s WBAI, New York, and is broadcast on more than 100 other stations.
Michael Steven Smith is an author, speaker, and New York City attorney with the firm Michael Steven Smith and Associates. His firm has for twenty years successfully represented victims in suits against insurance companies in cases of medical malpractice and other accidents. He has authored or edited five books including Notebook of a Sixties Lawyer: An Unrepentant Memoir and Selected Writings, Lawyers You’ll Like: Putting Human Rights First, and Che Guevara and the FBI (with Michael Ratner).
Note from The Grayzone’s editor: This article was updated on November 29 with more information about US sanctions against Nicaragua.
After presiding over a far-right coup in Bolivia, the US dubbed Nicaragua a “national security threat” and announced new sanctions, while Trump designated drug cartels in Mexico as “terrorists” and refused to rule out military intervention.
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One successful coup against a democratically elected socialist president is not enough, it seems.
Washington dubbed Nicaragua a threat to US national security, and announced that it will be expanding its suffocating sanctions on the tiny Central American nation.
Trump is also turning up the heat on Mexico, baselessly linking the country to terrorism and even hinting at potential military intervention. The moves come as the country’s left-leaning President Andrés Manuel López Obrador warns of right-wing attempts at a coup.
As Washington’s rightist allies in Colombia, Brazil, Chile, and Ecuador are desperately beating back massive grassroots uprisings against neoliberal austerity policies and yawning inequality gaps, the United States is ramping up its aggression against the region’s few remaining progressive governments.
These moves have led left-wing forces in Latin America to warn of a 21st-century revival of Operation Condor, the Cold War era campaign of violent subterfuge and US support for right-wing dictatorships across the region.
Trump admin declares Nicaragua a ‘national security threat’
A day after the US-backed far-right coup in Bolivia, the White House released a statement applauding the military putsch and making it clear that two countries were next on Washington’s target list: “These events send a strong signal to the illegitimate regimes in Venezuela and Nicaragua,” Trump declared.
On November 25, the Trump White House then quietly issued a statement characterizing Nicaragua as an “unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States.”
This prolonged for an additional year an executive order Trump had signed in 2018 declaring a state of “national emergency” on the Central American country.
Trump’s 2018 declaration came after a failed violent right-wing coup attempt in Nicaragua. The US government has funded and supported many of the opposition groups that sought to topple elected Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega, and cheered them on as they sought to overthrow him.
The 2018 national security threat designation was quickly followed by economic warfare. In December the US Congress approved the NICA Act without any opposition. This legislation gave Trump the authority to impose sanctions on Nicaragua, and prevents international financial institutions from doing business with Managua.
Trump’s new 2019 statement spewed outlandish propaganda against Nicaragua, referring to its democratically elected government — which for decades has been targeted for overthrow by Washington — as a supposedly violent and corrupt “regime.”
This executive order is similar to one made by President Barack Obama in 2015, which designated Venezuela as a threat to US national security.
Both orders were used to justify the unilateral imposition of suffocating economic sanctions. And Trump’s renewal of the order paves the way for an escalated economic attack on Nicaragua.
The extension received negligible coverage in mainstream English-language corporate media, but right-wing Spanish-language outlets in Latin America heavily amplified it.
And opposition activists are gleefully cheering on the intensification of Washington’s hybrid warfare against Managua.
More aggressive US sanctions against Nicaragua
Voice of America (VOA), the US government’s main foreign broadcasting service, noted that the extension of the executive order will be followed with more economic attacks.
Washington’s ambassador to the Organization of American States (OAS), Carlos Trujillo, told VOA, “The pressure against Nicaragua is going to continue.”
The OAS representative added that Trump will be announcing new sanctions against the Nicaraguan government in the coming weeks.
VOA stated clearly that
“Nicaragua, along with Cuba and Venezuela, is one of the Latin American countries whose government Trump has made a priority to put diplomatic and economic pressure on to bring about regime change.”
This is not just rhetoric. The US Department of the Treasury updated the Nicaragua-related sanctions section of its website as recently as November 8.
And in September, the Treasury Office of Foreign Assets Control announced a “more comprehensive set of regulations,” strengthening the existing sanctions on Nicaragua.
Voice of America’s report quoted several right-wing Nicaraguans who openly called for more US pressure against their country.
Bianca Jagger, a celebrity opposition activist formerly married to Rolling Stones frontman Mick Jagger, called on the US to impose sanctions on Nicaragua’s military in particular.
“The Nicaraguan military has not been touched because they [US officials] are hoping that the military will like act the military in Bolivia,” Jagger said, referring to the military officials who violently overthrew Bolivia’s democratically elected president.
Many of these military leaders had been trained at the US government’s School of the Americas, a notorious base of subversion dating back to Operation Condor. Latin American media has been filled in recent days with reports that Bolivian soldiers were paid $50,000 and generals were paid up to $1 million to carry out the putsch.
VOA added that “in the case of the Central American government [of Nicaragua], the effect that sanctions can have can be greater because it is a more economically vulnerable country.”
VOA quoted Roberto Courtney, a prominent exiled right-wing activist and executive director of the opposition group Ethics and Transparency, which monitors elections in Nicaragua and is supported by the US government’s regime-change arm, the National Endowment for Democracy (NED).
Courtney, who claims to be a human rights activist, salivated over the prospects of US economic war on his country, telling VOA, “There is a bit of a difference [between Nicaragua and Bolivia] … the economic vulnerability makes it more likely that the sanctions will have an effect.”
Courtney, who was described by VOA as an “expert on the electoral process,” added, “If there is a stick, there must also be a carrot.” He said the OAS could help apply diplomatic and political pressure against Nicaragua’s government.
These unilateral American sanctions are illegal under international law, and considered an act of war. Iran’s foreign minister, Javad Zarif, has characterized US economic warfare “financial terrorism,” explaining that it disproportionately targets civilians in order to turn them against their government.
Top right-wing Nicaraguan opposition groups applauded Trump for extending the executive order and for pledging new sanctions against their country.
Estados Unidos amplió por un año más la vigencia de la Declaración de Emergencia Nacional con respecto a la Situación en Nicaragua. https://t.co/Xq8m8UWVfr
The Nicaraguan Civic Alliance for Justice and Democracy, an opposition front group that brings together numerous opposition groups, several of which are also funded by the US government’s NED, welcomed the order.
Trump dubs drug cartels in Mexico “terrorists,” refuses to rule out drone strikes
While the US targeting of Nicaragua and Venezuela’s governments is nothing new, Donald Trump is setting his sights on a longtime US ally in Mexico.
In 2018, Mexican voters made history when they elected Andrés Manuel López Obrador as president in a landslide. López Obrador, who is often referred to by his initials AMLO, is Mexico’s first left-wing president in more than five decades. He ran on a progressive campaign pledging to boost social spending, cut poverty, combat corruption, and even decriminalize drugs.
AMLO is wildly popular in Mexico. In February, he had a record-breaking 86 percent approval rating. And he has earned this widespread support by pledging to combat neoliberal capitalist orthodoxy.
“The neoliberal economic model has been a disaster, a calamity for the public life of the country,” AMLO has declared. “The child of neoliberalism is corruption.”
When he unveiled his multibillion-dollar National Development Plan, López Obrador announced the end to “the long night of neoliberalism.”
AMLO’s left-wing policies have caused shockwaves in Washington, which has long relied on neoliberal Mexican leaders ensuring a steady cheap exploitable labor base and maintaining a reliable market for US goods and open borders for US capital and corporations.
On November 27 — a day after declaring Nicaragua a “national security threat” — Trump announced that the US government will be designating Mexican drug cartels as “terrorist organizations.”
Such a designation could pave the way for direct US military intervention in Mexico.
Trump revealed this new policy in an interview with right-wing Fox News host Bill O’Reilly. “Are you going to designate those cartels in Mexico as terror groups and start hitting them with drones and things like that?” O’Reilly asked.
The US president refused to rule out drone strikes or other military action against drug cartels in Mexico.
President @realDonaldTrump tells me he is 90 days into the process of designating Mexican drug cartels as Foreign Terrorist Organizations – which would give US forces more leverage in taking them out. pic.twitter.com/ewSJMkt6rr
Trump’s announcement seemed to surprise the Mexican government, which immediately called for a meeting with the US State Department.
The designation was particularly ironic considering some top drug cartel leaders in Mexico have long-standing ties to the US government. The leaders of the notoriously brutal cartel the Zetas, for instance, were originally trained in counter-insurgency tactics by the US military.
Throughout the Cold War, the US government armed, trained, and funded right-wing death squads throughout Latin America, many of which were involved in drug trafficking. The CIA also used drug money to fund far-right counter-insurgency paramilitary groups in Central America.
These tactics were also employed in the Middle East and South Asia. The United States armed, trained, and funded far-right Islamist extremists in Afghanistan in the 1980s in order to fight the Soviet Union. These same US-backed Salafi-jihadists then founded al-Qaeda and the Taliban.
This strategy was later repeated in the US wars on Libya and Syria. ISIS commander Omar al-Shishani, to take one example, had been trained by the US military and enjoyed direct support from Washington when he was fighting against Russia.
The Barack Obama administration also oversaw a campaign called Project Gunrunner and Operation Fast and Furious, in which the US government helped send thousands of guns to cartels in Mexico.
Mexican journalist Alina Duarte explained that, with the Trump administration’s designation of cartels as terrorists, “They are creating the idea that Mexico represents a threat to their national security.”
“Should we start talking about the possibility of a coup against Lopez Obrador in Mexico?” Duarte asked.
She noted that the US corporate media has embarked on an increasingly ferocious campaign to demonize AMLO, portraying the democratically elected president as a power-hungry aspiring dictator who is supposedly wrecking Mexico’s economy.
Duarte discussed the issue of US interference in Mexican politics in an interview with The Grayzone’s Max Blumenthal and Ben Norton, on their podcast Moderate Rebels:
Now, a whisper campaign over fears that the right-wing opposition may try to overthrow President Andrés Manuel López Obrador is spreading across Mexico.
AMLO himself has publicly addressed the rumors, making it clear that he will not tolerate any discussion of coups.
“How wrong the conservatives and their hawks are,” López Obrador tweeted on November 2. Referencing the 1913 assassination of progressive President Francisco Madero, who had been a leader of the Mexican Revolution, AMLO wrote, “Now is different.”
“Another coup d’état will now be allowed,” he declared.
Ahora es distinto. Aunque son otras realidades y no debe caerse en la simplicidad de las comparaciones, la transformación que encabezo cuenta con el respaldo de una mayoría libre y consciente, justa y amante de la legalidad y de la paz, que no permitiría otro golpe de Estado.
In recent months, as fears of a coup intensify, López Obrador has swung even further to the left, directly challenging the US government and asserting an independent foreign policy that contrasts starkly to the subservience of his predecessors.
AMLO’s government has rejected US efforts to delegitimize Venezuela’s leftist government, throwing a wrench in Washington’s efforts to impose right-wing activist Juan Guaidó as coup leader.
AMLO has welcomed Ecuador’s ousted socialist leader Rafael Correa and hosted Argentina’s left-leaning Alberto Fernández for his first foreign trip after winning the presidency.
In October, López Obrador even welcomed Cuban President Díaz-Canel to Mexico for a historic visit.
Trump’s Operation Condor 2.0
For Washington, an independent and left-wing Mexico is intolerable.
In a speech for right-wing, MAGA hat-wearing Venezuelans in Miami, Florida in February, Trump ranted against socialism for nearly an hour, threatened the remaining leftist countries in Latin America with regime change.
“The days of socialism and communism are numbered not only in Venezuela, but in Nicaragua and in Cuba as well,” he declared, adding that socialism would never be allowed to take root in heart of capitalism in the United States.
While Trump has claimed he seeks to withdraw from wars in the Middle East (when he is not occupying its oil fields), he has ramped up aggressive US intervention in Latin America.
During the height of the Cold War, Operation Condor thousands of dissidents were murdered, and hundreds of thousands more were disappeared, tortured, or imprisoned with the assistance of the US intelligence apparatus.
Today, as Latin America is increasingly viewed through the lens of a new Cold War, Operation Condor is being reignited with new mechanisms of sabotage and subversion in play. The mayhem has only begun.
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Ben Norton is a journalist, writer, and filmmaker. He is the assistant editor of The Grayzone, and the producer of the Moderate Rebels podcast, which he co-hosts with editor Max Blumenthal. His website is BenNorton.com and he tweets at @BenjaminNorton.
Producers: Gregory Allen Howard, Debra Martin Chase, Daniela Taplin Lundberg
Screenplay: Gregory Allen Howard, Kasi Lemmons
Starring: Cynthia Erivo as Harriet Tubman along with Leslie Odom Jr., Joe Alwyn and Janelle Monáe
Since the conclusion of the Civil War some 154 years ago, the existential consciousness and human culture of enslaved Africans has been a source of contested debate within academia, literature and popular artistic representations.
This is why a film such as “Harriet” is so important in contributing to the notion that African people were the principal agents of their own liberation during the antebellum period in United States history.
The story portrays the family life, religious beliefs and collective courage of a people who were systematically subjected to a dehumanization process for nearly 250 years. Harriet was born into slavery in 1822 at Dorchester County, Maryland and experienced the brutality, separations and extreme exploitation inherent within the system.
Opposition to slavery was not merely a moral issue. The abolitionist movement threatened the very foundation of the economic system of the U.S. during its first 90 years of historical development.
In its early phase, slavery was not confined to the Southern regions of the country. It thrived in the Northeast under Dutch, British and later American rule.
With specific reference to Maryland, the number of enslaved people grew from 1642, when the first recorded importation of Africans arrived at St. Mary’s City then under British colonialism, through the beginning of the 19th century after the U.S. independence from the Crown. The cultivation of tobacco was the principal agricultural crop which fueled the spread of the plantation economy.
During the course of the 19th century the number of Africans held in bondage decreased. At its peak in 1810, the U.S. census records 111,502 enslaved people. By 1860, on the eve of the Civil War, the number had been reduced to 87,189.
Many Africans were granted freedom through manumission while others escaped from the plantations. The declining significance of tobacco production played an important role in the decline of the demand for enslaved African labor. At the same time, many Africans were sold by plantation owners into the Deep South.
The Woman Called Moses
This film depicts the horrors of plantation life in the mid-to-late 19th century in Maryland. Born Araminta Ross, Harriet Tubman, as she was later known, escaped bondage in 1849 fleeing to the state of Pennsylvania where slavery had been abolished after the American War of Independence.
Tubman was beaten viciously as a child enduring the hostility of white plantation owners. As a youth she was hit in the head with a metal object by a slave master seeking to inflict pain on another African person. From that time onwards she experienced seizures, probably the result of a closed-head injury from the assault suffered as a child.
Her outlook was highly religious in character. It is reported she had become a Methodist and often had visions of escaping and helping others towards liberation.
After leaving the plantation in 1849 and settling in Philadelphia, a vibrant center of abolitionist activity through the Anti-Slavery Society as well as other independent African organizations and churches, she returned to Maryland on numerous occasions to transport her relatives and friends out of the state to freedom. Some 70 people were liberated under her direct guidance along trails, waterways and safe houses which became known as the Underground Railroad.
Maryland, although a state heavily reliant upon slave labor for its economic viability, was deeply divided over secession from the Union after 1860. The state remained within the Union due to the efforts of leading politicians working in conjunction with the-then President Abraham Lincoln. By 1860, approximately half of the people of African descent in Maryland were considered free from slavery.
The status of Africans whether free or enslaved was highly unstable. The passage of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, which emboldened Planters and their agents to pursue Africans for recapture in non-slaveholding states, intensified the resistance among abolitionists to the system of involuntary servitude. Since there was a risk of re-enslavement in many northern states, thousands of Africans migrated to Ontario in neighboring Canada, including Tubman who lived in St. Catharines with other members of her family.
When Lincoln issued the Confiscation Act and the Emancipation Proclamation in 1862, these measures did not apply to Maryland since the leadership of the state had not seceded. During the war, Tubman joined the Union military initially as a nurse and cook, then eventually becoming a scout for the defense forces on expeditions into the Confederate South.
One of her most notable achievements during the War was her leadership role in the Union Army’s raid at Combahee Ferry in South Carolina on June 1-2, 1863 which resulted in the liberation of 700 Africans. After the war, Tubman moved to a home she had purchased earlier in Auburn, New York in 1859. She provided care for her ageing parents and continued to be involved in emancipatory work related to the struggle for racial equality and women’s rights.
The Portrayal of Harriet
Cynthia Onyedinmanasu Chinasaokwu Erivo starred as Harriet Tubman in the film. Erivo, a Black British national of Nigerian ancestry, was an ideal choice for the part since the majority of Africans kidnapped into slavery and brought to North America originated in West Africa.
Erivo was born in 1987 in Stockwell, South London to parents who were from the West African state of Nigeria. She attended a Catholic Girl’s School and later the University of East London.
Her initial studies were in the field of psychology. However, she soon switched her major to the theater and transferred to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London.
The young actor’s first appearances were in roles on British television programs such as “Chewing Gum” and “The Tunnel.” Moving to the stage she worked in the production “Marine Parade” by Simon Stephens at the Brighton Festival.
Later in a musical production she appeared in John Adams’ and June Jordan’s “I Was Looking at the Ceiling and Then I Saw the Sky” at Theatre Royal Stratford East. Eventually in 2013, Erivo played the role of Celie Harris in the Menier Chocolate Factory production of “The Color Purple.” This was the role which Whoopi Goldberg played in the award-winning film from the 1980s. Erivo had earlier portrayed Sister Mary Clarence/Deloris Van Cartier in a British version of the stage musical “Sister Act,” in which Goldberg had starred in the film during the 1990s.
By 2018, Erivo was chosen for the lead role in “Harriet.” The film was shot from October 2018 to January 2019. It was released on November 1, 2019. Since its opening, the $17 million production had earned nearly $40 million in box office sales in its first month.
Additional projects for Erivo includes “Chaos Walking,” based on Patrick Ness’ trilogy novels, with an anticipated release in 2020. Earlier in January 2019, Erivo appeared in the Home Box Office (HBO) series version of Stephen King’s novel “The Outsider.” She portrayed the character of investigator Holly Gibney in the production.
As it relates to audio work, Erivo co-produced and was the lead voice actor in the scripted thriller podcast Carrier from the broadcasting firm Qcode Media. Erivo worked as the series leading role of Raylene ‘Ray’ Watts, a truck driver who is transporting a trailer with mysterious and unknown contents.
Consequently, as a result of her work in “Harriet” and other productions, there is an undoubtedly promising career ahead for this young woman.
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Abayomi Azikiwe is the editor of Pan-African News Wire. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.
We are cruising on a pristine, 380 km-long four-lane superhighway from Almaty to Khorgos – finished in 2016 for $1.25 billion, 85% of the cost covered by a World Bank loan. And then, suddenly, riding parallel to us, there’s the real superstar of New Silk Road connectivity.
Meet Yuxinou, the container cargo train plying back and forth along the 11,000 km-long railway corridor connecting Chongqin in Sichuan province via Xinjiang and Kazakhstan to Russia, Belarus, Poland and finally Duisburg in the Ruhr valley. And all that in a mere 13 days.
Along the way, the Yuxinou stops in, among other places, Almaty, Bishkek, Tashkent, Tehran, Istanbul, Moscow and Rotterdam: a who’s who of Eurasian cities. It carries laptops, BMWs, spare parts, clothes, machinery, international post packages, chemical products, medicine and medical instruments – all manner of goods, made in China and made in Europe. And all that for only 20% of air freight cost.
This operation platform is called Yuxinou (Chongqing) Logistics Co., Ltd., a joint venture among the railways of China, Russia, Kazakhstan and Germany and the Chongqin municipal government, which is quite proud of its “seamless integration of multinational railway logistics” – complete with a fast custom clearance procedure called “single declaration and inspection on entire journey.”
The key Yuxinou crossroads is the intersection between Alashankou, on the Chinese side of the Kasakh border, and Khorgos, a special economic zone in Kazakhstan. The whole project may be in its infancy. After all, the Belt and Road Initiative is still, according to Beijing’s detailed timetable, in the planning stage.
So Khorgos may still be far from metastasizing into the new Dubai, as the hype claimed a few years ago. But watching Khorgos in action is a fascinating experience, unparalleled in its usefulness for gauging Belt & Road’s potential. As much as the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, the northern part of which I traveled a year ago, this is one of the jewels in Belt & Road’s crown.
Hitting the malls
There are actually three places to take care of border-crossing buisness at Khorgos. I arrived, via the superhighway, at the exclusive crossing for container trucks. Then I visited the border crossing used by Kazakhs and Central Asians from everywhere, leading to a collection of duty-free mega shopping malls officially called the International Center for Boundary Cooperation (ICBC). Then there’s the train station in Altynkol, where Yoxinou stops as do the Urumqi-Almaty cargo/passenger trains. The actual SEZ – many buildings still under construction – is in the periphery of Khorgos.
The timetable at Altynkol station, featuring the Almaty-Urumqi trains. Photo: Pepe Escobar / Asia Times
The ICBC – 5.3 square kilometers housing five multi-story shopping malls with over 2,000 shops – is a sort of neutral no man’s land. If you’re Kazakh or Chinese, no visa is needed. But people from all over Central Asia also come – by bus, eager to take advantage of unlimited Made in China bargains.
The bus stop at Khorgos, before crossing to the Chinese mega mall. Photo: Pepe Escobar
The brand new Kazakh customs station. Photo: Pepe Escobar
The procedure is quite straightforward. Customers arrive usually in the early morning at a huge bus parking lot. They walk a short distance toward the very modern Kazakh customs building (on the day I visited, because of the bitter cold, it was virtually empty). Then they take a shuttle bus to the Chinese border, cross it with little or no bureaucracy (although the Central Asians, other than Kazakhs, do need visas), and hit the malls.
Porter carrying the loot from shoppers at the Chinese megamall. Photo: Pepe Escobar
They come back at the end of the day fully loaded – excellent business for an army of packagers and porters. Then they board their buses returning to all points Kazakhstan and other “stans”. On busy days, especially in summer, there may be as many as 8,000 shoppers hitting the ICBC.
China’s top connectivity access to Central Asia and West Asia markets, and farther on down the road to Europe, is via Kazakhstan, which counts China as its second-largest trading partner. At the same time, it’s essential to consider that Khorgos is smack on the Xinjiang border, which implies maximum Chinese security alert.
Image on the right: The Yuxinou at Altynkol station, in Khorgos. Photo: Pepe Escobar
Yet there’s nothing Orwellian about Khorgos. The CCP apparatus in far away Urumqi seems to understand pragmatically that the whole deal is all about a mega-mall, and not conducive to Uighur separatist shenanigans. And on top of it the really heavy business transits via Yuxinou. In the near future, it’s bound to evolve towards high-speed rail.
In terms of road traffic, container trucks conduct a hefty business at Khorgos – certainly more substantial than in other border crossings I visited, in Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan.
There are two China-Kyrgyzstan border crossings. The more established one, at Torugart, leads straight to the capital Bishkek and then Tashkent in Uzbekistan. The road was repaved with loans from the Export-Import Bank of China and the Asian Development Bank.
The ADB also provided the financing for an alternative route from Bishkek to Osh, along with an $850 million loan from the EXIM Bank. This road is quite something, cutting through Kyrgyz mountains and passes and eliminating at least 220 km of travel in comparison with the ancient road. China Road and Bridge Cooperation was in charge of the construction, including a 3.3 km-long tunnel.
But it’s still a tricky road; on the last mountain pass before the final dash towards Bishkek, my driver Alex and I spent hours negotiating a cornucopia of lorries gone sideways in the snow and a myriad of clueless drivers stuck without tire chains.
China & the ‘stans
The other China-Kyrgyz border crossing is at the Irkeshtam pass, It used to be the main southern branch of the ancient Silk Road, coming straight from Kashgar. The road was resurfaced in 2013, adding to a connectivity integration net linking Kyrgyzstan, Xinjiang and the Karakoram Highway in Pakistan. I crossed a steady convoy of Chinese container trucks coming from Irkeshtam.
There’s only one China-Tajikistan border crossing, at the top of the Kulma pass, 4,363 meters high. The actual Chinese border is 14 km away from the Tajik border, very close to the Karakoram Highway: another instance of close connectivity. This road was opened in 2004 and also follows the ancient Silk Road.
The whole road between the Kulma pass and the Tajik capital Dushanbe, which includes the legendary Pamir Highway (the subject of an upcoming two-part special), is still a (slow) work in progress. It’s funded by a $254 million loan from China’s EXIM Bank with work by China Road and Bridge Cooperation.
Just outside Dushanbe, as I was leaving for the Pamir Highway, I saw a multi-level road intersection built with a loan from the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and another from the Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank.
What I saw was in fact history in the making; this was the AIIB’s first-ever development loan. There will be many others, as the connectivity between China and its neighboring ‘stans hits overdrive.
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This article was originally published on Asia Times.
Pepe Escobar is a frequent contributor to Global Research.
Featured image: The train called Yuxinou, hauling cargo between Germany and Chongqin, seen from the Almaty-Khorgos superhighway. Photo: Pepe Escobar / Asia Times
In its most recent report to the UN Security Council, the UN Stabilization Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (MONUSCO) blandly recounted “progress” in service to their mission, but what is their mission? Up until 2013, MONUSCO had no combat mandate; they were somehow expected to keep the peace amidst a war for Congo’s resources without one. In 2013, however, as the M23 militia was ravaging North and South Kivu Provinces, the UN Group of Experts on the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) reported that M23 answered to the command of Rwandan Defense Minister James Kabarebe, who of course answered to Rwandan President Paul Kagame himself. There were competing factions within M23, and some of its officers answered to high-level officials in Uganda, who of course answered to Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni.
This made Rwanda and Uganda’s wars of aggression so obvious that the UN Security Council finally felt obliged to do what the UN Charter compels them to: organize a UN military intervention to stop the Rwandan and Ugandan militias.
The UN Force Intervention Brigade, composed of Tanzanian, South African, and Malawian troops, was the first UN Peacekeeping mission with an explicit combat mandate, and they did indeed chase M23 back into Rwanda and Uganda.
Then the press reported that M23 had “surrendered” to Kagame and Museveni. That was more or less like reporting that the Confederate Army had fled South to surrender to General Robert E. Lee, but the world that had been horrified by M23’s atrocities applauded their defeat and turned its attention elsewhere.
Museveni, one of the aggressors, presided over a so-called peace conference in Uganda’s capital Kampala, which produced an agreement giving M23 everything it had asked for at the outset of the war. But who bothered to read or understand the agreement? Others no doubt did, but I’m the only one I know of who bothered to report what it said—on Pacifica Radio and in the San Francisco Bay View Newspaper, which the powerful players feel free to ignore, even if they were slightly discomfited.
The aggressors are not named
Violence has continued in the DRC’s Kivu Provinces. According to the Congo Research Group based at New York University, at least 99 Congolese civilians have been massacred since November 5 in North Kivu’s Beni Territory alone. UN Peacekeepers have failed to protect them from marauding militias, and protesters have taken to the streets in Beni, Goma, and Butembo to say that the peacekeepers are part of the problem and demand that they leave. In Beni they burned down most of at least one UN military base, and one protester has been reported killed, five wounded.
Smoke from the United Nations compound rises in Beni, Democratic Republic of Congo, Monday, Nov. 25, 2019. Angry residents of this eastern Congo city burned the town hall and stormed the UN peacekeeping mission, known as MONUSCO, after Allied Democratic Forces rebels killed eight people and kidnapped nine overnight. (AP Photo/Al-hadji Kudra Maliro)
With 18,000 troops, the UN Peacekeeping Mission in Congo is the largest in the world, and it has been in Congo for 20 years without protecting the people or the peace. A young protester in Beni told Aljazeera, “The UN is supposed to keep us safe, to keep peace in North Kivu, but we’ve never seen the peace. So we are so angry we don’t want them to stay here in North Kivu.”
Congolese Swiss historian Bénédicte Kumbi Njoko also spoke to Aljazeera:
“If we think about the UN and its presence, we need to go back to almost 59 years that the UN has been working in the Congo because there were problems in the country. And I think that if we take that into perspective, we can of course question the utility of this organization, because what we have seen the last 20 years now is that people are still dying and this war that is happening in the Congo has caused already more than 8 million deaths, so maybe the response that the UN is giving to that situation is not an appropriate one.”
South African mining researcher and community organizer David Van Wyk agreed.
“Sadly,” he said, “it’s one more failed intervention. The UN has failed the Congolese people from the very first day of the Congo’s independence 59 years ago.”
“Rebels,” “rebellions,” and “rebel groups”
Kumbi told me that she had asked Aljazeera why, like the rest of the international press, they describe the militias killing the Congolese people as “rebel groups” when they are in fact gangs—Rwandan, Ugandan, and Congolese—fighting over Congolese territory and resource riches.They are not Congolese nationals fighting for power or social justice as the term “rebel groups” implies. They are fighting at the country’s easternmost edges, on its borders with Uganda, Rwanda, and Burundi. The war-torn Kivu Provinces couldn’t be farther from Congo’s capital, Kinshasa, which is on its western border with the Republic of Congo and near its Atlantic coast. So they are not trying to overthrow the existing government as any self-respecting rebels would.
Her question, Kumbi said, did not make it into Aljazeera’s final cut. It is essentially the same question that she demanded an answer to at a UN conference in Geneva back in 2013, where—until the gendarmes dragged her out—she interrupted then UN Secretary General Ban-Ki-Moon with this scream:
“What about people of the Congo? Please! What about people of the Congo??? You don’t say anything about that! There’s been killed eight million people and you say you’re making fictitious peace and you’re telling us that this is peace when aggressors are not named! Rwanda is responsible for what is going wrong in the peace in Congo. And nobody says something about that! Burundi! Uganda! You should say that! We are sick and tired of hearing every time people just being so ‘peaceful’ with Africa. You should let Africa in peace!”
So long as the UN Security Council and the international press blame the war on non-existent “rebels” and “rebel groups” carrying out non-existent “rebellions,” the Congolese holocaust will go on. NGOs and UN agencies will continue to call for millions of dollars to help with the humanitarian crisis, comparing it to Syria, Yemen, and Iraq, and the displaced population already numbering four million will continue to rise. Neither the UNSC nor anyone else is going to defeat “rebels” or end a war they refuse to name.
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On November 19, the Detroit City Council voted down a bond proposal advanced by corporate-imposed Mayor Mike Duggan ostensibly designed to eliminate blighted residential properties in this overwhelmingly impoverished African American municipality.
The latest bond initiative came to the city’s legislative body in the aftermath of the release of scathing reports by several municipal entities related to the inefficient and corrupt conduct of the administration.
Most significantly, the Auditor General published a report on the city’s demolition program which was filled with rules violations, fiscal waste and environmentally compromised practices. This audit had been commissioned by Council President Brenda Jones some four years ago.
Testimony before the City Council in a public session on November 12 revealed that the Duggan administration had refused to provide documents related to the demolition program. In response to the Auditor General’s findings, the Chief Financial Officer (CFO) on behalf of the Mayor, sought to discredit the conclusions.
Nonetheless, the data utilized in the AG report came from several city departments managing the projects which have been mired by cost overruns, a blatant disregard for the health and safety of the communities impacted as well as a general level of impunity in dealing with the City Council, the corporate press and residents of the city. Numerous community organizations appeared before the City Council for two straight weeks speaking out against the bond initiative. On the eve of the final vote, over 500 people jammed the Erma Henderson Auditorium at the Coleman A. Young Municipal Center (CAYMC) during a public hearing to condemn the Duggan policy demanding that City Council reject the scheme.
“The sweeping audit revealed the Detroit Building Authority— along with one or more city departments in some instances: failed to properly provide oversight and administer contracts; did not fully comply with some local and state laws; didn’t monitor to ensure that demolition contractors met requirements. Auditor General Mark Lockridge also blasted the city for having ‘inconsistent and unreliable’ demolition data, as well as poor record keeping that made it difficult to perform the audit. ‘A perception that public officials are using the procurement system to reward themselves, their friends, or supporters, poisons the public’s confidence in government and shakes its faith in the bureaucratic process,’ he wrote.”
Federal Hardest Hit Funds Redirected and Expropriated
The AG’s findings mainly related to the city’s own demolition program. Far worse, the reported $250 million in Federal Hardest Hit Funds (FHHF) which were granted to the city initially to address the horrendous problems of mortgage and later property tax foreclosures, have instead become a source of widespread mismanagement as well and therefore subject to scrutiny by United States law-enforcement officials and 14th District Congresswoman Brenda Lawrence.
Figures provided by the Duggan administration claims that over 19,000 vacant homes have been demolished since 2014. Of that number the majority, some 14,000, utilized FHHF allocations to tear down the structures. Private contractors hired by the Duggan administration demolished homes allowing asbestos, lead and other harmful materials to remain in the soil. Bricks and other housing debris were often left on the land where the structures were removed.
Congresswoman Lawrence was quoted in the November 14 issue of the Free Press saying:
“I want those sites tested and documented. And if they are contaminated, lets remediate it. … We cannot have contaminated soil that we use federal dollars for in a community. I was very involved in the details of Flint and one of the things we discovered is that there were cries or complaints or concerns about an issue happening in the community and for months there was no response from government, I am not going to have my record reflect that I did not respond. … We must act.”
After the failure of the state to enforce the utilization of the FHHF monies in a proper fashion under both Democratic and Republican administrations between 2010-2014, the contrived declaration of a financial emergency, the illegal placing of an Emergency Manager (EM) over the city in early 2013 along with the filing of bankruptcy by the state-appointed EM during that summer, set the stage for the injection of the federal funds into the Detroit Land Bank Authority (DLBA). Attempts by the Moratorium NOW! Coalition and other community organizations to have the FHHF resources put to practical and much needed use in stabilizing communities was rejected by the administration while the City Council, the Michigan State Housing Development Authority (MSHDA) and the federal government accepted the false notions that massive demolition would somehow foster development. In fact a recent study indicated that blight has worsened since the advent of the corporate-imposed Duggan regime. (See this)
Since 2014, the DLBA has been given unwarranted authority to survey, target, confiscate, resale and demolish homes throughout the city. The DLBA has been cited for several violations of basic best practices. The offices of the “quasi-governmental agency” established by the Michigan State Legislature has wasted hundreds of millions in federal funds which could have provided much needed relief for Detroit residents suffering from over-assessed property taxes, predatory mortgages, utility and water shutoffs.
In essence, the policies enacted by the bank-led “development” strategy in Detroit have in effect created more abandonment, dislocations and underdevelopment of communities. The city remains one of poorest major municipalities in the U.S. The nationality character of Detroit, being approximately 80% African American, provides a glaring example of the convergence between race and class oppression under capitalism.
The Need for a Broad-based Citywide Coalition to Reverse the Bank-led Strategy
Despite the determination of the Duggan administration to force the city residents into more indebtedness through the floating of General Obligation Bonds (GOBs) for demolitions, an alliance of community organizations were successful in defeating this plot which in all likelihood would provide more opportunities for patronage, profiteering, theft and environmental degradation. Such an alliance could be extended to meaningfully address the overall crises impacting the city now facing a renewed challenge as a direct result of the stalled prestige business complexes which have been showcased as examples of Detroit’s resurgence.
Many of the announced “development projects” over the last five years have failed to materialize. The much-championed “District Detroit” which began with the publicly-funded to the tune of over $300 million construction of Little Caesars Arena (LCA), had been deceptively sold to the City Council during the state-engineered bankruptcy as the first stage of the rebuilding of dozens of blocks of blighted and vacant areas formerly known as the Cass Corridor. Today, most of the land surrounding the LCA sports arena consists of parking lots and uninhabited buildings.
The “Hudson’s site project” established by billionaire Dan Gilbert along Woodward Avenue downtown has yet to begin construction. The Republican-dominated Michigan state legislature granted huge tax abatements and the capture of personal income taxes designed to be recycled back into the Gilbert financial empire. Gilbert, who suffered a stroke over six months ago, remains out of the public view. Meanwhile, the impatience of the majority African American residents and other progressive forces is impacting the corporate media and the City Council.
A Detroit Inspector General’s (IG) report recently condemned the Duggan administration for the deliberate destruction of e-mails (public documents) related to a non-profit corporation which is run by a physician which the Mayor has a personal relationship. Municipal employees and resources were mobilized to assist the “Make-Your-Date” non-profit ostensibly geared towards curbing the high infant mortality rate in the city.
Yet it is quite obvious that the program was far less than legitimate prompting the IG to call for disciplinary actions by the administration. The administration refused to implement any corrective measures. Several weeks ago the Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel conducted a raid on the Information Technology (IT) division of the city in an ongoing investigation related to the ordering of e-mails deletions by high-ranking administration officials.
At a recent Moratorium NOW! Coalition meeting, members emphasized the need for the convening of a people’s Town Hall gathering independent of the City Council. This teach-in or conference would analyze the current situation in Detroit in light of the economic stagnation and the continuing problems of poverty, racism, financial exploitation, corruption and administrative impunity.
There is a need to reevaluate the entire municipal bond issuance process in light of the experiences in the city over the last two decades. Detroit residents have approved numerous bond initiatives where the funds have been redirected towards debt service payments to financial institutions. This phenomenon created the conditions for the illegal appointment of EMs in both the public school district and municipal government as a whole.
Municipal bonds supposedly designed to construct and refurbish school buildings have resulted in the structures being closed and razed. Payments on these bonds are set to continue for another twenty years. The same scenario holds true for the prestige projects littering downtown and midtown. Tax captures from funds which should be utilized for education and municipal services are funneled to the Detroit Downtown Development Authority (DDA) and the Neighborhood Strategic Fund (NSF).
The banks which were instrumental in the destruction of the city through racist predatory lending have announced the allocation of millions to the NSF. However, these programs have not resulted in genuine development. Certain areas such as the Livernois business district on the northwest side have been plunged into an economic crisis due to a lack of adequate construction planning. The same problems exist as well along Woodward Avenue in the New Center area.
Community organizations equipped with an analysis of the contemporary crises of capitalism will come to the realization that only socialist-oriented planning and development strategies provide any hope for a sustainable future. A nationwide effort is required for such an approach to municipal governance to be successful.
The problems of urban restructuring and displacement are part and parcel of the global character of capitalism and imperialism. Consequently, local organizing must take into consideration the necessity for revolutionary transformation of the conditions under which the working class and oppressed live and work.
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Abayomi Azikiwe is the editor of Pan-African News Wire. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.
The most insidious and pervasive form of modern warfare by Wall Street and the Pentagon, acting in coordination, is passing largely unnoticed and unchallenged. This calculated attack is rolling back decades of progress in health care, sanitation, housing, essential infrastructure and industrial development all around the world.
Almost every developing country attempting any level of social programs for its population is being targeted.
U.S. imperialism and its junior partners have refined economic strangulation into a devastating weapon. Sanctions in the hands of the dominant military and economic powers now cause more deaths than bombs or guns. This weapon is stunting the growth of millions of youth and driving desperate migrations, dislocating tens of millions.
‘A crime against humanity’
Sanctions and economic blockades against Venezuela, Cuba and Iran are well known. But the devastating impacts of U.S. sanctions on occupied Palestine — or on already impoverished countries such as Mali, Central African Republic, Guinea-Bissau, Kyrgyzstan, Fiji, Nicaragua and Laos — are not even on the radar screen of human rights groups.
Most sanctions are intentionally hidden; they don’t generate even a line of news. Some sanctions are quickly passed after a sudden news article about an alleged atrocity. The civilians who will suffer have nothing to do with whatever crime the corporate media use as an excuse. What are never mentioned are the economic or political concessions the U.S. government or corporations are seeking.
Sanctions cannot be posed as an alternative to war. They are in fact the most brutal form of warfare, deliberately targeting the most defenseless civilians — youth, the elderly, sick and disabled people. In a period of human history when hunger and disease are scientifically solvable, depriving hundreds of millions from getting basic necessities is a crime against humanity.
International law and conventions, including the Geneva and Nuremberg Conventions, United Nations Charter and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, explicitly prohibit the targeting of defenseless civilians, especially in times of war.
Sanctions draw condemnation
Modern industrial society is built on a fragile web of essential technology. If pumps and sewage lines, elevators and generators can’t function due to lack of simple spare parts, entire cities can be overwhelmed by swamps. If farmers are denied seed, fertilizer, field equipment and storage facilities, and if food, medicine and essential equipment are deliberately denied, an entire country is at risk.
The Venezuelan ambassador to the United Nations, Samuel Moncada, spoke to the XVIII Summit of the Non-Aligned Movement held in Baku, Azerbaijan, Oct. 26. Addressing the 120 countries represented, he denounced the imposition of arbitrary measures, called “sanctions” by the U.S., as “economic terrorism which affects a third of humanity with more than 8,000 measures in 39 countries.”
This terrorism, he said, constitutes a “threat to the entire system of international relations and is the greatest violation of human rights in the world.” (tinyurl.com/uwlm99r)
The Group of 77 and China, an international body based at the U.N. and representing 134 developing countries, called upon “the international community to condemn and reject the imposition of the use of such measures as a means of political and economic coercion against developing countries.”
The Group explained:
“The criminal, anti-human policy of targeting defenseless populations, which is in clear violation of United Nations Charter and international law, has now become the new weapon of choice for these powerful states since they are faced with strong opposition from the majority of their own population to the endless wars of occupation that they are already involved in.”
The power of banks
The mechanism and the ability of one country or one vote to destroy a country on the other side of the world are not well understood.
International capital uses the dollar system. All international transactions go through U.S. banks. These banks are in a position to block money transfers for the smallest transaction and to confiscate billions of dollars held by targeted governments and individuals. They are also in a position to demand that every other bank accept sudden restrictions imposed from Washington or face sanctions themselves.
This is similar to how the U.S. Navy can claim the authority to intercept ships and interrupt trade anywhere, or the U.S. Army can target people with drones and invade countries without even asking for a declaration of war.
Sometimes a corporate media outlet, a U.S.-funded “human rights” group or a financial institution issues charges, often unsubstantiated, of human rights violations, or political repression, drug trafficking, terrorist funding, money laundering, cyber-security infractions, corruption or non-compliance with an international financial institution. These charges become the opening wedge for a demand for sanctions as punishment.
Sanctions can be imposed through a U.S. Congressional resolution or Presidential declaration or be authorized by a U.S. government agency, such as the departments of the Treasury, Commerce, State or Defense. The U.S. might apply pressure to get support from the European Union, the U.N. Security Council or one of countless U.S.-established regional security organizations, such as the Organization of American States.
A U.S. corporate body that wants a more favorable trade deal is able to influence numerous agencies or politicians to act on its behalf. Deep-state secret agencies, military contractors, nongovernmental organizations funded by the National Endowment for Democracy, and numerous corporate-funded foundations maneuver to create economic dislocation and pressure resource-rich countries.
Even sanctions that appear mild and limited can have a devastating impact. U.S. officials will claim that some sanctions are only military sanctions, needed to block weapons sales. But under the category of possible “dual use,” the bans include chlorine needed to purify water, pesticides, fertilizers, medical equipment, simple batteries and spare parts of any kind.
Another subterfuge is sanctions that supposedly apply only to government officials or specific agencies. But in fact any and every transaction they carry out can be blocked while endless inquiries are held. Anonymous bank officials can freeze all transactions in progress and scrutinize all accounts a country holds. Any form of sanctions, even against individuals, raises the cost and risk level for credit and loans.
There are more than 6,300 names on the Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons List of individuals sanctioned by the Office of Foreign Assets Control at the U.S. Treasury Department.
The OFAC describes its role this way:
“OFAC administers a number of different sanctions programs. The sanctions can be either comprehensive or selective, using the blocking of assets and trade restrictions to accomplish foreign policy and national security goals.”
There is also a Financial Action Task Force list and an International Traffic in Arms Regulations list.
The sanctions weapon has become so extensive that there is now a whole body of law to guide U.S. corporations and banks in navigating sales, credit and loans. It is intended to be opaque, murky and open to interpretation, payoffs and subterfuge. There seems to be no single online site that lists all the different countries and individuals under U.S. sanctions.
Once a country is sanctioned, it must then “negotiate” with various U.S. agencies that demand austerity measures, elections that meet Western approval, cuts in social programs, and other political and economic concessions to get sanctions lifted.
Sanctions are an essential part of U.S. regime change operations, designed in the most cynical way to exact maximum human cost. Sudden hyperinflation, economic disruption and unexpected shortages are then hypocritically blamed on the government in office in the sanctioned country. Officials are labeled inept or corrupt.
Agencies carefully monitor the internal crisis they are creating to determine the optimum time to impose regime change or manufacture a color revolution. The State Department and U.S. covert agencies fund numerous NGOs and social organizations that instigate dissent. These tactics have been used in Venezuela, Nicaragua, Iran, Syria, Libya, Zimbabwe, Sudan and many other countries.
A weapon of imperialism in decline
Gone are the days of Marshall Plan-type promises of rebuilding, trade, loans and infrastructure development. They are not even offered in this period of capitalist decay. The sanctions weapon is now such a pervasive instrument that hardly a week goes by without new sanctions, even on past allies.
In October the U.S. threatened harsh sanctions on Turkey, a 70-year member of the U.S.-commanded NATO military alliance.
On Nov. 27, Trump suddenly announced, by presidential decree, harsher sanctions on Nicaragua, calling it a “National Security Threat.” He also declared Mexico a “terrorist” threat and refused to rule out military intervention. Both countries have democratically elected governments.
Other sanctions sail through the U.S. Congress without a roll call vote — just a cheer and a unanimous voice vote, such as the sanctions on Hong Kong in support of U.S.-funded protests.
Why Wall Street can’t be sanctioned
Is there any possibility that the U.S. could be sanctioned for its endless wars under the same provisions by which it has asserted the right to wreak havoc on other countries?
The Chief Prosecutor at the International Criminal Court, Fatou Bensouda, in November 2017 asked the Hague-based ICC to open formal investigations of war crimes committed by the Taliban, the Haqqani network, Afghan forces, and the U.S. military and the CIA.
The very idea of the U.S. being charged with war crimes led then White House National Security Advisor John Bolton to threaten judges and other ICC officials with arrest and sanction if they even considered any charge against U.S. forces in Afghanistan.
“If the court comes after us, Israel or other U.S. allies, we will not sit quietly,” Bolton said. He noted that the U.S. “is prepared to slap financial sanctions and criminal charges on officials of the court if they proceed against any U.S. personnel. … We will ban its judges and prosecutors from entering the United States. We will sanction their funds in the U.S. financial system, and we will prosecute them in the U.S. criminal system. … We will do the same for any company or state that assists an ICC investigation of Americans.” (The Guardian, Sept. 10, 2018)
Bolton also cited a recent move by Palestinian leaders to have Israeli officials prosecuted at the ICC for human rights violations. The ICC judges got the message. They ruled that despite “a reasonable basis” to consider war crimes committed in Afghanistan, there was little chance of a successful prosecution. An investigation “would not serve the interests of justice.”
Chief Prosecutor Bensouda, for proposing an even-handed inquiry, had her U.S. visa revoked by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.
Sanctions are a weapon in the capitalist world order used by the most powerful countries against those that are weaker and developing. One hundred years ago, in 1919, President Woodrow Wilson advocated sanctions as a quiet but lethal weapon that exerts pressure no nation in the modernworld can withstand.
Sanctions demonstrate how capitalist laws protect the right of eight multibillionaires to own more than the population of half the world.
U.N. sanctions demanded by Washington
The U.S., with the largest nuclear arsenal on the planet and 800 military bases, claims — while engaged in wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria and Libya — that the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea and the Islamic Republic of Iran are the greatest threats to world peace.
In the U.N. Security Council, the U.S. succeeded in winning harsh new sanctions against Iran and the DPRK by threatening, on the eve of “war games,” that the U.S. would escalate hostilities to an open military attack.
This threat proved sufficient to get other Security Council members to fall in line and either vote for sanctions or abstain.
These strong-arm tactics have succeeded again and again. During the Korean War, when the U.S. military was saturation-bombing Korea, U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Warren Austin held up a submachine gun in the Security Council to demand expanded authority in the war from that body.
Throughout the 1990s the U.S. government used sanctions on Iraq as a horrendous social experiment to calculate how to drastically lower caloric intake, destroy crop output and ruin water purification. The impact of these sanctions were widely publicized — as a threat to other countries.
Bill Clinton’s Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright, when asked about the half a million children who died as a result of U.S. sanctions on Iraq, replied, “We think the price is worth it.”
The sanctions imposed by the U.S. against Iran are book-length, spanning 40 years since the Iranian Revolution. The blockade and sanctions on Cuba have continued for 60 years.
Sanctions Kill campaign
It is an enormous political challenge to break the media silence and expose this crime. We need to put a human face on the suffering.
Targeted countries cannot be left to struggle by themselves in isolation — there must be full solidarity with their efforts. The sheer number of countries being starved into compliance via U.S.-imposed sanctions must be dragged into the light of day. And one step in challenging the injustice of capitalist property relations is to attack the criminal role of the banks.
The effort to rally world opinion against sanctions as a war crime is beginning with a call for International Days of Action Against Sanctions & Economic War on March 13-15, 2020. Its slogans are “Sanctions Kill! Sanctions Are War! End Sanctions Now!”
These coordinated international demonstrations are a crucial first step. Research and testimony; resolutions by unions, student groups, cultural workers and community organizations; social media campaigns; and bringing medical supplies and international relief to sanctioned countries can all play a role. Every kind of political campaign to expose the international crime of sanctions is a crucial contribution.
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Medical doctors who wrote to UK Home Secretary Priti Patel last month calling for urgent action to protect the life of imprisoned WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange have today issued a further urgent appeal.
Despite worldwide media coverage of their open letter, more than 80 medical doctors have received no response from the UK government. Their letter was sent on November 22. The doctors are now calling on the Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice to intervene.
“We reiterate our grave concern that Mr Assange could die of deliberate medical negligence in a British prison and demand an urgent response from the UK Government”, the doctors write.
Their second open letter has been sent to the Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice the Rt Hon Robert Buckland QC.
“In our open letter, we urged the UK Government to change course immediately and transfer Mr Assange from Belmarsh Prison to a university teaching hospital for appropriate expert medical assessment and care. So far, we have received no substantive reply from the UK Government, nor has receipt of our letter been acknowledged.
“In our opinion, the UK Government’s conduct in this matter is irresponsible, incompatible with medical ethics and unworthy of a democratic society bound by the rule of law.”
The full text of the doctors’ open letter to the Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice is HERE. The letter was also sent to the Home Secretary.
Dr Bob Gill General Medical Practitioner MBChB MRCGP (UK)
“The continued detention of Julian Assange in his reported physical and psychological state is inhumane and a flagrant neglect of his right to access essential medical care. These shameful actions are those of a repressive dictatorship not a democracy and must be reversed.”
Dr Sue Wareham OAM MBBS General Medical Practitioner (retired) (Australia)
“The Australian government’s failure to speak out to protect an Australian citizen whose life is at risk is utterly shameful, as is the UK government’s failure to respond to the recent urgent open letter regarding Julian Assange’s health. Nations that call themselves civilised are keeping a man incarcerated, deprived of adequate health care, at risk of death, for the “crime” of publishing material that shed light on alleged war crimes. The Australian government should, at the very least, insist that Assange receive the health care he needs.”
Dr Richard House Chartered Psychologist, former psychotherapist and senior university lecturer (UK)
“The disgraceful treatment of Julian Assange should become a General Election issue, and the current government and Home Secretary held robustly to account for what appears to be deliberately inflicted suffering.”
Dr Victoria Abdelnur MD Specialist in Integrative Trauma Therapy (Germany and Argentina)
“The global medical community is watching, we know he needs urgent proper health care, and if he does not receive it soon, it will be crystal clear we are governed by criminals. The popular backlash will have astronomic proportions.”
Dr Stephen Frost BSc MBChB Specialist in Diagnostic Radiology (UK and Sweden)
“How and why did it ever come about that five states–the UK, the US, Australia, Sweden and Ecuador—seemingly deliberately and cruelly conspired against one human being? We agree with the assessment of Nils Melzer, UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, that Julian Assange has been ‘psychologically tortured’ in the centre of London of all places.
“The torture must stop now, and Mr Assange must be provided with immediate access to the health care which he so obviously needs before it is too late. That doctors should have to write open letters to the UK government to demand appropriate health care for a victim of torture is beyond belief.”
The full text of the November 22 open letter and list of signatories can be found here.
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Madrid COP 25. The climate emergency is presented as “the defining and most urgent issue of our time, and it cannot be avoided without a global shift away from fossil-fuel dependency.”
Our message to climate activists:
ASK YOURSELF WHY IS BIG OIL GENEROUSLY FUNDING THE CLIMATE PROTEST MOVEMENT?
WHY IS THE EU SUPPORTING NUCLEAR ENERGY AS A SOLUTION TO THE CLIMATE CRISIS?
WHAT IS THE PURPOSE OF THE “GREEN NEW DEAL”, A MULTIBILLION DOLLAR OPERATION? FOLLOW THE MONEY TRAIL
WHY ARE ENVIRONMENTAL MODIFICATION TECHNIQUES FOR MILITARY USE NOT PART OF THE CLIMATE DEBATE?
First published in September 2019
#FridaysForFuture:
4500 climate strikes in over 100 countries. Several million protesters demand that governments around the World “take action” on the devastating environmental impacts of climate change.
Many of the climate activists point to the destructive impacts of global capitalism on their lives.
“Capitalism = death (or extinction)”.
“Cancel Capitalism.”
People’s lives are destroyed. Politicians are coopted by the corporate giants including Big Oil. The economic, environmental and social structures are undermined. The outcome is a process of Worldwide impoverishment.
The oil giants were indelibly under fire. In New York City, climate activists confronted “Big Oil”:
The unspoken truth is that Big Oil funds the campaign against Big Oil. Sounds contradictory?
Climate activists have been lied to.
The Climate Movement (New Green Deal) is funded by major charities and corporate foundations including the National Endowment for Democracy, Soros Open Society Foundations, the Rockefeller Brothers Trust, Shell Foundation, BP, Goldman Sachs, among others.
Whereas “Big Oil” is held responsible for the devastating impacts of the fossil fuel industry, the architect of Big Oil, namely the Rockefeller family is the major protagonist of the Green New Deal:
“Beginning in the 1980s, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund became leading advocates of the global warming agenda. … In their Sustainable Development Program Review, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund boasts of being one of the first major global warming activists, citing its strong advocacy for both the 1988 formation of the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the 1992 establishment of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change.” (The Energy & Environmental Legal Institute published in 2016).
Debate on the world’s climate is of crucial importance.
But who controls that debate? Major capitalist foundations ultimately call the shots?
There is an obvious contradictory relationship. The protest movement is funded by corporate foundations.
Prince Charles, … along with the Bank of England and City of London finance have promoted “green financial instruments,” led by Green Bonds, to redirect pension plans and mutual funds towards green projects. A key player in the linking of world financial institutions with the Green Agenda is outgoing Bank of England head Mark Carney. In December 2015, the Bank for International Settlements’ Financial Stability Board (FSB), chaired then by Carney, created the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosure (TCFD), to advise “investors, lenders and insurance about climate related risks.” That was certainly a bizarre focus for world central bankers.
And the Protest movement including the Extinction Rebellion provide a justification for investing in Green Bonds:
The omnipresent Wall Street bank, Goldman Sachs, … has just unveiled the first global index of top-ranking environmental stocks, done along with the London-based CDP, formerly the Carbon Disclosure Project. The CDP, notably, is financed by investors such as HSBC, JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Merrill Lynch, Goldman Sachs, American International Group, and State Street Corp.
The new index, called CDP Environment EW and CDP Eurozone EW, aims to lure investment funds, state pension systems such as the CalPERS (the California Public Employees’ Retirement System) and CalSTRS (the California State Teachers’ Retirement System) with a combined $600+ billion in assets, to invest in their carefully chosen targets.
A cursory review suggests that the key climate organizations are invariably funded by corporate capital (including the Oil giants):
Climate Action has links with a number of financial partners with a view to promoting “Green investments” in what is described as the “global sustainability industry.”
The Climate Institute at climate.org, is a major research entity funded by Ford Motor Company Fund, GE Foundation, Goldman Sachs, Rockefeller Brothers Fund, Shell Foundation, The Rockefeller Foundation, among others.
While climate activists express their concern regarding the nefarious impacts of global capitalism on climate, including those pertaining to militarization (and defense spending), the scientific analysis of climate under the auspices of the IPCC largely focusses on a single variable: Carbon Dioxide (CO2), i.e. the impact of increased emissions of CO2 derived from fossil fuels (including fracking) on average global temperature.
Depletion of the ozone layer is what triggers global warming. The ozone layer is in the Earth’s stratosphere. “Ozone is constantly being produced and destroyed naturally. This ozone layer filters out ultra-violet (UV) rays from the Sun and protects life on Earth.”
Greenhouse gas emissions affecting the ozone layer largely consist of water vapor (50%), carbon dioxide (CO2) (20%) and clouds (25%). The remaining greenhouse gases (5%) is made up of small aerosol particles, methane (CH4) and nitrous oxides (N2O) (both a greenhouse gas as well as an “ozone destroyer” with devastating impacts on climate). (approximate figures provided by NASA for 2011).
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is the key UN body “for assessing the science related to climate change”.
The focus of the IPCC is to estimate the additional CO2 greenhouse gas generated by fossil fuel extraction. It is assumed that the increase in greenhouse gas emissions from Planet Earth results solely from CO2 emissions tied to fossil fuel extraction (including fracking).
Note: The CO2 emissions resulting from fossil fuel extraction constitute a very small percentage of total CO2 emissions (estimated at 20% of total greenhouse gas emissions), i.e a very small percentage of the 20%.
The current IPCC climate debate focus consists of the following:
-Rising CO2 emissions (from fossile fuels) constitute the sole cause of global warming, attributable to the depletion of the ozone layer.
-To reduce the depletion of the ozone layer requires a reduction in fossil fuel extraction, which constitutes the major cause of rising CO2 emissions.
“an understanding of the impacts of 1.5°C global warming above pre-industrial levels and related global emission pathways in the context of strengthening the response to the threat of climate change, sustainable development and efforts to eradicate poverty.”
Most of the results in this IPCC study are based on model simulations of likely impacts comparing a 2.0 C increase in average global temperature to the 1.5°C global warming above pre-industrial levels.
These include impacts on biodiversity and ecosystems, species loss and extinctions (plants, insects and vertebrates), impacts on oceans and waterways, as well as social impacts including poverty.
The report distinguishes between terrestrial, freshwater and coastal ecosystems. It examines the impacts of global warming on ocean temperatures. It also addresses “associated increases in ocean acidity and decreases in ocean oxygen levels”and the impacts on marine life and biodiversity. The social impacts on (e.g. on fishing communities) are also acknowledged.
On land, impacts on biodiversity and ecosystems, including species loss and extinction, are projected to be lower at 1.5°C of global warming compared to 2°C. Similarly, “limiting global warming to 1.5°C is projected to reduce risks to marine biodiversity, fisheries, and ecosystems, and their functions and services to humans”
Critique: Single Variable Analysis
There are many other complex factors which directly or indirectly affect climate and environmental structures including the ozone layer, which have been excluded from the IPCC model simulations.
The quantitative results of the IPCC are deterministic to say the least. According to MIT Professor Richard S Lindzen:
“Now here is the currently popular narrative concerning this system. The climate, a complex multifactor system, can be summarized in just one variable, the globally averaged temperature change, and is primarily controlled by the 1-2% perturbation in the energy budget due to a single variable – carbon dioxide – among many variables of comparable importance.
This is an extraordinary pair of claims based on reasoning that borders on magical thinking. It is, however, the narrative that has been widely accepted, even among many sceptics.”
They omit variables which affect climate. With the exception of fossil fuel, they do not address the impacts of government policy on climate, nor do they address how US led wars as well as the multi-trillion dollar war economy threatens Planet Earth.
It is the art of omission:
A single highly relevant variable carbon-dioxide (CO2) “Explains Everything”. (ceteris paribus).
With all other variables excluded, through omission, CO2 “Explains nothing”.
CO2 emissions cannot reasonably explain the complexities of climate change.
By centering solely on CO2, the Climate debate has excluded “everything else”.
The climatic and environmental crisis in different regions of the World are identified. The underlying causality is the single variable approach: CO2 emissions from fossil fuel extraction.
And the IPCC’s stylized results are then used to justify the Green New Deal multibillion corporate bonanza.
A whole series of important processes including biodiversity, animal life, poverty, species loss, etc have been explained by the IPCC solely referring to the impact of the the increase in CO2 emissions on global warming, nothing else.
Measurement: Biased and Flawed Global Temperature Readings
There are serious problems in estimating CO2 emissions (from fossil fuel) as well average global temperature.
Global warming cannot be identified and explained by a single global temperature. There are numerous regional temperatures which describe climatic conditions. A global (weighted) average temperatures established from major geographical readings does not provide an understanding of the complexities of climate.
Moreover, there is evidence that the Global Average Temperature is manipulated. This temperature has a direct bearing on gains and losses in multibillion dollar Carbon Trade transactions:
When future generations look back on the global-warming scare of the past 30 years, nothing will shock them more than the extent to which the official temperature records – on which the entire panic ultimately rested – were systematically “adjusted” to show the Earth as having warmed much more than the actual data justified. (Telegraph, 7 February, 2015)
This belief has rested on … official data records. … the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), … the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit, the Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction, UK Met Office. [as well] as … measurements made by satellites, compiled by Remote Sensing Systems (RSS) (The Telegraph, 24 January 2015)
The Impact of Radioactivity on Climate
Are increased CO2 emissions from fossil fuel the only cause of climate change and environmental degradation?
In this article, we focus briefly on the impacts on the Ozone Layer resulting from the explosion of nuclear bombs, an issue which has not been addressed by the New Green Deal, as well as radiation from nuclear power plants. We also focus on Environmental Modification Techniques (ENMOD) and the “militarization of the climate”.
Radiation from Nuclear Power Plants (Fukushima)
The dumping of highly radioactive water into the Pacific Ocean constitutes a potential trigger to a process of global radioactive contamination.
In this regard, since 2011, amply documented, marine life as well as species loss has been affected by the release of radioactive plutonium into the Pacific Ocean following the Fukushima-Daichi disaster.
Radioactive elements have not only been detected in the food chain in Japan, radioactive rain water has been recorded in California.
“The main man-made contribution to the exposure of the world’s population [to radiation] has come from the testing of nuclear weapons in the atmosphere, from 1945 to 1980. Each nuclear test resulted in unrestrained release into the environment of substantial quantities of radioactive materials, which were widely dispersed in the atmosphere and deposited everywhere on the Earth’s surface.”
The above report highlights the impacts of radiation on living cells as well on the concurrent incidence of leukaemia, cancer of the thyroid, lung and breast cancer.
What would be the impact of the explosion of nuclear weapons on the World’s climate?
The issue of nuclear winter was first addressed in a 1983 study by R.P. Turco, O.B. Toon, T.P. Ackerman, J.B. Pollack, and Carl Sagan (referred to as TTAPS) “Global Atmospheric Consequences of Nuclear War”
The publication of the TTAPS study at the height of the Cold War unleashed a concern on the devastating impacts of nuclear war including its climatic impacts.
The extreme cold, high radiation levels, and the widespread destruction of industrial, medical, and transportation infrastructures along with food supplies and crops would trigger a massive death toll from starvation, exposure, and disease.
The TTAPS study concluded: “…the possibility of the extinction of Homo Sapiens cannot be excluded.”
It also created an awareness among US foreign policy-makers, which today is totally absent. Trump does not have the foggiest idea regarding the impacts of a nuclear war.
According to Atomic Archive.com which essentially summarizes the concepts of the TTAP study (p. 22) “When a nuclear weapon explodes in the air, the surrounding air is subjected to great heat, followed by relatively rapid cooling.”
These conditions are ideal for the production of tremendous amounts of nitric oxides. These oxides are carried into the upper atmosphere, where they reduce the concentration of protective ozone. Ozone is necessary to block harmful ultraviolet radiation from reaching the Earth’s surface.
Oxides of nitrogen form a catalytic cycle to reduce the protective ozone layer.
The nitric oxides produced by the weapons could reduce the ozone levels in the Northern Hemisphere by as much as 30 to 70 percent. Such a depletion might produce changes in the Earth’s climate, and would allow more ultraviolet radiation from the sun through the atmosphere to the surface of the Earth, where it could produce dangerous burns and a variety of potentially dangerous ecological effects.
It has been estimated that as much as 5,000 tons of nitric oxide is produced for each megaton of nuclear explosive power. See Atomic Archive
The 2008 Simulation of Nuclear Conflict. Impacts on Ozone Layer
In a major 2008 study by Michael Mills et al entitled Massive global ozone loss predicted following regional nuclear conflict (Academy of Sciences of the United States) a simulation was conducted (largely based on the concepts outlined in the TTPS 1983 study) of a nuclear conflict involving 100 Hiroshima sized bombs. The simulation confirmed that the nuclear explosions “could produce long-term damage to the ozone layer, enabling higher than “extreme” levels of ultraviolet radiation to reach the Earth’s surface, (see GSN, March 16, 2010).
Increased levels of UV radiation from the sun could persist for years, possibly with a drastic impact on humans and the environment, even thousands of miles from the area of the nuclear conflict. …
“A regional nuclear exchange of 100 15-kiloton weapons … would produce unprecedented low-ozone columns over populated areas in conjunction with the coldest surface temperatures experienced in the last 1,000 years, and would likely result in a global nuclear famine,” …
The research by Mills and colleagues was the first to address the possibility that a nuclear explosion could lead to increased ultraviolet radiation levels on Earth, according to a NCAR press release issued during the American Association for the Advancement of Science conference. NTI
In the 1980s, using simple climate models, we discovered that global nuclear arsenals, if used on cities and industrial areas, could produce a nuclear winter and lead to global famine.
Smoke from the fires would last for years in the upper atmosphere, blocking sunlight, and making it cold, dark and dry at the Earth’s surface. It would also destroy ozone, enhancing ultraviolet radiation reaching the surface.
While the immediate effects of nuclear strikes might kill hundreds of thousands, the numbers that would die from starvation in the years that followed could run into billions.
In the real sense of the word, nuclear war could potentially lead to a process of Human Extinction:
A very large nuclear war would be a calamity of indescribable proportions and absolutely unpredictable consequences, with the uncertainties tending toward the worse. . . . All-out nuclear war would mean the destruction of contemporary civilization, throw man back centuries, cause the deaths of hundreds of millions or billions of people, and, with a certain degree of probability, would cause man to be destroyed as a biological species . . . Andrei Sakharov, Foreign Affairs, Summer 1983
Those concerns have largely been excluded from the Climate Debate and the Extinction Rebellion.
The Extinction Rebellion Protest Movement has its eyes riveted on the rising emissions of Carbon Dioxide (from fossil fuel), heralded as “the most dangerous and prevalent greenhouse gas”.
All other variables are excluded. Scientific lies by omission.
The use of CFCs was banned under the Montreal Protocol. A June 2016 study however confirms that the Montreal Protocol failed to fully resolve the CFC ban:
“when countries began phasing out CFCs, manufacturers replaced them with hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs). HFCs don’t deplete ozone, but they are potent greenhouse gases, which contribute to global warming. The challenge going forward, then, will be to develop new alternatives to HFCs — and to have the world adopt them, once again.”
Methyl bromide (MeBr) is used increasingly as a biocidal fumigant, primarily in agricultural soils prior to planting of crops. This usage carries potential for stratospheric ozone reduction due to Br atom catalysis, depending on how much MeBr escapes from fumigated soils to the atmosphere.
The IPCC simulations neglect the fact that HFC as well as MeBr constitute a threat to the ozone layer.
A recent UN report nonetheless confirms that despite the IPCC alarm bell, “Earth’s protective ozone layer is finally healing from damage caused by aerosol sprays and coolants, a new United Nations report said.”
The ozone layer had been thinning since the late 1970s. Scientist raised the alarm and ozone-depleting chemicals were phased out worldwide.
As a result, the upper ozone layer above the Northern Hemisphere should be completely repaired in the 2030s and the gaping Antarctic ozone hole should disappear in the 2060s, according to a scientific assessment released Monday at a conference in Quito, Ecuador. The Southern Hemisphere lags a bit and its ozone layer should be healed by mid-century. (AP November 2018)
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This report on ozone layer repair not only contradicts IPCC CO2 fossil fuel hype, it also suggests that the CO2 single variable analysis and projections are flawed.
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Environmental Modification Techniques (ENMOD)
The militarization of climate is rarely mentioned in the Climate Debate. “In 1977, an international Convention was ratified by the UN General Assembly which banned ‘military or other hostile use of environmental modification techniques having widespread, long-lasting or severe effects.'”
It defined ‘environmental modification techniques’ as ‘any technique for changing –through the deliberate manipulation of natural processes – the dynamics, composition or structure of the earth, including its biota, lithosphere, hydrosphere and atmosphere, or of outer space.’
While the substance of the 1977 Convention was reasserted in the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) signed at the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio, debate on weather modification for military use has become a scientific taboo.
Military analysts are mute on the subject. Meteorologists are not investigating the matter and environmentalists are focused on greenhouse gas emissions under the Kyoto Protocol. Neither is the possibility of climatic or environmental manipulations as part of a military and intelligence agenda, while tacitly acknowledged, part of the broader debate on climate change under UN auspices. (Michel Chossudovsky, The Ecologist, 2007)
The US possesses a vast arsenal of electromagnetic weapons which are capable of disrupting climate through environmental modification techniques (ENMOD). (See the author’s earlier writings)
The impacts of ENMOD techniques for military use were documented by CBC TV in the early 1990s. The report acknowledged that the HAARP facility in Alaska (now closed down or transferred to another location) under the auspices of the US Air Force had the ability of triggering typhoons, earthquakes, floods and droughts:
“Directed energy is such a powerful technology it could be used to heat the ionosphere to turn weather into a weapon of war. Imagine using a flood to destroy a city or tornadoes to decimate an approaching army in the desert. The military has spent a huge amount of time on weather modification as a concept for battle environments. If an electromagnetic pulse went off over a city, basically all the electronic things in your home would wink and go out, and they would be permanently destroyed.”
the US Military Would eventually “Own the Weather”.
Required Capability: Why Would We Want to Mess with the Weather? [title of Chapter 2, following Introduction]
According to Gen Gordon Sullivan, former Army chief of staff, “As we leap technology into the 21st century, we will be able to see the enemy day or night, in any weather— and go after him relentlessly.” global, precise, real-time, robust, systematic weather-modification capability would provide war-fighting CINCs with a powerful force multiplier to achieve military objectives. Since weather will be common to all possible futures, a weather-modification capability would be universally applicable and have utility across the entire spectrum of conflict. The capability of influencing the weather even on a small scale could change it from a force degrader to a force multiplier.
Advanced techniques of climatic warfare including environmental modification techniques:
“offer(s) the war fighter a wide range of possible options to defeat or coerce an adversary”, capabilities, it says, extend to the triggering of floods, hurricanes, droughts and earthquakes:
‘Weather modification will become a part of domestic and international security and could be done unilaterally… It could have offensive and defensive applications and even be used for deterrence purposes. The ability to generate precipitation, fog and storms on earth or to modify space weather… and the production of artificial weather all are a part of an integrated set of [military] technologies.” (emphasis added) US Air Force document AF 2025 Final Report
Climate instability is an important concern. But it cannot be analyzed in isolation. It is an extremely complex process.
While there is a significant grassroots movement of young activists, the CO2 Climate Consensus has distracted millions of people from an understanding of the broader and ongoing threats to human life on Planet Earth. In turn, the climate debate has excluded the fact amply documented that climate can be used to serve military objectives.
These climate strikes are taking place at a time of crisis, largely marked by US threats to wage war on Iran. The use of tactical nuclear weapons against Iran is contemplated.
Activists are often misled by those who fund the campaign including Rockefeller et al, as well as by the organizers and the public relations operatives involving Hollywood celebrities, et al.
The underlying science methodology is in many regard flawed.
In a bitter irony, the movement against capitalism is funded by capitalism. It’s called “manufactured dissent”.
Global warfare
Global warfare using advanced weapons systems coupled with deliberate acts of destruction, sabotage and destabilization of sovereign countries constitutes the most serious threat to the survival of humanity.
The globalization of war is coupled with the derogation of civil rights, the surveillance State, neoliberal IMF-World Bank macroeconomic reforms applied Worldwide which trigger mass poverty, unemployment and environmental destruction. This global policy framework (controlled by powerful financial interests) repeals workers’ rights, destroys family farming, undermines the Welfare state leading to the privatization health and education, etc.
What is required is a broad protest movement which encompasses these interrelated dimensions. The underlying causes of this Worldwide Crisis must be understood. It is not caused by a single variable (aka CO2 emissions).
The Extinction Debate and Nuclear War
Nine countries including US, Russia, France, China, UK, Israel, Pakistan, India, North Korea together possess nearly 14,000 nuclear weapons. (2017 data) The US and Russia have 6185 and 6500 respectively.
According to ICAN, “The United States and Russia maintain roughly 1,800 of their nuclear weapons on high-alert status – ready to be launched within minutes of a warning.”
Today’s nuclear bombs (with the exception of the so-called mini-nukes) are significantly more powerful in terms of explosive capacity than a Hiroshima bomb.
The B61.11 “mini-nuke” (categorized as a “low yield” “more usable” nuclear bomb) has an explosive capacity between one third and twelve times a Hiroshima bomb.
People should understand. There are enough nuclear bombs to destroy life on planet Earth several times over. Surely this should be part of the Extinction Debate.
While one can conceptualize the loss of life and destruction resulting from previous wars including Iraq and Afghanistan, it is impossible to fully comprehend the devastation which might result from a Third World War, using “new technologies” and advanced weapons, until it occurs and becomes a reality. The international community has endorsed nuclear war in the name of world peace. “Making the world safer” is the justification for launching a military operation which could potentially result in a nuclear holocaust. (Michel Chossudovsky, 2011)
War rather than CO2 emissions is the greatest threat to humanity. Oops, according to the media, nuclear weapons are a means to achieving World peace.
Trump has a 1.2 trillion dollar nuclear weapons program, initially set up by Obama.
While this multibillion dollar project is intended “to make the world safer”, these (expensive) nuclear weapons are categorized as “more usable” “humanitarian bombs”, “safe for the surrounding population”, according to scientific opinion on contract to the Pentagon.
US-NATO and their allies are involved in illegal acts of war. Nuclear war is on the drawing-board of the Pentagon.
But these wars are no longer illegal: they are part of the “responsibility to protect” (R2P). These are “humanitarian wars” or “counter-terrorism” ops despite the fact that millions of people have been killed and entire nations have been destroyed. It’s called “collateral damage”.
Needless to say, there are powerful financial interests behind the globalization of war. and without extensive media propaganda, they could not have a leg to stand on.
War is good for business. And luckily for the Military Industrial Complex, the antiwar movement is dead.
The Ritual of Rebellion Prevails.
University of Manchester sociologist Max Gluckman (1911-1975) in his writings showed how ritualized forms of rebellion by those who protest against those in power “through a controlled expression of hostility to authority” ultimately leads to the reinforcement of the established structures of authority.
Is that not what is happening today?
The movement against capitalism is funded and supported by capitalism.
The antiwar movement is dead. There are no protests directed against global warfare and the use of nuclear weapons on a first strike basis.
What’s More Dangerous, CO2 or Nuclear War?
“The Globalization of War” & “Towards a World War III Scenario”: Two books by Michel Chossudovsky at a discounted price!
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Towards a World War III Scenario: The Dangers of Nuclear War
by Michel Chossudovsky
The US has embarked on a military adventure, “a long war”, which threatens the future of humanity. US-NATO weapons of mass destruction are portrayed as instruments of peace. Mini-nukes are said to be “harmless to the surrounding civilian population”. Pre-emptive nuclear war is portrayed as a “humanitarian undertaking”.
While one can conceptualize the loss of life and destruction resulting from previous wars including Iraq and Afghanistan, it is impossible to fully comprehend the devastation which might result from a Third World War, using “new technologies” and advanced weapons, until it occurs and becomes a reality. The international community has endorsed nuclear war in the name of world peace. “Making the world safer” is the justification for launching a military operation which could potentially result in a nuclear holocaust.
The object of this book is to forcefully reverse the tide of war, challenge the war criminals in high office and the powerful corporate lobby groups which support them.
The 2016 Oxfam Davos Report which the mass media have ignored arrestingly shows that 62 individuals – 388 in 2010 – now own more wealth than 50% of the world’s population. More shockingly, it reports from its uncontested public sources that this share of wealth by half of the world’s people has collapsed by over 40% in just the last five years.
Yet the big lies persist even here that “the progress has been made in tackling world poverty” and “extreme poverty has been halved since 1990”.
Reversing Undeniable Fact as Ultimate Justification
Unbelievably, the endlessly repeated assertion of the form that ‘the poor are being lifted out of poverty in ever greater numbers’ continues on untouched despite the hard evidence that, in fact, the poorer half of humanity has lost almost half of their wealth in just the last five years.
This big lie is significant in its implications. For not only is a pervasive claim about the success of globalization undeniably falsified while no-one notices it. Basic market theory and dogma collapses as a result. What is daily claimed as an infallible benefit of the global market is shown to be the opposite of reality. What does it mean for “trickle-down theory” when, in truth, the trickle down goes up in hundreds of billions of dollars to the rich from the already poor and destitute?
What can we say now of the tirelessly proclaimed doctrine that the global market brings “more wealth for all” when, in fact, unimpeachable business evidence shows the opposite reality on the ground and across the world. For the poor have undeniably lost almost half their share of global wealth while the richest have multiplied theirs at the same time.
The evidence proves, in short, that the main moral and economic claims justifying the global market are very big lies becoming bigger all the time.
Worse than delusional, the lived reality of impoverishment of billions of people is reversed, the victims are continually proclaimed to be doing better under the system that increasingly deprives them of what little they have, and a trillion dollars worth of loss to the poorer half of humanity ends up in the pockets of the rich within only five years.
While the ever bigger lies go on justifying the global system that eats the poor alive as “poverty amelioration”, ever more of the same policies of accumulation by dispossession justify still more stripping of the majority as more “austerity”, more “welfare cuts”, and more “labor flexibility” – in a word, more starvation and depredation of people’s lives and life conditions as “more freedom and prosperity for all”.
The Statistical Shell Game that Masks the Life-Devouring Reality
As World Bank, IMF and like figures claim to show the uplifting of the poor out of poverty across the world, media of record like The Guardian and the New York Times report the claims with headlines to show all is well and getter for the poor and the majority as they are in fact grindingly reduced in their actual lives, work and life security. Thus the very big lies are instituted as given facts which economists and social scientists propagate without a blink.
In fact, these alleged great gains for the poor out of poverty and absolute poverty alike are based on income gains of less than a cup of coffee a day, an observation that is so well blocked from view that readers may now be seeing it for the first time. Thus the hypnotic thrall of the big lies are sustained, while no other life support system is. I have had economists and interviewers of high note respond angrily when this delusion is pointed out, as if I was letting down the poor rather than exposing the big lies. In this way, we find that the masking falsehoods have gone so deep into expert and public assumption that the real-life world can no longer be engaged. These big lies then work in the background to the non-stop big lies that precede endless foreign conflicts and wars to “defend the free world”
No-one appears to observe that the income gains ’lifting the poor out of poverty’ typically refer to emigrants from the countryside into polluted cities, insecure and dehumanized life conditions for those who formerly had at least a family dwelling, clean air and water and living horizons. In short, the standard $1.50 +/- measure of uplift out of poverty and extreme poverty is inhumanly absurd, but triumphally used as proof that the system is serving the least too.
The Counter-Revolution against Social Evolution that Engineers Deepening Recession
Throughout the unseen redistribution of wealth from the poor to the rich (now buried in much talk of “inequality”), ever more “market reforms” are enforced as “enhanced competition”, “liberalized de-regulation”, “reduced welfare costs” and “austerity programs to correct excesses”. The “excessive entitlements” of the system are all projected on the victims so that the truly insane entitlements of the richest to multiply their fortunes with no committed life function, value or coordinate but still more money-demand for them is somehow not noticed. This is yet another level of normalized big lies forming the ruling thought system.
In fact beneath the pervasive propaganda conditioning citizens to believe in the private money shell game devouring the world, the poorer half of humanity has been deprived of one trillion dollars of wealth while the 62 richest people have gained almost twice as much for themselves by the operations of this global disorder. Yet the Davos Report further emphasizes that still another US $760 billion goes annually to non-producing investors by immense transnational tax evasion with impunity across the world. Again the borderless money-capital freedom of ‘globalization’ vastly enriches the richest, while simultaneously doubling down on deprivation of the poor as ‘poverty reduction’.
Here the system is programmed in effect to strip the funding of all public sectors and institutions which have evolved to serve the common life interest. Public services and infrastructures too are perpetually driven towards bankruptcy not only by never-ending defunding, cutbacks, privatizations, and corporate lobby control of public policies and subsidies, but by ever-soaring public tax evasion near one trillion dollars annually about which governments and trade treaties have done nothing to correct yet.
Thus governments which could invest in sustaining humanity’s social and ecological life support systems from growing deterioration and collapse are now systematically bankrupted or debt enslaved along with most citizens. In consequence without governments knowing why, the world economy slips into ever deeper recession from the collapse of economic demand at the public and majority levels.
Eating the World Alive as Global Competition
The new law of human evolution is that are required to compete for more money and commodities for themselves as “necessary to survive”, with the borderless system de-regulated and structured to increasingly impoverish the great majority while multiplying the wealth of the rich. The facts are now long in. Corporate globalization is not only out of control. It is eating the world alive at all levels towards cumulative collapse of organic, social and ecological life organization. Global competition means, in fact, the majority’s life means and security keep falling as the environment is looted and polluted on ever larger scales of depredation. Yet only “more growth” of this system is imagined as a solution. The system is clinically insane
While the common life-ground is blinkered out a-priori by the ruling value system, those deprived and left behind disappear into multi-level big lies proclaiming the opposite. This is why the facts are not reported. This is why claimed actions to stop the world bleeding blinker out the system disorder causing them. This is why even progressives assume economic falsehoods as if they were true. Like a cancer system at the macro level, this exponentially multiplying private money-sequence system has only one set-point – to blindly grow itself while masking the life-devouring disorder as “enhancing people’s well-being”.
John McMurtry is University Professor Emeritus at the University of Guelph and elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. His work has been translated from Latin America through Europe to Japan, and he is the author/editor of UNESCO’s three-volume Philosophy and World Problems, as well as more recently, The Cancer Stage of Capitalism; From Crisis to Cure.
Realiza-se em Londres, em 4 de Dezembro, o Conselho Atlântico Norte dos Chefes de Estado e de Governo, que celebra o 70º aniversário da NATO, definida pelo Secretário Geral, Jens Stoltenberg, como “a aliança mais bem sucedida da História”.
Um “sucesso” inegável. Desde a demolição através da guerra, da Federação Jugoslava, em 1999, a NATO alargou de 16 para 29 países (30 se agora incluir a Macedónia do Norte), expandindo-se para Leste, muito próxima da Rússia. “Pela primeira vez na nossa História – sublinha Stoltenberg – temos tropas prontas para combate no Leste da nossa Aliança”. Mas a Organização do Tratado do Atlântico Norte foi além, estendendo as suas operações bélicas desde as montanhas afegãs e através dos desertos africanos e do Médio Oriente.
Agora a Grande Aliança ambiciona mais. Na Cimeira de Londres – anuncia, antecipadamente, Stoltenberg – os dirigentes dos 29 países membros “reconhecerão o Espaço como o nosso quinto campo operativo”, que se junta ao terrestre, ao marítimo, ao aéreo e ao ciberespaço. “O Espaço é essencial para o sucesso das nossas operações”, sublinha o Secretário Geral, deixando perceber que a NATO desenvolverá um programa espacial militar. Obviamente, não fornece detalhes, mas informa que a NATO assinou um primeiro contrato de 1 bilião de dólares para modernizar os seus 14 aviões AWACS. Eles não são simples aviões radares, mas centros de comando voadores, produzidos pela Boeing americana, para a gestão da batalha através de sistemas espaciais.
Certamente quase nenhum dos líderes europeus (para a Itália, o Primeiro Ministro Conte) que, em 4 de Dezembro, “reconhecerão o Espaço como o nosso quinto campo de operativo”, conhece o programa espacial militar da NATO, preparado pelo Pentágono e pelos altos comandos militares europeus subordinados, juntamente com as principais indústrias aeroespaciais. Muito menos sabem os Parlamentos, como o italiano, que aceitam qualquer decisão da NATO, sob comando USA, sem se preocupar com suas implicações político-militares e económicas.
A NATO é lançada no Espaço no prosseguimento do novo Comando Espacial criado pelo Pentágono, em Agosto passado, com o objectivo, declarado pelo Presidente Trump, de “garantir que o domínio americano do Espaço nunca seja ameaçado”. Trump então anunciou o estabelecimento subsequente da Força Espacial dos Estados Unidos, com a tarefa de “defender os interesses vitais americanos no Espaço, o próximo campo de batalha da guerra”. A Rússia e a China acusam os EUA de abrir o caminho para a militarização do Espaço, alertando que têm capacidade para responder. Tudo isso aumenta o perigo de guerra nuclear.
Mesmo que o programa espacial militar da NATO ainda não seja conhecido, uma coisa é certa: será extremamente caro. Na Cimeira, Trump pressionará os aliados europeus para que aumentem as suas despesas militares para 2% ou mais, do PIB. Até agora, fizeram-no oito países: Bulgária (que elevou para 3,25%, um pouco abaixo de 3,42%, dos EUA), Grécia, Grã-Bretanha, Estónia, Roménia, Lituânia, Letónia e Polónia. Os outros, apesar de permanecerem abaixo de 2%, estão empenhados em aumentá-la. Impulsionada pela enorme despesa USA – 730 biliões de dólares em 2019, 10 vezes superior à da Rússia – a despesa militar anual da NATO, segundo dados oficiais, ultrapassa 1 trilião de dólares. Na realidade, é superior à indicado pela NATO, pois que não inclui vários elementos de natureza militar: por exemplo, o das armas nucleares dos EUA, inscrita no orçamento, não do Pentágono, mas do Departamento de Energia.
A despesa militar italiana, que subiu de 13º para 11º lugar no mundo, importa, em termos reais, em cerca de 25 biliões de euros por ano, sempre a aumentar. Em Junho passado, o Governo Conte I adicionou 7,2 biliões de euros, também fornecidos pelo Ministério do Desenvolvimento Económico para a compra de sistemas de armas. Em Outubro, na reunião com o Secretário Geral da NATO, o governo do Conte II prometeu aumentá-la constantemente em cerca de 7 biliões de euros por ano a partir de 2020 (La Stampa, 11de Outubro de 2019).
For months Western media outlets have been retailing stories about riots in Hong Kong. With lip-smacking relish there have been such reports as “On October 1, China’s National Day, the first live round to hit a protester was fired by riot police pursued by protesters in the distant suburb of Tsuen Wan.” Unfortunately for the anti-China zealots in the US and Europe there were no deaths of rioting students, except one “who fell from a parking garage during a police dispersal operation… escalating tensions between police and the public that have been increasingly strained over the months of worsening violence.” The two incidents in which rioters were shot by policemen made Western headlines.
On October 15 the US House of Representatives voted unanimously for a Bill that “addresses Hong Kong’s status under US law and imposes sanctions on those responsible for human rights violations in Hong Kong” and on November 16 the Senate moved “to expedite passage of a bill that would open a path to sanctions against those seen to be eroding freedoms in the Chinese territory.”
(On November 29 the BBC reported that when Hong Kong police entered the Polytechnic University “they found 3,989 petrol bombs; 1,339 explosive items; 601 bottles of corrosive liquids; and 573 weapons” but there will be no criticism by Congress about this arsenal. US legislators apparently consider that petrol bombs intended to incinerate policemen do not violate human rights, providing they are thrown by those in mobs rioting against China.)
US domestic legislation criticising China is gross interference in the internal affairs of a sovereign nation, but Washington’s finest are curiously selective about the countries they want to punish. Given the size of the majority votes in both Houses, President Trump had no option but to sign the bill into law on November 27, thereby further complicating US-China relations and failing to benefit one single US citizen.
In the same period as the Hong Kong riots there was continued chaos in Iraq, not only involving the usual barbaric violence of car bombs and drive-by shootings, but extending to slaughter of civilian demonstrators by military forces. On November 25 it was reported that “Thirteen anti-government protesters have been killed by Iraqi security forces in one of the worst days of clashes in the country’s south. Demonstrators outraged by rampant government corruption and poor services burned tires and blocked main road arteries. Seven protesters were killed in the southern province of Basra when Iraqi authorities used live fire and tear gas to disperse them, security and hospital officials said.”
Strangely, there wasn’t a word of protest about the Iraq carnage from any of those in Washington who are so supportive of human rights, although US legislators had been extremely vocal about the Hong Kong riots, with, for example, Republican Senator Marco Rubio declaring on November 19 that the anti-China Bill “is an important step in holding accountable those Chinese and Hong Kong government officials responsible for Hong Kong’s eroding autonomy and human rights violations.” He was echoed by Democrat Senator Chuck Schumer who berated President Xi and told him that “You cannot be a great leader and you cannot be a great country when you oppose freedom, when you are so brutal to the people of Hong Kong, young and old, who are protesting.”
Then on November 27, the day Trump signed the anti-China Bill into law, the US military issued a statement that “Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley met with Iraqi Joint Headquarters Chief of Staff General Othman Al-Ghanimi today in Baghdad, Iraq. The senior leaders discussed the vital strategic partnership between the US and Iraq and the current security environment throughout the Middle East. The partnership between the United States and Iraq is a crucial element to peace and security in the Middle East region.”
While the Generals were discussing security, Reuters reported that Iraqi forces “shot dead more demonstrators. In the holy city of Karbala they used live ammunition against protesters, killing two overnight. Two more were killed in clashes near Ahrar Bridge in Baghdad. Near Basra one protester died of wounds from gunfire, police and medics said, bringing the toll since unrest broke out on October 1 to 344 people dead nationwide.”
Rioting in Iraq began on the same day that in Hong Kong the “first live round to hit a protester was fired by riot police pursued by protesters,” which gave rise to heated anti-China diatribes in the US Congress. But the two most senior military commanders of the US and Iraq had nothing to say publicly about the hundreds of Iraqis killed by soldiers of their own national armed forces.
US forces invaded Iraq in March 2003 with the stated aims of “disarming the country of weapons of mass destruction, ending Saddam Hussein’s support for terrorism and freeing the Iraqi people from his repressive regime.” As we know — and many of us wrote at the time — there were no weapons of mass destruction and Saddam did not support terrorism, although there is no doubt his regime was oppressive, and often brutally so. However, the main long-term objective, according to GW Bush, was to “help you to build a new Iraq that is prosperous and free… we believe the Iraqi people are deserving and capable of human liberty. And when the dictator has departed, they can set an example to all the Middle East of a vital and peaceful and self-governing nation.”
But now it is evident that “millions lack access to adequate healthcare, education, clean water and electricity, with much of the country’s infrastructure in tatters.” The thousands who have taken to the streets in protests were subjected to “poverty, rampant corruption, unemployment and crumbling public services.” The country is a heaving shambles, thanks to the Bush war, but a Congressional delegation that visited in early November could only “express their support for the efforts made by the Iraqi government to respond to the legitimate demands of the Iraqi people.” When Vice-President Pence visited US troops at a base in Iraq on November 23 he didn’t meet any Iraqis and merely spoke on the phone with the prime minister who “assured me that they were working to avoid violence or the kind of oppression we see taking place even as we speak in Iran. He pledged to me that they would work to protect and respect peaceful protesters as part of the democratic process here in Iraq.”
There has been no criticism from the White House or Congress concerning the killing of hundreds of Iraqi civilians by their own government’s troops. There were no threats of sanctions and no legislation enacted on the basis of countering the “erosion of freedoms” — nothing except expressions of support for the Iraqi government whose prime minister has now resigned.
There is the smell of death in the streets of Iraq — but the stink of hypocrisy in Washington.
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Brian Cloughley is a British and Australian armies’ veteran, former deputy head of the UN military mission in Kashmir and Australian defense attaché in Pakistan.
Tensions in the Eastern Mediterranean are rapidly rising after Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan met with a Libyan official of the internationally recognized Government of National Accord (GNA), based in the Libyan capital of Tripoli, in Ankara last week. They agreed on their own Economic Exclusive Zone that penetrates into Greek and Cypriot waters, in violation of the United Nations Convention Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) that favors Cypriot and Greek claims, a major reason why Turkey is only one of 15 UN members, out of 193, that has not signed it. Although Turkey claims it is acting within international law to enter the oil and gas-rich Greek and Cypriot waters, it never references which international law. This leads to the simple question of why Turkey has not signed UNCLOS if international law supposedly favors their claim?
The Turkish-GNA provocation against Greece comes as only last month Pakistan and Turkey conducted naval exercises where Pakistan violated Greek and Cypriot air and maritime space several times and harassed Cypriot merchant ships. This demonstrates that Turkey is bolstering its alliances to force its complete hegemony over the Eastern Mediterranean. This is to expand their maritime space in violation of international law to exploit the rich deposits of gas and oil in the region.
However, Turkey has once again defied international law, remembering the illegal invasion of northern Cyprus and Syria among many. This has now opened up a new quagmire that Erdoğan has probably not expected. With the NATO destruction of Libya in 2011, in which both Greece and Turkey took a minor part in, the country has been plagued by tribalism, feudalism and Islamic radicalism, with two major forces emerging from the mess – the GNA in coalition with the Muslim Brotherhood, and the Libyan National Army (LNA) led by General Khalifa Haftar and based in eastern Libya. This is unsurprising since Turkey has a long history of supporting the Muslim Brotherhood.
Erdoğan has opened up a pandora’s box in Libya that will now surely backfire on him and see the dismantlement of the GNA. The GNA is now becoming increasingly isolated since Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Egypt have sworn to back General Haftar with weapons and money. It is expected with the arrival of new funds and weapons, Haftar will continue his assault to take Tripoli that he began in March. One major reason for this new support for the LNA is that Greece, Cyprus and Egypt are in a strategic regional alliance to protect their respective EEZ against Turkish aggression.
Haftar has also controversially announced that he wants relations with Israel. His desires for relations with Israel, a rarity among Muslim-majority countries, will surely bring Haftar more international recognition and legitimacy as a “reward,”, especially crucial as the majority of the world recognizes the Tripoli government.
A delegation of U.S. diplomats recently asked Haftar to halt military operations, citing that it will supposedly allow Russia’s military invasion of Libya. Haftar refused. Haftar’s Secretary of State said that the United States is completely wrong, as Libya has become a huge arena for settling accounts among regional powers – and this is true if we consider that the Saudis, Emirates and Egyptians are backing the LNA, while the Turks and Qataris backs the GNA.
Rather than being in compliance with international law, Erdoğan signed with the GNA an illegal agreement to carve out the Eastern Mediterranean for its own plans. Greece has given the GNA time until today to retract their deal with Turkey. Although Greece on the international scene is a minor player, it does wield significant influence in the Eastern Mediterranean and will use NATO and EU mechanisms to convince member states to retract their recognition of the GNA, which will only further isolate Turkey as it has attempted to build an alliance to counter the Greek-Cypriot-Egyptian military partnership.
In a rare occurrence, both the U.S. and Russia have criticized Turkey’s aggression and escalation in the Eastern Mediterranean, with the US State Department describing the Turkish and GNA move as “unhelpful” and “provocative.”
It is unlikely this will make a difference as it is expected that the GNA will adamantly refuse to renounce its agreement with Turkey, which will push Greece to back the LNA and encourage NATO and EU members to do the same. At the very minimum, the Saudi-Emirati-Egyptian tripartite has used Turkey’s aggression in the Eastern Mediterranean as an excuse to back the LNA, providing him with the money, weapons, intelligence and other resources to overcome the Turkish-backed GNA.
With Saif Gaddafi, the second son of Muammar Gaddafi, also announcing his support for Haftar, there is every potential that the internationally recognized GNA will have a multitude of pressure from NATO, the EU, the Saudi-Emirati-Egyptian alliance, and from Haftar and Gaddafi supporters. Erdoğan’s desperate pursuit for regional hegemony was first received with applause domestically, but it appears he has now opened a pandora’s box in Libya that is now likely to backfire on him.
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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.
Paul Antonopoulos is a Research Fellow at the Center for Syncretic Studies.
a NATO-Exit.
Prince Sultan Air Force base in central Saudi Arabia, 80 km south of Riyadh.
“Exxon: Make Them Pay”?
