Wednesday’s public hearing on the impeachment of President Trump featured the US ambassador to the European Union, Gordon Sondland, who testified that, contrary to the White House narrative, there had been a “quid pro quo” in Trump’s dealings with Ukraine.
Trump, Sondland said, offered military aid and an invitation to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to visit the White House in return for an announcement by Zelensky of an investigation into the activities of the Democratic National Committee in Ukraine in 2016 and the role of Hunter Biden. Biden was paid $50,000 a month by a large Ukrainian gas company while his father, then the vice president, was point man for Ukrainian policy in the Obama administration.
Sondland’s appearance was trumpeted by the Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee and most of the media as a “smoking gun” against Trump. Sondland was even compared to John Dean, the White House counsel whose testimony against Richard Nixon in the Watergate scandal paved the way to Nixon’s resignation to avoid certain impeachment.
The testimony of John Dean, however, was part of the uncovering of a major attack on the democratic rights of the American people. The break-in at the Democratic National Committee offices in the Watergate complex, carried out by ex-CIA agents working for Nixon, was the outcome of a protracted campaign of political spying and repression directed against Vietnam War protesters, the former military official Daniel Ellsberg, who leaked the Pentagon Papers, and other political opponents.
There are no such issues of democratic rights in the conflict between Trump and the Democrats, who are acting as the political front men for the CIA and other sections of the national security apparatus. The significance of Sondland’s testimony lies not in what he revealed about Trump, but in his account of the everyday relationship between American imperialism and Ukraine, a small, dependent nation that has been turned into a vassal state by successive administrations in Washington.
The president of Ukraine is told by American diplomats exactly what words he must use and what promises he must make to appease his overlord in Washington. When President Zelensky offers to have his chief prosecutor make a statement along the lines demanded by Trump, he is told that he himself must make the statement, and it must be televised so that he is on the record. He is told to jump, and exactly how high.
In that respect, there is no difference whatsoever between Trump’s conduct in 2019 and the actions of his Democratic nemesis, Vice President Biden, in 2016. Biden traveled to Ukraine and told its government that Washington was withholding $1 billion in promised aid until certain actions were taken, including the firing of a corrupt national prosecutor. Biden even boasted in a US television interview that within six hours of his delivering that ultimatum the Ukrainian president had sacked the official.
Apologists for the Democrats and Biden will insist that Biden was carrying out official US government policy, in the interests of US “national security,” whereas Trump was looking out for his personal interests, seeking dirt on a potential election rival. This argument is questionable even on its own terms, since the prosecutor whose firing Biden demanded had control over the corruption investigation into the gas company Burisma, which was lavishly paying Biden’s son.
But there is a more fundamental issue: What was the “national security” interest that Biden was upholding? Why is the United States supplying vast quantities of military aid and weaponry to Ukraine? It is part of the effort by American imperialism, carried out over two decades, to turn Ukraine into an American puppet state directed against Russia.
For all the claims by the Democrats that they are shocked by Trump seeking “foreign interference” in the 2020 presidential election, every presidential election in Ukraine since 2004 has been characterized by massive foreign interference, particularly by the United States. One US official boasted in 2013 that Washington had expended more than $5 billion on its operations to install a pliable anti-Russian regime in Kiev.
Detaching Ukraine from Russia has been a key US foreign policy objective since the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. Ukraine and Russia were the two largest components of the USSR. They share a land border of more than 2,000 kilometers and economies that were once closely integrated. Thirty percent of the Ukrainian people speak Russian as their first language, including the vast majority of the population of Crimea and the eastern Ukrainian region now controlled by pro-Russian forces.
In both World War I and World War II, German imperialism made the seizure of Ukraine, with its rich soil and proximity to the oilfields of the Caucasus, a key strategic objective. The largest number of Soviet Jews massacred as part of the Holocaust were killed in Ukraine, in atrocities such as Babi Yar, the ravine outside Kiev where 34,000 Jews were machine-gunned, and Odessa, where 50,000 Jews were slaughtered.
American imperialism is seeking to do what German imperialism failed twice to accomplish: use Ukraine as a launching pad for political subversion and military violence against Russia. Behind the backs of the American people, with little or no public discussion, the US government has been shipping large quantities of arms and other war materiel to Ukraine, in an operation that brings with it the increasing danger of a direct US military collision with Russia, a conflict between the two powers that between them deploy most of the world’s nuclear weapons.
The impeachment hearings have focused on anti-Trump witnesses who are themselves key participants in this reactionary foreign policy, and who speak in the Orwellian language of American imperialism. They define “democracy” in Ukraine in terms of the degree to which Ukraine’s government agrees to serve as an instrument of American foreign policy. They hail the so-called “Revolution of Dignity” in which an elected president, Viktor Yanukovych, was overthrown because he was viewed as an obstacle to the anti-Russia campaign. They salute fascistic figures like Ukrainian Interior Minister Arsen Avakov, sponsor of the notorious Azov Battalion, which marches under modified swastikas and celebrates the Ukrainians who collaborated with the Nazis in World War II.
Nothing of this political reality is so much as hinted at in the coverage of the impeachment hearings by either the pro-Trump or anti-Trump corporate media. On the contrary, the presumption is that the foreign policy of the United States government is aimed at the promotion of freedom and democracy and opposed to Russia because Russian President Vladimir Putin is a tyrant.
The role of US imperialism in Ukraine, however, is only one example of the depredations of American imperialism throughout the world, in which countless tyrants and fascists—like Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and Brazilian President Jair Bolsanaro—are aligned with the CIA, the Pentagon and the State Department.
Nor is the cavalier attitude of the US government to Ukrainian sovereignty an exception. There is no difference between Washington’s role in Ukraine in 2014, its intervention against the Rajapakse government in Sri Lanka in 2015, its backing for the abortive military coup in Turkey in 2016, or its support for the overthrow of Evo Morales in Bolivia today.
Weaker nations whose rulers get in the way of American imperialism will pay the price, and in some cases, as in Iraq, Venezuela, Syria and Libya—all countries where oil wealth is a major consideration—the result can be invasion, occupation, military coup or a combination of all three.
Washington has its hands around the throats of the Ukrainian people. The issue is not whether this stranglehold is being used for improper “personal” ends by Trump, as the Democrats allege, rather than for the purposes laid down by the national security establishment. The issue is the intervention of the American and international working class to free the Ukrainian people, and the population of the world, from the deadly grip of Wall Street and the Pentagon.
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Featured image is Gordon Sondland from Wikimedia Commons
After my work in the Middle East had finished, at least for the time being, I was waiting for my flight to Santiago de Chile. In Paris. I could count on a few ‘free’ days, processing what I had heard and witnessed in Beirut. Day after day, for long hours, I sat in a lounge, typing and typing; reflecting and typing.
As I was working, above me, France 24 television news channel was on, beaming from a flat screen.
The people around me were coming and going: West African elites on their wild shopping sprees, shouting unceremoniously into their mobile phones. Koreans and Japanese doing Paris. Rude German and North American beefy types, discussing business, laughing vulgarly, disregarding ‘lower beings’, in fact everyone in their immediate radius.
No matter what was happening in my hotel, France 24 was on, and on, and on. Yes, precisely; for 24 hours, recycling for days and nights the same stories, once in a while updating news, with a slightly arrogant air of superiority. Here, France was judging the world; teaching Asia, the Middle East, Africa and Latin America, about themselves.
In front of my eyes, above me, on that screen, the world was changing. For many months I had been covering the nightmarish riots of the treasonous violent ninjas in Hong Kong. I was all over the Middle East, particularly Lebanon, and now I was on my way to my second home, Latin America, where socialism has kept winning elections, but was getting beaten, even terrorized, by the corrupt and crooked Western empire.
All that France 24 kept showing, I have been habitually witnessing with my own eyes. And more, much more, from many different angles. I have filmed it, written about it, and analyzed it.
In many countries, all over the world, people have been sharing their stories with me. I have seen barricades, photographed and filmed injured bodies, as well as tremendous revolutionary enthusiasm and excitement. I have also witnessed betrayals, treasons, cowardice.
But in the lounge, in front of the television set, everything appeared pretty groovy, very classy, and comforting. The blood looked like a well-mixed color, the barricades like a stage of the latest Broadway musical.
People were dying beautifully, their shouts muted, theatrical. The elegant anchor in a designer dress was beaming benevolently, whenever people on the screen dared to show some powerful emotions, or were grimacing in pain. She was in charge, and she was above all of this. In Paris, London and New York, powerful emotions, political commitments and grand ideological gestures, were made outdated, already a long time ago.
During just the few days that I spent in Paris, many things have changed, on all the continents.
The Hong Kong rioters were evolving; beginning to set on fire their compatriots simply because they dared to pledge their allegiance to Beijing. Women were unceremoniously beaten, with metal bars, until their faces were covered in blood.
In Lebanon, the big clenched fists of the pro-Western regime-change Otpor were suddenly at the center of the anti-government demonstrations. The economy of the country was collapsing. But the Lebanese ‘elites’ were burning money, all around me, all around Paris and all around the world. Poor Lebanese Misérables, as well as the impoverished middle class, were demanding social justice. But the rich of Lebanon were mocking them, showing. They had it all figured out: they have robbed their own country, then left it behind, and now were having a great ball here, in the “City of Lights”.
But to criticize them in the West has been taboo; forbidden. Political correctness, the mighty Western weapon used to uphold the status quo, has made them untouchable. Because they are Lebanese; from the Middle East. A good arrangement, isn’t it? They are robbing their fellow Middle Easterners, on behalf of their foreign masters in Paris and Washington, but in Paris or London, it is taboo to expose their ‘culture’ of debauchery.
In Iraq, the anti-Shi’a and therefore anti-Iranian sentiments have been dispersed, powerfully and clearly, from abroad. The second big episode of the so-called Arab Spring.
Chileans have been fighting and dying, trying to depose a neo-liberal system, forced down their throats ever since 1973 by the Los Chicago Boys.
The Bolivian socialist government, successful, democratic and racially inclusive, has been overthrown, by Washington and Bolivian treasonous cadres. People have been dying there, too, on the streets of El Alto, La Paz, and Cochabamba.
Israel was at it again, in Gaza. Full force.
Damascus was bombed.
I went to film the Algerians, Lebanese and Bolivians; people who were pushing for their agendas at the Place de la Republique.
I anticipated the horrors that were waiting for me, soon; in Chile, Bolivia and Hong Kong.
I was writing, feverishly.
While the television set was humming.
People were entering and leaving the lounge, meeting and separating, laughing, shouting, crying and making up.
Nothing to do with the world.
The outbursts of indecent laugher erupted periodically, even as the bombs were exploding on the screen, even as the people were charging against the police and the military.
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Then, one day, I realized that nobody really gives a damn. Like that; so simple.
You witness what happens, all over the world; you document it. You are risking your life. You are getting engaged. You get injured. Sometimes you come close, extremely close, to death.
You do not watch TV. Never, or almost never. You appear on the television, yes; you supply stories and images. But you never watch the results; what emotions your work, your words and images, truly evoke. Or do they evoke any emotions at all? You only work for the anti-imperialist media outlets, never for the mainstream. But for whomever you work for, you have no clue what the facial expressions your reports from the war zones are arousing. Or what emotions any war zone reports stir.
And then, you are in Paris, and you have some time to watch your readers, and suddenly you understand.
You get it: why so few are writing to you, support your struggle, or even fight for the countries being destroyed, decimated by the empire.
When you look around, observing people who are sitting in a hotel lounge, you clearly realize: they feel nothing. They want to see nothing. They understand nothing. France 24 is on, but it is not a news channel, which it was intended to be, many years ago. It is entertainment stuff, which is supposed to produce sophisticated background noise. And it does. Precisely that.
Same as the BBC, CNN, Fox and Deutsche Welle.
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As the legitimately elected socialist President of Bolivia was being forced into exile, tears in his eyes, I got hold of the remote control, and switched channel to some bizarre and primitive cartoon network.
Nothing changed. The expressions on the faces of some twenty people around me did not change.
If a nuclear bomb would have exploded on the screen, somewhere in the Sub-Continent, no one would pay any attention.
Some people were taking selfies. While I was describing the collapse of the Western culture on my MacBook. All of us were busy, in our own way.
Kashmir, West Papua, Iraq, Lebanon, Hong Kong, Palestine, Bolivia and Chile were on fire.
So, what?
Ten meters away from me, an American businessman was shouting into his phone:
“Are you going to invite me back to Paris in December? Yes? We have to discuss details. How much am I getting per day?”
Coups, uprisings, riots, all over the world.
And that plastic, professional smile of the lady, the news announcer, in her blue and white retro designer dress; so confident, so French, and so endlessly fake.
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Lately, I keep wondering whether the inhabitants of Europe and North America have any moral right to control the world.
My conclusion is: definitely not!
They do not know, and they do not want to know. Those who have power are obliged to know.
In Paris, Berlin, London, New York, individuals are too busy admiring themselves, or ‘suffering’ from their little, selfish problems.
They are too busy taking selfies, or being preoccupied with their sexual orientation. And of course, with their ‘business’.
That is why I prefer to write for Russian and Chinese outlets, to address people who are scared like myself, anxious about the future of the world.
The editors of this magazine, in faraway Moscow, are; they are anxious and passionate at the same time. I know they are. I, and my reports, are not some ‘business’ for them. People whose cities are smashed, ruined, are not some sort of entertainment in the editorial room of NEO.
In many Western countries, people have lost their ability to feel, to get engaged, and to fight for a better world.
Because of this loss, they should be forced to give up their power over the world.
Our world is damaged, scarred, but is tremendously beautiful and precious.
It is not a business, to work for its improvement and survival.
Only great dreamers, poets and thinkers can be trusted, fighting for it, steering it forward.
Are there many poets and dreamers amongst my readers? Or do they look, do they behave, as those guests in the hotel lounge in Paris, in front of the screen beaming France 24?
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as we head deeper into the 21st century. The mind is the new frontier – and from a military standpoint the new battleground – as governmental-military-corporate organizations become enmeshed with each other to push the same AI (Artificial Intelligence) driven agenda of a NWO (New World Order). Research is feverishly underway with the aim of completely understanding and decoding the brain, with the idea that such an understanding will lead to many ‘useful’ benefits (but not for the average person), such as governments being better able to control their citizens without threats or force, and military forces being better able to defeat their enemies without firing a single shot. Do you realize you and your mind are being targeted? And, on the other hand, do you realize you can harness the power of your mind to achieve your potential, including lifting yourself out or poverty, creating deep and strong relationships, and fulfilling your dreams?
Broad Mind Control
Mind control is a term with broad and specific meanings. In the broad sense, it refers to the widespread propaganda and programming (mostly doled out by the MSM [Mainstream Media]) that aims to brainwash people by limiting their perception of Who They Are and what reality is. The idea of this broad mind control is always to manipulate and disempower the individual, so that his/her attitudes and behavior come into alignment with what the Controllers want. It is said that Americans are the most propagandized people on Earth.
Specific Mind Control
In the narrow or specific sense, mind control refers to the projects started by the Nazis and continued by the CIA that sought to influence and control people’s minds to the point where they would become programmable robots, rendering themselves with docility into the hands of their manipulators. This would include doing whatever they were told and in some cases not even remembering it, because the programming involved splitting up the person’s mind into different ‘altars’ or personalities which were tightly compartmentalized in their brains. Each altar had no idea of the existence or actions of the other altars. A handler would then use certain triggers to activate a particular altar and bring it to the front, in order to get the mind-controlled victim to perform certain actions. In this way, mind-controlled assassins were created and used in major political assassinations, such as with Robert Kennedy and the dazed and confused Sirhan Sirhan. Mind-controlled sex slaves (e.g. Cathy O’Brien, Brice Taylor, Arizona Wilder, Cisco Wheeler, Svali, Kathy Collins and many more) have also been a common theme. The CIA’s notorious MK Ultra began in 1953. It is stated that it was shut down in 1973. When it was later declassified, the public learnt there were an incredible 149 sub-projects!
Advanced Overt Mind Control: Neuralink, BMIs, Nanochips, Neuro-enhancement
If you think the CIA, the government and other military agencies had a change of heart and suddenly stopped their mind control research, think again. Mind control continues today and has become even more advanced. Big Tech corporations like Google (Alphabet) and Facebook, which are not really private companies but rather a fusion of government-military-intelligence money/direction with corporate execution, are investing millions of dollars into developing technologies that can read your thoughts and devices which make a computer mouse and typing obsolete. They want to access your thoughts and make it so your brain is directly connected to a computer, to the internet and to AI (Artificial Intelligence). The USG under Obama launched the BRAIN initiative, estimated to cost $6 billion over a decade ($4.5 billion to the NIH alone). Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla and founder of the Neuralink Corporation, is developing a device (like a neural lace) which he claims will basically read your mind. Dr. James Giordano (who worked at the DoD and DARPA) reveals all the areas the military is exploring – and it’s scary. In his own words, this includes stuff like neuroimaging, cyber-linked neurocog manipulation, directed energy devices, implantable BMIs (Brain-Machine Interfaces), nanoneurotechnologicals, nanochips and the neuro-enhancement of soldiers. Yes, he actually admitted the existence of directed energy devices – DEW was used on 9/11 and in other crimes such as the engineered fires in Paradise, California.
Advanced Covert Mind Control: V2K, Dream Hacking, Forced Speech, Synthetic Telepathy, EEG Cloning/Heterodyning, Cybernetic Hive Mind
These things are the admitted, overt brain research, and when it comes to exposing the conspiracy, there’s always one thing we are told and another thing that is actually happening. The covert brain research is even more shocking. Ex-CIA officer turned whistleblower Dr. Robert Duncan, an engineer who built many of these systems, has for years exposed numerous covert current mind control techniques. He confesses that he worked on the V2K (Voice to Skull) ‘Voice of God’ weapon, which had 4 different techniques that can pipe voices into people’s heads. This was used in the Iraq War against the Iraqi soldiers (“Lay down your guns, this is Allah”). He reveals how dreams can be hacked and people can be made to speak (forced speech). He also exposes how the following area are being researched and weaponized: remote mind reading, synthetic telepathy, cybernetic hive mind experimentation (multiple people sharing the same mental ‘space’), the existence and use of a technology for remotely ‘cloning’ or copying thoughts, emotions & other states (e.g. intense pain) onto a target (EEG cloning or EEG heterodyning). He also confirms that people can be targeted and tracked remotely via their energy signature or ‘brain print’.
Targeted Individuals
More and more people are blowing the whistle about how they are being attacked via electronic harassment and stalking. This is the remote assault on victims (known as TIs or Targeted Individuals) using frequency or directed energy weapons and other mind control technology to bombard people with invisible attacks. These TIs are made to feel certain emotions and think certain thoughts which are not their own. Sadly, these TIs may initially think they are crazy, and unfortunately many people around them do when they report it, however it is a very real phenomenon. Calling people crazy, forcing them to do a psychiatric evaluation or having them locked up all old tricks that have been used by governments worldwide to silence political opponents and dissidents.
In a nutshell, the overall point is this: control someone’s mind, control their perception and control their reality, because perception creates reality. Mind control is a tool of a very few psychopathic manipulators to control the whole of humanity.
Controlling Your Mind and Taking Back Your Power
So that’s the bad news – and it’s better to be aware of it than blindly ignorant of it just hoping it will go away. Far from going away, it’s expanding and increasing. So what can you do in the face of all of that? Yes, you can be aware of it, and yes, you can take some steps to protect yourself against it. However I want to highlight how most of us don’t use our brains to anywhere near the full potential. What if you took the full journey from mind control to controlling your mind? After all, if you don’t control yourself, eventually someone outside of you will control you; likewise, if you don’t control your mind, someone else will control it.
So, here’s the good news. Controlling your mind is a choice. You have the power to expand your consciousness and use the untapped potential of your own mind – intentionally, for your own good. You can learn to harness the amazing capacity of your mind and emotions to create the life you want. How? There is ancient knowledge, wisdom and a host of techniques which explain how to do this. The theme of controlling your mind has many facets, however in this article, for the sake of brevity, I will touch on just a couple. Firstly, there is the nature of the mind itself, spewing out thought after thought. Many spiritual traditions emphasize the importance of meditation, inner silence and full immersion in the now/present moment. This is training to reign in the so-called monkey mind so that you control it, rather than allowing it to control you.
Intention + Emotion = Creation
Secondly, there is a formula for creating or manifesting in this life. The formula is very well known to the Secret Societies that underpin the NWO and run the world. It is Intention + Emotion = Creation. Like any piece of knowledge or technology, it is neutral; it can be used for good or evil. If you use it for good, it’s White Magic; if you use it for evil, it’s Black Magic.
The key idea is to get clear on what you want, release any negative thoughts around it (e.g. it’s impossible, I’m unworthy etc.), make it specific and achievable, then focus on it. Then you bring your emotions into it: imagine feeling grateful for whatever it is. Imagine the feeling of already having it. Make this ‘imagining’ into a deep trust and knowing that what you want to create already exists and is yours for the taking. It works! This kind of magic power lies within each and every human, regardless of age, gender, race, religion or income bracket. And, it does not at all have to be limited to material things. Perhaps you wish to exercise your power on manifesting material things first, but after awhile you may find it is more fulfilling to create and manifest non-material things, such as loving relationships with your children, parents, romantic partners, relatives and friends, or non-tangible things such as having more love, harmony, time and fun in your life. The sky is the limit with what you can manifest.
Apply these principles in your own life by controlling your own mind and watch what happens! Use the power of your emotions to supercharge your vision, then watch as it springs into life. You don’t need to focus on what the Controllers are doing; being aware of it is enough; focus instead on what you can do to control and expand your own mind, for that is where your power lies. The power of your will and consciousness is more than the power of their mind control technology.
Mind => Perception => Reality
The mind is the source of our perception, and perception is the source of our reality. When we change our perception, we automatically change our reality. People are already waking up and doing this, realizing they are infinite consciousness using the body-mind as a vehicle for experience. Once we perceive ourselves as divine and deserving of love, freedom, abundance, peace and more as our birthright, we win the mind battle.
Work on Controlling your Mind – or Someone Else will Control It for You
Remember: control yourself or someone else will control you; control your mind or someone else will control it. The NWO agenda is to narrow the allowable, acceptable and ultimately POSSIBLE range of human thought, so that it becomes illegal, unthinkable and ultimately IMPOSSIBLE to think or do anything other than what the State wants you to think or do. However, humanity is 7.8 billion strong. A relative handful of manipulators cannot control your mind unless you willingly acquiesce and give your mind away. Think critically. Question everything. Read from a wide variety of sources. Investigate the origin and funding of those sources – many are connected to the NWO in some way, e.g. via Big Pharma, the Military Industrial Complex, Zionism, etc. all of which have massive lobbies and control over the MSM. Always check the facts! Don’t rely on organizations to do your fact-checking for you. Everything is a mind game. You can take back your mind and perceptual sovereignty to rise above the control and achieve freedom and prosperity.
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This year, China as “Intimidating Monster” has become the popular motif in Canberra circles. Australian government members Andrew Hastie and Senator James Paterson have become vigorous moral, if hollow enthusiasts. Their criticism of China has led to the revocation of visas to the country, something that has given reason to flash their plumage for the Australian electorate. How dare China do what Australia has done a countless number of times to those they do not regard as passing a character test?
Senator Eric Abetz, chair of the Senate foreign affairs committee, has accepted the findings of an independent China tribunal that genocide is being committed against the Falun Gong. “Genocide – in relation to Falun Gong – is something that might be an appropriate description.” The brush, suggests the senator, is broad, including “Buddhists, Uighurs, house Christians and indeed criminals”, all of whom have been targets for organ harvesting.
A somewhat different perspective is offered by Paul Keating, the last Australian prime minister to have the vision bug and see Australia as something a bit better than a spacious annex of US power. He proved to be in fine tongue-lashing form on Monday. Speaking at the Australian newspaper’s strategic forum, he suggested that, “The Australian media has been recreant in its duty to the public in failing to present a balanced picture of the rise, legitimacy and importance of China.” The China image being preferred was one of “side plays dressed up with cosmetics of sedition and risk.”
The language of sedition and risk had a distinct genealogy: China, he posed, had become modern code for the “communism” of old, seamless substitute. Particularly irritating to Keating were those “do-gooder” hacks scrounging on the selected titbits delivered by security agencies. They, he argued, were not only shaping the narrative on China but caging it. It was pious, indulgent, self-serving. It ignored the obvious point that powerful states tended to be “rude and nasty”, not to mention selfish, hardly a qualification of exclusion.
As for dealing with authoritarian powers, this was a normal and immutable facet of foreign policy. To avoid engaging China for not being a model democracy was a principle doomed to failure. It would “have cost us the Second World War – for Europe had no chance of being liberated singularly from the West. Twenty-six million Russians died defeating Nazism in the brutal battles across the northern European plain.”
Keating, as ever, is hard to ignore. His premise rings powerfully: Australia’s political classes have been hijacked by the security wonks, jam packed with “phobias” and “effectively running the foreign policy of the country.” An elementary lesson on the politics of governance, he felt, was in order. “The reason we have ministries and cabinets is that a greater and collective wisdom can be brought to bear on complex topics – and particularly on movements of tectonic importance.” It was a process, he argued, that was “not working in Australia.”
How then, to deal with a boisterous, strapping China? Not, suggests Keating, to encourage menacing behaviour, but discourage notions of strategic encirclement, a theme so common in the glacial language of Cold War confrontation. “Closer US political and commercial links with the countries of the region should help establish a web of self-reinforcing, cooperative ties over time, should assuage Chinese concerns that a structure is being built with the express purpose of Chinese strategic containment.” This is wishful thinking, given the evident narrative from Canberra, boosted by Washington’s enthusiasm, that a firmer line is required.
The China fear factory, however, has its devotees. Former Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott counts himself among them, drumming up the containment argument before various regional fora with regular insistence. To the India Foundation in New Delhi, Abbott insisted that Australia had “put too many eggs into the China basket”. The word preferred is not that of “containment” so much as “constrainment”, suggesting that Beijing had become an unruly patient escaping the ward of orderly international relations.
Australian governments had gone about successfully cultivating the relationship with Beijing but any further engagement, suggested Abbott, would be dangerous.
“The often-glossed-over reality is that it’s hard for Australia to be a meaningful strategic partner to a country that thinks it can bully its neighbours on the basis of confected territorial claims that it refuses to submit to arbitration and tires to resolve unilaterally in its favour.”
One would think, on consulting such views, that Abbott might be referring to the United States, a country inclined, notably during various stages of its history, to unilaterally puncture holes in the international system as deemed fit. Talk about any rule-based order is only relevant from the perspective of those who set those rules. The makers are often the breakers. From international human rights conventions to the International Criminal Court, the US imperium remains selective and aloof while retaining a rather tarnished crown as protector of the muddled free world.
Abbott continues the theme, again showing how interchangeable the logic of great power politics can be to middle or small powers. “It’s hard for any country to be [anything] other than a client, or a strategic competitor, with a country that still regards itself as the ‘middle kingdom’ and that has now dropped the mask hiding its strength and biding its time”.
It was important, therefore, to encourage counter balances. India, for instance, would in a half-century “be much more prosperous and no less democratic; every bit as strong as China, in fact, but far less overbearing. I hope that Australia will be a key partner in India’s rise.”
Both Keating and Abbott have points of merit. Australia cannot afford to be paranoid; nor can it afford to be unquestioning in its relations with China. Dollars should not dull and drug strategic common sense. But this is an area where balance is never assured. Righteous hypocrisy is in abundant supply: Australia will continue to export its fossil fuels to China and receive its students while releasing gobbets of dislike and disdain – an all too familiar process. It will also tolerate foreign interference when needed, something done over the decades since the Australian politicians cast their eyes to that ample bosom across the Pacific.
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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]
Opposition leader and former Defense Minister Lieutenant Colonel Gotabaya Rajapaksa won the first round of elections and will become Sri Lanka’s next president, thus returning his family to power after his brother Mahinda’s 2005-2015 presidency.
“It was very open, Americans, the Norwegians, Europeans were openly working against me. And RAW” (India’s foreign intelligence agency). He also added that “I asked the Indians, ‘Why are you doing this? It’s an open secret what you are doing.’ I had assured them that I would never allow the Sri Lankan soil to be used against any friendly country, but they had other ideas.”
His successor’s rule coincidentally saw Sri Lanka moving much closer to India, though the country didn’t pivot away from China like some analysts feared would happen at the time. Nevertheless, elements of President Sirisena’s administration politicized some of the island’s Belt & Road Initiative (BRI) investments, which contributed to the hostile information warfare narrative that attempted to falsely portray Sri Lanka as a “victim” of a so-called “debt trap” and therefore raise global doubts about the long-term strategic intentions of BRI.
There’s no greater refutation of that manufactured narrative than Gotabaya’s recent election since his brother was responsible for Sri Lanka’s strategic partnership with China that resulted in at least $7 billion dollars’ worth of BRI investments. His people voted for him not just because they want a strong leader who has a proven track record of security successes after he decisively ended the quarter-century-long civil war in 2009 (which is reassuring for them after last Easter’s Daesh terrorist attacks), but also because of his family’s ties with China.
Former President Mahinda’s vision was to make Sri Lanka a key node on the New Silk Road in order to assist its post-civil war recovery, though that strategy was thrown into uncertainty following President Sirisena’s reluctance (possibly under foreign pressure) to fully carry through with it. There was also a creeping perception among many people that Sri Lanka’s “recalibrated” foreign policy vector was turning it into other countries’ “junior partner”, especially after the US requested changes to its current “Status Of Forces Agreement” (SOFA).
An allegedly leaked copy of these proposed revisions was published by the press over the summer and claimed to show that American servicemen on the island would be granted immunity akin to the type that diplomats have per the Vienna Convention. This is extremely controversial when keeping in mind that such legal guarantees had previously been abused by American servicemen in Japan so much that the host state demanded changes to the original terms of their pact in order to finally prosecute some of those criminals.
It’s unclear at this moment whether Gotabaya will go through with the proposed SOFA revisions or not, but it’s abundantly clear that he and his brother will reprioritize their country’s commitment to BRI in order to return Sri Lanka to its path of prosperity in becoming one of the world’s most geostrategic trade and logistics hubs with time. This development isn’t aimed against India or the US, but would actually aid their long-term interests by ensuring stability in this formerly civil war-torn state, thus making it a better partner for all.
Proper development cannot occur without proper security measures first being in place, and it’s unfortunate that the previous government rolled back some of former President Mahinda’s security initiatives which in hindsight made the island vulnerable to Daesh’s worst-ever terrorist attack last Easter. Gotabaya plans to ensure that the security of all his compatriots is assured, after which all Sri Lankans can then begin reaping the benefits of further BRI investments.
The Rajapaksa’s return to power will therefore contribute to the stabilization of the Indian Ocean Region and enable the island nation to regain its previously lost role as one of the world’s most promising trade hubs.
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Andrew Korybko is an American Moscow-based political analyst specializing in the relationship between the US strategy in Afro-Eurasia, China’s One Belt One Road global vision of New Silk Road connectivity, and Hybrid Warfare. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.
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An ‘internal memo’ that was intentionally leaked has blasted U.S.President Donald Trump’s decision for the U.S. military to withdraw from Syria, or more accurately, relocate from northern Syria to the oilfields in the east, as well as his complacency as Turkey commits “war crimes and ethnic cleansing” against the Kurdish minority.
Thumbing his nose at the Geneva Convention, the Rome Statute, the UN Security Council, the UN General Assembly and the International Court of Justice, Donald Trump decided that Israel’s unlawful construction of Jewish settlements in occupied Palestinian territory is lawful. This policy change is part of Trump’s pattern of seeking to legalize illegal Israeli practices. It panders to Israel at the expense of the Palestinians while aiming to burnish Trump’s bona fides with his Christian Zionist base. Christian Broadcasting Network quoted Jack Graham, pastor of the megachurch Prestonwood Baptist Church in Plano, Texas, as saying that the Trump administration “once again has demonstrated why evangelical Christians have been unwavering in their support.”
After several days of unremarkable testimony by assorted State Department functionaries the Democrats continue to struggle with ferreting out a legally defensible impeachable offense to warrant the three ring circus currently being conducted by Rep. Adam Schiff, Chair of the House Intel Committee.
On a railroad through the Intel Committee, the impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump’s alleged attempt at a Quid Pro Quo (QPQ), Dems are no closer to a sure-fire ‘we got him now’ piece of evidence than when the inquiry began as they shift gears to widen the probe into “bribery’ and/or ‘extortion,’ whichever shoe fits.
China has by far the largest lithium market. China produces already today the most electric cars, about 1 million in 2018, and will at least triplicate their production by 2025 – and in the following decade or two, demand is expected to increase exponentially.
Bolivia has the world’s largest – by far – known lithium reserves. A long-term win-win contract between China and Bolivia was under preparation since early 2019 and being negotiated as a 51% Bolivia – 49% China share-arrangement, with manufacturing of batteries and other lithium-related products foreseen in Bolivia – added value, job creation in Bolivia – with an initial investment of US$ 2.3 billion – was about to be signed, when the US-instigated Bolivian military coup occurred. It was immediately followed with the usual US-style intimidating, violent and murderous oppression, particularly directed at protests by indigenous people.
The strike also was joined by members of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) which reached a tentative agreement prior to the teachers. A division of SEIU represents thousands of security guards and teachers’ assistants in Chicago Public Schools system.
An October 30 tentative agreement between the CTU and the city administration was agreed upon by the executive board ending the strike paving the way for a return to classes for 350,000 students on November 1. The deal created the conditions for schools to open fully staffed since the SEIU said it would not return to work until the city administration reached an agreement with the CTU.
To allow the President or any rogue government agency or individual to disregard the rule of law whenever, wherever and however it chooses and operate “above the law” is exactly how a nation of sheep gives rise to a government of wolves.
To be clear: this is not about Donald Trump. Or at least it shouldn’t be just about Trump.
Elon Musk has now applied to the Federal Communications Commission for permission to launch a further 30,000 satellites into Earth orbit, bringing the current total to 53,000 (October 2019). With the issues of space debris and weaponization being the two major issues of concern at the UN year after year, this is a mad enterprise, especially when NATO intends to declare space a domain of warfare in December 2019.
We stand at the brink of extinction if we do not stop the madness.
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With less than a month to go before the UK general election, all efforts are being made by political parties to further their agendas. Naturally each side is launching attacks on the other, but perhaps the most virulent campaign is that of the Conservatives towards Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour party. Their malicious accusations, particularly regarding allegations of widespread anti-semitism in the Labour party, which are without any proper foundation, have been propagated more or less since Corbyn came to power.
The anti-Corbyn propaganda reached its peak last week with an article in The Guardian entitled: “Concerns about anti-semitism mean we cannot vote Labour”. Signed by 24 ‘celebrities’, the piece stated that Jeremy Corbyn was
‘steeped in association with anti-semitism’ and that the opposition leader had ‘a long history of embracing antisemites as colleagues’.
And yet a Home Affairs Select Committee inquiry into antisemitism in the UK in 2016 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”.
Furthermore, Labour’s own investigation the same year ruled that the party was not “overrun by anti-Semitism or other forms of racism”. Some party members did resign over matter – but this equated to as little as 0.08% of the membership – hardly a widespread issue it seems.
We therefore have to ask ourselves, why is it that we, the British people, are constantly being bombarded with information that the Labour party, and leader Jeremy Corbyn himself is anti-semitic? One can only deduce that it is pure propaganda being promoted by the Conservative party, because the fact is, there is very little to attack the Labour leader on. His policies genuinely have the potential to become extremely popular with the electorate, some of which are truly revolutionary and would nourish what is a nation starved of welfare provision after years of Tory austerity. Free broadband internet for all, raising the minimum wage to £10 an hour, nationalising public services – including rail, bus and Royal Mail – and creating a state-run pharmaceutical organisation: what is not to like? Britain is now a society steeped in injustice, with record levels of poverty and homelessness and despite Johnson’s attempt to compete with Corbyn on welfare with talk of also raising the minimum wage, he simply can’t undo the years of Tory austerity and the damage it has done to the lives of millions of ordinary working Brits.
Yet the Tory propaganda machine is on full blast. On Wednesday, after the ITV leaders’ debate where Corbyn and Johnson went head to head, it emerged that the Conservative press office twitter account was changed to the title ‘factcheckUK’ during the course of their exchange. The fact that it was temporarily changed during the one-hour programme was clearly an attempt to mislead the public into thinking that this was an unbiased, impartial media outlet offering commentary on the Labour leader’s performance. It’s video entitled: ‘factcheckUK verdict: Boris Johnson is winner of the leader’s debate’ demonstrates a clear aim to deceive the public.
But we should not be surprised that a Johnson government is prepared to go to such lengths to mislead and dupe the electorate. Under the current Prime Minister’s leadership, such deception is an everyday occurrence it seems, to the extent that one of the questions put to Johnson at the debate on Tuesday night was about ‘trust’ and whether indeed he could be trusted. The PM has been caught out lying, whether consciously or not, on so many occasions, and was engaged in this even before he took office. In the run up to the EU referendum he was one of many claiming that the UK would save around £350 million a year by leaving the EU.
It is easy to lose count of the number of times he has lied since becoming PM. He said the Conservatives were building 40 new hospitals – this has been shown to be untrue. He keeps repeating that there will be 20,000 new police officers to tackle crime; misleading considering his party have taken 21,000 police officers off the streets in recent years. His propensity to be untruthful does not go unnoticed, and frequently makes headlines: ‘For nine extraordinary minutes, Boris Johnson stood next to his bus and lied and lied and lied without stopping’ and ‘PM Makes String of False Claims in BBC Interview’. And it’s a sad state of affairs when you almost except the Prime Minister not to tell the truth: ‘Johnson’s Brexit would devastate business; the CBI must be hoping he is lying’, Simon Jenkins writes in The Guardian.
And yet propaganda, it seems, works. For despite the woes of ordinary working Brits, they are still prepared to vote Conservative, for one reason or another at the ballot box. Personally, I find it difficult to work out why. One candidate is offering real solutions to the everyday strife facing working people, and another is promoting further uncertainty under Brexit and a continuation of the status quo when it comes to social provision. And yet people seem to be taken in by the glossy, slick packaging of the Conservative manifesto and Johnson’s buffoonish, amiable personality. ‘He’s one of the boys, isn’t he?’ one Leave voter told Sky News recently. I shuddered in disbelief. One of the boys? How many average blokes in Britain have attended Eton and the Bullingdon Club? And yet people speak about him as if he joins the locals for a pint after work at the pub.
It’s time for people to waken up and smell the coffee come December 12th. For people’s livelihoods are at stake.
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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.
Our relationship with China just went from bad to worse, and most Americans don’t even realize that we just witnessed one of the most critical foreign policy decisions of this century. The U.S. Senate just unanimously passed the “Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act of 2019”, and the Chinese are absolutely seething with anger.
Violent protests have been rocking Hong Kong for months, and the Chinese have repeatedly accused the United States of being behind the protests. Whether that is true or not, the U.S. Senate has openly sided with the protesters by passing this bill, and there is no turning back now.
The protesters in Hong Kong have been waving American flags, singing our national anthem and they have made it exceedingly clear that they want independence from China. And all of us should certainly be able to understand why they would want that, because China is a deeply tyrannical regime. But to the Chinese government, this move by the U.S. Senate is essentially an assault on China itself. They are going to argue that the U.S. is inciting a revolution in Hong Kong, and after what the Senate has just done it will be very difficult to claim that is not true.
The Chinese take matters of internal security very seriously, and the status of Hong Kong is one of those issues that they are super sensitive about. China will never, ever compromise when it comes to Hong Kong, and if the U.S. keeps pushing this issue it could literally take us to the brink of a military conflict.
And you can forget about a comprehensive trade agreement ever happening. Even if a Democrat is elected in 2020, that Democrat is going to back what the Senate just did. That is why it was such a major deal that this bill passed by unanimous consent. It sent a message to the Chinese that Republicans and Democrats are united on this issue and that the next election is not going to change anything.
And the trade deal that President Trump was trying to put together was already on exceedingly shaky ground. “Phase one” was extremely limited, nothing was ever put in writing, and nothing was ever signed. And in recent days it became quite clear that both sides couldn’t even agree about what “phase one” was supposed to cover…
A spokesperson for China’s Commerce Ministry said earlier this month that both countries had agreed to cancel some existing tariffs simultaneously. Trump later said that he had not agreed to scrap the tariffs, lowering hopes for a deal.
“They’d like to have a rollback. I haven’t agreed to anything,” the president said.
On Tuesday, Trump was visibly frustrated by how things are going with China, and he publicly warned the Chinese that he could soon “raise the tariffs even higher”…
President Donald Trump threatened higher tariffs on Chinese goods if that country does not make a deal on trade.
The comments came during a meeting with the president’s Cabinet on Tuesday. The U.S. and China, the world’s two largest economies, have been locked in an apparent stalemate in trade negotiations that have lasted nearly two years.
“If we don’t make a deal with China, I’ll just raise the tariffs even higher,” Trump said in the meeting.
Unfortunately, raising tariffs isn’t going to fix anything at this point.
In fact, Trump can raise tariffs until the cows come home but it isn’t going to cause the Chinese to budge.
That is because on Tuesday evening everything changed.
In a widely anticipated move, just after 6pm ET on Tuesday, the Senate unanimously passed a bipartisan bill, S.1838, showing support for pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong by requiring an annual review of whether the city is sufficiently autonomous from Beijing to justify its special trading status. In doing so, the Senate has delivered a warning to China against a violent suppression of the demonstrations, a stark contrast to President Donald Trump’s near-silence on the issue, the result of a behind the scenes agreement whereby China would allow the S&P to rise indefinitely as long as Trump kept his mouth shut.
As we reported last week, the vote marks the most aggressively diplomatic challenge to the government in Beijing just as the US and China seek to close the “Phase 1” of their agreement to end their trade war. The Senate measure would require annual reviews of Hong Kong’s special status under U.S. law to assess the extent to which China has chipped away the city’s autonomy; in light of recent events, Hong Kong would not pass. It’s unclear what would happen next.
I am finding it difficult to find the words to describe what this means to the Chinese.
We have deeply insulted their national honor, and our relationship with them will never be the same again.
Many will debate whether standing up to China on this issue was the right thing to do, but in this article I am trying to get you to understand that there will be severe consequences for what the U.S. Senate just did.
There isn’t going to be a comprehensive trade deal, the global economy is going to suffer greatly, and the Chinese now consider us to be their primary global adversary.
Shortly after the Senate passed the bill, a strongly worded statement was released by the Chinese government. The following excerpt comes from the first two paragraphs of that statement…
On November 19th, the US Senate passed the “Hong Kong Bill of Rights on Human Rights and Democracy.” The bill disregards the facts, confuses right and wrong, violates the axioms, plays with double standards, openly intervenes in Hong Kong affairs, interferes in China’s internal affairs, and seriously violates the basic norms of international law and international relations. The Chinese side strongly condemns and resolutely opposes this.
In the past five months, the persistent violent criminal acts in Hong Kong have seriously jeopardized the safety of the public’s life and property, seriously trampled on the rule of law and social order, seriously undermined Hong Kong’s prosperity and stability, and seriously challenged the bottom line of the “one country, two systems” principle. At present, what Hong Kong faces is not the so-called human rights and democracy issues, but the issue of ending the storms, maintaining the rule of law and restoring order as soon as possible. The Chinese central government will continue to firmly support the Hong Kong SAR Government in its administration of the law, firmly support the Hong Kong police in law enforcement, and firmly support the Hong Kong Judiciary in punishing violent criminals in accordance with the law, protecting the lives and property of Hong Kong residents and maintaining Hong Kong’s prosperity and stability.
For a long time I have been warning that U.S. relations with China would greatly deteriorate, and this is the biggest blow that we have seen yet.
The U.S. and China are now enemies, and ultimately that is going to result in a tremendous amount of pain for the entire planet.
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On November 20, the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) announced that they had carried out “wide-scale strikes” on the “Iranian Quds Force” and the Syrian Armed Forces in Syria. The IDF claimed that the strikes were carried out in response to 4 rockets, which were reportedly launched from Syria at targets in northern Israel on November 19. The IDF’s Iron Dome intercepted these rockets over the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.
Commenting on the November 20 attack, the IDF claimed that it destroyed “a number” of Syrian air defense batteries because they did not refrain from responding to Israeli strikes. The IDF provided almost no details regarding the impact of its attack. However, photos and videos of the ground show that it successfully hit civilian buildings in southwest and west of Damascus. At least 2 civilians were killed and several others were injured.
Hayat Tahrir al-Sham and its Turkish-backed allies repelled an attack by the Syrian Army on the town of Misherfah in southern Idlib. According to pro-militant sources, the army suffered “notable casualties”. However, no precise number was provided. The army attack on Misherfah demonstrates that government forces are not going to halt their anti-terrorist efforts in the area.
On November 19, Asayish, a security force, of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), apologized for the ‘unfortunate incident’ with a Russian patrol in northeastern Syria. To be clear, this ‘unfortunate incident’ was an attempt by SDF supporters to burn a Russian vehicle with petrol bombs.
According to the Asayish statement, the group will work to prevent further attacks on Russian personnel in the region from Kurdish ‘activists’. The statement followed remarks by the Turkish foreign minister that Ankara is not satisfied with the implementation of the safe zone agreement and is ready to resume its offensive in northeastern Syria.
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Professor Chossudovsky’s most recent book describes America’s hegemonic project in the post 9/11 reality whereby the U.S.-NATO military machine —coupled with covert intelligence operations, economic sanctions and the thrust of “regime change”— is deployed in all major regions of the world. The threat of pre-emptive nuclear war is also used to black-mail countries into submission.
There is an intimate relationship between the Globalization of War and the Economic Crisis. This “Long War against Humanity” is carried out at the height of the most serious economic crisis in modern history. It is intimately related to a process of global financial restructuring, which has resulted in the collapse of national economies and the impoverishment of large sectors of the World population.
Michel Chossudovsky views “economic conquest” as an integral part of the US military agenda. The US military and intelligence apparatus consults with Wall Street and the Texas oil conglomerates. Conversely the IMF and the World Bank are in permanent liaison with the Pentagon and the US State Department.
The Globalization of War, by Michel Chossudovsky
America’s hegemonic project in the post 9/11 era is the “Globalization of War” whereby the U.S.-NATO military machine —coupled with covert intelligence operations, economic sanctions and the thrust of “regime change”— is deployed in all major regions of the world. The threat of pre-emptive nuclear war is also used to black-mail countries into submission.
This “Long War against Humanity” is carried out at the height of the most serious economic crisis in modern history.
It is intimately related to a process of global financial restructuring, which has resulted in the collapse of national economies and the impoverishment of large sectors of the World population.
The ultimate objective is World conquest under the cloak of “human rights” and “Western democracy”.
The Globalization of War: America’s “Long War” against Humanity, Michel Chossudovsky
ISBN Number: 978-0-9737147-6-0
Year: 2015
Pages: 240 pages with complete index
Global Research Price: US* $15.00 + shipping & handling
(List price: US $24.95)
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The Global Economic Crisis, Michel Chossudovsky and Andrew Gavin Marshall, Editors
In all major regions of the world, the economic recession is deep-seated, resulting in mass unemployment, the collapse of state social programs and the impoverishment of millions of people. The meltdown of financial markets was the result of institutionalized fraud and financial manipulation. The economic crisis is accompanied by a worldwide process of militarization, a “war without borders” led by the U.S. and its NATO allies.
This book takes the reader through the corridors of the Federal Reserve, into the plush corporate boardrooms on Wall Street where far-reaching financial transactions are routinely undertaken.
The complex causes as well as the devastating consequences of the economic crisis are carefully scrutinized with contributions from Ellen Brown, Tom Burghardt, Michel Chossudovsky, Richard C. Cook, Shamus Cooke, John Bellamy Foster, Michael Hudson, Tanya Cariina Hsu, Fred Magdoff, Andrew Gavin Marshall, James Petras, Peter Phillips, Peter Dale Scott, Bill Van Auken, Claudia Van Werlhof and Mike Whitney.
The Global Economic Crisis: The Great Depression of the XXI Century, Michel Chossudovsky and Andrew Gavin Marshall, Editors (Paperback)
ISBN Number: 978-0-9737147-3-9
Year: 2010
Pages: 416 pages with complete index
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November 21st, 2019 by Center For Biological Diversity
In one of the largest lawsuits ever launched under the Endangered Species Act, the Center for Biological Diversity filed a formal notice today of its intent to sue the Trump administration for failing to decide whether 274 imperiled animals and plants across the country should be federally protected. Decisions for these species are years overdue.
Among the species in today’s legal filing are wolverines in the Rockies, a “jumping” slug in the Pacific Northwest, moose in the Midwest, a western bumblebee that has declined by 84 percent, Venus flytrap plants in the Carolinas, and a tiny freshwater fish that flips stones with its nose to find food. (A full list is below.)
In 2016 the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service developed a workplan to address a backlog of more than 500 species awaiting protection decisions, including those in today’s notice, but the Trump administration has kept the agency from completing decisions for dozens of species every year. Today’s notice seeks to ensure that all the remaining species in the workplan that are still awaiting protection get decisions as soon as possible.
Image: American wolverine, courtesy Audrey Magoun/USFW
“Scientists around the world are sounding the alarm about the extinction crisis, but the Trump administration can’t be bothered to lift a finger for hundreds of species that are in serious trouble,” said Noah Greenwald, endangered species director at the Center. “Every day protections are delayed is a day that moves these fascinating species closer to extinction.”
Earlier this year the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, known as IPBES, warned governments around the world that 1 million species are now at risk of extinction because of human activity. IPBES scientists said that urgent actions are needed to avert mass extinction in the coming decades.
Meanwhile the Trump administration has only protected 19 species under the Endangered Species Act — the lowest of any administration at this point in the presidential term. By comparison, during the Obama administration, 360 species were protected under the Endangered Species Act. Under Clinton 523 species were protected, while 232 species were protected under George H.W. Bush, 62 species under George W. Bush, and 254 under Reagan.
“The Trump administration’s hostility toward wildlife is appalling,” said Greenwald. “The Endangered Species Act has saved 99 percent of species under its protection, and it can save these plants and animals too, but only if they get the protection they need.”
The 274 species occur across the lower 48 states and include birds, butterflies, fish, mammals and more. All of the species face serious threats to their survival, ranging from habitat destruction to climate change to disease.
“The extinction crisis is an emergency of epic proportions, and habitat loss is playing a huge role,” Greenwald said. “If we’re going to have any real shot at saving these species, we need to protect more of the land and water in this country that they need to survive.”
Click here to view a table of the 274 species awaiting protection decisions.
The Center for Biological Diversity is a national, nonprofit conservation organization with more than 1.6 million members and online activists dedicated to the protection of endangered species and wild places.
The developing story about how the US intelligence and national security agencies may have conspired to influence and possibly even reverse the results of the 2016 presidential election is compelling, even if one is disinclined to believe that such a plot would be possible to execute. Not surprisingly perhaps there have been considerable introspection among former and current officials who have worked in those and related government positions, many of whom would agree that there is urgent need for a considerable restructuring and reining in of the 17 government agencies that have some intelligence or law enforcement function. Most would also agree that much of the real damage that has been done has been the result of the unending global war on terror launched by George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, which has showered the agencies with resources and money while also politicizing their leadership and freeing them from restraints on their behavior.
If the tens of billions of dollars lavished on the intelligence community together with a “gloves off” approach towards oversight that allowed them to run wild had produced good results, it might be possible to argue that it was all worth it. But the fact is that intelligence gathering has always been a bad investment even if it is demonstrably worse at the present. One might argue that the CIA’s notorious Soviet Estimate prolonged the Cold War and that the failure to connect dots and pay attention to what junior officers were observing allowed 9/11 to happen. And then there was the empowerment of al-Qaeda during the Soviet-Afghan war followed by failure to penetrate the group once it began to carry out operations.
More recently there have been Guantanamo, torture in black prisons, renditions of terror suspects to be tortured elsewhere, killing of US citizens by drone, turning Libya into a failed state and terrorist haven, arming militants in Syria, and, of course, the Iraqi alleged WMDs, the biggest foreign policy disaster in American history. And the bad stuff happened in bipartisan fashion, under Democrats and Republicans, with both neocons and liberal interventionists all playing leading roles. The only one punished for the war crimes was former CIA officer and whistleblower John Kiriakou, who exposed some of what was going on.
Colonel Pat Lang, a colleague and friend who directed the Defense Intelligence Agency HUMINT (human intelligence) program after years spent on the ground in special ops and foreign liaison, thinks that strong medicine is needed and has initiated a discussion based on the premise that the FBI and CIA are dysfunctional relics that should be dismantled, as he puts it “burned to the ground,” so that the federal government can start over again and come up with something better.
Lang cites numerous examples of “incompetence and malfeasance in the leadership of the 17 agencies of the Intelligence Community and the Federal Bureau of Investigation,” to include the examples cited above plus the failure to predict the collapse of the Soviet Union. On the domestic front, he cites his personal observation of efforts by the Department of Justice and the FBI to corruptly “frame” people tried in federal courts on national security issues as well as the intelligence/law enforcement community conspiracy to “get Trump.”
Colonel Lang asks
“Tell me, pilgrims, why should we put up with such nonsense? Why should we pay the leaders of these agencies for the privilege of having them abuse us? We are free men and women. Let us send these swine to their just deserts in a world where they have to work hard for whatever money they earn.”
He then recommends stripping CIA of its responsibility for being the lead agency in spying as well as in covert action, which is a legacy of the Cold War and the area in which it has demonstrated a particular incompetence. As for the FBI, it was created by J. Edgar Hoover to maintain dossiers on politicians and it is time that it be replaced by a body that operates in a fashion “more reflective of our collective nation[al] values.”
Others in the intelligence community understandably have different views. Many believe that the FBI and CIA have grown too large and have been asked to do too many things unrelated to national security, so there should be a major reduction-in-force (RIF) followed by the compulsory retirement of senior officers who have become too cozy with and obligated to politicians. The new-CIA should collect information, period, what it was founded to do in 1947, and not meddle in foreign elections or engage in regime change. The FBI should provide only police services that are national in nature and that are not covered by the state and local jurisdictions. And it should operate in as transparent a fashion as possible, not as a national secret police force.
But the fundamental problem may not be with the police and intelligence services themselves. There are a lot of idiots running around loose in Washington. Witness for example the impeachment hearings ludicrous fact free opening statement by House Intelligence Committee chairman Adam Schiff (with my emphasis)
“In 2014, Russia invaded a United States ally, Ukraine, to reverse that nation’s embrace of the West, and to fulfill Vladimir Putin’s desire to rebuild a Russian empire.”
And the press is no better, note the following excerpt from The New York Timeslead editorial on the hearings, including remarks of the two State Department officers who testified, on the following day:
“They came across not as angry Democrats or Deep State conspirators, but as men who have devoted their lives to serving their country, and for whom defending Ukraine against Russian aggressionis more important to the national interest than any partisan jockeying…
“At another point, Mr. Taylor saidhe had been critical of the Obama administration’s reluctance to supply Ukraine with anti-tank missiles and other lethal defensive weapons in its fight with Russia, and that he was pleased when the Trump administration agreed to do so…
“What clearly concerned both witnesses wasn’t simply the abuse of power by the president, but the harm it inflicted on Ukraine, a critical ally under constant assault by Russian forces. ‘Even as we sit here today, the Russians are attacking Ukrainian soldiers in their own country and have been for the last four years…’ Mr. Taylor said.”
Schiff and the Times should get their facts straight. And so should the two American foreign service officers who were clearly seeing the situation only from the Ukrainian perspective, a malady prevalent among US diplomats often described as “going native.” They were pushing a particular agenda, i.e. possible war with Russia on behalf of Ukraine, in furtherance of a US national interest that they fail to define. One of them, George Kent, eulogized the Ukrainian militiamen fighting the Russians as the modern day equivalent of the Massachusetts Minutemen in 1776, not exactly a neutral assessment, and also euphemized Washington-provided lethal offensive weapons as “security assistance.”
Another former intelligence community friend Ray McGovern has constructed a time line of developments in Ukraine which demolishes the establishment view on display in Congress relating to the alleged Russian threat. First of all, Ukraine was no American ally in 2014 and is no “critical ally” today. Also, the Russian reaction to western supported rioting in Kiev, a vital interest, only came about after the United States spent $5 billion destabilizing and then replacing the pro-Kremlin government. Since that time Moscow has resumed control of the Crimea, which is historically part of Russia, and is active in the Donbas region which has a largely Russian population.
It should really be quite simple. The national security state should actually be engaged in national security. Its size and budget should be commensurate with what it actually does, nothing more. It should not be roaming the world looking for trouble and should instead only respond to actual threats. And it should operate with oversight. If Congress is afraid to do it, set up a separate body that is non-partisan and actually has the teeth to do the job. If the United States of America comes out of the process as something like a normal nation the entire world will be a much happier place.
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Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is [email protected].
An ‘internal memo’ that was intentionally leaked has blasted U.S. President Donald Trump’s decision for the U.S. military to withdraw from Syria, or more accurately, relocate from northern Syria to the oilfields in the east, as well as his complacency as Turkey commits “war crimes and ethnic cleansing” against the Kurdish minority.
The author of the memo, diplomat and former ambassador to Bahrain, William V. Roebuck, took every opportunity to lambast Trump as he faces impeachment 12 months before the next U.S. presidential elections. Roebuck questioned whether the U.S. could have prevented the Turkish military operation in northern Syria by increasing military patrols, sanctions and threats, but conceded that “the answer is probably not,” citing Turkey’s membership in NATO and its large army against the small American presence in the region. “But we won’t know because we didn’t try,” Roebuck added.
The New York Times claims that Roebuck’s memo was delivered to the State Department’s special envoy on Syria, James F. Jeffrey, and to dozens of officials focusing on Syria in the State Department, White House and Pentagon. However, the entirety of the 3,200-word memo failed to mention Ankara’s motivation in conducting this operation.
The Syrian perspective is that this is part of a project for a Greater Turkey. Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu emphasized in an October interview that Turkey is not interested in territorial expansionism, stating
“Russia is concerned about some sensitive issues, such as territorial integrity and the unity of the country [Syria]. We are also worried. If we look at all the joint statements of Turkey, Russia and Iran, we emphasize it.”
Although it may sound conspiratorial, this statement would have done little to alleviate this fear as Turkey has controlled large swathes of northern Syria since 2016 without any process to negotiate the return of these regions to Syrian government administration. In conjunction, Damascus would also remember the 1939 Turkish annexation of its Hatay province, Turkey’s invasion of neighboring Cyprus in 1974, and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan invoking an early 20th-century irredentist document that claims northern Syria, northern Iraq, most of Armenia, the entirety of Cyprus, much of Bulgaria and Greece’s northern and eastern Aegean islands as under Turkish sovereignty.
Although territorial expansionism may be a motivating factor for many in the Turkish political and military leadership, it would be a secondary motivating factor. What Roebuck’s memo failed to mention is that Turkey’s Syria policy today is motivated by security concerns.
In an academic article titled “Turkey’s interests in the Syrian war: from neo-Ottomanism to counterinsurgency,” I first made the argument that Turkey’s initial interests in Syria was to expand its influence, and perhaps territory. What was not envisioned by the Turkish leadership was the re-emergence of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) in Syria, recognized as a terrorist organization by Turkey, Syria and the U.S., but not by Russia. The PKK in Syria fight under the banner of the People’s Protection Units (YPG), who comprise the majority of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).
Washington confusingly recognizes the PKK as a terrorist organization, but has directly funded, armed and supported the YPG in Syria. Ankara makes no distinction between the PKK and the YPG, and this has been a primary source of recent hostilities between Turkey and the U.S. Although Syria once supported the PKK against Turkey, it has recognized the group as a terrorist organization since 1998, initially easing the tense relations between Damascus and Ankara, with Erdoğan even describing his Syrian counterpart Bashar al-Assad as his “brother.”
Former Turkish Foreign Minister (2009–2014), Ahmet Davutoglu, adopted a “zero problems with neighbors” policy that saw his country strengthen economic and political ties with the Islamic World by lifting visa restrictions and taking a larger active role in critical Islamic issues like the fallout between the Palestinian Hamas and Fatah groups, Afghanistan and Pakistan, and Syria and Israel. However, this new doctrine was taken to the test when the Syrian war began in 2011, with Ankara immediately contradicting the “zero problems with the neighbours” policy by supporting terrorist organizations and getting itself into disputes and hostilities with not only Syria, but also Iraq, Greece, Cyprus and Armenia.
The Arab Spring changed the status quo in the Middle East and provided an opportunity for Turkey to engage in power projections within a new regional order where Ankara would be the center of power. However, what Ankara had not calculated is that by abandoning the “zero problems with neighbors” policy and flooding Syria with tens thousands of terrorists, it was creating the very conditions for the PKK to return to Syria after a more than 20-year hiatus under the guise of protecting Syria’s Kurds.
Essentially, the project for a Greater Turkey has become secondary in the case of Syria, with Ankara’s current focus on what it calls a counterterrorist operation against the PKK/YPG, after they created the very conditions for them to return to Syria. Although Trump has whole teams dedicated to Syria, it appears that Washington refuses to acknowledge Turkey’s security concerns, just as Roebuck’s memo demonstrates.
The rise of the YPG brought questions of Kurdish independence or autonomy in northern Syria, which can also find justification for an autonomous or independent Kurdish state in eastern Turkey as the PKK, militarily and politically, has struggled for decades to achieve this. A Kurdish push for independence or autonomy in northern Syria not only threatens Turkey’s desire to illegally annex this region, but destabilizes Turkey as the Kurds can make a greater push for independence or autonomy in eastern Anatolia.
As Turkey strengthens its relations with Russia, the question remains whether the country will formally leave NATO or not. It is unlikely that the U.S. will push for Turkey’s expulsion from NATO as it has the second largest military in the alliance and occupies one of the most strategic spots on the planet.
Although the U.S. has turned to Greece as its Plan B to contain Russia in the Black Sea in any hypothetical war, Washington would know there is a great possibility that the next general election in Turkey could see Erdoğan out of power and replaced by a more Washington-friendly leader. Not only is Erdoğan’s popularity diminishing because of the economic crisis and his unpopular Syria policy, but the highly popular ex-economy minister Ali Babacan and ex-Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu have both recently left Erdoğan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) to establish their own respective political parties, which will only further weaken AKP who have lost over 840,000 members in one year alone.
The U.S. would be hoping that by continuing to apply military, diplomatic and economic pressure against Turkey, the tense situation in Turkey will see Erdoğan’s popularity diminish, and the return of a pro-U.S. leader. The difficult economic situation, the millions of refugees and the increased terror attacks in Turkey can all be directly attributed to Erdoğan’s Syria policy, and the U.S. will continue to use these means to pressure Turkey until it conforms to Washington’s desires and reverse its strengthened ties with Russia.
Many within Washington are unsatisfied with Trump’s Turkey policy and feel that they are not utilizing their advantages to pressure Erdoğan. Roebuck’s memo however appears to be a potential gamechanger as it has critically expressed opposition to Trump’s policy at a formal, and now public, level.
Roebuck publicly revealed that Turkey’s military operation in northern Syria is “spearheaded by armed Islamist groups on its payroll” who are committing what can “only be described as war crimes and ethnic cleansing.” The same jihadist forces utilized by Turkey are no different to the ones the U.S. supported against Assad, who not only ethnically cleansed Kurds, but also Shi’ites, Alawites, Antiochian Greeks, Assyrians and Armenians.
Roebuck also suggested that the U.S. must maintain relations with Turkey. As Turkey is at a crossroads with its political leadership, Washington knows there is a strong possibility that Erdoğan might not be around by the time the next general election is scheduled in 2023, although it appears likely that these elections will take place years earlier. With Roebuck’s ‘leak,’ it is likely that Trump will start receiving stronger domestic political pressure to deal with Turkey in a much tougher way and continue to make every destabilizing effort to remove Erdoğan and have him replaced with a pro-U.S. leader.
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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.
Paul Antonopoulos is a Research Fellow at the Center for Syncretic Studies.
Thumbing his nose at the Geneva Convention, the Rome Statute, the UN Security Council, the UN General Assembly and the International Court of Justice, Donald Trump decided that Israel’s unlawful construction of Jewish settlements in occupied Palestinian territory is lawful. This policy change is part of Trump’s pattern of seeking to legalize illegal Israeli practices. It panders to Israel at the expense of the Palestinians while aiming to burnish Trump’s bona fides with his Christian Zionist base. Christian Broadcasting Network quoted Jack Graham, pastor of the megachurch Prestonwood Baptist Church in Plano, Texas, as saying that the Trump administration “once again has demonstrated why evangelical Christians have been unwavering in their support.”
“The timing of this was not tied to anything that had to do with domestic politics anywhere in Israel or otherwise,” Secretary of State Mike Pompeoclaimed, denying that the change in policy was designed to benefit Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who’s locked in a tight battle for political survival.
Rabbi Alissa Wise, acting co-executive director of Jewish Voice for Peace, said,
“It’s hardly a surprise that on the eve of Netanyahu’s indictment and Trump’s impeachment proceedings we suddenly have the Trump administration throwing the Geneva Convention and international consensus out the window and shamelessly pandering to the right-wing and evangelical base.”
Walking in lockstep with Netanyahu, Trump also illegally declared Jerusalem the capital of Israel. And three months after he illegally recognized Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights, Netanyahu named a new — and illegal — settlement under construction, “Trump Heights.”
On November 18, Pompeo announced the end of the United States’s 41-year policy of considering Israeli settlements to be unlawful.
“The establishment of Israeli civilian settlements in the West Bank is not per se inconsistent with international law,” Pompeo declared.
In 1978, the Carter administration adopted the position detailed in a letter written by State Department Legal Advisor Herbert Hansell. It concluded that
“the establishment of the civilian settlements in [the occupied Palestinian] territories is inconsistent with international law.”
Hansell’s letter cited Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, which prohibits an occupying power from transferring “parts of its own civilian population into the territories it occupies.” The letter stated that just because territory comes “under the control of a belligerent occupant,” it “does not thereby become its sovereign territory.”
After the 1967 war, Israeli military forces occupied Gaza, the West Bank, East Jerusalem, the Sinai Peninsula and the Golan Heights. The narrative that Israel acted in self-defense when it attacked Egypt, Jordan and Syria and seized those Palestinian territories is a false one.
Security Council Resolution 242, passed in 1967, specifies “the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war.” In 2016, the Council reiterated that language in Resolution 2334, which condemned Israel for the establishment of settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories, including East Jerusalem. The Resolution says that the building of settlements “has no legal validity and constitutes a flagrant violation under international law.”
The United States abstained from Resolution 2334. Barack Obama allowed it to pass by not vetoing it. Just before Trump took office, he tried unsuccessfully to keep the resolution from reaching the Council floor. In addition to pandering to his evangelical base, Trump is reversing still another Obama achievement. Pompeo admitted that the new policy is a rejection of Obama’s failure to veto Resolution 2334.
In 2004, the International Court of Justice issued an advisory opinion stating that the “settlements have been established in breach of international law.” The Court cited the Security Council’s characterization of Israel’s policy of establishment of settlements in the occupied Palestinian territory as a “flagrant violation” of the Fourth Geneva Convention.
The Rome Statute for the International Criminal Court considers an occupying power’s direct or indirect transfer “of parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies” to be a war crime.
Over 600,000 Israelis live in settlements in the occupied West Bank, including occupied East Jerusalem. About 3 million Palestinians live there.
Saeb Erekat, chief Palestinian negotiator and secretary general of the Palestine Liberation Organization, condemned the Trump administration’s “unceasing attempts to replace international law with the ‘law of the jungle.’” He called on the global community to resist the new U.S. policy.
“Israel’s colonial-settlement enterprise perpetuates the negation of the Palestinian right to self-determination,” Erekat said.
“Israeli settlements in occupied territory are illegal,” Bernie Sanderstweeted. “This is clear from international law and multiple United Nations resolutions. Once again, Mr. Trump is isolating the United States and undermining diplomacy by pandering to his extremist base.”
Trump has made explicit what has long been implicit: The United States directly enables Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestinian lands and oppression of the Palestinians. As journalist Ali Abunimah tweeted, the U.S. proclamation that Israeli settlements do not violate international law “is merely a shedding of the fiction that the U.S. has ever opposed Israel’s land-theft colonies. It changes nothing but makes clear to all that the U.S. and Israel are partners in crime.”
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Marjorie Cohn is professor emerita at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, former president of the National Lawyers Guild, deputy secretary general of the International Association of Democratic Lawyers and a member of the advisory board of Veterans for Peace. Her most recent book is Drones and Targeted Killing: Legal, Moral, and Geopolitical Issues.
What originally began as an expression of legitimate outrage at the Mideast country’s dysfunctional government and endemic corruption quickly transformed into a Color Revolution aimed at carrying out regime change in Lebanon through the removal of Hezbollah from its government, the threat of which makes this a defining moment for the Resistance because its supporters’ loyalty is being tested to the core.
Lebanon is undoubtedly in the throes of an ongoing Color Revolution that’s already succeeded in securing the resignation of Prime Minister Hariri in response to large-scale protests against the Mideast country’s dysfunctional government and endemic corruption, sparked as they were by a proposed tax on WhatsApp calls that served as the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back. The unrest has been condemned by two key members of the Resistance, Ayatollah Khamenei and Hezbollah leader Nasrallah, who warned against the participants becoming useful idiots in the US, “Israel“, and the GCC’s plot against their homeland. The first-mentioned tweetedthat “I recommend those who care in #Iraq and #Lebanon remedy the insecurity and turmoil created in their countries by the U.S., the Zionist regime, some western countries, and the money of some reactionary countries. The people have justifiable demands, but they should know their demands can only be fulfilled within the legal structure and framework of their country. When the legal structure is disrupted in a country, no action can be carried out”, while the second urged his supporters to stay away from the scene of the disturbances and emphasized how much the government’s fall could destabilize their fragile country.
Nevertheless, the situation still remains unresolved despite Hariri’s resignation, and ever-louder demands have made within Lebanon and through some Alt-Media outlets that Hezbollah should leave the government in order to resolve the crisis. The Resistance group, which functions as a socio-political and military force, had nothing to do with the trigger event that sparked this explosion of unrest, though the very fact that it’s now increasingly being targeted for removal from its elected positions in the government proves that there are forces that had intended for this to be the outcome all along when they encouraged the unfolding of events there. It shouldn’t be forgotten that US Secretary of State Pompeo ominously hinted at an ultimatum being made to Lebanon during his visit there in March when he thundered that “Lebanon faces a choice; bravely move forward as an independent and proud nation or allow the dark ambitions of Iran and Hezbollah to dictate your future”, which strongly suggests that the US at the very least tacitly has a hand in guiding developments to that aforementioned end. What’s so disturbing about the latest narrative twist is that it appears to have the support of a critical mass of protesters, including those who have outwardly supported Hezbollah prior to this moment but evidently harbored deep feelings of antipathy towards it that are only now being publicly expressed through this “anti-corruption” “populist” pretext.
It’s impossible to accurately generalize every one of these supposed Resistance supporters feels this way, though sharing some plausible explanations could nevertheless still help to make sense of this previously unexpected trend. Hezbollah’s military might is appreciated by most patriotic Lebanese after it liberated their country from “Israeli” occupation in 2000 and prevented a second such occupation in 2006, though some look suspiciously upon its social activities because they wrongly interpret them through a sectarian lense. In addition, the group’s involvement in fighting terrorism in Syria side-by-side with the IRGC reinforced the weaponzied fake news perception among some that Hezbollah is just an “Iranian proxy”. These growing doubts about the group’s long-term strategic intentions might not have been able to be publicly expressed in such a direct way without risk of receiving accusations that the person voicing such views is unpatriotic, hence why they may have hitherto been outwardly supportive of Hezbollah despite internally cultivating hatred towards the organization and waiting for the “opportune” moment to express it in a way that couldn’t be as easily framed as part of a self-serving sectarian agenda on their part. That chance arrived when the proposed WhatsApp tax served as the catalyst for large-scale protests against the government as a whole, during which time it became “acceptable” among some to attack Hezbollah for its supposedly “corrupt” alliance with certain political forces.
It should be said at this point that Hezbollah is a responsible stakeholder in Lebanon’s stability and therefore understands the need to make tactical decisions in pursuit of the larger strategic end of preventing external forces from driving wedges between the country’s cosmopolitan socio-religious groups, hence why it’s entered into the certain political partnerships that it’s had out of its interest in working within the legal system to carry out responsible reforms to the best of its ability. These noble intentions have been deliberately misportrayed by those who have wanted to remove Hezbollah from the government for some time already as part of their never-ending campaign to delegitimize it, after which they believe that it’ll become more susceptible to the joint US-“Israeli”-GCC Hybrid War against it. A similar modus operandi is being pursued in nearby Iraq, where Resistance forces also hold considerable sway within the government but are plagued by the same accusations of allying themselves with corrupt figures, which is being used by agenda-driven forces to misportray them as “guilty by association” despite the reason for these tactical partnerships being the same as Hezbollah’s. Even worse, the similar events in both countries are being described by Mainstream Media as a “new Arab Spring“.
There’s no question at this point that legitimate anti-corruption protests have been hijacked for regime change ends aimed at removing Resistance forces from power in those countries, especially since both the Ayatollah and Nasrallah touched upon this in their recent statements on this topic, though there are still those who outwardly profess to support the Resistance’s broader mission but refuse to stop participating in the unrest there. This represents a true moment of reckoning for the Resistance that will ultimately separate its true supporters who have faith in this movement’s leaders from the opportunistically fraudulent ones who betrayed the cause as soon as they “conveniently” saw the “publicly plausible pretext” to do so. It doesn’t help any either that many Alt-Media outlets that used to have Resistance-friendly editorial lines are portraying the protests in a positive light despite the Iranian and Hezbollah leaders warning against the credible risk that they could spiral out of control and end up advancing the strategic goals of the Resistance’s enemies, which further confuses the audience at large who can’t countenance how or why this is happening, preferring instead to put their faith in those media forces instead of the leaders whose movement they had previously professed to support. As the situation remains unresolved, it’s anyone’s guess what will happen next, but it certainly doesn’t look good.
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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.
Some analysts see the world dodging a recession next year, which provides some upward room for oil prices.
Last week, the IEA warned last week that “the hefty supply cushion” building up in the first half of 2020 will cause OPEC+ problems as the group tries to balance the oil market. Part of the reason for another potential surplus is the steep drop in demand growth this year, forcing oil forecasters to make multiple downward revisions to their projections.
“With consumption growth of just 830 thousand b/d YoY in 2019, global oil demand has easily expanded at the lowest rate since the global financial crisis 10 years ago,” Bank of America Merrill Lynch said in a note.
The slowdown was particularly concentrated in industrial sectors, which have been hit hard by the trade war.
“The manufacturing downturn in 2019 has been so pronounced that we think it could aptly be labeled as the third global industrial recession in the past 10 years, following the activity drops witnessed in 2012 and 2016,” the bank said.
Or, put more succinctly, “The world has just lived through an industrial recession,” Bank of America concluded, and oil prices really only held up because of massive supply outages in 2019. The industrial slowdown spread around the world.
Take India, for example. The “weak picture for the manufacturing and industrial” sectors of the Indian economy continue, JBC Energy said in a note on Monday, which have hit diesel sales.
“The 120,000 b/d (7%) y-o-y contraction was greater than even the demonetization-driven downside from January 2017,” JBC Energy said. “With bitumen sales also low, it appears activity in Indian manufacturing and construction is waning.”
But there are some reasons to think that things could turn around. While a lot still depends on the outcome of the U.S.-China trade war and the “partial deal” that the market still believes is likely, recent streams of data have tamped down fears of a recession.
“Looking into 2020, we expect an improvement in cyclical demand conditions as manufacturing PMIs seem to have stabilized and in some cases appear to be turning positive,” Bank of America said.
Part of the reason for more optimism is that corporations with global supply chains have held back on purchases over the past year, in large part because of the trade war, and have whittled away at inventory. The strategy seemed to be an attempt to wait out tariffs in the hopes of a negotiated breakthrough. That makes sense at the individual company level, but it hit manufacturers hard as sales and activity dropped. However, companies will now have to restock in 2020, Bank of America says. That could help steady the economy.
Meanwhile, if the U.S. and China can indeed agree to a partial trade deal, that would “further help boost industrial activity and confidence in the global economy,” Bank of America said, and “any signs of improvement on the trade front could add upward pressure to cyclical energy and metals prices.” The removal of some tariffs could both push down the dollar and raise commodity prices.
Still, a comprehensive breakthrough in the trade war is going to be extremely difficult, and the two sides have been far apart on the big issues. The partial deal, such as it is, would only suspend tariffs in exchange for China buying large sums of agricultural goods.
But even the partial deal has run into trouble. The Trump administration has hyped a $50 billion purchase from China for U.S. agricultural goods, a figure that some say is “not possible.” So, it’s worth noting that even a very narrow and modest agreement has become a challenging prospect, to say nothing of more structural differences between the two countries.
In short, while the tone has softened and both sides have signaled that negotiations are proceeding to a conclusion, the U.S.-China trade war is far from finished.
In fact, right on cue, doubts began to resurface on Monday. CNBC said that the “mood in Beijing about a trade deal is pessimistic due to U.S. President Donald Trump’s reluctance to roll back tariffs.” Beijing may instead decide to sit and wait, betting that Trump’s standing continues to deteriorate in the face of an impeachment inquiry.
“It looks like this is by no means a done deal,” Matthew Miskin, a market strategist at John Hancock Advisors in Boston, told Bloomberg.
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Nick Cunningham is an independent journalist, covering oil and gas, energy and environmental policy, and international politics. He is based in Portland, Oregon.
Welche Rolle spielt der Internationale Währungsfonds (IWF) bei den zahlreichen gegenwärtigen Protesten in Südamerika? Eine große, aber keine gute – so das Fazit von Peter König, der über zwanzig Jahre lang als Ökonom für die Weltbank tätig war.
Im Interview mit Maria Janssen beleuchtet der Schweizer Wirtschaftswissenschaftler die ökonomischen Hintergründe der Ereignisse in Südamerika und kommt zu dem Schluss, dass die Umsetzung der Konzepte des IWF (auch als IMF – International Monetary Fund – bezeichnet) noch nie zu einem besseren Lebensstandard für die Masse der Bevölkerung geführt hat.
Im Gegenteil sei der IWF ein Kriegsinstrument der USA und diene dazu, ressourcenreiche Länder in die Verschuldung zu treiben, um deren Rohstoffe ungehindert ausplündern zu können.
Alain Chouet, former chief of the Security Intelligence Service within the French external intelligence service (DGSE)
Marcello Ferrada de Noli, Professor Emeritus, former head Research group Cross-cultural Injury Epidemiology, Karolinska Institute. Chair Swedish Doctors for Human Rights – SWEDHR
John Kiriakou, Former CIA Officer and Former Senior Investigator, US Senate Committee on Foreign Relations
Annie Machon, former MI5 Officer, UK Security Services
Ray McGovern, former CIA analyst and presidential briefer; co-founder of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) and of Sam Adams Associates for Integrity in Intelligence; former Army Infantry/Intelligence officer.
John Pilger, Journalist and documentary film maker
Theodore Postol, Professor Emeritus of Science, Technology and National Security, MIT
John Holmes, Maj Gen (retd) DSO OBE MC, former director of Special Forces, British Army
Dr. Helmut Lohrer, MD, Board member of International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW) and International Councilor of its German affiliate
Prof. Dr. Günter Meyer, Centre for Research on the Arab World (CERAW) at the University of Mainz
And with support of members of the OPCW Douma Fact-Finding Mission
Open Letter to Permanent Representatives of States Parties
cc: Office of the Director General, OPCW
Dear Permanent Representative,
We are writing in order to bring to your attention the recent meeting of the Courage Foundation Panel held in October 2019 and to ask for your support in taking action at the forthcoming CSP aimed at restoring the integrity of the OPCW and regaining public trust. The Courage Foundation is an international organisation that supports those who risk life or liberty to make significant contributions to the historical record.
The Courage Foundation Panel heard testimony and saw documentation from an OPCW official who was a member of the team investigating the alleged chemical weapon attack in Douma, Syria, April 2018. The panel, comprised of eminent individuals including José Bustani (the first Director General of the OPCW), Professor Richard Falk (Professor of International Law at Princeton and former UN Special Rapporteur) and Dr Helmut Lohrer (International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War), was unanimous in finding that ‘unacceptable practices’, involving suppression of information aimed at reaching a ‘preordained conclusion’, had occurred during the Douma investigation. Substantive concerns were raised regarding the credibility of the report, specifically with respect to toxicology and ballistics assessments, as well as the use and interpretation of witness testimonies. Suppression of internal debate and questioning within the investigation team appears to have been systematic. The full statement and accompanying analytical points can be found at https://couragefound.org/?s=OPCW and https://wikileaks.org/opcw-douma/.
The deliberations of the Courage Foundation Panel occurred against the backdrop of existing public controversy following the leaking in May 2019 of an engineering report authored by OPCW official Ian Henderson which reached very different conclusions from the official final OPCW report. In this regard, the Courage Foundation Panel noted that little consideration had been given in the final OPCW report to alternative hypotheses on how the alleged chlorine munitions came to be found in the two apartment buildings.
In view of the current disclosures, and the questions inevitably raised with respect to the integrity and credibility of OPCW FFM investigations, the Panel has called on the OPCW to ‘permit all inspectors who took part in the Douma investigation to come forward and report their differing observations in an appropriate forum of the States Parties to the Chemical Weapons Convention’.
We believe this request is eminently reasonable and indeed an essential step toward both establishing the truth of what happened in Douma and restoring public trust in the OPCW. If the organization is to faithfully implement the Chemical Weapons Convention, proper accountability and transparency of process are now required.
We hereby call on you to support the Panel’s request and facilitate efforts to allow all members of the FFM team to speak freely and without risk of censure at an appropriate forum.
Yours Sincerely,
José Bustani, Ambassador of Brazil, first Director General of the OPCW and former Ambassador to the United Kingdom and France
William Binney, former technical director at NSA
George Carey, former Archbishop of Canterbury
Noam Chomsky, Emeritus Professor, MIT
Marcello Ferrada de Noli, Professor Emeritus, former head Research group Cross-cultural Injury Epidemiology, Karolinska Institute. Chair Swedish Doctors for Human Rights – SWEDHR
Anne Gazeau-Secret, former French Ambassador, The Hague
Katharine Gun, former GCHQ (UKGOV), Whistleblower
John Kiriakou, Former CIA Officer and Former Senior Investigator, US Senate Committee on Foreign Relations
Annie Machon, former MI5 Officer, UK Security Services
Ray McGovern, former CIA analyst and presidential briefer; co-founder of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) and of Sam Adams Associates for Integrity in Intelligence; former Army Infantry/Intelligence officer
John Pilger, Journalist and documentary film maker
Theodore Postol, Professor Emeritus of Science, Technology and National Security, MIT
Scott Ritter, UNSCOM Weapons Inspector 1991-1998
Coleen Rowley, retired FBI agent and former Minneapolis Division Legal Counsel, 9-11 whistleblower and a 2002 Time Magazine Person of the Year
Hans von Sponeck, former UN Assistant Secretary-General and UN Humanitarian Coordinator (Iraq)
Oliver Stone, Film Director, Producer and Writer
Courage Foundation Panel Members:-
Richard Falk, Professor of International Law, Emeritus, Princeton University; Visiting Professor, Istinye University, Istanbul
Kristinn Hrafnsson, editor-in-chief, Wikileaks
John Holmes, Maj Gen (retd), DSO OBE MC
Dr. Helmut Lohrer, MD, Board member of International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW) and International Councilor of its German affiliate
Prof. Dr. Guenter Meyer, Centre for Research on the Arab World (CERAW) at the University of Mainz
Elizabeth Murray, former Deputy National Intelligence Officer for the Near East, National Intelligence (retd); member, Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity and Sam Adams Associates for Integrity in Intelligence
This letter is supported by members of the OPCW Douma Fact-Finding Mission
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After several days of unremarkable testimony by assorted State Department functionaries the Democrats continue to struggle with ferreting out a legally defensible impeachable offense to warrant the three ring circus currently being conducted by Rep. Adam Schiff, Chair of the House Intel Committee.
On a railroad through the Intel Committee, the impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump’s alleged attempt at a Quid Pro Quo (QPQ), Dems are no closer to a sure-fire ‘we got him now’ piece of evidence than when the inquiry began as they shift gears to widen the probe into “bribery’ and/or ‘extortion,’ whichever shoe fits.
At the outset, it is essential to recognize that the debate surrounding Trump’s impeachment is not to protect the Republican status quo as a preference to the Democratic status quo – as both have failed the American people when trusted honorable people of quality were needed. Today’s assembly of House Republicans opposing Schiff et al provide a glimmer that perhaps such individuals may yet exist. The opposition to the Democrat’s impeachment inquiry is, more importantly, an effort to preserve what remains of a constitutional democracy and the rule of law on the outside chance that a true patriot of unimpeachable, exceptional character may arise from the ashes.
Once Schiff agreed to take the behind-closed-doors witness depositions public, HR 660 was approved to establish new ground rules favorable to the Democrats to determine “whether sufficient grounds exist for the House of Representatives to exercise its Constitutional power to impeach.” Those new rules invest Schiff with an insatiable power to rein in Republican committee members when and how he sees fit – limiting the ability of the minority to question witnesses, limiting due process for the accused and to deny Republican requests for witnesses unfavorable to Schiff like the alleged WB himself.
The first day of hearings began with Schiff opening statement inserting Russia into the fray with a totally inaccurate portrayal: “in 2014 Russia invaded US ally Ukraine to reverse that nation’s embrace of the west and to fulfill Vladimir Putin’s desire to rebuild a Russia empire.” What Schiff conveniently omitted was the role of Victoria Nuland, Assistant Secretary of State in Kiev in February, 2014 to effect the US overthrow of Ukraine’s democratically elected President Viktor Yanukovych when he refused to join the EU in favor of a trade agreement with Moscow.
In his statement, Schiff, known as the Dems most bold prevaricator on Russiagate, omitted any mention of the alleged WB/CIA operative who filed the Complaint and, after public promises to the contrary, is not expected to testify on the matter as neither is Hunter Biden whose presence on the Burisma Board is central to the inquiry.
During Day One, two career State Department officials, known as Ambassadors, pontificated on their version of how foreign policy should be conducted as if their experience entitled them to special decision-making authority above and beyond an elected President of the United States. Both remained ignorant and indifferent to the fact that unelected, embedded bureaucrats do not conduct their version of reality different from what an elected President has determined. Neither offered any incriminating evidence of wrongdoing, no bombshell of misbehavior or any compelling revelations besides scant meaningless trivia that had already been stated. All State Department testimony is against the background of the US State Department role in the 2014 coup what former President Obama referred to as ‘brokering a transition.”
On day one, former Ambassador William Taylor was the first, albeit the Democrats Star Witness who did not provide the smoking gun the Democrats needed. When a stand up comic as talented as Jimmy Dore effectively destroyed former Ambassador William Taylor’s testimony, disintegration of the Democrat’s case for impeachment cannot be far behind.
Deputy Assistant Secretary of State George Kent then proved his own agenda in conflict with Trump’s objective that Ukraine is not vital to US interests when he reiterated Schiff’s earlier comments regarding the 2014 coup as a “popular revolution of dignity in 2014 forcing a corrupt pro Russian communist to flee to Moscow – after that Russian invaded Ukraine, including the Crimea and the Donbass territories currently occupied by Russia.” What neither Schiff nor Kent mentioned was that Volodymyr Zelensky was overwhelmingly elected President of Ukraine over US puppet Petro Poroshenko with 73% of the vote and the stated goal of cleaning up corruption, resolving the conflict in the Donbas and normalizing relations with Russia. Putin and Zelensky are scheduled to meet in Paris on December 9th.
Kent went on to describe having a “front row seat” in early 2015 when he “raised questions with the Deputy Prosecutor General about why the (Burisma) investigation had been terminated. Later he said he ‘became aware that Hunter Biden was on the Burisma board and soon after, in a briefing call with the National Security staff of VP Biden’s office in 2015”, he “raised concerns that Hunter Biden status on the Board member could create the perception of a conflict of interest.” In other words, if it was permissible for Kent to raise questions of the younger Biden’s presence on Burisma, the President of the US would have an even more legitimate reason for concern.
Kent confirmed that ‘there are and always have been conditionality placed on our sovereign loan guarantees for Ukraine; the IMF does the same thing.” which sounds like an administration using political incentives as a negotiating tool to achieve political objectives. In other words, it is common practice for any administration to provide loan guarantees with strings attached.
On Day Two, former US Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yuvanovich testified for longer than was necessary since she had nothing relevant to contribute except how her feelings were hurt as she was summarily dismissed from her position. Soon after Yuvanovich made a controversial statement calling for the removal of Ukraine’s special anti corruption prosecutor, she was told the President had lost faith in her and that she would be dismissed. Any President has the constitutional right to dismiss any State Department diplomat or any other political appointee at any time.
Rep. Chris Stewart (R-Utah) inquiredof Yuvanovich “Do you have any information regarding the President of the United States accepting any bribes?” Yovanovitch responded: “No.”
Stewart again inquired “Do you have any information regarding any criminal activity that he has been involved with at all?” Again Yovanovitch responded “No.” Period. End of Story.
NSC staffer Lt. Col. Alexander Vindmantestified this week and offered his opinion that the President was “inappropriate” or “improper” but was unable to provide Ranking Member Nunes with a factual basis of wrongdoing or to questions as Schiff interceded on behalf of the WB.
By the end of day three, former Special Envoy to Ukraine Kurt Volker testified that he saw no QPQ and no evidence of bribery or extortion.Tim Morrison, former National Security staff testified he did not agree with Schiff’s interpretation of the Trump Zelensky July 25th transcript.
On day four, another Star Witness former Ambassador to the EU Gordon Sondland also failed to provide Schiff with the necessary clincher to provide an irrefutable impeachable offense.
What was inescapable during the hearing was the absence of parliamentary courtesy or simply personal gracious conduct on the part of Chair of the Committee who was consistently intrusive as he overstepped his role with arbitrary, prejudicial violations of Roberts Rules of Order. Schiff routinely ruled Points of Order to be out of order with an inflated sense of magisterial presence. His demeanor proved to be classless and boorish as if he had been granted special dispensation from the House of Representative’s Code of Conduct to treat his colleagues with disdain and contempt. Schiff routinely refused to ‘recognize’ a Member, liberally gavelled his authority to cut off debate and at times, badgered Republican witnesses and further treated Republican Members, who are his peers, as second class citizens in what was once regarded as a collegial body. Once the dust settles, the House Ethics Committee may ultimately weigh in on Schiff’s character and the manner in which he conducted the Committee’s business.
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Renee Parsons has been a member of the ACLU’s Florida State Board of Directors and president of the ACLU Treasure Coast Chapter. She has been an elected public official in Colorado, an environmental lobbyist with Friends of the Earth and staff member of the US House of Representatives in Washington DC. She can be found on Twitter @reneedove31
What is the difference between an outright lie — stating something as a fact while knowing that it is false — and a deliberate material representation that accomplishes the same end? Here is an example that really pushes the boundary between the two, to the point where the distinction practically vanishes.
And the consequences are quite serious; this misrepresentation (or lie) has already played a major role in a military coup in Bolivia last week. This military coup overthrew the government of President Evo Morales before his current term was finished — a term to which nobody disputes that he was democratically elected in 2014.
More violent repression and even a civil war could follow.
OAS mission
The Organization of American States (OAS) sent an Electoral Observation Mission to Bolivia, entrusted with monitoring the Oct. 20 national election there. The day after the election, before all the votes were even counted, the mission put out a press release announcing its “deep concern and surprise at the drastic and hard-to-explain change in the trend of the preliminary results…”
Here is what the OAS was referring to: there is an unofficial “quick count” of the voting results that involves contractors who upload results at intervals, as the tally sheets are available. At 7:40 p.m. on election day, they had reported about 84% of the votes and then stopped reporting for 23 hours (more on that below).
When they resumed reporting results at 95% of votes counted, Morales’s lead had increased from 7.9% before the interruption to just over 10%.
This margin was important because in order to win without a second-round runoff, a candidate needs either an absolute majority, or at least 40% and a 10-point margin over the second-place finisher. This margin — which grew to 10.6% when all the votes were counted in the official count — re-elected Morales without a second round.
Morales’s lead grew steadily
Now, if you had any experience with elections or maybe even arithmetic, what is the first thing you would want to know about the votes that came in after the interruption? You might ask, were people in those areas any different from people in the average precinct in the first 84%?
And was the change in Morales’s margin sudden, or was it a gradual trend that continued as more vote tally sheets were reported?
You might even want to ask these questions before expressing “deep concern and surprise” about what happened, especially in a politically very polarized situation that was already turning violent.
CEPR
This graph shows that the lead held by President Evo Morales (light blue dots) and by his party in parliamentary elections (dark blue dots) rose at a steady rate for most of the vote counting. There was no sudden surge at the end to put him over the 10% threshold.
A look at that data shows that the change in Morales’s lead was actually gradual and continuous, and started rising many hours before the break in reporting of the quick count. You can see that in a graph of the results.
It’s geography
Why did it happen? The answer is simple and not that uncommon: the people in later-reporting areas were more pro-MAS (Morales’s party, the Movement Toward Socialism) than those in areas that reported earlier. Hence the gradual and continuous rise in Morales’s lead, in which the votes after the interruption put him over the top.
The OAS has published two press releases, one preliminary report, and one preliminary audit on the election. How many of these contained the disparagement of the election results implied by the “deep concern and surprise” quoted above? Three. How many contained anything about the difference between the percentage of MAS/Morales voters in areas with later returns versus earlier? Zero.
As it turns out, the interruption in the quick count was not a sign of foul play either.
Quick count has no legal status
The quick count is separate from the official count, and has no legal status to determine the results. It’s never been intended or promised to be a complete count; in prior elections it did not even near 84%.
It’s just a quick series of snapshots, done by contractors, to provide early results before the official count is done. It makes sense that the electoral authorities might not want two sets of voting results, which are inherently different, coming out at the same time in a violently polarized political situation.
For those who like numbers better than graphs: Morales’s margin after the first 84% of votes was 7.9%, as noted. If we look at the remaining 16% of precincts, and we ask, what is Morales’s pre-interruption margin in the areas where these later-reporting precincts were located? That margin is about 22%. Again, a simple explanation of how his margin increased as it did with later returns.
For a more powerful statistical analysis, we can project the remaining (and thus total) vote count on the basis of the first 84% reported. And — no surprise here — Morales’s projected final margin based on the first 84% of votes turns out to be slightly more than 10%.
It is difficult, almost impossible, to believe that this OAS mission, or those above them in the OAS Department of Electoral Cooperation and Observation, felt “deep concern and surprise” and yet were too incompetent to even look at this data.
Three lies
That is why I would say that they lied at least three times: in the first press release, the preliminary report, and the preliminary audit. And that is why I would regard with great skepticism the allegations presented in their preliminary audit, and further publications — unless these can be verified by independent investigators from publicly available data.
And the OAS isn’t all that independent at the moment, with the Trump administration actively promoting this military coup, and Washington having more right-wing allies in the OAS than they did just a few years ago.
Not to mention that the U.S. supplies 60% of its budget. But the OAS has horribly abused its mandate in election monitoring before, helping to reverse election results as the U.S. and its allies wanted: most destructively, in 2000 in Haiti; and also in the same country in 2011.
More evidence: in the last three weeks, the OAS has refused to answer questions from journalists, on the record, about their statements or reports since the election.
Maybe they are afraid that a curious reporter would ask questions like these: Is there a difference between the political preferences of people who live in later-reporting areas as compared to earlier ones? Doesn’t this explain how Morales’s lead rose to more than 10% as votes from more pro-Morales areas came in? Did you even look at this question?
Since I am an economist, I believe in incentives: I am offering a $500 reward for the first journalist who can get a substantive answer to these questions from an OAS official, on the record. Even if turns out to be a lie.
Mark Weisbrot is co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, D.C. CEPR is a research and education organization established to promote democratic debate on the most important economic and social issues that affect people’s lives. He is also the author of “Failed: What the ‘Experts’ Got Wrong About the Global Economy” (2015, Oxford University Press). You can subscribe to his columns here.
China has by far the largest lithium market. China produces already today the most electric cars, about 1 million in 2018, and will at least triplicate their production by 2025 – and in the following decade or two, demand is expected to increase exponentially.
Bolivia has the world’s largest – by far – known lithium reserves. A long-term win-win contract between China and Bolivia was under preparation since early 2019 and being negotiated as a 51% Bolivia – 49% China share-arrangement, with manufacturing of batteries and other lithium-related products foreseen in Bolivia – added value, job creation in Bolivia – with an initial investment of US$ 2.3 billion – was about to be signed, when the US-instigated Bolivian military coup occurred. It was immediately followed with the usual US-style intimidating, violent and murderous oppression, particularly directed at protests by indigenous people.
They – the indigenous people, 70% to 80% of the Bolivian people – didn’t want to lose their President, Evo Morales, who has improved their lives enormously, like nobody else before since Bolivia’s independence from Spain some 200 years ago. Evo has drastically reduced poverty and provided most Bolivians with jobs and with a decent living. President Evo Morales had to seek asylum in Mexico to protect himself and his family from threats to his life and that of his loved ones, as well as to his political associates and members of Congress, who were in line to succeed him. The CIA, its handlers and their paid assets work with impunity, without scruples.
A day after Evo Morales left Bolivia, the opposition, led by the self-proclaimed neofascist, racist President, Jeanine Añez, ransacked and looted the Central Bank of its gold and large amounts of cash reserves. The loot was seen to be transported to the airport to be flown out of the country, presumably to the US. Madame Añez said she needed the money to buy weapons, of course, from America to keep oppressing and killing the indigenous protesters.
After the long-prepared and US- orchestrated ‘civic-military’ coup on 10th November, Bolivia is being ruled by a self-appointed, illegal, temporary (they say), neofascist government which is not only supported by the United States – the “putsch-maker” – but also by the abysmally shameful European Union, as well as by the Organization of American States – OAS (boasting, the US pays 60% of OAS’ budget…).
Bolivians have been plunged into a violent military-police dictatorship knowing no restraint beating up indigenous protesters and shooting them with live ammunition. At least 25 have already been killed and hundreds wounded. Añez has signed a decree exonerating police and military from criminal prosecution for crimes and murders committed on protesters, giving the police and military a direct license to kill. Evo Morales, was forced to resign by top military brass which has been secretly trained by the School of the Americas, now called The Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC).Evo has been bitterly betrayed by Washington-corrupted and trained officers.
About 20 of Evo’s closest entourage, including members of congress, who according to the Bolivian Constitution would have been in line to take up temporarily the Presidency until new elections are organized – a fact Evo proposed before being forced to resign, hardly reported by the western media – were also ordered to resign. They were all granted asylum in Mexico. They were told by the new, illegal self-appointed Government, that they were not allowed to run for the Presidency in upcoming elections. This is the type of “Democracy” exported by Washington. Its more aptly called dictatorship.
The power and fervor of pro-Morales protests in Bolivia is increasing day-by-day. Evo was the first indigenous President of the plurinational Andean country. Indigenous Bolivians, the vast majority, are strong supporters of Evo’s and his MAS party (MAS = Movimiento al Socialismo, or movement towards socialism).
US President Trump has made it abundantly clear that he does not tolerate socialist governments in the world, let alone in his backyard, Latin America. Congratulating the US-trained putsch leaders, he warned Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua of what might soon happen to them. He doesn’t lose an opportunity dishing out threats to world leaders who do not follow his orders. Indeed, the CIA via locally trained and bought agents is also causing havoc and bloody uprisings in Iran, Hong Kong, Lebanon. He, Mr. Trump the Great, a President in the process of being impeached himself for corruption and other misdeeds by the US Parliament. Bravo.
Having a socialist Government was certainly a reason for the coup d’état, but not the only one, perhaps not even the key reason. Bolivia, like Venezuela, is rich in natural resources, gas, oil, minerals and metals – and lithium, a light metal, used in car batteries, especially batteries for electric cars. They are ideal assets to be privatized by a neoliberal government for the benefit of a few local oligarchs and of foreign corporations – mostly US, of course. Stealing natural resources from developing countries is a key objective for the empire’s attempting to establish monetary and territorial world hegemony.
Already before Evo Morales first took office in January 2006, he pledged to the Bolivian people that the vast and rich natural resources treasures of Bolivia belong to Bolivia, to the Bolivian people. Among the first actions of his Presidency was the partial nationalization of the hydrocarbon industry – gas and petrol. Evo inherited from his predecessors, Goni Sanchez and Carlos Mesa an absurd arrangement, whereby the foreign corporations would receive on average 82% of the profits from hydrocarbon exploitation and the remaining 18% would stay in Bolivia. It is precisely for this reason that both Goni and Mesa were thrown out by the people in bloody people’s rebellions in 2003 and 2005, respectively.
When Evo was elected President in 2005 and took office in January 2006, he reversed this proportion: 82% for Bolivia and 18% for the transnationals. The western world screamed and hollered and warned him that all the foreign investors will abandon Bolivia – and Bolivia will be alone and her economy will collapse miserably. None of this happened, of course. Because even under this new arrangement foreign corporations made enough profit for them to stay in Bolivia. They are there as of this day.
In comes lithium, a soft, light and highly flammable mineral – what some call the gold of the 21st Century. The world’s total known lithium reserves are about 15 million tons, with a potential of up to 65 million tons. Bolivia has arguably the world’s largest single known lithium deposits with a projected 9 million tons, about 60% of all known reserves.
Bolivia’s lithium has so far remined largely untapped, whereas major current producers are Chile, Argentina, Australia and China. Bolivia’s reserves are located in the Uyuni salt flats, the world’s largest salt desert (some 10,000 km2) in the remote southern tip of Bolivia, about 4,000m above sea level. Lithium is contained in salt brine pools below the Uyuni salt flats.
Access is complicated because of altitude and remoteness and lithium mining has also environmental issues. Finally, and maybe most importantly, Evo Morales has promised his people that this valuable resource will not just be exported as raw material, but processed in Bolivia so that added value and major benefits remain in Bolivia. The general manager of state-owned Yacimientos de Litio Bolivianos (YLB) assures that “Bolivia will be a relevant actor in the global lithium market within four or five years.”
Lithium is mainly used for the production of car batteries, cell phones, electronic devices in sophisticated weapons systems. In the age of growing environmental consciousness and electric cars, the car battery market is expected to explode in the coming years. China’s President, Xi Jinping, recently said that as of 2030, all new cars on China’s roads will be electric. Though, this may be optimistic, it speaks for a huge market. It is expected that the use of lithium in car batteries alone could triple – or beyond – in the coming 5 to 10 years.
In the last few weeks, the Bolivian Government was about to sign a contract with ACI Systems Alemania (ACISA), a small German mining company. On November 4, the deal was canceled, due to local protests over profit sharing. The local population wanted an increase of royalty payments from 3% to 11%. The deal would have brought a US$ 1.3 billion investment in the Salar del Uyuni (the Uyuni Salt Flats) over time for a vehicle battery factory and a lithium hydroxide plant. Similar deals with Tesla and other US and Canadian battery producers also failed, because of unacceptable profit-sharing arrangements.
China has the World’s largest lithium market. By far. And the one with the fastest growth potential. With a million Chinese electric cars sold in 2018 alone, demand is expected to increase almost exponentially. President Xi’s predictions may be slightly optimistic, but according to a Chinese thinktank, by 2040 all new vehicles on China’s roads will be electric. Already today, almost 100% of all scooters roaming major cities are electric.
In February 2019, the Chinese company Xinjiang TBEA Group Co Ltd. And the Bolivian state company Yacimientos de Litio Bolivianos (YLB) negotiated a deal that would have given Bolivia 51% and the Chinese 49% shares of a lithium extraction investment, an initial US$ 2.3 billion investment venture, expandable according to market demand. The project would have included manufacturing of vehicle batteries – and more – thus, adding value in Bolivia and creating thousands of jobs.
The Chinese Ambassador to Bolivia estimates that China would need some 800,000 tons of the light metal by 2025. Electric cars with today’s technology require massive amounts of lithium, about 63 kilograms for a single 70 kWh Tesla Model S battery pack.Officially known reserves in the Salar Uyuni of some 9 million tons, correspond to about a quarter of total known world reserves, according the US Geological Survey. Countrywide lithium deposits in Bolivia, but not yet proven, may reach 21 million tons, mostly in the Uyuni salt flats, according to government projections. World Bank projections see global demand for lithium skyrocketing in the coming years, reaching more than 1,000% of present demand by 2050.
A huge proportion of this multi-multibillion-dollar market would be Chinese. It is therefore not too far-fetched to believe that the US-induced military coup itself, and particularly its timing – has something to do with Bolivia’s lithium – and more precisely with the China-Bolivia partnership deal.
Since the beginning of this year Bolivia has been negotiating with China, Bolivia’s linking up to the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). The lithium extraction and industrial development was part of it. Under Evo’s guidance it could have lifted this still most impoverished country of South America out of poverty, to a level of “living well” for most Bolivians. China, with her win-win approach for the BRI expansion around the globe and for such bilateral deals, as would have been lithium development in and with Bolivia – would have contributed greatly to the improvement of living conditions for this landlocked Andean country.
With China being lambasted, thrashed and aggressed on every occasion, clearly, such a multiple billion-dollar long-term arrangement, for a market the west wants to claim for itself, is not allowed by the true axis of evil, the United States, the vassalic Europeans, Canada and Australia. So, President Evo Morales and his close MAS party allies – and potential successors – had to go. Unarmed indigenous people had to be intimidated by bought police and military forces. They are beaten up and shot at with live ammunition. As of today, the dead toll has reached at least 25, since the police-military violence began when Evo was forced to resign, about a week ago.
It is predictable that the current “interim” government will call a State of Emergency, meaning a de factomilitary-police dictatorship. The natural riches of a poor country that wants to use reserves for the betterment of her people, can be a curse – and especially if that country has a socialist regime. But – as a positive glare of hope, the Bolivian people are known to be headstrong and staunch defenders of their rights. So, with the support and solidarity of neighboring countries’ people protesting for their lost civil rights, Chile, Ecuador, Argentina and maybe soon also Brazil, not all may be lost.
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Peter Koenig is an economist and geopolitical analyst. He is also a water resources and environmental specialist. He worked for over 30 years with the World Bank and the World Health Organization around the world in the fields of environment and water. He lectures at universities in the US, Europe and South America. He writes regularly for Global Research; ICH; RT; Sputnik; PressTV; The 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.
The United Kingdom’s government and its armed forces hid solid evidence of war crimes committed by British soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq against civilians among them children, an investigation led by the BBC and the Sunday Times revealed Sunday.
The investigation found that British troops were implicated in the murders of children and the killing and torture of civilians. The soldiers’ behavior during the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq was documented by two government-ordered inquiries – the Iraq Historic Allegations Team (IHAT) and Operation Northmoor – which investigated war crimes during the occupation in Afghanistan.
Based on leaked documents kept secret by the government, the accusations include assassinations by a soldier from the elite SAS unit, as well as deaths in custody, beatings, torture, and sexual abuse of detainees by members of the Black Watch infantry unit.
Military detectives who disclosed proof of the alleged war crimes told the year-long investigation that senior commanders covered it “for political reasons.”
In response, the Ministry of Defence said the allegations were “untrue” and the decisions of prosecutors and investigators were “independent” and involved “external oversight and legal advice.”
The British government closed IHAT and Operation Northmoor’s investigations in 2017 after Phil Shiner, a lawyer who had registered more than 1,000 allegations, was suspended from practicing law as a consequence of an accusation of paying fixers in Iraq to find clients.
However, some former IHAT and Operation Northmoor detectives say Shiner’s actions served as a pretext to shut down the inquiries after wrongdoings at the highest levels were discovered. None of the cases investigated by IHAT or Operation Northmoor resulted in a prosecution.
“The MoD had no intention of prosecuting any soldier of whatever rank he was unless it was absolutely necessary, and they couldn’t wriggle their way out of it,” an investigator told the BBC.
Another former detective said the victims had been gravely failed.
“I use the word disgusting. And I feel for the families because… they’re not getting justice. How can you hold your head up as a British person?”
Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab told the BBC that “all of the allegations, that had evidence, have been looked at,” adding “the right balance” had been struck over decisions whether or not to investigate alleged war crimes.
Iran has been swept by protests since November 15th, with banks, stores and gas stations being set on fire. So far, more than 1,000 have been arrested and upwards of 12 people have died. Iranian authorities said 87,400 people were involved in the unrest across the country.
People took the streets after the government-implemented increase in the price of fuel by 50%. According to the decision, vehicles for private use would be restricted to 60 liters of fuel monthly, while the price of petrol would jump 50% to 15,000 Iranian rials per liter. Any fuel in excess of those 60 liters would be charged with an additional 30,000 rials ($0.26) per liter.
Judiciary Chief Ebrahim Raeisi said that the decision was taken hastily, without consulting the wide public, but that it was necessary. The move is intended to raise about $2.5 billion a year for additional subsidies for 18 million families, or about 60 million Iranians on lower incomes. As of November 19th, the Iranian government began carrying out the direct payments to the 60 million poorest, of the country’s 80 million population.
The current economic situation in Iran is a result of the ongoing US-led sanction war against the country. In 2018, Iran’s $1.63 trillion economy was reduced by 3.5%. Iran’s inflation is officially upwards of 40%. The country’s economy is projected to shrink by around 6% in 2019. Official oil exports have gone down from about 2.5 million barrels a day before the US left the nuclear deal to less than 200,000 barrels a day.
The current round of protests began in Tehran on November 15th, with citizens blocking main roads and destroying property. By November 17th, the protests had reached some 100 cities and towns, including Tabriz, Isfahan, Kermanshah, Sanandaj and Shiraz. At least 100 banks and 57 stores were set on fire.
The US publicly supported the demonstrations, with US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo even tweeting his support of the Iranian people. The Trump administration released a general statement condemning Tehran’s alleged use of “lethal force” and its proven use of communications restrictions. US officials and mainstream media actively endorsed protestors make an attempt to overthrow the government.
Tehran called the US stance “hypocritical,” highlighting that Washington’s sanctions are the main reason for the unrest. Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei expressed his support of the fuel price increase, saying that it was necessary, while condemning the violent protesters. There’s been a wide internet shutdown since the protests began, with connectivity falling to only around 4-7% of normal levels.
Prior to now, protests in Iran have sporadically happened, expressing public discontent with the complicated economic situation.
There’s been a tendency, beginning from December 2017, and they lasted until mid-January 2018. Protesters expressed their opposition to cuts to fuel and cash subsidies, contained in the 2018 budget proposal unveiled in mid-December 2017. The previous protests were similar in nature to these, but less violent. There were similar protests in August, November and December 2018. In all the cases, protests had no clear political agenda and were mostly focused on the economic and social situation.
On November 19, authorities announced that the calm has been restored across the most of the country. However, the situation remains unstable and more unpopular economic moves needed to counteract the US economic pressure on the country may cause a new round of riots. Iran is unlikely to comply with the US’ demands for the “maximum pressure” campaign and trade the sovereignty to ease the sanctions.
The behavior of the US, which publicly calls on protestors to overthrow the Iranian government, is more common for a period of active war than for any kind of a peacetime public diplomacy. It demonstrates that Washington sees Iran as a country with which it is in a state of the military conflict. Such statements were unprecedented even towards the USSR during the Cold War. In fact, the US is waging an open aggressive hybrid war on Iran pushing the entire Middle East towards a further instability.
If Washington achieves its desired goal and anti-government protests in Iran expand and involve a large part of the population (20-30%), and the US continues endorsing them for more violence and regime-change attempts, there are notable chances that the cornered Iranian government will have to use the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and the Army against rioters. In the event of a deep crisis threatening the existence of the Iranian state in the current form, the country’s leadership may even opt to carry out a retaliatory strike on Israel, Saudi Arabia or US infrastructure in the region.
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Il ministro degli Esteri Luigi Di Maio, accogliendo a Roma i cinque militari feriti in Iraq, ha dichiarato che «lo Stato italiano mai indietreggerà di un centimetro di fronte alla minaccia terroristica e reagirà con tutta la sua forza di fronte a chi semina terrore».
E’ quindi volato a Washington per partecipare alla riunione del gruppo ristretto della «Coalizione globale contro Daesh» di cui fanno parte, sotto guida Usa, Turchia, Arabia Saudita, Qatar, Giordania e altri paesi che hanno sostenuto Daesh/Isis e analoghe formazioni terroristiche, fornendo loro armi e addestramento (come abbiamo documentato su questo giornale).
La Coalizione – di cui fanno parte Nato, Unione Europea, Lega Araba, Comunità degli Stati del Sahel/Sahara e Interpol, più 76 singoli Stati – rivendica nel suo comunicato del 14 novembre di «aver liberato l’Iraq e la Siria nord-orientale dal controllo di Daesh/Isis», mentre è evidente che le forze della Coalizione avevano lasciato volutamente mano libera a Daesh/Isis.
Questa e altre formazioni terroristiche sono state sconfitte solo quando la Russia è intervenuta militarmente a sostegno delle forze governative siriane.
La Coalizione rivendica inoltre di aver «fornito 20 miliardi di dollari di assistenza umanitaria e per la stabilizzazione ai popoli iracheno e siriano, e addestrato ed equipaggiato oltre 220.000 membri delle forze di sicurezza per stabilizzare le comunità locali».
Scopo di questa «assistenza» è in realtà non la stabilizzazione ma la continua destabilizzazione di Iraq e Siria, facendo leva strumentalmente soprattutto sulle diverse componenti dell’indipendentismo curdo, per disgregare questi Stati nazionali, controllare il loro territorio e le loro riserve energetiche.
Nel quadro di tale strategia l’Italia, definita «uno dei massimi contribuenti della Coalizione», è impegnata in Iraq principalmente nell’addestramento delle «Forze di sicurezza curde» (Peshmerga), in particolare all’uso di armi anti-carro, di mortai e artiglieria, e a quello di fucili di precisione in speciali corsi per cecchini.
Operano attualmente in Iraq circa 1100 militari italiani, divisi in diverse task force in luoghi differenti, dotati di oltre 300 mezzi terrestri e 12 mezzi aerei, con una spesa nel 2019 di 166 milioni di euro.
A quella in Iraq è affiancata una componente aerea italiana in Kuwait, con 4 cacciabombardieri Typhoon, 3 droni Predator e un aereo-cisterna per il rifornimento in volo.
Con tutta probabilità le forze speciali italiane, cui appartengono i cinque feriti, partecipano ad azioni di combattimento anche se il loro compito ufficiale sarebbe solo quello di addestramento.
L’impiego delle forze speciali è di per se stesso segreto. Ora diviene ancora più segreto perché il loro comando, il Comfose, viene trasferito dalla caserma della Folgore a Pisa alla limitrofa area della base di Camp Darby, il più grande arsenale Usa fuori dalla madrepatria, dove si svolgono anche attività di addestramento.
Nella Coalizione l’Italia ha inoltre il compito di co-dirigere il «Gruppo finanziario di contrasto all’Isis» insieme ad Arabia Saudita e Stati uniti. ossia a coloro che hanno finanziato e organizzato l’armamento delle forze dell’Isis e di altre formazioni terroristiche (v. inchiesta del New York Times nel 2013).
Forte di tutti questi meriti, il ministro degli Esteri Di Maio ha avanzato a Washington la proposta, subito accettata, che sia l’Italia ad ospitare la riunione plenaria della Coalizione nel 2020.
L’Italia avrà così l’onore di ospitare strenui oppositori del terrorismo come l’Arabia Saudita che, dopo aver finanziato l’Isis, ora spende i suoi petrodollari per finanziare la sua guerra terroristica nello Yemen.
Chicago educators on November 16 approved by a wide margin the contract negotiated by their union leadership.
On October 17, 25,000 Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) members walked off the job demanding better salaries and working conditions among other issues.
The strike also was joined by members of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) which reached a tentative agreement prior to the teachers. A division of SEIU represents thousands of security guards and teachers’ assistants in Chicago Public Schools system.
An October 30 tentative agreement between the CTU and the city administration was agreed upon by the executive board ending the strike paving the way for a return to classes for 350,000 students on November 1. The deal created the conditions for schools to open fully staffed since the SEIU said it would not return to work until the city administration reached an agreement with the CTU.
This agreement guarantees all CTU members a 16% salary increase over the five-year life of the contract. The City of Chicago has also pledged to invest $35 million into the school system in order to reduce class sizes, placing at least one nurse and a social worker in every building by 2023.
Public support for the strike was widespread throughout the city and around the United States as school systems have come under tremendous pressure due to privatization of services, the proliferation of charter schools and tax-funded vouchers for private educational institutions. Although Chicago is a major center for industrial production, retail outlets and finance capital, the majority African American and Latinx communities still suffer from disproportionate allocations for schools.
Many of the students attending the Chicago Public Schools come from families living just above or below the poverty lines. A housing crisis which has plagued many large urban areas has impacted Chicago with the razing of public housing complexes, an epidemic of home foreclosures and the rising costs of rental units.
The recent work stoppage was the second of its kind since 2012. Nonetheless, it appears as if the situation has worsened for students, service employees and teachers over the last seven years.
Two issues raised by the CTU during the strike appear to have remained unresolved: the growing demand for affordable housing and the need to address the shrinking availability of trained librarians within the CPS. Since the previous strike in 2012, the number of librarians has declined.
An article published in the November 8 edition of American Libraries Magazine says of the situation in Chicago that:
“Roughly 80% of the 514 district-run schools in the CPS system are without a librarian, and Nora Wiltse, the only CPS librarian at the bargaining table during the negotiations, says she believes the situation is likely to get worse under the new contract. Wiltse, a librarian at Coonley Elementary School who has pressed for more funding for librarians since 2012, says there are only 108 full-time working librarians in the district. That’s down from 454 librarians in the 2012–2013 school year, the year of the last Chicago Teachers Union strike.”
The lack of available librarians is the direct result of the austerity which has impacted public schools. In Chicago many of the librarians have either been laid off, resigned or found positions in other sectors.
Some more affluent areas of the city have kept school libraries open through parental and community volunteers. Nonetheless, this is not necessarily an option for distressed neighborhoods and it does not address the pressing need for personnel trained in information science.
This same above-mentioned report published by American Libraries Magazine continues by emphasizing:
“While the new contract commits funding to 120 schools in economically depressed parts of the city to create new positions—though Wiltse says the language of the contract allows the funds to be used for programming or materials, not necessarily for hiring new employees—principals are tasked with making tough decisions on where to allocate those dollars. They could opt to bring librarians back to their schools, but they likely won’t, Wiltse says. ‘This contract had a lot of really big wins for our students, but it’s not going to help the lack of librarians in our school system,’ she says.”
The Chicago Administration and Labor Relations
Chicago’s new Mayor Lori Lightfoot, the first woman and only third African American to serve in that position, was elected to office in April of this year amid a groundswell of dissatisfaction with the Democratic Party political machine. Lightfoot pledged to improve the social conditions of the working class and poor residents of this municipality of 2.7 million people.
However, the mayor failed to negotiate an agreement with the CTU that could have avoided the 11-day strike. Tensions between the administration and the CTU continued after the tentative agreement was announced on October 30 as representatives of the union refused to appear in a proposed joint press conference with Lightfoot.
CTU President Jesse Sharkey wrote an open letter to the public after the tentative agreement in which he characterized the political atmosphere in the city as lacking representation on the part of the electorate to choose members of the CPS board. The board is selected by the mayor making all of its members political appointees of the city administration.
The letter also went on to address broader social issues underlying the strike, stressing:
“While a linchpin in our bargaining was the demand to lift our paraprofessionals out of poverty, this was not a strike solely about wages and benefits. We returned to our school communities with the same pay increase that was on the table before our strike. We fought, instead, to shift CPS policy away from a relentless agenda of austerity and privatization toward real student needs, and, by extension, the needs of the neighborhoods our school communities anchor. We fought for the common good of students, and CPS must now — for the first time in decades — invest in the bare minimum: a nurse in every school every day; social workers and counselors; and manageable class sizes, especially in schools with urgent needs.”
Chicago Strike Representative of Nationwide Labor Struggles in Education Sector
The Chicago Teachers’ strike follows similar actions over the last year-and-a-half. Beginning with an unexpected statewide strike in West Virginia, teachers continued to demand better wages and working conditions along with pension guarantees in other districts in Oklahoma, North Carolina, Arizona, Kentucky, Arkansas and Colorado.
Strikes occurred in 2018 and 2019 in Los Angeles and Oakland, California. Similar labor actions have taken place among bus drivers in Georgia and part-time faculty members in Virginia. This trend has been labelled #RedforEd.
November 19 was a day of action by the Indiana State Teachers Association and the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) which stayed away from the classroom to stage a rally at the Capitol building in Indianapolis. The union websites published testimonials from teachers deploring the deteriorating conditions under which they are working.
City administrations and school districts are increasingly subjected to the withholding of tax revenues for the purpose of funding high profile prestige economic projects owned and controlled by capitalist corporations. The Lincoln Yards Development in Chicago is a prime example of this process where taxpayers in the city are mandated to provide $1.3 billion in Tax Increment Funding (TIF).
A major community struggle aimed at blocking the transferal of public funds for corporate profit-making projects is underway in Chicago. Mayor Lightfoot while running for office said she had reservations about the Lincoln Yard Development and its reliance on TIF. Nevertheless, after being elected, Lightfoot gave her support to the project along with a majority of the Board of Alderman.
The Chicago Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights is suing Sterling Bay, the Lincoln Yards Development leader, saying that the utilization of TIF violates the laws of the State of Illinois which suggests that the funds should be invested in distressed communities for the benefit of the people who live there.
“It just doesn’t comply with the state statute – and that’s $1.3 billion over the next 23 years that should be going to the general tax base. Another goal though is to really step back with the entire TIF program that the city has been administering and to evaluate the kind of impact it’s having on increasing wealth inequality in our city on perpetuating residential racial segregation and economic segregation.”
These issues can potentially link the labor unions with community-based movements against austerity. The current phase of capitalist development requires even greater levels of worker exploitation and the expropriation of public funds for private investments which further enrich the billionaire ruling class.
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Abayomi Azikiwe is the editor of Pan-African News Wire. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.
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Obama knows Democrats will lose next November if they keep pushing “socialism” as a campaign objective. Americans on the coasts may support a command economy, control freak regulations, legalized theft—larger theft than now—and a braindead wad of social justice idiocy that is predicated on racism and sexism, but all of this is rejected by voters out here in flyover country.
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Obama wades into the 2020 race, warning of the dangers of listening to “certain left-leaning twitter feeds” or “the activist wing of our party.”
“Even as we push the envelope and we are bold in our vision we also have to be rooted in reality," he said. https://t.co/OioCWy4pbv
Obama may want to ask why people support radical ideologies. The answer is simple—most Americans are struggling to make ends meet and millions are no longer the middle class. Half the country is on government assistance.
The implosion of the economy going on behind the smokescreen of Trump’s feel good propaganda—millions of jobs created (if you don’t mind minimum wage) and low inflation (when it is in fact over 10%)—will convince many Americans that capitalism is broken and the answer is communism (as Gary Allen noted a few decades ago, socialism and communism are virtually the same).
Left out of the conversation is the fact Obama and his predecessors are responsible for a crumbling economy. Trump, who said he would take a hard look at the Federal Reserve and then forgot about this campaign promise after the election, is basically the same as Obama, Clinton, Bush, and the rest of the neoliberal clan that runs the economy.
Obama in particular. He gave his blessing to “bailing out” the banks, essentially a reward for banksters who nearly crashed the economy a decade ago with their financial instruments of destruction.
Since that time, the controllers and their clan of professional shysters have scooped up billions by moving funny money around, hedging bets, repackaging toxic waste as investment, and moving wealth into the coffers of the ultra-rich and corporations.
These professional economic criminals are responsible for huge “asset bubbles” that are now splitting at the seams, ready to crash and drive the country into a horrific depression, “The Greatest Depression.” The last depression, simply “Great,” was engineered by the Federal Reserve and its cartel of banksters. This was admitted by former Fed boss, Ben Bernanke.
The people, generally ignorant of economic issues, will run to the socialists after the economy implodes. There is a distinct possibility it will crash before the election, thus sealing Trump’s fate, and thus ushering in a freshly minted cabal of SJW socialists masquerading as Democrats led by Elizabeth Warren (a multimillionaire) and Bernie Sanders (also a multimillionaire).
However, as it stands now, most Americans are not supportive of the sort of socialism advocated by Warren and Sanders. In 2016, around half of voters went to the polls to pull the lever for Trump.
It is primarily millennials pushing for socialism. This is to be expected. Not only are they woefully ignorant of economics, but they are also seriously brainwashed by the state’s educational institutions.
I don’t think Warren, Sanders, Beto, Mayor Pete, Kamala, and the rest stand a chance, not necessarily due to a rejection by Americans (why else would the mental case Joe Biden be a frontrunner).
Early next year, Hillary Clinton will announce her candidacy and the DNC will clear the board, sweeping away the SJW Democrats, basically the same two-step they performed on Sanders in 2016.
Responsibility for the crashing economy will be foisted off on Trump, mostly because most Americans don’t understand the president has little effect on the economy and the damage is largely inflicted by the Federal Reserve and the banksters.
Of course, it doesn’t really matter who wins the election. There is little substantial difference between Democrats and Republicans. Both support the current fraudulent economic system that drives wealth into the coffers of the mega-wealthy at the expense of average citizens.
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Kurt Nimmo writes on his blog, Another Day in the Empire, where this article was originally published. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.
Non-intervention by nations in the internal affairs of others is fundamental international law.
In Nicaragua v. United States (1986), the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled against Washington for breaching international law and violating Nicaraguan sovereignty by supporting Contra death squads in the country, along with mining its waters and operating illegally in its airspace.
Unilaterally imposed sanctions by nations on others breach the principle of non-intervention and the UN Charter — giving the Security Council exclusive authority to take this action.
UN Charter Article 2 (4) states: “All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations.”
Time and again, the US breaches the letter and spirt of international and its own constitution — operating exclusively by its own rules, making them up to serve its interests.
Last month, House members unanimously passed the so-called Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act of 2019 by voice vote.
On Tuesday, Senate members unanimously adopted its version of the same measure — violating the principle of non-intervention in the internal affairs of other countries.
Among 535 congressional members, not a single profile in courage opposed the hostile, interventionist measure, breaching international and constitutional law.
It has nothing to do with promoting democracy, a notion the US abhors and tolerates nowhere, especially not at home.
It has nothing to do with supporting human rights in Hong Kong — US dirty hands all over months of violence and chaos in the city, aiming to destabilize China by attacking its soft underbelly.
On Wednesday, Xinhua reported the following:
“The Foreign Affairs Committee of the National People’s Congress (NPC), the top legislature of China…firmly opposed…and strongly condemned the passing of the so-called Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act of 2019 by the US Senate.”
“The US Senate passed the bill on Tuesday local time despite stern representations and strong opposition from China.”
“The move ‘grossly interfered in China’s internal affairs,’ ” the NPC stated, adding: Adopting the measure is all about “US intervention in Hong Kong affairs and China’s internal affairs.”
China’s Foreign Ministry condemned the measure’s adoption, saying:
It “disregards the facts, confuses right and wrong, violates the axioms, plays with double standards, openly intervenes in Hong Kong affairs, interferes in China’s internal affairs, and seriously violates the basic norms of international law and international relations. The Chinese side strongly condemns and resolutely opposes this,” adding:
“In the past five months, the persistent violent criminal acts in Hong Kong have seriously jeopardized the safety of the public’s life and property, seriously trampled on the rule of law and social order, seriously undermined Hong Kong’s prosperity and stability, and seriously challenged the bottom line of the ‘one country, two systems’ principle.”
“(W)hat Hong Kong faces is not the so-called human rights and democracy issues, but the issue of ending the storms, maintaining the rule of law and restoring order as soon as possible.”
“The Chinese central government will continue to firmly support the Hong Kong SAR Government in its administration of the law, firmly support the Hong Kong police in law enforcement, and firmly support the Hong Kong Judiciary in punishing violent criminals in accordance with the law, protecting the lives and property of Hong Kong residents and maintaining Hong Kong’s prosperity and stability.”
“(A)ttacks on the police and other criminal acts (have nothing to do with) the pursuit of ‘human rights’ and ‘democracy.’ ”
They have everything to do with “support(ing) the extremist forces and violent elements in the anti-China chaos and to undermine Hong Kong’s prosperity and stability.”
“This bad behavior of the United States not only harms China’s interests, but also undermines the important interests of the United States itself in Hong Kong.”
“Any attempt by the US to intervene in China’s internal affairs and hinder China’s development will not succeed.”
“Hong Kong is China’s Hong Kong, and Hong Kong affairs are purely China’s internal affairs.”
“If the US (continues its hostile actions), China will surely take effective measures to resolutely counteract and firmly safeguard national sovereignty, security, and development interests.”
The unacceptable measure calls for annual reviews of Hong Kong’s special status. It challenges China’s “one country, two systems” status.
Congressional adoption supports CIA orchestrated violence and chaos in the city.
On Wednesday, the South China Morning Post (SCMP) said Beijing summoned the US embassy Minister Counsellor for Political Affairs William Klein, China’s Foreign Ministry saying:
Its ruling authorities “will take strong opposing measures, and the US has to bear all the consequences.”
“If the US sticks to its course, China will surely take forceful measures to resolutely oppose it to safeguard national sovereignty, security and development interest.”
House and Senate reconciliation of differences in the measures passed will follow. Given unanimous adoption by both houses negates Trump’s veto power if he opposes the legislation.
The measure amends the 1992 Hong Kong Policy Act. It “directs various departments to assess whether political developments in Hong Kong justify changing Hong Kong’s unique treatment under US law.”
It requires annual certification by the secretary of state on whether US special treatment should be afforded to Hong Kong.
It requires the president to identify persons involved in committing human rights abuses in the city — freezing their assets, denying them entry into the US.
It requires the president to determine whether to revise the US/Hong Kong extradition agreement and State Department’s travel advisory for the city.
It requires the commerce secretary to issue annual assessments on whether Hong Kong authorities are enforcing US regulations regarding certain dual-use items and sanctions it (unlawfully) imposed on various nations, notably Iran, North Korea and Venezuela.
Months of violence and chaos in Hong Kong, followed by unacceptable congressional legislation certain to become US law, are all about illegally meddling in China’s internal affairs by the Trump regime and Congress.
Unacceptable US actions aim to undermine China’s economic, financial, technological, and military development — what its ruling authorities won’t tolerate.
A Final Comment
Last Sunday, Putin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the following:
“Every time we emphasize that Moscow and Beijing fully share stance that any foreign meddling in domestic affairs of all countries, and in particular Russia and China, is unacceptable. It is also unacceptable to impose any system of values on other countries.”
Illegally meddling in the internal affairs of other countries is longstanding US policy.
It’s all about seeking control over their sovereignty, resources and populations — preemptive wars, color revolutions, economic terrorism, and other hostile actions its favored strategies.
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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.”
Note: This paper was presented in part at a public meeting held by the Communist Workers League (CWL) in Detroit. In addition to the presentation by Abayomi Azikiwe, Yusuf Mshahwar, a student at Wayne State University, spoke on the current situation in Syria and the role of the United States. Also Randi Nord, co-founder of Geo-Politics Alert website, spoke on the ongoing imperialist war against Yemen and its implications for the balance of forces in the region. Jerry Goldberg, a lawyer and member of the Moratorium NOW! Coalition, gave a report on the anti-imperialist conference hosted by the Republic of Cuba earlier in November in which he had attended along with more than 1,200 other delegates from throughout Latin America and the world.
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Since late 2010, the political atmosphere throughout North Africa and contiguous regions has been volatile, shaking the foundations of various fragile states and arousing the sentiment of the masses of workers, farmers and youth.
This area of the continent has been a source of United States and European imperialist interventions for many years. Such involvement by Washington and other Western capitals should be of no surprise considering the vast natural resource wealth and geo-strategic significance of the region and its connection with West Asia and the Mediterranean states of Southern Europe as well as the rest of the African continent.
The U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) was established nearly twelve years ago in February 2008 when the Pentagon enhanced its military presence across the continent. We were the only political tendency inside this country and one of the few in the world which recognized early on the ominous threat these developments posed to the people of Africa.
At that time in February 2008, we held a day-long conference on “U.S. Imperialism and Africa” where we examined the history of Washington’s role in the region and the necessity to organize and mobilize against it based upon a scientific analysis utilizing historical and dialectical materialism. Our conclusions were that the stated purpose of AFRICOM was not altruistic. Its aim was to enhance the capacity of the Pentagon, the State Department and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to conduct operations on the continent so that the ongoing exploitation and oppression of the people could be carried out with greater efficiency.
In a public call for the “U.S. Imperialism and Africa” Conference it stated clearly that:
“The Michigan Emergency Committee Against War & Injustice (MECAWI) is an anti-war and anti-imperialist coalition that opposes United States military intervention in Iraq and Afghanistan. Moreover, MECAWI has responded to further interventionist maneuvers by the Bush administration in Somalia, Haiti, Zimbabwe, Sudan, Colombia, Cuba, Venezuela and other geo-political regions of the world. Based upon recent political events on the African continent such as:-the US-backed invasion of Somalia in 2006;-the escalation of destabilization efforts against Sudan, Zimbabwe, Kenya and Chad;-as well as the much publicized American plans to establish military bases on the continent through the Africa Command (AFRICOM) that is directly administered from the Pentagon, many of us in the anti-imperialist and anti-war movements see the mounting danger of greater United States military intervention in Africa.”
This same document goes on to emphasize:
“Recent Bush administration plans to implement AFRICOM has been met with rejection among various African countries. Two of the largest nations in Africa, Nigeria and South Africa, have refused to allow the American military to set up AFRICOM bases in their respective territories and have come out solidly against any other country allowing such intervention. Consequently, MECAWI is holding a conference to address the political and historical context in which these events are occurring in Africa and to discuss action proposals to ensure that these concerns are fully addressed by the anti-war and peace movements here in the United States. In addition, we wish to advance activities that will express solidarity with the peoples of Africa and other regions that are subjected to imperialist intervention and manipulation.”
Since 2008 we have witnessed this process unfold. There has not been greater security and stability in Africa as the U.S. had falsely stated. Despite the inherent reluctance by the overwhelming number of African states during the time period in question, a series of events has prompted a deeper penetration of the continent by the Pentagon.
On the economic front, the U.S., its imperialist allies in Europe and their surrogates within the region, have implemented policies which have in fact weakened the ability of Africa to determine its own destiny through the utilization of its resources for the benefit of the majority of people. The prices of natural resources and agricultural commodities have overall declined precipitously while the share of the international market has been marginalized for these assets.
Such a set of circumstances can easily be associated with the socio-economic uncertainty of the working people, peasants and youth throughout Africa. Despite the phenomenal growth within these states over the last two decades as manifested through the proliferation of telecommunications technology, further discovery of strategic minerals and resources, along with the greater political consciousness of the people, the imperialist centers of the world system are determined to crush the popular aspirations of the masses in order to fortify the West and its interests.
Egypt: U.S. Militarism and Economic Dependency
Since the ascendancy of the government of now President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi in 2013, the Egyptian political status remains in close coordination with that of the U.S. The president, who transformed himself from a military field marshal to a head-of-state, is now the Chair of the African Union (AU).
The Egyptian state-controlled media agencies are filled with articles on the purported growth within the national economy. There is much discussion on the rebuilding of the tourism industry in the aftermath of a tumultuous past decade where longtime leader President Hosni Mubarak was overthrown by the military amid mass demonstrations and strikes during the early months of 2011.
In recent months there have been demonstrations in Egypt against the government. These are the first significant protests since the crackdown on Muslim Brotherhood and Freedom and Justice Party (FJP) supporters in the aftermath of the July 2013 military coup. Since this time period the military and its allies within the civilian population have dominated Egyptian politics.
A recent article says of the demonstrations and the designated leader:
“Almost two months after prompting rare demonstrations in Egypt, former army contractor Mohamed Ali says he will leave no stone unturned to push for the departure of President Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi. In an interview with Anadolu Agency in Barcelona, where he lives, Ali claims massive corruption in Egypt under al-Sisi’s rule. Ali has posted several videos from exile, in which he accused the military of corruption, while al-Sisi denied the accusations as ‘false’ and a ‘conspiracy’. In the interview, Ali, a businessman and actor, says he plans foreign tours to expose the financial irregularities in his country. The Egyptian opponent says he receives ‘constant threats’ from the regime, but he hopes to unify the Egyptian opposition abroad and heal the rift within the Muslim Brotherhood group.”
With the failure of the alliance with Washington to provide an enhanced standard of living for the majority of the population, Egypt continues to have economic and social problems. Poverty is rampant and the need for infrastructural development is imperative.
Consequently, there has been no fundamental change in the foreign policy of the Egyptian state since in most instances the domestic situation is a determining factor in international relations. The agreements made with the State of Israel have remained in force. There is no apparent shift towards viewing the liberation of Palestine as a primary state priority.
As it relates to the role of Egypt as Chair of the AU, they have been involved in the negotiations surrounding the creation of a new political dispensation in neighboring Sudan. Even though former President Omer Hassan al-Bashir was overthrown in a military coup in April of this year, the country is still struggling in an attempt to stabilize the domestic situation. As far as relations between Egypt and Sudan are concerned, there does not appear to be any major shifts in policy orientation.
A potentially explosive diplomatic row with Ethiopia has not been resolved. The issue stems from the construction of the Grand Renaissance Dam Project which Egypt charges will redirect waters from the Blue Nile potentially creating a social crisis for Cairo. Negotiations surrounding the dispute are continuing while U.S. President Donald Trump has offered to assist in the discussions.
Sudan: Revolution or Counter-Revolution?
The Republic of Sudan is another important state in Africa and the areas known as the Middle East. These geo-political regions have been inextricably linked historically while remaining so today in the 21st century.
Since the second term of former U.S. President Barack Obama, there has been a concerted effort to undermine the economic growth of the emerging states of Africa, Asia and Latin America. This aspect of U.S. energy policy has had a profound impact particularly on oil and natural gas producing states in the Global South.
With specific reference to the Republic of Sudan, the partitioning of the country, previously Africa’s largest geographical state, created an immediate economic crisis. Much of the oil produced by Sudan had its origination in the South which separated to form an independent state in 2011. A brief conflict over the control of oil in one of the key border regions ended with both sides facing a much weakened position in regard to oil production and export capacity.
Later there was a split within the ruling Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army between President Salva Kiir and Vice-President Riek Machar. These issues are still not resolved and the U.S., of all governments, has threatened sanctions against the South Sudanese leadership if they do not create a unified administration. It was the U.S. and the State of Israel which encouraged the SPLM/A to realize its grievances with Khartoum by creating a new country.
As has been stated before, it remains to be seen whether the Republic of South Sudan can become a viable state. Over the last eight years the stability of the Juba government has not been in evidence. The responsibility for this situation cannot be assessed separately from the foreign policy of Washington, the former colonial power of Britain and the ongoing interference by Israel, which has provided the South with military and political support.
In the Republic of Sudan in the North, this economic crisis engendered by the volatile nature of the international energy market, triggered a social crisis due to the decline in foreign exchange revenues largely garnered from the export of oil and natural gas. The economic decline in Sudan influenced the foreign policy trajectory of Khartoum.
Sudan became involved in the genocidal Washington-directed war against the people of Yemen since March 2015. Hundreds of thousands of people have died in Yemen in order to prevent the consolidation of power by the Supreme Revolutionary Committee allied with the Ansurallah. The western corporate and governmental media outlets have sought to frame the Yemen war as a bulwark of defense against growing Iranian influence in West Asia.
As Marxist-Leninists we see the struggle within the context of imperialism in its quest for world domination in opposition to the genuine resistance forces among the people. This war was initiated by the U.S. The Pentagon and the CIA supply the ordnances, targeting and refueling technology along with diplomatic cover for Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) which is bombing Yemen on a daily basis. Relief agencies have stated that the situation in Yemen represents the worst humanitarian crisis in the world today.
Demonstrations which erupted in Sudan in December of 2018 were sparked by the rise in consumer prices. Soon enough the demands escalated for the removal of the National Congress Party (NCP) government under former President al-Bashir. On April 6, an alliance of opposition groups and parties known as the Forces for Freedom and Change (FFC) began a sit-in in front of the Ministry of Defense in Khartoum.
Just five days later, a Transitional Military Council (TMC) seized power and placed President al-Bashir under arrest. Opposition groupings demanded the relinquishing of power by the TMC and the transferal of leadership to a government selected by them. These disagreements led to a series of strikes and violent clashes. Eventually, through the mediation efforts facilitated by neighboring Ethiopia and Egypt, the military leadership agreed to the creation of an interim transitional government.
This interim government has selected Economist and former Deputy Executive Secretary of the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa, Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok, to lead the transition process. Nonetheless, these developments have not resolved the contradictions in Sudan. There are opposition parties which have refused to join the Sovereign Council now ruling Sudan in alliance with the military. Of course there are divisions within the military as well which has manifested itself through purges.
The Sudanese Communist Party (SCP) has maintained a critical posture towards the FFC and Sovereign Council leadership. Although the SCP is a signatory of the Declaration of the Forces for Freedom and Change, it has rejected any governing alliance with the military.
In a recent statement the SCP called for the transitional government to take control of gold resources in North Darfur which they claimed were outside the purview of the national state in Khartoum. They went further to allege that the economy is under the control of unlawful forces operating within society.
“Another economist and member of the Communist Party, Abdelmunim Hasan, said at the press conference that ‘the Sudanese economy is dominated by criminal networks formed in the earliest era of the integration of banking capital into commerce, and over time shifted to a criminal networks trading the country’s strategic resources.’ He attributed the deterioration of the economy to the lack of control and to smuggling, and pointed out that Sudanese goods are sold on the world markets as products of other countries after being smuggled from Sudan. In the end of October, the Sudan Democracy First Group (SDFG) released its latest report, ‘Insurance Sector in Sudan – Islamization and Corruption’, which is part of a series of studies on corruption in Sudan. The Sudanese activist think-tank asserts that lack of transparency and corruption was inherent of the operation of the public and private sector during the Omar Al Bashir regime (1989-2019).”
Moreover, the continuing talks in Juba between the interim Sovereign Council and the alliance of armed groups in Darfur, South Kordofan and Blue Nile, known as the Sudan Revolutionary Front (SRF), has brought into focus the potential for resolving these conflicts. An agreement was signed in late October which was described in a report in Dabanga as follows:
“The political agreement also includes an agreement renewing the cessation of hostilities for humanitarian purposes. The government will also deliver humanitarian assistance from inside and outside Sudan to conflict-affected areas. The parties agree to negotiate all issues related to the Sudanese crisis, including areas of armed conflict, national issues, and specific issues. The government is holding separate talks with the Sudan Peoples’ Liberation Movement-North (SPLM-N) faction, led by Abdelaziz El Hilu. On Friday the SPLM-N El Hilu and the Sudanese transitional government reached an agreement on a roadmap for peace negotiations concerning South Kordofan.” (see this)
One glaring aspect of the Sovereign Council and TMC foreign policy is that they have not pledged to withdraw the Republic of Sudan and its military forces from Yemen. This is a critical issue that will determine the political character of the government going forward.
In addition, elements within the FFC and even some opposition parties are calling for ousted President al-Bashir to be turned over to the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague, Netherlands. The ICC has been under constant criticism from African people and their allies due to its almost exclusive preoccupation with events on the continent while taking no effective action against the imperialist powers of the U.S., Britain, France, and the Netherlands as well for their historical and contemporary crimes against humanity, primarily those genocidal actions taken against the peoples of Africa, Asia and Latin America.
Tunisia: A New Government amid a Neo-Colonial Continuing Crisis
It was in Tunisia that the uprising of 2010-2011 began which were characterized as the “Arab Spring.” Yet Tunisia is in North Africa where some of the earliest world civilizations were formed thousands of years ago.
The popular rebellions and general strikes in Tunisia and later Egypt set the stage for other forms of mass demonstrations and social unrest which unfortunately were misdirected due a political vacuum created in the absence of no single or multiple political parties’ alliance of revolutionary forces, which could have provided leadership for a transformative, anti-capitalist and socialist-oriented movement which is very much needed in the region.
Events in Tunisia and Egypt provided a rationale for the imperialists to intervene in Libya during February of 2011. A counter-revolutionary rebellion against the Gaddafi government was framed in the same vein as the “Arab Spring”, a purported form of democratic renewal for the masses. Nonetheless, the CIA deployed hundreds of operatives in Benghazi to coordinate the putative “revolutionaries” fighting against the Jamahiriya political system which had transformed Libya into the most advanced and prosperous state in Africa, with a standard of living for the masses which outstripped many of the states in Southern Europe.
Tunisia and Egypt in a revolutionary sense were never fully transformed in the interests of the workers, farmers and youth. In the most recent elections in Tunisia, the new president has tapped into the discontent which has arisen to the continued pro-western orientation of the political elites. Interestingly enough, when the leader was elected, thousands of people went into the streets of Tunis chanting for the liberation of Palestine. This clearly illustrates the revolutionary sentiment still in existence among the masses where the creation of a Palestinian state resonates in the hearts and minds of the people.
The formation of a new government in Tunisia has been given back over to the Islamist Ennahdha Party. Nonetheless, the question remains as to what can this incoming administration actually do to improve the conditions for the unemployed and other exploited and oppressed groups in the North African state?
“Tunisia’s recently elected President Kais Saied has tasked agricultural engineer Habib Jemli with forming a government after the Ennahdha party nominated him for the prime minister’s job…. Tunisia’s new Parliament on Wednesday (Nov. 13) elected Ennahdha’s Rached Ghannouchi as its speaker after the rival Heart of Tunisia party backed him, opening the way for a possible coalition government between them.”
However, with the international financial institution making claims against the Tunisian government it will be extremely difficult under the present circumstances to foster growth and genuine development inside the country. All of the independent nation-states in Africa have been adversely affected by finance capital including both the U.S.-based International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank.
This same report mentioned above continues by stressing that:
“Analysts say the new government will need clear political will and strong backing in Parliament to push through economic reforms started by the outgoing Prime Minister, Youssef Chahed, who is acting as caretaker during coalition talks. Chahed’s cabinet has focused on spending cuts backed by the IMF to bring Tunisia’s hefty deficit and public debt under control while raising spending on security to woo back tourists to the country. Economic challenges – unemployment of 15 percent nationally and 30 percent in some cities, inflation of nearly seven percent and a weak dinar – have plagued Tunisia since its 2011 revolution, which spawned democracy and sparked the ‘Arab Spring’ that swept across the region. Those problems, alongside deteriorating public services and a public perception of widespread government corruption drove voters to reject the political establishment in this autumn’s presidential and parliamentary elections.”
Therefore, the process of indirect rule through the financial machinations of the global banking interests continues to stifle growth, development and the much coveted political stability needed to implement reforms. The new administration will not be able to address these concerns without a mass movement committed to reversing the system of dependency inherited from the colonial period where the existence of these territories were exclusively for the benefit of imperialism.
Algeria: The Dialectics of Armed Struggle, Mass Demonstrations and Electoral Politics
France colonized Algeria beginning in 1830 and continued this process well into the 20thcentury when after World War II the people’s indignation with the imperialist system boiled over into an independence movement in the form of the National Liberation Front (FLN). Starting in 1954, the FLN initiated an armed struggle against the colonial occupation forces based in Paris.
By 1962, the French recalcitrance to the freedom struggle in Algeria could no longer persist. The independence of Algeria ushered in a period of anti-imperialism and Pan-Africanism. The FLN played a significant role in the ongoing campaigns for the total liberation of the African continent.
In July 1969, the Black Panther Party in the U.S. was recognized as the legitimate leadership of the African American liberation movement. During the same period the Pan-African Cultural Festival (PACF) brought together thousands of delegates from across Africa and the Middle East in order recommit the revolutionary parties, liberation movements and progressive states to the unification of the continent on an anti-imperialist basis.
In recent months Algerian students and professional groupings have been demonstrating against the government calling for the resignation of the former head-of-state President Abdelaziz Bouteflika. Even after Bouteflika left office, the protests continued demanding that the entire FLN-dominated government steps down and that the planned elections be cancelled.
Yet the government is by no means interested in suspending the electoral process. Some five official candidates have been placed on the ballot for the upcoming national poll.
France24 assessed the situation in an article noting:
“The campaign for the December 12 elections in Algeria was launched on Sunday, November 17, despite popular demonstrations to call for an end to the electoral process. The Hirak, as the protest movement has been dubbed, began February 22 against former President Abdelaziz Bouteflika’s bid for a fifth term in office but has so far failed to change the course of the election.”
In fact the spokespersons for the Hirak movement seem to have suggested that power be turned over directly to them even prior to the holding of an election. The aims and objectives of this anti-government crusade are not spelled out specifically as it relates to the concrete challenges facing Algeria and the region. There is no articulation as to why the removal of the existing administration is a prerequisite to meeting their demands.
Such a posture harkens back to events in Egypt and Tunisia during the period of 2010-2013 when the milieu of youth and professional associations which appeared to be leading the democracy movement did not have the capacity organizationally and ideologically to make a bid for the seizure of political power. Algeria during the 1990s was plunged into civil war after an election in 1991 resulted in a majority of parliamentary representatives from the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS) poised to take office. The FLN as a party along with the military structures refused to cede control of the state to Islamist party. Thousands died in the nearly decade-long war which resulted in the defeat of the Islamist guerrilla groups and the maintenance of control by the existing FLN party apparatus.
Other factors in the present scenario are enunciated in the same France24 report cited previously:
“On Saturday, the five candidates, including Abdelaziz Bouteflika’s former prime ministers, Ali Benflis and Abdelmajid Tebboune, the favorites heading into the campaign, signed a charter on the ethics of electoral practices in Algiers. The charter, drafted by the Independent National Electoral Authority (Anie), ‘sets out the guiding principles and specific practices that form the framework for the moral behavior expected of the candidates and persons involved in the electoral process’. It’s the first time that candidates for an election in Algeria have signed such a charter….General Ahmed Gaïd Salah, the country’s main powerbroker in the post-Bouteflika era, and the military high command have for months refused any way out of the crisis other than a presidential election and rejected the establishment of transitional institutions demanded by the demonstrators.”
The outcome of the elections will have an important influence on the direction of political events in Algeria, a large-scale oil and natural gas producer. Overcoming the legacy of colonialism and the subsequent neo-colonial dependency facing AU member-states is not exclusively the burden of Algeria and other contiguous states. This represents a continental and global challenge to the overall struggle against imperialism.
Libya and the Extreme Consequences of Destabilization and Attempted Recolonization
On February 17, 2011, a counter-revolutionary war against the Jamahiriya system in Libya was declared with the open direction and coordination of the Pentagon and the CIA. The project to violently remove Col. Muammar Gaddafi was adopted by the entire North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) alliance along with its allies in Africa and West Asia. Consequently, Libya, a former center for Pan-Africanism and national liberation, is today a major source of instability and underdevelopment throughout the region.
By March 21, 2011, the United Nations Security Council had endorsed the mandate for a genocidal war of regime-change. During the course of the air campaign, the coordination of the rebel ground war by the CIA along with Special Forces from Egypt and the Gulf monarchial states, underlined the facilitation politically of an international disinformation campaign to vilify Gaddafi. During the eight months war it was reported that tens of thousands of Libyans and other Africans died.
By the end of October 2011, the major urban centers and oil producing areas had been devastated by NATO bombs, some 10,000 in number, while lawless militias armed by the Pentagon and other imperialist governments roamed the cities and countryside enforcing self-serving laws only benefitting their interests. Since this time period there has been no stability in Libya.
At present a protracted and deadly conflict continues over the control of the capital of Tripoli where the UN-recognized Government of National Accord (GNA and its Prime Minister Fayez Mustafa al-Sarraj is based. The so-called Libyan National Army (LNA) headed by renegade Gen. Khalifa Haftar, a longtime CIA asset, has been attempting unsuccessfully to take control for many months.
Where does the White House stand in this conflict? Washington’s position is contradictory where it is stated on the one hand that they back the al-Sarraj GNA regime in Tripoli and at the same time, President Donald Trump has reportedly held telephone conversations with Haftar. The former Gaddafi governmental official, Haftar is a well-known entity to the U.S. having resided in Virginia for many years after he defected from the Libya army in the 1980s during the war in Chad.
For several years the horrendous conditions endured by African migrants in Libya has been a major by-product of Pentagon-NATO war. Africans are being sold in and out of slavery in Libya while thousands are imperiled every month in the desperate attempts to escape on rickety vessels to Southern Europe.
The failure of the neo-colonial scheme in Libya is indicative of the broader chaos created by Washington and its allies in North Africa and West Asia. In every subversive project that the U.S. has embarked upon, the outcomes have been disastrous for the people of these geo-political regions. From Afghanistan, Iraq, Haiti, Libya, Syria, Palestine and Yemen, the intervention of successive administrations in the U.S. have resulted in hundreds of thousands and even millions of deaths and injuries, the dislocation of tens of millions and the proliferation of armed conflict under the guise of “Islamic terrorism.”
These same terrorist groups which the U.S. has repeatedly designated as the principal source of their military operations have their origins within the strategic vision of imperialism. This was illustrated in both Libya and Syria, where Al-Qaeda and Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), were armed in order to wage war in alliance with imperialism against the Gaddafi government and the ruling administration in Damascus headed by President Bashar al-Assad.
With specific reference to Libya, Pentagon warplanes routinely engage in bombing missions supposedly in pursuit of ISIS elements in the South of the country. These aerial strikes are said to be successful in killing “Islamist terrorists”, yet the war appears to proceed in perpetuity.
This continuing military engagement on the part of the imperialists only reinforces the rationale for the presence of AFRICOM. Meanwhile, the western corporate and governmental news outlets provide virtually no information on the actual situation in Libya approaching nine years since the imperialist intervention to remove the Jamahiriya.
Which Way Forward for North Africa and the AU Member-states?
Even a cursory examination of the present political, economic and social situation in North Africa at the conclusion of the second decade of the 21st century clearly reveals that neo-colonialism remains the dominant system on the continent. Although there is the advent of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) initiated in 2018, where plans are enforce to create tariff free exchange zones and enhanced regional economic planning, these valiant and necessary goals cannot be realizable in the contemporary reality of burgeoning U.S. and NATO military involvement.
Compounding and underlying the military presence of imperialist forces is the renewed economic war being waged by Washington against numerous geo-political regions on an international scale. Tariffs leveled at the People’s Republic of China, the European Union states and other nations, have not resulted in the dividends sought by the ruling class in the U.S. Warnings of a new recession and the widening gap between the rich and poor, is a reality that cannot be escaped by people both inside and outside of the U.S.
In order to bring stability and prosperity in North Africa and other regions throughout the continent, a protracted struggle must be waged against neo-colonialism and its imperialist underpinnings. This will require the full mobilization and organization of the working class, peasantry and youth into an anti-imperialist movement. Consequently, the unification of Africa and its genuine development are intertwined with the global movement for sustainable peace and social justice.
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Abayomi Azikiwe is the editor of Pan-African News Wire. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.
All images in this article are from the author unless otherwise stated
The scandals erupting within No. 10 Downing street are seriously undermining any remaining confidence in the government. It doesn’t matter where you look – mutual respect, tolerance, the rule of law, liberty and democracy are now just thin veils covering the ugly truth of a government constantly overreaching its authority.
Today, Britain has a prime minister accused of misusing public funds. The police investigation into that incident has been conveniently ‘delayed’ until after the election. Quite rightly there has been a furious response from political opponents and the general public.
In addition, the police and Electoral Commission have recently announced more cases to bring against the very organisations that campaigned for Brexit – fronted by the Prime Minister. It should not be forgotten that senior Tory ministers and peers, past and present, have been caught red-handed in the Cambridge Analytica scandal that saw the theft and misuse of mass citizen data in a propaganda campaign designed to rig the outcome of a referendum.
In the meantime, the Electoral Commission itself has been swamped with complaints – and investigations have unearthed political campaigners accepting funds from impermissible donors and parties involved in false accounting, over-spending, illegal use of expenses and accepting illegal gifts.
Cash-for-donors was another scandal. American donors were paying a so-called think-tank to broker access to ministers who were either negotiating Brexit or very close to Brexit ministers to influence the outcome of a UK/US trade deal. They were caught on camera and the press barely blinked at this corruption of the highest office in the land.
Last week we learned that political opponents of Boris Johnson have been offered peerages and safe Conservative seats to stand down. In the last few days, we’ve now heard that the Brexit Party is compiling a dossier of complaints from its candidates of alleged inducements and bullying from senior Tories to persuade them to step down. This is tantamount to state-sponsored bribery, corruption and intimidation to sway the outcome of an election.
Then we have the new Brexit Withdrawal Agreement Bill, which has hidden in the depths of its small print – appendices that allows the prime minister nineteen new sets of powers that cannot be easily challenged by representative democracy. This alone amounts to a huge shift towards executive powers being granted to just one person. If Boris Johnson wins this election and does push through that Bill, he will have more power than anyone in Britain (aside of two World War periods) has had for over 400 years.
After the Skripal poisonings in Salisbury, no less than 21 countries stood shoulder-to-shoulder with to Britain just six months ago in what was the worlds biggest expulsion of Russian spies. This was in response to what the government of the day saw as Russian aggression on British soil. And yet, they have been casually jettisoned for Johnson to realise his dream of power with another scandal involving large amounts of election funding found to be tainted with money emanating from the Kremlin.
For those rolling their eyes about Britain’s own ‘Russiagate’ – TruePublica has never endlessly harped on about Russian interference into Britain’s politics – but this is different.
This scandal of political malfeasance is potentially seismic. The Russia Report is serious and is consistent with accusations of abuse of office and power. The term ‘cover-up’ says it all.
We are all stuck in this trajectory. Malfeasance in office is becoming normalised as it has in America. Britain is being led down a very dark alley towards a stronger form of centralised power. This is not the statement of some rambling paranoid – this is already happening.
“Downing Street acted “beyond the conventions of its authority” by demanding that specific names be removed from a report into Russian influence on UK politics by the parliamentary Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC), according to sources close to the committee.
The redactions are understood to have been ordered to protect London-based Russian oligarchs who are either leading donors to the Conservative Party or individuals regarded as friends of the prime minister, Boris Johnson. According to Whitehall sources close to the ISC, with detailed knowledge of how it operates, Number 10 or senior ministers can order the redaction of names only if publication is regarded a matter of national security.
One source said: “If it is simply politically inconvenient or embarrassing for Number 10 or the Conservative Party that individuals are named in a controversial report, that cannot be an official reason to issue an order that names be covered up. However if Downing Street does genuinely believe these names represent a security risk, then the importance of this report and the need for its immediate publication has just grown.”
The source added that Downing Street has acted “beyond the conventions of its authority”.
We are led to believe that the money involved in this case will be boosting the potency of the Tory election machine and comes from well-connected Russian oligarchs and companies involved in lobbying for Russian commercial interests. Those commercial interests are what exactly? We know gangsters such as arms dealers and money launderers feature in the ‘Russia Report’ – so it’s a fair question to ask to what end are they seeking for their investment in our prime minister? And even if they were not wanting a return – it’s the cover-up that’s important here. And there are so many of them going on, it makes you wonder what have we not yet heard about? And if we don’t believe a word of what MI5, MI6, the police and senior cyber-security officers say when it’s accusations are about the establishment and political elite, then we’ve lost all confidence in Britain – it’s time to pack a bag and abandon ship.
The result of this abuse of power is that this election has boiled down to what appears to be a fight between Boris Johnson, Vladimir Putin, the far-right, American religious extremists, Steve Bannon and the ultra-conservative free-market jihadists and the oligarchs on the one side – and European social democracy on the other. It’s the fight for a pivot – look left to Europe, look right to America. And what do we really have left? Deep-seated tribalism, division, a never-ending Brexit catch22 and an institutional spiral.
As a result of this abuse of power, this election has boiled down to what appears to be a fight between Boris Johnson, Vladimir Putin, the far-right, American religious extremists, Steve bannon and his ultra-conservatives and the oligarchs on the one side and European social democracy on the other.
This institutional spiral means dark money is now coursing through the veins of Britain’s democracy and what we have seen in real-time is a government that has done nothing but encourage it. The police and electoral commission appear to be more cautious, seemingly acting like they are being threatened and reluctant to act. The BBC has been accused of discarding rules of impartiality to become a propaganda mouthpiece for the hoodlums installed in Downing Street.
Boris Johnson took the opportunity of the Queen’s speech to use it as a conduit to illegally shut down parliament and then not mention a word of protecting Britain’s weakened democracy.
So what’s really happening here? The slogan ‘taking back control’ was never meant for the people – it was meant for them. They are a mix of Tory elites like Johnson and Rees-Mogg, American free-market fundamentalists, Russian orthodox ultra-conservatives and the increasingly more belligerent movement of the far-right. (read this article by Hope Not Hate – it’s scary)
They are pumping millions into their destabilisation of Europe plan – and it’s working, especially in Britain.
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Turkish President Erdogan reaffirmed to his American counterpart that his country won’t completely abandon its purchase of Russia’s S-400s like Washington wants but that Ankara would buy its Patriot competitor as well if an offer was made “under suitable conditions”, suggesting that one or the other air-defense system would become a ‘white elephant’ under that scenario, with the odds being likely that it would be the Patriots which would fulfill this expensive but useless role and not the S-400s.
Turkish President Erdogan’s visit to the US last week didn’t visibly seem to have accomplished much in repairing the unprecedentedly damaged relationship between these two nominal NATO “allies”, although the very fact that it occurred despite Washington’s CAATSA sanctions threats, their earlier sharp disagreements over Ankara’s latest military operation in Northeastern Syria, and Congress’ provocative passing of a motion recognizing what some countries including Russia regard as the “Armenian Genocide” showed that there’s the political will on both sides to improve their ties even if only at the leadership level at this moment in time. As it stands, the main stumbling block is Turkey’s purchase of Russia’s S-400s, seeing as how the two countries have more or less reached a pragmatic understanding on Northern Syria and Ankara realizes that Trump’s “deep state” foes are politicizing historical events from a century ago in order in order to undermine his foreign policy in an attempt to weaken him ahead of next year’s elections.
President Erdogan reaffirmed to his American counterpart that his country won’t completely abandon its military deal with Russia like Washington wants but that Ankara would buy the US’ Patriots as well if an offer was made “under suitable conditions”, suggesting that one or the other air-defense system would become a ‘white elephant’ under that scenario. The odds, however, are likely that it would be the Patriots which would fulfill this expensive but useless role and not the S-400s. This is because the very intent in diversifying from NATO defense systems in the first place was to ensure that they couldn’t be sabotaged in the event of an intra-NATO conflict such as one between Turkey and Greece or between Turkey and the US. These concerns have been at the forefront of Turkish strategic military thought following the US’ indirect role in orchestrating the failed coup attempt against President Erdogan in 2016, during which time rogue pilots even attempted to assassinate the country’s leader. The S-400s give Turkey the reassurance that it could confidently thwart such scenarios in the future, while the Patriots would always leave it wary that they might prove “unreliable” at the worst moment.
The question then becomes one of why Turkey would even want to fork over what might potentially amount to billions of dollars for an air-defense system that it doesn’t even really plan to use, but the answer rests in the global geostrategic trend of “balancing” that’s increasingly come to define the emerging Multipolar World Order. Turkey acknowledges the threat that the Obama-era “deep state” that Trump inherited poses to it, but it also wisely understands that strategies can always change, hence why it’s important not to do anything that could make a more permanent enemy out of the US. The S-400 purchase is a strong step in the direction of increasing Turkey’s sovereignty at the expense of the US’ proxy control over this rising Great Power, but it’s precisely because of this outcome that even the pro-Trump factions of the US “deep state” are opposed to it. So as to not unnecessarily “provoke” America even more than it already has in recent years through its independent policies, the decision evidently has been made to seek some sort of a “compromise” with it through the potential purchase of Patriots “under suitable conditions”.
The aforesaid likely refer to these systems being offered at a competitive price and not made conditional on Turkey abandoning the S-400s. For as much as the US’ “deep state” factions are uniting in their perception of Turkey as a so-called “threat” to American interests in the Mideast and elsewhere, they also don’t want to completely cut it off and risk the country enacting a full-fledged pivot towards Russia and China in response, hence why they might be interested in reaching a deal that could avoid the imposition of CAATSA sanctions. That same pragmatic logic holds true for India as well, which plans to begin receiving S-400s next year after also signing a deal with Russia to this effect. A formula is therefore being formed for how countries that purchase the S-400s could potentially avoid CAATSA sanctions without abandoning those systems wherein they’d simply purchase some Patriots to complement their air defenses instead, though only so long as the US agrees to allow this to happen by “compromising” on its previously maximalist position that they don’t buy the S-400s at all.
The US might have an interest in making some extra money for its military-industrial complex in parallel with keeping those countries’ multipolar-friendly policies in check by not completely cutting them off from the Western orbit by imposing sanctions against them. From the Indian perspective, its armed forces could still find a use for the Patriots since it’s extremely unlikely that the US would ever sabotage them in the event that the South Asian state enters into a conventional conflict with either China or Pakistan, though the Turks would probably have to be content with accepting that they’re basically paying “protection money” to America by purchasing those “white elephants”. That said, Turkey might possibly find some minor use for these systems such as along the Syrian border for instance, though it’s unlikely that they’ll ever occupy any premier position of strategic importance in defending the country since they can’t ever be relied upon in that respect like the S-400s could. All told, if there’s any positive outcome of President Erdogan’s latest trip to Washington, it’s that Turkey and the US might be coming closer to a deal for avoiding CAATSA sanctions, though lots of work still remains to be done before that happens.
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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.
This past weekend the Yellow Vests (Gilets Jaunes) celebrated their first birthday, with convivial barbeques on traffic circles (roundabouts) all over France followed by direct actions like liberating tollbooths. Although number of protestors has declined to about 10 per cent of the estimated 400,000 who rose up a year ago on November 17, 2018 – thanks to a year of violent police repression, media distortion, and sheer fatigue – a surprisingly large number of women and men throughout la France profonde (“middle France”) came out of ‘retirement’ and donned their yellow vests for “ACT 53” of the weekly Yellow Vest drama – double the previous weeks’ numbers. Recent polls indicate that 10 per cent of French people consider themselves “Yellow Vests,” and two-thirds still support them (although a majority wish they would go home!).
The first anniversary of the Yellow Vest uprising marks an historic moment: perhaps the first time in history that a self-organized, unstructured, leaderless, social movement has survived for so long. This weekend there was much eager discussion out on the traffic circles of the upcoming unlimited general strike called by the Confédération Générale du Travail (CGT) and other unions for December 5. Two weeks ago the Yellow Vests’ nationwide “Assembly of Assemblies” called for “convergence” with the upcoming strike, and the leader of the CGT, who had previously snubbed the Yellow Vests, reacted by inviting them to join.
So, after a year of lonely, increasingly dangerous, physical resistance to the neoliberal counter-reforms of the arrogant, unpopular “President of the rich,” suddenly new perspectives are opening for the Yellow Vests in their unequal struggle with the powerful, unified, increasingly authoritarian, capitalist state. (We will turn to this enticing possibility in a moment.)
This Revolution will not be Televised
None of the above events transpired through the French mainstream media, which as usual concentrated on two subjects: violence and Paris. In the capital this Saturday, as happens every Saturday, brigades of robo-cops outnumbered demonstrators and prevented them from actually marching along routes that had been (for once!) previously agreed upon, while a few bands of black-clad casseurs (vandals who somehow never seem to get arrested or even shot at) managed to smash bank windows and set a couple of cars on fire. The usual. Despite the fact, universally recognized by sociologists, historians, and analysts, that the Yellow Vests are unique among revolutionary movements because based in the provinces rather than centered in Paris, you would never guess this from French television.
Indeed, the highpoint of Channel 3’s evening coverage of the nationwide Yellow Vest anniversary, was a woman reporter filmed standing in front of the Arc of Triumph, with a perfectly empty Champs Elysées in the background, going on at length about the great achievement of the “forces of order” (as they are invariable termed) in keeping this rich Parisian neighborhood safe by emptying it. The next day’s top story quoted a thuggish gangster named Costner, Macron’s Minister of Interior (police), calling the Paris vandals “thugs and gangsters.” Nothing new.
On Sunday, Channel 5 aired a serious, well-produced, hour-long retrospective on the Yellow Vests. The words “convergence” and “Assembly of Assemblies” (of which there have been four) were never spoken. Clips of Yellow Vests acting violent were shown, but no images of another taboo subject: the government’s systematic excessive violence against demonstrators, sharply condemned by the Human Rights Commissions of both the UN and the European Union. No wonder “Turn off your TV and come out to talk with us” was among the Yellow Vests’ first slogans.
New Perspectives
Two weekends ago, the self-organized Yellow Vest movement held its fourth nation-wide Assembly of Assemblies here in Montpellier. This Assembly brought together 500 Yellow Vests delegated by over 200 local groups from all over France.1 Pulled together at the last minute in an abandoned, futuristic Agriculture museum known as “the Saucer” as a squat, it was a convivial event, with food supplied by local soup-kitchens, endless small-group discussions and endless good will, despite a certain amount of controversy around the issue of “convergence” with the unions, of which many Yellow Vests are suspicious, as they are of political parties.
Montpellier was chosen at the Third Assembly of Assemblies to host the Fourth, and the local organizers, a somewhat secretive group, designed the format so as to exclude plenary sessions and official appeals, for example for Convergence with the unions, which many of us in Montpellier, as elsewhere, had been working toward for months. It soon became clear, as the results of the small-group discussions were synthesized, that the huge majority of delegates, although openly critical of the unions’ bureaucratic leaders, were eager to support and ally themselves with the organized workers and to converge with the nationwide, unlimited labour strikes that are scheduled to begin on December 5. At the last minute, the efforts of the organizers to limit debate were overwhelmed, and a near-unanimous Assembly voted the following appeal:
After a year of tireless mobilization, the situation has reached a turning point. The time has come for convergence with the world of work and its web of thousands of union members who, like us, don’t accept it. All the constituant sections of the people of France must join together: peasants, retired people, the youth, artists, people with disabilities, artisans, artists, the unemployed, temps, workers in both the public and private sectors…
Beginning on December 5, hundreds of thousands of workers will be on strike and meeting in general assemblies to ratify its continuation until the satisfaction of our demands. The ADA of Montpellier calls on the Yellow Vests to be at the heart of the movement, with their own demands and aspirations, at their jobs or on their traffic circles with their Yellow Vests clearly visible!
The defeat of the government’s reform of retirements would open the way to other victories for our camp. Everyone into the street beginning December 5, on strike, on traffic circles or in blocking actions.
Interviewed on BFM/TV, Philippe Martinez, the leader of the CGT labour federation, immediately declared that the Yellow Vest appeal to join the December 5 strike movement “A very good thing.” He added, “We have been trying for a year to find convergences, and little by little we’re getting there. We have the same preoccupations, the cost of living, the environment, unemployment.”
The Yellow Vest Assembly of Assemblies also voted unanimous appeals for international solidarity with all the spontaneous, horizontal social movements and uprisings around the globe, including Algeria Chile, Irak, Catalonia, Lebanon, Hong Kong, Equator, Sudan, Colombia, Haïti, and Guinée-Conakry, as well as the Syrian Kurds, while recognizing France’s heavy responsibility as an imperialist power and arms producer. The Yellow Vests were clearly proud and encouraged that peoples across the world were following, as it were, in their footsteps.
Cracks in the System
Since the Yellow Vests first rose up a year ago – in the wake of the abject failure of organized labour to mount a credible resistance to Macron’s steamrolling into law a series of neoliberal attacks on public services, wages, and social services – the social crisis in France has only deepened. The signs of cracks in the system are everywhere, as working people organize themselves to resist. Already there are struggles in hospital emergency rooms where patients wait hours on stretchers in corridors and where dedicated doctors and nurses are protesting lack of beds and lack of personnel; in schools, where classes are overcrowded, teacher aids cut back, and incomprehensible new programs are imposed from above, forcing students to choose their futures at age 15; on the railroads, where for the first time in a generation, railway workers spontaneously walked off the job after a safety emergency without asking permission from either management or the union; and most recently among firefighters, whose demonstration was gassed by the police in Paris and who have now formed an interprofessional alliance with the striking emergency room personnel.
The straw which broke the camel’s back was Macron’s recent unveiling of his proposed “reform” of France’s retirement system which, like much that is positive in France, dates back to 1945 when the French owning class was in disgrace for collaborating with the Nazis and the Communist- and Socialist-led Resistance was still powerful.
Macron’s pension “reform” would do away with early retirement for workers in dangerous or arduous jobs (for example railways) and replace today’s system, where retirement income is about 75 per cent of your last year, to one based on “points.” Points are calculated on the total number of weeks you worked in your life. This penalizes, for example, workers who have been unemployed and women who have taken time off for children. Each point would be worth a sum in Euros to be decided by the government in power when you retire! Based on current estimates, people would commonly lose around 30 per cent of expected benefits under the proposed system.
In their arrogance, Macron and the financial groups he represents are finally crossing a line which even Trump and the Republicans are afraid to cross: cutting retirement – the last straw in their systematic shredding of France’s (admirable) historical social contract. They can expect trouble.
Popular anger and resentment have been building up in France since early 2018, when Macron started pushing through his reactionary decrees and the 50th Anniversary of the 1968 student-worker uprising and general strike was on everyone’s mind. When the unions failed to rise to the occasion, ordinary people were so angry and disgusted that the pot boiled over and in November, the Yellow Vest movement burst on the scene out of nowhere.
Far from having “achieved nothing” by refusing to negotiate, the Yellow Vests got more out of Macron than all the unions: 1.7 billion Euros in concessions last December including year-end bonuses, tax breaks for the poor and rescinding of the gas tax that set the movement in motion. When these concessions failed to stop the movement, Macron unleashed a PR “great debate” where he did most of the talking and doubled down on police repression, but the Yellow Vests, whose theme song is “We are here!” are still here.
Today, French workers in almost every sector are already in motion in advance of the planned general strike, and the issue of retirements – along with health, education, public services – unites the whole population against the government and the narrow financial interests it represents. The declared goals of the Yellow Vests – Macron’s resignation, fiscal justice, economic equality, and participatory democracy – are frankly utopian, and when the general strike gets going, they are unlikely to be willing to stop half way when Martinez and the union bureaucrats decide to settle and end the strike as they did in 1936, 1945, 1968 and 1995. New perspectives?
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Richard Greeman has been active since 1957 in civil rights, anti-war, anti-nuke, environmental and labour struggles in the U.S., Latin America, France (where he has been a longtime resident) and Russia (where he helped found the Praxis Research and Education Center in 1997). He maintains a blog at richardgreeman.org.
Note
1. Personal disclosure: I was present as a delegate from Montpellier’s Convergence34 group.
“When a man unprincipled in private life[,] desperate in his fortune, bold in his temper . . . despotic in his ordinary demeanour — known to have scoffed in private at the principles of liberty — when such a man is seen to mount the hobby horse of popularity — to join in the cry of danger to liberty — to take every opportunity of embarrassing the General Government & bringing it under suspicion — to flatter and fall in with all the non sense of the zealots of the day — It may justly be suspected that his object is to throw things into confusion that he may ‘ride the storm and direct the whirlwind.’”—Alexander Hamilton
By all means, let’s talk about impeachment.
To allow the President or any rogue government agency or individual to disregard the rule of law whenever, wherever and however it chooses and operate “above the law” is exactly how a nation of sheep gives rise to a government of wolves.
To be clear: this is not about Donald Trump. Or at least it shouldn’t be just about Trump.
This is a condemnation of every government toady at every point along the political spectrum—right, left and center—who has conspired to expand the federal government’s powers at the expense of the citizenry.
For too long now, the American people have played politics with their principles and turned a blind eye to all manner of wrongdoing when it was politically expedient, allowing Congress, the White House and the Judiciary to wreak havoc with their freedoms and act in violation of the rule of law.
“We the people” are paying the price for it now.
We are paying the price every day that we allow the government to continue to wage its war on the American People, a war that is being fought on many fronts: with bullets and tasers, with surveillance cameras and license readers, with intimidation and propaganda, with court rulings and legislation, with the collusion of every bureaucrat who dances to the tune of corporate handouts while on the government’s payroll, and most effectively of all, with the complicity of the American people, who continue to allow themselves to be easily manipulated by their politics, distracted by their pastimes, and acclimated to a world in which government corruption is the norm.
Don’t keep falling for the Deep State’s ploys.
This entire impeachment process is a manufactured political circus—a shell game—aimed at distracting the public from the devious treachery of the American police state, which continues to lock down the nation and strip the citizenry of every last vestige of constitutional safeguards that have historically served as a bulwark against tyranny.
Has President Trump overstepped his authority and abused his powers?
Without a doubt.
Then again, so did Presidents Obama, Bush, Clinton, and almost every president before them.
Trump is not the first president to weaken the system of checks and balances, sidestep the rule of law, and expand the power of the president. He is just the most recent.
If we were being honest and consistent in holding government officials accountable, you’d have to impeach almost every president in recent years for operating “above the law,” unbound by the legislative or judicial branches of the government.
When we refer to the “rule of law,” that’s constitutional shorthand for the idea that everyone is treated the same under the law, everyone is held equally accountable to abiding by the law, and no one is given a free pass based on their politics, their connections, their wealth, their status or any other bright line test used to confer special treatment on the elite.
When the government and its agents no longer respect the rule of law—the Constitution—or believe that it applies to them, then the very contract on which this relationship is based becomes invalid.
Although the Constitution requires a separation of powers between the executive, legislative and judicial branches of government in order to ensure accountability so that no one government agency becomes all-powerful, each successive president over the past 30 years has, through the negligence of Congress and the courts, expanded the reach and power of the presidency by adding to his office’s list of extraordinary orders, directives and special privileges.
All of the imperial powers amassed by Barack Obama and George W. Bush—to kill American citizens without due process, to detain suspects indefinitely, to strip Americans of their citizenship rights, to carry out mass surveillance on Americans without probable cause, to suspend laws during wartime, to disregard laws with which he might disagree, to conduct secret wars and convene secret courts, to sanction torture, to sidestep the legislatures and courts with executive orders and signing statements, to direct the military to operate beyond the reach of the law, to operate a shadow government, and to act as a dictator and a tyrant, above the law and beyond any real accountability—were inherited by Donald Trump.
There are hundreds—make that thousands—of government bureaucrats who are getting away with murder (in many cases, literally) simply because the legislatures, courts and the citizenry can’t be bothered to make them play by the rules of the Constitution.
Unless something changes in the way we deal with these ongoing, egregious abuses of power, the predators of the police state will continue to wreak havoc on our freedoms, our communities, and our lives.
It doesn’t matter whether you’re talking about a politician, an entertainment mogul, a corporate CEO or a police officer: give any one person (or government agency) too much power and allow him or her or it to believe that they are entitled, untouchable and will not be held accountable for their actions, and those powers will eventually be abused.
We’re seeing this dynamic play out every day in communities across America.
A cop shoots an unarmed citizen for no credible reason and gets away with it. A president employs executive orders to sidestep the Constitution and gets away with it. A government agency spies on its citizens’ communications and gets away with it. An entertainment mogul sexually harasses actors and actresses and gets away with it. The U.S. military bombs civilian targets and gets away with it.
Abuse of power—and the ambition-fueled hypocrisy and deliberate disregard for misconduct that make those abuses possible—works the same whether you’re talking about sexual harassment, government corruption, or the rule of law.
Twenty years ago, I was a lawyer for Paula Jones, who sued then-President Clinton for dropping his pants and propositioning her for sex when he was governor of Arkansas. That lawsuit gave rise to revelations about Clinton’s affair with Monica Lewinsky, a 21-year-old intern at the White House, and his eventual impeachment for lying about it under oath.
As Dana Milbank writes for The Washington Post:
We didn’t know it at the time, of course. But in Bill Clinton were the seeds of Donald Trump. With 20 years of hindsight, it is clear… Clinton’s handling of the Monica Lewinsky affair was a precursor of the monstrosity we now have in the White House: dismissing unpleasant facts as “fake news,” self-righteously claiming victimhood, attacking the press and cloaking personal misbehavior in claims to be upholding the Constitution…. Clinton set us on the path, or at least accelerated us down the path, that led to today.
It doesn’t matter what starts us down this path, whether it’s a president insisting that he get a free pass for sexually harassing employees, or waging wars based on invented facts, or attempting to derail an investigation into official misconduct.
If we continue down this road, there can be no surprise about what awaits us at the end.
After all, it is a tale that has been told time and again throughout history about how easy it is for freedom to fall and tyranny to rise, and it often begins with one small, seemingly inconsequential willingness on the part of the people to compromise their principles and undermine the rule of law in exchange for a dubious assurance of safety, prosperity and a life without care.
For example, 86 years ago, the citizens of another democratic world power elected a leader who promised to protect them from all dangers. In return for this protection, and under the auspice of fighting terrorism, he was given absolute power.
This leader went to great lengths to make his rise to power appear both legal and necessary, masterfully manipulating much of the citizenry and their government leaders.
Unnerved by threats of domestic terrorism and foreign invaders, the people had little idea that the domestic turmoil of the times—such as street rioting and the fear of Communism taking over the country—was staged by the leader in an effort to create fear and later capitalize on it.
In the ensuing months, this charismatic leader ushered in a series of legislative measures that suspended civil liberties and habeas corpus rights and empowered him as a dictator.
On March 23, 1933, the nation’s legislative body passed the Enabling Act, formally referred to as the “Law to Remedy the Distress of the People and the Nation,” which appeared benign and allowed the leader to pass laws by decree in times of emergency.
What it succeeded in doing, however, was ensuring that the leader became a law unto himself.
The leader’s name was Adolf Hitler, and the rest, as they say, is history.
Yet history has a way of repeating itself.
Hitler’s rise to power should serve as a stark lesson to always be leery of granting any government leader sweeping powers.
Clearly, we are not heeding that lesson.
“How lucky it is for rulers,” Adolf Hitler once said, “that men cannot think.”
The horrors that followed in Nazi Germany might have been easier to explain if Hitler had been right. But the problem is not so much that people cannot think but that they donot think. Or if they do think, as in the case of the German people, that thinking becomes muddled and easily led.
Hitler’s meteoric rise to power, with the support of the German people, is a case in point.
On January 30, 1933, Hitler was appointed chancellor of Germany in full accordance with the country’s legal and constitutional principles. When President Paul von Hindenburg died the following year, Hitler assumed the office of president, as well as that of chancellor, but he preferred to use the title Der Füehrer (the leader) to describe himself. This new move was approved in a general election in which Hitler garnered 88 percent of the votes cast.
It cannot be said that the German people were ignorant of Hitler’s agenda or his Nazi ideology. Nazi literature, including statements of the Nazi plans for the future, had papered the country for a decade before Hitler came to power. In fact, Hitler’s book Mein Kampf, which was his blueprint for totalitarianism, sold more than 200,000 copies between 1925 and 1932.
Clearly, the problem was not that the German people did not think but that their thinking was poisoned by the enveloping climate of ideas that they came to accept as important.
At a certain point, the trivial became important, and obedience to the government in pursuit of security over freedom became predominant.
As historian Milton Mayer recounts in his seminal book on Hitler’s rise to power, They Thought They Were Free, “Most of us did not want to think about fundamental things and never had. There was no need to. Nazism gave us some dreadful, fundamental things to think about—we were decent people‑—and kept us so busy with continuous changes and ‘crises’ and so fascinated, yes, fascinated, by the machinations of the ‘national enemies’, without and within, that we had no time to think about these dreadful things that were growing, little by little, all around us.”
The German people were not oblivious to the horrors taking place around them. As historian Robert Gellately points out, “[A]nyone in Nazi Germany who wanted to find out about the Gestapo, the concentration camps, and the campaigns of discrimination and persecutions need only read the newspapers.”
The warning signs were definitely there, blinking incessantly like large neon signs.
“Still,” Gellately writes, “the vast majority voted in favor of Nazism, and in spite of what they could read in the press and hear by word of mouth about the secret police, the concentration camps, official anti-Semitism, and so on. . . . [T]here is no getting away from the fact that at that moment, ‘the vast majority of the German people backed him.’”
Half a century later, the wife of a prominent German historian, neither of whom were members of the Nazi party, opined: “[O]n the whole, everyone felt well. . . . And there were certainly eighty percent who lived productively and positively throughout the time. . . . We also had good years. We had wonderful years.”
In other words, as long as their creature comforts remained undiminished, as long as their bank accounts remained flush, as long as they weren’t being discriminated against, persecuted, starved, beaten, shot, stripped, jailed and turned into slave labor, life was good.
This is how tyranny rises and freedom falls.
The American kleptocracy (a government ruled by thieves) has sucked the American people down a rabbit hole into a parallel universe in which the Constitution is meaningless, the government is all-powerful, and the citizenry is powerless to defend itself against government agents who steal, spy, lie, plunder, kill, abuse and generally inflict mayhem and sow madness on everyone and everything in their sphere.
This dissolution of that sacred covenant between the citizenry and the government—establishing “we the people” as the masters and the government as the servant—didn’t happen overnight. It didn’t happen because of one particular incident or one particular president. It is a process, one that began long ago and continues in the present day, aided and abetted by politicians who have mastered the polarizing art of how to “divide and conquer.”
Unfortunately, there is no magic spell to transport us back to a place and time where “we the people” weren’t merely fodder for a corporate gristmill, operated by government hired hands, whose priorities are money and power.
So yes, let’s talk about impeachment, but don’t fall for the partisan shell game that sets Trump up as the fall guy for the Deep State’s high crimes and misdemeanors.
Set your sights higher: impeach the government for overstepping its authority, abusing its power, and disregarding the rule of law.
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Sex, the late Gore Vidal astutely observed, is politics, and not merely from the vantage point of those who wish to police it. In the case of whistleblowers, claims of aberrant, unlawful sex serves the purpose of diminishing credibility, tarring and feathering the individual and furnishing a distraction. Forget what was disclosed; focus, instead, on the moral character of the person in question. The rotter could not have been good anyway.
In the case of Julian Assange, the stench of accusation (never charge) of sexual assault clung stubbornly.
“The road to Belmarsh and 175-years in prison was paved in Stockholm – and so it will be remembered,” tweeted the Defend Assange Campaign.
Then came the announcement from the Deputy Director of Public Prosecution Eva-Marie Persson: the Swedish investigation was being laid to rest.
“The reason for this decision is that the evidence has weakened considerably due to the long period of time that has elapsed since the events in question.”
This did not mean Persson would let Assange off without a blemish on character. Some stain still had its place.
“I would like to emphasise that the injured party has submitted a credible and reliable version of events. Her statements have been coherent, extensive and detailed; however, my overall assessment is that the evidential situation has been weakened to such an extent that there is no longer any reason to continue the investigation.”
Despite no charge or trial, untested accounts are still being permitted to linger on the historical chronicle.
The effort to get at Assange via the sexual channel has been sporadic, arbitrary and inconsistent. In 2010, Assange was accused by two women of rape and sexual assault following a WikiLeaks conference in Stockholm. One of the women, Miss A (Anna Ardin), claimed that Assange had fiddled with a condom during sex. Miss W claimed to have been penetrated by Assange without a condom while asleep. The accusations were also supplemented by claims of unlawful coercion and molestation, though these had run their course by 2015.
The initial phase of prosecution lacked conviction. Stockholm chief prosecutor, Eva Finne, was unimpressed. She immediately cancelled the arrest warrant claiming no “reason to suspect that he has committed rape.” Four days later, she dismissed the rape investigation. One of the accusers would also say that he had not been raped. But another chapter was being drafted. Claes Borgström, taking it upon himself to represent the two women, persuaded Marianne Ny seize the reins. The case was re-opened. All of this took place under the cloud of claims that US-Sweden intelligence sharing would be compromised if Assange was sheltered in Sweden, and the very pointed views of Sweden’s military intelligence service that WikiLeaks posed a threat to the country’s soldiers in Afghanistan under US command.
In 2017, the tired effort was shelved. With the storming of Ecuadorean embassy in London and the forced eviction of Assange, prosecutors again got a burst of inspiration: the investigation was re-opened for a second time. The exercise seemed redundant, given that the United States would be having first dibs with its effort to extradite the publisher.
Over time, the sexual angle to the issue morphed into a crusade, becoming, intentionally or otherwise, a means to demonise the efforts of Assange and WikiLeaks. It aligned neatly, consistently, and even conspiratorially, with the recommendations of the US Army Counterintelligence Centre within the Counterintelligence Assessments Branch in its March 2008 document “Wikileaks.org – An Online Reference on Foreign Intelligence Services, Or Terrorist Groups?” As WikiLeaks relies on “trust as a centre of gravity by protecting the anonymity of the insiders, leakers or whistleblowers,” it was possible that “identification, exposure, termination of employment, criminal prosecution, legal action against current or former insiders, leakers, or whistleblowers could potentially damage or destroy this centre of gravity and deter others considering similar actions from using the Wikileaks.org Web site.”
Sexual misdemeanour was always going to be a formidable vehicle by which this could be executed. For Yana Walton of the Women’s Media Centre, the issue was condensed and simple: “Rape is rape is rape is rape, and should be prosecuted as such.” Such arguments ignored the defective processes behind the Swedish prosecution, the refusal to conduct interviews with Assange in the embassy, and the obsession with physically having him present in Sweden.
Beyond that was the point made by WikiLeaks, now gruesomely evident, that the United States would seek to have Assange delivered into its custody the moment he reached Swedish soil. Claims of sexual impropriety were subsequently sharpened to suggest that Assange was never a political prisoner in the embassy, let alone an agent of radical transparency.
In May this year, Caroline Orr’s less than considered scribbles parroted the US Department of Justice line that Assange “wasn’t a prisoner at all. He wasn’t being pursued for bravely standing up for truth; rather, he was hiding from it.” Very generous of Orr to know something others do not.
In suggesting her own understanding of the truth as unimpeachable, she proceeded to take a leaf out of the covert manual of whistleblower demonization, using misogyny as her preferred weapon. Being one naturally meant you could not speak, let alone shout truth, to power. “Assange is a misogynist who spent nearly seven years living in the Ecuadorean Embassy in London because he didn’t want to return to Sweden to answer to two women accusing him of sex crimes. Regardless of your feelings toward WikiLeaks, this is a major part of Assange’s legacy – and it matters.”
On his apprehension, British Labour MP Jess Phillipswas appalled by the idea of women’s issues being “the political side salad, never the main event.” In responding to Assange’s arrest, “the political establishment slapped us around the face.” Speaking collectively as voice of the slapped, she found the debate about how best to deal with the Australian publisher one that ignored “the fact that Assange, for seven years, evaded accusations of sexual violence in Sweden.” Not a sliver of acknowledgment about Assange’s status of political asylum was made. Assange was merely a creep worthy of punishment.
Philips’s own tendency to trim the record was evident, ignoring the obvious point that the sex allegations (and not charges, as she mistakenly implies) were very much placed in the foreground to take discussions away from WikiLeaks and its disruptions. The bigger picture, which she dismisses as a case of “big boys playing toy soldiers”, was cluttered with the ongoing US investigation that finally confirmed its presence in April this year.
As with other figures with historical freight, Assange is a character flawed and troubled, hardly your card carrying Women’s Libber or gallant knight. The ramshackle motor of history is not operated by saints; to even assume that level of purity and clean living suggests a degree of shuddering naïveté. But the stuttering Swedish prosecution, shelved then restarted, was never based purely on the dictates of conscience and the pursuit of justice on behalf of the claimed victims. Sex is politics, and from the start, the Assange prosecution, from Washington to Stockholm, was and remains, political.
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Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research and Asia-Pacific Research. Email: [email protected]
Featured image: Julian Assange court sketch, October 21, 2019, supplied by Julia Quenzler.
An important and informative interview on the topic of 5G and the “International Appeal To STOP 5G on Earth and in Space”. Spokesperson for the Appeal to STOP 5G, Claire Edwards is the guest on this eye-opening, in-depth and compelling episode of Age of Truth TV, interviewed by presenter and investigative reporter, Lucas Alexander.
Watch the interview below.
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Transcript of the interview is as follows.
Lucas: Hello and welcome to this edition of Age of Truth TV. I’m Lucas Alexander in Copenhagen, Denmark. It’s the 30th of October 2019 and our guest today is the British/Irish spokesperson for the International Appeal to Stop 5G on Earth and in Space. She’s a former United Nations editor, an author and researcher, and has a master’s degree in intercultural competence. Claire Edwards.
Lucas: Claire Edwards, it’s wonderful to have you on the show and welcome to Denmark.
Claire: Thank you very much. It’s wonderful to be here with you.
Lucas: You are a former United Nations editor and have now become a spokesperson for the International Appeal to Stop 5G on Earth and in Space. But why are you going against the rollout of 5G? A lot of people, a lot of scientists say that it’s just something that we are now going to have in order to have a faster-running Internet connection.
Claire: 5G is potentially an annihilation event for this planet. 5G was marketed as 5G because it was intended for people to believe that it was just an upgrade from 4G. But in fact, if you understand wireless technology and cell phones, you would know that cell phones were never tested for health or safety, and wireless technology was never tested for health or safety. So all of this is devastating for health. We have the health results now from all of these first generations of wireless technology so we know that this is absolutely devastating for people’s health and for the environment. And 5G is going to be a very, very different technology. It has very little in common with 4G actually, and it would be truly, truly devastating.
Lucas: What is the difference between 4G and 5G, if 5G is so different?
Claire: Well, the difference between earlier generations of wireless technology and 5G is that you could think of 4G as an antenna that you might see in the distance – and I tend to think of what 4G puts out as a soup. So we’re all sitting in this soup 24/7. But, what 5G does is – it’s basically densification on every level so you – with the 5G box you have up to or more than a thousand mini-antennas in one box. And what this produces is a beam. So it’s beam-forming. It’s like a laser and the laser goes out – a very concentrated signal and it does not attenuate over distance, so it does not weaken over distance as the 4G signal does. And therefore it maintains its power and therefore it’s particularly devastating. Now, the densification aspect of 5G is huge because, again, as I said, 4G, you have – you might see it off in the distance. But 5G would be absolutely everywhere. And the list of places from which 5G will come at you is so long that it’s hard to enumerate. So for a start, “smart” meters are part of the 5G rollout. LED street lights are part of the 5G rollout. Cabinets on the street – so they have designed new cabinets on the street which will let the signal pass. Under manhole covers – so imagine that you’re taking your baby for a walk and you see a friend and you leave the baby standing over the manhole cover. Your baby is being irradiated. Then you have satellites in the Earth orbits. So now SpaceX has asked for permission to put up a further 30,000 satellites, so now we’re up to a figure of 53,000 satellites in the Earth orbits. Plus, they want to put pseudosatellites in the stratosphere. Plus, you’re talking about networked civil aircraft, which would network between them and then beam down broadband down to Earth level, ground level. And also the plan is to put the 5G antennas approximately every third house. So you’re talking about a hugedensification. You’re talking about putting these antennas extremely close to where people are and where they live, outside their bedroom windows, for example. You’re also talking about different power levels. Now, because we have no standards for 5G – if you look at the press conference with Tom Wheeler in 2016, Tom Wheeler said it: we’re not waiting for the standards; we’re not waiting for committees and commissions to sit around deciding the standards. Therefore we have no standards for this. This is completely unprecedented. So we actually do not have a definition for 5G. It is undefined. They’re making it up as they go along. In terms of frequencies, people think that the higher frequencies will be used, which is true. They have – obviously there have been frequency auctions and it’s proposed to use frequencies up to 100 GHz for 5G. But also they will use low frequencies and we have to consider that evenextremely low frequencies do tremendous damage to the human body. So it’s a common misconception that 5G just means higher frequencies – it doesn’t. And it will devastate on all levels and at all frequencies.
Lucas: But isn’t it because of the low frequencies that a lot of scientists who are allowed to speak in the mainstream media, though, are saying that it’s not a danger to our health or anything else?
Claire: Well, 5G is complicated. The whole issue of wireless technology is complicated. The problem we have is that a lie has been perpetrated. Ever since we’ve had wireless technology. The lie is the “thermal hypothesis”. And the thermal hypothesis says that there are no biological effects to microwave radiation, which is absolutely not true. The US military collected compendia of thousands of studies detailing the biological effects of microwave radiation precisely because they wanted to develop weapons. So the biological effects are absolutely known. The World Health Organization organized a symposium in 1973, which was actually called “The Biologic Effects and Health Hazards of Microwave Radiation”. But since then they have conveniently forgotten that they organized that symposium. So it is absolute fact that there are biological effects but the regulatory agencies have been, basically, taken over and corrupted by industry and the lie of the thermal hypothesis has been propagated. So they want us to believe that there are only heating effects. So all your cell phones are based on this principle, that there are only heating effects and therefore if you simply hold the phone away from your head, you’re not being heated and therefore there’s no problem. And they test this on plastic mannequins filled with gel, into which they put a probe to ascertain to what extent this mannequin has been heated. So it’s absolutely fraudulent and people think if they hold the phone away, it’s not affecting them, but of course it’s going through their arm; it’s going into their body and there are biological effects so the whole body is being totally devastated by wireless technology and cell phones.
Lucas: So what are the possible dangers and health effects of electromagnetic radiation and frequencies?
Claire: Well, now we have the results after 25 years of cell phone use, now we have the results and they could not be more devastating. We have 9 to 10 year-old children presenting with the brains of senile old people. We have the highest suicide rate in the US since World War Two.
Lucas: So how is suicide connected to those frequencies?
Lucas: What does that mean? Is that because it causes cancer and other illnesses?
Claire: Well, there was recently a paper which was putting out a hypothesis that it is wireless technology, it is the ubiquitous nature of electromagnetic radiation that is causing neurological disease and deaths in the Western world. So we have the information now. The Blue Cross Blue Shield health insurance association in the United States put out a report in April this year where they said that millennials, who are the first generation to have used cell phones for a considerable period of time, they have double-digit increases in all the major diseases and you have 27 year-olds now who are presenting with dementia. It could not be more devastating. You also have a prominent scientist in the US who has predicted that, by 2025, every second baby born in the US will be autistic. Autism and ADHD [attention deficit hyperactivity disorder] are both associated with electromagnetic radiation.
Lucas: And we have the studies to prove that?
Claire: Absolutely. These are the studies. These are the results.
Lucas: People, when they hear you talk about these things—we will talk much more about it—can actually do their research and find some evidence about this?
Claire: Absolutely. If people go and they read the articles that I’ve written, I reference everything that I say and I give links to all the studies. The University of Aachen has an EMF Portal and on that portal there are over 28,000 studies. Not all of those are peer-reviewed, obviously. But we have an enormous, an overwhelming amount of studies showing these biological effects, which are absolutely known.
Lucas: So why don’t we hear about them on the mainstream news? Why is it not something that they’re taking into consideration. Why don’t they stop it?
Claire: Because this industry, the telecommunications industry is one of the most powerful industries on this planet. And they estimate that the 5G rollout is worth approximately 17 trillion dollars. And you will also find, since about three months ago because of the success of our Appeal and because so many millions of people now know about the dangers of 5G, the mainstream media started a pushback of fake news. This is mainstream media fake news, which started about three months ago. And you will find that, for example, the BBC has some sort of collaboration going with a telecommunications company. Le Monde in France has done two attacks on what we are saying, one very recently which was specifically about our Appeal.
Lucas: That was a French paper?
Claire: That’s one of the main French newspapers, and that is owned by a man who owns a telecommunications company. And so it goes on. You will find very strong links between the telecommunications companies and the newspapers. So, for example, there was an article in The New York Timesabout three or four months ago attacking what we’re saying and then it was done – in fact, attacking what Russia Today America was saying about 5G and then Russia Today answered back and said, well, actually The New York Times has a collaboration with Verizon, one of the very major American telecommunications companies. So frankly, the mainstream media has a huge conflict of interest. Not a single whisper comes out about the dangers of 5G. There is no balance and if you listen to what they say about the evidence – please listen carefully because I’ve written an article about this and it’s called BBC Fake News on 5G Decoded– how to decode this fake news. Because if you listen very carefully to what they say. Every time they say there is no evidence, they say there is no solid evidence, there is no convincing evidence, there is no valid evidence. Listen for the key word: there’s lots of evidence, but it’s not solid, convincing, valid, believable, etc.
Lucas: So is it not solid? Is it not believable? Is it not something we can trust?
Claire: Well, you know, do you want to dismiss in excess of 28,000 studies? And in that case, why then would the American military have compiled all these compendia on the biological effects of microwave radiation? Why would they have bothered if none of this is solid, convincing, valid or believable?
Lucas: But all these people behind the scenes or whoever is part of rolling it out, they will be irradiated as well?
Claire: I don’t know what they believe. I think that there are some innocent parties in this. I certainly believe that a lot of the people who work for the telecommunications companies cannot be aware of this.
Lucas: And so it’s on a need-to-know basis? It’s more like a compartmentalized …
Claire: Well, no, it goes back to the thermal hypothesis, you see. The regulatory agencies have put out the lie about the thermal hypothesis and a lot of people have believed it because they’re simply not aware of the biological effects. And so the main culprit in this is the so-called “international commission on non-ionizing radiation protection (icnirp). And this has this very grand name “international commission” so we should all respect this international commission. What this is, this is simply a club under German law. Now I could go and I could start a club and I could call myself the international commission. So this international commission so-called, it appoints its own members. There is no transparency; there is no supervision. It has no legal standing in international law. And yet, clearly they must be doing the bidding of industry, their pronouncements – they dismiss all the science on the biological effects. They say there is only thermal effect. And then, mysteriously, their pronouncements are taken up by the World Health Organization and by the International Telecommunication Union, both of which are UN organizations. And, as far as I can see, there is no legitimacy in the fact that their pronouncements are taken up. And you may also wish to consider that on icnirp’s website, they actually have a disclaimer disclaiming all responsibility for any of their pronouncements, obviously including their so-called safety guidelines, which actually don’t protect anybody from anything whatsoever.
Lucas: And the UN is not taking any action on this either, right?
Claire: The UN is the chief promoter of this.
Lucas: But you worked for the United Nations for a long time. So why aren’t they doing that? Do you think that the United Nations is actually a part of the New World Order structure?
Claire: I have no idea if they are part of the New World Order, but you can just look at what the United Nations actually does.
Lucas: You worked there?
Claire: I worked there and I came into this because, in December 2015, I was working in Vienna at the Vienna International Centre and they put up public access points on the ceilings. Now, these public access points were for Wi-Fi and cell phones and they have very little in common with your home Wi-Fi router. They are much, much more powerful. So when I saw these go up on the ceilings, I was extremely concerned and I tried to bring it to the attention of the authorities in Vienna, none of whom listened to me. And I was sick as a result of that. I was sick for seven months with flu, cold, flu, cold, flu, cold and the symptoms of flu …
Lucas: Caused by that, do you think?
Claire: Well, I would say so. I didn’t realize this until afterwards when I was talking to a friend. I didn’t realize it at the time but afterwards I thought, “Well, gosh, that happened as soon as those things went up”. And the symptoms of flu are almost identical to the symptoms of radiation poisoning, you know, so it’s very difficult for a doctor to differentiate between the two. So I was sick for seven months and, because nobody would listen to me and because I was extremely concerned about the situation, I actually took early retirement to get out of there. But I continued to try to alert people, including the Medical Service at the UN in Vienna, and nobody listened. Nobody even replied to my emails. So in the end, when I heard that the Secretary-General was coming in May last year and was going to speak to staff – you have to understand that when you work for the UN, you keep a grounds pass when you retire. So you’re still part of the UN if, you know, even though you’re retired.
Lucas: So you had access to go there?
Claire: Yes. So I went there to warn him about these public access points and also about 5G. Now, what I find extremely interesting – so that video is now on the Internet– and if you watch that video, what is extremely interesting is that it took me quite a time to read what I had to say out to the Secretary-General. So in other words, he had about three minutes to think how to respond to me. And when he responded to me, he laughed. Which is – I find that quite a strange response.
Lucas: Why did he laugh? That is so immature, isn’t it?
Claire: Well, I mean, I had brought my very serious concerns to him about the welfare of the UN staff. I mean, I hear anecdotally that many people have had breast cancer, some people have died. People have had heart attacks. I know a lot of people have had burnout, which is also associated with exposure to electromagnetic radiation.
Lucas: Stress, huh?
Claire: No, it’s to do with electromagnetic radiation. There’s also connections there so I know that there have been very serious consequences, but I only know anecdotally. What I was asking was that, for example, building biology experts should be brought in. Nobody needs to listen to me. I’m not an expert. I’m simply raising the alarm. So I asked the UN to bring in experts and they failed to do so. Now, what I find interesting about the fact that the Secretary-General laughed is that he could have done something else. So I raised my very serious concerns about the welfare of the staff and his response was to laugh. I find that wildly inappropriate myself. And also think about what he did notsay. So I should have been reassured – if these public access points are fine on the ceilings and he knows that they are fine, then actually he should have reassured me and said, “Oh, don’t worry about a thing. It’s all absolutely safe”. He did not do that.
Lucas: So, other than finding it funny and laughing, did he actually say something constructive or anything that you could use positively?
Claire: He said that he would consult the World Health Organization, which he did not do subsequently. Now, then you have to look at what the Secretary-General actually did do after I told him about 5G. First of all, I should say that he is an electrical engineer by training and also a physicist and he also taught telecommunications signals early in his career. So if there’s one man on this planet who should have known what I was talking about, about the dangers …
Lucas: Should have been him, shouldn’t it?
Claire: … he should have known. So what did he actually do? Approximately two months later he appointed a High-Level Panel on Digital Cooperation and this was to promote digitalization. And this Panel was stuffed solely with industry insiders. So this was all Melinda Gates and the man who started Ali Baba … all people who were pro-5G. So this was about promoting 5G. There was not a single doctor involved; there was not a single environmentalist involved. Then he went on to bring out a document on digital technologies. So, basically, you have these digital technologies being pushed through absolutely every UN programme. The word – if you look at the literature, the word that’s used in the UN literature – and other literature emanating from the European Union and the US – the word they use is to “blanket” the Earth. Their intention is to blanket the Earth. As I have already described, 53,000 satellites, pseudosatellites in the stratosphere, networked civil aviation, densification of antennas absolutely everywhere. They intend that every square centimetre of this planet be bathed in electromagnetic radiation. Now when you consider that, already, we have the canaries in the coalmine – you could say – are so-called electrohypersensitive people. Now this term electrohypersensitivity, it’s actually a political term, because, when you talk about, “Oh, you are electrohypersensitive”, this points the finger at you. “Oh, you have a problem because you are electrohypersensitive. The rest of us are not feeling anything” – because this is the problem, you don’t feel anything. We are all being attacked and our health is being massively damaged and the environment is being damaged. So some people – and we don’t know why – but some people feel this, where others don’t.
Lucas: Maybe later on they’ll feel it.
Claire: Well, with 5G, I mean, I’m quite sure that everybody will feel it because this is going to be …
Lucas: But this is the United Nations and the WHO we’re talking about here. People depend on these organizations. They think they’re doing something good, right? Trying to help the human race. That’s at least the official narrative.
Claire: There tends to be a very positive view. But we live in a society where authority is respected and people defer to authority. And I would say this is exactly the problem. That people do not realize that actually they need to inform themselves of what is really going on. And people need to realize that they have a lot of power to change what is going on.
Lucas: But the UN Secretary-General, he knows. Because he’s part of – he knew about all of this, being an engineer, right?
Claire: Yes, I would say he undoubtedly has to know.
Lucas: I mean, really know, in depth.
Claire: Yes, really know, yes, in depth. Yes.
Lucas: Yes, so this he knows and therefore he is actually he’s implement … he’s part of the knowledge and going against what is actually secure and good for the human race. That’s really what it comes down to, right?
Claire: I don’t believe in coincidences. He was appointed Secretary-General at the time when it was known that 5G was going to be rolled out. So I don’t believe in coincidences
Lucas: And he was not too thrilled to meet you when you asked him those questions or presented this material in front of him?
Lucas: And we’re gonna talk, of course, much more about that. But why do you think that they’re rolling it out at rapid speed – so fast. Why does that have to happen, so fast?
Claire: That question was actually asked in an EU report [page 6: “The notion of a “race” is part of the campaign”]. It was asked sceptically in an EU report earlier this year. And frankly, I think nobody knows why this has been characterized as a race. My guess is that they need to roll it out before people really realize. Or they hoped to roll it out before people really realized the dangers of 5G and by giving it the name “5G”, people assume that it’s just more of the same as 4G, but just a lot better and a lot faster.
Lucas: “Next generation.”
Claire: So they were hoping really that nobody would inform the public about the real nature of 5G. So by characterizing it as a race, you have to get there before any other country gets there …
Lucas: Because it’s easier to stop it than to take it back or to actually disarm it or destroy it afterwards?
Claire: Er, no. I think they wanted to roll it out before people could realize how damaging it would be. And before people had an opportunity to organize and stop it.
Lucas: It’s more difficult to take it away once it’s there.
Claire: I would say it’s extremely difficult to take it away once it’s there. How are you going to take down 53,000 satellites once they are up? The whole point about 5G is that it affects your brain. I mean, not only does it affect your body, but it affects your brain and therefore it affects your judgment. It can also be used for mind control because it’s very closely associated with HAARP. It has many of the same characteristics as far as I can see …
Lucas: Please, for the viewers, just explain what HAARP is.
Claire: HAARP is the – if I can remember correctly – the High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program. H-A-A-R-P and it’s an ionospheric heater. And what you can do with HAARP is you can mind-control people, you can change their emotional state, all sorts of things.
Lucas: Weather.
Claire: The weather, yes, you can interfere with the weather. It’s a very sinister tool. And it heats the ionosphere. Now, my question would be – I think that there are very close parallels between HAARP and 5G. Of course, nobody is drawing attention to this.
Lucas: Some people say that HAARP, which was in Alaska, is no longer functioning.
Claire: No, that’s not true. There was an interview with Dr. Nick Begich, who has written several books on this. And it’s all a switcheroo. It’s all just public relations to make people believe things.
Lucas: So it’s kept under the radar?
Claire: In his opinion, it was taken over, I think, from the American military, it was given to DARPA. And, as we know, DARPA is one of the most sinister organizations on this planet. And from DARPA, it was then transferred to the University of Alaska. So it comes under the University of Alaska now, but the University of Alaska was already working with the American military on HAARP. So it’s just a question of PR. Now the University of Alaska is still providing the same services to those same “clients”, if you want to call it. So, basically, it’s still controlled by the same people. HAARP has multiplied over the years so I believe – I mean, I can’t substantiate that – I haven’t done any detailed research into HAARP, but I believe that there are HAARP stations all around the world at this stage.
Lucas: The European version is placed in Norway, in Tromso.
Claire: Exactly. Exactly. And that was just updated – a couple of years ago there was a huge investment in that. So, far from being downgraded, I would say this is something that has been upgraded.
Lucas: So just explain DARPA. What does that stand for? What is DARPA?
Claire: [Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.] I’ve forgotten what it stands for. This is the organization that does some of the most sinister projects on the planet. So, for example, they have designed these battlefield robots that look like robotic dogs. Now, the problem on the battlefield – and this really shows you the connection with 5G because you can – so, for example, the invasion of Iraq by the US.
Lucas: In 2003.
Claire: Yes, exactly. So a lot of the veterans from the Iraq so-called war came back and complained of some sort of peculiar syndrome. Now, it would appear that, in fact, the Iraq invasion – they were using electronic weapons. So if you listen to what Mark Steele has to say … Mark Steele is based in the UK and he’s a weapons expert. And he says that 5G is battlefield interrogation technology, which it is. So what happened with these Iraq veterans is that they were very damaged by this battlefield interrogation technology. And therefore you really cannot deploy soldiers on the battlefield any more, which is why you need these DARPA robotic dogs.
Lucas: Like Manchurian Candidate syndrome, really?
Claire: That sort of thing, yes. It’s a similar technology. I mean, we also have to realize that the mind-control technology goes back decades. And was taken from the Nazis. In Operation Paperclip, where a lot of Nazis were – thousands of Nazi scientists were brought into the US. And all the various projects that they worked on were taken up by the Americans. And, of course, they’ve had decades to improve this technology.
Lucas: CIA?
Claire: Yes, and the mind-control technology is absolutely real.
Lucas: MKULTRA?
Claire: MKULTRA. And it’s extremely sophisticated at this stage and 5G also includes mind control.
Lucas: So frequencies can be beamed from this satellite grid around Earth that they’re creating with this technology? And it can be beamed into a person’s mind in order to make them do certain things or think in a certain direction. Is that what you mean?
Claire: Exactly. Well, we have the proof you see. This was deployed during the Iraq war when these frequencies were beamed at Iraqi soldiers. In fact, it was put on top of a radio signal so when they were listening to prayers and so forth and they went into fear and panic. And they were told to put down their weapons and they did. So they didn’t understand where this fear and panic came from. So we’ve already had a public demonstration of this.
Lucas: Is 5G part of UN agenda 21, also now known as UN Agenda 2030?
Claire: I can’t really speak to that because I don’t have expertise in that area. I would simply say that 5G …
Lucas: Even if you worked for the UN?
Claire: Well, no, because it depends who you work for. I worked in the Conference Management Service so we were providing services to conferences, so translations and documentation, conference rooms, etc. And, you know, there are many different parts of the UN. So Agenda 21 is the UN Environment Programme and we don’t have the UN Environment Programme in Vienna. In Vienna, we work on space so I edited a lot of the space documents, which is why I have some knowledge of space law and the issues in space.
Lucas: And they also work closely with NASA?
Claire: Not necessarily, no.
Lucas: When you talk about space?
Claire: Oh, well – you know – there are various parts of the UN work on space. So you have the Office of Disarmament Affairs is one, the First Committee in New York is another one. And in Vienna we have the Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space and so for several years I edited all the documents for them, including their Legal, and Scientific and Technical subcommittees. And what I can tell you is that the two major, major issues that were always talked of were space debris and weaponization. So right now – I don’t know if it’s because of 25 years of cell phone use, but it’s like we have gone into some sort of collective amnesia because the 5G rollout is totally illegal. It’s totally illegal on every level. The number of international treaties that it breaches– you know – I can’t even list them for you. But environmental treaties, human rights, space law. It’s astonishing. And so the two issues that the Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space [discussed] were always space debris and weaponization. And it’s almost as if those discussions never ever took place because now we’re putting up 53,000 satellites and so the two issues – let’s separate them. So the space debris – there was a paper written, I think back in the 1970s or 1980s by a man called Kessler who posited what became called the Kessler syndrome. And what he says is that if you reach a point where you have so much space debris that it starts colliding, you could have a cascade effect where you cannot stop the constant cascade of collisions and you would have a situation where the space orbits became unusable for a thousand years.
Lucas: Please explain to us where this space debris comes from. How does that happen?
Claire: Well, there’s – we’ve had a lot of space exploration, obviously, for decades, and so as you – I mean, some, certain countries have actually attacked their own satellites.
Lucas: So it’s from satellites, it’s from rockets or from …
Claire: Rockets, satellites, all the activities that have gone on in space. So you you’ve had I think the US has also attacked its own satellite. Certainly China did, and India did. India did that earlier this year. And when you destroy your own satellite, of course, it shatters into – I don’t know how many pieces. And you have to consider that the velocity at which these pieces travel means that the tiniest, tiniest piece could cause such damage, for example, to the International Space Station, that it could no longer function. So the tiniest – it’s not a question of size. The tiniest piece can be absolutely devastating. And they estimate that there are over 500,000 pieces of space debris already. And by 2025 they estimate that …
Lucas: How can it cause damage when it’s so tiny?
Claire: Because of the velocity at which it travels. And also there was a project during the Cold War called Project West Ford, where the Americans put up 480 million needles into the Earth orbits and those are still up there. They’re floating around. So you – if you look at a picture of space debris. If you go on to YouTube, for example, and look up the Kessler syndrome or space junk, you can actually see the tremendous amount of space debris that exists up there. And so, at the UN, year after year after year, they constantly talked about the dangers from space debris. And now suddenly we’ve forgotten all of that. It’s like we never had those discussions. But now we’re going to put up 53,000 satellites and nobody considers it a problem any more. But the other issue that constantly came up year by year was the issue of weaponization of space. The Outer Space Treaty of 1966 bans weapons in space – it’s actually illegal now the problem with the weaponization of space is of course you don’t have visibility you can’t look out the window and see what’s happening in the earth orbits so if a military satellite and of course the militaries all depend increasingly on the intelligence satellites so if one of these satellites blips out suddenly and makes that country vulnerable. Now, if that country believes that it was another state that caused the , of their satellite, they could launch nuclear missiles! They could think that they’re under attack! It’s tremendously dangerous. This issue of weaponization in space. And again this is another issue where it’s as if these conversations never ever took place because now we have NATO, this December, intends to designate space a domain of warfare! And this year, President Trump announced a space force.President Macron of France has also announced a space force. Where are we going now? We have descended into lunacy now. And all I can suppose is that, because we’ve had 25 years of cell phones, people have lost their minds. It’s unimaginable what is happening now.
Lucas: Some people say that the governments of the world, well, the top elite factions of the governments are working with alien races, people from other worlds. What are your thoughts on that when you’re talking about, let’s say, human-made space stations around Earth?
Claire: I can’t speculate about alien races. I mean, my personal opinion is I don’t see why there should not be alien races. If we exist, you know, why should alien races not equally exist? But I can’t really speak to that, but I can speak to artificial intelligence. Again, this is not an area where I have expertise.
Lucas: People think that 5G is actually, let’s just say a pathway, a route to AI, artificial intelligence.
Claire: Absolutely. 5G is what facilitates artificial intelligence.
Lucas: Is that the agenda?
Claire: 5G, in my view, is about a total surveillance and mind control and kill grid. That’s what 5G is.
Lucas: A kill grid? In order to kill the population?
Claire: Well, people speculate on that.
Lucas: What are your thoughts?
Claire: Well, you know, people say, “Is it a weapon?” Well, you know, if you have a technology which is potentially going to annihilate everything on Earth, do we need to decide whether it’s a weapon or not? I mean, the only difference between it being a weapon and not a weapon is just intention.
Lucas: But why would the leaders of the world and even the moguls in the financial system who are behind the whole control system. Why would they want to kill a large number of the population on Earth known as depopulation?
Claire: Please don’t ask me for insights into the mind of psychopaths. You know, I am not the author of 5G. I think it is more insane, demented than anything I have ever come across in my life.
Lucas: Is it because they think we’re too many or is it because a growing number of the population is waking up to what possibly is behind what we talked about just before a little bit –the new world order structure, a one-world government strategy.
Claire: Well, for me it is a form of madness. What we have in the West is – we have the materialist-reductionist paradigm. And this is very much left-brain thinking. So in left-brain thinking, everything is separate, so nothing is ever seen in context. And in left-brain thinking, you are very much in fear. You tend to exercise control. The right-brain thinking is much more holistic and much more accepting of the idea that you cannot grasp everything – not everything is understandable. So the left-brain thinking is materialistic. Now, if you subscribe to this kind of thinking, which frankly I don’t. Nikola Tesla said that if you think of the universe in terms of energy, frequency and vibration, you would make more progress in a decade in science than ever before. So clearly it’s an energy universe. I mean, this is absolutely indisputable. And I don’t understand why anybody would even argue about it. Even at school we are taught that everything is atoms and molecules. So we know that everything is energy and when you touch something, you should know by now that what you’re touching is, it’s about electron repulsion. You’re not actually touching something solid because there IS nothing solid.
Lucas: Because atoms have no solidity. So everything is holographic in structure or …
Claire: According to some theories, yes. But it’s an energy universe. But when you believe – as many scientists, extraordinarily, still perpetuate this belief that we live in a material world, then you tend to think that everything is scarce and perishable. Life is limited. And therefore you live in fear. And you believe that the resources of the world are limited because they’re made of matter. Now, when you believe that, then you start to worry that you have too many people on Earth. So, depopulation agenda? Is it a conspiracy theory? Well, I would invite people to go and do the research because …
Lucas: Or conspiracy fact?
Claire: Conspiracy fact. Because if you go and do the research and you look at eugenics, this has been touted for well over a hundred years. And very prominent people such as George Bernard Shaw were talking about finding a humane gas to reduce the human population, so if …
Lucas: Bill Gates talked about it.
Claire: Bill Gates talked about it as well.
Lucas: Even Prince Philip.
Claire: I don’t know if that’s true or not. I’ve certainly heard it. But eugenics and the depopulation agenda is absolutely real. So whether 5G is intended to depopulate the planet, I couldn’t say, but as to its potential for doing so, absolutely!
Lucas: What’s the reason for AI? What is artificial intelligence? Well, that of course explains a little bit what it is, but please talk about why we need that. Why do we want to connect the human brain to artificial intelligence?
Claire: Well, this again for me, it goes to your perception of our existence and potential as human beings. Our brain is fantastically powerful so when Elon Musk talks about the Neuralink, it seems to me a complete inversion. So what he’s offering is that people should connect up their brains to the Internet. And artificial intelligence can be thought of as algorithms, so, you know, in terms of algorithms, I mean it’s pathetic and childish. So I think that this kind of Neuralink and this kind of artificial intelligence is actually about tapping our brain power. It’s not about us connecting ourselves to the Internet and tapping in to the Internet. No. It’s that for such an Internet to work they would actually need our brain power. So it’s complete nonsense to think that you want to connect your brain via Neuralink.
Lucas: To imprison the mind.
Claire: Yes, I think it’s about imprisoning the mind. Absolutely. Yes. But as to artificial intelligence, you know, I think that there are different perceptions of artificial intelligence. It always seemed to me – I was never interested in Facebook. But if you look back to the beginning of the Internet, you used to receive these emails from people, which said “Oh, you have to send on this email to 10 people within the next 15 minutes, and then something wonderful will happen to you”. And I was always very suspicious of this so I never did it. And then Facebook started up and it was very clear to me from the start that Facebook was about getting people’s data. So what they’ve collected over the years is the human reaction to every type of human event in order to develop machines such as Sophia the robot. So that Sophia can come out with a reaction to anything that she might be presented with because it’s been picked up from social media. So is this creature intelligent? I would say absolutely not. It’s just based on algorithms. Now, whether there is another type of artificial intelligence on another level, which could be trained to be intelligent. Well, that may be possible, yes.
Lucas: What are you talking about now? Are you talking about something other-worldly, extraterrestrial or connected to that?
Claire: Well, there’s the algorithmic AI, which I think, frankly, is pretty childish and it’s just imitative of human beings. A sort of fake imitation. But there’s also another level to AI, where it’s posited that machines can actually learn. And that, I think, is extremely sinister and I think it’s that aspect of AI that the UK Prime Minister was addressing when he spoke at the General Assembly just a few weeks ago. And he gave a very, very strong warning about the threat from AI. And he spent some time on it. And he talked about it as a dark cloud, lowering over the human race, over which potentially the human race would have no say whatsoever. So I was very glad to see that he …
Lucas: Boris Johnson?
Claire: Boris Johnson.
Lucas: Why do you think that he actually did that? If he’s part of – like all presidents and prime ministers in a way, supposedly part of this new world order structure and the whole agenda behind that. Why do you think he actually spoke and was allowed to talk about that?
Claire: Well, because I do think that occasionally you can get wildcards. I don’t think everybody … You know, I personally don’t live in fear and paranoia. And so I think that it’s perfectly possible to get somebody who is independent-minded and don’t forget that Boris Johnson came to be Prime Minister in a fairly accidental way because of Brexit. Now, there’s been some questioning about the – how can I put it? The authenticity of what Boris Johnson said. And in the second part of his speech he went on to talk about the importance of vaccinations and so on.
Lucas: And you’re not for that?
Claire: No. And I just think that that was window dressing because he had to be supportive of technologies for strategic reasons. But if you listen to the first part of his speech, he – Boris Johnson is a maverick. And I think that 5G is going to be combatted by mavericks. What you need is, you need free-thinkers, people who don’t just go with the herd. People who actually are clear-sighted and can see what is happening and are prepared to stand up and oppose it. And it seems to me that Boris Johnson is one of those. I’m told that he has planted an enormous number of trees. Certainly he always used to cycle to the House of Commons. So it seems to me that – he’s also a writer and a journalist and he’s benefited from a very good education. So I would say that he was genuine when he was talking.
Lucas: But you don’t like what he said about vaccinations?
Claire: Well, it would appear that, possibly, the vaccinations, the purpose of the vaccinations is again something to do with interfering with the processes of the mind because the adjuvant that is used in vaccinations is aluminium. And it would appear that aluminium in some way also works with these frequencies. Now, I’m not sure exactly how, but certainly aluminium and barium had something to do with the HAARP processes. So equally, I would suggest, that that’s going to affect the brain – the combination of the aluminium adjuvant and these frequencies.
Lucas: And microchipping the population, even through vaccines.
Claire: Well, you don’t need to microchip the population because everybody has cell phones and they’re addicted to them. And it would be my guess that very soon it will become compulsory to carry a “smart” phone. I don’t have one. I don’t want to be mind-controlled. I don’t have one. I took a hammer and I smashed my cell phone in January this year. And I’ve never been happier than to be free of this mobile phone.
Lucas: So please talk about your thoughts on climate change, which is the big thing at the moment. We are in October 2019 and all through this year we’ve been hearing about the climate, almost that the world is going under and that the whole CO2 scare and this Swedish girl, 16-year-old girl Greta Thunberg and how she has been promoted all over the world. But it seems that everybody is worried about the environment and the climate. But the same people are not very worried, it seems, about 5G. So what are your thoughts on climate change? Is it real or not? And why is it not connected to 5G?
Claire: As far as I’m concerned, you cannot talk about anthropogenic climate change as long as you are interfering with the weather, which is what you’re doing with HAARP and it’s what you’re doing with geoengineering. Now, as far as Little Greta is concerned, I thought – if you look at what she said in front of the UN, this terrible rage and distorted expression on her face. Pointing the finger and accusing adults of stealing her childhood. This is revolting. This child is being manipulated. She has a German handler who is paid by one of the George Soros organizations. The child is autistic. She’s being manipulated. And this is about distracting people from the reality of the danger of 5G. The Powers That Be want everybody to be looking in the wrong direction. And if you look at the – all the green parties, the environmental organizations, are so busy talking about anthropogenic climate change and they absolutely refuse to look at electromagnetic radiation, which has been far more devastating over the last 25 years. We have lost between 75 and 80 per cent of our insects at this stage. If you look – there are papers, studies that have been done. The insect loss in the Puerto Rico rainforest can also be attributed to the installation of a very large radar antenna there. There were other studies done in Germany on radar antennas, Cold War radar antennas which have shown absolute devastation to the environment [Summary of Invisible Rainbow: A History of Electricity and Life, chap. 16: Bees, Birds, Trees, and Humans;full book here]. So in my view, and in the view of a lot of scientists, the environmental devastation is actually far more attributable to electromagnetic radiation than it is to any hypothesized climate change.
Lucas: But everybody is talking about that now. It’s covered all in the mainstream media, on the news every single day. Everybody’s, even scientists are saying that we have manmade climate change.
Claire: There are – there’s a substantial body of scientists who say that there is no anthropogenic climate change. And if you look into the climate issue, you will find that the science has actually been distorted and the calculations have been very conveniently done to exclude the [Little] Ice Age. So these figures have been distorted. We know that there has been manipulation in scientific circles. So the whole climate change agenda originated – there was a very interesting document published a couple of months ago by the Canadian civil liberties organization. And they actually identified this fake climate change agenda as coming from, I think, the 1970s and …
Lucas: Club of Rome.
Claire: Club of Rome, exactly. So it’s something that has been cooked up to put people in fear and manipulate them. Now, as to the real motive behind the climate change agenda. This was revealed a couple of weeks ago, where I came across a very interesting article, which included a video, where our Little Greta has now teamed up with a very fake environmental journalist called George Monbiot who writes for the UK Guardian. And so we had Little Greta lying on a carpet on her stomach, looking into the camera. So they were clearly trying to make her look like an ordinary teenage girl and not an autistic child. So she spoke first and then she was followed by George Monbiot, who told us, “Wow, we have a machine that converts CO2 to oxygen and it’s called a tree!” So now we have, the trees are now machines. This again is materialist-reductionist paradigm. It’s the madness of seeing everything as mechanistic. The tree is a living organism. This is not a machine. And what I further learned from this article is that actually the aim of all this is a new regime which is “Naturocracy”. So Naturocracy is now about monetizing nature. So it’s not enough that the neoliberals of the last 40 years have stolen everything on this planet, stolen all the resources, exploited everybody, stacked up vast fortunes in tax havens, but now they want the Earth orbits, they want the stratosphere, they want the ionosphere, and they want every last blade of grass! This is what this is about. It’s about monetizing nature. That is the purpose of the fake climate change agenda. And I don’t know about you, but I find that frankly horrifying. This is my planet. This is my home and I will do everything to defend this planet and protect all the creatures that live on it and all the nature that lives on it. So I would say to people, they have to stop following blindly what they find in the media. Now, I suspect that, we do know that the cell phones are about mind control and manipulation. We know that people do become addicted to cell phones. Weapons expert Barrie Trower has told us that these phones are 17 times as addictive as heroin. So what you have now is, I think, you have memes that are put out by the media and they are reinforced by these cell phones to make people into herds who will simply follow what they have been told. And you can just move them left and right and manipulate them. I would ask people to stop parroting absolute nonsense which has no scientific foundation whatsoever and to actually go and do their own research. There’s enough information …
Lucas: Most people believe the scientists when they speak through the mainstream media.
Claire: Well, you know, it’s always a manipulation. I mean, you know, cui bono? Who is making money out of this? People need to ask some serious, hard questions.
Lucas: Who benefits.
Claire: Who benefits?
Lucas: Some of those people, some climate activists who are advocating that we have to really worry about the climate, say now that the oil company, I think called Exxon, is part of this anti-climate change propaganda happening, saying that it’s not real because they are worried about the whole oil industry thing. Do you think that could also be orchestrated?
Claire: I think everything is a fiction at this stage. I mean, if people were to wake up and look around them, I think they would quickly see that everything is a fiction. And I find it very interesting to note that you recently saw these so-called Extinction Rebellion people, who again are funded by the same George Soros organizations, by the way. But recently they all dressed up in red robes and protested somewhere. Now, did nobody else notice the parallels with the ISIS theatricals where the ISIS so-called terrorists were all dressed up in theatrical costumes and all arranged – you know, posing for photographs. It’s the same manipulation. I think that I would really say – I would really plead with people to get rid of these dangerous cell phones because people are clearly being prevented from thinking properly. Their brains don’t function properly and they’re being seriously misled. People need to get rid of these cell phones, they need to switch off their Wi-Fi routers, they need to cable their computers and they need to start seriously looking at the facts.
Lucas: Here in Denmark, and maybe other places around the world, “smart” meters are mandatory. It’s actually forced that we must have a “smart” meter rigged up in our homes. How can we actually say no to that?
Claire: Lucas, you can say no to anything. It depends whether you are in your power and your sovereignty. We are sovereign human beings. It doesn’t matter what manmade laws there are. It doesn’t matter what you are told. Ultimately, you are a human being and you are sovereign. So you don’t have to be told anything whatsoever. You simply refuse to cooperate. And this is really what is the problem on this planet. That people think they have no power. They do not realize that they are creator beings. And their intention creates everything. What do you think creates everything that we have around us? Everything started with an idea. Everything started with the creation of a mind. Everything that we have here is about intention. So the most important thing that we have to do now is say “No!” to this whole agenda. Every single part of it. Now, you don’t need everybody to do that; you simply need a sufficient number for a tipping point. So people need to take back their power. In fact, I would simply say they need to recognize the power that they have and they need to start asserting it. They just have to refuse. So do what you feel necessary to make sure that you do not have a “smart” meter. And I would say further, that you have a lot of – so the 5G rollout is taking place on a local basis and people are following orders. “Oh, the government told us we have to do this.” Okay, but the government is acting illegally under national and international law. So are you like Nazis now? Is that your excuse? That you’re going to follow orders and kill your local population? Or are you going to inform yourself and stand up and confront this agenda?
Lucas: You certainly do that through the International Appeal to Stop 5G on Earth and in Space. Please talk about this initiative. Who is part of this International Appeal to Stop 5G and how can people join or sign up? What is the purpose of this Appeal? What do you think can be the positive result?
Claire: Well, there have been a lot of previous scientific appeals. People don’t realize this. There have been at least 60 previous appeals by scientists and doctors and none of those succeeded in coming to public notice, really. So they really didn’t have any effect because they remained within those closed circles and the governments and institutions just ignored them. Now, what’s different about our International Appeal to Stop 5G on Earth and in Space is that, one, it’s extremely comprehensive. It’s telling you the whole context of 5G and not purely addressing the science. So it tells a story to people. It sets out the whole situation and, for me, the most important aspect of this Appeal is that it provides the information people need and information is empowering. So that’s the most important aspect of the Appeal as far as I’m concerned. In terms of an appeal, I think it’s questionable – making an appeal to the very organizations that are rolling out 5G, appealing to them to stop. I wonder about the effectiveness of that. However, again, the Appeal – by signing the Appeal, you are joining a project to refuse your consent. So rather than the Appeal side of things, it’s more like a vehicle to say that you do not agree with this agenda. So in those terms I think it’s extremely powerful. We currently have approximately 165,000 signatories, which includes many thousands of scientists and doctors and also organizations. We would like to have a lot more signatories. It’s being sent to the addressees at the moment, but it’s going to remain open for people to sign. And I would like to see millions of people sign that Appeal because, as I say, that expresses their own intention to oppose this agenda.
Lucas: How can people sign the Appeal?
Claire: Well, they simply look up “5G space appeal” on the Internet and they will instantly find it. There’s one other very significant thing about this Appeal. It’s that we chose as our symbol the bee. And the bee is a symbol of life. And it’s also an insect that we really love and we really love it because we know that the bee assists us in in having our food. So it’s something very beautiful and it’s motivating because we love the bee. Now, a lot of other appeals, they would put a cell phone mast as the symbol of their appeal. Well, you don’t motivate people by fear. You motivate people by love. And it’s absolutely love that motivates me in campaigning here. For me, this has nothing to do with fear. Now, when people – you know, some people say, “Oh, you know, they’re so powerful. There’s nothing I can do to change this because I’m just one person.” But this is absolute nonsense because – if you say that, it means that you have not understood 5G. 5G is potentially an annihilation event. Oleg Grigoriev, who is the head of the Russian National Committee on Non-ionizing Radiation Protection, he has called 5G “a slow Hiroshima”. Professor Emeritus Martin Pall has said that, with 5G we can expect societal breakdown within months, not years. So when you really understand 5G, you are not going to say, there is nothing I can do and I have no power. You are absolutely going to stand up and oppose this agenda.
Lucas: Can 5G be stopped from being rolled out?
Claire: Absolutely. I’ve always believed it. I’ve always said this must be stopped. The important thing is that 5G is unlike any other human challenge we have had because, in the past, when we’ve made mistakes, for example, with asbestos and tobacco. Okay, many people have been injured and many people have died and then we’ve adjusted and done something about it. But with 5G you cannot do that. You’re talking about a total surveillance, mind control and kill grid. Once this is in place, you will not be able to stop it. You will already be damaged. And you will not be able to withdraw it. So people have to take action now so that 5G never happens. Now, it’s being rolled out as we speak. In many countries, it’s being rolled out, but there’s also huge opposition. People have to realize that millions of people are now aware of the dangers of 5G. I have a list of at least 30 countries where people are opposing the 5G agenda. So far from being powerless, it’s absolutely the opposite. I recently published an article where I listed all the official pushback. I’m not talking about demonstrations I’m talking about official pushback against 5G and this is massive. We are already succeeding in stopping 5G.
Lucas: They stopped the rollout in the former EU capital, Brussels, in Belgium, didn’t they? Why do you think they hesitated or stopped it there and not all over the world?
Claire: Well, the Environment Minister said that the people of Brussels were not guinea pigs and she acknowledged that the scientific data were not there on the safety of 5G and therefore she was not prepared to roll it out in Brussels. My question would be, what’s happening with the rest of Belgium? Why do the environment ministers there only talk about Brussels? So are they rolling it out in the rest of Belgium? Or is it just Brussels that is unique? But you’ve already had – one company has pulled out of Australiabecause they were convinced by the health arguments. And another company has pulled out of the US. So we have to remember that this is being rolled out by commercial companies. So this is their Achilles heel. I would say that we need to keep pushing these companies. These companies cannot get insurance for injuries or damage caused by electromagnetic radiation. So this is their Achilles heel. One thing about these space launches. I would like to know whether these companies launching these satellites actually have insurance. Because there isa space Liability Convention, which says that launching states are responsible for any damage caused by objects launched into space. And if these companies cannot get insurance – you know, you have to think about the potential consequences here. I mean, you could have vastareas of this planet destroyed, you know, vast populations affected by this. So these companies need to have insurance in the many billions. Do they have any insurance at all? I mean, for example, we have Portugal now, which has set up a space port– or it’s just about to be set up in January 2020 on the island of Santa Maria in the Azores. And if you look at the Liability Convention, it’s the launching state that carries the liability for damage caused by a space launch. So you have to ask the question, “Why is Portugal establishing its space agency on Santa Maria, which is a little island with nothing. I would guess that they are trying to avoid liability. Now, Portugal is not a signatory to the Liability Convention, but nevertheless, we need to make these people accountable. What we have with 5G is a total free-for-all. And I come back to the beginning of this conversation, where we said that in 2016 Tom Wheeler said that they would not wait for the standards. That means that 5G is completely undefined. Now, a lot of people are saying that this is a crime against humanity under the Nuremberg Code because there has never been any health or safety testing on 5G. But, in my view, it’s not that that makes it a crime against humanity. What makes it a crime against humanity is that it’s undefined and it’s a free-for-all. Because if you had to define this and create norms and standards for this before it’s rolled out, it would never be rolled out. So the first person who has to be held liable for crimes against humanity is Tom Wheeler of the Federal Communications Commission. But we need now, as the population of the world, we need to hold these people accountable.
Lucas: And you say that the global warming or climate change scare propaganda is actually a diversion away from 5G, which you say is the essential problem.
Claire: Absolutely. The climate change agenda is a total distraction and it’s designed to have people focus on something which is irrelevant. 5G is a planetary emergency and everybody needs to drop everything to stop 5G.
Lucas: Is there any possibility …?
Claire: The people who realize this, Lucas, they have they have given up their jobs to work on this. I’ve been working on this day and night since I found out about it and that’s what you do once you understand 5G. If you are not currently working on stopping 5G, it means you don’t understand it yet. When you understand it, nothing else matters any more because this is about the survival of you, your children and this planet.
Lucas: Do you know if there is a possibility that we can shield ourselves from 5G radiation, the electromagnetic frequencies that’s coming from 5G? If it’s being rolled out.
Claire: This is one of my bêtes noires, my hobbyhorses. To me, this is another manifestation of the mad thinking of the left brain: “Oh, we have a disaster of a technology. Let’s find another technology to combat the last technological disaster. And if that turns out to be a disaster, perhaps we can find another technology to combat that as well.” The fact is, you cannot shield yourself against 5G. There is no shielding yourself against 5G. You’re not going to paint your walls with lead paint. You’re not going to wear little doo-dads, pendants and so on. There is nothing that you are going to be able to use to shelter yourself from 5G. And even if you did, what then would happen to the environment? How are you going to have your food when we have no pollinators left? Do you want to live in a totally devastated environment, where all the trees are dead? So the solution to this has to be holistic. It’s not about you solely and your individual survival. This is about the survival of all of us together and that’s why it’s so beautiful. I think that this is a problem for individuals to stand up to and cooperate with other individuals. So this is not a problem where you’re going to go to an organization or a leader or a government to stop this. This is the responsibility of every single individual to confront this. And when you confront 5G, you’re confronting something that is more terrifying than anything you have ever confronted in your life. Because you are talking about the potential annihilation of everything you have ever related to in your entire life. Everything you’ve ever known could be annihilated by this. So this is a terror such as you have never felt. You are facing your own death and you have to look truth in the face. And when you do that, you find that you pass through a trial by fire. And it’s necessary. If you like, this trial by fire is transformative. Because the only way you can deal with this is to change yourself. We have to change from passive, powerless beings into immensely powerful creator beings and say “No!” to this. And we do that inside ourselves. There are no answers out there. Forget it! Who’s doing this? All these authorities that you have believed in all your life – they are the ones doing this. And the only people who are going to stop this are individuals.
Lucas: So that is your most important message for people to hear if they are a bit fearful after hearing all of what you’ve said here.
Claire: Well, people have to realize that it’s necessary to feel the fear. Unless you feel the fear, you have not understood 5G unless you feel this terror. But all I can say is, yes, you feel the terror, and it’s a process and you pass through it and you come out the other side. And you come out the other side transformed. I don’t feel any fear about it. I have a job here to do, which is to stop 5G. And I do that in love; I don’t do that in fear. Because every time I hear something more horrible about an aspect of 5G, which unfortunately I hear pretty much every day, I actually feel more love. I feel more love and I feel more connection. When I walk out in the street and I see the children, the little children dancing and playing and smiling and laughing, I feel devastated for them. They don’t know that these antennas are underneath manhole covers or coming at them from cabinets on the street that they’re passing. They don’t know that these cell phones are injuring their brains. They have no idea. These are innocents in all of this and I feel tremendous love for them. I feel tremendous love for the trees. So everything I hear about 5G now actually generates more love in me. For me, 5G means fifth-generation, but for me, what it is generating? It’s generating love. Now, you know, people talk about the Awakening. 2012 and the Awakening. Well, to my mind, 5G IS the Awakening. That’s exactly what it is. So when you confront 5G, you transform internally. And the Awakening is not something out there, it’s something in here. And it’s every individual responding to this threat. And what is unique about 5G is precisely that there is no escape. It’s hermetically sealed. You cannot protect yourself because it’s going to come at you from everywhere. And therefore you have to transform. Therefore, the answer is always within yourself. So 5G for me is absolutely perfect. And in my team, we always say, “I love 5G”.
Lucas: If people want to know more, read your articles, maybe get involved, to participate or something, or have you to come to their place or their country for a lecture, how can they contact you?
Claire: People – a lot of my articles are published on Global Research. I think they probably have all of my articles at this stage.
Lucas: What is the website?
Claire: Well, just look up Global Research and my name and they’ll find me as an author on Global Research and they’ll be able to see all my articles. Now, the mainstream media is completely missing in action over 5G so what I try to do is I try to write articles which address the different aspects of 5G. I’m trying to cover the different aspects. Now, as a former UN editor, I reference everything extremely carefully. I don’t put anything in my articles that I cannot substantiate. So if people look at the references and the links to those articles, they can do their own research and they will see that I have all the evidence in those articles.
Lucas: Under your name, Claire Edwards.
Claire: Absolutely. I try to simplify and make this – I like to put the whole thing in context and try to make it clear for people. So, at the end of those articles, they will find my address and they can contact me there. [[email protected]]
Lucas: It’s been absolutely fascinating, really informative, mind-blowing and very, very interesting to have you on the show and you are obviously a great inspiration and we wish you the best of luck with the International Appeal to Stop 5G on Earth and in Space. Claire Edwards, thank you very much for doing this interview.
Claire: Thank you for inviting me, Lucas. It’s been a real pleasure.
Lucas: Thank you.
Lucas: Thank you very much to Claire Edwards. And thanks to all of you for watching Age of Truth TV. You can support us by clicking onto our website, Age of Truth TV. And please like our videos, subscribe to our channel and hit the bell for notifications. Your support is greatly appreciated. Thank you very much for watching and we’ll see you again soon.
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Claire Edwards, BA Hons, MA, worked for the United Nations as Editor and Trainer in Intercultural Writing from 1999 to 2017. Claire warned the Secretary-General about the dangers of 5G during a meeting with UN staff in May 2018, calling for a halt to its rollout at UN duty stations. She part-authored, designed, administered the 30 language versions, and edited the entirety of the International Appeal to Stop 5G on Earth and in Space (www.5gspaceappeal.org) and vigorously campaigned to promote it throughout 2019. In January 2020, she severed connection with the Appeal when its administrator, Arthur Firstenberg, joined forces with a third-party group, stop5ginternational, which brought itself into disrepute at its foundation by associating with the Club of Rome/Club of Budapest eugenicist movement. She is a frequent contributor to Global Research.
Claire Edwards was speaking at a seminar in Oslo, Norway, on Saturday 26 October 2019.
Elon Musk has now applied to the Federal Communications Commission for permission to launch a further 30,000 satellites into Earth orbit, bringing the current total to 53,000 (October 2019). With the issues of space debris and weaponization being the two major issues of concern at the UN year after year, this is a mad enterprise, especially when NATO intends to declare space a domain of warfare in December 2019.
We stand at the brink of extinction if we do not stop the madness.
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Claire Edwards, BA Hons, MA, worked for the United Nations as Editor and Trainer in Intercultural Writing from 1999 to 2017. Claire warned the Secretary-General about the dangers of 5G during a meeting with UN staff in May 2018, calling for a halt to its rollout at UN duty stations. She part-authored, designed, administered the 30 language versions, and edited the entirety of the International Appeal to Stop 5G on Earth and in Space (www.5gspaceappeal.org) and vigorously campaigned to promote it throughout 2019. In January 2020, she severed connection with the Appeal when its administrator, Arthur Firstenberg, joined forces with a third-party group, stop5ginternational, which brought itself into disrepute at its foundation by associating with the Club of Rome/Club of Budapest eugenicist movement. She is a frequent contributor to Global Research.
Kurdish provocateurs have tried to burn a Typhoon MRAP vehicle of the Russian Military Police and a Kirpi MRAP vehicle of the Turkish Army in northern Syria. The incident happened during a joint Russian-Turkish patrol, which was conducted in the framework of the safe zone agreement reached between Ankara and Moscow.
Russian and Turkish forces once again showed an amazing restraint and avoided the use of force against the Kurdish radicals. Nonetheless, a Turkish vehicle rammed one of the cars involved in the provocations.
Such actions of Kurdish radicals affiliated with the Syrian Democratic Forces pose a serious threat to the shaky stability in the region. If their actions lead to casualties among Russian or Turkish personnel, they will easily find themselves in the situation when the Turkish Army will have to resume its military operation in the area and Moscow will not hurry up to rescue them once again.
The intensity and frequency of attacks on the Russian-Turkish patrols by pro-SDF rioters that are always timely supported by journalists are a strong signal that these developments are a part of well-organized pre-planned campaign to instigate tensions in the area.
Local experts say that by such actions the US-affiliated part of the Kurdish leadership is attempting to undermine the de-escalation and demonstrate to the so-called international community that the US troop withdrawal led to the destabilization of northern Syria.
At the same time, the SDF leadership announced that it rejects the deployment of the Syrian Army and the Russian Military Police in the town of Tell Tamir. Earlier reports appeared that the Russian Military Police will establish an observation point there. The Russian military convoy even deployed near the town. This move is aimed to de-escalating the situation north of the town, where clashes between Turkish-led forces and SDF units in some cases backed by the Syrian Army.
However, it seems that the SDF leaders have once again demonstrated that they are more interested in keeping their fleeting influence than in stability in the area.
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Anyone remember the line from the film Forest Gump: ‘Stupid is as stupid does’? Well, now we have, each and every passing day, the bastard children of our violent empire. Yes, violence has always been with us, this the frailty and flaw of humanity. One would think that as more (supposedly) ‘evolved’ a culture becomes, the less inclined it is to choose violence as a meaningful expression of distaste or disagreement. No siree bob! Amerika in this the 21st Century is more and more violent.
Think about this when you hear of crazed individuals blowing away groups of people, or a professional football player ‘losing it’ and crashing a helmet on the bare head of the opposing quarterback at the end of his team’s winning game. Recently, the fifteen year old boy shooter at the California grade school and the man child football player are but symptoms of just how violent our Amerikan empire has become. Most of the apathetic public have never been too concerned for what their government has done and is doing to the people of other nations. Go back to the disgraceful and immoral (so called) Vietnam War, whereupon Uncle Sam interceded in what was in essence a civil war between the Vietnamese people. We bombed the shit out of those people, with Napalm and other incendiary devices that either melted or maimed for life hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese. Let us not forget the 50,000 US servicemen who came home, like Vito P. and Tommy l. from my neighborhood, in wooden boxes, and the tens of thousands of their ‘brothers in arms’ who lost arms, legs, eyes and in many cases their minds for life! Many great directors like Oliver Stone, Francis Ford Coppola, Michael Cimino and Stanley Kubrick captured the sad reality of that Phony War.
Throughout the 1970s, 80s and 90s, and finally right into this new century, this Amerikan empire has trampled on the bodies of so many civilians worldwide, all in the name of ‘Restoring Democracy’. Sadly, where is that democracy right here at home? The super rich, whether private or corporate, have the money to place the candidates they purchase on Column A or Column B of this Two Party/One Party scam. The only democracy they allow is to let the suckers… sorry, the voters, to make the final choice… Sometimes. I say sometimes because in 2000 and even 2004 they wouldn’t even allow that to chance. The Fix was in both times. This writer recalls how even the Deep State stooge, pollster Dick Morris, as political analyst for one of the news networks, summed it up best on election night 2004. When he noticed how the exit polls in Ohio were decidedly for John Kerry, he remarked how they were always ‘right on target’. Later in the night, when it became clear that Junior Bush would win Ohio, Morris said in essence that ‘Something smelled!’ No guns were needed at all to maintain the status quo of continuing to keep our republic hostage and undemocratic.
Martin Luther King Jr. said it best: “The greatest purveyor of violence in the world: My own government. I cannot remain silent.” Even in the sports world violence reigns supreme. For over a century baseball was called ‘America’s pastime’. Since our intrusion into Vietnam football became our new ‘Amerikan pastime’. Think about this: Wars are fought for gaining another’s territory… by force. Football’s game plan is to move into and take over the other team’s territory, and finally, to land into what they call ‘The END Zone’. Reminiscent of the anger and rage that permeated in Weimar Germany circa 1930, as the Nazi mindset gained influence amongst rank and file Germans, so one can feel it here and now in Amerika. The Deep State’s scapegoating of foreign nations parallels a similar attitude by many towards foreigners and or non white and non Christian peoples right here at home. For some who think and behave that way we can dismiss them as just being foolish or stupid. Yet, many fine and decent folks in Germany circa 1930 may have said the same thing about those jackasses in brown or black uniforms wearing the swastika. What Forrest Gump should have said is “Evil is as evil does”.
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Philip A Farruggio is a contributing editor for The Greanville Post. He is also frequently posted on Global Research, Nation of Change, World News Trust and Off Guardian sites. He is the son and grandson of Brooklyn NYC longshoremen and a graduate of Brooklyn College, class of 1974. Since the 2000 election debacle Philip has written over 300 columns on the Military Industrial Empire and other facets of life in an upside down America. He is also host of the ‘It’s the Empire… Stupid‘ radio show, co produced by Chuck Gregory. Philip can be reached at [email protected].
Over the past days, southern Idlib, southern Raqqah, northwestern al-Hasakah remained the main points of tensions in Syria.
On November 16, the Syrian Army repelled an attack by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham and its allies on the hill of Khaznah in southeastern Idlib. According to pro-government sources, at least 7 militants were killed in the clashes.
The Syrian Army, backed up by the Russian Aerospace Forces, liberated the Khaznah hill and the village of Luwaybidah on November 14 in an attempt to expand a buffer zone between militants’ positions and nearby civilian areas. Despite this, attacks in the area continued. If government forces want to remove the threat of shelling by militants to nearby villages, they will have to push deeper into southern Idlib.
On November 17, the Russian Aerospace Forces delivered a series of strikes on positions of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham near Maarzita and Misherfah eliminating several strong points.
On November 15, the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces retook the villages of Bir Tmah and Sa’dah from Turkey’s Syrian National Army. On November 15 and 16 clashes were also ongoing north of Tell Tamir.
On November 17, a Russian military convoy deployed in the Tell Tamir area. According to reports, the Russians will establish an observation post in the area as a part of the local de-escalation deal. Under the same deal, SDF units will reportedly withdraw from the town and Turkish-backed militants will abandon several villages north of Tell Tamir.
In the period from November 14 to November 15, Israel, the United States, Germany, Italy and Greece participated in the Blue Flag 2019 military drill at the Uvda Air Force base north of Israel’s Eilat. According to the Israeli Defense Forces, the drill involved 70 aircraft, including F-35I, and approximately 1,000 personnel.
The storyline guiding the exercise was based on two fictional neighboring countries, one blue and the other red. The scenarios included large aircraft formations, including fighter jets, remotely piloted aerial vehicles, transport aircraft and helicopters. The blue force’s mission was protecting Israel’s skies and overcoming the red’s air power and air defenses.
Several pro-Israeli media outlets and military experts reported that the Red’s Patriot surface-to-air missile systems simulated Russia’s S-300 and S-400 air defense systems, which were successfully overcome during the exercise.
The success demonstrated by US-made Patriot missiles in Saudi Arabia, where they defended a half of Saudi oil production from Houthi strikes, is widely-known on the international level. So, there are no reasons to doubt the result of the drill.
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We spent the last week in Occupied Palestinian Territory, commonly referred to as Israel, where we traveled around the country to visit communities in Jerusalem, Jaffa, Bethlehem, the West Bank, the Nagab, and more.
We call Israel Occupied Palestine because it is not just the West Bank and Gaza that are occupied, but all of historic Palestine, the entire Palestinian nation. Palestinian people do not have equal rights and their communities are constantly encroached upon by settlers pushing them into small, crowded areas. The mistreatment of Palestinians happens right before the eyes of the Israeli Jews. If they do not see it, it is either because they do not want to see it or because they are encouraged not to see it. Just as Jim Crow racism was evident to all in the southern states of the US, apartheid in Palestine is obvious.
This visit deepened our support for the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement because we saw modern apartheid, Jim Crow-segregation laws, ongoing land theft, and ethnic cleansing. For example, we were in Jerusalem when a squadron of fighter jets flew over our heads to bomb the open-air prison of Gaza killing more than 30 people. The Israeli people, media and politicians applauded that, displaying a sickness that runs deep in this colonized land founded on theft, terrorism, and violence.
To end the colonization, there is great hope of developing a movement for the creation of One Democratic State (ODS). This is being organized by a large group of Palestinians and Jews as the formation of two separate states is impossible. ODS envisions a universally equal and democratic nation where minority communities are protected and every person can vote. ODS is the first step to the decolonization and healing of Palestine.
Aida Refugee Camp, photo by Margaret Flowers.
Correcting The Record
Palestinians are disenfranchised: Occupied Palestine is called a liberal democracy. In reality, while Palestinians are the majority, most of them can’t vote. Out of a total population of twelve million people, five million Jews can vote and five million Palestinians can’t. The remaining two million Palestinians who live in “The 48,” the land between the West Bank and Gaza, can vote but often boycott elections in protest. The dominant parties all support anti-Palestinian policies.
Image on the right: Sign entering Area A, Israeli Citizens Forbidden.
Palestine has hyper-segregation: Palestine can only be described as a modern apartheid state with updated Jim Crow laws. We drove on Jewish-only roads where the color of a person’s license plate determines if they can use the road. There are military checkpoints along these roads. Palestinians are often forced to take long detours to get around the segregated roads and walls. Many Jews never meet a Palestinian because their lives are so segregated.
Under the 1993 Oslo Accords, Occupied Palestine was divided into Areas A, B and C. We visited Bethlehem, classified as Area A, where a sign upon entry warns it is against the law for Israeli-citizens to enter. In Area A, the Palestinian Authority (PA) serves as police and can arrest Israeli-Jews and turn them over to Israeli-police. In Area B, both the PA and Israeli-police have power. And, in Area C, the majority of the country, only the Israeli-police have authority.
Land Theft Against Palestinians Continues: People are often told that no one lived here before 1948 when the occupation of the area by Jewish settlers began. This massive land theft continues today. Although the German Holocaust is used to justify this, the Zionist project began well before then.
Image below: Jaffa, above as depicted by Gutman and below as the crowded Arab city that actually existed. Photo by Margaret Flowers.
This false picture is depicted by the well-known Zionist artist Nahum Gutman. His famous painting of the major Arab city of Jaffa showed only sand dunes and a few buildings where hundreds of houses stood. Today Sir Charles Clore Park covers the remains of this section of the city. Similar tactics have hidden thousands of Palestinian villages that existed before “The Nakba” in 1948.
Forests planted by the Jewish National Fund (JNF), founded in 1901, are still being used to hide the sites of Palestinian villages. We visited the village of Al-Araqib, which has been destroyed 167 times. All that remains is a cemetery built in 1914 and a few residents who hold space under a tree near the cemetery in fear of losing access to it. In Canada, there is a campaign to end the non-profit status of the JNF.
Jaffa was an important Arab port city with a population of 90,000 before 1948 that served as an entry point into Jerusalem and beyond. The first Jewish neighborhoods were built there in the late 19th Century. Tel Aviv, the first Jewish-governed city, began in the early 20th century as a suburb of Jaffa. More than ninety-five percent of the population of Jaffa was expelled by Zionist militias in 1948 and beyond. The remaining residents were confined to an area under guard and forced to operate the port. Between 1947 and 1949, the Nakba terrorized Palestinians and forced 800,000 to flee their homes. The Absentee Property Law was used to seize the homes of those who fled.
Zionist settlers continue encroaching on land in Palestinian neighborhoods. In the historic walled city of Old Jerusalem, they come up from underground tunnels to seize homes in the Palestinian quadrant and put them under armed guards. In Palestinian East Jerusalem, Zionists continue to confiscate houses and land, pushing Palestinians to the other side of the segregation wall where they are crowded into areas without city services. Similar forced urbanization and crowding is occurring throughout Palestine. Gaza is perhaps the most severe example of this. Over the last 50 years, the Israeli government has transferred between 600,000 and 750,000 settlers to the West Bank and East Jerusalem in at least 160 settlements and outposts.
In the West Bank, Jerusalem, and Gaza, this land annexation has made a two-state solution physically impossible. The combination of hundreds of thousands of settlers, Jewish-only roads plus the Expansion (or Annexation) Wall that divides Palestinian communities, and more than 200 checkpoints have severely restricted movement for Palestinians and seized 78% of their country.
A banner hanging in Mea Shearim, a Jewish neighborhood in Jerusalem.
Judaism is not Zionism: In the 1880s, Palestinian Jews amounted to three percent of the total population. They were apolitical and did not aspire to build a Jewish state. We met with Rabbi Meir Hirsch in the Mea Sharim neighborhood of Jerusalem. This tightly-knit ultra-Orthodox Jewish neighborhood has signs posted on the walls that say: ‘A Jew Not a Zionist,’ ‘Zionism is Dying’ and ‘Arabs are Good.’
Hirsch’s family came to Palestine 150 years ago from Russia. His people came to better worship God, not to take land from Palestinians. Hirsch told us about Jacob Israël de Haan, a Dutch-Jew who worked to prevent the 1917 Balfour Declaration and almost succeeded. The Balfour Declaration, issued by the British government, announced support for the establishment of a “national home for the Jewish people” in Palestine. De Haan was assassinated in Jerusalem by the Jewish paramilitary organization Haganah for his anti-Zionist political activities. His murder led to the Neturei Karta movement, which resists Zionism to this day.
Hirsch views Zionism as contradictory to the Jewish religion. His community believes the Torah does not allow Jewish sovereignty of any kind over the Holy Land and those who want to live there must have the approval of the native Palestinian people. Hirsch says that ultra-Orthodox Jews “want to see the end of the Zionist tragedy and the restoration of peace to the Middle East.” His views counter those who claim criticism of Israel is anti-Semitic as, he says, “Judaism and Zionism are as foreign to each other as day and night, good and evil.”
One Democratic State
There is a positive path to resolving the conflict between Jews and Palestinians. The path comes from the movement for One Democratic State, which envisions a genuinely just and workable political agreement developed by Palestinians and Jews together.
There has been a marked decline in support for a two-state solution. A poll conducted by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research from September 11-14, 2019 found only 42% of Palestinians now support the two-state solution. When President Netanyahu entered office a decade ago, that figure was 70%. Similarly, fewer than half of the Jews now support a two-state solution. Further, 63% of Palestinians believe a two-state solution is no longer practical or feasible due to the expansion of the settlements and 83% support the local and international boycott (BDS) movement against Israel.
We met separately with two leaders of this campaign, Awad Abdelfattah, a founder of the Arab Balad Party, and Ilan Pappe, an Israeli historian. Along with many others in the ODS campaign, they seek a multicultural and constitutional democracy in which all people enjoy a common citizenship, a common parliament, and equal civil rights, with constitutional protection granted to national, ethnic and religious views. ODS means equal rights for Palestinians and protection of the rights of Jews.
Their vision includes making the Palestinian ‘right of return’ a reality. Palestinian homes and communities were demolished years ago. According to the Palestinian geographer Salman Abu-Sitta, 85% of Palestinian lands taken in 1948 are still available for resettlement. While more than 530 villages, towns, and urban areas were systematically demolished, their agricultural lands still exist. Other lands lie under public parks and forests. Refugees could actually return, if not to their former homes, at least to the parts of the country where they originated. Palestinian planners could design modern communities for refugees and their descendants in the areas they left with new communities and economic infrastructure that is integrated with other segments of the society. Land redistribution, financial compensation, and equal access to education, training and the economy would enable refugees, like other Palestinians, to achieve economic parity with Jews within a fairly short time.
For Jews, their security will increase by providing constitutional protection of their collective rights. While structures of privilege and domination would be dismantled, the “collective rights” of groups to maintain their community in the framework of a multi-cultural democracy (e.g., communities of ethnic Russians, African asylum-seekers, foreign workers, anti-Zionist ultra-orthodox Jews, and others) give Jews the collective security they need.
ODS views the establishment of a just and working state as requiring: decolonization, restoration, and reconciliation. Decolonization includes ending economic, cultural, political, and legal domination. This means building an egalitarian, inclusive and sustainable society that restores the rights, properties (actual or through compensation), identities and social position of those expelled, excluded and oppressed. This is followed by reconciliation to confront the still-open wounds of the Nakba and the Occupation, and the suffering they have caused.
While the view may sound Utopian to some, in fact, it is the practical path out of the current disaster of Occupied Palestine. Palestine is already one nation. The issue is whether it will be a democratic state with equal rights for all citizens that dismantles the apartheid system or whether it will remain an undemocratic and unequal settler-colonial nation.
We titled this article “BDS to ODS” because while this solution must come from the Palestinian people, along with Jews, people in the United States and throughout the world who support peace and justice have an important role to play through the growing BDS campaign to pressure Israel into accepting ODS. This struggle will be won through solidarity between popular movements inside and outside Occupied Palestine.
We encourage you to visit Occupied Palestine to see and learn for yourself. If you visit Jerusalem, be sure to take the tour offered by Grassroots Jerusalem. They also offer a guide to Palestinian places to stay, shop and eat. Zochrot is an organization that also offers tours and resources about the Nakba. If you are interested in direct service, you can volunteer to assist with the olive harvest or volunteer in places such as the Aida Refugee Camp. They need all sorts of volunteers, especially those who can provide instruction to children in music and arts. Visit Volunteer Palestine to see the many opportunities available.
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Margaret Flowers and Kevin Zeese co-direct Popular Resistance where this article was originally published.
One of Canada’s top child advocacy groups, Children First Canada, has released a new poll on Canadian’s attitudes on the wellbeing of our country’s kids. The poll is being released today on the occasion of National Child Day and the 30th Anniversary of the UN Convention of the Rights of the Child.
According to the new poll, 71% believe Canada ranks in the top 10 compared to other wealthy nations, with 36% believing it ranks in the top 5. In fact, Canada ranks 25th overall.
Once informed of Canada’s actual rank, nine in ten respondents said Canada should put a high priority on improving children’s well-being, with 4 in 10 believing it should be a very high priority.
The number of Canadians prioritizing children’s well-being has increased since the poll was last conducted in 2016. Then, 86% said it was a high priority (compared to 91% today) and 24% said it was a very high priority (increasing 19 points to 43% in 2019).
“It’s discouraging to know there is so much work that needs to be done to improve the health and wellbeing of Canada’s children, but Canadians aren’t aware of the problem. What this poll shows us is that when Canadians become aware of the state of our children, they strongly support urgent action to improve our kids’ wellbeing,” Says Sara Austin, Founder and CEO of Children First Canada.
“As Canadians celebrate National Child Day, the federal cabinet is being sworn into office. Children First Canada urges the Prime Minister and his Cabinet to put our children at the top of the agenda, and to swiftly take action on the long-standing recommendations to appoint an independent Commission for Children and Youth,” adds Austin.
Today has additional significance for Austin because it is the 30th anniversary of the UN Convention of the Rights of the Child and National Child Day. In the early 2000s, the child advocate lobbied the United Nations to pass the “Third Optional Protocol,” which allows children to hold their governments accountable for the protection of their rights. The protocol was passed in 2011, but has yet to be ratified by Canada.
As part of its unveiling of today’s report, Children First Canada is also holding an event in Ottawa to bring together children and youth to learn about their rights and the Canadian Children’s Charter. The event will also assemble representatives from federal government and Canada’s leading charities, hospitals, research institutes and major corporations to discuss current challenges and create a plan of action.
Satellite events will also take place across the country, bringing together youth and adult leaders to be part of a national conversation on how to make Canada the best place in the world for kids to grow up.
“Children have a right to be at the table when decisions are being made that impact their future. They have a voice and it needs to be heard,” adds Austin.
Top issues affecting children as identified by poll respondents:
1. mental health/depression/anxiety – mentioned by 48% of respondents
2. Bullying/safety online – mentioned by 34% of respondents
3. Health/fitness/obesity/nutrition: mentioned by 32% of respondents
4. Schools/education: mentioned by 31% of respondents
5. Poverty/poor families: mentioned by 31% of respondents
6. Domestic violence/child abuse and post-secondary education: both cited by 23% of respondents
“It’s heartening to hear that Canadians are concerned about the issues that matter most to our children,” say Austin. The top priorities identified in the poll are well aligned with the research released earlier this by Children First Canada in the Raising Canada report on the top 10 threats to Canada’s kids.
Other findings:
Only 54% believe that young Canadians get the support they need to achieve their full potential (only 7% stating they totally agree)
92% believe that investing in children now saves additional spending in the future
59% believe Canada is not doing its best for poor people
The study was conducted by Ipsos on behalf of Children First Canada and two of its partners: Children’s Healthcare Canada and the IWK Health Centre.
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Last month a fire roared through the refugee camp on the Greek island of Samos, a few miles from the coast of Turkey. The immediate cause of the fire is unclear, but there were clashes between Afghan and Syrian refugees in the nearby town of Vathy earlier in the evening, which some witnesses said continued in the camp. There were chaotic scenes during the fire, and almost the entire camp was evacuated, according to Doctors Without Borders (MSF) Field Coordinator Eirini Papanastasiou.
“The shelters are totally burnt down,” she told Newsweek. “They’re mainly made out of tents and plywood and plastic sheeting and all of this has burned down.”
The camp, originally constructed as an army base meant to house 650 individuals, now hosts close to 6,000 refugees. Roughly 3,000 reside in the camp itself, while the remainder scramble to find a spot to pitch their makeshift tents on an adjacent hillside, which is known as the Jungle. Because of the extreme overcrowding, the shelters are built close to each other, and it does not take much for a fire to spread. While no serious injuries were reported, the blaze did destroy the shelters of 700 people residing in the Jungle.
Samos is one of a handful of Greek islands where migrants arrive seeking refuge in Europe, fleeing war, hunger, torture and poverty. At the height of the refugee crisis in 2015 and 2016, over a million asylum seekers used this route to make their way to Germany and other countries. In March of 2016, however, the European Union and Turkey, in an attempt to stem the flow of refugees, signed an agreement that would allow the EU to transfer Syrian refugees on the Greek islands back to Turkey. The deal has been criticized on many points, including the fact that it is based on the premise that Turkey is a safe country for refugees. One of the provisions of the deal was that refugees would be detained on the Greek islands until their asylum cases were heard, after which those who were refused asylum would be deported. However, the Greek asylum service was overwhelmed by the number of asylum applicants, and refugees have been staying on the islands—sometimes for two or three years—waiting to have their future decided. As a consequence, the Aegean islands in practice have become detention centers.
The conditions on Samos—as well as the other islands—are deplorable.
“C’est l’enfer,” said Jean, a forty-year-old refugee from the Democratic Republic of Congo told me a week after he arrived on Samos with his six-year-old daughter. It is hell.
Aref Kassem, his wife Fariba and three of their children, refugees from Afghanistan, are lucky because they live in the camp itself, rather than the Jungle. They stay in a container with fifteen other families. Their own space is two meters by two meters, separated from those of the others by curtains. The container has four toilets and one shower, used not only by the residents of the container, but by the refugees living in the Jungle, where there are no toilet facilities at all.
“It is not a place for human beings,” said Aref.
The food and water is a particular issue of contention for many of the refugees. Everyone gets 1.5 liters of water every day, which is not nearly sufficient for the hot days of summer. The food is generally of poor quality, and much of it is expired.
“We get potatoes, rice, beans and sometimes chicken for lunch. But no vegetables. I have been here one year and have never seen a vegetable,” said Farzaad, a twenty-two-year-old from Afghanistan.
To obtain breakfast, which consists of a small pastry and a juice box, residents must rise at 2 am and wait in line for six hours. This process is repeated for lunch and dinner. It is so arduous that many of the residents buy their own food in the town.
Violence is a consequence of the extreme overcrowding and the deplorable conditions. The fighting on the evening of the fire resulted in stab wounds. Clashes are especially common in the food line.
“There is always fighting in the line. Every day. Every breakfast. Every lunch. Every dinner. Women against women. I was in front of you. I was here first,” said Farzaad. “Every day. Sometimes with knifes. I saw one guy stab another.”
The camp and the Jungle are both filthy, and there are snakes, scorpions, rats and bedbugs.
“Some of the refugees bring stray cats to the camp in the hopes they will chase away the rats,” said Abdul, a refugee from Yemen. “But the rats are so big that the cats are afraid of them.”
The access to medical care in the camp is almost non-existent, as there is only one doctor for the 6,000 refugees. Residents often spend the night on the ground in front of the doctor’s office, hoping to be seen the next day. More often than not, they are turned away.
“The worst thing about being in the camp is the waiting,” said Farzaad. “All you do is wait. For food, for the doctor, for your interview.”
Farzaad is speaking about an interview with the Greek asylum office, where the fate of the refugees is decided. A survey recently administered by NGO’s on the island revealed that over 40% of the respondents have their first interview with the asylum office in 2021 or later.
The situation has become untenable for those affected directly by the fire. Sandrine Vollebregt, a doctor working for a medical NGO on Samos, described the situation.
“When you walk around town, you see many women and children lying on the street. The playgrounds are full of people,” she said. “Many people lost their medication. We saw babies that couldn’t stop crying after the fire. Some mothers couldn’t produce breast milk anymore.”
The Greek government has attempted to alleviate the situation by transferring 700 asylum seekers from Samos to the mainland, with plans to move another 300. While this will help in the immediate aftermath of the fire, a real solution will not be found until Europe changes its policies vis-à-vis the refugees and discontinues its practice of forcing those fleeing the horrors of war and torture to suffer in these camps in abominable conditions.
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It’s no secret that Donald Trump is one of the most aggressive arms salesmen in history. How do we know? Because he tells us so at every conceivable opportunity. It started with his much exaggerated “$110 billion arms deal” with Saudi Arabia, announced on his first foreign trip as president. It continued with his White House photo op with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in which he brandished a map with a state-by-state rundown of American jobs supposedly tied to arms sales to the kingdom. And it’s never ended. In these years in office, in fact, the president has been a staunch advocate for his good friends at Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, and General Dynamics — the main corporate beneficiaries of the U.S.-Saudi arms trade (unlike the thousands of American soldiers the president recently sent into that country’s desert landscapes to defend its oil facilities).
All the American arms sales to the Middle East have had a severe and lasting set of consequences in the region in, as a start, the brutal Saudi/United Arab Emirates war in Yemen, which has killed thousands of civilians via air strikes using U.S. weaponry and pushed millions of Yemenis to the brink of famine. And don’t forget the recent Turkish invasion of Syria in which both the Turkish forces and the Kurdish-led militias they attacked relied heavily on U.S.-supplied weaponry.
Donald Trump has made it abundantly clear that he cares far more about making deals for that weaponry than who uses any of it against whom. It’s important to note, however, that, historically speaking, he’s been anything but unique in his obsession with promoting such weapons exports (though he is uniquely loud about doing so).
Despite its supposedly strained relationship with the Saudi regime, the Obama administration, for example, still managed to offer the royals of that kingdom a record $136 billion in U.S. weapons between 2009 and 2017. Not all of those offers resulted in final sales, but striking numbers did. Items sold included Boeing F-15 combat aircraft and Apache attack helicopters, General Dynamics M-1 tanks, Raytheon precision-guided bombs, and Lockheed Martin bombs, combat ships, and missile defense systems. Many of those weapons have since been put to use in the war in Yemen.
To its credit, the Obama administration did at least have an internal debate on the wisdom of continuing such a trade. In December 2016, late in his second term, the president finally did suspend the sale of precision-guided bombs to the Royal Saudi Air Force due to a mounting toll of Yemeni civilian deaths in U.S.-supplied Saudi air strikes. This was, however, truly late in the game, given that the Saudi regime first intervened in Yemen in March 2015 and the slaughter of civilians began soon after that.
By then, of course, Washington’s dominance of the Mideast arms trade was taken for granted, despite an occasional large British or French deal like the scandal-plagued Al Yamamah sale of fighter planes and other equipment to the Saudis, the largest arms deal in the history of the United Kingdom. According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, from 2014 to 2018 the United States accounted for more than 54% of known arms deliveries to the Middle East. Russia lagged far behind with a 9.5% share of the trade, followed by France (8.6%), England (7.2%), and Germany (4.6%). China, often cited as a possible substitute supplier, should the U.S. ever decide to stop arming repressive regimes like Saudi Arabia, came in at less than 1%.
The U.S. government’s stated rationales for pouring arms into that ever-more-embattled region include: building partnerships with countries theoretically willing to fight alongside U.S. forces in a crisis; swapping arms for access to military bases in Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, and other Persian Gulf states; creating “stability” by building up allied militaries to be stronger than those of potential adversaries like Iran; and generating revenue for U.S. weapons contractors, as well as jobs for American workers. Of course, such sales have indeed benefited those contractors and secured access to bases in the region, but when it comes to promoting stability and security, historically it’s been another story entirely.
The Nixon Doctrine and the Initial Surge in Mideast Arms Sales
Washington’s role as the Middle East’s top arms supplier has its roots in remarks made by Richard Nixon half a century ago on the island of Guam. It was the Vietnam War era and the president was on his way to South Vietnam. Casualties there were mounting rapidly with no clear end to the conflict in sight. During that stopover in Guam, Nixon assured reporters accompanying him that it was high time to end the practice of sending large numbers of U.S troops to overseas battlefields. To “avoid another war like Vietnam anywhere in the world,” he was instead putting a new policy in place, later described by a Pentagon official as “sending arms instead of sending troops.”
The core of what came to be known as the Nixon Doctrine was the arming of regional surrogates, countries with sympathetic rulers or governments that could promote U.S. interests without major contingents of the American military being on hand. Of such potential surrogates at that moment, the most important was the Shah of Iran, with whom a CIA-British intelligence coup replaced a civilian government back in 1953 and who proved to have an insatiable appetite for top-of-the-line U.S. weaponry.
The Shah’s idea of a good time was curling up with the latest copy of Aviation Week and Space Technology and perusing glossy photos of combat planes. Egged on by the Nixon administration, his was the first and only country to buy the costly Grumman F-14 combat aircraft at a time when that company desperately needed foreign sales to bolster the program. And the Shah put his U.S.-supplied weapons to use, too, helping, for instance, to put down an anti-government uprising in nearby Oman (a short skip across the Persian Gulf), while repressing his own population at the same time.
In the Nixon years, Saudi Arabia, too, became a major weapons client of Washington, not so much because it feared its regional neighbors then, but because it had seemingly limitless oil funds to subsidize U.S. weapons makers at a time when the Pentagon budget was beginning to be reduced. In addition, Saudi sales helped recoup some of the revenue streaming out of the U.S. to pay for higher energy prices exacted by the newly formed OPEC oil cartel. It was a process then quaintly known as “recycling petrodollars.”
The Carter Years and the Quest for Restraint
The freewheeling arms trade of the Nixon years eventually prompted a backlash. In 1976, for the first (and last) time, a presidential candidate — Jimmy Carter — made reining in the arms trade a central theme of his 1976 campaign for the White House. He called for imposing greater human-rights scrutiny on arms exports, reducing the total volume of arms transfers, and initiating talks with the Soviet Union on curbing sales to regions of tension like the Middle East.
Meanwhile, members of Congress, led by Democratic Senators Gaylord Nelson and Hubert Humphrey, felt that it was long past time for Capitol Hill to have a role in decision-making when it came to weapons sales. Too often Congressional representatives found out about major deals only by reading news reports in the papers long after such matters had been settled. Among the major concerns driving their actions: the Nixon-era surge of arms sales to Saudi Arabia, then still an avowed adversary of Israel; the use of U.S.-supplied weapons by both sides in the Greek-Turkish conflict over the island of Cyprus; and covert sales to extremist right-wing forces in southern Africa, notably the South African-backed Union for the Total Independence of Angola. The answer was the passage of the Arms Export Control Act of 1978, which required that Congress be notified of any major sales in advance and asserted that it had the power to veto any of them viewed as dangerous or unnecessary.
As it happened, though, neither President Carter’s initiative nor the new legislation put a significant dent in such arms trafficking. In the end, for instance, Carter decided to exempt the Shah’s Iran from serious human-rights strictures and his hardline national security advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski, undercut those talks with the Soviet Union on reducing arms sales.
Carter also wanted to get the new Rapid Deployment Force (RDF) he established — which eventually morphed into the U.S. Central Command — access to military bases in the Persian Gulf region and was willing to use arms deals to do so. The RDF was to be the centerpiece of the Carter Doctrine, a response to the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the fall of the Shah of Iran. As the president made clear in his 1980 State of the Union address: “An attempt by any outside forces to gain control of the Persian Gulf region will be regarded as an assault on the vital interests of the United States. It will be repelled by use of any means necessary, including the use of force.” Selling arms in the region would prove a central pillar of his new doctrine.
Meanwhile, most major sales continued to sail through Congress with barely a discouraging word.
Who Armed Saddam Hussein?
While the volume of those arms sales didn’t spike dramatically under President Ronald Reagan, his determination to weaponize anti-communist “freedom fighters” from Afghanistan to Nicaragua sparked the Iran-Contra scandal. At its heart lay a bizarre and elaborate covert effort led by National Security Council staff member Oliver North and a band of shadowy middlemen to supply U.S. weapons to the hostile regime of Ayatollah Khomeini in Iran. The hope was to gain Tehran’s help in freeing U.S. hostages in Lebanon. North and company then used the proceeds from those sales to arm anti-government Contra rebels in Nicaragua in violation of an explicit Congressional ban on such aid.
Worse yet, the Reagan administration transferred arms and provided training to extremist mujahedeen factions in Afghanistan, acts which would, in the end, help arm groups and individuals that later formed al-Qaeda (and similar groups). That would, of course, prove a colossal example of the kind of blowback that unrestricted arms trading too often generates.
Even as the exposure of North’s operation highlighted U.S. arms transfers to Iran, the Reagan administration and the following one of President George H.W. Bush would directly and indirectly supply nearly half a billion dollars worth of arms and arms-making technology to Iran’s sworn enemy, Iraqi autocrat Saddam Hussein. Those arms would bolster Saddam’sregime both in its war with Iran in the 1980s and in its 1991 invasion of Kuwait that led to Washington’s first Gulf War. The U.S. was admittedly hardly alone in fueling the buildup of the Iraqi military. All five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council (the U.S., the Soviet Union, France, the United Kingdom, and China) provided weapons or weapons technology to that country in the run-up to its intervention in Kuwait.
The embarrassment and public criticism generated by the revelation that the U.S. and other major suppliers had helped arm the Iraqi military created a new opening for restraint. Leaders in the U.S., Great Britain, and other arms-trading nations pledged to do better in the future by increasing information about and scrutiny of their sales to the region. This resulted in two main initiatives: the United Nations arms trade register, where member states were urged to voluntarily report their arms imports and exports, and talks among those five Security Council members (the largest suppliers of weapons to the Middle East) on limiting arms sales to the region.
However, the P-5 talks, as they were called, quickly fell apart when China decided to sell a medium-range missile system to Saudi Arabia and President Bill Clinton’s administration began making new regional weapons deals at a pace of more than $1 billion per month while negotiations were underway. The other suppliers concluded that the Clinton arms surge violated the spirit of the talks, which soon collapsed, leading in the presidency of George W. Bush to a whole new Iraqi debacle.
The most important series of arms deals during the George W. Bush years involved the training and equipping of the Iraqi military in the wake of the invasion of Iraq and the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. But $25 billion in U.S. arms and training was not enough to create a force capable of defeating the modestly armed militants of ISIS, when they swept into northern Iraq in 2014 and captured large swaths of territory and major cities, including Mosul. Iraqi security forces, short on food and equipment due to corruption and incompetence, were also short on morale, and in some cases virtually abandoned their posts (and U.S. weaponry) in the face of those ISIS attacks.
The Addiction Continues
Donald Trump has carried on the practice of offering weaponry in quantity to allies in the Middle East, especially the Saudis, though his major rationale for the deals is to generate domestic jobs and revenues for the major weapons contractors. In fact, investing money and effort in almost anything else, from infrastructure to renewable energy technologies, would produce more jobs in the U.S. No matter though, the beat just goes on.
One notable development of the Trump years has been a revived Congressional interest in curbing weapons sales, with a particular focus on ending support for the Saudi-led war in Yemen. (Watching Turkish and Kurdish forces face off, each armed in a major way by the U.S., should certainly add to that desire.) Under the leadership of Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT), Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT), Senator Mike Lee (R-UT), Representative Ro Khanna (D-CA), and Representative Ted Lieu (D-CA), Congress has voted to block bomb sales and other forms of military support for Saudi Arabia, only to have their efforts vetoed by President Trump, that country’s main protector in Washington. Still, congressional action on Saudi sales has been unprecedented in its persistence and scope. It may yet prevail, if a Democrat wins the presidency in 2020. After all, every one of the major presidential contenders has pledged to end arms sales that support the Saudi war effort in Yemen.
Such deals with Saudi Arabia and other Mideast states may be hugely popular with the companies that profit from the trade, but the vast majority of Americans oppose runaway arms trading on the sensible grounds that it makes the world less safe. The question now is: Will Congress play a greater role in attempting to block such weapons deals with the Saudis and human-rights abusers or will America’s weapons-sales addiction and its monopoly position in the Middle Eastern arms trade simply continue, setting the stage for future disasters of every sort?
Three Taliban commanders have been released today, on Tuesday, by the Afghan government as part of a prisoner swap involving two Western hostages. Reportedly, the militant leaders, including senior Taliban leader Anas Haqqani, had landed in Qatar, which hosts the Taliban political office.
In exchange, two university professors identified as US citizen Kevin King and Australian Timothy Weeks were reportedly released later on Tuesday. The pair had been held by the Taliban for three years.
“The two professors are safely freed and are being taken care of now,” an Afghan official told [1] Reuters news agency.
Kevin King and Timothy Weeks were kidnapped in August 2016 from outside the American University of Afghanistan in Kabul where both worked as professors. They appeared in a hostage video a year later looking disheveled and pleading with their governments to secure their release.
The developments come after Afghan President Ashraf Ghani announced a week ago that Haqqani, whose elder brother is the deputy Taliban leader and head of the Haqqani Network, a Taliban affiliate, and the two other commanders would be freed.
Renewed efforts to end the country’s 18-year conflict have been stepped up recently, with US special representative for Afghanistan Zalmay Khalilzad visiting Pakistan last month to meet the Taliban’s top negotiator, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, a close aide to the Taliban’s deceased leader Mullah Omar.
Baradar was released from captivity [2] in October last year by Pakistan’s intelligence agencies and was allowed to join his family in Afghanistan. He was captured in a joint US-Pakistan intelligence-based operation in the southern port city of Karachi in 2010.
His release was a longstanding demand of the US-backed Kabul government because he is regarded as a comparatively moderate Taliban leader who could play a positive role in the peace process between the Afghan government and the Taliban.
Alongside the issues of Taliban providing guarantees that it would not allow Afghan soil to be used by transnational terrorists, al-Qaeda and the Islamic State Khorasan, the Taliban holding direct negotiations with the US-backed Afghan government – which the Taliban regards as an American stooge and hence refuse to recognize – a permanent ceasefire and the formation of a mutually acceptable interim government, a few other minor issues, such as the exchange and release of prisoners, removing travel restrictions on the Taliban leadership and unfreezing its bank accounts were on the agenda of the peace talks, before Donald Trump abruptly ended the negotiations in September.
In announcing the cancellation of the peace talks with the Taliban in September, Trump cited a Taliban attack in Kabul in which 12 people, including a US soldier, were killed, though that was only an ostensible excuse because the death toll of American soldiers in Afghanistan already stood at 2,372 in July 2018.
Fact of the matter is that the biggest stumbling block in the peace talks has been the American deep state. The bureaucracy of the Pentagon, the State Department and their mouthpiece, the mainstream media, tried their best to thwart the nuclear negotiations with North Korea and Trump’s Syria withdrawal last year, and their subversive antics are hampering the Afghanistan drawdown too.
Regarding the presence of transnational terrorist networks on the Afghan soil, the al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden has already been killed in a May 2011 raid of the US Navy Seals in the Abbottabad compound in Pakistan and its second-in-command Ayman al-Zawahiri is on the run. Besides, the number of al-Qaeda’s Arab militants in the Af-Pak region does not exceed more than a few hundred and are hence inconsequential.
Though the homegrown insurgent movements comprising ethnic Pashtun militants, such as the Taliban and its breakaway factions, including the Islamic State Khorasan, are a much larger menace. According to a recent report by the US Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR), the US-backed Afghan government controls only half of Afghanistan’s territory.
It’s worth noting, however, that SIGAR is a US-based governmental agency that often inflates figures. Factually, the government’s writ does not extend beyond a third of Afghanistan. In many cases, the Afghan government controls district centers of provinces and outlying rural areas are either controlled by the Taliban or are contested.
The so-called “Khorasan Province” of the Islamic State in the Af-Pak region is nothing more than a coalition of several breakaway factions of the Taliban and a few other inconsequential local militant outfits that have pledged allegiance to the Islamic State’s late chief Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in order to enhance their prestige, and draw funds and followers, but which doesn’t have any organizational and operational association with the Islamic State proper in Syria and Iraq.
The total strength of the Islamic State-Khorasan is estimated to be between 3,000 to 5,000 fighters. By comparison, the strength of the Taliban is estimated to be between 60,000 to 80,000 militants. The Islamic State-Khorasan was formed as a merger between several breakaway factions of the Afghan and Pakistani Taliban in early 2015. Later, the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU), a Pakistani terrorist group Jundullah and Chinese Uyghur militants pledged allegiance to it.
In 2017, the Islamic State-Khorasan split into two factions. One faction, based in Afghanistan’s eastern Nangarhar province, is led by a Pakistani militant commander Aslam Farooqi, and the other faction, based in the northern provinces of Afghanistan, is led by a former Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) commander Moawiya. The latter faction also includes Uzbek, Tajik, Uyghur and Baloch militants.
If we take a cursory look at the insurgency in Afghanistan, the Bush administration toppled the Taliban regime with the help of the Northern Alliance in October 2001 in the aftermath of the 9/11 terror attack. Since the beginning, however, Afghanistan was an area of lesser priority for the Bush administration.
The number of US troops stationed in Afghanistan did not exceed beyond 30,000 during George Bush’s tenure as president, and soon after occupying Afghanistan, Washington invaded Iraq in March 2003 and American resources and focus shifted to Iraq.
It was the Obama administration that made the Afghanistan conflict the bedrock of its foreign policy in 2009 along with fulfilling then-President Obama’s electoral pledge of withdrawing American forces from Iraq in December 2011. At the height of the surge of the US troops in Afghanistan in 2010, the American troops numbered around 100,000, with an additional 40,000 troops from the rest of the international coalition, but they still could not manage to have a lasting effect on the relentless Taliban insurgency.
The Taliban are known to be diehard fighters who are adept at hit-and-run guerrilla tactics and have a much better understanding of the Afghan territory compared to foreigners. Even by their standards, however, the Taliban insurgency seems to be on steroids during the last several years.
The Taliban have managed to overrun and hold vast swathes of territory not only in the traditional Pashtun heartland of southern Afghanistan, such as Helmand, but have also made significant inroads into the northern provinces of Afghanistan which are the traditional strongholds of the Northern Alliance comprising the Tajik and Uzbek ethnic groups.
In October 2016, for instance, the Taliban mounted brazen attacks on the Gormach district of northwestern Faryab province, the Tirankot district of Uruzgan province and briefly captured [3] the district-center of the northern Kunduz province, before they were repelled with the help of the US air power.
The main reason of the surge in the Taliban attacks during the last several years appears to be the drawdown of the American troops which number only 14,000, and the number has reportedly been further reduced by several thousand even after the cancellation of the peace talks with the Taliban in September, indicating impending resumption of the dialogue process as is obvious from the release of Kevin King and Timothy Weeks on Tuesday.
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Nauman Sadiq is an Islamabad-based attorney, columnist and geopolitical analyst focused on the politics of Af-Pak and Middle East regions, neocolonialism and petro-imperialism. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.
Following the invitation on October 1, 2019 to the European Parliament of Dr Marc Arazi by MEPs Philippe Lamberts, Michèle Rivasi and Klaus Buchner of the Greens/EFA, and the alert issued to parliamentarians and organisations gathered at this event on the Phonegate health and industrial scandal, a written question was tabled by Michèle Rivasi on October 9, 2019 before the European Commission.
We would like to thank her for her support and mobilisation at European level to protect the health of hundreds of millions of mobile phone users.
At the end of 2016, Europe had 745 million mobile subscriptions. What corrective actions will manufacturers and public authorities in the various Member States take to inform their customers and the public? Will existing models be “updated”, with software that will limit their influence? Which ones will be withdrawn from the market? MEP Michèle Rivasi is asking for urgent and precise answers from the European Commission in the management of this new health crisis affecting consumer protection.
Read the press release published by the MEP on 29 October 2019
Press release
Brussels, 29th October 2019
MEP Michele Rivasi
Overexposure of the public to mobile phone radiation: What is Europe doing?
Do you keep your mobile phone with you, in the pocket of a shirt? Or glued to your ear to make a phone call? When worn close to the body, most mobile phones placed on the market before 2016 emit so much radiation that they exceed exposure limits. These are the official conclusions of a set of radiation measures made in France since 2012, which have remained largely confidential so far. In its opinion published on 21 October 2019, the Agence française de sécurité sanitaire de l’alimentation, de l’environnement et du travail (ANSES) recommends that measures be taken to ensure that users are no longer exposed to high levels when phones are worn close to the body. The alert came from France but the issue is also European, says MEP Michèle Rivasi, who has been following the impact of electromagnetic waves on life for more than 20 years.
“We knew that mobile phones “in motion” radiated more than the same phones used “motionless”. It is now a fact that most mobile phones worn against the skin are more dangerous than when held away from the body, used with an earpiece or on loudspeaker mode.
SAR, or Specific Absorption Rate, is the indicator used to estimate the body’s exposure to radiation from a mobile phone. At the head or trunk level, the regulatory SAR limit value in France and Europe is set at 2 W/kg, the threshold above which biological effects have been observed.
Measures that are more in line with actual use conclude that the standards have been exceeded
Previously, SAR measurements were made at an average distance of 15 mm from the body. From now on, since 2016, the European RED directive requires the SAR to be measured by placing the mobile phone at a maximum distance of 5 mm from the skin. The results under these realistic conditions are then significantly different. Phones marketed with SAR values that previously met the standards are now exceeding them. “Tests on nearly 300 phones were carried out between 2012 and 2016,” summarizes the ANSES opinion published on 21 October. A large proportion of the phones tested had SAR values above 2 W/kg, some exceeding 7 W/kg on contact. »
On 1 October 2019, during a meeting I organised at the European Parliament on 5G and the precautionary principle, Marc Arazi of the PhoneGate Alert association warned:
“Most mobile phones exceed regulatory values but we also discovered that there was a 10-fold difference between the value displayed in the manuals and advertisements of some manufacturers and the DAS value found in tests in France. Other independent tests conducted in 2018 and 2019 in the United States at 2 mm from the skin show that several very popular phones exceed the ceilings. The iPhone 7 has values twice as high as the American standard of 1.6 W/Kg. For the iPhone 8, this is three times the norm. The Samsung galaxy S8 has the most worrying rates: five times the US standard. This is a widespread, systematic and large-scale deception by manufacturers against consumers about a legal value – the DAS – indicating the conformity and the absence of health danger of a mobile phone. »
What is Europe doing to inform its 500 million consumers?
Articles 40 and 42 of Directive 2014/53/EU (RED Directive) on the harmonisation of the laws of the Member States relating to the availability of radio equipment on the market, lay down the obligations of the economic operator and the Commission as regards corrective measures or withdrawal from the market in respect of equipment which does not comply or which may present a risk.
In my written question at the beginning of October, I reminded the Commission that when 95 mobile phones were tested in France in 2015, the Specific Absorption Rate (SAR) of 85 of them (89% of phones) was above the limit value (2 W/kg) when the phones were tested in contact with the body. Since then, as a result of these controls, 17 mobile phones have either been withdrawn from the market or updated in France. At the end of 2016, Europe had 745 million mobile subscriptions. What corrective actions will manufacturers and public authorities in the various Member States take to inform their customers and the public?
The most radiating mobiles must be removed from the market!
These facts are very serious and should not be overlooked. For several years now, we have been denouncing the methods used to calculate the SAR, which are too vague, too approximate and, above all, underestimate people’s actual exposure. The measures taken in France, which the PhoneGate Alert association has made public since 2016, reveal the importance of the scandal.
By reducing public exposure measures, manufacturers have knowingly and deliberately caused the massive overexposure of several hundred millions of people throughout the European Union to mobile phone radiations, to values above the legal limits. And this has been the case for nearly 20 years for the oldest users.
The official alert comes from the French authorities, which have announced that they have asked the European Commission “to strengthen the requirements applicable to new mobile phones placed on the market”. But what exactly is the situation? What about the old models? Will they be “updated”, with software that will limit their influence? Which ones will be withdrawn from the market? We expect urgent and precise answers from the European Commission in the management of this new health crisis affecting consumer protection. It should be recalled that since 2011, in the light of available studies, the International Agency for Research on Cancer has classified microwave radiation from mobile phones as a “possible carcinogen”. Denial is no longer an acceptable option.
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October 9, 2019, Written question by Michele Rivasi
“Removal of non-compliant mobile phones from the European market (PhoneGate)” http://bit.ly/Rivasi_PhoneGateEU
October 21, 2019, Opinion on the ANSES Report of July 2019
“Exposures to mobile phones worn close to the body” http://bit.ly/Rivasi_ANSES_DAS
In 1960 Allan H. Frey was 25 years old, he had graduated in biophysics and worked at General Electric’s Advanced Electronics Center at Cornell University. When a radar technician invited him to come and listen to a clicking sound of the radar broadcasting, which he was hearing in his brain at his workplace,
Allan Frey made a discovery that started his lifetime scientific research. Just one year later, in 1961, he published in a scientific magazine his experiments where people could hear in their heads, at a distance of 300 feet from the antenna, different sounds produced by pulsed microwaves. With this same method, he also produced in people the perception of severe buffeting of the head, or the pins and needles sensation (see this). His further experiments were financed by American Navy and Air Force (see this), which could see in his experiments the potential for new type of weapons. Allan Frey began to experiment with rats and frogs and found out that to influence the activity of their nervous system he needed much lower density of electromagnetic energy than is the density of electromagnetic energy used nowadays for the communication by cell phones.
Robert Becker was twice nominated to the Nobel prize for his research on effects of electric and magnetic fields on healing of fractures. At the end of 20th century he testified in a trial where the state of Wisconsin tried to ban the construction of an antenna for the communication with military submarines on its territory. The antenna was supposed to use 90 Hz frequency, which is within the range of the functioning of the human nervous system (see this). Robert Becker testified that the transmission of the antenna could be harmful to people.
When he lost his work for this testimony, he started writing books on the research of effects of electromagnetic radiation on the human organism. In the book entitled “Body Electric“ – he wrote about the experiment by Allan H. Frey, where he slowed down the heart beat of frogs by electromagnetic energy with a density of 3 microwatts per square centimeter (see this). Just to have a comparison – in the European Union the limit for electromagnetic exposure is at the frequency of 900 Mhz set to 450 microwatts per square centimeter and at another microwave frequency used by cell phone systems 1800 Mhz to 900 microwatts per square centimeter.
This means that it is permitted in the European Union to expose people to a density of electromagnetic energy 150 and 300 times higher than is necessary to slow down the heart-beat of a frog. With the fifth generation of cell phone systems this density will be increased at least tenfold. It is possible to object that at higher frequencies the skin will absorb most of this radiation, but the human body is full of salty liquids and this kind of electrolyte may act as an antenna which will carry this radiation deep into the human body – just see the veins (covered just by milimeter of skin), which are full of blood, which is an electrolyte. In addition the radiation will be transmitted constantly and there will be no place to escape from it, since it is supposed to enable driver-less car transportation and so it must penetrate every inch of the planet (see this).
In 1975 Allan Frey published an experiment where he injected a fluorescent dye into the circulatory system of white rats, then swept the microwave frequencies across their bodies and the dye had leached into the confines of the rats’ brains. It proved that microwave frequencies can breach the barrier between the blood and brain allowing toxins and viruses to enter the brain (see this). Swedish scientist Leif Salford i is engaged in similar experiments. He exposed three groups of rats to the power density of 24 microwatts, 240 microwatts and 2400 microwatts and found out that due to penetration of toxins into their brains a number of neurons in their brains were destructed, while in the control group, which was not exposed to this radiation, it did not happen (see this). Similar results were obtained by 13 scientific laboratories in 6 countries (see this, this, and this).
Indian scientists carried out an experiment where rats were exposed for 180 days for two hours a day to cell phone radiations in 900, 1800 and 2450 Mhz. Prior to the experiment the rats were trained to move in a maze. After the exposure the reactions of irradiated rats were slower than the reactions of rats that were not exposed to microwave radiation. The scientists drew a conclusion that the ability of exposed rats to learn and to remember was damaged. Their DNA was also damaged (see this). To measure the exposure of rats to electromagnetic radiation the Indian scientists used a specific absorption rate. In their experiment it was 595 microwatts per one kilogram and 672 microwatts per one kilogram. According to the European norms people may not be exposed to density of electromagnetic radiation exceeding 0,08 Watts per one kilogram. Again, this exposure is high above the exposure where toxic effects of microwave radiation on rat’s brains were observed. With this finding we should not be surprised that the intelligence quotient of people living in developed countries is decreasing since the 1990’s of the past century (see this), when the density of electromagnetic radiation in the human environment has been rapidly growing.
Allen H. Frey wrote in 2012, when he was already partially retired, that in the USA the results of effects of microwave radiation on people were falsified during the cold war years to assure people that the radiation from military radars could not harm them. Another reason to block and disqualify the unclassified research of effects of microwaves on human organism was to hide the microwave bio-weapons program. For that matter the contractors, hired by military, supposedly replicated the Allan Frey’s experiment with injecting dye into the blood of rats by injecting it into their intestines instead of incjecting it into their blood. At the scientific conferences they then presented the results of their experiments where the dye did not penetrate the rat’s brains. In this way they suppressed the impact of Frey’s experiments. To keep hiding the military research of bio-weapons the U.S. Government stopped financing unclassified research in the microwave area and in this way also stopped the subsequent publication of the results. Stopped was, as well, the funding of Allan Frey’s research on the barrier between blood and brain.
Apparently the same situation exists worldwide and many scientists do not oppose the implementation of the 5G systems, because they are afraid that they could lose the funding of their work in the same way as Robert Becker did. In the conclusion of his article Allan Frey wrote that for those reasons hundreds of millions of people, who began to use cell phones, became subjects of experiments they never gave informed consent to (see this).
However all over the world there exists legislations prohibiting experiments on people without their informed consent and at present time the world mass media fail to inform the general public of the risks connected to the use of cell phones and the implementation of the fifth generation of the cell phone systems networks. In this way people are not allowed to know that electromagnetic radiation produces in their organisms oxidative stress, which can contribute to the following illnesses:
cancer (for example in the Czech Republic since 1985, when the use of microwaves started growing – GPS, cell phone systems and WiFi – until 2016 the occurrence of cancer disease grew by 141%, see this)
diabetes (in the Czech Republic was registered 184000 people with this disease in 2008 and in 2018 it was already 320000 – the number of ill people grew almost by 100% in ten years, see this and this – there are some 10 millions of inhabitants in the Czech Republic)
Parkinsons disease (20000 people are ill with this disease in the Czech republic in this year and in 2030 it is expected to be 30000 people, see this)
Alzheimer disease (at present time there are 135000 people ill with this disease in the Czech Republic and it is expected that there will be 225000 of them in 2050 (see this) – in the last five years that number grew by 38% (see this) and certainly the life expectancy in the Czech Republic has not grown by 38% in the last five years)
Autism (in 1975 one out of 5000 people suffered with this disease in the Czech Republic, in 1985 it was one out of 2500 people, in 2007 it was one out of 150 people and in 2015 it was one out of 86 children This is the increase by 5000% in 30 years !!! (see this))
According to the scientific research all of those illnesses can be produced by oxidative stress (see this), caused in the human organism by electromagnetic radiation (see this and this). It is highly logical to find that there is coincidence between the rapidly growing density of electromagnetic radiation in the atmosphere since the introduction of GPS, cell phone telephony and WiFi and rapidly growing occurrence of illnesses which can be produced by oxidative stress produced by electromagnetic radiation.
It would be appropriate to sue the governments, which promote the introduction of 5G mobile telephony, without verifying its harmlessness, for experimenting on people without their informed consent, and consequently sue the actual members of those governments for the further increase of the occurrence of the diseases mentioned above after the introduction of the 5G cell phone systems.
The readers may sign the appeal for the world wide ban of the introduction 5G technology here.
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A future without independent media leaves us with an upside down reality where according to the corporate media “NATO deserves a Nobel Peace Prize”, and where “nuclear weapons and wars make us safer”
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Leaked documents have revealed that not only was the UK army involved in war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan in the 2000s, but Conservative ministers succeeded in covering it up. Military detectives unveiled alleged ‘daily’ abuse dating back as far as 2003 by the Black Watch regiment in Basra as well as more recent crimes such as a 2012 raid on a compound in Helmund Province where three ‘unarmed’ children and a young man were shot dead.
For several years since the global push to develop mass-scale Electric Vehicles, the element Lithium has come intofocus as a strategic metal. Demand is enormous in China, in the EU and in the USA at present, and securing control over lithium supplies is already developing its own geopolitics not unlike that for the control of oil.
For China, which has set major targets to become the world’s largest producer of EVs, developing lithium battery materials is a priority for the 13th Five-Year Plan (2016-20) period. Though China has its own lithium reserves, recovery is limited, and China has gone to secure lithium mining rights abroad.
It can also be revealed that Lady Arbuthnot has received gifts and hospitality in relation to her husband, including from a military and cybersecurity company exposed by WikiLeaks. These activities indicate that the chief magistrate’s activities cannot be considered as entirely separate from her husband’s.
Lord Arbuthnot of Edrom, a former defence minister, is a paid chair of the advisory board of military corporation Thales Group, and was until earlier this year an adviser to arms company Babcock International. Both companies have major contracts with the UK Ministry of Defence (MOD).
Look beneath what’s happening with Yellow Vests in France, Hong Kong demonstrations, mass demonstrations across the South American continent, in North Africa and the Middle East, and what you will find is young workers growing desperate over their working conditions, over income inequality, the lack of jobs that provide a basic living, and their sense of hopelessness of change any time soon. In other words, discontent over their fate in emerging 21st century capitalism.
But the worse is still yet to come. Contingent, or so-called precarious, work and its condemning of workers to a ‘new indentureship’—a kind of 21st century capitalist serfdom—is now being intensified by new capitalist business models and technological change.
The EU, taken as a whole is the UK’s largest trading partner. In 2018, UK exports to the EU were £291 billion (45% of all UK exports). UK imports from the EU were £357 billion (53% of all UK imports).
Therefore, the UK had an overall trade deficit of -£66 billion with the EU in 2018. A surplus of £28 billion on trade in services was outweighed by a deficit of -£94 billion on trade in goods.
The armed insurrection which contributed to unseating President Aristide on February 29th 2004 was the result of a carefully staged military-intelligence operation.
The Rebel paramilitary army crossed the border from the Dominican Republic in early February. It constitutes a well armed, trained and equipped paramilitary unit integrated by former members of Le Front pour l’avancement et le progrès d’Haiti(FRAPH), the “plain clothes” death squadrons, involved in mass killings of civilians and political assassinations during the CIA sponsored 1991 military coup, which led to the overthrow of the democratically elected government of President Jean Bertrand Aristide.
Morales obtained 47.08 % of the vote to secure a fourth term as president in the election held on the 20th of October. Since his vote was more than 10% of what his closest rival had harnessed, there was no need for a second round of voting according to the Bolivian Constitution. However his opponents did not want to accept the result. Neither did the Organisation of American States (OAS) nor the United States of America (USA) nor the European Union (EU). They alleged “electoral fraud” without providing any tangible evidence. It should be emphasised that international observers from a number of countries testified to the legitimacy of the polls.
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US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced on Monday that the US was softening its position on Israel’s network of settlements in the occupied Palestinain territory, saying it was revoking the notion that settlements are illegal under international law — a notion recognized by the rest of the world as factual and true.
“The Trump administration is reversing the Obama administration’s approach to Israeli settlements,” Pompeo said in his opening remarks at a press conference in Washington, D.C.
Pompeo said that the Trump administration would be departing from the Carter administration’s 1978 legal opinion — which served as the basis for the long-standing U.S. policy on settlements — which states that Israel’s establishment of Jewish-only settlements was “inconsistent with international law.”
Calling Israeli settlements illegal under international law, Pompeo said, “hasn’t worked” and “hasn’t advanced the cause of peace.”
“The hard truth is there will never be a judicial resolution to the conflict, and arguments about who is right and wrong as a matter of international law will not bring peace,” he said.
“The establishment of Israeli civilian settlements in the West Bank is not per se inconsistent with international law,” Pompeo declared, adding that the administration was “expressing no view on the legal status of any individual settlement.”
According to Pompeo, one of the considerations taken by the administration leading up to the decision were the “confirmed the legality of certain settlement activities” by the Israeli legal system — a system that has been widely criticized as serving to uphold the structures of Israel’s occupation rather than one aimed at achieving justice and equality for all.
He went on to say that this decision was not meant to be a judgement on the status of the West Bank or Israeli sovereignty in the territory. “This is for the Israelis and the Palestinians to negotiate.”
“The United States remains deeply committed to helping facilitate peace, and I will do everything I can to help this cause. The United States encourages the Israelis and the Palestinians to resolve the status of Israeli settlements in the West Bank in any final status negotiations,” he concluded.
Outrage in Palestine, celebration in Israel
Monday’s announcement was the latest in a series of efforts by the Trump administration — declaring occupied Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, recognizing Israeli sovereignty in the Golan Heights, and the movement of the US embassy to Jeruaslem — aimed at weaking Palestinian claims of statehood.
“The announcement marks a continuation of the Trump Administration’s efforts to undermine years of progress on refining parameters for an agreed-upon resolution of the core issues of the conflict,” Israeli settlement watchdog Peace Now said in a statement.
The group called the announcement “an Orwellian absurdity,” saying “no declaration will change the fact that the settlements were built on occupied territory, in contravention of international law, and that they pose among the greatest obstacles to peace.”
The European Union released a statement immediately after Pompeo’s remarks, saying “all settlement activity is illegal under international law and it erodes the viability of the two-state solution and the prospects for a lasting peace.”
The statement went on to call on Israel to cease all settlement activity “in line with its obligations as an occupying power.”
PLO Executive committee member Hanan Ashrawi called the policy change “outrageous and horrific” in a statement, and reaffirmed the widely held position that settlements are a “grave violation of international law.”
Chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat reacted to the news, saying “Israeli settlements steal Palestinian land, seize and exploit Palestinian natural resources, and divide, displace and restrict the movement of the people of Palestine.”
“In sum, Israel’s colonial-settlement enterprise perpetuates the negation of the Palestinian right to self-determination,” he said.
Nabil Abu Rdeineh, spokesman for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, said “the U.S. administration has lost its credibility to play any future role in the peace process.”
Meanwhile, Israel and its supporters welcomed the decision. According to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, he spoke to Trump on the phone after the announcement to thank him for “correcting a historical injustice.”
I said to President Trump that we are not in a foreign land. This is our homeland for over 3,000 years. The reason that we are called “Jews” is because we came from here, from Judea.
“I said to President Trump that we are not in a foreign land. This is our homeland for over 3,000 years. The reason that we are called “Jews” is because we came from here, from Judea,” he continued, referring to the Hebrew name for the West Bank.
Israeli Minister of Foreign Affairs Israel Katz also took to Twitter to celebrate the decision, saying “there’s no dispute about the right of the Jewish people to the Land of Israel.”
I welcome @SecPompeo & the Trump admin’s announcement on legality of communities in Judaea & Samaria. There’s no dispute about the right of the Jewish people to the Land of Israel. This is an appropriate response to the European Court decision & the boycott attempt against Israel
The policy reversal comes at a pivotal time in regional politics, as Netanyahu, an ardent supporter of the settlements and annexation, struggles to hold onto power, and the Palestinian Authority continues to suffer financial and political blows at the hands of the US and its allies.
Michael Lynk, Canadian law professor and UN human rights expert, told Mondoweiss that by legitimizing Israeli settlements, that US has put the “very last nail in the coffin of the two state solution.”
Lynk emphasized the fact that “the illegality of the Israeli settlements has been accepted by virtually every country in the world,” and by departing with this consensus, the US is legitimizing “the significant human rights and humanitarian violations perpetuated by the settlements.”
“This effectively grants permission to the Israeli government to formally annex large parts of the occupied West Bank. This will only confirm a one state reality characterized by a rigid two-tier system of legal and political rights, based on ethnicity and religion,” Lynk said. “This would meet the international definition of apartheid.”
Palestinian-American activist and human rights lawyer Noura Erekat expressed to Mondoweiss that she wasn’t particularly surprised by Pompeo’s announcement or what seems to be a sudden change in US foreign policy.
“What Pompeo is announcing is not a rupture in US foreign policy, but a culmination of it,” she said, adding that since 1967 the U.S. has “spoken out of both sides of its mouth.”
On the one hand, the US has maintained, until now, that settlements are inconsistent with international law and counterproductive to the peace process, but “out of the other side of its mouth, the US has provided Israel with unequivocal military, financial, and diplomatic aid in order to continue that settlement process,” Erekat said.
Erekat highlighted the fact that since the early 1990s until today, Israeli settlement expansion has increased by 200%.
“So this is the culmination of what every administration has done,” she told Mondoweiss. “The only difference is that Trump removed the Emperor’s clothes.”
The UK is very keen at reminding certain countries – Syria, Russia, China – of their human rights abuses and yet, when it comes to looking closer to home, this current government quite frankly prefers not to, and in some cases deliberately try to obfuscate the truth.
Leaked documents have revealed that not only was the UK army involved in war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan in the 2000s, but Conservative ministers succeeded in covering it up. Military detectives unveiled alleged ‘daily’ abuse dating back as far as 2003 by the Black Watch regiment in Basra as well as more recent crimes such as a 2012 raid on a compound in Helmund Province where three ‘unarmed’ children and a young man were shot dead.
According to the BBC’s Panorama programme and The Sunday Times, the documents suggest that senior military officers covered up the incidents, with the implicated individuals only being questioned briefly on the matters by the Royal Military Police (RMP). It is reported that the Ministry of Defence itself put pressure on the organisations involved in the investigations – the Iraq Historic Allegations Team (IHAT) and Operation Afghanistan (for Afghanistan) to bring enquiries to a halt.
The government dismissed on Sunday any allegations of a cover-up, with Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab naturally defending the military’s handling of the cases, stressing that the prosecuting authorities for the British military are ‘some of the most rigorous in the world’. But it cannot be denied that this could be potentially harmful to the government at a time when it and its leader, Boris Johnson are accused of being ‘dishonest’.
The International Criminal Court (ICC) has said that it would be independently investigating the reported allegations and was taking them ‘very seriously’. The BBC said on Monday morning it would be a ‘landmark case’ if indeed the government was to be prosecuted for protecting soldiers from being charged with war crimes.
In a further twist, former employees of the now defunct IHAT have said that the reason given for shutting down the organisation was in fact an excuse for ending further investigation. It was closed in 2017 by the government after it was found that Phil Shiner, a solicitor who had taken more than 1000 cases to IHAT, was in fact paying fixers in Iraq to source him clients.
It is important that the ICC does indeed do its own digging as to what was going on with IHAT and the allegations of war crimes by UK soldiers. Otherwise, we may never know what happened. With Brexit, an increasingly right-wing government in power and the mantra being one of ‘Rule Britannia’, the rhetoric has changed in recent years to one of little sympathy for the victims of war crimes and more disgust and dismay that British soldiers should be investigated at all.
Indeed it is somewhat disturbing that for some commentators, the fact whether unnecessary killings have been committed by British soldiers abroad have been carried out, seems almost obsolete. Writing in The Telegraph on Monday, Richard Dannatt says “My heart sank when I read the front page story yesterday about alleged British Army war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan. “Here we go again”, I thought.” Being ex-army, one could argue that of course he will support the military in this argument. But the fact that his views are carried in Britain’s leading right-wing broadsheet, does make one wonder the extent to which this opinion is shared by the current Conservative government, hence the fact that proper investigations have never taken place.
The leaking of these documents does not come at a good time for Boris Johnson, as he battles to retain his position as PM in the run-up to the December election. And yet for many ‘Leave’ voters, who support his bid to ‘get Brexit done’ it may be nothing more than an irrelevant distraction. British, or rather English nationalism is on the rise, and Brexit has exacerbated levels of xenophobia and racism not seen for decades in Britain. The questions this issue raises about the government’s lack of integrity, and even of its inherent racism and islamophobia – of which the Conservative party has been directly accused – may not dissuade those who are mainly concerned about Britain leaving the EU.
It is a dangerous state of affairs if we have a government implicit in deceit, led by a lying, cheating Prime Minister, which is not being held to account; a government aiding and abetting cover-ups at home but one which is all too eager to highlight perceived injustices in other countries. And one can be sure that a government which unscrupulous in some areas will be just as underhand in others. It’s a high price to pay for Brexit.
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Lost in the media’s obsession with the impeachment circus last week was Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell’s testimony on the state of the economy before the Joint Economic Committee. In his testimony, Chairman Powell warned that when the next recession inevitably occurs, the US Government’s over $23 trillion debt would prevent Congress from increasing spending to revive the economy.
Powell also said that the Fed’s current low interest rate policies would prevent the Fed from using its traditional methods of increasing the money supply and further lowering interest rates to jump-start economic growth in a recession. Hopefully, Powell is correct that when the next recession hits the Federal Reserve and Congress will be unable to “stimulate” the economy with cheap money and new spending.
Interest rates are the price of money and, as with all prices, government manipulation of interest rates distorts the signals regarding market conditions. Artificially low interest rates lead to malinvestment and the creation of bubbles. Recessions are a painful but necessary correction that allows the economy to cleanse itself of these distortions. When the Federal Reserve and Congress try to stimulate the economy, they introduce new distortions, making it impossible for the economy to heal itself. Fiscal and monetary stimulus may temporally create the illusions of prosperity, but in reality they merely create another bubble that will eventually burst starting the boom-and-bust cycle all over again. So, the best thing Congress and the Federal Reserve can do to help the economy recover from a recession is nothing.
Powell is the latest Federal Reserve Chair to warn of the dangers of government debt, which is ironic since the Federal Reserve is the great enabler of deficit spending. Government manipulation of the value of money allows politicians to hide the true costs of their warfare and welfare. This is why throughout history governments have sought the power to dictate what is and is not money and determine the value of the monetary unit. Today’s central bankers are the heirs of the medieval kings who shaved off the edges of gold coins, then ordered the people to pretend that shaved coins were just as valuable as unshaved coins.
Instead of shaving gold coins, today’s central bankers facilitate the growth of government by purchasing government securities in order to keep interest rates—and thus the government’s borrowing costs— low. The Federal Reserve’s interventions enable the expansion of government well beyond what would be politically palatable if politicians had to finance the entire welfare-warfare state through direct taxation or borrowing at market interest rates, which would increase interest rates for private sector borrowers, lower growth, and increase unemployment.
Since the creation of the Federal Reserve, the US dollar has lost over 96 percent of its value. The Federal Reserve-caused decline in purchasing power is a stealth tax. This inflation tax does not affect the financial elites—who receive new money created by the Federal Reserve before the Fed’s actions have diminished the dollar’s purchasing power—but has hurt middle-and-working class Americans whose purchasing power is continuously reduced by the Federal Reserve. The inflation tax is not just the most hidden, but the most regressive of taxes.
The Federal Reserve is responsible for the growth of government, the loss of liberty, the rise in income inequality, and the boom-and-bust economic cycle. All those who support liberty, peace, and prosperity should join the effort to audit and end the Fed.
On 20 September students will be mobilizing in a global protest against climate change.
Who is supporting this Worldwide endeavour, who is funding it?
Is this a real rebellion?
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It is natural for people to come forward in defense of planet Earth once they become aware of the policies of ecocide built into corporate globalization. In fact, it is the general lack of such action which constitutes the real concern for all who care deeply about the health and welfare of the planet and its occupants.
But for a long time now, those with their hands on the control levers of daily life have shown themselves to be extremely adept at tuning-in to expressions of resistance and covertly subverting such expressions to fit their monopoly of unrestrained economic growth – at all costs.
The Extinction Rebellion clash between eco-activist movements and a highly structured elite policy of distinctly un-ecological wealth procurement, has been increasingly in the public eye recently.
It looks, to all intents and purposes, as though these are indeed two camps with major idealistic differences, coming up against each other on the streets, in print and over the airwaves.
However, on closer inspection, it transpires that this is not the case. Just under the surface is an entanglement which we need to grasp in order to know what is actually going on. I am grateful to www.nowhere.news for looking behind the scenes of recent high profile events on the streets of London and elsewhere and drawing out the largely hidden details of exactly who is behind these actions and what they aim to achieve.
In brief, what is revealed to be the real under-text of these ‘happenings’ is essentially a cruel hoax on tens of thousands of protesters, the majority of whom are young and ostensibly making their presence known so as to challenge government on global warming/ climate change concerns. People whose stated reason for coming forward is that they don’t believe enough serious actions are being taken to keep CO2 emissions below 400 parts per million.
So let’s try to deconstruct the multiple layered confusion that clouds the road to truth in this matter. Firstly, the majority of ‘stop global warming /climate change activists’ have a problem: they have never questioned the narrative of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change whose edict categorically states that the science behind its prognosis on climate change is an incontrovertible fact and beyond discussion.
Just why would tens of thousands of people, who supposedly have little or no faith in government, not firstly question what a government panel claims to be an indisputable fact? This is the first major question in need of a clear answer.
We shouldn’t need to remind ourselves that the majority of governments are in the pocket of corporations and their main policies never go against the global corporate will. Although they are usually disguised to seem to.
In short, IPCC, industry and government paid climatologists, want people to believe their carefully scripted global warming /climate change story because there is big money to be made mass-producing the infrastructure needed to transform a fading brown and black fossil fuel regime into a supposedly Green New Deal, Fourth Industrial Revolution.
Something that would not encounter resistance from most urban ecologists and greens, as they choke everyday on diesel, oil and coal pollutants and, thanks to IPCC, see the demise of fossil fuels as also key to ‘saving the planet’ – not just themselves.
Next, it would appear that those who take on front line street actions within organizations like Extinction Rebellion make the error of also failing to research the background of those who are financially supporting and leading the organization from behind the scenes – or on occasions – quite openly.
In the case of Extinction Rebellion, the co-founders and leading light is Gail Bradbrook, assisted by climate change lawyer Farhana Yamin, both of whose backgrounds have lines of direct working connection with people and organizations committed to exactly the opposite objectives to those of the green protesters following their leadership directives.
According to ‘Nowhere News’ investigations, Gail Bradbrook has a history of working with top-down elitist organizations committed to upholding the neoliberal capitalist status quo. She is quoted as being an enthusiastic supporter of ‘Otpor’ – an organization funded by the US National Endowment for Democracy – a body closely affiliated with US government promotion of regime change around the World.
Farhana Yamin is CEO of ‘Track O’ a business whose partners include the Rockefeller Foundation and Chatham House, where she is also an associate fellow. Chatham House, aka The Royal Institute of International Affairs, is perhaps the leading empire upholding think-tank in the Western hemisphere.
Just why would Extinction Rebellion supporters go along with such plainly inappropriate individuals leading their movement?
Before answering this, I would like to focus on how government is using these quasi leaders to misguide and demotivate all those who could, if properly organized and motivated, actually present a serious challenge to genuinely destructive globalist environmental practices that play-out everyday of our lives. But first, of course, the green aspiring supporters of Extinction Rebellion would have to realize that their ‘rebellion’ never steps outside the confines of a globalist agenda. But instead lands up actually supporting it.
The think-tank secret societies like the Bilderbergers and Trilateral Commission are made-up of leading figureheads from – among others – global banking interests, the military industrial complex, Big Pharma, Big Agro, Big Legal, Big Telecommunications, Big Energy and Big Media. All of which share a common interest in preserving and expanding their empires. To do this they need to be ahead of the game and always ready to infiltrate any movements that might provoke a wider uprising for change in another direction.
This requires considerable cunning and a well developed knowledge of how to deceive in such a way that it appears that one is doing the opposite of deceiving i.e. promoting pragmatic solutions to global problems – the very one’s one has been responsible for creating in the first place.
This includes the re-branding of global capitalism as something benign and indispensable to the greening of the national and global economy.
Such deception is standard procedure, along with the by now infamous technique of ‘divide and conquer’, for deflating opposition to the expansionist globalist agenda. However, as we shall see, Extinction Rebellion doesn’t really need much encouragement to stick by the rules of the game – as it already bears the official stamp ‘government approved’ .
In the latest round of negotiations that took place between Extinction Rebellion representatives and UK government ministers, it is reported that a green activist put it to Environment Minister Michael Grove, that the current economy is extractive and thereby the cause of much hardship. Grove’s answer caused surprise; because instead of denying this fact, he showed some sympathy for it – stating that the government is working on a more radical circular economy that would overcome the pitfalls of the extractive factor.
This is a classic example of ‘repositioning’ so as to appear to be acquiescing to the demands of a popular movement – by saying that the government is actually ahead of the game in its vision of a better, cleaner, brighter future for all!
But is anyone fooled into believing that what is termed by government ‘ a circular economy’ would be so in reality? Would actually involve the redistribution of income within communities in a way that would close the wealth gap between rich and poor?
Grove, like nearly all government ministers, is schooled in the art of deception. In today’s world of predatory politics, ministers don’t hold down their jobs for long if they are not seen to be towing the line of their masters: the corporations that provide the funds and give the orders that go with them.
What we see in the rash of non governmental organizations suddenly getting excited about initiatives to put pressure on governments to uphold the climate agreement clauses approved at the Paris climate accord, is not actually a demand for radical change to the extractive economy. That is something that would indeed put the capitalist global economy firmly in the dock; whereas what these protesters are demanding resembles nothing much more than a shuffling of the deck chairs around the Titanic.
The Green New Deal, which appears to be closely affiliated with Extinction Rebellion, makes proposals that claim to be the answer to ‘global warming’ and ‘saving the world’, but has correctly been exposed as simply a massive reinvestment of global banking capital into the next big corporate energy heist after coal, oil and gas. Green New Deal lauds itself as having the capacity to provide thousands of new jobs in constructing the next generation of infrastructure to ensure the coming into being of a brave new world of ‘clean energy’.
What is being referred to as a world of clean energy is this: 5G WiFi driven ‘smart cities’; 5G guided autonomous driver-less cars; 5G treeless microwaved streets; 5G robots taking over from people on the factory floor and a 5G satellite and ground based total surveillance grid. Add to this the pleasures of a diet of hydroponic and nanotech ‘clean foods’ plus a near total vegan take-over of the food chain, with its accompanying ending of family farms working with time honored sustainable mixed rotational livestock/crop systems.
The Green New Deal, in its present form, will lead directly to a microwaved and monitored world population reduced to a state of abject poverty and slavery to the high-tech masters of the long predicted New World Order.
The Green New Deal is being promoted by such figureheads as leader of the DiEm 25 movement ex finance minister of Greece Yanis Veroufakis, Green MP Caroline Lucas and .. yes Gail Bradbrook, leader of Extinction Rebellion.
The great tragedy in all this is that tens of thousands of idealistic young people, seemingly motivated to do something positive for the this planet, cannot see that they are being betrayed. Co-opted by government to sell its industry backed climate change agenda; with its ‘cap and trade’ and ‘carbon tax’ levies serving as lucrative cash cows for the benefit of government and industry alike.
Gail Bradbrook, recently interviewed on Sky TV, stated (in a conversation about global warming) that UK government advisors had told her “We need you guys to do the job”. We’ll, one doesn’t need to try and prove the collusion between government and the leaders of the social movement called Extinction Rebellion, when it is already openly admitted by its leader.
Frankly, this is serious. Serious because firstly the government presentation of climate change is rife with inconsistencies and deception. And secondly, it comes at a time when most people able to think recognize that governments – in most of the Western World and beyond – are not representative of the will of the people – but of the will of the corporations and multi millionaire bankers.
This is so fundamental a fact that one can’t begin to see how movements and organizations like Green New Deal, Extinction Rebellion and Climate Action – which are all lead by people tainted by their close affiliation to the neo liberal globalist status quo – can be taken seriously. I reiterate “by anyone who can still think”.
Let us recall the words of Albert Einstein “We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them”.
For all the emotional good will generated by a carefully programmed Greta Thunberg and the contortions performed by ‘inconvenient truth’ multi millionaire jet setter Al Gore, all we land up with is a deeper blurring of the real agenda being enacted by the deep state/shadow government architects of control. Of a supranational, totalitarian New World Order.
While the United Nations pretends to care about sustainable development, the International Monetary Fund pretends to care about the economy, the World Bank pretends to care about the starving, The World Health Organization pretends to care about health. Yet even while these corrupted organizations (and many more) eat into our planetary survival, too many environmental activist organizations remain transfixed by the hugely over-hyped government red herring known as global warming. I might be castigated for bringing out this ‘inconvenient truth’, but it needs to be said.
I would also like to flag-up this fact, it is the military war machine which has been identified as contributing the highest levels of toxic pollutants into the biosphere.
There is no doubt that the climate is changing and being changed. It is a recognized fact that our planetary weather is frequently being manufactured and manipulated by superpower military interventions, particularly by US operatives. Who has not seen the sky criss-crossed by the toxic atmospheric geoengineered aerosol jet trails designed by these criminals.
As a direct result of such interventions our world has a fever. She is running hot and cold. After all, our planet is Gaia, a living being – and living beings get fevers when their bodies can absorb no more sickness inducing pathogens.
It is highly significant that the architects of the central control system that holds this world to ransom, have succeeded in side-lining a large percentage of those who might have otherwise poured their energies into tackling the the military intervention of natural climatic cycles and other such brutal interventions with the health of our living planet.
I would like to conclude this article by revealing the agenda that has been most side-lined by the proclamations of the United Nations and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. This is the promotion of a vision of a decentralized society that fosters into reality benign, local and regional socio-economic cells of creative activity. Activities that lead the world away from the suicidal globalized capitalistic cliff face.
The United Kingdom and all European Countries as well as the USA and beyond, could and should be nations built on the foundations of human scale, self governing communities, in which central government quite simply becomes redundant. Has no role to play, except within the sphere of certain international concerns.
This is the only truly radical ‘people power’ take-over that would channel human energies in a positive direction. One in which taking control of – and responsibility for – our destinies becomes the precursor for all actions that follow.
I have written at length about how this can be practically achieved in Changing Course for Life, now republished under the new title ‘Creative Solutions to a World in Crisis’ (Dixi Books). I show how all aspects of community life and higher human aspiration can be met via a logical and really quite simple re-organizational and regenerative process that starts at the local level. A formula I have named ‘The Proximity Principle’.
This is not to say that intensive efforts to stop governments and corporations rolling-out their disastrous policies should be dropped in favour of concentrating on building the local community ‘arks’ envisaged. Of course not – one simply has to redouble one’s efforts and fight on two fronts simultaneously.
At the moment, the vision that would lead to the creation of human scale, self governing communities, is simply not being considered or expressed. Maybe because most green activists who join organizations like Extinction Rebellion, are urban raised and schooled; buy their foods in supermarkets and are preoccupied with maintaining the life styles peculiar to the urban jungle. Unfortunately, most couldn’t begin to envision the practicalities of building a new life outside the urban rat-race.
The majority are dependent on the very corporations they expose; the materialistic global agenda they blame for planetary warming and global ecocide. In urban settings nobody is independent of a heavy reliance upon unsustainable, toxic and extractive economic patterns of daily life.
People caught-up in this way of life firstly need to find a way out, if they are to present a meaningful critique of its pit-falls. One cannot avoid the old axiom ‘practice as you preach’.
No progress can be made while one is financially supporting those who one attacks. Those that represent the interests of multinational/transnational business conglomerates that keep inorganic life-styles going. In other words one has to start on a new journey which involves saying ‘no’ to supermarket shopping, sweat shop and branded clothes, money deposits with big banks, fast food chains, household chemicals and so forth and so on.
It is hard to see such changes happening overnight, but they will have to if movements like Green New Deal and Extinction Rebellion are to have any credibility or achieve any meaningful results.
The unfortunate truth is that, in the great majority of cases, if one cannot ‘lead by example’ one is no better than the people and policies one seeks to expose.
Real resistance is a much tougher proposition than participating in happenings on the streets of London, New York or Berlin, however well-intentioned and spectacular they might be. Especially ‘government approved’ TV spectacles like Extinction Rebellion, led by insider individuals whose agendas have been tainted by careers that would appear to have successfully initiated them into the corporate art of deception. It all comes down to un-hideable hypocrisy.
Extinction Rebellion and other comparable protest statements, are essentially bandwagon movements. Pop-up cult like manifestations cleverly branded by those who have something significant to gain from the manipulation of others. So long as this sort of mass outcry is seen as the best hope for achieving change, we will be on a road to nowhere. A highway already so well traveled that the tarmacadam has worn through and potholes are now the predominant feature.
The serious route to positive change is built on more than just good intentions. It is built on holistic awareness and long-term graft – with a solid determination to ‘practice what one preaches’. Practical examples need to form the core of actions designed to halt the destruction. Sound examples that demonstrate a way forward that heals wounds and catalyses a way of life based on conscious responsibility, ecological awareness, real justice and a strong predisposition for humanitarian sharing.
Step forward all those who are committed to face the deeper challenges of life, with bravery. For these are the people who will form the vanguard of resistance to the erosion of values indispensable to the coming-through of a new paradigm. A new paradigm in the way we humans creatively interact with each other and our priceless planet Earth.
That is the real rebellion.
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Julian Rose is an international activist, writer, organic farming pioneer and actor. In 1987 and 1998, he led a campaign that saved unpasteurised milk from being banned in the UK; and, with Jadwiga Lopata, a ‘Say No to GMO’ campaign in Poland which led to a national ban of GM seeds and plants in that country in 2006. Julian is currently campaigning to ‘Stop 5G’ WiFi. He is the author of two acclaimed titles: Changing Course for Life and In Defence of Life. His latest book ‘Overcoming the Robotic Mind’ will be available from this July. Julian is a long time exponent of yoga/meditation. See his web site for more information and to purchase his books www.julianrose.info
The EU, taken as a whole is the UK’s largest trading partner. In 2018, UK exports to the EU were £291 billion (45% of all UK exports). UK imports from the EU were £357 billion (53% of all UK imports).
Therefore, the UK had an overall trade deficit of -£66 billion with the EU in 2018. A surplus of £28 billion on trade in services was outweighed by a deficit of -£94 billion on trade in goods.
Services accounted for 41% of the UK’s exports to the EU in 2018. Financial services and other business services (a category which includes legal, accounting, advertising, research and development, architectural, engineering and other professional and technical services) are important categories of services exports to the EU – in 2018 these two service categories made up just over half of of UK service exports to the EU. (Source – Research briefings – UK Parliament – published Nov 1st 2019)
Most of these trade deals now signed to replace those within the EU are in fact, ‘continuity of trade deals. ‘ These were already in place but required adjusting due to the current arrangement with the EU.
So far, the UK has signed 18 “continuity” deals covering 48 countries or territories. Combined, these deals represent just 8% of total UK trade. No other trade deals have been signed although some are being negotiated. The current Conservative government considers a trade deal with America to be the big prize. Currently, Britain enjoys a trade surplus with America of nearly $19billion. Outside of the EU, America is Britain’s biggest trading partner. U.S. goods and services trade with the UK totalled $261.9 billion in 2018. Exports were $140.4 billion; imports were $121.5 billion.
A full trade agreement with America would mean a significant trade deficit being created with America as lower quality/regulated goods will be allowed in. Any deal to be signed with the USA is likely to take a number of years to sign meaning the UK will be trading through WTO rules – an organisation that America has been undermining for years.
There’s no ambiguity about the illegality of Israeli settlements. International law on the issue is clear and unequivocal.
It’s automatically US constitutional law under its Supremacy Clause (Article VI, Clause 2).
Fourth Geneva’s Article 49 states:
“Individual or mass forcible transfers, as well as deportations of protected persons from occupied territory to the territory of the Occupying Power or to that of any other country, occupied or not, are prohibited, regardless of their motive.”
“The Occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies.”
Security Council Resolution 2334 (December 2016) said the following:
Settlements have “no legal validity and constitute a flagrant violation under international law.”
The resolution demands “Israel immediately and completely cease all settlement activities in occupied Palestinian territory, including East Jerusalem.”
It recognizes no territorial changes “to the 4 June 1967 lines, including with regard to Jerusalem, other than those agreed by the parties through negotiations.”
It “(c)alls upon all States, to distinguish, in their relevant dealings, between the territory of the State of Israel and the territories occupied since 1967.”
It “(c)alls for immediate steps to prevent all acts of violence against civilians, including acts of terror, as well as all acts of provocation and destruction, calls for accountability in this regard…”
Note: Security Council resolutions are binding international law on all 193 UN member states. They’re automatically US constitutional law.
On Monday, Pompeo turned international and US constitutional law on its head, stating:
“The establishment of Israeli civilian settlements in the West Bank is not per se inconsistent with international law (sic),” adding:
“Israeli courts have confirmed the legality of certain settlement activities…”
Fact: His announcement green-lighted US approval for unlimited Israeli settlement expansions on stolen Palestinian land, perhaps driving a final nail in the no-peace/peace process — the greatest hoax in modern times, along with the US war on terror waged on humanity.
Fact: Israeli or other courts calling illegal settlements legal flagrantly breach binding international law.
Pompeo: “(T)he conclusion that will no longer recognize Israeli settlements as per se inconsistent with international law (sic) is based on the unique facts, history, and circumstances presented by the establishment of civilian settlements in the West Bank (sic).”
Fact: There’s nothing “unique” about revanchist aims of nations with territorial ambitions beyond their borders.
Fact: The principle of territorial integrity in international law prohibits states from forcefully usurping control over land not their own.
Fact: UN Charter Article 2 (4) affirms this principle, stating: “All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations.”
Fact: In 1948, Israel stole 78% of historic Palestine, in June 1967 illegally taking the rest.
In 1947, the UN General Assembly declared Jerusalem an international city, a corpus separatum under a world body protectorate. It’s not the legal capital of Israel or any other country.
On June 30, 1980, the Security Council unanimously adopted Resolution 476 (the US abstaining), declaring “all legislative and administrative measures and actions taken by Israel, the occupying Power, which purport to alter the character and status of the Holy City of Jerusalem have no legal validity and constitute a flagrant (Fourth Geneva) violation.”
Israel claiming the city, “complete and united, as (its) capital” has no legal standing.
East Jerusalem is illegally occupied territory. So is historic Palestine, lawlessly seized by Israel during its 1948 war of aggression, massacring and displacing hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, replacing their cities, towns and villages with Israeli ones – exacerbating their long nightmare, begun following the infamous 1917 Balfour Declaration.
The US and Israel consistently breach binding Security Council resolutions and other international laws that differ from their imperial aims.
Palestine belongs to the Palestinians. Theft of their land by Israel has no legal validity.
Pompeo falsely claimed that the US is “deeply committed to helping facilitate peace…”
Its historical actions reveal otherwise, smashing one nation after another, waging economic terrorism against sovereign states, supporting Israeli aggression against defenseless Palestinians, along with a long history of hostile actions against ordinary people at home and abroad.
In response to Pompeo’s Monday announcement, EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini said the following:
“The EU calls on Israel to end all settlement activity, in line with its obligations as an occupying power.”
Fact: EU nations operate as virtual US colonies, partnering in its wars of aggression and economic terrorism, along with taking no actions against Israeli high crimes and other abuses of power throughout Jewish state history.
Mogherini’s remark was hollow, Brussels doing nothing to hold Israeli accountable for time and again breaching international law, nothing to support the fundamental rights of Palestinians and ordinary people everywhere — consistently pursuing might over right.
Netanyahu praised the Trump regime’s illegal recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, its illegal control of Syria’s Golan and settlements on stolen Palestinian land.
PLO member Saeb Erekat condemned the Trump regime’s position on settlements, saying “once (again it) undermine(d) international law,” affirmed Israel’s illegal “occupation, (its) war crimes, (its) threat to international peace and security…”
PLO member Hanan Ashrawi made similar remarks, saying Pompeo “sen(t) a clear signal that (the Trump regime) ha(s) total disregard for international law, for what is right and just, and for the requirements of peace.”
The US under both right wings of its war party operates by its own rules exclusively — serving its own interests at the expense of world peace, stability, equity, justice, and the rule of law.
Israel operates the same way, how it’s been throughout its history.
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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.”
From November 3 to November 14, Israeli, U.S., German, Italian and Greek war jets participated in the “Blue Flag 2019” military exercises out of the Ovda Air Base in Israel’s Negev Desert. The timing of these exercises corresponds with Turkey and a whole host of other countries conducting their own naval exercises in the Aegean and Mediterranean Seas.
Lines are certainly being drawn in the Eastern Mediterranean between pro-U.S. forces and states seeking their own sovereignty away from U.S. hegemony, especially Turkey. Greece proves to be a curious country at the moment, since one of its warships participated in the Turkish-led naval exercises, even though Pakistan twice violated Greek airspace during these exercises and a war of words continues to ensue between Turkish and Greek political leaders over the maritime waters of Cyprus and the Eastern Aegean.
Although Greece was involved in both exercises, there can be no doubt that the Blue Flag 2019 exercises were aimed against Russia, Turkey and Iran. Part of the Blue Flag 2019 was the process and execution of aerial scripts to neutralize Russia’s S-400 Triumph missile defense system. However, since none of the participating countries have an S-400, the Israeli military had deployed U.S.-made Patriot missiles in specific locations to try to simulate the capabilities of the Russian-made systems during the military exercises that occurred near the Gaza Strip.
The simulation of the S-400 rocket launcher demonstrates for the first time that Israel is actively preparing to deal with such a system that exists only in Syrian and Turkish territory. In Syria, the powerful Russian defense system was deployed to protect Russian forces exactly four years ago, ironically because Turkey blew out a Russian jet from Syrian airspace in November 2015.
Meanwhile, the S-300V4 missiles will also be deployed in Egypt. The S-300V4 uses almost similar technology to the S-400 and has great capabilities in handling stealth aircraft. The S-400 has recently been shipped to Turkey, but is not yet operational, while Iran and Saudi Arabia have also shown interest in these systems.
The oldest and least capable S-300PMU-2 was deployed by the Syrian armed forces in late 2018, reducing the frequency of Israeli attacks in the country, but not stopping them. It is unclear what exact development led to Israel’s implementation of the S-400 neutralization training, however it is likely that these systems will also begin appearing elsewhere in the Middle East, putting Israel in a compromised military position.
Whatever the case, a big game is being played in the area with the possession and potential use of strategic weapons, such as Russian missiles and 5th generation American fighter jets.
Turkey, Greece, Israel, the U.S. and Syria have been embroiled in a meltdown of developments over who will eventually have the upper hand in the Eastern Mediterranean, but it is also seen that alliances are forming in the region. Although Greece was involved in both exercises taking place in the Eastern Mediterranean, its warship participating in the Turkish-led exercises took a more observatory position ensuring that its maritime waters were not violated, while it took a very active role in Israel, even winning the war games against the other participants of the exercises, which is unsurprising since Greece has the best pilots in NATO.
While Greece also participated in the Turkish-led naval exercises, it was actively training its pilots alongside the U.S. and conducting drills with Patriot missile batteries modified to imitate the Russian-made systems. However, the Russian systems hit targets twice as fast as the Patriots, and at a longer distance and higher altitude – essentially, attempting to use Patriots to simulate the S-400 would not have been very accurate.
It cannot be forgotten that Saudi Arabia, the world’s largest exporter and producer of oil in the world, on September 14 had its daily supply cut by nearly 50 percent because of drone and missile attacks against state-owned oil company by the Yemeni Houthi-led Ansarullah resistance movement. With Saudi Arabia investing billions of dollars into the Patriot system, it would have been expected that they would have a near 100% success rate in hitting all the missiles launched by the Ansarullah Movement.
It is for this reason that Russian Senate Security and Defense Committee member Franz Klintsevich, in a comedic manner, stated that “if Saudi Arabia had installed the Russian anti-aircraft systems, this would not have happened. The S-300 and S-400 missile systems, supported by the Pantsir S-1 would not have allowed any of the drones and missiles to hit their target. The Saudis should think about it.” Therefore, there is a huge doubt that the modified Patriots could successfully mimic the S-400.
Whether the training against “the S-400” in Israel was successful for the participating countries, it more importantly demonstrates an intent by these countries to be able to overcome the Russian missile defense system. For Israel, it is crucial so that it knows how to respond to any hypothetical war with Iran or Turkey, while for the U.S. it would also be against Russia.
With Russia selling the S-400 system, announcing its intent to also sell fighter jets, and conducting patrols with Turkey in Syria, their ties are becoming much more integrated. It also appears that the U.S., Greece and Israel are strengthening their military coordination in the Eastern Mediterranean. Although Israel is not against Russia, it certainly has an adversarial political and military relationship with Turkey despite their close economic ties, just as Greece does with Turkey. And although Greece might not be against Russia, they certainly are against Turkey. The U.S. intentions for the Blue Flag 2019 exercise is to coordinate an alliance against Russia, and potentially Turkey, while training against the S-400.
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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.
Paul Antonopoulos is a Research Fellow at the Center for Syncretic Studies.
Iran’s problem isn’t that foreign forces are politically encouraging the latest unrest and possibly even directly supporting some of the most violent provocateurs to an uncertain extent, but that the vast majority of the participants in these nationwide protests are there for well-intended reasons and represent a real grassroots movement.
Iran has been rocked by unrest ever since the government increased fuel prices to 15,000 rials (approximately $0.13) a gallon last week and imposed a rationing policy of 60 liters (13 gallons) a month in order to fund direct payouts to most families and curb corrupt smuggling activities by those who were abusing the previous subsidy system. Its citizens used to be able to be able to purchase up to 250 liters a month for 10,000 rials each, but will now have to pay 30,000 rials for every liter beyond 60. Although this price increase is minuscule compared to Western standards, it’s disproportionately impactful for the average Iranian given their country’s ongoing economic crisis that’s been gradually exacerbated by the US’ unilateral sanctions regime. It’s little wonder then that tens of thousands of people took to the streets over the past few days to protest against this decision since it contributed to the prevailing uncertainty about Iran’s overall economic future, but some of their demonstrations turned violent after provocateurs started attacking police officers and burning & seizing buildings.
President Rouhani declared that “People have the right to protest, but that is different from riots”, after which he strongly hinted at an impending crackdown by warning that “We cannot let insecurity in the country through riots”. As for the Ayatollah, he shrewdly declined to give his opinion on the wisdom behind the latest price hike because he’s “not an expert on such matters” but said that he stands by the government’s decision on the principle that it was reached by the heads of the three branches of government after consulting competent experts. The Supreme Leader acknowledged that “some people are certainly worried or upset about this decision”, but blamed “hooligans” and “thugs” for the recent acts of “sabotage”. He said that this “adds insecurity to any possible problem” and “is the worst disaster for every country and every society”. He’s certainly right about that, and he’s also correct in pointing out that “all malicious centers in the world, which work against us, have encouraged these actions…ranging from the sinister and malicious Pahlavi household to evil and criminal munafeqeen terrorist cult (who) are constantly encouraging such actions in social networks and via other outlets.”
Iran’s problem, however, isn’t that foreign forces are politically encouraging the latest unrest and possibly even directly supporting some of the most violent provocateurs to an uncertain extent, but that the vast majority of the participants in these nationwide protests are there for well-intended reasons and represent a real grassroots movement. The security forces have the right to crack down on those who commit crimes against the population and acts of terrorism against the state, but it’s a gross oversimplification to blame the recent events solely on foreign forces. Although the US is most directly responsible for Iran’s economic woes over the past few years, the “politically inconvenient” fact of the matter is that its sanctions policy has indeed succeeded in creating the conditions whereby people naturally take to the streets in protest from time to time (and especially after so-called “trigger events” such as the latest fuel price hike), after which they function (whether knowingly or unwittingly) as de-facto “human shields” for provocateurs to hide behind when carrying out their attacks against the state. So long as they have a critical mass of people to “protect” them, the security forces will be reluctant to kinetically respond to the provocateurs out of fear of causing “collateral damage”.
Given the scope of the latest unrest, the rapidity with which it’s spread across the country, and the intensity of some of the riots, it wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that Iran has a nascent crisis on its hands that could easily spiral out of control if it’s not properly resolved, thus generating a self-sustaining cycle of unrest that could then facilitate more direct foreign intelligence meddling in its domestic affairs. The key is to contain the grassroots rage and separate legitimate protesters from professional provocateurs, which could happen by the state enacting some “concessions” in order to encourage them to leave the streets. There’s also the risk that doing so could embolden both the protesters and the provocateurs who hide behind them, but it might be a risk worth taking. The Ayatollah shrewdly declined to state his opinion on the price hike other than to say that he supports the state in principle because the agreement was reached by the government’s three branches, so there’s some leeway for him as the Supreme Leader to propose a “compromise solution” if he feels the need, one which could then be used as the pretext for removing some of the more unpopular officials responsible for this decision.
Should the state stand its ground and refuse to make any “concessions” (whether symbolic or of substance) prior to kinetically (forcefully) responding to the provocateurs, then it risks radicalizing the well-intended majority of the protesters who might get caught in the crossfire and thus worsening the same incipient Color Revolution dynamics that it wants to offset. Furthermore, any attempt to paint the protest movement itself as being purely the result of foreign intelligence meddling risks delegitimizing the population’s genuine economic grievances and absolving the state of any responsibility for the crisis even though the government should have realized that it was extremely poor timing (to put it mildly) to enact the fuel price hike against the backdrop of the recent riots in neighboring Iraq and nearby Lebanon. That’s not to say that the government “deserved” this response, but just that it was entirely predictable given the regional security context. The state has the right to respond to rioters however it sees fit, as does it have the right to implement policy, but both must be done responsibly in order to reduce the odds of blowback and ensure the success of both initiatives. As long as the latest unrest continues to be driven by grassroots forces, however, then Iran’s present security challenges will remain very serious.
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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.
O Ministro dos Negócios Estrangeiros, Luigi Di Maio, acolhendo em Roma, os cinco soldados feridos no Iraque, declarou que “o Estado italiano nunca recuará um centímetro diante da ameaça terrorista e reagirá com toda a sua força diante dos que semeiam terror”. Voou, então, para Washington, a fim de participar na reunião de grupo restrito da “Coligação Global contra o Daesh”, do qual fazem parte, sob orientação USA, a Turquia, a Arábia Saudita, o Catar, a Jordânia e outros países que apoiaram o Daesh/ISIS e formações terroristas análogas, fornecendo-lhes armas e treino de combate (conforme documentamos neste jornal).
A Coligação – que inclui a NATO, a União Europeia, a Liga Árabe, a Comunidade dos Estados do Sahel/Sahara e a Interpol, mais 76 Estados individuais – afirma no seu comunicado de 14 de Novembro, “ter libertado o Iraque e o nordeste da Síria” do controlo do Daesh/ISIS», embora seja evidente que as forças da Coligação deixaram, deliberadamente, a mão livre ao Daesh/ISIS.
Esta e outras formações terroristas foram derrotadas apenas, quando a Rússia interveio militarmente em apoio às forças do governo sírio.
A Coligação também reivindica ter “fornecido 20 biliões de dólares em assistência humanitária e para a estabilização do povo iraquiano e sírio, treinado e equipado mais de 220.000 membros das forças de segurança para estabilizar as comunidades locais”. O objectivo desta “assistência” é, na realidade, não a estabilização, mas a contínua desestabilização do Iraque e da Síria, fomentando instrumentalmente, sobretudo, as diversas componentes do independentismo curdo, para desagregar esses Estados nacionais, controlar o seu território e as suas reservas de energia.
Como parte dessa estratégia, a Itália, definida como “um dos maiores contribuintes da Coligação”, está empenhada no Iraque, principalmente, no adestramento das “forças de segurança curdas” (Peshmerga), em particular, no uso de armas anti-tanque, morteiros, artilharia e espingardas de precisão, em cursos especiais para franco-atiradores.
Operam, actualmente, no Iraque, cerca de 1.100 soldados italianos, divididos em diversas ‘task force’/grupos de trabalho, em vários lugares, equipados com mais de 300 veículos terrestres e 12 meios aéreos, com uma despesa, em 2019, de 166 milhões de euro.
A do Iraque está apoiada por uma componente aérea italiana no Kuwait, com 4 caças-bombardeiros Typhoon, 3 drones Predator e um avião-tanque para reabastecimento em voo.
Com toda a probabilidade, as forças especiais italianas, às quais pertencem os cinco feridos, participam em acções de combate, mesmo que a sua tarefa oficial seja só de treino. O emprego de forças especiais é em si, secreto. Agora, torna-se ainda mais secreto porque o seu comando, o COMFOSE, foi transferido do quartel Folgore, em Pisa, para a área vizinha da base de Camp Darby, o maior arsenal USA fora da pátria, onde também são realizadas actividades de treino.
Na Coligação, a Itália também tem a tarefa de co-dirigir o “Grupo financeiro de combate ao “ISIS”, juntamente com a Arábia Saudita e os Estados Unidos, ou seja, aqueles que financiaram e organizaram o armamento das forças do ISIS e de outras formações terroristas (ver a pesquisa do New York Times, em 2013).
Fortalecido com todos estes méritos, o Ministro dos Negócios Estrangeiros, Di Maio, apresentou em Washington a proposta, imediatamente aceite, de que seja a Itália a acolher a reunião plenária da Coligação, em 2020. Assim, a Itália terá a honra de receber oponentes infatigáveis do terrorismo como a Arábia Saudita que, depois de financiar o ISIS, agora gasta os seus petrodólares para financiar a sua guerra terrorista, no Iémen.
Il ministro degli Esteri Luigi Di Maio, accogliendo a Roma i cinque militari feriti in Iraq, ha dichiarato che «lo Stato italiano mai indietreggerà di un centimetro di fronte alla minaccia terroristica e reagirà con tutta la sua forza di fronte a chi semina terrore». E’ quindi volato a Washington per partecipare alla riunione del gruppo ristretto della «Coalizione globale contro Daesh» di cui fanno parte, sotto guida Usa, Turchia, Arabia Saudita, Qatar, Giordania e altri paesi che hanno sostenuto Daesh/Isis e analoghe formazioni terroristiche, fornendo loro armi e addestramento (come abbiamo documentato su questo giornale).
La Coalizione – di cui fanno parte Nato, Unione Europea, Lega Araba, Comunità degli Stati del Sahel/Sahara e Interpol, più 76 singoli Stati – rivendica nel suo comunicato del 14 novembre di «aver liberato l’Iraq e la Siria nord-orientale dal controllo di Daesh/Isis», mentre è evidente che le forze della Coalizione avevano lasciato volutamente mano libera a Daesh/Isis.
Questa e altre formazioni terroristiche sono state sconfitte solo quando la Russia è intervenuta militarmente a sostegno delle forze governative siriane.
La Coalizione rivendica inoltre di aver «fornito 20 miliardi di dollari di assistenza umanitaria e per la stabilizzazione ai popoli iracheno e siriano, e addestrato ed equipaggiato oltre 220.000 membri delle forze di sicurezza per stabilizzare le comunità locali». Scopo di questa «assistenza» è in realtà non la stabilizzazione ma la continua destabilizzazione di Iraq e Siria, facendo leva strumentalmente soprattutto sulle diverse componenti dell’indipendentismo curdo, per disgregare questi Stati nazionali, controllare il loro territorio e le loro riserve energetiche.
Nel quadro di tale strategia l’Italia, definita «uno dei massimi contribuenti della Coalizione», è impegnata in Iraq principalmente nell’addestramento delle «Forze di sicurezza curde» (Peshmerga), in particolare all’uso di armi anti-carro, di mortai e artiglieria, e a quello di fucili di precisione in speciali corsi per cecchini.
Operano attualmente in Iraq circa 1100 militari italiani, divisi in diverse task force in luoghi differenti, dotati di oltre 300 mezzi terrestri e 12 mezzi aerei, con una spesa nel 2019 di 166 milioni di euro.
A quella in Iraq è affiancata una componente aerea italiana in Kuwait, con 4 cacciabombardieri Typhoon, 3 droni Predator e un aereo-cisterna per il rifornimento in volo.
Con tutta probabilità le forze speciali italiane, cui appartengono i cinque feriti, partecipano ad azioni di combattimento anche se il loro compito ufficiale sarebbe solo quello di addestramento. L’impiego delle forze speciali è di per se stesso segreto. Ora diviene ancora più segreto perché il loro comando, il Comfose, viene trasferito dalla caserma della Folgore a Pisa alla limitrofa area della base di Camp Darby, il più grande arsenale Usa fuori dalla madrepatria, dove si svolgono anche attività di addestramento.
Nella Coalizione l’Italia ha inoltre il compito di co-dirigere il «Gruppo finanziario di contrasto all’Isis» insieme ad Arabia Saudita e Stati uniti, ossia a coloro che hanno finanziato e organizzato l’armamento delle forze dell’Isis e di altre formazioni terroristiche (v. inchiesta del New York Times nel 2013).
Forte di tutti questi meriti, il ministro degli Esteri Di Maio ha avanzato a Washington la proposta, subito accettata, che sia l’Italia ad ospitare la riunione plenaria della Coalizione nel 2020. L’Italia avrà così l’onore di ospitare strenui oppositori del terrorismo come l’Arabia Saudita che, dopo aver finanziato l’Isis, ora spende i suoi petrodollari per finanziare la sua guerra terroristica nello Yemen.
For several years since the global push to develop mass-scale Electric Vehicles, the element Lithium has come intofocus as a strategic metal. Demand is enormous in China, in the EU and in the USA at present, and securing control over lithium supplies is already developing its own geopolitics not unlike that for the control of oil.
China Moves to Secure Sources
For China, which has set major targets to become the world’s largest producer of EVs, developing lithium battery materials is a priority for the 13th Five-Year Plan (2016-20) period. Though China has its own lithium reserves, recovery is limited, and China has gone to secure lithium mining rights abroad.
In Australia Chinese companyTalison Lithium, controlled by Tianqi, mines and owns the world’s largest and highest grade spodumene reserves in Greenbushes, Western Australia near Perth.
Talison Lithium Inc. is the world’s largest primary lithium producer. Their Greenbushes site in Australia produces today some 75% of China’s lithium demands and about forty percent of world demand. This as well as other vital Australian raw materials, has made relations with Australia, traditionally a firm US ally, of strategic importance to Beijing. As well, China has become the largest trade partner for Australia.
However China’s growing economic influence in the Pacific around Australia led Prime Minister Scott Morrison to send a warning message to China not to challenge Australia’s strategic backyard region. In late 2017 Australia, with growing concern over expanding Chinese influence in the region, resumed informal cooperation in what is sometimes called the Quad,with USA, India and Japan, reviving an earlier attempt to check Chinese influence in the South Pacific. Australia has also recently stepped up lending to strategic Pacific island nations to counter China’s lending. All this clearly makes it imperative for China to go global to other sites to secure its lithium in order to become the key player in the emerging EV economy over the coming decade.
As development of electric vehicles became priority in Chinese economic planning, the search for secure lithium turned to Chile,another major source of the lithium. There,China’s Tianqiis amassing a major share of Chile’s SociedadQuimica Y Minera (SQM), one of the world’s largest lithium producers. If China’s Tianqi succeeds in gaining control of SQM it will change the geopolitics of world lithium control according to mining industry reports.
The global supply of lithium metals, a strategic component of lithium-ion batteries used to power electric vehicles (EVs) is concentrated in a very few countries.
To give an idea of lithium’s potential demand, the battery for Tesla’s Model S requires 63 kilograms of lithium carbonate, enough to power approximately 10,000 cell phone batteries. In a recent report, the Goldman Sachs bank has called lithium carbonate the new gasoline. Only a 1 per cent increase in electric vehicle production could increase lithium demand by more than 40 per cent of current global production, according to Goldman Sachs. With many governments demanding lower CO2 emission, the global auto industry is expanding plans for EVs massively over the coming decade, which will make lithium potentially as strategic as oil is today.
Saudi Arabia of Lithium?
Bolivia, whose lithium is far more complicated to extract, has alsoin recent years become a target of interest for Beijing. Some geological estimates rank Bolivia’s lithium reserves as the world’s largest.Salar de Uyuni salt flats alone are estimated to contain nine million tons of lithium.
Since 2015 a Chinese mining company, CAMC Engineering Company, has been operating a large plant in Bolivia to produce potassium chloride as fertilizer. What CAMC downplays is the fact that beneath the potassium chloride are the largest known lithium reserves in the world in Salar de Uyuni salt flats, one of 22 such salt flats in Bolivia. China’s Linyi Dake Trade in 2014 constructed a lithium battery pilot plant on the same site.
Then in February 2019 the Morales government signed another lithium deal, this with China’s Xinjiang TBEA Group Co Ltd who will hold a 49 percent stake in a planned joint venture with Bolivia’s state lithium company YLB. That deal is to produce lithium and other materials from the Coipasa and PastosGrandes salt flats and would cost an estimated $2.3 billion.
In terms of lithium, China so far dominates the global new Great Game for control. Chinese entities now control nearly half of global lithium production and 60 percent of the electric battery production capacity. Within a decade, Goldman Sachs predicts China could supply 60 percent of the world’s EVs. In short lithium is a strategic priority for Beijing.
USA China Lithium Rivalry?
The other major actor in the global lithium mining world today is the United States. Albemarle, a Charlotte, North Carolina company with an impressive board of directors, has major lithium mining in Australia and Chile,notably, just as does China. In 2015 Albemarle became a dominant factor in world lithium mining when it bought US company, Rockwood Holdings. Notably, Rockwood Lithium had operations in Chile in the Salar de Atacama, and in the same Greenbushes mine in Australia, where China’sTianqi Industry Group owns 51 percent. That gave Albemarle 49% share of the huge Australian lithium project, in partnership with China.
What is beginning to become clear is that US-China tensions over Chinese economic plans also likely include countering China influence in controlling key strategic lithium reserves. The recent military coup in Bolivia that forced Evo Morales into Mexican exile, from early evidence, had the fingerprints of Washington. The entry of acting interim President Jeanine Áñez, a right-wing Christian,and the right-wing millionaire, Luis Fernando Camacho, signals a nasty turn to the right in the country’s political future, one openly backed by Washington. Crucial among other issues will be whether a future government will annul the lithium mining agreements with Chinese companies.
So too, the cancellation of the November 16 meeting in Chile of APEC, which was to have featured a summit on trade between Trump and Xi Jinping, takes another significance. The meeting was also to have been the venue for major China-Chile trade deals according to the South China Morning Post. Xi’s planned delegation would have included 150 corporate heads and plans to sign major economic agreements, further tightening Chile-China economic ties, something the US has recently warned against.
The eruption of mass protests across Chile opposing government public transit fare increases bears the signs of similar economic triggers in other countries used to ignite Washington Color Revolutions. The protests had the short-term effect of cancelling the APEC summit in Chile. The active role of the US-financed NGOs in the Chile protests has not been confirmed, but the growing economic relations between Chile and China clearly are not seen as positive by Washington. China lithium exploitation in Chile at this point is a little-discussed strategic geopolitical factor that could be target of Washington interventions despite the free market economics of the present government.
At this juncture what is clear is that there is a global battle on for domination of the EV battery market of the future and control of lithium is at the heart of it.
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F. William Engdahl is strategic risk consultant and lecturer, he holds a degree in politics from Princeton University and is a best-selling author on oil and geopolitics, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook” where this article was originally published. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.
Featured image is from NEO
Seeds of Destruction: Hidden Agenda of Genetic Manipulation
Author Name: F. William Engdahl
ISBN Number: 978-0-937147-2-2
Year: 2007
Pages: 341 pages with complete index
List Price: $25.95
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This skilfully researched book focuses on how a small socio-political American elite seeks to establish control over the very basis of human survival: the provision of our daily bread. “Control the food and you control the people.”
This is no ordinary book about the perils of GMO. Engdahl takes the reader inside the corridors of power, into the backrooms of the science labs, behind closed doors in the corporate boardrooms.
The author cogently reveals a diabolical world of profit-driven political intrigue, government corruption and coercion, where genetic manipulation and the patenting of life forms are used to gain worldwide control over food production. If the book often reads as a crime story, that should come as no surprise. For that is what it is.
CEPR
