Global Research

Human life is precious, limited in time and delicate, fragile and unpredictable. There seems to be two types of humans on earth and they are those with no conscience and those who have compassion, empathy and genuine concern for others.

Astoundingly after thousands of years of human existence, the world of humanity is at odds with one another to the extreme of perpetual animosities resulting in endless wars of death and destruction, which never serve a valid or legitimate purpose in human life on earth.

Every war ever fought among human beings, has always and forever will be for selfish motives of conquest against others. Every war is fueled by mass-propaganda, lies, distortions and motives that serve no purpose, other than the sick mentality of the psychopaths in power.

The meaning of human life on earth is not and never will be the property of human governments, warmongers or the violent. Human life is very limited and even those in power have a short window. They will all die. The perverted mentality of humans in power is a mental sickness beyond the comprehension of the majority of all humans on earth. What gain is control and power over the entire world, all natural resources on earth, all people on earth, all geography on earth and all everything on earth, when those who ascend to such power will die and their end is death guaranteed?

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Standing next to a secretive Israeli atomic reactor earlier in the week, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu threatened to “wipe out” his enemies. In a speech that many will see as the Jewish state breaking its long silence over the possession of nuclear weapons, the Likud leader warned that it has the means to destroy its enemies.

“Those who threaten to wipe us out put themselves in a similar danger, and in any event will not achieve their goal,” he said on Wednesday during a ceremony to rename the complex, near the desert town of Dimona.

The site has long been suspected to be the location where Israel has been developing nuclear weapons.

Iran hit back by describing Netanyahu as a “warmonger”.  The threat “atomic annihilation” against the Islamic Republic was denounced as “beyond shameless in the gall”.

“Iran, a country without nuclear weapons, is threatened with atomic annihilation by a warmonger standing next to an actual nuclear weapons factory,” Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif wrote on his official Twitter account.

Iran, a country without nuclear weapons, is threatened with atomic annihilation by a warmonger standing next to an actual nuclear weapons factory. Beyond shameless in the gall. pic.twitter.com/MBoFac8Bvv

— Javad Zarif (@JZarif) August 29, 2018

Zarif also commented on Israel’s nuclear programme saying:

“As the world marks Int’l Day against Nuclear Tests, let’s remember that only nuclear bombs in our region belong to Israel and the US; the former a habitual aggressor & the latter the sole user of nukes. Let’s also remember that Iran has called for Nuclear Weapon Free Zone since 1974.”

Israel has never acknowledged possessing nuclear weapons, instead maintaining a policy of “strategic ambiguity”. Foreign reports have put the size of Israel’s nuclear arsenal in the dozens to hundreds of weapons.

Earlier this month a science journal published by Princeton University’s Science and Global Security journal claimed that Israel conducted illegal nuclear test in contravention of international law.

Netanyahu’s remarks came as Israel lobbies world powers to follow the US in exiting a 2015 international deal with Iran that capped the Islamic Republic’s nuclear capabilities.

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Classified ‘sublethal’, the rubber bullets, teargas and stun grenades used by French police have nevertheless maimed, blinded and killed almost as many in the last six months as in the 20 years before the ‘yellow jacket’ protests began taking to the streets of La République.

To investigate how and why our cousins across the water have stood firm in the face of authorised force that would shock and outrage anywhere else in Europe, GQ’s Robert Chalmers joined les gilets jaunes

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“Most of us who’ve lost an eye were hit near the cheekbone or temple,” says Jérôme Rodrigues, “at which point, that section of your skull shatters. Your cranium is then reconstructed using screws and titanium plates. I was fortunate in that I had no skeletal injury. The officer responsible aimed directly at my eyeball, which burst.” He pauses. “Coffee?”

We’re talking in the kitchen of his studio flat in a quiet village 25 miles north of Paris. Rodrigues, 40, the most engaging and articulate of the prominent gilets jaunes – he doesn’t appreciate being called a “leader” – hands me a grey object roughly as large as a roll-on deodorant: a 40mm calibre projectile from a weapon known as an LBD 40, popularly referred to as a Flash-Ball. Its rigid outer casing, weight (60g) and speed of trajectory (360kph) makes it absurdly euphemistic to refer to it as a “rubber bullet”.

Rodrigues was filming on his mobile phone when he was blinded by an LBD in the Place de la Bastille on 26 January, during the eleventh “Acte”, as the gilets jaunes call their Saturday demonstrations. Acte I took place on 17 November 2018. The first thing you hear on Rodrigues’ recording is the launching of a stun grenade – the widely feared GLI-F4, which is packed with TNT and has blown off the limbs of several protestors. A second later comes the sound of the LBD discharging, a noise similar to the popping of a Champagne cork. After several weeks of accompanying the gilets jaunes both sounds are familiar to me. It’s come to the point these days that when I hear the word “Paris”, the sensual associations the French capital is supposed to evoke – the scent of Guerlain, Gitanes and the sound of the street accordion – have long since been supplanted by the astringent taste of teargas, fumes from burning car tyres and the scream of police sirens.

“As you can hear,” says Rodrigues, replaying the footage, “just before I am hit I’m telling my friends to keep moving, so they’re not sitting ducks.”

When Rodrigues falls to the ground, his mobile hits the pavement but continues to record. People call for the street medics – the volunteers, mainly off-duty nurses, who tend to the wounded gilets jaunes. A woman screams.

“They’ve taken his eye out,” somebody shouts. “His eyeball has gone.”

Some who are unfamiliar with the robust methods of the Compagnies Républicaines De Securité (CRS), the French riot police, might accuse Rodrigues of paranoia when he talks about being cynically targeted.

“They shot directly at my eye,” says Rodrigues, who, before he was mutilé (a word formerly associated with soldiers “mutilated” on the battlefield, it’s one you hear a lot when conversation turns to the gilets jaunes) had been working as a plumber. Even before he was shot, he had been interviewed regularly on television and with his then full beard, now trimmed, was already a unmistakable figure.

“One shot,” he says, “one victim. At first the authorities denied they had even fired an LBD. Every discharge has to be logged within an hour.”

To read the complete article on GQ click here

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A large-scale escalation has taken place on the contact line between Israeli forces and Hezbollah in southern Lebanon.

On September 1, the Israeli military launched several shells at unidentified targets in Shebaa Farms, located in the Israeli-occupied area. An Israeli drone also dropped several incendiary grenades at Bestrah in the Lebanese-controlled part of Shebaa Farms.

In response to these attacks, Hezbollah destroyed an Israeli military vehicle near the Avivim military post in Upper Galilee with an anti-tank guided missile. The Lebanese group said that the attack was carried out by a unit named after Hassan al-Zabib and Yasser Dahir, two of the group’s fighters who were killed in Israeli airstrikes on the Syrian capital of Damascus in August.

Hezbollah said that several Israeli soldiers were killed or injured in the attack. However, Israel denies these claims.

Watch the video here.

In their turn, Tel Aviv forces launched over 100 artillery shells and employed helicopters to attack southern Lebanon.

The escalation on the contact line is the logical continuation of the previous aggressive Israeli actions in the region, including attacks on Beirut and Damascus. Experts say that the current Israeli political leadership is intentionally escalating the situation in order to gain the upper hand in the upcoming parliamentary election.

On August 31, a new ceasefire entered force in Syria’s Greater Idlib marking another attempt of the participants of the Astana format (involving Syria, Turkey, Iran and Russia) to de-escalate the situation in northwestern Syria via diplomatic measures.

The one-sided ceasefire was announced by the Russian Defense Ministry on August 30 and confirmed by the Syrian Armed Forces on August 31. However, the Syrian military said that the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) would use its right to retaliate to any ceasefire violation by terrorists.

Earlier in August, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham and other radical groups rejected a similar ceasefire and immediately started violating it. This led to the resumption of the SAA advance in northern Hama and southern Idlib and to the liberation of Khan Shaykhun.

According to local sources, the new round of the ceasefire in the southern part of the Idlib de-escalation zone is not expected to last long. The main reason is the behavior of the so-called opposition. Immediately, after the start of the ceasefire, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham shot down a Syrian unmanned aerial vehicle monitoring the ceasefire regime.

On September 1, Syrian newspaper al-Watan reported that Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham and its so-called Salvation Government in Greater Idlib could be soon dissolved as part of the Russian-Turkish agreement on the Idlib zone. According to the report, the terrorist group is now involved in talks with the Turkish-backed National Front for Liberation with the mediation of Turkish-backed Faylaq al-Sham. Nonetheless, even if Hayat Tahrir al-Sham officially dissolves, the terrorist threat in Idlib will not be removed because all of its commanders and members remain in the area.

On August 31, at least 7 SAA soldiers were injured in an improvised explosive device explosion which hit their bus in the area between Eastern Ghariyah and al-Karak in eastern Daraa. Pro-government activists said that ISIS cells in southern Syria were likely behind the attack. On July 17, 5 SAA soldiers were killed and several others were injured in a similar attack near the town of al-Yadudah in western Daraa.

As the main point of tensions moved to Greater Idlib, cells of ISIS and other radical groups have taken advantage of a decrease in the scale of anti-terrorist operations in southern Syria to increase their own activity in the region.

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The Brexit storm-clouds are gathering, and the political class in Dublin is in a tizzy. Having placed almost all its emphasis on the mantra of the “hard, militarised border and return to violence,” they will be deprived of any coherent argument when this fails to materialise.

The problem for the southern ruling class is not that the Belfast Agreement will fall apart as a result of Britain withdrawing from the European Union: their difficulty lies in the fact that continued membership of the EU will not address the underlying problems faced by a growing number of the Republic’s citizens; and this is something they wish to conceal.

While the governing coalition of Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil promotes a story of economic recovery, full employment, and prosperity, the reality for many is very different.

Homelessness and lack of access to satisfactory housing is a nightmare for thousands of citizens; yet the state refuses to address the matter. As with most infrastructural issues, this is a problem that will gradually go from bad to worse until it reaches stability-threatening crisis.

The health service is also in chaos. In spite of spending more per capita than most Western European countries, the Republic’s health service lurches from crisis to crisis in a seemingly unending cycle. Nevertheless the Government refuses to review its commitment to retaining an expensive and inefficient two-tier system that benefits paying customers over public patients.

Moreover, whatever protection was afforded by the trade union movement has been diminished since the introduction of the Industrial Relations Act (1990), the effect of which was illustrated recently when the High Court granted Ryanair an injunction preventing a strike by the airline’s pilots.

The Republic’s membership of the European Union is not the sole cause of this situation. The free-market comprador class now governing Ireland predates even the Common Market. Nevertheless they depend heavily for their privileged position and security on a continuing subservient relationship with neo-liberal Brussels. Not only does membership of the EU afford them a bogus prosperity narrative, it organises the bail-out (for which we, the people, pay) when their mismanagement and profligacy lead to meltdown. In return, of course, they ruthlessly apply the free-market agenda dictated by the Continental power-brokers.

It is this slavish adherence to a Thatcherite agenda of privatisation and commercialisation that prevents the southern state from building the necessary houses, creating a universal free health service, and providing a range of public services that would guarantee the well-being of all its citizens.

With Britain now certain to leave the European Union, with or without a deal, attention will sooner or later return to conditions in Ireland as a whole. Not only will the issues referred to above come in for further scrutiny but there is every indication that the global economy is again faltering, and a significant downturn is in prospect.

Coupled with this is the political, economic and social stalemate in the Six Counties, aggravated by the age-old sore of partition. The Belfast Agreement no longer functions as “the light of the world, a city set on a hill . . .” as envisaged by its designers. While the agreement undoubtedly facilitated an ending to the armed conflict, it has failed to provide political agreement or a consensus on local governance.

The future of Northern Ireland as a political entity has rarely been so uncertain. Suspended institutions, changing demographics, sections of unionism’s farming and business community eager to retain easy access to the Republic’s markets, all contribute to a state in flux. And now there is the real prospect that Boris Johnson’s pursuit of a Little Englander agenda will lead to renewed demands for Scottish independence, something that would undermine Unionist confidence.

In the light of all this it is important for socialist republicanism to give serious consideration to a strategy for achieving its objective of a workers’ republic. Towards this end a number of issues have to be stated plainly.

One is to reassert unambiguously that continuing membership of the European Union will not, and indeed cannot, deliver social or economic justice for the people of this country. A second point that has to be hammered home is the one made by Connolly in his debate with William Walker: breaking the political connection with Britain remains an imperative if we are to make progress; and campaigning for an end to partition does not contradict our commitment to internationalism.[1]

It is important, therefore, to take a strong supportive position in the current discussions and campaigns to end partition and bring about political reunification. Such a stance is neither opportunistic nor nationalistic. It not only advances democracy in Ireland but also opens the door to progressive change.

Notwithstanding the turbulence created by armed conflict in the Six Counties, the political context in Ireland, on both sides of the border, remained unchanged for decades after the early 1920s. Three conservative parties shared government in the South throughout that period, while two equally conservative if not reactionary parties dominated politics in the North. On the surface it might be argued that this is still the case, with little sign of it being about to change. The DUP remains the largest party at the Stormont constituency level, while Leo Varadkar’s and Mícheál Martin’s parties continue to dominate the Dáil.

For the reasons outlined above, the hold of these parties on power is not as secure as it once was. Nevertheless, the status quo will not crumble of its own accord, nor should we wait for an external crisis to effect change here. A global economic recession is highly probable but, in isolation, is just as likely to reinforce the right as it is to promote the left.

Moreover, how and when changes in the global economy take place is unpredictable and, by definition, beyond our control.

What socialist republicans should do is engage actively on those issues where we have influence and where we can exert a progressive effect. Battling to end the Industrial Relations Act, fighting north and south for public housing, campaigning against membership of the European Union are all important areas of struggle. However, overturning the constitutional status quo that has resisted the building of a workers’ state has to remain high among our priorities.

With conditions being what they are at present, we could do worse than recall a phrase coined by Bobby Seale and seize the time.

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Note

[1] James Connolly wrote in Forward in July 1911: “Jaurès affirms, in the name of International Socialism, that the Socialists of a subject nation were and are not only in the right in voting for the national independence of their country, but in defending it with their lives if need be.”

Featured image is from Socialist Voice

September 17 Israeli elections loom. Were late August IDF attacks on Syria, Iraq and Lebanon “fuel for the fire of (Netanyahu’s) campaign,” as Haaretz suggested?

Manufacturing nonexistent threats is common US/NATO/Israeli practice. Members of the block and the Jewish state face no threats to their national security.

So they’re invented to pursue their hostile agendas. It’s unlikely that Netanyahu wants war — other than as junior partner to US aggression like what’s ongoing endlessly in Syria.

Lebanon’s Hezbollah Secretary General Sayed Hassan Nasrallah warned of retaliation against Israeli aggression.

Lebanese President Michel Aoun called aggressive Israeli drone strikes on the country a “declaration of war.”

On Monday, Arab League secretary general Ahmed Aboul Gheit accused Israel of escalating tensions with Lebanon, adding:

“The international community is responsible for restraining Israel’s actions, which are taken in domestic electoral interests.”

In response to Israel’s preemptive attack, Hezbollah “destroyed (an IDF) military vehicle on the road to the Avivim barracks (in the country’s north), killing and wounding those inside,” according to Lebanon’s Al Mayadeen television.

Lebanon’s military said the IDF fired 40 rockets at the country’s south on Sunday. Lebanese Al-Manar television reported that Israel also used banned white phosphorous munitions in attacking the country.

Israeli drones used the terror weapon to firebomb a Lebanese grove near the border separating both countries, setting it ablaze.

Netanyahu regime-provoked incidents risk war if pushed too far. On Saturday, Sputnik News reported that the IDF is “preparing ground, air and naval troops for the possibility of a major attack by Hezbollah.”

Its fighters never launched strikes preemptively, only in response when attacked, Israel a major threat to their security, Lebanon and the region.

On Sunday, the IDF said Hezbollah rocket strikes in northern Israel caused no military or civilian casualties.

Video published on the Israeli Yedioth Ahronoth website showed IDF helicopters airlifting wounded soldiers (and perhaps civilians) to a hospital for treatment — refuting the IDF Big Lie, Netanyahu’s as well, saying no Israelis were “scratched.”

The Trump regime reportedly demanded that Hezbollah not respond to Israeli aggression — rejected by its ruling authorities.

Its Deputy Secretary General Sheikh Naim Qassem said Israeli aggression won’t go unanswered. Self-defense when attacked is a universal right — recognized under international law.

Hezbollah said Israeli drone attacks on Lebanese territory were rigged with explosives, aiming to kill one or more senior group officials.

Its Secretary General Nasrallah said preemptive Israeli attacks were the first on Lebanon since its 2006 war of aggression on the country.

On Monday, Lebanon’s Prime Minister Sa’ad Hariri said his government seeks to avoid “any slide towards a serious escalation, but this requires the international community to prove its rejection of this flagrant (Israeli) violation of our sovereignty and of resolution 1701.”

Unanimously adopted following Israel’s 2006 aggression on Lebanon, it mandated a full cessation of hostilities by both sides, among other provisions.

Like the US, Israel does what it pleases, breaching international law with impunity, Palestinians bearing the brunt of its viciousness, Syria aggressively attacked repeatedly by its warplanes — Lebanon now in the line of fire.

On Sunday in Moscow for meetings with his counterpart and other Kremlin officials, Iranian Foreign Minister Zarif said Israeli aggression against regional countries will be discussed — along with “talks on bilateral cooperation.”

Israeli military intelligence-connected DEBKAfile (DF) falsely suggested more Hezbollah attacks are coming — only in self-defense it failed to explain.

The goes as well for Iran and Hamas, threatening no one, wanting peace, not war. DF falsely claimed otherwise.

It turned truth on its head, suggesting “an Iranian backed war of attrition from Lebanon” may be planned.

The Islamic Republic never attacked another country throughout its 40 year history — what the US, NATO and Israel do repeatedly.

On Monday, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Seyyed Abbas Mousavi slammed “(t)he aggressive move by the Israeli regime against Lebanon…”

He called it “a clear breach of the sovereignty and integrity of an independent UN member state and against international security,” adding:

“The bankrupt Israeli regime, with the international community’s meaningful silence and the US’ lavish supports, is trying to undermine the Lebanese people’s great resistance.”

Hezbollah’s response to Israeli aggression showed it will retaliate against IDF strikes.

The ball is in Netanyahu’s court. Does he want conflict with Lebanon, believing it may help his reelection?

Or will IDF commanders warn him against attacking an adversary able to hit back hard against Israeli targets anywhere in the country, causing numerous casualties and significant damage?

The Jewish state is vulnerable, Hezbollah with much greater firepower than in 2006 when it embarrassed IDF ground forces.

If Netanyahu foolishly wants war with Lebanon, Israel will get a belly full in response.

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

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

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

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

The US’ reported threats to sanction African countries that buy Russian weaponry won’t succeed in stopping security cooperation between Moscow and its partners, though it’s nevertheless a clever way to try to exploit those nations’ “deep state” divisions in a desperate bid to reverse Russian influence in the continent.

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Saada’s old city, which is among the world’s oldest human-carved landscapes, once consisted entirely of historic, centuries-old multi-story homes. Now, it has been wiped out, after Saudi Arabia declared it a military zone — even the city’s hand-carved wooden doors have been reduced to ashes.

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Yemen was once described as a living museum, but U.S. made bombs dropped by the Saudi-led Coalition’s jets have not only killed thousands of civilians and led to famine and the spread of disease but also pulverized the country’s rich architectural history and left its inimitable heritage at the mercy of the highest bidder.

“I remember how light filtered through the stained glass of the patterned crescent window (qamarias) onto the white gypsum plaster in the resting room (Deirmanah) on the top floor. At night, lights tossed dapples of color into the sky,” Saleh Ali al-Aeini recounted to MintPress from his partially destroyed high-rise apartment, continuing, “Now, only scattered glass remains amid a mound of dust and mud, thanks to American bombs.”

Saleh’s ancient tower-house was one of four historic buildings in the old quarter of Sana’a that were destroyed by U.S. bombs dropped from Saudi warplanes in June, 2015. The buildings’ many-storied tower-houses, three of them rising to 110 feet, were more than 2,500 years old. The newest of them was more than 1,000 years old, built long before the United States even existed as a nation.

The effects of airstrikes on the UNESCO-listed Old City, perched on a highland plateau more than 7,200 feet above sea level, can be noticed at a glance. Cracks show on the more than 1,975 densely-packed homes, threatening them with collapse. Labyrinths, hidden gardens, steam baths, busy markets and streets have all been affected by airstrikes on the city that was said to have been founded by Shem, the son of Noah. In fact, the ancient city has been targeted at least four times with over 30 airstrikes according to the General Authority for the Preservation of Historic Cities.

Yet Saudi airstrikes extend far beyond Sana’a’s historic sites — to Sadaa, Shibam Hadramout, Zabid in Hodeida, Shibam Kuban, east of Sana’a, Shabwa, Aden, Amran, Taiz, and other areas of the country’s history that have also fallen victim to coalition bombing. Airstrikes and shelling have destroyed at least 66 historic sites according to Muhannad al-Sayani, chairman of the Yemeni General Authority for Antiquities

Coalition raids have targeted ancient castles and forts, museums, religious shrines housing cultural treasures; and ancient dams, including the world-famous Great Marib Dam.

Al-Sayani told MintPress that targeting of the country’s historic sites by the Saudi-led Coalition is deliberate: “These are open sites, mostly in desert areas where weapons cannot be stored.” Following many of the attacks, the Coalition often accuses the Houthis of using archaeological sites as weapons depots; however, no evidence has been provided to substantiate these allegations.

The undersecretary of the General Authority for the Preservation of Historic Cities, Amat al-Razzaq Jahaf, told MintPress that most of the monuments or sites have been damaged or destroyed by Saudi airstrikes since the Saudi-led campaign began without any justification.

The al-Hadi Mosque shown here has been targeted several times. Built around 897, it is the final resting place of Imam al-Hadi ila’l-Haqq Yahya, the Zaydi imam of Yemen, August 22, 2019. Ali al-Shurqbai | MintPress News

The United States says it does not make targeting decisions for the Coalition. But it does support Coalition operations through arms sales, the refueling of Saudi combat aircraft, and the sharing of intelligence. Just last Thursday, a U.S. MQ-9 Reaper drone was downed in the city of Dhamar near the historic Dhamar Museum, which was leveled by a direct Saudi airstrike in June 2015.

Nothing can bring these back

Al-Aeini’s wife, who told MintPress than an American-made bomb had destroyed her home and killed her sons, accused international aid organizations of neglecting their suffering. “Lots of organizations visited us and provided only [promises] without doing anything,” she went on, “We rebuilt a part of the house by ourselves, just to have shelter for me and my husband, without any help.” Yemen’s General Authority of Antiquities complained to MintPress that the country’s heritage has been neglected by international organizations and communities.

Now, the buildings — which have stood tall for thousands of years in the historic city that surrounds the remnants of al-Aeini family home — are subject to eroding foundations and ominous cracks that line their ancient walls built of mud and stone, as a result of repeated Saudi attacks and the inability of Yemen’s government to address the deterioration amid four years of Saudi bombardment.

To make matters worse, Yemen is in the midst of its rainy season, adding to the challenges in rebuilding archaeological sites that have been targeted. “Of course, what has been destroyed is still devastating and every day the dangers [to those sites] is multiplied due to our inability to carry out operations to reduce the aggravation of damage because of the costs of rebuilding,” Jahaf told MintPress. Al-Qasimi’s house in Sultan’s orchard in ancient Sana’a, which was destroyed in another Saudi airstrike, is an example of this.

“If peace is brought to Yemen — and with it, compensation is provided — infrastructure, roads, schools, and hospitals could all be rebuilt; but nothing can bring back the historic architecture that has been destroyed,” Mohaned al-Sayani, chairman of the Yemeni General Authority for Antiquities, told MintPress.

Centuries in building, seconds in destroying

“Here, generations of my grandparents lived; why is it that the Coalition can so easily destroy it?” Hashem Ali, who fled to Sana’a after airstrikes leveled his family home in the historic Rahban area of Saada, asked MintPress. “This is the first time in nearly 600 years that my family is without a home.”

The attack on ancient Sana’a was the first of many violent assaults on Yemen’s architectural history, but the worst hit historic area has been Yemen’s northern province of Saada, the hub of the ancient Minaean Kingdom of Ma’in, founded before the fourth century B.C.

Saada’s old city, which is among the world’s oldest human-carved landscapes, once consisted entirely of historic, centuries-old multi-story homes. Now, it has been wiped out, after Saudi Arabia declared it a military zone — even the city’s hand-carved wooden doors have been reduced to ashes.

Just hours after the Coalition issued a warning on May 10, 2015, dozens of airstrikes rained down on the historic city, including on the ancient al-Hadi Mosque, which was founded nearly 1,200 years ago and is the final resting place of Imam al-Hadi ila’l-Haqq Yahya, the Zaydi imam of Yemen

To understand Saudi Arabia’s motivation to essentially exterminate Yemen’s heritage, one must understand Yemen’s history as well as that of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates and the Saudi-based Wahhabi faith, which provides religious justification for targeting heritage sites under the guise of eradicating polytheism.

In ancient times, Yemen was home to several flourishing civilizations — including Ma’in, Qataban, Hadramaut, Ausan, Himyar and Saba (Sheba), which lasted for 11 centuries and was mentioned in the Quran and other ancient holy books. The Saban civilization was marked by its distinctive architecture, based almost entirely on local building materials, a style unique in the Middle East.

In contrast to Yemen’s rich and ancient history, civilization did not make its way to the Arabian Gulf until the 1930s. The United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia’s fellow coalition war partner, didn’t take root until 1971.

Many Yemenis, including Saleh Ali al-Aeini, believe that Saudi Arabia harbors severe jealousy over Yemen’s history and heritage and the unique role that it has played in human history. According to some historians, that history spans 60,000-70,000 years, when the country received its first Homo sapiens who migrated across the Red Sea from Africa to the Middle East before traveling west to Europe and east to Asia and Australia.

Moreover, Wahhabism — the official state religion of Saudi Arabia, based on a puritanical and widely rejected interpretation of Islam — sees the preservation of historic and religious sites as tantamount to idolatry. The Wahhabi establishment in Saudi Arabia has not even spared the Kingdom’s own tombs and monuments in Mecca and Medina and shows special disdain for Yemen’s historic sites, especially those located in northern Yemen, the seat of the Shia Zaydis for over a thousand years.

Looting what was not destroyed

Yemenis see their historic sites as a social-cultural fabric linking generations to their early ancestors. “I’ve lived here for dozens of years but now I have no house; there are no more gatherings of my ones-loved on the weekend,” al-Aeini said. He continued: “Another thing to worry about is our remaining legacy being looted.”

Destruction from the air is not the only threat to Yemen’s ancient legacy. During their war in Yemen, Saudi Arabia and the UAE have established smuggling networks in the country to loot historic sites.

A.M.M., who asked to be identified only by his initials, worked as an antiquities smuggler for a security outfit based in the UAE. A.M.M. told MintPress that his team sold four 2,500-year-old mummies, a gilded Torah scroll, and dozens of bejeweled daggers from the early Islamic era.

“They always stressed the importance of keeping [the items] from being damaged so that they will be accepted by their American friends,” he said.

The smuggling of Yemeni antiquities is often carried out by diplomats operating out of Yemeni embassies from Saudi Arabia, the UAE,  Bahrain and Egypt in return for lucrative sums of money allegedly provided by patrons from the United States and Israel. Yemen is the cradle to many civilizations and home to multiple faiths — particularly Judaism, Christianity and Islam, which all thrived in Yemen for millennia. For the Israelis, many of Yemen’s antiquities are seen as the rightful property of the Jewish people and there is reason to believe that Israel is also involved in the looting of Yemen’s heritage.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu holds a 500 hundred-year-old Torah scroll as he poses with some Yemeni Jews brought to Israel, at the Knesset on March 21, 2016. Haim Zach | GPO

Officials in Sana’a say they have strong evidence that Yemeni artifacts are being sold off to American and Isreali buyers.

“Artifacts featuring the Star of David or Jewish names are our priority; they often fetch a higher price than the other artifacts,” A.M.M told MintPress. “I sold one Hebrew manuscript to a UAE officer for $20,000,” he added.

Aden, in the eastern province of Marib, is favored by smugglers for shuttling stolen artifacts abroad. Here — according to the testimonies of a number of smugglers arrested by Houthi forces and now serving their sentences Sana’a’s Central Prison — smugglers are able to work in broad daylight in facilities provided to them by high-ranking officials in the ousted government of President Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi, with direct coordination of both Emirati and Saudi officials.

More weapons to destroy what remains?

“We want compensation to rebuild our house again,” al-Aeini said, perched atop the stone rubble of his destroyed ancient home. “We should get compensation from the Americans. American bombs have killed more of us than were killed in the September 11 attacks.”

Al-Aeini was sardonically referring to the duality of moral attitudes in the United States, where on one hand Saudi Arabia is asked to pay compensation to the families of victims of the September 11 attacks, yet do nothing for victims of the war in Yemen, who are often killed with U.S. weapons sold to Saudi Arabia. “If there hadn’t been an American bomb, I would be at home now with my children and grandchildren, but they took everything,” al-Aeini said.

Many Yemenis are pessimistic about the future of their heritage. They say President Donald Trump’s recently-announced sales of U.S. weapons to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates will destroy what remains of their country’s legacy. The sale includes precision-guided missiles manufactured by Raytheon as well as precision guidance parts for Paveway IV bombs used on Eurofighter and Tornado warplanes — the same type that have been blamed for much of the destruction of Yemen’s historic sites and civilian casualties alike in the Saudi-UAE air campaign in Yemen.

An old Yemeni proverb used for generations to encourage the preservation of the country’s rich heritage reads Eli maluh awal maluh taley (Whoever has no first, has no second). Many Yemenis, al-Aeini among them, fear that Yemen is already losing its heritage, much like al-Aeini lost his home, to American weapons.

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Ahmed AbdulKareem is a Yemeni journalist. He covers the war in Yemen for MintPress News as well as local Yemeni media.

Featured image is from Al-Masdar News

The Trump administration has gone ahead with its decision to impose a 15 percent tariff on $110 billion worth of Chinese goods in one of the most significant escalations of the trade war that has now lasted more than a year.

The new tariffs came into effect yesterday and will impact on a range of consumer products from footwear and clothing to certain technology products. The 15 percent tariff hike is set to be extended to a further $160 billion worth of Chinese goods from December 15, with the prospect that the rate could also increase.

The US has already imposed tariffs on $250 billion worth of Chinese goods, mainly business products, and these are set to rise to 30 percent in a month’s time.

The new tariffs will directly impact on consumers. Myron Brilliant, head of international affairs at the US Chamber of Commerce, said the administration was using the wrong tactic against China and the tariffs would cost every American household between $600 and $1,000 by the end of the year.

In a calculation made in May, the New York Federal Reserve estimated that tariffs imposed on Chinese imports were already costing the average American household $831 a year because of their direct effect on prices and their impact on economic efficiency.

China put into effect retaliatory measures yesterday which will hit $3.2 billion worth of US soybean exports, $2.55 billion worth of crude oil and $1.16 billion of pharmaceutical products. China has targeted a total of $75 billion worth of American goods, mainly agricultural products, in order to try to hit at states that provide the main base of Trump’s political support in the South and the Midwest.

A commentary published in the official Xinhua news agency after the tariffs went into effect indicated Beijing considers there is no prospect for a solution to the conflict and it is ready for a long battle.

“China’s determination to fight against the US economic warmongering has only grown stronger and its countermeasures more resolute, measured and targeted,” it stated. One thing that “White House tariff men should learn is that the Chinese economy is strong and resilient enough to resist the pressure brought about in the ongoing trade war.”

The official position on both sides is that face-to-face talks will be held sometime this month. Trump told reporters on Saturday that the scheduled talks were still on, “as of now.”

China has yet to confirm that negotiations will resume with the commerce ministry saying the two sides were still discussing whether a delegation from Beijing would travel to Washington.

On the sidelines of the G7 meeting last weekend Trump claimed there had been a call from a top Beijing official, and China was eager for talks to resume and to make a deal. But the Chinese side denied all knowledge of such a call.

Even if talks are held, it is doubtful whether any progress will be made in resolving the conflict.

China’s foreign ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said the trade teams on both sides maintained effective communication.

“We hope the US side can demonstrate good faith and take real action, to work in concert with the Chinese side, to find a solution to the problem on the basis of equality and mutual respect.”

As far as Beijing is concerned that means some pullback on the tariff measures imposed by the Trump administration.

“What should be discussed now is that the US must call off its plan to impose [additional] tariffs on $550 billion worth of Chinese goods to avoid a further escalation in the trade dispute,” commerce ministry spokesman Gao Feng said.

However, there are no indications of that taking place. The Trump administration fears that if it makes any move in that direction it will come under attack from anti-China hawks in both the Republican and Democratic parties. They maintain that Chinese economic expansion, especially in high-tech areas, is an existential threat to the “national security” of the US and must be prevented at all costs.

The imposition of the tariff brought a series of calls from US business representatives for some resolution of the conflict, amid warnings that the trade war could bring about a recession.

The president of the Consumer Technology Association, Gary Shapiro, said the use of tariffs to try to pressure China had backfired.

“US companies have to spend more resources on constantly changing trade rules and less on innovation, new products and our economic health. This is not how you reach a meaningful trade agreement,” he said.

Trump has received backing from the trade union bureaucracy. In an interview with Fox News, AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka credited Trump with “taking on China” but expressed the criticism, common in US political and business circles, that “unfortunately he’s done it in the wrong way.”

“To take on China, there has to be a multilateral approach,” Trumka said.

Trump, who last week “hereby ordered” US businesses to leave China, citing national security legislation, has dismissed criticism from business organisations that the trade war is having an adverse impact on the US economy.

The US president said any business setbacks were the fault of “badly run and weak companies” and that the US Federal Reserve was to blame. The US did not “have a tariff problem … we have a Fed problem.”

Trump is demanding that the Fed ease monetary policy, both through cuts in interest rates, and even a resumption of asset purchases—the policy of so-called “quantitative easing”—in order to bring down the value of the dollar and improve the position of the US in global markets.

The increasing push by the administration towards what amounts to a currency war is taking place amid increasing signs of a significant slowdown in the world economy. Germany, the leading economy in the euro zone, is on the brink of recording two successive quarters of negative growth and the UK economy contracted in the last quarter.

In China the manufacturing purchasing managers’ index stood at 49.5 in August, up from 48.7 in July. This was the fourth month in a row that the index had come in below the level of 50, which marks the border between expansion and contraction.

While Trump continues to insist that the US economy is strong, there are indications of a downturn. The University of Michigan’s index of consumer confidence, released on Friday, posted its largest monthly drop since 2012, with about a third of those surveyed pointing to tariffs as a concern.

“The data indicate that the erosion of consumer confidence due to tariff policies is well under way,” said the survey’s chief economist Richard Curtin.

Long-time economic forecaster Allen Sinai told the Wall Street Journal that a fall in corporate earnings could lead to less investment and a contraction. Business investment fell at an annual rate of 0.6 percent in the second quarter after reaching growth rates of more than 8 percent at the end of 2017 and at the beginning of 2018.

Sinai said that China had to be confronted, but the trade measures were a “big policy error” and were hurting at home.

According to a Wall Street Journal survey, economists on average now see a 33.6 percent probability of recession in the US, up from 30.1 in July, and the highest level since the survey began in 2011. A year ago the probability of recession was rated at 18.3 percent.

According to the forecasting firm Macroeconomic Advisers, the US economy is growing at an annual rate of 1.7 percent in the current quarter, well below the Trump administration’s target of at least 3 percent.

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Hindsight is the best foresight, so clarity will arrive as events unfold.

For the vast majority of ordinary Americans, the 2008-09 great recession never ended.

Real unemployment is around 21%, based on how numbers were calculated in the 1980s.

The so-called U-3 headlined unemployment number omits individuals without jobs who want them, including many longterm unemployed ones not looking after months of failure to find work.

Millions of unemployed Americans are considered nonpersons, their status omitted from headlined monthly Labor Department figures.

These are real people struggling to get by. Most working Americans hold low-wage, poor-or-no benefit temporary or part-time service jobs.

Already living in poverty or bordering it, they’re one or a few missed paychecks away from possible homelessness, hunger and despair — the world’s richest nation uncaring about their dire straights.

Its policymakers serve privileged interests exclusively at the expense of the rights and welfare of most others — what the scourge of neoliberal harshness is all about.

Current US economic growth is weak, likely heading south, not improving.

Economist John Williams re-engineers official data to how it was accurately calculated decades earlier.

On August 29, he reported the following:

Q II 2019 GDP was revised lower to 2.04%. “Manufacturing and oil and gas production are in decline.”

“Real new orders are in their worst contraction since the (2008-09) great recession.”

Construction spending fell to its lowest level since that period, the same true for freight activity.

“Heavy downside revisions to retail trade employment suggest” officials numbers were overstated.

Williams believes further Fed interest rate cuts are cutting, money printing madness quantitative easing (QE) likely to follow. Will monetary policy and tax cuts strengthen economic conditions?

Corporations used their windfall  for executive pay increases and bonuses, stock buybacks raising valuations, mergers and acquisitions to reduce competition, dividends to shareholders, and stashing trillions of dollars in offshore tax havens.

Easy money encourages speculation, what drove equity valuations to record-high levels.

Economic growth depends on productive investments, creating jobs, absent in the US, its industrial base and other high-paying jobs offshored to low-wage countries.

Tax cuts for the rich widened the wealth gap to extremes not seen since the roaring 20s and earlier age of the robber barons.

It did little or nothing to benefit ordinary Americans, the nation in decline, thirdworldized for most of its people, things worsening, not improving.

Another great recession will hit them harder — while the nation’s privileged class never had things better, able to ride out economic storms when arrive.

Economist David Rosenberg believes recession is coming, things close to it now, saying:

Corporate earnings are “rolling over.” Weakening economic data suggest “a significant growth turndown right now in the US economy,” adding:

“(E)arnings estimates are coming down and the stock market is just rocking and rolling.”

Trump’s trade war with China made things worse. On September 1, new 15% tariffs took effect on $112 billion worth of Chinese imports — including consumer products, making them more costly to buyers.

On December 15, US tariffs are coming on all remaining Chinese goods. According to JP Morgan Chase, tariffs imposed on September 1 will cost the average US household an extra $1,000 annually.

Numerous US companies and industry groups voiced strong opposition to Trump’s tariffs war. He slammed them, saying they’re “badly run and weak,” using tariffs as an excuse for bad management.

Likely making enemies in corporate boardrooms by his arrogance, he maintains the myth that China is paying for US tariffs. They’re hitting US business and consumers.

Forbes magazine said most economists predict that “the next recession could be deeper and more severe than the previous one in light of the fact that business and household debts are at higher levels than they were prior to the Great Recession of 2007-09, a global trade war is ramping up, and there’s been a significant increase in the federal debt.”

Economist David Stockman believes Fed interest rate cuts and QE will be “no match” for the coming recession.

The yield curve is an important indicator of future economic activity. When the spread between US 3-month Treasury notes and 10-year bonds inverts for at least three consecutive months, recession follows every time — according to the historical record.

Last week, the Economic Collapse blog said the following:

“We now have had three months of a 3-mo/10-yr yield curve inversion. The track record this has had in predicting recessions: 100%.”

It’s likely coming, hindsight will tell when — maybe later this year or some time in 2020, its strength and duration to be known after the fact.

Escalating trade war with China showing no signs of easing, increases the chance for economic downturn, maybe something stiff and protracted.

In late August, the US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reported that the 2018-19 period ending in March produced 501,000 fewer nonfarm jobs than initially reported — a 20% downward revision from 2.496 million to 1.995 million.

It’s the largest downward revision since the 2008/09 great recession’s waning stages.

Payroll growth was downwardly revised from 1.69% to 1.35%, the weakest figure since the great recession, John Williams reported.

The data is further proof that tax cuts don’t stimulate jobs creation, a myth maintained by Trump and others around him.

Economist Jack Rasmus explained another myth. Adjusted for inflation and other factors, wage gains have been minimal, stagnant or falling for US workers, “not rising 3.1%,” adding:

“A survey by the finance site Bankrate.com found that ‘more than 60% of Americans said they didn’t get a pay raise or get a better-paying job in the last 12 months.’ ”

Re-engineered US inflation to how it was calculated in the 1980s (by Williams) shows it exceeds 5.5%, not the phony sub-2% official number.

Rasmus asked “if 60% (of US workers) didn’t get any wage increase at all, how could wages be rising 3.1% or even 1.5%?”

If real US inflation exceeds 5.5%, average wages for working Americans declined, a further drag on the economy, compounded by record high consumer debt exceeding $13 trillion.

McKinsey Global Institute data show US “median wages have not risen at all since 2007,” Rasmus reported.

Adjusted for real inflation, they’ve fallen, exacerbating the widening US wealth gap, have and have not economic reality in the country.

Whenever it arrives, economic recession will hit ordinary Americans hardest.

If stiff and protracted, current hard times will be much harder for most households.

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

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

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

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

Headlines emanating from the West regarding Syria’s ongoing war have a common theme – allegations of Syria and Russia’s “ruthless barrage” of the northern region of Idlib.

So often – however – has the US and its allies falsely invoked “humanitarian concern” that these headlines fall on informed and discerning ears who not only reject it, but have cemented in their minds a familiarity with this ploy that will make it all but impossible to use it again on whatever battlefield the US shifts its foreign policy to next.

Like a Broken Record

CBS in its article, “Syrians trapped by Assad’s ruthless Russian-backed barrage in Idlib beg for help,” peddles an all-too-familiar narrative of helpless, innocent civilians in desperate need of “help.” That “help,” of course always comes in the form of US intervention and the eventual, total destruction of the nation as was the case for Libya in 2011.

The article claims:

More than three million people are trapped under a Syrian bombing campaign as Bashar Assad battles to reclaim the last enclave held by rebels in his country. Idlib is the only remaining opposition stronghold after eight grueling years of civil war.

There are no “rebels” or “opposition” in Idlib. There are – however – legions of militants operating under the banners of Al Qaeda, the self-proclaimed “Islamic State” (ISIS), and their various affiliates.

These terrorists are the recipients of foreign arms and support – and many of them are not even themselves Syrian – making CBS’ claims that Syria’s conflict is a “civil war” wholly inaccurate.

Far from Syrian or Russian “propaganda,” the fact that Idlib has been occupied by terrorists and not “rebels” is one admitted by the Western media itself – and a fact admitted to since the region first fell to foreign-armed terrorists.

The Associated Press in its 2015 article titled, “Assad Loses Final Idlib Stronghold to Al Qaeda-led Insurgents,” would report:

After a two-year siege, al Qaeda’s affiliate in Syria and other insurgents on Wednesday captured the one remaining Syrian army air base in Idlib, a development that activists said effectively expelled the last of President Bashar al-Assad’s military from the northwestern province. 

The CBS article – like many examples of Western war propaganda – after deceiving readers as to who Syrian forces are fighting in Idlib – makes the case for US intervention, claiming:

In the aftermath, one woman screamed hysterically at a news camera, begging for an American intervention. 

“We are getting killed every day,” she cried. “Mr. Trump, please, please stop this!” 

But there is no help.

Like many of the West’s narratives, CBS’ story depends on readers believing without any evidence that not only did their “witness” really exist and said what CBS claims they said, but really begged the US to intervene despite seeing what US interventions have done everywhere else in the region over the past two decades.

Extra irony can be drawn from CBS’ reporting – considering that the US itself has carried out airstrikes and drone attacks on Idlib over the years as well.

As another part of the West’s admissions of Al Qaeda, ISIS, and other terrorist organizations occupying Idlib – there have been reports over the years of the US carrying out airstrikes and drone attacks targeting various leaders of Al Qaeda.

A 2016 Radio Free Europe Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) article titled, “Pentagon Says It Killed Senior Al-Qaeda Leader,” admitted:

A U.S. drone strike in Syria killed a senior Al-Qaeda leader who once had ties to Osama bin Laden, the Pentagon said on November 2. 

The October 17 strike near Idlib killed Haydar Kirkan, who “was intent on plotting and carrying out attacks against the West,” Pentagon spokesman Captain Jeff Davis said.

The Business Insider in another 2016 article titled, “Egyptian al Qaeda leader killed by US drone strike in Idlib, Syria,” would reveal:

Syria’s militant Jabhat Fateh al Sham, formerly the Nusra Front, said on Monday that Egyptian cleric Abu al Faraj al Masri, a prominent member of the militant group, had been killed in a strike by the U.S.-led coalition.

The US – finding Idlib to be a seemingly target-rich environment for Al Qaeda leaders – and by having carried out military operations there itself – not only contradicts its current accusations of Syria and Russia bombing “rebels” and “opposition” groups, but also reveals the US as equally guilty of bombing the population of Idlib – whatever the reason – as it now claims Syria and Russia are.

Despite the best efforts by CBS and others to sell US intervention in Syria at this late juncture – the prospects of US intervention are remote – not only because the lies told by media networks like CBS to justify it have run their course, but also because the US is out of options militarily, politically, economically, and even covertly.

The Endgame 

Lacking any coherent, viable proxy force on the ground, the US is left with only a few, equally unattractive options including carrying out its own military campaign against Damascus, or having proxies like Israel or Turkey initiate hostilities it can then join in shortly thereafter.

Russian diplomatic efforts to give Turkey an exit from its involvement in Washington’s apparently failed proxy war appear to be gaining traction. Turkey will remain for the time being teetering between East and West as its economy and special interests within the spheres of business and politics cultivate ties in both directions.

Creating the conditions on the ground – however – that leave little for Ankara to gain from by aiding Washington’s proxy war further is key to having Turkey place both feet down firmly on Damascus and Moscow’s side at least in this regard.

Israel – on the other hand – is an eager proxy who remains committed to provocations including air strikes on Syria, Iraq, and now even Lebanon. Israel is also equally committed to provoking Iran – the primary target of the US-led war in Syria.

Israel’s ability to “invade” Syria – let alone Iran – is nonexistent and its inability to win any war through air power alone was already fully demonstrated in its failed 2006 war with Lebanon. Without a sizable commitment of US forces, “US intervention” or that by its proxies in Syria – or Iran for that matter – is unlikely and were it to happen, not guaranteed to succeed.

The Russian military presence in Syria also greatly complicates US ambitions to escalate hostilities in Syria – and as Russia expands its ties throughout the Middle East – it complicates Washington’s campaign of sowing regional hostilities as well.

Assuming those in Washington are aware of their failure in Syria and their current lack of options, the threat of simply sowing chaos in the region and delaying peace and reconstruction is more likely an attempt to find leverage and force concessions as the conflict reaches its endgame.

The US and its media’s “humanitarian-based” accusations against Syria and Russia will continue despite its growing impotence as a political tool. Thus, the alternative media who helped dull the blade of this tool in the first place, must continue exposing Western disinformation and war propaganda to ensure it remains impotent.

In many ways, complacency and misplaced trust in Washington’s feigned rapprochement with Russia, Syria, and others in the early 2000’s invited the current conflict. Lessons must be learned from how this conflict began and how it is being ended in order to avoid it from ever unfolding again.

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Tony Cartalucci is a Bangkok-based geopolitical researcher and writer, especially 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

My life has been turned upside down amd inside out. My brain has never had to work so hard to make sense, to survive and to live. For some of my hardest years, the system saw me and treated me as illegal.

That is a big experience. I learnt much. But above all I thought about being human and being free.

Syria

Now 24 years old I was born in Aleppo in northern Syria. As one of the oldest human cities in the world it is rich with history. But I didn’t think of the city as a unique place. I thought that our cultures were everywhere in the world. As a young Syrian I couldn’t leave the country for many reasons, including money and international laws, which did not allow me to roam freely across the earth. I had no direct knowledge of the world other than Syria.

After the winds of war tore up my country, I was forced to leave Syria without any options other than escaping into Turkey, illegally. For the first time in my life I came to understand the incredible importance that humans give to ‘papers’ – passports, ID, visas and so on. If I had been a bird in Aleppo I would have been free to go where I wished with no thought about papers or borders. For birds and all other living creatures on this earth borders have no meaning. But we seem to be alone amongst living things in restricting this universal right.

Turkey

When I arrived in Turkey I discovered that there are people who speak a strange language (my first feeling), which is Turkish and they do not know Arabic. I thought that I must learn their language so that I can communicate with them, but the Turkish language was not the only obstacle; the Turkish way of life I found hard to accept.

In the short time I spent in Turkey I experienced a society where men and women worked so hard for little money. Life for many seemed little better than prison.

On one sunny morning I went to a public garden to sit under the sun. There were a lot of young and old people in the garden and I approached one of them and said “Hi” to him, but he refused to respond and then he said, “What do you want, do you know me?”

I returned to my house where I heard the voices of the women in our neighbourhood, which I did not understand, but they were very loud. It was strange for me that their women sit in the street and talk and prepare food and wear bright clothes whilst on their heads they put a coloured cap that does not cover half of their hair, while their daughters wear short skirts and go from morning until evening to work. Their life looked very difficult and complex and I did not understand it well.

On Fridays I saw men streaming to the mosque to hear the Imam’s speech ًwhich is filled with screaming, crying, warnings and intimidations from God. And the people there were all crying and praying. But once they left the mosque they go back to their hard work, and later, tired after long hours of work they drink beer (which is not allowed in Islam ) and eat dough mixed with chili. (I don’t like chili!) There was a simplicity to this life but it was so hard and I felt that I was never accepted as a refugee from Syria. I felt that I had to become like them in order to live with them.

After some days I decided that I couldn’t make a new life in Turkey so I left for Greece, again ‘illegally’. There was no other choice for me. I am no longer afraid of illegal travel. I have been a homeless and guilty refugee as some people in the world seem to see me and as international laws want me, but in fact I am a bird traveling wherever he wants.

Greece

When I arrived in Greece (Samos Island) I could not roam the streets or travel between the islands because I was forced to live in a cage (camp for refugees).

The Samos camp was full of refugees of different colours, shapes and languages. For the first time I met many different people, who I hadn’t been able to meet before, such as Ethiopians and Afghanis, Pakistanis, Indians, Egyptian Arabs, Algerians and many others. I did not know that all human beings were so alike and that we eat similar food with a slightly different taste and that Afghans and Pakistanis have a lot of cooking skills. And others were into sports and learning languages, and the prettiest of all of this was the chance I had to touch the body of one of the black refugees from Africa without fear, and I knew they were human beings like us. And it was in Greece where I had the opportunity to meet and know people from Europe and the north America.

How beautiful it is to be a free bird.

Despite all these great and new experiences there were many difficulties in getting close to people from so many different societies. There seemed many issues which held us back from accepting one another.

Even gays from Arab and Asian countries includingGreece seemed closed to themselves and do not seem to like any person except gays. But I think that is a reaction because many people don’t accept them. How hard it is to be different and to be a friend to all people, they see you as different and you see them as different and both of you are afraid of the other.

The Greek government allowed me to fly to its capital after much trouble and time and to start another tale.

Athens is not similar to Aleppo or Izmir and was so different from them, with people from many countries and cultures. But this did not change the nature of its people who love to dance and party, drinking beer and raki which is the best alcoholic beverage they have.This may be nice for them, but I was very surprised that most of the workers I saw in Athens were immigrants and refugees from Asia and Africa.

It was not difficult to talk to the young Greek people because they speak English and I have enough to make conversation. But their pronunciation of the English language can seem strange as they speak a new language with a strange voice, but the bigger problem was with the old people who speak only the language of their country.

If I hadn’t met my English friends, life would have been harder for me in Greece. It was also great that my English friends are sociologists which helped them and me better understand the Greek people and others. I began to realise that I too had been influenced by the place where I grew up where the air I breathed was not so open and fresh.

In Greece, which is one of the gateways into Europe, you find a lot of refugees fleeing from their walled countries; many of them also seek to escape from Greece. And the reason is that they are looking for a country that does not have racism, fences and prisons, and is full of safety and love and coexistence. And where you have a chance to make a new life. Greece is a beautiful country but it is so poor that like many refugees I couldn’t see how I could make my new life there.

It seemed to me that most of us still carry in our minds many feelings of distrust and lack of acceptance of those different from ourselves just as we are looking for people different from us and to become like them. I experienced a lot of persecution from refugees which made me think that the freedom we are looking is still infected by the poisonous air from the soceities where we once called home. Even now I am still trying to understand all of this!

Netherlands

My illegal journey finished in Greece. I was so lucky when the Dutch government allowed me to go to Holland by family re-unification. They recognized me as a free, legal bird . A few weeks after my acceptance I took the travel documents and went to Athens airport to stand there as all other people and could now say I am here ! A legitimate bird so you have to let me get into the plane.

I arrived in the Netherlands with my beautiful loyal dog Max after I got financial help from my British friends to buy travel tickets for me and my dog and some money to buy food, clothes and bags.

The journey was very beautiful, but the fear of another shock was in my mind all the time. I arrived in that beautiful green country, which is trying to escape from the water which is threatening it from all sides. Should it win then will I be safe with Dutch people or should I learn how to swim to start again my journey again but this time as fish not bird ? That was the first question in my mind. Crazy!

In the airport in Amsterdam my friend was waiting me to take me to his house in Enschede where he is living. It was not a house but just one room he shared with another three Syrian refugees.

These were not the easiest days for me in the Netherlands because I was living with my friend and Max my dog in a small room. I couldn’t relax because these Syrian birds didn’t accept me and my dog with them in the same house and because they see me as a ‘fucking feminine’ boy so they want to fuck me or for me to leave the house. They didn’t accept Max either because they said it is not allowed in Islam to have a dog in your house. Although I tried to talk with one of them to explain to him that we are both human and that I am a good person and not as he thinks and his answer was “why you are talking with me ? What do you want ? “

My question is, is he right that I shouldn’t have talked to him and every person must make his life in a small shell ? or is he a psychiatric patient who needs treatment in order to learn to live with others?

Smiles

Before going to my friend’s house I had to spend a few days in a camp sorting out my papers. I arrived at the refugee camp after a journey of more than three and a half hours, but the beauty of the nature and the houses there made me forget everything. I had not seen in my life more beautiful buildings and more beautiful grounds for a refugee camp.Wherever you look, you find trees, flowers and small houses with red rooves, white doors and policemen wandering around the camp on bicycles with a beautiful smile on their faces.

I can not forget those smiles that explained the meaning of life and assured me of my humanity, which I feel has been ‘imprisoned’ since I was a child growing up in Aleppo. And it was not only the smiles on the faces of the police, but wherever you go, you find people smiling at you and greeting you as if they knew you for years or as if you were one of their family.

Even the refugees living here were painting their faces with the same smile. Perhaps the secret is that when you see this smile everywhere and all the time it will draw on your face without thinking. This experience made me so happy because I never imagined that there are people smiling for all people even if they have different colours, religions, shapes, education levels, races and passports.

The story does not end here, but the smiles still accompany me everywhere here in the city where I decided to live in the east of the Netherlands. Every morning and evening I go out with my dog for a walk. I see people around me smile and greet each other and me . That is really the key to life and this is a beautiful society which seems to accept all cultures, and with smiles welcomes all people and all creatures.

Perhaps the Netherlands is not the only country with these wonderful qualities, but this is what I have discovered so far. Life is going on and my wings are stronger and longer now that I have I got legitimate wings. But I will never forget that legal or not we will never stop trying to fly, free like the birds in the sky.

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The destruction of the Amazon jungles by right-wing Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro threatens to end our civilization and to condemn the next generation to death and destruction. This is a truly existential moment for us, to use the hackneyed term employed in the media so frequently that most people forget its significance. But as the Amazon burns, due to fires set by those seeking to make short-term profits for the few off of the jungles that purify the atmosphere shared by all of humanity, we are made aware of how completely defenseless we are.

The United Nations can make statements, famed intellectuals can write editorials, NGOs can protest in front of Brazilian embassies, and citizens can sign petitions, but we are essentially powerless in the face of a criminal effort to destroy our future.

Some are so married to the idea of solving all problems peacefully through discussion that they cannot imagine real resistance. Or they are so accustomed to opposing demands for regime change that come from right-wing think thanks that they are allergic to the very concept—even when it is necessary for our survival.

But a progressive form of regime change [emanating from the grassroots] is an entirely legitimate thing for concerned citizens to advocate for. Do not forget the thousands of committed youth who went to Spain in the 1930s to fight against Franco’s fascist regime. There was no shame in the word regime change then, nor should there have been. Nor was there any shame in the use of the force of arms to combat the fascistic governments that were set on slaughtering the majority of humanity in a ruthless quest for “living space.”

There can be no mistaking the threat of totalitarian governance and the destruction of the ecosystem and of humanity in the ruthless search for profit. We cannot ignore the pressing need to transform our world and that will require more than signing petitions. It will require us to reinvent global governance, not as a tool for investment bankers and wealthy philanthropists to flatter themselves, but as a means to address the threats of ecological collapse, militarism and the massive concentration of wealth.

It is no mystery why the G7, the G20, the United Nations and other global organizations are entirely powerless to respond to burning of the Amazon, even as scientists describe it as a threat to life on earth that may be the equivalent of a world war.

The radical concentration of wealth has made those global organizations into the play toys of those with money.

And the superrich have somehow convinced themselves that money and technology can save them from the catastrophe that awaits us. That attitude is best summed up by Lt. Gen. Steven L. Kwast, of the recently launched “Space Command” which will bring the war for dominance into low orbit, into a region that should be the shared legacy of all of humanity. Kwast notes,

“There is also a marketplace of opportunity for humans not only to live and thrive in space, but also to have a place to go if there is ever any problem with Earth whether it is from an asteroid, from a disease, or any kind scourge of human nature or of nature that can threaten human life. This is the broad arch of history that we sometimes forget because we have lived in such a cocoon of protection and security for so long that we forget the fact that there is a cycle asteroids and of contagion that can wipe out from the dinosaurs to the human race. And there is nothing you can do about it unless you have a sanctuary you can go to.”

Kwast does not use the word “climate change,” but there can be no doubt that it is what he refers to by a “problem with Earth.” He is selling a delusional fantasy that somehow the control of space will allow some to survive catastrophe. This superficial and thoughtless strategy is typical of the bankruptcy of global governance today and it is leading us towards military conflicts in space, in the Arctic and the Antarctic, and in the oceans which should be a shared commons, not the exclusive property of corporations.

We face an ideological and systemic collapse around the world that is at least as dangerous as that which we face when the United Nations was established in 1942 and that even if Trump and Bolsonaro are not sending millions to death camps yet, their assault on the climate and their embrace of fossil fuels will be far more lethal for humanity than were the German death camps.

We need a vision for a future world that will move beyond this suicidal consumption-driven and military-dominated society and will inspire us to risk everything we have to fight against such dark powers as they tear our world apart.

The United Nations did not suddenly spring into being. It was at the center of the drive to battle against fascist movements which had taken over many nations through force and by ideological struggles, roaming over large swaths of the Earth and threatening to destroy much of humanity. It was a time, that is, not unlike our own.

A small group of intellectuals and political activists risked their lives in all corners of the Earth to fight against totalitarianism, and advocate for internationalism and for peace. Eventually, they joined forces with Russia, China, the United States and Great Britain, and with other exiled governments in London, Washington and Shanghai. There were profound compromises in that process, but together they planned not only for the defeat of the Fascists, but also for a new form of global governance.

Those who had battled against Fascism in the streets of Europe and Asia came together for a brief moment with those who held institutional power and were able to rise above the exploitative systems that had put them in power. The wisdom and the experience of those who had led the struggle was reflected in government policy for a change, and an institution dedicated to true global governance, both inspiring and infinitely practical, was established.

The “United Nations” grew out of the struggle to create a new system for international relations that can be traced back to the Hague Peace Conventions of 1899, 1907 and 1914 (the final one was disrupted by the outbreak of World War I). Those peace conventions codified the principles of international law, proposed, and started to implement global regimes for disarmament, and promulgated humanitarian laws for the conduct of diplomacy, trade and war that included the punishment of war crimes. The tradition of the Hague Peace Conventions, although completely ignored by the media today, was the source of much of what we think of as international law beyond trade policy. That tradition is what we most desperately need today.

The proposals of the Hague Peace Conventions were developed further in the League of Nations after the catastrophe of the First World War, moving the Earth closer to a form of global governance that could counter global governance driven by multinational corporations. This effort culminated in the Kellogg–Briand Pact of 1928 which set up a framework to end war in a systematic, legal and institutional manner.

That effort did not succeed, as we know from the rise of Fascism, but it did not fail entirely either. The Hegelian spiral continued upwards and even in the midst of the chaos of the Second World War, the United Nations took shape, and a small group of intellectuals and activists around the world struggled to push forward with a new model for true governance.

Sadly, the United States, flushed with confidence after its victory in the Second World War, was unable to pass up the temptation to inherit the spoils of the British Empire. By the end of the Korean War, the financial elites with deep ties to London were victorious over those Americans who had taken cause with the global struggle against Fascism. The United States thereafter turned the Soviet Union into a rival, rather than a partner for world peace. The Cold War was born and the United Nations was still born.

But even if the United Nations did not realize its full potential during the Cold War l, it continued to play a critical role defusing crises and proposing solutions to intractable global problems.

The end of political economies focused on a socialist model in Russia and China has profoundly distorted the discourse on policy in the United Nations because the previous pushback on issues of class and capital has vanished. Yet, even after the United Nations’ budget was stripped to the bone during the George W. Bush Administration and United Nations resolutions were ignored as a matter of course, even as American policy drifted further and further away from international law under the Trump administration, the United Nations remained vital as the place to which citizens of the Earth feel that they can appeal for justice and for guidance.

The United Nations, stuffed with retired bureaucrats in cushy jobs, funded (directly and indirectly) by multinational corporations and billionaires, continues to drift away from it moorings. And yet, again and again, we appeal to it to play the role that no other institution can play, and on occasion it stand for the greater good and for ethical policy.

The desire for an agency of global governance accountable to the people, in contrast to numerous secretive and self-interested institutions that dominate global governance such as G7 and the International Monetary Fund, has been enough to keep the United Nations going even through the most difficult of times. The United States, however, never regained the institutional commitment to the United Nations it had under President Franklin Roosevelt.

We are facing political and ideological dangers equal to, or greater than,those that we faced in 1942. We have not yet witnessed anything in this struggle, in this chaos, as horrible as the slaughter of millions by the Nazi armies in Poland, the Soviet Union and China. Nevertheless, the decision of the United States to renounce all arms control treaties, to launch wars of aggression in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen and elsewhere (and to openly prepare for war with Iran, Russia and China) suggest that a conflict on that scale (or greater) is entirely possible.

The complete collapse of arms control policy in the United States, now that right-wing and corporate power has taken complete control of global and national governance, is best embodied by the ideologue and psychopath John Bolton who has opened wide the gates of hell. The United States and Russia now have thousands of nuclear weapons that are thousands of times more powerful than those that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.

The threat of war against China made by US vice president John Pence, a fascistic “Christian” leader who has drunk his full at the teat of militarism, suggests that total war is not just something to be experienced vicariously on video games, but quite plausible as American policy. If Trump is not afraid of the catastrophic implications of climate change what makes you think that he is afraid of nuclear war?

The breakdown in global governance cannot be separated from the concentration of wealth. We now see in the mainstream media, on Facebook or Twitter (which is the only media most citizens have access to unless they come from privileged and educated families) that opinions on climate, economics, and geopolitics comes primarily from billionaires like Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates or Michael Bloomberg, or from their shills, and not from individuals with expertise, or with a deep ethical commitment to the common good.

The “Wealth-X World Ultra Wealth Report 2018” reported that 255,810 “ultra high net worth” (UHNW) individuals (people with over $30 million USD in assets) now control $31.5 trillion USD. That amount is greater than the total assets controlled by 80 percent of the Earth’s population, some 5.6 billion people. The increase in the wealth of these UHNW increased by 16.3% between 2016 and 2017, and when the figures are released for this 2018, the rate of increase will most likely be far higher. It is these superrich, and not the United Nations bureaucrats, who call the shots in global governance today.

Don’t reform the United Nations; Transform the United Nations

The current institutional decay of national, regional and international institutions is not theoretical or forthcoming. It is right here, right now. The global liberal order that once we trusted to guide us forward has collapsed, leaving behind a smoking crater wherein investment bankers and their lackeys spar with vicious fascist tribes.

And although those groups may disagree about who gets what part of the spoils, they are working together to burn down the Amazon, and to prepare for war with China and Russia; they are deadly serious and they have no intention of backing down—or even of negotiating.

Don’t bother asking them what they are going to do; ask yourself, what are we going to do?

Such a dangerous and unstable world demands from us nothing less than a global response. “Global” does not refer to shared Facebook postings, but rather a coordinated international effort by committed citizens of the Earth who are at least as well organized as the investment bankers, and ethnic nationalists that we are up against.

This unstable world also demands that we form institutions that go beyond the limited capacity of the United Nations so as to address the single greatest political issue: The Earth is excessively integrated in terms of finance, manufacturing, distribution and consumption but we remain complete strangers when it comes to collaboration between ethical intellectuals and citizens groups. We need a global system that supports,first and foremost,the rational scientific analysis of the causes of the threats that we face, and that oversees the immediate and effective implementation of a massive response for the entire Earth—regardless of borders.

Numerous proposals for United Nations reform have been made over the last six decades. Some, like the Millennium Development Goals, have been partially implemented. Yet the vast majority of the ideas proposed have been left to rot because the United Nations, and the nation states of which it is comprised, are increasingly manipulated by global investment banks and other vested interests who are concerned primarily with their own profits.

The hour is late and the institutional rot is deep. Whether we look at the degeneration of United Nations’ assignments into perks for bureaucrats or the commercialization and the privatization of the policy making process, the UN is no longer able to rise to the critical tasks of preventing world war, ending the unholy concentration of wealth, or reducing the catastrophic warming of our Earth.

The Earth Congress

The current situation is so serious that a laundry list of piecemeal reforms for the United Nations will not do. What we need is a proposal for a massive structural transformation, not a progressive adjustment, that will change the function of the United Nations, and be a shift equivalent to the move from the League of Nations to the United Nations.

We must make the United Nations a bicameral representative institution, vaguely akin to the United States Congress, or to Great Britain’s Parliament, so that it no longer represents the outdated institutions known as nation states, but also represents the citizens of the Earth in a democratic manner. That is to say we must make it function more like a government, but do so by making it directly representative.

Such a move will give the United Nations back the mandate that it had in 1942.

The current United Nations assembly should become the upper house, the equivalent of the Senate in the United States. This upper house, which could keep the title “United Nations,” will offer each nation state a single representative. The current Security Council, however, should be replaced with a speaker elected by all members of the United Nations who works together with permanent and ad hoc committees to address economic, security, welfare and environmental issues for the Earth as a whole.

The majority of the authority in global governance, however, should be transferred to a new legislative body that will serve as the rough equivalent of a lower house, or a “House of Representatives.” The analogy to a lower house is limited, however, because this assembly will play the central role in global governance.

This legislature, hereafter referred to as the “Earth Congress,” will serve as a means of representing the needs and the concerns of the citizens of the Earth at the local level, while at the same time functioning as global institution for the formulation and for the implementation of policies for the entire Earth. It will carry out the global governance function which is currently monopolized by investment banks, multinational corporations and the consulting firms that they support, and then forced upon nation states through corrupt political systems.

The Earth Congress will be directly engaged with citizens around the world, both responding to the actual concerns of local populations and representing their interests and also informing them about global issues in a scientific and rational manner. It will establish a global dialog for the formulation of policy and the policy that it produces will be binding across the entire Earth. It will not be an oppressive world government because it will be far more democratic in nature than most current nation states. Moreover the Earth Congress will provide funding for global action based on an objective assessment of the Earth’s needs. It will not be dependent on the whims of billionaires or the profits of corporations in order to implement its goals.

Although the Earth Congress will draw on the traditions of the League of Nations and of the United Nations, it will go further by taking full advantage of new technologies to facilitate the promotion of true cooperation around the world whether dialog between citizens, joint research between scientists or cooperation on global issues between governments. It will not have a central building where representatives gather, but will rather have its meeting places distributed across the Earth, even as policy is formulated in a centralized manner.

Because the Earth Congress is concerned with democratic governance, education must be a critical part of its mission. Governance is in decline around the world not so much because of corrupt politicians, but because the media and educational organizations on which we depend have declined radically in their quality and therefore most citizens of the Earth are encouraged to respond to gimmicks and fads rather than to engage in rational discourse and objective analysis. The citizens of the Earth are subject to a broad anti-intellectual attack that makes political discourse difficult and ethical governance nearly impossible.

The Earth Congress must offer to citizens around the world the chance to learn about the critical problems that we face and at the same time opportunities to participate in governance at the local level that will be reflected in policy discussions at the global level. Such a process requires a radical restructuring of the value systems promoted by business in the local economy so as to make participation in political discourse a high priority.

The Earth Congress will take the lead in formulating strategies that allow citizens to work together with their peers around the world. Trade will no longer be limited to the import and export of goods monopolized by large corporations in a manner that greatly increases carbons emissions. Rather a truly shared economy will be established in which communities around the world can find like interests and coordinate their own micro-trade and manufacturing cooperatives so as to form a citizen-based global integration that counters the current concentration of capital in the hands of those who dominate trade and finance. Such efforts should not be a sideshow, but rather central to the future of global governance.

The actions of for-profit organizations that seek to obtain short-term benefits through the destruction of the Earth’s resources will be strictly regulated by the Earth Congress. The Earth Congress, funded by a system of local contributions, must serve as a global organization that capable of both assessing impact of current corporate exploitation of resource and of definitively stopping such actions. It will be capable overriding the criminal actions taking place in Brazil today, or creating a long-term plan to wean the Middle East permanently of dependence on petroleum for economic development.

The Earth Congress will regulate, on behalf of the population of the entire Earth, the oceans, the Arctic and the Antarctic, the atmosphere and the satellites and other devices that orbit the Earth, and it will set out transparent and effective regulations to assure that the internet is based entirely on renewable energy, is accessible to all and promotes an open intellectual discourse based on the scientific method.

Policy will be made within the Earth Congress, and not by law firms, or by think tanks, or by consulting firms that lack transparency or accountability. The Earth Congress will be funded by contributions from citizens (which will ultimately be obligatory like taxes) across the Earth. It will employ such an approach because it allows it to create institutions to govern the world that will replace those based on profit today which do not consider the health of society or of the Earth. The Earth Congress  will not be allowed to accept questionable forms of support from profit-seeking organizations.

It is better to have a smaller budget and be able to make accurate and objective decisions than to have massive funding that promotes corrupt and dangerous policies.

The Earth Congress, as the primary legislative body of the United Nations, will determine representation according to the population of the entire Earth.

Perhaps one representative can be assigned for every 50 million people (120 representatives for 6 billion people). Some parts of the representation should be determined geographically (to represent regions like Africa or South America) but at the same time, there must be members of the Earth Congress who represent groups who are a significant part of the Earth’s population, but who are too few in number to have direct representation in local government. For example, the extreme poor, or the handicapped, should be granted representatives to reflect their global significance, even though they do not represent a large population in any one country. Such an approach will provide a global democracy to counter the global tyranny of multinational corporations.

The Earth Congress will be responsible for assessing the long-term interests of humanity and of our precious Earth without concern for national boundaries, or for special interests. It will then propose long-term solutions to current challenges and implement them on a global scale.

The Earth Congress must insist on long-term (minimum of 30 years) solutions to the most critical issues facing the Earth and will encourage thoughtful and frank discussions about security concerns such as climate change and immigration that are not driven by a need for symbolic images, but real solutions.

Because it makes long-term policy, the Earth Congress will also provide long-term financing globally that will make solar and wind power, and other organic farming projects readily affordable for citizens of the Earth.

The Earth Congress must move beyond the short-term, case by case, arbitration of economic and political conflicts of interests between nation states that have paralyzed the United Nations. Rather it will plan for the future of humanity in an integrated manner with a focus on the long-term ecological health of the Earth.

Problems such as saving dying oceans, reducing the emissions of dangerous chemicals, countering the spread of deserts and stopping the proliferation of dangerous weapons cannot be addressed by nation states or international organizations that are dependent on the good will of the wealthy.

For the Earth Congress, security will be defined as protecting the Earth and its inhabitants. Its inhabitants are not only humans but also indigenous animal and plant life. It is a basic assumption within this new approach to global governance that no one owns the oceans, the air, or the land and that all modern concepts like “real estate” and extraction are extremely limited in authority. The Earth Congress will strictly regulate fishing, pollution of the air and the water, the destruction of soil and of natural habitats and it will focus on projects to restore the natural environment.

The interaction of experts in the Earth sciences, the environment, agriculture and technology with groups that are deeply engaged with ordinary citizens and with representatives of local governments will create a positive cycle of inquiry, objective analysis, constructive proposals and transparent and global implementation that will usher in a new age for meaningful global governance.

The future of global governance

There is nothing idealistic or unrealistic about this proposal for the meaningful reform of global governance.

We already have a highly integrated system for global governance administrated by investment banks and sovereign wealth funds which use banks of supercomputers to calculate their short-term profits and force through policy at the local, national and international level to support their interests.

The rapid advancement of communication technologies taking place today has already established a form of global governance that overpowers the nation-state, whether we like it or not, whether we know it, or not. Our only choice is to embrace the best of the traditions of moral philosophy and good governance, and to use our creativity and our industriousness so that we can create a better model for global governance, on that addresses in a direct and long-term manner the tremendous challenges of the current age, rather than the short-term profits of the few.

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Venezuela

There are innumerable examples throughout the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, but three of the most notorious demonstrations of Washington, and its European cohorts incubating massive human tragedy and/or civil wars can be exemplified by Washington’s cultivation, indeed creation of toxic opposition movements whose goal is the destabilization and destruction of progressive governments and egalitarian economic and social structures. Currently, one of the most venal is Washington’s latest inamorata, or inamorato, Juan Guaido, the teflon Quisling of Venezuela, whose attempt to usurp the Presidency from democratically elected Nicolas Maduro would be comic in its ineffectiveness, were it not so tragic in its destruction of the lives of Venezuelan citizens. Venezuela, which controls the world’s largest oil reserves, among other coveted resources, is currently one of the most viciously targeted victims of imperialism, (cosmetically now described as “democracy development,” the latest rhetorical politically correct name for plunder).  Yet, Venezuela, contrary to mainstream media disinformation, seems to be enduring, with a loyal populace who are evidently capable of detecting and resisting  economic, social, and cultural manipulation, and a military who are so far unwilling to prostitute themselves.

This is a phenomenally heroic example of human integrity, and the success of socialism. President Maduro has assembled a team of brilliant leaders to represent his government, in particular, his Foreign Minister, Jorge Arreaza, an intellectual aristocrat of the highest order,  his expert Ambassador Samuel Moncada, and many others of remarkable sophistication, whose capacity to see beyond the idiocies of bourgeoise propaganda is admirable, and indeed, enviable. (There are, after all, other things in life beyond designer handbags and plastic surgery, as the young women of South Korea discovered at the arrival of Kim Yo Jong, the DPRK envoy at the Winter Olympics in Seoul, who dazzled the West by her elegant simplicity and eschewal of conspicuous consumption.)

But, as Jeffrey Sachs demonstrated, in his excellent recent essay (“Economic Sanctions as Collective Punishment”), Washington’s sanctions are designed and determined to devastate and destroy the very fabric of the lives of the Venezuelan people, while making a mockery of  U.S. “concern for human rights.” And all this is being done in the name of “democracy,” which, as a result, is acquiring a putrid odor. These sanctions are a form of economic genocide.

Yesterday’s New York Times reports Elliot Abrams offering President Maduro amnesty if he resigns office, which is in staggering contrast to recent threats by U.S. Senator Marco Rubio that Maduro will suffer the same fate as Libya’s Khadafi, who was sodomized with a bayonet among other tortures prior to his murder by the opposition. President Maduro might understandably conclude that the inmates have taken over the asylum.

Ukraine

In his famous book, “The Grand Chessboard,” the late Zbigniew Brezezinski, (the architect of the US policy of  training, funding and arming of the savage Islamic jihadists to overthrow the socialist government of Najibullah in Afghanistan,) stressed, at length, the necessity of severing all relations between Russia and Ukraine, to completely isolate Russia from Europe, and force it to become an Eurasian state. Brzezinski’s policies were carried out during the Obama Administration, and this was implemented by State Department officials, led by Victoria Nuland.

If the history of US efforts to destabilize and overthrow the democratically elected presidency of Victor Yanukovich in Ukraine is written, one of the central figures is the US Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs, Victoria (“Fuck the EU”) Nuland. And in all likelihood, she will be remembered for that famous expletive, which reveals her (and her cohorts) attitude toward illegal intervention in the sovereign affairs  of another country. The BBC published the leaked transcript of the Nuland-Pyatt phone call, which reveals the scandalous details of Nuland and Pyatt’s masterminding the overthrow of a democratically elected government, which they replaced with a neo-nazi regime more to their liking, and which has resulted in a virtual civil war in Ukraine, glorification of Ukranian Nazis such as Stefan Bandera, and ethnocide of the Russian-speaking Ukranians which bears striking similarity to the early stages of Hitler’s extermination of the Jews, which began with destroying their cultural identity.

Nuland:

“I think Yats is the guy who’s got the economic experience, the governing experience.  He’s the…what he needs is Klitsch and Tyahnybok on the outside…..I just think Klitsch going in…he’s going to be at that level working for Yatseniuk, it’s just not going to work.”

Pyatt:

“….I think you reaching out directly to Klischko helps with the personality management among the three and it gives you also a chance to move fast on all this stuff and put us behind it before they all sit down and he explains why he doesn’t like it.”

Nuland:

“….when I talked to Jeff Feltman (UN Under-Secretary-General for Political Affairs) this morning, he had a new name for the UN guy Robert Serry did I write you that this morning?  OK.  He’s now gotten both Serry and (UN Secretary-General) Ban Ki-moon to agree that Serry could come in Monday or Tuesday.  So that would be great, I think, to help glue this thing and to have the UN help glue it and, you know, Fuck the EU.”

BBC  diplomatic correspondent Jonathan Marcus notes:

“An intriguing insight into the foreign policy process with work going on at a number of levels: Various officials attempting to marshal the Ukranian opposition, efforts to get the UN to play an active role in bolstering a deal; and the big guns waiting in the wings – US Vice-President Biden clearly being lined up to give private words of encouragement at the appropriate moment.”

Every year at the United Nations, the Russian Federation submits a resolution prohibiting the glorification of Nazism. Every year the Resolution is adopted by a majority vote, and the Resolution has consistently been opposed by only one country: the U.S. In recent years Ukraine has joined with the U.S. in opposition to the anti-nazi resolution.

Today, conditions in Ukraine are appalling, and the horrific event in Odessa, recently, where workers were trapped in a building deliberately set on fire, and were burned to death, while neo-nazis circled the building chanting neo-nazi slogans is only one among innumerable such events, in a country which had previously known peace and stability.

Perhaps, the most moving and accurate description of the destruction of the democratically elected Presidency of Victor Yanukovich was delivered in a speech by Russia’s late Ambassador Vitali Churkin on March 27, 2014 at the UN General Assembly, and it bears quoting in large part here:

Ambassador Churkin:

“The crisis was to a large extent provoked by the adventurous actions of the current political forces, which sought to break the centuries-old ties of Russia and Ukraine, by giving Kiev a false choice between either the European Union and the West or Russia.  That policy was carried out with unprecedented bluntness.  They could either sign a Ukraine-European Union association agreement, as demanded of the Ukranian Government, or they could face sanctions.  Within the ranks of anti-Government demonstrators were representatives of the European Union and the United States, who openly marched alongside them and called on them to openly carry out anti-Government actions.”

“The central square of the city –Maidan Nezalezhnosti—was turned into a militarized camp. Well-trained and equipped units of militants carried out violent attacks against law enforcement bodies and seized administrative buildings.  In one of those buildings, the trade unions building, the so-called common diversion of the Maidan was organized.  On the seventh floor of that building was a permanent staff member of the United States Embassy.  By the way, it is from that building that snipers were shooting at police and demonstrators;  that action was clearly aimed at provoking a violent overthrow of the government.  At some point, it appeared that it would be possible to stop before the situation became worse….However, someone thought that such a scenario was not sufficiently radical.  The violence continued.  Under the threat of death, President Yanukovich had to leave Kiev and then Ukraine.  The legitimate Government stopped operating in Kiev.  Violence became the rule of politics.  In the Verkhovna Rada, the parties that supported the Yanukovich majority became victims of that violence.  As a result, the Rada was reshuffled, and instead of a Government of national unity, a so-called Government of victors emerged.  The shots were called by those who conducted an armed coup, national radicals who –according to the definition of the European Parliament—preached racist, anti-semitic and xenophobic views and seemed to hate everything that was Russian and did not conceal that they considered the Ukranian allies of Nazis as their ideological ancestors.”

Violence and hatreds fester today in Ukraine, xenophobia, Russophobia, neo-nazism are the “new normal” in this “democracy?”

Hong Kong

Several years ago, Syrian Ambassador Bashar Ja’afari told me, personally, that each year recently Saudi Arabia invites at least 5,000 moslem Uighurs from the northwest of China to the pilgrimage in Mecca. The Saudis pay all their expenses, and extend their stay there for one month after all other pilgrims have left.  The Saudis train the Uighurs in religious extremism and jihad, and then return these newly minted jihadist to their homes in Xingjiang, China, where they have been primed to destabilize the region, and promote jihad, with its terrorist core.  China is not ignorant of these manoeuvers by the West, and it is attempting to restrain the metastasization of jihad terrorism elsewhere in China.  This is the origin of the re-education camps which the mainstream Western media is attempting to depict as concentration camps, violating all human rights of the Uighurs.  Carefully omitted from the Western media narrative is the background and origin of the re-education efforts by the Chinese, their efforts to eliminate the incitement to violence inculcated into these Uighur Chinese by the Saudis…and by other interested parties.

Once again, China must simultaneously confront engineered terrorism in its northwest, a trade war with the USA, and another “Color Revolution,” in Hong Kong, the last one, picturesquely titled the “Umbrella Revolution” occurred in 2013, and at that time there was also a violent terrorist attack in Beijing, as I know, since I was there at that time.

And once again, the US and European mainstream media and various government and quasi government entities are supporting destabilization of the government in Hong Kong, with an August 6 meeting between US Consulate Official Julie Eadeh and Hong Kong opposition figures Martin Lee, Anson Chan (who also met with Vice-President Pence in March) and Joshua Wong of “Occupy Central” in 2014.

Opposition protests have escalated in violence, with protesters now hurling Molotov cocktails at police.  There is evidence that some of the most extreme provocative violent actions are, in fact, the work of agent provocateurs, and allegations are made that CIA infiltration is attempting to force the authorities to violent repression that can then be likened to the Tiennamen Square events of 1989.  There was, however, even then, evidence that the Tiennamen protests, which had been peaceful for an extended period, but then suddenly escalated to violence, was the result of infiltration by agents, seeking to provoke the government to violent repression, which could then be used to discredit it.  This provocative tactic is well known.

The current destabilization of Hong Kong in the name of “democracy” has become so chaotic that even as mainstream a US publication as “Newsweek” featured an article on August 12, 2019 headlined: “China Warns of Terrorism in Hong Kong Protests, Says U.S. is Supporting it.” “In the past few days, Hong Kong’s radical demonstrators have repeatedly attacked police officers with extremely dangerous tools, which already constitutes serious violent crimes and has begun to show signs of terrorism,” Yang Guang, a spokesperson for the Chinese State Council’s Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office,” condemning petrol bomb attacks against police, and other violent actions.  On August 14 CBS reported that those “peaceful, non-violent, pro-democracy” protesters had smashed to the ground two unarmed men, whom they wantonly accused of sympathy with the government, and these defenseless men were kicked, beaten, punched and drenched in ice water;  one of the men “was bound with cable ties and left on the ground in a fetal position,” unaided, until “finally emergency workers were allowed to take them away.”

The U.S. and the U.K. support these violent demonstrations, with U.S. Vice President Pence, State Secretary Pompeo, and John Bolton openly meeting Hong Kong opposition figures. According to Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Hua Chunyang,

“Senior U.S. politicians met and engaged with anti-China rabble-rousers in Hong Kong, propped up violent and illegal activities and undermined Hong Kong’s prosperity and stability…I’d like to ask the US this question again:  what is the true intention behind your behaviors relating to Hong Kong?”

Spokesperson Hua’s question is virtually rhetorical. The motive for the multi-pronged effort to weaken and destabilize China in the Northwest, in Hong Kong, through economic trade wars, and escalated pressures is obvious. China’s denial to permit an American warship to dock in Qingdao on August 29 is an inevitable reaction to U.S. provocations, including the Trump administration’s decision to pursue an $8 billion sale of F-16 fighter jets to Taiwan. The U.S. cannot tolerate the competition of a China on the ascendency, and will do everything, so far, covert, to disintegrate and collapse the world’s second largest economy.

Zbigniew Brzezinski’s ultimate nightmare is an alliance, or close cooperation between China and Russia. On April 28, 2017 China Daily headlined: “China, Russia Note Strategic Importance Tied To Relationship,” reporting: “The mutual trust and cooperation between Russia and China are stronger now than at any time in the past.” Though Brzezinski’s hope of severing relations between Russia and Ukraine has become a reality, at least at this time, Brzezinski’s nightmare of close ties between Russia and China may next become a reality, brought about by those very short-sighted zero-sum policies pursued by the West.

These abhorrent “color revolutions” bear resemblance to the ravages of Attilla the Hun, and the nations fostering them  are themselves decaying of their own greed and moral degeneracy, as can be observed by any visitor to the capitols of Washington, London, Paris, etc., with their crowds of homeless, impoverished citizens sleeping in the gutters, deprived of all dignity and  hope, but nevertheless bearing within themselves the potential to ultimately resist their destitution, and end this intolerable affront to humanity.

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Carla Stea is Global Research’s correspondent at United Nations Headquarters, New York, N.Y.

Online independent analysis of US-led wars, rampant corruption, corporate greed, civil rights and fraudulent monetary transactions is invariably relegated to the bottom rung of search engine results.

As a result we presently do not cover our monthly running costs which could eventually jeopardize our activities.

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America’s Billionaires Congealing Around Warren and Buttigieg

By Eric Zuesse, September 02, 2019

The Democratic Presidential candidates who have been the most backed by billionaires have not been doing well in the polling thus far, and this fact greatly disturbs the billionaires. They know that the Democratic nominee will be chosen in the final round of primaries, and they have always wanted Pete Buttigieg to be in that final round.

Linking Popular Movements and Unions Is a Winning Strategy for Workers

By Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers, September 02, 2019

After years of declining power and stagnant wages, workers in the United States are awakening, striking and demanding more rights.  A Bureau of Labor Statistics report shows the number of striking workers is the highest since 1986.

Is the Fed Preparing to Topple US Dollar?

By F. William Engdahl, September 02, 2019

Unusual remarks and actions by the outgoing head of the Bank of England and other central banking insiders strongly suggest that there is a very ugly scenario in the works to end the role of the US dollar as world reserve currency.

Israeli Border Provocation Moves Plan for Regional War Forward

By Kurt Nimmo, September 02, 2019

Israel has bombed both Syria and Iraq with impunity. Syria, over the last couple of years, has endured attacks by Israel hundreds of times. In July, the IDF, using US-produced F-35i stealth fighter jets, attacked targets inside Iraq. 

Labor Day 2019: Surveys Show Wages Not Rising & Jobs 500,000 Fewer

By Dr. Jack Rasmus, September 02, 2019

What’s the condition of the US working class on this Labor Day 2019? Wages and Jobs are of course the best indicators of that condition. So let’s look at wages and jobs today in America today.

BRICS Was Created as a Tool of Attack: Lula

By Pepe Escobar and Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, September 02, 2019

Amid the 24/7 media frenzy of scripted sound bites and “fake news”, it’s virtually impossible to find a present or former head of state anywhere, in a conversation with journalists, willing to speak deep from his soul, to comment on all current political developments and relish telling stories about the corridors of power. And all that while still in prison.

Sen. Bernie Sanders: “Our Prison System Must Change!” For-profit Private Prisons

By Rossen Vassilev Jr., September 02, 2019

On August 18, Senator Bernie Sanders, a leading 2020 presidential candidate, unveiled a sweeping criminal-justice reform initiative that aims to cut the unprecedentedly huge U.S. prison population in half, end all mandatory minimum sentences, and root out unabashed corporate profiteering and greed in what the Independent senator from Vermont had previously called “the American Gulag.”

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Introduction and translation by Steve Rabson. The original Japanese text can be found here.

Introduction

The March, 1954 “Bravo Shot” H-bomb test in the Pacific dumped radioactive debris on the Marshall Islands, U.S. servicemen, and the crew of a Japanese fishing boat. The multi-megaton blast infected Marshall Islanders with radiation sickness and caused cancers in the years that followed. Their contaminated home on Bikini Atoll remains uninhabitable to this day. U.S. servicemen who had been purposely transported by the Navy into the blast zone have suffered from multiple cancers from radiation exposure. For years their claims denied were denied by the Veterans Administration. It took an act of Congress in 1990 to provide compensation for them and their children with birth defects. The crew of the Japanese fishing boat, Lucky Dragon No. 5, suffered from acute radiation poisoning. One crew member, Kuboyama Aikichi (age 40), died while in treatment for exposure.

U.S. military forcibly evacuating Marshall Islanders from Bikini Atoll

U.S. servicemen transported under orders into the Bikini blast zone

Japanese scientists examine the hull of contaminated Lucky Dragon at Yaizu City port

Okuaki Satoru tells below how Japanese scientists confronted, and eventually overcame, roadblocks thrown up by both the U.S. and Japanese governments to obtain urgently needed information for the treatment of radiation poisoning and to determine the extent of environmental contamination. As Jacob Darwin Hamblin and Linda M. Richards explain in the journal Historia Scientarium,

“Japanese perspectives influenced several American scientists to think differently about the implications of nuclear tests for humans and the natural environment . . . despite stiff resistance from offices of the U.S. government.”²

The U.S. government withholds information on lethal fallout

On March 16, 1954, the newspaper Yomiuri Shimbun first reported victims of a U.S. nuclear test in the Pacific among Japanese crew members of the fishing boat Lucky Dragon. The U.S. government acknowledged that tests had been carried out, but, insisting on secrecy, refused to provide information about them to Japanese scientists. Today it is known that they were hydrogen bomb tests, but even that wasn’t disclosed at the time. The only information Japanese scientists could obtain was from radioactive contamination of the Lucky Dragon’s hull.

Several scientists visited the fishing port at Yaizu City in Shizuoka Prefecture and recorded high levels of radioactive contamination from fallout on the boat’s hull. Okano Masaharu, a specialist in measuring radioactivity, was twenty-eight at the time and on the faculty of the Institute for Scientific Research (now known as RIKEN).

After World War II when Japan was under Allied Occupation (1945-1952), research on atomic energy was strictly prohibited. However, in 1950 permission was granted for research on radioactive isotopes. Okano traveled throughout the country giving lectures to inform Japanese about isotopes, and became skilled in handling radioactive materials. On April 16, 1954, he traveled with his supervisor, Dr. Yamazaki Fumio, to examine the hull of the Lucky Dragon. A full month had passed since fallout had contaminated the boat, but both men were astonished to see the needle of their radiation meter swing wildly up into the danger zone. This was the first time they had detected significant radiation outside their laboratories, and it exceeded one hundred times the level occurring in nature. With the discovery that radioactive fallout had contaminated the Lucky Dragon, scientists at universities in Tokyo, Kyoto, Shizuoka, Osaka and Kanazawa began their own studies, communicating their findings by telephone.

Ikeda Nobutaka conducted research on radioactive fallout in Professor Kimura Kenjirō’s research laboratory in the Chemistry Department of Tokyo University. He also visited the Lucky Dragon at Yaizu, and collected samples of fallout-contaminated material. Returning with them to the laboratory, he and about a dozen other researchers spent the next several days and nights frantically analyzing the material out of acute concern for the Lucky Dragon’s crew.

“We needed the results as soon as possible,” said Ikeda, now eighty-eight. “Without knowing the characteristics of the fallout, there would be no way to find a treatment for the crew. We were also aware that the reputation of Japanese scientists was at stake. If our results turned out to be wrong, it would be a disgrace for Japan’s scientific methods.”

Over the next month Ikeda and his colleagues found twenty-seven types of atomic radiation including Strontium (Sr) 89, Yttrium (Y) 90, and Cerium (Ce) 141.

“We were overjoyed because knowing the radiation characteristics meant that it could be located in patients’ bodies and a way might be found to eliminate it. I can still remember how lovely the sunset looked the evening we finally finished the analyses.”

U.S. Atomic Energy Commission declares “no risk” from radioactive contamination

The U.S. carried out many nuclear weapons tests in the Pacific; however, the one named “Castle Bravo” on March 1, 1954, which showered fallout on the Lucky Dragon, was the most powerful conducted to that time, 1,000 times the fifteen megatons of the Hiroshima bomb. On March 31, Lewis Strauss, Chairman of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission, issued a statement denying that there had been any contamination of fish or seawater.

With respect to the stories concerning widespread contamination of tuna and other fish as a result of the tests, the facts do not confirm them. The only contaminated fish discovered were in the open hold of a Japanese trawler [that had been] well within the danger zone. The Federal Drug Administration has informed us that their thorough survey found no radioactive contamination of boats or fish. The fallout dissipated rapidly in the ocean current and has posed no risk. No radioactivity has been detected in an area between five and five hundred miles of the test site.

There was a rumor last week of a danger from radioactivity falling in the United States. As with Soviet nuclear tests, there might be a small increase in natural background radiation in some local areas. However, it is only infinitesimally higher than what has been observed after previous tests in the continental United States and overseas, far too small to pose any risk to persons, animals or plants. Radioactivity dissipates rapidly after tests, and soon returns to normal levels of natural background radiation.

Did American officials deny that radioactivity had contaminated the ocean because they wanted to conceal the possibility that it had, or because they didn’t believe it would spread over a wide area beyond the test site?

Professor Higuchi Toshihiro at the Institute for the Study of Diplomacy of Georgetown University cites radioactive contamination from the Bikini tests as having initiated world-wide concern over the problem of environmental pollution; and he has studied how the governments and societies in Japan and in the United States took opposing positions over the issue of radioactive pollution.

It was known among scientists at the time that, at least in theory, radioactive contamination of the ocean from nuclear tests could be detected in seawater, plants, and animals. So when the U.S. conducted the first hydrogen bomb test in 1953, the Atomic Energy Commission began surveying seawater, tuna, and other ocean life for radioactivity. The Bikini test that contaminated the Lucky Dragon occurred the following year, but the data collected by the survey was still insufficient. Nevertheless, the Atomic Energy Commission sought first and foremost to quiet the furor over the tests at home and abroad, and issued a series of announcements for political reasons. Lacking reliable scientific data, the Commission surveyed a large area of seawater in which any trace of radiation would have been much diluted, and then claimed no contamination had been detected. Thus, it wasn’t that the Commission was trying to conceal findings of contamination, or that it was ignorant of the possibility. For strictly political reasons, it quickly declared the ocean safe.³

Contradicting its own denials of radioactive contamination, the U.S. government banned imports of Japanese tuna

The U.S. government was greatly alarmed by news that radiation had contaminated tuna in Japan. At the time of the Bikini tests the U.S. was importing large quantities of canned tuna from Japan. Cheap and plentiful, long-finned tuna was canned in vegetable oil.

The development of Japan’s canning industry had begun before World War II in the fresh waters of Shizuoka Prefecture. In the 1950’s before Japan’s heavy industry recovered from the war, the government strongly encouraged the production of goods for export of which canned tuna was a key enterprise. Sold under the brand names “Fujiyama” and “Geisha,” high-quality and inexpensive Japanese canned tuna became so popular it dominated the American market.

Now the U.S. government became deeply concerned that contaminated tuna was being imported and distributed in America. Located by Professor Higuchi in the U.S. National Archives, an official U.S. government memo entitled “fish exports” was sent to Washington from the American Embassy in Tokyo on March 21, 1954, five days after the Yomiuri Shimbun reported contamination of the fishing boat Lucky Dragon. Higuchi described the memo:

The memo explained that embassy officials and representatives of the American fishing industry had warned the Japanese government to stop exports of contaminated fish. The government agreed that no fish would be exported to the United States in which radiation was detected.⁴

Subsequently, a member of the Atomic Energy Commission came to Japan and went to Yokohama Port. There, he ordered thorough monitoring tests for the fins and bellies of frozen tuna scheduled for export to the United States. People in Japan were outraged because, on the one hand, the U.S. government was denying that radiation from nuclear tests had contaminated the ocean or fish, yet it was suspiciously monitoring fish being exported to America.

The Japanese government refuses to pursue U.S. responsibility for contamination and supports continuation of nuclear tests

How, then, in the wake of radiation injuries to the Lucky Dragon’s crew and nuclear contamination of tuna, did the Japanese government deal with the U.S. government that had carried out the tests?

On March 17, with the Diet in an uproar over the Bikini tests, Foreign Minister Okazaki Katsuo came under persistent questioning in a session of the Lower House Budget Committee. Representative Imazumi Isamu, a member of the Socialist Party, severely criticized the Japanese government for failing to request crucial information from the U.S. about the nuclear tests. “America has inflicted radiation injuries on our country’s innocent fishermen. The treatment varies depending on what kind of bomb was detonated. A Japanese government that fails to seek this information for treating the victims is in no way worthy of representing our citizens. It is truly unforgivable.”⁵

Representative Kawasaki Hideji of the Progressive Party insisted that the Japanese government confront the U.S. government.

We have learned that the test was of either a hydrogen or a cobalt bomb. Should Japan bring the case to the International Court of Justice, world opinion would be deeply sympathetic to a nation that has been victimized three times by nuclear explosions. Our foreign policy must be courageous enough to petition the court. Does the Foreign Minister agree? Please answer the question directly.⁶

“We know from the information they already provided us that the Americans are very sympathetic,” replied Foreign Minister Okazaki. “They have said they will send doctors specializing in atomic bomb injuries and pay compensation no matter the cost. I am confident we can resolve the issue without going to the International Court of Justice.”⁷

Foreign Minister Okazaki reiterated the decision not to pursue America’s legal responsibility at a party given by the America-Japan Society in Tokyo on April 9, 1954. A tape recording of his speech before guests that included the American ambassador is available at the Society’s office in Akasaka.

Although it goes without saying that the fishing industry Japan’s economy relies on has suffered major losses as a result of the ban in the area of the ocean affected by the atomic tests, we have no intention of asking the U.S. government to stop them. We recognize that they are indispensable to the security, not only of America, but of Japan and other democratic nations. Thus, we join the other democratic nations in helping to make sure the atomic tests are successful.⁸

Radioactive contamination from the Bikini test occurred two years after Japan regained its independence in 1952 under the San Francisco Peace Treaty. Yet, despite the damage the test inflicted on the nation, the Japanese government supported their continuation. This attitude provoked outrage among the citizenry.

 Japanese scientists respond

Japanese government leaders refused to pursue U.S. responsibility for the damages inflicted by the Bikini test. However, among all government departments, the Fisheries Agency was most acutely aware of the danger. It alone planned a survey of radiation contamination in the ocean area around the Bikini atoll where the test was conducted. “The U.S. government was entirely downplaying the test’s effects,” explained Miyake Yasuo who joined the scientific advisory group organized to carry out the survey. “The Japanese government was seeking compensation for injuries to the Lucky Dragon’s crew and the major damage to our fishing industry, but conducting a survey at the site for crucial information about the radioactive contamination was absolutely essential.”

With daily reporting in the newspapers on their expedition aboard the ship Shunkotsu Maru, the scientists were given a heroes’ welcome when they returned to Tokyo on July 4, 1954 from their fifty-one day voyage. It was their survey that first determined the extent of ocean contamination and damage to the environment from atomic tests. Though conducted for the Fisheries Agency, the results advanced knowledge in several scientific fields including radiology, oceanography, meteorology and medicine.

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Okuaki Satoru is a program director at NHK. Born in Kanagawa Prefecture, he graduated with a Masters Degree from the Life Sciences Division of Tokyo University, joining NHK in 1999. He has directed television documentaries on the work of novelist Inoue Yasushi and the massacres of Koreans following the 1923 Tokyo earthquake.

Notes

¹ From Okuaki Satoru, 海の放射能に立ち向かった日本人：ビキニからフクシマへの伝言Radioactive Contamination of the Ocean Revealed by Japanese Scientists: From Bikini to Fukushima, Junpō-sha, Tokyo, 2017.

² Jacob Darwin Hamblin and Linda M. Richards, “Beyond the Lucky Dragon: Japanese Scientists and Fallout Discourse in the 1950s,” Historia Scientiarum, Vol. 25, No. 1 (2015), pp. 36-56.

³ Okuaki, pp. 44-45.

⁴ Ibid., p. 46.

⁵ Ibid., p. 47.

⁶ Ibid., pp. 47-48.

⁷ Ibid., p. 48.

⁸ Ibid., pp. 48-49.

All images in this article are from APJJF unless otherwise stated

Official Secrets, co-written and directed by Gavin Hood,  is one of the best movies ever made about investigative reporting and whistle-blowing—a film in a league with All the President’s Men and Snowden. 

Like the 1976 Watergate classic starring Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman as Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, and Oliver Stone’s 2016 drama about exposure of the National Security Agency’s clandestine mass warrantless surveillance program, the U.K.-set Secrets is based on a true story.

The film is about Martin Bright, a reporter with The Observer (played by Matt Smith), and Katharine Gun, a translator for the British government (played by Keira Knightley). Gun is responsible for what Pentagon Papers leaker Daniel Ellsberg called “the most important and courageous leak I have ever seen. No one else – including myself – has ever done what Gun did: tell secret truths at personal risk, before an imminent war, in time, possibly, to avert it.”

In early 2003, during the lead-up to the U.S. attack on Iraq, Gun came across an email from a shadowy National Security Agency official named Frank Koza. It revealed U.S. plans to spy on U.N. Security Council members in order to blackmail them into voting for a resolution approving a military offensive against Baghdad. The resolution was seen as key to providing the strike with a fig leaf of legitimacy from the international community for a war based largely on the dubious proposition that Saddam Hussein possessed “Weapons of Mass Destruction.”

In the movie, Gun had already begun doubting President George W. Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair’s pretext for assaulting Iraq. She is shown yelling at the television, such as when David Frost interviews Blair and she shouts “bloody liar!” at the screen. (Secrets enhances its verisimilitude by intercutting news clips with the actors’ dramatizations.)

To further complicate matters, Gun’s presumably Muslim husband Yasar (Palestinian actor Adam Bakri) is a Turk with a sketchy immigration status. The troubled translator surreptitiously prints out Koza’s message, and wrestles with her conscience as she tries, Hamlet-like, to decide what to do.

When the hard copy of Koza’s email is leaked to the The Observer, it ignites an internal fight. The British Sunday newspaper has been co-opted by the Blair government: In exchange for preferential treatment, including high level access, the liberal-leaning Observer has favored war, giving Blair “left cover” for attacking Iraq.

But journalists Bright and Ed Vulliamy (Rhys Ifans) of The Observer’s sister newspaper, The Guardian, a daily, argue for publishing the nefarious scheme. “You’re the press, not a PR agency for Blair,” Vulliamy insists to cautious editors.

After Vulliamy tracks Koza down, The Observer’s management relents and publishes Bright’s report in a March 2, 2003, front-page article headlined, “Revealed: U.S. Dirty Tricks to Win Vote on Iraq War.” All hell breaks loose: Gun is charged with violating the Official Secrets Act, which prohibits disclosure of confidential state information. She becomes a cause célèbre and is defended by Ben Emmerson (Ralph Fiennes), a human rights attorney in the William Kunstler/Michael Ratner tradition.

At nearly two hours long, Official Secrets raises a number of philosophical and political issues.  Following a private screening, Hood agreed with my observation that the film is of a piece with his 2007 Rendition and 2015 Eye in the Sky. The South African filmmaker referred to these features as his “trilogy,” as all three focus on different disturbing aspects of the post-9/11 “war on terror.”

Rendition dramatized the U.S. intelligence community’s pernicious policy of shipping terrorism suspects off to overseas black op sites to be tortured and imprisoned, absent being found guilty of any crimes. Eye challenged the ethics, accuracy, and efficiency of drone warfare.

Although Hood has also directed such crowd-pleasing Tinseltown blockbusters as 2009’s X-Men Origins: Wolverine, this trio of hard-hitting, well-made features boasting top talents including Meryl Streep and Helen Mirren has placed the Johannesburg-born director in the vanguard of filmmakers shooting thought-provoking movies about the issues of the day. Tsotsi, Hood’s 2005 film about a violent young South African thug who takes care of a baby, won an Academy Award for Best Foreign Film.

Previously known primarily for lighter entertainment, including 2003’s Love Actually and the Pirates of the Caribbean film franchise, Knightley has lately been taking on more serious roles, like her portrayal of a feminist novelist in 2018’s Colette. As Gun, she plays a truth teller who risks all for believing she “worked for the British people”—not a government lying the U.K. into a costly, completely avoidable war.

At a private screening of Secrets in Hollywood, the real-life whistleblower Katharine Gun remarked that Knightley “did a great job. It was like watching a different person’s life. She was so intense [the way she] portrayed emotions. It affected me.”

At the same screening, the real-life Matthew Bright agreed that Knightley’s performance is “very impressive,” saying she “did lots of research and was very powerful.” As for being depicted by Matt Smith (who plays Prince Philip in Netflix’s The Crown and The Doctor in the BBC TV series Doctor Who) Bright admitted, “It’s odd to watch one’s self [onscreen].”

Hood, meanwhile, said he recently met with Daniel Ellsberg in San Francisco and drew parallels with the subject of his film. “This story is not about a-larger-than-life person. It’s about someone like us. We all work for organizations—but most people are afraid. Until they think it’s really bad. Here’s someone [Gun] who acts, who examines her conscience. The personal story has a historical effect.”

Unlike Gun, who stood up to the state by trying to avert the needless shedding of blood, Tony Blair and George W. Bush were never hauled into a court of law for lying us into a totally unnecessary war. The P.M. and prez didn’t face a Nuremberg tribunal or International Criminal Court at The Hague. But they have not escaped scot-free—now Official Secrets is holding them accountable.

If the press is the “fourth estate,” the cinema is arguably the “fifth estate.” By combining mass entertainment, drama, and first-rate acting with a true tale of an ordinary woman who stood up to the powers-that-be, Official Secrets indicts Blair, Bush, and other mass murderers in the court of public opinion—at a theater near you.

Official Secrets opens nationwide August 30. Watch the trailer below.

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L.A.-based film historian/reviewer Ed Rampell co-authored the third edition of “The Hawaii Movie and Television Book.”

Featured image is from IFC Films

“Activist groups and members of the opposition reminded President Evo Morales that his policy of expanding the agricultural frontier to favor the country’s agribusinesses and ranchers is the cause of the environmental disaster,” wrote the opposition daily Página Siete, attributing responsibility to Bolivian President Evo Morales for the burning of 500,000 hectares of the Chiquitania Forest, located in the department of Santa Cruz.

WE NEED HELP! EMERGENCY STATE DECLARED! #SOSBOLIVIA #amazonasenllamas #soschiquitania pic.twitter.com/vBuHsHtXEv

– katerine Quispe Street (@Kattytatiana18) August 22, 2019

¡NECESITAMOS AYUDA! ¡DECLAREMOS ESTADO DE EMERGENCIA!#SOSBOLIVIA #amazonasenllamas #soschiquitania pic.twitter.com/vBuHsHtXEv

— katerine Quispe Calle (@Kattytatiana18) August 22, 2019

The burning of the forest immediately gave way to an aggressive campaign in social networks and media against President Evo Morales, attributing the fires to Decree 3973 and Law 741 that supposedly allow deforestation and controlled burning for activities oriented to agriculture and cattle ranching.

“Las leyes de quemema y desmonte” (The laws of burning and clearing) was the qualification that the opposition daily El Tiempo used for both legislations, omitting that one of them was approved by opponents and government officials in Congress, according to the president of the Senate, Adriana Salvatierra.

However, the suspicions about the intentionality of the fire are completely ignored. They were found in some areas, remnants of bottles with gasoline and a group of people accused of starting the fires were arrested. The role of the mayor of San José de Chiquitos, the oppositionist Germain Caballero, also represents another clue, because of the granting of “chaqueo” permits, as deforestation is colloquially called in Bolivia.

The hysteria about this fire in the world’s best-preserved tropical forest contrasts with the fact that little has been reported: the number of sources of fire was reduced from 11,468 to 1,362 in the last week (85% of the total number of fires), as a result of the work of more than 4,000 people, and the deployment of 200 vehicles and five aircraft, among them the famous Supertanker.

The campaign and its dissemination principles

One of the figures of this campaign, marketing and neuroscience specialist Jurgen Klaric, demanded in a video that President Morales accept international aid and guarantees that donated medicines would reach those affected by the fires.

“Today we are Bolivians, there are no parties or private interests, the only interest is to save the lung of the planet,” he said in a speech aimed entirely at criticizing Evo Morales and his government. Along the same lines, a group of ecological lobbyists with celebrities recorded a video with the tag #SOSChiquitania to promote the campaign.

#SOSBolivia #SOSChiquitania
Let the world know #PrayforAmazonas pic.twitter.com/YjvT5uNeSy

– Lizbeth Mendoza (@lizzye812) August 25, 2019

#SOSBolivia #SOSChiquitania
Que el mundo se entere #PrayforAmazonas pic.twitter.com/YjvT5uNeSy

— Lizbeth Mendoza (@lizzye812) August 25, 2019

In the same way, Ximena Zalzer, former beauty queen and host of Bolivian television, is another of the protagonists of the campaign for the entry of “international aid” to deal with the fires in the Chiquitania forest. In fact, she is one of the main spokespersons of the campaign #SOSChiquitania which, on social networks, states that the Morales government is responsible for the origin of the fire and for refusing to receive “international aid”.

This posterization of citizen opinion, promoted from social networks and private media, also corresponds to basic principles of propaganda and marketing, focused on establishing a single enemy and a set of basic arguments repeated to the point of exhaustion, as happens with respect to the explanations for the fires and the responsibility of President Morales.

The Nazi propagandist Josseph Goebbels catalogued some of these techniques as principles of simplification, vulgarization and orchestration.

In this way, the videos ranked as a trend in #SOSChiquitania appeal to the emotions of the public by reflecting the natural devastation and death of animals resulting from the burning of the forest.

In this way, Evo Morales is positioned as the “sole culprit” behind the fires. This basic idea circulates through viral stories on social networks, according to advertising principles that the theorist Edward Bernays collected in his work The Engineering of Consent, in which he elaborates a method for “people to support certain ideas and programs, from the application of scientific principles and public opinion studies”.

Evo Morales has two paths left, either he listens to his people and abrogates Law 741 and Decree 3973 or he will go down in history as the greatest criminal in our history. Already chingo 1 million hectares. Tonight all to the Plaza de las Banderas to… https://t.co/9ZH9rrDKmW

– Violeta Ayala (@violetablue007) August 29, 2019

A Evo Morales le quedan dos caminos, o escucha a su pueblo y abroga la ley 741 y el Decreto 3973 o pasara a la historia como el criminal mas grande de nuestra historia. Ya se chingo 1 millon de hectareas. Esta noche todos a la Plaza de las Banderas a… https://t.co/9ZH9rrDKmW

— Violeta Ayala (@violetablue007) August 29, 2019

In the same vein, the orchestrators of this campaign unilaterally established the figure of 1 million hectares burned to position the fires as an unobjectionable “natural disaster,” one of the strongest arguments for pressuring the Bolivian government to accept international aid, as demanded by environmental and indigenous groups.

Protests, agitation and contradictions in the discourse

The fire in social networks and private media concentrating on the same opinion matrix led to a series of street actions, spectacularized in social media to reinforce the campaign of agitation against the Bolivian government.

The first was the call for a march in La Paz, Bolivia’s capital, with a four-point agenda:

• “Immediate authorization of national and international aid already present on Bolivian soil.
• “Allow citizen organizations (read NGO) to carry out relief work.”
• “Issue a public document requesting assistance from the international community at the UN and OAS within 48 hours.”
• “Repeal of supreme decree 3973”

As is already common in these cases, the promoters of this call were celebrities, in this case Ximena Zalzer and Jurgen Klaric, as well as members of environmental groups influenced by NGOs.

In this manner, the call was “citizenized,” with no visible partisan features, in order to turn their demands against the Bolivian government into an apolitical center that would bring together more than those interested in the issue. This was precisely to create a lawsuit, apparently without political interest, that would become a mass issue for Bolivians, according to the propaganda principles explained above.

BOLIVIA needs international help – International Aid for BOLIVIA #SOSBolivia #BOLIVIA DEMANDS… NOW!
-Abrogation of Law 741.
-Abrogation of DS 3973.
-Immediate entry of #International Help #SOSChiquitania#Chiquitania pic.twitter.com/AKLR0pgZmR

– Samy Schwartz (@samyschwartz) August 25, 2019

BOLIVIA needs international help – Ayuda Internacional para BOLIVIA #SOSBolivia #BOLIVIA EXIGE… ¡AHORA!
-Abrogación de la Ley 741.
-Abrogación del DS 3973.
-Ingreso inmediato de #AyudaInternacional #SOSChiquitania#Chiquitania pic.twitter.com/AKLR0pgZmR

— Samy Schwartz (@samyschwartz) August 25, 2019

The action that followed this mobilization was the emergence of a group of environmentalists at an event for the first shipment of meat to China, which has a potential income of 800 million dollars for the country by 2030, a figure of enormous importance for the diversification of income for the nation.

“The Chiquitania is on fire and you are talking about exporting meat,” shouted the activists who claim the reasons for the deforestation are the extension of the agricultural frontier to produce meat and soy, as well as the granting of land to coca producers.

Denunciation @Csanchezberzain : The Amazon fire in #Bolivia has been promoted and sustained by Evo Morales to expand illegal coca crops, colonize for political purposes and expand agro-industrial areas for businessmen of his regime.
Interview with @PaulSfeir pic.twitter.com/FitMlwLJVq

– CarlosSanchezBerzain (@Csanchezberzain) August 27, 2019

In the same narrative exercise of consolidating Evo Morales as the only culprit, environmental groups called him the “saint of ranchers” with the clear intention of placing him as protector of the Santa Cruz Federation of Ranchers and the Confederation of Bolivian Ranchers, both organizations present at the event. It is a clear manoeuvre to construct the president of Bolivia as the “constituted power” that must be confronted in order to stop the “chaqueo”.

#Now #LoUltimo
Artist Rilda Paco Alvarado painted a painting she called “San Evo Morales,” the “saint” of cattle ranchers, amid the forest fires caused by the burns at #Chiquitanía pic.twitter.com/R0WRwXulKn.

– @DavidOvando (@Davicko3) August 29, 2019

Denuncia @Csanchezberzain : El incendio del Amazonas en #Bolivia ha sido promovido y es sostenido por Evo Morales para expandir cultivos de coca ilegal,hacer colonización con fines políticos y ampliar áreas de agroindustria para empresarios de su régimen
Entrevista con @PaulSfeir pic.twitter.com/FitMlwLJVq

— CarlosSanchezBerzain (@Csanchezberzain) August 27, 2019

However, the discursive nucleus overexposed by influencers and trolls of few followers, surely paid by some advertising agency, is totally unaware that President Morales completely stopped the allocation of land in Chiquitania, and ordered that international aid be received from eight countries in the amount of 2.2 million dollars, in addition to announcing that a new “chaqueos” law will be adopted.

Obviously this type of omission is aimed at sowing disinformation, favourable to the campaign against the Bolivian government, in order to maintain on the agenda a claim that in due course will radically change to a single focus: the questioning of the figure of Evo Morales and his government in the face of the presidential elections.

Among the accounts presented as influential in the campaign by Bolivian digital strategist Carlos Andrés Peredo is that of environmental NGO Ríos de Pie founded by Jhanisse Daza, a member of the Human Rights Foundation (HRF) of Thor Halvorssen Mendoza, cousin of Venezuelan businessman Lorenzo Mendoza.

Daza is one of the main promoters, for example, of the protests against President Morales in Bolivian embassies abroad, just as was done in previous weeks in Brazil’s diplomatic headquarters against Jair Bolsonaro for burning the Amazon.

#Bolivia: protests continue across the country asking the government to let international help in. We hear reports of volunteers passing out due to intoxication since they don’t have masks.
Yup, this is me giving a speech outside the Cathedral and holding tears. #SOSBolivia pic.twitter.com/Z2UQlHaSWG

– Jhanisse V. Daza (@JhanisseVDaza) August 29, 2019

#Bolivia: protests continue across the country asking the government to let international help in. We hear reports of volunteers passing out due to intoxication since they don’t have masks.
Yup, this is me giving a speech outside the Cathedral and holding tears. #SOSBolivia pic.twitter.com/Z2UQlHaSWG

— Jhanisse V. Daza (@JhanisseVDaza) August 29, 2019

The HRF belongs to the Atlas Foundation network, financed by the American industrialists of the Koch oligarchy, which has financed movements such as “Brasil Livre”, which in 2013 took to the streets against Dilma Rousseff in the Gold Cup for the rise of bus fare. Paradoxically, this movement shaped the prelude to the process that led to Rousseff’s illegal dismissal, turning into a coup d’état, similar to “La Salida” in Venezuela in 2014.

Daza, on the other hand, was educated at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, where he participated in the program “Leading the Nonviolent Movement for Social Progress”.

In February, he gave a TED-style lecture, sponsored by the Spanish Embassy in Bolivia, in which he described the “non-violent strategy” he is developing to overthrow Evo Morales.

She also considers herself an admirer and a close friend of Srdja Popovic, a member of the Serbian Otpor movement that ousted President Slobodan Milosevic in what is believed to be one of the world’s first colour revolutions.

Thanks to her membership in the HRF-sponsored Oslo Forum, the young Bolivian frequently exchanges ideas about “non-violent strategies” with U.S.-funded leaders in other parts of the world, such as those who are now leading the protests in Hong Kong.

A colour revolution or a prelude to a phase of harassment and demolition?

The campaign is quite similar to what in 2011 gave rise to protests against the construction of a road in the Isiboro Sécure National Park Indigenous Territory (TIPNIS). Needless to say, several environmental NGOs, funded by the United States, and Bolivian-Israeli photographer Sammy Shwartz, were among the main promoters of the #SOSChiquitania campaign.

At last! #Bolivia is mentioned in a report in #France that puts Evo Morales in his place as the president who allowed the disaster to happen. #SOSBOLIVIA#SOSCHIQUITANIA#ACTFORAMAZONIA @AFPespanol @CNNEE @amnestyusa @BBCNews @mathildeamnesty @ValerieCabanes @Francetele pic.twitter.com/7kOjSzQGCqq

– All Together for Bolivia (@TJxBolivia) August 25, 2019

AL FIN! #Bolivia es mencionada en un reportaje en #Francia que pone en su lugar a Evo Morales como el presidente que permitió que el desastre suceda.#SOSBOLIVIA#SOSCHIQUITANIA#ACTFORAMAZONIA @AFPespanol @CNNEE @amnestyusa @BBCNews @mathildeamnesty @ValerieCabanes @Francetele pic.twitter.com/7kOjSzQGCq

— Todos Juntos por Bolivia (@TJxBolivia) August 25, 2019

In this context, it is to be expected that the target audience of this new regime change operation will be the upper middle class, traditionally anti-evista, and the new middle class born as a result of the Bolivian process.

It is to be expected that the most heavily targeted, through social networks, will be the youngest who grew up during the governments of Evo Morales, considered 39% of the electoral roll. Given that this sector in general, is receptive to the propaganda that may establish it as a “rebellion” to oppose the government of the day, even though the administration of the Movement Toward Socialism has assured them economic stability.

In a context where Evo Morales leads the polls with 43% before the presidential elections, such a coup can also change the course of the electoral process in order to lay the foundations for a process of delegitimization against him.

The singularity that Bolivia is today is that it integrates the regional bloc of the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA), where three of its main members (Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela) are regarded by the United States as the “troika of evil,” and two of them (Ecuador and El Salvador) have changed their orientation through betrayals and changes of government.

In this sense, the failed colour revolutions in Nicaragua and Venezuela, manufactured under the same paradigm, allowed the United States to launch new forms of warfare against the two countries through sanctions, and in the case of Venezuela, the promotion of a parallel government.

Bolivia, in this context, may be in the forefront of a similar process of softening that will allow them to attack the main source of political stability: the economy.

In a paper by Russian Ukrainian analyst Rotislav Ishchenko on “coups or colour revolutions”, it is stated that the “aggressor-state” generally seeks to drive the “victim-state” to face violent street protests. Through these, the “aggressor-state” forces the attacked government to choose between capitulating or repressing the protests so that, if the latter happens, it will be described as “dictatorial” and that it has lost its legitimacy.

This enables the “aggressor-state” to interfere in the internal affairs of the affected country, if possible through mandates from multilateral organizations such as the UN or the OAS, using as a pretext the protection of human rights and the democracy institutions supposedly violated by the “victim-state”.

Furthermore, in this way, international coalitions can be formed to cover up the aggressions against the nation-victim, as is the case in Venezuela with the notorious Lima Group. In this regard, there are already steps in the OAS to condemn the re-election of Evo Morales under the auspices of Colombia and Brazil.

However, in Bolivia history has yet to be written, but it is framed in a regional context in which the United States has opted to criminalize and persecute its regional geopolitical adversaries until they fall.

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The Democratic Presidential candidates who have been the most backed by billionaires have not been doing well in the polling thus far, and this fact greatly disturbs the billionaires. They know that the Democratic nominee will be chosen in the final round of primaries, and they have always wanted Pete Buttigieg to be in that final round. Therefore, they have backed him more than any of the other candidates. But what worries them now is that his opponent in that round might turn out to be Bernie Sanders, whom they all consider to be their nemesis. They want to avoid this outcome, at all costs. And they might have found a way to do it: Elizabeth Warren. Here is how, and why:

Among the top three in the polling — Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders, and Elizabeth Warren — only Biden is among the top five in the number of billionaires who have backed him, and each of the other four candidates scores higher than Biden does in the number of billionaire backers. Furthermore, Biden is sinking in the polls. Consequently, Democratic Party billionaires are increasingly worrying that their Party might end up nominating for the Presidency someone whom they won’t support. That person would be Sanders. And the Democratic National Committee — which relies heavily upon its billionaire backers in order to be able to win elections (just as the Republican National Committee relies upon Republican billionaire backers in order to win) — is terrified by this possibility (alienating its Party’s crucial moneybags).

The saving grace for these billionaires (and for the DNC) increasingly seems likely to be Senator Warren’s candidacy, which draws support away from Sanders, and therefore gives Buttigieg a chance ultimately to win the nomination.

On August 27th, the top website for Democratic Party activists, Political Wire, headlined “Warren Overtakes Biden as Most Favorable Candidate”, and reported that not only does Warren now edge out both Biden and Sanders in net favorability rating, and top the entire field of candidates in that extremely important measure, but Warren is overwhelmingly the most frequently mentioned second choice of Democratic Party primary voters, which means that not only would the voters who intend to vote for her in the primary be delighted if she were to become the Democratic nominee — this outcome would also likeliest produce the most-unified Party going into the general election.

This, in turn, would mean that Democratic Party billionaires, instead of Republican Party billionaires, would almost certainly control the country after 2020 — the country would be controlled by people such as Thomas Steyer and Donald Sussman, instead of by people such as Sheldon Adelson and Paul Singer. It would be a different ‘democracy’, but not really much different; it would be like the difference between George W. Bush and Barack Obama — it would be different in rhetoric and bumper-stickers, but very similar in actual policies. (For examples: whereas Bush invaded and destroyed Afghanistan and Iraq, Obama invaded and destroyed Libya and Syria; and, all the while, both of them supported the Sauds and Israel; and, moreover, both of them supported Wall Street, though Obama tongue-lashed them, which Bush didn’t.) So: though the rhetoric is sometimes different, the basic policies aren’t. The policies of Republican billionaires and of Democratic billionaires are basically similar.

As of just a few weeks ago, the Democratic Party’s five top US Presidential candidates, in terms of whom had been backed the most strongly by America’s billionaires, were, in order from the top: Pete Buttigieg, Cory Booker, Kamala Harris, Michael Bennett, and Joe Biden. Warren was 12th down from Buttigieg’s #1 position, in support from the billionaires. Sanders was at the very bottom — zero billionaires backing him (he was the only one of the 17 reporting candidates who had nobillionaire backer).

The Democratic Party’s billionaires are just crazy about Buttigieg, but the question right now is whom will they choose to be running against him during the decisive final round of the primaries? Would they rather it be Sanders? Or instead Warren?

They definitely prefer Warren. Her recent soaring poll-numbers are raising her support, from them, so strongly that the neoconservative-neoliberal (i.e., pro-billionaire) David Bradley’s The Atlantic magazine headlined on August 26th, “Elizabeth Warren Manages to Woo the Democratic Establishment”.

This magazine reported (to use my language, not theirs) that the rats from the sinking ship Joe Biden have begun to jump onboard the USS. Elizabeth Warren’s rising ship, which might already be tied even-steven with the other two leading ships, of Biden and of Sanders. Since Sanders is the only American Presidential candidate whom no billionaire supports, there are strong indications that Warren is drawing some of them away from Biden. This could turn the nominating contest into, ultimately, Buttigieg versus Warren (both of whom are acceptable to billionaires), instead of into Buttigieg versus Sanders (which woud pose the threat to them of producing a Sanders Presidency).

There is little reason to think that Buttigieg will decline to the #2 position in billionaires’ support; but, if this contest turns into Sanders v. Buttigieg, instead of into Warren v. Buttigieg, then Democratic Party billionaires not only would pour even more money into Buttigieg’s campaign against Sanders, but they would likely end up donating to the Republican Presidential nominee in 2020 if Sanders ends up beating Buttigieg (as polls indicate he almost certainly would). By contrast, if this nominating contest ends up being between Warren v. Buttigieg, then the Party’s billionaires wouldn’t likely switch to supporting the Republican Presidential nominee — they’d continue donating to the Democratic Party, regardless of which of those two candidates wins the nomination, in order to defeat Trump (or whomever the Republican nominee turns out to be), and take the control of the country away from Republican billionaires (as it now is).

Therefore, David Bradley’s propaganda organs are turned on, really hot, by Lizzie. For some typical examples, at Bradley’s biggest-circulation one, The Atlantic, its recent stories gushing about her have been headlined: “Elizabeth Warren Had Charisma, and Then She Ran for President”, and “Elizabeth Warren’s Big Night”, and “The Activist Left Already Knows Who It Wants for President”. For example: the last-mentioned of those articles was about “Netroots Nation, a conference that’s been around since the early 2000s,” which “is run by the liberal political blog Daily Kos.”

Here’s what it hides: Daily Kos was founded and owned by the CIA asset and El Salvadorian aristocrat Markos Moulitsas, a ‘former’ Republican far-right person, who set up his website in 2002 and suddenly specialized in fooling progressive Democrats to endorse whomever the billionaire-run Democratic National Committee wants them to support. Unlike David Bradley’s ‘moderate’-Democrat rags, Moulitsas’s ‘progressive’-Democrat rag, Daily Kos, targets to make suckers of Democrats who might vote in the primaries for people that the billionaires actually fear — and that’s now especially Sanders — in order to turn them instead toward favoring the ‘mainstream’, ‘more electable’, Democratic Party candidates (such as Biden, Buttigieg, and Harris — not David Bradley’s darling as Buttigieg’s stalking horse, Warren).

In 2016, that ‘mainstream’ was Hillary Clinton (whom the DNC had rigged the primaries to ‘win’ against Sanders), but more recently it was Joe Biden and Pete Buttigieg; and, now, this ‘mainstream’ is starting to include (from the billionaires’ standpoint) Elizabeth Warren. That’s because Warren is vastly more preferred by billionaires than is Sanders, and so they want the Party’s progressives to choose her,instead of Sanders, so that the final Democratic Presidential contest will be between Warren versus the billionaires’ actual favorite, which is Buttigieg. If they can’t get him, at least they can get her, the Party’s billionaires clearly now are hoping.

On April 19th, Jonathan Martin headlined in the New York Times, “‘Stop Sanders’ Democrats Are Agonizing Over His Momentum”, and he opened:

“When Leah Daughtry, a former Democratic Party official, addressed a closed-door gathering of about 100 wealthy liberal donors in San Francisco last month, all it took was a review of the 2020 primary rules to throw a scare in them. … “I think I freaked them out,” Ms. Daughtry recalled with a chuckle, an assessment that was confirmed by three other attendees. They are hardly alone. … But stopping Mr. Sanders … could prove difficult for Democrats.

Martin went on to say:

His strength on the left gives him a real prospect of winning the Democratic nomination and could make him competitive for the presidency if his economic justice message resonates in the Midwest as much as Mr. Trump’s appeals to hard-edge nationalism did in 2016. And for many Sanders supporters, the anxieties of establishment Democrats are not a concern.

That prospect is spooking establishment-aligned Democrats. …

David Brock, the liberal organizer [founder of the Media Matters anti-progressive Democratic Party website against Republicans], … said he has had discussions with other operatives about an anti-Sanders campaign and believes it should commence “sooner rather than later.” …

Howard Wolfson [here’s the wiki on him], who spent months immersed in Democratic polling and focus groups on behalf of former Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg of New York, had a blunt message for Sanders skeptics: “People underestimate the possibility of him becoming the nominee at their own peril.” …

The matter of What To Do About Bernie and the larger imperative of party unity has, for example, hovered over a series of previously undisclosed Democratic dinners in New York and Washington organized by the longtime party financier Bernard Schwartz [the billionaire former Vice Chairman of Lockheed Martin]. …

[Rufus] Gifford [former President Barack Obama’s 2012 finance director, who]… has gone public in recent days with his dismay over major Democratic fund-raisers remaining on the sidelines, said of Mr. Sanders, “I feel like everything we are doing is playing into his hands.”

But the peril of rallying the party’s elite donor class against a candidate whose entire public life has been organized around confronting concentrated wealth is self-evident: Mr. Sanders would gleefully seize on any Stop Bernie effort.

“You can see him reading the headlines now,” Mr. Brock mused: “‘Rich people don’t like me.’”

So: the rise of Elizabeth Warren gives the billionaires a ‘progressive’ candidate who might either win the nomination or else at least split progressive voters during the primaries (between Sanders and Warren) and thus give the nomination to Buttigieg, who is their first choice (especially since both Biden and Harris have been faltering so badly of late).

This explains the gushings for Warren, at such neocon rags as The Atlantic, The New Republic, New Yorker, and Mother Jones. It’s being done in order to set up the final round, so as for its outcome to be acceptable to the billionaires who fund the Democratic Party. Her record in the US Senate is consistently in support of US invasions, coups, and sanctions against countries that have never invaded nor even threatened to invade the US, such as Venezuela, Palestine, Syria, and Iran; she’s 100% a neocon (just like G.W. Bush, Obama and Trump were/are); and, to billionaires, that is even more important than her policy-record regarding Wall Street is, because the Military Industrial Complex, which she represents, is even more important to enforcing and spreading the US megacorporate empire than the investment-firms are. So, whereas they would be able to deal with Warren, they wouldn’t be able to deal with Sanders, whose policy-record is remarkably progressive in all respects, and not only on domestic US matters.

Whereas the public pay attention virtually only to domestic matters, billionaires care even more about foreign than about domestic affairs — and this fact — more than anything else — makes Sanders utterly unacceptable to them.

Under a President Warren, America’s string of invasions, coups, and economic blockades (sanctions) would continue; but, under a President Sanders, all of that wasted money would be spent instead on improving the lives of the American people, rather than on destroying the lives of the residents in those foreign lands so as to conquer those lands in the name of advancing ‘human rights’ and ‘democracy’ there and of ‘defending America’ against ‘enemies’ who never even have threatened us.

This con is the reality that both the Democratic and the Republican sides of The Establishment (the collective operation of all billionaires and their ‘news’-media and think tanks, etc.) constantly hide from the public. And that is why, for example, America went from invading Iraq on the basis of lies in 2003, to invading Libya on the basis of lies in 2011, and Syria on the basis of lies in 2013-, and maybe Venezuela and Iran on the basis of lies after the upcoming Presidential ‘election’.

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Around the world, coups are normally international events. Short of war they have been a preferred mechanism to achieve what has become known as ‘regime change’. And the last time there was a successful coup in this country in 1688 that too was an international affair, with Mary and William of Orange being installed as a monarchy. That was a coup by parliament against an over-bearing monarchy.

The current situation is quite different. We are living through a coup against parliament by a minority of parliamentarians, who have seized control of the Tory party from the right. They intend to impose their will against the majority of elected representatives and against the will of the public.

They are able to attempt this because this too is an international affair. Boris Johnson hopes to prolong his premiership by crashing this country out of the EU with a No Deal Brexit. But the key beneficiary of this project is Donald Trump and the interests he represents, and the project has his full backing.

Any significant agreement with the EU would necessarily include some degree of alignment with European rules and tariffs. They are not going to formulate an entirely new set of rules and tariffs simply to accommodate us – any more than the US will. For Trump, No Deal is imperative.

The effect of those US rules and tariffs are truly frightening. Contrary to the false promises and blatant untruths of the leaders of the Leave campaigns, we will not be entering a new golden age of peace and prosperity as a subordinate state to Trump’s MAGA project. This is not what the millions of decent Leave voters were told.

On trade, you only have recognise how he treats US allies, like Canada, Mexico, India and the EU, to understand how trade negotiations will go. It will be an imposition not a negotiation. Similarly, it is clear Trump will drag this country into new conflicts, with countries such as Iran and China. Some in the Tory party are only too eager to follow him.

Being Trump’s vassal will affect every part of our lives, from the Americanisation of the NHS, to the decimation of the car industry, the assault on British farming and much else besides. American workers have even fewer rights and benefits than workers in this country, and there will be a major offensive to ‘level down’ our rights. Donald Trump is also a climate crisis denier, and seems sure to insist on greater fracking by US firms.

In opposing No Deal the majority of MPs are in tune with the voters. Poll after poll shows only a small minority support No Deal. The general public have asked themselves, will I be better or worse off with No Deal? And they don’t like the answer.

The arguments of coup plotters are clearly false. They deliberately confuse suspending parliament for weeks with an ordinary recess while knowing the opponents of No Deal intended to get parliament to sit and debate instead of going into recess. They claim a ‘new government’ needs its own Queen’s Speech, when it currently has no programme except No Deal. They claim to relish the prospect of a general election, when Johnson could have called one when he ousted May.

Boris Johnson also previously told the One Nation group he had no intention of proroguing parliament. Now he is telling them that he is still aiming for a deal with the EU. The truth is Trump will not allow that, and his puppet Farage recently repeated his threat to stand against the Tories if Johnson fails to deliver No Deal. That would prove fatal to Johnson’s lifelong ambitions: he would forever be known as Boris the Brief.

It is our job as the Labour party to ensure that we prevent the huge damage to the living standards and well-being of the ordinary people of this country that Trump, Johnson and No Deal will inflict. Jeremy Corbyn is doing a brilliant job in uniting the entire opposition to those plans. Parliament has not yet been prorogued, and can prevent it. I would invite anyone who simply prefers our current democracy to arbitrary rule in Trump’s interests to join us in opposing the coup and opposing No Deal.

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NATO-backed terrorist remnants in Aleppo countryside have increased attacks against civilian populations of the city, since prior to the Astana meetings and the short-lived ‘cessation of hostilities’ agreement. 

Massive quantities of this criminal drug were found in the wheels of the MAN truck and hidden with such precision inside, that industrial electrical saw was needed to cut through thick metal enclosures.

.

.

As is the standard — or, rather, the lack thereof — western media remain silent over this massive confiscation of illegal drugs being trafficked into Syria.

Captagon is a habit-forming, illicit amphetamine drug that contains the bronchodilator, theophylline; expanding the bronchial tree of the lungs potentiates the effects of the amphetamine. Amphetamines are nicknamed “speed,” because they accelerate the body’s physiology, including the production of emotional hormones.

Captagon was first manufactured in the west, in the early 60s. It was wrongfully used for weight reduction, the very rare narcolepsy, and generic fatigue. The US stopped manufacturing it in the 80s, finally realizing it had no medical use. Contrary to the criminal lies of various western media, unlike in the US, Syria never manufactured Captagon.

WaPo exhibited its anti-Syria arrogance by claiming the ‘highly addictive pill [is] produced in Syria,’ even while quoting a UNDOC representative: “[w]ho is doing the manufacturing, that’s not something we have visibility into from a distance.”

WaPo Propaganda Report on Captagon Pills in Syria by anti-Syria Liz Sly

The huge shipment of the psychotropic stimulant — along with other, unidentified illicit drugs — is believed to have come from Lebanon, again.

Captagon is an excellent drug for enhancing the deranged savagery of the criminally insane, NATO- and Gulfies-armed terrorists, in Syria.

A member of the FSA grills a severed head of a decapitated officer – Idleb

As the Syrian Arab Army continues to fulfill President Assad’s promise that “every inch” of Syria will be freed from foreign-owned pathogens, there has been an increase in attempted trafficking of Captagon to the savages. This most recent interception is the third large shipment confiscated in August, and western media have not reported on any of them.

Those of principled character might marvel at this silence — especially given the non-stop US media hysteria on the “opioid crisis” — and the nasty double standard the silence demonstrates.

Thinking minds might remember the Iran/Contra horror, that had the US taxpayer funding the CIA’s dumping crack cocaine and weapons into American cities, to pay the costs of arming terrorists in Central America.

Perhaps the CIA oversees the illicit Captagon manufacturing in Lebanon?

Syria News will continue to report on the successes of law enforcement seizures of this psycho-stimulant. At the current time, various terrorists and their supporters are engaged in various forms of fratricide; the gangs are burning flags of the rabid Erdogan, in effigy, they are firing guns at each other, and hordes of them are trying to knock down a border wall, to force themselves into Turkey.

Leaving them to be minced by the advancing SAA, Erdogan’s terrorists protest at the borders

Such chaos among the demons will likely increase the attempts to traffic Captagon to those left behind.

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All images in this article are from Syria News unless otherwise stated

Priti Patel was paid £1,000 an hour to advise a US company bidding on a lucrative £6 billion defence contract, The Guardian has revealed.

The Home Secretary has been urged to withdraw from cabinet discussions on the contract following the revelations.

Bidding to supply next-generation military satellite communication systems is expected to start next year, but Patel has been called out over a “conflict of interest”.

Christine Jardine, the Liberal Democrats’ home affairs spokesperson, pointed out that the now Home Secretary worked for Viasat in the period running up to her appointment.

She called on Patel to clarify whether she “has had any conversations about the [Ministry of Defence] contract with anyone there”.

Saying the government cabinet minister should “recuse herself from any cabinet or national security council discussions concerning the firm”.

Patel worked as a “strategic adviser” to Viasat from 1 May to 31 July, earning £5,000 a month for “an expected commitment” of about five hours a month.

The Californian company recently declared its interest in bidding for Skynet 6.

In a corporate blog the company executive said the UK has “an enormous opportunity” to deploy expertise from “private sector … providers, including Viasat”.

Jardine said:

“The British public cannot have confidence that this multibillion-pound defence contract will be decided in the national interest while one of the cabinet ministers in the discussions was until very recently a paid adviser to one of the companies bidding for it.”

Home Office sources said Patel had been “through a full process” of examination by the advisory committee on business appointments (Acoba), the body that monitors private sector employment by ministers and ex-ministers, and that “no issues were raised”.

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Jack Peat is a business and economics journalist and the founder of The London Economic (TLE).He has contributed articles to The Sunday Telegraph, BBC News and writes for The Big Issue on a weekly basis. Jack read History at the University of Wales, Bangor and has a Masters in Journalism from the University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne.

Featured image is from Empics Entertainment

More than ten years ago, in Nadi, Fiji, during a UN conference, I was approached by the Minister of Education of Papua New Guinea (PNG).

He was deeply shaken, troubled, his eyes full of tears: “Please help our children,” he kept repeating:

“Indonesian army, TNI, is kidnapping our little girls in the villages, raping them, and then… in the most sadistic way cutting off their nipples and clitorises. And if they speak, entire villages get burned down in retribution. Many already have been. Some children managed to escape; to cross the border, from West Papua to PNG. Now they are staying in our refugee camps, but our country is poor; we are hardly coping. Please come to Papua, and we will take you to the border region… please tell the story to the world…”

What followed, I described in detail in my book, Oceania. In brief, I managed to scramble some money for my trip from Samoa back to PNG, I found the Minister of Education, but he refused to take me to the camps. I contacted his subordinates as well as local journalists, and was told the same thing:

“Nothing has changed; nothing improved; but the Minister was bribed and intimidated by the omnipresent Indonesian embassy.”

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Now even the mainstream media in Java, including the generally pro-regime English-language daily The Jakarta Post, has had to react to the terrible events which are taking place on the occupied territory of West Papua. On August 19, 2019, Evi Mariani, wrote:

“Papuans are said to have endured racial discrimination from the majority Javanese. A political activist from Papua, Filep Karma, wrote in 2014 in his book, Seakan Kitorang Setengah Binatang: Rasialisme Indonesia di Tanah Papua (As If We Are Half Animal: Indonesia’s Racism in Papua Land), that he experienced racism when he studied in a state university in Surakarta, Central Java. He often heard his friends calling Papuans “monkeys”, he said in the book.

The book speaks volumes of the crimes against humanity facing Papuans on their own land.”

But what really is happening in West Papua?

Of course, foreign journalists are banned from entering and reporting freely from there. Only official Indonesian journalists, basically lackeys of the regime, are regularly flown to the most devastated and oppressed areas. Their lies and twisted ‘reporting’ are the only things that the world is ‘allowed to see’.

Working for years in South Pacific (Oceania), I visited on several occasions, both Papua New Guinea (PNG), and Vanuatu, where the West Papuan resistance has been regrouping. I also have some 25 years of experience, of working in Indonesia itself. And I used to cooperate with a late professor from Sydney University, Peter King, a man who basically dedicated his life to the plight of West Papua. I spoke at Sydney University, side by side with him, recalling my experience from East Timor; from the Indonesian occupation, where 30-40% of the population lost their life, and where I, myself, was savagely tortured in 1996, for trying to expose the systematic gang rapes committed by the Indonesian military, TNI.

While living in Oceania, I spent days discussing the occupation with the West Papuan refugees, who resided outside Port Moresby, the capital of PNG.

I managed to enter West Papua only once, illegally, in 1999, as a ‘side-trip’ while covering the horrific sectarian conflict in Ambon.

From the information and testimonies that I amassed so far, I can clearly see that the occupation of West Papua is, together with the situation in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) which is being plundered by both Rwanda and Uganda on behalf of Western corporations and governments and where approximately 8 million people already lost their lives, perhaps the most horrendous genocide taking place on our planet.

But in the region of the Great Lakes of Africa I managed to make my big documentary film, Rwanda Gambit. While in West Papua, I would never be allowed to film, photograph or even openly talk to people. I would never be allowed to enter those monstrous mines controlled by Freeport and other corporations; mines that are being ‘protected’ by the corrupt and murderous Indonesian military.

Prof. Peter King and Prof. John Wing wrote in the Executive Summary to their report “Genocide in West Papua?” (Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies, The University of Sydney, 2005):

“The report details a series of concerns which, if not acted upon, may pose serious threats to the survival of the indigenous people of the Indonesian province of Papua. It covers the threats posed by the Indonesian military to the province’s stability, the recent increase in large scale military campaigns which are decimating highland tribal communities, the HIV/AIDS explosion and persistent Papuan underdevelopment in the face of a rapid and threatening demographic transition in which the Papuans face becoming a minority in their own land.

A “culture of impunity” exists in Indonesia which sees its highest manifestation currently in Papua and Aceh. Military operations have led to thousands of deaths in Papua and continue to costs lives, yet the Republic’s armed forces act as a law unto themselves with no real accountability for crimes against the Papuan population. The report discusses a number of areas of Indonesian security forces involvement, including: illegal logging and corrupt infrastructure and construction work; destabilization and manipulation of local politics, and orchestration of attacks blamed on pro-Papuan independence groups; the introduction of illegal arms and militia training and recruitment; and prostitution and the spread of HIV/AIDS. 

The report concludes with a number of urgent recommendations to the Indonesian and Australian governments, the United Nations and other involved parties.”

Since 2005, not much has improved. Actually, things have deteriorated even further.

Eliza Egret and Tom Anderson reported on August 31, 2017 in their essay “West Papua’s Silent Genocide”:

“The occupation of West Papua receives little attention in the UK. This is, in no small part, due to Indonesia’s ban on foreign journalists and its outlawing of West Papuan social movements who try to speak out internationally. However, West Papua has not been forgotten by international corporations, including companies from the UK. For them, Indonesia’s brutal occupation of West Papua provides lucrative opportunities for profit. 

Mining companies exploit the country’s vast wealth of minerals, with security for their operations provided by the Indonesian military. International arms companies profit from selling Indonesia the weapons it needs to maintain the occupation. The UK government, which gives financial support and training to Indonesian police forces, is also complicit in the repression in West Papua. 

West Papuans have called on people in the UK to help stop what they describe as the silent genocide in West Papua.”

The Free West Papua Campaign states:

Over 500,000 civilians have been killed in a genocide against the indigenous population. Thousands more have been raped, tortured, imprisoned or ‘disappeared’ after being detained. Basic human rights such as freedom of speech are denied and Papuans live in a constant state of fear and intimidation.”

In a series of the official reports, fingers were being pointed at Indonesia and its genocidal behavior in the occupied West Papua. From the United Nations to human rights organizations, a gruesome picture has been emerging.

As mentioned by the “Free West Papua Campaign”:

“Sexual assault and rape have been repeatedly used as a weapon by the Indonesian military and police.

In a public report to the U.N. Commission on Human Rights in 1999, the Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women concluded that the Indonesian security forces used rape “as an instrument of torture and intimidation” in West Papua, and “torture of women detained by the Indonesian security forces was widespread”.

The Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Centre for Human Rights prepared a full report on “Rape and Other Human Rights Abuses by the Indonesian Military in Irian Jaya (West Papua), Indonesia”.”

Even the otherwise ‘timid’ Amnesty International(timid when it comes to the West’s allies), admits that torture, killings and other grave human rights abuses, are regularly taking place in the Indonesia-controlled territory, in its reports on West Papua.

Information about sexual assaults and rapes highlighted in the above-mentioned U.N. report, is consistent with the behavior of the Indonesian military during and after the 1965-66 military coup, and later, during the occupation and genocide committed in East Timor.

It is important to point out that the Indonesian military and police are enjoying unprecedented impunity. After presiding over the murder of approximately 2 million Communists, intellectuals, teachers and members of the Chinese minority in 1965-66, no culprit has ever been sent to prison. Acts of killing are still being celebrated, publicly. Generals and officers who openly participated in the East Timor genocide, as well as in the on-going genocide in West Papua, have been holding high positions in the Indonesian governments, including the present one.

The monstrous brutality is well documented (even some mainstream media outlets like Al-Jazeera are regularly releasing footage of torture committed by the Indonesian troops), but Indonesia is never dragged through the international courts of justice. It is because Jakarta is a well-tested and greatly reliable ally of Western companies and governments. For instance, it allows many local and Western mining companies to plunder West Papua. The Indonesian President, “Jokowi”, actually flies around the world, asking for “more investment”, promising tax holidays, ‘reforms’ of already pathetic labor laws, and other pro-big-business concessions.

All this is brilliantly exposed in an Australian short (2:39 minute) satire film “Honest Government Ad/Visit West Papua”.

But the world prefers to stay idle. As least for now. No mass-protest movements, like those in support of the Palestinian cause, or even the Kurdish cause.

Why is all this happening?

My close friend, the renown Australian historian, Geoffrey Gunn, Professor Emeritus at Nagasaki University, wrote for this essay:

“The crimes committed by the Indonesian military in Papua today appear very similar to East Timor under Indonesian military occupation between 1975-1999 and with some of the same Indonesian officials involved. That would include General Wiranto the butcher of East Timor in 1999 who, far from being brought before an international tribunal Rwanda-style, enjoys cabinet-level appointment in the Jokowi government. But even when Suharto-era crimes could no longer be covered up in East Timor thanks to the courage of crusading journalists and others, so incredulously does the avowedly democratic regime in Jakarta today disallow the entry of humanitarian workers much less foreign media into Papua. If the Western-backed cover up of crimes committed in East Timor was itself a crime of complicity then Western – especially Australian – silence over the agony of the Papuan people over an even longer time frame is a crime of a special order, and with mining company, oil company interests in the fore as if this was the heart of Africa under Leopold II of Belgium.”

We saw the same chilling indifference, when 30% to 40% of East Timorese were slaughtered by Indonesia. Again, and again, I was managing to illegally penetrate that then Indonesian colony, which was screaming in pain, shedding thousands and thousands of people every month. And again, and again, my stories were being rejected; no interest whatsoever shown by the mass media outlets.

Then and now. East Timor and West Papua.

And in Indonesia itself, chilling, horrifying defiance. Silence. Almost no activism, and hardly any awareness. The country lives in total denial. Like in the case of 1965-66, like in the case of East Timor; total rejection of the truth. There is near zero chance that the barbarity will stop because of the pressure ‘from within’. Indonesia has proven, again and again, that after being conditioned by decades of extreme fascist ideology, fundamentalist religions, and grotesque individualism, it has no mercy, and no sympathy for its own victims. After mass killings and consistent conditioning, it is now in a serious mental, pathological state.

The government of President Jokowi is nowhere near being deep in thought, considering a referendum on independence for West Papuans. To the contrary: it is ‘investing in infrastructure’ in order to bring even more ‘investment’ from abroad, and to extract even more natural resources.

According to investigation conducted by Eliza Egret and Tom Anderson:

 “The Indonesian occupation of West Papua is directly related to corporate interests. US company Freeport-McMoRan operates the Grasberg mine in Papua – the largest gold mine and the third largest copper mine in the world. Freeport’s third largest shareholder, Carl Icahn, happens to be a  Special Advisor to Donald Trump.  

According to the Free West Papua Campaign:  

‘Freeport is Indonesia’s biggest taxpayer, making billions of dollars for the Indonesian government every year. Freeport reportedly pays the Indonesian military around US $3 million every year in ‘protection money’, ensuring that local West Papuans are kept out of the area.”

TIME states that “In 2015 alone, Freeport mined some $3.1 billion worth of gold and copper here. In addition, Papua boasts timber resources worth an estimated $78 billion.”

Amos explained the history behind Freeport’s mining in West Papua: “A contract was signed for Freeport to operate in West Papua before we were even part of Indonesia.” With the help of Henry Kissinger, Freeport was awarded the rights to pillage West Papua. Kissinger later became a Freeport board member. 

Australian-British corporation Rio Tinto holds an interest in Freeport’s Grasberg mine, which entitles it to 40% of production, over specified levels until 2021, and 40% of all production after 2021. 

Meanwhile, British company BP continues to profit from the occupation through its massive liquified natural gas fields in Tangguh. Kugi told us: “BP’s biggest operation in Southeast Asia is in West Papua, and Papuan communities are also being pushed from their land for palm oil.” According to CorpWatch, an indigenous community in West Papua filed a complaint against Sri Lankan company Goodhope Asia for taking over their land to create a palm plantation.”

In the meantime, the government of Indonesia has been turning the pristine waters of Papuan Raja Ampat into a luxury diving destination, charging horrendous airfares and lodging prices, and making the mainly Western tourist live in a bubble.

And Westerners are now coming, indifferent to the fact that they are actually funding genocide, legitimizing occupation. A boycotting Raja Ampat campaign is unheard of.

Now the Papuan people are rising. Their Morning Star flag, the symbol of resistance, is waving again, all over the island.

The world should support the Papuan people. They have been suffering for decades. Their nation lost hundreds of thousands of men, women and children. Torture, rape and humiliation have been widespread ever since the beginning of the occupation. Religion has been brutally forced down the throats of the robbed people, in many areas of West Papua: ‘You either embrace Islam, or you will starve to death, after we have looted you of all that you used to possess’.

Here, Java and its Western handlers have managed to re-define colonialism, bringing it to a monstrous extreme.

It is a “Freedom or Death” situation, now. Either freedom, or, the total destruction of the nation. The Indonesian President Jokowi is on a selling spree. He is flying all over the world, offering what is left of both Indonesia, and its ‘dependencies’, to the multi-national corporations, for an extremely low price and often, tax free. Papua is not his, and he is well aware of the fact that it may soon find a way to break free from the torture chamber and the horror of Indonesian occupation. That is why he is accelerating his business activities: trying to trade as quickly as possible with what is not his to touch.

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This article was originally published on New Eastern Outlook.

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

Featured image is from NEO

After years of declining power and stagnant wages, workers in the United States are awakening, striking and demanding more rights.  A Bureau of Labor Statistics report shows the number of striking workers is the highest since 1986. In 2018, 485,000 people went on strike, a number not exceeded since the 533,000 people in 1986, and 2019 will be even larger. Workers should be in revolt, as the Economic Policy Institute found workers have had stagnant wages for three and a half decades even though productivity is increasing. 

This week we look at the origin of Labor Day, how workers are returning to those roots and the future for workers in the United States.

From the Economic Policy Institute

Labor Returns To Its Roots: Strikes Escalate

This is the 125th anniversary of Labor Day, which was declared in 1894 after the nationwide Pullman railroad strike led by the American Railway Union under Eugene Debs when 260,000 workers in 27 states participated. Federal troops were used to stop the strike and 26 people were killed. Six days after the more than two-month-long strike ended, President Grover Cleveland pushed legislation through Congress creating Labor Day as a conciliatory gesture to the workers.

Near the end of the strike, on July 4, Debs described the strike as the beginning of a conflict where “90 percent of the people of the United States will be arrayed against the other 10 percent.” Six days later, Debs was arrested and, after his conviction was upheld by the Supreme Court, he served six months in prison for violating an injunction against the strike. When released, Debs started the Socialist Party, which built worker power in elections, resulting in many changes to the laws.

The Pullman Strike was part of a growing labor movement that won reforms such as ending child labor, the 8-hour workday, the right to unionize and Depression-era New Deal laws, which included many laws demanded by workers, the Socialist Party and the Progressive Party.

Since the 1947 Taft-Harley Act, which restricted worker rights, unions have been in decline with reduced members and rights. The Janus decision, which some saw as a fatal attack on public-sector unions, might be the low point, perhaps the darkness before the dawn, for workers in the United States. Workers are realizing that democracy requires unions and now 64% of people say they approve of unions, a dramatic increase of 16 percent over a record-low figure registered in 2009.

Janus seems to have focused unions on the need to rethink their approach, and so far unions who have moved to an organizing culture have not been hurt by Janus. In recent years, there has been an awakening with a wave of strikes such as the teachers’ strikes in multiple states (California, Colorado, Michigan, New Jersey, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Washington, West Virginia, among others). There have also been recent strikes by healthcare and hotel workers in ten cities, grad students, farmworkers and Stop and Shop, National Grid and Steelworkers, as well as the largest strike of manufacturing workers in the Trump era, McDonald’s, and even prisoners on stike in 17 states. WalMart workers threatened to strike and won increased wages.

Workers in the new gig economy also face challenges. When Uber and Lyft went public, it was bad news for drivers. While investors made billions of dollars, it created new “demands from investors for fare increases and further attacks on drivers, already grossly undercompensated.”  These drivers are contractors, not employees subject to minimum wage laws or the benefits of being an employee. The effective hourly wage of an Uber driver is less than what 90 percent of US workers earn. Drivers have begun to organize and strike to demand better wages and benefits.

It is time for a new era of worker rights, union organizing, higher wages, and worker ownership. Decades of mistreatment of workers are boomeranging and could make the next decade one of massive advancement by workers.

People participate in a workers’ rights protest. (Ben Smith/The Daily Iowan)

Transformation Requires More Than Wages

The vast majority of people in the United States are wage slaves as they depend on their job for survival and missing a short time without work puts people in serious financial difficulty. This is the time to transform the relationship of workers to their jobs.

The Congressional Budget Office found the wealth divide has reached new levels of disparity, finding the wealthiest top 10 percent of families with incomes of at least $942,000 now hold 76 percent of the total wealth and average $4 million in wealth. The remainder of the top half of the population took most of the rest, 23 percent, which left only 1 percent of wealth for the bottom 50 percent. That bottom half can barely pay their bills, has no money for emergencies, has no savings, can’t afford to send their children to college and is trapped with great insecurity and no upward mobility. In fact, the bottom 25 percent of people in the US are, on average, in debt $13,000 and the bottom 12 percent is $32,000 in debt.

One reason for the wealth divide is that since 1979 productivity has increased by 70 percent while hourly compensation has increased only by 12 percent. During this period, the top one percent’s wages grew 138 percent, while wages of the bottom 90 percent grew just 15 percent. If the wages of the bottom 90 percent had grown in parallel with the increase in productivity, then the bottom 90 percent’s wages would have grown by 32 percent, more than double the actual growth. Breaking this down further, middle-class wages have been stagnant with an hourly wage increase of only 6 percent since 1979, while low-wage workers’ wages have actually declined by 5 percent. Those with very high wages had a 41 percent increase.

Radical transformation is needed to correct decades of decline in worker’s rights and wages. This means reversing the era of privatization and creating economic democracy, such as worker ownership and workers sharing in the profits. As the calls to declare a climate emergency get louder, there is an opportunity to do both while we confront the reality of the climate crisis. Various proposals are being put forward for a Green New Deal. Transitioning to a clean energy economy requires changes in many economic sectors, e.g. construction, manufacturing, transit, agriculture, housing, finance, energy, and infrastructure. Jeremy Brecher and Joe Uehlein list twelve reasons why a Green New Deal could be good for workers.

Responding to the climate crisis is going to require major public capital investments over the next two decades. With these public investments, the United States needs a democratically controlled economy. This means more public works, and the nationalizing of some sectors of the economy, especially the energy and transportation sectors.  It is an opportunity to put in place public ownership where workers have a share in ownership of businesses or complete ownership based on a worker-cooperative model.

Labor unions need to be involved in determining the details of the new Green-era economy. As Labor for Sustainability points out, many unions are already on board. It is important for workers involved in the fossil fuel economy to realize the new economy of the future will not include fossil fuels and they need to help create that new economy so they can be part of it and benefit from it. Green New Deal advocates are calling for a “Just Transition”, where workers are compensated and receive training as they transition to the new economy. One of the challenges of building the new economy is it will require millions of workers. There will be a worker shortage as all sectors of the economy will have to transition to sustainability and clean energy.

Join the People’s Mobilization to Stop the US War Machine and Save the Planet, September 20 to 23 in New York City. We will join the climate strike with messages that war = ecocide. We’ll march for Puerto Rico’s independence. We’ll talk about racism, militarism, and resistance. We’ll rally and march to demand the US be held accountable for its global gangsterism with Cornel West, Roger Waters, and the Embassy Protectors. And we’ll hold an evening of solidarity with representatives from countries impacted by US sanctions and intervention and music by David Rovics (you must register for this at bit.ly/RSVPapathtopeace). Learn more at PeoplesMobe.org. And sign the Global Appeal for Peace.

The shift to a democratized economy is already underway as more people are developing worker-owned businesses. The movement for worker ownership in the United States has been growing rapidly since before the 2008 financial crash. This movement is now reflecting itself in the electoral process. Polls show widespread support among people in the US for workers having ownership in corporations where they are employed.

Last week, Senator Sanders put forward a labor program that included giving workers a greater ownership stake in companies. Senator Warren made a similar proposal last year when she announced her exploratory campaign that included workers on boards of directors and receiving a share of the profits. Green candidate Howie Hawkins has a long history of support for economic democracy, giving workers more rights, a share in profits and ownership of corporations. Such “codetermination” policies are widely prevalent in Europe providing unions with a strong voice in corporate decision-making.

Commencement celebration, Bronx, NY

Wage-Slaves Must Revolt To Reverse The Era of Privatization

The attack on workers is a product of the privatization era that began under Reagan, accelerated under Clinton and continues today. Some of the teacher’s strikes have focused on charter schools, highlighting how privatization hurts workers. Privatization strengthens the financiers. The negative consequences of the privatization era are increasing support for socialism and economic democracy as well as specific policies such as national improved Medicare for all, municipal Internet networks, public utilities, and worked-controlled businesses.

There has been an increased call for general strikes by workers, climate activists, and immigrants. When the people of the United States become mobilized enough to organize a general strike, it will be a revolutionary moment in the development of the United States. People will realize they have the power to determine their own futures.

When we describe building power at Popular Resistance, we are describing the kind of people’s movement that is able to stop business as usual with a mass general walkout or other tactics. A wage-slave revolt is where the popular movement is going in the foreseeable future.

The escalation in worker organizing in the US, both inside and outside of unions, over the past half-dozen years is coming at a time when people are being radicalized in social movements from Occupy to Black Lives Matter. Unions are connecting worker struggles to community concerns and as a result, when they strike, the community supports them.  The linking of the popular movement to growth in unions strengthens both workers and activists. People uniting across issues is building a popular movement that is demanding people and planet, not profit.

Labor Day is a time to reflect on the potential of workers building power. The people are on the path to build a powerful political movement against both corporate-controlled parties to fight for a government that represents the interests of workers and puts people and planet before profits.

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Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers co-direct Popular Resistance where this article was originally published.

The UN Charter and other international laws are clear and unequivocal. 

No nation may legally interfere in the internal affairs of others for any reasons at any time — except in self-defense if attacked.

The US hasn’t been attacked by another nation since December 7, 1941 — or threatened by any since WW II ended.

Facing no enemies today, they’re invented as pretexts for its policymakers to pursue their imperial aims — seeking unchallenged global dominance, wanting all nations transformed into US vassal states, their resources plundered, their people exploited.

Endless wars, color revolutions, and old-fashioned coups are their favored tactics, targeting nonbelligerent nations the US doesn’t control, threatening no one.

What’s ongoing in Hong Kong replicates US color revolution attempts against targeted countries since first aimed at Belgrade, Serbia in 2000.

There’s nothing spontaneous about these disruptive eruptions when occur.

They’re planned and orchestrated in the US, directing local proxies, the CIA, anti-democratic National Endowment for Democracy, and likely other US agencies involved.

Make no mistake. Trump regime hardliners are waging escalated war on China by other means.

Tactics include weaponized trade, tariffs and sanctions war, provocative Pentagon incursions near Chinese waters, weapons sales to Taiwan, and targeting China’s soft Hong Kong underbelly, wanting the country destabilized.

Over the weekend, Hong Kong protesters escalated violence further, throwing bricks and firebombs, setting a police barrier protecting a government building ablaze.

Overnight Saturday, the city’s financial district was gripped by running street battles, police countering orchestrated violence with tear gas and water cannons.

A police statement denounced “radical protesters (for throwing) corrosives and petrol bombs, (posing a) serious threat” to everyone nearby.

So far, Beijing has been reluctant to overreact, letting city authorities handle things, perhaps not for much longer.

Its authorities are well aware of US dirty hands behind what’s been ongoing for months, Hong Kong wracked by endless violence and chaos, restoring calm to the city essential.

On Saturday, China’s official People’s Daily broadsheet published several pieces, denouncing “outrageous violence and disruptions…radical demonstrators” involved, adding:

“(R)adical forces…attacked journalists…travelers, (and) police officers,” US politicians and media supporting them — the broadsheet calling “US interference in Hong Kong affairs intolerable.”

Earlier, US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was way out of line, saying Hong Kong protests are “a beautiful sight to behold.”

After reunification with China, Hong Kong (1997) and Macau (1999) were granted a high degree of autonomy for 50 years as special administrative regions (SARs).

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

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

The People’s Daily said Beijing supports Hong Kong’s SAR government, along with actions by police to restore order.

Failure to curb violence encourages more of it. What began in March turned violent in June, especially in recent weeks.

The People’s Daily said

“kidnapping HK’s future (violently) should not be tolerated.” It called “radical protesters no different than terrorists…engag(ing) in all kinds of illegal and violent activities.”

Restoring normality to the city is vital. Should Beijing intervene directly, a dilemma confronting its authorities!

Since early June, protests became violent, showing no signs of abating, things escalating.

So far, Beijing let city police handle things, hoping energy behind what’s going on would wane, intervening only rhetorically.

If violence in city streets continues much longer, its authorities may request mainland intervention by the People’s Armed Police or People’s Liberation Army to restore order.

No nations anywhere tolerate unrest, disorder, rioting, or violence without intervening to quell it.

Key for Beijing and Hong Kong authorities is doing enough to end what’s going on without going too far.

They don’t want to discourage foreign investment or harm local business interests more than already.

But if violent protests continue unchecked, there’s risk they could spread to the mainland — what bipartisan hardliners in Washington may have in mind.

A Final Comment

How would Washington respond if foreign hands stoked violence in a US city, maybe its New York financial hub?

They’d be blood in the streets and mass arrests for sure, no holds barred.

Perhaps Pentagon forces would join local police to restore normality if things escalated to how Hong Kong is affected.

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

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

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

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

Unusual remarks and actions by the outgoing head of the Bank of England and other central banking insiders strongly suggest that there is a very ugly scenario in the works to end the role of the US dollar as world reserve currency. In the process, this would involve that the Fed deliberately triggers a dramatic economic depression. If this scenario is actually deployed in coming months, Donald Trump will go down in history books as the second Herbert Hoover, and the world economy will be pushed into the worst collapse since the 1930s. Here are some elements worth considering.

Bank of England speech

The about-to-retire head of the very special Bank of England, Mark Carney, delivered a remarkable speech at the recent annual meeting of central bankers and finance elites at Jackson Hole Wyoming on August 23. The 23-page address to fellow central bankers and financial insiders is clearly a major signal of where the Powers That Be who run world central banks plan to take the world.

Carney addresses obvious flaws with the post-1944 dollar reserve system, noting that,

“…a destabilising asymmetry at the heart of the IMFS (International Monetary and Financial System) is growing. While the world economy is being reordered, the US dollar remains as important as when Bretton Woods collapsed.” He states bluntly, “…In the longer term, we need to change the game…Risks are building, and they are structural.”

What he then goes on to outline is a remarkably detailed blueprint for global central bank transformation of the dollar order, a revolutionary shift.

Carney discusses the fact that China as the world leading trading nation is the obvious candidate to replace the dollar as leading reserve, however, he notes,

“…for the Renminbi to become a truly global currency, much more is required. Moreover, history teaches that the transition to a new global reserve currency may not proceed smoothly.”

He indicates that means it often needs wars or depressions, as he cites the role of World War I forcing out sterling in favor of the US dollar. What Carney finds more immediate is a new IMF-based monetary system to replace the dominant role of the dollar. Carney declares,

“While the rise of the Renminbi may over time provide a second best solution to the current problems with the IMFS, first best would be to build a multipolar system. The main advantage of a multipolar IMFS is diversification… “ He adds, “… When change comes, it shouldn’t be to swap one currency hegemon for another. Any unipolar system is unsuited to a multi-polar world… In other words he says, “Sorry, Beijing, you must wait.”

The Bank of England Governor proposes in effect that the IMF, with its multi-currency Special Drawing Rights (SDR), a basket of five currencies—dollar, Pound, Yen, Euro and now Renminbi—should play the central role creating a new monetary system:

“The IMF should play a central role in informing both domestic and cross border policies. … Pooling resources at the IMF, and thereby distributing the costs across all 189 member countries…”

For that to work he proposes raising the IMF SDR funds triple to $3 trillions as the core of a new monetary system.

Then Carney proposes that the IMF oversee creation of a new payments infrastructure based on an international “stablecoin.” Referring to the private Libra, he clearly states a “new Synthetic Hegemonic Currency (SHC) would be best provided by the public sector, perhaps through a network of central bank digital currencies.” Note that Carney, a former Goldman Sachs banker, is mentioned as a leading candidate to replace Christine Lagarde as IMF head. Is his speech open admission of what is being planned by the world’s leading central bankers as the next step to a world currency and global economic control? Let’s look further.

Lagarde to ECB

The Carney speech, when deciphered from its central bank language, gives us for the first time a clear roadmap where the powers that control world central banking would like to take us. The world reserve role of the US dollar must end; it must be replaced by some form of IMF SDRs as basis for a multi-currency reserve. That in turn would ultimately be based on digital money, so-called block chain currencies. Such currencies, make no mistake, would be completely controlled by central bank authorities and the IMF. That would require their often-proposed elimination of all cash in favor of digital money where every cent we spend can be monitored by the state. This cashless society would also set the stage for the next great financial crisis and the confiscation by governments of ordinary citizens’ bank deposits under new “bank bail-in” laws now on the books since 2014 in every major industrial country including the EU and USA.

The IMF is fully behind the turn to global blockchain digital currencies and use of SDR to replace the dominant US dollar. In a little-noticed speech in November 14, 2018, IMF chief Lagarde strongly indicated that the IMF was behind central bank digital currencies as well as cashless societies. She noted very carefully,

“I believe we should consider the possibility to issue digital currency. There may be a role for the state to supply money to the digital economy.” She added, “A new wind is blowing, that of digitalization…What role will remain for cash in this digital world? … demand for cash is decreasing—as shown in recent IMF work. And in ten, twenty, thirty years, who will still be exchanging pieces of paper?”

Dudley Remarks

The introduction of this central bankers’ new digital currency world will require, as Carney suggests, dramatic upheavals of the status quo, upheavals that would lead to the end of the dominant role of the US dollar since the 1944 Bretton Woods agreement. As that dollar reserve currency role is a pillar of American power in the world, for that to happen would require nothing short of catastrophe. Is this in fact what the Federal Reserve is quietly planning with its money policies?

A remarkable hint of what might be in the works came in an OpEd by the person who until 2018 was the very important President of the New York Federal Reserve Bank, Bill Dudley, who like Mark Carney is a senior Goldman Sachs alumnus. Dudley is no minor actor in the central bankers’ world. Until last year he also was a member of the Bank for International Settlements Board of Directors and chaired the BIS Committee on Payment Settlement Systems and the Committee on the Global Financial System.

Dudley, pointing to the Trump trade war policies and economic dangers of same, then issues the following rare undiplomatic declaration:

“Trump’s re-election arguably presents a threat to the U.S. and global economy, to the Fed’s independence and its ability to achieve its employment and inflation objectives. If the goal of monetary policy is to achieve the best long-term economic outcome, then Fed officials should consider how their decisions will affect the political outcome in 2020.”

While it shocked many, Dudley is merely making public what the Fed has done since its creation in 1913 — influence the course of world and US politics stealthily behind the cover of “neutral” monetary policies. Dudley suggests not “Russian interference” but rather Fed interference.

The Fed could easily tip the US into crisis. The debt levels of the US economy are at record high levels for private households, Federal government, and US corporate debt. Most US corporations have used growing debt, well over $9 trillion, to make stock buybacks rather than invest in new plant and equipment, fueling an unprecedented bubble in the S&P stocks. The rising stocks are not a sign of economic health but of a dangerous speculative bubble vulnerable to collapse.

Were the Fed now to resume rate rises and continue its less-publicized Quantitative Tightening into 2020, a domino-style series of debt defaults, corporate bankruptcies, home mortgage foreclosures, default on car loans and student loans could quickly make a second Trump Presidency in 2020 more than doubtful. However that would be no grounds for the rest of the world opposed to Trump policies to cheer. It would also trigger collapse in major emerging market countries who have borrowed hundreds of billions denominated in US dollars, including Chinese state companies, Turkey, Argentina, Brazil to name a few. EU banks from Italy to Germany to France would fail.

If this Dudley scenario comes to pass in 2020 or not, only the key central bank actors know for sure. It is clear that, after almost eleven years since the 2008 global financial meltdown, the unprecedented central bank zero interest rate policies in the EU and until recently the US, have fueled creation of what some call an “everything bubble”, not only in stocks, in corporate and public bonds, in home prices. Is a new Fed intervention to raise rates and tighten credit the event– the deliberate central bank rupturing of this inflated bubble using the excuse of the Trump danger to the world economy– that Carney has in mind when he says, “transition to a new global reserve currency may not proceed smoothly,”? Let us hope not. The coming months will tell.

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F. William Engdahl is strategic risk consultant and lecturer, he holds a degree in politics from Princeton University and is a best-selling author on oil and geopolitics, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook” where this article was originally published. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from NEO

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Israel has bombed both Syria and Iraq with impunity. Syria, over the last couple of years, has endured attacks by Israel hundreds of times. In July, the IDF, using US-produced F-35i stealth fighter jets, attacked targets inside Iraq. 

From Al-Jazeera:

The mystery attacks have not been claimed by any side and have left Iraqi officials scrambling for a response amid strong speculation that Israel may have been behind them.

Earlier this week, the deputy head of the Iraqi Shia militias, known collectively as the Popular Mobilization Forces, openly accused Israeli drones of carrying out the attacks, but ultimately blamed Washington and threatened strong retaliation for any future attack.

Such attacks are potentially destabilising for Iraq and its fragile government, which has struggled to remain neutral amid growing tensions between the United States and Iran.

Israel usually doesn’t admit to illegally bombing of its neighbors. However, following the raids in Iraq, embattled Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu indirectly took credit for the attack. 

After Iraq accused Israel of an attack on a powerful Shi’te militia in the country, Israel Prime Minister Netanyahu said to his supporters in a Facebook post: “I am doing everything to defend our nation’s security from all directions: in the north facing Lebanon and Hezbollah, in Syria facing Iran and Hezbollah, unfortunately in Iraq as well facing Iran. We are surrounded by radical Islam led by Iran.”

Netanyahu, however, is not defending the Israeli people from Hezbollah and “radical Islam led by Iran,” but rather ensuring there will be a large war that puts millions of civilians in the crosshairs, as it did during the failed invasion of Lebanon in 2006. If the war escalates, Netanyahu will use it to call for unity during Israel’s upcoming elections. 

Iraq characterized the attacks as a “declaration of war.”

Iraqi parliament group calls alleged Israeli attack 'declaration of war' https://t.co/TPwGVrUiN7 #Iraq #Israel

— Al-Masdar News (@TheArabSource) August 26, 2019

Hezbollah and Iran have promised to respond to the latest round of Israeli attacks. 

It now appears that long-promised war following Israel’s 2006 defeat and humiliation at the hands of Hezbollah is moving forward. 

On September 1, Hezbollah destroyed an Israeli vehicle along the border. Israel has a long history of border provocations designed to elicit a response by its enemies and produce a casus belli for a war that the Israelis promise will all but destroy Lebanon and kill countless civilians in the process. 

BREAKING: #Lebanon has retaliated against #Israel's attacks, destroying an illegal military vehicle which was driving on occupied land. pic.twitter.com/Pk0D6MSM2o

— Syrian Girl 🇸🇾 (@Partisangirl) September 1, 2019

If Iran’s Press TV is correct, the death of a senior military officer in that attack will undoubtedly result in more aggressive behavior by the Israeli military. The Israelis have long used the death of soldiers as a pretext to escalate hostilities. 

Report: Senior Israeli military commander killed in Hezbollah #missile attack #Israel #Lebanon pic.twitter.com/CUdiQtZ3Tr

— Press TV (@PressTV) September 1, 2019

Leave it to the corporate propaganda media to make it appear Hezbollah launched an attack without provocation. 

Israel strikes targets in southern Lebanon after apparent Hezbollah missile attack https://t.co/yG9sw1Sg4F

— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) September 1, 2019

Hezbollah fires rockets into Israel from Lebanon https://t.co/WyugWMypHF

— BBC News (World) (@BBCWorld) September 1, 2019

Israel, of course, portrayed the border provocation and the attack on an IDF vehicle on occupied land as a dire threat to babies and grandmothers. 

Moments ago, an anti-tank missile was fired from Lebanon towards a community in northern Israel. Details to follow. pic.twitter.com/LhkdtwJEGW

— Israel Defense Forces (@IDF) September 1, 2019

Back in 2015, Israeli defense minister Moshe Yaalon promised to kill Lebanese civilians in large numbers during the next manufactured war. 

Speaking at a conference in Jerusalem, Yaalon threatened that “we are going to hurt Lebanese civilians to include kids of the family. We went through a very long deep discussion … we did it then, we did it in [the] Gaza Strip, we are going to do it in any round of hostilities in the future.”

The Israeli official also appeared to threaten to drop a nuclear bomb on Iran, although he said “we are not there yet.”

"There's no such country as Lebanon," says “Israel’s” Moshe Yaalon, while threatening to destroy it https://t.co/q7DKyjBzBB

— Ali Abunimah (@AliAbunimah) July 17, 2017

In response to a question about Iran, Yaalon said that “in certain cases” when “we feel like we don’t have the answer by surgical operations” Israel might take “certain steps” such as the Americans did in “Nagasaki and Hiroshima, causing at the end the fatalities of 200,000.”

If you believe Israel is a moral country, the only democracy in the Middle East—as we are repeatedly and fallaciously told—and incapable of such wanton mass murder and sadistic mayhem, consider what happened in Shujaiya, eastern Gaza, in 2014. This terror raid is but one of hundreds since the establishment of Israel nearly 70 years ago. 

In #Gaza Shifa hospital the morgue is full, the emergency ward packed. #Shujayah pic.twitter.com/SGhePiTPCg

— lyse doucet (@bbclysedoucet) July 20, 2014

Hezbollah is said to have over 100,000 missiles and rockets stowed away for the next war. Israel claims its heretofore unannounced attacks are intended to disrupt and destroy an Iranian missile pipeline and military presence Iran to Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq. 

All three countries have significant Shi’a populations and are naturally aligned with Iran. The cross border trade, cooperation, and religious pilgrimages between what is now Iraq and Iran existed many centuries before the Zionist plan to establish Greater Israel at the expense of Palestinians and other Arabs and Muslims in the region. 

The corporate media is working overtime to portray Hezbollah as the aggressor. This may or may not be the catalyst that begins the next war in the Middle East. 

The sudden burst of violence raised the prospect of a wider round of fighting between Israel and Hezbollah. https://t.co/SQ4HMOo5so

— PBS NewsHour (@NewsHour) September 1, 2019

Israel knows the neocons in the White House fully support the Zionist cause and will not hesitate to commit US firepower and possibly troops to a “final war” against Hezbollah and Iran. Congress, domesticated by AIPAC, will sign off on the coming war. 

Remarkably, the Pentagon admitted Iraq has the right to defend itself against “external actors,” that is to say Israel, although the Pentagon didn’t go so far as to specifically call out Israel. 

In Iraq, Israel has repeatedly struck the bases of Iranian-backed militia in recent weeks, sufficiently freaking the Pentagon out about the possible force protection issues for US troops that that they released a statement about it 👇. https://t.co/roeudN8056 3/6

— Colin Kahl (@ColinKahl) August 29, 2019

Israel is upping its game to force Trump to fully back its plan to invade southern Lebanon, punish the Lebanese people for supporting Hezbollah, continue aggression against Syria and Iraq, and go after the big kahuna, Iran. This agenda cannot be accomplished without the United States and its military. 

Trump is probably the most pro-Israel president in US history. His blessing for the ethnic cleansing and dispossession of thousands of Palestinians through annexation—Netanyahu now says Israel will annex the West Bank in addition to stolen property in the Golan Heights—as well as moving the US embassy to Jerusalem, is not considered pro-Israel enough by Likud and the fanatical settlers who routinely terrorize and kill Palestinians. 

Nothing short of total war will suffice—and Bibi wants that to happen before the Israeli elections later this month. 

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Kurt Nimmo writes on his blog, Another Day in the Empire, where this article was originally published. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from Another Day in the Empire

What’s the condition of the US working class on this Labor Day 2019? Wages and Jobs are of course the best indicators of that condition. So let’s look at wages and jobs today in America today.

What we see is that—contrary to Trump, US government, and mainstream media hype and reporting—a growing number of independent surveys show that wages have not been rising as they claim. And 500,000 fewer jobs were actually created last year than initially reported.

The media’s oft-quoted figure for rising wages is about 3.1% over the past year. But there are at least five reasons why 3.1% is not accurate and in fact grossly over-estimated. First, the 3.1% is not adjusted for inflation. Second, it represents an average only, which reflects higher wages for the top 10% of the workforce and higher salaries for professionals, managers, and supervisors. Third, it applies to full time workers only and therefore leaves out the 60 million or so part time, temp, and gig workers. Fourth, it does not factor into the 3.1% average the fact that the millions of unemployed are getting no wages whatsoever. Fifth, it defines wage narrowly, excluding the lack of any increase in deferred wages (pension payments) and social wages (social security pay for retirees).

Why Wages Are Not Rising 3.1%

Considering the first point, the 3% figure is what’s called a ‘nominal’ wage. If adjusted for the 1.6% inflation rate, then the real wage gain is only 1.5% a year. (It’s even less real wage gain for workers at the median household income level ($50K/yr.) and below—where inflation is even higher than 1.6% due to housing and rent cost, local utility fees and taxes, medical insurance premiums and drugs costs escalation, education and other costs escalation).

The second problem overestimating the wage gains for the vast majority of workers in the ‘bottom 80%’ of the workforce is that the 3.1% represents an ‘average’. Averaging means the highest paid wage earners (which include most salaried workers) are getting more than the 1.5% and therefore, in turn, those at the median or below are getting much less than 1.5%. And in most cases they’re not even getting that 1.5%.

A survey by the finance site Bankrate.com found that “more than 60% of Americans said they didn’t get a pay raise or get a better-paying job in the last 12 months”. So if 60% didn’t get any wage increase at all, how could wages be rising 3.1% or even 1.5%? Unless of course workers in the best paid 10% of the labor force are getting 10% or more in wage increases last year. These are occupations like software engineers, data scientists, physicians assistants, professionals with advanced degrees, and of course middle and upper managers paid mostly by salary. Perhaps they were getting 10%+ last year, but that’s highly doubtful.

Here’s another mainstream respected survey that challenges the 3.1% wage increase myth peddled by the government and media: Focusing on the median wage—not the average wage—“according to figures from the PayScale Index…the median wage increases, when adjusted for inflation, were only 1.1% since last year and 1% over the past year”.

The Payscale survey is corroborated further by a recent study by McKinsey Global Institute which shows that median wages have not risen at all since 2007. By 2017 they were the same level as in 2007, rising less than 1.1%.

Comparing McKinsey with Payscale, there’s been no wage change under Trump. In fact, the Payscale survey concluded that real wages from June 2018 to June 2019 have shrunk by -0.8% and by 9% since 2006.

But that’s still not the whole picture.

There’s another adjustment necessary, even to the 1.1% real wage. Whether 1.5% or 1.1%, that figure applies only to the full time employed workers. It therefore does not take into account the lower wages, and more typical lack of any wage increases, for the 60 million plus ‘contingent’ (part time, temp, gig) workforce that exists now in the US. That’s 37% of the total workforce of more than 160 million who are not factored into the 3.1% estimate at all!

And the numbers for the part time/temp/gig part of the total work force may be much larger than the government is estimating. US Labor Dept. statistics count part time, temp and gig workers for whom their work is a primary job. It doesn’t accurately account those who have a primary part time job (or a primary full time job) AND who have also taken on second and even third part time, temp, or gig jobs to make ends meet. The aforementioned Bankrate survey showed, for example, that while the government data estimates less than a fifth of all workers are part time, the Bankrate survey found 45% of all US workers had second or third jobs. That included 48% of Millennials, 39% of GenXers, and even 28% of Boomers.

The real picture that appears, therefore, is NOT one of traditional full time workers getting annual 3.1% wage increases in their base pay every year. That’s the US labor force of the 1950s and 1960s, not the 21st century.

The real picture is little or no wage increases for the vast majority those workers, especially those below the 80th percentile of the US labor force, and especially those at the median and below, who are being increasingly forced to take on second and third jobs to make ends meet. Meanwhile, a small percentage of the total workforce, likely well less than 10%, comprised of professionals, managers, tech, and advanced degreed special occupations are realizing wage gains well above the average. In fact, those at the very ‘top’, earning more than $150,000 a year may be getting exceptionally large wage increases. That’s because the US Dept. of Labor employs a methodology in which it ‘top codes’ weekly earnings. Top coding means any raises for those earning above $150,000 a year are not being recorded at all.

What all the foregoing analysis strongly suggests is that wages under Trump have not been rising anywhere near close to 3.1%, or even near the inflation adjusted 1.5%. They are not rising at all for the vast majority of the US workforce since 2016.

To repeat the Payscale survey: real wages have actually fallen by -0.8% between 2017-2018.

The disjoint between the 3.1% and the -0.8% is due to the averaging in wages and salaries for the very top occupations and salaries of managers and professionals; due to accounting for only full time employed; and by ignoring most of the part-time/temp workers—the numbers for whom are also much larger than the official government data now indicate.

Add to these reasons for the gap between 3.1% and -0.8% the fact that monthly pension benefits and social security retirement payments—i.e. deferred wages—are never included in the 3.1% figure by the government. They are really wages as well. They are ‘deferred’ wage payments which are foregone by workers while they were actively in the labor force, to be paid out upon retirement. These wage payments are fixed and are therefore constantly declining in real terms. Nor of course do official wage statistics ever considered in calculating wages the millions of unemployed workers who, without jobs, get no wages whatsoever. If deferred wages and unemployed with no wages were included in calculating total wage change for the working class, the Bankrate, Payscale, McKinsey and other independent surveys would show annual wage gains—for all but the very highest paid—have been contracting ever faster than -0.8% under Trump.

Business-Investor Tax Cuts Haven’t Created Jobs

A hallmark claim of Neoliberalism in general is that business tax cuts create jobs. This is part of the economic ideology notion called supply side economics. Cutting business taxes raises business disposable income, which it is assumed business then spends largely and instantaneously on new investment that boosts production and therefore hiring. But this is a deceptive misrepresentation (i.e. ideology) of reality. Businesses don’t necessarily spend the tax windfall on investment. They may divert the tax savings into investing in financial markets that don’t produce any jobs. They may distribute it to shareholders in the form of stock buybacks and dividend payouts. They may use it for buying up competitors via mergers and acquisitions. They may simply hoard the savings to boost their balance sheets. Or they may invest it on expanding production—but for their spend it on production—but for their offshore subsidiaries. All this is what in fact actually happens, not that business tax cuts create jobs.

In January 2018, once again, Trump and Congress ‘sold’ the economic lie that business-investor tax cuts create jobs. But there is no empirical evidence that such tax cuts causally result in job creation. In fact, even a correlation between Neoliberal tax cuts and job creation does not exist. Witness Trump’s massive $4.5 trillion tax cuts of 2017. (Yes, $4.5 trillion, not his reported $1.5 trillion). What has actually happened to investment in expanding plant and equipment and therefore employment? After a very brief boost in early 2018, business investment in the US fell to only 2.7% (10% rate is historically average). In 2019 it fell further into negative territory by mid-year, as ‘Business investment contracted in the second quarter for the first time since the first quarter of 2016”. That means if investment—i.e. the mechanism for job creation per the supply side theory—has not risen, then the claim cannot be substantiated in turn that business tax cuts, by creating investment, in turn create jobs.

But hasn’t there been actual job creation since Trump took office? Yes, there has. 1.1 million according to government official stats. However, its causation cannot be attributed to the tax cuts. So where have the 1.1 million jobs come from?

Are ‘Contingent’ (Part-Time/Temp/Gig) Job Greater Than Reported?

US Labor stats do not really report the number of workers finding employment when the Dept. reports job gains each month. It reports jobs—not people—growth. So jobs can be increasing (as second and third jobs added) but employment by real people may not be actually growing by the same number of jobs that were created. Jobs may be increasing by 1.1 million but those newly employed may be far less. Why? Because most of the 1.1 million jobs may represent already employed taking on second and third part time jobs. Recall the prior Bankrate survey which reported that 45% of all American workers indicate they are working second and third jobs to make ends meet! Or the Marketwatch survey that 33% need a gig side job in order to meet living expenses! But the Labor Dept. shows numbers not rising as high for part time and temp work. That may be due, however, to its reporting of part time/temp as the primary job of part time/temp workers. They may be working second and third additional part time jobs and the government is not picking that up—its only accounting for part time/temp jobs that are primary for the person.

Labor Dept. Revises Jobs Down 500,000 for Last Year

The confusion in the Labor Dept.’s job stats is perhaps further suggested by recent revisions in its job creation numbers. Annually the Labor Dept. adjusts its past year job numbers after more data is made available from States’ unemployment insurance records. In its just latest report, prior to the Labor Dept. downward revisions, the Dept. indicated it had over-stated 2018 jobs by no less than 500,000. That brings 2018 monthly job creation numbers well under 200,000, which is about the 180,000 monthly creation in 2017. In other words, no actual increase due to Trump’s tax cuts introduced in January 2018.

The Labor Dept. stats indicate employment rose from July 2018 through July 2019 by 1.1 million jobs. Does that mean the Labor Dept. had erred by nearly 50% in its job growth numbers? If so, it’s such a gross margin of error it makes Labor Dept. job reporting under Trump highly suspect or else something is fundamentally wrong with US job creation stats. What’s wrong is that the stats are failing to accurately reflect contingent job creation as second and third jobs.

Conclusions: A Much Different Wage & Job Picture Than Reported

A deeper look at the official wage and job numbers shows wages rising no where near the official 3.1%. In fact, most of the wage gains are highly skewed to the very top. At the median they’re barely rising, if at all. And certainly contracting below the median (except perhaps for the few millions in blue states where minimum wages have been adjusting some). When defined more broadly and therefore accurately, wages have been contracting under Trump—as they have been since 2006. Various independent surveys that are not based on the Labor Dept.’s questionable assumptions or definitions, or even errors, in its estimation bear this out that wages are not rising.

Reliability of official jobs data is also a growing concern. Changes in the US labor market structure in recent decades means the growing number of contingent and gig jobs that are second and third jobs are not being reflected in the official job numbers. The Labor Dept.’s recent adjustment reducing last year’s job gains by a whopping 500,000 raises further concerns about the methods by which it reports out monthly job gains. And actual job gains, after its adjustment, suggest that most of these may actually represent part time/temp/gig jobs that are second and third jobs taken on by workers who just can’t make ends meet any more with the first contingent job, or even current full time job. Yet Trump and friends keep peddling the myth that more business-tax cuts are needed to create jobs.

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This article was originally published on the author’s blog site, Jack Rasmus.

Jack Rasmus is author of the forthcoming book, ‘The Scourge of Neoliberalism: US Policy from Reagan to Trump’, Clarity Press, October 1, 2019, of which the preceding material is an excerpt. His website is https://kyklosproductions.com and twitter handle, @srjackrasmus. He hosts the Alternative Visions radio show on the Progressive Radio network weekly, podcasts available are available at http://alternativevisions.podbean.com.

The battle to reclaim Syria moved forward this week. Syrian Arab Army forces reclaimed the town of Khan Sheikoun last week prompting a flurry of moves by all involved, most notably Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Erdogan was in Moscow this week sharing an ice cream cone with Vladimir Putin and cutting deals. The first part of that deal went into effect today; a ceasefire in the de-escalation zone in Idlib province.

If the battle is won, in essence, and the jihadists on the run, why call a ceasefire now?

Simple. Turkey needs to be able to recall its troops from the area and disengage with the rebels it has been backing there for years. That was what Erdogan bargained for in Moscow, the lives of his troops.

That should tell you how serious Putin is about retaking Idlib and how little patience he has now for Erdogan’s nonsense.

As Bernard from Moon of Alabama points out the proof of this is Turkey blocking the rebels’ escape from Idlib back into Turkey.

Today about a thousand ‘rebels’ tried to cross through the Al-Bab border station into Turkey. Videos show a long line of cars of fleeing people. At the front several hundred men managed to enter Turkish ground. They were pushed back by Turkish army forces with water cannon trucks, tear gas and finally with gunfire. At least two ‘rebels’ were killed.

People shouted “Traitor traitor traitor, Turkish army is traitor”. They burned pictures of Erdogan while screaming takbir and allahu akbar.

Putin has been very clear about his policy from the beginning. Terrorists are to be wiped out. They are not to be allowed to escape and regroup to show up and cause trouble somewhere else.

The implicit message here is that Erdogan cannot do the U.S.’s bidding on this. He must withdraw support from them and leave them to hang.

If the U.S. and Israel want these guys kept alive then they should stop acting through Turkey’s proxy.

The howls from the U.S. corporate media will be ridiculous. There will be infuriating bloviations from Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. John Bolton’s mustache will be heartsick that opportunities to kill more decent people will be lost.

Netanyahu will likely bomb some SAA ammunition dump and declare himself the greatest military mind of the 21st century.

What was that the gods making men mad?

The failure to reinforce Khan Sheikoun and the open hostility by Syrian forces against the Turkish resupply convoy was Erdogan’s end-game in Idlib.

Putin by working with the SAA finally forced Erdogan to choose what’s more important: his relationship with the U.S. or that with Russia and China, who are currently supporting his economically-challenged regime.

Erdogan got what he wanted from the U.S. on removing the Kurdish SDF forces from the northern part of Syria. He made that deal when it looked like he would be able to hold Khan Sheikoun and keep maximum pressure on Bashar al-Assad’s government.

The U.S. is desperately trying to starve Syria of oil to keep the SAA from having the resources needed to finish its job. It is failing.

All of these little battles they’ve lost, inch by inch. The collapse of the coalition to starve Yemen has fractured because of this. The border crossing between Iraq and Syria is now open. Iran is surviving Trump’s sanctions as China’s oil imports are rising again.

Oil tankers will make it to Syria.

The amount of time and money the Trump Administration sank into stopping one Iranian oil tanker is ludicrous and now highlights jut how pathetic and ineffective the whole program is.

With each little victory, each tanker of oil offloaded, town liberated and each day survived the position of U.S. forces in Syria weakens.

And soon Trump will be forced to make a real decision, not some fake one he doesn’t have the stones to follow through on. He’ll have to decide if Syria is worth it.

The ceasefire will be temporary. It is Erdogan’s last chance to truly gain Putin’s trust and exit Turkey from an untenable situation. He cannot use his troops as human shields anymore to protect the jihadist attacks on government-held territory.

He’s been trying to play Russia and the U.S. off each other to forge an independent path and hold onto his gains in Syria, while at the same time pressuring Cyprus.

Putin wasn’t having any of that. The price for Turkey’s energy stability which Putin has provided is the end of Turkish-backed opposition in Syria. The price of Turkey’s territorial stability is also bound up in Putin’s support. Because it is clear that the U.S.’s goal is an independent and oil-rick Kurdistan under its proxy control.

Putin understands that Turkey needs to be put back in its box. Because this is the only way forward that puts Israel’s expansionist ambitions back in the bottle where they belong.

Trump’s over the top support for Israel emboldened everyone to think they had this campaign in the bag.

In thinking this everyone in the U.S.’s orbit — Israel, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, the UAE, the U.K. — all overextended themselves. In doing so they became exposed to counter-attack and to key moments of failure.

Khan Sheikoun was one of those moments. And with Turkey no longer providing support the jihadists there will be wiped out, paving the way for the reintegration of Syria.

As I pointed out last week, the Houthi drone attack was another. The UAE cutting deals with Iran after the attack on oil tankers at Fujairah was another. These were all small victories which have big implications.

Millions can return to rebuild Syria once this is campaign is over which Russia, China and Iran will take the lead on in defiance of horrific and cruel U.S. sanctions.

The big question is what Israel will do here to stop this. Because they are the last wild card.

Bibi Netanyahu is putting on his best show before September’s election. He’s opened Israel up to a response by Hezbollah and Lebanon after going way too far there and in Iraq.

One can only hope that Trump will finally see the folly of this policy, understand that the conditions to enforce the Kushner/Netanyahu plan for subjugation of the Palestinians is dead and begin reversing course.

There are signs that he obliquely understands this but Trump’s inability to curb his ‘enthusiasms’ is his Achilles’ heel.

The fate of tens of millions of people hangs in the balance.

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In a wide-ranging, two-hour-plus, exclusive interview from a prison room in Curitiba in southern Brazil, former Brazilian president Luis Inacio Lula da Silva re-emerged for the first time, after more than 500 days in jail, and sent a clear message to the world.

Amid the 24/7 media frenzy of scripted sound bites and “fake news”, it’s virtually impossible to find a present or former head of state anywhere, in a conversation with journalists, willing to speak deep from his soul, to comment on all current political developments and relish telling stories about the corridors of power. And all that while still in prison.

The first part of this mini-series focused on the Amazon. Here, we will focus on Brazil’s relationship with BRICS and Beijing. BRICS is the grouping of major emerging economies – Brazil, Russia, India and China – that formed in 2006 and then included South Africa in their annual meetings from 2010.

My first question to Lula was about BRICS and the current geopolitical chessboard, with the US facing a Russia-China strategic partnership. As president, from 2003 to 2010, Lula was instrumental in formatting and expanding the influence of BRICS – in sharp contrast with Brazil’s current President, Jair Bolsonaro, who appears to be convinced that China is a threat.

Lula stressed that Brazil should have been getting closer to China in a mirror process of what occurred between Russia and China:

“When there was a BRICS summit here in Ceará state in Brazil, I told comrade Dilma [Rousseff, the former president] that we should organize a pact like the Russia-China pact. A huge pact giving the Chinese part of what they wanted, which was Brazil’s capacity to produce food and energy and also the capacity to have access to technological knowledge. Brazil needed a lot of infrastructure. We needed high-speed rail, many things. But in the end that did not happen.”

Lula defined his top priorities as he supported the creation of BRICS: economic autonomy, and uniting a group of nations capable of helping what the Washington consensus describes as LDCs – least developed countries.

He emphasized:

“BRICS was not created to be an instrument of defense, but to be an instrument of attack. So we could create our own currency to become independent from the US dollar in our trade relations; to create a development bank, which we did – but it is still too timid – to create something strong capable of helping the development of the poorest parts of the world.”

Lula made an explicit reference to the United States’ fears about a new currency:

“This was the logic behind BRICS, to do something different and not copy anybody. The US was very much afraid when I discussed a new currency and Obama called me, telling me, ‘Are you trying to create a new currency, a new euro?’ I said, ‘No, I’m just trying to get rid of the US dollar. I’m just trying not to be dependent.’”

One can imagine how this went down in Washington.

Obama may have been trying to warn Lula that the US ‘Deep State’ would never allow BRICS to invest in a currency or basket of currencies to bypass the US dollar. Later on, Vladimir Putin and Erdogan would warn President Dilma – before she was impeached – that Brazil would be mercilessly targeted. In the end, the leadership of the Workers’ Party was caught totally unprepared by a conjunction of sophisticated hybrid-war techniques.

One of the largest economies in the world was taken over by hardcore neoliberals, practically without any struggle. Lula confirmed it in the interview, saying:

“We should look at where we got it wrong.”

Lula also hit a note of personal disappointment. He expected much more from BRICS.

“I imagined a more aggressive BRICS, more proactive and more creative. ‘The Soviet empire has already fallen; let’s create a democratic empire.’ I think we made some advances, but we advanced slowly. BRICS should be much stronger by now.”

Lula, Obama and China

It’s easy to imagine how what has followed went down in Beijing. That explains to a great extent the immense respect Lula enjoys among the Chinese leadership. And it’s also relevant to the current global debate about what’s happening in the Amazon. Let just Lula tell the story in his own, inimitable, Garcia Marquez-tinged way.

“One thing that the Chinese must remember, a lot of people were angry in Brazil when I recognized China as a market economy. Many of my friends were against it. But I said, ‘No, I want the Chinese at the negotiating table, not outside. Is there any discord? Put them inside the WTO, let’s legalize everything.’ I know that [Chinese President] Hu Jintao was much pleased.

“Another thing we did with China was at the COP-15 [Conference of Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change] in Copenhagen in 2009. Let me tell you something: I arrived at COP-15 and there was a list of people requesting audiences with me – Angela Markel, Sarkozy, Gordon Brown; Obama had already called twice – and I didn’t know why I was important. What did they all want? They all wanted us to agree, at COP-15, that China was the prime polluting evil on earth. Sarkozy came to talk to me with a cinematographic assembly line, there were 30 cameras, a real show: Lula accusing China. Then I had a series of meetings and I told them all, ‘Look, I know China is polluting. But who is going to pay for the historical pollution you perpetrated before China polluted? Where is the history commission to analyze English industrialization?’’

“Then something fantastic happened. An agreement was not in sight, I wanted Sarkozy to talk to Ahmadinejad – later I’ll tell you this thing about Iran [he did, later in the interview]. Ahmadinejad did not go to our dinner, so there was no meeting. But then, we were discussing, discussing, and I told Celso [Amorim, Brazil’s Foreign Minister], ‘Look,  Celso, there’s a problem, this meeting will end without an agreement, and they are going to blame Brazil, China, India, Russia. We need to find a solution.’ Then I proposed that Celso call the Chinese and set up a parallel meeting. That was between Brazil, China, India and perhaps South Africa. Russia, I think, was not there. And in this meeting, imagine our surprise when Hillary Clinton finds out about it and tries to get inside the meeting. The Chinese didn’t let her. All these Chinese, so nervous behind the door, and then comes Obama. Obama wanted to get in and the Chinese didn’t let him. China was being represented by Jiabao [Wen Jiabao, the prime minister].

“Then we let Obama in, Obama said, ‘I’m gonna sit down beside my friend Lula so I won’t be attacked here.’ So he sat by my side and started to talk about the agreement, and we said there is no agreement. And then there was this Chinese, a negotiator, he was so angry at Obama, he was standing up, speaking in Mandarin, nobody understood anything, we asked for a translation, Jiabao did not allow it, but the impression, by his gesticulation, was that the Chinese was hurling all sorts of names at Obama, he talked aggressively, pointing his finger, and Obama said, ‘He is angry.’ The Brazilian ambassador, who said she understood a little bit of Mandarin – she said he used some pretty heavy words.

“The concrete fact is that in this meeting we amassed a great deal of credibility, because we refused to blame the Chinese. I remember a plenary session where Sarkozy, Obama and myself were scheduled to speak. I was the last speaker. When I arrived at the plenary there was nothing, not a thing written on a piece of paper. I told one of my aides, please go out, prepare a few talking points for me, and when he left the room they called me to speak; they had inverted the schedule. I was very nervous. But that day I made a good speech. It got a standing ovation. I don’t know what kind of nonsense I said [laughs]. Then Obama started speaking. He didn’t have anything to say. So there was this mounting rumor in the plenary: He ended up making a speech that no one noticed. And then with Sarkozy, the same thing.

“What I had spoken about was the role of Brazil in the environmental question. I’ll get someone from the Workers’ Party to find this speech for you. The new trend in Brazil is to try to compare policies between myself and Bolsonaro. You cannot accept his line that NGOs are setting fire to the Amazon. Those burning the Amazon are his voters, businessmen, people with very bad blood, people who want to kill indigenous tribes, people who want to kill the poor.”

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Featured image: Former Brazilian leader Lula holds hands with Chinese President Hu Jintao, left, at the BRICS summit in Brasilia on April 15, 2010. Lula wishes his country had a strategic partnership with Beijing. Photo: Dida Sampaio /Agencia Estado

Unless world governments, consumers, and businesses all work together to address the root causes of the current burning of the Amazon rain forest, the Arctic, and forests in the Congo and Angola, the planet will continue careening toward a point of no return, the U.N.’s top biodiversity expert said Friday.  

Cristiana Paşca Palmer, executive secretary of the U.N. Convention on Biological Diversity, called the fires that have torn through more than 1,300 square miles of the Amazon this year “extraordinarily concerning.”

“But it is not just the Amazon,” she toldThe Guardian. “We’re also concerned with what’s happening in other forests and ecosystems, and with the broader and rapid degradation of nature.”

The Amazon fires themselves are a sign, Paşca Palmer said, that

“we are moving towards the tipping points that scientists talk about that could produce cascading collapses of natural systems.”

Green groups have largely blamed Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro for the fires, pointing to his encouragement of what one indigenous leader called “predatory behavior” of loggers, ranchers, and miners who want to clear forests for their industrial use.

World governments and philanthropists have offered tens of millions of dollars to help save the rain forest, often called the “lungs of the Earth” because of the amount of oxygen its trees produce, but Paşca Palmer emphasized that a paradigm shift is needed in how the world approaches biodiversity and ecosystems.

“We need to address the root causes,” Paşca Palmer said. “Even if the amount involved in extinguishing fires in rainforests was a billion or 500 million dollars, we won’t see an improvement unless more profound structural changes are taking place. We need a transformation in the way we consume and produce.”

Helping to protect the world’s pollinators by ending the use of harmful pesticides, cutting fossil fuel emissions to net zero by 2030 to avoid a catastrophic warming of the planet by more than 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, and ending habitat destruction through deforestation and other human activities, are all necessary to maintain the Earth’s biodiversity, the U.N. panel led by Paşca Palmer says.  

Paşca Palmer pointed to robust biodiversity programs in Costa Rica and Colombia as models for the rest of the world when they meet for an upcoming biodiversity summit in Kunming, China next year.

Costa Rica’s government has offered payments to landowners for preserving forests and planting trees, while Colombia has nearly doubled its federally protected lands in recent years.

“I hope this will have a snowball effect,” said Paşca Palmer. “It’s a growing movement. I feel that now the heads of state are embracing this, we have a good signal.”

On social media, Extinction Rebellion Ireland expressed support for Paşca Palmer’s message, writing,

“If we don’t work together, we are going to die together.”

If we don't work together, we are going to die together.

UN’s top biodiversity body says we are moving towards the tipping points that will produce the collapse of our natural systems.

Join the rebellion now: https://t.co/Z186tX6OUBhttps://t.co/EelHEWdiIx

— Extinction Rebellion Ireland (@ExtinctRebelsIE) August 30, 2019

Climate campaigner Tony Juniper called the U.N. official’s comments “a timely reminder that nature underpins the human world.”

A timely reminder that Nature underpins the human world & that we are approaching a ‘point of no return’. It is vital to embed ecological recovery at the heart of our economic system, a reality that must be reflected in actual policy & spending decisions https://t.co/2DJDdxz3sT

— Tony Juniper (@TonyJuniper) August 30, 2019

“It is vital to embed ecological recovery at the heart of our economic system,” wrote Juniper, “a reality that must be reflected in actual policy and spending decisions.”

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Featured image: The fires engulfing the Amazon rain forest are a sign that the Earth is approaching an environmental and ecological “tipping point” that all of humanity must work together to avoid, the U.N.’s top biodiversity expert said Friday. (Photo: ©Victor Moriyama/Greenpeace)

On August 29th, Kazakhstan’s first president Nursultan Nazarbayev called for the construction of new global nuclear-arms-control infrastructure.  While addressing the awards ceremony for the Nazarbayev Prize for a Nuclear-Weapons-Free World and Global Security, he stated:

“There is a need to review the outdated concept of strategic stability based on nuclear weapons and build a new nuclear arms control system. It is important to launch talks on developing a comprehensive nuclear reduction treaty….Guarantees should be provided to the countries that voluntarily abandon nuclear weapons and those that have a non-nuclear status. Otherwise, it is at least naive to expect threshold countries to stop trying to acquire nuclear arms. It means that while nuclear powers seek to maintain and upgrade their nuclear weapons, they expect others to abolish and ban them. It’s impossible and unfair.”

Former President Nazarbayev also said that he had presented formal proposals to the governments of the United States, Russia, China and other nuclear powers to hold multilateral arms-control talks in Kazakhstan’s capital, renamed Nur-Sultan in his honour upon his decision to vacate the office of the presidency in March.

Before we do anything else, it is necessary for us to break down the wording of President Nazarbayev’s remarks very carefully, as several key phrases are loaded with implications.

Firstly, while nuclear non-proliferation is a shared priority of all of the world-powers, the country which pursues it most obsessionally as a geo-strategic policy objective is the United States. Indeed, Russia and China have played mediating roles in denuclearization dialogue with North Korea, and the JCPOA’s signatories include Russia, China, the European Union, and several EU member-states. However, we need to bear in mind that so many players became invested in the JCPOA, not essentially because they feared Iran’s nuclear program, but at least equally as much because they wished to offset the risk of direct US military aggression against Iran. So when Nazarbayev draws attention to the hypocrisy of the nuclear powers on the issue of non-proliferation for threshold countries, he is primarily highlighting the hypocrisy of the United States.

Secondly, when former President Nazarbayev states that “guarantees should be provided to the countries that voluntarily abandon nuclear weapons,” it is implicitly understood that, as the United States’ historical track-record of military aggression clearly demonstrates, any security-guarantees offered by the US would be meaningless. Therefore the implication of Nazarbayev’s remarks are that, in order to further the shared goal of nuclear non-proliferation, in practical terms, Russia and China would have to become the guarantors of threshold-nations’ security against the prospect of military aggression. The implication is that nuclear non-proliferation can be a realistic goal only if it becomes accepted that Russia and China will expand their spheres of influence, and that this process would include zones of shared influence. By a process of elimination, who else could the guarantors realistically be? In short, we need a Pax Russica-Sinica.

However, in making these remarks, former President Nazarbayev is also playing a very shrewd game in furthering Kazakhstan’s own geo-political interests. He sees an opportunity for Kazakhstan to position itself as a key broker in the project of non-proliferation. As American hegemony fades, very many nations and inter-governmental entities eye a multiplicity of diplomatic, economic, cultural and military means to bolster their own quotients of geo-political capital.

As the most robust economy in the western alliance and the hegemon of the EU, Germany is assuming a role of more central economic leadership.

France is once again becoming more militarily assertive in sub-Saharan Africa.

Poland has resurrected and rebranded the Pilsudski-era “intermarium” project through the Three Seas Initiative and de facto leadership of the Visegrád Group, finances Roman Catholic missions in western Ukraine and Kiev (implicitly, a resurrection of the Pilsudski-era “Promethean” project), and uses NATO article 5 to provide cover for an increasingly unilateral geo-political agenda.

The EU seeks to establish its own standing army.

Turkey also uses NATO article 5 as cover for its primarily central-Asia focused neo-Ottoman project.

Meanwhile, Iran has become the greatest regional power in the Middle East, with political, ideological and economic tentacles extending into Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Yemen. Infrastructural integration will quickly follow.

In short, everybody, not only the conventionally recognized “superpowers,” is now looking for ways to expand into the power-vacuum created by the fading away of American hegemony. We live in a time of renewed multi-polar imperial competition.

So why not Kazakhstan too?

Kazakhstan’s population is only 18 million, but with extremely impressive mineral and hydrocarbon resources, and as the world’s largest producer of uranium ore, diplomacy is not the only lever which Kazakhstan can employ in positioning itself as an important broker, most particularly on the issues of denuclearization and non-proliferation.

However, it would be unjustifiably cynical to see former President Nazarbayerv’s remarks as simply a matter of geo-political jostling. In 1991, the newly formed government of Kazakhstan under Nazarbayev closed the Semipalatinsk nuclear test-site and voluntarily gave up the 1,400 nuclear warheads which it had inherited from the USSR, to be transported to and decommissioned in Russia. Furthermore, President Nazarbayev was instrumental in the formation of the Central Asia Nuclear Weapon Free Zone in 2006. This extremely clear, consistent and principled commitment to denuclearlization over the past 30 years, and for that matter his exceptionally capable “safe pair of hands” in the stewardship of a stable, pluralistic emergent Kazakh nation, underlie his status as one of the most under-regarded statesmen on the world-stage over that period. It’s a cliché, but Nazarbayev really has been a father to his country.

I really can’t think of a single currently living political leader worldwide who is more deserving of having his nation’s capital renamed in his honour.

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Padraig McGrath is a political analyst.

“Fake news” is so threatening to America’s national security, the Pentagon’s DARPA research agency has announced it will launch a project to repel “large-scale, automated disinformation attacks,” according to Bloomberg. 

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency wants custom software that can unearth fakes hidden among more than 500,000 stories, photos, video and audio clips. If successful, the system after four years of trials may expand to detect malicious intent and prevent viral fake news from polarizing society.

As usual, a translation is in order. DARPA is working on a system that will prevent news and analysis contrary to the establishment narrative from rising above the mosh pit that is the lower depths of social media. 

U.S. officials have been working on plans to prevent outside hackers from flooding social channels with false information ahead of the 2020 election. The drive has been hindered by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s refusal to consider election-security legislation. Critics have labeled him #MoscowMitch, saying he left the U.S. vulnerable to meddling by Russia, prompting his retort of “modern-day McCarthyism.”

It should be obvious there isn’t any “election-security.” Even with alleged Russian interference—which has zero credibility and is remarkably evidence-free—can’t overcome the fact the election system is rigged in favor of the establishment’s handpicked “public service” careerists. Bernie Sanders knows about this and Tulsi Gabbard is learning. 

No amount of “fake news” will change or even marginally impact the system. An astute eleven-year-old, after examining the evidence or lack thereof, would conclude the Russians are not hijacking elections. That job is left up to the DNC, RNC, and the corporate propaganda media. 

President Donald Trump has repeatedly rejected allegations that dubious content on platforms like Facebook, Twitter and Google aided his election win. Hillary Clinton supporters claimed a flood of fake items may have helped sway the results in 2016.

Hillary Clinton followers are simply sore losers. In order to push the fallacy we live in a pluralistic democracy, the state provides the appropriate cover to effectively obfuscate the “deep fake” that is performed every election cycle. 

This cover allowed Donald Trump to win the election. Trump didn’t collude with the Russians, he didn’t need to. He took advantage of the widespread discontent of the American people and promised the Make America Great Again. 

Beyond Trump’s egotistical flourishes and daily tweet diatribes against enemies real and imagined, he has done little to move the MAGA agenda forward. He is little different than his predecessors—the national debt is in the stratosphere, the wars continue and expand, and the Federal Reserve scam of pumping up the stock market to make it appear all’s well while facilitating the upward shift of wealth to the elite.

But never mind that. 

“Where things get especially scary is the prospect of malicious actors combining different forms of fake content into a seamless platform. Researchers can already produce convincing fake videos, generate persuasively realistic text, and deploy chatbots to interact with people. Imagine the potential persuasive impact on vulnerable people that integrating these technologies could have: an interactive deepfake of an influential person engaged in AI-directed propaganda on a bot-to-person basis,” Andrew Grotto at the Center for International Security at Stanford University told Bloomberg. 

Because “vulnerable people” are supposedly at risk, the state and its agencies are prepared to implement some sort of fantastical (and likely ineffectual) AI solution to stop unacceptable content from going viral. 

The target is not Russians per se, it’s millions of American citizens the state and its secret political police, the FBI, are attempting to prevent from participating in social media and the larger political discussion that is ostensibly democratic but is, in fact, a form of hippodroming, that is to say rigging the political process for a favored outcome by the fixers. 

Meanwhile, the state and its Silicon Valley partners are picking off targets one by one, the latest victim being Daniel McAdams at the Ron Paul Institute. His account was permanently suspended for the crime of criticizing Sean Hannity. 

“They said I would not be reinstated. My crime? I called Sean Hannity ‘retarded.’ But do a Twitter search on use of the term and you will see its use millions of times with impunity,” McAdams emailed Robert Wenzel after the suspension. 

The corporate propaganda media has marginalized dozens of people and ruined careers and reputations by characterizing them as white nationalists, peddlers of fake news and conspiracy theories, and now, directly from the FBI, as national security threats, evil conspiracy-bearing domestic terrorists bent on filling every American head with the illusion of “deep fakes,” fomenting and spreading lies, misinformation, participating in Russian collusion, and keeping company with bad actors (paid agents or dupes for Russia) steering the nation into a white supremacist nightmare.

I was wrong about Hillary. I thought she’d win the election hands-down with the help of the Deep State and its media. I’m making another prediction, but I could be wrong again.

Donald Trump will be roundly defeated next November. 

If Democrats take control of the House and Senate, we will witness an inquisition against those of us not on-narrative, beginning with revenge exacted on hardcore MAGA supporters. How effective this jihad is will remain to be seen. 

As we have witnessed over the last few months, the state is serious about taking back the narrative and disallowing any contrary narratives put out by “bad actors,” largely libertarians like Daniel McAdams, dissidents on the “New Right,” and disillusioned former MAGAites opposed to endless war and a bankster-dominated state drifting into total authoritarian control freak mode.

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Kurt Nimmo writes on his blog, Another Day in the Empire, where this article was originally published. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from Another Day in the Empire

Even Americans who learned about the doctrines of “exceptionalism” and “Manifest Destiny”, and are associated to the country’s higher decision circles were surprised with President Donald Trump’s declaration about his intention to buy Greenland, the world’s largest island, and an autonomous territory belonging to Denmark, a solid ally of the USA at NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization).

If one thought this was just another inconvenient witticism as usual with the President, Trump soon showed he meant it, briskly reacting to the expected negative reaction of Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen (“Greenland is not for sale”) by cancelling an already scheduled visit to Denmark in September.

Amid the howling, former Assistant Secretary of State Heather A. Conley, presently Vice-president for Europe, Eurasia and Arctic of the Center for Strategic  and International Studies (CSIS), one of  Washington’s most important think-tanks, wrote an article for Washington Post on August 21, where she suggests that Trump invest in Alaska, rather than creating problems with a strategic ally:

“Instead of buying Greenland, I strongly recommend the President to invest in Alaska to deepen our economic and safety relations with Greenland and Denmark. After all, both are open to business.”

However, it is convenient to recall that a major part of the American territory was bought and added to the original Thirteen Colonies, as Louisiana, Alaska, and Virgin Islands, or by military conquest – Texas, California, Arizona, and New Mexico, taken from Mexico after the 1846-48 War, already under the aegis of the “Manifest Destiny”.

Be it as it may, the Trumpian boasting must have awakened the imperial instincts of the British editors of The Economist, who hurriedly published an editorial defending territorial sale by countries faced with neighbour disputes to pay for debts or for environmental reasons.

“The world would be more pacific if the countries sold territories”, states the editorial. “With some imagination, it is possible to see a large and varied business market. Climate change could foster the demand”, echoing the nostalgia of the British Empire, whose greater part was incorporated manu militari.

For those who think such elucubrations are unthinkable delirium it is worth pondering that the higher oligarchical circles are used to think decades in advance. One example is the advance over the large Ibero-American state corporations, discussed by them in the first half of the 1980’s, and later embodied by the Washington Consensus. In particular, in an August 1983 seminar promoted by the American Enterprise Institute, establishment’s heavy weights, such as former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, the future president of Federal Reserve Alan Greenspan, ex-President Gerald Ford, and others, openly discussed the “need” for foreign capital in the large state companies of indebted countries as Brazil, Argentina, Mexico, and others, through the plan called debt-for-equity swaps. On that occasion Brazil’s Petrobras was cited as one of the plan’s targets.

Two years later, when I arrived in Brazil, the most heard answer when commenting on this matter with General Meira Matos and other well-known Brazilian nationalists was: “Impossible.” Without using the old Brazilian expression “it wasn’t for lack of advice”, it would be relevant to know what they would say about the main headlines of the Valor Econômico newspaper from August 22: “Economic team intends to sell Petrobras till 2022.”

The comparison between state companies and territories is far from being forced. Exchanging national external debt for natural “protection” agreements (debt-for-nature swaps) was also aired by oligarchical planners as part of a vast plot for financialization of environmental questions, which now have reached their paroxysm in face of the climate change agenda.

These options were widely discussed at the Fourth World Wilderness Congress in Denver, USA, during September 1987, counting with high representatives of the Anglo-American establishment, such as: then Secretary of Treasury, James Baker; multibillionaires Edmond de Rothschild and David Rockefeller; Canadian tycoon Maurice Strong, the main establishment “environmental executive”; ex-Director of USA Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), William Ruckelshaus; ex-Norway’s Premier Gro-Harlem Brundtland, coordinator of the Brundtland Commission, who created the concept of sustainable development; and many others.

In one of his many interventions, Edmond de Rothschild presented the atmospheric warming by fossil fuel carbon emission as the greatest mankind problem, anticipating the present “decarbonization” campaign. One of the ventilated proposals to face the problem was the creation of an international “conservation bank”.

During the seminar, the American NGO World Resources Institute was charged with elaborating a report with recommendations for imposing “global environmental ethics” especially upon developing countries.The document, as finished in 1989, had as its main directives:

1) Establishing an International Environmental Facility, which “would help to mobilize substantial additional financing in appropriate terms for conservation projects of bilateral and multilateral developments agencies, and whenever possible, of the private sector”. Its basic function would be to “identify, design, and finance solid conservation projects in the Third World”.

2) Establishing a world environmental fund, managed by the United Nations Development Program, to be financed by fining “polluters”, and especially activities that produced “greenhouse effect gases”.

3) Promoting several forms of swapping debts for equities, e.g. by bringing some relief for developing countries’ debts by prohibiting the use of tropical forests for cattle raising, or by directing external loans for wilderness preservation, instead of development projects.

The formal proposal for creating a “conservation bank” was presented by France during a ministerial meeting of the International Monetary Fund in 1989. It is known that then- President François Mitterrand (1981-1995) was an enthusiast of applying “limited sovereignty” to environmental questions. The project was put under the auspices of the World Bank, and formally established in 1991 under the name Global Environmental Facility, later changed to Global Environmental Fund, GEF. After the Rio-92 conference, GEF was removed from under the World Bank, and converted into an independent agency, although the bank continued as its curator.

Among other functions, the Fund works as the financial mechanism for the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), in charge of international implementation of measures related to climate questions, which have acted as spearheads for the efforts to limit industrialization and development for all countries of the world.

Through “financialization” of environmental questions and their connection to sovereign debts, the oligarchical establishment came to possess in their radar an efficient blackmailing instrument against developing countries, especially those disposing of vast natural resources. With GEF and other similar initiatives, the powers which control the environmental movement had the means to press the targeted countries to accept the environmental and indigenous people agenda, unless they accepted complications over negotiating their external debts. As in general in these countries the resources for environmental and indigenous “protection” are always disputing the limited governmental budgetary priorities, international resources are received without questioning the demands imposed by the environmental machinery towards internal development restrictions.

One example of these programs which framed Brazil into the “Green-Indian” agenda was the Brazilian Pilot Program for Tropical Forest Protection (PPG-7). Between 1992 and 2009, PPG-7 attracted to the country a total of 463 million dollars, applied in conservation projects of the Amazon and Atlantic Forest biomes, in an effort to decrease international pressure for environmental and indigenous matters.

Another one is the Amazon Fund, established in 2008, and financed by Norway and Germany, whose fate faces deadlock, because of the present Brazilian government questioning.

On the other hand, despite the government’s critical attitude against the politics of the environmental agenda, the ultraliberal orientation of the economic team led by Economy Minister Paulo Guedes, manifest by his intention of privatizing Petrobras, puts in check the capacity of the Brazilian State to fully display its sovereignty for the country’s development. So, what seemed unthinkable until recently has ceased to be so. In this environment, bizarre proposals involving the Amazon may stop being unthinkable. After all, the international campaign articulated over the Amazon fires has the open intention of demonstrating that Brazil is unable to protect what has wrongly been called “the world’s lungs”. Brazil must be prepared to get rid of this ambush.

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Lorenzo Carrasco is a Brazil-based Mexican journalist, co-founder and president of the Ibero-american Solidarity Movement (MSIa – www.msiainforma.org); e-mail: [email protected]. 

Featured image is from Greenpeace

Israeli State Sponsored Torture of Young non-Jewish children, an Australian documentary film.

This documentary film is laying bare what the Israeli supporting media always tries to cover up. There are a lot of upsetting scenes in this film so viewer discretion is advised.

All rights belong to Four Corners Program,  Australia.

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Featured image is from TruePublica

Ambassador Matjila, South Africa:

“It is indeed deeply troubling that a long-established arms control instrument such as the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty has unraveled, placing not only the region of Europe but the whole world at risk of a nuclear war and catastrophe.”

On Thursday, August 22, 2019, Russia and China called a UN Security Council meeting to address the perils resulting from the US withdrawal from the INF treaty. The High Representative on Disarmament Affairs, Ms. Izumi Nakamitsu noted:

“The recent collapse of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty removed one of the few constraints on the development and deployment of destabilizing and dangerous classes of missiles.”

Dmitri Polyanskiy, Deputy Permanent Representative of the Russian Federation stated:

“On August 2, a very sad and important event took place—the United States withdrew from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, which, in no small measure, played a key role in building both the regional and global security architecture. …The INF Treaty was crucial for international détente…..With time it became increasingly clear that the Treaty, like other disarmament and arms-control agreements, had become inconvenient for our American partners, who were convinced of their exceptionalism and became increasingly determined to impose their inequitable unilateral schemes of international relations on others….To be frank, today it is not our American partners that we are primarily addressing, because their views are clear. But we are very surprised by the stubborn position that is being adopted by our European colleagues… Are they aware that, because of the geopolitical ambitions of the United States, we are all just one step away from an uncontrolled, unregulated arms race?….. according to publically available data, the US military budget is about $700 billion, while the budget of NATO amounts to $1.4 trillion. These are just approximate figures. For reference, the military budget of Russia, which is allegedly a threat to us all, is about $60 billion, that is, more than 20 times lower than that of NATO….Just think about how much we could have done if the money that our Western colleagues have been allocating for military purposes had been spent to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals and help less developed and developing countries.”“

There is a sense of déjà vu about this development of a new arms race, which seems to be an inexorable component of capitalist economies. Several years ago both China and Russia were alarmed by the US threat to deploy THAAD (Terminal High Altitude Area Defense) missiles in the Republic of Korea. THAAD posed an existential threat to both Russia and China. On August 22, 2019 Chinese Ambassador Zhang Jun described the current threat resulting from the US withdrawal from the INF treaty in terms clearly reminiscent of the dangers and alarm expressed by Russia and China regarding THAAD:

Ambassador Zhang:

“The United States withdrawal from the INF treaty is another negative act in the pursuit of unilateralism and the shirking of international obligations by the United States. Its true intention is to render the Treaty no longer binding and seek a unilateral, absolute military advantage. China has always pursued a national defense policy that is defensive in nature. China’s land-based intermediate-range missiles are all deployed within Chinese territory. They are for defence purposes only and pose no threat to any other country. China firmly opposes the United States attempts to deploy land-based intermediate-range missiles in the Asia-Pacific region and hopes that the United States will exercise restraint and be rational in that regard.”

The US seems to have an irresistible attraction to the Asia-Pacific region (among others regions, including Latin America) and an uncontrollable desire to place missiles on the territory of that region, which would facilitate dominance over the entire area, its peoples, and its resources. Decision seems to remain with Japan and the Republic of Korea, theoretically staunch allies of the US and NATO, as to whether or not to permit their territories to host placement of these missiles, which contain the potential to exterminate all living creatures in that area of the world – and, inevitably, beyond. This is the among the greatest of all threats to international peace and security.

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Carla Stea is Global Research’s correspondent at United Nations Headquarters, New York, N.Y.

Featured image is from Alternet

The telecom industry’s pr campaign describes 5G as the next generation of ’ultra fast wireless technology that has the potential to connect everything from smart phones to self driving cars to virtual worlds” as if the added amenities will make a benign contribution to American life or that the American public has been in eager anticipation of its arrival – neither of which is true.

There is, however, a far more sinister side to 5G that is being driven by a weapons-grade millimeter wave radiation that remains hidden from the American public as all the basic 5G components (especially the AIs and Directed Energy Weapons (DEWs) are totally dependent on the electro magnetic Spectrum. What is new to the American public is 5Gs connection with the menacing MK Ultra and Dews as examples of the nefarious radio frequency weapons which were in experimental stages since at least 1985.  All of the US radio frequency projects have been based on Nikola Tesla’s research utilizing an abundant supply of free wireless energy on the EM Spectrum.   In other words, 5G’s speedier mode is the window dressing in order to expand its current stock and expedite a new generation of sophisticated radio frequency weapons, presumably for interstellar military application.

It was Tesla’s famed Coil which provided the first awareness of an unlimited potent source of energy that exists within the radio frequency range of the Spectrum and that that energy could be utilized to create radio frequency weapons. In 1934, Tesla revealed the first particle beam projector that he referred to as the ‘peace ray’, a defensive weapon generating an intense targeted beam of energy to take down any enemy airplane.   Today those weapons are known as Directed Energy Weapons (DEWs) and MK Ultra, all of which rely on electro magnetic waves.

Since 5G is dependent on the electro magnetic Spectrum for functioning and as details of 5G’s more comprehensive agenda eke out, the need for a particular radio frequency is indicative of 5G’s most essential priorities.  As the Spectrum is broken into bands, each bandwidth and its physical characteristics differentiate the low and mid band from the higher, more specialized millimeter band.  It is the specific location on the Spectrum that makes each band suitable for a different purpose as they move up the scale of radio frequency.

For instance, 4G networks use frequencies below 6 GHz while 5G will use extremely high wave frequencies from 24 GHz and up to 90 GHz known as millimeter wave bands with some predictions up to the 300 GHz range.  The millimeter bands are required for the Massive Internet of Things (MIOT), Artificial Intelligence and Directed Energy Weapons (DEWs), all of which require the highest end of the Spectrum scale which also represents increasingly higher levels of radiation exposure.

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has already held two auctions in the 24 GHz– 28 GHz range with Auction 102 in the 24 GHz range arousing much controversy regarding the deleterious effects on NASA and NOAA’s weather prediction and forecasting ability.  Auction 103 (37 GHz, 39 GHz and 47 GHz) is scheduled for December, 2019 as the largest amount of Spectrum ever auctioned.  All three auctions will utilize the millimeter band of Spectrum thereby allowing for accelerated development of those 5G specialized elements previously mentioned.  

It is only a demented mind that can conceive of an experimental, dangerous technology like 5G with no independent safety or health analysis that threatens the biosphere and all its living creatures. Instead the public is being presented with a new era of useless, high tech harmful gadgetry as the end product from a generation of crazed scientists and feeble politicians who have lost their grip on reality.

With a pervasive radio frequency and electromagnetic radiation defined as progress, inanimate objects like artificial intelligence are deliberately confused with humanity as if trans-human robots offer a new paradigm of deep evolutionary consciousness.

In what now seems like an eerily prescient documentary, a 1985 CNN Special Report on “Electromagnetic Frequency Weapons,” described the state of  US military experiments on DEWs and mind control weaponry utilizing the electro magnetic field.

The following was from CNN Special Assignment reporter Chuck deCaro in the 1985 video:

“Imagine the implications of a weapon with no visible trace.  A weapon that could knock out  ships, tanks and planes as fast as the speed of light” and ”Scientists have succeeded in creating limited types of artificial lightening and some think these could be the forerunner of a new type of directed energy weapon; part of a family of weapons which operate within the radio frequency segment of electro magnetic spectrum and are thus referred to as radio frequency weapons.”

“Highly computerized planes and even new models of  cars might be enough to force a plane out of sky or cause an auto to crash. 

Dr, Larissa Vilenskaya, a Russian research scientist working in the US said

“I was surprised after coming  here that the (health) influence of electro magnetic fields was almost completely ignored here” with deCaro inquiring whether the US military was working in the field of electronic mind control.

deCaro:

“Over the past year, CNN has repeatedly asked the Department of Defense and Air Force about radio frequency weapons.  After much resistance, DOD finally said the subject was “too sensitive to discuss.”

Dr. Robert Bass, a  physicist and PhD in mathematics is working on US weapons research said

“We are behind the Soviet Union in directed energy weapons based on 60 GHz microwave beams.”

Bass described Soviet weaponry as high powered microwaves (HPM) similar to a “focused ultra high intensity radar beam” that would literally cook humans, knock out computers, electronic surveillance and communications gear.  An operational radio frequency weapon, reasonably cheap and reusable, could devastate sophisticated and expensive war machinery.”

Bass cited “The $20 million F16 fighter for example is totally controlled by electronic sensors and computers, with no manual flight controls, the plane would literally fall out of the sky after being hit with a high intensity pulse of microwave radiation” which sounds eerily like one of the Malaysian flights.  Scientists say that micro wave or other types of radio frequency pulses operating at specific frequency can be transmitted with little or no loss of power.  

De Caro reported on his participation in a “real life experiment of a prototype device designed to project images into the mind without electrodes” not unlike what became known as MK Ultra.“The prototype machine developed from Soviet scientific data could have a profound effect as a weapon of war.  Electronic mind control research is not new.

In the 1960s, Dr. Jose Delgado demonstrated remote control over a charging bull by connecting a radio antenna to electrodes inserted in the bull’s brain which proved that the animal’s aggressive impulses could be thwarted by electronically manipulating the bull‘s muscle reflexes.”  Delgado said “do you realizefantastic possibility if on the outside, we could modify the inside…could we give messages to the inside. but the beauty is that we are not using electrodes.” Delgado explained that by using low pulsating magnetic fields “any functions in the brain, emotions, intellect, personality could be perhaps modified by this noninvasive technology.”

DeCaro further reported on a scientist employed by the US government who refused to be identified and has done secret radio frequency weapon research stating that tests prove humans are susceptible to remote alteration of mood and awareness. “Certain kinds of weak electro magnetic signals work exactly like drugs.  So the promise is that anything you can do with drugs, you could do with the right electro magnetic signals.  Apparently there are specific sites involved, specific functions involved, it is a matter of matching up just like a pill or a drug to cause and effect. You could have a cause and effect relationship between a magnetic field and a biological function.”

In 2004, the Encyclopedia of Espionage, Intelligence and Security confirmed the role of radio frequency weapons (also known as DEWs) and HPM weapons in their ability to disrupt plane or vehicle safety systems.  In addition, scientists at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory developed an HPM weapon for the Department of Justice aimed at a moving vehicle:  the HPM could shut off the electronic ignition, thus bringing a high-speed car chase to an abrupt end.

In summation, it is no secret that there is an all pervasive, out-of-control element within our government that no one in authority, not any President, not any Member of Congress can limit or control their power and influence – we now know that 5G will provide them with the ultimate neural remote-control weapons to sublimate the population.

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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

On August 18, Senator Bernie Sanders, a leading 2020 presidential candidate, unveiled a sweeping criminal-justice reform initiative that aims to cut the unprecedentedly huge U.S. prison population in half, end all mandatory minimum sentences, and root out unabashed corporate profiteering and greed in what the Independent senator from Vermont had previously called “the American Gulag.” So far, the only reaction among other politicians in Washington, D.C. has been to shrug off his idea of reforming our penal system: “If it ain’t broke, why fix it?” But why is Senator Sanders so worried (and angry) about America’s prison system?

Some sobering statistics

The U.S. locks up more people per capita than any other nation on earth. According to the latest statistics released by the U.S. Bureau of Justice (BJS), our country boasts by far the world’s most populated prison system. Close to 2.3 million adults are currently incarcerated in America’s 102 federal prisons, 1,719 state prisons, 3,163 local jails, 1,852 juvenile correctional facilities, and 80 Indian Country jails. The number of prisoners equates about 700 adults behind bars for every 100,000 people residing in our country. In addition, nearly 5 million adults are on probation or parole. In toto, approximately 7 million adults are under some kind of correctional supervision (prison, jail, probation or parole)—equaling about 3% of all adults in the entire resident population. Over 540,000 Americans are locked up without even having been convicted or sentenced. Many people are detained in local jails simply because they cannot afford to pay the bail set by the courts to secure their release—with the median bail for felonies being at least $10,000. More than 63 thousand confined youth are held in our juvenile detention system—often for non-violent offenses or even no crime at all. (Wendy Sawyer and Peter Wagner, “Mass Incarceration: The Whole Pie 2019,” Prison Policy Initiative, March 19, 2019)

The only country that comes close to the U.S. in this respect is Turkmenistan in Central Asia, given its incarceration rate of 552 adults per 100,000 population (yet Turkmenistan has only about 30 thousand adult offenders in its prisons and jails). In comparison, our neighbor to the north, Canada, has a prison population of around 41 thousand, translating into an incarceration rate of 114 adults per 100,000 population. Mexico, our southern neighbor, has a prison population of about 200 thousand, translating into an incarceration rate of 164 adults per 100,000 population. Holland has an incarceration rate of just 59 adults per 100,000 population, while Japan has an even lower documented incarceration rate of only 41 adults per 100,000 population. (Peter Wagner and Wendy Sawyer, “States of Incarceration: The Global Context 2018,” Prison Policy Initiative, June 2018)

The racial and ethnic makeup of the U.S. prison population continues to be significantly different from the demographics of the nation as a whole. In 2017, blacks represented 12% of the U.S. adult population but 33% of the sentenced prison inmates. Whites accounted for 64% of all adults but 30% of the prison population. And while Hispanics represented 16% of the adult population, they accounted for 23% of all inmates. Compared to the past, the gap between the number of blacks and whites behind bars seems to be shrinking. (John Gramlich, “The Gap Between the Number of Blacks and Whites in Prison is Shrinking,” FactTank: News in the Numbers, April 30, 2019)

For-profit private prisons

For-profit private prisons and jails have become very popular of late, especially among GOP-controlled state and local governments, most of which have at the same time passed measures designed to maintain high levels of local incarceration, while simultaneously slashing their spending on penal institutions. While only 8% of all incarcerated people are currently held in America’s private prisons, by “privatizing services like phone calls, medical care and commissary, prisons and jails are unloading the costs of incarceration onto incarcerated people and their families, trimming their budgets at an unconscionable social cost.” (Wendy Sawyer and Peter Wagner, “Mass Incarceration: The Whole Pie 2019,” Prison Policy Initiative, March 19, 2019)

In at least 20 states, probation and parole are also privatized and profit-driven. In Georgia, for instance, privatized probation alone represents a $40 million-a-year industry. In Florida, private probation officials are charging a 40% collections surcharge on probationers’ debts to the “Sunshine state.” (Chandra Bozelko and Ryan Lo, “You’ve Served Your Time. Now Here’s Your Bill,” HuffPost News, September 16, 2018)

Another, more widespread “innovation” involving “offender funded” justice, which is also very popular with state and local governments is pay-to-stay imprisonment. This is the barbaric practice of charging prisoners for the costs of their accommodation behind bars. In 49 states, prisons and jails can charge inmates up to $66 per day or more (depending on the maximum amount allowed under state law), which can leave locked-up individuals with thousands of dollars of debt upon release, further impoverishing those who already lack material resources and making it practically impossible for even the most well-intentioned ex-prisoners to become once again productive members of society. In this form of modern-day slavery, people who are incarcerated are served with an itemized bill upon release, including hefty booking and release fees as well as the inflated costs of their imprisonment—from bed, (often inedible) food and telephone calls to other necessities such as personal hygiene products and medical bills. Should you also lose your job as a result of spending time in jail—and this is your sole source of income—you are in big-time trouble:

“If you fail to pay the fee when you are released, it may end up on your credit report. When you apply for a new job, they may do a credit check and you could be denied employment because of the pay-to-stay fees’ impact on your credit. You’ve lost your job and you cannot get a new one…all of this keeps you from work, earning an honest check, and paying your bills and your accumulated fees.” (American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio, “In Jail & in Debt: Ohio’s Pay-to-Stay Fees,” Fall 2015, www.acluohio.org: p. 8)

Departments of corrections at the state and county level have reportedly filed countless lawsuits against former inmates seeking to collect their imprisonment-related debts often ranging up to tens of thousands and even hundreds of thousands of dollars. Prison officials appear to go after employed people whose income they can verify through financial disclosure forms, mail, bank or brokerage statements. In other words, Department of Correction bureaucrats are hounding former prisoners with enough personal income to pay for the skyrocketing and inflated costs of their own incarceration. (Jean Trounstine, “Fighting the Fees that Force Prisoners to Pay for Their Incarceration,” Prison Policy Initiative, August 18, 2019)

“Prison slave labor”

While the U.S. news media have been lambasting foreign countries like China for employing “prison slave labor,” our own prisons and jails are supplying a large, cheap but invisible labor force. Domestic critics have blasted the practice of economic exploitation of prison laborers as being a modern form of slavery. Prisoners are either employed by private companies selected through the federal Prison Industry Enhancement Certification Program (PIECP) or by state-owned businesses called “correctional industries.” While the for-profit prison industry has lobbied for even more “factories behind fences,” most inmates still work for the prison or jail where they happen to be serving time simply because:

“…prisons do rely on the labor of incarcerated people for food service, laundry and other operations, and they pay incarcerated workers unconscionably low wages: our 2017 study found that on average, incarcerated people earn between 86 cents and $3.45 per day for the most common prison jobs. In at least five states, those jobs pay nothing at all. Moreover, work in prison is compulsory, with little regulation or oversight, and incarcerated workers have few rights and protections. Forcing people to work for low or no pay and no benefits allows prisons to shift the costs of incarceration to incarcerated people—hiding the true cost of running prisons from most Americans.” (Wendy Sawyer and Peter Wagner, “Mass Incarceration: The Whole Pie 2019,” Prison Policy Initiative, March 19, 2019)

Our prisons and jails are paying prisoners employed inside their places of incarceration much less today than they were paying them in the recent past. The national average of the wages paid to incarcerated workers in regular non-industry prison jobs range from 14 to 63 cents per hour. And the national average wages paid to incarcerated workers in prison jobs for state-owned businesses (“correctional industries”) range from 33 cents to $1.41 per hour. Regular prison jobs are still unpaid in Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, South Carolina and Texas. (Wendy Sawyer, “How Much Do Incarcerated People Earn in Each State,” Prison Policy Initiative, April 10, 2017) Given such inhumanely paltry wages for incarcerated people who are forced to work while in prison, it is hardly surprising that

“the economic exploitation of prisoners doesn’t end when they’re released. In 49 states, inmates are charged for the costs of their own incarceration…. No inmate can earn enough inside to cover the costs of their incarceration; each one will necessarily leave with a bill. The state of Florida, which pays inmate workers a maximum of $0.55 per hour, billed former inmate Dee Taylor $55,000 for his three-year sentence…. Ex-offenders in the United States owe about $50 billion for various criminal justice costs like pretrial detention, court fees and incarceration costs…. These debts can make it even harder for a returning citizen to rebuild their life after incarceration, because in 46 states, failure to repay them is an offense punishable by yet more incarceration.” (Chandra Bozelko and Ryan Lo, “You’ve Served Your Time. Now Here’s Your Bill,” HuffPost News, September 16, 2018)

Neither liberal Holland (which is, in fact, shutting down some of its prisons), nor Japan, nor even the far less liberal Canada have had much use for private prisons or cheap prison labor designed to punish and exploit the incarcerated, rather than reforming them.

Drugs and America’s imprisonment rate

Just how much of this mass incarceration is a result of our “war on drugs”? It is not entirely clear if a country’s drug policy contributes overwhelmingly to the size of its prison population, but many believe that the war on drugs has filled American prisons and jails to the brim with non-violent offenders, most of whom have done little more than being caught in possession of small amounts of soft drugs like marijuana. Currently, around 451,000 Americans are imprisoned for non-violent drug offenses. That is, 1 in 5 incarcerated people is locked up for committing a non-violent drug offense. The “war on drugs” was launched officially in the early 1970s by President Richard Nixon who believed that psychedelic drugs, “free love,” and rock-and-roll music were turning patriotic crew-cut Americans into long-haired, antiwar hippies and anti-establishment radicals (an example of such presumed radical transformation would be the very popular 1970s movie-musical Hair). Through shrill or hypocritical presidential slogans like Ronnie Reagan’s “Just Say No!” or Bill Clinton’s “Don’t Inhale! I Know I Didn’t…”, our policy of criminalizing the possession (rather than just the production, transportation, and sale) of all drugs, soft or hard, including even tiny amounts of pot for personal use, has contributed to swelling the ranks of inmates in the big house.

According to a Washington Post news story, the number of federal inmates alone has grown tenfold since 1980 due to “…steep mandatory minimum-prison sentences for many low-level non-violent drug offenders” and is threatening to unravel the Justice Department budget. (Brad Plumer, “The War on Drugs Is Breaking the Justice Department Budget,” WP, August 12, 2013) In contrast, Holland’s far more enlightened drug policy has separated soft drugs from hard drugs, tolerating the former while criminalizing only the latter. In Holland, the possession of marijuana (which they call “hashish”) is ostensibly illegal, but is widely tolerated by the cops as evidenced by the numerous so-called “cafes” selling nothing else but pot all over the capital city of Amsterdam. Perhaps that’s the reason why they have a much lower incarceration rate than us.

Canada’s incarceration rate is rather similar to that of the U.S. This is hardly surprising, when one reads that “Canada has the dubious honour of having the highest number of drug arrests per capita of any nation other than the United States….” (Diane Riley, “Drugs and Drug Policy in Canada,” Canadian Foundation for Drug Policy, November 1998) All drugs, soft and hard, including pot (cannabis), are illegal under Canadian law and the penalty for being caught is often imprisonment—although no automatic drug-related sentences are imposed like in our own country. Japan is not that different from either the U.S. or Canada in terms of drug policy but has a much lower incarceration rate (lower than even Holland’s):

“Japanese law is among the harshest in the world…. Japanese law and society at large usually view drug possession as almost an unconscionable act. Japanese citizens who are caught growing, possessing, or using illegal drugs of pretty much any kind find themselves in deep trouble. Not only do drug offenders face up to five years in prison for their first offense…. People who get caught with drugs can be fired from their jobs, expelled from school, and have their life flipped, turned upside-down…. Tokyo sure ain’t Amsterdam.” (Hashi, “Drug Laws in Japan: You Better Have a Prescription,” Tofugu.com, December 2, 2011)

Sounds a lot like Saudi Arabia, the medieval kingdom in the Arabian Peninsula where they chop off the heads of first-time drug offenders (I could not find out what the Saudis do when they catch you doing drugs for a second time). So, the relationship between Japan’s drug policy and incarceration rate may not be as straightforward as in America’s case.

This article will not deal with the cruel physical, sexual and mental violence and abuse which are reportedly pervasive and endemic in America’s penal institutions, including military prisons, immigration detention facilities, civil commitment centers, and state psychiatric hospitals. A fact which is very well-known to American judges, which has not deterred them from meting out unjustifiably harsh and lengthy sentences “like giving away candy”—in the words of Henry Hill, the real-life protagonist of GoodFellas, the 1990 biographical crime movie directed by Hollywood filmmaker Martin Scorsese.

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Rossen Vassilev Jr. is a journalism senior at the Ohio University in Athens, Ohio.

In response to the “Stop the Coup” call made by the “Another Europe is Possible” movement, thousands of people took to the streets in London, Manchester, Oxford, Glasgow, Birmingham, Brighton, Swansea, Bristol, Liverpool and other cities to reject the five-weeks closure of the Parliament prompted by Prime Minister Boris Johnson.

In Central London, near Downing Street where the PM’s official residence is located, the British “shouted ‘What do we want? Democracy! When do we want it? Now!’, ‘Boris Johnson, shame on you’ and ‘Hey, hey, ho, ho, Boris Johnson’s got to go’,” The Guardian reported.

“The public outrage at Boris Johnson shutting down democracy has been deafening. People are right to take to the streets,” the Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn said and encouraged “everyone to join the demonstrations in London and across the country.”

Consequently with such widespread feeling, demonstrations in at least 32 cities, in Britain and Northern Ireland, were reported by local media until Saturday noon.

This massive response was expected to be accompanied by other unusual actions in this country: Momentum, a left-wing organization attached to the Labor Party, called to occupy bridges and block roads.

Fantastic diverse turn out of young people at todays protest. 🇪🇺The government and #Boris needs to listen to these young people protesting for their futures 💯#Brexit #FBPE #StopBoris #DefendOurDemocracy #DefendDemocracy#StopTheCoup #BlockTheCoup #StopTheBrexitCoup #brexitcoup pic.twitter.com/ZEGHSWG6mu

— Marley2023 (@Marley20231) August 31, 2019

“Disruption is the only form of leverage protesters can rely on,” said Michael Chessum, the former president of the University of London students’ union, who describes himself as “hard left,” The Telegraph reported.

​​​“Ultimately we are not going to persuade Boris Johnson to change his mind through some intellectual exercise… this process needs to force the government to change its course,” he added.

As part of his offers to his supporters, PM Johnson pledged to take Britain out of the European Union (EU) on Oct. 31. In order to do so, he asked Queen Elizabeth to shut the British parliament for around three weeks.

This move is aimed at hindering efforts by his political opponents to stop him from performing a “Hard Brexit”, whereby the U.K. will leave not only the EU institutions but also the EU single market and customs union.

Today thousands of people attended #stopthecoup protests across the #UK. At the London protest, attended by an estimated 30,000 people, I spoke to Mo Silvester. #StopTheCoup #StopTheBrexitCoup #DefendOurDemoracy@telesurenglish pic.twitter.com/WlvtwFQD9W

— Pablo Navarrete (@pablo_telesur) August 31, 2019

“A Hard Brexit would still require the U.K. to pay a divorce settlement to the EU as part of a withdrawal treaty, but it would not require the U.K. to sign up to the free movement of EU nationals or be subject to the European Court of Justice,” the Investec Bank’s webpage explained.

“The U.K. would also be able to sign independent free-trade deals with any country without any restrictions.”​​​​​​​

The Hard Brexit option might be, however, accompanied by sensitive economic and political problems. If the British parliament were not closed, opposition lawmakers could discuss them and pass legislation to avoid a no-deal Brexit, when they return from their summer recess on Sep. 3.

Among the most worrying issues of a hard departure is the so-called “Irish Backstop”, which is part of the withdrawal agreement negotiated between the EU and former PM Theresa May. According to this safeguard, the U.K will commit to keep its border with the Republic of Ireland open.

PM Johnson wants the backstop removed, for it could leave Northern Ireland operating under different regulatory rules than the rest of the U.K. The EU and Ireland say Britain has yet to come up with acceptable alternatives.

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The Israeli army was well able to hide its soldiers along the Lebanese-Israeli border. Hezbollah defeated the Israeli army without firing a shot by forcing the army to disappear and leave puppets behind in its military vehicles. That is to prevent any opportunity for Hezbollah to avenge the killing of its members in Syria, for sending booby-trapped drones to the southern suburb of Beirut and for attacking a Palestinian military officer in the Bekaa. Along the border with Lebanon, from the coastal city of Naqoura to the occupied town of the Shebaa Farms, for about 60 kilometres, Hezbollah is searching for Israeli military targets without finding any apparent soldier. That means Hezbollah would be obliged to target a non-visible object inland. Hezbollah’s bank of objectives is rich and selecting an Israeli target will not be very difficult. It is not forced to reveal the exact time of revenge, happy to keep Israel on its toes, spreading fear and continuous anxiety over the entire country.

Hezbollah is not in a hurry to close the account and may not really need to jump the gun. Striking a far-flung target would reveal Hezbollah’s capabilities: better to keep its special arsenal unrevealed for a more serious, wider military confrontation. Hezbollah is therefore in favour of using laser missiles, snipers or camouflaged booby-traps, or precision missiles and suicide drones that can inflict heavy casualties on Israeli soldiers as they gather together (if and when possible!).

For the first time since 2006 (the third war on Lebanon), a whole week has gone by without any Israeli ground violations. The number of these violations was up to five per week and about 167 per month (air, land and sea), rebuffing the UN Resolution 1701. Israel continues to violate Lebanese airspace every day, dozens of times a day.

Hezbollah succeeded in its psychological warfare, according to the Israeli press. Naturally, the Israelis are closely monitoring any movement on the border, any open source information or any intelligence material that could help thwart an attack. However, the theory that “Israel is an invincible army” has been ended : it was irrevocably subdued by a television threat from Hezbollah’s Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah.

The Israeli army is on high alert, it cancelled leave for a large number of combat units, and asked settlers not to approach any fields near the border. The commander of Israel’s northern front, General Amir Baram, paradoxically rejected the settlers’ request to open shelters so as not to make them even more nervous while waiting for the deadly response from Hezbollah.

For the first time it seems that Israeli soldiers along the border would even be pleased if three or four of their comrades were killed because it would mean that death had not knocked at their own door. Israeli soldiers would breathe a sigh of relief and return to their daily work with greater peace of mind once Hezbollah’s attack were concluded.

From Israeli military and political statements, it seems that the winds of war are far from blowing that strongly: that neither side favours a wider confrontation. But it is too early to speculate because will be up to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to decide whether to really drag Israel into war or not.

Israel will not be able to hide for long behind the barricades and the IDF will not be able to remain in its hideouts for long. Time is getting short:  closer and closer every day to the hit that Hezbollah promised. Then the pressure will be lifted but not on Netanyahu who knows that the psychological war has damaged him despite his public boasting about achievements in Syria and Iraq. But he certainly cannot boast of striking Lebanon or Hezbollah, precisely because he has already lost his first battle. Israel awakened the Shiite genie in the 1982 war when it invaded Lebanon and brought Sayyed Nasrallah to Hezbollah leadership in 1992 by assassinating Sayyed Abbas al-Moussawi, the former Hezbollah leader. Israel apparently has once more failed to learn from history and from its previous mistakes.

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Our obsequious media is actively perpetuating the myth that the monarch can do no wrong, and is apolitical. In fact the monarchy has been active and absolutely central to the seizure of power from the Westminster parliament in a right wing coup. Yesterday’s collaboration at Balmoral between the Queen and Jacob Rees Mogg is only the latest phase.

The monarch appoints the UK Prime Minister. The convention is that this must be the person who can command the support of the majority in the House of Commons. That does not necessarily have to be from a single party, it can be via a coalition or pact with other parties, but the essential point, established since Hanoverian times, is that the individual must have a majority in the Commons.

The very appointment of Boris Johnson by  Elizabeth Saxe Coburg Gotha was a constitutional outrage. Johnson may have been selected by Conservative Party members, but that is not the qualification to be PM. Johnson very plainly did not command a majority in the House of Commons, proven by the fact that still at no stage has he demonstrated that he does. I do not write merely with hindsight.

Johnson’s flagship policy was always No Deal Brexit. Contrary to the monarchist propaganda spewed out across the entire MSM, not only is it untrue that the Queen had “no constitutional choice” but to appoint Johnson, the Queen had a clear constitutional duty not to appoint a Prime Minister whose flagship policy had already been specifically voted down time and again by the House of Commons.

The Queen has now doubled down on this original outrage by proroguing the Westminster parliament in conspiracy with old Etonians Rees Mogg and Johnson, specifically so that the House of Commons cannot vote down Johnson.

The monarchy will always be an extremely useful institution in promoting the political aims of the upper classes, not least because of the ludicrous media promulgation of its infallibility. When you have former Prime Minister John Major, senior Tories like Philip Hammond and Michael Heseltine, and the Speaker of the House of Commons himself all talking of “consitutional outrage”, it is plainly preposterous to insist that the monarchy cannot, by definition, have done anything wrong.

The Queen has appointed a Prime Minister who does not have the support of the House of Commons and then has conspired to prevent the House of Commons from obstructing her Prime Minister. That is not the action of a politically neutral monarchy. The institution should have been abolished decades ago. I do hope that all those who recognise the constitutional outrage, will acknowledge the role of the monarchy and that the institution needs to be swiftly abolished.

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After 18 years of war in Afghanistan– America’s longest – US and Taliban negotiators are said to be close to an agreement that may see the withdrawal of many of the 14,000 US soldiers in that remote nation.

That’s the official version. President Donald Trump keeps changing his mind about the number of US troops to be withdrawn. The latest version from the White House has 5,000 US troops remaining in Afghanistan as a permanent garrison to guard the major air bases at Bagram and Kandahar and protect the US-installed puppet Afghan government in Kabul.

Without US troops to defend it, the Afghan regime of Ashraf Ghani would be swept away in days. Even Trump has admitted this. Keeping the Ghani regime safe in Kabul would at least provide a fig leaf to claim the US-backed government was still in charge.

The pro-war right in Washington is crying to high heaven at this prospect. Senators and congressmen who never heard a shot fired in anger are ready to fight to the last 18-year-old American soldier and keep the trillion-dollar war sputtering on.

To date, 2,426 American soldiers have been killed in combat in Afghanistan, with some 20,000 wounded, many of them permanently maimed. Thousands of US-paid mercenaries and foreign troops dragooned into this conflict have been killed or wounded. Heavy Afghan civilian casualties, mostly caused by air strikes, are covered up by US occupation authorities. Without 24/7 US air support, American forces would have long ago been driven from Afghanistan, as were their British and Soviet predecessors.

Proponents of the Afghan War insist that ‘terrorists’ will take over if US troops withdraw. By now, it’s unclear who the so-called ‘terrorists’ really are. Previously, the US branded Taliban as terrorists. But now that the US is negotiating with Taliban to end the war, Washington claims the threats are the Islamic State from Iraq and something called ‘the Khorasan Group,’ a figment of Washington’s imagination.

The US warns that if Taliban wins, it will turn Afghanistan into a base for international terrorism. This is absurd. Taliban today controls more than half the nation by day, and 80% by night. There is plenty of room left for anti-US groups.

Contrary to US claims, Taliban was never a terrorist group. I was in Afghanistan and Pakistan when Taliban was created. Civil war in Afghanistan after the Soviets pulled out led to wide scale banditry, rapine and anarchy. A preacher named Mullah Omar, a veteran of the anti-Soviet war, cobbled together a force of ethnic Pashtun (Pathan) fighters and students to attack the bandits, rapists, and opium-producing Communist forces causing mayhem. This rag-tag movement came to be known as ‘talibs,’ or religious students. Thus was born Taliban.

Mullah Omar and his Pashtun fighters went on to drive the Communists from Kabul and take most of the country. According to the UN, Taliban eliminated 90% of Afghanistan’s opium production and brought a rough justice to the nation.

But then came the 9/11 attacks on the United States. Caught sleeping on guard duty, the embarrassed Bush administration claimed Taliban was somehow behind 9/11 because it had given refuge to Afghan war hero Osama bin Laden. There was no hard evidence against bin Laden but he became the target of America’s wrath and desire for revenge.

Washington demanded Taliban turn over bin Laden. But the Afghan mountain warriors held to their tradition of defending guests and refused, claiming bin Laden would never have gotten a fair trial in the US. But they offered to send him for trial in another Muslim nation like Turkey or Egypt. The US spurned this offer and invaded Afghanistan, oblivious to its title ‘Graveyard of Empires.’

And so, under the banner of the faux War on Terrorism, the US bombed and rocketed Afghanistan, one of the world’s poorest but proudest nations, for 18 years, using B-1 heavy bombers and fleets of killer drones against mountain tribesmen armed with old rifles and fierce courage.

America faces historic defeat in Afghanistan. By not winning, it loses. How this loss would affect the rest of America’s empire remains to be seen. But the sooner America ends this shameful colonial war the better.

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The Globalization of War: America’s “Long War” against Humanity

Michel Chossudovsky

The “globalization of war” is a hegemonic project. Major military and covert intelligence operations are being undertaken simultaneously in the Middle East, Eastern Europe, sub-Saharan Africa, Central Asia and the Far East. The U.S. military agenda combines both major theater operations as well as covert actions geared towards destabilizing sovereign states.

ISBN Number: 978-0-9737147-6-0

Year: 2015

Pages: 240 Pages

List Price: $22.95

Special Price: $15.00

Click here to order.

For all the people who follow the MH17 case, Max van der Werff is an outstanding analyst. After spending thousands of hours of investigation on the crash of the Malaysian airline, Max has become an expert on this case.

His blog, ironically called ‘Kremlin troll‘, is really a gold mine, containing a lot of useful information about what happened to the MH17, the available information, and what are the problems with the official investigation.

Recently, he gave an interview for the Philippine television about the status of the investigation, how he works on this case, what pushed him to investigate on the MH17, his doubts about the conclusion of the JIT, and how he hopes this case will end.

Watch the full interview in English (you can skip the three minutes which are in Filipino):

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Costumava ser feito regularmente e funcionava: o Ocidente identificava um país como seu inimigo, desencadeava sua propaganda profissional contra ele, a seguir administrava uma série de sanções, esfaimando e assassinando crianças, idosos e outros grupos vulneráveis. Se o país não entrasse em colapso num prazo de meses, ou num par de anos, começaria o bombardeamento. E a nação, totalmente abalada, em sofrimento e em desordem entraria em colapso como um castelo de cartas, antes que as primeiras botas da NATO pisassem seu terreno.

Tais cenários foram reencenados, múltiplas vezes, desde a Jugoslávia até o Iraque.

Mas subitamente algo significativo aconteceu. Este horrendo desrespeito à lei, este caos, cessou; foi travado.

O Ocidente continua a utilizar as mesmas tácticas, mantém-se a aterrorizar países independentes, a assustar os povos, a derrubar o que ele define como “regimes”, mas o seu poder monstruosamente destrutivo subitamente tornou-se ineficaz.

Ele ataca e a nação atacada treme, chora, sangra, mas mantém-se de pé, orgulhosamente erecta.

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É claro que há outras razões porque o ocidente não consegue por de joelhos os seus adversários.

Uma delas é que os mais resilientes são deixados em paz. A Rússia, Cuba, China, Coreia do Norte (RPDC), Irão, Síria e Venezuela não vão fugir do campo de batalha. Trata-se de países que já perderam milhares, milhões, mesmo dezenas de milhões de pessoas, no combate contra o imperialismo e o colonialismo ocidental.

Se alguém acompanhar cuidadosamente os mais recentes ataques do Ocidente, o cenário é patético, quase grotesco: Washington e muitas vezes também a UE fazem grandes esforços, golpeiam, gastam milhares de milhões de dólares, utilizando os mercenários locais (que apodam de “oposição local”, depois retiram-se rapidamente após uma derrota miserável, mas expectável. Até agora a Venezuela tem sobrevivido. A Síria sobreviveu. O Irão sobreviveu. A China luta contra horríveis subversões apoiadas pelo Ocidente, mas sobrevive altivamente. A Rússia mantém-se sempre de pé.

Isto é um momento tremendo na história humana. Pela primeira vez, o imperialismo ocidental não só está a ser derrotado, mas plenamente desvelado e humilhado. Muitos agora riem-se dele, abertamente.

Mas não deveríamos celebrar, ainda. Deveríamos entender o que e porque isto está a acontecer, e então continuar a combater. Há muitas e muitas batalhas pela frente. Mas estamos no caminho certo.

Que tentem. Sabemos como combater. Sabemos como prevalecer. Já combatemos o fascismo, sob muitas das suas formas. Sabemos o que é a liberdade. A sua “liberdade” não é a nossa liberdade. Aquilo a que eles chamam “democracia” não é o modo como queremos que o nosso povo governe e seja governado. Deixem-nos partir, nós, o nosso povo, não os queremos!

Eles não podem derrubar os nossos sistemas, precisamente porque são nossos! Sistemas que queremos, que o nosso povo quer; sistemas pelos quais estamos prontos a combater e a morrer!

Andre Vltchek

 

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Este artigo foi publicado originalmente na New Eastern Outlook.

Versão inglesa:

Suddenly the West Is Failing to Overthrow “Regimes”, o 23 de Agosto de 2019.

Tradução: Resistir.info

Andre Vltchek é jornalista de investigação, filósofo, romancista e cineasta. Já cobriu guerras e conflitos em dezenas de países. Entre as suas obras encontramos estas quatro: China and Ecological Civilization com John B. Cobb, Jr., Revolutionary Optimism, Western Nihilism, o romance revolucionário “Aurora” o e best seller de não ficção política, “Exposing Lies Of The Empire”. Pode consultar aqui as restantes obras. Veja Rwanda Gambit, o seu documentário inovador sobre o Ruanda e a República Democrática do Congo e o seu filme/diálogo com Noam Chomsky “On Western Terrorism”. Vltchek reside actualmente no Oriente asiático e no Médio Oriente, continuando a trabalhar em todo o mundo. Pode ser contactado através do seu portal, do seu Twitter e do seu Patreon.

On Tuesday, the biennial MAKS-2019 International Aviation and Space Show kicked off in Russia’s Zhukovsky International Airport. This important event has drawn spectators, journalists, and photographers from around the world every odd year since 1992. What began as an entertaining event has now become a marketplace for Russian aerospace companies to negotiate export contracts and for Russian air carriers to make foreign contacts.

This year by special invitation Turkey’s president Recep Tayyip Erdogan was given a personal tour by President Putin and other officials, to gain insight into Russia’s latest aviation developments. Turkey was recently ejected from the multinational, US-led F-35 industrial program after defiantly purchasing and receiving the first shipment of S-400 missile systems from Russia, earlier this summer. Erdogan has said that by April of next year the S-400 will be operational much to the dismay of the Washington.

On July 17th White House spokesperson Stephanie Grisham made an announcement stating,

“Unfortunately, Turkey’s decision to purchase Russian S-400 air defense systems renders its continued involvement with the F-35 impossible. Turkey has been a longstanding and trusted partner and NATO ally for over 65 years but accepting the S-400 undermines the commitments all NATO allies made to each other to move away from Russian systems.”

During the aviation show Erdogan said,

“We came here for more than just a sightseeing tour. We will make steps after learning about the final decision [from Washington on the F-35]. The market where Turkey can acquire everything it needs is large enough.” He also stated, “We want to proceed with the solidarity [with Russia] in many areas of the defense industry. This can be on passenger or fighter aircraft. We will continue with the spirit of solidarity.”

The head of Russia’s Federal Service for military-technical cooperation Dmitry Shugayev confirmed on Wednesday that Turkey was interested in procuring “either the Su-35 or Su-57.” Turkey’s Foreign minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu clarified that Turkey would prefer to search for alternatives to the F-35 but would look for a new source to procure combat jets if the U.S. follows through with canceling their F-35 shipments of which Turkey is not just a customer but a manufacturer as well.

On the way back to Turkey Erdogan was asked if Turkey was interested in Russian planes and he responded, “Why not? We didn’t come here for nothing.” Russia’s fifth-generation jet might but the answer to Erdogan’s F-35 problem. Erdogan asked Putin if the plane was airworthy and for sale to which Putin responded, yes you can buy it. This was the first time the export variant of the Su-57 was presented to the public and Erdogan was the first foreign world leader to see them up close and person. Earlier this year the Russian military started receiving its first serial-product models.

The United states has insisted that the F-35 is not compatible with the S-400 and that the two systems operating together might reveal intelligence which Russia can then use.

In addition to discussing fighter jets and being treated to ice cream, Erdogan and Putin also discussed Syria. Ankara has long supported the terrorist factions fighting against the Syrian army and has tried to protect them on multiple occasions. Both leaders have expressed interest in working together to ease tensions in Idlib province, however their views on how to solve those grievances are different. Russia supports Syria’s fight against terrorism and has taken an active role both politically and militarily to back the Syrian government alongside Iran, Hezbollah, and other forces of the Axis of Resistance.

Syrian forces are taking steps to liberate  Idlib the last terrorist stronghold.

“The situation in the Idlib de-escalation zone is of serious concern to us and our Turkish partners,” Putin said at a press conference with Erdogan on Russian state television. Putin also said Turkey had “legitimate interests” to protect on its southern borders and supported the creation of a security zone in the area.

The Syrian government has warned that Turkey is trying to change the demographics of areas by driving out diverse populations and replacing them with Syrian refugees that had fled to Turkey and are sympathetic to the Free Syrian Army and Al Qaeda.

Last year a de-escalation buffer zone around Idlib was negotiated between Putin and Erdogan to avert confrontation between the Syrian army and terrorist factions, but the ceasefire was not respected by the terrorist facts and the Syrian army continued with their military operations to liberate terrorist infested areas.

Erdogan has complained that his troops are in harm’s way, the simplest way to resolve this would be to stop supporting terrorist factions, pull out all Turkish forces on Syrian land, and close down all twelve observation posts.

On September 16th Turkey, Russia, and Iran’s presidents will be meeting at a summit to discuss Syria. Erdogan said the September meeting “should contribute to peace in the region”.

Although both Russia and Turkey’s leaders have stated that they support Syria’s territorial integrity Turkey has shown that behind their humanitarian façade is a plan to illegally expand their territory. Putin along with the Syrian government has emphasized the need to keep fighting terrorist factions in Idlib. “Terrorists continue shelling the positions of Syrian government forces, trying to attack Russian military installations,” Putin said. He also stated, “The de-escalation zone must not serve as a refuge for militants, let alone a bridgehead for new attacks.”

Putin’s role as political mediator between Syria and Turkey has become more complex due to Turkey’s interest in purchasing Russian jets.

“We have many opportunities, we demonstrated new weapons systems and new electronic warfare systems,” Putin said. “In my opinion there was a lot of interest from our Turkish partners.” It will be interesting to see if Syria’s sovereignty will become a bargaining chip in these war games.

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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.

Sarah Abed is an independent journalist and political commentator. For media inquiries please email [email protected].

Featured image is from InfoBrics

If an ethnic group told you that a certain name used to describe them is deeply offensive, would you continue to use that name and even try to convince them that it is not offensive?

No. So stop calling me a “North Macedonian” from “North Macedonia”. Stop trying to convince me that redefining my entire ethnic group and taking away our right to self-determination and self-identification is not offensive. Stop trying to tell me that the forced renaming of Macedonia, the mandated rewriting of our history (led by our most vocal oppressor, Greece!), and the redefinition of everything it ever meant to be Macedonian is not offensive. And stop telling me that stripping away my name and identity because our oppressors demand it solves a “diplomatic dispute”.

Our name is Macedonia and our identity, history, ethnicity and language are Macedonian – despite the current US-led forced renaming of our country in order to satisfy its misguided, racist foreign policy and to appease our oppressors. Interested in learning more? You should also be interested in preventing our eradication. See my op-ed in the Canadian Foreign Policy Journal detailing the brutal violation of Macedonians’ most basic of human rights, and Canada’s shocking support of our demise.

The disturbing messages I mentioned above are the exact messages that Macedonians are receiving from Western politicians, diplomats and journalists. My response is, “put yourselves in our shoes”: After hearing these outrageous claims from the people listed below, I personally asked them the following:

• To Canadian Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland,“If you were of Macedonian, instead of Ukrainian ethnic background, what would Canada’s policy be? Would you support the handing over of Ukraine’s name, identity and history to Russia?”

• To Kati Csaba, Canada’s Ambassador to Macedonia, “Kati, you told me that you are of Hungarian descent. So what if Hungary was forcibly renamed “West Hungary” and the definition of “Hungarian” was suddenly given to Romania? What if Hungarian history was being rewritten by a group of Romanians, as Macedonian history is being rewritten by a panel of Greek diplomats (as per Article 8 (5) of the anti-Macedonian Prespa Agreement). What would you do if there was a 19-page document telling you that you and your ancestors suddenly have a new identity and that everything you ever knew about your ethnic group is now being changed?”

• To Helene Laverdiere, the New Democratic Party’s Foreign Affairs Critic, “Did you even read the 19-page ‘agreement’ that eradicates our Macedonian ethnicity? What if the same agreement was rammed down Francophones’ throats and you were told that it solved a diplomatic dispute?”
  

This is what Macedonians are being forced to endure. And this is us:

In 1913, the entire region of Macedonia was partitioned among Serbia (now the independent Republic of Macedonia), Bulgaria, Greece and Albania. Macedonians have been fighting attempts at eradication, forcible assimilation and competing claims to our name since then. So how can Macedonia be Serbian, Bulgarian, Greek, and Albanian all at once? Macedonia is Macedonian. Let’s not forget the irony too, that Greece outlawed the term “Macedonia” in 1913 and denied its existence until a dramatic propaganda switch in 1988, when it began a campaign of trying to deceive the world into believing that Macedonia belonged to them.

Do not allow cultural misappropriation to be rewarded. Do not allow political games and corruption to erase an age-old nationality. Our name is Macedonia. Join us in defending it. We would do the same for you.

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Bill Nicholov is President of Macedonian Human Rights Movement International.

The Syrian Arab Army (SAA) and its allies responded to recent militant attacks near Abu Dail with a limited offensive in the area.

In the first phase of the offensive, SAA units liberated Khuwayn al-Kabir, Ard al-Zurzur, the Aghir hilltop, and farms near al-Tamanah. After this, government troops attacked militants’ positions inside al-Tamanah itself.

Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, the al-Qaeda-affiliated Wa Harid al-Muminin operations room and the Turkish-backed National Front for Liberation are the main SAA opponents there. They carried out a counter-attack, involving a suicide bomber, but were not able to take the lost areas back.

It is expected that the Syrian Army could develop its advance even further. Despite declarations about the Assad regime’s aggression and the need to respect the Idlib ceasefire by mainstream media, militants continue to attack SAA positions in southern Idlib on a regular basis.

Watch the video here.

The Turkish military is preparing to establish new observation posts in Idlib. According to reports, new observation posts will be located near Saraqib, the Brick Factory, al-Shabibah camp on the Aleppo-Lattakia highway, in the area of Muhambal and near the city of Jisr al-Shughur.

By this move, Ankara is likely seeking to limit the expected SAA progress in the event of a large-scale advance on Idlib.

The Syrian Armed Forces have renamed the Tiger Forces, led by Brigadier General Suheil the Tiger al-Hassan, to the 25th Special Forces Division. Over the past few years, the Tiger Forces have participated in the most intense battles across Syria and become one of the most widely-known pro-government formation around the world. They will likely continue this tradition under the new name.

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Currently at Category 4 strength, defined as having sustained winds of from 130 – 156 mph, gusts up to 30% stronger, Dorian is expected hit Florida’s Atlantic coast on Tuesday, precisely where unclear so far.

On August 31, the National Hurricane Center said the following:

“Life-threatening storm surge and devastating hurricane-force winds are still possible along portions of the Florida east coast by the early to middle part of next week…”

“Dorian is forecast to slow down and turn northward near (Florida’s) coast. (I)t is too soon to determine when or where the highest surge and winds will occur.”

“Residents (in potentially affected areas) should have their hurricane plan in place,” seek an evacuation zone if available, and follow advice from local emergency officials.

“Heavy rains (and) life-threatening flash floods are expected over portions…of the southeastern United States this weekend through much of next week.”

With its life-threatening winds and storm surge, Dorian is nothing to be taken lightly. Considerable damage, including extensive power outages, is expected along the US east coast.

States of emergency are in effect for Florida, Georgia and North Carolina — South Carolina on high alert. Dorian may be the severest hurricane to hit the US Atlantic coast since Andrew in 1992.

Millions of Americans will feel its impact. At 5:00AM Saturday, Dorian shifted slightly north. The Florida Keys and central Miami-Dade County are not in the cone of its latest forecast track.

At this time, Broward County and rest of Florida’s east coast are in it. On Saturday morning, senior hurricane specialist Jack Bevin said the following:

The latest “forecast track does not preclude Dorian making landfall on the Florida coast, as large portions of the coast remain in the track cone of uncertainty. Also, significant impacts could occur even if the center stays offshore.”

Winds currently at 140 mph may strengthen over the weekend into Monday, heading northwest at around 12 mph. Its slow speed makes it possible to intensify.

The storm is expected to slow Monday evening and make landfall Tuesday afternoon, possibly north of where it’s expected to hit now.

National Hurricane Center models show Dorian may come ashore anywhere along the US east coast north of Miami — a possible multi-day storm, adding:

“(A)ny small deviation in the track could bring the core of the powerful hurricane well inland over Florida, keep it near the coast, or offshore.”

Category 4 storms cause “devastating damage.” Scenarios for Florida’s east coast range from a direct hit to a glancing blow.

Miami National Weather Service meteorologist Robert Molleda said

“(t)here’s not a lot that we’re confident about this forecast scenario as it approaches Florida, but one of the things that we are confident about is that it will slow down,” adding:

“All weekend it’s going to be moving slowly but surely toward South Florida. The big question begins as it approaches the coastline. This is going to be a long event.”

National Hurricane Center’s director Ken Graham said:

“Slow is never our friend. Slow means more rain. Slow means a longer period of time to get those winds and saturate the soils. More trees down. More power outages.”

Rainfall in affected areas is expected to range from six to 15 inches.

Most hurricanes during the US storm season occur from mid-August to late October.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) warned that conditions are favorable for more dangerous storms than earlier projected.

Trump is a climate science denier, despite evidence of global warming, rising sea levels, melting ice caps, and likelihood of increasing numbers of hugely destructive hurricanes.

If Dorian slams his luxury Palm Beach, Florida Mar-a-Lago resort, causing extensive damage, reality may hit home harder than cold hard scientific evidence he ignores.

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

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

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

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

The Ansar Allah movement carried out a new series of strikes on Saudi Arabia in the framework of their operations to oppose the Kingdom-led intervention of Yemen.

On August 25, Yemeni forces fired 10 short-range ballistic missiles at military sites in the Jizan International Airport in their “biggest” attack with such missiles on targets inside Saudi Arabia. Yemen’s al-Masirah TV reported that the missiles targeted the hangars of Saudi warplanes and Apache choppers as well as some military sites in the area.

On the same day, Ansar Allah launched a new “ballistic missile,” dubbed Nakal, at a gathering of the Saudi military in the Kingdom’s province of Najran.  Brig. Gen. Yahya Sari, a spokesman for Ansar Allah-led forces, said that the new missile stuck its target, killing and injuring “dozens” of coalition personnel.

Watch the video here.

On August 26, Ansar Allah, for the first time, used a squadron of its new Sammad-3 to strike an “important military target” in the Saudi capital of Riyadh.  Brig. Gen. Sari said that the drones struck the designated target with great precision emphasizing that the strikes were the answer to the Saudi aggression against Yemen.

Later, a Qassem medium-range ballistic missile hit positions of Saudi-backed forces in the Saqam area of Narjan Province.

On August 27, Qasef-2K loitering munitions targeted Saudi Arabia’s King Khalid Air Base in the province of Asir.

All these developments came amid continued border clashes between Ansar Allah fighters and Saudi-led forces. Ansar Allah regularly releases videos showing large equipment losses of coalition-backed troops in the area.

Taking into account a recent rift between Saudi-backed and UAE-backed forces in southern Yemen, it appears that the coalition is steadily losing more and more ground in the war-torn country and , that the war is moving to southern Saudi Arabia.

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Trump’s “fire and fury like the world has never seen” remark about North Korea shifted to the appearance of friendship with Kim Jong-un, DJT saying “(h)e wrote me beautiful letters and we fell in love.”

Two summits and Trump’s meeting with Kim across the DMZ on North Korean soil, a first by a US sitting president, achieved nothing toward ending US hostility toward the country since the Korean peninsula was divided post-WW II.

Talks between Kim and Trump broke down because of unacceptable US demands in return for empty promises.

Its history is clear – a record of breached treaties, conventions and other deals, the US agreeing to one thing, then going another way – why it can never be trusted.

Pompeo and Bolton sabotaged talks between Kim and Trump. They got DJT to make Kim an offer to be refused — demanding the DPRK transfer its nuclear arsenal and bomb fuel to the US.

In writing, his regime also insisted that Pyongyang dismantle its nuclear and whatever chemical and biological infrastructure it may have, along with eliminating its ballistic missiles, launchers, and related facilities, as well as handing over to the US its dual-use technologies.

Almost everything hi-tech or close to it can be considered potentially dual-use.

Other unacceptable demands included North Korea providing the Trump regime with a full and comprehensive explanation of its nuclear program, giving US inspectors unimpeded access to its facilities, halting construction of everything related to its nuclear activities, along with shifting its scientists and technicians to non-nuclear activities.

The Trump regime demanded unilateral DRRK surrender to its will — in return for nothing, not even modest good faith gestures, just empty promises to be broken like countless times before.

Bolton earlier said “(w)e have very much in mind the Libya model from 2003, 2004” in dealings with North Korea.

Gaddafi abandoned his WMD development. In February 2011, US-dominated NATO launched naked aggression against the country, raping and destroying it, transforming Africa’s most developed country into a dystopian charnel house, sodomizing Gaddafi to death – things remaining violent and chaotic today.

Pyongyang has no intention of entrapping itself the same way. Its nuclear and other weapons are solely for defense by a nation that never attacked another state throughout its history.

It’s willing to abandon its nuclear arsenal only in return for iron-clad security guarantees, an end to decades of uneasy armistice, removal of unacceptable sanctions, and normalization of relations with the US and other countries.

Its nuclear deterrent was developed and remains maintained, fearing a repeat of what happened in the early 1950s — the rape and destruction of its country, massacring millions of its people by a hostile aggressor.

Perhaps US/DPRK rapprochement will never happen, surely not with hardliners in charge of US policymaking, needing enemies to advance their imperial agenda.

Since none exist, they’re invented, North Korea a key target because of its sovereign independence, not for any threat. Claiming it exists is fabricated, how the US operates against all nations it doesn’t control.

In summer 2018, North Korea’s Foreign Ministry accused the Trump regime of pursuing “unilateral and gangster-like demands for denuclearization,” calling its unacceptable actions “deeply regrettable,” sabotaging normalization efforts — hardliners Pompeo and Bolton to blame.

Last December, Pyongyang accused the Trump regime of “block(ing) the path to denuclearization on the Korean peninsula forever,” adding:

The US is “bent on bringing…relations back to the status of last year” when Trump demeaned Kim by calling him “little rocket man.”

Before June 2018 Kim/Trump summit talks in Singapore, Pompeo falsely claimed “American interests are held at risk by the existential threat posed by North Korea (sic)” — a bald-faced Big Lie. Throughout its history, the DPRK threatened no other nations.

Pompeo and Bolton run Trump’s geopolitical agenda, warmongers deploring world peace and stability, figures to be feared, never trusted.

Bolton earlier said the only way to end North Korea’s nuclear program is “to end (the) regime,” adding: “It’s not enough…to impose sanctions.”

A Bolton critic earlier said he never met a sovereign independent country he didn’t want to bomb. Pompeo likely shares similar views.

Because of continued US hardline actions, North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Yong-ho called Pompeo the “diehard toxin of the US diplomacy,” adding:

“Nothing decent can be expected from Pompeo, a man subject to strong censure from many countries for adopting the most wicked methods of the Central Intelligence Agency as diplomatic means in every part of the world.”

He “los(t) face as” Washington’s top “diplomatic…He who has no shame has no conscience.”

“He is truly impudent enough to utter such thoughtless words which only leave us disappointed and skeptical as to whether we can solve any problem with such a guy.”

He’s “a trouble-maker bereft of sensible cogitative power and rational judgment as he only casts dark shadow over the prospect of the DPRK-US negotiations.”

“We are ready for both dialogue and stand-off” — never surrendering the nation’s sovereignty to another state.

North Korea’s official Rodong Sinmun broadsheet slammed the Trump regime’s “imperialistic behavior” and “double-dealing” for undermining denuclearization talks.

Interviewed by the Washington Examiner last week, Pompeo threatened North Korea, saying if its authorities don’t denuclearize, the Trump regime will “continue to keep on the sanctions that are the toughest in all of history…”

Addressing the American Legion’s national convention days earlier, Pompeo demeaned North Korea, saying its “rogue behavior (sic) could not be ignored.”

DPRK First Vice Foreign Minister Choe Son-hui responded, calling his remarks “thoughtless.”

He “provoked us once again by making an irrational remark. (He) severely insult(ed) us…mak(ing) it more difficult (to pursue) working-level negotiations.”

“Our expectations for dialogue with the US have been fading gradually, and it has been pushing us to the situation where we are compelled to review all the measures that we have taken until now.”

“The US had better not try to test our patience any longer with remarks that irritate us if it does not want to make horrendous regrets.”

Pompeo earlier suggested he has post-Trump presidential ambitions. The former congressman/CIA director ruled out a Senate run.

Those close to him say he’s weighing the possibility as a stepping-stone to higher office.

Politico said “(f)ew GOP politicians have more ambition or the prospect of upward mobility than Pompeo.”

Last March, Vanity Fair headlined in caps: “ ‘AMBITION BEYOND BEING SUCH A PATHETIC SECRETARY OF STATE:’ AS THE WORLD BURNS AND TRUMP UNRAVELS, MIKE POMPEO IS ACTING A LOT LIKE A GUY RUNNING FOR PRESIDENT.”

President Pompeo? The possibility should terrify everyone everywhere.

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

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

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

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

Featured image: Trump and Kim meet Sunday before Trump became first US president to step on North Korean territory. (White House photo)

We are again reaching the point in the business cycle known as “peak debt,” when debts have compounded to the point that their cumulative total cannot be paid. Student debt, credit card debt, auto loans, business debt and sovereign debt are all higher than they have ever been. As economist Michael Hudson writes in his provocative 2018 book, “…and forgive them their debts,” debts that can’t be paid won’t be paid. The question, he says, is how they won’t be paid.

Mainstream economic models leave this problem to “the invisible hand of the market,” assuming trends will self-correct over time. But while the market may indeed correct, it does so at the expense of the debtors, who become progressively poorer as the rich become richer. Borrowers go bankrupt and banks foreclose on the collateral, dispossessing the debtors of their homes and their livelihoods. The houses are bought by the rich at distress prices and are rented back at inflated prices to the debtors, who are then forced into wage peonage to survive. When the banks themselves go bankrupt, the government bails them out. Thus the market corrects, but not without government intervention. That intervention just comes at the end of the cycle to rescue the creditors, whose ability to buy politicians gives them the upper hand. According to free-market apologists, this is a natural cycle akin to the weather, which dates all the way back to the birth of modern economics in ancient Greece and Rome.

Hudson counters that those classical societies are not actually where our financial system began, and that capitalism did not evolve from bartering, as its ideologues assert. Rather, it devolved from a more functional, sophisticated, egalitarian credit system that was sustained for two millennia in ancient Mesopotamia (now parts of Iraq, Turkey, Kuwait and Iran). Money, banking, accounting and modern business enterprise originated not with gold and private trade, but in the public sector of Sumer’s palaces and temples in the third century B.C. Because it involved credit issued by the local government rather than private loans of gold, bad debts could be periodically forgiven rather than compounding until they took the whole system down, a critical feature that allowed for its remarkable longevity.

The True Roots of Money and Banking

Sumer was the first civilization for which we have written records. Its notable achievements included the wheel, the lunar calendar, our numerical system, law codes, an organized hierarchy of priest-kings, copper tools and weapons, irrigation, accounting and money. It also produced the first written language, which took the form of cuneiform figures impressed on clay. These tablets were largely just accounting tools, recording the flow of food and raw materials in the temple and palace workshops, as well as IOUs (mainly to these large public institutions) that had to be preserved in writing to be enforced. This temple accounting system allowed for the coordinated flow of credit to peasant farmers from planting to harvesting, and for advances to merchants to engage in foreign trade.

In fact, it was the need to manage accounts for a large labor force under bureaucratic control that is thought to have led to the development of writing. The people willingly accepted this bureaucratic control because they viewed the gods as having decreed it. According to their cuneiform writings, humans were created to work in the fields and the mines after certain lower gods tasked with that hard labor rebelled.

Usury, or the charging of interest on loans, was an accepted part of the Mesopotamian credit system. Interest rates were high and remained unchanged for two millennia. But Mesopotamian scholars were well aware of the problem of “debts that can’t be paid.” Unlike in today’s academic economic curriculum, Hudson writes:

Babylonian scribal students were trained already c. 2000 BC in the mathematics of compound interest. Their school exercises asked them to calculate how long it took a debt at interest of 1/60^th per month to double. The answer is 60 months: five years. How long to quadruple? 10 years. How long to multiply 64 times? 30 years. It must’ve been obvious that no economy can grow in keeping with this rate of increase.

Sumerian kings solved the problem of “peak debt” by periodically declaring “clean slates,” in which agrarian debts were forgiven and debtors were released from servitude to work as tenants on their own plots of land. The land belonged to the gods under the stewardship of the temple and the palace and could not be sold, but farmers and their families maintained leaseholds to it in perpetuity by providing a share of their crops, service in the military and labor in building communal infrastructure. In this way, their homes and livelihoods were preserved, an arrangement that was mutually beneficial, since the kings needed their service.

Jewish scribes, who spent time in captivity in Babylon in the sixth century B.C, adapted these laws in the year or jubilee, which Hudson argues was added to Leviticus after the Babylonian captivity. According to Leviticus 25:8-13, a Jubilee Year was to be declared every 49 years, during which debts would be forgiven, slaves and prisoners freed and their property leaseholds restored. As in ancient Mesopotamia, property ownership remained with Yahweh and his earthly proxies. The Jubilee law effectively banned the outright sale of land, which could only be leased for up to 50 years (Leviticus 25:14-17). The Levitican Jubilee represented an advance over the Mesopotamian “clean slates,” Hudson says, in that it was codified into law rather than relying on the whim of the king. But its proclaimers lacked political power, and whether the law was ever enforced is unclear. It served as a moral rather than a legal prescription.

Ancient Greece and Rome adopted the Mesopotamian system of lending at interest, but without the safety valve of periodic “clean slates,” since the creditors were no longer the king or the temple, but private lenders. Unfettered usury resulted in debt bondage and forfeiture of properties, consolidation into large landholdings, a growing wedge between rich and poor, and the ultimate destruction of the Roman Empire.

As for the celebrated development of property rights and democracy in ancient Greece and Rome, Hudson argues that they did not actually serve the poor. They served the rich, who controlled elections, just as rich donors do today. Taking power away from local governments by privatizing once-communal lands allowed private creditors to pass laws by which they could legally confiscate property when their debtors could not pay. “Free markets” meant the freedom to accumulate massive wealth at the expense of the poor and the state.

Hudson maintains that when Jesus Christ preached “forgiveness of debts,” he was also talking about economic debt, not just moral transgressions. When he overturned the tables of the money changers, it was because they had turned a house of prayer into “a den of thieves.” But creditors’ rights had by then gained legal dominance, and Christian theologians lacked the power to override them. Rather than being a promise of economic redemption in this life, forgiveness of debts thus became a promise of spiritual redemption in the next.

How to Pull Off a Modern Debt Jubilee

Such has been the fate of debtors in modern Western economies. But in some modern non-Western economies, vestiges of the debt write-off solution remain. In China, for instance, nonperforming loans are often carried on the books of state-owned banks or canceled rather than putting insolvent debtors and banks into bankruptcy. As Dinny McMahon wrote in June in an article titled “China’s Bad Data Can Be a Good Thing”:

In China, the state stands behind the country’s banks. As long as authorities ensure those banks have sufficient liquidity to meet their obligations, they can trundle along with higher delinquency levels than would be regarded safe in a market economy.

China’s banking system, like that of ancient Mesopotamia, is largely in the public sector, so the state can back its banks with liquidity as needed. Interestingly, the Chinese state also preserves the ancient Near Eastern practice of retaining ownership of the land, which citizens can only lease for a period of time.

In Western economies, most banks are privately owned and heavily regulated, with high reserve and capital requirements. Bad loans mean debtors are put into foreclosure, jobs and capital infrastructure are lost, and austerity prevails. The Trump administration is now aggressively pursuing a trade war with China in an effort to level the playing field by forcing it into the same austerity regime, but a more productive and sustainable approach might be for the U.S. to engage in periodic debt jubilees itself.

The problem with that solution today is that most debts in Western economies are owed not to the government but to private creditors, who will insist on their contractual rights to payment. We need to find a way to pay the creditors while relieving the borrowers of their debt burden.

One possibility is to nationalize insolvent banks and sell their bad loans to the central bank, which can buy them with money created on its books. The loans can then be written down or voided out. Precedent for this policy was established with “QE1,” the Fed’s first round of quantitative easing, in which it bought unmarketable mortgage-backed securities from banks with liquidity problems.

Another possibility would be to use money generated by the central bank to bail out debtors directly. This could be done selectively, by buying up student debt or credit card debt or car loans bundled as “asset-backed securities,” then writing the debts down or off, for example. Alternatively, debts could be relieved collectively with a periodic national dividend or universal basic income paid to everyone, again drawn from the deep pocket of the central bank.

Critics will object that this would dangerously inflate the money supply and consumer prices, but that need not be the case. Today, virtually all money is created as bank debt, and it is extinguished when the debt is repaid. That means dividends used to pay this debt down would be extinguished, along with the debt itself, without adding to the money supply. For the 80% of the U.S. population now carrying debt, loan repayments from their national dividends could be made mandatory and automatic. The remaining 20% would be likely to save or invest the funds, so this money too would contribute little to consumer price inflation; and to the extent that it did go into the consumer market, it could help generate the demand needed to stimulate productivity and employment. (For a fuller explanation, see Ellen Brown, “Banking on the People,” 2019).

In ancient Mesopotamia, writing off debts worked brilliantly well for two millennia. As Hudson concludes:

To insist that all debts must be paid ignores the contrast between the thousands of years of successful Near Eastern clean slates and the debt bondage into which [Greco-Roman] antiquity sank. … If this policy in many cases was more successful than today’s, it is because they recognized that insisting that all debts must be paid meant foreclosures, economic polarization and impoverishment of the economy at large.

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Ellen Brown chairs the Public Banking Institute and has written thirteen books, including her latest, Banking on the People: Democratizing Money in the Digital Age.  She also co-hosts a radio program on PRN.FM called “It’s Our Money.” Her 300+ blog articles are posted at EllenBrown.com. She is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Time and again, the US, its key NATO allies and Israel blame their victims for wrongdoing committed against them.

According to the Daily Beast, Republicans are pushing for sanctions on China over how Hong Kong authorities are handling months of protests — US dirty hands all over them the website failed to explain.

Trump regime and congressional hardliners are discussing ways “to officially punish China” over what’s going on in the city, said the Daily Beast (DB) — despite restraint shown by Hong Kong and mainland authorities, toughness used only in response to violence no governments tolerate.

Sino/US relations are already badly strained over Trump regime-initiated trade war. Upping the stakes further will make resolution all the harder.

According to an unnamed White House official,

“China (is) a national security concern (sic). The protests in Hong Kong are just another example of why we should be focusing our attention on finding ways to push back against Beijing,” adding:

“We’ve been taking other routes to confront China, especially economically. This would be another step in the game plan. The draft legislation is in a lot of ways going to look like some of the sanctions we implemented with Russia.”

Washington is threat to China and all other nations it doesn’t control — not the other way around.

The US uses illegal sanctions as weapons of war by other means. What’s going on in Hong Kong is a US color revolution attempt on China’s soft underbelly, aiming to destabilize the country.

On Monday, Beijing’s official People’s Daily slammed “(a)nti–China forces in the US (not only involved in) openly cheer(ing) the violent protesters on…but provid(ing) money, benefits, and advice to the rioters” — from the hostile to democracy National Endowment for Democracy, CIA dirty hands likely involved as well.

“(D)ata released by NED in 2018 revealed that of all the countries (it) allocated funds to, China topped the list at $6.5 million,” said the broadsheet, adding:

“These figures are just the tip of the iceberg, as it’s believed that most NED spending was not disclosed due to its ‘sensitivity.’ ”

“(T)he US (is) fanning the flames of the confrontation with advice, action and money.”

Earlier I explained that China’s emergence as a world power threatens Washington’s aim to control planet earth, its resources and populations.

Beijing’s successful economic model, producing sustained growth, embarrasses the US-led unfair, exploitive Western “free market” system.

The US eliminated the Japanese economic threat in the 1980s, a similar one from the Asian Tiger economies in the 1990s, and now it’s China’s turn to be taken down.

That’s what Trump’s war on the country by other means is all about, understood in Beijing, countering hostile US tactics its own way, taking a longterm approach to achieve its objectives.

Separately an “exclusive” DB report said elements involved in Hong Kong protests “flew to Montana last week for an under-the-radar meeting with US lawmakers…according to sources familiar with the meeting.”

Earlier they met with a US consulate official in Hong Kong, notably with US officials in Washington as well.

Orchestrated protests gripped Hong Kong since last March, turning violent weeks earlier, creating intolerable conditions for majority city residents wanting none of it.

On Thursday, an annual change of the guard occurred in Hong Kong. According to state-run Xinhua:

“The Hong Kong Garrison of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army conducted the 22nd rotation of its members in the wee hours of Thursday since it began garrisoning Hong Kong in 1997,” adding:

“Approved by the Central Military Commission, the move is normal routine annual rotation in line with the Law of the People’s Republic of China on Garrisoning the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, which stipulates that ‘the Hong Kong Garrison shall practice a system of rotation of its members.’ ”

Troops underwent special training related to ongoing protests in Hong Kong so they’re able to defend the city and national sovereignty if needed.

China rotates troops in Macau the same way. The South China Morning Post said announcements of previous Hong Kong rotations were made after they occurred, this year in advance because of ongoing disruptive/violent protests.

NYT disinformation headlined: “Chinese Military Sends New Troops Into Hong Kong,” suggesting it was something other than a normal rotation.

The Times and other US establishment media ignore US dirty hands behind what’s going on.

In mid-August, Times editors falsely claimed “protesters in Hong Kong are not…pro-Western troublemakers,” adding:

“They are young people, a great many of them, who ardently don’t want to come further under the repressive rule of the Chinese Communists.”

So-called “Chinese Communists” have been capitalists for decades, their model superior to the Western one.

The US wants China transformed into a client state, the country exploited, its development as a world power checked, what Trump’s trade war aims to achieve, what Beijing is challenging to prevent.

The Times and other Western media fail to explain that Hong Kong residents are freer under Chinese rule since its 1997 takeover than as a UK crown colony from 1843 until that time.

Britain and France fought two opium wars against China — from 1839-1842 preceding UK annexation of Hong Kong, and from 1856 – 1860, exploiting the Chinese for profit-making.

A Final Comment

Sputnik International reported that US troops are training in Poland under harsh conditions for “possible war” against China or Russia — the only nations able to challenge US rage for global dominance.

According to US Col. Donn Yates, Pentagon forces are enduring (combat) field-like conditions — claiming “(t)he more it sucks out here…the higher the morale is.”

Having experienced a week of similar conditions in the 1950s during army training, I and others with me yearned for the ordeal to end.

There was nothing remotely related to morale uplifting about living in the field, sleeping on the ground, eating awful food, being pushed hard, and using slit trenches we dug to relieve ourselves.

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

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

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

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

The Amazon is burning. Nearly 75,000 fires have started in the iconic Brazilian rainforest this year to date, an 84 percent increase from the year before. Since August 10, a spate of intentionally set fires have been raging in the Amazon. But Brazil’s president Jair Bolsonaro, who took office in January, let them burn for two weeks before sending firefighters to put them out following an international outcry.

Fires ravaging the Amazon pose imminent peril to the 34 million people and 3 million species of animals and plants that live in the world’s largest rainforest, which covers 2 million square miles.

Damage from the raging fires will change the face of the planet. The rainforest is home to 10 percent of the species on Earth, including many types of plants and animals that cannot be found anywhere else.

“The loss of the Amazon’s biodiversity will be beyond devastating for the planet,” Dahr Jamail wrote in Truthout, noting that many scientists consider the Amazon to be the Earth’s most important site of biodiversity.

“An International Crisis”

French president Emmanuel Macron tweeted,

“Our house is burning. Literally,” and exhorted, “Members of the G7 Summit, let’s discuss this emergency first order in two days!”

Bristling at Macron’s exhortation, Bolsonaro wrote on Twitter,

“The French president’s suggestion that Amazon issues be discussed at the G-7 without participation by the countries in the region evokes a colonialist mentality that is out of place in the 21st century.”

In light of Bolsonaro’s refusal to provide resources to extinguish the fires, Macron threatened to block the Mercosur-European Union trade deal. Bolsonaro capitulated. He allocated $7 million and sent 44,000 troops and military aircraft to the burning areas.

But that falls short of what is needed to put out the fires and save the Amazon.

“We’re talking about battling what will be hundreds of fires burning simultaneously, beyond any road network, distributed across thousands of miles,” according to Douglas Morton, head of the Biospheric Sciences Laboratory at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. “It’s quite a challenge to mobilize resources for one of these fires, but to simultaneously track down and put out a number of these sorts of fires … demands essentially a full press,” adding, “You really do need thousands of people.”

The countries in the G-7 – the U.S., Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and Canada – donated $20 million to help fight the fires, but Bolsonaro refused to accept the money unless Macron apologizes. Bolsonaro is playing games while the Amazon burns.

Donald Trump, who skipped the climate meeting at the G-7 summit, later said he hadn’t agreed to contribute to the $20 million because of lack of coordination with Bolsonaro.

Moreover, even if accepted, this money would not be sufficient. Rick Swan, of the International Association of Fire Fighters, told The Washington Post that, by comparison, to extinguish the 2017 Tubbs Fire in Northern California, “the costs alone were $100 million.”

In other words, a massive international effort is needed to end the Amazon fires.

Bolsonaro’s Appeal to Anti-Colonial Politics Is Deeply Cynical

Those who are critical of ongoing colonial and neocolonial dynamics but who are not entirely familiar with the context of the fires in Brazil may at first be skittish about backing international efforts to pressure Bolsonaro to end the fires. In truth, however, Bolsonaro’s appeal to anti-colonial politics is deeply cynical and should not deter progressives with anti-colonial commitments from backing international endeavors to end the fires.

The cynicism of Bolsonaro’s anti-colonial appeal is evident in the context of widespread popular protests in which Brazilians have marched holding signs with messages, such as “The Amazon belongs to the world, and we need the world’s help right now” and “SOS.” Protesters took part in some 30 demonstrations across Brazil last weekend, and thousands of demonstrators marching in Rio chanted, “The Amazon stays, out with Bolsonaro.”

Indigenous peoples in Brazil have also made clear that they hold Bolsonaro’s government responsible for the destruction of the Amazon. The Coordination of Indigenous Organizations of the Brazilian Amazon (COIAB) issued a statement expressing “extreme concern about the rapid destruction of the Amazon rainforest, home to our families and to all the resources we need to live.” COIAB stated,

“The related record rates of deforestation and outbreaks of fire are a consequence of the anti-indigenous and anti-environmental genocidal speeches of this government.”

A group of Indigenous Huni Kuin leaders recently called for a stop to the fires, saying:

“Nature is crying and we are crying. If we don’t stop this destruction of Mother Nature, future generations will live in a completely different world to the one we live in today. This is Mother Nature’s cry, asking us to help her. And we are working today so that humanity has a future. But if we don’t stop this destruction, we will be the ones that will be extinguished, burned and the sky will descend upon us, which has already begun to happen.”

The UN Security Council Should Order International Firefighters and Economic Boycott

As empowered by the United Nations Charter, the Security Council should find that the fires in the Amazon pose a “threat to the peace” and order measures to restore and maintain international peace and security. Those measures “may include complete or partial interruption of economic relations.”

The Council should require that member states refrain from entering into trade agreements with Brazil unless and until it agrees to allow international economic and physical firefighting assistance. As Moira Birss, Amazon Watch’s finance campaign director said in a release issued by the Institute for Public Accuracy (IPA),

“Now that the world is finally paying attention, it’s important to also understand that governments and companies around the world are emboldening Bolsonaro’s toxic policies when they enter trade agreements with his government or invest in agribusiness companies operating in the Amazon.”

In addition, the Council should order member states to contribute money and personnel to fight the fires raging in the Amazon.

There is precedent for this type of resolution. In 1985, the Council passed Resolution 569, which condemned the South African government’s policy of apartheid. It urged UN members to adopt measures including suspension of all new investment in South Africa, prohibition of the sale of South African currency and coins, restrictions on cultural relations and sports, suspension of guaranteed export loans, prohibition of new nuclear contracts, and prohibition of sales of computer equipment that could be used by the South African police and army. The international boycott of South Africa led to the end of the apartheid regime.

All UN member countries are bound by the resolutions of the Security Council. Article 25 of the Charter says,

“The members of the United Nations agree to accept and carry out the decisions of the Security Council.”

And Article 49 states that the UN members “shall join in affording mutual assistance in carrying out the measures” upon which the Council decides.

Bolsonaro’s Policies Have Exacerbated the Fires

Fires do not ignite themselves in the rainforest.

“Basically, the Amazon hadn’t burnt in hundreds of thousands or millions of years,” said William Magnusson, a biodiversity specialist at the National Institute of Amazonian Research in Brazil. According to National Geographic, “A growing number of manmade fires have plagued the Amazon in recent years, imperiling the ecosystem. The rainforest is not built for fire.”

Farmers in the Amazon cut down trees to clear the area for planting. Miners and loggers start fires to cover their illegal activities. And some fires are set to force Indigenous peoples from their land. Bolsonaro, however, has fanned the flames in the Amazon.

A New York Times analysis found that for the first six months of 2019, Bolsonaro’s pro-development, anti-environmental policies led to a 20 percent decrease in enforcement measures aimed at protecting against deforestation, as compared to the same period in 2018.

“Bolsonaro must take immediate, comprehensive steps to not only extinguish these fires but also address the root causes of this environmental catastrophe: the roll-back of environmental and indigenous rights protections and the recklessness of the profit-seeking agribusiness industry,” Christian Poirier, program director at Amazon Watch, said on the IPA release. But, he added, “This burden isn’t on the Brazilian government alone. We are all global citizens of our shared planet and must take shared responsibility for its preservation.”

We must act internationally to save the precious Amazon rainforest. Citizens of the 15 member countries on the Security Council should pressure their governments to vote in favor of a resolution calling for an economic boycott of Brazil and the provision of resources to quell the forest fires. The future of our planet is at stake.

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Copyright © Truthout. Reprinted with permission.

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. She is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image: An aerial image of the Amazon burning in the Jamanxim Environmental Protection Area in the city of Novo Progresso in Pará state, Brazil. (Source: VICTOR MORIYAMA / GREENPEACE)

What heralded the United States as a uniquely dangerous force was its creation of the atomic bomb, the world’s first nuclear weapon. Prompting this was Albert Einstein‘s signing of a letter regarding nuclear research, drafted by his fellow physicists Leo Szilard and Eugene Wigner, then quickly dispatched on 2 August 1939 to president Franklin D. Roosevelt.

The letter detailed a formulation of “extremely powerful bombs of a new type” which “may thus be constructed”, and urged America to pursue the invention of such weapons before the Nazis. Fear of Hitler attaining atomic bombs was Einstein’s sole concern. Roosevelt responded on 19 October 1939 promising to “thoroughly investigate the possibilities of your suggestion”.

After two years of analysis and inquiries, Roosevelt formally established America’s nuclear program on 19 January 1942, called the Manhattan Project – with a final $2 billion budget supporting it ($36 billion today) and employing over 130,000 people.

Einstein himself, whose parents were Jewish, had much reason to be aggrieved with the Nazis. In March 1933, the 54-year-old Einstein was left severely shaken upon learning that men loyal to Hitler had raided his summer cottage in Caputh, a village just 30 miles from Berlin. His lakeside residence was then converted into a Hitler Youth camp. This was the due thanks afforded to Einstein after decades of glittering service to his country.

Einstein, born in the southern German city of Ulm, quickly renounced his citizenship and spent periods in Belgium and England, before settling in America by the mid-1930s.

In September 1933, after a visit to an exiled Winston Churchill, Einstein said of Hitler’s rise to power,

“I cannot understand the passive response of the whole civilized world to this modern barbarism. Does the world not see that Hitler is aiming at war?”

Later, Hitler’s pursuit of murderous policies would result in the deaths of about 35 million people. Yet the global human population in 1940 stood at just over 2.2 billion. Hitler’s brutal methods had only reached a certain point, though he was indeed determined to wipe out the Jewish race, from Lisbon to the Urals.

Elsewhere, Hitler had recognized the path to nuclear weapons could see the earth “transformed into a glowing star” as observed in June 1942 by Albert Speer, the Third Reich’s leading war minister and architect. Speer also noted that “Hitler was plainly not delighted” the globe under his command could be incinerated by the route to obtain atomic bombs. Almost inevitably, Hitler also linked nuclear fission as belonging to “Jewish pseudo-science”.

Born 10 years after Einstein, Hitler comprised part of the First World War generation; that being, those born long before the era of endless technological advancements and mass production, which tens of millions have become accustomed to post-1945.

The Nazi leader’s vision of armaments was entrenched with antiquity, and he instinctively disapproved of modern contraptions. Of the airplane’s 1903 invention, Hitler informed the SS commander Heinrich Himmler in early November 1941 that,

“The world has ceased to be interesting since men began to fly. Until then, there were white patches on the map. The mystery has vanished, it’s all over”.

In the evening of 29 October 1941, Hitler said to an approving Field Marshal Günther von Kluge,

“In a campaign it’s the infantryman who, when all’s said, sets the tempo of operation with his legs. That consideration should bid us to keep motorization within reasonable limits. Instead of the six horses that used to pull an instrument of war, they’ve taken to using an infinitely more powerful motor-engine, with the sole objective of making possible a speed which is, in practice, unusable – that’s been proved”.

These opinions were expressed at the height of Operation Barbarossa on the Eastern Front. Meanwhile, the Nazis’ atomic bomb project was abandoned forever in the autumn of 1942. Had Einstein predicted such eventualities, he would surely not have signed his name to the Roosevelt letter; indeed, he may have strongly advised against America developing atomic weapons. In 1954, the year before he died, Einstein described his role in America’s nuclear program as the “one great mistake in my life”.

As seen, in mid-January 1942 Roosevelt authorized the atomic bomb project, one month after America declared war on Germany and Japan. Throughout 1942, America’s pursuit of the atomic bomb could be excused by pointing towards the Nazis, who still employed hugely gifted scientists like Werner Heisenberg and Wernher von Braun.

With the war advancing into 1943, it was becoming clear to the British that Hitler possessed no nuclear program, mainly due to information relayed to them from Paul Rosbaud, Britain’s spy operating in Germany. These reports were relayed to the Americans, who remained skeptical initially.

However, by spring 1944, US leaders were convinced that Hitler had no such project to develop atomic bombs. What’s more, the Wehrmacht was now set in unmistakable retreat.

Militarily-speaking, but most importantly from an ethical viewpoint, Roosevelt should have disbanded America’s nuclear program from at least early 1944. At this late date, Roosevelt’s health was in steep decline, yet he still commanded office and began a fourth term as president in January 1945. It seems that Roosevelt simply could not grasp the grave threat that atomic bombs posed to the planet.

By 1944, America’s ambitions with regard nuclear weapons had also shifted towards a purely imperial outlook. From winter 1943, US strategists identified that the USSR would be their principal rival at war’s end – the same USSR who then ranked as America’s indispensable ally against both Germany, and later Japan. America’s atomic weapons were thereafter being constructed with the Russians in mind, as confirmed in 1944 by Leslie Groves, who was directing the Manhattan Project.

Over dinner in March 1944, Groves told his nuclear physicist Joseph Rotblat that “the real purpose in making the bomb was to subdue the Soviets”. Rotblat was “terribly shocked” to hear this and in late 1944 he resigned from the program.

Rotblat was the only scientist to depart America’s nuclear project on ethical grounds. This is perhaps not so surprising. The typical scientist, once set towards an important task, becomes consumed by the work, convincing him or herself that the research they are conducting is morally correct and of benefit to humankind – even when the mounting evidence suggests otherwise. After all, why did almost the entirety of America’s scientists continue working on the atomic bomb when Hitler was defeated, and Japan virtually so?

Despite many scientists possessing very high levels of intelligence, they can submit willingly to state power, unquestioningly obeying orders from government bosses. Some scientists are heroic and others less so. A good number too are naive to politics and the surrounding world, assuring themselves that their country’s leaders are of sound character. The Manhattan Project is a landmark example of this glaring lack of political and moral awareness regarding scientists.

In late morning of 24 July 1945, the combined American and British Chiefs of Staff convened near Berlin to discuss the atomic bomb, with new US president Harry Truman in attendance, along with British counterpart Churchill. Amid all these prestigious figures, not one person put forward an objection to deployment of atomic weapons. Churchill revealed, “There was unanimous, automatic, unquestioned agreement around our table”.

Truman himself said later,

“The final decision of where and when to use the atomic bomb was up to me. Let there be no mistake about it. I regarded the bomb as a military weapon and never had any doubt that it should be used”.

It may be worth remembering that, throughout the latter half of World War II, American and British bombers had attacked German and Japanese cities with increasing ferocity. Since 1942, the ethical aspects of war had largely been cast to the winds. By mid-1945, hundreds of thousands of German and Japanese civilians were killed, due to indiscriminate Allied bombing. These policies had prior agreement in British and American government headquarters.

As a result, in the minds of Allied political and military chiefs, the atomic bomb was just another step towards a more powerful weapon to be used against the enemy. Yet the absence of foresight on the Allies’ part is remarkable, not to mention dangerous without precedent.

It hardly required a great mind to realize that Stalin would soon produce his own atomic arsenal, and by August 1949 the Soviet Union successfully tested a nuclear device, a replica of America’s Nagasaki bomb. The policies sought first by Roosevelt, and pushed through by Truman with British support, have seen the world become indescribably dangerous after 1945.

In November 1952 (again under Truman) the Americans developed the hydrogen bomb, up to a thousand times more powerful than its atomic cousin. The Soviets quickly followed suit. In 1947, the Doomsday Clock had been established by atomic scientists, and come 1953 they advanced its hand to two minutes to midnight (apocalypse), which is its position today.

Once more, with the hydrogen bomb’s creation, lack of concern for our globe and humanity as a whole is indeed staggering. The elapsing decades have witnessed many close calls and near-accidents – the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis standing out most clearly.

Entering 2019, the threat of nuclear conflict is likely higher than during the Cold War’s darkest days. This is mostly due to aggressive policies engineered by the Donald Trump administration, governing the world’s dominant nuclear and military power.

It is borne out in Trump’s 2018 Nuclear Posture Review, which lowers the threshold for war; his trillion dollar modernization of America’s nuclear arsenal sparking another arms race; his plan to ditch Cold War-era treaties that attempted to contain nuclear threats and further proliferation; his amassing of huge US forces to encircle nuclear-armed China; NATO’s continuing intimidation and provocation of Russia, another nuclear superpower.

Trump’s climate actions have also constituted a catastrophe, the result of which saw America’s carbon emissions rise by over 3% in 2018. It is, for reasons such as these, that the Doomsday Clock is likely to advance once more later this January, for the third consecutive year. In that case, it is the closest the hand will have ever been to midnight.

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Shane Quinn obtained an honors journalism degree. He is interested in writing primarily on foreign affairs, having been inspired by authors like Noam Chomsky. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from Strategic Culture Foundation

“Towards a World War III Scenario: The Dangers of Nuclear War” 

by Michel Chossudovsky

Available to order from Global Research! 

ISBN Number: 978-0-9737147-5-3
Year: 2012
Pages: 102
Print Edition: $10.25 (+ shipping and handling)
PDF Edition:  $6.50 (sent directly to your email account!)

Michel Chossudovsky is Professor of Economics at the University of Ottawa and Director of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG), which hosts the critically acclaimed website www.globalresearch.ca . He is a contributor to the Encyclopedia Britannica. His writings have been translated into more than 20 languages.

Reviews

“This book is a ‘must’ resource – a richly documented and systematic diagnosis of the supremely pathological geo-strategic planning of US wars since ‘9-11’ against non-nuclear countries to seize their oil fields and resources under cover of ‘freedom and democracy’.”
–John McMurtry, Professor of Philosophy, Guelph University

“In a world where engineered, pre-emptive, or more fashionably “humanitarian” wars of aggression have become the norm, this challenging book may be our final wake-up call.”
-Denis Halliday, Former Assistant Secretary General of the United Nations

Michel Chossudovsky exposes the insanity of our privatized war machine. Iran is being targeted with nuclear weapons as part of a war agenda built on distortions and lies for the purpose of private profit. The real aims are oil, financial hegemony and global control. The price could be nuclear holocaust. When weapons become the hottest export of the world’s only superpower, and diplomats work as salesmen for the defense industry, the whole world is recklessly endangered. If we must have a military, it belongs entirely in the public sector. No one should profit from mass death and destruction.
–Ellen Brown, author of ‘Web of Debt’ and president of the Public Banking Institute   

The commemoration of 9/11 on September 11, 2019 is fast approaching.

The following text (including a selection of articles) was first posted seven years ago on September 12, 2012.

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Whoever dares raise questions about the official 9/11 narrative, will be excluded from both the mainstream and  “progressive” media, dismissed as a mentally disturbed individual, lost in delirium, harboring wild conspiracy theories.

In reality, the governmental spoon-fed 9/11 myth crumbles like a house of cards when confronted to facts and scientific analysis.

That is why to keep the myth alive,  the facts surrounding 9/11 need to be continuously censored. In the process, the U.S. government’s propaganda has reached all-time highs. In addition to the 9/11 mainstream media myth factory,  both presidents George W Bush and Barack Obama have seized every opportunity to fuel the myth since the fatal attacks on September 11, 2001.

As James Corbett notes:

In his latest weekly address to the nation, President Obama asserts that America’s questions about 9/11 have been answered. If only it were so.

The questions of 9/11 have only continued to pile up higher since that fateful day, and despite official platitudes we are no closer to having those questions answered today then we were when they first arose. In fact, for some of the most important 9/11 questions, the government’s own documents and records that could conceivably answered them have been destroyed, meaning we may never have answers. ( James Corbett, The Unanswered Questions of 9/11)

Former assistant secretary of the US Treasury Dr. Paul Craig Roberts, who had high level security clearance while in office, immediately doubted the official narrative. The scale of the security failure “was too massive to be credible”:

The more the story of 9/11 was presented in the media, the more wondrous it became. It is not credible that not only the CIA and FBI failed to detect the plot, but also all 16 US intelligence agencies, including the National Security Agency, which spies on everyone on the planet, and the Defense Intelligence Agency, Israel’s Mossad, and the intelligence agencies of Washington‟s NATO allies. There are simply too many watchmen and too much infiltration of terrorist groups for such a complex attack to be prepared undetected and carried out undeterred.

Washington’s explanation of the attack implied a security failure too massive to be credible. Such a catastrophic failure of national security would mean that the US and Western Europe were never safe for one second during the Cold War, that the Soviet Union could have destroyed the entire West in one undetected fell swoop. (Paul Craig Roberts, On 9/11 Doubts Were Immediate)

We need to know the truth about 9/11.

The 9/11 Commission was a colossal cover-up exercise even according to the Commission’s own chairmen Thomas Kean and Lee H. Hamilton. Let us not forget that the 9/11 myth is the pillar of another fabrication, the so-called “Global War on Terrorism” and constitutes the one and only pretext for the U.S. imperialist war on the world, responsible for the death of millions of innocent civilians.

As long as the lie is perpetuated, women, men and children will be killed, whole families and countries will be destroyed in the name of an elusive anti-terrorism campaign.

The Global Research website was launched on the 9th of September 2001, Since its inception, Global Research has been offering its readers with important facts, scientific and political evidence which refute  the official 9/11 narrative.

Here is a list of selected articles [published in 2012] on that important topic.

***

Selected articles 

First published in March 2019

Introduction

Not since the US pronounced the Monroe Doctrine proclaiming its imperial supremacy over Latin America, nearly 200 years ago, has a White House regime so openly affirmed its mission to recolonize Latin America.

The second decade of the 21st century has witnessed, in word and deed, the most thorough and successful US recolonization of Latin America, and its active and overt role as colonial sepoys of an imperial power.

In this paper we will examine the process of recolonization and the strategy tactics and goals which are the driving forces of colony- building. We will conclude by discussing the durability, stability and Washington’s capacity to retain ownership of the Hemisphere.

A Brief History of 20th Century Colonization and Decolonization

US colonization of Latin America was based on direct US military, economic, cultural and political interventions with special emphasis on Central America, North America (Mexico) and the Caribbean. Washington resorted to military invasions, to impose favorite trade and investment advantages and appointed and trained local military forces to uphold colonial rule and to ensure submission to US regional and global supremacy.

The US challenged rival European colonial powers – in particular England and Germany, and eventually reduced them to marginal status, through military and economic pressure and threats.

The recolonization process suffered severe setbacks in some regions and nations with the onset of the Great Depression which undermined the US military and economic presence and facilitated the rise of powerful nationalist regimes and movements in particular in Argentina, Brazil, Chile Nicaragua and Cuba.

The process of ‘decolonization’ led to, and included, the nationalization of US oil fields, sugar and mining sectors; a shift in foreign policy toward relatively greater independence; and labor laws which increased workers’ rights and leftwing unionization.

The US victory in World War II and its economic supremacy led Washington to re-assert its colonial rule in the Western Hemisphere. The Latin American regimes lined up with Washington in the Cold and Hot wars, backing the US wars against China, Korea, Vietnam and the confrontation against the USSR and Eastern Europe.

For Washington, working through its colonized dictatorial regimes, invaded every sector of the economy, especially agro-minerals; it proceeded to dominate markets and sought to impose colonized trade unions run by the imperial-centered AFL-CIO.

By the early 1960’s a wave of popular nationalist and socialist social movements challenged the colonial order, led by the Cuban revolution and accompanied by nationalist governments throughout the continent including Argentina, Bolivia, Venezuela, Peru, Ecuador and the Dominican Republic. US multi-national manufacturing firms were forced to engage in joint ventures or were nationalized, as were oil, mineral and energy sectors.

Nationalists proceeded to substitute local products for imports, as a development strategy. A process of decolonization was underway!

The US reacted by launching a war to recolonize Latin America by through military coups, invasions and rigged elections. Latin America once more lined up with the US in support of its economic boycott of Cuba,and the repression of nationalist governments. The US reversed nationalist policies and denationalized their economies under the direction of US controlled so-called international financial organizations – like the International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Bank (WB) Inter-American Development Bank.

The recolonization process advanced, throughout the 1970’s and 1980’s, under the auspices of newly imposed military regimes and the new ‘neo-liberal’ free-market doctrine.

Once again recolonization led to highly polarized societies in which the domestic colonized elites were a distinct minority. Moreover, the colonial economic doctrine allowed the US banks and investors to plunder the Latin countries, impose out- of -control debt burdens, de-industrialization of the economies, severe increases in unemployment and a precipitous decline in living standards.

By the early years of the 21st century, deepening colonization led to an economic crisis and the resurgence of mass movements and new waves of nationalist-popular movements which sought to reverse – at least in part – the colonial relationship and structures.

Colonial debts were renegotiated or written off; a few foreign firms were nationalized; taxes were increased on agro-exporters; increases in public welfare spending reduced poverty ; public investment increased salaries and wages. A process of de-colonization advanced, aided by a boom in commodity pieces.

Twenty-first century decolonization was partial and affected only a limited sector of the economy; it mainly increased popular consumption rather than structural changes in property and financial power.

De-colonization co-existed with colonial power elites. The major significant changes took place with regard to regional policies. Decolonizing elites established regional alliance which excluded or minimized the US presence.

Regional power shifted to Argentina and Brazil in Mercosur; Venezuela in Central America and the Caribbean; Ecuador and Bolivia in the Andean region.

But as history has demonstrated, imperial power can suffer reverses and lose collaborators but while the US retains its military and economic levers of power it can and will use all the instruments of power to recolonize the region, in a step by step approach, incorporating regions in its quest for hemisphere supremacy.

The Recolonization of Latin America: Brazil, Argentina, and the Lima Pact Against Venezuela

As the first decade of the 21st century unfolded numerous Latin American governments and movements began the process of decolonization, displacing US client regimes, taking the lead in regional organizations, diversifying their markets and trading partners.

Nevertheless, the leaders and parties were incapable and unwilling to break with local elites tied to the US colonization project.

Vulnerable to downward movements in commodity prices, composed of heterogeneous political alliances and unable to create or deepen anti-colonial culture, the US moved to reconstruct its colonial project.

The US struck first at the ‘weakest link’ of the decolonization process. The US backed coups in Honduras and Paraguay. Then Washington turned to converting the judiciary and congress as stepping stones for launching a political attack on the strategic regimes in Argentina and Brazil and turning secondary regimes in Ecuador, Chile, Peru and El Salvador into the US orbit.

As the recolonization process advanced, the US regained its dominance in regional and international organizations. The colonized regimes privatized their economies and Washington secured regimes willing to assume onerous debts, previously repudiated.

The US advances in recolonization looked toward targeting the oil rich, dynamic and formidable anti-colonial government in Venezuela.

Venezuela was targeted for several strategic reasons.

First, Venezuela under President Chavez opposed US regional and global colonial ambitions.

Secondly, Caracas provided financial resources to bolster and promote anti-colonial regimes throughout Latin America especially in the Caribbean and Central America.

Thirdly, Venezuela invested in, and implemented, a profound and comprehensive state social agenda, building schools and hospitals with free education and health care, subsidized food and housing. Socialist democratic Venezuela contrasted with the US abysmal dismantling of the welfare state among the reconstructed colonial states.

Fourthly, Venezuela’s national control over natural resources, especially oil, was a strategic target in Washington imperial agenda.

While the US successfully reduced or eliminated Venezuela’s allies in the rest of Latin America, its repeated efforts to subdue Venezuela failed.

An abortive coup was defeated; as was a referendum to impeach President Chavez.

US boycotts and the bankrolling of elections failed to oust the Venezuelan government

Washington was unable to pressure and secure the backing of the mass of the population or the military.

Coup techniques, successful in imposing colonial regimes elsewhere, failed.

The US turned to a multi-prong, continent-wide, covert and overt military, political, economic and cultural war.

The White House appointed Juan Guaido, a virtual unknown, as ‘interim President’. Guaido was elected to Congress with 25% of the vote in his home district. Washington spent millions of dollars in promoting Guaido and funding NGOs and self-styled human rights organization to slander the Venezuelan government and launch violent attacks on the security forces.

The White House rounded up its recolonized regimes in the region to recognize Guaido as the ‘legitimate President’.

Washington recruited several leading European Union countries, especially the UK, France and Germany to isolate Venezuela.

The US sought to penetrate and subvert the Venezuelan populace via so-called humanitarian aid, refusing to work through the Red Cross and other independent organizations.

The White House fixed the weekend of Feb. 23 – 24 as the moment to oust President Maduro. It was a total, unmitigated failure, putting the lie to all of Washington’s fabrications.

The US claimed the Armed Forces would defect and join with the US funded opposition – only a hundred or so , out of 260,000 did so. The military remained loyal to the Venezuelan people, the government and the constitution despite bribes and promises.

Washington claimed ‘the people’ in Venezuela would launch an insurrection and hundreds of thousands would cross the border. Apart from a few dozen street thugs, tossing Molotov cocktails there was no uprising and less than a few hundred tried to cross the border.

Tons of US ‘aid’ remained in the Colombian warehouses. The Brazilian border patrol sent the US funded ‘protestors’ packing for blocking free passage across the frontier

Even US provocateurs who incinerated two trucks carrying ‘aid’ were exposed, the vehicles in flames remained on the Colombian side of the border. US sponsored boycotts of Venezuelan oil exports partially succeed because Washington illegaly seized Venezuela export revenues.

The recolonized Lima Group passed hostile resolutions and re-anointed Trump’s President Guaido, but few voters in the region took their pronouncements serious.

Conclusion

What are the colonized states expected to serve? Why has the White House failed to recolonize Venezuela as it did in the rest of Latin America?

The recolonized states in Latin America serve to open their markets to US investors on easy terms, with low taxes and social and labor costs, and political and economic stability based on repression of popular class and national struggles.

Colonized regimes are expected to support US boycotts, coups and invasions and to supply military troops as ordered.

Colonized regimes take the US side in international conflicts and negotiations; in regional organizations they vote with the US and meet debt payments on time and in full.

The recolonized nations ensure favorable results for Washington by manipulating elections and judicial decisions and by excluding anti-colonial candidates and officials and arresting political activists.

The colonized regimes anticipate the needs and demands of Washington and introduce resolutions on their behalf in regional organizations.

In the case of Venezuela, they promote and organize regional bloc like the Lima Group to promote US led intervention.

As Washington proceeds to destabilize Venezuela the colonized allies recycle US mass media propaganda and offer sanctuaries for opposition defectors and refugees.

In sum the recolonized elites facilitate domestic plunder and overseas conquests.

Venezuela success in resisting and defeating the US drive for reconquest is the result of nationalist and socialist leaders who re-allocate private wealth and re-distribute public expenditures to the workers, peasants and the unemployed.

Under President Chavez, Venezuela recruited and promoted military and security forces loyal to the constitutional order and in line with a popular socio-economic and anti-colonial agenda. Venezuela ensured that elections and judicial appointments were free and in-line with the politics of the majority.

The Venezuelans ensured that military advisers were independent of US military missions and aid agencies which plot coups and are disloyal to the nationalist state.

Venezuelan social democracy, its social advances and the massive reduction of poverty and inequality, contributed to reinforcing commitments to endogenous cultural values and national sovereignty.

Despite the US accumulation of colonial vassals throughout Latin America and Europe, Venezuela has consolidated mass support. Despite Washington’s capture of the global mass media it has not influenced popular opinion on a world scale. Despite US threats of a ‘military option’it lacks global support. In the face of prolonged and large scale resistance ,Washington hesitates. In addition the Latin Americans colonized states face domestic social and economic crises and political resistance. Europe confronts a regional break-up. Washington is riven by partisan divisions and a constitutional crisis.

The failure of the imperialist ultra’s in Washington to defeat Venezuela can set in motion a new wave of decolonization struggles which can force the US to look inward and downward – in order to decolonize its own electorate.

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Award winning author Prof. James Petras is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization.

Featured image: A protest outside the United States Consulate in Sydney on January 23 2019 to demand no US intervention in Venezuela. Photo: Peter Boyle