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Richard Nixon was a friend of the earth, Donald Trump its mortal enemy.

Following the 1969 offshore Santa Barbara, CA February oil spill, the largest in US waters to that time, (now third-ranked after the 1989 Exxon Valdez and 2010 Deepwater Horizon spills), still the largest in offshore California waters, newly inaugurated Richard Nixon visited the affected area.

He overflew the polluted waters in a low-flying helicopter, then walked along the oil-soiled sand with his entourage and press, saying the following:

“What is involved is something much bigger than Santa Barbara. What is involved is the use of our resources of the sea and the land in a more effective way, and with more concern for preserving the beauty and the natural resources that are so important to any kind of society that we want for the future.”

“I don’t think we have paid enough attention to this…We are going to do a better job than we have done in the past.”

Skeptical environmentalists became believers. He established the Environmental Environmental Policy Act, the EPA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the Clean Air Act, Earth Week, the Clean Water Act, and Endangered Species Act (ESA).

There’s plenty about Nixon to criticize. Overlooked were his eco-friendly policies — unmatched by today’s Republicans and undemocratic Dems.

What Nixon established, Trump is going all-out to eliminate, most recently steps to roll back ESA protections.

Established in 1973, it was enacted “to provide for the conservation of endangered and threatened species of fish, wildlife, and plants (from the) consequence of economic growth and development untempered by adequate concern and conservation.”

It requires federal agencies to consult with the Fish and Wildlife Service &/or National Marine Fisheries Service administering the law — to ensure public actions don’t jeopardize the existence of any species or their habitats.

On Monday, the Center for Biological Diversity said the following:

“In a massive attack on imperiled wildlife, the Trump (regime)  finalized rollbacks to regulations implementing key provisions of the Endangered Species Act,” adding:

“The changes, which could lead to extinction for hundreds of animals and plants, are illegal and will be challenged in court.”

Changes finalized on Monday by Trump’s Interior Department secretary David Bernhardt, a former fossil fuel lobbyist, “crash(ed) a bulldozer through (ESA’s) lifesaving protections for America’s most vulnerable wildlife.”

“For animals like wolverines and monarch butterflies, this could be the beginning of the end.”

“We’ll fight the Trump (regime) in court to block this rewrite, which only serves the oil industry and other polluters who see endangered species as pesky inconveniences.”

Trump’s ecocidal agenda aims “to undercut protections for the nation’s air, land, wildlife and water.”

On the same day, Earth Justice said the Nixon era’s ESA “did in 1973 what no country had done before, establishing a commitment to protect and restore the species that are most at risk of extinction.”

ESA “is one of the most popular and effective environmental laws ever enacted.”

After becoming law 46 year ago, “99% of species (it) protected…have not perished.”

The six most endangered species from Trump’s action are gray wolves, bald eagles, grizzly bears, killer whales, Florida manatees, and whooping cranes, said Earth Justice.

Also on Monday, the National Resources Defense Council (NDRC) said Trump’s drastic rollback action came “months after the United Nations released a dire report, warning that one million species could go extinct if business continues as usual.”

“We’re facing an extinction crisis, and the (Trump regime) is placing industry needs above the needs of our natural heritage,” NRDC’s Nature Program legal director Rebecca Riley stressed.

The UN report explained that the pace of species loss worldwide today is hundreds of times greater than any time in the past 10 million years — repeat: 10 million years.

Critical forests, oceans, other waterways, wetlands, and overall nature are being devastated by climate change and over-development in areas vital to preserve for the species of the earth that need them to stay alive.

Friends of the Earth (FOA) said “Trump wants to sell off our lands and waters to Big Oil” and other corporate polluters.

In June, FOE notified Trump regime officials that it intends to sue NOAA “under the Endangered Species Act Regarding Sea Grant’s Funding of Offshore Aquaculture Projects.”

Time and again, Trump proved he’s an enemy of the earth and all its life forms — serving exploitive monied interests at the expense of peace, equity and justice for all.

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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.

Government forces are developing their advance in the southern part of the Idlib de-escalation zone.

The Syrian military has deployed a new batch of reinforcements, including battle tanks from the 4^th Armoured Division, to the frontline. According to pro-government sources, these reinforcements will take part in the ongoing Syrian Army offensive in northwestern Hama and southern Idlib.

On August 13, a firefights took place east of Sukayk, but no notable changes on the frontline took place. Syrian Army units made an attempt to capture Tel Tari, but the attack was repelled by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham. In a separate development, government troops liberated Kafr Ayn.

An increased usage of anti-tank guided missiles was also reported.

On August 12, a Turkish military convoy accompanied by militants visited Tell Tuqan, Surman and Morek. According to local sources, Ankara is now actively working behind the scenes to rescue militants besieged in northern Hama.

The Syrian Army and its allies are preparing to capture Kafr Zita and Khan Shaykhun and cut off the rest of supply lines to the key militant stronghold of Lataminah.

The Syrian Air Force and the Russian Aerospace Forces continued their bombing campaign against militants’ infrastructure in the area. According to data released by the Russian Defense Ministry, the priority targets of the bombing campaign is underground hideouts, gatherings of military equipment and convoys of the terrorists.

10 villages in the Syrian province of Raqqah have signed a reconciliation agreement with the Damascus government, the Russian Defense Ministry’s Center for Reconciliation of Opposing Sides in Syria said on August 12. According to the released report, the total population of the villages is around 20,000 people. The Russian Defense Ministry provided no further details regarding the development. The Syrian Democratic Forces and the US-led coalition have not commented on the situation yet.

Such developments are a notable blow to the US-led efforts to isolate the US-occupied, northwestern part of Syria from the rest of the country.

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Public ignorance and indifference about major issues let US authorities get away with mass murder and much more.

In a June 1950 commencement address, Boston University President Daniel Marsh said:

“If the (television) craze continues…we are destined to have a nation of morons.”

Long before the television age, political commentator Walter Lippmann called the US public a “bewildered herd…their function (to be) spectators (not) participants” in affairs of state.

Industrialist Henry Ford believed if ordinary Americans “underst(ood) our banking and monetary system (there’d) be a revolution before tomorrow morning.”

Governance in the US, other Western societies, and most other nations, is all about serving privileged interests exclusively, exploiting most others to benefit the rich and powerful.

Know-nothing Americans indeed let both extremist right wings of the nation’s war party wage hot war and by other means on humanity — at home and abroad.

Jefferson called an educated citizenry “a vital requisite for our survival as a free people.”

Madison warned that “(a) popular government, without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a prologue to a farce or a tragedy, or, perhaps both.”

Jack Kennedy said “(t)he ignorance of one (US) voter impairs the security of all.”

The power of media propaganda keeps most Americans uninformed in the dark about vital issues affecting their rights, welfare, lives and futures.

Iran and Venezuela are in the eye of the US storm, “maximum pressure” Trump regime war on both countries by other means raging, most Americans ignorant about what’s going on.

Establishment media support what demands denunciation, manipulating the public mind for powerful interests, filling it with rubbish, suppressing vital hard truths.

Days earlier, worldwide solidarity with Venezuela rallies were held in the country and other nations — supporting the Bolivarian Republic, denouncing the Trump regime’s war by other means on its people, notably its economic blockade.

Millions of Venezuelans are signing a petition against it as part of a #No More Trump global mobilization.

Communication Minister Jorge Rodriguez said in the next 30 days through September 10,

“people will sign a letter of rejection of the genocidal, racist, xenophobe” Trump.

Results will be sent to UN Secretary General Guterres, a symbolic gesture to a figure installed by the US to serve its interests.

US establishment media ignored mass pro-Bolivarian rallies and the petition drive — supporting the Trump regime’s war on Venezuela by other means.

Last May, media watchdog Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) reported that

“international corporate media have long displayed a peculiar creativity with the facts in their Venezuela reporting, to the point that coverage of the nation’s crisis has become perhaps the world’s most lucrative fictional genre.”

Anti-Bolivarian social democracy propaganda war rages. Last week, establishment media falsely called Venezuela the “cocaine capital of the world.”

Earlier I wrote about the myth of a Venezuelan cocaine super-highway to the US, falsely accusing high-level Bolivarian officials of involvement in what they’re combatting.

Minister of Industries and National Production Tareck El Aissami explained that when he “headed the public security corps of my country, in 2008 — 2012, our fight against drug cartels achieved the greatest progress in our history and in the western hemisphere, both in terms of the transnational drug trafficking business and their logistics structures,” adding:

“During those years, the Venezuelan anti-drug enforcement authorities under my leadership captured, arrested and brought 102 heads of criminal drug trafficking organizations not only to the Venezuelan justice but also to the justice of other countries where they were wanted.”

Venezuela is the leading Latin American nation in combatting the spread of illicit drugs. Falsely claiming its officials are trafficking in them by the Trump regime and major media is part of propaganda war on the country.

Support by Venezuela’s military for Bolivarian governance foiled attempts by Bush/Cheney, Obama and Trump to replace its authorities with US-controlled puppet rule.

Since establishment of the Bolivarian Republic, the NYT has waged propaganda war on its governance, supporting the US plot to return the country to client state status.

Its latest propaganda piece falsely claimed “Maduro (is) crack(ing) down on his own military…to retain power” — a Big Lie.

Further disinformation followed, falsely claiming “a majority of Venezuelans (are) left without sufficient food…”

Maduro’s Local Provision and Production Committees (CLAPs) program distributes subsidized food to around six million Venezuelan families in need, around two-thirds of the population, part of the nation’s participatory social democracy — an inconvenient fact the Times ignored.

It also falsely claimed Venezuelan “security forces (staged) at least five attempts to overthrow or assassinate the president.”

Indeed numerous attempts were made to kill Hugo Chavez and Nicolas Maduro. Obama succeeded in eliminating Chavez. Maduro survived so far.

The plots originated in Washington by three regimes, CIA dirty hands likely all over them — assassinations of foreign leaders and other key officials a longtime agency practice, another inconvenient fact the Times ignored.

Chavez and now Maduro were and continue to be bombarded with false accusations by hardline US officials, the Times, and other establishment media — while ignoring US high crimes of war and against humanity worldwide.

Without major media support for their imperial rage, hostile policies of US regimes wouldn’t get out of the starting gate.

Venezuela, Iran, China, Russia, Syria, and other nations are targeted by the US for their sovereign independence — part of its aim to rule the world and control its resources.

What’s most important to explain to the US public, the Times and other establishment media suppress — substituting disinformation, Big Lies, and fake news instead.

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Note to readers: please click the share buttons below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

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: A protest outside the United States Consulate in Sydney on January 23 2019 to demand no US intervention in Venezuela. Photo: Peter Boyle

The hybrid war, being conducted against China by the United States and its gaggle of puppet states from the UK to Canada to Australia, has entered a new phase.

The first stage involved the massive shift of US air and naval forces to the Pacific and constant provocations against China in the South China Sea and the Taiwan Strait.

The second stage was the creation of disinformation about China’s treatment of minority groups, especially in Tibet and west China.

That this propaganda campaign has been carried out by nations such as the US, Canada and Australia who have the worst human rights records in the world with respect to their indigenous peoples, subjected to centuries of cultural and physical genocide by those governments, and who refuse to protect their minority peoples from physical attacks and discrimination despite their human rights laws, shocks the conscience of any objective observer.

But not content with that, the propaganda was extended to China’s economic development, its international trade, the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, its Silk and Belt Road Initiative, its development bank, and other facilities and trade initiatives, through which China is accused of trying to control the world; an accusation made by the very nation that threatens economic embargo or worse, nuclear annihilation, to anyone, friend or foe, who resists its attempt to control the world.

The fourth phase is the US attempt to degrade the Chinese economy with punitive “tariffs,” essentially an embargo on Chinese goods. That the objective is not better trade deals but to bring China to its knees is the fact that the negative effect of these tariffs on American consumers, farmers and manufacturers is considered secondary to the principal objective.

Last year it moved to a fifth phase, the kidnapping and illegal detention of Meng Wanzhou, the Chief Financial Officer of China’s leading technology company Huawei, in synchronicity with a massive campaign by the USA to force its puppets to drop any dealings with that company. Meng Wanzhou is still held against her will in Canada on US orders. Chinese have been harassed in the US, Australia and Canada.

The latest phase in this hybrid warfare is the insurrection being provoked by the US, UK, Canada and the rest in Hong Kong, using tactics designed to provoke China into suppressing the rioters with force to amplify the anti-Chinese propaganda, or pushing the “protestors” into declaring Hong Kong independent of China and then using force to support them.

Mitch McConnell, an important US senator implicitly threatened just such a scenario in a statement on August 12th stating that the US is warning China not to block the protests and that if they are suppressed trouble will follow. In other words the US is claiming that it will protect the thugs in black shirts, the shirts of fascists. This new phase is very dangerous, as the Chinese government has time and again stated, and has to be handled with intelligence and the strength of the Chinese people.

There is now abundant evidence that the UK and US are the black hand behind the events in Hong Kong. When the Hong Kong Bar association joined in the protests the west claimed that even the lawyers were supporting the protests in an attempt to bring justice to the people. But the leaders of that association are all either UK lawyers or members of law firms based in London, such as Jimmy Chan, head of the so-called Human Civil Rights Front, formed in 2002 with the objective of breaking Honk Kong away from China, such as Kevin Lam, a partner in another London based law firm, and Steve Kwok and Alvin Yeung, members of the anti-China Civic Party who are going to meet with US officials next week.

Kwok has called for the independence of Hong Kong in other visits, some sponsored by the US National Security Council and has called for the US to invoke its Hong Kong Policy Act, which, among other things mandates the US president to issue an order suspending its treatment of Hong Kong as a separate territory in trade matters. The effect of this would be to damage China’s overall trade since a lot of its revenue comes through Hong Kong. The president can invoke the Act if it decides that Hong Kong “is not sufficiently autonomous to justify it being treated separately from China.”

In tandem with Kwok’s call for the use of that Act, US Senator Ted Cruz has filed a Bill titled the Hong Kong Revaluation Act requiring the president to report on “how China exploits Hong Kong to circumvent the laws of the United States.”

But it seems the anti-Chinese propaganda campaign is not having the effect they hoped. The New York Times ran a piece on August 13 stating, “China is waging a disinformation war against the protestors.” Embarrassed by US consular officials being caught red-handed meeting with protest leaders in a hotel in Hong Kong last week and blatant statements of support for the protestors from the US, Canada and UK as well attempts to treat Hong Kong as an independent state, the US intelligence services have now been forced to try to counter China’s accounts of the facts by declaring anything China says as disinformation.

The US and UK objectives are revealed in this statement from the article,

“Hong Kong, which Britain returned to Chinese rule in 1997, remains outside China’s firewall, and thus is sitting along one of the world’s most profound online divides. Preserving the city’s freedom to live without the mainland’s controls has become one of the causes now motivating the protests.”

This statement flies in the face of the Basic Law, expressing the agreement between the UK and China when the UK finally agreed to leave Hong Kong. We need to be aware of what the Basic Law says. Promulgated in April 4 1990 but put into effect on July 1, 1997, the date of the hand over of the territory to China, the Preamble states:

“Hong Kong has been part of the territory of China since ancient times; it was occupied by Britain after the Opium War in 1840. On 19 December 1984, the Chinese and British Governments signed the Joint Declaration on the Question of Hong Kong, affirming that the Government of the People’s Republic of China will resume the exercise of sovereignty over Hong Kong with effect from 1 July 1997, thus fulfilling the long-cherished common aspiration of the Chinese people for the recovery of Hong Kong.

Upholding national unity and territorial integrity, maintaining the prosperity and stability of Hong Kong, and taking account of its history and realities, the People’s Republic of China has decided that upon China’s resumption of the exercise of sovereignty over Hong Kong, a Hong Kong Special Administrative Region will be established in accordance with the provisions of Article 31 of the Constitution of the People’s Republic of China, and that under the principle of “one country, two systems”, the socialist system and policies will not be practised in Hong Kong. The basic policies of the People’s Republic of China regarding Hong Kong have been elaborated by the Chinese Government in the Sino-British Joint Declaration.

In accordance with the Constitution of the People’s Republic of China, the National People’s Congress hereby enacts the Basic Law of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People’s Republic of China, prescribing the systems to be practised in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, in order to ensure the implementation of the basic policies of the People’s Republic of China regarding Hong Kong.”

Hong Kong is a part of China. That is the essential fact set out in the Basic Law agreed to by the UK as well as China. It is an administrative region of China. It is not an independent state and never was when Britain seized it through force and occupied it.

So the claim that the protestors are trying to preserve something that never existed, freedom from China’s control, since Hong Kong is subject to China’s control, is bogus. The fact that China permitted Hong Kong to retain its capitalist system confirms this. The fact that China can impose socialism 50 years after or sooner if certain conditions are met, also confirms this.

The pretexts for the riots, the first being a proposed extradition law between the mainland and Hong Kong which is similar to those that exist between provinces in Canada and states in the USA, the second being the claim that China’s insistence on its sovereignty over the territory somehow overrides the limited autonomy granted Hong Kong and threatens that autonomy, are without any foundation.

One could easily split Canada into pieces based on such bogus arguments or again split up the USA, or even the UK as London sees its rule of Ireland, Wales and Scotland being challenged by nationalist groups. And we know very well what violent protests will bring in swift suppression of such forces if the central governments feel threatened, especially by the violence we see used by the black shirts in Hong Kong. We saw what happened in Spain when the Catalans attempted to split from Spain. The leaders of the movement are now in exile. We saw what the US is capable of against demonstrators when it shot them down at Kent State when students were demonstrating peacefully. These things are not forgotten. We know how the British will react to renewed attempts for a united Ireland.

China is facing attacks on several fronts at once and it will require wisdom, endurance and the strength of the Chinese people to defend their revolution and rid themselves of colonial and imperialist domination, once and for all. Those who carry British and American flags in the protests in Hong Kong, reveal who they are. They are not the future of China. They are the living embodiment of a dead history and dead ideas, zombies of the past.

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Christopher Black is an international criminal lawyer based in Toronto. He is known for a number of high-profile war crimes cases and recently published his novel “Beneath the Clouds. He writes essays on international law, politics and world events, especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook.” He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from NEO

Members of the Sudanese Professional Association (SPA), a leading organization within the Forces for Freedom and Change (FFC), announced on August 9 that they would have no representatives in the soon to be created transitional government.

This report comes in the midst of a whirlwind of political developments inside the oil-producing African state which has experienced social unrest, a military coup and ongoing negotiations aimed at establishing an effective interim process.

Former President Omer Hassan al-Bashir of the National Congress Party (NCP) was ousted in a putsch on April 11, just five days after the commencement of a sit-in outside the defense headquarters in the capital of Khartoum. The occupation remained until it was violently dispersed nearly two months later at the aegis of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), an important component of the security apparatus in the country.

Demonstrations began in Sudan during mid-December as a rise in bread prices triggered thousands of people to move into the streets in protest. Soon enough the demands shifted from economic grievances to the call for the resignation of President al-Bashir.

A Political Declaration agreed to by the FFC and the Transitional Military Council (TMC) which has ruled the nation since April 11, laid a framework for a Sovereign Council where representatives from both the TMC and FFC will share power for 39 months leading up to multi-party elections. The terms of the implementation of the Constitutional component of the three-pronged transitional framework will remain uncertain particularly with the absence of a pathway towards peace which is contingent upon its adoption by the armed opposition groupings, the Left and other disaffected tendencies.

However, the armed Sudanese Revolutionary Front (SRF) and the Sudanese Communist Party (SCP) have already expressed their displeasure with the terms of the Political Declaration leaving the possibility of continuing demonstrations and other forms of resistance. This same position has carried over as it relates to the Constitutional Declaration agreement as well. The third component of the transitional arrangement, the Legislative Council, is yet to be determined by the principal negotiators of the FFC and the TMC.

Sudanese celebrate the signing of the Constitutional Declaration on August 9, 2019 (Photo by EWN)

Other groups which have significant followings, the National Umma Party and the Sudanese Congress Party (SCP) have also revealed they will not be a part of the transitional government based in Khartoum. An apparent restless populace which has been the target of highly repressive measures by the security forces may not be willing to remain optimistic in light of a myriad of unanswered questions related to the country’s future.

SRF affiliates have been engaged in military operations against the central government for many years. Two of the principal members of the alliance are fighting against SAF and RSF units in South Kordofan, Blue Nile and the Darfur region.

Consequently, when the SPA said it would not participate in the transitional government, additional questions came to the fore. Moreover, how long will the negotiations continue on outstanding issues related to the Political Declaration and the Constitutional Declaration? A Legislative Council is also under discussion which would theoretically seal a pathway towards a new dispensation.

In an article published by Sudan Tribune on August 9, it says that:

“The Sudanese Professionals’ Association and the opposition Unionist Gathering have announced that they will not participate in the transitional government due to be formed in late August. The two groups were the spearhead of the protest movement that lasted for months before to topple the regime of Omer al-Bashir in April 2019.”

This same above-mentioned dispatch goes on to note:

“Babikir Faisal the Chairman of the Unionist Gathering’s Executive Committee told reporters on Wednesday (Aug. 7) that they would not take part in the upcoming government. ’The Gathering will not participate in the transitional government,’ Babikir told a news conference on Wednesday. He stressed that there are no quotas in the transitional government and that what is circulating through the media are ‘mere rumors.’”

Therefore, despite the extensive discussions between the FFC and TMC in both Khartoum and in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, under the mediation of the African Union (AU), existing contentious issues are unresolved. There can be no effective transition to even a bourgeois democratic government without securing sustainable peace treaties mandating the laying down of arms and the creation of an inclusive administration.

Attempted Military Coups and Regional Intrigue

Another key element of the Sudanese political crises is the numerous accounts of attempted counter-coups within the SAF itself. Several high-ranking military officials have been arrested where they join former President al-Bashir in detention.

In addition, there were rumors of ongoing “purges of Islamists” military personnel from the SAF. Defining what the term “Islamists” actually means within the context of contemporary Sudan is undoubtedly complex. The previous government of the NCP under al-Bashir was categorized by some as “Islamist.”

At the same time there are other political tendencies such as the Umma Party and the Popular Congress Party (PCP), long in opposition to the NCP, as also fitting into this characterization. These factors raise the question as to the nature of the political disagreements obviously plaguing the military apparatus.

For example, the crackdown on the mass demonstrations which occurred in the capital of Khartoum on June 3 has been attributed to the RSF. In a sense the SAF has attempted to distance itself from some of the harsher forms of repression which have resulted in the deaths of more than 300 people.

On the international level, there are reports that the RSF militias are supplying weapons to opposition forces in the Central African Republic (CAR). The Seleka Coalition, an alliance of several organizations dominated by the CAR’s minority Muslim population, has recently signed a peace deal with the government in the capital of Bangui.

Seleka Coalition affiliates are said to be concerned about a possible offensive to disarm their forces. This comes amid the increasing presence of advisors from the Russian Federation who were requested to assist the military of the CAR by its current President Faustin-Archange Touadera. The appeal was made directly to Russian President Vladimir Putin on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly in 2017.

Moreover, SAF units are still cooperating with Saudi Arabia and other regional states in the now more than four-year old war being wage in Yemen. This is a United States engineered bombing and ground campaign designed to weaken the Ansurallah (Houthis) Movement. The U.S., Britain and their allies contend that the Ansurrallah are backed by the Islamic Republic of Iran and therefore viewed as a threat to the strategic balance of forces in the Middle East.

The Aims of Imperialism in Sudan

Washington’s foreign policy towards Sudan has been geared towards regime-change and a total capturing of the state for the purpose ensuring compliance with its political and economic objectives in North and Central Africa. The fact that the previous government of President al-Bashir had exercised a degree of independence from successive U.S. administrations, both Democratic and Republican, resulted in hostile actions towards the NCP over a number of years.

The al-Bashir government had made firm economic agreements with the People’s Republic of China in regard to its drilling and export of oil. Ousted President al-Bahir also defied the warrants issued against him by the International Criminal Court (ICC), saying that they would not recognize this imperialist construct as having any authority over the country and its leaders.

Nevertheless, this modicum of independent domestic and international policy would shift after 2014 with the decline in petroleum prices and the worsening economic outlook for the Republic of Sudan in the aftermath of the partitioning of the South. The Republic of South Sudan came into being in 2011 largely as a result of the contradictions which developed during the period of British colonialism in the late 19^th and early-to-mid 20^th centuries until the country became liberated in 1956.

Britain ruled Sudan as two separate entities involving the North and the South. These divisions fomented two civil wars, from 1955-1972, and later from 1983 through 2003. The transition to partition reduced the economic and territorial status of the Republic of Sudan, which prior to the independence of Juba, was the largest geographic nation-state in Africa.

The U.S., Britain and the State of Israel supported the creation of the Republic of South Sudan. As events have developed since 2013, the Republic of South Sudan has not proven to be a viable state and has been inflicted with civil war due to a split within the ruling Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A). Both Juba and Khartoum are suffering from internal conflict and economic malaise. Consequently, the imperialist legacy of domination has effectively impeded the genuine development of the now two separate states.

Of course this contemporary history has profound significance for other regional states and Africa as a whole. The necessity for the resolution of internal conflict and the maintenance of sovereignty is the major question facing the AU. The degree to which the Republic of Sudan can resolve its present situation will prove instructive to other African and developing nations.

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Abayomi Azikiwe is the editor of Pan-African News Wire. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research. 

Featured image: Sudan Constitutional Declaration signed by Transitional Military Council and Force for Freedom and Change Photo by Al Jazeera

In front of our eyes green forests are blackened by fire, draughts turn grassy planes to brown semi-deserts, fertile fields are flooded by muddy water, white snow and ice  melt to pale blue water and clear blue skies turn grey with aerosols.

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The inhabitants of planet Earth are in the process of destroying the habitability of their world through the perpetration of the largest mass extinction of species since 66 million years ago when a large asteroid impacted Earth and 55 million years since the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM) reaching +5 to +8°C. The late Holocene-Anthropocene climate change represents an unprecedented event, triggering a fast shift in climate zones and a series of extreme weather events, with consequences for much of nature and civilization. The changes are manifest where green forests are blackened by fire, draughts are turning grassy planes to brown semi-deserts, brilliant white snow and ice caps are melting into pale blue water and clear blue skies turn grey due to aerosols and jet contrails, most particularly in the northern hemisphere. Unless effective efforts are undertaken at CO₂down-draw, the consequence would include demise of much of nature and a collapse of human civilization.

1. The scorched Earth

The transfer of hundreds of billions of tonnes of carbon from the Earth crust, the residues of ancient biospheres, to the atmosphere and oceans, condemning the bulk of life through the most extreme shift in the composition of the atmosphere and ocean Earth has experienced since 55 million years ago, with changes taking place in front of our eyes. Since the industrial revolution, about 375 billion tonnes of carbon (or 1,374 billion tonnes CO₂) have been emitted by humans into the atmosphere. The consequences are everywhere, from mega-droughts, to heat waves, fires, storms and floods. With atmospheric CO₂-equivalent rising above 500 ppm and mean temperatures by more than 1.5^oC (Figure 1) look no further than the shift in climate zones, displayed for example on maps of the expanding wet tropical zones, drying sub-tropical latitudes and polar-ward migration of temperate climate zone. The ice sheets and sea ice are melting, huge fires overtake Siberia, the Sahara is shifting northward, large parts of southern Europe are suffering from draughts, heat waves and fires, the Kalahari Desert dunes are shifting and much of southern Australia is affected by warming and draughts. This is hardly compensated by a minor increase in precipitation and greening such as at the southern fringes of the Sahara Desert and parts of northern Australia.

Induced by anthropogenic carbon emissions reaching 37.1 billion tonnes CO₂in 2018 and their amplifying feedbacks from land and oceans, ranging from where the US produces 16.5 tonnes CO₂per capita per year, to 35.5 tonnes CO₂ per capita per year from Saudi Arabia’s and 44 tons export per capita per year from Australia. The inexorable link between these emissions and the unfolding disaster is hardly mentioned by mainstream political classes and the media.

Figure 1(A) Growth of CO₂-equivalent level and the annual greenhouse gas Index (AGGI^[1]). Measurements of CO₂to the 1950s are from (Keeling et al., 1958) and air trapped in ice and snow above glaciers. Pre-1978 changes are based on ongoing measurements of all greenhouse gases. Equivalent CO₂amounts (in ppm) are derived from the relationship between CO₂concentrations and radiative forcing from all long lived gases; (B)showing how much warmer each month of the GISTEMP data is than the annual global mean. For July (2019) temperatures rose by about +1.5^oC.

2. Migrating climate zones

As the globe warms, to date by a mean of near ~1.5^oC, or ~2.0^oC when the masking effects of sulphur dioxide and other aerosols are considered, and by a mean of ~2.3^oC in the polar regions, the expansion of warm tropical latitudes and the pole-ward migration of subtropical and temperate climate zones (Figure 2) ensue in large scale draughts such as parts of inland Australia and southern Africa. A similar trend is taking place in the northern hemisphere where the Sahara desert is expanding northward, with consequent heat waves across the Mediterranean and Europe.

In southern Africa “Widespread shifts in climate regimes are projected, of which the southern and eastern expansion of the hot desert and hot steppe zones is most prominent.  From occupying 33.1 and 19.4 % of southern Africa under present-day climate, respectively, these regions are projected to occupy between 47.3 and 59.7 % (hot desert zone) and 24.9 and 29.9 % (hot steppe zone) of the region in a future world where the mean global temperature has increased by ~3°C.

Closely linked to the migration of climate zones is the southward drift of Antarctic- sourced cold moist fronts which sustain seasonal rain in south-west and southern Australia. A feedback loop has developed where deforestation and decline in vegetation in southern parts of the continent result in the rise of thermal plumes of dry air masses that deflect the western moist fronts further to the southeast.

Figure 2. Köppen-Geiger global Climate zones classification map

Since 1979 the planet’s tropics have been expanding pole-ward by 56 km to 111 km per decade in both hemispheres, leading one commentator to call this Earth’s bulging waistline. Future climate projections suggest this expansion is likely to continue, driven largely by human activities – most notably emissions of greenhouse gases and black carbon, as well as warming in the lower atmosphere and the oceans.”

An analysis of the origin of Australian draughts suggests, according to both observations and climate models, that at least part of this decline is associated with changes in large-scale atmospheric circulation, including shrinking polar ice and  a pole-ward movement of polar-originated westerly wind spirals, as well as increasing atmospheric surface pressure and droughts over parts of southern Australia (Figure 3). Simulations of future climate with this model suggest amplified winter drying over most parts of southern Australia in the coming decades in response to changes in radiative forcing. The drying is most pronounced over southwest Australia, with total reductions in austral autumn and winter precipitation of approximately 40% by the late twenty-first century. Thus rainfall in southwestern Australia has declined sharply from about 1965 onward, concomitant with the sharp rise of global temperatures.

Figure 3(A) Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) draught map, showing rainfall levels for the southern wet season from April 1 to July 31 in 2019; (B) NASA satellite image displaying a southward deflection of Antarctic-sourced moist cold fronts from southern Australia, a result of (1) southward migration of climate zones; (2) increasing aridity of southern and southwestern Australia due to deforestation; (3) rising hot plumes from warming arid land..

3. Extreme weather events

The consequences of the migration of climate zones are compounded by changes in flow patterns of major river systems around the world, for example in southern an southeastern Asia, including the Indus, Ganges, Brahmaputra and Mekong river basins, the home and bread basket for more than a billion people. With warming, as snow cover declines in the mountainous source regions of rivers, river flows are enhanced, with ensuing floods, in particular during the Monsoon. For example, in 2010 approximately one-fifth of Pakistan’s total land area was affected by floods (Figure 4A), directly affecting about 20 million people, with a death toll close to 2,000. And about 700 people in cyclone Isai in Mozambique (Figure 4B, C). Such changes in climate and geography are enhanced once sea level rise increases from the scale of tens of centimeters, as at present, to meters, as predicted to take place later this and next century.

An increasing frequency and intensity of cyclones constitute an inevitable consequence of rising temperatures over warm low pressure cell tracks in tropical oceans, already affecting large populations in the Caribbean and west Pacific island chains, encroaching into continental coastal zones, China, southeast USA, southeast Africa, India, northern Australia, the Pacific islands. According to Sobel et al. (2016)

“We thus expect tropical cyclone intensities to increase with warming, both on average and at the high end of the scale, so that the strongest future storms will exceed the strength of any in the past”.

Likewise increasing temperatures, heat waves and droughts, compounded by deforestation over continents, constitute an inevitable consequence of heat waves and droughts. A prime example is the Siberian forest fires (Figure 5B), covering an area larger than Denmark and contributing significantly to climate change. Since the beginning of the year a total of 13.1 million hectares has burned. Total losses from natural catastrophes on 2018 stated as US$160 billion.

Figure 4(A) Pakinstan flooding showing the 2010 Indus River spanning well over 10 kilometers, completely filling the river valley and spilling over onto nearby land. Floodwaters have created a lake almost as wide as the swollen Indus that inundates Jhatpat; (B) Before-and-after satellite imagery of Mozambique showing massive flood described as an “inland ocean” up to 30 miles wide following the landfall of Tropical Cyclone Idai, 2019.

Figure 5(A) Global fire zones, NASA. The Earth data fire map accumulates the locations of fires detected by moderate-resolution imaging radiometer (MODIS) on board the Terra and Aqua satellites over a 10-day period. Each colored dot indicates a location where MODIS detected at least one fire during the compositing period. Color ranges from red where the fire count is low to yellow where number of fires is large;(B)An ecological catastrophe in Russia: wildfires have created over 4 million square km smoke lid over central northern Asia. Big Siberian cities are covered with toxic haze that had already reached Urals.

4. Shrinking Polar ice sheets

Last but not least, major changes in the Polar Regions are driving climate events in the rest of the globe. According to NOAA Arctic surface air temperatures continued to warm at twice the rate of the rest of the globe, leading to major thaw at the fringes of the Arctic (Figure 6A) and a loss of 95 percent of its oldest ice over the past three decades. Arctic air temperatures during 2014-18 since 1900 have exceeded all previous records and are driving broad changes in the environmental system both within the Arctic as well as through the weakening of the jet stream which separates the Arctic from warmer climate zones. The recent freezing storms in North America represent penetration of cold air masses through an increasingly undulating jet stream barrier, as well as allowing warm air masses to move northward, further warming the Arctic and driving further ice melting (Figure 6B).

According to Rignot et al. (2011) in 2006 the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets experienced a combined mass loss of 475 ± 158 billion tons of ice per year. IPCC models of future climate change contain a number of departures from the paleoclimate evidence, including the major role of feedbacks from land and water, estimates of future ice melt, sea level rise rates, methane release rates, the role of fires in enhancing atmospheric CO₂, and the already observed onset of transient freeze events consequent on the flow of ice melt water into the oceans. Ice mass loss would raise sea level on the scale of meters and eventually tens of meters (Hansen et al. 2016). The development of large cold water pools south and east of Greenland (Rahmstorf et al. 2015) and at the fringe of West Antarctica, signify early stages in the development of a North Atlantic freeze, consistent with the decline in the Atlantic Meridional Ocean Circulation (AMOC). As the Earth warms the increase in temperature contrasts across the globe, in particular between warming continental regions and cooling ocean regions, leads to storminess and extreme weather events, which need to be taken into account when planning adaptation measures, including preparation of coastal defenses, construction of channel and pipelines from heavy precipitation zones to draught zones.

Figure 6(A) Thawing at the fringes of Siberia and Canada. Scientists say 2019 could be another annus horribilisfor the Arctic with record temperatures already registered in Greenland—a giant melting ice sheet that threatens to submerge the world’s coastal areas one day; (B) Weakening and increasing undulation of the polar vortex, allowing penetration of cold fronts southward and of warm air masses northward.

Figure 7 (A) Surface air temperature (◦C) change in 2055–2060 relative to 1880–1920 according to. A1B model + modified forcings and ice melt to 1 meter sea level rise; (B)  Surface-air temperature change in 2096 relative to 1880–1920 according to IPCC model AIB adding Ice melt with 10-year doubling of ice melt leading to +5 meters sea level rise; (C)Surface air temperature (◦C) relative to 1880–1920 for several scenarios taking added ice melt water into account (Hansen et al. 2016)

Postscript

None of the evidence and projections summarized above appears to form a priority consideration on the part of those in power—in parliaments, in corporations or among the wealthy elites and vested interests. Having to all intents and purposes given up on the habitability of large parts of the Earth and on the survival of numerous species and future generations—their actions and inactions constitute the ultimate crime against life on Earth.

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Dr Andrew Glikson, Earth and Paleo-climate science, Australia National University (ANU) School of Anthropology and Archaeology, ANU Planetary Science Institute, ANU Climate Change Institute, Honorary Associate Professor, Geothermal Energy Centre of Excellence, University of Queensland. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Note

[1] The AGGI index uses 1990 as a baseline year with a value of 1.  The index increased every year since 1979. 

Ethics can be a slippery matter and Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has taken, rather decidedly, the option of adding more grease.  His understanding over the ethics, for instance, of interfering in the decision-making process involving an Attorney-General has led to a little bit of history: Trudeau finds himself the first Canadian prime minister to be in breach of federal ethics rules.

In recent months, Trudeau’s crown has lost much of its lustre.  The SNC-Lavalin affair has been a primary contributor, a millstone gathering weight around his now very bruised neck.  The company had found itself in a spot of deep bother over bribing Libyan officials, a point it claimed in February 2015 was the result of “alleged reprehensible deeds by former employees who left the company a long time ago.”  Then came a 2018 law offering mild relief: the prospect of a fine rather than a conviction.  Business could go on as usual.

The question on the lips of the political fraternity was to what extent Trudeau’s office, and he personally, attempted to pressure the ex-Attorney General Jody Wilson-Raybould that taking SNC-Lavalin to trial would be costly in terms of jobs and votes in Quebec.  A bribery and fraud conviction against the company would have barred it from bidding on federal contracts for 10 years, with current contracts cancelled by the federal authorities.

In early February 2016, it became clear that the company was putting the word out to Trudeau and various government bodies that a remediation agreement was desirable.  The prime minister seemed convinced the company was keen to reform, a point used to avert the disruptive prospect of having cancellations of contracts covering, amongst others, the Gordie Howe International Bridge project and Montreal’s light rail project.

Wilson-Raybould found herself cornered and badgered, taking issue with Trudeau’s evident bias towards SNC-Lavalin.  Her refusal to overrule the decision of the prosecutors to refuse pursuing the remediation option led to her demotion in January’s cabinet reshuffle.  This, in turn, precipitated a lusty round of bloodletting: the removal of Wilson-Raybould and Jane Philpott of the Treasury Board from the Liberal caucus, the resignation of Trudeau’s top personal aide Gerry Butts, and the early retirement of the head of the federal bureaucracy, Michael Wernick.

The entire affair also prompted an examination request to the Ethics Commissioner by Charlie Angus, MP for Timmins-James Bay, and Nathan Cullen, MP for Skeena-Bulkley Valley.  Their concern: that the Prime Minister and his office had pressured Wilson-Raybould to instruct the Public Prosecution Service of Canada to seek a remediation agreement with SNC-Lavalin.  This suggested, argued Angus and Cullen, preferential treatment by an office holder towards a particular person or entity, something prohibited by section 7 of the Conflict of Interest Act.

While Ethics Commissioner Mario Dion was not convinced that section 7 held the necessary water, section 9 prohibiting a public officer holder from using their position to seek to influence a decision of another person to further their own private interests or those of a relative or friend, or to improperly further another person’s private interests, was quite a different matter.

Dion showed little sympathy for the Trudeau line of interference.  “The Prime Minister, directly and through his senior officials, used various means to exert influence over Ms Wilson-Raybould.”  SNC-Lavalin “overwhelmingly stood to benefit from Ms Wilson-Raybould’s intervention”.  The prime minister’s actions were therefore “improper since the actions were contrary to the constitutional principles of prosecutorial independence and the rule of law”.

The findings by Dion also serve a historical diet on the independence – aspirational or otherwise – of certain office holders, with the Attorney General being a singular creature in the scheme of government.  Such an office holder had a “unique perspective” in being a Cabinet member but also one who had to be “independent of Cabinet when exercising their prosecutorial discretion.”  It was a role, and a distinction inherent in it, that had clearly been “misunderstood” by Trudeau.

Dion was also wise enough to make a salient reference to Lord Hartley Shawcross’ views on the matter.  As Attorney General of England and Wales, Lord Shawcross explained to the UK House of Commons in 1951 that the Attorney General was “not obliged to, consult with any of his colleagues in the government” in making decisions pertinent to a prosecution.  The AG might well be informed and assisted by colleagues on matters assisting in reaching a decision, but never “in telling him what that decision ought to be.”

Trudeau’s statement of response is the mildest of efforts at contrition (“I can’t apologise for standing up for Canadian jobs”), a backhanded thank you to the Ethics Commissioner, a grudging acceptance that Parliamentary officers be independent, and an ultimate sense that his conduct had been, in the final analysis, proper in most respects, even if he did “take full responsibility”.

“The Commissioner took the strong view that all contact with the Attorney General on this issue was improper. I disagree with that conclusion, especially when so many peoples’ jobs were at stake.”

Such apologetics are padded by a good dose of self-congratulation.

“Our government has made tremendous progress over the last few years, for seniors, students, workers, families, and newcomers.”

The issue of jobs is the re-iterated barb.

“We have always fought to create and protect jobs, to invest in Canadians, and to strengthen the middle class at the heart of our country’s success.”

The consequences for such findings for Trudeau might prove the telling blow come the October elections.  Conservative leader Andrew Scheer smells blood and is demanding a police investigation.  The Royal Canadian Mounted Police has expressed interest.  Other commentators will simply remember that Trudeau has form on this.  In December 2017, he was found in breach of conflict of interest rules in accepting a vacation to be on the Aga Khan’s private island.  At least then, he thought apologising a wise move.  Trudeau the cynic has been outed.

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Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge.  He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research and Asia-Pacific Research. Email: [email protected]

Two Cambodian employees of US government-funded “Radio Free Asia” (RFA) face espionage charges for continuing to work for the foreign information operation even after the Cambodian government ordered it closed.

Qatari state media, Al Jazeera, in their article, “Espionage trial of two former RFA journalists starts in Cambodia,” would report:

Former Radio Free Asia (RFA) reporters Uon Chhin and Yeang Sothearin were arrested in November 2017 after a late-night police raid on an apartment rented by the former. They were accused of supplying a foreign state with information, a charge that carries a prison sentence of between seven and 15 years. 

RFA, which is funded by the government of the United States, had closed its operations in Cambodia shortly before the arrests. The outlet was known for its critical coverage of the Cambodian government, including frequent reports on corruption and illegal logging.

Al Jazeera also admitted:

Both Uon Chhin and Yeang Sothearin admitted at Friday’s hearing that they had continued sending videos and information to RFA after it had shut down, but they denied that this constituted espionage.

Human Rights Watch’s (HRW) deputy Asia director Phil Robertson would make a statement published on the organisation’s site claiming:

Chhin and Sothearin should never have had to face these bogus espionage charges, and all judicial restrictions on them should be lifted.

HRW’s Robertson made these comments unironically after celebrating and making excuses for Facebook and Twitter’s censorship of accounts and individuals critical of Western impropriety (including the dubious, often hypocritical work of HRW itself) worldwide.

Cambodian courts vowed to ignore the demands of foreign organisations like HRW, insisting instead they would use evidence and Cambodian law to reach a verdict, RFA’s own article on the story reported.

US Meddling in Cambodia Was Extensive 

Amid continued hysteria and accusations of “Russian interference” levelled by the United States and its various functionaries against any and all opponents worldwide, the US itself has been involved in meddling in Cambodia’s internal political affairs extensively.

Far from merely funding information operations like RFA, Voice of America and Cambodia Daily Cambodia has since shut down or co-opted, the US literally ran an entire political party with members operating out of Washington DC itself. It protected these proxies  from well-earned accusations and charges of sedition with fronts posing as “human rights” organisations also funded by the US government.

Cambodian National Rescue Party (CNRP) leader Kem Sokha openly admitted to Washington’s role in propping up his party and its bid to seize power in Cambodia not through elections, but through the same sort of destructive colour revolutions that have swept through Eastern Europe, North Africa and the Middle East.

The Phnom Penh Post in its article, “Kem Sokha video producer closes Phnom Penh office in fear,” would go over the many admissions made by Kem Sokha:

“…the USA that has assisted me, they asked me to take the model from Yugoslavia, Serbia, where they can changed the dictator Slobodan Milosevic,” he continues, referring to the former Serbian and Yugoslavian leader who resigned amid popular protests following disputed elections, and died while on trial for war crimes.

Fronts posing as “human rights” organisations operating in Cambodia and running defence for CNRP and its supporters include  Licadho funded by USAID and the Cambodian Center for Independent Media (CCIM) funded by US National Endowment for Democracy-subsidiary the International Republican Institute, Open Society, the British and Australian embassies as well as Canada Fund.

Were Russia doing any of this in the United States, Washington’s reaction would undoubtedly be swift and severe, and backed with full support from supposed “rights advocates” like Phil Robertson and Human Rights Watch. There would shuttered organisations, arrests, charges, trials and lengthy sentences handed out. Yet the United States openly subjects other nations to abuse it would not tolerate itself.

The US reaction to the trial for former RFA employees and its overall attempts to condemn and reverse Cambodia’s widening crackdown on foreign interference in its own internal political affairs is an exercise in both hypocrisy and “might makes right.” Unfortunately for Washington, the potency of that reaction is diminishing in direct proportion to its diminishing “might” across Asia-Pacific.

Washington’s involvement in Cambodia in the first place is aimed not only at co-opting the Cambodian people, their territory and resources, but also at surrounding China with either US client states or failed states unable to aid Beijing in its continued and steady rise upon the global stage.

Washington’s recent setbacks are demonstrative of how this policy of encirclement and containment is failing. While compromised “rights advocates” like Robertson attempt to portray Cambodia’s recent trial as a miscarriage of justice, it in truth is indicative of a wider trend reversing injustice imposed upon nation’s and their sovereignty by Washington and its proxies who have, until recently, operated largely with impunity.

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

Featured image is from NEO

It is not “the rising tide of human numbers” simpliciter that loots, pollutes and destroys the life carrying capacities of the planet. It is what all over-populationists conveniently ignore:

(1) the much still exponentially self-multiplying tides of private money demand on the earth’s resources that drives every degenerate trend in the planet’s life carrying capacities, and

(2) its ultimate driver of limitlessly self-maximizing private profit to the top which now puts more demand on the earth’s resources by a few plutocrats than by 90% of the population .

Over-population ideology is a pre-conscious cover story for this real causal mechanism of the planetary omnicide.

This cover story cannot tell the difference between the majority number of human beings with less than three dollars a day of demand on the earth’s resources and the US family with $100 million dollars a day multiplying its ‘investment’ demand every minute on every level of life support depredation.

The solution is not many more deaths, as over-populationists seem to enjoy, but economic reason – rationing demand to human life needs.

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Prof. John McMurtry is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada whose works are translated across the world. He is the author and editor of the multi-volume Philosophy and World Problems(Encyclopedia of Life Support Systems, UNESCO) and The Cancer Stage of Capitalism: From Crisis to Cure. Prof McMurtry is a frequent contributor to Global Research (2009-  )

You may not have heard of Ellen Brown but she is without a doubt the world’s most persistent advocate for public banking.

So what, you may ask! What she is fighting for is a change in our banking system so that it serves the people and not the bankers. If we were to do so we could have a society with no public debt, no need for austerity policies, average people would live better lives, education would be free.

The difference between public banking and private banking is simple. When the banks are privately owned, a few senior bankers and the shareholders reap the benefits. With public banking everyone shares the benefits.

One of her blogs is entitled How Banks Secretly Create Money and she quotes Sir Josiah Stamp who was President of the Bank of England and the second richest man in Britain in the 1920s. He addressed the University of Texas in 1927:

“The modern banking system manufactures money out of nothing. The process is perhaps the most astounding piece of sleight of hand that was ever invented….. if you want to continue to be the slaves of bankers and pay the cost of your own slavery, then let bankers continue to create money and control credit.”

Nothing has changed since Stamp made his speech. This is what he was talking about; if you get approved for a loan, the bank will put money into your account with a few keystrokes. A credit in your account, a debit in the banks. No money changes hands, instead money is created. The bank then gets interest on the loan but has invested nothing …. ‘the most astounding sleight of hand ever invented.’

This is done in plain sight and is reported in news of the money supply. M1 is money as we understand it, M2 is the money created out of thin air. As of June 2019, the M1 in the U.S. was 3,831.7 billion dollars and the M2 was 14,744.1 billion over three times more ‘thin air’ money than real. It would be accurate to say the banks create debt and not wealth since every dollar of M2 is debt.

Today, Brown uses the Bank of North Dakota to show how public banking is better. It’s a state-owned institution, the only one in the United States. It was founded in 1919 to promote state interests in competition to the commercial banks. Ellen Brown quotes the Wall Street Journal article in November 2014.

”the public banking model is simply more profitable and efficient than the private model. Profits, rather than being siphoned into offshore tax havens, are recycled back into the bank, the state and the community.”

Ellen Hodgson Brown is a Californian attorney who got her law degree from UCLA in 1977. She was a civil litigation attorney in LA for ten years. In 2011 she founded the Public Banking Institute. She ran for California State Treasurer in 2014 and got a record number of votes for a Green Party candidate.

In 2007 she published The Web of Debt which explains myths about money, how it is created out of thin air and managed by the privately-owned Federal Reserve in the United States, its one a dozen books she has written. In 2011 she formed the public Banking Institute and earlier this year published her latest book Banking on the People; Democratizing Money in the Digital Age.

Public banking is a simple concept. North Dakota like every other state, collects money for many things; fees, licenses, business and personal income taxes. Unlike the other states which puts these dollars into the private banks, North Dakota puts the money into its own state-owned bank and with that, they get interest on the money and can lend the money for profit. All the other states put their money into private banks giving up the option to lend it and giving up the profit! It’s that simple!

Does it work?

It sure does as the Nov. 16, 2014 issue of the Wall Street Journal’s Chester Dawson reported:

BISMARCK, N.D.—It is more profitable than Goldman Sachs Group Inc., has a better credit rating than J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. and hasn’t seen profit growth drop since 2003. Meet the Bank of North Dakota, the U.S.’s lone state-owned bank.

Ellen Brown’s writing is easy to read and understandable. If you are not into books, she has written over 200 articles that are on her blog, and you can subscribe to them or read them on Global Research.

Her most recent blog entitled Neoliberalism Has Met its Match in China (of three days ago) is about the emerging situation where the US and the Federal Reserve (a private bank) are up against the 80% state owned banks in China. She reports that ‘the Chinese have proven the effectiveness of their public banking system in supporting their industries and their workers. Rather than seeing it as an existential threat, we could thank them for test-driving the model and take a spin in it ourselves.’

She runs the Web of Debt web site and her blog articles are there.

To access Ellen Brown’s articles on Global Research (2007-  ) click here

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There were many public protests with the arrival of Donald Trump to the shores of Britain and contrary to his own beliefs, Trump is not well-liked at all by ordinary British citizens. What was strange though was the fact that there were no protests at all in Britain for the arrival of one of the world’s most destructive individuals  – John Bolton – and he came to ensure Britain does what it is told over Huawei, Iran and China before any trade deal can be signed.

His arrival is a dark day for Britain. It signifies what the Trump administration expects of its latest geopolitical scalp.

Sam Lowe from the Centre for European Reform said –

“Remember that Bolton is not a trade expert. All he cares about is getting leverage to get the U.K. to follow the U.S. on Huawei, Iran and China.”

John Bolton’s proposal for the sectoral U.S.-U.K. post-Brexit trade deal has caused rather childish excitement in London, with many trade experts not in the slightest impressed.

When the U.S. asks Britain to sign on the dotted trade deal line, it will be Congress, organisations representing the likes of U.S. farmers, and Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer who dictate the conditions, not the musings Trump’s international chief enforcer.

“What Bolton is proposing is not realistic,” said Lowe – “Why would Congress sign off on anything that doesn’t have agriculture included?”

Lowe forgot to mention that access to the NHS and pharmaceutical business is dependent on this US trade deal.

Any trade deal with the U.S. needs to be ratified by Congress — where Democrats have a majority in the House of Representatives, and interest groups such as farmers, frackers, the chemicals industry work to make sure any trade deal is in their favour. If it isn’t in there, there’s no deal.

“All Congress cares about is dismantling the EU’s regulatory approach to food and chemicals,” Lowe argued. “Any deal that falls short of that would not be ratified, regardless of Bolton’s assurances.”

Politico publishes a case in point: Congress has been holding up Trump’s new USMCA deal with Canada and Mexico for months over dairy exports, lumber tariffs, and weak labour rights protections. It has made clear the U.S. won’t even consider negotiating a trade agreement with the EU that doesn’t include market openings for U.S. beef and chicken.

Bolton did not mention this inconvenience during his visit in London, because he had other goals in mind.

“For Bolton, the promise of a trade deal is a carrot to get U.K. cooperation on security issues,” Lowe said.

The need for Boris Johnson’s administration to show that Brexit will be a success has not gone unnoticed in Washington. Promising trade deals gets Bolton friends in Downing Street without costing anything.

David Henig, director of the U.K. Trade Policy Project, pointed out another flaw in Bolton’s proposal:

“Partial trade deals that reduce tariffs in one sector are not legal under WTO rules.”

While “Trump and Bolton have shown before that they care little for WTO rules, the U.K., on the other hand, needs a well-functioning WTO,” Henig added.

It’s what London will have to rely on to trade with the EU and other countries if it leaves the bloc without a deal. Let’s not forget that Britain’s application to the WTO was rejected last August by other member states, specifically the USA as the UK’s application was not to their taste.

A Department for International Trade spokesperson said:

“We have already laid the groundwork for an ambitious, creative trade deal with the U.S. and are working hard to take advantage of the golden opportunity to increase trade between our countries as we leave the EU. We will set out our approach to negotiations in due course.”

We should also not forget that a full trade deal with the United States offers very little to Britain – in fact, it has been calculated that in real terms, Britain’s GDP will rise by just 0.2 per cent with a US/UK trade deal. On the other hand, America gets to fully exploit the fifth largest economy in the world.

A trade deal as outlined by John Bolton will not see the light of day –  as Lowe put it:

“The U.S. didn’t get to where they are in the world by being unnecessarily nice to countries that are slightly desperate.”

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A future without independent media leaves us with an upside down reality where according to the corporate media “NATO deserves a Nobel Peace Prize”, and where “nuclear weapons and wars make us safer”

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How English Nationalist Boris Johnson Is Turning the UK into a “US Colony”

By Henry McLeish, August 14, 2019

Boris Johnson and the right-wing Tories in Cabinet are English nationalists who hope to turn UK into a US ‘colony’, a country where EU regulations are replaced by limited welfare, minimum standards, low taxes and low pay, writes Henry McLeish.

Irish Newspaper Calls for Union between Ireland, Wales and Scotland

By Nation.Cymru, August 14, 2019

Writing for the newspaper, Jason O’Toole suggests that a pact of the four nations – Ireland, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales – would be similar to the Scandinavians with their Nordic Council.

UK Government Is Pushing Ahead with Extreme US Trade Deal

By True Publica, August 14, 2019

Currently, Britain has a Prime Minister who was elected not by the public, but by around 90,000 Conservative party members. With a majority in the House of Commons of just one seat, without any real political mandate, Britain is being pushed towards a hard Brexit.

Britain after Brexit: Welcome to the Vulture Restaurant

By Adam Ramsay, August 11, 2019

“Britain has no leverage, Britain is desperate … it needs an agreement very soon. When you have a desperate partner, that’s when you strike the hardest bargain.” So warned former US treasury secretary Larry Summers on Radio 4 ‘Today’ programme this morning, as new foreign secretary Dominic Raab jets off on a tour of North America to investigate potential trade deals.

Ireland can Stop a no-deal Brexit. Here’s How

By Fintan O’Toole, August 10, 2019

Ireland, North and South, is facing a political and economic crisis. But the key to preventing it lies in Irish hands. One Irish political party has the power to change the balance of power at Westminster and to alter the dynamics of British politics, prevent a no-deal Brexit, avoid a hard UK-Ireland border and save the economy of Northern Ireland from catastrophe.

U.K. Breakup? New Poll Sets the Scene for Scottish Independence Referendum

By Johanna Ross, August 07, 2019

Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon has hailed as ‘phenomenal’ a new poll which shows majority support for Scottish Independence. The survey, which was carried out by Lord Ashcroft in the wake of Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s visit to Scotland a week ago, puts those in favour of independence at 46% with 43% against.

Leaked: UK’s New Trade Secretary Met with US Pressure Groups to Discuss Weakening Regulations

By True Publica, August 06, 2019

In ‘off the record’ meetings last September, Liz Truss sought lessons from Donald Trump’s radical program of deregulation and tax cuts. The new international trade secretary, Liz Truss, met with hard-right pressure groups in Washington DC last year to learn about the benefits of Donald Trump’s deregulatory agenda, according to official documents obtained by Unearthed.

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The three meltdowns and at least four big core explosions at the Fukushima nuclear-power plant’s six American-designed Daiichi reactors in March 2011 still constitute the world’s worst nuclear nightmare so far, surpassing even the Chernobyl #4 reactor’s explosion and meltdown of April 1986. While Chernobyl’s disaster was very quickly contained albeit at the cost of at least 30 human lives (according to Soviet sources)—by first having the stricken reactor completely buried in sand from the air and then immediately sealing it inside a sarcophagus of reinforced concrete, Fukushima’s tragedy has remained an open, festering wound to this day. A U.N. report issued in 2012 stated that at least six Fukushima workers had died since the meltdowns and the tsunami (according to a later report by the Japanese government, only one of these workers had died from radiation exposure).

The Japanese seem to have been reluctant to risk the lives of their more than 6,000 rescue workers pouring daily hundreds of tons of sea water over the fully destroyed reactors as well as the several partly damaged ones. Yet, as of 27 February 2017, the Fukushima prefecture government counted 2,129 “disaster-related deaths” in that prefecture alone. At least 1,368 among those deaths have been listed as directly “related to the nuclear power plant.” Predicted future cancer deaths due to accumulated radiation exposures in the population living near Fukushima are expected to run in the many hundreds, if not the thousands.

Obviously, the Japanese government’s wishful thinking is that the nuclear disaster would just go away if as few people as possible—both at home and especially abroad—knew about its true extent and actual severity. According to Harvey Wasserman (“14,000 Hiroshimas Still Swing in Fukushima’s Air,” The Free Press, October 9, 2013), the situation on the ground was still rather catastrophic more than two years after the disaster, because

“Massive quantities of heavily contaminated water are pouring into the Pacific Ocean, dousing workers along the way. Hundreds of huge, flimsy tanks are leaking untold tons of highly radioactive fluids. At Unit #4, more than 1300 fuel rods, with more than 400 tons of extremely radioactive material, containing potential cesium fallout comparable to 14,000 Hiroshima bombs, are stranded 100 feet in the air.”

Have we been witnessing a major local catastrophe with some perilous global repercussions that are still being concealed from the general public and the world under a veil of total government secrecy—“apparently to avoid causing ‘needless’ social panic,” in the words of Japanese research scientist Haruko Satoh (“Fukushima and the Future of Nuclear Energy in Japan: The Need for a Robust Social Contract,” ARI, June 29, 2011)? While the Russians had the excuse of having just one prior warning—namely that of the Three Mile Island’s much smaller nuclear mishap in the U.S. on March 28, 1979—the Japanese appear to have completely ignored Chernobyl’s tragic lessons while operating their Fukushima nuclear-power plant built in a highly vulnerable seismic zone in close proximity to the Pacific Ocean which is prone to massive earthquakes and tsunamis. Pointing out that

“…a vast area of land has been contaminated by radiation,” Haruko Satoh further writes that “…the nature of the on-going nuclear crisis is better understood as a man-made disaster resulting from the systemic failure of Japan’s nuclear energy regime for safety than an inevitable consequence of unforeseen forces of nature.”

In his considered opinion, Japan “has also failed to act speedily to remove and treat the accumulating contaminated soil and water” (ibid.).

As a result, according to The Guardian (“Plummeting Morale at Fukushima Daiichi as Nuclear Cleanup Takes Its Toll,” October 15, 2013), “the world’s most dangerous industrial cleanup” has been threatening not only Japan (long dubbed “America’s unsinkable aircraft carrier” in the western Pacific) but the rest of the planet as well. Will the international community finally wake up to this still on-going lethal danger that will persist for many years to come—at least until the afflicted nuclear reactors are finally cooled down? But it is not going to be an easy job since by Tokyo’s own estimates the full decommissioning of the wrecked nuclear site could take up to 40 years.

Could the 2020 Tokyo Olympics be canceled?

The Fukushima catastrophe released in the air many radioactive pollutants such as cesium-134, cesium-137, strontium-90, iodine-131, plutonium-238 and other so-called radionuclides that emit ionized (alpha and beta) particles. With lifespan exceeding hundreds of years, these radioactive pollutants will continue to pose a radiation threat for many decades to come. One eyewitness testifies about the failure of Japan’s decontamination measures (Maxime Polleri, “The Truth About Radiation in Fukushima: Despite Government Claims, Radiation From the 2011 Nuclear Disaster Is Not Gone,” The Diplomat, March 14, 2019):

“…mountains of black plastic bags, filled with contaminated soil or debris, can be seen in many parts of Fukushima…. As such, decontamination does not imply that radiation has vanished; it has simply been moved elsewhere. Yet in rural regions, where many of the bags are currently being disposed, far away from the eyes of urban dwellers, residents are still forced to live near the storage sites. Many rural residents have criticized the actual efficacy of the decontamination projects. For instance, vinyl bags are now starting to break down due to the build-up of gas released by rotten soil. Plants and flowers have also started to grow inside the bags, in the process tearing them apart. With weather factors, residual radioactivity inside the bags will eventually be scattered back into the environment.”

But with the upcoming 2020 Tokyo Olympics, it is doubtful that the secretive Japanese government will ever acknowledge this threatening reality. For example, the Japanese have been silent about the current extent of radiological contamination of the seas surrounding Japan—obviously for fear that the Tokyo Olympics scheduled to be held next year may be canceled.

The Official Cover-up

In the past, the Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco), the crippled nuclear-power plant’s sole owner and operator,

“has all but admitted (that) Fukushima’s radiation leaks are spiraling out of control. In addition to the leaking water storage units that are unleashing hundred of tons of radioactive water each day, Tepco now says (that) 50% of its contaminated filtration capability has been taken offline due to corrosion. The result is that radiation leaks are escalating out of control and attempted remediation efforts are faltering” (“Fukushima in Free Fall,” NaturalNews.com, August 27, 2013).

The traditionally close-mouthed Japanese bureaucrats have been far less truthful and much more evasive about the gravity of the Fukushima nuclear crisis than the Russians ever were about their Chernobyl disaster. Only in June 2011—three whole months after the Fukushima nuclear accident—did Tokyo announce that meltdowns had actually occurred in three of the six reactors. “From day one,” the NaturalNew.com article continues,

“the Fukushima fiasco has been all about denial: Deny the leaks, shut off the radiation sensors, black out the news and fudge the science. Yet more than two years later, the denials are colliding with the laws of physics, and Tepco’s cover stories are increasingly being blown wide open.” (ibid.)

Buried under a virtual tsunami of compensation-seeking lawsuits, Tepco, “once a behemoth that virtually controlled Japan’s energy policy“ (Haruko Satoh, “Fukushima and the Future of Nuclear Energy in Japan: The Need for a Robust Social Contract,” ARI, June 29, 2011), has survived to this day as Japan’s biggest energy giant only thanks to the LDP government which seems to be more than willing and eager to bail it out. Despite the attempted cover-up by pro-nuclear Japanese cabinets and the Japanese news media alike, Japan’s own nuclear-safety watchdog—the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency (NISA)—gave Fukushima’s nuclear catastrophe the worst possible rating for radiological danger, Level 7 (“major accident”)—the same rating as the Chernobyl disaster—in accordance with the International Nuclear and Radiological Event Scale (INES) standards established by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in 1990.

Showing how more than two years after the disaster the waters of the Pacific Ocean were actually “boiling” off the coast of Fukushima in what it called “a viral photo of the day,” Before It’s News (“’Boiling Sea’ Off Fukushima Viral Photo of the Day,” August 30, 2013) asked rhetorically, “…if this radiation keeps leaking, and there is no way to stop it, will boiling seas spread all the way across the Pacific Ocean to the West Coast of the United States? If so, what happens then?”

How was the critically important oceanic animal and plant life affected by the radioactive contamination? Tokyo has denied that due to higher radiation levels it is dangerous to eat any fish caught by Japanese fishermen, but the government has reinstated its earlier fishing ban. Could it be that all of Japan has been poisoned? Moreover, is the whole planet going to be eventually contaminated by Fukushima’s many tons of radioactive material released into the air and sea? Again according to Harvey Wasserman,

“A worst-case cloud would eventually make Japan an uninhabitable waste-land. What it could do to the Pacific Ocean and the rest of us downwind approaches the unthinkable” (“14,000 Hiroshimas Still Swing in Fukushima’s Air,” The Free Press, October 9, 2013).

The Fukushima nuclear accident and its tragic consequences have taken place at the worse possible time for Japan, given its huge national debt (which is more than twice the size of its annual GDP) and protracted economic slump lasting now for almost three decades. Japan’s economic downturn started with the bursting of Tokyo’s stock-market and real-estate “bubbles” in the 1990s and was gravely exacerbated by the global Great Recession of 2008-2009 sparked by America’s own banking and real-estate crises. The international community should have by now pressed the U.N. Security Council to consider and adopt a binding resolution to close down Japan’s hazardous nuclear-energy industry, given the major economic, public health and public safety risks involved.

Is Japan’s nuclear industry doomed?

But Japan’s nuclear power may already be doomed, with its nuclear units being gradually taken “offline” in the wake of the Fukushima fiasco (“After Fukushima, Does Nuclear Power Have a Future?” The New York Times, October 10, 2011). In September 2013, the new Liberal Democratic Party Prime Minister Shinzo Abe ordered the shutdown—supposedly for routine maintenance and safety checks—of its last nuclear reactor at Oi that was still working after all the other 53 operating reactors had been closed down for one reason or another. Facing pressure from the Japanese public which has turned decisively against nuclear energy, the previous Prime Minister, Yoshihiko Noda of the Democratic Party of Japan, had announced in September 2012 a major change in Japan’s energy policy, pledging to shut down all nuclear power for good by the 2030s, thus angering the all-powerful Japanese captains of industry.

In power since December 2012, Shinzo Abe’s LDP cabinet has been warning about the steep economic costs of pulling the plug on Japan’s nuclear energy, mainly in the form of escalating and very expensive energy imports, especially for a country which lacks fossil fuel reserves. Under tremendous pressure from the “iron triangle” community of electricity utilities, heavy industry, ministry bureaucrats and academic experts, known as the “nuclear village,” Prime Minister Shinzo has been trying to restart as many nuclear reactors as the still hostile domestic public opinion would permit him.

Following the Fukushima accident, as each Japanese nuclear reactor entered its scheduled maintenance and refueling outage, it was not returned to operation. Between September 2013 and August 2015, Japan’s entire reactor fleet was suspended from operation, leaving the country with no nuclear generation. But in 2018 Prime Minister Shinzo’s cabinet restarted five nuclear power reactors (U.S. Energy Information Administration, “Japan Has Restarted Five Nuclear Power Reactors in 2018,” November 28, 2018). He is facing a new and unexpected obstacle—the renewed and strengthened Nuclear Regulation Authority (NRA), which had been reformed and given more regulatory powers and administrative independence after Fukushima, especially since this now independent agency has to declare any nuclear plants safe before they could restart. There is also the implacable opposition of many prefectures, towns and villages which, under the law, have a say over the reopening of any local or nearby nuclear plants (“Electricity in Japan: Power Struggle,” The Economist, September 21, 2013). In spite of the determination of the ruling LDP to keep Japan’s ailing nuclear industry alive, its days may already be numbered (Sumiko Takeuchi, “Is There a Future For Nuclear Power in Japan?” Japan Times, July 16, 2019).

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Rossen Vassilev Jr. is a journalism senior at the Ohio University in Athens, Ohio.

In a massive attack on imperiled wildlife, the Trump administration today finalized rollbacks to regulations implementing key provisions of the Endangered Species Act. The changes, which could lead to extinction for hundreds of animals and plants, are illegal and will be challenged in court.

The three rules finalized today were developed under the supervision of David Bernhardt, the secretary of the U.S. Department of the Interior and a former fossil fuel industry lobbyist. They severely weaken protections for threatened and endangered species across the country.

“These changes crash a bulldozer through the Endangered Species Act’s lifesaving protections for America’s most vulnerable wildlife,” said Noah Greenwald, the Center for Biological Diversity’s endangered species director. “For animals like wolverines and monarch butterflies, this could be the beginning of the end. We’ll fight the Trump administration in court to block this rewrite, which only serves the oil industry and other polluters who see endangered species as pesky inconveniences.”

One set of regulatory changes weaken the consultation process designed to prevent harm to endangered animals and their habitats from federal agency activities. A second set curtails the designation of critical habitat and weakens the listing process for imperiled species. A third regulation would eliminate all protections for wildlife newly designated as “threatened” under the Act.

The changes are part of a broader effort by the Trump administration to undercut protections for the nation’s air, land, wildlife and water.

“These regulations are totally out of touch with the American public, which broadly supports endangered species protections,” Greenwald said. “We’ll do everything in our power to get these dangerous regulations rescinded, including going to court.”

Under a change relating to federal consultations, impacts to critical habitat will be ignored unless they impact the entirety of an animal’s habitat. This disregards the cumulative “death-by-a-thousand-cuts” process that is the most common way wildlife declines toward extinction.

The new rules will also prohibit designation of critical habitat for species threatened by climate change, even though, in many cases, these species are also threatened by habitat destruction and other factors. The rollbacks will also preclude designation of critical habitat for areas where species need to move to avoid climate impacts.

The new rules will sharply limit wildlife agencies’ ability to designate critical habitat in unoccupied areas needed for recovery. That ignores the fact that many threatened and endangered species have lost substantial range and need their historic habitats preserved to provide living space for recovering populations.

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Russia’s Defense Ministry has published dramatic video Tuesday showing another close encounter between its military planes and NATO jets over the Baltic Sea, but this time it involved a dangerous intercept as the NATO aircraft came just off the wing of a large passenger plane carrying Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu.

A TASS news agency correspondent aboard Defense Minister Shoigu’s plane captured the moment when a pair of Russian Su-27 escorts drove off the NATO F-18 aircraft in what is the most serious incident in the neutral skies over the Baltic to date.

A Russian Su-27 jet propels an F/A-18 Hornet fighter jet away from the aircraft of Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu in the sky over the Baltic Sea.#Russia #USA #Baltic pic.twitter.com/uUeTebiYDd

— Ali Özkök (@Ozkok_A) August 13, 2019

TASS describes the incident as follows (based on rush translation):

The plane carrying Shoigu was accompanied by an escort of two fighter aircraft of the Baltic Fleet Su-27 as it went from Kaliningrad to Moscow.

Above the neutral waters of the Baltic, the NATO F-18 aircraft tried to approach the defense minister’s plane, but the Russian pilots pushed the fighter out, not allowing it to come close to the liner.

One of the Russian Su-27’s can be seen banking hard into the NATO F-18, after which the F-18 continues its path away from the defense minister’s plane.

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The gold bears have finally caved under the deafening barrage of fiscal and geopolitical catalysts, from Fed hints to intensely brewing conflict with Iran. But there is one key trend that stands to push gold up beyond $1,700–regardless of the day’s news.

Of course, it’s difficult for the bears to ignore a nearly $50/ounce gain for gold, which is now trading well above its 5-year high.

Not only has the U.S.-Iran conflict reached a boiling point, with Trump readying to deploy an additional 1,000 troops to the Middle East, but the European Central Bank has issued a defiant, dovish tone, saying it won’t hesitate to provide further stimulus: That means rate cuts.

The icing on the gold cake is the US Fed, which has now clearly indicated that it hasn’t abandoned the idea of rate cuts for 2019.

But in this perfect storm for gold prices, EuroSun Mining (TSE:ESM, OTCMKTS:CPNFF) CEO Scott Moore says we’re overlooking a significant trend that will outlast the current geopolitical meltdown and even the Fed’s policies: It’s a global push for de-dollarization.

“Government’s around the world are becoming increasingly wary of the dollar’s hegemony in international trade,” says Moore. “And they’re doing their best to distance themselves from it by using their gold reserves to buy more gold instead.”

This process is already underway mainly in nations with strong anti-U.S. sentiment including Russia, China, Iran, Venezuela, Syria, Turkey, Qatar, India, Pakistan, Libya, Egypt and the Philippines among others.

Naturally, these countries are turning to gold since the yellow metal is not under lock-and-key like the greenback and other electronic payment methods.

This trend is abundantly clear when you look at central banks’ buying activity.

According to the World Gold Council, central banks purchased nearly 70 percent more gold during the first quarter of the year than they did during the previous year’s corresponding period.

That’s the most they bought since the first quarter of 2013.

For EuroSun’s Rovina Valley project in Romania–the largest in-development gold mine in Europe–the de-dollarization drive will been a boon for the 10 million ounces of gold equivalent they’re hoping to get out of the ground in the simple geography of Romania’s prolific Tethyan Gold Belt.

There are plenty of billionaire fund managers who think today’s ‘crazy’ gold prices are just getting started.

Not least among them is Paul Tudor Jones, who says that gold “has everything going for it”, and sees it pushing to $1,700 an ounce “rather quickly”, as he noted in an interview with Bloomberg.

And this is all just thanks to near-term trends wrapped up in the Fed and wild geopolitics.

We’re interested instead in the long-term trend that is says gold will be a major winner of the global de-dollarization trend.

There’s nothing like a sanctions frenzy to create a major uptick in momentum here.

Most notably, Russia and China have pledged to accelerate their de-dollarization strategies because of Trump’s sanctions push. And they’ve reached a deal to use national currencies for bilateral trade. No more U.S. dollar, then.

So, we’re carefully watching what the central banks are doing.

The latest countries to jump on the de-dollarization bandwagon are Serbia and the Philippines. Serbia is boosting its national gold reserves, increasing them from 20 to 30 tons by the end of this year.  It’s shooting for 50 tons by the end of 2020.

Tudor is watching these developments closely, and to him, it suggests an unprecedented shift:

“Remember we’ve had 75 years of expanding globalization and trade, and we built the machine around the belief that’s the way the world’s going to be. Now all of a sudden it’s stopped, and we are reversing that,” he told Bloomberg.

“When you break something like that, the consequences won’t be seen at first, it might be seen one year, two years, three years later. That would make one think that it’s possible that we go into a recession. That would make one think that rates in the US go back toward the zero bound and in the course of that situation, gold is going to scream. “

EuroSun’s (TSE:ESM, OTCMKTS:CPNFF) Moore agrees:

“What’s happening with Iran right now will only further the de-dollarization push. The dollar isn’t necessarily king anymore, and gold is more than ready to resume its rightful place on the safe haven throne.”

Five gold companies to watch as more countries push for de-dollarization:

Yamana Gold (NYSE:AUY) (TSE:YRI)

Yamana, has recently completed its Cerro Moro project in Argentina, giving its investors something major to look out for. The company plans to ramp up its gold production by 20% through 2019 and its silver production by a whopping 200%. Investors can expect a serious increase in free cash flow if precious metal prices remain stable.

Recently, Yamana signed an agreement with Glencore and Goldcorp to develop and operate another Argentinian project, the Agua Rica.  Initial analysis suggests the potential for a mine life in excess of 25 years at average annual production of approximately 236,000 tonnes (520 million pounds) of copper-equivalent metal, including the contributions of gold, molybdenum, and silver, for the first 10 years of operation.

The agreement is a major step forward for the Agua Rica region, and all of the miners working on it.

Eldorado Gold Corp. (NYSE:EGO) (TSE:ELD)

This Canadian mid-cap miner has assets in Europe and Brazil and has managed to cut cost per ounce significantly in recent years. Though its share price isn’t as high as it once was, Eldorado is well positioned to make significant advancements in the near-term.

In 2018, Eldorado produced over 349,000 ounces of gold, well above its previous expectations, and is set to boost production even further in 2019. Additionally, Eldorado is planning increased cash flow and revenue growth this year.

Eldorado’s President and CEO, George Burns, stated:

“As a result of the team’s hard work in 2018, we are well positioned to grow annual gold production to over 500,000 ounces in 2020.  We expect this will allow us to generate significant free cash flow and provide us with the opportunity to consider debt retirement later this year. “

Barrick Gold Corp. (NYSE:GOLD) (TSE:ABX) and Goldcorp Inc. (NYSE:GG)

All eyes are on the billion-dollar partnership these two giants are forming in Chile’s gold belt. Goldcorp is putting up $1 billion to get in on this deal as miners scramble for new sources of growth. This joint venture will see the two giant miners operate three properties in Chile’s Maricunga region, and these will be major catalysts for both.

Newmont Mining Corp (NYSE:NEM) Founded over 100 years ago, Newmont Mining Corporation (NYSE:NEM) is one of the leading mining companies in the world. The company holds assets in Peru, Australia, Ghana, Indonesia, Mexico, and around the United States. Primarily focusing on gold and copper, Newmont has steadily carved out a name for itself among those in the industry. In Q1 2017 alone, the company secured over 1.2M ounces of gold. Definitely noteworthy for investors.

Wheaton Precious Metals Corp. (NYSE:WPM) (TSE:WPM)

Wheaton is a company with its hands in operations all around the world. As one of the largest ‘streaming’ companies on the planet, Wheaton has agreements with 19 operating mines and 9 projects still in development. Its unique business model allows it to leverage price increases in the precious metals sector, as well as provide a quality dividend yield for its investors.

Recently, Wheaton sealed a deal with Hudbay Minerals Inc. relating to its Rosemont project. For an initial payment of $230 million, Wheaton is entited to 100 percent of payable gold and silver at a price of $450 per ounce and $3.90 per ounce respectively.

Randy Smallwood, Wheaton’s President and Chief Executive Officer explained,

“With their most recent successful construction of the Constancia mine in Peru, the Hudbay team has proven themselves to be strong and responsible mine developers, and we are excited about the same team moving this project into production. Rosemont is an ideal fit for Wheaton’s portfolio of high-quality assets, and when it is in production, should add well over fifty thousand gold equivalent ounces to our already growing production profile.”

Centerra Gold Inc. (OTCMKTS: CAGDF) (TSE:CG)

Centerra Gold is a Canada-based gold miner with flagship assets, the Mount Milligan Mine and the Kumtor Mine which are located in Canada and the Kyrgyz Republic respectively. It also owns the Öksüt Gold Mine in Turkey, making it the single-largest North American gold company operating in Asia, with over 22 years of experience in the region.

Centerra’s biggest selling points, however, are its strong balance sheets. For 2018, the company reported over $100 million in net earnings, generating over $217 million from cash operations, exceeding many analyst’s expectations.

Scott Perry, President and Chief Executive Officer of Centerra stated,

“As a result of the strong fourth quarter operating performance at both operations, the Company exceeded its overall 2018 production and cost guidance producing 729,556 ounces of gold at an all-in sustaining cost on a by-product basis of $754 per ounce sold, beating the low-end of our all-in-sustaining cost guidance for the year.

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In political terms the government of Venezuela had a good month of July while managing very critical economic circumstances. Reps of 120 Non Aligned Movement (NAM) countries attended their ministerial meeting in Caracas, and more than 700 delegates from dozens of leftist parties and social movements from about 32 countries were in attendance for the 25th encounter of the Sao Paulo Forum (SPF) also in Caracas a few days later. Even the quick recovery from what appeared to be another sabotage to the electric power grid that occurred in the days between the two meetings was seen as a sign of an efficient and responsive government fully in control.

However, the month of August had a more challenging beginning for Venezuela. But we think that the Maduro government still retains full command of the political situation.

On August 5, the day before the meeting of the so-called Lima Group in Lima, Peru, United States President Donald Trump signed an Executive Order on “Blocking Property of the Government of Venezuela”. This may well be the most severe unilateral coercive measure (sanctions) against Venezuela to this date. It also meets the criteria of a total blockade on the country, despite Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s denial that “this is not an embargo”.

The more serious and controversial issue of the Trump’s executive order is that it implies the possibility of its extraterritorial application. US National Security Adviser John Bolton left no doubt about that intention saying that the order “also authorizes sanctions on foreign persons who provide support or goods or services to any designated person, including the government of Venezuela.”

The EU immediately opposed Washington’s threat and other countries may follow. But we know that Trump is not shying away from his version of “if you’re not with us, you are against us”. He has recently implemented, for the first time since 1996, Title III of the Helms-Burton Act (blockade) on Cuba, which allows US persons, whose property was taken over by the Cuban Government after 1959, to sue in US courts companies and individuals who “traffic” in those properties. This has serious implications for many foreign companies in Europe and Canada currently operating in Cuba.

The US blockade of Venezuela is intended to “make the Venezuelan economy cry”; nevertheless, the blockade does not guarantee the collapse of the economy. After almost 60 years of persistent and harsh US blockade, Cuba’s economy has done fairly well in maintaining its socialist project, initially with the support of the former Soviet Union, and since the early 1990s with the development of a thriving tourist sector that has brought substantial foreign investment to the chagrin of the US government.

Therefore, in geopolitical terms, the extraterritorial element of the blockade on Venezuela is the US second line of attack – unlikely directed at the EU or Canada that have recognized self appointed “interim president” Juan Guaidó – rather directed at Russia and China that have sided in words and deeds with the elected president Nicolás Maduro.

Russia has not only sold military equipment to Venezuela and trained its military, but last July 10 the two countries have signed a protocol on facilitating Russian state-owned oil company Rosneft’s activities at two gas fields on the continental shelf of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela.

China has also developed important economic cooperation with Venezuela. A joint venture of over $1.8 billion between Venezuelan Petroleum Corp (CVP) and China National Petroleum Corp (CNPC) was just reported.

Enter John Bolton with a threatening message in Lima:

“to both Russia and China, we say that your support to the Maduro regime is intolerable, particularly to the democratic regime that will replace Maduro.”

Both in tone and actions Washington is sounding increasingly desperate and frustrated at the lack of tangible results in its effort at regime change in Venezuela. The US has usually been absent at meetings of the “Lima Group”; it is not even a member of it. Canada has normally taken on the “leadership” role with other dozen or so nations.

The Lima meeting was clearly driven by a combative US government with the high profile presence of NSA John Bolton and Secretary of Commerce, Wilbur Ross. If Bolton struck Washington’s stick, Ross offered its carrot as a vague recovery plan for Venezuela after Maduro. Of the 100 governments invited, only about 60 reps were present, mostly observers. Many declined including Russia and China.

If Washington’s intention was to bring on board more international allies, the strategy didn’t work. The UN Assembly would have been a larger and captive audience. Why was that venue not chosen?

The answer lies in the balance of support for the Maduro government. While reportedly about 50 governments do not, 120 NAM governments showed their support with their presence and joint declaration in Caracas in July. That is almost one third of the UN state members.

The Maduro government seems to show a better understanding of the world order, the role of the UN and the mustering of public support. This spells failure of the US blockade as it did in the case of Cuba at least politically. Caracas is still in control. It has not only denounced the White House executive order calling it “economic and political terrorism” illegal according the UN Charter, but it is also making a direct appeal to the UN. As we write, a campaign to collect signatures for a “Letter from Venezuelans to the Secretary General of the United Nations” is underway. All world supporters are invited to sign as well.

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This article was originally published on OneWorld.

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

Featured image is from Zero Hedge

Paul Findley one of the most remarkable Congressmen that the US House of Representatives had produced since the Second World War passed away on the 9^th of August 2019. He was 98 years old. He was first elected to Congress in 1960 from a district in Illinois once represented by Abraham Lincoln, his immortal hero.  Findley was elected 11 times from that constituency until his defeat in 1982.

As a Congressman, he played a significant role in the formulation of the War Powers Act which required the US president to notify Congress of foreign military engagements. He was also critical of wasteful pentagon spending. He was one of a handful of early legislators who opposed the Vietnam War.

But Findley’s “notoriety” is associated with something else. He was a consistent critic of the influence of the Israel Lobby over Congress. He could see how the Lobby shaped US policies especially in West Asia. He was very much aware of the tactics the Lobby employed to silence anyone who questioned even mildly the biasness of the US position in the Israel-Palestine/ Arab conflict.

Findley himself was a victim of the Lobby’s vicious targeting. Because of his concern over the conflict he had visited the late Palestinian leader, Yasser Arafat, who was then regarded by the US government as a “terrorist.” That visit became cannon-fodder for the Israel Lobby to mount a massive campaign against Findley which was one of the main reasons for his defeat in the 1982 Congressional election.

Following his defeat, he wrote a couple of books about the power of the Lobby in US public life and how institutions and individuals were confronting the Lobby. They Dare to Speak Out had a bigger impact outside the US than within. His next book, Deliberate Deceptions, revealed the nexus between US and Israel forged through money, corporate links and personal relationships. Findley was now perceived by the US Establishment as a staunch opponent of Israeli power over the US.

His explorations into Israeli and Zionist power in the US invariably compelled him to look into how that power determined public perceptions of Islam and Muslims in general. His tentative perspective on the issue received a boost when he was invited to participate in a workshop in Penang, Malaysia on perceptions of Islam and Muslims in the Western media organised by JUST in October 1995. That workshop, as Findley had observed many times since changed his outlook on not only Islam but also the West’s relationship with a civilization which often invoked negative sentiments especially among the ‘educated.’ He began to realise that the roots of the antagonism towards the religion and its followers were deeply embedded in the West’s history and entangled with the crusades and colonialism  and post-colonial structures of global power and dominance.

On his return he produced a Friendly Note on his Muslim Neighbour which was widely circulated and later authored a book entitled Silent No More that sought to demolish America’s false images of Islam and Muslims. The book sold 60,000 copies.

As Findley’s mission to combat ignorance about, and prejudice against, another civilisation was beginning to make some progress, it suffered a severe setback through two major events at the start of the new century. Both the destruction of the twin towers in New York on the 11^th of September 2001 — the infamous 9-11 incident — which was the rationale for the US helmed ‘War on Terror’ and the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq in March 2003 made bridge-building between Christians and Muslims a monumental challenge. Nonetheless, Findley persevered. He continued to lend support to the work of the Council on American—Islamic Relations (CAIR) and other such causes.

His last correspondence with me was in January 2016. He had written an article for the JUST Commentary January 20, 2016 entitled, “Truth Seeking About Islam.”  He lamented that his eye-sight was failing — though his spirit was still high.

Findley was a man of extraordinary courage. The positions he adopted on Israeli power or on Palestinian rights or on justice for Muslims in the US incurred the wrath of many. He was often isolated and marginalised. But he never abandoned his principles.

The tenacity with which he adhered to them was what made him a man of integrity and dignity. He knew the price would be heavy.  But it was a price he was prepared to pay.

It is this — his moral conduct in the face of adversity — that will be his lasting legacy.

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Dr. Chandra Muzaffar is the President of the International Movement for a Just World (JUST), Malaysia. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization.

Let’s begin by stating the obvious: Jeffrey Epstein’s violent death in a Manhattan jail cell prevents a trial or a plea deal that threatened to expose business associates and political enablers who made use of the services provided by his alleged sex-trafficking activities, or who profited from this and other sordid operations of the multimillionaire money manager.

Given the extraordinary circumstances surrounding his death, the efforts of the media—and the New York Times in particular—to dismiss out of hand any suggestion that Epstein’s death was the result of anything but a suicide reek of a high-level cover-up. Whether he was strangled in a jail cell by a hired killer or allowed to hang himself is almost beside the point.

Epstein’s life came to a violent end while in the custody of the US government. This is an undeniable fact. Even if he committed suicide, the act could not have succeeded without the direct complicity of those who were responsible for his safety.

And while Epstein was accused of deplorable crimes, it should hardly be necessary to point out that he—yes, even Epstein—had the right to a vigorous defense in a trial. That his untimely death preempts and prevents the trial from taking place is a matter of staggering seriousness.

The suspicion of homicide is clearly justified. That Epstein was murdered—whether by an assailant or by the calculated enabling of his jail cell suicide—is far more plausible than the official account of what took place at the Metropolitan Correctional Center over the past three weeks. According to prison officials, Epstein was found hanged in his cell Saturday morning. His guards had neglected to perform their every-half-hour inspection during the night and only belatedly took a look at their prisoner at 6:30 a.m.

This occurred even though Epstein was arguably the most notorious prisoner currently in federal custody, with his arrest on sex-trafficking charges given saturation coverage in the New York and national media. Moreover, he had been placed on suicide watch from July 23, when he was reportedly found unconscious in his cell with marks on his neck, until July 31, when the special provisions, including 24/7 surveillance, were lifted without explanation.

Epstein’s attorneys and other visitors said they saw no signs that the multimillionaire was in low spirits or likely to take his own life, and he had been participating in preparations for his legal defense in an upcoming trial for as much as 12 hours a day.

Investigations have now begun by the Federal Bureau of Prisons, Attorney General William Barr and the Justice Department inspector general, all of whom have ample reason to rig the result and cover up what really happened. So far, the most elementary facts have been withheld from the public. It has not been reported how and with what material Epstein was hanged, or whether there is a video recording of his cell that would show the alleged “suicide” or otherwise shed light on the physical circumstances of his death.

The legal and political circumstances of Epstein’s death are a different matter; they strongly suggest that Epstein had become a danger to an entire section of the Wall Street and political elite, who had a powerful motive to silence him.

The media has quickly moved to denounce anyone who points to the obviously concocted character of the official story as the promoter of a “conspiracy theory.”

The New York Times is aggressively promoting the official claims of suicide. The newspaper’s editorial Sunday begins,

“By apparently committing suicide in his Manhattan jail cell on Saturday morning, Jeffrey Epstein spared himself a lengthy trial that could have sent him to prison for the rest of his life on federal sex-trafficking charges.”

The use of the word “apparently” is entirely out of place. In the absence of any details relating to this death, nothing is “apparent.” The Times is simply conditioning the public to accept the suicide narrative without an urgently required criminal investigation into Epstein’s death, which must be considered suspicious.

Furthermore, why does the Times state that Epstein was “spared” a trial? Do the editors have information that supports their assumption that Epstein did not want to have a trial? What about the possibility that his death “spares” other powerful and influential people from having their connections to Epstein’s proven and alleged criminal activities, either sexual or financial, brought into the public eye by a lengthy legal proceeding.

The editorial continues:

“Attorney General William Barr said the Justice Department’s inspector general would open an investigation into the circumstances of Mr. Epstein’s death in federal custody. While Mr. Epstein will never face a legal reckoning, the investigations into his crimes, and those of others connected to him, must continue. His premature death shouldn’t stop law enforcement authorities from finishing the job that they finally took up seriously years after they should have.”

This is cynical claptrap: The Times knows full well that Epstein’s death, without a trial or conviction (technically, Epstein dies an innocent man, at least on the most recent charges), will effectively end the investigation. There is no longer the danger of a plea deal, which Epstein’s lawyers would certainly have attempted to negotiate in return for his testimony in trials of others whom he might have implicated in the alleged sex-trafficking ring.

The Times does not raise these obvious issues, let alone demand a criminal investigation and public hearings into the circumstances of Epstein’s highly suspicious death.

Any elementary review of the facts makes clear that Epstein’s death must be treated as a criminal investigation. Only 24 hours before his death, more than 2,000 pages of documents were released by a Florida court in a civil suit brought by one of the women who has charged Epstein with enslaving her as a teenager as part of his systematic abuse of young girls. The woman filed a defamation suit against Epstein’s partner, Ghislaine Maxwell, who allegedly had acted as a procuress, recruiting teenage girls to service him.

Maxwell is herself a product of the super-rich milieu that vomited up Epstein. She is the daughter of the late British billionaire publisher Robert Maxwell, also the target of numerous allegations of fraud and other financial crimes.

In a grisly similarity, Robert Maxwell died under mysterious circumstances in 1991, when he allegedly fell off his yacht, the Lady Ghislaine (named after the daughter), and his naked body was found floating in the Atlantic Ocean several days later. The death was ruled accidental, although both suicide and homicide were widely suggested at the time.

The documents released Thursday named a number of prominent political and society figures as patrons of Epstein’s sex ring, including two top Democrats, former Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell and former governor and Clinton cabinet member Bill Richardson, a one-time presidential candidate, as well as Prince Andrew, second son of the Queen of England.

Whatever the truth of the allegations against these individuals, there is no question that Epstein was for many years an integral part of the financial and political elite in the United States, hobnobbing with former presidents like Bill Clinton and future presidents—and equally corrupt billionaires—like Donald Trump.

Epstein was a Palm Beach neighbor of Trump, and some of the girls he abused were recruited at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort. That circumstance may account for Trump’s extraordinary response to the news of Epstein’s death, as he retweeted a right-wing supporter’s suggestion that Epstein was murdered at the orders of Bill Clinton.

The death of Epstein so obviously invites the assumption that this is a case of removing an inconvenient personality, one who could have implicated dozens if not hundreds of powerful people if he were finally brought to trial, that the official claim of suicide made possible by neglect on the part of low-ranking prison guards has been greeted with disbelief. Epstein’s death evokes recollections of Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather.

The Epstein case, in all its criminal depravity, sheds light on the state of American capitalist society. The super-rich prey upon the poor and the vulnerable, using them as they wish. They make use of their connections to cover up their crimes, or, depending on the circumstances, arrange for the elimination of those former friends and associates whose activities have become an inconvenience or a danger.

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Boris Johnson and the right-wing Tories in Cabinet are English nationalists who hope to turn UK into a US ‘colony’, a country where EU regulations are replaced by limited welfare, minimum standards, low taxes and low pay, writes Henry McLeish.

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Rarely has a new Prime Minister been less deserving of a period of grace. Boris Johnson’s in his coveted new job and has unleashed a powerful range of divisive and potentially destructive ideas. Left unchecked, this approach, could weaken the Tory Party, destroy the Union, set the UK’s relationship with the EU back 50 years, engineer a catastrophic no-deal Brexit, embolden the most right-wing group of ideologues ever contained within a Tory Cabinet and, potentially the most damaging of all, embark on an uncritical embrace of the USA and President Donald Trump.

But Britain was promised something different! Less than a month ago, Boris was supposed to unite the Conservative Party, bring the country together, deliver Brexit, strengthen the ties that bind the Union and offer leadership “as only he could”. Instead his Cabinet and Government seem more like a new Leave campaign team, with the zealots and cheap patriots of the European Research Group occupying prominent roles.

Britain, it is claimed, is on a war-time footing, with tax-payer funded, pro-Brexit propaganda and billions of pounds being spent on preparations for a “no deal” Brexit. In doing so, Johnson is mocking the memory and achievements of a great war leader. Sir Winston Churchill was fighting fascism, the destruction of civilisation and the possible invasion of Britain. In sharp contrast, Johnson, a narcissist and opportunist, is only trying to cope with the most monumental act of self-harm this country has ever inflicted upon itself.

Telling lies, exploiting emotion, sentiment, and nostalgia, sprinkling billions on services his party has starved of resources and serving it up with a large dose of delusion and theatrics, are all designed to rally the great British public around the flag. But which flag and which public? Johnson’s populism and English nationalism go hand-in-hand. His brief visits to Northern Ireland, Wales and Scotland were embarrassingly contrived, and confirmed for many, that Johnson’s Union is draped in the cross of St George.

Read the Complete Article on the Scotesman

Featured image is from TruePublica

Wales, Ireland and Scotland should form a ‘Celtic pact’ and leave England behind to sort out Brexit for itself, according to the Irish Mirror.

Writing for the newspaper, Jason O’Toole suggests that a pact of the four nations – Ireland, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales – would be similar to the Scandinavians with their Nordic Council.

He says Wales and the rest could mimic the inter-parliamentary co-operation between Sweden, Denmark, Iceland, Finland, Norway, Greenland and other smaller islands.

“There would no doubt be countless benefits if we replicated their model, such as with trade agreements and unrestricted borders, which would solve the Irish backstop,” Jason O’Toole.

“And it would collectively make us a much stronger power within the EU too.

“I know there might be a knee-jerk reaction to the idea, but it makes sense for the Celtic nations to swim off together into the sunset – while Boris Johnson sinks England with Brexit.”

A poll conducted between 30 July and 2 August by Lord Ashcroft projected that the ‘Yes’ vote in a Scottish Independence poll had a 3% lead.

There is no suggestion yet of majority support for a united Ireland, however. An Irish Times/Ipsos Mori poll in March had yes on 32%, no on 45%, with 23% on don’t know.

The most recent ‘yes/no’ poll on Welsh independence, conducted by Sky News Data in December 2018, had 17% yes, 67% no, and 16% don’t know.

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Featured image is from the National Assembly (CC BY 2.0)

Japan was the first, the last and the only nation to be attacked with nuclear weapons. If it continues along the path set by Prime Minister Abe and the national security bureaucrats of his Liberal Democrat Party (LDP), it may also be the next.

The laws and norms restraining the development and deployment of nuclear weapons are dissolving in the same corrosive nationalism that led to Hiroshima and Nagasaki. One by one laboriously negotiated constraints are disappearing. The latest to go was the INF Treaty. Mr. Abe’s government did nothing to preserve it, and may have intentionally hastened its demise. For more than a decade LDP bureaucrats have been lobbying the US government to redeploy US nuclear weapons in Asia. Some Japanese officials, including Vice Foreign Minister Takeo Akiba, have discussed putting US nuclear weapons back in Japan, training the Japanese Self-Defense Force to deliver them and obtaining US permission to decide when to use them.

Fear of China

Government and military officials in Japan and the United States are in the grips of increasing anxiety about China. The steady growth of a national economy containing nearly one-fifth of humanity is the cause of their worries and the animus guiding some of President Trump’s trade warriors. China’s gross domestic product (GDP) eclipsed Japan’s in 2010 and will soon surpass the GDP of the United States. China has held military spending to consistent 2% of GDP since 1979, but combined with the rapid pace of Chinese economic growth Chinese military expenditures have created the impression of an equally rapid military buildup US and Japanese security experts assume must be aimed at something other than self-defense.

Japanese security experts fear China will act the same way Japan did in the 1930s. US security experts worry China will behave the same way the United States does now. Neither feels comfortable living with those thoughts.

Both sets of officials imagine new nuclear weapons will relieve their anxiety. The Trump administration wants to offset China’s increasing conventional military capabilities with new “low-yield” or “non-strategic” nuclear weapons the United States can use to avoid defeat in a future war with China. The nuclear thinking within Abe’s LDP is similar but less clear cut. In a lengthy discussion about China in Washington in 2009, Mr. Akiba told me he believed that if Chinese leaders knew Japan had access to US nuclear weapons, a military trained to deliver them and a government with the authority to use them then China would be less assertive on everything from territorial disputes to trade negotiations.

Estimate of casualties from a single Chinese nuclear warhead targeting Kadena Air Base in Okinawa, Japan by NUKEMAP.

Resurgent Nationalism

The elevation of national ambitions, priorities and interests over international agreements that subordinate all three to shared peace and prosperity is rapidly overturning decades of halting but inspiringly successful efforts to not only avoid another world war but to create a more sustainable and equitable global economy. The collapse of international nuclear arms control is accelerating in a context where all international organizations are under assault, and many of the international laws and norms that created them are being disparaged or ignored.

Abe’s LDP was one of the first to subvert the post World War II consensus on the dangers of nationalism.  The prime minister and the leaders of his party bristled at the continuation of ritual expressions of remorse for the consequences of Japanese militarism and chose instead to ostentatiously honor the perpetrators. They sought to restore Japan’s national stature by overturning the “peace constitution” instituted in the wake of the atomic bombings and Japan’s defeat. Steve Bannon admiringly told the LDP that Abe was Trump before Trump. The only difference between Abe and his American idol is that the prime minister still values international trade agreements seen as essential to Japan’s economic survival.

It is unlikely President Trump is self-consciously leading an organized effort to redirect US foreign, economic and military policy. His only clear interest–the focus of all his presidential activity–appears to be simple self-aggrandizement. But the aberrant character of his campaign and his government repelled traditional US  foreign policy elites and attracted a cabal of sycophants, opportunists and ideologues, like Bannon, who mobilized longstanding popular resentments against post-war US internationalism that Trump shared and articulated. Public support for Trump’s “America-first” orientation enabled his underlings to institutionalize a rapid US withdrawal from many of its international obligations.

China, on the other hand, embraced the idea of global community and emerged as one of internationalism’s most vocal defenders. This difference may provide a new ideological foundation for anti-Chinese policies similar to those that organized US-China relations during the Cold War.

Precarious Planning

The war all three nations imagine might come would be fast and vast. US plans include preemptive long range missile strikes deep into central China. US leaders refuse to rule out the possibility that some of those missiles would be armed with nuclear warheads.

Chinese plans include large-scale missile launches at every imaginable US military target on its periphery, including US military bases in Japan. Some of China’s missiles are capable of carrying either nuclear or conventional warheads. Chinese leaders have repeatedly stated they will never, under any circumstances, be the first to use nuclear weapons but US and Japanese officials don’t believe them.

Within minutes of the beginning of a war between China and the United States–a war Abe’s new interpretation of the Japanese constitution obliges Japan to join even if it is a not party to the dispute that starts it–there will be hundreds of missiles headed for scores of targets spread over an incredibly large area of East Asia. The first things to be destroyed will be the antennas, radars and computer networks commanders on all sides rely upon to assess what’s happening and communicate with their troops. None of them can be certain some of the missiles headed in their direction are not armed with nuclear warheads.

In the midst of this fast-moving high-stakes chaos it is not inconceivable that a nuclear weapon could be used by either side, perhaps without authorization or by mistake, igniting a much broader nuclear war that could obliterate Japanese urban populations near US military bases and major metropolitan areas in the continental United States.

Delusional Thinking

Even more frightening is the belief of Japanese and US defense officials that they can use use low yield nuclear weapons first to control the escalation of the war. They imagine if they use these nuclear weapons China will give up the fight without retaliating.  The idea is an old one stretching all the way back to the beginning of the nuclear age.

The Chinese communist leadership faced this type of US nuclear threat before during the Taiwan Straits Crisis of the 1950s. They did not have nuclear weapons then but were allied with a nuclear-armed Soviet Union. Declassified Chinese and Soviet archives show China’s leaders were prepared to take the blow and continue to fight. They did not expect Soviet retaliation on their behalf so long as the scale of the US nuclear attack was limited. Soviet leaders, however, insisted they must retaliate in order to preserve their own credibility.

It is impossible to know how a nuclear-armed China would respond today. I suspect even China’s leaders do not know what they would do. There is, however, a reasonable chance it would not be what US military planners expect. The United States foreign policy and defense establishment does not have a very good track record when it comes to understanding Chinese thinking or predicting Chinese behavior.

China does not have low yield nuclear weapons so if it did retaliate, even in a very limited way, it would be with missiles carrying nuclear warheads with an explosive force 30-40 times larger than the weapons the US dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. One classified Chinese text on the operations of its nuclear forces suggests they would choose a relatively isolated but important military target in the theater of war, like Okinawa or Guam.  A single Chinese nuclear warhead targeting Kadena Air Base in Okinawa would kill approximately 90,000 people and injure 200,000 more, most of whom would be innocent Okinawans and the families of the 18,000 American and 4,000 Japanese personnel who work there. It’s hard to believe either side would be able exercise “escalation control” at that point in an already devastatingly massive conflict.

Lessons Worth Remembering

We’ve managed to avoid sliding into another “great power” conflict for 74 years because up until very recently our governments understood the dangers of nationalism and the necessity to subordinate national interests to international law and organization. Japan’s peace constitution embodies this better than any other legal document of the post-war era.

“Aspiring sincerely to an international peace based on justice and order, the Japanese people forever renounce war as a sovereign right of the nation and the threat or use of force as a means of settling international disputes.

In order to accomplish the aim of the preceding paragraph, land, sea and air forces, as well as other war potential, will never be maintained. The right of belligerency of the state will not be recognized.”

The constitution may have been imposed by the United States at the end of WW II but the Japanese people came to cherish it and transformed those commitments into a pillar of Japan’s post-war national identity.

I find it sadly ironic that US officials have been pressing their Japanese counterparts to abandon that language for decades to no avail until Abe’s LDP pledged to restore Japan’s national honor and autonomy by finally capitulating to this foreign demand.

Japan’s new nationalists and their US counterparts justify their challenge to the post-war international consensus by pointing to the rise of China. The implication is that China, not the United States and Japan, is to blame for the disintegration of the international order. Rhetorically, at least, nothing could be farther from the truth. The key component of the Chinese Communist Party’s foreign policy is the concept of a “community of common human destiny.” The five aims of the policy are to “build enduring peace, universal security, shared prosperity, openness and tolerance and a clean and beautiful world.”

Not exactly Mein Kampf, is it.

Despite its many horrible faults, the Chinese government is not championing nationalism or disparaging internationalism. It has a number of seemingly intractable sovereign disputes with some of its neighbors, including Japan, but those disputes do not necessarily foretell the emergence of another Imperial Japan, Nazi Germany or Soviet Union.

I’ve spent most of the last thirty-five years living, studying and working in China. The one constant in the breathtaking transformation of that country during this period is the consistently enormous gap between US perceptions of what is happening in China and the reality I experience when I am there. It’s possible US and Japanese fears may be exaggerated or misplaced.

Attempting to address those fears by exerting pressure, waging trade wars and flooding East Asia with new nuclear weapons will put all three nations on the path to a war none of them can win. The only way out of our present difficulties is to negotiate mutually acceptable compromises in the interest of the common good.

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Gregory Kulacki researches the cross-cultural aspects of nuclear arms control negotiations between the United States, China and Japan.

Australia has always nursed a contradictory, repressive relationship with its Pacific neighbours.  Being a satrap of great powers, it has performed the role of gate keeper and monitor of regional instability, a condescending, often paternalistic agent. At stages, it has also entertained more direct colonial interests.  For almost seven decades, Australia controlled Papua New Guinea, assuming power over the former British colony of Papua in 1906.

The conclusion of the First World War saw Australia draw in more former colonial territories once under German control, including German New Guinea.  In Papua, stiff British tradition prevailed under the guidance of Hubert Murray.  As Murray’s entry in the Australian Dictionary of Biography goes,

“Although aware that in some British colonies attempts were being made to rule through customary laws and to use influential villagers on local courts, Murray maintained the English-Australian legal system.”

In New Guinea, the emphasis was on the enthusiastic and fairly ruthless exploitation of the indigenous population for economic gain.

The initial defeat of Australian forces in the Pacific by Japan brought a brief halt to its colonising hubris.  After the Second World War, the colonising drive reasserted itself, this time in the guise of modernisation.  Paternalism was enforced; theories of development were implemented.

Little wonder, then, that Australia has a relationship of bleak contradiction with its neighbours, hovering between that of subsidising supporter and interfering father.  But Australia now finds itself as the state seemingly out of step with the modern age.  Climate change remains at the forefront of Pacific nations, a terrifying, existential threat that promises a liquid, submerged future.  The government of Scott Morrison, by way of contrast, remains irritated by such notions of a warming earth and the growing number of doomed species.  There is mining to be done, coal reserves to be extracted.  The plunderer, in short, remains enthroned in Canberra.

What Morrison has instead done is to offer a package of $500 million, announced ahead of a meeting of the Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) Leaders Meeting, to take place at Tuvalu on Wednesday.  According to Alex Hawke, Australia’s Minister for International Development and the Pacific, this constituted the “most amount of money Australia has ever spent on climate in the Pacific”.

The amount did little to inspire the popping of champagne corks through the region: the package was an accounting readjustment on existing spending arrangements and aid programs, despite Hawke’s suggestion that the aid budget had remained unaltered.  Amidst such voodoo budgeting, Prime Minister Morrison insisted that the commitment highlighted “our commitment to not just meeting our emissions reductions obligations at home but supporting our neighbours and friends”.

In a sparse media statement on August 13, Morrison confirmed that he would “continue to work with our partners to build a Pacific region that is secure strategically, stable economically and sovereign politically.”  Lip service was paid to the Blue Pacific narrative – the acknowledgment of shared ocean resources, geography and identity – and the Boe Declaration.  Morrison gave the latter the most cursory of mentions, a conscious understating of the declaration’s acknowledgement that “climate change remains the single greatest threat to the livelihoods, security and wellbeing of the peoples of the Pacific and our commitment to progress and implementation of the Paris Agreement”.

Pacific Island leaders, however, are keen to remind their Australian counterpart that the sum of money dressed up as improving resilience in the face of climate change should not be taken to be an indulgence of polluting dispensation.  As Tuvalu Prime Minister Enele Sopoaga explained,

“No matter how much money you put on the table, it doesn’t give you the excuse not to do the right thing.”

That right thing would be to reduce emissions, “including not opening your coal mines”.

Tuesday’s meeting of the Pacific small island states yielded a declaration less than musical to Morrison and his cabinet, a direct scorning of Australia’s environmental policy in calling for “an immediate global ban on the construction of new coal-fired power plants and coal mines” and the urging of all countries “to rapidly phase out their use of coal in the power sector”.

Morrison prefers to focus on the influence of that other C word, China, and the increasingly unhinging need to curb its influence.   Pacific governments already owe Beijing some $US1.3 billion, a debt arrangement causing beads of sweat to form on the brows of Australian diplomats.  But the Pacific family remains divided in their interests.  The Solomon Islands, for instance, is warming to reconsidering its recognition of Taiwan as a separate, independent state, a point of some concern to Morrison, who wishes Taiwanese recognition to be a continuing policy.

In June, Solomon Islands’ Prime Minister Manasseh Sogovare went so far as to conduct a fact-finding tour of various neighbours with close China ties.  In the words of a government law maker, John Moffat Fuqui, the taskforce would assess “the kind of development relations they have, the kind of assistance they get, the conditionalities or lack of conditionalities they might have, the kind of governance”.  Nauru’s President Baron Waqa will not have a bar of it.

“Taiwan is a very, very strong partner with those of us in the Pacific.”

Where the Morrison government hopes to be most mischievous in tampering with the PIF agenda remains climate change.  In the realm of foreign policy, the Australian prime minister is hoping to have it both ways: placate, even bribe regional leaders into thinking that some climate change policy is chugging away, while maintaining the emissions schedule back home.  To do so, Australian delegates have taken liberties in an annotated draft of the Pacific Islands Forum declaration.  The August 7 comments ruthlessly excise references to climate change, carbon neutrality, the 1.5C limit in temperature rise, phasing out fossil fuel subsidies and a ban on new coal power plants.

The findings of the International Panel on Climate Change’s report on 1.5C are also given the heave-ho, with suggestions that Australia might “recognis[e] the information” without endorsing assessments that a fall of global emissions by 45 percent by 2030, with the attainting of carbon neutrality by 2050, had to take place for the limit of 1.5C to achieved.  In the opinion of a regretful Hilda Heine, president of the Marshall Islands, “We would be lying to say we’re not disappointed, extremely disappointed.”

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Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge.  He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research and Asia-Pacific Research. Email: [email protected]

As part of Remarks by President Trump on Mass Shootings in Texas and Ohio on August 5^th, President Donald Trump announced that:

“Today, I am also directing the Department of Justice to propose legislation ensuring that those who commit hate crimes and mass murders face the death penalty, and that this capital punishment be delivered quickly, decisively, and without years of needless delay.”

Normally it might have been expected that the mainstream media would run with Trump’s support of the death-penalty-for-hate-crimes as proof positive that the man is off his rocker.  Instead, the statement garnered barely a flicker of public notice.  Did anyone in authority bother to confirm that the shootings were indeed motivated by ‘hate?’

As the mainstream media consistently rush to judgment, speculation too often becomes fact before all the evidence is considered (ie Russiagate) as the MSM is relied on to provide factual and critical background information.  And yet since 65% of the American public believe that the MSM is peddling fake news begs the question of why should detailed reporting on these tragic events be left to a discredited media establishment or that their information on these recent shootings be considered truthful?  Why should the American public trust the MSM for what may have already been determined to be a ‘hate’ crime without providing evidence of the hate – as the Divide and Rule Game continues undeterred sowing division and conflict among the American people.

It remains unclear exactly why either tragedy is being specifically labeled a “hate” crime instead of felony murder as if there is a larger agenda to establish ‘hate’ as a bona fide.  Obviously, such barbaric mass killings are not normal behavior as the rationale for such conduct must stem from some deep emotional depravity just as the epidemic of suicides of young white males who have lost hope in American society makes no more sense.

There is an endemic crisis throughout the country and the political class are responsible. Decades after federal government elimination of grants for community mental health programs, ‘hate’ is the favorite determinant factor as the world’s most violent nation creates a generation of emotionally or mentally unstable young men, many of whom may be on mind-numbing psychiatric drugs.  Since the MSM has failed to inform the American public of advanced mind control practices; perhaps the MSM itself and the young shooters are part of widespread experiment using MK Ultra or other state-of-the-art brain manipulation techniques.  How would the American public ever know which might be true?

The 21 year old El Paso shooter was immediately identified  as a right wing Trumper acting on behalf of the President’s “hate” rhetoric and that he had posted an anti-immigration racist tract entitled  “An Inconvenient Truth’ – all of which turned out to be something less than the truth.  Decrying mass immigration as an environmental plea for population control sounds more like something John Muir might have written rather than a hate-filled racist diatribe justifying the slaughter.   Perusing the alleged politically charged manifesto  included such statements:  “Our lifestyle is destroying the environment of our country   If we can get rid of enough people, then our way of life can become more sustainable.”  There is, however, a problematic psychiatrist father of uncertain character in the background as the shooter drove 650 miles from his home to El Paso before committing the crime and surrendering to authorities.

On the other hand, the Dayton shooter also defies the usual partisan identity and has been acknowledged as a 24-year old member of the Democratic Socialist Party, a Bernie and Elizabeth Warren supporter and was dressed and masked as an Antifa member at the time of the shooting.  His weapons and ammo magazines appear to have been legally acquired, he had a high school history as a bully who kept a hit list and made violent threats.

Meanwhile,  the Democrats who consider themselves the responsible party on gun control,  failed to restore the assault gun ban when they had the votes in 2010 as they prefer fanning the flames of more ‘hate’ by blaming Trump’s loose lips even though the once-revered ACLU does not oppose the Second Amendment.

One wonders that if the El Paso shooter can be tagged with being influenced by Trump rhetoric, did the Dayton shooter receive his inspiration from Antifa or perhaps Elizabeth Warren?   It is too much to expect any rational media voice to inquire – all of which brings us back to the President’s Remarks endorsing the death penalty.

How exactly did this ‘hate’ language make its way into Trump’s remarks as “hate” has become a preoccupation of American society and the Administration as its Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism’s very life purpose is to root out hate – not hate of all kinds but only that of the Jewish variety.

Historically, the American criminal justice system, flawed as it is, requires any jury in a criminal case to consider the Defendant’s level of conscious intent to commit a criminal act as well as the illegality of the act without specificity to the psychological issues of that intent.

Originally, hate crime laws were expected to offer special protection based on an individuals’ sexual orientation, gender, religion, disability or racial identity as perceived by the perpetrator.   In a manner that does not occur in normal criminal proceedings, defining the “hate” component of a crime requires a distinct determination that the defendant’s actions were solely motivated by thoughts of ‘hate.’

In a worse case scenario, is Trump suggesting that the death penalty may be applied to what is determined to be a hate crime even if that crime has not resulted in a death? The reality is that hate crimes may be difficult to distinguish from a run-of-the-mill felony murder, thereby increasing the hate crime penalty makes little sense since first degree murder is already subject to the death penalty.  Therefore, it appears that a redundant death penalty for a crime that would already call for the death penalty is little more than…overkill.

In other words, hate crime prosecution necessarily relies on criminalizing thoughts as the NSA claims it has already developed remote neural monitoring revealing one’s most hidden private thoughts or an iphone may be bugged with implants to reduce impulse control.

Many legal scholars would respond that the Equal Protection Clause of the 14^th Amendment and the Due Process Clause in the Fifth Amendment already provides all American citizens with the guaranteed right to equal protection under the law (ie Brown v. Board of Education and Roe v. Wade) and therefore such hate laws are unnecessary and may be unconstitutional.

Since the Constitution already protects the rights of aggrieved parties, why would Congress initiate an entirely new category of duplicative Hate Crime laws unless they needed the extra legislative accomplishment to justify their existence or to satisfy prominent politically-connected constituencies or to create a nefarious political agenda.

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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. She is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from Countercurrents

Currently, Britain has a Prime Minister who was elected not by the public, but by around 90,000 Conservative party members. With a majority in the House of Commons of just one seat, without any real political mandate, Britain is being pushed towards a hard Brexit. In little more than 80 days – it is predicted British business will need a bail-out fund to help them survive, the economy will fall straight into recession (described by the BoE as an ‘economic shock‘), jobs will be lost and a constitutional and political crisis will see the beginnings of the eventual end of the union.

Liz Truss addressed an extreme free-market think tank in Washington DC last Friday. which saw campaign group Global Justice Now accusing Boris Johnson’s government of pushing ahead with an extreme US trade deal without a mandate from the public or parliament.

Last week both Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab and Trade Secretary Liz Truss were in Washington DC to talk trade with US officials. Both ministers are well-known opponents of the sort of regulations and protections that would be threatened by a US trade deal. Liz Truss spoke at a meeting of the extreme free-market Heritage Foundation and has previously held meetings with several free-market think tanks to discuss US-style deregulation.

Last year, the Heritage Foundation co-developed a ‘model-free trade deal’ which would if implemented, completely restructure the British economy. Proposals include:

• Zero restrictions on cross-border data flow, threatening to hand huge powers to the likes of Amazon, Google and Facebook.
• Zero restrictions on foreign direct investment in the economy making it harder for post-Brexit Britain to control or tax the activities of big business.
• Strict prohibitions against the use of ‘nontariff barriers’, which would set off a ‘race to the bottom’ in standards and consumer protections, preventing post-Brexit Britain from being able to stop the import of industrially farmed food like chlorine chicken.
• Lock-in liberalisation of all services ensuring the continued liberalisation of our NHS.

Nick Dearden, Director of Global Justice Now, said:

“As the government snubs European leaders, so they fall over themselves to get to Washington DC to talk trade with Trump’s officials. That’s because these ministers are committed to an extreme big business agenda which would see Britain cut rights and protections after Brexit, and they know a trade deal with the US can help push those plans forward. Today Trade Secretary Liz Truss is speaking to her friends at the hard-right Heritage Foundation. This is one of the groups that dreamt up a ‘model US-UK trade deal’ which would lay waste to huge swathes of our economy, including farming, and would undermine our public services.

“Even more worrying, this extreme trade agenda is being carried out by a government which has no mandate from parliament or the public. MPs still don’t have the ability to stop or properly scrutinise the government’s negotiations. The public are not allowed to see any details of these talks – even though we are told there are over 100 officials sometimes in the room. This is frighteningly undemocratic, and no wonder, because whenever the public are asked for their opinion about the detail of these trade deals, they are deeply hostile to them.”

The Heritage Foundation (HF) is widely considered one of the world’s most influential public policy research institutes. The Foundation wields considerable influence in Washington DC and is a member of the State Policy Network, a web of right-wing “think tanks” that operates in every state across America. It has strong ties to the tobacco industry, is a proponent of climate science denial, has pushed hard to deny the Affordable Care Act to millions in the USA, was the originator of a policy of an individual mandate to buy health insurance and pushed for the last government shut-down for political gain. They have campaigned to stop immigrant amnesties, stoked anti-immigrant sentiment and is a political organisation feeding off the extreme right-wing Tea Party movement.

The Heritage Foundation also maintains strong ties with the London Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA).

This is where part of the underbelly of the extreme Brexit loop lives. The IEA faced two official investigations after it emerged that the thinktank offered potential US donors access to UK government ministers as it raised cash for research to promote free-trade deals demanded by hardline Brexiters. The IEA was caught red-handed when it was filmed in an undercover investigation that confirmed it had arranged for US donors who donated £35,000 to have a private meeting with Steve Baker MP, when he was Brexit minister. This is not just a conflict of interest – it is what most would consider to be corruption.

The IEA also got caught when the casino industry donated £8,000 to the IEA after it published a report calling for more casinos in Britain. IEA was also under investigation by the Charity Commission which raised questions about its charitable status which means it enjoys tax breaks on its £2.3m annual expenditure, when in fact, it is really clearly a hard-right political lobbyist. The Charity Commission then issued a formal warning demanding written assurances from the think tank that it will not engage in further political campaigning. And that was the extent of their punishment.

The plot thickens with the IEA. It has very strong ties with the so-called Legatum Institute – also accused of breaching charity rules. Former Legatum trade chief Shanker Singham, described by a former Labour minister as a ‘hard Brexit Svengali’, was advising PR and lobbying agency Grayling on Brexit and trade. Singham, who has been said to enjoy “unparalleled access” to government ministers also happened to be an advisor to Liam Fox. Legatum got into another scandal when it gave Tory MP Sir Oliver Letwin a £30,000-a-year job, prompting questions over whether it meets rules that say charities must not be party political, which of course, it cannot lay claim to be under such circumstances. Again, most moral observers would consider this to be a corruption of government.

This is nothing short of a cash-for-access, cash-for-questions, cash-for-influence scandal all rolled into one with massive infiltration from a foreign state. The difference is that this time all these scandals are being drowned out by the biggest in Britain’s post-war history – that of Brexit itself. And we should not make any mistake how this has indeed come about – American corporations, its think tanks along with evangelical conservative extremists with direct access to the Trump administration has pumped millions into a project to asset strip, plunder and pillage Britain.

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As many as 13 million people are expected to sign a petition opposing the US economic blockade of Venezuela and the “genocidal, racist, xenophobe” Donald Trump, according to the Bolivarian government.

Tables have been organised in public squares in cities across Venezuela gathering names for the petition, which will be sent to United Nations secretary general Antonio Guterres.

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores were the first to sign the petition at the No More Trump rally in Caracas on Saturday.

He said:

“This is a fight for peace against the sanctions imposed by the United States, and the power of the dollar … For 20 years Venezuela has had a popular government. Today, we Venezuelans have dignity and are spiritually united.”

The national drive was launched yesterday and will last until September 10.

Millions signed a similar petition in February when a US-backed coup attempt was launched by president of the illegitimate national assembly Juan Guaido.

He declared himself interim president of Venezuela. But his attempts at launching armed insurrection have failed, with the army and the people of Venezuela remaining loyal to Mr Maduro.

The failure to garner internal support is believed to be behind the executive order signed by US President Donald Trump on August 5 freezing Venezuelan state assets in the US.

The latest measures amount to a near-total blockade and were branded a “criminal act” by Mr Maduro at the Caracas rally.

Government supporters gather for a rally to protest against economic sanctions imposed by the administration of US President Donald Trump, in Caracas, Venezuela, on Saturday (Source: Morning Star)

Sanctions are estimated to have caused 40,000 deaths between 2017 and 2018, according to the Washington-based Centre for Economic & Political Research.

Its report published in April found that Venezuelans were deprived of “lifesaving medicines, medical equipment, food and other essential imports” due to the US embargo.

The non-aligned movement (Nam) has discussed measures to counter the impact of US global sanctions, with 21 countries now included on Washington’s sanctions list.

A gathering of 120 Nam countries met in Caracas last month, issuing a statement that affirmed that only Venezuela can decide its fate. It warned that US sanctions were in breach of the United Nations charter.

The meeting agreed to develop an international financial system independent of US control. President of the general assembly Maria Fernanda Espinosa told those gathered that the Nam was an important strategic partner for the UN, making up two thirds of its total membership — and 55 percent of the world’s population.

“Multilateralism and international law are the only effective formula to achieve a sustainable and lasting peace,” she said.

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On August 12, 2019, financial markets in Argentina crashed. The stock market contracted 38% in just one day. The currency, the Peso, fell 20% after falling as low as 30% and recovered to 20% only when Argentina’s central bank raised its interest rate to 75%. Watch next for bond prices, both government and corporate, and especially dollarized bonds which Argentina has loaded up on in recent years, to freefall as well.

What’s going on in Argentina? What’s likely to happen next? And what do the events in Argentina have to do with falling financial asset prices—i.e. stocks, currencies, derivatives, commodity futures, real estate prices, etc.—now underway globally as well?

The precipitating cause of yesterday’s crash in Argentina stocks, peso, bond rates, etc. was the primary presidential election results over the weekend. The election was a preview for the general election that will happen this October. Macri, the current president, a businessman whose election in 2015 was assisted by US interests, lost heavily to his challenger, Alberto Fernandez. Fernandez got 48% of the vote; Macri only 32%. A gap that is likely insurmountable for Macri. It’s almost certain now that Macri will now lose in October. That prospect has global bankers and investors quite worried. For Fernandez is associated with the Kirchner government that held office prior to Macri from 2002 to 2015, and that government refused to pay US hedge funds and other investors the exorbitant rates on Argentina bonds they demanded ever since the last crisis in 2001-02.

The US media and business press today expressed deep confusion over the weekend’s political results. They just can’t understand how Macri could have done so poorly in the primary. As the talking heads put it, ‘Macri’s been putting the economy in order’, why did he lose so badly to Fernandez?

But all the perplexed ‘talking heads’ in the US media needed to do was to look at the facts: Inflation has been running at 56% per year, one of the highest in the world. The pundits say Macri has done well, bringing inflation down from 70% in 2018. But annual inflation rates, whether 56% or 70%, have been devastating real incomes of workers and small businesses. The currency has also been collapsing for two years now, having fallen from an exchange rate of roughly 16 to the US$ in 2017 to 52 to the dollar, after hitting a 60 to the dollar low yesterday. That falling will almost certainly continue in coming weeks. And with the 20% collapse of the peso this past weekend, inflation will now accelerate even faster once again.

Add to that the Argentine real economy has been in recession, contracting the past four quarters on average by more than -5%, with unemployment officially at double digit levels and likely much higher. Industrial production has fallen nearly -10% over the past 12 months, with manufacturing double that, at around -20%.

In other words, living standards have been falling sharply due to both accelerating inflation and chronic double digit job loss for the vast majority of workers and small businesses ever since Macri took office in 2015 and instituted his austerity reforms demanded by the IMF. That austerity has included cutting pensions, slashing government jobs, raising utility costs, eliminating past household subsidies. A third of all Argentina households now officially live in poverty. Is it any wonder then that Argentinians expressed their discontent in the primaries this past weekend? US business media and pundits of course don’t choose to look at this human cost of US neoliberal policies and its corollary of Argentina austerity. For them, it’s just about whether Argentina continues to service its debt to global bankers and whether the stock market in Argentina, the Merval, continues to produce capital gains profits for investors.

But wait. Didn’t Argentina recently receive a record $56 billion loan from the IMF? Isn’t that boosting the economy? No, it isn’t. Because the $56 billion is not going into the real economy. So where is the $56B IMF loan going? It’s going to pay the debt that Argentina owes to global bankers and investors, including the ‘vulture capitalist’ hedge funds, who Macri welcomed back in 2015 after he took office.

The IMF never gives money to a country to spend on stimulating its real economy. Quite the opposite. It extends loans with the condition that the country introduces austerity measures that reduce government spending or raise taxes. So what if that does the opposite—i.e. slows and contracts the real economy. That’s not its objective.

The IMF officially says it lends money to help stabilize a country’s currency. Translated, however, that means lending with the understanding the country first pays off foreign investors to whom it owes money. In fact, IMF loans never even get routed directly to the country. The IMF loan goes directly to paying of principal and interest to the investment banks, hedge funds, and billionaire ‘vulture capitalists’ who get the country indebted in the first place. The IMF actually pays them off and then send the ‘bill’ to the country for repayment—i.e. payment of the principal and interest on the debt it owes the IMF now instead of the private investors. And the debt payments are made with the money extracted from austerity programs levied on workers and the real economy. The IMF is thus the bill collector for big finance capital, and transfers the debt owed from their private investor and banker balance sheets onto its own IMF balance sheet.

The IMF recently loaned Argentina the largest amount it has ever loaned a country, the $56 billion. But it wasn’t the first time it did so. In 2001, caught in a recession that originated in the USA, Argentina couldn’t repay interest on the $100 billion debt it had incurred with private investors in the late 1990s. The IMF stepped in and did its duty. It loaned Argentina money to bail out the private investors. But some of them—led by hedge fund US billionaire Paul Singer—didn’t think the IMF loan terms didn’t pay them enough. Singer and his consortium of vulture capitalist hedge funds kept demanding Argentina pay more. The dispute went on until 2015, when the pre-Macri government was replaced by Macri, an election engineered with the assistance, financial and otherwise, of the Obama government on behalf of Singer and his buddies.

The first thing Macri did when he took office was to pay off Singer and friends the full amount they were demanding since 2001. Where did he get the money for that? From the IMF of course, which loaned Argentina the $56 billion. The payoff also opened the door for Macri & his business friends to get more private loans from US investors. They immediately trotted off to New York, met with the US bankers, and came back with a bag full of private loans. In other words, they loaded up on more private investor debt after ‘borrowing’ from the IMF to pay off the old private investor hedge fund debt.

So how is it that Macri—with big loans from not only the IMF but from New York bankers as well—couldn’t get the Argentina real economy back on its feet the past four years? The IMF money went directly to the hedge funds and vultures. But where did the new private money go? It certainly didn’t go into the real economy—i.e. investment, jobs, household income for consumption, and thus GDP. Likely it’s been skimmed off the top by Macri and his friends in part. The rest diverted to financial markets in Argentina, in the USA, or Europe.

Despite the nearly $100 billion in capital provided by the IMF and New York investors, the Argentina economy has performed poorly ever since Macri took office. In 2016 the Argentina economy contracted. It recovered briefly and slightly from recession in 2017. But in 2018-19 it has fallen into recession once again, this time more deeply as its currency has collapsed, from 16 to the dollar to more than 50 to the $US—with more collapse to come. The loans it arranged since 2015 from New York investors, moreover, have been heavily denominated in US dollars. Argentina has one of the worst run-ups in dollarized private bond debt in the world. That means as the US dollar rises the cost of making payments on that debt also rises.

Not only is the prospect of default on the IMF $56 billion debt in the near future now rising, but the parallel default on corporate debt is also rising. The value of a US dollar denominated bond dropped since last week to 58 cents on the dollar, from 77 cents. Defaults are on the horizon, both government and private, in other words.

The peso’s precipitous collapse also has further ‘knock on’ negative effects that are now intensifying the crisis in the country. Here’s how: As currencies fall in relation to the dollar, what happens is capital flight accelerates from the country. That reduces investment further in the country, in turn exacerbating the recession and layoffs even more. To slow the capital flight from the country, its central bank then typically raises interest rates dramatically. Argentina’s central bank benchmark rate is now an amazing 75%. Rising domestic interest rates further slow the real economy. In turn, the slowing real economy results in domestic stock and bond markets collapsing further—thus feeding back into the financial sector and making it even more unstable and driving financial asset price deflation even more.

What results, in other words, is a negative feedback effect between all financial markets in the country, an effect that dries up the availability of credit in general forcing more layoffs and a deeper recession. That’s what is going on now in Argentina.

But Argentina is just the leading edge of a similar general process of global financial asset price deflation. Argentina is just an intense example of financial asset markets declining everywhere globally. And in that sense its current financial and economic collapse may be the harbinger of things soon to come.

USA and other emerging market economies’ stock markets are now contracting sharply since the beginning of August. The 20%-30% decline of US stock markets last November-December 2018 has resumed. We are beginning to see November-December 2018 events déjà vu all over again. The 2018 stock market contraction was halted temporarily by the US central bank, the Fed, capitulating in late December to Trump and financial interests demanding the bank stop raising interest rates. The Fed halted raising interest rates in January 2019 and both US and emerging market economies’ financial markets regained their losses in the first quarter 2019. Aiding the halt of rate hikes by the Fed was the appearance of an imminent agreement between the US-China on trade, as negotiations resumed between February to May 2019, which also helped to restore stock market losses of 2018.

But two events happened in late July-early August 2019 that have resulted in stock and other financial markets resuming their trajectory of decline of last November-December 2018: the US Federal Reserve cut rates on July 28 by only a token 0.25% when financial markets expected more aggressive action by the Fed; and Trump a day later scuttled the prospect of a trade deal with China by raising more tariffs on $300 billion of China imports. Add to these two events the rise of Boris Johnson as the new UK prime minister and the almost now certain ‘hard Brexit’ coming after October 2019; evidence of German and Italian banks increasingly in trouble; and central banks around the world in a ‘race to the bottom’ to cut their domestic interest rates to lower their currencies exchange value to boost exports as global trade stagnates—now growing at only 0.5% annually and is about to contract for the first time since the 1930s.

Together, all these current events have translated into investors worldwide selling their stocks and other financial assets, and diverting the money into ‘safe havens’—like US Treasuries, the Japanese Yen, and gold. Argentina’s economic mismanagement by Macri has occurred in the context of a global financial asset deflation that only exacerbates Argentina’s crisis—and makes it increasingly difficult to deal with by Argentina alone, notwithstanding the record $56 billion IMF loan.

Look around. The global economy is on the precipice of a potential financial asset market price deflation not seen since 2008. It’s not quite there yet. But the momentum is now clearly in that direction.

Not only have stock prices globally contracted sharply worldwide in just a few weeks, but so too have other financial market prices:

Government bond interest rates are falling rapidly everywhere in the advanced economies. More than $15 trillion in bonds globally are now yielding negative rates. Trillions of Euro bonds are now in negative territory, up more than a $trillion in just the past year, including in Germany, and are continuing to fall further. Currencies are also contracting everywhere (driving up the value of the US dollar). Property prices are leveling off, and have begun to drop. Global oil futures, a financial asset, have fallen 20% again, from $75 a barrel to the low $50s and may soon to fall below $50. The same for many other commodities.

Financial asset prices are deflating across the board and investors are dumping them and converting to cash—i.e. a sure sign of pending global recession. What’s rising in price are the ‘safe havens’ into which the cash is flowing: gold, the Yen, US Treasuries, high end residential properties in select markets in the advanced economies, art works, and even cryptocurrencies. Also rising sharply is the cost of insuring bonds with credit default swap derivatives. In Argentina the CDS cost has accelerated to $38 for every $100 of Argentina debt, and that’s in addition to regular debt principal and interest payments.

But Argentina is just the ‘worst case’ scenario of this global financial asset deflation underway. Its financial asset prices are deflating faster and deeper than others at the moment. It is just the worst case of a more general scenario emerging globally. Global trade volumes have already collapsed, and a recession in the global economy will necessarily follow. Global manufacturing is already in recession. And a global recession tomorrow will only exacerbate Argentina’s current recession today.

Argentina today is therefore likely a harbinger of things to come, i.e. the canary in the global economy coal mine, and the victim of a ‘made in the USA’ global slowdown driven by Trump trade and US monetary policies. Of course, Argentina’s economic crisis can’t be explained alone by US government policies. Macri’s austerity and loading up again on private foreign investor debt and IMF loans since 2015 is also responsible. And Macri’s recent austerity policies to pay for that debt by cutting more pensions, social subsidies, raising utility costs and taxes on households has contributed heavily to Argentina’s current crisis. But that debt and austerity too can be traced back to US vulture capitalists and their friends in the IMF and among New York bankers.

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

Dr. Jack Rasmus is author of the forthcoming book, ‘The Scourge of Neoliberalism: US Economic Policy from Reagan to Trump’, Clarity press, October 1, 2019. He blogs at jackrasmus.com and his website is http://kyklosproductions.com. He tweets at @drjackrasmus and hosts the Alternative Visions radio show weekly on the Progressive Radio network.

Since April 11 when unlawfully dragged from Ecuador’s London embassy to captivity, Assange has languished under draconian conditions in a UK dungeon at the behest of the Trump regime, wanting him tried in the US for the “crime” of truth-telling journalism. More on this below.

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Dark forces in the US, other Western states, Israel, and most everywhere else greatly fear widespread public knowledge of their wrongdoing against ordinary people to benefit privileged ones.

They want it kept out of the mainstream, notably not on television and in print publications with widespread readership.

If the fourth estate gave news consumers a daily diet of what’s vital to know about domestic and geopolitical issues, another world would be possible — plowshares replacing swords, social justice over neoliberal harshness, equity and justice for all, nations fit and safe to live in for all their citizens and residents.

Notably in hegemonic America, if ordinary people understood the bipartisan plot against their rights and welfare in service to monied interests, a national convulsion could follow, a possible revolutionary uprising, maybe yellow vest-type protests involving millions demanding justice.

That’s why dark forces in America want whistleblowers like Chelsea Manning and investigative journalists like Julian Assange silenced and punished.

Digital democracy is the last frontier of free and open expression, the only reliable independent space for real news, information and analysis – enabling anyone to freely express views on any topics.

Government censorship is an ominous possibility. In America and other Western societies, democracies in name only, the real thing prohibited, censorship increasingly is the new normal.

What’s going on is the hallmark of totalitarian rule – controlling the message, eliminating what conflicts with it, notably on major geopolitical issues.

Losing the right of free expression endangers all others. When truth-telling and dissent are considered threats to national security, free and open societies no longer exist – the slippery slope America and other Western societies are heading on.

On August 11, Activist Post.com reported that

“leaked documents show (the) White House is planning (an) executive order to censor the Internet.”

If indeed planned, the Trump regime plot involves having the corporate-controlled FCC and FTC decide what’s permitted and banned online, a frightening prospect.

In America, Big Brother watches everyone. Will the same dark force henceforth end digital democracy as now exists by executive order — to become the law of the land if not judicially overruled.

Are things heading toward criminalizing truth-telling independent journalists, risking a fate similar to Assange.

John Pilger tweeted the following:

“Do not forget Julian #Assange. Or you will lose him. I saw him in Belmarsh prison and his health has deteriorated.”

“Treated worse than a murderer, he is isolated, medicated and denied the tools to fight the bogus charges of a US extradition. I now fear for him. Do not forget him.”

His mother Christine tweeted the following:

“My son Julian Assange is being slowly, cruelly & unlawfully assassinated by the US/UK Govts for multi-award winning journalism revealing war crimes & corruption! I’m tweeting/retweeting #FreeAssangeNOW.”

In May, UN special rapporteur on torture Nils Melzer said the following:

“My most urgent concern is that, in the United States, Mr. Assange would be exposed to a real risk of serious violations of his human rights, including his freedom of expression, his right to a fair trial and the prohibition of torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment,” adding:

“In the course of the past nine years, Mr. Assange has been exposed to persistent, progressively severe abuse ranging from systematic judicial persecution and arbitrary confinement in the Ecuadorian embassy, to his oppressive isolation, harassment and surveillance inside the embassy, and from deliberate collective ridicule, insults and humiliation, to open instigation of violence and even repeated calls for his assassination.”

On May 9, Melzer visited him at London’s high-security Belmarsh prison, accompanied by two medical experts on the effects of torture and other forms of abuse, explaining the following:

“It was obvious that Mr Assange’s health has been seriously affected by the extremely hostile and arbitrary environment he has been exposed to for many years” — compounded by imprisonment at Belmarsh on orders by the Trump regime.

Besides poor physical health needing treatment not adequately gotten, Assange showed “all symptoms typical for prolonged exposure to psychological torture, including extreme stress, chronic anxiety and intense psychological trauma.”

Three months later, he likely deteriorated further, last spring too weak and ill to communicate normally.

Britain in cahoots with the Trump regime may want him dead from prolonged imprisonment and neglect.

They may not want him extradited following a federal district court dismissal of a DNC suit against Russia, WikiLeaks, and the Trump campaign.

Judge John Koeltl said

“(t)he DNC cannot hold these defendants liable for aiding and abetting publication when they would have been entitled to publish the stolen documents themselves without liability,” he stressed, adding:

Its lawsuit was “entirely divorced” from the facts…(riddled with) substantive legal defect(s).”

“The Court has considered all of the arguments raised by the parties. (They’re) either moot or without merit.”

Absolving WikiLeaks of wrongdoing applies to Assange, its founder and editor-in-chief when active — meaning US federal courts at the district, appeals, and highest level could absolve him at trial, citing First Amendment free expression rights, defeating the Trump regime’s aim to imprison him longterm.

With this in mind, they may want him languishing behind bars in London, wanting him killed by neglect to avoid an embarrassing judicial defeat if US courts support First Amendment speech and media freedoms — what earlier Supreme Court rulings upheld.

WikiLeaks is an investigative journalism operation. Media freedom is a constitutional right — no matter how unacceptable or offensive views expressed may be to certain parties.

Abolishing the right jeopardizes all others. Injustice to Chelsea Manning and Assange threatens the right of everyone to express views freely.

It’s the most fundamental of all rights. Without it, anyone expressing views publicly that challenge the official narrative on vital issues is vulnerable to prosecution for the “crime” of speech or media freedom.

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

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

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

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

Featured image is from 21st Century Wire

It’s certainly peculiar that the international activist community cares more for the Rohingyas than the Kashmiris despite both of these people being Muslim minorities that are facing a similar threat of ethnic cleansing, which suggests that there must be more behind their double standards than initially meets the eye.

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The international activist community rallied in solidarity with the Rohingyas after a sweeping anti-terrorist operation by Myanmar’s security services saw the displacement of hundreds of thousands of this Muslim minority group a few years ago, yet these same activists have done little if anything to support the Kashmiris who are facing an imminent threat of something similar befalling them after India’s “Israeli”-like unilateral move against them last week. There’s nothing on the surface to explain these self-evident double standards in applying different approaches towards both Muslim minorities, meaning that other factors must be at play. It’s impossible to know with absolute certainty what they are since each person is accountable for their own actions or lack thereof, but Islamophobia can safely be ruled out since it wouldn’t make sense for someone who believes in this hateful ideology to support the Rohingyas to begin with.

Should this be the case, then the solution is rather obvious, and it’s that the international activist community needs to be educated about the reality of what India’s turned into today (or one can argue, has always been). It’s with this in mind that Prime Minister Khan’s tweets over the weekend can be seen in a new light since they’re intended to shock readers with the truth so that they take the initiative to learn more about what he wrote. It’s important to note that his warning comes ahead of Pakistan taking the latest Kashmir Crisis to the UNSC, during which time the rest of the world will have the opportunity to learn more about this issue. As such, the Prime Minister’s tweets and his diplomats’ efforts represent a concerted attempt to educate the international community about the danger that India’s recent moves pose to the Kashmiris, thus revealing that the global pivot state is finally beginning to take its perception management responsibilities seriously in response to the imminent threat of ethnic cleansing that might result in a Rohingya-like flood of refugees.

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This article was originally published on Eurasia Future.

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

For decades many critics of broadcast television labeled it ‘The idiot box’. As Ed Norton said in a Honeymooners episode “Maybe the phrase fits.'” Well, today, perhaps more than ever before, we all must be idiots to continue viewing it.

Let’s first examine the news and news talk shows that seem to almost go 24/7 along with their cousin, the sports and sports talk shows. You stroll down the dial and you get mostly millionaire and wannabe millionaire pundits labeled as journalists, political analysts, Democratic or Republican strategists (how I just love that term), or contributors to their channel of servitude – usually CNN, Fox or MSNBC.

Amazing how every single one of these people gladly and regularly serve the Military Industrial Empire! The only delineating factor is if they are with the Republicans or Democrats… period! What in God’s name could any of these wealthy people understand how we working stiffs, or worse than that, unemployed or homeless Amerikans are going through? Really! They sit there and pontificate on the subject of a Medicare for All ideal, always finding some fault in it, whether they be from either of the two corrupt and hypocritical parties. If anyone reading this is a millionaire, or goodness, a mega millionaire, paying out $ 15- $ 20k a year for what they call a Cadillac Health Plan would be a drop in the bucket (of course we taxpayers subsidize the plan our elected officials get gratis). So, how can they ever comprehend the stress that NOT having such a plan means? Ditto for paying rent to an Absentee Landlord when that figure eats up too large a portion of one’s wages. Need I go down the list of the costs of raising a child or children on the wages most of us have to survive on? The faces we see on that idiot box do not, in most cases, have even a clue!

You turn on the sports talk shows, as I used to do too much of the time, and the dribble that comes out of the mouths of those sports journalistsis overwhelming! This economic system is so skewed that any working stiff should now realize the futility of it all. All of these sports talk shows readily accept the fact that the pro sports like football, basketball and baseball pay these players mega millions of dollars. Imagine the debates that these sports talk shills have on about some  above average player demanding a salary of $ 300 million dollars over 10 years. They don’t argue that the whole enchilada is ridiculous, when guys are earning that much to throw or catch a ball or make a basket while we suckers pay through the nose to watch.

No, to these whores of the sports media the more these guys get paid, the more they can get paid as water carriers. Of course, to them and to the players this all is fine and dandy, because the owners  of both the teams and the media channels are raking in billions! Going to a game in person, with a couple of kids, will cost, just for middle of the road seats, at least hundreds of dollars! For one game! As a baby boomer, I can recall taking my two sons to a Met game in the 1970s and paying out maybe $ 75 for everything: parking , tickets, food and drinks and programs.

How about the people you vote to represent we working stiffs? This is from the 2018 Roll Call listing: 

In 2018, to rank among the top 50 wealthiest members of Congress required a net worth of at least $7.5 million.

Source: Roll Call (2018)^[1]

When you tune into that idiot box just remember that you are viewing a club of super rich people. It does not matter if it is news, politics, sports or any type of entertainment… these folks do NOT have a clue as to what you and your family and friends are up against each and every day. They all are NOT representative of anything worth appreciating. So, who are the real idiots here?

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Philip A Farruggio is a contributing editor for The Greanville Post. He is also frequently posted on Global Research, Nation of Change, World News Trust and Off Guardian sites. He is the son and grandson of Brooklyn NYC longshoremen and a graduate of Brooklyn College, class of 1974. Since the 2000 election debacle Philip has written over 300 columns on the Military Industrial Empire and other facets of life in an upside down America. He is also host of the ‘It’s the Empire… Stupid‘ radio show, co produced by Chuck Gregory. Philip can be reached at [email protected].

Featured image is from Newsbud

I appreciate my readers’ confidence in me.  However, I cannot clear up the Epstein matter for you.  Perhaps I can help you to think about it in a careful way.

First of all, many jail “suicides” are murders.  In 1995 Jesse Trentadue’s brother, Kenneth,  was mistakenly identified as the possible “missing man” who was thought to be involved in the Oklahoma City bombing and beaten to death in a federal prison by federal agents. 

The prison claimed Kenneth hung himself in his cell.  The state coroner refused to confirm the suicide verdict and only much later after much pressure ceased his resistance to the coverup.  The prison wanted to cremate the body rather than return the body to family for burial.  But Jesse, a Salt Lake City attorney was suspicious.  When the body was returned, it was covered in heavy makeup.  Investigation revealed head lacerations, bruises and burns all over and other contusions that obviously were not self-inflicted and could not possibly have occurred from hanging. Apparently, Kenneth was tortured and beaten to death in an effort to get a confession. Jesse has been trying to get to get justice for the family for 24 years, but has been stonewalled by the US Department of Justice (sic). 

It is not possible to commit suicide when a person is on suicide watch.  Former inmates and prison guards and correctional personnel have stated with certainty that Epstein did not commit suicide by hanging himself.

The only questions before us are:  Was Epstein murdered in order to protect members of the elite? Was Epstein switched out by the Deep State and a dead person of similar appearance left in his place?

Last week those who said that Epstein would not make it to trial because so many prominent people would be implicated were dismissed as “conspiracy theorists.”  This week we know the “conspiracy theorists” were right. Epstein did not make it to trial.

But we don’t know that he is dead.  This report on Intellihub might be a fabrication posted to attract readers. 

Or it might be a false report put out by the deep state to distract attention from a suspicious suicide. James Jesus Angleton, head of CIA counter-intelligence, once told me that when the CIA pulls off something, it muddies the waters by placing different and conflicting stories in the media.  The result, he said, is that there is too much to investigate, and people end up arguing with one another over which story is correct, and the facts of the event are never investigated. Today with the Internet all sorts of stories can be put into play in order to cover an event in confusion.

When you hear someone trying to discredit a view by calling it a “conspiracy theory,” be suspicious.  The CIA invented “conspiracy theory” in order to control the explanation of President John F. Kennedy’s assassination by discrediting skeptics of the official explanation. 

We won’t know that Epstein is not alive and enjoying life with underage females in a CIA safe house until people who knew him well and are not endangered by investigation of his pedophile activities identify the body, and non-official, non-governmental experts identify the body via DNA. Even with these steps, we cannot know that investigators were not bribed or threatened.

Much will be done to add to the confusion and doubt.  Already we have a delayed autopsy report, and  involvement of a pathologist who supported the unbelievable single bullet explanation of President Kennedy’s murder.  

Contradictory information grows by the day. Now there are reports, allegedly from official sources, that Epstein was taken off suicide watch shortly before his “suicide.”  This report is necessary to support the verdict of suicide as suicide is not possible in a suicide-proof cell.  

The odds are heavy against us ever being given a clear and convincing explanation.  The only way you can know is to study the situation very carefully, consider the ever-changing story, and make up your own mind.  Official explanations, such as President Kennedy’s assassination, Robert Kennedy’s assassination, Martin Luther King’s assassination, the Israeli attack on the USS Liberty, and 9/11, are never correct.  

Epstein’s trial would have discredited the American elite and simply was not permitted to happen.  For the same reason, we will never know what really happened to Epstein.

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

Featured image is from Wikimedia Commons

Is it even remotely possible pedo trafficker for the elite, Jeffrey Epstein, killed himself in a suicide-watch, ligature-resistant Manhattan jail cell? 

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Elite knowledge management – delete database https://t.co/UmPJ6GoGum

— CatherineAustinFitts (@TheSolariReport) August 10, 2019

Epstein didn’t kill himself. He was killed so there wouldn’t be a trial and the perverse crimes of a psychopathic elite wouldn’t be revealed to the commoners. I predicted this on the day he was arrested. Jeffrey Epstein’s days are numbered. 

If the state and its corporate media want me to believe Epstein is in fact truly dead, they will have to show the body and allow a neutral party to take a DNA sample. We will have to see the CCTV footage of what happened in that cell. I no longer believe what the state, its institutions, its “correctional facilities,” and a propaganda media tell us. Everything must be independently verified. 

Listen to the first minute of this video:

No trial now that Epstein is dead. There will be civil lawsuits, and possible criminal charges brought against Madam Ghislaine Maxwell , but I’ll bet the farm we’ll never find out—beyond an ex-president, a prince, and a rogue’s gallery of celebrities—the names of the elite participants in Epstein’s rape, trauma, sex slave trafficking, and blackmail operation. 

Meanwhile, the seat warmers in Congress are demanding an investigation. No doubt this will stop short of actually finding anything out. 

JUST IN: Dem lawmaker calls for congressional investigation into Jeffrey Epstein’s death https://t.co/r73k7AmiRupic.twitter.com/rdy5UCOtEk

— The Hill (@thehill) August 10, 2019

Now that Epstein is supposedly dead, this story will move from the front page, making room for more false flag news, possibly another mass shooting by a cartoon white supremacist, or maybe a confrontation in the Gulf or closer to home where Bolton and crew are starving the Venezuelan people to death. 

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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 the author

Complex doesn’t even begin to describe the positioning of Iran-Russia in the geopolitical chessboard. What’s clear in our current, volatile moment is that they’re partners, as I previously reported. Although not strategic partners, as in the Russia-China tie-up, Russia-China-Iran remain the crucial triad in the ongoing, multi-layered, long-term Eurasia integration process.

A few days after our Asia Times report, an article – based on “senior sources close to the Iranian regime” and crammed with fear-mongering, baseless accusations of corruption and outright ignorance about key military issues – claimed that Russia would turn the Iranian ports of Bandar Abbas and Chabahar into forward military bases complete with submarines, Spetsnaz special forces and Su-57 fighter jets, thus applying a “stranglehold” to the Persian Gulf.

For starters, “senior sources close to the Iranian regime” would never reveal such sensitive national-security details, much less to Anglo-American foreign media. In my own case, even though I have made several visits to Iran while consistently reporting on Iran for Asia Times, and even though authorities at myriad levels know where I’m coming from, I have not managed to get answers from Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps generals to 16 detailed questions I sent nearly a month ago. According to my interlocutors, these are deemed “too sensitive” and, yes, a matter of national security.

Predictably, the report was fully debunked. One of my top Tehran sources, asked about its veracity, was blunt: “Absolutely not.” After all, Iran’s constitution decisively forbids foreign troops stationed on national soil. The Majlis – Iranian parliament – would never approve such a move barring an extreme case, as in the follow-up to a US military attack.

As for Russia-Iran military cooperation, the upcoming joint military exercises in the “northern part of the Indian Ocean,” including the Strait of Hormuz, are a first-ever such occasion, made possible only by a special agreement.

Analyst Gennady Nechaev is closer to reality when he notes that in the event of growing Russia-Iran cooperation, the possibility would be open for “permanent basing of the Russian Navy in one of the Iranian ports with the provision of an airfield nearby – the same type of arrangement as Tartus and Hmeimim on the Mediterranean coast of Syria.”  To get there, though, would be a long and winding road.

And that brings us to Chabahar, which poses an interesting question. Chabahar is a deep sea port, on the Gulf of Oman and the key plank in India’s mini-Silk Road vision. India invested a lot in Chabahar, to have it connected by highway to Afghanistan and Central Asia and in the future by rail to the Caucasus. All that so India may bypass Pakistan as far as trade routes are concerned.

Chabahar, though, may also become an important node of the New Silk Roads, or Belt and Road Initiative. India and China – as well as Russia – are members of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. Iran, sooner or later, will also become a full SCO member. Only then the possibility “might” – and the emphasis is on “might” – open for the Russian or Chinese navy occasionally to dock at Chabahar, but still not to use it as a forward military base.

Got oil, will travel

On Iran, the Russia-China strategic partnership is working in parallel. China’s priority is energy supplies – and Beijing works the chessboard accordingly. The Chinese ambassador to the United Arab Emirates just issued a trial balloon, mentioning that Beijing might consider escorting oil tankers across the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz. That could happen independently or – the dangling carrot – as part of Washington’s Operation Sentinel, which for the moment has managed to find only one “coalition of the willing” member: the UK.

What’s actually happening right now in the Persian Gulf is way more entertaining. As I confirmed with energy traders in Doha late last month, demand for oil right now is higher than in 2018. And in consequence Iran continues to sell most of its oil.

A tanker leaves Iran with transponder off; the oil is transferred to another tanker on the high seas; and then it is relabeled. According to a trader, “If you take two to three million barrels a day off the market by sanctions on Venezuela and Iran, plus the OPEC cutbacks, you would have to see a higher price.”

There is no higher price. Brent crude remains near a seven-month low, around US$60 a barrel. This means that Iran continues to sell, mostly to China. That trial balloon floated in the UAE might well be China camouflaging its continued purchase of Iranian oil.

Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif has been proving again and again his diplomatic mastery, running rings around the Donald Trump administration. But all major decisions in Iran come from Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei. That also applies to Tehran’s position in relation to multi-level forms of support from the Russia-China strategic partnership.

What the past few months have made crystal clear is how Russia-China’s magnetic pull is attracting key Eurasia players Iran, Turkey and Pakistan. And make no mistake: As much as Tehran may be extremely proud of its political independence, it is reassuring to know that Iran is, and will continue to be, a definitive red line for Russia-China.

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This article was originally published on Asia Times.

Pepe Escobar is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

As the saying goes, if it walks, talks, and quacks like a duck, chances are it is one.

What’s been going on for months in Hong Kong has all the earmarks of a US orchestrated color revolution, aimed at destabilizing China by targeting its soft Hong Kong underbelly. 

In calling for reunification of China in the early 1980s, then-leader Deng Xiaoping said Hong Kong and Macau could retain their own economic, financial and governmental systems, Taiwan as well under a “one country, two systems” arrangement.

The above would be something like what the US 10th Amendment stipulates, stating:

“The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”

Each of the 50 US states has its own electoral system, governing procedures, and laws that may differ from federal ones.

China’s soft underbelly in Western-oriented Hong Kong left it vulnerable to what’s going on. US dirty hands likely orchestrated and manipulated pro-Western 5th column elements behind months of anti-Beijing protests.

Dubbed Occupy Central, China’s leadership is well aware of what’s going on and the high stakes. Beijing is faced with a dilemma.

Cracking down forcefully to end disruptive Hong Kong protests could discourage foreign investments. Letting them continue endlessly can destabilize the nation.

US war on China by other means aims to marginalize, weaken, contain, and isolate the country — because of its sovereign independence, unwillingness to bend to US interests, and its growing political, economic, financial, and military development.

China’s emergence as a world power threatens Washington’s aim to control other countries, their resources and populations worldwide.

Its 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.

Its leadership understands what’s going on and is countering it in its own way. China is a more formidable and resourceful US adversary than earlier ones.

Its strategy includes taking a longterm approach toward achieving its objectives with plenty of economic and financial ability to counter US tactics.

It may become the first post-WW II nation to defeat Washington’s imperial game, making the new millennium China’s century in the decades ahead.

US strategies to control other nations include preemptive wars of aggression, old-fashioned coups, and color revolutions — what appears to be going on in Hong Kong.

This form of covert war first played out in Belgrade, Serbia in 2000. What appeared to be a spontaneous political uprising was developed by RAND Corporation strategist in the 1990s — the concept of swarming.

It replicates “communication patterns and movement of” bees and other insects used against nations to destabilize and topple their governments.

The CIA, (anti-democratic) National Endowment for Democracy (NED), International Republican Institute (IRI), National (undemocratic) Democratic Institute, and USAID are involved.

Their mission is disruptively subverting democracy and instigating regime change through labor strikes, mass street protests, major media agitprop, and whatever else it takes short of military conflict.

Belgrade in 2000 was the prototype test drive for this strategy. When subsequently used, it experienced successes and failures, the former notably in Ukraine twice — in late 2004/early 2005, again in late 2013/early 2014.

US color revolution attempts have a common thread, aiming to achieve what the Pentagon calls “full spectrum dominance” — notably by neutralizing and controlling Russia and China, Washington’s main rival powers, adversaries because of their sovereign independence.

Controlling resource-rich Eurasia, that includes the Middle East, along with Venezuelan world’s largest oil reserves, is a key US imperial aim.

Swarming tactics are being used in Hong Kong. According to RAND strategists John Arquilla and David Ronfeldt, it’s war by other means.

It exploits the information revolution and social media to take full advantage of “network-based organizations linked via email and mobile phones to enhance the potential of swarming.”

In 1993, Arquilla and Ronfeldt explained that “warfare is no longer primarily a function of who puts the most capital, labor and technology on the battlefield, but of who has the best information” and uses it advantageously.

State-of-the art IT techniques use “advanced computerized information and communications technologies and related innovations in organization and management theory,” they explained.

Information technologies “communicate, consult, coordinate, and operate together across greater distances.”

Cyberwar today is what blitzkrieg was to 20th century warfare, involving “irregular modes of conflict, including terror, crime, and militant social activism.”

Both strategists believed swarming could “emerge as a definitive doctrine (to) encompass and enliven both cyberwar and netwar.”

They called swarming a way to strike from all directions in an overwhelming fashion, believing what works in combat theaters can be effective in waging war by other means in cities.

The strategy appears to be in play against China by targeting Hong Kong.

On August 12, Beijing’s official People’s Daily broadsheet said the city “is not and shall not be the frontline of US and China,” adding:

“Hong Kong has been rocked by chaos and violence for weeks, and the violence is getting more and more intense.”

“What is going on in Hong Kong? There is already evidence of interference by foreign forces.”

“As Chinese officials have pointed out, the situation in Hong Kong bears the features of a (US-orchestrated) color revolution.”

“US politicians have openly supported the unrest, and anti-China forces are working behind the scenes.”

“(T)he US government often uses democracy promotion to attack other countries, and China has always been a major target.”

“Some US politicians dream of making China look and act more like the United States. One reason we are seeing increased pressure on China is because those who have tried to change China over the years via other methods have failed and there is growing fear that China is getting too powerful, so the Uncle Sam will never miss any opportunity to undermine China.”

“…Hong Kong is Chinese territory. This means that the city is not and shall not be a playground for anti-China forces.”

“China is no longer a poor and weak country that cannot stand up to foreign interference.”

“The country has enough methods and strength to quickly quell the unrest and smash foreign plots when such actions are deemed necessary to protect national sovereignty and the prosperity and stability of Hong Kong.”

Beijing will deal with what’s going on in Hong Kong in ways it believes are most effective.

US destabilization and other hostile tactics make resolving major bilateral differences all the harder.

If Trump regime anti-China hardball tactics accelerate already weakening global economic conditions, including in the US, DJT could end up a one-term president.

Strengthened Sino/Russian unity is better able to counter hostile US actions — a vital anti-imperial alliance US strategists fear.

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

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

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

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

Featured image is from New Eastern Outlook

Over the past weekend, the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) and the Tiger Forces have continued their advance on positions of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham and its allies in northwestern Hama and southern Idlib.

By August 12, government forces had liberated the areas of al-Hobait, Maghar al-Hamam, Maghar al-Hantah, Sukayk and Tell Sukayk. The SAA also attacked the village Kbanah in northern Lattakia, but was not able to overrun militants’ defense there.

In response to the SAA advance, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, Jaysh al-Izza, the National Front for Liberation and other Idlib groups carried out attacks in the areas of Sukayk and al-Wasta. They even used a suicide vehicle-borne improvised explosive device to break the SAA defense in southern Idlib. Nonetheless, both attacks were repelled by the SAA.

Warplanes of the Syrian Air Force coonducted an intense bombing campaign targeting militants in northern Hama. According to pro-government sources, the goal of the ongoing advance is to isolate militants deployed in al-Lataminah, Kafr Zayta, Murak and nearby areas from their allies in the rest of the Idlib zone.

On August 11, Jaysh al-Ahnar revealed that its three senior commanders had been eliminated by the SAA. The commanders were identified as Tunisian citizen Abu Misab al-Tunisi, the general military commander, Abu Sutif al-Binishi, the general commander of the group’s special forces and Abu Qutadah al-Homsi, the main coordinator of the group’s operations room.

Jaysh al-Ahnar was formed in 2016 by several groups, which had defected from Ahrar al-Sham. Jaysh al-Ahrar was among the first factions to join Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham formed by Jabhat al-Nusra, the Syrian branch of al-Qaeda. The faction left the terrorist group in 2017 and joined the Turkish-backed National Front for Liberation, branded as the moderate opposition group, in 2018.

The fate of Jaysh al-Ahnar serves a demonstration of the key issue behind all the previous efforts to de-escalate the situation in Idlib and separate radical groups from moderate counterparts. Idlib groups join new alliances and change names to hide their real face on a regular basis.

These branding efforts allow mainstream media and foreign backers of militants to claim that ongoing clashes are a barbaric example of the Assad oppression of moderate opposition and democratic rebels.

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Obama is a shining light in comparison to his two bookends, George Bush and Donald Trump.  His manner is calm and focused as he presents his ideas with well mannered rhetorical flourishes, speaking in terms of hope, peace, change, freedom and democracy for all.  He is living proof of the success of black people, the American dream come true, and a representation of all the good of the indispensable democracy of the United States.  Unfortunately it is for those who follow U.S. foreign policy a rather nice shine on a rather thin veneer.

The veneer is broken in Jeremy Kuzmarov’s new work, Obama’s Unending Wars.  Throughout the book he contrasts Obama’s rhetoric about the military helping people live free, protecting them from threats, promoting peace and human rights throughout the world, while all the while throughout his presidency (and after) he supported dictatorships and big business while killing or buying off opponents to the empire.  Glen Ford’s introduction sums it all up on the very first line,

“Barak Obama may go down in presidential history as the most effective – and deceptive – imperialist of them all.”

The introduction to the book expands on that theme as Obama’s presidency was significant in “institutionalizing a permanent warfare state,” as he was the “most perfect spokesman for the military industrial complex” with a “liberal and humanitarian veneer.”  After drawing comparisons to Woodrow Wilson’s failed ideals and citing an Obama speech wherein Obama says “Evil does exist in the world,” Kuzmarov concludes “If evil exists in this world, Obama put America on its side.”

The writing then turns through a range of chapters covering many details of the Obama era, from his pre-election marketing through to a reprisal of Wilsonian comparisons, a look at the policy towards Latin America and finally a well written summary conclusion.

In his summary statement on Obama’s marketing, Obama’s actions “betrayed his progressive base who all along failed to see him for what he was…a…cynical and calculating political operative who rode the wave of liberal guilt over the history of slavery and Jim Crow to personal fame and glory.”  A rather powerful statement which is fully supported by subsequent chapters detailing how Obama provided cover for the warfare state.

Africa, regardless of Obama’s heritage and skin colour, was increasingly subject to the warfare state,

“With drones buzzing overhead, and the ghosts of dead Congolese littered about, he duped and deceived Africans in a manner the even Cecil Rhodes would have admired.”

The drone wars in particular against alleged terrorists justified “preemptive military action under a human rights veneer.”

The discussion then turns to Afghanistan and Iraq, wars Obama did not start, but did not do anything to finish and withdraw.  Asia’s turn comes next as Obama states the policy of the “pivot to Asia” in order to “deter threats to peace” while “operating in the tradition of empire builders.” Finally for this world adventure tour, Russia is revived as the evil persona – as Putin personally was reviled and attacked with unsubstantiated and highly doubtful claims.  But then an empire always needs a good enemy to keep the people distracted from the military-industrial complex and its influence in most aspects of domestic living.

While reprising Obama’s Cairo promise, his policies towards Egypt’s Mubarak and Tunisia’s ben Ali “exemplified the betrayal of Obama’s Cairo vision and his blatant double standard on human rights.”  This vision’s betrayal was “acute in his policy towards Israel.”  While referring to Israel’s attack on Gaza (Protective Edge, 2014) Kuzmarov summarizes that “Obama’s complicity with Israeli state atrocity under cut the credibility of the 2009 Cairo speech,” as “freedom, democracy, and the rule of law…did not include Gaza.”

Overall the full failure of Obama’s wonderful Cairo speech comes from a memeber of the Muslim Brotherhood locked up in al-Sisi’s gulag:

“The one thing everyone had in common – the ISIS group, the Muslim Brotherhood group, the liberals, the guards, the officers – is they all hate America.”

Obama continued the U.S. drug wars in Latin America, ostensibly for combating drug cartels and keeping drugs off the streets of America, but it was “no less than continuing military force to contain nonconformist, disruptive movements, groups in resistance, and collective who raise their voices.”  U.S. and other western corporations (many Canadian mining companies) were being given the ability to exploit these countries while U.S. trained armies and militias helped protect their ‘rights’ over the rights of the citizens.

In his conclusion Kuzmarov writes,

“Though packaging himself as a peace candidate, Obama ultimately proved indispensable to the military-industrial complex in his ability to sustain the illusion of humanitarian intervention and defuse anti-war activism.”

Kuzmarov’s thematic idea is well presented and well supported.  His writing is easy to follow and each section has a clear, well written summary highlighting the ongoing message of Obama’s complicity with the warfare state.  It is a disturbing book in part because of the ”hope” that was first raised and then the realization afterwards that Obama accomplished very little, while doing a lot to promote and continue with the U.S.’ warfare state.

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Jim Miles is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Is former NDP Cabinet Minister, Shannon Phillips, attempting to revive her waning political career by initiating a fear mongering campaign? Ms. Phillips is targeting Alberta Premier Jason Kenney’s plan to integrate the Chicago Principles on Free Speech into the operations of Alberta’s colleges and universities.

The University of Chicago put forward a statement in 2015 asserting that it is an essential duty of universities to foster debate even when some might find the certain arguments to be “offensive, unwise, immoral or wrongheaded.” Rather than trying to constrain speech the academic mission calls on its champions to celebrate ideas by debating them with enthusiasm and respect.

In an Aug. 9 video posted on her Facebook account, Lethbridge-West MLA Shannon Phillips tries to make a case against the Chicago Principles. Instead of embracing free speech, Ms. Phillips would apparently prefer to continue the Alberta NDP’s policy of trying to manage and control speech in Alberta’s institutions of higher learning. This NDP hostility to free speech and to academic freedom has been most clearly expressed in the political party’s shifting position on my case.

My suspension came in October of 2016 as an administrative response to a now-notorious Facebook scam mounted by B’nai Brith Canada and Joshua Goldberg. Goldberg’s extremely reprehensible “Kill All Jews” post is said to have appeared very briefly on my Facebook wall without my sanction or agreement. Goldberg is presently in a US federal penitentiary convicted of terrorist charges.   

See this and this. 

Ms. Phillips wants to confine the issues to my suspension at the U of L in October of 2016. Among the many issues she tries to ignore or downplay is the fact that the professional associations representing me locally and nationally defeated the U of L Board of Governors in the Alberta Court of Queen’s Bench. The ruling came down in September of 2017. It indicated my suspension took place outside the terms of an administrative-faculty collective agreement. A judge ruled that my suspension was illegal.

It does not bode well for the future of the supposedly left-leaning NDP that one of its senior MLAs can be so flippantly dismissive about an administrative failure to live up to the terms of a collective agreement with a faculty association. Who does the Alberta NDP represent if it fails to uphold the rights of organized labour?

Is the NDP’s position on Israel-Palestinian relations illustrative of the party’s propensity to identify with wealth and power over the victims of injustice? The provincial and national branches of the NDP have disappointed many decent men and women who expect Canada to show some sort of balance in its international orientation to the Jewish state and the Palestinian people.

The former leader of the federal NDP, Tom Mulcair, was ruthlessly one-sided in his Middle East policies. Mulcair would not allow NDP MPs to criticize Israel. He prevented NDP members from seeking election to federal office if they manifested pro-Palestinian proclivities. Mulcair prevented Libby Davis, Morgan Wheeldon, Jerry Natanine and Paul Manly from running for public office. Paul Manley’s father, James, is a United Church clergyman who risked his life on a ship seeking to deliver in 2012 humanitarian aid to the Palestinian inhabitants of the blockaded open-air prison of Gaza.

See this.

In 2017 NDP federal leadership candidate, Niki Ashton, attempted to overcome Muclair’s reactionary legacy by emphasizing the need for the Canadian government to develop a more balanced position in the Middle East. Ashton’s role in Parliament as MP for a large Manitoba riding with a majority of Aboriginal peoples was probably a factor in her developing a wise sensibility to the dilemmas of indigenous Palestinians.

B’nai Brith Canada intervened in the NDP leadership campaign to depict Ms. Ashton as an anti-Semitic bigot engaged in the process of befriending terrorists. As this lobby was trying to turn NDP members against the pro-Palestinian candidate, B’nai Brith Canada was deeply involved concurrently in my case. It put extreme pressure on the Alberta Premier to counter the court’s decision to reinstate me to my professional responsibilities.  

Premier Notley succumbed to the pressure. Seeking partisan political advantage she wrongfully intervened to undermine the juridical integrity of an internal investigation within the University.  The President of the U of L Faculty Association wrote to the Premier indicating she “may have biased the outcome of any such fair and objective process.” Shortly after Notley intervened to join in the attack on academic freedom, she was feted at a dinner hosted by B’nai Brith Canada.

See this.

The coalition of the lobby group, the U of L Board of Governors and the very top officials in the Alberta government was aimed at bringing about a preconceived outcome before a genuine process of arbitration of my academic work had even commenced.

Left-wing parties in many countries have been pressured to ignore the Israeli government’s violations of international law in its treatment of Palestinians. Those who insist on criticizing Israeli actions are often targeted professionally for defamation through the deployment of weaponized terms like “anti-Semitism,” “conspiracy theories,” “holocaust denial” and “hate speech.”

The Israel Lobby’s attack on the UK Labour Party of Jeremy Corbyn, a decent social democrat under vicious political attack, forms a telling illustration of the web of corruption that has ensnared Rachel Notley and Shannon Phillips. It is disturbing to witness the Tony Blairite propensities of the NDP survivors of Jason Kenney’s recent electoral sweep in Alberta.

In her video discussing the U of L free speech case, Shannon Phillips shows that she is deeply enmeshed in the deceptions and propaganda disseminated by B’nai Brith Canada. This deception began when B’nai Brith tried to pin on me the extremely offensive content of the Joshua Goldberg post.

An honest account of how this story has unfolded would mention that I retired on 20 October of 2018 in good standing as Emeritus Professor. I was not found guilty of anything. Shannon Phillips has conspicuously failed to do her homework in mounting her attack on free speech and on the protections for academic freedom in Alberta.          

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Dr. Hall is editor in chief of American Herald Tribune. He is currently Professor of Globalization Studies at University of Lethbridge in Alberta Canada. He has been a teacher in the Canadian university system since 1982. Dr. Hall, has recently finished a big two-volume publishing project at McGill-Queen’s University Press entitled “The Bowl with One Spoon”.

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Iran Might be About To Change Its Approach Towards India

By Andrew Korybko, August 13, 2019

Iran had hitherto allowed India to make a fool out of it without uttering even the faintest protest in response, yet the Islamic Republic’s previously servile attitude might be changing if two recent statements by its leadership are any indication of a new approach taking shape towards the South Asian state.

Hair-trigger Nuclear Alert over Kashmir

By Eric Margolis, August 12, 2019

Two of the world’s most important powers, India and Pakistan, are locked into an extremely dangerous confrontation over the bitterly disputed Himalayan mountain state of Kashmir. Both are nuclear armed.

Could The Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) Contribute to Resolving the Kashmir Crisis?

By Andrew Korybko, August 12, 2019

The onset of the latest Kashmir Crisis following India’s “Israeli”-like unilateral moves there last week have raised the question among many in the Alt-Media Community of whether the SCO could help mediate a solution between New Delhi and Islamabad, but the fact of the matter is that the organization would be utterly useless in doing so even if it had the proper mandate because its members could just engage in behind-the-scenes diplomacy without having to make a public spectacle about it on that platform.

India’s Kashmir Crackdown Poses Risk of War

By John Riddell, August 10, 2019

On August 5, India’s Hindu nationalist government unilaterally revoked the autonomy of the state of Jammu and Kashmir, while flooding the region with troops, imposing a curfew, and shutting down all communications.

India’s Tryst with Destiny: Freedom Struggle from Exploitation and Degradation Is Global

By Colin Todhunter, August 07, 2019

Today, we are in the grip of a globalised system of capitalism which drives narcissism, domination, ego, anthropocentrism, speciesism and plunder. A system that is using up oil, water and other resources much faster than they can ever be regenerated.

If Crimea Matters, Russia Should Support Kashmir

By Andrew Korybko, August 08, 2019

There are striking structural similarities between Kashmir and Crimea that should make Russian decision makers think twice before endorsing the unilateral actions of their decades-long Indian partners if they want to remain politically consistent.

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Brazilian federal prosecutors are seeking to prevent far-right President Jair Bolsanaro’s son from becoming the new ambassador to the United States. 

The prosecutors filed a court injunction on Monday to bar Eduardo Bolsonaro from this ambassador role, citing the latter’s lack of experience as one of the main factors for their intervention.

The public prosecutor’s office asked a Brasilia court to rule on the need for non-diplomats to have relevant international experience and served the nation abroad for at least three years.

Opposition lawmakers have also sought to block Eduardo Bolsonaro becoming Brazil’s envoy in Washington by introducing a bill against nepotism in the public administration.

Bolsonaro, who has developed close ties with U.S. President Donald Trump since taking office in January, has defended the appointment of his son, saying he is a friend of Trump’s family which would help improve relations between the two nations.

But even some of Bolsonaro’s allies in Congress, where the Senate has still to confirm the appointment, see the choice as an unprecedented affront to Brazil’s experienced diplomatic corps.

Opposition lawmakers are backing bills in both chambers to block nepotism in government appointment, and the Cidadania party has asked the Supreme Court to bar Bolsonaro’s appointment calling it “blatant nepotism.”

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A recent meeting of the 10 member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) convened in Bangkok, Thailand and attended by representatives from China, Russia and even the United States, provides us with a clear indicator of how power and influence are being shaped across wider Asia and even globally.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo left Thailand on Saturday with his hopes for resuming nuclear talks with North Korea dashed, while facing an escalating trade war with China and a potentially devastating breakdown in relations between key American allies Japan and South Korea.

Another article published just ahead of the meetings would better frame US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s (and Washington’s) agenda. The LA Times’, “Pompeo seeks to restore U.S. influence in Southeast Asia amid China’s rise,” would report:

Against a backdrop of China’s rising economic and military power, Secretary of State Michael R. Pompeo arrived in the Thai capital of Bangkok this week with a difficult mission: Try to win back lost ground in Southeast Asia, a region once dominated by the U.S.

The article would continue:

Pompeo is also attempting to solidify another initiative of his tenure: creation of the so-called Indo-Pacific region, which portends to redraw boundaries to stretch from the U.S. West Coast to Japan, down through Southeast Asia to Australia and west across another ocean to India. It is replacing the familiar Asia-Pacific region and incorporates India (while sidelining Pakistan) to expand U.S. heft against China. 

China has not been shy about pouring tens of billions of dollars into infrastructure projects as part of its mammoth Belt and Road initiative, promising to boost transport systems and connectivity to help drive a sustained period of growth and stepping in where the U.S. often isn’t. 

Thanks in part to China’s investment, the Assn. of Southeast Asian Nations, or ASEAN, has posted a combined economic-output growth of 50% in the last decade. 

The LA Times would then attempt to cite “backlash” across the region, but upon closer examination, things like Malaysia “cancelling” One Belt, One Road (OBOR) projects with China were more about negotiating better agreements rather than cancelling them.

The Diplomat in an article from April this year titled, “Malaysia: Revised China Deal Shows Costs Were Inflated,” helps explain how the Chinese-Malaysian “row” was blown out of proportion by many in the Western media and how the project is once again moving forward.

Despite this renegotiating having long-since taken place, the LA Times and other media outlets are still trying to portray various countries in Southeast Asia as “opposed” to China or having cancelled deals that are still very much moving forward.

The LA Times also tries to cite disputes in the South China Sea, another area of conflict cultivated by Washington with even the nations it is supposedly “defending” dragging their feet on initiatives Washington had hoped would divide the region and isolate Beijing.

The LA Times does finally admit:

Many Southeast Asian governments have also recoiled at what they see as U.S. efforts to force them to take sides in the trade dispute with China. 

Apart from Vietnam, no country in the region has agreed to join the U.S. boycott of Huawei, despite the Trump administration’s warnings that the U.S. could cease sharing sensitive information with countries that use the company’s technology. 

Not only has ASEAN rejected US demands regarding Huawei and other coercive polices designed to divide the region and set back joint development, the LA Times quotes Western policymakers who have no choice but to admit the US has no alternatives to offer the region.

From Coercion to Pan-Handling 

Thailand in particular has suffered years of coercion from Washington in a bid to roll back Thai-Chinese relations.

Thailand is currently in the process of replacing the vast majority of its aging US military hardware with new Chinese systems including main battle tanks, armoured personnel carriers, infantry fighting vehicles and even the nation’s first modern submarine.

Thailand is also currently in the process of building a joint Thai-Chinese high-speed rail network connecting Thai cities and also connecting Thailand to its neighbours.

Despite US coercion and multiple attempts to politically subvert Thailand’s current political order, Thailand continues moving forward undaunted. Not only did it ignore US demands to boycott Huawei, the Chinese tech-giant has been contracted to build the nation’s 5G telecommunications network.

In light of this reality, the US has been forced to back off (at least publicly) from its various threats and preconditions.

The South China Morning Post in an article titled, “Mike Pompeo set for first visit to Thailand as US looks to renew ties despite junta leader Prayuth Chan-ocha retaining grip on power,” would claim:

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo will begin his first visit to Thailand on Thursday as part of a week-long tour of the Indo-Pacific that will include stops in Australia and Micronesia. 

His visit comes as the country emerges from five years of military rule, with coup leader Prayuth Chan-ocha retaining power after being voted prime minister by his ruling coalition following March’s disputed election. His new cabinet was confirmed after being approved by Thailand’s king earlier this month.

The article would continue by claiming:

The United States condemned Prayuth’s 2014 coup and subsequently downgraded defence ties, raising questions over whether Washington will be satisfied by Thailand’s return to democracy – especially amid allegations of electoral fraud and a vote that was widely considered to be rigged in the junta’s favour. 

But as Bangkok has leaned ever closer to China in the years since the army seized power – with increased arms deals, investments and economic cooperation – the US has expressed readiness to work with Thailand again, and support the country as it assumes the role of chair of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) this year.

The SCMP never mentions that the regime the Thai military ousted from power in 2014 was the recipient of extensive US and European support. It was also headed by a fugitive, Thaksin Shinawatra, who did not even reside in the country at the time.

Instead, we see the Western media’s familiar tactic of condemning any election that delivers results unfavourable to Washington’s interests. We also see how the US has been left with no choice but to either make concessions and work with Thailand where it can, or be left behind indefinitely.

Considering the trail of broken treaties, political meddling and the destructive trade war the US has initiated against China at Asia’s collective expense, it is difficult to see where Thailand or other ASEAN members can find common ground, mutual interests or any activity at all with the US that is mutually beneficial. Much of ASEAN’s current ties with the US are designed merely to buy time and avoid more aggressive tactics by Washington until the window closes on US hegemony for good.

The real shame of it is that ASEAN could use a counterbalance to China’s rise, ensuring Beijing is never even so much as tempted to simply trade places with the US as the next abusive regional hegemon. It is a counterbalance the US could serve as had it anything genuine to offer potential partners. Instead, ASEAN must look within itself and to other nations across Eurasia, including Russia.

It is ironically not China’s rise that has prompted America’s decline around the globe or in Asia-Pacific specifically, but rather its own unsustainable policies it seems incapable of reforming. Until Washington can approach the Southeast Asia as a region populated by sovereign nations to do business with, rather than a fiefdom to exploit, US representatives will continue to leave regional meetings empty-handed.

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

Thousands of demonstrators held an unlawful assembly in Hong Kong International Airport on Monday and prompted the cancellation of all flights for the day out of safety concerns. This marks a dramatic escalation in the weeks-long demonstrations against a now-suspended fugitive bill that have grown increasingly violent since they first began. There’s no doubt that the political radicalism on full display nowadays is symptomatic of an ongoing “color revolution” attempt tacitly supported by foreign forces.

My article last month about how “It’s deceptive to talk about a ‘cycle of violence’ in Hong Kong” pointed out that the Western mainstream media’s biased reporting on these rowdy disturbances aims to discredit the city’s law enforcement officers as part of a plot to fuel even more protests on the basis of alleged “police brutality” on top of the preexisting political motivations that many of the participants already have.

It was on this supposed pretext that thousands of people flooded into Hong Kong’s airport in order to disrupt its activities just like they’ve attempted to do over the past few weeks in trying to stop its subway service.

Financial Secretary of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, Paul Chan, announces the new annual budget in the Hong Kong Legislative Council, February 27, 2019. /VCG Photo

The attempt to bring the city to a standstill by targeting its public transport systems amounts to nothing less than a cruel act of collective punishment by a radical minority against the peaceful majority of Hong Kong’s citizens, one that intends to not only inconvenience their lives, but also to damage their livelihoods by trying to harm the city’s economy.

In fact, one can even say that several thousand people are trying to hold the metropolis of over seven million people hostage to their political demands through the strategic application of “color revolution” technologies against the city’s vital infrastructure.

The end result is that the average person might suffer if the protesters’ illegal actions lead to an eventual decline in the city’s economy. The protesters are expecting that this would cause their “color revolution” ranks to swell as people join their movement in response, but this is nothing more than wishful thinking on their part since the people know that their livelihoods are being impacted because of the protesters’ collective punishment against them, not due to anything being done by the authorities. In fact, it’s the authorities who are trying to restore law and order, unlike the protesters who are disrupting the aforesaid.

Image on the right: The Hang Seng Index drops by 2.85 percent to close at 26,151.32 in Hong Kong, China, August 5, 2019. /VCG Photo

At this point, it would be understandable if the city’s patience had begun to wear thin, both in terms of the government’s attitude towards the protesters and the general population’s. Seven million people can no longer move in, out, and through Hong Kong at will without being inconvenienced by the actions of a radical minority, and worse still, the city’s economy is suffering because of this.

The authorities have gone out of their way to ensure that the crowd control measures that they have undertaken don’t result in any collateral damage, yet this considerate approach hasn’t been appreciated by the protesters, who have only become more violent.

The time might soon be coming where more forceful actions would be justified in the interests of safeguarding the city’s stability and protecting the livelihoods of its citizens, with these speculative measures being supported by the peaceful majority of the population who want nothing more than to return to their ordinary life as soon as possible.

The Hong Kong situation is on the brink of spiraling out of control after many of the protesters transformed into rioters who no longer have any respect for the law or their fellow citizens, and it’s important that the authorities will not allow the city to be held hostage by the actions of this radical minority.

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This article was originally published on CGTN.

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

Featured image is from Sky News

“It is often the case that police shootings, incidents where law enforcement officers pull the trigger on civilians, are left out of the conversation on gun violence. But a police officer shooting a civilian counts as gun violence. Every time an officer uses a gun against an innocent or an unarmed person contributes to the culture of gun violence in this country.”—Journalist Celisa Calacal

Yes, gun violence is a problem in America, although violent crime generally remains at an all-time low.

Yes, mass shootings are a problem in America, although while they are getting deadlier, they are not getting more frequent.

Yes, mentally ill individuals embarking on mass shooting sprees are a problem in America.

However, tighter gun control laws and so-called “intelligent” background checks fail to protect the public from the most egregious perpetrator of gun violence in America: the U.S. government.

Consider that five years after police shot and killed an unarmed 18-year-old man in Ferguson, Missouri, there has been no relief from the government’s gun violence.

Here’s what we’ve learned about the government’s gun violence since Ferguson, according to The Washington Post: If you’re a black American, you’ve got a greater chance of being shot by police. If you’re an unarmed black man, you’re four times more likely to be killed by police than an unarmed white man. Most people killed by police are young men. Since 2015, police have shot and killed an average of 3 people per day. More than 2,500 police departments have shot and killed at least one person since 2015. And while the vast majority of people shot and killed by police are armed, their weapons ranged from guns to knives to toy guns.

Clearly, the U.S. government is not making America any safer.

Indeed, the government’s gun violence—inflicted on unarmed individuals by battlefield-trained SWAT teams, militarized police, and bureaucratic government agents trained to shoot first and ask questions later—poses a greater threat to the safety and security of the nation than any mass shooter.

According to journalist Matt Agorist,

“mass shootings … have claimed the lives of 339 people since 2015… [D]uring this same time frame, police in America have claimed the lives of 4,355 citizens.”

That’s 1200% more people killed by police than mass shooters since 2015.

For example, in Texas, a police officer sent to do a welfare check on a 30-year-old woman seen lying on the grass near a shopping center, took aim at the woman’s dog as it ran towards him barking, fired multiple times, and killed the woman instead.

In Chicago, a SWAT team—wearing “army fatigues with black cloth covering their faces and wearing goggles,” armed with automatic rifles, and throwing flash-bang grenades—crashed through the doors of a suburban home and proceeded to storm into bedrooms, holding the children of the household at gunpoint. One child, 13-year-old Amir, was “accidentally” shot in the knee by police while sitting on his bed.

In St. Louis, Missouri, a SWAT team on a mission to deliver an administrative warrant carried out a no-knock raid that ended with police kicking in the homeowner’s front door, and shooting and killing her dog—all over an unpaid gas bill. Taxpayers will have to find $750,000 to settle the lawsuit arising over the cops’ overzealous tactics.

In South Carolina, a 62-year-old homeowner was shot four times through his front door by police who were investigating a medical-assist alarm call that originated from a cell phone inside the home. Dick Tench, believing his house was being broken into, was standing in the foyer of his home armed with a handgun when police, peering through the front door, fired several shots through the door, hitting Tench in the pelvis and the aortic artery. Tench survived, but the bullet lodged in his pelvis will stay there for life.

Screenshot from News Maven

In Kansas, a SWAT team, attempting to carry out a routine search warrant (the suspect had already been arrested), showed up at a residence around dinnertime, dressed in tactical gear with weapons drawn, and hurled a flash-bang grenade into the house past the 68-year-old woman who was in the process of opening the door to them and in the general direction of a 2-year-old child.

These are just a few recent examples among hundreds this year alone.

Curiously enough, in the midst of the finger-pointing over the latest round of mass shootings, Americans have been so focused on debating who or what is responsible for gun violence—the guns, the gun owners, the Second Amendment, the politicians, or our violent culture—that they have overlooked the fact that the systemic violence being perpetrated by agents of the government has done more collective harm to the American people and their liberties than any single act of terror or mass shooting.

Violence has become our government’s calling card, starting at the top and trickling down, from the more than 80,000 SWAT team raids carried out every year on unsuspecting Americans by heavily armed, black-garbed commandos and the increasingly rapid militarization of local police forces across the country to the drone killings used to target insurgents.

The government even exports violence worldwide, with one of this country’s most profitable exports being weapons. Indeed, the United States, the world’s largest exporter of arms, has been selling violence to the world for too long now. Controlling more than 50 percent of the global weaponry market, the U.S. has sold or donated weapons to at least 96 countries in the past five years, including the Middle East. The U.S. also provides countries such as Israel, Egypt, Jordan, Pakistan and Iraq with grants and loans through the Foreign Military Financing program to purchase military weapons.

At the same time that the U.S. is equipping nearly half the world with deadly weapons, profiting to the tune of $36.2 billion, its leaders have also been lecturing American citizens on the dangers of gun violence and working to enact measures that would make it more difficult for Americans to acquire certain weapons.

Talk about an absurd double standard.

If we’re truly going to get serious about gun violence, why not start by scaling back the American police state’s weapons of war?

I’ll tell you why: because  the government has no intention of scaling back on its weapons.

In fact, all the while gun critics continue to clamor for bans on military-style assault weapons, high-capacity magazines and armor-piercing bullets, the U.S. military is passing them out to domestic police forces.

Under the auspices of a military “recycling” program, which allows local police agencies to acquire military-grade weaponry and equipment, more than $4.2 billion worth of equipment has been transferred from the Defense Department to domestic police agencies since 1990. Included among these “gifts” are tank-like, 20-ton Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) vehicles, tactical gear, and assault rifles.

There are now reportedly more bureaucratic (non-military) government agents armed with high-tech, deadly weapons than U.S. Marines.

While Americans have to jump through an increasing number of hoops in order to own a gun, the government is arming its own civilian employees to the hilt with guns, ammunition and military-style equipment, authorizing them to make arrests, and training them in military tactics.

Among the agencies being supplied with night-vision equipment, body armor, hollow-point bullets, shotguns, drones, assault rifles and LP gas cannons are the Smithsonian, U.S. Mint, Health and Human Services, IRS, FDA, Small Business Administration, Social Security Administration, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Education Department, Energy Department, Bureau of Engraving and Printing and an assortment of public universities.

Seriously, why do IRS agents need AR-15 rifles?

For that matter, why do police need armored personnel carriers with gun ports, compact submachine guns with 30-round magazines, precision battlefield sniper rifles, and military-grade assault-style rifles and carbines?

Short answer: they don’t.

In the hands of government agents, whether they are members of the military, law enforcement or some other government agency, these weapons have become routine parts of America’s day-to-day life, a byproduct of the rapid militarization of law enforcement over the past several decades.

Over the course of 30 years, police officers in jack boots holding assault rifles have become fairly common in small town communities across the country. As investigative journalists Andrew Becker and G.W. Schulz reveal, “Many police, including beat cops, now routinely carry assault rifles. Combined with body armor and other apparel, many officers look more and more like combat troops serving in Iraq and Afghanistan.”

Does this sound like a country under martial law?

You want to talk about gun violence? While it still technically remains legal for the average citizen to own a firearm in America, possessing one can now get you pulled over, searched, arrested, subjected to all manner of surveillance, treated as a suspect without ever having committed a crime, shot at and killed by police.

You don’t even have to have a gun or a look-alike gun, such as a BB gun, in your possession to be singled out and killed by police.

There are countless incidents that happen every day in which Americans are shot, stripped, searched, choked, beaten and tasered by police for little more than daring to frown, smile, question, or challenge an order.

Growing numbers of unarmed people are being shot and killed for just standing a certain way, or moving a certain way, or holding something—anything—that police could misinterpret to be a gun, or igniting some trigger-centric fear in a police officer’s mind that has nothing to do with an actual threat to their safety.

With alarming regularity, unarmed men, women, children and even pets are being gunned down by twitchy, hyper-sensitive, easily-spooked police officers who shoot first and ask questions later, and all the government does is shrug, and promise to do better, all the while the cops are granted qualified immunity.

Killed for standing in a “shooting stance.” In California, police opened fire on and killed a mentally challenged—unarmed—black man within minutes of arriving on the scene, allegedly because he removed a vape smoking device from his pocket and took a “shooting stance.”

Killed for holding a cell phone. Police in Arizona shot a man who was running away from U.S. Marshals after he refused to drop an object that turned out to be a cellphone. Similarly, police in Sacramento fired 20 shots at an unarmed, 22-year-old black man who was standing in his grandparents’ backyard after mistaking his cellphone for a gun.

Killed for carrying a baseball bat. Responding to a domestic disturbance call, Chicago police shot and killed 19-year-old college student Quintonio LeGrier who had reportedly been experiencing mental health problems and was carrying a baseball bat around the apartment where he and his father lived.

Killed for opening the front door. Bettie Jones, who lived on the floor below LeGrier, was also fatally shot—this time, accidentally—when she attempted to open the front door for police.

Killed for running towards police with a metal spoon. In Alabama, police shot and killed a 50-year-old man who reportedly charged a police officer while holding “a large metal spoon in a threatening manner.”

Killed for running while holding a tree branch. Georgia police shot and killed a 47-year-old man wearing only shorts and tennis shoes who, when first encountered, was sitting in the woods against a tree, only to start running towards police holding a stick in an “aggressive manner.”

Killed for crawling around naked. Atlanta police shot and killed an unarmed man who was reported to have been “acting deranged, knocking on doors, crawling around on the ground naked.” Police fired two shots at the man after he reportedly started running towards them.

Killed for wearing dark pants and a basketball jersey. Donnell Thompson, a mentally disabled 27-year-old described as gentle and shy, was shot and killed after police—searching for a carjacking suspect reportedly wearing similar clothing—encountered him lying motionless in a neighborhood yard. Police “only” opened fire with an M4 rifle after Thompson first failed to respond to their flash bang grenades and then started running after being hit by foam bullets.

Killed for driving while deaf. In North Carolina, a state trooper shot and killed 29-year-old Daniel K. Harris—who was deaf—after Harris initially failed to pull over during a traffic stop.

Killed for being homeless. Los Angeles police shot an unarmed homeless man after he failed to stop riding his bicycle and then proceeded to run from police.

Killed for brandishing a shoehorn. John Wrana, a 95-year-old World War II veteran, lived in an assisted living center, used a walker to get around, and was shot and killed by police who mistook the shoehorn in his hand for a 2-foot-long machete and fired multiple beanbag rounds from a shotgun at close range.

Killed for having your car break down on the road. Terence Crutcher, unarmed and black, was shot and killed by Oklahoma police after his car broke down on the side of the road. Crutcher was shot in the back while walking towards his car with his hands up.

Killed for holding a garden hose. California police were ordered to pay $6.5 million after they opened fire on a man holding a garden hose, believing it to be a gun. Douglas Zerby was shot 12 times and pronounced dead on the scene.

Killed for calling 911. Justine Damond, a 40-year-old yoga instructor, was shot and killed by Minneapolis police, allegedly because they were startled by a loud noise in the vicinity just as she approached their patrol car. Damond, clad in pajamas, had called 911 to report a possible assault in her neighborhood.

Killed for looking for a parking spot. Richard Ferretti, a 52-year-old chef, was shot and killed by Philadelphia police who had been alerted to investigate a purple Dodge Caravan that was driving “suspiciously” through the neighborhood.

Shot seven times for peeing outdoors. Eighteen-year-old Keivon Young was shot seven times by police from behind while urinating outdoors. Young was just zipping up his pants when he heard a commotion behind him and then found himself struck by a hail of bullets from two undercover cops. Allegedly officers mistook Young—5’4,” 135 lbs., and guilty of nothing more than taking a leak outdoors—for a 6’ tall, 200 lb. murder suspect whom they later apprehended. Young was charged with felony resisting arrest and two counts of assaulting a peace officer.

This is what passes for policing in America today, folks, and it’s only getting worse.

In every one of these scenarios, police could have resorted to less lethal tactics.

They could have acted with reason and calculation instead of reacting with a killer instinct.

They could have attempted to de-escalate and defuse whatever perceived “threat” caused them to fear for their lives enough to react with lethal force.

That police instead chose to fatally resolve these encounters by using their guns on fellow citizens speaks volumes about what is wrong with policing in America today, where police officers are being dressed in the trappings of war, drilled in the deadly art of combat, and trained to look upon “every individual they interact with as an armed threat and every situation as a deadly force encounter in the making.”

Remember, to a hammer, all the world looks like a nail.

Yet as I point out in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, “we the people” are not just getting hammered.

We’re getting killed, execution-style.

Violence begets violence: until we start addressing the U.S. government’s part in creating, cultivating and abetting a culture of violence, we will continue to be a nation plagued by violence in our homes, in our schools, on our streets and in our affairs of state, both foreign and domestic.

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Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead is founder and president of The Rutherford Institute, where this article was originally published. His new book Battlefield America: The War on the American People  is available at www.amazon.com. Whitehead can be contacted at [email protected].

Iran had hitherto allowed India to make a fool out of it without uttering even the faintest protest in response, yet the Islamic Republic’s previously servile attitude might be changing if two recent statements by its leadership are any indication of a new approach taking shape towards the South Asian state.

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India recently made a fool out of Iran by complying with the US’ unilateral sanctions against its oil industry, victimizing it with blowback from the Hybrid War on CPEC, and allying with its sworn American & “Israeli” enemies, yet the Islamic Republic’s previously servile attitude towards the South Asian state might be changing if two recent statements by its leadership are any indication of a new approach that might be taking shape. Foreign Minister Zarif said last week that his country regards any extra-regional presence in the Persian Gulf as a “source of insecurity“, which by extension would naturally include India’s air and naval mission in that waterway that New Delhi launched over the summer in tacit support of the US’ efforts to forge a multinational coalition there. Shortly thereafter, Iranian Speaker Ali Larijani declared that Tehran will adopt a joint strategy with Islamabad in response to India’s recent “Israeli-“-likeunilateral actions in Kashmir. Taken together, the contours of a new Iranian policy towards India appear to be emerging.

Iran has been disrespected so much by India over the past year, yet it kept crawling back to its regional “partner” time and again likely out of desperation for some hope of eventually receiving a modicum of sanctions relief from it, yet the country’s international reputation has been so strongly damaged by this show of fealty that its leaders might have finally decided upon a different course of action even if only for soft power’s sake. It’s with this in mind that Iran might soon begin championing the Kashmiri cause alongside the global pivot state of Pakistan because of how identical this struggle is to the Palestinians’ one against “Israel“. India, after all, is the “Israel” of South Asia, and it’s also the self-professed “Jewish State’s” new military-strategic partner as well, so it makes sense for Iran to behave consistently towards both of them if it wants to retain its hard-fought standing in the global activist community. It’s still too early to tell whether or not it’ll irreversibly move in this direction, but the signs certainly show that it’s at the very least seriously deliberating doing so.

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This article was originally published on Eurasia Future.

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

Clearly, Hoover was world’s apart from Trump geopolitically, at war with no other nations, polar opposite how both extremist right wings of the US war party operate today. This article deals only with economic and financial issues.

Hoover had the misfortune of taking office eight months before the October 1929 Wall Street crash, ushering in the Great Depression of the 1930s, followed by WW II when FD Roosevelt was US president.

He failed to heed advice of economist John Maynard Keynes who later gave to Franklin Roosevelt. He urged “spend, spend, spend.” Supply “cheap and abundant credit.”

Focus on “increas(ing) the national output” by stimulative fiscal policies. Boost purchasing power by “put(ting people back to work.”

Back then, the US wasn’t burdened by today’s high debt level exceeding GDP, increasing exponentially because of unsustainable military spending at time when the only US enemies are invented ones.

Trump took office at a late-cycle time similar to excesses of the 1920s, characterized by money printing madness that facilitated speculation on a grand scale.

On August 7, Wall Street on Parade’s Pam and Russ Martens reported that “central banks are in panic mode for good reason,” explaining the following:

The benchmark 10-year US Treasury plunged “a stunning…41 basis points in 8 days (to) 1.65 percent,” down from an earlier in the year yield of over 3%, perhaps heading toward exceeding its past decade low of 1.37%.

The inverted yield curve often signals recession ahead. After a decade of monetary and speculative excess, it’s likely coming, maybe matching or exceeding the October 2007 – March 2009 turmoil.

With short-term treasuries now at a range between 2 – 2.25% after a late July quarter point cut, and the Federal Reserve’s near-$4 trillion already bloated asset portfolio, it has much less ammunition to combat an economic decline than earlier — complicated by a potential perfect storm hitting the economy and financial markets ahead.

The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency explained the following:

Five US too-big-to-fail mega-banks hold an unthinkable amount of derivatives, facilitating speculation, what Warren Buffet once called “financial weapons of mass destruction, carrying dangers that…are potentially lethal.”

Here’s what the five US mega-banks hold in these instruments:

• JPMorgan Chase – $58.7 trillion
• Citigroup – $51.5 trillion
• Goldman Sachs Group – $50.8 trillion
• Bank of America – $37.9 trillion
• Morgan Stanley – $35 trillion

Combined they hold 86% of the amount of these instruments held by 5,000 US banks.

Using them to accumulate windfall profits could dramatically backfire if the economy turns sharply south, a significant possibility ahead.

What goes up in financial gains over a prolonged period can unwind rapidly during a significant economic decline.

On August 11, economist John Williams commented on “unstable and deteriorating economic and political circumstances, foreshadow(ing) domestic financial market turmoil” in his judgment, adding:

The “flight from US stocks and the dollar into into gold should continue,” signaling a potential “major tipping point.”

What’s going on is exacerbated by chaotic geopolitical conditions, largely because of unacceptable Trump regime actions.

According to economist David Rosenberg, “(w)e are living in dangerous times…a period of history that will be written about in textbooks in years and decades to come, and the undertones are none too good.”

Count the ways:

Financial markets are pricing in recession ahead.

“We have a bond market in which a quarter of the universe trades at a negative yield” — including in economic powerhouse Germany.

“Investment grade yields, on average, are below zero in the euro area.”

Unlike earlier economic downturns, including post-October 1929, 2001, and 2008, today’s “global debt load is infinitely larger now than it was at the peak of…prior credit-bubble cycle(s).”

“The world is awash in debt. Years of monetary intervention among the world’s central banks created artificial asset-price inflation and exacerbated wealth inequalities at the same time.”

What’s going on “is a global phenomenon.” Mass shootings in the US nationwide are symptomatic “of a society starting to come apart at the seams.”

“(T)he world is splintering.” There’s possible Brexit in some form, “deep (EU) divisions,” months of violent Hong Kong protests, Sino/US trade and possible currency war, instability in the Middle East and Indo/Pacific, the threat of possible US war on Iran, and heightened India/Pakistan tensions over Kashmir.

Rosenberg noted that for the first time since the 1930s,

“a Federal Reserve tightening cycle got stopped out at 2.5 per cent on the federal-funds rate…(D)ebt dynamics are very unstable…interest rates (likely) to go (way) down…”

If go negative in the US, a real possibility if there’s economic and financial turmoil, “how do assets with cash-flow streams get valued,” Rosenberg asked?

“The distortions are wild…(G)old prices have broken out in recent months in all currency terms and central banks are adding bullion to their reserves.”

Trump is a geopolitical and economic know-nothing. Verbally trying to weaken the dollar “jeopardizes its status as the world’s reserve currency,” said Rosenberg.

His protectionist tariffs war on China and other countries are destabilizing and counterproductive, especially at a time of growing global economic weakness.

There’s “no end-game in sight” on  the Sino/US trade and currency war he initiated.

“This sounds a lot like the 1930s to me,” said Rosenberg. Will major hot war follow like at the end of that decade?

Economist F. William Engdahl asked if China will trigger the “next financial tsunami.”

Will irreconcilable differences between both countries, showing no signs of resolution, “trigger (another) Lehman Crisis” like in 2008?

“Are we on the verge of a so-called ‘perfect storm’ that will transform the post-1945 global order?”

The Chinese curse about “liv(ing) in interesting times” may come home to roost in the months ahead.

Potential economic, financial, geopolitical, and military crisis conditions may be triggered by wrongheaded Trump policies — making a looming bad situation worse by his chaotic actions.

As always during times of crisis, ordinary people suffer most.

Highly-indebted households and individuals on fixed incomes with minimal savings are most vulnerable to be harmed by protracted instability and economic weakness that may lie ahead.

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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.

Since taking office in December 2015, President Mauricio Macri created socio-economic crisis conditions by serving privileged interests exclusively at the expense of the public welfare.

He slashed social benefits at the behest of internal monied interests, Wall Street and the IMF. Real unemployment way exceeds the official 10% level. Underemployment affects most working Argentinians.

Inflation at over 50% destroyed purchasing power for most people. Most Argentinians are impoverished or bordering it.

Macri’s force-fed neoliberal harshness worsened after getting June 2018 $57 billion in IMF financing — the largest amount ever by the notorious loan shark of last resort agency to any nation, what no responsible leader should have anything to do with.

Its predatory lending practices come with unacceptable strings, demanding privatization of state enterprises, mass layoffs, deregulation, deep social spending cuts, wage freezes or cuts, other corporate friendly policies, marginalizing trade unions, and harsh crackdowns on resisters.

It’s all about letting bankers and other corporate predators strip mine countries of their material wealth and resources, shift them from public to private hands, crush democratic values, hollow out nations into backwaters, destroy middle class societies, and turn ordinary people able to find work into serfs earning poverty wages.

For nations getting into bed with the IMF, it’s perpetual debt bondage, obligating them to go deeper into debt to service existing obligations – at the expense of eroding and eliminating vital public services.

Macri is widely despised for his economic strangulation policies, Argentina’s contraction severest in over a decade, most people experiencing Depression conditions.

The country faces possible economic and financial meltdown, conditions exacerbated by growing global economic weakness. Its currency was in free-fall earlier, contributing greatly to eroding purchasing power.

Public anger over deplorable conditions showed up in Sunday’s primary elections, Macri admitting he had a bad night.

Opposition candidate Alberto Fernandez and his running mate/former president Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner handed him a stunning defeat — suggesting he’s unlikely to be reelected in October.

Fernandez/de Kirchner got 47.22% support from voters compared to 32.36% for Macri, a crushing defeat by any standard. Center-right Roberto Lavagna came in third with 8.39% support.

“We are here to create a new Argentina, not to continue the past model, but to end this time of lies and give a new horizon…Argentinians realized we are the change, not them,” Fernandez told supporters in post-election remarks.

De Kirchner said

“(w)e know of the difficult moment that the country is going through, of millions of Argentines who have lost their jobs.”

“We have talked with so many. We know what it is. This gives us the responsibility that we have to reach everyone to give them absolute peace of mind.”

Telesur explained that to win in October, “a candidate needs at least 45 percent of the vote or 40 percent and a difference of 10 percentage points over the second-place runner.”

“If there’s no clear winner, voters will return for a run-off on Nov. 24” between the top two vote-getting candidates.

With most Argentinians suffering greatly from economic harshness under the neoliberal/fascist Macri regime, a change of the guard is likely in October.

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Note to readers: please click the share buttons below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

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.

This past week’s meeting of the U.S.-and-Canada-created anti-Venezuela Lima Group of nations failed to achieve the U.S. regime’s intention of organizing a coalition of its members to participate in a U.S.-led invasion to overthrow Venezuela’s Government and install Trump’s choice, the self-styled ‘interim President’ of Venezuela, Juan Guaido, to rule there. Although 100 nations had been invited, only 60 attended, and the U.S. regime wasn’t able to obtain even one ally for an invasion. John Bolton (U.S. National Security Advisor) and Wilbur Ross (U.S. Secretary of ‘Commerce’ — mainly U.S. oil companies) represented U.S. President Trump at the meeting, which started on August 5th. The meeting ended with no official announcement. It was a humiliating defeat for the U.S. regime.

Below is a report about this meeting, by Agence France-Presse, a typical U.S.-allied ‘news’-medium. The italicized additions in brackets in and near the article’s end are essential historical context; it’s taken from Wikipedia’s article “International sanctions during the Venezuelan crisis”, and thus also isn’t from me. This way, the reader will be able to see what the ‘news’-report here leaves out, which is essential background in order for readers to know the reality that stands behind this particular ‘news’ report. The minor typos in the original report are also left unchanged; the entire article is unchanged, except that I boldface the passages toward the end, which passages are subsequently contextualized immediately below them. Afterward, I shall add my own comments, in order to provide a fuller context.

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See this and this.

US warns off Venezuela’s supporters as Lima meeting opens

Date created: Tuesday 6 August 2019,  06/08/2019 – 20:07

AFP, Lima (AFP): Washington warned third parties on Tuesday to avoid doing business with the Venezuelan regime of Nicolas Maduro, as delegates from some 60 countries met in Lima to discuss ways of ending the crisis in South American nation.

The warning came one day after President Donald Trump ordered a freeze on all Venezuelan government assets in the United States and barred transactions with its authorities.

“We are sending a signal to third parties that want to do business with the Maduro regime: proceed with extreme caution,” said Trump’s National Security Advisor John Bolton, speaking in Lima.

“There is no need to risk your business interests with the United States for the purposes of profiting from a corrupt and dying regime.”

The Trump administration is determined to force Maduro from power and support opposition leader Juan Guaido’s plans to form a transitional government and set up new elections.

The sanctions drew an angry response from Caracas, which denounced the US move as “another serious aggression by the Trump administration through arbitrary economic terrorism against the Venezuelan people.”

Crisis-wracked Venezuela has been mired in a political impasse since January when Guaido, speaker of the Natinal Assembly, proclaimed himself acting president, quickly receiving the support of more than 50 countries.

Tuesday’s meeting was called by the Lima Group, which includes a dozen Latin American countries and Canada, most of which support Guaido.

The Lima meeting comes as representatives of Maduro and Guaido are involved in “continuous” negotiations mediated by Norway.

The first round of talks were in Oslo in May, and three further rounds have taken place in Barbados.

Caracas claims the US sanctions show that Washington and its allies are “committed to the failure of the political dialogue” because “they fear the results and benefits.”

Bolton, who is in the US delegation alongside Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, said Maduro was “not serious” about talks.

He said Trump’s move “authorizes the US government to identify, target and impose sanctions on any persons who continue to provide support” Maduro’s “illegitimate regime.”

He said it would “deny Maduro access to the global financial system and to further isolate him internationally.”

Venezuela’s opposition considers Maduro a usurper over his re-election last year in a poll widely viewed as rigged.

They want him to stand down so new elections can be held — but Maduro, with support from the country’s powerful military, refuses to go.

Maduro says the talks must lead to “democratic coexistence” and an end to what he describes as an attempted US-orchestrated “coup.”

But on Tuesday the White House was emphatic: the “dictatorship must end for Venezuela to have a stable, democratic, and prosperous future.”

The United States would “use every appropriate tool to end Maduro’s hold on Venezuela,” White House Press Secretary Stephanie Grisham said in a statement.

Oil-rich but cash-poor Venezuela has been in a deep recession for five years.

[“President Barack Obama signed the Venezuela Defense of Human Rights and Civil Society Act of 2014, a U.S. Act imposing sanctions on Venezuelan individuals held responsible by the United States for human rights violations during the 2014 Venezuelan protests, in December of that year.[13][14] It “requires the President to impose sanctions” on those “responsible for significant acts of violence or serious human rights abuses associated with February 2014 protests or, more broadly, against anyone who has directed or ordered the arrest or prosecution of a person primarily because of the person’s legitimate exercise of freedom of expression or assembly”.[8]”]

Food and medicine shortages are routine, and public services are progressively failing.

[“As the humanitarian crisis deepened and expanded, the Trump administration levied more serious economic sanctions against Venezuela on 28 January [2019], and “Maduro accused the US of plunging Venezuelan citizens further into economic crisis.”[3] Rafael Uzcátegui, director of PROVEA, added that “sanctions against PDVSA are likely to yield stronger and more direct economic consequences, and that “[w]e should remember that 70 to 80 percent of Venezuela’s food is imported, and there’s barely any medicine production in the country.”[3]”]

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My Comments

The U.S. regime’s sanctions against Venezuelans were aimed at producing such distress amongst the population so as to cause them not to vote for Maduro. It didn’t work. The sanctions had the intended effect of distressing Venezuelans, but this deprivation drove so many of the most anti-Maduro Venezuelans to leave the country so that the sanctions failed to force the expected “regime change.”

It drove too many of his enemies out. The U.S. regime is therefore trying even-stronger measures to grab the country. Trump is dictating to Venezuela that “the dictatorship must end.” He has even chosen the person, Guaido, who is to replace the current nationally elected President, whom the U.S. regime has long been trying to oust.

Guaido has never even been a candidate in any national Venezuelan election, but he was trained in the U.S., and has always cooperated with the U.S. Government’s repeated efforts to take control over Venezuela. Venezuela has never invaded nor even threatened the United States. This coup-attempt is purely an effort for imperialistic conquest of Venezuela, but it is cloaked in ‘democratic’ and ‘humanitarian’ lies, for fools, like America’s invasions and coups typically are.

Only idiots can’t see what the U.S. pattern is here, especially after the lies that had suckered Americans in 2003 to support “regime-change in Iraq.” Trump is continuing Barack Obama’s policy, which continued that of George W. Bush. Whatever changes in personnel occur within the U.S. regime, the regime itself remains basically the same, though its theatrics change, and that’s enough change to satisfy most Americans that we live in a democracy. Virtually all of the U.S. Congress supports these efforts to conquer Venezuela, and this fascism includes all of the Democratic Party’s Presidential candidates.

Therefore, none of the candidates are being challenged about their votes supporting this (or any other) attempted conquest by the U.S. regime. The neoconservative policy is bipartisan in America, though the personnel do change, from the representatives of one group of billionaires, to the representatives of another group of billionaires.

And the vast majority of Americans think that it’s good, or at least okay — even after all of the lies have been exposed, they still approve. Of course, most Italians, Japanese, and Germans, thought favorably about their Government’s imperialistic conquests, during WW II; but Americans became opposed to that when we were hit by the Japanese at Pearl Harbor and Germany declared war against us. This time around, we are the Japanese, and the Germans, and the Italians. Things weren’t supposed to turn out this way, but it has happened. The U.S. is today the world’s leading fascist nation. And very few Americans recognize that it’s the way that things did turn out. Very few Americans know that we live in a fascist nation — today’s leading fascist nation.

After that News-Report

The next day, August 7th, Venezuela’s Telesur headlined “EU Opposes Recent US Total Blockade Against Venezuela” and reported that Trump had failed to get the EU — his biggest hope for destroying Venezuela short of militarily invading it — to accept even that proposal. The EU said “We oppose the extraterritorial application of unilateral measures.” They further said

“A negotiated outcome remains the only sustainable way to overcome this multidimensional crisis.”

The EU couldn’t muster enough fascists to go along with anything that the U.S. regime proposed. At this point, Trump isn’t far from the moment when he will need either to abandon his effort to grab Venezuela in this round, or else spring a blitz invasion without allies. Even if he calls off the effort, that would only be temporary.

Perhaps if and when he is re-elected, he will feel freer just to send in thousands of troops, tanks, and missiles, to get the job done. However, if Russia stands firm, then such an invasion could spark WW III. He would have to decide whether grabbing the world’s largest oil reserves is worth that risk.

Meanwhile, he will almost certainly continue to try to make life as difficult as possible for the Venezuelan people, all the while blaming Maduro for their misery. This has been the basic American plan, since well before Trump occupied the White House.

At this stage, an American President is just a figurehead for one or another faction of America’s 607 billionaires, and it seems that whereas some of them demand conquest of Venezuela, none of the others opposes such a conquest. The only issue, therefore, for the American regime, is how and when to do that.

On August 8th, Venezuela, Iran, China, and Russia, held “war games” at Kaliningrad, Russia, on the Baltic coast, which military exercises had been organized by Russia, perhaps in order to indicate to Washington that a U.S. invasion against any of these four would be militarily responded to by all of the four. This symbolic act warns the fascist, and fascist-accepting, regimes: Your imperialist alliance has 60 nations, but is fractious; ours, on the other hand — all resolute supporters of national sovereignty, and therefore opponents of imperialism — has 4 nations, but we are united. Consequently, though “US warns off Venezuela’s supporters as Lima meeting opens,” Venezuela’s three allies here answered that verbal threat immediately after the Lima Group meeting, by a joint action, which symbolized that they are ignoring it.

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This article was originally published on The Saker.

Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of  They’re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010, and of  CHRIST’S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity.

Two of the world’s most important powers, India and Pakistan, are locked into an extremely dangerous confrontation over the bitterly disputed Himalayan mountain state of Kashmir. Both are nuclear armed.

Kashmir has been a flashpoint since Imperial Britain divided India in 1947. India and Pakistan have fought numerous wars and conflicts over majority Muslim Kashmir. China controls a big chunk of northern Kashmir known as Aksai Chin. (see map below)

In 1949, the UN mandated a referendum to determine if Kashmiris wanted to join Pakistan or India. Not surprisingly, India refused to hold the vote. But there are some Kashmiris who want an independent state, though a majority seek to join Pakistan.

India claims that most of northern Pakistan is actually part of Kashmir, which it claims in full. India rules the largest part of Kashmir, formerly a princely state. Pakistan holds a smaller portion, known as Azad Kashmir. In my book on Kashmir, ‘War at the Top of the World,’ I called it ‘the globe’s most dangerous conflict.’ It remains so today.

I’ve been under fire twice on the Indo-Pak border in Kashmir, known as the ‘Line of Control,’ and once at 15,000 feet atop the Siachen Glacier on China’s border. India has over 500,000 soldiers and paramilitary police garrisoning its portion of Kashmir, whose 12 million people bitterly oppose often corrupt and brutal Indian rule – except for local minority Hindus and Sikhs who support it. A bloody, bitter uprising has flared on against Indian rule since 1989 in which some 42,000 people, mostly civilians, have died.

About 250,000 Pakistani troops are dug in on the other side of the ceasefire line.

What makes this confrontation so dangerous is that both sides have important tactical and nuclear forces arrayed against one another. These are mostly short/medium-ranged nuclear tipped missiles, and air-delivered nuclear bombs. Strategic nuclear weapons back up these tactical forces. A nuclear exchange, even a limited one, could kill millions, pollute much of Asia’s ground water, and spread radioactive dust around the globe – including to North America.

India’s new Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, is a Hindu hardliner who is willing to confront Pakistan and India’s 200 million Muslims, who make up over 14% of the population. In February, Modi sent warplanes to attack Pakistan after Kashmir insurgents ambushed Indian forces. Pakistan shot down an Indian MiG-21 fighter. China, Pakistan’s closest ally, warned India to back off.

Modi is very close to President Donald Trump and Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu, both noted for anti-Muslim sentiments. Modi just revoked article 370 of India’s constitution that bars non-Kashmiris from buying land in the mountain state, and shut down its phone and internet systems.

The revocation means that non-Kashmiris can now buy land there. Modi is clearly copying Israel’s Netanyahu by encouraging non-Muslims to buy up land and squeeze the local Muslim population. Welcome to the Mideast conflict East. China is also doing similar ethnic inundation in its far western, largely Muslim, Xinjiang (Sinkiang) region.

In an ominous sign, Delhi says it will separate the high altitude Ladakh region (aka ‘Little Tibet’) from its portion of Kashmir. This move suggests India plans to chop up Indian Kashmir into two or three states, a move sure to further enrage Pakistan and thwart any future peace settlement.

There’s little Pakistan can do to block India’s actions.

India’s huge armed forces outnumber those of Pakistan by 4 or 5 to one. Without nuclear weapons, Pakistan would be quickly overrun by Indian forces. Only massive Chinese intervention would save Pakistan.

Meanwhile, Kashmir, the world’s longest-running major dispute, continues, threatening a terrible nuclear conflict. Making matters worse, both India and Pakistan’s nuclear forces are on a hair-trigger alert, with a warning time of only minutes. This is a region where electronics often become scrambled. A false alert or a flock of birds could trigger a massive nuclear war in South Asia.

India and Pakistan, where people starve in the streets, waste billions on military spending because of the Kashmir dispute. Now some of India’s extreme Hindu nationalists warn they want to reabsorb Pakistan, Bangladesh, and even Sri Lanka into Mother India.

Previous Indian leaders have been cautious. But not PM Modi. He is showing signs of power intoxication.

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The crowded field has 25 Dems in it so far, maybe more to come, dropouts along the way for lack of enough support. 

Tulsi Gabbard and 89-year-old former senator Mike Gravel are the only worthy candidates. 

Both have genuine anti-war, progressive agendas, not progressives in name only Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, or anti-criminal justice supporter Kamala Harris.

Gabbard has been in the news but not Gravel. I wrote several times about her, largely offering praise, criticizing some of her positions, stressing her genuine attributes, making her a worthy aspirant.

From 1969 to 1981, Gravel was US Senator from Alaska, earlier serving in its house, including two years as speaker.

He calls his platform “the most progressive” in the crowded Dem field, saying:

His mission is “ending all wars—not only our murderous wars of choice abroad, but our disastrous war on drugs, the war on crime, and the everyday war on this country’s working class. Our goal is a country defined by peace and justice—not by violence, inequality, and poverty.”

Like Gabbard, he’s genuinely anti-war. He supports ending the “America alone” world vision through peace and cooperation with other nations.

Along with other notable figures for peace, equity and justice, he was a member of the Bradley (now Chelsea) Manning advisory board, campaigning for justice denied her.

He’s a 9/11 truth supporter, earlier saying:

“There’s no question in my mind that 9/11 was an inside job.”

The evidence is indisputable.

A website and Twitter account in his name explained the following. Entering the race isn’t about winning.

He and his supporters said the

“goal is to push the rest of the (Dem) field toward policies, especially on political reform, climate change, and foreign policy, that, for the first time in decades, will truly challenge the American plutocracy and military-industrial complex.”

He strongly opposes the US war OF terror, not on it. Years earlier, he said

“90% of what the government does is held secret. It’s a whole cult. And that’s the thing that is really strangling (US governance), that we just don’t know what’s going on.”

Sticking to the official narrative exclusively on issues mattering most, establishment media suppress what’s vital for everyone to know.

On his website, Gravel calls for:

“FULL RE-ENGAGEMENT WITH MULTILATERAL INSTITUTIONS

ENDING THE NUCLEAR THREAT

NON-AGGRESSION ABROAD

DEPARTMENTS OF PEACE AND WAR

BRING EVERY TROOP HOME

BIG CUTS IN MILITARY SPENDING

COMMITTING TO INTERNATIONAL JUSTICE

OPPOSING ISRAELI APARTHEID

ENDING SUPPORT FOR SAUDI ARABIA

BANNING FOREIGN ARMS SALES

MAKING WAR CONSTITUTIONAL AGAIN

A PEACEFUL SOLUTION IN THE KOREAN PENINSULA

AN AMERICAN NATIONAL FUND

BREAKING UP BIG BUSINESSES

A NATIONAL REPARATIONS TRUST FUND

FAIR EDUCATION REFORM

PROTECT OUR PARENTS,

PROTECT OUR CHILDREN

ECONOMIC SUPPORT FOR THE LEAST ADVANTAGED

REFORMING AND NATIONALIZING CORPORATE LAW

A GREEN NEW DEAL

A TRANSPORTATION POLICY FOR THE 21ST CENTURY

PUBLIC BANKING FOR ALL

AUTOMATIC TAX FILING

THE RIGHT TO OWN: COOPERATIVE BUSINESSES

PROGRESSIVE TAX REFORM

HOUSING AS A HUMAN RIGHT

HEALTH AS A HUMAN RIGHT

INTERNET ACCESS AS A RIGHT

ENDING THE WAR ON DRUGS

ABOLISHING THE DEATH PENALTY

PROMOTING POLICE ACCOUNTABILITY

REPRODUCTIVE RIGHTS AND BODILY AUTONOMY

FAIRNESS IN TRIALS AND SENTENCING

IMPROVING PRISONS AND COMBATING RECIDIVISM

JUST IMMIGRATION REFORM

SUPPORTING SEX WORKERS

FULL RIGHTS FOR AMERICANS WITH DISABILITIES

INVESTIGATING HUMAN RIGHTS ABUSES

SUPPORTING LGBTQIA+ INDIVIDUALS

AMNESTY AND HONOR FOR WHISTLEBLOWERS

RESTORING CIVIL LIBERTIES

ABOLISHING THE ELECTORAL COLLEGE

MAKING ELECTIONS FAIR

NATIONAL RANKED-CHOICE VOTING

ADOPTING THE WYOMING RULE

ABOLISHING THE SENATE AS WE KNOW IT

12-YEAR TERMS FOR ALL FEDERAL JUDGES

SELF-DETERMINATION FOR DC, PUERTO RICO, AND OTHER TERRITORIES”

No major party presidential candidate in US history had an agenda remotely this progressive — for peace, equity and justice.

None ever challenged the military, industrial, military, media complex this way — calling for big cuts in military spending, banning foreign arms sales, bringing home US forces deployed abroad, along with substituting plowshares for swords, and opposing apartheid Israel.

At age-89, Gravel’s candidacy is symbolic. He aims to challenge the dirty system and give ‘em hell.

He wants his progressive social justice, anti-war voice heard, supporters aiming to spread it.

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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.

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“Opposition” or Terrorists? Who Is Syria and Russia Targeting in Idlib?

By Tony Cartalucci, August 12, 2019

It is a particular irony that Israeli media and policy institutions have helped expose IHH when many elements of the current Israeli government have been involved in backing terrorist organizations in neighboring Syria alongside Turkey, the United States, other Western states, as well as several Persian Gulf autocracies since the conflict began in 2011.

Project Fear Panic: Predicted Hard-Brexit Job Losses Across Europe

By Zero Hedge, August 12, 2019

As a no-deal, hard Brexit becomes ever more likely, the fearmongering of the establishment has been turned up to ’11’ as it appears they have little to no control over the process – no matter what they think – now that Johnson (and his cabinet) are in charge.

What Is Really Happening in Syria?

By Revd Andrew Ashdown, Mark Taliano, and John Shuck, August 12, 2019

In this episode of “The Beloved Community”, Mark Taliano and Andrew Ashdown shed light on what is really happening in Syria. Their evidence-based, on the ground narratives, are shockingly different from the fake, monochromatic narratives fed to Western populations on the tv and in the news.

The World Is Uniting for International Law, Against US Empire

By Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers, August 12, 2019

That is not Cuba, Nicaragua, Iran, Russia, or China talking about the most recent unilateral coercive measures imposed by the United States against Venezuela, i.e. economic sanctions that have become an economic blockade, but the European Union. Even allies who have embarrassed themselves by recognizing the phony “interim president” Juan Guaido are saying the US has gone too far.

Sick to the Stomach: Pesticides and the Cocktail of Toxicity

By Colin Todhunter, August 12, 2019

In her document, Mason also discusses the deleterious effects of agrochemicals on the gut microbiome, the collective genome of organisms inhabiting our body, and notes increasing levels of obesity are associated with low bacterial richness in the gut.

China’s Belt and Road (BRI): Could Save Destroyed Southeast Asia?

By Andre Vltchek, August 12, 2019

Most of the people in the West or in North Asia usually never think about it, but Southeast Asia is one of the most depressed and depressing parts of the world.

Syria Warns US-Turkey “Safe Zone” Deal Is a Plot for “Expansionist Ambitions”

By Sarah Abed, August 11, 2019

After three days of intense negotiations in Ankara, US and Turkish officials reached an agreement on Wednesday to create a joint operations center and set up a safe zone east of the Euphrates in north eastern Syria. Deal details have not yet been disclosed.

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The onset of the latest Kashmir Crisis following India’s “Israeli”-like unilateral moves there last week have raised the question among many in the Alt-Media Community of whether the SCO could help mediate a solution between New Delhi and Islamabad, but the fact of the matter is that the organization would be utterly useless in doing so even if it had the proper mandate because its members could just engage in behind-the-scenes diplomacy without having to make a public spectacle about it on that platform.

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 The idea is that Russia and China, which have historically been closer to India and Pakistan (both of which are member states of the SCO) respectively, could join forces in somehow encouraging their regional partner of choice to moderate their positions and therefore reach some sort of a “compromise” on the future status of the disputed region. This suggestion might be well intended, but it reveals that those making it are unaware that the UNSC previously mandated that a plebiscite be held there, something that India has refused to do for over seven decades already.

That’s the only solution available that would follow international law, but even if it wasn’t, the notion that Russia and China exercise such influence over India and Pakistan that they could successfully compel them to “compromise” is patently false. Both countries are independent states, not colonized territories, and neither Moscow nor Beijing can get either of them to change their views towards Kashmir just by incessantly talking about the issue. Not only that, but the SCO doesn’t allow member states to bring their bilateral problems to the platform, and while the issue is veritably a multilateral one by its very nature (it not only involves China via Aksai Chin, but has also seen the official involvement of the UNSC), it’s unlikely that the organization would allow it to be discussed under its aegis.

After all, the SCO focuses on cooperation on issues of shared security (and recently, economic) interests, not on any problems between its member states. Bringing up the Kashmir Conflict could undermine its working efficacy, though that’s probably already the case nowadays as it is after what just happened last week. Anyhow, publicly talking about Kashmir on the SCO platform wouldn’t accomplish anything other than getting each side to once again reiterate their positions towards this issue. If the intent in proposing the SCO’s involvement in resolving this dispute is to get Russia and China to mediate it along the lines of what was previously described at the beginning of this analysis, then the requested behind-the-scenes diplomacy could happen without making a public spectacle of it, and might already quietly be in the process of occurring.

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

Embattled Bayer is getting a helping hand from Donald Trump.

The German pharmaceuticals titan is currently inundated with lawsuits claiming Roundup, a weedkiller owned by its Monsanto subsidiary, causes cancer. The Trump administration is refusing to approve product labels warning glyphosate — the active ingredient in Roundup — is a carcinogen.

The Environmental Protection Agency’s new guidance is a reaction to California regulators, who have required product labels to warn glyphosate potentially causes cancer since 2017.

“It is irresponsible to require labels on products that are inaccurate when EPA knows the product does not pose a cancer risk,” EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler said in a statement. “We will not allow California’s flawed program to dictate federal policy.”

There isn’t a scientific consensus on whether glyphosate causes cancer. The World Health Organization’s cancer agency found glyphosate is “probably carcinogenic to humans.” However, the EPA conducted an independent evaluation and found it’s “not likely to be carcinogenic to humans.”

Bayer faces Roundup-related lawsuits from more than 13,000 farmers, landscapers, and gardeners. It has lost three high-profile court cases since its $63 billion takeover of Monsanto last summer. However, it has successfully reduced the combined jury awards from close to $2.4 billion to less than $200 million.

The company has proposed to pay as much as $8 billion to settle more than 18,000 US lawsuits tied to Roundup, Bloomberg reported last week.

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Boris Johnson declares himself a champion of the UK union, a prime minister who wants to strengthen “the ties that bind our United Kingdom”. This is just part of the propaganda game being played. But as the FT headline goes – “Brexit has become the enemy of the UK union” (paywall) and it stresses that the union is done. The international press are now reporting that Britain is inevitably breaking up. The Washington Post asserts that BJ is gambling the house on a one card game and likely to lose his shirt in their article ‘Playing Chicken.’ The New York Times pretty much says the same.

Business Insider says quite matter of factly, that the Tories are simply conditioning the electorate to accept the breakup of the union as an acceptable consequence of Brexit. The reason is political selfishness driven by psychotic lust for power at all costs. “If the UK were to break up, it would likely leave the Conservative party with a permanent majority in an English House of Commons.”

I’ve heard this from contacts in Westminster quite a lot recently and it is this that alarms many parliamentarians behind closed doors the most.

Traditional institutions set up to uphold the values of Britain are just as worried. The British Academy was established in 1902, as the United Kingdom’s national academy for the humanities and the social sciences. It says that Brexit is a spasm of English nationalism and it is clearly worried the union is facing its biggest test ever. It argues that whatever way you look at Brexit – Scotland, Northen Ireland and Wales will all present real dangers to the survival of the union in their own way. Part of the problem is that with Brexit, the UK is not a federal state with a written constitution allocating powers unambiguously.

The BA rightly points out that the Irish border question is the most pressing and that the scale of the Brexit task for government is unprecedented. And as the BA likes to quote when it comes to Brexit – “it’s like taking the egg out of an omelette. And they are not wrong.

Irish Unity

A large majority in the Republic of Ireland would now vote to unify with Northern Ireland if a vote were held, according to an election exit poll by Irish broadcasters RTÉ and TG4. This was back in May this year. Interestingly, the poll questioned 3,000 people at polling stations after they had cast their ballots in local and European elections, so they were in the right place and frame of mind – and were actual voters, not randomly selected in a city high street.

Overall, the results showed 65 per cent “yes” versus 19 per cent “no.” Excluding undecided voters and those who refused to answer – 15 per cent – nearly four in five respondents who had made up their minds said they would vote in favour.

In Northern Ireland, voters originally and unambiguously voted to Remain by 56% to 44%.

Sinn Fein, the left-wing Irish republican political party active in both the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland, has called for a vote on Irish unification after Brexit.

Back in Westminister – “A no-deal Brexit is the way that’s most likely to lead to a border poll and to people questioning the benefits of being in the United Kingdom,” one cabinet minister told the BBC, supported by a number of notable Tory backbenchers.

The other side of the NI equation are the loyalists. “There will never be a united Ireland” screams one headline from the Irish Times, where so-called ‘street loyalists’ warn against ‘dangerous’ talk on hard border and Irish unification. And we all know what the consequences will be. Loyalists see the repeated warnings from Taoiseach Leo Varadkar and Tánaiste Simon Coveney about the threat of a return to violence.

As it turns out in latest polls, if Brexit happens, over half of the people in the North would also back Irish unity and it confirmed once again that a large majority of people were in favour of Ireland remaining in the EU. In a joint referendum, Ireland would likely unify and the union would fracture.

If Boris Johnson achieves what he has promised – to leave the EU on 31st October, it is all but inevitable that a referendum question of some sort will be asked – and violence will erupt to stop it will follow. But once pandora’s box is opened – a prolific source of divisive trouble will emerge – as we have already witnessed, not just with the ‘troubles’ but with Brexit itself.

Scottish Independence

The headline from a major new Ashcroft poll of Scottish public opinion is that Independence now has 52-48 majority support. The polling method involves much larger samples than regular newspaper polls and has a generally good record. The point that is the most interesting in this new Scottish poll is that it finds that fully 40% of Scottish Labour voters in 2017 now support Independence.

Craig Murray – former British ambassador, Scot and Independence activist –

“This has important repercussions. The Labour leadership will no longer be able to portray Independence as beyond the pale for decent thinking people, or to portray Scottish nationalism as akin to Viktor Orban, without alienating a huge swathe of its own support. It certainly ought, at the very least, to encourage the Labour Party in supporting the Scottish people’s right to a new referendum, against Tory attempts to block it.

But it also has ramifications for how the SNP and wider Yes movement conduct ourselves, particularly online. Nationalists must stop automatically writing off Labour supporters as unionists. There remains a Blairite rump still powerful in Scottish Labour who are rightfully despised, but we need more readily to acknowledge how much we have in common with a great many ordinary members of the Labour Party, both in terms of supporting Independence and in terms of the more socially inclusive Scottish state we wish to build.”

The dates in brackets indicate that the affiliation refers to how people voted in the election or referendum of that date.

“It is not surprising that many more Labour voters are looking to Scottish Independence as a reaction to a historically extreme right-wing government in London. But as I blogged at the time, already in 2017 25% of Scottish Labour voters supported Independence and a significant number who had voted SNP in the 2015 General Election had reverted to Labour in the 2017 General Election. The reason for this was simple – the SNP showed little sign of pushing on with Independence anyway and our dreadful, lacklustre 2017 GE campaign was conducted entirely on the basis of “don’t mention Independence and deny we are pushing for it whenever the Tories bring it up.” No wonder some Indy supporters drifted away.

The SNP must put Independence right at the forefront of a general election campaign, and I entirely endorse the Angus MacNeil option of declaring the general election a de facto independence referendum if the Tories persist in their refusal to countenance a formal one. If the SNP fails to strike all out for Independence now, and gets further distracted by the effort to stop Brexit for the whole UK, I shall not be alone in wondering how many of the 8% of SNP voters in the Ashcroft poll who do not support Independence, are at or near the top of the party.”

I’ve asked several very well connected Scots on what they feel – and unanimously it now echoes Murray’s sentiment.

Welsh Independence

Former First Minister Carwyn Jones garnered significant press coverage a few weeks back with his statement that the chaos in UK politics was driving curiosity about Welsh independence. It was a pretty remarkable intervention from a former Labour First Minister.

In a recent in-depth poll on Welsh Independence, the results showed some interesting answers. They compared attitudes towards independence in 2017 and today. The average (mean) scores from both years – in 2017 the polling showed a mean score of 3.8 – by 2019 this had grown to 4.4. This continues to demonstrate that somewhat more of the Welsh population has a negative view of Welsh independence than a positive one – but the direction of travel is clear – many more electors are willing to consider the possibility.

Further categorizing of the data into three groups – Against (0-3), In Favour (7-10) and the middle – Indycurious – ground (4-6). Here we find 42% against (down from 48%) in 2017 with almost 30% in favour and almost 30% in the Indycurious bracket.

So, if a vote were held on Welsh Independence it would likely vote to remain part of the union. But the question has not been asked in an environment where Brexit has actually happened, only what their preferences were as at June (before Boris Johnson came to power). I suspect that the ‘Indycurious’ might well be ‘ProIndy’ and the campaign trail will follow. Wales will stay but in ten years or twenty?

What’s next?

Whatever happens – the union of Britain is almost certainly coming to an end, if not in the immediate future, then within a decade or so. The price of Brexit will be as I said last year, the demise of global Britain. I said –

“Britain is not just facing the challenge of negotiating Brexit – it is demonstrating in front of the world stage its incompetence and more than anything that it lacks the confidence to do so in a manner befitting a world power.”

As if to reinforce that quote the FT recently said that Brexit “guarantees chaos on all sides” and a “series of co-ordinated unilateral actions would be required to avoid a national crisis.” The current government has just about given up even trying to save the national crisis from happening and is now actively engaging the idea of the union coming to an end for the purposes of retaining their power in Westminster at all costs.

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“Gold over life, literally.”

That was the succinct and critical reaction of Canadian author and activist Naomi Klein to reporting on Friday that President Donald Trump had personally intervened—after a meeting with Alaska’s Republican Governor Mike Dunleavy on Air Force One in June—to withdraw the Environmental Protection Agency’s opposition to a gold mining project in the state that the federal government’s own scientists have acknowledged would destroy native fisheries and undermine the state’s fragile ecosystems.

So Trump meets Alaska's governor in his airplane and agrees to push through a goldmine that had been stopped b/c it will devastate salmon habitat. This at a time that orcas are already starving death. Salmon carry entire ecosystems on their backs. Gold over life, literally. https://t.co/QcT2UosP0g

— Naomi Klein (@NaomiAKlein) August 9, 2019

Based on reporting by CNN that only emerged Friday evening, the key developments happened weeks ago after Trump’s one-on-one meeting with Dunleavy—who has supported the copper and gold Pebble Mine project in Bristol Bay despite the opposition of conservationists, Indigenous groups, salmon fisheries experts, and others.

The EPA told staff scientists that it was no longer opposing a controversial Alaska mining project that could devastate one of the world's most valuable wild salmon fisheries, just one day after President Trump met with Alaska's governor, CNN has learned https://t.co/vJmjAYfSw4 pic.twitter.com/TFGjPxSeAR

— CNN (@CNN) August 9, 2019

CNN reports:

In 2014, the project was halted because an EPA study found that it would cause “complete loss of fish habitat due to elimination, dewatering, and fragmentation of streams, wetlands, and other aquatic resources” in some areas of Bristol Bay. The agency invoked a rarely used provision of the Clean Water Act that works like a veto, effectively banning mining on the site.

“If that mine gets put in, it would … completely devastate our region,” Gayla Hoseth, second chief of the Curyung Tribal Council and a Bristol Bay Native Association director, told CNN. “It would not only kill our resources, but it would kill us culturally.”

EPA just lifted a restriction blocking #PebbleMine — which would decimate 3,500+ acres of Alaskan wetlands

"Yet again, the agency charged with protecting our public health and environment is abandoning science to advance the interests of a wealthy few."https://t.co/8aCOe63eCq

— Friends of the Earth (@foe_us) August 5, 2019

When the internal announcement was made by Trump political appointees that the agency was dropping its opposition, which came one day after the Trump-Dunleavy meeting, sources told CNN it came as a “total shock” to some of the top EPA scientists who were planning to oppose the project on environmental grounds. Sources for the story, the news outlet noted, “asked to remain anonymous for fear of retribution.”

According to CNN:

Four EPA sources with knowledge of the decision told CNN that senior agency officials in Washington summoned scientists and other staffers to an internal videoconference on June 27, the day after the Trump-Dunleavy meeting, to inform them of the agency’s reversal. The details of that meeting are not on any official EPA calendar and have not previously been reported.

Those sources said the decision disregards the standard assessment process under the Clean Water Act, cutting scientists out of the process.

The EPA’s new position on the project is the latest development in a decade-long battle that has pitted environmentalists, Alaskan Natives and the fishing industry against pro-mining interests in Alaska.

Responding to Klein’s tweet, fellow author and activist Bill McKibben—long a colleague of hers at 350.org—expressed similar contempt.

“This is one of the world’s most beautiful places, with a thriving salmon run, and now we’ll get some…gold,” McKibben tweeted. Trump, he added, is “President Midas.”

It’s all so tragic, and criminal. https://t.co/SB02V25G9P

— Bonnie Bates (@bonniebates51) August 10, 2019

After being told that the decision was made, one EPA inside told CNN,

“I was dumbfounded. We were basically told we weren’t going to examine anything. We were told to get out of the way and just make it happen.”

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Scott Lucas – a professor at the University of Birmingham UK – would decry with the rest of the Western media – resumed joint military operations carried out by Syria and Russia in and around the northwestern governorate of Idlib.

Reuters in their article, “Syrian army resumes military operations against rebels in northwest Syria,” would claim:

The Syrian army said on Monday it was resuming military operations in a Russian-led campaign in northwest Syria that has uprooted tens of thousands and killed hundreds, blaming Turkey for not abiding by its commitments under a truce deal.

Both Lucas and Reuters – like many other Western media fronts and personalities – are careful never to fully characterize who the “opposition” actually consists of – instead attempting to imply Syria and Russia are waging war on civilians and “moderate rebels.” 

When asked by journalist Peter Hitchens to give a run down on who the Syrian opposition actually was, Lucas in a post on social media would respond:

Hi, Peter! #Syria situation, across not only northwest but northeast, is web of local councils, local military groups, and local activist organizations to provide services. You’ll need to specify a particular area, such as a town or city in #Idlib or #Hama Province.

Yet the accompanying picture Lucas used to illustrate his point was of a meeting organized by the IHH (Foundation for Human Rights and Freedoms and Humanitarian Relief). IHH is based in Turkey and is by no means “local.”

IHH is also linked directly to Al Qaeda, serving as a logistical support network for the terrorist organization, merely couching itself behind its humanitarian mission statement.

IHH’s ties to terrorism are not recent. A 2012 article by Israeli media outlet Ynet titled, “Report: IHH financially linked to al-Qaeda,” would report:

IHH director Bulent Yildirim is reportedly being investigated by Turkish authorities for allegedly creating a financial partnership with the infamous terror group. 

Turkey’s Hurriyet Daily reported Friday that Yildirim has allegedly been transferring funds to al-Qaeda through his organization.

The Israeli-based International Institute for Counter-Terrorism (ICT) in a much more recent report titled, “IHH: The Nonprofit Face of Jihadism. An In-Depth Review,” would admit:

IHH (The Foundation for Human Rights and Freedoms and Humanitarian Relief) is a Turkish NGO active in 135 countries and seemingly dedicated entirely to humanitarian aims. In fact, mounting evidence suggests that IHH also operates as a hidden arm of the Turkish government in the conflict zones of the Middle East and Southeast Asia. It has been designated as a terrorist organization by Israel since 2012 and has been investigated by European prosecutors as a key logistical supporter of Al Qaeda.

It is a particular irony that Israeli media and policy institutions have helped expose IHH when many elements of the current Israeli government have been involved in backing terrorist organizations in neighboring Syria alongside Turkey, the United States, other Western states, as well as several Persian Gulf autocracies since the conflict began in 2011.

That the one picture Lucas was able to find where the “opposition” wasn’t overtly exposing itself as armed terrorists still depicted a known, verified foreign terrorist organization operating within Syrian territory – masquerading as humanitarians – speaks to just how deeply rooted terrorists are in Syria’s Idlib governorate.

Strategic Patience 

Were the situation reversed and the West was faced with an entire province or state occupied by Al Qaeda and its myriad of affiliates – total war would commence and would not end until the targeted region was purged entirely of militants. Civilian causalities would either go uncounted and under-reported, or spun as a necessity in confronting an otherwise intolerable bastion of armed terrorism.

In fact – similar narratives were used during the US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan despite Washington’s objectives being geopolitical rather than counter-terrorism related.

The strategic reality is that despite how well Damascus and its allies have weathered and overcome Washington’s proxy war in Syria – the US remains a potent military, political, and economic threat. Strategic patience, multiple “truce deals,” and geopolitical concessions will be required to finally wrest Idlib back from foreign-backed terrorist forces currently entrenched there.

Terrorist forces have been concentrated in Idlib as Syrian forces pushed them out of virtually every other populated region of the country. Even the liberation of the City of Aleppo took years to achieve. Idlib is an entire governorate bordering Turkey which is still arming and protecting terrorist organizations both within Turkish territory itself and in Syrian territory occupied by Turkish forces.

While Turkey has recently shown signs of shifting objectives and moving closer to Russia geopolitically – it will be a long and agonizing process to undo the tensions this 8-year conflict has created.

If there is one point of hope amid this still dangerous and deadly conflict – it’s that the Western media and inveterate war propagandists like Scott Lucas are no longer able to conceal the true nature of terrorists they have aided and abetted since 2011.

They will continue trying nonetheless – but as Lucas just managed to do – will succeed only in exposing more of the network the US and its allies used in their proxy war against Damascus – thus further undermining regime change efforts in Syria and complicating similar attempts to target and overthrow other nations in the future.

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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.

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.

As a no-deal, hard Brexit becomes ever more likely, the fearmongering of the establishment has been turned up to ’11’ as it appears they have little to no control over the process – no matter what they think – now that Johnson (and his cabinet) are in charge.

And on the heels of a surprise contraction in GDP in The UK, Statista’s Niall McCarthy notes the latest projections for just how end of the world, a hard Brexit will be… A study by Leuven University in Belgium has predicted that 1.2 million jobs will be lost across Europe in the case of a hard-Brexit.

You will find more infographics at Statista

Unsurprisingly, the study finds that the United Kingdom is expected to be the country that will suffer the most with over 500,000 jobs set to be lost. Germany would also be significantly impacted with just under 292,000 redundancies while France and Italy would lose 141,320 and 139,140 jobs respectively.

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On the surface, it might be incongruous to assert that there is a single law that has shaped what appear to be the contrasting development experiences of the Arab World (AW) and East Asia (EA). After all, as Ali Kadri indicates in this important and challenging book, the economic and social data suggests EA has industrialized, and AW has not, war in both regions has led to the expansion of development in EA, based on the sale of civilian end use commodities, whereas the AW has experienced continuous war and conflict and is integrated into the world economy via militarization and strategic control of oil.

There is, however, a single unifying theme that links not only these two regions but all parts of the globe and that is the role of US imperialism. EA in fact is part of the US cordon sanitaire intended to restrict the advance of China, and as Kadri demonstrates, the AW is dominated by the destructive forces of US and Israeli led devastation of people, machines, technology, and the means by which people can socially reproduce themselves.

The unifying link between EA and AW is that in the post WW2 period “US‐led imperialism sought arresting the expansion of China and promoting the expansion of Israel” (p. 4) and that is the context in which the different development challenges need to be gauged.

This is not always an easy read. There is an absence of empirical data and narrative around which to unpick the similarities and differences between and within EA and AW. The book is also in need of a serious editing. The five chapters that comprise the monograph are theoretical in nature and sometimes very abstract. However, the infusion of theory and rigor is a welcome antidote to neoclassical economic development tropes and neo‐liberal explanations for the perceived relative successes and failures of the two regions. Ali Kadri is at his best when he undermines the mainstream accounts of development, the contrasts in economic performance between the two regions and why war and violence needs to be more accurately understood as an essential structural feature of capitalist development. He shows this well when he documents the disastrous impact of US imperialism in the AW and collusion with Israel to destroy national regional attempts to control local means of production. He does not view violence as exogenous or its persistence as a product of local pathology. Instead, the very context for development was first laid down by European and then later by US imperialist violence.

This is a far cry from the liberal lament that if only there was a full acceptance and delivery of responsibility to protect (R2P), the world and with it “development” would be a better place and further advanced. On the contrary, Ali Kadri argues that violence is at the heart of imperialism; therefore, there is little chance that the US, EU, and Japan (what the late Samir Amin called the imperial triad) will do anything to soften or end the role that violence plays in generating its economic and military dominance. For Kadri, the rate of commercial exploitation in the AW is greater than what he calls the super exploitation of sweatshops in EA. This is because, among other things, the AW is characterized by the intensification of commercial exploitation, higher profits, “newer manifestations of slavery, as in the act of denationalising/destroying peripheral formations” (p. 60).

Militarisation and war simply increases imperial power and crucially for Kadri, reduces the negotiating power of the working class. The Marxist labor theory of value shapes the ways in which the periphery has any room for maneuver. But this is not a simple notion that the North dominates the Third World (a refreshing use of this term that has been mostly replaced in the mainstream by the Global South) by superior mechanization and labor productivity. Instead, Kadri argues throughout, with immense analytical heft, that;

Prices [are] the mediated actuality of value via the balance of forces in the international class struggle and, within the class struggle as a production sphere itself, tally with the accumulated stock of imperialist power and camouflage real value by the degree of labours’ repression (p. 61).

In other words, there is a history to the ways in which value is generated and that context is crucial to unbundle in order to understand the dynamics of contemporary imperialism and why the world is ordered in the way that it is. On this latter point, Kadri makes an important contribution in seeking to understand the role of China in the world and especially in relation to the US. He offers a refreshing account of the rise of China, the transitions politically and economically since 1977 and the gang of five—he includes Mao in the populist notion of the Gang of 4—and the extent to which Beijing offers a sufficiently robust obstacle to Washington’s hegemony. After clearly indicating why and how China is certainly not an imperial power, concerned as it is with market power and not military conquest, he also notes the “obsequious strand in Chinese politics that stems from the rents of the cross‐cutting relationship with the USA … that caps the thrust of anti‐capitalist propaganda” (p. 144).

This is a hard hitting critique of imperialism and the differential impact that it has in two regions of the world. It will be on my reading lists.

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This article was originally published on Wiley Online Library in February 2019.

Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

Ray Bush is Professor of African Studies and Development Politics at the University of Leeds, Leeds, UK.

The Cordon Sanitaire: A Single Law Governing Development in East Asia and the Arab World

Author: Ali Kadri

Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan

ISBN: 978-981-10-4821-0

Pages: XVII, 170

Click here to order.

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In this episode of “The Beloved Community”, Mark Taliano and Andrew Ashdown shed light on what is really happening in Syria. Their evidence-based, on the ground narratives, are shockingly different from the fake, monochromatic narratives fed to Western populations on the tv and in the news.

We learn that Syria is a secular society, with a secular constitution, blessed with a “full spectrum” of Christian and Muslim communities living and thriving together.

We learn that the Western terrorists, all of them “extremists” who commit unimagineable atrocities, are commanded and controlled by NATO.

We learn that whereas the elected government led by President Assad protects all communities in Syria, including Christian communities, the terrorists exterminate Christians and Muslims and seek to impose their Wahhabi diktats and their extremist interpretations of Sharia Law wherever they occupy.

We learn that Syrians overwhelmingly support their President, their pluralist government, and their pluralist society, as they overwhelmingly oppose the terrorists, their twisted ideologies, and their barbaric ways.

Finally, we are left wondering how Western governments could have deceived us for so long, and when will Western populations demand an end to the holocaust being perpetrated by governments that falsely claim to represent “the people”.

Listen to the podcast below. Transcript follows.

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TRANSCRIPT

John Shuck [00:00:46] My name is John Shuck and you are listening to The Beloved Community. The Beloved Community is on the second Friday of every month between 9 and 10 a.m., looking at spirituality, social justice, various issues regarding activism, what’s happening in the world, alternative viewpoints to official narratives, and we have one this morning. My guest is from Hamilton, Ontario. His name is Mark Taliano and he’s written a book called “Voices from Syria.” He’s a former high school teacher, author, and activist, and independent investigative reporter, and a research associate with the Center for Research on Globalization. Also known as Global Research. In 2016, he traveled to Syria with the Third International Tour of Peace where he spoke with and listened to many Syrian citizens. In his book “Voices from Syria,” Mark combines years of research with on the ground observations to present an informed and well-documented analysis that refutes mainstream media narratives about the dirty war on Syria. His Web site is Mark Taliano Dot Net. www.marktaliano.net. And he’s with me from Hamilton Ontario. Also we are working to get a hold of…we’re trying to get a hold of from the UK, Reverend Andrew Ashdown who also has experience with Syria and what is happening there. But first we’ll get Mark on the phone. Mark are you with me?

Mark Taliano [00:02:18] Yes I am. Hi John how are you?

John Shuck [00:02:20] Very good. Welcome. Glad to have you here. So we’ll talk for a little while. The engineer is going to work on seeing if we can’t get Andrew on and if not we’ll have to see if Andrew can call us. But I wanted to talk just the basics here. You went to Syria three years ago. You’ve been interested in Syria for some time before that. Can you provide some background to your connection and interest in Syria?

Mark Taliano [00:02:42] Yeah, well I was there a few years ago but I was also there in 2018 and actually I had the misfortune of being there, well no it is always fortunate to be there. But when I was there in 2018 that’s when the NATO ships bombed Syria with their cruise missiles, and some of them landed really close by, like maybe five kilometers from where I was. That was quite terrifying. And it was based upon a false flag. In other words in Douma, there was no chemical attack like that. The Syrian government did not attack its citizens with chemical weapons.

John Shuck [00:03:20] That was back in April right? April of 2018?

Mark Taliano [00:03:23] If people, actually if anyone is listening and they are in front of a computer they can go to my web site and reference articles. Because all the information is there. So I do have an article there and I interviewed someone and yeah. So I was woken up early in the morning very very very very scary although we knew something was going to happen, and it was extraordinarily loud, and you know really bad. And fortunately not too many people were slaughtered, that time. Because with the assistance of allies, et cetera Syria is getting better at defending itself. But it underscored for me, the terror that people in what I call “prey countries” have to live with on a day to day basis and these are kids, children have to live with this and endure this… [lost connection]

Mark Taliano [00:04:23] Woops I think we’ve lost him.

Andrew Ashdown [00:04:25]Hello. I’m here.

John Shuck [00:04:26] Well we’ve got. Well this is… We lost Mark Taliano.  This must be Reverend Andrew Ashdown.

Andrew Ashdown [00:04:33]Speaking.  Good afternoon.

John Shuck [00:04:34]  Good afternoon. All right. My name is John Shuck and this is The Beloved Community and we’re live on KBOO in Portland. In getting you we just lost Mark but we’re working on getting him back on. So we’ll spend a couple of minutes with you. And I was just introduced to you just a few minutes ago from Mark. Can you tell me your expertise regarding Syria?

Andrew Ashdown [00:04:57]I’ve been involved in Syria for many years actually. I was a regular visitor before the conflict and since 2014 I visited the country I think 10 times as a guest of the local faith communities and I’ve just finished doctoral research. I’ve just completed a Ph. D. in Christian-Muslim relations in Syria. I’ve been studying the faith context in Syria throughout the war and travelling extensively across Syria as a guest of the local faith communities during the conflict in some of the areas most affected by the war.

John Shuck [00:05:39] And what did you observe there?

Andrew Ashdown [00:05:43]What’s really interesting is that Syria has been one of the most diverse religiously, one of the most diverse and plural societies, countries in the whole of the Middle East. So you have a full spectrum of Christianity. Most of the Christian denominations are present and have been present for centuries within Syria. And also the Muslim landscape is quite broad as well. And for centuries these communities have for the most part coexisted extremely well. And during the conflicts in government controlled areas where being a constitutional state actually allows freedom of religion and freedom of expression of worship. So for most of the conflict, Christian and Muslim leaders have worked together very much to support one another and affirm efforts of reconciliation and supporting the local communities.

John Shuck [00:06:40] This isn’t something we hear from the mainstream news in the United States at least, perhaps also in the UK and Canada. Mark Taliano I believe is back are you there Mark?

Mark Taliano [00:06:49] I’m back. Hi Andrew.

John Shuck [00:06:50] All right. Good. Can you hear each other?

Andrew Ashdown [00:06:52]Hey Mark.

John Shuck [00:06:52] Good. All right well happy family all right. Because here in the United States the news that we hear is that primarily that the president, Bashar al-Assad, is a dictator, gasses his own people, kills his own people and he needs to be stopped and what would you say to that one? Either of you.

Mark Taliano [00:07:15] Who are you addressing?

John Shuck [00:07:16] Well let’s go with you Mark and then we will go back to Andrew.

Mark Taliano [00:07:20] This is how I would respond to that. First of all people have a short memory. They have forgotten that Libya, that we totally destroyed Libya. Any pretext was humanitarian issues which were fabricated. And we are committing and committed a holocaust in Iraq. The pretext was weapons of mass destruction. Well sorry, there weren’t any. In other words the empire to which we are part… [Disconnected]

John Shuck [00:07:55] OK. That’s interesting. Is anybody there? A weird signal here and we lost looks and sounds like all of our contacts. Yeah, well that’s exciting. Engineer Ray is getting busy to get these phones back on again and we’ll see if this can happen. I’m speaking with Mark Taliano and Reverend Andrew Ashdown. Mark Taliano is from Hamilton, Ontario, a suburb of Toronto. Reverend Andrew Ashdown is from the U.K. We’re talking about Syria. We’re talking about a very counter narrative to the narrative that is pummelled upon Western people about Syria. And these are people who’ve been to Syria, many times, and they have a point of view that is quite counter to the prevailing official narrative that somehow the United States is doing good over there. We’re going to find out that according to these folks who’ve been there, Mark Taliano and Andrew Ashdown, that the United States is actually promoting the terrorists themselves not necessarily fighting the terrorists. It’s a bit of a complicated piece to unravel but this is part of empire’s struggle here to perhaps control the Middle East. Mark brought up just a second ago about how the Iraq war were supposed weapons of mass destruction which of course were empty. Destroyed a whole country there of Iraq. I had a chance to be in Iraq last year. Last October I walked in a 50 mile walk from Najaf to Karbala, Iraq as part of Arba’een, which is the largest, the largest, peaceful human gathering on Earth. Occurs every year and it has since since the fall of Saddam Hussein. 15 million to 20 million, perhaps even more, people paying homage and tribute. mourning the death and sacrifice of Imam Hussein. Not a story that is heard in the Western media. Very little do we hear about that. It’s a peaceful march. It is a peaceful, not a march. It isn’t a march. It’s actually a religious celebration of mourning for the death of the grandson of Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him). Imam Hussein was martyred in Karbala, Iraq about fourteen hundred years ago. And so that kind of story, the stories that we don’t really get in the West, because there is a narrative of war-making in the West against Muslims and against countries that we we seek to control and the situation in Syria is a complex one and Mark Taliano.  His website is www.marktaliano.net. He has written the book, the book called “Voices from Syria.” And they’re both back. Well that’s what happens Mark when you criticize empire you get cut off the air I guess. I don’t know what happened there. [laughter] So tell us again…

Andrew Ashdown [00:11:27]I got caught up I don’t know what happened.

John Shuck [00:11:30] So you’re there Andrew how are you?  OK. Is Mark there?

Mark Taliano [00:11:33] Yes I’m here.

John Shuck [00:11:34] OK Mark can you go ahead and finish what you were talking about then. You remember where you were? Syria is another, what? Domino? In this empire, imperial strike against the Middle East?

Mark Taliano [00:11:49] And that’s how it is except I come at it from a human point of view and what it means to me is the mass murder of women, men, and children because that’s what’s happening. And people have a very short memory. NATO totally destroyed Libya based on lies. They looted it. They plundered it. They stole its money. And now there’s open market sex trading. OK. And prior to the war it was the most affluent country in Africa. And Iraq, the whole war including the economic warfare prior to the Iraq War Two, I guess you’d call it.  Madeleine Albright said we think it was worth it.  Well, sanctions…and this is in my book, economic warfare, they intentionally, they intentionally murdered. I think it’s murder because the intent is there. They knew what would happen when they shut down the water system and just under six hundred thousand kids were slaughtered, murdered. As well as maybe over a million adults. So this is how I look at these wars. Are you there?

John Shuck [00:12:58] I’m here. I’m with you.

Mark Taliano [00:13:00] Yes. So this is how I view these wars and having been there twice, been to Syria twice, I’ve met the people. And they’re just like you and me. People like to put labels on them, oh he’s you know, they’re a Shiite, or they’re Sunnis all of these…  That’s nonsense.

John Shuck [00:13:20]  Syria’s a secular society or has been in the past.

Mark Taliano [00:13:24] It’s a secular society, but if I meet you on a street I’m not going to ask first thing are you a Catholic or Protestant? That’s rude. And the Syrians are the same. They do not identify by religious labels. They are deeply religious, many of them as are many people in North America. But they reject the labels. Yet the people who do not reject the labels are the people who have these Orientalist views of the situation and imperialist views. They want to turn people into cardboard figures and cartoon figures to dehumanize them so that it’s easier to slaughter them and to fabricate consent.

John Shuck [00:14:12] Tell me. Yeah go ahead. Yeah yeah.

Mark Taliano [00:14:15] I think Reverend Ashdown could probably add to that as well.

John Shuck [00:14:20]  What I’d like to get to is this question… I would like to know just some basic things. For example Assad. Bashar al-Assad. How is he understood by the people who live in Syria? Is he a dictator? Does he gas his own people and all of that kind of stuff that we hear here?

Mark Taliano [00:14:35] Well in 2013, NATO conducted a survey of Syrians. This is during the war, a NATO survey. It’s the same organization that is committing supreme international war crimes against Syria. And about 70 percent of Syrians indicated their support for President Assad. Now there is no Canadian politician that I know of who would generate that type of support. And there are people in Lebanon lined up I believe for days. Eva Bartlett was there. And they were lined up at the wherever they vote for because they’re in Lebanon–they had to leave the country. They were lining up to vote for President Assad. And he was overwhelmingly elected in democratic elections. Now some people they say, “Come on, they couldn’t be democratic.” Excuse me? Yes, they were. Multi-party, multiple candidates. And my response to that would be is, excuse me. North America do you really think we have democracy? If we had democracy, people would be aware of what our governments are doing overseas. And if we had democracy, if we turn on the TV, we would be more than just one war propaganda view of what they are presenting as the truth which is war propaganda. It’s false.

John Shuck [00:16:01] Mark Taliano is speaking with me. He’s the author of “Voices from Syria.” His web site is Mark Taliano dot net. I also have on the phone Reverend Andrew Ashdown who also has been to Syria a number of times, a Christian minister. Andrew, what is your perspective from what people think of the Syrian government now and who is really the enemy from the Syrian people’s point of view?

Andrew Ashdown [00:16:25]Absolutely. I think we’ll have to go back a bit, actually because what you have what people don’t realize, and again, my expertise on this if you’d like, my study on this is on the plurality of Syrian society. I was a regular visitor to Syria before the conflict and since and during the conflict. Syria is a plural society based on a secular constitution. All countries have their difficulties and no government is perfect. That’s a fact. Prior to the conflict, Syria was emerging. The reforms were happening. I visited several times in the years immediately prior to the conflict. The country was developing quite rapidly. People were excited. In 2010 I visited the country and I had people sort of saying come back in five years this is going to be the beacon of the Middle East. The tourism infrastructure was being rebuilt.  The social infrastructure was…main mainstream infrastructure was being restored. Lots of things were happening and there’s great excitement in the country and lo and behold suddenly six months later it all falls apart.

John Shuck [00:17:39] Now was this 2011?

Andrew Ashdown [00:17:41]What you have in the country is actually multiple communities. Mark’s quite right, actually. When you ask questions about whether you are Shia or Sunni or Christian, many Syrians get quite offended. Because they say that you’re sectarianizing the country, and we are not a sectarian country. We are Syrians together. And if you go into restaurants now, even now, yes and throughout the war in government controlled areas at least where Sunnis and Shia and Druze and Christians of all denominations live together and churches and mosques are side by side and people go about their daily business, you go into restaurants or the mosque and you will see Sunni and Shia and Christian eating, sitting, socializing side by side, you know, whatever they are doesn’t matter. And that’s been true of Syrian society throughout. And most Syrians wish to recover or sustain that sense of plurality. The so-called rebels belong to extremist Islamist ideology. Are those blokes going to establish democracy? You know I’ve seen the villages, the Christian villages, which have been ethnically cleansed by what we call the so-called moderate rebels. Churches destroyed, other mosques destroyed. Anybody who doesn’t follow the extremist ideology of the so-called rebels the West supports, villages wiped out by that ideology. And there are no Christians left in the areas that are occupied by those groups–or a tiny number. So you know you’ve got the contrast between those areas and the government controlled areas. When the vast majority of you know the internally displaced the refugees that are more internally displaced in Syria than refugees outside. And the vast majority have gone from where to where? They’ve gone from the so-called rebel controlled areas to the government controlled areas where they’re being looked after where they’re not being killed by the government. They’re being looked after by the faith communities, by the government, by various agencies. So the situation on the ground is very very different to how it is perceived. And yes President Assad is much much more popular than people realize. And the other thing is that there’s a huge amount of hypocrisy in the Western approach to to Syria. You know we go in as the West and we just we’ve successfully destroyed Iraq. We successfully helped destroy Libya and Afghanistan. We kill millions. We go out and are supposedly doing the right thing. We will bomb cities to show… we bombed Mosul and Raqqa killing tens of thousands of civilians in the process to destroy ISIS. But it’s okay for us to do that.  And having spent weeks and weeks, many many weeks over over a period of five years travelling throughout Syria and meeting hundreds and hundreds of people on the ground in these areas which have been in the midst of the conflict, they want to get rid of those extremist elements and restore the peace. And if you go to Syria now wherever those so-called rebel groups have been, the areas that have been liberated from them, life is returning to a kind of normality except that you have the huge effect of sanctions which is causing yet more suffering to millions and millions of people. So Western policies are actually prolonging the war and causing suffering to millions, millions of people. So the situation is very very different to how it is projected or presented by western media and Western governments.

John Shuck [00:21:37] Reverend Andrew Ashdown speaking there about Syria. You’ve been to Syria several times.  What about these, they call them the moderate rebels but they are really what al Nusra, Wahhabists, terrorists, mercenaries. Can you tell us about these guys?

Andrew Ashdown [00:21:56]Most Syrians that you talk to in Syria and if you talk to the ones who’ve actually fled from the areas under those areas under the control I mean the sheer brutality of what they… I mean I’ve heard some of the stories firsthand. And we’re talking brutality of an extraordinary degree, an unimaginable degree. And most Syrians who’ve experienced that say there is no such thing as a moderate rebel. They are all intertwined. Now it’s well-documented now that most people feel that even if at the beginning there might have existed what one might call so-called moderates, any that’s existed all of them work together. I’ve spoken with people in towns and villages which have been under attack from these groups, and they say absolutely consistently that all the groups were fighting together. From those that we could term moderate to the most extremist. I mean take the names of these groups. They are extreme Islamist groups. The other factor is that even though the groups that we call moderate have as their intention to create an Islamic state, which most Syrians, including I would dare suggest most secular Sunni Syrians, do not want to see. Many Sunni Syrians as I’ve spoken to in Syria you know, don’t want to see that happen. Oppose. The vast majority of people inside Syria oppose those extremist groups and don’t want to see this sectarian government that they would bring. Now why on earth is the West supporting these groups that have an extremist ideology?

John Shuck [00:23:41] Well let’s let’s ask that question. Why on earth is that happening?

Mark Taliano [00:23:45] Can I answer this?

John Shuck [00:23:45] You bet, Mark. Mark Taliano.

Mark Taliano [00:23:50] OK yes I agree with Reverend Ashdown totally. They all work together. And why is that? Because NATO has command and control out of Turkey. OK. NATO has control. I mean these terrorists could not work independently against and perform and occupy so much on their own. OK? And it is quite clear that NATO has command and control ….People use the term rebel, OK that’s that’s being nice. OK, Andrew has specified that they are extremist and he’s correct. And who are extremists? Well they are al-Qaida groups. They’re al-Qaida affiliated groups. They are ISIS. The Empire claims it’s a war against ISIS. I’m sorry it isn’t. ISIS are also supported by empire. OK? They are expendable, but they serve a purpose. And let me give you an example. There were that defense intelligence agency document in 2012. OK? And in that document it said that the Empire supports the opposition. Well the opposition they’re referring to is al-Qaida and its affiliates and ISIS. And it says on this report, al-Qaida drives the opposition in Syria. Now just a little caveat. There is opposition Syria. But they’re not walking around with assault rifles. OK? There are opposition politicians in Syria, but the North American military refers to these armed jihadis, these terrorists, as opposition. But anyway the report goes on that al-Qaida drives the opposition in Syria. The West identifies with the opposition. The establishment of a quote unquote Salafist principality in eastern Syria is exactly what the external powers supporting the opposition want. The external powers are identified as the West, the Gulf countries, and Turkey, in order to weaken the Assad government. OK? So there’s plenty of primary source documentation which supports everything that we’re saying. That this war has nothing to do about humanitarian issues except.

Andrew Ashdown [00:26:10]It is geo-political.

Mark Taliano [00:26:12] And also the areas now, the oil rich areas now occupied by the West, were exactly predicted by these documents. They wanted this area in eastern Syria. So in some ways, in all ways, the document predicted what has happened so far. Because right now empire is illegally occupying areas. Some areas they’re training new terrorists, and they are occupying oil fields. And the oil fields are to the east of the Euphrates. And let’s not forget also, Wesley Clark, “We’re going to take out seven countries in five years.” I mean all of this was publicly acknowledged. Canada’s own defense minister, said you know, Assad has to go. Well they’re announcing publicly supreme international war crimes.

John Shuck [00:27:13] My guests are Mark Taliano and Reverend Andrew Ashdown. Mark Taliano has written a book called “Voices from Syria.” In 2017 he wrote that. His website is Mark Taliano Dot net.   You can go there and kind of follow along if you happen to be by a computer and listening to the radio. Mark Taliano dot net is his website.    One thing in your book that came out that I thought was eye opening to me is that there’s a sense right now in which it is almost or perhaps even is a world war. We we’ve got various countries involved already, Russia. You mentioned Turkey. NATO. Could this be a prelude to something much larger than where then we’re looking at?

Mark Taliano [00:27:59] Well it’s an economic war for sure and there are imperial powers in there and NATO is there. Turkey is on the ground. The Americans are on the ground right now. Those forces are committing supreme international war crimes because the Syrian government did not invite them in and the U.N. Security Council did not allow them to go in.  Russia was invited in. So Russia and Iran, any forces that invited them by the Syrian government are legitimate. The Syrian government can legitimately and should defend its sovereignty and its territorial integrity as it is doing. And Russia and Iran and their allies are helping.

John Shuck [00:28:45] You know.

Mark Taliano [00:28:46] And the West, we are supporting the terrorists.

John Shuck [00:28:48] One part of this is the language that’s used here in the West. You know like it’s a “regime” of Assad or something that it is not actually correct. But really he was democratically elected.

Mark Taliano [00:29:00] That’s correct.  I take issue especially with the nomenclature that the West uses, that mainstream, so-called journalists. They use really war propaganda terms. It isn’t a “regime.” And as soon as a prey country is targeted it becomes a regime and immediately you have a brutal dictator. Immediately he is committing atrocities. But none of it is based on evidence on solid evidence.

John Shuck [00:29:32]  You want to step in, Andrew Ashdown?

Andrew Ashdown [00:29:36]As Mark has said actually there are quite a number of parties and I think the 20 something parties in the Syrian government. I’ve met most of the internal opposition leaders who are non-violent opposition leaders. It’s a different kind of system. It’s not the kind of system we have in the West. But there are more…the actual parliament is representational of the different groupings. So you know all the different communities within Syria whether Sunni, Shia, Druze, Christian etc all are in there. The Syrian parliament has more Christians than any other governments in the Middle East. It has more women than any other governments in the Middle East. And it is an elected government. Again a different process than we have.  But who are we to dictate? You know it’s up to the Syrians. I mean this is also really important. It’s not up to the Americans or the Canadians or the British to decide who’s going to govern the government of the country. It’s only the Syrians who can choose their leader.

John Shuck [00:30:36] It’s got to be just sort of…

Andrew Ashdown [00:30:38]We make all sorts of judgments. Despite all catastrophic history of intervention.

John Shuck [00:30:49] Yeah yeah. You know it’s kind of interesting. I am just thinking in our own country,  is there opposition to President Trump? Well sure. But would that mean we’d want China to come in and bomb us to get rid of him?

Andrew Ashdown [00:31:00]Exactly. Exactly.

John Shuck [00:31:05] We’re going to take a break. I’m going to come right back.

Andrew Ashdown [00:31:09]And it is a secular based Constitution. And what is being intended to be replaced by certainly nothing that’s going to be democratic. Quite the opposite. Another interesting dimension is most women in Syria. You know you go to Syria and women, particularly, and this is very important. The women can dress as they wish. They can work as they wish. They can do you know…there are cultural issues, you know, everybody in every culture has cultural norms and expectations, but under law they can do as they wish. And so if you walk around Damascus or Aleppo you can’t tell what community a person belongs to by their dress because it’s a secular society based on those norms. Most women I know in Syria are terrified of any of these militant groups taking over because they fear that actually all opportunities for women will be immediately crushed. Interesting in these news reports from inside so-called rebel controlled areas. What do you see of the women? They’re completely shrouded. That’s not Syria. That’s not normal in Syria.

[00:32:29] Reverend Andrew Ashdown and Martin Taliano are my guests. We’re talking about Syria. We are talking about Mark’s book, in particular, “Voices from Syria.” We’re going to take a two minute break and then we are going to come back and continue this discussion with Reverend Andrew Ashdown and Mark Taliano. You folks stay on the line. We’re going to continue. I want to talk about where we are,  the level right now, what is changed in the last couple of years? Is it getting better or worse? We are going to come back with that question in just a minute. This is The Beloved Community.  [Music break]

[00:34:35] That’s “The Ostrich” from Steppenwolf from 1968. This is The Beloved Community on KBOO, every second Friday from 9 to 10. My name is John Shuck. My guests are two. One is from Canada. His name is Mark Taliano. His website is Mark Taliano Dot Net. His book is called Voices From Syria. Recounting his trip to Syria. And talking with the people in Syria, as well as an analysis of the geopolitical situation. Also from the UK I have Reverend Andrew Ashdown a Christian minister who has actually gone to Syria a number of times and has discussed with a variety of people there and knows the situation on the ground. Let’s talk about the situation on the ground now. Is it better than it was, Mark, when you wrote your book three years ago?

Mark Taliano [00:35:26] It is better. I’m hearing that it is better. And many, many more areas have been liberated. And every time an area is liberated, that is great news. Because when terrorists occupy areas they target everyone and anyone with their mortars. For example, they murdered about 14,000 people in Aleppo when they occupied part of that area. And they murdered around eleven thousand people and in Damascus when they were in that area. So in any time an area is liberated people breathe a sigh of relief because nobody wants to be mortared and the mortar campaigns slaughter as I said many times children and women and men and they target schools and they target hospitals and they target everything and anything that makes a society function. OK? So when we’re hearing the propaganda about, oh the evil regime is targeting hospitals in Idlib. OK. Let’s remember, Idlib, first of all has only 12 hospitals. It doesn’t have 50,000 hospitals. Second of all, the terrorists use hospitals as torture centers, command posts, weapons depots, sniper perches, et cetera. And once they do that, the hospital’s no longer a hospital status.  But first and foremost the government of Syria which is beloved by most Syrians has no intention or no desire to kill its own people. That’s what our terrorists are doing. They are killing Syria’s people. And Syria is doing what it is duty bound to do which is to protect its people. And in order to do that. There will be as in any war there will be…people will be killed.

John Shuck [00:37:40] So would you say that this isn’y so much a global war on terrorism that the UK, the US, Canada, NATO countries are fighting, but really that we are actually the terrorists in this case?

Mark Taliano [00:37:53] We are definitely the terrorists. OK? The global war on terror is a fraud. It’s a total fraud. It’s a program to create Islamophobia and to go after terrorists that we create and support. The terrorists, they are proxies on the ground in Syria. And our governments despite the words that come from politicians’ mouths, our governments are deep state agencies that actually create Islamophobia. That’s their intent. And Justice Bruce proved that when a bunch of security personnel, governing agencies, Canadian government agencies, set up two hapless people and framed them for kettle pot bombing on Canada Day years ago. The judge said, “That’s not your job to do this. You’re not supposed to be creating terrorism.” But that’s exactly what these government employees were doing. They were creating Islamophobia on purpose. Okay so there’s a big propaganda war and is a big military psychological operation.  The war on terror is a fraud. We are supporting the terrorists.

John Shuck [00:39:12] Well let’s continue this conversation because I want to go in the sense of terms of propaganda, I guess I would say. the role of the media. I’m talking about the Western media in Syria. What has happened? Are there no media from the West in Syria?

Mark Taliano [00:39:35] Well the media has been corrupted. Empire corrupts basically everything it touches. The media has been corrupted. For example, the White Helmets. The White Helmets are sources of information for various so-called NGOs which are not nongovernmental. They’re foundation funded and government funded. They are a source of information for Amnesty International and for our governments and the White Helmets are auxiliaries to al-Qaida. They work with al-Qaida. When Vanessa Beeley goes to Syria she goes to an area that was occupied by al-Qaeda or ISIS or other affiliated terrorists and a White Helmet building is always there. OK. And their equipment and their money comes from the West and they hoard medicine. But it is a very evil side. Some of them are terrorists actually. You know they terrorists by night, White Helmets by day sort of thing. But there is also plenty of evidence indicating organ trafficking. OK. There’s a very nefarious side to these White Helmets. They’re not independent at all. They’re paid for by Canada, by the U.S. They are agencies of the empire which daily commits supreme international war crimes in Syria. That’s the ugly side to this. War through deception. And our media plays a huge role in this apparatus of deception and White Helmets play a starring role in that.

John Shuck [00:41:21] Well the movie about them won an Oscar.

Mark Taliano [00:41:24] Yeah.

John Shuck [00:41:26] My guests are Mark Taliano and Reverend Andrew Ashdown talking about Syria. Reverend Andrew Ashdown, talk a little bit more about the Christian witness and presence in Syria now.

Andrew Ashdown [00:41:41]The Christian presence is quite remarkable as I said. there are five Christian families actually.  All of them are present in Syria and have been for centuries. However it’s been severely affected by the war. It’s estimated that about half the number of Christians have left the country. But that means that half still are there.   Those that have left from either from areas that have been occupied by the militant groups or I’ve seen the Christian villages that have been literally destroyed by the terrorist groups or shelled.  I was in Aleppo during the final battles for East Aleppo and many churches were shelled and bombed by them, by the terrorists then. And you also have many Christians who have connections with the West or whatever who’ve left because of the very difficult war situation and also because the economic situation as well. Yet the Christians that remain there are inspiring in terms of their service. The projects that are being done by all the Christian denominations to serve the local communities, to serve internally displaced, for the elderly, for the children, for education to schools, for those traumatized by the war, practically helping to rebuild houses and all that sort of thing. Numerous projects. Enabling new people to start up new businesses. Numerous projects organized by all the church denominations on the ground. Amazing work being done. We don’t hear about any of this. And all the churches actually are utterly opposed to the Western stance against Syria. As they say, you know, if if the terrorists that the West support took over Syria you would lose Christianity completely from Syria. It would be gone.  So there is much that we just don’t hear about. I want to just affirm, that actually since those terrorist controlled areas when they are liberated, the pace of change is remarkable. I was in East Aleppo just months after–I was actually there when East Aleppo was finally liberated, and went into East Aleppo liberated areas immediately after. Very quickly the streets were being cleared within a few months. Shops were being reopened. People were returning to their houses. I think it’s about 800,000 people returned to the Aleppo area since they have been liberated from the terrorists. And the degree of life returns.

John Shuck [00:44:24] And when you are saying liberated, just to make sure people are clear, that is liberated by the Syrian army. The Government.

Andrew Ashdown [00:44:31]Exactly. Liberated by the Syrian army from the terrorists. And remember these are extremist brutal terrorist groups that we are supporting. And the Syrian army, I’ve seen them in action. Remember the Syrian army are the Syrian people. Most of these terrorist groups are you know, they are Afghans, Chechnyans. You know people from Pakistan. From all over the world. Tens of thousands of foreign fighters. There are Syrians amongst them. But there are tens of thousands of foreign fighters. The Syrian army is the Syrian brothers, sons, daughters, uncles, husbands. And what’s not often mentioned is it’s estimated 100,000 Syrian soldiers have been killed during the war. Now many of those have been brutally murdered.

John Shuck [00:45:21]  Let me get that figure correct. 100,000? 100,000 Syrian soldiers?

Andrew Ashdown [00:45:25]Exactly. That’s never mentioned in the figures that are bandied about. That’s never mentioned. And these are Syrians. And they’re Sunnis. The majority of  Syrian soldiers are Sunnis. That’s never mentioned. They’re very loyal to the country and they’re loved by the people because they are the Syrian people. And the loss to Syria trying to protect its people, trying to protect the nation from pretty well foreign invasion is absolutely vast. And of course there are many Christians amongst the Syrian army as well. And they’re fighting for freedom, they’re fighting for to secure the secular constitution of the state they’re fighting for their country.

John Shuck [00:46:08] Let’s talk a little bit about the feeling. I watched a video on Mark Taliano’s website Mark Taliano Dot Net. Vanessa Beeley recorded a bombing, there, a big missile, not some small rocket against a church.  The people were being interviewed there expressed really an incredible resiliency. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Andrew Ashdown [00:46:38]I think this is this is absolutely true. I’ve been in similar places, I’ve been with Vanessa and some of the folks. I was with Vanessa and in Aleppo and East Aleppo was finally liberated and went in the next day with her to some of those areas. The resilience is absolutely phenomenal and the determination of people to stay. The determination of many to actually try and even forgive which is a really hard one. But to rebuild to carry on in a situation that feels so desperate. And while the situation is improving the security situation is improving wherever the terrorists moved out and areas are liberated. The security situation improves.  What’s often not mentioned for example in Aleppo. Dozens of schools have reopened in East Aleppo. Clinics are reopening in East leppo. All this thing is happening, a reopening of things and the old city is being restored at a rapid pace. None of this was mentioned though. But the economic situation is dire and people are dying because of the sanctions which is quite deliberate because it’s all done to destabilise, further destabilise the Syrian state. So there’s no sense in which we are trying to sort the war out. We’re actually trying to prolong it. Why? Because we haven’t succeeded in our goal which is regime change for all our own interests and agendas which have nothing to do with human rights but everything to do with geopolitics as we were talking about earlier.

John Shuck [00:48:17] Andrew Ashdown, Reverend Andrew Ashdown from the UK and Mark Taliano from Canada. Both of you from the West. You’ve both been to Syria. How were you personally received?

Mark Taliano [00:48:27] Either one?

John Shuck [00:48:29] Both of you. Yeah sure go ahead Mark.

Mark Taliano [00:48:32] It really was heartbreaking.  Both times I was in Syria I just I was treated so well. And I tried to put myself in the Syrians’ shoes because they know that our countries, that the West are responsible for this war. And I thought to myself, “Well. If the roles were reversed, and there were people from a country that were supporting terrorists I would have a really hard time being gracious about it.” What is remarkable about Syrians is they really are wonderful people. I mean they accept us with open arms. They have an understanding–a far more sophisticated understanding of what’s going on. And I think that they understand that the West is blanketed with war propaganda. I think they understand that Western people if they were aware of what their governments were doing that they would not support this. And I think they’re right. I think if Western people, if my neighbors knew what our governments were supporting, that we are supporting al-Qaida and and ISIS and all these terrorists. I think for sure that they would oppose that. So if we’re getting back to the issue of democracy how democratic are we? My argument is not at all.

John Shuck [00:50:10] Yeah.  Mark Taliano. Andrew what would you say to that?  How have you been received? You’ve been there a number of times, too.

Andrew Ashdown [00:50:16]Similarly, I mean it is truly humbling to be able to go to a country in that situation and to receive such humbling hospitality, welcome generosity, knowing the people, knowing that our governments are part of the problem, and helping those who are helping to destroy the country. It just overwhelming welcome and facilitating things to happen, and welcoming to homes and even when life is so hard being utterly generous, and generous of spirit as well. So it is very very humbling and I often wonder and would we be the same? Are we the same to hosting other people from different situations? And the answer is No. So we we have a lot to learn.  Also I think as a Christian, as a priest going to Syria. I’m one of only very, very few clergy who’ve actually gone to engage with the faith communities in Syria. And that’s really sad because actually as people of faith and particularly as Christians are going to engage with the Christian communities in Syria and listen to them and stand alongside them and just learn and listen. That’s not been happening at all. And so there’s been appreciation for that and sadness that actually the church in the West has failed and neglected the Christian and the other faith communities who are all suffering.

John Shuck [00:51:52] You know Andrew, I didn’t ask you,  Are you a priest with the Anglican Church?

Andrew Ashdown [00:51:58]Yes yes, I am.

John Shuck [00:52:01] So tell me, one more geopolitical question here. We have a few minutes left I wonder what is Israel’s role in this?

Andrew Ashdown [00:52:10]Yes. I think that there is a lot of evidence now. Israel admits to have been involved with…I mean it’s now accepted and documented that Israel has been supporting the terrorist groups in the south of Syria, militarily as well as in humanitarian service of the local terrorist groups. Of course there’s huge geopolitical reasons and a long history between Israel and Syria. So I’m just actually aware that I have to leave very shortly or so.

John Shuck [00:52:42] So okay. Well why don’t you give me a sentence or two of what you’d like people to know who are listening to this radio program in the United States.

Andrew Ashdown [00:52:52] What I’d say to people is, look what you hear is so twisted actually.  I was going to say so narrow but it’s not just narrow it’s actually twisted. There is a whole, you know, we hear a narrative and it’s a very very partial, it’s a very biased narrative and there’s a huge amount that we don’t actually, aren’t being told. In fact the story of a Syrian people inside Syria–two thirds, three quarters of the population of Syria who are in government controlled areas, their views, their story, their experience has been completely whitewashed by the Western governments and by the Western media. They’ve been disappeared as irrelevant. So our understanding is completely skewed and I would say completely wrong. And our sources in Syria are nearly all from extremely dodgy sources exclusively from terrorist controlled areas with highly politicized agenda. So don’t believe everything you hear from from the media. But remember that there are many other different narratives that need to be heard. And the situation in Syria is much more complex and very different to that which we’re used to hearing.

John Shuck [00:54:25] Reverend Andrew Ashdown I know you have to go.

Andrew Ashdown [00:54:26]Thank you.

John Shuck [00:54:30] Thank you. We’re going to close up here in a minute Mark. We got about a minute left. So this is The Beloved Community. Mark, can you tell me about some of the sources, in addition to yourself, researchers and journalists who are reporting accurately regarding Syria?

Mark Taliano [00:54:48] Who are reporting accurately?

John Shuck [00:54:49] Yes.

Mark Taliano [00:54:50] Vanessa Bailey is reporting accurately. Professor Tim Anderson is reporting accurately. Eva Bartlett is reporting accurately. Reverend Andrew Ashdown we just had is reporting accurately. I am reporting accurately. A number of us and the list is growing.  OK because every time an occupied area is liberated more truth comes out. You’ve seen some of the video that Vanessa has put up, that I’ve put in my articles. More of he truth is emerging. Oh there’s Mike Rafferty and his co-editor, Alison. And there’s many many people here that I could mention. And we need to pay attention to those voices. Because those are the voices of the truth. Those are the voices of people who have been to Syria. Who have studied it intensively. And we, our narratives are based upon real evidence.

John Shuck [00:55:58] All right.

Mark Taliano [00:55:59] And much of the evidence is Western sort of evidence.

John Shuck [00:56:02] All right. Mark we were out of time. Mark Taliano has been my guest as well as Reverend Andrew Ashdown. Mark is the author of “Voices from Syria.” His web site is Mark Taliano dot net. Mark Taliano dot net. Mark, thank you so much for your work and for spending time with me today.

Mark Taliano [00:56:23] Thank you very much.

John Shuck [00:56:25] You’ve been listening to The Beloved Community every second Friday from 9 to 10 a.m. on KBOO. And you can also go to KBOO dot fm for a podcast of this broadcast. I’m John Shuck. Be well. [Music Out]

*

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

Featured image is from Mark Taliano

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

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

Voices from Syria 

ISBN: 978-0-9879389-1-6

Author: Mark Taliano

Year: 2017

Pages: 128 (Expanded edition: 1 new chapter)

List Price: $17.95

Special Price: $9.95 

“We oppose the extraterritorial application of unilateral measures.“

That is not Cuba, Nicaragua, Iran, Russia, or China talking about the most recent unilateral coercive measures imposed by the United States against Venezuela, i.e. economic sanctions that have become an economic blockade, but the European Union. Even allies who have embarrassed themselves by recognizing the phony “interim president” Juan Guaido are saying the US has gone too far.

All of the countries listed above and many more have stated their opposition to the escalation of the US economic war against Venezuela. Venezuela, along with Iran, has become a prime target of US regime change, and both are uniting the world in opposition to US bullying behavior, which is hastening the demise of US domination. Popular social movements are growing against US unilateralism and violations of international law.

Activists in Indonesia on the World Day of Protest against the US blockade of Venezuela. Telesur.

Countries of the World are Uniting Against the United States

Six months ago, the US sought to install a puppet government led by Juan Guaido. Guaido, trained by the US, was an unknown personality to most Venezuelans. He is a minor politician who barely won election to the defunct National Assembly. Today, the failure of the US coup attempt is evident. Repeated efforts by Guaido, his allies and the United States to rally support for Guaido from the people and Venezuelan military have failed.

A large rebuke on the international stage occurred in July when delegations from 120 countries of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) united to oppose US policy against Venezuela, saying in a statement that only Venezuela can decide its fate, no other state can intervene in accordance with the United Nations Charter. The UN General Secretary pointed out the importance of the Non-Aligned Movement when she spoke at the beginning of the conference, stating that “two-thirds of the United Nations members and 55% of the world’s population” are represented by it, making it the second-largest multinational body in the world after the UN.

Javad Zarif, the Foreign Minister of Iran, put the US intervention against Venezuela in context, declaring upon his arrival for the meeting:

“The resistance of the people of Venezuela against the United States is very important for all the countries of the world.”

The economic blockade, announced last week, has also escalated opposition to dollar domination. There are now 21 countries on the US sanctions list and scores of other countries are impacted by US sanctions. In reality, what the US is doing is imposing unilateral coercive measures against these countries, which violate the United Nations Charter. Sanctions imply there was a formal action that justified punishment, but that is not the case here.

The Caracas Declaration was passed at the NAM meeting. As Anya Parampil reported in the Grayzone,

“the delegates unanimously affirmed their pursuit of a multipolar world and a desire to construct an international financial system independent of US control.”

The Declaration also contained a clause calling for following the Vienna Convention, which includes a provision to protect diplomatic missions. No doubt this was in response to the US seizure of Venezuelan diplomatic properties, highlighted by the work of the Embassy Protection Collective to uphold international law.

Sanctions are Economic Terrorism

At the NAM meeting, representatives of various countries described the impacts of the US’ economic war on their people. Zarif of Iran made the point clear:“Just Google ‘terrorism.’ This is the definition that the dictionary will give you: ‘unlawful use of violence or intimidation, especially against civilians, in pursuit of political gains’… so please friends, stop using [the term] ‘sanctions’… sanctions have a legal connotation. This is economic terrorism… we have to say it again and again.”

Illegal unilateral coercive measures have contributed to the deaths of 40,000 Venezuelans in 2017 and 2018. A leading Venezuelan Economist, Francisco Rodríguez, says the Trump Administration’s sanctions are costing Venezuela $16.9 billion annually and threaten a famine that could cause hundreds of thousands of deaths. Two days after Trump’s new Executive Order was signed, a ship carrying 25 thousand tons of soy-made products for food production in Venezuela was blocked.

The NAM conference agreed to study and report on the impact of US sanctions, ensuring that the movement against illegal unilateral coercive measures by the United States will continue.

Russia, an observer of the NAM, was represented by Vice Minister Sergey Ryabkov who said the US was strangling Venezuela with one hand through sanctions while pick-pocketing it with the other by freezing its assets held in Western banks. Ryabkov told The Grayzone,

“the US has sanctioned almost 70 countries in recent decades, impacting the lives of over one-third of the world’s population.”

The US tried to threaten diplomats to convince them not to attend the meeting, but was unsuccessful. Jorge Arreaza, the Venezuelan Foreign Minister, described the successful summit as “a failure of US diplomacy” driven home by “120 countries [that] are not aligned with the US… they want to be free, they want to be independent.” He described the Non-Aligned Movement as a “vaccine against unilateralism.”

President Maduro spoke at the meeting. He underscored the march of history toward freedom and the end of US empire describing the 21st Century as “the century of freedom, it is the century of the end of empires, and it is just beginning in 2019…nothing, nor anyone will stop us…no one can stop the course of the new story that is making its way!”

People’s Movements Organizing Against US’ Violations of International Law

The US blockade against Venezuela and continued threats of military attack galvanized worldwide protests this weekend. Popular Resistance joined with other social movements and civil society organizations in denouncing the blockade.

In addition to the Non-Aligned Movement’s renewed commitment to the United Nations Charter, popular movements are organizing along similar lines. This week, we launched the Global Appeal to Save International Law, an effort to create a global network of people and social movements to demand respect for the United Nations Charter and its use as a tool for maintaining peace, guaranteeing human rights and protecting the sovereignty of nations.

From September 20-23, a coalition of organizations is holding the People’s Mobilization to Stop the US War Machine and Save the Planet. The Mobe will highlight the role of US militarism as the largest polluter on the planet during the Global Climate Strike on Friday, September 20 and join in calling for decolonization at the Puerto Rico Independence March on September 21. The People’s Mobe will hold a rally at Herald Square at 2:00 pm on Sunday, September 22. On Monday the 23rd, we will hold an evening event: “A Path To International Peace: Realizing the Vision of the United Nations Charter,” which will feature social movements and government representatives working for an end to US violations of international law. Registration is free, but is required. Register here.

Opposition to US violations of international law were also evident at the Sao Paulo Forum held in Caracas from July 25-28 with the participation of 190 organizations, political parties, social movements, workers’ movements, parliamentarians and intellectuals from Latin America, the Caribbean and several continents. Seven hundred people participated in the four-day event showing unity across Latin America against US aggression.

A dozen members of the Venezuelan Embassy Protection Collective attended the forum, spoke to the conference and were received with standing ovations for their work to uphold international law. The Collective had challenges getting to the Forum, due to US airlines no longer flying to Venezuela, and one member was harassed at the US border when he returned.

A Final Declaration was issued by the Forum in support for Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua and other progressive governments under attack by US imperialism and for a demand to free Lula and other left-wing leaders imprisoned for political reasons.

Members of the Embassy Protection Collective in Caracas.

Rising Resistance

People are standing up to US interventions in many other countries. In Honduras, there are widespread protests against the US-installed coup president, Juan Orlando Hernandez, who was indicted last week in the US for drug trafficking. US-trained police are responding to protests with violence.  A hunger strike by political prisoners turned into a call for Hernandez’s resignation. Embassy Protector Adrienne Pine is there and reporting via Twitter.

In Nicaragua, peace has prevailed after a US coup attempt last year. A US-funded Human Rights Director was accused of massive theft of US regime change dollars and inflating death tolls. To understand Nicaragua, read this excellent book by social movement leaders. There is a great deal happening in Cuba, Colombia, Brazil, Ecuador and other countries responding to US domination. Stephon Sefton writes that the next five years will be pivotal for the Left in Latin America.

Another top target is Iran where the US has escalated its economic war after Trump violated the nuclear arms agreement. Iran is being very strategic in responding to US aggression in the Strait of Hormuz and the US has been unable to get traditional allies like France and Germany to join with it, causing concerns within the US foreign policy establishment. The US economic war is undermining the Iranian economy and causing tens of thousands of deaths annually.

Iran has never attacked another country nor invaded a country to steal its resources. They are proud of their skills in diplomacy and negotiation, as a veteran of the Iraq-Iran war wrote to President Trump in an open letter. He warns that the initiator of war is the loser, and attacks on Iran will backfire. Foreign Minister Zarif made a similar point with regard to the unilateral coercive measures saying US economic terrorism will backfire against the US.

High level officials at the Non-Aligned Movement meeting in Caracas, 2019. By the Grayzone Project.

The Loss of US Supremacy

Aggressive US actions being put in place by Trump, John Bolton, and Mike Pompeo are backfiring. Responses are being put in place that will unravel US economic power, which is more fragile than it seems.

Foreign Minister Zarif summarizes the situation saying,

“Last year we did 35 percent of our bilateral transactions with Turkey in our own currencies. And this is happening between us and China, between us and India, between us and Russia, and between us and the countries in the region.”

Countries are responding to dollar domination by trading without the US dollar. JP Morgan’s private bank advised clients that “the US dollar could lose its status as the world’s dominant currency” and urged investors to diversify their currency holdings. New financial structures are being created by Europe, Russia, Iran, China, and others to trade without the dollar. The value of the dollar is in decline and last month Credit Suisse predicted it would continue to fall.

The US political leadership seems unable to change course. The bi-partisans in Washington, DC passed a record-setting two-year military budget that continues to misspend US resources on an arms race and never-ending war rather than on critical needs at home. The failure to rebuild infrastructure, make education from pre-school through college free and available to all, confront the lack of investment in cities and rural areas and confront the crisis of healthcare with national improved Medicare for all will cause a downward US spiral.

The myth of American Exceptionalism is being exposed, as we discuss with Danny Haiphong on Clearing the FOG. We need to prepare for a new era as the 2020’s offer potential for significant social and political transformation if we work at it.

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

All images in this article are from PR unless otherwise stated; featured image: Since the cutting off of electricity, food and water inside the embassy has not been enough to force the collective to leave, late Tuesday afternoon, the Washington, D.C. Metropolitan Police handed out a trespassing notice that was printed without letterhead or signature from any U.S. government official. (Photo: CodePink)

Dame Sally Davies is the Chief Medical Officer (CMO) for England and recently released the CMO annual report for 2019. The report focuses on UK engagement with global health and forging partnerships.

However, there appears to be no mention of cancers in the report, a serious omission according to environmental campaigner Rosemary Mason. Like many others, she has been campaigning tirelessly for many years to draw attention to the links between agrochemicals and certain cancers and health conditions.

In response to the report, Mason has written an open letter addressed to Sally Davies (and has also sent a copy to Werner Bauman, CEO of Bayer).

Mason’s letter is presented below.

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Dear Professor Dame Sally Davies

I have just read your CMO’s Report for 2019 in the Lancet. I note your statement: Across the UK, there are significant and widening inequalities in a range of health outcomes, including healthy life expectancy, infant mortality and obesity.

What about the huge increases in cancers in the UK? Were you asked by Werner Baumann (Bayer CEO) not to mention them while he tries to decide whether to fight the 18,400 lawsuits from people in the US who claim that Roundup caused their cancer or to settle them? If you add the 13,605 new cases of Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma diagnosed in 2015 (the latest figures produced for the UK) and they all were to take out lawsuits against Bayer, he would probably agree to settle.

Pesticide Action Network UK’s analysis of the last 12 years of residue data published by the Expert Committee on Pesticide Residues in Food (PRiF) shows that there are unacceptable levels of pesticides present in the food provided through the Department of Health’s School Fruit and Vegetable Scheme (SFVS). Residues of 123 different pesticides were found, some of which are linked to serious health problems such as cancer and disruption of the hormone system.

In many cases, multiple residues were found on the produce. This is another area of serious concern as the scientific community has little understanding about the complex interaction of different chemicals in what is termed the ‘cocktail’ effect. We have also found that the levels of residues contained on SFVS produce are higher than those in produce tested under the national residue testing scheme (mainstream produce found on supermarket shelves). When Nick Mole, Policy Director of PAN-UK sent these findings to the Department of Health, he was told that pesticides are not their concern.

That is a shocking statement to hear from an organisation meant to be protecting people’s health. There are many papers that show that obesity is associated with low diversity of bacteria in the gut microbiome. Thousands of UK children, mainly in deprived city areas, are already classed as severely obese when they leave primary school. Children are being poisoned from their very first days at school. It is no wonder children in Britain have the highest levels of obesity in the world and the UK is the most obese country in western Europe. 

Were you aware that documents released under a freedom of information request showed that between the coalition taking power in May 2010 and the end of 2013 the Department of Health alone had 130 meetings with representatives of the industry?

Yours sincerely

Rosemary Mason

(MB, ChB, FRCA)

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Rosemary Mason also attached a 20-page document to the letter for the attention of Sally Davies and Werner Bauman.

In it, Mason states that each year there are steady increases in the numbers of new cancers in the UK and increases in deaths from the same cancers, with no treatments making any difference to the numbers.

In the UK there were

• 13,605 new cases of Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma in 2015 (and 4,920 deaths in 2016);
• 41,804 new cases of bowel cancer in 2015 (and 16,384 deaths in 2016);
• 12,547 new cases of kidney cancer in 2015 (and 4,619 deaths in 2016);
• 5,736 new cases of liver cancer in 2015 (5,417 deaths in 2016);
• 15,906 new cases of melanoma in 2015 (2,285 deaths in 2016);
• 3,528 new cases of thyroid cancer in 2015 (382 deaths in 2016);
• 10,171 new cases of bladder cancer in 2015 (5,383 deaths in 2016);
• 8,984 new cases of uterine cancer in 2015 (2,360 deaths in 2016);
• 7,270 cases of ovarian cancer in 2015 (4,227 deaths in 2016);
• 9,900 new cases of leukaemia in 2015 (4,712 deaths in 2016);
• 55,122 new cases of invasive breast cancer in 2015 (11,563 deaths in 2016);
• 47,151 new cases of prostate cancer in 2015 (11,631 deaths in 2016);
• 9,211 new cases of oesophageal cancer in 2015 (8,004 deaths in 2016); and
• 5,540 new cases of myeloma in 2015 (3,079 deaths in 2016);
• 2,288 new cases of testicular cancer in 2015 (57 deaths in 2016);
• 9,921 new cases of pancreatic cancer in 2015 (9,263 deaths in 2016);
• 11,432 new cases of brain cancer in 2015 (5,250 deaths in 2016);
• 46,388 new cases of lung cancer in 2015 (and 35,620 deaths in 2016).
• In the US in 2014 there were 24,050 new cases of myeloma.

Mason wonders whether industry influenced the decision not to mention cancers in the CMO 2019 report and reserves a special place for Bayer in her document.

Bayer has stated that transparency creates trust. The company says it embraces its responsibility to assess its products’ safety. An advertisement that Bayer placed in Politico and the Farmers’ Guardian on 19/12/2018 said:

“Transparency creates trust. At Bayer, we embrace our responsibility to communicate how we assess our products’ safety — and we recognize that people around the world want more information around glyphosate. This month, we published more than 300 study summaries on the safety of glyphosate on our dedicated transparency website.”

However, Mason implies this is little more than PR and provides a brief and disturbing history of the company and claims that Bayer has never been transparent in its life.

She then goes on to note that life expectancy is falling in Britain and the US and argues that people are being poisoned by weedkiller and other pesticides in our food.

As mentioned in Mason’s letter, Pesticide Action Network UK’s analysis of the last 12 years of residue data (published by the Expert Committee on Pesticide Residues in Food) shows there are unacceptable levels of pesticides present in the food provided through the Department of Health’s (DoH) School Fruit and Vegetable Scheme (SFVS).

Residues of 123 different pesticides were found, some of which are linked to serious health problems such as cancer and disruption of the hormone system. Moreover, residues contained on SFVS produce were higher than those in produce tested under the national residue testing scheme (mainstream produce found on supermarket shelves).

In her document, Mason also discusses the deleterious effects of agrochemicals on the gut microbiome, the collective genome of organisms inhabiting our body, and notes increasing levels of obesity are associated with low bacterial richness in the gut. She refers to certain studies and lays the blame squarely at the door of agrochemicals, not least the use of glyphosate, a strong chelator of essential minerals, such as cobalt, zinc, manganese, calcium, molybdenum and sulphate. In addition, it kills off beneficial gut bacteria and allows toxic bacteria such as clostridium difficile to flourish. She states that two key problems caused by glyphosate residues in our diet are nutritional deficiencies, especially minerals and essential amino-acids, and systemic toxicity.

At this point, it must be stressed that children and young people are especially vulnerable. In a 2016 article that appeared in The Guardian, developmental neurobiologist and science writer Mo Costandi discussed the importance of gut bacteria and their balance. In adolescence, he explained, the brain undergoes a protracted period of heightened neural plasticity, during which large numbers of synapses are eliminated in the prefrontal cortex and a wave of ‘myelination’ sweeps across this part of the brain. These processes refine the circuitry in the prefrontal cortex and increase its connectivity to other brain regions. Myelination is also critical for normal, everyday functioning of the brain. Myelin increases a nerve fibre’s conduction velocity by up to a hundred times, and so when it breaks down, the consequences can be devastating.

Gut microbes control the maturation and function of microglia, the immune cells that eliminate unwanted synapses in the brain; age-related changes to gut microbe composition might regulate myelination and synaptic pruning in adolescence and could, therefore, contribute to cognitive development. Upset those changes, and there are going to be serious implications for children and adolescents.

Findings published in the journal ‘Translational Psychiatry’ provide strong evidence that gut bacteria can have a direct physical impact on the brain. Alterations in the composition of the gut microbiome have been implicated in a wide range of neurological and psychiatric conditions, including autism, chronic pain, depression, and Parkinson’s Disease.

Many important neurotransmitters are located in the gut. Aside from affecting the functioning of major organs, these transmitters affect our moods and thinking. Feed gut bacteria a cocktail of biocides and is it any surprise that many diseases are increasing?

Yet we are still being subjected to an unregulated cocktail of agrochemicals. Regulatory agencies and governments appear to work hand in glove with the agrochemical sector.

In her document, Rosemary Mason discusses the nexus between government, health institutes, the Gates Foundation and a profiteering pharmaceuticals industry and the fact that many of its products escape effective regulatory controls and are pushed onto an unsuspecting public, especially children.

Mason touches on a lot more but also notes a failure by the media to discuss the impact of agrochemicals on public health primarily because so many journalists are fed reports and press releases by the very organisations with an interest in protecting industry.

Perhaps her most damning comments are reserved for Cancer Research UK (CRUK):

“CRUK’s vision ‘is to bring forward the days when all cancers are cured’ is complete fabrication by the pesticides industry.”

It’s a bold statement. Readers can access Rosemary Mason’s latest document here (and all her previous documents here) and may draw their own conclusions.

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